My Dearest Holmes: an extract from Rohase Piercy's groundbreaking novel.

'My Dearest Holmes' is a novel of two halves. Part I, entitled 'A Discreet Investigation',

tells the story of an unconventional client's search for her missing companion – a quest

that Sherlock Holmes embarks on with enthusiasm and solves with relative ease. The

denoument of the case, however, has less to do with the resolution of Miss Anne

D'Arcy's dilemma than with Watson's admission, forced out of him by the circumstances

of the investigation, of his feelings for the great detective and his determination to seek a

'marriage of convenience' in order to protect them both from suspicion and scandal.

Part II, entitled 'The Final Problem' and set three years later, follows the same sequence

of events as the original Conan Doyle story of that name (in which Holmes plunges to

his death over the Reichanbach Falls in Switzerland, locked in the arms of his arch-

enemy Professor Moriarty) and carries the reader forward to the events of 'The Adventure

Of The Empty House' in which Doyle, finally bowing to public pressure, 'resurrects' his

hero and returns him to 221B Baker Street and to a conveniently-widowed Watson. In

other words, my version of 'The Final Problem' is an attempt to give an alternative

explanation for the fabled 'Great Hiatus'.

Those of you familiar with the original stories will recognise the setting of this extract,

in which Holmes and Watson, having excaped Moriarty's gang in London, travel across

France and Belgium towards Switzerland. My conceit, however, is that Conan Doyle

failed to disclose the real reason for their flight: Moriarty's threat to expose Watson's

homosexual lifestyle and bring down upon him the full rigour of the 1885 Criminal Law

Amendment Act - the same law under which Oscar Wilde was to be convicted and

sentenced to imprisonment with hard labour just a few years later.

The Gateways Club

The Gateways Club, just off Chelsea’s Kings Road in London, was the longest surviving lesbian club of the 20th century, open from 1931 to 1985. It also became the most famous, when it featured in the 1968 Hollywood movie, The Killing of Sister George, where real life club members came out on screen, dancing cheek to cheek in front of millions, before gay liberation ever hit the headlines.

In her book, From the Closet to the Screen - Women at the Gateways Club 1945-85, Jill Gardiner shares the stories of 80 women who went there. They include the author, Maureen Duffy, whose best-selling 1966 novel The Microcosm, immortalised the club, and grew out of interviews with its members; Maggi Hambling, the artist, who arrived on New Year's Eve, dressed as Bonnie, then changed her costume to Clyde at midnight; sociologist Mary McIntosh, who wrote 'The Homosexual Role', and Pat Arrowsmith, the peace campaigner, who listed the Gateways as her club in Who’s Who.

But how did anyone ever find the Gateways in the early days when clubs didn’t advertise and many a young woman grew up thinking she was the only one in the world who felt this way?

It was 1963. I hadn’t identified myself as a lesbian. I persuaded my boyfriend to go to this weird pub in Soho full of drag queens. There was this woman sitting opposite me with her boyfriend. A couple of drinks later, I suddenly found myself asking her if she had ever wanted to go to a queer club. She said, ‘Funnily enough, yeah.’ Our boyfriends looked pretty gob-smacked. The next week, she and I went back to Soho and found the Huntsman in Berwick Street. It was an eye-opener to me, full of people boasting how much they’d nicked that day. At about 3am an axe came through the door. There was some sort of gang conflict going on. It was mayhem, and the police arrived, at which point all the same-sex partners dancing switched to the opposite sex. I found myself dancing with a bloke called Bobby.   -  Marion

Through her visit to the Huntsman, Marion found the Gateways.

That was my introduction to the gay world, and although it was exciting I knew I wasn’t going to meet anyone like me. A lot of the women in the Huntsman said they’d been in children’s homes and were living off the streets. The femmes were often on the game and one of the aspirations of the younger butchy types was to become a pimp.

The Huntsman during the day became an ordinary cafe called the Coffee Pot. After we’d had a big raving session one night, I was still there in the morning, having a pot of coffee when this young woman came in, Sasha, and she knew some of the people I was with. She was gay: I couldn’t believe it. She was setting up her own business as a couturier and had been to a material shop nearby, and she knew some of the people I was with. She had lots of eye make-up and bouffanted dark hair and was dressed very trendily.

Sasha introduced me to the Gateways. I remember Gina [one of the owners] sitting at the bottom of the stairs, in a black dress, and I was impressed that she looked very sophisticated. There was a man in a suit behind the bar, and Greta said, ‘That’s Ted, that’s Gina’s husband’, and I just couldn’t work it out. Smithy [often assumed to be Gina’s lover] was there too, a woman with fair cropped hair, polishing glasses.

I was excited that there must be lots of people like myself around who had ordinary jobs. I was struck by the ordinariness of everybody - they just looked like a cross section of women you would see walking around the streets. I identified as a hippy at the time. I had long hair, jeans and purple boots with Cuban heels: slightly more ‘unisex’ than most people there.

Someone came up to me and said that blonde Archie had sent her over. Archie was  very good-looking but a bit frightening. She’d sent over to find out if I was butch or femme. I said I didn’t know and I got a message back saying, that I ought to make my mind up soon or I might find myself in a bit of trouble.   -  Marion 

© Jill Gardiner

From the Closet to the Screen is available at:

Gay’s the Word bookshop in London (who deliver almost anywhere worldwide)

City Books in Hove   

BFI Shop 

Veil of Tweed

We're re-posting this wonderful poem by Maria Jastrzębska today, as Maria has a new anthology coming out in October 2022, Small Odysseys (click the title to order a copy from Waterloo Press). She's a Polish-British poet, editor and translator, the author of sell-out drama Dementia Diaries and a founding member of Queer Writing South. The poem is from her collection Everyday Angels.

Maria says: 'Can you imagine, or do you remember how little information (let alone anything like positive images) there was about the lives of women who loved other women (or women generally) back in the 60s and 70s when I was growing up? This poem references two classics: The Killing of Sister George a play from 1964 about a “slightly sadistic masculine woman” adapted into a film in 1968 and made nastier and also more explicitly lesbian and Les Biches a French film from 1968 about bisexuality, “tortured” relationships, etc.'

VEIL OF TWEED

 

 

Behind a veil of tweed, through a smoke-screen 

of bravado I know too well, pouring out gin 

in your jodhpurs or PVC, Sister George

you don’t scare me, but you did once.

 

I fled from you into the arms of a biche

with long lashes, sulky lips. At least 

her hair was long, even though it all ended 

in tears. It might as well have been me 

 

slumped, sobbing face pressed 

against a bathroom door, behind which 

Anouk Aimée made love with a real man.

I wouldn’t cut my hair. Wore a frock 

 

to the hairdressers in case I looked like you 

when I walked out. At eighteen 

how afraid I was of being mistaken 

for a man. How afraid of being old.

Maria Jastrzębska

from Everyday Angels (Waterloo Press 2009)

 

www.mariajastrzebska.wordpress.com

All those words left unsaid

Constance Wilde died on 7th April 1898. Inevitably linked for all time with the scandals of her famous husband Oscar, Constance's tumultuous interior life is imagined by Rohase Piercy in her novel The Coward Does It With A Kiss.

The curtain is moving in the breeze … it comforts me, like the rocking of a cradle.  Green, with turquoise motif – what are they?  Flowers?  Dragons?  I always loved green.  These are decadent curtains; you would not find them in an English hospital. The colours absorb the pain a little, and I find some ease.

Well, it is over; and the nuns who nurse me are  kind, and bring me morphine for the pain, and do everything for my comfort.  They have laid me on my side today, and I cannot move without help, so I watch the light move slowly across the window, and the curtain stirring where they have opened it a little to let in fresh air.  Faint voices drift up from the grounds below; a bell tolls in the distance.  I remind myself that you, Oscar, suffered worse things in prison.

If I could go back – oh, a long way back in my life, I could make all things as new as this new morning.  This must be what a newborn baby sees, light and movement, the edge of a curtain dancing in the breeze.  And all sound is muffled.

I have short, jagged periods of sleep, and when I wake the bedclothes are drenched in sweat.  In my dreams I hear people shouting, aiming words at me like sharp, black beads.  What are they saying?  Next time I awake, I will try to make sense of it.  Is it just my name that I hear, repeated over and over?

Constance!  Constance!  Constance!

*****

I remember you called my name, and I ran out of the house, out of the front door and across the street to the beach; there were carriages, and pedestrians on the street turning to stare, and families on the beach.  This was Worthing, not Babbacombe; there were no nooks and crannies in which to hide.

I walked along the Esplanade, wringing my hands.  My agitation drew curious glances, but I kept my head down and walked to the pier, and to the end of the pier, and then all the way back to the house.  You were there in the little front parlour, alone.  I tried to dash past, to go up to my room, but you ran out and caught me by the arm.

“Constance.”

“Let me go, Oscar.”

“Constance, I have got to talk to you.”

“I don't want to talk.  Leave me alone.”

“Constance please.  Come in here, please, the children will hear.  Just one brief word, I beg of you.”

I followed you into the room, and you closed the door.  Wearily I sat down upon the sofa.

“Where are they?”

“Gone.”

“Gone where?”

“Away. Does it matter? Constance, please listen.  I am sorry that you saw what you did.  I am sorry that I allowed Bosie to bring him here.  It will not happen again, my dear;  please try to put it out of your mind.”

“What will not happen again, Oscar?”

“Well, this – this intrusion into your domestic life.  I have told Bosie he is not to bring any more of his - friends to this house.  Really, the last thing I want to do is to upset you, Constance.  I promise to be more careful ...”

“More careful?  Careful to keep your sordid life out of sight, is that what you mean?  You do realise, don't you, that our children could have walked past that door at any moment?”

“No!  I mean yes, I suppose that is what I mean, and no, I made sure the boys were out with Fräulein Zeigler, or I would never ...”

“I see.  May I go now?”

“Constance, please try to understand.”

“Oh, I understand perfectly well, Oscar.  You are not sorry for what you and Bosie are doing, but you are sorry that I saw you do it.  You will not promise to give up your unsavoury companions and activities, but you will try to keep them out of my way.  Oscar, I don't know exactly what age that young man was, but he cannot have been more than fifteen at most.  Have you absolutely no sense of responsibility?  In a few years' time your own sons will be that age – does that not even give you pause for thought?”

You sighed, a long, shuddering sigh, and held your head in your hands.  At last you said quietly:  “But you knew, Constance.”

“I knew about you and Bosie, but not about this.  Where do you meet these boys, Oscar?  Do you do this in London?  Of course you do, how stupid of me.  You introduced me to that boy Edward Shelley, when I came home unexpectedly and found him in the house.  How can you – how can you corrupt the young like this, when you have children of your own?”

You blushed deeply, and murmured something inaudible.

“What?” I asked sharply, “What did you say?”

“I do not corrupt them, Constance.  There are boys that I know, but they are already hardened little … they are already leading that life, Constance, it is how they earn a living.”

“Oh, I see.  So you are kindly providing employment for the poor.”

“I did not say that, Constance.”

“Where do you meet them?  On the streets?”

“My dear, you don't want to know all this.”

“But I do!  I do!  I have a right to know, I demand to know.  Where do you meet them?  Do you bring them to our house on a regular basis, when I am away?”

“No!  I have a friend called Alfred Taylor.  He lives in Little College Street.  He – arranges introductions.  We go out for meals, to hotels … there.  That is all.  Now you know.  What are you going to do, Constance?  Are you going to divorce me, and take the boys away?”

You sounded so hopeless, so desolate, that I raged inwardly at my inability to keep pity at bay.

“No, of course not.  What would I have to gain by dragging our children's name in the mud?”

“Your freedom, my dear.  A new husband, perhaps.”

I was furious at having the tables turned on me at a time like this.

“What?  It is you who want freedom, not I!  Well, you have it.  You have always taken it, anyway.  Consider yourself free to do as you wish.  And I do not want a new husband.”

That was true.  I would have given anything, there and then, to have my old husband back, the husband I had courted so shyly and married so proudly only a decade ago.  Not this debauched and lascivious stranger.

“Constance, I know that Arthur Humphreys is in love with you.”

“Don't talk nonsense, he's a married man,” I said, and left the room.

I lay on my bed and sobbed until I was nearly sick.  I remembered with revulsion my romantic indulgence of your friendships, and the spell cast over me, in the early days, by Bosie.  I bit my nails to the quick, and damned him to Hell a thousand times.  I thought of Ada Leverson, that wily old Sphinx on her pedestal; she knew you for what you were and revelled in it, and by watching you as I had done I felt that I'd brought myself down to her level.  As for you, Oscar – well, I planned my revenge in this way and that, and swore that I would make you suffer.  

When I came to myself, I found that you'd left for Brighton; and there was still the blood on my lips of all those words left unsaid, crying out for vengeance.

The boys had been clamouring to go out.  They wanted to know where Bosie was – he'd arrived out of the blue as was his wont, apparently completely oblivious to his father's threats and determined to muscle in on our family holiday, as always.  They wanted to go to the beach with you both, but I had no idea where you were so I sent them on a sedate afternoon walk with Fräulein Zeigler.  Poor dears, this was not turning out to be a happy holiday for them; they were restless and demanding, estranged by school and unable to settle.  

When you came in to find the parlour empty, you must have assumed I'd gone with them; but  I was in the kitchen, checking the supplies, suspecting that the local cook we'd engaged was not above a little domestic pilfering.  I found nothing amiss however, and after a while I made my way upstairs to lie down; as I passed the open door of the room I'd reluctantly allotted to Bosie, I saw you.

You were kneeling before a young boy lying on the bed, leaning over him, your fingers twined in his hair.  With your free hand you were loosening his clothes, quickly, deftly, while Bosie sat poised on the edge of the bedside chair, watching with a greedy, hateful expression on his face.  The boy slid his arm around your neck, and pulled you down to him.  You kissed first his lips and then his throat, moving slowly down his body.

I should have backed away, quickly and silently, but I stood in the doorway for some time and watched you quite calmly, until Bosie looked up and saw me.  I have never seen anyone's eyes become quite so round with shock.  I turned and ran back down the stairs, along the passage to the front door, and out into the street.  I heard your voices calling me:  “Constance!  Constance!  Constance!”

When are you coming home, Oscar?

Oscar Wilde died, disgraced and in exile, on 30th November 1900, famously saying 'Either this wallpaper goes, or I do' ... but what of his neglected wife Constance, who had predeceased him by two and a half years? How much did she actually know about her husband's sexual preferences? Rohase Piercy depicts Constance's state of mind in her novel, The Coward Does It With A Kiss. This is how she imagines the famous encounter between husband and wife at the Albemarle Hotel, where Oscar was staying with his lover Bosie, might have gone.

25th of April 1893

I have just returned from delivering O.'s letters – quite a few of them by now.  I went to the Albemarle, only to be told that he “and Lord Alfred Douglas” had left yesterday, apparently after some disagreement with the hotel manager.  I imagine that the disagreement was of a financial nature, for when the said gentleman eventually deigned to come and speak to me, he could hardly bring himself to tell me where they had gone.  At last he said, “They mentioned that they were going back to the Savoy, Madam,” oozing disapproval from every syllable, though whether of them or of the Savoy I am not certain.  By the time I arrived there, I was close to tears and the whole thing went very badly.

They were staying in one of the best suites of course, and I was shown into the sitting room; but they were still in the bedroom, and the door was open.  There was another gentleman present, and they were arguing, in French, about something to do with Salome.  When the boy announced me they all turned towards the door, very embarrassed, and O. apologised to the others in a low voice and came out to me in his dressing-gown.  He was very abrupt with me at first, but seeing that I was upset, and no doubt wishing to avoid a scene, he became kinder.

“My letters!  But how delightful to receive so many, and by special delivery!  Tite Street?  Is that really my address?  Do you know, it is so long since I have been to Tite Street that I'd quite forgotten I have a house there!  Thank you, my dear,” (kissing me on the cheek) “for reminding me that I have an address, even as lesser mortals.  Remember, O Poet, thou too art human!”

The others emerged somewhat shamefacedly from the bedroom, and Bosie greeted me in a quiet, sulky manner and then introduced me to the French gentleman, since O. was too absorbed in reading his correspondence to do so.  Monsieur Pierre Louys - I had never heard of him before.  He seemed quite at a loss, which made me suspect that the ignorance was mutual.  Bosie asked after the children, and I'm afraid I replied quite coldly, as I am now far from happy about his effect upon them.  Evidently he was supposed to be studying during his stay at Babbacombe, and had even brought a tutor with him; but if Cyril is to be believed, he avoided his lessons at every opportunity, and encouraged my boys to do the same.  Poor Miss Squine confirmed that she had a very difficult time with them while I was away.  Of course, I have not been able to speak to O. about it.

After a while O. interrupted the conversation, waving an invitation card under Bosie's nose.

“Did you know about this, dear boy?”

Bosie took and read it, with some surprise.  “Certainly not.  I have not been invited myself!  How very remiss of Mama.  I shall telegraph her about it today, and ask what she means by it!”

“Probably she does not know where you are.  There, Constance, it is not only I who deserve reproach; Lady Queensberry would no doubt sympathise with you.  You have an errant husband, she an errant son.”

“You're invited too, by the way, Constance,” said Bosie carelessly, handing the card to me – and I intercepted a look of annoyance from O. as I took it.  Sure enough, it was addressed to Mr and Mrs Oscar Wilde, and requested the pleasure of our company at Lady Queensberry's May Ball, to be held at Bracknell on the 19th.  I am utterly convinced that O. would have gone without me, and never said a word about it.

“It is very kind of your mother, and I shall write and thank her,” I said after an awkward silence.  Bosie gave an enigmatic smile.

“But will you come, Constance?”  His use of my Christian name, which I once thought so charming, was now beginning to grate on me.

I looked from him to my husband.  O. looked uncomfortable and disapproving, Bosie sly and vicious.  It dawned upon me that they had been having an argument, and that Bosie was endorsing his mother's invitation to me purely to cause chagrin.  How dared either of them think to use me as a pawn in their sordid little game!

My first instinct was to refuse; but I have said that I will accept the invitation, and have undertaken to write to Lady Q today on behalf of both O. and myself to that effect.  Why, I wonder?  I can hardly imagine that I will enjoy myself.  Did I do it purely out of spite?  Or am I just curious to meet Bosie's mother?  I should like to meet her, if only to find out what she thinks of O. and of his friendship with her son.  How much does she know, I wonder?

Yes, I admit it, I'm curious, and I am also spiteful.  O. had no right to humiliate me this morning in front of his friends.  I suppose he would say it was my fault, for turning up unannounced.

He bade me farewell in a very jovial manner.

“When are you coming home, Oscar?” I asked plainly.

“Home?  Ah yes, to Tite Street!  How I should love to visit Tite Street!  They tell me I have a charming house there.  Don't worry my dear, you shall certainly be seeing me at Tite Street sooner than you think.  The rates these hotels charge nowadays are quite shocking, and I hear that quite a number of perfectly respectable people are being forced to live at their own houses simply because they cannot afford to live anywhere else!”

I bade them all farewell, I hope reproachfully.  M. Louys looked amazed, and quite upset.  Yes, I think he was completely ignorant of my existence.

I could see the bedroom very clearly, by the way. There was but one bed.  I can hardly believe that O. and Bosie have been sleeping quite openly together in the same bed.  How could he do anything so blatant?  Is he completely mad?  Is he completely past caring what people will think of him?  Is he past caring what people will think of me?

Oscar, I will start again

Happy New Year to all our kindly readers! We wish you all plenty of health, wealth and happiness and thank you for visiting our blog.   

As we note that it was Constance Wilde's birthday yesterday, it seems an excellent opportunity to take a peep into some private correspondence addressed to her estranged husband, Oscar Wilde. It is, of course, as imagined by Rohase Piercy in her excellent and well-researched novel, The Coward Does It With A Kiss. 

Villa Elvira,

Bogliasco,

Nervi.

2nd of January 1898

My Dear Oscar,

You may be surprised to receive another letter from me so soon after my last, and indeed I had not intended to write again for I have nothing in particular to say that has not been covered by our recent correspondence.  I'm sure I need hardly add that I have not changed my mind about anything, especially after your last letter to me, which is the letter of a madman.  I suppose that A.D. is still with you?  I hear rumours that Lady Q. has written to him, and that you are both short of money.  I can only say that I hope she has withdrawn his allowance as I have withdrawn yours, and when I think of your going back to him after all that has happened, and then blaming me because I have been biding my time before inviting you here to join me, a thing which everyone agreed to be the most sensible and delicate course of action, I hope you may both starve.

Oscar, I will start again.

I do not want to write you another letter full of bitterness and recrimination.  I want to write you at least one honest piece of correspondence, not to lecture you about your situation, but to tell you something about mine.  Or are you so far steeped in the madness of self-pity that you have not even the imagination to see that your wife has a soul to be tormented also, a soul as precious as yours perhaps?

It is no use. I am so full, so saturated with bitterness and spite, that it appears I can neither speak nor write without barbs.  I sometimes wonder whether my ill health is not caused by sheer anger - spite and resentment running like electricity through my nerves - which would account, perhaps, for the shooting pains and the tingling.  Of course I have plenty of encouragement from my family and from well-meaning friends (and your well-meaning friends have done little to help the situation) – but encouragement is no excuse.  The truth is that I am an unpleasant person masquerading as a likeable one, a vindictive women pretending to be a martyr; one who chose with eyes wide open to go where I would seem to have been led innocent and blind.  I say this in cold blood and without self-abasement; and I know that it will be as great a surprise to you as anyone, to know that I have long had a window through which to look into the secret recesses of your heart.  

It has often been said to me (how often!) that I could not be blamed for having misunderstood you, that your actions were, and still are, beyond the comprehension of decent people.  But I did and still do understand you, Oscar; I understand you perfectly well.  It is myself, myself I do not understand.

Cyril went back to Neuenheim yesterday, and I do miss him; especially as today is my birthday, as you know, and I enter my forty-first year.  But it is a beautiful morning here at Nervi, and I feel quite well for the first time in days.  Maria woke me with a breakfast tray on which lay a bouquet of sun-coloured roses – a gift from the Ranee, who always remembers me.  She must have sent for them specially, at this time of year.  Feeling rested, I rose early and have been sitting for some time now by my window, from which I can see the jasmine in bloom, and the white road leading down to the village.  I have been leafing through an old diary which I found in the bottom of my trunk – I am still in the process of unpacking, you see! - and which I am very thankful to have kept by me, for I blush to think what the bailiffs who ransacked Tite Street would have made of it.  I am not sure just what has prompted such a restrospective indulgence, at a time when retrospection can bring me nothing but pain – intimations of mortality, perhaps, having reached the age of forty (still young, the Ranee says, but it feels so old!); my ill health, et cetera; and thoughts of other birthdays, with you.

 You think this a rambling and self-indulgent preamble, no doubt.  Well, you should know all about that.

  

No.  If I cannot do better than this, this letter had best not be sent at all.  I am getting too tired, Oscar, to nag you for much longer, you will be relieved to hear.  Would you be interested, I wonder, in what I have been reading?  

 Well, prepare yourself.  The young woman who expressed herself thus was twenty-six years of age, and newly married; a young woman of artistic pretensions, ardent disciple of the Aesthetic Movement, and forty-eight hours wife of one who was, at the time, regarded as its High Priest.

Hotel Wagram, Rue de Rivoli

31st of May, 1884

The first day of my new life!  And my first chance to write about it.  It still seems like a wonderful dream, from which I pray I may never wake.  I have a few hours to myself this morning – by choice, of course, for O. pressed me to join them in a morning stroll but I declined, thinking how delicious it would be to spend some time writing by the window in our room.  We have a wonderful view of the Tuileries, and everything is in bloom, and I can see couples out strolling arm in arm just as O. and I did yesterday (as man and wife!  How strange, and yet how completely natural it seems already to think of ourselves in those terms).  Mr Sherard addressed me this morning as “Mrs Oscar”...

  Oh, I forgot to mention that Robert Sherard arrived at breakfast this morning, and was introduced to me, and was altogether most charming and contratulatory.  I had heard much about him from O. and so was very interested to meet him; he does not seem on first acquaintance to display any of the “puritanism” that O. likes to complain of – on the contrary, he seems a rather romantic figure, and puts me in mind of Chatterton.  And he is the great-grandson of Wordsworth!  Anyway, he and Oscar are taking a stroll together, and I do not at all begrudge them one another's company, for now I have a little solitude in which to revel in my happiness.  To tell the truth, I am also feeling tired – and aching in every limb!  I am very glad of those talks with Lady M.B. otherwise I might not be quite sure that all is as it should be.  It feels rather like one's monthly “indisposition”, but it is not at all unpleasant; in fact I feel extremely smug and contented, and I shall never allow myself to be intimidated by a bitter old spinster like Aunt Emily again!  For what does she know of life, when all is said and done?

“More happy love, more happy, happy love,

Forever warm, and still to be enjoyed,

Forever panting and forever young!”

(O. prefers Keats to Shelley, and I am coming round to his way of thinking - we read this aloud only last night, and laughed for pleasure!)  

“Forever may I love, and he be fair!”

O. seems vastly pleased with himself, and enjoys showing much tenderness and concern.  I do not like to spoil it for him, although he knows perfectly well that I was neither ignorant - how could I be, with a father whose indiscretions were the talk of the household? - nor apprehensive!  He insists that all his past experience counts for nothing, that there was no-one to compare to me, and of course that pleases me.  And he is so beautiful … I nearly told him what Lady M.B. said to me about the Rajah on her wedding night, but feared that instead  of amusing him it might offend.  His delicacy is so delightful, I hope he never loses it ...

Oh, Oscar!  I really think I had better not send this letter.  Embittered and cynical as I have become, it still brings an indulgent smile to my lips, even a nostalgic tear or two.  And Robert Sherard!  Not that I have any particular suspicions, for it is true that he was infected with a lingering puritanism … but even so, more than one of my friends thought it strange, on the second day of our honeymoon, and said so!  Well, it comes as no surprise to me now, to remember that I thought the two of you charming together.  But see what comes next:

 

I am interrupted by a knock at the door, and there has just been delivered a beautiful bouquet from O., who has not yet been gone more than an hour and a half, and a card with sweet words on it! What must Mr Sherard think of us?

  

(What indeed?  I remember how, a few days later, he threatened to throw his swordstick out of the carriage door on the grounds of being tempted to murder us for being too happy.  I thought it a great joke, and offered to relieve him of the tempting weapon there and then...)

 Ah, Oscar, our honeymoon!  Visits to John Donaghue's studio (you remember the bas-relief of the naked boy harpist we both admired so much?); Sarah Bernhardt's wonderful Lady Macbeth; ordering heaps of new clothes (at last I could order with impunity the costumes of which Aunt Emily so disapproved - soft flowing fabrics, rich colours, no bustle); reading Keats to one another in the evenings, when “Chatterton” had made his bow and retired.  And we were in Paris, in June!  Of all places and all seasons!  I felt as though a banner had unfurled in my heart declaiming Liberté, égalité, fraternité!  Strolling through the Tuileries in the evening, lamps flaring out against an indigo sky - I felt like a queen newly crowned, installed in the palace of your heart, Oscar, with all your adorers hastening to cast themselves at my feet also.

  After Paris, Dieppe was quiet, was it not?  A little too quiet for you, I think, but for me it was just what I wanted, for I needed time to reflect, and prepare for our return to London.  I had much to reflect on – at least, I seem to have thought so at the time, for my diary entries become quite copious, all much in the same rapturous vein:

  

Oscar is like the white moon, hiding the secret blue of his eyes under langorous heavy lids, and the amber waves of his hair are like an aureola around him. He makes me feel as deep and as powerful as the sea; the moon leans down, and she rocks him in her lap, like a lover.

  

A little too “utter”, perhaps, but not all bad I think – even comparable to something of yours?  I was told that you described me on occasion as a “violet-eyed Artemis” - well, I cannot imagine that you found me much like Artemis on our honeymoon!  Looking back, I wonder whether I might even have frightened you a little?

  

Received today a letter from Lady Wilde, who addresses me as “Dearest Constance” and signs herself “La Madre Devotissima”!  Mainly compliments about the wedding...  Will I ever live up to her expectations?  I wish I had the courage to display even half her unconventionality!  I really do not want to be a  Virgilia to her Volumnia, though I am sometimes afraid that is how people will see us.

  

Ah, poor Speranza. She was looking for a daughter to fill the chasm left by your little sister's death all those years ago.  I think that in time I did come to fill it, at least partly.  I certainly did come to love her, with a true affection; it is one of my greatest regrets that I was not more of a comfort and support to her at the last.