Lord Alfred Bruce Douglas (22 October 1870 – 20 March 1945), also known as Bosie Douglas, was an English poet and journalist, and a lover of Oscar Wilde.
At the University of Oxford, he edited an undergraduate journal, The Spirit Lamp, that carried a homoerotic subtext, and met Wilde, starting a close but stormy relationship. Douglas's father, John Douglas, 9th Marquess of Queensberry, abhorred it and set out to humiliate Wilde, publicly accusing him of homosexuality. Wilde sued him for criminal libel, but Queensberry produced witnesses who attested to the truth of his claim, and Wilde was later imprisoned. On his release, he briefly lived with Douglas, but they had separated by the time Wilde died in 1900. Douglas married the bisexual poet Olive Custance in 1902 and had a son, Raymond.
Douglas wrote several books of verse, some in a homoerotic Uranian genre. The phrase "The love that dare not speak its name" appears in one (Two Loves) published in 1894, and is often misattributed to Wilde.
After converting to Catholicism in 1911, he repudiated homosexuality, and in the magazine Plain English he expressed openly antisemitic views. He was jailed for libelling Winston Churchill over claims of misconduct in the First World War.
Douglas was born at Queensberry House (Ham Hill House) in Powick, Worcestershire, the third son of John Douglas, 9th Marquess of Queensberry, and his first wife, Sibyl Montgomery. He was born on 22 October 1870.
His nickname derived from his mother's habit of calling him "Boysie", a West Country diminutive meaning "little boy", which was eventually shortened to "Bosie." This was a nickname which stuck for the rest of his life. His mother successfully sued for divorce in 1887 on the grounds of his father's adultery. The Marquess later married Ethel Weeden in 1893, but the marriage was annulled the following year.
Douglas was educated at Wixenford School, Winchester College (1884–88) and Magdalen College, Oxford (1889–93), which he left without obtaining a degree. At Oxford, he edited an undergraduate journal, The Spirit Lamp (1892–93), an activity that intensified the constant conflict between him and his father. Their relationship had always been strained, and during the Queensberry–Wilde feud, Douglas sided with Wilde, even encouraging Wilde to prosecute the Marquess for libel. In 1893, Douglas had a brief affair with George Cecil Ives.
In 1858, his grandfather, Archibald Douglas, 8th Marquess of Queensberry, had died in what was reported as a shooting accident, but was widely believed to have been suicide. In 1862, his widowed grandmother, Lady Queensberry, converted to Catholicism and took her children to live in Paris. One of his uncles, Lord James Douglas, was deeply attached to his twin sister "Florrie" (Lady Florence Douglas) and was heartbroken when she married a baronet, Sir Alexander Beaumont Churchill Dixie. In 1885, Lord James tried to abduct a young girl, and after that, he became ever more manic; in 1888, he made a disastrous marriage. Separated from Florrie, James drank himself into a deep depression, and in 1891 committed suicide by cutting his throat. Another of his uncles, Lord Francis Douglas (1847–1865), had died in a climbing accident on the Matterhorn. His uncle, Lord Archibald Edward Douglas (1850–1938), became a clergyman. Alfred Douglas's aunt, Lord James's twin Lady Florence Dixie (1855–1905), was an author, war correspondent for the Morning Post during the First Boer War, and a feminist. In 1890, she published a novel, Gloriana, or the Revolution of 1900, in which women's suffrage is achieved after a woman posing as a man named Hector D'Estrange is elected to the House of Commons. Some scholars have suggested that the character D'Estrange is based on Oscar Wilde.
In 1891, Lionel Johnson brought Douglas to the home of Oscar Wilde in Tite Street, Chelsea, for afternoon tea. Wilde took an interest in Douglas but it was six months before they became intimate and their affair began. In 1894, the Robert Hichens novel The Green Carnation was published, a roman à clef satirically depicting Douglas's dependent relationship on Wilde.
Douglas has been described as spoiled, reckless, insolent and extravagant. He would spend money on boys and gambling, expecting Wilde to contribute to funding his tastes. They often argued and broke up, but would usually be reconciled.
Douglas had praised Wilde's play Salome in the Oxford magazine The Spirit Lamp, of which he was editor. Wilde had originally written Salome in French, and in 1893 he commissioned Douglas to translate it into English. Douglas's French was very poor and his translation was highly criticised; for example, a passage that runs "On ne doit regarder que dans les miroirs" ("One should look only in mirrors") he rendered "One must not look at mirrors". Douglas was angered at Wilde's criticism, and claimed that the errors were in fact in Wilde's original play. This led to a hiatus in the relationship and a row between the two, with angry messages being exchanged and even the involvement of the publisher John Lane and the illustrator Aubrey Beardsley when they themselves objected to the poor standard of Douglas's work. Beardsley complained to Robbie Ross: "For one week the numbers of telegraph and messenger boys who came to the door was simply scandalous". Wilde redid much of the translation himself, but in a gesture of reconciliation suggested that Douglas be dedicated as the translator rather than be credited, along with him, on the title page. Accepting this, Douglas, likened the difference between sharing the title page and having a dedication to "the difference between a tribute of admiration from an artist and a receipt from a tradesman".
In 1894, Douglas came and visited Wilde in Worthing, to the consternation of the latter's wife Constance.
On another occasion, while staying with Wilde in Brighton, Douglas fell ill with influenza and was nursed by Wilde, but failed to return the favour when Wilde himself fell ill having caught influenza in consequence. Instead Douglas moved to the luxurious Grand Hotel and on Wilde's 40th birthday sent him a letter informing him that he had charged Wilde with the hotel bill. Douglas also gave his old clothes to male prostitutes, but failed to remove from the pockets incriminating letters exchanged between him and Wilde, which were then used for blackmail.
Alfred's father, the Marquess of Queensberry, suspected the liaison to be more than a friendship. He sent his son a letter, attacking him for leaving Oxford without a degree and failing to take up a proper career. He threatened to "disown [Alfred] and stop all money supplies." Alfred responded with a telegram reading: "What a funny little man you are."
Queensberry's next letter threatened his son with a "thrashing" and accused him of being "crazy". He also threatened to "make a public scandal in a way you little dream of" if he continued his relationship with Wilde.
Queensberry was well known for his short temper and threatening to beat people with a horsewhip. Alfred sent his father a postcard stating "I detest you" and making it clear that he would take Wilde's side in a fight between him and the Marquess, "with a loaded revolver".
In answer Queensberry wrote to Alfred (whom he addressed as "You miserable creature") that he had divorced Alfred's mother so as not to "run the risk of bringing more creatures into the world like yourself" and that when Alfred was a baby, "I cried over you the bitterest tears a man ever shed, that I had brought such a creature into the world, and unwittingly committed such a crime.... You must be demented."
Douglas's eldest brother Francis Viscount Drumlanrig died in a suspicious hunting accident in October 1894, as rumours circulated that he had been having a homosexual relationship with the future Prime Minister, Lord Rosebery, and that the cause of death was suicide. The Marquess of Queensberry thus embarked on a campaign to save his other son and began a public persecution of Wilde. Wilde had been openly flamboyant and his actions made the public suspicious even before the trial. The Marquess and a bodyguard confronted Wilde in Wilde's home; later, Queensberry planned to throw rotten vegetables at Wilde on the first night of The Importance of Being Earnest, but forewarned of this, Wilde was able to deny him access to the theatre.