Constance: The Tragic and Scandalous Life of Mrs. Oscar Wilde

by Franny Moyle

  Father Maturin’s sister ‘had a little boy who died when he was a child’, Constance continued,

  and when he was very ill was taken to Eastbourne where he lay in bed in the drawing room looking out of a window at the sea. One day they noticed a dove which kept fluttering up and down outside the closed window, and which attracted the child’s attention and pleased him. At about 3 o’clock in the afternoon he died, and a few hours afterwards the dove was found dead on his breast, tho no one knew it had got in, and the window was still shut. So the boy and the dove were buried together. What do you think the white dove was? We are so surrounded with the supernatural; I wish I could have some experience of it.11

  During their extended residence at Torquay, Constance and Oscar took a break at the end of December to attend to other matters. Cyril and Vyvyan were left at Babbacombe in the care of their French governess and the Hearnes. First stop for the Wildes was London. Constance spent New Year’s Eve with friends in De Vere Gardens in Kensington, probably because the bulk of the servants had been let go at Tite Street. Constance was house-hunting in London now. Oscar did not share his wife’s desire to leave the metropolis; regardless of what the doctors were suggesting, London life was key to him.

  So Constance now sought a larger family home in Chelsea. The lease on Tite Street was coming up for renewal in June, and Constance probably felt there were many reasons to be moving on from it. ‘I expect to be very busy while I am in London,’ she had told Georgina earlier, ‘for I want to look for a small abode for Lady Wilde, and also for something for ourselves, for I quite agree with Aunt Carrie. Oscar will never live out of London, & I shall live alone in exile if I take a house in the Country. And we must settle on something or we shall be turned out on the street next June!’12

  In fact, Constance’s stay back in London was short. As 1893 got under way, rather than reopen Tite Street, Constance headed to Witley to see her friends the Lathburys. She then returned to Babbacombe briefly in mid-January with Oscar and Robbie Ross, before heading on to Plymouth to stay with the Walkers, those cousins of Oscar’s who had featured in his story about the boy and the dove. Another quick return to Babbacombe to see the boys was merely a prelude to a trip to Italy with her aunt Mary Napier and cousins Eliza and Lilias. They would be en route for the Continent in the last week of January.

  If Constance and Oscar’s relationship had survived their respective travels in the first two years of the decade, Constance made a fateful mistake in assuming it could survive similar separations going forward. She had not counted on the influence of his latest best friend. In leaving for Italy in early 1893, Constance left Oscar to his own devices at a time when his relationship with Bosie Douglas was just beginning to take on new depths. Her departure provided the moment in which Oscar’s infatuation with Bosie, and the latter’s extraordinary power over the older man, really cemented.

  In fact, Oscar’s delayed arrival at Babbacombe had something to do with Bosie. Oscar’s friendship with the young lord had led to several other new acquaintances. Through Bosie, Oscar had become friendly with a young homosexual called Maurice Schwabe, and through Schwabe, Oscar and Bosie had got to know Alfred Taylor. Taylor, a good-time guy and committed homosexual, lived in Little College Street in Westminster, where he held soirées and procured ‘renters’ – young male prostitutes – for his friends. In the autumn of 1892 Taylor had introduced Oscar to one Sidney Mavor, a twenty-year-old who had ambitions to go on the stage. He was one of those youths who were given a silver cigarette case by Oscar. Meanwhile on 18 November, when Constance was filling the house in Babbacombe with bayleaves, Oscar and Bosie were having tea in Little College Street, meeting Schwabe’s latest conquest, a young cockney renter called Fred Atkins. That evening all five men – Bosie, Oscar, Taylor, Schwabe and Atkins – dined in town.

  Oscar was becoming consumed by this new circle of homosexual men. The notion of his ‘sons’ had taken on an entirely new dimension. The ease of sex with ‘renters’ was a temptation he seemed unable to resist.

  On 21 November in Babbacombe, Constance was in the depths of reading Dante’s Inferno. She felt in the midst of a crisis. ‘I feel every word of it true to me. I am approaching the middle of the path of my life, and I am lost in that dark bitter forest. I certainly was asleep when I entered it and I know not how I entered it or when!’ she wrote to Georgina. ‘And then comes my bane the leopard of envy that pursues and torments me so much … And you darling Mother must be my Virgil and seeing me weep have pity on me and guide me right … You haunted me so last night that I thought you were in my room in spirit, winging me to get up and see the sunrise.’13 Oscar, by contrast, had decided to whisk Fred Atkins off to Paris for a few days.

  And now, in January, Oscar’s socializing with Bosie and the Taylor set continued. Bosie had come across a replacement for Atkins, a young unemployed clerk called Alfred Wood, who was living in Taylor’s rooms. Within days, while Constance was conveniently out of the way on her trip to Witley, Oscar began taking Wood back to Tite Street.

  In late January, Oscar went back to Paris, almost certainly in connection with the publication of his play Salome, which was imminent. Constance had a ‘delightful peep at Oscar in Paris’ on her way to Italy. Oscar informed her there ‘that he would like to stay on at Bab till March and write his play for Mr Hare … The children will come home on the 17th and this will be better for Cyril to go to school and for Oscar to be alone.’14 The play Constance alludes to was An Ideal Husband. That Oscar would be writing this alone at Babbacombe was not, however, how things turned out.

  Constance made Turin by 2 February. The journey was difficult, and her ‘neuralgia’ returned, felt this time in her head and back. In spite of her discomfort, she had enjoyed watching Europe unfurl, ‘looking so wonderful in its garb of snow’ from the windows of her warm wagon-lit. Two days later she and her party were in Florence, having taken in Pisa en route. Aunt Mary Napier and her daughter went on to Naples with the plan to rejoin Constance later in Rome, but Constance was far from alone in Florence. There was her other cousin, Lilias, who was also travelling with her. But then there was also a raft of friends who, like Constance, had chosen to escape wintry London in favour of Italian sunshine. Laura Hope was in Florence, as was Miss Cunninghame Graham. The George Wyndhams, relatives of Bosie, had a villa, and Constance’s old schoolfriend Bessie Shand was staying with them. Robbie Ross’s mother was not far from Florence, and the artist John Rodham Spenser Stanhope and his family were also there. Constance’s days were packed. Alongside a rigorous schedule of sightseeing that she set for herself, she also enjoyed a whirlwind social diary.

  Constance took a Kodak camera with her to Italy and began to photograph everything. Kodak had introduced a portable camera that took roll film in 1890, and in the following year they had developed daylight-loading film, ideal for tourists unable to access a dark-room. Constance’s cousin Lilias, who was her companion in Florence, found the process of taking Kodaks tiresome. Constance preferred the company of her cousin Lizzie Napier, who had happily trudged the streets of Pisa with her.

  My cousin Miss Napier (who is not with me here but has gone on to Naples with her mother) is much more ‘sympathetique’ to me than Lilias and is ready to wander about and look for odd churches and wait while I take kodaks and I am looking forward to being at Rome with her. We saw the Duomo, the Campanile, the Battisteria (where I saw a funny little bambina Anna christened) the Campo Santo a wonderful little church on the banks of the Arno, Santa Maria Delia Spina and an old church of St Paolo that Lizzie and I found in the afternoon. Don’t you think that is good for half a day?15

  Constance was not just taking photographs of buildings. She was also photographing some of the art around her, as well as exploring her own artistic talent. ‘I hope you liked the two scrappy photographs I put in for you yesterday,’ she wrote to Georgina. ‘They were meant to be sunbeams.’16

  Florence must have wooed Constance into a false sense of securi
ty. In a bizarre way the holiday did nothing but reinforce the social wealth her life and career with Oscar had brought. The people she was mixing with were a reflection of the friendships and interests they had built together. These cultural pioneers were not restricted to living in London; they could live in the greatest artistic cities of Europe if they wished. She began to persuade herself that she and Oscar might actually leave Tite Street and take up residence in the magical city of Florence too:

  Don’t be surprised if you hear of my flitting here … I love Florence with a passionate love and yearning as I have never loved any place before, only people. Still I don’t know whether I shall get Oscar out here, though he does speak of it as a possibility, and to me it seems more than a possibility, a delightful future to look forward to.17

  While Constance continued her education in Florentine art and culture, back at Babbacombe Bosie and a colleague, Campbell Dodgson, had joined Oscar. Bosie had been sent down from Oxford for failing his exams, and Dodgson was supposed to be tutoring him. Far from the solitary, studious atmosphere Oscar suggested in a letter to Georgina (‘Babbacombe Cliff has become a kind of college or school, for Cyril studies French in the nursery, and I write my new play in Wonderland, and in the drawing room Lord Alfred Douglas – one of Lady Queensberry’s sons – studies Plato with his tutor’18), in fact the three men were having something of a riot.

  After Dodgson left Babbacombe, Oscar wrote to assure him that ‘I am still conducting the establishment on the old lines and really think I have succeeded in combining the advantages of a public school with those of a private lunatic asylum.’ As a memento he added a brief prospectus for Babbacombe School, as follows:

  Headmaster – Mr Oscar Wilde

  Second Master – Mr Campbell Dodgson

  Boys – Lord Alfred Douglas

  Rules

  Tea for masters and boys at 9.30am

  Breakfast at 10.30

  Work 11.30–12.30

  At 12.30 Sherry and biscuits for headmasters and boys (the second master objects to this)

  12.40–1.30 work

  1.30 lunch

  2.30–4.30 compulsory hide and seek for headmaster

  5 Tea for headmaster and second master, brandy and sodas for boys

  6–7 work

  7.30 dinner

  8.30–12 Ecarté, limited to five-guinea points

  12–1.30 compulsory reading in bed …19

  Now the house in Tite Street was burgled for a second time. This time nothing was taken. Which raises the question, just what were the burglars looking for? By associating with ‘renters’, Bosie and Oscar were laying themselves open to blackmail. Having also slept with Alfred Wood, Bosie gave him a suit of clothes, overlooking the fact that there was a compromising letter from Oscar in the pocket. Within a month Wood would attempt to blackmail Oscar with the letter. It’s tempting to speculate that he may well have been behind the break-in at Tite Street a little earlier, looking for more compromising material against the fêted Mr Wilde.

  Oblivious to the double life her husband was now leading, after Florence Constance headed for Rome. On 19 February she got up at the crack of dawn and attended Jubilee Mass at St Peter’s. ‘The enthusiasm of thousands of people waving hats and handkerchiefs in that enormous building while the beautiful “Papa” was carried through the nave and round the Tribune, she explained to Georgina. ‘I was glad to have the dear old man’s blessing.’

  ‘Oscar writes to me every day & must be written to every day,’ Constance also stated, adding later that ‘Oscar has quite made up his mind to spend next winter in Florence.’20 Although a regular exchange of letters with one another had gone on during their periods of separation across the two previous years, now that Oscar’s life was becoming so geared around Bosie Douglas, Constance’s revelation that she and Oscar were still writing regularly seems surprising. Many accounts of Oscar’s life have failed to recognise how much his wife remained in his thoughts. The fact is, however, that in the spring of 1893, Oscar was still torn between Bosie and Constance.

  Although enthralled by him, Oscar’s relationship with Bosie was ambivalent. While he was hooked on Bosie, at another level Oscar understood how damaging the affair was. It was not just the money he was spending on Bosie and his circle, nor the danger that the ‘renters’ they shared presented, but Bosie’s personality was twisted and difficult. Demanding and hedonistic, greedy and selfish, Bosie Douglas also had tantrums that wore Oscar down. In fact, when Bosie left Babbacombe Cliff, Oscar said he was ‘determined never to speak to you again, or to allow you under any circumstances to be with me, so revolting had been the scene you had made the night before your departure’.21

  His letters to Constance were Oscar’s last attempts to throw a lifeline back to his formerly stable family life. But it was one growing weaker and weaker. Oscar was increasingly under Bosie’s power, and, although she clearly did not know it, every day Oscar was with Bosie diminished the bond between him and his wife. Despite the elder man’s resolution to break with his young love and acolyte, he was weak. Later Oscar would recall to Bosie that after the scene at Babbacombe ‘I consented to meet you, and of course I forgave you. On the way up to town you begged me to take you to the Savoy. That was indeed a visit fatal to me.’22

  Returning from Devon at the beginning of March, Oscar took a suite at one of London’s most expensive and prestigious hotels. He and Bosie had adjoining rooms. The renters continued to come and go. Constance was meanwhile beginning to make her way back from Rome. She stopped in Florence again, now with the express purpose of looking at apartments. She was quite certain that she and Oscar would be back there together the following September and October. Earnest and hungry for knowledge as ever, she made sure that, when not viewing rooms, she was continuing to see every splendour of Florentine art still available to her. She had with her Ruskin’s guidebook Mornings in Florence and attempted as best she could to follow his recommendations.

  ‘I went with St C23 to Santa Croce yesterday,’ she faithfully reported to their mutual friend, ‘not at sunrise as he thinks right, but armed with an opera glass and studied … the Giotto St Francis. When I come back to London I shall read nothing but Italian Art; nothing can exceed the vastness of my ignorance about it all.’24

  Full of the joys of Renaissance art she may have been, but when Constance’s feet touched British soil again on 21 March, she was mortified. Oscar was not waiting for her in Tite Street. He was staying at the Savoy with Bosie. The house in Tite Street, full of unopened post, felt as if it had been deserted. Whatever sweet nothings he had written to her while she was abroad, Oscar no longer seemed interested in seeing his wife now she had returned home.

  Some of Oscar’s friends began to feel disenchanted with him in the spring of 1893. Oscar and Bosie presented new behaviours that the old established circle of Wilde admirers – even the homosexual ones – found not only unpalatable but dangerous. John Gray, the original model and dedicatee of Dorian Gray, terminated his friendship with Wilde. And the man to whom Wilde dedicated Salome, Pierre Louys, also ended their relationship, not least because he witnessed what he considered Oscar’s shameful treatment of Constance.

  After their stay at the Savoy, Oscar and Bosie moved on to the Albemarle Hotel, no doubt telling Constance that it was important to be close to the rehearsals for A Woman of No Importance, which were now under way at the Haymarket Theatre. Louys visited Oscar and Bosie in their hotel rooms. Constance came round to deliver some post to her husband. When she complained that he no longer came home, Oscar announced for all to hear that he no longer remembered his address. He did so without an ounce of guilt. Constance left in tears, and Louÿs was horrified.

  A Woman of No Importance opened in April. As the press reported, the opening night was conspicuously well attended, with ‘Mr Balfour … in a stage box, accompanied by Mr George Wyndham and the Countess Grosvenor, while in the corresponding box on the opposite side was Lord Battersea with Mr Alfred Rothschi
ld’. The stalls were glittering with celebrities drawn from artistic and literary circles: ‘Lord Randolph Churchill and Lady Sarah Wilson, the Marquess and Marchioness of Granby, the Earl of Arran, M. Henry Rochefort, Mr and Mrs Chamberlain, Mr and Mrs Shaw Lefevre, Mr Alma Tadema, Miss Florence Terry, Mr Justin H. McCarthy, and Miss Jenoure, Mr Swinburne, and of course Mr Wm Wilde represented his brother.’25

  Constance is not mentioned in the press as one of the celebrity attendees, but given that she and Oscar had attended a reception at the New Gallery just six days earlier, it seems unlikely that Constance would have missed the opening of her husband’s second play, in spite of the recent personal difficulties between the two.

  The audience applauded the play, but this time there were hoots and hisses at the author when, clad in a white waistcoat with lilies in his buttonhole, he came to bathe in their praise. It was not just Oscar’s close friends who were noticing a change in his attitude and behaviour. The general public, it seems, had picked up on the rumours about his personal life, and his scandalous relationship with Bosie Douglas. As if in acknowledgement of this, the actor–manager responsible for the production, Herbert Beerbohm Tree, announced, as he took his curtain call, that he was ‘proud to have been connected with such a work of art’, a statement that raised applause, one imagines, from the large number of Oscar’s invitees in the audience.

  In spite of the souring of his public profile, Oscar suddenly found himself the recipient of £100 a week. This income could not have come at a better time for a family still generally outliving their means. But to Constance’s dismay the much-needed income did not seem to improve matters. Rather than plough it back into family finances, Oscar was spending it on a new lavish lifestyle, on Bosie Douglas, on hotels and, unbeknown to her, on rent boys.