OSCAR WILDE & BOSIE

Letter to Lord Alfred Douglas January 1893
My Own Boy,
Your sonnet is quite lovely, and it is a marvelthat those rose-leaf lips of yours should have been madeno less for music of song than for madness of kisses.Your slim gilt soul walks between passion and poetry.I know Hyacinthus, whom Apollo loved so madly,was you in Greek days. Why are you alone in London, and when do you go to Salisbury?Do go there to cool your hands in the grey twilight ofGothic things, and come here whenever you like.It is a lovely place--it only lacks you; but go toSalisbury first. Always, with undying love, Yours,Oscar

Notes:1. Douglas' mother, the Lady Queensberry, had a house in Salisbury called St. Ann's Gate in the Close.2. Douglas sent Wilde a sonnet entitled In Sarum Close (1892). Its third and fourth lines read as follows:I thought to cool my burning handsIn this calm twilight of gray Gothic things.3. The letter was subsequently translated into French by Pierre Louys (below) and published in the May 4, 1893edition of the Oxford undergraduate magazine The Spirit Lamp edited by Douglas. It was later stolen, usedas material for attempted blackmail against Wilde, and finally read in court during the trials.