The Chap-book was a little semi-monthly issue published by Messrs. Stone and Kimball, Chicago. No. 9, the “William Sharp” number, appeared on the 15th of September, three days after that author’s birthday. It contained the reproduction of an autograph signed poem, by William Sharp “To Edmund Clarence Stedman in Birthday Greeting 8th October”; an appreciation of William Sharp’s Poems by Bliss Carmen; “The Birth of a Soul” one of the Dramatic Interludes afterwards included in Vistas, and a portrait of the Author.
Notwithstanding the paramount interest to the author of the “F. M.” expression of himself as, “W. S.” he was not idle. After a visit to Mr. Murray Gilchrist in the latter’s home on the Derbyshire moors, W. S. wrote his story “The Gypsy Christ,” founded on a tradition which he had learned from his gipsy friends, and set in a weird moorland surroundings. In Harper’s there appeared a description of the night-wanderers on the Thames’ embankment, pathetic frequenters of “The Hotel of the Beautiful Star.” The July number of The Portfolio consisted of a monograph by him on “Fair Women in Painting and Poetry” (afterwards published in bookform by Messrs. Seeley) which he, at first, intended to dedicate to Mr. George Meredith. His ‘second thought’ was approved of by the novelist, who wrote his acknowledgment:
“You do an elusive bit of work with skill. It seems to me, that the dedication was wisely omitted. Thousands of curdling Saxons are surly almost to the snarl at the talk about ‘woman.’ Next to the Anarchist, we are hated.”
The month of July was saddened by the death of our intimate and valued friend Walter Pater; upon that friend and his work William Sharp wrote a long appreciation which appeared in The Atlantic Monthly. Another death, at the year-end, caused him great regret, that of Christina Rossetti, whom he had held in deep regard. He felt, as he wrote to her surviving brother: “One of the rarest and sweetest of English singers is silent now. 1882 and 1894 were evil years for English poetry.” Later he wrote a careful study of her verse for The Atlantic Monthly.
As a Christmas card that year he gave me a little book of old wood-cut illustrations, reproduced and printed on Iona. On the inside of the cover he wrote what he held to be his creed. It is this:
Credo
“The Universe is eternally, omnipresently and continuously filled with the breath of God.
“Every breath of God creates a new convolution in the brain of Nature: and with every moment of change in the brain of Nature, new loveliness is wrought upon the earth.
“Every breath of God creates a new convolution in the brain of the Human Spirit, and with every moment of change in the brain of the Human Spirit, new hopes, aspirations, dreams, are wrought within the Soul of the Living.