BIB_ID
456081
Accession number
MA 23931.11
Creator
Dowson, Ernest Christopher, 1867-1900, sender.
Credit line
Purchased on the Drue Heinz Fund for Twentieth-Century Literature, 2025.
Description
1 item (2 pages) ; 17.4 x 10.9 cm
Notes
Written from the Cafe d'Harcourt, "Tuesday."
A steam train crashed through a wall at Gare Montparnasse on October 18, 1895, creating the hole Dowson refers to here.
A steam train crashed through a wall at Gare Montparnasse on October 18, 1895, creating the hole Dowson refers to here.
Provenance
Sotheby's, 11 March 1968, lot 773; Barry Humphries (1934-2023; bookplate); Christie's, London, "Barry Humphries: The Personal Collection," 13 February 2025.
Summary
Admitting he has been lunching at the d'Harcourt since some money arrived; congratulating O'Riordan on his new home; admitting to having been "very seedy all yesterday," not leaving his apartment until evening, when it was time to eat; reporting that he slept well and "breakfasted at our Cremerie at 8.0 [sic] AM," followed by a walk to the Gare Montparnasse, where he "looked at the hole in the station" then returned home to find a letter from Smithers; describing a hat he recently bought and the haircut he is contemplating to compliment it; telling O'Riordan, "I feel so much better today except for my specific disease which increases by leaps & starts"; noting he has heard no more about a "fracas" with "the snailmer-chant," and has just seen Leopold in the cafe on his way to the races; asking O'Riordan to write, and to "remember me" to Noblet.
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