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Lord Alfred Bruce Douglas (born October 22, 1870; died March 20, 1945) was the third son of John Sholto Douglas, 9th Marquess of Queensberry, and the former Sibyl Montgomery. He is remembered as a partner to the poet and writer Oscar Wilde. Douglas was born at Ham Hill House in Worcestershire, and educated at Winchester College and Magdalen College, Oxford. He met Oscar Wilde in 1891 and soon began an affair with him. When his father the Marquess of Queensberry discovered his son's liaison, he publicly insulted Wilde with a misspelled note left at Wilde's club. The note was addressed to "Mr. Wilde posing as a Somdomite." Wilde charged Queensberry with libel. The confrontation escalated, and some believe Lord Alfred egged Wilde on, to fight his father. Wilde was eventually formally accused of 'gross indecency', this being little more than a euphemism for any homosexual act, public or private, an offense for which he went to trial. Wilde was convicted and imprisoned for two years. Afterward, he and Douglas lived together in Naples for three months and then lived apart in Paris for a time. In 1902 Douglas married Olive Eleanor Custance, an heiress and poet. They had one son, Raymond. Douglas published several volumes of poetry, some of which is well regarded, and two books about his relationship with Wilde. Douglas's 1892 poem "Two Loves," used against Wilde at the latter's trial, ends with the famous line that refers to homosexuality as "the Love that dare not speak its name". Douglas translated The Protocols of the Elders of Zion in 1919, amongst the first English language translations of that anti_Semitic work, and embraced right-wing Catholicism in his later life.
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