WILLIAM SHARP (FIONA MACLEOD) A MEMOIR COMPILED BY HIS WIFE ELIZABETH A. SHARP by ELIZABETH A. SHARP (best ebook reader ubuntu txt) đ
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_Shelley_
In the summer of 1885 we went to Scotland and looked forward to an
idyllic month on West Loch Tarbert. While staying with Mr. Pater in
Oxford my husband had seen the advertisement of a desirable cottage to
be let furnished, with service, and garden stocked with vegetables.
He knew the neighbourhood to be lovely, the attraction was great, so
we took the cottage for August, and in due time carried our various
MSS. and work to the idyllic spot. Beautiful the surroundings were
indeed:âAn upland moor sloping to the loch, with its opposite hilly
shore thickly wooded. The cottage was simplicity itself in its
appointments, butâthe garden was merely a bit of railed-in grass field
destitute of plants; the vegetables consisted of a sack of winter
potatoes quite uneatable, and the only service that the old woman
owner would give was to light the fires and wash up the dishes and
black our boots. Everything else devolved on me, for help I could
get nowhere and though my husbandâs intentions and efforts in that
direction were admirable, their practical qualities ended there! Yet
to all the drawbacks we found compensation in the loveliness of the
moorland, the peace of the solitude, and in the magnificent sunsets.
One sunset I remember specially. We had gone for a wander westward. The
sun was setting behind the brown horizon-line of the moor, and the sky
was aflame with its glow. Suddenly we heard the sound of the pipes,
sighing a Lament. We stopped to listen. The sound came nearer, and we
saw walking over the brow of the upland an old man with bag-pipes and
streamers outlined against the orange sky. We drew aside into a little
hollow. As he neared we saw he was gray haired, his bonnet and clothes
were old and weatherworn. But in his face was a rapt expression as he
played to himself and tramped across the moor, out of the sunset toward
the fishing village that lay yonder in the cold evening light.
The summer was a wet one, and shortly after our return to town the poet
developed disquieting rheumatic symptoms. Nevertheless we were both
hard at work with the reviewing of pictures and books, and among other
things he was projecting a monograph on Shelley. It was about this
time I think that he decided to compete for a prize of ÂŁ100 offered
by the Editor of _The Peopleâs Friend_ for a novel suited to the
requirements of that weekly, and these requirements of course dictated
the sensational style of story. It was my husbandâs one attempt to
write a novel in three volumes. He did not gain the prize but the
story ran serially through _The Peopleâs Friend_, and was afterward
published in 1887 by Messrs. Hurst and Blackett. The scene is laid in
Scotland and in Australia, with a Prologue dealing with Cornwall, where
he had once spent a few days in order to act as best man to one of
his fellow-passengers on the sailing ship that brought him back from
Australia.
The following Review from _The Morning Post_ and letter from our
poet-friend Mathilde Blind will give an idea of the style and defects
of the novel:
âThe many who have the mental courage to allow that they prefer the
objective to the subjective novel may pass some delightful hours
in the perusal of Mr. Sharpâs âThe Sport of Chance.â It has _primĂą
facie_ an undeniable advantage to start with, i. e. it is unlike
almost anything hitherto written in the shape of a novel in three
volumes. Slightly old-fashioned, the authorâs manner is simple and
earnest, while he shows much skill in unravelling the tangled skein
of a complicated plot. He deals also in sensationalism, but this is
of a peculiar kind, and it rarely violates the canons of probability.
To southerners his highly-coloured pictures of Highland peasant life,
with their accompaniments of visions and second sight, may savour of
exaggeration, but not so to those whose youth has been past amidst
similar surroundings. Many episodes of the shipwrecks of âThe Fair
Hopeâ and âThe Australasian,â are as effective as the best of those
written by authors who make a specialty of âTales of the Sea.â Hew
Armitageâs âquest,â in Australia, is related with graphic force. The
descriptions of the natural features of the country, of life in the
bush, and at the outlying settlements, are all stamped with the vivid
fidelity that is one of the great merits of the book. Charles Lamb,
_alias_ Cameron, is a singular conception. Too consistently wicked,
perhaps, to escape the reproach of being a melo-dramatic villain, his
misdeeds largely contribute to the interest of this exciting novel.â
Nov. 6, 1888.
DEAR WILLIAM,
... Your âSport of Chanceâ has helped me to while away the hours and
certainly you have crammed sensation enough into your three volumes to
furnish forth a round dozen or so. The opening part seemed to me very
good, especially the description of the storm off the Cornish coast,
and the mystery which gradually overclouds Monaâs life, but her death
and the advent of a new set of characters seems to me to cut the story
in two, while the sensational incidents are piled on like Ossa on
Olympus. What seemed best to me, and also most enjoyable to my taste at
least, are the personal reminiscences which I recognised in the voyage
out to Australia and the descriptions of its scenery, full of life and
freshness. Most of all I liked the weird picture of the phosphorescent
sea with its haunting spectral shapes. You have probably seen something
of the kind and ought to have turned it into a poem; if there had
been a description of some scene like it in your last volume I should
doubtless remember it.
With best love to Lillie,
Your sincere friend,
MATHILDE BLIND.
The opening of the new year 1886âfrom which we hoped muchâwas
unpropitious. A wet winter and long hours of work told heavily on my
husband, whose ill-health was increased by the enforced silence of his
âsecond selfâ for whose expression leisure was a necessary condition.
In a mood of dejection induced by these untoward circumstances he sent
the following birthday greeting to his friend Eric S. Robertson:
46 TALGARTH ROAD, W.
MY DEAR FRIEND,
I join with Lillie in love and earnest good wishes for you as man and
writer. Accept the accompanying two sonnets as a birthday welcome.
There are two âWilliam Sharpâsââone of them unhappy and bitter enough
at heart, God knowsâthough he seldom shows it. This other poor devil
also sends you a greeting of his own kind. Tear it up and forget it, if
you will.
But sometimes I am very tiredâvery tired.
Yours ever, my dear Eric,
S.
TO ERIC SUTHERLAND ROBERTSON
(On his birthday, 18: 2: 86)
I
Already in the purple-tinted woods
The loud-voiced throstle callsâsweet echoings
Down leafless aisles that dream of bygone springs:
Already towards their northern solitudes
The fieldfares turn, and soaring high, wheel broods
Of wild swans with a clamour of swift wings:
A tremor of new life moves through all things
And earth regenerate thrills with joyous moods.
Let not springâs breath blow vainly past thine heart,
Dear friend: for Time grows ruinously apace:
Yon tall white lily in its holy grace
The winds will draggle soon: for an unseen dart
Moves ever hither and thither through each place,
Nor know we when or how our lives âtwill part.
II
A little thing it is indeed to die:
Godâs seal to sanctify the soulâs advanceâ
Or silence, and a long enfevered trance.
But no slight thing is itâere the last sigh
Leaves the tired heart, ere calm and passively
The worn face reverent grows, fades the dim glanceâ
To pass away and pay no recompense
To Life, who hath given to us so gloriously.
Not so for theeâwithin whose heart lie deep
As ingots âneath the waves, thoughts true and fair.
Nor ever let thy soul the burden bear,
Of having life to live yet choosing sleep:
Yea even if thine the dark and slippery stair,
Better to toil and climb than wormlike creep.
In the early spring my husband was laid low with scarlet fever and
phlebitis. Recovery was slow, and at the press view of the Royal
Academy he caught a severe chill; the next day he was in the grip of a
prolonged attack of rheumatic fever. For many days his life hung in the
balance.
During much of the suffering and tedium of those long weeks the sick
man passed in a dream-world of his own; for he had the power at times
of getting out of or beyond his normal consciousness at will. At first
he imagined himself the owner of a gipsy travelling-van, in which
he wandered over the to him well-known and much-loved solitudes of
Argyll, resting where the whim dictated and visiting his many fisher
and shepherd friends. Later, during the long crises of the illness,
though unconscious often of all material surroundings, he passed
through other keen inner phases of consciousness, through psychic and
dream experiences that afterward to some extent were woven into the
Fiona Macleod writings, and, as he believed, were among the original
shaping influences that produced them. For a time he felt himself to
be practically dead to the material world, and acutely alive âon the
other side of thingsâ in the greater freer universe. He had no desire
to return, and rejoiced in his freedom and greater powers; but, as he
described it afterward, a hand suddenly restrained him: âNot yet, you
must return.â And he believed he had been âfreshly sensitisedâ as he
expressed it; and knew he hadâas I had always believedâsome special
work to do before he could again go free.
The illusion of his wanderings with the travelling van was greatly
helped by the thoughtfulness of his new friend Ernest Rhys who brought
him branches of trees in early leaf from the country. These I placed
upright in the open window; and the fluttering leaves not only helped
his imagination but also awoke âthat dazzle in the brain,â as he always
described the process which led him over the borderland of the physical
into the âgardensâ of psychic consciousness or, as he called it, âinto
the Green Life.â
At the end of ten weeks he left his bed. As soon as possible I took
him to Northbrook, Micheldever, the country house of our kind friends
Mr. and Mrs. Henryson Caird, who put it at our disposal for six weeks.
Slowly his strength came back in these warm summer days, as he lay
contentedly in the sunshine. But as he began to exert himself new
disquieting symptoms developed. His heart proved to be badly affected
and his recovery was proportionately retarded.
The Autumn found us face to face with problems hard to solve, how to
meet not only current expenses but also serious debt, with a limited
stock of precarious strength. At the moment of blackest outlook the
invalid received a generous friendly letter from Mr. Alfred Austin
enclosing a substantial cheque. The terms in which it was offered were
as kindly sympathetic as the thought which prompted them. He had, he
said, once been helped in a similar way with the injunction to repay
the loan not to the donor but to some one else who stood in need.
Therefore he now offered it with the same conditions attached. During
the long months of illness it had been a constant source of regret
to us that we were unable to see Philip Marston or to read to him as
was our habit. We were anxious, too, for in the autumn he had been
prostrated by a heat stroke, followed by an epileptic seizure. At
last, on Christmas day 1886 William Sharp went to see him and spent an
hour or so with him. As he tells in his prefatory Memoir to Marstonâs
âSong-tideâ (_Canterbury Poets_): âHe was in bed and I was shocked at
the changeâas nearly a year had elapsed since I had seen him I found
the alteration only too evident.... Throughout the winter his letters
had been full of foreboding: âYou will miss me, perhaps, when I am
gone, but you need not mourn for me. I think few lives have been so
deeply sad as mine, though I do not forget those who have blessed it.ââ
This was the keynote to each infinitely sad letter.
âOn the last day of January 1887 paralysis set in, and for fourteen
days, he lay speechless as well as sightless, but at last he was asleep
and
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