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

by Franny Moyle

  And if Constance had any doubt in her mind about Oscar’s behaviour, this is almost certainly the reassurance that she offered herself. Oscar was eccentric and shocking. He was playful and risqué. But at heart he was a conventional, ‘manly’ man. His devotion to her spoke for itself in this regard. Oscar was just as infatuated with her as she was with him, a fact revealed in Oscar’s letter to his friend Lillie Langtry.

  ‘I am going to be married to a beautiful girl called Constance Lloyd,’ he wrote,

  a grave, slight, violet-eyed Artemis, with great coils of heavy brown hair which make her flower-like head droop like a flower, 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 like her. I am hard at work lecturing and getting quite rich, tho’ it is horrid being so much away from her.11

  Although Constance’s life was taking a decided turn for the better, she was nevertheless haunted in these early days of her relationship with Oscar. Full of unspecified fear, she found herself sleepless and anxious at night. Her cousin Lizzie Napier, staying at Lancaster Gate, slept with her in an attempt to stop these night terrors.

  ‘I get so frightened at night,’ Constance confided to her fiancé. ‘The wind was howling furiously and suddenly there came a crash as if the house were coming down, & after a few minutes another. We have not yet discovered what had happened. The wind always makes me think of death & separation and terrifies me into a state of horrors.’12

  Oscar did what he could to comfort his bride-to-be. Wherever he was in the country, he telegraphed her twice daily and sent her flowers as often as he could, often lilies. If he had a day off from his talks and London was within reach, he dashed back to see her, sometimes forfeiting sleep or supper for the privilege of an hour with his fiancée. Although Constance was delighted with this devotion, it also concerned her. ‘I wish you were not so tired,’ she wrote to Oscar.

  Perhaps you had better not come to London next Sunday! You must not give up any more Saturday lectures, and if you won’t promise to have a proper supper you are not to come & see me on Saturday evening. I am still very angry with you for not telling me you were starving last Saturday, I think it was so unkind: so it was, I should have insisted on your having something only I never feel at home here, I am only just like a visitor myself.13

  In the first three weeks of December, Oscar travelled from the north to the south of England, gradually working his way through the north-east and Birkenhead, then to the midlands and Worcester, before returning to London to lecture at the Crystal Palace on the 21st. The minute he was back in London, Constance was at his side. She took Oscar to have lunch with her aunt Mary Napier in Norwood before the lecture. For the following Christmas week, which Oscar had as a holiday, the couple were barely out of one another’s sight.

  The engagement was announced in mid-December in Society and Truth magazines. The news spread quickly through a press for whom Oscar was now a regular topic, and Constance tasted the celebrity and public scrutiny that from now she would have to live with. By 20 December regional papers as far afield as Dublin, Liverpool, Manchester and Derby were carrying the news. ‘Bunthorne is to get his bride,’ announced the Liverpool Daily Post.

  Oscar Wilde is going to be married … she is a Dublin girl, a Miss Lloyd, a niece of the late Sergeant Armstrong, very well known and much liked in Ireland. There was at first some fear lest London should lose its lion, and society its favourite source of admiration and ridicule. A terrible rumour had got about that Mr and Mrs Oscar Wilde were to settle down in Dublin. Happily this danger is averted. We keep Oscar.

  Constance discovered that she was now something of a novelty. She and Oscar went to the theatre most nights that week. At the St James’ the cast peeped through the curtains during the intervals to glimpse the future Mrs Wilde. On 23 December she found herself again the focus of fascination when Oscar’s friend the painter Whistler held a special breakfast function at which Oscar ‘and the lady whom he has chosen to be the chatelaine of the House Beautiful’ were guests of honour.

  Aunt Emily was having problems adjusting to her niece’s new status. Constance was entering a bohemian, modern world that this spinster could barely grasp. Although a grown woman and now officially engaged, Constance had to fight for permission to attend every single event with Oscar. She barely made it to the Whistler breakfast. ‘I am afraid you will have to go to Mr Whistler’s without me,’ she had written to Oscar earlier in the month. ‘I am very sorry. Please don’t let him be offended or think I did not want to come.’14 It was Aunt Emily who was forbidding Constance to go. Oscar went into battle. Although Aunt Emily eventually gave in, she made her disapproval clearly felt in her letter to him.

  ‘As Constance tells me Mr Whistler has arranged his luncheon party expressly for her & she is heartily disappointed at not being permitted to go, I have determined to withdraw my objection on this occasion on the distinct understanding that it is not to be made a precedent for any more visiting of a like kind. So long as she remains under her grandfather’s roof it is also understood that her brother is to take charge of her.’ Emily did not want Constance to do anything ‘unbecoming to a young unmarried lady’.15

  Despite the rather frosty and old-fashioned Aunt Emily, with whom he now had to negotiate access to his bride-to-be, Oscar was visibly delighted about his engagement. On Boxing Day he celebrated with the Sickert family and was so overcome with joy that he carelessly left two sovereigns behind him. Eleanor Sickert, the painter Walter’s mother, was amused by this turn of events. ‘We found two sovereigns on your chair,’ she explained. ‘I feel inclined to scold you for being so careless but you are too happy to mind even a severe lecture so I will not waste one.’16

  Constance meanwhile found herself inundated with letters and cards congratulating her. Many of her friends and family prefaced their messages, asking whether the news was really true. Oscar was, after all, so famous, and Constance absolutely unlike the publicly visible Lillie Langtrys or Maud Howes with whom he was typically associated.

  Constance responded to all who wrote with a brief note to which she attached a peacock feather – one of the motifs of Aestheticism. Whatever supply she had acquired was insufficient to meet a flood of interest in the news. In the end she cut up three of her own peacock feather fans as well as ‘numbers of feathers that I collected at Mrs Ainslie’s last year’. She tried offering one of these tokens to Otho, but he refused it, believing the peacock feather to be unlucky. Aunt Carrie, on the other hand, ‘not being superstitious took them, so now we shall have no ill-luck’.17

  One person who was far from surprised on hearing from Oscar of his ‘Artemis’ was Lillie Langtry. ‘Oscar’s contemplated marriage did not surprise me,’ she said, ‘as I knew that he had for some time admired the girl.’18

  And then in January, Oscar was off again and Constance’s life quietened. But Oscar did not leave before giving his betrothed a special gift, a pet marmoset to keep her company while he was away. It was christened Jimmy, possibly after Oscar’s friend the painter James Whistler.

  Constance took her new pet and headed for Bagshot in Surrey to stay with the Cochranes. Basil Cochrane, later Vice-Admiral Sir Basil, and his wife, Cornelia, were old family friends.19 John Horatio was still very ill – if anything, his condition had deteriorated over Christmas – and Aunt Emily wanted Lancaster Gate vacated so she could be left alone to deal with her deteriorating father. Constance could read all the signs. She confided in Otho that she felt it unlikely the old man would survive the winter.

  The philanthropic Cochranes kept Constance busy. They held a children’s dancing class, for which Constance had to play waltzes on the piano. She went with Mrs Cochrane to help out at the annual Sunday school tea. But at night, when Windlesham House in Bagshot fell silent, Constance’s trials continued. This time Mrs Cochrane crawled into bed with her, sleepin
g with her every night of her stay so that so she didn’t feel so frightened in the dark.

  Constance had a tendency towards clumsiness and misadventure when it came to everyday life. Throughout her life she was known for losing umbrellas or purses, or dropping or tearing precious things. Little Jimmy somehow fell prey to this unlucky aspect of Constance’s life. Oscar’s pet met its untimely end on 4 January 1884; it could only have been in Constance’s care a matter of days. Constance broke the news to her betrothed. ‘My sweet little Jimmy is dead, died at 1 /2 past 5 o clock this morning: I am forlorn & miserable. Is it my fault that everything you give me has an untimely end? I don’t think he suffered much as he looks so pretty. I can’t bear to think of him; we are going to bury him presently.’20

  Much of Constance’s time away from Oscar was spent in imagining what married life would be like. Oscar, who was much parodied in the press for his heavy smoking, loved the very highest-quality cigarettes supplied from the Parascho depot in Mayfair’s Park Street, conveniently close to Speranza and Willie. Constance began to wonder what it would be like to live with a smoker. She was not massively fond of the habit but told Oscar that ‘I would never ask you to give it up: I see no reason why you should not smoke as much as you like, only if you over-do it, I should think it would become a morbid craving like that for opium.’21

  If Oscar’s fault in Constance’s eyes was his addiction to nicotine, Constance began to wonder what aspects of her character would grate with him. ‘Do get the list of my faults from Cenie!’ Constance urged. ‘I know two people who think I have none: one is Mrs Cochrane who wrote to me yesterday, the other a lady at Oxford who told Charlie Napier so: Charlie did not agree!’22

  No matter that at the heart of their relationship lay the simple concerns of any ordinary couple; as far as the public were concerned, Constance and Oscar were extraordinary. Now, with news that they would marry in April, the speculation began regarding the wedding itself. Just what would an Aesthetic wedding be like? And what would the bride wear?

  Any such questions were quickly answered. Constance’s wedding dress was made by March and went on show. This event in itself was enough to attract national attention. News travelled far and wide that the wedding attire of Mrs Oscar Wilde was ‘saffron hued, the colour the Greek maidens wore on their wedding day’.23

  Anna Kingsford, a friend of Speranza’s, wrote to Lady Wilde keen to hear more about just this:

  I am coming to town for the season in about ten days … please write me a line and say WHEN and WHERE the wedding is to take place! I hear the bridal robe is on view somewhere and I should greatly like to see it. So please give me the address of the artist who is responsible for it. I hope the illustrated papers will do their duty noble in regard to the marriage and this ‘sweetness and light’ of which it will be the radiant point.24

  Oscar’s friend Robert Sherard alleged that Oscar himself designed Constance’s wedding dress. Constance’s son Vyvyan, however, later denied this. Oscar was often credited with matters of design at Constance’s expense, and the anecdote of the genesis of this outfit may well be the first instance of this. Given her art schooling and her natural interest in fashion and embroidery, it is far more likely that Constance designed her own outfit, in conjunction with her dressmaker Mrs Nettleship.

  Adeline Nettleship was the wife of the painter John Trivett Nettleship, a one-time solicitor who had given up his conventional career in 1870 to paint and who had subsequently become a successful and regular exhibitor at the Grosvenor Gallery.25 Her business was based at 2 Melbury Terrace, St Marylebone, and it was probably here that Anna Kingsford and others would have gone to glimpse the gown ahead of the big day. While John Nettleship pursued his art on canvas, his wife created unique, dramatic and sometimes consciously bizarre outfits that were considered to represent the most outrageous and expressive end of the art dress market. Ada Nettleship was not dogmatic in her designs, but known for working with her clients, incorporating their own ideas into a final product that was always not only unique but also genuinely reflective of the wearer’s personality.

  While Mrs Nettleship and her girls were busy working on Constance’s wedding and going-away gowns, Constance and Oscar got on with the pressing matter of where they should live. Oscar had already lived briefly in the exquisite Keats House that Godwin had designed for Frank Miles in Tite Street in Chelsea. Now there was another property coming up in that street. ‘We have been looking at a house in Tite Street, which I think we are likely to take,’ Constance wrote to family friends, the Harrises, at the end of March.

  The problem for Oscar and Constance, however, was that, although they had found a house they liked, they still didn’t have a sufficiently large amount of cash to secure it. Although Constance now had an annual income arranged, to lease Tite Street the couple would have to come up with a lump sum. It may well have been this final hurdle in regulating their affairs that encouraged Constance and Oscar to delay their wedding until May.

  John Horatio once again came to the aid of his granddaughter. On 29 April an arrangement was made by which a further advance of £500, to be offset against her future legacy, was paid into the Union Bank of London. This sum would allow Constance to acquire a six-year lease on Tite Street and the cost of the modifications to the house that they wanted to make.

  And so eventually, after a brief six-month engagement, the public were delivered the wedding that they had been so eagerly anticipating. The event had been kept as low-key as possible, not least because of the state of John Horatio’s health. Only close family and friends were admitted to the ceremony by special ticket. The newspapers noted with disappointment that there were few literary or artistic glitterati amid the invitees. Whether Anna Kingsford made the ceremony is not sure. Jimmy Whistler telegrammed on the day that he would be late. People such as Oscar’s solicitor and family friend George Lewis and his wife attended, the latter in a costume of black and amber. Ada Swinburne-King and Speranza were in brilliant shades of grey, the former in rich grey satin with black mantle and bonnet and the latter in silver-grey brocaded silk and satin. The actress Mrs Bernard-Beere wore a jet-covered dress with a black hat trimmed with yellow flowers.

  Underwhelmed by the celebrity quotient of the guests, the large crowd of Oscar Wilde fans who had gathered to see Constance emerge from her carriage outside St James’s Church, Sussex Gardens, at 2.30 p.m. on 29 May 1884 were then met with further disappointment. Those members of the public who had hoped to see her in that saffron dress which had been so talked about were instantly surprised. Rather than the deep golden yellow of the tip of the saffron crocus thread, Constance’s dress had just the merest tint of yellow. The Ladies’ Treasury described it as a ‘rich creamy satin dress … of delicate cowslip tint’, while the Lady’s Pictorial thought it more of an ‘ivory satin’. Oscar, meanwhile, ‘appeared in the ordinary and commonplace frock coat of the period’.

  There were, of course, some more obvious concessions to Aestheticism. Rather than being bustled, the skirt of Constance’s dress was plain, with a long train. The bodice was low-cut with a Medici collar, and the sleeves were, of course, puffed. Instead of the traditional wreath of orange blossom, she wore a wreath of myrtle leaves, which the ‘Metropolitan Gossip’ column of the Belfast News informed its readers was ‘a more poetical and highly classical adornment’. According to the press, the most unusual aspect of the outfit, apart from its surprising simplicity, was the veil. Hanging from the back of her head, it was Indian silk gauze embroidered with pearls. And around her waist Constance wore a silver girdle, which was Oscar’s wedding gift to her. She carried a bouquet of lilies.

  If anything, it was the bridesmaids who provided the spectacle that the crowd had been expecting. Six of Constance’s cousins, two them children, were dressed in terracotta, ‘after Sir Joshua Reynolds’. The elder girls had ‘bodices and short over skirts of figured nun’s veiling; the ground was pale blue, the flowers old gold. They wore high crowned straw hats t
rimmed with long cream feathers and knots of surah silk. All the bridesmaids wore yellow roses at the throat; amber necklaces, and carried bouquets of the fairest and most fragrant water lilies.’ John Horatio was too ill to attend the ceremony, and so it was left to Constance’s uncle Hemphill to give her away. Willie was Oscar’s best man.

  Oscar selected an extremely unusual wedding ring that he gave Constance that day. At first glance it is a simple gold band. But on closer examination it is sliced in half, so that it opens to form two interlocking rings. On the inside of one is the tiny inscription ‘29th May 1884’ while the other bears the names ‘Constance and Oscar’.

  After the ceremony the party retired for a brief reception at Lancaster Gate. There they ate a cake covered with sprays of jasmine and lily of the valley. By 4.30 that afternoon Constance and Oscar were on a train from Charing Cross en route to a honeymoon in Paris. Constance was wearing what one publication described as a dark mahogany, and another reported as a deep crimson, travelling dress. Both press accounts agree that she wore a large-brimmed hat to match. What no one needed to report, but everyone took for granted, was that above all Constance was wearing a huge smile.

  5

  Violets in the refrigerator

  THE ‘ECHOES OF Society’ column of the North Wales Chronicle carried a satirical sketch in its July 1884 issue that went like this: