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

  So let Silence seal me and Darkness gather, Piper of Sleep.

  Play me a lulling chant, O Anthem-maker,

  Out of the fall of lonely seas, and the wind’s sorrow:

  Behind are the burning glens of the sunset-sky

  Where like blown ghosts the sea-mews wail their desolate sea-dirges:

  Make me of these a lulling chant, O Anthem-maker.

  No—no—from nets of silence weave me, O Sigher of Sleep,

  A dusky veil ash-gray as the moonpale moth’s grey wing;

  Of thicket-stillness woven, and sleep of grass, and thin evanishing air

  Where the tall reed spires breathless—for I am tired, O Sigher of Sleep,

  And long for thy muffled song as of bells on the wind, and the wind’s cry

  Falling, and the dim wastes that lie

  Beyond the last, low, dim, oblivious sigh.

During a short visit to Maniace W. S. wrote to Mrs. Philpot:

  11th Nov., 1903.

 ... At this season of the year, beautiful and unique in its appeal

 and singular wild fascination as it is, this place does not suit me

 climatically, being for one thing too high between 2,000 and 3,000 ft.

 and also too much under the domination of Etna, who swings vast electric

 current, and tosses thunder charged cloud-masses to and fro like a Titan

 acolyte swinging mighty censers at the feet of the Sun. We drive to

 Taormina on Tuesday and the divine beauty and not less divinely balmy

 and regenerative climate—sitting as she does like the beautiful goddess

 Falcone worshipped there of old, perched on her orange and olive-clad

 plateau, hundreds of feet above the peacock-hued Ionian Sea, with one

 hand as it were reaching back to Italy (Calabria ever like opal or

 amethyst to the North-east), with the other embracing all the lands of

 Etna to Syracuse and the Hyblæan Mount, the lands of Empedocles and

 Theocritus, of Æschylus and Pindar, of Stesichorus and Simonides, and so

 many other great names—and with her face ever turned across the Ionian

 Sea to that ancient Motherland of Hellas, where once your soul and mine

 surely sojourned.

 We shall have a delightful “going” and one you would enjoy to the

 full.... Tomorrow if fine and radiant we start for that absolutely

 unsurpassable expedition to the great orange gardens a thousand feet

 lower at the S. W. end of the Duchy. We first drive some eight miles or

 so through wild mountain land till we come to the gorges of the Simeto

 and there we mount our horses and mules and with ample escort before

 and behind ride in single file for about an hour and a half. Suddenly

 we come upon one of the greatest orange groves in Europe—26,000 trees

 in full fruit, an estimated crop of 3,000,000! stretching between the

 rushing Simeto and great cliffs. Then once more to the saddle and back a

 different way to barbaric Bronte and thence a ten mile drive back along

 the ancient Greek highway from Naxos to sacred Enna. And so, for the

 moment, à revedèrla!”

After a delightful week at Corfù we settled in Athens (at Maison

Merlin) for four months, and found pleasant companionship with members

of the English and American Schools of Archeology—of which Mr. Carl

Bosenquet and Prof. Henry Fowler were respectively the heads—with Dr.

Wilhelm head of the Austrian School,—with Mr. Bikelas the Greek poet,

at whose house we met several of the rising Greek men of letters, and

other residents and wanderers.

The winter was very cold and at first my husband was very ill—the

double strain of his life seemed to consume him like a flame. At the

New Year he wrote again to Mrs. Philpot:

  MAISON MERLIN,

  ATHENS.

  DEAR FRIEND,

 This is mainly to tell you that I’ve come out of my severe feverish

 attack with erect (if draggled) colours and hope to march

 “cock-a-hoopishly” into 1904 and even further if the smiling enigmatical

 gods permit!... To-day I heard a sound as of Pan piping, among the glens

 on Hymettos, whereon my eyes rest so often and often so long dream.

 Tomorrow I’ll take Gilbert Murray’s fine new version of Hippolytus or

 Bacchæ as my pocket companion to the Theatre of Dionysus on the hither

 side of the Acropolis; possibly my favourite Œdipus at Kolonos and read

 sitting on Kolonos itself and imagine I hear on the wind the rise and

 fall of the lonely ancient lives, serene thought-tranced in deathless

 music. And in the going of the old and the coming of the new year, a

 friend’s thoughts shall fare to you from far away Athens.... As far as

 practicable I am keeping myself to the closer study of the literature

 and philosophy and ethical concepts and ideals of ancient Hellas and

 of mythology in relation thereto, but you know how fascinating and

 perturbing much else is, from sculpture to vase paintings, from Doric

 and Ionic architecture to the beauty and complex interest of the

 almost inexhaustible field of ancient Greek coins, and those of Græcia

 Magna,—And then (both Eheu and Evoe!) I have so much else to do—besides

 “Life” the supreme and most exciting of the arts!

A letter of New Year wishes to Dr. Garnett from W. S.; and a copy of

_The House of Usna_ to Mr. and Mrs. Ernest Rhys brought the following

acknowledgments:

  27 TANZA ROAD, HAMPSTEAD,

  Jan. 8, 1904.

  MY DEAR SHARP,

 Your letter has given me infinite pleasure....

 Athens must be a delightful residence at this time of year, especially

 if there are no “cold snaps,” against which I fear that the modern

 Athenians are no better provided than their ancestors were. There is a

 very amusing letter in Alisplorn’s epistles, describing the sufferings

 of a poor parasite in a hard winter. You seem to have very charming

 society. The name of Bikelas is well known to me, but I am not much

 versed in Roman literature. The history of Paparrhegopoulos has been

 a good deal noticed here of late. It seems to be a really classical

 work. By producing such the Greeks will indicate their claim to a high

 position in the European family, until the time has come for action,

 which apparently has not come yet.

 I quite agree in the conclusion at which they seem to have arrived that

 it is better to have the Turks in Constantinople than the Bulgarians,

 much more the Russians. If either of their victims once occupy it, the

 rightful possessors will be forever excluded.

 I have not wanted for literary occupations—one a little work of fancy

 which I am about finishing, and of which you will hear more. Then I have

 a story to translate from the Portuguese, published in the _Venture_;

 an edition of Browning’s preface to Shelley’s forged letters, with

 an introduction by me, and the second volume of English literature

 in conjunction with Gosse, which has been these six weeks ready for

 issue but delayed from time to time to suit the Americans. It is now

 positively announced for the 31st.

 With kindest regards to Mrs. Sharp, who I hope finds Attica entirely to

 her taste,

  I am, dear Sharp,

  Very sincerely yours,

  DERWEN,

  HERMITAGE LANE, N. W.,

  Jan. 28, 1904.

  DEAR MISS FIONA MACLEOD,

 Most delightful of all New Year’s gifts is a really beautiful book;

 and we thank you,—both of us,—for sending us your most characteristic

 heroic-lyric tragedy, _The House of Usna_. We were fortunate in being

 allowed to see it performed—how long ago can it have been!—at the

 Stage Society’s instance.... The “Psychic Drama,” as you conceive it,

 opens the door to a lost world of Nature and the emotions of Nature

 in the imagination. No doubt it is a frightfully difficult thing to

 attire these emotions in fair and credible human dress, one that seemed

 impossible even, but the “House of Usna” may serve as a test of how

 far those who have the key to these emotions can hope to fit it to old

 or new-old dramatic forms. Your ‘Foreword’ is suggestive enough to be

 treated separately; but we write from a sick house, and in such states,

 it is harder to think of critical things than of pure imaginative ones.

 For these last, as they rise out of your magic ‘House,’ and haunt the

 ear, we owe you very whole and ample thanks.

 With many wishes for health and spirit in this year of 1904,

  We are, yours most truly,

With Spring sunshine and warmth my husband regained a degree of

strength, and it was his chief pleasure to take long rambles on the

neighbouring hills alone, or with the young American archeologist,

Mrs. Roselle L. Shields, a tireless walker. We made some interesting

expeditions to Tyrens, Mycenæ, Corinth, Delphi, etc. and from ‘Olympia

in Elis’ he wrote to a friend:

 “How you would love this radiant heat, this vast solitude of ruins,

 the millions of flowers and dense daisied grass. This fragment of vast

 Olympia is the most ancient Greek temple extant. It lies at the base of

 the Hill of Kronos, of which the lowest pines are seen to the right and

 overlooks the whole valley of the Alpheios....

 And the millions of flowers. They are almost incredible in number and

 density. The ground is often white with thick snow of daisies. Wild

 plums, pears, cherries, etc. The radiant and glowing heat is a joy. I am

 sad to think that this day week beautiful Greece will be out of sight.”

Later he wrote to Mr. Rhys:

  MAISON MERLIN, ATHENS,

  Friday, 26th Feb., 1904.

  MY DEAR ERNEST,

 ... Yesterday I had a lovely break from work, high up on the beautiful

 bracing dwarf-pine clad slopes of Pentelicos, above Kephisia, the

 ancient deme of Menander—and then across the country behind Hymettos,

 the country of Demosthenes, and so back by the High Convent of St. John

 the Hunter, on the north spur of the Hymettian range, and the site of

 ancient Gargettos, the place of Epicurus’ birth and boyhood. At sundown

 I was at Heracleion, some three or four miles from Athens—and the city

 was like pale gold out of which peaked Lycabettos rose like a purple

 sapphire. The sky beyond, above Salamis, was all grass-green and mauve.

 A thunder-cloud lay on extreme Hymettos, rising from Marathon: and three

 rainbows lay along the violet dusk of the great hill-range....

 We intend to spend April in France, mostly in Southern Provence, which

 we love so well, and where we have dear French friends.

 I am apparently well and strong again, hard at work, hard at pleasure,

 hard at life, as before, and generally once more full of hope and energy.

 Love to you both, dear friends and a sunbeam to little Stella.

  Ever yours,

  WILL.

On leaving Greece we loitered at Hyères in the month of

cherry-blossoms, and moved slowly northwards through Nîmes to the

fantastic neighbourhood of Le Puy, with its curious hill-set town and

churches perched on pinnacles of conical rock.

From Le Puy W. S. wrote to Mrs. Janvier:

 18th April, 1904.... What has most impressed my imagination in this

 region is what I saw today outside of fantastic Le Puy—namely at the

 magnificent old feudal rock-Chateau fortress of Polignac, erected on

 the site of the famous Temple of Apollo (raised here by the Romans on

 the still earlier site of a Druidic Temple to the Celtic Sun God). I

 looked down the mysterious hollow of the ancient oracle of Apollo, and

 realised how deep a hold even in the France of today is maintained by

 the ancient Pagan faith....

_Literary Geography_

Two important events of 1904 to William Sharp were the publication of

_The Winged Destiny_, at midsummer, by Messrs. Chapman & Hall; and of

his _Literary Geography_ in October.

In the Dedication to Dr. John Goodchild of _The Winged Destiny_ (the

title of _The Magic Kingdoms_ was discarded), the author set forth

‘her’ intention:

 “In this book I have dealt—as I hope in all I write—only with things

 among which my thought has moved, searching, remembering, examining,

 sometimes dreaming....

 It is not the night-winds in sad hearts only that I hear, or the sighing

 of vain fatalities: but, often rather, of an