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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charm for me, but as from a Celtic comrade and spiritual brother who is
also the foremost living exponent of the Breton genius. It may interest
you to know that I am preparing an _Ă©tude_ on Contemporary Breton (i. e.
Franco-Breton) Literature; which, however, will be largely occupied with
consideration of your own high achievement in prose and verse.
It gives me sincere pleasure to send to you by this post a copy of the
âpopularâ edition of Adamnanâs _Life of St. Colum_âwhich please me by
accepting. You will find, below these primitive and often credulous
legends of Iona a beauty of thought and a certain poignant exquisiteness
of sentiment that cannot but appeal to you, a Breton of the Bretons....
It seems to me that in writing the spiritual history of Iona I am
writing the spiritual history of the Gael, of all our Celtic race. The
lovely wonderful little island sometimes appears to me as a wistful
mortal, in his eyes the pathos of infinite desires and inalienable
idealsâsometimes as a woman, beautiful, wild, sacred, inviolate, clad in
rags, but aureoled with the Rainbows of the west.
âTell the story of Iona, and you go back to God, and end in God.â (The
first words of my âspiritual historyâ)....
But you will have already wearied of so long a letter. My excuse is ...
that you are Anatole Le Braz, and I am your far-away but true comrade,
FIONA MACLEOD.
On the 30th Dec. W. S. wrote to Mr. Frank Rinder:
Just a line, dear Frank, both as dear friend and literary comrade, to
greet you on New Yearâs morning, and to wish you health and prosperity
in 1900. I would like you very much to read some of this new Fiona work,
especially the opening pages of âIona,â for they contain a very deep and
potent spiritual faith and hope, that has been with me ever since, as
there told, as a child of seven, old Seumas Macleod (who taught me so
muchâwas indeed the _father_ of Fiona)âtook me on his knees one sundown
on the island of Eigg, and made me pray to âHer.â I have never written
anything mentally so spiritually autobiographical. Strange as it may
seem it is almost all literal reproduction of actuality with only some
dates and names altered.
But enough about that troublesome F. M.!...
And to Mr. Gilchrist, âIt was written _de profundis_, partly because of
a compelling spirit, partly to help others passionately eager to obtain
some light on this most complex and intimate spiritual destiny.â
Some months previously William had written to an unknown correspondent,
Dr. John Goodchild, poet, mystic and archeologist:
THE OUTLOOK TOWER,
EDINBURGH,
1898.
MY DEAR SIR,
I have to thank you very cordially for your book and the long and
interesting letter which accompanied it. It must be to you also that I
am indebted for an unrevised proof-copy of _The Light of the West_.
Everything connected with the study of the Celtic past has an especial
and deep interest for me, and there are few if any periods more
significant than that of the era of St. Columba. His personality has
charmed me, in the old and right sense of the word âcharmâ: but I
have come to it, or it to me, not through books (though of course
largely through Adamnan) so much as through a knowledge gained partly
by reading, partly by legendary love and hearsay, and mainly by much
brooding on these, and on every known saving and record of Colum, in
Iona itself. When I wrote certain of my writings (e. g. âMuime Chriosdâ
and âThe Three Marvels of Ionaâ) I felt, rightly or wrongly, as though
I had in some measure become interpretative of the spirit of âColum the
White.â
Again, I have long had a convictionâpartly an emotion of the
imagination, and partly a belief insensibly deduced through a hundred
avenues of knowledge and surmiseâthat out of Iona is again to come a
Divine Word, that Iona, the little northern isle, will be as it were the
tongue in the mouth of the South.
Believe me, sincerely yours,
FIONA MACLEOD.
âThe House of Usnaââone of three Celtic plays, on which F. M. had
been working for several months, was brought out under the auspices
of The Stage Society, of which William Sharp was the first Chairman.
Mr. Frederick Whelen, the founder of that Society, had met my husband
at Hindhead when we were staying with his uncle and aunt, Mr. and
Mrs. Grant Allen, at their charming house, The Croft, built among the
heather and the pines on the hill-top just by the edge of the chasm
called âThe Devilâs Punch Bowl.â
The older man was keenly interested in the project, did his utmost
to help towards its realisation. âThe House of Usnaâ was performed
at the Fifth Meeting of the Society at the Globe Theatre April 29th,
1900, together with two short plays by Maeterlinck, _The Interior_
and _The Death of Tintagiles_. The music, composed especially for the
short drama in three scenes, was by Mr. Y. M. Capel, and the play was
produced under the direction of Mr. Granville Barker. According to one
critic: âIt had beauty and it had atmosphere, two very rare things on
the stage, but I did not feel that it quite made a drama, or convince,
as a drama should, by the continuous action of inner or outer forces.
It was, rather, passion turning upon itself, and with no language but a
cry.â
The author took the greatest interest in the rehearsals, and in the
performance. He thoroughly enjoyed the double play that was going
on, as he moved about the theatre, and chatted to his friends during
the intervals, with little heed of the risks he ran of detection of
authorship. The drama itself was printed three months later in _The
National Review_, and eventually published in book form in America by
Mr. T. B. Mosher, in 1903.
In 1900, too, the second of these dramas, âThe Immortal Hour,â appeared
in the November number of _The Fortnightly Review_. It was published
posthumously in England (Foulis) and in America (Mosher). The third
play, âThe Enchanted Valleys,â was never finished. It had been the
authorâs intention to publish these dramas in book form under the third
title, and to dedicate it to Mr. W. L. Courtney, who, as Editor of the
_Fortnightly_, had been a good friend to Fiona Macleod.
To his unknown correspondent the dramatist wrote again:
Nov. 15, 1900.
DEAR DR. GOODCHILD,
I am glad that you have found pleasure in _The Immortal Hour_. I wonder
if you interpret the myth of Midir and Etain quite differently, or if
you, too, find in Midir the symbol of the voice of the other world; and
what you think of Dalua, the Fool, here and elsewhere. Your earnest
letter, written in spiritual comradeship, has been read by me again
and again. I do not say that the warning in it is not justified, still
less that it is not called for: but, on the other hand, I do not think
I follow you aright. Is it something in _The Immortal Hour_ (or in _The
Divine Adventure_ or more likely _The Dominion of Dreams_) that impelled
you to write as you did: or something seemingly implied, or inferred by
you?...
We seldom know how or where we really stand, or the mien and aspect
we unwittingly bear to the grave eyes of the gods. Is it the lust of
knowledge, of Hidden Things, of the Delight of the World, of the magic
of Mother-Earth, of the Fleshâto one or allâthat you allude. The matter
touches me intimately.
You have (I had almost said mysteriously, but why so, for it would be
more mysterious if there were no secret help in spiritual comradeship)
helped me at more than one juncture in my life....
Most sincerely,
FIONA MACLEOD.
Dr. Goodchild replied:
BORDIGHERA,
Nov. 29, 1900.
MY DEAR MISS MACLEOD,
I left one or two of your questions unanswered in my last. I am no
Celtic scholar. It was your âPrayer of the Womenâ which suggested to me
first how far you might feel for your sisters, and how far you might
journey to find succour....
A woman who gazes into Columbaâs Well and sees how the bubbles burst
on its surface, needs all her own wisdom lest she be dizzy, and a hand
held out from the opposite side the spring may help her to gaze more
steadily. _Midhir_, I believe to be the same as the oriental _Mitherd_,
the Recipient of Light, and its translator in the _Midhc-Myth_, A
voice from the âOtherworldâ as you say, but the wearer of the _Miter_,
speaking not from the _Under_world, but the _Upper_world i.e. He is a
High Priest speaking in the full light of the Sun.
_Etain_ is difficult, and my own ideas by no means formulated. I merely
suggest that ere your Etain was born, her name typified the strong hope
of the singer, his immortality, his knowledge that the Sun not merely
creates but re-creates in renewed beauty.
If you remember Cairbre, the son of Etain, you may also remember those
other Ethainn who sung before the Ark in a far country. The Father is
put on one side for the Mother, by the singer, the Mother for the Bride.
Even Milton, puritan though he was, must invoke a woman to the aid of
âadventurous songâ and is careful not to change the sex when in the Muse
of Sinni and Silva is seen the Spirit of the Creator.
As regards Dalua, I know nothing of him by name except what you yourself
have written. Is there any connection between the name and Dala (the
Celtic) which is sometimes found in company with Brat and Death, in your
Celtic genealogies?
At the same time I have dimly guessed all my life how folly might be
better than the wisdom of wise men, and remembering dimly how much wiser
I was myself as a child than after I had grown up, I have incessantly
desired a return to that state of childish thought, and tried to learn
from children, when I had the chance, the secrets of their folly which
carried them so near to divinity, if they were not hurried away from
their vision by those about them.
A. G.
The Essay entitled âCelticâ had originally appeared in the
_Contemporary Review_ a few weeks before the publication of the new
volume, and had aroused considerable comment. In Britain it was
regarded as a clear statement of the aims and ideas of the so-called
Celtic Revivalâ(a term which âF. M.â greatly disliked). It was
otherwise in Ireland, and naturally so, considering the different
conditions on both sides of the Irish channel out of which the movement
had grown. On this side political considerations had not touched the
question; it was mainly concerned with the preservation of the old
language, with racial characteristic feelings, and their expression
in literature. On the other side of the water, the workers had many
more issues at heart than in the Highlands. So the Highland Celt and
the Irish Celts did not quite understand one another; an animated
correspondence ensued in private and in the press. The Irish press
was divided in its opinion on âCeltic,â because the writers were not
of one mind among themselves in their methods of working towards the
one end all Celts have at heart. There were those, who being ardent
Nationalists regarded the Celtic literary movement as one with the
political, or as greatly coloured by it. This factor gave a special
element to the Irish phase of the movement which sharply differentiated
it from the movement in Scotland, Wales or Brittany. Other workers
were interested in the movement as a whole, in each of the âsix
Celtic Nations,â and âThe Celtic Associationâ was formed, with Lord
Castletown at its head, with a view of keeping each of the six branches
of the movement in touch with each other: the Irish, Scots, Welsh,
Manx, Breton, and Cornish or British. This Society desired to make a
Federation of these working sections an actuality, and to that end
decided to hold a Pan Celtic Congress every three years. The first of
these was held in Dublin, and to it my husband subscribed as W. S. and
as F. M., though, as an obvious precaution against detection, he did
not attend it.
Opinion in Ireland was divided as to the value of such a Federation;
certain of the enthusiasts believed that working for it drew strength
and work away from the central needs in Ireland. Another point
of dispute was the question of language; as to what did or would
constitute an Irish Literatureâworks written in the Erse only; or all
work, either in the Erse or the English tongue that gave expression to
and made vital the Celtic spirit and aspirations. F. M. deplored the
uniting of the political element to the movementâand
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