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.
III
Dowson was the only poet I ever knew who cared more for his prose than
his verse; but he was wrong, and it is not by his prose that he will
live, exquisite as that prose was at its best. He wrote two novels in
collaboration with Mr. Arthur Moore: "A Comedy of Masks," in 1893, and
"Adrian Rome," in 1899, both done under the influence of Mr. Henry James,
both interesting because they were personal studies, and studies of known
surroundings, rather than for their actual value as novels. A volume
of "Stories and Studies in Sentiment," called "Dilemmas," in which the
influence of Mr. Wedmore was felt in addition to the influence of Mr.
James, appeared in 1895. Several other short stories, among his best work
in prose, have not yet been reprinted from the _Savoy_. Some translations
from the French, done as hack-work, need not be mentioned here, though
they were never without some traces of his peculiar quality of charm in
language.
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