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

and the salt

 weed upon the shore. The touch of dream was upon everything, from the

 silent hills to the brooding herons by the shore.

 

 After a cup of tea, I wandered up the heights behind. In these vast

 solitudes peace and joy came hand in hand to meet me. The extreme

 loneliness, especially when I was out of sight of the sea at last, and

 could hear no more the calling of the tide, and only the sough of the

 wind, was like balm. Ah, those eloquent silences: the deep pain-joy

 of utter isolation: the shadowy glooms and darkness and mystery of

 night-fall among the mountains.

 

 In that exquisite solitude I felt a deep exaltation grow. The flowing of

 the air of the hills laved the parched shores of my heart....

 

 There is something of a strange excitement in the knowledge that two

 people are here: so intimate and yet so far-off. For it is with me as

 though Fiona were asleep in another room. I catch myself listening for

 her step sometimes, for the sudden opening of a door. It is unawaredly

 that she whispers to me. I am eager to see what she will do—particularly

 in _The Mountain Lovers_. It seems passing strange to be here with her

 alone at last....”

 

_The Mountain Lovers_ was published in the summer of 1895 by Mr. John

Lane. A copy of it was sent to Mr. George Meredith with the following

letter:

 

 

  9 UPPER COLTBRIDGE TERRACE,

  MURRAYFIELD.

 

  DEAR SIR,

 

 Will you gratify one of your most loyal readers by the acceptance of the

 accompanying book? Nothing helped

 

 me so much, or gave me so much enduring pleasure, as your generous

 message to me about my first book, _Pharais_, which you sent through my

 cousin, Mr. William Sharp.

 

[Illustration: HANDWRITING

 

Fac-simile of an autograph “Fiona Macleod” poem by William Sharp

 

  The Legions of the time

 

  In the silences of the woods

  I have heard all day and all night

  The moving multitudes

  Of the birds in flight.

  He is named Myriad:

  And I am sad

  Often, and often, I am glad,

  But oftener I am white

  With fear of the dim broods

  That are his multitudes.

 

  Fiona Macleod

]

 

 Naturally, I was eager it should appeal to you—not only because I have

 long taken keener delight in your writings than in those of any living

 author, but also because you are Prince of Celtland....

 

 I hope you will be able to read, and perhaps care for, _The Mountain

 Lovers_. It is not a story of the Isles, like _Pharais_, but of the

 remote hill-country in the far northwest. I know how busy you are: so do

 not consider it necessary to acknowledge either the book or this letter.

 Still, if some happy spirit move you, I need not say that even the

 briefest line from you would be a deep pleasure to

 

  Yours, with gratitude and homage,

 

  FIONA MACLEOD.

 

Acknowledgment came swiftly:

 

 

  BOX HILL, July 13, 1895.

 

  DEAR MADAM,

 

 If I could have written on any matter out of my press of work when I

 received your _Pharais_, there would have been no delay with me to thank

 you for such a gift to our literature. This book on the “Mountains”

 promises as richly. Whether it touches equally deep, I cannot yet say. I

 find the same thrill in it, as of the bard on the three-stringed harp,

 and the wild western colour over sea and isles; true spirit of the

 mountains. How rare this is! I do not know it elsewhere. Be sure that

 I am among those readers of yours whom you kindle. I could write more,

 but I have not recovered from the malady of the _degoût de la plume_,

 consequent on excess—and I pray that it may never fall on you. For

 though it is wisdom at my age to cease to write, it is not well to be

 taught to cease by distaste. That is a giving of oneself to the enemy.

 I have to be what I am, and I disclose it to win your pardon for my

 inexpressiveness when I am warmly sensible of a generous compliment.

 

  I am, Yours most faithful

 

  GEORGE MEREDITH.

 

It was in 1895 that the Omar Khayyam Club under the Presidentship of

Mr. Edward Clodd, who was an old personal friend of Mr. Meredith,

elected to hold its summer dinner at the Burford Bridge Hotel. Mr.

Thomas Hardy, Mr. Watts-Dunton, Mr. George Gissing and William Sharp

were among the guests. Mr. Clodd knew that it would be difficult to

persuade Mr. Meredith to be present at the dinner. Nevertheless he

lured him to the Hotel, and when coffee was served, (I quote from

a contemporary account) “the beautiful face of the great novelist

appeared within the doorway, and he was welcomed with enthusiasm by

all present. The president extended to Mr. Meredith the right hand of

fellowship on behalf of the Club, in a charming and eloquent speech not

devoid of pathos. Mr. Meredith in his reply declared that Mr. Clodd

was the most amiable of Chairmen but the most dastardly of deceivers.

Never before, he added, had he been on his legs to make a speech in

public, now before he knew it he was bustled over the first fence, and

found himself overrunning the hounds. ‘I have my hands on the fellow

at this moment’ he continued laughingly ‘and I could turn on him and

rend him, but I spare him.’ After a few graceful and characteristic

sentences concerning the Club and its object, and Omar, and expressing

his appreciation of his reception Mr. Meredith said in conclusion: ‘I

thank you from my heart, everyone of you.’”

 

Much to William Sharp’s satisfaction he was elected member of the

Omar Khayyam Club in the autumn of the same year. On receipt of the

announcement of the fact the new member wrote to the President:

 

 

  RUTLAND HOUSE,

  2d Nov., 1895.

 

  DEAR BROTHER-IN-OMAR,

 

 On my return from Scotland the other day I found a note informing

 me that I had been elected an Omarian on the nomination of your

 distinguished self.

 

 My thanks, cher confrère. ‘A drop of my special grape to you,’ as Omar

 might say, if he were now among us with a Hibernian accent! Herewith I

 post to you another babe, born into this ungrateful world so recently

 as yesterday.... Such as it is, I hope you may like it. “Ecce Puella”

 itself was written at white heat—and ran in ripples off the brain: and

 so is probably readable.

 

 “Fragments from The Lost Journals of Piero di Cosimo” when they

 appeared (some few years ago) won the high praise of Pater—but perhaps

 their best distinction is that they took in the cocksure and levelled

 the Omniscient. One critical wight complained that I was not literal

 (probably from the lack of knowledge of medieval Italian), which

 he clinched by the remark that he had compared my version with the

 original! I see that Silas Hocking has just published a book called “All

 men are liars.” I would fain send a copy to that critic, even now. By

 the way, my cousin Miss Fiona Macleod wrote to me the other day for your

 address. I understand she wanted to send you a copy of her new book. If

 you get it, you should, as a folk-lorist, read the titular story, _The

 Sin-Eater_.

 

 My wife joins with me in cordial regards, and I am

 

  Sincerely yours,

 

  WILLIAM SHARP.

 

The President replied:

 

 

  19 CARLETON ROAD,

  TUFNELL PARK

 

  5th Nov.

 

  MY DEAR SHARP,

 

 It is an addition to the pleasant memories of my year of office to

 know that you are of the elect. You come in with Lang and Gissing. By

 the way, the next dinner is fixed for the sixth proximo. And it is an

 addition to a burden of obligation willingly borne which your kind gift

 imposes. For work such as yours has unending charm for me, because while

 Science was my first love and is still my dear mistress, I love her more

 for what she suggests than what she reveals. Facts, unrelated, bore me:

 only in their significance does one get abiding interest. That is why

 your ‘Vistas’ and such like delicate, throbbing things attract me. Some

 of these were especially welcome on a recent dull Sunday by our ‘cold

 restless sea,’ on which in bright days you promise to come with Allen to

 look at it from my window. Your delicious story of the critic sent me

 straight to the Journal of di Cosimo. How well you produce the archaic

 flavour: the style has a Celtic ring about it. As for ‘Ecce Puella’ I

 await the hearing of it from the voice of a ‘puella’ who likes your

 work. I was at Meredith’s on Sunday week: he keeps wonderfully well for

 him: his talk is bright as his face is beautiful. He has his fling at

 me over the Burford Bridge deception, and says that my duplicity cost

 you all a fine speech. I tell him that the speech we had was good enough

 for ‘the likes of us.’ So Fiona Macleod is your cousin! She is of the

 ‘elect.’ I take it as most kind of her to send me her new book, which I

 have as yet but partly read, and am about to acknowledge. She holds a

 weird, strong pen, and will help the Celt to make further conquest of

 the dullard Saxons. Meredith and I talked about her “_Mountain Lovers_”

 when I was with him in August.

 

 Kindest regards to Mrs. Sharp and yourself.

 

  Yours sincerely,

  EDWARD CLODD.

 

In the Autumn of 1894 we had come in touch with Professor and Mrs.

Patrick Geddes of Edinburgh, and a friendship with far reaching results

for “Fiona Macleod” arose between the two men. Both were idealists,

keen students of life and nature; cosmopolitan in outlook and interest,

they were also ardent Celts who believed in the necessity of preserving

the finer subtle qualities and the spiritual heritage of their race

against the encroaching predominance of materialistic ideas and aims of

the day.

 

It was the desire and dream of such idealists and thinkers as Professor

Geddes, and those associated with him, to preserve and nurture what

is of value and of spiritual beauty in the race, so that it should

fuse into and work with, or become part of, the great acquisitions and

marvellous discoveries of modern thought. To hold to the essential

beauty and thought of the past, while going forward eagerly to meet the

new and ever increasing knowledge, was the desire of both men. In their

aims they were in sympathy with one another; their manner of approach

and methods of work were different. Patrick Geddes—biologist—was

concerned primarily with the practical and scientific expression of his

ideals; William Sharp was concerned primarily with expression through

the art of words. Mutually sympathetic, they were eager to find some

way of collaboration.

 

It was the dream of Professor Geddes to restore to Scotland something

of its older pre-eminence in the world of thought, to recreate in

Edinburgh an active centre and so arrest the tremendous centralising

power of the metropolis of London; to replace the stereotyped methods

of education by a more vital and synthetic form; and to encourage

national art and literature. Towards the carrying out of these aims

he had built a University Hall and Settlement for students, artists,

etc. Perhaps the most important of his schemes, certainly the most

important from the modern scientific point of view was the planning

of the Outlook Tower—once an observatory—now an educational museum

on the Castle Rock commanding a magnificent view of the city, of the

surrounding country, of sea and sky; “an institution that is designed

to be a method of viewing the problems of the science of life.”

According to Professor Geddes “Our little scholastic colony in the

heart of Edinburgh symbolises a movement which while national to the

core, is really cosmopolitan in its intellectual reach.”

 

Grouped with this scientific effort, was the aim to revive the Celtic

influence in art and literature; and the little colony contained a

number of men and women who were working to that end; notably among

the painters were James Cadenhead, Charles Mackie, Robert Burns,

John Duncan, also Pittendrigh MacGillivray the sculptor; and among

the writers Professor Arthur Thomson, Dr. Douglas Hyde, Nora Hopper,

Rosa Mulholland, A. Percival Graves, S. R. Crockett, Elisée Réclus,

Alexander Carmichael, Victor Branford, Professor Patrick Geddes, F. M.

and W. S.

 

Into that eager and sympathetic atmosphere of linked thought and aim

my husband and I were speedily drawn; and before long a Publishing

Firm was established for the issuing of Celtic Literature and Works

on Science. To Mr. and Mrs. Geddes was confided the important secret

relating to the personality of “Fiona Macleod,” to the thoughts and

ideals that unlay ‘her’ projected work. It was arranged that William

Sharp should be the Manager in the Firm of Patrick Geddes & Colleagues

(which post he very soon relinquished for that