Sir Noel Paton had given his younger countryman an introduction also to his old friend Mrs. Craik (author of John Halifax) who, it happened, was P. B. Marston’s godmother. She had a house in Kent, at Shortlands, and to it she on several occasions invited the two young poets. During one of these days, in the late summer, they went for a drive through the green lanes, when suddenly there came on a thunderstorm. The carriage was shut up, but there was no way of protecting the occupant of the box seat. So that Philip should come to no harm the younger man took the box seat and got thoroughly wet. On reaching the house he refused many suggestions to have his clothes dried, and went back to town that evening in his damp garments. A violent cold ensued, which he was unable to throw off. He was out of health, ill-nourished, owing to his slender means, and overworked. That summer my mother had taken a cottage in South Wales, on the estuary near Portmadoc, and my cousin came to spend his holidays with us. A weary delicate creature arrived, but he was sure that a bathe or two in the salt water would soon cure him. Alas, instead of that within a few days he was laid low with rheumatic fever, and for four weeks my mother and I nursed him and it was the end of September before he could go back to town. That autumn my mother let her house for six months and decided to winter in Italy with her daughters. Although there was much that was alluring in the prospect I was very greatly worried at leaving London, for my poet was so weak and delicate, and I distrusted his notions of taking care of himself. On the 13th December he wrote to me:
Monday, 13: 12: 80.
“I spent such a pleasant evening on Saturday. I went round to Francillon’s house about 8 o’clock, and spent about an hour there with him and Julian Hawthorne. Then we walked down to Covent Garden, and joined the ‘Oasis’ Club—where we met about 30 or so other literary men and artists, including the D. Christie Murray I so much wished to meet, and whom I like very much. We spent a very pleasant while a decidedly ‘Bohemian’ night, and after we broke up I walked home with Francillon, Julian Hawthorne, and Murray. Hawthorne and myself are to be admitted members at the next meeting.”
He has described his friendship with the blind poet in his Introduction to a Selection of Marston’s poems published in the Canterbury Series:
“I was spending an evening with Rossetti, when I chanced to make some reference to Marston’s poetry. Finding that I did not know the blind poet and that I was anxious to meet him, Rossetti promised to bring us together. I remember that I was fascinated by him at once—his manner, his personality, his conversation. ‘There is a kind of compensation,’ he remarked to me once, ‘in the way that new friendships arise to brighten my life as soon as I am bowled over by some great loss.’”
Just before Christmas, William wrote:
Dear Mr. Rossetti,
... I wished very much to show you two poems I had written in the earlier half of this year, and now send them by the same post. The one entitled “Motherhood” I think the better on the whole. It was written to give expression to the feeling I had so strongly of the beauty and sacredness of Motherhood in itself, and how this is the same, in degree, all through creation: the poem is accordingly in three parts—the first dealing with an example of Motherhood in the brute creation, the second with a savage of the lowest order, and the third with a civilised girl-woman of the highest type.
The other—“The Dead Bridegroom”—is more purely an “art” poem. After reading it, you will doubtless recognise the story, which I believe is true. Swinburne (I understand) told it to one or two, and Meredith embodied it in a short ballad. Philip Marston told me the story one day, and, it having taken a great hold upon me, the accompanying poem was the result. After I had finished and read it to Philip, it took strong hold of his imagination also—and so he also began a poem on the same subject, treating it differently, however, and employing the complete details of the story, instead of, as I have done, stopping short at the lover’s death, and is still unfinished.