Constance: The Tragic and Scandalous Life of Mrs. Oscar Wilde
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13. Constance to Otho, undated (probably 1879). MSS collection of Merlin Holland.
14. Charlotte Gere with Lesley Hoskins, The House Beautiful: Oscar Wilde and the Aesthetic Interior (Lund Humphries in association with the Geffrye Museum, London, 2000), p. 14.
15. Lillie Langtry, The Days I Knew (Hutchinson, London, 1925), p. 60.
16. As noted in The Illustrated London News (November 1878).
17. Hope-Nicholson (ed.), Life amongst The Troubridges: Journals of a Young Victorian, by Laura Troubridge, 1873–1884 (Tite Street Press, London, 1999), P- 151-
18. Langtry, The Days I Knew, p. 87.
19. Constance to Otho, 1 Aug 1880. MSS collection of Merlin Holland.
20. Constance to Otho, undated (1880). MSS collection of Merlin Holland.
21. Constance to Otho, 7 June 1881. MSS collection of Merlin Holland.
22. A Mrs Arbuthnot appears in Wilde’s play A Woman of No Importance. Many of his characters’ names are based on those of real acquaintances or places that he found amusing or just convenient to use.
23. Constance to Otho, 10 June 1881. MSS collection of Merlin Holland.
24. Otho to A. J. Symons, 22 May 1937. Clark Library.
25. Constance to Otho, 10 June 1881. MSS collection of Merlin Holland.
26. Constance to Otho, 7 June 1881. MSS collection of Merlin Holland.
27. Constance to Otho, undated. MSS collection of Merlin Holland.
28. The Era (7 May 1881).
29. Constance to Otho, June 1881. MSS collection of Merlin Holland.
30. Complete Letters, p. no.
31. Constance to Otho, undated. MSS collection of Merlin Holland.
32. Constance to Otho, 10 June 1881. MSS collection of Merlin Holland.
33. Constance to Otho, 10 June 1881. MSS collection of Merlin Holland.
34. Ibid.
Chapter 3: The sunflower and the lily
1. Constance to Otho, 27 Nov 1881. MSS collection of Merlin Holland.
2. Freeman’s Journal and Daily Commercial Advertiser (17 July 1882).
3. ‘Constance used to keep all her letters from Oscar in a little blue leather case’: Anne Clark Amor, Mrs Oscar Wilde: A Woman of Some Importance (Sidgwick & Jackson, London, 1983). Amor claims the box was stolen from Tite Street when the contents of the house were auctioned in 1895. Although Constance’s brother preserved a fair amount of her correspondence, this box and its contents seem to have been lost. It may alternatively have been destroyed at the time of the scandal or by the family after Constance’s death.
4. The Saturday Review (23 July 1881).
5. Oscar to Violet Hunt, 22 July 1881. Complete Letters, p. 114.
6. Neil McKenna, The Secret Life of Oscar Wilde (Arrow Books, London, 2004), p. 26.
7. Constance to Otho, 18 Nov 1881. MSS collection of Merlin Holland.
8. Constance to Otho, 27 Nov 1881. MSS collection of Merlin Holland.
9. Constance to Otho, 10 Jan 1882. MSS collection of Merlin Holland.
10. Constance to Otho, 10 June 1881. MSS collection of Merlin Holland.
11. Constance to Otho, 29 March 1882. MSS collection of Merlin Holland.
12. Gere with Hoskins, The House Beautiful, p. 86.
13. Constance to Otho, 31 March 1883. MSS collection of Merlin Holland.
14. Constance to Otho, 28 April 1883. MSS collection ofMerlin Holland.
15. ‘Work for All’, The Girls Own Paper (22 Dec 1883).
16. Constance to Otho, 18 Aug 1882. MSS collection ofMerlin Holland.
17. Constance to Otho, 20 Aug 1882. MSS collection of Merlin Holland.
18. Ibid.
19. Constance to Otho, 22 Aug 1882. MSS collection ofMerlin Holland.
20. Constance to Otho, 23 Aug 1882. MSS collection of Merlin Holland.
21. Constance to Otho, 27 March 1883. MSS collection ofMerlin Holland.
22. Constance to Otho, 4 Sept 1880. MSS collection ofMerlin Holland.
23. BL Eccles 81690.
24. Ibid.
25. Ibid.
26. Clark Library.
27. BL Eccles 81690.
28. Clark Library.
29. Oscar to Robert Sherard, May 1883. Merlin Holland and Rupert Hart Davis (eds), The Complete Letters of Oscar Wilde (Fourth Estate, London, 2000), p. 211.
30. Oscar wrote to Steele Mackaye in May asking for a loan of £200 to be honoured as he found himself once again with ‘a great many expenses’. Complete Letters, p. 209.
31. BL Eccles 81731.
32. Constance to Otho, undated. MSS collection ofMerlin Holland.
33. Ibid.
34. Joy Melville, Mother of Oscar: The Life of Jane Francesca Wilde (John Murray, London, 1994), p. 179.
35. Constance to Otho, written from Norfolk House, Folkestone, 28 Sept 1883.
36. BL Eccles 81690.
37. Constance to Otho, 23 and 24 Nov 1883. MSS collection of Merlin Holland.
38. Constance to Otho, 26 Nov 1883. MSS collection of Merlin Holland.
Chapter 4: ‘Bunthorne is to get his bride’
1. Constance to Otho, 26 Nov 1883. MSS collection ofMerlin Holland.
2. Maria Luisa Borras, the biographer of Otho’s son Fabian Lloyd, claims that, while in Lausanne, Nellie looked after two little girls of the neigh bouring Hutchinson family. She was of an obscure background, and so they lent her their name so that she would be sufficiently respectable to marry Otho. She thus became known as Clara St-Clair Hutchinson. Maria Luisa Borras, Arthur Cravan: une strategic du scandale (Editions Jean-Michel Place, Paris, 1996), p. 19.
3. Constance to Otho, 26 Nov 1883. MSS collection of Merlin Holland.
4. Constance to Oscar, addressed from 1 Ely Place and dated Thursday 8.30 p.m. (therefore Thursday 27 Nov 1883). BL Eccles MS 81690.
5. Constance to Otho, 27 Nov 1883. MSS collection of Merlin Holland.
6. Ada Swinburne-King to Lady Wilde, 30 Nov 1883. Clark Library.
7. Clark Library.
8. ‘I know nothing about Oscar’s means whatsoever but as I shall not be able to marry while poor Grandpa is alive, I shall have enough for us both to start on.’ Constance to Otho, 28 Nov 1883. MSS collection of Merlin Holland.
9. Clearly John Horatio had increased his initial allowance of £150 per annum bestowed on Constance in 1878.
10. BL Eccles 81690.
11. Complete Letters, p. 224.
12. BL Eccles 81690.
13. Ibid.
14. Ibid.
15. Clark Library.
16. Ibid.
17. BL Eccles 81690.
18. Langtry, The Days I Knew, p. 94.
19. Basil Cochrane’s grandfather was Lieutenant-Colonel Edward FitzGerald, and it is tempting to speculate that the mysterious Mr Fitzgerald with his military background who was Oscar’s rival for Constance’s affections may well have been a cousin of the Cochranes.
20. BL Eccles 81690.
21. Ibid.
22. Ibid.
23. ‘Feminine Fashions and Fancies’, The Newcastle Courant (28 March 1884).
24. Anna Kingsford to Speranza, 11 March 1884. BL Eccles 81731.
25. Under the influence of their highly artistic household, the Nettleships’ daughter Ida would in due course go to art school and ultimately marry the painter Augustus John.
Chapter 5: Violets in the refrigerator
1. New York Times (8 June 1884).
2. Ada Leverson, Letters to the Sphinx from Oscar Wilde: With Reminiscences of the Author (Duckworth, London, 1930), p. 44.
3. Constance to Otho, 3 June 1884. MSS collection of Merlin Holland.
4. Ibid.
5. Louise Jopling, Twenty Years of My Life: 1867 to 1887 (John Lane, London, 1925).
6. Marie-Jaqueline Lancaster (ed.), Letters of Engagement: The Love Letters of Adrian Hope and Laura Troubridge (Tite Street Press, London, 2001), p. 115.
7. In a letter to Lady Mount-Temple, Constance signed herself’Constanza Cantankeray’ adding, ‘Osca
r thinks that a very wicked name for me and he laughed immensely over it!’ 17 Feb 1894, BR 57/19/3.
8. The Lady’s Pictorial, quoted in ‘The Household (A Column for the Ladies)’, The Derby Mercury (3 Sept 1884).
9. A friend of Whistler’s called Miss Reubell.
10. Constance to Otho, 3 June 1884. MSS collection of Merlin Holland.
11. The Ladies Journal [Toronto] (1 Oct 1884).
12. ‘Society Gossip’, Hampshire Telegraph and Sussex Chronicle (2 May 1885).
13. A shade of green identified with the grey-green leaves of the plant of the same name.
14. ‘Society Gossip’, Hampshire Telegraph and Sussex Chronicle (2 May 1885).
15. ‘The Private View at the Grosvenor’, Daily News (3 May 1886).
16. The use of beetle wings in embroidery was a consequence of Empire. Beetle-wing cases were collected in Burma and sold through Calcutta. In the hands of Mrs Nettleship beetle-wing embroidery reached new levels of creativity and exoticism. In 1888 she went on to make a bee tle-wing-embroidered gown for Ellen Terry’s Lady Macbeth. A crea tion that at once suggested soft chain-mail armour and the scales of a serpent, the beetle wings gave the impression of a shimmering sheath enveloping the actress.
17. Hearth and Home (15 Jan 1887).
18. Anna, Comtesse de Brémont, Oscar Wilde and His Mother (Everett & Co., London, 1911), p. 91.
19. ‘Our Ladies’ Column’, Preston Guardian (9 May 1885).
20. Michael Field (Katherine Bradley and Edith Cooper), Works and Days: From the Journal of Michael Field (John Murray, London, 1933), p. 70.
21. Hope-Nicholson (ed.), Life amongst the Troubridges, p. 169.
22. Ibid., p. 38.
23. Ibid., p. 236.
24. Ladies’ Pictorial (8 January 1887).
25. ‘Our Ladies’ Column’, The Preston Guardian (9 May 1885).
26. Brémont, Oscar Wilde and His Mother, p. 68.
27. Constance to Otho, 10 Jan 1882. MSS collection of Merlin Holland.
28. Our Ladies’ Column’, Bristol Mercury and Daily Post (7 March 1885).
29. ‘Dear Mr Godwin, Oscar asked me to let you know that Mr Sharp has only gone today to the “Healtheries” to get the Japanese things.’ BL Eccles 81691. Correspondence between Constance and Godwin relating to the renovation of 16 and 14 Tite Street, 10 Nov 1884.
30. So Constance would have a further £6,ooo invested from the estate, in addition to the £5,500 that John Horatio had already invested for her before his death.
31. Mary Braddon, The Rose of Life (Hutchinson, London, 1905), p. 107.
32. Oscar to Constance, 16 Dec 1884. Complete Letters, p. 241.
33. BL Eccles 81700.
34. BL Eccles 81732.
35. Constance to Otho, 6 May 1885. MSS collection of Merlin Holland.
36. Ibid.
Chapter 6: Ardour and indifference
1. The Owl (22 October 1885).
2. Complete Letters, p. 261.
3. Ibid.
4. Ibid., p. 258.
5. Ibid., p. 262.
6. V. Holland, Time Remembered after Père Lachaise (Gollancz, London, 1966), p. 129.
7. Marie-Jaqueline Lancaster (ed.), Letters of Engagement (Tite Street Press, London, 2001), p. 134.
8. Complete Letters, p. 264.
9. Constance to Otho, 25 June 1884. MS collection of Merlin Holland.
10. The Illustrated London News (4 June 1881).
11. Constance to Otho, 6 May 1885. The letter in the Pall Mall Gazette is signed simply ‘CW’.
12. Henry Currie Marillier (1865–1951) was a Bluecoat boy attending Christ’s Hospital school and had lodged in the same building in Salisbury Street as Oscar when Wilde was there in 1880 and 1881. At this time Marillier ran errands for Oscar and brought him his coffee.
13. Hengler’s was subsequently converted into what is today the London Palladium.
14. The Era (22 May 1886).
15. Frank Harris, Oscar Wilde (Constable, London, 1938), p. 338.
16. Constance is inconsistent in her spelling of her son’s name, but in the majority of instances she spells it ‘Vivian’. However, after her death Vyvyan Holland, as he became, adopted the spelling that I have therefore used for the sake of consistency in this book.
17. Vyvyan Holland, Son of Oscar Wilde (Rupert Hart-Davis, London, 1954). p. 35.
18. Leverson, Letters to the Sphinx, p. 44.
19. Constance to Lady Mount-Temple, 8 Dec 1892. BR 57/18/2.
20. Douglas Ainslie went on to become a poet.
21. Constance to Otho, 15 Jan 1885. MSS collection of Merlin Holland.
22. Complete Letters, p. 267.
23. Ibid., p. 272.
24. Ibid., p. 282.
25. McKenna, Secret Life of Oscar Wilde, p. III.
26. BL Eccles 81731.
27. Mrs Claude Beddington, All That I Have Met (Cassell & Co., London, 1929), p. 41.
28. There is a family anecdote handed down on Otho’s side of the family that Mary Winter got her surname after having been found as a baby deserted in a handbag in deep midwinter – though this author has not sought to substantiate this story. It is amusing to think that Oscar may have adapted this story for The Importance of Being Earnest, where Jack Worthing also says he was discovered in a handbag as a baby.
29. Constance to Otho at Riposte Cottage, Lausanne, 26 July 1887. MSS collection of Merlin Holland.
30. Constance to Otho at Hotel Matanhoff, Interlaken, 27 Aug 1887. MSS collection of Merlin Holland.
31. Richard Ellman, Oscar Wilde (Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 1988), p. 275.
32. The file relating to Oscar’s bankruptcy reveals Oscar borrowed £500 from Otho, secured against a life policy. PRO B9 429.
33. Constance to Otho, 26 July 1887. MSS collection of Merlin Holland.
34. Complete Letters, p. 297.
Chapter 7: A literary couple
1. Funny Folks (14 April 1888).
2. Vyvyan Holland, Son of Oscar Wilde, p. 50.
3. BLEccles 81755.
4. Ibid.
5. Anna, Comtesse de Brémont, Oscar Wilde and His Mother (Everett & Co., London, 1911), pp. 87–8.
6. Complete Letters, p. 301. Later on Constance changed her ‘at homes’ to Wednesdays.
7. BL Eccles 81755.
8. Weldon became known for successfully suing her husband. They sepa rated, and he attempted to have her committed to a lunatic asylum in order to avoid having to support her financially. She successfully fought her way out of the situation in the courts.
9. The Preston Guardian (December 1885) notes that Henriette Corkran was painting Constance’s portrait in pastels. This picture is now lost.
10. Lloyd’s Weekly Newspaper (27 Nov 1887).
11. Alice Corkran (ed.), The Bairn’s Annual 1887/88 (Leadenhall Press, London, 1887), pp. 65-74.
12. Constance to Otho, 9 Nov 1887. MSS collection of Merlin Holland.
13. J. H. Badley, the headmaster of Bedales, recalls being among the group of Cambridge students to whom Oscar told the story, while Mrs Claude Beddington passes on Harry Marillier’s recollections in her memoir All That I Have Met, p. 35.
14. Beddington, All That I Have Met, p. 39.
15. ‘I am trying to read a Dutch review of Salome for Oscar. It seems to have been translated into Dutch without his leave, & I hope to get hold of a copy. Lady Windermere’s Fan was translated into Dutch and The Happy Prince with a beautiful view of Nelson’s Column supposed to represent the statue of the Prince. So you see, the Dutch like Oscar & probably recognised that his name is most likely corrupted from Van der Welde. But it is a horrid language & I don’t get on with my translation of the review.’ Constance to Lady Mount-Temple, 16 Nov 1893. BR 57/47/I4-
16. Intriguingly, the bound volume was put together by the nth Marquess of Queensberry, the grandson of John Sholto Douglas and Bosie Douglas’s nephew.
17. Oscar to George Kersley. Complete Letters, p. 352.
18. Com
plete Letters, p. 478.
19. Merlin Holland, A Portrait of Oscar Wilde (privately printed, Genoa, 2008), Chapter 4.
20. ‘Jottings on Dress, Fashion, Music, Drama, Literature, Fashionable Doings & c.’, Weekly Irish Times (2 Feb 1889).
21. F. E. Weatherly, M. A. Hoyer, Mrs Glasgow, Mrs Molesworth, Emily Bennett, Frances Compton and others, Cosy Corner Stories (Ernest Nister, London, 1895).
22. Complete Letters, p. 317.
23. The Woman’s World, issue 1 (Nov 1887), p. 7. BL Eccles 418.
24. The other article Constance wrote was on the history of the muff.
25. Rational Dress Society Gazette, 1 (April 1888).
26. Ibid., p. 6.
27. Rational Dress Society Gazette (April 1889), p. 6.
28. Ibid.
Chapter 8: ‘Not to kiss females’
1. Constance to Otho, March 1888. MSS collection of Merlin Holland.
2. Ibid.
3. ‘Baby’s birthday was last Thursday and though he is small I think he is quite strong now. He is frightfully spoilt and very self willed and does not say one mortal word, still grows a greater darling every day, but baby is his father’s pet.’ Constance to Otho, 9 Nov 1887. MSS collection of Merlin Holland.
4. Vyvyan Holland, Son of Oscar Wilde, p. 53.
5. Constance to Lady Mount-Temple, 13 Nov 1891. BR 57/12/12.
6. There is evidence in Constance’s letters to Otho that the Lloyds had hoped that he would go into the law and then Parliament. However, after the break-up of his first marriage and his elopement it seems that Otho attempted to live off the income left him by his grandfather, using it to make a series of speculative investments. He pursued his interest in Classics, meanwhile, and in the twentieth century published a number of translations.
7. Gladstone signed Constance’s autograph book on Easter eve in 1888.
8. Pall Mall Gazette (17 April 1888).
9. On a trip to Florence in 1893 Constance related: ‘I went to Dante’s house again and into the little chapel where he married Gemma Donata. Poor wife, I pity her! Then lunch with Miss Cunninghame Graham and out to a lovely villa belonging to Mr Spenser Stanhope and to the Bello Sguardo to see Florence by the sunset-glow – such an exquisite picture’. Constance to Lady Mount-Temple, 11 Feb 1893. BR 57/46/15.
10. Pall Mall Gazette (17 April 1888).
11. Northern Echo (24 May 1889).
12. Pall Mall Gazette (24 May 1889).
13. Birmingham Daily Post (14 June 1889).