Chapter Twelve
© William F. Halloran, CC BY 4.0 https://doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0196.01
Life: January–June, 1895
In January 1895 William Sharp wrote to a friend: “London, I do not like, though I feel its magnetic charm, or sorcery. I suffer here. The gloom, the streets, the obtrusion and intrusion of people, all conspire against thought, dream, true living.” The city was “a vast reservoir of all the evils of civilised life with a climate which makes me inclined to believe that Dante came here instead of to Hades.” Elizabeth said “the noise and confused magnetism of the great City weighed disastrously” on her husband. “The strain of the two kinds of work he was attempting to do, the immediate pressure of the imaginative work [by which she meant the work of Fiona Macleod] became unbearable, ‘the call of the sea,’ imperative” (Memoir, p. 242). To alleviate the crisis, the Sharps went to Ventnor on the Isle of Wight on January 6. Before they left, Sharp managed to write several letters. On January 1, he wrote to the editor of a Scottish paper recommending the publication of an article Frank Rinder had written about the Scottish poet Robert Fergusson, who died prematurely at the age of twenty-four in 1774. Rinder was an “able and promising young writer.” In fact, he was thirty-two — only seven years younger than Sharp — and was married to the woman Sharp loved.
On January 2 Sharp attended the funeral of Christina Rossetti and proposed to Horace Scudder, editor of the Atlantic Monthly, an article about her similar to that which he wrote on Walter Pater in the December issue of Atlantic Monthly. Scudder accepted the suggestion, and Sharp’s “Some Reminiscences of Christina Rossetti” appeared in the July issue. He also asked Scudder if he would like an article on “The Celtic Renaissance,” which was a subject that was “becoming recognized as one of profound interest and indeed of paramount significance.” He was “a specialist in old and contemporary Scots-Irish Celtic literature,” and he would, of course, restrict himself to “the Celtic spirit: not to what is written in Scottish Gaelic or Irish Gaelic.” The new “Celtic movement in Ireland & Scotland, & in a less degree in Wales, is, in a word, of vital importance.” Sharp wanted to be part of that movement, and he hoped Fiona Macleod would be its dominant literary voice in Scotland.
On the other hand, in a letter to Catherine Janvier on January 5 he said he resented “too close identification” with the “so-called Celtic renaissance.” His work, if it were to survive, “must be beautiful in itself.” The main purpose of this letter was to tell Mrs. Janvier he was Fiona Macleod. He had no choice since she had recalled for him an August 1893 letter in which he said he was writing a romance called Pharais. Now he had to trust her to preserve his secret, which was known by only one or two others in Britain. He went on to say the book came from the “core of my heart,” and was “the beginning of my true work.” As he wrote it, his pen was “dipped in the ichor of my life.” More hopeful than accurate, he claimed the book had “reached people more than I dreamt of as likely” and “created a new movement” in Scotland. In England, it was hailed as a “work of genius” by the likes of George Meredith, Grant Allen, H. D. Traill, and Theodore Watts. It was “ignored in some quarters, abused in others, and unheeded by ‘the general reader,’” but Sharp was nonetheless “deeply glad with its reception.”
Mrs. Janvier’s curiosity about how Sharp came upon the name “Fiona Macleod” elicited his clearest explanation of its origin:
The name was born naturally: (of course I had associations with the name Macleod.) It, Fiona, is very rare now. Most Highlanders would tell you it was extinct — even as the diminutive of Fionnaghal (Flora). But it is not. It is an old Celtic name (meaning “a fair maid”) still occasionally to be found. I know a little girl, the daughter of a Highland clergyman, who is called Fiona.
He could not say more about Pharais without telling her about his whole life, but one day he would confide “some of the strange old mysteries of earlier days I have part learned, part divined, and other things of the spirit.” As Fiona Macleod he could write out of his heart in a way he could not do as William Sharp. Neither could he do so were he the woman Fiona Macleod was supposed to be “unless veiled in scrupulous anonymity.” He continued:
This rapt sense of oneness with nature, this cosmic ecstasy and elation, this wayfaring along the extreme verges of the common world, all this is so wrought up with the romance of life that I could not bring myself to expression by my outer self, insistent and tyrannical as that need is… . My truest self, the self who is below all other selves, and my most intimate life and joys and sufferings, thoughts, emotions, and dreams, must find expression, yet I cannot save in this hidden way.
This explanation of his adoption of the pseudonym reproduced in part by Elizabeth Sharp in the Memoir is one of his most extensive and forthright. There is no mention of supernatural beings or of a separate person speaking through him, but simply a recognition of multiple personalities, or “selves,” within the single human being. The most basic of those he experienced could be expressed only by the adoption of the feminine pseudonym and by projecting a separate identity for a feminine hidden self. That the deeper self is female raises important questions concerning what is now called gender identity. These questions have plagued the reputation of William Sharp since his pseudonym was revealed upon his death in 1905. They have arisen earlier in this work, and will arise again later. Here it is enough to observe that possible answers to these questions lie in his recognition and the recognition of many of his contemporaries that men and women had the potential for multiple personalities, with different personalities achieving dominance at various stages of their lives.
The Sharps met Anna and Patrick Geddes in the fall of 1894, and the couple figured prominently in their lives as 1895 unfolded. There arose between Sharp and Geddes, according to Elizabeth,
a friendship with far-reaching results for “Fiona Macleod” […] Both were idealists, keen students of life and nature; cosmopolitan in outlook and interest, they were also ardent Celts who believed in the necessity of preserving the finer subtle qualities and the spiritual heritage of their race against the encroaching predominance of materialistic ideas and aims of the day (Memoir, pp. 248–49).
The Geddes lived in Dundee, where he was Professor of Botany at University College, and they were also active in the intellectual and social life of Edinburgh where, in 1887, Geddes established Scotland’s first student hostel and a summer school of arts, letters, and science. The summer school continued every August until 1899 and attracted students and scholars from Great Britain and the Continent. In 1894 he transformed a town mansion known as “Laird of Cockpen,” located near the Castle on the Edinburgh High Street, into the Outlook Tower, where he established the first “sociological laboratory” in the world. Best known for the camera obscura in its tower in which one can view a panorama of the city of Edinburgh, the building became the locus of the Scottish version of the Celtic Revival, and Geddes became the dominant figure in that revival. He fostered the movement as a means of furthering his ambition to restore Edinburgh as a major center of learning in Europe. The Celtic Renaissance article Sharp offered Horace Scudder for the Atlantic Monthly was one of a series of lectures Geddes asked Sharp to deliver in his Summer School in August, 1895. The lectures, as we will see, had an unfortunate result, but the invitation initiated a friendship between the two men and opened the way for significant contributions to the Celtic movement by Sharp as an editor and Fiona Macleod as a writer.
From Ventnor on January 10, Sharp asked Anna Geddes if she was surprised when her husband told her “W. S. and Fiona Macleod are one in the same person.” Since the Fiona writings were his “Celtic” credentials for taking part in the publishing firm Geddes was organizing, he had confided in Geddes and given him permission to share the secret with his wife. Sharp’s purpose in writing to Anna was to emphasize the need for “absolute preservation of the secret.” He had sent her a letter from Fiona, written in Fiona’s handwriting, before she was apprised of Fiona’s true identity. Now he wrote in his own handwriting and signed the letter, curiously, “Fiona Macleod and William Sharp.” This is a unique instance of the double signature in a letter and of the Fiona Macleod signature in a letter written in Sharp’s hand. Signing both names and asserting that W. S. and F. M. are one in the same implies the presence of two personalities in the same body. Sharp was trying to find a means of defining and describing the psychological phenomena he was experiencing. It is no wonder Elizabeth believed her husband’s frequent ailments were exacerbated by the strain of being two people, of appearing to the world as William Sharp while experiencing insights and feelings that found an adequate means of expression only through the female persona.
On January 15 Sharp wrote again to Patrick Geddes from Ventnor to say he thought he should go to Edinburgh to discuss details of the publishing firm and “Celtic matters.” They would be able to accomplish more in a day than in “months of correspondence.” The Sharps were returning to London on January 18 and would be fully occupied through the weekend, but he might be able to get away on January 21 and spend the next two days in Edinburgh. He could ill afford the trip, but it seemed a necessity. Geddes replied he would come to London for the meeting, and Sharp wrote on January 21 to say he would keep the afternoon and evenings of January 29, 30, and 31 entirely free to talk with Geddes. The Sharp’s flat had only one bedroom, but he would arrange with a nearby friend — probably Mona Caird — a place for him to stay.
In his response to Sharp’s January 15 letter, Geddes suggested Sharp consider moving to Edinburgh to play a leading role in the publishing firm and avoid extensive travel back and forth between London and Edinburgh. In his January 21 letter Sharp said he found the idea tempting: “I have a profound & chronic distaste for London & London life and a nostalgia for the north.” The chief drawback of a move would be financial as a good deal of his income derived from reviewing London art exhibits and works of literature. Editors were less likely to ask for reviews beyond the London postal zone “partly on account of late transmissions & early return of proofs.” He doubted there was “publishing, secretarial, tutorial, or other work in Edinburgh that, without more expenditure of time and energy than I now give to my reviewing, would ensure me say £300 & leave me time for my own particular work.” In addition to the financial disadvantage of a permanent move to Edinburgh, the Sharps had “a great number of acquaintances and some dear friends” in London, and the city was a great meeting place, a “bazaar of fortunate & smiling chances.” Sharp mentioned his interest in “the Stage” and his “ambitions in that direction — &, I may add, Music, which is one of my wife’s chief joys.” He didn’t see how he could “throw up Fogtown — at present.” Perhaps he could have “rooms in Edinburgh (or the flat in Ramsey Gardens we want to take if possible […] and come & go a good deal: in fact, if the publishing idea develops, & you entrust me with a responsible part in it, I would need to be in Edinburgh for one week & perhaps two weeks in each month.” On the other hand, if his work for the Geddes publishing firm were to develop to the point where he could receive a guaranteed salary of £300 per year, the move might be possible as he would be glad to drop all his “miscellaneous pen-work.”
Having addressed his own situation and availability to take part in the new publishing venture, Sharp turned to the proposed firm and described at some length how he thought it should develop. “The effort,” he wrote, “should be to produce at first certain books of as pronounced a character as possible — books of significance so to say: so that the Firm be known at once for a certain distinction.” To help the firm get a good start, he suggested “a little Fortnightly,” like The Chap-Book Stone and Kimball was publishing in Chicago. Selling for only two pence, it was “attractive in itself and a splendid advt. of their wares.” He had given Geddes an issue of The Chap-Book that featured his photograph and an article publicizing the American edition of his Vistas. The fortnightly would require careful editing and handling, and Sharp would be glad to undertake it. Here, Geddes inserted “Agreed” on the letter. Sharp’s suggestion was the genesis of The Evergreen: A Northern Seasonal, a more elaborate publication, the first issue of which appeared in the spring of 1895.
Sharp went on to say the firm should engage in “no haphazard publishing at first”: “There might be, to start with, a biological book by A. Thomson: a sociological or other work by yourself: ‘A New Synthesis of Art’ or other work by myself […] a Celtic romance by Fiona Macleod […] (for it is on Celtic lines, I think, the most development will take place first).” He estimated the firm would need an initial outlay of about £1,000; authors would be paid on a royalty system. As for his own involvement,
If you intend me to be the literary “boss” in the firm (tho’ perhaps I mistake your intent!) I would give my best thought, care, & experience to making the venture a success in every way, & ultimately a potent factor in the development of Scotland & of Edr [Edinburgh] in particular. Of course, my editorial experiences, & far-reaching literary connections, would stand me in good stead: & in a year or so we could have a varied and potent “staff.”
Sharp was thinking very grandly as he continued, “If I were lity. ‘boss,’ as I say, one effort would be to centralise in Edinburgh all the Celtic work now being done by Scottish, Irish, and Welsh writers.” Capital would be needed to “grease the wheels” and then “patience” and “wise discretion.” Here Geddes again wrote, “Agreed.” There is always room at the “top of the tree,” Sharp asserted, and “We are too enthusiastic, too determined, not to get to that top if it be possible, as I firmly believe it is, and as I know you do.” To this statement, Geddes gave his final blessing: “Quite so. Full speed ahead!” Sharp concluded by apologizing for writing “so scrappy and unsatisfactory a note,” but said the writing of it moved him out of his “depression & ‘doleful dumps.’” This letter must have provided the basis for their discussion in London as Geddes noted his agreement with many of Sharp’s suggestions and moved ahead with them without involving Sharp. He must have sensed Sharp’s inability to stay focused for long on the practical details of management.
In early February 1895, Sharp was putting the finishing touches on the second Fiona Macleod romance, The Mountain Lovers, which John Lane published in the summer. He was also writing Fiona Macleod stories for a volume called The Sin-Eater and Other Tales which was published in November of 1895 by the Geddes firm in Edinburgh and by Stone and Kimball in Chicago. He was corresponding with Herbert Stone as Fiona about that volume and other possible Fiona publications and as William Sharp about a collection of short stories entitled The Gypsy Christ and Other Tales which Stone and Kimball published, also in 1895. The combination of writing fiction and arranging for publications negatively affected Sharp’s health. Elizabeth Sharp recalled an incident that brought home to her the seriousness of his condition.
A telegram had come. I took it to his study. I could get no answer. I knocked, louder, then louder, — at last he opened the door with a curiously dazed look in his face. I explained. He answered, “Ah, I could not hear you for the sound of the waves!” It was the first indication to me, in words, of what troubled him (Memoir, pp. 242–43).
He was troubled by “the noise and confused magnetism of the great City” and his estrangement from the sea. Since there were no waves to be heard in London, he soon left for the West of Scotland.
In a February 13 letter to Herbert Stone, Sharp reported that he was going to Edinburgh at the weekend where he would see Fiona Macleod. On February 18 he would go to Corrie on the western island of Arran. He described his arrival in a letter to Elizabeth the next day:
It was a most glorious sail from Ardrossan. The sea was a sheet of blue and purple washed with gold. Arran rose like a dream of beauty. I was the sole passenger in the steamer, for the whole island! What made the drive of six miles more beautiful than ever was the extraordinary, fantastic beauty of the frozen waterfalls and burns caught as it were in the leap. Sometimes these immense icicles hung straight and long, like a Druid’s beard: sometimes in wrought sheets of gold, or magic columns and spaces of crystal. Sweet it was to smell the pine and the heather and bracken, and the salt weed upon the shore. The touch of dream was upon everything, from the silent hills to the brooding herons by the shore.
“In that exquisite solitude,” he continued, “I felt a deep exaltation grow. The flowing of the air of the hills laved the parched shores of my heart.” Arran brought a dramatic improvement in his mental condition, and the sea and the quiet majesty of the cold landscape released his creative impulses. The William Sharp who wrote this letter was deeply hidden from the world of London editing and publishing. He wrote vividly, compellingly, directly, and with no invocation of a feminine persona.
Years later, Sharp retold the story of this 1895 visit to Arran in an essay called “Earth, Fire, and Water” which appeared in Fiona Macleod’s The Divine Adventure: Iona; By Sundown Shores (1900). After repeating several tales about men who were called to the sea by hearing the sound of waves, the narrator continued:
I have myself in lesser degree, known this irresistible longing. I am not fond of towns, but some years ago I had to spend a winter in a great city. It was all-important to me not to leave during January; and in one way I was not ill-pleased, for it was a wild winter. But one night I woke, hearing a rushing sound in the street — the sound of water. I would have thought no more of it, had I not recognized the troubled noise of the tide, and the sucking and lapsing of the flow in weedy hollows. I rose and looked out. It was moonlight, and there was no water. When, after sleepless hours, I rose in the grey morning I heard the splash of waves. All that day and the next I heard the continual noise of waves. I could not write or read; at last I could not rest. On the afternoon of the third day the waves dashed up against the house. I said what I could to my friends and left by the night train. In the morning we (for a kinswoman was with me) stood on the Greenock Pier waiting for the Hebridean steamer, the Clansman, and before long were landed on an island, almost the nearest we could reach, and one that I loved well. We had to be landed some miles from the place I wanted to go, and it was a long and cold journey. The innumerable little waterfalls hung in icicles among the mosses, ferns, and white birches on the roadside. Before we reached our destination, we saw a wonderful sight. From three great mountains, their flanks flushed with faint rose, their peaks white and solemn, vast columns of white smoke ascended. It was as though volcanic fires had once again broken their long stillness. Then we saw what it was: the north wind (unheard, unfelt, where we stood) blew a hurricane against the other side of the peaks, and, striking up the leagues of hard snow, drove it upward like smoke, till the columns rose gigantic and hung between the silence of the white peaks and the silence of the stars.
That night, with the sea breaking less than a score yards from where I lay, I slept, though for three nights I had not been able to sleep. When I woke, my trouble was gone.
The word painting of this passage is precise and moving; it illustrates the beauty Sharp could achieve when he dropped his defenses and wrote from his heart. In this passage he recalls the peace that came to him in February 1895 when he escaped from London to the Isle of Arran. The incident itself and his description of it in the letter to his wife had germinated and evolved into a striking and controlled passage of poetic prose. Does Fiona Macleod, the supposed author of “Earth, Fire and Water,” enter the picture? The short answer is no. While there are subtle efforts to feminize the narrative voice earlier and later in the essay, none appear in this passage.
Elizabeth directly addressed the issue: “Although the essay is written over the signature of ‘Fiona Macleod’ and belongs to that particular phase of work, nevertheless it is obviously ‘William Sharp’ who tells the story, for the ‘we’ who stood on the pier at Greenock is himself in his dual capacity; his ‘kinswoman’ is his other self.” Sharp sometimes believed — and often encouraged his wife to believe — he was two separate people, one male and one female. In the 20 February letter of 1895, after telling Elizabeth he was alone on the ferry to Arran, he wrote, “There is something of a strange excitement in the knowledge that two people are here: so intimate and yet so far-off. For it is with me as though Fiona were asleep in another room. I catch myself listening for her step sometimes, for the sudden opening of a door. It is unawaredly that she whispers to me. I am eager to see what she will do — particularly in The Mountain Lovers. It seems passing strange to be here with her alone at last.” It was one thing to be William Sharp and Fiona Macleod, two people in one body, and in full control of both. It was quite another to claim to have no control over a second self that flourished within him. The implied separation of his creative imagination is unique and remarkable.
When Sharp objectified the Fiona persona as a separate person entirely free of control by the man the world knew as William Sharp, he was often describing not simply a creature of his imagination but a real person. The kinswoman who accompanied him to Arran in mid-winter 1895, stood on the pier with him, and was sleeping in the next room, may have been not the imaginary woman, Fiona Macleod, but the woman he loved, Edith Wingate Rinder. Ever kind and generous, Elizabeth wrote of Mrs. Rinder:
Because of her beauty, her strong sense of life and of the joy of life; because of her keen intuitions and mental alertness, her personality stood for him as a symbol of the heroic women of Greek and Celtic days, a symbol that, as he expressed it, unlocked new doors in his mind and put him “in touch with ancestral memories” of his race.
Sharp wrote to his wife of Edith Rinder in 1896: “to her I owe my development as ‘Fiona Macleod,’ […] without her there would have been no Fiona Macleod” (Memoir, p. 222).
One can speculate endlessly about the psychological interaction between Sharp and Edith that enabled him to produce the writings of Fiona Macleod, but it is impossible to define it precisely. It shifted over time, and even the Sharps, who described it variously, failed to understand it. Near the end of 1895, in writing to his friend Sir George Douglas, for example, Sharp called Fiona Macleod a “puzzling literary entity.” The previous January, we recall, he told Catherine Janvier, “My truest self, the self who is below all other selves, and my most intimate life and joys and sufferings, thoughts, emotions and dreams, must find expression, yet I cannot save in this hidden way.” We know Sharp and Edith were deeply in love for many years. It was she who enabled him to drop his defenses, release his deepest “self,” exercise most fully his creative imagination. He claimed he could become Fiona Macleod — and thus write most easily as Fiona Macleod — only when he and Edith were alone together. It sometimes appears he was using his need to be away from the city, his need for solitude, as an excuse to be alone with Edith. The build-up of frustration that preceded his escape to the West of Scotland in February 1895 and again in June of that year may have been, at least partially, a build-up of sexual tension. The sense of relief and renewal in his February 20 letter to Elizabeth and later in a June 4 letter to Geddes is palpable.
By March third, Sharp was back in London writing again to Geddes, this time with a detailed proposal for a quarterly which would be used as a vehicle for stories, articles, poems and visual art and as a means of advertising the firm’s other publications. He had in mind “a thoroughly representative Anglo-Celtic ‘quarterly’” that would be “well-supported” in all the big towns of Great Britain and America and draw “Anglo-Celtic writers to look to Edinburgh.” He enclosed a draft of what he thought the first number should contain and volunteered to be its editor (with the help of his wife). Drawing on his London connections, he would assemble a strong list of contributors, and he envisioned the quarterly as “a valuable record” of the entire Celtic Revival. The quarterly would be entitled “The Celtic World.” Rather than naming an editor, it should say only: “Published by Patrick Geddes and Colleagues” or “Edited and Published in Edinburgh.” He outlined a possible Table of Contents for a “Summer Number” that included items by the most notable Irish, English, Welsh, and Scottish Celticists: W. B. Yeats, Ernest Rhys, Patrick Geddes, Katherine Tynan, George Russell (AE), and, of course, Fiona Macleod among them, and a Frontispiece and Celtic Ornament by John Duncan. Sharp was planning expansively.
Geddes took the idea of a quarterly issued as a book and implemented it quickly and more restrictively. He ignored Sharp’s offer of himself as editor, began correspondence with T. Fisher Unwin in London to arrange for distribution, and produced not a summer issue, as suggested by Sharp, but a Spring issue called simply The Evergreen: A Northern Seasonal. This would be followed, in accordance with Sharp’s suggestion, by Summer, Fall and Winter issues. Geddes asked William Macdonald, an aspiring poet, to assemble and oversee the publication of the volume. The volume began with a seven-page “Proem” signed by Macdonald and J. Arthur Thomson, a biologist and a friend of Geddes which clearly set forth Patrick Geddes’s ideas for reforming not only Edinburgh’s Old Town, but the industrialized cities of Britain and the world. It equated the decadence that pervades literature and the arts with the decay of cities and asserted there were signs of a New Birth “against the background of Decadence.”
The music of the coming Renascence is heard so far only in “broken snatches,” but in these snatches four chords are sounded, which we would fain carry in our hearts — That faith may be had still in the friendliness of fellows; that the love of country is not a lost cause; that the love of women is the way of life; and that in the eternal newness of every Child is an undying promise for the Race.
In those words, one hears the distinctive voice of Patrick Geddes filtered through the voice of the aspiring poet William Macdonald.
The content of the Spring volume was divided into four sections: “Spring in Nature,” “Spring in Life,” “Spring in the World,” and “Spring in the North.” Each story, poem, and essay touches on the theme of renewal. The authors are not the luminaries of the larger Celtic renaissance proposed by Sharp, but Scots largely unknown today — except, of course, Patrick Geddes, who contributed two essays (“Life and its Science” and “The Scots Renascence”), and William Sharp, who contributed one short poem under his own name and two poems and a story (“The Anointed Man”) as Fiona Macleod. Celtic designed Headpieces and Tailpieces appear throughout the volume which was printed by Constable in Edinburgh on fine paper. Some copies were produced with tan leather bindings and a full-page design on the front cover embossed in green. There are several full-page drawings, the finest by John Duncan, the principal visual artist of the Scottish revival, one of which (“Apollo’s School-Days”) shows the influence of Aubrey Beardsley.
In a letter to Geddes dated May 15, Sharp said he liked much of what was in the Spring volume, but some of it lacked “distinctiveness as well as distinction.” It was promising and with “careful piloting” should “come to stay.” He read Geddes’s two contributions “with particular interest and pleasure, not only with the affection of a friend but with the sangfroid of a critic.” The poetry in the volume, including that of Fiona Macleod, did not seem as good as the prose. The editorial control, he wrote, “must be more exigent.” And the illustrations, he thought, perilously weak: “With the exception of Duncan’s “Apollo’s School Days” & some of the head-pieces, there is not a drawing […] which is not crude in draughtsmanship and in design — or in one or two instances frankly meaningless!” He thought John Duncan’s “Anima Celtica” weakly imitative and lacking in any redeeming features. Sharp judged this kind of work as “the mere dross and debris of the ‘fin-de Siècle’ ebb,” stating that it had “the same effect on one’s optic nerves as a scraping nail has on one’s auditory ditto.” He expected much adverse criticism of the volume because of its art; “the Yellow Book drawings are at least clever if ultra-fin-de-Siècle, while the majority of these of The Evergreen are fin-de-Siècle without being clever.” Perhaps he was too severe in his criticism, but he felt so strongly “that a really valuable & significant future awaits the ‘Evergreen’ if it preserve & develop its best, in literature & art, & disengage itself from what is amateurish, that it seems worthwhile to be severely exigent.”
The second volume of The Evergreen appeared in the fall of 1895, the third (Summer) and the fourth (Winter) in 1896. Though Sharp was not named editor, his critique had the effect of improving the quality of the later volumes. In a note called “Envoy” at the close of the fourth volume Patrick Geddes and W. Macdonald announced the end of the first series and declared the need to take some seasons off before producing a second series. Since the publication was without an editor and invited authors were free to contribute as they wished, The Evergreen reflected Geddes’s effort to create an artistic commune in the Outlook Tower and its surrounding buildings, in which writers, visual artists, and scientists would live together happily stimulating each other’s creativity. According to the “Envoy,” the artists and scientists now recognized the need to go off on their own and do their own work before coming together in a new synthesis. The Evergreen was not revived.
In early April Sharp wrote a long letter to Herbert Stone complaining that he had not received the proof sheets for The Gypsy Christ though they had been promised in February. Moreover, Fiona Macleod was upset for not having heard from him about the agreement to publish an American edition of Pharais. Sharp was beginning to have doubts that Stone and Kimball would be a reliable American publisher of his books. It was an early sign that stresses had begun to develop between the two young publishers. In fact, Melville Stone — Herbert’s father and the publisher of the Chicago Daily News — who supported the publishing venture was beginning to wonder if it would develop into a viable business.
In mid-April Sharp went to Paris to cover a salon for the Glasgow Herald. Back in London on April 27, he apologized to Geddes for not having time in Paris to look up Thomas Barclay, a Scottish barrister specializing in international law, and ask him to support Geddes’s scheme to create a Franco-Scottish College somewhere in France. He promised to contact Barclay when he was back in Paris on May 5, this time with his wife, to review another salon.
Prior to the second Paris visit, he wrote another long letter to Geddes (April 29) that described an elaborate plan for the Geddes’s firm’s book publications. He planned to be in Scotland around May 20 and would stay with the Geddes in Dundee for a few days to confer “about the publishing business.” The two men had come to an arrangement, perhaps during Geddes’s late January visit to London, for Sharp to oversee the publication of books, and his April 29 letter was filled with proposals for them to discuss in person. Sharp thought that a volume of short stories by Fiona Macleod (The Sin-Eater and Other Stories) should be one of the firm’s “start-off books.” He explained that short stories of the kind were in demand at that time, and its sales should be helped by the appearance of Fiona’s second romance, The Mountain Lovers, in June. Geddes must have had Sharp’s letter on hand when the two met in Dundee as Geddes noted in its margin “Press for July” and then “Agreed 23/5/5/ for the Autumn.”
Lyra Celtica would also be ready for publication in the fall. Though Sharp was the primary editor of the volume, he wrote on April 29 that its editor of record will be not F. M. or W. S., but Elizabeth Sharp. This was advisable “for several reasons (one among them, the inclusion of F. M.’s runes & Celtic lyrics).” Sharp, however, would write a “critical introductory essay (as distinct from an ordinary preface).” This book, “though mainly Scottish-Celtic and Irish Celtic,” would contain “representative pieces by Breton (trs), Cornish, & Welsh, & Manx poets.” Sharp suggested that the firm’s first book be an “R. L. S. volume” — that is, a volume either about or by Robert Louis Stevenson — followed by a romance composed by “a well-known Man.” Here Geddes wrote in the margin “Mrs. Mona Caird — Agreed 23/5/5.” Though not a man, Mona Caird was well-known as an advocate for the rights of women, especially for granting women equal legal rights within the marriage contract. Geddes’s marginal note raises the interesting prospect that Mona Caird, who, in 1894, had published her ground-breaking novel, The Daughters of Danaus, was working on or had in mind a romance. Neither the Stevenson book nor a Mona Caird romance was published by the Geddes firm. Sharp also proposed a series of short books of fiction, perhaps called “The Evergreen Series,” and a “Cosmopolitan Series” containing translations of works by “foreign authors of marked power & distinction in the ‘new movement’ — a vague phrase that really means little save the onward wave of the human mind.” He listed no fewer than fourteen authors from six countries, including the United States. Finally, he thought it best to leave until 1896 the publication of a book called The Literary Ideal, which would contain the lectures he planned to deliver in August in Geddes’s Summer School. Geddes wisely wrote in the margin “Discuss in August,” as he wanted to see the lectures before agreeing to publish them.
Though few of the ideas proposed in this letter materialized, Sharp served briefly as Manager of Patrick Geddes and Colleagues and, when that proved impracticable, as its Literary Adviser. Under his guidance the firm produced several beautifully designed books — authored by William Sharp, his wife, and his friends — that rival in design and format those published by established firms in London and Dublin for the Irish contingent of the Celtic Revival. Under Sharp’s guidance, the firm became the principal vehicle for publishing his own writings under the guise of Fiona Macleod, who became, according to an article in The Irish Independent, “the most remarkable figure in the Scottish Celtic Renascence.” The Sin-Eater and Other Tales appeared in the fall of 1895 and The Washer of the Ford in 1896. Also, in 1896, the firm issued Fiona’s From the Hills of Dream (1896), a collection of poems that was published in multiple editions. In 1897, when Sharp was no longer Literary Director, the firm issued Fiona’s Songs and Tales of St. Columba and His Age and The Shorter Stories of Fiona Macleod, a rearrangement and reissue in three inexpensive paper-covered volumes of the stories published in The Sin-Eater and The Washer of the Ford. Lyra Celtica and the first two Fiona Macleod books appeared in a series Sharp called “The Celtic Library.”
Lyra Celtica was the firm’s most successful publication, with several editions published, beginning in 1896. As proposed in Sharp’s April letter, it was compiled and edited by Elizabeth Sharp, with a lengthy introduction and copious notes written by Sharp. The series also included, in 1896, The Fiddler of Carne: A North Sea Winter’s Tale, a Welsh romance set in the late eighteenth century by Sharp’s friend Ernest Rhys, and, in 1897, The Shadow of Arvor; Legendary Romances and Folk-Tales of Brittany, translated and retold by none other than Edith Wingate Rinder. The binding of the latter volume was among the most beautiful of the series.
The Rhys and Rinder books exemplify Sharp’s desire to have the firm represent more than Scottish Gaeldom by introducing tales from Wales and Brittany. Neither Patrick Geddes nor William Sharp were well organized businessmen, and the firm soon descended into financial insolvency. Sharp’s efforts to sustain the writing and publication of his dual-authorship, his frequent bouts of ill-health and depression, and his inability to remain for long in one place placed a strain on his relationship with the individuals Geddes enlisted to try to save the firm. Geddes was endlessly patient with Sharp and concerned with his well-being. Their close friendship produced a great deal in a brief period, but the strain ultimately became too great, and they gradually parted ways, with Geddes’s interests expanding into town planning on a grand scale.
Sharp went to York on May 18, spent two nights there with his friend George Cotterell, editor of the Yorkshire Herald, and visited the Geddes home in Dundee on May 20. On May 23, he left for a long weekend of relaxation in the West of Scotland. During their brief visit Geddes became concerned about the state of Sharp’s physical and mental well-being. He wrote to Elizabeth Sharp to ask her opinion about her husband’s health and to propose the possibility of the publishing firm providing him a stipend for the work he would do. This would also enable him to spend less time on reviewing, and more time on his poetry and fiction. In a late May response, Elizabeth expressed her deep appreciation for Geddes’s concern and generosity. She was thankful to have someone else who “sees how he is expending health and strength — and encroaching on his reserve — in work of a kind he ought not to do.” She continued:
Like you, I have a great belief in the future of W. S. and Fiona M., and I am equally persuaded that he must give up the fretting hack-work in order to give his real work its chance. But it is so difficult to make him do so; he grows nervous, and, I regret to say, chiefly on my account. But I feel sure, that now, your kind interest in him, and thought for him will do more [than] anything else to make him, not only feel, but act on our advice — which coincides. You are indeed a most valuable ally.
It was a relief for her “to see that there is a friend who understands Will and sees his persistent overwork and delicacy.” She would discuss Geddes’s offers with her husband when he returned to London and put him into “his doctor’s hands” to deal with the weakness in his back, which was the result of overwork. She assured Geddes of her interest in all the “schemes” he and her husband were discussing and hoped she might be allowed “to share in a little of the work.”
Shortly after he returned to London on May 29 and heard from Elizabeth about the letter from Geddes, Sharp expressed his gratitude to Geddes for his “solicitude about his health and welfare.” “You are truly,” he wrote, “a good & loyal comrade as well as a dear friend.” He promised to ponder all Geddes’s “arguments and advice,” but he was sorry Geddes had written “so exigently” about his health, especially about his back, as he had hoped not to worry Elizabeth about that “passing trouble”. He then launched into a lengthy description of his days in the West:
I had the most glorious weather in the West and had a true sun-bath every day. Friday, Saty, Sunday, & Monday last I spent at one of my favourite remote places on Loch Fyne in Western Argyll. There I lived mentally, spiritually, & physically (excuse the unscientific specifications!) in rainbow-gold. All day from sunrise to midnight I was on the higher mountain slopes, or in the pine-woods (full of continuous solemn music with the north wind), or on the sea. On Sunday forenoon I rowed across (2 miles or so) to the uninhabitable rocky solitudes opposite (South of Ceann More) — went for a long glorious swim of about an hour! — lay naked in the sunlight below a pine on a mossy crag, & dreamed pagan dreams, & fell asleep, & had a wonderful vision of woodland lives unknown of men, and of a beautiful Child God, of which you will hear something from Fiona in due time — & wakened two hours later, still sun-bathed, tanned & burnt & midge-bitten — then another swim — then rowed across the loch again &, after tea etc., away up to the summit of a hill set against a marvellous vision of mountains & peaks & lofty ranges, which I have baptised with a Gaelic name meaning the Hill of the Beauty of the World — then watched the sunglow till 10 p.m. & came down thro’ the dewy heather to the pinewoods, where I climbed into the branches of a great red brother & lay awhile listening to the wind, with its old-world wonder-song of the pines, & watching the moon sail upward.
While his physical and mental state doubtless was improved by this brief interlude, the main impetus of the letter is to convince Geddes that he was well enough to undertake work for the publishing firm, and well enough to prepare the lectures he promised to deliver for Geddes’s Summer School in August:
I have come away with a sense of the sunflood through & through me: of magic rhythms and hints: of secret voices and cadences haunting-sweet: & with the almost passionate health & eagerness of that young Norse god who in sheer extravagance of joy wove the rainbows into a garland for the moment’s mountain he made out of falling worlds.
All this, Sharp asserts, “means [that] I am well”. He thanks God “for life — for a swift pulse & red blood — and fever in the heart and brain,” and states his intention to “be good, & to lecture, & to publish, & behave, & always love Mrs. Geddes & yourself.” Much of this is overblown, but it nonetheless again illustrates Sharp’s determination to recover quickly from frequent bouts of illness and depression. The overt “Paganism” of his account and his promise to behave raise the possibility that he was not alone in this restorative interlude. Though he remained well enough through June to do a good deal of work, his recovery, as usual, was only temporary.
Letters: January–June, 1895
To a friend [January 1, l895]1
… London I do not like, though I feel its magnetic charm, or sorcery. I suffer here. The gloom, the streets, the obtrusion and intrusion of people, all conspire against thought, dream, true living. It is a vast reservoir of all the evils of civilised life with a climate which makes me inclined to believe that Dante came here instead of to Hades… .
Memoir, p. 242
To Dr. Ward, January 1, 1895
Rutland House | Greencroft Gardens | So. Hampstead | 1: Jan: ’95
Dear Dr. Ward,
I send this line introducing to you my friend Mr. Frank Rinder, an able & promising young writer. Everyone is now talking of Stevenson’s recent utterance — and among these none is more interesting than that about “Mr. Robin,” as he called his poetic forerunner, Robert Fergusson.2 Fergusson’s poetry, & still more his short and tragic life — ill-starred as that of his contemporary Chatterton — fascinated Stevenson, & certainly his stirring words (read at the Burns Club) have done much to create a keen interest in this pioneer of Burns & Tannahill.3
Mr. Frank Rinder has written an excellent & authoritarian account of the poet — and at my suggestion is to submit his MS to you, as it seems to me likely to appeal to the readers of your ever fresh & welcome paper. (Please keep room for me, once in a way? Etc?)
I hope you & yours, & all friends in common, are well.
With Cordial New Year wishes | Sincerely yours | William Sharp
ALS Princeton University
To Horace Scudder, January 2, 1895
Rutland House, | Greencroft Gardens, | So. Hampstead. | 2nd January 1895
My dear Horace Scudder,
Frederick Shields and I have just come back from the funeral of Christina Rossetti — who, I have no doubt you will agree with us, may well be regarded as our foremost woman poet since Mrs. Browning. We have been talking, too, of our friend of oversea: and about his delightful book on “Childhood in Lit: and Art”:4 and both wishing that you could see the wonderful work that is now being done by Shields in the building near Tyburn Gate that is to be called, and is to be, a House of Rest. The opportunity is one that has never really come to an English painter before: and Shields is unquestionably, now in his noble maturity, just the man.
I do not know if you would care to have another article by me at present: but I would much like to write for you a paper of the “Walter Pater” kind (about which I have had several gratifying letters from America and elsewhere) on Christina Rossetti.5 I knew her intimately, and of late years was one of the few who saw anything of her. She had a strange personality — & I think the story of her life, of her relationships with Dante Gabriel Rossetti, and iterary record — with a critical estimate and some illuminative quotations — would be of wide interest both in this country and in America: in America particularly, if it be true what I have heard, that there she is the most widely read of all modern English poets. An old friend who knew her when she was a girl (in the Germ6 days) has given me some interesting details, & of course I know William Michael Rossetti. I may add that during the last week or two of Rossetti’s life, I stayed with him at Birchington, with Miss Christina Rossetti as fellow-guest: & that I could give some interesting reminiscences.
Kindly let me hear from you by return.
My other proposal is in connection with a lecture which I have been invited to give at University Hall in Edinburgh next Special Summer Session (August) — on “The Celtic Renaissance”, a subject which is becoming recognised as one of profound interest and indeed of paramount significance. I need hardly say I should not be asked to do this were I not a specialist in old and contemporary Scots-Irish Celtic literature. But of course I restrict myself to the Celtic spirit: not to what is written in Scottish Gaelic or Irish Gaelic. The new Celtic movement in Ireland & Scotland, & in a less degree in Wales, is, in a word, of vital importance.
My other lectures (these chosen by myself) are to be on “The Relations of Nature and Poetry”, “The Ideals of Art”, and “The Literary Ideal”. The last named will also be the first essay in, or Introduction to, a volume of critical studies which I hope to publish this year under that title, “The Literary Ideal”.7
But I mention “The Celtic Renaissance” as most likely to suit you.
My kind remembrances & best wishes for 1895 to Mrs. and Miss Scudder, and as for yourself you know that you have the friendliest regard of
Yours Cordially, | William Sharp
ALS Harvard University, Houghton Library
To Catherine Janvier, January 5, 1895
London, January 5, 1895
Early tomorrow morning I leave for the Isle of Wight for a fortnight… . I hope to send you a letter from the beautiful place by the sea where we are going to. It will be a letter from Fiona Macleod.
Yes, Pharais is mine. It is a book out of my heart, out of the core of my heart. I wrote it with the pen dipped in the ichor of my life. It has reached people more than I dreamt of as likely. In Scotland especially it has stirred and created a new movement. Here, men like George Meredith, Grant Allen, H. D. Traill, and Theodore Watts hailed it as a “work of genius.” Ignored in some quarters, abused in others, and unheeded by “the general reader,” it has yet had a reception that has made me deeply glad. It is the beginning of my true work. Only one or two know I am “Fiona Macleod.” Let you and my dear T. A. J.8 preserve my secret. I trust you.
You will find more of me in Pharais than in anything I have written. Let me add that you will find The Mountain Lovers, at which I am now writing when I can, more elemental still, while simpler… . By blood I am part Celt, and partly so by upbringing, by Spirit wholly so… . One day I will tell you of some of the strange old mysteries of earlier days I have part learned, part divined, and other things of the spirit. You can understand how I cannot do my true work, in this accursed London…
… I resent too close identification with the so-called Celtic renaissance. If my work is to depend solely on its Gaelic connection, then let it go, as go it must. My work must be beautiful in itself — Beauty is a Queen and must be served as a Queen… . You have asked me once or twice about F. M., why I took her name: and how and when she came to write Pharais. It is too complex to tell you just now. The name was born naturally: (of course I had associations with the name Macleod.) It, Fiona, is very rare now. Most Highlanders would tell you it was extinct — even as the diminutive of Fionnaghal (Flora). But it is not. It is an old Celtic name (meaning “a fair maid”) still occasionally to be found. I know a little girl, the daughter of a Highland clergyman, who is called Fiona. All my work is so intimately wrought with my own experiences that I cannot tell you about Pharais, etc., without telling you my whole life.
… I can write out my heart in a way I could not do as William Sharp, and indeed I could not do so if I were the woman Fiona Macleod is supposed to be, unless veiled in scrupulous anonymity…
This rapt sense of oneness with nature, this cosmic ecstasy and elation, this wayfaring along the extreme verges of the common world, all this is so wrought up with the romance of life that I could not bring myself to expression by my outer self, insistent and tyrannical as that need is… . My truest self, the self who is below all other selves, and my most intimate life and joys and sufferings, thoughts, emotions and dreams, must find expression, yet I cannot save in this hidden way.
Memoir, pp. 226–27
To Patrick Geddes, [January 10, 1895]
[Croft House | House | Hambrough Road | Ventnor]9
In a few days now I expect to have the long delayed copies of the new American edition of my Vistas, & to send one to you.
But now enough about myself. You, I hope are well: with your busy brain as alert and hopeful & observant as usual. I often think of you, cher ami.
On some other occasion I must write to you about the papers & pamphlets of your own which you gave me. In all, a remarkable power of distinctive thought is evident: in those that deal with art there is not only forcible and admirable writing but unusual flair. My wife begs to be most cordially remembered to you — & to thank you — for all your kindness in the matter of the Nit. of Amyl Capsules etc. etc.10
We shall be here for about a week yet: but must be in London again by the afternoon of Friday the 18th.
Do let me hear from you.
Your comrade in many things & Your friend in all | William Sharp
Please if practicable write to me (& give me as long a letter as you can spare) by return: if impracticable, send me at least a P/C of acknowledgment. Letter writing is a great strain for me just now — & I don’t want to have to write this note a third time! So I’d like to know you’ve received it!!
ALS National Library of Scotland
To Anna Geddes, January 10, 1895
Croft House | Hambrough Road | Ventnor | 10/1/95
Dear Mrs. Geddes,
I have just written a long letter to that unduly silent spouse of yours: and now enclose a brief line to you.
I have not been very well of late, though now greatly better: mainly from overwork. So, a week or so ago my wife & I came here, at the doctor’s suggestion, for a short spell of comparative rest, & for the sea-air, quiet, & long “sleeps”. We’ll remain in the Isle of Wight (at above address) for about a week yet, but must be home again in South Hampstead by the afternoon of Friday next, 18th.
I often think of you and Geddes: and always with a glow of pleasure, and, if you will allow me to say so, of affection. My wife, who liked you both so much, now says she is quite in love with both of you!
Well, were you very surprised when Geddes told you that W. S. and Fiona Macleod are one and the same person? I could not resist the temptation to write to you, as F. M., in response to your kind letter: indeed, courtesy prompted this, then, and in the circumstances. Still, I did not mean to leave you long in the misunderstanding, of course.
I need hardly say I have every confidence in you as well as in him, as to the absolute preservation of my secret: even if the subject, by any hazard, come up in conversation any time.
I wished to pay you a little act of homage & esteem: & so got a little album (with Celtic designs) from Iona, and filled it with MS. excerpts from Pharais & other unpubd. writings, specially for you. I sent it to you just before Xmas: but I fear my little Celtic offering is gone to No-Man’s-Land. If so, you must take the will for the deed, and believe that you are held in friendship & esteem by two of your sincerest well wishers
Fiona Macleod | and William Sharp
P.S. My wife is going to write to you someday soon. She looks forward with keen pleasure to next August.
ALS National Library of Scotland
To Patrick Geddes, [January 15, 1895]11
Croft House, Hambrough Road, Ventnor. | Tuesday afternoon
My dear Geddes,
I hope that by this time you are under less strain of work and that “Bhean Gath-greine” and the little gathain-greine* are well. Bhean Gath-Greine is right to be in bed, and resting: but I trust that the actual need is now over. Please thank her for the welcome little supplementary note I had this morning: and in telling her that I am glad she likes that volume of stories I so strongly recommended to you both, add that the author is a Scot, from Perthshire, and I think from near Perth, though his name is not Ian Maclaren. He is a man of middle age, and is a clergyman of a Scot’s church in Liverpool.
*Anglice: “Lady Sunbeam and the little Beam-lets!”
Later
Well I took up the pen to answer your letter in detail, but I find it difficult to be succinct and adequately explanatory in so complicated a matter.
The long and short of it is that I think, just before I settle down again, I had better take a run up to Edinburgh to talk this and other questions over with you. We could do more thus (in the matter of publishing, Celtic matters, etc.) in a day than we could manage in a month by correspondence: and at present any writing about details tires me very much: or writing of any kind, except in the morning: though I am ever so much better. Certainly I can ill afford to do this, as things are: but there are two economies to consider, and I think I choose the wiser in deciding to go to Edinburgh to see you. (I can also take notes for the Celtic school of ornament article etc.)
Friday and Saturday & Sunday of this week are fully preoccupied. But I might be able to get away on Monday morning. Could you put me up that night? I daresay I’ll stay in Edinburgh over Tuesday & Wednesday, but I could go to my mother’s on those days. (In fact, it must be on these days or not at all just now.)
I am taking for granted that you will not be at Dundee — and that you will be able to spare the time to talk things over. (I have neither time nor health to spare just now for meeting other people.)
If this reach you tomorrow (Wednesday) evening, will you kindly write by return. If not till Thursday, then address to me at the Grosvenor Club, New Bond St, London: marked “Not to be forwarded.” We leave here early on Friday morning: but my art-work will prevent my getting home till about 9 or 10 p.m.
Perhaps the little “rune” overleaf will suit you for “The Evergreen.”
Ever yours, | William Sharp
ALS National Library of Scotland
To Patrick Geddes, [January 21, 1895]
Monday12
My dear Geddes,
We are very sorry indeed to hear of the illness of your very little boy, but hope it will now run its course swiftly and mildly. Our sympathies are with you both. It is probably hard upon Mrs. Geddes, after the children having been so long from home, & now the girlet having to be sent away.
I am too pressed to write letters today, and yet I cannot do anything else, feeling as “down” as though I had that infernal influenza again — tho’ I think it is more the low swing of the pendulum. However, proofs and revision of typed MSS etc. are ready to hand, and must be gone on with.
Well, as things are, it would suit better if you came to us next Tuesday. You will not mind having to sleep away from here will you: i.e. as our guest, but in a room in another house, somewhere near? I’ll get one for you as near as possible, and you can look upon my study as your own: & of course you’ll have all your meals with us, consistently with your wishes or arrangements. For alas, in our small flat there is no spare room.
Let me hear from you soon [and also] because I wish to keep myself as free as possible for you. At present, I am free (or have freed myself) on Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday: i.e. as regards afternoon and evening freedom — for I am too much in arrears just now not to have to utilise the morning hours (say till 12). Perhaps one day you would care to come for a ramble in the country near: — Milton’s and Matthew Arnold’s country. (Chalfont St. Giles & Chemis).
I am sure you are right about Edinburgh versus London. I have a profound & chronic distaste for London & London life: and a nostalgia for the north. The chief drawback to any change is the problem as to some surety in income (here chiefly derived from art-work, which would be lost to me & to my wife, worth about £250, as a regular thing, but increased by occasional art-work in the magazine etc.) — Thus a considerable part of my reviewing would be lost, owing to the growing habit with editors not to send review-books beyond the London postal area (partly on account of late transmission & early return of proofs). Again, London is a great meeting-place, a “bazaar of fortunate & smiling chances”: then, we have a great number of acquaintances and some dear friends: and, finally, there is my interest in the Stage, & my ambitions in that direction — &, I may add, Music, which is one of my wife’s chief joys. However, partial residence in London, or frequency of visitation, could be placed to the other side.
As you will understand, the point is mainly one of means of subsistence. In other words, is there publishing, secretarial, tutorial, or other work in Edinburgh that, without more expenditure of time and energy than I now give to my art work and reviewing, would ensure me say £300 & leave me time for my own particular work. I doubt it.
On the other hand, I would in some ways be glad to stop all this miscellaneous pen-work. I feel I am wasting time, and opportunities, myself. If I were free from it, I could devote more of my time to making a name for myself in fiction and the drama: & once I could depend on that kind of pen-work, I should be independent of London.
On the whole then, I don’t see how I could throw up Fogtown — at present. What I would like to do would be to have rooms in Edinburgh (or the flat in Ramsey Gardens we want to take if possible — and about which we’ll speak to you when you come) and come & go a good deal: in fact, if the publishing idea develops,13 & you entrust me with a responsible part in it, I would need to be in Edinburgh one week & perhaps two weeks in each month.
Àpropos of publishing — the effort should be to produce at first certain books of as pronounced a character as possible — books of significance so to say: so that the Firm be known at once for a certain distinction. Again, it will be financially important that the publications should be as varied as practicable: i.e. fiction and belles lettres as well as science, philosophy, etc. Among ourselves (Arthur Thomson, you, Fiona Macleod, W. S. etc.) we could start well: and by loyally seeking the common good as well as looking to our own interests (i.e. not letting our own interests be the primary determining factors in our procedure). I am convinced we should maintain & speedily develop that good start — among the highly advisable things to do would be the production of a little Fortnightly like that Chap Book I gave you (the one with [an] article on myself, and photo — you remember?) — which would be at once attractive and a splendid advt. It might be brought out in the same way, and at the same price 2d. [Here Geddes has written: “Why not 3d?”] The C.B.14 was originally started by Stone & Kimball as an artistic & worthy advt. of their wares — but speedily attained a circulation of 10,000 copies each fortnightly issue — & now sells out 12,500 each issue. It would require careful editing & handling: — & I should be glad to undertake it. [Here Geddes has written: “Agreed”] It would be paying in itself — & would attract wide notice to the publications.
There might be, to start with, a biological book by A. Thomson:15 a sociological or other work by yourself: “A New Synthesis of Art” or other work by myself, or perhaps “Ernest Hello: A Study” or my wife’s “The Spirit of Man” (being a translation of L’Homme of Hello): a Celtic romance by Fiona Macleod: some other Celtic book, in prose or verse (for it is on Celtic lines, I think, the most development will take place first): a vol. of striking short stories: if possible, a really striking and original novel. These could be printed, bound, & advertised, & distributed on an outlay (carefully administered) varying from £500 to £750: or including the Edinburgh Chap Book, & extra & unforeseen expense, & extra advertising, etc. at say £1,000. As to payments to authors: that wd. need to be on a royalty system. There would need to be no haphazard publishing at first: & especially in the choice of what to begin with fiction, great judgment would need to be exercised. If you intend me to be the literary “boss” in the firm (tho’ perhaps I mistake your intent!) I would give my best thought, care, & experience to making the venture a success in every way, & ultimately a potent factor in the development of Scotland & of Edr.16 in particular. Of course my editorial experiences, & far-reaching literary connections, would stand me in good stead: & in a year or so we could have a varied and potent “staff”. If I were lity. “boss,” as I say, one effort would be to centralise in Edinburgh all the Celtic work now being done by Scottish, Irish, and Welsh writers.
It is a question of capital, of “greasing the wheels pro tem” and of patience & wise discretion [Here Geddes wrote: “Agreed”].
There is, as has been wisely said, always room — at the top of the tree!
We are too enthusiastic, too determined, not to get to that top if it be possible, as I firmly believe it is, and as I know you do. [Here Geddes wrote: “Quite so. Full speed ahead!”].
However, these & all other relevant matters I must leave over now till we meet. Let me have a line from you to say if you will come to us on Tuesday. You know how welcome you will be.
My wife sends her affectionate sympathy to Mrs. Geddes — to whom also mine, with all cordial greetings.
Forgive so scrappy & unsatisfactory a note: the writing of which, however, has moved me out of my depression & “doleful dumps”.
À Vous, Cher ami et Confrère, | W. S.
ALS National Library of Scotland
To Professor William Knight,17 January 30, 1895
15, Greencroft Gardens | South Hampstead | 30/1/95
My dear Sir
I have been ill — and have just returned from Ventnor. I am under very great pressure, now — &, moreover, must do as little extra work as possible.
But at the earliest moment I can spare I will see if I have any material that can serve your aim.
Yours very truly, | William Sharp
Professor Wm. Knight LL. D.
ACS Pierpont Morgan Library
To Herbert S. Stone, January 31, [1895]
9. Upper Coltbridge Terrace | Murrayfield. | Midlothian | Jan. 31st
My dear Sir
I thank you for your courteous and friendly note, and am glad to inform you that I am now quite recovered.
I am glad you are so much interested in my stories. By the way, just as I was writing to you the acceptance of your terms, I was urgently “approached” by a publisher: so I am glad you were able to make a definite proposal, as otherwise I should have accepted the rather tempting offer made me here. I hope, and venture to believe, you will be pleased with “The Sin-Eater” volume.18 The three or four I have read or shown to qualified judges have been praised so very highly that I am confirmed in my own opinion that some of the best I can do is here. The book, I am hopeful, will attract attention in both countries. (If I could get out of my engagement with “The Mountain Lovers” I would do so — for I should much like the three romances, Pharais, The Mountain Lovers, and The Herdsman,19 to be published by one firm: but I fear this is not practicable. However, it may yet be arranged that you issue it in America.)
By the way, you have not written as to what I am to do about Pharais. Kindly let me know by return if possible, as another and rather important proposal has been made me. Since recovery from my nondescript illness (overwrought nerves from insomnia, and influenza, and from being — pro: tem: — in a town, and away from the sea of the west) I had first, because of priority of the commission and of my promise, to finish the section of the volume (to be called, probably, Celtic Sorrows) which was commissioned by the editor of Harper’s Magazine, on the head of “Pharais.” This section of seven to ten short pieces will probably be called “From the Hebrid Isles”: and is, if possible, to appear in 1895: so I understand at least. The MSS. went off yesterday.20
You may be sure I will not needlessly delay a day in transmission of “The Sin-Eater etc” For my own part as well, I am most anxious that, if practicable, this book should be brought out this Spring, or, at latest, early summer. Kindly oblige me by letting me know by return if this is your intention: if you are too busy to write at once upon other matters please send me the briefest line about this and Pharais, as I have consequent arrangements to make.
The names of the longest stories are “The Sin-Eater” — “The Judgment o’ God” — The Ninth Wave” — “The Annointed Man” — “The Dark Mile of Achnacarry” — “The Bandruidh” — “The Ransom” — and “The Seven Hunters”. They are now being typed, (more than half are done) and will then have a final revision. I dare not promise to let you have the book before the end of February: but if I can I will. These stories wear me very much in writing: sometimes even in the rewriting of [?]revision.
I was actually ill for weeks after Pharais!! This, no doubt, is a foolish weakness of
Yours very sincerely | Fiona Macleod
P.S. My cousin, Mr. William Sharp, has sent me some “Chap-Books” to look at. What delightful little periodicals they are: so charmingly got up: and extremely interesting. In particular, I have read Mr. Bliss Carman’s Critical Articles with vivid interest, the more so as I admire greatly what I have seen of his poetry.
In his letter, Mr. W. S. in allusion to the number for Oct. 15. (Mr. W. Kennedy’s story), incidentally says something about “how pleasant it would be if I printed” in a Chap-Book number, either the opening section of The Mountain Lovers (which would stand by itself, as it is of the nature of a prologue and is mainly an intimate revelation of the evolution of night from dusk to dawn on a remote mountain solitude) or else the three Iona tales in The Sin-Eater, — “The Judgment o’God”, “The Ninth Wave”, and the strange tale of St. Columba days “Deirthrê Anguifera” (which, by the way, I now think of calling “The Idolaters”.)
This, he says, “would — with a portrait — doubtless be welcome.”
But I gather from his words that this is a mere remark of his, and not suggested by you?
If by any chance, a special number were made, I take it for granted a financial arrangement would be come to first.
Perhaps a better plan would be the expression of “the Idolaters” (“Deirthrê Anguifera”) into a longer story (i.e. for appearance in the Chap-Book only) with more of St. Columba and Oran and the early life (700 years before Chaucer!). But all this may be “the blue smoke of the village out of sight.”
My mention of the matter at all may be presumptuous. If so, pray put the matter aside, and think no more of it.
F. M.
ALS Stanford University
To Herbert Stuart Stone, February 1, 1895
Rutland House | Greencroft Gardens | So. Hampstead, London | 1st Feby /95
Dear Mr. Stone
I have been asked to write an article for the Fortnightly Review on the “Younger Transatlantic Poets”21: & would be much obliged if you would (i.e. if you care to) send me a copy severally of Geo. Santayana’s “Sonnets”, Gilbert Parker’s book of verse, and Hamlin Garland’s “Prairie Songs”22 — and indeed anything new you have published lately that you think well of. Of course I will allude to you as publisher — & indeed will have something to say about “Stone & Kimball” and the new movement.
Why don’t you reprint the first 2 vols. of The Chap-Book. Surely it wd. pay you to do so, and wd. gratify many here as well as in the U.S.A. You will be glad to hear that the Green Tree Vistas is much admired. By the way, your delightful posters have created quite a flutter. I have just had an eager request for one from J. Pennell23: who had seen one somewhere.
I suppose I shall be hearing from you shortly about the “Gypsy Christ”etc.
Do you ever see The Realm? If so, you will find an article by me on Pater’s Greek Studies in last week’s issue, which may interest you: as you like my “Atlantic Monthly” article on W.P.24 Do you know Addington Symonds’s work well? I have a long review of him in the Academy this week.25
With cordial regards,
Sincerely yours, | William Sharp
P.S. I suppose you won’t be here till after March at earliest. Please let me know when next you write.
ALS Huntington Library
To Horace Scudder, February 2, 1895
Rutland House | Greencroft Gardens | So. Hampstead | N.W. | 2/2/95
My dear Horace Scudder,
Many thanks for your letter — and for your friendly suggestions. As to the latter, I’ll write to you later. I hope to send “Christina Rossetti”26 by next mail (Wednesday 6th). I want to interpolate a few extra particulars as to early days (from William Rossetti). She was not only a poet of rare distinction, but a woman, representative of the fine flower of Christianity, one of the white-souled of the world.
Despite the pressure of books, I have at last got the Ed. of the Academy to agree to have an article upon your “Childhood”.27 I hope to write it end of next week. Herewith I send you a “leader” of mine from this week’s Academy on J. Addington Symonds — whom I knew and liked well, though I have had to say some plain things in my causeriè.28
At home, I had done up a copy of last week’s Realm (with an article by myself on Pater’s Greek Studies, which I thought you might care to see) — and also a copy of the new edition of my Vistas, which please accept from me with my cordial regard: but I have come away without them (I write this at the Grosvenor Club) & so they must wait over till next mall.
Shields29 sends you “his brotherly love”: & says you will be welcomed with open arms. It will be a great pleasure to him, and myself, and many others, to see you here. (But don’t come in August or Septr!)
Cordially Yours, | William Sharp
ALS Harvard University, Houghton Library
To Stone and Kimball, [early February, 1895]
Rutland House | Greenscroft Gardens | So. Hampstead | London
Dear Sirs,
Herewith my Postal order for Renewal of my Subscription to “The Chap Book.”
Please note in your address-book that the penultimate address is not Homestead but So. Hampstead.
Yours faithfully | William Sharp
P.S. I think I subscribed for the 3rd. vol. (Verlaine) in the Green Tree Library:30 but if so I have never recd. it.
ALS Huntington Library
To Herbert Stuart Stone, February 13, 1895
Rutland House | Greencroft Gardens | South Hampstead, London | 13/2/95
Dear Mr. Stone,
Thanks for your letter of acceptance of my terms, in the matter of “The Gypsy Christ” — proofs (& “copy” of the G. C.) of which I await in due course.
I am not so wedded to “The Rape of the Sabines” as to insist on its inclusion against your will. It will do just as well in another volume, The Daughters of Vengeance,31 which I may have ready for publication next winter. So do as you wish. I will loyally accept your decision. If you would rather exclude that story, do so. I send you two others, instead. In any case I would like “The Lady in Hosea” to go in. I have not had time to reread and consider “The Graven Image”: you can do so, and include or exclude as you think best. So that the volume could now stand (with or without “The Second Shadow”):
I. The Gypsy Christ | II. Madge o’ the Pool | III. The Coward | IV. A Venetian Idyl | V.? [“The Second Shadow” — or “The Graven Image”]? | VI. Fröken Bergliot | VII. The Lady in Hosea.32
What bitter weather! I trust it is better with you. (I go to Edinburgh for a few days this week-end, & hope to see Miss Fiona Macleod, who is staying near: and very busy with the revision of the volume she is doing for you. It is the strongest thing she has done, I think.)33
My cordial regards, | Sincerely yours, | William Sharp
By this mail I am also sending a commissioned article (for the Atlantic Monthly) of “Reminiscences of Christina Rossetti,” which I wd. like you to read on appearance.
P.S. You will already have got my letter about Vistas, with which all my friends (as well I) are charmed.
ALS Huntington Library
To Elizabeth A. Sharp, February 20, 1895
Corrie, Isle of Arran, | 20:2:1895.
… You will have had my telegram of my safe arrival here. There was no snow to speak of along the road from Brodick (for no steamer comes here) — so I had neither to ride nor sail as threatened: indeed, owing to the keen frost (which has made the snow like powder) there is none on the mountains except in the hollows, though the summits and flanks are crystal white with a thin veil of frozen snow.
It was a most glorious sail from Ardrossan. The sea was a sheet of blue and purple washed with gold. Arran rose above all like a dream of beauty. I was the sole passenger in the steamer, for the whole island! What made the drive of six miles more beautiful than ever was the extraordinary fantastic beauty of the frozen waterfalls and burns caught as it were in the leap. Sometimes these immense icicles hung straight and long, like a Druid’s beard: sometimes in wrought sheets of gold, or magic columns and spaces of crystal. Sweet it was to smell the pine and the heather and bracken and the salt weed upon the shore. The touch of dream was upon everything, from the silent hills to the brooding herons by the shore.
After a cup of tea, I wandered up the heights behind. In these vast solitudes peace and joy came hand in hand to meet me. The extreme loneliness, especially when I was out of sight of the sea at last, and could hear no more the calling of the tide, and only the sough of the wind, was like balm. Ah, those eloquent silences: the deep pain-joy of utter isolation: the shadowy glooms and darkness and mystery of night-fall among the mountains.
In that exquisite solitude I felt a deep exaltation grow. The flowing of the air of the hills laved the parched shores of my heart… .
There is something of a strange excitement in the knowledge that two people are here: so intimate and yet so far-off. For it is with me as though Fiona were asleep in another room. I catch myself listening for her step sometimes, for the sudden opening of a door. It is unawaredly that she whispers to me. I am eager to see what she will do — particularly in The Mountain Lovers. It seems passing strange to be here with her alone at last… .
Memoir, pp. 243–44
To Patrick Geddes, March 3, 1895
Rutland House | Greencroft Gardens | South Hampstead | London | Sunday 3rd March/95
My dear Geddes,
When I saw you last, and again when I wrote to you yesterday, I quite forgot to communicate to you my scheme for a thoroughly representative Anglo-Celtic “quarterly”34 — broadly speaking, about the size & on the technical lines of “The (new) Evergreen”. It would, I think, be well supported in all the big towns of Scotland and Ireland, and (in England) in Newcastle and London, & doubtless elsewhere, & of course in Wales: also, most certainly, in America (particularly in the Teuto-Celtic New England States and the North). In addition to this, it wd. greatly help our Publishing firm, & aid in drawing Anglo-Celtic writers to look to Edinburgh. I think 2s/6 net would be best, as price. I send you [a] partially drawn out scheme: for your approval, examination, & comments. Tho’ I am willing to be Editor (with my wife’s help) — I think it best that the Editorial indication should be either | Published by Patrick Geddes and Colleagues |or simply Edited and Published in Edinburgh. I could, I know, soon get a very strong list — & the quarterly would become a valuable record. It is quite easy to see why foregoing Celtic mags. have spelt failure or relative failure. I have studied this point carefully: (& would take up only the best lines of “The Highland Monthly”, the defunct “Celtic Mag.,” etc.).
Please give the matter your careful consideration (Time-bills, eh?) & let me hear from you in due course.
Yours ever | William Sharp
You have a most thorough ally (in all you urged upon me) in my wife. We both foresee (in the fulness of time) — Edinburgh! in a broad sense, i.e. she takes greatly to the whole publishing idea, & I foresee how she may prove of great service, & well worth her time-bills!
N.B. “The Hill of God” by F. M. in the first no. wd. be an account (“from a relative”) of the sacrificial episode I told you about.
PROSPECTUS |
Vol. I No. I July to September 1895. Quarterly | 2/6 Net. |
The Celtic World |
Published By Patrick Geddes & Colleagues |
(or else) Edited and Published in Edinburgh |
July August September |
Summer Number |
Frontispiece |
By John Duncan |
|
1. The Celtic Renaissance |
A Prologue (Editorial) |
|
2. The Word Anglo-Celtic |
A Note |
“ |
3. Anglo-Celtic Magazines |
“ |
|
4. The late Professor Blackie |
By Prof. MacDonald |
|
5. The Hill of God |
By Fiona Macleod |
|
6. A Poem |
By W. B. Yeats |
|
7. The Hill-Way |
By Ernest Rhys |
|
8. The House of Rest. A Forecast |
By Patrick Geddes |
|
9. A Poem |
By Moira O’Neill or Katherine Tynan |
|
10. Three Hebridean Folk-Hymns |
By A. Carmichael |
|
11. Celtic Ornament |
By John Duncan or ? |
|
12. Standish O’Grady’s Historical Romance |
By – |
|
13. Anima Celtica |
By “A. E.” |
Notes
Names of Some of the Earliest Contributors
(If possible) George Meredith & the older writers like Geo. Macdonald and Robt Buchanan, Douglas Hyde & Prof. Rhys, Grant Allen etc., as well as the younger men.
In the Second Quarterly Number (Oct–Dec.) will appear the first installment of “The Celtic Wonderland” and Stories, Poems, Episodes, Articles, Critical-papers, Folk-Lore, etc.
By Douglas Hyde, George Russell, W. B. Yeats, Fiona Macleod, Moira O’Neill, Dr. Donald Macleod, Robert Buchanan, George Macdonald, Grant Allen, W. Macdonald, Ian Maclaren, and other Irish, Scottish, Welsh, Manx, Cornish, & Breton writers.
With a Frontispiece by P. MacGillivray or by T. Hope Mclauchlan or Photogravure of Evensong, by Macaulay Stevenson
ALS National Library of Scotland
To J. Stanley Little, March 21, 189535
21/Mch/95
My dear Boy
The beginning of a long & happy & prosperous time has, I am sure, dawned for you. All happiness & luck be yours. Be good to her, for she is worthy of it: and both of you enjoy to the full what nature has been good enough to supply you with.
In all ways, happiness and weal!
Your friend, | William Sharp
ALS Princeton University
To Edmund Clarence Stedman, March 30, 1895
Rutland House, | Greencroft Gardens, | So. Hampstead. | 30/Mch/95
My dear Stedman
I know you will be glad to meet the bearer of this note, Mr. John Lane, whose name will be familiar to you as that of one of our most distinguished publishers. It seems hardly necessary to add that he is himself an able and discriminating student of literature, the friend of many of the beaux esprits of the day, and himself a good fellow. I know you will welcome him to your hospitable abode: & if you can give him any advice or introduce him to any one whom he wants particularly to meet, you will not only be obliging Mr. Lane but also
Yours affectionately, | William Sharp
Edmund Clarence Stedman Esq
ALS Princeton University
To Mrs. Henry Mills Alden, [April, 1895]
… And now I write in Sussex36 — in my ears the cries of the lambs, the cawing of rooks, the song of a labourer sowing seed, instead of the harsh summons of the muezzin, the call of the water-carrier in Tunis, the bark of the jackal on the Desert, the barbaric chant of the Hasebircheaters of Constantine. It seems almost incredible at times.
Yes it is all equally beautiful. Life is life everywhere. Here, in placid England, as in the austere South, as in the grey savage North, there is a diurnal banquet of joy. Everywhere this indescribable, alluring, haunting, lovely seduction of Beauty.
How I wish, dear Mrs. Alden, that you could be here just now — it is all so Spring-essential. But of course it will be as lovely in New Jersey. I wish, though, I could send you some of our yellow primrose glory, a breath of an old English cottage-garden, with its mignonette and wallflowers.
It is, just now, — though the malcontents say it is too warm, & that 6 weeks of unbroken weather & cloudless skies is serious — so unspeakably lovely. It is all a joy of green tress, green hedges, cowslip’d fields, daffodil pastures, — blossoms of apple, pear, quince, plum, and cherry all like blown surf suddenly suspended in the warm blue air — larks in rapture, the cuckoo and the wood-dove calling, calling, through the noontide, birds everywhere in the trees, the hedgerows, and by the brook — a song of Spring begun by the Black-cap at sunrise, sustained through the drowsy afternoon by the thrush, & now just lifted with an exquisite preliminary thrill when at the edge of o’dark the nightingale calls from the thickets of jasmine and elder.
Have you the delight in words that I know the author of “God in His World”37 has so keenly? If so, you will rejoice in an almost unknown West-Country word for twilight which I have just learned — unknown save in remote parts of Devon & Cornwall. “Twilight” is lovely: “The Gloaming” is lovelier and sweeter: but is there something solemn, almost Biblically austere & noble about “The Dim-Sea” (the dimsee as pronounced).
How I hope this Spring will bring you healing and peace and joy. Will you let me send you my “love”? Alden already has it, and my deep admiration: and you know, you two are one. Let me slightly alter Bacon’s beautiful saying; “The soul of the twin-soul is the Beauty of the World”.
Cordially Yours, | William Sharp
ALS University of Delaware Library
To Herbert S. Stone, April 6, 1895
Rutland House | Greencroft Gardens | South Hampstead N.W. | London | 6th April 1895
Dear Mr. Stone,
I admit that I am much put about by the long silence on your part: and, I may add, I have had two or three letters of late from Miss Macleod to the same effect, so displeased, indeed, is she that she wrote to me the other day to say that she would prefer to make other arrangements, particularly as she is much pressed by publishers here. It really does seem too much of a good thing that urgent letters should be allowed to be unanswered, and this quite apart from the apparent discourtesy. I wrote to Miss Macleod to say that I was sure no actual discourtesy was intended — and that probably you had been or were ill; to which she naturally enough replied that someone could have sent a reply to the specific enquiry she wrote on the 2nd of February, with a request for an answer by return.
Well, about “The Gypsy Christ”? For some time past I have been looking to every mail to bring me the promised proofs, and also the MS. of the titular story for revision. In the first place, I had particularly specified my wish, & understood that you entirely shared it, for early spring issue of the book: but here is April, and no proofs come, and apparently no arrangements made! Had I foreseen this I should, of course, have made other arrangements. There is now no mail due till the 9th — & I can only hope that at last I shall hear from you. In your letter of January 28th, formally agreeing to my terms, you say that you will go ahead with the composition at once: & that you will dispatch the MS. of the G.C. itself by registered post. These proofs, you say, will be sent “in the course of two or three weeks”. If they had been sent in two or three weeks I might have received them by the end of February. Now the first week in April is over, and no word of them — nor, for that matter, of “The Tower of Silence”, concerning which you say (28th January) — “I shall write regarding this within the week.”
Leaving aside other considerations, this delay is very inconvenient for me in the matter of proof-revision etc. In a life as busy [as] mine, with chronically more work on hand that I can well get through, it is impossible to manage things aright unless matters are conducted on both sides (in each instance) in a prompt and businesslike way. As soon as I received your letter of Jany 28th, I made corresponding arrangements: so that I should be comparatively free at the time I could reasonably expect Proofs. Financially & for every other reason I hoped to see the book out in early Spring: but for this reason, also, trusted for early proofs, namely that April & May are my two busiest months, and every hour has to be discounted. At the end of April or early in May I have to go to Paris for the Salons: & proofs and revision at that time will be a difficulty and inconvenience added to existing difficulties & inconveniences.
I trust that an early post now will bring communication from you: but if not I must beg of you to write to me without delay, & explicitly.
As for Miss Macleod — I am not quite sure what to advise her: but from what she writes to me I think her best plan would be to arrange with someone here. She says, & rightly, she will not send any MS. to you till she has an explicit reply and that in any case she now holds herself free to come to any arrangement that suits her. She was pleased by your first letter, but your extraordinary silence of late has both annoyed and offended her.
And now apart from business let me express my hope that you are not or have not been ill: and that matters go well with you. When do you intend to come over here?
By the way, I gave John Lane a line of introduction to you. Lane, I may add, is going to issue Miss Macleod’s new book, “The Mountain Lovers”. As it will be in the Keynotes series it is not likely he will offer it to you first — tho’ Miss M. wrote expressly asking him to do so if possible.
Forgive me for saying that if we are to have any business relations in the future, I make it an indispensable condition that this kind of treatment does not recur. I am glad, however, to feel sure that it is due to pressure and inexperience: & certainly look forward with pleasure to a chat over business & other matters when you come to London.38
Yours very truly | William Sharp
ALS New York Public Library, Berg Collection
To Patrick Geddes, April 27, 1895
Rutland House, | Greencroft Gardens. | So. Hampstead. | Saty 27th April/95
My dear Geddes,
Owing to the press of work and engagements it was impossible for me to see Mr. Barclay39 àpropos of the Franco-Scottish College scheme (a most alluring and I should think inevitably fruitful one) — but I hope to do so when I return to Paris, on the 5th May for the Old Salon etc. My wife will go with me to Paris this time, & we’ll be there for 3 or 4 days at any rate. By the way, when I was at the Douane on my outward journey I met Mrs. Traquair40 on her way to a brief holiday in Rome.
W. Macdonald41 does not seem to have come to a bed of roses. Work which he had looked upon as fairly assured has not “come off” — & he writes to me to see what I can do or suggest. He seems to have become impatient over the Evergreen: for, àpropos, he writes: “I got tired waiting, & came to the conclusion that the book would never appear until one or two artists had been taken back to the nursery & locked up there.”
I’ll write to you a publishing and book-anticipatory communication on Monday. Too seedy today, having caught a bad facial chill in the passage and being unable to go out owing to an inflamed jaw (an abscess I fear) — and bad facial neuralgia: together keeping me in considerable pain and discomfort.
As to Campbell Irons42 — yes, I wholly agree to all you say as politic & advisable every way.
I am afraid it will be quite impracticable for me to get to Paris at Whitsuntide. But I hope to see you before then: Of this more when I write on Monday.
Love to you and yours | William Sharp
ALS National Library of Scotland
To Patrick Geddes, April 29, 1895
Rutland House, | Greencroft Gardens, | So. Hampstead. | Monday 29/4/95
My dear Geddes
I forget if I told you how seedy I was on Saturday when I wrote to you. At any rate, by the afternoon I was in high fever, with inflammation of the jaw, & severe frontal & optic-nerve neuralgia — an infernal form of influenza (complicated with an abscess somewhere, generally in the ear, but in my case at the top of the left jaw) which attacks many people here just now, & has just laid low my doctor (Dr. Moir of whom I spoke to you) & our other reserve “medico”. I had a pretty bad time of it on Saturday night, almost delirious: & all Sunday: but today am greatly better, and hope to be up and about tomorrow, though of course I won’t get out till next day and then only if fine and warm.
I think I told you that my wife and I go to Paris for our art-work at this coming week-end (on Sunday probably) & will be away for 5 or 6 days. I don’t know where we’ll stay, probably at the “Continental” — but in any case I’ll try to see Mr. Barclay.43 Perhaps, if writing, you will kindly mention this to him, in case he knows nothing of me, and takes me for what Rabelais calls somewhere “a villain cut-throat Scot”, a man to be hurried off the premises!”
I’ll do my best to get north soon after my return from Paris etc. about the 12th — i.e. to get north on or about the 20th. I want to talk over “publishing business” for one thing: and perhaps I could see Mr. Campbell Irons & Branford44 and some others. Yes, by all means let us have Mr. C. Irons as ally and client.
Meanwhile, as I must be making certain arrangements, please let me know if you will be at Dundee on or about the 20th. of May — & when it is your intention to leave for Paris. (I am afraid there is now no chance of my getting over at Whitsuntide.) And are you sure it will still be quite convenient for Mrs. Geddes & yourself to put me up at Dundee, as you kindly suggested.
(1) |
For the late autumn of 1895, I’ll do what I can to place the vol. of stories by Fiona Macleod (The Sin-Eater: and Other Stories) with “Patrick Geddes & Colleagues.”45 So far, I am free of the arrangement with Stone and Kimball, I think: for as they were not up to time with their undertaking I wrote about 3 weeks ago to break off with them as regards the British edn. I have not definitely heard from them yet in response to my ultimatum — but the strong chances are that I shall now be able to make this one of our start-off books — of which I shall be glad from the publisher’s standpoint, as short stories of the kind are in demand just now, and as “The Mountain Lovers” (to be out in June) will give a fillip to F. M.’s growing public. I am afraid that, as author, the arrangement may not be so much to my advantage — but, after all, the reverse is possible, & in the long run may even prove much the better: but in any case I am willing to make this arrangement if I can.46 The book is practically ready, and will reach a wider audience than either Pharais or The Mountain Lovers, I fancy. Certainly some of the strongest work I have ever done is in it. |
(2) |
Lyra Celtica will also be ready, & will be a valuable and suggestive vol. Two-thirds of it is in shape already: indeed it is more the long critical “weighing” & rejecting & adding that has now to be done. It will have the additional value of being representative, for though mainly Scottish-Celtic and Irish Celtic, there are representative pieces by Breton (trs), Cornish, & Welsh, & Manx poets. Can you give me the name of a Welsh poet you spoke of to me at Arran? But please note that L/C will be edited not by F. M. or by W. S. but by my wife. This is advisable for several reasons (one among them, the inclusion of F. M.’s runes & Celtic lyrics), & also because she is well known by her critical anthologies, & was recently commissioned to do the important “Musa Catholica” for Elkin Mathews.47 If, however, any critical introductory essay (as distinct from an ordinary preface) is considered advisable it will be written (& signed) by me. |
(3) |
The R. L. S. volume will, I presume, be the first actual issue? (apart from The Evergreen & A Scottish College).48 |
(4) |
“Life of Croll” could come out. Also “Heredity” if ready.49 (“The Literary Ideal” by W. S. ought, I think, to stand over till beginning 1896 — but, if wished particularly, might be available for issue say in mid-October or November of this year)50 |
(5) |
We must have some “romance” of a kind likely to be popular. If possible, some well-known man: but what is more important is a really modern romance, full of life & movement.51 |
(6) |
What about a series of short books of fiction — as that is so much the vogue at present: — books of about 30,000 words, or say from a minimum of 25,000 to a max. of 35,000. It might be called “The Evergreen Series”: or, say, the “Cosmopolitan” Series.52 |
(7) |
Àpropos of the last named, I think a good bid for public favour would be occasional vols by foreign authors of marked power & distinction in the “new movement” — a vague phrase that really means little save the onward wave of the human mind: men like the Scandinavians, Jonas Lie & Ola Hansson (Swede), Southerners like the Italians Gabriele d’Annunzio, Antonio Fagazzaro, Matilde Serao, or the Spaniard José Echegaray, |
Germans like Hermann Sudermann, Frenchmen like Anatole France, J. H. Rosny, etc., Belgians like Geo. Eekhoud (Flemish), Lemonnier, and others, and the notable Americans among the younger generation, above all of [sic] Hamlin Garland.53 |
This either in a “Cosmopolitan Series”, or to be worked into the other. I am strongly in favour of some translations from the contemporary fiction of countries near us, & that are in touch with this country — notably Belgium. The Flemish & Walloon side of B. (tho’ now familiar to thousands) is little touched in book-form or translation. Good translations of such (past) masters as Henri Conscience or (living) as G. Eeckhoud would take.
As soon as things are settled on a business footing, I’ll put affairs en train. I have already talked to some able writers & translators — but of course can commission or advise nothing as yet. Send me a word, too, about this idea of representative translations.
Meanwhile let me know what you think — & also about your being at Dundee at the date named and when you leave for Paris.
Love to you and yours.
W. S.
ALS National Library of Scotland
To Robert Murray Gilchrist, April 30, 1895
Rutland House | Greencroft Gardens | So. Hampstead | 30th April/95
My dear Boy
How goes the world with you? I hope you are well, & that the pen has been busy, and happily. I have been much away this year — twice for a long time in Scotland (once in the Western Isles), and in France. I go to Paris again this week-end but expect to be in London again by the 12th. A few days later I’ll likely be in Scotland for 10 days or so. When are we to meet again? When I look back upon this last year, it seems to me as though life were a fever indeed. I am not tired of life — which is more wonderful & fascinating than ever: but sometimes now I am tired of living. In a vague way you know something of the tragic issues which underlie the surface-calms of my life stream. Well, tragedy or high comedy — for low farce to men like ourselves is impossible — or tragi-comedy or inscrutable irony, it is all a dream.
“The Mountain Lovers,” the successor to Fiona Macleod’s “Pharais,” is now in the printer’s hands, & ought to be out from a month to 5 weeks hence. It is to be published by John Lane.
Are you coming south this June? I hope so. My cordial regards to your mother & kind remembrances to your sisters — nor, or course, omit my greetings to Garfitt. As for yourself you [know] that I am
Your Affectionate friend | William Sharp
To J. Stanley Little, May 10, 189554
Paris: Friday Night
Dear S.
We are to return tomorrow after a very pleasant but rather too extravagant time in Paris. (This is my second visit to Paris within the last 3 weeks.) I shall, however, be in town for 3 or 4 days only — as I wish to go to Scotland for a fortnight or so. I hope you and “Madame” are both flourishing, and bear in mind my favourite adage “Be good, and you will be happy”.
Yours ever | W. S.
ACS Princeton University
To Patrick Geddes, May 15, 1895
Rutland House, | Greencroft Gardens, | So. Hampstead. | 15th May 1895
My dear Geddes,
I am glad we are to meet so soon, and I am much looking forward to Monday evening, to see you & Deò-grein again.55 As I explained to her in my note of yesterday, I shall arrive by the North British train due at Tay Bridge at 6:10. If it stop at Esplanade Station, I’ll get out there. I leave here on Saturday, as I have to be in York on Saturday evening, & shall remain there with my friend George Cotterell56 till Monday morning (address, if needed, 3 Grosvenor Terrace, York) when I leave at 10.
I have thought out a good deal about publishing schemes — and so we’ll have lots to discuss if you can spare me the time. For the moment, however, I need not go into so these, as we are to meet so soon. For the same reason, indeed, I’ll reserve detailed mention of “The Evergreen”. Much of it I like, but some of it seems to me to lack in distinctiveness as well as distinction. In the main, however, it is a most promising and interesting production. With careful piloting it ought “to come to stay”. We must all do what we can to make it as scrupulously near to the highest attainable standard as is practicable. Your own writing therein I have read with particular interest & pleasure, not only with the affection of a friend but with the sangfroid of a critic. The poetry, including that of Miss Fiona Macleod does not seem to me to be so good in its kind as is the best of the prose in its kind. That also is a point where the editorial control must be more exigent.
But the real and I fear perilous weakness is in the illustrations. With the exception of Duncan’s57 “Apollo’s School Days” & some of the head-pieces, there is not a drawing (Cadenhead’s58 and Wall’s59 “cuts” are distinct from those I am referring to) which is not crude in draughtsmanship and in design — or in one or two instances frankly meaningless! (I mean from the standpoint of art, which, as you know, is as exigent in its demand for an adequate & convincing raison-d’être, as the Art of Poetry is for adequate rhythmic motive). In the latter category, I include a muddled, badly composed, & ill drawn “Natura Naturans” by Robert Burns60 (his “Casket” is better, but shows little sense of rhythmic balance or movement in the composition) — but, in particular, a really deplorable plate, “Anima Celtica”, by Duncan. It is weakly imitative to start with, & in my judgment has not a redeeming quality. Aubrey Beardsley61 may be a depraved & decadent artist — but at least he is an artist & original: but work of this kind is the mere dross and débris of the “fin-de Siècle” ebb. I am afraid that even the most casual critic will notice the bad drawing throughout — which has the same effect on one’s optic nerves as a scraping nail has on one’s auditory ditto. (On the other hand, though it lacks firmness in touch, i.e. surety, Duncan’s head-piece to “The Norland Wind” is at once appropriate & winsome). In a word, I anticipate much adverse artistic criticism on the ground that the Yellow Book62 drawings are at least clever if ultra fin-de-Siècle, while the majority of these of The Evergreen are fin-de-Siècle without being clever.
Probably, I am too severe a critic here — & in any case I’ll be glad if I’m a false prophet. But I feel so strongly that a really valuable & significant future awaits the “Evergreen” if it preserve & develop its best, in literature & art, & disengage itself from what is amateurish, that it seems worthwhile to be severely exigent.
The binding & get-up are very novel & attractive, & the type & setting are in Constable’s63 best style. Altogether, it is a promising start for “Patrick Geddes &Colleagues”. There is the real breath of earnest life in it — & that is a saving grace indeed. Well, Skoal to it, & to its projectors and contributors, & to all our fellowship!
I had a long talk in Paris with Mr. Barclay (whose name is Thomas not William, as you had in your notes & typed letters from him) about the Scots College. As you will know by this time, there is not now to be any Whitsuntide meeting in Paris: but, later, in London, and also, I understand, in Edinburgh.
Of this, again, more when we meet.
Till Monday evening then, auf wiedersehen — | Affectionately Your Friend | William Sharp
“Porporsia Celtica” is better now than he was, though till yesterday he was very “down” indeed. No doubt the heat & London atmosphere had something to do with it. He made his will, poor thing, one day: which affected him so much that he got better!64
ALS National Library of Scotland
To Robert Murray Gilchrist, [May 16?, 1895]65
till middle of next week | c/o Prof. Patrick Geddes | 17 Westfield Place | Dundee
After the 22nd | to | 9 Upper Coltbridge Terrace | Murrayfield | Midlothian |
(letter address only)
My dear Gilchrist
Herewith I send you a pipe — though I fear it may not suit you. “Pipes” are as “Kittle Cattle” as hats or umbrellas, & each man has his own fancy. But if the accompanying article would never make for a smoker’s paradise, send it back to me — & I’ll get another. It pleased me, your asking for it. May it make you think of me sometimes.
Don’t overwork into apathy: that is the dangerous hole to get into. Overwork to a certain strain on the nerves, if you will — even till Heaven one moment & Hell the next seem near — but stop short of a dull apathy in the act of composition, a dull apathy in the sense of atmosphere. Then, body, and nerves, and brain, crave for a path of silence: for sleep.
I doubt if it will be possible for me to see you on my way back (somewhere about Whitsuntide, probably a day or two later rather than earlier) — but I’ll let you know.
Why did you not let me know you were in London, when on your way to or from Paris? I am sorry at that.
I do hope your work is to your satisfaction, i.e. as much as it ever is to anyone who really cares for his work. Work, my dear Boy, with sunshine in your heart, and the sunrise air in your brain and a moonlight imagination. You will do big things some day.
I am glad you are going over to Cartledge.66 It will be better for you every way I shd. think.
Ever yrs affectly | William Sharp
ALS Sheffield City Archives
To Patrick Geddes, [late May, 1895]
74. Upper Grosvenor Terrace | Tunbridge Wells | Sunday.
Dear Professor Geddes67
First let me say that I read your letter — which reached me yesterday — with feelings of unmixed relief and thankfulness. I cannot express to you how grateful I feel for your loving friendship for my husband and for all the care and thought you and Mrs. Geddes have given him. I am thankful that there is someone else than myself who sees how he is expending health and strength — and encroaching on his reserve — in work of a kind he ought not to do. Like you, I have a great belief in the future of W. S. and Fiona M. and I am equally persuaded that he must give up the fretting hack-work in order to give his real work its chance. But it is so difficult to make him do so; he grows nervous, and, I regret to say, chiefly on my account. But I feel sure, that now, your kind interest in him, and thought for him will do more [than] any thing else to make him, not only feel, but act on our advice — which coincides. You are indeed a most valuable ally.
And, indeed, I do not know what to say concerning the kind proposals in the latter half of your letter. I feel deeply touched by and grateful for the genuine friendship which prompted them. I think the very knowledge of such an offer will suffice to give Will peace of mind to work in greater belief in himself and in the future of his work. I think it will give him the confidence he lacks when he seizes nervously the first piece of work that offers. I see that little by little he begins to believe what I say about him; & feel sure your letter to me — so full of generous solicitude and help — will do the rest. I, too, promise to remind him to let you know if at any time an advance from the publishing account would save him from pot-boiling temptations; I will be only too glad to do it — glad, too, to feel that the responsibility concerning him — which I feel to be heavy sometimes — is thus lessened. That statement sounds very selfish, now I reread it; but I do not mean to be selfish. I mean it is a relief to me to see that there is a friend who understands Will, and sees his persistent overwork and delicacy. With regard to the other offer in your letter, Friend, I feel overwhelmed, and can say nothing. But I will show your letter to Will when we meet. I think he, like myself, will feel so encouraged by the kindly thought that prompted the suggestion, that the desired sense of rest and freedom from worry will thus be attained.
I intend to have him put into his doctor’s hands as soon as he returns, in the hope that the weakness in Will’s back may [be] bettered. It is the result of overwork; but a symptom not to be disregarded.
I feel this note is very inadequate in its attempt to say how I appreciate your friendship shown in your letter. But words do not come readily to me, alas! Believe that I feel it deeply; also that I look forward with delight to August,68 when I shall have a chance of knowing you and Mrs. Geddes still better than I do now.
Will has, I know, told you how much I am interested in all the schemes; and how I hope I may be allowed to share in a little of the work.
With cordial greetings to Mrs. Geddes and yourself,
Gratefully and sincerely yours, | Elizabeth A. Sharp
ALS National Library of Scotland
To Robert Murray Gilchrist, [May 28, 1895]
Murrayfield | Midlothain | (Tuesday)69
I return to London Tomorrow (Wednesday)
My dear Gilchrist,
Alas, the visit is impracticable this time — but may be made about the end of July possibly, if you are to be at Cartledge then. I (& my wife) have to be in Edinburgh all August — where, at University Hall, I have to give a course of ten lectures on “Life & Art.” Then in all September we’ll be at a remote & beautiful place in the West Highland, Tigh-na-Bruaich in the Kyles of Bute.
I have just come here (Murrayfield) from a most beautiful place, near Lock Fyne in Argyle. There, the Lord be praised, for a few days I have been swung across the frontiers of ordinary life into an existence of rainbows & moonlight & endless, impossible, hauntingly beautiful horizons. Now the dream is over — but the rainbow gold of it is for life! Don’t you think you could manage a week or so at Tigh-na-Bruich in September? There is a pleasant inn, where you could doubtless have comfortable & moderate accommodation (or a cheap lodging somewhere) & we could see something of each other.
My best remembrances to your mother & sisters, & know me ever your affectionate friend.
William Sharp
ALS Sheffield City Archives
To Patrick Geddes, June 4, 1895
4 June 95
I am grateful to you for all your solicitude about my health and welfare, cher ami. You are truly a good & loyal comrade as well as a dear friend.
As to “working the constituency”: yes, I’ll do what I can. If possible I’ll come to Edinburgh a little before the beginning of August. Thanks for the summarized conversation with MacCormick.70 Be assured that all your arguments & advice have been, are being, & will be loyally pondered by me. My wife is touched & pleased by a letter you have written to her. I have not seen it, & can do no more than infer: but while I gladly accept the friendly intent as further proof of your affectionate friendship I am sorry you wrote exigently about my health — & particularly about my back. I was eager that she should know nothing of a passing trouble — partly due to over strain & partly no doubt rheumatic.
I am now not only ever so much better, but full of energy & ardour. I had the most glorious weather in the West, and had a true sun-bath every day. Friday, Saty, Sunday, & Monday last I spent at one of my favourite remote places on Loch Fyne in Western Argyll. There I lived mentally, spiritually, & physically (excuse the unscientific specifications!) in rainbow-gold. All day from sunrise to midnight I was on the higher mountain slopes, or in the pine-woods (full of continuous solemn music with the north wind), or on the sea. On Sunday forenoon I rowed across (2 miles or so) to the uninhabitable rocky solitudes opposite (South of Ceann More) — went for a long glorious swim of about an hour! — lay naked in the sunlight below a pine on a mossy crag, & dreamed pagan dreams, & fell asleep, & had a wonderful vision of woodland lives unknown of men, and of a beautiful Child God, of which you will hear something from Fiona in due time — & wakened two hours later, still sun-bathed, tanned & burnt & midge-bitten — then another swim — then rowed across the loch again &, after tea etc., away up to the summit of a hill set against a marvellous vision of mountains & peaks & lofty ranges, which I have baptised with a Gaelic name meaning the Hill of the Beauty of the World — then watched the sunglow till 10 p.m. & came down thro’ the dewy heather to the pinewoods, where I climbed into the branches of a great red brother & lay awhile listening to the wind, with its old-world wonder-song of the pines, & watching the moon sail upward.
I have come away with a sense of the sunflood through & through me: of magic rhythms and hints: of secret voices and cadences haunting-sweet: & with the almost passionate health & eagerness of that young Norse god who in sheer extravagance of joy wove the rainbows into a garland for the moment’s mountain he made out of falling worlds.
All which dithyrambic exultation means I am well. I thank the Gods for life — for a swift pulse & red blood — and fever in the heart and brain —
and
But I’m going to be good, & to lecture, & to publish, & behave, & always love Mrs. Geddes & yourself –
W. S.
ALS National Library of Scotland
To Frederick Shields, June 24, 1895
Rutland House | Greencroft Gardens | So. Hampstead | 24:6:95
My dear Shields
I want to introduce to you my friend, Mr. MacKenzie Bell (an intimate friend, also, of two whom you hold dear — our Dear Christina Rossetti, & Theodore Watts).
I want to do this, partly because Mr. MacKenzie Bell is anxious to make the acquaintance of one whose work he admires so much: partly that you, too, may meet a poet & man of letters and what is best of all a good fellow: & partly that he may chat to you about Christina Rossetti whose life (or rather a monograph on whose life-work — with some biographical detail) he has been commissioned to write.
With Greetings, | Ever yours affectionately, | William Sharp
ALS Yale University
To Herbert Stuart Stone, [late June, 1895]
9. Upper Coltbridge Terrace | Murrayfield
Dear Mr. Stone
I thank you for your letter — the suggestions in which I endorse and will abide by. Yes: “The Washer of the Ford”71 may stand over till February: a decision I should probably have come to even if you and Mr. Sharp (from whom I heard by the same post) had not urged it.
It will be all the better for keeping, and for the opportunities of close and repeated revision. There are in particular two things in this book (“Muime Chriosd” and “The Washer of the Ford”) which I think will attract more attention than anything I have done.
As to Pharais. Yes, I will abide loyally by my undertaking to give you first option in America of all my books. Please send me a line to say when you wish my revised and slightly altered (for copyright) copy to be delivered to you. Will it do if you receive it in Chicago before the end of August? If, however, you wish it earlier you can have it.
In writing about this, please add if the letter of terms as to “The Sin-Eater” volume still holds. I have not the letter at hand, but the undertaking was a 15% royalty on the published price of each copy sold. Kindly add if you confirm this: i.e., for America. I will send you duplicate typed copy (ready for press) by or before the end of July. As I told you, the book will be issued here by Patrick Geddes and Colleagues early in October: of course, the exact date will be fixt by mutual agreement later. The present stipulation on the part of P.G. & Colleagues is that I send in “The Sin-Eater” complete by or before end of July, when it will at once be sent to the printers, to be ready for issue in (say) first week of October.
I hope you will please me by accepting from me a copy of The Mountain Lovers on its shortly forthcoming publication by Mr. Lane, (who now awaits only a cable from Messrs. Roberts Bros. of Boston, who are printing the book in America.
Believe me, | Yours very truly, | Fiona Macleod
ALS Pierpont Morgan Library