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.
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.
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]
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]
In a letter to Leonard Smithers, Oscar Wilde wrote of the death of Dowson: "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 is."[14]
Arthur Moore wrote several comic novels about the young adult duo of Anthony "Tony" Wilder and Paul Morrow. Tony is based on Dowson, while Paul is based on Moore. Moore's novel The Eyes of Light is mentioned by E. Nesbit in her novel The Phoenix and the Carpet.
In a memoir included in Poems and Prose of Ernest Dowson (1919) Arthur Symons describes Dowson as "a man who was undoubtedly a man of genius ... There never was a poet to whom verse came more naturally. ... He had the pure lyric gift, unweighed or unballasted by any other quality of mind or emotion."[15]
Dowson's poem Vitae Summa Brevis a/k/a "Days of Wine and Roses" is recited by the character Waldo Lydecker in the 1944 Otto Preminger-directed film noir Laura and in the UK-produced TV series The Durrells in Corfu (series 2, episode 4).
In anticipation of the anniversary of Dowson's birth on 2 August 2010 his grave, which had fallen derelict and been vandalised, was restored. The unveiling and memorial service were publicised in the South London Press, on BBC Radio 4 and in the Times Literary Supplement, and dozens of people paid tribute to the poet 110 years after his death.
^Vitae summa brevis ("Life's short sum") is a quotation from Horace's Odes, Book I, 4.
^Non sum qualis eram bonae sub regno Cynarae ("I am not what I was, under the reign of the good Cynara") is a quotation from Horace's Odes, Book IV, 1.
^"I absolutely decline to see socca' matches." (letter by Dowson, 21 February 1889). Soccer , in Oxford English Dictionary online, (subscription required), retrieved 30 April 2014.
Anon (1968) "Ernest Dowson", in Essays and Reviews from the Times Literary Supplement 1967, London: Oxford University Press, pp. 55–63. Originally published in the Times Literary Supplement, 2 November 1967.
Plarr,Victor (1914). Ernest Dowson 1888-1897: Reminiscences, Unpublished Letters and Marginalia, with a bibliography compiled by H. Guy Harrison. New York: Laurence J. Gomme.
