WILLIAM SHARP (FIONA MACLEOD) A MEMOIR COMPILED BY HIS WIFE ELIZABETH A. SHARP - ELIZABETH A. SHARP (phonics reader TXT) 📗
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corner of a winding path, and then by the bend of Santa Caterina garden
wall with fine tall plume-like cypresses filled with a living green
darkness, silhouetted against the foam-white cone.
My French windows open on the terrace, it is lovely to go out early in
the morning to watch sunrise (gold to rose-flame) coming over Calabria,
and the purple-blue emerald straits of Messina and down by the wildly
picturesque shores of these island coasts and across the Ionian sea,
and lying like a bloom on the incredible vastness of Etna and its rise
from distant Syracuse and Mt. Hybla to its cone far beyond the morning
clouds when clouds there are—or to go out at sunrise and see a miracle
of beauty being woven anew—or at night when there is no moon, but only
the flashing of the starry torches, the serpentine glitter of lights,
the soft cry of the aziola, and the drowsy rhythmic cadence of the sea
in the caves and crags far below. Just now the hum of bees is almost
as loud as the drowsy sighing of the sea: among the almonds a boy is
singing a long drowsy Greek-like chant, and on the mass of wild rock
near the cypresses a goatherd is playing intermittently on a reed pipe.
A few yards to the right is a long crescent-shaped terrace garden filled
with roses, great shrublike clumps of white and yellow marguerite,
myrtle, lilies, narcissus, sweet-scented blossom-covered geranium,
oranges hanging in yellow flame, pale-gold lemons. Below the branches a
“Purple Emperor” and a snow-white “May Queen” are hovering in butterfly
wooing. On an oleander above a wilderness of pink and scarlet geraniums
two blue tits are singing and building, building and singing.
* * * * *
Since I wrote the above Easter has intervened. The strange half pagan,
half Christian ceremonies interested me greatly, and in one of the
ceremonials of one processional part I recognized a striking survival of
the more ancient Greek rites of the Demeter and the Persephonæ-Kôrê cult.
To Mrs. Janvier.
TAORMINA.
... It is difficult to do anything here. I should like to come sometime
without anything to do—without even a book to read: simply to come
and dream, to re-live many of the scenes of this inexhaustible region
of romance: to see in vision the coming and going of that innumerable
company—from Ulysses and his wanderers, from Pythagoras and St. Peter,
from that Pancrazio who had seen Christ in the flesh, from Æschylus, and
Dionysius and Hiero and Gelon, from Pindar and Simonides and Theocritus,
to Richard Cœur-de-Lion and Garibaldi and Lord Nelson—what a strange
company!...
As for my own work, it is mostly (what there is of it!) dealing with the
literature, etc., of the south. I do not know whether my long article
on Contemporary Italian Poetry is to be in the April-June issue of _The
Quarterly_, or the summer issue. I am more interested in a strange
Greek drama I am writing—_The Kôrê of Enna_—than in anything I have
taken up for a long time. My reading just now is mostly Greek history
and Italian literature.... Looking on this deep blue, often violet sea,
with the foam washing below that perhaps laved the opposite shores
of Greece, and hearing the bees on the warm wind, it is difficult to
realise the wet and cold you have apparently had recently in New York—or
the fogs and cold in London. I wish you could bask in and sun yourself
on this sea-terrace, and read me the last you have written of “Captain
Dionysius” while _I_ give _you_ tea!
During our first visit to Sicily, though my husband realised the beauty
of the island, he could not feel its charm or get in touch with the
spirit of the place because he was overborne by the sense of battle
and bloodshed that he felt pervaded it. When I suggested how much the
fascination of the beautiful island had seized hold of me he would say:
“No, I cannot feel it for the ground is sodden and every leaf drips
with blood.” To his great relief, on his return there he found, as he
said, that he had got beyond the surface of things, had pierced down
to the great essentials of the ancient land, and had become one of her
devoted lovers.
PART II ( FIONA MACLEOD ) CHAPTER XXIII ( LISMORE )
_Taormina_
Our summer was spent on Arran, Colinsay, and on “the Green Isle” of
Lismore in the sea-mouth of Loch Linnhe within sight of the blue hills
of Morven. We had rooms in the Ferryman’s cottage at the north point
of the isle, where the tide race was so strong at the ebb in stormy
weather that at times it was impossible to row across to the Appin
shore, even to fetch a telegram whose advent was signalled to us by a
little flag from the post office—a quicker way of getting it than by
the long road from the Lismore post office. We spent much of our time
on the water in a little rowing boat. A favourite haunt was a little
Isle of Seals, in the loch, where we one day found a baby seagull, fat
and fully fledged, but a prisoner by reason of a long piece of grass
that had tightly wound round and atrophied one of its feet. Sometimes
our friend the ferryman would come too. At first he refused to talk
if I was there, because I could not speak Gaelic, and he thought I
was English. But at last when I had reassured him that I too was a
Scot, when he admitted that though I had not a Highland tongue I had
Highland eyes just like his mother’s—his shyness wore away. And one day
when we were out on the loch at sundown, and an exquisite rosy flush
lay over hill and water, he stopped rowing and leant over his oars,
silent for a time, and at last murmured in his slow Highland English
“’Tis—the—smile—of God—upon—the—waters.”
At Lismore F. M. wrote, to quote the author’s own words, “‘The Four
Winds of Eiré’ (long); ‘The Magic Kingdoms’ (longer and profounder, one
of the best things F. M. has ever written); ‘Sea-Magic’ (a narrative
and strange Sea-Lore); ‘The Lynn of Dreams’ (a spiritual study); and
‘Seumas’ (a memory).”
During the summer and autumn he had, as F. M., also written a long
study on the work of W. B. Yeats for _The North American Review_; had
arranged the first volume of a selection of tales for the Tauchnitz
series, entitled _Wind and Wave_; and had prepared a revised and
augmented edition of _The Silence of Amor_ for publication in America
by Mr. Mosher. W. S. meanwhile had not been idle. After editing a
volume of the Poems by our friend, Eugene Lee-Hamilton, with a long
Introduction for _The Canterbury Poets_, he was at work on a series
of articles which were intended for a projected book to be called
_Literary Geography_; and of these there appeared in _Harper’s_ “Walter
Scott’s Land,” “R. L. Stevenson’s Country”; and a poem, “Capt’n
Goldsack.”
Unfortunately, his increasing delicacy not only disabled him from
the continuous heavy strain of work he was under, but our imperative
absence from England necessitated also the relinquishing of my
journalistic work. The stress of circumstances weighed heavily on
him, as he no longer had the energy and buoyancy with which to make
way against it. At this juncture, however, one or two friends, who
realised the seriousness of conditions petitioned that he should be
put on the Civil Pension List. The Hon. Alex. Nelson Hood and Mr.
Alfred Austin were the chief movers in the matter, and were backed by
Mr. George Meredith, Mr. Thomas Hardy and Mr. Watts Dunton. Realising
however, that the writings of William Sharp, considered alone, would
not constitute a sufficient claim, Mr. Hood urged William to allow him
to acquaint the Prime Minister with the authorship of the Fiona Macleod
writings, and of the many sacrifices their production had entailed. My
husband consented providing that Mr. Balfour were told “confidentially
and verbally.” However, it proved necessary that “a statement of entire
claims to consideration should be laid upon the table of the House of
Commons for the inspection of members.” In writing to acquaint my
husband of this regulation, Mr. Hood added:
“I do not presume to say one word to influence you in the decision
you may come to. In such a matter it is for you to decide. If you
will sacrifice your unwillingness to appear before the world in all
the esteem and admiration which are your due, then, (I may say this)
perhaps you will obtain freedom—or some freedom—from anxiety and worry
that will permit you to continue your work unhampered and with a quiet
mind. But advice I cannot give. I cannot recommend any one to abandon a
high ideal, and your wish to remain unknown is certainly that....”
To this W. S. replied:
EDINBURGH,
21st Aug., 1902.
MY DEAR ALEC,
You will have anticipated my decision. No other was possible for me. I
have not made many sacrifices just to set them aside when a temptation
of need occurs. Indeed, even writing thus of ‘sacrifices’ seems to
me unworthy: these things are nothing, and have brought me far more
than I lost, if not in outward fortune. It is right, though, to say
that the decision is due to no form of mental obstinacy or arrogance.
Rightly or wrongly, I am conscious of something to be done—to be done
by one side of me, by one half of me, by the true inward self as I
believe—(apart from the overwhelmingly felt mystery of a dual self, and
a reminiscent life, and a woman’s life and nature within, concurring
with and oftenest dominating the other)—and rightly or wrongly I believe
that this, and the style so strangely born of this inward life, depend
upon my aloofness and spiritual isolation as F. M. To betray publicly
the private life and constrained ideal of that inward self, for a
reward’s sake, would be a poor collapse. And if I feel all this, as I
felt it from the first (and the _nominal_ beginning was no literary
adventure, but a deep spiritual impulse and compelling circumstances
of a nature upon which I must be silent) how much more must I feel it
now, when an added and great responsibility to others has come to me,
through the winning of so already large and deepening a circle of those
of like ideals or at least like sympathies in our own country, and in
America—and I allude as much or more to those who while caring for the
outer raiment think of and need most the spirit within that raiment,
which I hope will grow fairer and simpler and finer still, if such is
the will of the controlling divine wills that, above the maze, watch us
in our troubled wilderness.
That is why I said that I could not adopt the suggestion, despite
promise of the desired pension, even were that tenfold, or any sum.
As to ‘name and fame,’ well, that is not my business. I am glad and
content to be a ‘messenger,’ an interpreter it may be. Probably a wide
repute would be bad for the work I have to do. Friends I want to gain,
to win more and more, and, in reason, “to do well”: but this is always
secondary to the deep compelling motive. In a word, and quite simply,
I believe that a spirit has breathed to me, or entered me, or that my
soul remembers or has awaked (the phraseology matters little)—and, that
being so, that my concern is not to think of myself or my ‘name’ or
‘reward,’ but to do (with what renunciation, financial and other, may be
necessary) my truest and best.
And then, believing this, I have faith you see in the inward destiny.
I smiled when I put down your long, affectionate, and good letter.
But it was not a smile of bitterness: it was of serene acceptance and
confidence. And the words that came to my mind were those in the
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