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

Rest.” Besides, a number of short stories: some with a definite end in

view, that of coherent book-publication. In the background are other

works: e. g. _Darthûla_, thought out nearly fully, which I would like

to make my _chef d’œuvre_. In all, I have actually on hand eight books,

and innumerable stories, articles, etc.

[Illustration: HANDWRITING

Fac-simile of an autograph poem by William Sharp

  Venilia

  Exspirare rosas, decrescere lilia vidi

  Claudian

  Along the faint shores of the foamless gulf

  I see pale lilies droop, wan roses fall,

  And Silence stilling the upplifted wave

  And in the moment of the lifted wave

  And ere the rose fall or the lily breathe,

  A husht far voice hath Silence, like to hers,

  Venilia’s, who when love was given wings

  And vanishing flight, mourned ceaseless as a dove

  Till bitter Circe changed her to a strain

  Long lingering in old, forgotten woods

  When on the grey wind swims the yellow leaf.

  William Sharp

]

The things first to be done now are

  Books 1 Finish new Life of Rossetti

        2 Finish Pharais

        3 Write Nostalgia

        4 Collaborate in Ivresse

            then, The Brotherhood of Rest

            and, The Comedy of Woman

            and, The Lunes of Youth

(Articles) “The Literary Ideal”: Flemçen: “Tunisia”: “The Province

of Constantine”: “The Province of Oran”: “Lyric Japan”: “Chansons

D’Amour”: etc. etc.

(Short Stories) “The late Mrs. Pygmalion” etc. etc.”

       *       *       *       *       *

_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 ‘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

  _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._

_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. 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.

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

_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:

“ ... The white flowers you speak of are the moondaisies, are they

not?—what we call moonflowers in the west of Scotland and ox-eye

daisies in England, and marguerites in France?... It is very strange

that you should write about them to me just as I was working out a

scene in a strange Celtic tale I am writing, called _Pharais_, wherein

the weird charm and terror of a night of tragic significance is brought

home to the reader (or I hope so) by a stretch of dew-wet moonflowers

glimmering white through the mirk of a dusk laden with sea mists.

Though this actual scene was written a year or two ago—and one or two

others of the first part of _Pharais_—I am going to re-write it, your

letter having brought some subtle inspiration with it. _Pharais_ is a

foil to the other long story I am working at. While _it_ is full of

Celtic romance and dream and the glamour of the mysterious, the other

is a comedy of errors—somewhat in the nature, so far, of “A Fellowe

and His Wife” (I mean as to style). In both, at least the plot, the

central action, the germinal _motif_, is original: though I for one

lay little stress on extraneous originality in comparison with that

inner originality of individual life.... I have other work on the many

occupied easels in the studio of my mind: but of nothing of this need I

speak at present. Of minor things, the only one of any importance is a

long article on a subject wherein I