in that squalid part of the East End which he came to know so well, and
to feel so strangely at home in. He drank the poisonous liquors of those
pot-houses which swarm about the docks; he drifted about in whatever
company came in his way; he let heedlessness develop into a curious
disregard of personal tidiness. In Paris, Les Halles took the place of the
docks. At Dieppe, where I saw so much, of him one summer, he discovered
strange, squalid haunts about the harbour, where he made friends with
amazing innkeepers, and got into rows with the fishermen who came in to
drink after midnight. At Brussels, where I was with him at the time of the
Kermesse, he flung himself into all that riotous Flemish life, with a zest
for what was most sordidly riotous in it. It was his own way of escape from
life.

To Dowson, as to all those who have not been "content to ask unlikely
gifts in vain," nature, life, destiny, whatever one chooses to call it,
that power which is strength to the strong, presented itself as a barrier
against which all one's strength only served to dash one to more hopeless
ruin. He was not a dreamer; destiny passes by the dreamer, sparing him
because he clamours for nothing. He was a child, clamouring for so many
things, all impossible. With a body too weak for ordinary existence, he
desired all the enchantments of all the senses. With a soul too shy to tell
its own secret, except in exquisite evasions, he desired the boundless
confidence of love. He sang one tune, over and over, and no one listened
to him. He had only to form the most simple wish, and it was denied him.
He gave way to ill-luck, not knowing that he was giving way to his own
weakness, and he tried to escape from the consciousness of things as they
were at the best, by voluntarily choosing to accept them at their worst.
For with him it was always voluntary. He was never quite without money; he
had a little money of his own, and he had for many years a weekly allowance
from a publisher, in return for translations from the French, or, if he