2 BRADNOR ROAD, OXFORD,

Nov. 4, 1882.

MY DEAR SHARP,

(I think we have known each other long enough to drop the “Mr.”) I read

your letter with great pleasure, and thank you very much for it. Your

friendly interest in my various essays I value highly. I have really

worked hard for now many years at these prose essays, and it is a real

encouragement to hear such good things said of them by one of the most

original of young English poets. It will be a singular pleasure to me to

be connected, in a sense, in your book on Rossetti, with one I admired

so greatly. I wish the book all the success both the subject and the

writer deserve. You encourage me to do what I have sometimes thought of

doing, when I have got on a little further with the work I have actually

on hand—viz. to complete the various series of which the papers I have

printed in the _Fortnightly_ are parts. The list you sent me is complete

with the exception of an article on Coleridge in the _Westminster_ of

January, 1866, with much of which, both as to matter and manner, I

should now be greatly dissatisfied. That article is concerned with S.

T. C.’s prose; but, corrected, might be put alongside of the criticism

on his verse which I made for Ward’s “English Poets.” I can only say

that should you finish the paper you speak of on these essays, your

critical approval will be of great service to me with the reading

public. I find I have by me a second copy of the paper on Giorgione,

revised in print, which I send by this post, and hope you will kindly

accept. It was reprinted some time ago when I thought of collecting that

and other papers into a volume. I am pleased to hear that you remember

with pleasure your flying visit to Oxford; and hope you will come for

a longer stay in term time early next year. At the end of this month I

hope to leave for seven weeks in Italy, chiefly at Rome, where I have

never yet been. We went to Cornwall for our summer holiday, but though

that country is certainly very singular and beautiful, I found there

not a tithe of the stimulus to one’s imagination which I have sometimes

experienced in quite unrenowned places abroad.

I should be delighted with a copy of the Rossetti volume from yourself;

but it is a volume I should have in any case purchased, and I hope it

may appear in time to be my companion on my contemplated journey.

Very sincerely yours,

WALTER H. PATER.

2 BRADNOR ROAD,

Jan. 15, 1883.

MY DEAR SHARP,

Thank you very sincerely for the copy of your book, with the fine

impression of the beautiful frontispiece, which reached me yesterday.

One copy of the book I had already obtained through a bookseller in

Rome, and read it there with much admiration of its wealth of ideas and

expression, and its abundance of interesting information. Thank you

also sincerely, for the pleasant things you have said about myself;

all the pleasanter for being said in connection with the subject of

Rossetti, whose genius and work I esteemed so greatly. I am glad to

hear that the book is having the large sale it deserves. Your letter of

December 24th, was forwarded to me at Rome, with the kind invitation I

should have been delighted to accept had it been possible, and which I

hope you will let me profit by some other time. Then, I heard from my

sisters, of your search for me in London, and was very sorry to have

missed you there. I shall be delighted to see you here; and can give

you a bed at Brasenose, where I shall reside this term.

Thank you again for the pleasure your book has given, and will give me,

in future reading. Excuse this hurried letter, and

Believe me,

Very sincerely yours,

WALTER PATER.

It had been William Sharp’s intention to rewrite his Study on Rossetti;

for in later years he was very dissatisfied with the early book, and

considered his judgment to have been immature. He had indeed arranged

certain publishing preliminaries; and he wrote the dedicatory chapter;

but the book itself was untouched save one or two opening sentences.

For this project, with many others planned by William Sharp, was laid

aside when the more intimate, the more imperative work put forward

under the pseudonym of “Fiona Macleod” began to shape itself in his

brain. In his dedication to Walter Pater (the only portion of the book

that was finished), the author explains his reasons for wishing to

write a second Study of the painter-poet. He describes the new material

available, and relates that in Rossetti’s lifetime it was planned

that a “Life should be written by Philip Bourke Marston and myself,

primarily for publication in America. Rossetti took a humorous interest

in the scheme, and often alluded to it in notes or conversation as the

Bobbies’ book (a whimsical substitute for the Boston firm of Roberts

Brothers, whom we intended to honour with our great—unwritten—work):

but nothing came of the project.... Rossetti was eager to help Marston;

so he said he was charmed with the idea, and promised to give all the

aid in his power. A week later he told me that ‘there was no good in

it,’ and that ‘it had better drop’: but, instead he suggested that _he_

should write an article upon Marston and his poetry for _Harper’s_, or

_Scribner’s_, if it were more expedient that such an article should

appear in an American periodical, or, if preferred, for some important

Quarterly here.

“But you, cognizant as you are of much of this detail, will readily

understand and agree with me when I say that no really adequate

portrait of Rossetti is likely to be given to us for many years

to come. Possibly never: for his was a nature wrought of so many

complexities, his a life developed perplexedly by such divers elements,

that he will reappear, for those who come after us, not in any one

portraiture but as an evocation from many....

“Of all that has been written of Rossetti’s genius and achievement

in poetry nothing shows more essential insight, is of more striking

and enduring worth, than the essay by yourself, included in your

stimulating and always delightful _Appreciations_. You, more than any

one, it seems to me, have understood and expressed the secret of his

charm. And though you have not written also of Rossetti the painter, I

know of no one who so well and from the first perceived just wherein

lies his innate power, his essential significance.

“Years ago, in Oxford, how often we talked these matters over! I have

often recalled one evening, in particular, often recollected certain

words of yours: and never more keenly than when I have associated

them with the early work of Rossetti, in both arts, but preëminently

in painting: ‘To my mind Rossetti is the most significant man among

us. More torches will be lit from his flame—or torches lit at his

flame—than perhaps even enthusiasts like yourself imagine.’

“We are all seeking a lost Eden. This ideal Beauty that we catch

glimpses of, now in morning loveliness, now in glooms of tragic terror,

haunts us by day and night, in dreams of waking and sleeping—nay,

whether or not we will, among the littlenesses and exigencies of

our diurnal affairs. It may be that, driven from the Eden of direct

experience, we are being more and more forced into taking refuge

within the haven guarded by our dreams. To a few only is it given to

translate, with rare distinction and excellence, something of this

manifold message of Beauty—though all of us would fain be, with your

Marius, ‘of the number of those who must be made perfect by the love of

visible beauty.’ Among these few, in latter years in this country, no

one has wrought more exquisitely for us than Rossetti.

“To him, and to you and all who recreate for us the things we have

vaguely known and loved, or surmised only, or previsioned in dreams, we

owe what we can never repay save by a rejoicing gratitude. Our own Eden

may be irrecoverable, its haunting music never be nearer or clearer

than a vanishing echo, yet we have the fortunate warranty of those

whose guided feet have led them further into the sunlit wilderness, who

have repeated to us, as with hieratic speech, what they have seen and

heard.

“‘From time to time,’ wrote Rossetti in one of those early prose

passages of his which are so consecrated by the poetic atmosphere—‘from

time to time, however, a poet or a painter has caught the music (of

that garden), and strayed in through the close stems: the spell is

on his hand and his lips like the sleep of the Lotus-eaters, and his

record shall be vague and fitful; yet will we be in waiting, and open

our eyes and our ears, for the broken song has snatches of an enchanted

harmony, and the glimpses are glimpses of Eden.’”

* * * * *

It was during the preparation of this early book that the first volume

of William Sharp’s poems was published—too late however to be welcomed

by either of the two friends who had taken so keen an interest in

its growth: Rossetti, to whom all the poems had been read—and John

Elder to whom it was originally dedicated. It is entitled _The Human

Inheritance; Motherhood; Transcripts from Nature_ (Elliot Stock), and

contains a prefatory poem, and last lines dedicated to myself.

“The Human Inheritance” is a long poem in four cycles—the Inheritance

of Childhood, Youth, Manhood and Womanhood, and Old Age, and was an

expression of his belief that the human being should fearlessly reach

out to every experience that each period might have to offer. Eager,

and intensely alive, the poet thirsted till his last breath after

whatever might broaden and deepen his knowledge, his understanding, his

enjoyment of life.

The second long poem, “The New Hope: a Vision of the Travail of

Humanity,” was especially connected with John Elder, the outcome

of many talks and letters concerning the purport of the Travail of

Humanity—concerning a belief they both held that a great new spiritual

awakening is imminent that

... “the one great Word

That spake, shall wonderfully again be heard” ...

To “Motherhood” allusion has been made in one or two letters.

Notwithstanding that some of the critics predicted that the new name

was destined to become conspicuous, it was not by these poems, but by

the Life of Rossetti that the real impetus was given to his literary

fortunes and emphasised the fact of his existence to publishers and the

reading public. But to the poet himself—and to me—the publication of

the book of poems was a great event. We looked upon it as the beginning

of the true work of his life, toward the fulfilment of which we were

both prepared to make any sacrifice.

I have a few letters relating to this volume of poems, and append the

three which the recipient especially cared to preserve:

2 BRADMORE ROAD,

July 30th.

MY DEAR SHARP,

Since you have been here I have been reading your poems with great

enjoyment. The presence of philosophical, as in “The New Hope” and

of such original, and at the same time perfectly natural motives as

“Motherhood” is certainly a remarkable thing among younger English

poets, especially when united with a command of rhythmical and verbal

form like yours. The poem “Motherhood” is of course a bold one; but

it expresses, as I think, with perfect purity, a thought, which all

who can do so are the better for meditating on. The “Transcripts from

Nature” seem to me precisely all, and no more than (and just how is the

test of excellence in such things) what little pictures in verse ought

to be.

Very sincerely yours,

WALTER PATER.

DEAR MR. SHARP,

I have really not much to say about your poems. That you are of the

tribe or order of prophets, I certainly believe. What rank you may take

in that order I cannot guess. But the essential thing is that you are

the thing _poet_, and being such I doubt much whether talk about your

gift and what you ought to do with it will help you at all.

In “Motherhood” I think you touch the highest point in the volume.

The “Transcripts from Nature”—some of them—give me the _feel_ in

my nerves of the place and hour you describe, I like the form but

I think you have written a sufficient mass in this form, and that

future _rispetti_ ought to be rare, that is, whenever it is necessary

and right to express yourself in that form. (It is harder to take in

many in succession than even sonnets.) The longer poems seem to me as

decisively the poetry of a poet as the others, but they seem not so

successful (while admirable in many pages and in various ways).

I believe a beautiful action, beautifully if somewhat severely handled,

would bring out your highest. I wish you had some heroic old Scotch

story to brood over and make live while you are in Scotland.

I look forward with much interest to your Pre-Raphaelism and Rossetti.

Very sincerely yours,

EDWARD DOWDEN.

Sept. 6, 1882.

DEAR MR. SHARP,

... I came abroad and brought your book with me. I have read it again

through among the mountains and have found much to admire and more than

like in it; so that the hours I passed in reading it are and will be

pleasant hours to remember. If I may venture a criticism it is that

nature occupies more than three fourths of the Emotion of the Book,

and not Humanity, and even the passion and childhood and youth, and

later love and age—and all passions are painted in terms of Nature, and

through her moods. It pleases me, for I care more for Nature myself

when I am not pressed on by human feeling, than I do for Man, but an

artist ought to love Man more than Nature, and should write about Him

for his own sake. It won’t do to become like the being in the “Palace

of Art.” It will not do either to live in a Palace of Nature, alone.

But all this is more a suggestion than an objection, and it is partly

suggested to me at first by the fact that the poem in the midst of The

Human Inheritance, Cycle III, is the nearest to the human heart and

yet the least well written of all the cycles—at least so it seems to

me. I like exceedingly “The Tides of Venice.” It seems to me to come

nearer the kind of poem in which the Poet’s Shuttle weaves into one web

Nature and Humanity and the close is very solemn and noble.

You asked me to do a critic’s part. It is a part I hate, and I am not a

critic. But I say what I say for the sake of men and women whom you may

help through the giving of high pleasure even more than you help them

in this book.

With much sympathy and admiration,

I am yours most sincerely,

STOPFORD A. BROOKE.

Two other deaths occurred in this year, and made a profound impression

on the young writer. I quote his own words:

“It was in 1882 also that another friend, to whom Philip Marston had

also become much attached—attracted in the first instance by the common

bond of unhappiness—died under peculiarly distressing circumstances.

Philip Marston and myself were, if I am not mistaken, the last of his

acquaintances to see him alive. Thomson had suffered such misery and

endured such hopelessness, that he had yielded to intemperate habits,

including a frequent excess in the use of opium. He had come back from

a prolonged visit to the country, where all had been well with him,

but through over confidence he had fallen a victim again immediately

on his return. For a few weeks his record is almost a blank. When the

direst straits were reached, he so far reconquered his control that he

felt able to visit one whose sympathy and regard had stood all tests.

Marston soon realised that his friend was mentally distraught, and

endured a harrowing experience, into the narrative of which I do not

care to enter.

“I arrived in the late afternoon, and found Philip in a state of

nervous perturbation. Thomson was lying down on the bed in the

adjoining room: stooping I caught his whispered words that he was

dying; upon which I lit a match, and in the sudden glare beheld his

white face on the blood-stained pillow.

“He had burst one or more blood-vessels, and the hæmorrhage was

dreadful. Some time had to elapse before anything could be done;

ultimately with the help of a friend who came in opportunely, poor

Thomson was carried downstairs, and having been placed in a cab, was

driven to the adjoining University Hospital. He did not die that night,

nor when Marston and I went to see him in the ward next day was he

perceptibly worse, but a few hours after our visit he passed away.

“Thus ended the saddest life with which I have ever come in

contact—sadder even than that of Philip Marston, though his existence

was oftentimes bitter enough to endure....”

The other death was that of Emerson, whose writings had been a potent

influence in the life-thought of the young Scot from his college days.

Indeed throughout his life Emerson’s Essays were a constant stimulus

and refreshment. “My Bible,” as he called the Volume of Selected

Essays, accompanied him in all his wanderings, and during the last

weeks he spent in Sicily in 1905 he carefully studied it anew and

annotated it copiously.

On hearing of Emerson’s death he wrote a poem in memoriam—“Sleepy

Hollow”—which was printed in the _Academy_ and afterward in his second

volume of verse _Earth’s Voices_. According to _Harper’s Weekly_ (3:

6: 1882) “No finer tribute has been rendered to Emerson’s memory than

William Sharp’s beautiful poem ‘Sleepy Hollow.’ And, as _Earth’s

Voices_ is now out of print, I will quote it in full:

SLEEPY HOLLOW

_In Memoriam: Ralph Waldo Emerson_

He sleeps here the untroubled sleep

Who could not bear the noise and moil

Of public life, but far from toil

A happy reticence did keep.

With Nature only open, free:

Close by there rests the magic mind

Of him who took life’s thread to wind

And weave some poor soul’s mystery

Of spirit-life, and made it live

A type and wonder for all days;

No sweeter soul e’er trod earth’s ways

Than he who here at last did give

His body back to earth again.

And now at length beside them lies[1]

One great and true and nobly wise—

A King of Thought, whose spotless reign

The overwhelming years that come

And drown the trash and dross and slime

Shall keep a record of till Time

Shall cease, and voice of man be dumb.

At lasts he rests, whose high clear hope

Was wont on lofty wings to scan

The future destinies of man—

Who saw the Race through darkness grope,

Through mists and error, till at last

The looked-for light, the longed-for age

Should dawn for peasant, prince, and sage,

And centuries of night be past.

Thy rest is won: O loyal, brave,

Wise soul, thy spirit is not dead—

Thy wing’d words far and wide have fled,

Undying, they shall find no grave.

CHAPTER V

FIRST VISIT TO ITALY

“After Rossetti’s death, I wrote,” William Sharp has related, “to the

commission of Messrs. Macmillan, a record of his achievements in the

two arts of literature and poetry, my first and of course immature

attempt at a book of prose. I had also written a book of poems, which,

however, did not attract much attention, though it had the honour of

a long and flattering review in the _Athenæum_. Happily, it seems to

have fallen into the hands of the editor of _Harper’s Magazine_, for

some time afterward I received a letter from him asking me to let him

see any poems I had by me. I sent him all I had and the matter passed

from my mind. Months went by, and I remember how, one day, I had almost

reached my last penny. In fact, my only possession of any value was a

revolver, the gift of a friend. That night I made up my mind to enlist

next morning. When I got up on the following morning there were two

letters for me. The usual thing, I said to myself, notice of ‘declined

with thanks.’ I shoved them into my pocket. A little later in the day,

however, recollection impelled me to open one of the letters. It was

from the editor of _Harper’s_, enclosing a cheque for forty pounds

for my few _Transcripts from Nature_, little six-line poems, to be

illustrated by Mr. Alfred Parsons, A.R.A. That money kept me going

for a little time. Still it was a struggle, and I had nearly reached

the end of my resources when one day I came across the other letter I

had received that morning. I opened and found it to be from a, to me,

unknown friend of one who had known my grandfather. He had heard from

Sir Noel Paton that I was inclined to the study of literature and art.

He therefore enclosed a cheque for two hundred pounds, which I was

to spend in going to Italy to pursue my artistic studies. I was, of

course, delighted with the windfall, so delighted, indeed, that I went

the length of framing the cheque and setting it up in my lodgings. I

tried to get my landlord to advance me the not very ambitious loan of a

needed sovereign on the spot, but he only shook his head knowingly, as

if he suspected something. However, at last, he risked a pound, and I

think I spent most of it that afternoon in taking the landlady and her

family to the pantomime.

[Illustration: WILLIAM SHARP

From a photograph taken in Rome in 1883]

“Eventually I went to Italy and spent five months away.”

Thus, the year 1883 opened with brighter prospects. Not only was it

easier to get articles accepted and published, but “William obtained

the post of London Art Critic to _The Glasgow Herald_, to be taken up

in the autumn. During his stay in London he had made a continual study

of the Old Masters, and his connection with The Fine Art Society had

brought him in touch with modern work and living artists. Therefore,

with the opportune cheque in his pocket he decided to spend the ensuing

months in careful study of pictures in Italy.

He left London at the end of February, and remained in Italy till the

end of June, when he joined my mother and myself in the Ardennes.

He went first of all to stay with an aunt of mine, Mrs. Smillie, who

had a villa in the outskirts of Florence. From that city and later from

Rome and Venice he wrote to me the following impressions:

FLORENCE,

Wednesday, 14: 3: 83.

... “Yesterday morning I went to Sta. Maria Novella, and enjoyed it

greatly. It is a splendid place, though on a first visit I was less

impressed than by Santa Croce....

The monumental sculpture is not so fine as in Santa Croce, but on the

other hand there are some splendid paintings and frescoes—amongst

others Cimabue’s famous picture of the Virgin seated on a throne. I

admired some frescoes by Fillipino Lippi—also those in the Choir by

Ghirlandajio: in the Capella dei Strozzi (to the left) I saw the famous

frescoes of Orcagna, the Inferno and Paradiso. They greatly resemble

the same subjects by the same painter in the Campo Santo at Pisa. What

a horrible imagination, poisoned by horrible superstitions, these old

fellows had: his Paradise, while in some ways finely imagined, is stiff

and unimpressive, and his Inferno simply repellent. It is strange

that religious art should have in general been so unimaginative. The

landscapes I care most for here are those of the early Giottesque and

pre-Raphaelite painters—they are often very beautiful—for the others,

there is more in Turner than in them all put together....”

FLORENCE, 18: 3: 83.

“ ... Well, yesterday after lunch I went to the Chiesa del Carmine,

and was delighted greatly with the famous frescoes of Masaccio, which

I studied for an hour or more with great interest. He was a wonderful

fellow to have been the first to have painted movement, for his figures

have much grace of outline and freedom of pose. Altogether I have been

more struck by Masaccio than by any other artist save Michel Angelo and

Leonardo da Vinci. If he hadn’t died so young (twenty-seven) I believe

he would have been amongst the very first in actual accomplishment.

He _did_ something, which is more than can be said for many others

more famous than himself, who merely duplicated unimaginative and

stereotyped religious ideals....

Yesterday being Holy Thursday we went to several Churches and in the

afternoon and evening to see the Flowers for the Sepulchres. Very

much impressed and excited by all I saw. I was quite unprepared for

the mystery and gloom of the Duomo. There were (comparatively) few

people there, as it is not so popular with the Florentines as Sta.

Maria Novella—and when we entered, it was like going into a tomb.

Absolute darkness away by the western entrances (closed), a dark gloom

elsewhere, with gray trails of incense mist still floating about like

wan spirits, and all the crosses and monuments draped in black crape,

and a great canopy of the same overhead. Two acolytes held burning

tapers before only one monument, that of the Pietà under the great

crucifix in the centre of the upper aisle—so that the light fell with

startling distinctness on the dead and mutilated body of Christ. Not

a sound was to be heard but the wild chanting of the priests, and at

last a single voice with a strain of agony in every tone. This and the

mystery and gloom and pain (for, strange as it may seem to you, I felt

the agony of the pierced hands and feet myself) quite overcame me, and

I burst into tears. I think I would have fainted with the strain and

excitement, if the Agony of the Garden had not come to an end, and the

startling crash of the scourging commenced, the slashing of canes upon

the stones and pillars. I was never so impressed before. I left, and

wandered away by myself along the deserted Lung-Arno, still shivering

with the excitement of almost foretasted death I had experienced, and

unable to control the tears that came whenever I thought of Christ’s

dreadful agony. To-day (Good Friday) the others have gone to church,

but I couldn’t have gone to listen to platitudes—and don’t know if

I can bring myself to enter the catholic churches again till the

Crucifixion is over, as I dread a repetition of last night’s suffering.

I shall probably go to hear the Passion Music in the church of the

Badia (the finest in Florence for music). How I wish you were with

me....”

FLORENCE, 3: 4: 83.

“ ... The last two days have been days of great enjoyment to me. First

and foremost they have been heavenly warm, with cloudless ardent

blue skies—and everything is beginning to look fresh and green.

Well, on Monday I drove with Mrs. Smillie away out of the Porta San

Frediano till we came in sight of Scanducci Alto, and then of the

Villa Farinola. There I left her, and went up through beautiful and

English-like grounds to the house, and was soon ushered in to Ouida’s

presence. I found her alone, with two of her famous and certainly most

beautiful dogs beside her. I found her most pleasant and agreeable,

though in appearance somewhat eccentric owing to the way in which her

hair was done, and also partly to her dress which seemed to consist

mainly of lace. A large and beautiful room led into others, all full of

bric-a-brac, and filled with flowers, books, statuettes and pictures

(poor), by herself. We had a long talk and she showed me many things of

interest. Then other people began to arrive (it was her reception day).

Before I left, Ouida most kindly promised to give me some introductions

to use in Rome. Yesterday she drove in and left three introductions for

me which may be of good service—one to Lady Paget, wife of the British

Ambassador, one to the Storys, and one to Tilton, the sculptor....

Yesterday I perhaps enjoyed more than I have done since I came to

Italy. In the morning Arthur Lemon, the artist, called for me, and

being joined by two others (Lomax, an artist, and his brother) we had a

boat carried over the weir and we got into it at the Cascine and rowed

down stream past the junction of the Mugnone and Arno, till Florence

and Fiesole were shut from view, and the hills all round took on extra

beauty—Monte Beni on the right and Monte Morello on the left glowing

with a haze of heat, and beyond all, the steeps of Vallombrosa in

white—and Carrara’s crags also snow-covered behind us. We passed the

quaint old church and village of San Stefano and swung in-shore to get

some wine....

We rowed on and in due course came in sight of Signa. We put on a

spurt (the four of us were rowing) and as we swept at a swift rate

below the old bridge it seemed as if half the population came out to

see the unusual sight of _gentili signorini_ exerting themselves so

madly when they might be doing nothing. We got out and said farewell

to the picturesque-looking fellow who had steered us down—had some

breakfast at a Trattoria, where we had small fish half-raw and steeped

in oil (but not at all bad)—kid’s flesh, and delicious sheep’s-milk

cheese, bread, and light, red, Chianti wine. We then spent some two

or three hours roaming about Signa, which is a beautifully situated

dreamy sleepy old place—with beautiful “bits” for artists every here

and there—old walls with lizards basking on them in numbers—and lovely

views.

We came back by Lastia, a fine ancient walled town, and arrived in

Florence by open tramcar in the evening, finally I had a delicious

cold bath. The whole day was heavenly. If the river has not sunk too

low when I return from Rome, Arthur Lemon and some other artists and

myself are going on a sketching trip down the Arno amongst the old

villages—the length of Pisa—taking about two days.”

ROME.

“ ... It is too soon to give you my impressions of Rome, but I may say

that they partly savour of disappointment.... Of one thing however,

I have already seen enough to convince me—and that is that Rome is

not for a moment to be compared to Florence in beauty—neither in its

environs, its situation, its streets, nor its rivers. Its palaces

may be grander, the interiors of its churches more magnificent, its

treasures of art more wonderful, but in beauty it is as far short as

London is of Edinburgh. But it has one great loveliness which can never

tire and which charms immeasurably—the fountains which continually and

every here and there splash all day and night in the sunlight or in

green grottoes in the courts of villas and palaces. I am certain that I

should _hate_ to live here—I believe it would kill me—for Rome is too

old to be alive—unless indeed a new Rome entirely overshadows the past.

I don’t suppose you will quite understand, and I cannot explain just

now—but so I feel. Florence (after the cold has gone) is divine—air,

atmosphere, situation, memory of the past, a still virile present—but

Rome is an anomaly, for what is predominant here is that evil mediæval

Rome whose eyes were blind with blood and lust and hate. Ancient Rome

is magnificent—but so little remains of it that one can no more

live in it than in Karnak or Thebes: as for modern Rome, everything

seems out of keeping—so that one has either to weary with the dull

Metropolitanism of the capital of Italy or else to enter into the life

of the mediæval ages....

I expect and believe that I shall find Rome beautiful in many things,

even as she is already majestic and wonderful—and that the more one

becomes acquainted with the Eternal City the more one loves or at least

reverences and delights in it.

Meanwhile, however, with me, it is more a sense of oppression that I

experience—a feeling as if life would become intolerable unless all

sense of the past were put away. I hate death, and all that puts one

in mind of death—and after all Rome is only a gigantic and richly

ornamented tomb....

How I hate large cities! Even Florence is almost too large, but there

at least one can always escape into open space and air and light and

freedom at will—and the mountains are close, and the country round on

all sides is fair, and the river is beautiful. Do not be provoked with

me when I say that Signa, for instance, is more beautiful to me than

Rome—and that the flashing of sunlight in the waters of the fountains,

the green of Spring in the flowered fields and amongst the trees, and

the songs of birds and the little happy-eyed children, mean infinitely

more to me than the grandest sculptures, the noblest frescoes,

the finest paintings. This is my drawback I am afraid, and not my

praise—for where such hundreds are intensely interested I am often but

slightly so. Again and again when I find myself wearied to death with

sight-seeing I call to mind some loch with the glory of morning on it,

some mountain-side flecked with trailing clouds and thrilling me with

the bleating of distant sheep, the cries of the cliff hawks, and the

wavering echoes of waterfalls: or, if the mood, I recall some happy and

indolent forenoon in the Cascine or Monte Oliveto or in the country

paths leading from Bellosguardo, where I watched the shadows playing

amongst the olives and the dear little green and grey lizards running

endlessly hither and thither—and thinking of these or such as these

I grow comforted. And often when walking in the Cascine by myself at

sunset I have heard a thrush or blackbird call to its mate through the

gloom of the trees, or when looking toward Morello and the Appenine

chain and seeing them aglow with wonderful softness, or, on the Arno’s

banks I have seen the river washing in silver ripples and rosy light

to the distant crags of Carrara where the sun sank above the Pisan

sea—often at such times my thrill of passionate and sometimes painful

delight is followed by the irrepressible conviction that such things

are to me more beautiful, more worthy of worship, more full of meaning,

more significant of life, more excelling in all manner of loveliness,

than all the treasures of the Uffizi and the Pitti, the Vatican and the

Louvre put together. But whenever I have expressed such a conviction I

have been told that the works of man are after all nobler, in the truer

sense lovelier, and more spiritually refreshing and helpful—and though

I do not find them so, I must believe that to most people such is the

case, perhaps to the infinite majority.

And, after all, why am I to be considered inferior to my fellows

because I love passionately in her every manifestation the mother who

has borne us all, and to whom much that is noblest in art is due!...

Yet I would not be otherwise after all. I know some things which few

know, some secrets of beauty in cloud, and sea and earth—have an inner

communion with all that meets my eyes in what we call nature, and am

rich with a wealth which I would not part with for all the palaces in

Rome. Do you understand me, Lill, in this?... Poor dear! I had meant

to have told her all about my visit to Orvieto (alone worth coming to

Italy for—if only to behold the magnificent Cathedral) but instead I

have only relieved my mind in a kind of grumbling....

What fascinates me most in Rome is the sculpture. Well as I knew all

the famous statues, from copies and casts, some of them were almost

like new revelations—especially the Faun of Praxiteles, of which I had

never seen a really good copy. Can’t say, however, I felt enthusiastic

about the Capitoline Venus.”

ROME, 16th April, 1883.

“ ... I have just come in from the Campagna where I have spent some of

the happiest hours I have yet had in Rome. I went for some three miles

across the glorious open reaches of tall grass, literally dense with

myriads of flowers—not a vestige of a house to be seen, not a hint

of Rome, nothing but miles upon miles of rolling grassy slopes till

they broke like a green sea against the blue-purple hills, which were

inexpressibly beautiful with their cloud-shadows athwart their sides

and the lingering snows upon their heights. There was not a sound to

be heard save those dear sounds of solitary places, the endless hum of

insects, the cries of birds, the songs of many larks, the scream of an

occasional hawk, the splash of a stream that will soon be dried up, and

the exquisite, delicious, heavenly music of the wind upon the grass and

in the infrequent trees.... And a good fairy watched over me to-day,

for I was peculiarly fortunate in seeing one or two picturesque things

I might have missed. First, as I was listening to what a dear spark

of a lintie was whistling to its mate, I heard a dull heavy trampling

sound, and on going to a neighbouring rise I saw two wild bulls

fighting. I never realised before the immense weight and strength these

animals have. Soon after, a herd of them came over the slope, their

huge horns tossing in the sunlight and often goring at each other. I

was just beginning to fancy that I had seen my last of Rome (for I had

been warned against these wild cattle especially at this season) when

some picturesquely-attired horsemen on shaggy little steeds came up at

full speed, and with dogs and long spears or poles and frantic cries

urged the already half furious, half terrified animals forward. It

was delightful to witness, and if I were a painter I would be glad to

paint such a scene. I then went across a brook and up some slopes (half

buried in flowers and grasses) till I came to a few blackthorn trees

and an old stone-pine, and from there I had a divine view. The heat

was very great, but I lay in a pleasant dreamy state with my umbrella

stuck tentwise, and I there began the first chapter of the novel I told

you before I left that I intended writing. I had been thinking over

it often, and so at last began it: and certainly few romances have

been begun in lovelier places. Suddenly, through one eye, as it were,

I caught sight of a broad moving shadow on the slope beyond me, and

looking up I was electrified with delight to see a large eagle shining

gold-bronze in the sun. I had no idea (though I knew they preyed on the

lambs, etc., further on the Campagna and in the Maremma) that they ever

came so near the haunts of men. It gave one loud harsh scream, a swoop

of its broad wings, and then sailed away out of sight into the blue

haze beyond the farthest reaches I could see. Away to the right I saw a

ruined arch, formerly some triumphal record no doubt, and near it was a

shepherd, clad in skins, tending his goats. No other human sign—oh, it

was delicious and has made me in love with the very name of Rome. Such

swarms of lizards there were, and so tame, especially the green ones,

which knew I wouldn’t hurt them and so ran on to my hands. The funniest

fly too I ever saw buzzed up, and sat on a spray of blackthorn blossom

and looked at me: I burst out laughing at it, and it really seemed to

look reproachfully at me—and for a moment I felt sorry at being so

rude. I could have lain there all day, so delicious was the silence

save for these natural sounds—and all these dear little birds and

insects. What surprised me so much about the flowers was not only their

immense quantity, but also their astounding variety. At last I had to

leave, as it is not safe to lie long on the Campagna if one is tired

or hungry. So I strolled along through the deep grasses and over slope

after slope till at last I saw the clump of stone pines which were my

landmark, and then I soon joined the road....”

SIENA, 30th April, 1883.

“You will see by the above address that I have arrived in this

beautiful old city.

I left Rome and arrived in Perugia on Thursday last—spending the rest

of the day in wandering about the latter, and watching the sunset over

the far-stretching Umbrian country. I made the acquaintance of some

nice people at the Hotel, and we agreed to share a carriage for a

day—so early on Friday morning we started in a carriage and pair for

Assisi. About 3 miles from Perugia we came to the Etruscan tombs, which

we spent a considerable time in exploring: I was much struck with the

symbolism and beauty of the ornamental portions, Death evidently to

the ancient Etrurians being but a departure elsewhere. The comparative

joyousness (exultation, as in the symbol of the rising sun over the

chief entrance) of the Etruscans contrasts greatly with the joylessness

of the Christians, who have done their best to make death repellant in

its features and horrible in its significance, its possibilities.

_Only a Renaissance of belief in the Beautiful being the only sure

guide can save modern nations from further spiritual degradation_—and

not till the gloomy precepts of Christianity yield to something more

akin to the Greek sense of beauty will life appear to the majority

lovely and wonderful, alike in the present and in the future.

After leaving the Tombs of the Volumnii we drove along through a most

interesting country, beautiful everywhere owing to Spring’s feet having

passed thereover, till we came to the Church of Sta. Maria degli

Angeli—on the plain just below Assisi. We went over this, and then

drove up the winding road to the gray old town itself, visiting, before

ascending to the ruined citadel at the top of the hill, the Chiesa di

Santa Chiara. Lying on the grass on the very summit of the hill, we

had lunch, and then lay looking at the scenery all round us, north,

south, east, and west. Barren and desolate and colourless, with neither

shade of tree nor coolness of water, these dreary Assisi hills have

nothing of the grandeur and beauty of the barrenness and desolation of

the north—they are simply hideous to the eye, inexpressibly dreary,

dead, and accursed. I shall never now hear Assisi mentioned without

a shudder, for picturesque as the old town is, beautiful as are the

Monastery, the Upper Church, the paintings and the frescoes—they are

overweighted in my memory with the _hideousness_ of the immediate

hill-surroundings. It made me feel almost sick and ill, looking from

the ruined citadel out upon these stony, dreary, lifeless, hopeless

hills—and I had again and again to find relief in the beauty of more

immediate surroundings—the long grasses waving in the buttresses of

the citadel, the beautiful yellow (absolutely stainless in colour)

wallflowers sprouting from every chink and cranny, and the green and

gray lizards darting everywhere and shining in the sunlight. Here

at least was life, not death: and to me human death is less painful

than that of nature, for in the former I see but change, but in the

latter—annihilation. These poor mountains!—once, long ago, bright and

joyous with colour and sound and winds and waters and birds—and now

without a tree to give shadow where grass will never again grow, save

here and there a stunted and withered olive, like some plague-stricken

wretch still lingering amongst the decayed desolation of his

birthplace—without the music and light of running water, save, perhaps

twice amidst their parched and serried flanks a crawling, muddy,

hideous _liquid_; and without sound, save the blast of the winter-wind

and the rattle of dislodged stones.

Yet the day was perfect—one of those flawless days combining the

laughter of Spring and the breath of ardent Summer: but perhaps this

very perfection accentuates the desert wretchedness behind the old town

of St. Francis. Yet the very day before I went I was told that the view

from the citadel was lovely (and this not with reference to the Umbrian

prospect in _front_ of Assisi, which is fine though to my mind it has

been enormously exaggerated)—lovely! As well might a person ask me to

look at the divine beauty of the Belvedere Apollo, and then say to me

that lovely also was yon maimed and hideous beggar, stricken with the

foulness of leprosy.

The hills about Assisi beautiful! Oh Pan, Pan, indeed your music passed

long, long ago out of men’s hearing....”

FLORENCE, 7th May.

“On either Wednesday or Thursday last we started early for Monte

Oliveto, and after a long and interesting drive we came to a rugged and

wild country, and at last, by the side of a deep gorge to the famous

Convent itself. The scenery all round made a great impression on me—it

was as wild, almost as desolate as the hills behind Assisi—but there

was nothing repellant, i. e., stagnant, about it. While we were having

something to eat outside the convent (a huge building) the abbé came

out and received us most kindly, and brought us further refreshment in

the way of hard bread and wine and cheese—their mode of life being too

simple to have anything else to offer.

Owing to the great heat and perhaps over-exposure while toiling up some

of the barren scorched roads, where they became too hilly or rough for

the horses—I had succumbed to an agonising nervous headache, and could

do nothing for a while but crouch in a corner of the wall in the shade

and keep wet handkerchiefs constantly over my forehead and head. In

the meantime the others had gone inside, and as Mrs. S. had told the

abbé I was suffering from a bad headache he came out to see me and at

once said I had had a slight touch of the sun—a frequent thing in these

scorched and barren solitudes. He took me into a private room and made

me lie down on a bed—and in a short time brought me two cups of strong

black coffee, with probably something in it—for in less than twenty

minutes I could bear the light in my eyes and in a few minutes more I

had only an ordinary headache. He was exceedingly kind altogether, and

I shall never think of Monte Oliveto without calling to remembrance the

Abbé Cesareo di Negro. I then spent about three hours over the famous

35 noble frescoes by Sodoma and Signorelli, illustrating the life

of Saint Benedict, the founder of the convent. They are exceedingly

beautiful—and one can learn more from this consecutive series than can

well be imagined. While taking my notes and wondering how I was to

find time (without staying for a couple of days or so) to take down

all particulars—I saw the abbé crossing the cloisters in my direction,

and when he joined me he said, “la Signora” had told him I was a

poet and writer, and that I thought more of Sodoma than any of his

contemporaries, and so he begged me to accept from him a small work

in French on the history of the convent including a fairly complete

account of each fresco. A glance at this showed that it would be of

great service to me, and save much in the way of note-taking—and I was

moreover glad of this memento; he inscribed his name in it....

The more I see of Sodoma’s work the more I see what a great artist he

was—and how enormously underrated he is in comparison with many others

better known or more talked about. After having done as much as I could

take in, I went with the abbé over other interesting parts and saw

some paintings of great repute, but to me unutterably wearisome and

empty—and then to the library—and finally through the wood to a little

chapel with some interesting frescoes. I felt quite sorry to leave the

good abbé. I promised to send him a copy of whatever I wrote about

the Sodomas—and he said that whenever I came to Italy again I was to

come and stay there for a few days, or longer if I liked—and he hoped

I would not forget but take him at his word. Thinking of you, I said

I supposed ladies could not stay at the Convent—but he said they were

not so rigorous now, and he would be glad to see the wife of the young

English poet with him, if she could put up with plain fare and simple

lodging. Altogether, Monte Oliveto made such an impression on me that

I won’t be content till I take you there for a visit of a few days....”

VENEZIA, 10th May.

“ ... I came here one day earlier than I anticipated. What can I

say! I have no words to express my delight as to Venice and its

surroundings—it makes up an hundredfold for my deep disappointment

as to Rome. I am in sympathy with everything here—the art, the

architecture, the beauty of the city, everything connected with it,

the climate, the brightness and joyousness, and most of all perhaps

the glorious presence of the sea.... From the first moment, I fell

passionately and irretrievably in love with Venice: I should rather be

a week here than a month in Rome or even Florence: the noble city is

the crown of Italy, and fit to be empress of all cities.

All yesterday afternoon and evening (save an hour on the Piazza and

neighbourhood) I spent in a gondola—enjoying it immensely: and after

dinner I went out till late at night, listening to the music on the

canals. Curiously, after the canals were almost deserted—and I was

drifting slowly in a broad stream of moonlight—a casement opened

and a woman sang with as divine a voice as in my poem of _The Tides

of Venice_: she was also such a woman as there imagined—and I felt

that the poem was a true forecast. Early this morning I went to the

magnificent St. Mark’s (not only infinitely nobler than St. Peter’s,

but to me more impressive than all the Churches in Rome taken

together). I then went to the Lido, and had a glorious swim in the

heavy sea that was rolling in. On my return I found that Addington

Symonds had called on me—and I am expecting W. D. Howells. I had also a

kind note from Ouida.

Life, joyousness, brightness everywhere—oh, I am so happy! I wish I

were a bird, so that I could sing out the joy and delight in my heart.

After the oppression of Rome, the ghastliness of Assisi, the heat and

dust of Florence—Venice is like Paradise. Summer is everywhere here—on

the Lido there were hundreds of butterflies, lizards, bees, birds, and

some heavenly larks—a perfect glow and tumult of life—and I shivered

with happiness. The cool fresh joyous wind blew across the waves white

with foam and gay with the bronze-sailed fisher-boats—the long wavy

grass was sweet-scented and delicious—the acacias were in blossom

of white—life—dear, wonderful, changeful, passionate, joyous life

everywhere! I shall never forget this day—never, never. Don’t despise

me when I tell you that once it overcame me, quite; but the tears were

only from excess of happiness, from the passionate delight of getting

back again to the Mother whom I love in Nature, with her wind-caresses

and her magic breath.”

* * * * *

The weeks in Venice gave my correspondent the crowning pleasure of his

Italian sojourn; Venetian art appealed to him beyond that of any other

school. The frequent companionship of John Addington Symonds, the long

hours in the gondola, in the near and distant lagoons were a perpetual

joy to him. June he spent in the Ardennes with my mother and me—at

Dinant, at Anseremme and at La Roche. They were happy days which we

spent chiefly in a little boat sailing up the Lesse, dragging it over

the shallows, or resting in the green shade of oak and beech trees.

In July he was once more in London and hard at work. Among other things

he had contributed a series of articles on the Etrurian Cities to the

_Glasgow Herald_, and followed them with letters descriptive of the

Ardennes, then relatively little known. In August he packed all his

Italian notes, and joined his mother and sisters at Innellan on the

Clyde, and later he visited Sir Noel Paton in Arran, whence he wandered

over many of his old loved haunts in Loch Fyne, in Mull and in Iona.

On his way back to London—where he was to take up his work as Art

Critic to the _Glasgow Herald_—a serious misadventure befell him. His

portmanteau with all his precious Italian photographs, notes and other

MSS. was lost. Nowhere could he trace it, and he had to return without

it. He was in despair; for it meant not only the loss of material for

future commissions, but the loss of work already finished, and in

process.

It was a wet August; and his search through the various places he

had passed on the Clyde was made in pouring rain. Again and again on

the steamers and on the piers he was soaked during those miserable

days. He settled in London at 13 Thorngate Road, Sutherland Gardens,

in deep depression; his persistent appeals to the Railway Company

were unavailing. As the autumn advanced his old enemy rheumatism took

hold of him, and he was laid low again with rheumatic fever, which

this time attacked his heart mainly. His sister Mary came up to town

and she and I nursed him. The best tonic however toward recovery was

the reappearance of the lost portmanteau with its much mourned over

contents in a soaked and sodden condition, but still legible and

serviceable.

In the Introduction to a selection of Philip Marston’s Poems my husband

relates that:

“During the spring months of 1884 I was residing at Dover, and in

April Marston came down from London to spend a week or so with me. The

weather was perfect, and our walks by shore and cliff were full of

delight to us both. Once or twice we crossed to Calais for the sake of

the sail, and spent a few hours in the old French port, and returned

by the afternoon boat. In the evenings, after dinner, we invariably

adjourned to the beach, either under the eastern bluffs, or along the

base of Shakespeare’s Cliff, for the music of the sea, in calm or tidal

turbulence or tempest, had an unfailing fascination for him.

“He took keen pleasure in learning how to distinguish the songs of the

different birds, and all spring’s sounds and scents were sources of

exquisite pleasure. How well I remember the rapt expression of puzzled

delight which animated his face, as one day we crossed some downs to

the westward of Folkestone. ‘Oh, what is that?’ he cried eagerly; and

to my surprise I found that what had so excited him was the crying of

the young lambs as they stumbled or frisked about their mothers. He had

so seldom been out of London in early spring that so common an incident

as this had all the charm of newness to him.

“A frisky youngster was eagerly enticed alongside, and the blind poet’s

almost childlike happiness in playing with the woolly little creature

was something delightful to witness. A little later I espied one which

had only been a few hours in the world, and speedily placed it in

his arms. He would fain have carried it away with him: in his tender

solicitude for it he was like a mother over her first-born.

“As we turned to walk homeward we met a boy holding a young starling

in his hand. Its feeble strident cries, its funny little beak closing

upon his finger under the impression it was a gigantic worm, delighted

him almost as much as the lambkin. ‘A day of days!’ was his expressive

commentary, as tired and hungry we reached home and sat down to dinner,

with the deep boom of the sea clearly audible through the open window.”

From Dover W. S. went to Paris for the first time in his capacity as

Art Critic, and thoroughly enjoyed himself as this letter to me shows:

PARIS, 10th April, 1884.

What remains of me after to-day’s heat now writes to you. This morning

I spent half an hour or so in M. Bourget’s study—and was flattered

to find a well-read copy of my _Rossetti_ there. He had a delightful

library of books, and, for a Frenchman, quite a respectable number by

English writers: amongst other things, I was most interested in seeing

a shelf of about 30 volumes with letters or inscriptions inside from

the corresponding contemporary critics, philosophists, etc. M. Bourget

is fortunate in his friends.

I then went to breakfast with him at a famous Café, frequented chiefly

by _hommes de lettres_. At our table we were soon joined by Hennequin

and two others. After breakfast (a most serious matter!) I adjourned

with Bourget to his club, La Société Historique, Cercle St. Simon, and

while there was introduced to one or two people, and made an honorary

member with full privileges. I daresay Bourget’s name is better known

to you as a poet, but generally his name is more familiar as the author

of “Essais de Psychologie Contemporaine”—an admirable series of studies

on the works and genius of Baudelaire, Renan, Gustave Flaubert, Taine,

and Stendhal. He very kindly gave me a copy (which I am glad to have

from him, though I knew the book already) and in it he wrote

À William Sharp

de son confrère

Paul Bourget.

After leaving him I recrossed the Champs Elysées—perspired so freely

that the Seine perceptibly rose—sank exhausted on a seat at the Café de

la Paix—dwelt in ecstasy while absorbing a _glace aux pistaches_—then

went back to the Grand Hotel—and to my room, where after a bit I set to

and finished my concluding Grosvenor Gallery Notice.

On Sunday, if I can manage it, I will go to Mdme. Blavatsky.

On Monday Bourget comes here for me at twelve, and we breakfast

together (he with me this time)—and I then go to M. Lucien Mariex, who

is to take and introduce me to M. Muntz, the writer of the best of the

many books on Raphael and an influential person in the Bibliothèque

Nationale. Somebody else is to take me to look at some of the private

treasures in the École des Beaux Arts. In the course of the week I

am to see Alphonse Daudet, and Bourget is going to introduce me to

Émile Zola. As early as practicable I hope to get to Neuilly to see M.

Milsand, but don’t know when. If practicable I am also to meet François

Coppée (the chief living French poet after Victor Hugo)—also M. M.

Richepin, F. Mistral (author of _Miréio_), and one or two others.

Amongst artists I am looking forward to meeting Bouguereau, Cormin,

Puvis de Chavannes, and Jules Breton. As much as any one else, I look

forward to making the acquaintance of Guizot to whose house I am going

shortly with M. Bourget. There is really a delightful fraternity here

amongst the literary and artistic world. And every one seems to want to

do something for me, and I feel as much flattered as I am pleased. Of

course my introductions have paved the way, and, besides, Bourget has

said a great deal about me as a writer—too much, I know.”

* * * * *

The two important events of 1884 were the publication of a second

volume of Poems, and our marriage.

In June _Earth’s Voices_ (Elliot Stock) was issued and was well

received at home and in America. In an article on William Sharp and

Fiona Macleod written for _The Century_ in 1906 Mr. Ernest Rhys wrote

of this volume:

“There was an impassioned delight in nature—in nature at large, that

is—in her seas and skies, or in her scenery subjectively coloured by

lyric emotion to be found in these early books.

“Perhaps one of his Northern poems may best serve to illustrate his

faculty; and there is one that is particularly to the purpose, since it

sketches ‘Moonrise’ from the very spot—Iona—with which so many of the

‘Fiona’ tales and fantasies were to be connected afterward.

Here where in dim forgotten days,

A savage people chanted lays

To long since perished gods, I stand:

The sea breaks in, runs up the sand,

Retreats as with a long-drawn sigh,

Sweeps in again, again leaves dry

The ancient beach, so old and yet

So new that as the strong tides fret

The island barriers in their flow

The ebb hours of each day can know

A surface change. The day is dead,

The Sun is set, and overhead

The white north stars set keen and bright;

The wind upon the sea is light

And just enough to stir the deep

With phosphorescent gleams and sweep

The spray from salt waves as they rise.

“Sharp’s early work is more like that of a lyric improvisator than of a

critical modern poet. At this period he cared more for the free colours

of verse than for exact felicity of phrase. His writings betrayed a

constant quest after those hardly realisable regions of thought, and

those keener lyric emotions, which, since Shelley wrote and Rossetti

wrote and painted, have so often occupied the interpreters of the

vision and spectacle of nature.

“One may find this variously attempted or half expressed in several

of the poems of his second book. In one called ‘A Record’ (to which a

special inscription drew attention in the copy he sent me), he treats

very fancifully the mystery of transmigration. He pictures himself

sitting in his room, and there he resumes the lives, and states of

being, of many savage types of man and beast viewed in passion and

action—the tiger, the eagle, and the primitive man who lighted the fire

that consumed the dry scrub and his fellow-tribesmen:

He looks around to see some god,

And far upon the fire-scorched sod

He sees his brown-burnt tribesmen lie,

And thinks their voices fill the sky,

And dreads some unseen sudden blow—

And even as I watch him, lo,

My savage-self I seem to know.

“Or again he reincarnates the Druid:

And dreaming so I dream my dream:

I see a flood of moonlight gleam

Between vast ancient oaks, and round

A rough-hewn altar on the ground

Weird Druid priests are gathered

While through their midst a man is led

With face that seems already dead.

“And again the type is changed into a Shelleyan recluse, a hermit who

had had retreated to his cave, and that hermit

Was even that soul mine eyes have traced

Through brute and savage steadily,

That he even now is part of me

Just as a wave is of the sea.

“If there are traces of Shelley in this poem, Rossetti and Swinburne

have also their echo in some of its rhapsodic, highly figurative

stanzas. There are unmistakable germs in it, too, of some of the

supernatural ideas that afterward received a much more vital expression

in ‘Fiona Macleod’s’ work.”

The volume was dedicated to his friend Walter Pater and from him and

other writers and friends he received many interesting letters, and

from them I select the following:

2 BRADMORE ROAD, May 28th.

MY DEAR SHARP,

I was just thinking of sending off my long-delayed acknowledgment

of your charming volume, with its friendly dedication (which I take

as a great compliment, and sincerely thank you for) when your post

card arrived. These new poems must, I feel sure, add much to your

poetic reputation. I have just finished my first reading of them; but

feel that I shall have to go back many times to appreciate all their

complex harmonies of sense and rhythm. On a first superficial reading,

I incline to think that the marks of power cluster most about the

poem of _Sospitra_. Also, I prefer the _Transcripts from Nature_, to

the various poems included in _Earth’s Voices_, admirable as I think

many of the latter to be, e. g., The Song of the Flowers, The Field

Mouse, The Song of the Thrush, The Cry of the Tiger, The Chant of the

Lion, The Hymn of the Autumn. This looks shamefully matter-of-fact.

But then, you asked me to tell you precisely which I preferred. _The

Shadowed Souls_, among the short pieces, I find very beautiful. The

whole volume seems to me distinguishable among latter-day poetry for

its cheerfulness and animation, and of course the Australian pieces are

delightfully novel and fresh. Many thanks, again, from

Yours very sincerely,

WALTER H. PATER.

In an article on Christina Rossetti, William Sharp relates:

“In the beginning of May, 1884, I called to see Miss Rossetti and to

leave with her a copy of a just-published volume of verse, but failed

to find her at home. The poem I cared most for was the epilogue,

_Madonna Natura_, but instinct told me Miss Rossetti would neither like

nor approve so pagan an utterance, and the surmise was correct:

30 TORRINGTON SQUARE, W. C.,

May 3, 1884.

DEAR MR. SHARP,

I might say “Why do you call just when we are out?” only that you might

retort “Why are you out just when I call?”

Thank you very much for your new volume and yet more for the kindness

which enriches the gift. Be sure my Mother and I retain you in friendly

remembrance.

An imperfect acquaintance with your text inclines me for the present to

prefer “the Thames” amongst rivers, and the “West” among winds, and the

“Thrush” among song-birds. So also “Deserts” to “Cornfields.”

Of course all the pieces which memorialise our dear Gabriel interest us.

And “Ah Sin” I like and sympathise with: and I fear it is only too

lifelike. Shall I or shall I not say anything about “Madre Natura”? I

dare say without my taking the liberty of expressing myself you can (if

you think it worth while) put my regret into words.

Very truly yours,

CHRISTINA G. ROSSETTI.

“Though I cannot recall what I wrote, write I did evidently, and

obviously also with eagerness to prove that, while I accepted her

gentle reproof in the spirit in which she offered it, I held the point

of view immaterial; and no doubt a very crude epistle it was in thought

and diction....”

That summer my Poet and I were very happy receiving the congratulations

from our friends on the approaching termination of our nine years of

waiting. We were married on a Friday the 31st October 1884 at Christ

Church, Lancaster Gate, and his friend Eric S. Robertson—Editor of The

Great Writer Series, and afterward Professor of Literature and Logic

at Lahore Government College—acted as best man. Mrs. Craik lent us her

house at Dover for our honeymoon, and we also made a flying visit to

Paris.

The end of November found us settled in a little house in Talgarth

Road, West Kensington (No. 46): our relatives furnished the house for

us and we began our new life with high hopes and a slender purse. My

husband had £30 in his pocket, and I had an income of £35 a year.

Among the many kindly letters of congratulations came one from Mr.

Addington Symonds.

DAVOS PLATZ, Dec. 22, 1884.

MY DEAR MR. SHARP,

Allow me first to congratulate you on your marriage, and settlement

in London. You will remember that I was privileged at Venice to see a

volume of your “Transcripts from Nature,” in relation to which you told

me of your engagement. I am therefore interested to hear of the happy

event, and wish both you and Mrs. Sharp all the prosperity, which it is

possible for mortals to enjoy! When I come to London (which I hope to

do next year) I shall not forget your kind invitation.

I must give you most hearty thanks for the enjoyment of a rare delight

in your post-card and letter about my Sonnets. I have so high an esteem

of your own original work in poetry that to be appreciated by you

is no common pleasure. Such words as yours are more than many of the

ordinary reviews, even if kindly; and they take the annoyance away,

which some unjust and ignorant critiques leave upon a sensitive mind.

If it were not that men like yourself, who have the right and power to

judge, speak thus from time to time, I do not think I should care to go

on publishing what I take pleasure in producing, but what has hitherto

brought me no gains and caused me to receive some kicks. It is indeed

very good of you amid your pressing literary occupations and the more

delightful interests of your life at present, to find time to tell me

what you really value in my work. Thank you for noticing the omission

of the comma after _islands_ in Sonnet on p. 38 of Vag: Lit:

It has fallen out accidentally; and if such a remarkable event as a

2nd. edn. occurs, it shall be replaced. So also will I alter what you

rightly point out as a blemish in the Sonnet on p. 200—the repetition

of _deep deep_ and _sleep_ in the same line. That was questioned by my

own ear. I left it thus because I thought it added a sort of oppressive

dreaminess to the opening of the Sonnet, striking a keynote. But if it

has struck you as wrong, I doubt not that it should be altered; since

it will not have achieved the purposed effect. And those effects are

after all tricks.

I shall also attend to your suggestions about future work. I have

had it in my mind to continue the theme of “Animi Figura,” and to

attempt to show how a character which has reached apparent failure in

moral and spiritual matters may reconstruct a life’s philosophy and

find sufficient sources of energy and health. There is no doubt great

difficulty in this motif. But were it possible to succeed in some such

adumbration of what the Germans call a Versöhnung, then the purgation

of the passions at which a work of art should aim would be effected.

Believe me, with renewed thanks, to be very sincerely yours,

JOHN ADDINGTON SYMONDS.

Many were the pleasant literary households that gave a welcome to us,

and in particular those of Mr. and Mrs. Craik, of Mr. and Mrs. George

Robinson, whose beautiful daughters Mary, the poetess, and Mabel, the

novelist, I already knew; of Mr. and Mrs. Francillon, of Mrs. Augusta

Webster, and of Dr. and Mrs. Garnett. In these and other houses we met

many common friends and interesting people of note; most frequently,

among others, Mr. Walter Pater, Mr. Robert Browning, Dr. Westland

Marston, Mr. and Mrs. Ford Madox Brown, Mr. and Mrs. William Rossetti,

Mr. and Mrs. William Morris, Mr. and Mrs. Holman Hunt, Mr. Andrew Lang,

Mr. Austin Dobson, Mr. Frederick Shields, Mr. Theodore Watts, Sir

Frederick Leighton, Miss Mathilde Blind, Miss Olive Schreiner, Miss

Louise Bevington, Mr. and Mrs. John Todhunter, Mr. and Mrs. Oscar Wilde

and Mrs. Lynn Linton.

CHAPTER VI

SONNETS OF THIS CENTURY

1885 was a year of hard work. It was our desire that such work should

be done that should eventually make it possible for my husband to

devote himself exclusively to original work—perhaps in a year or two at

most. Meanwhile the outlook was satisfactory and encouraging. He held

the post of London Art-Critic to the _Glasgow Herald_, was on the staff

of _The Academy_ then under the Editorship of his good friend Mr. James

Cotton; and he wrote for _The Examiner_, _The Athenaeum_ and other

weeklies.

On the appearance in _The Athenaeum_ of his Review on _Marius the

Epicurean_ the author expressed his satisfaction in a letter:

2 BRADMORE ROAD,

March 1, 1885.

MY DEAR SHARP,

I have read your article in _The Athenaeum_ with very real pleasure;

feeling criticism, at once so independent and so sympathetic, to be a

reward for all the long labours the book has cost me. You seem to me to

have struck a note or criticism not merely pleasant but judicious; and

there are one or two important points—literary ones—on which you have

said precisely what I should have wished, and thought it important for

me, to have said. Thank you sincerely for your friendly work! Also,

for your letter, and promise of the other notices, which I shall look

out for, and greatly value. I was much pleased also that Mrs. Sharp

had been so much interested in my writing. It is always a sign to me

that I have to some extent succeeded in my literary aim when I gain the

approval of accomplished women.

[Illustration: WALTER PATER]

I should be glad, and feel it a great compliment, to have Marius

translated into German, on whatever terms your friend likes—provided

of course that Macmillan approves. I will ask him his views on this

point. As regards the ethical drift of Marius, I should like to talk to

you, if you were here. I _did_ mean it to be more anti-Epicurean than

it has struck you as being. In one way however I am glad that you have

mistaken me a little on this point, as I had some fears that I might

seem to be pleading for a formal thesis, or “parti pris.” Be assured

how cheering your praise—praise from so genuine and accomplished a

fellow-workman—has been to me. Such recognition is especially a help

to one whose work is so exclusively personal and solitary as the kind

of literary work, which I feel I can do best, must be. I fancied you

spoke of bringing your wife to Oxford this term; and wish we had a room

to offer you. But I think you know that we have at most only room for

a single visitor. It will however give my sisters great pleasure to

make the acquaintance of Mrs. Sharp. Only let us know a week or so, if

possible, before you come to Oxford, that we may see as much of you as

possible: and with our united kind regards, believe me, my dear Sharp,

Very sincerely yours,

WALTER PATER.

I hope that in generosity to me you are not wasting too much of the

time that belongs to your own original work. I have told Macmillan to

send you a properly bound copy of Marius, with only a few misprints.

* * * * *

Mr. Theodore Watts had frequently spoken to us about a romance he had

in hand, and partly in print. After much persuasion he sent several

chapters of _Aylwin_ to us during our summer holiday, and we read them

on the shores of West Loch Tarbert in Argyll with keen enjoyment. An

enthusiastic letter from the younger author brought this reply:

SEAFORD, Sept. 16, 1885.

MY DEAR SHARP,

My best thanks for your most kind and suggestive letter. I am much

gratified to know that in you and Mrs. Sharp I have true sympathisers

in a story which although it may and I hope will be generally popular,

can only deeply appeal to the heart of hearts of here and there one of

the true romantic temper. Swinburne, who has read it all, tells me that

the interest grows sharply and steadily to the very end and the finest

volume is the last.

You are right in your surmise as to the rapidity in which the story was

written to dictation. Both its merits and its defects you will find to

arise from the fact that the conception came to me as one whole and

that my eagerness to pour it out while the imagination was at white

heat conquered everything. I doubt if it ever _could_ have been written

save to dictation. When do you return?

Kindest regards to Mrs. Sharp,

Yours affectly,

THEO. WATTS.

P.S.—I and Swinburne are getting some delicious bathing.

* * * * *

In the article written for _The Century Magazine_, 1907, on William

Sharp and Fiona Macleod, Mr. Ernest Rhys gives a reminiscent

description of the young author and of his impressions of him, on their

first acquaintance:

“One summer morning, some twenty years ago, in Cheyne Walk, Chelsea,

I was called down to an early visitor, and found waiting me a superb

young man—a typical Norseman, as I should have thought him—tall,

yellow-haired, blue-eyed. His cheeks were as rosy as a young girl’s,

his manners as frank and impulsive as a boy’s. He had come with

an introduction from a common friend (Mrs. William Bell Scott), a

would-be contributor to a new periodical; but he soon passed from

the discussion of an article on De Quincey to an account of himself

that was joyously and consciously exuberant. He told of adventures

in Australian backwoods, and of intrigues in Italy that recalled

Cellini; and then he turned, with the same rapid flow of brief staccato

sentences, to speak of his friend Mr. Swinburne’s new volume of poems,

or of the last time he walked along Cheyne Walk to spend an evening

with Rossetti. He appeared to know everybody, to have been everywhere.

Finally, though he had apparently been sitting up all the night before

to write an epic or a ‘Quarterly’ article, he was quite ready to start

the same evening for Paris, not only to be present at a new play there,

but in order to be able to talk, hours on end in the dark, about the

‘Contes Extraordinaires’ of M. Ernest Hello, or about a very different

and still more wonderful being, then little known in London, called

Nietzsche.

“It is not easy to avoid extravagance in speaking of one who was in all

things an illusionist. Sharp’s sensations, doings, artistic ideas, and

performances were not to be counted by rule and measure. He was capable

of predicting a new religion as he paced the Thames Embankment, or of

devising an imaginary new theatre for romantic drama—whose plays were

yet to be written (by himself)—as he rode home from the Haymarket.

“Before we separated, at that first meeting, he had made more plans

for events and new great works than the most sanguine of imaginers and

writers could hope to effect in a lifetime. And, alas! for his control

of circumstance, within a fortnight I was summoned to his sick-bed. He

was down with scarlet fever, and it fell to me to write from his notes,

or otherwise to complete, more than one essay and review which he had

undertaken before he fell ill....

“There was another side to William Sharp. He had a spirit of fun,

boyish mischief even, which found the slightest reflection in his work;

for his writing is not remarkable for its humour. His extravagance of

energy, which vehemently sped his pen, led him, in the course of his

earlier life, into a hundred wild exploits. To him a piece of writing

was an adventure. He delighted in impossible feats of composition,

such as trying to finish a whole romance between sunset and sunrise.

It follows that, with all this huge impetuosity, he was a poet who was

rather disinclined by temperament for the ‘poetic pains.’ What he wrote

in haste he was not always anxious to correct at leisure; and he was

happy about what he wrote—at any rate, until a colder mood supervened

at some later stage of his development.

“In keeping with this mental restlessness, Sharp was an insatiable

wanderer. No sooner did he reach London than he was intriguing to be

off again. Some of his devices in order to get work done, and to equip

these abrupt expeditions, were as absurd as anything told by Henri

Murger. Thanks to his large and imposing presence, his sanguine air,

his rosy faith in himself, he had a way of overwhelming editors that

was beyond anything, I believe, ever heard of in London, before or

since. On one occasion he went into a publisher’s office, and gave so

alluring an account of a long-meditated book that the publisher gave

him a check for £100, although he had not written a word of it.

“These things illustrate his temperament. He was a romanticist, an

illusionist. He did not see places or men and women as they were;

he did not care to see them so: but he had quite peculiar powers of

assimilating to himself foreign associations—the ideas, the colours,

the current allusions, of foreign worlds. In Italy he became an Italian

in spirit; in Algiers, an Arab. On his first visit to Sicily he could

not be happy because of the sense of bloodshed and warfare associated

with the scenes amid which he was staying; he saw bloodstains on the

earth, on every leaf and flower.

“The same susceptibility marked his intercourse with his fellows. Their

sensations and emotions, their whims, their very words, were apt to

become his, and to be reproduced with an uncanny reality in his own

immediate practice. It was natural, then, that he should be doubly

sensitive to feminine intuitions; that he should be able, even on

occasion, thanks to an extreme concern with women’s inevitable burdens

and sufferings, to translate, as men are very rarely able to do, their

intimate dialect.”

The description given by Mr. Rhys of William Sharp’s method of work

as characterised by an impetuosity which made him “disinclined for

the poetic pains” belonged to one phase of his development. During

the early days of hard work for the bare necessities of life, he had

little time to devote to the writing of poetry or of purely imaginative

work. His literary efforts were directed toward the shaping of his

prose critical writings, toward the controlled exercise of the mental

faculties which belonged to the William Sharp’s side of himself.

From time to time the emotional, the more intimate self would sweep

aside all conscious control; a dream, a sudden inner vision, an idea

that had lain dormant in what he called “the mind behind the mind”

would suddenly visualise itself and blot out everything else from

his consciousness, and under such impulse he would write at great

speed, hardly aware of what or how he wrote, so absorbed was he in the

vision with which for the moment he was identified. In those days he

was unwilling to retouch such writing; for he thought that revision

should be made only under a similar phase of emotion. Consequently

he preferred for the most part to destroy such efforts if the result

seemed quite inadequate, rather than alter them. Later, when that side

of his nature found expression in the Fiona Macleod writings—when those

impulses became more frequent, more reliable, more coherent—he changed

his attitude toward the question of revision, and desired above all

things to give as beautiful an expression as lay in his power to what

to him were dreams of beauty.

For his critical work, however, he studied and prepared himself

deliberately. He believed that the one method of attaining to a

balanced estimate of our literature is by a comparative study of

foreign contemporary writing.

“The more interested I became in literature,” he on one occasion

explained to an interviewer, “the more convinced I grew of the

narrowness of English criticism and of the importance to the English

critic of getting away from the insular point of view. So I decided

that the surest way of beginning to prepare myself for the work of the

critic would be to make a study of three or four of the best writers

among the older, and three or four among the younger school of each

nation, and to judge from the point of view of the nation. For example,

in studying French literature, I would try to judge from the point

of view of a Frenchman. When this task was done I tried to estimate

the literature under consideration from an absolute impersonal and

impartial point of view. Of course, this study took a long time, but it

furnished me material that has been invaluable to me in my work ever

since.”

It was his constant endeavour to understand the underlying motive in

any phase of modern literature; and he believed that “what is new in

literature is not so likely to be unfit for critics, as critics are

likely to be unfit for what is new in literature.” Concerning the art

of Criticism he expressed his belief in an unfinished article: “When I

speak of Criticism I have in mind not merely the more or less deft use

of commentary or indication, but one of the several ways of literature

and in itself a rare and fine art, the marriage of science that knows,

and of spirit that discerns.”

“The basis of Criticism is imagination: its spiritual quality is

sympathy: its intellectual distinction is balance.”

The occasion of his visit to Mr. Ernest Rhys was in connection with a

scheme for the publication of two series of cheap re-issues of fine

literature—a comparatively new venture five-and-twenty years ago—to

be published by Messrs. Walter Scott: _The Camelot Classics_ to be

edited by Ernest Rhys and to consist of selected prose writings, and

_The Canterbury Poets_ to be edited by William Sharp;—Each volume

to be prefaced by a specially written introduction. For the Prose

Series William Sharp prepared De Quincey’s _Confessions of an Opium

Eater_, and Mrs. Cunningham’s _Great English Painters_. For a third

series—Biographies of _Great Writers_ edited by Eric S. Robertson and

Frank T. Marzial, he wrote his monographs on Shelley in 1887, on Heine

in 1888 and on Browning in 1890.

Meanwhile he contributed a volume from time to time to _The Canterbury

Poets_, among others: Collections of Shakespeare’s Sonnets, Great Odes,

American Sonnets, and his Collection of English Sonnets. In preparing

the Edition of Shakespeare’s Sonnets he consulted Mr. Edward Dowden on

one or two points and received the following reply:

DAVOS PLATZ, Dec. 6, 1885.

DEAR MR. SHARP,

The most welcome gift of your _Songs, Poems and Sonnets_ of Shakespeare

reached me to-night. I have already looked it quickly through, and have

seen enough to know that this volume will be my constant companion in

future upon all my wanderings. Comparisons are odious. So I will not

make a list of the other travelling companions, which your edition of

Shakespeare’s lyrics is destined to supersede.

I will only tell you _why_ yours has the right to supersede them. First

and foremost, it is more scientifically complete.

Secondly, it is invaluable in its preservation of the play-atmosphere,

by such introductory snatches as you insert e. g. on p. 20. Hitherto,

we had often yearned in our Shakespearean anthologies for a whiff of

the play from which the songs were torn. You have given this just where

it was needed, and else not. That is _right_.

Thirdly, the Preface (to my mind at least) is more humanly and humanely

true about Shakespeare’s attitude in the Sonnets than anything which

has yet been written about them.

(I thank you, par parenthèse, for “the _vox humana_ of Hamlet!”) And

apropos of p. 11, I think you might have mentioned François Victor

Hugo’s translation of Shakespeare’s Sonnets. It is a curious piece of

French criticism. But the main thing left upon my mind by this first

cursory perusal is that you are one of those who live (as Goethe has

for ever put it) in “_the whole_.” It is the great thing for modern

criticism to get itself up out of holes and corners, mere personal

proclivities and scholarly niceties, into the large air of nature and

of man.

The critic who does this, has to sacrifice the applause of coteries and

the satisfaction which comes from “discovering” something and making

for his discovery a following.

But I am sure this is the right line for criticism, and the one which

will ultimately prevail, to the exclusion of more partial ways.

I therefore, who, in my own humble way, have tried as critic to

preserve what Goethe also calls the “abiding relations,” _bleibende

Verhältnisse_, feel specially drawn to your work by the seal of

largeness set upon it.

You test Shakespeare in his personal poems as man, from the standpoint

of the whole; and this seems to me eminently scientific—right. In a

minor point, I can tell you, as no one else could, that your critical

instinct is no less _acute_ than generally right. You have quoted

one of my sonnets in the notes. This Sonnet was written, to myself

consciously, under the Shakespearean influence. The influence was

complex, but very potent; and your discernment, your “spotting” of it,

appears to me that you have the right scent—fiuto (as Italians) flair

(as Frenchmen call that subtle penetration into the recesses of a mind

regulated by style).

Thank you from my heart for this gift, which (I hope, if years enough

are given me) shall wear itself out in the daily service of your friend,

JOHN ADDINGTON SYMONDS.

In the following letter to Mr. Symonds the Editor explained the

intention of his collected _Sonnets of this Century_:

12: 11: 85.

MY DEAR MR. SYMONDS,

I am shortly going to bring out a Selection of the Best Sonnets of

this Century (including a lengthy Introductory Essay on the Sonnet as

a vehicle of poetic thought, and on its place and history in English

Literature)—and I should certainly regard it as incomplete if your fine

sonnet-work were unrepresented. I am giving an average of _two_ to each

writer of standing, but in your case I have allowed for _five_. This is

both because I have a genuine admiration for your sonnet-work in the

main, and because I think that you have never been done full justice to

as a poet—though of course you have met with loyal recognition in most

of those quarters where you would most value it....

I have taken great pleasure in the preparation of the little book,

and I think that both poetically and technically it will be found

satisfactory. My main principles in selection have been (1) Structural

correctness. (2) Individuality, with distinct poetic value. (3)

Adequacy of Sonnet-Motive.

I hope that you are hard at work—not neglecting the shyest and dearest

of the muses—? Is there any chance of your being in London in the late

Spring? I hope so.

Sincerely yours,

WILLIAM SHARP.

In the preparation of the volume he received several interesting

communications from well-known English sonnet writers from which I

select four. The first is from the Irish poet Aubrey de Vere; in the

second Mr. George Meredith answers a question concerning his volume of

sequent poems, _Modern Love_:

CURRAGH CHASE, ADARE,

Dec. 5, 1885.

DEAR MR. SHARP,

... I am much flattered by what you say about my sonnets, and glad

that you like them; but I hope that in selecting so many as five for

your volume you have not displaced sonnets by other authors. Sir R.

Hamilton’s are indeed, as you remark, excellent, and I rejoice that you

are making them better known than they have been hitherto. Wordsworth

once remarked to me that he had known many men of high talents and

several of real genius; but that Coleridge, and Sir W. H. Hamilton were

the only men he had known to whom he would apply the term “wonderful.”

Yours faithfully,

AUBREY DE VERE.

BOXHILL, DORKING,

Nov. 12, 1885.

DEAR SIR,

You are at liberty to make your use of the Sonnet you have named. The

Italians allow of 16 lines, under the title of “Sonnets with a tail.”

But the lines of “Modern Love” were not designed for that form.

Yours very truly,

GEORGE MEREDITH.

The third letter is from Mr. Theodore Watts-Dunton:

THE PINES, PUTNEY HILL,

Jan. 8, 1886.

MY DEAR SHARP,

I sent off the proofs by Wednesday afternoon’s post. I had no idea that

the arrangement of the sonnets would give bother and took care to write

to you to ask. The matter was not at all important, and I shall be

vexed, indeed, if the printers are put to trouble. The printers would,

unless the snow storms interfered, get my verses by Thursday morning’s

_first_ post.

My theory of the sonnet is exactly expressed in the sonnet on the

sonnet. It is that, in the octave, the emotion flows _out_ in a

rhythmic billow: that the solidarity of this billow is maintained

by knitting the two quatrains together by means of two rhyme sounds

only: that in the sestet the billow _ebbs_ back to “Life’s tumultuous

sea” and that like the ebb of an ocean-billow it moves backward, not

solidly, but _broken up_ into wavelets. This is only the arrangement of

the rhymes in the sestet, that not only _need_ not be based upon any

given system but that _should_ not be based on any given system, and

should be perceived entirely by emotional demands.

Yours affectly,

THEO. WATTS.

The fourth letter is from Oscar Wilde:

16 TITE ST., CHELSEA.

DEAR SIR,

It will give me much pleasure to see the sonnets you mention included

in your selection. Of the two, I much prefer “Libertatis Sacra

Fames”—and if only one is taken, would like to be represented by that.

Indeed I like the sonnets on p. 3 and p. 16 of my volume better than

the one written in Holy Week at Genoa. Perhaps however this is merely

because Art and Liberty seem to me more vital and more religious than

any Creed. I send you a sonnet I wrote at the Sale of Keats’s love

letters some months ago. What do you think of it? It has not yet been

published. I wonder are you including Edgar Allan Poe’s sonnet to

Science. It is one I like very much.

I will look forward with much interest to the appearance of your book.

I remain

Truly yours,

OSCAR WILDE.

ON THE SALE BY AUCTION OF KEATS’S LOVE LETTERS

These are the letters which Endymion wrote

To one he loved in secret, and apart.

And now the brawlers of the auction mart

Bargain and bid for each poor blotted note.

Ay! for each separate pulse of passion quote

The merchant’s price: I think they love not art,

Who break the crystal of a poet’s heart

That small and sickly eyes may glare and gloat!

Is it not said that many years ago,

In a far Eastern town, some soldiers ran

With torches through the midnight, and began

To wrangle for mean raiment, and to throw

Dice for the garments of a wretched man,

Not knowing the God’s wonder, or his woe.

I wish I could grave my sonnets on an ivory tablet—Quill pens and

note-paper are only good enough for bills of lading. A sonnet should

always _look_ well. Don’t you think so?

O. W.

The success of the volume was immediate, and a second edition followed

quickly. For it I begged that the Editor would include some sonnets

of his own. He had refused to do so for the 1st Edition, but he now

yielded to my wish and included two, “Spring Wind” and “A Midsummer

Hour.” In later editions, however, he took them out again and left

only the two dedicatory sonnets to D. G. Rossetti, for he considered

that the Editor should not be represented in the body of the book. The

volume was generously welcomed by contemporary writers. George Meredith

considered it the best exposition of the Sonnet known to him; to Walter

Pater the Introductory Essay was “most pleasant and informing,” and

“Your own beautiful dedication to D. G. R. seems to me _perfect_, and

brought back, with great freshness, all I have felt, and so sincerely,

about him and his work.”

Robert Louis Stevenson expressed his views on the sonnet in a letter to

the Editor:

SKERRYMORE (BOURNEMOUTH).

DEAR SIR,

Having at last taken an opportunity to read your pleasant volume,

it has had an effect upon me much to be regretted and you will

find the consequences in verse. I had not written a serious sonnet

since boyhood, when I used to imitate Milton and Wordsworth with

surprising results: and since I have fallen again by your procuring (a

procuration) you must suffer along with me.

May I say that my favourite sonnet in the whole range of your book

is Tennyson Turner’s “The Buoy-Bell?” Possibly there is a touch of

association in this preference; but I think not. No human work is

perfect; but that is near enough.

Yours truly,

ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.

The form of my so-called sonnets will cause you as much agony as it

causes me little. I am base enough to think the main point of a sonnet

is the disjunction of thought coinciding with the end of the octave:

and when a lesser disjunction makes the quatrains and sestets I call it

an ideal sonnet; even if it were rhymed anyhow. But the cross rhyme,

tears—fear, in the second is, even in my base eyes, a vile flaw.

(Two sonnets were enclosed in the letter.)

THE ARABESQUE

(Complaint of an artist)

I made a fresco on the coronal,

Amid the sounding silence and the void

Of life’s wind-swept and unfrequented ball.

I drew the nothings that my soul enjoyed;

The pretty image of the enormous fact

I fled; and when the sun soared over all

And threw a brightness on the painted tract.

Lo, the vain lines were reading on the wall!

In vain we blink; our life about us lies

O’erscrawled with crooked mist; we toil in vain

To hear the hymn of ancient harmonies

That quire upon the mountains as the plain;

And from the august silence of the skies

Babble of speech returns to us again.

THE TOUCH OF LIFE

I saw a circle in a garden sit

Of dainty dames and solemn cavaliers,

Whereof some shuddered at the burrowing nit,

And at the carrion worm some burst in tears;

And all, as envying the abhorred estate

Of empty shades and disembodied elves,

Under the laughing stars, early and late,

Sat shamefast at this birth and at themselves.

The keeper of the house of life is fear:

In the rent lion is the honey found

By him that rent it; out of stony ground

The toiler, in the morning of the year,

Beholds the harvest of his grief abound

And the green corn put forth the tender ear.

William Sharp offered to include “The Touch of Life” in the body of the

book, and “The Arabesque” in the Notes. He received this reply:

DEAR MR. SHARP,

It is very good of you, and I should like to be in one of your pleasant

and just notes; but the impulse was one of pure imitation and is not

like to return, or if it did, to be much blessed. I have done so many

things, and cultivated so many fields in literature, that I think I

shall let the “scanty plot” lie fallow. I forgot to say how much taken

I was with Beaconsfield’s lines (scarce a sonnet indeed) on Wellington.

I am engaged with the Duke, and I believe I shall use them.

I think the “Touch of Life” is the best of my snapshots; but the other

was the best idea. The fun of the sonnet to me is to find a subject;

the workmanship rebuts me.

Thank you for your kind expressions, and believe me,

Yours truly,

ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.

The Editor was much gratified by an appreciative letter from John

Addington Symonds concerning the _Edition de Luxe_ of his Anthology:

DAVOS PLATZ, Nov. 28, 1886.

MY DEAR SHARP,

I have just received my copy of the magnificent edition of your

_Sonnets of this Century_ to which I subscribed. It is indeed a noble

book. Let me say at once how much I think you have improved the

Preface. There are one or two things affecting my own share in the

Collection to which I should like to call your attention.

I notice that in pp. xxvii-xxix of your Introduction you have adopted

the ideas I put forth (Academy, Feb. 13, 1886) about the origin

of the Sonnet. But you somewhat confuse the argument by using the

word _Stornello_. If you look at Ancora’s _Poesia Popolare Italiana_

(Livano, Vigo), pp. 175, 313, you will see that Italians regard the

stornello (320) as a totally different species from the rispetto. I

have explained the matter in my Renaissance in Italy, Vol. A. p. 264.

I admit that there may be differences of opinion about these popular

species of verse. Yet I have no doubt that every one in Italy, a

_Stornello_ being mentioned, would think at once of a single couplet

prefaced with _Fiore di granata_ or something of that sort. However,

it would be pedantic to insist upon this point. I only do so because

I believe I was the first to indicate the probable evolution of the

sonnet from the same germ as the Rispetto Sesta Rima, and Ottava Rima;

and I am distinctly myself of opinion that the Stornello is quite a

separate offshoot.

I doubt whether Sonnets in Dialogue be so rare as you imply on p. 43. I

know that I composed one for Lady Kitty Clive in 1875. It is printed on

p. 117 of my _Vagabunduli Libellus_. I do not esteem it, however, and

only published it because it was in dialogue....

Believe me very truly yours,

J. A. SYMONDS.

P. S.—Pater is an old acquaintance of mine. Watts I never met, and I

should greatly value the opportunity of knowing him in the flesh—in the

spirit, I need hardly say, he has long been known to me.

* * * * *

This postscript reminds me of the fact that Mr. Pater, Mr. Alfred

Austin, and Mr. Theodore Watts-Dunton met together one evening at

our house. I especially remember the occasion because of an incident

that occurred, which indicated to us a temperamental characteristic

of Walter Pater. During dinner a guest asked to see a necklace I was

wearing. It was in the form of a serpent made of silver wire deftly

interwoven to resemble scales and to make it sinuous and supple. I

unfastened the serpent and as I handed it to Mr. Pater who was nearest

me, it writhed in a lifelike manner, and he drew back his hands with

a slight movement of dislike. In a flash I remembered the passage in

_Marius the Epicurean_ in which the hero’s dislike to serpents is so

vividly described, and I realised the description to be autobiographic.

Later I had occasion to note the same effect. My husband and I in the

early summer went down to Oxford so that I might meet the Misses Pater

at their brother’s house. In the morning I had seen Mr. Pater’s study

at Brasenose, and was as charmed with the beauty and austerity of the

decoration, as with the sense of quiet and repose. In the afternoon it

was proposed that I should be shown the Ifley Woods. My husband, always

glad to handle the oars, had, however, to consent to being rowed by one

of the boat attendants, for Mr. Pater with the timidity of a recluse

declined to trust himself to the unknown capabilities of one whom he

regarded rather as a townsman. As Mr. Pater and I strolled through

the wood I suddenly noticed that my companion gave a little start and

directed my attention to what seemed of small interest. When, however,

we rejoined our companions Miss Pater asked her brother if he had seen

the dead adder lying on one side of the path. “Oh, yes,” he answered,

turning his head on one side with a gesture of aversion; “but I did not

wish Mrs. Sharp to see it.”

If _The Sonnets of this Century_ gained us pleasant friendships it

also brought upon us a heavy penalty. For, within the next year or two

we were inundated with letters and appeals from budding poets, from

ambitious and wholly ignorant would-be sonneteers, who sent sheafs of

sonnets not only for criticism and advice but now and again with the

request to find a publisher for them! A large packet arrived one day,

I remember, with a letter from an unknown in South Africa. The writer

explained his poetical ambitions, and stated that he forwarded for

consideration a hundred sonnets. On examining the packet we found one

hundred poems varying in length from twelve to twenty lines, but not a

solitary sonnet among them!

CHAPTER VII

THE SPORT OF CHANCE

_Shelley_

In the summer of 1885 we went to Scotland and looked forward to an

idyllic month on West Loch Tarbert. While staying with Mr. Pater in

Oxford my husband had seen the advertisement of a desirable cottage to

be let furnished, with service, and garden stocked with vegetables.

He knew the neighbourhood to be lovely, the attraction was great, so

we took the cottage for August, and in due time carried our various

MSS. and work to the idyllic spot. Beautiful the surroundings were

indeed:—An upland moor sloping to the loch, with its opposite hilly

shore thickly wooded. The cottage was simplicity itself in its

appointments, but—the garden was merely a bit of railed-in grass field

destitute of plants; the vegetables consisted of a sack of winter

potatoes quite uneatable, and the only service that the old woman

owner would give was to light the fires and wash up the dishes and

black our boots. Everything else devolved on me, for help I could

get nowhere and though my husband’s intentions and efforts in that

direction were admirable, their practical qualities ended there! Yet

to all the drawbacks we found compensation in the loveliness of the

moorland, the peace of the solitude, and in the magnificent sunsets.

One sunset I remember specially. We had gone for a wander westward. The

sun was setting behind the brown horizon-line of the moor, and the sky

was aflame with its glow. Suddenly we heard the sound of the pipes,

sighing a Lament. We stopped to listen. The sound came nearer, and we

saw walking over the brow of the upland an old man with bag-pipes and

streamers outlined against the orange sky. We drew aside into a little

hollow. As he neared we saw he was gray haired, his bonnet and clothes

were old and weatherworn. But in his face was a rapt expression as he

played to himself and tramped across the moor, out of the sunset toward

the fishing village that lay yonder in the cold evening light.

The summer was a wet one, and shortly after our return to town the poet

developed disquieting rheumatic symptoms. Nevertheless we were both

hard at work with the reviewing of pictures and books, and among other

things he was projecting a monograph on Shelley. It was about this

time I think that he decided to compete for a prize of £100 offered

by the Editor of _The People’s Friend_ for a novel suited to the

requirements of that weekly, and these requirements of course dictated

the sensational style of story. It was my husband’s one attempt to

write a novel in three volumes. He did not gain the prize but the

story ran serially through _The People’s Friend_, and was afterward

published in 1887 by Messrs. Hurst and Blackett. The scene is laid in

Scotland and in Australia, with a Prologue dealing with Cornwall, where

he had once spent a few days in order to act as best man to one of

his fellow-passengers on the sailing ship that brought him back from

Australia.

The following Review from _The Morning Post_ and letter from our

poet-friend Mathilde Blind will give an idea of the style and defects

of the novel:

“The many who have the mental courage to allow that they prefer the

objective to the subjective novel may pass some delightful hours

in the perusal of Mr. Sharp’s ‘The Sport of Chance.’ It has _primâ

facie_ an undeniable advantage to start with, i. e. it is unlike

almost anything hitherto written in the shape of a novel in three

volumes. Slightly old-fashioned, the author’s manner is simple and

earnest, while he shows much skill in unravelling the tangled skein

of a complicated plot. He deals also in sensationalism, but this is

of a peculiar kind, and it rarely violates the canons of probability.

To southerners his highly-coloured pictures of Highland peasant life,

with their accompaniments of visions and second sight, may savour of

exaggeration, but not so to those whose youth has been past amidst

similar surroundings. Many episodes of the shipwrecks of ‘The Fair

Hope’ and ‘The Australasian,’ are as effective as the best of those

written by authors who make a specialty of ‘Tales of the Sea.’ Hew

Armitage’s ‘quest,’ in Australia, is related with graphic force. The

descriptions of the natural features of the country, of life in the

bush, and at the outlying settlements, are all stamped with the vivid

fidelity that is one of the great merits of the book. Charles Lamb,

_alias_ Cameron, is a singular conception. Too consistently wicked,

perhaps, to escape the reproach of being a melo-dramatic villain, his

misdeeds largely contribute to the interest of this exciting novel.”

Nov. 6, 1888.

DEAR WILLIAM,

... Your “Sport of Chance” has helped me to while away the hours and

certainly you have crammed sensation enough into your three volumes to

furnish forth a round dozen or so. The opening part seemed to me very

good, especially the description of the storm off the Cornish coast,

and the mystery which gradually overclouds Mona’s life, but her death

and the advent of a new set of characters seems to me to cut the story

in two, while the sensational incidents are piled on like Ossa on

Olympus. What seemed best to me, and also most enjoyable to my taste at

least, are the personal reminiscences which I recognised in the voyage

out to Australia and the descriptions of its scenery, full of life and

freshness. Most of all I liked the weird picture of the phosphorescent

sea with its haunting spectral shapes. You have probably seen something

of the kind and ought to have turned it into a poem; if there had

been a description of some scene like it in your last volume I should

doubtless remember it.

With best love to Lillie,

Your sincere friend,

MATHILDE BLIND.

The opening of the new year 1886—from which we hoped much—was

unpropitious. A wet winter and long hours of work told heavily on my

husband, whose ill-health was increased by the enforced silence of his

“second self” for whose expression leisure was a necessary condition.

In a mood of dejection induced by these untoward circumstances he sent

the following birthday greeting to his friend Eric S. Robertson:

46 TALGARTH ROAD, W.

MY DEAR FRIEND,

I join with Lillie in love and earnest good wishes for you as man and

writer. Accept the accompanying two sonnets as a birthday welcome.

There are two “William Sharp’s”—one of them unhappy and bitter enough

at heart, God knows—though he seldom shows it. This other poor devil

also sends you a greeting of his own kind. Tear it up and forget it, if

you will.

But sometimes I am very tired—very tired.

Yours ever, my dear Eric,

W. S.

TO ERIC SUTHERLAND ROBERTSON

(On his birthday, 18: 2: 86)

I

Already in the purple-tinted woods

The loud-voiced throstle calls—sweet echoings

Down leafless aisles that dream of bygone springs:

Already towards their northern solitudes

The fieldfares turn, and soaring high, wheel broods

Of wild swans with a clamour of swift wings:

A tremor of new life moves through all things

And earth regenerate thrills with joyous moods.

Let not spring’s breath blow vainly past thine heart,

Dear friend: for Time grows ruinously apace:

Yon tall white lily in its holy grace

The winds will draggle soon: for an unseen dart

Moves ever hither and thither through each place,

Nor know we when or how our lives ’twill part.

II

A little thing it is indeed to die:

God’s seal to sanctify the soul’s advance—

Or silence, and a long enfevered trance.

But no slight thing is it—ere the last sigh

Leaves the tired heart, ere calm and passively

The worn face reverent grows, fades the dim glance—

To pass away and pay no recompense

To Life, who hath given to us so gloriously.

Not so for thee—within whose heart lie deep

As ingots ‘neath the waves, thoughts true and fair.

Nor ever let thy soul the burden bear,

Of having life to live yet choosing sleep:

Yea even if thine the dark and slippery stair,

Better to toil and climb than wormlike creep.

In the early spring my husband was laid low with scarlet fever and

phlebitis. Recovery was slow, and at the press view of the Royal

Academy he caught a severe chill; the next day he was in the grip of a

prolonged attack of rheumatic fever. For many days his life hung in the

balance.

During much of the suffering and tedium of those long weeks the sick

man passed in a dream-world of his own; for he had the power at times

of getting out of or beyond his normal consciousness at will. At first

he imagined himself the owner of a gipsy travelling-van, in which

he wandered over the to him well-known and much-loved solitudes of

Argyll, resting where the whim dictated and visiting his many fisher

and shepherd friends. Later, during the long crises of the illness,

though unconscious often of all material surroundings, he passed

through other keen inner phases of consciousness, through psychic and

dream experiences that afterward to some extent were woven into the

Fiona Macleod writings, and, as he believed, were among the original

shaping influences that produced them. For a time he felt himself to

be practically dead to the material world, and acutely alive “on the

other side of things” in the greater freer universe. He had no desire

to return, and rejoiced in his freedom and greater powers; but, as he

described it afterward, a hand suddenly restrained him: “Not yet, you

must return.” And he believed he had been “freshly sensitised” as he

expressed it; and knew he had—as I had always believed—some special

work to do before he could again go free.

The illusion of his wanderings with the travelling van was greatly

helped by the thoughtfulness of his new friend Ernest Rhys who brought

him branches of trees in early leaf from the country. These I placed

upright in the open window; and the fluttering leaves not only helped

his imagination but also awoke “that dazzle in the brain,” as he always

described the process which led him over the borderland of the physical

into the “gardens” of psychic consciousness or, as he called it, “into

the Green Life.”

At the end of ten weeks he left his bed. As soon as possible I took

him to Northbrook, Micheldever, the country house of our kind friends

Mr. and Mrs. Henryson Caird, who put it at our disposal for six weeks.

Slowly his strength came back in these warm summer days, as he lay

contentedly in the sunshine. But as he began to exert himself new

disquieting symptoms developed. His heart proved to be badly affected

and his recovery was proportionately retarded.

The Autumn found us face to face with problems hard to solve, how to

meet not only current expenses but also serious debt, with a limited

stock of precarious strength. At the moment of blackest outlook the

invalid received a generous friendly letter from Mr. Alfred Austin

enclosing a substantial cheque. The terms in which it was offered were

as kindly sympathetic as the thought which prompted them. He had, he

said, once been helped in a similar way with the injunction to repay

the loan not to the donor but to some one else who stood in need.

Therefore he now offered it with the same conditions attached. During

the long months of illness it had been a constant source of regret

to us that we were unable to see Philip Marston or to read to him as

was our habit. We were anxious, too, for in the autumn he had been

prostrated by a heat stroke, followed by an epileptic seizure. At

last, on Christmas day 1886 William Sharp went to see him and spent an

hour or so with him. As he tells in his prefatory Memoir to Marston’s

“Song-tide” (_Canterbury Poets_): “He was in bed and I was shocked at

the change—as nearly a year had elapsed since I had seen him I found

the alteration only too evident.... Throughout the winter his letters

had been full of foreboding: ‘You will miss me, perhaps, when I am

gone, but you need not mourn for me. I think few lives have been so

deeply sad as mine, though I do not forget those who have blessed it.’”

This was the keynote to each infinitely sad letter.

“On the last day of January 1887 paralysis set in, and for fourteen

days, he lay speechless as well as sightless, but at last he was asleep

and at peace. Looking at his serene face on the day ere the coffin

lid enclosed it, where something lovelier than mortal sleep subtly

dwelt, there was one at least of his friends who forgot all sorrow in

a great gladness for the blind poet—now no longer blind, if he be not

overwhelmed in a sleep beyond our ken. At such a moment the infinite

satisfaction of Death seems beautiful largess for the turmoil of a few

‘dark disastrous years.’”

The Spring of 1887 brought a more kindly condition of circumstances

to us, in the form of good steady work. Mr. Eric Robertson had then

been selected to fill the vacant chair of Literature and Logic at the

University of Lahore, and, on accepting, he suggested to Mr. Joseph

Henderson that William Sharp should be his successor as Editor of the

“Literary Chair” in _The Young Folk’s Paper_—the boys’ weekly paper for

which Robert Louis Stevenson had written his “Treasure Island.” “The

Literary Olympic” was a portion of the paper devoted to the efforts in

prose and verse of the Young Folk who wished to exercise their budding

literary talents. Their papers were examined, criticised; a few of the

most meritorious were printed, prefaced by an article of criticism and

instruction written by their Editor and critic. The work itself was

congenial; and the interest was heightened by the fact that it put

us into touch with the youth of all classes, in England, Scotland,

and Ireland, in town and country, alike. Several of the popular

novelists and essayists of to-day received the chief early training

in the “Olympic.” Many were the confidential personal letters to the

unknown editor, who was imagined by one or two young aspirants to be

white-haired and venerable. This work, moreover, could be done at home,

by us both; and it brought a reliable income, a condition of security

hitherto unknown to us, which proved an excellent tonic to the delicate

Editor.

In August a letter came from Mr. Theodore Watts-Dunton suggesting the

possibility that an original poem, _The Ode to Mother Carey’s Chicken_

contributed to my little anthology _Sea-Music_, should be re-printed in

_The Young Folk’s Paper_:

“I do especially want it to be read by boys,” he wrote, “who would

understand and appreciate it thoroughly.” The poem appeared; and

drew forth an appreciative letter from a young blacksmith who had

sent contributions to “The Literary Olympic.” Mr. Watts-Dunton’s

acknowledgment to the “Editor” was thus expressed:

“I have seen the poem in the paper and am much gratified to be enabled

to speak, thus, to thousands of the boys of Great Britain, the

finest—by far the finest—boys in the world as I always think. It was a

friendly act on your part and the preliminary remarks are most kind and

touching.

“I sincerely hope that your indisposition has, by this time, left you,

and shall be glad to get a line to say that it has. The young man’s

letter is most interesting. What pleases me most is the manly pride he

takes in his business. A blacksmith is almost the only artisan whose

occupation is tinged with the older romance as Gabriel[2] often used

to say. I love still to watch them at the forge—the sparks flying

round them. I hope he may not forsake such a calling for the literary

struggle.”

* * * * *

In the early part of the year “The Sport of Chance” had run serially

through _The People’s Friend_. Its success incited the author to write

a sensational boys’ story for _The Young Folk’s Paper_; and accordingly

in the Xmas number of that weekly appeared the first installment of

“Under the Banner of St. James,” a tale of the conquest of Peru. This

story was followed at intervals by others such as “The Secret of the

Seven Fountains,” “Jack Noel’s Legacy,” “The Red Riders.” Although the

weaving of these sensational plots was a great enjoyment to the writer

of them, he at no time regarded them as other than useful pot-boilers.

A letter written about this time to the American poet E. C. Stedman

led to a life-long friendship with him of so genial a nature that, on

becoming personally acquainted in New York two years later, the older

poet laughingly declared that he adopted the younger man from across

the seas as his “English son.”

In an article on “British Song” in _The Victorian Poets_, the Scottish

poet was referred to as a Colonial. He wrote to the author to point

out the mistake “since you are so kindly going to do me the honour of

mention in your forthcoming supplementary work, I should not like to be

misrepresented.”

In replying Mr. Stedman explained that no great harm has been done:

Something in your work made me suspect that, despite your Australian

tone, etc., you did not hail (as we Yankees say) from the Colonies.

So you will find in my new vol. of _Victorian Poets_ that I do not

place you with the Colonial poets, but just preceding them, and I have

a reference to your Rosetti volume. The limited space afforded by my

supplementary chapter has made my references to the new men altogether

too brief and inadequate. Of this I am seriously aware, but trust that

you and others will take into consideration the scope and aim of the

chapter. You see I have learned that “The Human Inheritance” is scarce!

Of course I shall value greatly a copy from the author’s hands. And I

count among the two pleasant things connected with my prose work—my

earlier and natural metier being that of a poet—such letters as yours,

which put me into agreeable relations with distant comrades-in-arms.

Beginning, as you have, with the opening of a new literary period,

and with what you have already done, I am sure you have a fine career

before you—that will extend long after your American Reviewer has

ceased to watch and profit by its course.

Very sincerely yours,

EDMUND C. STEDMAN.

A few months later Mr. Stedman wrote again:

NEW YORK, March 27, 1888.

MY DEAR SHARP,

Let me thank you heartily, if somewhat tardily, for your very handsome

and magnanimous review of the _Victorian Poets_. It breathes the

spirit of fairness—and even generosity—throughout. You have been more

than “a little blind” to my faults, and to my virtues most open-eyed

and “very kind” indeed. I am sufficiently sure of my own _purpose_ to

believe that you _have_ ground for perceiving that the spirit of my

major criticisms is _essential_, rather than merely “technical.” I

look more to the breadth and imagination of the poet than to minute

details—though a stickler for natural melody and the lasting canons

of art. The real value of the book lies, of course, in the chapters

on some of the elder poets. You are quite right in pointing out

the impossibility of correct proportion in the details of the last

chapter. It is added to give more completeness to the work as a whole.

For the same reason, the earlier chapters on “The General Choir”

were originally introduced; but in them I knew my ground better, and

could point out with more assurance the tendencies of the various

“groups.” But I write merely to say that I am heartily satisfied

with your criticism, and grateful for it; and that I often read your

other reviews with advantage—and shall watch your career, already so

fruitful, with great interest. A man who comes down to first principles

and looks at things broadly, as you are doing, is sure in the end to be

a man of mark.

Very faithfully yours,

EDMUND C. STEDMAN.

* * * * *

One desirable result of this good fortune was a change of residence

to a higher part of the town, where the air was purer, and access to

green fields easier. To this end in the Spring of 1887 we took a little

house for three years in Goldhurst Terrace, South Hampstead. As it was

numbered 17_a_, much annoyance was caused as our letters frequently

were delivered at No. 17. A name therefore had to be found, and we

dubbed our new home _Wescam_, a name made up of the initials of my

husband, myself and our friend Mrs. Caird whose town house was within

two minutes’ walk of us. There was a sunny study for the invalid on the

ground floor, to obviate as much as possible the need of going up and

down stairs. The immediate improvement in his health from the higher

air and new conditions was so marked that we had every reason to hope

it would before many months be practically re-established.