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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not mean dissatisfied) he constantly desired new fields for this
experimentation. Therefore, happy though he had been at Wescam,
successful as that experiment had proved, he felt it had served its
turn and he longed for different circumstances, different environment,
new possibilities in which to attempt to give fuller expression of
himself. He realised that nothing more would happen under the then
existing conditions, satisfactory though they seemed externally; that
indeed the satisfactoriness was a chain that was winding round him and
fettering him to a form of life that was becoming rigid and monotonous,
and, therefore, paralysing to all those inner impulses. His visit to
America had re-awakened the desire to wander. So we gave up our house,
stored our furniture, and planned to go abroad for the first winter
and leave the future âin the lap of the Godsâ; for was he not âof the
unnumbered clan that know a longing that is unquiet as the restless
wave ...â the âdeep hunger for experience, even if it be bitter, the
longing for things known to be unattainable, the remembrance that
strives for rebirth.â That summer he wrote to Mr. Stedman:
â ... You will ere this have received the copy of the little book of
_Great Odes: English and American_ which I sent to you. I think I told
you that your own beautiful âOde to Pastoral Romanceâ has appealed to
many people, and will, I hope and believe, send new readers to you,
among the new generation, as a poet. Well, we are breaking up our home,
and are going to leave London for a long timeâprobably for ever as
a fixed âresidentz platz.â Most of my acquaintances think I am very
foolish thus to withdraw from the âthick of the fightâ just when things
are going so well with me, and when I am making a good and rapidly
increasing incomeâfor I am giving up nearly every appointment I hold,
and am going abroad, having burned my ships behind me, and determined
to begin literary life anew. But, truly enough, wisdom does not lie in
money makingânot for the artist who cares for his work at any rate. I
am tired of so much pot-boiling, such increasing bartering of literary
merchandise: and wish to devote myself entirelyâor as closely as the
fates will permitâto work in which my heart is. I am buoyant with the
belief that it is in me to do something both in prose and verse far
beyond any hitherto accomplishment of mine: but to stay here longer,
and let the net close more and more round me, would be fatal. Of course
I go away at a heavy loss. My income will at once drop to zero, and
even after six months or so will scarce have risen a few degrees above
that awkward limitâthough ultimately things may readjust themselves.
Yet I would ratherâI am readyâI should say _we_ are readyâto live in
the utmost economy if need be. We shall be none the less happy: for
my wife, with her usual loving unselfishness and belief in me, is as
eager as I am for the change, despite all the risks. Among the younger
writers few have the surely not very high courage necessary to give
up something of material welfare for the sake of art. As for us, we
are both at heart Bohemiansâand are well content if we can have good
shelter, enough to eat, books, music, friends, sunshine and free
natureâall of which we can have with the scantiest of purses. Perhaps I
should be less light-hearted in the matter if I thought that our coming
Bohemian life might involve my wife in hard poverty when my hour comes,
but fortunately her future is assured. So henceforth, in a word, I am
going to take down the board
WILLIAM SHARP
Literary Manufacturer
(All kinds of jobs undertaken)
and substitute:
WILLIAM SHARP
Given up Business: Moved to Bohemia.
Publishers and Editors Need not Apply.
Friends can write to W. S. % âDramaâ âFictionâ or âPoetry,â
Live-as-you-will Quarter, Bohemia.
This day week we leave our house for good. My wife and I then go into
Hampshire to breathe the hay and the roses for a week at a friendâs
place, 7 miles across the Downs north of Winchester: then back to
London to stay with our friend, Mrs. Mona Caird, till about the 20th
of July. About that date we go to Scotland, to my joy, till close on
the end of September. Thereafter we return to London for a week or so,
and then go abroad. We are bound first for the lower Rhineland, and
intend to stay at Heidelberg (being cheap, pretty, thoroughly German,
with good music and a good theatre) for about two months. Then, about
the beginning of December, we go to Rome, where we intend to settle:
climatic, financial, and other considerations will decide whether we
remain there longer than six months, but six ideal months at least we
hope for. _Mihi sex menses satis sunt vitĂŠ septimum Orco spondeo._
* * * * *
That summer we went to Clynder on the Gareloch, Argyll, in order to be
near my husbandâs old friend, Dr. Donald Macleod, who, as he records
in his diary âsang to me with joyous abandonment a Neapolitan song,
and asked me to send him a MS. from Italy for _Good Words_.â While we
were in the West we made acquaintance with the poet-editor of _The
Yorkshire Herald_, George Cotterell, who became a dear and valued
friend. I cannot recall if it were in the early summer of 1889 or 1890
that my husband was first approached on the subject of the _Joseph
Severn Memoirs_, but I remember the circumstance. We spent a week-end
in Surrey with some old friends of my mother, Sir Walter and Lady
Hughes, and one morning Mr. Walter Severn, the painter, walked over
to luncheon. He spoke about my husbandâs _Life of Rossetti_, then of
the quantity of unpublished MSS. he and his family had written by and
relating to his father, Joseph Severn, âthe friend of Keats.â Finally
he proposed that his listener should take over the MSS., put them in
form and write a Life of Severn, with, as the special point of literary
interest, his fatherâs devoted friendship with and care of the dying
poet. After considerable deliberation, W. S. agreed to undertake the
work, and arrangements were made with Messrs. Samson Low to publish it.
The preparing of this Memoir brought him into pleasant relationship
not only with Mr. Walter Severn, and with Mr. and Mrs. Arthur Severn,
but also with Ruskin, who he visited later at Coniston, where he was
delighted, among other things, with the fine collection of minerals and
stones that was one of Ruskinâs hobbies.
The preparation of _The Joseph Severn Memoirs_ necessarily entailed
correspondence with members and friends of that family, among others
with W. W. Story, the sculptor, who sent him the following information:
âI knew Mr. Severn at Rome and frequently met and saw him but I can
recall nothing which would be of value to you. He was, as you know, a
most pleasant manâand in the minds of all is associated with the memory
of Keats by whose side he lies in the Protestant Cemetery at Rome. When
the bodies were removed, as they were several years ago, and laid side
by side, there was a little funeral ceremony and I made an address on
the occasion in honour and commemoration of the two friends. I remember
we then had hoped that Lord Houghton would have been able to be present
as he had promised. But he was taken ill in the East, where he was then
journeying, and I had to express the fear lest the ceremony might be a
commemoration not only of two but of the three friends so intimately
associated together. However, Houghton did recover from the attack and
came afterward to Rome, sadly broken.â
Early in October my husband and I crossed to Antwerp and stopped at
Bonn. The Rhine disappointed Williamâs expectations. He wrote to a
friend: âThe real charm of the Rhine, beyond the fascination that all
rivers and riverine scenery have for most people, is that of literary
and historical romance. The Rhine is in this respect the Nile of
Europe: though probably none but Germans feel thus strongly. For myself
I cannot but think it ought not to be a wholly German river, but from
every point of view be the Franco-German boundary.... Germany has much
to gain from a true communion with its more charming neighbour. The
world would jog on just the same if Germany were annihilated by France,
Russia and Italy: but the disappearance of brilliant, vivacious,
intellectual France would be almost as serious a loss to intellectual
Europe, as would be to the people at large the disappearance of the
Moon.â
From Rome he wrote to Mrs. Janvier:
Dec., 1890.
â ... Well, we were glad to leave Germany. Broadly, it is a joyless
place for Bohemians. It is all beer, coarse jokes, coarse living,
and domestic tyranny on the manâs part, subjection on the womanâsâon
the one side: pedantic learning, scientific pedagogism, and mental
_ennui_; on the other: with, of course, a fine leavening _somewhere_
of the salt of life. However, it is only fair to say that we were not
there at the best season in which to see the blither side of Germans
and German life. I saw a good deal of the southern principalities and
kingdomsâthe Rhine provinces, Baden, WĂŒrtemberg, and Bavaria. Of course
Heidelberg, where we stayed six wet weeks, is the most picturesque of
the residential places (towns like Frankfort-am-Main and Mannheim are
only for merchants and traders, though they have music âgaloreâ), but
I would rather stay at Stuttgart than any I saw. It is wonderfully
animated and pleasing for a German town, and has a charming double
attraction both as a mediĂŠval city and as a modern capital. There,
too, I have a friend: the American novelist, Blanche Willis Howard
(author of _Guenn_, _The Open Door_, etc.), who is now the wife of the
Court-Physician to the King of WĂŒrtemberg and rejoices in the title
âFrau Hof-Arzt von Teuffel.â Dr. von Teuffel himself is one of the few
Germans who seem to regard women as equals.
âBut what a relief it was to be in Italy again, though not just at
first, for the weather at Verona was atrocious, and snow lay thick past
Mantua to Bologna. But once the summit of the Apennines was reached,
and the magnificent and unique prospect of Florentine Tuscany lay
below, flooded in sunshine and glowing colour (though it was in the
second week of December) we realised that at last we were in Italy....
When we came to Rome we had at first some difficulty in getting rooms
which at once suited our tastes and our pockets. But now we are settled
in an âapartmentâ of 3-1/2 rooms, within a yard or so of the summit of
the Quirinal Hill. The 1/2 is a small furnished corridor or ante-room:
the comfortable _salotto_, is at once our study, drawing-room, and
parlour.
âWe have our coffee and our fruit in the morning: and when we are in
for lunch our old landlady gives us delightful colazioni of maccaroni
and tomatoes, or spinach and lentils, or eggs and something else, with
roasted chestnuts and light wine and bread. We have our dinner sent in
from a trattoria.
âIn a sense, I have been indolent of late: but I have been thinking
much, and am now, directly or indirectly, occupied with several
ambitious undertakings. Fiction, other imaginative prose, and the drama
(poetic and prose), besides a lyrical drama, and poetry generally,
would fain claim my pen all day long. As for my lyrical dramaâwhich is
the only poetic work not immediately modern in themeâwhich is called
âBacchus in Indiaâ; my idea is to deal in a new and I hope poetic way
with Dionysos as the Joy-Bringer, the God of Joyousness. In the first
part there is the union of all the links between Man and the World he
inhabits: Bacchus goes forth in joy, to give his serene message to
all the world. The second part, âThe Return,â is wild disaster, and
the bitterness of shame: though even there, and in the Epilogue, will
sound the clarion of a fresh Return to Joy. I transcribe and enclose
the opening scene for youâas it at present stands, unrevised. The âlost
Godâ referred to in the latter part is really that deep corrosive
Melancholy whom so many poets and artistsâfrom Dante and Durer to our
own timeâhave dimly descried as a terrible Power.
âAt the moment I am most of all interested in my blank-verse tragedy.
It deals with a most terrible modern instance of the scriptural warming
as to the sins of the father being visited upon his children: an
instance
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