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

to have been out in December but it has

 been postponed till February. If I have any earlier copies you shall

 have one. I am specially curious to know what you think of a story

 called “The Adoration of the Magi” which is a half prophecy of a very

 veiled kind.

 

  Yours truly,

 

B. YEATS.

 

The prolonged strain of the heavy dual work added to by an eager

experimentation with certain psychic phenomena with which he had long

been familiar but wished further to investigate, efforts in which at

times he and Mr. W. B. Yeats collaborated—began to tell heavily on

him, and to produce very disquieting symptoms of nervous collapse. We

decided therefore that he should pass the dead months of the year, as

he called December and January, in the South of France. From St. Remy

while on a visit to Mr. and Mrs. Janvier he wrote to me:

 

 “I am not going to lament that even the desire to think-out anything has

 left me—much less the wish to write—for I am sure that is all in the

 order of the day towards betterness. But I do now fully realise that

 I must give up everything to getting back my old buoyancy and nervous

 strength—and that prolonged rest and open air are the paramount needs....

 

 However, enough of this, henceforth I hope to have to think of and

 report on the up-wave only.

 

 I am seated in a little room close to the window—and as I look out I

 first see the boughs of a gigantic sycamore through which the mistral

 is roaring with a noise like a gale at sea. Beyond this is a line of

 cypresses, and apparently within a stone’s throw are the extraordinary

 wildly fantastic mountain-peaks of St. Remy. I have never seen anything

 like them. No wonder they are called the Dolomites of France. They are,

 too, in aspect unspeakably ancient and remote.

 

 We are practically in the country, and in every way, with its hill-air

 and beauty, the change from Tarascon is most welcome.... There is a

 strange but singularly fascinating blend of north and south here just

 now. The roar of the mistral has a wild wintry sound, and the hissing of

 the wood fire is also suggestive of the north: and then outside there

 are the unmistakable signs of the south and those fantastic unreal like

 hills. I never so fully recognise how intensely northern I am than when

 I am in the south....”

 

The following fragment of a diary—all there is for 1897—gives a record

of the work he had in progress: also shows his way of noting (or not

noting!) his outgoing expenses:

 

 _January 1st, 1897._—A day of extreme beauty at Sainte-Maxime (Var). In

 the morning wrote letters etc., and then walked into Sainte-Maxime and

 posted them, and sent a telegram to Elizabeth, to be delivered at dinner

 time, with New Year greetings and Fair Wishes.

 

 Worked at “Ahez the Pale,” and, having finished the revision of it from

 first to last, did it up with “The Archer,” and then sent (with long

 letter of general instructions about the re-issue of F. M.’s tales in 3

 vols., Spiritual Tales, Barbaric Tales, and Tragic Romances) to Lilian

 Rea, at the Outlook Tower.

 

 After dinner went a long walk by the sea. Noticed a peculiarity by which

 tho’ the sea was dead calm, and on the eastern side of the littoral of

 Ste. Maxime made hardly a ripple, the noise on the further side was like

 that of a rushing train or of a wind among pinewoods. I walked round,

 and found oily waves beating heavily on the shore. Tidal, possibly.

 Expenses today: Letters 3.90, Telegrams 5.90, Poor Man 30. Board &c., at

 hotel.

 

  Total ” ”.

 

After his return to London he wrote to Mrs. Janvier:

 

 

  GROSVENOR CLUB,

 

  March 10, 1897.

 

 ... Although I have had an unpleasant mental and physical set-back the

 last three days, I am steadily (at least I hope so) gaining ground—but

 I have never yet regained the health or spirits I was in at St. Remy,

 tho’ even there far more worn in mind and body than even _you_ guessed.

 But with the spring I shall get well.

 

 I am heart and soul with Greece in this war of race and freedom—and

 consider the so-called “Concert” a mockery and a sham. It is a huge

 Capitalist and Reactionary Bogus Company. Fortunately the tide of

 indignation is daily rising here—and even the Conservative papers are

 at one with the Liberal on the central points. Were I a younger man—or

 rather were I free—I would now be in Greece or on my way to join the

 Hellenes. As you will see by enclosed, I am one of the authors who have

 sent a special message to the Athenian President of the Chamber. It is a

 stirring time, and in many ways....

 

 

  March 22d.

 

 ... What a whirl of excitement life is, just now. I am all on fire about

 the iniquities of this Turkish-Finance triumph over honour, chivalry,

 and the old-time sense that the world _can_ be well lost. There are

 many other matters, too, for deep excitement—international, national,

 literary, artistic, personal. It is the season of sap, of the young

 life, of green fire. Heart-pulses are throbbing to the full: brains are

 effervescing under the strong ferment of the wine of life: the spiral

 flames of the spirit and the red flower of the flesh are fanned and

 consumed and recreated and fanned anew every hour of every day....

 

 This is going to be a strange year in many ways: a year of spiritual

 flames moving to and fro, of wild vicissitudes for many souls and for

 the forces that move through the minds of men. The West will redden in

 a new light—the ‘west’ of the forlorn peoples who congregate among our

 isles in Ireland—‘the West’ of the dispeopled mind.

 

 The common Soul is open—one can see certain shadows and lights as though

 in a mirror.... [The letter ends abruptly.]

 

Towards the end of April I went to Paris to write upon the two

“Salons,” and my husband, still very unwell, went to St. Margaret’s

Bay, whence he wrote to me:

 

 

 Sunday (on the shore by the sea, and in the sunshine). I wonder what

 you are doing today? I feel very near you in spirit as I always do

 when I have been reading, hearing, or seeing any beautiful thing—and

 this forenoon I have done all three, for I am looking upon the beauty

 of sunlit wind-swept sea, all pale green and white, and upon the deep

 blue sky above the white cliffs, upon the jackdaws and gulls dense

 black or snowy against the azure, upon the green life along and up the

 cliff-face, upon the yellow-green cystus bushes below—and am listening

 to the sough of the wind, soft and balmy, and the rush and break of

 the sunlit waves among the pebbly reaches just beyond me—and have been

 reading Maeterlinck’s two essays, “The Deeper Life” and “The Inner

 Beauty.”

 

 I am longing to be regularly at work again—and now feel as if at last I

 can do so....

 

 More and more absolutely, in one sense, are W. S. and F. M. becoming

 two persons—often married in mind and one nature, but often absolutely

 distinct. I am filled with a passion of dream and work....

 

 Friendship, deepening into serene and beautiful flame, is one of the

 most ennobling and lovely influences the world has....

 

  WILFION.

 

S. Again some more good tidings. Constables have accepted my giving

 up _The Lily Leven_ indefinitely—and instead have agreed to my proposal

 to write a child’s book (dealing with the Celtic Wonderworld) to be

 called _The Laughter of Peterkin_....

 

From Paris I went to St. Remy for a short visit to our friends the

Janviers, and my birthday found me still there. My husband had been

considerably perplexed how he was to celebrate the day for me from a

distance. On the early morning of the 17th of May the waiter brought

me my coffee and my letters to my room as usual, and told me gravely

that a large packet had arrived for me, during the night, with orders

that it should not be delivered to me till the morning. Should it be

brought up stairs? The next moment the door was pushed open and in came

the radiant smiling unexpected apparition of my Poet! In a little town

an event of this sort is soon known to everyone, and that evening when

he and I went for a walk, and sauntered through the little boulevards,

we found we were watched for and greeted by everyone, and heads were

popped out of windows just to see “les amants.”

 

After his equally rapid return to town he wrote to me:

 

 “It seems very strange to be here and at work again—or rather it is the

 interlude that seems so strange and dreamlike. This time last week it

 was not quite certain if I could get away, as it depended partly upon

 finishing the Maeterlinck Essay and partly upon the postponement of due

 date for the monograph on Orchardson. Then Richard Whiteing came in.

 Then at last I said that since fortune wouldn’t hurry up it could go to

 the devil—and I would just go to my dear wife: and so I went. And all is

 well. Only a week ago today since I left! How dramatic it all is—that

 hurried journey, the long afternoon and night journey from Paris, the

 long afternoon and night journey to Tarascon—the drive at dawn and

 sunrise through beautiful Provence—the meeting you—the seeing our dear

 friends there again. And then that restful Sunday, that lovely birthday!”

 

And again a few days later:

 

 “Herewith my typed copy of your Wilfion’s last writing. Called ‘The

 Wayfarer’ though possibly, afterwards, ‘Where God is, there is Light,’

 it is one of the three Spiritual Moralities of which you know two

 already, ‘The Fisher of Men’ and ‘The Last Supper.’ In another way,

 the same profound truth is emphasised as in the other two—that Love is

 the basic law of spiritual life. ‘The Redeemer liveth’ in these three:

 Compassion, Beauty, Love—the three chords on which these three harmonies

 of Fiona’s inner life have been born....”

 

“The Wayfarer” was published in _Cosmopolis_, and afterwards included

in _The Winged Destiny_.

 

On the 10th of June the author went for a night to Burford Bridge, in

order to have some talks with George Meredith. While there he began to

write “_The Glory of the King_,” and two days later he finished it on

reaching home.

 

In the summer of 1897 he visited Ireland for the first time. In Dublin

he met Mr. George Russell—whose beautiful verse was first published

over the initials A. E.—Mr. Standish O’Grady and other writers with

whom he had been in correspondence; and he greatly enjoyed a visit to

Mr. Edward Martin at Tillyra Castle in Galway.

 

Among several enthusiastic letters I received the following:

 

 

 ... I find it almost impossible to attempt to tell you the varied and

 beautiful delights of this lovely place. ... The country is strange

 and fascinating—at once so austere, so remote, so unusual, and so

 characteristic....

 

 Lord Morris, and Martin and I go off today “to show me the beauties

 of the wild coast of Clare.” It is glorious autumnal weather, with

 unclouded sky, and I am looking forward to the trip immensely. We

 leave at 11, and drive to Ardrahan, and there get a train southward

 into County Clare, and at Ennis catch a little loopline to the coast.

 Then for two hours we drive to the famous Cliffs of Moher, gigantic

 precipices facing the Atlantic—and then for two hours move round the

 wild headlands of Blackhead—and so, in the afternoon, to the beautiful

 Clare ‘spa’ of Lisdoonvarna, where we dine late and sleep. Next day

 we return by some famous Round Tower of antiquity, whose name I have

 forgotten. Another day soon we are to go into Galway, and to the Aran

 Isles.

 

 On Thursday Yeats arrives, also Dr. Douglas Hyde, and possibly Standish

 O’Grady—and Lady Gregory, one of the moving spirits in this projected

 new Celtic Drama. She is my host’s nearest neighbour, and has a lovely

 place (Coole Park) about five miles southwest from here, near Gort.

 I drove there, with Sir N. G. yesterday, in a car, through a strange

 fascinating austere country.

 

 The people here are distinct from any I have seen—and the women in

 particular are very striking with their great dark eyes, and lovely

 complexions and their picturesque ‘snoods.’

 

 The accent is not very marked, and the voices are low and pleasant, and

 the people courteous to a high degree.

 

 In the evening we had music—and so ended delightfully my first

 delightful day in the west....

 

 I forgot to tell you that I arrived late—and of course at Athenry

 only—some 14 miles from here. I had to wait some time till a car could

 be got—and what a drive I had! The man said that “Plaze God, he would

 have me at Tull-lyra before