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

be—but all the waters in the world can

 only affect the external life, and even that only secondarily very

 often....

 

  Monday evening.

 

 ... “_How_ I enjoyed my breakfast this morning! (in the lovely garden, in

 a vine-shadowed arbour or pergola, with great tall poplars and other

 trees billowing against the deep blue). Then a cigarette, a stroll in

 the lovely sunlit-dappled green shadowiness of an adjoining up-sloping

 avenue—and a seat for a little on a deserted south-wall bench (because

 of the blazing heat) for a sun-bath, while I watched a nightingale

 helping its young to fly among the creaming elders and masses of

 wild-rose, while her mate swung on a beech-branch and called long sweet

 exquisite cries of a thrilling poignancy (which, however, might only

 be “Now then, Jenny, look out, or Tommy will fall into that mass of

 syringa:—hillo! there’s Bobby and Polly gone and got scratched pecking

 at these confounded white wild-roses!).”

 

 Then I got up to come in and write to you (gladly in one way,

 reluctantly in another for I seem to drink in life in the strong

 sunlight and heat), but first stopped to speak to a gorgeous solitary

 dandelion. I stroked it gently, and said “Hullo, wee brother, isn’t the

 world beautiful? Hold up your wee head and rejoice!” And it turned up

 its wee golden nose and said “Keep your hair on, you old skidamalink,

 I’m rejoicing as hard as ever I can. I’m _always_ rejoicing. What else

 would I do? You _are_ a rum old un-shiny animal on two silly legs!” So

 we laughed, and parted—but he called me back, and said gently in a wee

 soft goldy-yellow voice, “Don’t think me rude, Brother of Joy. It’s only

 my way. I love you because you love _me_ and don’t despise me. Shake

 pinkies!”—so I gave him a pinkie and he gave me a wee golden-yellow

 pinkie-petal....

 

 Tell Marjorie[5] the wee Dandelion was asking about her and sends her

 his love—also a milky daisy that says _Hooray!_ every morning when it

 wakes, and then is so pleased and astonished that it remains silently

 smiling till next morning.

 

 This flower and bird talk doesn’t bother you, does it? Don’t think I

 don’t realise how ill I have been and in a small way still am: but

 I don’t think about it, and am quite glad and happy in this lovely

 June-glory....”

 

He broke his return journey at Doorn with our friends M. and Mme.

Grandmont and wrote to me:

 

 

  July, 1905.

 

 “ ... How you’d love to be here!

 

 Nothing visible but green depths fading into green depths, and fringing

 the sky-lines the endless surf of boughs and branches. From the

 forest-glades the cooing of doves and the travelling-voice of a flowing

 cool sweet wind of this delicious morning. I always gain immensely in

 mind and body from nearness to woodlands and green growth—hence in

 no small part my feeling for Fontainebleau. I’d such a lot to tell

 you about it—and of what we should strive to obtain for ourselves in

 restful, fine, dignified life, and much else, apropos and apart—as you

 lay happy and contented on the long luxurious lounge beside my chair on

 the deep balcony, half listening to me and half to the soft continuous

 susurrus of the pine-fragrant breeze—that more than an hour elapsed

 while I drank my tea and read your letter....

 

 “It is no exaggeration to say, that, so greatly do I value and treasure

 afterwards certain aspects of beauty, I would quite willingly go through

 all the suffering again for the sake of the lovely impressions here

 last night and this morning. The beauty and charm of this house and its

 forest-environment, the young moon and the night-jar at dusk (and then

 to soothe and sleepify me still more, the soft, sweet, old-fashioned

 melodies of Haydn from 9 to 9.30)—one or two lovely peacocks trailing

 about in front—the swallows at corner of my great verandah—a

 thousandfold peace and beauty, and the goodness of these dear friends,

 have not only been, and are, a living continuous joy, but have been like

 the Heralds of Spring to the return of gladness and energy into my mind.

 Today I realise that too, for one thing, ‘Fiona’ has come back from afar

 off. It is peace and greenness she loves—not the physical and psychical

 perturbation and demoralisation of towns.

 

 Yes, we’ll make ‘green homes’ for ourselves now. No more long needless

 months in London....

 

Despite his serenity of mind, London as usual wrought him harm, and as

he explained to Dr. Goodchild:

 

 

  30th July.

 

 ... August is always a ‘dark’ month for me—and not as a rule, I fancy, a

 good one: at any rate an obscure and perhaps perilous one. But this time

 I fancy it is on other lines. I believe strong motives and influences

 are to be at work in it perhaps furtively only: but none the less

 potently and far reachingly. Between now and September-end (perhaps

 longer) many of the Dark Powers are going to make a great effort. We

 must all be on guard—for there will be individual as well as racial and

 general attack. But a Great Unloosening is at hand.

 

  Yours ever,

 

S.

 

We therefore went to Scotland to say goodbye to his mother and sisters,

and to see one or two friends, among others, Miss Mary Wilson, the

pastellist, at Bantaskine, her home on the site of the battle of

Falkirk; Mr. D. Y. Cameron, with whom my husband planned an unfulfilled

wander among the Western Isles; and Mr. David Erskine of Linlathen.

 

While in the North he wrote to Mr. John Maesfield:

 

 

  KESSOCK COTTAGE,

  NAIRN.

 

  DEAR MR. MAESFIELD,

 

 A brief word to tell you what pleasure I have had in your little book _A

 Mainsail Haul_. It is not only that it is written with delicate art: but

 it is rich in atmosphere—a much rarer thing. The simplicity, the charm,

 the subtle implication of floating, evasive yet fluctuating romance,

 your own keen sense of the use of words and their veiled life and latent

 as well as obvious colour, combine to a winning and often compelling

 effect. I do not think any who has read Don Alfonso’s drinking bout

 with the little red man and the strange homegoing of the weed and

 flower-grown brigantine with the Bible name, will forget it: and what

 dream charm also there is in “Port of Many Ships,” “Sea Superstition,”

 “The Spanish Sailor’s Yarn.” In such a splendid and delightful colour

 fabric as “From the Spanish” “high words and rare” are of course apt—but

 is it not a mistake to introduce in “Sea Superstition” words such as

 “august” and “wrought” in a sailor’s mouth? (In the text the effect

 seems to be enhanced not lessened, by the omission of these words—“were

 like things in bronze,” “the roof of which was of dim branches.”)

 

 In “From the Spanish” I would, as a matter of personal taste, prefer

 that the end came at the close of the penultimate para, the shore-drift

 of the Italian lute. I think the strange dream-like effect would be much

 enhanced without (what seems to me) the superfluous ‘realistic’ tag.

 Otherwise the piece is a gem of its kind.

 

 But you will forgive the critic (and it shows he has read closely) in

 the admirer, I hope?

 

 Let us have more work of the kind. There is much need of it, and you are

 of the few who can give it.

 

  Yours sincerely

  WILLIAM SHARP.

 

Mr. Maesfield—who had written concerning Fiona Macleod to a friend:

“I think the genius of a dead people has found re-incarnation in her.

Wherever the Celt is, thence come visions and tears”—replied:

 

 

  GREENWICH,

  Aug. 19, 1905.

 

  DEAR MR. SHARP,

 

 I was deeply touched by your kind letter about my little book [_A

 Mainsail Haul_]. If it should go to a second edition I will make use of

 your suggestion. I prepared the book rather hurriedly, and there is much

 in it that I very much dislike, now that it cannot be altered.

 

 The mood in which I wrote the tales you like, has gone from me, and I am

 afraid I shall be unable to write others of the same kind. In youth the

 mind is an empty chamber; and the spirits fill it, and move and dance

 there, and colour it with their wings and raiment. In manhood one has

 familiars. But between those times (forgive me for echoing Keats) one

 has little save a tag or two of cynicism, a little crude experience,

 much weariness, much regret, and a vision blurred by all four faults.

 One is weakened, too, by one’s hatreds.

 

 I thank you again for your very kind and cordial letter.

 

  Yours very sincerely,

  JOHN MAESFIELD.

 

To an unknown correspondent F. M. wrote:

 

 

  Sept. 15, 1905.

 

 ... I have been away, in the isles, and for a time beyond the reach of

 letters. I wish there were Isles where one could also go at times, where

 no winged memories could follow. In a Gaelic folk-tale, told me by an

 old woman once, the woman of the story had only to burn a rose to ashes

 and to hold them in the palms of her hands and then to say seven times

 _A Eileanain na Sith_, “O Isles of Peace”! and at once she found herself

 in quiet isles beyond the foam where no memories could follow her and

 where old thoughts, if they came, were like phantoms on the wind, in a

 moment come, in a moment gone. I have failed to find these Isles, and

 so have you: but there are three which lie nearer, and may be reached,

 Dream, Forgetfulness, and Hope.

 

 And there, it may be, we can meet, you and I....

 

 Yes, your insight is true. There is a personal sincerity, the direct

 autobiographical utterance, in even, as you say, the most remote and

 phantastic of my legends as in the plainest of my words. But because

 they cover so much illusion as well as passion, so much love gone on the

 wind as well as love that not even the winds of life and death can break

 or uproot, so much more of deep sorrow (apart from the racial sorrow

 which breathes through all) than of joy save in the deeper spiritual

 sense, they were thus raimented in allegory and legend and all the

 illusion of the past, the remote, the obscure, or the still simpler if

 more audacious directness of the actual, the present, and the explicit.

 There is, perhaps, a greater safety, a greater illusion, in absolute

 simplicity than in the most subtly wrought of art....

 

 But you will understand me when I say that you must not count on our

 meeting—at any rate not this year. I too stand under obscure wings.

 

  Your friend,

M.

 

To the Duchess of Sutherland:

 

 ... I have the memory that recalls everything in proportion and

 sequence. I have often written that art is memory, is in great part

 memory, though not necessarily a recalling of mere personal experience:

 and the more deeply I live the more I see that this is so....

 

 When you write, I mean imaginatively, you must write more and more with

 concentrated vision. Some time ago I re-read your _Four Winds of the

 World_; much of it is finely done, and in some of it your self lives,

 your own accent speaks. But you have it in you to do work far more

 ambitious. The last is not a word I like, or affect; but here it is

 convenient and will translate to your mind what is in my mind. These

 stories are _yours_ but they are not _you_: and though in a sense art

 is a wind above the small eddies of personality, there is a deeper

 sense in which it is nothing else than the signature of personality.

 Style (that is, the outer emotion that compels and the hidden life of

 the imagination that impels and the brooding thought that shapes and

 colours) should, spiritually, reflect a soul’s lineaments as faithfully

 as the lens of the photographer reflects the physiognomy of a man or

 woman. It is because I feel in you a deep instinct for beauty, a deep

 longing for beautiful expression and because I believe you have it in

 you to achieve highly in worth and beauty, that I write to you thus....

 There is that Lady of Silence, the Madonna of Enigma, who lives in

 the heart of many women. Could you not shape something under _Her_

 eyes—shape it and colour it with your own inward life, and give it all

 the nobler help of austere discipline and control which is called art?

 I have not much to tell you of myself just now. At the moment I do not

 write to you from the beloved west where I spend much of each year and

 where my thoughts and dreams continually are. Tonight I am tired, and

 sad, I hardly know why.

 

  O wind, why break in idle foam

    This wave that swept the