II

I cannot remember my first meeting with Ernest Dowson. It may have

been in 1891, at one of the meetings of the Rhymers' Club, in an upper

room of the "Cheshire Cheese," where long clay pipes lay in slim heaps

on the wooden tables, between tankards of ale; and young poets, then

very young, recited their own verses to one another with a desperate

and ineffectual attempt to get into key with the Latin Quarter. Though

few of us were, as a matter of fact, Anglo-Saxon, we could not help

feeling that we were in London, and the atmosphere of London is not

the atmosphere of movements or of societies. In Paris it is the most

natural thing in the world to meet and discuss literature, ideas,

one's own and one another's work; and it can be done without

pretentiousness or constraint, because, to the Latin mind, art, ideas,

one's work and the work of one's friends, are definite and important

things, which it would never occur to any one to take anything but

seriously. In England art has to be protected not only against the

world, but against one's self and one's fellow artist, by a kind of

affected modesty which is the Englishman's natural pose, half pride

and half self-distrust. So this brave venture of the Rhymers' Club,

though it lasted for two or three years, and produced two little books

of verse which will some day be literary curiosities, was not quite a

satisfactory kind of _cénacle_. Dowson, who enjoyed the real thing so

much in Paris, did not, I think, go very often; but his contributions

to the first book of the club were at once the most delicate and the

most distinguished poems which it contained. Was it, after all, at one

of these meetings that I first saw him, or was it, perhaps, at another

haunt of some of us at that time, a semi-literary tavern near

Leicester Square, chosen for its convenient position between two

stage-doors? It was at the time when one or two of us sincerely

worshipped the ballet; Dowson, alas! never. I could never get him to

see that charm in harmonious and coloured movement, like bright

shadows seen through the floating gauze of the music, which held me

night after night at the two theatres which alone seemed to me to give

an amusing colour to one's dreams. Neither the stage nor the

stage-door had any attraction for him; but he came to the tavern

because it was a tavern, and because he could meet his friends there.

Even before that time I have a vague impression of having met him, I

forget where, certainly at night; and of having been struck, even

then, by a look and manner of pathetic charm, a sort of Keats-like

face, the face of a demoralised Keats, and by something curious in the

contrast of a manner exquisitely refined, with an appearance generally

somewhat dilapidated. That impression was only accentuated later on,

when I came to know him, and the manner of his life, much more

intimately.

I think I may date my first impression of what one calls "the real

man" (as if it were more real than the poet of the disembodied

verses!) from an evening in which he first introduced me to those

charming supper-houses, open all night through, the cabmen's shelters.

I had been talking over another vagabond poet, Lord Rochester, with a

charming and sympathetic descendant of that poet, and somewhat late at

night we had come upon Dowson and another man wandering aimlessly and

excitedly about the streets. He invited us to supper, we did not quite

realise where, and the cabman came in with us, as we were welcomed,

cordially and without comment, at a little place near the Langham;

and, I recollect, very hospitably entertained. The cooking differs, as

I found in time, in these supper-houses, but there the rasher was

excellent and the cups admirably clean. Dowson was known there, and I

used to think he was always at his best in a cabmen's shelter. Without

a certain sordidness in his surroundings he was never quite

comfortable, never quite himself; and at those places you are obliged

to drink nothing stronger than coffee or tea. I liked to see him

occasionally, for a change, drinking nothing stronger than coffee or

tea. At Oxford, I believe, his favourite form of intoxication had been

haschisch; afterwards he gave up this somewhat elaborate experiment in

visionary sensations for readier means of oblivion; but he returned to

it, I remember, for at least one afternoon, in a company of which I

had been the gatherer and of which I was the host. I remember him

sitting a little anxiously, with his chin on his breast, awaiting the

magic, half-shy in the midst of a bright company of young people whom

he had only seen across the footlights. The experience was not a very

successful one; it ended in what should have been its first symptom,

immoderate laughter.

Always, perhaps, a little consciously, but at least always sincerely,

in search of new sensations, my friend found what was for him the

supreme sensation in a very passionate and tender adoration of the

most escaping of all ideals, the ideal of youth. Cherished, as I

imagine, first only in the abstract, this search after the immature,

the ripening graces which time can only spoil in the ripening, found

itself at the journey's end, as some of his friends thought, a little

prematurely. I was never of their opinion. I only saw twice, and for a

few moments only, the young girl to whom most of his verses were to be

written, and whose presence in his life may be held to account for

much of that astonishing contrast between the broad outlines of his

life and work. The situation seemed to me of the most exquisite and

appropriate impossibility. The daughter of a refugee, I believe of

good family, reduced to keeping a humble restaurant in a foreign

quarter of London, she listened to his verses, smiled charmingly,

under her mother's eyes, on his two years' courtship, and at the end

of two years married the waiter instead. Did she ever realise more

than the obvious part of what was being offered to her, in this shy

and eager devotion? Did it ever mean very much to her to have made and

to have killed a poet? She had, at all events, the gift of evoking,

and, in its way, of retaining, all that was most delicate, sensitive,

shy, typically poetic, in a nature which I can only compare to a weedy

garden, its grass trodden down by many feet, but with one small,

carefully tended flowerbed, luminous with lilies. I used to think,

sometimes, of Verlaine and his "girl-wife," the one really profound

passion, certainly, of that passionate career; the charming,

child-like creature, to whom he looked back, at the end of his life,

with an unchanged tenderness and disappointment: "Vous n'avez rien

compris à ma simplicité," as he lamented. In the case of Dowson,

however, there was a sort of virginal devotion, as to a Madonna; and I

think, had things gone happily, to a conventionally happy ending, he

would have felt (dare I say?) that his ideal had been spoilt.

But, for the good fortune of poets, things rarely do go happily with

them, or to conventionally happy endings. He used to dine every night

at the little restaurant, and I can always see the picture, which I

have so often seen through the window in passing: the narrow room with

the rough tables, for the most part empty, except in the innermost

corner, where Dowson would sit with that singularly sweet and

singularly pathetic smile on his lips (a smile which seemed afraid of

its right to be there, as if always dreading a rebuff), playing his

invariable after-dinner game of cards. Friends would come in during

the hour before closing time; and the girl, her game of cards

finished, would quietly disappear, leaving him with hardly more than

the desire to kill another night as swiftly as possible.

Meanwhile she and the mother knew that the fragile young man who dined

there so quietly every day was apt to be quite another sort of person

after he had been three hours outside. It was only when his life

seemed to have been irretrievably ruined that Dowson quite

deliberately abandoned himself to that craving for drink, which was

doubtless lying in wait for him in his blood, as consumption was also;

it was only latterly, when he had no longer any interest in life, that

he really wished to die. But I have never known him when he could

resist either the desire or the consequences of drink. Sober, he was

the most gentle, in manner the most gentlemanly of men; unselfish to a

fault, to the extent of weakness; a delightful companion, charm

itself. Under the influence of drink, he became almost literally

insane, certainly quite irresponsible. He fell into furious and

unreasoning passions; a vocabulary unknown to him at other times

sprang up like a whirlwind; he seemed always about to commit some act

of absurd violence. Along with that forgetfulness came other memories.

As long as he was conscious of himself, there was but one woman for

him in the world, and for her he had an infinite tenderness and an

infinite respect. When that face faded from him, he saw all the other

faces, and he saw no more difference than between sheep and sheep.

Indeed, that curious love of the sordid, so common an affectation of

the modern decadent, and with him so genuine, grew upon him, and

dragged him into more and more sorry corners of a life which was never

exactly "gay" to him. His father, when he died, left him in possession

of an old dock, where for a time he lived in a mouldering house, in

that squalid part of the East End which he came to know so well, and

to feel so strangely at home in. He drank the poisonous liquors of

those pot-houses which swarm about the docks; he drifted about in

whatever company came in his way; he let heedlessness develop into a

curious disregard of personal tidiness. In Paris, Les Halles took the

place of the docks. At Dieppe, where I saw so much, of him one summer,

he discovered strange, squalid haunts about the harbour, where he made

friends with amazing innkeepers, and got into rows with the fishermen

who came in to drink after midnight. At Brussels, where I was with him

at the time of the Kermesse, he flung himself into all that riotous

Flemish life, with a zest for what was most sordidly riotous in it. It

was his own way of escape from life.

To Dowson, as to all those who have not been "content to ask unlikely

gifts in vain," nature, life, destiny, whatever one chooses to call

it, that power which is strength to the strong, presented itself as a

barrier against which all one's strength only served to dash one to

more hopeless ruin. He was not a dreamer; destiny passes by the

dreamer, sparing him because he clamours for nothing. He was a child,

clamouring for so many things, all impossible. With a body too weak

for ordinary existence, he desired all the enchantments of all the

senses. With a soul too shy to tell its own secret, except in

exquisite evasions, he desired the boundless confidence of love. He

sang one tune, over and over, and no one listened to him. He had only

to form the most simple wish, and it was denied him. He gave way to

ill-luck, not knowing that he was giving way to his own weakness, and

he tried to escape from the consciousness of things as they were at

the best, by voluntarily choosing to accept them at their worst. For

with him it was always voluntary. He was never quite without money; he

had a little money of his own, and he had for many years a weekly

allowance from a publisher, in return for translations from the

French, or, if he chose to do it, original work. He was unhappy, and

he dared not think. To unhappy men, thought, if it can be set at work

on abstract questions, is the only substitute for happiness; if it has

not strength to overleap the barrier which shuts one in upon oneself,

it is the one unwearying torture. Dowson had exquisite sensibility, he

vibrated in harmony with every delicate emotion; but he had no

outlook, he had not the escape of intellect. His only escape, then,

was to plunge into the crowd, to fancy that he lost sight of himself

as he disappeared from the sight of others. The more he soiled himself

at that gross contact, the further would he seem to be from what

beckoned to him in one vain illusion after another vain illusion, in

the delicate places of the world. Seeing himself moving to the sound

of lutes, in some courtly disguise, down an alley of Watteau's

Versailles, while he touched finger-tips with a divine creature in

rose-leaf silks, what was there left for him, as the dream obstinately

refused to realise itself, but a blind flight into some Teniers

kitchen, where boors are making merry, without thought of yesterday or

to-morrow? There, perhaps, in that ferment of animal life, he could

forget life as he dreamed it, with too faint hold upon his dreams to

make dreams come true.

For, there is not a dream which may not come true, if we have the

energy which makes, or chooses, our own fate. We can always, in this

world, get what we want, if we will it intensely and persistently

enough. Whether we shall get it sooner or later is the concern of

fate; but we shall get it. It may come when we have no longer any use

for it, when we have gone on willing it out of habit, or so as not to

confess that we have failed. But it will come. So few people succeed

greatly because so few people can conceive a great end, and work

towards that end without deviating and without tiring. But we all know

that the man who works for money day and night gets rich; and the man

who works day and night for no matter what kind of material power,

gets the power. It is the same with the deeper, more spiritual, as it

seems vaguer issues, which make for happiness and every intangible

success. It is only the dreams of those light sleepers who dream

faintly that do not come true.

We get out of life, all of us, what we bring to it; that, and that

only, is what it can teach us. There are men whom Dowson's experiences

would have made great men, or great writers; for him they did very

little. Love and regret, with here and there the suggestion of an

uncomforting pleasure snatched by the way, are all that he has to sing

of; and he could have sung of them at much less "expense of spirit,"

and, one fancies, without the "waste of shame" at all. Think what

Villon got directly out of his own life, what Verlaine, what Musset,

what Byron, got directly out of their own lives! It requires a strong

man to "sin strongly" and profit by it. To Dowson the tragedy of his

own life could only have resulted in an elegy. "I have flung roses,

roses, riotously with the throng," he confesses in his most beautiful

poem; but it was as one who flings roses in a dream, as he passes with

shut eyes through an unsubstantial throng. The depths into which he

plunged were always waters of oblivion, and he returned forgetting

them. He is always a very ghostly lover, wandering in a land of

perpetual twilight, as he holds a whispered _colloque sentimental_

with the ghost of an old love:

"Dans le vieux parc solitaire et glacé, Deux spectres ont évoqué le

passé."

It was, indeed, almost a literal unconsciousness, as of one who leads

two lives, severed from one another as completely as sleep is from

waking. Thus we get in his work very little of the personal appeal of

those to whom riotous living, misery, a cross destiny, have been of so

real a value. And it is important to draw this distinction, if only

for the benefit of those young men who are convinced that the first

step towards genius is disorder. Dowson is precisely one of the people

who are pointed out as confirming this theory. And yet Dowson was

precisely one of those who owed least to circumstances; and, in

succumbing to them, he did no more than succumb to the destructive

forces which, shut up within him, pulled down the house of life upon

his own head.

A soul "unspotted from the world," in a body which one sees visibly

soiling under one's eyes; that improbability is what all who knew him

saw in Dowson, as his youthful physical grace gave way year by year,

and the personal charm underlying it remained unchanged. There never

was a simpler or more attaching charm, because there never was a

sweeter or more honest nature. It was not because he ever said

anything particularly clever or particularly interesting, it was not

because he gave you ideas, or impressed you by any strength or

originality, that you liked to be with him; but because of a certain

engaging quality, which seemed unconscious of itself, which was never

anxious to be or to do anything, which simply existed, as perfume

exists in a flower. Drink was like a heavy curtain, blotting out

everything of a sudden; when the curtain lifted, nothing had changed.

Living always that double life, he had his true and his false aspect,

and the true life was the expression of that fresh, delicate, and

uncontaminated nature which some of us knew in him, and which remains

for us, untouched by the other, in every line that he wrote.