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

by Franny Moyle

  Before she left for Switzerland, Constance had one more important liaison. Although she was now pursuing divorce proceedings against Oscar for the sake of her children, she was still concerned about her husband’s welfare. There were those in high places who were trying to help Oscar, and one such man was Richard Burdon Haldane QC, a friend of the Prime Minister, Lord Rosebery, who had recently been involved in a parliamentary inquiry into the penal system.25 Haldane was also a friend of Margaret, Lady Brooke, the Ranee of Sarawak, who, as a good friend of both Oscar and Constance, had similarly used her influence on him. On 14 June, Haldane visited Oscar in Pentonville, and shortly after this he met ‘his family’. In a subsequent letter Constance would inquire more widely about Haldane, and Arthur Clifton would reassure her that ‘he is a very well known Q C … on the liberal side in politics’.26 This may suggest that she was at this ‘family’ meeting with Haldane at which it seems some reassurances were made about arrangements that could be made to make Oscar more comfortable. On 4 July, at Haldane’s request, Oscar ‘was transferred to Wandsworth gaol, which was generally considered more lenient and comfortable than Pentonville.

  Constance finally arrived in Glion later in the month of June, and thus began what her two sons considered a strange, long summer holiday. The village was close to Lake Geneva and was reached by a little funicular railway line from the nearby town of Territet. Constance and her sons were surrounded by water, mountains and woods. They explored the Gorges du Chaudron to their west, which was, according to Vyvyan’s memories, filled with a carpet of narcissi.

  Glion had become a fashionable resort in the nineteenth century, and it was not short of interesting Europeans. Constance and the boys particularly liked a couple of Russian countesses there who, according to Vyvyan, smoked perpetually.

  Writing to Emily Thursfield from Glion, Constance allowed her feelings towards Oscar to begin to emerge. In spite of the horrors of the trial, which had left her ‘broken hearted’, the revelations about her husband’s secret life and his recent treatment of her, she still felt desperately sorry for him ‘confined within four walls’. At a profound level Constance could not stop loving Oscar, nor could she rid herself of the idea that, as his wife, she had sworn to never leave him. She did not want to break this oath now, despite the torments he had visited on her. Her decision to file for divorce was not about her and Oscar, she explained to her friend; it was about the children. ‘I have to sue for divorce because the boys must be free and I cannot get a separation … and on account of the way he has behaved about money affairs no one would trust him to look after the boys if anything should happen to me and he got control of my money.’27

  Otho travelled to Glion to meet his sister, and in August and early September stayed with her and the boys, assisting them as best he could. Extraordinarily, Otho had also managed to see Oscar in gaol, a visit that may well have been facilitated by Haldane. The effect of the visit was quite unexpected. Otho discovered Oscar to be utterly penitent when it came to Constance. His sentiments were persuasive and profound, for by the time Otho left the prison the two had agreed that Oscar should write to Constance and ask her to drop her divorce proceedings. In August, Oscar was allowed to write just one letter. Taking on board Otho’s advice, he wrote it to Constance, begging forgiveness.

  In the same month that he was allowed to write a letter, Oscar was also permitted to receive just one visit, and it was his old friend Robert Sherard who went to see him. Sherard, like Otho, believed that reconciliation was possible between Constance and Oscar, despite all that had happened. He discussed this with Oscar, and immediately after the visit he too wrote to Constance. The combination of Oscar’s and Sherard’s correspondence dissolved Constance’s resolve to divorce her husband. The love that she clearly, astonishingly, still held for him was sufficient for her to forgive him, provided he was penitent. She would remain his wife, and somehow they would work out a future as a married couple. She wrote to Oscar to tell him as much.

  And then, in early September, Constance received news that she had a visitor at the hotel in Glion. To her utter surprise it was her solicitor, Mr Hargrove. Although Constance had sought advice from Sir George Lewis in the first instance regarding her relationship with Oscar, Constance was now using the family solicitor, with whom she had liaised over the years regarding Otho’s business dealings, to progress her divorce proceedings. Hargrove’s decision to come all the way to Switzerland is extraordinary, but it may be that the amount of general business he had between the two siblings justified the journey. The Leasehold Investment Company had issued a final call in January, and no doubt Hargrove, in addition to Constance’s affairs, had plenty of business with Otho.

  Hargrove revealed that he too had received a letter from Oscar, so piteous and touching that he felt swayed. Suddenly he also suggested that divorce might be avoided. She and the boys would still have to change their names, but it was possible that Oscar might join them in doing so after his internment, and perhaps they could start afresh.

  Given this turn of events, Constance now determined to return to London to see Oscar herself. This was not as straightforward as it might seem. Access to Oscar was very limited, as were visits to him, and many of his friends were making applications. Constance’s distance from events only added to complications. Otho wrote to the Governor of Wandsworth prison in an attempt to make Oscar aware of Constance’s intentions and to prioritize them.

  ‘I have had a reply from the Governor of the prison,’ Otho wrote to his wife, Mary, from Glion on 12 September 1895:

  he says that my letter has been handed to Oscar; now by the ordinary rules, he may not receive another letter for the next three months, but, in special circumstances leave may be asked for from the prison commissioners. His letter and mine having crossed each other is very unfortunate, particularly if he should suppose as he could “well do, that mine was Constance’s answer to his. Constance is waiting till tomorrow to see if it will bring a letter from the governor in answer to her enquiry whether she could have an interview with Oscar on the 18th of this month. This morning to make things still more difficult, a letter from Mr Clifton tells her that Mr Sherard is confident thro friends of himself and the Home Secretary of obtaining another interview with Oscar shortly, which of course if it were granted would lessen her chances of seeing him herself. She has therefore had to write to Mr Sherard asking him in her favour to forgo his claim, and that again is a nuisance because he is a journalist and sends everything to the papers. The next step probably for Constance is to write to Mr Haldane QC to interest himself in her letter being delivered. So it is all at sixes and sevens.28

  In the end Constance’s and Otho’s letter-writing campaign bore fruit. Constance was allowed to visit Oscar in addition to Sherard, and she made preparations to return to London. Before she did this, however, Constance had to attend to Mlle Schuwer, the French governess, who had proved herself unfit to be in charge of two boys. According to Vyvyan, she had run up huge expenses and was in the habit of locking herself in her room rather than properly supervising the children. However, a comment from Otho to his wife suggests that she may have been devoting herself to a male companion rather than the children. ‘It is said that Mlle Schuwer has rejoined her Corsican at the Hotel Victoria,’ Otho informed Mary, ‘and four servants have suddenly been dismissed.’29

  Whatever new scandals Constance was faced with concerning her wayward governess, the solution was simple. She and the governess parted company. Now she packed Cyril and Vyvyan off to stay with Otho and Mary in their small chalet in Bevaix, not far from Neuchâtel, while she travelled back to London with a Miss Boxwell, whom she had met at Glion. Constance boxed up her sons’ things and posted them on to her sister-in-law Mary Holland.

  In a note she thanked her for ‘taking charge of the 2 young monkeys for me while I go on this very sad pilgrimage to London. I am sure you will wish it to have a very happy ending both for his sake and for mine.’ As part of this note Con
stance revealed that Oscar had written to her more than once, and that his ‘letters are touching to a degree and I cannot think that the children will suffer more by seeing him than they must in any case by the very fact of being his children’.30

  So, full of hope for her marriage and for a future where her children might see their father after all, Constance entered through the grim gates of Wandsworth gaol on 21 September. Afterwards she described the visit to Robert Sherard:

  My Dear Mr Sherard

  It was indeed awful more so than I had any conception it could be I could not see him, I could not touch him, and I scarcely spoke. Come and see me before you go to him on Monday at any time after 2 I can see you. When I go again I am to get at the Home Secretary thro’ Mr Haldane and try and get a room to see him in and touch him again. He has been mad the last three years, and he says that if he saw Lord A—he would kill him. So he had better stay away and be satisfied with having marred a fine life. Few people can boast of so much.

  I thank you for your kindness to a fallen friend; you are kind & gentle to him and you are, I think, the only person he can bear to see.31

  Constance returned to Switzerland after the visit, this time to stay in her brother’s crowded home, where he lived very frugally since his financial demise. Otho, Mary and their children, Hester and Eugene, occupied the top floor of a two-storey chalet in Bevaix. The chalet was called La Maison Benguerel, after Mademoiselle Benguerel, the owner of the property, who lived on the ground floor, where she also made Gruyère cheese. It was a far cry from the life the boys had enjoyed in England, where they had had the run of huge houses such as Babbacombe and, even in Tite Street, had been used to the privileges of the upper middle class. Otho and his second family, by contrast, accessed their modest rooms via a wooden staircase that ran up the outside of the chalet and entered straight into the dining room, which also served as a study. Here the boys’ education was resumed by Otho himself, who began tutoring them.

  Constance’s Kodak camera went with her to Bevaix. In the possession of Constance’s grandson today there is an album with postage-stamp-sized photographs from his period depicting Otho, Mary and their children. There is just one image of Constance amid pages of images of the others. Gone are the beautiful dresses and hats. She wears a plain dark skirt and a white shirt. She looks like a governess.

  The extraordinary loyalty and hope that defined Constance before Oscar went to prison re-emerged after her visit to her husband. From Bevaix she wrote to Emily Thursfield again, this time stating that Oscar ‘cares for no one but myself and the children’ and so ‘by sticking to him now I may save him from even worse … I think we women were meant to be comforters and I believe that no-one can really take my place now, or help him as I can.’32

  Writing to Lady Mount-Temple, Constance revealed that her latest visit had made her determined to attempt another, more intimate visit to Oscar before the end of the year. ‘I may even see him under more favourable circumstances than I did when I was in London a month ago,’ she wrote.

  I saw him only as one is allowed by special permission to see any prisoner but I really could not go through it again. There were two gratings and a passage between us, and so we had to speak. It was awful, more awful than anything I have ever been through, and worse even for him I suppose. I came over to London for five days only to see him, but next time I shall word my request differently, and in a month’s time I hope to see him face to face, tho even so, there must be a warden present all the time.33

  If Constance did return to London in November for a second prison visit, it has gone unrecorded. In that month Oscar’s name was once again splashed across the headlines when he had to appear at the bankruptcy court. With his hair cut short by the prison wardens, and wearing a short, unkempt beard, he stood to hear himself declared bankrupt and to see his affairs placed in the hands of the Official Receiver. This unwelcome publicity may have been enough to deter Constance from returning to England as intended. But she may also have altered her plans because her health was yet again deteriorating. She was once more finding walking very hard indeed. Instead she decided that she and the boys should seek some sun for the winter. This news filtered back to her friends in England. Lady Mount-Temple’s daughter Juliet, whose resolve to distance herself from Constance had melted, wrote to Constance from Babbacombe: ‘Nervi sounds rather delicious for you for the winter.’34

  Although life could hardly ever be delicious again for Constance, given her wider troubles, it is true that Nervi was a spectacular place. A village that clung to the cliffs surrounding an azure-blue bay, it lay close to Genoa on the Italian Riviera. Her motivation for wintering in Nervi was Margaret Brooke, the Ranee of Sarawak, who had a winter villa close by. Although Constance was enjoying her brother’s company enormously, Bevaix was isolated. She missed her friends and the company she had always enjoyed at home. Margaret Brooke was one of many expatriates with villas in or around Nervi, and Constance must have hoped she could once again sample a little society.

  Margaret Brooke was another older lady who would become a much needed shoulder for Constance. They had a great deal in common. The Ranee had gained her unusual title after marrying Sir Charles Brooke, the white Rajah of Sarawak.35 But the marriage was an unhappy one, and she had lived apart from the Rajah for many years, in London and on the Continent. In London she had become friendly with many of the Pre-Raphaelite set that Constance knew – not least Ruskin and the Burne-Joneses. And when her son Bertram fell ill, she bought a villa outside Nervi where she could benefit from a better climate than London could offer.

  ‘It was a nice little abode, painted white with yellow shutters and had a lovely view over the Mediterranean and its cliff-bound coasts to which clung olive woods, even rose gardens dipping themselves into the sea,’ the Ranee wrote in her autobiography. ‘Sometimes we were pleased, sometimes rather sorry that we were but one mile removed from Nervi, where an enormous hotel harboured portions of the beau-monde from Russia, Austria and elsewhere.’36

  In the end Constance found an apartment just outside Nervi, in Casa Barbagelata at nearby Sori. This was still nice and close to the Ranee and allowed the two women to explore a friendship that had begun in London. The Ranee was also a keen photographer, but more advanced than Constance, since she could enlarge and print her work – skills she now began to teach her friend. With the studiousness and sense of purpose that Constance applied to everything, she now found an Italian maid and began Italian lessons.

  Otho and his family joined Constance in the apartment in Sori that winter. But while Otho, Mary and the children were quick to explore the local countryside and its customs, Constance was housebound much of the time.

  ‘I want to go and see all the lovely little villages around here. They look so sweet with their pink houses with the green shutters and their gardens full of orange trees and palms and all the lovely pergola,’ she told Georgina in early December. But the fact was Constance could barely move. ‘There is a large garden here, but I have not been into it yet,’ she complained.37

  Confined to her apartment, Constance had begun making new plans for the boys’ education. She determined to return to Britain in the spring and bring the boys back with her. She had decided to send them to school in ‘Gt Berkhamsted to be under Mr Gowring first and then I hope with Dr Fry the headmaster’.38

  It seems likely that this plan was forged with her friend Emily Thursfield, who lived in Great Berkhamsted. Constance was also good friends with Lady Lothian, who lived at Ashridge, just outside Great Berkhamsted. At the heart of her thinking seems to have been a notion that she could reintroduce her sons to their homeland under the protection of new identities, because since October 1895 Constance, Cyril and Vyvyan Wilde had ceased to exist. Constance had determined to change her and her sons’ names, and she had chosen the same family name that Otho now used. One day in October the documentation had arrived that changed Constance, Cyril and Vyvyan Wilde to Constance, Cyril and Vyvyan Holland.<
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  14

  Madame Holland

  JUST BEFORE CHRISTMAS 1895 Madame Holland, as she was now known, checked into a clinic in the Italian town of Genoa. The clinic was the private concern of Signor Bossi, a gynaecologist who was more than amenable to dealing with some of the less savoury medical procedures that some Englishwomen could only have undertaken on the Continent.

  Mme Holland was not the only person in the clinic concealing a former identity. One of her fellow patients, apparently delivering an illegitimate child, was

  only 22 and is here evidently under an assumed name, she is the daughter of very rich people in London, she’s more French than English and she doesn’t want the nuns to know who she is. The Doctor posts all her letters for her and fetches those addressed to her … She told me that she would tell me her mother’s name, but I don’t want to know it and I think she is suspicious and thinks always that the Sisters want to find out her secret. She is very pretty and very young. She’s operated, as she calls it yesterday and today she is very unwell.1

  Constance had come to the clinic because Bossi had claimed that he was able to treat her mobility and the creeping paralysis in her right arm and legs. His treatment included an operation, followed by a month-long stay in his private clinic and complete bed rest. The indications are that the operation had a gynaecological aspect.

  Constance was miserable that her stay in the clinic was over the Christmas period, but she was genuinely hopeful that the medical procedures could improve her walking, which had been failing for so long. She took a photograph of Lady Mount-Temple into the clinic along with a little crucifix that Cyril had given her, and she quickly became friendly with the Dominican Sisters who provided the nursing care there. They wore white dresses and black veils, and one, Soeur Catherine (‘refreshingly quiet & serene and beautiful with a fair face and grey eyes that look straight at one without any arriere pensée’2), became particularly close to Constance. Bossi was also charming to his latest patient. Although he told Constance that he normally charged up to 3,000 francs for the treatment he had given her, he had agreed to accept whatever fee she was able to muster in her reduced circumstances. Otho and Mary made a fuss of her as best they could. Otho sent her a book, which Constance considered far too expensive, and Mary sent her a blue blouse that Sister Catherine made Constance try on, even though Constance insisted it was far too beautiful for her.