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

by Franny Moyle

  Constance

  The Tragic and Scandalous Life of

  Mrs Oscar Wilde

  FRANNY MOYLE

  JOHN MURRAY

  To my mother Olga

  and my daughter Rosa

  Contents

  Acknowledgements

  Introduction

  1.

  The sins of the parents …

  2.

  Terribly bad taste

  3.

  The sunflower and the lily

  4.

  ‘Bunthorne is to get his bride’

  5.

  Violets in the refrigerator

  6.

  Ardour and indifference

  7.

  A literary couple

  8.

  ‘Not to kiss females’

  9.

  Qui patitur vincit

  10.

  My own darling mother

  11.

  A dark bitter forest

  12.

  Modern-day Martha

  13.

  The strife of tongues

  14.

  Madame Holland

  15.

  Life is a terrible thing

  Epilogue

  Notes

  Select bibliography

  Illustration acknowledgements

  Index

  Acknowledgements

  I owe the greatest debt to Merlin Holland, whose great generosity has made this book possible. Not only has he shared his extensive knowledge of Oscar, Constance and their circle, but he has made his own immensely important manuscript collection available to me. And as a result of his allowing me to quote both from the letters in his own collection and those held elsewhere around the world, Constance’s voice can be heard once again. I owe a great deal to John Holland, who allowed me to study those letters and manuscripts in his care. Merlin and John have also provided many of the rarely seen photographs featured in the book.

  I am grateful to the Trustees of the Broadlands Archives and the University of Southampton, who have allowed me access to the huge, untapped resource they have in the form of the hundreds of letters between Constance and Lady Mount-Temple. Professor Chris Woolgar and the rest of the staff in the Special Collections unit there have been particularly kind. Thanks must also go to the William Andrews Clark Memorial Library at the University of California, Los Angeles, who have again been hugely accommodating in giving me access to their collection of Wilde manuscripts and meeting my numerous requests.

  And of course, there have been other institutions and individuals who have contributed to this book. The British Library and the Morgan Library & Museum in New York have proven wonderful resources that I have tapped on a regular basis. In addition, I remain grateful to people such as the manager of the Royal Oak Hotel in Betws-y-Coed and the archivist at Bedales School, who so readily went out of their way to send me what precious information they had. It is this kind of open helpfulness that makes writing and researching such a joy.

  The continuing support of my agents Georgina Capel and Anita Land, my publisher Roland Philipps and, of course, my family makes the chaos and upheaval of trying to squeeze writing into the rest of my ‘portfolio’ life and career worthwhile.

  Introduction

  ‘DEAR CONSTANCE … I am coming to see you at nine o’clock. Please be in – it is important. Ever yours Oscar.’1 So went the note that Oscar Wilde, at that moment apparently the most successful man in London, dashed off in hurried pencil to his wife. It was the afternoon of 28 February 1895, and the forty-year-old playwright, wit and bon viveur was writing from the rooms in which he was temporarily resident, in the opulent settings of the Avondale Hotel at 68 Piccadilly, just off Dover Street. He was in a state of high anxiety.

  The note made its way out of the hotel and into the wintry bustle of one of London’s busiest thoroughfares, where horse-buses and carriages bustled to and fro. It weaved through the gents in bowlers and top hats and passed advertising boys whose sandwich boards, draped over the shoulders, promoted everything from the pleasure of the current ‘Orient in London’ exhibition at Olympia to Regent Street’s International Fur Store, where ‘a really good and serviceable Fur-Lined Overcoat, trimmed with Fur Collar and Cuffs’, was available for £10.

  When the note had left behind the splendid stone surroundings of central London, it found itself in the more modest but undoubtedly more modern domestic environs of Chelsea. Here it grew close to its destination in Tite Street, where a line of red-brick terraced houses found themselves overlooking the gardens of the Victoria Hospital for Children on one side and backing on to the slum dwellings so inappropriately named Paradise Walk on the other. At no. 16 it would have been Arthur, the Wildes’ young butler, who attended to the post boy’s double knock and made sure that this latest missive was placed into the hands of his mistress, Mrs Wilde.

  Houses in Tite Street were often beautiful, but they were generally far from grand, occupying a site that only a very few decades earlier would have been the haunt of the prostitutes and swells spilling out from the then notorious (and now demolished) Cremorne Pleasure Gardens. No. 16 had been Oscar Wilde’s home for just over a decade. But although his wardrobe, dining habits and general lifestyle suggested an abundance of funds, Oscar was not even the owner of this relatively modest abode; he merely held a lease on it. Oscar and his wife, Constance, had secured tenure of the five-storey terrace back in 1884, when it had presented itself as merely a conventional new build, typical of the wider development of Chelsea in the last quarter of the nineteenth century.

  The formerly insalubrious but fast-developing borough had acquired bohemian credentials during the 1860s and 1870s. By the early 80s the newly wed Wildes were following in the footsteps of several aspirant artistic householders, such as the painter James McNeill Whistler and the portrait artist Frank Miles, who wanted to secure their own patch of bohemia.

  The Wildes had followed artistic protocol, and, like their friends Whistler and Miles before them, they had hired the fashionable avant-garde architect Edward Godwin to turn their conventional red-brick home into something more charming, surprising and aesthetically up-to-the-minute. And so 16 Tite Street, with its black iron railings and tradesman’s gate leading down to the basement domain of Arthur and the cook, was remodelled. Its carefully designed rooms stood in contrast to the dark, cluttered style that had come to define Victorian taste. The interiors at Tite Street were shockingly pared down. The walls were painted white and polished, the floor covering kept pale and plain; internal dividing doors were replaced by curtains, and slim, sparse furniture contributed to a sense of space and calm. All this gave greater prominence to the art on display and the unusual decorative touches that Godwin and his clients had commissioned. In the drawing room, for example, prints and drawings were displayed as a frieze, boldly set off against a broad background band of gold. And in that same room peacock feathers had been pressed into the ceiling plasterwork.

  But despite such flourishes, 16 Tite Street was a house that spoke not of riches but of aspirations. It was a home that placed those who lived in it in the set of liberal-minded, forward-thinking folk who found a frisson of pleasure in new territories, dangerously close to the old London slums, and who, rather than displaying riches by accumulating quantities of art and objects, showed their artistic appreciation of the few beautiful things they owned. It marked the Wildes out as pioneers, with more taste and intellect than money. And it pinned their colours to the mast of a movement being termed ‘Aestheticism’ by the chroniclers of the day.

  Perhaps because of their far from in
finite means, few concessions to art had been made to the exterior of the house, which, like those on either side, sported standard bay windows and a tiled porch that sheltered the shallow steps leading to the front door. Only the bold decision to paint this main entrance white amounted to a statement.

  Now Oscar’s note, entering through that unconventional white door, found itself inside a house little changed over the course of a decade. The birth of children had, of course, brought with it the attendant upheaval, and the telltale signs of its shared occupancy with two young boys could be discerned. Alongside prints by contemporary artists such as Whistler, Edward Burne-Jones and Walter Crane were photographic portraits of the boys, Cyril and Vyvyan, and a pastel of Cyril by the Wildes’ friend and neighbour the artist Laura Hope.

  Here Constance must have read the latest, brusque communiqué from her husband with a degree of concern. Although the Wildes were used to dealing with one another by post, and had made a habit of living apart from time to time when Oscar’s business made it more practical, the note brought with it an air of panic. In addition to requesting that she remain at home, Oscar informed his wife he had telegraphed Mr Badley, the headmaster of Bedales School, and stopped a planned exeat for their elder son, Cyril. This was out-of-the-ordinary behaviour for a man who not only adored and relished the company of his elder child but who would rarely get involved with the mundane travel, school and holiday arrangements that were very much the domain of his wife.

  Oscar had been staying at the Avondale for the best part of three weeks. It was a hotel that had the reputation of being ‘a little Savoy in Piccadilly’, offering excellent cuisine and theatrical décor to match: a marble-clad dining room with frescoed walls, and pillars complete with gilded capitals. But unlike the Savoy, which was inconveniently buried away on the Strand, the Avondale had unique appeal for Oscar. For Wilde found himself in the exceptional position of having two West End hits running simultaneously, and the Avondale placed him almost equidistant from the productions of An Ideal Husband and The Importance of Being Earnest.

  Just a few hundred yards to the east of the Avondale, the Haymarket Theatre had been running Wilde’s An Ideal Husband since early January. The play was about sin and blackmail, and the reputation of a public figure whose past came back to haunt him. London society was flocking to see how the fictional MP Sir Robert Chiltern would extricate himself from Mrs Cheveley, who was blackmailing him with the knowledge that he had sold political secrets in his misspent youth. How was he possibly going to square the situation with his wife, who believed that her ‘ideal husband’ was above reproach?

  The play had been an immediate success. Oscar Wilde was ‘the fashion’ in those early weeks of 1895. London flocked to see the exquisite dresses in which the female members of his cast were clad and to be dazzled by the rich, bejewelled language and amusing epigrams that Oscar had wrought for them. Oscar had enthralled his audience with his wit and ingenuity; ‘the whole of society’ was ‘engaged in inventing Oscar Wildeisms’, an intoxicated press announced.2 It was Oscar’s ability to pepper his story so cleverly with aphorisms that ‘the audience is kept perpetually on the qui vive’, one journal opined. ‘When all else fails, he knows how to shock or astonish – and a new sensation is all that fin de siècle society seems to want.’3 He was quite simply the talk of the town, of the land even.

  The ability to create sensation was something in which Oscar had become expert. Controversial and unapologetic, a man who captivated people with his magnetic personality, fabulous wit and magical storytelling, he was the embodiment of charm, genius and arrogance bundled into one. His whole career had been built on his ability to get himself noticed by shocking, provoking and then winning over his audience. It was not merely his pen that could provoke; he was expert in using his appearance and behaviour to market himself. His current pose was no exception. An image of the ‘Great Oscar’ as he was at this time, fleshy and languid, is easy to conjure. Noted for his dandyish outfits and unrepentant of his decadent behaviour, he was the subject of an abundance of caricatures, portraying a tall and somewhat over-fed figure, immaculately and expensively dressed with a cane and cigarette in his hand, an extravagant green carnation on his lapel and a withering expression.

  It is less easy for us today to invoke a mental image of Mrs Oscar Wilde. Yet her contemporaries would have had little problem. She was a high-profile figure, whose beauty was widely acknowledged, whose activities were often reported in the press and whose appearances and outfits were also monitored for the sake of an intrigued public. In fact, ever since their marriage Oscar’s charming wife had done nothing but enhance and complement his reputation. Constance Wilde balanced her husband. She was wholesome and earnest and provided the ideal foil to his determined flamboyance.

  Née Constance Lloyd, she came from a moneyed background. Her highly respected family, although not aristocratic, had branches that had become entwined with the highest echelons of society. Stunning-looking and naturally stylish, with impressive chestnut hair and delicate features, she had been thrust into the limelight in 1884, when she wed a man who, at the outset of that decade, had managed to make himself famous even before he had achieved anything – an accomplishment in itself.

  From the moment they married and Mrs Oscar Wilde came into being, Constance had used her new-found celebrity to support the husband she adored but also to forge her own path. She had consistently encouraged Oscar’s ambitions and contributed to his circle, and those who celebrated Oscar knew her well. But she had also pursued her own passions.

  Those who admired Constance Wilde were discrete from Oscar Wilde’s fans. In contrast to the self-proclaimed ‘Aesthetes’, of whom Constance would have undoubtedly considered herself one, she was nevertheless a role model for a more politically motivated circle of liberal women. They formed a section of society seeking both to be improved and to improve what they saw as the failings of the nineteenth century.

  Those who subscribed to The Young Woman in January 1895 could see the latest photograph of Constance accompanying an article she had written on ‘How to Decorate a House’. In contrast to Oscar, who posed so readily, his wife sat rather awkwardly in front of the camera, actually looking rather glum and insecure. This was her default expression in front of a lens, an involuntary look that she was all too aware made her appear ‘solemnly tragic’. She was consistently surprised by such photographs. ‘Do I really look like that?’ she would ask.4

  Her natural warmth and charm unapparent, nevertheless the photograph in The Young Woman reveals Constance’s round, soft face and brown hair, worn in what was then the latest Parisian manner: crimped and drawn down over the temples and ears, then looped back into a bun behind. Her eyes seem dark in the photograph, belying their real-life blue-green hue. Constance is captured wearing one of her favourite ‘Aesthetic’ outfits: a full-sleeved dress with a loose pleated bodice that is drawn in at the waist. The silk she is wearing might be deep red or green, printed with a bold modern pomegranate pattern. Around her neck she wears two strands of ‘art beads’ shining like bright cough sweets. You have no way of knowing that in her stockings she stood five feet eight inches tall.

  Very much the darling of the women’s magazines, Mrs Oscar Wilde was renowned for her beautiful outfits, a regular complement to her husband’s own attire. Constance, like so many other forward-thinking women of her day, used fashion to convey something of her political, feminist leanings. A hundred years before women burned their bras, she wore loose-fitting clothing in sympathy with the movement to reform female dress and emancipate women from the confines of corsets and hoops. She sported divided skirts, modelled Turkish trousers and talked about the hygienic virtues of cellular cloth.

  But as much as her outfits could be ‘political’, they were also ‘Aesthetic’, worn to be beautiful and to express the value the wearer attributed to the importance of beauty and pleasure. Although her day dress was practical and pioneering, her evening dress could be show-stopping.


  That January was no exception. What Constance wore to the opening night of An Ideal Husband became a story in its own right for the women’s press. Her dress was ‘composed of green chine moiré arranged with green chiffon and black silk muslin, and trimmed with velvet roses and ribbon to match’, The Lady’s Pictorial informed its readers.

  The full skirt is of green chine moiré with a black silk muslin round the hem, while the bodice is of green chiffon with sprays of roses and with long ends of ribbon reaching almost to the hem of the skirt. The sleeves are formed of two big puffs of black silk muslin, headed with green chiffon and moire, while a garland of velvet roses may be seen on the shoulders.5

  The very next day Constance sat down to convey to friends her delight in her husband’s success. Formidable letter-writer that she was, she had a bespoke writing table in her bedroom, part of a larger set of fitted cupboards and shelves that had been specially built and were considered a complete innovation. One visitor to Tite Street described how, when opening the door to Constance’s bedroom, one found oneself ‘about to walk through the opening in a wall apparently three foot thick. When you get into the room you find that on the one side of the door forming a side of the doorway is an ideal wardrobe with every kind of drawer and hanging cupboard for dresses’ and that ‘on the opposite side of the door is a book case and writing table’.6 All this was painted white.

  ‘Oscar’s play was the most tremendous success,’ Constance wrote to her great friend Georgina, Lady Mount-Temple, ‘and is, I think, the most beautiful play that he has written.’7 Like many of her female contemporaries, she clearly approved of the way in which the play aired the question of morality and marriage.