Franny Moyle (31 page)

The burglars were apprehended in November, and their stash, the product of some sixty-five housebreakings, displayed at King's Cross. Constance dashed down to see if anything had been salvaged from the Wilde household but was dismayed when nothing of theirs had been recovered ‘in spite of the newspapers informing the world that we have recovered all our things'.
¹⁹

The break-in did not deter Constance from heading to Dorking in the second week of October, to another house party, which included esteemed literary guests such as the writer George Meredith, who lived at nearby Box Hill. Constance described him as talking agreeable nonsense and being ‘very pleasant and genial, though a strange being like all geniuses'.
²⁰

She joined this social gathering only after having the distress of saying goodbye to Otho. He and his new, second, family were returning to the Continent, fleeing from mounting debts and various calls on him from the sinking Leasehold Investment Company. Perhaps all too aware of the distress that separation from her brother had caused her, Oscar made sure that he wrote to his wife almost as soon as she arrived on this particular jaunt. ‘I hear this morning from
London
Oscar that Willie Wilde is married in America to the rich widow who has been longing for ages to marry him!' Constance reported to Georgina from Dorking. In a very un-Constance-like line, she may well have been quoting from Oscar when she
continued: ‘The news has much the same effect upon me socially that poor Mr Parnell's death has upon me politically – that is, that it is the best solution of a difficulty, and that things in both cases will now right themselves.'
²¹

Constance had forgotten, in relaying this latest news to Georgina, that her husband was not in fact in London while she was away, but was staying in Brighton. There was an arrangement that Oscar would join Constance and her party in time to celebrate his birthday on the 16th. Constance was excited at the prospect of seeing her husband but was disappointed that, after a night of storms over the south coast, he overslept, failed to catch the right train and discovered himself back in London instead.

Whether or not Oscar missed the train to Dorking accidentally on purpose, he made up for his failure to show with more loving letters. ‘He has been so dear in writing to me since I came here,' Constance assured Georgina, ‘and I have written to him, as I found he did not at all like my not writing to him when I was away before!!'
²²

The pattern of separation was set to continue into October. Oscar had been writing the play that would become
Lady Windermere's Fan
since the beginning of the year. By October it had reduced him to a state of nervous exhaustion, and he was much in need of a break. He informed Constance that he was planning to go to Paris with a friend to recuperate. Quite who the friend was that Oscar was proposing to take with him to Paris is not noted. But it may well have been Oscar's intention to take Lord Alfred Douglas with him.

Oscar had met ‘Bosie' Douglas in June that year, as had Constance. Slight, blond and clean-shaven, he was an Oxford student and a Wilde fanatic. A practising homosexual who was himself exploring homoerotic themes in his own writing, he had become passionate about
The Picture of Dorian Gray
. When he had the good fortune to meet the author of this work, his admiration for Oscar, combined with his stunning looks, presented Oscar with the ideal formula for a new acolyte and lover. Bosie, instinctively controversial, captivatingly attractive and a genuinely talented poet, was just the ticket.

The poet Lionel Johnson made the introduction. The two young
men had driven round to Tite Street after lunching with Lionel's mother in Cadogan Place. ‘We had tea in his little writing room facing the street on the ground floor, and before I left, Oscar took me upstairs to the drawing room and introduced me to his wife,' Bosie remembered.
²³

Oscar was instantly smitten. Bosie, however, was not immediately attracted to such an older man. Nevertheless he met Oscar at the Lyric Club, where Oscar presented Bosie with a signed copy of
Dorian Gray
. Throughout the summer Oscar had continued to pursue Bosie, and the latter had continued to meet Oscar. It may well. have been that Oscar was hoping that the romantic and exciting Parisian scene would be the one that would finally convert this budding, intense, new friendship into something with a sexual dimension.

Dutiful as ever, Constance left Dorking and returned to London in order to see her husband safely off. When she arrived at Tite Street on 22 October, plenty of news awaited her. To her dismay the doctor was recommending that Oscar take a six-week rest cure for his case of bad nerves. On the positive side, however, Oscar had finished his play and sold it to George Alexander at the St James's Theatre. ‘This is a great pleasure to temper the sorrow at the separation,' Constance noted.
²⁴

Constance's return to London was brief. Practical as ever, she quickly fitted out the boys with winter clothing. She also made some moves to replace some of the valuables that had been stolen. With £10 from her insurers she bought a George IV silver teapot and sugar tongs. Her friends rallied round too. A Mrs Macpherson contributed a silver cream jug from the same period, and Jean Palmer promised to give Constance teaspoons.

On 23 October Constance took Cyril to wave his father off from Victoria station and was delighted that Oscar left her a copy of his new play to read. There is no mention of ‘the friend' accompanying him. Perhaps Oscar had dropped his plans to take a companion at the last moment. Perhaps he had overlooked the fact that Bosie would be going back to Oxford for his Michaelmas term.

If Constance and Oscar acknowledged each other's right to pursue different lifestyles, accepting separation from one another, Constance still missed her husband. In that late October, when Oscar was in Paris and Lady Mount-Temple had not yet returned to London from Babbacombe, Constance began to surfer from depression. Although Constance was not technically alone – after all, she had both her children at home and refers to visits from friends, including the neighbouring Hopes – it was intimacy that she particularly craved. For Constance, Oscar and Georgina were the sole sources of this. With both of them away simultaneously, she felt adrift. ‘I wish you would come back to Cheyne. London is unnatural without you, and I want you dreadfully now Oscar is away too … I can't live in the quiet
by myself
, and I am much more dependent than I was on fellowship and sympathy,' she explained to Georgina.
²⁵
Constance's susceptibility to the blues would plague her for the rest of her life.
²⁶

By 26 October, Constance was preparing to leave the capital again, this time heading off to look after Aunt Emily, who had fallen ill. Emily Lloyd had moved to the seaside town of St Leonards after John Horatio's death. Constance was not looking forward to the trip, complaining to Georgina that she faced a ‘fortnight's purgatory away from my bairns and all that I love'. Resentful that she faced missing Vyvyan's fifth birthday, she felt ‘like a flower (a very weedy flower) transplanted into other soil that does not belong to it'.
²⁷
When she arrived, Constance discovered she disliked the nurse Aunt Emily had hired and found herself sulkily knitting gloves for both her aunt and Georgina to pass the time.

But now Constance got ill again. She began to suffer from bouts of what she termed rheumatism. It was so severe in her arms that, like her or not, she was forced to ask this nurse to continually rub them for her. This episode of ill health would continue throughout the late autumn and winter months of 1891. She was regularly bedridden.

The one thing she looked forward to during her stay in St Leonards was Oscar's letters from Paris. ‘Oscar writes in very good spirits from Paris, and never leaves me now without news, which is dear of him
after all my grumbles,' she told Georgina, adding a few days later ‘he really is very good in writing'. Oscar had told her she could read the play – which at this time still had the working title of
A Good Woman
– to her aunt. ‘I think it very interesting, and hope it is going to be a great success, but one cannot tell unless one has great stage experience, how a play will
act
.'
²⁸

By mid-November Constance had waved goodbye to St Leonards and was back in Tite Street. Instantly her frantic London life resumed. Positive news from Paris buoyed her. Oscar had written to tell her that the French actor Coquelin thought
A Good Woman
‘faultless in construction and has recommended him a translator, and when it is translated will help him to get it acted in Paris!' Further news that her husband was embarking on ‘writing a one-act play in French, and enjoying Paris and French people who are very kind to him seemed to cheer her further'.
²⁹

She took Cyril for portrait sittings – almost certainly with Laura Hope, a pastel artist of some renown who is known to have drawn him. She went to political meetings and she dined with the Palmers, who were in town, meeting Jean Palmer's Catholic father, Mr Craig. As a High-Church Anglican, Constance found Catholicism tempting, as did her husband and many other people moving in Aesthetic circles at the time.
³⁰

Once again it was not long before Constance made another excursion out of town, this time in connection with Vyvyan. She was worried about the general health of her younger son and she decided he would do well to stay with the Palmers for a month. Constance's determination to send a five-year-old away for a month feels brutal. It also adds credibility to Vyvyan's persistent feeling throughout his life that he was treated differently from his brother. In her letters to Georgina, Constance makes constant mention of Cyril. Vyvyan, by contrast, is rarely mentioned, except to express concerns. In 1891 alone Cyril has his portrait painted and Vyvyan does not. Constance sends Lady Mount-Temple Cyril's photograph, but no such picture of Vyvyan is offered. Georgina, who kept birds, sends Cyril two canaries, but apparently nothing to Vyvyan. Cyril sees his
father off at the station, but Vyvyan does not. Cyril is referred to as his mother's ‘Lovebird' in Constance's letters; Vyvyan is not described in such overtly passionate terms.

Cyril was clearly a deeply affectionate child. When Constance's aches and pains left her no alternative but to retreat to her bed, Cyril brought her hot-water bottles and proved attentive in a manner that his younger sibling did not and perhaps could not. ‘He is my Dove now just come out of the egg,' Constance cooed.
³¹
Vyvyan was less demonstrative towards his mother, and generally more difficult.

The nurse who looked after both boys did her best to make up for what she saw as an inequality in their treatment. This did not go down well with Constance at all. Revealing the tougher, intolerant streak in her character, she complained to Georgina on this subject.

I am getting more & more convinced that my nurse is not wise, and my cook tells me that she is ruining that dear little Vyvyan by indulgence, and that I should not allow it. What I am to do? She is so angry now at me sending Vyvyan away from her … She is kind and devoted to the child, but she is uneducated … it is becoming almost a monomania with her to think that every-one but herself is unkind to Vyvyan. She can never love Vyvyan as much as I do. I love him to the full as much as Cyril, but he is not interesting yet, because his soul has not awaked.
³²

When Constance returned to London, she came up with a plan that addressed the issues she had with the children's nurse. She sent her to Reading to assist in Vyvyan's care there. This, of course, left Constance more fully in charge of Cyril during the day. So now her already packed schedule was burdened further. In between visits to St Barnabas, attendances at lectures on Dante at University Hall, sessions with her phrenologist, Rational Dress Committee meetings at Lady Harberton's and visits to check on Speranza, who had now moved to nearby Oakley Street, she found herself also in charge of children's tea parties.

At this point Georgina lost patience with Constance. She could see a not very well woman rushing around and pushing herself to the
limit. She told Constance to calm down and spend more time at home rather than being either endlessly out and about in town, or dashing up and down the country. Constance did not take kindly to being told some home truths.

‘I have given up heaps of things since you asked me to do less,' she wrote at the end of November,

and I don't want to live like a root! I am very well, and everyone says I am looking so well. I can't imagine what you want me to be like. I do a great deal of needle work and a fair amount of reading, and these things I can only do at home, and I spend dreary evenings by myself after Cyril goes to bed unless I go and see Lady Wilde. You talk to me as if I were never quiet and gadded about and I don't and I am very cross at your thinking so, and I shall not tell you any more what I do!!!
³³

Georgina's concern seems to have focused on the fact that, in being away from home so often, Constance was not only exhausting herself but also contributing to her husband's absences. Georgina sensed a growing alienation between Oscar and Constance that matched their lack of time together. Georgina, like many women of her generation, believed that women's domestic duties were paramount. If a wife neglected these, then only she would be to blame if her household began to collapse.

Hurt by Georgina's criticisms of her, Constance was presented with what she considered proof of the love that still prevailed at the heart of her marriage when another letter from Oscar, who was still in Paris, arrived in the last week of November. If people were saying she was not paying sufficient attention to her husband, Constance was suddenly armed with evidence that, regardless of what they might think, Oscar loved her more than anything else in his life.