The Fall of the House of Wilde (81 page)

Oscar Wilde, looking every inch the stylish husband to the beautiful Constance.

 

The Wildes' ‘House Beautiful', at No. 16 (now 34) Tite Street, Chelsea. The interior was done by the renowned architect and theatre designer, E. W. Godwin.

 

Robbie Ross, Oscar's first male lover and dearest friend. They meet in 1886 and Ross moved into Tite Street as the Wildes' lodger.

 

Constance and Cyril, Oscar and Constance's first child, who was born in June 1885.

Vyvyan Wilde, their second child, born in 1886 – the same year Oscar met Robbie Ross.

 

Constance, aged thirty-four, in 1892; and in the same year, Oscar, aged thirty-eight. Constance and Oscar were leading separate lives, she devoted to religion, he to pleasure.

 

Oscar met Lord Alfred Douglas, then a student at Oxford, in 1891.

 

Oscar, Constance and Cyril in 1892 in Norfolk, where Oscar wrote
A Woman of No Importance
.

 

Willie Wilde (
above
) in America. In 1891 he married an American newspaper magnate, Mrs F. Leslie (
right
), then better known than any American woman. The marriage lasted little more than a year. The American press described Willie as a writer who will not write.

 

Oscar in 1895, at the time of his trial, looking subdued.

 

Edward Carson, who acted for Queensberry, and made his reputation cross-examining Wilde. Their paths had previously crossed as students at Trinity.

 

Constance, aged thirty-nine, in Heidelberg. She left London after Oscar's trial and lived with the boys in much reduced circumstances.

 

Oscar and Douglas living in Naples in 1897, both ostracised from polite society, both sour for want of money.

 

Cyril and Vyvyan in Heidelberg. Oscar, who had not seen his children since the trial, was deeply pained to receive these photographs from Constance.

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First published in Great Britain 2016

© Emer O'Sullivan, 2016