At Oxford University 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 some intimate notes were found and Wilde was later imprisoned.
On his release, he briefly lived with Douglas in Naples, but they had separated by the time Wilde died in Douglas married a poet, Olive Custance , in and had a son, Raymond. On converting to Catholicism in , he repudiated homosexuality, and in a Catholic magazine, Plain English , expressed openly antisemitic views, but rejected the policies of Nazi Germany. 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 , though it is widely misattributed to Wilde. He was his mother's favourite child; she called him Bosie a derivative of "boysie", as in boy , a nickname which stuck for the rest of his life. Douglas was educated at Wixenford School , [ 3 ] Winchester College β88 and Magdalen College, Oxford β93 , which he left without obtaining a degree.
At Oxford , he edited an undergraduate journal, The Spirit Lamp β3 , an activity that intensified the constant conflict between him and his father. Their relationship had always been a strained one and, during the Queensberry-Wilde feud, Douglas sided with Wilde, even encouraging Wilde to prosecute the Marquess for libel.
In , Douglas had a brief affair with George Ives. In 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 , Lord James tried to abduct a young girl, and after that became ever more manic; in , he made a disastrous marriage. His uncle Lord Archibald Edward Douglas β became a clergyman.
