THE WINGED DESTINY
Literary Geography
Two important events of 1904 to William Sharp were the publication of The Winged Destiny, at midsummer, by Messrs. Chapman & Hall; and of his Literary Geography in October.
In the Dedication to Dr. John Goodchild of The Winged Destiny (the title of The Magic Kingdoms was discarded), the author set forth ‘her’ intention:
“In this book I have dealt—as I hope in all I write—only with things among which my thought has moved, searching, remembering, examining, sometimes dreaming....
It is not the night-winds in sad hearts only that I hear, or the sighing of vain fatalities: but, often rather, of an Emotion akin to that mysterious Sorrow of Eternity in love with tears, of which Blake speaks in Vala. It is at times, at least I feel it so, because Beauty is more beautiful there. It is the twilight hour in the heart, as Joy is the heart’s morning.
Perhaps I love best the music that leads one into the moonlit coverts of dreams, and old silence, and unawakening peace. But Music, like the rose of the Greeks, is ‘the thirty petalled one’ and every leaf is the gate of an equal excellence. The fragrance of all is Joy, the beauty of all is Sorrow: but the Rose is one—Rosa Sempiterna, the Rose of Life. As to the past, it is because of what is there, that I look back: not because I do not see what is here today, or may be here tomorrow. It is because of what is to be gained that I look back: of what is supremely worth knowing there, of knowing intimately: of what is supremely worth remembering, of remembering constantly: not only as an exile dreaming of the land left behind, but as one travelling in narrow defiles who looks back for familiar fires on the hills, or upward to the familiar stars where is surety. In truth is not all creative art remembrance: is not the spirit of ideal art the recapture of what has gone away from the world, that by an imperious spiritual law is forever withdrawing to come again newly.”
To a friend W. S. wrote:
It is a happiness to me to know that you feel so deeply the beauty that has been so humbly and eagerly and often despairingly sought, and that in some dim measure, at least, is held here as a shaken image in troubled waters. It it a long long road, the road of art ... and those who serve with passion and longing and unceasing labour of inward thought and outward craft are the only votaries who truly know what long and devious roads must be taken, how many pitfalls have to be avoided or escaped from, how many desires have to be foregone, how many hopes have to be crucified in slow death or more mercifully be lost by the way, before one can stand at last on “the yellow banks where the west wind blows,” and see, beyond, the imperishable flowers, and hear the immortal voices.
A thousand perils guard the long road. And when the secret gardens are reached, there is that other deadly peril of which Fiona has written in “The Lynn of Dreams.” And, yet again, there is that mysterious destiny, that may never come, or may come to men but once, or may come and not go, of which I wrote to you some days ago, quoting from Fiona’s latest writing: that destiny which puts dust upon dreams, and silence upon sweet airs, and stills songs, and makes the hand idle, and the spirit as foam upon the sea.
For the gods are jealous, O jealous and remorseless beyond all words to tell. And there is so little time at the best ... and the little gain, the little frail crown, is so apt to be gained too late for the tired votary to care, or to do more than lie down saying ‘I have striven, and I am glad, and now it is over, and I am glad!’
A letter of appreciation to the author from an unknown Gaelic correspondent contained this beautiful wish:
“May you walk by the waters of Life, and may you rest by Still Waters, and may you know the mystery of God.”
To Mrs. Helen Bartlett Bridgman, “Fiona” wrote in acknowledgment of a letter, and of a sympathetic, printed appreciation of The Winged Destiny:
My dear Friend,
(For if deep sympathy and understanding do not constitute friendship, what does?) It would be strange indeed if I did not wish to write to you after what Mr. Mosher has told me, and after perusal of what you have written concerning what I have tried to do with my pen. There are few things so helpful, perhaps none so pleasant to a writer in love with his or her work and the ideals which are its source, than the swift understanding and sympathy of strangers. So much of my work is aside from the general temper and taste, and not only in its ideals but in its ‘atmosphere,’ indeed even in its writer’s methods and manner, that I have to be content (as I gladly am content) to let the wind that blows through minds and hearts carry the seed whithersoever it may perchance take root, and this with the knowledge that the resting places must almost of necessity, as things are, be few and far between. But it is not number that counts, and, as I say, I am well content—would be content were my readers far fewer than they are. It seems enough to me that one should do one’s best in a careful beauty and in the things of the spirit. It is enough to be a torch-bearer, whether the flame be a small and brief light or a beacon—it is to take over and to tend and to hand on the fire that matters. As I say in my very shortly forthcoming new book, The Winged Destiny, I desire to be of the horizon-makers; if I can be that, however humbly, I am glad indeed. This would be so with anyone, I think, feeling thus. To me outside sympathy means perhaps more; for I stand more isolated than most writers do, partly by my will, partly by circumstances as potent and sometimes more potent. It is not only that I am devoid of the desire of publicity, of personal repute, and that nothing of advantage therefrom has the slightest appeal to me (though, alas, both health and private circumstances make my well-being to a large extent dependent on what my work brings me), but that I am mentally so constituted that I should be silenced by what so many are naturally and often rightly eager for and that so many seek foolishly or unworthily. In this respect I am like the mavis of the woods, that sings full-heartedly in the morning shadow or evening twilight in secret places, but will be dumb and lost in the general air of noon and where many are gathered in the frequented open to see and hear.
It is for these, and other not less imperative private reasons, why I am known personally to so very few of my fellow-writers: and why in private circles the subject is not one that occurs. I cannot explain, though not from reluctance or perversity or any foolish and needless mystery. The few who do not know me, as you know me, but with added intimacy, are loyal in safe-guarding my wishes and my privacy. That explains why I refuse all editorial and other requests of “interviews,” “photographs,” “personal articles” and the like. In a word, I am blind to all the obvious advantages that would accrue from my ‘entering the arena’ as others do. I have all that frequently borne in upon me. But still less so do I ignore what would happen to my work, to its quality and spirit, to myself, if I yielded. I may be wrong, but I do not think I am. I am content to do my best, as the spirit moves me, and as my sense of beauty compels me; and if, with that, I can also make some often much-needed money, enough for the need as it arises; and, further, can win the sympathy and deep appreciation of the few intimate and the now many unknown friends whom, to my great gladness and pride, I have gained, then, indeed, I can surely contentedly let wider “fame” (of all idle things the idlest, when it is, as it commonly is, the mere lip-repute of the curious and the shallow) go by, and be indifferent to the lapse of possible but superfluous greater material gain....”
Dr. Goodchild, after a first acknowledgment of the dedication, again wrote to F. M.:
Author’s Club,
July 1904.
Dear Friend,
... Yesterday I read your Preface to a friend of mine, and afterwards a lady (a clever woman I believe) came into the room. I had never met her before, and she had never read anything of yours, but she picked up the book and asked what it was. “Just read the introduction” said my friend. The reader had an expressive face, and I wish you had seen it. “But this is something quite new. I never read anything like it before” she said as she finished: and I fancy that many will do likewise.
A woman said in my hearing not long ago, of one of your poems, “I could not put out my heart for daws to peck at” and I said “only the Eagle could do that, and not only daws, but blackbirds of all kinds will come to do that, and when the Eagles hear the call of their mates, there will be such slaughter of carrion crows as the World has not seen yet.”
J. A. G.
A few days later William described to a friend the events of
... one of the loveliest days of the year, with the most luminous atmosphere I have seen in England—the afternoon and evening divinely serene and beautiful.
I had a pleasant visit to Bath, and particularly enjoyed the long day spent yesterday at Glastonbury and neighbourhood, and the glowing warmth and wonderful radiance.
As usual one or two strange things happened in connection with Dr. G. We went across the ancient “Salmon” of St. Bride, which stretches below the hill known as “Weary-All” (a corruption of Uriel, the Angel of the Sun), and about a mile or less westward came upon the narrow water of the ancient ‘Burgh.’ Near here is a very old Thorn held in great respect....
He put me (unknowing) to a singular test. He had hoped with especial and deep hope that in some significant way I would write or utter the word “Joy” on this 1st day of August (the first three weeks of vital import to many, and apparently for myself too)—and also to see if a certain spiritual influence would reach me. Well, later in the day (for he could not prompt or suggest, and had to await occurrence) we went into the lovely grounds of the ancient ruined Abbey, one of the loveliest things in England I think. I became restless and left him, and went and lay down behind an angle of the East end, under the tree. I smoked, and then rested idly, and then began thinking of some correspondence I had forgotten. Suddenly I turned on my right side, stared at the broken stone of the angle, and felt vaguely moved in some way. Abruptly and unpremeditatedly I wrote down three enigmatic and disconnected lines. I was looking curiously at the third when I saw Dr. G. approach.
“Can you make anything out of that,” I said—“I’ve just written it, I don’t know why.” This is the triad:
“From the Silence of Time, Time’s Silence borrow.
In the heart of To-day is the word of To-morrow.
The Builders of Joy are the Children of Sorrow.”
To Mr. Stedman W. S. announced our plans for the coming winter:
Aug. 29, 1904.
Dear Poet,
This is not an advance birthday letter, as you may think! It is to convey tidings of much import to my wife and myself, and I hope of pleasure to you and other friends over-sea—namely that this late autumn we are going to pay a brief visit to New York.
It is our intention to spend January, February, and March in Rome—which for me is the City of Cities. But we are going to it via New York. In a word, we intend to leave England somewhere between 23rd and 26th of October, according as steamers and our needs fit it. Then after six weeks or so in New York, we intend to sail direct to the Mediterranean by one of the Hamburg-American or North-German Lloyd Special Mediterranean line, sailing to Genoa and Naples....
I have been very busy of late, and for one thing have been occupied with collecting and revising the literary studies of some years past—and much else of which I’ll tell you when we meet. My Literary Geography, which has been running serially in the Pall Mall Magazine for the last 14 or 15 months will be out in book-form in October. My wife’s recently published little book on Rembrandt has had a good reception, I am very glad to say.
With all affectionate greetings to you both, ever, Dear Stedman,
Affectionately your friend,
William Sharp.
Before we started for New York Literary Geography (by W. S.) was published. According to the critic in The World:
“It was a characteristically original idea of the author to combine descriptions of certain localities with criticisms and appreciations of those famous writers who had identified themselves therewith. It gives one a fresher and keener insight, for instance, into Mr. George Meredith’s poems to know how much they reveal of the lovely country in which he lives, and how many of his exquisite similes are drawn from observation of the birds and beasts and plants which he sees daily around his home under the shadow of Box Hill. “The Country of Stevenson,” “Dickens-Land,” “Scott-Land,” “The Country of George Eliot,” “Thackeray-Land,” “The Brontë Country,” “The Carlyle Country,” and “Aylwin-Land” are all both delightful and instructive, full of poetic description, sound criticism, and brilliant flashes of wit; and not less so are the chapters on the “literary geography” of the Thames from Oxford to the Nore, the English Lakes, with all their associations with Wordsworth and his brother poets, and the Lake of Geneva, which might have been called Voltaire-Land were it not that so many other famous personalities and authors are identified with Geneva and its surroundings that the solitary distinction might seem invidious.”
The book was dedicated to the author’s friend of early days, Mr. George Halkett (then Editor of The Pall Mall Gazette) with the reminder that
“More years ago now than either of us cares to recall, we were both, in the same dismal autumn for us, sent wandering from our native lands in Scotland to the end of the earth. I remember that each commiserated the other because of that doctor’s doom in which we both, being young and foolish, believed. Since then we have sailed many seas and traversed many lands, and I, at least, have the wayfaring fever too strong upon me ever to be cured now.”
The critic in the Daily Chronicle explained that the “book is all an affair of temperament, and the only thing which really matters is that Mr. Sharp has made excellent stuff out of his impressions.... For instance, the first time he saw Robert Louis Stevenson was not as it should have been, in the land of Alan Breck; it was at Waterloo Station. Is the literary geographer abashed by this conjunction of two sympathetic Scots in a dismal London shed? Not a bit of it:
‘He was tall, thin, spare—indeed, he struck me as almost fantastically spare. I remember thinking that the station draught caught him like a torn leaf blowing at the end of a branch.’
“Mind you, at that moment Mr. Sharp did not know who the stranger was, but knew by instinct that the station draught ought to make poetical use of him. More than that, Mr. Sharp saw that Stevenson had the air of a man just picked out of a watery grave. Anybody could see this.
‘That it was not merely an impression of my own was proved by the exclamation of a cabman, who was standing beside me expectant of a “fare” who had gone to look after his luggage: “Looks like a sooercide, don’t he, sir? One o’ them chaps as takes their down-on-their-luck ’eaders into the Thames!”’
“When Stevenson could inflame a cabman with this picturesque fantasy, no wonder he turned Waterloo Station into the home of romance. But this was not all. The ‘sooercide’ had still more magic about him. Stevenson was waiting for a friend to arrive by train, and when the friend appeared, the drowned revenant became another being.
‘The dark locks apparently receded, like weedy tangle in the ebb; the long sallow oval grew rounder and less wan; the sombre melancholy vanished like cloud-scud on a day of wind and sun, and the dark eyes lightened to a violet-blue and were filled with sunshine and laughter.’
“This extraordinary man was carrying a book and dropped it. Then happened something which expanded Waterloo Station into the infinite:
‘I lifted and restored it, noticing as I did that it was the Tragic Comedians, ...
In 1902 W. S. had been greatly gratified by a request from the composer, Mr. McDowell, couched in generous terms of appreciation:
Columbia University,
New York, May 25th.
Miss Fiona Macleod,
My dear Madam,
Your work has so grown into my life that I venture to ask you to permit my placing your name on some music of mine. Your poems have been an inspiration to me and I trust you will accept a dedication of music that is yours already by right of suggestion. By this I do not mean that my music in any way echoes your words but that your words have been a most powerful incentive to me in my music and I crave your sympathy for it.
Sincerely yours,
Edward MacDowell.
At the end of 1904 F. M. wrote to Mr. Lawrence Gilman, the American Musical Critic:
22 Ormidale Terrace,
Murrayfield, 31st Dec.
Dear Mr. Gilman,
Some time ago a friend played to me one or two lovely airs by Mr. Loeffler, and I was so much impressed by their unique quality and their atmosphere of subtle beauty that I wrote to find out what I could about this composer, and also about another, Mr. MacDowell, whose beautiful Keltic Sonata I have heard. And now I have been sent a copy of your winsome and deeply interesting and informing little book, Phases of Modern Music. There I not only find much of deep interest to me about Mr. Loeffler and Mr. MacDowell, but find your whole book at once informing and fascinating. In addition I had the great pleasure of coming unexpectedly upon allusions to myself and my writings: and I would like you to know how truly I appreciate these, and how glad I am that a critic touched to such fine issues in the great art of Music, and with so keen a sense for the new ideals of beauty, the new conceptions of style and distinction, should care for what I am trying to do in my own art.
I hope you are writing another book. Whether on musical subjects only, or on literary and musical subjects in conjunction (which of course would appeal to a wider section of the reading public), any such book would I am sure, be welcomed by all who know Phases of Modern Music.
I wish I knew more of the music of these two composers. There is a spirit abroad just now, full of a new poignancy of emotion, uplifted on a secret wave of passion and ecstasy, and these men seem to me of that small but radiant company who have slept and dreamed in the other world and drank moon-dew.
Let me thank you again for all the pleasure you have given me, and
Believe me
Most truly yours,
Fiona Macleod.
Mr. Lawrence Gilman replied:
New York,
Jan 14, 1905.
My dear Miss Macleod,
It would not be easy for me to tell you, without seeming extravagance, of the keen pleasure I have had in your cordial letter concerning my book, Phases of Modern Music. The deep impression which your own work has made upon me must already have become evident to you through even the most cursory reading of my book—an impression the extent and definiteness of which I myself had scarcely realised. You will know, then, how great a satisfaction it is for me to hear that you have been interested in my thoughts on musical subjects, and that they have seemed to you worthy of the friendly praise which you have spoken in your letter.
So you know and like the music of Loeffler and MacDowell! That is good to hear; for few, even in this country, where they have been active in their art for so long, are sensible of the beauty and power of their work. Do you know Loeffler’s latest production—“Quatre Poëmes,” settings of verses by Verlaine and Baudelaire? They are written for voice, piano, and viola: a singular and admirable combination. Mr. MacDowell will be glad to hear of your pleasure in his “Keltic Sonata,” for he is one of your most sensitive admirers: it was he, indeed, who first made me acquainted with your work. Have you heard his earliest sonatas—the “Norse,” “Eroica,” and “Tragica”? They are not very far behind the “Keltic” in distinction and force, though lacking the import and exaltation of the latter.
You would be surprised, I think, to know how the Celtic impulse is seizing the imaginations of some of the younger and more warmly-tempered of American composers. I am enclosing a programme of a concert given recently in Boston, consisting entirely of music written on Celtic themes.
Thank you again.
Very faithfully yours,
Lawrence Gilman.
When in New York William Sharp had written to Mr. Alden “on behalf of Miss Macleod” concerning her later nature-essay work, and explained that “Some months ago, by special request from the Editor of Country Life Miss M. began contributing one or two of these papers. From the first they attracted notice, and then the Editor asked her if she would contribute a series to appear as frequently as practicable—averaging two a month—till next May when they would be issued in book-form. As Miss M. enjoys writing them, she agreed.”
In the same letter he spoke of a subject on which he had long meditated. He proposed it for Harper’s Magazine:—“I have long been thinking over the material of an article on the Fundamental Science of Criticism, to be headed, say ‘A New Degree: D. Crit.’” This project among many others was never worked out. But the ‘nature-papers’ were a great pleasure to him, and in 1904 and 1905 he wrote on many subjects for Country Life, over the signature of F. M., also several poems that were afterwards included in the second edition of From the Hills of Dream.
As month by month the number of nature essays grew, he planned to issue them in two, and later in three volumes. To the second volume he thought to give the title “Blue Days and Green Days” (from a line of R. L. Stevenson’s), and to call the third, which was to deal with the stars and the skies at night, “Beyond the Blue Septentrion.” Not all the projected essays for each book, however, were written; but those which appeared serially were published posthumously in 1906, by Country Life under the title of Where the Forest Murmurs. Concerning the titular essay, Mr. Alfred Noyes wrote: “It is one of those pieces of nature-study which, in Matthew Arnold’s phrase, have that rarest of all modern qualities—‘Healing Power.’”
And according to The Contemporary Review:
“Fiona Macleod’s prose baffles description. It is perhaps hardly prose at all. It is melody in words suggesting scenes as much by sound as by the passage of ideas. The ideas conveyed by the actual words are supplemented by the rhythm or melody conveyed by the sequence of words. But it is, when all analysis is ended, something quite alone: pure music of a strange and curious quality that is neither prose nor poetry, but thrilling with the pain and passion of a Gaelic chant. It conveys to the mind and heart the scenes and sounds of nature with almost magical accuracy.”
The immediate object of our short visit to New York and Boston was that I should know in person some of the many friends my husband valued there, and I was specially interested to make the acquaintance of Mr. and Mrs. Stedman, who gave me a warm welcome, of Mr. and Mrs. Alden, Mr. and Mrs. R. Watson Gilder, Mr. John Lafarge, Mrs. Julia Ward Howe, and Miss Caroline Hazard whom we visited at Wellesley College. But winter set in with December. The cold proved so severe that we sailed for and reached Naples in time to spend Xmas Day with friends at Bordighera whence W. S. wrote to Mr. Murray Gilchrist: “We are back from America (thank God) and are in Italy (thank Him more).... For myself I am crawling out of the suck of a wave whose sweep will I hope be a big one of some months and carry me far.”
In Rome we took rooms at the top of Fischer’s Park Hotel, whence from the balconies we had a superb view over Rome. There we saw a few friends—in particular Mr. Hichens who was also wintering there; but my husband did not feel strong enough for any social effort. As he wrote to Mr. Mosher:
11th Feb., 1905.
Dubious and ever varying health, with much going to and fro in quest of what is perhaps not to be found (for mere change of climate will not give health unless other conditions combine to bring about the miracle) have, among other causes, prevented my writing to you as I had intended, or, indeed, from doing much writing of any kind. I have written a few articles for Country Life—and little else, published or unpublished. The days go by and I say “at night”—and every night I am too tired or listless, and say “tomorrow”: and so both the nights and the morrows go to become thistles in the Valley of Oblivion. But with the advancing Spring I am regathering somewhat of lost energy, and if only I were back in Scotland I believe I should be hard at work! Well, I shall be there soon, though I may be away again, in the remote isles or in Scandinavia for the late spring and summer....
F. M.
1905
“There is a great serenity in the thought of death, when it is known to be the Gate of Life.”
Fiona Macleod.
April my husband spent in the West of Scotland, for which he pined; and on his way North broke his journey in Edinburgh whence he wrote to Mr. W. J. Robertson, the translator into English verse of A Century of the French poets of the XIX Century:
April, 1905.
Dear Mr. Robertson,
After our most pleasant evening à deux I had a comfortable journey north: and last night luxuriated in getting to bed early (a rare thing for me) with the sure and certain knowledge there would be no glorious resurrection therefrom at any untimely hour. So after sleeping the sleep of the true Gael—who is said to put 85 to the poor Sassenach 40 winks—I woke in peace. I was thereafter having a cigarette over the Scotsman when my youngest (and secretary) sister brought me my letters, papers, etc. and with them a long narrow box which I soon discovered to be your generous gift of 100 of these delectable Indian cigars. It is very good of you indeed, and I am grateful, and may the ancient Gaelic God Dia-Cheo, God of Smoke, grant you remission of all your philological sins and derivative ‘howlers’—and the more so as there is no authority for any such god, and the name would signify hill-mist instead of pipe-smoke! And may I have a himdred ‘rèves de Notre Dame de Nicotine!’ I couldn’t resist trying one. Wholly excellent. And in the meditative fumes I arrived through intuition at the following derivation which I hope will find a place in your book:
Roab ancient Celtic for a Good Fellow
H’Errt—”
———”
–”
–Smoke-Maker or Smoke-Bestower
’s contraction for Agus ‘and’,
Onn ancient Celtic for ‘May Heaven Bless’
W. J. ancient Celtic Tribal tattoo——
which, assisted in dreams by the spirits of Windisch, D’Arbois de Jubainville, Loth, Whitley Stokes and Kuno Meyer, I take to be W. J. Roab-H’Errt-S-onn—i. e. Bill-Jack, or in mod. English ‘William John’ of the Clan of Heaven-Blessed Friendly Smokers—i. e. William John of the Roaberrtsson, or Robertson Clan. This of course disposes of Donnachie once and for all.
Ever sincerely yours
William Sharp.
From Edinburgh he and his secretary-sister Mary went to Lismore, so that he might “feel the dear West once more.” From Oban he reported to Mr. W. J. Robertson on a post card addressed to “Ri Willeam Iain MacRiobeart mhic Donnach aidh”——
“Awful accident in a lonely Isle of the West.
A distinguished stranger was observing the vasty deep, and had laid a flask-filled cup on a rock beside him when a tamned gull upset it and at same time carried off a valuable Indian cheroot. Deep sympathy is everywhere expressed, for the distinguished stranger, the lost cheroot, and above all for the spilt cup and abruptly emptied flask. A gloom has been cast over the whole island.
Verb: Sap:”
From Lismore he wrote to me:
“April 19. It was sweet to fall asleep last night to the sound of the hill-wind and the swift troubled waters. We had a lovely walk in the late afternoon, and again in the sombre moonlit night. It came on too stormy for me to go round to the Cavern later, however. I’ll try again. I was there about first dusk, with Mary. To my chagrin there was neither sound nor sight of the sea-woman, but she must be there for MacC. has twice heard her sobbing and crying out at him when he passed close in the black darkness. There was only a lapwing wailing near by, but both Mary and I heard a singular furtive sound like something in a trailing silk dress whispering to itself as it slid past in the dusk—but this, I think, was a curious echo of what’s called ‘a sobbing wave’ in some narrow columnar hidden hollow opening from the sea. Mary got the creeps, and loathed a story I told her about a midianmara that sang lovely songs but only so as to drown the listener and suck the white warm marrow out of his spine.
Later I joined MacC. for a bit over the flickering fireflaucht. I got him to tell me all over again and more fully about the Maighdeann Mhara. The first time he heard ‘something’ was before his fright last November. ‘There was cèol then’ he said....
I asked in Gaelic ‘were songs sung?’ He said ‘Yes, at times.’ Mrs. MacC. was angry at him he said, and said he hadn’t the common-sense of a jenny-cluckett (a clucking hen)—but (and there’s a world of difference in that) she hadn’t heard what he had heard. So to cheer him up I told him a story about a crab that fed on the brains of a drowned man, and grew with such awful and horrible wisdom that it climbed up the stairway of the seaweed and on to a big rock and waved its claws at the moon and cursed God and the world, and then died raving mad. Seeing how it worked upon him, I said I would tell him another, and worse, about a lobster—but he was just as bad as Mary, and said he would wait for the lobster till the morning, and seemed so absurdly eager to get safely to bed that the pleasant chat had to be abruptly broken off....
P. S. The cold is very great, and it is a damp cold, you couldn’t stand it. When I got up my breath swarmed about the room like a clutch of phantom peewits. No wonder I had a dream I was a seal with my feet clemmed on to an iceberg. A duck went past a little ago seemingly with one feather and that blown athwart its beak, so strong was the north-wind blowing from that snowy mass that Ben Nevis wears like a delicate veil. Cruachan has covered herself with a pall of snow mist.
April 20.... Fiona Macleod has just been made an honorary member of a French League of writers devoted to the rarer and subtler use of Prose and Verse, a charming letter from Paul Fort acting for his colleagues Maeterlinck, Henri de Roquier, Jean Moréas, Emile Verhacren, Comte Antoine de la Rochefoucault, Duchesse de la Roche-Guyon, Richeguin, Sully Prudhomme, Henri Le Sidaner, Jules Claretie, etc. etc.
We’re glad, aren’t we, you and I? She’s our daughter, isn’t she?
23d April.... You will have got my note of yesterday telling you that I have reluctantly had to relinquish Iona. The primary reason is its isolation at present....
But from something I heard from old Mr. C. I fancy it’s as well for me not to visit there just now, where I’d be the only stranger, and every one would know of it—and where a look out for F. M. or W. S. is kept! And, too, anything heard there and afterwards utilised would be as easily traced to me.... After Tiree and Iona and Coll, and Arran in the South, I don’t care just now for anywhere else—nearer: as for Eigg, which I loved so much of old, Rum or Canna and the Outer Isles, they are too inaccessible just now and Skye is too remote and too wet and cold. However, it is isolation plus ‘atmosphere’ I want most of all—and I doubt if there is any place just now I could get so much good from as Lismore. I love that quiet isolated house on the rocks facing the Firth of Lorne, all Appin to Ben Naomhir, and the great mountains of Morven.
It was on the sandy bindweed-held slope of the little bay near the house, facing Eilean-nan-Coarach, that F. wrote the prelude to The Winged Destiny—and also the first piece, the “Treud-nan-Ron,” which describes that region, with Mr. MacC.’s seal legend, and the dear little island in the Sound of Morvern (do you remember our row to it one day?) There one could be quiet and given over to dreams and to the endless fascination of outer nature.... And I have got much of what I want—the in-touch above all, the atmosphere: enough to strike the keynote throughout the coming year and more, for I absorb through the very pores of both mind and body like a veritable sponge. Wild-life and plant-life too extremely interesting here. There does seem some mystery about that cave tho’ I cannot fathom it.
I’ve all but finished the preparation of the new Tauchnitz vol. (The Sunset of Old Tales) and expect to complete it (for May) tonight.
24th April.... Yes, I was sorry to leave Lismore. It may be my last time in the Gaelic west. (I don’t say this “down-ly”—but because I think it likely). There is much I want to do, and now as much by W. S. as by F. M. and that I realise must be done abroad where alone can I keep well and mentally even more than physically. (How I hope Fontainebleau may some day suit us.) Dear MacC. was sorry to part too. He shook hands (with both his) and when I said in Gaelic “Goodbye, and Farewell upon that, my friend” he said “No—no”—and then suddenly said “My blessing on you—and goodbye now!” and turned away and went down the pier-side and hoisted the brown sail and went away across the water, waving a last farewell.
The cold proved so disastrous that my husband was ordered to Neuenahr for special treatment. Thence he wrote to the Hon. A. Nelson Hood:
June, 1905.
My dear Julian,
Just a brief line, for I am still very restricted in permission as to writing, as so much depends on the rest-cure which is no small factor in my redemption here....
It has been ‘a narrow squeak.’ Briefly, after a hard tussle at the brink of ‘Cape Fatal’ and a stumble across ‘Swamp Perilous’ I got into the merely “dangerous condition” stage—and now at last that’s left behind, and I’ll soon be as well in body as I’m happy and serene in mind.
It is at best, however, a reprieve, not a lifetime-discharge. N’importe. Much can be done with a reprieve, and who is to know how long the furlough may be extended to. At any rate, I am well content.”
To me he wrote—for I was unable to accompany him:
Neuenahr,
16th June, 1905.
... Here, at the Villa Usner, it is deliciously quiet and reposeful. I had not realised to the full how much nervous harm I’ve had for long. To live near trees is alone a joy and a restorative. The heat is very great but to me most welcome and strengthening.... In my room or in the garden I hear no noise, no sounds save the susurrus of leaves and the sweet monotony of the rushing Ahr, and the cries and broken songs of birds....
I could see that Dr. G. can’t understand why I am not more depressed or, rather, more anxious. I explained to him that these physical troubles meant little to me, and that they were largely the bodily effect of other things, and might be healed far more by spiritual well-being than by anything else: also that nature and fresh air and serenity and light and warmth and nervous rest were worth far more to me than all else. “But don’t you know how serious your condition may become at any moment, if you got a bad chill or setback, or don’t soon get better?” “Certainly,” I said; “but what then? Why would I bother about either living or dying? I shall not die before the hour of my unloosening comes.”
I want to be helped all I may be—but all the waters in the world can only affect the external life, and even that only secondarily very often....
Monday evening.
... “How I enjoyed my breakfast this morning! (in the lovely garden, in a vine-shadowed arbour or pergola, with great tall poplars and other trees billowing against the deep blue). Then a cigarette, a stroll in the lovely sunlit-dappled green shadowiness of an adjoining up-sloping avenue—and a seat for a little on a deserted south-wall bench (because of the blazing heat) for a sun-bath, while I watched a nightingale helping its young to fly among the creaming elders and masses of wild-rose, while her mate swung on a beech-branch and called long sweet exquisite cries of a thrilling poignancy (which, however, might only be “Now then, Jenny, look out, or Tommy will fall into that mass of syringa:—hillo! there’s Bobby and Polly gone and got scratched pecking at these confounded white wild-roses!).”
Then I got up to come in and write to you (gladly in one way, reluctantly in another for I seem to drink in life in the strong sunlight and heat), but first stopped to speak to a gorgeous solitary dandelion. I stroked it gently, and said “Hullo, wee brother, isn’t the world beautiful? Hold up your wee head and rejoice!” And it turned up its wee golden nose and said “Keep your hair on, you old skidamalink, I’m rejoicing as hard as ever I can. I’m always rejoicing. What else would I do? You are a rum old un-shiny animal on two silly legs!” So we laughed, and parted—but he called me back, and said gently in a wee soft goldy-yellow voice, “Don’t think me rude, Brother of Joy. It’s only my way. I love you because you love me and don’t despise me. Shake pinkies!”—so I gave him a pinkie and he gave me a wee golden-yellow pinkie-petal....
Tell Marjorie[5] the wee Dandelion was asking about her and sends her his love—also a milky daisy that says Hooray! every morning when it wakes, and then is so pleased and astonished that it remains silently smiling till next morning.
This flower and bird talk doesn’t bother you, does it? Don’t think I don’t realise how ill I have been and in a small way still am: but I don’t think about it, and am quite glad and happy in this lovely June-glory....”
He broke his return journey at Doorn with our friends M. and Mme. Grandmont and wrote to me:
July, 1905.
“ ... How you’d love to be here!
Nothing visible but green depths fading into green depths, and fringing the sky-lines the endless surf of boughs and branches. From the forest-glades the cooing of doves and the travelling-voice of a flowing cool sweet wind of this delicious morning. I always gain immensely in mind and body from nearness to woodlands and green growth—hence in no small part my feeling for Fontainebleau. I’d such a lot to tell you about it—and of what we should strive to obtain for ourselves in restful, fine, dignified life, and much else, apropos and apart—as you lay happy and contented on the long luxurious lounge beside my chair on the deep balcony, half listening to me and half to the soft continuous susurrus of the pine-fragrant breeze—that more than an hour elapsed while I drank my tea and read your letter....
“It is no exaggeration to say, that, so greatly do I value and treasure afterwards certain aspects of beauty, I would quite willingly go through all the suffering again for the sake of the lovely impressions here last night and this morning. The beauty and charm of this house and its forest-environment, the young moon and the night-jar at dusk (and then to soothe and sleepify me still more, the soft, sweet, old-fashioned melodies of Haydn from 9 to 9.30)—one or two lovely peacocks trailing about in front—the swallows at corner of my great verandah—a thousandfold peace and beauty, and the goodness of these dear friends, have not only been, and are, a living continuous joy, but have been like the Heralds of Spring to the return of gladness and energy into my mind. Today I realise that too, for one thing, ‘Fiona’ has come back from afar off. It is peace and greenness she loves—not the physical and psychical perturbation and demoralisation of towns.
Yes, we’ll make ‘green homes’ for ourselves now. No more long needless months in London....
Despite his serenity of mind, London as usual wrought him harm, and as he explained to Dr. Goodchild:
30th July.
... August is always a ‘dark’ month for me—and not as a rule, I fancy, a good one: at any rate an obscure and perhaps perilous one. But this time I fancy it is on other lines. I believe strong motives and influences are to be at work in it perhaps furtively only: but none the less potently and far reachingly. Between now and September-end (perhaps longer) many of the Dark Powers are going to make a great effort. We must all be on guard—for there will be individual as well as racial and general attack. But a Great Unloosening is at hand.
Yours ever,
W. S.
We therefore went to Scotland to say goodbye to his mother and sisters, and to see one or two friends, among others, Miss Mary Wilson, the pastellist, at Bantaskine, her home on the site of the battle of Falkirk; Mr. D. Y. Cameron, with whom my husband planned an unfulfilled wander among the Western Isles; and Mr. David Erskine of Linlathen.
While in the North he wrote to Mr. John Maesfield:
Kessock Cottage,
Nairn.
Dear Mr. Maesfield,
A brief word to tell you what pleasure I have had in your little book A Mainsail Haul. It is not only that it is written with delicate art: but it is rich in atmosphere—a much rarer thing. The simplicity, the charm, the subtle implication of floating, evasive yet fluctuating romance, your own keen sense of the use of words and their veiled life and latent as well as obvious colour, combine to a winning and often compelling effect. I do not think any who has read Don Alfonso’s drinking bout with the little red man and the strange homegoing of the weed and flower-grown brigantine with the Bible name, will forget it: and what dream charm also there is in “Port of Many Ships,” “Sea Superstition,” “The Spanish Sailor’s Yarn.” In such a splendid and delightful colour fabric as “From the Spanish” “high words and rare” are of course apt—but is it not a mistake to introduce in “Sea Superstition” words such as “august” and “wrought” in a sailor’s mouth? (In the text the effect seems to be enhanced not lessened, by the omission of these words—“were like things in bronze,” “the roof of which was of dim branches.”)
In “From the Spanish” I would, as a matter of personal taste, prefer that the end came at the close of the penultimate para, the shore-drift of the Italian lute. I think the strange dream-like effect would be much enhanced without (what seems to me) the superfluous ‘realistic’ tag. Otherwise the piece is a gem of its kind.
But you will forgive the critic (and it shows he has read closely) in the admirer, I hope?
Let us have more work of the kind. There is much need of it, and you are of the few who can give it.
Yours sincerely
William Sharp.
Mr. Maesfield—who had written concerning Fiona Macleod to a friend: “I think the genius of a dead people has found re-incarnation in her. Wherever the Celt is, thence come visions and tears”—replied:
Greenwich,
Aug. 19, 1905.
Dear Mr. Sharp,
I was deeply touched by your kind letter about my little book [A Mainsail Haul]. If it should go to a second edition I will make use of your suggestion. I prepared the book rather hurriedly, and there is much in it that I very much dislike, now that it cannot be altered.
The mood in which I wrote the tales you like, has gone from me, and I am afraid I shall be unable to write others of the same kind. In youth the mind is an empty chamber; and the spirits fill it, and move and dance there, and colour it with their wings and raiment. In manhood one has familiars. But between those times (forgive me for echoing Keats) one has little save a tag or two of cynicism, a little crude experience, much weariness, much regret, and a vision blurred by all four faults. One is weakened, too, by one’s hatreds.
I thank you again for your very kind and cordial letter.
Yours very sincerely,
John Maesfield.
To an unknown correspondent F. M. wrote:
Sept. 15, 1905.
... I have been away, in the isles, and for a time beyond the reach of letters. I wish there were Isles where one could also go at times, where no winged memories could follow. In a Gaelic folk-tale, told me by an old woman once, the woman of the story had only to burn a rose to ashes and to hold them in the palms of her hands and then to say seven times A Eileanain na Sith, “O Isles of Peace”! and at once she found herself in quiet isles beyond the foam where no memories could follow her and where old thoughts, if they came, were like phantoms on the wind, in a moment come, in a moment gone. I have failed to find these Isles, and so have you: but there are three which lie nearer, and may be reached, Dream, Forgetfulness, and Hope.
And there, it may be, we can meet, you and I....
Yes, your insight is true. There is a personal sincerity, the direct autobiographical utterance, in even, as you say, the most remote and phantastic of my legends as in the plainest of my words. But because they cover so much illusion as well as passion, so much love gone on the wind as well as love that not even the winds of life and death can break or uproot, so much more of deep sorrow (apart from the racial sorrow which breathes through all) than of joy save in the deeper spiritual sense, they were thus raimented in allegory and legend and all the illusion of the past, the remote, the obscure, or the still simpler if more audacious directness of the actual, the present, and the explicit. There is, perhaps, a greater safety, a greater illusion, in absolute simplicity than in the most subtly wrought of art....
But you will understand me when I say that you must not count on our meeting—at any rate not this year. I too stand under obscure wings.
Your friend,
F. M.
To the Duchess of Sutherland:
... I have the memory that recalls everything in proportion and sequence. I have often written that art is memory, is in great part memory, though not necessarily a recalling of mere personal experience: and the more deeply I live the more I see that this is so....
When you write, I mean imaginatively, you must write more and more with concentrated vision. Some time ago I re-read your Four Winds of the World; much of it is finely done, and in some of it your self lives, your own accent speaks. But you have it in you to do work far more ambitious. The last is not a word I like, or affect; but here it is convenient and will translate to your mind what is in my mind. These stories are yours but they are not you: and though in a sense art is a wind above the small eddies of personality, there is a deeper sense in which it is nothing else than the signature of personality. Style (that is, the outer emotion that compels and the hidden life of the imagination that impels and the brooding thought that shapes and colours) should, spiritually, reflect a soul’s lineaments as faithfully as the lens of the photographer reflects the physiognomy of a man or woman. It is because I feel in you a deep instinct for beauty, a deep longing for beautiful expression and because I believe you have it in you to achieve highly in worth and beauty, that I write to you thus.... There is that Lady of Silence, the Madonna of Enigma, who lives in the heart of many women. Could you not shape something under Her eyes—shape it and colour it with your own inward life, and give it all the nobler help of austere discipline and control which is called art? I have not much to tell you of myself just now. At the moment I do not write to you from the beloved west where I spend much of each year and where my thoughts and dreams continually are. Tonight I am tired, and sad, I hardly know why.
O wind, why break in idle foam
This wave that swept the seas—...
Foam is the meed of barren dreams,
And hearts that cry for peace.
Lift then, O wind, this heart of mine
And swirl aside in foam—
No, wander on, unchanging heart,
The undrowning deeps thy home.
Less than a billow of the sea
That at the last doth no more roam
Less than a wave, less than a wave
This thing that hath no home
This thing that hath no grave!
But I shall weary you. Well, forgive me....
The next letter is to Mrs. Helen Hopekirk, the Scottish-American composer, who has set several of the F. M. poems to music:
18th Oct., 1905.
My dear Mrs. Hopekirk,
I was very pleased to hear from you again. I am busy with preparations for Italy, for the doctors say I should be away from our damp Scottish climate from October-end till Spring comes again. How far off it seems.... Spring! Do you long for it, do you love its advent, as I do? Wherever I am, St. Bride’s Day is always for me the joy-festival of the year—the day when the real new year is born, and the three dark months are gone, and Spring leans across the often gray and wet, but often rainbow-lit, green-tremulous horizons of February. This year it seems a longer way off than hitherto, and yet it should not be so—for I go to Italy, and to friends, and to beautiful places in the sun, there and in Sicily, and perhaps in Algeria. But, somehow, I care less for these than I did a few years ago, than two or three years ago, than a year ago. I think outward change matters less and less as the imagination deepens and as the spirit more and more “turns westward.” I love the South: and in much, and for much, am happy there: but as the fatally swift months slip into the dark I realise more and more that it is better to live a briefer while at a high reach of the spirit and the uplifted if overwrought physical part of one than to save the body and soothe the mind by the illusions of physical indolence and mental leisure afforded by long sojourns in the sunlands of the South....
How I wish I knew Loeffler and Debussy and others as you do: but then, though I love music, tho’ it is one of the vital things in life for me, I am not a musician, alas. So even if I had all their music beside me it would be like a foreign language that must be read in translation. Do you realise—I suppose you do—how fortunate you are in being your own interpreter. Some day, however, I hope to know intimately all those wonderful settings of Verlaine and Baudelaire and Mallarmé and others. The verbal music of these is a ceaseless pleasure to me. I have a great love of and joy in all later French poetry, and can never understand common attitude to it here—either one of ignorance, or patronage, or complete misapprehension. Because of the obvious fact that French is not so poetic a language as English or German, in scale, sonority, or richness of vocabulary—it is, indeed, in the last respect the poorest I believe of all European languages as English is by far the richest—people, and even those who should be better informed, jump to the conclusion that therefore all French poetry is artificial or monotonously alike, or, at best, far inferior to English. So far as I can judge, finer poetry has been produced in France of late years than in England, and very much finer than any I know in Germany. However, the habitual error of judgment is mainly due to ignorance: that, and the all but universal unfamiliarity with French save in its conventional usage, spoken or written....
“Fiona” received that summer, from Mr. Yoni Noguchi, a volume entitled From the Eastern Sea by that Japanese author, and sent acknowledgment:
On the Mediterranean.
Dear Mr. Noguchi,
Your note and delightful little book reached me, after considerable delay, in southern Europe. I write this at sea, and will send it with other letters, etc., to be stamped and posted in Edinburgh—and the two reasons of delay will show you that it is not from indolence!
I have read your book with singular pleasure. What it lacks in form (an inevitable lack, in the circumstances) it offers in essential poetry. I find atmosphere and charm and colour and naïveté, and the true touch of the poet; and congratulate you on your ‘success of suggestion’ in a language so different in all ways from that wherein (I am sure) you have already achieved the ‘success of finality.’
Believe me, yours very truly,
Fiona Macleod.
Later, Mr. Noguchi sent his subsequent book The Summer Cloud, a collection of short prose-poems, which, as he explained in his note of presentation: “In fact, I had been reading your prose-poems, The Silence of Amor, and wished I could write such pieces myself. And here is the result!”
It was our habit, when talking to one another of the “F. M.” writings, to speak of “Fiona” as a separate entity—so that we should not be taken unawares if suddenly spoken to about ‘her’ books. It was William’s habit also to write and post to himself two letters on his birthday—letters of admonition and of new resolutions. On the 12th Sep. 1905 he brought me the two birthday letters when they reached him, and gave them to me to read, saying, with a smile, “Fiona is rather hard on me, but she is quite right.” Both letters are in his handwriting and are as follows:
Gu Fionaghal nic Leoid
Sliabhean n’an Aisling
Y-Breasil (na Tir-fo-Tuinn)
An Domhain Uaine,
12th Sept., 1905.
Dearest Fiona,
A word of loving greeting to you on the morrow of our new year. All that is best in this past year is due to you, mo caraid dileas: and I hope and believe that seeds have been sown which will be reborn in flower and fruit and may be green grass in waste places and may even grow to forests. I have not always your serene faith and austere eyes, dear, but I come to much in and thro’ my weakness as you through your strength. But in this past year I realise I have not helped you nearly as much as I could: in this coming year I pray, and hope, it may be otherwise. And this none the less tho’ I have much else I want to do apart from our work. But we’ll be one and the same au fond even then, shall we not, Fiona dear?
I am intensely interested in the fuller development of the Celtic Trilogy—and shall help in all ways. You say I can give you what you have not: well, I am glad indeed. Together we shall be good Sowers, Fionaghal mo rùn: and let us work contentedly at that. I wish you Joy and Sorrow, Peace, and Unrest, and Leisure, Sun, and Wind, and Rain, all of Earth and Sea and Sky in this coming year. And inwardly dwell with me, so that less and less I may fall short of your need as well as your ideal. And may our “Mystic’s Prayer” be true for us both, who are one.
Ever yours, dear,
Will.
12th Sept., 1905.
Hills of Dream,
Y-Breasil.
My dear Will,
Another birthday has come, and I must frankly say that apart from the loss of another year, and from what the year has brought you in love and friendship and all that makes up life, it has not been to your credit. True, you have been in America and Italy and France and Scotland and England and Germany—and so have not been long settled anywhere—and true also that for a month or two you were seriously and for a few months partially ill or ‘down’—but still, after all allowances, I note not only an extraordinary indolence in effort as well as unmistakable laziness in achievement. Now, either you are growing old (in which case admit dotage, and be done with it) or else you are permitting yourself to remain weakly in futile havens of ignoble repose or fretful pseudo rest. You have much to do, or that you ought to do, yourself: and as to our collaboration I see no way for its continuance unless you will abrogate much of what is superfluous, curtail much that can quite well be curtailed, and generally serve me loyally as I in my turn allow for and serve you.
Let our New Year be a very different one from the last, dear friend: and let us not only beautifully dream but achieve in beauty. Let the ignoble pass, and the noble remain.
Lovingly yours, dear Will,
Fiona.
Some of his own copies of his F. M. books have an inscription to “W. S.” from his twin self. For instance, his specially bound copy of The Winged Destiny bears this inscription in his handwriting: and is dated 12th Sept., 1904. But William did not write or sign his F. M. letters himself. When not typed by him, they were copied and signed for him by his sister Mary, in whose handwriting is the following signature—familiar to F. M.’s correspondents:
In the beginning of October we left London accompanied by Miss Mary Wilson and went to Venice by way of Zurich and Innsbruck. Then to Florence to stay with our friends Mr. and Mrs. Lee Hamilton, and finally, to Sicily.
Taormina was beautifully sunny and restful as of yore; and the delicate man rejoiced greatly in the beautiful gardens that the Duke of Bronte was designing and planting with flowers and trees, on the slopes of the hillside below the town.
A letter reached him there from Mr. Hichens:
St. Stephen’s,
Canterbury.
Oh, my dear Will,
I cannot help envying you. It is bitterly cold here, like winter, and neuralgia is flitting about my twitching face and shrinking head. But I will not inflict my little woes upon you, and only write this word to say I am sending you my book The Black Spaniel. It is a very slight and mixed affair this time—my last book of stories I think. The new novel I have some hopes of your liking, as I hope I have imprisoned something of our beloved Sicily in it. Now I am doing the last act—the last to be done, I mean, of my play for Wyndham. Yes, we will meet in Africa, if the gods are kind. I expect to leave England for Rome on Dec. 3. I am looking forward to Biskra immensely but must try to settle in there as must be working then.... How are you both? Happy in the sun? All blessings upon you and your work.
Ever yours affectionately,
Roberto.
It had been planned that after the New Year Mr. Hood, Mr. Hichens, my husband and I should go together to Biskra. But as the autumn waned, we realised the unwisdom of making any such plans. On hearing of our reluctant decision Mr. Hichens wrote:
Nov., 1905.
My dear Will,
Your letter was really a blow, but of course I thoroughly understand that you must not risk such a journey. I am grieved about your delicate health. You must take great care and stay in places where you can have your comforts. I wish Rome suited you both. I am suffering from London dyspepsia. Today there is a thick fog and I envy you all tremendously. I am counting the days till I can start for Rome. How is Taormina? Alec describes it as warm and splendid, and pretends that he needs a sun umbrella and a straw hat! Perhaps you are all bathing in the sea! Oh, these travellers’ tales! I am going out to bathe in the fog, so au revoir. Love to you both, kindest regards to Etna from
Yours ever affectionately,
Roberto.
During one of our visits to Maniace Mr. Hichens was also a guest; on a subsequent visit to that lava-strewn country, on the great western slope of the shoulder of Etna, he wrote to me, in 1906, about my husband: “I have had many walks here with Will. I think my last long walk with him here was towards Maletto. We sat on a rock for a long while, looking at the snow on Ætna and the wild country all around. We talked about death, and he said he loved life but he did not fear death at all. I remember well how alive his eyes looked. He always had a very peculiar look of life in the eyes, an unquenchable vitality.”
On reaching Maniace W. S. wrote to a friend:
Dec. 4, 1905.
... As my card of yesterday will have told you we arrived here all right on Monday afternoon, after a wonderful journey. We left Taormina in a glory of midsummerlike warmth and beauty—and we drove down the three miles of winding road from Taormina to the sea at Giardini; thence past the bay and promontory of Naxos, and at the site of the ancient famous fane of Apollo Archagêtês turned inland. Then through the myriad lemon-groves of Al Cantara, till we crossed the gorges of the Fiumefreddo, and then began the long ascent, in blazing heat, by the beautiful hill road to the picturesque mountain-town of Piedemonte. There we caught the little circum-Ætnean mountain loop-line, and ascended the wild and beautiful slopes of Etna. Last time we went we travelled mostly above the clouds, but this time there was not a vestige of vapour in the radiant air, save for the outriders’ trail of white, occasionally flame-coloured, smoke from the vast 4-mile wide mouth of snow-white and gigantically-looming cone of Etna. At the lofty mediæval and semi-barbaric town of Randazzo we were delayed by an excited crowd at the station, on account of the arrest and bringing in by the carabinieri of three chained and heavily manacled brigands, one of them a murderer, who evidently had the sympathy of the populace. A woman, the wife of one of the captured men, outdid any lamenting Irish woman I ever saw: her frenzy was terrible—and of course the poor soul was life-desolate and probably punished and would likely never see her man again. Finally she became distracted with despair and fury, and between her appeals and furious curses and almost maniacal lamentations, the small station was anything but an agreeable stopping place. The captive brigands were absolutely impassive: not a glance: only, as the small train puffed onward, one of them lifted a manacled arm behind one of the carabinieri and made a singular sign to some one.
MRS. WILLIAM SHARP
From a photograph by T. Craig-Annan, 1909
Thereafter we passed into the wild and terrible lava-lands of the last frightful eruption, between Randazzo and the frontier of the Duchy of Bronte: a region as wild and fantastic as anything imagined by Doré, and almost terrifying in its sombre deathfulness. The great and broad and sweeping mountains, and a mighty strath—and we came under the peaked rocks of Maletto, a little town standing 3000 feet high. Then the carriage, and the armed escort, and we had that wonderful drive thro’ wild and beautiful lands of which I have heretofore written you. Then about four we drove up to the gates of the Castle, and passed into the great court just within the gates, and had the cordial and affectionate welcome of our dear host.
A few minutes later we were no longer at an ancient castle in the wilds of Sicily, but in a luxurious English country house at afternoon tea....
My husband had taken with him, as material for the winter’s work, his notes for the Greek Backgrounds, and the finished drafts of two dramas. One, by W. S., was to be called Persephonæia, or the Drama of the House of Ætna, and of it one act and one scene had been written at Maniace two years before. It was to have been dedicated to The Duke of Bronte. The other drama was Fiona’s projected play The Enchanted Valleys, of which one scene only was written. But he felt unable for steady work, as the following letter to the same friend, shows:
... A single long letter means no work for me that day, and the need of work terribly presses, and in every way, alas. My hope that I might be able for some writing in the late afternoon, and especially from 5 to 7.30 is at present futile. I simply can’t. Yesterday I felt better and more mentally alert than I’ve done since I came, and immediately after afternoon tea, I came to my study and tried to work, but could not, though I had one of my nature articles begun and beside me: nor had I spirit to take up my reviews: then I thought I could at least get some of that wearisome accumulated correspondence worked off, but a mental nausea seized me, so that even a written chat to a friend seemed to me too exhausting. C’est cette maladie poignante, ce “degoût de la plume,” que Tourgenieff (ou Flaubert?) parlait de son cœur frappé. So I collapsed, and dreamed over a strange and fascinating ancient-world book by Lichtenberger, and then dreamed idly, watching the flaming oak-logs.”
In William’s Diary for December there are the following entries:
1st. Friday. Wrote the short poem “When greenness comes again.” Read Zola’s wearisome “His Excellency Eugène Rougon,” and in the evening the “Jupiter” and “Saturn” chapters in Proctor’s “Otherworlds Than Ours.”
2d. Saty. Read and took notes and thought out my Country Life article on “At the Turn of the Year.” Also incidentally “The Clans of the Rush, the Reed, and the Fern,” and one to be called “White Weather” (snow, the wild goose and the wild swan). Alec and I walked to the Boschetto. Began (about 1300 words) “At the Turn of the Year.”
3rd. Sunday. A stormy and disagreeable day. Wrote long letters. In afternoon felt too tired and too sleepy to work or even to write letters: so sat before the fire in my study and partly over that fascinating book I love often to recur to for a few pages, Lichtenberger’s Centaures, and partly in old dreams of my own, it was 7.30 and time to dress before I knew it. Heard today from Ernest Rhys about the production of his and Vincent Thomas’ Opera Guinevere. Thought over an old world book to be called Beyond the Foam.
Dec. 4th. In the forenoon began again and wrote first thousand words of “At the Turn of the Year.” At 3 went to drive with Elizabeth along the Balzo to near the Lake of Garrida.
Dec. 5. Tuesday. In forenoon wrote the remaining and large half of “At the Turn of the Year”: revised the whole of it and posted it to Mary, with long letter.
In afternoon a drive, despite the wet and inclement weather, up to Maletto. I walked back. A lovely, if unsettled sunset of blue and gold, purple brown, amethyst, and delicate cinnamon. A marvellous light on the hills. Luminous mist instead of cloud as of late. For the first time have seen the Sicilian Highlands with the beauty of Scotland.
From 10 till 11.30 p.m. worked at notes for “White Weather” article.
Dec. 6. Wed. In the forenoon worked at Gaelic material partly for articles, partly for other things. But not up to writing. There is a sudden change to an April-like heat: damply-hot; though fine: very trying, all feel it. After lunch walked up the north heights with Alec, then joined E. and D. L. in carriage and drove up past Otaheite to the Saw-Mills. Lovely air, gorgeous windy sky in the west, and superb but thunderous clouds in S. and E. Another bad change I fear. Etna rose gigantic as we ascended Otaheite-way, and from Serraspina looked like an immense Phantom with a vast plume of white smoke.
In afternoon (from 5.30 till 7.30) wrote 1200 words of “White Weather.”
Thursday. 7th. This morning fresh and bright and clear, a welcome change from these recent days—with the Beechwoods all frosted with snow. The Simeto swollen to a big rushing river.
Worked at and finished the latter part of “White Weather,” and then revised and sent off to Mary to forward with note to Country Life. Also other letters. Turned out the wettest and worst afternoon we’ve had yet, and return of severe thunderstorm.
Dec. 8. Friday. A fine morning but very doubtful if yet settled. Went out and was taken by Beek to see the observatory instruments and wind-registers and seismographs. Then took the dogs for a walk, as “off” work today.
Wrote a long letter to Robert Hichens, also to R. L. S. Also, with poem “When Greenness comes again” by W. S. to C. Morley Pall Mall Magazine. In afternoon we had a lovely drive up above the Alcantara Valley along the mountain road toward Cesaro.”
And here the Diary ends, and here too ends the written work of a tired hand and brain, but of an eager outlooking spirit. Ever since we left London it was evident that his life forces were on the ebb-tide slowly but surely; and he knew it, but concerned himself little, and believed he had at any rate a few months before him and possibly a whole year. Yet he seemed to have an inner knowledge of what was to be. In Scotland, in the summer, he told me it would be his last visit there; that he knew it, and had said farewell to his mother. On the afternoon when we drove up to the Saw-Mills in the oak-woods he got out of the carriage and wandered among the trees. When I urged him to come away, as the light was waning rapidly, he touched the trees again and again and said, “Ah dear trees of the North, dear trees of the North, goodbye.” The drive on the 8th, so beautiful, to him so full of fascination, was fatal to him. We drove far along a mountain pass and at the furthest point stopped to let him look at the superb sunset over against the hillset town of Cesaro.
He seemed wrapt in thought and looked long and steadfastly at the wonderful glowing light; it was with difficulty that I persuaded him to let us return. On the way back, a sudden turn of the road brought us in face to the snow covered cone of Ætna. The wind had changed and blew with cutting cold straight off the snow. It struck him, chilling him through and through. Half way back he got out of the carriage to walk and get warm. But the harm was done. That evening, before dinner, he said to me: “I am going to talk as much as I can tonight. That dear fellow Alec is rather depressed. I’ve teased him a good deal today; now I am going to amuse him.” He was as good as his word, anecdote, reminiscence, followed one another told in the gayest of spirits, and in saying goodnight to me our host declared, “I have never heard Will more brilliant than he has been tonight.”
The next morning my husband complained of pain which grew rapidly more severe. The doctor was sent for, and remained in the house.
On the morning of the 12th—a day of wild storm, wind, thunder and rain—he recognised that nothing could avail. With characteristic swiftness he turned his eager mind from the life that was closing to the life of greater possibilities that he knew awaited him. About 3 o’clock, with his devoted friend Alec Hood by his side, he suddenly leant forward with shining eyes and exclaimed in a tone of joyous recognition, “Oh, the beautiful ‘Green Life’ again!” and the next moment sank back in my arms with the contented sigh, “Ah, all is well.”
On the 14th, in an hour of lovely sunshine, the body was laid to rest in a little woodland burial-ground on the hillside within sound of the Simeto; as part of the short service, his own “Invocation to Peace,” from The Dominion of Dreams, was read over the grave by the Duke of Bronte. Later, an Iona cross, carved in lava, was placed there, and on it this inscription, chosen by himself:
Farewell to the known and exhausted,
Welcome the unknown and illimitable
and
Love is more great than we conceive, and Death is the keeper of unknown redemptions.
F. M.
Now, truly, is Dreamland no longer a phantasy of sleep, but a loveliness so great that, like deep music, there could be no words wherewith to measure it, but only the breathless unspoken speech of the soul upon whom has fallen the secret dews.
F. M.