WILLIAM SHARP (FIONA MACLEOD) A MEMOIR COMPILED BY HIS WIFE ELIZABETH A. SHARP - ELIZABETH A. SHARP (phonics reader TXT) 📗
- Author: ELIZABETH A. SHARP
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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 knowshow 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
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