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

where the father himself shares the doom and the agony. Then

I have also schemed out, and hope soon to get on with, a prose play,

dealing with the deep wrong done to women by certain existing laws.

Among other prose books (fiction) which I have “on the stocks” nothing

_possesses_ me more than a philosophical work which I shall probably

publish either anonymously or under a pseudonym, and, I hope, before

next winter. How splendid it is to be alive! O if one could only crush

into a few vivid years the scattered fruit of wasted seasons. There

is such a host of things to do: such a bitter sparsity of time, after

bread-and-butter making, to do them in—even to dream of them!”

 

       *       *       *       *       *

 

These various schemes planned mentally were never realised. William

constantly projected and of the roughly drafted out possible work that

absorbed him during its conception, but was put aside when a more

dominating idea demanded full expression. “Bacchus in India” remained a

fragment. Neither the tragedy nor that prose play was finished, and the

philosophical work was never begun. A new impulse came, new work grew

out of the impressions of that Roman winter which swept out of his mind

all other cartooned work.

 

 

PART I  (WILLIAM SHARP) CHAPTER XI ( ROME )

 

_Sospiri di Roma_

 

 

Winter in Rome was one long delight to the emancipated writer. It

amply fulfilled even his optimistic anticipation. He revelled in the

sunshine and the beauty; he was in perfect health; his imagination was

quickened and worked with great activity. We had about us a little

group of friends, who, like ourselves, intended to live quietly and

simply. Among these were Mrs. Caird who had come abroad for her health;

Sir Charles Holroyd, who had a studio in the Via Margoutta, and Mr. and

Mrs. Elihu Vedder. Mrs. Wingate Rinder joined us for three weeks, and

with her my husband greatly enjoyed long walks over the Campagna and

expeditions to the little neighbouring hill towns. His Diary for the

beginning of 1891 was kept with creditable regularity, and contains

a record of some of these expeditions and of work done in Rome, in

particular of the dates on which the poems of _Sospiri di Roma_ were

written. From it I have selected entries.

 

 

“_Jan. 2nd._ ... Read through and revised ‘Bacchus in India.’ Added the

(I think good) adjective ‘sun-sparkled wood....”

 

Poetry is a glorious rebirth of prose. When a beautiful thought can

be uttered in worthy prose: best so. But when it moves through the

mind in music, and shapes itself to a lyric rhythm, then it should

find expression in poetry. The truest poets are those who can most

exquisitely capture, and concentrate in a few words, this haunting

rhythm.

 

_Jan. 3rd._ The morning broke well, though not so promisingly as

yesterday.... Caught the 9 A.M. train for Albano-Laziale. Marnio

is a fine and picturesque hill-city. After passing it we admired

the view of the Lake of Albano, with its abrupt variations of light

and profound shadow. Arrived at Albano we walked by the way of the

Viaduct to L’Ariccia, with lovely views of the Campagna to the right:

of Monte Cavo and Rocca di Papa to the left. Then on by a lovely road

to Genzano. Having gone through the lower part and out again into

the Campagna we turned southward, and in due time reached the high

ground, with its olive-orchards, looking down upon the Lake of Nemi.

It looked lovely in its grey-blue stillness, with all the sunlit but

yet sombre winterliness around. Nemi, itself, lay apparently silent and

lifeless, ‘a city of dream,’ on a height across the lake. One could

imagine that Nemi and Genzano had once been the same town, and had

been riven asunder by a volcano. The lake-filled crater now divides

these two little hill-set towns.... Walked through Albano to the N.W.

gate, past the ancient tomb, and along the beautiful ilex-bordered road

leading to Castel-Gandolfo. Saw two Capuchin friars with extraordinary

faces. They fitted the scene. Magnificent views of the Campagna,

tinted with a faint pink-grey mist: of Ostea, etc.: and of the strange

dreamful, partially sunlit Tyrrhene sea. Then through Castel Gandolfo,

with lovely views of Lake Albano. Broke our fast with some apples.

Down the steep front till we joined the road just above the little

station, where we caught the train 10 minutes later. The Aqua Felice

and Claudian Aqueducts seen to great advantage in returning across the

Campagna to Rome.

 

_Jan. 5th._ A fine morning, with a delicate hint of Spring in the

air.... Caught the train for Champino, near Frascati. The officials at

the station seemed amazed at our descending there. No one ever does

so, it seems! There was literally no regular way out of the station,

and when I asked how we were to get out the man did not know. Neither

he nor the clerk, nor the others who gathered round knew the road back

to Rome! At last some one from the train suggested that if we struck

across country we would come to the Via Appia. We had a pleasant walk

across a barren part of the Campagna intersected by railway cuttings,

and at last came to a place called Frattochie, whence a road led us to

the Via Appia Nuova. From this again we struck across a field and came

upon the Via Appia Antica, adown which we had a splendid and absolutely

solitary walk. We saw no one but a few shepherds at a distance, with

their large white dogs and sheep. Often stopped among the ruins, or

at the top of one of the grassy tombs to hear the wind among the

pines, along the grass, or in the crevices of the wall. A few drops

of rain fell as we neared the tomb of Cecilia Metella, and soon the

rain-storm, which we had watched approaching across the Campagna, came

The first three wayside _trattorie_ we came to were shut, but in

the fourth, a peasant’s resort, we got some bread, and white and poor

Marino. We shared some of the bread with a large dog, and gave some

wine to a malarious-looking poor devil of a labourer. Returned by the

Gate of San Sebastiano.

 

_Jan. 8th._ ... Bought _L’Evolution des Genres dans l’Histoire de

la Littérature_ by Ferdinand Brunetière; Roux’s book on Italian

Literature; Pierre Loti’s _Mariage de Loti_. After dinner copied out

‘Rebirth’ (Spring’s Advent) to send to _Belford’s_, and ‘The Sheik’ for

_N. Y. Independent_.

 

This forenoon the house nearly opposite fell in. We saw one man brought

out dead. Seven others were said to be buried in the ruins. The King

came later on and himself helped one of the wounded out and took him to

the hospital.

 

_Jan. 9th._ Wet and rain. The Campagna covered with snow. In the

forenoon I wrote four more of my ‘Ebb and Flow’ Series of Sea

Poems—‘Phosphorescence before Storm’—‘Tempest Music’—‘Dead Calm:

Noon’ and ‘Dead Calm: Midnight.’ The others were written some on the

French coast some on the English in 1887. ‘Tempest-Music’ and the

two ‘Dead Calm’ are as good if not better than any in the series. In

all the latter I care most for the ‘Swimmer at Sunrise’ and ‘The

Dead-Calm-Noon’: also for ‘Tempest Music.’

 

... After dinner read to Lill for a bit including the prose version

(outline) of my “Lilith.”

 

To-day the anniversary of the Death of Victor Emmanuel, 13 years ago.

The Italians idolise his memory, and call him “The Father of the

Country.” He is rapidly becoming a Presiding Deity. 10th rewrote and

greatly improved “Phosphorescence.” Its two opening lines, originally,

 

  “As hill winds and sun and rains inweave a veil

  Of lichen round vast boulders on the mountain side.”

 

were out of keeping in imagery with the rest: and in every way

 

  “As some aerial spirit weaves a rainbow veil

  Of Mist, his high immortal loveliness to hide.”

 

are better. Should have preferred “wild” to “high” in this line, but

the 4th terminal is “wild.” Perhaps not, after all.

 

_Jan. 16th._ Although it was so cold and wintry with signs of snow

in suspension caught the train for Tivoli. The scenery extremely

beautiful, and doubly fascinating and strange from the whirling snow

falling every here and there, in strangely intermittent and separate

fashion. The sheep and disconsolate shepherds on one high healthy part

made a fantastic foreground. At Tivoli, which was like a hill town in

Scotland in midwinter, with a storm raging, we walked past the first

cascades, then up a narrow hill-path partly snowed up, partly frozen,

to the open country beyond. Then back and into a trattoria where we had

lunch of wine, omelette, bread, fruit, and coffee.

 

_Jan. 17th._ Midwinter with a vengeance. Rome might be St. Petersburg.

Snow heavy and a hard frost. Even the Fountain of the Tritone hung all

over with long spears and pendicles of ice.—Later, I went out, to walk

to and fro on the Pincio Terrace in the whirling snow, which I enjoyed

beyond words. There was a lull, and then I saw the storm clouds sweep

up from the Maremma, across the Campagna and blot out Rome bit by bit.

Walking to and fro I composed the lyric, beginning:

 

  “There is a land of dream:

  I have trodden its golden ways:

  I have seen its amber light

  From the heart of its sun-swept days:

  I have seen its moonshine white

  On its silent waters gleam—

  Ah, the strange, sweet, lonely delight

  Of the Valleys of Dream!”

 

Returning by the Pincian Gate, about 5.45 there was a strange sight.

Perfectly still in the sombre Via di Mura, with high walls to the

right, but the upper pines and cypresses swaying in a sudden rush of

wind: to the left a drifting snow-storm: to the right wintry moonshine:

vivid sweeping pulsations of lightning from the Campagna, and long low

muttering growls of thunder. (The red light from a window in the wall.)

 

_Jan. 19th._ After dinner read a good deal of Beddoes to Lill.... How

like Poe the first stanza of ‘The Old Ghost’: every now and again there

is a gleam of rare moon-white beauty, as in the lovely 3rd stanza

of ‘The Ballad of Human Life’—the first quatrain of the 2nd stanza

of ‘Dial Thoughts,’ and that beautiful line in the fantastic and

ultra-Shelleyian ‘Romance of the Lily,’

 

  ‘As Evening feeds the waves with brooks of quiet life.’

 

_Jan. 22nd._ In the evening read through Elihu Vedder’s _Primitive

Folk_. There is a definite law in the evolution of sexual _morale_, I

am sure, if one could only get at it. The matter is worth going into,

both for Fundamental and Contemporary and Problematical Ethics.

 

_Jan. 27th._ Elizabeth and I went to the opening lecture of the

Archæological Society, at the Hotel Marini. Lord Dufferin in the Chair.

Mr. Porter, U. S. Minister, delivered an address, mainly on Cicero....

Lord Dufferin afterwards told us incidentally that a friend of his

had gone into a book shop in the Corso and asked for _Max O’Rell: En

Amérique_. The bookseller said he neither had the book nor had he

heard of it: now the visitor persisted and the bookseller in despair

exclaimed, ‘_Dio mio_, Signor, I never even heard of _Marc Aurèle_

having been in America!’

 

_Jan. 30th._ After lunch we went for a drive in the Campagna....

Delighting in the warm balmy air, the superb views, the space and

freedom, the soft turfy soil under foot, the excited congregation of

larks twittering as they wheeled about, soon to pair, and one early

songster already trilling his song along the flowing wind high overhead.

 

Between 9 P.M. and 12 P.M. my ears were full of music. Wrote the

Sospiri, ‘The Fountain of the Aqua Paola’; ‘Ruins’; ‘High Noon at

Midsummer on the Campagna’; ‘Sussurri’; ‘Breath of the Grass’; ‘Red

Poppies’; and the lyric Spring.

 

_Jan. 31st._ Wrote to-day. ‘The Mandolin’ (_Sospiri di Roma_) (115

lines). In afternoon wrote ‘All’ Ora della Stella’ (Vesper Bells),

partly from memory of what I have heard, several times, and partly

modified by a poem I chanced to see to-day, Fogazzaro’s ‘A Sera.’

 

_February 2nd._ Second day