Her aesthetics might not altogether conform, yet her admiration for him was steadfast; the letter displayed spirit as well as modesty. Set an impossible task, she discharged it skillfully. It also indicated her tolerance of his views when opposed to her own. She was intelligent, she was capable and independent.
When Wilde checked into the Shelbourne Hotel in Dublin on 21 November, he found a note asking him to come round to Ely Place. By now he could see that he was being received as Constance Lloyd’s suitor, and the unfamiliar situation ruffled him. Constance reported to her brother Otho that Wilde, ‘though decidedly extra affected, I suppose partly from nervousness … made himself very pleasant.’ His attention was mostly given to her. When he lectured for the first time on ‘The House Beautiful’ on 22 November, Constance Lloyd was of course an appreciative member of the audience. (So was W. B. Yeats, then eighteen.) After the lecture Wilde came to tea at the Atkinson house in Ely Place, and again addressed himself mostly to her. The following night he took a box for a nondescript play at the Gaiety Theatre, and gave it to the Atkinson family while he kept another engagement. It was perhaps an augury of his later absences from the conjugal home, but Constance made no complaint. She attended his ‘Impressions of America’ lecture as well, on the 24th, but preferred his high-minded to his bantering mood. She could never quite compass his strain of near-nonsense. They talked again of Vera, and she read the play once more and this time announced to Otho, and presumably to Wilde, that she thought it ‘very fine.’20 Wilde had told her that ‘he wrote it to show that an abstract idea such as liberty could have quite as much power and be made quite as fine as the passion of love.’ Vera, however, is not so republican as that. At any rate, it was the curtailment of his liberty in the name of his love which was about to rule him.
The fifth day of his stay in Dublin, Sunday, 25 November, was the climactic one. Wilde was alone with Constance in the drawing room, where, as she well knew, her father had thirty years before proposed to her mother. Her relations had left them together, and hinted by their chaffing that they had guessed a declaration was about to be made. It came, and Constance was enraptured. She wrote to her brother, ‘Prepare yourself for an astounding piece of news! I am engaged to Oscar Wilde and perfectly and insanely happy.’ She only worried a little over the response of some of the family. There was no doubt about her grandfather Lloyd: his pleasure in Wilde’s company had long been cordial. Her grandmother Atkinson was also a Wilde partisan and thought Constance extremely lucky. She had nothing to fear from her mother, who liked Wilde immensely. The only opposition might come from her aunt Emily Lloyd, whose views of marriage were as strict as Lady Bracknell’s, and who treated Constance as a guest on sufferance after years of putting her up in Lancaster Gate.21
Meanwhile, her suitor was writing to her grandmother and mother, and to her brother Otho, who replied on 27 November, ‘I am pleased indeed: I am sure that for my own part I welcome you as a new brother.… If Constance makes as good a wife as she has been a good sister to me your happiness is certain; she is staunch and true.’22 So she proved to be.
What Wilde said to Constance Lloyd could only have been passionate. He had no intention of proceeding at less than full sail. One of the lesser yet still genuine pleasures of this momentous change in his way of life was that it afforded him a new verbal situation. Because of the catastrophe to come, his love letters do not survive. But incantatory rhythms and idealistic phrasing came readily to him. His mind had other recesses, from which he drew ‘The Sphinx’ and later The Picture of Dorian Gray and Salome; they were left dark as he brought to light his simpler self.
A few letters of Constance to her accepted lover have been kept. One makes clear that he told her something of his sexual past. She responded, ‘I don’t think I shall ever be jealous. Certainly I am not jealous now of anyone: I trust in you for the present: I am content to let the past be buried, it does not belong to me: for the future trust and faith will come, and when I have you for my husband, I will hold you fast with chains of love.’23 The confession, to judge from the tone of her absolution, can have been only partial—no light loves and no untoward ones. Syphilis was not mentioned, for Wilde thought himself cured. It seems likely that he mentioned Florence Balcombe and, since he wrote quickly to give her the news of his engagement, Mrs Langtry. Constance recognized that neither of these was a present rival.
To Mrs Langtry Wilde began tactfully by congratulating her on her success in Peril. ‘You have done what no other artist of your day has done,’ he said, ‘invaded America a second time and carried off new victories. But then, you are made for victory. It has always flashed in your eyes and rung in your voice.’ Then he went on to tell her that
I am going to be married to a beautiful girl called Constance Lloyd, a grave, slight, violet-eyed little Artemis, with great coils of heavy brown hair which make her flower-like head droop like a blossom, and wonderful ivory hands which draw music from the piano so sweet that the birds stop singing to listen to her. We are to be married in April. I hope so much that you will be over then. I am so anxious for you to know and to like her.
I am hard at work lecturing and getting rich, though it is horrid being so much away from her, but we telegraph to each other twice a day, and I rush back suddenly from the uttermost parts of the earth to see her for an hour, and do all the foolish things that wise lovers do.24
Her brother characterized Constance’s violet eyes more prosaically as blue-green. The description of her as an Artemis was not altogether just, as Constance Lloyd tried to make clear to him: ‘I am so cold and undemonstrative outwardly: you must read my heart and not my outward semblance if you wish to know how passionately I worship and love you.’25 Worship was perhaps more than Wilde wanted, yet her letters to him were open: he was ‘my hero and my god.’ Like Dorian Gray’s Sibyl Vane, she said repeatedly, ‘I am not worthy of him.’ Constance had been kept down, first by her cruel mother, then by her reproachful aunt, so that Wilde became a Perseus to whom she would be bound in gratitude and love.
Wilde was pleased for a time to match her, heartbeat for heartbeat. Mrs Belloc-Lowndes and other observers thought him head over heels in love with her. He shifted to a playful mode in writing to the sculptor Waldo Story, in whom he confided that she was ‘quite perfect except that she does not think Jimmy [Whistler] the only painter that ever really existed: she would like to bring Titian or somebody in by the back door: however, she knows I am the greatest poet, so in literature she is all right: and I have explained to her that you are the greatest sculptor: art instruction cannot go further?26
The two lovers spent some days together at Christmas, when Wilde had a respite from what he called ‘civilising the provinces’ with his lectures. These were ecstatic hours. The week ended in Constance’s tears at his departure and subsequent apology for being silly. In January, perfection was not so rampant. Wilde had sent Constance a marmoset, called ‘Jimmy’ for its whistling. Jimmy died. Constance felt tragic, and remembered some other ill-fated gift: ‘Is it my fault that everything you give me has an untimely end?’ To add to her misery, Wilde had misaddressed a telegram to her: ‘How much do you think of me that you did not even remember that I was not at home? Your telegram was forwarded to me this morning.… I am too gloomy to write.’27 Wilde made it up, but Constance guessed that he occupied her thoughts more than she did his. That pattern would continue.
Marriage had its financial as well as its emotional side. As Constance had guessed, there was opposition, though not from Emily Lloyd. It came from her grandfather, who pronounced himself in favor of the marriage but asked Wilde to answer two questions, what were his means and what were his debts. (‘And now I have a few questions to put to you, Mr Worthing,’ says Lady Bracknell.) Like Algernon, Wilde had ‘nothing but his debts to depend upon.’ He acknowledged that he owed Levy £1200, but said he had already paid off £300 with lecture fees. A conference was held at a lawyer’s office. Wilde offered to write the lawyer a sonnet, a
s proof of his capacity as author, but feared this would be of no use.28 He and Constance could not marry till at least March, since Wilde was booked for lectures, and would then have to wait till Lent was past. John Horatio Lloyd proposed that the marriage be deferred a bit longer, until Wilde had paid off another £300 of his debt. So the ceremony, originally planned for April, would not take place until 29 May. Constance had £250 a year, and when her grandfather died she would have £900 a year. The young couple represented their need of money to lease and furnish a house, and Constance was given £5000 in advance from her grandfather’s estate, to count against her eventual share.
The friends and relations of Wilde and his intended wife responded with surprise and pleasure to the news of the engagement. Whistler gave them a luncheon party in mid-December; at first Emily Lloyd, who countenanced the marriage, forbade Constance to attend, on the grounds that an unmarried woman should not appear in society without a chaperone. Eventually she was prevailed upon to give way. Lady Wilde and Willie were in the highest excitement. Willie wrote on 27 November, ‘My dear old Boy, This is indeed good news, brave news, wise news, and altogether charming and amazing in the highest and most artistic sense.’ He sent his love to ‘Alcibiades and Lady Constance.’ He and Oscar were affectionate, like two boys together. Lady Wilde wrote at once also, the same day, and her letter implies that the couple had been moving towards an understanding for some months:
My dear Oscar, I am extremely pleased at your note of this morning. You have both been true and constant, and a blessing will come on all true feeling.
But one feels very anxious: so much yet—all the services and the [word indecipherable]. It always seems so hard for two lovers to get married. But I have hope all will end well.… What lovely vistas of speculation open out. What you will do in life? Where live? Meantime you must go on with your work. I enclose another offer for lectures. I would like you to have a small house in London and live the literary life and teach Constance to correct proofs and eventually go into Parliament.
May the Divine Intelligence that rules the world, give you happiness and peace and joy in your beloved.
LA MADRE29
The notion of entering Parliament had occurred to Wilde as well, and was still being dandled on 28 February, when Lady Wilde wrote to someone else about it as her son’s idea. With more result, he began negotiating for a lease on a house at 16 Tite Street, near where he and Miles had lived some years before. The lease would begin on 24 June. Wilde asked Whistler to superintend the redecoration. ‘No, Oscar,’ came the reply, ‘you have been lecturing to us about the House Beautiful; now is your chance to show us one.’30 Wilde then turned to Godwin, whom Beerbohm described as ‘the greatest aesthete of them all,’ and Godwin agreed to redo the house for them. Constance’s income and the £5000 proved insufficient to defray the considerable expense. A letter of 15 May 1884 from Wilde’s solicitor and friend, George Lewis, indicates that Wilde was borrowing £1000 on what remained of his father’s estate. In spite of John Horatio Lloyd’s anxiety about prudent domestic management, the marriage began under the shadow of debts, and remained there. Lloyd himself improved as the marriage impended, but he rescued the necessitous lovers by dying on 18 July, thus freeing his legacy.
Marriage
LORD ILLINGWORTH: The Book of Life begins with a man and woman in a garden.
MRS ALLONBY: It ends with Revelations.
On 29 May 1884 at St James’s Church, the bride was lovely and the groom said to look more than ever like George IV. A telegram arrived ‘From Whistler, Chelsea, to Oscar Wilde, St James’s Church, Sussex Gardens: Fear I may not be able to reach you in time for the ceremony. Don’t wait.’ Because of the illness of Constance’s grandfather, the wedding was kept small and somewhat secret. The bridesmaids—cousins of Constance—were not told where or when the wedding would be till a week before. The plan was to allow no one except invited guests, furnished with cards, but the rector opened the church doors. Only near relatives were invited afterwards to Lancaster Gate. Lady Wilde embraced Constance with some effusiveness; Wilde kissed her ‘calmly and coolly,’ according to the Canterbury Times. ‘A happy little group of intimes saw them off at Charing Cross,’ reported The World on 4 June, and the crusty New York Times, probably depending once more upon Bodley as a London correspondent, added on 22 June in a burst of generosity, ‘and few married couples ever carried better wishes with them.’ They told of the bride’s dress, designed by Wilde: it was of ‘rich creamy satin’ with ‘a delicate cowslip tint; the bodice, cut square and somewhat low in front, was finished with a high Medici collar; the ample sleeves were puffed; the skirt, made plain, was gathered by a silver girdle of beautiful workmanship, the gift of Mr Oscar Wilde; the veil of saffron-coloured Indian gauze was embroidered with pearls and worn in Marie Stuart fashion; a thick wreath of myrtle leaves, through which gleamed a few white blossoms, crowned her fair frizzed hair; the dress was ornamented with clusters of myrtle leaves; the large bouquet had as much green in it as white.’ Equally overdressed were the bridesmaids, with Wilde again as couturier. It was a wedding in the high aesthetic mode.
The Wildes crossed the Channel and arrived in Paris; at the Hôtel Wagram they took three rooms on the fourth floor overlooking the Tuileries. On the second day Wilde met Robert Sherard, who somewhat resented the radiant happiness of the newly married couple. Wilde made matters worse by taking Sherard aside for a walk. He began with superlatives about his bride, and got as far as ‘It’s so wonderful when a young virgin …’ when Sherard steered him away from confidences. Wilde was willing to sacrifice some of the nuptial intimacy for the delight of describing it. That he should so readily turn private acts into public was disturbing to Sherard’s sexual jealousy, and a questionable augury.31 Wilde was reading Stendhal’s Le Rouge et le noir, another book in which the hero tries to act always deliberately, never à l’improviste.
On 9 June 1884, Wilde was stretched out on a sofa amid a heap of books in the hotel when a reporter from the Morning News knocked on the door. Wilde protested that he was ‘too happy to be interviewed,’ but let him in all the same. ‘You are reading?’ said the reporter. ‘Yes, I am dipping,’ Wilde replied. ‘I never read from the beginning, especially with novels. It is the only way to stimulate the curiosity that books, with their regular openings, always fail to rouse. Have you ever overheard a conversation in the street, caught the fag end of it, and wished you might know more? If you overhear your books in that way, you will go back to the first chapter, and on to the last naturally, as soon as the characters bite.’
Observing Le Rouge et le noir among the books, the reporter asked, ‘You go to Stendhal again and again?’ ‘Yes. And he is one of the few. For my part, I think the most exquisite thing in reading is the pleasure of forgetfulness. It is so nice to think there are some books you cared for so much at a certain epoch in your life and do not care for now. There is to me a positive delight in cutting an author and feeling I have got beyond him.’ ‘And do you extend that observation to persons?’ ‘Undoubtedly,’ Wilde replied. ‘So we all do, only I would make it a positive satisfaction instead of a regret. Why should we not joyfully admit that there are some people we do not want to see again? It is not ingratitude, it is not indifference. They have simply given us all they have to give.’
The reporter, remembering the several months Wilde had spent in France the previous year, asked, ‘You do not feel that way about Paris?’ ‘No,’ said Wilde. ‘It is not easy to exhaust the message of Paris, especially when Sarah Bernhardt is playing. I have seen Macbeth over and over again. There is nothing like it on our stage, and it is her finest creation. I say her creation deliberately, because to my mind it is utterly impertinent to talk of Shakespeare’s Macbeth or Shakespeare’s Othello. Shakespeare is only one of the parties. The second is the artiste through whose mind it passes. When the two together combine to give me an acceptable hero, that is all I ask. Shakespeare’s intentions were his own secret: all we can form an o
pinion about is what is actually before us.’
He was unstinting in his praise of the actress: ‘There is absolutely no one like Sarah Bernhardt. She brings all her fine intelligence to the part, all her instinctive and acquired knowledge of the stage. Her influence over Macbeth’s mind is just as much influence of womanly charm as of will—with us they only accentuate the last. She holds him under a spell: he sins because he loves her: his ambition is quite a secondary motive. How can he help loving her? She binds him by every tie, even by the tie of coquetry. Look at her dress—the tight-fitting tunic and the statuesque folds of the robe below. The whole piece is admirably done.’ Wilde praised Richepin’s prose translation, and went on, ‘The very ghost is Elizabethan. Remember, in Shakespeare’s day ghosts were not shadowy, subjective conceptions, but beings of flesh and blood, only beings living on the other side of the border of life, and now and then permitted to break bounds. The ghosts of the Porte Saint-Martin are men: you could pinch them and run them through and through. They are not mere things of gauze, like our English stage figures of the kind, elaborated, apparently, from some programme of the Psychical Society.’
The reporter turned the conversation to Le Maître de forges, a current dramatization of Georges Ohnet’s novel about an aristocratic woman married to a rich but lowborn ironmaster, whom she treats with arrogance until his cold politeness brings her to adoring subjection. Wilde had not attended the Paris performance but had seen it in London. ‘And London is not shocked?’ asked the reporter. ‘Oh, London is improving,’ said Wilde, ‘and besides, it will take anything from the French. Of course, if an English writer had done anything of the sort there would have been one loud shriek.’ ‘So you might wish yourself a Frenchman—if you mean to go on writing plays?’ ‘In one respect certainly,’ said Wilde, ‘for the sake of the interpretation. What a gulf there is between the character as you conceive it and the character as it comes out on the stage. I admit, after what I said just now, that the author has no right to complain where the result is artistic, but with us that is so often not the case. I speak from experience. I shall never forget the two hours and a half I passed in the playhouse in New York on the first night of my piece.’32
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