Lord Alfred Douglas
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Lord Alfred Douglas
Lord Alfred Bruce Douglas (October 22, 1870 – March 20, 1945), nicknamed "Bosie", was the third son of John Sholto Douglas, 9th Marquess of Queensberry, and Sibyl Montgomery. He is best remembered as the friend and lover of the writer Oscar Wilde, and was a minor Uranian poet in his own right.
When Lord Drumlanrig (Bosie's eldest brother and the heir to the Queensberry title) died, rumors were circulating that Drumlanrig had been having a homosexual relationship with the Prime Minister, Lord Rosebery. Hence Lord Queensberry began a "crusade" to save his youngest son. The Marquis publicly insulted Wilde by leaving, at Wilde's club, his calling card on which he had written: "To Oscar Wilde posing as a somdomite" - a mis-spelling of sodomite
With Douglas's avid support, but against the advice of friends such as Robert Ross and Frank Harris, Wilde charged Queensberry with criminal libel. The case went badly for Wilde, as Queensberry had hired private detectives to document Wilde's and Bosie's homosexual contacts. Several male prostitutes were enlisted by Queensberry's defence to give evidence against Wilde and, on advice from his lawyer, he dropped the suit. However, based on evidence raised during the case, Wilde was eventually charged with committing acts of 'gross indecency' with other male persons, a charge which covered all homosexual acts, public or private.
After a retrial (the jury in his first trial having been unable to reach a verdict), Wilde was convicted on 25 May 1895 and imprisoned with hard labour for two years. Douglas was forced into exile in Europe. Following Wilde's release (19 May 1897), the two were reunited in August at Rouen.
This meeting was disapproved of by the friends and families of both men. During the later part of 1897, Wilde and Douglas lived together near Naples, but for financial and other reasons, they decided they should separate. Wilde lived the remainder of his life primarily in Paris. Douglas returned to England in late 1898.
The period when the two men lived in Naples would later become quite controversial. Wilde claimed that Bosie had offered a home, but had no funds or ideas. When Douglas eventually did gain funds from his late father's estate, he refused to grant Wilde a permanent allowance, although he did give him handouts from time to time. When Wilde died in 1900, he was relatively impoverished. Lord Alfred Douglas served as chief mourner, although there seems to have been a scuffle at the gravesite between Bosie and Robert Ross. This struggle would preview the later litigations between the two former lovers of Oscar Wilde.
Douglas published several volumes of poetry (see Bibliography below); two books about his relationship with Wilde, Oscar Wilde and Myself (1914; largely ghostwritten by T.W.H. Crosland, the assistant editor of The Academy and later repudiated by Douglas), Oscar Wilde: A Summing Up (1940); and a memoir, The Autobiography of Lord Alfred Douglas (1931).
Douglas's 1892 poem "Two Loves", used against Wilde at the latter's trial, ends with the famous line that refers to homosexuality as "the Love that dare not speak its name".
Douglas translated The Protocols of the Elders of Zion in 1919, amongst the first English language translations of that anti-Semitic work, and embraced Roman Catholicism in his later life.
In 1924 while in prison, Douglas, in an ironic echo of Wilde's composition of De Profundis (Latin for "From the Depths") during his incarceration, wrote his last major poetic work, In Excelsis (literally, "in the highest" in Latin), which contains 17 cantos. Since the prison authorities would not allow Douglas to take the manuscript with him when he was released, Douglas had to write out the entire work from memory.
Douglas maintained that his health never recovered from his harsh prison ordeal, which included sleeping on a plank bed, without a mattress.
His son Raymond was diagnosed with schizoaffective disorder in 1927 and entered St. Andrew's Hospital, a mental institution. He was de-certified after five years and released from the hospital, but he suffered a subsequent breakdown and returned to the Hospital.
Douglas' beloved mother Sibyl, the Marchioness of Queensberry, died in 1937 at the age of 91. She was buried at the Franciscan Monastery at Crawley. One of his final public appearances was made to deliver a well-received lecture to the Royal Society of Literature, entitled The Principles of Poetry, which was published in a limited edition of 1000 copies. Throughout the 1930s and until his death, Douglas maintained correspondences with many people, including Marie Stopes and George Bernard Shaw. Anthony Wynn wrote the play Bernard and Bosie: A Most Unlikely Friendship based on the letters of Shaw and Douglas.
In February 1944, Douglas's estranged wife, Olive Custance, died of a cerebral haemorhage at the age of 67. Raymond was able to attend the funeral and in June was again de-certified and released from St. Andrew's Hospital. However, his conduct rapidly deteriorated, culminating in a brain-storm and he returned to St. Andrew's in November. (He remained in the hospital until his death in October 1964).
Lord Alfred Douglas died of congestive heart failure on 20 March 1945 at the age of 74. He was buried at the Franciscan Monastery, Crawley, West Sussex on 23 March. He is interred alongside his mother, one gravestone covering them both.
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