  SONNETS OF THIS CENTURY 1885 was a year of hard work. It was our desire that such work should be done that should eventually make it possible for my husband to devote himself exclusively to original work—perhaps in a year or two at most. Meanwhile the outlook was satisfactory and encouraging. He held the post of London Art-Critic to the Glasgow Herald, was on the staff of The Academy then under the Editorship of his good friend Mr. James Cotton; and he wrote for The Examiner, The Athenaeum and other weeklies. On the appearance in The Athenaeum of his Review on Marius the Epicurean the author expressed his satisfaction in a letter: 2 Bradmore Road, March 1, 1885. My dear Sharp, I have read your article in The Athenaeum with very real pleasure; feeling criticism, at once so independent and so sympathetic, to be a reward for all the long labours the book has cost me. You seem to me to have struck a note or criticism not merely pleasant but judicious; and there are one or two important points—literary ones—on which you have said precisely what I should have wished, and thought it important for me, to have said. Thank you sincerely for your friendly work! Also, for your letter, and promise of the other notices, which I shall look out for, and greatly value. I was much pleased also that Mrs. Sharp had been so much interested in my writing. It is always a sign to me that I have to some extent succeeded in my literary aim when I gain the approval of accomplished women. WALTER PATER I should be glad, and feel it a great compliment, to have Marius translated into German, on whatever terms your friend likes—provided of course that Macmillan approves. I will ask him his views on this point. As regards the ethical drift of Marius, I should like to talk to you, if you were here. I did mean it to be more anti-Epicurean than it has struck you as being. In one way however I am glad that you have mistaken me a little on this point, as I had some fears that I might seem to be pleading for a formal thesis, or “parti pris.” Be assured how cheering your praise—praise from so genuine and accomplished a fellow-workman—has been to me. Such recognition is especially a help to one whose work is so exclusively personal and solitary as the kind of literary work, which I feel I can do best, must be. I fancied you spoke of bringing your wife to Oxford this term; and wish we had a room to offer you. But I think you know that we have at most only room for a single visitor. It will however give my sisters great pleasure to make the acquaintance of Mrs. Sharp. Only let us know a week or so, if possible, before you come to Oxford, that we may see as much of you as possible: and with our united kind regards, believe me, my dear Sharp, Very sincerely yours, Walter Pater. I hope that in generosity to me you are not wasting too much of the time that belongs to your own original work. I have told Macmillan to send you a properly bound copy of Marius, with only a few misprints. Mr. Theodore Watts had frequently spoken to us about a romance he had in hand, and partly in print. After much persuasion he sent several chapters of Aylwin to us during our summer holiday, and we read them on the shores of West Loch Tarbert in Argyll with keen enjoyment. An enthusiastic letter from the younger author brought this reply: Seaford, Sept. 16, 1885. My dear Sharp, My best thanks for your most kind and suggestive letter. I am much gratified to know that in you and Mrs. Sharp I have true sympathisers in a story which although it may and I hope will be generally popular, can only deeply appeal to the heart of hearts of here and there one of the true romantic temper. Swinburne, who has read it all, tells me that the interest grows sharply and steadily to the very end and the finest volume is the last. You are right in your surmise as to the rapidity in which the story was written to dictation. Both its merits and its defects you will find to arise from the fact that the conception came to me as one whole and that my eagerness to pour it out while the imagination was at white heat conquered everything. I doubt if it ever could have been written save to dictation. When do you return? Kindest regards to Mrs. Sharp, Yours affectly, Theo. Watts. P.S.—I and Swinburne are getting some delicious bathing. In the article written for The Century Magazine, 1907, on William Sharp and Fiona Macleod, Mr. Ernest Rhys gives a reminiscent description of the young author and of his impressions of him, on their first acquaintance: “One summer morning, some twenty years ago, in Cheyne Walk, Chelsea, I was called down to an early visitor, and found waiting me a superb young man—a typical Norseman, as I should have thought him—tall, yellow-haired, blue-eyed. His cheeks were as rosy as a young girl’s, his manners as frank and impulsive as a boy’s. He had come with an introduction from a common friend (Mrs. William Bell Scott), a would-be contributor to a new periodical; but he soon passed from the discussion of an article on De Quincey to an account of “It is not easy to avoid extravagance in speaking of one who was in all things an illusionist. Sharp’s sensations, doings, artistic ideas, and performances were not to be counted by rule and measure. He was capable of predicting a new religion as he paced the Thames Embankment, or of devising an imaginary new theatre for romantic drama—whose plays were yet to be written (by himself)—as he rode home from the Haymarket. “Before we separated, at that first meeting, he had made more plans for events and new great works than the most sanguine of imaginers and writers could hope to effect in a lifetime. And, alas! for his control of circumstance, within a fortnight I was summoned to his sick-bed. He was down with scarlet fever, and it fell to me to write from his notes, or otherwise to complete, more than one essay and review which he had undertaken before he fell ill.... “There was another side to William Sharp. He had a spirit of fun, boyish mischief even, which found the slightest reflection in his work; for his writing is not remarkable for its humour. His extravagance of energy, which vehemently sped his pen, led him, in the course of his earlier life, into a hundred wild exploits. To him a “In keeping with this mental restlessness, Sharp was an insatiable wanderer. No sooner did he reach London than he was intriguing to be off again. Some of his devices in order to get work done, and to equip these abrupt expeditions, were as absurd as anything told by Henri Murger. Thanks to his large and imposing presence, his sanguine air, his rosy faith in himself, he had a way of overwhelming editors that was beyond anything, I believe, ever heard of in London, before or since. On one occasion he went into a publisher’s office, and gave so alluring an account of a long-meditated book that the publisher gave him a check for £100, although he had not written a word of it. “These things illustrate his temperament. He was a romanticist, an illusionist. He did not see places or men and women as they were; he did not care to see them so: but he had quite peculiar powers of assimilating to himself foreign associations—the ideas, the colours, the current allusions, of foreign worlds. In Italy he became an Italian in spirit; in Algiers, an Arab. On his first visit to Sicily he could not be happy because of the sense of bloodshed and warfare associated with the scenes amid which he was staying; he saw bloodstains on the earth, on every leaf and flower. “The same susceptibility marked his intercourse with his fellows. Their sensations and emotions, their whims, their very words, were apt to become his, and to be reproduced with an uncanny reality in his own immediate practice. It was natural, then, that he should be doubly sensitive to feminine intuitions; that he should be able, even The description given by Mr. Rhys of William Sharp’s method of work as characterised by an impetuosity which made him “disinclined for the poetic pains” belonged to one phase of his development. During the early days of hard work for the bare necessities of life, he had little time to devote to the writing of poetry or of purely imaginative work. His literary efforts were directed toward the shaping of his prose critical writings, toward the controlled exercise of the mental faculties which belonged to the William Sharp’s side of himself. From time to time the emotional, the more intimate self would sweep aside all conscious control; a dream, a sudden inner vision, an idea that had lain dormant in what he called “the mind behind the mind” would suddenly visualise itself and blot out everything else from his consciousness, and under such impulse he would write at great speed, hardly aware of what or how he wrote, so absorbed was he in the vision with which for the moment he was identified. In those days he was unwilling to retouch such writing; for he thought that revision should be made only under a similar phase of emotion. Consequently he preferred for the most part to destroy such efforts if the result seemed quite inadequate, rather than alter them. Later, when that side of his nature found expression in the Fiona Macleod writings—when those impulses became more frequent, more reliable, more coherent—he changed his attitude toward the question of revision, and desired above all things to give as beautiful an expression as lay in his power to what to him were dreams of beauty. For his critical work, however, he studied and prepared himself deliberately. He believed that the one method of attaining to a balanced estimate of our literature is by a comparative study of foreign contemporary writing. “The more interested I became in literature,” he on one occasion explained to an interviewer, “the more convinced I grew of the narrowness of English criticism and of the importance to the English critic of getting away from the insular point of view. So I decided that the surest way of beginning to prepare myself for the work of the critic would be to make a study of three or four of the best writers among the older, and three or four among the younger school of each nation, and to judge from the point of view of the nation. For example, in studying French literature, I would try to judge from the point of view of a Frenchman. When this task was done I tried to estimate the literature under consideration from an absolute impersonal and impartial point of view. Of course, this study took a long time, but it furnished me material that has been invaluable to me in my work ever since.” It was his constant endeavour to understand the underlying motive in any phase of modern literature; and he believed that “what is new in literature is not so likely to be unfit for critics, as critics are likely to be unfit for what is new in literature.” Concerning the art of Criticism he expressed his belief in an unfinished article: “When I speak of Criticism I have in mind not merely the more or less deft use of commentary or indication, but one of the several ways of literature and in itself a rare and fine art, the marriage of science that knows, and of spirit that discerns.” “The basis of Criticism is imagination: its spiritual quality is sympathy: its intellectual distinction is balance.” The occasion of his visit to Mr. Ernest Rhys was in connection with a scheme for the publication of two series of cheap re-issues of fine literature—a comparatively new venture five-and-twenty years ago—to be published by Messrs. Walter Scott: The Camelot Classics to be edited by Ernest Rhys and to consist of selected prose writings, and The Canterbury Poets to be edited by William Sharp;—Each volume to be prefaced by a specially written Meanwhile he contributed a volume from time to time to The Canterbury Poets, among others: Collections of Shakespeare’s Sonnets, Great Odes, American Sonnets, and his Collection of English Sonnets. In preparing the Edition of Shakespeare’s Sonnets he consulted Mr. Edward Dowden on one or two points and received the following reply: Davos Platz, Dec. 6, 1885. Dear Mr. Sharp, The most welcome gift of your Songs, Poems and Sonnets of Shakespeare reached me to-night. I have already looked it quickly through, and have seen enough to know that this volume will be my constant companion in future upon all my wanderings. Comparisons are odious. So I will not make a list of the other travelling companions, which your edition of Shakespeare’s lyrics is destined to supersede. I will only tell you why yours has the right to supersede them. First and foremost, it is more scientifically complete. Secondly, it is invaluable in its preservation of the play-atmosphere, by such introductory snatches as you insert e. g. on p. 20. Hitherto, we had often yearned in our Shakespearean anthologies for a whiff of the play from which the songs were torn. You have given this just where it was needed, and else not. That is right. Thirdly, the Preface (to my mind at least) is more humanly and humanely true about Shakespeare’s attitude in the Sonnets than anything which has yet been written about them. (I thank you, par parenthÈse, for “the vox humana of Hamlet!”) And apropos of p. 11, I think you might have mentioned FranÇois Victor Hugo’s translation of Shakespeare’s Sonnets. It is a curious piece of French criticism. But the main thing left upon my mind by this first cursory perusal is that you are one of those who live (as Goethe has for ever put it) in “the whole.” It is the great thing for modern criticism to get itself up out of holes and corners, mere personal proclivities and scholarly niceties, into the large air of nature and of man. The critic who does this, has to sacrifice the applause of coteries and the satisfaction which comes from “discovering” something and making for his discovery a following. But I am sure this is the right line for criticism, and the one which will ultimately prevail, to the exclusion of more partial ways. I therefore, who, in my own humble way, have tried as critic to preserve what Goethe also calls the “abiding relations,” bleibende VerhÄltnisse, feel specially drawn to your work by the seal of largeness set upon it. You test Shakespeare in his personal poems as man, from the standpoint of the whole; and this seems to me eminently scientific—right. In a minor point, I can tell you, as no one else could, that your critical instinct is no less acute than generally right. You have quoted one of my sonnets in the notes. This Sonnet was written, to myself consciously, under the Shakespearean influence. The influence was complex, but very potent; and your discernment, your “spotting” of it, appears to me that you have the right scent—fiuto (as Italians) flair (as Frenchmen call that subtle penetration into the recesses of a mind regulated by style). Thank you from my heart for this gift, which (I hope, if years enough are given me) shall wear itself out in the daily service of your friend, John Addington Symonds. In the following letter to Mr. Symonds the Editor explained the intention of his collected Sonnets of this Century: 12: 11: 85. My dear Mr. Symonds, I am shortly going to bring out a Selection of the Best Sonnets of this Century (including a lengthy Introductory Essay on the Sonnet as a vehicle of poetic thought, and on its place and history in English Literature)—and I should certainly regard it as incomplete if your fine sonnet-work were unrepresented. I am giving an average of two to each writer of standing, but in your case I have allowed for five. This is both because I have a genuine admiration for your sonnet-work in the main, and because I think that you have never been done full justice to as a poet—though of course you have met with loyal recognition in most of those quarters where you would most value it.... I have taken great pleasure in the preparation of the little book, and I think that both poetically and technically it will be found satisfactory. My main principles in selection have been (1) Structural correctness. (2) Individuality, with distinct poetic value. (3) Adequacy of Sonnet-Motive. I hope that you are hard at work—not neglecting the shyest and dearest of the muses—? Is there any chance of your being in London in the late Spring? I hope so. Sincerely yours, William Sharp. In the preparation of the volume he received several interesting communications from well-known English sonnet writers from which I select four. The first is from the Irish poet Aubrey de Vere; in the second Mr. George Meredith answers a question concerning his volume of sequent poems, Modern Love: Curragh Chase, Adare, Dec. 5, 1885. Dear Mr. Sharp, ... I am much flattered by what you say about my sonnets, and glad that you like them; but I hope that in Yours faithfully, Aubrey de Vere. Boxhill, Dorking, Nov. 12, 1885. Dear Sir, You are at liberty to make your use of the Sonnet you have named. The Italians allow of 16 lines, under the title of “Sonnets with a tail.” But the lines of “Modern Love” were not designed for that form. Yours very truly, George Meredith. The third letter is from Mr. Theodore Watts-Dunton: The Pines, Putney Hill, Jan. 8, 1886. My dear Sharp, I sent off the proofs by Wednesday afternoon’s post. I had no idea that the arrangement of the sonnets would give bother and took care to write to you to ask. The matter was not at all important, and I shall be vexed, indeed, if the printers are put to trouble. The printers would, unless the snow storms interfered, get my verses by Thursday morning’s first post. My theory of the sonnet is exactly expressed in the sonnet on the sonnet. It is that, in the octave, the emotion flows out in a rhythmic billow: that the solidarity of this billow is maintained by knitting the two quatrains together by means of two rhyme sounds only: that in the Yours affectly, Theo. Watts. The fourth letter is from Oscar Wilde: 16 Tite St., Chelsea. Dear Sir, It will give me much pleasure to see the sonnets you mention included in your selection. Of the two, I much prefer “Libertatis Sacra Fames”—and if only one is taken, would like to be represented by that. Indeed I like the sonnets on p. 3 and p. 16 of my volume better than the one written in Holy Week at Genoa. Perhaps however this is merely because Art and Liberty seem to me more vital and more religious than any Creed. I send you a sonnet I wrote at the Sale of Keats’s love letters some months ago. What do you think of it? It has not yet been published. I wonder are you including Edgar Allan Poe’s sonnet to Science. It is one I like very much. I will look forward with much interest to the appearance of your book. I remain Truly yours, Oscar Wilde. ON THE SALE BY AUCTION OF KEATS’S LOVE LETTERS These are the letters which Endymion wrote Bargain and bid for each poor blotted note. Ay! for each separate pulse of passion quote Is it not said that many years ago, To wrangle for mean raiment, and to throw Not knowing the God’s wonder, or his woe. I wish I could grave my sonnets on an ivory tablet—Quill pens and note-paper are only good enough for bills of lading. A sonnet should always look well. Don’t you think so? O. W. The success of the volume was immediate, and a second edition followed quickly. For it I begged that the Editor would include some sonnets of his own. He had refused to do so for the 1st Edition, but he now yielded to my wish and included two, “Spring Wind” and “A Midsummer Hour.” In later editions, however, he took them out again and left only the two dedicatory sonnets to D. G. Rossetti, for he considered that the Editor should not be represented in the body of the book. The volume was generously welcomed by contemporary writers. George Meredith considered it the best exposition of the Sonnet known to him; to Walter Pater the Introductory Essay was “most pleasant and informing,” and “Your own beautiful dedication to D. G. R. seems to me perfect, and brought back, with great freshness, all I have felt, and so sincerely, about him and his work.” Robert Louis Stevenson expressed his views on the sonnet in a letter to the Editor: Skerrymore (Bournemouth). Dear Sir, Having at last taken an opportunity to read your pleasant volume, it has had an effect upon me much to be regretted and you will find the consequences in verse. I had not written a serious sonnet since boyhood, when I used to imitate Milton and Wordsworth with surprising results: and since I have fallen again by your procuring (a procuration) you must suffer along with me. May I say that my favourite sonnet in the whole range of your book is Tennyson Turner’s “The Buoy-Bell?” Possibly there is a touch of association in this preference; but I think not. No human work is perfect; but that is near enough. Yours truly, Robert Louis Stevenson. The form of my so-called sonnets will cause you as much agony as it causes me little. I am base enough to think the main point of a sonnet is the disjunction of thought coinciding with the end of the octave: and when a lesser disjunction makes the quatrains and sestets I call it an ideal sonnet; even if it were rhymed anyhow. But the cross rhyme, tears—fear, in the second is, even in my base eyes, a vile flaw. (Two sonnets were enclosed in the letter.) THE ARABESQUE I made a fresco on the coronal, Of life’s wind-swept and unfrequented ball. The pretty image of the enormous fact And threw a brightness on the painted tract. In vain we blink; our life about us lies To hear the hymn of ancient harmonies And from the august silence of the skies THE TOUCH OF LIFE I saw a circle in a garden sit Whereof some shuddered at the burrowing nit, And all, as envying the abhorred estate Under the laughing stars, early and late, The keeper of the house of life is fear: By him that rent it; out of stony ground Beholds the harvest of his grief abound William Sharp offered to include “The Touch of Life” in the body of the book, and “The Arabesque” in the Notes. He received this reply: Dear Mr. Sharp, It is very good of you, and I should like to be in one of your pleasant and just notes; but the impulse was one of pure imitation and is not like to return, or if it did, to be much blessed. I have done so many things, and cultivated so many fields in literature, that I think I shall let the “scanty plot” lie fallow. I forgot to say how much taken I was with Beaconsfield’s lines (scarce a sonnet indeed) on Wellington. I am engaged with the Duke, and I believe I shall use them. I think the “Touch of Life” is the best of my snapshots; but the other was the best idea. The fun of the sonnet to me is to find a subject; the workmanship rebuts me. Thank you for your kind expressions, and believe me, Yours truly, Robert Louis Stevenson. The Editor was much gratified by an appreciative letter from John Addington Symonds concerning the Edition de Luxe of his Anthology: Davos Platz, Nov. 28, 1886. My dear Sharp, I have just received my copy of the magnificent edition of your Sonnets of this Century to which I subscribed. It is indeed a noble book. Let me say at once how much I think you have improved the Preface. There are one or two things affecting my own share in the Collection to which I should like to call your attention. I notice that in pp. xxvii-xxix of your Introduction you have adopted the ideas I put forth (Academy, Feb. I doubt whether Sonnets in Dialogue be so rare as you imply on p. 43. I know that I composed one for Lady Kitty Clive in 1875. It is printed on p. 117 of my Vagabunduli Libellus. I do not esteem it, however, and only published it because it was in dialogue.... Believe me very truly yours, J. A. Symonds. P. S.—Pater is an old acquaintance of mine. Watts I never met, and I should greatly value the opportunity of knowing him in the flesh—in the spirit, I need hardly say, he has long been known to me. This postscript reminds me of the fact that Mr. Pater, Mr. Alfred Austin, and Mr. Theodore Watts-Dunton met together one evening at our house. I especially remember the occasion because of an incident that occurred, which indicated to us a temperamental characteristic of Walter Pater. During dinner a guest asked to see a necklace I was wearing. It was in the form of a serpent made of silver wire deftly interwoven to resemble scales and to make it sinuous and supple. I unfastened the serpent and as I handed it to Mr. Pater who was nearest me, it If The Sonnets of this Century gained us pleasant friendships it also brought upon us a heavy penalty. For, within the next year or two we were inundated with letters and appeals from budding poets, from ambitious and wholly ignorant would-be sonneteers, who sent sheafs of sonnets not only for criticism and advice but now and again with the request to find a publisher for them! A large packet arrived one day, I remember, with a letter from an unknown in South Africa. The writer explained his poetical ambitions, and stated that he forwarded for consideration a hundred sonnets. On examining the packet we found one hundred poems varying in length from twelve to twenty lines, but not a solitary sonnet among them! |
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