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 di Roma he wrote to Mrs. Janvier:
1st May, 1891.
... Whether coming with praise or with blame and cast me to the perdition of the unrighteous, the critics all seem unable to take the true standpoint—namely, that of the poet. What has he attempted, and how far has he succeeded or failed? That is what should concern them. It is no good to any one or to me to say that I am a Pagan—that I am “an artist beyond doubt, but one without heed to the cravings of the human heart: a worshipper of the Beautiful, but without religion, without an ethical message, with nothing but a vain cry for the return, or it may be the advent, of an impossible ideal.” Equally absurd to complain that in these “impressions” I give no direct “blood and bones” for the mind to gnaw at and worry over. Cannot they see that all I attempt to do is to fashion anew something of the lovely vision I have seen, and that I would as soon commit forgery (as I told some one recently) as add an unnecessary line, or “play” to this or that taste, this or that critical opinion. The chief paper here in Scotland shakes its head over “the nude sensuousness of ‘The Swimmer of Nemi,’ ‘The Naked Rider,’ ‘The Bather,’ ‘Fior di Memoria,’ ‘The Wild Mare’ (whose ‘fiery and almost savage realism!’ it depreciates—tho’ this is the poem which Meredith says is ‘bound to live’) and evidently thinks artists and poets who see beautiful things and try to fashion them anew beautifully, should be stamped out, or at any rate left severely alone....
In work, creative work above all, is the sovereign remedy for all that ill which no physician can cure: and there is a joy in it which is unique and invaluable.
For a time, however, creative work had to be put aside. The preparation of The Life and Letters of Joseph Severn was a hard grind that lasted till mid-August. At Whitby, on the 13th, according to his diary he “wrote 25 pp. digest of Severn’s novel and worked at other things. Later I wrote the concluding pages, finishing the book at 2 A.M. I can hardly believe that this long delayed task is now accomplished. But at last “Severn” is done!”
The final revision occupied him till the 28th August, and in order to finish it before we went abroad on the 27th he wrote “all morning till 1 p.m.; again from 9 p.m. all night unbrokenly till 7 A.M. Then read a little to rest my brain and wrote four letters. Had a bath and breakfast and felt all right.”