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

by Franny Moyle

  By mid-January, Constance, confident that her dreadful aches and pains had been substantially improved, was full of plans to return home. She still intended to be staying around Great Berkhamsted in the spring and was considering spending the summer back at Babbacombe with Lady Mount-Temple.

  But if there was a new optimism in Constance, there were also new worries. Although she had seriously begun to consider reconciliation with Oscar, this had depended entirely on his assurances that he would put his past life, and former associations, behind him. But now Constance could sense that many of Oscar’s old friends were encouraging him down different paths. She was not alone in her fears. Her friends and allies were becoming nervous too, and retrenching back to their earlier position that divorce was, on balance, better than reconciliation.

  ‘I am again being urged to divorce Mr Wilde and I am as usual blown about by contrary winds,’ she explained to Georgina.

  Everyone who knows anything about him believes that he wants my wretched money and indeed it seems from his present actions as tho it were so. Poor poor fellow, if it is so, it is he who suffers most throwing away affection and everything else. I cannot understand the greed for money that makes men cast everything else to the winds … And I don’t know what I am to do if I divorce him now. It will be his own fault and that of his friends who are forcing on me a step in connection with money of which I do not approve. However time will show, and nothing else, what is going to happen!3

  The ‘step in connection with money’ to which Constance alludes was a matter arising from Oscar’s bankruptcy. In September 1895 Bosie’s father, keen to recoup his court costs, had forced bankruptcy on Oscar. Oscar, in his prison garb, had been dragged to the bankruptcy court, where his debts were noted as standing at £3,591, most of which had been incurred on behalf of Bosie. However, the hearing was adjourned because Oscar’s lawyers suggested that his debts could well be covered by subscriptions by his friends.

  One of the assets that had been placed in the hands of the Official Receiver was a life interest in Constance’s private income. This annuity entitled Oscar to his wife’s income if she were to predecease him. If Constance had divorced or been judicially separated from her husband, Oscar’s claim on his wife’s money would have been dealt with as part of those proceedings. But Constance’s delay in this had created an interesting situation regarding the life interest. The Receiver now held this policy, and it was technically up for sale. Constance could both buy back the annuity herself and settle it on her children, or Oscar’s friends could buy it for him, thus securing him an income if Constance were to die.

  More Adey, an art historian, gallerist and close friend of Robbie Ross, had taken on the task of looking after Oscar’s legal affairs and was determined that the policy should be Oscar’s. The move chimed with those warnings George Lewis had offered Constance at the time of Oscar’s trial: that eventually her husband would come after her for her money. After all that her husband’s actions had put her through, this latest development was unwelcome, to say the least.

  An opportunity to meet and discuss the matter face to face with Oscar presented itself in an unfortunate guise. In February a letter arrived from Lily Wilde, Willie’s wife. Lily had shown particular kindness to her disgraced in-law during and after the trial. She had proved considerate and thoughtful, and this letter was no exception. It contained the news that Lady Wilde had died on 3 February. She had never managed to communicate with Oscar since his incarceration, despite several attempts on her part.

  Lily knew enough of Oscar’s relationship with his mother to understand that news of her death would come as a particularly terrible blow. She knew that it would have to be broken to him very carefully.

  ‘I have written to Mr Haldane for leave to see O,’ Constance responded to Lily. ‘I quite agree with you that it must be broken to him and I believe it will half kill him. Poor Oscar has been bitterly punished for breaking the laws of his country. I am not strong but I could bear the journey better if I thought that such a terrible thing would not be told to him roughly.’4

  Despite her frail condition, for the second time in six months Constance travelled back to London to see her husband, who had now been moved to Reading gaol. Now using her new name, she was sufficiently courageous to stay at the Grosvenor Hotel, from where she wrote to Otho on 21 February.

  I went to Reading on Wednesday and saw poor O, they say he’s quite well, but he is an absolute wreck compared with what he was. On Wednesday I dined with the Macebrys and yesterday I saw the Lows, the Simons and the Burne-Jones who all asked after you. I cannot write now, I mean to write long letters but I seem to have lost all power. Mrs Christian’s coming to see me this morning and I am lunching with the Millais. I’m dining with the Wilkes, your loving sister Constance.5

  The letter is an interesting mix of tea and scandal, social parties arranged around a prison visit to a dishonoured husband. But it’s also indicative of Constance’s extraordinary ability to accommodate events, cope and move forward. Few people could have shown such mettle. For a woman once cripplingly shy, the brazenness of taking rooms at one of London’s most visible hotels and then pursuing an energetic social diary is testimony to the sheer bravery that Constance was able to display under circumstances that might have reduced others to total breakdown. She could take anything in her stride, from cup cakes to prison, from art exhibitions to bankruptcy. These were facets of her life that she now dealt with equally.

  The meeting with Oscar had been everything that Constance had hoped. In return for her kindness to him, Oscar confessed much to Constance that he had failed to admit in the past. Crucially, he confessed his fears for his children. Considering the failure of Bosie’s own mother as a parent, he wanted to be sure that Constance was properly equipped to deal with her own children.

  ‘I told her everything,’ Oscar later revealed to Bosie in his confessional letter De Profundis.

  I told her … the reason of the endless notes with ‘Private’ on the envelope that used to come to Tite Street from your mother, so constantly that my wife used to laugh and say that we must be collaborating on a society novel … I told her that if she was frightened of facing the responsibility of the life of another, though her own child, she should get a guardian to help her.6

  Oscar also made it clear to Constance that he absolutely approved of her acquiring the life interest so that it could be settled on the children and that he would not contest it. Constance consequently promised that, whatever happened, she would not leave Oscar penniless. On 10 March, Oscar wrote to his friend Robbie Ross confirming these wishes and asking his friends to act accordingly: ‘I feel that I have brought such unhappiness on her and such ruin on my children that I have no right to go against her wishes in anything.’7

  On 29 February, Constance visited her solicitors at the offices in Victoria Street and made a new will. In it she made her whole estate over to her family friend and relative Adrian Hope, with the express wish that on her death he should realize her assets and invest them, and then hold everything in trust for the boys until they were twenty-one. Hope was made her executor, and the will stated that it was Constance’s ‘earnest wish and desire’ that he should also be the boys’ guardian and have sole control over them.

  Reassured, Constance returned to Italy. The tenure of the apartment in Sori had come to an end, so she moved into rooms at the Hotel Eden in Nervi. She had found London very expensive and had returned with a heightened sense of the limits of her finances and the need for economy. Consequently, after a few days at the Eden she changed to the Hotel Nervi, which was substantially cheaper (‘I am very comfortable here and pay 26 francs, it would have been 36 at the Eden’8).

  At the end of March, Constance’s plans for the boys to be schooled in England were suddenly dropped. It seems likely that attempts to enter Cyril and Vyvyan at Berkhamsted School had been politely declined. Despite her best attempts to protect herself and her boys, scandal continued to follow Const
ance around. She and the boys were in Nervi for the annual festival of flowers and joined the Ranee, who had taken a suite of rooms at her hotel for the occasion. On the day of the celebrations the hotel proprietor kept calling Constance ‘Mrs Wilde’ rather than ‘Mrs Holland’, a fact that became more embarrassing when Cyril pointed out his mother’s new name. It was a small mistake. But there were greater potential embarrassments close by. Constance had heard Bosie was staying in Genoa, ‘so I don’t feel much inclined to go over there’, she told Otho.9

  Since Oscar’s conviction, Bosie had continued to proclaim his love and loyalty to the once celebrated Wilde. In fact, he was planning to dedicate a volume of poems to Oscar. Not only was this awkward for Constance, but Oscar also found it distasteful. A year in gaol had turned him against Bosie, whom he now referred to as ‘Douglas’. Oscar wrote to his friends begging them to acquire letters and jewellery from Oscar still in Bosie’s possession. ‘The thought that they are in his hands is horrible to me, and though my unfortunate children will never of course bear my name, still they know whose sons they are and I must try and shield them from the possibility of any further revolting disclosure or scandal.’10

  It was almost a year since Oscar’s conviction, and although Constance had managed to keep her head above water, she was not without moments of despair. As her plans were forced to change yet again, she confessed to Georgina Mount-Temple that ‘Some nights here I have had visions of how near the sea was and of how “life’s fitful fever” might be soon ended, but then there are the boys and they save me from anything too desperate!’11

  And so, after yet another disappointment, Constance once again thought on her feet and came up with a new plan. With Bosie far too close in Genoa, and English schools proving resistant to taking the children, she decided the boys would be schooled in Germany.

  This decision was informed by the Ranee, who was planning to rent a villa in Heidelberg in Germany. She had a son who needed to improve his German in preparation for the diplomatic service. With the Ranee considering a sojourn in this German city, Constance suddenly decided that she should send her sons to Heidelberg too. She ordered Baedeker’s guide to the town and began to make inquiries about schools and to explore the costs of a modest set of rooms for herself and the children. The Pension Anglais would offer her a single and double room for 75 francs a week, she told Otho. If the boys boarded, she could take a single room for substantially less, but this would have to be balanced against the £60 a year that Heidelberg College charged for boarders.12 Constance was doing her sums.

  The Holland family, as they were now, arrived in Heidelberg in April. As a renowned centre of learning and the home of the famous university, it was a city rich in schools. According to Vyvyan, his mother had managed to enrol the boys in a German school initially. The boys, who had so far had a very limited experience of school, were immediately troublesome. The schools practised corporal punishment. When Vyvyan was hit on the head with a ruler by one of his masters, Cyril apparently kicked the master on the shins. The boys were expelled from this first establishment almost instantly. Constance had scarcely more luck at a second school, where this time it was not the staff but the pupils who were attacked by the two young Holland boys.

  Finally Constance settled Vyvyan and Cyril in the English school in the town, Neuenheim College. Most of the masters were British, and most of the boys were being educated in Germany because their own scandals and troubles had forced extractions from Britain. So in a sense Cyril and Vyvyan were in good company, and gradually they settled in.

  Constance’s life in Heidelberg became very simple indeed. Living in her small pension, reading became her greatest pleasure, along with small domestic chores. She began to teach herself German, of course, and she set herself the task of making cushions for Otho and Mary much of the time. She bought a photograph album and began to mount all her Kodak snaps.

  She had very little in the way of society in Heidelberg. She was utterly astounded and delighted to hear that her friends Sir Hugh and Lady Low were passing through the city that summer and intended to see her. This was noted as a rare treat. Otherwise it was the Ranee who was Constance’s most regular and loyal visitor. She would read to Constance from her diary about the life she used to lead in Sarawak.

  Constance had joined the local English church and committed herself to being responsible for the flowers throughout July. But above and beyond small excursions to church and to town, she was essentially becoming housebound again. Signor Bossi’s operation had failed.

  ‘I’m afraid I’ve no news because nothing happens,’ Constance wrote to Otho in mid-July. ‘The Castle is always here and always looks beautiful and I have not yet been over it, because this entails a long walk and that I am not up to.’13

  As an expatriate, Constance found that her life was becoming defined by the post. Her letters are full of instructions and information about things being boxed up and sent on, or having been safely received. Customs transactions, the cost of postage and the irritation of weight tariffs become part of her daily language. Many of her letters are concerned with cheques from her bank in England that need signing. It’s small wonder that the boys became keen stamp collectors during this period. This in itself accounts for much of the correspondence between Constance and her friends and family, as she requests particular stamps for the boys.

  Of course, much of her correspondence also concerned Oscar. After her arrival in Heidelberg, Constance’s relations with Oscar’s friends took a distinct change for the worse. As far as she was concerned, Oscar had agreed to allow her solicitor, Mr Hargrove, to buy the life interest in their marriage settlement. But the self-appointed group of friends who were taking care of Oscar’s interests, specifically Robbie Ross and More Adey, were still attempting to block Constance’s bid for the life interest and had lodged a competing offer for it with the Receiver. Constance was outraged. It felt like another betrayal. Robbie Ross wrote to her in June to explain the reasoning behind the move, claiming that rumours had circulated that Queensberry himself was planning to acquire the interest and that this had to be prevented.

  Whatever the motivations of Oscar’s friends, Constance was appalled by their actions, and now she threatened to withdraw her offer to support Oscar to the tune of £150 a year on his release. The business matters that were currently proposed were utterly incomprehensible to her, she told Robbie. She was, after all, a woman now ‘obliged to live abroad’. She reminded him that ‘the boys will be forced to make their own way in life heavily handicapped by their father’s madness for I can consider it nothing else’.14

  After Robbie, More Adey decided he must write to Constance. He was petitioning the Home Secretary for an early release for Oscar and was desperately keen that Constance’s signature should be part of the petition. Hers was perhaps the most persuasive voice Oscar might have at his disposal. But after her departure from Nervi, and after the bid for the life interest by Oscar’s camp, Constance’s advisers had closed ranks around her. Her new address was not disclosed by Hargrove or Constance’s family. More Adey was therefore forced to reach Constance through mutual friends. In doing so, further parties became drawn into Constance and Oscar’s affairs.

  At one time Margaret Brooke had lived in Wimbledon, where she had made the acquaintance of Adela Schuster – ‘The Lady of Wimbledon’, as she was referred to by Oscar. The socialite and literary enthusiast Adela was one of Oscar’s supporters and was in regular contact with More Adey. Schuster now informed Adey that her great friend the Ranee was in close touch with Constance.

  ‘I have heard from my friend at Heidelberg,’ Adela Schuster wrote to Adey on 23 June 1896, ‘a very kind letter evidently ready to do all she can – but she writes guardedly – she does not definitely say that she has or has not appealed to Mrs Wilde, but she advises me to write to her myself detailing exactly what Mrs Wilde should do.’15

  The Ranee was clearly not being quite straight with Adela, for what is revealed next i
mplies a very considered response which Constance must have almost dictated to the Ranee regarding Adey’s request for Constance’s signature on his petition.

  She then proceeds to tell me that she is quite sure Mrs W will do anything she can to affect her husband’s release provided she is assured of one or two points: Mrs W wishes first to obtain some certainty of promise from Oscar … that O will not attempt to interfere with the boys; and secondly that she is to be allowed to have her own money to bring them up as she thinks best. Assured of these things (she says) she would ‘tear herself to little bits’ to get O’s release.

  Although Oscar had himself suggested that Constance must take charge of the boys, in light of the recent moves by his friends Constance clearly felt the need to restate this position. She was aware that what Oscar wanted and what those acting on his behalf were initiating were not necessarily the same thing. While at Nervi, Constance had even become nervous that some friends of Oscar might actually attempt to remove the boys from her. And she had become rather paranoid about their safety.16