Constance Wilde: an ideal wife?

Constance Wilde was a fascinating creature; I had learnt a little about her this summer on my course on the Aesthetic Movement at the V&A, but much more from Franny Moyle's biography Constance: The Tragic and Scandalous Life of Mrs Oscar Wilde. Constance revelled in wearing aesthetic dress - loose, uncorseted clothing often in sludgy colours, with her hair unstructured and occasionally decorated with feathers; so shocking at the time. She decorated the Wilde family home in Tite Street along aesthetic lines complete with white walls, floors and ceilings, blue and white Japanese jars and motives of sunflowers, peacock feathers and lilies, so beloved of the aesthetes. She was a regular at the aesthetic temples of Liberty's in Regent Street and the Grosvenor Gallery. She had her own career as a leading light in the Rational Dress Movement; like many late Victorians she dabbled in spiritualism; unusually for her class and time, she spent time playing with and looking after her own children; she was active in the suffrage movement and wrote a book of children's stories. Indeed, Moyle suggests that Constance, rather than Oscar, was the true author of The Selfish Giant. They must have been the golden couple of the time..... at least for a few years.

This book is hugely enjoyable. I have rarely read a biography which has been quite so engrossing, colourful and well written. It is also a little frustrating since many of Constance's possessions and letters (including letters between the Wildes) were lost in the bankruptcy sale of the Tite Street house after Oscar's fall from grace; Constance's voice is largely heard through letters to her brother and to friends (usually women much older than her).

Moyle is inconclusive about the key issue of what Constance knew about her husband's activities and when; however, Constance's regular absences from London (and Oscar) suggest that there was a lot of denial going on. Like Jennie Churchill (whose biography the book group read in January 2009) Constance was the type of girl who, when cash was tight, took herself off to Italy or the south of France or friends in the country. And even though she was strapped for cash, what money the Wildes retained belonged to Constance which placed her in a position of power when Wilde was released from prison. Despite the fact that he never returned to her and their boys, we are left in no doubt about her enduring affection for Oscar and it is easy to conclude that, for several years, they had a fulfilling marriage. Constance was, in many ways, his ideal wife.