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

by Franny Moyle

  In the letter Constance continued an argument that she and Oscar had been having about the nature of art, one that set them distinctly apart: ‘I am afraid you & I disagree in our opinion on art, for I hold that there is no perfect art without perfect morality, whilst you say that they are distinct & separable things.’ But Constance was quick to offer a means of resolving their differences into a workable arrangement: ‘I know that I should judge you rather by your aims than by your work.’ And with this Constance wrapped up her letter with an invitation to Oscar to visit her in Dublin: ‘I told the Atkinsons that you would be here some time soon and they will be very pleased to see you. I shall be here.’

  Oscar headed for Ireland on 21 November. Constance was ready and waiting. The Irish family were primed to meet her beau: her Hemphill cousins had a note awaiting him at his hotel, the Shelbourne, inviting him to join the family the moment he arrived. And so Oscar saw Constance the very first evening he was in town. According to Constance, Oscar was ‘extra affected’. She put this down to nerves.

  The following day he was lecturing on ‘The House Beautiful’ at the Gaiety Theatre, and Constance and her clan attended. They were so thrilled with the lecture that, even though Constance had already heard it, they all decided to go to his ‘Impressions of America’ the next day.

  Cenie and Stanhope & I went to the lecture yesterday afternoon and brought O. W. back to four o’clock tea … We three went again to the [American] lecture, which none of us thought as interesting as the former one. We also went to Oscar’s box in the evening to see The Merry Duchess (stupid and somewhat vulgar thing!). He could not come himself as he was dining out. They all think him so improved in appearance, and he is certainly very pleasant. Mama Mary is so fond of him & he is quite at home here. We are having 40 or 50 people to tea this afternoon for my sake I believe, between ourselves rather a nuisance for I hate having to talk to dozens of people. Stanhope has started on a new tack and chaffs my life out of me about O. W., such stupid nonsense, & Cenie eggs him on … I have just read Vera through again, and I really think it very fine. Oscar says he wrote it in order 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 … Please destroy this letter for as you know our family is not over-honourable in such matters as reading other people’s letters.

  Ever your loving sister

  Constance M. Lloyd

  Oscar praised you so much both to Cenie and me.37

  And now something quite strange happened in the story of Oscar and Constance’s romance. Otho, who throughout the summer had chaperoned his sister during her outings with Oscar, suddenly wrote to his sister confessing his doubts about the suitability of his Oxford contemporary as her suitor. His letter, no longer extant, related a story about Oscar Wilde, sufficiently unsavoury for Otho to feel he must raise an immediate alarm.

  Otho’s letter arrived at Ely Place on 27 November. It crossed with one that Constance had sent her brother the day previously. The two siblings must have been horrified as they opened each other’s correspondence. For while Constance read with dismay Otho’s warnings, on reading his sister’s letter Otho realized he had acted too late.

  ‘My dearest Otho,’ his sister announced, ‘Prepare yourself for an astounding piece of news! I am engaged to Oscar Wilde and perfectly and insanely happy.’38

  4

  ‘Bunthorne is to get his bride’

  THE ENGAGEMENT RING that Oscar Wilde presented to Constance Lloyd remains in the possession of the Wilde family’s descendants today: a heart formed from diamonds enclosing two pearls, surmounted with another bow of diamonds. The design was apparently Oscar’s own.

  In slipping this ring on to her finger, Constance knew that she was going to have to steel herself for a barrage of objections. When she informed her brother of her engagement, Constance revealed that, although the Dublin Atkinsons were delighted with the match, she held some concern that she would face opposition from the Lloyds, and specifically from Aunt Emily. ‘I am so dreadfully nervous over my family; they are so cold and practical,’ she worried. But in the same breath her determination to go her own way whatever was also clear. ‘I won’t stand opposition,’ she wrote, ‘so I hope they won’t try it.’1

  Constance felt sure that Otho would be her ally in negotiating any objections from the Lloyd camp, not least because she had spent recent months smoothing the way for his own somewhat unconventional matrimonial ambitions. Otho had fallen in love with a beautiful girl called Clara, whose background was socially dubious, to the minds of the conservative Lloyds at least. In the summer of 1882 Nellie, as Clara was known, was sent to a finishing school in Lausanne in Switzerland – possibly at Otho’s expense, and as part of his longer-term ambition to marry her.2 Certainly by the following March it seems that these ambitions had been aired, and Constance, who had a genuine fondness for Nellie, was being drafted in as her advocate. Now, as far as Constance was concerned, it was Otho’s turn: ‘I want you now to do what has hitherto been my part for you, and make it all right.’3

  Constance and Oscar had meticulously planned their assault on the Lloyd side. Oscar had left Ireland straight after proposing and travelled to Shrewsbury to continue his lecture circuit. On his arrival there he wrote to John Horatio, to Constance’s mother and to Otho regarding his intentions. Constance had written a note for Aunt Emily, no doubt pleading how much she loved Oscar, and had sent this to Otho, with instructions that he should hand it over when Oscar’s letters arrived, and ‘not before’. Then the plan was that Constance would take a Friday crossing which would return her to London early on Saturday i December. That same Saturday, Oscar, with a temporary break in his lecturing, could return to London and then visit Lancaster Gate the following Sunday to repeat his intentions in person before setting off on his next round of lectures. His commitments would then keep him and his fiancée apart until Christmas, a prospect that Constance was already dreading.

  The minute Oscar left Constance in Dublin he began writing to her. And two days after his proposal she wrote back in the most passionate terms:

  My own Darling Oscar

  I have just got your letter, and your letters always make me mad for joy and yet more mad to see you and feel once again that you are mine and that it is not a dream but a living reality that you love me. How can I answer your letters, they are far too beautiful for any words of mine, I can only dream of you all day long and it seems as if everyone I meet must know my secret and see in my face how I love you, my own love. If you had your magic crystal you would see nothing, believe me, but your own dear image there for ever, and in my eyes you shall see reflected nought but my love for you. Oh Oscar how shall I ever love you … for your sweet love for me, and yet I worship you my hero and my god! You may give up your lecturing if you will, for as long as I live you shall be my lover. You must come to me on Saturday, I cannot live til Xmas without you, & yet I know if you do not come you cannot. All thro the early watches of the night your image is ever present with me, & I cannot sleep.4

  But Constance’s and Oscar’s plans were quickly challenged. First there was that unfortunate letter from Otho that suggested a potential lack of support on his part for the engagement. In addition to this blow came news that Oscar had forgotten a commitment to lecture on the very Saturday that he planned to travel to London to talk to Constance’s family. And then there was further disappointment. Rather than giving his instant consent to his granddaughter’s marriage, John Horatio had responded to Oscar’s letter with the news that he intended to withhold his consent until Oscar could answer some important questions about his financial situation. After her initial elation Constance sank into a period of anxiety, fearing that it might be some weeks before she and Oscar secured the family blessing that was so preferable.

  ‘You will have discovered by this that your observation that with regard to Oscar was rather ill timed,’ Constance now wrote to Otho.

  I don’t wish to know t
he story but even if there were foundations for anything against him it is too late to affect me now. I will not allow anything to come between us and at any rate no one can abuse him to me. I am sorry to say that he will not be up in town for 3 or 4 weeks because he has discovered that he has to lecture somewhere on Saturday. Please for my sake and because my happiness is dependent upon this thing do not oppose it, I’m desperately seedy with a very bad cold and can neither sleep nor eat now until this suspense is over.5

  Otho replied by return. He had softened. He duly wrote to Oscar welcoming him into the family. With one of her concerns allayed, when Constance then heard that Oscar would cancel his Saturday lecture in order to meet the family, she was ecstatic.

  More good news was forthcoming when the Swinburne-Kings gave their seal of approval too. Ada wrote to Lady Wilde explaining that she had already written to Oscar ‘to say how pleased I should be to welcome him as my son in law’. Ada said the couple were well suited to each other. ‘Both are … charming, gifted and what is to my mind even more essential to the beginning of married life, immensely attracted to each other. I have heard twice from Constance about the event and in each letter she says she is so intensely happy – I do indeed think that there may be a long and happy life in store for them both.’6 Now it was just John Horatio who needed reassurance.

  On Friday 30 November Constance packed her bags and headed for the steamer that would carry her across the Irish Sea. At seven the following morning, by her own accounts so radiant that ‘all the fog in London will disappear’, she met Otho on a frosty platform in Euston station. Constance had specifically requested that her brother have a muffin with him for her breakfast. Whether he remembered this detail is not known. That evening Otho invited Oscar to dine at Lancaster Gate, and much of Sunday was spent at home with the Lloyds, in frank conversation.

  Far from objecting to the marriage, the Lloyds were in fact happy to support it, provided Oscar could prove himself sufficiently responsible. John Horatio, too ill to write when he received Oscar’s letter on 27 November, had instructed Aunt Emily to lay out things as he saw it. John Horatio had ‘no objection to you personally as a husband for Constance’, she informed Oscar by return. ‘He believes that you and she are well suited to each other. He has confidence you will treat her kindly … But he thinks it right as her guardian to put one or two questions to you … He would like to know what your means are of keeping a wife.’ In addition, Aunt Emily pointed out that her father also insisted on knowing ‘if you had any debts’. Only when Oscar could answer these points would Constance’s grandfather ‘give a considered consent’.7

  Constance was not fully aware of Oscar’s financial situation. She knew enough though to ascertain that he didn’t have the resources to support a wife and start a household.8 And so in the early days of her engagement she was working on the assumption that their marriage was not going to be possible until her grandfather died, a point at which she would be a beneficiary of his will.

  John Horatio had written his will in February 1880. In it his personal effects were split between his three daughters and Otho, who was to receive his library. The remainder of his property was to be sold, and the money raised divided into four portions for investment. The income from these investments was for the benefit of aunts Emily, Carrie and Mary, with the last to cater for Constance and Otho. Constance had no capital bequest per se. Aunt Emily had pointed out in her letter to Oscar that on John Horatio’s death she might expect an income of £700 at least, but until then she had a limited allowance of just £250 a year.9

  But John Horatio clearly wanted to help the couple. As requested, Oscar was transparent about his debts to the old man, which at that time were in the region of £1,500, and he must have made a good case for his capacity to earn an income. Perhaps knowing his own death was imminent and also, as Aunt Emily had conveyed to Oscar, making Constance’s happiness his first consideration, he prepared a financial package for the couple that would allow them to marry more quickly than Constance had anticipated. They would not have to wait for him to shuffle off his mortal coil. John Horatio revealed he would forward £5,000 to a trust fund. The trustees of this fund would in turn advance Constance the interest generated by this capital, and this would provide her with an income immediately. When John Horatio died, this capital advance would be deducted from her legacy. It meant that the couple could go ahead and marry; the only remaining issue was when.

  And so by the evening of Sunday 2 December 1883, when Oscar boarded the Scotch mail train that would return him to his lecturing commitments, his engagement to Constance had been thoroughly digested and approved. It was just the matter of a wedding date that remained.

  On this topic, correspondence between Oscar and the Lloyds continued in early December, with Aunt Emily acting as scribe for the bed-bound John Horatio. Constance’s grandfather was concerned that Oscar’s debts would place a burden on a young couple. He wanted Oscar to manage to pay off at least £300 in the next few months. The wedding could take place only when this was done.

  If Oscar was criticized for his high living and spending, at the same time he had a drive and work ethic that were hard to match. He had undertaken to make a lecture tour of Britain every bit as gruelling and intense as that he had made in America. Over the next two years Constance would have to get used to being without Oscar at least as much as she was with him. If there had ever been any sense that Oscar was marrying Constance for her money, the limits of her actual marriage settlement meant that he was never going to be a kept man. Determined to succeed in his own right, he set out to work hard and milk every opportunity that was offered him. He told John Horatio that he could pay off the £300 of debts by April. And with this pledge he and Constance began to make plans for a wedding in that month.

  Constance was so deeply in love with Oscar at this time that every day his lecturing kept him away from her pained her terribly. She pined for him desperately.

  My darling love, I am sorry I was so silly: you take all my strength away, I have no power to do anything but just love you when you are with me, & I cannot fight against my dread of your going away. Every day that I see you, every moment that you are with me I worship you more, my whole life is yours to do as you will with it, such a poor gift to offer up to you, but yet all I have and so you will not despise it. I know it is only for 3 days, but – it is the wrench of the parting that is so awful, and you are so good to me I cannot bear to be an hour away from you: Do believe that I love you most passionately with all the strength of my heart and mind: anything that you asked me to do, I would in order to convince you and make you happy. I don’t think I shall ever be jealous, certainly 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 & faith will come, & when I have you for my husband, I will hold you fast with chains of love & devotion so that you shall never leave me, or love anyone as long as I can love & comfort …10

  Constance’s reference to jealousy is intriguing. Had she and Oscar begun to discuss his past romantic and sexual histories? Was such a discussion prompted by the story that Otho had wanted to disclose about Oscar and that Constance didn’t care to hear? Had Otho suggested that Oscar had his eyes on other marriageable women at the same time he was courting Constance? Or did Otho have an even more controversial story – that perhaps Oscar was sexually interested in men? One can easily imagine Oscar making an honest confession about his past feelings for Florrie Balcombe and perhaps even Violet Hunt. But would Constance have even dared raise any suggestion that Oscar also had a penchant for men?

  What Constance understood of homosexuality at this stage is impossible to know. The stifling old-world atmosphere in Lancaster Gate would not have been one in which such things were discussed. But as a bright woman with an inquiring mind who was in touch with the artistic community it also seems highly improbable that she would have failed to grasp the sexual ambiguity that Oscar’s Aesthetic pos
e presented, or the implication that lay beneath the public ridicule in which his effeminacy was so often held by publications such as Punch. And that she understood the ‘wicked’ sexual allusions in his poetry is clear.

  The fact is that, in spite of his effete manner, Oscar’s sexual orientation in his twenties was predominantly towards women. He had had a genuine and rather conventional love affair with Florrie Balcombe at the very least. And his attentions to women elsewhere had been well noted.

  That’s not to say that there was already an aspect of his personality that was drawn to sexual experimentation, and more unconventional or insalubrious sexual experiences. He had slept with prostitutes since his Oxford days. And while on his writing trip to Paris in the spring of 1883 he had continued this habit, as his friend the journalist and author Robert Sherard would later attest. Oscar first met Sherard in Paris in 1883, and they would remain lifelong friends. Sherard was a firm heterosexual who himself regularly used prostitutes in Paris, and he may well have introduced Oscar to the notorious Eden music hall, where he paid for the services of the infamous Marie Aguétant.

  Sherard is a key character. His attitude to Oscar seems very close to that of Constance. Never for a moment did he consider Oscar’s ‘effeminacy’ indicative of homosexual tendencies. Oscar had a habit of kissing Sherard on the lips when they met, and calling him and everyone else for that matter by their first names. Oscar would send him letters that others might well interpret as being sexually suggestive and homoerotic in tone. But Sherard persisted in reading Oscar’s fruity letters and over-intimate behaviour as part of his Aesthetic affectation. It was his style. Sherard loved Oscar for all this. But not for a moment did he sense any predatory sexual attitudes on Oscar’s part towards him.