Franny Moyle (14 page)

The problem for Oscar and Constance, however, was that, although they had found a house they liked, they still didn't have a sufficiently large amount of cash to secure it. Although Constance now had an annual income arranged, to lease Tite Street the couple would have to come up with a lump sum. It may well have been this final hurdle in regulating their affairs that encouraged Constance and Oscar to delay their wedding until May.

John Horatio once again came to the aid of his granddaughter. On 29 April an arrangement was made by which a further advance of £500, to be offset against her future legacy, was paid into the Union Bank of London. This sum would allow Constance to acquire a six-year lease on Tite Street and the cost of the modifications to the house that they wanted to make.

And so eventually, after a brief six-month engagement, the public were delivered the wedding that they had been so eagerly anticipating. The event had been kept as low-key as possible, not least because of the state of John Horatio's health. Only close family and friends were admitted to the ceremony by special ticket. The newspapers
noted with disappointment that there were few literary or artistic glitterati amid the invitees. Whether Anna Kingsford made the ceremony is not sure. Jimmy Whistler telegrammed on the day that he would be late. People such as Oscar's solicitor and family friend George Lewis and his wife attended, the latter in a costume of black and amber. Ada Swinburne-King and Speranza were in brilliant shades of grey, the former in rich grey satin with black mantle and bonnet and the latter in silver-grey brocaded silk and satin. The actress Mrs Bernard-Beere wore a jet-covered dress with a black hat trimmed with yellow flowers.

Underwhelmed by the celebrity quotient of the guests, the large crowd of Oscar Wilde fans who had gathered to see Constance emerge from her carriage outside St James's Church, Sussex Gardens, at 2.30 p.m. on 29 May 1884 were then met with further disappointment. Those members of the public who had hoped to see her in that saffron dress which had been so talked about were instantly surprised. Rather than the deep golden yellow of the tip of the saffron crocus thread, Constance's dress had just the merest tint of yellow. The
Ladies' Treasury
described it as a ‘rich creamy satin dress … of delicate cowslip tint', while the
Lady's Pictorial
thought it more of an ‘ivory satin'. Oscar, meanwhile, ‘appeared in the ordinary and commonplace frock coat of the period'.

There were, of course, some more obvious concessions to Aestheticism. Rather than being bustled, the skirt of Constance's dress was plain, with a long train. The bodice was low-cut with a Medici collar, and the sleeves were, of course, puffed. Instead of the traditional wreath of orange blossom, she wore a wreath of myrtle leaves, which the ‘Metropolitan Gossip' column of the
Belfast News
informed its readers was ‘a more poetical and highly classical adornment'. According to the press, the most unusual aspect of the outfit, apart from its surprising simplicity, was the veil. Hanging from the back of her head, it was Indian silk gauze embroidered with pearls. And around her waist Constance wore a silver girdle, which was Oscar's wedding gift to her. She carried a bouquet of lilies.

If anything, it was the bridesmaids who provided the spectacle that
the crowd had been expecting. Six of Constance's cousins, two them children, were dressed in terracotta, ‘after Sir Joshua Reynolds'. The elder girls had ‘bodices and short over skirts of figured nun's veiling; the ground was pale blue, the flowers old gold. They wore high crowned straw hats trimmed with long cream feathers and knots of surah silk. All the bridesmaids wore yellow roses at the throat; amber necklaces, and carried bouquets of the fairest and most fragrant water lilies.' John Horatio was too ill to attend the ceremony, and so it was left to Constance's uncle Hemphill to give her away. Willie was Oscar's best man.

Oscar selected an extremely unusual wedding ring that he gave Constance that day. At first glance it is a simple gold band. But on closer examination it is sliced in half, so that it opens to form two interlocking rings. On the inside of one is the tiny inscription ‘29th May 1884' while the other bears the names ‘Constance and Oscar'.

After the ceremony the party retired for a brief reception at Lancaster Gate. There they ate a cake covered with sprays of jasmine and lily of the valley. By 4.30 that afternoon Constance and Oscar were on a train from Charing Cross
en route
to a honeymoon in Paris. Constance was wearing what one publication described as a dark mahogany, and another reported as a deep crimson, travelling dress. Both press accounts agree that she wore a large-brimmed hat to match. What no one needed to report, but everyone took for granted, was that above all Constance was wearing a huge smile.

5

Violets in the refrigerator

T
HE
‘E
CHOES OF
Society' column of the
North Wales Chronicle
carried a satirical sketch in its July 1884 issue that went like this:

Mrs Oscar Wilde – ‘Yes dear, dinner is ready. Which do you prefer, sunflower dried, or some toasted lily of the valley?' Oscar – ‘Ah! Ahem! Is that all you have?' ‘Oh no! There is a big dish of violets in the refrigerator.' ‘My love haven't you got anything to eat?' ‘Eat! Eat! Why what do you mean?' ‘I should like some beef and potatoes and bread and a bottle of ale, and some' – But the bride of the aesthete had fainted.

When Constance married Oscar in May 1884, she became a celebrity. She also became an integral partner for her husband in what Oscar considered the next phase of his career. If as a bachelor he had lived life as the embodiment of Aesthetic principles, in marriage he saw the opportunity ‘of realising a poetical conception … to set an example of the pervading influence of art in matrimony'.
¹

Since his return from America, Oscar had abandoned his silk breeches and long hair in favour of elegant suits and a short, curled coiffure. In doing so he had cast off any sense of boyishness that might formerly have been associated with his public persona. Marriage allowed him to develop this more mature character further in the public imagination. Instinctively Oscar understood the key to maintaining the interest of one's public is to offer them change. Constance could at once provide this, as well as amplifying and extending his profile.

But this is not to suggest that Oscar's and Constance's marriage
was some form of publicity stunt, or merely something intended to benefit Oscar solely. It was a happy coincidence that allowed him his new ambition to explore how Aestheticism, and the liberal thinking that attached itself to this artistic movement, might apply in marriage. Far more importantly, his feelings for Constance were rooted in what was, according to the couple's friends, a very genuine love affair. Ada Leverson, one such friend, noted that ‘when he first married, he was quite madly in love, and showed himself an unusually devoted husband.'
²

On honeymoon in Paris they took reasonably priced rooms, no doubt with John Horatio and Aunt Emily's words about the need for economy and careful housekeeping still ringing in their ears. Their apartment in the Hotel Wagram, rue de Rivoli, was ‘3 rooms, 20 francs a day, not dear for a Paris Hotel', Constance explained to Otho. ‘We are
au quatrième
quite a lovely view over the gardens of the Tuileries.'
³

From here the couple would launch themselves out into Paris society on a daily basis and indulge themselves in art. They visited the annual Paris salon to see the work by Oscar's friends that was on display: Whistler was showing
Harmony in Grey and Green: Miss Cicely Alexander
, as well as
Arrangement in Grey and Black, No. 2: Thomas Carlyle
, and the sculptor John Donoghue a bas-relief of a nude boy playing the harp. They went to the opera and to see Sarah Bernhardt in
Macbeth
, a production in which Constance witnessed ‘the most splendid acting I ever saw. Only Donalbain was bad. The witches were charmingly grotesque. The Macbeth very good, Sarah of course superb, she simply stormed the part.'
⁴
They held dinner parties and attended dinner, luncheon and breakfast parties by return. Constance met an array of new artistic people, among them the American artist John Singer Sargent. Then there was the French novelist Paul Bourget, the sculptor Donoghue (whom Oscar had befriended in America) and the writer Robert Sherard.

The evening before he married, Oscar had had dinner with some of his closest married female friends, the painter Louise Jopling and the wife of his lawyer, George Lewis. They gave him advice on how
a ‘young husband should treat his wife'.
⁵
If they told him he should be romantic, full of grand gesture and spoil his new life-companion, then he followed their advice to the letter. Oscar was enormously extravagant towards Constance. If he ventured out with his Parisian friends while Constance remained behind to write letters, the minute he left her, Oscar would send bouquets of flowers back to their rooms and shower love gifts on her the moment he returned. He played the role of lover extremely well, and not just for Constance's benefit. Robert Sherard found himself strolling along the Parisian streets with an Oscar full of nuptial joys and attempting to reveal in detail the delights of sleeping with his wife, details that Sherard squeamishly asked Oscar to desist from divulging.

But in spite of these grand gestures, even on his honeymoon Oscar displayed a characteristic that over the years of marriage to come would prove a thorn in Constance's side. It is obvious that Oscar enjoyed being apart from his wife as much as he loved being with her. He would disappear, and she would be left alone to her own devices.

Oscar was attracted by danger. He loved experiencing low life and would seek out notorious street haunts, where he would immerse himself in another world. Even on his honeymoon Oscar and Robert Sherard ventured out to some of the low-life bars in Paris, such as the Château Rouge, a notorious criminal haunt, above which was Paris's ‘Salle des Morts'. This was a room in which the city's beggars and orphans, dropouts and cut-throats spent the night – a room full of ragged men who looked, in slumber, more like corpses than human beings, and upon whom Oscar gazed in horror and wonder.

Within a few months of their marriage Constance and Oscar would begin to talk about matrimony in unusual terms, consciously ‘modern' in their approach to their new status. Adrian Hope recalled one dinner party with them in which Constance ‘said she thought it should be free to either party to go off at the expiration of the first year'.
⁶
Oscar subsequently offered the proposal that marriage should be a contract for seven years, renewable as either party sees fit at the end of that duration.

It's intriguing to speculate whether these expressions on both sides
promoting some form of trial period in wedlock, or some notion that marriage need not be eternally binding, indicates that the marriage suffered some teething troubles. What is sure is that Oscar and Constance, like so many other Victorians, barely knew each other when they married. They had met many times, but nearly always in public situations. And Oscar had spent much of their six-month engagement away on his lecture tour.

It seems likely, given the many accounts of a genuine love affair between the two of them early on, that they simply suffered a kind of shock reaction to the adjustments each had to make to accommodate life with the other. Oscar must have been surprised to find, beneath the delicate exterior of his violet-eyed Artemis, a rather steely resolve and something of a short temper. Later in life, after Arthur Pinero had written his stage hit
The Second Mrs Tanqueray
, Oscar's nickname for Constance would be Mrs Cantankeray.
⁷
Constance, on the other hand, had to accommodate Oscar's ego, his tendency to leave her alone and his utter uselessness with money.

In spite of this, the public profile that they presented was immediately, and for the next few years, fixed as one of utter union and single-minded purpose. If Oscar had an idea that there could be such a thing as an artistic marriage, then Constance was ready and prepared to explore it with him.

The first, instant evidence of this was Constance's wardrobe. Although she had in recent years adopted the loose dress that Otho so loathed, on her honeymoon Constance revealed a new wardrobe that took Aesthetic fashion to new heights and spoke not only of her allegiance but also of her preparedness to partner the high priest of Aestheticism in awakening a wider public to just how far art might be extended in life.

A sense of Mrs Nettleship's fabrications is given by
The Lady's Pictorial
, which reported:

If the French ladies are more slaves to fashion edicts than are their English sisters, and are less indulgent to eccentricity in dress or manner, they yet recognize the superior right of grace inspired by taste to adorn itself with picturesque becomingness. Mrs Oscar
Wilde, in her large white plumed hats, in her long dust cloaks of creamy alpaca richly trimmed with ruches of coffee coloured lace, in her fresh and somewhat quaintly-made gowns of white muslin, usually relieved by touches of golden ribbon, or with yellow floss silk embroideries, is declared ‘charmante' and to be dressed with absolute good taste.
⁸

‘My dress creates a sensation in Paris,' Constance proudly announced to Otho on the fifth day of her honeymoon. ‘Miss R,
⁹
who is as I said, frightful … wants me to get Mrs Nettleship to make a dress for her exactly like the one of mine. Of course I promised. Imagine Oscar's horrors.'
¹⁰

Constance had a passion for old lace and embroidery, and so pieces that she had collected over the years were now worked into her outfits by Mrs Nettleship. One description of Constance in the year of her marriage makes note of her ‘in a very artistic looking gown of crimson and gold brocade. There was a Watteau plait at the back and the sleeves were long, full and puffed at the top of the elbows. A wide and falling collar of old lace complemented the chief features of this very elegant toilet.'
¹¹