Wilde was a happily married man with two children. He was from St. James in Paddington to make Constance Lloyd his wife on May 29, 1884. He was deeply in love with her to the contrary to what many thought he was marrying wealth.
The affectionate husband, the fond father, Oscar Wilde in a new role that many suspected will not last long and true enough they had not gone many years before Wilde stopped at a flower stall where he chose the loveliest blossoms to send with a message of love to the bride he had dumped.
Charming bride
Constance understood and loved him unto death though they lived far apart. The beautiful and charming bride of five summers earlier was heartbroken as to what happened to the man she adored and cared for, the man who wrote beautiful verses to her all the time.
I can write no stately poem
As a prelude to my lay
From a poet to a poem
I would dare to say,
……………..If these fallen petals
One to you seem fair
Love will waft it till settles
In your hair.
………………… And when wind and winter harden
All the loveless land,
It will whisper of the garden
You will understand.'
Understand? Which she did no matter how cruel he sounded. The fond husband, the proud father, the advocate of matrimony, an unusual facet with Oscar Wild which was destined to end no sooner it started.
People believed that the reason Wilde distanced himself from his wife was that he was suffering was from the recurrence of a disease contracted during an affair while at the university. Later, it was claimed the cause of his death was this particular disease though on and oft-disputed. It was extracted from one of his biographies that Oscar Wilde when at Oxford contacted syphilis for the cure of which mercury injections were administered. It was probably due to the treatments that his teeth subsequently turned black and became diseased.
Pathological obstacle
Wilde went to see a doctor in London before proposing to his future wife who assured him that he was completely cured with no pathological obstacle to his marriage but later he was to discover that the disease had been dormant and was forced to give up physical relations with his wife. It was at this juncture when Wilde was feeling depressed that his friends tempted him to homosexuality. Wilde was feeling guilty about the mess he had got into to cool of his relations with a sweet, gentle and exceptionally beautiful wife with whom he had been deeply in love with. But Alfred Douglas found it hard to comprehend and did not believe it.
The literary circle was gripped by the horror that fell upon the country's most brilliant son, playwright Oscar Wilde when he was at the height of his popularity that was reduced to a psychological evolve and destined to suffer humiliation.
It was at Oxford that Robert Rose was introduced to Oscar Wilde in 1886 when Rose was about seventeen years his senior and was to play an important role in wild's life in the years when Wilde turned to the unnatural from the natural ways of men. This was history veiled in obscurity and was to be proved beyond any doubt in the years that followed attested by ample document. The emergence of Ross was always there in the background paving the way to his downfall but its presence carefully covered up and scarcely discernible while all the time Wilde was innocently unaware of the danger lurking in the form of Rose.
Threatening letter
When Sherard visited Wilde later, he found his friend in good cheer. There were no bars between them and Sherard threw his arms around his friend and embraced him. He saw tears rolling down Wilde's face and a look of gratitude.
Wilde knew that it was Sherard whose efforts that brought Constance to him. Wilde's happiness brought fury and anger on Douglas. He had heard about the reconciliation. He was afraid of the consequences that would fall upon him that he never imagined. Alfred Douglas wrote a threatening letter to Sherard that if he were to lose his friendship with Wilde in the future through any words used by Sherard that he would shoot him down like a dog. He was still very much in love with Wilde no matter whether Constance was by his side.
During the first few weeks of his stay with prison routine, it appeared that Wilde would succumb to its rigours as he felt the shame he had brought upon himself. The most affected among his friends was Sherard who shared his pain and was determined to promote reconciliation with his wife who was pressed by her family to seek a divorce. If she was to abandon him, he would have died quicker. So the loyal Sherard wrote many letters to Constance to forgive her husband and it took time for response because of her family advisers but the kind and loyal Constance who still loved him agreed on the advice of her brother asking Wilde to write to her that she would seek no divorce proceedings, Apparently he wrote and she crossed over to England from her refuge in the Continent and obtained permission to meet him.
Wilde had to face the truth, there was no way out as the evidence kept loading upon him and his sexual activities. He was sentenced to prison in May 1895 to serve his term at Wandsworth and Reading and later released in May 1897. He experienced the greater part the prison rigours of the silent system then in force and was helpless with nothing to do.
Reading Goal
However, the last few months were a blessing when a humane prison governor was appointed to replace the strict disciplinarian at Reading. He was permitted to use pen and paper and Wilde seized the opportunity to write and wrote the letter of Reading Goal, extracts from which were published but was not made public until 1949. His experience at Reading provided inspiration for his famous, THE BALLAD OF READING GOAL which became his last completed work.
Wilde accompanied a friend to various Catholic gatherings. They went to hear Mannings, raised that year to the purple, preach at St Aloysius. The outward visible sign of what Roman Catholicism could have impressed that responded a mind and Wilde as a Cardinal would have found his place among the great figures of Rome of the Renaissance. How far Wilde pressured this imagination no one knows
His father, Sir William Wilde rejoiced that his son went Oxford away from the feel of longing for the vision. He was of opinion that the corrupting influence of Catholic Ireland and then Oxford had faltered in Protestant orthodoxy. In many years that his friends, Manning and Newman had gone over to Rome. It appeared that Wilde too was keen on joining them if not for his father. Another friend, David Hunter Blair, surrendered all his wealth and position to become a Benedictine monk and Abbot.
Add new comment