WILLIAM SHARP (FIONA MACLEOD) A MEMOIR COMPILED BY HIS WIFE ELIZABETH A. SHARP by ELIZABETH A. SHARP (best ebook reader ubuntu txt) 📖

of meadows

and summer suns and flowers? Chaucer—who is as delicious now as in the

latter part of the fourteenth century! Shakespeare—who was, is, and

ever shall be the supreme crowned lord of verse!—Take up one of the

comparatively speaking minor lights of the Elizabethan era. Does Jonson

with his ‘Every Man in his Humour,’ or his ‘Alchemist,’ does Webster

with his ‘Duchess of Malfi,’ does Ford with his ‘Lover’s Melancholy,’

does Massinger, with his ‘Virgin Martyr,’ do Beaumont and Fletcher with

their ‘Maid’s Tragedy,’ does Marlowe with his ‘Life and Death of Dr.

Faustus,’ pall upon us? Have we ever to keep before us the fact that

they lived so many generations or centuries ago?

 

“I never tire of that wonderful, tremendous, magnificent epoch in

literature—the age of the Elizabethan dramatists.

 

“Despite the frequent beauty of much that followed I think the genius

of Poetry was of an altogether inferior power and order (excepting

Milton) until once again it flowered forth anew in Byron, in Coleridge,

in Keats, and in Shelley! These two last names, what do they not mean!

Since then, after a slight lapse, Poetry has soared to serener heights

again, and Goethe, Victor Hugo, Tennyson, and Browning have moulded

new generations, and men like Rossetti, Swinburne, Morris, Marston,

Longfellow, and others have helped to make still more exquisitely fair

the Temple of Human Imagination. Men like Joaquin Miller and Whitman

are the south and north winds that soothe or stir the leaves of

thought surrounding it.

 

“We are on the verge of another great dramatic epoch—more subtle and

spiritual if not grander in dimensions than that of the sixteenth

century. I hope to God I live to see the sunrise which must follow the

wayward lights of the present troubled dawn....

 

“On Monday evening (from eight till two) I go again as usual to

Marston’s. I called at his door on my way here this afternoon and left

a huge bouquet of wallflowers, with a large yellow heart of daffodils,

to cheer him up. He is passionately fond of flowers....”

 

       *       *       *       *       *

 

That winter, despite his continued delicacy, was full of interest to

William, who had always a rare capacity for throwing himself into the

enjoyment of the moment, whatever it might be, or into the interests

of others and dismissing from his mind all personal worries. No matter

how depressed he might be, when with friends he could shake himself

free from the thraldom of the black clouds and let his natural buoyant

spirit have full play. His genial sunny manner, his instinctive belief

in and reliance on an equal geniality in others assured him many a

welcome.

 

Among the literary houses open to him were those of Mr. and Mrs.

William Rossetti, Miss Christina Rossetti, Mr. and Mrs. William

Bell Scott, Mr. and Mrs. Francillon, Mr. Robert Browning, and Mr.

Theodore Watts. Mr. and Mrs. George Robinson, whose daughter, Mary,

distinguished herself among the poets of her generation, were

especially good to him. Among artists whose studios he frequented were

Mr. Ford Madox Brown, Mr. William Morris and Mr. Holman Hunt, and Sir

Frederick Leighton; and among his intimate friends he counted Mathilde

Blind, the poet, Louise Bevington, Mrs. Louise Chandler Moulton,

Belford Bax and others.

 

There was a reverse side to the picture however. His desire and effort

not to identify himself—in his original work, with any set of writers,

or phase of literary expression, tended to make him of no account

in the consideration of some of his fellow writers. His was a slow

development, and while he gained greatly in the technical knowledge of

his art through the wise and careful advice of Rossetti, the sensitive

taste of Philip Marston, the more severe criticism of Theodore Watts,

he felt he had a definite thing to say, a definite word of his own to

express sooner or later. It was long before this finally shaped its

utterance, and in the interval he experimented in many directions,

studied various methods—and of course to make a livelihood wrote many

“pot-boilers”—always hoping that he would ultimately “find himself.”

Unquestionably, with his nature—which vibrated so sensitively to

everything that was beautiful in nature and life, and had in it so much

of exuberance, of optimism—the severe grind for the bare necessities of

life, the equally severe criticism that met his early efforts, proved

an invaluable-schooling to him. The immediate result, however, was

that his “other self,” the dreaming psychic self, slept for a time,

or at any rate was in abeyance. “William Sharp” gradually dominated,

and before long he was accepted generally as literary critic and later

as art critic also. So complete, apparently, for a time, was this

divorce between the two radical strains in him, that only a few of his

intimates suspected the existence of the sensitive, delicate, feminine

side of him that he buried carefully out of sight, and as far as

possible out of touch with the current of his literary life in London

where at no time did the “Fiona Macleod” side of his nature gain help

or inspiration.

 

Just as of old, when in Glasgow, he had wandered in the city and beyond

it, and made acquaintances with all sorts and conditions of men and

women, so, too, did he now wander about London, especially about the

neighbourhood of “The Pool” which offered irresistible attractions and

experiences to him. These he touched on later in “Madge o’ the Pool”

and elsewhere. I remember he told me that rarely a day passed in which

he did not try to imagine himself living the life of a woman, to see

through her eyes, and feel and view life from her standpoint, and so

vividly that “sometimes I forget I am not the woman I am trying to

imagine.” The following description of him, at this date, is taken from

a letter quoted in Mrs. Janvier’s article on “Fiona Macleod and her

Creator” in _The North American Review_.

 

“You ask about our acquaintance with Willie Sharp. Yes, we knew him

well in the days when we all were gay and young.... He was a very

nice-looking amiable young fellow whom every one liked, very earnest

with great notions of his own mission as regards Poetry, which he took

_very_ seriously. He used to have the saving grace of fun—which kept

him sweet and wholesome—otherwise he might have fallen into the morbid

set.”

 

Unfortunately, I have very few letters or notes that illustrate the

light gay side of his nature—boyish, whimsical, mischievous, with rapid

changes of mood. Others saw more of it at this period than I; for to me

he came for sympathy in his work and difficulties; to others he went

for gaiety and diversion, and to them he made light of his constant

delicacy; so that the more serious side of his life was usually

presented to me—and naturally our most unpromising prospects and our

long engagement were not matters to inspirit either of us.

 

At the end of August in that year his connection with the Bank of the

City of Melbourne ceased. That his services were scarcely valuable

to his employers may be gathered from the manner and reason of his

dismissal. He has himself told the story:

 

“I did not take very kindly to the business, and my employers saw

One day I was invited to interview the Principal. He put it very

diplomatically, said he didn’t think the post suited me (I agreed),

and finally he offered me the option of accepting an agency in some

out-of-the-way place in Australia, or quitting the London service.

‘Think it over,’ he said, ‘and give us your answer to-morrow.’ I think

I might have given him my answer there and then. Next morning the

beauty of the early summer made an irresistible appeal to me. I had

not heard the cuckoo that season, so I resolved to forget business for

the day, seek the country, and hear the cuckoo; and I had a very happy

time, free from everybody, care, and worry. Next day I was called in to

see the Principal. ‘I should have sent word—busy mail day,’ he said.

‘Was I ill?’ he asked. ‘No,’ I replied, and explained the true cause of

my absence. ‘That’s scarcely business,’ he said. ‘We can’t do with one

who puts the call of the cuckoo before his work.’ However, his offer

still held. What was I to do? I left the bank.”

 

During the intervening months efforts to find other work resulted

through the kindness of Mr. George Lillie Craik in a temporary post

held for six months in the Fine Art Society’s Gallery in Bond Street.

It was the proposal of the Directors to form a section dealing with old

German and English Engravings and Etchings, and that William should

be put in charge of it; and that meanwhile, during the six months, he

should make a special study of the subject, learn certain business

details to make him more efficient. The work and the prospect were a

delightful change after the distasteful grind at the Bank, and he threw

himself into the necessary studies with keen relish.

 

In the autumn he spent two months in Scotland, visiting his mother, and

other relatives, Mr. W. Bell Scott, and his old friend Sir Noel Paton.

 

From Lanarkshire he wrote in September to me and to Rossetti.

 

  To E. A. S.:

 

  LESMAHAGOW, Sept., 1881.

 

 ... Yesterday I spent some hours in a delicious ramble over the moors

 and across a river toward a distant fir wood, where I lay down for a

 time, beside the whispering waters, seeing nothing but a semicircle of

 pines, a wall of purple moorland, the brown water gurgling and splashing

 and slowly moving over the mossy stones, and above a deep cloudless

 blue sky—and hearing nothing but the hum of a dragonfly, the summery

 sound of innumerable heather-bees, and the occasional distant bleat of

 a sheep or sudden call of a grouse. I lay there in a kind of trance of

 enjoyment—half painful from intensity. I drank in not only the beauty of

 what I have just described, but also every little and minute thing that

 crossed my vision—a cluster of fir-needles hanging steel-blue against

 the deeper colour of the sky, a wood-dove swaying on a pine-bough like

 a soft gray and purple blossom, a white butterfly clinging to a yellow

 blossom heavy with honey, a ray of sunlight upon a bunch of mountain-ash

 berries making their scarlet glow with that almost terrible red which

 is as the blood of God in the sunsets one sometimes sees, a dragonfly

 poised like a flame arrested in its course, a little beetle stretching

 its sharded wings upon a gray stone, a tiny blue morsel of a floweret

 between two blades of grass looking up with, I am certain, a _sense_ of

 ecstatic happiness to the similar skies above—all these and much more

 I drank in with mingled pain and rejoicing. At such times I seem to

 become a part of nature—the birds seem when they sing to say things in a

 no longer unfamiliar speech—nor do they seem too shy to approach quite

 close to me. Even bees and wasps I do not brush away when they light

 upon my hands or face, and they never sting me, for I think they know

 that I would not harm them. I feel at these rare and inexpressibly happy

 times as a flower must feel after morning dew when the sun comes forth

 in his power, as a pine tree when a rising wind makes its boughs quiver

 with melodious pain, as a wild wood-bird before it begins to sing, its

 heart being too full for music.... O why weren’t you there?

 

  10th Sept., 1881.

 

  MY DEAR ROSSETTI,

 

 Where I most enjoy myself is along the solitary banks of the Nithan:

 it is a true mountain stream, now rushing along in broken falls, now

 rippling over shallows of exquisite golden-brown hues—now slipping with

 slow perfect grace of motion under the overhanging boughs of willow,

 pine, or mountain-ash—and ever and again resting in deep dark linns and

 pools in deliciously dreamful fashion, the only signs of life being a

 silver flash from its depths as some large trout or grilse stirs from

 the shelter of mottled boulders banking the sides, or when a dragonfly

 like a living flame flashes backward and forward after the gray gnats.

 Indeed, I never saw such a place for dragonflies—I think there must be

 vast treasures of rubies and emeralds under these lonely moors, and

 that somehow the precious stones dissolve and become permeated with the

 spirit of life, and rise up living green fires or crimson and purple

 flames to flash upon the unseen hill-winds instead of upon a woman’s

 bosom or in the Holy of Holies in an idolater’s temple....

 

 After the gloaming has dreamed itself into night the banks and woods

 along the stream seem to become a part of a weird faeryland. The

 shadows are simply wonderful. White owls come out and flit about