W. E. H.

P. S.—I am glad you quoted “The King of Babylon.” It’s my own favourite of all. I call it “a romance without adjectives” and the phrase (which represents an ideal) says everything. I wish I could do more of the same reach and tune.

At Wescam we enjoyed once more the pleasant ways of friendship that had grown about us, and especially our Sunday informal evening gatherings to which came all those with whom we were in sympathy. Among the most frequent were Mrs. Mona Caird, the eager champion of women long before the movement passed into the militant hands of the suffragettes; Walter Pater, during his Oxford vacation; Dr. and Mrs. Garnett; John M. Robertson, who was living the “simple life” of a socialist in rooms close by; Richard Whiteing, then leader-writing for The Daily News, and author of the beautiful idyll The Island. Mathilde Blind—poetess novelist, who in youth had sat an eager disciple at the feet of Mazzini, came frequently, Ernest Rhys was writing poems and editing The Camelot Classics from the heights of Hampstead, and his wife, then Miss Grace Little, lived in the neighbourhood with her sisters, the eldest of whom, Lizzie Little, was a writer of charming verse. W. B. Yeats came in the intervals of wandering over Ireland in search of Folk tales; John Davidson had recently come to London, and was bitter over the hard struggle he was enduring; William Watson was a rare visitor. Another frequent visitor was Arthur Tomson the landscape painter, who came to us with an introduction from Mr. Andrew Lang. A warm friendship grew up between Arthur and ourselves, which was deepened by his second marriage with Miss Agnes Hastings, a girl-friend of ours, and lasted till his death in 1905. Mr. and Mrs. John M. Swan came occasionally, Mr. and Mrs. William Strang, we saw frequently, and Theodore Roussell was an ever welcome guest. Sir George Douglas came now and again from Kelso; Charles Mavor, editor of The Art Review, ran down occasionally from Glasgow. Other frequenters of our Sunday evenings were Richard Le Gallienne, whose Book bills of Narcissus was then recently published; Miss Alice Corkran, Mr. and Mrs. Todhunter, Mr. and Mrs. Gilbert Coleridge, Mr. and Mrs. Frank Rinder, Mr. and Mrs. Joseph Pennell. The Russian Nihilist Stepniak and his wife were a great interest to us. I remember on one occasion they told us that Stepniak intended to make a secret visit to Russia—as he had done before—that he was starting the next morning, and though every care would be taken in matter of disguise, the risks were so great that he and his wife always said farewell to one another as though they never would meet again.

Mrs. Caird’s town house was close to us; and she, keenly interested—as my husband and I also were—in the subject of the legal position of women, had that spring written two articles on the Marriage question which were accepted by and published in The Westminster Review in July. Twelve years ago the possibilities of a general discussion on such subjects were very different to what exist now. The sensibilities of both men and women—especially of those who had no adequate knowledge of the legal inequalities of the Marriage laws nor of the abuses which were and are in some cases still the direct outcome of them—were disturbed and shocked by the plain statements put forward, by the passionate plea for justice, for freedom from tyrannous legal oppression, exercised consciously and unconsciously. Mrs. Caird’s articles met with acute hostility of a kind difficult to understand now, and much misunderstanding and unmerited abuse was meted out to her. Nevertheless these brave articles, published in book form under the title of The Morality of Marriage, and the novels written by the same pen, have been potent in altering the attitude of the public mind in its approach to and examination of such questions, in making private discussion possible.

In the autumn of 1888 the monograph on Heine was published in the Great Writers Series (Walter Scott); and the author always regarded it as the best piece of work of the kind he ever did. It seemed fitting that the writer of a life of Shelley should write one of Heine, for there is a kinship between the two poets. To their biographer Heine was the strangest and most fascinating of all the poets not only of one country and one century, but of all time and of all nations; he saw in the wayward brilliant poet “one of those flowers which bloom more rarely than the aloe—human flowers which unfold their petals but once, it may be, in the whole slow growth of humanity.... At his best Heine is a creature of controlled impulse; at his worst he is a creature of impulse uncontrolled. Through extremes he gained the golden mean of art: here is his apologia.”

The book is an endeavour to handle the subject in an impartial spirit, to tell the story vividly, to give a definite impression of the strange personality, and in the concluding pages to summarise Heine’s genius. But, “do what we will we cannot affiliate, we cannot classify Heine. When we would apprehend it his genius is as volatile as his wit.... Of one thing only can we be sure: that he is of our time, of our century. He is so absolutely and essentially modern that he is often antique....

“As for his song-motive, I should say it was primarily his Lebenslust, his delight in life: that love so intensely human that it almost necessarily involved the ignoring of the divine. Rainbow-hued as is his genius, he himself was a creature of earth. It was enough to live.... He would cling to life, even though it were by a rotten beam, he declared once in his extremity. And the poet of life he unquestionably is. There is a pulse in everything he writes: his is no galvanised existence. No parlour passions lead him into the quicksands of oblivion....”

The author was gratified by appreciative letters from Dr. Richard Garnett and Mr. George Meredith:

3 St. Edmund’s Terrace,

Nov 11, 1888.