WILLIAM SHARP (FIONA MACLEOD) A MEMOIR COMPILED BY HIS WIFE ELIZABETH A. SHARP by ELIZABETH A. SHARP (mobi ebook reader txt) 📕

glorious September foliage made a happy contrast

to the wearisome hundreds of miles of decayed and decaying firs. It

was a most glorious sunset—one of the grandest I have ever seen—and

the colour of the vast Laurentian Mountain range, on the north side of

the St. Lawrence, superb. It was dark when we reached the mouth of the

Saguenay River—said to be the gloomiest and most awe-inspiring river

in the world—and began our sail of close upon a hundred miles (it can

be followed by canoes for a greater length than Great Britain). The

full moon came up, and the scene was grand and solemn beyond words.

Fancy fifty miles of sheer mountains, one after another without a

valley-break, but simply cleft ravines. The deep gloom as we slowly

sailed through the noiseless shadow brooding between Cape Eternity and

Cape Trinity was indescribable. We anchored for some hours in “Ha! Ha!

Bay,” the famous landing place of the old discoverers. In the early

morning we sailed out from Ha! Ha! Bay, and then for hours sailed

down such scenery as I have never seen before and never expect to see

again.... At Quebec I am first to be the guest of the well-known Dr.

Stewart, and then of Mons. Le Moine at his beautiful place out near the

Indian Village of Lorette and the Falls of Montmorenci—not far from the

famous Plain of Abraham, where Wolfe and Montcalm fought, and an Empire

lay in balance.

 

In New York, William was the guest of Mr. and Mrs. E. C. Stedman at 44

East 26th Street, whence he wrote to me:

 

“ ... So much has happened since I wrote to you from Montreal that I

don’t see how I’m to tell you more than a fraction of it—particularly

as I am seldom alone even for five minutes. Last week I left Montreal

(after having shot the rapids, etc.) and travelled to Boston via

the White Mountains, through the States of Vermont, Connecticut and

Massachusetts. Boston is a beautiful place—an exceedingly fine city

with lovely environs. Prof. A. S. Hardy (’Passe Rose,’ etc.) was

most kind.... Cambridge and Harvard University, are also very fine.

I enjoyed seeing Longfellow’s house (Miss L. still occupies it) and

those of Emerson, Lowell, etc. I spent brief visits to Prof. Wright

of Harvard, to Winsor the historian, etc. On Sunday afternoon I drove

with A. S. H. to Belmont in Massachusetts, and spent afternoon with

Howells, the novelist. He was most interesting and genial—I had the

best of welcomes from the Stedmans. They are kindness personified. The

house is lovely, and full of beautiful things and multitudes of books.

I have already more invitations than I can accept: every one is most

hospitable. I have already met Mr. Gilder, the poet, and editor of the

‘Century’; Mr. Alden of ‘Harpers’; Mr. Bowen, of the ‘Independent’; R.

Stoddart, the ‘father’ of recent American letters; and heaven knows

how many others. I have been elected honorary member of the two most

exclusive clubs in N. Y., the ‘Century’ and ‘The Players,’ Next week

there is to be a special meeting at the Author’s Club, and I am to be

the guest of the evening....”

 

 

  NEW YORK, 1:10:89.

 

“Can only send you a brief line by this mail. I enjoyed my visit to Mr.

Alden at Metuchen in New Jersey very much. Among the new friends I care

most for are a married couple called Janvier. They are true Bohemians

and most delightful. He is a writer and she an artist ... and both have

travelled much in Mexico. We dined together at a Cuban Café last night.

He gave me his vol. of stories called ‘Colour Studies’ and she a little

sketch of a Mexican haunted house—both addressed to ‘William Sharp.

Recuerdo di Amistad y carimo.’”

 

On leaving New York he wrote to his kind host:

 

 

  Oct. 8, 1889.

 

  MY DEAR STEDMAN,

 

This, along with some flowers, will reach you on the morning of your

birthday, while I am far out on the Atlantic. May the flowers carry

to your poet-soul a breath of that happy life which seems to inspire

them—and may your coming years be full of the beauty and fragrance of

which they are the familiar and exquisite symbols. You have won my

love as well as my deep regard and admiration. And so I leave you to

understand how earnestly and truly I wish you all good.

 

Once more let me tell you how deeply grateful I am to you and Mrs.

Stedman for all your generous kindness to me. We have all, somewhere,

sometime, our gardens, where—as Hafiz says—the roses have a subtler

fragrance, and the nightingales a rarer melody; and my memory of _my_

last “fortunate Eden” will remain with me always....

 

I shall always think of you, and Mrs. Stedman, and Arthur, as of near

and dear relatives. Yes, we _are_ of one family.

 

  Farewell, meanwhile,

  Ever your affectionate,

  WILLIAM SHARP.

 

This note drew from the American poet the following reply:

 

 

  MY DEAR SHARP,

 

‘Tis quite surprising—the severity wherewith you have been missed, in

this now very quiet household, since you looked down upon its members

from the Servia’s upper-deck, very much like Campanini in Lohengrin

when the Swan gets fairly under way! The quiet that settled down was

all the stiller, because you and we had to get through with so much

in your ten days _chez nous_. Lay one consolation to heart: you won’t

have to do _this_ again; when you return, ‘twill be to a city of which

you have deduced a general idea, from the turbid phantasmagoria of

your days and nights here. The conclusions on our side were that we

had formed a liking for you such as we have retained after the visits

of very few guests from the Old World or the New. Well as I knew your

books and record I had the vaguest notion of your _self_. ‘Tis rare

indeed that a clever writer or artist strengthens his hold upon those

who admire his work, by personal intimacy. What can I say more than to

say that we thoroughly enjoyed your visit; that we think immeasurably

more of you than before you came; that you are upon our list of friends

to whom we are attached for life—for good and ill. We know our own

class, in taste and breeding, when we find them—which is not invariably

among our different guests. Nor can one have your ready art of charm

and winning, without a good heart and comradeship under it all: even

though intent (and rightly) on nursing his career and making all the

points he has a right to make—Apropos of this—I may congratulate you on

the impression you made here on the men and women whom you chanced at

this season to meet; that which you left with _us_ passes the border of

respect, and into the warm and even lowland of affection.

 

That is all I now shall say about our acquaintanceship. Being an

Anglo-Saxon, ‘tis not once in half a decade that I bring myself to say

so much.

 

And now, my dear boy, what shall I say of the charming surprise with

which you and your florist so punctually greeted my birthday? At 56

(“oh, woeful when!”) one is less than ever used to the melting mood,

but you drew a tear to my eyes. The roses are still all over our house,

and the letter is your best autograph in my possession. We look forward

to seeing you again with us, of course—because, if for no other reason,

you and yours always have one home ready for you when in the States,

at least while a roof is over our heads, even though the Latin wolf be

howling at our door. Mrs. Stedman avows that I must give you her love,

and joins with me in all the words of this long letter.

 

  Affectionately your friend,

  EDMUND C. STEDMAN.

 

       *       *       *       *       *

 

On our return to Hampstead we resumed our Sunday evening gatherings,

and among other frequenters came Mr. and Mrs. Henry Harland, with an

introduction from Mr. W. D. Howells. From Mr. George Meredith came a

charming welcome home.

 

 

  BOX HILL (DORKING),

  Nov. 22, 1889.

 

  MY DEAR SHARP,

 

I am with all my heart glad of your return and the good news you give

of yourself and your wife. He who travels comes back thrice the man he

was, and if you do not bully my poor Stayathoma, it is in magnanimity.

The moccasins are acceptable for their uses and all that they tell me.

Name a time as early as you can to come and pour out your narrative.

There is little to attract, it’s true—a poor interior and fog daily

outside. We cast ourselves on the benevolence of friends. Give your

wife my best regards. I have questions for her about Tyrol and

Carinthia.

 

Hard at work with my “Conqueror,” who has me for the first of his

victims.

 

England has not done much in your absence; there will be all to hear,

nothing to relate, when you come.

 

  Yours warmly,

  GEORGE MEREDITH.

 

       *       *       *       *       *

 

We went. As we walked across the fields to the cottage Mr. Meredith

came through his garden gate to meet us, raised high his hat and voiced

a welcome, “Hail daughter of the Sun!”

 

 

 

PART I  (WILLIAM SHARP) CHAPTER X (  BROWNING  )

_The Joseph Severn Memoirs_

 

 

To William Sharp, as to many others, the closing days of 1899 brought

a deep personal sorrow in the death of Robert Browning. The younger

man had known him for several years, and had always received a warm

welcome from the Poet in his house in Warwick Crescent which, with

its outlook on the water of broad angle of the canal with its little

tree clad island, he declared laughingly, reminded him of Venice. And

kindly he was too, when, coming to the first of our “At Homes” in South

Hampstead, he assured me with a genial smile “I like to come, because I

know young people like to have me.”

 

“It is needless to dwell upon the grief everywhere felt and expressed

for the irreparable loss” (W. S. wrote in his monograph on Browning).

The magnificent closing lines of Shelley’s “Alastor” have occurred to

many a mourner, for gone indeed was “a surpassing Spirit.” The superb

pomp of the Venetian funeral, the solemn grandeur of the interment in

Westminster Abbey, do not seem worth recording: so insignificant are

all these accidents of death made by the supreme fact itself. Yet it is

fitting to know that Venice has never in modern times afforded a more

impressive sight than those of craped processional gondolas following

the high flower-strewn famous barge through the thronged water-ways and

out across the lagoon to the desolate Isle of the Dead: that London has

rarely seen aught more solemn than the fog-dusked Cathedral spaces,

echoing at first with the slow tramp of the pall-bearers, and then with

the sweet aerial music swaying upward the loved familiar words of the

“Lyric Voice” hushed so long before. Yet the poet was as much honoured

by those humble friends, Lambeth artificers and a few working-women,

who threw sprays of laurel before the hearse—by that desolate,

starving, woe-weary gentleman, shivering in his thread-bare clothes,

who seemed transfixed with a heart-wrung though silent emotion, ere

he hurriedly drew from his sleeve a large white chrysanthemum, and

throwing it beneath the coffin as it was lifted upward, disappeared in

the crowd, which closed again like the sea upon this lost wandering

wave.”

 

But it was nevertheless difficult to realise that the stimulating

presence had passed away and the cheerful voice was silent: “It seems

but a day or two that I heard from the lips of the dead poet a mockery

of death’s vanity—a brave assertion of the glory of life. ‘Death,

death! It is this harping on death I despise so much,’” he remarked

with emphases of gesture as well as of speech—the inclined head and

body, the right hand lightly placed upon the listener’s knee, the

abrupt change in the inflection of the voice, all so characteristic

of him—“this idle