Editing Oscar Wilde (section)

=== Queensberry family ===
[[File:Wilde Douglas British Library B20147-85.jpg|thumb|upright=0.9|Wilde and [[Lord Alfred Douglas]] in 1893]]
In mid-1891, [[Lionel Johnson]] introduced Wilde to [[Lord Alfred Douglas]], Johnson's friend, who was at the time an undergraduate at Oxford.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Riley |first1=Kathleen |last2=Blanshard |first2=Alastair |last3=Manny |first3=Iarla |title=Oscar Wilde and classical antiquity |publisher=Oxford University Press |location=Oxford |edition=first |year=2018 |oclc=986815031 |isbn=978-0-19-878926-0}}</ref> Known to his family and friends as "Bosie", he was a handsome and spoilt young man. An intimate friendship sprang up between Wilde and Douglas and by 1893 Wilde was infatuated with Douglas and they consorted together regularly in a tempestuous affair. If Wilde was relatively indiscreet, even flamboyant, in the way he acted, Douglas was reckless in public. Wilde, who was earning up to £100 a week from his plays (his salary at ''The Woman's World'' had been £6), indulged Douglas's every whim: material, artistic, or sexual.

Douglas soon initiated Wilde into the Victorian underground of gay prostitution, and Wilde was introduced to a series of young working-class male prostitutes ([[rent boys]]) from 1892 onwards by Alfred Taylor. These infrequent rendezvous usually took the same form: Wilde would meet the boy, offer him gifts, dine him privately and then take him to a hotel room. Unlike Wilde's idealised relations with Ross, [[John Gray (poet)|John Gray]], and Douglas, all of whom remained part of his aesthetic circle, these consorts were uneducated and knew nothing of literature. Soon his public and private lives had become sharply divided; in ''[[De Profundis (letter)|De Profundis]]'' he wrote to Douglas that "It was like feasting with panthers; the danger was half the excitement... I did not know that when they were to strike at me it was to be at another's piping and at another's pay."{{sfn|Holland|Hart-Davis|2000|p={{page needed|date=May 2021}}}}

Douglas and some Oxford friends founded a journal, ''[[The Chameleon (magazine)|The Chameleon]]'', to which Wilde "sent a page of paradoxes originally destined for the [[Saturday Review (London newspaper)|''Saturday Review'']]".{{sfn|Holland|Hart-Davis|2000|p=702}} "[[s:Phrases and Philosophies for the Use of the Young|Phrases and Philosophies for the Use of the Young]]" was to come under attack six months later at Wilde's trial, where he was forced to defend the magazine to which he had sent his work.{{sfn|Holland|Hart-Davis|2000|p=703}} In any case, it became unique: ''The Chameleon'' was not published again.

Lord Alfred's father, the [[John Douglas, 9th Marquess of Queensberry|Marquess of Queensberry]], was known for his outspoken atheism, brutish manner and creation of the [[Marquess of Queensberry Rules|modern rules of boxing]].{{efn|Queensberry's oldest son, [[Francis Douglas, Viscount Drumlanrig]], possibly had an intimate association with [[Archibald Philip Primrose, 5th Earl of Rosebery]], the Prime Minister to whom he was private secretary, which ended with Drumlanrig's death in an unexplained shooting accident. In any case the Marquess of Queensberry came to believe his sons had been corrupted by older homosexuals or, as he phrased it in a letter in the aftermath of Drumlanrig's death: "Montgomerys, The Snob Queers like Rosebery and certainly Christian Hypocrite like Gladstone and the whole lot of you".{{sfn|Ellmann|1988|p=402}}}} Queensberry, who feuded regularly with his son, confronted Wilde and Lord Alfred about the nature of their relationship several times, but Wilde was able to mollify him. In June 1894, he called on Wilde at 16 Tite Street, without an appointment, and clarified his stance: "I do not say that you are it, but you look it, and pose at it, which is just as bad. And if I catch you and my son again in any public restaurant I will thrash you" to which Wilde responded: "I don't know what the Queensberry rules are, but the Oscar Wilde rule is to shoot on sight".{{sfn|Ellmann|1988|p=421}} His account in ''De Profundis'' was less triumphant: "It was when, in my library at Tite Street, waving his small hands in the air in epileptic fury, your father... stood uttering every foul word his foul mind could think of, and screaming the loathsome threats he afterwards with such cunning carried out".{{sfn|Holland|Hart-Davis|2000|pp=699–700}}{{sfn|Ellmann|1988|p=396}} Queensberry only described the scene once, saying Wilde had "shown him the [[white feather]]", meaning he had acted in a cowardly way.{{sfn|Ellmann|1988|p=396}} Though trying to remain calm, Wilde saw that he was becoming ensnared in a brutal family quarrel. He did not wish to bear Queensberry's insults, but he knew that confronting him could lead to disaster were his liaisons disclosed publicly.