“Oh how I miss you … your sweet golden head … your small red mouth […] and above all your great blue eyes … the most beautiful eyes a boy ever had, like two blue flowers under water”
TRQ: Olive Custance , Died February 12, 1944
British poet Olive Custance, who married Lord Alfred Douglas after his infamous affair with Oscar Wilde, was born in Mayfair, London at 12 John Street.
One of the most prolific British writers of her time, Custance was the eldest daughter and heiress of the wealthy British army Colonel Frederick Hambleton Custance, with whom she would later have a troubled relationship.
From the age of 16, Olive Custance was very active in a literary circle that included Oscar Wilde, Aubrey Beardsley, Ernest Dowson and John Gray.
She also began having romantic relationships with men and women from an early age. During her visits to Paris, Custance would have affairs with Natalie Barney, a lesbian salon hostess, and the poet Renee Vivien.
It was understood that Custance pursued Lord Douglas, attracted to his femininity. Both Custance and Lord Douglas had strong queer, homosexual natures. It has been said that the Custance’s masculine side attracted Lord Douglas, while his femininity attracted her.
Lord Douglas favoured occupying the role of the pursued rather than the pursuer, which had already played out in his relationship with Wilde.
He explains in autobiography, that “‘it was necessary that there should be a girl who loved me very much […] she would have to make the first advance, and a good many other advances after that (Douglas 1931: 212).”
Lord Douglas had fallen in love with a woman who looked and acted like a boy. “I did not for a moment intend to put up with less love and admiration from a girl than I had been in the habit of getting […] from innumerable male friends (Douglas 1931: 214-215).”
Custance and Lord Douglas married in 1902, and gave birth to one son, Raymond Wilfred Sholto Douglas. Their marriage would begin to suffer after Custance’s father won custody of Raymond. Religion, family turmoil and their son’s unstable mental health would add to their emotional burden.
Though Custance and Lord Douglas never divorced, their relationship involved many periods of living apart. “How could I know or guess that the very thing she loved in me was that which I was trying to suppress or keep under: I mean the feminine part of me? As soon as I was married I deliberately tried to be more and more manly. The more manly I became the less attractive I was to Olive (Douglas 1931: 215).”
While Custance did achieve an added level of notoriety through her marriage to the openly queer Lord Douglas, her work speaks for itself. According to her bibliographer Nancy Hawkey, Custance’s reputation today holds as one of the most representative poets of the 1890’s. In fact, Lord Douglas edited many of the journals publishing Custance’s work, including the anti-Semitic periodical Plain English.
Custance stopped writing in 1911, after years of difficulty with Lord Douglas and her father, and suffering from depression and ill health. They saw each other almost every day until February 12, 1944, when Olive Custance died holding her husband’s hand. Lord Douglas died a little over a year later.
Sources:
Interdisciplinary Journal of Decadence Studies
Douglas, Lord Alfred (1931), The Autobiography of Lord Alfred Douglas [1929], London: Martin Secker.
Murray, Douglas (2000), Bosie: A Biography of Lord Alfred Douglas, London: Hodder and Stoughton.
