CHAPTER VIII

ROMANTIC BALLADS

The Children of To-morrow

The three years spent at Wescam were happy years, full of work and interest. Slowly but steadily as health was re-established, the command over work increased, and all work was planned with the hope that before very long William should be able to devote himself to the form of imaginative work that he knew was germinating in his mind. Meanwhile he had much in hand. Critical work for many of the weeklies, a volume of poems in preparation, and a monograph on Heine, were the immediate preoccupations.

Romantic Ballads and Poems of Phantasy was published in the spring (Walter Scott). The poems had been written at different times during the previous five or six years. “The Son of Allan” had met with the approval of Rossetti, whose influence was commented upon by certain of the critics. The book was well received both in England and America. The Boston Literary World considered that in such poems as “The Isle of Lost Dreams,” “Twin Souls,” and “The Death Child” “a conjuring imagination rises to extraordinary beauty of conception.” These three poems are undoubtedly forerunners of the work of the “Fiona Macleod” period. In the Preface the writer stated his conviction that “a Romantic Revival is imminent in our poetic literature, a true awakening of genuinely romantic sentiment. The most recent phase thereof,” however, “that mainly due to Rossetti, has not fulfilled the hopes of those who saw in it the prelude to a new great poetic period. It has been too literary, inherently, but more particularly in expression.... Spontaneity it has lacked supremely.... It would seem as if it had already become mythical that the supreme merit of a poem is not perfection of art, but the quality of the imagination which is the source of such real or approximate perfection.... In a sense, there is neither Youth nor Age in Romance, it is the quintessence of the most vivid emotions of life.” And further on he voices the very personal belief “Happy is he who, in this day of spiritual paralysis, can still shut his eyes for a while and dream.”

Concerning the idea of fatality that underlies the opening ballad “The Weird of Michel Scott”—“meant as a lyrical tragedy, a tragedy of a soul that finds the face of disastrous fate set against it whithersoever it turn in the closing moments of mortal life,” he wrote to a friend, “What has always impressed me deeply—how deeply I can scarcely say—is the blind despotism of fate. It is manifested in Æschylus, in Isaiah and in the old Hebrew Prophets, in all literature, in all history and in life. This blind, terrible, indifferent Fate, this tyrant Chance, stays or spares, mutilates or rewards, annihilates or passes by without heed, without thought, with absolute blankness of purpose, aim, or passion....

“I am tortured by the passionate desire to create beauty, to sing something of ‘the impossible songs’ I have heard, to utter something of the rhythm of life that has most touched me. The next volume of romantic poems will be daringly of the moment, vital with the life and passion of to-day (I speak hopefully, not with arrogant assurance, of course), yet not a whit less romantic than ‘The Weird of Michel Scott’ or ‘The Death Child.’”

Many encouraging and appreciative letters reached him from friends known and unknown.

In Mr. William Allingham’s opinion “Michel Scott clothing his own Soul with Hell-fire is tremendous!”

Professor Edward Dowden was not wholly in accord with the poet’s views, as expressed in the Introduction:

Rathmines, Dublin,

July 10, 1888.

My dear Sharp,

It gave me great pleasure to get your new volume from yourself. I think that a special gift of yours, and one not often possessed, appears in this volume of romance and phantasy. I don’t find it possible to particularise one poem as showing its presence more than another, for the unity of the volume comes from its presence. And I rejoice at anything which tends to make this last quarter of the century other than what I feared it would be—a period of collecting and arranging facts, with perhaps such generalisations as specialists can make. (Not that this is not valuable work, but if it is the sole employment of a generation what an ill time for the imagination and the emotions!) At the same time I don’t think I should make any demand, if I could, for Romance. I should not put forth any manifesto in its favour, for this reason—that the leaders of a movement of phantasy and romance will have such a sorry following. The leaders of a school which overvalued form and technique may have been smaller men than the leaders of a romantic school, yet still their followers were learning something; but while the chiefs of the romantic and phantastic movement will be men of genius, what a lamentable crowd the disciples will be, who will try to be phantastic prepense. We shall have the horrors of the spasmodic school revived without that element of a high, vague, spiritual intention which gave some nobility—or pseudo-nobility—to the disciples of the spasmodists. We shall have every kind of extravagance and folly posing as poetry.

The way to control or check this is for the men who have a gift for romance to use that gift—which you have done—and to prove that phantasy is not incoherence but has its own laws. And they ought to discourage any and every one from attempting romance who has not a genius for romance.

Sincerely yours,

E. Dowden.

Meanwhile, the author of the ballads was at work preparing two volumes for the Canterbury Series—a volume of selected Odes, and one of American Sonnets, to which he contributed prefaces—and writing critical articles for the Academy, Athenæum, Literary World, etc. Various important books were published that spring, and among those which came into his hands to write about were Underwoods by R. L. Stevenson, In Hospital by W. Henley; and from these writers respectively he received letters of comment. I am unable to remember what was the occasion of the first of the R. L. Stevenson notes, what nature of request it was that annoyed the older writer. Neither of his letters is dated, but from the context each obviously belongs to 1888.

Dear Mr. Sharp,

Yes, I was annoyed with you, but let us bury that; you have shown so much good nature under my refusal that I have blotted out the record.

And to show I have repented of my wrath: is your article written? If not, you might like to see early sheets of my volume of verse, not very good, but still—and the Scotch ones would amuse you I believe. And you might like also to see the plays I have written with Mr. Henley: let me know, and you shall have them as soon as I can manage.

Yours very truly,

Robert Louis Stevenson.

The notice I had seen already, and was pleased with.

After the appearance of the review of Underwoods, R. L. S. wrote again:

Dear Mr. Sharp,

What is the townsman’s blunder?—though I deny I am a townsman, for I have lived, on the whole, as much or more in the country: well, perhaps not so much. Is it that the thrush does not sing at night? That is possible. I only know most potently the blackbird (his cousin) does: many and many a late evening in the garden of that poem have I listened to one that was our faithful visitor; and the sweetest song I ever heard was past nine at night in the early spring, from a tree near the N. E. gate of Warriston cemetery. That I called what I believe to have been a merle by the softer name of mavis (and they are all turdi, I believe) is the head and front of my offence against literal severity, and I am curious to hear if it has really brought me into some serious error.

Your article is very true and very kindly put: I have never called my verses poetry: they are verse, the verse of a speaker not a singer; but that is a fair business like another. I am of your mind too in preferring much the Scotch verses, and in thinking “Requiem” the nearest thing to poetry that I have ever “clerkit.”

Yours very truly,

Robert Louis Stevenson.

R. L. S. Saranac, New York.

Mr. Henley wrote:

Merton Place, Chiswick, W.,

5: 7: 88.

My dear Sharp,

At Wescam we enjoyed once more the pleasant ways of friendship that had grown about us, and especially our Sunday informal evening gatherings to which came all those with whom we were in sympathy. Among the most frequent were Mrs. Mona Caird, the eager champion of women long before the movement passed into the militant hands of the suffragettes; Walter Pater, during his Oxford vacation; Dr. and Mrs. Garnett; John M. Robertson, who was living the “simple life” of a socialist in rooms close by; Richard Whiteing, then leader-writing for The Daily News, and author of the beautiful idyll The Island. Mathilde Blind—poetess novelist, who in youth had sat an eager disciple at the feet of Mazzini, came frequently, Ernest Rhys was writing poems and editing The Camelot Classics from the heights of Hampstead, and his wife, then Miss Grace Little, lived in the neighbourhood with her sisters, the eldest of whom, Lizzie Little, was a writer of charming verse. W. B. Yeats came in the intervals of wandering over Ireland in search of Folk tales; John Davidson had recently come to London, and was bitter over the hard struggle he was enduring; William Watson was a rare visitor. Another frequent visitor was Arthur Tomson the landscape painter, who came to us with an introduction from Mr. Andrew Lang. A warm friendship grew up between Arthur and ourselves, which was deepened by his second marriage with Miss Agnes Hastings, a girl-friend of ours, and lasted till his death in 1905. Mr. and Mrs. John M. Swan came occasionally, Mr. and Mrs. William Strang, we saw frequently, and Theodore Roussell was an ever welcome guest. Sir George Douglas came now and again from Kelso; Charles Mavor, editor of The Art Review, ran down occasionally from Glasgow. Other frequenters of our Sunday evenings were Richard Le Gallienne, whose Book bills of Narcissus was then recently published; Miss Alice Corkran, Mr. and Mrs. Todhunter, Mr. and Mrs. Gilbert Coleridge, Mr. and Mrs. Frank Rinder, Mr. and Mrs. Joseph Pennell. The Russian Nihilist Stepniak and his wife were a great interest to us. I remember on one occasion they told us that Stepniak intended to make a secret visit to Russia—as he had done before—that he was starting the next morning, and though every care would be taken in matter of disguise, the risks were so great that he and his wife always said farewell to one another as though they never would meet again.

Mrs. Caird’s town house was close to us; and she, keenly interested—as my husband and I also were—in the subject of the legal position of women, had that spring written two articles on the Marriage question which were accepted by and published in The Westminster Review in July. Twelve years ago the possibilities of a general discussion on such subjects were very different to what exist now. The sensibilities of both men and women—especially of those who had no adequate knowledge of the legal inequalities of the Marriage laws nor of the abuses which were and are in some cases still the direct outcome of them—were disturbed and shocked by the plain statements put forward, by the passionate plea for justice, for freedom from tyrannous legal oppression, exercised consciously and unconsciously. Mrs. Caird’s articles met with acute hostility of a kind difficult to understand now, and much misunderstanding and unmerited abuse was meted out to her. Nevertheless these brave articles, published in book form under the title of The Morality of Marriage, and the novels written by the same pen, have been potent in altering the attitude of the public mind in its approach to and examination of such questions, in making private discussion possible.

In the autumn of 1888 the monograph on Heine was published in the Great Writers Series (Walter Scott); and the author always regarded it as the best piece of work of the kind he ever did. It seemed fitting that the writer of a life of Shelley should write one of Heine, for there is a kinship between the two poets. To their biographer Heine was the strangest and most fascinating of all the poets not only of one country and one century, but of all time and of all nations; he saw in the wayward brilliant poet “one of those flowers which bloom more rarely than the aloe—human flowers which unfold their petals but once, it may be, in the whole slow growth of humanity.... At his best Heine is a creature of controlled impulse; at his worst he is a creature of impulse uncontrolled. Through extremes he gained the golden mean of art: here is his apologia.”

The book is an endeavour to handle the subject in an impartial spirit, to tell the story vividly, to give a definite impression of the strange personality, and in the concluding pages to summarise Heine’s genius. But, “do what we will we cannot affiliate, we cannot classify Heine. When we would apprehend it his genius is as volatile as his wit.... Of one thing only can we be sure: that he is of our time, of our century. He is so absolutely and essentially modern that he is often antique....

“As for his song-motive, I should say it was primarily his Lebenslust, his delight in life: that love so intensely human that it almost necessarily involved the ignoring of the divine. Rainbow-hued as is his genius, he himself was a creature of earth. It was enough to live.... He would cling to life, even though it were by a rotten beam, he declared once in his extremity. And the poet of life he unquestionably is. There is a pulse in everything he writes: his is no galvanised existence. No parlour passions lead him into the quicksands of oblivion....”

The author was gratified by appreciative letters from Dr. Richard Garnett and Mr. George Meredith:

3 St. Edmund’s Terrace,

Nov 11, 1888.

My dear Sharp,

I have now finished your Heine, and can congratulate you upon an excellent piece of biographical work. You are throughout perfectly clear and highly interesting, and, what is more difficult with your subject, accurate and impartial. Or, if there is any partiality it is such as it is becoming in one poet to enlist aid for another. With all one’s worship of Heine’s genius, it must be allowed that he requires a great deal of toleration. The best excuse to be made for him is that his faults were largely faults of race—and just now I feel amiably toward the Jews, for if you have seen the Athenæum you will have observed that I have fallen into the hands of the Philistines. Almost the only point in which I differ from you is as regards your too slight mention of Platen, who seems to me not only a master of form but a true though limited poet—a sort of German Matthew Arnold. Your kind notice of my translation from the Romanzen did not escape me. Something, perhaps, should have been said of James Thomson, the best English translator.

Believe me, my dear Sharp,

Most sincerely yours,

R. Garnett.

Box Hill, Dec. 10, 1887.

Dear Mr. Sharp,

Your Heine gave me pleasure. I think it competently done; and coming as a corrective to Stigund’s work, it brings the refreshment of the antidote. When I have the pleasure of seeing you we will converse upon Heine. Too much of his—almost all of the Love poems drew both tenderness and tragic emotion from a form of sensualism, much of his wit too was wilful—a trick of the mind. Always beware of the devilish in wit: it has the obverse of an intellectual meaning, and it shows at the best interpretation, a smallness of range. Macmillan says that if they can bring out my book “Reading of Earth” on the 18th I may expect it. Otherwise you will not receive a copy until after Christmas.

Faithfully yours,

George Meredith.

Mr. Meredith wrote again after the publication of his poems:

Box Hill, Feb. 15, 1888.

Dear Mr. Sharp,

Yours very cordially,

George Meredith.

It was the late spring before we could visit Mr. Meredith. The day of our going was doubly memorable to me, because as we went along the leafy road from Burford Bridge station we met Mr. and Mrs. Grant Allen—my first meeting with them—whose home was at that time in Dorking. Memorable, too, was the courteous genial greeting from our host and his charming daughter; and the many delightful incidents of that first week end visit. William and Mr. Meredith had long talks in the garden chalet on the edge of the wood. And in the evenings the novelist read aloud to us. On that occasion I think it was he read some chapters from “One of our Conquerors” on which he was working; another time it was from “The Amazing Marriage” and from “Lord Ormont and his Aminta.” The reader’s enjoyment seemed as great as that of his audience, and it interested me to hear how closely his own methods of conversation resembled, in wittiness and brilliance, those of the characters in his novels. Sometimes he turned a merciless play of wit on his listener; but my husband, who was as deeply attached to the man as he admired the writer, enjoyed these verbal duels in which he was usually worsted. The incident of the visit that charmed me most arose from my stating that I had never heard the nightingale. So on the Sunday afternoon we were taken to a stretch of woodland, “my woods of Westermain” the poet smilingly declared, and there, standing among the tree-boles in the late afternoon sun-glow I listened for the bird-notes as he described them to me until he was satisfied I heard aright.

The Xmas of 1888, and the following New Year’s day we passed at Tunbridge Wells, with Mathilde Blind, in rooms overlooking the common. Many delightful hours were spent together in the evenings listening to one or other of the two poets reading aloud their verse, or parts of the novels they had in process. Mathilde was writing her Tarantella; my husband had recently finished a boys’ serial story for Young Folk’s Paper, with a highly sensational plot entitled “The Secret of Seven Fountains,” and was at work on a Romance of a very different order in which he then was deeply interested, though in later life he considered it immature in thought and expression. The boys’ story was one of adventure, of life seen from a purely objective point of view. The Children of To-morrow was the author’s first endeavour to give expression in prose to the more subjective side of his nature, to thoughts, feelings, aspirations he had hitherto suppressed; it is the direct forerunner of the series of romantic tales he afterward wrote as Fiona Macleod; it was also the expression of his attitude of revolt against the limitations of the accepted social system. The writing of the Monograph on Shelley had rekindled many ideas and beliefs he held in common with the earlier poet—ideas concerning love and marriage, viewed not from the standpoint of the accepted practical standard of morality, nor of the possible realisation by the average humanity of a more complex code of social morality, but viewed from the standpoint held by a minority of dreamers and thinkers who look beyond the present strictly guarded, fettered conditions of married life, to a time, when man and woman, equally, shall know that to stultify or slay the spiritual inner life of another human being, through the radical misunderstanding between alien temperaments inevitably tied to one another, is one of the greatest crimes against humanity. That the author knew how visionary for the immediate future were these ideas, which we at that time so eagerly discussed with a little group of intimate sympathetic friends, is shown by the prefatory lines in the book:

“Forlorn the way, yet with strange gleams of gladness;
Sad beyond words the voices far behind.

Yet we, perplext with our diviner madness,
Must heed them not—the goal is still to find!

What though beset by pain and fear and sorrow,

We must not fail, we Children of To-morrow.”

The Children of To-morrow called forth all manner of divergent opinions. It was called depressing by one critic, and out of touch with realities. Another considered the chief interest of the book to consist “in what may be called its aims. It is clearly an attempt toward greater truth in art and life.” All agreed as to the power displayed in the descriptions of nature. The critic in Public Opinion showed discernment as to the author’s intentions when he wrote “To our mind the delightful irresponsibility of this book, the calm determination which it displays that now, at least, the author means to please himself, to give vent to many a pent up feeling or opinion constitutes one of its greatest charms. This waywardness, the waywardness of a true artist, is shown on almost every page.... Mr. Sharp states his case with wonderful power and lucidity; he draws no conclusions—as an artist they do not concern him—he leaves the decision to the individual temperament.”

Mathilde Blind wrote to the author:

1 St. Edmund’s Terrace, N. W., 1889.

Dear Child of the Future,

You have indeed written a strange, weird, romantic tale with the sound of the sea running through it like an accompaniment. Adama Acosta is a specially well-imagined and truthful character of a high kind; and the intermittent wanderings of his brain have something akin to the wailing notes of the instrument of which he is such a master. But it is in your conception of love—the subtle, delicate, ideal attraction of two beings inevitably drawn to each other by the finest elements of their being—that the charm of the story consists to my mind; on the other hand, you have succeeded in drawing a very realistic and vivid picture of the hard and handsome Lydia, with her purely negative individuality, and in showing the deadly effect which one person may exercise over another in married life—without positive outward wrongdoing which might lead to the divorce court. I agree with you in thinking that the end is the finest part of the Romance, especially the last scene where Dane and Sanpriel are in the wood under the old oak tree, where the voice of the rising storm with its ominous note of destiny is magnificently described. Such a passing away in the mid-most fire of passion on the wings of the elements has always seemed to me the climax of human happiness. But I fear the book is likely to rouse a good deal of opposition in many quarters for the daring disregard of the binding sanctity of the marriage relation. If I may speak quite openly and as a friend who would wish you to do yourself full justice and produce the best work that is in you, I wish you had given yourself more time to work out some of the situations which seem, to me at least, to lack a certain degree of precision and consistency. Thus, for example, Dane after discovering that Ford has been trying to murder him, and is making secret love to his wife, rushes off to the painter’s studio evidently bent on some sort of quarrel or revenge, yet nothing comes of it, and afterwards we find the would-be murderer on outwardly friendly terms with the sculptor on board the house boat. I must tell you by the way how powerful I think the scene of the dying horse in Ratho Sands and the murder of Lydia. I should also have liked to have heard a little more of the real aims and objects of “The Children of the Future” and would like to know whether such an association really exists among any section of the modern Jews; we must talk of that this evening or some other time when we meet. I hope to look in to-night with Sarrazin and Bunand who are coming to a little repast here first. Madox Brown has been reading your book with the greatest interest.

Yours ever,

Mathilde Blind.

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CHAPTER IX

FIRST VISIT TO AMERICA

In the Spring of 1889 the Chair of Literature at University College, London, became vacant on the death of Professor Henry Morley; and many of William Sharp’s friends urged him to stand for election. He was of two minds on the subject. His inclinations were against work of the kind, for, temperamentally, he had difficulty in regulating his life in accordance with strict routine. Born, as he would say, with the wandering wave in his blood, the fixed and the inevitable were antipathetic to him. He was, however, awake to the material importance of such a post, to the advantages of a steady income. Had he had himself only to consider he would not have given the proposal a thought; but he believed it to be his duty to attempt to secure the post for his wife’s sake, though she was not of that opinion. Among the many friends who advocated his election were Robert Browning, George Meredith, Walter Pater, Theodore Watts Dunton, Alfred Austin, Dr. Richard Garnett, Prof. Minto, Hall Caine, Sir George Douglas, Aubrey De Vere, Mrs. Augusta Webster. When, however, the date of election drew near, he consulted his doctor and withdrew his candidature. The question, to him, had all along been one of security of means versus freedom of action; and having done his duty in the matter, his relief was great that the decision left him in possession of his freedom.

For some time William Sharp had contemplated a visit to the United States, where he was well known as poet and critic, and had many friendly correspondents. So he considered the moment to be opportune. He decided to go; although he was forbidden to lecture in America, and very opportunely our friend Mrs. Caird asked me to accompany her to Austria—to the Sun-cure at Veldes in the Carpathian Alps. She and I were the first to leave, and eventually, my husband after his return from America joined me at Cologne and accompanied me home.

Meanwhile he made his preparations for a visit to Canada and New York, and just before starting paid a flying visit to Mr. George Meredith who had written to him:

Box Hill, July 15, 1889.

Dear Mr. Sharp,

This would have been headed to your wife, but for the chances of her flying, and the letter after her. Tell her we are grieved to lose the pleasure her company would give, and trust to welcome her on her return. When she looks on Tyrol, let her strain an eye to see my heart on the topmost peak. We hope for your coming on Saturday.

Yours very truly,

George Meredith.

He looked forward to his American tour with keen delight. New experiences were ever alluring; he had the power of throwing himself heart and soul into every fresh enjoyment. Going by himself seemed to promise chances of complete recovery of health; the unexplored and the unknown beckoned to him with promise of excitement and adventure.

As he wrote to Mr. Stedman: “I am a student of much else besides literature. Life in all its manifestations is of passionate interest for me, and I cannot rest from incessant study and writing. Yet I feel that I am but on the threshold of my literary life. I have a life-time of ambitious schemes before me; I may perhaps live to fulfil a tenth part of them.”

Mid-August found him in Canada. Fine as he considered the approach to Nova Scotia, Newfoundland impressed him more. At Halifax he was the guest of the Attorney General. He wrote to me “Mr. and Mrs. Longley were most kind, and so were all the many leading people to whom I was introduced. I was taken to the annual match of the Quoit Club, and was asked to present the Cup to the winner at the close, with a few words if I felt disposed. Partly from being so taken aback, partly from pleased excitement, and partly from despair, I lost all nervousness and made a short and (what I find was considered) humourous speech, so slowly and coolly spoken that I greatly admired it myself!”

At Halifax, which he considered “worth a dozen of the Newfoundland capital,” he was met by Professor Charles Roberts who had come “to intercept me so as to go off with him for a few days in Northern Scotia and across the Straits to Prince Edward Island. So, a few days later Prof. Roberts and I, accompanied for the first 100 miles by Mr. Longley, started for Pictou, which we reached after 5 hours most interesting journey. The Attorney General has kindly asked me to go a three days’ trip with him (some 10 days hence) through the famous Cape Breton district, with the lovely Bras D’Or lakes: and later on he has arranged for a three days’ moose-hunt among the forests of Southern Acadia, where we shall camp out in tents, and be rowed by Indian guides.”

New Glasgow delighted him; he visited Windsor and Halifax: “I went with Charles Roberts and Bliss Carman through Evangeline’s country. En route I travelled on the engine of the train and enjoyed the experience. Grand Pré delighted me immensely—vast meadows, with lumbering wains and the simple old Acadian life. The orchards were in their glory—and the apples delicious! At one farm house we put up, how you would have enjoyed our lunch of sweet milk hot cakes, great bowls of huckleberries and cream, tea, apples, etc.! We then went through the forest belt and came upon the great ocean inlet known as the “basin of Minas,” and, leagues away the vast bulk of Blomidon shelving bough-like into the Sea....”

To E. A. S.:

(On the St. Lawrence),

12th Sept.

To-day has been a momentous birthday on the whole—and none the less so because I have been alone and, what is to me an infinite relief, quite unknown. I told no one about my Saguenay expedition till the last moment—and so there is nothing definite about me in the papers save that I “abruptly left St. John” (the capital of New Brunswick) and that I am to arrive in Quebec to-morrow. I sent you a card from Rivière du Loup, the northernmost township of the old Acadians, and a delightful place. I reached it early from Temiscouata (the Lake of Winding Water)—a journey of extreme interest and beauty, through a wild and as yet unsettled country. The track has only been open this summer. Before I reached its other end (the junction of the St. John river with the Madawaska) I was heartily sick of New Brunswick, with its oven-like heat, its vast monotonous forests with leagues upon leagues of dead and dying trees, and its all present forest-fires. The latter have caused widespread disaster.... Several times we were scorched by the flames, but a few yards away—and had “to rush” several places. But once in the province of Quebec, and everything changed. The fires (save small desultory ones) disappeared: the pall of smoke lightened and vanished: and the glorious September foliage made a happy contrast to the wearisome hundreds of miles of decayed and decaying firs. It was a most glorious sunset—one of the grandest I have ever seen—and the colour of the vast Laurentian Mountain range, on the north side of the St. Lawrence, superb. It was dark when we reached the mouth of the Saguenay River—said to be the gloomiest and most awe-inspiring river in the world—and began our sail of close upon a hundred miles (it can be followed by canoes for a greater length than Great Britain). The full moon came up, and the scene was grand and solemn beyond words. Fancy fifty miles of sheer mountains, one after another without a valley-break, but simply cleft ravines. The deep gloom as we slowly sailed through the noiseless shadow brooding between Cape Eternity and Cape Trinity was indescribable. We anchored for some hours in “Ha! Ha! Bay,” the famous landing place of the old discoverers. In the early morning we sailed out from Ha! Ha! Bay, and then for hours sailed down such scenery as I have never seen before and never expect to see again.... At Quebec I am first to be the guest of the well-known Dr. Stewart, and then of Mons. Le Moine at his beautiful place out near the Indian Village of Lorette and the Falls of Montmorenci—not far from the famous Plain of Abraham, where Wolfe and Montcalm fought, and an Empire lay in balance.

In New York, William was the guest of Mr. and Mrs. E. C. Stedman at 44 East 26th Street, whence he wrote to me:

“ ... So much has happened since I wrote to you from Montreal that I don’t see how I’m to tell you more than a fraction of it—particularly as I am seldom alone even for five minutes. Last week I left Montreal (after having shot the rapids, etc.) and travelled to Boston via the White Mountains, through the States of Vermont, Connecticut and Massachusetts. Boston is a beautiful place—an exceedingly fine city with lovely environs. Prof. A. S. Hardy (’Passe Rose,’ etc.) was most kind.... Cambridge and Harvard University, are also very fine. I enjoyed seeing Longfellow’s house (Miss L. still occupies it) and those of Emerson, Lowell, etc. I spent brief visits to Prof. Wright of Harvard, to Winsor the historian, etc. On Sunday afternoon I drove with A. S. H. to Belmont in Massachusetts, and spent afternoon with Howells, the novelist. He was most interesting and genial—I had the best of welcomes from the Stedmans. They are kindness personified. The house is lovely, and full of beautiful things and multitudes of books. I have already more invitations than I can accept: every one is most hospitable. I have already met Mr. Gilder, the poet, and editor of the ‘Century’; Mr. Alden of ‘Harpers’; Mr. Bowen, of the ‘Independent’; R. H. Stoddart, the ‘father’ of recent American letters; and heaven knows how many others. I have been elected honorary member of the two most exclusive clubs in N. Y., the ‘Century’ and ‘The Players,’ Next week there is to be a special meeting at the Author’s Club, and I am to be the guest of the evening....”

New York, 1:10:89.

“Can only send you a brief line by this mail. I enjoyed my visit to Mr. Alden at Metuchen in New Jersey very much. Among the new friends I care most for are a married couple called Janvier. They are true Bohemians and most delightful. He is a writer and she an artist ... and both have travelled much in Mexico. We dined together at a Cuban Café last night. He gave me his vol. of stories called ‘Colour Studies’ and she a little sketch of a Mexican haunted house—both addressed to ‘William Sharp. Recuerdo di Amistad y carimo.’”

On leaving New York he wrote to his kind host:

Oct. 8, 1889.

My dear Stedman,

Farewell, meanwhile,

Ever your affectionate,

William Sharp.

This note drew from the American poet the following reply:

My dear Sharp,

Affectionately your friend,

Edmund C. Stedman.

On our return to Hampstead we resumed our Sunday evening gatherings, and among other frequenters came Mr. and Mrs. Henry Harland, with an introduction from Mr. W. D. Howells. From Mr. George Meredith came a charming welcome home.

Box Hill (Dorking),

Nov. 22, 1889.

My dear Sharp,

Yours warmly,

George Meredith.

We went. As we walked across the fields to the cottage Mr. Meredith came through his garden gate to meet us, raised high his hat and voiced a welcome, “Hail daughter of the Sun!”

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CHAPTER X

BROWNING

The Joseph Severn Memoirs

To William Sharp, as to many others, the closing days of 1899 brought a deep personal sorrow in the death of Robert Browning. The younger man had known him for several years, and had always received a warm welcome from the Poet in his house in Warwick Crescent which, with its outlook on the water of broad angle of the canal with its little tree clad island, he declared laughingly, reminded him of Venice. And kindly he was too, when, coming to the first of our “At Homes” in South Hampstead, he assured me with a genial smile “I like to come, because I know young people like to have me.”

“It is needless to dwell upon the grief everywhere felt and expressed for the irreparable loss” (W. S. wrote in his monograph on Browning). The magnificent closing lines of Shelley’s “Alastor” have occurred to many a mourner, for gone indeed was “a surpassing Spirit.” The superb pomp of the Venetian funeral, the solemn grandeur of the interment in Westminster Abbey, do not seem worth recording: so insignificant are all these accidents of death made by the supreme fact itself. Yet it is fitting to know that Venice has never in modern times afforded a more impressive sight than those of craped processional gondolas following the high flower-strewn famous barge through the thronged water-ways and out across the lagoon to the desolate Isle of the Dead: that London has rarely seen aught more solemn than the fog-dusked Cathedral spaces, echoing at first with the slow tramp of the pall-bearers, and then with the sweet aerial music swaying upward the loved familiar words of the “Lyric Voice” hushed so long before. Yet the poet was as much honoured by those humble friends, Lambeth artificers and a few working-women, who threw sprays of laurel before the hearse—by that desolate, starving, woe-weary gentleman, shivering in his thread-bare clothes, who seemed transfixed with a heart-wrung though silent emotion, ere he hurriedly drew from his sleeve a large white chrysanthemum, and throwing it beneath the coffin as it was lifted upward, disappeared in the crowd, which closed again like the sea upon this lost wandering wave.”

But it was nevertheless difficult to realise that the stimulating presence had passed away and the cheerful voice was silent: “It seems but a day or two that I heard from the lips of the dead poet a mockery of death’s vanity—a brave assertion of the glory of life. ‘Death, death! It is this harping on death I despise so much,’” he remarked with emphases of gesture as well as of speech—the inclined head and body, the right hand lightly placed upon the listener’s knee, the abrupt change in the inflection of the voice, all so characteristic of him—“this idle and often cowardly as well as ignorant harping! Why should we not change like everything else? In fiction, in poetry, in so much of both, French as well as English, and, I am told, in American art and literature, the shadow of death—call it what you will, despair, negation, indifference—is upon us. But what fools who talk thus! Why, amico mio, you know as well as I that death is life, just as our daily, our momentarily dying body is none the less alive and ever recreating new forces of existence. Without death, which is our crapelike churchyardy word for change, for growth, there could be no prolongation of what we call life. Pshaw! it is foolish to argue upon such a thing even. For myself, I deny death as an end of everything. Never say of me that I am dead!”

On the 4th January, 1890, W. S. wrote to Mr. Thomas A. Janvier:

London.

Many thanks for the Aztec Treasure House, which opens delightfully and should prove a thrilling tale. I don’t know how you feel, but for myself I shall never again publish serially till I have completed the story aforehand. You will have seen that I have been asked and have agreed to write the critical monograph on Browning for the Great Writer’s Series. This involves a harassing postponement of other work, and considerable financial loss, but still I am glad to do it.

The Harlands spent New Year’s Day with us, and the Champagne was not finished without some of it being quaffed in memory of the dear and valued friends oversea. You, both of you, must come over this spring.

Ever yours,

William Sharp.

With each New Year a Diary was begun with the intention of its being carefully continued throughout the months, an intention however that inevitably was abandoned as the monotony of the fulfilment palled upon the writer.

The Diary for 1890 begins with a careful record of work and events, noted daily till mid February when it ceases, to be resumed more fitfully in September and October. The year is prefaced with the motto:

“C’est à ce lendemain sevère que tout artiste sérieux doit songer.”—Sainte Beuve.

The following more important entries tell where and how the monograph was written and what other work he had on hand:

There is darkness everywhere;
Scarce is the city limned

In shadow on the lagoon.

No wind in the heavy air.
The stars themselves are dimmed,

And a mist veils the moon.

“After lunch took T. Mavor to Alfred East’s to see his Japanese pictures. Then I took T. M. to John M. Swan’s Studio. Then we went to spend half an hour with Stepniak and his wife at 13 Grove Gardens.”

“Jan. 13th.—Late in settling down, and then disinclined to write except in verse. Wrote the second and final part of the Elegaic Browning Poem for Belford’s Magazine. It is not often that I indulge in inversions: but the gain is sometimes noticeable. I think it is in this stanza:

Alas, greatness is not, nor is
There aught that is under the sun,

Nor any mortal thing,

Neither the heights of bliss
Nor the depths of evil done,

Unshadowed by Death’s wing.”

He soon found that it was impossible to write the monograph in London—with its ceaseless demands and distractions. Under the pressure of much work he became so unwell that we realised he could not finish the book under existing conditions, therefore arranged that he should leave me in charge of work at home and he should go to Hastings and devote himself mainly to his Browning. On the 18th he records, from rooms overlooking the sea “Blew a gale at night. The noise of the sea like a vast tide in a hollow echoing cavern: and a shrill screaming wail in the wind. Began my Life of Browning. To bed at 12.”

Then follows a record of the work done day by day: on the 19th, twelve printed pages: on the 20th ten pages: on the 21st four only because he lunched with Coventry Patmore who was then residing at Hastings. On the 22nd, thirteen pages; on the 23rd, eleven pages, and five letters.

Jan. 26th has this note: “We can no more predict Browning’s place in literature as it will be esteemed by posterity than we can specify the fauna and flora of a planet whose fires have not yet sufficiently cooled to enable vegetation to grow.”

His stay at Hastings was rendered pleasant by the neighbourliness of Coventry Patmore with whom he had many long talks, and by occasional visits to Miss Betham Edwards who had a house on the hill beyond the old castle.

He returned to town at the beginning of February.

On the 4th he wrote “the first scene of a Play (to be called either “The Lover’s Tragedy,” or “The Tower of Silence”) which was afterward rewritten and published in Vistas as “A Northern Night.”

The Diary continues:

Here the Diary abruptly ends. I do not recollect on what date the Browning was finished, but it was published in the early autumn. And I have no recollection as to what became of The Ordeal of Basil Hope, whether or not it ever appeared serially, but I think not. It never was issued in book form—and from the time we gave up the house in Goldhurst Terrace he never gave it a thought. It was characteristic of him that when a piece of work was finished or discarded, it passed wholly out of his mind, for his energies were always centred on his work on hand and on that projected.

He was a careful student of the progress of contemporary literatures—especially French (including Belgian) Italian and American—and during the spring and summer he wrote a long article on American literature for The National Review, an article on D’Annunzio for The Fortnightly. He also prepared a volume in English of selected Essays of St. Beuve for which he wrote a careful critical Preface.

The three years at Hampstead had been happy and successful. William had regained health; and had a command of work that made the ways of life pleasant. We had about us a genial sympathetic group of friends, and were in touch with many keen minds of the day. Temperamentally he could work or play with equal jest and enjoyment; he threw himself whole-heartedly into whatever he did. Observant, keenly intuitive, he cared to come into contact with all kinds and types of men and women; cared continually to test the different minds and temperaments he came across, providing always that they had a vital touch about them, and were not comatosely conventional. Curious about life, he cared incessantly to experiment; restless and never satisfied (I do not mean dissatisfied) he constantly desired new fields for this experimentation. Therefore, happy though he had been at Wescam, successful as that experiment had proved, he felt it had served its turn and he longed for different circumstances, different environment, new possibilities in which to attempt to give fuller expression of himself. He realised that nothing more would happen under the then existing conditions, satisfactory though they seemed externally; that indeed the satisfactoriness was a chain that was winding round him and fettering him to a form of life that was becoming rigid and monotonous, and, therefore, paralysing to all those inner impulses. His visit to America had re-awakened the desire to wander. So we gave up our house, stored our furniture, and planned to go abroad for the first winter and leave the future “in the lap of the Gods”; for was he not “of the unnumbered clan that know a longing that is unquiet as the restless wave ...” the “deep hunger for experience, even if it be bitter, the longing for things known to be unattainable, the remembrance that strives for rebirth.” That summer he wrote to Mr. Stedman:

“ ... You will ere this have received the copy of the little book of Great Odes: English and American which I sent to you. I think I told you that your own beautiful ‘Ode to Pastoral Romance’ has appealed to many people, and will, I hope and believe, send new readers to you, among the new generation, as a poet. Well, we are breaking up our home, and are going to leave London for a long time—probably for ever as a fixed ‘residentz platz.’ Most of my acquaintances think I am very foolish thus to withdraw from the ‘thick of the fight’ just when things are going so well with me, and when I am making a good and rapidly increasing income—for I am giving up nearly every appointment I hold, and am going abroad, having burned my ships behind me, and determined to begin literary life anew. But, truly enough, wisdom does not lie in money making—not for the artist who cares for his work at any rate. I am tired of so much pot-boiling, such increasing bartering of literary merchandise: and wish to devote myself entirely—or as closely as the fates will permit—to work in which my heart is. I am buoyant with the belief that it is in me to do something both in prose and verse far beyond any hitherto accomplishment of mine: but to stay here longer, and let the net close more and more round me, would be fatal. Of course I go away at a heavy loss. My income will at once drop to zero, and even after six months or so will scarce have risen a few degrees above that awkward limit—though ultimately things may readjust themselves. Yet I would rather—I am ready—I should say we are ready—to live in the utmost economy if need be. We shall be none the less happy: for my wife, with her usual loving unselfishness and belief in me, is as eager as I am for the change, despite all the risks. Among the younger writers few have the surely not very high courage necessary to give up something of material welfare for the sake of art. As for us, we are both at heart Bohemians—and are well content if we can have good shelter, enough to eat, books, music, friends, sunshine and free nature—all of which we can have with the scantiest of purses. Perhaps I should be less light-hearted in the matter if I thought that our coming Bohemian life might involve my wife in hard poverty when my hour comes, but fortunately her future is assured. So henceforth, in a word, I am going to take down the board

WILLIAM SHARP
Literary Manufacturer
(All kinds of jobs undertaken)

and substitute:

WILLIAM SHARP
Given up Business: Moved to Bohemia.
Publishers and Editors Need not Apply.
Friends can write to W. S. % “Drama” “Fiction” or “Poetry,”
Live-as-you-will Quarter, Bohemia.

This day week we leave our house for good. My wife and I then go into Hampshire to breathe the hay and the roses for a week at a friend’s place, 7 miles across the Downs north of Winchester: then back to London to stay with our friend, Mrs. Mona Caird, till about the 20th of July. About that date we go to Scotland, to my joy, till close on the end of September. Thereafter we return to London for a week or so, and then go abroad. We are bound first for the lower Rhineland, and intend to stay at Heidelberg (being cheap, pretty, thoroughly German, with good music and a good theatre) for about two months. Then, about the beginning of December, we go to Rome, where we intend to settle: climatic, financial, and other considerations will decide whether we remain there longer than six months, but six ideal months at least we hope for. Mihi sex menses satis sunt vitæ septimum Orco spondeo.

That summer we went to Clynder on the Gareloch, Argyll, in order to be near my husband’s old friend, Dr. Donald Macleod, who, as he records in his diary “sang to me with joyous abandonment a Neapolitan song, and asked me to send him a MS. from Italy for Good Words.” While we were in the West we made acquaintance with the poet-editor of The Yorkshire Herald, George Cotterell, who became a dear and valued friend. I cannot recall if it were in the early summer of 1889 or 1890 that my husband was first approached on the subject of the Joseph Severn Memoirs, but I remember the circumstance. We spent a week-end in Surrey with some old friends of my mother, Sir Walter and Lady Hughes, and one morning Mr. Walter Severn, the painter, walked over to luncheon. He spoke about my husband’s Life of Rossetti, then of the quantity of unpublished MSS. he and his family had written by and relating to his father, Joseph Severn, “the friend of Keats.” Finally he proposed that his listener should take over the MSS., put them in form and write a Life of Severn, with, as the special point of literary interest, his father’s devoted friendship with and care of the dying poet. After considerable deliberation, W. S. agreed to undertake the work, and arrangements were made with Messrs. Samson Low to publish it. The preparing of this Memoir brought him into pleasant relationship not only with Mr. Walter Severn, and with Mr. and Mrs. Arthur Severn, but also with Ruskin, who he visited later at Coniston, where he was delighted, among other things, with the fine collection of minerals and stones that was one of Ruskin’s hobbies.

The preparation of The Joseph Severn Memoirs necessarily entailed correspondence with members and friends of that family, among others with W. W. Story, the sculptor, who sent him the following information:

“I knew Mr. Severn at Rome and frequently met and saw him but I can recall nothing which would be of value to you. He was, as you know, a most pleasant man—and in the minds of all is associated with the memory of Keats by whose side he lies in the Protestant Cemetery at Rome. When the bodies were removed, as they were several years ago, and laid side by side, there was a little funeral ceremony and I made an address on the occasion in honour and commemoration of the two friends. I remember we then had hoped that Lord Houghton would have been able to be present as he had promised. But he was taken ill in the East, where he was then journeying, and I had to express the fear lest the ceremony might be a commemoration not only of two but of the three friends so intimately associated together. However, Houghton did recover from the attack and came afterward to Rome, sadly broken.”

Early in October my husband and I crossed to Antwerp and stopped at Bonn. The Rhine disappointed William’s expectations. He wrote to a friend: “The real charm of the Rhine, beyond the fascination that all rivers and riverine scenery have for most people, is that of literary and historical romance. The Rhine is in this respect the Nile of Europe: though probably none but Germans feel thus strongly. For myself I cannot but think it ought not to be a wholly German river, but from every point of view be the Franco-German boundary.... Germany has much to gain from a true communion with its more charming neighbour. The world would jog on just the same if Germany were annihilated by France, Russia and Italy: but the disappearance of brilliant, vivacious, intellectual France would be almost as serious a loss to intellectual Europe, as would be to the people at large the disappearance of the Moon.”

From Rome he wrote to Mrs. Janvier:

Dec., 1890.

These various schemes planned mentally were never realised. William constantly projected and of the roughly drafted out possible work that absorbed him during its conception, but was put aside when a more dominating idea demanded full expression. “Bacchus in India” remained a fragment. Neither the tragedy nor that prose play was finished, and the philosophical work was never begun. A new impulse came, new work grew out of the impressions of that Roman winter which swept out of his mind all other cartooned work.

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