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Constance Wilde
Constance Mary Holland (née Lloyd; 2 January 1858 – 7 April 1898), better known as Constance Wilde, was an Irish writer. She was the wife of Irish playwright Oscar Wilde and the mother of their two sons, Cyril and Vyvyan.
The daughter of Horace Lloyd, an Anglo-Irish barrister, and Adelaide Barbara Atkinson, who had married in 1855 in Dublin, Constance Lloyd was born at her parents' home in Harewood Square, Marylebone, London. Registration of births did not become compulsory until 1875 and her parents omitted to do this.
She married Wilde at St James's Church, Paddington on 29 May 1884. Their two sons Cyril and Vyvyan were born in the next two years.
In 1888, Constance Wilde published a book based on children's stories she had heard from her grandmother, called There Was Once. She and her husband were involved in the dress reform movement.
It is unknown at what point Constance became aware of her husband's homosexual relationships. In 1891, she met his lover Lord Alfred Douglas when Wilde brought him to their home for a visit. Around this time Wilde was living more in hotels, such as the Avondale Hotel, than at their home in Tite Street. Since the birth of their second son, they had become distant.
In 1894, Constance was staying in Worthing with Oscar Wilde and started assembling a collection of epigrams called Oscariana from Wilde's works. The intention was that it be published by Arthur Humphreys, with whom she briefly fell in love that summer. The book was instead published privately the following year.
According to son Vyvyan's 1954 autobiography, the boys had a relatively happy childhood and their father was a loving parent. Richard Ellman's biography of Wilde recounted an occasion when he warned his sons about naughty boys who made their mamas cry; they asked him what happened to absent papas who made mamas cry.
After Wilde's conviction and imprisonment in 1895, Constance changed her and her sons' last name to Holland to dissociate them from his scandal. The couple never divorced, but Constance forced Wilde to give up his parental rights. She moved with her sons to Switzerland and enrolled them in an English-language boarding school in Germany. They never saw their father again.
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Constance Wilde
Constance Mary Holland (née Lloyd; 2 January 1858 – 7 April 1898), better known as Constance Wilde, was an Irish writer. She was the wife of Irish playwright Oscar Wilde and the mother of their two sons, Cyril and Vyvyan.
The daughter of Horace Lloyd, an Anglo-Irish barrister, and Adelaide Barbara Atkinson, who had married in 1855 in Dublin, Constance Lloyd was born at her parents' home in Harewood Square, Marylebone, London. Registration of births did not become compulsory until 1875 and her parents omitted to do this.
She married Wilde at St James's Church, Paddington on 29 May 1884. Their two sons Cyril and Vyvyan were born in the next two years.
In 1888, Constance Wilde published a book based on children's stories she had heard from her grandmother, called There Was Once. She and her husband were involved in the dress reform movement.
It is unknown at what point Constance became aware of her husband's homosexual relationships. In 1891, she met his lover Lord Alfred Douglas when Wilde brought him to their home for a visit. Around this time Wilde was living more in hotels, such as the Avondale Hotel, than at their home in Tite Street. Since the birth of their second son, they had become distant.
In 1894, Constance was staying in Worthing with Oscar Wilde and started assembling a collection of epigrams called Oscariana from Wilde's works. The intention was that it be published by Arthur Humphreys, with whom she briefly fell in love that summer. The book was instead published privately the following year.
According to son Vyvyan's 1954 autobiography, the boys had a relatively happy childhood and their father was a loving parent. Richard Ellman's biography of Wilde recounted an occasion when he warned his sons about naughty boys who made their mamas cry; they asked him what happened to absent papas who made mamas cry.
After Wilde's conviction and imprisonment in 1895, Constance changed her and her sons' last name to Holland to dissociate them from his scandal. The couple never divorced, but Constance forced Wilde to give up his parental rights. She moved with her sons to Switzerland and enrolled them in an English-language boarding school in Germany. They never saw their father again.