Franny Moyle (21 page)

Whistler would note that Oscar was ‘a bourgeois malgré lui',
³¹
and that was the nub of it. Oscar was the married man, his wife, children and home the cathedral he had built around him. His relationship with men would be kept both discreet and discrete. From now on a clandestine version of Oscar would quietly seek to fill that ‘secret sacred niche'. This private version of Oscar, visible to us from the perspective history can offer, was apparent neither to the majority of his contemporaries at this stage nor to Constance. And it seems that once Oscar had realized that is was possible both to live a bourgeois married life and to have a secret existence, to have his cake and eat it, then his relationship with his wife improved.

In a gesture that must have reassured Constance of his sense of familial responsibility, Oscar redoubled efforts to secure proper full-time employment. Such reassurance came not a moment too soon. Constance confessed to Otho that their finances were spiralling out of control. In fact, they had borrowed money from Otho, agreeing to pay him back with interest.
³²
Now that Otho found himself with two households rather than one, he needed evidence that the Wildes could meet their debts.

‘Of course I will see that your interest is paid in future,' she calmed her brother. ‘You shall receive this half year's in January and the rest shall, if possible, be paid off gradually also, but we have given up any hope of being able to let our house and I am afraid we shall still be living here rather too expensively as we neither of us have a notion how to live non extravagantly.' Constance added that she was ‘obliged to have two nurses on account of baby and expenses flow … however, I hope that after next year we shall be able to get on.'
³³

That the Wildes were actually attempting to lease the house they had so recently moved into and in which they had invested so heavily seems extraordinary. This alone must have applied a pressure that would have brought the most romantic love affair down to earth with a bump.

Oscar finally got a job. In 1887, after being overlooked in his
attempts to become first an inspector of schools and then the secretary of a charitable foundation, he was invited to become a magazine editor. In the spring of that year Thomas Wemyss Reid, a former editor of the
Leeds Mercury
, joined the publishers Cassell & Co. in London. Cassell's had begun publication of a magazine called
The Lady's World: A Magazine of Fashion and Society
. Oscar's lectures on dress and interiors had not gone unnoticed by Reid. The fact he had such a high-profile fashionable wife, well versed in the hot issues of the day such as rational dress, could not have hurt. Reid invited Oscar to look at the magazine and see if there were improvements that he thought could be made were he to edit it. It's tempting to consider that the letter he wrote to Reid in response was written in consultation with Constance.

‘It seems to me that at present it is too feminine, and not sufficiently womanly,' Oscar wrote.

No one appreciates more fully than I do the value and importance of Dress, in its relation to good taste and good health: indeed the subject is one that I have constantly lectured on, but it seems to me that … the field of mere millinery and trimmings, is to some extent already occupied by such papers as the
Queen
and
Lady's Pictorial
, and that we should take a wider range, as well as a high standpoint, and deal not merely with what women wear, but with what they think, and what they feel.
³⁴

Oscar went on the magazine payroll in May 1887 and immediately began recruiting writers from among the female intelligentsia of the day. The venture instantly realigned him and Constance. To be the successful man at the helm of
The Lady's World
Oscar must have known that his wife was going to play a crucial role. In accepting the job, Constance's and Oscar's interdependence was re-established. Their artistic marriage was back on track – for the time being at least.

7

A literary couple

Mrs Oscar Wilde entertains ‘in a cream-tinted dining room, of which walls, furniture, and all things are in unison' – even the guests, who are of course the crème de la crème of society.
¹

Constance's ‘at homes' were famous. From the moment Constance and Oscar moved into Tite Street in 1885 the great and the good had come to see the avant-garde interiors, meet the beautiful wife and, of course, hear Oscar entertain the room. ‘To my mother's receptions came people of such widely different interests,' Vyvyan remembered, noting attendees including ‘Henry Irving, Sir William Richmond, R A, Sarah Bernhardt, John Sargent, John Ruskin, Lillie Langtry, Mark Twain, Herbert Beerbohm Tree, Robert Browning, Algernon Swinburne, John Bright, Lady de Grey, Ellen Terry and Arthur Balfour. All the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood was constantly in attendance.'
²

Ever the collector, and impressed by fame and success, Constance made sure that she captured the signatures of some of her visitors in an autograph book. Those she solicited provide an interesting insight into her own character and passions.

The first entry in the book, even before Oscar's own dedication, is from Oliver Wendell Holmes, the American poet and physician, friend of Longfellow and liberal reformer, who had championed the rights of women and blacks to attend university. Oscar's own contribution to the pages, written in June 1886, apart from being intended as an expression of his love for his wife for all subsequent signatories to see, seems to contain a very private message about the deeply intimate nature of their mutual understanding.

I can write no stately poem

As a prelude to my lay

From a poet to a poem –

This is all I say.

Yet if of these fallen petals

One to you seems fair,

Love will waft it, till it settles

On your hair.

And when wind and winter harden

All the loveless land,

It will whisper of the garden,

You will understand.
³

After Holmes and Oscar, Constance made sure that Walter Pater provided his signature for her along with Jimmy Whistler, the painter W. B. Richmond and the critic and poet Theodore Watts. The latter, contributing a poem called ‘Baby Smiles' in the summer of 1886, had obviously met an infant Cyril during his visit. Watts offered a rather saccharine and flattering observation that

… a sight I saw outshine all other –

Saw a woman kiss a lovely child –

Saw the lovelier smile of her, the mother,

When ‘baby' smiled.
⁴

the liberal politician and campaigner for parliamentary reform John Bright presented a much more sombre thought a few months later. He reminded Constance that ‘In Peace sons bury their Fathers – In War Fathers bury their sons'.

Constance treated her twice-monthly ‘at homes' as a theatrical exercise where scenery and costume were meticulously planned. She spent much time and effort in finding new surprising ways of decorating Tite Street to impress and please her guests, and the combination of this attention to detail with celebrity attendees quickly made Mrs Oscar's parties a matter of national news. In July 1887 the
Lady's Pictorial
took delight in listing those who attended
one particularly successful party. Apart from family, including Aunt Mary Napier, Constance's mother, Mrs Swinburne-King, and Speranza, the Wildes managed to gather under one roof aristocrats such as Lady Nevill, Lady Ardilaun and Lady Monckton, alongside theatrical celebrities such as Mr and Mrs George Alexander and Mr and Mrs Bram Stoker, and artists such as Walter Crane and Waldo Story.

‘Roses were the only flowers used for decoration,' the
Lady's Pictorial
noted; ‘the hostess looked most picturesque in a lovely gown made with a bodice and train of dark green silk and outlined with small gold beads; long hanging sleeves from the shoulder lined with dark green, worn over tightly-fitting sleeves of gold gauze, completed this very charming and picturesque attire.'

Anna, Comtesse de Brémont, remembered the cachet that an invitation to Constance's ‘at homes' carried. ‘I was not prepared for the crush of fashionable folk that overcrowded the charming rooms of the unpretentious house in Tite Street,' she wrote.

There was an air of brightness and luxury about it … A smart maid opened the door and I found myself in the wide hallway towards the dining room. There tea was served in the most delightfully unconventional manner from a quaint shelf extending around the wall, before which white enamelled (Chippendale) seats – modelled in various Grecian styles – were placed … I presently found myself sitting in one of the white Greek seats, drinking tea out of a dainty yellow cup that might have been modelled on a lotus flower, and being talked to by a young poet.

On finding Oscar in the smoking room, she was duly introduced to Constance, who was wearing ‘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 the neck, and crossing the wavy masses above the brow.'
⁵

In such circumstances it seems that Constance produced an event at which ultimately her husband could perform. The Comtesse noted
that, once Oscar took the floor, Constance would slip back into the general hubbub of the event, mixing among the crush, ‘a rapt expression of love and pride on her face; while her eyes were magnetised, on her husband's inspired features'.

Oscar did not underestimate Constance's ‘at homes' as a recruitment ground for
The Lady's World
. His tactics are revealed in his letter to Helena Sickert, the sister of the painter Walter Sickert and a writer, lecturer and campaigner for women's rights. First he wrote to her and invited her to write an article for his new magazine, and then he followed this with an invitation: ‘My wife is at home the first and third Thursdays in each month. Do come next Thursday with your mother and talk over the matter.'
⁶

It's hardly surprising that Constance's autograph book also reflects the notable women who graced her living room
en route
to their contribution to
The Lady's World
. Mary Braddon, the author of the best-selling novel
Lady Audley's Secret
, and the American poet and critic Louise Chandler Moulton penned little epigrams and notes of affection for their hostess. The South African novelist and women's rights campaigner Olive Schreiner made her mark. The writer John Strange Winter (real name Henrietta Eliza Vaughan Stannard) wrote a strange little note in blank verse that reminded Constance that

There are lions & there are tiger-

Cats, but the balance is pretty

Evenly kept between them:

Man is not all lion; woman is not all tiger-cat.
⁷

Constance must have felt inspired by these successful literary women with whom she now associated, not least because she had been progressing her own literary ambitions. Even during the personally difficult years of 1886 and 1887 Constance had exploited the literary opportunities that life within the Wilde circle brought, probably motivated as much by their financial mess as anything else.

While she was on honeymoon, Speranza had promised Constance that Willie Wilde was going to use his influence to get Constance appointed as a special correspondent for a women's
weekly magazine. It was no idle pledge. While Oscar was a drama critic for
The Dramatic Review
and other periodicals, Constance was writing drama reviews of the plays they saw together for the
Lady's Pictorial
. These were all written anonymously. But on at least one occasion a beneficiary of Constance's comments wrote to Oscar, suspecting
his
authorship and thanking him for his kind words. The amateur singer and social phenomenon Georgina Weldon was flattered that in an account of Henry Irving's
Merchant of Venice
she had been described as ‘radiant and young looking as ever'.
⁸
Oscar was forced to confess: ‘The little note in the
Lady's Pictorial
on the Irving Benefit was written not by me, but by my wife.' This ‘little note' was an article that stretched to close to a thousand words.

By June 1888 Constance was noted as one half of a ‘literary couple' attending a gathering of ‘Literary and Artistic Society' at the Royal Institute Gallery. But this literary acclaim was not down to her journalism alone. Although she had not realized the ‘practical Romance' she had discussed with Otho, she began to write children's stories.

In 1887 Oscar had his first short stories published. ‘Lord Arthur Savile's Crime', inspired by the amateur fortune-teller Edward Heron Allen, is the story of a young man who becomes the subject of a self-fulfilling destiny after a chiromantist (or palm-reader) called Mr Podger foresees a murder in the lines on his hand. Oscar's ‘The Canterville Ghost' also reflects the fascination for other-worldly phenomena that prevailed in society at the time, and which held a particular fascination for Constance.

While Oscar was busy negotiating the publication of these stories, Constance was approached to write a children's story for
The Bairn's Annual
, a publication produced by the Leadenhall Press and edited by the writer Alice Corkran. Corkran's Irish family were established friends of Speranza's and by default Oscar's. Alice's sister the society artist Henriette had painted Constance's portrait two years earlier.
⁹

For the third edition of
The Bairn's Annual
, released in November 1887 ready for the Christmas market, Constance wrote a story called ‘Was It a Dream?' Her contribution provided instant publicity for the annual.
‘The Bairn's Annual …
contains tales and poetry for children
in every way worthy of the Leadenhall Press,' noted
Lloyd's Weekly Newspaper
in its ‘Books of the Day' column, adding: ‘among the contributors being Mrs Oscar Wilde'.
¹⁰