ROME
Sospiri di Roma
Winter in Rome was one long delight to the emancipated writer. It amply fulfilled even his optimistic anticipation. He revelled in the sunshine and the beauty; he was in perfect health; his imagination was quickened and worked with great activity. We had about us a little group of friends, who, like ourselves, intended to live quietly and simply. Among these were Mrs. Caird who had come abroad for her health; Sir Charles Holroyd, who had a studio in the Via Margoutta, and Mr. and Mrs. Elihu Vedder. Mrs. Wingate Rinder joined us for three weeks, and with her my husband greatly enjoyed long walks over the Campagna and expeditions to the little neighbouring hill towns. His Diary for the beginning of 1891 was kept with creditable regularity, and contains a record of some of these expeditions and of work done in Rome, in particular of the dates on which the poems of Sospiri di Roma were written. From it I have selected entries.
“Jan. 2nd. ... Read through and revised ‘Bacchus in India.’ Added the (I think good) adjective ‘sun-sparkled wood....”
Poetry is a glorious rebirth of prose. When a beautiful thought can be uttered in worthy prose: best so. But when it moves through the mind in music, and shapes itself to a lyric rhythm, then it should find expression in poetry. The truest poets are those who can most exquisitely capture, and concentrate in a few words, this haunting rhythm.
Jan. 3rd. The morning broke well, though not so promisingly as yesterday.... Caught the 9 a.m. train for Albano-Laziale. Marnio is a fine and picturesque hill-city. After passing it we admired the view of the Lake of Albano, with its abrupt variations of light and profound shadow. Arrived at Albano we walked by the way of the Viaduct to L’Ariccia, with lovely views of the Campagna to the right: of Monte Cavo and Rocca di Papa to the left. Then on by a lovely road to Genzano. Having gone through the lower part and out again into the Campagna we turned southward, and in due time reached the high ground, with its olive-orchards, looking down upon the Lake of Nemi. It looked lovely in its grey-blue stillness, with all the sunlit but yet sombre winterliness around. Nemi, itself, lay apparently silent and lifeless, ‘a city of dream,’ on a height across the lake. One could imagine that Nemi and Genzano had once been the same town, and had been riven asunder by a volcano. The lake-filled crater now divides these two little hill-set towns.... Walked through Albano to the N.W. gate, past the ancient tomb, and along the beautiful ilex-bordered road leading to Castel-Gandolfo. Saw two Capuchin friars with extraordinary faces. They fitted the scene. Magnificent views of the Campagna, tinted with a faint pink-grey mist: of Ostea, etc.: and of the strange dreamful, partially sunlit Tyrrhene sea. Then through Castel Gandolfo, with lovely views of Lake Albano. Broke our fast with some apples. Down the steep front till we joined the road just above the little station, where we caught the train 10 minutes later. The Aqua Felice and Claudian Aqueducts seen to great advantage in returning across the Campagna to Rome.
Jan. 5th. A fine morning, with a delicate hint of Spring in the air.... Caught the train for Champino, near Frascati. The officials at the station seemed amazed at our descending there. No one ever does so, it seems! There was literally no regular way out of the station, and when I asked how we were to get out the man did not know. Neither he nor the clerk, nor the others who gathered round knew the road back to Rome! At last some one from the train suggested that if we struck across country we would come to the Via Appia. We had a pleasant walk across a barren part of the Campagna intersected by railway cuttings, and at last came to a place called Frattochie, whence a road led us to the Via Appia Nuova. From this again we struck across a field and came upon the Via Appia Antica, adown which we had a splendid and absolutely solitary walk. We saw no one but a few shepherds at a distance, with their large white dogs and sheep. Often stopped among the ruins, or at the top of one of the grassy tombs to hear the wind among the pines, along the grass, or in the crevices of the wall. A few drops of rain fell as we neared the tomb of Cecilia Metella, and soon the rain-storm, which we had watched approaching across the Campagna, came on. The first three wayside trattorie we came to were shut, but in the fourth, a peasant’s resort, we got some bread, and white and poor Marino. We shared some of the bread with a large dog, and gave some wine to a malarious-looking poor devil of a labourer. Returned by the Gate of San Sebastiano.
Jan. 8th. ... Bought L’Evolution des Genres dans l’Histoire de la Littérature by Ferdinand Brunetière; Roux’s book on Italian Literature; Pierre Loti’s Mariage de Loti. After dinner copied out ‘Rebirth’ (Spring’s Advent) to send to Belford’s, and ‘The Sheik’ for N. Y. Independent.
This forenoon the house nearly opposite fell in. We saw one man brought out dead. Seven others were said to be buried in the ruins. The King came later on and himself helped one of the wounded out and took him to the hospital.
Jan. 9th. Wet and rain. The Campagna covered with snow. In the forenoon I wrote four more of my ‘Ebb and Flow’ Series of Sea Poems—‘Phosphorescence before Storm’—‘Tempest Music’—‘Dead Calm: Noon’ and ‘Dead Calm: Midnight.’ The others were written some on the French coast some on the English in 1887. ‘Tempest-Music’ and the two ‘Dead Calm’ are as good if not better than any in the series. In all the latter I care most for the ‘Swimmer at Sunrise’ and ‘The Dead-Calm-Noon’: also for ‘Tempest Music.’
... After dinner read to Lill for a bit including the prose version (outline) of my “Lilith.”
To-day the anniversary of the Death of Victor Emmanuel, 13 years ago. The Italians idolise his memory, and call him “The Father of the Country.” He is rapidly becoming a Presiding Deity. 10th rewrote and greatly improved “Phosphorescence.” Its two opening lines, originally,
“As hill winds and sun and rains inweave a veil
Of lichen round vast boulders on the mountain side.”
were out of keeping in imagery with the rest: and in every way
“As some aerial spirit weaves a rainbow veil
Of Mist, his high immortal loveliness to hide.”
are better. Should have preferred “wild” to “high” in this line, but the 4th terminal is “wild.” Perhaps not, after all.
Jan. 16th. Although it was so cold and wintry with signs of snow in suspension caught the train for Tivoli. The scenery extremely beautiful, and doubly fascinating and strange from the whirling snow falling every here and there, in strangely intermittent and separate fashion. The sheep and disconsolate shepherds on one high healthy part made a fantastic foreground. At Tivoli, which was like a hill town in Scotland in midwinter, with a storm raging, we walked past the first cascades, then up a narrow hill-path partly snowed up, partly frozen, to the open country beyond. Then back and into a trattoria where we had lunch of wine, omelette, bread, fruit, and coffee.
Jan. 17th. Midwinter with a vengeance. Rome might be St. Petersburg. Snow heavy and a hard frost. Even the Fountain of the Tritone hung all over with long spears and pendicles of ice.—Later, I went out, to walk to and fro on the Pincio Terrace in the whirling snow, which I enjoyed beyond words. There was a lull, and then I saw the storm clouds sweep up from the Maremma, across the Campagna and blot out Rome bit by bit. Walking to and fro I composed the lyric, beginning:
“There is a land of dream:
I have trodden its golden ways:
I have seen its amber light
From the heart of its sun-swept days:
I have seen its moonshine white
On its silent waters gleam—
Ah, the strange, sweet, lonely delight
Of the Valleys of Dream!”
Returning by the Pincian Gate, about 5.45 there was a strange sight. Perfectly still in the sombre Via di Mura, with high walls to the right, but the upper pines and cypresses swaying in a sudden rush of wind: to the left a drifting snow-storm: to the right wintry moonshine: vivid sweeping pulsations of lightning from the Campagna, and long low muttering growls of thunder. (The red light from a window in the wall.)
Jan. 19th. After dinner read a good deal of Beddoes to Lill.... How like Poe the first stanza of ‘The Old Ghost’: every now and again there is a gleam of rare moon-white beauty, as in the lovely 3rd stanza of ‘The Ballad of Human Life’—the first quatrain of the 2nd stanza of ‘Dial Thoughts,’ and that beautiful line in the fantastic and ultra-Shelleyian ‘Romance of the Lily,’
‘As Evening feeds the waves with brooks of quiet life.’
Jan. 22nd. In the evening read through Elihu Vedder’s Primitive Folk. There is a definite law in the evolution of sexual morale, I am sure, if one could only get at it. The matter is worth going into, both for Fundamental and Contemporary and Problematical Ethics.
Jan. 27th. Elizabeth and I went to the opening lecture of the Archæological Society, at the Hotel Marini. Lord Dufferin in the Chair. Mr. Porter, U. S. Minister, delivered an address, mainly on Cicero.... Lord Dufferin afterwards told us incidentally that a friend of his had gone into a book shop in the Corso and asked for Max O’Rell: En Amérique. The bookseller said he neither had the book nor had he heard of it: now the visitor persisted and the bookseller in despair exclaimed, ‘Dio mio, Signor, I never even heard of Marc Aurèle having been in America!’
Jan. 30th. After lunch we went for a drive in the Campagna.... Delighting in the warm balmy air, the superb views, the space and freedom, the soft turfy soil under foot, the excited congregation of larks twittering as they wheeled about, soon to pair, and one early songster already trilling his song along the flowing wind high overhead.
Between 9 p.m. and 12 p.m. my ears were full of music. Wrote the Sospiri, ‘The Fountain of the Aqua Paola’; ‘Ruins’; ‘High Noon at Midsummer on the Campagna’; ‘Sussurri’; ‘Breath of the Grass’; ‘Red Poppies’; and the lyric Spring.
Jan. 31st. Wrote to-day. ‘The Mandolin’ (Sospiri di Roma) (115 lines). In afternoon wrote ‘All’ Ora della Stella’ (Vesper Bells), partly from memory of what I have heard, several times, and partly modified by a poem I chanced to see to-day, Fogazzaro’s ‘A Sera.’
February 2nd. Second day of the Carnival. Wrote all forenoon and part of afternoon. Took up and revised ‘The Fountain of the Aqua Paola’ and added so largely to it as to make it a new poem. It ended with ‘Eternal Calm.’ Also wrote ‘The Fallen Goddess’—about 250 lines in length. In the evening wrote ‘Bats’ Wings’ (26 ll) and ‘Thistledown’ (Spring on the Campagna) (71 ll).
Such bursts of uncontrollable poetic impulse as came to me to-day, and the last three days, only come rarely in each year. It was in such a burst last year (1889?) that I wrote ‘The Weird of Michael Scott’ (each part at a single sitting).
Feb. 4th. Wrote the Sospiro ‘To my Dream.’
Feb. 5th. Between 10 p.m. and 1.30 a.m. wrote the poem which I think I will call ‘Fior di Memoria’ (about 175 lines).
Feb. 7th. We went to Ettore Roesler Franz’s studio. His water-colour drawings of (mediæval) Rome as it was from the middle of the century to within the last 7 or 10 years very charming and deeply interesting and valuable—and at the same time infinitely sad. Those of the Prati di Castello and the Tiber Bank and Stream especially so: instead of this lost beauty we have hideous jerry buildings, bad bridges, monotonous and colourless banks, and dull municipal mediocrity and common-place everywhere.
There might be a Weeping Wall in Rome as well as in Jerusalem. Truly enough there will soon be absolute truth in Bacon’s noble saying ‘The souls of the living are the beauty of the world’—for the world will be reduced to the sway of the plumber and builder, and artificial gardener and Bumbledom.
In evening wrote “Primo Sospiro di Primavera.”
8th. In forenoon wrote “The White Peacock” (56 lines)—a study in Whites for Théodore Roussel. Also “The Swimmer of Nemi” (Red and White) 42 lines. In evening revised the “Swimmer of Nemi” and partly rewrote or recast. It is much improved in definite effect; and gains by the deletion of 9 or 10 lines, pretty in themselves but not in perfect harmony. Wrote the poem commemorating the strange evening of 17th Jan.... called it “A Winter Evening” (35 lines). Later. Wrote the poem called “Scirocco” (June), 67 lines. To bed about 12.30.
10th. Gave first sitting to Charles Holroyd for his Etching of me.
11th. Gave Charles Holroyd a second sitting. Between 9 and 2 a.m. wrote
“The Naked Rider” (70 lines)
“The Wind at Fidenae” (38 lines)
“The Wild Mare” (32 lines)
“A Dream at Ardea” (In Maremma) 215 lines.
12th. Wrote “La Velia” (38 lines).
15th. Agnes and Lill, Charles Holroyd and the P—s and I went to Tusculum by morning train. Very warm as soon as we got to Frascati. Lovely Tramontana day. Took a donkey to carry the wine and provisions: or Lill, if necessary. After a long walk, lunched in the Theatre at Tusculum. Wreathed the donkey with ivy and some early blooms, and then I rode on it on to the stage, à la Bacchus, flasks of Frascati under either arm.
Most glorious sunset. The view from the height above Tusculum simply superb, and worth coming to see from any part of the world.
17th. Yesterday was one of the most glorious days possible in Rome. Cloudless sky: fresh sweet breeze: deliciously warm. Went with A. to Porto d’Anzio again, and walked along the coast northward. Sea unspeakably glorious: blue, sunlit, with great green foam-crested waves breaking on the sands, and surging in among the hollow tufa rocks and old Roman remains. Lay for a long time at the extreme end of the Arco Muto. One of the red letter days in one’s life.
Stayed up all night (till Breakfast) writing: then revising. Between 8 p.m. and 4 A.M. wrote poem after poem with unbroken eagerness. The impulse was an irresistible one, as I was tired and not, at first, strongly inclined to write, though no sooner had I written the Italian “Dedicatory Lines” than it all came upon me. In all, besides these, I wrote “Al Far della Notte” (31 lines): “Clouds, from the Agro Romano” (31): “The Olives of Tivoli” (30): “At Veii” (86): “The Bather” (68): “De Profundis” (26): and “Ultimo Sospiro” (37).
18th. Beautiful day. Felt none the worse for being up all night. Wrote article on Ibsen’s ‘Rosmersholm’ for Y. F. P. Wrote “Spuma dal Mare” (41 lines).
WILLIAM SHARP
After a pastel drawing by Charles Ross, 1891
In “Spuma dal Mare” I have attempted to give something of the many-coloured aspects of the sea. It is absurd to keep on always speaking of it as blue, or green, or even grey. The following portion is as true as practicable, whatever other merits they may have:
Here the low breakers are rolling thro’ shallows,
Yellow and muddied, the line of topaz
Ere cut from the boulder:
Save when the sunlight swims through them slantwise,
When inward they roll,
Long billows of amber,
Crown’d with pale yellow
And gray-green spume.
Here wan gray their slopes
Where the broken lights reach them,
Dull gray of pearl, and dappled and darkling,
As when, ‘mid the high
Northward drift of the clouds,
Sirocco bloweth
With soft fanning breath.
20th. In morning wrote out Dedicatory and other Preliminary Pages, etc., etc., for my “Sospiri di Roma” and after lunch took the complete MS. to Prof. Garlanda of the Societa Laziale, who will take them out to the Establishment at Tivoli to-day. Holroyd came with final proof of his etching of me.
24th. Wrote “The Shepherd in Rome” (66 lines).
25th. Wrote “Sorgendo La Luna” (47 ll.).
27th. Wrote poem “In July: on the Campagna” (26 ll.). Wrote poem “August Afternoon in Rome” (59 ll.).
Charles M. Ross (Norwegian painter), and Julian Corbett (author of “The Life of Drake”) called on me today. Mr. Ross wants to paint me in pastel and has asked me to go to-morrow for that purpose.”
In mid-March I went to Florence in advance of my husband; and he and Mr. Corbett spent a few days together at the Albergo Sybilla Tivoli—where their sitting-room faced the Temple of Vesta—so that he could superintend there the printing of his “Sospiri.” The two authors worked in the morning, and took walks in the afternoon. The Diary records one expedition:
March 23. After lunch J. C. and I caught the train for Palombaria Marcellina meaning to ascend to Palombara: but we mistook the highest and most isolated mountain town, in the Sabines and after two hours of an exceedingly wild and rugged and sometimes almost impossible mule-path, etc., we reached the wonderfully picturesque and interesting San Polo dei Cavalieri. Bought a reed pipe from a shepherd who was playing a Ranz des Vaches among the slopes just below San Polo. The mediæval castle in the middle of the narrow crooked picturesque streets very fine. Had some wine from a comely woman who lived in the lower part of the castle. Then we made our way into the Sabines by Vicovaro, and Castel Madama, and home late to Tivoli, very tired.
Certain tales told to him by the Italian woman, and the picturesque town and its surroundings formed the basis of the story “The Rape of the Sabines” which appeared later in The Pagan Review. At the end of March he left Rome, to his great regret; he joined me at Pisa and thence we journeyed to Provence and stayed awhile at Arles, whence he wrote to Mrs. Janvier:
30: 3: 91.
Gento Catarino,
You see I address you à la Provençale already! We left Italy last week, and came to Provence. Marseilles, I admit, seemed to me an unattractive place after Rome—and indeed all of Provence we have seen as yet is somewhat chill and barren after Italy. No doubt the charm will grow. For one thing, Spring is very late here this year....
Arles we like much. It is a quaint and pleasant little town: and once I can get my mind free of those haunting hill-towns of the Sabines and Albans I love so much—(is there any hill range in the world to equal that swing of the Apennines stretching beyond Rome eastward, southward, and southwestward?)—I shall get to love it too, no doubt. But oh, Italy, Italy! Not Rome: though Rome has an infinite charm, even now when the jerry-builder is fast ruining it: but “greater Rome,” the Agro Romano! When I think of happy days at the Lake of Nemi, high up in the Albans, of Albano, and L’Ariccia, and Castel Gandolfo—of Tivoli, and the lonely Montecelli, and S. Polo dei Cavalieri, and Castel Madama, and Anticoli Corrado, etc., among the Sabines—of the ever new, mysterious, fascinating Campagna, from the Maremma on the North to the Pontine Marshes, my heart is full of longing. I love North Italy too, all Umbria and Tuscany: and to know Venice well is to have a secret of perpetual joy: and yet, the Agro Romano! How I wish you could have been there this winter and spring! You will find something of my passion for it, and of that still deeper longing and passion for the Beautiful, in my “Sospiri di Roma,” which ought to reach you before the end of April, or at any rate early in May. This very day it is being finally printed off to the sound of the Cascades of the Anio at Tivoli, in the Sabines—one of which turns the machinery of the Socièta Laziale’s printing-works. I do hope the book will appeal to you, as there is so much of myself in it. No doubt it will be too frankly impressionistic to suit some people, and its unconventionality in form as well as in matter will be a cause of offence here and there. You shall have one of the earliest copies.
Yesterday was a fortunate day for arrival. It was a great festa, and all the women were out in their refined and picturesque costumes. The Amphitheatre was filled, tier upon tier, and full of colour (particularly owing to some three or four hundred Zouaves, grouped in threes or fours every here and there) for the occasion of “a grand Bull-Fight.” It was a brilliant and amusing scene, though (fortunately) the “fight” was of the most tame and harmless kind: much less dangerous even for the most unwary of the not very daring Arlesians than a walk across the remoter parts of the Campagna....
Letters from Mr. Meredith and Miss Blind, in acknowledgment of the privately published volume of poems, greatly pleased their author:
Box Hill, April 15, 1891.
Dear Sharp,
I have sent a card to the Grosvenor Club. I have much to say for the Sospiri, with some criticism. Impressionistic work where the heart is hot surpasses all but highest verse. When, mind. It can be of that heat only at intervals. In the ‘Wild Mare’ you have hit the mark. It is an unrivalled piece.
But you have at times (I read it so) insisted on your impressions. That is, you have put on your cap, sharpened your pencil, and gone afield as the Impressionistic poet. Come and hear more. I will give you a Crown and a bit of the whip—the smallest bit.
Give my warm regards to your wife.
Yours ever,
George Meredith.
May 18, 1891.
Dear Will,
I got the copy you sent me of Sospiri di Roma.... Your nature feeling is always so intense and genuine that I would have liked my own mood to be more completely in harmony with yours before writing to you about what is evidently so spontaneous an outcome of your true self. I should have wished to identify myself with this joy in the beauty of the world which bubbles up fountainlike from every one of these sparkling Roman transcripts, why called “Sospiri” I hardly know. One envies you the ebullient delight which must have flooded your veins before you could write many of these verses, notably “Fior di Primavera,” “Red Poppies,” and “The White Peacock”: the effect of colour and movement produced in these last two seems to be particularly happy, as also the descriptions of the sea of roses in the first which vividly recalled to me the prodigal wealth of blossom on the Riviera. I thoroughly agree with what George Meredith says of the sketch of “The Wild Mare,” the lines of which seem as quiveringly alive as the high strung nerves of these splendid creatures.
“August Afternoon in Rome” is also an admirable bit of impressionism and, if I remember, just that effect—
Far in the middle-flood, adrift, unoar’d,
A narrow boat, swift-moving, black,
Follows the flowing wave like a living thing.
By and by if I should get to some “place of nestling green for poets made” I hope to get more deeply into the spirit of your book.
Come to see me as soon as ever you and Lill can manage it, either separately or together.
Always yours,
Mathilde Blind.
Concerning certain criticisms on Sospiri di Roma he wrote to Mrs. Janvier:
1st May, 1891.
... Whether coming with praise or with blame and cast me to the perdition of the unrighteous, the critics all seem unable to take the true standpoint—namely, that of the poet. What has he attempted, and how far has he succeeded or failed? That is what should concern them. It is no good to any one or to me to say that I am a Pagan—that I am “an artist beyond doubt, but one without heed to the cravings of the human heart: a worshipper of the Beautiful, but without religion, without an ethical message, with nothing but a vain cry for the return, or it may be the advent, of an impossible ideal.” Equally absurd to complain that in these “impressions” I give no direct “blood and bones” for the mind to gnaw at and worry over. Cannot they see that all I attempt to do is to fashion anew something of the lovely vision I have seen, and that I would as soon commit forgery (as I told some one recently) as add an unnecessary line, or “play” to this or that taste, this or that critical opinion. The chief paper here in Scotland shakes its head over “the nude sensuousness of ‘The Swimmer of Nemi,’ ‘The Naked Rider,’ ‘The Bather,’ ‘Fior di Memoria,’ ‘The Wild Mare’ (whose ‘fiery and almost savage realism!’ it depreciates—tho’ this is the poem which Meredith says is ‘bound to live’) and evidently thinks artists and poets who see beautiful things and try to fashion them anew beautifully, should be stamped out, or at any rate left severely alone....
In work, creative work above all, is the sovereign remedy for all that ill which no physician can cure: and there is a joy in it which is unique and invaluable.
For a time, however, creative work had to be put aside. The preparation of The Life and Letters of Joseph Severn was a hard grind that lasted till mid-August. At Whitby, on the 13th, according to his diary he “wrote 25 pp. digest of Severn’s novel and worked at other things. Later I wrote the concluding pages, finishing the book at 2 A.M. I can hardly believe that this long delayed task is now accomplished. But at last “Severn” is done!”
The final revision occupied him till the 28th August, and in order to finish it before we went abroad on the 27th he wrote “all morning till 1 p.m.; again from 9 p.m. all night unbrokenly till 7 A.M. Then read a little to rest my brain and wrote four letters. Had a bath and breakfast and felt all right.”
The 24th has the interesting entry: “Met old Charles Severn at the Italian Restaurant near Portland Road Station and had a long talk with him. He confirmed his previous statement (end of September last year) about Keats having written “The Ode to the Nightingale” under “The Spaniards on Hampstead Heath.”
September found us in Stuttgart in order that my husband should collaborate with the American novelist Blanche Willis Howard. The first days were spent in wandering about the lovely hillsides around the town, which he described to Mrs. Janvier:
Johannes Strasse 33,
3: 9: 91.
... I know that you would revel in this glowing golden heat, and in the beautiful vinelands of the South. Southern Germany in the vintage season is something to remember with joy all one’s life. Yesterday it seemed as if the world above were one vast sea of deep blue wherever a great glowing wave of light straight from the heart of the sun was flowing joyously. I revel in this summer gorgeousness, and drink in the hot breath of the earth as though it were the breath of life. Words are useless to depict the splendour of colour everywhere—the glimmer of the golden-green of the vines, the immeasurable sunfilled flowers, the masses of ripening fruit of all kinds, the hues on the hill-slopes and in the valleys, on the houses and the quaint little vineyard-cots with their slanting red roofs. In the early afternoon I went up through the orchards and vineyards on the shoulder of the Hasenberg. It was a glory of colour. Nor have I ever seen such a lovely purple bloom among the green branches—like the sky of faerieland—as in the dark-plum orchards. There was one heavily laden tree which was superb in its massy richness of fruit: it was like a lovely vision of those thunder-clouds which come and go in July dawns. The bloom on the fruit was as though the west wind had been unable to go further and had let its velvety breath and wings fade away in a soft visible death or sleep. The only sounds were from the myriad bees and wasps and butterflies: some peasants singing in the valley as they trimmed the vines: and the just audible sussurrus of the wind among the highest pines on the Hasenberg. There was the fragrance of a myriad odours from fruit and flower and blossom and plant and tree and fructifying soil—with below all that strange smell as of the very body of the living breathing world. The festival of colour was everywhere. As I passed a cottar’s sloping bit of ground within his vineyards, I saw some cabbages high up among some trailing beans, which were of the purest and most delicate blue, lying there like azure wafts from the morning sky. Altogether I felt electrified in mind and body. The sunflood intoxicated me. But the beauty of the world is always bracing—all beauty is. I seemed to inhale it—to drink it in—to absorb it at every pore—to become it—to become the heart and soul within it. And then in the midst of it all came my old savage longing for a vagrant life: for freedom from the bondage we have involved ourselves in. I suppose I was a gipsy once—and before that “a wild man o’ the woods.”
A terrific thunderstorm has broken since I wrote the above. I have rarely if ever seen such continuous lightning. As it cleared, I saw a remarkably beautiful sight. In front of my window rose a low rainbow, and suddenly from the right there was slung a bright steel-blue bolt, seemingly hurled with intent right through the arch. The next moment the rainbow collapsed in a ruin of fading splendours....
I have had a very varied, and, to use a much abused word, a very romantic life in its external as well as in its internal aspects. Life is so unutterably precious that I cannot but rejoice daily that I am alive: and yet I have no fear of, or even regret at the thought of death.... There are many things far worse than death. When it comes, it comes. But meanwhile we are alive. The Death of the power to live is the only death to be dreaded....
His Diary also testifies to his exultant mood:
Wednesday, 2:9:1891.—Another glorious day. This flood of sunshine is like new life: it is new life. I rejoice in the heat and splendour of it. It seems to get into the heart and brain, and it intoxicates with a strange kind of rapture.... How intensely one lives sometimes, even when there is little apparently to call forth quintessential emotion. This afternoon was a holiday of the soul. And yet how absolutely on such a day one realises the savage in one. I suppose I was a gipsy once: a ‘wild man’ before: a wilder beast of prey before that. We all hark back strangely at times. To-day I seemed to remember much.... What a year this has been for me: the richest and most wonderful I have known. Were I as superstitious as Polycrates I should surely sacrifice some precious thing lest the vengeful gods should say “Thou hast lived too fully: Come!...”
The following extracts from William’s Diary indicate the method of the collaboration used by the two authors:
Sunday 6th. Sept. 1891.—Blanche Willis Howard, or rather, the Frau Hof-Arzt Von Teuffel, arrived last night. She sent round word that she could conveniently receive me in the afternoon, but as it was not to have our first talk-over about our long projected joint novel, Elizabeth came with me so as to make Frau Von T.’s acquaintanceship.... She is a charming woman, and I like her better than ever. As I am here to write a novel in collaboration with her, and not to fall in love, I must be on guard against my too susceptible self....
Monday 7th.—At 3 o’clock I went to Frau Von Teuffel’s, and stayed till 5.45. We had a long talk, and skirmished admirably—sometimes “fluking” but ever and again taking our man: in other words, we gained what we were after, to some extent—indirectly as well as directly. She agrees to my proposal that we call the book A Fellowe and His Wife. The two chief personages are to be Germans of rank, from the Rügen seaboard. I am to be the “faire wife,” and have decided to live at Rome, and to be a sculptor in ivory, and to have rooms in the Palazzo Malaspina. Have not yet decided about my name. My favourite German name is Hedwig, but Frau Von T. objected that English and American readers would pronounce it ‘Hed-wig.’ She suggested Edla: but that doesn’t ‘fetch’ me. I think Freyda (or perhaps Olga) would suit.
Tuesday, 8th.—This morning I began our novel A Fellowe and His Wife. I wrote some nine pages of MS. being the whole of the first letter written by Freia (or Ilse) from Rome.
Thursday, 10th.—In the evening I went round to Môrike Strasse. We had a long talk about the book and its evolution, and ultimately decided to attempt the still more difficult task of telling the whole story in the letters of Odo and Ilse only. Of course this is much more difficult: but if we can do it, so much the more credit to our artistic skill and imaginative insight.... (It was also decided that Frau v. Teuffel should write Odo’s letters, and her collaborator, Ilse’s. In addition to the novel W. S. dramatised the story in a five-act play.)
1st October, 1891.—Wrote to-day the long first scene of Act III. of A Fellowe. In afternoon E. and I went out in the town. I bought Maurice Maeterlinck’s La Princesse Maleine and Les Aveugles, and in the late afternoon read right thro’ the latter and skimmed the former. Some one has been writing about him recently and comparing him to Webster. In method greatly, and in manner, and even in conceptive imagination, he differs from Webster: but he is his Cousin-German. It is certainly hopelessly uncritical to say as Octave Mirbeau did last year in a French paper or magazine that Maeterlinck is another Shakespeare. He is not even remotely Shakespearian. He is a writer of singular genius; and I shall send for everything he has written. Reading these things of his excited me to a high degree. It was the electric touch I needed to produce my Dramatic Interludes over which I have been brooding. I believe that much of the imaginative writing of the future will be in dramatic prose of a special kind....
Friday, 2nd.—I went to bed last night haunted by my story “The Summons.” To-day at 10.30 or nearer 11 I began to write it, and wrote without a break till 5.30, by which time “A Northern Night,” as I now call it, was entirely finished, ‘asides’ and all. Both there and when I issue the Dramatic Interludes (five in all) I shall send them forth under my anagram, H. P. Siwäarmill. The volume will be a small one. The longest pieces will be the “Northern Night,” and “The Experiment of Melchior van Hoëk”: the others will be “The Confessor,” “The Birth of a Soul” and “The Black Madonna.”
Saturday 3rd.—... This late afternoon wrote the Dramatic Study, “The Birth of a Soul.” Though not ‘picturesque’ it touches a deeper note than “A Northern Night,” and so is really the more impressive.
Tuesday, 6th.—... P. S. After writing this Entry for Tuesday, shortly before 12, I began to write the opening particulars of Scene II. of Act IV., and went on till I finished the whole scene, shortly before 2 A.M.
Wednesday, 7th. Finished before 1 A.M. my Play, A Fellowe, by writing the longish Scene III. of Act IV. Went out with Lill in the afternoon. The town all draped in black for the death of the King of Saxony. Wrote to Frank Harris (from here, as H. P. Siwäarmill) with “The Birth of a Soul.” ...
Friday, 9th.—In late evening thought out (but only so far as leading lines and general drift) the drama “The Gipsy-Christ.” (Being The Passion of Manuel van Hoëk)....
WALT WHITMAN
The Pagan Review
The brilliant summer was followed by a damp and foggy autumn. My husband’s depression increased with the varying of the year. While I was on a visit to my mother he wrote to me, after seeing me in the morning:
Grosvenor Club, Nov. 9th, 1891.
“ ... I have been here all day and have enjoyed the bodily rest, the inner quietude, and, latterly, a certain mental uplifting. But at first I was deep down in the blues. Anything like the appalling gloom between two and three-thirty! I could scarcely read, or do anything but watch it with a kind of fascinated horror. It is going down to the grave indeed to be submerged in that hideous pall.... As soon as I can make enough by fiction or the drama to depend thereon we’ll leave this atmosphere of fog and this environment of deadening, crushing, paralysing, death-in-life respectability. Circumstances make London thus for us: for me at least—for of course we carry our true atmosphere in ourselves—and places and towns are, in a general sense, mere accidents....
I have read to-day Edmond Schérer’s Essais on Eng. Literature: very able though not brilliant—reread the best portions of Jules Breton’s delightful autobiography, which I liked so much last year ... all George Moore’s New Novel, Vain Fortune.
I had also a pleasant hour or so dipping into Ben Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher, and other old dramatists: refreshed my forgotten acquaintanceship with that silly drama “Firmilian”: and, generally, enjoyed an irresponsible ramble thro’ whatever came to hand. I am now all right again and send you this little breath, this little ‘Sospiro di Guglielmo,’ to give you, if perchance you need it, a tonic stimulus. No, you don’t need it!”
His health was so seriously affected by the fogs that it became imperative that he should get into purer air so he decided to fulfil his intention of going to New York even though he had been forced to relinquish all ideas of lecturing. There were various publishing matters to attend to, and many friends to visit. In a letter to Mrs. Janvier, announcing his projected visit, he tells her of the particular work he had on hand:
“You will be the first to hear my new imaginative work. Although in a new method, it is inherently more akin to “Romantic Ballads” than to “Sospiri,” but it is intense dramatic prose. There is one in particular I wish to read to you—three weeks from now.” And he adds, “Do you not long for the warm days—for the beautiful living pulsing South? This fierce cold and gloom is mentally benumbing.... Yes you are right: there are few women and perhaps fewer men who have the passion of Beauty—of the thrilling ecstasy of life.”
During his short stay in New York he was made the welcome guest of Mr. and Mrs. Clarence Stedman; and he delighted in this opportunity of again meeting his good friends Mr. and Mrs. Richard Stoddart, Mr. Alden, Mr. Howells, etc. But his chief interest was a memorable visit to Walt Whitman, in whose fearless independent, mental outlook, and joy in life, in whose vigorous individual verse, he had found incentive and refreshment. Armed with an introduction from Mr. Stedman he pilgrimaged to Camden, New Jersey, on January 23rd, and found the veteran poet in bed propped up with pillows, very feeble, but bright-eyed and mentally alert. William described the visit in a letter to me:
“During a memorable talk on the literature of the two countries past and to come, the conversation turned upon a vivid episode. ‘That was when you were young?’ I asked. The patriarchal old poet—who lay in his narrow bed, with his white beard, white locks, and ashy-grey face in vague relief, in the afternoon light, against the white pillows and coverlet—looked at me before he answered, with that half audacious, wholly winsome glance so characteristic of him, ‘Now, just you tell me when you think that was!’
“Then, with sudden energy, and without waiting for a reply, he added, ‘Young? I’m as young now as I was then! What’s this grey tangle’ (and as he spoke he gave his straggling beard an impatient toss),’and this decrepit old body got to do with that, eh? I never felt younger, and I’m glad of it—against what’s coming along. That’s the best way to shift camp, eh? That’s what I call Youth!’”
When the younger man bade him farewell Whitman gave him a message to take back with him across the seas. “He said to me with halting breath: ‘William Sharp when you go back to England, tell those friends of whom you have been speaking, and all others whom you may know and I do not that words fail me to express my deep gratitude to them for sympathy and aid truly enough beyond acknowledgment. Good-bye to you and to them—the last greetings of a tired old poet.’”
The impression made on my husband, by the fearless serene attitude of the great poet found expression in the few lines that flashed into his mind, when on March 29th he read in a London evening paper of the death of Walt Whitman:
IN MEMORIAM
He laughed at Life’s Sunset-Gates
With vanishing breath,
Glad soul, who went with the sun
To the Sunrise of death.
While William was in New York Mr. Stedman was asked by Mr. J. W. Young to approach his guest with a request that he should “lecture” at Harvard upon a subject of contemporary Literature. “Quite a number of Harvard men are anxious to see and hear Mr. Sharp if he will consent to come to Cambridge.”
It was with genuine regret that, owing to his doctor’s strict prohibition, William felt himself obliged to refuse this flattering request. He had also been asked by Mr. Palmer “the leading theatrical Boss in the States to sell to him the rights of my play on ‘A Fellowe and his Wife,’” a proposal which he declined.
On his return to England he wrote to Mr. Janvier:
“Dear Old Man,
“I have read your stories (as I wrote the other day) with particular pleasure, apart from personal associations. You have a delicate and delightful touch that is quite your own, and all in all I for my part fully endorse what Mr. Howells wrote about you recently in Harpers’ and said as emphatically in private. So—amico caro—“go in and win!”
I am settling down in London for a time, and am more content to abide awhile now that the writing mood is at last upon me again—and strong at that!
I have not yet put my hand to any of the commissioned stories I must soon turn to—but tell la sposa that I have finished my “Dramatic Vistas” (two or three of which I read to her), and even venture to look with a certain half-content upon the last of the series—“The Lute-Player”—which has been haunting me steadily since last October, but which I could not express aright till the other day....”
The immediate outcome of his visit to America was the publication, by Messrs. Chas. Webster & Co., of his Romantic Ballads and Sospiri di Roma in one volume entitled Flower O’ the Vine. It was prefaced by a flattering Introduction by Mr. Janvier, to whom the author wrote in acknowledgment:
Paris, 23d April, 1892.
... Many thanks for your letter, my dear fellow, and for the “Introduction,” which I have just read. I thank you most heartily for what you say there, which seems to me, moreover, if I may say so, at once generous, fittingly reserved, and likely to win attention. You yourself occupy such a high place in Letters oversea that such a recommendation of my verse cannot but result to my weal. I have been so deep in work and engagements, that I have been unable to attend to any correspondence of late—and have, I fear, behaved somewhat churlishly to friends across the water, and particularly to my dear friends at 27th Avenue. But now the pressure of work is over for the moment: my London engagements or their ghosts are vainly calling to me d’Outre-Manche: I am keeping down my too cosmopolitan acquaintanceship in Paris to the narrowest limit: and on and after the second of May am going to reform and remain reformed. If you don’t object to a little “roughing,” you would enjoy being with me and mes camarades this coming week. We like extremes, so after a week or so of the somewhat feverish Bohemianism of literary and artistic Paris, we shall be happy at our ‘gipsy’ encampment in the Forest of Fontainebleau (at a remote and rarely-visited but lovely and romantic spot between the Gorge de Franchard and the Gorge d’Apremont). Spring is now here in all her beauty: and there is a divine shimmer of green everywhere. Paris itself is en fête with her vividly emerald limes and sycamores, and the white and red spires of the chestnuts must make the soul of the west wind that is now blowing rejoice with gladness. The Seine itself is of a paler green than usual, and is suggestive of those apple-hued canals and conduits of Flanders and by the ‘dead cities’ of north-east Holland. I forget if you know Paris—but there is one of its many fountains that has an endless charm for me: that across the Seine, between the Quai des Grands Augustins and the Bld. St. Germain—the Fontaine St. Michel—I stood watching the foaming surge and splash of it for some time yesterday, and the pearl-grey and purple-hued doves that flew this way and that through the sunlit spray. It brought, as it always does, many memories of beloved Rome and Italy back to me. I turned—and saw Paul Verlaine beside me: and I was in Paris again, the Paris of Paris, the Aspasia of the cities of the World, the only city whom one loves and worships (and is betrayed by) as a woman. Then I went round to Leon Vanier’s, where there were many of les Jeunes—Jean Moréas, Maurice Barrès, Cazals, Renard, Eugène Holland, and others (including your namesake, Janvier). To-night I ought to go to the weekly gathering of a large number of les Jeunes at the Café du Soleil d’Or, that favourite meeting place now of les décadents, les symbolistes, and les everything else. But I can’t withstand this flooding sunshine, and sweet wind, and spraying of waters, and toss-toss and shimmer-shimmer of blossoms and leaves; so I’ll probably be off. This won’t be off if I don’t shut up in a double sense.
My love to ‘Kathia’ and to you, dear fellow Pagans.
Ever yours rejoicingly,
William Sharp.
Tell K. that when I have ‘reformed’ I’ll write to her. Don’t let her be impertinent, and say that this promise will be fulfilled ad Græcas Kalendas!
P. S. Here are my proposed ‘coming-movements.’
(1) Lill joins me in Paris about 10 days hence, and remains to see the two Salons, etc.
(2) From the middle of May till the middle (14th) of July we shall be in London.
(3) Then Lill goes with friends to Germany, to Bayreuth (for Wagnerian joys) and I go afoot and aboat among the lochs and isles and hills of the western Scottish Highlands.
(4) We meet again in Stirling or Edinburgh, early in August—and then, having purchased or hired a serviceable if not a prancing steed, we go off for three weeks vagabondage. The steed is for Lill and our small baggage and a little tent. We’ll sometimes sleep out: sometimes at inns, or in the fern in Highlander’s cottages. Thereafter I shall again go off by myself to the extreme west “where joy and melancholy are one, and where youth and age are twins” as the Gaelic poet says.
(5) The rest of September visiting in Scotland.
(6) Part of October in London then (O Glad Tidings)
(7) Off for 6 months to the South: first to the Greek side of Sicily: then to Rome (about Xmas) for the Spring. Finally: a Poor-house in London.
The reply came swiftly:
New York, 6: 5: 92.
My dear Sharp,
Your letter of April 3rd is like a stirring fresh wind. The vigour of it is delightful, and a little surprising, considering what you had been about. I will not cast stones at you—and, if you ran on schedule time, you have been reformed for four days. Your announcement that you intend to stay reformed is fine in its way. What a noble imagination you have! I am glad that you tolerate my ‘introduction.’ As Kate wrote you, I was very wretched—unluckily for you—when it was written. I wish that it were better in itself and more worthy of you. But the milk is spilled. The book will look very well, I think.... Your programme for the ensuing year fills me with longing. Even the London poorhouse at the end of it don’t alarm me. Colonel Newcome was brought up in a poorhouse—or a place of that nature; and, even without such a precedent I should be willing to go to a poor-house for a while after such a glorious year. Joy and good luck attend you, my dear fellow, as you go upon your gay way!...
Always yours,
T. A. J.
A Fellowe and his Wife had in the early spring been published in America and England, and also in the Tauchnitz Collection, and had a flattering reception in both countries. It had been preceded in February by the Life and Letters of Joseph Severn published by Messrs. Sampson Low & Co.
Among various articles written during the early summer for the Academy were one on Philip Marston, and one on Maeterlinck; and in the July number of the Forum was an appreciation of Thomas Hardy—to whom he had made a flying visit in March.
In acknowledgment he received the following note from the novelist:
Max Gate, Dorchester,
July, 1892.
My dear Sharp,
It did give me a great deal of pleasure to read the article in the Forum, and what particularly struck me was your power of grasping the characteristics of this district and people in a few hours visit, during which, so far as I could see, you were not observing anything. I wish the execution of the novels better justified the generous view you take.
Yours sincerely,
Thomas Hardy.
Our delightful plans for the autumn were not carried out; for, during a visit to the art critic, J. Stanley Little, at Rudgwick, Sussex, my husband saw a little cottage which attracted him and we decided to take it as a pied-à-terre. Pending negotiations we stayed with Mr. and Mrs. Caird at Northbrook, Micheldever, where W. S. began to plan out the scheme of a new quarterly Review that was “to be the expression of a keen pagan delight in nature.” I quote from his Diary:
“June 2nd, 1892. In early forenoon, after some pleasant dawdling, began to write the Italian story, “The Rape of the Sabines,” which I shall print in the first instance in my projected White Review as by James Marazion. After tea wrote about a page or so more of story. Then went a walk up to One-Tree-Hill. Saw several hares. The Cuckoo was calling till after 9 o’clock. Noticed that the large white moths fluttered a long time in one spot above the corn. Wild pigeons go to roost sooner than rooks, apparently. Got back about 9.30, and then finished “The Rape of the Sabines” (about 4,500 words).
“Friday 3rd. After breakfast went for a brisk walk of over four miles. Then worked, slowly, till lunch, at opening of “The Pagans” (afterwards to be called “Good-Bye, my Fancy”). Then walked to the station by the fields and back by the road (another 4 miles). Then worked about an hour more on “The Pagans.” Have done to-day, in all, from 1,200 to 1,500 words of it. While walking in the afternoon thought out “The Oread” and also the part of it which I shall use in the White Review by Charles Verlayne.
Saty 4th. Did rest of “The Pagans.” In afternoon did first part of “The Oread.”
Sunday 5th. Finished “Oread.”
Tuesday 7th. Went down to Rudgwick, Sussex, by appointment, and agreed to take the cottage on a 3-years’ lease.”
Regretfully the wanderings in the Highlands had to be postponed although the projector of the Review went for a time to Loch Goil with a friend and I to Bayreuth. In August we settled in the little eight-roomed cottage, near Rudgwick, with a little porch, an orchard and garden, and small lawn with a chestnut tree in its midst. We remained at Phenice Croft two years and took much pleasure in the little green enclosure that was our own. The views from it were not extensive. A stretch of fields and trees lay in front of the house, and from the side lawn we could see an old mill whose red brick roof had been weathered to picturesque shades of green. Phenice Croft stood at the edge of a little hamlet called Buck’s Green, and across the road from our garden gate stood the one shop flanked by a magnificent poplar tree, that made a landmark however far we might wander. It was a perpetual delight to us. William Sharp settled down at once to the production of his quarterly to be called, finally, The Pagan Review, edited by himself as W. H. Brooks. As he had no contributors, for he realised he would have to attract them, he himself wrote the whole of the Contents under various pseudonyms. It was published on August 15th, 1892; the cover bore the motto “Sic transit gloria Grundi” and this list of contents:
| The Black Madonna | By W. S. Fanshawe |
| [This dramatic Interlude was afterwards included in Vistas.] | |
| The Coming of Love | By George Gascoign |
| [Republished posthumously in Songs Old and New.] | |
| The Pagans: a Romance | By William Dreeme |
| [Never finished.] | |
| An Untold Story | By Lionel Wingrave |
| [Sonnets afterwards printed in Songs Old and New.] | |
| The Rape of the Sabines | By James Marazion |
| The Oread | By Charles Verlayne |
| Dionysos in India | By William Windover |
| Contemporary Record. | |
| Editorial. | |
The Editorial announced a promised article on “The New Paganism” from the pen of H. P. Siwäarmill, but it was never written.
As the Foreword gives an idea, not only of the Editor’s project, but also of his mental attitude at that moment—a sheer revelling in the beauty of objective life and nature, while he rode for a brief time on the crest of the wave of health and exuberant spirits that had come to him in Italy after his long illness and convalescence—I reprint it in its entirety.
Editorial prefaces to new magazines generally lay great stress on the effort of the directorate, and all concerned, to make the forthcoming periodical popular.
We have no such expectation: not even, it may be added, any such intention. We aim at thorough-going unpopularity: and there is every reason to believe that, with the blessëd who expect little, we shall not be disappointed.
⁂
In the first place, The Pagan Review is frankly pagan: pagan in sentiment, pagan in convictions, pagan in outlook. This being so, it is a magazine only for those who, with Mr. George Meredith, can exclaim in all sincerity—
“O sir, the truth, the truth! is’t in the skies,
Or in the grass, or in this heart of ours—
But O, the truth, the truth!...”—
and at the same time, and with the same author, are not unready to admit that truth to life, external and internal, very often
“... is not meat
For little people or for fools.”
To quote from Mr. Meredith once more:
“... these things are life:
And life, they say, is worthy of the Muse.”
But we are well aware that this is just what “they” don’t say. “They,” “the general public,” care very little about the “Muse” at all; and the one thing they never advocate or wish is that the “Muse” should be so indiscreet as to really withdraw from life the approved veils of Convention.
Nevertheless, we believe that there is a by no means numerically insignificant public to whom The Pagan Review may appeal; though our paramount difficulty will be to reach those who, owing to various circumstances, are out of the way of hearing aught concerning the most recent developments in the world of letters.
⁂
The Pagan Review conveys, or is meant to convey, a good deal by its title. The new paganism is a potent leaven in the yeast of the “younger generation,” without as yet having gained due recognition, or even any sufficiently apt and modern name, any scientific designation. The “new paganism,” the “modern epicureanism,” and kindred appellations, are more or less misleading. Yet, with most of us, there is a fairly definite idea of what we signify thereby. The religion of our forefathers has not only ceased for us personally, but is no longer in any vital and general sense a sovereign power in the realm. It is still fruitful of vast good, but it is none the less a power that was, rather than a power that is. The ideals of our forefathers are not our ideals, except where the accidents of time and change can work no havoc. A new epoch is about to be inaugurated, is, indeed, in many respects, already begun; a new epoch in civil law, in international comity, in what, vast and complex though the issues be, may be called Human Economy. The long half-acknowledged, half-denied duel between Man and Woman is to cease, neither through the victory of hereditary overlordship nor the triumph of the far more deft and subtle if less potent weapons of the weaker, but through a frank recognition of copartnery. This new comradeship will be not less romantic, less inspiring, less worthy of the chivalrous extremes of life and death, than the old system of overlord and bondager, while it will open perspectives of a new-rejoicing humanity, the most fleeting glimpses of which now make the hearts of true men and women beat with gladness. Far from wishing to disintegrate, degrade, abolish marriage, the “new paganism” would fain see that sexual union become the flower of human life. But, first, the rubbish must be cleared away; the anomalies must be replaced by just inter-relations; the sacredness of the individual must be recognised; and women no longer have to look upon men as usurpers, men no longer to regard women as spiritual foreigners.
⁂
These remarks, however, must not be taken too literally as indicative of the literary aspects of The Pagan Review. Opinions are one thing, the expression of them another, and the transformation or reincarnation of them through indirect presentment another still.
This magazine is to be a purely literary, not a philosophical, partisan, or propagandist periodical. We are concerned here with the new presentment of things rather than with the phenomena of change and growth themselves. Our vocation, in a word, is to give artistic expression to the artistic “inwardness” of the new paganism; and we voluntarily turn aside here from such avocations as chronicling every ebb and flow of thought, speculating upon every fresh surprising derelict upon the ocean of man’s mind, or expounding well or ill the new ethic. If those who sneer at the rallying cry, “Art for Art’s sake,” laugh at our efforts, we are well content; for even the lungs of donkeys are strengthened by much braying. If, on the other hand, those who, by vain pretensions and paradoxical clamour, degrade Art by making her merely the more or less seductive panoply of mental poverty and spiritual barrenness, care to do a grievous wrong by openly and blatantly siding with us, we are still content; for we recognise that spiritual byways and mental sewers relieve the Commonwealth of much that is unseemly and might breed contagion. The Pagan Review, in a word, is to be a mouthpiece—we are genuinely modest enough to disavow the definite article—of the younger generation, of the new pagan sentiment, rather, of the younger generation. In its pages there will be found a free exposition of the myriad aspects of life, in each instance as adequately as possible reflective of the mind and literary temperament of the writer. The pass-phrase of the new paganism is ours: Sic transit gloria Grundi. The supreme interest of Man is—Woman: and the most profound and fascinating problem to Woman is, Man. This being so, and quite unquestionably so with all the male and female pagans of our acquaintance, it is natural that literature dominated by the various forces of the sexual emotion should prevail. Yet, though paramount in attraction, it is, after all, but one among the many motive forces of life; so we will hope not to fall into the error of some of our French confrères and be persistently and even supernaturally awake to one functional activity and blind to the general life and interest of the commonwealth of soul and body. It is Life that we preach, if perforce we must be taken as preachers at all; Life to the full, in all its manifestations, in its heights and depths, precious to the uttermost moment, not to be bartered even when maimed and weary. For here, at any rate, we are alive; and then, alas, after all,—
“how few Junes
Will heat our pulses quicker...”
⁂
“Much cry for little wool,” some will exclaim. It may be so. Whenever did a first number of a new magazine fulfil all its editor’s dreams or even intentions? “Well, we must make the best of it, I suppose. ‘Tis nater, after all, and what pleases God,” as Mrs. Durbeyfield says in “Tess of the Durbervilles.”
⁂
Have you read that charming roman à quatre, the Croix de Berny? If so, you will recollect the following words of Edgar de Meilhan (alias Théophile Gautier), which I (“I” standing for editor, and associates, and pagans in general) now quote for the delectation of all readers, adversely minded or generously inclined, or dubious as to our real intent—with blithe hopes that they may be the happier therefor: “Frankly, I am in earnest this time. Order me a dove-coloured vest, apple-green trousers, a pouch, a crook; in short, the entire outfit of a Lignon Shepherd. I shall have a lamb washed to complete the pastoral.”
⁂
This is “the lamb.”
The Editor.
The Review was well subscribed for, and many letters came to the Editor and his secretary (myself) that were a source of interest and amusement. Mr. Richard Whiteing—who knew the secret of the Editorship wrote: “I want to subscribe to The Pagan Review if you will let me know to whom to send my abonnement for the half year. I think, you know, you will have to put some more clothes on before the end of the year. You are certainly the liveliest and most independent little devil of a review I ever saw in a first number.”
The Editor, however, swiftly realised that there could be no continuance of the Review. Not only could he not repeat such a tour de force, and he realised that for several numbers he would have to provide the larger portion of the material—but the one number had served its purpose, as far as he was concerned for by means of it he had exhausted a transition phase that had passed to give way to the expression of his more permanent self.
To Thomas A. Janvier the Editor wrote:
Rudgwick, Sussex.
Dear Mr. Janvier,
For though we are strangers in a sense I seem to know you well through our friend in common, Mr. William Sharp!
I write to let you know that The Pagan Review breathed its last a short time ago. Its end was singularly tranquil, but was not unexpected. Your friend Mr. Sharp consoles me by talking of a certain resurrection for what he rudely calls “this corruptible”: if so the P/R will speak a new and wiser tongue, appear in a worthier guise, and put on immortality as a Quarterly.
In the circumstances, I return, with sincerest thanks, the subscription you are so good as to send. Also the memorial card of our late lamented friend—I mean the P/R, not W. S. Talking of W. S., what an admirable fellow he is! I take the greatest possible interest in his career. I read your kind and generous estimate of him in Flower o’ the Vine with much pleasure—and though I cannot say that I hold quite so high a view of his poetic powers as you do, I may say that perusal of your remarks gave me as much pleasure as, I have good reason for knowing, they gave to him. He and I have been ‘delighting’ over your admirably artistic and charming stories in Harper’s. By the way, he’s settling down to a serious ‘tussle.’ He has been “a bad boy” of late: but about a week previous to the death of the Pagan/Review he definitively reformed—on Sept. 11th in the early forenoon, I believe. I hope earnestly he may be able to live on the straight henceforth: but I regret to say that I see signs of backsliding. Still, he may triumph; the spirit is (occasionally) willing. But, apart from this, he is now becoming jealous of such repute as he has won, and is going to deserve it, and the hopes of friends like yourself. Mrs. Brooks’ love to Catherine and yourself: Mine, Tommaso Mio,
You know you have ...
W. H. Brooks.
Elizabeth A. Brooks was so pleased to receive your letter.
One or two young writers sent in MS. contributions and these of course he had to return. One came from Mr. R. Murray Gilchrist with whom he had come into touch through his editorship of the Literary Chair in Young Folk’s Paper. To him he wrote:
Rudgwick, Sussex, 10: 92.
My dear Sir,
As it is almost certain that for unforeseen private reasons serial publication of The Pagan Review will be held over till sometime in 1893, I regret to have to return your MS. to you. I have read The Noble Courtesan with much interest. It has a quality of suggestiveness that is rare, and I hope that it will be included in the forthcoming volume to which you allude.... It seems to me that the story would be improved by less—or more hidden—emphasis on the mysterious aspect of the woman’s nature. She is too much the “principle of Evil,” the “modern Lilith.” If you do not use it, I might be able—with some alterations of a minor kind—to use it in the P/R when next Spring it reappears—if such is its dubious fate.
Yours very truly,
W. H. Brooks.
P. S. It is possible that you may surmise—or that a common friend may tell you—who the editor of the P/R is: if so, may I ask you to be reticent on the matter.
Phenice Croft, Rudgwick,
22: 10: 92.
Dear Mr. Gilchrist,
Although I do not wish the matter to go further I do not mind so sympathetic and kindly a critic knowing that “W. S.” and “W. H. Brooks” are synonymous.
I read with pleasure your very friendly and cordial article in The Library. By the way, it may interest you to know that the “Rape of the Sabines” and—well, I’ll not say what else!—is also by W. H. Brooks. But this, no outsider knows.... The Pagan Review will be revived next year, but probably as a Quarterly: and I look to you as one of the younger men of notable talent to give a helping hand with your pen.
I suppose you come to London occasionally. I hope when you are next south, you will come and give me the pleasure of your personal acquaintance. I can offer you a lovely country, country fare, a bed, and a cordial welcome.
Yours sincerely,
William Sharp.
Intimation had also to be sent to each subscriber; with it was enclosed a card with the following inscription:
The Pagan Review.
On the 15th September, still-born The Pagan Review.
Regretted by none, save the affectionate parents and a few forlorn friends, The Pagan Review has returned to the void whence it came. The progenitors, more hopeful than reasonable, look for an unglorious but robust resurrection at some more fortunate date. “For of such is the Kingdom of Paganism.”
W. H. Brooks.
And at the little cottage a solemn ceremony took place. The Review was buried in a corner of the garden, with ourselves, my sister-in-law Mary and Mr. Stanley Little as mourners; a framed inscription was put to mark the spot, and remained there until we left Rudgwick.