Love (In the Shade)

Abstract Chapter 2 explores Dowson’s first encounter with Adelaide Foltinowicz, and considers how this relationship, too, came to manifest itself in his writing: initially, she was simply a specimen ‘child’, whose naïve sociability chastened his cynicism, but Dowson came rapidly to entertain the complementary notions that he might eventually marry her, and that he might hitch his literary star to her young person. This prospect first dawned on Dowson in Brittany, giving rise to ‘Ploumariel’, the liminal zone of his heart’s desire. His resulting conception of ‘Amor Umbratilis’ signals the intention of writing sacerdotal, ‘aesthetic’ poetry; but it also obliges him to discard his prior writings as being ‘unmeet’ for his adolescent muse. Dowson’s fictional studies place great emphasis upon the marriage of convenience—notably, to his own literary prospects—which he expects will result from these relations, however this may be a ‘masquerade’ necessitated by Foltinowicz young age.