Davos Platz, Dec. 22, 1884.
My dear Mr. Sharp,
Allow me first to congratulate you on your marriage, and settlement in London. You will remember that I was privileged at Venice to see a volume of your “Transcripts from Nature,” in relation to which you told me of your engagement. I am therefore interested to hear of the happy event, and wish both you and Mrs. Sharp all the prosperity, which it is possible for mortals to enjoy! When I come to London (which I hope to do next year) I shall not forget your kind invitation.
I must give you most hearty thanks for the enjoyment of a rare delight in your post-card and letter about my Sonnets. I have so high an esteem of your own original work in poetry that to be appreciated by you is no common pleasure. Such words as yours are more than many of the ordinary reviews, even if kindly; and they take the annoyance away, which some unjust and ignorant critiques leave upon a sensitive mind.
If it were not that men like yourself, who have the right and power to judge, speak thus from time to time, I do not think I should care to go on publishing what I take pleasure in producing, but what has hitherto brought me no gains and caused me to receive some kicks. It is indeed very good of you amid your pressing literary occupations and the more delightful interests of your life at present, to find time to tell me what you really value in my work. Thank you for noticing the omission of the comma after islands in Sonnet on p. 38 of Vag: Lit:
It has fallen out accidentally; and if such a remarkable event as a 2nd. edn. occurs, it shall be replaced. So also will I alter what you rightly point out as a blemish in the Sonnet on p. 200—the repetition of deep deep and sleep in the same line. That was questioned by my own ear. I left it thus because I thought it added a sort of oppressive dreaminess to the opening of the Sonnet, striking a keynote. But if it has struck you as wrong, I doubt not that it should be altered; since it will not have achieved the purposed effect. And those effects are after all tricks.
I shall also attend to your suggestions about future work. I have had it in my mind to continue the theme of “Animi Figura,” and to attempt to show how a character which has reached apparent failure in moral and spiritual matters may reconstruct a life’s philosophy and find sufficient sources of energy and health. There is no doubt great difficulty in this motif. But were it possible to succeed in some such adumbration of what the Germans call a Versöhnung, then the purgation of the passions at which a work of art should aim would be effected. Believe me, with renewed thanks, to be very sincerely yours,
John Addington Symonds.
Many were the pleasant literary households that gave a welcome to us, and in particular those of Mr. and Mrs. Craik, of Mr. and Mrs. George Robinson, whose beautiful daughters Mary, the poetess, and Mabel, the novelist, I already knew; of Mr. and Mrs. Francillon, of Mrs. Augusta Webster, and of Dr. and Mrs. Garnett. In these and other houses we met many common friends and interesting people of note; most frequently, among others, Mr. Walter Pater, Mr. Robert Browning, Dr. Westland Marston, Mr. and Mrs. Ford Madox Brown, Mr. and Mrs. William Rossetti, Mr. and Mrs. William Morris, Mr. and Mrs. Holman Hunt, Mr. Andrew Lang, Mr. Austin Dobson, Mr. Frederick Shields, Mr. Theodore Watts, Sir Frederick Leighton, Miss Mathilde Blind, Miss Olive Schreiner, Miss Louise Bevington, Mr. and Mrs. John Todhunter, Mr. and Mrs. Oscar Wilde and Mrs. Lynn Linton.