This is not an advance birthday letter, as you may think! It is to convey tidings of much import to my wife and myself, and I hope of pleasure to you and other friends over-sea—namely that this late autumn we are going to pay a brief visit to New York.
It is our intention to spend January, February, and March in Rome—which for me is the City of Cities. But we are going to it via New York. In a word, we intend to leave England somewhere between 23rd and 26th of October, according as steamers and our needs fit it. Then after six weeks or so in New York, we intend to sail direct to the Mediterranean by one of the Hamburg-American or North-German Lloyd Special Mediterranean line, sailing to Genoa and Naples....
I have been very busy of late, and for one thing have been occupied with collecting and revising the literary studies of some years past—and much else of which I’ll tell you when we meet. My Literary Geography, which has been running serially in the Pall Mall Magazine for the last 14 or 15 months will be out in book-form in October. My wife’s recently published little book on Rembrandt has had a good reception, I am very glad to say.
With all affectionate greetings to you both, ever, Dear Stedman,
Affectionately your friend,
William Sharp.
Before we started for New York Literary Geography (by W. S.) was published. According to the critic in The World:
“It was a characteristically original idea of the author to combine descriptions of certain localities with criticisms and appreciations of those famous writers who had identified themselves therewith. It gives one a fresher and keener insight, for instance, into Mr. George Meredith’s poems to know how much they reveal of the lovely country in which he lives, and how many of his exquisite similes are drawn from observation of the birds and beasts and plants which he sees daily around his home under the shadow of Box Hill. “The Country of Stevenson,” “Dickens-Land,” “Scott-Land,” “The Country of George Eliot,” “Thackeray-Land,” “The Brontë Country,” “The Carlyle Country,” and “Aylwin-Land” are all both delightful and instructive, full of poetic description, sound criticism, and brilliant flashes of wit; and not less so are the chapters on the “literary geography” of the Thames from Oxford to the Nore, the English Lakes, with all their associations with Wordsworth and his brother poets, and the Lake of Geneva, which might have been called Voltaire-Land were it not that so many other famous personalities and authors are identified with Geneva and its surroundings that the solitary distinction might seem invidious.”
The book was dedicated to the author’s friend of early days, Mr. George Halkett (then Editor of The Pall Mall Gazette) with the reminder that
“More years ago now than either of us cares to recall, we were both, in the same dismal autumn for us, sent wandering from our native lands in Scotland to the end of the earth. I remember that each commiserated the other because of that doctor’s doom in which we both, being young and foolish, believed. Since then we have sailed many seas and traversed many lands, and I, at least, have the wayfaring fever too strong upon me ever to be cured now.”