Heed not the worship of the weak,
That in a maiden’s fearless voice
The clarion voice of God may speak.
Be swift to strike and strong to save,
Steadfast in all! Till all the land
Shall hail thee ‘Bravest of the Brave’
Oh Lady of the Lily Hand.
It was a fair scene in which it was written—a hill-top under Monte Rosa overlooking the lovely shores of Lugano—and, though he always said that actual surroundings were never proper to be described in the work of the moment but must be digested and crystallized in the hidden corners of remembrance, I think that the spirit of a place did influence him, so that the sun shone on the hillside of the first Act of The Lonely Queen as the lowering brow of the Black Mount, at Rannoch, seemed to overshadow the halls of Camelot; he even said himself that he could see the barge with Elaine’s body float down the Hertfordshire stream where he was wont to fish after his day’s labour.
His poetical work was always that which lay nearest his heart, though his friends often deplored that he did not devote himself more to comedy; but strange to say, his humour, which was so inexhaustible in colloquial intercourse, did not strike home so surely in his stage dialogue: he needed the stimulus of conversation. Possibly he felt this, which made him shyer of comedy-writing than he would have been; in Nerves he was witty enough and there is a very deft comedy scene for two old ladies in Forgiveness, produced at the “St. James’” Theatre by Sir George Alexander. His first attempts at dramatic work, made on the tiny stage of German Reed’s, were entirely in quaint comedy.