Olive Eleanor Custance (7 February 1874 – 12 February 1944), styled as Lady Alfred Douglas, was an English poet and wife of

Lord Alfred Douglas 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 Oxford University he edited an undergraduate journal, ''The Spirit Lamp'', that carr ...

. She was part of the

aesthetic movement Aestheticism (also known as the aesthetic movement) was an art movement in the late 19th century that valued the appearance of literature, music, fonts and the arts over their functions. According to Aestheticism, art should be produced to b ...

of the 1890s, and a contributor to ''

The Yellow Book ''The Yellow Book'' was a British quarterly literary periodical that was published in London from 1894 to 1897. It was published at The Bodley Head Publishing House by Elkin Mathews and John Lane, and later by John Lane alone, and edited by th ...

''.

Biography

She was born at 12 John Street,

Berkeley Square Berkeley Square is a garden square in the West End of London. It is one of the best known of the many squares in London, located in Mayfair in the City of Westminster. It was laid out in the mid 18th century by the architect William Kent, ...

, Mayfair, in London, the eldest daughter, and heiress of Colonel Frederick Hambleton Custance, who was a wealthy and distinguished soldier in the British army. Custance spent much of her childhood at Weston Old Hall in

Weston Longville Weston Longville is a civil parish in the English county of Norfolk, approximately north-west of Norwich. Its name is derived from the Manor of Longaville in Normandy, France, which owned the local land in the 12th century. It covers an area o ...

in Norfolk, the family seat. Custance joined the London literary circle around such figures as

Oscar Wilde Oscar Fingal O'Fflahertie Wills Wilde (16 October 185430 November 1900) was an Irish author, poet, and playwright. After writing in different literary styles throughout the 1880s, he became one of the most popular and influential playwright ...

Aubrey Beardsley Aubrey Vincent Beardsley ( ; 21 August 187216 March 1898) was an English illustrator and author. His black ink drawings were influenced by Woodblock printing in Japan, Japanese woodcuts, and depicted the grotesque, the decadent, and the erotic. ...

Ernest Dowson Ernest Christopher Dowson (2 August 186723 February 1900) was an English poet, novelist, and short-story writer who is often associated with the Decadent movement. Biography Ernest Dowson was born in Lee, London, Lee, then in Kent, in 1867. His ...

and John Gray in about 1890 when she was only 16. At this time she became infatuated with the poet John Gray and wrote some of her first poetry about him. Heavily influenced by French poets such as

Verlaine Verlaine (; ) is a municipality of Wallonia located in the province of Liège, Belgium. On January 1, 2006, Verlaine had a total population of 3,507. The total area is 24.21 km2 which gives a population density Population density (in ag ...

and Rimbaud and by the decadent mood of that period, she quickly rose to prominence as a poet. In 1901 she became involved in a relationship with the overtly

lesbian A lesbian is a homosexual woman or girl. The word is also used for women in relation to their sexual identity or sexual behavior, regardless of sexual orientation, or as an adjective to characterize or associate nouns with female homosexu ...

writer

Natalie Clifford Barney Natalie Clifford Barney (October 31, 1876 – February 2, 1972) was an American writer who hosted a salon (gathering), literary salon at her home in Paris that brought together French and international writers. She influenced other authors thro ...

in Paris, which Barney later described in her memoirs. Barney, and her lover at the time, Renée Vivien, were keen to win Custance as a partner, and indeed Custance remained on close terms with Barney for years. Custance and Barney exchanged love poems, including Custance's poems 'The White Witch'. Vivien's

roman à clef A ''roman à clef'' ( ; ; ) is a novel about real-life events that is overlaid with a façade of fiction. The fictitious names in the novel represent real people and the "key" is the relationship between the non-fiction and the fiction. This m ...

''A Woman Appeared to Me'' (1904) also recounts her brief relationship with Custance. During her brief affair with Barney, Custance also instigated a courtship with

by writing to him admiringly in June 1901, six months after the death of

. The two corresponded under the nicknames of the 'Prince' (for Douglas) and 'Princess' or 'Page' for Custance. However, in late 1901, in an odd turn of events, Custance became engaged to George Montagu, who had been at school with Douglas. It was a short engagement because when Douglas returned from a trip to the USA (where, as he had written to her teasingly, he was looking for a rich heiress to marry) the two of them ran away and married each other on 4 March 1902. Custance's father did not approve of Douglas. They had one child, Raymond Wilfred Sholto Douglas, born on 17 November 1902. The marriage was stormy after Douglas became a

Roman Catholic The Catholic Church (), also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the largest Christian church, with 1.27 to 1.41 billion baptized Catholics worldwide as of 2025. It is among the world's oldest and largest international institut ...

in 1911. They began to live apart in 1913, after the couple lost a custody battle for their only child to Custance's father. In 1913 Douglas was charged with libeling his father-in-law who had always disapproved of him and seems to have been a major reason for strain on their marriage. The couple again lived together for a time in the 1920s after Olive also converted to

Catholicism The Catholic Church (), also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the List of Christian denominations by number of members, largest Christian church, with 1.27 to 1.41 billion baptized Catholics Catholic Church by country, worldwid ...

in 1917. Their only child, Raymond, showed signs of instability in his youth. For a time he served in the army, but was confined to mental institutions for long periods. This placed further strain on the marriage, so that by the end of the 1920s they had separated again and Custance had given up her Catholicism. However, they did not divorce, and in 1932, she followed Douglas to Hove, taking a house near his. In the final 12 years of her life, they saw each other almost every day. In 1931 Douglas had already written that their marriage held firm despite "the welter of mud and stones" hurled at it by their enemies. Custance continued to write and publish poems during the twentieth century. Many of these were published in journals edited by Douglas, including '' The Academy'' and the right-wing, anti-Semitic periodical ''Plain English''.Parker, Sarah (2019) 'Olive Custance, Nostalgia, and Decadent Conservatism', Volupté: Interdisciplinary Journal of Decadence Studies, 2.1 'Women Writing Decadence' (Spring 2019), 57-81: http://journals.gold.ac.uk/index.php/volupte/article/view/574/701 She also contributed poems to William Sorley Brown's newspaper the ''Border Standard''. During

World War II World War II or the Second World War (1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945) was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War II, Allies and the Axis powers. World War II by country, Nearly all of the wo ...

Custance wrote several patriotic poems but these have not been collected. She died on 12 February 1944 holding Lord Alfred Douglas' hand; Douglas himself died the next year, on 20 March 1945. Their son Raymond survived to the age of 61; after several lengthy episodes of mental instability throughout his lifetime, he died unmarried on 10 October 1964.

Works

*''Opals'' (1897) *''Rainbows'' (1902) *''The Blue Bird'' (1905) *''The Inn of Dreams'' (1911) *''The Inn of Dreams: Poems by Olive Custance'' (2015); edited by Edwin King *''The Selected Poems of Olive Custance'' (1995); edited by Brocard Sewell ;Posthumous * Olive Custance, ''I Desire the Moon: The Diary of Lady Alfred Douglas (Olive Custance) 1905-1910'', ed. C. Wintermans (Avalon Press, 2005)

References

Sources

*''Olive Custance: Her Life and Work'' (1975) Brocard Sewell *''The Autobiography'' (1931) Lord Alfred Douglas *''Bosie'' (1963) Rupert Croft-Cooke * ''The Lesbian Muse and Poetic Identity'' (2013) Sarah Parker * Introduction to ''The Inn of Dreams: Poems by Olive Custance'' (2015); edited by Edwin King. * Pulham, Patricia, 'Tinted and tainted love: the sculptural body in Olive Custance's poetry', ''The Yearbook of English Studies'', Vol. 37, No. 1, 2007, 161-176 * Parker, Sarah, '"A Girl's Love": Lord Alfred Douglas as Homoerotic Muse in the Poetry of Olive Custance', ''Women: A Cultural Review'', Volume 22, Issue 2–3, 2011, 220-240 https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/09574042.2011.585045 * Parker, Sarah, 'Olive Custance, Nostalgia, and Decadent Conservatism', ''Volupté: Interdisciplinary Journal of Decadence Studies'', 2.1 'Women Writing Decadence' (Spring 2019), 57-81: http://journals.gold.ac.uk/index.php/volupte/article/view/574/701

External links

Olive Custance Society
* * * {{DEFAULTSORT:Custance, Olive 1874 births 1944 deaths 20th-century English poets Bisexual women writers British bisexual writers Converts to Roman Catholicism from Anglicanism English Catholic poets English women poets English LGBTQ poets People from Broadland (district) 20th-century English women writers 20th-century English writers