[i]

ill001

[ii]

WILLIAM SHARP

(FIONA MACLEOD)

A MEMOIR

COMPILED BY HIS WIFE

ELIZABETH A. SHARP

NEW YORK

DUFFIELD & COMPANY

1910

[iii]

Copyright, 1910, by
DUFFIELD & COMPANY

THE TROW PRESS · NEW YORK

[iv]

WILLIAM SHARP

A MEMOIR

PREFACE

When the secret of the identity of Fiona Macleod—so loyally guarded by a number of friends for twelve years—was finally made known, much speculation arose as to the nature of the dual element that had found expression in the collective work of William Sharp. Many suggestions, wide of the mark, were advanced; among others, that the writer had assumed the pseudonym as a joke, and having assumed it found himself constrained to continue its use. A few of the critics understood. Prof. Patrick Geddes realised that the discussion was productive of further misunderstanding, and wrote to me: “Should you not explain that F. M. was not simply W. S., but that W. S. in his deepest moods became F. M., a sort of dual personality in short, not a mere nom-de-guerre?” It was not expedient for me at that moment to do so. I preferred to wait till I could prepare as adequate an explanation as possible. My chief aim, therefore, in writing about my husband and in giving a sketch of his life, has been to indicate, to the best of my ability, the growth and development in his work of the dual literary expression of himself.

The most carefully compiled record of a life can be but partially true, since much of necessity must be left unsaid. A biographer, moreover, can delineate another human being only to the extent of his understanding of that fellow being. In so far as he lacks, not only knowledge of facts, but also the illumination of intuition and sympathy, to that extent will he fail to present a finished study of his subject. And because no one can wholly know another: because one of necessity interprets another through the colour of his or her mind, I am very conscious of my own limitations in this respect. As, however, I have known William Sharp for more consecutive[vi] years than any other of his intimate friends, I perhaps am able therefore to offer the fullest survey of the unfolding of his life; though I realise that others may have known him better than I on some sides of his nature: in particular as he impressed those who had not discovered, or were not in sympathy with, the “F. M.” phase in him.

The life of William Sharp divides itself naturally into two halves: the first ends with the publication by W. S. of Vistas, and the second begins with Pharais, the first book signed Fiona Macleod. It has been my endeavour to tell his story by means of letters and diaries; of letters written by him, and of others written to him, concerning his work and interests. To quote his own words: “A group of intimate letters, written with no foreseen or suspected secondary intention, will probably give us more insight into the inner nature of a man than any number of hypothetical pros and cons on the part of a biographer, or than reams of autobiography.... I know Keats for instance far better through his letters than by even the ablest and most intimate memoirs that have been written of him: the real man is revealed in them and is brought near to us till we seem to hear his voice and clasp his hand.”

The diaries are fragmentary. They were usually begun at each New Year, but were speedily discontinued; or noted down intermittently, during a sojourn abroad, as a record of work. He was a good correspondent, both as W. S. and F. M. I have thus tried to make the book as autobiographic as possible, by means of these letters and diaries, and I have added only what has seemed to me necessary to make the narrative sequent. Unfortunately, letters have not been available from several valuable sources; and I regret the absence of any written by him to Walter Pater, George Meredith, Theodore Watts-Dunton, Arthur Symons, and to one or two of his most intimate friends.

I take this opportunity of expressing to many friends on both sides of the Atlantic my appreciation of their courtesy in placing letters at my disposal; also for permission[vii] accorded to me by Mr. Robert Ross for the use of letters from Oscar Wilde, and by Mr. Charles Baxter, for letters from Robert Louis Stevenson. Through the kindness of Mrs. Sturgis I have included among the illustrations a portrait of her father George Meredith (dated 1898). I am indebted to Miss Pater for the photograph of her brother Walter Pater; and to Mr. W. M. Rossetti for that of his brother Dante Gabriel Rossetti.

Of the four portraits of William Sharp, herein reproduced, the earliest was taken about the time of the publication of his first volume of poems. The pastel by the Norwegian painter, Charles Ross, was executed in Rome in 1891, two years before Pharais was written; and the etching by our friend, Mr. William Strang A.R.A., who has kindly sanctioned my use of it, dates to 1896, in which year were published The Washer of the Ford, Green Fire, and From the Hills of Dream. The final portrait of my husband was taken in Sicily in 1903 by the Hon. Alexander Nelson Hood (Duke of Bronte), who also has permitted me to reproduce his photograph of Il Castello di Maniace, Bronte—on the inland shoulder of Etna—close to which, on a sloping hillside, in the little woodland burial ground, and within sound of rushing waters, stands the Iona cross erected to the memory of William Sharp and “Fiona Macleod[viii].”

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

PART I

WILLIAM SHARP

[2]

“Praised be the fathomless universe,
For life and joy ... and for love, sweet love.”

W. Whitman.

“But one to whom life appeals by myriad avenues, all alluring and full of wonder and mystery, cannot always abide where the heart most longs to be. It is well to remember that there are Shadowy Waters, even in the cities, and that the Fount of Youth is discoverable in the dreariest towns as well as in Hy Brasil: a truth apt to be forgotten by those of us who dwell with ever-wondering delight in that land of lost romance which had its own day, as this epoch of a still stranger, if less obvious, romance has its passing hour.”

F. M.

[3]

CHAPTER I

CHILDHOOD

“Childhood, when the child is as a flower of wilding growth, and when it is at one with nature, fellow with the winds and birds.”

W. S.

“That man is fortunate who has half his desires gratified, who lives to see half his desires accomplished,” says Schopenhauer, and taking the axiom to be true I am not going back on it, for certainly more than half of the desires of my boyhood and youth have been fulfilled. I come of a West of Scotland stock which—perhaps in part because of its Scandinavian admixture—has always had in it ‘the wandering blood’: and from my early days, when at the mature age of three I escaped one night from the nursery and was found in the garden at midnight, a huddled little white heap at the foot of a great poplar that was at once my ceaseless delight and wonder and a fascination that was almost terror, a desire of roaming possessed me.”

That William Sharp should be one of the fortunates who, toward the end of life, could say he had fulfilled more than half of his early desires, was due mainly to a ceaseless curiosity and love of adventure, to a happy fearlessness of disposition that prompted him when starting on any quest to seize the propitious moment, and if necessary to burn his boats behind him. He believed himself to have been born under a lucky star. Notwithstanding the great hardships and difficulties that sometimes barred his way, his vivid imagination, aided by a strong will and untiring perseverance, opened to him many doors of the wonderland of life that lured him in his dreams. The adventurous and the romantic were to him as beacons; and though their lights were at times overshadowed by the tragedy of human life, his[4] natural buoyancy of disposition, his power of whole-hearted enjoyment in things large and small, his ready intuitive sympathy, preserved in him a spirit of fine optimism to the end.

The conditions of his early boyhood were favourable to the development of his natural inclination.

He was born on the 12th of September, 1855, at 4 Garthland Place, Paisley, on a day when the bells were ringing for the fall of Sebastopol. He was the eldest of a family of three sons and five daughters. His father, David Galbreath Sharp, a partner in an old-established mercantile house, was the youngest son of William Sharp, whose family originally came from near Dunblane. His mother was a Miss Katherine Brooks, the eldest daughter of William Brooks, Swedish Vice-Consul at Glasgow, and of Swedish descent, whose wife was a Miss Agnes Henderson, related to the Stewarts of Shambellie and the Murrays of Philiphaugh.

Mr. David Sharp was a genial, observant man, humourous, and a finished mimic. Though much of his life was of necessity spent in a city, he had a keen love of the country, and especially of the West Highlands. Every summer he took a house for three or four months on the shores of the Clyde, or on one of the beautiful sea lochs, or on the island of Arran, now so exploited, but then relatively secluded. Very early he initiated his son in the arts of swimming, rowing, and line fishing; sailed with him along the beautiful shores of the Western Highlands and the Inner Hebrides.

Mrs. David Sharp had been brought up by her father to read seriously, and to take an interest in his favourite study of Geology. It was she who watched over her son’s work at college, and made facilities for him to follow his special pursuits at home. But the boy was never urged to distinguish himself at college. He was considered too delicate to be subjected to severe mental pressure; and he met with no encouragement from either parent in his wish to throw himself into the study of science or literature as a profession, for such a[5] course seemed to them to offer no prospects for his future. It was from Mrs. Sharp that her son inherited his Scandinavian physique and high colouring; for in appearance he resembled his fair-complexioned, tall maternal grandfather. The blend of nationalities in him, slight though the Swedish strain was, produced a double strain. He was, in the words of a friend, a Viking in build, a Scandinavian in cast of mind, a Celt in heart and spirit.

As a little child he was very delicate.

The long months each year by mountain and sea, and the devotion of his Highland nurse Barbara, and his delight in open-air life, were the most potent factors in the inward growth of his mind and spirit. From his earliest days he was a passionate lover of nature, a tireless observer of her moods and changes, for he had always felt himself to be “at one with nature, fellow with the winds and birds.” And Barbara, the Highland woman, it was she who told him stories of Faerie, crooned to him old Gaelic songs, and made his childish mind familiar with the heroes of the old Celtic Sagas, with the daring exploits of the Viking rovers and Highland chieftains. It was she who sowed the seeds in his mind of much that he afterward retold under the pseudonym of Fiona Macleod.

There are two stories of his childhood I have heard him tell, which seem to me to show that from earliest years the distinctive characteristics of his markedly dual nature existed and swayed him. From babyhood his mind had been filled with stories of old heroic times, and in his play he delighted in being the adventurous warrior or marauding Viking. In the gray, inclement days of winter when he was shut up in his nursery away from the green life in the garden and the busy wee birds in the trees, he was thrown on the resources of his imagination to fill the long hours. One snowy day, when he was five years old, and he was tired of playing with his baby sisters, who could not sufficiently rise to the occasion and play the distressed damsels to his deeds of knightly chivalry, he determined to sally forth in search of adventure.[6] He buckled his sword above his kilt—it was afternoon and the light was waning—stole downstairs and out of the house, hatless, with flying curls, and marched down the street to lay siege to the nearest castle. A short distance away stood the house of a friend of his father, and upon that the besieger turned his attack. It loomed in his mind as the castle of his desire. He strode resolutely up to the door, with great difficulty, on tiptoe, reached the handle of the bell, pulled a long peal, and then demanded of the maid that she and all within should surrender to him and deliver up the keys of the castle. The maid fell in with his humour, was properly frightened, and begged to be allowed to summon her mistress, who at once promised submission, led the victor into her room, and by a blazing fire gave him the keys in the form of much coveted sweets, held him in her lap till in the warmth he fell asleep, rolled him up in a blanket, and carried him home.

The other story is indicative not of the restless adventure-loving side of him, but of the poet dreamer.

During the child’s sixth year his father had taken a house for the summer months on the shores of Loch Long; the great heather-clad hills, peak behind peak, the deep waters of the winding loch, were a ceaseless delight to the boy. But above all else there lay an undefined attraction in a little wood, a little pine belt nestling on the hillside above the house. It was an enchanted land to him, away from the everyday world, where human beings never came, but where he met his invisible playmates, visible to him. “I went there very often,” he wrote later. “I thought that belt of firs had a personality as individual as that of any human being, a sanctity not to be disturbed by sport or play.” It was a holy place to him. The sense of the Infinite touched him there. He had heard of God in the church, and as described from the pulpit that Being was to him remote and forbidding. But here he seemed conscious of a Presence that was benign, beautiful. He felt there was some great[7] power (he could not define the feeling to himself) behind the beauty he saw; behind the wind he did not see, but heard; behind the wonder of the sunshine and sunset and in the silences he loved, that awoke in him a desire to belong to it. And so, moved to express his desire in some way, he built a little altar of stones, rough stones, put together under a swaying pine, and on it he laid white flowers in offering.

The three influences that taught him most in childhood were the wind, the woods, and the sea. Water throughout his life had an irresistible charm for him—the sea, the mountain-loch, or the rushing headlong waters of the hill-burns. To watch the play of moving waters was an absorbing fascination, and he has told me how one bright night he had crept on to a ledge of wet rocks behind a hill water-fall and had lain there so that he might watch the play of moonlight through the shimmering veil of waters.

“When I was a child,” he wrote later, “I used to throw offerings—small coins, flowers, shells, even a newly caught trout, once a treasured flint arrow-head—into the sea-loch by which we lived. My Hebridean nurse had often told me of Shony, a mysterious sea-god, and I know I spent much time in wasted adoration: a fearful worship, not unmixed with disappointment and some anger. Not once did I see him. I was frightened time after time, but the sudden cry of a heron, or the snort of a pollack chasing the mackerel, or the abrupt uplifting of a seal’s head became over-familiar, and I desired terror, and could not find it by the shore. Inland, after dusk, there was always the mysterious multitude of shadow. There, too, I could hear the wind leaping and growling. But by the shore I never knew any dread, even in the darkest night. The sound and company of the sea washed away all fears.”

But the child was not a dreamer only. He was a high-spirited little chap, who loved swimming and fishing and climbing; and learned at an early age to handle the oar and the tiller, and to understand the ways and[8] moods of a sailing boat; afraid of nothing and ready for any adventure that offered.

My first recollections of him go back to my childhood. We were cousins; my father was his father’s older brother. My mother was the daughter of Robert Farquharson, of Breda and Allargue. In 1863 my Uncle David had a house at Blairmore on the Gare-loch for the summer, and my mother took her children to the neighbouring village of Strone, so that the cousins might become acquainted. My impression of “Willie” is vivid: a merry, mischievous little boy in his eighth year, with bright-brown curly hair, blue-gray eyes, and a laughing face, and dressed in a tweed kilt; eager, active in his endless invention of games and occupations, and a veritable despot over his sisters in their play. He interested his London cousins in showing them how to find crabs and spouting fish, birds’ nests, and brambles; terrified them with tales of snakes in the grass on the hills, and of the ghostly things that flitted about the woods at night. But his chief delight was his punt. A great part of the day he spent on and in the water, shouting with delight as he tossed on the waves in the wake of a steamer, and he occasionally startled us by being apparently capsized into the water, disappearing from sight, and then clambering into the punt dripping and happy. But I remember that with all his love of fun and teasing, he seemed to feel himself different from the other children of his age, and would fly off alone to the hillside or to the woods to his many friends among the birds and the squirrels and the rabbits, with whose ways and habitations he seemed so familiar.

About the dream and vision side of his life he learned early to be silent. He soon realised that his playmates understood nothing of the confused memories of previous lives that haunted him, and from which he drew materials to weave into stories for his school-fellows in the dormitory at nights. To his surprise he found they saw none of the denizens of the other worlds—tree spirits and nature spirits, great and small—so[9] familiar to him, and who he imagined must be as obvious to others as to himself. He could say about them as Lafcadio Hearn said about ghosts and goblins, that he believed in them for the best of possible reasons, because he saw them day and night.

He found, as have other imaginative psychic children, that he had an inner life, a curious power of vision unshared by any one about him; so that what he related was usually discredited. But the psychic side of his nature was too intimately a part of himself to be killed by misunderstanding. He learned early to shut it away—keep it as a thing apart—a mystery of his own, a mystery to himself. This secrecy had two direct results: he needed from time to time to get away alone, from other people, so as again and again to get into touch with “the Green Life,” as he called it, for spiritual refreshment; and it developed in him a love not only of mystery for its own sake, but of mystification also that became a marked characteristic, and eventually was one of the factors which in his literary work led to the adoption of the pseudonym.

Once only, as far as I know, in the short psychic tale called “The Four Winds of the Spirit,” did he, in his writings, make any reference to his invisible playmates. I have often heard him speak of a beautiful, gentle white Lady of the Woods, about whom he once wrote in a letter: “For I, too, have my dream, my memory of one whom as a child I called Star-Eyes, and whom later I called ‘Baumorair-na-mara,’ the Lady of the Sea, and whom at least I knew to be no other than the woman who is in the heart of women. I was not more than seven when one day, by a well, near a sea-loch in Argyll, just as I was stooping to drink, my glancing eyes lit on a tall woman standing among a mist of wild hyacinths under three great sycamores. I stood, looking, as a fawn looks, wide-eyed, unafraid. She did not speak, but she smiled, and because of the love and beauty in her eyes I ran to her. She stooped and lifted blueness out of the flowers, as one might lift foam out of a pool,[10] and I thought she threw it over me. When I was found lying among the hyacinths dazed, and, as was thought, ill, I asked eagerly after the lady in white, and with hair all shiny-gold like buttercups, but when I found I was laughed at, or at last, when I passionately persisted, was told I was sun-dazed and had been dreaming, I said no more—but I did not forget.”

This boy dreamer began his education at home under a governess, and of those early days I know little except that he was tractable, easily taught, and sunny-natured.

He has given an account of his first experiences at school in a paper, “In the Days of my Youth,” which he was asked to contribute to M. A. P.

“The first tragedy in my life was when I was captured for the sacrifice of school. At least to me it seemed no less than a somewhat brutal and certainly tyrannical capture, and my heart sank when, at the age of eight (I did not know how fortunate I was to have escaped the needless bondage of early schooling till I was eight years old), I was dispatched to what was then one of the chief boarding-schools in Scotland, Blair Lodge, in Polmont Woods, between Falkirk and Linlithgow. It was beautifully situated, and though I then thought the woods were forests and the Forth and Clyde canal a mighty stream, I was glad some years ago, on revisiting the spot, to find that my boyish memories were by no means so exaggerated as I feared. I am afraid I was much more of a credit to my shepherd and fisher and gipsy friends than to my parents or schoolmasters.

“On the very day of my arrival a rebellion had broken out, and by natural instinct I was, like the Irishman the moment he arrived in America, ‘agin the Government.’ I remember the rapture with which I evaded a master’s pursuing grip, and was hauled in at a window by exultant rebels. In that temporary haven the same afternoon I insulted a big boy, whose peculiar physiognomy had amazed me to delighted but impolite laughter,[11] and forthwith experienced my first school thrashing. Later in the day I had the satisfaction of coming out victor in an equal combat with the heir of an Indian big-wig, whom, with too ready familiarity, I had addressed as ‘Curry.’ As I was a rather delicate and sensitive child, this was not a bad beginning, and I recollect my exhilaration (despite aching bones and smarting spots) in the thought that ‘school’ promised to be a more lively experience than I had anticipated.

“I ran away three times, and I doubt if I learned more indoors than I did on these occasions and in my many allowed and stolen outings. The first flight for freedom was an ignominious failure. The second occasion two of us were Screaming Eagle and Sitting Bull, and we had a smothered fire o’ nights and ample provender (legally and illegally procured), and we might have become habitual woodlanders had I not ventured to a village and rolled downhill before me a large circular cheese, for which, alas! I now blush to say, I forgot to pay or even to leave my name and address. That cheese was our undoing. The third time was nearly successful, and but for a gale my life, in all probability, would have had an altogether different colour and accent. We reached the port of Grangemouth, and were successful in our plot to hide ourselves as stowaways. We slept that night amid smells, rats, cockroaches, and a mysterious congregation of ballast and cargo, hoping to wake to the sound of waves. Alas! a storm swept the Forth from west to the east. The gale lasted close on three days. On the morning of the third, three pale and wretched starvelings were ignominiously packed back to Blair Lodge, where the admiration of comrades did not make up for punishment fare and a liberal flogging.

“A fourth attempt, however, proved successful, though differently for each of us. One of the three, a rotund, squirrel-eyed boy, named Robinson, was shipped off as an apprentice in an Indiaman. A few years later[12] he went to his dreamed-of South Seas, was killed in a squabble with hostile islanders, and, as was afterward discovered, afforded a feast (I am sure a succulent one) to his captors. The second of the three is now a dean in the Anglican Church. I have never met him, but once at a big gathering I saw the would-be pirate in clerical garb, with a protuberant front, and bald. I think Robinson had the better luck. As for the third of the three, he has certainly had his fill of wandering, if he has never encountered cannibals and if he is neither a dean nor bald.”

When their son was twelve years old, William’s parents left Paisley and took a house in Glasgow (India Street), and he was sent as a day scholar to the Glasgow Academy. In his sixteenth year he was laid low with a severe attack of typhoid fever. It was to that summer during the long months of convalescence in the West that many of his memories of Seumas Macleod belong. Of this old fisherman he wrote: “When I was sixteen I was on a remote island where he lived, and on the morrow of my visit I came at sunrise upon the old man standing looking seaward with his bonnet removed from his long white locks; and upon my speaking to Seumas (when I saw he was not ‘at his prayers’) was answered, in Gaelic of course, ‘Every morning like this I take my hat off to the beauty of the world.’ Although I was sent to the Academy at Glasgow, and afterward to the University, I spent much of each year in boating, sailing, hill-climbing, wandering, owing to the unusual freedom allowed to me during our summer residence in the country and during the other vacations. From fifteen to eighteen I sailed up every loch, fjord, and inlet in the Western Highlands and islands, from Arran and Colonsay to Skye and the Northern Hebrides, from the Rhinns of Galloway to the Ord of Sutherland. Wherever I went I eagerly associated myself with fishermen, sailors, shepherds, gamekeepers, poachers, gipsies, wandering pipers, and other musicians.” In this way he made many friends, especially among the fishermen and shepherds,[13] stayed with them in their houses, and, ‘having the Gaelic,’ talked with them, gained their confidence, and listened to tales told by old men, and old mothers by the fireside during the long twilight evenings, or in the herring-boats at night.

“At eighteen I ‘took to the heather,’ as we say in the north, for a prolonged period....” Up the Gare-loch, close to Ardentinny, there was a point of waste land running into the water, frequently used as camping ground by roving tinkers and gipsies. Many a time he sailed there in his little boat to get in touch with these wandering folk. One summer he found there an encampment of true gipsies, who had come over from mid-Europe, a fine, swarthy, picturesque race. The appeal was irresistible, strengthened by the attraction of a beautiful gipsy girl. He made friends with the tribe, and persuaded the ‘king’ to let him join them; and so he became ‘star-brother’ and ‘sun-brother’ to them, and wandered with them over many hills and straths of the West Highlands. To him, who at all times hated the restrictions and limitations of conventional life, to whom romance was a necessity, this free life ‘on the heather’ was the realisation of many dreams. In those few months he learned diverse things; much wood-lore, bird-lore, how to know the ways of the wind, and to use the stars as compass. I do not know exactly how long he was with the camp; two months, perhaps, or three. For to him they were so full of wonder, so vivid, that in later life, when he spoke of them, he lost all count of time, and on looking back to those days, packed with new and keen experiences so wholly in keeping with his temperament, weeks seemed as months, and he ceased to realise that the experience was compressed into one short summer. He never wove these memories into a sequent romance, though in later time he thought of so doing. For one thing, the present was the absorbing actuality to him, and the future a dream to realise; whether in life or in work the past was past, and he preferred to project himself toward the future and what it might have in store[14] for him. But traces of the influence of those gipsy days are to be seen in Children of To-morrow, in the character of Annaik in Green Fire, and in the greater part of the story of “The Gipsy Christ,” published later in the collection of short stories entitled Madge o’ the Pool. He also had projected a romance to be called The Gipsy Trail, but it was never even begun.

One thing, however, I know for certain, that the truant’s parents were greatly concerned over his disappearance. After considerable trouble the fugitive was recaptured. Not long after he was put into a lawyer’s office, ostensibly to teach him business habits, but also the better to chain him to work, to the accepted conventions of life, and to remove him out of the way of dangerous temptations offered by the freer College life with its long vacations.

“Not long after my return to civilisation, at my parent’s urgent request, I not only resumed my classes at the University, but entered a lawyer’s office in Glasgow (on very easy conditions, hardly suitable for a professional career), so as to learn something of the law. I learned much more, in a less agreeable fashion, when I spent my first years in London and understood the pains and penalties of impecuniosity! The only outside influence which had strongly perturbed my boyhood was the outbreak of the Franco-German War, and I recall the eager excitement with which I followed the daily news, my exultation when the French were defeated, my delight when the Prussians won a great victory. A few years later I would have ‘sided’ differently, but boys naturally regarded the French as hereditary foes.”

In the autumn of 1871 he had been enrolled as student at the Glasgow University, and he attended the sessions of 1871-72 and 1872-73 during the Lord Rectorship of The Right Honourable B. Disraeli. He did not remain long enough at the university to take his degree. Yet he worked well, and was an attentive scholar. Naturally, English Literature was the subject that attracted him[15] specially; in that class he was under Prof. John Nichol, whose valued friendship he retained for many years. At the end of his second session he was one of three students who were found ‘worthy of special commendation.’ The chief benefit to him of his undergraduate days was the access it gave him to the University Library. There new worlds of fascinating study were opened to him; not only the literature and philosophy of other European countries, but also the wonderful literatures and religions of the East. He read omnivorously; night after night he read far into the morning hours literature, philosophy, poetry, mysticism, occultism, magic, mythology, folk-lore. While on the one hand the immediate result was to turn him from the form of Presbyterian faith in which he had been brought up, to put him in conflict with all orthodox religious teachings, it strengthened the natural tendency of his mind toward a belief in the unity of the great truths underlying all religions; and, to his deep satisfaction, gave him a sense of brotherhood with the acknowledged psychics and seers of other lands and other days. At last he found a sympathetic correspondence with his thoughts and experiences, and a clew to their possible meaning and value.

In 1874, with a view to finding out in what direction his son’s capabilities lay, Mr. David Sharp put him into the office of Messrs. Maclure and Hanney, lawyers, in Glasgow, where he remained till his health broke down and he was sent to Australia. It was soon evident that he would never be a shining light in the legal profession: his chief interest still lay in his private studies and his earliest efforts in literature. In order to find time for all he wished to do, which included a keen interest in the theatre and opera whenever the chance offered, he allowed himself during these two years four hours only out of the twenty-four for sleep; a procedure which did not tend to strengthen his already delicate health. At no time in his life did he weigh or consider what amount of physical strength he had at his disposal. His[16] will was strong, his desires were definite; he expected his strength to be adequate to his requirements, and assumed it was so, until, from time to time, a serious breakdown proved to him how seriously he had overdrawn on his reserve.

CHAPTER II

AUSTRALIA

My second meeting with my cousin was in August of 1875, when he spent a week with us at a cottage my mother had taken at Dunoon, then one of the most charming villages on the Clyde.

I remember vividly the impression he made on me when I saw the tall, thin figure pass through our garden gateway at sunset—he had come down by the evening steamer from Glasgow—and stride swiftly up the path. He was six feet one inch in height, very thin, with slightly sloping shoulders. He was good-looking, with a fair complexion and high colouring; gray-blue eyes, brown hair closely cut, a sensitive mouth, and winning smile. He looked delicate, but full of vitality. He spoke very rapidly, and when excited his words seemed to tumble one over the other, so that it was not always easy to understand him.

In September my sister and I visited our Uncle and Aunt at 16 Rosslyn Terrace, Glasgow, and before the close of that month their son and I were secretly plighted to one another. Then began a friendship that lasted unbrokenly for thirty years.

It was then he confided to me that his true ambition lay not in being a scientific man, as it was supposed, but a poet: that his desire was to write about Mother Nature and her inner mysteries, but that as yet he had not sufficient mastery of his art to be able to put his message into adequate form. After much persuasion he read to me several of his early attempts, and promised to send me a copy of whatever he should write.

We were very anxious to meet again before I returned to London, as we should of necessity be separated till the following autumn. A few days later in Edinburgh[18] came the desired opportunity. But how and where to meet? No one must know, lest our secret should be discovered—for we well knew all our relations would be unanimous in disapproval.

Instead of going to the Lawyer’s office one morning my cousin took an early train into Edinburgh—and I left my sister to make the necessary excuses for my absence at luncheon. But where to meet? We knew we should run the risk of encountering relations and acquaintances in the obvious places that suggested themselves. At last a brilliant idea came to my betrothed, and we spent several hours in—the secluded Dean Cemetery, and were not found out! We talked and talked—about his ambitions, his beliefs and visions, our hopeless prospects, the coming lonely months, my studies—and parted in deep dejection.

The immediate outcome of the day was a long poem of no less than fifty-seven verses addressed to me: “In Dean Cemetery”—a pantheistic dream, as its author described it; and in a note to one of the verses he wrote: “I hold to the rest of the poem, for there are spirits everywhere. We are never alone, though we are rarely conscious of other presences.”

The poem is too long and too immature to quote from. It was one of a series, never of course published, that he wrote about this time; all very serious, for his mind was absorbed in psychic and metaphysical speculation.

And the reason why he chose such serious types of poems to dedicate to the girl to whom he was engaged was that she was the first friend he had found who to some extent understood him, understood the inner hidden side of his nature, sympathised with and believed in his visions, dreams, and aims.

Immediately on my return to London he sent me three long poems written in 1873 under the influence of Shelley—then to him the poet of poets. Very faulty in their handling, they are to me significant, inasmuch as they strike the keynote of all his subsequent intimate writings. “To the Pine Belt” begins with these lines:

[19]

To-day amid the pines I went
In a wonderment,
For the ceaseless song
Of lichened branches long
In measures free
Said to me
Strange things of another life
Than woodland strife.

In The Blue Peaks he sings of the Quest of the beckoning dim blue hills, of which he wrote again many years later in The Divine Adventure. And the third, “The River το καλυγ,” is an ecstatic chant to Beauty:

O Spirit fair
Who dwelleth where
The heart of Beauty is enshrined.

Wherewith he invokes “Nature, or Beauty, or God” to help him to realise the poignant dream of beauty, which haunted him in diverse ways throughout his life. When he sent them to me he realised how youthful and faulty was the presentment, and he wrote: “If I had not promised to send these poems I should certainly not do so now. They are very poor every way, and the only interest they may have for you is to show you the former current of my thoughts—I did indeed put Beauty in the place of God, and Nature in that of his Laws. Now that I see more clearly (and that is not saying much), these appear trash. Still there is some good here and there. I am glad I have written them, for they helped me to arrive at clearer convictions. The verse and rhythm are purposely uneven and irregular—it admitted of easier composition to write so.” While at the University he had made an eager study of comparative religions, their ethics and metaphysics, being then in active revolt against the religious teachings in which he had been brought up. This mental conflict, this weighing of metaphysical problems, found expression in the first Book of a projected Epic on Man, to be called Upland, Woodland, Cloudland. “Amid the Uplands” only was finished, and consists of two thousand lines in blank[20] verse; the leading idea is fairly suggested in these lines from the Proem:

“And I have written in the love of God
And in a sense of man’s proud destiny.

And I have striven to point out harmony,
An inner harmony in all things fair,
Flow’rs, tree, and cloudlet, wind, and ocean wave,
Wold, hill, and forest, with the heart of man,
And with the firmament and universe,
And thence with God. All things are part of Him.”

Scattered through the many pages of philosophic exhortation and speculation, of descriptions of nature, of psychical visions, are lines that are suggestive of later development, of later trend of thought, and from them the following are selected:

“There is in everything an undertone ...
Those clear in soul are also clear in sight,
And recognise in a white cascade’s flash,
The roar of mountain torrents, and the wail
Of multitudinous waves on barren sands,
The song of skylark at the flush of dawn,
A mayfield all ablaze with king-cups gold,
The clamour musical of culver wings
Beating the soft air of a dewy dusk,
The crescent moon far voyaging thro’ dark skies,
And Sirius throbbing in the distant south,
A something deeper than mere audible
And visible sensations; for they see
Not only pulsings of the Master’s breath,
The workings of inevitable Law,
But also the influences subordinate
And spirit actors in life’s unseen side.
One glint of nature may unlock a soul.”

“Our Evil is too finite to disturb
The infinite of good.”

“We all are wind-harps casemented on Earth,
And every breath of God that falls may fetch
Some dimmest echo of a faint refrain
From even the worst strung of all of us.”

“Oh, I have lain upon a river’s brink
[21]And drank deep, deep of all the glory near,
Until my soul in unison did beat
With all things round me: I was at the root,
The common root of life from which all flow,
And when thus far could enter unto all;
I look’d upon a rose and seemed to grow
A bud into a bloom, I watched a tree
And was the life that quicken’d the green leaves,
I saw the waters swirling and became
The law of their wild course, and in the clouds
I felt my spirit wand’ring over heaven.
I did identify myself with aught
That rose before me, and communion held.

Death is not only change, or sleep; it is
God’s seal to sanctify the soul’s advance.”

In the beginning of 1875 he made various experiments in rhymed metre, all equally serious in subject and stiff in handling; but in the latter part of the year he wrote several little songs in a lighter vein and happier manner.

The following year brought a fresh change in his circumstances, and placed him face to face with the serious questions of practical means of living. His father had been in bad health for some months, and he himself developed disquieting symptoms of chest trouble. I had been in Italy during the three spring months, and was overjoyed on my return to hear that we and my uncle’s family were to spend August at Dunoon in neighbouring houses. On arriving there we found my uncle in an alarming condition and his son looking extremely delicate. Nevertheless there were many happy days spent there—and rambling over the hills, boating and sailing on the lochs, in talking over our very vague prospects, in reading and discussing his poems. Of these he had several more to show me, chief among them being an idyll “Beatrice,” dedicated to me, and a lyrical drama “Ariadne in Naxos” which excited in me the greatest admiration and pride. Toward the middle of the month my uncle’s condition grew hopeless, and on the 20th he died. His death was a great shock to his son, whose health gave way: consumption was feared (as it proved,[22] causelessly) and in the autumn he was ordered a voyage to Australia.

In September I was taken by my mother to Aberdeenshire, and thus I had no opportunity of seeing William again, and the last thing I heard of him, when he had left Scotland in a sailing ship, was a gloomy prediction made by an old relative to my mother: “Ah, that poor nephew of yours, Willie Sharp, he’ll never live to reach Australia.”

To quote his own words:

“So to Australia I went by sailing ship, relinquishing my idea of becoming a formidable rival to Swinburne (whose Atalanta in Calydon had inspired me to a lyrical drama named Ariadne in Naxos), to Tennyson (whose example I had deigned to accept for an idyll called ‘Beatrice’), and to the author of Festus, whose example was responsible for a meditative epic named ‘Amid the Uplands.’ Alas! ‘subsequent events’ make it unlikely that these masterpieces will ever see the light.

“In Australia I had friends with whom I stayed, and from them I joined an eminent colonist whose tragic end cast a cloud over a notable career as an explorer. With him I saw much of the then wild country in Gippsland, beyond the Buffalo and Bogong Mountains, across the Murray River into the desert region of lower New South Wales.”

So to Australia he sailed, not only in search of health but to look about and see if he would care to settle there, supposing that he should find work that he could do, as it was now imperative he should provide for his future. In The Sport of Chance, and in an article “Through Bush and Fern,” he has given graphic descriptions of the memorable ride which afforded the newcomer a unique opportunity of seeing something of the interior of the colony; and from these the following selections are taken:

“It was the full tide of summer when my friend and I started one morning in continuance of our ride south[23] through the ranges that rise and swell and slope away in mighty hollows, sweeping like immense green waves around the bases of those lofty Australian Alps, of which Mounts Hotham, Kosciusko, and Feathertop are the chief glories. Although early, the heat of the sun was already very powerful; but its effect was more bracing than enervating, owing to the clearness and dryness of the atmosphere.... Across the rugged mountains we rode, by difficult passes over desolate plains, along sweeping watercourses marked by the long funeral procession of lofty blue-gums, and mournful, stringy bark. Day by day we saw the sun rise above the hills. We slept, while our horses stood by panting with heat, under what shade we could get, and arose when the sky had lost its look of molten copper and had taken on once more its intense ultramarine. At night as we rode across the plains we heard the howling of the wild dogs as they scoured afar off, or sent flying in all directions startled kangaroos, which leaped across the moonlit wastes like ghosts of strange creatures in pre-Adamite times.... At last we had come to Albury to join a friend who promised us some swan shooting, and it thus came about that early one morning, about an hour before dawn, we found ourselves crouching under the shelter of some wattles growing close to the Murray lagoons. Not a sound was to be heard save the monotonous swish of the river as it swept slowly onward, except when at rare intervals some restless parrot or cockatoo made a transient disturbance somewhere in the forest. The stillness, the semi-darkness, the sound of the rushing water, our expectancy, all rendered the hour one of mingled solemnity and excited tension; and it was with difficulty that at least one of our small party repressed some sound when within a few feet a venomous-looking snake wriggled away with a faint hiss from a bunch of knotted grass.”

At this juncture, unfortunately the writer was carried away by his interest in snakes ... in rare water birds and “Murray-cod,” and quite forgot to finish his[24] account of the swan shooting. It is obviously unnecessary to explain that shooting, as a sport, had no attraction for him; whereas observing birds and bats, fish, etc., was always a preoccupying interest.

“What a day of intense heat followed that morning! When at last we reached our previous night’s shelter, a shepherd station known as Bidgee Bend, we were nearly exhausted.

“While resting on a rough shake-down and lazily smoking, my eye happened to glance at my saddle, which was lying close at hand, and right in the midst thereof I saw a large scorpion with its tail raised in that way which is known to signify a vicious state of mind. Hearing my exclamation, the stockman looked round, and without a word reached for a long-lashed whip, and with a blow of the shaft put an end to the possibly dangerous intentions of our unwelcome visitor. Of an extremely laconic nature, our shepherd friend never uttered a word he felt to be unnecessary, and when, after having asked him if he saw scorpions frequently hereabouts, and received a monosyllabic reply in the affirmative, I added, ‘Any other kind of vermin?’ he muttered sleepily, with his pipe in his mouth, ‘Bull-dog ants, hairy spiders, centipedes, bugs.’”

On his return to Melbourne the traveller realised that there was no immediate prospect of finding work. He had made inquiries in every available direction, but he did not make any great effort. He realised that life in the New World, under such conditions as would be open to him, would be very distasteful; and greatly as he had enjoyed the few months’ sojourn in Australia, owing chiefly to Mr. Turner’s friendliness, he had little regret when he went on board the Loch Tay for his homeward faring.

The return voyage, too, was eventful. The route lay round Cape Horn, and the ship was driven by contrary winds down into the Antarctic seas, where it encountered bitterly cold weather, and came close to drifting icebergs.

[25]

The Loch Tay reached England in June, and the wanderer came direct to my mother’s house in London and stayed with us there for several weeks. This first visit to London was uneventful, but full of quiet happiness for us both. He had, of course, much to see, and it was a delight to me to be his cicerone. It was, moreover, a much wished-for opportunity to introduce him to my special friends, while my mother made him known to whosoever she thought would be influential in helping her nephew to find some suitable post or occupation.

I had three friends in particular I wanted him to know; two were then in London; but the third, John Elder, was in New Zealand, and did not return till the following year. His sister, however, Miss Adelaide Elder, was in town. She and my sister had been my confidants during the preceding two years in the matter of our engagement, and I was naturally most wishful that she and my cousin should meet. We had known each other from childhood—our parents were old friends—and we had read and studied together, often in a quiet part of Kensington Gardens reading Tennyson, Carlyle, John Stuart Mill, Fichte, etc. The other friend was Miss Alison—afterward Mrs. Mona Caird—the novelist and essay writer. We three were friends with many tastes and interests in common, not the least being all questions relating to women. To my great satisfaction out of the meeting with my cousin there grew deeply attached friendships that lasted throughout his life.

In spite of all our efforts no work was found for the wanderer; he spent the remainder of the year in Scotland and devoted his time to writing. I have about two letters written to me about that time. In one, dated August 21st from Braemar, he says:

“I feel another self within me now more than ever; it is as if I were possessed by a spirit who must speak out.... I am in no hurry to rush into print; I do not wish to write publicly until I can do so properly. It would be a great mistake to embody my message in such[26] a poem as ‘Uplands,’ although a fifty times better poem than that is. People won’t be preached to. Truth can be inculcated far better by inference, by suggestion.... I am glad to see by your note you are in good spirits. I also now look on things in a different light; but, unfortunately, Lill, we poor mortals are more apt to be swayed by moods than by circumstances, and look on things through the mist of these moods.”

In the other letter he wrote:

“I am too worried about various things to settle to any kind of literary work in the meantime. The weather has been wretchedly wet, and the cold is intense. I do trust I shall get away from Scotland before the winter sets in, as I am much less able to stand it than I thought I was. Even with the strong air up here I can’t walk any distance without being much the worse for it.”

One cause of the “worry” was a candid letter of criticism he had received from Robert Buchanan, whose The Book of Orm had been one of his great favourites among books of modern verse. Its fine mysticism appealed to him, and to the author he sent a number of his poems, and asked for a criticism and hoping for a favourable one. But, alas, when it came it was uncompromisingly the reverse; and the older poet strongly advised the young aspirant not to dream of literature as a career. Many years ago, he explained, when he was struggling in London he tried in vain to get certain employment of the kind, but he had never succeeded and had had “to buffet the sharp sea of journalism.” It was a great blow. It produced a deep and prolonged depression, and it required all my powers of persuasion and reiterated belief in his possibilities to enable him to pull himself together and try again.

His hope was unfulfilled and he remained in Scotland throughout the winter, at Moffat, where his mother had taken a house. Despite the cold and the delay, he enjoyed the long rambles over the snow-clad hills and in the fir woods; and wrote a number of poems afterward published in The Human Inheritance; and so vivid were[27] certain effects of sunglow in the winter woods, that he described them in one of his last writings included in Where the Forest Murmurs.

But for the most part his mood was one of depression; under it he wrote the following sonnet:

THE GATE OF DEATH

I wonder if the soul upon that day
When Death’s gate opens to it, will with gaze
Rapt and bewilder’d tremble at the rays

Of God’s great glory—or if wild dismay

Will stun it with blank horror, while away
It watches the unguided world blaze
With speed relentless down the flowing ways

That end in nothing; while far off a gray

Wan shadow trembles ere it fades for aye?
Or if, half blinded still with death’s amaze,

Dimly and faintly it will somewhat see,
Some Shadow become substance and unroll

Until there looms one vast Humanity,
One awful, mighty, and resistless Whole?

In the late Spring of 1878 William Sharp settled in London. An opening had been found for him in the City of Melbourne Bank by Mr. Alexander Elder, the father of our friends, just in time to prevent him from carrying out his decision to go as a volunteer in the Turkish army during its conflict with Russia.

Neither the work nor the prospects offered were inviting, but he was thankful to have a chance of trying his fortunes in London. He bound himself as clerk in the Bank for three years, on a salary of £80, £90, and £100. As owing to the long idleness he had unavoidable debts to pay off, he determined to try what he could do with his pen to add to the slender income. He took a room in 19 Albert Street, Regent’s Park, whence he could walk to the Bank, yet sleep not far away from birds and trees; and he had the good fortune to fall in with a kindly, competent landlady. Now began a long, arduous struggle for the means of livelihood, for health, for a place among the literary writers of his day—a “schooling in the pains and impecuniosities of life[28]” from which he learned so much. He had no influence to help him; and no friends other than those he had met at my mother’s house. Each week-end he came to 72 Inverness Terrace and stayed with us from Saturday till Monday. A serious difficulty now presented itself, one which threatened us both with temporary disaster. As long as my betrothed was in Scotland it was quite possible to preserve the secret of our engagement. Now that he was in London and a constant visitor at our house it was not so simple a matter. Moreover, to me it did not seem honourable toward my mother, and I wished her to know. He, however, was not of my opinion; not only would he lose much—we both believed we could not win my mother to our way of thinking—if he were forbidden to come to the house, but he also delighted in the very fact of the secrecy, of the mystery, and, indeed, mystification, which I did not then realise was a marked characteristic of his nature. For me such secrecy had no charm, but was fraught with difficulties and inconveniences. Many were our discussions, and at last he yielded an unwilling consent.

One Sunday afternoon in the late summer a dejected couple wandered about in Kensington Gardens, under the old trees, trying to forecast what seemed a mournful future. However, our fears were groundless. My mother, though she felt it her duty to point out to us the hopelessness and foolishness of the engagement from a worldly point of view, her strong objection to it on the score of our cousinship, his delicacy and lack of prospects, nevertheless realised the uselessness of opposing her daughter’s decision, accepted the inevitable, and from that moment treated her nephew as her son.

Two months later he wrote to me:

26: 8: 78.

... Thanks for your welcome note which I received a little ago. I, too, like you, was sitting at my open window last night (or rather this morning) with the stars for my companions: and I, too, took comfort from them[29] and felt the peace hidden in their silent depths. I know of nothing that soothes the spirit more than looking on those awful skies at midnight. Some of our aspirations seem to have burnt into life there, and, tangled in some glory of starlight, to shine down upon us with beckoning hands.... I have told you before how that music, a beautiful line of poetry, and other cherished things of art so often bring you into close communion with myself. But there is one thing that does it infallibly and more than anything else: trees on a horizon, whether plain or upland, standing against a cloudless blue sky—more especially when there is a soft blue haze dimly palpitating between. Strange, is it not? I only half indefinitely myself know the cause of it. One cause certainly is the sense of music there is in that aspect—possibly also the fairness of an association so sympathetic with some gracious memory of the past.

P. S.—By-the-bye, have you noticed that my “Nocturne” is in the July number of Good Words?

This poem was of special interest to me because it had been written while I had played to him on the piano one evening. It was in the summer of 1878 also that he just met Mr. John Elder, whom I had known from childhood. John was a graduate of Cambridge, a thinker and man of fine tastes, and his new friend found a great stimulus in the keen mind of the older man. Owing to delicacy he could be but little in England, and till his death in 1883 the two men corresponded regularly with one another. From the letters of the younger man I have selected one or two to illustrate the trend of his mind at that date:

19 Albert St., Regent’s Park,

Oct., 1879.

My dear John,

23d October, 1880.

Lo, in a dream, I saw a vast dim sea
Whose sad waves broke upon a barren shore;
The name of this wan sea was Nevermore,

The land The Past, the shore Futility:

Thereon I spied three mighty Shadows; three
Weary and desolate Shades, of whom each wore
A crown whereon was writ Despair. To me

One spoke, and said, “Lo, I am He
In whom the countless millions of the East

Live, move, and hope. And all is vanity!”—
And I knew Buddha. Then the next: “The least
Am I, but once God’s mightiest Prophet-Priest”—

So spake Mahomet. And then pitifully

The third Shade moaned, “I am of Galilee!”

I also enclose the record of a vision I had lately:

Lo, in that Shadowy place wherein is found
The fruitage of the spirit men call dreams,
I wander’d. Ever underneath pale gleams

Of misty moonlight quivering all around,
And ever by the banks of sedgy streams
Swishing thro’ fallen rushes with slow sound

A spirit walked beside me. From a mound,

Rustling from poplar-leaves from top to base,

Some bird I knew not shrilled a cry of dole,

So bitter, I cried out to God for grace.
Whereat he by me slackened from his pace,

Turning upon me in my cold amaze
And saying, “While the long years onward roll

Thou shalt be haunted by this hateful face—“
And looking up, I looked on my own soul!

[33]

Nov. 20, 1880.

If this note does not reach you by New Year’s Day it will soon after—so let me wish you most heartily and sincerely all good wishes for the coming year. May the White Wings of Happiness and Peace and Health brush from your path all evil things. There is something selfish in the latter wish, for I hope so much to see you before long again. Don’t despise me when I say that in some things I am more a woman than a man—and when my heart is touched strongly I lavish more love upon the one who does so than I have perhaps any right to expect returned; and then I have so few friends that when I do find one I am ever jealous of his or her absence.

P. S.—I wonder if this late Kentish violet will retain its delicious scent till it looks at you in New Zealand. It is probably the last of its race.

Feb., 1881.

I may say in reference to the Religion of Humanity that my sympathy with Comtism is only limited, and that though I think it is and will yet be an instrument of great good, I see nothing in it of essential savingness. It is even in some of its ceremonial and practical details a decided retrogression—at least so it seems to me—and though I do not believe in a revealed God, I think such a belief higher and more precious and morally as salutary as a belief in abstract Humanity. Concrete humanity appeals more to my sympathy when filled with the breath of “God” than in its relation to its abstract Self. When I write again I will endeavour to answer your question as to whether I believe in a God or not. My friend, we are all in the hollow of some mighty moulding Hand. Every fibre in my body quivers at times with absolute faith and belief, yet I do not say that I believe in “God” when asked such a question by those whom I am conscious misinterpret me. You have some lines of mine called “The Redeemer”; they will hint something to you of that belief which buoys my soul up in the ocean of[34] love that surrounds it. It were well for the soul, if annihilation rounds off the circle of life, to sink to final forgetfulness in the sea of precious human love; but it is far better if the soul can be borne along that sea of wonder and glory to distant ever-expanding goals, transcending in love, glory, life all that human imagination ever conceived....

Farewell for the present, dear friend.

W.

CHAPTER III

EARLY DAYS IN LONDON

The most important influence in the early literary career of the young poet was his friendship with Dante Gabriel Rossetti. He gained not only a valued friend, who introduced him to many of the well-known writers of the time, but one who helped him in the development of his art by sound, careful criticism and kindly encouragement. His first acquaintance with the writings of the painter-poet dated from the Autumn of 1879, when on his birthday Miss Adelaide Elder had sent him a volume of poems, an incident destined to have far-reaching results. In 1899 he wrote to her:

Dear Adelaide,

To quote his own words:

“By the autumn of 1880 I was within sight of that long and arduous career called the literary life. An extraordinary good fortune met me at the outset, for, through an introduction from Sir Noel Paton, I came to know, and know intimately, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, whose winsome personality fascinated me as much as his great genius impressed me. Rossetti introduced me to one who became my chief friend—the late Philip Bourke Marston; and through Rossetti also I came to know Mr. Theodore Watts, Mr. Swinburne, and others. By the spring of 1881, I was in the literary world, and in every phase of it, from the most Bohemian to the most isolated.”

On the 1st of September, 1881, William Sharp presented himself at the door of 16 Cheyne Walk. The housekeeper explained that Mr. Rossetti could receive no one. The importunate stranger persisted and stated that it was of the highest importance that he should see Mr. Rossetti and so impressed her that she not only went to report to Mr. Rossetti but came back with orders to admit him. On seeing his eager visitor, the poet-painter naturally asked him what he wanted so urgently, and his visitor answered promptly, “Only to shake hands with you before you die!” “Well,” was the answer, “I am in no immediate danger of dying, but you may shake hands if you wish.”

The introduction from Sir Noel Paton was then tendered; and thus began a friendship that grew to a deep affectionate devotion on the side of the younger man.

Rossetti took him into the studio, and showed him the paintings he had on his easels. The two which specially impressed his visitor were “La Donna della Fenestra[37],” and “Dante’s Dream.” In a letter written to me when I was in Italy, he describes the pictures as beautiful colour harmonies, and continues:

“After I had looked at it for a long time in happy silence, Rossetti sat behind me in the shadow and read me his translation of the poem from the Vita Nuova, which refers to Dante’s Dream. Was it not kind of him to give so much pleasure to one, a complete stranger? I also saw several other paintings of extreme beauty, but which I have no time to mention at present. He told me to come again, and shortly before I left he asked me for my address, and said that he would ask me to come some evening to talk with him, and also to meet one or two. This was altogether unexpected. Fancy having two such men for friends as Sir Noel Paton and Dante Gabriel Rossetti! I went out in a dream. The outside world was altogether idealised. I was in the golden age again. To calm myself, I went and leant over Chelsea Embankment, where there were many people as there was a regatta going on. But, though conscious of external circumstances, I was not in London. The blood of the South burned in my veins, the sky was a semi-tropical one: the river rushing past was not the Thames, but the Tiber; the granite embankment was a marble aqueduct, with vines laden with ripe fruit covering it with a fragrant veil: citrons and pomegranates were all around. Dark passionate eyes of the South met mine; the dreamy sweetness of a strange tongue sang an ineffably delicious song through and through my soul: I sank into the utmost realms of reverie, and drank a precious draught of alien life for only too brief a space. Not De Quincey in the mystic rapture of opium, not Mohammed in his vision of Paradise, drank deeper of the ineffable wine of the Supreme and Unattainable.”

It was several weeks before the much-hoped-for invitation came, and the recipient was feeling so ill that he was hardly in a condition to take full advantage of it, and feared he had made a bad impression on his host. The following morning he wrote:

[38]

19 Albert St., Regent’s Park N.W.,

31: 1: 80.

My dear Sir,

Yours most faithfully,

William Sharp.

On the 23d of February he wrote to Mrs. Caird:

Dear Mona.

Your friend and comrade,

Will.

He submitted several poems to Rossetti who had suggested that if he had a suitable sonnet it might be included in Hall Caine’s Century of Sonnets. Rossetti’s acknowledgment contained an adverse criticism on the Sonnet sent, softened by an invitation to the younger man to go again to see him.

Saturday.

Dear Mr. Rossetti,

Yours ever sincerely,

William Sharp.

Eventually the Sonnets were written that satisfied his critic and were included in Hall Caine’s Anthology.

About this time also he was attempting a poem relating to an imaginary episode in the early life of Christ. To me it seemed a mistake, and I urged him to consult Mr. Rossetti, who replied as follows:

Thursday, Jan., 1880.

My dear Sharp,

I am quite unable to advise you on so abstruse a point. Strange to say, I can conceive no higher Ideal than the Christ we know; and I judge it to be very rash to lower in poetry (to the apprehension of many beautiful minds) that Ideal, by any assumption to decide a point respecting it which it is not possible to decide, whichever way belief or even conviction may tend.

I did not gather fully the relation of the Wandering Jew to your poem. If the very Jew in question, how is he to know of the development of humanity before his time? That he is a symbol of course I understand; but the balance between person and symbol should be clearly determined. I hope you may enjoy yourself in such good company, and am ever,

Sincerely yours,

D. G. Rossetti.

Sir Noel Paton had given his younger countryman an introduction also to his old friend Mrs. Craik (author of John Halifax) who, it happened, was P. B. Marston’s godmother. She had a house in Kent, at Shortlands, and to it she on several occasions invited the two young poets. During one of these days, in the late summer,[42] they went for a drive through the green lanes, when suddenly there came on a thunderstorm. The carriage was shut up, but there was no way of protecting the occupant of the box seat. So that Philip should come to no harm the younger man took the box seat and got thoroughly wet. On reaching the house he refused many suggestions to have his clothes dried, and went back to town that evening in his damp garments. A violent cold ensued, which he was unable to throw off. He was out of health, ill-nourished, owing to his slender means, and overworked. That summer my mother had taken a cottage in South Wales, on the estuary near Portmadoc, and my cousin came to spend his holidays with us. A weary delicate creature arrived, but he was sure that a bathe or two in the salt water would soon cure him. Alas, instead of that within a few days he was laid low with rheumatic fever, and for four weeks my mother and I nursed him and it was the end of September before he could go back to town. That autumn my mother let her house for six months and decided to winter in Italy with her daughters. Although there was much that was alluring in the prospect I was very greatly worried at leaving London, for my poet was so weak and delicate, and I distrusted his notions of taking care of himself. On the 13th December he wrote to me:

Monday, 13: 12: 80.

“I spent such a pleasant evening on Saturday. I went round to Francillon’s house about 8 o’clock, and spent about an hour there with him and Julian Hawthorne. Then we walked down to Covent Garden, and joined the ‘Oasis’ Club—where we met about 30 or so other literary men and artists, including the D. Christie Murray I so much wished to meet, and whom I like very much. We spent a very pleasant while a decidedly ‘Bohemian’ night, and after we broke up I walked home with Francillon, Julian Hawthorne, and Murray. Hawthorne and myself are to be admitted members at the next meeting.”

[43]

He has described his friendship with the blind poet in his Introduction to a Selection of Marston’s poems published in the Canterbury Series:

“I was spending an evening with Rossetti, when I chanced to make some reference to Marston’s poetry. Finding that I did not know the blind poet and that I was anxious to meet him, Rossetti promised to bring us together. I remember that I was fascinated by him at once—his manner, his personality, his conversation. ‘There is a kind of compensation,’ he remarked to me once, ‘in the way that new friendships arise to brighten my life as soon as I am bowled over by some great loss.’”

Just before Christmas, William wrote:

Dear Mr. Rossetti,

His kindly critic answered:

Jan., 1881.

My dear Sharp,

Yours sincerely,

D. G. Rossetti.

A letter from the younger poet, written a few days later, reached me in Rome:

24: 1: 81.

“Well, last Friday was a ‘red-letter’ day to me. I went to Rossetti’s at six, dined about 7.30, and stayed there all night. We had a jolly talk before dinner, and[45] then Shields the painter came in and stayed till about 11 o’clock: after that Rossetti read me all his unpublished poems, some of which are magnificent—talked, etc.—and we did not go to bed till about three in the morning. I did not go to the Bank next day, as I did not feel well: however, I wrote hard at poetry, etc., all day till seven o’clock, managing to keep myself up with tea. I was quite taken aback by the extent of Rossetti’s praise. He said he did not say much in his letter because writing so often looks ‘gushing’ but he considered I was able to take a foremost place among the younger poets of the day—and that many signs in my writings pointed to a first-class poet—that the opening of ‘The Dead Bridegroom’ was worthy of Keats—that ‘Motherhood’ was in every sense of the word a memorable poem—that I must have great productive power, and broad and fine imagination—and many other things which made me very glad and proud.”

“The Dead Bridegroom” was never published, but in a letter to a friend who raised objections to the treatment of the poem “Motherhood”—he wrote in explanation:

To E. A. S.:

“4: 2: 81.

“I have written one of my best poems (in its own way) since writing you last. It was on Tuesday night: I did not get back till about seven o’clock, and began at once to write. Your letter came an hour or so afterward but it had to lie waiting till after midnight, when I finished, having written and polished a complete poem of thirty[47] verses in that short time. It is a ballad. The story itself is a very tragic one. Perhaps the kind of verse would be clear to you if I were to quote a verse as a specimen:

“And I saw thy face wax flush’d, then pale,
And thy lips grow blue like black-ice hail,
With eyes on fire with the soul’s fierce bale,

Son of Allan!

“I may have been pale, and may be red—
But this night shall one lie white and dead.

(O Mother of God! whose eyes

Watch men lie dead ’neath midnight skies.)”

In Italy I was making a careful study of the old masters in painting, and found that my correspondent took but lukewarm interest in my enthusiasm. Until that date he had had little opportunity of studying Painting; and at no time did the cinquecento and earlier painters really attract him. I regretted his indifference, and asked him, banteringly, if his dislike extended equally to the early masters of the pen and to those of the brush.

He replied: “You ask me, if I dislike the Old Masters of Poetry as much as I do those of Painting? and I reply Certainly not, but at the same time the comparison is not fair. Most of the old poets are not only poets of their time but have special beauties at the present day, and can be read with as much or almost as much pleasure now as centuries ago. Their imagination, their scope, their detail is endless. On the other hand the Old Masters of Painting are (to me, of course, and speaking generally) utterly uninteresting in their subjects, in the way they treat them, and in the meaning that is conveyed. If it were not for the richness and beauty of their colour I would never go into another gallery from pleasure, but colour alone could not always satisfy me. But take the ‘Old Masters’ of Poetry! Homer of Greece, Virgil and Dante of Italy, Theocritus of Sicily, and in England Chaucer, Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Webster, Ford, Massinger, Marlowe, Milton!

“The poetry of these men is beautiful in itself apart from the relation they bear to their times. We may not care for Dryden (though I do) or Prior or Cowley, because in the verse of these latter there is nothing to withstand the ages, nothing that rises above their times. In looking at Rubens, or Leonardo da Vinci, or Fra Angelico, we must school ourselves to admiration by saying ‘How wonderful for their time, what a near attempt at a perspective, what a near success in drawing nature—external[50] and human!’ Would you, or any one, care for a painting of Angelico’s if executed in exactly the same style and in equally soft and harmonious colours at the present day? Could you enjoy and enter into it apart from its relation to such-and-such a period of early Christian Art? It may be possible, but I doubt it. On the other hand take up the Old Masters of Poetry and judge them by the present high standard. Take up Homer—who has his width and space? Dante—who has his fiery repressed intensity? Theocritus, who has sung sweeter of meadows and summer suns and flowers? Chaucer—who is as delicious now as in the latter part of the fourteenth century! Shakespeare—who was, is, and ever shall be the supreme crowned lord of verse!—Take up one of the comparatively speaking minor lights of the Elizabethan era. Does Jonson with his ‘Every Man in his Humour,’ or his ‘Alchemist,’ does Webster with his ‘Duchess of Malfi,’ does Ford with his ‘Lover’s Melancholy,’ does Massinger, with his ‘Virgin Martyr,’ do Beaumont and Fletcher with their ‘Maid’s Tragedy,’ does Marlowe with his ‘Life and Death of Dr. Faustus,’ pall upon us? Have we ever to keep before us the fact that they lived so many generations or centuries ago?

“I never tire of that wonderful, tremendous, magnificent epoch in literature—the age of the Elizabethan dramatists.

“Despite the frequent beauty of much that followed I think the genius of Poetry was of an altogether inferior power and order (excepting Milton) until once again it flowered forth anew in Byron, in Coleridge, in Keats, and in Shelley! These two last names, what do they not mean! Since then, after a slight lapse, Poetry has soared to serener heights again, and Goethe, Victor Hugo, Tennyson, and Browning have moulded new generations, and men like Rossetti, Swinburne, Morris, Marston, Longfellow, and others have helped to make still more exquisitely fair the Temple of Human Imagination. Men like Joaquin Miller and Whitman are the[51] south and north winds that soothe or stir the leaves of thought surrounding it.

“We are on the verge of another great dramatic epoch—more subtle and spiritual if not grander in dimensions than that of the sixteenth century. I hope to God I live to see the sunrise which must follow the wayward lights of the present troubled dawn....

“On Monday evening (from eight till two) I go again as usual to Marston’s. I called at his door on my way here this afternoon and left a huge bouquet of wallflowers, with a large yellow heart of daffodils, to cheer him up. He is passionately fond of flowers....”

That winter, despite his continued delicacy, was full of interest to William, who had always a rare capacity for throwing himself into the enjoyment of the moment, whatever it might be, or into the interests of others and dismissing from his mind all personal worries. No matter how depressed he might be, when with friends he could shake himself free from the thraldom of the black clouds and let his natural buoyant spirit have full play. His genial sunny manner, his instinctive belief in and reliance on an equal geniality in others assured him many a welcome.

Among the literary houses open to him were those of Mr. and Mrs. William Rossetti, Miss Christina Rossetti, Mr. and Mrs. William Bell Scott, Mr. and Mrs. Francillon, Mr. Robert Browning, and Mr. Theodore Watts. Mr. and Mrs. George Robinson, whose daughter, Mary, distinguished herself among the poets of her generation, were especially good to him. Among artists whose studios he frequented were Mr. Ford Madox Brown, Mr. William Morris and Mr. Holman Hunt, and Sir Frederick Leighton; and among his intimate friends he counted Mathilde Blind, the poet, Louise Bevington, Mrs. Louise Chandler Moulton, Belford Bax and others.

There was a reverse side to the picture however. His desire and effort not to identify himself—in his original work, with any set of writers, or phase of literary[52] expression, tended to make him of no account in the consideration of some of his fellow writers. His was a slow development, and while he gained greatly in the technical knowledge of his art through the wise and careful advice of Rossetti, the sensitive taste of Philip Marston, the more severe criticism of Theodore Watts, he felt he had a definite thing to say, a definite word of his own to express sooner or later. It was long before this finally shaped its utterance, and in the interval he experimented in many directions, studied various methods—and of course to make a livelihood wrote many “pot-boilers”—always hoping that he would ultimately “find himself.” Unquestionably, with his nature—which vibrated so sensitively to everything that was beautiful in nature and life, and had in it so much of exuberance, of optimism—the severe grind for the bare necessities of life, the equally severe criticism that met his early efforts, proved an invaluable-schooling to him. The immediate result, however, was that his “other self,” the dreaming psychic self, slept for a time, or at any rate was in abeyance. “William Sharp” gradually dominated, and before long he was accepted generally as literary critic and later as art critic also. So complete, apparently, for a time, was this divorce between the two radical strains in him, that only a few of his intimates suspected the existence of the sensitive, delicate, feminine side of him that he buried carefully out of sight, and as far as possible out of touch with the current of his literary life in London where at no time did the “Fiona Macleod” side of his nature gain help or inspiration.

Just as of old, when in Glasgow, he had wandered in the city and beyond it, and made acquaintances with all sorts and conditions of men and women, so, too, did he now wander about London, especially about the neighbourhood of “The Pool” which offered irresistible attractions and experiences to him. These he touched on later in “Madge o’ the Pool” and elsewhere. I remember he told me that rarely a day passed in which he did not[53] try to imagine himself living the life of a woman, to see through her eyes, and feel and view life from her standpoint, and so vividly that “sometimes I forget I am not the woman I am trying to imagine.” The following description of him, at this date, is taken from a letter quoted in Mrs. Janvier’s article on “Fiona Macleod and her Creator” in The North American Review.

“You ask about our acquaintance with Willie Sharp. Yes, we knew him well in the days when we all were gay and young.... He was a very nice-looking amiable young fellow whom every one liked, very earnest with great notions of his own mission as regards Poetry, which he took very seriously. He used to have the saving grace of fun—which kept him sweet and wholesome—otherwise he might have fallen into the morbid set.”

Unfortunately, I have very few letters or notes that illustrate the light gay side of his nature—boyish, whimsical, mischievous, with rapid changes of mood. Others saw more of it at this period than I; for to me he came for sympathy in his work and difficulties; to others he went for gaiety and diversion, and to them he made light of his constant delicacy; so that the more serious side of his life was usually presented to me—and naturally our most unpromising prospects and our long engagement were not matters to inspirit either of us.

At the end of August in that year his connection with the Bank of the City of Melbourne ceased. That his services were scarcely valuable to his employers may be gathered from the manner and reason of his dismissal. He has himself told the story:

“I did not take very kindly to the business, and my employers saw it. One day I was invited to interview the Principal. He put it very diplomatically, said he didn’t think the post suited me (I agreed), and finally he offered me the option of accepting an agency in some out-of-the-way place in Australia, or quitting the London service. ‘Think it over,’ he said, ‘and give us your answer to-morrow.’ I think I might have given him my answer there and then. Next morning the beauty of the[54] early summer made an irresistible appeal to me. I had not heard the cuckoo that season, so I resolved to forget business for the day, seek the country, and hear the cuckoo; and I had a very happy time, free from everybody, care, and worry. Next day I was called in to see the Principal. ‘I should have sent word—busy mail day,’ he said. ‘Was I ill?’ he asked. ‘No,’ I replied, and explained the true cause of my absence. ‘That’s scarcely business,’ he said. ‘We can’t do with one who puts the call of the cuckoo before his work.’ However, his offer still held. What was I to do? I left the bank.”

During the intervening months efforts to find other work resulted through the kindness of Mr. George Lillie Craik in a temporary post held for six months in the Fine Art Society’s Gallery in Bond Street. It was the proposal of the Directors to form a section dealing with old German and English Engravings and Etchings, and that William should be put in charge of it; and that meanwhile, during the six months, he should make a special study of the subject, learn certain business details to make him more efficient. The work and the prospect were a delightful change after the distasteful grind at the Bank, and he threw himself into the necessary studies with keen relish.

In the autumn he spent two months in Scotland, visiting his mother, and other relatives, Mr. W. Bell Scott, and his old friend Sir Noel Paton.

From Lanarkshire he wrote in September to me and to Rossetti.

To E. A. S.:

Lesmahagow, Sept., 1881.

... Yesterday I spent some hours in a delicious ramble over the moors and across a river toward a distant fir wood, where I lay down for a time, beside the whispering waters, seeing nothing but a semicircle of pines, a wall of purple moorland, the brown water gurgling and splashing and slowly moving over the mossy stones,[55] and above a deep cloudless blue sky—and hearing nothing but the hum of a dragonfly, the summery sound of innumerable heather-bees, and the occasional distant bleat of a sheep or sudden call of a grouse. I lay there in a kind of trance of enjoyment—half painful from intensity. I drank in not only the beauty of what I have just described, but also every little and minute thing that crossed my vision—a cluster of fir-needles hanging steel-blue against the deeper colour of the sky, a wood-dove swaying on a pine-bough like a soft gray and purple blossom, a white butterfly clinging to a yellow blossom heavy with honey, a ray of sunlight upon a bunch of mountain-ash berries making their scarlet glow with that almost terrible red which is as the blood of God in the sunsets one sometimes sees, a dragonfly poised like a flame arrested in its course, a little beetle stretching its sharded wings upon a gray stone, a tiny blue morsel of a floweret between two blades of grass looking up with, I am certain, a sense of ecstatic happiness to the similar skies above—all these and much more I drank in with mingled pain and rejoicing. At such times I seem to become a part of nature—the birds seem when they sing to say things in a no longer unfamiliar speech—nor do they seem too shy to approach quite close to me. Even bees and wasps I do not brush away when they light upon my hands or face, and they never sting me, for I think they know that I would not harm them. I feel at these rare and inexpressibly happy times as a flower must feel after morning dew when the sun comes forth in his power, as a pine tree when a rising wind makes its boughs quiver with melodious pain, as a wild wood-bird before it begins to sing, its heart being too full for music.... O why weren’t you there?

10th Sept., 1881.

My dear Rossetti,

BILL OF FARE

A wee drappie Talisher.
——
Callipee Broth.————Hotch Potch.
——
Saumon à la Pottit Heed.——Pomphlet à la Newhaven.
——
Anither Drappie.
——
Mince Collops.————Doo Tairt.
——
Haggis.
——
An Eek.
——
Stuffed Bubbly Jocks an Hawm.
Gigot of Mutton wi’ red curran jeelie.
Sheep’s Heed an’ Trotters.
——
Tatties Biled & Champit.
Bashed Neeps.
Jist a wee Donal’.
——
Glesky Magistrates.————Sma’ peas.
——
Grozet Pies.————Aiple Dumplins.
——
Ice Puddin wi’ cookies.
——
A Guid Dram to keep a’ doon.

When I have a house of my own I shall give such a dinner some day, and the Sassenach hearts present shall admit there is no dinner like a Scotch one and no whiskey like the heavenly Celtic brew.

And now, au revoir,

Ever yours affectionately,

William Sharp.

CHAPTER IV

THE DEATH OF ROSSETTI

The Directors of The Fine Art Society decided finally not to organise the special department of Engravings of which William Sharp hoped to take charge, therefore his engagement fell through and he was thrown on his own resources. The outlook was very serious, for he was still practically unknown to editors and publishers; and during the following two years he had a hard fight with circumstances. No post of any kind turned up for him and he had to depend solely on his pen, and for many months was practically penniless; and many a time the only food he could afford, after a meagre breakfast, was hot chestnuts bought from men in the street.

I do not care to dwell on those days; I could do so little to help, and by common consent we hid the true condition of things from his mother and mine. Nevertheless we firmly believed in his “future”; that with persistence and patience—and endurance—he would “gain a footing”; that circumstances were pushing him into the one career suited to him, even if the method seemed too drastic at times.

ill058

DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI

[59]

He had already succeeded in having a poem accepted occasionally by one or two Magazines and Weeklies. In 1879 Good Words published a poem entitled “Night,” and in 1880 two Sonnets on Schubert’s “Am Meer.” The Examiner printed some Sonnets and a poem of fifteen lines. In 1881 he contributed a long poem on Victor Hugo to Modern Thought, and in February of 1882 his Sonnet “Spring Wind” was accepted by the Athenæum and it was afterward included in Hall Caine’s Century of Sonnets. Early the following year he spent a delightful week-end with Rossetti, at Birchington, whence he wrote to me:

Feb. 13, 1882.

“Just a line to tell you I am supremely content. Beautiful sea views, steep ‘cavey’ cliffs, a delicious luxurious house, and nice company. By a curious mistake I got out at the wrong place on Sunday, and had a long walk with my bag along the cliffs till I arrived rather tired and hot at my destination. I was surprised not to find Hall Caine there, but it appeared he clearly understood I was to get out at a different station altogether. I was also delayed in arriving, as I asked a countryman my direction and he told me to go to the left—but from the shape of the coast I argued that the right must be the proper way—I went to the right in consequence, and nearly succeeded in going over a cliff’s edge, while my theory was decidedly vanquished by facts. However the walk repaid it. Oh, the larks yesterday! It was as warm as June, and Rossetti and Caine and myself went out and lay in the grass (at least I did) basking in the sun, looking down on the gleaming sea, and hearing these heavenly incarnate little joys sending thrills of sweetness, and vague pain through all my being. I seemed all a-quiver with the delight of it all. And the smell of the wrack! and the cries of the sea-birds! and the delicious wash of the incoming tide! Oh, dear me, I shall hate to go back to-morrow. Caine is writing a sonnet in your book, Watts is writing a review for the Athenæum, Rossetti is about to go on with painting his Joan of Arc, and I am writing the last lines of this note to you.”

Little did he dream as he shook hands with his host on the Monday morning that he was bidding a last farewell to his good friend.

Of that visit he wrote later:

“Of my most cherished memories is a night at Birchington-on-Sea, in March, 1882. It had been a lovely day. Rossetti asked me to go out with him for a stroll on the cliff; and though he leaned heavily and dragged his limbs wearily as if in pain, he grew more cheerful as the[60] sunlight warmed him. The sky was a cloudless blue and the singing of at least a score of larks was wonderful to listen to. Everywhere Spring odours prevailed, with an added pungency from the sea-wrack below. Beyond, the sea reached far to horizons of purple shaded azure. At first I thought Rossetti was indifferent: but this mood gave way. He let go my arm and stood staring seaward silently, then, still in a low tired voice, but with a new tone in it he murmured, ‘It is beautiful—the world and life itself. I am glad I have lived.’ Insensibly thereafter the dejection lifted from off his spirit, and for the rest of that day and that evening he was noticeably less despondent.

“The previous evening Christina Rossetti and myself were seated in the semi-twilight in the low-roofed sitting room. She had been reading to him but he had grown weary and somewhat fretful. Not wishing to disturb him, Miss Rossetti made a sign to me to come over to the window and there drew my attention to a quiet hued but very beautiful sunset. While we were enjoying it Rossetti, having overheard an exclamation of almost rapturous delight from Christina, rose from his great armchair before the fire and walked feebly to the window. He stared blankly upon the dove-tones and pale amethyst of the sky. I saw him glance curiously at his sister, and then again long and earnestly. But at last with a voice full of chagrin he turned away pettishly saying he could not see what it was we admired so much. ‘It is all gray and gloom,’ he added; nor would he hear a word to the contrary, so ignorant was he of the havoc wrought upon his optic nerve by the chloral poison which did so much to shorten his life.... ‘Poor Gabriel,’ Miss Rossetti said, ‘I wish he could have at least one hopeful hour again.’ It was with pleasure therefore next day she heard of what he had said upon the cliff, and how he had brightened. The evening that followed was a happy one, for, as already mentioned Rossetti grew so cheerful, relatively, that it seemed as though the shadow of death had lifted. What makes it doubly memorable[61] to me is that when I opened the door for Miss Rossetti when she bade me good-night, she turned, took my hand again, and said in a whisper, ‘I am so glad about Gabriel, and grateful.’”

To E. A. S.:

11: 4: 82.

“...After spending a very pleasant day at Haileybury with Farquharson [E. A. Sharp’s brother] we arrived late in London, and while glancing over an evening paper my eye suddenly caught a paragraph which made my heart almost stop. I could not bring myself to read it for a long time, though I knew it simply rechronicled the heading—“Sudden Death of Mr. Dante Gabriel Rossetti.” He died on Sunday night at Birchington. I cannot tell you what a grief this is to me. He has ever been to me a true friend, affectionate and generous—and to him I owe more perhaps than to any one after yourself. Apart from my deep regret at the loss of one whom I so loved, I have also the natural regret at what the loss of his living friendship means. I feel as if a sudden tower of strength on which I had greatly relied had given way: for not only would Rossetti’s house have been my own as long as and whenever I needed, but it was his influence while alive that I so much looked to. Comparatively little known to the public, his name has always been a power and recommendation in itself amongst men of letters and artists and those who have to do with both professions. When I recall all that Rossetti has been to me—the pleasure he has given me—the encouragement, the fellowship—I feel very bitter at heart to think I shall never see again the kindly gray eyes and the massive head of the great poet and artist. He has gone to his rest. It were selfish to wish otherwise considering all things....

If I take flowers down, part of the wreath shall be from you. He would have liked it himself, for he knew you through me, and he knew I am happier in this than most men perhaps.”

[62]

To E. A. S.:

April 13, 1882.

“ ... I have just returned (between twelve and one at night) tired and worn out with some necessary things in connection with Rossetti, taking me first to Chelsea, then away in the opposite direction to Euston Road. As I go down to Birchington by an early train, besides having much correspondence to get through after breakfast, I can only write a very short letter. I have felt the loss of my dear and great friend more and more. He had weaknesses and frailties within the last six or eight months owing to his illness, but to myself he was ever patient and true and affectionate. A grand heart and soul, a true friend, a great artist, a great poet, I shall not meet with such another. He loved me, I know—and believed and hoped great things of me, and within the last few days I have learned how generously and how urgently he impressed this upon others. God knows I do not grudge him his long-looked-for rest, yet I can hardly imagine London without him. I cannot realise it, and yet I know that I shall never again see the face lighten up when I come near, never again hear the voice whose mysterious fascination was like a spell. What fools are those vain men who talk of death: blinded, and full of the dust of corruption. As God lives, the soul dies not. What though the grave be silent, and the darkness of the Shadow become not peopled—to those eyes that can see there is light, light, light—to those ears that can hear the tumult of the disenfranchised, rejoicing. I am borne down not with the sense of annihilation, but with the vastness of life and the imminence of things spiritual. I know from something beyond and out of myself that we are now but dying to live, that there is no death, which is but as a child’s dream in a weary night.

I am very tired. You will forgive more, my dearest friend.”

[63]

To Mr. W. M. Rossetti:

13 Thorngate Road,

Sutherland Gardens, W.,

15th April, 1883.

Dear Mr. Rossetti,

As your wife kindly expressed a wish that I would send you a copy of the sonnet I left in your brother’s coffin along with the flowers, I now do so. It must be judged not as a literary production, but as last words straight from the heart of one who loved and revered your brother.

Yours very sincerely,

William Sharp.

To Dante Gabriel Rossetti
AVE! MORS NON EST!

True heart, great spirit, who hast sojourn’d here
Till now the darkness rounds thee, and Death’s sea
Hath surged and ebbed and carried suddenly

Thy Soul far hence, as from a stony, drear,

And weary coast the tide the wrack doth shear;
Thou art gone hence, and though our sight may be
Strained with a yearning gaze, the mystery

Is mystic still to us: to thee, how clear!

O loved great friend, at last the balm of sleep
Hath soothed thee into silence: it is well
After life’s long unrest to draw the breath

No more on earth, but in a slumber deep,
Or joyous hence afar, the miracle
Await when dies at last imperious Death.

W. S.

Keenly desirous of offering some tribute to the memory of Rossetti, whose friendship had meant so much to him during the years of struggle in London, William Sharp eagerly accepted a proposal from Messrs. Macmillan that he should write a biographical Record and appreciation of the painter-poet, to be produced within the year. It was begun in June, it was his first lengthy attempt in prose and attempted with little knowledge of the art of writing; but it was written “red hot,” as he used to say, inspired by deep affection and profound admiration for his friend. He spared no pains to make his story as accurate as practicable, and visited the chief owners of[64] the pictures, photographs of which Rossetti had given him. Several of the later paintings he had seen and discussed many times in Rossetti’s studio.

The book divides itself naturally into two parts representing the man in his dual capacity as painter and as poet, and the author selected as frontispiece Rossetti’s most characteristic and symbolic design for his sonnet on the sonnet.

In his Diary of 1890 the author refers to “my first serious effort in prose, my honest and enthusiastic, and indeed serviceable, but badly written ‘Life of Rossetti.’” And he tells that the first two thirds were written at Clynder on the Gareloch (Argyll), “in a little cottage where I stayed with my mother and sisters eight years ago”; and the rest was written in London, and published in December.

“I remember that the book was finished one December day, and so great was the pressure I was under, that, at the end, I wrote practically without a break for thirty-six hours: i. e., I began immediately after an early breakfast, wrote all day except half an hour for dinner, and all evening with less than ten minutes for a slight meal of tea and toast, and right through the night. About 4 or 5 a.m. my fire went out, though I did not feel chilled till my landlady came with my breakfast. By this time I was too excited to be tired, and had moreover to finish the book that day. I was only a few minutes over breakfast, which I snatched during perusal of some notes, and then buckled to again. I wrote all day, eating nothing. When about 7 p.m. I came to ‘finis,’ I threw down the pen from my chilled and cramped fingers: walked or rather staggered into the adjoining bedroom, but was asleep before I could undress beyond removal of my coat and waistcoat. (What hundreds of times I have been saved weariness and bad headaches, how often I have been preserved from collapse of a more serious kind, by my rare faculty of being able to sleep at will at any time, however busy, and for even the briefest intervals—ten minutes or less.)

[65]

“For three weeks before this I had been overworking and I was quite exhausted, partly from want of sufficient nourishment. It was the saving of my brain, therefore, that I slept fourteen hours without a break, and after a few hours of tired and dazed wakefulness again fell into a prolonged slumber, from which I awoke fresh and vigorous in mind and body.”

The most interesting letter which he received during the interval of the writing was one from Robert Browning, in answer to an inquiry concerning a letter written years earlier by Rossetti to Browning, to know if the author of Paracelsus was also the author of Pauline. Rossetti once told William Sharp that it was “on the forenoon of the day when the Burden of Nineveh was begun, conceived rather,” that he read this story (at the British Museum) “of a soul by the soul’s ablest historian.” So delighted was Rossetti with it, and so strong his opinion that Pauline was by Browning, that he wrote to that poet, then in Florence, for confirmation. Mr. Browning, in his reply—which I quote from my husband’s monograph on Browning—gave the following particulars of the incident:

St. Pierre de Chartreuse,

Aug. 22, 1882.

Dear Mr. Sharp,

Rossetti’s Pauline letter concerning which you inquire was addressed to me at Florence, more than thirty years ago: I must have preserved it, but, even were I at home, should be unable to find it without troublesome searching. It was to the effect that the writer, personally and altogether unknown to me, had come upon a poem in the British Museum, which he copied the whole of, from its being not otherwise procurable, that he judged it to be mine, but could not be sure, and wished me to pronounce on the matter—which I did. A year or two after, I had a visit in London from Mr. Allingham and a friend—who proved to be Rossetti: when I heard he was a painter I insisted on calling on him, though he declared he had nothing to show me—which was far enough from[66] the case. Subsequently on another of my returns to London, he painted my portrait: not, I fancy, in oils but water colours—and finished it in Paris shortly after: this must have been in the year when Tennyson published “Maud,” unless I mistake: for I remember Tennyson reading the poem one evening, while Rossetti made a rapid pen-and-ink sketch of him, very good, from an unobserved corner of vantage—which I still possess and duly value. This was before Rossetti’s marriage.

I hope that these particulars may answer your purpose; and beg you to believe me, dear Mr. Sharp,

Yours very truly,

Robert Browning.

The young biographer wrote to every one who he thought might possess drawings or paintings by Rossetti—and among others he applied to Tennyson. The Poet Laureate replied:

Aldworth, Haslemere,

Oct. 12, 1882.

Dear Sir,

I am,

Faithfully yours,

A. Tennyson.

The book met with immediate success; it was recognised that the work was “one of no ordinary difficulty,” that the author “brought fairness and critical acumen to his task,” “truest enthusiasm and perseverance that[67] nothing can daunt; that by reason of his friendship he had unusual insight into the history and work of Rossetti,” and “a critic of Art and a writer of poems he is thus further to be respected in what he has to say.” Only three letters are in my possession of the many he received from friends of his own, or of the dead poet; two are from Walter Pater with whom he had recently become acquainted: and the other from Christina Rossetti:

30 Torrington Square.

Dear Mr. Sharp,

Thank you with warm thanks from my Mother and myself for your precious gift. She has already and with true pleasure perused Chapter I. I have but glanced here and there as yet but with an appetite for the feast to come. I shall be both fortunate and unfortunate if I find occasion for the marginal notes you want—fortunate if even thus I can be of use: but I will rather wish myself a very narrow field for strictures. Allow me to congratulate you on the binding of the well-known monogram and crest—a pretty point which catches and gratifies the eye at a first glance. I figure so amiably in connection with your frontispiece that I may reasonably regret having brought nothing to the transaction (in reality) beyond good will.

Very truly yours,

Christina G. Rossetti.

This letter was received while the book was in preparation:

2 Bradnor Road, Oxford,

Nov. 4, 1882.

My dear Sharp,

(I think we have known each other long enough to drop the “Mr.”) I read your letter with great pleasure, and thank you very much for it. Your friendly interest in my various essays I value highly. I have really worked hard for now many years at these prose essays, and it is a[68] real encouragement to hear such good things said of them by one of the most original of young English poets. It will be a singular pleasure to me to be connected, in a sense, in your book on Rossetti, with one I admired so greatly. I wish the book all the success both the subject and the writer deserve. You encourage me to do what I have sometimes thought of doing, when I have got on a little further with the work I have actually on hand—viz. to complete the various series of which the papers I have printed in the Fortnightly are parts. The list you sent me is complete with the exception of an article on Coleridge in the Westminster of January, 1866, with much of which, both as to matter and manner, I should now be greatly dissatisfied. That article is concerned with S. T. C.’s prose; but, corrected, might be put alongside of the criticism on his verse which I made for Ward’s “English Poets.” I can only say that should you finish the paper you speak of on these essays, your critical approval will be of great service to me with the reading public. I find I have by me a second copy of the paper on Giorgione, revised in print, which I send by this post, and hope you will kindly accept. It was reprinted some time ago when I thought of collecting that and other papers into a volume. I am pleased to hear that you remember with pleasure your flying visit to Oxford; and hope you will come for a longer stay in term time early next year. At the end of this month I hope to leave for seven weeks in Italy, chiefly at Rome, where I have never yet been. We went to Cornwall for our summer holiday, but though that country is certainly very singular and beautiful, I found there not a tithe of the stimulus to one’s imagination which I have sometimes experienced in quite unrenowned places abroad.

I should be delighted with a copy of the Rossetti volume from yourself; but it is a volume I should have in any case purchased, and I hope it may appear in time to be my companion on my contemplated journey.

Very sincerely yours,

Walter H. Pater.

[69]

2 Bradnor Road,

Jan. 15, 1883.

My dear Sharp,

Thank you very sincerely for the copy of your book, with the fine impression of the beautiful frontispiece, which reached me yesterday. One copy of the book I had already obtained through a bookseller in Rome, and read it there with much admiration of its wealth of ideas and expression, and its abundance of interesting information. Thank you also sincerely, for the pleasant things you have said about myself; all the pleasanter for being said in connection with the subject of Rossetti, whose genius and work I esteemed so greatly. I am glad to hear that the book is having the large sale it deserves. Your letter of December 24th, was forwarded to me at Rome, with the kind invitation I should have been delighted to accept had it been possible, and which I hope you will let me profit by some other time. Then, I heard from my sisters, of your search for me in London, and was very sorry to have missed you there. I shall be delighted to see you here; and can give you a bed at Brasenose, where I shall reside this term.

Thank you again for the pleasure your book has given, and will give me, in future reading. Excuse this hurried letter, and

Believe me,

Very sincerely yours,

Walter Pater.

It had been William Sharp’s intention to rewrite his Study on Rossetti; for in later years he was very dissatisfied with the early book, and considered his judgment to have been immature. He had indeed arranged certain publishing preliminaries; and he wrote the dedicatory chapter; but the book itself was untouched save one or two opening sentences. For this project, with many others planned by William Sharp, was laid aside when the more intimate, the more imperative work put forward under the pseudonym of “Fiona Macleod” began[70] to shape itself in his brain. In his dedication to Walter Pater (the only portion of the book that was finished), the author explains his reasons for wishing to write a second Study of the painter-poet. He describes the new material available, and relates that in Rossetti’s lifetime it was planned that a “Life should be written by Philip Bourke Marston and myself, primarily for publication in America. Rossetti took a humorous interest in the scheme, and often alluded to it in notes or conversation as the Bobbies’ book (a whimsical substitute for the Boston firm of Roberts Brothers, whom we intended to honour with our great—unwritten—work): but nothing came of the project.... Rossetti was eager to help Marston; so he said he was charmed with the idea, and promised to give all the aid in his power. A week later he told me that ‘there was no good in it,’ and that ‘it had better drop’: but, instead he suggested that he should write an article upon Marston and his poetry for Harper’s, or Scribner’s, if it were more expedient that such an article should appear in an American periodical, or, if preferred, for some important Quarterly here.

“But you, cognizant as you are of much of this detail, will readily understand and agree with me when I say that no really adequate portrait of Rossetti is likely to be given to us for many years to come. Possibly never: for his was a nature wrought of so many complexities, his a life developed perplexedly by such divers elements, that he will reappear, for those who come after us, not in any one portraiture but as an evocation from many....

“Of all that has been written of Rossetti’s genius and achievement in poetry nothing shows more essential insight, is of more striking and enduring worth, than the essay by yourself, included in your stimulating and always delightful Appreciations. You, more than any one, it seems to me, have understood and expressed the secret of his charm. And though you have not written also of Rossetti the painter, I know of no one who so well and[71] from the first perceived just wherein lies his innate power, his essential significance.

“Years ago, in Oxford, how often we talked these matters over! I have often recalled one evening, in particular, often recollected certain words of yours: and never more keenly than when I have associated them with the early work of Rossetti, in both arts, but preëminently in painting: ‘To my mind Rossetti is the most significant man among us. More torches will be lit from his flame—or torches lit at his flame—than perhaps even enthusiasts like yourself imagine.’

“We are all seeking a lost Eden. This ideal Beauty that we catch glimpses of, now in morning loveliness, now in glooms of tragic terror, haunts us by day and night, in dreams of waking and sleeping—nay, whether or not we will, among the littlenesses and exigencies of our diurnal affairs. It may be that, driven from the Eden of direct experience, we are being more and more forced into taking refuge within the haven guarded by our dreams. To a few only is it given to translate, with rare distinction and excellence, something of this manifold message of Beauty—though all of us would fain be, with your Marius, ‘of the number of those who must be made perfect by the love of visible beauty.’ Among these few, in latter years in this country, no one has wrought more exquisitely for us than Rossetti.

“To him, and to you and all who recreate for us the things we have vaguely known and loved, or surmised only, or previsioned in dreams, we owe what we can never repay save by a rejoicing gratitude. Our own Eden may be irrecoverable, its haunting music never be nearer or clearer than a vanishing echo, yet we have the fortunate warranty of those whose guided feet have led them further into the sunlit wilderness, who have repeated to us, as with hieratic speech, what they have seen and heard.

“‘From time to time,’ wrote Rossetti in one of those early prose passages of his which are so consecrated by the poetic atmosphere—‘from time to time, however, a[72] poet or a painter has caught the music (of that garden), and strayed in through the close stems: the spell is on his hand and his lips like the sleep of the Lotus-eaters, and his record shall be vague and fitful; yet will we be in waiting, and open our eyes and our ears, for the broken song has snatches of an enchanted harmony, and the glimpses are glimpses of Eden.’”

It was during the preparation of this early book that the first volume of William Sharp’s poems was published—too late however to be welcomed by either of the two friends who had taken so keen an interest in its growth: Rossetti, to whom all the poems had been read—and John Elder to whom it was originally dedicated. It is entitled The Human Inheritance; Motherhood; Transcripts from Nature (Elliot Stock), and contains a prefatory poem, and last lines dedicated to myself.

“The Human Inheritance” is a long poem in four cycles—the Inheritance of Childhood, Youth, Manhood and Womanhood, and Old Age, and was an expression of his belief that the human being should fearlessly reach out to every experience that each period might have to offer. Eager, and intensely alive, the poet thirsted till his last breath after whatever might broaden and deepen his knowledge, his understanding, his enjoyment of life.

The second long poem, “The New Hope: a Vision of the Travail of Humanity,” was especially connected with John Elder, the outcome of many talks and letters concerning the purport of the Travail of Humanity—concerning a belief they both held that a great new spiritual awakening is imminent that

... “the one great Word

That spake, shall wonderfully again be heard” ...

To “Motherhood” allusion has been made in one or two letters.

Notwithstanding that some of the critics predicted that the new name was destined to become conspicuous, it was not by these poems, but by the Life of[73] Rossetti that the real impetus was given to his literary fortunes and emphasised the fact of his existence to publishers and the reading public. But to the poet himself—and to me—the publication of the book of poems was a great event. We looked upon it as the beginning of the true work of his life, toward the fulfilment of which we were both prepared to make any sacrifice.

I have a few letters relating to this volume of poems, and append the three which the recipient especially cared to preserve:

2 Bradmore Road,

July 30th.

My dear Sharp,

Since you have been here I have been reading your poems with great enjoyment. The presence of philosophical, as in “The New Hope” and of such original, and at the same time perfectly natural motives as “Motherhood” is certainly a remarkable thing among younger English poets, especially when united with a command of rhythmical and verbal form like yours. The poem “Motherhood” is of course a bold one; but it expresses, as I think, with perfect purity, a thought, which all who can do so are the better for meditating on. The “Transcripts from Nature” seem to me precisely all, and no more than (and just how is the test of excellence in such things) what little pictures in verse ought to be.

Very sincerely yours,

Walter Pater.

Dear Mr. Sharp,

Very sincerely yours,

Edward Dowden.

Sept. 6, 1882.

Dear Mr. Sharp,

... I came abroad and brought your book with me. I have read it again through among the mountains and have found much to admire and more than like in it; so that the hours I passed in reading it are and will be pleasant hours to remember. If I may venture a criticism it is that nature occupies more than three fourths of the Emotion of the Book, and not Humanity, and even the passion and childhood and youth, and later love and age—and all passions are painted in terms of Nature, and through her moods. It pleases me, for I care more for Nature myself when I am not pressed on by human feeling, than I do for Man, but an artist ought to love Man more than Nature, and should write about Him for his own sake. It won’t do to become like the being in the “Palace of Art.” It will not do either to live in a Palace of Nature, alone. But all this is more a suggestion than an objection, and it is partly suggested to me at first by the fact that the poem in the midst of The Human Inheritance, Cycle III, is the nearest to the human heart[75] and yet the least well written of all the cycles—at least so it seems to me. I like exceedingly “The Tides of Venice.” It seems to me to come nearer the kind of poem in which the Poet’s Shuttle weaves into one web Nature and Humanity and the close is very solemn and noble.

You asked me to do a critic’s part. It is a part I hate, and I am not a critic. But I say what I say for the sake of men and women whom you may help through the giving of high pleasure even more than you help them in this book.

With much sympathy and admiration,

I am yours most sincerely,

Stopford A. Brooke.

Two other deaths occurred in this year, and made a profound impression on the young writer. I quote his own words:

“It was in 1882 also that another friend, to whom Philip Marston had also become much attached—attracted in the first instance by the common bond of unhappiness—died under peculiarly distressing circumstances. Philip Marston and myself were, if I am not mistaken, the last of his acquaintances to see him alive. Thomson had suffered such misery and endured such hopelessness, that he had yielded to intemperate habits, including a frequent excess in the use of opium. He had come back from a prolonged visit to the country, where all had been well with him, but through over confidence he had fallen a victim again immediately on his return. For a few weeks his record is almost a blank. When the direst straits were reached, he so far reconquered his control that he felt able to visit one whose sympathy and regard had stood all tests. Marston soon realised that his friend was mentally distraught, and endured a harrowing experience, into the narrative of which I do not care to enter.

“I arrived in the late afternoon, and found Philip in a state of nervous perturbation. Thomson was lying down on the bed in the adjoining room: stooping I caught[76] his whispered words that he was dying; upon which I lit a match, and in the sudden glare beheld his white face on the blood-stained pillow.

“He had burst one or more blood-vessels, and the hæmorrhage was dreadful. Some time had to elapse before anything could be done; ultimately with the help of a friend who came in opportunely, poor Thomson was carried downstairs, and having been placed in a cab, was driven to the adjoining University Hospital. He did not die that night, nor when Marston and I went to see him in the ward next day was he perceptibly worse, but a few hours after our visit he passed away.

“Thus ended the saddest life with which I have ever come in contact—sadder even than that of Philip Marston, though his existence was oftentimes bitter enough to endure....”

The other death was that of Emerson, whose writings had been a potent influence in the life-thought of the young Scot from his college days. Indeed throughout his life Emerson’s Essays were a constant stimulus and refreshment. “My Bible,” as he called the Volume of Selected Essays, accompanied him in all his wanderings, and during the last weeks he spent in Sicily in 1905 he carefully studied it anew and annotated it copiously.

On hearing of Emerson’s death he wrote a poem in memoriam—“Sleepy Hollow”—which was printed in the Academy and afterward in his second volume of verse Earth’s Voices. According to Harper’s Weekly (3: 6: 1882) “No finer tribute has been rendered to Emerson’s memory than William Sharp’s beautiful poem ‘Sleepy Hollow.’ And, as Earth’s Voices is now out of print, I will quote it in full:

SLEEPY HOLLOW
In Memoriam: Ralph Waldo Emerson

He sleeps here the untroubled sleep
Who could not bear the noise and moil
Of public life, but far from toil

A happy reticence did keep.

[77]

With Nature only open, free:
Close by there rests the magic mind
Of him who took life’s thread to wind

And weave some poor soul’s mystery

Of spirit-life, and made it live
A type and wonder for all days;
No sweeter soul e’er trod earth’s ways

Than he who here at last did give

His body back to earth again.
And now at length beside them lies[1]
One great and true and nobly wise—

A King of Thought, whose spotless reign

The overwhelming years that come
And drown the trash and dross and slime
Shall keep a record of till Time

Shall cease, and voice of man be dumb.

At lasts he rests, whose high clear hope
Was wont on lofty wings to scan
The future destinies of man—

Who saw the Race through darkness grope,

Through mists and error, till at last
The looked-for light, the longed-for age
Should dawn for peasant, prince, and sage,

And centuries of night be past.

Thy rest is won: O loyal, brave,
Wise soul, thy spirit is not dead—
Thy wing’d words far and wide have fled,

Undying, they shall find no grave.

CHAPTER V

FIRST VISIT TO ITALY

“After Rossetti’s death, I wrote,” William Sharp has related, “to the commission of Messrs. Macmillan, a record of his achievements in the two arts of literature and poetry, my first and of course immature attempt at a book of prose. I had also written a book of poems, which, however, did not attract much attention, though it had the honour of a long and flattering review in the Athenæum. Happily, it seems to have fallen into the hands of the editor of Harper’s Magazine, for some time afterward I received a letter from him asking me to let him see any poems I had by me. I sent him all I had and the matter passed from my mind. Months went by, and I remember how, one day, I had almost reached my last penny. In fact, my only possession of any value was a revolver, the gift of a friend. That night I made up my mind to enlist next morning. When I got up on the following morning there were two letters for me. The usual thing, I said to myself, notice of ‘declined with thanks.’ I shoved them into my pocket. A little later in the day, however, recollection impelled me to open one of the letters. It was from the editor of Harper’s, enclosing a cheque for forty pounds for my few Transcripts from Nature, little six-line poems, to be illustrated by Mr. Alfred Parsons, A.R.A. That money kept me going for a little time. Still it was a struggle, and I had nearly reached the end of my resources when one day I came across the other letter I had received that morning. I opened and found it to be from a, to me, unknown friend of one who had known my grandfather. He had heard from Sir Noel Paton that I was inclined to the study of literature and art. He therefore enclosed a cheque for two hundred pounds, which I was to spend in going to Italy to pursue my artistic studies. I was, of course, delighted with the windfall, so delighted, indeed, that I went the length of framing the cheque and setting it up in my lodgings. I tried to get my landlord to advance me the not very ambitious loan of a needed sovereign on the spot, but he only shook his head knowingly, as if he suspected something. However, at last, he risked a pound, and I think I spent most of it that afternoon in taking the landlady and her family to the pantomime.

ill078

WILLIAM SHARP
From a photograph taken in Rome in 1883

[79]

“Eventually I went to Italy and spent five months away.”

Thus, the year 1883 opened with brighter prospects. Not only was it easier to get articles accepted and published, but “William obtained the post of London Art Critic to The Glasgow Herald, to be taken up in the autumn. During his stay in London he had made a continual study of the Old Masters, and his connection with The Fine Art Society had brought him in touch with modern work and living artists. Therefore, with the opportune cheque in his pocket he decided to spend the ensuing months in careful study of pictures in Italy.

He left London at the end of February, and remained in Italy till the end of June, when he joined my mother and myself in the Ardennes.

He went first of all to stay with an aunt of mine, Mrs. Smillie, who had a villa in the outskirts of Florence. From that city and later from Rome and Venice he wrote to me the following impressions:

Florence,

Wednesday, 14: 3: 83.

... “Yesterday morning I went to Sta. Maria Novella, and enjoyed it greatly. It is a splendid place, though on a first visit I was less impressed than by Santa Croce....

The monumental sculpture is not so fine as in Santa Croce, but on the other hand there are some splendid paintings and frescoes—amongst others Cimabue’s famous picture of the Virgin seated on a throne. I admired some frescoes by Fillipino Lippi—also those in the[80] Choir by Ghirlandajio: in the Capella dei Strozzi (to the left) I saw the famous frescoes of Orcagna, the Inferno and Paradiso. They greatly resemble the same subjects by the same painter in the Campo Santo at Pisa. What a horrible imagination, poisoned by horrible superstitions, these old fellows had: his Paradise, while in some ways finely imagined, is stiff and unimpressive, and his Inferno simply repellent. It is strange that religious art should have in general been so unimaginative. The landscapes I care most for here are those of the early Giottesque and pre-Raphaelite painters—they are often very beautiful—for the others, there is more in Turner than in them all put together....”

Florence, 18: 3: 83.

“ ... Well, yesterday after lunch I went to the Chiesa del Carmine, and was delighted greatly with the famous frescoes of Masaccio, which I studied for an hour or more with great interest. He was a wonderful fellow to have been the first to have painted movement, for his figures have much grace of outline and freedom of pose. Altogether I have been more struck by Masaccio than by any other artist save Michel Angelo and Leonardo da Vinci. If he hadn’t died so young (twenty-seven) I believe he would have been amongst the very first in actual accomplishment. He did something, which is more than can be said for many others more famous than himself, who merely duplicated unimaginative and stereotyped religious ideals....

Yesterday being Holy Thursday we went to several Churches and in the afternoon and evening to see the Flowers for the Sepulchres. Very much impressed and excited by all I saw. I was quite unprepared for the mystery and gloom of the Duomo. There were (comparatively) few people there, as it is not so popular with the Florentines as Sta. Maria Novella—and when we entered, it was like going into a tomb. Absolute darkness away by the western entrances (closed), a dark gloom elsewhere, with gray trails of incense mist still[81] floating about like wan spirits, and all the crosses and monuments draped in black crape, and a great canopy of the same overhead. Two acolytes held burning tapers before only one monument, that of the Pietà under the great crucifix in the centre of the upper aisle—so that the light fell with startling distinctness on the dead and mutilated body of Christ. Not a sound was to be heard but the wild chanting of the priests, and at last a single voice with a strain of agony in every tone. This and the mystery and gloom and pain (for, strange as it may seem to you, I felt the agony of the pierced hands and feet myself) quite overcame me, and I burst into tears. I think I would have fainted with the strain and excitement, if the Agony of the Garden had not come to an end, and the startling crash of the scourging commenced, the slashing of canes upon the stones and pillars. I was never so impressed before. I left, and wandered away by myself along the deserted Lung-Arno, still shivering with the excitement of almost foretasted death I had experienced, and unable to control the tears that came whenever I thought of Christ’s dreadful agony. To-day (Good Friday) the others have gone to church, but I couldn’t have gone to listen to platitudes—and don’t know if I can bring myself to enter the catholic churches again till the Crucifixion is over, as I dread a repetition of last night’s suffering. I shall probably go to hear the Passion Music in the church of the Badia (the finest in Florence for music). How I wish you were with me....”

Florence, 3: 4: 83.

Rome.

Rome, 16th April, 1883.

“ ... I have just come in from the Campagna where I have spent some of the happiest hours I have yet had in Rome. I went for some three miles across the glorious open reaches of tall grass, literally dense with myriads of flowers—not a vestige of a house to be seen, not a hint of Rome, nothing but miles upon miles of rolling grassy slopes till they broke like a green sea against the blue-purple hills, which were inexpressibly beautiful with their cloud-shadows athwart their sides and the lingering snows upon their heights. There was not a sound to be heard save those dear sounds of solitary places, the endless hum of insects, the cries of birds, the songs of many larks, the scream of an occasional hawk, the splash of a stream that will soon be dried up, and the exquisite, delicious, heavenly music of the wind upon the grass and in the infrequent trees.... And a good fairy watched over me to-day, for I was peculiarly fortunate in seeing one or two picturesque things I might have missed. First, as I was listening to what a dear spark of a lintie was whistling to its mate, I heard a dull heavy trampling sound, and on going to a neighbouring rise I saw two wild bulls fighting. I never realised before the immense weight and strength these animals have. Soon after, a herd of them came over the slope, their huge horns tossing in the sunlight and often goring at each other. I was just beginning to fancy that I had seen my last of Rome (for I had been warned against these wild cattle especially at this season) when some picturesquely-attired horsemen on shaggy little steeds came up at full speed, and with dogs and long spears or poles and frantic cries urged the already half furious, half terrified[87] animals forward. It was delightful to witness, and if I were a painter I would be glad to paint such a scene. I then went across a brook and up some slopes (half buried in flowers and grasses) till I came to a few blackthorn trees and an old stone-pine, and from there I had a divine view. The heat was very great, but I lay in a pleasant dreamy state with my umbrella stuck tentwise, and I there began the first chapter of the novel I told you before I left that I intended writing. I had been thinking over it often, and so at last began it: and certainly few romances have been begun in lovelier places. Suddenly, through one eye, as it were, I caught sight of a broad moving shadow on the slope beyond me, and looking up I was electrified with delight to see a large eagle shining gold-bronze in the sun. I had no idea (though I knew they preyed on the lambs, etc., further on the Campagna and in the Maremma) that they ever came so near the haunts of men. It gave one loud harsh scream, a swoop of its broad wings, and then sailed away out of sight into the blue haze beyond the farthest reaches I could see. Away to the right I saw a ruined arch, formerly some triumphal record no doubt, and near it was a shepherd, clad in skins, tending his goats. No other human sign—oh, it was delicious and has made me in love with the very name of Rome. Such swarms of lizards there were, and so tame, especially the green ones, which knew I wouldn’t hurt them and so ran on to my hands. The funniest fly too I ever saw buzzed up, and sat on a spray of blackthorn blossom and looked at me: I burst out laughing at it, and it really seemed to look reproachfully at me—and for a moment I felt sorry at being so rude. I could have lain there all day, so delicious was the silence save for these natural sounds—and all these dear little birds and insects. What surprised me so much about the flowers was not only their immense quantity, but also their astounding variety. At last I had to leave, as it is not safe to lie long on the Campagna if one is tired or hungry. So I strolled along through the deep grasses and over slope after slope till at last[88] I saw the clump of stone pines which were my landmark, and then I soon joined the road....”

Siena, 30th April, 1883.

Florence, 7th May.

Venezia, 10th May.

From Dover W. S. went to Paris for the first time in his capacity as Art Critic, and thoroughly enjoyed himself as this letter to me shows:

Paris, 10th April, 1884.

The two important events of 1884 were the publication of a second volume of Poems, and our marriage.

In June Earth’s Voices (Elliot Stock) was issued and was well received at home and in America. In an article on William Sharp and Fiona Macleod written for The Century in 1906 Mr. Ernest Rhys wrote of this volume:

“There was an impassioned delight in nature—in nature at large, that is—in her seas and skies, or in her scenery subjectively coloured by lyric emotion to be found in these early books.

“Perhaps one of his Northern poems may best serve to illustrate his faculty; and there is one that is particularly to the purpose, since it sketches ‘Moonrise’ from the very spot—Iona—with which so many of the ‘Fiona’ tales and fantasies were to be connected afterward.

Here where in dim forgotten days,
A savage people chanted lays
To long since perished gods, I stand:
The sea breaks in, runs up the sand,
Retreats as with a long-drawn sigh,
Sweeps in again, again leaves dry
The ancient beach, so old and yet
So new that as the strong tides fret
The island barriers in their flow
The ebb hours of each day can know
A surface change. The day is dead,
[98]The Sun is set, and overhead
The white north stars set keen and bright;
The wind upon the sea is light
And just enough to stir the deep
With phosphorescent gleams and sweep
The spray from salt waves as they rise.

“Sharp’s early work is more like that of a lyric improvisator than of a critical modern poet. At this period he cared more for the free colours of verse than for exact felicity of phrase. His writings betrayed a constant quest after those hardly realisable regions of thought, and those keener lyric emotions, which, since Shelley wrote and Rossetti wrote and painted, have so often occupied the interpreters of the vision and spectacle of nature.

“One may find this variously attempted or half expressed in several of the poems of his second book. In one called ‘A Record’ (to which a special inscription drew attention in the copy he sent me), he treats very fancifully the mystery of transmigration. He pictures himself sitting in his room, and there he resumes the lives, and states of being, of many savage types of man and beast viewed in passion and action—the tiger, the eagle, and the primitive man who lighted the fire that consumed the dry scrub and his fellow-tribesmen:

He looks around to see some god,
And far upon the fire-scorched sod
He sees his brown-burnt tribesmen lie,
And thinks their voices fill the sky,
And dreads some unseen sudden blow—
And even as I watch him, lo,
My savage-self I seem to know.

“Or again he reincarnates the Druid:

And dreaming so I dream my dream:
I see a flood of moonlight gleam
Between vast ancient oaks, and round
A rough-hewn altar on the ground
Weird Druid priests are gathered
While through their midst a man is led
With face that seems already dead.

[99]

“And again the type is changed into a Shelleyan recluse, a hermit who had had retreated to his cave, and that hermit

Was even that soul mine eyes have traced
Through brute and savage steadily,
That he even now is part of me
Just as a wave is of the sea.

“If there are traces of Shelley in this poem, Rossetti and Swinburne have also their echo in some of its rhapsodic, highly figurative stanzas. There are unmistakable germs in it, too, of some of the supernatural ideas that afterward received a much more vital expression in ‘Fiona Macleod’s’ work.”

The volume was dedicated to his friend Walter Pater and from him and other writers and friends he received many interesting letters, and from them I select the following:

2 Bradmore Road, May 28th.

My dear Sharp,

I was just thinking of sending off my long-delayed acknowledgment of your charming volume, with its friendly dedication (which I take as a great compliment, and sincerely thank you for) when your post card arrived. These new poems must, I feel sure, add much to your poetic reputation. I have just finished my first reading of them; but feel that I shall have to go back many times to appreciate all their complex harmonies of sense and rhythm. On a first superficial reading, I incline to think that the marks of power cluster most about the poem of Sospitra. Also, I prefer the Transcripts from Nature, to the various poems included in Earth’s Voices, admirable as I think many of the latter to be, e. g., The Song of the Flowers, The Field Mouse, The Song of the Thrush, The Cry of the Tiger, The Chant of the Lion, The Hymn of the Autumn. This looks shamefully matter-of-fact. But then, you asked me to tell you precisely which I preferred. The Shadowed Souls, among the short pieces, I find very beautiful. The[100] whole volume seems to me distinguishable among latter-day poetry for its cheerfulness and animation, and of course the Australian pieces are delightfully novel and fresh. Many thanks, again, from

Yours very sincerely,

Walter H. Pater.

In an article on Christina Rossetti, William Sharp relates:

“In the beginning of May, 1884, I called to see Miss Rossetti and to leave with her a copy of a just-published volume of verse, but failed to find her at home. The poem I cared most for was the epilogue, Madonna Natura, but instinct told me Miss Rossetti would neither like nor approve so pagan an utterance, and the surmise was correct:

30 Torrington Square, W. C.,

May 3, 1884.

Dear Mr. Sharp,

Very truly yours,

Christina G. Rossetti.

[101]

“Though I cannot recall what I wrote, write I did evidently, and obviously also with eagerness to prove that, while I accepted her gentle reproof in the spirit in which she offered it, I held the point of view immaterial; and no doubt a very crude epistle it was in thought and diction....”

That summer my Poet and I were very happy receiving the congratulations from our friends on the approaching termination of our nine years of waiting. We were married on a Friday the 31st October 1884 at Christ Church, Lancaster Gate, and his friend Eric S. Robertson—Editor of The Great Writer Series, and afterward Professor of Literature and Logic at Lahore Government College—acted as best man. Mrs. Craik lent us her house at Dover for our honeymoon, and we also made a flying visit to Paris.

The end of November found us settled in a little house in Talgarth Road, West Kensington (No. 46): our relatives furnished the house for us and we began our new life with high hopes and a slender purse. My husband had £30 in his pocket, and I had an income of £35 a year.

Among the many kindly letters of congratulations came one from Mr. Addington Symonds.

Davos Platz, Dec. 22, 1884.

My dear Mr. Sharp,

John Addington Symonds.

[103]

Many were the pleasant literary households that gave a welcome to us, and in particular those of Mr. and Mrs. Craik, of Mr. and Mrs. George Robinson, whose beautiful daughters Mary, the poetess, and Mabel, the novelist, I already knew; of Mr. and Mrs. Francillon, of Mrs. Augusta Webster, and of Dr. and Mrs. Garnett. In these and other houses we met many common friends and interesting people of note; most frequently, among others, Mr. Walter Pater, Mr. Robert Browning, Dr. Westland Marston, Mr. and Mrs. Ford Madox Brown, Mr. and Mrs. William Rossetti, Mr. and Mrs. William Morris, Mr. and Mrs. Holman Hunt, Mr. Andrew Lang, Mr. Austin Dobson, Mr. Frederick Shields, Mr. Theodore Watts, Sir Frederick Leighton, Miss Mathilde Blind, Miss Olive Schreiner, Miss Louise Bevington, Mr. and Mrs. John Todhunter, Mr. and Mrs. Oscar Wilde and Mrs. Lynn Linton.

CHAPTER VI

SONNETS OF THIS CENTURY

1885 was a year of hard work. It was our desire that such work should be done that should eventually make it possible for my husband to devote himself exclusively to original work—perhaps in a year or two at most. Meanwhile the outlook was satisfactory and encouraging. He held the post of London Art-Critic to the Glasgow Herald, was on the staff of The Academy then under the Editorship of his good friend Mr. James Cotton; and he wrote for The Examiner, The Athenaeum and other weeklies.

On the appearance in The Athenaeum of his Review on Marius the Epicurean the author expressed his satisfaction in a letter:

2 Bradmore Road,

March 1, 1885.

My dear Sharp,

I have read your article in The Athenaeum with very real pleasure; feeling criticism, at once so independent and so sympathetic, to be a reward for all the long labours the book has cost me. You seem to me to have struck a note or criticism not merely pleasant but judicious; and there are one or two important points—literary ones—on which you have said precisely what I should have wished, and thought it important for me, to have said. Thank you sincerely for your friendly work! Also, for your letter, and promise of the other notices, which I shall look out for, and greatly value. I was much pleased also that Mrs. Sharp had been so much interested in my writing. It is always a sign to me that I have to some extent succeeded in my literary aim when I gain the approval of accomplished women.

ill104

WALTER PATER

[105]

I should be glad, and feel it a great compliment, to have Marius translated into German, on whatever terms your friend likes—provided of course that Macmillan approves. I will ask him his views on this point. As regards the ethical drift of Marius, I should like to talk to you, if you were here. I did mean it to be more anti-Epicurean than it has struck you as being. In one way however I am glad that you have mistaken me a little on this point, as I had some fears that I might seem to be pleading for a formal thesis, or “parti pris.” Be assured how cheering your praise—praise from so genuine and accomplished a fellow-workman—has been to me. Such recognition is especially a help to one whose work is so exclusively personal and solitary as the kind of literary work, which I feel I can do best, must be. I fancied you spoke of bringing your wife to Oxford this term; and wish we had a room to offer you. But I think you know that we have at most only room for a single visitor. It will however give my sisters great pleasure to make the acquaintance of Mrs. Sharp. Only let us know a week or so, if possible, before you come to Oxford, that we may see as much of you as possible: and with our united kind regards, believe me, my dear Sharp,

Very sincerely yours,

Walter Pater.

I hope that in generosity to me you are not wasting too much of the time that belongs to your own original work. I have told Macmillan to send you a properly bound copy of Marius, with only a few misprints.

Mr. Theodore Watts had frequently spoken to us about a romance he had in hand, and partly in print. After much persuasion he sent several chapters of Aylwin to us during our summer holiday, and we read them on the shores of West Loch Tarbert in Argyll with keen enjoyment. An enthusiastic letter from the younger author brought this reply:

[106]

Seaford, Sept. 16, 1885.

My dear Sharp,

Yours affectly,

Theo. Watts.

P.S.—I and Swinburne are getting some delicious bathing.

In the article written for The Century Magazine, 1907, on William Sharp and Fiona Macleod, Mr. Ernest Rhys gives a reminiscent description of the young author and of his impressions of him, on their first acquaintance:

The description given by Mr. Rhys of William Sharp’s method of work as characterised by an impetuosity which made him “disinclined for the poetic pains” belonged to one phase of his development. During the early days of hard work for the bare necessities of life, he had little time to devote to the writing of poetry or of purely imaginative work. His literary efforts were directed toward the shaping of his prose critical writings, toward the controlled exercise of the mental faculties which belonged to the William Sharp’s side of himself. From time to time the emotional, the more intimate self would sweep aside all conscious control; a dream, a sudden inner vision, an idea that had lain dormant in what he called “the mind behind the mind” would suddenly visualise itself and blot out everything else from his consciousness, and under such impulse he would write at great speed, hardly aware of what or how he wrote, so absorbed was he in the vision with which for the moment he was identified. In those days he was unwilling to retouch such writing; for he thought that revision should be made only under a similar phase of emotion. Consequently he preferred for the most part to destroy such efforts if the result seemed quite inadequate, rather than alter them. Later, when that side of his nature found expression in the Fiona Macleod writings—when those impulses became more frequent, more reliable, more coherent—he changed his attitude toward the question of revision, and desired above all things to give as beautiful an expression as lay in his power to what to him were dreams of beauty.

For his critical work, however, he studied and prepared himself deliberately. He believed that the one method of attaining to a balanced estimate of our literature is by a comparative study of foreign contemporary writing.

[110]

“The more interested I became in literature,” he on one occasion explained to an interviewer, “the more convinced I grew of the narrowness of English criticism and of the importance to the English critic of getting away from the insular point of view. So I decided that the surest way of beginning to prepare myself for the work of the critic would be to make a study of three or four of the best writers among the older, and three or four among the younger school of each nation, and to judge from the point of view of the nation. For example, in studying French literature, I would try to judge from the point of view of a Frenchman. When this task was done I tried to estimate the literature under consideration from an absolute impersonal and impartial point of view. Of course, this study took a long time, but it furnished me material that has been invaluable to me in my work ever since.”

It was his constant endeavour to understand the underlying motive in any phase of modern literature; and he believed that “what is new in literature is not so likely to be unfit for critics, as critics are likely to be unfit for what is new in literature.” Concerning the art of Criticism he expressed his belief in an unfinished article: “When I speak of Criticism I have in mind not merely the more or less deft use of commentary or indication, but one of the several ways of literature and in itself a rare and fine art, the marriage of science that knows, and of spirit that discerns.”

“The basis of Criticism is imagination: its spiritual quality is sympathy: its intellectual distinction is balance.”

The occasion of his visit to Mr. Ernest Rhys was in connection with a scheme for the publication of two series of cheap re-issues of fine literature—a comparatively new venture five-and-twenty years ago—to be published by Messrs. Walter Scott: The Camelot Classics to be edited by Ernest Rhys and to consist of selected prose writings, and The Canterbury Poets to be edited by William Sharp;—Each volume to be prefaced by a specially written[111] introduction. For the Prose Series William Sharp prepared De Quincey’s Confessions of an Opium Eater, and Mrs. Cunningham’s Great English Painters. For a third series—Biographies of Great Writers edited by Eric S. Robertson and Frank T. Marzial, he wrote his monographs on Shelley in 1887, on Heine in 1888 and on Browning in 1890.

Meanwhile he contributed a volume from time to time to The Canterbury Poets, among others: Collections of Shakespeare’s Sonnets, Great Odes, American Sonnets, and his Collection of English Sonnets. In preparing the Edition of Shakespeare’s Sonnets he consulted Mr. Edward Dowden on one or two points and received the following reply:

Davos Platz, Dec. 6, 1885.

Dear Mr. Sharp,

John Addington Symonds.

[113]

In the following letter to Mr. Symonds the Editor explained the intention of his collected Sonnets of this Century:

12: 11: 85.

My dear Mr. Symonds,

Sincerely yours,

William Sharp.

In the preparation of the volume he received several interesting communications from well-known English sonnet writers from which I select four. The first is from the Irish poet Aubrey de Vere; in the second Mr. George Meredith answers a question concerning his volume of sequent poems, Modern Love:

Curragh Chase, Adare,

Dec. 5, 1885.

Dear Mr. Sharp,

... I am much flattered by what you say about my sonnets, and glad that you like them; but I hope that in[114] selecting so many as five for your volume you have not displaced sonnets by other authors. Sir R. Hamilton’s are indeed, as you remark, excellent, and I rejoice that you are making them better known than they have been hitherto. Wordsworth once remarked to me that he had known many men of high talents and several of real genius; but that Coleridge, and Sir W. H. Hamilton were the only men he had known to whom he would apply the term “wonderful.”

Yours faithfully,

Aubrey de Vere.

Boxhill, Dorking,

Nov. 12, 1885.

Dear Sir,

You are at liberty to make your use of the Sonnet you have named. The Italians allow of 16 lines, under the title of “Sonnets with a tail.”

But the lines of “Modern Love” were not designed for that form.

Yours very truly,

George Meredith.

The third letter is from Mr. Theodore Watts-Dunton:

The Pines, Putney Hill,

Jan. 8, 1886.

My dear Sharp,

I sent off the proofs by Wednesday afternoon’s post. I had no idea that the arrangement of the sonnets would give bother and took care to write to you to ask. The matter was not at all important, and I shall be vexed, indeed, if the printers are put to trouble. The printers would, unless the snow storms interfered, get my verses by Thursday morning’s first post.

My theory of the sonnet is exactly expressed in the sonnet on the sonnet. It is that, in the octave, the emotion flows out in a rhythmic billow: that the solidarity of this billow is maintained by knitting the two quatrains together by means of two rhyme sounds only: that in the[115] sestet the billow ebbs back to “Life’s tumultuous sea” and that like the ebb of an ocean-billow it moves backward, not solidly, but broken up into wavelets. This is only the arrangement of the rhymes in the sestet, that not only need not be based upon any given system but that should not be based on any given system, and should be perceived entirely by emotional demands.

Yours affectly,

Theo. Watts.

The fourth letter is from Oscar Wilde:

16 Tite St., Chelsea.

Dear Sir,

It will give me much pleasure to see the sonnets you mention included in your selection. Of the two, I much prefer “Libertatis Sacra Fames”—and if only one is taken, would like to be represented by that. Indeed I like the sonnets on p. 3 and p. 16 of my volume better than the one written in Holy Week at Genoa. Perhaps however this is merely because Art and Liberty seem to me more vital and more religious than any Creed. I send you a sonnet I wrote at the Sale of Keats’s love letters some months ago. What do you think of it? It has not yet been published. I wonder are you including Edgar Allan Poe’s sonnet to Science. It is one I like very much.

I will look forward with much interest to the appearance of your book.

I remain

Truly yours,

Oscar Wilde.

ON THE SALE BY AUCTION OF KEATS’S LOVE LETTERS

These are the letters which Endymion wrote
To one he loved in secret, and apart.
And now the brawlers of the auction mart

Bargain and bid for each poor blotted note.

Ay! for each separate pulse of passion quote
The merchant’s price: I think they love not art,
Who break the crystal of a poet’s heart

[116]That small and sickly eyes may glare and gloat!

Is it not said that many years ago,
In a far Eastern town, some soldiers ran
With torches through the midnight, and began

To wrangle for mean raiment, and to throw
Dice for the garments of a wretched man,

Not knowing the God’s wonder, or his woe.

I wish I could grave my sonnets on an ivory tablet—Quill pens and note-paper are only good enough for bills of lading. A sonnet should always look well. Don’t you think so?

O. W.

The success of the volume was immediate, and a second edition followed quickly. For it I begged that the Editor would include some sonnets of his own. He had refused to do so for the 1st Edition, but he now yielded to my wish and included two, “Spring Wind” and “A Midsummer Hour.” In later editions, however, he took them out again and left only the two dedicatory sonnets to D. G. Rossetti, for he considered that the Editor should not be represented in the body of the book. The volume was generously welcomed by contemporary writers. George Meredith considered it the best exposition of the Sonnet known to him; to Walter Pater the Introductory Essay was “most pleasant and informing,” and “Your own beautiful dedication to D. G. R. seems to me perfect, and brought back, with great freshness, all I have felt, and so sincerely, about him and his work.”

Robert Louis Stevenson expressed his views on the sonnet in a letter to the Editor:

Skerrymore (Bournemouth).

Dear Sir,

Having at last taken an opportunity to read your pleasant volume, it has had an effect upon me much to be regretted and you will find the consequences in verse. I had not written a serious sonnet since boyhood, when I used to imitate Milton and Wordsworth with surprising results: and since I have fallen again by your procuring (a procuration) you must suffer along with me.

[117]

May I say that my favourite sonnet in the whole range of your book is Tennyson Turner’s “The Buoy-Bell?” Possibly there is a touch of association in this preference; but I think not. No human work is perfect; but that is near enough.

Yours truly,

Robert Louis Stevenson.

The form of my so-called sonnets will cause you as much agony as it causes me little. I am base enough to think the main point of a sonnet is the disjunction of thought coinciding with the end of the octave: and when a lesser disjunction makes the quatrains and sestets I call it an ideal sonnet; even if it were rhymed anyhow. But the cross rhyme, tears—fear, in the second is, even in my base eyes, a vile flaw.

(Two sonnets were enclosed in the letter.)

THE ARABESQUE
(Complaint of an artist)

I made a fresco on the coronal,
Amid the sounding silence and the void

Of life’s wind-swept and unfrequented ball.
I drew the nothings that my soul enjoyed;

The pretty image of the enormous fact
I fled; and when the sun soared over all

And threw a brightness on the painted tract.
Lo, the vain lines were reading on the wall!

In vain we blink; our life about us lies
O’erscrawled with crooked mist; we toil in vain

To hear the hymn of ancient harmonies
That quire upon the mountains as the plain;

And from the august silence of the skies
Babble of speech returns to us again.

THE TOUCH OF LIFE

I saw a circle in a garden sit
Of dainty dames and solemn cavaliers,

Whereof some shuddered at the burrowing nit,
And at the carrion worm some burst in tears;

And all, as envying the abhorred estate
Of empty shades and disembodied elves,

Under the laughing stars, early and late,
[118]Sat shamefast at this birth and at themselves.

The keeper of the house of life is fear:
In the rent lion is the honey found

By him that rent it; out of stony ground
The toiler, in the morning of the year,

Beholds the harvest of his grief abound
And the green corn put forth the tender ear.

William Sharp offered to include “The Touch of Life” in the body of the book, and “The Arabesque” in the Notes. He received this reply:

Dear Mr. Sharp,

Yours truly,

Robert Louis Stevenson.

The Editor was much gratified by an appreciative letter from John Addington Symonds concerning the Edition de Luxe of his Anthology:

Davos Platz, Nov. 28, 1886.

My dear Sharp,

This postscript reminds me of the fact that Mr. Pater, Mr. Alfred Austin, and Mr. Theodore Watts-Dunton met together one evening at our house. I especially remember the occasion because of an incident that occurred, which indicated to us a temperamental characteristic of Walter Pater. During dinner a guest asked to see a necklace I was wearing. It was in the form of a serpent made of silver wire deftly interwoven to resemble scales and to make it sinuous and supple. I unfastened the serpent and as I handed it to Mr. Pater who was nearest me, it[120] writhed in a lifelike manner, and he drew back his hands with a slight movement of dislike. In a flash I remembered the passage in Marius the Epicurean in which the hero’s dislike to serpents is so vividly described, and I realised the description to be autobiographic. Later I had occasion to note the same effect. My husband and I in the early summer went down to Oxford so that I might meet the Misses Pater at their brother’s house. In the morning I had seen Mr. Pater’s study at Brasenose, and was as charmed with the beauty and austerity of the decoration, as with the sense of quiet and repose. In the afternoon it was proposed that I should be shown the Ifley Woods. My husband, always glad to handle the oars, had, however, to consent to being rowed by one of the boat attendants, for Mr. Pater with the timidity of a recluse declined to trust himself to the unknown capabilities of one whom he regarded rather as a townsman. As Mr. Pater and I strolled through the wood I suddenly noticed that my companion gave a little start and directed my attention to what seemed of small interest. When, however, we rejoined our companions Miss Pater asked her brother if he had seen the dead adder lying on one side of the path. “Oh, yes,” he answered, turning his head on one side with a gesture of aversion; “but I did not wish Mrs. Sharp to see it.”

If The Sonnets of this Century gained us pleasant friendships it also brought upon us a heavy penalty. For, within the next year or two we were inundated with letters and appeals from budding poets, from ambitious and wholly ignorant would-be sonneteers, who sent sheafs of sonnets not only for criticism and advice but now and again with the request to find a publisher for them! A large packet arrived one day, I remember, with a letter from an unknown in South Africa. The writer explained his poetical ambitions, and stated that he forwarded for consideration a hundred sonnets. On examining the packet we found one hundred poems varying in length from twelve to twenty lines, but not a solitary sonnet among them!

CHAPTER VII

THE SPORT OF CHANCE

Shelley

In the summer of 1885 we went to Scotland and looked forward to an idyllic month on West Loch Tarbert. While staying with Mr. Pater in Oxford my husband had seen the advertisement of a desirable cottage to be let furnished, with service, and garden stocked with vegetables. He knew the neighbourhood to be lovely, the attraction was great, so we took the cottage for August, and in due time carried our various MSS. and work to the idyllic spot. Beautiful the surroundings were indeed:—An upland moor sloping to the loch, with its opposite hilly shore thickly wooded. The cottage was simplicity itself in its appointments, but—the garden was merely a bit of railed-in grass field destitute of plants; the vegetables consisted of a sack of winter potatoes quite uneatable, and the only service that the old woman owner would give was to light the fires and wash up the dishes and black our boots. Everything else devolved on me, for help I could get nowhere and though my husband’s intentions and efforts in that direction were admirable, their practical qualities ended there! Yet to all the drawbacks we found compensation in the loveliness of the moorland, the peace of the solitude, and in the magnificent sunsets. One sunset I remember specially. We had gone for a wander westward. The sun was setting behind the brown horizon-line of the moor, and the sky was aflame with its glow. Suddenly we heard the sound of the pipes, sighing a Lament. We stopped to listen. The sound came nearer, and we saw walking over the brow of the upland an old man with bag-pipes and streamers outlined against the orange sky. We drew aside into a little hollow. As he neared we saw he was gray haired, his bonnet and[122] clothes were old and weatherworn. But in his face was a rapt expression as he played to himself and tramped across the moor, out of the sunset toward the fishing village that lay yonder in the cold evening light.

The summer was a wet one, and shortly after our return to town the poet developed disquieting rheumatic symptoms. Nevertheless we were both hard at work with the reviewing of pictures and books, and among other things he was projecting a monograph on Shelley. It was about this time I think that he decided to compete for a prize of £100 offered by the Editor of The People’s Friend for a novel suited to the requirements of that weekly, and these requirements of course dictated the sensational style of story. It was my husband’s one attempt to write a novel in three volumes. He did not gain the prize but the story ran serially through The People’s Friend, and was afterward published in 1887 by Messrs. Hurst and Blackett. The scene is laid in Scotland and in Australia, with a Prologue dealing with Cornwall, where he had once spent a few days in order to act as best man to one of his fellow-passengers on the sailing ship that brought him back from Australia.

The following Review from The Morning Post and letter from our poet-friend Mathilde Blind will give an idea of the style and defects of the novel:

“The many who have the mental courage to allow that they prefer the objective to the subjective novel may pass some delightful hours in the perusal of Mr. Sharp’s ‘The Sport of Chance.’ It has primâ facie an undeniable advantage to start with, i. e. it is unlike almost anything hitherto written in the shape of a novel in three volumes. Slightly old-fashioned, the author’s manner is simple and earnest, while he shows much skill in unravelling the tangled skein of a complicated plot. He deals also in sensationalism, but this is of a peculiar kind, and it rarely violates the canons of probability. To southerners his highly-coloured pictures of Highland peasant life, with their accompaniments of visions and second[123] sight, may savour of exaggeration, but not so to those whose youth has been past amidst similar surroundings. Many episodes of the shipwrecks of ‘The Fair Hope’ and ‘The Australasian,’ are as effective as the best of those written by authors who make a specialty of ‘Tales of the Sea.’ Hew Armitage’s ‘quest,’ in Australia, is related with graphic force. The descriptions of the natural features of the country, of life in the bush, and at the outlying settlements, are all stamped with the vivid fidelity that is one of the great merits of the book. Charles Lamb, alias Cameron, is a singular conception. Too consistently wicked, perhaps, to escape the reproach of being a melo-dramatic villain, his misdeeds largely contribute to the interest of this exciting novel.”

Nov. 6, 1888.

Dear William,

... Your “Sport of Chance” has helped me to while away the hours and certainly you have crammed sensation enough into your three volumes to furnish forth a round dozen or so. The opening part seemed to me very good, especially the description of the storm off the Cornish coast, and the mystery which gradually overclouds Mona’s life, but her death and the advent of a new set of characters seems to me to cut the story in two, while the sensational incidents are piled on like Ossa on Olympus. What seemed best to me, and also most enjoyable to my taste at least, are the personal reminiscences which I recognised in the voyage out to Australia and the descriptions of its scenery, full of life and freshness. Most of all I liked the weird picture of the phosphorescent sea with its haunting spectral shapes. You have probably seen something of the kind and ought to have turned it into a poem; if there had been a description of some scene like it in your last volume I should doubtless remember it.

With best love to Lillie,

Your sincere friend,

Mathilde Blind.

[124]

The opening of the new year 1886—from which we hoped much—was unpropitious. A wet winter and long hours of work told heavily on my husband, whose ill-health was increased by the enforced silence of his “second self” for whose expression leisure was a necessary condition. In a mood of dejection induced by these untoward circumstances he sent the following birthday greeting to his friend Eric S. Robertson:

46 Talgarth Road, W.

My Dear Friend,

Yours ever, my dear Eric,

W. S.

TO ERIC SUTHERLAND ROBERTSON
(On his birthday, 18: 2: 86)

I

Already in the purple-tinted woods
The loud-voiced throstle calls—sweet echoings
Down leafless aisles that dream of bygone springs:

Already towards their northern solitudes

The fieldfares turn, and soaring high, wheel broods
Of wild swans with a clamour of swift wings:
A tremor of new life moves through all things

And earth regenerate thrills with joyous moods.

Let not spring’s breath blow vainly past thine heart,
Dear friend: for Time grows ruinously apace:
Yon tall white lily in its holy grace

The winds will draggle soon: for an unseen dart
Moves ever hither and thither through each place,

Nor know we when or how our lives ’twill part.

[125]

II

A little thing it is indeed to die:
God’s seal to sanctify the soul’s advance—
Or silence, and a long enfevered trance.

But no slight thing is it—ere the last sigh

Leaves the tired heart, ere calm and passively
The worn face reverent grows, fades the dim glance—
To pass away and pay no recompense

To Life, who hath given to us so gloriously.

Not so for thee—within whose heart lie deep
As ingots ‘neath the waves, thoughts true and fair.
Nor ever let thy soul the burden bear,

Of having life to live yet choosing sleep:
Yea even if thine the dark and slippery stair,

Better to toil and climb than wormlike creep.

In the early spring my husband was laid low with scarlet fever and phlebitis. Recovery was slow, and at the press view of the Royal Academy he caught a severe chill; the next day he was in the grip of a prolonged attack of rheumatic fever. For many days his life hung in the balance.

During much of the suffering and tedium of those long weeks the sick man passed in a dream-world of his own; for he had the power at times of getting out of or beyond his normal consciousness at will. At first he imagined himself the owner of a gipsy travelling-van, in which he wandered over the to him well-known and much-loved solitudes of Argyll, resting where the whim dictated and visiting his many fisher and shepherd friends. Later, during the long crises of the illness, though unconscious often of all material surroundings, he passed through other keen inner phases of consciousness, through psychic and dream experiences that afterward to some extent were woven into the Fiona Macleod writings, and, as he believed, were among the original shaping influences that produced them. For a time he felt himself to be practically dead to the material world, and acutely alive “on the other side of things” in the greater freer universe. He had no desire to return, and rejoiced in his freedom and greater powers; but, as he described it afterward, a[126] hand suddenly restrained him: “Not yet, you must return.” And he believed he had been “freshly sensitised” as he expressed it; and knew he had—as I had always believed—some special work to do before he could again go free.

The illusion of his wanderings with the travelling van was greatly helped by the thoughtfulness of his new friend Ernest Rhys who brought him branches of trees in early leaf from the country. These I placed upright in the open window; and the fluttering leaves not only helped his imagination but also awoke “that dazzle in the brain,” as he always described the process which led him over the borderland of the physical into the “gardens” of psychic consciousness or, as he called it, “into the Green Life.”

At the end of ten weeks he left his bed. As soon as possible I took him to Northbrook, Micheldever, the country house of our kind friends Mr. and Mrs. Henryson Caird, who put it at our disposal for six weeks. Slowly his strength came back in these warm summer days, as he lay contentedly in the sunshine. But as he began to exert himself new disquieting symptoms developed. His heart proved to be badly affected and his recovery was proportionately retarded.

The Autumn found us face to face with problems hard to solve, how to meet not only current expenses but also serious debt, with a limited stock of precarious strength. At the moment of blackest outlook the invalid received a generous friendly letter from Mr. Alfred Austin enclosing a substantial cheque. The terms in which it was offered were as kindly sympathetic as the thought which prompted them. He had, he said, once been helped in a similar way with the injunction to repay the loan not to the donor but to some one else who stood in need. Therefore he now offered it with the same conditions attached. During the long months of illness it had been a constant source of regret to us that we were unable to see Philip Marston or to read to him as was our habit. We were anxious, too, for in the autumn he had been[127] prostrated by a heat stroke, followed by an epileptic seizure. At last, on Christmas day 1886 William Sharp went to see him and spent an hour or so with him. As he tells in his prefatory Memoir to Marston’s “Song-tide” (Canterbury Poets): “He was in bed and I was shocked at the change—as nearly a year had elapsed since I had seen him I found the alteration only too evident.... Throughout the winter his letters had been full of foreboding: ‘You will miss me, perhaps, when I am gone, but you need not mourn for me. I think few lives have been so deeply sad as mine, though I do not forget those who have blessed it.’”

This was the keynote to each infinitely sad letter.

“On the last day of January 1887 paralysis set in, and for fourteen days, he lay speechless as well as sightless, but at last he was asleep and at peace. Looking at his serene face on the day ere the coffin lid enclosed it, where something lovelier than mortal sleep subtly dwelt, there was one at least of his friends who forgot all sorrow in a great gladness for the blind poet—now no longer blind, if he be not overwhelmed in a sleep beyond our ken. At such a moment the infinite satisfaction of Death seems beautiful largess for the turmoil of a few ‘dark disastrous years.’”

The Spring of 1887 brought a more kindly condition of circumstances to us, in the form of good steady work. Mr. Eric Robertson had then been selected to fill the vacant chair of Literature and Logic at the University of Lahore, and, on accepting, he suggested to Mr. Joseph Henderson that William Sharp should be his successor as Editor of the “Literary Chair” in The Young Folk’s Paper—the boys’ weekly paper for which Robert Louis Stevenson had written his “Treasure Island.” “The Literary Olympic” was a portion of the paper devoted to the efforts in prose and verse of the Young Folk who wished to exercise their budding literary talents. Their papers were examined, criticised; a few of the most meritorious were printed, prefaced by an article of criticism and instruction written by their Editor and critic. The[128] work itself was congenial; and the interest was heightened by the fact that it put us into touch with the youth of all classes, in England, Scotland, and Ireland, in town and country, alike. Several of the popular novelists and essayists of to-day received the chief early training in the “Olympic.” Many were the confidential personal letters to the unknown editor, who was imagined by one or two young aspirants to be white-haired and venerable. This work, moreover, could be done at home, by us both; and it brought a reliable income, a condition of security hitherto unknown to us, which proved an excellent tonic to the delicate Editor.

In August a letter came from Mr. Theodore Watts-Dunton suggesting the possibility that an original poem, The Ode to Mother Carey’s Chicken contributed to my little anthology Sea-Music, should be re-printed in The Young Folk’s Paper:

In the early part of the year “The Sport of Chance” had run serially through The People’s Friend. Its success incited the author to write a sensational boys’ story for The Young Folk’s Paper; and accordingly in the Xmas number of that weekly appeared the first installment of “Under the Banner of St. James,” a tale of the conquest of Peru. This story was followed at intervals by others such as “The Secret of the Seven Fountains,” “Jack Noel’s Legacy,” “The Red Riders.” Although the weaving of these sensational plots was a great enjoyment to the writer of them, he at no time regarded them as other than useful pot-boilers.

A letter written about this time to the American poet E. C. Stedman led to a life-long friendship with him of so genial a nature that, on becoming personally acquainted in New York two years later, the older poet laughingly declared that he adopted the younger man from across the seas as his “English son.”

In an article on “British Song” in The Victorian Poets, the Scottish poet was referred to as a Colonial. He wrote to the author to point out the mistake “since you are so kindly going to do me the honour of mention in your forthcoming supplementary work, I should not like to be misrepresented.”

In replying Mr. Stedman explained that no great harm has been done:

Something in your work made me suspect that, despite your Australian tone, etc., you did not hail (as we Yankees say) from the Colonies. So you will find in my new vol. of Victorian Poets that I do not place you with the Colonial poets, but just preceding them, and I have a reference to your Rosetti volume. The limited space afforded by my supplementary chapter has made my references to the new men altogether too brief and inadequate. Of this I am seriously aware, but trust that[130] you and others will take into consideration the scope and aim of the chapter. You see I have learned that “The Human Inheritance” is scarce! Of course I shall value greatly a copy from the author’s hands. And I count among the two pleasant things connected with my prose work—my earlier and natural metier being that of a poet—such letters as yours, which put me into agreeable relations with distant comrades-in-arms.

Beginning, as you have, with the opening of a new literary period, and with what you have already done, I am sure you have a fine career before you—that will extend long after your American Reviewer has ceased to watch and profit by its course.

Very sincerely yours,

Edmund C. Stedman.

A few months later Mr. Stedman wrote again:

New York, March 27, 1888.

My dear Sharp,

Let me thank you heartily, if somewhat tardily, for your very handsome and magnanimous review of the Victorian Poets. It breathes the spirit of fairness—and even generosity—throughout. You have been more than “a little blind” to my faults, and to my virtues most open-eyed and “very kind” indeed. I am sufficiently sure of my own purpose to believe that you have ground for perceiving that the spirit of my major criticisms is essential, rather than merely “technical.” I look more to the breadth and imagination of the poet than to minute details—though a stickler for natural melody and the lasting canons of art. The real value of the book lies, of course, in the chapters on some of the elder poets. You are quite right in pointing out the impossibility of correct proportion in the details of the last chapter. It is added to give more completeness to the work as a whole. For the same reason, the earlier chapters on “The General Choir” were originally introduced; but in them I knew my ground better, and could point out with more assurance the tendencies of the various “groups.” But[131] I write merely to say that I am heartily satisfied with your criticism, and grateful for it; and that I often read your other reviews with advantage—and shall watch your career, already so fruitful, with great interest. A man who comes down to first principles and looks at things broadly, as you are doing, is sure in the end to be a man of mark.

Very faithfully yours,

Edmund C. Stedman.

One desirable result of this good fortune was a change of residence to a higher part of the town, where the air was purer, and access to green fields easier. To this end in the Spring of 1887 we took a little house for three years in Goldhurst Terrace, South Hampstead. As it was numbered 17a, much annoyance was caused as our letters frequently were delivered at No. 17. A name therefore had to be found, and we dubbed our new home Wescam, a name made up of the initials of my husband, myself and our friend Mrs. Caird whose town house was within two minutes’ walk of us. There was a sunny study for the invalid on the ground floor, to obviate as much as possible the need of going up and down stairs. The immediate improvement in his health from the higher air and new conditions was so marked that we had every reason to hope it would before many months be practically re-established.

The most important undertaking after the long illness was the monograph on Shelley written for Great Writers’ Series (Walter Scott) and published in the autumn of 1887. It was a work of love, for Shelley had been the inspiring genius of his youth, the chief influence in his verse till he knew Rossetti. He was in sympathy with much of Shelley’s thought: with his hatred of rigid conventionality, of the tyranny of social laws; with his antagonism to existing marriage and divorce laws, with his belief in the sanctity of passion when called forth by high and true emotion. He exclaimed that

“It is my main endeavour in this short life of Shelley[132] to avoid all misstatement and exaggeration; to give as real a narrative of his life from the most reliable sources as lies within my power; to recount without detailed criticism and as simply and concisely as practicable, the record of his poetic achievements. To this end I shall chiefly rely on anecdote and explanatory detail, or poems and passages noteworthy for their autobiographical or idiosyncratic value, and on indisputable facts.”

He proposed merely to give a condensation of all really important material; and based his monograph mainly on Professor Dowden’s memorable work (then recently published). Many statements written by William Sharp about Shelley may be quoted as autobiographic of himself. For instance: “From early childhood he was a mentally restless child. Trifles unnoticed by most children seem to have made keen and permanent impression on him—the sound of wind, the leafy whisper of trees, running water. The imaginative faculties came so early into play, that the unconscious desire to create resulted in the invention of weird tales sometimes based on remote fact in the experience of more or less weird hallucinations.”

Or again: “The fire of his mind for ever consuming his excitable body, his swift and ardent emotions, his over keen susceptibilities all combined to increase the frailty of his physical health.” Or this in particular: “He did not outgrow his tendency to invest every new and sympathetic correspondent (and I would add, friend) with lives of ideal splendour.”

And in explanation of each idealization appearing to him “as the type of that ideal Beauty which had haunted his imagination from early boyhood,” he adds: “No fellow mortal could have satisfied the desire of his heart. Perhaps this almost fantastic yearning for the unattainable—this desire of the moth for the star—is the heritage of many of us. It is a longing that shall be insatiable even in death.” With Shelley he might have said of himself: “I think one is always in love with something or other; the error—and I confess it is not easy for spirits[133] cased in flesh and blood to avoid it—consists in seeking in a mortal image the likeness of what is, perhaps, eternal.”

From the many letters the biographer received after the publication of his book I select three:

Brasenose College, Nov. 23d.

My dear Sharp,

I am reading your short life of Shelley with great pleasure and profit. Many thanks for your kindness in sending it. It seems to me that with a full, nay! an enthusiastic, appreciation of Shelley and his work, you unite a shrewdness and good sense rare in those who have treated this subject. And then your book is pleasant and effective, in contrast to a French book on Shelley of which I read reluctantly a good deal lately. Your book leaves a very definite image on the brain.

With sincere kind regards,

Very truly yours,

Walter Pater.

Cimiez, près Nice.

22d Dec., 1887.

My dear Friend,

Ever yours,

Mathilde Blind.

Box Hill (Dorking),

Feb. 13, 1888.

Dear Mr. Sharp,

I have read your book on Shelley, and prefer it, matched with the bulky. Putting out of view Matthew Arnold’s very lofty lift of superterrestrial nose over the Godwin nest, one inclines to agree with him about our mortal business of Shelley. We shall be coming next to medical testimony, with expositions. You have said just enough, and in the right tones. Yesterday a detachment of the Sunday tramps under Leslie Stephen squeezed at the table in the small dining-room you know, after a splendid walk over chalk and sand. When you are in the mood to make one of us, give me note of warning, and add to the pleasure by persuading your wife to come with you.

And tell her that this invitation would be more courtly were I addressing her directly.

I am,

Very truly yours,

George Meredith.

CHAPTER VIII

ROMANTIC BALLADS

The Children of To-morrow

The three years spent at Wescam were happy years, full of work and interest. Slowly but steadily as health was re-established, the command over work increased, and all work was planned with the hope that before very long William should be able to devote himself to the form of imaginative work that he knew was germinating in his mind. Meanwhile he had much in hand. Critical work for many of the weeklies, a volume of poems in preparation, and a monograph on Heine, were the immediate preoccupations.

Romantic Ballads and Poems of Phantasy was published in the spring (Walter Scott). The poems had been written at different times during the previous five or six years. “The Son of Allan” had met with the approval of Rossetti, whose influence was commented upon by certain of the critics. The book was well received both in England and America. The Boston Literary World considered that in such poems as “The Isle of Lost Dreams,” “Twin Souls,” and “The Death Child” “a conjuring imagination rises to extraordinary beauty of conception.” These three poems are undoubtedly forerunners of the work of the “Fiona Macleod” period. In the Preface the writer stated his conviction that “a Romantic Revival is imminent in our poetic literature, a true awakening of genuinely romantic sentiment. The most recent phase thereof,” however, “that mainly due to Rossetti, has not fulfilled the hopes of those who saw in it the prelude to a new great poetic period. It has been too literary, inherently, but more particularly in expression.... Spontaneity it has lacked supremely.... It would seem as if it had already become mythical that the supreme merit of[136] a poem is not perfection of art, but the quality of the imagination which is the source of such real or approximate perfection.... In a sense, there is neither Youth nor Age in Romance, it is the quintessence of the most vivid emotions of life.” And further on he voices the very personal belief “Happy is he who, in this day of spiritual paralysis, can still shut his eyes for a while and dream.”

Concerning the idea of fatality that underlies the opening ballad “The Weird of Michel Scott”—“meant as a lyrical tragedy, a tragedy of a soul that finds the face of disastrous fate set against it whithersoever it turn in the closing moments of mortal life,” he wrote to a friend, “What has always impressed me deeply—how deeply I can scarcely say—is the blind despotism of fate. It is manifested in Æschylus, in Isaiah and in the old Hebrew Prophets, in all literature, in all history and in life. This blind, terrible, indifferent Fate, this tyrant Chance, stays or spares, mutilates or rewards, annihilates or passes by without heed, without thought, with absolute blankness of purpose, aim, or passion....

“I am tortured by the passionate desire to create beauty, to sing something of ‘the impossible songs’ I have heard, to utter something of the rhythm of life that has most touched me. The next volume of romantic poems will be daringly of the moment, vital with the life and passion of to-day (I speak hopefully, not with arrogant assurance, of course), yet not a whit less romantic than ‘The Weird of Michel Scott’ or ‘The Death Child.’”

Many encouraging and appreciative letters reached him from friends known and unknown.

In Mr. William Allingham’s opinion “Michel Scott clothing his own Soul with Hell-fire is tremendous!”

Professor Edward Dowden was not wholly in accord with the poet’s views, as expressed in the Introduction:

Rathmines, Dublin,

July 10, 1888.

My dear Sharp,

It gave me great pleasure to get your new volume from yourself. I think that a special gift of yours, and one[137] not often possessed, appears in this volume of romance and phantasy. I don’t find it possible to particularise one poem as showing its presence more than another, for the unity of the volume comes from its presence. And I rejoice at anything which tends to make this last quarter of the century other than what I feared it would be—a period of collecting and arranging facts, with perhaps such generalisations as specialists can make. (Not that this is not valuable work, but if it is the sole employment of a generation what an ill time for the imagination and the emotions!) At the same time I don’t think I should make any demand, if I could, for Romance. I should not put forth any manifesto in its favour, for this reason—that the leaders of a movement of phantasy and romance will have such a sorry following. The leaders of a school which overvalued form and technique may have been smaller men than the leaders of a romantic school, yet still their followers were learning something; but while the chiefs of the romantic and phantastic movement will be men of genius, what a lamentable crowd the disciples will be, who will try to be phantastic prepense. We shall have the horrors of the spasmodic school revived without that element of a high, vague, spiritual intention which gave some nobility—or pseudo-nobility—to the disciples of the spasmodists. We shall have every kind of extravagance and folly posing as poetry.

The way to control or check this is for the men who have a gift for romance to use that gift—which you have done—and to prove that phantasy is not incoherence but has its own laws. And they ought to discourage any and every one from attempting romance who has not a genius for romance.

Sincerely yours,

E. Dowden.

Meanwhile, the author of the ballads was at work preparing two volumes for the Canterbury Series—a volume of selected Odes, and one of American Sonnets, to which he contributed prefaces—and writing critical articles for[138] the Academy, Athenæum, Literary World, etc. Various important books were published that spring, and among those which came into his hands to write about were Underwoods by R. L. Stevenson, In Hospital by W. Henley; and from these writers respectively he received letters of comment. I am unable to remember what was the occasion of the first of the R. L. Stevenson notes, what nature of request it was that annoyed the older writer. Neither of his letters is dated, but from the context each obviously belongs to 1888.

Dear Mr. Sharp,

Yes, I was annoyed with you, but let us bury that; you have shown so much good nature under my refusal that I have blotted out the record.

And to show I have repented of my wrath: is your article written? If not, you might like to see early sheets of my volume of verse, not very good, but still—and the Scotch ones would amuse you I believe. And you might like also to see the plays I have written with Mr. Henley: let me know, and you shall have them as soon as I can manage.

Yours very truly,

Robert Louis Stevenson.

The notice I had seen already, and was pleased with.

After the appearance of the review of Underwoods, R. L. S. wrote again:

Dear Mr. Sharp,

What is the townsman’s blunder?—though I deny I am a townsman, for I have lived, on the whole, as much or more in the country: well, perhaps not so much. Is it that the thrush does not sing at night? That is possible. I only know most potently the blackbird (his cousin) does: many and many a late evening in the garden of that poem have I listened to one that was our faithful visitor; and the sweetest song I ever heard was past nine at night in the early spring, from a tree near the[139] N. E. gate of Warriston cemetery. That I called what I believe to have been a merle by the softer name of mavis (and they are all turdi, I believe) is the head and front of my offence against literal severity, and I am curious to hear if it has really brought me into some serious error.

Your article is very true and very kindly put: I have never called my verses poetry: they are verse, the verse of a speaker not a singer; but that is a fair business like another. I am of your mind too in preferring much the Scotch verses, and in thinking “Requiem” the nearest thing to poetry that I have ever “clerkit.”

Yours very truly,

Robert Louis Stevenson.

R. L. S. Saranac, New York.

Mr. Henley wrote:

Merton Place, Chiswick, W.,

5: 7: 88.

My dear Sharp,

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,[141] 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[142] 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[143] 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.

My dear Sharp,

I have now finished your Heine, and can congratulate you upon an excellent piece of biographical work. You are throughout perfectly clear and highly interesting, and, what is more difficult with your subject, accurate and impartial. Or, if there is any partiality it is such as it is becoming in one poet to enlist aid for another. With all one’s worship of Heine’s genius, it must be allowed that he requires a great deal of toleration. The best excuse to be made for him is that his faults were largely faults of race—and just now I feel amiably toward the Jews, for if you have seen the Athenæum you will have observed that I have fallen into the hands of the Philistines. Almost the only point in which I differ from you is as regards your too slight mention of Platen, who seems to me not only a master of form but a true though limited poet—a sort of German Matthew Arnold. Your kind notice of my translation from the Romanzen did not escape[144] me. Something, perhaps, should have been said of James Thomson, the best English translator.

Believe me, my dear Sharp,

Most sincerely yours,

R. Garnett.

Box Hill, Dec. 10, 1887.

Dear Mr. Sharp,

Your Heine gave me pleasure. I think it competently done; and coming as a corrective to Stigund’s work, it brings the refreshment of the antidote. When I have the pleasure of seeing you we will converse upon Heine. Too much of his—almost all of the Love poems drew both tenderness and tragic emotion from a form of sensualism, much of his wit too was wilful—a trick of the mind. Always beware of the devilish in wit: it has the obverse of an intellectual meaning, and it shows at the best interpretation, a smallness of range. Macmillan says that if they can bring out my book “Reading of Earth” on the 18th I may expect it. Otherwise you will not receive a copy until after Christmas.

Faithfully yours,

George Meredith.

Mr. Meredith wrote again after the publication of his poems:

Box Hill, Feb. 15, 1888.

Dear Mr. Sharp,

Yours very cordially,

George Meredith.

It was the late spring before we could visit Mr. Meredith. The day of our going was doubly memorable to me, because as we went along the leafy road from Burford Bridge station we met Mr. and Mrs. Grant Allen—my first meeting with them—whose home was at that time in Dorking. Memorable, too, was the courteous genial greeting from our host and his charming daughter; and the many delightful incidents of that first week end visit. William and Mr. Meredith had long talks in the garden chalet on the edge of the wood. And in the evenings the novelist read aloud to us. On that occasion I think it was he read some chapters from “One of our Conquerors” on which he was working; another time it was from “The Amazing Marriage” and from “Lord Ormont and his Aminta.” The reader’s enjoyment seemed as great as that of his audience, and it interested me to hear how closely his own methods of conversation resembled, in wittiness and brilliance, those of the characters in his novels. Sometimes he turned a merciless play of wit on his listener; but my husband, who was as deeply attached to the man as he admired the writer, enjoyed these verbal duels in which he was usually worsted. The incident of the visit that charmed me most arose from my stating that I had never heard the nightingale. So on the Sunday afternoon we were taken to a stretch of woodland, “my woods of Westermain” the poet smilingly declared, and there, standing among the tree-boles in the late afternoon sun-glow I listened for the bird-notes as he described them to me until he was satisfied I heard aright.

The Xmas of 1888, and the following New Year’s day[146] we passed at Tunbridge Wells, with Mathilde Blind, in rooms overlooking the common. Many delightful hours were spent together in the evenings listening to one or other of the two poets reading aloud their verse, or parts of the novels they had in process. Mathilde was writing her Tarantella; my husband had recently finished a boys’ serial story for Young Folk’s Paper, with a highly sensational plot entitled “The Secret of Seven Fountains,” and was at work on a Romance of a very different order in which he then was deeply interested, though in later life he considered it immature in thought and expression. The boys’ story was one of adventure, of life seen from a purely objective point of view. The Children of To-morrow was the author’s first endeavour to give expression in prose to the more subjective side of his nature, to thoughts, feelings, aspirations he had hitherto suppressed; it is the direct forerunner of the series of romantic tales he afterward wrote as Fiona Macleod; it was also the expression of his attitude of revolt against the limitations of the accepted social system. The writing of the Monograph on Shelley had rekindled many ideas and beliefs he held in common with the earlier poet—ideas concerning love and marriage, viewed not from the standpoint of the accepted practical standard of morality, nor of the possible realisation by the average humanity of a more complex code of social morality, but viewed from the standpoint held by a minority of dreamers and thinkers who look beyond the present strictly guarded, fettered conditions of married life, to a time, when man and woman, equally, shall know that to stultify or slay the spiritual inner life of another human being, through the radical misunderstanding between alien temperaments inevitably tied to one another, is one of the greatest crimes against humanity. That the author knew how visionary for the immediate future were these ideas, which we at that time so eagerly discussed with a little group of intimate sympathetic friends, is shown by the prefatory lines in the book:

[147]

“Forlorn the way, yet with strange gleams of gladness;
Sad beyond words the voices far behind.

Yet we, perplext with our diviner madness,
Must heed them not—the goal is still to find!

What though beset by pain and fear and sorrow,

We must not fail, we Children of To-morrow.”

The Children of To-morrow called forth all manner of divergent opinions. It was called depressing by one critic, and out of touch with realities. Another considered the chief interest of the book to consist “in what may be called its aims. It is clearly an attempt toward greater truth in art and life.” All agreed as to the power displayed in the descriptions of nature. The critic in Public Opinion showed discernment as to the author’s intentions when he wrote “To our mind the delightful irresponsibility of this book, the calm determination which it displays that now, at least, the author means to please himself, to give vent to many a pent up feeling or opinion constitutes one of its greatest charms. This waywardness, the waywardness of a true artist, is shown on almost every page.... Mr. Sharp states his case with wonderful power and lucidity; he draws no conclusions—as an artist they do not concern him—he leaves the decision to the individual temperament.”

Mathilde Blind wrote to the author:

1 St. Edmund’s Terrace, N. W., 1889.

Dear Child of the Future,

You have indeed written a strange, weird, romantic tale with the sound of the sea running through it like an accompaniment. Adama Acosta is a specially well-imagined and truthful character of a high kind; and the intermittent wanderings of his brain have something akin to the wailing notes of the instrument of which he is such a master. But it is in your conception of love—the subtle, delicate, ideal attraction of two beings inevitably drawn to each other by the finest elements of their being—that the charm of the story consists to my mind; on the other hand, you have succeeded in drawing a very realistic and[148] vivid picture of the hard and handsome Lydia, with her purely negative individuality, and in showing the deadly effect which one person may exercise over another in married life—without positive outward wrongdoing which might lead to the divorce court. I agree with you in thinking that the end is the finest part of the Romance, especially the last scene where Dane and Sanpriel are in the wood under the old oak tree, where the voice of the rising storm with its ominous note of destiny is magnificently described. Such a passing away in the mid-most fire of passion on the wings of the elements has always seemed to me the climax of human happiness. But I fear the book is likely to rouse a good deal of opposition in many quarters for the daring disregard of the binding sanctity of the marriage relation. If I may speak quite openly and as a friend who would wish you to do yourself full justice and produce the best work that is in you, I wish you had given yourself more time to work out some of the situations which seem, to me at least, to lack a certain degree of precision and consistency. Thus, for example, Dane after discovering that Ford has been trying to murder him, and is making secret love to his wife, rushes off to the painter’s studio evidently bent on some sort of quarrel or revenge, yet nothing comes of it, and afterwards we find the would-be murderer on outwardly friendly terms with the sculptor on board the house boat. I must tell you by the way how powerful I think the scene of the dying horse in Ratho Sands and the murder of Lydia. I should also have liked to have heard a little more of the real aims and objects of “The Children of the Future” and would like to know whether such an association really exists among any section of the modern Jews; we must talk of that this evening or some other time when we meet. I hope to look in to-night with Sarrazin and Bunand who are coming to a little repast here first. Madox Brown has been reading your book with the greatest interest.

Yours ever,

Mathilde Blind.

CHAPTER IX

FIRST VISIT TO AMERICA

In the Spring of 1889 the Chair of Literature at University College, London, became vacant on the death of Professor Henry Morley; and many of William Sharp’s friends urged him to stand for election. He was of two minds on the subject. His inclinations were against work of the kind, for, temperamentally, he had difficulty in regulating his life in accordance with strict routine. Born, as he would say, with the wandering wave in his blood, the fixed and the inevitable were antipathetic to him. He was, however, awake to the material importance of such a post, to the advantages of a steady income. Had he had himself only to consider he would not have given the proposal a thought; but he believed it to be his duty to attempt to secure the post for his wife’s sake, though she was not of that opinion. Among the many friends who advocated his election were Robert Browning, George Meredith, Walter Pater, Theodore Watts Dunton, Alfred Austin, Dr. Richard Garnett, Prof. Minto, Hall Caine, Sir George Douglas, Aubrey De Vere, Mrs. Augusta Webster. When, however, the date of election drew near, he consulted his doctor and withdrew his candidature. The question, to him, had all along been one of security of means versus freedom of action; and having done his duty in the matter, his relief was great that the decision left him in possession of his freedom.

For some time William Sharp had contemplated a visit to the United States, where he was well known as poet and critic, and had many friendly correspondents. So he considered the moment to be opportune. He decided to go; although he was forbidden to lecture in America, and very opportunely our friend Mrs. Caird asked me to[150] accompany her to Austria—to the Sun-cure at Veldes in the Carpathian Alps. She and I were the first to leave, and eventually, my husband after his return from America joined me at Cologne and accompanied me home.

Meanwhile he made his preparations for a visit to Canada and New York, and just before starting paid a flying visit to Mr. George Meredith who had written to him:

Box Hill, July 15, 1889.

Dear Mr. Sharp,

This would have been headed to your wife, but for the chances of her flying, and the letter after her. Tell her we are grieved to lose the pleasure her company would give, and trust to welcome her on her return. When she looks on Tyrol, let her strain an eye to see my heart on the topmost peak. We hope for your coming on Saturday.

Yours very truly,

George Meredith.

He looked forward to his American tour with keen delight. New experiences were ever alluring; he had the power of throwing himself heart and soul into every fresh enjoyment. Going by himself seemed to promise chances of complete recovery of health; the unexplored and the unknown beckoned to him with promise of excitement and adventure.

As he wrote to Mr. Stedman: “I am a student of much else besides literature. Life in all its manifestations is of passionate interest for me, and I cannot rest from incessant study and writing. Yet I feel that I am but on the threshold of my literary life. I have a life-time of ambitious schemes before me; I may perhaps live to fulfil a tenth part of them.”

Mid-August found him in Canada. Fine as he considered the approach to Nova Scotia, Newfoundland impressed him more. At Halifax he was the guest of the Attorney General. He wrote to me “Mr. and Mrs. Longley[151] were most kind, and so were all the many leading people to whom I was introduced. I was taken to the annual match of the Quoit Club, and was asked to present the Cup to the winner at the close, with a few words if I felt disposed. Partly from being so taken aback, partly from pleased excitement, and partly from despair, I lost all nervousness and made a short and (what I find was considered) humourous speech, so slowly and coolly spoken that I greatly admired it myself!”

At Halifax, which he considered “worth a dozen of the Newfoundland capital,” he was met by Professor Charles Roberts who had come “to intercept me so as to go off with him for a few days in Northern Scotia and across the Straits to Prince Edward Island. So, a few days later Prof. Roberts and I, accompanied for the first 100 miles by Mr. Longley, started for Pictou, which we reached after 5 hours most interesting journey. The Attorney General has kindly asked me to go a three days’ trip with him (some 10 days hence) through the famous Cape Breton district, with the lovely Bras D’Or lakes: and later on he has arranged for a three days’ moose-hunt among the forests of Southern Acadia, where we shall camp out in tents, and be rowed by Indian guides.”

New Glasgow delighted him; he visited Windsor and Halifax: “I went with Charles Roberts and Bliss Carman through Evangeline’s country. En route I travelled on the engine of the train and enjoyed the experience. Grand Pré delighted me immensely—vast meadows, with lumbering wains and the simple old Acadian life. The orchards were in their glory—and the apples delicious! At one farm house we put up, how you would have enjoyed our lunch of sweet milk hot cakes, great bowls of huckleberries and cream, tea, apples, etc.! We then went through the forest belt and came upon the great ocean inlet known as the “basin of Minas,” and, leagues away the vast bulk of Blomidon shelving bough-like into the Sea....”

[152]

To E. A. S.:

(On the St. Lawrence),

12th Sept.

To-day has been a momentous birthday on the whole—and none the less so because I have been alone and, what is to me an infinite relief, quite unknown. I told no one about my Saguenay expedition till the last moment—and so there is nothing definite about me in the papers save that I “abruptly left St. John” (the capital of New Brunswick) and that I am to arrive in Quebec to-morrow. I sent you a card from Rivière du Loup, the northernmost township of the old Acadians, and a delightful place. I reached it early from Temiscouata (the Lake of Winding Water)—a journey of extreme interest and beauty, through a wild and as yet unsettled country. The track has only been open this summer. Before I reached its other end (the junction of the St. John river with the Madawaska) I was heartily sick of New Brunswick, with its oven-like heat, its vast monotonous forests with leagues upon leagues of dead and dying trees, and its all present forest-fires. The latter have caused widespread disaster.... Several times we were scorched by the flames, but a few yards away—and had “to rush” several places. But once in the province of Quebec, and everything changed. The fires (save small desultory ones) disappeared: the pall of smoke lightened and vanished: and the glorious September foliage made a happy contrast to the wearisome hundreds of miles of decayed and decaying firs. It was a most glorious sunset—one of the grandest I have ever seen—and the colour of the vast Laurentian Mountain range, on the north side of the St. Lawrence, superb. It was dark when we reached the mouth of the Saguenay River—said to be the gloomiest and most awe-inspiring river in the world—and began our sail of close upon a hundred miles (it can be followed by canoes for a greater length than Great Britain). The full moon came up, and the scene was grand and solemn beyond words. Fancy fifty miles of sheer mountains, one after another without a valley-break, but simply cleft[153] ravines. The deep gloom as we slowly sailed through the noiseless shadow brooding between Cape Eternity and Cape Trinity was indescribable. We anchored for some hours in “Ha! Ha! Bay,” the famous landing place of the old discoverers. In the early morning we sailed out from Ha! Ha! Bay, and then for hours sailed down such scenery as I have never seen before and never expect to see again.... At Quebec I am first to be the guest of the well-known Dr. Stewart, and then of Mons. Le Moine at his beautiful place out near the Indian Village of Lorette and the Falls of Montmorenci—not far from the famous Plain of Abraham, where Wolfe and Montcalm fought, and an Empire lay in balance.

In New York, William was the guest of Mr. and Mrs. E. C. Stedman at 44 East 26th Street, whence he wrote to me:

“ ... So much has happened since I wrote to you from Montreal that I don’t see how I’m to tell you more than a fraction of it—particularly as I am seldom alone even for five minutes. Last week I left Montreal (after having shot the rapids, etc.) and travelled to Boston via the White Mountains, through the States of Vermont, Connecticut and Massachusetts. Boston is a beautiful place—an exceedingly fine city with lovely environs. Prof. A. S. Hardy (’Passe Rose,’ etc.) was most kind.... Cambridge and Harvard University, are also very fine. I enjoyed seeing Longfellow’s house (Miss L. still occupies it) and those of Emerson, Lowell, etc. I spent brief visits to Prof. Wright of Harvard, to Winsor the historian, etc. On Sunday afternoon I drove with A. S. H. to Belmont in Massachusetts, and spent afternoon with Howells, the novelist. He was most interesting and genial—I had the best of welcomes from the Stedmans. They are kindness personified. The house is lovely, and full of beautiful things and multitudes of books. I have already more invitations than I can accept: every one is most hospitable. I have already met Mr. Gilder, the poet, and editor of the ‘Century’; Mr. Alden of ‘Harpers’; Mr.[154] Bowen, of the ‘Independent’; R. H. Stoddart, the ‘father’ of recent American letters; and heaven knows how many others. I have been elected honorary member of the two most exclusive clubs in N. Y., the ‘Century’ and ‘The Players,’ Next week there is to be a special meeting at the Author’s Club, and I am to be the guest of the evening....”

New York, 1:10:89.

“Can only send you a brief line by this mail. I enjoyed my visit to Mr. Alden at Metuchen in New Jersey very much. Among the new friends I care most for are a married couple called Janvier. They are true Bohemians and most delightful. He is a writer and she an artist ... and both have travelled much in Mexico. We dined together at a Cuban Café last night. He gave me his vol. of stories called ‘Colour Studies’ and she a little sketch of a Mexican haunted house—both addressed to ‘William Sharp. Recuerdo di Amistad y carimo.’”

On leaving New York he wrote to his kind host:

Oct. 8, 1889.

My dear Stedman,

Farewell, meanwhile,

Ever your affectionate,

William Sharp.

This note drew from the American poet the following reply:

My dear Sharp,

Affectionately your friend,

Edmund C. Stedman.

On our return to Hampstead we resumed our Sunday evening gatherings, and among other frequenters came Mr. and Mrs. Henry Harland, with an introduction from Mr. W. D. Howells. From Mr. George Meredith came a charming welcome home.

Box Hill (Dorking),

Nov. 22, 1889.

My dear Sharp,

Yours warmly,

George Meredith.

We went. As we walked across the fields to the cottage Mr. Meredith came through his garden gate to meet us, raised high his hat and voiced a welcome, “Hail daughter of the Sun!”

CHAPTER X

BROWNING

The Joseph Severn Memoirs

To William Sharp, as to many others, the closing days of 1899 brought a deep personal sorrow in the death of Robert Browning. The younger man had known him for several years, and had always received a warm welcome from the Poet in his house in Warwick Crescent which, with its outlook on the water of broad angle of the canal with its little tree clad island, he declared laughingly, reminded him of Venice. And kindly he was too, when, coming to the first of our “At Homes” in South Hampstead, he assured me with a genial smile “I like to come, because I know young people like to have me.”

“It is needless to dwell upon the grief everywhere felt and expressed for the irreparable loss” (W. S. wrote in his monograph on Browning). The magnificent closing lines of Shelley’s “Alastor” have occurred to many a mourner, for gone indeed was “a surpassing Spirit.” The superb pomp of the Venetian funeral, the solemn grandeur of the interment in Westminster Abbey, do not seem worth recording: so insignificant are all these accidents of death made by the supreme fact itself. Yet it is fitting to know that Venice has never in modern times afforded a more impressive sight than those of craped processional gondolas following the high flower-strewn famous barge through the thronged water-ways and out across the lagoon to the desolate Isle of the Dead: that London has rarely seen aught more solemn than the fog-dusked Cathedral spaces, echoing at first with the slow tramp of the pall-bearers, and then with the sweet aerial music swaying upward the loved familiar words of the “Lyric Voice” hushed so long before. Yet the poet was as much honoured by those humble friends, Lambeth artificers and[159] a few working-women, who threw sprays of laurel before the hearse—by that desolate, starving, woe-weary gentleman, shivering in his thread-bare clothes, who seemed transfixed with a heart-wrung though silent emotion, ere he hurriedly drew from his sleeve a large white chrysanthemum, and throwing it beneath the coffin as it was lifted upward, disappeared in the crowd, which closed again like the sea upon this lost wandering wave.”

But it was nevertheless difficult to realise that the stimulating presence had passed away and the cheerful voice was silent: “It seems but a day or two that I heard from the lips of the dead poet a mockery of death’s vanity—a brave assertion of the glory of life. ‘Death, death! It is this harping on death I despise so much,’” he remarked with emphases of gesture as well as of speech—the inclined head and body, the right hand lightly placed upon the listener’s knee, the abrupt change in the inflection of the voice, all so characteristic of him—“this idle and often cowardly as well as ignorant harping! Why should we not change like everything else? In fiction, in poetry, in so much of both, French as well as English, and, I am told, in American art and literature, the shadow of death—call it what you will, despair, negation, indifference—is upon us. But what fools who talk thus! Why, amico mio, you know as well as I that death is life, just as our daily, our momentarily dying body is none the less alive and ever recreating new forces of existence. Without death, which is our crapelike churchyardy word for change, for growth, there could be no prolongation of what we call life. Pshaw! it is foolish to argue upon such a thing even. For myself, I deny death as an end of everything. Never say of me that I am dead!”

On the 4th January, 1890, W. S. wrote to Mr. Thomas A. Janvier:

London.

Many thanks for the Aztec Treasure House, which opens delightfully and should prove a thrilling tale. I don’t know how you feel, but for myself I shall never again publish serially till I have completed the story[160] aforehand. You will have seen that I have been asked and have agreed to write the critical monograph on Browning for the Great Writer’s Series. This involves a harassing postponement of other work, and considerable financial loss, but still I am glad to do it.

The Harlands spent New Year’s Day with us, and the Champagne was not finished without some of it being quaffed in memory of the dear and valued friends oversea. You, both of you, must come over this spring.

Ever yours,

William Sharp.

With each New Year a Diary was begun with the intention of its being carefully continued throughout the months, an intention however that inevitably was abandoned as the monotony of the fulfilment palled upon the writer.

The Diary for 1890 begins with a careful record of work and events, noted daily till mid February when it ceases, to be resumed more fitfully in September and October. The year is prefaced with the motto:

“C’est à ce lendemain sevère que tout artiste sérieux doit songer.”—Sainte Beuve.

The following more important entries tell where and how the monograph was written and what other work he had on hand:

There is darkness everywhere;
Scarce is the city limned

In shadow on the lagoon.

No wind in the heavy air.
The stars themselves are dimmed,

And a mist veils the moon.

“After lunch took T. Mavor to Alfred East’s to see his Japanese pictures. Then I took T. M. to John M. Swan’s Studio. Then we went to spend half an hour with Stepniak and his wife at 13 Grove Gardens.”

“Jan. 13th.—Late in settling down, and then disinclined to write except in verse. Wrote the second and final part of the Elegaic Browning Poem for Belford’s Magazine. It is not often that I indulge in inversions: but the gain is sometimes noticeable. I think it is in this stanza:

Alas, greatness is not, nor is
There aught that is under the sun,

Nor any mortal thing,

Neither the heights of bliss
Nor the depths of evil done,

Unshadowed by Death’s wing.”

He soon found that it was impossible to write the monograph in London—with its ceaseless demands and distractions. Under the pressure of much work he became so unwell that we realised he could not finish the book under existing conditions, therefore arranged that he should leave me in charge of work at home and he should go to Hastings and devote himself mainly to his Browning. On the 18th he records, from rooms overlooking the sea “Blew a gale at night. The noise of the sea like a vast tide in a hollow echoing cavern: and a shrill screaming wail in the wind. Began my Life of Browning. To bed at 12.”

Then follows a record of the work done day by day: on the 19th, twelve printed pages: on the 20th ten pages: on the 21st four only because he lunched with Coventry Patmore who was then residing at Hastings. On the[164] 22nd, thirteen pages; on the 23rd, eleven pages, and five letters.

Jan. 26th has this note: “We can no more predict Browning’s place in literature as it will be esteemed by posterity than we can specify the fauna and flora of a planet whose fires have not yet sufficiently cooled to enable vegetation to grow.”

His stay at Hastings was rendered pleasant by the neighbourliness of Coventry Patmore with whom he had many long talks, and by occasional visits to Miss Betham Edwards who had a house on the hill beyond the old castle.

He returned to town at the beginning of February.

On the 4th he wrote “the first scene of a Play (to be called either “The Lover’s Tragedy,” or “The Tower of Silence”) which was afterward rewritten and published in Vistas as “A Northern Night.”

The Diary continues:

Here the Diary abruptly ends. I do not recollect on what date the Browning was finished, but it was published in the early autumn. And I have no recollection as to what became of The Ordeal of Basil Hope, whether or not it ever appeared serially, but I think not. It never was issued in book form—and from the time we gave up the house in Goldhurst Terrace he never gave it a thought. It was characteristic of him that when a piece of work was finished or discarded, it passed wholly out of his mind, for his energies were always centred on his work on hand and on that projected.

He was a careful student of the progress of contemporary literatures—especially French (including Belgian) Italian and American—and during the spring and summer he wrote a long article on American literature for The National Review, an article on D’Annunzio for The Fortnightly. He also prepared a volume in English of selected Essays of St. Beuve for which he wrote a careful critical Preface.

The three years at Hampstead had been happy and successful. William had regained health; and had a command of work that made the ways of life pleasant. We had about us a genial sympathetic group of friends, and were in touch with many keen minds of the day. Temperamentally he could work or play with equal jest and enjoyment; he threw himself whole-heartedly into whatever he did. Observant, keenly intuitive, he cared to come into contact with all kinds and types of men and women;[166] cared continually to test the different minds and temperaments he came across, providing always that they had a vital touch about them, and were not comatosely conventional. Curious about life, he cared incessantly to experiment; restless and never satisfied (I do not mean dissatisfied) he constantly desired new fields for this experimentation. Therefore, happy though he had been at Wescam, successful as that experiment had proved, he felt it had served its turn and he longed for different circumstances, different environment, new possibilities in which to attempt to give fuller expression of himself. He realised that nothing more would happen under the then existing conditions, satisfactory though they seemed externally; that indeed the satisfactoriness was a chain that was winding round him and fettering him to a form of life that was becoming rigid and monotonous, and, therefore, paralysing to all those inner impulses. His visit to America had re-awakened the desire to wander. So we gave up our house, stored our furniture, and planned to go abroad for the first winter and leave the future “in the lap of the Gods”; for was he not “of the unnumbered clan that know a longing that is unquiet as the restless wave ...” the “deep hunger for experience, even if it be bitter, the longing for things known to be unattainable, the remembrance that strives for rebirth.” That summer he wrote to Mr. Stedman:

“ ... You will ere this have received the copy of the little book of Great Odes: English and American which I sent to you. I think I told you that your own beautiful ‘Ode to Pastoral Romance’ has appealed to many people, and will, I hope and believe, send new readers to you, among the new generation, as a poet. Well, we are breaking up our home, and are going to leave London for a long time—probably for ever as a fixed ‘residentz platz.’ Most of my acquaintances think I am very foolish thus to withdraw from the ‘thick of the fight’ just when things are going so well with me, and when I am making a good and rapidly increasing income—for I am giving up nearly every appointment I hold, and am going abroad,[167] having burned my ships behind me, and determined to begin literary life anew. But, truly enough, wisdom does not lie in money making—not for the artist who cares for his work at any rate. I am tired of so much pot-boiling, such increasing bartering of literary merchandise: and wish to devote myself entirely—or as closely as the fates will permit—to work in which my heart is. I am buoyant with the belief that it is in me to do something both in prose and verse far beyond any hitherto accomplishment of mine: but to stay here longer, and let the net close more and more round me, would be fatal. Of course I go away at a heavy loss. My income will at once drop to zero, and even after six months or so will scarce have risen a few degrees above that awkward limit—though ultimately things may readjust themselves. Yet I would rather—I am ready—I should say we are ready—to live in the utmost economy if need be. We shall be none the less happy: for my wife, with her usual loving unselfishness and belief in me, is as eager as I am for the change, despite all the risks. Among the younger writers few have the surely not very high courage necessary to give up something of material welfare for the sake of art. As for us, we are both at heart Bohemians—and are well content if we can have good shelter, enough to eat, books, music, friends, sunshine and free nature—all of which we can have with the scantiest of purses. Perhaps I should be less light-hearted in the matter if I thought that our coming Bohemian life might involve my wife in hard poverty when my hour comes, but fortunately her future is assured. So henceforth, in a word, I am going to take down the board

WILLIAM SHARP
Literary Manufacturer
(All kinds of jobs undertaken)

and substitute:

WILLIAM SHARP
Given up Business: Moved to Bohemia.
Publishers and Editors Need not Apply.
Friends can write to W. S. % “Drama” “Fiction” or “Poetry,”
Live-as-you-will Quarter, Bohemia.

[168]

This day week we leave our house for good. My wife and I then go into Hampshire to breathe the hay and the roses for a week at a friend’s place, 7 miles across the Downs north of Winchester: then back to London to stay with our friend, Mrs. Mona Caird, till about the 20th of July. About that date we go to Scotland, to my joy, till close on the end of September. Thereafter we return to London for a week or so, and then go abroad. We are bound first for the lower Rhineland, and intend to stay at Heidelberg (being cheap, pretty, thoroughly German, with good music and a good theatre) for about two months. Then, about the beginning of December, we go to Rome, where we intend to settle: climatic, financial, and other considerations will decide whether we remain there longer than six months, but six ideal months at least we hope for. Mihi sex menses satis sunt vitæ septimum Orco spondeo.

That summer we went to Clynder on the Gareloch, Argyll, in order to be near my husband’s old friend, Dr. Donald Macleod, who, as he records in his diary “sang to me with joyous abandonment a Neapolitan song, and asked me to send him a MS. from Italy for Good Words.” While we were in the West we made acquaintance with the poet-editor of The Yorkshire Herald, George Cotterell, who became a dear and valued friend. I cannot recall if it were in the early summer of 1889 or 1890 that my husband was first approached on the subject of the Joseph Severn Memoirs, but I remember the circumstance. We spent a week-end in Surrey with some old friends of my mother, Sir Walter and Lady Hughes, and one morning Mr. Walter Severn, the painter, walked over to luncheon. He spoke about my husband’s Life of Rossetti, then of the quantity of unpublished MSS. he and his family had written by and relating to his father, Joseph Severn, “the friend of Keats.” Finally he proposed that his listener should take over the MSS., put them in form and write a Life of Severn, with, as the special point of literary interest, his father’s devoted[169] friendship with and care of the dying poet. After considerable deliberation, W. S. agreed to undertake the work, and arrangements were made with Messrs. Samson Low to publish it. The preparing of this Memoir brought him into pleasant relationship not only with Mr. Walter Severn, and with Mr. and Mrs. Arthur Severn, but also with Ruskin, who he visited later at Coniston, where he was delighted, among other things, with the fine collection of minerals and stones that was one of Ruskin’s hobbies.

The preparation of The Joseph Severn Memoirs necessarily entailed correspondence with members and friends of that family, among others with W. W. Story, the sculptor, who sent him the following information:

“I knew Mr. Severn at Rome and frequently met and saw him but I can recall nothing which would be of value to you. He was, as you know, a most pleasant man—and in the minds of all is associated with the memory of Keats by whose side he lies in the Protestant Cemetery at Rome. When the bodies were removed, as they were several years ago, and laid side by side, there was a little funeral ceremony and I made an address on the occasion in honour and commemoration of the two friends. I remember we then had hoped that Lord Houghton would have been able to be present as he had promised. But he was taken ill in the East, where he was then journeying, and I had to express the fear lest the ceremony might be a commemoration not only of two but of the three friends so intimately associated together. However, Houghton did recover from the attack and came afterward to Rome, sadly broken.”

Early in October my husband and I crossed to Antwerp and stopped at Bonn. The Rhine disappointed William’s expectations. He wrote to a friend: “The real charm of the Rhine, beyond the fascination that all rivers and riverine scenery have for most people, is that of literary and historical romance. The Rhine is in this respect the Nile of Europe: though probably none but Germans feel thus strongly. For myself I cannot but think it ought not[170] to be a wholly German river, but from every point of view be the Franco-German boundary.... Germany has much to gain from a true communion with its more charming neighbour. The world would jog on just the same if Germany were annihilated by France, Russia and Italy: but the disappearance of brilliant, vivacious, intellectual France would be almost as serious a loss to intellectual Europe, as would be to the people at large the disappearance of the Moon.”

From Rome he wrote to Mrs. Janvier:

Dec., 1890.

These various schemes planned mentally were never realised. William constantly projected and of the roughly drafted out possible work that absorbed him during its conception, but was put aside when a more dominating idea demanded full expression. “Bacchus in India” remained a fragment. Neither the tragedy nor that prose play was finished, and the philosophical work was never begun. A new impulse came, new work grew out of the impressions of that Roman winter which swept out of his mind all other cartooned work.

CHAPTER XI

ROME

Sospiri di Roma

Winter in Rome was one long delight to the emancipated writer. It amply fulfilled even his optimistic anticipation. He revelled in the sunshine and the beauty; he was in perfect health; his imagination was quickened and worked with great activity. We had about us a little group of friends, who, like ourselves, intended to live quietly and simply. Among these were Mrs. Caird who had come abroad for her health; Sir Charles Holroyd, who had a studio in the Via Margoutta, and Mr. and Mrs. Elihu Vedder. Mrs. Wingate Rinder joined us for three weeks, and with her my husband greatly enjoyed long walks over the Campagna and expeditions to the little neighbouring hill towns. His Diary for the beginning of 1891 was kept with creditable regularity, and contains a record of some of these expeditions and of work done in Rome, in particular of the dates on which the poems of Sospiri di Roma were written. From it I have selected entries.

“As hill winds and sun and rains inweave a veil
Of lichen round vast boulders on the mountain side.”

were out of keeping in imagery with the rest: and in every way

“As some aerial spirit weaves a rainbow veil
Of Mist, his high immortal loveliness to hide.”

“There is a land of dream:
I have trodden its golden ways:
I have seen its amber light
From the heart of its sun-swept days:
I have seen its moonshine white
On its silent waters gleam—
Ah, the strange, sweet, lonely delight
Of the Valleys of Dream!”

Returning by the Pincian Gate, about 5.45 there was a strange sight. Perfectly still in the sombre Via di Mura, with high walls to the right, but the upper pines and cypresses swaying in a sudden rush of wind: to the left a drifting snow-storm: to the right wintry moonshine: vivid sweeping pulsations of lightning from the Campagna, and long low muttering growls of thunder. (The red light from a window in the wall.)

Jan. 19th. After dinner read a good deal of Beddoes to Lill.... How like Poe the first stanza of ‘The Old Ghost’: every now and again there is a gleam of rare moon-white beauty, as in the lovely 3rd stanza of ‘The Ballad of Human Life’—the first quatrain of the 2nd stanza of ‘Dial Thoughts,’ and that beautiful line in the fantastic and ultra-Shelleyian ‘Romance of the Lily,’

‘As Evening feeds the waves with brooks of quiet life.’

ill180

WILLIAM SHARP
After a pastel drawing by Charles Ross, 1891

[181]

In “Spuma dal Mare” I have attempted to give something of the many-coloured aspects of the sea. It is absurd to keep on always speaking of it as blue, or green, or even grey. The following portion is as true as practicable, whatever other merits they may have:

Here the low breakers are rolling thro’ shallows,
Yellow and muddied, the line of topaz
Ere cut from the boulder:
Save when the sunlight swims through them slantwise,
When inward they roll,
Long billows of amber,
Crown’d with pale yellow
And gray-green spume.
Here wan gray their slopes
Where the broken lights reach them,
Dull gray of pearl, and dappled and darkling,
As when, ‘mid the high
Northward drift of the clouds,
Sirocco bloweth
With soft fanning breath.

Charles M. Ross (Norwegian painter), and Julian Corbett (author of “The Life of Drake”) called on me today. Mr. Ross wants to paint me in pastel and has asked me to go to-morrow for that purpose.”

In mid-March I went to Florence in advance of my husband; and he and Mr. Corbett spent a few days together at the Albergo Sybilla Tivoli—where their sitting-room faced the Temple of Vesta—so that he could superintend there the printing of his “Sospiri.” The two authors worked in the morning, and took walks in the afternoon. The Diary records one expedition:

March 23. After lunch J. C. and I caught the train for Palombaria Marcellina meaning to ascend to Palombara: but we mistook the highest and most isolated mountain town, in the Sabines and after two hours of an[182] exceedingly wild and rugged and sometimes almost impossible mule-path, etc., we reached the wonderfully picturesque and interesting San Polo dei Cavalieri. Bought a reed pipe from a shepherd who was playing a Ranz des Vaches among the slopes just below San Polo. The mediæval castle in the middle of the narrow crooked picturesque streets very fine. Had some wine from a comely woman who lived in the lower part of the castle. Then we made our way into the Sabines by Vicovaro, and Castel Madama, and home late to Tivoli, very tired.

Certain tales told to him by the Italian woman, and the picturesque town and its surroundings formed the basis of the story “The Rape of the Sabines” which appeared later in The Pagan Review. At the end of March he left Rome, to his great regret; he joined me at Pisa and thence we journeyed to Provence and stayed awhile at Arles, whence he wrote to Mrs. Janvier:

30: 3: 91.

Gento Catarino,

Letters from Mr. Meredith and Miss Blind, in acknowledgment of the privately published volume of poems, greatly pleased their author:

Box Hill, April 15, 1891.

Dear Sharp,

Yours ever,

George Meredith.

May 18, 1891.

Dear Will,

I got the copy you sent me of Sospiri di Roma.... Your nature feeling is always so intense and genuine that I would have liked my own mood to be more completely in harmony with yours before writing to you about what is evidently so spontaneous an outcome of your true self. I should have wished to identify myself with this joy in the beauty of the world which bubbles up fountainlike from every one of these sparkling Roman transcripts, why called “Sospiri” I hardly know. One envies you the ebullient delight which must have flooded your veins before you could write many of these verses, notably “Fior di Primavera,” “Red Poppies,” and “The White Peacock”: the effect of colour and movement produced in these last two seems to be particularly happy, as also the descriptions of the sea of roses in the first which vividly recalled to me the prodigal wealth of blossom on the Riviera. I thoroughly agree with what George Meredith says of the sketch of “The Wild Mare,” the lines of which seem as quiveringly alive as the high strung nerves of these splendid creatures.

“August Afternoon in Rome” is also an admirable bit of impressionism and, if I remember, just that effect—

[185]

Far in the middle-flood, adrift, unoar’d,
A narrow boat, swift-moving, black,
Follows the flowing wave like a living thing.

By and by if I should get to some “place of nestling green for poets made” I hope to get more deeply into the spirit of your book.

Come to see me as soon as ever you and Lill can manage it, either separately or together.

Always yours,

Mathilde Blind.

Concerning certain criticisms on Sospiri di Roma he wrote to Mrs. Janvier:

1st May, 1891.

... Whether coming with praise or with blame and cast me to the perdition of the unrighteous, the critics all seem unable to take the true standpoint—namely, that of the poet. What has he attempted, and how far has he succeeded or failed? That is what should concern them. It is no good to any one or to me to say that I am a Pagan—that I am “an artist beyond doubt, but one without heed to the cravings of the human heart: a worshipper of the Beautiful, but without religion, without an ethical message, with nothing but a vain cry for the return, or it may be the advent, of an impossible ideal.” Equally absurd to complain that in these “impressions” I give no direct “blood and bones” for the mind to gnaw at and worry over. Cannot they see that all I attempt to do is to fashion anew something of the lovely vision I have seen, and that I would as soon commit forgery (as I told some one recently) as add an unnecessary line, or “play” to this or that taste, this or that critical opinion. The chief paper here in Scotland shakes its head over “the nude sensuousness of ‘The Swimmer of Nemi,’ ‘The Naked Rider,’ ‘The Bather,’ ‘Fior di Memoria,’ ‘The Wild Mare’ (whose ‘fiery and almost savage realism!’ it depreciates—tho’ this is the poem which Meredith says is ‘bound to live’) and evidently thinks[186] artists and poets who see beautiful things and try to fashion them anew beautifully, should be stamped out, or at any rate left severely alone....

In work, creative work above all, is the sovereign remedy for all that ill which no physician can cure: and there is a joy in it which is unique and invaluable.

For a time, however, creative work had to be put aside. The preparation of The Life and Letters of Joseph Severn was a hard grind that lasted till mid-August. At Whitby, on the 13th, according to his diary he “wrote 25 pp. digest of Severn’s novel and worked at other things. Later I wrote the concluding pages, finishing the book at 2 A.M. I can hardly believe that this long delayed task is now accomplished. But at last “Severn” is done!”

The final revision occupied him till the 28th August, and in order to finish it before we went abroad on the 27th he wrote “all morning till 1 p.m.; again from 9 p.m. all night unbrokenly till 7 A.M. Then read a little to rest my brain and wrote four letters. Had a bath and breakfast and felt all right.”

The 24th has the interesting entry: “Met old Charles Severn at the Italian Restaurant near Portland Road Station and had a long talk with him. He confirmed his previous statement (end of September last year) about Keats having written “The Ode to the Nightingale” under “The Spaniards on Hampstead Heath.”

September found us in Stuttgart in order that my husband should collaborate with the American novelist Blanche Willis Howard. The first days were spent in wandering about the lovely hillsides around the town, which he described to Mrs. Janvier:

Johannes Strasse 33,

3: 9: 91.

His Diary also testifies to his exultant mood:

Wednesday, 2:9:1891.—Another glorious day. This flood of sunshine is like new life: it is new life. I rejoice in the heat and splendour of it. It seems to get into the heart and brain, and it intoxicates with a strange kind of rapture.... How intensely one lives sometimes, even when there is little apparently to call forth quintessential emotion. This afternoon was a holiday of the soul. And yet how absolutely on such a day one realises the savage in one. I suppose I was a gipsy once: a ‘wild man’ before: a wilder beast of prey before that. We all hark back strangely at times. To-day I seemed to remember much.... What a year this has been for me: the richest and most wonderful I have known. Were I as superstitious as Polycrates I should surely sacrifice[189] some precious thing lest the vengeful gods should say “Thou hast lived too fully: Come!...”

The following extracts from William’s Diary indicate the method of the collaboration used by the two authors:

CHAPTER XII

WALT WHITMAN

The Pagan Review

The brilliant summer was followed by a damp and foggy autumn. My husband’s depression increased with the varying of the year. While I was on a visit to my mother he wrote to me, after seeing me in the morning:

Grosvenor Club, Nov. 9th, 1891.

His health was so seriously affected by the fogs that it became imperative that he should get into purer air so he decided to fulfil his intention of going to New York even though he had been forced to relinquish all ideas of lecturing. There were various publishing matters to attend to, and many friends to visit. In a letter to Mrs. Janvier, announcing his projected visit, he tells her of the particular work he had on hand:

“You will be the first to hear my new imaginative work. Although in a new method, it is inherently more akin to “Romantic Ballads” than to “Sospiri,” but it is intense dramatic prose. There is one in particular I wish to read to you—three weeks from now.” And he adds, “Do you not long for the warm days—for the beautiful living pulsing South? This fierce cold and gloom is mentally benumbing.... Yes you are right: there are few women and perhaps fewer men who have the passion of Beauty—of the thrilling ecstasy of life.”

During his short stay in New York he was made the welcome guest of Mr. and Mrs. Clarence Stedman; and he delighted in this opportunity of again meeting his good friends Mr. and Mrs. Richard Stoddart, Mr. Alden, Mr. Howells, etc. But his chief interest was a memorable visit to Walt Whitman, in whose fearless independent, mental outlook, and joy in life, in whose vigorous individual verse, he had found incentive and refreshment. Armed with an introduction from Mr. Stedman he pilgrimaged to Camden, New Jersey, on January 23rd, and found the veteran poet in bed propped up with pillows, very feeble, but bright-eyed and mentally alert. William described the visit in a letter to me:

“During a memorable talk on the literature of the two countries past and to come, the conversation turned upon a vivid episode. ‘That was when you were young?’ I[194] asked. The patriarchal old poet—who lay in his narrow bed, with his white beard, white locks, and ashy-grey face in vague relief, in the afternoon light, against the white pillows and coverlet—looked at me before he answered, with that half audacious, wholly winsome glance so characteristic of him, ‘Now, just you tell me when you think that was!’

“Then, with sudden energy, and without waiting for a reply, he added, ‘Young? I’m as young now as I was then! What’s this grey tangle’ (and as he spoke he gave his straggling beard an impatient toss),’and this decrepit old body got to do with that, eh? I never felt younger, and I’m glad of it—against what’s coming along. That’s the best way to shift camp, eh? That’s what I call Youth!’”

When the younger man bade him farewell Whitman gave him a message to take back with him across the seas. “He said to me with halting breath: ‘William Sharp when you go back to England, tell those friends of whom you have been speaking, and all others whom you may know and I do not that words fail me to express my deep gratitude to them for sympathy and aid truly enough beyond acknowledgment. Good-bye to you and to them—the last greetings of a tired old poet.’”

The impression made on my husband, by the fearless serene attitude of the great poet found expression in the few lines that flashed into his mind, when on March 29th he read in a London evening paper of the death of Walt Whitman:

IN MEMORIAM

He laughed at Life’s Sunset-Gates
With vanishing breath,

Glad soul, who went with the sun
To the Sunrise of death.

While William was in New York Mr. Stedman was asked by Mr. J. W. Young to approach his guest with a request that he should “lecture” at Harvard upon a subject of contemporary Literature. “Quite a number of[195] Harvard men are anxious to see and hear Mr. Sharp if he will consent to come to Cambridge.”

It was with genuine regret that, owing to his doctor’s strict prohibition, William felt himself obliged to refuse this flattering request. He had also been asked by Mr. Palmer “the leading theatrical Boss in the States to sell to him the rights of my play on ‘A Fellowe and his Wife,’” a proposal which he declined.

On his return to England he wrote to Mr. Janvier:

“Dear Old Man,

The immediate outcome of his visit to America was the publication, by Messrs. Chas. Webster & Co., of his Romantic Ballads and Sospiri di Roma in one volume entitled Flower O’ the Vine. It was prefaced by a flattering Introduction by Mr. Janvier, to whom the author wrote in acknowledgment:

Paris, 23d April, 1892.

... Many thanks for your letter, my dear fellow, and for the “Introduction,” which I have just read. I thank you most heartily for what you say there, which seems[196] to me, moreover, if I may say so, at once generous, fittingly reserved, and likely to win attention. You yourself occupy such a high place in Letters oversea that such a recommendation of my verse cannot but result to my weal. I have been so deep in work and engagements, that I have been unable to attend to any correspondence of late—and have, I fear, behaved somewhat churlishly to friends across the water, and particularly to my dear friends at 27th Avenue. But now the pressure of work is over for the moment: my London engagements or their ghosts are vainly calling to me d’Outre-Manche: I am keeping down my too cosmopolitan acquaintanceship in Paris to the narrowest limit: and on and after the second of May am going to reform and remain reformed. If you don’t object to a little “roughing,” you would enjoy being with me and mes camarades this coming week. We like extremes, so after a week or so of the somewhat feverish Bohemianism of literary and artistic Paris, we shall be happy at our ‘gipsy’ encampment in the Forest of Fontainebleau (at a remote and rarely-visited but lovely and romantic spot between the Gorge de Franchard and the Gorge d’Apremont). Spring is now here in all her beauty: and there is a divine shimmer of green everywhere. Paris itself is en fête with her vividly emerald limes and sycamores, and the white and red spires of the chestnuts must make the soul of the west wind that is now blowing rejoice with gladness. The Seine itself is of a paler green than usual, and is suggestive of those apple-hued canals and conduits of Flanders and by the ‘dead cities’ of north-east Holland. I forget if you know Paris—but there is one of its many fountains that has an endless charm for me: that across the Seine, between the Quai des Grands Augustins and the Bld. St. Germain—the Fontaine St. Michel—I stood watching the foaming surge and splash of it for some time yesterday, and the pearl-grey and purple-hued doves that flew this way and that through the sunlit spray. It brought, as it always does, many memories of beloved Rome and Italy back to me. I turned—and saw Paul Verlaine beside me:[197] and I was in Paris again, the Paris of Paris, the Aspasia of the cities of the World, the only city whom one loves and worships (and is betrayed by) as a woman. Then I went round to Leon Vanier’s, where there were many of les Jeunes—Jean Moréas, Maurice Barrès, Cazals, Renard, Eugène Holland, and others (including your namesake, Janvier). To-night I ought to go to the weekly gathering of a large number of les Jeunes at the Café du Soleil d’Or, that favourite meeting place now of les décadents, les symbolistes, and les everything else. But I can’t withstand this flooding sunshine, and sweet wind, and spraying of waters, and toss-toss and shimmer-shimmer of blossoms and leaves; so I’ll probably be off. This won’t be off if I don’t shut up in a double sense.

My love to ‘Kathia’ and to you, dear fellow Pagans.

Ever yours rejoicingly,

William Sharp.

Tell K. that when I have ‘reformed’ I’ll write to her. Don’t let her be impertinent, and say that this promise will be fulfilled ad Græcas Kalendas!

P. S. Here are my proposed ‘coming-movements.’

(1) Lill joins me in Paris about 10 days hence, and remains to see the two Salons, etc.

(2) From the middle of May till the middle (14th) of July we shall be in London.

(3) Then Lill goes with friends to Germany, to Bayreuth (for Wagnerian joys) and I go afoot and aboat among the lochs and isles and hills of the western Scottish Highlands.

(4) We meet again in Stirling or Edinburgh, early in August—and then, having purchased or hired a serviceable if not a prancing steed, we go off for three weeks vagabondage. The steed is for Lill and our small baggage and a little tent. We’ll sometimes sleep out: sometimes at inns, or in the fern in Highlander’s cottages. Thereafter I shall again go off by myself to the extreme west “where joy and melancholy are one, and where youth and age are twins” as the Gaelic poet says.

[198]

(5) The rest of September visiting in Scotland.

(6) Part of October in London then (O Glad Tidings)

(7) Off for 6 months to the South: first to the Greek side of Sicily: then to Rome (about Xmas) for the Spring. Finally: a Poor-house in London.

The reply came swiftly:

New York, 6: 5: 92.

My dear Sharp,

Your letter of April 3rd is like a stirring fresh wind. The vigour of it is delightful, and a little surprising, considering what you had been about. I will not cast stones at you—and, if you ran on schedule time, you have been reformed for four days. Your announcement that you intend to stay reformed is fine in its way. What a noble imagination you have! I am glad that you tolerate my ‘introduction.’ As Kate wrote you, I was very wretched—unluckily for you—when it was written. I wish that it were better in itself and more worthy of you. But the milk is spilled. The book will look very well, I think.... Your programme for the ensuing year fills me with longing. Even the London poorhouse at the end of it don’t alarm me. Colonel Newcome was brought up in a poorhouse—or a place of that nature; and, even without such a precedent I should be willing to go to a poor-house for a while after such a glorious year. Joy and good luck attend you, my dear fellow, as you go upon your gay way!...

Always yours,

T. A. J.

A Fellowe and his Wife had in the early spring been published in America and England, and also in the Tauchnitz Collection, and had a flattering reception in both countries. It had been preceded in February by the Life and Letters of Joseph Severn published by Messrs. Sampson Low & Co.

Among various articles written during the early summer for the Academy were one on Philip Marston, and one on Maeterlinck; and in the July number of the[199] Forum was an appreciation of Thomas Hardy—to whom he had made a flying visit in March.

In acknowledgment he received the following note from the novelist:

Max Gate, Dorchester,

July, 1892.

My dear Sharp,

It did give me a great deal of pleasure to read the article in the Forum, and what particularly struck me was your power of grasping the characteristics of this district and people in a few hours visit, during which, so far as I could see, you were not observing anything. I wish the execution of the novels better justified the generous view you take.

Yours sincerely,

Thomas Hardy.

Our delightful plans for the autumn were not carried out; for, during a visit to the art critic, J. Stanley Little, at Rudgwick, Sussex, my husband saw a little cottage which attracted him and we decided to take it as a pied-à-terre. Pending negotiations we stayed with Mr. and Mrs. Caird at Northbrook, Micheldever, where W. S. began to plan out the scheme of a new quarterly Review that was “to be the expression of a keen pagan delight in nature.” I quote from his Diary:

Regretfully the wanderings in the Highlands had to be postponed although the projector of the Review went for a time to Loch Goil with a friend and I to Bayreuth. In August we settled in the little eight-roomed cottage, near Rudgwick, with a little porch, an orchard and garden, and small lawn with a chestnut tree in its midst. We remained at Phenice Croft two years and took much pleasure in the little green enclosure that was our own. The views from it were not extensive. A stretch of fields and trees lay in front of the house, and from the side lawn we could see an old mill whose red brick roof had been weathered to picturesque shades of green. Phenice Croft stood at the edge of a little hamlet called Buck’s Green, and across the road from our garden gate stood the one shop flanked by a magnificent poplar tree, that made a landmark however far we might wander. It was a perpetual delight to us. William Sharp settled down at once to the production of his quarterly to be called, finally, The Pagan Review, edited by himself as W. H. Brooks. As he had no contributors, for he realised he would have to attract them, he himself wrote the whole of the Contents under various pseudonyms. It was published[201] on August 15th, 1892; the cover bore the motto “Sic transit gloria Grundi” and this list of contents:

The Editorial announced a promised article on “The New Paganism” from the pen of H. P. Siwäarmill, but it was never written.

As the Foreword gives an idea, not only of the Editor’s project, but also of his mental attitude at that moment—a sheer revelling in the beauty of objective life and nature, while he rode for a brief time on the crest of the wave of health and exuberant spirits that had come to him in Italy after his long illness and convalescence—I reprint it in its entirety.

“... is not meat

For little people or for fools.”

To quote from Mr. Meredith once more:

“... these things are life:

And life, they say, is worthy of the Muse.”

But we are well aware that this is just what “they” don’t say. “They,” “the general public,” care very little about the “Muse” at all; and the one thing they never advocate or wish is that the “Muse” should be so indiscreet as to really withdraw from life the approved veils of Convention.

Nevertheless, we believe that there is a by no means numerically insignificant public to whom The Pagan Review may appeal; though our paramount difficulty will be to reach those who, owing to various circumstances, are out of the way of hearing aught concerning the most recent developments in the world of letters.

⁂

The Pagan Review conveys, or is meant to convey, a good deal by its title. The new paganism is a potent leaven in the yeast of the “younger generation,” without as yet having gained due recognition, or even any sufficiently apt and modern name, any scientific designation. The “new paganism,” the “modern epicureanism,” and kindred appellations, are more or less misleading. Yet, with most of us, there is a fairly definite idea of what we signify thereby. The religion of our forefathers has not only ceased for us personally, but is no longer in any vital and general sense a sovereign power in the realm. It is still fruitful of vast good, but it is none the less a power that was, rather than a power that is. The ideals of our forefathers are not our ideals, except where the accidents of time and change can work no havoc. A new epoch is about to be inaugurated, is, indeed, in many respects, already begun; a new epoch in civil law, in international comity, in what, vast and complex though the issues be, may be called Human Economy. The long half-acknowledged, half-denied duel between Man and Woman is to cease, neither through the victory of hereditary overlordship nor the triumph of the far more deft and subtle if less potent weapons of the weaker, but through a frank recognition of copartnery. This new comradeship will be not less romantic, less inspiring, less worthy of the chivalrous extremes of life and death, than the old system of overlord and bondager, while it will open perspectives of a new-rejoicing humanity, the most fleeting glimpses of which now make the hearts of true men and women beat with gladness. Far from wishing to disintegrate, degrade, abolish marriage, the “new paganism” would fain see that sexual union become the flower of human life. But, first, the rubbish must be cleared away; the anomalies must be replaced by just inter-relations; the sacredness of the individual must[203] be recognised; and women no longer have to look upon men as usurpers, men no longer to regard women as spiritual foreigners.

⁂

These remarks, however, must not be taken too literally as indicative of the literary aspects of The Pagan Review. Opinions are one thing, the expression of them another, and the transformation or reincarnation of them through indirect presentment another still.

This magazine is to be a purely literary, not a philosophical, partisan, or propagandist periodical. We are concerned here with the new presentment of things rather than with the phenomena of change and growth themselves. Our vocation, in a word, is to give artistic expression to the artistic “inwardness” of the new paganism; and we voluntarily turn aside here from such avocations as chronicling every ebb and flow of thought, speculating upon every fresh surprising derelict upon the ocean of man’s mind, or expounding well or ill the new ethic. If those who sneer at the rallying cry, “Art for Art’s sake,” laugh at our efforts, we are well content; for even the lungs of donkeys are strengthened by much braying. If, on the other hand, those who, by vain pretensions and paradoxical clamour, degrade Art by making her merely the more or less seductive panoply of mental poverty and spiritual barrenness, care to do a grievous wrong by openly and blatantly siding with us, we are still content; for we recognise that spiritual byways and mental sewers relieve the Commonwealth of much that is unseemly and might breed contagion. The Pagan Review, in a word, is to be a mouthpiece—we are genuinely modest enough to disavow the definite article—of the younger generation, of the new pagan sentiment, rather, of the younger generation. In its pages there will be found a free exposition of the myriad aspects of life, in each instance as adequately as possible reflective of the mind and literary temperament of the writer. The pass-phrase of the new paganism is ours: Sic transit gloria Grundi. The supreme interest of Man is—Woman: and the most profound and fascinating problem to Woman is, Man. This being so, and quite unquestionably so with all the male and female pagans of our acquaintance, it is natural that literature dominated by the various forces of the sexual emotion should prevail. Yet, though paramount in attraction, it is, after all, but one among the many motive forces of life; so we will hope not to fall into the error of some of our French confrères and be persistently and even supernaturally awake to one functional activity and blind to the general life and interest of the commonwealth of soul and body. It is Life that we preach, if perforce we must be taken as preachers at all; Life to the full, in all its manifestations, in its heights and depths, precious to the uttermost moment, not to be bartered even when maimed and weary. For here, at any rate, we are alive; and then, alas, after all,—

“how few Junes

Will heat our pulses quicker...”

⁂

“Much cry for little wool,” some will exclaim. It may be so. Whenever did a first number of a new magazine fulfil all its editor’s dreams[204] or even intentions? “Well, we must make the best of it, I suppose. ‘Tis nater, after all, and what pleases God,” as Mrs. Durbeyfield says in “Tess of the Durbervilles.”

⁂

Have you read that charming roman à quatre, the Croix de Berny? If so, you will recollect the following words of Edgar de Meilhan (alias Théophile Gautier), which I (“I” standing for editor, and associates, and pagans in general) now quote for the delectation of all readers, adversely minded or generously inclined, or dubious as to our real intent—with blithe hopes that they may be the happier therefor: “Frankly, I am in earnest this time. Order me a dove-coloured vest, apple-green trousers, a pouch, a crook; in short, the entire outfit of a Lignon Shepherd. I shall have a lamb washed to complete the pastoral.”

⁂

This is “the lamb.”

The Editor.

The Review was well subscribed for, and many letters came to the Editor and his secretary (myself) that were a source of interest and amusement. Mr. Richard Whiteing—who knew the secret of the Editorship wrote: “I want to subscribe to The Pagan Review if you will let me know to whom to send my abonnement for the half year. I think, you know, you will have to put some more clothes on before the end of the year. You are certainly the liveliest and most independent little devil of a review I ever saw in a first number.”

The Editor, however, swiftly realised that there could be no continuance of the Review. Not only could he not repeat such a tour de force, and he realised that for several numbers he would have to provide the larger portion of the material—but the one number had served its purpose, as far as he was concerned for by means of it he had exhausted a transition phase that had passed to give way to the expression of his more permanent self.

To Thomas A. Janvier the Editor wrote:

Rudgwick, Sussex.

Dear Mr. Janvier,

You know you have ...

W. H. Brooks.

Elizabeth A. Brooks was so pleased to receive your letter.

One or two young writers sent in MS. contributions and these of course he had to return. One came from Mr. R. Murray Gilchrist with whom he had come into[206] touch through his editorship of the Literary Chair in Young Folk’s Paper. To him he wrote:

Rudgwick, Sussex, 10: 92.

My dear Sir,

As it is almost certain that for unforeseen private reasons serial publication of The Pagan Review will be held over till sometime in 1893, I regret to have to return your MS. to you. I have read The Noble Courtesan with much interest. It has a quality of suggestiveness that is rare, and I hope that it will be included in the forthcoming volume to which you allude.... It seems to me that the story would be improved by less—or more hidden—emphasis on the mysterious aspect of the woman’s nature. She is too much the “principle of Evil,” the “modern Lilith.” If you do not use it, I might be able—with some alterations of a minor kind—to use it in the P/R when next Spring it reappears—if such is its dubious fate.

Yours very truly,

W. H. Brooks.

P. S. It is possible that you may surmise—or that a common friend may tell you—who the editor of the P/R is: if so, may I ask you to be reticent on the matter.

Phenice Croft, Rudgwick,

22: 10: 92.

Dear Mr. Gilchrist,

Although I do not wish the matter to go further I do not mind so sympathetic and kindly a critic knowing that “W. S.” and “W. H. Brooks” are synonymous.

I read with pleasure your very friendly and cordial article in The Library. By the way, it may interest you to know that the “Rape of the Sabines” and—well, I’ll not say what else!—is also by W. H. Brooks. But this, no outsider knows.... The Pagan Review will be revived next year, but probably as a Quarterly: and I look to you as one of the younger men of notable talent to give a helping hand with your pen.

I suppose you come to London occasionally. I hope[207] when you are next south, you will come and give me the pleasure of your personal acquaintance. I can offer you a lovely country, country fare, a bed, and a cordial welcome.

Yours sincerely,

William Sharp.

Intimation had also to be sent to each subscriber; with it was enclosed a card with the following inscription:

The Pagan Review.

On the 15th September, still-born The Pagan Review.

Regretted by none, save the affectionate parents and a few forlorn friends, The Pagan Review has returned to the void whence it came. The progenitors, more hopeful than reasonable, look for an unglorious but robust resurrection at some more fortunate date. “For of such is the Kingdom of Paganism.”

W. H. Brooks.

And at the little cottage a solemn ceremony took place. The Review was buried in a corner of the garden, with ourselves, my sister-in-law Mary and Mr. Stanley Little as mourners; a framed inscription was put to mark the spot, and remained there until we left Rudgwick.

CHAPTER XIII

ALGIERS

Vistas

Many schemes were mentally cartooned for the autumn and winter’s work; but all our plans were suddenly upset by an unlooked for occurrence. While in Rome I had had a severe attack of Roman fever; and I had never quite recovered therefrom. The prolonged rains in the hot autumn, the dampness of the clay soil on which lay the hamlet of Buck’s Green, made me very ill again with intermittent low fever. It was deemed imperative that I should not spend the whole winter in England, but go in search of a dry warm climate. But we had not the necessary funds. So instead of devoting himself to his dream-work, as he had hoped, my husband laid it temporarily aside and settled himself to write between October and Xmas, two exciting boys’ serial stories for Young Folk’s Paper, and thus procured sufficient money to enable us to cross to North Africa. “The Red Rider” and “The Last of the Vikings” were crowded with startling adventures. The weaving of sensational plots offered no difficulties to him, but an enjoyment. He did not consider the achievement of any real value, and did not wish that particular kind of writing to be associated with his name. His impressions of Algeria and Tunisia were chronicled in a series of articles, such as “Cardinal Lavigerie,” “The March of Rome,” “Rome in Africa,” etc.; also in a series of letters to a friend from which I select one or two:

Biskra, 2d Feb., 1893.

Constantine, 12th Feb., 1893.

“It would be useless to attempt to give you any idea of all we have seen since I last wrote. The impressions are so numerous and so vivid until one attempts to seize them: and then they merge in a labyrinth of memories. I sent you a P/c from Sidi Okba—the memory of which with its 5,000 swarming Arab population has been something of a nightmare-recollection ever since. I can well believe how the City of Constantine was considered one of the seven wonders of the world. It is impossible to conceive anything grander. Imagine a city hanging down the sides of gorges nearly 1,000 feet in depth—and of the most fantastic and imposing aspect. In these terrible gorges, which have been fed with blood so often, the[213] storks and ravens seem like tiny sparrows as they fly to and fro, and the blue rock-doves are simply wisps of azure....

Last night I had such a plunge into the Barbaric East as I have never had, and may never have again. I cannot describe, but will erelong tell you of those narrow thronged streets, inexplicably intricate, fantastic, barbaric: the Moorish cafés filled with motley Orientals—from the turban’d Turk, the fez’d Jew, the wizard-like Moor, to the Kabyl, the Soudanese, the desert Arab: the strange haunts of the dancing girls: the terrible street of the caged women—like wild beasts exposed for sale: and the crowded dens of the Haschisch-eaters, with the smoke and din of barbaric lutes, tam-tams, and nameless instruments, and the strange wild haunting chanting of the ecstatics and fanatics. I went at last where I saw not a single European: and though at some risk, I met with no active unpleasantness, save in one Haschisch place, where by a sudden impulse some forty or fifty Moors suddenly swung round, as the shriek of an Arab fanatic, and with outstretched hands and arms cursed the Gaiour-kelb (dog of an infidel!): and here I had to act quickly and resolutely. Thereafter one of my reckless fits came on, and I plunged right into the midst of the whole extraordinary vision—for a kind of visionary Inferno it seemed. From Haschisch-den to Haschisch-den I wandered, from strange vaulted rooms of the gorgeously jewelled and splendidly dressed prostitutes to the alcoves where lay or sat or moved to and fro, behind iron bars, the caged “beauties” whom none could reach save by gold, and even then at risk; from there to the dark low rooms or open pillared places where semi-nude dancing girls moved to and fro to a wild barbaric music.... I wandered to and fro in that bewildering Moorish maze, till at last I could stand no more impressions. So I found my way to the western ramparts, and looked out upon the marvellous nocturnal landscape of mountain and valley—and thought of all that Constantine had been—”

[214]

Carthage,

Sunday, 19th Feb.

“How strange it seems to write a line to London from this London of 2,000 years ago! The sea breaks at my feet, blue as a turquoise here, but, beyond, a sheet of marvellous pale green, exquisite beyond words. To the right are the inland waters where the Carthaginian galleys found haven: above, to the right, was the temple of Baal: right above, the temple of Tanit, the famous Astarte, otherwise “The Abomination of the Sidonians.” Where the Carthaginians lived in magnificent luxury, a little out of the city itself, is now the Arab town of Sidi-ban-Saïd—like a huge magnolia-bloom on the sunswept hillside. There is nothing of the life of to-day visible, save a white-robed Bedouin herding goats and camels, and, on the sea, a few felucca-rigged fisherboats making for distant Tunis by the Strait of Goletta. But there is life and movement in the play of the wind among the grasses and lentisks, in the hum of insects, in the whisper of the warm earth, in the glow of the burning sunshine that floods downward from a sky of glorious blue. Carthage—I can hardly believe it. What ivresse of the mind the word creates!”

The following letter was received shortly after our return:

19 St. Mary Abbotts Terrace, W.,

7th March, 1893.

My dear Sharp,

I did not reply to your kind letter because I could not divest myself of a certain suspicion of the postal arrangements of the desert. I admit however there was little warrant for misgiving since they are evidently civilised enough to keep the natives well supplied with copies of The Island. The thought of the studious Sheik painfully spelling out that work with the help of his lexicon is simply fascinating, and I have made up my mind to read The Arabian Nights in the original by way of returning the compliment. But if I talk any more about myself I shall forget the immediate purpose of this letter[215] which is to ask if you and Mrs. Sharp are back again; and, if you are, how and when we may see you. I think this was about the date of your promised return. We shall all be delighted to see you and to hear about your journey. You are more than ever Children of To-morrow in my esteem, to be able not only to dare such trips but to do them. When I read your letter I felt more than ever a child of yesterday. Do write and give us a chance of seeing you as soon as you can.

Ever yours,

R. Whiteing.

Mr. Whiteing was one of the many friends who came to our cottage for week-end visits in the ensuing spring and summer. Among others whom we welcomed were Mrs. Mona Caird, Miss Alice Corkran, Mr. George Cotterell, Mr. and Mrs. Le Gallienne, the Honble Roden Noel, Mr. Percy White, Dr. Byres Moir, Mr. and Mrs. Frank Rinder, Mr. R. A. Streatfield, Mr. Laurence Binyon, my brother R. Farquharson Sharp, and my sister-in-law Mary, or Marik, who for many years acted as my husband’s secretary and whose handwriting became familiar to many correspondents who afterwards received letters in handwriting from Fiona Macleod.

The Diary for December 1893 has the following entries:

ill216

Fac-simile of an autograph poem by William Sharp

[217]

Vistas was published early in 1894 by Mr. Frank Murray of Derby in “his Regent Series,” of which Frangipani by R. Murray Gilchrist was the first number. The English edition of Vistas is dedicated to Madame Elspeth H. Barzia—an anagram on my name.

In the Dedication to H. W. Alden (author of “God in His World”) in the American edition—which contains an extra ‘Interlude’ entitled “The Whisperer”—the intention of the book is thus explained:

“You asked me what my aim was in those dramatic interludes which, collectively, I call Vistas. I could not well explain: nor can I do so now. All are vistas of the inner life of the human soul, psychic episodes. One or two are directly autopsychical, others are renderings of dramatically conceived impressions of spiritual emotion: to two or three no quotation could be more apt than that of the Spanish novelist, Emilia Pardo Bazàn: ‘Enter with me into the dark zone of the human soul.’ These Vistas were written at intervals: the most intimate in the spiritual sense, so long ago as the spring of 1886, when during recovery from a long and nearly fatal illness[218] ‘Lilith’ came to me as a vision and was withheld in words as soon as I could put pen to paper. Another was written in Rome, after a vain effort to express adequately in a different form the episode of death-menaced and death-haunted love among those remote Scottish wilds where so much of my childhood and boyhood and early youth was spent.... I came upon for the first time ‘La Princesse Maleine’ and ‘L’Intruse.’

“One or two of the Vistas were written in Stuttgart in 1891, others a year or so later in London or elsewhere—all in what is, in somewhat unscholarly fashion, called the Maeterlinckian formula. Almost from the first moment it seemed clear to me that the Belgian poet-dramatist had introduced a new and vital literary form. It was one that many had been seeking—stumblingly, among them, the author of Vistas—but Maurice Maeterlinck wrought the crude material into a form fit for swift and dextrous use, at once subtle and simple. The first which I wrote under this impulse is that entitled ‘Finis.’ The latest or latest but one (’The Whisperer,’ now added to this Edition) seems to me, if I may say so, as distinctively individual as ‘The Passing of Lilith,’ and some, at least of my critics have noticed this in connection with ‘The Lute Player.’ In all but its final form, it embodies a conception that has been with me for many years, ever since boyhood: a living actuality for me, at last expressed, but so inadequately as to make me differ from the distinguished critic who adjudged it the best of the Vistas. To me it is the most obvious failure in the book, though fundamentally, so near and real emotionally.”

END OF PART ONE

Part II

FIONA MACLEOD

[220]

I too will set my face to the wind and throw my handful of seed on high,
It is loveliness I seek, not lovely things.

F. M.

[221]

CHAPTER XIV

THE PSEUDONYM

Pharais

The summer of 1893 was hot and sunny: and we delighted in our little garden with its miniature lawns, its espalier fruit trees framing the vegetable garden, and its juvenile but to us fascinating flower beds. Horsham, our nearest town, was seven miles distant and the village of Rudgwick lay a mile away up a steady ascent beyond the station. William Sharp was happy once more to be resident in the country, although the surroundings were not a type of scenery that appealed to him. But, as he wrote to a friend, it was not so much the place that he liked “as what is in it conducive to that keen perturbation, elation, excitement of mind, which is life worth living.”

At Phenice Croft his imagination was in a perpetual ferment. Out of the projected work that he had noted in his diary, out of those subjects that lay in his mind to germinate and mature, or to wither and be rejected, grew one or two achievements; and in particular after the completion of Vistas, a romance of the Isles, Pharais, about which his friend Mr. Cotterell in acknowledging a copy of these Dramatic Interludes, wrote to the author:

“Vistas should mark a point in your career from which you should go forward to greater things. I am eager to see the Celtic romance.”

The quiet and leisure at Phenice Croft, the peace, the “green life” around were unspeakably welcome to my husband. Once again, he saw visions and dreamed dreams; the psychic subjective side of his dual nature predominated. He was in an acutely creative condition; and, moreover he was passing from one phase of literary work to another, deeper, more intimate, more permanent.[222] So far, he had found no adequate method for the expression of his “second self” though the way was led thereto by Sospiri di Roma and Vistas.

The Sospiri di Roma was the turning point. Those unrhymed poems of irregular meter are filled not only with the passionate delight in life, with the sheer joy of existence, but also with the ecstatic worship of beauty that possessed him during those spring months we spent in Rome, when he had cut himself adrift for the time from the usual routine of our life, and touched a high point of health and exuberant spirits. There, at last, he had found the desired incentive towards a true expression of himself, in the stimulus and sympathetic understanding of the friend to whom he dedicated the first of the books published under his pseudonym. This friendship began in Rome and lasted throughout the remainder of his life.

And though this newer phase of his work was at no time the result of collaboration, as certain of his critics have suggested, he was deeply conscious of his indebtedness to this friend, for—as he stated to me in a letter of instructions, written before he went to America in 1896, concerning his wishes in the event of his death—he realised that it was “to her I owe my development as ‘Fiona Macleod’ though, in a sense of course, that began long before I knew her, and indeed while I was still a child,” and that, as he believed, “without her there would have been no ‘Fiona Macleod.’”

Because of her beauty, her strong sense of life and of the joy of life; because of her keen intuitions and mental alertness, her personality stood for him as a symbol of the heroic women of Greek and Celtic days, a symbol that, as he expressed it, unlocked new doors in his mind and put him “in touch with ancestral memories” of his race. So, for a time, he stilled the critical, intellectual mood of William Sharp to give play to the development of this new found expression of subtler emotions, towards which he had been moving with all the ardour of his nature.

[223]

From then till the end of his life there was a continual play of the two forces in him, or of the two sides of his nature: of the intellectually observant, reasoning mind—the actor, and of the intuitively observant, spiritual mind—the dreamer, which differentiated more and more one from the other, and required different conditions, different environment, different stimuli, until he seemed to be two personalities in one. It was a development which, as it proceeded, produced a tremendous strain on his physical and mental resources; and at one time between 1897-8 threatened him with a complete nervous collapse.

And there was for a time distinct opposition between these two natures which made it extremely difficult for him to adjust his life, for the two conditions which were equally imperative in their demands upon him. His preference, naturally, was for the intimate creative work which he knew grew out of his inner self; though the exigencies of life, his dependence on his pen for his livelihood—and, moreover the keen active interest ‘William Sharp’ took in all the movements of the day, literary and political, at home and abroad—required of him a great amount of applied study and work.

During those two years at Phenice Croft, to which he always looked back with deep thankfulness, he was the dreamer—he was testing his new powers, living his new life, and delighting in the opportunity for psychic experimentation. And for such experimentation the place seemed to him to be peculiarly suited. To me it seemed “uncanny,” and to have a haunted atmosphere—created unquestionably by him—that I found difficult to live in, unless the sun was shining. This uncanny effect was felt by more than one friend; by Mr. Murray Gilchrist, for instance, whose impressions were described by his host in one of the short “Tragic Landscapes.”

Pharais was the first of the books written and published under the pseudonym of “Fiona Macleod.” The first reference to it is in the afore noted diary: “Have also done the first part of a Celtic romance called[224] Pharais.” The next is in a letter written to Mrs. Janvier from St. Andrews, on 12th August, 1893, before the author had decided on the use of a pseudonym:

Three months later, he wrote to Mr. Richard Stoddart and proposed for serial publication in Lippincotts a romance to be called Nostalgia—which was never written. In the same letter he speaks of “another story, Pharais,” which he describes as “written deeply in the Celtic spirit and from the Celtic standpoint.” Neither suggestion was accepted; and the author decided to issue Pharais as soon as possible in book form, and not under his own name.

When in the following year the book was published the author, forgetting that he had ever written Mrs. Janvier about it, sent a copy of it to her, and said merely that it was a book in which he was interested. Whereupon she wrote and asked if the book were not his own, and he replied:

[226]

“ ... Yes, Pharais is mine. It is a book out of my heart, out of the core of my heart. I wrote it with the pen dipped in the very ichor of my life. It has reached people more than I dreamt of as likely. In Scotland especially it has stirred and created a new movement. Here, men like George Meredith, Grant Allen, H. D. Traill, and Theodore Watts hailed it as a ‘work of genius.’ Ignored in some quarters, abused in others, and unheeded by the ‘general reader,’ it has yet had a reception that has made me deeply glad. It is the beginning of my true work. Only one or two know I am ‘Fiona Macleod.’ Let you and my dear T.A.J. preserve my secret. I trust you.

“You will find more of me in Pharais than in anything I have written. Let me add that you will find The Mountain Lovers, at which I am now writing when I can, more elemental still, while simpler.... By blood I am part Celt, and partly so by upbringing, by Spirit wholly so.... One day I will tell you of some of the strange old mysteries of earlier days I have part learned, part divined, and other things of the spirit. You can understand how I cannot do my true work, in this accursed London.”

A little later he wrote:

“ ... I resent too close identification with the so-called Celtic renaissance. If my work is to depend solely on its Gaelic connection, then let it go, as go it must. My work must be beautiful in itself—Beauty is a Queen and must be served as a Queen.

“ ... You have asked me once or twice about F. M., why I took her name: and how and when she came to write Pharais. It is too complex to tell you just now.... The name was born naturally: (of course I had associations with the name Macleod.) It, Fiona, is very rare now. Most Highlanders would tell you it was extinct—even as the diminutive of Fionaghal (Flora). But it is not. It is an old Celtic name (meaning “a fair maid”)[227] still occasionally to be found. I know a little girl, the daughter of a Highland clergyman, who is called Fiona. All my work is so intimately wrought with my own experiences that I cannot tell you about Pharais, etc., without telling you my whole life.”

As a matter of fact Pharais was not the first written expression of the new work. It was preceded by a short story entitled “The Last Fantasy of James Achanna” that in the autumn of 1893 was sent to The Scots Observer. It was declined by Mr. Henley who, however, wrote a word of genuine encouragement. He accepted Mr. Henley’s decision, and the story was never reprinted in its first form. It was re-written several times; it was included in The Dominion of Dreams as “The Archer.” During the writing of Pharais the author began to realise how much the feminine element dominated in the book, that it grew out of the subjective, or feminine side of his nature. He, therefore, decided to issue the book under the name of Fiona Macleod, that “flashed ready made” into his mind. Mrs. Janvier wrote later and asked why he, a man, chose to send forth good work under the signature of a woman. He answered:

“ ... I can write out of my heart in a way I could not do as William Sharp, and indeed I could not do so if I were the woman Fiona Macleod is supposed to be, unless veiled in scrupulous anonymity....

“This rapt sense of oneness with nature, this cosmic ecstasy and elation, this wayfaring along the extreme verges of the common world, all this is so wrought up with the romance of life that I could not bring myself to expression by my outer self, insistent and tyrannical as that need is.... My truest self, the self who is below all other selves, and my most intimate life and joys and sufferings, thoughts, emotions and dreams, must find expression, yet I cannot save in this hidden way.”

He was wont to say “Should the secret be found out, Fiona dies.” Later in the year he wrote: “Sometimes[228] I am tempted to believe I am half a woman, and so far saved as I am by the hazard of chance from what a woman can be made to suffer if one let the light of the common day illuminate the avenues and vistas of her heart....”

A copy of Vistas and one of Pharais were sent to George Meredith, who wrote in acknowledgment to the author:

Box Hill, July 5, 1894.

Dear Mr. Sharp,

Ever faithfully yours,

George Meredith.

The following letter to Mr. Grant Allen is one of the earliest that were signed with the pseudonym:

1894.

Grant Allen, Esq.:
Dear Sir,

I have only now ascertained that you are in England. I was informed that you were in the south of France. Some short time ago I asked Mr. Frank Murray of Derby to forward to you a copy of my just published romance Pharais. I now write to ask if you will accept[229] it as a slight token of homage from the youngest and latest of Celtic writers to the most brilliant champion of the Celtic genius now living. I do not, however, send it by way of inveigling you to write about it, much as any word of yours would mean to me both in service and honour: but primarily because of your deep and vivid sympathy not only with nature but with the Celtic vision of nature—and, also, let me add, because of the many delightful hours I have enjoyed with your writings.

Faithfully yours,

Fiona Macleod.

Mr. Grant Allen replied:

The Croft, Hindhead.

Dear Madam,

I thank you for your book, and still more for your charming and too flattering letter. Pharais strikes me as a beautiful and poetical piece of work. It is instinct with the dreamy Celtic genius, and seems to come to us straight from the Isles of the Dead. That shadowy Ossianic spirit, as of your misty straits and your floating islands, reminds me exactly of the outlook from the western mountains over the summer-blue belted sea as I saw it once on an August morning at Oban. Too shadowy, sometimes, and too purely poetical, I fear, for your Saxon readers. But the opening sentences are beautiful, and the nature-studies and the sense of colour throughout are charming. Now, after so much praise, will you forgive a few questions and a word of criticism? You are, I take it, a young writer, and so an older hand may give you a hint or two. Don’t another time interlard your English with Gaelic. Even a confirmed Celtomaniac like myself finds it a trifle distracting. Don’t say “the English,” and “the Gaelic.” Give a little more story to less pure poetry. Of course I recognise that your work is an idyll, not a novel, a cameo, not a woodcut; but even so, it seems to me a trifle too dreamy. Forgive this frankness, and remember that success still lies in the lap of the Saxon. Also that we Celts have our besetting sins,[230] and that perfection in literature lies in avoiding excess in any direction, even that of one’s own best qualities. Now a question or two—because you interest me. How in English letters would you write Pharais phonetically, or as near it as our clumsy southern lips can compass? (I have not “the Gaelic,” and my Celtic blood is half Irish, half Breton.) And how “Fiona?” Is it something like Feena? And are you Miss or Mrs.? And do you live in Edinburgh? If ever you come south, we hope you will let us know; for my wife read your book before I did, and interested me in it by sketching the story for me. Now see how long a letter I have written unto you, going the Apostle one better, with my own left hand: only the busiest man in England could have found time to do it.

Faithfully yours,

Grant Allen.

Questions as to the identity of the author were already ‘in the air’; “F. M’s” answer to Mr. Allen shows that the author felt ‘her’ security menaced:

Kilcreggan, Argyll,

1894.

Dear Mr. Grant Allen,

Sincerely and gratefully yours,

Fiona Macleod.

St. Andrews, 1894.

Dear Mr. Grant Allen,

Most sincerely yours,

Fiona Macleod.

P. S. In his letter Mr. Sharp says (writing to me in his delightful shaky Gaelic) that ‘both Grant and Nellie Allen are clach-chreadhain.’ It took me some time to understand the compliment. Clach-chreadh means ‘stone of clay’—i. e. a Brick!

That Mr. Grant Allen was half persuaded as to the identity of the author is shown in the following invitation:

The Croft, Hindhead,

July 12, 1894.

My dear Sharp,

I am ever

Yours very sincerely,

Grant Allen.

Unfortunately, there was an imperative reason for bringing our residence at Rudgwick to a close. The damp, autumnal days in the little cottage on its clay soil, and the fatigue of constantly going up and down to town in order to do the work of the Art critic for the Glasgow Herald—which I for some time had undertaken—proved too severe a strain on me, and I found that in the winter months I could not remain at Phenice Croft without being seriously ill. So with great reluctance we decided to give it up at midsummer. I was anxious that we should seek for another cottage, on a main line of railway, and on sandy soil; but my husband feared to make another experiment and preferred that we should make our headquarters in London once again, and that he should go into the country whenever the mood necessitated. But his regret was deep. Phenice Croft had seen the birth of Fiona Macleod; he had lived there with an[234] intensity of inner life beyond anything he had ever experienced. He knew that life in town would create difficulties for him, yet it seemed the wisest compromise to make. Our difficulty of choice was mainly one of ways and means; a considerable part of the ordinary work was in my hands, and I found it difficult to do it satisfactorily away from London. He expressed his regret in a letter to Mr. Murray Gilchrist:

Phenice Croft,

27th March, 1894.

My dear Gilchrist,

Your friend

William Sharp.

We took a small flat in South Hampstead (Rutland House, Greencroft Gardens) that stood high enough for us to see, on clear days, the line of the Surrey hills from the windows, and to give us a fine stretch of sky above the chimney pots.

The night before leaving Phenice Croft, a lovely still evening, he wrote the little poem,

[236]

THE WHITE PEACE

It lies not on the sunlit hill
Nor in the sunlit gleam

Nor ever in any falling wave
Nor ever in running stream—

But sometimes in the soul of man
Slow moving through his pain

The moonlight of a perfect peace
Floods heart and brain.

and sent it to me in a letter (for I had gone to town in advance of him), and told me:

“Before I left I took up a handful of grassy turf, and kissed it three times, and then threw it to the four quarters—so that the Beauty of the Earth might be seen by me wherever I went and that no beauty I had seen or known there should be forgotten. Then I kissed the chestnut tree on the side lawn where I have seen and heard so much: from the springing of the dream flowers, to the surge of the sea in Pharais.”

Thence he went to Scotland and wrote to me from Kilcreggan, where he was staying with his mother and sisters till I could join him:

To me the summer was memorable because of my first visit to Iona. While there he wrote part of The Sin-Eater, and its prefatory dedication to George Meredith, and projected some of the St. Columba tales; he renewed impressions of his earlier days on the sacred isle, and stored new experiences which he afterwards embodied in his long essay on Iona published in The Divine Adventure volume.

From that Isle of Dreams “Fiona” wrote to Mrs. Tynan-Hinkson:

[238]

Isle of Iona,

September, 1894.

Dear Mrs. Hinkson,

I am, in summer and autumn, so much of a wanderer through the Isles and Western Highlands that letters sometimes are long in reaching me. But your kind note (and enclosure) has duly followed me from Edinburgh to Loch Goil in eastern Argyll and thence deviously here. It will be a great pleasure to me to read what you have to say in the Illus. London News or elsewhere, and I thank you. I wish you could be here. Familiar with your poetry as I am, I know how you would rejoice not only in the Iona that is the holy Icolmkill but also in the Iona that is Ithona, the ancient Celtic Isle of the Druids. There is a beauty here that no other place has, so unique is it. Of course it does not appeal to all. The Sound of Iona divides the Island from the wild Ross of Mull by no more than a mile of water; and it is on this eastern side that the village and the ancient Cathedral and ruined Nunnery etc. stand. Here it is as peaceful as, on the west side, it is wild and grand. I read your letter last night, at sunset, while I was lying on the Cnoc-an-Angeal, the hillock on the west where the angel appeared to St. Columba. To the north lay the dim features of the Outer Hebrides: to the west an unbroken wilderness of waves till they fall against Labrador: to the south, though invisible, the coastline of Ireland. There was no sound, save the deep hollow voice of the sea, and a strange reverberation in a hollow cave underground. It was a very beautiful sight to see the day wane across the ocean, and then to move slowly homeward through the gloaming, and linger awhile by the Street of the Dead near the ruined Abbey of Columba. But these Isles are so dear to me that I think everyone must feel alike!

I remain

Sincerely yours,

Fiona Macleod.

P. S. I enclose a gillieflower from close to St. Columba’s tomb.

[239]

In November came a letter from Mr. Stedman:

137 West 78th St.,

New York.

My dearest Friend beyond Seas,

Ever affectionately yours

Edmund C. Stedman.

[240]

The Chap-book was a little semi-monthly issue published by Messrs. Stone and Kimball, Chicago. No. 9, the “William Sharp” number, appeared on the 15th of September, three days after that author’s birthday. It contained the reproduction of an autograph signed poem, by William Sharp “To Edmund Clarence Stedman in Birthday Greeting 8th October”; an appreciation of William Sharp’s Poems by Bliss Carmen; “The Birth of a Soul” one of the Dramatic Interludes afterwards included in Vistas, and a portrait of the Author.

Notwithstanding the paramount interest to the author of the “F. M.” expression of himself as, “W. S.” he was not idle. After a visit to Mr. Murray Gilchrist in the latter’s home on the Derbyshire moors, W. S. wrote his story “The Gypsy Christ,” founded on a tradition which he had learned from his gipsy friends, and set in a weird moorland surroundings. In Harper’s there appeared a description of the night-wanderers on the Thames’ embankment, pathetic frequenters of “The Hotel of the Beautiful Star.” The July number of The Portfolio consisted of a monograph by him on “Fair Women in Painting and Poetry” (afterwards published in bookform by Messrs. Seeley) which he, at first, intended to dedicate to Mr. George Meredith. His ‘second thought’ was approved of by the novelist, who wrote his acknowledgment:

“You do an elusive bit of work with skill. It seems to me, that the dedication was wisely omitted. Thousands of curdling Saxons are surly almost to the snarl at the talk about ‘woman.’ Next to the Anarchist, we are hated.”

The month of July was saddened by the death of our intimate and valued friend Walter Pater; upon that friend and his work William Sharp wrote a long appreciation which appeared in The Atlantic Monthly. Another death, at the year-end, caused him great regret, that of Christina Rossetti, whom he had held in deep regard. He felt, as he wrote to her surviving brother: “One of the rarest and sweetest of English singers is[241] silent now. 1882 and 1894 were evil years for English poetry.” Later he wrote a careful study of her verse for The Atlantic Monthly.

As a Christmas card that year he gave me a little book of old wood-cut illustrations, reproduced and printed on Iona. On the inside of the cover he wrote what he held to be his creed. It is this:

Credo

“The Universe is eternally, omnipresently and continuously filled with the breath of God.

“Every breath of God creates a new convolution in the brain of Nature: and with every moment of change in the brain of Nature, new loveliness is wrought upon the earth.

“Every breath of God creates a new convolution in the brain of the Human Spirit, and with every moment of change in the brain of the Human Spirit, new hopes, aspirations, dreams, are wrought within the Soul of the Living.

“And there is no Evil anywhere in the Light of this creative Breath: but only, everywhere, a redeeming from Evil, a winning towards Good.”

CHAPTER XV

THE MOUNTAIN LOVERS

The Sin-Eater

It was soon evident that the noise and confused magnetism of the great City weighed disastrously on William Sharp. At the New Year, 1895, he wrote to a friend:

“London I do not like, though I feel its magnetic charm, or sorcery. I suffer here. The gloom, the streets, the obtrusion and intrusion of people, all conspire against thought, dream, true living. It is a vast reservoir of all the evils of civilised life with a climate which makes me inclined to believe that Dante came here instead of to Hades.”

The strain of the two kinds of work he was attempting to do, the immediate pressure of the imaginative work became unbearable, “the call of the sea,” imperative.

As he has related in “Earth, Fire and Water”: “It was all important for me not to leave in January, and in one way I was not ill-pleased for it was a wild winter. But one night I awoke hearing a rushing sound in the street, the sound of water. I would have thought no more of it had I not recognised the troubled sound of the tide, and the sucking and lapsing of the flow in muddy hollows. I rose and looked out. It was moonlight, and there was no water. When after sleepless hours I rose in the grey morning I heard the splash of waves, I could not write or read and at last I could not rest. On the afternoon of that day the waves dashed up against the house.”

An incident showed me that his malaise was curable by one method only. A telegram had come for him that morning, and I took it to his study. I could get no answer. I knocked, louder, then louder,—at last he opened[243] the door with a curiously dazed look in his face. I explained. He answered “Ah, I could not hear you for the sound of the waves!” It was the first indication to me, in words, of what troubled him.

That evening he started for Glasgow en route for Arran, where I knew he would find peace.

“The following morning we (for a kinswoman was with me) stood on the Greenock pier waiting for the Hebridean steamer and before long were landed on an island, almost the nearest we could reach that I loved so well.... That night, with the sea breaking less than a score of yards from where I lay, I slept, though for three nights I had not been able to sleep. When I woke the trouble was gone.”

There is a curious point in his telling of this episode. Although the essay is written over the signature of “Fiona Macleod” and belongs to that particular phase of work, nevertheless it is obviously “William Sharp” who tells the story, for the “we” who stood on the pier at Greenock is himself in his dual capacity; “his kinswoman” is his other self.

He wrote to me on reaching his destination:

Corrie, Isle of Arran,

20: 2: 1895.

There is something of a strange excitement in the knowledge that two people are here: so intimate and yet so far-off. For it is with me as though Fiona were asleep in another room. I catch myself listening for her step sometimes, for the sudden opening of a door. It is unawaredly that she whispers to me. I am eager to see what she will do—particularly in The Mountain Lovers. It seems passing strange to be here with her alone at last....”

The Mountain Lovers was published in the summer of 1895 by Mr. John Lane. A copy of it was sent to Mr. George Meredith with the following letter:

9 Upper Coltbridge Terrace,

Murrayfield.

Dear Sir,

Will you gratify one of your most loyal readers by the acceptance of the accompanying book? Nothing helped

me so much, or gave me so much enduring pleasure, as your generous message to me about my first book, Pharais, which you sent through my cousin, Mr. William Sharp.

ill244

Fac-simile of an autograph “Fiona Macleod” poem by William Sharp

[245]

Naturally, I was eager it should appeal to you—not only because I have long taken keener delight in your writings than in those of any living author, but also because you are Prince of Celtland....

I hope you will be able to read, and perhaps care for, The Mountain Lovers. It is not a story of the Isles, like Pharais, but of the remote hill-country in the far northwest. I know how busy you are: so do not consider it necessary to acknowledge either the book or this letter. Still, if some happy spirit move you, I need not say that even the briefest line from you would be a deep pleasure to

Yours, with gratitude and homage,

Fiona Macleod.

Acknowledgment came swiftly:

Box Hill, July 13, 1895.

Dear Madam,

If I could have written on any matter out of my press of work when I received your Pharais, there would have been no delay with me to thank you for such a gift to our literature. This book on the “Mountains” promises as richly. Whether it touches equally deep, I cannot yet say. I find the same thrill in it, as of the bard on the three-stringed harp, and the wild western colour over sea and isles; true spirit of the mountains. How rare this is! I do not know it elsewhere. Be sure that I am among those readers of yours whom you kindle. I could write more, but I have not recovered from the malady of the degoût de la plume, consequent on excess—and I pray that it may never fall on you. For though it is wisdom at my age to cease to write, it is not well to be taught to cease by distaste. That is a giving of oneself to the enemy. I have to be what I am, and I disclose it to win[246] your pardon for my inexpressiveness when I am warmly sensible of a generous compliment.

I am, Yours most faithful

George Meredith.

It was in 1895 that the Omar Khayyam Club under the Presidentship of Mr. Edward Clodd, who was an old personal friend of Mr. Meredith, elected to hold its summer dinner at the Burford Bridge Hotel. Mr. Thomas Hardy, Mr. Watts-Dunton, Mr. George Gissing and William Sharp were among the guests. Mr. Clodd knew that it would be difficult to persuade Mr. Meredith to be present at the dinner. Nevertheless he lured him to the Hotel, and when coffee was served, (I quote from a contemporary account) “the beautiful face of the great novelist appeared within the doorway, and he was welcomed with enthusiasm by all present. The president extended to Mr. Meredith the right hand of fellowship on behalf of the Club, in a charming and eloquent speech not devoid of pathos. Mr. Meredith in his reply declared that Mr. Clodd was the most amiable of Chairmen but the most dastardly of deceivers. Never before, he added, had he been on his legs to make a speech in public, now before he knew it he was bustled over the first fence, and found himself overrunning the hounds. ‘I have my hands on the fellow at this moment’ he continued laughingly ‘and I could turn on him and rend him, but I spare him.’ After a few graceful and characteristic sentences concerning the Club and its object, and Omar, and expressing his appreciation of his reception Mr. Meredith said in conclusion: ‘I thank you from my heart, everyone of you.’”

Much to William Sharp’s satisfaction he was elected member of the Omar Khayyam Club in the autumn of the same year. On receipt of the announcement of the fact the new member wrote to the President:

[247]

Rutland House,

2d Nov., 1895.

Dear Brother-in-Omar,

Sincerely yours,

William Sharp.

The President replied:

19 Carleton Road,

Tufnell Park

5th Nov.

My dear Sharp,

It is an addition to the pleasant memories of my year of office to know that you are of the elect. You come in with Lang and Gissing. By the way, the next dinner is fixed for the sixth proximo. And it is an addition to a[248] burden of obligation willingly borne which your kind gift imposes. For work such as yours has unending charm for me, because while Science was my first love and is still my dear mistress, I love her more for what she suggests than what she reveals. Facts, unrelated, bore me: only in their significance does one get abiding interest. That is why your ‘Vistas’ and such like delicate, throbbing things attract me. Some of these were especially welcome on a recent dull Sunday by our ‘cold restless sea,’ on which in bright days you promise to come with Allen to look at it from my window. Your delicious story of the critic sent me straight to the Journal of di Cosimo. How well you produce the archaic flavour: the style has a Celtic ring about it. As for ‘Ecce Puella’ I await the hearing of it from the voice of a ‘puella’ who likes your work. I was at Meredith’s on Sunday week: he keeps wonderfully well for him: his talk is bright as his face is beautiful. He has his fling at me over the Burford Bridge deception, and says that my duplicity cost you all a fine speech. I tell him that the speech we had was good enough for ‘the likes of us.’ So Fiona Macleod is your cousin! She is of the ‘elect.’ I take it as most kind of her to send me her new book, which I have as yet but partly read, and am about to acknowledge. She holds a weird, strong pen, and will help the Celt to make further conquest of the dullard Saxons. Meredith and I talked about her “Mountain Lovers” when I was with him in August.

Kindest regards to Mrs. Sharp and yourself.

Yours sincerely,

Edward Clodd.

In the Autumn of 1894 we had come in touch with Professor and Mrs. Patrick Geddes of Edinburgh, and a friendship with far reaching results for “Fiona Macleod” arose between the two men. Both were idealists, keen students of life and nature; cosmopolitan in outlook and interest, they were also ardent Celts who believed in the necessity of preserving the finer subtle qualities and[249] the spiritual heritage of their race against the encroaching predominance of materialistic ideas and aims of the day.

It was the desire and dream of such idealists and thinkers as Professor Geddes, and those associated with him, to preserve and nurture what is of value and of spiritual beauty in the race, so that it should fuse into and work with, or become part of, the great acquisitions and marvellous discoveries of modern thought. To hold to the essential beauty and thought of the past, while going forward eagerly to meet the new and ever increasing knowledge, was the desire of both men. In their aims they were in sympathy with one another; their manner of approach and methods of work were different. Patrick Geddes—biologist—was concerned primarily with the practical and scientific expression of his ideals; William Sharp was concerned primarily with expression through the art of words. Mutually sympathetic, they were eager to find some way of collaboration.

It was the dream of Professor Geddes to restore to Scotland something of its older pre-eminence in the world of thought, to recreate in Edinburgh an active centre and so arrest the tremendous centralising power of the metropolis of London; to replace the stereotyped methods of education by a more vital and synthetic form; and to encourage national art and literature. Towards the carrying out of these aims he had built a University Hall and Settlement for students, artists, etc. Perhaps the most important of his schemes, certainly the most important from the modern scientific point of view was the planning of the Outlook Tower—once an observatory—now an educational museum on the Castle Rock commanding a magnificent view of the city, of the surrounding country, of sea and sky; “an institution that is designed to be a method of viewing the problems of the science of life.” According to Professor Geddes “Our little scholastic colony in the heart of Edinburgh symbolises a movement which while national to the core, is really cosmopolitan in its intellectual reach[250].”

Grouped with this scientific effort, was the aim to revive the Celtic influence in art and literature; and the little colony contained a number of men and women who were working to that end; notably among the painters were James Cadenhead, Charles Mackie, Robert Burns, John Duncan, also Pittendrigh MacGillivray the sculptor; and among the writers Professor Arthur Thomson, Dr. Douglas Hyde, Nora Hopper, Rosa Mulholland, A. Percival Graves, S. R. Crockett, Elisée Réclus, Alexander Carmichael, Victor Branford, Professor Patrick Geddes, F. M. and W. S.

Into that eager and sympathetic atmosphere of linked thought and aim my husband and I were speedily drawn; and before long a Publishing Firm was established for the issuing of Celtic Literature and Works on Science. To Mr. and Mrs. Geddes was confided the important secret relating to the personality of “Fiona Macleod,” to the thoughts and ideals that unlay ‘her’ projected work. It was arranged that William Sharp should be the Manager in the Firm of Patrick Geddes & Colleagues (which post he very soon relinquished for that of Literary Adviser); an arrangement which made it possible for that particular Colleague to publish three of his “F. M.” books under his immediate supervision and from what was then one of the centres of the Celtic movement. This post, naturally, necessitated frequent visits to Edinburgh. For the month of August 1895 we took a flat in the neighbourhood of the University settlement so that we might share actively in the Summer Session.

It was an interesting experience. The students came from England, Scotland, France, Italy, and Germany; among the lecturers in addition to Professors Geddes and Arthur Thomson were Elisée Réclus the geographer and his brother Elie Réclus, Edmond Demolins and Abbé Klein.

W. S. prepared his lectures in rough outline. His inexperience in such work led him to plan them as though he were drafting out twelve books, with far more material[251] than he could possibly use in the time at his disposal. His subject was “Art and Life” divided into ten lectures:

One lecture only was delivered; for during it he was seized with a severe heart attack and all his notes fell to the ground. It was with the greatest effort that he was able to bring the lecture to a close: and he realised that he must not attempt to continue the course; the risk was too great. Therefore, while I remained in Edinburgh to keep open house for the entertainment of the students, he went to the little Pettycur Inn at Kinghorn, on the north side of The Firth of Forth, till I was able to join him at Tighnabruaich in the Kyles of Bute where we had taken a cottage with his mother and sisters for September.

Two volumes of short stories were published in the late Autumn. It was the writer’s great desire that work should be issued by W. S. and by F. M. about the same time; in part to sustain what reputation belonged to his older Literary self, and in part to help to preserve the younger literary self’s incognito. Ecce Puella published by Mr. Elkin Matthew for W. S. was a collection of[252] stories &c. that had been written at different times and issued in various magazines, and prefaced by a revised and shortened version of the Monograph on “Fair Women in Painting and Poetry.” It contained among other short stories one entitled “The Sister of Compassion,” dedicated “to that Sister of compassion for all suffering animals, Mrs. Mona Caird,” our dear friend. The other volume contained the first series of barbaric tales and myths of old Celtic days, “recaptured in dreams,” that followed in quick succession from the pen of Fiona Macleod. The Sin-Eater was the first of the three F. M. books published by the new Scoto-Celtic publishers. The Author was gratified by favourable reviews from important journals, and by letters, from which I select two.

The first is from Mr. Hamilton W. Mabie:

The Outlook,

13 Astor Place,

May 23d, 1897.

My dear Friend,

The Sin-Eater came in holiday week and was one of my most welcome remembrances. I have read it with deep pleasure, almost with envy; so full is it of the stuff which makes literature. It has the vitality and beauty of a rich and living imagination. The secrets of the spirit are in it, and that fellowship with the profounder experiences which gets at the heart of a race. I have not forgotten your kind words about my own work; words which gave me new heart and hope. For you are the very type of man to whose mind I should like to appeal. The judgment of Mrs. Sharp, which you quote, gave me sincere pleasure. To get the attention of the few for whose opinion one cares most is a piece of great good fortune; to really find one’s way to their hearts is best of all. I am looking forward to a good long talk with you. I wish you were here today. This is a divine May; balmy, fragrant, fresh; as if it had never been here before. There is enough soul in Miss Macleod’s stories to set up a generation of average novelists.[253] The work of the real writer seems to me a miracle; something from the sources of our life. I have found, however, so few among all my good literary friends who feel about literature as I do that I have felt at times as if I had no power of putting into words what lies in my heart. This does not mean that I have missed appreciation; on the contrary, I have had more than I deserve. But most of the younger men here regard literature so exclusively as a craft and so little as a revelation that I have often missed the kind of fellowship which you gave me. The deeper feeling is, however, coming back to us in the work of some of the newest men—Bliss Carman for instance. There is below such a book as “Vistas” a depth and richness of imagination which have rarely been disclosed here. I hope you will find time to send me an occasional letter. You will do me a real service. I am now at work on a book which I hope will be deeper and stronger than anything I have done yet. There is the stir of a new life here, although it may be long in getting itself adequately expressed.

Yours fraternally,

Hamilton W. Mabie.

The second is from Sir George Douglas, poet, scholar, and keen critic:

Springwood Park, Kelso,

23:12:95.

My dear Sharp,

Many thanks for your interesting letter and enclosures. I am very glad to find that you think I have understood Miss Macleod’s work, and I think it very good of her to have taken my out-spoken criticisms in such good part. Certainly if she thinks I can be of any use to her in reading over the proofs of “The Washer of the Ford,” it will be a great pleasure to me. I shall probably be in Italy by the time she names—the end of Feb. but in these days of swift posts I hope that need not matter. What you tell me of Fiona’s admirer is very interesting, and from my recollection of the way in which books and[254] the fancied personality of their authors possessed my mind when I was a youth, I can well enter into his infatuation. Fortunately there were no women among my “influences,” or I might have been in as bad a case as he! Would not this be a case for telling the secret, under pledges of course, if it were only to prevent mischief? By the way the whole incident seems to me to afford excellent material for literary treatment—not by you perhaps, nor yet by me (for the literary element in the material puts it outside your province, and makes it not quite the theme I like for my own use either) but say, for W.

Yours ever sincerely,

George Douglas.

I do not quite agree with you as to the inception of Miss Macleod, and possibly this is a matter in which you are not the best possible judge. At any rate, without going into the matter, I fancy that I could establish the existence in works earlier than the Poems of Phantasy of a certain mystical tendency, (German perhaps rather than Celtic in its colouring at that time) but none the less akin to the mysticisms of F. M.

But I may be mistaken....

Our friend, Sir George Douglas, had followed the literary career of William Sharp with careful interest, and gave the same heed to the writings of “Fiona Macleod.” After perusal of The Sin-Eater he made a careful study of the two methods of work, and wrote to the author to tell him he was finally convinced from internal evidence that William Sharp was the author of these books under discussion. He did not ask for confirmation but wished the author to know his conclusions. The latter, who valued not only the friendship but the critical appreciation of his correspondent, made no denial, but begged that the secret might be guarded. In Sir George Douglas’ answer is a reference to a curious incident which had happened while we were at Rudgwick. A[255] letter came from an unknown correspondence containing a proposal of marriage to Fiona Macleod. Whether it was intended as a “draw” or not we could not decide. The proposal was apparently written in all seriousness. Similarities of taste, details of position, profession etc., were carefully given. Acceptance was urged with all appearance of seriousness; therefore the refusal was worded with gravity befitting the occasion.

CHAPTER XVI

THE WASHER OF THE FORD

Owing to the publication of The Sin-Eater by a firm identified with the Scoto-Celtic movement the book attracted immediate attention. Dr. Douglas Hyde voiced the Irish feeling when he wrote to my husband: “I think Fiona Macleod’s books the most interesting thing in the new Scoto-Celtic movement, which I hope will march side by side with our own.” This movement was according to William Sharp “fundamentally the outcome of Ossian, and immediately of the rising of the sap in the Irish nation.” Following on the incentive given by such scholars as Windische, Whitly Stokes, Kuno Meyer, and the various Folklore societies, a Gaelic League had been formed by enthusiasts in Ireland, and in Scotland, for the preservation and teaching of the old Celtic tongue; for the study of the old literatures of which priceless treasures lay untouched in both countries, and for the encouragement of natural racial talent. Wales had succeeded in recovering the use of her Cymric tongue; and the expression in music of racial sentiment had become widespread throughout that country. Ireland and the Highlands looked forward to attaining to a similar result; and efforts to that end were set agoing in schools, in classes, by means of such organisations as the Irish Feis Ceoil Committee, the Irish Literary Society and the Irish National Theatre. Their aim was to preserve some utterance of the national life, to mould some new kind of romance, some new element of thought, out of Irish life and traditions. Among the most eager workers were Dr. Douglas Hyde, Mr. W. B. Yeats, Mr. Standish O’Grady, Mr. George Russell (A.E.), Dr. George Sigerson, and Lady Gregory.

In Scotland much valuable work had been done by such[257] men as Campbell of Islay, Cameron of Brodick, Mr. Alexander Carmichael; by the Gaelic League and the Highland Mod and its yearly gatherings. There were writers and poets also who used the old language and were consequently known within only a small area. No conspicuous modern Celtic work had hitherto been written in the English tongue until the appearance of the writings of Fiona Macleod, and later of Mr. Neil Munro. The Sin-Eater was therefore warmly welcomed on both sides of the Irish Channel, and Fiona Macleod, acclaimed as the leading representative of the Highland Gael, “our one and only Highland novelist.” The Irish Independent pronounced her to be “the poet born,” “her work is pure romance—and she strikes a strange note in modern literature, but it has the spirit of the Celt, and is another triumph for the Celtic genius.”

In consequence of this reception, and of a special article in The Bookman, speculations began to be made concerning the unknown and unseen authoress. The Highland News in pursuance of its desire to awake in the Highlands of Scotland an active sympathy with the growing Scoto-Celtic movement, was anxious to give some details concerning the new writer. To that end Mr. John Macleay wrote to William Sharp to ask if “considering your relation towards Miss Macleod, you might be able to tell me where I could obtain any personal information about her.” In reply, a few sparse notes were sent; the author in question was said to have passed her girlhood in the West Highlands; her tastes, her dislike of towns and her love of seclusion, were among the characteristics described.

When, early in 1896, The Highland News wrote to several authors to ask their views on the subject of Literature in the Highlands, Mr. Grant Allen, Mrs. Katherine Tynan Hinkson, Fiona Macleod and William Sharp were among those writers whose letters, expressive of interest and sympathy, were published.

The two letters contributed by my husband were written necessarily, each from a slightly different standpoint.[258] He welcomed the opportunity of appearing in print in the two characters for he believed that it would help to shield the secret concerning Fiona Macleod.

The publication by P. Geddes & Coll. of The Washer of the Ford—a collection of Tales and Legendary Moralities—aroused a fresh outbreak of curiosity. For instance, a sensational article appeared in The Highland News on the vexed question of the identity of the Highland writer, headed: “Mystery! Mystery! All in a Celtic Haze.”

According to it: “Highland Celts in Glasgow are, I hear, hot on the scent of what they imagine to be a female James Macpherson. This, of course, is Miss Fiona Macleod. The way which Miss Macleod has led our Glasgow countrymen is strange indeed, and the literary detective has been busy. In the first place, it is asserted that Miss Fiona Macleod does not exist. No one seems to have seen her. One gentleman called twice at her residence in Edinburgh, and Miss Macleod was out. She has written about Iona, but again in that well watched place her name is unknown. The natural inference, you will admit, is that there is something here to be “fahnd aht,” as the Englishman says. Seeing that the non-existence of Miss Fiona Macleod has been thus established, the next point is who wrote those books to which that name is attached. Now, Mr. William Sharp has declared himself to be Miss Fiona Macleod’s uncle; he has, too, interested himself in Celtic things. Isn’t it the second natural inference that he has written the books? But Mr. Sharp has specifically denied the authorship. Then, of course, it must be Mr. and Mrs. Sharp in collaboration. But again comes denial. Mr. Sharp has addressed the following note to the Glasgow “Evening News,” which has been somewhat persistent in casting doubt on the existence of Miss Macleod—“Miss Fiona Macleod is not Mr. William Sharp, Miss Fiona Macleod is not Mrs. William Sharp, Miss Fiona Macleod is—Miss Fiona Macleod.” The persecuted author was much disturbed by this effort to draw Fiona Macleod into a controversy, to[259] force her to declare herself. Not only was he indignant at what to him was an unwarrantable interference with the privacy of the individual, and resented the traps that were laid to catch the author should “she” be ‘unwary,’ it was instrumental also in making him much more determined to guard his secret at all costs. During the months of controversy the subject of it accomplished a considerable amount of work.

He collaborated with me in the preparation of an Anthology of Celtic Poetry; prepared an edition of Ossian (P. Geddes & Coll.) for which he wrote a long introduction; and began to work upon a humourous novel, not, however, finished until 1898.

As F. M. he published The Washer of the Ford in April, wrote Green Fire, and also a number of Poems, which were subsequently included in From the Hills of Dream. His Diary for the New Year has this entry:

“Jany 7th, 1896. The British Weekly has a paragraph given under all reserve that Fiona Macleod is Mrs. William Sharp. Have written—as W. S.—to Dr. R. Nicoll and to Mrs. Macdonell of The Bookman to deny this authoritatively.”

From the first we decided that it would be advisable to admit that F. M. was my cousin, also, that my husband acted as her adviser and ‘right hand’ in the matter of publishing.

The arrangements for the two first books were made by W. S. in person. No such precautions were necessary for the books brought out by P. Geddes & Col. as the head of the firm was in the secret. But, as it was well known in Edinburgh and elsewhere that William Sharp was keenly interested in the ‘Celtic Movement,’ he thought it well to collaborate with me on an Anthology of Celtic Poetry entitled Lyra Celtica (and published by the firm), for which he prepared an Introduction and Notes.

On the 6th January, in a letter to Mrs. William Rossetti he wrote “Just back from France where I went so far with my wife on her way to Central Italy. Her health[260] has given way, alas, and she has been sent out from this killing climate for 3 or 4 months at any rate.”

At the end of January he wrote to me:

“Only a brief line to thank you for your letter about me and Fiona. Every word you say is true and urgent, and even if I did not know it to be so I would pay the most searching heed to any advice from you, in whose insight and judgment mentally as well as spiritually I have such deep confidence. Although in the main I had come to exactly the same standpoint I was wavering before certain alluring avenues of thought.... If I live to be an elderly man, time enough for one or more of my big philosophical and critical works. Meanwhile—the flame!

The only thing of the kind I will now do—and that not this year—will be the “Introduction to the Study of Celtic Literature”: but for that I have the material to hand, and shall largely use in magazines first.... Well, we shall begin at once! February will be wholly given over to finishing Wives in Exile and The Washer of the Ford.”

On the 1st February he left town and settled down to work at the Pettycur Inn, Kinghorn, Fife. His Diary gives the following record of work:

In the middle of February William had written to Mr. R. Murray Gilchrist, one of the few friends who then knew the secret of the pseudonym:

[261]

My dear Gilchrist,

Yours,

W. S.

I received the following letter from him in Rome:

London, 21st Feb.

I am sure The Highland News must have delighted you. Let me know what you think of Fiona’s and W. S.’s letters.... I am so sorry you are leaving Siena.... I follow every step of your movements with keenest interest. But oh the light and the colour, how I envy you!

I am hoping you are pleased with Lyra Celtica. It is published today only—so of course I have heard nothing yet from outsiders. Yesterday I finished my Matthew Arnold essay[3]—and in the evening wrote the first part of my F. M. story, “Morag of the Glen”—a strong piece of work I hope and believe though not finished yet. I hope to finish it by tonight. I am so glad you and Mona liked the first of “The Three Marvels of Hy” (pronounced Eo or Hee) so well. Pieces like “The Festival of the Birds” seem to be born out of my brain almost[263] in an inspirational way. I hardly understand it. Yes, you were in the right place to read it—St. Francis’ country. That beautiful strange Umbria! After all, Iona and Assisi are not nearly so remote from each other as from London or Paris. I send you the second of the series “The Blessing of the Flies.” It, too, was written at Pettycur—as was “The Prologue.” ... There is a strange half glad, half morose note in this Prologue which I myself hardly apprehend in full significance. In it is interpolated one of the loveliest of the ‘legendary moralities’ which I had meant to insert in Section I—that of ‘The King of the Earth.’ I will send it to you before long....

To a correspondent he wrote about the “Three Marvels of Hy”: “They are studies in old Religious Celtic sentiment so far as that can be recreated in a modern heart that feels the same beauty and simplicity of the Early Christian faith.”

And to me again: “... I know you will rejoice to hear that there can be no question that F. M’s deepest and finest work is in this “Washer of the Ford” volume. As for the spiritual lesson that nature has taught me, and that has grown within me otherwise, I have given the finest utterance to it that I can. In a sense my inner life of the spirit is concentrated in the three pieces “The Moon-Child,” “The Fisher of Men,” and “The Last Supper.” Than the last I shall never do anything better. Apart from this intense inner flame that has been burning within me so strangely and deeply of late—I think my most imaginative work will be found in the titular piece “The Washer of the Ford,” which still, tho’ written and revised some time ago, haunts me! and in that and the pagan and animistic “Annir Choille.” We shall read those things in a gondola in Venice?”

He joined me in Venice on the 16th May—glad of sunshine and rest. We journeyed back to England by way of the Lakes, in a time of early roses, and returned to London to find the first copies of The Washer of the[264] Ford awaiting us. Two out of many letters concerning the book that came to him from friends who were in the secret and watched the development of the “F. M.” work, were a strong incentive to further effort.

The first is from Mr. Frank Rinder:

My dear Will,

From my heart I thank you for the gift of this book. It adds to the sum of the precious, heaven-sent things in life. It will kindle the fire of hope, of aspiration and of high resolve in a thousand hearts. As one of those into whose life you have brought a more poignant craving for what is beautiful in word and action, I thank you for writing it.

Your friend,

Frank.

The second was from Mr. Janvier:

Saint Remy de Provence,

June 22, 1896.

My dear Will,

Always affectionately yours,

T. A. J.

CHAPTER XVII

“RUNES OF THE SORROW OF WOMEN”

Green Fire

During the most active years of the Fiona Macleod writings, the author was usually in a highly wrought condition of mental and emotional tension, which produced great restlessness, so that he could not long remain contentedly anywhere. We spent the summer of 1896 moving about from one place to another that had special interest for him. First we went to Bamborough, for sea-bathing (he was a fine swimmer), and to visit the little Holy Isle of the Eastern Shores, Lindisfarne, Iona’s daughter. Thence to the Clyde to be near his mother and sisters. From Inverness we went to the Falls of Lora, in Ossian’s country, and later we moved to one of William’s favourite haunts, Loch Tarbert, off Loch Fyne, where our friends Mr. and Mrs. Frank Rinder had taken a house for the summer. There I left him with his secretary-sister, Mary, and returned to London to recommence my work on The Glasgow Herald. The two following letters to me told of the progress of his work:

September 23d.

I am now well in writing trim I am glad to say. Two days ago I wrote the long-awaited “Rune of the Passion of Woman” the companion piece in a sense to the ‘Chant of Woman’ in Pharais—and have also done the Savoy story “The Archer” (about 4,500 words) and all but done “Ahez the Pale.” Today I hope to get on with the “Lily Leven.” ...

I must make the most of this day of storm for writing. I had a splendid long sleep last night, and feel ‘spiff.’ ... I am not built for mixed companies, and like them[267] less and less in proportion as the imperative need of F. M. and W. S. for greater isolation grows. I realise more and more the literal truth of what George Meredith told me—that renunciation of ordinary social pleasures (namely of the ordinary kind in the ordinary way) is a necessity to any worker on the high levels: and unless I work that way I shall not work at all.

26th Sept.

From Tighnabruaich Hotel, a lovely little village in the Kyles of Bute, he wrote to me:

I am glad to be here, for though the weather has changed for the worse I am so fond of the place and[268] neighbourhood. But what I care for most is I am in a strong Fiona mood, though more of dream and reverie—creatively—than of actual writing: indeed it is likely all my work here, or nearly all shall be done through dream and mental-cartooning. I have written “The Snow Sleep of Angus Ogue” for the winter Evergreen, and am glad to know it is one of F. M.’s deepest and best utterances.

The Evergreen was a Quarterly started by Prof. Geddes, of which W. S. was Editor. Five numbers only were issued. During the autumn William had prepared for publication by P. Geddes & Coll a re-issue of the Tales contained in The Sin-Eater and The Washer of the Ford, in the form of a paper covered edition in three volumes, Barbaric Tales, Spiritual Tales, Tragic Romances. Each volume contained a new tale. Mr. W. B. Yeats considered that “Of the group of new voices none is more typical than the curious mysterious voice that is revealed in these stories of Miss Fiona Macleod.... She has become the voice (of these primitive peoples and elemental things) not from mere observation of their ways, but out of an absolute identity of nature.... Her art belongs in kind, whatever be its excellence in its kind, to a greater art, which is of revelation, and deals with invisible and impalpable things. Its mission is to bring us near to those powers and principalities, which we divine in mortal hopes and passions.

Mr. W. E. Henley had shown considerable interest in the “F. M.” Tales, and had written an appreciative letter to the author, who immediately acknowledged it:

1:4:97.

Dear Mr. Henley,

I thank you for your kind letter. Any work of recognition from you means much to me. Your advice is wise and sane, I am sure—and you may be certain that I shall bear it in mind. It will be difficult to follow—for absolute simplicity is the most difficult of all styles, being, as it must be, the expression of a mind at once so imaginative[269] in itself, so lucid in its outlook, and so controlled in its expression, that only a very few rarely gifted individuals can hope to achieve the isolating ideal you indicate.

The three latest things I have written are the long short-story “Morag of the Glen,” “The Melancholy of Ulad,” and “The Archer.” I would particularly like to know what you think of the style and method of “The Archer” (I mean, apart from the arbitrary fantasy of the short supplementary part—which affords the clue to the title)—as there I have written, or tried to write, with the accent of that life as I know it.

F. M.

The central story of “The Archer” was one of the Tales which the author valued most, and rewrote many times. In its final form—“Silas,” in the Tauchnitz volume of F. M. Tales—it stands without the opening and closing episodes. Concerning the “fantasy of the short supplementary part” a curious coincidence happened. That arbitrary fantasy is the record of a dream, or vision, which the author had at Tarbert. In a letter from Mr. Yeats received shortly after, the Irish poet related a similar experience which he had had—a vision of a woman shooting arrows among the stars—a vision that appeared also the same night to Mr. Arthur Symons. I remember the exchange of letters that passed between the three writers; unfortunately Fiona’s letter to Mr. Symons, and the latter’s answer, are not available. But I have two of the letters on the subject which, through the courtesy of Mr. Yeats, I am able to quote; both, unfortunately are undated. F. M. describes a second vision which, however, had no connection with the coincidence.

Mr. Yeats wrote:

Tillyra Castle,

Co. Galway.

My dear Sharp,

Many thanks for your letter. You must have written it the very morning I was writing to Miss Macleod. I have just returned from the Arran Islands where I had[270] gone on a fishing boat, and where I go again at the end of this week. I am studying on the islands for the opening chapter of a story I am about to set out upon. I met two days ago an old man who hears the fairies he says every night and complains much that their singing keeps him awake. He showed me a flute which he had got thinking that if he played it they might be pleased and so cease teasing him. I have met much curious lore here and in Arran.

I have had some singular experiences myself. I invoked one night the spirits of the moon and saw between sleep and waking a beautiful woman firing an arrow among the stars. That night she appeared to Symons who is staying here, and so impressed him that he wrote a poem on her the only one he ever wrote to a dream, calling her the fountain of all song or some such phrase. She was the symbolic Diana. I invoked a different spirit another night and it appeared in dreams to an old French Count, who was staying here, and was like Symons ignorant of my invocations. He locked his door to try to keep it out. Please give my greetings to Miss Macleod.

Yours Sincerely,

W. B. Yeats.

F. M. wrote in acknowledgment of a long critical letter from Mr. Yeats, to whom “she” had sent The Washer of the Ford:

Tarbert on Loch Fyne.

Dear Mr. Yeats,

My cordial greetings to you,

Sincerely,

Fiona Macleod.

No sooner had W. S. returned to London than he fell ill with nervous prostration, and rheumatism. It was soon obvious that he could not remain in town, and that for a[273] short time at any rate he must cease from pen-work. It therefore seemed an opportune moment for him to go to New York, and attend to his publishing interests there, especially as Messrs. Stone & Kimball had recently failed.

Before starting he had read and reviewed with much interest a volume of poems by the American poet, Mrs. Elizabeth Stoddard, and had received a pleased acknowledgment from her husband Richard A. Stoddard:

New York,

Oct. 30, 1896.

My dear Sharp,

I am greatly obliged to you for what you have written about my wife’s poetry, any recognition of which touches me more nearly than anything that could be said about my own verse.... My wife has told you, I presume, how much I enjoyed your wife’s Women’s Voices, just before I went into the Hospital, and how I composed a bit of verse in my head when I couldn’t see to feed myself. Do you ever compose in that silent way? I have taught myself to do without pens, ink, and paper, in verse; but I can’t do so in prose, which would print itself in the thing I call my mind. Give my kindest regards and warmest good wishes to your Elizabeth, whose charming book is a favourite with my Elizabeth as well, as with

Yours sincerely,

R. H. Stoddard.

Later, Mr. Stedman wrote an account of a dinner given to Mr. Stoddard to which W. S. was invited:

Bronxville, N. Y.,

Feb. 17, 1897.

My dear Sharp,

I have received your long letter of the 25th Jany, and also a shorter one of the 30th written at Mr. George Cotterell’s house. I will say at the outset that I feel guilty at seeing the name of that loveable man and true poet; for although a year has passed since the completion of my (Victorian) “Anthology” I have been positively unable to write the letter which I have in my heart for him.

[274]

... The most important social matter here this winter relating to our Guild will be a large important dinner to be given on March 25th by the Author’s Club and his other friends, to Richard Henry Stoddard. We are going to try to make an exception to the rule that New York is not good to her own, and to render a tribute somewhat commensurate with Stoddard’s life long services, and his quality as poet and man. A few invitations are going to be sent to literary men abroad, and I have been able to write about them to Besant, Dobson, Garnett and yourself. Of course I do not expect that you will come over here, and I am quite sure you will write a letter which can be read at the dinner, for I have in mind your personal friendship with Stoddard and affectionate comprehension of his genius and career....

On the 13th of April Mr. Stedman wrote again to report on the proceedings:

Your letter to the Stoddard Banquet was by far the best and most inclusive of the various ones received, and it was read out to the 150 diners and met with high favour. I mailed you the full report of the affair, but believe I have not written you since it came off. It proved to be the most notable literary occasion yet known in this city—was brilliant, magnetic, enthusiastic throughout. I felt a pride in my office as Chairman. The hall was one of the handsomest in America, the speaking of the most eloquent type, and full of laughter and tears. The Stoddards were deeply gratified by your letter.

E. C. S.

My husband arrived in New York on All Hallow E’en and went direct to the hospitable house of Mr. Alden whence he wrote to me:

Metuchen, N. J.,

1st Nov., 1896.

... Of course nothing can be done till Wednesday. All America is aflame with excitement—and New York itself is at fever-heat. I have never seen such a sight as[275] yesterday. The whole enormous city was a mass of flags and innumerable Republican and Democratic insignia—with the streets thronged with over two million people. The whole business quarter made a gigantic parade that took 7 hours in its passage—and the business men alone amounted to over 100,000. Everyone—as indeed not only America, but Great Britain and all Europe—is now looking eagerly for the final word on Tuesday night. The larger issues are now clearer: not merely that the Bryanite 50-cent dollar (instead of the standard 100 cent) would have far reaching disastrous effects, but that the whole struggle is one of the anarchic and destructive against the organic and constructive forces. However, this tremendous crisis will come to an end—pro tem. at any rate—on Tuesday night....

During his absence, F. M.’s romance, Green Fire, was published. The title was taken from a line in ‘Cathal of the Woods,’ ‘O green fire of life, pulse of the world, O Love!’ And the deeper meaning of the expression ‘Green Life’—so familiar to all who knew ‘Fiona Macleod’—is suggested in a sentence at the close of the book: “Alan knew that strange nostalgia of the mind for impossible things. Then, wrought for a while from his vision of green life, and flamed by another green fire than that born of earth, he dreamed his dream.”

To me, the author wrote from New York:

“ ... I am indeed glad you like Green Fire so well. And you are right in your insight: Annaik is the real human magnet. Ynys is an idealised type, what I mean by Ideala or Esclarmoundo, but she did not take hold of me like Annaik. Alan, too, is a variation of the Ian type. But Annaik has for me a strange and deep attraction: and I am sure the abiding personal interest must be in her. You are the only one who seems to have understood and perceived this—certainly the only one who has noticed it. Some day I want to tell Annaik’s story in full....”

[276]

The author had read much Breton lore during his study of French Literature, and as his interest had for a time been centred on the land of the kindred Celt, he determined to make it the setting of a new Romance. He had never been there, so drew on his imagination for the depiction of the places he knew of by hearsay only. The result, when later he judged the book in cool criticism, he considered to be unsatisfactory as to structure and balance. He realised, that although the Fiona impetus produced the first chapter and the latter part, the plot and melodramatic character of the Breton story are due to W. S.; that the descriptions of nature are written by F. M. and W. S. in fusion, are in character akin to the descriptions in “The Children of Tomorrow,” written by W. S. in his transition stage. Consequently, when in 1905, he discussed with me what he wished preserved of his writings, he asked my promise that I would never republish the book in its entirety.

In order to preserve what he himself cared for, he rewrote the Highland portion of the book, named it “The Herdsman” and included it in The Dominion of Dreams. (In the Uniform Edition, it is placed, together with a series of detached Thought-Fragments from Green Fire, in The Divine Adventure, Vol. IV.) He never carried out his intention of writing Annaik’s story in full. Had he done so it would have been incorporated in a story, partly reminiscent of his early sojourn among the gipsies, and have been called The Gypsy Trail.

Some months later Mr. W. B. Yeats wrote to W. S.:

“I have read ‘Green Fire’ since I saw you. I do not think it is one of your well-built stories, and I am certain that the writing is constantly too self-consciously picturesque; but the atmosphere, the romance of much of it, of ‘The Herdsman’ part in particular haunts me ever since I laid it down.

‘Fiona Macleod’ has certainly discovered the romance of the remote Gaelic places as no one else has ever[277] done. She has made the earth by so much the more beautiful.”

And Mr. George Russell (A. E.) wrote to F. M. from Dublin:

Dear Fiona Macleod,

A. E.

CHAPTER XVIII

FROM THE HILLS OF DREAM

The Laughter of Peterkin

On the wanderer’s return to England his volume of poems From the Hills of Dream was published by P. Geddes & Coll. The first edition was dedicated to our godson Arthur Allhallow, younger son of Prof. and Mrs. Patrick Geddes, who was born on that Hallow E’en the anniversary of our Wedding-day. The volume consists of poems, runes and lyrics, written by F. M. between 1893 and 1896; and a series of “prose rhythms” entitled “The Silence of Amor.”

A sympathetic letter from Mr. Ernest Rhys, the Welsh poet, drew a quick response:

Murrayfield, Midlothian,

23: 11: 96.

Dear Mr. Rhys,

Sincerely yours,

Fiona Macleod.

Early in 1897 Mr. Yeats wrote from Paris to F. M. concerning aims and ideals he was endeavouring to shape into expression for the re-vivifying of Celtic Ireland, and out of which has evolved the Irish National Theatre:

My dear Miss Macleod,

Yours truly,

W. B. Yeats.

The prolonged strain of the heavy dual work added to by an eager experimentation with certain psychic phenomena with which he had long been familiar but wished further to investigate, efforts in which at times he and Mr. W. B. Yeats collaborated—began to tell heavily on him, and to produce very disquieting symptoms of nervous collapse. We decided therefore that he should pass the dead months of the year, as he called December and January, in the South of France. From St. Remy while on a visit to Mr. and Mrs. Janvier he wrote to me:

The following fragment of a diary—all there is for 1897—gives a record of the work he had in progress: also shows his way of noting (or not noting!) his outgoing expenses:

After his return to London he wrote to Mrs. Janvier:

Grosvenor Club,

March 10, 1897.

... Although I have had an unpleasant mental and physical set-back the last three days, I am steadily[284] (at least I hope so) gaining ground—but I have never yet regained the health or spirits I was in at St. Remy, tho’ even there far more worn in mind and body than even you guessed. But with the spring I shall get well.

I am heart and soul with Greece in this war of race and freedom—and consider the so-called “Concert” a mockery and a sham. It is a huge Capitalist and Reactionary Bogus Company. Fortunately the tide of indignation is daily rising here—and even the Conservative papers are at one with the Liberal on the central points. Were I a younger man—or rather were I free—I would now be in Greece or on my way to join the Hellenes. As you will see by enclosed, I am one of the authors who have sent a special message to the Athenian President of the Chamber. It is a stirring time, and in many ways....

March 22d.

[285]

Towards the end of April I went to Paris to write upon the two “Salons,” and my husband, still very unwell, went to St. Margaret’s Bay, whence he wrote to me:

Wilfion.

P. S. Again some more good tidings. Constables have accepted my giving up The Lily Leven indefinitely—and instead have agreed to my proposal to write a child’s book (dealing with the Celtic Wonderworld) to be called The Laughter of Peterkin....

From Paris I went to St. Remy for a short visit to our friends the Janviers, and my birthday found me still there. My husband had been considerably perplexed how[286] he was to celebrate the day for me from a distance. On the early morning of the 17th of May the waiter brought me my coffee and my letters to my room as usual, and told me gravely that a large packet had arrived for me, during the night, with orders that it should not be delivered to me till the morning. Should it be brought up stairs? The next moment the door was pushed open and in came the radiant smiling unexpected apparition of my Poet! In a little town an event of this sort is soon known to everyone, and that evening when he and I went for a walk, and sauntered through the little boulevards, we found we were watched for and greeted by everyone, and heads were popped out of windows just to see “les amants.”

After his equally rapid return to town he wrote to me:

“It seems very strange to be here and at work again—or rather it is the interlude that seems so strange and dreamlike. This time last week it was not quite certain if I could get away, as it depended partly upon finishing the Maeterlinck Essay and partly upon the postponement of due date for the monograph on Orchardson. Then Richard Whiteing came in. Then at last I said that since fortune wouldn’t hurry up it could go to the devil—and I would just go to my dear wife: and so I went. And all is well. Only a week ago today since I left! How dramatic it all is—that hurried journey, the long afternoon and night journey from Paris, the long afternoon and night journey to Tarascon—the drive at dawn and sunrise through beautiful Provence—the meeting you—the seeing our dear friends there again. And then that restful Sunday, that lovely birthday!”

And again a few days later:

“Herewith my typed copy of your Wilfion’s last writing. Called ‘The Wayfarer’ though possibly, afterwards, ‘Where God is, there is Light,’ it is one of the three Spiritual Moralities of which you know two already,[287] ‘The Fisher of Men’ and ‘The Last Supper.’ In another way, the same profound truth is emphasised as in the other two—that Love is the basic law of spiritual life. ‘The Redeemer liveth’ in these three: Compassion, Beauty, Love—the three chords on which these three harmonies of Fiona’s inner life have been born....”

“The Wayfarer” was published in Cosmopolis, and afterwards included in The Winged Destiny.

On the 10th of June the author went for a night to Burford Bridge, in order to have some talks with George Meredith. While there he began to write “The Glory of the King,” and two days later he finished it on reaching home.

In the summer of 1897 he visited Ireland for the first time. In Dublin he met Mr. George Russell—whose beautiful verse was first published over the initials A. E.—Mr. Standish O’Grady and other writers with whom he had been in correspondence; and he greatly enjoyed a visit to Mr. Edward Martin at Tillyra Castle in Galway.

Among several enthusiastic letters I received the following:

In haste (and hunger),

Wilf.

But the pressure of health, of the needs of daily livelihood, and of the more dominating ambitions of F. M. prevented the fulfilment of this scheme.

Many times he talked of it, drafted out portions of it—but it remained unaccomplished, and all that exists of it is the beginning chapters of the first book written in Paris ten years before, and then called Cæsar of France.

London proved to be impossible to him owing to the excitable condition of his brain. Therefore he took rooms in Hastings whence he wrote to me:

Nov. 21, 1897.

Among the Christmas publications of 1897 appeared The Laughter of Peterkin by Fiona Macleod. This book, issued by Messrs. Archibald Constable and illustrated by Mr. Sunderland Rollinson, was a new departure for the author, an interlude in the midst of more strenuous original work, for it was the re-telling of three old tales of Celtic Wonderland: “The Four White Swans,” or “The[291] Children of Lir,” “The Fate of the Sons of Turenn,” and “Darthool and the Sons of Usna.”

Some years later, after the publication of Lady Gregory’s “Gods and Fighting Men,” Mr. Alfred Nutt wrote to F. M. and suggested that she should again turn her attention to the re-telling of some of the beautiful old Celtic tales and legends. My husband, however, realised that he had far more dreams haunting the chambers of his mind than he could have time to give expression to. Therefore, very regretfully, he felt constrained to forego what otherwise would have been a work of love.

CHAPTER XIX

WIVES IN EXILE

Silence Farm

The production of the Fiona Macleod work was accomplished at a heavy cost to the author as that side of his nature deepened and became dominant. The strain upon his energies was excessive: not only from the necessity of giving expression to the two sides of his nature; but because of his desire, that, while under the cloak of secrecy F. M. should develop and grow, the reputation of William Sharp should at the same time be maintained. Moreover each of the two natures had its own needs and desires, interests and friends. The needs of each were not always harmonious one with the other, but created a complex condition that led to a severe nervous collapse. The immediate result of the illness was to cause an acute depression and restlessness that necessitated a continual change of environment. In the early part of 1898 he went in turn to Dover, to Bournemouth, Brighton, and St. Margaret’s Bay. He was much alone, except for the occasional visit of an intimate friend; for I could go to him at the week-ends only, as I had the work in London to attend to. The sea, and solitude, however, proved his best allies.

To Mrs. Janvier he wrote:

... I am skirting the wood of shadows. I am filled with vague fears—and yet a clear triumphant laughter goes through it, though whether of life or death no one knows. I am also in a duel with other forces than those of human wills—and I need all my courage and strength. At the moment I have recovered my physic control over certain media. It cannot last more than a few days[293] at most a few weeks at a time: but in that time I am myself....

Let there be peace in your heart: peace and hope transmuted into joy: in your mind, the dusking of no shadow, the menace of no gloom, but light, energy, full life: and to you in your whole being, the pulse of youth, the flame of green fire....

At the end of April he wrote to R. Murray Gilchrist from St. Margaret’s Bay:

My dear Friend,

I know you will have been sorry to hear that I have been ill—and had to leave work, and home. The immediate cause was a severe and sudden attack of influenza which went to membranes of the head and brain, and all but resulted in brain fever. This evil was averted—but it and the possible collapse of your friend Will were at one time, and for some days, an imminent probability.

I have now been a fortnight in this quiet sea-haven, and am practically myself again. Part of my work is now too hopelessly in arrears ever to catch up. Fortunately, our friend Miss F. M. practically finished her book just before she got ill too—and there is a likelihood that There is But One Love [published in the following year under the title of The Dominion of Dreams] will come out this Spring. A few days will decide....

Your friend and Sunlover,

(in the deep sense you know I mean—for I have suffered much, but am now again fronting life gravely and with laughing eyes),

Will.

and again after his return to London:

Rutland House.

My dear Robert,

Will.

Two, among the many letters he wrote to me during that Spring—so full of suffering for him and anxiety for me—are, I think, very indicative of the two phases of his nature. The first relates to views we held in common; the second gives an insight into the primitive elemental soul that so often swayed him, and his work.

March 29, 1898.

(To E. A. S.)

St. Margaret’s Bay,

May, 1898.

It was in this mood that he wrote to a friend:

... but then, life is just like that. It is glad only ‘in the open,’ and beautiful only because of its dreams. I wish I could live all my hours out of doors: I envy no one in the world so much as the red deer, the eagle, the sea-mew. I am sure no kings have so royal a life as the plovers and curlews have. All these have freedom, rejoice continually on the wind’s wing, exalt alike in sun and shade: to them day is day, and night is night, and there is nothing else.

His sense of recovery was greatly heightened by a delightful little wander in Holland in May, with Mr. Thomas A. Janvier, a jovial, breezy companion. Of all he saw the chief fascination proved to be Eiland Marken, as he wrote to me:

The following is a letter from his other self:

23d July, 1898.

My dear Mr. Rhys,

On my coming to Edinburgh for a few days I find the book you have so kindly sent to me. It is none the less welcome because it comes as no new acquaintance: for on[299] its appearance a friend we have in common sent it to me. Alas, that copy lies among the sea-weed in a remote Highland loch; for the book, while still reading in part, slipped overboard the small yacht in which I was sailing, and with it the MS. of a short story of mine appropriately named “Beneath the Shadow of the Wave”! The two may have comforted each other in that solitude: or the tides may have carried them southward, and tossed them now to the Pembroke Stacks, now to the cliffs of Howth. Perhaps a Welsh crab may now be squeaking (they do say that crabs make a whistling squeak!) with a Gaelic accent, or the deep-sea congers be reciting Welsh ballads to the young-lady-eels of the Hebrides. Believe me, your book has given me singular pleasure. I find in it the indescribable: and to me that is one of the tests, perhaps the supreme test (for it involves so much) of imaginative literature. A nimble air of the hills is there; the rustle of remote woods; the morning cry, that is so ancient, and that still so thrills us.

I most eagerly hope that you will recreate in beauty the all but lost beauty of the old Cymric singers. There is a true originality in this, as in anything else. The green leaf, the grey wave, the mountain wind—after all, are they not murmurous in the old Celtic poets, whether Alban or Irish or Welsh: and to translate, and recreate anew, from these, is but to bring back into the world again a lost wandering beauty of hill-wind or green leaf or grey wave. There is, I take it, no one living who could interpret Davyth ap Gwilym and other old Welsh singers as you could do. I long to have the Green Book of ‘the Poet of the Leaves’ in English verse, and in English verse such as that into which you could transform it....

F. M.

The Welsh poet replied:

Newcastle-on-Tyne,

27th Dec., 1898.

Dear “Fiona Macleod,”

‘I believe I never wrote to thank you for your story in the Dome, which I read eventually in an old Welsh tower.[300] It was the right place to read such a fantasy of the dark and bright blindness of the Celt: and I found it, if not of your very best, yet full of imaginative stimulus.

Not many weeks ago, in very different surroundings, Mr. Sharp read me a poem—two poems—of yours. So I feel that I have the sense, at least, of your continued journeys thro’ the divine and earthly regions of the Gael, and how life looks to you, and what colours it wears. What should we do were it not for that sense of the little group of simple and faithful souls, who love the clay of earth because heaven is wrapt in it, and stand by and support their lonely fellows in the struggle against the forces upon forces the world sends against them? I trust at some time it may be my great good fortune to see you and talk of these things, and hear more of your doings.

Ernest Rhys.

From the little rock-perched, sea-girt Pettycur Inn, my husband wrote to Mrs. Janvier:

The House of Dreams,

20th Dec., 1898.

During the years that F. M. developed so rapidly her creator felt the necessity pressing hard on him to sustain, as far as he could, the reputation of W. S. He valued such reputation as he had and was anxious not to let it die away; yet there was a great difference in the method of production of the two kinds of work. The F. M. writing was the result of an inner impulsion, he wrote because he had to give expression to himself whether the impulse grew out of pain or out of pleasure. But W. S., divorced as much as could be from his twin self, wrote because he cared to, because the necessities of life demanded it. He was always deeply interested in his critical work, for he was a constant student of Literature in all its forms, and of the Literature of different countries—in particular of France, America and Italy. This form of study, this keen interest, was a necessity to W. S.; but fiction was to him a matter of choice. He deliberately set himself to write the two novels Wives in Exile and Silence Farm, because he felt W. S. ought to produce some such work as a normal procedure and development; and also he felt it imperative to show some result of the seclusion he was known to seek for purposes of work. He was deeply interested in both books. Wives in Exile was the easier to write, as it gave an outlet to the vein of whimsicality in him, to his love of fun. He delighted in the weaving of any plot, or in any extravaganza. The book was a great relief and rest to him and was a real tonic to his mind.

A little later, when he realised that something more was expected of him and was too ill to attempt anything in the shape of comedy, he therefore set himself to write a tragic tale of the Lowlands, founded on a true incident. Into this he put serious interested work, but there was[302] one consideration that throughout had a restraining effect on him—he never forgot that the book should not have obvious kinship to the work of F. M., that he should keep a considerable amount of himself in check. For there was a midway method, that was a blending of the two, a swaying from the one to the other, which he desired to avoid, since he knew that many of the critics were on the watch. Therefore, he strained the realistic treatment beyond what he otherwise would have done, in order to preserve a special method of presentment. Nevertheless, that book was the one he liked best of all the W. S. efforts, and he considered that it contained some of his most satisfactory work. Wives in Exile was published in June of 1896 by Mr. Grant Richards, and Silence Farm in 1897.

The following letter from Mr. Theodore Watts-Dunton was a great pleasure. It is, I believe, the only written expression of what the author terms the “inwardness of Aylwin”:

The Pines, Putney Hill,

Oct. 19, 1898.

My dear Sharp,

Your affectionate

“Aylwin.”

CHAPTER XX

THE DOMINION OF DREAMS

For the January number of The Fortnightly Review for 1899 “Fiona” wrote a long study on “A Group of Celtic Writers” and what she held to be “the real Celticism.” The writers specially noted are W. B. Yeats, Dr. Douglas Hyde, George Russell (A. E.), Nora Hopper, Katherine Tynan Hinkson, and Lionel Johnson. With regard to the Celtic Revival the writer considered that “there has been of late too much looseness of phrase concerning the Celtic spirit, the Celtic movement, and that mysterious entity Celticism. The ‘Celtic Renascence,’ the ‘Gaelic glamour,’ these, for the most part, are shibboleths of the journalist who if asked what it is that is being re-born, or what differentiating qualities has the distinction of Gaelic from any other ‘glamour,’ or what constitutes ‘glamour’ itself, would as we say in the North, be fair taken aback.... What is called ‘the Celtic Renascence’ is simply a fresh development of creative energy coloured by nationality, and moulded by inherited forces, a development diverted from the common way by accident of race and temperament. The Celtic writer is the writer the temper of whose mind is more ancient, more primitive, and in a sense more natural than that of his compatriot in whom the Teutonic strain prevails. The Celt is always remembering; the Anglo Saxon has little patience which lies far behind or far beyond his own hour. And as the Celt comes of a people who grew in spiritual outlook as they began what has been revealed to us by history as a ceaseless losing battle, so the Teuton comes of a people who has lost in the spiritual life what they have gained in the moral and the practical—and I use moral in its literal and proper sense. The difference is a far greater one than may be[305] recognised readily. The immediate divergence is, that with the Celt ancestral memory and ancestral instinct constitute a distinguishable factor in his life and his expression of life, and that with his Teutonic compatriot vision, dream, actuality and outlook, are in the main restricted to what in the past has direct bearing upon the present, and to what in the future is also along the line of direct relation to the present.... All that the new generation of Celtic or Anglo-Celtic (for the most part Anglo-Celtic) writers hold in conscious aim, is to interpret anew ‘the beauty at the heart of things,’ not along the line of English tradition but along that of racial instinct, coloured and informed by individual temperament.”

Naturally the article was favourably commented upon in Ireland. The immediate result in the English press was the appearance in The Daily Chronicle of January 28th of a long unsigned article entitled “Who is Fiona Macleod: A Study in two styles” to suggest that in response to the cry of “Author!” so repeatedly made, “we may, in our search for Miss Macleod, turn to Mr. William Sharp himself and say with literal truth ‘Thou art beside thyself!’”

The writer advanced many proofs in support of his contention, drawn from a close study of the writings and methods of work of W. S. and F. M.; and asked, in conclusion: “Will Mr. Sharp deny that he is identical with Miss Macleod? That Miss Macleod is Mr. Sharp, I, for one, have not a lingering doubt and I congratulate the latter on the success, the real magic and strength of the work issued under his assumed name.” At first the harassed author ignored the challenge; but a few months later F. M. yielded to the persuasion of her publishers—who had a book of hers in the press—and wrote a disclaimer which appeared in The Literary World and elsewhere.

In April 1899 The Dominion of Dreams was published by Messrs. A. Constable & Co.

[306]

To Mr. Frank Rinder the author wrote:

My dear Frank,

Lovingly,

Will.

To another correspondent he wrote:

... Well, if it gains wide and sincere appreciation I shall be glad: if it should practically be ignored I shall be sorry: but, beyond that, I am indifferent. I know what I have tried to do: I know what I have done: I know the end to which I work: I believe in the sowers who will sow and the reapers who will reap, from some seed of the spirit in this book: and knowing this, I have little heed[307] of any other considerations. Beauty, in itself, for itself, is my dream: and in some expression of it, in the difficult and subtle art of words, I have a passionate absorption.”

In a letter to Mr. Macleay W. S. explained that Fiona’s new book is the logical outcome of the others: the deeper note, the vox humana, of these. I think it is more than merely likely that this is the last book of its kind. I have had to live my books—and so must follow an inward law—that is truth to art as well as to life I think. There is, however, a miscellaneous volume (of ‘appreciations,’ and mystical studies) and also a poetic volume which I suppose should be classed with it. I imagine that, thereafter, her development will be on unexpected lines, both in fiction and the drama: judging both from what I know and what I have seen. In every sense I think you are right when you speak of ‘surprise’ as an element in what we may expect from her.... I suppose some of that confounded controversy about Miss M. and myself will begin again....

To Mr. W. B. Yeats the author wrote about the book, and described our plans for the summer:

Monday, 1899.

My dear Yeats,

... As you well know, all imaginative work is truly alive only when it has died into the mind and been born again. The mystery of dissolution is the common mean of growth. Resurrection is the test of any spiritual idea—as of the spiritual life itself, of art, and of any final expression of the inward life.... I have been ill—and seriously—but am now better, though I have to be careful still. All our plans for Scandinavia in the autumn are now over—partly by doctor’s orders, who says I must have hill and sea air native to me—Scotland or Ireland. So about the end of July my wife and I intend to go to Ireland. It will probably be to the east coast, Mourne Mountains coast. I hope you like The Dominion of Dreams. Miss Macleod has received two or three very[308] strange and moving letters from strangers, as well as others. The book of course can appeal to few—that is, much of it. But, I hope, it will sink deep. We leave our flat about 20th of July. Shall you be in town before then? I doubt if I’ll ever live in London again. It is not likely. I do not know that I am overwhelmingly anxious to live anywhere. I think you know enough of me to know how profoundly I feel the strain of life—the strain of double life. Still, there is much to be done yet. But for that ...

Your friend,

William Sharp.

Mr. Yeats’ Review of The Dominion of Dreams in the Bookman (July 1899) was carefully critical; it was his desire “to discover the thoughts about which her thoughts are woven. Other writers are busy with the way men and women act in joy and sorrow, but Miss Macleod has rediscovered the art of the mythmaker and gives a visible shape to joys and sorrows, and makes them seem realities and men and women illusions. It was minds like hers that created Aphrodite out of love and the foam of the sea, and Prometheus out of human thought and its likeness to the leaping fire.” And then he pointed out that “every inspiration has its besetting sin, and perhaps those who are at the beginning of movements have no models and no traditional restraints. She has faults enough to ruin an ordinary writer. Her search for these resemblances brings her beyond the borders of coherence.... The bent of nature that makes her turn from circumstance and personalities to symbols and personifications may perhaps leave her liable to an obsession for certain emotional words which have for her a kind of symbolic meaning, but her love of old tales should tell her that the old mysteries are best told in simple words.”

At first this criticism caused the author much emotional perturbation; but later, when he reconsidered the statements, he admitted that there was reason for the censure.

[309]

“Fiona” then asked the Irish poet to indicate the passages he took most exception to, and Mr. Yeats sent a carefully annotated copy of the book under discussion. And I may add that a number of the revisions that differentiate the version in the Collected Edition from the original issue are the outcome of this criticism. The author’s acknowledgment is dated the 16th September 1899:

My dear Mr. Yeats,

Sincerely yours,

Fiona Macleod.

These two plays were finally entitled “The Immortal Hour” and “The House of Usna.” The third, “The Enchanted Valleys,” remains a fragment.

At midsummer we gave up our flat in South Hampstead and stored our furniture indefinitely. It was decreed that we were to live no more in London; so we[311] decided to make the experiment of wintering at Chorleywood, Bucks. Meanwhile, we went to our dear West Highlands, to Loch Goil, to Corrie on Arran, and to Iona. And in August we crossed over to Belfast and stayed for a short time at Ballycastle, the north easterly point of Ireland, to Newcastle, and then to Dublin.

From Ballycastle my husband wrote to Mrs. Janvier:

6th Aug., 1899.

... We are glad to get away from Belfast, tho’ very glad to be there, in a nice hotel, after our fatigues and 10 hours’ exposure in the damp sea-fog. It was a lovely day in Belfast, and Elizabeth had her first experience of an Irish car.

We are on the shore of a beautiful bay—with the great ram-shaped headland of Fair Head on the right, the Atlantic in front, and also in front but leftward the remote Gaelic island of Rathlin. It is the neighbourhood whence Deirdrê and Naois fled from Concobar, and it is from a haven in this coast that they sailed for Scotland. It is an enchanted land for those who dream the old dreams: though perhaps without magic or even appeal for those who do not....”

October found us at Chorleywood, in rooms overlooking the high common. Thence he wrote to Mr. Murray Gilchrist:

My dear Robert,

Yours,

Will.

... The Progress of Art in the Century was a longer piece of work than the author anticipated. It was finished in the summer of 1900, and published in The Nineteenth Century Series in 1902 by The Linscott Publishing Co. in America, and by W. & R. Chambers in England. In the early winter the author wrote again to Mr. Gilchrist:

Chorleywood,

Nov., 1899.

My dear Robert,

The reason for another note so soon is to ask if you cannot arrange to come here for a few days about November-end, and for this reason. You know that the Omar[313] Khayyàm Club is the “Blue Ribbon” so to speak of Literary Associations, and that its occasional meetings are more sought after than any other. As I think you know, I am one of the 49 members—and I much want you to be my guest at the forthcoming meeting on Friday Dec. 1st, the first of the new year.

The new President is Sir George Robertson (“Robertson of Chitral”)—and he has asked me to write (and recite) the poem which, annually or biennially, some one is honoured by the club request to write. The moment she heard of it, Elizabeth declared that it must be the occasion of your coming here—so don’t disappoint her as well as myself!...

Ever affectly, yours,

Will.

CHAPTER XXI

THE DIVINE ADVENTURE

Celtic

In the early summer of 1900 the volume entitled The Divine Adventure: Iona: By Sundown Shores, with a dedication to me, was published by Messrs. Chapman & Hall.

Various titles had been discarded, among others “The Reddening of the West,” also “The Sun-Treader” intended for a story, projected but never written, to form a sequel to “The Herdsman.” The titular essays had previously appeared in various periodicals; the two first in The Fortnightly. As the author explained in a letter to Mr. Macleay, Fiona’s Highland champion:

Believe me, yours most sincerely,

Fiona Macleod.

[315]

To Mons. Anatole Le Braz, the Breton romance-writer and folklorist, F. M. had written previously:

Dear M. Le Braz,

Fiona Macleod.

On the 30th Dec. W. S. wrote to Mr. Frank Rinder:

And to Mr. Gilchrist, “It was written de profundis, partly because of a compelling spirit, partly to help others passionately eager to obtain some light on this most complex and intimate spiritual destiny.”

Some months previously William had written to an unknown correspondent, Dr. John Goodchild, poet, mystic and archeologist:

The Outlook Tower,

Edinburgh,

1898.

My dear Sir,

Believe me, sincerely yours,

Fiona Macleod.

“The House of Usna”—one of three Celtic plays, on which F. M. had been working for several months, was brought out under the auspices of The Stage Society, of which William Sharp was the first Chairman. Mr. Frederick Whelen, the founder of that Society, had met my husband at Hindhead when we were staying with his uncle and aunt, Mr. and Mrs. Grant Allen, at their charming house, The Croft, built among the heather and the pines on the hill-top just by the edge of the chasm called “The Devil’s Punch Bowl.”

The older man was keenly interested in the project, did his utmost to help towards its realisation. “The House of Usna” was performed at the Fifth Meeting of the Society at the Globe Theatre April 29th, 1900, together with two short plays by Maeterlinck, The Interior and The Death of Tintagiles. The music, composed especially for the short drama in three scenes, was by Mr. Y. M. Capel, and the play was produced under the direction of Mr. Granville Barker. According to one critic: “It had beauty and it had atmosphere, two very rare things on the stage, but I did not feel that it quite made a drama, or convince, as a drama should, by the continuous action of inner or outer forces. It was, rather, passion turning upon itself, and with no language but a cry.”

The author took the greatest interest in the rehearsals, and in the performance. He thoroughly enjoyed the[318] double play that was going on, as he moved about the theatre, and chatted to his friends during the intervals, with little heed of the risks he ran of detection of authorship. The drama itself was printed three months later in The National Review, and eventually published in book form in America by Mr. T. B. Mosher, in 1903.

In 1900, too, the second of these dramas, “The Immortal Hour,” appeared in the November number of The Fortnightly Review. It was published posthumously in England (Foulis) and in America (Mosher). The third play, “The Enchanted Valleys,” was never finished. It had been the author’s intention to publish these dramas in book form under the third title, and to dedicate it to Mr. W. L. Courtney, who, as Editor of the Fortnightly, had been a good friend to Fiona Macleod.

To his unknown correspondent the dramatist wrote again:

Nov. 15, 1900.

Dear Dr. Goodchild,

Most sincerely,

Fiona Macleod.

Dr. Goodchild replied:

Bordighera,

Nov. 29, 1900.

My dear Miss Macleod,

J. A. G.

The Essay entitled “Celtic” had originally appeared in the Contemporary Review a few weeks before the publication of the new volume, and had aroused considerable comment. In Britain it was regarded as a clear statement of the aims and ideas of the so-called Celtic Revival—(a term which “F. M.” greatly disliked). It was otherwise in Ireland, and naturally so, considering the different conditions on both sides of the Irish channel out of which the movement had grown. On this side political considerations had not touched the question; it was mainly concerned with the preservation of the old language, with racial characteristic feelings, and their expression in literature. On the other side of the water, the workers had many more issues at heart than in the Highlands. So the Highland Celt and the Irish Celts did not quite understand one another; an animated correspondence ensued in private and in the press. The Irish press was divided in its opinion on ‘Celtic,’ because the writers were not of one mind among themselves in their methods of working towards the one end all Celts have at heart. There were those, who being ardent Nationalists regarded the Celtic literary movement as one with the political, or as greatly coloured by it. This factor gave a special element to the Irish phase of the movement which sharply differentiated it from the movement in[321] Scotland, Wales or Brittany. Other workers were interested in the movement as a whole, in each of the “six Celtic Nations,” and “The Celtic Association” was formed, with Lord Castletown at its head, with a view of keeping each of the six branches of the movement in touch with each other: the Irish, Scots, Welsh, Manx, Breton, and Cornish or British. This Society desired to make a Federation of these working sections an actuality, and to that end decided to hold a Pan Celtic Congress every three years. The first of these was held in Dublin, and to it my husband subscribed as W. S. and as F. M., though, as an obvious precaution against detection, he did not attend it.

Opinion in Ireland was divided as to the value of such a Federation; certain of the enthusiasts believed that working for it drew strength and work away from the central needs in Ireland. Another point of dispute was the question of language; as to what did or would constitute an Irish Literature—works written in the Erse only; or all work, either in the Erse or the English tongue that gave expression to and made vital the Celtic spirit and aspirations. F. M. deplored the uniting of the political element to the movement—and naturally had no inclination towards any such feeling.

William Sharp’s great desire was that the Celtic spirit should be kept alive, and be a moulding influence towards the expression of the racial approach to and yearning after spiritual beauty, whether expressed in Gaelic or in the English tongue. He knew that there is a tendency, with the young of those people in Scotland at least, to put aside the beautiful old thoughts, or at all events their outward expression, with the disuse of the older language which had clothed those thoughts; he feared that to put silence upon them would be to lose them after a generation or two. Therefore it was his great hope that the genius of the race would prove strong enough to express itself in either language; and he realised that its influence would be more potent and widespread if also it found expression in the English language. Thus a misunderstanding[322] arose; one of approach to the subject rather than in essentials.

The Irish Press was divided in opinion concerning “Celtic,” especially The Irish Independent, Freeman’s Journal and All Ireland Review. In the latter a correspondence began. One writer welcomed the Essay as coming from one “possessed, as no other writer of our time is possessed, with a sense of the faculty and mission of the Celt, and shows not only deep intuition but the power to see life steadily and to see it as a whole.”

“A. E.” however, was of another opinion. He considered the essay to be out of place “in a book otherwise inspired by the artist’s desire to shape in a beautiful way”; to be semi-political and inaccurate as an expression of the passionate aimes of the Irish Celt; and he took exception to the expression of belief ‘there is no racial road to beauty.’

F. M. replied and endeavoured to make more clear her position; but without success, as a subsequent letter from the Irish poet proved. Another writer showed that there was obviously a confusion of two ideas between the disputants—and Mr. T. W. Rolleston closed the discussion with a letter in which he quietly pointed out the misapprehensions on both sides and concluded with the generous admission: “Fiona Macleod is most emphatically a helper, not a hinderer in this work, and one of the most potent we have. For my own part I think her essay ‘Celtic’ indicates the lines on which we may most successfully work.” William Sharp realised that since his essay had given rise to misapprehension of his aims and ideas, it would be well to further elucidate them; that moreover, as “F. M.” wrote to Mr. Russell, “a truer understanding has come to me in one or two points where we have been at issue.” He, therefore, revised and enlarged his essay, and, with an added Foreword of explanation, had it published separately in America by Mr. T. B. Mosher; and, finally, he included it in The Winged Destiny.

[323]

In the early autumn the following letter came to my husband from overseas:

Bronxville, N. Y.,

Sept. 26, 1900.

My dearest Guilielmo,

In this last year of my Century, among my little and exceptional attempts to celebrate my coming birthday—I wish that you the most leal and loved of our English friends, may receive for once a word from me before its sun goes down. Probably you are in some Lodge of the lake of your Northern Night, or off for the Mountains of the Moon. Still, even your restless and untamed spirit must by this time have been satisfied of wandering; at any rate, I doubt not this will in the end find you somewhere, and then you will know that my heart began to go out to you as I neared another milestone ... it has suffered enough and lost enough to make it yearn fondly for the frank face and dear words of a kindred, though fresher heart like yours. I have a few devoted sons, and you are one of them....

My remembrances to Mrs. Sharp and to Fiona McL—— whether she be real or hypothetical. If I could have spared the means, and had had the strength, I would have completed my recovery by a voyage to you and England last summer....

Ever devotedly yours,

E. C. Stedman.

The “restless spirit” was by no means tired of wandering. Partly owing to the insistence of circumstance, partly from choice, we began that autumn a series of wanderings that brought us back to London and to Scotland for a few weeks only each summer. The climate of England proved too severe; my husband had been seriously ill in the New Year. Despite his appearance of great vitality, his extraordinary power of recuperation after every illness—which in a measure was due to his buoyant nature, to his deliberate turning of his mind away from suffering or from failure and “looking sunwise,” to his endeavour to get the best out of whatever[324] conditions he had to meet—we realised that a home in England was no longer a possibility, that it would be wise to make various experiments abroad rather than attempt to settle anywhere permanently. Indeed, we were both glad to have no plans, but to wander again how and where inclination and possibilities dictated. Early in October he wrote to Mr. Murray Gilchrist from London:

My dear Robert,

Your loving friend,

Will.

[325]

P. S. Miss Macleod’s drama ‘The Immortal Hour’ is in the November Fortnightly, also her article “The Gael and His Heritage” in the November Nineteenth Century.

And in addition to these a study on the Dramas of Gabriele d’Annunzio appeared in The Fortnightly, in September, signed “W. S.”

To Mr. Macleay he sent an account of the work he had on hand:

Aix-en-Provence,

30th Nov., 1900.

Dear Mr. Macleay,

Yours sincerely,

William Sharp.

The Provencal romance that he was mentally projecting—the never written Gypsy Trail—was in part to have dealt with his early gipsy experiences. One among other things which revived this strain of memory was our near vicinage to Les Sainte-Maries, in Provence, where the bones of Sarah, the gipsy servant of “les Maries,” are enshrined; also he had recently read the vivid description of the gathering of the gipsy tribes at that Shrine on her Feast day, written by the Provencal novelist Jean Aicard, in his Le Roi des Camargues.

During my husband’s first visit to Provence he had been much interested in meeting certain members of Les[327] Félibres, the Provencal literary and linguistic Nationalists. He visited Frederick Mistral in his charming country home and noticed the similarity of physical type shared by the Provencal and himself. I, also, was struck by the likeness between the two men and thought that Mistral might easily have passed for elder brother of his Scots confrère. At Avignon we saw Madame Roumanille, the sister of Felix Gras, and widow of one of the founders of Les Félibres, and her poet-daughter, Térèse, who inherited her father’s gift. At Aix we met Mistral’s god-daughter Madame Marie Gasquet, daughter of the poet M. Gerard, another of the original group of workers in the old Langue d’Œuil. Madame Gasquet was the wife of the young poet, Joachim Gasquet, between whom and my husband there grew up a warm friendship.

CHAPTER XXII

PROVENCE

Maniace

New Year’s Day found us at Palermo where my husband was enchanted at being presented with a little pottle of freshly gathered wild strawberries; a week later we traversed the island to Taormina, whence he wrote to Mrs. Janvier:

Monte Venere, Taormina,

25th Jan., 1901.

To the same friend he described our visit to Syracuse:

Casa Politi,

Strada Dionysio,

7th Feb.,:01.

While we were at Taormina the news came of the death of Queen Victoria. An impressive memorial service was arranged by Mr. Albert Stopford, an English resident there, and held in the English Chapel of Sta. Caterina.

[331]

To attend it the Hon. Alexander Nelson Hood came from the “Nelson property” of Bronte where he was wintering with his father, Viscount Bridport, Duke of Bronte, who for forty years had been personal Lord in Waiting to the Queen. To the son we were introduced by Mr. Stopford; and a day or two later we started on our first visit to that strange beautiful Duchy on Ætna, that was to mean so much to us.

Greatly we enjoyed the experience—the journey in the little Circum-Ætnean train along the great shoulder of Etna, with its picturesque little towns and its great stretches of devastating lava; the first sight of the Castle of Maniace—in its shallow tree-clad valley of the Simeto flanked by great solemn hills—as we turned down the winding hill-road from the great lava plateau where the station of Maletto stands; the time-worn quadrangular convent-castle with its Norman chapel, and its great Iona cross carved in lava erected in the court-yard to the memory of Nelson; the many interesting relics of Nelson within the castle, such as his Will signed Nelson and Bronte on each page, medals, many fine line engravings of the battles in which he, and also Admiral Hood, took part; the beautiful Italian garden, and wild glen gardens beyond. No less charming was the kindly welcome given to us by the fine, hale old Courtier who—when his son one afternoon had taken my husband for a drive to see the hill-town of Bronte, and the magnificent views of and from Ætna, with its crowning cover of snow—told me, as we sat in the comfortable central hall before a blazing log fire, many reminiscences of the beloved Queen he had served so long.

In the spring we returned to England, through Italy; and from Florence, where we took rooms for a month, F. M. wrote to an unknown correspondent:

18th March, 1901.

My dear unknown friend,

Your friend,

Fiona Macleod.

ill332

IL CASTELLO DI MANIACE, BRONTE, SICILY
From a photograph taken by the Hon. Alex. Nelson Hood

[333]

The October number of The Fortnightly Review contained a series of poems by F. M. entitled “The Ivory Gate,” and at the same time an American edition of From the Hills of Dream—altered from the original issue—was published by Mr. T. Mosher, to whom the poet wrote concerning the last section of the English Edition:

12th Nov., 1901.

Dear Mr. Mosher,

Sincerely yours,

Fiona Macleod.

In sending a copy of the American edition of From the Hills of Dream to Mr. Yeats, the author explained that, though it contained new material,

[334]

Believe me,

Your friend truly,

F. M.

Mr. Yeats replied:

18 Woburn Buildings,

London, Saturday.

My dear Miss Macleod,

Yours,

W. B. Yeats.

I like your verses on Murias and like them the better perhaps because of the curious coincidence that I did in summer verses about lovers wandering ‘in long forgotten Murias.’

During the spring William Sharp had prepared a volume of selections from the poems of Swinburne, with an Introduction by himself, for publication in the Tauchnitz Collection of British Authors. Mr. Swinburne consented that the selection should be made in accordance with the critical taste of the Editor, with which however he was not in complete agreement. He expressed his views in a letter dated from The Pines, Putney Hill:

Oct. 6th.

Dear Mr. Sharp,

Many thanks for the early copy you have had the kindness to send on to me. I am pleased to find the Nympholept in a leading place, as I think it one of the best and most representative things I ever did. I should have preferred on all accounts that In the Bay had filled the place you have allotted to Ave atque Vale, a poem to which you are altogether too kind, in my opinion, as others have been before you. I never had really much in common with Baudelaire tho’ I retain all my early admiration[337] for his genius at its best. I wish there were fewer of such very juvenile crudities as you have selected from my first volume of poems: it is trying to find such boyish attempts as The Sundew, Aholibah, Madonna Mia, etc., offered as examples of the work of a man who has written so many volumes since in which there is nothing that is not at least better and riper than they. I wish too that Mater Triumphalis had not been separated from its fellow poem—a much fitter piece of work to stand by itself. On the other hand, I am very cordially obliged to you for giving the detached extract from Anactoria. I should greatly have preferred that extracts only should have been given from Atalanta in Calydon, which sorely needs compression in the earlier parts. Erectheus, which would have taken up so much less space, would also, I venture to think, have been a better and a fairer example of the author’s work. Mr. Watts Dunton’s objections to the book is the omission of Super Flumina Babylonis. I too am much surprised to find it excluded from a selection which includes so much that might well be spared—nay, would be better away. I would like to have seen one of what I call my topographical poems in full. The tiny scrap from Loch Torridon was hardly worth giving by itself. I do not understand what you find obscure or melancholy in The Garden of Cymodoce. It was written simply to express my constant delight in the recollection of Sark. I hope you will not think anything in this note captious or ungracious. Candour always seems to be the best expression possible of gratitude or goodwill.

Ever sincerely yours,

A. Swinburne.

In December of 1901 F. M. wrote, ostensibly from Argyll, to Dr. Goodchild: “I had hoped by this time to have had some definite knowledge of what I am to do, where to go this winter. But circumstances keep me here.... Our friend, too (meaning himself as W. S.), is kept to England by the illness of others. My plans[338] though turning upon different issues are to a great extent dependent, later, on his....

I have much to do, and still more to think of, and it may be bring to life through the mysterious resurrection of the imagination.

What long months of preparation have to go to any writing that contains life within it.—Even the slightest, the most significant, as it seems! We, all of us who live this dual life of the imagination and the spirit, do indeed mysteriously conceive, and fare thereafter in weariness and heaviness and long travail, only for one small uncertain birth. It is the common law of the spirit—as the obverse is the common law of womanhood.”

And again:

“Life becomes more and more strange, complex, interwrought, and intentional. But it is the end that matters—not individuals.”

Owing to my Mother’s serious illness I could not leave England early in November, as we had intended. London was impossible for my husband for he, too, was ill. At first he went to Hastings, whence he wrote to Mrs. Philpot—author of The Sacred Tree:

Hastings,

Dec. 20, 1901.

My dear Friend,

You would have enjoyed “being me” yesterday. I had a most delightful day at Rye with Henry James who now lives there for many months in the year. I went over early, lunched, and then we went all over that wonderfully picturesque old Cinque Port. A lovely walk in a frost-bound still country, and then back by the sombre old Land Gate, over the misty marshes down below, and the flame red Cypres Tower against a plum coloured sunset, to Henry James’ quaint and picturesque old house to tea. It was in every way a memorable and delightful day, and not least the great pleasure of intercourse[339] with that vivid brilliant and alive mind. He is as of course, you realise, an artist to the finger tips. Et ils sont rares ces diables d’esprit. I wish it were spring! I long to hear the missel thrush in the blossoming pear tree: and the tingling of the sap, and the laughter in the blood. I suppose we are all, all of us ever dreaming of resurrections....

The English climate proved equally impossible, so W. S. went to Bordighera to be near Dr. Goodchild. But he was too restless to remain long anywhere, and moved on to Rome and finally to Sicily. He wrote to Mr. Rhys after the New Year from Il Castello di Maniace:

My dear Ernest,

As I think I wrote to you, I fell ill with a form of fever,—and had a brief if severe recurrence of it at Rome: and so was glad some time ago to get on to my beloved ‘Greek’ Taormina, where I rapidly ‘convalesced.’ A few days ago I came on here, to the wilds inlands of the Sicilian Highlands, to spend a month with my dear friend here, in this wonderful old ‘Castle-Fortress-Monastery-Mansion—the Castel’ Maniace itself being over 2,000 feet in the highlands beyond Etna, and Maletto, the nearest station about 3,000.

How you and Grace would rejoice in this region. Within a day’s easy ride is Enna, sacred to Demeter, and about a mile or so from Castel’ Maniace, in a wild desolate region of a lava wilderness, is the lonely heron-haunted moorland-lake wherein tradition has it Persephone disappeared....

W. S.

I joined him early in February at Maniace and we remained with Mr. Hood for a month of sunshine and flowers. Among other guests came Miss Maud Valerie White. She was wishful that the pleasant days spent there together should be commemorated, and proposed that W. S. should write a short poem, that she would set to Sicilian airs, and that the song should be dedicated[340] to our host. To that end Mr. Hood summoned to the Castello one of the peasant bagpipe players, who one evening walked round and round the hall, playing the airs that are played each Christmas by the pipers before the shrines to the Madonna in the various churches. The result of that evening was a song, “Buon’ Riposo,” written by William Sharp, set to music by Miss Valerie White, and published by Messrs. Chappell.

BUON RIPOSO

When, like a sleeping child

Or a bird in the nest,

The day is gathered

To the earth’s breast ...

Hush!... ‘tis the dream-wind

Breathing peace,
Breathing rest

Out of the gardens of Sleep in the West.

O come to me ... wandering

Wind of the West!

Gray Doves of slumber

Come hither to nest....

Ah, sweet now the fragrance

Below the dim trees
Of the White Rose of Rest

That blooms in the gardens of Sleep in the West.

On leaving Maniace W. S. wrote to Dr. Goodchild:

Friday, 7th March, 1902.

To-morrow we leave here for Taormina.... And, not without many regrets, I am glad to leave—as, in turn, I shall be glad (tho’ for other reasons) when the time comes to leave Taormina. My wife says I am never satisfied, and that Paradise itself would be intolerable for me if I could not get out of it when I wanted. And there is some truth in what she says, though it is a partial truth, only. I think external change as essential to some natures as passivity is to others: but this may simply mean that the inward life in one person may best be hypnotised by ‘a still image,’ that of another may best be hypnotised by a wavering image or series of wavering[341] images. It is not change of scene one needs so much as change in these wavering images. For myself, I should, now, in many ways be content to spend the most of my life in some quiet place in the country, with a garden, a line of poplars and tall elms, and a great sweep of sky....

Your friend affectionately,

William Sharp.

To Mrs. Philpot.

Taormina,

April 3, 1902.

Dear Friend,

... It would take pages to describe all the flowers and other near and far objects which delight one continually. Persephone has scattered every treasure in this her birth-island. From my room here in the Castello-a-Mare—this long terraced hotel is built on the extreme edge of a precipitous height outside the Messina Gate of Taormina—I look down first on a maze of vividly green almond trees sloping swiftly down to the deep blue sea, and over them the snowy vastness of Etna, phantom-white against the intense blue, with its hitherside 11,000 feet of gulfs of violet morning shadow. About midway this is broken to the right first by some ancient cactus-covered fragments of antiquity at the corner of a winding path, and then by the bend of Santa Caterina garden wall with fine tall plume-like cypresses filled with a living green darkness, silhouetted against the foam-white cone.

My French windows open on the terrace, it is lovely to go out early in the morning to watch sunrise (gold to rose-flame) coming over Calabria, and the purple-blue emerald straits of Messina and down by the wildly picturesque shores of these island coasts and across the Ionian sea, and lying like a bloom on the incredible vastness of Etna and its rise from distant Syracuse and Mt. Hybla to its cone far beyond the morning clouds when clouds there are—or to go out at sunrise and see a miracle of beauty being woven anew—or at night when there is no moon, but only the flashing of the starry torches,[342] the serpentine glitter of lights, the soft cry of the aziola, and the drowsy rhythmic cadence of the sea in the caves and crags far below. Just now the hum of bees is almost as loud as the drowsy sighing of the sea: among the almonds a boy is singing a long drowsy Greek-like chant, and on the mass of wild rock near the cypresses a goatherd is playing intermittently on a reed pipe. A few yards to the right is a long crescent-shaped terrace garden filled with roses, great shrublike clumps of white and yellow marguerite, myrtle, lilies, narcissus, sweet-scented blossom-covered geranium, oranges hanging in yellow flame, pale-gold lemons. Below the branches a “Purple Emperor” and a snow-white “May Queen” are hovering in butterfly wooing. On an oleander above a wilderness of pink and scarlet geraniums two blue tits are singing and building, building and singing.

Since I wrote the above Easter has intervened. The strange half pagan, half Christian ceremonies interested me greatly, and in one of the ceremonials of one processional part I recognized a striking survival of the more ancient Greek rites of the Demeter and the Persephonæ-Kôrê cult.

To Mrs. Janvier.

Taormina.

... It is difficult to do anything here. I should like to come sometime without anything to do—without even a book to read: simply to come and dream, to re-live many of the scenes of this inexhaustible region of romance: to see in vision the coming and going of that innumerable company—from Ulysses and his wanderers, from Pythagoras and St. Peter, from that Pancrazio who had seen Christ in the flesh, from Æschylus, and Dionysius and Hiero and Gelon, from Pindar and Simonides and Theocritus, to Richard Cœur-de-Lion and Garibaldi and Lord Nelson—what a strange company!...

As for my own work, it is mostly (what there is of it!) dealing with the literature, etc., of the south. I do not[343] know whether my long article on Contemporary Italian Poetry is to be in the April-June issue of The Quarterly, or the summer issue. I am more interested in a strange Greek drama I am writing—The Kôrê of Enna—than in anything I have taken up for a long time. My reading just now is mostly Greek history and Italian literature.... Looking on this deep blue, often violet sea, with the foam washing below that perhaps laved the opposite shores of Greece, and hearing the bees on the warm wind, it is difficult to realise the wet and cold you have apparently had recently in New York—or the fogs and cold in London. I wish you could bask in and sun yourself on this sea-terrace, and read me the last you have written of “Captain Dionysius” while I give you tea!

During our first visit to Sicily, though my husband realised the beauty of the island, he could not feel its charm or get in touch with the spirit of the place because he was overborne by the sense of battle and bloodshed that he felt pervaded it. When I suggested how much the fascination of the beautiful island had seized hold of me he would say: “No, I cannot feel it for the ground is sodden and every leaf drips with blood.” To his great relief, on his return there he found, as he said, that he had got beyond the surface of things, had pierced down to the great essentials of the ancient land, and had become one of her devoted lovers.

CHAPTER XXIII

LISMORE

Taormina

Our summer was spent on Arran, Colinsay, and on “the Green Isle” of Lismore in the sea-mouth of Loch Linnhe within sight of the blue hills of Morven. We had rooms in the Ferryman’s cottage at the north point of the isle, where the tide race was so strong at the ebb in stormy weather that at times it was impossible to row across to the Appin shore, even to fetch a telegram whose advent was signalled to us by a little flag from the post office—a quicker way of getting it than by the long road from the Lismore post office. We spent much of our time on the water in a little rowing boat. A favourite haunt was a little Isle of Seals, in the loch, where we one day found a baby seagull, fat and fully fledged, but a prisoner by reason of a long piece of grass that had tightly wound round and atrophied one of its feet. Sometimes our friend the ferryman would come too. At first he refused to talk if I was there, because I could not speak Gaelic, and he thought I was English. But at last when I had reassured him that I too was a Scot, when he admitted that though I had not a Highland tongue I had Highland eyes just like his mother’s—his shyness wore away. And one day when we were out on the loch at sundown, and an exquisite rosy flush lay over hill and water, he stopped rowing and leant over his oars, silent for a time, and at last murmured in his slow Highland English “’Tis—the—smile—of God—upon—the—waters.”

At Lismore F. M. wrote, to quote the author’s own words, “‘The Four Winds of Eiré’ (long); ‘The Magic Kingdoms’ (longer and profounder, one of the best[345] things F. M. has ever written); ‘Sea-Magic’ (a narrative and strange Sea-Lore); ‘The Lynn of Dreams’ (a spiritual study); and ‘Seumas’ (a memory).”

During the summer and autumn he had, as F. M., also written a long study on the work of W. B. Yeats for The North American Review; had arranged the first volume of a selection of tales for the Tauchnitz series, entitled Wind and Wave; and had prepared a revised and augmented edition of The Silence of Amor for publication in America by Mr. Mosher. W. S. meanwhile had not been idle. After editing a volume of the Poems by our friend, Eugene Lee-Hamilton, with a long Introduction for The Canterbury Poets, he was at work on a series of articles which were intended for a projected book to be called Literary Geography; and of these there appeared in Harper’s “Walter Scott’s Land,” “R. L. Stevenson’s Country”; and a poem, “Capt’n Goldsack.”

Unfortunately, his increasing delicacy not only disabled him from the continuous heavy strain of work he was under, but our imperative absence from England necessitated also the relinquishing of my journalistic work. The stress of circumstances weighed heavily on him, as he no longer had the energy and buoyancy with which to make way against it. At this juncture, however, one or two friends, who realised the seriousness of conditions petitioned that he should be put on the Civil Pension List. The Hon. Alex. Nelson Hood and Mr. Alfred Austin were the chief movers in the matter, and were backed by Mr. George Meredith, Mr. Thomas Hardy and Mr. Watts Dunton. Realising however, that the writings of William Sharp, considered alone, would not constitute a sufficient claim, Mr. Hood urged William to allow him to acquaint the Prime Minister with the authorship of the Fiona Macleod writings, and of the many sacrifices their production had entailed. My husband consented providing that Mr. Balfour were told “confidentially and verbally.” However, it proved necessary that “a statement of entire claims to consideration should be laid upon the table of the House of Commons for the[346] inspection of members.” In writing to acquaint my husband of this regulation, Mr. Hood added:

“I do not presume to say one word to influence you in the decision you may come to. In such a matter it is for you to decide. If you will sacrifice your unwillingness to appear before the world in all the esteem and admiration which are your due, then, (I may say this) perhaps you will obtain freedom—or some freedom—from anxiety and worry that will permit you to continue your work unhampered and with a quiet mind. But advice I cannot give. I cannot recommend any one to abandon a high ideal, and your wish to remain unknown is certainly that....”

To this W. S. replied:

Edinburgh,

21st Aug., 1902.

My dear Alec,

Your friend,

Will.

Early in September Mr. Hood sent the welcome information to my husband that the Prime Minister had decided “on the strength of the assurance that Mr. Sharp is F. M.” to make him a grant that would meet his pressing needs and enable him to go abroad for the winter.

A few days before this message reached W. S. he had written to his friend.

23d Aug.

Dear Julian,

Ever affectionately yours, dear Friend,

Will.

P. S. By the way, you will be glad to know that Baron Tauchnitz is also going to bring out in 2 vols. a selection of representative tales by Fiona Macleod. The book called The Magic Kingdoms has been postponed till next year, but the first part of it will appear in The Monthly Review in December probably. Stories, articles, studies, will appear elsewhere.

Your friend W. S. has been and is not less busy, besides maturing work long in hand. So at least I can’t be accused of needless indolence.

To his great relief October-end found us at Taormina once again; and on Allhallow-e’en he wrote to Mrs. Janvier:

Oct. 30th.

[352]

The following letter from Mr. Robert Hichens, another devoted lover of Sicily, reached William Sharp at Maniace:

Dover,

Nov. 4, 1902.

My dear Will,

Yours cordially,

Robert Hichens.

Miss Hill and I returned to Sta. Caterina and left my husband at Maniace, whence a few days later he wrote to me:

Castello di Maniace,

15th Nov., 1902.

On his return to Taormina W. S. wrote to the Author of Adria, who had gone to Venice for “local colour”:

Taormina,

19th Nov., 1902.

Caro Fra Giuliano,

Yours,

Will.

And again two days later:

Shar Shan, Bor!

Which, being interpreted, is Romany (Gypsy) for “How d’ye do, Mate!”—I fear you are having a bad day for your return to Maniace. Here, at any rate, ‘tis evil weather. Last night the wind rose (after ominous signals of furtive lightnings in every quarter) to the extent of tempest: and between two and three a.m. became a hurricane. This lasted at intervals till dawn, and indeed since: and at times I thought a cyclone had seized Taormina and was intent on removing ‘Santa Caterina’ on to the top of Isola Bella. Naturally, sleep was broken. And in one long spell, when wind and a coarse rain (with a noise like sheep that has become sleet) kept wakefulness in suspense, my thoughts turned to Venice, to Giuliano in the lonely rain-beat wave-washed sanctuary of San-Francisco-in-Deserto; to Daniele Manin, with his dreams of the Venice that was and his hopes of the Venice to be; and to Adria, stilled at last in her grave in the lagunes after all her passionate life and heroic endeavour. And then I thought of the Venice they, and you, and I, love:—and recalled lines of Jacopo Sannazaro which I often repeat to myself when I think of the Sea-City as an abstraction—

[356]

“O d’Italia dolente
Eterno lumine
Venezia!”

And that’s all I have to say to-day!... except to add that this very moment there has come into my mind the remembrance of some words of Montesquieu I read last year (in the Lettres Persanes), to the effect (in English) that “altho’ one had seen all the cities of the world, there might still be a surprise in store for him in Venice,”—which would be a good motto for your book.

Your friend,

Will.

The few entries in William Sharp’s Diary for 1903 begin with New Year’s Day:

Taormina.

Thursday, 1st Jan., 1903. Yesterday afternoon I ended literary work for the year, at p. 62 on my MS. of “The King’s Ring” with the sentence: “Flora Macdonald saw clearly that the hearts of these exiles and New Englanders would follow a shepherd more potent than any kind, the shepherd called Freedom, who forever keeps his flocks of hopes and ideals on the hills of the human heart.” To-day, this afternoon, wrote till end of p. 70. In the evening we dined with Robert Hichens at the Hotel Timeo.

Sat. 3rd. Finished “The King’s Ring.” Revised: and sent off to Mary to type. We lunched at the Timeo. After lunch we spent an hour or more in the Greek Theatre with Hichens. Then we walked to Miss Valerie White’s villa and had tea with her. In evening ‘turned in’ about 9 and read Bourget’s Calabria Ricordi, and Lenormant on Crotone and Pythagorus.”

Saturday, 9th Jan.

To the Editor of The Pall Mall Magazine:

Dear Sir,

I have written a story somewhat distinct in kind from the work associated with my name, and think[357] it is one that should appeal to a far larger public than most of my writings do: for it deals in a new way with a subject of unpassing interest, the personality of Flora Macdonald. “The King’s Ring,” however, is not concerned with the hackneyed Prince Charlie episode. It is, in a word, so far as I know, the only narrative presentment of the remarkable but almost unknown late-life experiences of Flora Macdonald: for few know that, long after her marriage, she went with her husband and some of her family and settled in South Carolina, just before the outbreak of the War of Independence: how her husband was captured and imprisoned: how two of her sons in the Navy were lost tragically at sea: and how she herself with one daughter with difficulty evaded interference, and set sail from a southern port for Scotland again, and on that voyage was wounded in an encounter with a French frigate. True, all these things are only indicated in “The King’s Ring,” for fundamentally the story is a love-story, that of Flora M.’s beautiful eldest daughter Anne and Major Macleod, with the tragical rivalry of Alasdair Stuart, bearer of the King’s Ring.

Practically the facts of the story are authentic: save the central episode of Alasdair Stuart, which is of my own invention. I think the story would appeal to many not only in Scotland and England but in America.

Yours very truly,

Fiona Macleod.

The story was accepted and the first instalment was printed in the Pall Mall Magazine in May, 1904; but after its appearance the author did not care sufficiently for it to republish it in book form.

The Diary continues:

ill-358

WILLIAM SHARP
From a photograph taken by the Hon. Alex. Nelson Hood, 1903

[359]

This is the letter in question:

Taormina,

Jan., 1903.

My dear Walter,

... In some respects your rendering of your sonnet is towards improvement. But it has one immediate and therefore fatal flaw. Since the days of Sophocles it has been recognized as a cardinal and imperative law, that a great emotion (or incident, or idea, or collective act) must not be linked to an effective image, an incongruous metaphor. Perhaps the first and last word about passion (in a certain sense only, of course, for to immortal things there is no mortal narrowing or limiting in expression) has been said more than two thousand years ago by Sappho and to-day by George Meredith. “The apple on the topmost bough” ... all that lovely fragment of delicate imperishable beauty remains unique. And I know nothing nobler than Meredith’s “Passion is noble strength on fire.” ... But turn to a poet you probably know well, and study the imagery in some of the Passion-sonnets in “The House of Life” of Rossetti—of Passion

... “creature of poignant thirst

And exquisite hunger” ...

—the splendid sexual diapason in the sestet of the sonnet celled “The Kiss”—or, again, to “the flame-winged harp-player.”

... “thou art Passion of Love,

The mastering music walks the sunlit sea.”

Perhaps I have said enough to illustrate my indication as to the opening metaphor in your sonnet. Apart from the incongruity of the image, it has no logical congruity with the collateral idea of Fear. The sonnet itself turns on a fine emotion in your mind: let that emotion shape a worthy raiment of metaphor and haunting cadence of music, not as the metricist desires but as the poet au fond compels.[360] Yes, both in sonnet-writing and in your terza-rima narrative (cultivate elision here, also fluent terminals, or you will find the English prosody jib at the foreign reins) you will find G. useful. But the secret law of rhythm in a moving or falling wave, in the cadence of wind, in the suspiration of a distant song, in running water, in the murmur of leaves, in chord confluent upon chord, will teach you more—if you will listen long enough and know what you listen to.

I hope I have not discouraged you. I mean the reverse of that.

Your friend,

William Sharp.

I add here a letter of criticism and encouragement sent by F. M. to another young writer, in the previous summer, to the nephew of William Black the novelist:

London, June, 1902.

My dear Mr. Black,

Yours Sincerely,

Fiona Macleod.

To another friend he wrote in answer to a question on ‘style’:

“Rhythmic balance, fluidity, natural motion, spontaneity, controlled impetus, proportion, height and depth, shape and contour, colour and atmosphere, all these go to every living sentence—but there, why should I weary[362] you with uncertain words when you can have a certainty of instance almost any time where you are: you have hut to look at a wave to find your exemplar for the ideal sentence. All I have spoken of is there—and it is alive—and part of one flawless whole.”

From W. S. to Mrs. Janvier.

Taormina,

18th Feb., 1903.

... In fact, letters are now my worst evil to contend against—for, with this foreign life in a place like this, with so many people I know, it is almost impossible to get anything like adequate time for essential work—and still less for the imaginative leisure I need, and dreaming out my work—to say nothing of reading, etc. As you know, too, I have continually to put into each day the life of two persons—each with his or her own interests, preoccupations, work, thoughts, and correspondence. I have really, in a word, quite apart from my own temperament, to live at exactly double the rate in each day of the most active and preoccupied persons. No wonder, then, that I find the continuous correspondence of ‘two persons’ not only a growing weariness, but a terrible strain and indeed perilous handicap on time and energy for work....

A little later William Sharp started for a fortnight’s trip to Greece by way of Calabria—Reggio, Crotona, Taranto, Brindisi to Corfù and Athens, with a view of gathering impressions for the working out of his projected book (by W. S.) to be called Greek Backgrounds.

En route he wrote to me:

23d Jan., 1903.

Yours,

Will.

Athens, 29th Jan.

... This lovely place is wonderful. How I wish you were here to enjoy it too. I take you with me mentally wherever I go. It is a marvellous home-coming feeling I have here. And I know a strange stirring, a kind of spiritual rebirth.

Athens, Feb. 1st.

... Yesterday, a wonderful day at Eleusis. Towards sundown drove through the lovely hill-valley of Daphne, with its beautifully situated isolated ruin of the Temple of Aphrodîtê, a little to the north of the Sacred Way of the Dionysiac and other Processions from Aonai (Athenai) to the Great Fane of Eleusis. I have never anywhere seen such a marvellous splendour of living light as the sundown light, especially at the Temple of Aphrodîtê and later as we approached Athens and saw it lying between Lycabettos and the Acropolis, with Hymettos to the left and the sea to the far right and snowy Pentelicos behind. The most radiant wonder of light I have ever seen.

On his return to Taormina he received the following letter from Mr. Hichens:

St. Stephens,

Canterbury.

My dear Sharp,

... Lately I recommended a very clever man, half Spanish and half German, to read the work of Fiona Macleod. I wondered how it would strike one who had never been in our Northern regions, and he has just written to me, and says: “I am reading with intense delight Fiona Macleod’s books and thank you very much for telling me to get them. I ordered them all from London and cannot tell you how I admire the thoughts, the style,[366] “toute la couleur locale.” They are books I shall keep by me and take about with me wherever I go.” I suppose he feels they are fine, as I feel Tourgeney’s studies of Russian character are fine, although I have never lived among Russians. I shall take Anna Karénina to Italy with me and read it once more. At Marseilles I saw the “Resurrection” acted. It was very interesting and touching, though not really a very good play. It was too episodical. In London it is an immense success.

Well, I hope you will really come to winter in Africa. You can stay at either the Oasis or the Royal and I think we should be very happy. We must often go out on donkey-back into the dunes and spend our day there far out in the desert. I know no physical pleasure,—apart from all the accompanying mental pleasure,—to be compared with that which comes from the sun and air of the Sahara and the enormous spaces. This year I was more enchanted than ever before. Even exquisite Taormina is hum-drum in comparison. I expect to go to Italy very early in May, and back to Africa quite at the beginning of November. Do try to come then as November is a magnificent month. Don’t reply. You are too busy. I often miss the walks, and your company, which wakes up my mind and puts the bellows to my spark of imagination.

Ever yours,

Robert Hichens.

I can’t help being rather sorry that you won’t go to Sicily again for a long while. I always feel as if we all had a sort of home there.

For, as Mr. Hichens wrote to me, “I still think Taormina the most exquisite place in Europe. On a fine morning it is ineffably lovely.”

CHAPTER XXIV

WINTER IN ATHENS

Greek Backgrounds

During the following summer William Sharp saw George Meredith for the last time. Concerning that visit to Box Hill he wrote to a friend:

Monday, June 22, 1903.

Goodbye it was in truth; but it was the older poet who recovered hold on life and outlived the younger by four years.

ill368

GEORGE MEREDITH
From a photograph by F. Hollyer, about 1898

[369]

A wet spring, and a still damper autumn affected my husband seriously; and while we were visiting Mrs. Glassford Bell in Perthshire he became so ill that we went to Llandrindod Wells for him to be under special treatment. As he explained to Mr. Ernest Rhys:

Llandrindod Wells,

Sept., 1903.

My dear Ernest,

... I know that you will be sorry to learn that things have not gone well with me. All this summer I have been feeling vaguely unwell and, latterly, losing strength steadily.... However, the rigorous treatment, the potent Saline and Sulphur waters and baths, the not less potent and marvellously pure and regenerative Llandrindod air—and my own exceptional vitality and recuperative powers—have combined to work a wonderful change for the better; which may prove to be more than “a splendid rally,” tho’ I know I must not be too sanguine. Fortunately, the eventuality does not much trouble me, either way: I have lived, and am content, and it is only for what I don’t want to leave undone that the sound of ‘Farewell’ has anything deeply perturbing.

W. S.

And later to Mrs. Janvier:

London, Sept. 30, 1903.

Thanks for your loving note. But you are not to worry yourself about me. I’m all right, and as cheerful as a lark—let us say as a lark with a rheumatic wheeze in its little song-box, or gout in its little off-claw.... Anyway, I’ll laugh and be glad and take life as I find it, till the end. The best prayer for me is that I may live vividly till “Finis,” and work up to the last hour....

My love to you both, and know me ever your irrepressible,

Billy.

In a letter to Mr. Alden (Aug. 25th, 1903) he describes the work he had on hand at the moment, and the book he had projected and hoped to write:

The two following letters were acknowledgments of birthday greetings. In the first to Mr. Stedman our plans for that winter are described:

The Grosvenor Club,

Oct. 2, 1903.

My dear E. C. S.,

Ever, dear Stedman,

Your loving friend,

William Sharp.

13th Sept., 1903.

Dear Mrs. Gilchrist,

It is at all times a great pleasure to hear from you, and that pleasure is enhanced by hearing from you on my birthday and by your kind remembrance of the occasion....

We look forward to Athens greatly, though it is not (as in Elizabeth’s case) my first visit to that land of entrancing associations and still ever-present beauty. But as one grows older, one the more recognises that ‘climate’ and ‘country’ belong to the geography of the soul rather than to that secondary physical geography of which we hear so much. The winds of heaven, the dreary blast of the wilderness, the airs of hope and peace, the tragic storms and cold inclemencies—these are not the property of our North or South or East, but are of the climes self-made or inherited or in some strange way become our ‘atmosphere.’ And the country we dream of, that we long for, is not yet reached by Cook nor even chartered by Baedeker. You and yours are often in our thought. In true friendship, distance means no more than that the sweet low music is far off: but it is there.

Your friend,

William Sharp.

We journeyed by sea to Naples. Our hopes of a chat with our friends the Janviers at Marseilles were frustrated by a violent gale we encountered. As my husband wrote to Mrs. Janvier while at sea:

R.M.S. Orizaba,

Oct. 31, 1903.

But the gale increased and became one of the wildest we had ever known, as William reminded me later when he showed me an unrhymed poem he had composed—exactly as it stands—in the middle of the night, and the next day, in Naples, recalled it and wrote it down. It was his way of mental escape from a physical condition which induced great nervous strain or fatigue, to create imaginatively a contrary condition and environment, and[374] so to identify himself with it, that he could become oblivious to surrounding actualities. This is the poem:

INVOCATION

Play me a lulling tune, O Flute-Player of Sleep,

Across the twilight bloom of thy purple havens,

Far off a phantom stag on the moonyellow highlands

Ceases; and as a shadow, wavers; and passes:

So let Silence seal me and Darkness gather, Piper of Sleep.

Play me a lulling chant, O Anthem-maker,

Out of the fall of lonely seas, and the wind’s sorrow:

Behind are the burning glens of the sunset-sky

Where like blown ghosts the sea-mews wail their desolate sea-dirges:

Make me of these a lulling chant, O Anthem-maker.

No—no—from nets of silence weave me, O Sigher of Sleep,

A dusky veil ash-gray as the moonpale moth’s grey wing;

Of thicket-stillness woven, and sleep of grass, and thin evanishing air

Where the tall reed spires breathless—for I am tired, O Sigher of Sleep,

And long for thy muffled song as of bells on the wind, and the wind’s cry

Falling, and the dim wastes that lie

Beyond the last, low, dim, oblivious sigh.

During a short visit to Maniace W. S. wrote to Mrs. Philpot:

11th Nov., 1903.

... At this season of the year, beautiful and unique in its appeal and singular wild fascination as it is, this place does not suit me climatically, being for one thing too high between 2,000 and 3,000 ft. and also too much under the domination of Etna, who swings vast electric current, and tosses thunder charged cloud-masses to and fro like a Titan acolyte swinging mighty censers at the feet of the Sun. We drive to Taormina on Tuesday and the divine beauty and not less divinely balmy and regenerative climate—sitting as she does like the beautiful goddess Falcone worshipped there of old, perched on her orange and olive-clad plateau, hundreds of feet above the peacock-hued Ionian Sea, with one hand as it were reaching back to Italy (Calabria ever like opal or amethyst to the North-east), with the other embracing all the lands of Etna to Syracuse and the Hyblæan Mount, the[375] lands of Empedocles and Theocritus, of Æschylus and Pindar, of Stesichorus and Simonides, and so many other great names—and with her face ever turned across the Ionian Sea to that ancient Motherland of Hellas, where once your soul and mine surely sojourned.

We shall have a delightful “going” and one you would enjoy to the full.... Tomorrow if fine and radiant we start for that absolutely unsurpassable expedition to the great orange gardens a thousand feet lower at the S. W. end of the Duchy. We first drive some eight miles or so through wild mountain land till we come to the gorges of the Simeto and there we mount our horses and mules and with ample escort before and behind ride in single file for about an hour and a half. Suddenly we come upon one of the greatest orange groves in Europe—26,000 trees in full fruit, an estimated crop of 3,000,000! stretching between the rushing Simeto and great cliffs. Then once more to the saddle and back a different way to barbaric Bronte and thence a ten mile drive back along the ancient Greek highway from Naxos to sacred Enna. And so, for the moment, à revedèrla!”

After a delightful week at Corfù we settled in Athens (at Maison Merlin) for four months, and found pleasant companionship with members of the English and American Schools of Archeology—of which Mr. Carl Bosenquet and Prof. Henry Fowler were respectively the heads—with Dr. Wilhelm head of the Austrian School,—with Mr. Bikelas the Greek poet, at whose house we met several of the rising Greek men of letters, and other residents and wanderers.

The winter was very cold and at first my husband was very ill—the double strain of his life seemed to consume him like a flame. At the New Year he wrote again to Mrs. Philpot:

Maison Merlin,

Athens.

Dear Friend,

This is mainly to tell you that I’ve come out of my severe feverish attack with erect (if draggled) colours and[376] hope to march “cock-a-hoopishly” into 1904 and even further if the smiling enigmatical gods permit!... To-day I heard a sound as of Pan piping, among the glens on Hymettos, whereon my eyes rest so often and often so long dream. Tomorrow I’ll take Gilbert Murray’s fine new version of Hippolytus or Bacchæ as my pocket companion to the Theatre of Dionysus on the hither side of the Acropolis; possibly my favourite Œdipus at Kolonos and read sitting on Kolonos itself and imagine I hear on the wind the rise and fall of the lonely ancient lives, serene thought-tranced in deathless music. And in the going of the old and the coming of the new year, a friend’s thoughts shall fare to you from far away Athens.... As far as practicable I am keeping myself to the closer study of the literature and philosophy and ethical concepts and ideals of ancient Hellas and of mythology in relation thereto, but you know how fascinating and perturbing much else is, from sculpture to vase paintings, from Doric and Ionic architecture to the beauty and complex interest of the almost inexhaustible field of ancient Greek coins, and those of Græcia Magna,—And then (both Eheu and Evoe!) I have so much else to do—besides “Life” the supreme and most exciting of the arts!

A letter of New Year wishes to Dr. Garnett from W. S.; and a copy of The House of Usna to Mr. and Mrs. Ernest Rhys brought the following acknowledgments:

27 Tanza Road, Hampstead,

Jan. 8, 1904.

My dear Sharp,

I am, dear Sharp,

Very sincerely yours,

R. Garnett.

Derwen,

Hermitage Lane, N. W.,

Jan. 28, 1904.

Dear Miss Fiona Macleod,

Most delightful of all New Year’s gifts is a really beautiful book; and we thank you,—both of us,—for sending us your most characteristic heroic-lyric tragedy, The House of Usna. We were fortunate in being allowed to see it performed—how long ago can it have been!—at the Stage Society’s instance.... The “Psychic Drama,” as you conceive it, opens the door to a lost world of Nature and the emotions of Nature in the imagination. No[378] doubt it is a frightfully difficult thing to attire these emotions in fair and credible human dress, one that seemed impossible even, but the “House of Usna” may serve as a test of how far those who have the key to these emotions can hope to fit it to old or new-old dramatic forms. Your ‘Foreword’ is suggestive enough to be treated separately; but we write from a sick house, and in such states, it is harder to think of critical things than of pure imaginative ones. For these last, as they rise out of your magic ‘House,’ and haunt the ear, we owe you very whole and ample thanks.

With many wishes for health and spirit in this year of 1904,

We are, yours most truly,

G. and E. Rhys.

With Spring sunshine and warmth my husband regained a degree of strength, and it was his chief pleasure to take long rambles on the neighbouring hills alone, or with the young American archeologist, Mrs. Roselle L. Shields, a tireless walker. We made some interesting expeditions to Tyrens, Mycenæ, Corinth, Delphi, etc. and from ‘Olympia in Elis’ he wrote to a friend:

Later he wrote to Mr. Rhys:

[379]

Maison Merlin, Athens,

Friday, 26th Feb., 1904.

My dear Ernest,

Ever yours,

Will.

On leaving Greece we loitered at Hyères in the month of cherry-blossoms, and moved slowly northwards through Nîmes to the fantastic neighbourhood of Le Puy, with its curious hill-set town and churches perched on pinnacles of conical rock.

From Le Puy W. S. wrote to Mrs. Janvier:

18th April, 1904.... What has most impressed my imagination in this region is what I saw today outside of fantastic Le Puy—namely at the magnificent old feudal[380] rock-Chateau fortress of Polignac, erected on the site of the famous Temple of Apollo (raised here by the Romans on the still earlier site of a Druidic Temple to the Celtic Sun God). I looked down the mysterious hollow of the ancient oracle of Apollo, and realised how deep a hold even in the France of today is maintained by the ancient Pagan faith....

CHAPTER XXV

THE WINGED DESTINY

Literary Geography

Two important events of 1904 to William Sharp were the publication of The Winged Destiny, at midsummer, by Messrs. Chapman & Hall; and of his Literary Geography in October.

In the Dedication to Dr. John Goodchild of The Winged Destiny (the title of The Magic Kingdoms was discarded), the author set forth ‘her’ intention:

To a friend W. S. wrote:

A letter of appreciation to the author from an unknown Gaelic correspondent contained this beautiful wish:

“May you walk by the waters of Life, and may you rest by Still Waters, and may you know the mystery of God.”

To Mrs. Helen Bartlett Bridgman, “Fiona” wrote in acknowledgment of a letter, and of a sympathetic, printed appreciation of The Winged Destiny:

My dear Friend,

(For if deep sympathy and understanding do not constitute friendship, what does?) It would be strange indeed if I did not wish to write to you after what Mr. Mosher has told me, and after perusal of what you have written concerning what I have tried to do with my pen. There are few things so helpful, perhaps none so pleasant to a writer in love with his or her work and the ideals which are its source, than the swift understanding and sympathy of strangers. So much of my work is aside from the general temper and taste, and not only in its ideals but in its ‘atmosphere,’ indeed even in its writer’s methods and manner, that I have to be content (as I gladly am content) to let the wind that blows through minds and hearts carry the seed whithersoever it may perchance take root, and this with the knowledge that the resting places must almost of necessity, as things are, be few and far between. But it is not number that counts, and, as I say, I am well content—would be content were my readers far fewer than they are. It seems enough to me that one should do one’s best in a careful beauty and in the things of the spirit. It is enough to be a torch-bearer, whether the flame be a small and brief light or a beacon—it is to take over and to tend and to hand on the[384] fire that matters. As I say in my very shortly forthcoming new book, The Winged Destiny, I desire to be of the horizon-makers; if I can be that, however humbly, I am glad indeed. This would be so with anyone, I think, feeling thus. To me outside sympathy means perhaps more; for I stand more isolated than most writers do, partly by my will, partly by circumstances as potent and sometimes more potent. It is not only that I am devoid of the desire of publicity, of personal repute, and that nothing of advantage therefrom has the slightest appeal to me (though, alas, both health and private circumstances make my well-being to a large extent dependent on what my work brings me), but that I am mentally so constituted that I should be silenced by what so many are naturally and often rightly eager for and that so many seek foolishly or unworthily. In this respect I am like the mavis of the woods, that sings full-heartedly in the morning shadow or evening twilight in secret places, but will be dumb and lost in the general air of noon and where many are gathered in the frequented open to see and hear.

It is for these, and other not less imperative private reasons, why I am known personally to so very few of my fellow-writers: and why in private circles the subject is not one that occurs. I cannot explain, though not from reluctance or perversity or any foolish and needless mystery. The few who do not know me, as you know me, but with added intimacy, are loyal in safe-guarding my wishes and my privacy. That explains why I refuse all editorial and other requests of “interviews,” “photographs,” “personal articles” and the like. In a word, I am blind to all the obvious advantages that would accrue from my ‘entering the arena’ as others do. I have all that frequently borne in upon me. But still less so do I ignore what would happen to my work, to its quality and spirit, to myself, if I yielded. I may be wrong, but I do not think I am. I am content to do my best, as the spirit moves me, and as my sense of beauty compels me; and if, with that, I can also make some often much-needed[385] money, enough for the need as it arises; and, further, can win the sympathy and deep appreciation of the few intimate and the now many unknown friends whom, to my great gladness and pride, I have gained, then, indeed, I can surely contentedly let wider “fame” (of all idle things the idlest, when it is, as it commonly is, the mere lip-repute of the curious and the shallow) go by, and be indifferent to the lapse of possible but superfluous greater material gain....”

Dr. Goodchild, after a first acknowledgment of the dedication, again wrote to F. M.:

Author’s Club,

July 1904.

Dear Friend,

... Yesterday I read your Preface to a friend of mine, and afterwards a lady (a clever woman I believe) came into the room. I had never met her before, and she had never read anything of yours, but she picked up the book and asked what it was. “Just read the introduction” said my friend. The reader had an expressive face, and I wish you had seen it. “But this is something quite new. I never read anything like it before” she said as she finished: and I fancy that many will do likewise.

A woman said in my hearing not long ago, of one of your poems, “I could not put out my heart for daws to peck at” and I said “only the Eagle could do that, and not only daws, but blackbirds of all kinds will come to do that, and when the Eagles hear the call of their mates, there will be such slaughter of carrion crows as the World has not seen yet.”

J. A. G.

A few days later William described to a friend the events of

“From the Silence of Time, Time’s Silence borrow.
In the heart of To-day is the word of To-morrow.
The Builders of Joy are the Children of Sorrow.”

To Mr. Stedman W. S. announced our plans for the coming winter:

Aug. 29, 1904.

Dear Poet,

Affectionately your friend,

William Sharp.

Before we started for New York Literary Geography (by W. S.) was published. According to the critic in The World:

“It was a characteristically original idea of the author to combine descriptions of certain localities with criticisms and appreciations of those famous writers who had identified themselves therewith. It gives one a fresher and keener insight, for instance, into Mr. George Meredith’s poems to know how much they reveal of the lovely country in which he lives, and how many of his exquisite similes are drawn from observation of the birds and beasts and plants which he sees daily around his home under the shadow of Box Hill. “The Country of Stevenson[388],” “Dickens-Land,” “Scott-Land,” “The Country of George Eliot,” “Thackeray-Land,” “The Brontë Country,” “The Carlyle Country,” and “Aylwin-Land” are all both delightful and instructive, full of poetic description, sound criticism, and brilliant flashes of wit; and not less so are the chapters on the “literary geography” of the Thames from Oxford to the Nore, the English Lakes, with all their associations with Wordsworth and his brother poets, and the Lake of Geneva, which might have been called Voltaire-Land were it not that so many other famous personalities and authors are identified with Geneva and its surroundings that the solitary distinction might seem invidious.”

The book was dedicated to the author’s friend of early days, Mr. George Halkett (then Editor of The Pall Mall Gazette) with the reminder that

“More years ago now than either of us cares to recall, we were both, in the same dismal autumn for us, sent wandering from our native lands in Scotland to the end of the earth. I remember that each commiserated the other because of that doctor’s doom in which we both, being young and foolish, believed. Since then we have sailed many seas and traversed many lands, and I, at least, have the wayfaring fever too strong upon me ever to be cured now.”

The critic in the Daily Chronicle explained that the “book is all an affair of temperament, and the only thing which really matters is that Mr. Sharp has made excellent stuff out of his impressions.... For instance, the first time he saw Robert Louis Stevenson was not as it should have been, in the land of Alan Breck; it was at Waterloo Station. Is the literary geographer abashed by this conjunction of two sympathetic Scots in a dismal London shed? Not a bit of it:

‘He was tall, thin, spare—indeed, he struck me as almost fantastically spare. I remember thinking that the station draught caught him like a torn leaf blowing at the end of a branch.’

[389]

“Mind you, at that moment Mr. Sharp did not know who the stranger was, but knew by instinct that the station draught ought to make poetical use of him. More than that, Mr. Sharp saw that Stevenson had the air of a man just picked out of a watery grave. Anybody could see this.

‘That it was not merely an impression of my own was proved by the exclamation of a cabman, who was standing beside me expectant of a “fare” who had gone to look after his luggage: “Looks like a sooercide, don’t he, sir? One o’ them chaps as takes their down-on-their-luck ’eaders into the Thames!”’

“When Stevenson could inflame a cabman with this picturesque fantasy, no wonder he turned Waterloo Station into the home of romance. But this was not all. The ‘sooercide’ had still more magic about him. Stevenson was waiting for a friend to arrive by train, and when the friend appeared, the drowned revenant became another being.

‘The dark locks apparently receded, like weedy tangle in the ebb; the long sallow oval grew rounder and less wan; the sombre melancholy vanished like cloud-scud on a day of wind and sun, and the dark eyes lightened to a violet-blue and were filled with sunshine and laughter.’

“This extraordinary man was carrying a book and dropped it. Then happened something which expanded Waterloo Station into the infinite:

‘I lifted and restored it, noticing as I did that it was the Tragic Comedians, ...

In 1902 W. S. had been greatly gratified by a request from the composer, Mr. McDowell, couched in generous terms of appreciation:

Columbia University,

New York, May 25th.

Miss Fiona Macleod,
My dear Madam,

Your work has so grown into my life that I venture to ask you to permit my placing your name on some music of mine. Your poems have been an inspiration to me and I trust you will accept a dedication of music that[390] is yours already by right of suggestion. By this I do not mean that my music in any way echoes your words but that your words have been a most powerful incentive to me in my music and I crave your sympathy for it.

Sincerely yours,

Edward MacDowell.

At the end of 1904 F. M. wrote to Mr. Lawrence Gilman, the American Musical Critic:

22 Ormidale Terrace,

Murrayfield, 31st Dec.

Dear Mr. Gilman,

Believe me

Most truly yours,

Fiona Macleod.

Mr. Lawrence Gilman replied:

New York,

Jan 14, 1905.

My dear Miss Macleod,

Very faithfully yours,

Lawrence Gilman.

When in New York William Sharp had written to Mr. Alden “on behalf of Miss Macleod” concerning her later nature-essay work, and explained that “Some months ago, by special request from the Editor of Country Life Miss M. began contributing one or two of these papers. From the first they attracted notice, and then the Editor asked her if she would contribute a series to appear as frequently as practicable—averaging two a month—till next May when they would be issued in book-form. As Miss M. enjoys writing them, she agreed.”

In the same letter he spoke of a subject on which he had long meditated. He proposed it for Harper’s Magazine:—“I have long been thinking over the material of an article on the Fundamental Science of Criticism, to be headed, say ‘A New Degree: D. Crit.’” This project among many others was never worked out. But the ‘nature-papers’ were a great pleasure to him, and in 1904 and 1905 he wrote on many subjects for Country Life, over the signature of F. M., also several poems that were afterwards included in the second edition of From the Hills of Dream.

As month by month the number of nature essays grew, he planned to issue them in two, and later in three volumes. To the second volume he thought to give the title “Blue Days and Green Days” (from a line of R. L. Stevenson’s), and to call the third, which was to deal with the stars and the skies at night, “Beyond the Blue Septentrion.” Not all the projected essays for each book, however, were written; but those which appeared serially were published posthumously in 1906, by Country Life[393] under the title of Where the Forest Murmurs. Concerning the titular essay, Mr. Alfred Noyes wrote: “It is one of those pieces of nature-study which, in Matthew Arnold’s phrase, have that rarest of all modern qualities—‘Healing Power.’”

And according to The Contemporary Review:

“Fiona Macleod’s prose baffles description. It is perhaps hardly prose at all. It is melody in words suggesting scenes as much by sound as by the passage of ideas. The ideas conveyed by the actual words are supplemented by the rhythm or melody conveyed by the sequence of words. But it is, when all analysis is ended, something quite alone: pure music of a strange and curious quality that is neither prose nor poetry, but thrilling with the pain and passion of a Gaelic chant. It conveys to the mind and heart the scenes and sounds of nature with almost magical accuracy.”

The immediate object of our short visit to New York and Boston was that I should know in person some of the many friends my husband valued there, and I was specially interested to make the acquaintance of Mr. and Mrs. Stedman, who gave me a warm welcome, of Mr. and Mrs. Alden, Mr. and Mrs. R. Watson Gilder, Mr. John Lafarge, Mrs. Julia Ward Howe, and Miss Caroline Hazard whom we visited at Wellesley College. But winter set in with December. The cold proved so severe that we sailed for and reached Naples in time to spend Xmas Day with friends at Bordighera whence W. S. wrote to Mr. Murray Gilchrist: “We are back from America (thank God) and are in Italy (thank Him more).... For myself I am crawling out of the suck of a wave whose sweep will I hope be a big one of some months and carry me far.”

In Rome we took rooms at the top of Fischer’s Park Hotel, whence from the balconies we had a superb view over Rome. There we saw a few friends—in particular Mr. Hichens who was also wintering there; but my husband[394] did not feel strong enough for any social effort. As he wrote to Mr. Mosher:

11th Feb., 1905.

Dubious and ever varying health, with much going to and fro in quest of what is perhaps not to be found (for mere change of climate will not give health unless other conditions combine to bring about the miracle) have, among other causes, prevented my writing to you as I had intended, or, indeed, from doing much writing of any kind. I have written a few articles for Country Life—and little else, published or unpublished. The days go by and I say “at night”—and every night I am too tired or listless, and say “tomorrow”: and so both the nights and the morrows go to become thistles in the Valley of Oblivion. But with the advancing Spring I am regathering somewhat of lost energy, and if only I were back in Scotland I believe I should be hard at work! Well, I shall be there soon, though I may be away again, in the remote isles or in Scandinavia for the late spring and summer....

F. M.

CHAPTER XXVI

1905

“There is a great serenity in the thought of death, when it is known to be the Gate of Life.”

Fiona Macleod.

April my husband spent in the West of Scotland, for which he pined; and on his way North broke his journey in Edinburgh whence he wrote to Mr. W. J. Robertson, the translator into English verse of A Century of the French poets of the XIX Century:

April, 1905.

Dear Mr. Robertson,

Ever sincerely yours

William Sharp.

From Edinburgh he and his secretary-sister Mary went to Lismore, so that he might “feel the dear West once more.” From Oban he reported to Mr. W. J. Robertson on a post card addressed to “Ri Willeam Iain MacRiobeart mhic Donnach aidh”——

“Awful accident in a lonely Isle of the West.

A distinguished stranger was observing the vasty deep, and had laid a flask-filled cup on a rock beside him when a tamned gull upset it and at same time carried off a valuable Indian cheroot. Deep sympathy is everywhere expressed, for the distinguished stranger, the lost cheroot, and above all for the spilt cup and abruptly emptied flask. A gloom has been cast over the whole island.

Verb: Sap:”

From Lismore he wrote to me:

The cold proved so disastrous that my husband was ordered to Neuenahr for special treatment. Thence he wrote to the Hon. A. Nelson Hood:

June, 1905.

My dear Julian,

To me he wrote—for I was unable to accompany him:

Neuenahr,

16th June, 1905.

[402]

He broke his return journey at Doorn with our friends M. and Mme. Grandmont and wrote to me:

July, 1905.

[403]

Despite his serenity of mind, London as usual wrought him harm, and as he explained to Dr. Goodchild:

30th July.

... August is always a ‘dark’ month for me—and not as a rule, I fancy, a good one: at any rate an obscure and perhaps perilous one. But this time I fancy it is on other lines. I believe strong motives and influences are to be at work in it perhaps furtively only: but none the less potently and far reachingly. Between now and September-end (perhaps longer) many of the Dark Powers are going to make a great effort. We must all be on guard—for there will be individual as well as racial and general attack. But a Great Unloosening is at hand.

Yours ever,

W. S.

We therefore went to Scotland to say goodbye to his mother and sisters, and to see one or two friends, among others, Miss Mary Wilson, the pastellist, at Bantaskine, her home on the site of the battle of Falkirk; Mr. D. Y. Cameron, with whom my husband planned an unfulfilled wander among the Western Isles; and Mr. David Erskine of Linlathen.

While in the North he wrote to Mr. John Maesfield:

Kessock Cottage,

Nairn.

Dear Mr. Maesfield,

Yours sincerely

William Sharp.

Mr. Maesfield—who had written concerning Fiona Macleod to a friend: “I think the genius of a dead people has found re-incarnation in her. Wherever the Celt is, thence come visions and tears”—replied:

Greenwich,

Aug. 19, 1905.

Dear Mr. Sharp,

Yours very sincerely,

John Maesfield.

To an unknown correspondent F. M. wrote:

Sept. 15, 1905.

Your friend,

F. M.

To the Duchess of Sutherland:

O wind, why break in idle foam
This wave that swept the seas—...

Foam is the meed of barren dreams,
And hearts that cry for peace.

Lift then, O wind, this heart of mine
And swirl aside in foam—

No, wander on, unchanging heart,
The undrowning deeps thy home.

Less than a billow of the sea
That at the last doth no more roam

Less than a wave, less than a wave
This thing that hath no home

This thing that hath no grave!

But I shall weary you. Well, forgive me....

The next letter is to Mrs. Helen Hopekirk, the Scottish-American composer, who has set several of the F. M. poems to music:

18th Oct., 1905.

My dear Mrs. Hopekirk,

I was very pleased to hear from you again. I am busy with preparations for Italy, for the doctors say I should be away from our damp Scottish climate from October-end till Spring comes again. How far off it seems.... Spring! Do you long for it, do you love its advent, as I do? Wherever I am, St. Bride’s Day is always for me the joy-festival of the year—the day when the real new year is born, and the three dark months are gone, and Spring leans across the often gray and wet, but often rainbow-lit, green-tremulous horizons of February. This year it seems a longer way off than hitherto, and yet it should not be so—for I go to Italy, and to friends, and[408] to beautiful places in the sun, there and in Sicily, and perhaps in Algeria. But, somehow, I care less for these than I did a few years ago, than two or three years ago, than a year ago. I think outward change matters less and less as the imagination deepens and as the spirit more and more “turns westward.” I love the South: and in much, and for much, am happy there: but as the fatally swift months slip into the dark I realise more and more that it is better to live a briefer while at a high reach of the spirit and the uplifted if overwrought physical part of one than to save the body and soothe the mind by the illusions of physical indolence and mental leisure afforded by long sojourns in the sunlands of the South....

How I wish I knew Loeffler and Debussy and others as you do: but then, though I love music, tho’ it is one of the vital things in life for me, I am not a musician, alas. So even if I had all their music beside me it would be like a foreign language that must be read in translation. Do you realise—I suppose you do—how fortunate you are in being your own interpreter. Some day, however, I hope to know intimately all those wonderful settings of Verlaine and Baudelaire and Mallarmé and others. The verbal music of these is a ceaseless pleasure to me. I have a great love of and joy in all later French poetry, and can never understand common attitude to it here—either one of ignorance, or patronage, or complete misapprehension. Because of the obvious fact that French is not so poetic a language as English or German, in scale, sonority, or richness of vocabulary—it is, indeed, in the last respect the poorest I believe of all European languages as English is by far the richest—people, and even those who should be better informed, jump to the conclusion that therefore all French poetry is artificial or monotonously alike, or, at best, far inferior to English. So far as I can judge, finer poetry has been produced in France of late years than in England, and very much finer than any I know in Germany. However, the habitual error of judgment is mainly due to[409] ignorance: that, and the all but universal unfamiliarity with French save in its conventional usage, spoken or written....

“Fiona” received that summer, from Mr. Yoni Noguchi, a volume entitled From the Eastern Sea by that Japanese author, and sent acknowledgment:

On the Mediterranean.

Dear Mr. Noguchi,

Your note and delightful little book reached me, after considerable delay, in southern Europe. I write this at sea, and will send it with other letters, etc., to be stamped and posted in Edinburgh—and the two reasons of delay will show you that it is not from indolence!

I have read your book with singular pleasure. What it lacks in form (an inevitable lack, in the circumstances) it offers in essential poetry. I find atmosphere and charm and colour and naïveté, and the true touch of the poet; and congratulate you on your ‘success of suggestion’ in a language so different in all ways from that wherein (I am sure) you have already achieved the ‘success of finality.’

Believe me, yours very truly,

Fiona Macleod.

Later, Mr. Noguchi sent his subsequent book The Summer Cloud, a collection of short prose-poems, which, as he explained in his note of presentation: “In fact, I had been reading your prose-poems, The Silence of Amor, and wished I could write such pieces myself. And here is the result!”

It was our habit, when talking to one another of the “F. M.” writings, to speak of “Fiona” as a separate entity—so that we should not be taken unawares if suddenly spoken to about ‘her’ books. It was William’s habit also to write and post to himself two letters on his birthday—letters of admonition and of new resolutions.[410] On the 12th Sep. 1905 he brought me the two birthday letters when they reached him, and gave them to me to read, saying, with a smile, “Fiona is rather hard on me, but she is quite right.” Both letters are in his handwriting and are as follows:

Gu Fionaghal nic Leoid

Sliabhean n’an Aisling

Y-Breasil (na Tir-fo-Tuinn)

An Domhain Uaine,

12th Sept., 1905.

Dearest Fiona,

A word of loving greeting to you on the morrow of our new year. All that is best in this past year is due to you, mo caraid dileas: and I hope and believe that seeds have been sown which will be reborn in flower and fruit and may be green grass in waste places and may even grow to forests. I have not always your serene faith and austere eyes, dear, but I come to much in and thro’ my weakness as you through your strength. But in this past year I realise I have not helped you nearly as much as I could: in this coming year I pray, and hope, it may be otherwise. And this none the less tho’ I have much else I want to do apart from our work. But we’ll be one and the same au fond even then, shall we not, Fiona dear?

I am intensely interested in the fuller development of the Celtic Trilogy—and shall help in all ways. You say I can give you what you have not: well, I am glad indeed. Together we shall be good Sowers, Fionaghal mo rùn: and let us work contentedly at that. I wish you Joy and Sorrow, Peace, and Unrest, and Leisure, Sun, and Wind, and Rain, all of Earth and Sea and Sky in this coming year. And inwardly dwell with me, so that less and less I may fall short of your need as well as your ideal. And may our “Mystic’s Prayer” be true for us both, who are one.

Ever yours, dear,

Will.

[411]

12th Sept., 1905.

Hills of Dream,

Y-Breasil.

My dear Will,

Another birthday has come, and I must frankly say that apart from the loss of another year, and from what the year has brought you in love and friendship and all that makes up life, it has not been to your credit. True, you have been in America and Italy and France and Scotland and England and Germany—and so have not been long settled anywhere—and true also that for a month or two you were seriously and for a few months partially ill or ‘down’—but still, after all allowances, I note not only an extraordinary indolence in effort as well as unmistakable laziness in achievement. Now, either you are growing old (in which case admit dotage, and be done with it) or else you are permitting yourself to remain weakly in futile havens of ignoble repose or fretful pseudo rest. You have much to do, or that you ought to do, yourself: and as to our collaboration I see no way for its continuance unless you will abrogate much of what is superfluous, curtail much that can quite well be curtailed, and generally serve me loyally as I in my turn allow for and serve you.

Let our New Year be a very different one from the last, dear friend: and let us not only beautifully dream but achieve in beauty. Let the ignoble pass, and the noble remain.

Lovingly yours, dear Will,

Fiona.

[412]

Some of his own copies of his F. M. books have an inscription to “W. S.” from his twin self. For instance, his specially bound copy of The Winged Destiny bears this inscription in his handwriting: and is dated 12th Sept., 1904. But William did not write or sign his F. M. letters himself. When not typed by him, they were copied and signed for him by his sister Mary, in whose handwriting is the following signature—familiar to F. M.’s correspondents:

In the beginning of October we left London accompanied by Miss Mary Wilson and went to Venice by way of Zurich and Innsbruck. Then to Florence to stay with our friends Mr. and Mrs. Lee Hamilton, and finally, to Sicily.

Taormina was beautifully sunny and restful as of yore; and the delicate man rejoiced greatly in the beautiful gardens that the Duke of Bronte was designing and planting with flowers and trees, on the slopes of the hillside below the town.

A letter reached him there from Mr. Hichens:

St. Stephen’s,

Canterbury.

Oh, my dear Will,

I cannot help envying you. It is bitterly cold here, like winter, and neuralgia is flitting about my twitching face and shrinking head. But I will not inflict my little woes upon you, and only write this word to say I am sending you my book The Black Spaniel. It is a very slight and mixed affair this time—my last book of stories I think. The new novel I have some hopes of your liking, as I hope I have imprisoned something of our beloved Sicily in it. Now I am doing the last act—the last to be done, I mean, of my play for Wyndham. Yes, we will meet in Africa, if the gods are kind. I expect to leave England for Rome on Dec. 3. I am looking forward to Biskra immensely but must try to settle in there as must be working then.... How are you both? Happy in the sun? All blessings upon you and your work.

Ever yours affectionately,

Roberto.

[413]

It had been planned that after the New Year Mr. Hood, Mr. Hichens, my husband and I should go together to Biskra. But as the autumn waned, we realised the unwisdom of making any such plans. On hearing of our reluctant decision Mr. Hichens wrote:

Nov., 1905.

My dear Will,

Your letter was really a blow, but of course I thoroughly understand that you must not risk such a journey. I am grieved about your delicate health. You must take great care and stay in places where you can have your comforts. I wish Rome suited you both. I am suffering from London dyspepsia. Today there is a thick fog and I envy you all tremendously. I am counting the days till I can start for Rome. How is Taormina? Alec describes it as warm and splendid, and pretends that he needs a sun umbrella and a straw hat! Perhaps you are all bathing in the sea! Oh, these travellers’ tales! I am going out to bathe in the fog, so au revoir. Love to you both, kindest regards to Etna from

Yours ever affectionately,

Roberto.

During one of our visits to Maniace Mr. Hichens was also a guest; on a subsequent visit to that lava-strewn country, on the great western slope of the shoulder of Etna, he wrote to me, in 1906, about my husband: “I have had many walks here with Will. I think my last long walk with him here was towards Maletto. We sat on a rock for a long while, looking at the snow on Ætna and the wild country all around. We talked about death, and he said he loved life but he did not fear death at all. I remember well how alive his eyes looked. He always had a very peculiar look of life in the eyes, an unquenchable vitality.”

On reaching Maniace W. S. wrote to a friend:

Dec. 4, 1905.

... As my card of yesterday will have told you we arrived here all right on Monday afternoon, after a wonderful[414] journey. We left Taormina in a glory of midsummerlike warmth and beauty—and we drove down the three miles of winding road from Taormina to the sea at Giardini; thence past the bay and promontory of Naxos, and at the site of the ancient famous fane of Apollo Archagêtês turned inland. Then through the myriad lemon-groves of Al Cantara, till we crossed the gorges of the Fiumefreddo, and then began the long ascent, in blazing heat, by the beautiful hill road to the picturesque mountain-town of Piedemonte. There we caught the little circum-Ætnean mountain loop-line, and ascended the wild and beautiful slopes of Etna. Last time we went we travelled mostly above the clouds, but this time there was not a vestige of vapour in the radiant air, save for the outriders’ trail of white, occasionally flame-coloured, smoke from the vast 4-mile wide mouth of snow-white and gigantically-looming cone of Etna. At the lofty mediæval and semi-barbaric town of Randazzo we were delayed by an excited crowd at the station, on account of the arrest and bringing in by the carabinieri of three chained and heavily manacled brigands, one of them a murderer, who evidently had the sympathy of the populace. A woman, the wife of one of the captured men, outdid any lamenting Irish woman I ever saw: her frenzy was terrible—and of course the poor soul was life-desolate and probably punished and would likely never see her man again. Finally she became distracted with despair and fury, and between her appeals and furious curses and almost maniacal lamentations, the small station was anything but an agreeable stopping place. The captive brigands were absolutely impassive: not a glance: only, as the small train puffed onward, one of them lifted a manacled arm behind one of the carabinieri and made a singular sign to some one.

ill414

MRS. WILLIAM SHARP
From a photograph by T. Craig-Annan, 1909

[415]

Thereafter we passed into the wild and terrible lava-lands of the last frightful eruption, between Randazzo and the frontier of the Duchy of Bronte: a region as wild and fantastic as anything imagined by Doré, and almost terrifying in its sombre deathfulness. The great and broad and sweeping mountains, and a mighty strath—and we came under the peaked rocks of Maletto, a little town standing 3000 feet high. Then the carriage, and the armed escort, and we had that wonderful drive thro’ wild and beautiful lands of which I have heretofore written you. Then about four we drove up to the gates of the Castle, and passed into the great court just within the gates, and had the cordial and affectionate welcome of our dear host.

A few minutes later we were no longer at an ancient castle in the wilds of Sicily, but in a luxurious English country house at afternoon tea....

My husband had taken with him, as material for the winter’s work, his notes for the Greek Backgrounds, and the finished drafts of two dramas. One, by W. S., was to be called Persephonæia, or the Drama of the House of Ætna, and of it one act and one scene had been written at Maniace two years before. It was to have been dedicated to The Duke of Bronte. The other drama was Fiona’s projected play The Enchanted Valleys, of which one scene only was written. But he felt unable for steady work, as the following letter to the same friend, shows:

... A single long letter means no work for me that day, and the need of work terribly presses, and in every way, alas. My hope that I might be able for some writing in the late afternoon, and especially from 5 to 7.30 is at present futile. I simply can’t. Yesterday I felt better and more mentally alert than I’ve done since I came, and immediately after afternoon tea, I came to my study and tried to work, but could not, though I had one of my nature articles begun and beside me: nor had I spirit to take up my reviews: then I thought I could at least get some of that wearisome accumulated correspondence worked off, but a mental nausea seized me, so that even a written chat to a friend seemed to me too exhausting. C’est cette maladie poignante, ce “degoût[416] de la plume,” que Tourgenieff (ou Flaubert?) parlait de son cœur frappé. So I collapsed, and dreamed over a strange and fascinating ancient-world book by Lichtenberger, and then dreamed idly, watching the flaming oak-logs.”

In William’s Diary for December there are the following entries:

And here the Diary ends, and here too ends the written work of a tired hand and brain, but of an eager outlooking spirit. Ever since we left London it was evident that his life forces were on the ebb-tide slowly but surely; and he knew it, but concerned himself little, and believed he had at any rate a few months before him and possibly a whole year. Yet he seemed to have an inner knowledge of what was to be. In Scotland, in the summer, he told me it would be his last visit there; that he knew it, and had said farewell to his mother. On the afternoon when we drove up to the Saw-Mills in the oak-woods he got out of the carriage and wandered among the trees. When I urged him to come away, as the light was waning rapidly, he touched the trees again and again and said, “Ah dear trees of the North, dear trees of the North, goodbye.” The drive on the 8th, so beautiful, to him so full of fascination, was fatal to him. We drove far along a mountain pass and at the furthest point stopped to let him look at the superb sunset over against the hillset town of Cesaro.

He seemed wrapt in thought and looked long and steadfastly at the wonderful glowing light; it was with difficulty that I persuaded him to let us return. On the way back, a sudden turn of the road brought us in face to the snow covered cone of Ætna. The wind had changed and blew with cutting cold straight off the snow. It struck him, chilling him through and through. Half way back he got out of the carriage to walk and get warm. But the harm was done. That evening, before dinner, he said to me: “I am going to talk as much as I can tonight. That dear fellow Alec is rather depressed. I’ve teased him a good deal today; now I am going to amuse him.” He was as good as his word, anecdote, reminiscence, followed one another told in the gayest of spirits, and in saying goodnight to me our host declared, “I have[419] never heard Will more brilliant than he has been tonight.”

The next morning my husband complained of pain which grew rapidly more severe. The doctor was sent for, and remained in the house.

On the morning of the 12th—a day of wild storm, wind, thunder and rain—he recognised that nothing could avail. With characteristic swiftness he turned his eager mind from the life that was closing to the life of greater possibilities that he knew awaited him. About 3 o’clock, with his devoted friend Alec Hood by his side, he suddenly leant forward with shining eyes and exclaimed in a tone of joyous recognition, “Oh, the beautiful ‘Green Life’ again!” and the next moment sank back in my arms with the contented sigh, “Ah, all is well.”

On the 14th, in an hour of lovely sunshine, the body was laid to rest in a little woodland burial-ground on the hillside within sound of the Simeto; as part of the short service, his own “Invocation to Peace,” from The Dominion of Dreams, was read over the grave by the Duke of Bronte. Later, an Iona cross, carved in lava, was placed there, and on it this inscription, chosen by himself:

Farewell to the known and exhausted,
Welcome the unknown and illimitable

and

Love is more great than we conceive, and Death is the keeper of unknown redemptions.

F. M.

[420]

Now, truly, is Dreamland no longer a phantasy of sleep, but a loveliness so great that, like deep music, there could be no words wherewith to measure it, but only the breathless unspoken speech of the soul upon whom has fallen the secret dews.

F. M.

CHAPTER XXVII

CONCLUSION

“How the man subdivided his soul is the mystery,” wrote Mr. James Douglas. And in trying to suggest an answer I would say with “F. M.”—“I write, not because I know a mystery and would reveal it, but because I have known a mystery, and am to-day as a child before it, and can neither reveal nor interpret it.” For that mystery concerns the evolution of a human soul; and the part of it for which ‘the man’ is consciously and personally responsible, is the method he used, the fiction he created and deliberately fostered,—rightly or wrongly—for the protection of his inner, compelling self.

This deliberate ‘blind’—which according to some critics “is William Sharp’s most notable achievement in fiction rather than the creation of any of ‘her’ works”—is largely the cause of the sense of confusion that exists in the minds of certain of his friends, to whom he told the half but not the whole of the facts. He purposely did not dispel the idea of a collaborator, an idea which grew out of the half veiled allusions he had made concerning the friend of whom I have written, whose vivid personality appealed so potently to a phase of his complex nature, and stirred his imagination as no one else had done.

In a letter to Mr. W. B. Yeats signed “Fiona Macleod,” and written in 1899, about herself and her friend (namely himself) William tried “as far as is practicable in a strange and complex manner to be explicit.” ‘She’ stated that, “all the formative and expressional as well as nearly all the visionary power is my friends. In a sense only his is the passive part, but it is the allegory of the match, the wind, and the torch. Everything is in the torch in readiness, and as you know, there is nothing in the match itself. But there is a mysterious latency of fire[422] between them ... the little touch of silent igneous potency at the end of the match—and in what these symbolise, one adds spiritual affinity as a factor—and all at once the flame is born. The torch says all is due to the match. The match knows the flame is not hers. But beyond both is the wind, the spiritual air. Out of the unseen world it fans the flame. In that mysterious air both the match and the flame hear strange voices. The air that came at the union of both is sometimes Art, sometimes Genius, sometimes Imagination, sometimes Life, sometimes the Spirit. It is all.

“But before that flame people wonder and admire. Most wonder only at the torch. A few look for the match beyond the torch, and finding her are apt to attribute to her that which is not hers, save as a spiritual dynamic agent. Now and then the match may have in petto the qualities of the torch—particularly memory and vision: and so can stimulate and amplify the imaginative life of the torch. But the torch is at once the passive, the formative, the mnemonic, and the artistically and imaginatively creative force. He knows that in one sense he would be flameless or at least without that ideal blend of the white and the red—without the match: and he knows that the flame is the offspring of both, that the wind has many airs in it, and that one of the most potent is that which blows from the life and mind and soul of ‘the match’—but in his heart he knows that, to all others, he and he alone is the flame, his alone both the visionary, the formative, the expressional.”

At the last, realising with deep regret that one or two of the friends he cared greatly for would probably feel hurt when they should know of the deception, he left the following note to be sent to each immediately on the disclosure of the secret:

“This will reach you after my death. You will think I have wholly deceived you about Fiona Macleod. But, in an intimate sense this is not so: though (and inevitably) in certain details I have misled you. Only, it is a[423] mystery. I cannot explain. Perhaps you will intuitively understand or may come to understand. “The rest is silence.” Farewell.

William Sharp.

It is only right, however, to add that I, and I only, was the author—in the literal and literary sense—of all written under the name of “Fiona Macleod.”

In watching the development of the “Fiona Macleod” phase of expression it has seemed to me that the writer, in that work, lived a new sequent life, and passed through its successive phases of growth and development independently of the tenor of his ordinary life as “W. S.” He passed from the youth in Pharais and The Mountain Lovers, through the mature manhood of The Barbaric Tales and Tragic Romances to the greater serenity of later contemplative life in The Divine Adventure, The Winged Destiny and Where the Forest Murmurs.

In surveying the dual life as a whole I have seen how, from the early partially realised twin-ship, “W. S.” was the first to go adventuring and find himself, while his twin, “F. M.,” remained passive, or a separate self. When “she” awoke to active consciousness “she” became the deeper, the more impelling, the more essential factor. By reason of this severance, and of the acute conflict that at times resulted therefrom, the flaming of the dual life became so fierce that “Wilfion”—as I named the inner and third Self that lay behind that dual expression—realised the imperativeness of gaining control over his two separated selves and of bringing them into some kind of conscious harmony. This was what he meant when he wrote to Mrs. Janvier in 1899, “I am going through a new birth.”

For, though the difference between the two literary expressions was so marked, there was, nevertheless, a special characteristic of “Wilfion” that linked the dual nature together—the psychic quality of seership if I may so call it. Not only did he, as F. M. “dream dreams” and “get in touch with the ancient memory of the race[424]” as some of ‘her’ critics have said; but as W. S. he also saw visions by means of that seership with which he had been dowered from childhood. And though, latterly, he gave expression to it only under shelter of the Fiona Macleod writings—as for instance in The Divine Adventure, because he was as sensitive about it as he was to the subtler, more imaginative side of his dual self—a few of his friends knew William Sharp as psychic and mystic, who knew nothing of him as Fiona Macleod.

I have said little concerning my husband as a psychic; a characteristic that is amply witnessed to in his writings. From time to time he interested himself in definite psychic experimentation, occasionally in collaboration with Mr. W. B. Yeats; experimentation that sometimes resulted in such serious physical disturbance that he desisted from it in later years.

In a lecture given by Mr. Yeats to the Aberdeen Centre of the Franco-Scottish Society in 1907 the Irish poet referred to his friend. He considered that “Sharp had in many ways an extraordinarily primitive mind. He was fond of speaking of himself as the representative of the old bards,” and the Irish poet thought there was really something in the claim. (In a letter Mr. Yeats had expressed his opinion that my husband was imaginative in “the old and literal sense of image-making; not like a man of this age at all.”) He continued that W. S. was the most extraordinary psychic he had ever encountered. He really believed that “Fiona Macleod was a secondary personality—as distinct a secondary personality as those one reads about in books of psychical research. At times he (W. S.) was really to all intents and purposes a different being.” He would “come and sit down by my fireside and talk, and I believe that when ‘Fiona Macleod’ left the house he would have no recollection of what he had been saying to me.”

It is true, as I have said, that William Sharp seemed a different person when the Fiona mood was on him; but that he had no recollection of what he said in that mood[425] was not the case. That he did not understand it, is true. For that mood could not be commanded at will. Different influences awakened it, and its duration depended largely on environment. “W. S.” could set himself deliberately to work normally, and was, so far, master of his mind. But for the expression of the “F. M.” self he had to wait upon mood, or seek conditions to induce it. But, as I have said, the psychic, visionary power belonged exclusively to neither; it influenced both, and was dictated by laws he did not fully understand. For instance, “Lilith,” “The Whisperer,” “Finis,” by W. S. and “The Woman with the Net,” “The Last Supper,” “The Lynn of Dreams” by F. M., were equally the result of direct vision.

I remember from early days how he would speak of the momentary curious “dazzle in the brain” which preceded the falling away of all material things and preluded some inner vision of Great Beauty, or Great Presences, or of some symbolic import—that would pass as rapidly as it came. I have been beside him when he has been in trance and I have felt the room throb with heightened vibration. I regret now that I never wrote down such experiences at the time. They were not infrequent, and formed a definite feature in our life. There are, however, two or three dream-visions belonging to his last summer that I recollect. Two he had noted down in brief sentences for future use. One was:

“The Lily of the World, and its dark concave, dark with excess of light and the stars falling like slow rain.”

The other is headed “Elemental Symbolism,” “I saw Self, or Life, symbolised all about me as a limitless, fathomless and lonely sea. I took a handful and threw it into the grey silence of ocean air, and it returned at once as a swift and potent flame, a red fire crested with blown sunrise, rushing from between the lips of sky and sea to the sound as of innumerable trumpets.”

One morning he told me that during sleep he had visited a city of psychic mechanism. In a huge building he had seen this silent mechanism at work; he had watched[426] a force plunge into molten metal and produce a shaped vessel therefrom. He could see nothing that indicated by what power the machinery was driven. He asked his guide for explanation, and he was led along passages to a small room with many apertures in the walls, like speaking tubes. In the centre was a table, on a chair sat a man with his arm on the table, his head in his hand. Pointing to him the guide said “His thought is the motive force.”

In another dream he visited a land where there was no more war, where all men and women were equal; where humans, birds and beasts were no longer at enmity, or preyed on one another. And he was told that the young men of the land had to serve two years as missionaries to those who lived at the uttermost boundaries. “To what end?” he asked. “To cast out fear, our last enemy.” The dream is too long to quote in its entirety, for it spread over two nights, but one thing impressed him greatly. In the house of his host he was struck by the beauty of a framed painting that seemed to vibrate with rich colour. “Who painted that?” he asked. “His host smiled, “We have long ceased to use brushes and paints. That is a thought projected from the artist’s brain, and its duration will be proportionate with its truth.”

Once again he saw in waking vision those Divine Forges he had sought in childhood. On the verge of the Great Immensity that is beyond the confines of space, he saw Great Spirits of Fire standing at flaming anvils. And they lifted up the flames and moulded them on the anvils into shapes and semblances of men, and the Great Spirits took these flaming shapes and cast them forth into space, so that they should become the souls of men.

He was, as Mrs. Mona Caird has truly said of him, “almost encumbered by the infinity of his perceptions; by the thronging interests, intuitions, glimpses of wonders, beauties and mysteries which made life for him a pageant and a splendour such as is only disclosed to the soul that has to bear the torment and the revelations of[427] genius. He had much to suffer, but in spite of that—perhaps partly because of that—he was able to bring to all a great sense of sunshine and boyish freshness, of joy in life and nature and art, and in the adventure and romance of it all, for those who knew how to dare enough to go to meet it with open hands. He gave ever the sense of new power, new thresholds, new realms. His friendship was a spiritual possession.” And though indeed, as Mr. Frank Rinder has written “there may be those inclined to censure William Sharp for his silence about Fiona Macleod, yet, probably, had the world known, ‘she’—for in thought it is always that—would have written no more. May we not remember Ossian and others who shrank from revealing to all their secret?... I can but bear testimony to the ever-ready and eager sympathy, to the sunny winsomeness, to the nobility of the soul that has passed. William Sharp was one of the most lovable, one of the most remarkable men of our time.”

And, I would add,—to quote my husband’s own words—ever, below all the stress and failure, below all the triumph of his toil, lay the beauty of his dream.

[428]

To live in beauty—which is to put into four words all the dream and spiritual effort of the soul of man.

F. M.