It is beautiful, it is fine, it is the noblest form of affection. There is nothing unnatural about it.
OSCAR WILDE on ‘the love that dare not speak its name’1
Oscar Wilde is, quite correctly, held up as a gay icon who railed against the ignorance and prejudice of those who would deny the authenticity and appropriateness of love between two men. Yet, like every aspect of his life, his sexuality is complex. It seems that from the early 1890s onward, he was attracted exclusively to men, a realisation that his grandson Merlin Holland senses came as a relief to him in many ways.2 That said, there is little doubt that his love for his wife, Constance, was genuine. Even Lord Alfred Douglas, the love of Oscar’s later life, believed that ‘it was a marriage of deep love and affection on both sides’.3 Although society was desperately intolerant and sodomy was classified as a crime, the 1885 Criminal Law Amendment Act outlawing gross indecency between men was not passed until after he was married and he did not have as compelling a legal reason as many suppose to use his marriage as a smokescreen for his true orientation. He is also unlikely to have married Constance for her money, since she was far less wealthy than many suppose.
By 1883 the affection that had blossomed between Oscar and Constance during the summer of 1881 had deepened into love. Although they saw each other as much as possible, their courtship was curtailed by Oscar’s regular absences. The failure of Vera obliged him to sign up for a lecture circuit that took in a motley assortment of towns and cities scattered across the British Isles. A flood of affectionate letters and telegrams passed between them while he was away. Late in November 1883, Oscar travelled to Dublin to deliver two afternoon lectures in the Gaiety Theatre. As Constance was staying in the city with her Irish grandmother, Mama Mary,* at the time, he seized the opportunity to ask her the question that would change both their lives.
Although Constance found stability in her grandfather’s home, she appears to have been treated more like a visitor than a resident. When the old man’s health began to fail, his daughter, Constance’s stern Aunt Emily, suggested that she move out for a time. She travelled to Dublin, taking with her the manuscript of Vera, which Oscar had asked her to read. Although Constance had ‘no pretensions to being a critic’, she admired Vera and could think of no reason for its failure bar poor acting or a lack of sympathy with its politics, but she echoed Dion Boucicault’s criticism of Oscar’s dialogue, describing it as ‘slightly halting or strained’; astute observations on all counts.4
The letter in which she outlines these criticisms reveals key differences in her attitude: ‘I hold that there is no perfect art without perfect morality,’ she told Oscar, ‘whilst you say that they are distinct and separate things’.5 Constance warmed to the play: ‘I have just read Vera through again and I really think it very fine,’ she told her brother, Otho;
Oscar says he wrote it 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 (or something of that sort).6
For Oscar, love and liberty were always intertwined.
When Oscar checked into the Shelbourne Hotel on 21 November, he was handed a note from Constance’s cousins Stanhope and Eliza Hemphill, inviting him to visit Mary Atkinson’s home that evening. Although Constance found Oscar as personable as ever, she thought him ‘decidedly extra affected’ and put this down to nerves.7 Perhaps he was trying too hard to make a good impression. Next day, Constance, Stanhope and Eliza headed to the Gaiety Theatre to hear Oscar’s take on ‘The House Beautiful’. By now Constance’s cousins were teasing her about her fascinating new friend. All three returned the following afternoon to hear his ‘Personal Impressions of America’, which included observations on ‘the status, education, and training of women; their influence and their theories of dress’.8
Later that week, while they were alone in the drawing room of 1 Ely Place, Oscar asked Constance to marry him. She accepted with delight: ‘Prepare yourself for an astounding piece of news!’ she told Otho, ‘I am engaged to Oscar Wilde and perfectly and insanely happy’.9 Although her Dublin family was ‘quite charmed’ by her choice of beau, and Mama Mary declared her ‘very lucky’, Constance feared that the battle to convince the Lloyd family of Oscar’s suitability would be hard-fought.10 As she was counting on Otho’s support, she must have been taken aback to receive his letter, which crossed with her own, expressing reservations about Oscar. This letter has not survived, but it prompted Constance to assure her brother and her fiancé that the past did not trouble her since she cared only for the future. Convinced of the depth of her commitment, Otho welcomed Oscar into the family: ‘if Constance makes as good a wife as she has been a good sister to me your happiness is certain,’ he assured Oscar, adding, ‘she is staunch and true’.11
Oscar’s lecturing commitments took him back to England and, early on the morning of his return, he woke Robert Sherard, who was staying at the same Charles Street lodgings; Sherard thought him ‘much in love and very joyous’.12 Oscar described Constance to his friend Thomas Waldo Story as ‘quite young, very grave, and mystical, with wonderful eyes, and dark brown coils of hair,’ adding: ‘We are of course desperately in love’.13 To Lillie Langtry, he wrote:
I am going to be married to a beautiful young girl called Constance Lloyd, a grave, slight, violet-eyed little 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.14
How similar this is to his description of poor, ill-fated Sibyl Vane in The Picture of Dorian Gray. She had ‘a little, flowerlike face, a small Greek head with plaited coils of dark-brown hair’. Lillie’s good opinion mattered a great deal to Oscar: ‘I am so anxious for you to know and to like her’, he beseeched. She was not at all surprised by this news, as he ‘had often talked rapturously’ about Constance.15
Not everyone wished them well. Violet Hunt was scathing and suggested that Oscar was after Constance’s money, but with just £250 a year while her grandfather was alive, she was far less wealthy than Violet supposed. Louise Jopling claimed to have asked Oscar why he chose Constance and reported his reply: ‘She scarcely ever speaks. I am always wondering what her thoughts are like’.16 Although she is the only source, the sentiment is oddly reminiscent of the plot for Oscar’s short story ‘The Sphinx without a Secret’, first published in 1887 as ‘Lady Alroy’. Lord Murchison is attracted to the ‘indefinable atmosphere of mystery’ enveloping an enigmatic woman who speaks ‘very little’. He is perplexed to discover that her ‘secret’ is mundane.
Constance Lloyd was far from mundane. An accomplished woman with a keen mind, she demonstrated a deep and abiding passion for Pre-Raphaelite and Aesthetic art and literature. She had a flair for languages and many of her favourite books were in French or Italian. She was musical and played the piano exceptionally well. Yet she could be painfully self-effacing: ‘I have no beauty, no conversation, no small talk even to make me admired or liked’, she told Otho.17 While Jane built Oscar up, Ada seems to have undermined Constance at every turn. Her relationship with her father Horace, a barrister and bon vivant who was frequently absent from home, appears to have been warm, but he died when Constance was just sixteen.
Jane approved of the match and described Constance as: ‘A very nice pretty sensible girl – well-connected and well brought up’.18 Although far less flamboyant, she was, in some respects, a more understated version of what her mother-in-law had been: a beautiful young woman from a respectable Irish family, well-read, fluent in several languages and with strong proto-feminist sensibilities. She was also devoted to her husband: ‘I am intensely pleased,’ Jane assured Oscar; ‘You have both been true and constant and a blessing will come on all true feeling’.19 Yet, she recognised in Oscar the same core of genius that was present in his father and she realised that Constance’s role would be a taxing one. In ‘Genius and Marriage’, Jane wrote:
The daughters of men who wed with the sons of the gods, should have courage to face the lightnings and the thunders, if they dare to stand on the mountain height with an immortal husband. For such a man, and to insure his happiness, a woman should be ready to give her life with sublime self-immolation. At once an angel and a victim, sensitive to every chord of his nature, yet with a smile forever on the lip, no matter what anxieties may corrode the heart.20
Ambitious for Oscar, Jane saw Constance’s role as a modest one: ‘I would like you to have a small house in London and live the literary life,’ she told her son, ‘and teach Constance to correct proofs, and eventually go into parliament’.21
Ada Swinburne-King, who had never demonstrated much interest in her daughter’s happiness, seemed pleased with the match: ‘I think he & Constance are well suited to each other,’ she assured Jane:
Both are, as you say, young, gifted, & what is to my mind even more essential to the beginning of married life immensely attached to each other. I have heard twice from Constance since the event & in each letter she says “she is so extremely happy”.22
Fearing that the ‘cold and practical’ Lloyds might thwart her, Constance sent a note to Aunt Emily begging her not to oppose the match. Oscar had already written to John Horatio Lloyd. As they shared the distinction of a double first from Oxford and had always enjoyed each other’s company, it came as a shock when the old man decided to withhold his consent. Oscar rushed to London to plead his case but Lloyd was far too ill to see him and it was left to Aunt Emily to outline what was required.
Far from opposing the match, her father was willing to put a modest marriage settlement in place once Oscar assured him that his finances were under control. Oscar agreed to defray his mounting debts by a modest £300,* leaving him more committed to the lecture circuit than ever; he confided in Lillie:
it is horrid being so much away from her, but we telegraph to each other twice a day, and I rush back suddenly from the uttermost parts of the earth to see her for an hour, and do all the foolish things which wise lovers do.23
Constance too was unrestrained in her fervour:
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 …24
Constance’s connection to Oscar thrust her into an unfamiliar limelight. Newspapers carried reports of their engagement, and audience and cast members alike stared with unconcealed curiosity when they attended the theatre. Artist James Whistler hosted a celebratory luncheon, which they shared with May Fortescue and her then-beau, Viscount Garmoyle. Constance commissioned her regular dressmaker, Adeline Nettleship, an innovative wielder of a needle with a workforce of thirty seamstresses, to create a wedding gown. It was the subject of intense public scrutiny and went on public display in March. Society magazine Queen described it as a:
… rich creamy satin dress … of a delicate cowslip tint; the bodice, cut square and somewhat low in front, was finished with a high Medici collar; the ample sleeves were puffed; the skirt, made plain, was gathered by a silver girdle of beautiful workmanship, the gift of Mr. Oscar Wilde; the veil of saffron-coloured Indian silk gauze was embroidered with pearls and worn in Marie Stuart fashion; a thick wreath of myrtle leaves crowned her frizzed hair; the dress was ornamented with clusters of myrtle leaves; the large bouquet had as much green in it as white.25
Although they hoped to marry in April, the wedding was postponed until 29 May 1884, giving Oscar additional time to sort his finances. On the eve of his nuptials, he was invited to supper by Lady Elizabeth Lewis. In her memoir, Louise Jopling mentions that she ‘gave him some good advice as to how a young husband should treat his wife’; she does not elaborate as to its nature.26
John Horatio Lloyd’s uncertain health dictated that the wedding was an unexpectedly low-key event with admittance by invitation only, restricted to family and close friends. On the day, a sizable group of parishioners of St James’s Church in Sussex Gardens protested against being kept outside and were admitted to sit alongside the wedding party. They and those who congregated outside must have been disappointed by the dearth of recognisable faces.27 Oscar ‘bore himself with calm dignity’, depriving the gossip columnists of copy by wearing a perfectly ordinary blue morning frock-coat with grey trousers and ‘a touch of pink in his neck tie’.28 The ceremony was subdued, but bride and groom were jubilant. The Lady’s Pictorial reported:
The newly-married pair, as they came down the long aisle arm-in-arm, looked as hundreds of newly-married people have looked before – the bridegroom happy and exultant; the bride with a tender flush on her face, and a happy hopeful light in her soft brown eyes.29
Jane, resplendent in grey satin, trimmed with a chenille fringe and topped off with a high crowned hat adorned with ostrich feathers, reportedly ‘“snatched” her new daughter to her heart with some effusion’.30 Days later, she signed ‘La Madre devotissima’ at the bottom of the first of many warm letters to Constance. After a modest reception at Lancaster Gate, the newlyweds boarded the boat-train to Dover and travelled on to Paris: ‘few married couples ever carried better wishes with them’, gushed the Aberdeen Evening Express.31
Robert Sherard, back in Paris by then, described the couple’s well-appointed three room suite in the Hotel Wagram on the Rue de Rivoli as ‘full of flowers, youth and laughter’.32 He thought Constance ‘supremely happy’, and described her as ‘beautiful and gracious, kind-hearted, and devoted to her husband, for whose great cleverness she had the highest admiration’.33 Oscar ‘seemed then very much in love and said that marriage was a wonderful thing’.34 Within minutes of leaving to revisit old Parisian haunts, Oscar stopped at a flower stall and organised for the loveliest blooms to be delivered to his wife. Sherard believed ‘the union had every promise of being felicitous’.35
Constance held her first dinner party in Paris. One of her guests was the ebullient Henrietta Reubell, a wealthy and eccentric American of French descent who had hosted a breakfast for the couple. Artist William Rothenstein, who described Reubell as ‘a great friend and admirer of Oscar Wilde, to whom she was constantly loyal,’ left a wonderful description of this extraordinary woman:
In face and figure she reminded me of Queen Elizabeth – if one can imagine an Elizabeth with an American accent and a high, shrill voice like a parrot’s. All that was distinguished in French, English and American society came at one time or another to her apartment in the Avenue Gabriel; she was adept at bringing out the most entertaining qualities of the guests at her table.36
Reubell never doubted her own attractions even if others remained unconvinced. She was effusive in her praise of Constance’s outfit and insisted she ask Adeline Nettleship to replicate it for her; Constance was certain this would horrify Oscar.
Mr and Mrs Wilde returned to London on 24 June 1884, after a thrilling fortnight in Paris, followed by a delightful week in Dieppe. Lloyd’s largesse allowed them to take a six-year lease on 16 Tite Street and they had commissioned architect Edward Godwin to transform it into a suitably bohemian home. As it was far from complete, they spent two nights in the Brunswick Hotel while Constance dropped heavy hints in the direction of Aunt Emily before asking outright if they could stay at Lancaster Gate. Emily gave her grudging approval but her father was close to death, so they moved into Oscar’s old Charles Street lodgings soon afterwards. Six weeks later, the old man lost his struggle and Constance’s income almost trebled as a result.
When Oscar returned to the lecture circuit, Constance cast her practical eye over the chaos that had been allowed to reign in Tite Street. Oscar had fired the builder engaged by Godwin and was being sued for non-payment as a result. A second builder had run well over budget. Under her supervision, their ‘sweet little nest’ was ready early in 1885.37 The light and airy melange of soft yellows, blues and whites contrasted starkly with the dark hues favoured by their more conventional neighbours. Anna de Brémont described their home as having ‘an air of brightness and luxury’.38
When Oscar glanced out of their window and saw Ellen Terry arriving at John Singer Sargent’s Chelsea studio wearing her costume for Lady Macbeth, a remarkable emerald gown that shimmered with the iridescent wings of the jewel beetles sewn into it by Ada Nettleship, he remarked:
The street that on a wet and dreary morning has vouchsafed the vision of Lady Macbeth in full regalia magnificently seated in a four-wheeler can never again be as other streets: it must always be full of wonderful possibilities.39
Marriage gave Constance the independence she craved. Although she was more retiring than her husband, she supported Oscar by entertaining influential women and men who helped advance his career. She also developed interests beyond her hall door and her involvement with the Rational Dress Society and the Chelsea Women’s Liberal Association demonstrated her commitment to women’s issues. Like Oscar, Constance had strong views on dress reform; she was recognised as an accomplished public speaker on the topic. In ‘Clothed in Our Right Minds’, a lecture she addressed to the Rational Dress Society on 6 November 1888, she advocated the wearing of divided skirts, insisting that, as God had given women two legs, they should have the freedom to use them. She broadened her argument to insist that women deserved a wider role in all aspects of life.40
In ‘Children’s Dress in this Century’, an article she wrote for The Woman’s World, which was edited by Oscar, Constance insisted: ‘The Rational Dress should be adopted by all mothers who wish their girls to grow up healthy and happy’.41 When she edited The Rational Dress Society Gazette, she assumed responsibility for attracting new subscribers, growing advertising, overseeing printing and managing accounts. She was perfectly willing to wear the clothing she advocated and to have this reported by the press. When Oscar and she manned a charity flower stall in support of London’s hospitals, Constance made a point of wearing a divided skirt. Although Oscar encouraged Constance to dress in a freer and more flattering style, he is probably given too much credit for her choices. The novelist Marie Belloc Lowndes, who thought Constance strikingly pretty but timid, attributed her preference for simple dresses at home but eccentric outfits in public to Oscar’s influence, but Vyvyan Holland insisted that, while his father certainly encouraged her, his mother designed clothes that reflected her devotion to the Pre-Raphaelites.42
Not everyone approved of Constance’s style. When Beatrix Potter spotted them heading into the Fine Art Society, she described Oscar as a ‘rather fine looking gentleman, but inclined to stoutness’ and remarked that Constance was ‘strangely dressed’.43 At a ball given by the artist John Everett Millais, Potter noted that Constance had ‘her front covered with great water-lilies’.44 Laura Troubridge, who thought Constance ‘shy and dull’, had the couple to tea and described Constance’s outfit as ‘too hopeless’. Laura’s fiancé, Adrian Hope, a distant relative of Constance’s who would prove to be a malevolent influence in her life, insisted that she looked ‘horrid’ and sneered that she ‘never opened her lips’.45
Those who scoffed were out of step. Constance was exceptionally beautiful and her unconventional outfits were widely admired. Praising the ‘charming gown of dark crimson and gold brocade’ she wore to the opening of Twelfth Night at the Lyceum, the Lady’s Pictorial declared: ‘her costume was altogether admirably suited to her picturesque and southern style of beauty’.46 That same magazine also noted a ‘very pretty and graceful gown’ designed to complement a Lincoln green coat worn by Oscar.47 Anna de Brémont’s first impression of Constance was of:
… a young woman arrayed in an exquisite Greek costume of cowslip yellow and apple leaf green. Her hair, a thick mass of ruddy brown, was wonderfully set off by the bands of yellow ribbon, supporting the knot of hair low on the nape of her neck, and crossing the wavy masses above the brow. The whole arrangement was exceedingly becoming to the youthful, almost boyish face with its clear colouring and full, dark eyes.48
Detecting ‘an air of shy self-consciousness and restraint’ about her, Anna took Constance for a timid actress who had been prevailed upon to perform and was amazed when Oscar introduced her as his wife.
One of those who believed that Oscar’s love for Constance was genuine was Ada Leverson, who had no difficulty accepting his relationships with men: ‘When he was first married, he was quite madly in love, and showed himself an unusually devoted husband’, she wrote.49 Certainly, Oscar hated it when lecturing engagements took him away from home. In Edinburgh in December 1884, he composed an exceptionally tender letter to Constance:
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.50
He may not have realised it but Constance was three months pregnant by then.
Cyril Wilde arrived into the world at 10.45 a.m. on 5 June 1885. That day, his father wrote a lovely letter to Otho’s wife Nellie, insisting that his ‘amazing boy’ knew him quite well already.51 He told actor Norman Forbes Robertson that Cyril was ‘wonderful’, and encouraged him to get married ‘at once!’52 Mercifully, he remained ignorant of Adrian Hope’s mean-spirited declaration that he pitied the infant, and his by-now-wife, Laura’s cruel speculation that Cyril would be ‘swathed in artistic baby clothes – sage green bibs & tuckers … & peacock blue robes’.53 Fatherhood awakened a new sense of responsibility in Oscar. Years earlier, he told Bouncer Ward that his paltry inheritance necessitated him ‘doing some horrid work to earn bread’.54 Now he applied unsuccessfully for a position as an inspector of schools before turning to journalism and securing regular commissions from the Pall Mall Gazette, and the Dramatic Review. He also wrote occasionally for the Court and Society Review, the Nineteenth Century Magazine and several others.
The Dramatic Review allowed Oscar a byline but the Pall Mall Gazette required reviewers to maintain their anonymity. An exception was made for Oscar’s review of J. A. Froude’s historical novel The Two Chiefs of Dunboy, allowing him to put his initials to criticisms of British government policy in Ireland:
If in the last century she [England] tried to govern Ireland with an insolence that was intensified by race-hatred and religious prejudice, she has sought to rule her in this century with a stupidity that is aggravated by good intentions.55
Editor William Thomas Stead was sympathetic to the Irish question. A firm advocate for social justice, he was imprisoned in 1885 while working on ‘The Maiden Tribute of Modern Babylon’, a series of articles exposing the scourge of child prostitution. His campaign raised the age of consent but had the unintended consequence of prompting Henry Labouchère MP to draft a clause making gross indecency between men a criminal offence; the Criminal Law Amendment Act 1885 became known as ‘the blackmailer’s charter’. Oscar too had a campaigning agenda. His association with the Pall Mall Gazette commenced with a letter expressing strong opinions on the impracticality of women’s dress.56
Keen to do more than raise a child and keep a fashionable home, Constance contributed articles on fashion and theatre to the Ladies’ Pictorial. Her light, witty style undermines Louise Jopling’s assertion that Oscar’s friends found her humourless, although Jopling did concede that Constance’s sense of humour was subtle rather than absent. She also thought of acting and played a minor role in a six-night run of John Todhunter’s Helena in Troas, a play staged by Edward Godwin in May 1886. All proceeds went to The British School of Archaeology at Athens and Godwin cast amateurs, including Constance and Louise Jopling, alongside professional actors. Although careful not to mention his wife, Oscar gave a glowing account of the production in the Dramatic Review, commenting that Godwin gave his audience ‘the most perfect exhibition of a Greek dramatic performance that has as yet been seen in this country’. Of Louise Jopling he wrote: ‘Mrs. Jopling looked like a poem from the Pantheon’.57 When Willie reviewed Helena in Troas for Theatre on 1 June 1896, he too was careful not to mention Constance.
Constance was three months pregnant when she made her acting debut and this pregnancy was far more debilitating than her first. The notoriously unreliable, but oft quoted, Frank Harris insisted that it triggered Oscar’s waning interest in Constance. According to Harris, he could not bear to witness the metamorphoses of his ‘beautiful girl, white and slim as a lily’, into this ‘heavy, shapeless, deformed’ woman who dragged herself miserably around their house with a ‘drawn blotched face and hideous body’. Harris contended that, although Oscar remained outwardly solicitous, he was confronting an uncomfortable reality: ‘Desire is killed by maternity; passion buried in conception’.58 Although Anna de Brémont insisted that Oscar and Constance were ‘still fondly devoted to one another’ after Cyril’s birth, she too saw cracks emerging and observed that Constance’s ‘sincerity and devotion was her undoing’.
Vyvyan Oscar Beresford Wilde arrived into the world on an exceptionally foggy day in early November 1886. William Rothenstein observed that his parents ‘seemed on affectionate terms’ and was certain that Oscar ‘delighted in his children’, but he ‘felt something wistful and a little sad about Mrs. Wilde’.59 Perhaps the clearest indication that a facade was being constructed came from W. B. Yeats, who spent Christmas Day with the family in 1888 and wrote, with the benefit of hindsight:
I remember thinking that the perfect harmony of his [Oscar’s] life there, with his beautiful wife and his two young children, suggested some deliberate artistic composition.60
By all accounts, Cyril and Vyvyan Wilde were lovely, boisterous lads who enjoyed more freedom than many of their Victorian contemporaries. Eyewitness accounts confirm that both parents were indulgent and fond of them. Vyvyan’s recollections of an exceptional and turbulent childhood demonstrate great warmth and a wryness that belies the tragedy that befell his family.* Both boys adored their father, who was kind-hearted and playful and perfectly happy to join in with nursery games, even if they involved getting down on all fours in order to play the part of a bear, a lion, a horse or whatever was required of him. He once spent an entire afternoon repairing a beloved wooden fort. Their boisterous games often spilled out into the beautiful dining room, where all three would dodge between the legs of the spindly white chairs before tumbling together in a tangle on the floor. When they grew tired, Oscar would tell them the most wonderful stories.61
Although it was Oscar who jeopardised and effectively abandoned his marriage, slight evidence suggests that Constance too had unconventional views. At a dinner party they hosted just before their first wedding anniversary, Adrian Hope expressed surprise at Constance’s declaration that ‘it should be free to either party to go off at the expiration of the first year’. When Oscar and he discussed the subject further, Hope reported that his host had declared a marriage should last ‘7 years only, to be renewed or not as either party saw fit’.62 Laura’s spiteful response on hearing this was:
I dislike Constance Wilde for her remark … unless by the by it was a desperate attempt at originality. No wonder she has a sulky, dull face if those are the thoughts she has to talk with when she is alone.63
Although Oscar described Laura to Adrian as, ‘une femme de glace’, he remained friendly towards her and insisted that she be given the commission to illustrate ‘Le Jardin des Tuileries’, a poem he contributed to In a Good Cause, an anthology sold in aid of the North Eastern Hospital for Children in 1885.64 Laura availed of this opportunity to showcase her talent, but speculated that Oscar’s ‘Muse was out of town’ when he wrote his poem.65 It hints at ‘The Selfish Giant’, which Oscar thought of asking Laura to illustrate before choosing Walter Crane.*
Although Constance had nothing approaching Oscar’s talent, her maternal great-grandmother, Barbara Hare Hemphill, was a novelist of some note and she appears to have inherited some of her talent. A competent writer, she too published several stories for children and it is fascinating to read the joint review of their collections from The Irish Times of 2 February 1889:
Mr and Mrs Wilde possess charming children of their own and they have utilised their acquaintance with the infant world in giving to it some delightful fairytales, which even the elders must appreciate. “The Happy Prince and Other Tales,” illustrated by Walter Crane and Jacomb Hood, and published by David Nutt is one of the happiest works which Mr. Oscar Wilde has ever produced; whilst Mrs. Wilde’s fairytales, also published recently and entitled “There Was Once,” are a charming reproduction of the old stories, familiar to our childish days, which Nisbet [sic] has brought out.
The death of her beloved Mama Mary prompted Constance to compile There Was Once – Grandma’s Stories, a beautifully illustrated collection of five traditional tales and four familiar rhymes. Publisher Ernest Nister also brought out A Dandy Chair and Other Stories, an illustrated collection of children’s stories written by Constance Wilde, Edith Nesbit and Mary Louisa Molesworth. One story contributed by Constance was called ‘The Little Swallow’. In 1887, The Bairn’s Annual of Old Fashioned Fairy Tales, edited by Alice Corkran, sister of Jane’s great friend Henriette, contained ‘Was It a Dream’ by Constance Wilde. Jane was also a contributor to this periodical. In 1892, Nister published A Long Time Ago, favorite stories retold by Mrs. Oscar Wilde & others, and A Cosy Corner and Other Stories, which included Constance’s ‘For Japan’, which featured a little girl named Isola.*
Constance’s serious nature led her into the world of politics. She joined the Chelsea branch of the Women’s Liberal Association and campaigned to have Lady Margaret Sandhurst elected as Liberal candidate for Brixton to the London County Council. Although Sandhurst was successful, the courts supported a challenge from the man she had defeated and declared her election invalid. On 16 April 1888, Constance addressed a conference sponsored by the Women’s Committee of the International Arbitration and Peace Association. The theme was ‘By what methods can Women Best Promote the Cause of International Concorde’ and Constance spoke on the importance of encouraging pacifist ideals at an early age: ‘Children should be taught in their nursery to be against war’, she counselled.66
She was an accomplished public speaker and her performance at the Women’s Liberal Federation annual conference in 1889, when she discussed Home Rule for Ireland, was remarked upon by W. T. Stead in the Pall Mall Gazette:
I was astonished and delighted to notice yesterday at the conference for the Women’s Liberal Federation how very much Mrs. Oscar Wilde has improved in public speaking. She was always graceful and always charming, but there is now an earnestness and an ease about her which is the result of practice in platform speaking, and I shall not be surprised if in a few years Mrs. Wilde has become one of the most popular among “platform ladies”.67
It may seem bizarre nowadays, but Constance, like many of her peers, including Yeats, took a keen interest in the occult. On 13 November 1888, she joined the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, a society dedicated to the study of Rosicrucianism and ritual magic. She stood alongside Anna de Brémont while both were initiated into the order, wearing a black tunic with a cord wound three times around her waist, red shoes and a blindfold. The motto Constance chose was Qui Patitur Vincit (who endures wins). Anna evoked the day in rich detail:
I felt her [Constance] tremble, and the hand that held mine was icy cold. Her voice faltered over the formula of admission that we recited together – a most formidable declaration, which threatened dire calamity to those who disclosed the secret studies or proceedings of the Order. My sense of humour was secretly tried on that occasion, and I felt more inclined to laugh; although Constance Wilde’s beautiful eyes were full of tears.68
Although Constance passed through every grade of the outer order during her first year, she did not continue beyond this point.
Constance also joined the Society for Psychical Research. When her interest turned to Christian Socialism, with its emphasis on charitable works and daily church attendance, she diverged significantly from Oscar, who had little interest in such humdrum piety and considered philanthropy not merely ineffectual but an insidious form of social control. The poor state of the couple’s finances proved a further strain. By 1887 the expense of running a household requiring a cook, several housemaids, a footman and a children’s nurse was proving an unsustainable drain on the couple’s inadequate resources. Robert Sherard reported that one Tite Street neighbour was approached by Constance on several occasions when she needed to borrow money.69 Oscar’s income was sporadic and he was keen to find something more reliable. In April 1887, he accepted an interesting challenge that paid £6 per week.