WILLIAM SHARP (FIONA MACLEOD) A MEMOIR COMPILED BY HIS WIFE ELIZABETH A. SHARP - ELIZABETH A. SHARP (phonics reader TXT) 📗
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to wake to the sound of waves. Alas! a storm swept the Forth from west
to the east. The gale lasted close on three days. On the morning of the
third, three pale and wretched starvelings were ignominiously packed
back to Blair Lodge, where the admiration of comrades did not make up
for punishment fare and a liberal flogging.
“A fourth attempt, however, proved successful, though differently
for each of us. One of the three, a rotund, squirrel-eyed boy, named
Robinson, was shipped off as an apprentice in an Indiaman. A few years
later he went to his dreamed-of South Seas, was killed in a squabble
with hostile islanders, and, as was afterward discovered, afforded a
feast (I am sure a succulent one) to his captors. The second of the
three is now a dean in the Anglican Church. I have never met him, but
once at a big gathering I saw the would-be pirate in clerical garb,
with a protuberant front, and bald. I think Robinson had the better
luck. As for the third of the three, he has certainly had his fill of
wandering, if he has never encountered cannibals and if he is neither a
dean nor bald.”
When their son was twelve years old, William’s parents left Paisley
and took a house in Glasgow (India Street), and he was sent as a day
scholar to the Glasgow Academy. In his sixteenth year he was laid low
with a severe attack of typhoid fever. It was to that summer during
the long months of convalescence in the West that many of his memories
of Seumas Macleod belong. Of this old fisherman he wrote: “When I was
sixteen I was on a remote island where he lived, and on the morrow of
my visit I came at sunrise upon the old man standing looking seaward
with his bonnet removed from his long white locks; and upon my speaking
to Seumas (when I saw he was not ‘at his prayers’) was answered, in
Gaelic of course, ‘Every morning like this I take my hat off to the
beauty of the world.’ Although I was sent to the Academy at Glasgow,
and afterward to the University, I spent much of each year in boating,
sailing, hill-climbing, wandering, owing to the unusual freedom allowed
to me during our summer residence in the country and during the other
vacations. From fifteen to eighteen I sailed up every loch, fjord, and
inlet in the Western Highlands and islands, from Arran and Colonsay
to Skye and the Northern Hebrides, from the Rhinns of Galloway to
the Ord of Sutherland. Wherever I went I eagerly associated myself
with fishermen, sailors, shepherds, gamekeepers, poachers, gipsies,
wandering pipers, and other musicians.” In this way he made many
friends, especially among the fishermen and shepherds, stayed with
them in their houses, and, ‘having the Gaelic,’ talked with them,
gained their confidence, and listened to tales told by old men, and old
mothers by the fireside during the long twilight evenings, or in the
herring-boats at night.
“At eighteen I ‘took to the heather,’ as we say in the north, for a
prolonged period....” Up the Gare-loch, close to Ardentinny, there
was a point of waste land running into the water, frequently used as
camping ground by roving tinkers and gipsies. Many a time he sailed
there in his little boat to get in touch with these wandering folk.
One summer he found there an encampment of true gipsies, who had come
over from mid-Europe, a fine, swarthy, picturesque race. The appeal
was irresistible, strengthened by the attraction of a beautiful gipsy
girl. He made friends with the tribe, and persuaded the ‘king’ to
let him join them; and so he became ‘star-brother’ and ‘sun-brother’
to them, and wandered with them over many hills and straths of the
West Highlands. To him, who at all times hated the restrictions and
limitations of conventional life, to whom romance was a necessity, this
free life ‘on the heather’ was the realisation of many dreams. In those
few months he learned diverse things; much wood-lore, bird-lore, how to
know the ways of the wind, and to use the stars as compass. I do not
know exactly how long he was with the camp; two months, perhaps, or
three. For to him they were so full of wonder, so vivid, that in later
life, when he spoke of them, he lost all count of time, and on looking
back to those days, packed with new and keen experiences so wholly in
keeping with his temperament, weeks seemed as months, and he ceased to
realise that the experience was compressed into one short summer. He
never wove these memories into a sequent romance, though in later time
he thought of so doing. For one thing, the present was the absorbing
actuality to him, and the future a dream to realise; whether in life
or in work the past was past, and he preferred to project himself
toward the future and what it might have in store for him. But traces
of the influence of those gipsy days are to be seen in _Children of
To-morrow_, in the character of Annaik in _Green Fire_, and in the
greater part of the story of “The Gipsy Christ,” published later in the
collection of short stories entitled _Madge o’ the Pool_. He also had
projected a romance to be called _The Gipsy Trail_, but it was never
even begun.
One thing, however, I know for certain, that the truant’s parents were
greatly concerned over his disappearance. After considerable trouble
the fugitive was recaptured. Not long after he was put into a lawyer’s
office, ostensibly to teach him business habits, but also the better
to chain him to work, to the accepted conventions of life, and to
remove him out of the way of dangerous temptations offered by the freer
College life with its long vacations.
“Not long after my return to civilisation, at my parent’s urgent
request, I not only resumed my classes at the University, but entered
a lawyer’s office in Glasgow (on very easy conditions, hardly suitable
for a professional career), so as to learn something of the law.
I learned much more, in a less agreeable fashion, when I spent my
first years in London and understood the pains and penalties of
impecuniosity! The only outside influence which had strongly perturbed
my boyhood was the outbreak of the Franco-German War, and I recall the
eager excitement with which I followed the daily news, my exultation
when the French were defeated, my delight when the Prussians won a
great victory. A few years later I would have ‘sided’ differently, but
boys naturally regarded the French as hereditary foes.”
In the autumn of 1871 he had been enrolled as student at the Glasgow
University, and he attended the sessions of 1871-72 and 1872-73 during
the Lord Rectorship of The Right Honourable B. Disraeli. He did not
remain long enough at the university to take his degree. Yet he worked
well, and was an attentive scholar. Naturally, English Literature was
the subject that attracted him specially; in that class he was under
Prof. John Nichol, whose valued friendship he retained for many years.
At the end of his second session he was one of three students who were
found ‘worthy of special commendation.’ The chief benefit to him of
his undergraduate days was the access it gave him to the University
Library. There new worlds of fascinating study were opened to him;
not only the literature and philosophy of other European countries,
but also the wonderful literatures and religions of the East. He read
omnivorously; night after night he read far into the morning hours
literature, philosophy, poetry, mysticism, occultism, magic, mythology,
folk-lore. While on the one hand the immediate result was to turn
him from the form of Presbyterian faith in which he had been brought
up, to put him in conflict with all orthodox religious teachings, it
strengthened the natural tendency of his mind toward a belief in the
unity of the great truths underlying all religions; and, to his deep
satisfaction, gave him a sense of brotherhood with the acknowledged
psychics and seers of other lands and other days. At last he found a
sympathetic correspondence with his thoughts and experiences, and a
clew to their possible meaning and value.
In 1874, with a view to finding out in what direction his son’s
capabilities lay, Mr. David Sharp put him into the office of Messrs.
Maclure and Hanney, lawyers, in Glasgow, where he remained till his
health broke down and he was sent to Australia. It was soon evident
that he would never be a shining light in the legal profession: his
chief interest still lay in his private studies and his earliest
efforts in literature. In order to find time for all he wished to do,
which included a keen interest in the theatre and opera whenever the
chance offered, he allowed himself during these two years four hours
only out of the twenty-four for sleep; a procedure which did not tend
to strengthen his already delicate health. At no time in his life did
he weigh or consider what amount of physical strength he had at his
disposal. His will was strong, his desires were definite; he expected
his strength to be adequate to his requirements, and assumed it was
so, until, from time to time, a serious breakdown proved to him how
seriously he had overdrawn on his reserve.
PART I (WILLIAM SHARP) CHAPTER II ( AUSTRALIA )
My second meeting with my cousin was in August of 1875, when he spent
a week with us at a cottage my mother had taken at Dunoon, then one of
the most charming villages on the Clyde.
I remember vividly the impression he made on me when I saw the tall,
thin figure pass through our garden gateway at sunset—he had come
down by the evening steamer from Glasgow—and stride swiftly up the
path. He was six feet one inch in height, very thin, with slightly
sloping shoulders. He was good-looking, with a fair complexion and high
colouring; gray-blue eyes, brown hair closely cut, a sensitive mouth,
and winning smile. He looked delicate, but full of vitality. He spoke
very rapidly, and when excited his words seemed to tumble one over the
other, so that it was not always easy to understand him.
In September my sister and I visited our Uncle and Aunt at 16 Rosslyn
Terrace, Glasgow, and before the close of that month their son and I
were secretly plighted to one another. Then began a friendship that
lasted unbrokenly for thirty years.
It was then he confided to me that his true ambition lay not in being
a scientific man, as it was supposed, but a poet: that his desire was
to write about Mother Nature and her inner mysteries, but that as yet
he had not sufficient mastery of his art to be able to put his message
into adequate form. After much persuasion he read to me several of his
early attempts, and promised to send me a copy of whatever he should
write.
We were very anxious to meet again before I returned to London, as we
should of necessity be separated till the following autumn. A few days
later in Edinburgh came the desired opportunity. But how and where to
meet? No one must know, lest our secret should be discovered—for we
well knew all our relations would be unanimous in disapproval.
Instead of going to the Lawyer’s office one morning my cousin took an
early train into Edinburgh—and I left my sister to make the necessary
excuses for my absence at luncheon. But where to meet? We knew we
should run the risk of encountering relations and acquaintances in
the obvious places that suggested themselves. At last a brilliant
idea came to my betrothed, and we spent several hours in—the secluded
Dean Cemetery, and were not found out! We talked and talked—about his
ambitions, his beliefs and visions, our hopeless prospects, the coming
lonely months, my studies—and parted in deep dejection.
The immediate outcome of the day was a long poem of no less than
fifty-seven verses addressed
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