Franny Moyle (43 page)

And so on 1 April 1895 Oscar Wilde and Lord Alfred Douglas arrived together at the St James's Theatre to see
The Importance of Being Earnest
. Constance, wearing white fur, was on their arms. The message was clear. If Oscar Wilde's wife had no issue with his relationship with Bosie Douglas, then neither should anyone else.

George Alexander, the theatre's manager, was starring as John Worthing, and the theatre was packed, as it had been ever since the show opened some six weeks previously. During the interval Oscar
went back-stage to talk to Alexander but was horrified to find that, instead of supporting him, Alexander considered his appearance with Constance in the worst possible taste.

Earlier that very day Wilde had lunched at the Café Royal with his friend the journalist and editor Frank Harris, and the latter had pleaded with him to flee to France with Constance. Previously Wilde had asked Harris to provide evidence in support of his literature at his trial, a request that Harris was in principle prepared to grant. But when Harris began to make his own inquiries among his society friends, reporters and police contacts about the way the trial was likely to go, he was mortified to find that the die seemed to have been already cast against Oscar. ‘Everyone assumed that Oscar Wilde was guilty of the worst that had ever been alleged against him; the very people who received him in their houses condemned him pitilessly … To my horror, in the public Prosecutor's office, his guilt was said to be known and classified.'
⁴⁷

Unpublished letters from Bosie's cousin and Oscar's old friend George Wyndham also indicate a widespread view that Oscar was going to lose the case.
⁴⁸
Oscar's and Bosie's apparent confidence was leaving them utterly blind to how they were perceived and to the mood of the people. Just because Oscar's plays were a hit, this did not mean that he was. Many people were envious of him, and the public who knew him only by repute always loved to see a shining star fall.

With Harris's advice to drop the case and escape still ringing in his ears, Alexander's words must have felt like a double blow. But yet again Oscar failed to take heed. After the interval, rather than taking Constance home, packing their bags and summoning the children from school, he returned to his seat in the theatre.

According to Bosie's memoirs, Constance suffered terribly under the strain of that night. She must have felt as if the entire auditorium was looking at her. And perhaps now she looked at the auditorium in a new light.

Just a few weeks earlier the ‘Call Boy' column of
Judy: The Conservative Comic
, a magazine that competed with
Punch
to amuse London's chattering classes, had carried an acerbic satire on Wildeans
in general as they were observed in the auditorium on the opening night of
The Importance
. Presented as the foil to those ‘New Women' among whom Constance would have counted herself were these ‘New Men'. The article described them meeting after the show in the vestibule, where one

was fastening a really charming silk wrapper round his delicate neck with a modest elegant diamond brooch, and to this same kindred spirit he suddenly gushed with pretty abandon ‘I'm awfully glad Oscar made it a serious comedy for trivial people. I would never have gone if he hadn't, because my corset hurts me so ‘when I laugh. Besides, Trixie, dear boy, violent laughter reddens the face so and makes one look such a shocking fright'.

This had been a seemingly harmless satire a few weeks ago, but now, with the public shame now being attached to Wilde and his circle, articles like these must have haunted Constance as she sat listening to her husband's wit played out on stage. All her adult life Constance had gone her own way. Determined and forthright, stubborn even – some had called her foolish – she was now about to pay a high price for the streak of rebellion in her character that had led her into the arms of the man that she now must have known was about to ruin her life.

It was the last time she ever went to the theatre with her husband. It may well have been the last time she saw him as a free man. And Bosie remembered that ‘When I said goodnight to her at the door of the theatre she had tears in her eyes.'
⁴⁹

13

The strife of tongues

T
HE LIBEL TRIAL
of the Marquess of Queensberry began on 3 April 1895 at the Old Bailey. Oscar put on a show, arriving at court in a brougham carriage with liveried servants in attendance. By the third day, after Queensberry's defence team had raked through the names of all the young men Oscar had associated with as part of their plea of justification, Wilde withdrew his libel charges against the Marquess. The judge ruled that the Marquess had been justified in calling Wilde a sodomite in the public interest. Queensberry was applauded. Oscar had not only lost the case but was faced with £70 of costs. He would almost certainly also now be prosecuted for indecency. His reputation was shredded, his professional life was in dire straits and his personal life was the talk not just of the town but of the whole of the Western world.

As the trial crumpled, Oscar returned to the hotel where he had been staying in Holborn to write a quick note to the press explaining his actions and then went on to Bosie's hotel, the Cadogan. He wrote to Constance begging her to ‘allow no one to enter my bed-room or sitting room – except servants – today. See no one but your friends.'
¹
But it was Oscar's friend Robbie Ross who went and broke the news to Constance in person. Oscar was beyond facing his wife. She was still staying in Lower Seymour Street with her aunt Mary Napier.

Oscar was arrested that night at around 6.30 p.m., charged with various counts of indecency. He was thrown into the cells at Bow Street. Robbie gathered some possessions from the hotel, a change of clothes and such like, but the police did not allow him to leave them
for Oscar. Oscar was now on remand, and he would live like all the other prisoners awaiting their hearing with the magistrates.

That evening Constance's family were distraught. Mary Napier, who had been nursing Constance in Lower Seymour Street, went around to Laura and Adrian Hope in Tite Street. She was, according to Laura's diary, ‘in a most frantic state about her poor niece Constance Wilde'.
²
Adrian Hope was well regarded within the Napier and Lloyd circles, and doubtless Aunt Mary was seeking both his advice and assistance. The very next day Bosie also called on the Hopes. He was not so interested in Constance. His mission was to raise bail money for Oscar. Interestingly, the Hopes were already showing their true colours with regard to Oscar. In Laura's diary he is noted as a ‘ monstrous husband' and a ‘fiend'.

The Hopes' response to Oscar was typical of the wider public damnation of Oscar. Bile poured forth as newspapers produced ream after ream of hostile prose. ‘We begin to breathe purer air,' declared the
Pall Mall Gazette
, a magazine to which Oscar had once been such a welcome contributor. Penny dreadful pamphlets were issued.
The Great West End Scandal
related in voracious detail the ‘unnatural offences' and ‘startling revelations' that the Queensberry libel case had brought forth. And of course, many of those who had once welcomed Oscar into their homes were quick to burn the telltale letters, photographs and calling cards that were evidence of their former association.

The day after Oscar's arrest the
Pall Mall Gazette
reported that his name had been removed from the playbills and programmes of his plays at the Haymarket and St James's theatres. It was noted elsewhere in the press that, although there had been no demonstrations outside the St James's Theatre, where
The Importance of Being Earnest
was playing, the audience was notably smaller, and remarks were shouted from the gallery at the mention of ‘Worthing', a place now linked in the public mind in with Oscar's illicit sex sessions with Alfonso Conway.

In contrast to this surge of public hatred towards Oscar, there was a huge groundswell of public support for Constance. She was
instantly identified as a victim of the terrible tragedy. She became from this point onwards ‘poor Mrs Wilde' in the public's mind. Constance was inundated with letters, many from people she knew well, some of whom had met her merely in passing. Some people who didn't know Constance at all felt moved to put pen to paper. They were united in their pity for her.

‘Dear Heart,' the actress Ellen Terry wrote in her large, loopy hand.

Be of good cheer & when you can give me please a wee sign of you – I suppose I could be of no use to you or you wd have written? I could wish you were working hard – slaving – sweating – until a hard plank at night wd seem the softest bed – to hoe up turnips, or write verse, anything only to work – I hope yr little boys are ever so well. I send my dear love to you – if it can not serve you, it at least can do no harm. I don't quite know what rubbish I'm talking I only want to send you my love. Dearest Constancy.
³

A Mrs Mundella, a woman not well known to Constance, also determined to write: ‘My impulse is too strong and so I act upon it and just send you a line to say how dearly sorry I am for you in your great trouble and how much sympathy I feel for you.' The Church Army sent a ‘sympathetic word', asking Constance to join them, noting, ‘No one shall know who you are.' Ruth Waugh in Oxford, who admitted she did not have the ‘honour of your personal acquaintance', nevertheless wrote offering her help to Constance, despite ‘my being at present a personal stranger to you'.
⁴

While Oscar's close friends, Bosie and Robbie among them, moved fast to act on his behalf, Constance's intimate circle surged into action the minute news about Oscar broke. Oscar's and Constance's associates were already forming into two distinct camps, factions that would eventually be fiercely at war with one another.

One of the first of her closest friends to write to Constance was, of course, Lady Mount-Temple. On 5 April Georgina, who could only have received a telegram to alert her to the disastrous news, sent a note dictated by Mary Fawcett, who was at her bedside. ‘You are
always to remember how welcome you will be at the Cliff if ever you feel the “strife of tongues” too much,' she said.
⁵

On 6 April, while Oscar was incarcerated in Bow Street and Bosie and Robbie Ross were working hard to secure his release, another of Constance's friends, Eva Roller, who lived at Clapham Common, wrote to Constance urging her that ‘if you are still ailing as when I last saw you, will you come to this quiet place and stay here till your dear boys come home from their holidays?'
⁶

The same day as Eva Roller's thoughts flew to Constance, so did those of the Burne-Jones family. Georgie Burne-Jones and both her son and daughter, Phil and Margaret, all wrote separately offering their services.

But for all those who instantly showed support and love there were almost certainly more who withdrew their association with Constance. Just as attendance at her ‘at home' had fallen off in the prelude to the libel trial, now that Oscar was facing disgrace, many of those who had once called themselves her friends quickly distanced themselves. For many in society homosexuality was considered so vile that the wife of the man who was now confirmed in the minds of most as Britain's, if not Europe's, most notorious homosexual was also damned.

Even Juliet, Lady Mount-Temple's daughter, could not bear to have anything to do with Constance once the news broke. She announced as much in a letter to her mother. She may well have been encouraging her mother also to drop Constance. Juliet's letter does not survive, but Georgina's response does. She could not help but sympathize with Juliet's position, although she “was determined to stand by her friend. ‘I do not think there could be a greater trial with such disgusting shame … one cannot bear even to allude to it,' Georgina agreed with Juliet. ‘Can one touch pitch and not be defiled? You are quite right in keeping aloof – so would I if I did not feel called upon to shelter her.'
⁷

Constance, all too aware of the implications of the events unfurling around her, sprang into action too. Now that he had lost his libel trial, there is little indication that Constance was standing by
her husband as he faced his own trial for indecency. In fact, her actions imply that, from the moment the libel trial was lost, Constance understood that her husband was doomed. She was not even waiting for further outcomes. From 5 April onwards her actions were entirely motivated by the need to protect her children's future.

As soon as the Queensberry libel trial got under way, Constance had taken the precaution of moving the boys out of their schools and sent Cyril to her family in Ireland. Letters from a relative, who signs herself simply as Susie, recount that, while elsewhere the world was having its full swing at his father's private life, Cyril, staying at Floods Hotel in the village of Borris in Co. Carlow, was having stories read to him and playing in the local streams and woods.
⁸
Vyvyan, meanwhile, stayed in London with his mother.

Constance was attempting to protect Cyril not only from public scrutiny but also from the truth. She would not explain to her sons the subsequent charges raised against Oscar. But Cyril was no fool. Later he would write to his brother and reveal that he had seen the newspaper placards and had persisted until someone, somewhere, explained to him what was going on. ‘I never rested until I found out.'
⁹

Constance swiftly explored options for her sons' futures. Even before Oscar's own trial had begun, she was formulating new futures for her children. She wrote to Bedales to secure references for Cyril, to which his schoolmaster responded with the pledge ‘to do anything in my power for Cyril'. On 11 April a friend wrote to her from Admiralty House in response to her inquiries about the navy as a suitable career for her elder son.