Oscar Wilde Society

OSCAR WILDE SOCIETY

At 3pm on Sunday 29 May 2016, an expectant audience of regular worshippers, Wildeans and one or two stray onlookers gathered in St James’s Church, Paddington, for the long-anticipated final OSCANCE event: the unveiling of the Memorial commemorating the wedding of Oscar and Constance exactly 132 years before, in 1884.

At the time of the wedding, the church had very recently been re-built (in 1882). In a structural change worthy of a Wildean inversion, the west end of the building was now deemed to be the liturgical east end, so the ceremony was held facing geographical west rather than the traditional east. It is a fine example of the Gothic style. The principal architect was George Edmund Street, who had designed the Royal Courts of Justice in the Strand but did not live to complete this commission. The church is solid, spacious and grand with broad aisles, and before being re-ordered in 2002 -2003, able to accommodate over a thousand people.

We took our seats in the heavy carved oak pews and Christopher Cook (broadcaster, journalist and academic) welcomed us to the celebration. He began by interviewing Thomas Sergeant the apprentice letter-cutter who won the design prize and created the memorial.

Tom described how he had sourced and selected the Westmoreland slate, shaded green, from which he created the inner roundel with its image of a myrtle tree carved in relief with incised gilded leaves, and the name WILDE. Also, on the Purbeck freestone for the outer roundel into which ‘Oscar Fingal O’Flahertie Wills’ and ‘Constance Mary Lloyd’ are inscribed. These two stones lend themselves perfectly to juxtaposition. He had set out to give equal emphasis to the two names to demonstrate the companionship of Oscar and Constance. The lettering followed eighteenth century traditions of hand drawing and carving and he had used very sensitive tools. The memorial should not in any sense be seen as ‘following on’ from Jacob Epstein’s wingéd sphinx. He had set out to create a work which would be in the great tradition of memorial design and in harmony with the church architecture around it.

Next in the programme was to have been an interview with Franny Moyle, the author of Constance: the Tragic and Scandalous Life of Mrs Oscar Wilde. Unfortunately she was indisposed and Susanne Forrest gallantly stepped in to give readings from that book. ‘When Constance married Oscar she became a celebrity. She also became an integral partner for her husband in what Oscar considered the next phase of his career.’ She successfully hosted their dinner parties in the House Beautiful in Tite Street, but she was also a phenomenon in her own right – a popular children’s author, a fashion icon and a campaigner for women’s rights.

Merlin Holland arrived despite the efforts of French strikers to disrupt his journey from France. Christopher Cook asked him: ‘What did Oscar see in Constance, and was the marriage a genuine partnership with a sense of equality?’ Merlin said that Constance was a feisty young lady with a mind and a will of her own, and, yes, in the marriage she was loyal to him throughout. They were both ready to grant each other a degree of independence, but they were for years close partners in their work. ‘Do we know how Oscar felt about the wedding day?’ He was lecturing up to the last minute, but we know from his letters how he was ‘desperately in love’. In his letter to her from Edinburgh, seven months after their marriage, he declares: ‘I feel incomplete without you.’

We moved near the entrance door of the church for the unveiling. Merlin said that this was a very significant day. The beautiful memorial to Constance and Oscar, in its impressive surroundings, was a tribute to them and a fitting antidote to sensationalism. He recalled another unveiling (in 1995): the plaque at the Theatre Royal, Haymarket commemorating the first performance of An Ideal Husband. John Gielgud had believed the families of Wilde and of Queensberry were at odds, and seeing Merlin with the Marquess of Queensberry thought this was an occasion of reconciliation. Told that they were old friends, he was crestfallen. ‘There’s no story, then!’

The proceedings concluded with the Toast to Oscar and Constance proposed by Jonathan Fryer:

“Every time I come to St. James’s, I can feel the presence of Oscar Wilde. ‘Spooky!’ as Dame Edna Everage would say, though spooky in a most pleasant way. He’s up there somewhere, among the rafters, looking down on us. But he’s not alone, because half concealed behind one of the pillars – not hiding, but watching the proceedings with a wry smile on her face – is Constance. As was mentioned in the reading from Franny Moyle’s biography, Constance was a strong character in her own right – for example, being an active member of the Chelsea Women’s Liberal Association – though the drama of Oscar’s later life left her overshadowed. I sometimes wonder how things would have been if the couple had lived a hundred years later, in our own, more liberal age. But maybe there would not have been this more liberal age had it not been for the lesson of the downfall of Oscar Wilde. It is most fitting now that all the planning and commissioning and the tooling of the memorial are complete, that Oscar and Constance in the form of the beautiful plaque will now greet everyone who comes into this church and will bid us farewell this afternoon. I therefore ask you to raise your glasses: to Oscar and Constance!”

The Commemoration Fund is still open. Donations will go towards enhancing the website www.oscance.org.uk with photo-graphs and text related to this event.

All future donors will have their names listed on the Sponsors’ page. The Parish will adopt the website following its enlargement. Consideration is also being given to making a postcard of the Memorial available soon among the others on the rack near the church door.

Donald Mead

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