Autographs & Manuscripts: Literature

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Autograph Letter Signed ("Alfred Douglas") to "Dear Stewart", discussing a meeting with Frank Harris.

DOUGLAS, Lord Alfred (1870-1945). Poet; friend of Oscar Wilde.

"ALL THE LIES IT CONTAINS ABOUT ME"

Autograph Letter Signed ("Alfred Douglas") to "Dear Stewart", discussing a meeting with Frank Harris.

2 pages large 8vo on blue paper, Pension Iréna, Avenue des Fleurs, Nice, 13 March 1925. 

Douglas first of all gives his "social" news, saying he has been staying in Nice with Henry de Windt and his niece. He then alleges that Frank Harris has been making "desperate efforts" to see him. Douglas took great exception to the way he had been portrayed in Frank Harrris's controversial book Oscar Wilde, his Life and Confessions, which had recently been published. After Wilde's death Douglas spent many years trying to justify his own behaviour to him; all that need be said here is that it was Douglas's insistence on dragging Wilde into his vendetta with his father Lord Queensbery that led to Wilde's disgrace, imprisonment and death. As far as Douglas's feud with the highly unreliable Frank Harris was concerned, we can say that the two men probably deserved each other. Wilde once said of Harris that he had "no feelings." Douglas came to regard both Harris and Robert Ross, Wilde's literary executor of whom he had always been jealous, as his bitter enemies.

". . . Frank Harris is here, has been making desperate efforts to see me. At last, after refusing to meet him at least a dozen times, I consented to meet him with a view to his revising his Life of Oscar Wilde & cutting out what he now admits to be all the lies it contains about me. Will tell you about it when I see you. He blames it all on Ross."

Slightly defective and with mounting traces at the top. It is posible that the letter was roughly removed from an album. One word at the very top of the first page has been slightly affected.