Eugene Lee-Hamilton (Husband of Annie E. Holdsworth)

* Not connected to Dunbar but added as I found this when researching Annie.

The LIVING AGE Volume 257 (1908) Page 590

A MASTER OF THE SONNET: EUGENE LEE-HAMILTON.

Born 1845. Died September 7, 1907.

It was at the Bagni di Lucca In 1877 that I first saw the poet whose friendship I was privileged to possess for more than thirty years.

At that date he seemed to be perma- nently invalided, doomed to a lingering and painful death. Always lying flat on his back, often too suffering to bear the light, or be moved from his room. On his easier days he took the air in a carriage specially arranged to contain his mattress couch. The devoted mother who was always watching over him would occasionally halt to speak to some passing friend. Then, the brim of his broad felt hat being tilted up, one would see the poet's luminous, youthful eyes, and hear a kind word or so from his' patient lips.

Usually, however, in those days the slowly pacing horse was not pulled up, and Mrs. Paget's friendly gesture would show that her son was not to be disturbed.

We were already acquainted with Mrs. Paget, and her young daughter Violet, better known to fame by her pseudonym Vernon Lee; and, In our summer at the Bagni. were specially introduced to their cherished invalid during his daily drives through the valley.

After that, the carriage would some- times stop, and the recumbent figure would give us a friendly glance, and say a few words in his singularly clear and pleasant voice, often asking some pregnant question respecting the state of public affairs.

In this fashion acquaintance ripened fast into friendship, for although he could only talk for a few moments at a time, and was frequently too ill to leave his room, we had constant news of him from his mother, and became very intimate with his sister, who was then busy with her wonderful first book - Italy in the XVIIIth Century - which, in 1908, has leapt to new life in an enlarged and well-illustrated edition.

Mrs. Paget was fitted to be the mother of exceptionally gifted children. She was a small, slender, delicate woman whose gentleness and apparent timidity were merely the outer sheath of a singularly energetic and thoughtful nature. She had a highly cultivated mind and much literary taste, being a perfect mistress of English style and diction. In sober earn- est it may be said that she spoke "like a book" - a very well-written book; and undoubtedly her' children derived from her their unusual wealth of words and gift of expression.

In spite of her own feeble health she had followed a rigid system for the development of their minds in early youth on certain fixed lines. She had taken them to different countries in or- der to provide them with all the experiences she thought necessary for their training, while shutting them off from everything that was alien to the prescribed course of instruction. Thus, if missing some of the ordinary pleas- ures of childhood, they enjoyed intellectual advantages of a most unusual kind. As the result of this strictly private education, Lee-Hamilton went up to Oxford so soundly equipped that he won a scholarship during his first term. But in after years he would declare that it was a mistake to enter college without having gone to a public school, since his ignorance of school-boy life had kept him rather out of touch with his Oxford contemporaries.

But. in any case, we may feel sore that his poetic temperament exceptional attainments and fiery ambitions would have sufficed to keep him apart from the common run of undergraduates.

Besides reading hard and to the best effect, he joined in ail outdoor games and sports with an eagerness that is explained by their novel charm for one who had been held apart from boyish pleasures. Once at Oxford he certainly burnt his candle at both ends. In work as in play his energy seemed inexhaustible; yet while apparently in perfect health he occasionally showed signs of overstrained nerves.

In 1869 he left Oxford, immediately passed into the Foreign Office, aud six months later was appointed attache to the British Legation in Paris.

Owing to his early experiences of French life, and complete mastery of the French language, he was eminently fitted for this post. But when the Franco-German War broke out he was terribly overworked, and during its course had many exciting experiences both in Paris and Tours.

Some of the pieces in his first volume of poems (Poems and Transcripts. Blackwood & Sons. 1878) embody his impressions of the Siege, and reveal the lofty humanity that was the groundwork of his nature. If his technique and power of expression were still imperfect at that date, there was no flaw in the poet's soul; and. besides showing the fruits of unusually wide reading, he displayed exceptional force of imagination.

What leisure indeed could he have for the niceties of versification during the strain and stress of that dreadful time in the beleaguered capital, with philanthropic work added to official duties? or during the wild excesses of which Paris became the scene?

Nor did the restoration of peace grant him breathing space, for as one of the secretaries sent to Geneva to attend the Alabama Convention, the illness of his colleague doubled his labors. Immediately afterwards, when completely worn out, he was transferred to our Legation at Lisbon, and at first his delight at the change of air and scene seemed to act as a restorative to his failing health. Then, suddenly, he collapsed altogether; losing the use of his legs, and suffering agonies of pain.

Doctors came and went to little effect, and by most of them his malady was soon pronounced to be a most perilous case of cerebro-spiual disease.

By the following year (1874) all hope of recovery seemed gone; and thus, at the age of twenty-nine, this promising young diplomatist and budding poet had to renounce all his ambitions and try to resigu himself to a lingering death. But even in this desperate plight, and racked with paiu, his strength of character was displayed.

There was no escape for him, said the Faculty. Very well, then why submit to useless torment?

Accordingly, refusing all medlcai treatment he would only accept his dear mother's care and assistance. So by slow stages she brought him to her own home in Italy, henceforth his adopted country.

Despite his prolonged sufferings his brain power and energy of will were Intact. He employed every brief respite from pain in solving mathematical problems, revising early poems - a line or so at a time - or dictating a scrap of some new sonnet. And instead of lamenting over the ruin of his prospects he eagerly superintended the studies of his beioved and most precocious half-sister, Violet.

It was now, in the quiet of his Italian sick-room, while accepting his fate? with dignity, and patiently awaiting the final release, that he began to compose his sonnets and to make his masterly translations from Leopardi and Goethe. It was just line by line, very often word by word, that he produced some of his finest sonnets during the next years of his illness, between 1874 and 1880. And among those sonnets are included the delicate flights of fancy on the "Death of Puck" that breathe the very spirit of the Fairyland of Youth.

Yet about the same time he was composing some of the weirdest bits of tragedy, such as his morbidly powerful poem, "The Raft," and "Sister Mary of the Plague"; also, perhaps, his dashing but equally tragic 'The Hunting of the King." As we all know that monotonous days may breed nights of wildest dreams, we may hold that enforced seclusion led him to seek relief in wild flights of fancy. Probably their charm for him lay in being so entirely opposed to his own disposition and surroundings. They represented brute force and free movement to one nailed to a bed of pain. His poetic gift was not only intact, but likewise developing in various new directions, while his beautiful Sonnets of the Wingless Hours, containing a few pathetic allusions to his bodily ills, prove what advance he had achieved in the machinery of his art.

Also, Vernon Lee could tell us how keenly he rejoiced in her rapid success, and testify to his value as her literary adviser; while all know the effect of her companionship in lightening his sadder moods. Having flred her with some of his own perished ambtions he found his reward in her triumphs. Though sometimes differing from her on certain literary details, every passing discord was speedily resolved into some fresh harmony.

One noteworthy sign of this sufferer's mental force was his constant interest in all great political questions. Once, I remember, at a time when only able to talk to a friend for two or three minutes, he insistently begged to be informed as to the exact position of public affairs in Italy, and the characteristics of all the leading men in Parliament and Senate.

Doubtless this constant activity of the brain helped to nourish his recuperative force, and gradually - at snail's, pace - served to vanquish his complaint.

At any rate the original diagnosis or his case had been far too pessimistic, for at long last, and dating, I think, from the time when the family left their Florence flat, and settled in the pleasant Villa Palmerino among vineyards and olive-groves a few miles away, certain signs of improvement began to appear in his general condition.

But they were such faint signs as to be almost unheeded by the patient himself.

Having long renounced every hope of recovery he could not realize that any change should be for the better. He had tried too many doctors in vain, so refused to consult any more.

But his sister had heard of a foreign specialist who had succeeded in curing cases of the same nature. Accordingly she consulted him on her own responsibility, and, by applying the treatment he prescribed, gradually roused her brother's will to be cured.

Evidently the main disease, and its accompanying nervous prostration were both diminishing.

The first triumph came the day that the sick man discovered he could stand on his feet for two minutes. Then, still more gradually, with many throwbacks, power of movement returned, but it was only in 1894 that the miracle was completed, and Lee-Hamilton restored to the active world of men.

Save for a very slight limp, there was no outer trace of invalidism. He seemed to have regained his lost youth at a bound, for he re-entered society with all the zest of an undergradute.

It was touching to see his enjoyment of the simplest pleasures, and to note his perfect unselfishness, his eagerness. to devote his new-born strength to others' needs.

For instance, when a boy cousin had an accident while staying with him on a Christmas visit, and remained laid up for months, Lee-Hamilton not only nursed him with the tenderest care, but to compensate the boy for the loss of a school term, taught him French, and coached him in military history; while enlisting juvenile friends in Florence to help to amuse him.

Before this one saw him devotedly nursing his beloved mother during the long illness that preceded her death. I remember how earnestly, when all was over, he expressed his thankfulness at having recovered in time to give her some small portion of the infinite care she had lavished upon him during his twenty years of pain.

Our friend's resuscitation had at first one most unexpected consequence. His poetical gift seemed to have deserted him.

His first work Poems and Transcripts had appeared in 1878; God's Saints and Men, 1880; The New Medusa, 1882; Apollo and Marsyas, 1884; Imaginary Sonnets, 1888; The Fountain of Youth, 1801; while his best-known work, Sonnets of the Wingless Hours, composed at various periods during his illness, was collected in book form just before he returned to the world in 1894. Between that year and 1808 his sole output was a translation of Dante's Inferno.

It almost looked as though his imagination could only work freely In complete seclusion. Probably the first breath of the outer world had an intoxicating effect on one so long shut off from it, and whose nature was so responsive to all human sympathies and claims.

He loved to see his friends, was deeply interested in their ideas and deeds, while specially eager for details of the high politics in which, but for his terrible illness, he would have played so distinguished a part. Yet he never spoke repiningly of his broken career, and fixed his hopes on the success of younger aspirants.

Soon after his miraculous recovery he not only revisited old haunts and old friends in different parts of Europe, but went over to America and Canada; feeding his eager mind with a multitude of new impressions, observing men and things with vigorous zest. Then he came back to his true home in Italy, and presently met there his future wife, Annie B. Holdsworth the well-known novelist.

His fortunate marriage with her not only opened a new career for him as the most devoted of husbands, but immediately revived his poetic power. For it was during his woodland honeymoon in Hampshire that he wrote, in collaboration with his gifted wife, the delightful little volume of Forest Notes (1809).

But even in those joyous hours he felt now and again the chill of future trouble. For instance, when he sings in "The Passing Wing":

Oh, would that time were one immense
To-day
That we might sit for ever where birds
sing,
Amid these ripe hot ferns that light
winds sway,
Safe from the morrow, and the Past's
dark thing;
Oh, would that Love could make the
wood-dream stay,
And stop Time's broad, inexorable
wing.

Soon after their marriage the happy pair settled down in their "grey old villa" near the Palmerino where his sister still dwelt, and for a few years all went well with them. They wrote, they traveled, they entertained hosts of friends.

But although the poet's health seemed firmly re-established, it was not proof against sorrow and anxiety. Exactly when the cup of happiness seemed full to the brim, the imminent danger of his wife on the birth of the eagerly desired child who was to crown their bliss, undermined his strength. Nevertheless, he struggled on bravely during his wife's prolonged illness, thinking only of her and the precious bal>e, while never free from anxiety for the one or the other.

When things began to improve I often found him at his desk working at his tragedy Ezelin, with the child's cradle by his chair. The sight of his sleeping babe, the touch of her hand, made him forget all fears and gave wings to his pen. But he never regained his lost strength; and the following year when his idolized child fell a victim to meningitis his health was practically shattered by the blow, though he strove to hide its effects from his wife.

Grief had on him the effect of joy. He began to write again, and born of his sorrow came the incomparable sonnet sequence Mimma Bella; In Memory of a Little Life, which will endure as his most perfect work.

But he soon fell ill and one malady followed another in lamentably quick succession. Surgical treatment in Switzerland cured him of one complaint, but his nerves were irretrievably shaken; and his heart became dangerously weak.

Then in November, 1900, he was prostrated by a stroke of paralysis, accompanied by other even more alarming symptoms. Still one did not lose hope, for there were frequent rallies; he even regained some power of movement, showed all his usual interest In men and things, enjoyed receiv- ing his friends in the shady villa garden. and read much, although unable to hold a pen.

When spring merged into summer it became necessary to take him to some cooler spot within a day's journey from Florence; so the Baths of Lucca were chosen, and a hillside villa at some distance from his old quarters was found for him. At first he rather shrank from revisiting the scene of so many painful memories, but soon, I think, he looked forward to regaining his health there.

I saw my old friend for the last time on the eve of his departure. He seemed very cheerful, and solely troubled by having to sit idle while his wife was so busy with the packing.

He not only bore the journey well, but truly enjoyed it, and at first seemed decidedly better for the change. But, in one respect, he was a difficult patient to manage, for his active brain always craved the stimulus of social intercourse. He could not resign himself to quiet rest in the open air. Instead, he exhausted his energies by taking long drives, paying visits to one or two cherished friends, and receiving all who called upon him.

Before long the final break-down came. Yet during a brief rally just before his death he spent several hours in explaining to a youthful poet - who was regretting his inability to write sonnets - the whole technique of the difficult art of which he himself was so perfect a master.

In fact, his last work was the wreath of sonnets,1 in memory of his lost child, that only appeared in print after he had been laid to rest beside her In Florence.

He died at Villa Pierotti, Bagni di Lucca on the seventh of September, the day fixed for his return to the home he loved so well.

Now the literary world Is ringing with praise of Lee-Hamilton as presentday England's greatest writer of sonnets. His sonnets, in fact, have the sovereign charm of spontaneity. With him thought and emotion fitted naturally into that difficult form of verse. In restudying his complete works one is amazed anew by the wealth of out- of-the-way learning, and unusual range of imagination. Side by side with delicate, playful pieces full of tenderness and charm one finds scenes of rugged and even ghastly force. In certain pages instinct with morbid power one suddenly discovers passages of the truest serenity and kindliness.

His earlier works contain many autobiographical touches, but their unavoidable melancholy is always tempered by heroic resignation. In "The Sufferer" he describes his fight against the unseen foe, disease; and how, when all is lost.

He subsides into patience and sadness.
Bearing his burden in peace, writhing
in spirit no more;
Helpless and guiltless he lives, and the
worthiest parts of his being
Grow and develop with time, bearing a
fruit that is sweet.
Higher he looks for the good which the
world can no longer afford him;
Less of a man than before, nearer the
angels he stands.

If poets be rare, rarer still are human beings of Lee-Hamilton's Beautiful nature. After his long sufferings it would not have been surprising had he reappeared in the world as a moody self-centred egotist. Instead, he came forth full of altruistic, youthful impulses, full of sympathy and kindness in every relation of life.

Unheeding the years he had lost, he was no less generous of time than of trouble; and as ready to be helpful in tiresome little details as in the greater causes he had at heart.

No one who knew him can cease to mourn his loss; for all his life he practised the ideal of conduct of which he wrote in "Wine of Omar Khayyam":

Oh, just because we have no life but
this,
Put it to use; be noble while you can;
Search, help, create; then pass into the
night.

Linda Villari.

Florence, 1908.

1 Vide THE LIVING AGE, December 7, 1807. "" Mimma Bella; In Memory of a Little life."