Plan your visit. 225 Madison Avenue at 36th Street, New York, NY 10016.

Plan your visit. 225 Madison Avenue at 36th Street, New York, NY 10016.

Letter from Ernest Dowson, Paris, France, to Conal O'Riordan, approximately 1895 November : autograph manuscript signed

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.
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.