BIB_ID
456084
Accession number
MA 23931.4
Creator
Dowson, Ernest Christopher, 1867-1900, sender.
Credit line
Purchased on the Drue Heinz Fund for Twentieth-Century Literature, 2025.
Description
1 item (3 pages) ; 21 x 13.4 cm (folded); 21 x 26.8 cm (unfolded)
Notes
Date approximated from contents and other Dowson letters in the Morgan's collection.
Addressed from 214 Rue St. Jacques, Paris. Written in an unidentified cafe [see below].
Addressed from 214 Rue St. Jacques, Paris. Written in an unidentified cafe [see below].
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
Confirming that he will be accepting "Noblet's invitation"; describing his hopes for spending the holiday season with friends; describing in detail a "very gay evening" spent with Leopold and Smithers, eventually joined by J.P.E. Ashworth, "very drunk"; observing that his translation of Balzac's "La Fille aux Yeux d'Or" is "in the printer's hands"; half-seriously scolding O'Riordan for talking to Smithers about Dowson's drinking; expressing some disdain for Jepson and Teixeira's "interference" [presumably regarding Dowson's drinking], and noting that he has stopped answering Jepson's letters as a result; describing how he has written to Arthur Moore to drop a "hint" to Jepson as to the reason for Dowson's silence, and Moore has agreed; noting that Moore "has the most polished manner & can be more infernally rude in an urbane way than any man I have ever known in my life," and that he "dislikes [Jepson] personally"; observing that "students have invaded this café & are beginning to 'sing.' Therefore it is time for me to go."
Catalog link
Department