The All-Absorbing Subject

Abstract While it is nonsensical to speak of him as an eminent Catholic poet, Chapter 3 argues that Dowson is nevertheless an exemplary confessional poet and that—like Newman and the other Decadent converts Newman inspired—Dowson’s conversion came to last a lifetime. Like all good conversion narratives, Dowson’s has an inauspicious beginning: he was tolerant of, but personally indisposed to, Roman Catholicism throughout his youth. Influenced by Charles Sayle, Lionel Johnson, members of his extended family, and the Foltinowiczes, however, Dowson resolved to be received at the Brompton Oratory, in a gesture of aesthetic affiliation as well as religious surrender. His letters best illustrate the reactionary impetus and political context of this undertaking. Dowson’s confessional lyrics—especially ‘Nuns of the Perpetual Adoration’, written on the eve of Lent 1891—are crucial testimonies to his personal submission, but they also demonstrate the basically liturgical configuration of his accomplished lyrical style.