Franny Moyle (15 page)

Within a year the golden couple, effervescing with mutual devotion, dressed in their Aesthetic uniform, were the subject of a craze. Mrs Oscar Wilde, or ‘Mrs Oscar', as she was often referred to, had certainly become the brand extension that her husband had hoped. By May 1885, when galleries held their important summer show previews, Mr and Mrs Wilde were offering Lillie Langtry some serious competition as the main interest for celebrity spotters. ‘Mr and Mrs Oscar Wilde were the only rivals in public interest' to the ‘rush and crush whenever “the Lily” was recognised'.
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While Constance seemed to prefer ‘tea gowns' in lightweight and pale-coloured muslins for her day wear, for her evening wear Mrs Nettleship and Constance would often turn to green. At a preview of the Grosvenor Gallery's 1885 summer show

aestheticism culminated in Mrs Oscar Wilde's costume of a woollen stuff in dull reseda
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trimmed with pink, a kind of Kate Greenaway
dress, tied at the waist by a drooping pink sash. Round the neck she wore a wide Toby frill of two rows of ficelle lace with vari-coloured beads, and a large pink bow fastening a bunch of yellow marguerites; on her head a small Tam o'Shanter cap of the same greenish grey material was the accompaniment to this eccentric costume.
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A year later, at the same event, Constance was once again the focus of attention. This time she was dressed ‘in every shade of green from the palest lichen to the fullest summer foliage – a lizard trimmed with beetles'.
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Mrs Nettleship had sewn the iridescent green wings of the ‘jewel' beetle on to Constance's gown, so that they glistened like sequins.
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She would repeat this practice a year later, fashioning a hat for her client in which ‘beetles' wings shone from unsuspected corners whenever the head was turned'.
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Anna, Comtesse de Brémont, remembered how startlingly original Constance always looked. On one occasion she would be

purely Greek, on another early Venetian, in rich tints of old rose, with gold lace, high collar, trimmings and girdles. Again I would see her arrayed in draperies after the medieval style, or cerise and black satin with necklaces of quaint gems, all of which she wore with a shy air of depreciation, a bearing that was not quite in keeping with the stately, sumptuous style of dress.
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While the bohemian set considered her outfits charming, Constance's dress was generally considered eccentric and far too avant-garde by the wider public. Her new-found celebrity brought just as much ridicule as praise. One critic wrote that ‘The least said' about her dress ‘the better'.
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The press aside, even some friends and neighbours found themselves utterly bemused by Constance's transformed appearance. The poets Katherine Bradley and Edith Cooper noted in their memoirs how they were ‘received by Mrs Wilde in turquoise blue, white frills and amber stockings'.
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Adrian Hope's fiancée, Laura Troubridge, met Constance shortly after she and Oscar returned from honeymoon. Horrified, Laura described her ‘as looking too hopeless', dressed in ‘white muslin with absolutely no bustle; saffron coloured silk swathed about her shoulders, a huge
cartwheel Gainsborough hat, white, & bright yellow stockings & shoes'.
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Adrian Hope kept Laura up to date with news of Constance's wardrobe. That November he wrote to her, noting that, while visiting his Napier connections at Constance's old home of ioo Lancaster Gate, she and Oscar turned up for tea. ‘He dressed quite like anyone else, she in mouse-coloured velvet with a toque to match looking horrid.'
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Adrian recounts another instance when his friend Jo was introduced to the Wildes. ‘Jo sat amazed at Mrs Oscar,' Adrian reported to Laura, ‘and at Oscar who seemed to confound Jo's wits altogether.'
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There were occasions when Oscar and Constance wore planned, matching or complementary outfits that made something of a spectacle. Louise Jopling recalled an instance when they walked along the King's Road in Chelsea, with Oscar in a suit of brown cloth with innumerable little buttons on it that looked ‘rather like a glorified page's costume'. Mrs Oscar meanwhile ‘had on a large picture hat, with beautiful white feathers adorning it'. The couple were immediately taunted by a gang of street urchins, who, surprisingly well versed in the Bard, commented that they were like ‘'Amlet and Ophelia out for a walk'. On another occasion, at a private view at the Grosvenor Gallery, they were ‘a harmony in green. The coat of the apostle of culture was of Lincoln green cloth heavily trimmed with fur, while Mrs Oscar had a very pretty and graceful velvet gown of exactly the same shade of colour.'
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But what seems clear is that, apart from such moments of collaboration, it was generally Constance who now took on the mantle of eccentric dress, while Oscar gradually began to adopt what would become his signature style: conventional attire with unconventional details. Although his dress may have had dandyish touches (Bradley and Cooper remembered him in a lilac shirt with heliotrope tie at around this time), it was more often than not now described as ‘sensible'.
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It was as if his marriage to Constance had bestowed a degree of respectability and maturity on the one-time rebel, who now seemed ‘lulled into confidence … by the security ensured through
his happy marriage … There was no longer any need for eccentric and startling self-advertisement.'
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Oscar conversely gave his new wife permission to express the most extreme tendencies of her character.

Although fashion may appear superficial, Constance's collaboration with Mrs Nettleship represented a practical demonstration of serious thinking about dress that was circulating within certain circles. That Oscar would begin to explore the subject of dress in a new set of lectures devised within a few months of his marriage may well reflect the influence that Constance had on him and his subject matter.

On 1 October 1884 Oscar delivered his new lecture on dress to an audience in Ealing. He would repeat it on tour over the next six months. Oscar suggested that there had been a golden age of English dress. Harking back to a pre-1066 England, when ladies wore the loose medieval robes that the Pre-Raphaelite painters had re-imagined, he suggested that this era of beauty and simplicity was lost when William the Conqueror and his French court brought in new, exaggerated styles. Despite another brief period of beautiful clothing in the last quarter of the seventeenth century, the restoration of Charles II revived the French influence once again, and since then it had persisted. In the 1880s the French-inspired Watteau toilette, with its hourglass profile created by tight corsetry, its tight-fitting sleeves and heavy bustle, and its high-heeled shoes dominated English fashion.

Fundamentally his views on dress recognized the need to liberate women from the distorting and deforming clothing that moulded their bodies into idealized shapes. Oscar suggested that dress should be ‘rational'. He advocated the wearing of high waistbands that did away with corsetry. He praised the Greeks, Assyrians and Egyptians for clothing that was supported from the shoulder rather than the waist, and he condemned high-heeled shoes that tipped the body of the wearer forwards. He even suggested that wool was the ideal fabric, able to provide warmth in winter but also feel cool in summer.

It's hard not to hear something of Constance's voice in these lectures
. That she favoured dresses with high waistbands is clear. That she shunned high heels is also known, not least because of a comical note she wrote to her brother in 1882 in which she announced: ‘I have ordered a pair of shoes to be made for me with broad soles and low heels. We have discovered that my left foot is a three quarters of a size larger than my right.'
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To the twenty-first-century eye, the considerations of where to place a waistband and whether or not to wear heels seem flippant. But in the nineteenth century these were considerations that had genuinely important social issues at their heart. The issue of restriction to one side, there were the health issues at stake: tight corsetry crushed internal organs and deformed ribs. The stiff ivory stays often included in corsets deformed muscles and created chronic spinal damage. There were safety issues too. The large crinolines that women had worn in the earlier part of the century were terrible fire hazards. Oscar's own family had had their share of tragedy in this respect. His father's two illegitimate daughters had died in hideous circumstances. The girls had attended a dance one evening. The crinoline skirt of one caught in a fire. When the other tried to save her sister she too caught ablaze. They became two human torches. Despite the frantic attempts of other party-goers to roll the girls on the floor and beat out the flames, both of them succumbed to their burns.

Working-class women, even in their simpler outfits, also found themselves at risk from their clothes. The long, cumbersome skirts that women wore were trip and catch hazards – something that working women in factory environments were all too aware of. A skirt getting caught in heavy machinery was a genuine danger.

The idea that Aesthetic fashion was also something altogether safer and more wholesome for women was soon being widely acknowledged. By 1885 the press were conflating the terms ‘artistic' and ‘hygienic' when it came to dress. When Constance attended a lecture that Whistler gave in March that year, the lady correspondent for the
Bristol Mercury and Daily Post
observed plenty of pretty dresses

of both styles of fashion which now prevail in society, according to the taste of the wearer. Tight-fitting, well draped gowns, after the Parisian models, and some which might be called hygienic, or perhaps artistic, loose and flowing and very simple. Mrs Oscar Wilde of course wore one of the latter style, with a very high waist and a plain skirt. It was made of soft, creamy silk, embroidered with golden yellow flowers and she had daffodils in her hair and on her bodice.
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Health and healthier options in life were an ongoing fascination for Victorians in the mid-1880s, and they were not confined to dress. As a follow-up to the immensely popular ‘Fisheries' exhibition of 1883, the Prince of Wales came up with the idea of a health exhibition. The ‘Healtheries', as it quickly became known, was designed apparently to encourage healthy and hygienic modes of living, ‘one of the first conditions necessary for the happiness and prosperity of a nation', as explained by the Duke of Cambridge in his address at the opening of the event.

In reality it was like an enormous handicraft show, featuring craft practices and handmade items from around the world. One of the most spectacular exhibits was a period street which saw lost buildings from London's past rebuilt, inside which the city's various crafts guilds showed off their wares and methods. There were working dairies producing milk and making butter on site, as well as areas devoted to the craft specialities of other countries, with Indian weavers demonstrating carpet-making and an Italian court featuring beautiful inlaid furniture as well as Venetian glass and mosaic. In this strangely eclectic assemblage the pump room from Bath had been rebuilt, and Royal Doulton had constructed a ceramic temple. In the section dedicated to healthy dress there were stalls featuring practical dress for various activities as well as displays of chemicals that might make fabrics less flammable and non-toxic natural dyes.

There was also a display of waxworks dressed in historical costumes dating from the Norman Conquest to the Regency period.
The Times
explained that this was intended to provide a comparative study of civilian dress in its bearings on hygiene at different periods in the nation's growth. The architect Edward Godwin, who was simultaneously
busy modelling Oscar and Constance's new home in Tite Street, gave an address on this section of the exhibition. In fact, Godwin's address presented remarkably similar points to Oscar's lectures on the same subject, made some months later. Like Oscar, Godwin talked about Greek dress, about the need for clothes that emancipate rather than constrict a body and about the recommendation that shoulders rather than waists should carry the weight of a garment. And he too made the connection between health and beauty.

The ‘Healtheries' loomed quite large in the first few months of Constance and Oscar's marriage. For a start Oscar had participated in a fundraising venture for the Chelsea Hospital for Women that was associated with the exhibition. He contributed to
The Shakespearean Story Book
, a one-off novelty publication that went on sale at the ‘Healtheries' the day before his marriage, and which was intended to accompany some Shakespearean performances and costume displays occurring in the Royal Albert Hall, part of the wider exhibition site. Then later in the autumn Constance and Oscar both participated in a Royal Fête at the exhibition. At another charity event, this time supporting London hospitals, the couple manned one of many celebrity flower stalls. Amid other luminaries selling flowers of all kinds, ferns, exotics, fruits and refreshments, the Wildes' stall was, of course, offering lilies and sunflowers.

Perhaps with the theme of the exhibition uppermost in her mind, Constance made a point of wearing a divided skirt to the occasion. This was a very early form of wide-legged trouser that provided women with unprecedented freedom when it came to walking. She consequently became the focus of popular interest and found herself portrayed in the press in this novel outfit, along with a loose bodice tied with a sash, and a waistcoat.

The ‘Healtheries' also provided a good source for hand-crafted decorative objects for the house in Tite Street. Just as Constance was now the living embodiment of the wife in an artistic marriage, so Tite Street would be the working precinct in which the marriage would operate. As such it too needed to be aesthetic, practical and healthy. The Wildes had come across A. B. Ya's stall at the
‘Healtheries', which was selling ‘Objets d'Arts du Japon'. A letter between Constance and Godwin indicates that they purchased a number of items from him.
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