Wilde and Constance returned to London on 24 June, only to find that they had nowhere to live; work at Tite Street was behind schedule. Wilde consulted with Godwin, anxious ‘to press on the laggards’.9 A familiar tale of building woe ensured. Exasperated by the poor quality of the work that had been done, Wilde sacked the contractor (Mr Green) who promptly seized some of the furniture and sued Wilde for non-payment of his bill. The case was only settled, after weeks of wrangling, on the eve of trial. Meanwhile a new builder, Mr Sharpe, engaged by Godwin, was soon exceeding his estimates, as he found that he had to re-do much of the ‘imperfect work done by Green’ (by the end of November his bill had reached £222 17s, and there was more to come).10 Unable to move into their new home, the Wildes – after a very brief stay at Lancaster Gate – squeezed themselves into Oscar’s lodgings at Charles Street. From there they launched themselves into the tail end of the London season. Oscar did not have to return to lecturing until the autumn.
They were a celebrity couple, the embodiment of married Aestheticism. The press engaged in much would-be funny speculation about the details of their new life. One skit had Constance at the dinner table asking, ‘Which do you prefer, sunflower dried, or some toasted lily of the valley?’ To her consternation, Oscar confesses that – in the seclusion of his own home – he would like ‘some beef and potatoes and bread and a bottle of ale’.11
Wilde was noted – ‘fat and merry’ – at the Millais’ summer ball. And if he was not wearing a lily in his buttonhole, ‘to make up for it, his wife had her front covered in great water-lilies’.12 As a couple they manned a stall at the fashionable charity fete held in the midst of the ‘International Health Exhibition’ at South Kensington. Good-naturedly Wilde had consented to sell the ‘floral gifts’ – which included ‘an extensive assortment of sunflowers and lilies’.13 At receptions and gallery openings the Wildes came to be objects of ‘public interest’ to rival even Lillie Langtry.14 They attracted attention in the street, not all of it wanted. Walking down the King’s Road, Oscar in a many-buttoned suit ‘like a glorified page’s costume’, Constance in a ‘large picture hat’ decked with white feathers, they were hailed by a gang of street urchins as, ‘’Amlet and Ophelia out for a walk’. ‘You are quite right,’ Wilde replied, ‘we are.’15
The drama of Constance’s costumes, coupled with her shyness, meant that – in social settings – she was sometimes seen as being overwhelmed by both her clothes and her husband. At one tea party, she was – as Laura Troubridge put it –‘dressed for the part’ in ‘drimp white muslin with absolutely no bustle, saffron-coloured silk swathed around her shoulders, a huge cartwheel Gainsborough hat, white, and bright yellow stockings and shoes’; while Oscar was being ‘amusing, of course’, she looked ‘too hopeless’.16 But this obscured her ready complicity in the project, and also her real excitement in being married. After a girlhood dominated by an uncaring mother and a disapproving aunt, she was thrilled at the possibilities of her new life. She found an ally and a friend, too, in Lady Wilde.
The round of post-honeymoon pleasure was interrupted (briefly) by Horatio Lloyd’s death on 18 July. The event was not unexpected, and if it robbed Constance of one of her few supporters, it did bring her into her full inheritance. Her £5,000 trust fund was more than doubled, and her income along with it. With over £800 a year, there would be money for Tite Street and for dresses.17 Financial planning, though, was almost as alien to Constance as it was to Oscar. They were a blithely improvident pair. A relative who had given them, as a wedding present, a generous cheque with which to buy something ‘useful’ was exasperated when they declared excitedly that they had spent the entire amount on a pair of Apostle spoons.18
Wilde did earn some money that summer, standing in as the Vanity Fair theatre critic while Willie was away on holiday.19 It was, though, his own theatrical plans that continued to engage him most, with his hopes still fixed on The Duchess of Padua. Ada Cavendish had proved a broken reed, but – in between discussions about the Tite Street furnishings – he had enthused Godwin with the idea of producing the play. Godwin, a devotee of the theatre, with a particular interest in historically accurate costume and stage design, saw rich possibilities in Wilde’s Italian tragedy. He began to map out plans for an elaborate production, suggesting – among other things – that the action be transferred from the sixteenth century to the fourteenth. He opened negotiations, too, with the actress Anna Conover (and her business manager, Philip Beck), who had recently taken over the Olympic Theatre, off the Strand. A contract was drawn up for a London opening early in 1885, followed by a provincial tour. Despite the scheme being well advanced, it faltered that November. There were rumours in the press that Wilde’s ‘stout refusal’ to alter ‘a single line’ may have contributed to the impasse. But given his eagerness to collaborate with actresses on previous occasions, this seems unlikely. The plan, however, was not revived. Wilde’s hopes for the Duchess were again disappointed.20
The fraught negotiations over the play took place amid the demands of the autumn lecture season. Wilde had returned to the fray at the beginning of October, under the direction of a new young tour manager, George Appleton. He had prepared two new talks for the coming tour: one on ‘Dress’ (his leading item) and another on ‘The Value of Art in Modern Life’.21 The talk on ‘Dress’ – and the need to reform it – was first delivered at Ealing on 1 October 1884; it was a didactic affair, like ‘The House Beautiful’, part of Wilde’s ‘mission’ to bring beauty into everyday life. And it built upon the Aesthetic ideas of his earlier lectures but with a new focus on the healthful effects of good clothing. This was a topical slant encouraged by that summer’s ‘International Health Exhibition’. Godwin had actually lectured at the exhibition on ‘Dress and its Relation to Health and Climate’, and Wilde borrowed freely from his ideas.22
Wilde’s lecture sought to rescue ‘dress’ from the ephemeral folly of ‘fashion’, and restore it to the eternal laws of art – and good sense. ‘After all,’ he demanded, ‘what is fashion, [but] a form of ugliness so absolutely unbearable that they have to alter it every six months.’ In a bracing mix of prescription and proscription he launched into a succession of popular fads, decrying high-heeled boots, fancy French bonnets, unnecessary bows, ‘spotted veils’, corsets, the ‘dress improver’ (a sort of bustle), divided skirts, linen underclothes, and (for men) the ‘monstrously ugly’ top hat. There was a constant strain of humour, particularly on the subject of bonnets: ‘If I told you the sum of money spent every year on bonnets alone, I am quite sure half of you would be filled with remorse, and the other half with desperation’; ‘I have lately seen a very large picture [of a bonnet, accompanied by the note:] “With this kind of bonnet the mouth is worn slightly open”’. Among Wilde’s most memorable asides was the observation that ‘a Lancashire mill girl, with a shawl over her shoulders and wearing clogs, knows more about dress than a fashionable London lady recently returned from Paris, because in the former case there is comfort, while in the latter there is discomfort’.23
On the prescriptive side, Wilde suggested ‘combining the German principle of science with the Greek principle of beauty’ to create clothing that would ally ‘health, comfort and Art’ with the stamp of ‘individuality’. He advocated finely spun woollen garments – as recommended by ‘Dr Gustav Jaeger of Stuttgart’ – which should hang from the shoulder, rather than the waist or hip. There was to be no ‘fancy dress’ imitation of ancient Greek models, only a similar sense of simplicity and fitness, and a comparable understanding of colour and form. Addressing men’s attire, he praised the clothes of peasants, ‘fisher-folk’, sportsmen, and seventeenth-century cavaliers – and suggested they could be usefully adapted for modern urban use, to produce a wardrobe of soft hats, double-breasted coats, warm cloaks and high-topped boots.24
The subject of dress was, for many, a fascinating one. When an appreciative account of the Ealing lecture appeared in the Pall Mall Gazette (a paper that had previou
sly tended to disparage Wilde), it provoked an immediate flurry of correspondence. The opportunity was not to be missed. As Wilde explained to a friend, the surest way to fame and reputation was through self-advertisement: ‘Every time I see my name is mentioned in the paper, I write at once to admit that I am the Messiah.’25 Requesting ‘an opportunity to indulge that most charming of all pleasures, the pleasure of answering one’s critics’, he sent a long letter to the paper, admitting that he was indeed the Messiah of dress reform, and re-affirming all his principal views.26
It helped that Wilde now had an entrée at the magazine through his old Oxford friend Alfred Milner. Milner, who was delaying the start of a political career by working as the paper’s deputy editor, had invited Wilde to the Pall Mall Gazette’s offices in May, to join a select band of ‘worthies’ attending a ‘thought-reading’ demonstration; Wilde had repaid the consideration by offering his views on the office decor, and by inviting Milner to his wedding.† And the connection had been maintained.27 Wilde’s letter to the paper stimulated further debate, and prompted a second – even longer – Wildean missive the following month, offering ‘More Radical Ideas Upon Dress Reform’. By the end of the year even the ‘dull crowd’ was aware of Wilde’s position as a leading ‘dress reformer’. He was referred to, facetiously, by some as ‘the dress-improver’.28
Wilde’s ‘Dress’ lecture – as well as its more general companion piece about ‘The Value of Art in Modern Life’ – proved popular with the institutes and societies. Appleton was able to secure over sixty bookings, stretching from October 1884 into February 1885. Wilde was condemned to another winter of railway waiting rooms and provincial hotels. He read much on his travels. He saw old friends where he could – catching up with William Ward in Bristol and Hunter-Blair at Edinburgh. Often, though, he was lonely. From the Balmoral Hotel, Edinburgh, he wrote to Constance (the only one of his many letters to her to survive):
Dear and Beloved, Here am I, and you at the Antipodes. O execrable facts, that keep our lips from kissing, though our souls are one.
What can I tell you by letter? Alas! nothing that I would tell you. The messages of the gods to each other travel not by pen and ink and indeed your bodily presence here would not make you more real: for I feel your fingers in my hair, and your cheek brushing mine. The air is full of the music of your voice, my soul and body seem no longer mine, but mingled in some exquisite ecstasy with yours. I feel incomplete without you.
Ever and ever yours, Oscar.
As in other aspects of his life, Wilde was ready to use exaggerated modes to express real feelings.
Separated from Constance and London, he was often at the mercy of his hosts. At almost every stopping place he had to endure a guided tour of the local art school, foundry or pottery works. There were invitations, too, to dine with local worthies. In some towns, though, sympathetic spirits would seek him out, and provide a brief respite. The Yorkshire artist William Howgate offered to show him ‘the few places of interest that are to be seen in Leeds’. At Birmingham Wilde enjoyed a ‘charming meeting’ and some ‘golden hours’ with well-to-do young art lover called Philip Griffiths.29 And after his Bradford lecture (3 December 1884) Wilde gratefully accepted an invitation to stay the night with the prosperous Shalders family at their Gothic villa in Manyham – even if he disconcerted his hostess the following morning by disdaining the hearty Yorkshire breakfast with the remark that it would be ‘perfection’ if he might have, instead, ‘a handful of raspberries, pale yellow raspberries’.30
Such personal encounters – with interested people in Aesthetic settings – must have given some encouragement to Wilde and his hopes for his ‘mission’. The size of his audiences too was, for the most part, heartening. At Glasgow (19 December) he lectured before a massive crowd of some 5,000 people; there was an ‘excellent’ turnout at Bristol (14 October), and a notably crowded house at the Harborne & Edgbaston Institute (4 November). If attendances were disappointing at Leeds and Sheffield, the appalling weather was held responsible.31 Some sections of the press continued to carp, but most reports were positive. There was particular support for Wilde’s campaign against that ‘ugly, costly and comfortless abomination, the British top-hat’.32 And if a note of disappointment was occasionally sounded, it was that Wilde did not ‘practice what he preaches more extensively’ in his own attire, and don ‘doublet’ and Hessian boots. Although, the following year, he did create a minor sensation with a curiously pleated red-bronze coat, fashioned – after his own design – to suggest the form of a violoncello,33 in the winter of 1884 he did not ‘seem induced to go beyond the cloak and broad-brimmed hat’.34
Whatever his successes on the road, there was no disguising a mounting sense of dissatisfaction – with the demands of constant touring, with the protracted delays over the Tite Street house (it was still not ready at Christmas 1884), and with the ephemeral nature of lecturing itself. Willie tried to console Constance, who shared these frustrations, with the remark, ‘When you are settled in the fairest little nest in Tite Street, [Oscar] can and will I know sit down and write more lasting work than lectures, but for the passing “now” it is wise and right of him to keep “on the war path” – even if he has to leave his wife for a moment.’ He considered that Oscar’s punishing schedule was ‘rais[ing] him up’ and ‘show[ing] people how earnest he is in the work he has taken up’.35 Constance’s longing for domestic calm was heightened by the fact that she was now pregnant. It was rather unkindly suggested by Violet Fane that Wilde’s own steadily increasing girth might be in sympathy with his wife’s condition.36
The newlyweds were finally able to move into their home at the end of the year, although almost immediately Wilde had to depart on tour again, leaving Constance to finalize the furnishing details alone. And although the New Year schedule was not quite as fraught as previous months, it still devoured his time and energy.
In the brief respites from touring, however, Wilde began to settle himself into 16 Tite Street, and to show it off. He, together with Godwin and Constance – who had frequently displayed a practicality wanting in her two male collaborators – had created something strikingly novel and distinctive. One of their first visitors, Douglas Ainslie (a young friend of the Lloyds, who, as a teenaged Etonian in the summer holidays of 1882, had developed a tremendous crush on Constance) was quite bowled over. Constance reported to her brother that he thought ‘our house the most charming he has ever been in, and could hardly tear himself away’.37
The conventional red-brick terraced unit had been transformed into an Aesthetic temple. The dominant themes of the interior were lightness and simplicity, tempered with richer notes of exoticism and colour. But the drama began at the front door. It was painted in gloss white, to look almost like enamel. The effect was the more startling since all the other houses in the terrace had doors stained or grained in shades of brown. When Wilde received an anonymous note from a ‘Disgusted Neighbour’ that such a front door was rank ‘advertisement’ intended only to make known that ‘Mr Oscar Wilde, the Titan of Tite Street is a being apart and not to be confused with other common and garden residents’ – he remarked, with a weary sigh, ‘Symbolism not advertisement… the door of this house is painted white because no one must bring an evil thought into the house which shelters the whitest and purest soul in all the world, my beautiful and dearly loved wife.’38
The house abounded in such conceits. In Constance’s elegantly fitted-out bedroom – on the second floor, at the front – the lower part of the wall was painted pink, the upper part green, with a narrow white line marking the division. The idea was ‘to symbolize a sea-shell’ – an allusion to both the natural world and the birth of Venus.39
Every detail of colour, form, texture and decoration had been considered. Visitors were welcomed into a surprisingly ‘ordinary’ white painted hallway, its side wall adorned with two large white-framed engravings – of ‘Apollo and the Muses’ and ‘Diana and Nymphs Bathing’ – suggesting, perh
aps, the master and mistress of the house. A door on the right opened into the library, a room that was still being fitted out during most of 1885. Beyond this a white painted staircase with golden-yellow matting, set at right angles to the hall, led up to the drawing rooms on the first floor. The larger front drawing room was a light and airy space, its twin bow windows, framed with off-white curtains, looking across the street towards the gardens of the Royal Victoria Hospital. Both walls and mouldings were ‘all white’ and left bare ‘so as not to break the lines’, but the ceiling was panelled in squares of dull-gold ‘Japanese leather-paper’ – and from four pendants hung large blue and white barrel-shaped Japanese paper lanterns. The fireplace, flanked by low built-in ‘three-cornered divans’, was in the ‘Queen Anne’ style. Set into the white painted moulding above the mantelpiece was the bronze plaque given to Wilde by John Donoghue, with its lines from ‘Requiescat’, while on the mantel shelf itself stood the bust of Augustus that Wilde had received for winning the Newdigate.
The furniture was sparse. One early visitor – Laura Troubridge’s suitor, Adrian Hope – thought it looked as though the room had been ‘cleared for a dance’ for which ‘the matting did not look too inviting’. There were only four chairs – two with arms, two without – all designed by Godwin, all ‘white enamelled’ and cane seated, and all appearing to Hope’s eye as ‘stiff,’ ‘uncomfy’ and ‘too slight and slender for Oscar’s weight’. For those seeking more comfort there was ‘an old settee in gold lacquer’ (a present from Mrs Bloomfield Moore). Beside this sofa stood a little Louis Seize side table dotted with a few choice curios – including, it was claimed, Marie Antoinette’s gold key to the Trianon. There were two other tables, both designed by Godwin; small ‘Japanese’ pieces, one octagonal on spindle-legs, the other oblong and made of bamboo. The only definite note of colour in the room was provided by the cushions (from Liberty), which were covered with a ‘very quiet green’ fabric of ‘unobtrusive pattern’.‡
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