The critic in the Daily Chronicle explained that the “book is all an affair of temperament, and the only thing which really matters is that Mr. Sharp has made excellent stuff out of his impressions.... For instance, the first time he saw Robert Louis Stevenson was not as it should have been, in the land of Alan Breck; it was at Waterloo Station. Is the literary geographer abashed by this conjunction of two sympathetic Scots in a dismal London shed? Not a bit of it:
‘He was tall, thin, spare—indeed, he struck me as almost fantastically spare. I remember thinking that the station draught caught him like a torn leaf blowing at the end of a branch.’
“Mind you, at that moment Mr. Sharp did not know who the stranger was, but knew by instinct that the station draught ought to make poetical use of him. More than that, Mr. Sharp saw that Stevenson had the air of a man just picked out of a watery grave. Anybody could see this.
‘That it was not merely an impression of my own was proved by the exclamation of a cabman, who was standing beside me expectant of a “fare” who had gone to look after his luggage: “Looks like a sooercide, don’t he, sir? One o’ them chaps as takes their down-on-their-luck ’eaders into the Thames!”’
“When Stevenson could inflame a cabman with this picturesque fantasy, no wonder he turned Waterloo Station into the home of romance. But this was not all. The ‘sooercide’ had still more magic about him. Stevenson was waiting for a friend to arrive by train, and when the friend appeared, the drowned revenant became another being.
‘The dark locks apparently receded, like weedy tangle in the ebb; the long sallow oval grew rounder and less wan; the sombre melancholy vanished like cloud-scud on a day of wind and sun, and the dark eyes lightened to a violet-blue and were filled with sunshine and laughter.’
“This extraordinary man was carrying a book and dropped it. Then happened something which expanded Waterloo Station into the infinite:
‘I lifted and restored it, noticing as I did that it was the Tragic Comedians, ...
In 1902 W. S. had been greatly gratified by a request from the composer, Mr. McDowell, couched in generous terms of appreciation: