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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gone to Venice for “local colour”:
TAORMINA,
19th Nov., 1902.
CARO FRA GIULIANO,
To my surprise I hear from our common friend, Mr. Aurelio Da
Rù, the painter of Venice, that you are at present staying at
San-Francisco-in-Deserto. This seems to me a damp and cold place to
choose for November, but possibly you are not to be there long: indeed,
Da Rù hints at an entanglement with a lady named “Adria.” Perhaps I am
indiscreet in this allusion. If so, pray forgive me. The coincidence
struck me as strange, for only the other day I heard our friend Alec
Hood speaking of an Adria, of whom, to say the least of it, he seemed to
think very highly. By the way, I wouldn’t tell him (A. H.) too much of
your affairs or doings—or _he may put them in a book_. (He’s a “literary
feller” you know!)
I have just been staying with him—and I wish when you see him you would
tell him what a happy time I had at Maniace, and how pleasantly I
remember all our walks and talks and times together, and how the true
affection of a deepened friendship is only the more and more enhanced
and confirmed.
It is a lovely day, and very warm and delightful. Sitting by the open
French-window of my study, with a bunch of narcissus on my table, there
is all the illusion of Spring. I have just gone into an adjoining
Enchanted Garden I often frequent, and gathered there some sprays of
the Balm of Peace, the azure blossoms of Hope, and the white roses of
Serenity and Happiness and sending them, by one of the wild-doves of
loving thought and sympathy and affection, to Alec at Maniace.
Ever, dear Fra Giuliano, with love to Da Rù, the Graziani, the Manins,
and above all to Alec,
Yours,
WILL.
And again two days later:
SHAR SHAN, BOR!
Which, being interpreted, is Romany (Gypsy) for “How d’ye do, Mate!”—I
fear you are having a bad day for your return to Maniace. Here, at
any rate, ‘tis evil weather. Last night the wind rose (after ominous
signals of furtive lightnings in every quarter) to the extent of
tempest: and between two and three a.m. became a hurricane. This lasted
at intervals till dawn, and indeed since: and at times I thought a
cyclone had seized Taormina and was intent on removing ‘Santa Caterina’
on to the top of Isola Bella. Naturally, sleep was broken. And in one
long spell, when wind and a coarse rain (with a noise like sheep that
has become sleet) kept wakefulness in suspense, my thoughts turned to
Venice, to Giuliano in the lonely rain-beat wave-washed sanctuary of
San-Francisco-in-Deserto; to Daniele Manin, with his dreams of the
Venice that was and his hopes of the Venice to be; and to Adria, stilled
at last in her grave in the lagunes after all her passionate life and
heroic endeavour. And then I thought of the Venice they, and you, and
I, love:—and recalled lines of Jacopo Sannazaro which I often repeat to
myself when I think of the Sea-City as an abstraction—
“O d’Italia dolente
Eterno lumine
Venezia!”
And that’s all I have to say to-day!... except to add that this very
moment there has come into my mind the remembrance of some words of
Montesquieu I read last year (in the _Lettres Persanes_), to the effect
(in English) that “altho’ one had seen all the cities of the world,
there might still be a surprise in store for him in Venice,”—which would
be a good motto for your book.
Your friend,
WILL.
The few entries in William Sharp’s Diary for 1903 begin with New Year’s
Day:
TAORMINA.
_Thursday, 1st Jan., 1903._ Yesterday afternoon I ended literary
work for the year, at p. 62 on my MS. of “The King’s Ring” with the
sentence: “Flora Macdonald saw clearly that the hearts of these exiles
and New Englanders would follow a shepherd more potent than any kind,
the shepherd called Freedom, who forever keeps his flocks of hopes and
ideals on the hills of the human heart.” To-day, this afternoon, wrote
till end of p. 70. In the evening we dined with Robert Hichens at the
Hotel Timeo.
_Sat. 3rd._ Finished “The King’s Ring.” Revised: and sent off to Mary to
type. We lunched at the Timeo. After lunch we spent an hour or more in
the Greek Theatre with Hichens. Then we walked to Miss Valerie White’s
villa and had tea with her. In evening ‘turned in’ about 9 and read
Bourget’s Calabria _Ricordi_, and Lenormant on Crotone and Pythagorus.”
Saturday, 9th Jan.
_To the Editor of The Pall Mall Magazine_:
DEAR SIR,
I have written a story somewhat distinct in kind from the work
associated with my name, and think it is one that should appeal to a
far larger public than most of my writings do: for it deals in a new
way with a subject of unpassing interest, the personality of Flora
Macdonald. “The King’s Ring,” however, is not concerned with the
hackneyed Prince Charlie episode. It is, in a word, so far as I know,
the only narrative presentment of the remarkable but almost unknown
late-life experiences of Flora Macdonald: for few know that, long
after her marriage, she went with her husband and some of her family
and settled in South Carolina, just before the outbreak of the War of
Independence: how her husband was captured and imprisoned: how two of
her sons in the Navy were lost tragically at sea: and how she herself
with one daughter with difficulty evaded interference, and set sail
from a southern port for Scotland again, and on that voyage was wounded
in an encounter with a French frigate. True, all these things are
only indicated in “The King’s Ring,” for fundamentally the story is a
love-story, that of Flora M.’s beautiful eldest daughter Anne and Major
Macleod, with the tragical rivalry of Alasdair Stuart, bearer of the
King’s Ring.
Practically the facts of the story are authentic: save the central
episode of Alasdair Stuart, which is of my own invention. I think the
story would appeal to many not only in Scotland and England but in
America.
Yours very truly,
FIONA MACLEOD.
The story was accepted and the first instalment was printed in the
_Pall Mall Magazine_ in May, 1904; but after its appearance the author
did not care sufficiently for it to republish it in book form.
The Diary continues:
_Sunday 4th._ Began article on “Thro’ Nelson’s Duchy” commissioned
for _The Pall Mall Magazine_. Received _The Monthly Review_ for Jany.
with the Fiona Macleod article, “The Magic Kingdoms”: the _Mercure de
France_ for January: and proofs from the _Pall Mall Magazine_ of my
articles on Scott and George Eliot. Among several letters one from Mrs.
Gilchrist, who says (apropos of F. M.’s “By Sundown Shores”) “she always
can send one back to the distance which is all the future.”
Later, after a walk alone I looked in at Villa Bella Rocca and had a
pleasant chat with M. et Mme. Grandmont about Anatole France, Loti,
and treatment of sea in “Pecheur d’Islande,” Bourget’s and Lenormant’s
“Calabria,” etc. Wrote after dinner from 9 till 11; and read some
Bacchylides, etc. At 11.15 suddenly some five or six cocks began to crow
vehemently: and about five minutes later abruptly stopped.
_Monday 5th._ A day of perfect beauty. Divinely warm. In morning sat out
on Loggia two hours or so working at revision. After lunch Hichens came
for me and we walked down to Capo San Andrea and thence took a boat with
two men (Francesco and his brother) across to Capo Schiso (Naxos) and
thence walked some five or six miles back. Tea at H’s. A divinely lovely
sunset.
_Tuesday 6th._ As beautiful a day as yesterday. More could be said of no
day. Worked at “Thro’ Nelson’s Duchy” material, and wrote a letter. A
walk after lunch. Then again a little work. Had a charming letter from
Joachim Gasquet, and to F. M. one from Stephen Gwynn (with his “Today
and Tomorrow in Ireland”)—and an _Academy_ with pleasant para. about F.
saying just what I would want said (with an allusion to a specialstudy of F. M. in the _Harvard Monthly_, by the Editor).
This afternoon, the Festa of the Epiphany, more great doings with the
delayed Xmas tree treat of the School-children of Taormina. Much enjoyed
it.
_Thursday 8th._ Finished the P. M. Mag. commissioned article “Thro’
Nelson’s Duchy”—about 5,000 words—then revised: marked with directions
the 8 fine Photos selected by A. N. H. (Alex. Nelson Hood) and sent off
to be registered....
After dinner wrote one or two letters including longish one of literary
advice to Karl Walter. Read some Æschylus’ “Eumenides.”
[Illustration: WILLIAM SHARP
From a photograph taken by the Hon. Alex. Nelson Hood, 1903]
This is the letter in question:
TAORMINA,
Jan., 1903.
MY DEAR WALTER,
... In some respects your rendering of your sonnet is towards
improvement. But it has one immediate and therefore fatal flaw.
Since the days of Sophocles it has been recognized as a cardinal
and imperative law, that a great emotion (or incident, or idea,
or collective act) must not be linked to an effective image, an
incongruous metaphor. Perhaps the first and last word about passion
(in a certain sense only, of course, for to immortal things there is
no mortal narrowing or limiting in expression) has been said more than
two thousand years ago by Sappho and to-day by George Meredith. “The
apple on the topmost bough” ... all that lovely fragment of delicate
imperishable beauty remains unique. And I know nothing nobler than
Meredith’s “Passion is noble strength on fire.” ... But turn to a
poet you probably know well, and study the imagery in some of the
Passion-sonnets in “The House of Life” of Rossetti—of Passion
... “creature of poignant thirst
And exquisite hunger” ...
—the splendid sexual diapason in the sestet of the sonnet celled “The
Kiss”—or, again, to “the flame-winged harp-player.”
... “thou art Passion of Love,
The mastering music walks the sunlit sea.”
Perhaps I have said enough to illustrate my indication as to the opening
metaphor in your sonnet. Apart from the incongruity of the image, it
has no logical congruity with the collateral idea of Fear. The sonnet
itself turns on a fine emotion in your mind: let that emotion shape a
worthy raiment of metaphor and haunting cadence of music, _not_ as the
metricist desires but as the poet au fond compels.
Yes, both in sonnet-writing and in your terza-rima narrative (cultivate
elision here, also fluent terminals, or you will find the English
prosody jib at the foreign reins) you will find G. useful. But the
secret law of rhythm in a moving or falling wave, in the cadence of
wind, in the suspiration of a distant song, in running water, in the
murmur of leaves, in chord confluent upon chord, will teach you more—if
you will listen long enough and know what you listen to.
I hope I have not discouraged you. I mean the reverse of that.
Your friend,
WILLIAM SHARP.
I add here a letter of criticism and encouragement sent by F. M. to
another young writer, in the previous summer, to the nephew of William
Black the novelist:
LONDON, June, 1902.
MY DEAR MR. BLACK,
As soon as possible after my return from Brittany I read your MS. It
is full of the true sentiment, and has often charm in the expression:
but I think you would do well to aim at a style simpler still, freer
from mannerisms, and above all from mannerisms identified with the work
of other writers. As I am speaking critically, let me say frankly that
I have found your beautiful tale too reminiscent ever and again of an
accent, a note, a vernacular (too reminiscent even in names), common to
much that I have written. You are sympathetic enough to care for much
of my work, and loyal enough to say so with generous appreciation: but
just because of this you should be on guard against anything in my style
savouring of affectation or mannerism. You may be sure that whatever
hold my writings may have taken on the imagination of what is at most a
small clan has been in despite of and not because of mannerisms, which
sometimes make for atmosphere and versimilitude and sometimes are merely
obvious, and therefore make for weakness and even disillusion. Be on
guard, therefore, against a sympathy which would lead you to express
yourself in any other way than you yourself feel and in other terms than
the terms of our own mind. Mannerism is often the colour and contour of
a writer’s mind: but the raiment never fits even the original wearer,
and is disastrous for the borrower, when the mental habit of mannerism
is translated into the mental incertitude of mannerisms. You have so
natural a faculty and
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