WILLIAM SHARP (FIONA MACLEOD) A MEMOIR COMPILED BY HIS WIFE ELIZABETH A. SHARP by ELIZABETH A. SHARP (best ebook reader ubuntu txt) 📖
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of the Ford_ awaiting us. Two out of many letters concerning the book
that came to him from friends who were in the secret and watched the
development of the “F. M.” work, were a strong incentive to further
effort.
The first is from Mr. Frank Rinder:
MY DEAR WILL,
From my heart I thank you for the gift of this book. It adds to the sum
of the precious, heaven-sent things in life. It will kindle the fire of
hope, of aspiration and of high resolve in a thousand hearts. As one of
those into whose life you have brought a more poignant craving for what
is beautiful in word and action, I thank you for writing it.
Your friend,
FRANK.
The second was from Mr. Janvier:
SAINT REMY DE PROVENCE,
June 22, 1896.
MY DEAR WILL,
If _The Washer of the Ford_ were the first of Fiona’s books I am
confident that the sex of its author would not pass unchallenged. A
great part of it is essentially masculine—all the “Seanachas,” and
“The Annir Choille,” and the opening of “The Washer”: not impossible
for a woman to write, but unlikely. Nor would a woman have written
“The Annir Choille,” I think, as it is written here. Fiona has shown
her double sex in this story more completely, it seems to me, than in
any other. It is written with a man’s sense of decency and a woman’s
sense of delicacy—and the love of both man and woman is in it to a
very extraordinary degree. The fighting stories seem to me to be pure
man—though I suppose that there are Highland women (like Scott’s
“Highland Widow”) capable of their stern savagery. But on these alone,
Fiona’s sex scarcely could have been accepted unchallenged. But what
seems to me to show plainest, in all the stories together, is not the
trifle that they are by a man or by a woman but that they have come
out of your inspired soul. They seem to be the result of some outside
force constraining you to write them. And with their freshness they
have a curious primordial flavour—that comes, I suppose, from the deep
roots and full essences of life which are their substance of soul. Being
basic, elementary, they are independent of time; or even race. In a
literary—technically literary—way they seem to me to be quite your most
perfect work. I am sensitive to word arrangement, and some of your work
has made me rather disposed to swear at you for carelessness. You have
not always taken the trouble to hunt for the word that you needed. But
these stories are as nearly perfect in finish, I think, as literary
endeavour can make them. And they have that effect of flow and ease that
can only come—at least, I can imagine it only as arriving—from the most
persistent and laborious care. In the detail of make-up, I am especially
impressed by the insertion of the Shadow Seers just where the key is
changed radically. They are at once your justifying pieces for what has
gone before, and an orchestral interlude before the wholly different
Seanachas begin. Of all in the book, my strongest affection is for “The
Last Supper.” It seems to me to be the most purely beautiful, and the
profoundest thing that you have done.
I feel that some strong new current must have come into your life; or
that the normal current has been in some way obstructed or diverted—for
the animating spirit of these new books reflects a radical change
in your own soul. The Pagan element is entirely subordinated to and
controlled by the inner passions of the soul. In a word you have lifted
your work from the flesh-level to the soul-level....
What you say in your letter of worry and ill-health saddens me. It is
unjust that your rare power of creation should be hampered in any way.
But it seems to me that there must be great consolation in your certain
knowledge that you have greatly created, in spite of all.
Always affectionately yours,
A. J.
PART II ( FIONA MACLEOD ) CHAPTER XVII ( “RUNES OF THE SORROW OF WOMEN” )
_Green Fire_
During the most active years of the Fiona Macleod writings, the author
was usually in a highly wrought condition of mental and emotional
tension, which produced great restlessness, so that he could not long
remain contentedly anywhere. We spent the summer of 1896 moving about
from one place to another that had special interest for him. First we
went to Bamborough, for sea-bathing (he was a fine swimmer), and to
visit the little Holy Isle of the Eastern Shores, Lindisfarne, Iona’s
daughter. Thence to the Clyde to be near his mother and sisters. From
Inverness we went to the Falls of Lora, in Ossian’s country, and later
we moved to one of William’s favourite haunts, Loch Tarbert, off Loch
Fyne, where our friends Mr. and Mrs. Frank Rinder had taken a house
for the summer. There I left him with his secretary-sister, Mary, and
returned to London to recommence my work on _The Glasgow Herald_. The
two following letters to me told of the progress of his work:
September 23d.
I am now well in writing trim I am glad to say. Two days ago I wrote
the long-awaited “Rune of the Passion of Woman” the companion piece in
a sense to the ‘Chant of Woman’ in _Pharais_—and have also done the
_Savoy_ story “The Archer” (about 4,500 words) and all but done “Ahez
the Pale.” Today I hope to get on with the “Lily Leven.” ...
I must make the most of this day of storm for writing. I had a splendid
long sleep last night, and feel ‘spiff.’ ... I am not built for mixed
companies, and like them less and less in proportion as the imperative
need of F. M. and W. S. for greater isolation grows. I realise more and
more the literal truth of what George Meredith told me—that renunciation
of ordinary social pleasures (namely of the ordinary kind in the
ordinary way) is a necessity to any worker on the high levels: and
unless I work that way I shall not work at all.
26th Sept.
... Yesterday turned out a splendid breezy day, despite its bad opening:
one of the most beautiful we have had, altho’ too cold for bathing, and
too rough for boating. I went off by myself for a long sail—and got
back about 4. Later I went alone for an hour or so to revise what had
stirred me so unspeakably, namely the third and concluding “Rune of the
Sorrow of Women.” This last Rune tired me in preliminary excitement and
in the strange semi-conscious fever of composition more than anything of
the kind since I wrote the first of the three in _Pharais_ one night of
storm when I was alone in Phenice Croft.
I have given it to Mary to copy, so that I can send it to you at once.
Tell me what you think and feel about it. In a vague way not only
you, Mona, Edith and others swam into my brain, but I have never so
absolutely felt the woman-soul within me: it was as though in some
subtle way the soul of Woman breathed into my brain—and I feel vaguely
as if I had given partial expression at least to the inarticulate voice
of a myriad women who suffer in one or other of the triple ways of
sorrow. For work, and rebuilding energy, I am thankful I came here. You
were right: I was not really fit to go off to the Hebrides alone, at
the present juncture, and might well have defeated my own end. Tomorrow
morning I shall be writing—probably at From the Hills of Dream.
From Tighnabruaich Hotel, a lovely little village in the Kyles of Bute,
he wrote to me:
I am glad to be here, for though the weather has changed for the
worse I am so fond of the place and neighbourhood. But what I
care for most is I am in a strong Fiona mood, though more of dream
and reverie—creatively—than of actual writing: indeed it is likely
all my work here, or nearly all shall be done through dream and
mental-cartooning. I have written “The Snow Sleep of Angus Ogue” for the
winter _Evergreen_, and am glad to know it is one of F. M.’s deepest and
best utterances.
_The Evergreen_ was a Quarterly started by Prof. Geddes, of which W. S.
was Editor. Five numbers only were issued. During the autumn William
had prepared for publication by P. Geddes & Coll a re-issue of the
Tales contained in _The Sin-Eater_ and _The Washer of the Ford_, in the
form of a paper covered edition in three volumes, _Barbaric Tales_,
_Spiritual Tales_, _Tragic Romances_. Each volume contained a new tale.
Mr. W. B. Yeats considered that “Of the group of new voices none is
more typical than the curious mysterious voice that is revealed in
these stories of Miss Fiona Macleod.... She has become the voice (of
these primitive peoples and elemental things) not from mere observation
of their ways, but out of an absolute identity of nature.... Her
art belongs in kind, whatever be its excellence in its kind, to a
greater art, which is of revelation, and deals with invisible and
impalpable things. Its mission is to bring us near to those powers and
principalities, which we divine in mortal hopes and passions.
* * * * *
Mr. W. E. Henley had shown considerable interest in the “F. M.” Tales,
and had written an appreciative letter to the author, who immediately
acknowledged it:
1:4:97.
DEAR MR. HENLEY,
I thank you for your kind letter. Any work of recognition from you means
much to me. Your advice is wise and sane, I am sure—and you may be
certain that I shall bear it in mind. It will be difficult to follow—for
absolute simplicity is the most difficult of all styles, being, as it
must be, the expression of a mind at once so imaginative in itself, so
lucid in its outlook, and so controlled in its expression, that only a
very few rarely gifted individuals can hope to achieve the isolating
ideal you indicate.
The three latest things I have written are the long short-story “Morag
of the Glen,” “The Melancholy of Ulad,” and “The Archer.” I would
particularly like to know what you think of the style and method of
“The Archer” (I mean, apart from the arbitrary fantasy of the short
supplementary part—which affords the clue to the title)—as there I have
written, or tried to write, with the accent of that life as I know it.
M.
The central story of “The Archer” was one of the Tales which the author
valued most, and rewrote many times. In its final form—“Silas,” in
the Tauchnitz volume of F. M. Tales—it stands without the opening and
closing episodes. Concerning the “fantasy of the short supplementary
part” a curious coincidence happened. That arbitrary fantasy is the
record of a dream, or vision, which the author had at Tarbert. In a
letter from Mr. Yeats received shortly after, the Irish poet related a
similar experience which he had had—a vision of a woman shooting arrows
among the stars—a vision that appeared also the same night to Mr.
Arthur Symons. I remember the exchange of letters that passed between
the three writers; unfortunately Fiona’s letter to Mr. Symons, and
the latter’s answer, are not available. But I have two of the letters
on the subject which, through the courtesy of Mr. Yeats, I am able to
quote; both, unfortunately are undated. F. M. describes a second vision
which, however, had no connection with the coincidence.
Mr. Yeats wrote:
TILLYRA CASTLE,
GALWAY.
MY DEAR SHARP,
Many thanks for your letter. You must have written it the very morning I
was writing to Miss Macleod. I have just returned from the Arran Islands
where I had gone on a fishing boat, and where I go again at the end
of this week. I am studying on the islands
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