The three years at Hampstead had been happy and successful. William had regained health; and had a command of work that made the ways of life pleasant. We had about us a genial sympathetic group of friends, and were in touch with many keen minds of the day. Temperamentally he could work or play with equal jest and enjoyment; he threw himself whole-heartedly into whatever he did. Observant, keenly intuitive, he cared to come into contact with all kinds and types of men and women; cared continually to test the different minds and temperaments he came across, providing always that they had a vital touch about them, and were not comatosely conventional. Curious about life, he cared incessantly to experiment; restless and never satisfied (I do not mean dissatisfied) he constantly desired new fields for this experimentation. Therefore, happy though he had been at Wescam, successful as that experiment had proved, he felt it had served its turn and he longed for different circumstances, different environment, new possibilities in which to attempt to give fuller expression of himself. He realised that nothing more would happen under the then existing conditions, satisfactory though they seemed externally; that indeed the satisfactoriness was a chain that was winding round him and fettering him to a form of life that was becoming rigid and monotonous, and, therefore, paralysing to all those inner impulses. His visit to America had re-awakened the desire to wander. So we gave up our house, stored our furniture, and planned to go abroad for the first winter and leave the future “in the lap of the Gods”; for was he not “of the unnumbered clan that know a longing that is unquiet as the restless wave ...” the “deep hunger for experience, even if it be bitter, the longing for things known to be unattainable, the remembrance that strives for rebirth.” That summer he wrote to Mr. Stedman:
“ ... You will ere this have received the copy of the little book of Great Odes: English and American which I sent to you. I think I told you that your own beautiful ‘Ode to Pastoral Romance’ has appealed to many people, and will, I hope and believe, send new readers to you, among the new generation, as a poet. Well, we are breaking up our home, and are going to leave London for a long time—probably for ever as a fixed ‘residentz platz.’ Most of my acquaintances think I am very foolish thus to withdraw from the ‘thick of the fight’ just when things are going so well with me, and when I am making a good and rapidly increasing income—for I am giving up nearly every appointment I hold, and am going abroad, having burned my ships behind me, and determined to begin literary life anew. But, truly enough, wisdom does not lie in money making—not for the artist who cares for his work at any rate. I am tired of so much pot-boiling, such increasing bartering of literary merchandise: and wish to devote myself entirely—or as closely as the fates will permit—to work in which my heart is. I am buoyant with the belief that it is in me to do something both in prose and verse far beyond any hitherto accomplishment of mine: but to stay here longer, and let the net close more and more round me, would be fatal. Of course I go away at a heavy loss. My income will at once drop to zero, and even after six months or so will scarce have risen a few degrees above that awkward limit—though ultimately things may readjust themselves. Yet I would rather—I am ready—I should say we are ready—to live in the utmost economy if need be. We shall be none the less happy: for my wife, with her usual loving unselfishness and belief in me, is as eager as I am for the change, despite all the risks. Among the younger writers few have the surely not very high courage necessary to give up something of material welfare for the sake of art. As for us, we are both at heart Bohemians—and are well content if we can have good shelter, enough to eat, books, music, friends, sunshine and free nature—all of which we can have with the scantiest of purses. Perhaps I should be less light-hearted in the matter if I thought that our coming Bohemian life might involve my wife in hard poverty when my hour comes, but fortunately her future is assured. So henceforth, in a word, I am going to take down the board
WILLIAM SHARP
Literary Manufacturer
(All kinds of jobs undertaken)
and substitute:
WILLIAM SHARP
Given up Business: Moved to Bohemia.
Publishers and Editors Need not Apply.
Friends can write to W. S. % “Drama” “Fiction” or “Poetry,”
Live-as-you-will Quarter, Bohemia.
This day week we leave our house for good. My wife and I then go into Hampshire to breathe the hay and the roses for a week at a friend’s place, 7 miles across the Downs north of Winchester: then back to London to stay with our friend, Mrs. Mona Caird, till about the 20th of July. About that date we go to Scotland, to my joy, till close on the end of September. Thereafter we return to London for a week or so, and then go abroad. We are bound first for the lower Rhineland, and intend to stay at Heidelberg (being cheap, pretty, thoroughly German, with good music and a good theatre) for about two months. Then, about the beginning of December, we go to Rome, where we intend to settle: climatic, financial, and other considerations will decide whether we remain there longer than six months, but six ideal months at least we hope for. Mihi sex menses satis sunt vitæ septimum Orco spondeo.
That summer we went to Clynder on the Gareloch, Argyll, in order to be near my husband’s old friend, Dr. Donald Macleod, who, as he records in his diary “sang to me with joyous abandonment a Neapolitan song, and asked me to send him a MS. from Italy for Good Words.” While we were in the West we made acquaintance with the poet-editor of The Yorkshire Herald, George Cotterell, who became a dear and valued friend. I cannot recall if it were in the early summer of 1889 or 1890 that my husband was first approached on the subject of the Joseph Severn Memoirs, but I remember the circumstance. We spent a week-end in Surrey with some old friends of my mother, Sir Walter and Lady Hughes, and one morning Mr. Walter Severn, the painter, walked over to luncheon. He spoke about my husband’s Life of Rossetti, then of the quantity of unpublished MSS. he and his family had written by and relating to his father, Joseph Severn, “the friend of Keats.” Finally he proposed that his listener should take over the MSS., put them in form and write a Life of Severn, with, as the special point of literary interest, his father’s devoted friendship with and care of the dying poet. After considerable deliberation, W. S. agreed to undertake the work, and arrangements were made with Messrs. Samson Low to publish it. The preparing of this Memoir brought him into pleasant relationship not only with Mr. Walter Severn, and with Mr. and Mrs. Arthur Severn, but also with Ruskin, who he visited later at Coniston, where he was delighted, among other things, with the fine collection of minerals and stones that was one of Ruskin’s hobbies.
The preparation of The Joseph Severn Memoirs necessarily entailed correspondence with members and friends of that family, among others with W. W. Story, the sculptor, who sent him the following information:
“I knew Mr. Severn at Rome and frequently met and saw him but I can recall nothing which would be of value to you. He was, as you know, a most pleasant man—and in the minds of all is associated with the memory of Keats by whose side he lies in the Protestant Cemetery at Rome. When the bodies were removed, as they were several years ago, and laid side by side, there was a little funeral ceremony and I made an address on the occasion in honour and commemoration of the two friends. I remember we then had hoped that Lord Houghton would have been able to be present as he had promised. But he was taken ill in the East, where he was then journeying, and I had to express the fear lest the ceremony might be a commemoration not only of two but of the three friends so intimately associated together. However, Houghton did recover from the attack and came afterward to Rome, sadly broken.”