BIB_ID
291980
Accession number
MA 1625.1
Creator
Dowson, Ernest Christopher, 1867-1900.
Display Date
[1888] 13 Nov.
Credit line
Gift of the Fellows with the special assistance of H. Bradley Martin, 1954.
Description
1 item (8 p.) ; 17.8 cm
Notes
Dated in Flower, p. 16.
Louis Bouthers, a Frenchman living in London, was a close friend of Dowson's, and Walter John Magrath Lefroy was with him at Oxford. Agnes Hazel was a serio-comic with whom Dowson was briefly acquainted. Little Flossie [Macaroon], billed as "the American marvel," was at this time 9 years old. "'Madame de Viole" was a novel on which Dowson worked intermittently for the next year, but it was never published.
Part of a large collection letters from Ernest Dowson to his close friend Arthur Moore, the English solicitor and writer, with whom Dowson wrote four collaborative novels. Items are cataloged individually; see related collection record (MA 1625) for more information.
Written from Church End, Woodford. Addressed to "My dear Moore." Signed EC Dowson.
Louis Bouthers, a Frenchman living in London, was a close friend of Dowson's, and Walter John Magrath Lefroy was with him at Oxford. Agnes Hazel was a serio-comic with whom Dowson was briefly acquainted. Little Flossie [Macaroon], billed as "the American marvel," was at this time 9 years old. "'Madame de Viole" was a novel on which Dowson worked intermittently for the next year, but it was never published.
Part of a large collection letters from Ernest Dowson to his close friend Arthur Moore, the English solicitor and writer, with whom Dowson wrote four collaborative novels. Items are cataloged individually; see related collection record (MA 1625) for more information.
Written from Church End, Woodford. Addressed to "My dear Moore." Signed EC Dowson.
Provenance
Sale (Sotheby's, 20 December 1954, lot 205); gift of the Fellows with the special assistance of H. Bradley Martin in 1954.
Summary
Expressing concern over Moore's health, hoping that he is "laying in a stock of hygiene many kilos from this foggy, pestilent metrop[olis]." Discussing at length the "right merry time" Dowson has had lately, "a time quite unprecedented in the annals of my London life." Describing a visit the previous Wednesday with Bouthers and Lefroy to the Bedford (a music hall), where they encountered a friendly group of medical students and made the acquaintance of actors, acrobats, and the singer Miss Agnes Hazel, who he has since taken to dine (hoping the liaison "will be very amusing & not as costly affair with a regular horizontale"). Noting that "Friday night I spent in town even more festively" with the same set, including "an acrobat French and his 'wife' (?) -- an immensely vivacious girl who sat up ... until 6 A.M.," and mentioning that he "did not believe" such a girl existed. Stating that "the evening reminded me of la 'Vie de Bohême' more than any other episode I have been through" and that "the beauty of it is that it was all perfectly proper." Mentioning that to Dowson's "great delight" Little Flossie was brought to their box at the Bedford and that he has "promised to throw her chocolates at the 'Star' to-morrow," and inviting Moore to accompany him. Stating "all this gaiety is deucedly bad for literature, & you can imagine how it interferes with 'Madame de Viole' -- but the oof will be out soon & then I shall take up my pen perforce, if it is only pour tuer le temps." Discussing young women, wishing they had never been invented, but noting that "it is profitable to study them," and mentioning that "it is not les filles de l'opéra or horizontales that I protest against -- it is les jeunes filles de société -- & I will keep deucedly well away from them."
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