The Reign of Reverie

Abstract Chapter 6 traces the evolution of Dowson’s quasi-mystical erotology from Pater’s writing, and the declining course of his personal dedication to this credo. His long-suppressed correspondence on his relationship with Foltinowicz details the ‘reign of reverie’ that set in following his determination to propose marriage when she came of age; the circumstances are figured obliquely in Dowson’s poems and stories in 1893 and 1894 as the matter came to a head. Far from resolving matters, however, his proposal, when it finally arrived, precipitated by the death of Joseph Foltinowicz in 1893, only deepened Dowson’s sense of beleaguered devotion. Worse still, it began to alienate him from Foltinowicz’s affections. This gradual realization is chronicled in Dowson’s verse and prose, which reads the demise of the relationship as a personal and imaginative catastrophe, transforming the beloved into the callous agent of the poet’s destruction, the femme fatale of the ‘Dowson Legend’.