Olive Custance
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Olive Eleanor Custance (February 7, 1874 – February 12, 1944) was a British poet. She was part of the aesthetic movement of the 1890s, and a contributor to The Yellow Book.
She was born the only daughter and heiress of Colonel Frederick Custance, who was a wealthy and distinguished soldier in the British army.
In 1901 Custance became involved in a lesbian relationship with writer Natalie Clifford Barney in Paris, which Barney later included in her memoirs. Custance then became engaged to George Montagu, but ran away and married Lord Alfred Douglas instead. Her father did not approve of Douglas, and the two had eloped to avoid having problems. They married on March 4th, 1902. They had one child. The marriage was stormy, after Douglas became a Catholic in 1911. They separated in 1913, lived together for a time in the 1920s after Olive also converted, and then lived apart after she gave up Catholicism.
Their son, Raymond, showed signs of instability in his youth. For a time he served in the army, but was often confined to mental institutions for long periods. This further strained the marriage, which by the end of the 1920's was all but over, despite the fact that they never divorced. Custance died in 1944, her husband in 1945. Their son survived to the age of 60, although he had regular bouts of mental instability throughout his lifetime.
[edit] Works
- Opals (1897)
- Rainbows (1902)
- The Blue Bird (1905)
- The Inn of Dreams (1911)
- The Selected Poems of Olive Custance (1995) edited by Brocard Sewell
[edit] References
- Olive Custance: Her Life and Work (1975) Brocard Sewell
- Olive Custance
