WILLIAM SHARP (FIONA MACLEOD) A MEMOIR COMPILED BY HIS WIFE ELIZABETH A. SHARP by ELIZABETH A. SHARP (best ebook reader ubuntu txt) š
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only affect the external life, and even that only secondarily very
often....
Monday evening.
... ā_How_ I enjoyed my breakfast this morning! (in the lovely garden, in
a vine-shadowed arbour or pergola, with great tall poplars and other
trees billowing against the deep blue). Then a cigarette, a stroll in
the lovely sunlit-dappled green shadowiness of an adjoining up-sloping
avenueāand a seat for a little on a deserted south-wall bench (because
of the blazing heat) for a sun-bath, while I watched a nightingale
helping its young to fly among the creaming elders and masses of
wild-rose, while her mate swung on a beech-branch and called long sweet
exquisite cries of a thrilling poignancy (which, however, might only
be āNow then, Jenny, look out, or Tommy will fall into that mass of
syringa:āhillo! thereās Bobby and Polly gone and got scratched pecking
at these confounded white wild-roses!).ā
Then I got up to come in and write to you (gladly in one way,
reluctantly in another for I seem to drink in life in the strong
sunlight and heat), but first stopped to speak to a gorgeous solitary
dandelion. I stroked it gently, and said āHullo, wee brother, isnāt the
world beautiful? Hold up your wee head and rejoice!ā And it turned up
its wee golden nose and said āKeep your hair on, you old skidamalink,
Iām rejoicing as hard as ever I can. Iām _always_ rejoicing. What else
would I do? You _are_ a rum old un-shiny animal on two silly legs!ā So
we laughed, and partedābut he called me back, and said gently in a wee
soft goldy-yellow voice, āDonāt think me rude, Brother of Joy. Itās only
my way. I love you because you love _me_ and donāt despise me. Shake
pinkies!āāso I gave him a pinkie and he gave me a wee golden-yellow
pinkie-petal....
Tell Marjorie[5] the wee Dandelion was asking about her and sends her
his loveāalso a milky daisy that says _Hooray!_ every morning when it
wakes, and then is so pleased and astonished that it remains silently
smiling till next morning.
This flower and bird talk doesnāt bother you, does it? Donāt think I
donāt realise how ill I have been and in a small way still am: but
I donāt think about it, and am quite glad and happy in this lovely
June-glory....ā
He broke his return journey at Doorn with our friends M. and Mme.
Grandmont and wrote to me:
July, 1905.
ā ... How youād love to be here!
Nothing visible but green depths fading into green depths, and fringing
the sky-lines the endless surf of boughs and branches. From the
forest-glades the cooing of doves and the travelling-voice of a flowing
cool sweet wind of this delicious morning. I always gain immensely in
mind and body from nearness to woodlands and green growthāhence in
no small part my feeling for Fontainebleau. Iād such a lot to tell
you about itāand of what we should strive to obtain for ourselves in
restful, fine, dignified life, and much else, apropos and apartāas you
lay happy and contented on the long luxurious lounge beside my chair on
the deep balcony, half listening to me and half to the soft continuous
susurrus of the pine-fragrant breezeāthat more than an hour elapsed
while I drank my tea and read your letter....
āIt is no exaggeration to say, that, so greatly do I value and treasure
afterwards certain aspects of beauty, I would quite willingly go through
all the suffering again for the sake of the lovely impressions here
last night and this morning. The beauty and charm of this house and its
forest-environment, the young moon and the night-jar at dusk (and then
to soothe and sleepify me still more, the soft, sweet, old-fashioned
melodies of Haydn from 9 to 9.30)āone or two lovely peacocks trailing
about in frontāthe swallows at corner of my great verandahāa
thousandfold peace and beauty, and the goodness of these dear friends,
have not only been, and are, a living continuous joy, but have been like
the Heralds of Spring to the return of gladness and energy into my mind.
Today I realise that too, for one thing, āFionaā has come back from afar
off. It is peace and greenness she lovesānot the physical and psychical
perturbation and demoralisation of towns.
Yes, weāll make āgreen homesā for ourselves now. No more long needless
months in London....
Despite his serenity of mind, London as usual wrought him harm, and as
he explained to Dr. Goodchild:
30th July.
... August is always a ādarkā month for meāand not as a rule, I fancy, a
good one: at any rate an obscure and perhaps perilous one. But this time
I fancy it is on other lines. I believe strong motives and influences
are to be at work in it perhaps furtively only: but none the less
potently and far reachingly. Between now and September-end (perhaps
longer) many of the Dark Powers are going to make a great effort. We
must all be on guardāfor there will be individual as well as racial and
general attack. But a Great Unloosening is at hand.
Yours ever,
S.
We therefore went to Scotland to say goodbye to his mother and sisters,
and to see one or two friends, among others, Miss Mary Wilson, the
pastellist, at Bantaskine, her home on the site of the battle of
Falkirk; Mr. D. Y. Cameron, with whom my husband planned an unfulfilled
wander among the Western Isles; and Mr. David Erskine of Linlathen.
While in the North he wrote to Mr. John Maesfield:
KESSOCK COTTAGE,
NAIRN.
DEAR MR. MAESFIELD,
A brief word to tell you what pleasure I have had in your little book _A
Mainsail Haul_. It is not only that it is written with delicate art: but
it is rich in atmosphereāa much rarer thing. The simplicity, the charm,
the subtle implication of floating, evasive yet fluctuating romance,
your own keen sense of the use of words and their veiled life and latent
as well as obvious colour, combine to a winning and often compelling
effect. I do not think any who has read Don Alfonsoās drinking bout
with the little red man and the strange homegoing of the weed and
flower-grown brigantine with the Bible name, will forget it: and what
dream charm also there is in āPort of Many Ships,ā āSea Superstition,ā
āThe Spanish Sailorās Yarn.ā In such a splendid and delightful colour
fabric as āFrom the Spanishā āhigh words and rareā are of course aptābut
is it not a mistake to introduce in āSea Superstitionā words such as
āaugustā and āwroughtā in a sailorās mouth? (In the text the effect
seems to be enhanced not lessened, by the omission of these wordsāāwere
like things in bronze,ā āthe roof of which was of dim branches.ā)
In āFrom the Spanishā I would, as a matter of personal taste, prefer
that the end came at the close of the penultimate para, the shore-drift
of the Italian lute. I think the strange dream-like effect would be much
enhanced without (what seems to me) the superfluous ārealisticā tag.
Otherwise the piece is a gem of its kind.
But you will forgive the critic (and it shows he has read closely) in
the admirer, I hope?
Let us have more work of the kind. There is much need of it, and you are
of the few who can give it.
Yours sincerely
WILLIAM SHARP.
Mr. Maesfieldāwho had written concerning Fiona Macleod to a friend:
āI think the genius of a dead people has found re-incarnation in her.
Wherever the Celt is, thence come visions and tearsāāreplied:
GREENWICH,
Aug. 19, 1905.
DEAR MR. SHARP,
I was deeply touched by your kind letter about my little book [_A
Mainsail Haul_]. If it should go to a second edition I will make use of
your suggestion. I prepared the book rather hurriedly, and there is much
in it that I very much dislike, now that it cannot be altered.
The mood in which I wrote the tales you like, has gone from me, and I am
afraid I shall be unable to write others of the same kind. In youth the
mind is an empty chamber; and the spirits fill it, and move and dance
there, and colour it with their wings and raiment. In manhood one has
familiars. But between those times (forgive me for echoing Keats) one
has little save a tag or two of cynicism, a little crude experience,
much weariness, much regret, and a vision blurred by all four faults.
One is weakened, too, by oneās hatreds.
I thank you again for your very kind and cordial letter.
Yours very sincerely,
JOHN MAESFIELD.
To an unknown correspondent F. M. wrote:
Sept. 15, 1905.
... I have been away, in the isles, and for a time beyond the reach of
letters. I wish there were Isles where one could also go at times, where
no winged memories could follow. In a Gaelic folk-tale, told me by an
old woman once, the woman of the story had only to burn a rose to ashes
and to hold them in the palms of her hands and then to say seven times
_A Eileanain na Sith_, āO Isles of Peaceā! and at once she found herself
in quiet isles beyond the foam where no memories could follow her and
where old thoughts, if they came, were like phantoms on the wind, in a
moment come, in a moment gone. I have failed to find these Isles, and
so have you: but there are three which lie nearer, and may be reached,
Dream, Forgetfulness, and Hope.
And there, it may be, we can meet, you and I....
Yes, your insight is true. There is a personal sincerity, the direct
autobiographical utterance, in even, as you say, the most remote and
phantastic of my legends as in the plainest of my words. But because
they cover so much illusion as well as passion, so much love gone on the
wind as well as love that not even the winds of life and death can break
or uproot, so much more of deep sorrow (apart from the racial sorrow
which breathes through all) than of joy save in the deeper spiritual
sense, they were thus raimented in allegory and legend and all the
illusion of the past, the remote, the obscure, or the still simpler if
more audacious directness of the actual, the present, and the explicit.
There is, perhaps, a greater safety, a greater illusion, in absolute
simplicity than in the most subtly wrought of art....
But you will understand me when I say that you must not count on our
meetingāat any rate not this year. I too stand under obscure wings.
Your friend,
M.
To the Duchess of Sutherland:
... I have the memory that recalls everything in proportion and
sequence. I have often written that art is memory, is in great part
memory, though not necessarily a recalling of mere personal experience:
and the more deeply I live the more I see that this is so....
When you write, I mean imaginatively, you must write more and more with
concentrated vision. Some time ago I re-read your _Four Winds of the
World_; much of it is finely done, and in some of it your self lives,
your own accent speaks. But you have it in you to do work far more
ambitious. The last is not a word I like, or affect; but here it is
convenient and will translate to your mind what is in my mind. These
stories are _yours_ but they are not _you_: and though in a sense art
is a wind above the small eddies of personality, there is a deeper
sense in which it is nothing else than the signature of personality.
Style (that is, the outer emotion that compels and the hidden life of
the imagination that impels and the brooding thought that shapes and
colours) should, spiritually, reflect a soulās lineaments as faithfully
as the lens of the photographer reflects the physiognomy of a man or
woman. It is because I feel in you a deep instinct for beauty, a deep
longing for beautiful expression and because I believe you have it in
you to achieve highly in worth and beauty, that I write to you thus....
There is that Lady of Silence, the Madonna of Enigma, who lives in
the heart of many women. Could you not shape something under _Her_
eyesāshape it and colour it with your own inward life, and give it all
the nobler help of austere discipline and control which is called art?
I have not much to tell you of myself just now. At the moment I do not
write to you from the beloved west where I spend much of each year and
where my thoughts and dreams continually are. Tonight I am tired, and
sad, I hardly know why.
O wind, why break in idle foam
This wave that swept the
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