Page:Dictionary of National Biography, Second Supplement, volume 2.djvu/263

 Anthony Warton is a landscape painter. William Ernest was educated at the Crypt grammar school, Gloucester, of which, in 1861, Thomas Edward Brown [q. v. Suppl. I], the poet, became head master. That he had Brown for a teacher, Henley was accustomed to deem a rare piece of good fortune. His presence, he says, was 'like a call from the world outside, the great, quick, living world. . . . What he did for me, practically, was to suggest such possibilities in life and character as I had never dreamed ' (Works, iv. 207-8). Brown's influence was all the greater in that Henley was partly severed from ' the great, quick, living world,' during the late period of his youth and his early manhood, by a tuberculous disease which from his twelfth year made him a cripple and long threatened his life. His consolation was reading and study, and in 1867 he passed the Oxford local examination as a senior candidate. The progress of the disease soon necessitated the amputation of one foot, and having been told by the doctors that his life could be saved only by the amputation of the other leg he, in 1873, went to Edinburgh to place himself under the care of Prof. Joseph (afterwards Lord) Lister in the infirmary. There he was a patient for twenty months. By Lister's skilful attention the leg was saved, and although his health always remained precarious, he was able, with occasional intervals of severe illness, to apply himself to literary labour until the close of his life. The character of his nights and days in the infirmary is vividly disclosed in the 'Hospital Verses,' a portion of which appeared in the 'Cornhill Magazine ' for July 1876. His mood of mind is depicted in 'Out of the night that covers me.'

Some verses previously sent from the infirmary to the 'Cornhill Magazine' led the editor (Sir) Leslie Stephen, when in Edinburgh in 1875, to visit him on his sick-bed and to introduce him to R. L. Stevenson, who describes him as sitting 'up in his bed with his hair all tangled,' and talking ' as cheerfully as if he had been in a king's palace ' (letter of Stevenson, 13 Feb. 1875). Henley portrayed Stevenson to the life in the hospital sonnet 'Apparition.' Henceforth their relations became intimate. Their temperaments had strong affinities; both were unconventional; both were devoted to the art of literature, and their sympathy, as Stevenson states, was 'nourished by mutual assistance.' 'As I look back in memory,' he wrote in his dedication to Henley of 'Virginibus Puerisque' (1881), 'there is hardly a stage of that distance but I see you present with advice, reproof or praise.' Subsequently their personal relations grew less intimate owing to a private disagreement, and on the appearance of Stevenson's biography by Mr. Graham Balfour in 1901, Henley contributed to the 'Pall Mall Magazine ' (Dec. 1901) a disparaging article called 'R. L. S.' Yet in an essay on Hazlitt (1902, Works, ii. 158) he referred to Stevenson as an artist in letters, 'who lived to conquer the English-speaking world.'

On leaving the infirmary in 1875, Henley remained in Edinburgh for a few months to work on the staff of the 'Encyclopaedia Britannica.' His contributions, mainly in French biography, included Chenier and Chastelard; but he felt hampered by the conditions of the work. Already he had begun to contribute to the London journals, and in 1877-8 he settled in London to become editor of a weekly paper, 'London,' founded by George Glasgow Brown, a friend of Stevenson and himself, in which appeared many of his early poems, several of the essays included in 'Views and Reviews,' and Stevenson's unique 'New Arabian Nights.' On the discontinuance of the paper he did critical work for the 'Athenæum,' the 'St. James's Gazette,' the 'Saturday Review,' and 'Vanity Fair.' From 1882 to 1886 he was editor of the 'Magazine of Art,' where he made known to England the sculptural genius of Rodin, championed the pictorial art of Whistler, and found for Robert Alan Mowbray Stevenson [q. v. Suppl. I] opportunity to begin his work as art critic. In 1889 he returned to Edinburgh to become editor of a weekly paper, the 'Scots Observer,' the headquarters of which were in 1891 removed to London, the title having been changed to the 'National Observer.' Patriotic imperialism, or anti-Gladstonianism, was the dominating note of the paper's politics; but Henley's main purpose was the promotion of what he deemed the higher interests of literature and art. While iconoclasm, sometimes extreme and one-sided, was a conspicuous feature of its criticism, its appreciation of excellence only partially recognised or not recognised at all was as common as its disparagement of what was supposed to have obtained an undeserved repute. Its 'middles' included contributions from several writers who had won fame, and from more who were on the way to win it. Among the many contributors were J. M. Barrie, T. E. Brown,