Ernest Dowson

Ernest Christopher Dowson (2 August 1867 – 23 February 1900) was an English poet, novelist, and short-story writer, often associated with the Decadent movement.

Life

Ernest Dowson was born in Lee, London, in 1867. His great-uncle was Alfred Domett, a poet and politician who became Premier of New Zealand and had allegedly been the subject of Robert Browning's poem "Waring." Dowson attended The Queen's College, Oxford, but left in March 1888 before obtaining a degree.

In November 1888, he started work with his father at Dowson and Son, a dry-docking business in Limehouse, east London, which had been established by the poet's grandfather. He led an active social life, carousing with medical students and law pupils, going to music halls and taking the performers to dinner. He was also working assiduously at his writing during this time. He was a member of the Rhymers' Club, which included W. B. Yeats and Lionel Johnson. He was a contributor to such literary magazines as The Yellow Book and The Savoy.

Dowson collaborated on two unsuccessful novels with Arthur Moore, worked on a novel of his own, Madame de Viole, and wrote reviews for The Critic. Later in his career, Dowson was a prolific translator of French fiction, including novels by Balzac and the Goncourt brothers, and Les Liaisons dangereuses by Choderlos de Laclos.

In 1889, aged 23, Dowson fell in love with the eleven-year-old Adelaide "Missie" Foltinowicz, daughter of a Polish restaurant owner; in 1893 he unsuccessfully proposed to her. His biographer in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography writes cautiously, "Through [Dowson's] letters and poetry there runs a strong current of paedophilia, which has an erotic strain; but it is tempered by a humane and romantic appreciation of the freshness and generosity of children not yet tainted by the manners of society." To Dowson's despair, Adelaide was eventually to marry a tailor.

In August 1894, Dowson's father, who was in the advanced stages of tuberculosis, died of an overdose of chloral hydrate. His mother, who was also consumptive, hanged herself in February 1895. Soon after her death, Dowson began to decline rapidly. The publisher Leonard Smithers gave him an allowance to live in France and write translations, but he returned to London in 1897 (where he stayed with the Foltinowicz family, despite the transfer of Adelaide's affections).

In 1899, Robert Sherard found Dowson almost penniless in a wine bar and took him back to the cottage in Catford, where Sherard was living. Dowson spent the last six weeks of his life at Sherard's cottage where he died at age 32. He had become a Catholic in 1892 and was interred in the Roman Catholic section of nearby Brockley and Ladywell Cemeteries. After Dowson's death, Oscar Wilde wrote: "Poor wounded wonderful fellow that he was, a tragic reproduction of all tragic poetry, like a symbol, or a scene. I hope bay leaves will be laid on his tomb and rue and myrtle too for he knew what love was".

This article uses material from the Wikipedia article Ernest Dowson, which is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share-Alike License 3.0. ( view authors).