Ernest Dowson | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Born | Ernest Christopher Dowson 2 August 1867 |
| Died | 23 February 1900 (aged 32) |
| Alma mater | The Queen's College, Oxford |
| Occupation(s) | Poet, novelist, and short-story writer |
| Relatives | Alfred Domett (great-uncle) |
Ernest Christopher Dowson (2 August 1867 – 23 February 1900) was an English poet, novelist, and short-story writer who is often associated with the Decadent movement.
Ernest Dowson was born in Lee, then in Kent, in 1867. His great-uncle was Alfred Domett, a Prime Minister of New Zealand. Dowson attended The Queen's College, Oxford, but left in March 1888 without obtaining a degree.[1]
In November 1888 Dowson started work at Dowson & Son, his father's dry-docking business in Limehouse, East London. He led an active social life, carousing with medical students and law pupils, visiting music halls, and taking the performers to dinner.
Dowson was a member of the Rhymers' Club, and a contributor to literary magazines such as The Yellow Book and The Savoy.[2] He collaborated with Arthur Moore on two unsuccessful novels, worked on a novel of his own, Madame de Viole, and wrote reviews for The Critic. Later in his career Dowson became a translator of French fiction, including novels by Balzac and the Goncourt brothers, and Les Liaisons dangereuses by Choderlos de Laclos.[3]
In 1889 Dowson became infatuated with an 11-year-old girl, Adelaide "Missie" Foltinowicz, the daughter of a Polish restaurant-owner. In 1892 Dowson converted to Roman Catholicism and in 1893 he proposed to Foltinowicz, who was then aged 15.[4] She rejected his proposal and later married a tailor.[5]
In August 1894 Dowson's father, suffering from tuberculosis, died of an overdose of chloral hydrate. In February 1895 his mother, who also had tuberculosis, hanged herself. Soon after her death Dowson's health began to decline rapidly.[6] Leonard Smithers gave Dowson an allowance to live in France and make translations for him.[7] However, in 1897 Dowson returned to London to live with the Foltinowicz family.[8]
In 1899 Robert Sherard found Dowson almost penniless in a wine bar. Sherard took him to his cottage in Catford, where Dowson spent his last six weeks.
On 23 February 1900 Dowson died in Catford at the age of 32. He was interred in the Roman Catholic section of Brockley and Ladywell Cemeteries in London.[9]
Dowson is best remembered for three phrases from his poems:
J. P. Miller called a television play Days of Wine and Roses (1958) and the film of the same title was based on the play.[10] The phrase also inspired the song "Days of Wine and Roses".
They are not long, the days of wine and roses:
Out of a misty dream
Our path emerges for a while, then closes
Within a dream.
– Ernest Dowson, from "Vitae Summa Brevis" (1896).
I have forgot much, Cynara! gone with the wind,
Flung roses, roses riotously with the throng,
Dancing, to put thy pale, lost lilies out of mind;
But I was desolate and sick of an old passion,
Yea, all the time, because the dance was long:
I have been faithful to thee, Cynara! in my fashion.
– Ernest Dowson, from "Non sum qualis eram bonae sub regno Cynarae", third stanza (1894).
Margaret Mitchell, touched by the "far away, faintly sad sound I wanted" in the first line of the third stanza of "Non sum qualis eram bonae sub regno Cynarae", chose the line as the title of her novel Gone with the Wind.[11]
"Non sum qualis eram bonae sub regno Cynarae" is also the source of the phrase "I have been faithful ... in my fashion", as in the title of the film Faithful in My Fashion (1946). Cole Porter paraphrased Dowson in the song "Always True to You in My Fashion" in the musical Kiss Me, Kate. Morrissey uses the lines, "In my own strange way, / I've always been true to you. / In my own sick way, / I'll always stay true to you" in the song "Speedway" on the album Vauxhall & I.
According to the Oxford English Dictionary, Dowson provides the earliest recorded use of the word "soccer" in written language, although he spelled it "socca".[c]
Dowson's prose works include the short stories collected as Dilemmas (1895), and the two novels A Comedy of Masks (1893) and Adrian Rome (each co-written with Arthur Moore).
"Non sum qualis eram bonae sub regno Cynarae" was first published in The Second Book of the Rhymer's Club in 1894,[12] and was noticed by Richard Le Gallienne in his "Wanderings in Bookland" column in The Idler, Volume 9.[13]
