WILLIAM SHARP (FIONA MACLEOD) A MEMOIR COMPILED BY HIS WIFE ELIZABETH A. SHARP by ELIZABETH A. SHARP (mobi ebook reader txt) 📕

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 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 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.”

  “_Praised be the fathomless universe,

  For life and joy ... and for love, sweet love._”

 “_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

 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._”

 “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.”

“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 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 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