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

the

 corner of a winding path, and then by the bend of Santa Caterina garden

 wall with fine tall plume-like cypresses filled with a living green

 darkness, silhouetted against the foam-white cone.

 

 My French windows open on the terrace, it is lovely to go out early in

 the morning to watch sunrise (gold to rose-flame) coming over Calabria,

 and the purple-blue emerald straits of Messina and down by the wildly

 picturesque shores of these island coasts and across the Ionian sea,

 and lying like a bloom on the incredible vastness of Etna and its rise

 from distant Syracuse and Mt. Hybla to its cone far beyond the morning

 clouds when clouds there are—or to go out at sunrise and see a miracle

 of beauty being woven anew—or at night when there is no moon, but only

 the flashing of the starry torches, the serpentine glitter of lights,

 the soft cry of the aziola, and the drowsy rhythmic cadence of the sea

 in the caves and crags far below. Just now the hum of bees is almost

 as loud as the drowsy sighing of the sea: among the almonds a boy is

 singing a long drowsy Greek-like chant, and on the mass of wild rock

 near the cypresses a goatherd is playing intermittently on a reed pipe.

 A few yards to the right is a long crescent-shaped terrace garden filled

 with roses, great shrublike clumps of white and yellow marguerite,

 myrtle, lilies, narcissus, sweet-scented blossom-covered geranium,

 oranges hanging in yellow flame, pale-gold lemons. Below the branches a

 “Purple Emperor” and a snow-white “May Queen” are hovering in butterfly

 wooing. On an oleander above a wilderness of pink and scarlet geraniums

 two blue tits are singing and building, building and singing.

 

       *       *       *       *       *

 

 Since I wrote the above Easter has intervened. The strange half pagan,

 half Christian ceremonies interested me greatly, and in one of the

 ceremonials of one processional part I recognized a striking survival of

 the more ancient Greek rites of the Demeter and the Persephonæ-Kôrê cult.

 

To Mrs. Janvier.

 

 

  TAORMINA.

 

 ... It is difficult to do anything here. I should like to come sometime

 without anything to do—without even a book to read: simply to come

 and dream, to re-live many of the scenes of this inexhaustible region

 of romance: to see in vision the coming and going of that innumerable

 company—from Ulysses and his wanderers, from Pythagoras and St. Peter,

 from that Pancrazio who had seen Christ in the flesh, from Æschylus, and

 Dionysius and Hiero and Gelon, from Pindar and Simonides and Theocritus,

 to Richard Cœur-de-Lion and Garibaldi and Lord Nelson—what a strange

 company!...

 

 As for my own work, it is mostly (what there is of it!) dealing with the

 literature, etc., of the south. I do not know whether my long article

 on Contemporary Italian Poetry is to be in the April-June issue of _The

 Quarterly_, or the summer issue. I am more interested in a strange

 Greek drama I am writing—_The Kôrê of Enna_—than in anything I have

 taken up for a long time. My reading just now is mostly Greek history

 and Italian literature.... Looking on this deep blue, often violet sea,

 with the foam washing below that perhaps laved the opposite shores

 of Greece, and hearing the bees on the warm wind, it is difficult to

 realise the wet and cold you have apparently had recently in New York—or

 the fogs and cold in London. I wish you could bask in and sun yourself

 on this sea-terrace, and read me the last you have written of “Captain

 Dionysius” while _I_ give _you_ tea!

 

During our first visit to Sicily, though my husband realised the beauty

of the island, he could not feel its charm or get in touch with the

spirit of the place because he was overborne by the sense of battle

and bloodshed that he felt pervaded it. When I suggested how much the

fascination of the beautiful island had seized hold of me he would say:

“No, I cannot feel it for the ground is sodden and every leaf drips

with blood.” To his great relief, on his return there he found, as he

said, that he had got beyond the surface of things, had pierced down

to the great essentials of the ancient land, and had become one of her

devoted lovers.

 

 

 

 

PART II  ( FIONA MACLEOD  ) CHAPTER XXIII ( LISMORE )

_Taormina_

 

 

Our summer was spent on Arran, Colinsay, and on “the Green Isle” of

Lismore in the sea-mouth of Loch Linnhe within sight of the blue hills

of Morven. We had rooms in the Ferryman’s cottage at the north point

of the isle, where the tide race was so strong at the ebb in stormy

weather that at times it was impossible to row across to the Appin

shore, even to fetch a telegram whose advent was signalled to us by a

little flag from the post office—a quicker way of getting it than by

the long road from the Lismore post office. We spent much of our time

on the water in a little rowing boat. A favourite haunt was a little

Isle of Seals, in the loch, where we one day found a baby seagull, fat

and fully fledged, but a prisoner by reason of a long piece of grass

that had tightly wound round and atrophied one of its feet. Sometimes

our friend the ferryman would come too. At first he refused to talk

if I was there, because I could not speak Gaelic, and he thought I

was English. But at last when I had reassured him that I too was a

Scot, when he admitted that though I had not a Highland tongue I had

Highland eyes just like his mother’s—his shyness wore away. And one day

when we were out on the loch at sundown, and an exquisite rosy flush

lay over hill and water, he stopped rowing and leant over his oars,

silent for a time, and at last murmured in his slow Highland English

“’Tis—the—smile—of God—upon—the—waters.”

 

At Lismore F. M. wrote, to quote the author’s own words, “‘The Four

Winds of Eiré’ (long); ‘The Magic Kingdoms’ (longer and profounder, one

of the best things F. M. has ever written); ‘Sea-Magic’ (a narrative

and strange Sea-Lore); ‘The Lynn of Dreams’ (a spiritual study); and

‘Seumas’ (a memory).”

 

During the summer and autumn he had, as F. M., also written a long

study on the work of W. B. Yeats for _The North American Review_; had

arranged the first volume of a selection of tales for the Tauchnitz

series, entitled _Wind and Wave_; and had prepared a revised and

augmented edition of _The Silence of Amor_ for publication in America

by Mr. Mosher. W. S. meanwhile had not been idle. After editing a

volume of the Poems by our friend, Eugene Lee-Hamilton, with a long

Introduction for _The Canterbury Poets_, he was at work on a series

of articles which were intended for a projected book to be called

_Literary Geography_; and of these there appeared in _Harper’s_ “Walter

Scott’s Land,” “R. L. Stevenson’s Country”; and a poem, “Capt’n

Goldsack.”

 

Unfortunately, his increasing delicacy not only disabled him from

the continuous heavy strain of work he was under, but our imperative

absence from England necessitated also the relinquishing of my

journalistic work. The stress of circumstances weighed heavily on

him, as he no longer had the energy and buoyancy with which to make

way against it. At this juncture, however, one or two friends, who

realised the seriousness of conditions petitioned that he should be

put on the Civil Pension List. The Hon. Alex. Nelson Hood and Mr.

Alfred Austin were the chief movers in the matter, and were backed by

Mr. George Meredith, Mr. Thomas Hardy and Mr. Watts Dunton. Realising

however, that the writings of William Sharp, considered alone, would

not constitute a sufficient claim, Mr. Hood urged William to allow him

to acquaint the Prime Minister with the authorship of the Fiona Macleod

writings, and of the many sacrifices their production had entailed. My

husband consented providing that Mr. Balfour were told “confidentially

and verbally.” However, it proved necessary that “a statement of entire

claims to consideration should be laid upon the table of the House of

Commons for the inspection of members.” In writing to acquaint my

husband of this regulation, Mr. Hood added:

 

“I do not presume to say one word to influence you in the decision

you may come to. In such a matter it is for you to decide. If you

will sacrifice your unwillingness to appear before the world in all

the esteem and admiration which are your due, then, (I may say this)

perhaps you will obtain freedom—or some freedom—from anxiety and worry

that will permit you to continue your work unhampered and with a quiet

mind. But advice I cannot give. I cannot recommend any one to abandon a

high ideal, and your wish to remain unknown is certainly that....”

 

To this W. S. replied:

 

 

  EDINBURGH,

  21st Aug., 1902.

 

  MY DEAR ALEC,

 

 You will have anticipated my decision. No other was possible for me. I

 have not made many sacrifices just to set them aside when a temptation

 of need occurs. Indeed, even writing thus of ‘sacrifices’ seems to

 me unworthy: these things are nothing, and have brought me far more

 than I lost, if not in outward fortune. It is right, though, to say

 that the decision is due to no form of mental obstinacy or arrogance.

 Rightly or wrongly, I am conscious of something to be done—to be done

 by one side of me, by one half of me, by the true inward self as I

 believe—(apart from the overwhelmingly felt mystery of a dual self, and

 a reminiscent life, and a woman’s life and nature within, concurring

 with and oftenest dominating the other)—and rightly or wrongly I believe

 that this, and the style so strangely born of this inward life, depend

 upon my aloofness and spiritual isolation as F. M. To betray publicly

 the private life and constrained ideal of that inward self, for a

 reward’s sake, would be a poor collapse. And if I feel all this, as I

 felt it from the first (and the _nominal_ beginning was no literary

 adventure, but a deep spiritual impulse and compelling circumstances

 of a nature upon which I must be silent) how much more must I feel it

 now, when an added and great responsibility to others has come to me,

 through the winning of so already large and deepening a circle of those

 of like ideals or at least like sympathies in our own country, and in

 America—and I allude as much or more to those who while caring for the

 outer raiment think of and need most the spirit within that raiment,

 which I hope will grow fairer and simpler and finer still, if such is

 the will of the controlling divine wills that, above the maze, watch us

 in our troubled wilderness.

 

 That is why I said that I could not adopt the suggestion, despite

 promise of the desired pension, even were that tenfold, or any sum.

 As to ‘name and fame,’ well, that is not my business. I am glad and

 content to be a ‘messenger,’ an interpreter it may be. Probably a wide

 repute would be bad for the work I have to do. Friends I want to gain,

 to win more and more, and, in reason, “to do well”: but this is always

 secondary to the deep compelling motive. In a word, and quite simply,

 I believe that a spirit has breathed to me, or entered me, or that my

 soul remembers or has awaked (the phraseology matters little)—and, that

 being so, that my concern is not to think of myself or my ‘name’ or

 ‘reward,’ but to do (with what renunciation, financial and other, may be

 necessary) my truest and best.

 

 And then, believing this, I have faith you see in the inward destiny.

 I smiled when I put down your long, affectionate, and good letter.

 But it was not a smile of bitterness: it was of serene acceptance and

 confidence. And the words that came to my mind were those in the