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

by Franny Moyle

  Oscar carried on his affair with Bosie regardless of the book, staying with him in the Grand Hotel in Brighton in October. Constance meanwhile continued to see as much of Arthur Humphreys as she could. When she visited the London Library, just off Piccadilly, she made sure she popped into Hatchard’s to see him. They were both members of the Society for Psychical Research and also used its regular meetings as another opportunity to see one another. ‘Are you coming to the PRS [sic] meeting on Friday?’ Constance asked Arthur on 22 October. But their love affair was not without issues. The fact of their respective marriages aside, they held different political opinions and were finding themselves prone to fighting. They held radically different views on the cause of unemployment among the lower classes, for example – a point of difference that Constance found irksome.

  ‘We must not talk of subjects we do not agree upon,’ Constance warned Arthur.

  You have a very strong nature and perhaps it is natural that you should have no sympathy with the unfortunate of the world. I have had a long talk with the carpenter down here who has done all that work for us for the past ten years, and he spoke to me with grief of cases he had known of thoroughly competent citizens who were utterly unable to get work … It is a subject I feel most deeply on, and that is not serious to you.33

  By mid-November The Green Carnation had helped spawn a barrage of anti-Wilde feeling that was seemingly as strong in some portions of society as the enthusiasm for the author in others. Although publicly Wilde dealt with the situation with humour, privately he was rattled, as was his wife. Things were taking on a nightmarish complexion.

  On the very day that a cartoon of Wilde and Bosie appeared in Punch Constance was moved to write to Georgina in despair. It was not just the personal humiliation that Constance was suffering at these depictions of her husband and his friend, but reading her letter one senses her mounting panic at their implications. ‘I am very distraught and worried, and no one can help me. I can only pray for help from God, and that I seem now to spend my time in doing; some time I trust that my prayers may be answered – but when or how I don’t know. Destroy this letter please.’34

  The cartoon, entitled Two Decadent Guys: A Colour Study in Green Carnations, depicts Bosie and Oscar, characterized as Guy Fawkes dummies called Sir Fustian Flitters and Lord Raggie Tattersall, bound and ready to be burned. Bosie’s signature boater is worn by one, while the other wears a top hat. Both wear huge cauliflowers in their lapels in place of green carnations. The caption hints at a somewhat distasteful interest in young men: ‘See Raggie, here come our youthful disciples! Do they not look deliciously innocent and enthusiastic? I wish though, we could contrive to imbue them with something of our own lovely limpness.’

  The cartoon was just the tip of the iceberg. Only two nights before its publication Oscar, quite possibly accompanied by Constance, attended Haddon Chambers’s play John-o-Dreams at the Haymarket Theatre. To his horror, he was snubbed by many members of the audience.

  Whether it was naivety or a determined show of strength and faith in her husband, Constance dealt with the humiliating, distressing and embarrassing events that occurred that winter by ploughing on regardless with her round of social events and maintaining her ‘at homes’.

  An extensive interview with her in the 24 November edition of To-Day, a popular magazine edited by Jerome K. Jerome, must have served as some welcome positive publicity for the Wilde marriage, not least because the interviewer, on being shown Constance’s autograph book, chose to relate the loving verse that Oscar had written to his wife in it.

  Those around Constance could see the danger that she was now in. The satirization of Oscar and Bosie was doing nothing but play into the Marquess of Queensberry’s hands, as was the mounting public distaste for the couple. Constance had been suggesting that she leave London in early December and spend two or three weeks with Georgina at Babbacombe Cliff. But, unusually, this suggestion was firmly rebutted by her friend. Although Constance claimed she found Georgina’s reasons for not having her ‘puzzling’,35 Georgina was almost certainly indicating that Constance’s place was by her husband’s side at a time when insinuations about Oscar’s sexual leanings were flying about.

  Constance and Oscar began to pin their hopes on theatrical success as a means of regaining social approval. But although as confident as ever in public, at home with his wife Oscar revealed how extremely anxious he was that his next play, An Ideal Husband, would fail, at a time when he needed it to succeed.

  ‘Oscar is very unwell,’ Constance informed Georgina in early December, ‘and altogether we are terribly worried … but I hope that Oscar is going to make something by his new play, alas I doubt it, for he is so depressed about it.’36 In the same breath she mentioned that her cheques were being bounced by the bank.

  As the Christmas holidays approached, the boys came back from school. Constance busied herself with them, taking them to the usual seasonal children’s parties, including one in Tite Street at the home of Adrian and Laura Hope. She also continued with other Christmas traditions, writing cards with greetings to all her and Oscar’s friends.37

  As an adult, Vyvyan would write down his memories of that Christmas. They are poignantly happy. ‘In London my father always carried a gold-headed Malacca cane, about three foot six inches long, as was the fashion among the dandies of the day,’ he recounted.

  This fascinated me and I would rush to take it from him when he came home. I asked him to let me have it when I grew up, and he said he would give it to me as soon as I reached its height. So the next time he came in I greeted him with books tied to the soles of my feet, so I was taller than the stick. This pleased my father immensely … This … was one of the last memories of my father. It must have been in January 1895 during the Christmas holidays.38

  Constance must have worked hard to keep the boys shielded from her and Oscar’s troubles. In fact, on top of every other worry they shared, there was also the issue of her health, which had deteriorated rapidly. According to anecdote, Constance fell down the stairs that Christmas holiday, and as a result she could barely walk. If so, the fall only exacerbated a condition that her letters revealed had been plaguing her for years. On New Year’s Eve she dropped Georgina a line to say that ‘I am not well, in fact I have been very bad again, but my Doctor is coming to-day to give me some electricity and I hope I shall get better. I am alright when I don’t walk, but then I can’t go thro life sitting on a chair especially with two boys to amuse.’39

  The events that followed that Christmas holiday have already been recounted in the first chapter of this book. Oscar took rooms in town as An Ideal Husband went into production. He took a holiday in Algeria with Bosie, returning to a different suite of hotel rooms for the opening of his fourth play, The Importance of Being Earnest. Constance, meanwhile, went to Babbacombe in an attempt to improve her health. Here she allowed herself to get lost in the old-world company of Georgina’s elderly friends. On 8 February, while Oscar was making his way home from his African adventure, Constance and Georgina held a party for the critic John Ruskin’s seventy-sixth birthday. Constance wrote to Vyvyan and told him all about it. ‘I have had a lovely birthday cake,’ she revealed, adding, as a good, inquiring mother should: ‘you never told me whether your chocolate cake was a success.’40

  On her return to Tite Street on 28 February, Constance found no Oscar at home, only the note that he intended to come around to see her, with something important to relate. When Oscar arrived at Tite Street at nine o’clock in the evening of 28 February 1895, just as his note had said he would, he delivered the news Constance must have been dreading. During the course of February 1895 Queensberry’s behaviour had reached new lows. Things had come to a head, and Oscar felt he was going to have to sue.

  Far away in Babbacombe, Constance had been shielded from a fiasco that had occurred on the first night of The Importance of Being Earnest and which the press had failed to report. Yes, Oscar had arrived triumphant at the the
atre; yes, a full house that had braved a blizzard had worn lilies in his honour and applauded his success. But other things had also happened that night.

  One of Oscar’s friends, the Hon. Algernon Bourke, had heard that Queensberry had obtained tickets for the first night of The Importance and was planning to address the audience about Oscar’s relationship with Bosie. Thanks to this tip-off George Alexander had written to Queensberry stating that his ticket had been issued in error and was not valid, and then he and Oscar had applied to Scotland Yard for protection. And so when Oscar stepped out of his carriage that night, mingling among his fans, twenty policemen were also there, stationed outside the theatre and briefed to prevent the Marquess from entering.

  In spite of his ticket being invalidated, Queensberry had turned up carrying a bouquet of rotting vegetables and with a prizefighter to protect him. After his attempts to gain access to the theatre were thwarted by the police, he prowled around for the duration of the play, before eventually leaving the bouquet at the box office for Oscar.

  The next day Oscar once again considered a restraining order against the Marquess, which his solicitor, Charles Humphreys, investigated. But the order would have needed witness statements from George Alexander and his staff at the St James’s, and it seems that, though prepared to alert Scotland Yard to prevent affray, no one wanted to be implicated in a legal battle that was not essentially theirs. The statements were not forthcoming. Oscar’s lawyer pointed out, however, in delivering this news to his client, that it was likely Queensberry would present them with another opportunity.

  Such an opportunity now occurred on that very day, 28 February. While Constance was on the train, travelling back from the coast, Oscar’s day had begun like any other, a mixture of professional meetings and social pleasantries. Early on he had been with the illustrator Charles Ricketts at his Chelsea home in The Vale, discussing proposed illustrations and typesetting for a new edition of The Portrait of Mr W. H. After leaving Ricketts, Oscar enjoyed a conversation with the latter’s professional partner, lover and cohabiter, Charles Shannon, whom he bumped into as Shannon was making his way home along the King’s Road. As a thick London fog descended, the couple exchanged a few words before Oscar jumped into a cab and headed for the Albemarle Club.

  Despite its proximity to the Avondale, where he was staying, Oscar had not visited his club from some time. As he entered, he was handed an envelope by the hall porter, Sydney Wright. In it was the Marquess of Queensberry’s calling card, on which had been scribbled in ink a brief message: ‘For Oscar Wilde posing as somdomite’.

  The Marquess had called at Oscar’s club some days earlier, seeking to make the kind of public scene he had failed to achieve on Valentine’s Day. When he was informed that Oscar was not at the club, he had scribbled the sentence on his card, mis-spelling the accusation that Oscar was a sodomite. He had handed the card to Wright, who was able to read the libellous accusation, before putting it in an envelope to await Oscar.

  Oscar was utterly horrified by this event. After rushing back to the Avondale, he scribbled a note to Robbie Ross. ‘Bosie’s father has left a card at my club with hideous words on it,’ Oscar wrote. ‘I don’t see anything now but a criminal prosecution. My whole life seems ruined by this man. The tower of ivory is assailed by this foul thing. On the sand is my life spilt. I don’t know what to do. If you could come here at 11.30 please do so tonight … I have asked Bosie to come tomorrow.’41

  The proposed rendezvous with Robbie late that evening gave Oscar the time to rush back to Chelsea to meet Constance, just back from her holiday. He allowed a couple of hours with his wife, accounting for the time a cab would then take to return him to his rooms in Piccadilly.

  Now what Oscar had to explain to Constance was how he felt trapped by the note. Given that it had been read by Wright, and could have been read by other members of the club staff, this was no mere private accusation. As far as Wilde was concerned, although Queensberry had not made the public spectacle he had so long threatened, he had nevertheless made a statement that had been seen. It qualified as libel. If Oscar were to ignore it, he would appear to be accepting the libel and thus be damned; if he were to challenge it, the accusation would be made yet more public, another humiliation. Yet to defend his public face he had little choice but to take the latter course: to sue and have Queensberry arrested.

  Oscar considered leaving the country. Continental Europe was littered with members of the British upper class and aristocracy who had defaulted on various social pacts. Some, like Otho, were fleeing debts, some were adulterers, some were cheats and many were homosexuals. When their respective scandals erupted, a lengthy stay overseas ‘was seen as the appropriate action. After a year out of its glare, society tended to welcome its black sheep back again.

  Somewhat bizarrely, Oscar faced some inconvenience if he chose this path. He would have to go without luggage. For the fact of the matter was that all his cases and effects had been confiscated by the Avondale Hotel in Piccadilly.

  Ever since his most recent theatrical successes he had been served with writs from creditors to the tune of £400. Smelling his success and working on the basis that Wilde would now have money to pay his bills, everyone was cashing in. Among the cigarette merchants and jewellers, florists, hairdressers and wine merchants who suddenly wanted their accounts honoured, was the Avondale itself. The management had removed Wilde’s luggage as security against the payment of his bill.

  It was probably this confiscation that Oscar also used to justify his need to return to his hotel that night rather than stay at home with a wife he had barely seen for two months. As he headed out of the door and was subsumed by the London fog, Constance must have felt desperate, left alone in the house to contemplate the inevitable scandal she would now have to face.

  After discussing his options with Constance, Oscar went to meet Robbie Ross at 11.30 as planned. When he got there, Bosie had also already arrived at his hotel. Bosie had lingered in Algeria after Oscar left at the end of January, but when his brother Percy, who shared Bosie’s hatred of their father, telegrammed him alerting him to the fact that Queensberry was once more on the rampage, he returned to be at Oscar’s side. His presence instantly undermined Oscar’s ability to have a considered talk with Robbie.

  Bosie was incredibly self-centred, and whereas Constance was always mindful of what was best for her husband, Bosie was always mindful of what was best for Bosie. Bosie’s hatred for his father had become so intense that he was desperate to see the man humiliated and emasculated. Gaol seemed a most fitting and ignominious punishment. And so that night he delivered the most mind-bogglingly incautious piece of advice to Oscar. That night Bosie urged him to sue without hesitation.

  Without properly taking into consideration the damaging effect that a legal case of this nature was likely to have on Constance and the boys, Oscar took Bosie’s advice. He allowed himself to be persuaded that the loss of his luggage was a sufficient barrier to flight, and that action through the courts would prove fruitful.42 And so while Constance was left to mull over the ramifications of what she had just been told, Lord Alfred Douglas and Oscar Wilde knocked on the doors of Mr Humphreys’ offices in Giltspur Chambers, Holborn Viaduct. Humphreys asked if there was any truth in Queensberry’s allegations, and on hearing Oscar’s vehement denial he advised that Oscar did then indeed have a case.

  In a moment of doubt over the wisdom of proceeding, Oscar pointed out that he could not afford the cost of a court case, given his current financial embarrassment. But Bosie instantly assured Humphreys that his family – that is, his brother and his mother, who was divorced and alienated from Queensberry – would meet the expenses. Oscar had no further excuse to prevent proceedings.

  Humphreys, Bosie and Oscar hailed a cab that took them the relatively short distance from Holborn to Soho, and here at the Great Marlborough Street police station they applied for a warrant for the arrest of Queensberry. On the morning of 4 March 1895, Constance, alon
g with anyone else who took The Times, was able to read how that arrest had been made two days earlier.

  In the Police section of the paper, it was reported that:

  At Marlborough Street on Saturday, the Marquess of Queensberry, aged 50, described as having no occupation and as residing in Carter’s Hotel Dover St., was charged before Mr Newton on a warrant of defamatory libel concerning Mr Oscar Wilde on February 18th. Mr C. O. Humphreys, solicitor, prosecuted; and Sir George Lewis, solicitor, appeared for the defence.

  If Constance had not already been aware of the fact, the realization that George Lewis was not acting for them but for the other side must have come as a terrible shock. However, she may have felt momentarily reassured by the manner in which the paper seemed to be reporting events: ‘Mr Humphreys stated that Mr Oscar Wilde, who was a married man and lived on most affectionate terms with his wife and children, had been the object of a system of most cruel persecution at the hands of Lord Queensberry.’

  But if there was some solace to be found in the reference to her husband’s married status, and the note of his victimization by Queensberry, reports of the warning shot that Lewis fired back across the courtroom at his adversary were ominous:

  Let me say one word sir … I venture to say, when the circumstances of this case are more fully known, you will find that Lord Queensberry acted as he did under feelings of great indignation … I do not wish this case to be adjourned without it being known that there is nothing against the honour of Lord Queensberry.

  Queensberry’s bail was set at £1,000, and the court was adjourned until the following Saturday. A week later the whole of London woke up to the scandal. The kind of crowds Oscar had formerly attracted outside theatres were now in Great Marlborough Street, waiting for his return to court and queuing for the limited number of places available in the public gallery. He did not disappoint. Arriving ten minutes early for the hearing, Oscar drew up with great style in a carriage and pair with a coachman and footman to boot, and with Bosie and Bosie’s brother Percy in tow. Constance was noticeably absent.