CHAPTER III

EARLY DAYS IN LONDON

The most important influence in the early literary career of the young poet was his friendship with Dante Gabriel Rossetti. He gained not only a valued friend, who introduced him to many of the well-known writers of the time, but one who helped him in the development of his art by sound, careful criticism and kindly encouragement. His first acquaintance with the writings of the painter-poet dated from the Autumn of 1879, when on his birthday Miss Adelaide Elder had sent him a volume of poems, an incident destined to have far-reaching results. In 1899 he wrote to her:

Dear Adelaide,

To quote his own words:

“By the autumn of 1880 I was within sight of that long and arduous career called the literary life. An extraordinary good fortune met me at the outset, for, through an introduction from Sir Noel Paton, I came to know, and know intimately, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, whose winsome personality fascinated me as much as his great genius impressed me. Rossetti introduced me to one who became my chief friend—the late Philip Bourke Marston; and through Rossetti also I came to know Mr. Theodore Watts, Mr. Swinburne, and others. By the spring of 1881, I was in the literary world, and in every phase of it, from the most Bohemian to the most isolated.”

On the 1st of September, 1881, William Sharp presented himself at the door of 16 Cheyne Walk. The housekeeper explained that Mr. Rossetti could receive no one. The importunate stranger persisted and stated that it was of the highest importance that he should see Mr. Rossetti and so impressed her that she not only went to report to Mr. Rossetti but came back with orders to admit him. On seeing his eager visitor, the poet-painter naturally asked him what he wanted so urgently, and his visitor answered promptly, “Only to shake hands with you before you die!” “Well,” was the answer, “I am in no immediate danger of dying, but you may shake hands if you wish.”

The introduction from Sir Noel Paton was then tendered; and thus began a friendship that grew to a deep affectionate devotion on the side of the younger man.

Rossetti took him into the studio, and showed him the paintings he had on his easels. The two which specially impressed his visitor were “La Donna della Fenestra,” and “Dante’s Dream.” In a letter written to me when I was in Italy, he describes the pictures as beautiful colour harmonies, and continues:

“After I had looked at it for a long time in happy silence, Rossetti sat behind me in the shadow and read me his translation of the poem from the Vita Nuova, which refers to Dante’s Dream. Was it not kind of him to give so much pleasure to one, a complete stranger? I also saw several other paintings of extreme beauty, but which I have no time to mention at present. He told me to come again, and shortly before I left he asked me for my address, and said that he would ask me to come some evening to talk with him, and also to meet one or two. This was altogether unexpected. Fancy having two such men for friends as Sir Noel Paton and Dante Gabriel Rossetti! I went out in a dream. The outside world was altogether idealised. I was in the golden age again. To calm myself, I went and leant over Chelsea Embankment, where there were many people as there was a regatta going on. But, though conscious of external circumstances, I was not in London. The blood of the South burned in my veins, the sky was a semi-tropical one: the river rushing past was not the Thames, but the Tiber; the granite embankment was a marble aqueduct, with vines laden with ripe fruit covering it with a fragrant veil: citrons and pomegranates were all around. Dark passionate eyes of the South met mine; the dreamy sweetness of a strange tongue sang an ineffably delicious song through and through my soul: I sank into the utmost realms of reverie, and drank a precious draught of alien life for only too brief a space. Not De Quincey in the mystic rapture of opium, not Mohammed in his vision of Paradise, drank deeper of the ineffable wine of the Supreme and Unattainable.”

It was several weeks before the much-hoped-for invitation came, and the recipient was feeling so ill that he was hardly in a condition to take full advantage of it, and feared he had made a bad impression on his host. The following morning he wrote:

19 Albert St., Regent’s Park N.W.,

31: 1: 80.

My dear Sir,

Yours most faithfully,

William Sharp.

On the 23d of February he wrote to Mrs. Caird:

Dear Mona.

Your friend and comrade,

Will.

He submitted several poems to Rossetti who had suggested that if he had a suitable sonnet it might be included in Hall Caine’s Century of Sonnets. Rossetti’s acknowledgment contained an adverse criticism on the Sonnet sent, softened by an invitation to the younger man to go again to see him.

Saturday.

Dear Mr. Rossetti,

Yours ever sincerely,

William Sharp.

Eventually the Sonnets were written that satisfied his critic and were included in Hall Caine’s Anthology.

About this time also he was attempting a poem relating to an imaginary episode in the early life of Christ. To me it seemed a mistake, and I urged him to consult Mr. Rossetti, who replied as follows:

Thursday, Jan., 1880.

My dear Sharp,

I am quite unable to advise you on so abstruse a point. Strange to say, I can conceive no higher Ideal than the Christ we know; and I judge it to be very rash to lower in poetry (to the apprehension of many beautiful minds) that Ideal, by any assumption to decide a point respecting it which it is not possible to decide, whichever way belief or even conviction may tend.

I did not gather fully the relation of the Wandering Jew to your poem. If the very Jew in question, how is he to know of the development of humanity before his time? That he is a symbol of course I understand; but the balance between person and symbol should be clearly determined. I hope you may enjoy yourself in such good company, and am ever,

Sincerely yours,

D. G. Rossetti.

Sir Noel Paton had given his younger countryman an introduction also to his old friend Mrs. Craik (author of John Halifax) who, it happened, was P. B. Marston’s godmother. She had a house in Kent, at Shortlands, and to it she on several occasions invited the two young poets. During one of these days, in the late summer, they went for a drive through the green lanes, when suddenly there came on a thunderstorm. The carriage was shut up, but there was no way of protecting the occupant of the box seat. So that Philip should come to no harm the younger man took the box seat and got thoroughly wet. On reaching the house he refused many suggestions to have his clothes dried, and went back to town that evening in his damp garments. A violent cold ensued, which he was unable to throw off. He was out of health, ill-nourished, owing to his slender means, and overworked. That summer my mother had taken a cottage in South Wales, on the estuary near Portmadoc, and my cousin came to spend his holidays with us. A weary delicate creature arrived, but he was sure that a bathe or two in the salt water would soon cure him. Alas, instead of that within a few days he was laid low with rheumatic fever, and for four weeks my mother and I nursed him and it was the end of September before he could go back to town. That autumn my mother let her house for six months and decided to winter in Italy with her daughters. Although there was much that was alluring in the prospect I was very greatly worried at leaving London, for my poet was so weak and delicate, and I distrusted his notions of taking care of himself. On the 13th December he wrote to me:

Monday, 13: 12: 80.

“I spent such a pleasant evening on Saturday. I went round to Francillon’s house about 8 o’clock, and spent about an hour there with him and Julian Hawthorne. Then we walked down to Covent Garden, and joined the ‘Oasis’ Club—where we met about 30 or so other literary men and artists, including the D. Christie Murray I so much wished to meet, and whom I like very much. We spent a very pleasant while a decidedly ‘Bohemian’ night, and after we broke up I walked home with Francillon, Julian Hawthorne, and Murray. Hawthorne and myself are to be admitted members at the next meeting.”

He has described his friendship with the blind poet in his Introduction to a Selection of Marston’s poems published in the Canterbury Series:

“I was spending an evening with Rossetti, when I chanced to make some reference to Marston’s poetry. Finding that I did not know the blind poet and that I was anxious to meet him, Rossetti promised to bring us together. I remember that I was fascinated by him at once—his manner, his personality, his conversation. ‘There is a kind of compensation,’ he remarked to me once, ‘in the way that new friendships arise to brighten my life as soon as I am bowled over by some great loss.’”

Just before Christmas, William wrote:

Dear Mr. Rossetti,

His kindly critic answered:

Jan., 1881.

My dear Sharp,

Yours sincerely,

D. G. Rossetti.

A letter from the younger poet, written a few days later, reached me in Rome:

24: 1: 81.

“Well, last Friday was a ‘red-letter’ day to me. I went to Rossetti’s at six, dined about 7.30, and stayed there all night. We had a jolly talk before dinner, and then Shields the painter came in and stayed till about 11 o’clock: after that Rossetti read me all his unpublished poems, some of which are magnificent—talked, etc.—and we did not go to bed till about three in the morning. I did not go to the Bank next day, as I did not feel well: however, I wrote hard at poetry, etc., all day till seven o’clock, managing to keep myself up with tea. I was quite taken aback by the extent of Rossetti’s praise. He said he did not say much in his letter because writing so often looks ‘gushing’ but he considered I was able to take a foremost place among the younger poets of the day—and that many signs in my writings pointed to a first-class poet—that the opening of ‘The Dead Bridegroom’ was worthy of Keats—that ‘Motherhood’ was in every sense of the word a memorable poem—that I must have great productive power, and broad and fine imagination—and many other things which made me very glad and proud.”

“The Dead Bridegroom” was never published, but in a letter to a friend who raised objections to the treatment of the poem “Motherhood”—he wrote in explanation:

To E. A. S.:

“4: 2: 81.

“I have written one of my best poems (in its own way) since writing you last. It was on Tuesday night: I did not get back till about seven o’clock, and began at once to write. Your letter came an hour or so afterward but it had to lie waiting till after midnight, when I finished, having written and polished a complete poem of thirty verses in that short time. It is a ballad. The story itself is a very tragic one. Perhaps the kind of verse would be clear to you if I were to quote a verse as a specimen:

“And I saw thy face wax flush’d, then pale,
And thy lips grow blue like black-ice hail,
With eyes on fire with the soul’s fierce bale,

Son of Allan!

“I may have been pale, and may be red—
But this night shall one lie white and dead.

(O Mother of God! whose eyes

Watch men lie dead ’neath midnight skies.)”

In Italy I was making a careful study of the old masters in painting, and found that my correspondent took but lukewarm interest in my enthusiasm. Until that date he had had little opportunity of studying Painting; and at no time did the cinquecento and earlier painters really attract him. I regretted his indifference, and asked him, banteringly, if his dislike extended equally to the early masters of the pen and to those of the brush.

He replied: “You ask me, if I dislike the Old Masters of Poetry as much as I do those of Painting? and I reply Certainly not, but at the same time the comparison is not fair. Most of the old poets are not only poets of their time but have special beauties at the present day, and can be read with as much or almost as much pleasure now as centuries ago. Their imagination, their scope, their detail is endless. On the other hand the Old Masters of Painting are (to me, of course, and speaking generally) utterly uninteresting in their subjects, in the way they treat them, and in the meaning that is conveyed. If it were not for the richness and beauty of their colour I would never go into another gallery from pleasure, but colour alone could not always satisfy me. But take the ‘Old Masters’ of Poetry! Homer of Greece, Virgil and Dante of Italy, Theocritus of Sicily, and in England Chaucer, Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Webster, Ford, Massinger, Marlowe, Milton!

“The poetry of these men is beautiful in itself apart from the relation they bear to their times. We may not care for Dryden (though I do) or Prior or Cowley, because in the verse of these latter there is nothing to withstand the ages, nothing that rises above their times. In looking at Rubens, or Leonardo da Vinci, or Fra Angelico, we must school ourselves to admiration by saying ‘How wonderful for their time, what a near attempt at a perspective, what a near success in drawing nature—external and human!’ Would you, or any one, care for a painting of Angelico’s if executed in exactly the same style and in equally soft and harmonious colours at the present day? Could you enjoy and enter into it apart from its relation to such-and-such a period of early Christian Art? It may be possible, but I doubt it. On the other hand take up the Old Masters of Poetry and judge them by the present high standard. Take up Homer—who has his width and space? Dante—who has his fiery repressed intensity? Theocritus, who has sung sweeter of meadows and summer suns and flowers? Chaucer—who is as delicious now as in the latter part of the fourteenth century! Shakespeare—who was, is, and ever shall be the supreme crowned lord of verse!—Take up one of the comparatively speaking minor lights of the Elizabethan era. Does Jonson with his ‘Every Man in his Humour,’ or his ‘Alchemist,’ does Webster with his ‘Duchess of Malfi,’ does Ford with his ‘Lover’s Melancholy,’ does Massinger, with his ‘Virgin Martyr,’ do Beaumont and Fletcher with their ‘Maid’s Tragedy,’ does Marlowe with his ‘Life and Death of Dr. Faustus,’ pall upon us? Have we ever to keep before us the fact that they lived so many generations or centuries ago?

“I never tire of that wonderful, tremendous, magnificent epoch in literature—the age of the Elizabethan dramatists.

“Despite the frequent beauty of much that followed I think the genius of Poetry was of an altogether inferior power and order (excepting Milton) until once again it flowered forth anew in Byron, in Coleridge, in Keats, and in Shelley! These two last names, what do they not mean! Since then, after a slight lapse, Poetry has soared to serener heights again, and Goethe, Victor Hugo, Tennyson, and Browning have moulded new generations, and men like Rossetti, Swinburne, Morris, Marston, Longfellow, and others have helped to make still more exquisitely fair the Temple of Human Imagination. Men like Joaquin Miller and Whitman are the south and north winds that soothe or stir the leaves of thought surrounding it.

“We are on the verge of another great dramatic epoch—more subtle and spiritual if not grander in dimensions than that of the sixteenth century. I hope to God I live to see the sunrise which must follow the wayward lights of the present troubled dawn....

“On Monday evening (from eight till two) I go again as usual to Marston’s. I called at his door on my way here this afternoon and left a huge bouquet of wallflowers, with a large yellow heart of daffodils, to cheer him up. He is passionately fond of flowers....”

That winter, despite his continued delicacy, was full of interest to William, who had always a rare capacity for throwing himself into the enjoyment of the moment, whatever it might be, or into the interests of others and dismissing from his mind all personal worries. No matter how depressed he might be, when with friends he could shake himself free from the thraldom of the black clouds and let his natural buoyant spirit have full play. His genial sunny manner, his instinctive belief in and reliance on an equal geniality in others assured him many a welcome.

Among the literary houses open to him were those of Mr. and Mrs. William Rossetti, Miss Christina Rossetti, Mr. and Mrs. William Bell Scott, Mr. and Mrs. Francillon, Mr. Robert Browning, and Mr. Theodore Watts. Mr. and Mrs. George Robinson, whose daughter, Mary, distinguished herself among the poets of her generation, were especially good to him. Among artists whose studios he frequented were Mr. Ford Madox Brown, Mr. William Morris and Mr. Holman Hunt, and Sir Frederick Leighton; and among his intimate friends he counted Mathilde Blind, the poet, Louise Bevington, Mrs. Louise Chandler Moulton, Belford Bax and others.

There was a reverse side to the picture however. His desire and effort not to identify himself—in his original work, with any set of writers, or phase of literary expression, tended to make him of no account in the consideration of some of his fellow writers. His was a slow development, and while he gained greatly in the technical knowledge of his art through the wise and careful advice of Rossetti, the sensitive taste of Philip Marston, the more severe criticism of Theodore Watts, he felt he had a definite thing to say, a definite word of his own to express sooner or later. It was long before this finally shaped its utterance, and in the interval he experimented in many directions, studied various methods—and of course to make a livelihood wrote many “pot-boilers”—always hoping that he would ultimately “find himself.” Unquestionably, with his nature—which vibrated so sensitively to everything that was beautiful in nature and life, and had in it so much of exuberance, of optimism—the severe grind for the bare necessities of life, the equally severe criticism that met his early efforts, proved an invaluable-schooling to him. The immediate result, however, was that his “other self,” the dreaming psychic self, slept for a time, or at any rate was in abeyance. “William Sharp” gradually dominated, and before long he was accepted generally as literary critic and later as art critic also. So complete, apparently, for a time, was this divorce between the two radical strains in him, that only a few of his intimates suspected the existence of the sensitive, delicate, feminine side of him that he buried carefully out of sight, and as far as possible out of touch with the current of his literary life in London where at no time did the “Fiona Macleod” side of his nature gain help or inspiration.

Just as of old, when in Glasgow, he had wandered in the city and beyond it, and made acquaintances with all sorts and conditions of men and women, so, too, did he now wander about London, especially about the neighbourhood of “The Pool” which offered irresistible attractions and experiences to him. These he touched on later in “Madge o’ the Pool” and elsewhere. I remember he told me that rarely a day passed in which he did not try to imagine himself living the life of a woman, to see through her eyes, and feel and view life from her standpoint, and so vividly that “sometimes I forget I am not the woman I am trying to imagine.” The following description of him, at this date, is taken from a letter quoted in Mrs. Janvier’s article on “Fiona Macleod and her Creator” in The North American Review.

“You ask about our acquaintance with Willie Sharp. Yes, we knew him well in the days when we all were gay and young.... He was a very nice-looking amiable young fellow whom every one liked, very earnest with great notions of his own mission as regards Poetry, which he took very seriously. He used to have the saving grace of fun—which kept him sweet and wholesome—otherwise he might have fallen into the morbid set.”

Unfortunately, I have very few letters or notes that illustrate the light gay side of his nature—boyish, whimsical, mischievous, with rapid changes of mood. Others saw more of it at this period than I; for to me he came for sympathy in his work and difficulties; to others he went for gaiety and diversion, and to them he made light of his constant delicacy; so that the more serious side of his life was usually presented to me—and naturally our most unpromising prospects and our long engagement were not matters to inspirit either of us.

At the end of August in that year his connection with the Bank of the City of Melbourne ceased. That his services were scarcely valuable to his employers may be gathered from the manner and reason of his dismissal. He has himself told the story:

“I did not take very kindly to the business, and my employers saw it. One day I was invited to interview the Principal. He put it very diplomatically, said he didn’t think the post suited me (I agreed), and finally he offered me the option of accepting an agency in some out-of-the-way place in Australia, or quitting the London service. ‘Think it over,’ he said, ‘and give us your answer to-morrow.’ I think I might have given him my answer there and then. Next morning the beauty of the early summer made an irresistible appeal to me. I had not heard the cuckoo that season, so I resolved to forget business for the day, seek the country, and hear the cuckoo; and I had a very happy time, free from everybody, care, and worry. Next day I was called in to see the Principal. ‘I should have sent word—busy mail day,’ he said. ‘Was I ill?’ he asked. ‘No,’ I replied, and explained the true cause of my absence. ‘That’s scarcely business,’ he said. ‘We can’t do with one who puts the call of the cuckoo before his work.’ However, his offer still held. What was I to do? I left the bank.”

During the intervening months efforts to find other work resulted through the kindness of Mr. George Lillie Craik in a temporary post held for six months in the Fine Art Society’s Gallery in Bond Street. It was the proposal of the Directors to form a section dealing with old German and English Engravings and Etchings, and that William should be put in charge of it; and that meanwhile, during the six months, he should make a special study of the subject, learn certain business details to make him more efficient. The work and the prospect were a delightful change after the distasteful grind at the Bank, and he threw himself into the necessary studies with keen relish.

In the autumn he spent two months in Scotland, visiting his mother, and other relatives, Mr. W. Bell Scott, and his old friend Sir Noel Paton.

From Lanarkshire he wrote in September to me and to Rossetti.

To E. A. S.:

Lesmahagow, Sept., 1881.

... Yesterday I spent some hours in a delicious ramble over the moors and across a river toward a distant fir wood, where I lay down for a time, beside the whispering waters, seeing nothing but a semicircle of pines, a wall of purple moorland, the brown water gurgling and splashing and slowly moving over the mossy stones, and above a deep cloudless blue sky—and hearing nothing but the hum of a dragonfly, the summery sound of innumerable heather-bees, and the occasional distant bleat of a sheep or sudden call of a grouse. I lay there in a kind of trance of enjoyment—half painful from intensity. I drank in not only the beauty of what I have just described, but also every little and minute thing that crossed my vision—a cluster of fir-needles hanging steel-blue against the deeper colour of the sky, a wood-dove swaying on a pine-bough like a soft gray and purple blossom, a white butterfly clinging to a yellow blossom heavy with honey, a ray of sunlight upon a bunch of mountain-ash berries making their scarlet glow with that almost terrible red which is as the blood of God in the sunsets one sometimes sees, a dragonfly poised like a flame arrested in its course, a little beetle stretching its sharded wings upon a gray stone, a tiny blue morsel of a floweret between two blades of grass looking up with, I am certain, a sense of ecstatic happiness to the similar skies above—all these and much more I drank in with mingled pain and rejoicing. At such times I seem to become a part of nature—the birds seem when they sing to say things in a no longer unfamiliar speech—nor do they seem too shy to approach quite close to me. Even bees and wasps I do not brush away when they light upon my hands or face, and they never sting me, for I think they know that I would not harm them. I feel at these rare and inexpressibly happy times as a flower must feel after morning dew when the sun comes forth in his power, as a pine tree when a rising wind makes its boughs quiver with melodious pain, as a wild wood-bird before it begins to sing, its heart being too full for music.... O why weren’t you there?

10th Sept., 1881.

My dear Rossetti,

BILL OF FARE

A wee drappie Talisher.
——
Callipee Broth.————Hotch Potch.
——
Saumon à la Pottit Heed.——Pomphlet à la Newhaven.
——
Anither Drappie.
——
Mince Collops.————Doo Tairt.
——
Haggis.
——
An Eek.
——
Stuffed Bubbly Jocks an Hawm.
Gigot of Mutton wi’ red curran jeelie.
Sheep’s Heed an’ Trotters.
——
Tatties Biled & Champit.
Bashed Neeps.
Jist a wee Donal’.
——
Glesky Magistrates.————Sma’ peas.
——
Grozet Pies.————Aiple Dumplins.
——
Ice Puddin wi’ cookies.
——
A Guid Dram to keep a’ doon.

When I have a house of my own I shall give such a dinner some day, and the Sassenach hearts present shall admit there is no dinner like a Scotch one and no whiskey like the heavenly Celtic brew.

And now, au revoir,

Ever yours affectionately,

William Sharp.

---

CHAPTER IV

THE DEATH OF ROSSETTI

The Directors of The Fine Art Society decided finally not to organise the special department of Engravings of which William Sharp hoped to take charge, therefore his engagement fell through and he was thrown on his own resources. The outlook was very serious, for he was still practically unknown to editors and publishers; and during the following two years he had a hard fight with circumstances. No post of any kind turned up for him and he had to depend solely on his pen, and for many months was practically penniless; and many a time the only food he could afford, after a meagre breakfast, was hot chestnuts bought from men in the street.

I do not care to dwell on those days; I could do so little to help, and by common consent we hid the true condition of things from his mother and mine. Nevertheless we firmly believed in his “future”; that with persistence and patience—and endurance—he would “gain a footing”; that circumstances were pushing him into the one career suited to him, even if the method seemed too drastic at times.

ill058

He had already succeeded in having a poem accepted occasionally by one or two Magazines and Weeklies. In 1879 Good Words published a poem entitled “Night,” and in 1880 two Sonnets on Schubert’s “Am Meer.” The Examiner printed some Sonnets and a poem of fifteen lines. In 1881 he contributed a long poem on Victor Hugo to Modern Thought, and in February of 1882 his Sonnet “Spring Wind” was accepted by the Athenæum and it was afterward included in Hall Caine’s Century of Sonnets. Early the following year he spent a delightful week-end with Rossetti, at Birchington, whence he wrote to me:

Feb. 13, 1882.

“Just a line to tell you I am supremely content. Beautiful sea views, steep ‘cavey’ cliffs, a delicious luxurious house, and nice company. By a curious mistake I got out at the wrong place on Sunday, and had a long walk with my bag along the cliffs till I arrived rather tired and hot at my destination. I was surprised not to find Hall Caine there, but it appeared he clearly understood I was to get out at a different station altogether. I was also delayed in arriving, as I asked a countryman my direction and he told me to go to the left—but from the shape of the coast I argued that the right must be the proper way—I went to the right in consequence, and nearly succeeded in going over a cliff’s edge, while my theory was decidedly vanquished by facts. However the walk repaid it. Oh, the larks yesterday! It was as warm as June, and Rossetti and Caine and myself went out and lay in the grass (at least I did) basking in the sun, looking down on the gleaming sea, and hearing these heavenly incarnate little joys sending thrills of sweetness, and vague pain through all my being. I seemed all a-quiver with the delight of it all. And the smell of the wrack! and the cries of the sea-birds! and the delicious wash of the incoming tide! Oh, dear me, I shall hate to go back to-morrow. Caine is writing a sonnet in your book, Watts is writing a review for the Athenæum, Rossetti is about to go on with painting his Joan of Arc, and I am writing the last lines of this note to you.”

Little did he dream as he shook hands with his host on the Monday morning that he was bidding a last farewell to his good friend.

Of that visit he wrote later:

“Of my most cherished memories is a night at Birchington-on-Sea, in March, 1882. It had been a lovely day. Rossetti asked me to go out with him for a stroll on the cliff; and though he leaned heavily and dragged his limbs wearily as if in pain, he grew more cheerful as the sunlight warmed him. The sky was a cloudless blue and the singing of at least a score of larks was wonderful to listen to. Everywhere Spring odours prevailed, with an added pungency from the sea-wrack below. Beyond, the sea reached far to horizons of purple shaded azure. At first I thought Rossetti was indifferent: but this mood gave way. He let go my arm and stood staring seaward silently, then, still in a low tired voice, but with a new tone in it he murmured, ‘It is beautiful—the world and life itself. I am glad I have lived.’ Insensibly thereafter the dejection lifted from off his spirit, and for the rest of that day and that evening he was noticeably less despondent.

“The previous evening Christina Rossetti and myself were seated in the semi-twilight in the low-roofed sitting room. She had been reading to him but he had grown weary and somewhat fretful. Not wishing to disturb him, Miss Rossetti made a sign to me to come over to the window and there drew my attention to a quiet hued but very beautiful sunset. While we were enjoying it Rossetti, having overheard an exclamation of almost rapturous delight from Christina, rose from his great armchair before the fire and walked feebly to the window. He stared blankly upon the dove-tones and pale amethyst of the sky. I saw him glance curiously at his sister, and then again long and earnestly. But at last with a voice full of chagrin he turned away pettishly saying he could not see what it was we admired so much. ‘It is all gray and gloom,’ he added; nor would he hear a word to the contrary, so ignorant was he of the havoc wrought upon his optic nerve by the chloral poison which did so much to shorten his life.... ‘Poor Gabriel,’ Miss Rossetti said, ‘I wish he could have at least one hopeful hour again.’ It was with pleasure therefore next day she heard of what he had said upon the cliff, and how he had brightened. The evening that followed was a happy one, for, as already mentioned Rossetti grew so cheerful, relatively, that it seemed as though the shadow of death had lifted. What makes it doubly memorable to me is that when I opened the door for Miss Rossetti when she bade me good-night, she turned, took my hand again, and said in a whisper, ‘I am so glad about Gabriel, and grateful.’”

To E. A. S.:

11: 4: 82.

“...After spending a very pleasant day at Haileybury with Farquharson [E. A. Sharp’s brother] we arrived late in London, and while glancing over an evening paper my eye suddenly caught a paragraph which made my heart almost stop. I could not bring myself to read it for a long time, though I knew it simply rechronicled the heading—“Sudden Death of Mr. Dante Gabriel Rossetti.” He died on Sunday night at Birchington. I cannot tell you what a grief this is to me. He has ever been to me a true friend, affectionate and generous—and to him I owe more perhaps than to any one after yourself. Apart from my deep regret at the loss of one whom I so loved, I have also the natural regret at what the loss of his living friendship means. I feel as if a sudden tower of strength on which I had greatly relied had given way: for not only would Rossetti’s house have been my own as long as and whenever I needed, but it was his influence while alive that I so much looked to. Comparatively little known to the public, his name has always been a power and recommendation in itself amongst men of letters and artists and those who have to do with both professions. When I recall all that Rossetti has been to me—the pleasure he has given me—the encouragement, the fellowship—I feel very bitter at heart to think I shall never see again the kindly gray eyes and the massive head of the great poet and artist. He has gone to his rest. It were selfish to wish otherwise considering all things....

If I take flowers down, part of the wreath shall be from you. He would have liked it himself, for he knew you through me, and he knew I am happier in this than most men perhaps.”

To E. A. S.:

April 13, 1882.

“ ... I have just returned (between twelve and one at night) tired and worn out with some necessary things in connection with Rossetti, taking me first to Chelsea, then away in the opposite direction to Euston Road. As I go down to Birchington by an early train, besides having much correspondence to get through after breakfast, I can only write a very short letter. I have felt the loss of my dear and great friend more and more. He had weaknesses and frailties within the last six or eight months owing to his illness, but to myself he was ever patient and true and affectionate. A grand heart and soul, a true friend, a great artist, a great poet, I shall not meet with such another. He loved me, I know—and believed and hoped great things of me, and within the last few days I have learned how generously and how urgently he impressed this upon others. God knows I do not grudge him his long-looked-for rest, yet I can hardly imagine London without him. I cannot realise it, and yet I know that I shall never again see the face lighten up when I come near, never again hear the voice whose mysterious fascination was like a spell. What fools are those vain men who talk of death: blinded, and full of the dust of corruption. As God lives, the soul dies not. What though the grave be silent, and the darkness of the Shadow become not peopled—to those eyes that can see there is light, light, light—to those ears that can hear the tumult of the disenfranchised, rejoicing. I am borne down not with the sense of annihilation, but with the vastness of life and the imminence of things spiritual. I know from something beyond and out of myself that we are now but dying to live, that there is no death, which is but as a child’s dream in a weary night.

I am very tired. You will forgive more, my dearest friend.”

To Mr. W. M. Rossetti:

13 Thorngate Road,

Sutherland Gardens, W.,

15th April, 1883.

Dear Mr. Rossetti,

As your wife kindly expressed a wish that I would send you a copy of the sonnet I left in your brother’s coffin along with the flowers, I now do so. It must be judged not as a literary production, but as last words straight from the heart of one who loved and revered your brother.

Yours very sincerely,

William Sharp.

To Dante Gabriel Rossetti
AVE! MORS NON EST!

True heart, great spirit, who hast sojourn’d here
Till now the darkness rounds thee, and Death’s sea
Hath surged and ebbed and carried suddenly

Thy Soul far hence, as from a stony, drear,

And weary coast the tide the wrack doth shear;
Thou art gone hence, and though our sight may be
Strained with a yearning gaze, the mystery

Is mystic still to us: to thee, how clear!

O loved great friend, at last the balm of sleep
Hath soothed thee into silence: it is well
After life’s long unrest to draw the breath

No more on earth, but in a slumber deep,
Or joyous hence afar, the miracle
Await when dies at last imperious Death.

W. S.

Keenly desirous of offering some tribute to the memory of Rossetti, whose friendship had meant so much to him during the years of struggle in London, William Sharp eagerly accepted a proposal from Messrs. Macmillan that he should write a biographical Record and appreciation of the painter-poet, to be produced within the year. It was begun in June, it was his first lengthy attempt in prose and attempted with little knowledge of the art of writing; but it was written “red hot,” as he used to say, inspired by deep affection and profound admiration for his friend. He spared no pains to make his story as accurate as practicable, and visited the chief owners of the pictures, photographs of which Rossetti had given him. Several of the later paintings he had seen and discussed many times in Rossetti’s studio.

The book divides itself naturally into two parts representing the man in his dual capacity as painter and as poet, and the author selected as frontispiece Rossetti’s most characteristic and symbolic design for his sonnet on the sonnet.

In his Diary of 1890 the author refers to “my first serious effort in prose, my honest and enthusiastic, and indeed serviceable, but badly written ‘Life of Rossetti.’” And he tells that the first two thirds were written at Clynder on the Gareloch (Argyll), “in a little cottage where I stayed with my mother and sisters eight years ago”; and the rest was written in London, and published in December.

“I remember that the book was finished one December day, and so great was the pressure I was under, that, at the end, I wrote practically without a break for thirty-six hours: i. e., I began immediately after an early breakfast, wrote all day except half an hour for dinner, and all evening with less than ten minutes for a slight meal of tea and toast, and right through the night. About 4 or 5 a.m. my fire went out, though I did not feel chilled till my landlady came with my breakfast. By this time I was too excited to be tired, and had moreover to finish the book that day. I was only a few minutes over breakfast, which I snatched during perusal of some notes, and then buckled to again. I wrote all day, eating nothing. When about 7 p.m. I came to ‘finis,’ I threw down the pen from my chilled and cramped fingers: walked or rather staggered into the adjoining bedroom, but was asleep before I could undress beyond removal of my coat and waistcoat. (What hundreds of times I have been saved weariness and bad headaches, how often I have been preserved from collapse of a more serious kind, by my rare faculty of being able to sleep at will at any time, however busy, and for even the briefest intervals—ten minutes or less.)

“For three weeks before this I had been overworking and I was quite exhausted, partly from want of sufficient nourishment. It was the saving of my brain, therefore, that I slept fourteen hours without a break, and after a few hours of tired and dazed wakefulness again fell into a prolonged slumber, from which I awoke fresh and vigorous in mind and body.”

The most interesting letter which he received during the interval of the writing was one from Robert Browning, in answer to an inquiry concerning a letter written years earlier by Rossetti to Browning, to know if the author of Paracelsus was also the author of Pauline. Rossetti once told William Sharp that it was “on the forenoon of the day when the Burden of Nineveh was begun, conceived rather,” that he read this story (at the British Museum) “of a soul by the soul’s ablest historian.” So delighted was Rossetti with it, and so strong his opinion that Pauline was by Browning, that he wrote to that poet, then in Florence, for confirmation. Mr. Browning, in his reply—which I quote from my husband’s monograph on Browning—gave the following particulars of the incident:

St. Pierre de Chartreuse,

Aug. 22, 1882.

Dear Mr. Sharp,

Rossetti’s Pauline letter concerning which you inquire was addressed to me at Florence, more than thirty years ago: I must have preserved it, but, even were I at home, should be unable to find it without troublesome searching. It was to the effect that the writer, personally and altogether unknown to me, had come upon a poem in the British Museum, which he copied the whole of, from its being not otherwise procurable, that he judged it to be mine, but could not be sure, and wished me to pronounce on the matter—which I did. A year or two after, I had a visit in London from Mr. Allingham and a friend—who proved to be Rossetti: when I heard he was a painter I insisted on calling on him, though he declared he had nothing to show me—which was far enough from the case. Subsequently on another of my returns to London, he painted my portrait: not, I fancy, in oils but water colours—and finished it in Paris shortly after: this must have been in the year when Tennyson published “Maud,” unless I mistake: for I remember Tennyson reading the poem one evening, while Rossetti made a rapid pen-and-ink sketch of him, very good, from an unobserved corner of vantage—which I still possess and duly value. This was before Rossetti’s marriage.

I hope that these particulars may answer your purpose; and beg you to believe me, dear Mr. Sharp,

Yours very truly,

Robert Browning.

The young biographer wrote to every one who he thought might possess drawings or paintings by Rossetti—and among others he applied to Tennyson. The Poet Laureate replied:

Aldworth, Haslemere,

Oct. 12, 1882.

Dear Sir,

I am,

Faithfully yours,

A. Tennyson.

The book met with immediate success; it was recognised that the work was “one of no ordinary difficulty,” that the author “brought fairness and critical acumen to his task,” “truest enthusiasm and perseverance that nothing can daunt; that by reason of his friendship he had unusual insight into the history and work of Rossetti,” and “a critic of Art and a writer of poems he is thus further to be respected in what he has to say.” Only three letters are in my possession of the many he received from friends of his own, or of the dead poet; two are from Walter Pater with whom he had recently become acquainted: and the other from Christina Rossetti:

30 Torrington Square.

Dear Mr. Sharp,

Thank you with warm thanks from my Mother and myself for your precious gift. She has already and with true pleasure perused Chapter I. I have but glanced here and there as yet but with an appetite for the feast to come. I shall be both fortunate and unfortunate if I find occasion for the marginal notes you want—fortunate if even thus I can be of use: but I will rather wish myself a very narrow field for strictures. Allow me to congratulate you on the binding of the well-known monogram and crest—a pretty point which catches and gratifies the eye at a first glance. I figure so amiably in connection with your frontispiece that I may reasonably regret having brought nothing to the transaction (in reality) beyond good will.

Very truly yours,

Christina G. Rossetti.

This letter was received while the book was in preparation:

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.’”

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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,

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.

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