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

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 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,

 I had no idea that you were in England, and had no means of finding your

 address.

 You read only a portion of _Aylwin_—as far, I think, as the discovery

 that Winifred had been the model of Wilderspin. I always intended to

 send you other portions, but procrastination ruined my good intentions.

 You and my dear friend Mrs. Sharp were very kind to it, I remember,

 and this encourages me to hope that when you come to read it in its

 entirety, you will like it better than ever. Although it is of course

 primarily a love-story, and, as such, will be read by the majority of

 readers, it is intended to be the pronouncement of something like a

 new gospel—the gospel of love as the great power which stands up and

 confronts a materialistic cosmogony and challenges it and conquers it.

 This gospel of course is more fully expressed in “The Coming of Love” of

 which I send you a copy. “The Coming of Love” is of course a sequel to

 _Aylwin_, although, for certain reasons, it preceded in publication the

 novel. _Aylwin_ appears in the last year of the present century, and I

 had a certain object in delaying it for a little while longer because

 I believe that should it have more than an ephemeral existence as to

 which I am of course very doubtful, it will appeal fifty years hence

 to fifty people where it now only appeals to one. I cannot think that,

 when a man has felt the love-passion as deeply as Aylwin feels it, he

 will find it possible, whatever physical science may prove, to accept

 a materialistic theory of the universe. He must either commit suicide

 or become a maniac.... Henry Aylwin and Percy Aylwin, the Tarno Rye of

 “The Coming of Love,” spring from the same Romany ancestors and they

 inherited therefore the most passionate blood in the Western World. Each

 of them is driven to a peculiar spiritualistic cosmogony by the love of

 a girl—Winifred Wynne and Rhona Boswell, though the two girls are the

 exact opposite of each other in temperament.

 But you really must let me get a glimpse of you somehow before you leave

 England again.

  Your affectionate

  “AYLWIN.”

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 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.

To Mr. Frank Rinder the author wrote:

 MY DEAR FRANK,

 Today I got three or four copies of _The Dominion of Dreams_. I wish you

 to have one, for this book is at once the deepest and most intimate that

 Too much of it is born out of incurable heartache, “the nostalgia for

 impossible things.” ... My hope is that the issues of life have been

 woven to beauty, for its own sake, and in divers ways to reach and help

 or enrich other lives.... “The Wells of Peace” must, I think, appeal

 to many tired souls, spiritually athirst. That is a clue to the whole

 book—or all but the more impersonal part of it, such as the four opening

 stories and “The Herdsman”; this is at once my solace, my hope and my

 ideal. If ever a book (in the deeper portion of it) came out of the

 depths of a life it is this: and so, I suppose it shall live—for by a

 mysterious law, only the work of suffering, or great joy, survives, and

 that in degree to its intensity....

 lines I have hoped and dreamed.... In the writings to come I hope a

 deeper and richer and truer note of inward joy and spiritual hope

 will be the living influence. In one of the stories in this book,

 “The Distant Country” occurs a sentence that is to be inscribed on my

 gravestone when my time comes.

 “Love is more great than we conceive and Death is the keeper of unknown

 redemptions.”

  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 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,