WILLIAM SHARP (FIONA MACLEOD) A MEMOIR COMPILED BY HIS WIFE ELIZABETH A. SHARP by ELIZABETH A. SHARP (best ebook reader ubuntu txt) đ
- Author: ELIZABETH A. SHARP
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_The Pagan Review_
The brilliant summer was followed by a damp and foggy autumn. My
husbandâs 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.
â ... 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 weâll 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 leastâfor of course we carry our true atmosphere
in ourselvesâand places and towns are, in a general sense, mere
accidents....
I have read to-day Edmond SchĂ©rerâs _Essais_ on Eng. Literature: very
able though not brilliantâreread the best portions of Jules Bretonâs
delightful autobiography, which I liked so much last year ... all
George Mooreâs 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 âFirmilianâ: and, generally,
enjoyed an irresponsible ramble throâ whatever came to hand. I am now
all right again and send you this little breath, this little âSospiro
di Guglielmo,â to give you, if perchance you need it, a tonic stimulus.
No, you donât need it!â
* * * * *
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:
âYou will be the first to hear my new imaginative work. Although in a
new method, it is inherently more akin to âRomantic Balladsâ than to
âSospiri,â but it is intense dramatic prose. There is one in particular
I wish to read to youâthree weeks from now.â And he adds, âDo you not
long for the warm daysâfor 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
Beautyâof the thrilling ecstasy of life.â
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:
âDuring a memorable talk on the literature of the two countries past
and to come, the conversation turned upon a vivid episode. âThat was
when you were young?â I asked. The patriarchal old poetâwho 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
coverletâlooked at me before he answered, with that half audacious,
wholly winsome glance so characteristic of him, âNow, just you tell me
when you think that was!â
âThen, with sudden energy, and without waiting for a reply, he added,
âYoung? Iâm as young now as I was then! Whatâs this grey tangleâ (and
as he spoke he gave his straggling beard an impatient toss),âand this
decrepit old body got to do with that, eh? I never felt younger, and
Iâm glad of itâagainst whatâs coming along. _Thatâs_ the best way to
shift camp, eh? Thatâs what I call Youth!ââ
When the younger man bade him farewell Whitman gave him a message to
take back with him across the seas. âHe said to me with halting breath:
âWilliam 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
themâthe last greetings of a tired old poet.ââ
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 Lifeâs 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 âlectureâ at
Harvard upon a subject of contemporary Literature. âQuite a number of
Harvard men are anxious to see and hear Mr. Sharp if he will consent to
come to Cambridge.â
It was with genuine regret that, owing to his doctorâs strict
prohibition, William felt himself obliged to refuse this flattering
request. He had also been asked by Mr. Palmer âthe leading theatrical
Boss in the States to sell to him the rights of my play on âA Fellowe
and his Wife,ââ a proposal which he declined.
On his return to England he wrote to Mr. Janvier:
âDEAR OLD MAN,
âI 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 Harpersâ and
said as emphatically in private. Soâamico caroââgo in and win!â
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 againâand strong at
that!
I have not yet put my hand to any of the commissioned stories I must
soon turn toâbut tell _la sposa_ that I have finished my âDramatic
Vistasâ (two or three of which I read to her), and even venture to
look with a certain half-content upon the last of the seriesââThe
Lute-Playerââwhich has been haunting me steadily since last October,
but which I could not express aright till the other day....â
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 Oâ 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
âIntroduction,â 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 lateâand 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
dâOutre-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 donât object to a little
âroughing,â 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 âgipsyâ 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 dâApremont). Spring is now here in all her
beauty: and there is a divine shimmer of green everywhere. Paris itself
is _en fĂȘte_ 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 âdead citiesâ of north-east
Holland. I forget if you know Parisâbut 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. Germainâthe
Fontaine St. MichelâI 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 turnedâand 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 Vanierâs, where there were many of _les
Jeunes_âJean MorĂ©as, Maurice BarrĂšs, Cazals, Renard, EugĂšne 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 dâOr, that favourite meeting place now of _les dĂ©cadents_,
_les symbolistes_, and les everything else. But I canât withstand
this flooding sunshine, and sweet wind, and spraying of waters, and
toss-toss and shimmer-shimmer of blossoms and leaves; so Iâll probably
be off. _This_ wonât be off if I donât shut up in a double sense.
My love to âKathiaâ and to you, dear fellow Pagans.
Ever yours rejoicingly,
WILLIAM SHARP.
Tell K. that when I have âreformedâ Iâll write to her. Donât let her
be impertinent, and say that this promise will be fulfilled _ad GrĂŠcas
Kalendas_!
S. Here are my proposed âcoming-movements.â
(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 Augustâand 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. Weâll sometimes sleep out: sometimes at
inns, or in the fern in Highlanderâs cottages. Thereafter I shall again
go off by myself to the extreme west âwhere joy and melancholy are one,
and where youth and age are twinsâ 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
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