The Fall of the House of Wilde (38 page)

Jane was unlike Victorian Englishwomen. Where many dressed in sombre and sensible colours, Jane wore white and other bright-coloured dresses, oriental shawls, flowers and Celtic ornaments. Jane found the ‘mass of black' she saw everywhere in London oppressive and blamed Queen Victoria for the dreariness, and for the prevalence of women who, according to Jane, dressed to express ‘the stern, useful, homely virtues of their race'.
³
In his biography of Oscar Wilde, Frank Harris disapprovingly described Jane as ‘“made-up” like an actress'.
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Those, like Violet Hunt, who came to see the ‘mother of Oscar', faulted her for not being
à la mode
. Hunt described Jane ‘in an old white ball dress, in which she must have graced the soirees of Dublin a great many years ago'.
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Katharine Tynan, probably commenting on the same white dress, thought she looked like a ‘Druid priestess', with her hair hanging down her back; a throwback to the dawn of the Celtic era.
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The tresses of loose hair bespoke the same freedom of spirit that had made her speak out in 1848, and were probably seen as indecorous for those used to Victorian heads covered in bonnets or festooned with ringlets. Henrietta Corkran, a regular at Jane's London salons in the 1880s, gives a more vivid picture of her appearance at that time.

A very tall woman – she looked over six foot high – she wore that day a long crimson silk gown which swept the floor. Her skirt was voluminous; underneath there must have been two crinolines, for when she walked there was a peculiar swaying, swelling movement like that of a vessel at sea, the sails filled with wind. Over the crimson were flounces of Limerick lace, and round what had once been a waist an Oriental scarf, embroidered with gold, was twisted. Her long, massive, handsome face was plastered with white powder; over the black-blue glossy hair was a gilt crown of laurels. Her throat was bare, so were her arms, but they were covered with quaint jewellery.
⁷

With her gilt crown of laurels and bold, languorous, sensual swagger, she expressed her idiosyncratic soul.

In the magazine articles Jane was writing at the time, she speaks of dress as a person's way of sympathising with the character of an age. If so, Jane's dress was never in synchrony with her age, least of all when she lived in London. Emancipated women, the Aesthetic Movement, and Oscar in his capacity as one of its mouthpieces, argued for a woman's clothes to reflect the form of her body and respect its physiology. The lean and simple lines, then all the rage, Jane pronounced as ‘truly anaesthetic'. Modern dress, she claimed, ‘violates every principle of artistic beauty in the formation of the figure and annihilates, as far as possible, all the graceful folds and curves which drapery naturally assumes'.
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In dress, Jane spoke an idiom all her own. Struggling to pay bills, she recycled old images and gowns, and did what she could to defend herself against the marginalisation and insignificance that others in London might have faced without money or a promising professional future. Her direct uncensored thought, her sense of the ridiculous, the conglomeration of masculine courage and feminine kindness made Jane an untypical Victorian, a kind of bluestocking in the skin of a courtesan. Like her son, she was a paradox – an intellectual coquette, unmarked by the stamp of her time and indifferent to public approval.

For many years the at-homes were popular enough to become known as ‘crushes', thanks in no small measure to the growing fame of Oscar. The best account of the salon to survive was written by Anna, Comtesse de Brémont, an American woman Oscar had met at a dinner party in New York. She also offers a vivid picture of the public face of mother and son in her book,
Oscar Wilde and His Mother
, published in 1911. Her curiosity to meet Jane had come from her conversation with Oscar, who had spoken so highly of his mother, indeed, ‘whose praises' de Brémont said Oscar ‘was never weary of singing'. Her curiosity remained dormant until she made her first trip to London in 1886. Armed with a letter of introduction, she then had to wait a month in London before receiving a note from Jane explaining her delay. Everything was ‘upside down in her home', as she was about to move to another house, but if she were prepared to ‘waive ceremony', she would be most welcome to come and take tea with her.
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Jane was still living at Park Street, Mayfair, and did not move to 146 Oakley Street, Chelsea until October 1888.

Their relationship crystallised on that first occasion when Jane opened the door to a friendship that would enrich de Brémont's life and last until Jane's death. The comtesse attributed to Jane the opening of her cerebral faculties; in her words, it ‘marked a great change in my life . . . the woman who was to teach me out of her own intellectual struggles and failures the secret of success'.
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As with most memoirists, de Brémont ‘could scarcely credit the fact that a woman of Lady Wilde's distinction should be so simply housed'. She continued, ‘it was with most misgiving that I raised the rusty knocker on the door'. She was promptly greeted by an Irish maid, holding out a hand to welcome and help her to negotiate her way through the darkness of the hall, explaining, ‘It's her ladyship that loves to turn daylight into candlelight.' The comtesse was then beckoned into ‘a large low-ceiled panelled room dimly illuminated by red-shaded candles', where ‘the majestic figure' of Lady Wilde stood ‘in the centre of the obscurity'. Expecting to be intimidated, the comtesse was enchanted. Jane's voice performed the sorcery. She spoke ‘warm words of welcome in the rich, vibrating voice that was one of her greatest fascinations'. Of her impression of Jane, de Brémont wrote:

As she held my hand in both of hers and drew me nearer the candles to take a good look at me, I saw her noble face more clearly. I was infinitely moved by the pathetic expression of her large, lustrous eyes, and the evidences of womanly coquetry in the arrangement of her hair and those little aids to cheat time and retain a fading beauty.
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The comtesse spoke of Jane's ‘masculine' courage, her fearlessness. What struck her about this ‘grande dame' above all was her rooted self-assurance. ‘Never before, nor since, have I met a woman who was so absolutely sure of herself and of what she was. I felt an absorbing respect for her courage in being herself.'
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She wrote of Jane's ‘lofty indifference to her surroundings', the way she made ‘her surroundings subservient to her personality'. But, she adds astutely, ‘that was the charm of the pose'.
¹³
Under no circumstances would the proud Jane let anyone think that materials mattered. She was quick to show de Brémont her disdain for money-making. She aired her pet peeve, the crude greed of commercial people and told de Brémont, ‘We are leaving [Park Street] owing to the deterioration of our landlord – he has developed commercial instincts, and is desirous of converting the place into a shop.'
¹⁴
On another occasion she asked the comtesse not to bring a certain American lady to her at-homes, and when de Brémont protested that ‘she is a most respectable woman', Jane replied, ‘We are above respectability!' She gave her guests these off-the-cuff remarks to hang on to, reminding them that she was above the trivia of money and middle-class conventions.

The comtesse also inveighed against some memoirists, ‘who received hospitality at [Jane's] hands and were assiduous in their attendance at her receptions', and who then wrote ‘absurd stories of Lady Wilde's eccentricities in dress or bearing and overlooked her genius for the lost art of conversation and the intellectual gifts that drew to her At Homes Browning and other celebrated men and women of letters'.
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She was keen to set the record straight and provided an account of a typical Saturday at Oakley Street. This was probably in the late 1880s. Such was the crowd that any cabman could identify the house from the ‘long line of hansoms and broughams', running along the wide street connecting the Embankment's Albert Bridge to the Kings Road. Though presided over by Jane, the star of the magic circle was Oscar, who typically sauntered in and took ‘a position by the Chimney piece', from where he struck ‘an attitude of smiling boredom'. De Brémont noted how he tried ‘to efface himself that his mother might display her brilliant wit and hold everyone by the charm of her conversation'.
¹⁶

De Brémont came to appreciate Jane's
savoir vivre
, surmising that it came from the real interest she took in everything. Jane apparently showed as much stamina for listening as for talking and immediately sensed in the comtesse the spirit of a writer. With the flattery and encouragement of others that was her wont, Jane instilled in her young visitor on that first meeting an interest in her own abilities hitherto unfelt. ‘Her words had an electric influence on my mind,' the comtesse said. Jane insisted that she commit herself ‘at once' to a regular practice of writing. ‘Write as you have spoken to-day and success will follow. I am sure of it!' Jane said, and offered her ‘guidance and criticism', should she need it.
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Oscar's friend Frank Harris spoke of Jane's idealism:

Her idealism came to show as soon as she spoke. It was a necessity of her nature to be enthusiastic; unfriendly critics said hysterical, but I should prefer to say high-falutin' about everything she enjoyed and admired. She was at her best in misfortune; her great vanity gave her a certain proud stoicism which was admirable.
¹⁸

Harris had recently, in 1882, come from America to London, and started out as an American correspondent. He had led an eventful life. Born in 1856 in Galway in the west of Ireland to Welsh parents, at thirteen he ran away to New York where he worked as a boot-black, a porter and a labourer. From New York he went to Chicago, then became a cowboy and finally enrolled at the University of Kansas, where he earned a degree in law. Over the next decade, Harris's influence in London would grow as the editor of a series of newspapers, including the
Evening News
, the
Fortnightly Review
and the
Saturday Review
. In the late 1880s he became close to Oscar and was in a position to see the confidence and self-esteem Jane had instilled in him. Oscar once told Harris ‘you must go about repeating how great you are till the dull crowd comes to believe', and if proof were needed one had only to look at the results of the new medium of advertising. ‘Why is Pear's soap successful?' Oscar asked Harris. ‘Not because it is better or cheaper than any other soap, but because it is more strenuously puffed.' Oscar had the capacity to strenuously puff himself in spades. Indeed, admiration of himself was a ‘lifelong devotion', and as Harris said of him, ‘He proclaimed his passion on the housetops.'
¹⁹

27

Aesthetic Living

Oscar and Constance were living at 16 Tite Street. Oscar was still lecturing, travelling around the country while Constance remained in London. Constance's grandfather died seven weeks into their marriage, whereby Constance, as expected, almost tripled her income. It was much needed. In 1884 Oscar sold Illaunroe to help pay off his debts, as the income he earned from lecturing was insufficient by itself.

Outwardly, Oscar looked a transformed man. ‘How changed!' the Comtesse de Brémont said of the newly wed Oscar when she met him at one of Jane's at-homes. ‘He was no longer the aesthetic poseur, but a resplendent dandy, from the pale pink carnation in the lapel of his frock-coat to the exquisite tint of the gloves and the cut of the low shoes of the latest mode.' The comtesse thought he had acquired an air of ‘serenity'. She put it down to his marriage to ‘a rich and lovely wife'. ‘There was no longer any need for eccentric and startling self-advertisement . . . no longer the necessity of a pose to conceal his poverty,' she observed.
¹

That de Brémont thought Oscar's antics were a camouflage for his ‘poverty' says a lot about 1880s England, and something about Oscar as well. The England to which Oscar returned had become markedly more conscious of ‘art', thanks in no small part to the publicity Aestheticism received during his tour of America. That is not to overlook the importance of the Arts and Crafts pioneers and the reforming zeal of South Kensington Museum, now known as the Victoria and Albert Museum. Even so, Oscar undeniably helped to transform the place of ‘art' in late-nineteenth-century domestic life. Aestheticism had a huge impact on taste. The Aesthetic Movement ushered in to a wider national consciousness a sociological concept that would not be named for at least half a century. In its harnessing of art to retail and to publicity, it hastened the consumerist idea of a ‘lifestyle'. The movement reflected the aspirations of a materialistic society.

Ruskin's mantra, ‘beautiful art can only be produced by people who have beautiful things about them', ended the Romantic idea of the artist as wild and untamed, sailing the high seas or roaming in the wilderness. The artist went indoors in search of ‘a refuge, a sort of cloistral refuge from a certain vulgarity in the actual world', as Pater hoped art would provide. Tennyson reflected more equivocally on the desirability of artistic ivory towers in his 1857 poem ‘The Palace of Art' (‘I built my soul a lordly pleasure-house/ Wherein at ease for aye to dwell') at a time when artists began to build for themselves surprisingly splendid homes and striking studios.
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That artists of the 1850s, meticulously detailing their medieval-style set pieces, had to surround themselves with props only partly explains the change in their way of life. Also driving change was the unprecedented expansion of the picture-buying public from traditional aristocratic patrons, who typically bought Old Masters, to embrace newly rich merchants and manufacturers, who preferred to purchase contemporary works. With the increase in income from picture sales and from royalties on prints, many artists possessed the means to house themselves lavishly. For instance, the studio house in Holland Park that Frederic Leighton commissioned from the architect George Aitchison began modestly in 1866, but grew over time into an exotic set-piece as imagination and resources permitted.