At the same time the family noted other influences; it was a tradition of theirs that "On the 3rd Sunday of September, 1885, Fr. Richardson of St. Mary's, Ashton-under Lyne, delivered a sermon on 'Our Lady of Sorrows,' which, Francis hearing, was the subject of his meditation, and, two years later, of his poem 'The Passion of Mary.' It is thought that he did not make any notes on the sermon in church, but in the drawing-room at home in Stamford Street he made use that same night of pencil and paper."
[10] There is some parallel for this image (Tom-o'-Bedlam's, be it remembered) in Rossetti's—
But the sea stands spread
As one wall with the flat skies,
Where the lean black craft, like flies,
Seem well-nigh stagnated,
Soon to drop off dead.
[11] Here is a minor clue to the region of London best mapped out in his mind. From the Academy, 1900, he tore Mr. Whitten's review of an atlas of London, in which a comment is made on the restrictions of the scale—three inches to the mile; so that "York Street, Covent Garden, is merged in Tavistock Street; and Panton Street, Haymarket, and its short continuation, Spur Street, are marked but not named." When Francis does not dog de Quincey he is at the heel of Coleridge. Each had gone for a soldier; both were accosted with friendship in London. The Strand is remembered as the place where Coleridge was, as a youth, once walking in abstraction with waving arms, to find himself with his hand in a pedestrian's pocket and accused of attempted thieving. "I thought, sir, I was swimming in the Hellespont," he explained, and made a friend only less valuable than Mr. McMaster.
[12] Of the despoiling of the Lady Poverty he writes in an unpublished poem:—
DEGRADED POOR
Lo, at the first, Lord, Satan took from Thee
Wealth, Beauty, Honour, World's Felicity.
Then didst Thou say: "Let be;
For with his leavings and neglects will I
Please Me, which he sets by,—
Of all disvalued, thence which all will leave Me,
And fair to none but Me, will not deceive Me."
My simple Lord! so deeming erringly,
Thou tookest Poverty;
Who, beautified with Thy Kiss, laved in Thy streams,
'Gan then to cast forth gleams,
That all men did admire
Her modest looks, her ragged sweet attire
In which the ribboned shoe could not compete
With her clear simple feet.
But Satan, envying Thee Thy one ewe-lamb,
With Wealth, World's Beauty and Felicity
Was not content, till last unthought-of she
Was his to damn.
Thine ingrate ignorant lamb
He won from Thee; kissed, spurned, and made of her
This thing which qualms the air—
Vile, terrible, old,
Whereat the red blood of the Day runs cold.
[13] F. T.'s review of Booth's In Darkest England.
[14] In Booth's In Darkest England.
[15] Merry England was a magazine he had known in Manchester, and noted especially during his Christmas holiday at home. His uncle, Edward Healy Thompson, was already a contributor, and among others were Cardinal Manning, Lionel Johnson, Hilaire Belloc, May Probyn, St. John Adcock, Sir William Butler, Coulson Kernahan, Alice Corkran, Coventry Patmore, W. H. Hudson, Katharine Tynan, J. G. Snead Cox, Aubrey de Vere, Wilfrid Scawen Blunt, Father R. F. Clark, J. Eastwood Kidson, and Bernard Whelan.