Queer Places:
Pitts Cottage, Pitts Ln, Binstead, Ryde PO33 3SU, UK
36 Hans Pl, Knightsbridge, London SW1X 0JZ, UK
73 Pont St, Chelsea, London SW1X 0BH, UK
Aimée Constance Anne Lowther (1869-1935) was a playwright and an amateur actress. She died of tuberculosis.
Aimée Constance Anne Lowther was the daughter of Francis William Cressotti (1841-1908), the natural son of William Lowther, later 2nd Earl of Lonsdale, and Italian opera singer Emilia Cresotti, and renowned beauty Louise Beatrice de Fonblanque, third daughter of Albany de Fonblanque. Her siblings are the Conservative politician Claude Lowther (1870-1929); and the tennis player May ‘Toupie’ Lowther (1874-1944). The family appear on the 1871 census living at Pitts Cottage, Binstead, on the Isle of Wight. Also present on night of the census were Mrs Lowther’s sister Mary de Fonblanque and seven servants, including a butler. Francis Lowther gave ‘Commander R.N. and Landowner’ as his profession. In 1881 the family were living at 36 Hans Place, Knightsbridge. In 1891 they were living at 73 Pont Street, Chelsea. Francis gave as his profession ‘Captain late R.N., Engineer and Contractor for Public Works.’ The family were still at the same address in 1901, now with eleven servants, including a butler and two footmen. Francis William Lowther died on 30 March 1908 at his residence, 13 Upper-Brook Street, Grosvenor Square. He left an estate valued at £296,579.
When Aimée Lowther was a girl, she would rush home to write down the wonderful stories that her friend Oscar Wilde told her. Years later, in 1912, four of these stories were published in The Mask: A Quarterly Journal of the Art of the Theatre. They were ‘The Poet’, ‘The Actress’, ‘Simon of Cyrene’ and ‘Jezebel’. Each was captioned, ‘An unpublished story by Oscar Wilde’, and prefaced with the words: This story was told by Wilde to Miss Aimée Lowther when a child and written out by her. A few copies were privately printed but this is the first time it has been given to the public.
Lowther was in her forties by then, and had enjoyed some success as a playwright and amateur actress. As Wilde’s life had ended twelve years earlier, in room sixteen of the Hotel d’Alsace in Paris, he was unable to verify her claims. However, one of these stories, ‘The Actress’, was believed to have been inspired by his great friend Ellen Terry. Edward Gordon Craig, editor of The Mask, was Terry’s son and Aimée Lowther was her close confidante.
Wilde loved Lowther. It is recorded in Richard Ellmann’s biography on Wilde that, when she was just fifteen, he declared: “Aimée, if you were only a boy I could adore you.” In return, she remained loyal to him to the end, and a visit from her could lift his spirits even when he was at his lowest ebb: ‘…your friendship is a blossom on the crown of thorns that my life has become’, he told her in a letter, now collected in The Complete Letters of Oscar Wilde. In A Pride of Terrys, Marguerite Steen wrote that, in 1900, Lowther and Ellen Terry spotted a much diminished Oscar Wilde gazing longingly through the window of a Parisian patisserie and biting his fingers with hunger. They invited him to dine, and were greatly relieved when he ‘sparkled just as of old’, but they never saw him again.
The veracity of Lowther’s claim that Wilde told these four stories to her is borne out by a letter he sent her in August 1899, asking that she not allow the publication of ‘the little poem in prose I call ‘The Poet’’, as it was due to ‘appear next week in a Paris magazine above my own signature’. No such magazine has ever been identified. However, confusion arose when Gabrielle Enthoven, a passionate collector of theatrical memorabilia, claimed that Wilde had told these stories to her. In 1890, she commissioned the private printing of Echoes, a limited edition, twelve-page pamphlet containing the four stories in question. Aimée Lowther owned a copy of Echoes, which she later gave to Oscar’s younger son, Vyvyan, and the stories reproduced in both Echoes and The Mask are almost word for word the same.
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