(H, 1884-1888)
“If I had escaped untarnished from Winchester and Oxford it would have been a miracle, and I would have been a saint.”
Lord Alfred Douglas, known as Bosie, is best-known for having been the lover of Oscar Wilde, an affair which started in 1891 and led to Wilde’s incarceration in 1895. A writer, critic and translator in his own right, he published many collections of his own poetry, as well as a number of works explaining his relationship with Wilde.
His literary leanings started when he was at Winchester (1884-88), where he co-founded and edited (with Liddersfield and Phipps) a magazine called The Pentagram, something of a rival publication to The Wykehamist. This enabled him to practise, and publish, his early literary forays (with a pleasing smattering of Notions):
I.
I’m up to books at nine o’clock:
I haven’t done my out of School:
Five past! Good heavens, what a shock,
I’m up to books at nine o’clock.
My ‘toys’ are shut? Well burst the lock.
Now my straw hat; ‘play up’ you fool!
I’m up to books at nine o’clock,
I haven’t done my out of School.
II.
You writing lines? Yes. So am I,
For shirking Chapel Sunday last.
Halloa! I hear another sigh:
You writing lines? Yes. So am I;
That’s three of us; and here close by
Another scribbling very fast:
YOU writing lines? Yes, So am I,
For shirking Chapel Sunday last.
Some 40 years later, in his Autobiography (1929), Douglas defines the three sorts of friendships that he had enjoyed with other boys at Winchester and Oxford:
… I had many fine friendships, perfectly normal, wholesome, and not in the least sentimental… I had other friendships which were sentimental and passionate, but perfectly pure and innocent … I had others again which were neither pure nor innocent. But if it is to be assumed from this that I was `abnormal’ or `degenerate’ or exceptionally wicked, then it must also be assumed that at least ninety per cent of my contemporaries at Winchester and Oxford were the same.
Although he later repudiated Wilde and married Olive Custance, it is his major homosexual relationship for which he is best remembered. His portrayal by Jude Law in the 1997 film ‘Wilde’ brought him back into the public consciousness. Two decades later, he is to hit the big screen again, in a biopic of Wilde’s life. “The Happy Prince” will be released in May 2018, a British drama directed by, written by, and starring (as Wilde) Rupert Everett. Douglas will be played by Colin Morgan.