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Lionel Johnson's Letters to Charles Sayle By Murray Pittock Balliol College, Oxford University Despite his importance as an Eighteen Nineties poet, Lionel Johnson's letters remain unedited while those of contemporaries such as Dowson and Francis Thompson have been available for almost twenty years. The only collection existing, Russell's Some Winchester Letters, contains only the correspondence of the poet's early years with Russell himself, J. H. Badley, and Charles Sayle. Apart from the fact that this is by its very nature a somewhat truncated record, there are also elements of bowdlerization in the edition. The "Dearest Sayle's," "Dearest Charlie's," and simple "Dearest's" have all been omitted in the causes of anonymity and respectability.1 It is with this unsatisfactory state of published scholarship in mind that I am concerned to present Johnson's later correspondence with Charles Sayle, hopefully as an early step to a full edition. The letters, along with Sayle's Journal, are located in Cambridge University Library, and I am indebted to the library's permission to reprint them here. Charles Sayle was born in 1864, graduated from New College, Oxford, in 1887, and after brief periods at Toynbee Hall and Gray's Inn, went to St. John's, Cambridge, to work in the library. Later he worked in the University Library, remaining in Cambridge till his death in 1924. He was a noted bibliographer, a poetaster, and a non-practising homosexual. Sayle first corresponded with Johnson in 1884. The intense early correspondence gives way here to that of a more relaxed friendship. The later letters seem to show the two growing apart slightly; in the end, Sayle does not even mention Johnson's death in his Journal. This process was not unusual: Johnson became markedly more isolated in his later years, particularly after his expulsion from Fitzroy Street in 1895. The main interest of the correspondence seems to be twofold. We see Johnson's uncertainties about religion taking a more pronounced pro-Catholic turn, and we gain an insight also into a degree of academic and social uncertainty. While still at Oxford, Johnson is very concerned about his academic success or the lack of it; but more than this, he is concerned to praise old friends, meet new ones, and lament the absence of familiar ones. We also witness his absentmindedness and niceties over social engagements. If life should be a ritual, as Johnson seemed to think, it can only be said that it is one frequently interrupted by Johnson's own tendency to forget its constituent parts, as later he was to drink to forget the whole. 263 Pittock: Johnson's Letters to Sayle On Sayle's side, the letters show how often he turned to Johnson for information on poetry or scholarship. As the friendship progresses, it seem that Sayle accepts Johnson's judgment and information, though the poet was three years his junior; Johnson acts like an arbiter of taste. This side of the relationship is most clear from the letter on Fisher and More (no. 18). The letters themselves are reproduced as Johnson wrote them, as far as transcripts by means of a new-fangled laser printer can do justice to the spacing of his scrawl. Many of the words prove difficult reading even with a magnifying glass, as the Rev. Roseliep has noted.2 Square brackets are used to show an illegible word. Doubtful transcriptions are queried. Such errors (few) as Johnson makes are not corrected. Dating has proved a problem, since few of these letters bear any indication of time of composition. I have had to rely on a combination of internal evidence, subject matter, and tone; but I do not think that the postulated chronology will prove far adrift. Many thanks are due to Professor Ian Fletcher, for a most helpful correspondence on the subject of Johnson's letters; to Mr. A.E.B. Owen, Keeper of Manuscripts at Cambridge University Library; and to Mr. Richard Gaskin of St. Edmund Hall, Oxford, who stood in as a Greek lexicon at short notice. Notes to Introduction__________________________________________________ 1. Some Winchester Letters of Lionel Johnson, Earl Russell, ed. (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1919): 61, 206; cf. MSS...

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