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 a ma
simplicite," 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.
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