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

the rune of the

 ‘Knitting of the Knots’ and some information about the _Dalt_ and the

 _Cho-Alt_ about which I was not clear. He has seen the Light of the

 Dead, and his mother saw (before her marriage, and before she even saw

 the man himself) her husband crossing a dark stream followed by his

 four unborn children, and two in his arms whom afterwards she bore

 still-born....”

 

To me the summer was memorable because of my first visit to Iona. While

there he wrote part of _The Sin-Eater_, and its prefatory dedication

to George Meredith, and projected some of the St. Columba tales; he

renewed impressions of his earlier days on the sacred isle, and stored

new experiences which he afterwards embodied in his long essay on Iona

published in _The Divine Adventure_ volume.

 

From that Isle of Dreams “Fiona” wrote to Mrs. Tynan-Hinkson:

 

 

  ISLE OF IONA,

  September, 1894.

 

  DEAR MRS. HINKSON,

 

 I am, in summer and autumn, so much of a wanderer through the Isles

 and Western Highlands that letters sometimes are long in reaching me.

 But your kind note (and enclosure) has duly followed me from Edinburgh

 to Loch Goil in eastern Argyll and thence deviously here. It will be a

 great pleasure to me to read what you have to say in the _Illus. London

 News_ or elsewhere, and I thank you. I wish you could be here. Familiar

 with your poetry as I am, I know how you would rejoice not only in the

 Iona that is the holy Icolmkill but also in the Iona that is Ithona,

 the ancient Celtic Isle of the Druids. There is a beauty here that no

 other place has, so unique is it. Of course it does not appeal to all.

 The Sound of Iona divides the Island from the wild Ross of Mull by no

 more than a mile of water; and it is on this eastern side that the

 village and the ancient Cathedral and ruined Nunnery etc. stand. Here it

 is as peaceful as, on the west side, it is wild and grand. I read your

 letter last night, at sunset, while I was lying on the Cnoc-an-Angeal,

 the hillock on the west where the angel appeared to St. Columba. To

 the north lay the dim features of the Outer Hebrides: to the west an

 unbroken wilderness of waves till they fall against Labrador: to the

 south, though invisible, the coastline of Ireland. There was no sound,

 save the deep hollow voice of the sea, and a strange reverberation in

 a hollow cave underground. It was a very beautiful sight to see the

 day wane across the ocean, and then to move slowly homeward through

 the gloaming, and linger awhile by the Street of the Dead near the

 ruined Abbey of Columba. But these Isles are so dear to me that I think

 everyone must feel alike!

 

  I remain

  Sincerely yours,

  FIONA MACLEOD.

 

S. I enclose a gillieflower from close to St. Columba’s tomb.

 

In November came a letter from Mr. Stedman:

 

 

  137 WEST 78TH ST.,

  NEW YORK.

 

  MY DEAREST FRIEND BEYOND SEAS,

 

 For this in truth you now are. An older poet and comrade than you once

 held that place in my thoughts, but Time and Work have somehow laid the

 sword between us—and neither of us is to blame. I never so well obeyed

 Emerson’s advice to recruit our friendship (as we grow older) as when

 I won, I scarcely know how or why, your unswerving and ever increasing

 affection. In truth, again, it has been of the greatest service to me,

 during the most trying portion of my life—the period in which you have

 given me so much warmth and air—and never has it been of more worth than

 now you might well think otherwise.

 

 My birthday began for me with the “Sharp Number” of _The Chapbook_.

 I don’t know what fact of it gave me the more pleasure (it came at a

 time when I had a-plenty to worry me)—the beautiful autographic tribute

 to myself or the honour justly paid to my dear Esquire-at-arms, whose

 superb portrait is the envy of our less fortunate Yankee-torydons. The

 last five years have placed you so well to the front, on both sides of

 the Atlantic, that I can receive no more satisfying tributes than those

 which you have given me before the world. I feel, too, that it is only

 during these years that you have come to your full literary strength,

 there is nothing which the author of your “Ballads” and of “Vistas”

 cannot do.

 

 It is a noteworthy fact which you will be glad to hear, that your letter

 lay by my plate, when I came down to breakfast on the morning of October

 the eight! The stars in their courses must be in league with you....

 

 Mrs. Stedman sends her love, and says that your portrait is that of a

 man grown handsomer, and, she trusts, more discreet and ascetic! The

 month and this letter are now ending with midnight.

 

  Ever affectionately yours

  EDMUND C. STEDMAN.

 

The Chap-book was a little semi-monthly issue published by Messrs.

Stone and Kimball, Chicago. No. 9, the “William Sharp” number, appeared

on the 15th of September, three days after that author’s birthday. It

contained the reproduction of an autograph signed poem, by William

Sharp “To Edmund Clarence Stedman in Birthday Greeting 8th October”; an

appreciation of William Sharp’s Poems by Bliss Carmen; “The Birth of a

Soul” one of the Dramatic Interludes afterwards included in _Vistas_,

and a portrait of the Author.

 

Notwithstanding the paramount interest to the author of the “F. M.”

expression of himself as, “W. S.” he was not idle. After a visit to

Mr. Murray Gilchrist in the latter’s home on the Derbyshire moors, W.

wrote his story “The Gypsy Christ,” founded on a tradition which

he had learned from his gipsy friends, and set in a weird moorland

surroundings. In _Harper’s_ there appeared a description of the

night-wanderers on the Thames’ embankment, pathetic frequenters of

“The Hotel of the Beautiful Star.” The July number of _The Portfolio_

consisted of a monograph by him on “Fair Women in Painting and Poetry”

(afterwards published in bookform by Messrs. Seeley) which he, at

first, intended to dedicate to Mr. George Meredith. His ‘second

thought’ was approved of by the novelist, who wrote his acknowledgment:

 

“You do an elusive bit of work with skill. It seems to me, that the

dedication was wisely omitted. Thousands of curdling Saxons are surly

almost to the snarl at the talk about ‘woman.’ Next to the Anarchist,

we are hated.”

 

The month of July was saddened by the death of our intimate and valued

friend Walter Pater; upon that friend and his work William Sharp wrote

a long appreciation which appeared in _The Atlantic Monthly_. Another

death, at the year-end, caused him great regret, that of Christina

Rossetti, whom he had held in deep regard. He felt, as he wrote to her

surviving brother: “One of the rarest and sweetest of English singers

is silent now. 1882 and 1894 were evil years for English poetry.”

Later he wrote a careful study of her verse for _The Atlantic Monthly._

 

As a Christmas card that year he gave me a little book of old wood-cut

illustrations, reproduced and printed on Iona. On the inside of the

cover he wrote what he held to be his creed. It is this:

 

 CREDO

 

 “The Universe is eternally, omnipresently and continuously filled with

 the breath of God.

 

 “Every breath of God creates a new convolution in the brain of Nature:

 and with every moment of change in the brain of Nature, new loveliness

 is wrought upon the earth.

 

 “Every breath of God creates a new convolution in the brain of the

 Human Spirit, and with every moment of change in the brain of the Human

 Spirit, new hopes, aspirations, dreams, are wrought within the Soul of

 the Living.

 

 “And there is no Evil anywhere in the Light of this creative Breath: but

 only, everywhere, a redeeming from Evil, a winning towards Good.”

 

 

PART II  ( FIONA MACLEOD  ) CHAPTER XV ( THE MOUNTAIN LOVERS )

_The Sin-Eater_

 

 

It was soon evident that the noise and confused magnetism of the great

City weighed disastrously on William Sharp. At the New Year, 1895, he

wrote to a friend:

 

“London I do not like, though I feel its magnetic charm, or sorcery.

I suffer here. The gloom, the streets, the obtrusion and intrusion of

people, all conspire against thought, dream, true living. It is a vast

reservoir of all the evils of civilised life with a climate which makes

me inclined to believe that Dante came here instead of to Hades.”

 

The strain of the two kinds of work he was attempting to do, the

immediate pressure of the imaginative work became unbearable, “the call

of the sea,” imperative.

 

As he has related in “Earth, Fire and Water”: “It was all important for

me not to leave in January, and in one way I was not ill-pleased for

it was a wild winter. But one night I awoke hearing a rushing sound in

the street, the sound of water. I would have thought no more of it had

I not recognised the troubled sound of the tide, and the sucking and

lapsing of the flow in muddy hollows. I rose and looked out. It was

moonlight, and there was no water. When after sleepless hours I rose in

the grey morning I heard the splash of waves, I could not write or read

and at last I could not rest. On the afternoon of that day the waves

dashed up against the house.”

 

An incident showed me that his malaise was curable by one method only.

A telegram had come for him that morning, and I took it to his study. I

could get no answer. I knocked, louder, then louder,—at last he opened

the door with a curiously dazed look in his face. I explained. He

answered “Ah, I could not hear you for the sound of the waves!” It was

the first indication to me, in words, of what troubled him.

 

That evening he started for Glasgow en route for Arran, where I knew he

would find peace.

 

“The following morning we (for a kinswoman was with me) stood on the

Greenock pier waiting for the Hebridean steamer and before long were

landed on an island, almost the nearest we could reach that I loved so

well.... That night, with the sea breaking less than a score of yards

from where I lay, I slept, though for three nights I had not been able

to sleep. When I woke the trouble was gone.”

 

There is a curious point in his telling of this episode. Although the

essay is written over the signature of “Fiona Macleod” and belongs to

that particular phase of work, nevertheless it is obviously “William

Sharp” who _tells_ the story, for the “we” who stood on the pier at

Greenock is himself in his dual capacity; “his kinswoman” is his other

self.

 

He wrote to me on reaching his destination:

 

 

  CORRIE, ISLE OF ARRAN,

 

  20: 2: 1895.

 

 “You will have had my telegram of my safe arrival here. There was no

 snow to speak of along the road from Brodick (for no steamer comes

 here)—so I had neither to ride nor sail as threatened: indeed, owing to

 the keen frost (which has made the snow like powder) there is none on

 the mountains except in the hollows, though the summits and flanks are

 crystal white with a thin veil of frozen snow.

 

 It was a most glorious sail from Ardrossan. The sea was a sheet of

 blue and purple washed with gold. Arran rose above all like a dream

 of beauty. I was the sole passenger in the steamer, for the whole

 island! What made the drive of six miles more beautiful than ever was

 the extraordinary fantastic beauty of the frozen waterfalls and burns

 caught as it were in the leap. Sometimes these immense icicles hung

 straight and long, like a Druid’s beard: sometimes in wrought sheets of

 gold, or magic columns and spaces of crystal.

 

 Sweet it was to smell the pine and the heather and bracken,