“He took keen pleasure in learning how to distinguish the songs of the different birds, and all spring’s sounds and scents were sources of exquisite pleasure. How well I remember the rapt expression of puzzled delight which animated his face, as one day we crossed some downs to the westward of Folkestone. ‘Oh, what is that?’ he cried eagerly; and to my surprise I found that what had so excited him was the crying of the young lambs as they stumbled or frisked about their mothers. He had so seldom been out of London in early spring that so common an incident as this had all the charm of newness to him.
“A frisky youngster was eagerly enticed alongside, and the blind poet’s almost childlike happiness in playing with the woolly little creature was something delightful to witness. A little later I espied one which had only been a few hours in the world, and speedily placed it in his arms. He would fain have carried it away with him: in his tender solicitude for it he was like a mother over her first-born.
“As we turned to walk homeward we met a boy holding a young starling in his hand. Its feeble strident cries, its funny little beak closing upon his finger under the impression it was a gigantic worm, delighted him almost as much as the lambkin. ‘A day of days!’ was his expressive commentary, as tired and hungry we reached home and sat down to dinner, with the deep boom of the sea clearly audible through the open window.”
From Dover W. S. went to Paris for the first time in his capacity as Art Critic, and thoroughly enjoyed himself as this letter to me shows:
Paris, 10th April, 1884.
What remains of me after to-day’s heat now writes to you. This morning I spent half an hour or so in M. Bourget’s study—and was flattered to find a well-read copy of my Rossetti there. He had a delightful library of books, and, for a Frenchman, quite a respectable number by English writers: amongst other things, I was most interested in seeing a shelf of about 30 volumes with letters or inscriptions inside from the corresponding contemporary critics, philosophists, etc. M. Bourget is fortunate in his friends.
I then went to breakfast with him at a famous Café, frequented chiefly by hommes de lettres. At our table we were soon joined by Hennequin and two others. After breakfast (a most serious matter!) I adjourned with Bourget to his club, La Société Historique, Cercle St. Simon, and while there was introduced to one or two people, and made an honorary member with full privileges. I daresay Bourget’s name is better known to you as a poet, but generally his name is more familiar as the author of “Essais de Psychologie Contemporaine”—an admirable series of studies on the works and genius of Baudelaire, Renan, Gustave Flaubert, Taine, and Stendhal. He very kindly gave me a copy (which I am glad to have from him, though I knew the book already) and in it he wrote
À William Sharp
de son confrère
Paul Bourget.