CHAPTER XXVII: CONCLUSION 421

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

_Frontispiece_

WILLIAM SHARP (1896), after an etching by William Strang, A. R. A.

_Facing Page_

DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI 58

WILLIAM SHARP (1883), after photograph taken in Rome 78

WALTER PATER, after a photograph by Frederick Hollyer 104

WILLIAM SHARP (1891), after a pastel drawing by Charles Ross 180

FAC-SIMILE OF AN AUTOGRAPH POEM BY WILLIAM SHARP 216

FAC-SIMILE OF AN AUTOGRAPH “FIONA MACLEOD” POEM BY WILLIAM SHARP 244

IL CASTELLO DI MANIACE, Bronte, Sicily, after a photograph by the

Hon. Alex. Nelson Hood 332

WILLIAM SHARP (1903), after a photograph by the Hon. Alex. Nelson

Hood (Duke of Bronte) 358

GEORGE MEREDITH, after a photograph by Frederick Hollyer 368

MRS. WILLIAM SHARP (1909), after a photograph by T. Craig-Annan 414

PART I

WILLIAM SHARP

“_Praised be the fathomless universe,

For life and joy ... and for love, sweet love._”

W. WHITMAN.

“_But one to whom life appeals by myriad avenues, all alluring and full

of wonder and mystery, cannot always abide where the heart most longs to

be. It is well to remember that there are Shadowy Waters, even in the

cities, and that the Fount of Youth is discoverable in the dreariest

towns as well as in Hy Brasil: a truth apt to be forgotten by those of

us who dwell with ever-wondering delight in that land of lost romance

which had its own day, as this epoch of a still stranger, if less

obvious, romance has its passing hour._”

F. M.

CHAPTER I

CHILDHOOD

“Childhood, when the child is as a flower of wilding growth, and when it

is at one with nature, fellow with the winds and birds.”

W. S.

“That man is fortunate who has half his desires gratified, who lives

to see half his desires accomplished,” says Schopenhauer, and taking

the axiom to be true I am not going back on it, for certainly more than

half of the desires of my boyhood and youth have been fulfilled. I

come of a West of Scotland stock which—perhaps in part because of its

Scandinavian admixture—has always had in it ‘the wandering blood’: and

from my early days, when at the mature age of three I escaped one night

from the nursery and was found in the garden at midnight, a huddled

little white heap at the foot of a great poplar that was at once my

ceaseless delight and wonder and a fascination that was almost terror,

a desire of roaming possessed me.”

That William Sharp should be one of the fortunates who, toward the

end of life, could say he had fulfilled more than half of his early

desires, was due mainly to a ceaseless curiosity and love of adventure,

to a happy fearlessness of disposition that prompted him when starting

on any quest to seize the propitious moment, and if necessary to burn

his boats behind him. He believed himself to have been born under a

lucky star. Notwithstanding the great hardships and difficulties that

sometimes barred his way, his vivid imagination, aided by a strong

will and untiring perseverance, opened to him many doors of the

wonderland of life that lured him in his dreams. The adventurous and

the romantic were to him as beacons; and though their lights were at

times overshadowed by the tragedy of human life, his natural buoyancy

of disposition, his power of whole-hearted enjoyment in things large

and small, his ready intuitive sympathy, preserved in him a spirit of

fine optimism to the end.

The conditions of his early boyhood were favourable to the development

of his natural inclination.

He was born on the 12th of September, 1855, at 4 Garthland Place,

Paisley, on a day when the bells were ringing for the fall of

Sebastopol. He was the eldest of a family of three sons and five

daughters. His father, David Galbreath Sharp, a partner in an

old-established mercantile house, was the youngest son of William

Sharp, whose family originally came from near Dunblane. His mother was

a Miss Katherine Brooks, the eldest daughter of William Brooks, Swedish

Vice-Consul at Glasgow, and of Swedish descent, whose wife was a Miss

Agnes Henderson, related to the Stewarts of Shambellie and the Murrays

of Philiphaugh.

Mr. David Sharp was a genial, observant man, humourous, and a finished

mimic. Though much of his life was of necessity spent in a city, he had

a keen love of the country, and especially of the West Highlands. Every

summer he took a house for three or four months on the shores of the

Clyde, or on one of the beautiful sea lochs, or on the island of Arran,

now so exploited, but then relatively secluded. Very early he initiated

his son in the arts of swimming, rowing, and line fishing; sailed with

him along the beautiful shores of the Western Highlands and the Inner

Hebrides.

Mrs. David Sharp had been brought up by her father to read seriously,

and to take an interest in his favourite study of Geology. It was she

who watched over her son’s work at college, and made facilities for him

to follow his special pursuits at home. But the boy was never urged to

distinguish himself at college. He was considered too delicate to be

subjected to severe mental pressure; and he met with no encouragement

from either parent in his wish to throw himself into the study of

science or literature as a profession, for such a course seemed to

them to offer no prospects for his future. It was from Mrs. Sharp

that her son inherited his Scandinavian physique and high colouring;

for in appearance he resembled his fair-complexioned, tall maternal

grandfather. The blend of nationalities in him, slight though the

Swedish strain was, produced a double strain. He was, in the words of

a friend, a Viking in build, a Scandinavian in cast of mind, a Celt in

heart and spirit.

As a little child he was very delicate.

The long months each year by mountain and sea, and the devotion of

his Highland nurse Barbara, and his delight in open-air life, were

the most potent factors in the inward growth of his mind and spirit.

From his earliest days he was a passionate lover of nature, a tireless

observer of her moods and changes, for he had always felt himself to

be “at one with nature, fellow with the winds and birds.” And Barbara,

the Highland woman, it was she who told him stories of Faerie, crooned

to him old Gaelic songs, and made his childish mind familiar with the

heroes of the old Celtic Sagas, with the daring exploits of the Viking

rovers and Highland chieftains. It was she who sowed the seeds in his

mind of much that he afterward retold under the pseudonym of Fiona

Macleod.

There are two stories of his childhood I have heard him tell,

which seem to me to show that from earliest years the distinctive

characteristics of his markedly dual nature existed and swayed him.

From babyhood his mind had been filled with stories of old heroic

times, and in his play he delighted in being the adventurous warrior

or marauding Viking. In the gray, inclement days of winter when he

was shut up in his nursery away from the green life in the garden and

the busy wee birds in the trees, he was thrown on the resources of

his imagination to fill the long hours. One snowy day, when he was

five years old, and he was tired of playing with his baby sisters, who

could not sufficiently rise to the occasion and play the distressed

damsels to his deeds of knightly chivalry, he determined to sally forth

in search of adventure. He buckled his sword above his kilt—it was

afternoon and the light was waning—stole downstairs and out of the

house, hatless, with flying curls, and marched down the street to lay

siege to the nearest castle. A short distance away stood the house of

a friend of his father, and upon that the besieger turned his attack.

It loomed in his mind as the castle of his desire. He strode resolutely

up to the door, with great difficulty, on tiptoe, reached the handle

of the bell, pulled a long peal, and then demanded of the maid that

she and all within should surrender to him and deliver up the keys of

the castle. The maid fell in with his humour, was properly frightened,

and begged to be allowed to summon her mistress, who at once promised

submission, led the victor into her room, and by a blazing fire gave

him the keys in the form of much coveted sweets, held him in her lap

till in the warmth he fell asleep, rolled him up in a blanket, and

carried him home.

The other story is indicative not of the restless adventure-loving side

of him, but of the poet dreamer.

During the child’s sixth year his father had taken a house for the

summer months on the shores of Loch Long; the great heather-clad

hills, peak behind peak, the deep waters of the winding loch, were a

ceaseless delight to the boy. But above all else there lay an undefined

attraction in a little wood, a little pine belt nestling on the

hillside above the house. It was an enchanted land to him, away from

the everyday world, where human beings never came, but where he met

his invisible playmates, visible to him. “I went there very often,”

he wrote later. “I thought that belt of firs had a personality as

individual as that of any human being, a sanctity not to be disturbed

by sport or play.” It was a holy place to him. The sense of the

Infinite touched him there. He had heard of God in the church, and as

described from the pulpit that Being was to him remote and forbidding.

But here he seemed conscious of a Presence that was benign, beautiful.

He felt there was some great power (he could not define the feeling to

himself) behind the beauty he saw; behind the wind he did not see, but

heard; behind the wonder of the sunshine and sunset and in the silences

he loved, that awoke in him a desire to belong to it. And so, moved

to express his desire in some way, he built a little altar of stones,

rough stones, put together under a swaying pine, and on it he laid

white flowers in offering.

The three influences that taught him most in childhood were the wind,

the woods, and the sea. Water throughout his life had an irresistible

charm for him—the sea, the mountain-loch, or the rushing headlong

waters of the hill-burns. To watch the play of moving waters was an

absorbing fascination, and he has told me how one bright night he had

crept on to a ledge of wet rocks behind a hill water-fall and had

lain there so that he might watch the play of moonlight through the

shimmering veil of waters.

“When I was a child,” he wrote later, “I used to throw offerings—small

coins, flowers, shells, even a newly caught trout, once a treasured

flint arrow-head—into the sea-loch by which we lived. My Hebridean

nurse had often told me of Shony, a mysterious sea-god, and I know I

spent much time in wasted adoration: a fearful worship, not unmixed

with disappointment and some anger. Not once did I see him. I was

frightened time after time, but the sudden cry of a heron, or the snort

of a pollack chasing the mackerel, or the abrupt uplifting of a seal’s

head became over-familiar, and I desired terror, and could not find

it by the shore. Inland, after dusk, there was always the mysterious

multitude of shadow. There, too, I could hear the wind leaping and

growling. But by the shore I never knew any dread, even in the darkest

night. The sound and company of the sea washed away all fears.”

But the child was not a dreamer only. He was a high-spirited little

chap, who loved swimming and fishing and climbing; and learned at an

early age to handle the oar and the tiller, and to understand the ways

and moods of a sailing boat; afraid of nothing and ready for any

adventure that offered.

My first recollections of him go back to my childhood. We were cousins;

my father was his father’s older brother. My mother was the daughter

of Robert Farquharson, of Breda and Allargue. In 1863 my Uncle David

had a house at Blairmore on the Gare-loch for the summer, and my mother

took her children to the neighbouring village of Strone, so that the

cousins might become acquainted. My impression of “Willie” is vivid:

a merry, mischievous little boy in his eighth year, with bright-brown

curly hair, blue-gray eyes, and a laughing face, and dressed in a tweed

kilt; eager, active in his endless invention of games and occupations,

and a veritable despot over his sisters in their play. He interested

his London cousins in showing them how to find crabs and spouting fish,

birds’ nests, and brambles; terrified them with tales of snakes in the

grass on the hills, and of the ghostly things that flitted about the

woods at night. But his chief delight was his punt. A great part of the

day he spent on and in the water, shouting with delight as he tossed

on the waves in the wake of a steamer, and he occasionally startled us

by being apparently capsized into the water, disappearing from sight,

and then clambering into the punt dripping and happy. But I remember

that with all his love of fun and teasing, he seemed to feel himself

different from the other children of his age, and would fly off alone

to the hillside or to the woods to his many friends among the birds

and the squirrels and the rabbits, with whose ways and habitations he

seemed so familiar.

About the dream and vision side of his life he learned early to be

silent. He soon realised that his playmates understood nothing of the

confused memories of previous lives that haunted him, and from which

he drew materials to weave into stories for his school-fellows in the

dormitory at nights. To his surprise he found they saw none of the

denizens of the other worlds—tree spirits and nature spirits, great and

small—so familiar to him, and who he imagined must be as obvious to

others as to himself. He could say about them as Lafcadio Hearn said

about ghosts and goblins, that he believed in them for the best of

possible reasons, because he saw them day and night.

He found, as have other imaginative psychic children, that he had an

inner life, a curious power of vision unshared by any one about him;

so that what he related was usually discredited. But the psychic side

of his nature was too intimately a part of himself to be killed by

misunderstanding. He learned early to shut it away—keep it as a thing

apart—a mystery of his own, a mystery to himself. This secrecy had two

direct results: he needed from time to time to get away alone, from

other people, so as again and again to get into touch with “the Green

Life,” as he called it, for spiritual refreshment; and it developed in

him a love not only of mystery for its own sake, but of mystification

also that became a marked characteristic, and eventually was one of the

factors which in his literary work led to the adoption of the pseudonym.

Once only, as far as I know, in the short psychic tale called “The Four

Winds of the Spirit,” did he, in his writings, make any reference to

his invisible playmates. I have often heard him speak of a beautiful,

gentle white Lady of the Woods, about whom he once wrote in a letter:

“For I, too, have my dream, my memory of one whom as a child I called

Star-Eyes, and whom later I called ‘Baumorair-na-mara,’ the Lady of the

Sea, and whom at least I knew to be no other than the woman who is in

the heart of women. I was not more than seven when one day, by a well,

near a sea-loch in Argyll, just as I was stooping to drink, my glancing

eyes lit on a tall woman standing among a mist of wild hyacinths under

three great sycamores. I stood, looking, as a fawn looks, wide-eyed,

unafraid. She did not speak, but she smiled, and because of the

love and beauty in her eyes I ran to her. She stooped and lifted

blueness out of the flowers, as one might lift foam out of a pool,

and I thought she threw it over me. When I was found lying among the

hyacinths dazed, and, as was thought, ill, I asked eagerly after the

lady in white, and with hair all shiny-gold like buttercups, but when I

found I was laughed at, or at last, when I passionately persisted, was

told I was sun-dazed and had been dreaming, I said no more—but I did

not forget.”

This boy dreamer began his education at home under a governess, and of

those early days I know little except that he was tractable, easily

taught, and sunny-natured.

He has given an account of his first experiences at school in a paper,

“In the Days of my Youth,” which he was asked to contribute to _M. A.

P._

“The first tragedy in my life was when I was captured for the sacrifice

of school. At least to me it seemed no less than a somewhat brutal

and certainly tyrannical capture, and my heart sank when, at the age

of eight (I did not know how fortunate I was to have escaped the

needless bondage of early schooling till I was eight years old), I

was dispatched to what was then one of the chief boarding-schools

in Scotland, Blair Lodge, in Polmont Woods, between Falkirk and

Linlithgow. It was beautifully situated, and though I then thought the

woods were forests and the Forth and Clyde canal a mighty stream, I was

glad some years ago, on revisiting the spot, to find that my boyish

memories were by no means so exaggerated as I feared. I am afraid I was

much more of a credit to my shepherd and fisher and gipsy friends than

to my parents or schoolmasters.

“On the very day of my arrival a rebellion had broken out, and by

natural instinct I was, like the Irishman the moment he arrived in

America, ‘agin the Government.’ I remember the rapture with which I

evaded a master’s pursuing grip, and was hauled in at a window by

exultant rebels. In that temporary haven the same afternoon I insulted

a big boy, whose peculiar physiognomy had amazed me to delighted

but impolite laughter, and forthwith experienced my first school

thrashing. Later in the day I had the satisfaction of coming out victor

in an equal combat with the heir of an Indian big-wig, whom, with

too ready familiarity, I had addressed as ‘Curry.’ As I was a rather

delicate and sensitive child, this was not a bad beginning, and I

recollect my exhilaration (despite aching bones and smarting spots) in

the thought that ‘school’ promised to be a more lively experience than

I had anticipated.

“I ran away three times, and I doubt if I learned more indoors than

I did on these occasions and in my many allowed and stolen outings.

The first flight for freedom was an ignominious failure. The second

occasion two of us were Screaming Eagle and Sitting Bull, and we had

a smothered fire o’ nights and ample provender (legally and illegally

procured), and we might have become habitual woodlanders had I not

ventured to a village and rolled downhill before me a large circular

cheese, for which, alas! I now blush to say, I forgot to pay or

even to leave my name and address. That cheese was our undoing. The

third time was nearly successful, and but for a gale my life, in all

probability, would have had an altogether different colour and accent.

We reached the port of Grangemouth, and were successful in our plot to

hide ourselves as stowaways. We slept that night amid smells, rats,

cockroaches, and a mysterious congregation of ballast and cargo, hoping

to wake to the sound of waves. Alas! a storm swept the Forth from west

to the east. The gale lasted close on three days. On the morning of the

third, three pale and wretched starvelings were ignominiously packed

back to Blair Lodge, where the admiration of comrades did not make up

for punishment fare and a liberal flogging.

“A fourth attempt, however, proved successful, though differently

for each of us. One of the three, a rotund, squirrel-eyed boy, named

Robinson, was shipped off as an apprentice in an Indiaman. A few years

later he went to his dreamed-of South Seas, was killed in a squabble

with hostile islanders, and, as was afterward discovered, afforded a

feast (I am sure a succulent one) to his captors. The second of the

three is now a dean in the Anglican Church. I have never met him, but

once at a big gathering I saw the would-be pirate in clerical garb,

with a protuberant front, and bald. I think Robinson had the better

luck. As for the third of the three, he has certainly had his fill of

wandering, if he has never encountered cannibals and if he is neither a

dean nor bald.”

When their son was twelve years old, William’s parents left Paisley

and took a house in Glasgow (India Street), and he was sent as a day

scholar to the Glasgow Academy. In his sixteenth year he was laid low

with a severe attack of typhoid fever. It was to that summer during

the long months of convalescence in the West that many of his memories

of Seumas Macleod belong. Of this old fisherman he wrote: “When I was

sixteen I was on a remote island where he lived, and on the morrow of

my visit I came at sunrise upon the old man standing looking seaward

with his bonnet removed from his long white locks; and upon my speaking

to Seumas (when I saw he was not ‘at his prayers’) was answered, in

Gaelic of course, ‘Every morning like this I take my hat off to the

beauty of the world.’ Although I was sent to the Academy at Glasgow,

and afterward to the University, I spent much of each year in boating,

sailing, hill-climbing, wandering, owing to the unusual freedom allowed

to me during our summer residence in the country and during the other

vacations. From fifteen to eighteen I sailed up every loch, fjord, and

inlet in the Western Highlands and islands, from Arran and Colonsay

to Skye and the Northern Hebrides, from the Rhinns of Galloway to

the Ord of Sutherland. Wherever I went I eagerly associated myself

with fishermen, sailors, shepherds, gamekeepers, poachers, gipsies,

wandering pipers, and other musicians.” In this way he made many

friends, especially among the fishermen and shepherds, stayed with

them in their houses, and, ‘having the Gaelic,’ talked with them,

gained their confidence, and listened to tales told by old men, and old

mothers by the fireside during the long twilight evenings, or in the

herring-boats at night.

“At eighteen I ‘took to the heather,’ as we say in the north, for a

prolonged period....” Up the Gare-loch, close to Ardentinny, there

was a point of waste land running into the water, frequently used as

camping ground by roving tinkers and gipsies. Many a time he sailed

there in his little boat to get in touch with these wandering folk.

One summer he found there an encampment of true gipsies, who had come

over from mid-Europe, a fine, swarthy, picturesque race. The appeal

was irresistible, strengthened by the attraction of a beautiful gipsy

girl. He made friends with the tribe, and persuaded the ‘king’ to

let him join them; and so he became ‘star-brother’ and ‘sun-brother’

to them, and wandered with them over many hills and straths of the

West Highlands. To him, who at all times hated the restrictions and

limitations of conventional life, to whom romance was a necessity, this

free life ‘on the heather’ was the realisation of many dreams. In those

few months he learned diverse things; much wood-lore, bird-lore, how to

know the ways of the wind, and to use the stars as compass. I do not

know exactly how long he was with the camp; two months, perhaps, or

three. For to him they were so full of wonder, so vivid, that in later

life, when he spoke of them, he lost all count of time, and on looking

back to those days, packed with new and keen experiences so wholly in

keeping with his temperament, weeks seemed as months, and he ceased to

realise that the experience was compressed into one short summer. He

never wove these memories into a sequent romance, though in later time

he thought of so doing. For one thing, the present was the absorbing

actuality to him, and the future a dream to realise; whether in life

or in work the past was past, and he preferred to project himself

toward the future and what it might have in store for him. But traces

of the influence of those gipsy days are to be seen in _Children of

To-morrow_, in the character of Annaik in _Green Fire_, and in the

greater part of the story of “The Gipsy Christ,” published later in the

collection of short stories entitled _Madge o’ the Pool_. He also had

projected a romance to be called _The Gipsy Trail_, but it was never

even begun.

One thing, however, I know for certain, that the truant’s parents were

greatly concerned over his disappearance. After considerable trouble

the fugitive was recaptured. Not long after he was put into a lawyer’s

office, ostensibly to teach him business habits, but also the better

to chain him to work, to the accepted conventions of life, and to

remove him out of the way of dangerous temptations offered by the freer

College life with its long vacations.

“Not long after my return to civilisation, at my parent’s urgent

request, I not only resumed my classes at the University, but entered

a lawyer’s office in Glasgow (on very easy conditions, hardly suitable

for a professional career), so as to learn something of the law.

I learned much more, in a less agreeable fashion, when I spent my

first years in London and understood the pains and penalties of

impecuniosity! The only outside influence which had strongly perturbed

my boyhood was the outbreak of the Franco-German War, and I recall the

eager excitement with which I followed the daily news, my exultation

when the French were defeated, my delight when the Prussians won a

great victory. A few years later I would have ‘sided’ differently, but

boys naturally regarded the French as hereditary foes.”

In the autumn of 1871 he had been enrolled as student at the Glasgow

University, and he attended the sessions of 1871-72 and 1872-73 during

the Lord Rectorship of The Right Honourable B. Disraeli. He did not

remain long enough at the university to take his degree. Yet he worked

well, and was an attentive scholar. Naturally, English Literature was

the subject that attracted him specially; in that class he was under

Prof. John Nichol, whose valued friendship he retained for many years.

At the end of his second session he was one of three students who were

found ‘worthy of special commendation.’ The chief benefit to him of

his undergraduate days was the access it gave him to the University

Library. There new worlds of fascinating study were opened to him;

not only the literature and philosophy of other European countries,

but also the wonderful literatures and religions of the East. He read

omnivorously; night after night he read far into the morning hours

literature, philosophy, poetry, mysticism, occultism, magic, mythology,

folk-lore. While on the one hand the immediate result was to turn

him from the form of Presbyterian faith in which he had been brought

up, to put him in conflict with all orthodox religious teachings, it

strengthened the natural tendency of his mind toward a belief in the

unity of the great truths underlying all religions; and, to his deep

satisfaction, gave him a sense of brotherhood with the acknowledged

psychics and seers of other lands and other days. At last he found a

sympathetic correspondence with his thoughts and experiences, and a

clew to their possible meaning and value.

In 1874, with a view to finding out in what direction his son’s

capabilities lay, Mr. David Sharp put him into the office of Messrs.

Maclure and Hanney, lawyers, in Glasgow, where he remained till his

health broke down and he was sent to Australia. It was soon evident

that he would never be a shining light in the legal profession: his

chief interest still lay in his private studies and his earliest

efforts in literature. In order to find time for all he wished to do,

which included a keen interest in the theatre and opera whenever the

chance offered, he allowed himself during these two years four hours

only out of the twenty-four for sleep; a procedure which did not tend

to strengthen his already delicate health. At no time in his life did

he weigh or consider what amount of physical strength he had at his

disposal. His will was strong, his desires were definite; he expected

his strength to be adequate to his requirements, and assumed it was

so, until, from time to time, a serious breakdown proved to him how

seriously he had overdrawn on his reserve.

CHAPTER II

AUSTRALIA

My second meeting with my cousin was in August of 1875, when he spent

a week with us at a cottage my mother had taken at Dunoon, then one of

the most charming villages on the Clyde.

I remember vividly the impression he made on me when I saw the tall,

thin figure pass through our garden gateway at sunset—he had come

down by the evening steamer from Glasgow—and stride swiftly up the

path. He was six feet one inch in height, very thin, with slightly

sloping shoulders. He was good-looking, with a fair complexion and high

colouring; gray-blue eyes, brown hair closely cut, a sensitive mouth,

and winning smile. He looked delicate, but full of vitality. He spoke

very rapidly, and when excited his words seemed to tumble one over the

other, so that it was not always easy to understand him.

In September my sister and I visited our Uncle and Aunt at 16 Rosslyn

Terrace, Glasgow, and before the close of that month their son and I

were secretly plighted to one another. Then began a friendship that

lasted unbrokenly for thirty years.

It was then he confided to me that his true ambition lay not in being

a scientific man, as it was supposed, but a poet: that his desire was

to write about Mother Nature and her inner mysteries, but that as yet

he had not sufficient mastery of his art to be able to put his message

into adequate form. After much persuasion he read to me several of his

early attempts, and promised to send me a copy of whatever he should

write.

We were very anxious to meet again before I returned to London, as we

should of necessity be separated till the following autumn. A few days

later in Edinburgh came the desired opportunity. But how and where to

meet? No one must know, lest our secret should be discovered—for we

well knew all our relations would be unanimous in disapproval.

Instead of going to the Lawyer’s office one morning my cousin took an

early train into Edinburgh—and I left my sister to make the necessary

excuses for my absence at luncheon. But where to meet? We knew we

should run the risk of encountering relations and acquaintances in

the obvious places that suggested themselves. At last a brilliant

idea came to my betrothed, and we spent several hours in—the secluded

Dean Cemetery, and were not found out! We talked and talked—about his

ambitions, his beliefs and visions, our hopeless prospects, the coming

lonely months, my studies—and parted in deep dejection.

The immediate outcome of the day was a long poem of no less than

fifty-seven verses addressed to me: “In Dean Cemetery”—a pantheistic

dream, as its author described it; and in a note to one of the verses

he wrote: “I hold to the rest of the poem, for there _are_ spirits

everywhere. We are never alone, though we are rarely conscious of other

presences.”

The poem is too long and too immature to quote from. It was one of a

series, never of course published, that he wrote about this time; all

very serious, for his mind was absorbed in psychic and metaphysical

speculation.

And the reason why he chose such serious types of poems to dedicate

to the girl to whom he was engaged was that she was the first friend

he had found who to some extent understood him, understood the inner

hidden side of his nature, sympathised with and believed in his

visions, dreams, and aims.

Immediately on my return to London he sent me three long poems written

in 1873 under the influence of Shelley—then to him the poet of poets.

Very faulty in their handling, they are to me significant, inasmuch as

they strike the keynote of all his subsequent intimate writings. “To

the Pine Belt” begins with these lines:

To-day amid the pines I went

In a wonderment,

For the ceaseless song

Of lichened branches long

In measures free

Said to me

Strange things of another life

Than woodland strife.

In _The Blue Peaks_ he sings of the Quest of the beckoning dim blue

hills, of which he wrote again many years later in _The Divine

Adventure_. And the third, “The River το καλυγ,” is an ecstatic chant

to Beauty:

O Spirit fair

Who dwelleth where

The heart of Beauty is enshrined.

Wherewith he invokes “Nature, or Beauty, or God” to help him to realise

the poignant dream of beauty, which haunted him in diverse ways

throughout his life. When he sent them to me he realised how youthful

and faulty was the presentment, and he wrote: “If I had not promised to

send these poems I should certainly not do so now. They are very poor

every way, and the only interest they may have for you is to show you

the former current of my thoughts—I did indeed put Beauty in the place

of God, and Nature in that of his Laws. Now that I see more clearly

(and that is not saying much), these appear trash. Still there is some

good here and there. I am glad I have written them, for they helped me

to arrive at clearer convictions. The verse and rhythm are purposely

uneven and irregular—it admitted of easier composition to write so.”

While at the University he had made an eager study of comparative

religions, their ethics and metaphysics, being then in active revolt

against the religious teachings in which he had been brought up.

This mental conflict, this weighing of metaphysical problems, found

expression in the first Book of a projected Epic on Man, to be called

_Upland, Woodland, Cloudland_. “Amid the Uplands” only was finished,

and consists of two thousand lines in blank verse; the leading idea is

fairly suggested in these lines from the Proem:

“And I have written in the love of God

And in a sense of man’s proud destiny.

* * * * *

And I have striven to point out harmony,

An inner harmony in all things fair,

Flow’rs, tree, and cloudlet, wind, and ocean wave,

Wold, hill, and forest, with the heart of man,

And with the firmament and universe,

And thence with God. All things are part of Him.”

Scattered through the many pages of philosophic exhortation and

speculation, of descriptions of nature, of psychical visions, are lines

that are suggestive of later development, of later trend of thought,

and from them the following are selected:

“There is in everything an undertone ...

Those clear in soul are also clear in sight,

And recognise in a white cascade’s flash,

The roar of mountain torrents, and the wail

Of multitudinous waves on barren sands,

The song of skylark at the flush of dawn,

A mayfield all ablaze with king-cups gold,

The clamour musical of culver wings

Beating the soft air of a dewy dusk,

The crescent moon far voyaging thro’ dark skies,

And Sirius throbbing in the distant south,

A something deeper than mere audible

And visible sensations; for they see

Not only pulsings of the Master’s breath,

The workings of inevitable Law,

But also the influences subordinate

And spirit actors in life’s unseen side.

One glint of nature may unlock a soul.”

* * * * *

“Our Evil is too finite to disturb

The infinite of good.”

* * * * *

“We all are wind-harps casemented on Earth,

And every breath of God that falls may fetch

Some dimmest echo of a faint refrain

From even the worst strung of all of us.”

* * * * *

“Oh, I have lain upon a river’s brink

And drank deep, deep of all the glory near,

Until my soul in unison did beat

With all things round me: I was at the root,

The common root of life from which all flow,

And when thus far could enter unto all;

I look’d upon a rose and seemed to grow

A bud into a bloom, I watched a tree

And was the life that quicken’d the green leaves,

I saw the waters swirling and became

The law of their wild course, and in the clouds

I felt my spirit wand’ring over heaven.

I did identify myself with aught

That rose before me, and communion held.

* * * * *

Death is not only change, or sleep; it is

God’s seal to sanctify the soul’s advance.”

* * * * *

In the beginning of 1875 he made various experiments in rhymed metre,

all equally serious in subject and stiff in handling; but in the latter

part of the year he wrote several little songs in a lighter vein and

happier manner.

The following year brought a fresh change in his circumstances, and

placed him face to face with the serious questions of practical means

of living. His father had been in bad health for some months, and he

himself developed disquieting symptoms of chest trouble. I had been in

Italy during the three spring months, and was overjoyed on my return to

hear that we and my uncle’s family were to spend August at Dunoon in

neighbouring houses. On arriving there we found my uncle in an alarming

condition and his son looking extremely delicate. Nevertheless there

were many happy days spent there—and rambling over the hills, boating

and sailing on the lochs, in talking over our very vague prospects, in

reading and discussing his poems. Of these he had several more to show

me, chief among them being an idyll “Beatrice,” dedicated to me, and

a lyrical drama “Ariadne in Naxos” which excited in me the greatest

admiration and pride. Toward the middle of the month my uncle’s

condition grew hopeless, and on the 20th he died. His death was a great

shock to his son, whose health gave way: consumption was feared (as

it proved, causelessly) and in the autumn he was ordered a voyage to

Australia.

In September I was taken by my mother to Aberdeenshire, and thus I had

no opportunity of seeing William again, and the last thing I heard

of him, when he had left Scotland in a sailing ship, was a gloomy

prediction made by an old relative to my mother: “Ah, that poor nephew

of yours, Willie Sharp, he’ll never live to reach Australia.”

To quote his own words:

“So to Australia I went by sailing ship, relinquishing my idea of

becoming a formidable rival to Swinburne (whose _Atalanta in Calydon_

had inspired me to a lyrical drama named _Ariadne in Naxos_), to

Tennyson (whose example I had deigned to accept for an idyll called

‘Beatrice’), and to the author of _Festus_, whose example was

responsible for a meditative epic named ‘Amid the Uplands.’ Alas!

‘subsequent events’ make it unlikely that these masterpieces will ever

see the light.

“In Australia I had friends with whom I stayed, and from them I joined

an eminent colonist whose tragic end cast a cloud over a notable

career as an explorer. With him I saw much of the then wild country in

Gippsland, beyond the Buffalo and Bogong Mountains, across the Murray

River into the desert region of lower New South Wales.”

So to Australia he sailed, not only in search of health but to look

about and see if he would care to settle there, supposing that he

should find work that he could do, as it was now imperative he should

provide for his future. In _The Sport of Chance_, and in an article

“Through Bush and Fern,” he has given graphic descriptions of the

memorable ride which afforded the newcomer a unique opportunity of

seeing something of the interior of the colony; and from these the

following selections are taken:

“It was the full tide of summer when my friend and I started one

morning in continuance of our ride south through the ranges that rise

and swell and slope away in mighty hollows, sweeping like immense green

waves around the bases of those lofty Australian Alps, of which Mounts

Hotham, Kosciusko, and Feathertop are the chief glories. Although

early, the heat of the sun was already very powerful; but its effect

was more bracing than enervating, owing to the clearness and dryness of

the atmosphere.... Across the rugged mountains we rode, by difficult

passes over desolate plains, along sweeping watercourses marked by

the long funeral procession of lofty blue-gums, and mournful, stringy

bark. Day by day we saw the sun rise above the hills. We slept, while

our horses stood by panting with heat, under what shade we could get,

and arose when the sky had lost its look of molten copper and had

taken on once more its intense ultramarine. At night as we rode across

the plains we heard the howling of the wild dogs as they scoured

afar off, or sent flying in all directions startled kangaroos, which

leaped across the moonlit wastes like ghosts of strange creatures in

pre-Adamite times.... At last we had come to Albury to join a friend

who promised us some swan shooting, and it thus came about that early

one morning, about an hour before dawn, we found ourselves crouching

under the shelter of some wattles growing close to the Murray lagoons.

Not a sound was to be heard save the monotonous swish of the river as

it swept slowly onward, except when at rare intervals some restless

parrot or cockatoo made a transient disturbance somewhere in the

forest. The stillness, the semi-darkness, the sound of the rushing

water, our expectancy, all rendered the hour one of mingled solemnity

and excited tension; and it was with difficulty that at least one

of our small party repressed some sound when within a few feet a

venomous-looking snake wriggled away with a faint hiss from a bunch of

knotted grass.”

At this juncture, unfortunately the writer was carried away by his

interest in snakes ... in rare water birds and “Murray-cod,” and quite

forgot to finish his account of the swan shooting. It is obviously

unnecessary to explain that shooting, as a sport, had no attraction

for him; whereas observing birds and bats, fish, etc., was always a

preoccupying interest.

“What a day of intense heat followed that morning! When at last we

reached our previous night’s shelter, a shepherd station known as

Bidgee Bend, we were nearly exhausted.

“While resting on a rough shake-down and lazily smoking, my eye

happened to glance at my saddle, which was lying close at hand, and

right in the midst thereof I saw a large scorpion with its tail raised

in that way which is known to signify a vicious state of mind. Hearing

my exclamation, the stockman looked round, and without a word reached

for a long-lashed whip, and with a blow of the shaft put an end to the

possibly dangerous intentions of our unwelcome visitor. Of an extremely

laconic nature, our shepherd friend never uttered a word he felt to

be unnecessary, and when, after having asked him if he saw scorpions

frequently hereabouts, and received a monosyllabic reply in the

affirmative, I added, ‘Any other kind of vermin?’ he muttered sleepily,

with his pipe in his mouth, ‘Bull-dog ants, hairy spiders, centipedes,

bugs.’”

On his return to Melbourne the traveller realised that there was no

immediate prospect of finding work. He had made inquiries in every

available direction, but he did not make any great effort. He realised

that life in the New World, under such conditions as would be open

to him, would be very distasteful; and greatly as he had enjoyed

the few months’ sojourn in Australia, owing chiefly to Mr. Turner’s

friendliness, he had little regret when he went on board the _Loch Tay_

for his homeward faring.

The return voyage, too, was eventful. The route lay round Cape Horn,

and the ship was driven by contrary winds down into the Antarctic seas,

where it encountered bitterly cold weather, and came close to drifting

icebergs.

The _Loch Tay_ reached England in June, and the wanderer came direct to

my mother’s house in London and stayed with us there for several weeks.

This first visit to London was uneventful, but full of quiet happiness

for us both. He had, of course, much to see, and it was a delight to

me to be his cicerone. It was, moreover, a much wished-for opportunity

to introduce him to my special friends, while my mother made him known

to whosoever she thought would be influential in helping her nephew to

find some suitable post or occupation.

I had three friends in particular I wanted him to know; two were then

in London; but the third, John Elder, was in New Zealand, and did not

return till the following year. His sister, however, Miss Adelaide

Elder, was in town. She and my sister had been my confidants during

the preceding two years in the matter of our engagement, and I was

naturally most wishful that she and my cousin should meet. We had

known each other from childhood—our parents were old friends—and we

had read and studied together, often in a quiet part of Kensington

Gardens reading Tennyson, Carlyle, John Stuart Mill, Fichte, etc. The

other friend was Miss Alison—afterward Mrs. Mona Caird—the novelist

and essay writer. We three were friends with many tastes and interests

in common, not the least being all questions relating to women. To my

great satisfaction out of the meeting with my cousin there grew deeply

attached friendships that lasted throughout his life.

In spite of all our efforts no work was found for the wanderer; he

spent the remainder of the year in Scotland and devoted his time to

writing. I have about two letters written to me about that time. In

one, dated August 21st from Braemar, he says:

“I feel another self within me now more than ever; it is as if I were

possessed by a spirit who must speak out.... I am in no hurry to

rush into print; I do not wish to write publicly until I can do so

properly. It would be a great mistake to embody my message in such a

poem as ‘Uplands,’ although a fifty times better poem than that is.

People won’t be preached to. Truth can be inculcated far better by

inference, by suggestion.... I am glad to see by your note you are in

good spirits. I also now look on things in a different light; but,

unfortunately, Lill, we poor mortals are more apt to be swayed by moods

than by circumstances, and look on things through the mist of these

moods.”

In the other letter he wrote:

“I am too worried about various things to settle to any kind of

literary work in the meantime. The weather has been wretchedly wet, and

the cold is intense. I do trust I shall get away from Scotland before

the winter sets in, as I am much less able to stand it than I thought I

was. Even with the strong air up here I can’t walk any distance without

being much the worse for it.”

One cause of the “worry” was a candid letter of criticism he had

received from Robert Buchanan, whose _The Book of Orm_ had been one of

his great favourites among books of modern verse. Its fine mysticism

appealed to him, and to the author he sent a number of his poems, and

asked for a criticism and hoping for a favourable one. But, alas,

when it came it was uncompromisingly the reverse; and the older poet

strongly advised the young aspirant not to dream of literature as a

career. Many years ago, he explained, when he was struggling in London

he tried in vain to get certain employment of the kind, but he had

never succeeded and had had “to buffet the sharp sea of journalism.”

It was a great blow. It produced a deep and prolonged depression, and

it required all my powers of persuasion and reiterated belief in his

possibilities to enable him to pull himself together and try again.

His hope was unfulfilled and he remained in Scotland throughout the

winter, at Moffat, where his mother had taken a house. Despite the cold

and the delay, he enjoyed the long rambles over the snow-clad hills and

in the fir woods; and wrote a number of poems afterward published in

_The Human Inheritance_; and so vivid were certain effects of sunglow

in the winter woods, that he described them in one of his last writings

included in _Where the Forest Murmurs_.

But for the most part his mood was one of depression; under it he wrote

the following sonnet:

THE GATE OF DEATH

I wonder if the soul upon that day

When Death’s gate opens to it, will with gaze

Rapt and bewilder’d tremble at the rays

Of God’s great glory—or if wild dismay

Will stun it with blank horror, while away

It watches the unguided world blaze

With speed relentless down the flowing ways

That end in nothing; while far off a gray

Wan shadow trembles ere it fades for aye?

Or if, half blinded still with death’s amaze,

Dimly and faintly it will somewhat see,

Some Shadow become substance and unroll

Until there looms one vast Humanity,

One awful, mighty, and resistless Whole?

In the late Spring of 1878 William Sharp settled in London. An opening

had been found for him in the City of Melbourne Bank by Mr. Alexander

Elder, the father of our friends, just in time to prevent him from

carrying out his decision to go as a volunteer in the Turkish army

during its conflict with Russia.

Neither the work nor the prospects offered were inviting, but he was

thankful to have a chance of trying his fortunes in London. He bound

himself as clerk in the Bank for three years, on a salary of £80, £90,

and £100. As owing to the long idleness he had unavoidable debts to

pay off, he determined to try what he could do with his pen to add

to the slender income. He took a room in 19 Albert Street, Regent’s

Park, whence he could walk to the Bank, yet sleep not far away from

birds and trees; and he had the good fortune to fall in with a kindly,

competent landlady. Now began a long, arduous struggle for the means of

livelihood, for health, for a place among the literary writers of his

day—a “schooling in the pains and impecuniosities of life” from which

he learned so much. He had no influence to help him; and no friends

other than those he had met at my mother’s house. Each week-end he came

to 72 Inverness Terrace and stayed with us from Saturday till Monday. A

serious difficulty now presented itself, one which threatened us both

with temporary disaster. As long as my betrothed was in Scotland it was

quite possible to preserve the secret of our engagement. Now that he

was in London and a constant visitor at our house it was not so simple

a matter. Moreover, to me it did not seem honourable toward my mother,

and I wished her to know. He, however, was not of my opinion; not only

would he lose much—we both believed we could not win my mother to our

way of thinking—if he were forbidden to come to the house, but he also

delighted in the very fact of the secrecy, of the mystery, and, indeed,

mystification, which I did not then realise was a marked characteristic

of his nature. For me such secrecy had no charm, but was fraught with

difficulties and inconveniences. Many were our discussions, and at last

he yielded an unwilling consent.

One Sunday afternoon in the late summer a dejected couple wandered

about in Kensington Gardens, under the old trees, trying to forecast

what seemed a mournful future. However, our fears were groundless. My

mother, though she felt it her duty to point out to us the hopelessness

and foolishness of the engagement from a worldly point of view, her

strong objection to it on the score of our cousinship, his delicacy and

lack of prospects, nevertheless realised the uselessness of opposing

her daughter’s decision, accepted the inevitable, and from that moment

treated her nephew as her son.

Two months later he wrote to me:

26: 8: 78.

... Thanks for your welcome note which I received a little ago. I, too,

like you, was sitting at my open window last night (or rather this

morning) with the stars for my companions: and I, too, took comfort

from them and felt the peace hidden in their silent depths. I know

of nothing that soothes the spirit more than looking on those awful

skies at midnight. Some of our aspirations seem to have burnt into life

there, and, tangled in some glory of starlight, to shine down upon

us with beckoning hands.... I have told you before how that music, a

beautiful line of poetry, and other cherished things of art so often

bring you into close communion with myself. But there is one thing that

does it infallibly and more than anything else: trees on a horizon,

whether plain or upland, standing against a cloudless blue sky—more

especially when there is a soft blue haze dimly palpitating between.

Strange, is it not? I only half indefinitely myself know the cause

of it. _One_ cause certainly is the sense of music there is in that

aspect—possibly also the fairness of an association so sympathetic with

some gracious memory of the past.

P. S.—By-the-bye, have you noticed that my “Nocturne” is in the July

number of _Good Words_?

This poem was of special interest to me because it had been written

while I had played to him on the piano one evening. It was in the

summer of 1878 also that he just met Mr. John Elder, whom I had known

from childhood. John was a graduate of Cambridge, a thinker and man of

fine tastes, and his new friend found a great stimulus in the keen mind

of the older man. Owing to delicacy he could be but little in England,

and till his death in 1883 the two men corresponded regularly with one

another. From the letters of the younger man I have selected one or two

to illustrate the trend of his mind at that date:

19 ALBERT ST., REGENT’S PARK,

Oct., 1879.

MY DEAR JOHN,

Thanks for your welcome letter of 18th August. My purpose, in my

letter of May 7th, if I recollect rightly, was to urge that Reason is

sometimes transcended by Emotion—sufficiently often, that is to say,

to prevent philosophers from deriding the idea that a truth may be

reached emotionally now and again, quicker than by the light of Reason.

God may be beyond the veil of mortal life, but I cannot see that he

has given us any definite revelation beyond what pure Deism teaches,

viz., that there is a Power—certainly beneficent, most probably

eternal, possibly (in effect, if not in detail) omnipotent—who, letting

the breath of His being blow through all created things, evolves the

Ascidian into man, and man into higher manifestations than are possible

on earth, and whose message and revelation to man is shown forth in the

myriad-paged volume of nature, and the inherent yearning in every human

soul for something out of itself and yet of it. Of such belief, I may

say that I am.

But my mind is like a troubled sea, whereon the winds of doubt blow

continually, with waves of dead hopes and religious beliefs washing far

away behind, and nothing before but the weary seeming of phantasmal

shores. At times this faith that I cherish comes down upon me like

the hushful fall of snow-flakes, calming and soothing all into peace;

and again, it may be, it appears as a dark thunder-cloud, full of

secret lightnings and portentous mutterings. And, too, sometimes I

seem to waken into thought with a start, and to behold nothing but

the blind tyranny of pure materialism, and the unutterable sorrow and

hopelessness of life, and the bitter blackness of the end, which is

annihilation. But such phases are generally transient, and, like a

drowning man buffeting the overwhelming waves, I can often rise above

them and behold the vastness and the Glory of the Light of Other Life.

And this brings me to a question which is at present troubling many

others besides myself. I mean the question of the immortality of the

individual. I do not know how you regard it yourself, but you must be

aware that the drift of modern thought is antagonistic to personal

immortality, and that many of our best and most intelligent thinking

men and women abjure it as unworthy of their high conception of

Humanity....

But _is_ Humanity all? Has Humanity fashioned itself out of primal

elements, arisen and marched down the long, strange ways of Time—still

marching, with eyes fixed on some self-projected Goal—without ever a

spiritual breath blowing upon it, without ever the faintest guidance

of any divine hand, without ever a glance of sorrowful and yearning

but yet ineffably hopeful love from some Being altogether beyond and

transcending it? Is it, can it be so? But in any case, whether with the

Nirvana of the follower of Buddha, the absorption of the soul in the

soul of God of the Deist and Theist, or with the loss of the individual

in the whole of the Race of the Humanitarian, I cannot altogether

agree. It may be the “old Adam” of selfishness; it may be poverty of

highest feeling and insufficiency of intellectual grasp; but I cannot

embrace the belief in the extinction of the individual....

23d October, 1880.

I am glad you like my short paper in the _Sectarian Review_ and I think

that you understand my motive in writing it. It is no unreasoning

reverence that I advocate, no “countenancing beliefs in worn-out

superstitions,” as you say; no mercy to the erring, but much mercy to

and sympathy with the deceived. I do not reverence the Bible or the

Christian Theology in _themselves_, but for the beautiful spirituality

which faintly but ever and again breathes through them, like a vague

wind blowing through intricate forests; and so far I reverence the

recognition of this spiritual breath in the worship of those whose

views are so very different from my own....

I have been writing a good deal lately—chiefly verse. There is one

thing which I am sure will interest you: some time ago I wrote a sonnet

called “Religion,” the drift of which was to show the futility of any

of the great creeds _as_ creeds, and two or three weeks ago showed

it to my friend Mr. Belford Bax. It seems to have made considerable

impression upon him, for, after what he calls “having absorbed it,”

he has set it to very beautiful recitative music. There are some fine

chords in the composition, preluding the pathetic melody of the finale;

and altogether it has given me great pleasure. But what specially

interests me is that it is the first time (as far as I am aware) of a

sonnet in any language having been set to music. The form of this kind

of verse is of course antagonistic to song-music, and could only be

rendered by recitative. Do you know of any instance having occurred?

The sonnet in question will appear in _The Examiner_ in a week or two.

Lo, in a dream, I saw a vast dim sea

Whose sad waves broke upon a barren shore;

The name of this wan sea was _Nevermore_,

The land _The Past_, the shore _Futility_:

Thereon I spied three mighty Shadows; three

Weary and desolate Shades, of whom each wore

A crown whereon was writ _Despair_. To me

One spoke, and said, “Lo, I am He

In whom the countless millions of the East

Live, move, and hope. And all is vanity!”—

And I knew Buddha. Then the next: “The least

Am I, but once God’s mightiest Prophet-Priest”—

So spake Mahomet. And then pitifully

The third Shade moaned, “I am of Galilee!”

I also enclose the record of a vision I had lately:

Lo, in that Shadowy place wherein is found

The fruitage of the spirit men call dreams,

I wander’d. Ever underneath pale gleams

Of misty moonlight quivering all around,

And ever by the banks of sedgy streams

Swishing thro’ fallen rushes with slow sound

A spirit walked beside me. From a mound,

Rustling from poplar-leaves from top to base,

Some bird I knew not shrilled a cry of dole,

So bitter, I cried out to God for grace.

Whereat he by me slackened from his pace,

Turning upon me in my cold amaze

And saying, “While the long years onward roll

Thou shalt be haunted by this hateful face—“

And looking up, I looked on my own soul!

Nov. 20, 1880.

If this note does not reach you by New Year’s Day it will soon after—so

let me wish you most heartily and sincerely all good wishes for the

coming year. May the White Wings of Happiness and Peace and Health

brush from your path all evil things. There is something selfish in the

latter wish, for I hope so much to see you before long again. Don’t

despise me when I say that in some things I am more a woman than a

man—and when my heart is touched strongly I lavish more love upon the

one who does so than I have perhaps any right to expect returned; and

then I have so few friends that when I do find one I am ever jealous of

his or her absence.

* * * * *

P. S.—I wonder if this late Kentish violet will retain its delicious

scent till it looks at you in New Zealand. It is probably the last of

its race.

Feb., 1881.

I may say in reference to the Religion of Humanity that my sympathy

with Comtism is only limited, and that though I think it is and will

yet be an instrument of great good, I see nothing in it of essential

savingness. It is even in some of its ceremonial and practical details

a decided retrogression—at least so it seems to me—and though I do

not believe in a revealed God, I think such a belief higher and more

precious and morally as salutary as a belief in abstract Humanity.

Concrete humanity appeals more to my sympathy when filled with the

breath of “God” than in its relation to its abstract Self. When I write

again I will endeavour to answer your question as to whether I believe

in a God or not. My friend, we are all in the hollow of some mighty

moulding Hand. Every fibre in my body quivers at times with absolute

faith and belief, yet I do not say that I believe in “God” when asked

such a question by those whom I am conscious misinterpret me. You have

some lines of mine called “The Redeemer”; they will hint something to

you of that belief which buoys my soul up in the ocean of love that

surrounds it. It were well for the soul, if annihilation rounds off the

circle of life, to sink to final forgetfulness in the sea of precious

human love; but it is far better if the soul can be borne along that

sea of wonder and glory to distant ever-expanding goals, transcending

in _love, glory, life_ all that human imagination ever conceived....

Farewell for the present, dear friend.

W.

CHAPTER III

EARLY DAYS IN LONDON

The most important influence in the early literary career of the young

poet was his friendship with Dante Gabriel Rossetti. He gained not

only a valued friend, who introduced him to many of the well-known

writers of the time, but one who helped him in the development of his

art by sound, careful criticism and kindly encouragement. His first

acquaintance with the writings of the painter-poet dated from the

Autumn of 1879, when on his birthday Miss Adelaide Elder had sent him a

volume of poems, an incident destined to have far-reaching results. In

1899 he wrote to her:

DEAR ADELAIDE,

Do you know why I thought of you to-day particularly, it being my

birthday? For it was you who some two and twenty years ago sent me on

the 12th of September a copy of a beautifully bound book by a poet with

a strange name and by me quite unknown—Dante Gabriel Rossetti.

To that event it is impossible to trace all I owe, but what is fairly

certain is that, without it, the whole course of my life might have

been very different. For the book not only influenced and directed me

mentally at a crucial period, but made me speak of it to an elderly

friend (Sir Noel Paton) through whom I was dissuaded from going abroad

on a career of adventure (I was going to Turkey or as I vaguely put it,

Asia) and through whom, later, I came to know Rossetti himself—an event

which completely redirected the whole course of my life.

It would be strange to think how a single impulse of a friend may thus

have so profound a significance were it not that to you and me there is

nothing strange (in the sense of incredible) in the complex spiritual

interrelation of life. Looking back through all those years I daresay

we can now both see a strange and in much inscrutable, but still

recognisable, direction.

To quote his own words:

“By the autumn of 1880 I was within sight of that long and arduous

career called the literary life. An extraordinary good fortune met

me at the outset, for, through an introduction from Sir Noel Paton,

I came to know, and know intimately, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, whose

winsome personality fascinated me as much as his great genius impressed

me. Rossetti introduced me to one who became my chief friend—the late

Philip Bourke Marston; and through Rossetti also I came to know Mr.

Theodore Watts, Mr. Swinburne, and others. By the spring of 1881, I was

in the literary world, and in every phase of it, from the most Bohemian

to the most isolated.”

On the 1st of September, 1881, William Sharp presented himself at the

door of 16 Cheyne Walk. The housekeeper explained that Mr. Rossetti

could receive no one. The importunate stranger persisted and stated

that it was of the highest importance that he should see Mr. Rossetti

and so impressed her that she not only went to report to Mr. Rossetti

but came back with orders to admit him. On seeing his eager visitor,

the poet-painter naturally asked him what he wanted so urgently, and

his visitor answered promptly, “Only to shake hands with you before you

die!” “Well,” was the answer, “I am in no immediate danger of dying,

but you may shake hands if you wish.”

The introduction from Sir Noel Paton was then tendered; and thus began

a friendship that grew to a deep affectionate devotion on the side of

the younger man.

Rossetti took him into the studio, and showed him the paintings he had

on his easels. The two which specially impressed his visitor were “La

Donna della Fenestra,” and “Dante’s Dream.” In a letter written to

me when I was in Italy, he describes the pictures as beautiful colour

harmonies, and continues:

“After I had looked at it for a long time in happy silence, Rossetti

sat behind me in the shadow and read me his translation of the poem

from the _Vita Nuova_, which refers to Dante’s Dream. Was it not kind

of him to give so much pleasure to one, a complete stranger? I also saw

several other paintings of extreme beauty, but which I have no time

to mention at present. He told me to come again, and shortly before

I left he asked me for my address, and said that he would ask me to

come some evening to talk with him, and also to meet one or two. This

was altogether unexpected. Fancy having two such men for _friends_ as

Sir Noel Paton and Dante Gabriel Rossetti! I went out in a dream. The

outside world was altogether idealised. I was in the golden age again.

To calm myself, I went and leant over Chelsea Embankment, where there

were many people as there was a regatta going on. But, though conscious

of external circumstances, I was not in London. The blood of the

South burned in my veins, the sky was a semi-tropical one: the river

rushing past was not the Thames, but the Tiber; the granite embankment

was a marble aqueduct, with vines laden with ripe fruit covering it

with a fragrant veil: citrons and pomegranates were all around. Dark

passionate eyes of the South met mine; the dreamy sweetness of a

strange tongue sang an ineffably delicious song through and through my

soul: I sank into the utmost realms of reverie, and drank a precious

draught of alien life for only too brief a space. Not De Quincey in the

mystic rapture of opium, not Mohammed in his vision of Paradise, drank

deeper of the ineffable wine of the Supreme and Unattainable.”

It was several weeks before the much-hoped-for invitation came, and the

recipient was feeling so ill that he was hardly in a condition to take

full advantage of it, and feared he had made a bad impression on his

host. The following morning he wrote:

19 ALBERT ST., REGENT’S PARK N.W.,

31: 1: 80.

MY DEAR SIR,

I hope you will not consider me ungrateful for the pleasure you gave me

last night because I outwardly showed so little appreciation—but I was

really so unwell from cold and headache that it was the utmost I could

do to listen coherently. But though, otherwise, I look back gratefully

to the whole evening I especially recall with pleasure the few minutes

in which now and again you read. I have never heard such a beautiful

reader of verse as yourself, and if I had not felt—well, shy—I should

have asked you to go on reading. Voice, and tone, and expression, all

were in perfect harmony—and although I have much else to thank you for,

allow me to thank you for the pleasure you have given me in this also.

I enclose 4 or 5 poems taken at random from my MSS. Two or three were

written two or three years ago. That called the “Dancer” is modelled on

your beautiful “Card-Dealer.”

I have also to thank you for your kind criticisms: and hope that you

do not consider my aspirations and daring hopes as altogether in vain.

Despair comes sometimes upon me very heavily, but I have not yet lost

heart.

Yours most faithfully,

WILLIAM SHARP.

On the 23d of February he wrote to Mrs. Caird:

DEAR MONA.

Was unable after all to resume my letter on Friday night. On Friday

morning I had a note from Rossetti wanting me to come again and dine

with him—this time alone, I was glad to find. I spent a most memorable

evening, and enjoyed myself more than I can tell. We dined together

in free and easy manner in his studio, surrounded by his beautiful

paintings and studies. Then, and immediately after dinner he told me

things of himself, personal reminiscences, with other conversation

about the leading living painters and poets. Then he talked to me about

myself, and my manuscripts—a few of which he had seen. Then personal

and other matters again, followed, to my great delight (as Rossetti is

a most beautiful reader) by his reading to me a great part of the as

yet unpublished sonnets which go to form “The House of Life.” Some of

them were splendid, and seemed to me finer than those published—more

markedly intellectual, I thought. This took up a long time, which

passed most luxuriously for me....

He has been so kind to me every way: and this time he gave me two most

valuable and welcome introductions—one to Philip Bourke Marston, the

man whose genius is so wonderful, considering he has been blind from

his birth—and the other to his brother Mr. Michael Rossetti, to whom,

however, he had already kindly spoken about me. I am to go when I wish

to the latter’s literary re-unions, where I shall make the acquaintance

of some of our leading authors and authoresses. Did I tell you that the

last time I dined at Rossetti’s house he gave me a copy of his poems,

with something from himself written on the fly-leaf? On that occasion

I also met Theodore Watts, the well-known critic of _The Athenaeum_.

It is so strange to be on intimate terms with a man whom a short time

ago I looked on as so far off. Perhaps, dear friend, when you come to

stay with Elizabeth and myself in the happy days which I hope are in

store for us all, you will “pop” into quite a literary circle!... I was

sure, also, you would enjoy the _Life of Clifford_ in “Mod: Thought.”

What a splendid man he was: a true genius, yet full of the joy of life,

sociable, fun-loving, genial, and in every way a gentleman. I was

reading one of his books lately, and was struck with the sympathetic

spirit he showed toward what to him meant nothing—Christianity. I wish

we had more men like him. There is another man for whom I think I have

an equal admiration, though of a different order in one sense—Dr.

Martineau. Have you read anything of his?

On Wednesday evening next I am going to a Spiritual Séance, by the

best mediums—which I am looking forward to with great curiosity....

Besides verse, I am writing a Paper just now on “Climate in Relation

to the Influences of Art,” and going on with one or two other minor

things. There now, I have told you all about myself....

Your friend and comrade,

WILL.

He submitted several poems to Rossetti who had suggested that if he

had a suitable sonnet it might be included in Hall Caine’s _Century of

Sonnets_. Rossetti’s acknowledgment contained an adverse criticism on

the Sonnet sent, softened by an invitation to the younger man to go

again to see him.

Saturday.

DEAR MR. ROSSETTI,

Thanks for your kind invitation to Philip and myself for Monday

night—which we are both glad to accept. I found him in bed this morning

on my way to the city—but had no scruple in waking him as I knew what

pleasure your message would give. We both thank you also for promising

to put us up at night.

I infer from your letter that you do not think _The Two Realities_

good enough to send to Caine: and though of course sorry, I acquiesce

in your judgment. I know that none of my best work is in sonnet-form,

and that I have less mastery over the latter than any other form of

verse. But I will try to improve my deficiencies in this way by acting

up to your suggestions. You see, I have never had the advantage of

such a severe critic as you before. For instance, I have received

praise from many on account of a sonnet you once saw (one of a series

on “Womanhood”) called “Approaching Womanhood”—which I enclose

herewith—wishing you to tell me _how_ it is poor and what I might have

made of it instead. As I am writing from the city I have no others by

me (but indeed you have been bothered sufficiently already) but will

try and give one from memory—which I hastily dashed down one day in the

office.

Looking forward to Monday night,

Yours ever sincerely,

WILLIAM SHARP.

Eventually the Sonnets were written that satisfied his critic and were

included in Hall Caine’s Anthology.

About this time also he was attempting a poem relating to an imaginary

episode in the early life of Christ. To me it seemed a mistake, and I

urged him to consult Mr. Rossetti, who replied as follows:

Thursday, Jan., 1880.

MY DEAR SHARP,

I am quite unable to advise you on so abstruse a point. Strange to

say, I can conceive no higher Ideal than the Christ we know; and I

judge it to be very rash to lower in poetry (to the apprehension of

many beautiful minds) that Ideal, by any assumption to decide a point

respecting it which it is not possible to _decide_, whichever way belief

or even conviction may tend.

I did not gather fully the relation of the Wandering Jew to your poem.

If the very Jew in question, how is he to know of the development of

humanity before his time? That he is a symbol of course I understand;

but the balance between person and symbol should be clearly determined.

I hope you may enjoy yourself in such good company, and am ever,

Sincerely yours,

D. G. ROSSETTI.

Sir Noel Paton had given his younger countryman an introduction also to

his old friend Mrs. Craik (author of John Halifax) who, it happened,

was P. B. Marston’s godmother. She had a house in Kent, at Shortlands,

and to it she on several occasions invited the two young poets. During

one of these days, in the late summer, they went for a drive through

the green lanes, when suddenly there came on a thunderstorm. The

carriage was shut up, but there was no way of protecting the occupant

of the box seat. So that Philip should come to no harm the younger man

took the box seat and got thoroughly wet. On reaching the house he

refused many suggestions to have his clothes dried, and went back to

town that evening in his damp garments. A violent cold ensued, which

he was unable to throw off. He was out of health, ill-nourished, owing

to his slender means, and overworked. That summer my mother had taken

a cottage in South Wales, on the estuary near Portmadoc, and my cousin

came to spend his holidays with us. A weary delicate creature arrived,

but he was sure that a bathe or two in the salt water would soon cure

him. Alas, instead of that within a few days he was laid low with

rheumatic fever, and for four weeks my mother and I nursed him and it

was the end of September before he could go back to town. That autumn

my mother let her house for six months and decided to winter in Italy

with her daughters. Although there was much that was alluring in the

prospect I was very greatly worried at leaving London, for my poet was

so weak and delicate, and I distrusted his notions of taking care of

himself. On the 13th December he wrote to me:

Monday, 13: 12: 80.

“I spent such a pleasant evening on Saturday. I went round to

Francillon’s house about 8 o’clock, and spent about an hour there with

him and Julian Hawthorne. Then we walked down to Covent Garden, and

joined the ‘Oasis’ Club—where we met about 30 or so other literary men

and artists, including the D. Christie Murray I so much wished to meet,

and whom I like very much. We spent a very pleasant while a decidedly

‘Bohemian’ night, and after we broke up I walked home with Francillon,

Julian Hawthorne, and Murray. Hawthorne and myself are to be admitted

members at the next meeting.”

He has described his friendship with the blind poet in his Introduction

to a Selection of Marston’s poems published in the Canterbury Series:

“I was spending an evening with Rossetti, when I chanced to make some

reference to Marston’s poetry. Finding that I did not know the blind

poet and that I was anxious to meet him, Rossetti promised to bring us

together. I remember that I was fascinated by him at once—his manner,

his personality, his conversation. ‘There is a kind of compensation,’

he remarked to me once, ‘in the way that new friendships arise to

brighten my life as soon as I am bowled over by some great loss.’”

Just before Christmas, William wrote:

DEAR MR. ROSSETTI,

... I wished very much to show you two poems I had written in the

earlier half of this year, and now send them by the same post. The one

entitled “Motherhood” I think the better on the whole. It was written

to give expression to the feeling I had so strongly of the beauty and

sacredness of Motherhood in itself, and how this is the same, in degree,

all through creation: the poem is accordingly in three parts—the first

dealing with an example of Motherhood in the brute creation, the second

with a savage of the lowest order, and the third with a civilised

girl-woman of the highest type.

The other—“The Dead Bridegroom”—is more purely an “art” poem. After

reading it, you will doubtless recognise the story, which I believe

is true. Swinburne (I understand) told it to one or two, and Meredith

embodied it in a short ballad. Philip Marston told me the story one day,

and, it having taken a great hold upon me, the accompanying poem was the

result. After I had finished and read it to Philip, it took strong hold

of his imagination also—and so he also began a poem on the same subject,

treating it differently, however, and employing the _complete_ details

of the story, instead of, as I have done, stopping short at the lover’s

death, and is still unfinished.

It is in great part owing to his generously enthusiastic praise that I

now send these for your inspection; but also because much of what may be

good in them is owing to your gratefully remembered personal influence

and kindness, as well as your own beautiful work.”

His kindly critic answered:

Jan., 1881.

MY DEAR SHARP,

I have only this evening read your poems, and am quite amazed at the

vast gain in distinction and reality upon anything I had seen of yours

before. I read “Motherhood” first and think it best on the whole. It is

full of fine things and strange variety. “The Dead Bridegroom” is less

equal, but some touches are extremely fine. The close after the crisis

strikes me as done with a certain difficulty and wants some pointing. As

a narrative poem, I do not yet think it quite distinct enough, though it

always rises at the right moment. The execution of your work needs some

reform in detail. The adjectives, especially when monosyllabic, are too

crowded. There are continual assonances of _ings_, _ants_, _ows_, etc.,

midway in the lines. However, the sonorousness is sometimes striking

and the grip of the phrases complete at its best. I am sure you have

benefited much by association with Philip Marston, though I do not mean

to say that such things as these can have their mainspring elsewhere

than in native gift.

I will keep the poems a few days yet and then return them.

Yours sincerely,

D. G. ROSSETTI.

A letter from the younger poet, written a few days later, reached me in

Rome:

24: 1: 81.

“Well, last Friday was a ‘red-letter’ day to me. I went to Rossetti’s at

six, dined about 7.30, and stayed there all night. We had a jolly talk

before dinner, and then Shields the painter came in and stayed till

about 11 o’clock: after that Rossetti read me all his unpublished poems,

some of which are magnificent—talked, etc.—and we did not go to bed till

about three in the morning. I did not go to the Bank next day, as I did

not feel well: however, I wrote hard at poetry, etc., all day till seven

o’clock, managing to keep myself up with tea. I was quite taken aback

by the extent of Rossetti’s praise. He said he did not say much in his

letter because writing so often looks ‘gushing’ but he considered I was

able to take a foremost place among the younger poets of the day—and

that many signs in my writings pointed to a first-class poet—that the

opening of ‘The Dead Bridegroom’ was worthy of Keats—that ‘Motherhood’

was in every sense of the word a memorable poem—that I must have great

productive power, and broad and fine imagination—and many other things

which made me very glad and proud.”

“The Dead Bridegroom” was never published, but in a letter to a friend

who raised objections to the treatment of the poem “Motherhood”—he

wrote in explanation:

“You seem to think my object in writing was to describe the actual

initial act of Motherhood—whereas such acts were only used incidentally

to the idea. I entirely agree with you in thinking such a _motif_ unfit

for poetic treatment—and more, I think the choice of such would be in

very bad taste and wanting in true delicacy. My aim was something very

far from this—and what made me see you had not grasped it were the

words—‘Besides, is not your type of civilised woman degraded by being

associated with the savage and the wild beast?’

“Of course, what I was endeavouring to work out was just the opposite

of this. ‘Motherhood’ was written from a deep conviction of the beauty

of the state of Motherhood itself, of the holy, strangely similar bond

of union it gave to all created things, and how it, as it were, forged

the links whereby the chain of life reached unbroken from the polyp

depths we do see to the God whom we do not see. Looking at it as I did,

I saw it transfigured to the Seal of Unity: I saw the bestial life touch

the savage, and the latter’s low existence edge complete nobility of

womanhood, as—in the spirit—I see this last again merge into fuller

spiritual periods beyond the present sphere of human life. In embodying

this idea I determined to take refuge in no vague transcendentalism,

or from any false feeling shirk what I knew to be noble in its mystic

wonder and significance: and I came to the conclusion that the

philosophic idea could be best embodied and made apparent by moulding it

into three typical instances of motherhood, representing the brute, the

savage, and the civilised woman. From this point of view, I considered

the making choice of the initial act of motherhood—of birth—entirely

justifiable, and beyond reach of reproach of impurity, or even

unfitness. As to the artistic working out of these typical _motives_, I

gave to the first glow and colour, to the second mystery and weirdness,

to the third what dignity and solemnity I could.

“These were my aims and views, and I have not yet seen anything to make

me change them....

“So much for ‘Motherhood.’ As to ‘The Dead Bridegroom,’ I quite admit

that the advisability of choosing such subjects is a very debatable

one. It is the only one of mine (in my opinion) which could incur the

charge of doubtful ‘fitness.’ As a poem, moreover, it is inferior in

workmanship to ‘Motherhood.’”

To E. A. S.:

“4: 2: 81.

“I have written one of my best poems (in its own way) since writing

you last. It was on Tuesday night: I did not get back till about

seven o’clock, and began at once to write. Your letter came an hour

or so afterward but it had to lie waiting till after midnight, when I

finished, having written and polished a complete poem of thirty verses

in that short time. It is a ballad. The story itself is a very tragic

one. Perhaps the kind of verse would be clear to you if I were to quote

a verse as a specimen:

“And I saw thy face wax flush’d, then pale,

And thy lips grow blue like black-ice hail,

With eyes on fire with the soul’s fierce bale,

Son of Allan!

“I may have been pale, and may be red—

But this night shall one lie white and dead.

(O Mother of God! whose eyes

Watch men lie dead ’neath midnight skies.)”

“Both story and verse I invented myself: and I think you will think it

equal to anything I have done in power. It was a good lot to do at a

sitting, wasn’t it? I will read it to you when you come home again....

I enjoyed my stay with Rossetti immensely. We did not breakfast till

one o’clock on Tuesday—pretty late, wasn’t it? (I told you I had a

holiday, didn’t I?) He told me again that he considered ‘Motherhood’

fit to take the foremost place in recent poetry. He has such a fine

house, though much of it is shut up, and full of fine things: he showed

me some of it that hardly any one ever sees. He has asked me to come

to him again next Sunday. Isn’t it splendid?—and ar’n’t you glad for

my sake? He told Philip that he thought I “had such a sweet genial

happy nature.” Isn’t it nice to be told of that. My intense delight in

little things seems also to be a great charm to him—whether in a stray

line of verse, or some new author, or a cloudlet, or patch of blue sky,

or chocolate-drops, etc., etc. Have you noticed this in me? I am half

gratified and half amused to hear myself so delineated, as I did not

know my nature was so palpable to comparative strangers. And now I am

going to crown my horrid vanity by telling you that Mrs. Garnet met

Philip a short time ago, and asked after the health of his friend, the

“handsome young poet!” There now, amn’t I horridly conceited? (N. B.—I’m

pleased all the same, you know!)

“I wrote a little lyric yesterday which is one of the most musical I

have ever done. To-day, I was ‘took’ by a writing mood in the midst

of business hours, and despite all the distracting and unpoetical

surroundings, managed to hastily jot down the accompanying lyric. It is

the general end of young _unknowing_ love....

“I had a splendid evening last night, and Rossetti read a lot more of

his latest work. Splendid as his published work is, it is surpassed

by what has yet to be published. The more I look into and hear his

poems the more I am struck with the incomparable power and depth of

his genius—his almost magical perfection and mastery of language—his

magnificent spiritual strength and subtlety. He read some things last

night, lines in which almost took my breath away. No sonnet-writer in

the past has equalled him, and it is almost inconceivable to imagine any

one doing so in the future. His influence is already deep and strong,

but I believe in time to come he will be looked back to as we now

look to Shakespeare, to Milton, and in one sense to Keats. I can find

no language to express my admiration of his supreme gifts, and it is

with an almost painful ecstasy that I receive from time to time fresh

revelations of his intellectual, spiritual, and artistic splendour.

I fancy one needs to be an actual poet to feel this to the full, but

every one, however dim and stagnant or coldly intellectual his or her

soul, must feel more or less the marvellous beauty of this wedding of

the spirit of emotional thought and the spirit of language, and the

child thereof—divine, perfect expression. Our language in Rossetti’s

hands is more solemn than Spanish, more majestic than Latin, deeper

than German, sweeter than Italian, more divine than Greek. I know of

nothing comparable to it. He told me to call him Rossetti and not ‘Mr.

Rossetti,’ as disparity in age disappears in close friendship, wasn’t it

nice of him? It makes me both very proud and humble to be so liked and

praised by the greatest master in England—proud to have so far satisfied

his fastidious critical taste and to have excited such strong belief in

my powers, and humble in that I fall so far short of him as to make the

gulf seem impassable.”

In Italy I was making a careful study of the old masters in painting,

and found that my correspondent took but lukewarm interest in my

enthusiasm. Until that date he had had little opportunity of studying

Painting; and at no time did the _cinquecento_ and earlier painters

really attract him. I regretted his indifference, and asked him,

banteringly, if his dislike extended equally to the early masters of

the pen and to those of the brush.

He replied: “You ask me, if I dislike the Old Masters of Poetry as

much as I do those of Painting? and I reply Certainly not, but at the

same time the comparison is not fair. Most of the old poets are not

only poets of their time but have special beauties at the present

day, and can be read with as much or almost as much pleasure now as

centuries ago. Their imagination, their scope, their detail is endless.

On the other hand the Old Masters of Painting are (to me, of course,

and speaking generally) utterly uninteresting in their subjects, in

the way they treat them, and in the meaning that is conveyed. If it

were not for the richness and beauty of their colour I would never

go into another gallery _from pleasure_, but colour alone could not

always satisfy me. But take the ‘Old Masters’ of Poetry! Homer of

Greece, Virgil and Dante of Italy, Theocritus of Sicily, and in England

Chaucer, Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Webster, Ford, Massinger, Marlowe,

Milton!

“The poetry of these men is beautiful in itself apart from the relation

they bear to their times. We may not care for Dryden (though I do)

or Prior or Cowley, because in the verse of these latter there is

nothing to withstand the ages, nothing that rises above their times.

In looking at Rubens, or Leonardo da Vinci, or Fra Angelico, we must

school ourselves to admiration by saying ‘How wonderful for their time,

what a near attempt at a perspective, what a near success in drawing

nature—external and human!’ Would you, or any one, care for a painting

of Angelico’s if executed in exactly the same style and in equally soft

and harmonious colours at the present day? Could you enjoy and enter

into it apart from its relation to such-and-such a period of early

Christian Art? It may be possible, but I doubt it. On the other hand

take up the Old Masters of Poetry and judge them by the present high

standard. Take up Homer—who has his width and space? Dante—who has his

fiery repressed intensity? Theocritus, who has sung sweeter of meadows

and summer suns and flowers? Chaucer—who is as delicious now as in the

latter part of the fourteenth century! Shakespeare—who was, is, and

ever shall be the supreme crowned lord of verse!—Take up one of the

comparatively speaking minor lights of the Elizabethan era. Does Jonson

with his ‘Every Man in his Humour,’ or his ‘Alchemist,’ does Webster

with his ‘Duchess of Malfi,’ does Ford with his ‘Lover’s Melancholy,’

does Massinger, with his ‘Virgin Martyr,’ do Beaumont and Fletcher with

their ‘Maid’s Tragedy,’ does Marlowe with his ‘Life and Death of Dr.

Faustus,’ pall upon us? Have we ever to keep before us the fact that

they lived so many generations or centuries ago?

“I never tire of that wonderful, tremendous, magnificent epoch in

literature—the age of the Elizabethan dramatists.

“Despite the frequent beauty of much that followed I think the genius

of Poetry was of an altogether inferior power and order (excepting

Milton) until once again it flowered forth anew in Byron, in Coleridge,

in Keats, and in Shelley! These two last names, what do they not mean!

Since then, after a slight lapse, Poetry has soared to serener heights

again, and Goethe, Victor Hugo, Tennyson, and Browning have moulded

new generations, and men like Rossetti, Swinburne, Morris, Marston,

Longfellow, and others have helped to make still more exquisitely fair

the Temple of Human Imagination. Men like Joaquin Miller and Whitman

are the south and north winds that soothe or stir the leaves of

thought surrounding it.

“We are on the verge of another great dramatic epoch—more subtle and

spiritual if not grander in dimensions than that of the sixteenth

century. I hope to God I live to see the sunrise which must follow the

wayward lights of the present troubled dawn....

“On Monday evening (from eight till two) I go again as usual to

Marston’s. I called at his door on my way here this afternoon and left

a huge bouquet of wallflowers, with a large yellow heart of daffodils,

to cheer him up. He is passionately fond of flowers....”

* * * * *

That winter, despite his continued delicacy, was full of interest to

William, who had always a rare capacity for throwing himself into the

enjoyment of the moment, whatever it might be, or into the interests

of others and dismissing from his mind all personal worries. No matter

how depressed he might be, when with friends he could shake himself

free from the thraldom of the black clouds and let his natural buoyant

spirit have full play. His genial sunny manner, his instinctive belief

in and reliance on an equal geniality in others assured him many a

welcome.

Among the literary houses open to him were those of Mr. and Mrs.

William Rossetti, Miss Christina Rossetti, Mr. and Mrs. William

Bell Scott, Mr. and Mrs. Francillon, Mr. Robert Browning, and Mr.

Theodore Watts. Mr. and Mrs. George Robinson, whose daughter, Mary,

distinguished herself among the poets of her generation, were

especially good to him. Among artists whose studios he frequented were

Mr. Ford Madox Brown, Mr. William Morris and Mr. Holman Hunt, and Sir

Frederick Leighton; and among his intimate friends he counted Mathilde

Blind, the poet, Louise Bevington, Mrs. Louise Chandler Moulton,

Belford Bax and others.

There was a reverse side to the picture however. His desire and effort

not to identify himself—in his original work, with any set of writers,

or phase of literary expression, tended to make him of no account

in the consideration of some of his fellow writers. His was a slow

development, and while he gained greatly in the technical knowledge of

his art through the wise and careful advice of Rossetti, the sensitive

taste of Philip Marston, the more severe criticism of Theodore Watts,

he felt he had a definite thing to say, a definite word of his own to

express sooner or later. It was long before this finally shaped its

utterance, and in the interval he experimented in many directions,

studied various methods—and of course to make a livelihood wrote many

“pot-boilers”—always hoping that he would ultimately “find himself.”

Unquestionably, with his nature—which vibrated so sensitively to

everything that was beautiful in nature and life, and had in it so much

of exuberance, of optimism—the severe grind for the bare necessities of

life, the equally severe criticism that met his early efforts, proved

an invaluable-schooling to him. The immediate result, however, was

that his “other self,” the dreaming psychic self, slept for a time,

or at any rate was in abeyance. “William Sharp” gradually dominated,

and before long he was accepted generally as literary critic and later

as art critic also. So complete, apparently, for a time, was this

divorce between the two radical strains in him, that only a few of his

intimates suspected the existence of the sensitive, delicate, feminine

side of him that he buried carefully out of sight, and as far as

possible out of touch with the current of his literary life in London

where at no time did the “Fiona Macleod” side of his nature gain help

or inspiration.

Just as of old, when in Glasgow, he had wandered in the city and beyond

it, and made acquaintances with all sorts and conditions of men and

women, so, too, did he now wander about London, especially about the

neighbourhood of “The Pool” which offered irresistible attractions and

experiences to him. These he touched on later in “Madge o’ the Pool”

and elsewhere. I remember he told me that rarely a day passed in which

he did not try to imagine himself living the life of a woman, to see

through her eyes, and feel and view life from her standpoint, and so

vividly that “sometimes I forget I am not the woman I am trying to

imagine.” The following description of him, at this date, is taken from

a letter quoted in Mrs. Janvier’s article on “Fiona Macleod and her

Creator” in _The North American Review_.

“You ask about our acquaintance with Willie Sharp. Yes, we knew him

well in the days when we all were gay and young.... He was a very

nice-looking amiable young fellow whom every one liked, very earnest

with great notions of his own mission as regards Poetry, which he took

_very_ seriously. He used to have the saving grace of fun—which kept

him sweet and wholesome—otherwise he might have fallen into the morbid

set.”

Unfortunately, I have very few letters or notes that illustrate the

light gay side of his nature—boyish, whimsical, mischievous, with rapid

changes of mood. Others saw more of it at this period than I; for to me

he came for sympathy in his work and difficulties; to others he went

for gaiety and diversion, and to them he made light of his constant

delicacy; so that the more serious side of his life was usually

presented to me—and naturally our most unpromising prospects and our

long engagement were not matters to inspirit either of us.

At the end of August in that year his connection with the Bank of the

City of Melbourne ceased. That his services were scarcely valuable

to his employers may be gathered from the manner and reason of his

dismissal. He has himself told the story:

“I did not take very kindly to the business, and my employers saw

it. One day I was invited to interview the Principal. He put it very

diplomatically, said he didn’t think the post suited me (I agreed),

and finally he offered me the option of accepting an agency in some

out-of-the-way place in Australia, or quitting the London service.

‘Think it over,’ he said, ‘and give us your answer to-morrow.’ I think

I might have given him my answer there and then. Next morning the

beauty of the early summer made an irresistible appeal to me. I had

not heard the cuckoo that season, so I resolved to forget business for

the day, seek the country, and hear the cuckoo; and I had a very happy

time, free from everybody, care, and worry. Next day I was called in to

see the Principal. ‘I should have sent word—busy mail day,’ he said.

‘Was I ill?’ he asked. ‘No,’ I replied, and explained the true cause of

my absence. ‘That’s scarcely business,’ he said. ‘We can’t do with one

who puts the call of the cuckoo before his work.’ However, his offer

still held. What was I to do? I left the bank.”

During the intervening months efforts to find other work resulted

through the kindness of Mr. George Lillie Craik in a temporary post

held for six months in the Fine Art Society’s Gallery in Bond Street.

It was the proposal of the Directors to form a section dealing with old

German and English Engravings and Etchings, and that William should

be put in charge of it; and that meanwhile, during the six months, he

should make a special study of the subject, learn certain business

details to make him more efficient. The work and the prospect were a

delightful change after the distasteful grind at the Bank, and he threw

himself into the necessary studies with keen relish.

In the autumn he spent two months in Scotland, visiting his mother, and

other relatives, Mr. W. Bell Scott, and his old friend Sir Noel Paton.

From Lanarkshire he wrote in September to me and to Rossetti.

To E. A. S.:

LESMAHAGOW, Sept., 1881.

... Yesterday I spent some hours in a delicious ramble over the moors

and across a river toward a distant fir wood, where I lay down for a

time, beside the whispering waters, seeing nothing but a semicircle of

pines, a wall of purple moorland, the brown water gurgling and splashing

and slowly moving over the mossy stones, and above a deep cloudless

blue sky—and hearing nothing but the hum of a dragonfly, the summery

sound of innumerable heather-bees, and the occasional distant bleat of

a sheep or sudden call of a grouse. I lay there in a kind of trance of

enjoyment—half painful from intensity. I drank in not only the beauty of

what I have just described, but also every little and minute thing that

crossed my vision—a cluster of fir-needles hanging steel-blue against

the deeper colour of the sky, a wood-dove swaying on a pine-bough like

a soft gray and purple blossom, a white butterfly clinging to a yellow

blossom heavy with honey, a ray of sunlight upon a bunch of mountain-ash

berries making their scarlet glow with that almost terrible red which

is as the blood of God in the sunsets one sometimes sees, a dragonfly

poised like a flame arrested in its course, a little beetle stretching

its sharded wings upon a gray stone, a tiny blue morsel of a floweret

between two blades of grass looking up with, I am certain, a _sense_ of

ecstatic happiness to the similar skies above—all these and much more

I drank in with mingled pain and rejoicing. At such times I seem to

become a part of nature—the birds seem when they sing to say things in a

no longer unfamiliar speech—nor do they seem too shy to approach quite

close to me. Even bees and wasps I do not brush away when they light

upon my hands or face, and they never sting me, for I think they know

that I would not harm them. I feel at these rare and inexpressibly happy

times as a flower must feel after morning dew when the sun comes forth

in his power, as a pine tree when a rising wind makes its boughs quiver

with melodious pain, as a wild wood-bird before it begins to sing, its

heart being too full for music.... O why weren’t you there?

10th Sept., 1881.

MY DEAR ROSSETTI,

Where I most enjoy myself is along the solitary banks of the Nithan:

it is a true mountain stream, now rushing along in broken falls, now

rippling over shallows of exquisite golden-brown hues—now slipping with

slow perfect grace of motion under the overhanging boughs of willow,

pine, or mountain-ash—and ever and again resting in deep dark linns and

pools in deliciously dreamful fashion, the only signs of life being a

silver flash from its depths as some large trout or grilse stirs from

the shelter of mottled boulders banking the sides, or when a dragonfly

like a living flame flashes backward and forward after the gray gnats.

Indeed, I never saw such a place for dragonflies—I think there must be

vast treasures of rubies and emeralds under these lonely moors, and

that somehow the precious stones dissolve and become permeated with the

spirit of life, and rise up living green fires or crimson and purple

flames to flash upon the unseen hill-winds instead of upon a woman’s

bosom or in the Holy of Holies in an idolater’s temple....

After the gloaming has dreamed itself into night the banks and woods

along the stream seem to become a part of a weird faeryland. The

shadows are simply wonderful. White owls come out and flit about on

silent ghostly wings with weird uncanny cries, and bats begin to lead

a furiously active existence. The other night I was quite startled

by seeing a perfectly white animal slowly approaching me: it looked

remarkably like the ghost of a fox or wild-cat, but I am afraid it was

only a white hare.

So much for my surroundings. As for the few people hereabout they are

all charmingly of the old time. After dinner, and while the claret,

port, and sherry (the latter, oh so brandied!) are in process of

consumption, large toddy goblets with silver spoon-ladles and smaller

tumblers are handed round to ladies and gentlemen alike. Then come the

large silver flagon with the hot water, the bowl with the strictly

symmetrical lumps of sugar, three of which go to this large tumbler,

and the cut crystal decanter of pure Glenlivet. The custom has great

advantages, but it certainly does not conduce to the safe driving of the

dogcart home again.

Here is a specimen of a purely Scotch Bill of Fare, for some especially

noteworthy occasion:

BILL OF FARE

A wee drappie Talisher.

——

Callipee Broth. Hotch Potch.

——

Saumon à la Pottit Heed. Pomphlet à la Newhaven.

——

Anither Drappie.

——

Mince Collops. Doo Tairt.

——

Haggis.

——

An Eek.

——

Stuffed Bubbly Jocks an Hawm.

Gigot of Mutton wi’ red curran jeelie.

Sheep’s Heed an’ Trotters.

——

Tatties Biled & Champit.

Bashed Neeps.

Jist a wee Donal’.

——

Glesky Magistrates. Sma’ peas.

——

Grozet Pies. Aiple Dumplins.

——

Ice Puddin wi’ cookies.

——

A Guid Dram to keep a’ doon.

When I have a house of my own I shall give such a dinner some day, and

the Sassenach hearts present shall admit there is no dinner like a

Scotch one and no whiskey like the heavenly Celtic brew.

And now, au revoir,

Ever yours affectionately,

WILLIAM SHARP.

CHAPTER IV

THE DEATH OF ROSSETTI

The Directors of The Fine Art Society decided finally not to organise

the special department of Engravings of which William Sharp hoped to

take charge, therefore his engagement fell through and he was thrown

on his own resources. The outlook was very serious, for he was still

practically unknown to editors and publishers; and during the following

two years he had a hard fight with circumstances. No post of any kind

turned up for him and he had to depend solely on his pen, and for many

months was practically penniless; and many a time the only food he

could afford, after a meagre breakfast, was hot chestnuts bought from

men in the street.

I do not care to dwell on those days; I could do so little to help, and

by common consent we hid the true condition of things from his mother

and mine. Nevertheless we firmly believed in his “future”; that with

persistence and patience—and endurance—he would “gain a footing”; that

circumstances were pushing him into the one career suited to him, even

if the method seemed too drastic at times.

[Illustration: DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI]

He had already succeeded in having a poem accepted occasionally by one

or two Magazines and Weeklies. In 1879 _Good Words_ published a poem

entitled “Night,” and in 1880 two Sonnets on Schubert’s “Am Meer.”

_The Examiner_ printed some Sonnets and a poem of fifteen lines. In

1881 he contributed a long poem on Victor Hugo to _Modern Thought_,

and in February of 1882 his Sonnet “Spring Wind” was accepted by the

_Athenæum_ and it was afterward included in Hall Caine’s Century of

Sonnets. Early the following year he spent a delightful week-end with

Rossetti, at Birchington, whence he wrote to me:

Feb. 13, 1882.

“Just a line to tell you I am supremely content. Beautiful sea views,

steep ‘cavey’ cliffs, a delicious luxurious house, and nice company. By

a curious mistake I got out at the wrong place on Sunday, and had a long

walk with my bag along the cliffs till I arrived rather tired and hot

at my destination. I was surprised not to find Hall Caine there, but it

appeared he clearly understood I was to get out at a different station

altogether. I was also delayed in arriving, as I asked a countryman my

direction and he told me to go to the left—but from the shape of the

coast I argued that the right must be the proper way—I went to the right

in consequence, and nearly succeeded in going over a cliff’s edge, while

my theory was decidedly vanquished by facts. However the walk repaid it.

Oh, the larks yesterday! It was as warm as June, and Rossetti and Caine

and myself went out and lay in the grass (at least I did) basking in

the sun, looking down on the gleaming sea, and hearing these heavenly

incarnate little joys sending thrills of sweetness, and vague pain

through all my being. I seemed all a-quiver with the delight of it all.

And the smell of the wrack! and the cries of the sea-birds! and the

delicious wash of the incoming tide! Oh, dear me, I shall hate to go

back to-morrow. Caine is writing a sonnet in your book, Watts is writing

a review for the _Athenæum_, Rossetti is about to go on with painting

his Joan of Arc, and I am writing the last lines of this note to you.”

Little did he dream as he shook hands with his host on the Monday

morning that he was bidding a last farewell to his good friend.

Of that visit he wrote later:

“Of my most cherished memories is a night at Birchington-on-Sea, in

March, 1882. It had been a lovely day. Rossetti asked me to go out with

him for a stroll on the cliff; and though he leaned heavily and dragged

his limbs wearily as if in pain, he grew more cheerful as the sunlight

warmed him. The sky was a cloudless blue and the singing of at least

a score of larks was wonderful to listen to. Everywhere Spring odours

prevailed, with an added pungency from the sea-wrack below. Beyond, the

sea reached far to horizons of purple shaded azure. At first I thought

Rossetti was indifferent: but this mood gave way. He let go my arm and

stood staring seaward silently, then, still in a low tired voice, but

with a new tone in it he murmured, ‘It is beautiful—the world and life

itself. I am glad I have lived.’ Insensibly thereafter the dejection

lifted from off his spirit, and for the rest of that day and that

evening he was noticeably less despondent.

“The previous evening Christina Rossetti and myself were seated in the

semi-twilight in the low-roofed sitting room. She had been reading to

him but he had grown weary and somewhat fretful. Not wishing to disturb

him, Miss Rossetti made a sign to me to come over to the window and

there drew my attention to a quiet hued but very beautiful sunset. While

we were enjoying it Rossetti, having overheard an exclamation of almost

rapturous delight from Christina, rose from his great armchair before

the fire and walked feebly to the window. He stared blankly upon the

dove-tones and pale amethyst of the sky. I saw him glance curiously at

his sister, and then again long and earnestly. But at last with a voice

full of chagrin he turned away pettishly saying he could not see what it

was we admired so much. ‘It is all gray and gloom,’ he added; nor would

he hear a word to the contrary, so ignorant was he of the havoc wrought

upon his optic nerve by the chloral poison which did so much to shorten

his life.... ‘Poor Gabriel,’ Miss Rossetti said, ‘I wish he could

have at least one hopeful hour again.’ It was with pleasure therefore

next day she heard of what he had said upon the cliff, and how he had

brightened. The evening that followed was a happy one, for, as already

mentioned Rossetti grew so cheerful, relatively, that it seemed as

though the shadow of death had lifted. What makes it doubly memorable

to me is that when I opened the door for Miss Rossetti when she bade me

good-night, she turned, took my hand again, and said in a whisper, ‘I am

so glad about Gabriel, and grateful.’”

To E. A. S.:

11: 4: 82.

“...After spending a very pleasant day at Haileybury with Farquharson

[E. A. Sharp’s brother] we arrived late in London, and while glancing

over an evening paper my eye suddenly caught a paragraph which made

my heart almost stop. I could not bring myself to read it for a long

time, though I knew it simply rechronicled the heading—“Sudden Death of

Mr. Dante Gabriel Rossetti.” He died on Sunday night at Birchington. I

cannot tell you what a grief this is to me. He has ever been to me a

true friend, affectionate and generous—and to him I owe more perhaps

than to any one after yourself. Apart from my deep regret at the loss of

one whom I so loved, I have also the natural regret at what the loss of

his living friendship means. I feel as if a sudden tower of strength on

which I had greatly relied had given way: for not only would Rossetti’s

house have been my own as long as and whenever I needed, but it was his

influence while alive that I so much looked to. Comparatively little

known to the public, his name has always been a power and recommendation

in itself amongst men of letters and artists and those who have to do

with both professions. When I recall all that Rossetti has been to

me—the pleasure he has given me—the encouragement, the fellowship—I feel

very bitter at heart to think I shall never see again the kindly gray

eyes and the massive head of the great poet and artist. He has gone to

his rest. It were selfish to wish otherwise considering all things....

If I take flowers down, part of the wreath shall be from you. He would

have liked it himself, for he knew you through me, and he knew I am

happier in this than most men perhaps.”

To E. A. S.:

April 13, 1882.

“ ... I have just returned (between twelve and one at night) tired

and worn out with some necessary things in connection with Rossetti,

taking me first to Chelsea, then away in the opposite direction to

Euston Road. As I go down to Birchington by an early train, besides

having much correspondence to get through after breakfast, I can

only write a very short letter. I have felt the loss of my dear and

great friend more and more. He had weaknesses and frailties within

the last six or eight months owing to his illness, but to myself he

was ever patient and true and affectionate. A grand heart and soul, a

true friend, a great artist, a great poet, I shall not meet with such

another. He loved me, I know—and believed and hoped great things of

me, and within the last few days I have learned _how_ generously and

how urgently he impressed this upon others. God knows I do not grudge

him his long-looked-for rest, yet I can hardly imagine London without

him. I _cannot_ realise it, and yet I know that I shall never again see

the face lighten up when I come near, never again hear the voice whose

mysterious fascination was like a spell. What fools are those vain men

who talk of death: blinded, and full of the dust of corruption. As God

lives, the soul dies not. What though the grave be silent, and the

darkness of the Shadow become not peopled—to those eyes that can see

there is light, light, light—to those ears that can hear the tumult of

the disenfranchised, rejoicing. I am borne down not with the sense of

annihilation, but with the vastness of life and the imminence of things

spiritual. I _know_ from something beyond and out of myself that we

are now but dying to live, that there is no death, which is but as a

child’s dream in a weary night.

I am very tired. You will forgive more, my dearest friend.”

To Mr. W. M. Rossetti:

13 THORNGATE ROAD,

SUTHERLAND GARDENS, W.,

15th April, 1883.

DEAR MR. ROSSETTI,

As your wife kindly expressed a wish that I would send you a copy of

the sonnet I left in your brother’s coffin along with the flowers, I

now do so. It must be judged not as a literary production, but as last

words straight from the heart of one who loved and revered your brother.

Yours very sincerely,

WILLIAM SHARP.

_To Dante Gabriel Rossetti_

AVE! MORS NON EST!

True heart, great spirit, who hast sojourn’d here

Till now the darkness rounds thee, and Death’s sea

Hath surged and ebbed and carried suddenly

Thy Soul far hence, as from a stony, drear,

And weary coast the tide the wrack doth shear;

Thou art gone hence, and though our sight may be

Strained with a yearning gaze, the mystery

Is mystic still to us: to thee, how clear!

O loved great friend, at last the balm of sleep

Hath soothed thee into silence: it is well

After life’s long unrest to draw the breath

No more on earth, but in a slumber deep,

Or joyous hence afar, the miracle

Await when dies at last imperious Death.

W. S.

Keenly desirous of offering some tribute to the memory of Rossetti,

whose friendship had meant so much to him during the years of struggle

in London, William Sharp eagerly accepted a proposal from Messrs.

Macmillan that he should write a biographical Record and appreciation

of the painter-poet, to be produced within the year. It was begun in

June, it was his first lengthy attempt in prose and attempted with

little knowledge of the art of writing; but it was written “red hot,”

as he used to say, inspired by deep affection and profound admiration

for his friend. He spared no pains to make his story as accurate as

practicable, and visited the chief owners of the pictures, photographs

of which Rossetti had given him. Several of the later paintings he had

seen and discussed many times in Rossetti’s studio.

The book divides itself naturally into two parts representing the man

in his dual capacity as painter and as poet, and the author selected as

frontispiece Rossetti’s most characteristic and symbolic design for his

sonnet on the sonnet.

In his Diary of 1890 the author refers to “my first serious effort in

prose, my honest and enthusiastic, and indeed serviceable, but badly

written ‘Life of Rossetti.’” And he tells that the first two thirds

were written at Clynder on the Gareloch (Argyll), “in a little cottage

where I stayed with my mother and sisters eight years ago”; and the

rest was written in London, and published in December.

“I remember that the book was finished one December day, and so great

was the pressure I was under, that, at the end, I wrote practically

without a break for thirty-six hours: i. e., I began immediately after

an early breakfast, wrote all day except half an hour for dinner, and

all evening with less than ten minutes for a slight meal of tea and

toast, and right through the night. About 4 or 5 A.M. my fire went out,

though I did not feel chilled till my landlady came with my breakfast.

By this time I was too excited to be tired, and had moreover to finish

the book that day. I was only a few minutes over breakfast, which I

snatched during perusal of some notes, and then buckled to again. I

wrote all day, eating nothing. When about 7 P.M. I came to ‘finis,’

I threw down the pen from my chilled and cramped fingers: walked or

rather staggered into the adjoining bedroom, but was asleep before I

could undress beyond removal of my coat and waistcoat. (What hundreds

of times I have been saved weariness and bad headaches, how often I

have been preserved from collapse of a more serious kind, by my rare

faculty of being able to sleep at will at any time, however busy, and

for even the briefest intervals—ten minutes or less.)

“For three weeks before this I had been overworking and I was quite

exhausted, partly from want of sufficient nourishment. It was the

saving of my brain, therefore, that I slept fourteen hours without a

break, and after a few hours of tired and dazed wakefulness again fell

into a prolonged slumber, from which I awoke fresh and vigorous in mind

and body.”

The most interesting letter which he received during the interval of

the writing was one from Robert Browning, in answer to an inquiry

concerning a letter written years earlier by Rossetti to Browning, to

know if the author of _Paracelsus_ was also the author of _Pauline_.

Rossetti once told William Sharp that it was “on the forenoon of the

day when the _Burden of Nineveh_ was begun, conceived rather,” that

he read this story (at the British Museum) “of a soul by the soul’s

ablest historian.” So delighted was Rossetti with it, and so strong his

opinion that _Pauline_ was by Browning, that he wrote to that poet,

then in Florence, for confirmation. Mr. Browning, in his reply—which

I quote from my husband’s monograph on Browning—gave the following

particulars of the incident:

ST. PIERRE DE CHARTREUSE,

Aug. 22, 1882.

DEAR MR. SHARP,

Rossetti’s _Pauline_ letter concerning which you inquire was addressed

to me at Florence, more than thirty years ago: I must have preserved

it, but, even were I at home, should be unable to find it without

troublesome searching. It was to the effect that the writer, personally

and altogether unknown to me, had come upon a poem in the British

Museum, which he copied the whole of, from its being not otherwise

procurable, that he judged it to be mine, but could not be sure,

and wished me to pronounce on the matter—which I did. A year or two

after, I had a visit in London from Mr. Allingham and a friend—who

proved to be Rossetti: when I heard he was a painter I insisted on

calling on him, though he declared he had nothing to show me—which

was far enough from the case. Subsequently on another of my returns

to London, he painted my portrait: not, I fancy, in oils but water

colours—and finished it in Paris shortly after: this must have been

in the year when Tennyson published “Maud,” unless I mistake: for I

remember Tennyson reading the poem one evening, while Rossetti made a

rapid pen-and-ink sketch of him, very good, from an unobserved corner

of vantage—which I still possess and duly value. This was before

Rossetti’s marriage.

I hope that these particulars may answer your purpose; and beg you to

believe me, dear Mr. Sharp,

Yours very truly,

ROBERT BROWNING.

The young biographer wrote to every one who he thought might possess

drawings or paintings by Rossetti—and among others he applied to

Tennyson. The Poet Laureate replied:

ALDWORTH, HASLEMERE,

Oct. 12, 1882.

DEAR SIR,

I have neither drawing nor painting by Rossetti. I am sorry for it,

for some of his work which I have seen elsewhere I have admired very

much; nor (as far as I know) have I any letter from him, nor have I the

slightest recollection of his being present when I was “reading the

proof sheets of Maud.”

My acquaintance with him was in fact but an acquaintance, not an

“intimacy,” though I would willingly have known something more of so

accomplished an artist.

Wishing all success to your Memorial of him,

I am,

Faithfully yours,

A. TENNYSON.

The book met with immediate success; it was recognised that the work

was “one of no ordinary difficulty,” that the author “brought fairness

and critical acumen to his task,” “truest enthusiasm and perseverance

that nothing can daunt; that by reason of his friendship he had

unusual insight into the history and work of Rossetti,” and “a critic

of Art and a writer of poems he is thus further to be respected in what

he has to say.” Only three letters are in my possession of the many he

received from friends of his own, or of the dead poet; two are from

Walter Pater with whom he had recently become acquainted: and the other

from Christina Rossetti:

30 TORRINGTON SQUARE.

DEAR MR. SHARP,

Thank you with warm thanks from my Mother and myself for your precious

gift. She has already and with true pleasure perused Chapter I. _I_ have

but glanced here and there as yet but with an appetite for the feast

to come. I shall be both fortunate and unfortunate if I find occasion

for the marginal notes you want—fortunate if even thus I can be of use:

but I will rather wish myself a very narrow field for strictures. Allow

me to congratulate you on the binding of the well-known monogram and

crest—a pretty point which catches and gratifies the eye at a first

glance. I figure so amiably in connection with your frontispiece that

I may reasonably regret having brought nothing to the transaction (in

reality) beyond good will.

Very truly yours,

CHRISTINA G. ROSSETTI.

This letter was received while the book was in preparation: