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

because I have known a mystery, and am to-day as a child before it,

and can neither reveal nor interpret it.” For that mystery concerns

the evolution of a human soul; and the part of it for which ‘the man’

is consciously and personally responsible, is the method he used, the

fiction he created and deliberately fostered,—rightly or wrongly—for

the protection of his inner, compelling self.

This deliberate ‘blind’—which according to some critics “is William

Sharp’s most notable achievement in fiction rather than the creation of

any of ‘her’ works”—is largely the cause of the sense of confusion that

exists in the minds of certain of his friends, to whom he told the half

but not the whole of the facts. He purposely did not dispel the idea

of a collaborator, an idea which grew out of the half veiled allusions

he had made concerning the friend of whom I have written, whose vivid

personality appealed so potently to a phase of his complex nature, and

stirred his imagination as no one else had done.

In a letter to Mr. W. B. Yeats signed “Fiona Macleod,” and written in

1899, about herself and her friend (namely himself) William tried “as

far as is practicable in a strange and complex manner to be explicit.”

‘She’ stated that, “all the formative and expressional as well as

nearly all the visionary power is my friends. In a sense only his

is the passive part, but it is the allegory of the match, the wind,

and the torch. Everything is in the torch in readiness, and as you

know, there is nothing in the match itself. But there is a mysterious

latency of fire between them ... the little touch of silent igneous

potency at the end of the match—and in what these symbolise, one adds

spiritual affinity as a factor—and all at once the flame is born. The

torch says all is due to the match. The match knows the flame is not

hers. But beyond both is the wind, the spiritual air. Out of the unseen

world it fans the flame. In that mysterious air both the match and the

flame hear strange voices. The air that came at the union of both is

sometimes Art, sometimes Genius, sometimes Imagination, sometimes Life,

sometimes the Spirit. It is all.

“But before that flame people wonder and admire. Most wonder only at

the torch. A few look for the match beyond the torch, and finding her

are apt to attribute to her that which is not hers, save as a spiritual

dynamic agent. Now and then the match may have _in petto_ the qualities

of the torch—particularly memory and vision: and so can stimulate and

amplify the imaginative life of the torch. But the torch is at once

the passive, the formative, the mnemonic, and the artistically and

imaginatively creative force. He knows that in one sense he would be

flameless or at least without that ideal blend of the white and the

red—without the match: and he knows that the flame is the offspring

of both, that the wind has many airs in it, and that one of the most

potent is that which blows from the life and mind and soul of ‘the

match’—but in his heart he knows that, to all others, he and he

alone is the flame, his alone both the visionary, the formative, the

expressional.”

At the last, realising with deep regret that one or two of the friends

he cared greatly for would probably feel hurt when they should know

of the deception, he left the following note to be sent to each

immediately on the disclosure of the secret:

 “This will reach you after my death. You will think I have wholly

 deceived you about Fiona Macleod. But, in an intimate sense this is

 not so: though (and inevitably) in certain details I have misled you.

 Only, it is a mystery. I cannot explain. Perhaps you will intuitively

 understand or may come to understand. “The rest is silence.” Farewell.

  WILLIAM SHARP.

 It is only right, however, to add that I, and I only, was the author—in

 the literal and literary sense—of all written under the name of “Fiona

 Macleod.”

In watching the development of the “Fiona Macleod” phase of expression

it has seemed to me that the writer, in that work, lived a new

sequent life, and passed through its successive phases of growth and

development independently of the tenor of his ordinary life as “W.

S.” He passed from the youth in _Pharais_ and _The Mountain Lovers_,

through the mature manhood of _The Barbaric Tales and Tragic Romances_

to the greater serenity of later contemplative life in _The Divine

Adventure_, _The Winged Destiny_ and _Where the Forest Murmurs_.

In surveying the dual life as a whole I have seen how, from the early

partially realised twin-ship, “W. S.” was the first to go adventuring

and find himself, while his twin, “F. M.,” remained passive, or a

separate self. When “she” awoke to active consciousness “she” became

the deeper, the more impelling, the more essential factor. By reason

of this severance, and of the acute conflict that at times resulted

therefrom, the flaming of the dual life became so fierce that

“Wilfion”—as I named the inner and third Self that lay behind that dual

expression—realised the imperativeness of gaining control over his

two separated selves and of bringing them into some kind of conscious

harmony. This was what he meant when he wrote to Mrs. Janvier in 1899,

“I am going through a new birth.”

For, though the difference between the two literary expressions was so

marked, there was, nevertheless, a special characteristic of “Wilfion”

that linked the dual nature together—the psychic quality of seership if

I may so call it. Not only did he, as F. M. “dream dreams” and “get in

touch with the ancient memory of the race” as some of ‘her’ critics

have said; but as W. S. he also saw visions by means of that seership

with which he had been dowered from childhood. And though, latterly,

he gave expression to it only under shelter of the Fiona Macleod

writings—as for instance in _The Divine Adventure_, because he was as

sensitive about it as he was to the subtler, more imaginative side of

his dual self—a few of his friends knew William Sharp as psychic and

mystic, who knew nothing of him as Fiona Macleod.

I have said little concerning my husband as a psychic; a characteristic

that is amply witnessed to in his writings. From time to time he

interested himself in definite psychic experimentation, occasionally

in collaboration with Mr. W. B. Yeats; experimentation that sometimes

resulted in such serious physical disturbance that he desisted from it

in later years.

In a lecture given by Mr. Yeats to the Aberdeen Centre of the

Franco-Scottish Society in 1907 the Irish poet referred to his friend.

He considered that “Sharp had in many ways an extraordinarily primitive

mind. He was fond of speaking of himself as the representative of the

old bards,” and the Irish poet thought there was really something in

the claim. (In a letter Mr. Yeats had expressed his opinion that my

husband was imaginative in “the old and literal sense of image-making;

not like a man of this age at all.”) He continued that W. S. was the

most extraordinary psychic he had ever encountered. He really believed

that “Fiona Macleod was a secondary personality—as distinct a secondary

personality as those one reads about in books of psychical research.

At times he (W. S.) was really to all intents and purposes a different

being.” He would “come and sit down by my fireside and talk, and I

believe that when ‘Fiona Macleod’ left the house he would have no

recollection of what he had been saying to me.”

It is true, as I have said, that William Sharp seemed a different

person when the Fiona mood was on him; but that he had no recollection

of what he said in that mood was not the case. That he did not

understand it, is true. For that mood could not be commanded at will.

Different influences awakened it, and its duration depended largely on

environment. “W. S.” could set himself deliberately to work normally,

and was, so far, master of his mind. But for the expression of the “F.

M.” self he had to wait upon mood, or seek conditions to induce it.

But, as I have said, the psychic, visionary power belonged exclusively

to neither; it influenced both, and was dictated by laws he did not

fully understand. For instance, “Lilith,” “The Whisperer,” “Finis,” by

Dreams” by F. M., were equally the result of direct vision.

I remember from early days how he would speak of the momentary curious

“dazzle in the brain” which preceded the falling away of all material

things and preluded some inner vision of Great Beauty, or Great

Presences, or of some symbolic import—that would pass as rapidly as it

came. I have been beside him when he has been in trance and I have felt

the room throb with heightened vibration. I regret now that I never

wrote down such experiences at the time. They were not infrequent, and

formed a definite feature in our life. There are, however, two or three

dream-visions belonging to his last summer that I recollect. Two he had

noted down in brief sentences for future use. One was:

“The Lily of the World, and its dark concave, dark with excess of light

and the stars falling like slow rain.”

The other is headed “Elemental Symbolism,” “I saw Self, or Life,

symbolised all about me as a limitless, fathomless and lonely sea. I

took a handful and threw it into the grey silence of ocean air, and it

returned at once as a swift and potent flame, a red fire crested with

blown sunrise, rushing from between the lips of sky and sea to the

sound as of innumerable trumpets.”

One morning he told me that during sleep he had visited a city of

psychic mechanism. In a huge building he had seen this silent mechanism

at work; he had watched a force plunge into molten metal and produce

a shaped vessel therefrom. He could see nothing that indicated by what

power the machinery was driven. He asked his guide for explanation, and

he was led along passages to a small room with many apertures in the

walls, like speaking tubes. In the centre was a table, on a chair sat

a man with his arm on the table, his head in his hand. Pointing to him

the guide said “His thought is the motive force.”

In another dream he visited a land where there was no more war, where

all men and women were equal; where humans, birds and beasts were no

longer at enmity, or preyed on one another. And he was told that the

young men of the land had to serve two years as missionaries to those

who lived at the uttermost boundaries. “To what end?” he asked. “To

cast out fear, our last enemy.” The dream is too long to quote in its

entirety, for it spread over two nights, but one thing impressed him

greatly. In the house of his host he was struck by the beauty of a

framed painting that seemed to vibrate with rich colour. “Who painted

that?” he asked. “His host smiled, “We have long ceased to use brushes

and paints. That is a thought projected from the artist’s brain, and

its duration will be proportionate with its truth.”

Once again he saw in waking vision those Divine Forges he had sought

in childhood. On the verge of the Great Immensity that is beyond the

confines of space, he saw Great Spirits of Fire standing at flaming

anvils. And they lifted up the flames and moulded them on the anvils

into shapes and semblances of men, and the Great Spirits took these

flaming shapes and cast them forth into space, so that they should

become the souls of men.

He was, as Mrs. Mona Caird has truly said of him, “almost encumbered

by the infinity of his perceptions; by the thronging interests,

intuitions, glimpses of wonders, beauties and mysteries which made

life for him a pageant and a splendour such as is only disclosed to

the soul that has to bear the torment and the revelations of genius.

He had much to suffer, but in spite of that—perhaps partly because of

that—he was able to bring to all a great sense of sunshine and boyish

freshness, of joy in life and nature and art, and in the adventure

and romance of it all, for those who knew how to dare enough to go

to meet it with open hands. He gave ever the sense of new power, new

thresholds, new realms. His friendship was a spiritual possession.”

And