My dear Sir,
I hope you will not consider me ungrateful for the pleasure you gave me last night because I outwardly showed so little appreciation—but I was really so unwell from cold and headache that it was the utmost I could do to listen coherently. But though, otherwise, I look back gratefully to the whole evening I especially recall with pleasure the few minutes in which now and again you read. I have never heard such a beautiful reader of verse as yourself, and if I had not felt—well, shy—I should have asked you to go on reading. Voice, and tone, and expression, all were in perfect harmony—and although I have much else to thank you for, allow me to thank you for the pleasure you have given me in this also.
I enclose 4 or 5 poems taken at random from my MSS. Two or three were written two or three years ago. That called the “Dancer” is modelled on your beautiful “Card-Dealer.”
I have also to thank you for your kind criticisms: and hope that you do not consider my aspirations and daring hopes as altogether in vain. Despair comes sometimes upon me very heavily, but I have not yet lost heart.
Yours most faithfully,
William Sharp.
On the 23d of February he wrote to Mrs. Caird:
Dear Mona.
Was unable after all to resume my letter on Friday night. On Friday morning I had a note from Rossetti wanting me to come again and dine with him—this time alone, I was glad to find. I spent a most memorable evening, and enjoyed myself more than I can tell. We dined together in free and easy manner in his studio, surrounded by his beautiful paintings and studies. Then, and immediately after dinner he told me things of himself, personal reminiscences, with other conversation about the leading living painters and poets. Then he talked to me about myself, and my manuscripts—a few of which he had seen. Then personal and other matters again, followed, to my great delight (as Rossetti is a most beautiful reader) by his reading to me a great part of the as yet unpublished sonnets which go to form “The House of Life.” Some of them were splendid, and seemed to me finer than those published—more markedly intellectual, I thought. This took up a long time, which passed most luxuriously for me....
He has been so kind to me every way: and this time he gave me two most valuable and welcome introductions—one to Philip Bourke Marston, the man whose genius is so wonderful, considering he has been blind from his birth—and the other to his brother Mr. Michael Rossetti, to whom, however, he had already kindly spoken about me. I am to go when I wish to the latter’s literary re-unions, where I shall make the acquaintance of some of our leading authors and authoresses. Did I tell you that the last time I dined at Rossetti’s house he gave me a copy of his poems, with something from himself written on the fly-leaf? On that occasion I also met Theodore Watts, the well-known critic of The Athenaeum. It is so strange to be on intimate terms with a man whom a short time ago I looked on as so far off. Perhaps, dear friend, when you come to stay with Elizabeth and myself in the happy days which I hope are in store for us all, you will “pop” into quite a literary circle!... I was sure, also, you would enjoy the Life of Clifford in “Mod: Thought.” What a splendid man he was: a true genius, yet full of the joy of life, sociable, fun-loving, genial, and in every way a gentleman. I was reading one of his books lately, and was struck with the sympathetic spirit he showed toward what to him meant nothing—Christianity. I wish we had more men like him. There is another man for whom I think I have an equal admiration, though of a different order in one sense—Dr. Martineau. Have you read anything of his?