Ernest Dowson
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Ernest Christopher Dowson (2 August 1867-23 February 1900), an English poet who was associated with the Decadent Movement, was born at Lee, south-east of London. He attended The Queen's College, Oxford but left before obtaining a degree.
In November 1888, he started work at 'Dowson and Son' : his father's new dry-docking business. He led as active a social life as he could, carousing with medical students and law pupils, going to music halls, taking the performers to dinner, and so forth. At the same time he was working assiduously at his writing. He collaborated on a couple of unsuccessful novels with Arthur Moore, was working on his own novel Madame de Viole, and was working as an unpaid reviewer for The Critic.
He was a member of the Rhymers' Club, which included W. B. Yeats and Lionel Johnson. He was also a frequent contributor to the literary magazines The Yellow Book and The Savoy.
In 1891 Dowson fell in love with 12-year-old Adelaide "Missie" Foltinowicz, the daughter of a Polish restaurant owner. Adelaide is reputed to be the subject of his best-known poem, Non Sum Qualis eram Bonae Sub Regno Cynarae. He pursued her unsuccessfully -- in 1893 she married a waiter in her father's restaurant, and Dowson was crushed. In 1895 his parents both committed suicide, and Dowson began to decline rapidly.
Robert Sherard one day found Dowson almost penniless in a wine bar and took him back to the cottage in Catford where he was himself living. Dowson spent the last six weeks of his life at Sherard's cottage, and died there of alcoholism (or some say of tuberculosis) at the age of 32.
Biography
- Madder Music, Stronger Wine by Jad Adams (I.B. Tauris).
- See also sections in: Madonnas and Magdalens - the origins and developments of Victorian sexual attitudes. London. Eric Trudgill. (Heinemann, 1976).
External links
- [Seleced Poems & Prose of Ernest Dowson]
- [A few of Dowson's poems], through the University of Toronto.
- [Arthur Symons' memoir of Dowson.]
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