Details
DOWSON, ERNEST. Autograph manuscript signed of the story "The Eyes of Pride." [Paris, 1895]. 15 pages, folio, mostly in brown ink on rectos of lined sheets (mainly tinted tan, but a few sheets slightly larger and with a different tint) removed from a notebook, with numerous revisions by the author, signed at end, folded horizontally, some soiling and minor staining, last leaf nearly separated at horizontal fold, small quarto brown morocco pull-off case, the setting copy with the name of the typesetter on pages 1 and 9 and with some editorial markings.
Dowson's story of two lovers in anguished separation because of their pride was written for and was printed in the first issue of The Savoy (January 1896), edited by Arthur Symons. In his Ernest Dowson (Philadelphia, 1944), Mark Longaker writes (pp. 189-190) about this story: "[Dowson's] quarrel with Missie [Adelaide Foltinowicz, his 16-year-old love] immediately before leaving London had given him considerable distress; and once away from her he reflected on the reason which had brought it about...The lines from Number XXIV of George Meredith's Modern Love: 'Pluck out the eyes of pride; thy lips to mine? Never, though I die thirsting! Go thy ways...', struck him as applicable to the situation, and using them as the basis for the title of his story and its motivation, he built up a narrative which invites autobiographical interpretation...When 'The Eyes of Pride' appeared in the...The Savoy, few of its readers knew anything about 'A.F.' [Missie], to whom the story is dedicated, and who undoubtedly had a share in its motivation. To its author, however, the story was not whipped off to give Symons and [the publisher Leonard] Smithers the promised contribution to the magazine, but it was written out of his own distress, and with the thought that possibly there would be a time when Adelaide would read it and understand." Manuscript material of Ernest Dowson, particularly of this nature, is very rare.
Dowson's story of two lovers in anguished separation because of their pride was written for and was printed in the first issue of The Savoy (January 1896), edited by Arthur Symons. In his Ernest Dowson (Philadelphia, 1944), Mark Longaker writes (pp. 189-190) about this story: "[Dowson's] quarrel with Missie [Adelaide Foltinowicz, his 16-year-old love] immediately before leaving London had given him considerable distress; and once away from her he reflected on the reason which had brought it about...The lines from Number XXIV of George Meredith's Modern Love: 'Pluck out the eyes of pride; thy lips to mine? Never, though I die thirsting! Go thy ways...', struck him as applicable to the situation, and using them as the basis for the title of his story and its motivation, he built up a narrative which invites autobiographical interpretation...When 'The Eyes of Pride' appeared in the...The Savoy, few of its readers knew anything about 'A.F.' [Missie], to whom the story is dedicated, and who undoubtedly had a share in its motivation. To its author, however, the story was not whipped off to give Symons and [the publisher Leonard] Smithers the promised contribution to the magazine, but it was written out of his own distress, and with the thought that possibly there would be a time when Adelaide would read it and understand." Manuscript material of Ernest Dowson, particularly of this nature, is very rare.