{{Short description|Irish writer (1858–1898)}} {{Redirect|Constance Lloyd|the New Zealand artist|Connie Lloyd}} {{Use Hiberno-English |date=June 2025}} {{Use dmy dates |date=May 2024}} {{Infobox writer | name = Constance Wilde | image = Constance Lloyd by Louis Desanges 1882.jpg | imagesize = | caption = Portrait by Louis William Desanges (1882) | pseudonym = | birth_date = {{birth date|1858|1|2|df=y}} | birth_place = London, England | death_date = {{death date and age|1898|4|7|1858|1|2|df=y}} | death_place = Genoa, Italy | resting_place= Monumental Cemetery of Staglieno | occupation = Author | nationality = Irish | period = Victorian | genre = Children's stories | subject = | notableworks = ''There Was Once'' | spouse = {{marriage|Oscar Wilde|29 May 1884}} | partner = | children = {{ubli |Cyril Holland |Vyvyan Holland }} | relatives = Merlin Holland (grandson) }}
'''Constance Mary Holland''' ({{née|'''Lloyd'''}}; 2 January 1858{{snd}}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.
==Early life and marriage== thumb|Constance with her son Cyril in 1889 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.<ref>{{cite book |last=Moyle |first=Franny |author-link=Franny Moyle |year=2011a |title=Constance: The Tragic and Scandalous Life of Mrs Oscar Wilde |publisher=John Murray |location=London |isbn=9781848541627 |lccn=2011505665 |oclc=720547457 |ol=OL25172562M }}</ref>{{rp|p=14}} Registration of births did not become compulsory until 1875 and her parents omitted to do this.<ref>{{cite book |last=Amor |first=Anne Clark |year=1983 |title=Mrs. Oscar Wilde, a Woman of Some Importance |location=London |publisher=Sidgwick & Jackson |url=https://archive.org/details/mrsoscarwildewom0000amor/page/n6 |access-date=2025-06-16 |isbn=028398967X |lccn=83169597 |ol=OL3252036M }}</ref>{{rp|p=12}}
She married Wilde at St James's Church, Paddington on 29 May 1884.<ref name="Fitzsimons">{{cite book|last1=Fitzsimons|first1=Eleanor|title=Wilde's Women: How Oscar Wilde Was Shaped by the Women He Knew|publisher=The Overlook Press|isbn=9781468313260|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=ksZTCwAAQBAJ&q=st%20james%20sussex%20gardens%20oscar%20wilde&pg=PT133|access-date=25 September 2016|language=en|date=2017-09-26}}</ref> 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.<ref>{{cite book |title=Oscar Wilde On Dress |publisher=CSM Press |year=2013 }}{{author missing |date=May 2025}}{{ISBN missing |date=May 2025}}</ref>
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,<ref>{{cite book |last=Moyle |first=Franny |author-link=Franny Moyle |year=2011b |title=Constance: The Tragic and Scandalous Life of Mrs. Oscar Wilde |publisher=Pegasus Books |location=New York, NY |isbn=9781605983813 |oclc=785079100 }}</ref>{{rp|p=1}} than at their home in Tite Street. Since the birth of their second son, they had become distant.<ref>{{cite book |last=Ellman |first=Richard |author-link=Richard Ellmann |title=Oscar Wilde |year=1987 }}{{ISBN missing |date=May 2025}}{{publisher missing |date=May 2025}}</ref>{{rp|p=394}}
In 1894, Constance was staying in Worthing with Oscar Wilde and started assembling a collection of epigrams called ''Oscariana'' from Wilde's works.<ref name="edm25" /> 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.<ref name="edm25">{{cite web |last=Edmunds |first=Antony |title=Oscariana - New Information |url=https://www.oscarwilde.org.uk/oscariana.html |access-date=2025-06-16 }}{{date missing |date=May 2025}}{{publisher missing |date=May 2025}}</ref>
According to son Vyvyan's 1954 autobiography, the boys had a relatively happy childhood and their father was a loving parent.<ref name=time>{{cite magazine|title=A Life of Concealment|date=27 September 1954|magazine=Time |url=http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,820321-1,00.html |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090212185348/http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,820321-1,00.html |url-status=dead |archive-date=12 February 2009 |access-date=8 August 2008}}</ref> 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.<ref>{{Cite journal|last1=Robins|first1=Ashley H.|last2=Holland|first2=Merlin|date=2015-01-03|title=The enigmatic illness and death of Constance, wife of Oscar Wilde|url=https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(14)62468-5/abstract|journal=The Lancet|language=en|volume=385|issue=9962|pages=21–22|doi=10.1016/S0140-6736(14)62468-5|issn=0140-6736|pmid=25592892|s2cid=41229933|url-access=subscription}}</ref> 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.{{efn |The only time they were ever told of their father was at his death in 1900. When a kindly English schoolmaster broke the news to Vyvyan, the boy was astonished. "But," he said, "I thought he died long ago."<ref name="time" />}}
Constance visited Oscar in prison so she could tell him the news of his mother's death.<ref>{{cite book |last=Ellman |first=Richard |title=Oscar Wilde |location=New York |publisher=Vintage Books |year=1988 }}{{ISBN missing |date=May 2025}}</ref>{{rp|pp=497–498}} After he had been released from prison, she refused to send him any money unless he no longer associated with Douglas.
==Illness and death== Constance died on 7 April 1898, five days after a surgery conducted by Luigi Maria Bossi.<ref name="Lancet2015">{{cite journal|last2=Holland|first2=Merlin|date=3 January 2015|title=The enigmatic illness and death of Constance, wife of Oscar Wilde|url=http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(14)62468-5/fulltext|journal=The Lancet |publisher=Elsevier|volume=385|issue=9962|pages=21–22|doi=10.1016/s0140-6736(14)62468-5|last1=Robins|first1=Ashley|pmid=25592892|s2cid=41229933|url-access=subscription}}</ref> According to ''The Guardian'', "theories [about her death] have ranged from spinal damage following a fall down stairs to syphilis caught from her husband."<ref name=dalyaalberge>{{cite news|title=Letters unravel mystery of the death of Oscar Wilde's wife|author=Dalya Alberge|url=https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2015/jan/02/death-oscar-wilde-wife-solved|newspaper=The Guardian|date=1 January 2015|access-date=3 January 2015}}</ref> Also according to ''the Guardian'', Merlin Holland, grandson of Oscar Wilde,<ref name=dalyaalberge/> {{blockquote |text=unearthed medical evidence within private family letters, which has enabled a doctor to determine the likely cause of Constance's demise. The letters reveal symptoms nowadays associated with multiple sclerosis{{efn |Multiple sclerosis was then a little-known condition.}} but apparently wrongly diagnosed by her two doctors [...].}}
Constance sought help from two doctors. One of them was a "nerve doctor" from Heidelberg, Germany, who resorted to dubious remedies. The second doctor{{snd}}Luigi Maria Bossi{{snd}}conducted two operations (for uterine fibroid) in 1895 and 1898, the latter of which ultimately led to her death.<ref name=Lancet2015/> Writing in ''the Lancet'' in 2015, Ashley H. Robins and Merlin Holland surmised that, "the surgery Bossi performed in December 1895 was probably an anterior vaginal wall repair to correct urinary difficulties from a presumed bladder prolapse. In retrospect, the actual problem was probably neurogenic and not structural in origin".<ref name="Lancet2015"/>
During the second surgery in April 1898, Bossi probably "did not attempt a hysterectomy but merely excised the tumour in a myomectomy".{{cn |date=June 2025}} Shortly after the surgery Constance developed uncontrollable vomiting which led to dehydration and death. The immediate cause of death is thought to have been severe paralytic ileus, which developed either as a result of the surgery itself or of intra-abdominal sepsis. Constance is buried in Genoa, Italy, in the Monumental Cemetery of Staglieno.<ref>{{cite web |title=Biography of Oscar Wilde |year=2022 |website=Poem of Quotes |url=https://www.poemofquotes.com/oscarwilde/ |access-date=2025-06-14 }}</ref>
A memorial statue depicting a nude pregnant Constance is included in the Oscar Wilde Memorial Sculpture in Merrion Square in Dublin.<ref>{{cite journal|url=https://www.academia.edu/4042930|title=Sculpting Irishness: a discussion of Dublin's commemorative statues of Oscar Wilde and Phil Lynott |first=Smith |last=Sarah|journal=Sculpture Journal|volume=21|year=2012|access-date=16 June 2017}}</ref>
== Portrayals == Constance Wilde was portrayed by Jennifer Ehle in the 1997 film ''Wilde'', which features Stephen Fry as Oscar Wilde.
Emily Watson portrayed Constance Wilde in the 2018 film ''The Happy Prince'', which was written and directed by Rupert Everett, who also starred as Oscar Wilde.
In 2022,<ref>{{cite news |first1=Elsa |last1=Keslassy |first2=Manori |last2=Ravindran |date=2022-10-31 |title=Emilia Clarke to Play Oscar Wilde's Wife and Irish Author, Constance Lloyd, in Sophie Hyde's 'An Ideal Wife{{'}} |website=Variety |url=https://variety.com/2022/film/global/game-of-thrones-emilia-clarke-constance-llyod-sophie-hyde-oscar-wilde-1235417766/ |access-date=2025-06-14 }}</ref> Emilia Clarke was revealed to be the lead of the biographical film ''An Ideal Wife'' by director Sophie Hyde, which will explore the sexual awakening Constance experienced when she discovered that Wilde was homosexual.
==Gallery== {{Gallery |align=centre |width=178 |height=200 |mode=packed |noborder=yes
|Constance Lloyd 1882.jpg |Constance Lloyd, 1882
|Mrs. Oscar Wilde.jpg |Constance at a charity flower stall held at Kensington Town Hall, April 1891
|Constance Wilde c. 1887.jpg |Wilde, {{circa|1887}}
|Oscar, Constance and Cyril Wilde 1892.jpg |Constance, Cyril and Oscar, 1892
|Constance Wilde 1896.jpg |Constance in Heidelberg, 1896
|Constance Mary Lloyd tomb.jpg |Funerary monument, Monumental Cemetery of Staglieno, Genoa
|File:Constance Lloyd - Oscar Wilde companion piece.jpg |Nude, pregnant Constance{{efn |A companion piece to Oscar Wilde statue in Merrion Square Park, Dublin.}} }}
==Notes== {{Notelist}}
==References== {{Reflist |30em}}
{{Subject bar |auto=y |portal1=Ireland |portal2=Biography }} {{Oscar Wilde|state=collapsed}} {{Authority control}}
{{DEFAULTSORT:Wilde, Constance}} Category:1858 births Category:1898 deaths Category:British women children's writers Category:Irish women children's writers Category:Oscar Wilde Category:Neurological disease deaths in Liguria Category:Deaths from multiple sclerosis Category:People with multiple sclerosis Category:Irish people of English descent Category:British writers with disabilities Category:Irish people with disabilities Constance Category:Lovers of Oscar Wilde Category:Dress reformers Category:People from Marylebone Category:Writers from the City of Westminster