#aesthetism

Olive Custance was an English poet, part of the aesthetic movement of the 1890s, contributing to the decadent periodical the Yellow Book.

Among her most celebrated works are Opals (1897), Rainbows (1901) and the Inn of Dreams (1911), though her career considerably slowed down after her marriage with Lord Alfred Douglas in 1902, Oscar Wilde's famous lover, and came to an almost full stop when it ended. Although Custance, then Lady Alfred Douglas, continued to write poetry for journals such as the Academy (her husband's), she did not publish another poetry collection of her own after 1911.

In 1901, Olive Custance met Natalie Barney and Renée Vivien, lovers who lived in Paris as openly lesbian writers and poets. She immediately became involved with the two, simultaneously, causing some jealousy on both ends. Renée Vivien described this love triangle in her novel A Woman Appeared to Me, 1904. Custance is pictured with Barney above.

In a television interview for the BBC in 1966, Natalie Clifford Barney recalls how much she loved the woman and how abusive Douglas was as a person and specifically to his wife, right from the start of their relationship - going against the commonly accepted narrative that their marriage was a happy one and only became stormy in 1911 when the man converted to Roman Catholicism.

"Art is about emotion; if art needs to be explained it is no longer art."

manwhore : dorian gray