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

immortality, and that many of our best and most intelligent thinking

men and women abjure it as unworthy of their high conception of

Humanity....

But _is_ Humanity all? Has Humanity fashioned itself out of primal

elements, arisen and marched down the long, strange ways of Time—still

marching, with eyes fixed on some self-projected Goal—without ever a

spiritual breath blowing upon it, without ever the faintest guidance

of any divine hand, without ever a glance of sorrowful and yearning

but yet ineffably hopeful love from some Being altogether beyond and

transcending it? Is it, can it be so? But in any case, whether with the

Nirvana of the follower of Buddha, the absorption of the soul in the

soul of God of the Deist and Theist, or with the loss of the individual

in the whole of the Race of the Humanitarian, I cannot altogether

agree. It may be the “old Adam” of selfishness; it may be poverty of

highest feeling and insufficiency of intellectual grasp; but I cannot

embrace the belief in the extinction of the individual....

  23d October, 1880.

I am glad you like my short paper in the _Sectarian Review_ and I think

that you understand my motive in writing it. It is no unreasoning

reverence that I advocate, no “countenancing beliefs in worn-out

superstitions,” as you say; no mercy to the erring, but much mercy to

and sympathy with the deceived. I do not reverence the Bible or the

Christian Theology in _themselves_, but for the beautiful spirituality

which faintly but ever and again breathes through them, like a vague

wind blowing through intricate forests; and so far I reverence the

recognition of this spiritual breath in the worship of those whose

views are so very different from my own....

I have been writing a good deal lately—chiefly verse. There is one

thing which I am sure will interest you: some time ago I wrote a sonnet

called “Religion,” the drift of which was to show the futility of any

of the great creeds _as_ creeds, and two or three weeks ago showed

it to my friend Mr. Belford Bax. It seems to have made considerable

impression upon him, for, after what he calls “having absorbed it,”

he has set it to very beautiful recitative music. There are some fine

chords in the composition, preluding the pathetic melody of the finale;

and altogether it has given me great pleasure. But what specially

interests me is that it is the first time (as far as I am aware) of a

sonnet in any language having been set to music. The form of this kind

of verse is of course antagonistic to song-music, and could only be

rendered by recitative. Do you know of any instance having occurred?

The sonnet in question will appear in _The Examiner_ in a week or two.

  Lo, in a dream, I saw a vast dim sea

    Whose sad waves broke upon a barren shore;

    The name of this wan sea was _Nevermore_,

  The land _The Past_, the shore _Futility_:

  Thereon I spied three mighty Shadows; three

    Weary and desolate Shades, of whom each wore

    A crown whereon was writ _Despair_. To me

  One spoke, and said, “Lo, I am He

    In whom the countless millions of the East

  Live, move, and hope. And all is vanity!”—

    And I knew Buddha. Then the next: “The least

    Am I, but once God’s mightiest Prophet-Priest”—

  So spake Mahomet. And then pitifully

  The third Shade moaned, “I am of Galilee!”

I also enclose the record of a vision I had lately:

  Lo, in that Shadowy place wherein is found

    The fruitage of the spirit men call dreams,

    I wander’d. Ever underneath pale gleams

  Of misty moonlight quivering all around,

    And ever by the banks of sedgy streams

    Swishing thro’ fallen rushes with slow sound

  A spirit walked beside me. From a mound,

  Rustling from poplar-leaves from top to base,

  Some bird I knew not shrilled a cry of dole,

  So bitter, I cried out to God for grace.

    Whereat he by me slackened from his pace,

  Turning upon me in my cold amaze

    And saying, “While the long years onward roll

  Thou shalt be haunted by this hateful face—“

    And looking up, I looked on my own soul!

  Nov. 20, 1880.

If this note does not reach you by New Year’s Day it will soon after—so

let me wish you most heartily and sincerely all good wishes for the

coming year. May the White Wings of Happiness and Peace and Health

brush from your path all evil things. There is something selfish in the

latter wish, for I hope so much to see you before long again. Don’t

despise me when I say that in some things I am more a woman than a

man—and when my heart is touched strongly I lavish more love upon the

one who does so than I have perhaps any right to expect returned; and

then I have so few friends that when I do find one I am ever jealous of

his or her absence.

       *       *       *       *       *

scent till it looks at you in New Zealand. It is probably the last of

its race.

  Feb., 1881.

I may say in reference to the Religion of Humanity that my sympathy

with Comtism is only limited, and that though I think it is and will

yet be an instrument of great good, I see nothing in it of essential

savingness. It is even in some of its ceremonial and practical details

a decided retrogression—at least so it seems to me—and though I do

not believe in a revealed God, I think such a belief higher and more

precious and morally as salutary as a belief in abstract Humanity.

Concrete humanity appeals more to my sympathy when filled with the

breath of “God” than in its relation to its abstract Self. When I write

again I will endeavour to answer your question as to whether I believe

in a God or not. My friend, we are all in the hollow of some mighty

moulding Hand. Every fibre in my body quivers at times with absolute

faith and belief, yet I do not say that I believe in “God” when asked

such a question by those whom I am conscious misinterpret me. You have

some lines of mine called “The Redeemer”; they will hint something to

you of that belief which buoys my soul up in the ocean of love that

surrounds it. It were well for the soul, if annihilation rounds off the

circle of life, to sink to final forgetfulness in the sea of precious

human love; but it is far better if the soul can be borne along that

sea of wonder and glory to distant ever-expanding goals, transcending

in _love, glory, life_ all that human imagination ever conceived....

Farewell for the present, dear friend.

  W.

The most important influence in the early literary career of the young

poet was his friendship with Dante Gabriel Rossetti. He gained not

only a valued friend, who introduced him to many of the well-known

writers of the time, but one who helped him in the development of his

art by sound, careful criticism and kindly encouragement. His first

acquaintance with the writings of the painter-poet dated from the

Autumn of 1879, when on his birthday Miss Adelaide Elder had sent him a

volume of poems, an incident destined to have far-reaching results. In

1899 he wrote to her:

DEAR ADELAIDE,

Do you know why I thought of you to-day particularly, it being my

birthday? For it was you who some two and twenty years ago sent me on

the 12th of September a copy of a beautifully bound book by a poet with

a strange name and by me quite unknown—Dante Gabriel Rossetti.

To that event it is impossible to trace all I owe, but what is fairly

certain is that, without it, the whole course of my life might have

been very different. For the book not only influenced and directed me

mentally at a crucial period, but made me speak of it to an elderly

friend (Sir Noel Paton) through whom I was dissuaded from going abroad

on a career of adventure (I was going to Turkey or as I vaguely put it,

Asia) and through whom, later, I came to know Rossetti himself—an event

which completely redirected the whole course of my life.

It would be strange to think how a single impulse of a friend may thus

have so profound a significance were it not that to you and me there is

nothing strange (in the sense of incredible) in the complex spiritual

interrelation of life. Looking back through all those years I daresay

we can now both see a strange and in much inscrutable, but still

recognisable, direction.

To quote his own words:

“By the autumn of 1880 I was within sight of that long and arduous

career called the literary life. An extraordinary good fortune met

me at the outset, for, through an introduction from Sir Noel Paton,

I came to know, and know intimately, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, whose

winsome personality fascinated me as much as his great genius impressed

Philip Bourke Marston; and through Rossetti also I came to know Mr.

Theodore Watts, Mr. Swinburne, and others. By the spring of 1881, I was

in the literary world, and in every phase of it, from the most Bohemian

to the most isolated.”

On the 1st of September, 1881, William Sharp presented himself at the

door of 16 Cheyne Walk. The housekeeper explained that Mr. Rossetti

could receive no one. The importunate stranger persisted and stated

that it was of the highest importance that he should see Mr. Rossetti

and so impressed her that she not only went to report to Mr. Rossetti

but came back with orders to admit him. On seeing his eager visitor,

the poet-painter naturally asked him what he wanted so urgently, and

his visitor answered promptly, “Only to shake hands with you before you

die!” “Well,” was the answer, “I am in no immediate danger of dying,

but you may shake hands if you wish.”

The introduction from Sir Noel Paton was then tendered; and thus began

a friendship that grew to a deep affectionate devotion on the side of

the younger man.

Rossetti took him into the studio, and showed him the paintings he had

on his easels. The two which specially impressed his visitor were “La

Donna della Fenestra,” and “Dante’s Dream.” In a letter written to

me when I was in Italy, he describes the pictures as beautiful colour

harmonies, and continues:

“After I had looked at it for a long time in happy silence, Rossetti

sat behind me in the shadow and read me his translation of the poem

from the _Vita Nuova_, which refers to Dante’s Dream. Was it not kind

of him to give so much pleasure to one, a complete stranger? I also saw

several other paintings of extreme beauty, but which I have no time

to mention at present. He told me to come again, and shortly before

I left he asked me for my address, and said that he would ask me to

come some evening to talk with him, and also to meet one or two. This

was altogether unexpected. Fancy having two such men for _friends_ as

Sir Noel Paton and Dante Gabriel Rossetti! I went out in a dream. The

outside world was altogether idealised. I was in the golden age again.

To calm myself, I went and leant over Chelsea Embankment, where there

were many people as there was a regatta going on. But, though conscious

of external circumstances, I was not in London. The blood of the

South burned in my veins, the sky was a semi-tropical one: the river

rushing past was not the Thames, but the Tiber; the