I look forward to meeting Proteus very much: his sonnets are the cameos of the decadence. Very sincerely yours
OSCAR WILDE
To the Hon. George Curzon
16 July 1883 9 Charles Street
My dear George Curzon, I have been so busy—too busy to answer any nice letters—but I hope to see you soon. When are you at home? I will come round one morning and smoke a cigarette with you. You must tell me about the East. I hope you have brought back strange carpets and stranger gods. Very truly yours
OSCAR WILDE
To Wilfrid Scawen Blunt
[Circa 25 July 1883] 9 Charles Street, Grosvenor Square
Dear Mr Blunt, I am quite suddenly telegraphed for to go to America as they do not like beginning the rehearsals of my play without my being there and I find myself obliged to deprive myself of the pleasure of a day of steeds and sonnets with you, as I have to go to Liverpool early on Monday morning. I will not cease to regret the chance that has prevented my coming to you, and I beg you to offer to Lady Anne my most sincere apologies.
If when I return in September you are still in the country perhaps you will allow me to come and spend an afternoon with you. Believe me truly yours
OSCAR WILDE
Vera opened in New York on 21 August. It played to small houses, was slated by the critics and taken off after only a week. The New York Herald described it as ‘long-drawn dramatic rot’ and Wilde did not risk the stage again for eight years. He stayed on in America for a month, and on his return to England realised that lecturing was his only immediate source of income. According to his American manager Col. Morse, who was now in London, he arranged 150 lectures for Wilde for the 1883–4 season, as many as he had given in the States but without the frenetic pace and the long-distance travelling. Wilde also expanded his repertoire to include ‘The Value of Art in Modem Life’ and ‘Dress’. His schedule in November took him to Dublin where he renewed a close friendship with Constance Lloyd who was there visiting relations. Constance, whom he had first met in 1881, was the daughter of an eminent London QC who had died when she was sixteen. She had been attracted to Oscar from the moment they met and the feeling was mutual. This time it went further; within four days of meeting again they were engaged.
Constance Lloyd to Otho Holland Lloyd
26 November 1883 1 Ely Place, Dublin
My dearest Otho, Prepare yourself for an astounding piece of news! I am engaged to Oscar Wilde and perfectly and insanely happy. I am sure you will be glad because you like him, and I want you now to do what has hitherto been my part for you, and make it all right. Grandpapa will, I know, be nice, as he is always so pleased to see Oscar. The only one I am afraid of is Aunt Emily. Oscar will write to Grandpapa and to Mama when he arrives at Shrewsbury today, and probably to you at the same time, and he will call next Sunday (he is going up to town on purpose) so you must be at home and be nice to him. I shall probably be there myself, but I shall let you know in a day or two about that. I want to go because otherwise I shall not see him until Christmas. […] Now that he is gone, I am so dreadfully nervous over my family; they are so cold and practical. Everyone in this house is quite charmed, especially Mama Mary who considers me very lucky. Mind you write to me soon, dear old boy, and congratulate me. I am longing to know how you will all take it. I won’t stand opposition, so I hope they won’t try it. Ever your loving sister
CONSTANCE M. LLOYD
To Lillie Langtry
[Circa 22 January 1884] Royal Victoria Hotel, Sheffield
My dear Lil, I am really delighted at your immense success; the most brilliant telegrams have appeared in the papers here on your performance in Peril. You have done what no other artist of our day has done, invaded America a second time and carried off new victories. But then, you are made for victory. It has always flashed in your eyes, and rung in your voice.
And so, I write half to tell you how glad I am at your triumphs—you, ‘Venus Victrix of our age’!—and the other half to tell you that I am going to be married to a beautiful young girl called Constance Lloyd, a grave, slight, violet-eyed little Artemis, with great coils of heavy brown hair which make her flower-like head droop like a flower, and wonderful ivory hands which draw music from the piano so sweet that the birds stop singing to listen to her. We are to be married in April. I hope so much that you will be over then. I am so anxious for you to know and to like her.
I am hard at work lecturing and getting quite rich, tho’ it is horrid being so much away from her, but we telegraph to each other twice a day, and I rush back suddenly from the uttermost parts of the earth to see her for an hour, and do all the foolish things which wise lovers do.
Will you write and wish me happiness, and believe me, ever your devoted and affectionate friend
OSCAR WILDE
Waldo Story was an American sculptor whose family lived in Italy whom Wilde most probably met through James Whistler.
To Waldo Story
[Postmark 22 January 1884] Royal Victoria Hotel, Sheffield
Yes! my dear Waldino, yes! Amazing of course—that was necessary.
Naturally 1 did not write—the winds carry tidings over the Apennines better than the 2 1/2d post: of course it accounts for the splendid sunsets about which science was so puzzled. Hurrah! You had no sunsets when you were engaged—only moonlights. Well, we are to be married in April, as you were, and then go to Paris, and perhaps to Rome—what do you think? Will Rome be nice in May? I mean, will you and Mrs Waldo be there, and the Pope, and the Peruginos? If so we will arrive.
Her name is Constance and she is quite young, very grave, and mystical, with wonderful eyes, and dark brown coils of hair: quite perfect except that she does not think Jimmy the only painter that ever really existed: she would like to bring Titian or somebody in by the back door. However, she knows I am the greatest poet, so in literature she is all right: and I have explained to her that you are the greatest sculptor: art instruction can not go further.
We are of course desperately in love. I have been obliged to be away nearly all the time since our engagement, civilising the provinces by my remarkable lectures, but we telegraph to each other twice a day, and the telegraph clerks have become quite romantic in consequence. I hand in my messages, however, very sternly, and try to look as if ‘love’ was a cryptogram for ‘buy Grand Trunks’ and ‘darling’ a cypher for ‘sell out at par’. I am sure it succeeds.
Dear Waldo, I am perfectly happy, and I hope that you and Mrs Waldo will be very fond of my wife. I have spoken to her so much about you both that she knows you quite well already, and of course I can not imagine anyone seeing her and not loving her.
Please give my love to Uncle Sam and the young robust transcendentalist from Boston, Mass. whose novels we all delight in. And remember me most kindly to your wife, and tell her how much I look forward to introducing Constance to her. Addio
OSCAR
Oscar and Constance were married on 29 May 1884 and spent their honeymoon in Dieppe and Paris. They took a lease on a house at 16 Tite Street in Chelsea and commissioned the architect and theatre designer E, W. Godwin to make internal changes and decorate it. In the meantime they moved back into Oscar’s old lodgings in Charles Street until the work was finished in January of the following year.
To the Editor of the Pall Mall Gazette
[Circa 13 October 1884] [London]