BIB_ID
456088
Accession number
MA 23931.15
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) ; 15.3 x 10.2 cm, folded; 15.3 x 20.4 cm, unfolded
Notes
Written from 19 Sherwood St., Regent St., W., London.
Inscribed on first page in a different hand, presumably O'Riordan's: 21/4/97.
Inscribed on first page in a different hand, presumably O'Riordan's: 21/4/97.
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
Referring obliquely to "Dolly" and begging O'Riordan not to ask him to lunch with her, and not to "for the sake of my whole happiness give her my address"; enclosing two letters "which will show you how your own came to me" and asking him to "burn them both & this one also"; claiming that, except for one drunken night and a brief trip to Bruges, "I am working furiously at present"; telling him "I shall be here for the next month or so" and admonishing him, should he visit, "not a word about Dolly & such like follies. Vraimont, it is only the third occasion since I returned to this sad country that I have dealt with a whore"; begging him again to "Please burn all this 'packet' instantaneously."
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