“Friday 3rd. After breakfast went for a brisk walk of over four miles. Then worked, slowly, till lunch, at opening of “The Pagans” (afterwards to be called “Good-Bye, my Fancy”). Then walked to the station by the fields and back by the road (another 4 miles). Then worked about an hour more on “The Pagans.” Have done to-day, in all, from 1,200 to 1,500 words of it. While walking in the afternoon thought out “The Oread” and also the part of it which I shall use in the White Review by Charles Verlayne.
Saty 4th. Did rest of “The Pagans.” In afternoon did first part of “The Oread.”
Sunday 5th. Finished “Oread.”
Tuesday 7th. Went down to Rudgwick, Sussex, by appointment, and agreed to take the cottage on a 3-years’ lease.”
Regretfully the wanderings in the Highlands had to be postponed although the projector of the Review went for a time to Loch Goil with a friend and I to Bayreuth. In August we settled in the little eight-roomed cottage, near Rudgwick, with a little porch, an orchard and garden, and small lawn with a chestnut tree in its midst. We remained at Phenice Croft two years and took much pleasure in the little green enclosure that was our own. The views from it were not extensive. A stretch of fields and trees lay in front of the house, and from the side lawn we could see an old mill whose red brick roof had been weathered to picturesque shades of green. Phenice Croft stood at the edge of a little hamlet called Buck’s Green, and across the road from our garden gate stood the one shop flanked by a magnificent poplar tree, that made a landmark however far we might wander. It was a perpetual delight to us. William Sharp settled down at once to the production of his quarterly to be called, finally, The Pagan Review, edited by himself as W. H. Brooks. As he had no contributors, for he realised he would have to attract them, he himself wrote the whole of the Contents under various pseudonyms. It was published on August 15th, 1892; the cover bore the motto “Sic transit gloria Grundi” and this list of contents:
| The Black Madonna | By W. S. Fanshawe |
| [This dramatic Interlude was afterwards included in Vistas.] | |
| The Coming of Love | By George Gascoign |
| [Republished posthumously in Songs Old and New.] | |
| The Pagans: a Romance | By William Dreeme |
| [Never finished.] | |
| An Untold Story | By Lionel Wingrave |
| [Sonnets afterwards printed in Songs Old and New.] | |
| The Rape of the Sabines | By James Marazion |
| The Oread | By Charles Verlayne |
| Dionysos in India | By William Windover |
| Contemporary Record. | |
| Editorial. | |
The Editorial announced a promised article on “The New Paganism” from the pen of H. P. Siwäarmill, but it was never written.
As the Foreword gives an idea, not only of the Editor’s project, but also of his mental attitude at that moment—a sheer revelling in the beauty of objective life and nature, while he rode for a brief time on the crest of the wave of health and exuberant spirits that had come to him in Italy after his long illness and convalescence—I reprint it in its entirety.
Editorial prefaces to new magazines generally lay great stress on the effort of the directorate, and all concerned, to make the forthcoming periodical popular.