Franny Moyle Read Online Free Page A

to Constance or, more appropriately, her family during his travels.
    That Constance had revealed something of her unhappy private life to Oscar is evident. It is also clear that Oscar was moved by thefact that her circumstances had failed to erode Constance’s capacity for kindness. By the time Constance heard that Oscar would be leaving for America, she was no longer bothering to conceal her feelings for him. She had become completely infatuated with him.
    Just a few weeks after his flirtation with Constance began, Oscar had published his first book of poems. The edition had been roundly panned. The Saturday Review summed up the general tenor of the criticism that Oscar faced: ‘Mr Wilde’s verses belong to a class which is the special terror of reviewers, the poetry which is neither good nor bad, which calls for neither praise nor ridicule.’ The Review informed its readers that ‘The author possesses cleverness, astonishing fluency, a rich and full vocabulary, and nothing to say. Mr Wilde has read Messrs Tennyson, Swinburne, Arnold and Rossetti … and he has paid them the compliment of copying their mannerisms very naively.’ But it warned its readers of Wilde’s ‘sensual and ignoble tone which deforms a large proportion of the poems for which a plea of youth is scarcely sufficient to excuse. So much talk about “grand cool flanks” and “crescent thighs” is decidedly offensive.’ 4
    Far worse than the critical response, though, was the public humiliation that Oscar faced when an edition of his poems, specifically requested by the library of the Oxford Union Society, was then returned to him in what amounted to a rather public slap in the face. In a debate and vote held at the Union the majority of members found, like the Saturday Review , that Oscar’s verses were immoral and derivative.
    Quite what Constance thought has not been recorded. But it’s more than likely that, like her contemporary Violet Hunt, who was an immediate rival for Oscar’s affections, she saw only art and beauty in lines that others were interpreting decidedly differently.
    Violet Hunt was the daughter of the landscape artist Alfred Hunt and something of a fixture within the bohemian art world. Beautiful, confident and attending the South Kensington School of Art, she had been courted quite aggressively by Oscar in the months before hemet Constance. According to Violet, Oscar had even proposed to her, an offer that her father rejected.
    Oscar sent Violet his book of poems, at a time when he sent copies to a number of people, including William Gladstone and the poets Robert Browning and Swinburne. It seems highly likely that Constance would have received a copy too. Despite the rumpus about their morality and originality, Violet thought that Oscar’s poetry was beautiful. She wrote him a letter so full of praise that he felt moved to thank her, noting that ‘In an age like this when Slander, and Ridicule, and Envy walk quite unashamed among us, and when any attempt to produce serious beautiful work is greeted with a very tornado of lies and evil speaking, it is a wonderful joy, a wonderful spur for ambition and work, to receive such encouragement and appreciation as your letter brought me.’ 5
    Other immediate members of Wilde’s circle had, however, taken a similar view to the Oxford Union – most dramatically, his housemate Frank Miles’s father. This clergyman, whom Oscar had known for years and visited on several occasions, found himself so concerned about the subtext of the poetry that he felt it necessary to write to Oscar and suggest that he and his son cease lodging together.
    Since the days of ‘tea and beauties’ in Salisbury Street, Oscar and Frank had moved into ‘Keats House’, a property in that bohemian part of Chelsea, Tite Street, where Oscar would one day live with Constance. They were following the footsteps of their hero