WILLIAM SHARP (FIONA MACLEOD) A MEMOIR COMPILED BY HIS WIFE ELIZABETH A. SHARP by ELIZABETH A. SHARP (best ebook reader ubuntu txt) đ
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mortal passion struck me as most happily felt and expressed. I have
only one fault to find with you, and that you will think a very selfish
one (so you must excuse it), to wit that when speaking of _The Revolt
of Islam_ you did not mention in a line or so that I was the first
writer who pointed out, first in the âWestminster Reviewâ and afterward
in my Memoir of the poet, that in Cythna Shelley had introduced a new
type of Woman into poetry. I am rather proud of it, and as it was
mentioned by several of Shelleyâs subsequent biographers I would have
been pleased to have seen it in a volume likely to be so popular as
yours.
But enough of this small matter.
I wish you and your dear wife health and happiness.
Ever yours,
MATHILDE BLIND.
BOX HILL (DORKING),
Feb. 13, 1888.
DEAR MR. SHARP,
I have read your book on Shelley, and prefer it, matched with the
bulky. Putting out of view Matthew Arnoldâs very lofty lift of
superterrestrial nose over the Godwin nest, one inclines to agree with
him about our mortal business of Shelley. We shall be coming next to
medical testimony, with expositions. You have said just enough, and
in the right tones. Yesterday a detachment of the Sunday tramps under
Leslie Stephen squeezed at the table in the small dining-room you know,
after a splendid walk over chalk and sand. When you are in the mood to
make one of us, give me note of warning, and add to the pleasure by
persuading your wife to come with you.
And tell her that this invitation would be more courtly were I
addressing her directly.
I am,
Very truly yours,
GEORGE MEREDITH.
PART I (WILLIAM SHARP) 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. âThe Son of Allanâ 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 âThe Isle
of Lost Dreams,â âTwin Souls,â and âThe Death Childâ âa conjuring
imagination rises to extraordinary beauty of conception.â These three
poems are undoubtedly forerunners of the work of the âFiona Macleodâ
period. In the Preface the writer stated his conviction that âa
Romantic Revival is imminent in our poetic literature, a true awakening
of genuinely romantic sentiment. The most recent phase thereof,â
however, âthat 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.â And further on he voices the very personal
belief âHappy is he who, in this day of spiritual paralysis, can still
shut his eyes for a while and dream.â
Concerning the idea of fatality that underlies the opening ballad âThe
Weird of Michel Scottâââmeant 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,â he wrote to a friend,
âWhat has always impressed me deeplyâhow deeply I can scarcely sayâis
the blind despotism of fate. It is manifested in Ăschylus, 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....
âI am tortured by the passionate desire to create beauty, to sing
something of âthe impossible songsâ 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 âThe Weird of Michel Scottâ
or âThe Death Child.ââ
Many encouraging and appreciative letters reached him from friends
known and unknown.
In Mr. William Allinghamâs opinion âMichel Scott clothing his own Soul
with Hell-fire is tremendous!â
Professor Edward Dowden was not wholly in accord with the poetâs 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 donât 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 beâa 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 donât think I should make any _demand_, if I could, for
Romance. I should not put forth any manifesto in its favour, for this
reasonâthat 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 nobilityâor pseudo-nobilityâto 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 giftâwhich you have doneâand 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,
DOWDEN.
* * * * *
Meanwhile, the author of the ballads was at work preparing two volumes
for the _Canterbury Series_âa volume of selected Odes, and one of
American Sonnets, to which he contributed prefacesâand writing critical
articles for the _Academy_, _AthenĂŠum_, _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 stillâand 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 townsmanâs blunder?âthough 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
E. gate of Warriston cemetery. That I called what I believe to havebeen 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 â_Requiem_â the
nearest thing to poetry that I have ever âclerkit.â
Yours very truly,
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
L. S. SARANAC, NEW YORK.
Mr. Henley wrote:
MERTON PLACE, CHISWICK, W.,
5: 7: 88.
MY DEAR SHARP,
I am glad to have your letter. Of course I disagreed with your view of
_In Hospital_; but I didnât think it all worth writing about. I felt
youâd mistaken my aim; but I felt that your mistake (as I conceived it
to be) was honestly made, and that if the work itself had failed to
produce a right effect upon you, it was useless to attempt to correct
the impressions by means outside art.
Art (as I think) is treatment _et prĂŠteria nil_. What I tried to do in
_In Hospital_ was to treat a certain subjectâwhich seems to me to have
a genuine human interest and importanceâwith discretion, good feeling,
and a certain dignity. If I failed, I failed as an artist. My treatment
(or my art) was not good enough for my material. _VoilĂ ._ I thought
(I will frankly confess it) that I had got the run of the thingâthat
my results were touched with the distinction of art. You didnât think
so, and I saw that, as far as you were concerned, I had failed of my
effort. I was sorry to have so failed, and then the matter ended. To
be perfectly frank, I objected to but one expressionââoccasionally
crudeââin all the article. I confess I donât see the propriety
of the phrase at all. My method is, I know, the exact reverse of
your own; but I beg you to believe that my effortsâof simplicity,
directness, bluntness, brutality evenâare carefully calculated, and
that âcrudeââwhich means raw, if it means anything at allâis a word
that Iâd rather not have applied to me. The _Saturday_ Reviewer
made use of it, and I had it out with him, and he owned that it was
unfortunately usedâthat it didnât mean âraw,â but something un-Miltonic
(as it were), something novel and personal and which hadnât had time
to get conventionalised. Itâs
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