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