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

 what mere words are to others. I think this is partly why I like you

 better in your prose, though now and then a bit of verse comes well,

 rising up out of the prose, in your simplest prose the most, the myths

 stand out clearly, as something objective, as something well born and

 independent. In your more elaborate prose they seem subjective, an inner

 way of looking at things assumed by a single mind. They have little

 independent life and seem unique; your words bind them to you. If Balzac

 had written with a very personal, very highly coloured style, he would

 have always drowned his inventions with himself. You seem to feel this,

 for when you use elaborate words you invent with less conviction, with

 less precision, with less delicacy than when you forget everything but

 the myth. I will take as example, a prose tale.

 That beautiful story in which the child finds the Twelve Apostles eating

 porridge in a cottage, is quite perfect in all the first part, for

 then you think of nothing but the myth, but it seems to me to fade to

 nothing in the latter part. For in the latter part the words rise up

 between you and the myth. You yourself begin to speak and we forget the

 apostles, and the child and the plate and the porridge. Or rather the

 more mortal part of you begins to speak, the mere person, not the god.

 You, as I think, should seek the delights of style in utter simplicity,

 in a self-effacing rhythm and language; in an expression that is like a

 tumbler of water rather than like a cup of wine. I think that the power

 of your work in the future will depend on your choosing this destiny.

 Certainly I am looking forward to “The Laughter of the Queen.” I thought

 your last prose, that pilgrimage of the soul and mind and body to the

 Hills of Dream promised this simple style. It had it indeed more than

 anything you have done.

 To some extent I have an advantage over you in having a very fierce

 nation to write for. I have to make everything very hard and clear, as

 it were. It is like riding a wild horse. If one’s hands fumble or one’s

 knees loosen one is thrown. You have in the proper sense far more

 imagination than I have and that makes your work correspondingly more

 difficult. It is fairly easy for me, who do so much of my work by the

 critical, rather than the imaginative faculty, to be precise and simple,

 but it is hard for you in whose mind images form themselves without

 ceasing and are gone as quickly perhaps.

 But I am sure that I am right. When you speak with the obviously

 personal voice in your verse, or in your essays you are not that Fiona

 who has invented a new thing, a new literary method. You are that Fiona

 when the great myths speak through you....

  Yours,

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

 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

 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,

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 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 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....

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 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 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