WILLIAM SHARP (FIONA MACLEOD) A MEMOIR COMPILED BY HIS WIFE ELIZABETH A. SHARP - ELIZABETH A. SHARP (phonics reader TXT) 📗

structure and balance. He realised, that although

the Fiona impetus produced the first chapter and the latter part, the

plot and melodramatic character of the Breton story are due to W. S.;

that the descriptions of nature are written by F. M. and W. S. in

fusion, are in character akin to the descriptions in “The Children of

Tomorrow,” written by W. S. in his transition stage. Consequently, when

in 1905, he discussed with me what he wished preserved of his writings,

he asked my promise that I would never republish the book in its

entirety.

 

In order to preserve what he himself cared for, he rewrote the Highland

portion of the book, named it “The Herdsman” and included it in _The

Dominion of Dreams_. (In the Uniform Edition, it is placed, together

with a series of detached Thought-Fragments from _Green Fire_, in

_The Divine Adventure_, Vol. IV.) He never carried out his intention

of writing Annaik’s story in full. Had he done so it would have been

incorporated in a story, partly reminiscent of his early sojourn among

the gipsies, and have been called _The Gypsy Trail_.

 

Some months later Mr. W. B. Yeats wrote to W. S.:

 

 “I have read ‘Green Fire’ since I saw you. I do not think it is one of

 your well-built stories, and I am certain that the writing is constantly

 too self-consciously picturesque; but the atmosphere, the romance of

 much of it, of ‘The Herdsman’ part in particular haunts me ever since I

 laid it down.

 

 ‘Fiona Macleod’ has certainly discovered the romance of the remote

 Gaelic places as no one else has ever done. She has made the earth by

 so much the more beautiful.”

 

And Mr. George Russell (A. E.) wrote to F. M. from Dublin:

 

 

  DEAR FIONA MACLEOD,

 

 My friend, Willie Yeats, has just come by me wrapt in a faery whirlwind,

 his mouth speaking great things. He talked much of reviving the Druidic

 mysteries and vaguely spoke of Scotland and you. These stirring ideas

 of his are in such a blaze of light that, but for the inspiration of a

 presence always full of enthusiasm, I would get no ideas at all from

 him. But when he mentioned your name and spoke of the brotherhood of

 the Celts and what ties ought to unite them, I remembered a very kindly

 letter which I had put on one side waiting for an excuse to write again.

 So I take gladly Yeats’ theory of what ought to be and write....

 

 Thoughts inspired by what is written or said are aimed at the original

 thinker and from every quarter converge on his inner nature. Perhaps

 you have felt this. It means that these people are putting fetters on

 you, binding you to think in a certain way (what they expect from you);

 and there is a danger of the soul getting bent so that after its first

 battle it fights no more but repeats dream upon dream its first words

 in answer to their demand and it grows more voice and less soul every

 day. I read _Green Fire_ a few weeks ago and have fallen in love with

 your haunted seas. Your nature spirit is a little tragic. You love

 the Mother as I do but you seem for ever to expect some revelation of

 awe from her lips where I would hide my head in her bosom. But the

 breathless awe is true also—to “meet on the Hills of Dream,” that

 would not be so difficult. I think you know that? Some time when the

 power falls on me I’ll send a shadow of myself over seas just to get

 the feeling of the Highlands. I have an intuition that the “fires”

 are awakening somewhere in the North West. I may have met you indeed

 and not known you. We are so different behind the veil. Some who are

 mighty of the mighty there are nothing below and then waking life keeps

 no memory of their victorious deeds in sleep. And if I saw you your

 inner being might assume some old Druidic garb of the soul, taking that

 form because you are thinking the Druidic thought. The inner being is

 protean and has a thousand changes of apparel. I sat beside a friend

 and while he was meditating, the inner being started up in Egyptian

 splendour robed in purple and gold. He had chanced upon some mood of an

 ancient life. I write to you of these things judging that you know of

 them to some extent here: that your inner nature preserves the memory

 of old initiations, so I talk to you as a comrade on the same quest.

 You know too I think that these alluring visions and thoughts are of

 little import unless they link themselves unto our humanity. It means

 only madness in the end. I know people whose lamps are lit and they

 see wonderful things but they themselves will not pass from vision

 into action. They follow beauty only like the dwellers in Tyre whom

 Ezekiel denounced “They have corrupted their wisdom by reason of their

 brightness.” Leaving these mystic things aside what you say about art

 is quite true except that I cannot regard art as the “quintessential

 life” unless art comes to mean the art of living more than the art of

 the artists.... Sometime, perhaps, if it is in the decrees of the gods

 (our true selves) we may meet and speak of these things. But don’t get

 enslaved by your great power of expression. It ties the mind a little.

 There was an old Hermetist who said “The knowledge of It is a divine

 silence and the rest of all the senses....”

 

 You ask me to give my best. Sometimes I think silence is the best. I can

 feel the sadness of truth here, but not the joy, and there must always

 be as exquisite a joy as there is pain in any state of consciousness....

 

E.

 

PART II  ( FIONA MACLEOD  ) CHAPTER XVIII ( FROM THE HILLS OF DREAM )

_The Laughter of Peterkin_

 

 

On the wanderer’s return to England his volume of poems _From the Hills

of Dream_ was published by P. Geddes & Coll. The first edition was

dedicated to our godson Arthur Allhallow, younger son of Prof. and Mrs.

Patrick Geddes, who was born on that Hallow E’en the anniversary of our

Wedding-day. The volume consists of poems, runes and lyrics, written by

M. between 1893 and 1896; and a series of “prose rhythms” entitled

“The Silence of Amor.”

 

A sympathetic letter from Mr. Ernest Rhys, the Welsh poet, drew a quick

response:

 

 

  MURRAYFIELD, MIDLOTHIAN,

  23: 11: 96.

 

  DEAR MR. RHYS,

 

 On my coming from the West to Edinburgh, for a few days, I found your

 very welcome and charming letter, among others forwarded to me from the

 Outlook Tower.

 

 It gratifies me very much that you, whose work I so much admire and with

 whose aims and spirit I am in so keen sympathy, care so well for the

 “Hills of Dream.” These are hills where few inhabit, but comrade always

 knows comrade there—and so we are sure to meet one another, whether one

 carry a “London Rose” or a sheaf of half-barbaric Hill-Runes. It may

 interest you to know that the name which seems to puzzle so many people

 is (though it does exist as the name “Fiona,” not only in Ossian but at

 the present day, though rarely) the Gaelic diminutive of “Fionaghal” (i.

Flora). For the rest—I was born more than a thousand years ago, in

 the remote region of Gaeldom known as the Hills of Dream. There I have

 lived the better part of my life, my father’s name was Romance, and that

 of my mother was Dream. I have no photograph of their abode, which is

 just under the quicken-arch immediately west of the sunset-rainbow. You

 will easily find it. Nor can I send you a photograph of myself. My last

 fell among the dew-wet heather, and is now doubtless lining the cells of

 the wild bees.

 

 All this authentic information I gladly send you!

 

  Sincerely yours,

 

  FIONA MACLEOD.

 

Early in 1897 Mr. Yeats wrote from Paris to F. M. concerning aims

and ideals he was endeavouring to shape into expression for the

re-vivifying of Celtic Ireland, and out of which has evolved the Irish

National Theatre:

 

 

  MY DEAR MISS MACLEOD,

 

 I owe you a letter for a long time, and can only promise to amend and

 be more prompt in future. I have had a busy autumn, always trying to

 make myself do more work than my disposition will permit, and at such

 times I am the worst of correspondents. I have just finished a certain

 speech in _The Shadowy Waters_, my new poem, and have gone to _The Café

 du Musée de Cluny_ to smoke and read the Irish news in the _Times_. I

 should say I wrote about your book of poems as you will have seen in the

 _Bookman_. I have just now a plan I want to ask you about? Our Irish

 Literary and Political literary organisations are pretty complete (I am

 trying to start a Young Ireland Society, among the Irish here in Paris

 at the moment) and I think it would be very possible to get up Celtic

 plays through these Societies. They would be far more effective than

 lectures and might do more than anything else we can do to make the

 Irish Scotch and other Celts recognise their solidarity. My own plays

 are too elaborate, I think, for a start, and have also the disadvantage

 that I cannot urge my own work in committee. If we have one or two

 short direct prose plays, of (say) a mythological and folklore kind, by

 you and by some writer (I may be able to move O’Grady, I have already

 spoken to him about it urgently) I feel sure we could get the _Irish

 Literary Society_ to make a start. They have indeed for some time talked

 of doing my _Land of Heart’s Desire._ My own theory of poetical or

 legendary drama is that it should have no realistic, or elaborate, but

 only a symbolic and decorative setting. A forest, for instance, should

 be represented by a forest pattern and not by a forest painting. One

 should design a scene, which would be an accompaniment not a reflection

 of the text. This method would have the further advantage of being

 fairly cheap, and altogether novel. The acting should have an equivalent

 distance to that of the play from common realities. The plays might be

 almost, in some cases, modern mystery plays. Your _Last Supper_, for

 instance, would make such a play, while your story in _The Savoy_ would

 arrange as a strong play of merely human tragedy. I shall try my own

 hand possibly at some short prose plays also, but not yet. I merely

 suggest these things because they are a good deal on my mind, and not

 that I wish to burden your already full hands. My “Shadowy Waters” is

 magical and mystical beyond anything I have done. It goes but slowly

 however, and I have had to recast all I did in Ireland some years ago.

 Mr. Sharp heard some of it in London in its first very monotonous form.

 I wish to make it a kind of grave ecstasy.

 

 I am also at the start of a novel which moves between the Islands of

 Aran and Paris, and shall have to go again to Aran about it. After

 these books I start a long cherished project—a poetical version of the

 great Celtic epic tale Deirdre, Cuchullin at the Ford, and Cuchullin’s

 death, and Dermot and Grainne. I have some hopes that Mr. Sharp will

 come to Paris on his way back to England. I have much to talk over with

 him, I am feeling more and more every day that our Celtic movement is

 approaching a new phase. Our instrument is sufficiently prepared as far

 as Ireland is concerned, but the people are less so, and they can only

 be stirred by the imagination of a very few acting on all.

 

 My book _The Secret Rose_ was