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

of afternoon. Took up and revised ‘The Fountain of the Aqua Paola’ and

added so largely to it as to make it a new poem. It ended with ‘Eternal

Calm.’ Also wrote ‘The Fallen Goddess’—about 250 lines in length. In

the evening wrote ‘Bats’ Wings’ (26 ll) and ‘Thistledown’ (Spring on

the Campagna) (71 ll).

Such bursts of uncontrollable poetic impulse as came to me to-day, and

the last three days, only come rarely in each year. It was in such a

burst last year (1889?) that I wrote ‘The Weird of Michael Scott’ (each

part at a single sitting).

_Feb. 4th._ Wrote the Sospiro ‘To my Dream.’

_Feb. 5th._ Between 10 P.M. and 1.30 A.M. wrote the poem which I think

I will call ‘Fior di Memoria’ (about 175 lines).

_Feb. 7th._ We went to Ettore Roesler Franz’s studio. His water-colour

drawings of (mediæval) Rome as it was from the middle of the century

to within the last 7 or 10 years very charming and deeply interesting

and valuable—and at the same time infinitely sad. Those of the Prati di

Castello and the Tiber Bank and Stream especially so: instead of this

lost beauty we have hideous jerry buildings, bad bridges, monotonous

and colourless banks, and dull municipal mediocrity and common-place

everywhere.

There might be a Weeping Wall in Rome as well as in Jerusalem. Truly

enough there will soon be absolute truth in Bacon’s noble saying ‘The

souls of the living are the beauty of the world’—for the world will be

reduced to the sway of the plumber and builder, and artificial gardener

and Bumbledom.

In evening wrote “Primo Sospiro di Primavera.”

_8th._ In forenoon wrote “The White Peacock” (56 lines)—a study in

Whites for Théodore Roussel. Also “The Swimmer of Nemi” (Red and White)

42 lines. In evening revised the “Swimmer of Nemi” and partly rewrote

or recast. It is much improved in definite effect; and gains by the

deletion of 9 or 10 lines, pretty in themselves but not in perfect

harmony. Wrote the poem commemorating the strange evening of 17th

Jan.... called it “A Winter Evening” (35 lines). _Later._ Wrote the

poem called “Scirocco” (June), 67 lines. To bed about 12.30.

_10th._ Gave first sitting to Charles Holroyd for his Etching of me.

_11th._ Gave Charles Holroyd a second sitting. Between 9 and 2 A.M.

wrote

  “The Naked Rider” (70 lines)

  “The Wind at Fidenae” (38 lines)

  “The Wild Mare” (32 lines)

  “A Dream at Ardea” (In Maremma) 215 lines.

_12th._ Wrote “La Velia” (38 lines).

_15th._ Agnes and Lill, Charles Holroyd and the P—s and I went to

Tusculum by morning train. Very warm as soon as we got to Frascati.

Lovely Tramontana day. Took a donkey to carry the wine and provisions:

or Lill, if necessary. After a long walk, lunched in the Theatre at

Tusculum. Wreathed the donkey with ivy and some early blooms, and then

I rode on it on to the stage, à la Bacchus, flasks of Frascati under

either arm.

Most glorious sunset. The view from the height above Tusculum simply

superb, and worth coming to see from any part of the world.

_17th._ Yesterday was one of the most glorious days possible in Rome.

Cloudless sky: fresh sweet breeze: deliciously warm. Went with A.

to Porto d’Anzio again, and walked along the coast northward. Sea

unspeakably glorious: blue, sunlit, with great green foam-crested waves

breaking on the sands, and surging in among the hollow tufa rocks and

old Roman remains. Lay for a long time at the extreme end of the Arco

Muto. One of the red letter days in one’s life.

Stayed up all night (till Breakfast) writing: then revising. Between

8 P.M. and 4 A.M. wrote poem after poem with unbroken eagerness. The

impulse was an irresistible one, as I was tired and not, at first,

strongly inclined to write, though no sooner had I written the Italian

“Dedicatory Lines” than it all came upon me. In all, besides these, I

wrote “Al Far della Notte” (31 lines): “Clouds, from the Agro Romano”

(31): “The Olives of Tivoli” (30): “At Veii” (86): “The Bather” (68):

“De Profundis” (26): and “Ultimo Sospiro” (37).

_18th._ Beautiful day. Felt none the worse for being up all night.

Wrote article on Ibsen’s ‘Rosmersholm’ for Y. F. P. Wrote “Spuma dal

Mare” (41 lines).

[Illustration: WILLIAM SHARP

After a pastel drawing by Charles Ross, 1891]

In “Spuma dal Mare” I have attempted to give something of the

many-coloured aspects of the sea. It is absurd to keep on always

speaking of it as blue, or green, or even grey. The following portion

is as true as practicable, whatever other merits they may have:

  Here the low breakers are rolling thro’ shallows,

  Yellow and muddied, the line of topaz

  Ere cut from the boulder:

  Save when the sunlight swims through them slantwise,

  When inward they roll,

  Long billows of amber,

  Crown’d with pale yellow

  And gray-green spume.

  Here wan gray their slopes

  Where the broken lights reach them,

  Dull gray of pearl, and dappled and darkling,

  As when, ‘mid the high

  Northward drift of the clouds,

  Sirocco bloweth

  With soft fanning breath.

_20th._ In morning wrote out Dedicatory and other Preliminary Pages,

etc., etc., for my “Sospiri di Roma” and after lunch took the complete

the Establishment at Tivoli to-day. Holroyd came with final proof of

his etching of me.

_24th._ Wrote “The Shepherd in Rome” (66 lines).

_25th._ Wrote “Sorgendo La Luna” (47 ll.).

_27th._ Wrote poem “In July: on the Campagna” (26 ll.). Wrote poem

“August Afternoon in Rome” (59 ll.).

Charles M. Ross (Norwegian painter), and Julian Corbett (author of

“The Life of Drake”) called on me today. Mr. Ross wants to paint me in

pastel and has asked me to go to-morrow for that purpose.”

       *       *       *       *       *

In mid-March I went to Florence in advance of my husband; and he

and Mr. Corbett spent a few days together at the Albergo Sybilla

Tivoli—where their sitting-room faced the Temple of Vesta—so that he

could superintend there the printing of his “Sospiri.” The two authors

worked in the morning, and took walks in the afternoon. The Diary

records one expedition:

_March 23._ After lunch J. C. and I caught the train for Palombaria

Marcellina meaning to ascend to Palombara: but we mistook the highest

and most isolated mountain town, in the Sabines and after two hours

of an exceedingly wild and rugged and sometimes almost impossible

mule-path, etc., we reached the wonderfully picturesque and interesting

San Polo dei Cavalieri. Bought a reed pipe from a shepherd who was

playing a Ranz des Vaches among the slopes just below San Polo. The

mediæval castle in the middle of the narrow crooked picturesque streets

very fine. Had some wine from a comely woman who lived in the lower

part of the castle. Then we made our way into the Sabines by Vicovaro,

and Castel Madama, and home late to Tivoli, very tired.

Certain tales told to him by the Italian woman, and the picturesque

town and its surroundings formed the basis of the story “The Rape of

the Sabines” which appeared later in _The Pagan Review_. At the end

of March he left Rome, to his great regret; he joined me at Pisa and

thence we journeyed to Provence and stayed awhile at Arles, whence he

wrote to Mrs. Janvier:

  30: 3: 91.

  GENTO CATARINO,

You see I address you à la Provençale already! We left Italy last week,

and came to Provence. Marseilles, I admit, seemed to me an unattractive

place after Rome—and indeed all of Provence we have seen as yet is

somewhat chill and barren after Italy. No doubt the charm will grow.

For one thing, Spring is very late here this year....

Arles we like much. It is a quaint and pleasant little town: and once

I can get my mind free of those haunting hill-towns of the Sabines

and Albans I love so much—(is there any hill range in the world to

equal that swing of the Apennines stretching beyond Rome eastward,

southward, and southwestward?)—I shall get to love it too, no doubt.

But oh, Italy, Italy! Not Rome: though Rome has an infinite charm, even

now when the jerry-builder is fast ruining it: but “greater Rome,” the

Agro Romano! When I think of happy days at the Lake of Nemi, high up in

the Albans, of Albano, and L’Ariccia, and Castel Gandolfo—of Tivoli,

and the lonely Montecelli, and S. Polo dei Cavalieri, and Castel

Madama, and Anticoli Corrado, etc., among the Sabines—of the ever new,

mysterious, fascinating Campagna, from the Maremma on the North to the

Pontine Marshes, my heart is full of longing. I love North Italy too,

all Umbria and Tuscany: and to know Venice well is to have a secret of

perpetual joy: and yet, the Agro Romano! How I wish you could have been

there this winter and spring! You will find something of my passion for

it, and of that still deeper longing and passion for the Beautiful,

in my “Sospiri di Roma,” which ought to reach you before the end of

April, or at any rate early in May. This very day it is being finally

printed off to the sound of the Cascades of the Anio at Tivoli, in

the Sabines—one of which turns the machinery of the Socièta Laziale’s

printing-works. I do hope the book will appeal to you, as there is so

much of myself in it. No doubt it will be too frankly impressionistic

to suit some people, and its unconventionality in form as well as in

matter will be a cause of offence here and there. You shall have one of

the earliest copies.

Yesterday was a fortunate day for arrival. It was a great festa, and

all the women were out in their refined and picturesque costumes.

The Amphitheatre was filled, tier upon tier, and full of colour

(particularly owing to some three or four hundred Zouaves, grouped in

threes or fours every here and there) for the occasion of “a grand

Bull-Fight.” It was a brilliant and amusing scene, though (fortunately)

the “fight” was of the most tame and harmless kind: much less dangerous

even for the most unwary of the not very daring Arlesians than a walk

across the remoter parts of the Campagna....

       *       *       *       *       *

Letters from Mr. Meredith and Miss Blind, in acknowledgment of the

privately published volume of poems, greatly pleased their author:

  BOX HILL, April 15, 1891.

  DEAR SHARP,

I have sent a card to the Grosvenor Club. I have much to say for the

Sospiri, with some criticism. Impressionistic work where the heart is

hot surpasses all but highest verse. _When_, mind. It can be of that

heat only at intervals. In the ‘Wild Mare’ you have hit the mark. It is

an unrivalled piece.

But you have at times (I read it so) insisted on your impressions. That

is, you have put on your cap, sharpened your pencil, and gone afield as

the Impressionistic poet. Come and hear more. I will give you a Crown

and a bit of the whip—the smallest bit.

Give my warm regards to your wife.

  Yours ever,

  GEORGE MEREDITH.

  May 18, 1891.

  DEAR WILL,

I got the copy you sent me of _Sospiri di Roma_.... Your nature feeling

is always so intense and genuine that I would have liked my own mood to

be more completely in harmony with yours before writing to you about

what is evidently so spontaneous an outcome of your true self. I should

have wished to identify myself with this joy in the beauty of the world

which bubbles up fountainlike from every one of these sparkling Roman

transcripts, why called “Sospiri” I hardly know. One envies you the

ebullient delight which must have flooded your veins before you could

write many of these verses, notably “Fior di Primavera,” “Red Poppies,”

and “The White Peacock”: the effect of colour and movement produced in

these last two seems to be particularly happy, as also the descriptions

of the sea of roses in the first which vividly recalled to me the

prodigal wealth of blossom on the Riviera. I thoroughly agree with

what George Meredith says of the sketch of “The Wild Mare,” the lines

of which seem as quiveringly alive as the high strung nerves of these

splendid creatures.

“August Afternoon in Rome” is also an admirable bit of impressionism

and, if I remember, just that effect—

  Far in the middle-flood, adrift, unoar’d,

  A narrow boat, swift-moving, black,

  Follows the flowing wave like a living thing.

By and by if I should get to some “place of nestling green for poets

made” I hope to get more deeply into the spirit of your book.

Come to see me as soon as ever you and Lill can manage it, either

separately or together.

  Always yours,

  MATHILDE BLIND.

Concerning certain criticisms on _Sospiri