“The many who have the mental courage to allow that they prefer the objective to the subjective novel may pass some delightful hours in the perusal of Mr. Sharp’s ‘The Sport of Chance.’ It has primâ facie an undeniable advantage to start with, i. e. it is unlike almost anything hitherto written in the shape of a novel in three volumes. Slightly old-fashioned, the author’s manner is simple and earnest, while he shows much skill in unravelling the tangled skein of a complicated plot. He deals also in sensationalism, but this is of a peculiar kind, and it rarely violates the canons of probability. To southerners his highly-coloured pictures of Highland peasant life, with their accompaniments of visions and second sight, may savour of exaggeration, but not so to those whose youth has been past amidst similar surroundings. Many episodes of the shipwrecks of ‘The Fair Hope’ and ‘The Australasian,’ are as effective as the best of those written by authors who make a specialty of ‘Tales of the Sea.’ Hew Armitage’s ‘quest,’ in Australia, is related with graphic force. The descriptions of the natural features of the country, of life in the bush, and at the outlying settlements, are all stamped with the vivid fidelity that is one of the great merits of the book. Charles Lamb, alias Cameron, is a singular conception. Too consistently wicked, perhaps, to escape the reproach of being a melo-dramatic villain, his misdeeds largely contribute to the interest of this exciting novel.”
Nov. 6, 1888.
Dear William,
... Your “Sport of Chance” has helped me to while away the hours and certainly you have crammed sensation enough into your three volumes to furnish forth a round dozen or so. The opening part seemed to me very good, especially the description of the storm off the Cornish coast, and the mystery which gradually overclouds Mona’s life, but her death and the advent of a new set of characters seems to me to cut the story in two, while the sensational incidents are piled on like Ossa on Olympus. What seemed best to me, and also most enjoyable to my taste at least, are the personal reminiscences which I recognised in the voyage out to Australia and the descriptions of its scenery, full of life and freshness. Most of all I liked the weird picture of the phosphorescent sea with its haunting spectral shapes. You have probably seen something of the kind and ought to have turned it into a poem; if there had been a description of some scene like it in your last volume I should doubtless remember it.
With best love to Lillie,
Your sincere friend,
Mathilde Blind.
The opening of the new year 1886—from which we hoped much—was unpropitious. A wet winter and long hours of work told heavily on my husband, whose ill-health was increased by the enforced silence of his “second self” for whose expression leisure was a necessary condition. In a mood of dejection induced by these untoward circumstances he sent the following birthday greeting to his friend Eric S. Robertson:
46 Talgarth Road, W.