Chapter I

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

Very truly yours, CHRISTINA G. ROSSETTI.

This letter was received while the book was in preparation:

2 BRADNOR ROAD, OXFORD, Nov. 4, 1882.

MY DEAR SHARP,

(I think we have known each other long enough to drop the “Mr.”) I read your letter with great pleasure, and thank you very much for it. Your friendly interest in my various essays I value highly. I have really worked hard for now many years at these prose essays, and it is a real encouragement to hear such good things said of them by one of the most original of young English poets. It will be a singular pleasure to me to be connected, in a sense, in your book on Rossetti, with one I admired so greatly. I wish the book all the success both the subject and the writer deserve. You encourage me to do what I have sometimes thought of doing, when I have got on a little further with the work I have actually on hand—viz. to complete the various series of which the papers I have printed in the _Fortnightly_ are parts. The list you sent me is complete with the exception of an article on Coleridge in the _Westminster_ of January, 1866, with much of which, both as to matter and manner, I should now be greatly dissatisfied. That article is concerned with S. T. C.’s prose; but, corrected, might be put alongside of the criticism on his verse which I made for Ward’s “English Poets.” I can only say that should you finish the paper you speak of on these essays, your critical approval will be of great service to me with the reading public. I find I have by me a second copy of the paper on Giorgione, revised in print, which I send by this post, and hope you will kindly accept. It was reprinted some time ago when I thought of collecting that and other papers into a volume. I am pleased to hear that you remember with pleasure your flying visit to Oxford; and hope you will come for a longer stay in term time early next year. At the end of this month I hope to leave for seven weeks in Italy, chiefly at Rome, where I have never yet been. We went to Cornwall for our summer holiday, but though that country is certainly very singular and beautiful, I found there not a tithe of the stimulus to one’s imagination which I have sometimes experienced in quite unrenowned places abroad.

I should be delighted with a copy of the Rossetti volume from yourself; but it is a volume I should have in any case purchased, and I hope it may appear in time to be my companion on my contemplated journey.

Very sincerely yours, WALTER H. PATER.

2 BRADNOR ROAD, Jan. 15, 1883.

MY DEAR SHARP,

Thank you very sincerely for the copy of your book, with the fine impression of the beautiful frontispiece, which reached me yesterday. One copy of the book I had already obtained through a bookseller in Rome, and read it there with much admiration of its wealth of ideas and expression, and its abundance of interesting information. Thank you also sincerely, for the pleasant things you have said about myself; all the pleasanter for being said in connection with the subject of Rossetti, whose genius and work I esteemed so greatly. I am glad to hear that the book is having the large sale it deserves. Your letter of December 24th, was forwarded to me at Rome, with the kind invitation I should have been delighted to accept had it been possible, and which I hope you will let me profit by some other time. Then, I heard from my sisters, of your search for me in London, and was very sorry to have missed you there. I shall be delighted to see you here; and can give you a bed at Brasenose, where I shall reside this term.

Thank you again for the pleasure your book has given, and will give me, in future reading. Excuse this hurried letter, and

Believe me, Very sincerely yours, WALTER PATER.

It had been William Sharp’s intention to rewrite his Study on Rossetti; for in later years he was very dissatisfied with the early book, and considered his judgment to have been immature. He had indeed arranged certain publishing preliminaries; and he wrote the dedicatory chapter; but the book itself was untouched save one or two opening sentences. For this project, with many others planned by William Sharp, was laid aside when the more intimate, the more imperative work put forward under the pseudonym of “Fiona Macleod” began to shape itself in his brain. In his dedication to Walter Pater (the only portion of the book that was finished), the author explains his reasons for wishing to write a second Study of the painter-poet. He describes the new material available, and relates that in Rossetti’s lifetime it was planned that a “Life should be written by Philip Bourke Marston and myself, primarily for publication in America. Rossetti took a humorous interest in the scheme, and often alluded to it in notes or conversation as the Bobbies’ book (a whimsical substitute for the Boston firm of Roberts Brothers, whom we intended to honour with our great—unwritten—work): but nothing came of the project.... Rossetti was eager to help Marston; so he said he was charmed with the idea, and promised to give all the aid in his power. A week later he told me that ‘there was no good in it,’ and that ‘it had better drop’: but, instead he suggested that _he_ should write an article upon Marston and his poetry for _Harper’s_, or _Scribner’s_, if it were more expedient that such an article should appear in an American periodical, or, if preferred, for some important Quarterly here.

“But you, cognizant as you are of much of this detail, will readily understand and agree with me when I say that no really adequate portrait of Rossetti is likely to be given to us for many years to come. Possibly never: for his was a nature wrought of so many complexities, his a life developed perplexedly by such divers elements, that he will reappear, for those who come after us, not in any one portraiture but as an evocation from many....

“Of all that has been written of Rossetti’s genius and achievement in poetry nothing shows more essential insight, is of more striking and enduring worth, than the essay by yourself, included in your stimulating and always delightful _Appreciations_. You, more than any one, it seems to me, have understood and expressed the secret of his charm. And though you have not written also of Rossetti the painter, I know of no one who so well and from the first perceived just wherein lies his innate power, his essential significance.

“Years ago, in Oxford, how often we talked these matters over! I have often recalled one evening, in particular, often recollected certain words of yours: and never more keenly than when I have associated them with the early work of Rossetti, in both arts, but preëminently in painting: ‘To my mind Rossetti is the most significant man among us. More torches will be lit from his flame—or torches lit at his flame—than perhaps even enthusiasts like yourself imagine.’

“We are all seeking a lost Eden. This ideal Beauty that we catch glimpses of, now in morning loveliness, now in glooms of tragic terror, haunts us by day and night, in dreams of waking and sleeping—nay, whether or not we will, among the littlenesses and exigencies of our diurnal affairs. It may be that, driven from the Eden of direct experience, we are being more and more forced into taking refuge within the haven guarded by our dreams. To a few only is it given to translate, with rare distinction and excellence, something of this manifold message of Beauty—though all of us would fain be, with your Marius, ‘of the number of those who must be made perfect by the love of visible beauty.’ Among these few, in latter years in this country, no one has wrought more exquisitely for us than Rossetti.

“To him, and to you and all who recreate for us the things we have vaguely known and loved, or surmised only, or previsioned in dreams, we owe what we can never repay save by a rejoicing gratitude. Our own Eden may be irrecoverable, its haunting music never be nearer or clearer than a vanishing echo, yet we have the fortunate warranty of those whose guided feet have led them further into the sunlit wilderness, who have repeated to us, as with hieratic speech, what they have seen and heard.

“‘From time to time,’ wrote Rossetti in one of those early prose passages of his which are so consecrated by the poetic atmosphere—‘from time to time, however, a poet or a painter has caught the music (of that garden), and strayed in through the close stems: the spell is on his hand and his lips like the sleep of the Lotus-eaters, and his record shall be vague and fitful; yet will we be in waiting, and open our eyes and our ears, for the broken song has snatches of an enchanted harmony, and the glimpses are glimpses of Eden.’”

* * * * *

It was during the preparation of this early book that the first volume of William Sharp’s poems was published—too late however to be welcomed by either of the two friends who had taken so keen an interest in its growth: Rossetti, to whom all the poems had been read—and John Elder to whom it was originally dedicated. It is entitled _The Human Inheritance; Motherhood; Transcripts from Nature_ (Elliot Stock), and contains a prefatory poem, and last lines dedicated to myself.

“The Human Inheritance” is a long poem in four cycles—the Inheritance of Childhood, Youth, Manhood and Womanhood, and Old Age, and was an expression of his belief that the human being should fearlessly reach out to every experience that each period might have to offer. Eager, and intensely alive, the poet thirsted till his last breath after whatever might broaden and deepen his knowledge, his understanding, his enjoyment of life.

The second long poem, “The New Hope: a Vision of the Travail of Humanity,” was especially connected with John Elder, the outcome of many talks and letters concerning the purport of the Travail of Humanity—concerning a belief they both held that a great new spiritual awakening is imminent that

... “the one great Word That spake, shall wonderfully again be heard” ...

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

Notwithstanding that some of the critics predicted that the new name was destined to become conspicuous, it was not by these poems, but by the Life of Rossetti that the real impetus was given to his literary fortunes and emphasised the fact of his existence to publishers and the reading public. But to the poet himself—and to me—the publication of the book of poems was a great event. We looked upon it as the beginning of the true work of his life, toward the fulfilment of which we were both prepared to make any sacrifice.

I have a few letters relating to this volume of poems, and append the three which the recipient especially cared to preserve:

2 BRADMORE ROAD, July 30th.

MY DEAR SHARP,

Since you have been here I have been reading your poems with great enjoyment. The presence of philosophical, as in “The New Hope” and of such original, and at the same time perfectly natural motives as “Motherhood” is certainly a remarkable thing among younger English poets, especially when united with a command of rhythmical and verbal form like yours. The poem “Motherhood” is of course a bold one; but it expresses, as I think, with perfect purity, a thought, which all who can do so are the better for meditating on. The “Transcripts from Nature” seem to me precisely all, and no more than (and just how is the test of excellence in such things) what little pictures in verse ought to be.

Very sincerely yours, WALTER PATER.

DEAR MR. SHARP,

I have really not much to say about your poems. That you are of the tribe or order of prophets, I certainly believe. What rank you may take in that order I cannot guess. But the essential thing is that you are the thing _poet_, and being such I doubt much whether talk about your gift and what you ought to do with it will help you at all.

In “Motherhood” I think you touch the highest point in the volume. The “Transcripts from Nature”—some of them—give me the _feel_ in my nerves of the place and hour you describe, I like the form but I think you have written a sufficient mass in this form, and that future _rispetti_ ought to be rare, that is, whenever it is necessary and right to express yourself in that form. (It is harder to take in many in succession than even sonnets.) The longer poems seem to me as decisively the poetry of a poet as the others, but they seem not so successful (while admirable in many pages and in various ways).

I believe a beautiful action, beautifully if somewhat severely handled, would bring out your highest. I wish you had some heroic old Scotch story to brood over and make live while you are in Scotland.

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

Very sincerely yours, EDWARD DOWDEN.

Sept. 6, 1882.

DEAR MR. SHARP,

... I came abroad and brought your book with me. I have read it again through among the mountains and have found much to admire and more than like in it; so that the hours I passed in reading it are and will be pleasant hours to remember. If I may venture a criticism it is that nature occupies more than three fourths of the Emotion of the Book, and not Humanity, and even the passion and childhood and youth, and later love and age—and all passions are painted in terms of Nature, and through her moods. It pleases me, for I care more for Nature myself when I am not pressed on by human feeling, than I do for Man, but an artist ought to love Man more than Nature, and should write about Him for his own sake. It won’t do to become like the being in the “Palace of Art.” It will not do either to live in a Palace of Nature, alone. But all this is more a suggestion than an objection, and it is partly suggested to me at first by the fact that the poem in the midst of The Human Inheritance, Cycle III, is the nearest to the human heart and yet the least well written of all the cycles—at least so it seems to me. I like exceedingly “The Tides of Venice.” It seems to me to come nearer the kind of poem in which the Poet’s Shuttle weaves into one web Nature and Humanity and the close is very solemn and noble.

You asked me to do a critic’s part. It is a part I hate, and I am not a critic. But I say what I say for the sake of men and women whom you may help through the giving of high pleasure even more than you help them in this book.

With much sympathy and admiration, I am yours most sincerely, STOPFORD A. BROOKE.

Two other deaths occurred in this year, and made a profound impression on the young writer. I quote his own words:

“It was in 1882 also that another friend, to whom Philip Marston had also become much attached—attracted in the first instance by the common bond of unhappiness—died under peculiarly distressing circumstances. Philip Marston and myself were, if I am not mistaken, the last of his acquaintances to see him alive. Thomson had suffered such misery and endured such hopelessness, that he had yielded to intemperate habits, including a frequent excess in the use of opium. He had come back from a prolonged visit to the country, where all had been well with him, but through over confidence he had fallen a victim again immediately on his return. For a few weeks his record is almost a blank. When the direst straits were reached, he so far reconquered his control that he felt able to visit one whose sympathy and regard had stood all tests. Marston soon realised that his friend was mentally distraught, and endured a harrowing experience, into the narrative of which I do not care to enter.

“I arrived in the late afternoon, and found Philip in a state of nervous perturbation. Thomson was lying down on the bed in the adjoining room: stooping I caught his whispered words that he was dying; upon which I lit a match, and in the sudden glare beheld his white face on the blood-stained pillow.

“He had burst one or more blood-vessels, and the hæmorrhage was dreadful. Some time had to elapse before anything could be done; ultimately with the help of a friend who came in opportunely, poor Thomson was carried downstairs, and having been placed in a cab, was driven to the adjoining University Hospital. He did not die that night, nor when Marston and I went to see him in the ward next day was he perceptibly worse, but a few hours after our visit he passed away.

“Thus ended the saddest life with which I have ever come in contact—sadder even than that of Philip Marston, though his existence was oftentimes bitter enough to endure....”

The other death was that of Emerson, whose writings had been a potent influence in the life-thought of the young Scot from his college days. Indeed throughout his life Emerson’s Essays were a constant stimulus and refreshment. “My Bible,” as he called the Volume of Selected Essays, accompanied him in all his wanderings, and during the last weeks he spent in Sicily in 1905 he carefully studied it anew and annotated it copiously.

On hearing of Emerson’s death he wrote a poem in memoriam—“Sleepy Hollow”—which was printed in the _Academy_ and afterward in his second volume of verse _Earth’s Voices_. According to _Harper’s Weekly_ (3: 6: 1882) “No finer tribute has been rendered to Emerson’s memory than William Sharp’s beautiful poem ‘Sleepy Hollow.’ And, as _Earth’s Voices_ is now out of print, I will quote it in full:

SLEEPY HOLLOW

_In Memoriam: Ralph Waldo Emerson_

He sleeps here the untroubled sleep Who could not bear the noise and moil Of public life, but far from toil A happy reticence did keep.

With Nature only open, free: Close by there rests the magic mind Of him who took life’s thread to wind And weave some poor soul’s mystery

Of spirit-life, and made it live A type and wonder for all days; No sweeter soul e’er trod earth’s ways Than he who here at last did give

His body back to earth again. And now at length beside them lies[1] One great and true and nobly wise— A King of Thought, whose spotless reign

The overwhelming years that come And drown the trash and dross and slime Shall keep a record of till Time Shall cease, and voice of man be dumb.

At lasts he rests, whose high clear hope Was wont on lofty wings to scan The future destinies of man— Who saw the Race through darkness grope,

Through mists and error, till at last The looked-for light, the longed-for age Should dawn for peasant, prince, and sage, And centuries of night be past.

Thy rest is won: O loyal, brave, Wise soul, thy spirit is not dead— Thy wing’d words far and wide have fled, Undying, they shall find no grave.

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