Dubourg, Augustus William, prob. l A. W. Doubleday, Esquire, 91. StanIey St., PimIico I, playwright. The Post Office London Directory for 1858, also for 1857, lists the Stanley St. address as that of Augustus William Dubourg, Esq. "A. W. Doubleday" would seem to be a pseudonym for A. W. Dubourg. Dubourg was author of Bitter Fruit, Vittoria Contarini, Angelica, and other plays; co-author, with Tom Taylor, of A Sister's Penance and New Men and Old Acres; with Edmund Yates, of Without Love. He contributed to periodicals, e.g., Once a Week, Temple Bar. He published two novels and two novelettes under the title Four Studies of Love, 3 vols., 1877.

      The H.W. story assigned to Doubleday ["Mr. Pearson XVII, 291-94. March 13, 1858] relates the obstacles – monetary and other – that threatened to bar the marriage of a young man and woman. The story is told in a letter written by the young woman after her marriage. "We are so happy," she writes from Switzerland. "Ernest generally paints in the open air, and I sit near him working .... " " ... papa made us an allowance, and with what Ernest gets by painting, it is quite as much as we require." She then describes an alpine scene, finding in the sunshine, the rainbow, and the rain "a solemn but gentle admonition from Heaven on the transitoriness of earthly things."
      One of Dubourg's novels has a somewhat similar ending. Saved by Love, the story of a young woman's marrying a rich man whom she does not love, for the sake of providing for her parents and her sister, ends with a letter announcing the woman's marriage, after the death of the rich husband, to the man whom she has always loved. " ... we are so happy," she writes from Switzerland. "Frank is making fair though slow progress in his profession, he works so hard, dear boy. That cruel will took away every penny I derived ... from the property, but if need be, I can return for awhile to my oId teaching. ..." She then describes an alpine sunset – "it seems as if one can see more of the wonderful ways of the Almighty in this mountain-land than in England." The dying of the crimson flush on the mountain tops "into the cold dead desolation of twilight" fills her with apprehension, until she remembers that the crimson will in the morning again light the peaks, spreading downwards like a rich mantle and then fading into "the bright light of the perfect day.'
                                                                                                                                                                                                 Allibone

Author: Anne Lohrli; © University of Toronto Press, 1971