Alfred Douglas

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Alfred Douglas, 1903.

Lord Alfred Bruce Douglas (born October 22, 1870 in Worcestershire , † March 20, 1945 in St. Andrews ) was a British poet , translator and writer . He became famous as a friend and lover of the Irish writer Oscar Wilde .

Life

youth

Alfred Douglas was the third son of John Douglas, 9th Marquess of Queensberry and his first wife Sybil Montgomery. As a child, his mother gave him the nickname "Bosie", which is a belittling of "boy", similar in German to "Jungchen" or "Bübchen". "Bosie" remained Alfred's lifelong nickname.

While Alfred's relationship with his mother was very loving, the relationship with the father, described by contemporaries as aggressive and eccentric, remained tense and problematic.

Douglas attended Winchester College from 1884 to 1888 . 1889-1893 he was a student at Magdalen College of the University of Oxford , however, the university left without a degree.

During his time in Oxford, Douglas had homosexual contacts with fellow students and prostitutes.

The time with Oscar Wilde

Years of partnership

Alfred Douglas and Oscar Wilde, 1894

In 1891 Douglas met the then 37-year-old writer Oscar Wilde. The relationship between the two was initially friendly. Wilde gave the much younger Douglas the intellectual stimulus and recognition that Douglas missed from his father. Half a year after they first met, the friendship turned into a partnership that would last until Wilde's arrest in 1895. According to statements by Douglas and Wilde, their sexual relationship ended after a short time and became a purely emotional love affair. Douglas introduced Wilde to the London “ demi-monde ” of male prostitutes, in which the older writer, unlike his young partner, had not yet had any experience.

There were also differences in Alfred's relationship with Wilde, which were often due to the different class affiliations (nobility and bourgeoisie) and the associated lifestyle. The joint financing of their extravagant lifestyle in particular led to frequent conflicts. In 1893 Douglas had a brief affair with George Cecil Ives , a college friend.

The processes

Drawing by Félix Vallotton , in: La Revue blanche , 1896

In 1895 Alfred's father, who had suspected an "offensive" relationship between Wilde and his son for a long time, left a visiting card addressed to the writer in Wilde's club with the hard-to-read inscription "To Oscar Wilde / posing somdomite [sic]" (For Oscar Wilde / posing sodomite (homosexual)). At Alfred's insistence, and against the advice of other acquaintances, Wilde filed a defamation lawsuit against the Marquis of Queensberry. Wilde lost the trial and was himself arrested on charges of fornication . Douglas' poem Two Loves was used in the trial against Wilde (the poem ends with the line: "the love that dare not speak its name", a paraphrase for same-sex love, especially between men). Wilde was sentenced to two years in hard labor.

Douglas' potential moral offenses were also examined legally, but the possible criminal proceedings were not taken up because of the decided insignificance. Douglas subsequently left England and traveled through Europe and Egypt.

After Wilde was released from prison, Wilde and Douglas met again and lived together in Naples for a few weeks. After that, they ended their relationship for good.

In 1912 Arthur Ransome's book Oscar Wilde: A Critical Study was published . Ransome first made public that the text De Profundis, written by Wilde in prison and published posthumously, was a letter addressed to Douglas. The allegations against Douglas contained in the letter paint the picture of a selfish, parasitic person. Wilde never wanted to publish the text during his lifetime.

In the years that followed, Douglas often made derogatory comments about Wilde and denied any connection with the writer that went beyond a superficial friendship. In 1918, during a testimony in a character assassination trial of the dancer Maud Allan , Douglas Wilde described the dancer Maud Allan as: "The greatest force for evil that has appeared in Europe during the last three hundred and fifty years ”). He later regretted this behavior and gives De Profundis as the reason for his resentment against Wilde.

Further life

The house where Alfred Douglas lived in Brighton from 1935 to 1944

After Wilde's death in 1900, Douglas met the poet Olive Eleanor Custance. The two married in 1902 and had a son, Raymond Wilfred Sholto Douglas (November 17, 1902 to October 10, 1964) in the same year.

In 1911 Douglas converted to Catholicism .

In 1923 Douglas was sentenced to six months' imprisonment for character assassination : he had accused Winston Churchill of being an ally of a “Jewish conspiracy” responsible for the death of the British Secretary of War Horatio Herbert Kitchener . The detention damaged Douglas' health in the long term.

His son Raymond suffered from schizophrenia and was admitted to St. Andrews Hospital, a home for the mentally ill, in 1927. He lived there until his death in 1964.

In 1944, Douglas' wife Olive died of a stroke .

In 1945 Douglas died of heart failure . He was buried next to his mother in the Franciscan Cemetery in Crawley , West Sussex .

plant

Volumes of poetry

  • Poems (1896)
  • Tails with a Twist 'by a Belgian Hare' (1898)
  • The City of the Soul (1899)
  • The Duke of Berwick (1899)
  • The Placid Pug (1906)
  • The Pongo Papers and the Duke of Berwick (1907)
  • Sonnets (1909)
  • The Collected Poems of Lord Alfred Douglas (1919)
  • In Excelsis (1924)
  • The Complete Poems of Lord Alfred Douglas (1928)
  • Sonnets (1935)
  • Lyrics (1935)
  • The Sonnets of Lord Alfred Douglas (1943)

Non-fiction

  • Oscar Wilde and Myself (1914)
  • The Autobiography of Lord Alfred Douglas (1929, 2nd revised edition 1931)
  • The True History of Shakespeare's Sonnets (1933)
  • Without Apology (1938)
  • Ireland and the War Against Hitler (1940)
  • Oscar Wilde: A Summing Up (1940)
  • The Principles of Poetry (1943)

literature

  • Patrick Braybrooke: Lord Alfred Douglas: His Life and Work . 1931
  • William Freeman: Lord Alfred Douglas: Spoilt Child of Genius . 1948
  • H. Montgomery Hyde: Lord Alfred Douglas: A Biography . 1985, ISBN 0-413-50790-4
  • Douglas Murray: Bosie: A Biography of Lord Alfred Douglas . 2000, ISBN 0-340-76771-5
  • Trevor Fisher: Oscar and Bosie: A Fatal Passion . 2002, ISBN 0-7509-2459-4
  • Caspar Wintermans: Alfred Douglas: A Poet's Life and His Finest Work . 2006, ISBN 0-7206-1270-5 (German: Lord Alfred Douglas. A life in the shadow of Oscar Wilde . 2001, ISBN 3-89667-165-0 )

Web links

Commons : Alfred Douglas  - Collection of Images, Videos and Audio Files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Merlin Holland: Oscar Wilde in cross-examination . Karl Blessing Verlag, 2003, p. 17
  2. ↑ Merlin Holland: The Oscar Wilde Album . Karl Blessing Verlag, 1998, pp. 137-138
  3. ↑ Merlin Holland: The Oscar Wilde Album . Karl Blessing Verlag, 1998, pp. 144-145
  4. ↑ Caspar Wintermans: Lord Alfred Douglas. A life in the shadow of Oscar Wilde . Munich 2001, p. 138 f.
  5. ↑ Caspar Wintermans: Lord Alfred Douglas. A life in the shadow of Oscar Wilde . Munich 2001, p. 157.
personal data
SURNAME Douglas, Alfred
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Douglas, Lord Alfred Bruce
BRIEF DESCRIPTION English writer
DATE OF BIRTH October 22, 1870
PLACE OF BIRTH Worcestershire
DATE OF DEATH March 20, 1945
Place of death St Andrews