WILLIAM SHARP (FIONA MACLEOD) A MEMOIR COMPILED BY HIS WIFE ELIZABETH A. SHARP by ELIZABETH A. SHARP (best ebook reader ubuntu txt) đ
- Author: ELIZABETH A. SHARP
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Rest.â Besides, a number of short stories: some with a definite end in
view, that of coherent book-publication. In the background are other
works: e. g. _Darthûla_, thought out nearly fully, which I would like
to make my _chef dâĆuvre_. In all, I have actually on hand eight books,
and innumerable stories, articles, etc.
[Illustration: HANDWRITING
Fac-simile of an autograph poem by William Sharp
Venilia
Exspirare rosas, decrescere lilia vidi
Claudian
Along the faint shores of the foamless gulf
I see pale lilies droop, wan roses fall,
And Silence stilling the upplifted wave
And in the moment of the lifted wave
And ere the rose fall or the lily breathe,
A husht far voice hath Silence, like to hers,
Veniliaâs, who when love was given wings
And vanishing flight, mourned ceaseless as a dove
Till bitter Circe changed her to a strain
Long lingering in old, forgotten woods
When on the grey wind swims the yellow leaf.
William Sharp
]
The things first to be done now are
Books 1 Finish new Life of Rossetti
2 Finish Pharais
3 Write Nostalgia
4 Collaborate in Ivresse
then, The Brotherhood of Rest
and, The Comedy of Woman
and, The Lunes of Youth
(Articles) âThe Literary Idealâ: Flemçen: âTunisiaâ: âThe Province
of Constantineâ: âThe Province of Oranâ: âLyric Japanâ: âChansons
DâAmourâ: etc. etc.
(Short Stories) âThe late Mrs. Pygmalionâ etc. etc.â
* * * * *
_Vistas_ was published early in 1894 by Mr. Frank Murray of Derby in
âhis Regent Series,â of which _Frangipani_ by R. Murray Gilchrist was
the first number. The English edition of _Vistas_ is dedicated to
_Madame Elspeth H. Barzia_âan anagram on my name.
In the Dedication to H. W. Alden (author of âGod in His Worldâ) in the
American editionâwhich contains an extra â_Interlude_â entitled âThe
Whispererââthe intention of the book is thus explained:
âYou asked me what my aim was in those dramatic interludes which,
collectively, I call _Vistas_. I could not well explain: nor can I do
so now. All are vistas of the inner life of the human soul, psychic
episodes. One or two are directly autopsychical, others are renderings
of dramatically conceived impressions of spiritual emotion: to two or
three no quotation could be more apt than that of the Spanish novelist,
Emilia Pardo BazĂ n: âEnter with me into the dark zone of the human
soul.â These _Vistas_ were written at intervals: the most intimate in
the spiritual sense, so long ago as the spring of 1886, when during
recovery from a long and nearly fatal illness âLilithâ came to me as a
vision and was withheld in words as soon as I could put pen to paper.
Another was written in Rome, after a vain effort to express adequately
in a different form the episode of death-menaced and death-haunted love
among those remote Scottish wilds where so much of my childhood and
boyhood and early youth was spent.... I came upon for the first time
âLa Princesse Maleineâ and âLâIntruse.â
âOne or two of the _Vistas_ were written in Stuttgart in 1891, others
a year or so later in London or elsewhereâall in what is, in somewhat
unscholarly fashion, called the Maeterlinckian formula. Almost from the
first moment it seemed clear to me that the Belgian poet-dramatist had
introduced a new and vital literary form. It was one that many had been
seekingâstumblingly, among them, the author of _Vistas_âbut Maurice
Maeterlinck wrought the crude material into a form fit for swift and
dextrous use, at once subtle and simple. The first which I wrote under
this impulse is that entitled âFinis.â The latest or latest but one
(âThe Whisperer,â now added to this Edition) seems to me, if I may say
so, as distinctively individual as âThe Passing of Lilith,â and some,
at least of my critics have noticed this in connection with âThe Lute
Player.â In all but its final form, it embodies a conception that has
been with me for many years, ever since boyhood: a living actuality for
me, at last expressed, but so inadequately as to make me differ from
the distinguished critic who adjudged it the best of the _Vistas_. To
me it is the most obvious failure in the book, though fundamentally, so
near and real emotionally.â
END OF PART ONE
PART II ( FIONA MACLEOD ) CHAPTER XIV ( THE PSEUDONYM )
_I too will set my face to the wind and throw my handful
of seed on high,
It is loveliness I seek, not lovely things._
_F. M._
_Pharais_
The summer of 1893 was hot and sunny: and we delighted in our little
garden with its miniature lawns, its espalier fruit trees framing the
vegetable garden, and its juvenile but to us fascinating flower beds.
Horsham, our nearest town, was seven miles distant and the village of
Rudgwick lay a mile away up a steady ascent beyond the station. William
Sharp was happy once more to be resident in the country, although the
surroundings were not a type of scenery that appealed to him. But, as
he wrote to a friend, it was not so much the place that he liked âas
what is in it conducive to that keen perturbation, elation, excitement
of mind, which is life worth living.â
At Phenice Croft his imagination was in a perpetual ferment. Out of the
projected work that he had noted in his diary, out of those subjects
that lay in his mind to germinate and mature, or to wither and be
rejected, grew one or two achievements; and in particular after the
completion of _Vistas_, a romance of the Isles, _Pharais_, about which
his friend Mr. Cotterell in acknowledging a copy of these Dramatic
Interludes, wrote to the author:
â_Vistas_ should mark a point in your career from which you should go
forward to greater things. I am eager to see the Celtic romance.â
The quiet and leisure at Phenice Croft, the peace, the âgreen lifeâ
around were unspeakably welcome to my husband. Once again, he saw
visions and dreamed dreams; the psychic subjective side of his dual
nature predominated. He was in an acutely creative condition; and,
moreover he was passing from one phase of literary work to another,
deeper, more intimate, more permanent. So far, he had found no
adequate method for the expression of his âsecond selfâ though the way
was led thereto by _Sospiri di Roma_ and _Vistas_.
The _Sospiri di Roma_ was the turning point. Those unrhymed poems of
irregular meter are filled not only with the passionate delight in
life, with the sheer joy of existence, but also with the ecstatic
worship of beauty that possessed him during those spring months we
spent in Rome, when he had cut himself adrift for the time from the
usual routine of our life, and touched a high point of health and
exuberant spirits. There, at last, he had found the desired incentive
towards a true expression of himself, in the stimulus and sympathetic
understanding of the friend to whom he dedicated the first of the books
published under his pseudonym. This friendship began in Rome and lasted
throughout the remainder of his life.
And though this newer phase of his work was at no time the result of
collaboration, as certain of his critics have suggested, he was deeply
conscious of his indebtedness to this friend, forâas he stated to me in
a letter of instructions, written before he went to America in 1896,
concerning his wishes in the event of his deathâhe realised that it was
âto her I owe my development as âFiona Macleodâ though, in a sense of
course, that began long before I knew her, and indeed while I was still
a child,â and that, as he believed, âwithout her there would have been
no âFiona Macleod.ââ
Because of her beauty, her strong sense of life and of the joy of life;
because of her keen intuitions and mental alertness, her personality
stood for him as a symbol of the heroic women of Greek and Celtic days,
a symbol that, as he expressed it, unlocked new doors in his mind and
put him âin touch with ancestral memoriesâ of his race. So, for a
time, he stilled the critical, intellectual mood of William Sharp to
give play to the development of this new found expression of subtler
emotions, towards which he had been moving with all the ardour of his
nature.
From then till the end of his life there was a continual play of
the two forces in him, or of the two sides of his nature: of the
intellectually observant, reasoning mindâthe actor, and of the
intuitively observant, spiritual mindâthe dreamer, which differentiated
more and more one from the other, and required different conditions,
different environment, different stimuli, until he seemed to be two
personalities in one. It was a development which, as it proceeded,
produced a tremendous strain on his physical and mental resources;
and at one time between 1897-8 threatened him with a complete nervous
collapse.
And there was for a time distinct opposition between these two natures
which made it extremely difficult for him to adjust his life, for the
two conditions which were equally imperative in their demands upon him.
His preference, naturally, was for the intimate creative work which he
knew grew out of his inner self; though the exigencies of life, his
dependence on his pen for his livelihoodâand, moreover the keen active
interest âWilliam Sharpâ took in all the movements of the day, literary
and political, at home and abroadârequired of him a great amount of
applied study and work.
During those two years at Phenice Croft, to which he always looked
back with deep thankfulness, he was the dreamerâhe was testing his
new powers, living his new life, and delighting in the opportunity
for psychic experimentation. And for such experimentation the place
seemed to him to be peculiarly suited. To me it seemed âuncanny,â and
to have a haunted atmosphereâcreated unquestionably by himâthat I
found difficult to live in, unless the sun was shining. This uncanny
effect was felt by more than one friend; by Mr. Murray Gilchrist, for
instance, whose impressions were described by his host in one of the
short âTragic Landscapes.â
_Pharais_ was the first of the books written and published under the
pseudonym of âFiona Macleod.â The first reference to it is in the afore
noted diary: âHave also done the first part of a Celtic romance called
_Pharais_.â The next is in a letter written to Mrs. Janvier from St.
Andrews, on 12th August, 1893, before the author had decided on the use
of a pseudonym:
â ... The white flowers you speak of are the moondaisies, are they
not?âwhat we call moonflowers in the west of Scotland and ox-eye
daisies in England, and marguerites in France?... It is very strange
that you should write about them to me just as I was working out a
scene in a strange Celtic tale I am writing, called _Pharais_, wherein
the weird charm and terror of a night of tragic significance is brought
home to the reader (or I hope so) by a stretch of dew-wet moonflowers
glimmering white through the mirk of a dusk laden with sea mists.
Though this actual scene was written a year or two agoâand one or two
others of the first part of _Pharais_âI am going to re-write it, your
letter having brought some subtle inspiration with it. _Pharais_ is a
foil to the other long story I am working at. While _it_ is full of
Celtic romance and dream and the glamour of the mysterious, the other
is a comedy of errorsâsomewhat in the nature, so far, of âA Fellowe
and His Wifeâ (I mean as to style). In both, at least the plot, the
central action, the germinal _motif_, is original: though I for one
lay little stress on extraneous originality in comparison with that
inner originality of individual life.... I have other work on the many
occupied easels in the studio of my mind: but of nothing of this need I
speak at present. Of minor things, the only one of any importance is a
long article on a subject wherein I
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