Ernest Dowson, 1867-1900

Dowson was a novelist and short story writer. He was one of the best known of "the Decadents", definitely and absintheur and - unusually for the time - an Englishman.

Oscar Wilde is known to have commented on Dowson's heavy absinthe drinking, pointing out that if Dowson didn't drink absinthe, he just wouldn't be Dowson... Ernest Downson died at the very young age of only 32 years much due to his alcoholism. Both his father and mother died only a few years before and the sorrow of losing them both was very hard on him and was in large part cause of his rapid degeneration.

Dowson understood the romantic properties of the green spirit: 'Whiskey and beer are for fools,' he once said; 'absinthe has the power of the magicians; it can wipe out or renew the past, and annul or foretell the future.'

Written by Markus Hartsmar