A Comedy of Masks

A Comedy of Masks by Ernest Dowson

Philip Rainham, ailing owner of a run-down Thames dry dock called Rainham's Dock, hosts the young painter Richard "Dick" Lightmark, who works there on riverscapes and lodges with Rainham on his visits to London. Lightmark's foreman Bullen mentions that a young woman has been asking after a "Mr. Crichton" at the dock; Lightmark denies knowing the name. That evening Rainham learns Lightmark has grown close to the Sylvester family, particularly the barrister Charles Sylvester and his young sister Eve, whom Lightmark is sketching and clearly admires. Rainham reveals he has known the Sylvesters for years and is fond of Eve from her childhood. Lightmark's backstory unfolds: an unsettled Continental upbringing, an inheritance from his grandmother, expulsion from Oxford, itinerant art training in Paris and Rome, and eventual success in London as a fashionable portrait painter, partly through Charles Sylvester's patronage. At a dinner with Rainham at Brodonowski's restaurant, they encounter the fierce, uncompromising painter Oswyn, who despises commercial art and needles Lightmark for having "sold out." Rainham is drawn to Oswyn's integrity despite his coarseness. The mysterious woman, Kitty Crichton, accosts Rainham outside the dock gates one night, mistaking him and his companion for the "Cyril" she seeks; she carries an infant. Rainham, moved by her distress, gives her money and arranges to help her. He learns she once worked as an artist's model. He mentions "Kitty" absent-mindedly on seeing a sketch of her in Lightmark's portfolio at a studio gathering, provoking Lightmark's visible unease and Charles Sylvester's suspicion that Rainham himself is the culpable party, having glimpsed Rainham talking with Kitty in the park. Lightmark confides to Rainham that he intends to marry Eve, explaining away Kitty as merely a former studio model. Rainham, suppressing his own unacknowledged feelings for Eve, encourages the match and later helps smooth negotiations over settlements with Charles and Mrs. Sylvester, aided by Lightmark's wealthy uncle Colonel Lightmark. Meanwhile Rainham continues seeing Kitty, who tells him the child's father is married and asks to be left alone; Rainham suspects she is concealing the man's identity, possibly connected to a writer for the paper called the Outcry under the pseudonym "Cyril Crichton." Lightmark and Eve become engaged and marry after a trip to Lucerne, where Rainham's confidante Lady Garnett and her niece Mary Masters observe the courtship with wry skepticism about Lightmark's sincerity. Rainham, departing for the Riviera to nurse his failing lung, is troubled by unresolved doubts about Lightmark's character and the Kitty affair, and briefly encounters the Dollonds, a garrulous artist couple, at Bordighera and Monte Carlo. Lightmark's Academy portrait of Eve and a second exhibited river painting bring him acclaim at the Private View, attended by Eve, her mother, and Colonel Lightmark. Back in London, Rainham reunites with Oswyn, who reveals he had painted out his own ambitious dock nightscape after discovering that Lightmark's celebrated exhibited picture was built on the same idea, described earlier at Brodonowski's — an act of plagiarism. Oswyn confronts Lightmark directly in front of Rainham, accusing him of theft, while Rainham, shocked and pained, tries to intervene and calm the dispute, and Oswyn, torn by his loyalty to Rainham, wavers over how far to press the accusation.

By Ernest Dowson · First published 1893 · Genre: Literary Fiction, Realism, Drama · 34 chapters · 113,018 words

First lines

In that intricate and obscure locality, which stretches between the Tower and Poplar, a tarry region, scarcely suspected by the majority of Londoners, to whom the "Port of London" is an expression purely geographical, there is, or was not many years ago, to be found a certain dry dock called Blackpool, but better known from time immemorial to skippers and longshoremen, and all who go down to the sea in ships, as "Rainham's Dock."

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Satire · Social commentary · Humor · Irony · Wit · Decadence · Aestheticism · Fin de siècle · French influence · Poetic prose · Philosophical themes · Morality play

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