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

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 sestet the billow _ebbs_ back to “Life’s tumultuous

sea” and that like the ebb of an ocean-billow it moves backward, not

solidly, but _broken up_ into wavelets. This is only the arrangement of

the rhymes in the sestet, that not only _need_ not be based upon any

given system but that _should_ not be based on any given system, and

should be perceived entirely by emotional demands.

  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

    To one he loved in secret, and apart.

    And now the brawlers of the auction mart

  Bargain and bid for each poor blotted note.

  Ay! for each separate pulse of passion quote

    The merchant’s price: I think they love not art,

    Who break the crystal of a poet’s heart

  That small and sickly eyes may glare and gloat!

  Is it not said that many years ago,

    In a far Eastern town, some soldiers ran

    With torches through the midnight, and began

  To wrangle for mean raiment, and to throw

    Dice for the garments of a wretched man,

  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?

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

(Complaint of an artist)

  I made a fresco on the coronal,

    Amid the sounding silence and the void

  Of life’s wind-swept and unfrequented ball.

    I drew the nothings that my soul enjoyed;

  The pretty image of the enormous fact

    I fled; and when the sun soared over all

  And threw a brightness on the painted tract.

    Lo, the vain lines were reading on the wall!

  In vain we blink; our life about us lies

    O’erscrawled with crooked mist; we toil in vain

  To hear the hymn of ancient harmonies

    That quire upon the mountains as the plain;

  And from the august silence of the skies

    Babble of speech returns to us again.

THE TOUCH OF LIFE

  I saw a circle in a garden sit

    Of dainty dames and solemn cavaliers,

  Whereof some shuddered at the burrowing nit,

    And at the carrion worm some burst in tears;

  And all, as envying the abhorred estate

    Of empty shades and disembodied elves,

  Under the laughing stars, early and late,

    Sat shamefast at this birth and at themselves.

  The keeper of the house of life is fear:

    In the rent lion is the honey found

    By him that rent it; out of stony ground

  The toiler, in the morning of the year,

    Beholds the harvest of his grief abound

  And the green corn put forth the tender ear.

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. 13, 1886) about the origin

of the Sonnet. But you somewhat confuse the argument by using the

word _Stornello_. If you look at Ancora’s _Poesia Popolare Italiana_

(Livano, Vigo), pp. 175, 313, you will see that Italians regard the

stornello (320) as a totally different species from the rispetto. I

have explained the matter in my Renaissance in Italy, Vol. A. p. 264.

I admit that there may be differences of opinion about these popular

species of verse. Yet I have no doubt that every one in Italy, a

_Stornello_ being mentioned, would think at once of a single couplet

prefaced with _Fiore di granata_ or something of that sort. However,

it would be pedantic to insist upon this point. I only do so because

I believe I was the first to indicate the probable evolution of the

sonnet from the same germ as the Rispetto Sesta Rima, and Ottava Rima;

and I am distinctly myself of opinion that the Stornello is quite a

separate offshoot.

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

only published it because it was in dialogue....

  Believe me very truly yours,

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 writhed in a lifelike manner, and he drew back his hands with

a slight movement of dislike. In a flash I remembered the passage in

_Marius the Epicurean_ in which the hero’s dislike to serpents is so

vividly described, and I realised the description to be autobiographic.

Later I had occasion to note the same effect. My husband and I in the

early summer went down to Oxford so that I might meet the Misses Pater

at their brother’s house. In the morning I had seen Mr. Pater’s study

at Brasenose, and was as charmed with the beauty and austerity of the

decoration, as with the sense of quiet and repose. In the afternoon it

was proposed that I should be shown the Ifley Woods. My husband, always

glad to handle the oars, had, however, to consent to being rowed by one

of the boat attendants, for Mr. Pater with the timidity of a recluse

declined to trust himself to the unknown capabilities of one whom he

regarded rather as a townsman. As Mr. Pater and I strolled through

the wood I suddenly noticed that my companion gave a little start and

directed my attention to what seemed of small interest. When, however,

we rejoined our companions Miss Pater asked her brother if he had seen

the dead adder lying on one side of the path. “Oh, yes,” he answered,

turning his head on one side with a gesture of aversion; “but I did not

wish Mrs. Sharp to see 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!