Sad fidelity


Constance: the tragic and scandalous life of Mrs Oscar Wilde Franny Moyle


JOHN MURRAY, 374PP, £20 ■Tablet bookshop price £18


“I Tel 01420 592974


do lovemy name so much, and think it one of the most beautiful names in the


world.” Constance wrote this to her close friend Georgina, Lady Mount-Temple, in October 1893. It was a name she more than lived up to in her marriage to Oscar Wilde. Two years later, after the disastrous collapse of Oscar’s libel case against Queensberry, Constance received many letters of support including one from Ellen Terry, addressing her as “Dearest Constancy”. According to her latest biographer, Constance’s life was, ultimately, “a poem to love and constancy”. This is the third life of Constance and relies heavily on the manuscript collection of her grandson, Merlin Holland; on the letters between Constance and Lady Mount-Temple; and on those to her brother Otho, which are quoted extensively and are crucial to understanding Constance’s thoughts and feelings as events unfolded. Constance Lloyd was a forthright, vibrant


character: a feminist, aesthete, artist and writer; a radical thinker who espoused causes with a zeal bordering on fanaticism. She had had several admirers and proposals before she met Oscar but seems soon to have decided he was the one for her. Surprisingly perhaps, Oscar had been engaged several times before meeting Constance, with whom he quickly became infatuated. Both came from wealthy Dublin families,


were well educated, talented and charming. After some reservations about Oscar’s financial position (always precarious) and unspecified warnings by Constance’s brother Otho, the Lloyds accepted him. Constance wrote to him ecstatically: “I worship you my hero and my god!” When they married in 1884, her mother


younger wife Helen have only their two young daughters as a bond. Helen, as a naval wife, has become accustomed to taking her fancy among her husband’s young colleagues. But behaviour that can be winked at abroad won’t do at all when the admiral is posted back to London, so to continue her intrigues, Helen resuscitates an old but unexpected friendship with a renowned female activist. Emily Faithfull, nicknamed “Fido”, runs a printing press patronised by Queen Victoria, supports the unfortunately named Spew (the Society for the Promotion of the Employment of Women) and publishes a journal for the nascent women’s movement. Donoghue’s mastery lies in making a relationship between a vain and treacherous adulteress and a woman of


confidently predicted “a long and happy life in store for them both”. They honeymooned in Paris, where, ironically, Oscar was to die in penury and disgrace 16 years later. Franny


Moyle


suggests that, although their first few years of married life seemed very happy, the seeds of trouble were already present on honeymoon when “Oscar enjoyed being apart from his wife as much as he loved being with her”, and “was attracted by danger [and] loved experiencing low life … where he would immerse himself in another world”.


Constance clearly enjoyed being married to a man already famous for his lecture tours, wit and aestheticism. Her own aesthetic appearance created a sensation in Paris and London and she became a celebrity overnight. She loved being mother to Cyril and Vyvyan, born in 1885 and 1886, but still wanted an artistic career of her own. She wrote and published children’s stories until 1895, founded the Rational Dress Society and started a salon in Chelsea’s Tite Street in London, where the great and the good of the day, including Browning, Yeats and Ruskin, visited. Things started to fall apart during her second pregnancy. They both wanted a daughter but after a difficult birth a sickly son arrived. After that, for Oscar, the novelty of domestic bliss quickly waned, says Moyle, speculating that post-natal complications after Vyvyan’s birth might have left Constance “unable to have full sex”. Whether true or not, it is clear that Oscar “discovered” his bisexuality with their 17-year-old lodger, Robbie Ross, in


principle believable, while retaining one explicatory secret for the very last scene. The plot takes us to an era where divorce was gaining in acceptance, though only two cases a year got through. Donoghue shows that although basically unjust, the system was not entirely stacked against the female defendant. A cunning lawyer systematically chips away at the admiral’s reputation; however, what Helen cannot grasp is that, while she may well get her divorce, she will not get her children back. It wasn’t until the Guardianship of Infants Act in 1925 that mothers got equal rights with fathers in custody cases. Central to the case is a sealed letter,


previously written by the admiral outlining certain suspicions about Fido. As Donoghue explains in a postscript, the


1887. It is not clear how much Constance knew at this time, since she and Oscar often led quite separate lives: he edited magazines, wrote plays and lectured; she had her salon and took up causes such as female equality, Home Rule for Ireland and Christian Socialism. She also had “a collection of matriarchs” with whom she socialised.


She initially suspected Oscar of keeping mistresses, then came to resent the time and attention he devoted to his young male acolytes. Yet she went to the first nights of his plays; they still socialised and holidayed together and both adored their children. By 1891, when Oscar met Bosie Douglas, he was in “persistent pursuit of men”, despite his continuing devotion to Constance. Moyle suggests that Constance remained wilfully ignorant of Oscar’s predilections until it became impossible. She also maintains that Bosie was “the most intense and profound love-affaire he had ever had”, but that, despite this, Oscar was still torn between him and Constance. When she had to confront it, Constance was baffled and saw the infatuation as an obsessive illness. By 1894, her health had suffered and she was in “utter despair”. Inevitably, the events of Oscar’s trial and


imprisonment are recycled here, but in parallel to the events in Constance’s life. Only after Oscar’s conviction did she make future plans for herself and her sons, the name change to Holland and life abroad. She never divorced Oscar and she died, post-surgery, aged only 40. This is a carefully researched book, sympathetic and strong on the socio-historical background. Moyle runs the lives of Constance and Oscar in parallel, and the last few chapters, in particular, make compelling reading. Her narrative style is mainly descriptive, occasionally analytical, rarely judgemental or speculative. It is clear that, even if Oscar was never an ideal husband to Constance, she was, equally, never a woman of no importance to him. Richard Ormrod


actual letter was not opened in court so its contents remain a mystery. Around this she has woven a gripping narrative that demonstrates that the stories told in court are not likely to be “the whole truth”, but the narrative that best satisfies the moment. Although Donoghue worked extensively on records of the trial and newspaper reports, her portrayals perhaps do not quite jell with the accounts of her protagonists’ later lives provided in her postscript. But within the world of the novel, the anguish of a high-minded, progressive “woman-ist” embroiled in wrongdoing is finely drawn. The court case even makes her question, momentarily, her views on female equality. The dejected Fido finally concludes that 1864 is just too early for the revolution in sensibility that she longs for. Suzi Feay


12 November 2011 | THE TABLET | 23


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