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

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 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, 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 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 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 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.

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 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