Franny Moyle (10 page)

But something else happened during that holiday. The happy radiance that Constance exuded proved irresistible to the male members of the party and quickly ignited the jealousies of women in the group. If the growing number of admirers to date gives a picture of Constance as clearly attractive, this account shows that she was something far more than commonly attractive. She was, frankly, sexy and unconventionally precocious. In short, whether she was conscious of it or not, she was a magnet and a flirt.

At first it was Mr Huxley who fell under Constance's spell, much to the annoyance of Miss Michelle, who became

jealous of me because for 3 days before I came, Mr Huxley devoted himself to her. I think she is about 45, of Italian descent, the daughter of a diplomat, and consequently has been all over Europe and is very amusing, but she's terribly superstitious and too fond of chat. She never knows when to stop and riles everyone. I have offended her mortally and she will not forgive me, which is rather a nuisance.
¹⁷

But it was not just Mr Huxley who found Constance Lloyd so compelling. Once Huxley had left the party, the teenage Douglas Ainslie confided that he too was utterly smitten with Constance, despite the fact she was a good eight years his senior. ‘Douglas says that he was so jealous of Mr Huxley that he didn't know what to do,' Constance told Otho, ‘and used to go and bemoan himself to Miss Michelle, and ask her what he should do to make himself agreeable.'
¹⁸

Constance's and Douglas's flirtations were quickly noticed by the wider group, and a series of unfortunate incidents led to Constance being deemed a bad influence on the young man. In terms of his crush on her, ‘I never saw anything to equal Douglas,' Constance admitted,

and the worst of this is that Mrs Ainslie has discovered this and I simply don't know what to do. Unfortunately tonight he began telling me of this scrape he had got into at school and I was advising him to the best of my ability, lecturing him he called it, and Miss Michelle who is perpetually interfering about everything, went and told Mrs Ainslie we were in his room together and so I have been told I am not to go there. I like Douglas a great deal, too much to snub him and I like Mrs Ainslie a great deal, too much to want to offend her but it strikes me that I shall be lucky if I am asked here again and I have never been so happy in all my life.
¹⁹

Things went from embarrassing to farcical. Douglas, unable to conceal his massive crush, and with all the awkwardness one would expect from a boy of his age, began behaving strangely whenever Constance was near him, which left Constance ‘awfully done up':

Mrs Ainslie's simply furious with me about Douglas and I am quite certain now that I shall never be asked here again. Everybody … is
… laughing at us … What makes it so awfully difficult for me is … this, which you must not tell a soul. Douglas has got into the most fearful habit of betting and has actually bet £60 on the … race, … that comes off on September the 13th … Now for a lad of 16 it seems to me perfectly dreadful and my one great aim is to induce him to give up betting, and he says that I am the only person who could make him do it if I want to induce him to give me a promise not to bet anymore, the more so as he never loses … You could not understand unless you were here how awfully disagreeable it is. Everyone in the house is making fun of it, and they say that Mr Grant Duff and Mr Huxley were just the same, and there is a Colonel Forbes here too, about 50 I should think or more, evidently an awful flirt, who has gone cracked too, and of course everything is noticed and talked about here, and I know they all think I flirt. Mrs Ainslie tells me that I have turned Douglas's head … I must go to bed or I shall think my head off. Certainly I'm unlucky. For goodness sake write to me. I think I shall offer to go back to London next week and that will settle matters satisfactorily.
²⁰

But matters did not settle. In fact, they became even more comical. Douglas wrote Constance a note inviting her to his room after everyone was in bed. Clearly losing his nerve at the last minute, he never delivered his highly risqué proposal. Instead he left it in the blotter, to be found the next day by the disapproving Miss Michelle. The latter informed Mrs Ainslie, and Constance found herself returned to London.

Although Delgaty proved unfruitful from a sketching point of view, over the course of the next few months Constance did complete something that she felt was worthy of submission to the St John's Wood School. The following March she was in Torquay staying with relations, the Harveys, and was able to send a picture back to London by the night train. Otho was put on standby to collect it and get it to the school before eleven.
²¹

Constance's craft and artistic endeavours, along with her university exams, show her as a young woman searching for a role for herself. Some two years earlier, at the time when her cousin Stanhope so
inappropriately proposed to her, she had attempted to put into words this deep-seated desire to achieve something in life: ‘I have no special objection to being married, excepting that I don't care for anyone and that I think I am rather afraid of marrying,' Constance had told Otho.

At the same time I cannot say that I prefer the life I am leading at present. If I eventually do not marry, I will not live with Auntie all my life, I shall do something. I feel as though I am stagnating and it won't be so bad however if you are in London and I am thinking of going in for an examination. I shan't work my head off for I don't care much about the result, I just want something specific to do to prevent my continually dreaming 'til I get perfectly morbid.
²²

With her desire to achieve something in life, Constance was aligning herself with a group of women who since the middle part of the century had been fighting for social equality for women, as well as for their political enfranchisement. It would be a cause that in the fullness of time Constance would espouse more fully and formally.

Throughout the 1880s the voice of feminism was getting louder. The suffrage movement got under way with high-profile and aristocratic campaigners such as Viscountess Harberton leading national demonstrations for the right for women householders and rate-payers to vote. The question of the parliamentary vote aside, the dominance of men in other aspects of life was being chiselled away in tiny chunks. Women had already won the right to practise medicine, and in 1880 Eliza Orme became the first woman to obtain a degree in law. Then in 1882 the Married Women's Property Act marked a genuine shift in women's legal rights, since for the first time it allowed the notion that a married woman could in fact, legally speaking, be her own person.

Until 1882 all married women were defined as subordinate to their husbands, and any property and rights they might have held as single women were surrendered to his ownership. Horror stories in the press pointing out the injustice of this system cited men's ability to squander their wives' private fortunes should they wish, with the
former having no recourse. But after the Act married women were suddenly redefined legally. They were given the right to their own wealth, as well as to buy and sell property in their own right. They could hold bank accounts and stocks. They could sue as individuals rather than rely on the offices of their spouse. The flip side was that they were now liable for their own debts and could be declared bankrupt, but few were complaining. Constance was living in an era when she could enjoy both liberty and responsibility above and beyond her mother's and her grandmother's generations.

Speranza Wilde may not have fully grasped the implications of this Act of Parliament. In her time Speranza had expressed views that diverged from that Victorian expectation that the sole purpose of a woman and a wife was to accommodate the wishes of her spouse. In her essay ‘The Bondage of Women' she condemned an education system for women which solely prepared girls for ‘husband worship'. Nevertheless, in spite of her published views, Speranza was also a pragmatist, and when it came to her own sons she was more than prepared to consider how wealthy girls might provide automatic financial security for them.

Money, or the lack of it, was a constant preoccupation for Speranza. Amid the letters that survive between her and Oscar there are few without mention of money or debt. While he was in America, Speranza bombarded Oscar with letters in which she reminded him constantly of her own precarious financial situation. She complained she was living ‘in a fever of nerves' and remained perpetually on the brink of having to give up her house. She was, she told Oscar, scouring the papers to look for opportunities where the output of her own pen might bring in a few pennies.

Part of the problem was Oscar's brother Willie, who, far from providing comfort and security for his mother, was simply adding to her worries. Willie was a talented journalist and likeable raconteur who had secured work with
Punch, Vanity Fair
and the
Daily Telegraph
and had acquired quite a profile when he moved to London in the late 1870s. But despite what his peers recognized as a not inconsiderable talent and charm, he lived up to his surname. He was
irresponsible and unreliable and drank like a fish. He had a reputation for partying hard and was a member of the notorious Fielding Club in London, which would open its doors at eight o'clock in the evening and then stay open throughout the night.

Far from contributing to the Wilde coffers, Willie was, if anything, a drain on them. He had run up debts of around £2,000 by the early 1880s. The relationship between Willie and Oscar was consequently strained. Oscar was angry with his brother for his professional failures and while he was away wrote to him in no uncertain terms. Speranza opened the letter.

yr last from N York dated the 9th has arrived addressed to
Willie
. But he was away with a friend at Windlesham for a couple of days so I read it, but it was so severe & I did not give it to him, I burned it – he … feels at last how foolish he has been & he is really trying for work … I would rather you write a few kind words to him appealing to his good sense for something good.
²³

But it was not just Willie who was to blame for the Wildes' generally impecunious situation. While Oscar was away, Speranza found herself bombarded with bills from Oscar's creditors too. With his exploits in America racking up column inches, the impression at home was that Oscar was making a fortune. Some newspaper reports suggested he would make as much as £5,000. And so those he owed began to call in their debts.

On 10 July Speranza informed her son, ‘Levers bill came here for you. I will send you the list next time I write – do pey
[sic]
them before you spend all the money.' A couple of weeks later it was ‘North (of Dublin)' who was writing inquiring after Oscar's address, along with ‘several people [who] have sent me your bills'. Then in August another ‘bill came for you … you seem to have lived luxuriously at Tite Street – I never saw the rooms & can only judge from the items'.
²⁴

The actual profit Oscar made after close to a full year of lecturing was $5,605.31, a half-share of profits after costs of a tour that brought in $18,215.69. This would have amounted to just over £1,000. But
with his debts to settle it's unclear how much of this money would actually end up in Oscar's own pockets, not least because, clearly despairing at his mother's situation, he also began to bail her out, sending cheques with almost every letter home.

‘My dear child,' she wrote on 18 September 1882,

Your letter and cheque £80 of Sept 6th has this moment arrived & my first impulse was a flood of tears over it … I feel deeply at taking your money; the product of hard work and … fierce strivings against a bitter world – Willie was expected home to night, but not come … I still trust he will … awake to the full meaning of his life and what has become of it … I will hold on to the house, at least over the winter … You are the talk of London – the cab men ask if I am anything to Oscar Wilde, the milk man has bought your picture! … I think you will be mobbed when you come back.
²⁵

For Speranza, a good marriage for Oscar was vital, and the sooner the better. ‘What will you do on your return?' she wrote to Oscar while he was away, suggesting that ‘you must bring home the American bride'.
²⁶
Speranza was keen that Oscar set the bar high. Surely he could find an heiress with a ‘1/4 of a million', then he could ‘take a home in Park Lane – & go into Parliament'.
²⁷

His natural flirtatiousness heightened by Speranza's encouragement, Oscar became identified as quite the ladies' man while he was in America. And so it is perhaps hardly surprising that his name quickly became linked with that of Maud Howe when he stayed as the guest of her mother in Newport. But the newspaper reports were unfounded. Oscar and Maud may have been seen together, but there was no spark. It was Oscar's growing celebrity and the press's desire for a new story about him that generated news about an engagement. For once, Oscar was quick to quash the rumours, and he told his mother to do the same. ‘I gave a decided contradiction to the report that you were to be married to the beautiful Miss Maud Howe,'
²⁸
Speranza informed Oscar on 6 August, sounding perhaps just a bit disappointed.

Oscar arrived home in January 1883, and although he came
without the wife that the gossip columns had been predicting, he nevertheless stepped off the ocean liner
Bothnia
with the smell of success in his nostrils and a determination to build on his American experience. If not Parliament, then at the very least professional recognition was something he now craved. Sick of ridicule, he was intent on acquiring a new level of respect from those at home. He had cut the long locks that had been so mercilessly parodied before he left. Now, looking altogether a more robust proposition, he clearly considered that, after a haircut, marriage might also help.