Constance Lloyd, shortly before her marriage to Oscar Wilde.
Oscar at about the time of his marriage to Constance.
Oscar Wilde and Constance Lloyd were married on 29 May 1884 and, by the beginning of 1885, had moved into their marital home at 16 (now 34) Tite Street, Chelsea. The newlyweds loved to entertain, and a regular guest at their ‘House Beautiful’ was Constance’s cousin, Adrian Hope.
Hope and his fiancée Laura Troubridge were in equal parts fascinated with and bemused by the Wildes. Their correspondence and Troubridge’s diary are full of catty remarks on the couple’s aesthetic eccentricities. Troubridge thought Oscar ‘very amusing’ but did not like his ‘crumpled shirt cuffs turned back over his coat sleeves’, and she was scandalised when Constance turned up to tea wearing ‘absolutely no bustle’ and ‘a huge cartwheel Gainsborough hat’.Jaqueline Hope-Nicholson (ed., 1966) Life Amongst the Troubridges: Journals of a Young Victorian 1873–1884, London: John Murray, 164–5, 169
In March 1885 Hope was given a tour of the home the Wildes had recently leased. Afterwards he wrote a long letter to Troubridge about the decor. He was delighted with the ‘distinctly Turkish’ smoking room, but thought the bare-walled drawing room looked as if ‘the furniture has been cleared out for a dance for which the matting did not look inviting’. All the white paint in the house had ‘a high polish like Japanese Lacquerwork’. Troubridge was unimpressed: ‘I don’t think we could live in a room without pictures or books, do you? and all white too & shiny, like living inside a jam pot’.Marie-Jaqueline Lancaster (ed., 2000) Letters of Engagement, 1884–1888: The Love Letters of Adrian Hope and Laura Troubridge, London: Tite Street Press, 102–4
Within a month Hope was invited back to Tite Street for dinner. He later told Troubridge of his ‘strange’ conversation with the Wildes. One subject they had discussed was marriage:
Our conclusions were on the whole favourable to that remarkable institution though Oscar had distinct leanings to a system of Contract for 7 years only, to be renewed or not as either party saw fit.Marie-Jaqueline Lancaster (ed., 2000) Letters of Engagement, 1884–1888: The Love Letters of Adrian Hope and Laura Troubridge, London: Tite Street Press, 115
Wilde’s fiction and plays are crammed with controversial attitudes to marriage. ‘Good heavens! How marriage ruins a man!’ sighs Mr Dumby in Lady Windermere’s Fan. ‘It’s as demoralising as cigarettes, and far more expensive.’Josephine Guy (ed., 2021) The Complete Works of Oscar Wilde, Vol. 11: Plays, Vol. 4: Vera; or The Nihilist and Lady Windermere’s Fan, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 425.221–2 In A Woman of No Importance Lord Illingworth opines that ‘Men marry because they are tired; women because they are curious. Both are disappointed.’Oscar Wilde (1908) The Collected Works of Oscar Wilde: A Woman of No Importance, London: Methuen, 114 And, according to Algernon in The Importance of Being Earnest, ‘Divorces are made in Heaven’.Joseph Donohue (ed., 2019) The Complete Works of Oscar Wilde, Vol. 10: Plays, Vol. 3: The Importance of Being Earnest; ‘A Wife’s Tragedy’ (fragment), Oxford: Oxford University Press, 766.68
I have sometimes wondered, though, where Wilde got the idea for a marriage contract that would be renewable every seven years – for what we might call a ‘seven year hitch’.
The first page of Hargrove’s letter to Wilde about the terminable lease on 16 Tite Street.
One of the few surviving photographs of Constance (centre) and Oscar Wilde together.
I believe that I may have found the answer while leafing through the collection of Wilde’s legal papers held at UCLA’s William Andrews Clark Memorial Library. Amongst these papers is a letter to Wilde from his solicitor, J. Sidney Hargrove, dated 13 May 1884. Hargrove had received a copy of the lease agreement on 16 Tite Street and wanted to summarise its terms for his client.
The lease is for 21 years, commencing 24th June, terminable at the end of 7 or 14 years at the option of either the lessor or yourself. The rent is to be £130 for the first 7 years, £140 for the 2nd 7 years, and £150 for the 3rd 7 years, payable quarterly.Clark Library, MS. Wilde W6721Z C697, letter from J. Sidney Hargrove to Oscar Wilde, 13 May 1884
Wilde evidently thought the idea of a terminable lease was sensible, and wondered if it might be applied not just to the leasing of a marital home but to the marriage itself.
But his wife went one step further. Hope relates that Constance expressed the opinion that ‘it should be free to either party to go off at the expiration of the first year’.Marie-Jaqueline Lancaster (ed., 2000) Letters of Engagement, 1884–1888: The Love Letters of Adrian Hope and Laura Troubridge, London: Tite Street Press, 115 The wittiness of this remark becomes apparent when we remember that it was made when the Wildes had been married for precisely eleven months.
Oscar and Constance would remain married for fourteen years, though it was not the mutual termination of their marriage contract that would end their union but Constance’s death at the age of forty. They had been separated since Oscar’s arrest in 1895 and, even by that point, Oscar had long been seeking affection elsewhere.
In an early draft of The Importance of Being Earnest Wilde had Algy declare that ‘all women are far too good for the men they marry. That is why men tire of their wives so quickly.’Russell Jackson (2020) ‘Joseph Donohue (ed.) The Complete Works of Oscar Wilde, Volume IX, Plays 2, Lady Lancing (The Importance of Being Earnest) and Volume X, Plays 3: The Importance of Being Earnest and ‘A Wife’s Tragedy’ (Fragment)’, The Wildean 56, 110–113, 112 Perhaps sensing that there was rather too much truth in this quip, he deleted it.
In 1883 Constance had been ‘perfectly and insanely happy’ to accept Oscar’s proposal,Merlin Holland & Rupert Hart-Davis (eds., 2000) The Complete Letters of Oscar Wilde, London: Fourth Estate, 222 but before the couple had been married seven years she may well have been ready to endorse another of her husband’s aperçus on marriage: ‘It is much better to have loved and lost than to have loved and won.’Neil McKenna (2003) The Secret Life of Oscar Wilde, London: Century, 61