Wilde times with Oscar
By Caryn James |
March 17, 2013, Sunday
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Print Edition
Print Edition
NO one was ever more suitably named, at birth and by marriage, than Constance Wilde. Her first name conveys her near-endless loyalty to her irresponsible, genius husband, Oscar. Even after the worst of the humiliations - after he had taken up with the pretty young Lord Alfred Douglas and been sent to prison for the affair, after her household goods had been auctioned to pay the high-living Oscar's debts, after she had fled to the Continent and changed the family name to protect their two small sons - she could still refer to him as a "poor, poor fellow" and write in a letter, "What a tragedy for him who is so gifted!"
Yet her married surname suggests a daring she has rarely been credited with. Beautiful, well-born Constance Lloyd chose a wild man whose aestheticism and dandyish manner had already put him on the fringes of respectable society. The woman who emerges in "Constance," Franny Moyle's often flat-footed but endlessly fascinating biography, is no hapless dishrag, but a strong-willed, forward-thinking social activist.
As soon as they married, the Wildes became a celebrity couple. The papers called her "Mrs. Oscar." Some mocked her involvement in the Rational Dress Society, which advocated practical clothing, and no tightly fitting corsets; traditionalists were horrified when she wore a split skirt. She campaigned for women's right to serve in Parliament. Although her talent didn't approach her husband's (whose did?), she wrote children's stories, knew several languages and translated reviews of his work from Dutch.
Early in the marriage, Oscar was apparently happy, telling a friend about the rapture of sleeping with Constance. All that fell apart after their second child was born. Some biographers, including Moyle, speculate that a gynecological problem ended their sex life, but that was also the time when Wilde decided he much preferred young men.
We may never know exactly when Constance surmised that he was not spending his nights in hotels because he needed the quiet to work, as he claimed. Moyle tries, and makes good use of Constance's unpublished letters, especially to her great friend Lady Mount-Temple. Those letters are fraught with turmoil, but unlike her husband, Constance was ever discreet, referring to his lapses as "all my old misery over again."
Thorough though Moyle is, psychological astuteness is not one of her strengths. She is convincing when she says that for months Constance was "willfully immune" to public insinuations about her husband's homosexual life. But she makes the absurd claim that Constance's frequent absences from home during that period contributed to the marital split. And when she fills in historical background, it seems as if a Wikipedia page has suddenly landed in the book.
But Moyle touchingly portrays Constance's conflicted responses to her husband's ruin. Friends urged her to divorce him. Instead, on his release from prison she gave him an annuity, provided he avoid disreputable company, and turned her sympathies away only when he became involved with Douglas again.
Constance died in 1898 at 40, a few years after Oscar's trial, following a mysterious operation. She was so secretive about her condition that even her devoted brother apparently didn't know what the surgery was.
Millions of words have been written about her husband's tragedy. Moyle reminds us that Constance, once so full of possibilities, was a sad victim of his scandal too.
Yet her married surname suggests a daring she has rarely been credited with. Beautiful, well-born Constance Lloyd chose a wild man whose aestheticism and dandyish manner had already put him on the fringes of respectable society. The woman who emerges in "Constance," Franny Moyle's often flat-footed but endlessly fascinating biography, is no hapless dishrag, but a strong-willed, forward-thinking social activist.
As soon as they married, the Wildes became a celebrity couple. The papers called her "Mrs. Oscar." Some mocked her involvement in the Rational Dress Society, which advocated practical clothing, and no tightly fitting corsets; traditionalists were horrified when she wore a split skirt. She campaigned for women's right to serve in Parliament. Although her talent didn't approach her husband's (whose did?), she wrote children's stories, knew several languages and translated reviews of his work from Dutch.
Early in the marriage, Oscar was apparently happy, telling a friend about the rapture of sleeping with Constance. All that fell apart after their second child was born. Some biographers, including Moyle, speculate that a gynecological problem ended their sex life, but that was also the time when Wilde decided he much preferred young men.
We may never know exactly when Constance surmised that he was not spending his nights in hotels because he needed the quiet to work, as he claimed. Moyle tries, and makes good use of Constance's unpublished letters, especially to her great friend Lady Mount-Temple. Those letters are fraught with turmoil, but unlike her husband, Constance was ever discreet, referring to his lapses as "all my old misery over again."
Thorough though Moyle is, psychological astuteness is not one of her strengths. She is convincing when she says that for months Constance was "willfully immune" to public insinuations about her husband's homosexual life. But she makes the absurd claim that Constance's frequent absences from home during that period contributed to the marital split. And when she fills in historical background, it seems as if a Wikipedia page has suddenly landed in the book.
But Moyle touchingly portrays Constance's conflicted responses to her husband's ruin. Friends urged her to divorce him. Instead, on his release from prison she gave him an annuity, provided he avoid disreputable company, and turned her sympathies away only when he became involved with Douglas again.
Constance died in 1898 at 40, a few years after Oscar's trial, following a mysterious operation. She was so secretive about her condition that even her devoted brother apparently didn't know what the surgery was.
Millions of words have been written about her husband's tragedy. Moyle reminds us that Constance, once so full of possibilities, was a sad victim of his scandal too.
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