The lesser-known legacies of Oscar and Bosie
SIR – Despite their “tempestuous relationship”, Oscar Wilde and Lord Alfred Douglas (Letters, September 9), who was known as Bosie, both married and had children.
Wilde’s two sons from his marriage to Constance Lloyd were Army officers who served in the Royal Field Artillery in the First World War. Douglas’s only son from his marriage to Olive Custance joined the Scots Guards, in the hope of following a family tradition.
Captain Cyril Holland, whose name had originally been Wilde, was shot dead by a German sniper in May 1915 during the Battle of Festubert. He had been a successful oarsman at Radley College before attending the Royal Military Academy at Woolwich in 1903. His younger brother, Vyvyan, survived the war and went on to marry and have a fulfilling life.
Raymond Douglas left the Army in 1922. He was diagnosed with schizoaffective disorder and spent extended periods in a psychiatric hospital, where he died in 1964.
Ian R Lowry Caversham, Berkshire