_Medallist & Premium Holder of the Royal Academy of Arts, London._
4, Hill Side, Cotham Hill, Bristol,
_Epiphany, 1903._
_LITERATURE._
_To the Editor of_ THE BIRMINGHAM GAZETTE.
_March_, 1903.
Sir,--Touched by a virtuous sense that a noble writer has passed from
the central and celestial sphere of his vocation, and discharging the
offices of respect voluntarily admitted as a literary admirer, with
sympathy in a bruised state of liquefaction, I maintain that the
season for uttering a few words is clearly at hand, and should be
turned to the advantage of retrospect.
Being bred of a generation which has read, with a spirit attuned
to the pleasant influences of an Academic and a Saracenic art, the
writings of John Henry Shorthouse, and ever discovering them to
contain philosophic importance and pyschologic expression decidedly
above the astuteness and ability of average writers; and having
usually in them remarked wisdom, council and knowledge reminiscent
of the inspired logicial writers and divines of the law-given
Testaments; in point of enquiry, I am summarily induced to champion
the belief that the psychologic, emphatic style adopted by the writer,
with the success in high quarters attendant the disposal of his
works, has not, convincingness being the indicator, been reached, nor
surpassed. The Warwickshire alchemist invariably throws across his
scenes and to the centre, a glare, a strong ray, which burns to the
water-line the barque of Agnosticism. This is tacitly recognised,
concurrently and alternately traced in the selection of the phrases,
and in the subtle or dramatic sense of the scene photographed; the
second inspiration springing into immediate co-operation, linking to
the first the thought by a magnetised hyphen, causes his symbolistic
pictures to thrive gloriously, rapturously; the first touch of
sensitized matter at times appearing grotesque, dimly lit, although
never flimsy. This pedantic, pictorial, even scholarly system by our
revered writer adopted, is bent, applied to meet extreme passes of
imaginative perfection and delicacy. The picture is naïvely introduced
and obscurely, somewhat trenchantly elaborated, allows itself to be
apologetically understood; whilst in succession the lower taste
for animal sentiment is sorcerized by vivid flashes of captivating
contrast, forked, as lightning, and left, as embers smouldering to
glow in the crucible of memory's recesses. Specious instances of irony
playing the manliest part: flashes of meteoric, mesmeric eloquence,
fitfully flecking the embossed page, as one tier or set of ideas,
in rhetoric orchestration, symphonizes with or eclipses another.
Connection, an element of robust mesmeric cohesion with this prized
author being the adamantine hyphen, the articulating link, which
compacts the roll. John Henry Shorthouse, the templar, the confessor
of music, was, and concurrently, the apologist of philosophic light.
Engaged to a powerful mechanism of romantic dogma, the nett article of
its creed; the neochromatic acoustic regalia of stage eloquence,
the key, or longest recurrent note; the van or middle the next, the
sinuous lever of stage discipline. After all, concurrently may it
not, be said that this colour instinct aspect of cosmically conceived
romanticism is never wilfully vulgarized. For its incomparable,
iconographical purpose it exists, and is as intrinsically useful and
serviceable to the scheme as the figures which admirably illustrate
the pictures of Hogarth and Holman Hunt. When introduced, music is
rarely intended to edge itself into the important place of "first
study." This in alchemy or personification being occupied by the
circumstantial cruxes of life, philosophic morality, vested usually
in courtly attire; I would not say abstract attire, for the clean-cut
character it bears is too strictly defined (for the sake of that
Artist's art) for such an impression to be born, or even to lurk by
sentiment, there beneath.
The mould employed at all times is minutely fashioned, as a sculptor
would, by investing his model with a code of spirituality, inspired
with fire, which epicureanly endows fleeting emotion with a voice, and
vitality lends also to distant-reaching invisible ends: hinting that
the picturesque alchemy of music is potential too in reaching and
touching the lower chords of animal passion, where movement is rapid
and light redundant. The breast of the thoughtful writer heaved ever
to animal instincts without measure in extolling the complex phases
of court, ecclesiastic, and domestic oligarchy. Statesmanship and
subjunction rise and peacefully sink together, and in his magnetic
touch, are made to harmoniously coalesce in the political balance.
Shorthouse the author, a believer in, a champion was of two-fold or
dual cosmos: his colour sense being susceptible to and wrought upon in
singular consular consistence with the effulgent dogmas of its
creed, and in alliance with the spirit of the _cinque cento_ Italian
Renaissance Schools of Painting and Architecture. Practically
speaking, he conceived a train of adept ideas, at times fanciful, and
at times morbid, transforming them adroitly by adept excursions of
cross-lit introspection, accentuation, and by dint of manual caress,
as the first of players upon stringed instruments.
Music, I would apologetically infer, being the middle, the rallying
feature, of Mr. J.H. Shorthouse's verbose apology. If fictionizing in
prose, he writes with brief orange-hued flashes of liquid ether; each
of short, all but, brief span. Characteristically, he belongs to the
same school and unapproachable law as the French organist-composer,
C.M. Widor: stringent, petulant observance of free uncurbed metronome
time, allied to picturesque handling; punctuality of tidal consort
rigidly regarding, when each, the one to the other, linked; less a
care, by virtuous intuition displaying for lyric measure. The writings
of Nathaniel Hawthorne more forcibly and piquantly evince cylindrical
flow, and strike at the object lesson with less artificial, _cadavre_,
fastidious touch; but Mr. Shorthouse, speaking strictly, as to temper
and _tempo_ is a trifle more rugged; and never a shadow of suspense
suffered he to stir a hand's breadth, that is, rest 'twixt poetic
certainty and doubt, lest the ultimate end should all-attainable be
or not. For freedom from this, and other literary ambiguity, yet never
manifesting anxiety of freeing himself in prose from its insidious and
arbitrary restraint, I attribute his tragical, subtle, gentle power of
"connection," _liaison_; feeling for time; planetary time, be it lunar
time, sometimes unmistakably, solar time; disallowing, by potency of
sentimental touch, a sense of rupture, to linger. A noble stream by
mute comparison, pursuing its course unwavering; interrupted but now
and again, to the vast expansive ocean of shapeliness, of unity.