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.
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