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

for hours in the glorious warmth and cloudless

 sunglow—undisturbed by any sounds save the soft sighing of the sea far

 below, the fluttering of a young goatherd with his black flock on a

 steep across a near ravine, and the occasional passing of a muleteer or

 of a mountaineer with his wine-panier’d donkeys. A vast sweep of sea is

 before us and beneath. To the left, under the almond boughs, are the

 broad straits which divide Sicily from Calabria—in front, the limitless

 reach of the Greek sea—to the right, below, the craggy heights and Monte

 Acropoli of Taormina—and, beyond, the vast slope of snow-clad Etna....

 

 I have just been reading (for the hundredth time) in Theocritus. How

 doubly lovely he is, read on the spot. That young shepherd fluting away

 to his goats at this moment might be Daphnis himself. Three books are

 never far from here: Theocritus, the Greek Anthology, and the Homeric

 Hymns. I loved them before: now they are in my blood.

 

 Legend has it that near this very spot Pythagoras used to come and

 dream. How strange to think that one can thus come in touch with two of

 the greatest men of antiquity—for within reach from here (a pilgrimage

 to be made from Syracuse) is the grave of Æschylus. Perhaps it was here

 that Pythagoras learned the secret of that music (for here both the

 sea-wind and the hill-wind can be heard in magic meeting) by which one

 day—as told in Iamblicus—he cured a young man of Taormina (Tauromenion)

 who had become mad as a wild beast, with love. Pythagoras, it is said,

 played an antique air upon his flute, and the madness went from the

 youth....

 

 I shall never forget the journey across Sicily. I forget if I told you

 in my letter that it had been one of my dreams since youth to read the

 Homeric Hymns and Theocritus in Sicily—and it has been fulfilled: even

 to the unlikeliest, which was to read the great Hymn to Demeter at Enna

 itself. And that I did—in that wild and remote mountain-land. Enna is

 now called Castrogiovanni—but all else is unchanged—though the great

 temples to Demeter and Persephone are laid low. It was a wonderful

 mental experience to read that Hymn on the very spot where Demeter went

 seeking—torch in hand, and wind-blown blue peplos about her—her ravished

 daughter, the beautiful Pherephata or Persephone. However, I have

 already told you all about that—and the strange coincidence of the two

 white doves, (which Elizabeth witnessed at the moment I exclaimed) and

 about our wonderful sunset-arrival in Greek Tauromenion....

 

To the same friend he described our visit to Syracuse:

 

 

  CASA POLITI,

 

  STRADA DIONYSIO,

 

  7th Feb.,:01.

 

 ... I must send you at least a brief line from Syracuse—that marvellous

 ‘Glory of Hellas’ where ancient Athens fell in ruin, alas, when Nicias

 lost here the whole army and navy and Demosthenes surrendered by the

 banks of the Anapus—the Syracuse of Theocritus you love so well—the

 Syracuse where Pindar heard some of his noblest odes sung, where Plato

 discoursed with his disciples of New Hellas, where (long before) the

 Argonauts had passed after hearing the Sirens singing by this fatal

 shore, and near where Ulysses derided Polyphemus—and where Æschylus

 lived so long and died.

 

 It seems almost incredible when one is in the beautiful little Greek

 Theatre up on the rising ground behind modern Syracuse to believe that

 so many of the greatest plays of the greatest Greek tragedians (many

 unknown to us even by name) were given here under the direction of

 Æschylus himself. And now I must tell you of a piece of extraordinary

 good fortune. Yesterday turned out the superbest of this year—a real

 late Spring day, with the fields full of purple irises and asphodels and

 innumerable flowers, and the swallows swooping beneath the multitudes

 of flowering almonds. We spent an unforgettable day—first going to the

 Castle of ancient Euryalos—perhaps the most wonderful I have ever known.

 Then, in the evening, I heard that today a special choral performance

 was to be given in the beautiful hillside Greek Theatre in honour of

 the visit of Prince Tommaso (Duke of Genoa, the late King’s brother,

 and Admiral of the Fleet). Imagine our delight! And _what_ a day it has

 been—the ancient Æschylean theatre crammed once more on all its tiers

 with thousands of Syracusans, so that not a spare seat was left—while

 three hundred young voices sang a version of one of the choral sections

 of “The Suppliants” of Æschylus—with it il Principe on a scarlet dais

 where once the tyrant Dionysius sat! Over head the deep blue sky, and

 beyond, the deep blue Ionian sea. It was all too wonderful....

 

While we were at Taormina the news came of the death of Queen Victoria.

An impressive memorial service was arranged by Mr. Albert Stopford,

an English resident there, and held in the English Chapel of Sta.

Caterina.

 

To attend it the Hon. Alexander Nelson Hood came from the “Nelson

property” of Bronte where he was wintering with his father, Viscount

Bridport, Duke of Bronte, who for forty years had been personal Lord in

Waiting to the Queen. To the son we were introduced by Mr. Stopford;

and a day or two later we started on our first visit to that strange

beautiful Duchy on Ætna, that was to mean so much to us.

 

Greatly we enjoyed the experience—the journey in the little

Circum-Ætnean train along the great shoulder of Etna, with its

picturesque little towns and its great stretches of devastating lava;

the first sight of the Castle of Maniace—in its shallow tree-clad

valley of the Simeto flanked by great solemn hills—as we turned down

the winding hill-road from the great lava plateau where the station

of Maletto stands; the time-worn quadrangular convent-castle with its

Norman chapel, and its great Iona cross carved in lava erected in the

court-yard to the memory of Nelson; the many interesting relics of

Nelson within the castle, such as his Will signed Nelson and Bronte on

each page, medals, many fine line engravings of the battles in which

he, and also Admiral Hood, took part; the beautiful Italian garden, and

wild glen gardens beyond. No less charming was the kindly welcome given

to us by the fine, hale old Courtier who—when his son one afternoon

had taken my husband for a drive to see the hill-town of Bronte,

and the magnificent views of and from Ætna, with its crowning cover

of snow—told me, as we sat in the comfortable central hall before a

blazing log fire, many reminiscences of the beloved Queen he had served

so long.

 

In the spring we returned to England, through Italy; and from

Florence, where we took rooms for a month, F. M. wrote to an unknown

correspondent:

 

 

  18th March, 1901.

 

  MY DEAR UNKNOWN FRIEND,

 

 You must forgive a tardy reply to your welcome letter, but I have been

 ill, and am not yet strong. Your writing to me has made me happy. One

 gets many letters: some leave one indifferent; some interest; a few

 are like dear and familiar voices speaking in a new way, or as from an

 obscure shore. Yours is of the last. I am glad to know that something in

 what I have written has coloured anew your own thought, or deepened the

 subtle music that you yourself hear—for no one finds the colour of life

 and the music of the spirit unless he or she already perceive the one

 and love the other. Somewhere in one of my books—I think in the latest,

 _The Divine Adventure_, but at the moment cannot remember—I say that I

 no longer ask of a book, is it clever, or striking, or is it well done,

 or even is it beautiful, but—out of how deep a life does it come. That

 is the most searching test. And that is why I am grateful when one like

 yourself writes to tell me that intimate thought and emotion deeply felt

 have reached some other and kindred spirit....

 

 I am writing to you from Florence. You know it, perhaps? The pale

 green Arno, the cream-white, irregular, green-blinded, time-stained

 houses opposite, the tall cypresses of the Palatine garden beyond, the

 dove-grey sky, all seem to breathe one sigh ... _La Pace! L’Oblio!_

 

 But then—life has made those words “Peace,” “Forgetfulness,” very sweet

 for me. Perhaps for you this vague breath of another Florence than that

 which Baedeker described might have some more joyous interpretation. I

 hope so....

 

 You are right in what you say, about the gulf between kindred natures

 being less wide than it seems. But do not speak of the spiritual life as

 “another life”: there is no ‘other’ life: what we mean by that is with

 us now. The great misconception of Death is that it is the only door to

 another world.

 

  Your friend,

  FIONA MACLEOD.

 

[Illustration: IL CASTELLO DI MANIACE, BRONTE, SICILY

 

From a photograph taken by the Hon. Alex. Nelson Hood]

 

The October number of _The Fortnightly Review_ contained a series of

poems by F. M. entitled “The Ivory Gate,” and at the same time an

American edition of _From the Hills of Dream_—altered from the original

issue—was published by Mr. T. Mosher, to whom the poet wrote concerning

the last section of the English Edition:

 

 

  12th Nov., 1901.

 

  DEAR MR. MOSHER,

 

 What a lovely book _Mimes_ is! It is a pleasure to look at it, to handle

The simple beauty of the cover-design charms me. And the contents

 ... yes, these are beautiful, too.

 

 I think the translation has been finely made, but there are a few slips

 in interpretative translation, and (as perhaps is inevitable) a lapse

 ever and again from the subtle harmony, the peculiar musical undulant

 rhythm of the original. In a _creative_ translation, the faintest jar

 can destroy the illusion: and more than once I was rudely reminded that

 a foreigner mixt this far-carried honey and myrrh. Yet this is only “a

 counsel of perfection,” by one who perhaps dwells overmuch upon the

 ideal of a flawless raiment for beautiful thought or dream. Nor would

 I seem ungracious to a translator who has so finely achieved a task

 almost as difficult as that set to Liban by Oisin in the Land of the

 Ever-Living, when he bade her take a wave from the shore and a green

 blade from the grass and a leaf from a tree and the breath of the wind

 and a man’s sigh and a woman’s thought, and out of them all make an air

 that would be like the single song of a bird. Do you wish to tempt me?

 Tempt me then with a proposal as to “The Silence of Amor,” to be brought

 out as Mimes is!

 

 The short prose-poems would have to be materially added to, of course:

 and the additions would for the most part individually be longer than

 the short pieces you know....

 

  Sincerely yours,

  FIONA MACLEOD.

 

In sending a copy of the American edition of _From the Hills of Dream_

to Mr. Yeats, the author explained that, though it contained new

material,

 

 ... there will be much in it familiar to you. But even here there are

 changes which are recreative—as, for example, in the instance of “The

 Moon-Child,” where one or two touches and an added quatrain have made a

 poem of what was merely poetic.

 

 The first 10 poems are those which are in the current October

 _Fortnightly Review_. But when these are reprinted in a forthcoming

 volume of new verse ... it will also contain some of the 40 ‘new’ poems

 now included in this American edition, and the chief contents will be

 the re-modelled and re-written poetic drama _The Immortal Hour_, and

 with it many of the notes to which I alluded when I wrote last to you.

 In the present little volume it was not found possible to include the

 lengthy, intimate, and somewhat esoteric notes: among which I account of

 most interest for you those pertinent to the occult myths embodied in

 _The Immortal Hour_.

 

 You will see, however, that one or two dedicatory pages—intended for the

 later English new book—have here found a sectional place: and will, I

 hope, please you.

 

  Believe me,

  Your friend truly,

M.

 

Mr. Yeats replied:

 

 

  18 WOBURN BUILDINGS,

  LONDON, Saturday.

 

  MY DEAR MISS MACLEOD,

 

 I have been a long while about thanking you for your book of poems, but

 I have been shifting from Dublin to London and very busy about various

 things—too busy for any quiet reading. I have been running hither and

 thither seeing people about one thing and another. But now I am back

 in my rooms and have got things straight enough to settle down at last

 to my usual routine. Yesterday I began arranging under their various

 heads some hitherto unsorted folk-stories on which I am about to work,

 and today I have been busy over your book. I never like your poetry as

 well as your prose, but here and always you are a wonderful writer of

 myths. They seem your natural method of expressions.