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

by Franny Moyle

  Despite her and the school’s best efforts, by Christmas Constance realized that Vyvyan would have to be removed from Neuenheim College. In December she travelled back to Heidelberg and collected him, and together they spent a few days in Verona together as plans were made to put him into a Jesuit college in Monaco at the beginning of the new year.

  Constance had been given the address of the college in Monaco by her old family friend Mrs Cochrane. Constance had decided to try and hire a villa near Nervi, and make the Italian Riviera her home in the mid-term at least. Mrs Cochrane had recognized that a school in Monte Carlo, close by, would be very practical.

  Despite their greatly reduced means, the legacy of their formerly privileged life still brought the Holland family some adventures. Princess Alice of Monaco was both a close friend of the Ranee and had been on very good terms with Oscar. Although she and Constance were not acquainted, once she heard from the Ranee that Oscar’s son was at school in her principality, she made a point of meeting him. Vyvyan was accordingly presented at the grand Grimaldi Palace.

  ‘I was so glad to hear all about your visit to the Princess,’ Constance wrote to Vyvyan at the end of February. ‘Did she speak English or French to you? And was she kind & did you like her? I have never seen her & only know about her by name.’5 Constance was finally growing to appreciate her younger son. He was more similar to her than perhaps she had imagined. He was proving something of a linguist, like his mother, writing to her in Italian from the moment he was installed in Monaco. He was also developing a profound interest in religion and a strong appetite for Catholicism, which pleased her enormously. Her letters to him reveal a lively dialogue between them that ranged across religion, stamp collecting and world politics.

  ‘Aunt Mary and Lizzie go tomorrow,’ Constance wrote to Vyvyan from the hotel in Nervi, where in the first few months of 1897 she was once again staying. Her aunt and cousin had been to Japan, where cousin Lilias now lived with her new husband, who was in the diplomatic service there.

  It has been very nice having them here as otherwise it is very lonely. I am afraid there is no news to tell you as nothing ever happens here but we are wildly interested about affairs in Crete & would like to see the island taken away from the Turks who are horrid and given to the Greeks who are splendid … I like your little pictures so much that you send me & they go into my Bible.6

  As Constance’s hunt for an appropriate villa near Nervi continued, she moved from the Hotel Nervi to become a guest in the Ranee’s own Villa Raffo, which must have been a relief for Constance, who was now continuously worried about money.

  ‘The kind Ranee is having me with her now & of course I like being here very much,’ she wrote to Vyvyan.

  I am going to try and get something near here to live in & have a resting place not a hotel. If the Villa Bigatli where Mr Hardcastle was last year is big enough & is to be had I shall get that as there seems nothing unfurnished to be had which of course I should prefer. I think I shall stay at Nervi till the Ranee goes next month & then go to Otho for a month. We shall probably spend the holidays somewhere in Switzerland but I have not made up my mind where.7

  At the Villa Raffo, Constance took more Kodaks.

  I photograph a great deal now & have learned to develop & to print. The Ranee takes beautiful photos now, and she has taken charming things of me! I can only take things out of doors in the sun but she takes beautiful heads ‘a pose’ in Harry’s room … We have very little sun here lately & I don’t get out much, but then I should not get out much if it were sunny as I cannot walk properly.8

  It was no longer just Constance’s legs that were failing her. Her handwriting from this period reveals the difficulty she was now having in holding a pen properly. Her once even, easily legible hand, was becoming spidery and disjointed and looked more like something written by an eighty-year-old than that of someone in their late thirties. Constance discovered a typewriter at the Villa Raffo and found that easier than using a pen.

  On his release from gaol Oscar had written to Constance inviting her and the boys to Dieppe to see him. In fact the pair were corresponding regularly. But Constance, who in the past had crossed continents to see her husband in prison, now delayed. She had conceded that she and Oscar would meet, but when and whether with the boys was something she could not immediately commit to. The massive deterioration in her mobility once again may well have contributed to her reluctance to rush and meet Oscar. The fact that the boys were mid-term in their boarding-school may have been another practical consideration for her. But this was no time for practicalities. It was time for a grand gesture. That Constance failed to grasp this proved a fatal mistake.

  ‘It is a terrible punishment,’ Oscar wrote to Robbie Ross, describing his wife’s reticence, ‘and oh! how I deserve it. But it makes me feel disgraced and evil and I don’t want to feel that.’9 However evil and disgraced he felt, a part of Oscar still wanted to impress the woman he had so let down. On leaving gaol he had almost immediately written an article on the treatment of children in prison. It was published at the end of May in The Chronicle, and straight away Oscar asked for a copy to be sent to Constance.

  But although Oscar wanted to impress his wife, he was also in desperate need of love and craved respect once more after the humiliation of prison life. While he now waited to see Constance, there were others who were bombarding him daily with letters – none more so than Bosie Douglas. Very quickly Oscar developed the impression that Constance no longer cared properly for him, whereas the love of others continued to burn brightly.

  Quite quickly Oscar also refined those views about homosexuality he had expressed in prison. Homosexuality itself was not a disease; it was materialism and over-indulgence that had been his sin, he now stated. This he explained in July in a letter to his old friend Carlos Blacker, a man once so close to Oscar that the latter had dedicated The Happy Prince to him: ‘I was living a life unworthy of an artist, and though I do not hold with the British view of morals that sets Messalina above Sporus, I see that materialism in life coarsens the soul, and that the hunger of the body and the appetites of the flesh desecrate always, and often destroy.’10

  It was Constance who had provided Blacker with Oscar’s address. Blacker was also living in exile, in Freiburg in Germany. He and his wife, Carrie, had been on the Continent ever since the Duke of Newcastle accused him of cheating at cards, an accusation that in the nineteenth century clearly warranted flight. In June, Blacker had written to Constance asking for Oscar’s address in Berneval, which she readily provided, urging him to write.

  Blacker, like so many others, now began to involve himself in Constance’s and Oscar’s affairs. After spending July in Bevaix with Otho, Constance met the boys in August, once their school terms had ended, and took them for a holiday in the Black Forest. ‘It is exquisitely lovely with wonderful air,’ she told Otho. ‘Here we are high above everything … this is the highest parish in Germany, 3750 feet high, so you see you are not so much higher after all.’11 She then joined the Blackers in Freiburg for the best part of September.

  Photographs Constance took on her little Kodak of this holiday still survive. Blacker and his wife sit on a swing amid their and Constance’s children. They stand on a dusty road, turn and smile to the camera. Everyone is relaxed and natural. It seemed a particularly happy time, with reports of Cyril riding a new bicycle that one of Constance’s Napier cousins had sent from England. It was too small, and Blacker became entrusted with organizing a replacement.

  Although Constance’s correspondence with Oscar during this period no longer exists, it is clear that Oscar continued to press his desperate wish to see his sons during their school holidays. Blacker, however, now adopting some form of diplomatic role on behalf of the couple, suggested that, rather than Constance travelling to Dieppe with the boys to see Oscar, he should come and join them all once Constance was settled into her new villa. Constance was excited by this prospect. After all, she had finally secured t
he Villa Elvira, at Bogliasco, just outside Nervi. Their meeting there could be private, without the prying eyes of a hotel. It seemed like a perfect plan.

  Sitting on a site that overlooked the sea, with a large terrace that hung over a steep cliff falling into the Mediterranean, the Villa Elvira was ideal for Constance. It had the cool marble floor and high ceilings one would expect of the region, and four bedrooms, one of which was used by the servants. It had a large hall, which Constance used as a dining room, and a small drawing room. And with this villa Constance was determined to rebuild a new kind of life.

  ‘I have 2 servants, a delightful cook to whom I pay 45 fs a month and a maid who gets 35 fs out of me & does everything for me personally,’ Constance boasted contentedly.12 Her great friend the Ranee was close by, and what was more, to her joy, Otho and Mary were proposing to move to the region from Switzerland to be nearer to her.

  Constance arrived back in Nervi after holidaying with the Blackers at the end of September and moved into the Villa Elvira within days. She seems to have been lulled into a false sense of security regarding Oscar over the summer months, and remained quite sure that plans for Oscar to meet her at the villa were indeed confirmed, even though she had not had a letter from Oscar, as she had anticipated.

  ‘Not a sign of Oscar or a word from him,’ she wrote quite happily to Blacker, ‘but I have an idea that he will turn up some day without writing. Thank you immensely – both of you – for all your kindness to me and to the boys while I was at Freiburg.’13

  Having not yet had time to purchase new linen for her home, she hired linen from the local hotel in readiness for Oscar’s arrival and even decided that there would be no pretence over Oscar’s identity. She had written to Oscar and asked him to confirm when he would be arriving. In the same missive she pointed out that, when he visited her, he was to come as her husband. ‘The people who live here know my brother and know that I have no other,’ she explained to Blacker. ‘Besides, I hate telling lies more than this terrible thing called life makes necessary.’14

  But the day after she wrote so joyfully to Blacker, everything went wrong. On 26 September 1897, Constance received her long-awaited letter from Oscar. She was shattered to read that he had decided to delay his visit to her by a month, until late October. This was odd, given Oscar’s desire to see the boys. They would be back at their schools in late October. But more worrying to Constance was the postmark on the letter. As the horror dawned on her, she immediately wrote to Blacker with her concerns: ‘I have this morning received a letter from Naples saying that my letter has been forwarded from Paris … Question: has he seen the dreadful person at Capri? No-one goes to Naples at this time of year, so I see no other reason for his going, and I am unhappy … Write to me and tell me what to do.’15

  In fact, Constance did not wait for Blacker’s advice. Another letter sent in a different post but on the same day reveals the fury that began to take hold of her. She didn’t need telling what the postmark meant. All those instincts that she had had about Bosie before and which she had suppressed she now understood immediately, and this time she recognized them for what they were. Oscar had gone to stay with Bosie in Naples. In doing so, he had chosen Bosie, not only over her but also over her sons, despite his protestations of his ardent desire to see them. The nightmare had returned. It all felt horribly familiar. This time she was having none of it. She wrote to Oscar and demanded to know whether he was with Bosie again. Her furious letter contained many harsh words. She accused Oscar of not caring for his children.

  To Constance’s horror, but presumably not to her surprise, within days Blacker was able to confirm that Oscar was with Bosie once more, sharing a villa in Naples. Oscar was ‘as weak as water’, Constance, observed.16 She was revolted by him.

  Oscar replied to Constance’s letter. Although the letter itself no longer exists, one gets a sense of it from one he wrote to Robbie Ross, who had also already berated Oscar for going back to Bosie. Now in this letter the damaging influence of Bosie is evident. The humility and charm that Oscar displayed in Berneval had deserted him. In its place were bile and arrogance, mixed, no doubt, with a degree of pain that his wife failed to show him the level of adoration and urgency that Lord Alfred Douglas readily displayed.

  ‘I am awaiting a thunderbolt from my wife’s solicitor,’ Oscar told Robbie.

  She wrote me a terrible letter, but a foolish one, saying ‘I forbid you’ to do so and so: ‘I will not allow you’ etc: and ‘I require a distinct promise that you will not’ etc. How can she really imagine that she can influence or control my life? She might as well just try to influence and control my art. I could not live such an absurd life – it makes one laugh. So I suppose she will now try to deprive me of my wretched £3 a week. Women are so petty, and Constance has no imagination. Perhaps for revenge she will have another trial: then she certainly may claim to have for the first time in her life influenced me. I wish to goodness she would leave me alone. I don’t meddle with her life. I accept the separation from the children: I acquiesce. Why does she want to go on bothering me, and trying to ruin me?17

  Constance reacted as one might expect. ‘Had I received this letter a year ago … I should have minded, but now I look upon it as the letter of a madman who has not even enough imagination to see how trifles affect children, of unselfishness enough to care for the welfare of his wife,’ she wrote to Blacker. ‘It rouses all my bitterest feelings, and I am stubbornly bitter when my feelings are roused. I think the letter had better remain unanswered and each of us make our own lives independently. I have latterly (God forgive me) an absolute repulsion to him.’18

  The thunderbolt that Oscar expected did indeed come. Under the terms of their separation, if Oscar kept notorious company he could expect his annual income from Constance to be stopped. This was duly done. ‘I am being freed from the necessity of paying the allowance so now anything I give is a free gift which is much more satisfactory,’ she conceded to Otho.19

  Constance spent the winter months in the Villa Elvira concentrating on what was positive in her life. She tried to put Oscar out of her mind. She made cushions for the villa and had its ugly red walls painted yellow. Photographs she took of the rooms there reveal her mantelpiece full of remembrances of an earlier life. There is the photograph of her and Cyril, another of Watts’s portrait of Lady Mount-Temple. Her skills as a photographer improved greatly, but she did not allow herself to be content with one hobby alone, and so also set about learning macrame. Impressed by the typewriter she had sampled at the Villa Raffo, Constance bought one for herself. From October 1897 onwards her correspondence is practically all typewritten.

  Even though she could no longer venture out, Constance received visitors. The Ranee was, of course, a regular guest. Other visitors included the American socialite Princess Salm (widow of the Prussian Prince Felix Salm-Salm) and none other than Oscar’s distant relative Father Maturin, who had now very controversially converted to Catholicism.

  As Christmas approached, Constance prepared to spend the festive season. She received some gifts from London, including books from Arthur Humphreys. If she and Humphreys had ever had a future together, Oscar’s disgrace and her subsequent flight had made a relationship that was already clandestine impossible to pursue. Humphreys, however, was meticulous in sending both Constance and the boys all the books they wanted, and his letters to her remained deeply affectionate. In the one he wrote to her that Christmas, Constance was overcome by this continuing affection. His words, ‘I confess made me ashamed’, she admitted. ‘However it is much better to be thought too well of; then one has an ideal to live up to!’20

  In addition to Arthur Humphreys’ gifts, Constance also had a photograph of a kitten from Lady Mount-Temple, and a photograph of a painting by Arnold Böcklin from the Blackers. Cyril arrived from Germany on 22 December, although Vyvyan stayed at his school.

  In January, Constance bought a silver photograph frame that would serve as a late Christmas pres
ent to her from Vyvyan. In February she visited him in Monaco, staying in the Hotel Bristol. Finally she saw Vyvyan as a success story. He was ‘very happy, as clever as he can be, very sure of himself as always, and mad about stamps’, she reported back to Otho. ‘He is also mad about coins,’ she added.21

  In this quiet life Oscar remained a spectre who haunted Constance. Her feelings towards him shifted between affection and pain. In January she heard from Adrian Hope that Oscar and Bosie had separated. ‘But I have not the ghost of an idea where he is and I can’t imagine how he is living,’ she told Otho.22 Then in February 1898, three months after their terrible letters to one another, Constance saw a copy of the Ballad of Reading Gaol, which Oscar had just had published. This extraordinary poem, the tale of a murderer who has committed a crime passionnel and subsequently walked to the gallows, reduced her to tears.

  Constance could no longer bear not knowing what had become of her former husband. She had been told that Oscar was in Paris and urged Carlos Blacker find out more. ‘He has, as you know, behaved exceedingly badly both to myself and my children,’ she explained,

  and all possibility of our living together has come to an end, but I am interested in him, as is my way with anyone that I have once known. Have you seen his new poem, and would you like a copy, as if so I will send you one? His publisher lately sent me a copy which I conclude came from him. Can you find this out for me and if you do see him tell him that I think the Ballad exquisite, and I hope that the great success it has had in London at all events will urge him on to write more.23

  Constance’s best intentions, however, caused more trouble for her. The man she had once loved so dearly no longer existed. Instead, a husk of the great man responded to her inquiries with demands, as she revealed to Blacker: