The Secret Life of Oscar Wilde

by Neil McKenna

  Sherard felt uncomfortable when Oscar used to greet him with a kiss on the lips and disliked Oscar's use of Christian names. But they spent the greater part of every day together for almost two months and Oscar would recall fondly their `moonlit meanderings' and `sunset strolls'. He was enormously flattered when Sherard asked if he would accept the dedication of his forthcoming volume of poetry. `How could I refuse a gift so musical in its beauty and fashioned by one whom I love so much as I love you?' Oscar replied extravagantly. Sherard was not so much devoted to Oscar as obsessed by him. It was an obsession that was to last to the end of his life. At the time of Oscar's trials, Sherard found it almost impossible to accept that Oscar was indeed guilty of the crimes he was charged with. And during Oscar's imprisonment, Sherard sought to drive a wedge between Oscar and Bosie so that he could bring about a reconciliation between Oscar and Constance.

  Sherard did record Oscar's single encounter with a female prostitute in Paris. Oscar announced one evening that `Priapus was calling' and left Sherard to visit the Eden, a notorious music hall where he met the famous demimondaine Marie Aguetant, whose lover later slit her throat as she bestrode him during sex. `What animals we all are, Robert!' Oscar remarked to Sherard the next morning. Sherard - himself a regular patron of prostitutes - was only surprised that Oscar used prostitutes so rarely: `The only reflection I made to myself on the morning when I heard of the Eden episode was to wonder how a well-fed, well-wined, full-blooded man as Oscar was at 29 could so control himself as to restrict his sexual contacts to once in 42 days.'

  Oscar returned to London in early May, his flowing locks shorn and replaced by artificial curls in the style of Nero. Laura Troubridge, who had once been an admirer of Oscar's, confided spitefully to her diary:

  He is grown enormously fat, with a huge face and tight curls all over his head - not at all the aesthetic he used to look. He was very amusing and talked cleverly, but it was all monologue and not conversation. He is vulgar, I think, and lolls about in, I suppose, poetic attitudes with crumpled shirt cuffs turned back over his coat sleeves!

  Richard Le Gallienne, an aspiring poet from Birkenhead, paints an even more unflattering portrait of Oscar at this time:

  His amber-coloured hair, naturally straight, was not very long, and was unashamedly curled and massively modelled to his head, somewhat suggesting a wig. His large figure, with his big loose face, grossly jawed with thick, sensuous lips, and a certain fat effeminacy about him, suggested a sort of caricature Dionysius disguised as a rather heavy dandy of the Regency period.

  At Oscar's prompting, Constance and Otho were invited to Lady Wilde's salon on 16 May. If Constance was at all taken aback by Oscar's artificial curls and crumpled cuffs, she did not show it. The frequency of their meetings increased dramatically. In May, Otho was writing to Nellie:

  You will think that we must be becoming very intimate with the Wildes, when I tell you that we have been to their house again today, Constance and I ... Oscar Wilde had a long talk with Constance; it was of art, as usual, and of scenery, he so amused me when he called Switzerland `that dreadful place, Switzerland, so vulgar with its ugly big mountains, all black and white, like an enormous photograph'.

  The next month, Oscar and Lady Wilde were invited for an afternoon at home at Lancaster Gate. There were sixty people there, and Oscar spent the entire time talking to Constance. Otho was sceptical: `I don't believe that he means anything; that is his way with all girls whom he finds interesting,' he told Nellie. `Constance told me afterwards that they had not agreed upon a single subject.'

  Otho still doubted whether Oscar was in love with Constance. He had observed that `wherever she went, there followed he, and when he could not approach her then with his eyes he followed her'. Otho admitted there was smoke. But was there any fire? `If the man were anyone else but Oscar Wilde,' he told Nellie, `one might conclude that he was in love.' Otho had known Oscar for six years, not well, but sufficiently well perhaps to suspect Oscar of playing at being in love, of going through the romantic motions. He had seen Oscar do it several times before.

  Otho thought - and perhaps even hoped - that Oscar found Constance interesting, nothing more. There is an undertow of anxiety in his letters to Nellie. He was very protective of Constance. He had rescued her from their mother's abusive clutches and they had forged an unusually close relationship. Otho was concerned because he knew that behind the facade of a welleducated, intelligent and articulate young woman, Constance was scarred, vulnerable. And Otho could not help but be aware of Oscar's reputation. When he read Oscar's Poems, he must, as a classical scholar, have realised that they positively oozed homoerotic sentiments. He must have known how Oscar was pilloried in Punch, and how Henry Labouchere, the radical MP and journalist who was destined to play a more insidious role in Oscar's life, had recently called Wilde `an epicene youth' and `an effeminate phrasemaker'. And no doubt Otho was aware of some of the ugly rumours about Oscar that had begun in Oxford and still clung to him.

  At the end of June, Otho, Constance and Oscar attended a reception for advocates of women's rights where Constance remarked: `You know everybody says, Mr Wilde, that you do not really mean half of what you say.' Oscar's response was to guffaw with laughter. The courtship was again interrupted by Oscar's return to America in August to supervise the first production of Vera, or the Nihilists. The play flopped in New York, running for just a week, and Oscar returned to England in early September. He had asked Constance to read Vera which she promised to do. She wrote to Oscar:

  I am afraid you and I disagree in our opinions on art for I hold there is no perfect art without perfect morality, whilst you say they are distinct and separable things, and of course you have your knowledge to combat my ignorance with.

  Art and morality. It was a fundamental, unbridgeable chasm between their world views. Constance cleaved to a world ordered by laws and morals, a world in which goodness, decency, justice and virtue prevailed. Oscar was anarchic, questing, questioning. He wanted to push at the boundaries of acceptable art and acceptable morality, eventually embracing and exploring criminality.

  But all this lay in the future. For the present, Oscar was intent on courtship. On Wednesday 21 November, Oscar arrived in Dublin and was welcomed like a conquering hero returning to the city of his birth. He was there for three days and very busy. He was to give two lectures - `Impressions of America' and `The House Beautiful' - to recite his poems and to take part in a debate with the Fellows of Trinity College. Constance had so arranged things that she too was in Dublin, staying with Mama Mary Atkinson in Ely Place. She had written to Oscar earlier that month saying, `I told the Atkinsons that you would be here some time soon and they will be very pleased to see you.' On Thursday, Constance and her cousins, Stanhope and Eliza, left a note at Oscar's hotel asking him to drop in that evening which he duly did. Oscar, `though decidedly extra affected, I suppose partly from nervousness,' Constance told Otho, `made himself very pleasant.' She dismissed Stanhope's chaffings about romance with Oscar. `Such stupid nonsense,' she said.

  But it was not stupid nonsense. Three days later Oscar and Constance were engaged to be married. `Prepare yourself for an astounding piece of news!' Constance wrote to Otho. `I am engaged to Oscar Wilde and perfectly and insanely happy.' It was to be one of the very rare instances of perfect happiness in Constance's life. Oscar and Constance were alone in the drawing room at Ely Place, a situation no doubt deliberately choreographed by Mama Mary Atkinson, who was fully aware of what was about to take place. Constance was playing the piano, the very same piano that her mother had been playing when her father had proposed thirty years earlier.

  Otho might well be astounded, but if Constance feigned surprise at Oscar's proposal, she was being disingenuous. Ever since meeting him two and a half years earlier, she had been in love with him and wanted to marry him. She told Otho she had been `shaking with fright' even before she met Oscar for the very first time, which suggests that she was a little in love with the i
dea of being in love with the famous Oscar. She had already turned down `three good proposals', much to the indignation of her Irish aunts.

  Constance anticipated some difficulties over the engagement. Otho, she knew, liked Oscar, and `Grandpapa will, I know, be nice, as he is always so pleased to see Oscar,' she wrote. `The only one I am afraid of is Aunt Emily.' Otho was instructed to use his charm with Aunt Emily and `make it all right'. Constance was also concerned about how her mother and stepfather, as well as other relatives, might react to the news: `I am so dreadfully nervous over my family; they are so cold and practical.' But whatever difficulties there might be, Constance's determination to marry Oscar revealed a steely side to her character: `I won't stand opposition,' she told Otho, `so I hope they won't try it.' And remarkably nobody did.

  Otho did his work well. Grandpapa Lloyd expressed his approbation of the match. He was still too ill to write to Oscar personally, so Aunt Emily had to be his amanuensis. Five days after the proposal, Oscar received what was, for Aunt Emily, a cordial reply. `My father,' she wrote, `desires me to say that he can have no objection to you personally as a husband for Constance. He believes that you and she are well-suited to each other.' Constance's happiness, Aunt Emily continued, was Grandpapa Lloyd's `first consideration'. Above all, Grandpapa Lloyd wanted to protect his favourite granddaughter from any further abuse or cruelty. In an age where appalling cruelties were not only perpetrated upon women by their husbands, but also tolerated by society, Grandpapa Lloyd wanted a husband who would be a friend and companion for Constance; a husband, who, though he might break the mould of starchy, unbending, domineering Victorian maleness, would prize Constance's gentleness and love her for her vulnerabilities as much as for her strengths. Crucially, Grandpapa Lloyd, Aunt Emily told Oscar, `has confidence in you that you will treat her kindly'.

  Lady Wilde was ecstatic at the news: `I am intensely pleased at your note of this morning,' she wrote to Oscar. `You have both been true and constant and a blessing will come on all true feeling.' Speranza had bright visions of the future: `What endless vistas of speculation open out,' she exclaimed. `What will you do in life? Where live? 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.'

  Once the engagement had been agreed in principle, there were the financial details to go into. Oscar did not have a penny to his name. He had come back from America with a relatively large amount of cash, but it had all been frittered away in Paris. In fact, he was heavily in debt. He owed a moneylender called Edwin Levy who lived in Hastings at least £1,200, and almost certainly had other debts to his name. To be sure, he was earning good money - `growing quite rich', he boasted to Lillie Langtry - by travelling the length and breadth of Britain `civilising the provinces by my remarkable lectures'. But he needed money, a regular, unfluctuating, stable flow of money to enable him to write. `The best work in literature,' he told an aspiring young writer:

  is always done by those who do not depend upon it for their daily bread, and the highest form of literature, poetry, brings no wealth to the singer. For producing your best work also you will require some leisure and freedom from sordid care.

  Needless to say, there were those who saw Oscar's marriage as a manoeuvre to earn him a respite him from sordid financial care. After all, his courtship of Charlotte Montefiore, his waverings over Violet Hunt and the rumours of engagements to wealthy women hardly induced his critics to see his marriage to Constance as a love match. At the time she met Oscar, Constance had an income of £250 a year, a generous sum for a young woman. Under the terms of Grandpapa Lloyd's will, she would receive around £800 a year after his death, not exactly a fortune, but a very considerable income and more than sufficient on which to live very comfortably. Additionally, Constance was to receive a dowry of £5,000 from her share of the capital, enough to set up house. Violet Hunt was scathing when she heard of Oscar's engagement to Constance: `I hear that Oscar's fiancee only has £400 a year instead of £800,' she wrote in her diary. `I expect to hear of that engagement being broken off.' Violet's venom is understandable. As someone who had `as nearly as possible escaped the honour of becoming Mrs Wilde' because of her lack of money, she could be forgiven for assuming that Oscar was a fortune-hunter.

  But by the standards of his time, Oscar could not be said to have married purely for money. If he had wanted great wealth, he could have found it. He was already famous and had proved himself capable of earning large sums of money from lecturing - and rather smaller ones from writing. He was the companion and confidant of famous and beautiful women. Many women found him irresistibly fascinating. There were richer pickings to be found in England or, for that matter, America.

  Nevertheless, money was a natural, normal and important consideration in any marriage. When Oscar and Constance became engaged, the marriage contract had hardly changed since the time of Jane Austen. Women of the middle classes and above were expected to come to the marriage state with some sort of dowry, and if there was an income, then so much the better. In Oscar's play An Ideal Husband, Lord Caversham tells his son that marriage `is not a matter for affection', as `there is property at stake'. And when, in The Importance of Being Earnest, Lady Bracknell discovers that Cecily is wealthy, she suddenly perceives her desirability as a wife for Algernon: `A hundred and thirty thousand pounds! And in the Funds! Miss Cardew seems to me a most attractive young lady, now that I look at her.' There was love and there was money. And when there was both, happiness, it was generally agreed, was assured. Speranza was matter of fact about Constance's money: `a very nice, pretty, sensible girl - well connected and well brought up - and a good fortune, about £1,000 a year'.

  When Grandpapa Lloyd enquired into Oscar's finances, Oscar was admirably frank. He admitted to his debts and claimed that he had managed to pay off about k300 of them from his lecture fees. Cautious Grandpapa Lloyd was alarmed. `What causes him some uneasiness,' Aunt Emily wrote to Oscar, `is yr debts, for tho' the amount is not excessive it would be a considerable burden upon your income for some time to come.' Grandpapa Lloyd wanted to delay the marriage until Oscar had managed to clear another £300 worth of debt. Oscar's reaction verged on the flippant. `He had an interview in chambers with Mr Hargrove, the family lawyer,' Otho recalled:

  Pressed as to his ability to pay, Oscar replied that he could hold out no promise `but I would write you a sonnet, if you think that would be of any help'.

  Things had reached an impasse, and Oscar decided to broach the subject of money with Constance. To Oscar's surprise, she refused even to discuss the matter. Aunt Emily sought to explain Constance's behaviour. `I think it likely that she put you off when you wanted to speak of it because she did not wish to appear to attach too much importance to the question of money,' she wrote, `and she certainly would not wish to give you up because yr income was small.' Without a trace of irony, Oscar - whose habits of extravagance were already well-developed - set about impressing upon Constance the importance of careful housekeeping and restraint when they were married. Aunt Emily quite agreed. Constance, she said, `should be made to understand what the income that you will have will enable her to do, and that she will require to practise some economy and self-denial'.

  Oscar offered Constance love, companionship and a family of her own in the creation of the Aesthetic House Beautiful. He offered her status as the wife of a poet, a playwright and a man of letters. Oscar also offered her security and safety, commodities which had been in short supply in her life and which looked as if they might be in short supply again. Despite the tranquillity and opulence of Lancaster Gate, where life proceeded in a predictable and wellregulated fashion, Constance craved more. She wanted a home of her own. She felt, she said to Oscar, as if she were a visitor in Lancaster Gate, and not a member of the family. And she knew that her world was about to change in ways over which she had no control. Grandpapa Lloyd was nearly eighty and could not live for ever. His health had taken a turn
for the worse just before Constance left for Dublin. Her dearest Otho had recently become engaged, which had come as a surprise to everyone. If - or rather when - Grandpapa Lloyd died, Constance would be alone, forced to live with Aunt Emily, Aunt Mary Napier or with Otho and Nellie. She might even have to contemplate returning to her mother, who had now remarried. It was not a prospect to relish. And she was twenty-six. Not old, but old enough perhaps to worry about being left on the shelf. Faced with a stark choice between dependence and independence, Constance chose to be married to Oscar.

  Constance had captured her lion. Now she must tame him.

  The marriage cure

  LADY BRACKNELL: To speak frankly, I am not in favour o f long engagements. They give people the opportunity o ffinding out each other's character before marriage, which I think is never advisable.

  There can be no doubt that when Oscar proposed to Constance he was deeply in love. `He certainly had been very much in love with her,' Bosie was to write years later. Indeed, Oscar had `often' told Bosie how `the marriage was purely a love match'. And there were ample reasons why Oscar had fallen in love with Constance. She was beautiful, she was graceful, she was intelligent. She was well-educated, and she spoke French and Italian fluently, and much of her extensive reading had been undertaken in those languages. She was interested in art and social issues and held quite decided, indeed quite radical, views for a young woman of her time. Adversity and her friendships and travels with remarkable older women - like her `Mia Madre', Lady Mount-Temple, and Margaret, Ranee of Sarawak - had made Constance wise beyond her years and extended her world view to compass more than the trivialities of fashion and the gossip of girls. The Ranee's brother, Harry de Windt, said that many people would have been surprised if they had realised what `force and depth of character, what acute power of reasoning and analysis' lay behind Constance's `placid and beautiful exterior'. She thought deeply and with due consideration, and she could express herself and her opinions with a softness and a tact which were very appealing. She was kind and compassionate and had that rare quality of genuinely being more interested in others than she was in herself- a decided advantage where Oscar was concerned.