The Life and Letters of William Sharp and “Fiona Macleod”. Volume 3
| ,Chapter Twenty-Four
Texte intégral
Life: 1904
1During his two weeks in Greece in the winter of 1903, Sharp fell in love with its landscape, its classical monuments, and a young American archaeologist. In early December 1904, he returned to Greece, this time with Elizabeth, and stayed four months. Besides renewing his friendship with the young woman, he wanted to make notes for a travel book for English speaking visitors describing the classical associations of landmarks and monuments. Shortly after arriving, his plans were cut short by illness. According to Elizabeth, “the winter was very cold and at first my husband was very ill — the double strain of his life seemed to consume him like a flame” (Memoir, p. 374). In the following late December letter to Mrs. Philpot, he assured her he had come out of his “severe feverish attack with erect (if draggled) colours”. He continued,
Today I heard a sound as of Pan piping, among the glens on Hymettos, whereon my eyes rest so often and often so long dream. Tomorrow I’ll take Gilbert Murray’s fine new version of Hippolytus or Bacchae as my pocket companion to the Theatre of Dionysus on the hither side of the Acropolis; possibly my favourite Oedipus at Kolonos and read sitting on Kolonos itself and imagine I hear on the wind the rise and fall of the lonely ancient lives, serene thought-tranced in deathless music. And in the going of the old and the coming of the new year, a friend’s thoughts shall fare to you from far away Athens
2The optimism of this letter was short-lived. He became ill again in early January and remained so through most of the month. .
3Late in January, he began to feel better and wrote to Ernest Rhys describing his plan to visit “Mycenae and Argos & Tiryns to Nauplia and if possible, to Sparta.” Rhys included portions of this letter in his Letters from Limbo (p. 80) and described Sharp as “wandering abroad after his deadly enemy diabetes had attacked him.” This observation led to an insightful comment about Sharp’s attitude toward the disease which would soon claim his life:
Not a bad way-bill for a sick wanderer, but whatever else he might be he always took his ailments and his threatened fate with courage and at times with a histrionic relish of his own predicament. […] In truth it might be said he took both his mortal ailment and his early death with a light heart, and he would do nothing to delay the step of fate. He ate a pound of Turkish delight in Athens one day when the doctor had warned him he must eat nothing sweet, and at Newport, Isle of Wight, he took a plate of cakes one day out of a confectioner’s window and ate them all with amazing gusto.
4While mentioning her husband’s illness, Elizabeth recalled the friendships they made at the Maison Merlin. They enjoyed the “pleasant companionship with members of the English and American Schools of Archeology — of which Mr. Carl Bosenquet and Prof. Henry Fowler were respectively the heads — with Dr. Wilhelm head of the Austrian School.” They also befriended “a Greek poet, at whose house we met several of the rising Greek men of letters, and other residents and wanderers” (Memoir, p. 375).
5“With Spring sunshine and warmth,” Elizabeth wrote (Memoir, p. 378), “my husband regained a degree of strength, and it was his chief pleasure to take long rambles on the neighboring hills alone, or with the young American archaeologist, Mrs. Roselle L. Shields, a tireless walker.” Sharp described one of those walks in a late February letter to Rhys:
Yesterday I had a lovely break from work, high up on the beautiful bracing dwarf-pine clad slopes of Pentelicos, above Kephisia, the ancient deme of Menander — and then across the country behind Hymettos, the country of Demosthenes and so back by the High Convent of St. John the Hunter, on the north spur of the Hymettian range, and the site of ancient Gargettos, the place of Epicurus’ birth and boyhood. At sundown I was at Heracleion, some three or four miles from Athens — and the city was like pale gold out of which peaked Lycabettos rose like a purple sapphire. The sky beyond, above Salamis, was all grass-green and mauve. A thundercloud lay on extreme Hymettos, rising from Marathon: and three rainbows lay along the violet dusk of the great hill-range.
6Sharp assured Rhys he felt much better: “I am apparently well and strong again, hard at work, hard at pleasure, hard at life, as before, and generally once more full of hope and energy.”
7A Sharp letter to E. C. Stedman many months later (August 29) casts further light on his illness in Greece and the nature of his recovery:
I was all but done for in the autumn by a severe seizure of a form of diabetes, and after the rigorous treatment at Llandrindod Wells & elsewhere I went to Greece for the winter & spring. I got worse & worse all the same till about February. Then spring came over Hymettos, and new life came to me, & in more ways than one, & Attica became a garden of Eden, & I grew swiftly and continuously better. A heavenly trip in the Peloponnesus put an additional touch to it and a month or so later I sailed from Athens a new man.
8“Hard at pleasure,” “hard at life, as before,” “a new life came to me, & in more ways than one, & Attica became a garden of Eden.” In writing to Stedman through the years, Sharp often adopted the persona of a romantic Lothario. In this instance, there was some truth behind those phrases for Sharp was captivated with the young American archaeologist, the tireless walker, Roselle Lathrop Shields.
9A previously unknown letter dated February 9, 1906 (following Sharp’s death in December 1905) from Catherine Janvier to Mrs Shields, casts further light upon their relationship. The letter is transcribed in Appendix 2 in this volume. Having sent Roselle an inscribed copy of her book about cats, London Mews (Harper & Brothers: New York, 1904), Catherine wrote on February 8 to say “the cats are crossing the ocean and I hope will reach you safely.” The letter, along with a newspaper clipping of a portrait of Sharp, was in Roselle Shields’ copy of the cat book when it sold a few years ago. Roselle had written to Catherine about her regret in not being with Sharp at Alexander Hood’s Castle Maniace in Sicily when he died. Catherine responded: “My dearie, I am beginning to think that it is you and I who best know and understand our dear boy. Do not be influenced by others or their opinions. How I wish you could have been with him.” She then expressed her regret at not receiving any letters from Sharp after his final arrival at Maniace (though she did receive two brief letters from him),
How I envy you your four last letters — had I but one! Well, I feel I know how he longed for his wee “Roseen.” How weary he was of many things. It breaks my heart to think of him there — alone — I know that the best of care was taken of him, that every comfort was his, but I know that he was “alone,” he knew too, I am sure, that it had to be.
10Of the many letters Catherine received from Sharp since their first introduction in 1889, only a small number remained; “many letters were destroyed, otherwise he would not have written with the freedom that he did.” She does not know what Sharp did with her letters. “Should E. [Elizabeth] read them, if he kept them, she will be greatly puzzled.”
11Catherine continued: “What you say about P. and Mary and E. not knowing coincides with what I thought. In the letter that never was written he promised full details of P. and directions as to some matters — I never can know now. How I wish I were near, there is so much to ask, so much for us — you and I — to talk of.” The “E” who did not know — presumably how close Roselle’s relationship with her husband had been — was Elizabeth since Catherine referred to her as “E” earlier in the letter. The “Mary” was either Sharp’s sister who provided the Fiona handwriting or Mary Wilson who accompanied the Sharps to Italy, perhaps to help Elizabeth care for her husband whose health was failing quickly. The “P” may have been Mrs. J. H. Philpot with whom Sharp had been corresponding and who loaned some of her letters, including one from Greece dated December 1903, to Elizabeth for the Memoir. She was the author of The Sacred Tree in Religion and Myth (London and New York: Macmillan, 1897) and other popular books and pamphlets about spiritualist associations with trees. Little is known about Sharp’s relationship with her though he may have met her through Dr. John Goodchild since the three shared the conviction that spirits inhabited the natural world and communicated frequently with those attuned to their messages. She was among the company of women with whom Sharp had developed special relationships of dependency. Catherine agreed with Roselle that neither P, nor Mary, nor E, were aware of the intimacy of Sharp’s relationship with Roselle. She also shared Roselle’s regret that the woman he loved and the woman who often acted as his mother confessor could not be with him during his last hours.
12Catherine Janvier’s letter expresses her opinion of the state of Sharp’s mind and feelings before he died. Its purpose was to console Roselle and assure her that despite Sharp’s close relationships with other women, she, Roselle, was Sharp’s true love. After describing what Sharp had left for her during his last visit to New York in late November 1904, including the manuscript, in his handwriting, of Fiona’s long dedication to her ( “Prologue to Kathia”) in The Washer of the Ford (1896), Catherine concluded, “as soon as I can, I will hunt up all he said of you. Unfortunately, much is destroyed.” Then she affixed this postscript:
Sunday Oct. 22. Venice — 1905 (In reference to our, yours and my, first meeting) ‘Remember that her all surrounding love saved me, I am sure, in far away Greece, and what it has meant ever since to me.’ I cannot get at the earlier ones yet.
13Here Catherine asserts that less than two months before he died, when he and Elizabeth were in Venice on their way to Sicily (October 22), Sharp wrote Catherine a letter in which he said the surrounding love of Roselle, his “sweet Roseen,” saved his life in Greece in the spring of 1904. Sharp and Roselle cannot have met in person often, if at all, following the Sharps’ departure from Greece in April 1904, but it is certainly the case that their relationship echoes that he began a decade earlier with Edith Wingate Rinder. His “long rambles” among classical ruins with Roselle in Greece were like those he took with Edith in the Roman Campagna. His relationship with Edith lasted many years and led to the birth of Fiona Macleod. Both married to others and neither couple with children, William and Edith often spoke and wrote of Fiona as the child they could not have. Their relationship had begun to cool and devolve into one of close friendship by the time Edith gave birth to a baby girl on July 26, 1901. In December 1903, Sharp found another young woman in Greece who returned his love. How their relationship might have developed had Sharp lived longer, we cannot know, but it brought a measure of joy and happiness — a welcome renewal of youth — to his final years.
14Two photographs of Sharp illustrate the toll taken by his illnesses. In the 1894 photograph, he was a forty years old, handsome, virile man with dark hair. In less than ten years, at the age of fifty, he had become an old man with grey hair and a sad, if not worried, demeanor.

Fig. 21. William Sharp from a photograph by Frederick Hollyer, The Chap-book, September 15, 1894, Wikimedia, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:William_Sharp_1894.jpg#/media/File:William_Sharp_1894.jpg

Fig. 22. Photograph of William Sharp, taken by Alexander Nelson Hood, the Duke of Bronte, at his Castle Maniace in November 1903. Reproduced by Elizabeth Sharp in her Memoir, p. 358.
15It is hard to believe Sharp approached his relationship with Roselle Shields in Greece with the same ardor that characterized his relationship with Edith Rinder in Rome in 1892. Despite all that Catherine Janvier said and implied in her letter, one suspects Sharp viewed his relationship with Roselle as a father views his relationship with a daughter.
16In 1906, shortly after Sharp died, Catherine Janvier began an essay describing the genesis of Fiona Macleod and her discovery upon reading the first Fiona book that its author was William Sharp. Her essay first took the form of a paper she read to the Aberdeen branch of the Franco-Scottish society in June 1906, and then a lengthy article in The North American Review in April 1907. After reproducing parts of her surviving letters from Sharp in the article, Catherine made some of them available to Elizabeth Sharp who used them amply in her Memoir. Roselle Shields may have also shared some of her letters from Sharp with Elizabeth as she is likely the unidentified friend to whom several are addressed near the end of the Memoir. Elizabeth maintained a friendship with Roselle Shields, and she facilitated the publication by Thomas Mosher in 1908 of A Little Book of Nature Thoughts, poems by Fiona Macleod selected by Mrs. William Sharp and Roselle Lathrop Shields with a forward signed R. L. S.
17We have skipped ahead to Sharp’s death in December 1905 to cast light on his experience in Greece in the first three months of 1904. In early February of that year, he constructed a Fiona letter to the Celtic scholar and London publisher, Alfred Nutt, which he sent to Edinburgh where Mary copied and dated it February 18. Nutt had written to ask if Fiona would like to write a comprehensive retelling of Gaelic stories which he thought Lady Gregory had done only partially and not very well in Poets and Dreamers: Studies and Translations from the Irish, published in 1903. Writing as Fiona, Sharp reflected the distance that had developed between the Scottish and the Irish Celtic movements. Fiona had recently reread Lady Gregory’s book and found it
not nearly so “original” as I thought it — I mean, in the sense that far more of the book is “lifted,” as you say, than I had first noticed. And more than ever I realized how often the old is weakened in the retelling. There are certain episodes and even chapters which I reread with a chill indifference, when not with impatience.
18If she were ever to attempt the retelling Nutt proposed, Fiona would proceed with the “utmost simplicity and directness, and not at all unless in imaginative recovery of mood.”
19She would have liked to take up Nutt’s suggestion, but she was in too great a doubt of her “powers to do with the finality of achievement what otherwise is best left undone.” Nutt must have asked Yeats to undertake the project for Fiona wrote:
I too had hoped Mr. Yeats might do this thing. It is not to be thought of from him, now: not from lack of genius, or even scope of vision, but from his growing preoccupation with so many matters and conflicting interests and perhaps too from his lack of withdrawal from continuous personal influences, which rarely do much for the imaginative writer but oftener disintegrate what isolation has achieved.
20Sharp believed Yeats’s involvement in the cause of Irish nationalism and his relationship with Maud Gonne, an active Nationalist, interfered with his imaginative work. Fiona could not think of others fitted for the work; perhaps someone who has been influenced by her own imaginative work will emerge. If so, she will be pleased at having done a “truly good thing.” Some day she may be able to take up Nutt’s suggestion, but now she is busy finishing a volume of essays (which became The Winged Destiny) and preparing a volume of verse which appeared only after Sharp died. Then Sharp approached the real reason he had Fiona turn down Nutt’s proposal: he was simply too weak, too exhausted, too busy to undertake a project of that dimension however desirable the financial package might be.
21When the Sharps left Greece on March 24, 1904, their destination was the French Riviera. They travelled by ship at least part of the way, and a Fiona letter to Mosher dated March 30 and written “At Sea” suggests they may have stopped briefly in Naples. When she “put in” there, Fiona wrote, she found in her forwarded mail Mosher’s April Bibelot which contained “a too generously worded appreciation.” It also contained a Fiona essay entitled “Sea Magic and Running Water” (101–32), which caused Sharp to hurriedly draft the March 30 Fiona letter and sent it to London for Edith Rinder to type and send to Mosher. Fiona informed Mosher she had not authorized him to publish that essay since it was to appear in The Winged Destiny, a volume Chapman and Hall planned to publish later in 1904 both in England and the United States. She claimed, improbably, the publisher saw the Bibelot and decided to delay publication and reconsider an American edition. In his introduction to “Sea Magic and Running Water” in the Bibelot, Mosher wrote: “Later we hope to give some further studies, should what is here reprinted find favour, — more especially three very beautiful contributions to recent English reviews.” He listed them: “The Magic Kingdoms” (published in The Monthly Review of 10 January, 1903, 100–11); “The Sunset of Old Tales” (published in The Fortnightly Review of April 1, 1903, 1087–110); and “The Woman at the Crossways” (published in The Fortnightly Review of November 2, 1903, 869–73). Since these essays would also be included in The Winged Destiny, Mosher must not print them in his Bibelot. “If people in America,” she wrote, “can buy the best part of my new book for 10 cents, [the price of a single issue of the Bibelot] they will not be likely to pay for imported copies [of the book] at a dollar and a half or whatever the selling price may be.” She went on to mentioned essays not destined for The Winged Destiny which Mosher might wish to print in the Bibelot.
22On their way to the French Riviera, the Sharps may have stopped in Bordighera on the Italian Riviera to see Dr. John Goodchild as they had done in the spring of 1903. As Elizabeth recalled in the Memoir, they “loitered” for a time in Hyeres on the French Riviera “in the month of cherry blossoms.” After stopping for a time with the Janviers and other friends in Provence, they continued northwest toward Bordeaux. Writing to Catherine Janvier from La Puy on the eighteenth, Sharp described the “magnificent old feudal rock-Chateau fortress of Polignac, erected on the site of the famous Temple of Apollo (raised here by the Romans on the still earlier site of a Druidic Temple to the Celtic Sun God).” The time he spent in Sicily and Greece had quickened his interest in the remains of earlier civilizations in Western Europe. The site caused him to realize “how deep a hold even in the France of today is maintained by the ancient Pagan faith.” By early May, the Sharps were back in London where they rented rooms for the summer in Leinster Square, Bayswater.
23In June, Alexander Jessup asked Sharp if he would like to write a volume in a French Men of Letters series he was editing for the J. P. Lippincott Company in Philadelphia. Sharp responded enthusiastically on June 14, noting that he was a specialist in “Sainte-Beuve in criticism, Hello in philosophy & criticism, Leconte de L’Isle, Baudelaire, and Villiers de L’Isle Adam — These with Chateaubriand, of whom I have long been intimate, are the names with which I am most at home.” For the pleasure he would have in writing and because of concurrent work, he would prefer to write a volume on Mistral, Leconte de L’Isle, or Villiers de L’Isle Adam. Before committing, he would need to know and approve the terms. If satisfactory, he would begin drafting the book in the coming winter and finish it by mid-summer. It was decided he would do the Leconte de L’Isle volume, and he began collecting material for it during the summer. Sharp’s undertaking this work indicates his continuing need for money and his recurring optimism about his health. It was a much easier project than the elaborate comprehensive retelling of Gaelic stories Alfred Nutt proposed for Fiona in February.
24Sharp remained well throughout July and into August, but his thoughts were on the nature and quality of his accomplishments as a writer. In early July, he wrote under his own name to an unidentified friend who was also a writer and who knew he was Fiona. He thanked the friend for feeling “so deeply the beauty that has been so humbly and eagerly and often despairingly sought.” He then reflected on the “long long road, the road of art”:
those who serve with passion and longing and unceasing labour of inward thought and outward craft are the only votaries who truly know what long and devious roads must be taken, how many pitfalls have to be avoided or escaped from, how many desires have to be foregone, how many hopes have to be crucified in slow death or more mercifully be lost by the way, before one can stand at last on “the yellow banks where the west wind blows,” and see, beyond, the imperishable flowers, and hear the immortal voices.
25He concluded with a reference to Fiona’s The Winged Destiny which was about to appear:
Destiny puts dust upon dreams, and silence upon sweet airs, and stills songs, and makes the hand idle, and the spirit as foam upon the sea. For the gods are jealous, O jealous and remorseless beyond all words to tell. And there is so little time at the best… and the little gain, the little frail crown, is so apt to be gained too late for the tired votary to care, or to do more than lie down saying “I have striven, and I am glad, and now it is over, and I am glad!”
26Having reflected on his life, Sharp recognized it might soon be over.
27On the second of August he wrote again to the same friend. Yesterday had been “one of the loveliest days of the year, with the most luminous atmosphere I have seen in England — the afternoon and evening divinely serene and beautiful.” He spent the day in the “glowing warmth and wonderful radiance” of Glastonbury and its neighbourhood. His companion was John Goodchild who put him “unknowing to a singular test.” Goodchild
hoped with especial and deep hope that in some significant way I would write or utter the word “Joy” on this 1st day of August (the first three weeks of vital import to many, and apparently for myself too) — and also to see if a certain spiritual influence would reach me.
Well, later in the day (for he could not prompt or suggest, and had to await occurrence) we went into the lovely grounds of the ancient ruined Abbey, one of the loveliest things in England I think. I became restless and left him and went and lay down behind an angle of the East end, under the tree. I smoked, and then rested idly, and then began thinking of some correspondence I had forgotten. Suddenly I turned on my right side, stared at the broken stone of the angle, and felt vaguely moved in some way. Abruptly and unpremeditatedly I wrote down three enigmatic and disconnected lines. I was looking curiously at the third when I saw Dr. G. approach.
“Can you make anything out of that,” I said — “I’ve just written it, I don’t know why.” This is the triad.
From the Silence of Time, Time’s Silence borrow.
In the heart of To-day is the word of To-morrow.
The Builders of Joy are the Children of Sorrow.
28With Goodchild, Sharp could indulge his belief, as he had earlier with W. B. Yeats, that the spirit world surrounds and sometimes intervenes in the natural world.
29Sharp’s fascination with the realm of spirits is a controlling motif in the stories and essays in The Winged Destiny which began with a “Dedicatory Introduction” to Goodchild (pp. vii–xii). The spirit of the book and the nature of Sharp’s relationship with Goodchild are exemplified by the last paragraph though Goodchild was unaware it was Sharp speaking through Fiona:
But you — you are of the little clan, for whom this book is: you who have gone upon dark ways, and have known the starless road, and perchance on that obscure way learned what we have yet to learn. For you, and such as you, it is still a pleasure to gather bindweed of thoughts and dreams, these thoughts, to the airs and pauses and harmonies of considered speech. So, by your acceptance of this book, let me be not only of your fellowship but of that little scattered clan to whom the wild bees of the spirit come, as secret wings in the dark, with the sound and breath of forgotten things.
30Elizabeth included in the Memoir (p. 385) part of a July letter from Goodchild which she called his “first acknowledgement of the dedication.” The official publication date of The Winged Destiny was October 7, 1904. If Elizabeth’s dating is correct, Goodchild saw a draft or a proof of the dedication three months earlier.
31Some of the stories and essays in The Winged Destiny were written in the summer of 1902 when Sharp was in the west of Scotland (Memoir, p. 344). In an August 23, 1902 letter, he told Alexander Nelson Hood the book — then to be called “The Magic Kingdom” — had been postponed until the following year. In an October 1902 letter to Catherine Janvier, he said he intended to put together a volume of Gaelic essays and Spiritual studies called For the Beauty of an Idea. In Fiona’s March 30, 1904 letter to Mosher, the book had become The Winged Destiny and “For the Beauty of an Idea” had become a section containing the essays “Celtic” and “The Gaelic Heart.” The beautiful idea set forth in these two essays and the “Preface” to the section is that of pan-Celticism, that writers in Scotland, Wales, and especially Ireland should set aside their nationalistic passions and support each other as they write in English about myths and legends of the Gael, thereby contributing to the large canon of British literature. Most of the essays had appeared in British periodicals, but Sharp made some revisions and additions and settled on the internal arrangement of the book while he was in Greece. He thought Chapman & Hall would publish the book in April or early May 1904; the delay until October may have been due to the “modification of contract” occasioned by Mosher jumping the gun.
32One story in The Winged Destiny, “The Lynn of Dreams” (pp. 134–40), had a special meaning for Sharp. It tells the story of a writer — “let us call him John o’Dreams” — who loved words and was able to do marvellous things with them. “But he had a fatal curiosity. Year by year this had grown upon him. He desired to know the well-springs: he desired the well-spring of all literature.” He sought it everywhere in the great masters of literature and failed to find it. One day as he lay dreaming by a pool in the woods, “Dalua, the Master of Illusions, the Fool of Faery” appeared and offered to take him to the Lynn of Dreams where he would reveal “the souls of words in their immortal shape and colour, and how the flow of a secret tide continually moves them into fugitive semblances of mortal colour and mortal shape.” Reaching the Lynn of Dreams, John o’Dreams saw “his heart’s desire bending like a hind of the hill and quenching her thirst.” He saw the “mortal shape and colour of words” and, looking deeper, he saw “the souls of words, in their immortal shape and colour.” Having found paradise, “his soul cried out for joy.” But soon Dalua reappeared and told him to drink from “the Cup of which Tristran drank when he loved Yseult beyond the ache of mortal love, the Cup of Wisdom that gives madness and death before it gives knowledge and life.” After drinking from the cup, the writer lost all his creative ability, “the master-touch, the secret art, the craft. He became an ‘obscure stammerer.’ At the last he was dumb. And then his heart broke, and he died.” Sharp identified with John o’Dreams who, like Faust, came to the realization that perfection in art as in life is inseparable from death. Writing through the Fiona persona enabled him to tell his personal story while avoiding the tincture of autobiography.
33The first half of the book’s final essay, “The Winged Destiny” (pp. 341–64), which gave the volume its title, was the “Foreword” to Fiona Macleod’s “The House of Usna” when Thomas Mosher published it as a book in 1902. It asserts the need to move beyond Ibsen’s realism to plays like “The House of Usna” which portray the mystery of life and the spiritual forces at work in the world. Sharp had written the play as Fiona Macleod in response to Yeats’ request in 1896 to join him in producing dramas about mythological Celtic figures and the spiritual forces that moved them. The second half of “The Winged Destiny” essay was written in Greece, and its title is that of “a beautiful image which troubled all who looked on it” created long ago by a young, unknown sculptor at Delphi. The sculptor may have been a student of Agathon who created a statue of Destiny as a woman with “downward looking eyes” which were nearly closed. Agathon’s student, however, created a Destiny that was a male
with upward lifted face, and eyes looking out through time and change and circumstance: young, yet with weight of deep thought on the brows: serene. yet somehow appalling, as though a most ancient presence out of eternity looked from the newly carved marble. He was winged too, with great wings, as though he had come from afar, and was but a moment earth-lit.
34Most would say he was Anteros, the God of requited love, brother of Eros, the God of unrequited love. Without revealing its intended subject, the sculptor died the day after finishing the statue, reinforcing Sharp’s point that attaining perfect beauty in art is synonymous with death. His handyman, however, said the statue was to be named “The Winged Destiny.” Since there seems to be no such statue at Delphi, Sharp, writing as Fiona, may have had in mind the figure Albert Gilbert sculpted for the top of the Lord Shaftesbury Memorial fountain in London’s Piccadilly Square. Commonly called Eros, the figure was designed to be Anteros, his opposite. It was erected in 1892–1893 to commemorate the philanthropic works of Anthony Ashley Cooper, seventh Earl of Shaftesbury, who expressed his forward-looking love by establishing schools for childhood education and eliminating the scourge of child-labour.

Fig. 23. Statue of Anteros, Shaftesbury Memorial, Piccadilly Circus, London. Sculpted by Alfred Gilbert and erected in 1893. Photograph by Diego Delso (2014), Wikimedia, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Fuente_Eros,_Piccadilly_Circus,_Londres,_Inglaterra,_2014-08-11,_DD_159.JPG
35After ruminating on the mystery of Fate, Fiona declared there are two mighty forces at work in what we call Destiny. First, there is the “sombre and inscrutable Genius of this world, which weaves with time and races and empires, with life and death and change, and in the weft of whose web our swift-passing age, our race, our history, are no more than vivid gleams for a moment turned to the light.” Second, there is also a
Winged Destiny, a Creature of the Eternal, inhabiting infinitude, so vast and incommensurable that no eye can perceive, no imagination limn, no thought overtake, and yet that can descend upon your soul or mine as dew upon blades of grass, as wind among the multitudinous leaves, as the voice of sea and forest that can rise to the silence of mountain-brows or sink in whispers through the silence of a child’s sleep — a Destiny that has no concern with crowns and empires and the proud dreams of men, but only with the soul, that flitting shadow, more intangible than dew, yet whose breath shall see the wasting of hills and the drought of oceans.
36Beyond the lower force of Fate and the higher force of Destiny there is a Winged Destiny that leans
from Eternity into Time, and whispers to the soul through symbol and intuition the inconceivable mystery of the divine silence.… the Shepherd with whom, in the dark hour, we must go at last, to whose call we must answer when the familiar passions and desires and longings are as dust on the wind, and only that remains which so little we consider, only that little shaken flame of the spirit, which is yet of the things that do not pass, which is of the things immortal.
37These passages reveal what was on Sharp’s mind as he finished the essay in Greece in the spring of 1904. He knew he did not have long to live, and he must have shared his thoughts about the Winged Destiny, about the end of life, with Roselle Shields who, he told Catherine Janvier, saved his life during their long walks in the Grecian landscape.
38In the “Foreword” of ALittle Book of Nature Thoughts (pp. i–xi), Roselle Shields asserted the ancient Greeks “felt and showed Beauty is the essence of life.” Sharp convinced her the Celtic vision was a “reawakening of the old Hellenic harmony between the eternal love of beauty and the passionate longing for truth.” With Elizabeth’s help, Roselle selected and reproduced three quotations — one from Richard Jeffries and two from Emerson — which equate the highest life with the search for Beauty. “The Lynn of Dream” expressed the belief that the attainment of perfect beauty is synonymous with death. The conclusion of Fiona’s “The Winged Destiny” expressed the belief that a shepherd descends at the moment of death and leads the spirit into the realm of immortals. Elizabeth shared her husband’s belief in the survival of the spirit. After he died, she spent considerable time and energy communicating with his spirit through mediums, and she recorded her efforts in a journal now in the British Library. Similarly, Roselle Shields stated in the “Foreword” her belief in an “indefinable something, veiled, exquisite, and sombre, which hovers above the commonplace and illumines the sentiments and passions.” In this context, her disappointment in not being with Sharp when he died is understandable. She missed the chance to hold his hand and comfort him as the shepherd descended and led his soul across the boundary that separates life and death. Such was the power William Sharp exercised through the Fiona writings and the force of his presence over the many women and men who returned the love he, like Anteros, expended.
39Following “an ideal summer of warmth and radiance,” Sharp fell ill again. On August 29, he wrote to E. C. Stedman
And now I am again at Llandrindod Wells in Wales [where he had gone to recuperate the previous fall], & under the specialist’s rigorous regime as to waters, diet, exercise, & so forth — but (despite a recent & sudden & somewhat severe access of the ailment, now got well in hand however) more precautionarily than of necessity. Damp & raw cold are my worst enemies, & so, as for years past, there is no thought of our spending the winter in England. But being in so much greater general health than I was last year (in Sept. last the specialist gave me “a few months!”) it is not necessary to leave at October-end for Sicily, Greece, or Egypt. In fact, we had projected going to Stockholm, & then via Berlin & Leipzig to Dresden & Munich: & then later to Italy.
It is still our intention to spend January, February, & March in Rome — which for me is the City of Cities.
But we are going to it via New York!
40He went on to say he and Elizabeth intended to leave England near the end of October, spend six weeks or so in New York, and then sail directly to the Mediterranean. He asked if it would be convenient for them to stay with the Stedmans for a few days upon arrival “till we are able to look about & see what we can settle as to quarters within the limited reach of our very restricted finances.” He mentioned his “Literary Geography” articles, which had been running serially in the Pall Mall Magazine, would be out in book-form in October. Elizabeth’s little book on Rembrandt (London, Methuen & Company, 1904) was having an exceptionally good reception. He was busy collecting and revising his literary essays which had appeared in various periodicals over the years. He and Elizabeth would return to London in a week or two “for a month’s hard work before [getting ready] for New York.”
41In a September 20 letter to Alexander Jessup he withdrew his plan to write a book about Leconte de L’Isle for the French Men of Letters series. He described his deteriorating health:
Several of my immediate plans and later projects have to be relinquished, materially modified, or indefinitely postponed. My health, which despite a strong physique has long been far from what it ought to be, is now seriously complicated by what the doctors have discovered, namely an acute and dangerous attack of Diabetes. It has been arrested by rigorous dieting and the famous treatment at Llandrindod Wells — but it has not only weakened me and brought out certain climatic and other sensitiveness, but renders imperative the medical advice given me to lessen my work to the minimum compatible with well-being and the means to live, and to spend at least six months of the year in the South of Europe in as dry and sunny a winter-climate as I can afford to obtain. In the circumstances it is out of the question for me to consider further the writing of the Leconte de Lisle volume.
42Aside from ill health, Sharp found Jessup’s proposed terms unacceptable; another American, he claimed, had offered much better terms for a shorter manuscript.
43Helen Bartlett Bridgman, an American writer and friend of Mosher, had written to Fiona, praising her work and asking why she was so reclusive. Sharp responded cordially as Fiona in mid-September. The letter has the usual excuses designed to pre-empt any requests for a meeting and one masterfully constructed sentence that cuts two ways:
I am content to do my best, as the spirit moves me, and as my sense of beauty compels me; and if, with that, I can also make some often much-needed money, enough for the need as it arises; and, further, can win the sympathy and deep appreciation of the few intimate and the now many unknown friends whom, to my great gladness and pride, I have gained, then, indeed, I can surely contentedly let wider “fame” (of all idle things the idlest, when it is, as it commonly is, the mere lip-repute of the curious and the shallow) go by, and be indifferent to the lapse of possible but superfluous greater material gain.
44Just as it was necessary for Fiona to seek solitude and reject wider fame, so the fiction of Fiona kept her creator from the fame that would be his if he could claim the Fiona writings.
45By September 22, Sharp had received a letter from Mrs. Stedman saying she and her husband were not well enough to have overnight house guests, but that her granddaughter would try to find suitable lodgings for the Sharps in the city. In his reply on the twenty-second, Sharp expressed sorrow in hearing about their illnesses and assured her he understood why they could not have guests. In his August 29 letter to Stedman Sharp said they intended to spend six weeks in New York, but now, “for health’s sake & other reasons,” they would spend only a month in America and part of that in Boston. They would be glad to have Laura Stedman, Mrs. Stedman’s granddaughter, help them find modestly-priced adjacent rooms, “if possible roomy & pleasant enough to use also occasionally for writing in,” centrally located and “preferably well up Central Park Way.” They planned to sail on the SS. Menominee on November 3 which was due in New York on the thirteenth. By the end of September, their New York plans had crystallized. The Janviers were going to Mexico in mid-November, Sharp explained, and had offered their rooms to the Sharps: “They will be back by about the 1st or 2nd of December — & as we don’t sail from New York for the Mediterranean till either December 10th or 12th (12th I think is the date — & the last date the doctors want me to be in a cold & damp climate, where I shouldn’t be at all, tho’ I am wonderfully better) we’ll see something of them.” By late October, the couple had decided to spend the last week of their American visit in Boston and sail from there to Naples on December 10.
46The trip’s “immediate object,” Elizabeth wrote, “was that I should know in person some of the many friends my husband valued there, and I was specially interested to make the acquaintance of Mr. and Mrs. Stedman, who gave me a warm welcome, of Mr. and Mrs. Alden, Mr. and Mrs. R. Watson Gilder, Mr. John Lafarge, Mrs. Julia Ward Howe, and Miss Caroline Hazard whom we visited at Wellesley College” (Memoir, p. 393). Upon arriving in New York, they went directly to the Janvier’s apartment on West 49th Street and were entertained during the following weeks by the Aldens in Hoboken and the Gilders in New York, amongst others. They spent Thanksgiving Day with the Stedmans in Bronxville, and Sharp used a piece of their “Lawrence Park” stationery for a letter to Bliss Perry who was editing the Atlantic Monthly in Boston. Enclosing a note of introduction from Stedman, Sharp asked Perry if he could see him on one of the four days he would be in Boston before sailing for Italy.
47Soon after the Janviers returned to reclaim their apartment, the Sharps, on December 1, went to Newport, Rhode Island to spend a long weekend with Mr. and Mrs. Arthur Livingston Mason. Arthur Mason derived a fortune from The Rhode Island Locomotive Company which produced more than 3,400 steam locomotives between 1866 and 1899. The Masons lived in Halidon Hall, a twenty room Gothic structure with a commanding view of the harbor built by a Scottish stone mason in 1853. The invitation to the Sharps was from Arthur’s wife, Edith Bucklin Hartshorn Mason (1855–1906), a formidable woman who founded the Rhode Island chapter of the National Society of Colonial Dames and served on the board of the Rhode Island Sanitary and Relief Association which provided aid and comfort to men fighting in the Spanish American War and support for their families. Catherine Janvier arranged the invitation, either directly or through her friend Carolyn Hazard, President of Wellesley College, who was a native of Newport. In any case, the Sharps enjoyed a long weekend amid the cream of Newport society. On Monday, December 5 they boarded a train to Boston to have dinner and spend the night with Carolyn Hazard in the house she built with her own funds on the Wellesley campus, a house that would become her home and those of her successors for many years. On the sixth, the Sharps went to the Thorndike Hotel where they spent four days before boarding their ship.
48Miss Hazard’s generosity to the Sharp’s did not end on Monday evening with the celebration of the opening of a new residence hall. She arranged for Elizabeth Sharp to tour Wellesley on Monday and Radcliffe College on Wednesday; for both Sharps to call on Julia Ward Howe on Thursday; and, best of all, to visit “Fen Hall to see Mrs. Gardiner’s Collection” on Friday, the day before they set sail for Naples. Isabella Stewart Gardner (1840–1924) was a wealthy art collector, philanthropist, and patron of the arts who was said to be the model for Isabel Archer in Henry James’ Portrait of a Lady. After her marriage to the wealthy John Lowell “Jack” Gardner in 1860, they settled in Boston and began to build a world class collection of paintings and statues, tapestries, photographs, silver, ceramics, and manuscripts. Following the death of her husband in 1898, Isabella carried through his plans to build a home for their collection, modelled on the Renaissance palaces of Venice. Located in the fens area of Boston, the building, called Fenway Court, surrounds a glass-covered garden courtyard, the first of its kind in America. Isabella designed for herself an apartment on the building’s top floor which is now the museum’s offices. For the museum’s opening night, January 1, 1903, she invited four hundred guests who were entertained by members of the Boston Symphony Orchestra. Two years after its opening, the Sharps, both former London art critics for the Glasgow Herald, received a private tour of Fenway Court, the beautiful building and the world class collection that is now the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum.

Fig. 24. Interior Courtyard of the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston, built in 1903 to house the Gardner collection. The building replicates a fifteenth-century Venetian palace. Photograph by Sean Dungan (2017). Wikimedia, CC BY 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Courtyard,_Isabella_Stewart_Gardner_Museum,_Boston.jpg#/media/File:Courtyard,_Isabella_Stewart_Gardner_Museum,_Boston.jpg
49Sharp’s correspondence before and during the American trip reflects his continuing concerns about money, and he managed to meet with editors of the country’s most prominent magazines with proposals for articles he would not live to write. When he called on Bliss Perry at the Atlantic on December 6, he was introduced to Roger Livingston Scaife (1875– 1951), one of the Editors and a Director of Messrs. Houghton Mifflin & Co. Following this meeting, he stayed up late to write a detailed letter to Scaife proposing the publication of his “Greek Backgrounds” in two volumes, the first describing Greek remains in Sicily and Cambria and the second those in Greece itself. The editors accepted the proposal for the first of two volumes with the second contingent on the success of the first. Sharp acknowledged the acceptance in a letter from the Thorndike Hotel late Friday night before boarding his ship on Saturday.
50On November 28, Sharp wrote to Thomas Mosher from New York: Fiona had asked him to meet with Mosher. Might he be available to come to Boston from Portland, Maine on one of the four days Sharp would be there. A letter to Mosher from Fiona on December 28, indicates the meeting took place, probably on Friday, December 9. Given the close bond Mosher and Fiona had formed through their correspondence and with Mosher unaware he was meeting the author of all the Fiona letters he had received and the Fiona books he had published, and with Sharp conveying proposals for even more Fiona books, one can only wish to have overheard their conversation. Through it, Sharp managed to maintain the secret since Mosher remained in the dark until Sharp died. In addition to conveying directly to Mosher several proposals from Fiona Macleod, Sharp during his month in America, proposed articles to the editors of three important periodicals, subsequently he obtained a commitment from Houghton, Mifflin for one and possibly two books. The Sharp’s visit to America was a social and commercial success, but the good feelings that marked their departure soon began to fade.
51They boarded the Romantic on December 10 during a snowstorm, an ominous start for what became a very rough passage. They arrived in Naples in time to travel by train to Bordighera on the Italian Riviera to spend Christmas with John Goodchild and other friends. From there Sharp wrote to his friend R. Murray Gilchrist: “we are back from America (thank God) and are in Italy (thank Him more)… . For myself I am crawling out of the suck of a wave whose sweep will I hope be a big one of some months and carry me far.” The cold waves had so penetrated his consciousness that they became a metaphor for his physical and mental condition. The Sharps remained in Bordighera until mid-January when they went south to Rome and rented rooms at the top of a hotel on the Via Sallustiana where they planned to stay for two or three months.
Letters: 1904
To Ernest Rhys, January, 19041
- 1 Ernest Rhys printed and transcribed in his Letters from Limbo this page of the letter he received f (...)
52Maison Merlin | Athens | January 1904
- 2 Theodore Watts-Dunton.
- 3 Following this ellipsis, Rhys wrote: “Then he runs on to speak of plans for further wanderings in G (...)
53… itely (confound it, excuse this already begun sheet. I must be getting “dotty”! — this is the third time since New Year’s Day I’ve begun a letter on a sheet already otherwise dated etc. I often do this just before a mail, work in a fury, but must now leave it off, I see!) to postpone. In the one case, he2 seemed to think £20 would be a godsend to me. ( & a paralysingly high rate of payment!!) Probably he did not believe it when I wrote the other day that, because of pressure of commissioned work I had not only to decline this & that but even a very good offer of £100 for something of about 20,000 words wanted at once. He’s a good fellow — but not God’s Vicar upon Earth! Long friendship, & knowing all his fine and estimable sides prevents my feeling “the intolerable egotism” so trying to most people, particularly those annoyed by his superior airs, as though he and Swinburne lived in a sphere infinitely beyond that of “potboiling up-and-downers” (to quote poor George Gissing, whose death I sincerely lament as man and writer)… .3
54then south-east by Mycenae and Argos & Tiryns to Nauplia and if possible to Sparta, which after Delphi and Olympia… .
55William Sharp
56Letters from Limbo, pp. 78–79
To Alfred T. Nutt, February 18, [1904]4
- 4 Alfred Turner Nutt (1856–1916) took over his father’s publishing business in 1878 and continued hea (...)
5718th. Feby
58Dear Mr. Nutt,
- 5 Supposedly Fiona had been staying with the Sharps in Athens. Here Sharp describes her as “having le (...)
59Your letter was duly forwarded and reached me not long after I had left Athens, where I went with a friend and relative, but remained longer entranced, unable to leave till the last moment.5 The Hellenic genius… the genius of Hellas the ancient and the Hellas that endures impressed me more than I can say. It is beauty and austerity made one.
60Pray excuse the apparent long delay in answering your kind letter. It took a week or so to reach me — and now I shall have to send this, with other delayed letters, proofs and MSS, to be stamped and posted in London or Edinburgh.
- 6 Poets and Dreamers: Studies and Translations from the Irish (1903) for which Yeats wrote the introd (...)
61Your letter came at an opportune moment. A few days earlier I had received a request from the editor of a monthly magazine for an article upon Lady Gregory’s book,6 and though I had no intention to accede I did take up the book and re-read it. And I must admit that, reading critically, I was somewhat disillusioned, and in more ways than one. The subject and the attempt had both so won my sympathy, and Mr. Yeats’ extraordinarily high claim had so prejudiced me, that I came to the book while the rainbow was on it. In certain respects it is a fine and notable achievement, but is not nearly so “original” as I thought it — I mean, in the sense that far more of the book is “lifted”, as you say, than I had first noticed. And more than ever I realized how often the old is weakened in the retelling. There are certain episodes and even chapters which I reread with a chill indifference, when not with impatience.
62More and more I realise that these beautiful old Gaelic tales must be given either in the crude simplicity of direct translation or else in a modern retelling that shall be as far as possible identical in erudition and outlook and as exactly correspondent as is practicable in another and more modern language and in other and more complicated exigencies of art.
63Personally, I care for very few retellings. And if ever I attempt anything more in this kind, it shall be with the utmost of simplicity and directness, and not at all unless in imaginative recovery of mood.
- 7 Nutt must have suggested Fiona undertake a compendium of Gaelic tales in English to compete with an (...)
- 8 This comment reflects Yeats’ estrangement from Sharp which was partially due to Sharp’s increasing (...)
64As to what — in generous terms — you urge me to do, I can say only that I too wish it could be done.7 If my private circumstances left unhampered my dreams and hopes, I might well adventure upon so splendid a thing to do: but even then I stand in too great doubt of my powers to do with the finality of achievement what otherwise is best left undone. I too had hoped Mr. Yeats might do this thing. It is not to be thought of from him, now: not from lack of genius, or even scope of vision, but from his growing preoccupation with so many matters and conflicting interests and perhaps too from his lack of withdrawal from continuous personal influences, which rarely do much for the imaginative writer but oftener disintegrate what isolation has achieved.8
65There may be others fitted for the work. I cannot think of any, but then I know few. As for myself, I think I am rather one of those who, more or less obscurely, light the sacred fires in other minds. If it be so, I am content. Perhaps someone fitted for the work you adumbrate may be impelled to it, torch-lit by something born of my own love of and ceaseless reliving in the Gaelic life: and if that be so, I shall truly have done a good thing. (It is this very preoccupation, this voluntary isolation, which is one of the chief reasons — the chief reason, apart from private considerations, and the imperious demand of temperament — why I consistently maintain an apparently exaggerated reticence as to my “personality” and private life — a reticence more than ever advisable, imperative indeed, if I am to achieve even a moiety of what I hope to do.)
66But even granting that, with what knowledge I have and what powers I have, I could achieve the great task in question — and, as you truly say, no one could do more than believe it might be done, so constant and great are the many difficulties — it could only be attempted with a renunciation of the many intentions, hopes, and material interests which at present I could hardly dare contemplate, — could not, at any rate, contemplate unless with an inward certainty that I and I alone could achieve the end. And, honestly, I hold that infinitely to be desired achievement so high that I feel as though all my iron must be rewelded into flawless steel, and all my crude art be transmuted to perfect rhythmic life, before I could even approach it.
67If, some day, I do, it will be largely owing to the belief in and encouragement of myself, as one of the few servants of an old and beautiful ideal, so generously revealed to me by yourself and others.
- 9 The Winged Destiny: Studies in the Spiritual History of the Gael which was published by Chapman and (...)
- 10 Neither of these books was completed.
68In reply to your other enquiry — no, I am not meanwhile thinking of issuing “Celtic Runes.” I am now finishing the revision of a volume of essays9 and other studies of a kindred spirit and intention, and hope to see it published this late Spring: then I have a volume of verse to complete: and, apart from commissioned things and other things in part done to be finished, I am deeply preoccupied with an ambitious work of imaginative reliving of the ancient life — in line with, if distinct from what you write to me about — which, if at all possible, I hope to finish this year.10 I am more hopeful of it than I was, for I have learned a severe lesson in Greece.
69Believe me, | Yours very truly, | (Signed Fiona Macleod)
70ALS National Library of Scotland
To Ernest Rhys, February 26, 1904
71Maison Merlin, Athens, | Friday, 26th Feb., 1904.
72My Dear Ernest,
- 11 Pentelicos is a mountain in Attica, northeast of Athens overlooking Kephisia, a deme (suburb) of an (...)
73… Yesterday I had a lovely break from work, high up on the beautiful bracing dwarf-pine clad slopes of Pentelicos, above Kephisia, the ancient deme of Menander11 — and then across the country behind Hymettos, the country of Demosthenes and so back by the High Convent of St. John the Hunter, on the north spur of the Hymettian range, and the site of ancient Gargettos, the place of Epicurus’ birth and boyhood. At sundown I was at Heracleion, some three or four miles from Athens — and the city was like pale gold out of which peaked Lycabettos rose like a purple sapphire. The sky beyond, above Salamis, was all grass-green and mauve. A thunder-cloud lay on extreme Hymettos, rising from Marathon: and three rainbows lay along the violet dusk of the great hill-range… .
74We intend to spend April in France, mostly in Southern Provence, which we love so well, and where we have dear French friends.
75I am apparently well and strong again, hard at work, hard at pleasure, hard at life, as before, and generally once more full of hope and energy.
76Love to you both, dear friends, and a sunbeam to little Stella.
77Ever yours, | Will
78Memoir, p. 379
To… [March 24, 1904]
79… How you would love this radiant heat, this vast solitude of ruins, the millions of flowers and dense daisied grass. This fragment of vast Olympia is the most ancient Greek temple extant. It lies at the base of the Hill of Kronos, of which the lowest pines are seen to the right and overlooks the whole valley of the Alpheios… .
- 12 The Sharps spent four months in Greece — December through March — and this letter states they will (...)
80And the millions of flowers. They are almost incredible in number and density. The ground is often white with thick snow of daisies. Wild plums, pears, cherries, etc. The radiant and glowing heat is a Joy. I am sad to think that this day week beautiful Greece will be out of sight.12
81[William Sharp]
82Memoir, p. 378
To Thomas Mosher, March 30, [1904]
83Copy from MS. Pencil letter received from Miss Macleod from abroad, with instructions to copy and forward. | Secy. For Miss Macleod.
- 13 Since the typed letter is not signed in Mary’s Fiona Macleod hand, it must have been typed in Londo (...)
84(At Sea) 30th March13
85Dear Mr. Mosher,
86When we “put in” at Naples the other day I found, among other forwarded postal matter, the April “Bibelot.” While I read the too generously worded appreciation with interest and pleasure (tempered by the sense that the best I have done is still far short of such eulogy) I felt somewhat “taken aback” by this reprinting of in-book-matter to follow, without prior communication with me. I have also just heard from my publishers, Messrs. Chapman & Hall, and have had to modify my contract as to my new book, to be out at the end of April or early in May, under the title “The Winged Destiny” (instead of For the Beauty of an Idea… now used sectionally only) — on account of matter reprinted in U.S.A. One of the chief sections in the book is “The Children of Water,” the greater portion of which now appears in the Bibelot in advance. The first section is “The Sunset Of Old Tales,” which you speak of also reprinting. If people in America can buy the best part of my new book for 10 cents, they will not be likely to pay for imported copies at a dollar and a half or whatever the selling price may be. Private circumstances — with this prolonged health-seeking abroad and on the sea — make such considerations still more exigent for me: so you will understand why I write to you at once, or may possibly telegraph when I reach the French Riviera. In the circumstances you will see the advisability of not publishing any further uncollected matter till after “The Winged Destiny” has been published, and some chance of an American sale been allowed. There will be no issue of the book now in U. S. A. but only for such copies as may be ordered. (The third section, “For the Beauty, of an Idea” is in Part I a reissue of the two “Celtic” essays, revised, with an added part, “The Gaelic Heart”: and in Part II, “Anima Celtica”, of various reprinted essays & c from the “Fortnightly”, “Nineteenth Century”, & c, and also, under the title “The Ancient Beauty” of the “Deirdrê” volume.)
- 14 This volume was published posthumously as Where the Forest Murmurs: Nature Essays (London: George N (...)
87As to the paper called “The Magic Kingdoms,” it is the prelude to another volume, not yet ready: and it would be a mistake to forestall its interest and applicability, by a reissue in the Bibelot.14
88I am confident you were under the impression you had already communicated with me before issuing this April Bibelot: and did not foresee what a loss of sales it must almost inevitably cause the new book in U. S. A., especially in conjunction with the statement as to what is to appear later.
89In all likelihood my new volume of poems will also appear this summer: (if not, the autumn — but most likely towards end of May) either under the title “Threnodies and Dreams,” or else as
90Where the Forest Murmurs.
91(Threnodies and Dreams)
92or, just possibly, as
93The volume will include the poems that were newly added to your edition of “The Hills of Dream,” a considerable number of uncollected and as yet unpublished lyrical pieces, and the revised poetic drama “The Immortal Hour”.
94How would it do for you to issue an Amer. edition
(1) Either intact
(2) Without the poems already in Hills of Dream… i.e., those added to the original edition, for the Amer. edition (which I should regret)
(3) Separately —
i.e. one Lyrical
one The Immortal Hour
- 16 Although Sharp began this letter complaining about Mosher’s including an essay intended for The Win (...)
95Also, what about reprinting a selection of new matter from “The Winged Destiny” under one of the sectional (or better some quite new) title, either in one volume, or separately.16 If so, please let me hear your suggestions and proposals.
96I am now in considerably better health than when I wrote last, but still not so well as I had hoped to be by now. In all probability I shall not be in Great Britain at all this spring or summer (except for a possible rapid visit, by sea, to the Western Isles) — but cannot say yet. There is some idea of Norway and Sweden, and even Iceland, later. Health, means, private affairs, all combine to make work after my heart a very arduous and difficult thing, alas.
- 17 Henri David Davray (1873–1944) translated several Fiona Macleod tales into French for the Mercury d (...)
97I believe Mons. Davray’s long-delayed French translation of selected tales & c is to be out this May or June.17 Also (I understand) either in the April or May number of the important monthly called the Mercure de France, there is to be a translation by a French poet of the “prose-poems” of “The Silence of Amor” (Amer. edn.) with an essay by someone else on the Pagan or Scandinavian aspect & of my earlier writings.
98Will you please let me have a few copies of the April “Bibelot” (I presume the one sent is all that you dispatched?) Also, please, post a copy, marked “sent at request of Miss Macleod,” to
99Miss Vine Colby
1003934 Shenandoah Avenue
101St. Louis.
102(an enthusiastic admirer!… one of the many eager American correspondents who now write to me).
103Believe me, dear Mr. Mosher, |
104Sincerely yours, | FIONA MACLEOD
- 18 This reviewer was probably Helen Bartlett Bridgman. Mosher must have sent a copy of her review of e (...)
105P. S. I would like to know the name and read the review of the American reviewer to whom you allude in your Bibelot preface.18
- 19 Edith Rinder wanted to assure Mosher that the six additional copies he sent had arrived.
106P.S. From the Secy. To Miss Macleod. | The packet of six Bibelots received and have been dispatched to Miss Macleod.19
107TL New York Public Library, Berg Collection
To Catherine Janvier, April 18, 1904
10818 April, 1904
109… What has most impressed my imagination in this region is what I saw today outside of fantastic Le Puy — namely at the magnificent old feudal rock-Chateau fortress of Polignac, erected on the site of the famous temple of Apollo (raised here by the Romans on the still earlier site of a Druidic Temple to the Celtic Sun God). I looked down the mysterious hollow of the ancient oracle of Apollo, and realised how deep a hold even in the France of today is maintained by the ancient Pagan faith… .
110[William Sharp]
111Memoir, pp. 379–80
To Alexander Jessup,20 June 14, 1904
- 20 Alexander Jessup, born in 1871, was the General Editor of a series called French Men of Letters for (...)
11260 Leinster Square | London W. |
11314th June/04
114My Dear Sir,
115I am in receipt of your kind letter of the 28th inst., which comes somewhat in the guise of coals of fire!
- 21 The south of France.
116The French writers upon whom I have “specialized” are Sainte-Beuve in criticism, Hello in philosophy & criticism, Leconte de L’Isle, Baudelaire, and Villiers de L’Isle Adam — These with Chateaubriand, of whom I have long been intimate, are the names with which I am most at home. I do not mention Musset and Geo. Sand & Victor Hugo, as these are certain to have been arranged for amongst the first. But I may add that I am one of the very few foreign specialists on the subject of Modern Provencal literature, which I know intimately [vide e.g. my long etude, a couple of years or so ago, on Modern Provencal Literature, in the Quarterly Review, one of my several unsigned, foreign specialistic studies there], and not only know all the work of Frederic Mistral, the greatest Frenchman in the Midi,21 but also of Aubanel, Rounsaville, and all allied with him in the past & present. I have also lived in Provence, visited Mistral & know him well, & others. So, of course, I could take up Mistral, if you like.
117For pleasure in the work, I should prefer Mistral, Leconte de L’Isle, or Villiers de L’Isle Adam: though, as I have let you infer, I could treat (and I hope adequately) any of the others named. (I wrote a special study on St. Beuve some years ago, prefatory to a translation of selected essays which still sells steadily).
118It is because of concurrent work, however, that Mistral or Leconte de L’Isle (or Villiers too, tho’ not so closely) would suit me best. For the same reason, if I took it up, if editorially approved by you, I should do the book this coming winter, & let you have by next Spring (April or May) or at latest before Midsummer: and, possibly, earlier.
- 22 The nature of the “concurrent work” is unknown. See letter To [Alexander Jessup], September 20, 190 (...)
119But, in your letter, you do not specify terms. Of course I can undertake no volume till I learn them.22
120Again thanking you for your courtesy in writing to me.
121Believe me | Yours very truly | William Sharp
122Alexander Jessup, Esquire
123PS. I shd think Hillaire Belloc the best man to get for Villon. Thereafter, I fancy Arthur Symons would be the best. I think Mr. Ernest Rhys could treat “Chateaubriand” well. You know Madame Duclaux (Mary Robinson) by name, of course. She wrote an admirable study of “Renan.”
124ALS University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee
To “a friend,” [July?, 1904]23
- 23 E. A. S. gave no date for this letter, but she placed it in the Memoir following a long quotation f (...)
125It is a happiness to me to know that you feel so deeply the beauty that has been so humbly and eagerly and often despairingly sought, and that in some dim measure, at least, is held here as a shaken image in troubled waters. It is a long long road, the road of art… and those who serve with passion and longing and unceasing labour of inward thought and outward craft are the only votaries who truly know what long and devious roads must be taken, how many pitfalls have to be avoided or escaped from, how many desires have to be foregone, how many hopes have to be crucified in slow death or more mercifully be lost by the way, before one can stand at last on “the yellow banks where the west wind blows,” and see, beyond, the imperishable flowers, and hear the immortal voices.
- 24 “The Lynn of Dreams,” The Contemporary Review, 82 (December, 1902), 863–65.
126A thousand perils guard the long road. And when the secret gardens are reached, there is that other deadly peril of which Fiona has written in “The Lynn of Dreams”.24 And, yet or again, there is that mysterious destiny, that may never come, or may come to men but once, or may come and not go, of which I wrote to you some days ago, quoting from Fiona’s latest writing: that destiny which puts dust upon dreams, and silence upon sweet airs, and stills songs, and makes the hand idle, and the spirit as foam upon the sea.
127For the gods are jealous, O jealous and remorseless beyond all words to tell. And there is so little time at the best… and the little gain, the little frail crown, is so apt to be gained too late for the tired votary to care, or to do more than lie down saying “I have striven, and I am glad, and now it is over, and I am glad!”
128[William Sharp]
129Memoir, pp. 382–83
To a friend, August 2, [1904]25
- 25 This letter describes a day spent with Dr. John Goodchild at Glastonbury and identifies that day as (...)
130… one of the loveliest days of the year, with the most luminous atmosphere I have seen in England — the afternoon and evening divinely serene and beautiful.
131I had a pleasant visit to Bath, and particularly enjoyed the long day spent yesterday at Glastonbury and neighbourhood, and the glowing warmth and wonderful radiance.
132As usual one or two strange things happened in connection with Dr. G. We went across the ancient “Salmon” of St. Bride, which stretches below the hill known as “Weary-All” (a corruption of Uriel, the Angel of the Sun), and about a mile or less westward came upon the narrow water of the ancient “Burgh”. Near here is a very old Thorn held in great respect… .
133He put me (unknowing) to a singular test. He had hoped with especial and deep hope that in some significant way I would write or utter the word “Joy” on this 1st day of August (the first three weeks of vital import to many, and apparently for myself too) — and also to see if a certain spiritual influence would reach me. Well, later in the day (for he could not prompt or suggest, and had to await occurrence) we went into the lovely grounds of the ancient ruined Abbey, one of the loveliest things in England I think. I became restless and left him, and went and lay down behind an angle of the East end, under the tree. I smoked, and then rested idly, and then began thinking of some correspondence I had forgotten. Suddenly I turned on my right side, stared at the broken stone of the angle, and felt vaguely moved in some way. Abruptly and unpremeditatedly I wrote down three enigmatic and disconnected lines. I was looking curiously at the third when I saw Dr. G. approach.
134“Can you make anything out of that,” I said — “I’ve just written it, I don’t know why.” This is the triad.
135From the Silence of Time, Time’s Silence borrow.
136In the heart of To-day is the word of To-morrow.
137The Builders of Joy are the Children of Sorrow.
138[William Sharp]
139Memoir, pp. 385–86
To Edmund Clarence Stedman, August 29, 190426
- 26 A heavily edited version of this letter appears in the Memoir, pp. 386–87.
14060 Leinster Square | London W. |
14129th August 1904
142Dear Poet,
143I hope the world goes well with you and yours, & that at last you are in more assured health.
- 27 The phrases “in more ways than one” and “a garden of Eden” are covert references to his new-found l (...)
144This is not an advance birthday letter, as you may think! It is to convey tidings of much import to my wife and myself, & I hope of pleasure to you and other friends over sea — namely that this late autumn we are going to pay a brief visit to New York. I had hoped to do so last year, but considerations of health made it impossible, for I was all but done for in the autumn by a severe seizure of a form of diabetes, and after the rigorous treatment at Llandrindod Wells & elsewhere I went to Greece for the winter & spring. I got worse & worse all the same till about February. Then spring came over Hymettos, and new life came to me, & in more ways than one, & Attica became a garden of Eden, & I grew swiftly and continuously better.27 A heavenly trip in the Peloponnesus put an additional touch to it, and a month or so later I sailed from Athens a new man. Then we went to the Provencal Riviera for a month — & then back to England & to that rare thing in London, an ideal summer of warmth and radiance. And now I am again at Llandrindod Wells in Wales, & under the specialist’s rigorous regime as to waters, diet, exercise, & so forth — but (despite a recent & sudden & somewhat severe access of the ailment, now got well in hand however) more precautionarily than of necessity. Damp & raw cold are my worst enemies, & so, as for years past, there is no thought of our spending the winter in England. But being in so much greater general health than I was last year (in Sept. last the specialist gave me “a few months!”) it is not necessary to leave at October-end for Sicily, Greece, or Egypt. In fact, we had projected going to Stockholm, & then via Berlin & Leipzig to Dresden & Munich: & then later to Italy.
145It is still our intention to spend January, February, & March in Rome — which for me is the City of Cities.
146But we are going to it via New York!
147In a word, we intend to leave England somewhere between the 23rd and 26th of October, according as steamers & our needs fit in. Then after six weeks or so in New York etc we intend to sail direct to the Mediterranean by one of the Hamburg-American or North-German-Lloyd special Mediterranean line sailing to Genoa and Naples.
148And what I am now writing to you for is to ask if you and Mrs. Stedman (to whom my love) could take us on arrival for a few days and till we are able to look about & see what we can settle as to quarters within the limited reach of our very restricted finances. Needless to say it would be a deep pleasure to me to visit you both again, and my wife is looking forward eagerly to seeing something of friends of whom she has ever heard me speak lovingly and appreciatively. It would be an additional pleasure and great convenience if we could go to you at Lawrence Park directly on arrival (presumably somewhere between 1st and 5th November). Will you please let me know if this would be agreeable to Mrs. Stedman and yourself, & if you can manage it. I do not doubt your loving welcome & goodwill, but of course health or other considerations may make our visit inopportune.
149In the meanwhile (unless they broach the matter) say nothing of it to the Janviers or others, as I wanted to write to you first, & if possible have some definite place to go to on arrival — or if you do mention it inadvertently, or if they should speak of it (and we may advise them of our plans immediately) say nothing of our exact dates.
- 28 Sharp’s Literary Geography (London: Pall Mall Publications, 1904).
- 29 Elizabeth Sharp’s Rembrandt: with Forty Illustrations (London: Methuen and Company, 1903).
150I have been very busy of late, & for one thing have been occupied with collecting & revising the (mostly unsigned, “Quarterly Review” & other) literary studies of some years past — & much else of which I’ll tell you when we meet. My “Literary Geography” which has been running serially in the “Pall Mall Magazine” for the last 14 or 15 months, & been, there, a great success, will be out in book-form in October.28 My wife’s recently published little book on Rembrandt has had an exceptionally good reception I am very glad to say.29
151We go back in a week or two to London (at above address) — for a month’s hard work before we get ready for New York. I am delighted at the thought of it.
152With all affectionate greetings to you both —
153Ever, dear Stedman, | Affectionately your friend, | William Sharp
154ALS Columbia University Library
To Editor of The Daily Chronicle,30 September 14, 1904
- 30 Printed in the September 14, 1904 London Daily Chronicle, this letter was preceded by the following (...)
155With reference to a paragraph in your Writers and Readers column, in your issue of Friday, will you permit me to say that as there is no mystery (beyond the privacy I have ever sought to maintain, and have a right to ask to be respected) as to the authorship of my forthcoming hook, “The Winged Destiny”, and of its predecessors, there is neither necessity nor courtesy in the use of inverted commas when you honour me by quoting my name, nor in the implication that I am any other than —
156Yours very truly, | Fiona Macleod
157London Daily Chronicle
To Thomas Mosher, September 17, 1904
158C/o 22. Ormidale Terrace | Murrayfield |
159Midlothian | Scotland | 17th Sept.
160Dear Mr. Mosher
161My thanks for your letter and for its enclosed most sympathetic and gratifying reviews by Mrs. Bridgman. Although I think you already know my position as to publicity, as to interviews, wider repute, and all the rest of it, I enclose my reply to Mrs. Bridgman that you may read it before sending it on to her. Neither material advantage to myself or others is likely to make me alter a decision not lightly or perversely arrived at. (If either she or you meet my intimate friend and kinsman, Mr. William Sharp, on his forthcoming visit to New York etc. for a few weeks from mid-November till mid-December, perhaps certain circumstances I have before alluded to could be made a little clearer).
- 31 Mosher published The Tale of the Four White Swans in his Brocade Series in April 1904. It was one o (...)
162Yes, thanks, please let me have a few copies of “The Four White Swans” and “Ulad of the Dreams” — say six of “Ulad” and twelve of “The Swans.” (Do not register in sending, as that sometimes causes delay and trouble at this end.)31
163Will you also gratify me by letting me have a copy of “The Romance of Tristan and Iseult”?
- 32 Sharp enclosed with this letter both Fiona’s September 14 letter in the Chronicle and her letter to (...)
164I enclose a cutting from the London “Chronicle” of the 14th inst. to let you see that I occasionally do take note of the chronic (but now more rare) willful or other perversity as to my right to my own name.32
165I shall send you from myself a copy of “The Winged Destiny” after its publication on Oct. 7th by Messrs. Chapman & Hall. You already know some of it of course, and may have seen in the Fortnightly or elsewhere a good further proportion. I do not think I can publish my new volume of poems before Christmas. My chief “output” just now is a series of papers which will make a volume by next May. Some six or seven have already appeared, and appear to be well liked. I may use as collective title “Nature and Dream,” or something of the kind: or “Wind, Wave, and Hill.” I hope you are well, and that all is going well with you. (Are you far from Boston? If Mr. Sharp is there, as I suppose he will be for a day or two at least, I would like that you should meet.)
166Believe me, dear Mr. Mosher | Most sincerely yours | Fiona Macleod
167ALS New York Public Library, Berg Collection
To Helen Bartlett Bridgman,33 [September 17, 1904]
- 33 Helen Bartlett Bridgman (1855–1935) was an American writer and world traveler. Born in Milwaukee in (...)
168My Dear Friend,
169(For if deep sympathy and understanding do not constitute friendship, what does?) It would be strange indeed if I did not wish to write to you after what Mr. Mosher has told me, and after perusal of what you have written concerning what I have tried to do with my pen. There are few things so helpful, perhaps none so pleasant to a writer in love with his or her work and the ideals which are its source, than the swift understanding and sympathy of strangers. So much of my work is aside from the general temper and taste, and not only in its ideals but in its “atmosphere,” indeed even in its writer’s methods and manner, that I have to be content (as I gladly am content) to let the wind that blows through minds and hearts carry the seed whithersoever it may perchance take root, and this with the knowledge that the resting places must almost of necessity, as things are, be few and far between. But it is not number that counts, and, as I say, I am well content — would be content were my readers far fewer than they are. It seems enough to me that one should do one’s best in a careful beauty and in the things of the spirit. It is enough to be a torch-bearer, whether the flame be a small and brief light or a beacon — it is to take over and to tend and to hand on the fire that matters. As I say in my very shortly forthcoming new book, The Winged Destiny, I desire to be of the horizon-makers; if I can be that, however humbly, I am glad indeed. This would be so with anyone, I think, feeling thus. To me outside sympathy means perhaps more; for I stand more isolated than most writers do, partly by my will, partly by circumstances as potent and sometimes more potent. It is not only that I am devoid of the desire of publicity, of personal repute, and that nothing of advantage therefrom has the slightest appeal to me (though, alas, both health and private circumstances make my well-being to a large extent dependent on what my work brings me), but that I am mentally so constituted that I should be silenced by what so many are naturally and often rightly eager for and that so many seek foolishly or unworthily. In this respect I am like the mavis of the woods that sings full-heartedly in the morning shadow or evening twilight in secret places, but will be dumb and lost in the general air of noon and where many are gathered in the frequented open to see and hear.
170It is for these, and other not less imperative private reasons, why I am known personally to so very few of my fellow-writers: and why in private circles the subject is not one that occurs. I cannot explain, though not from reluctance or perversity or any foolish and needless mystery. The few who do not know me, as you know me, but with added intimacy, are loyal in safe-guarding my wishes and my privacy. That explains why I refuse all editorial and other requests of “interviews,” “photographs,” “personal articles” and the like. In a word, I am blind to all the obvious advantages that would accrue from my “entering the arena” as others do. I have all that frequently borne in upon me. But still less so do I ignore what would happen to my work, to its quality and spirit, to myself, if I yielded. I may be wrong, but I do not think I am. I am content to do my best, as the spirit moves me, and as my sense of beauty compels me; and if, with that, I can also make some often much-needed money, enough for the need as it arises; and, further, can win the sympathy and deep appreciation of the few intimate and the now many unknown friends whom, to my great gladness and pride, I have gained, then, indeed, I can surely contentedly let wider “fame” (of all idle things the idlest, when it is, as it commonly is, the mere lip-repute of the curious and the shallow) go by, and be indifferent to the lapse of possible but superfluous greater material gain....
171[Fiona Macleod]
172Memoir, pp. 383–85
To the Editor of The Daily Chronicle, September 19, 1904
173Private | Miss Macleod | c/o 22. Ormidale Terrace |
174Murrayfield | Midlothian
- 34 Robert Donald (1860–1933) was Editor of The Daily Chronicle from 1904 until 1918. He was thoughtful (...)
175Dear Sir,34
176I thank you for your courtesy as to insertion of my note. I thought it was not customary to give an address in letters intended for publication, and in any case the one address I give for my literary correspondence and for all save a few intimate friends is that of my private secretary and typist as above — a sister I may add of my Kinsman Mr. William Sharp, with whose name mine has so often been associated by paragraphists, in part no doubt because at one time he acted for me, and also because of his kindred sympathies and interests and our known intimacy and relationship. (Many, too, because my name is somewhat unusual [though of course not unique] thought it must be a pseudonym.)
177I trouble you with this private note because of the courtesy implied in your few prefatory words to the note you printed. I need hardly add the request that you will kindly so consider it.
178Believe me, | Yours very truly, | Fiona Macleod
17919th Sept. 1904.
180ALS Princeton University
To [Alexander Jessup], September 20, 1904
18160 Leinster Sq | London W. | 20th Septr/04
182My dear Sir,
183You know the familiar proverb “L’ homme propose, mais Dieu dispose,” well, I am sorry to have to adduce it now, in writing to you editorially.
- 35 In June, Alexander Jessup asked Sharp to do a volume in the French Men of Letters series he was edi (...)
184Several of my immediate plans and later projects have to be relinquished, materially modified, or indefinitely postponed. My health, which despite a strong physique, has long been far from what it ought to be, is now seriously complicated by what the doctors have discovered, namely an acute and dangerous attack of Diabetes. It has been arrested by rigorous dieting and the famous treatment at Llandrindod Wells — but it has not only weakened me and brought out certain climatic and other sensitiveness, but renders imperative the medical advice given me to lessen my work to the minimum compatible with well-being and the means to live, and to spend at least six months of the year in the South of Europe in as dry and sunny a winter-climate as I can afford to obtain. In the circumstances it is out of the question for me to consider further the writing of the Leconte de Lisle volume.35 I am sorry, but it can’t be helped, & I can only express regret at the disappointment of inconvenience to you. (I was asked about a fortnight ago from America to do a much simpler literary study of the kind for a series — about 40,000 words, with £100 on receipt of MS. and thereafter a royalty: but, tho’ I would have liked the subject, I have had to decline this also. How much less, then (speaking on the line of terms) could I afford in these new circumstances to take up a book of 75,000 words for an advance honorarium of £20 — less than I receive for any of my special articles in “Harper’s,” the “Pall Mall Magazine,” etc.)
- 36 Alfred de Vigny (1797–1863) was a poet and dramatist. Among his works are Cinq-Mars (1847); Servitu (...)
185For some weeks prior to the event alluded to I had been preparing the notes for the general scheme of the Leconte de Lisle volume — & was just on the point of writing to you to suggest a material modification or change in the contents of the volume. It is out of the question to make a good volume of that great length (for a critical study etc.) out of Leconte de Lisle. His life was eventless in the ordinary sense: his work is limited in scope. It could not be done without excessive quotation and much padding: & rather than add another useless because overdone book of the kind to the limbs of like superfluous volumes I would relinquish it forthwith. The only justification for a book of the kind would be that it should have no padding in the sense of superfluity. I was therefore going to propose that the volume should be on “Leconte de Lisle and the Parnassians,” & deal with French poetry (along the “Parnassian” lines) from DeVigny to Glatigny to Heredia: with L. de L. no more than the central and most imposing figure.36
186I write of this now only to hand on to you my friendly advice. I feel assured that this advice is in all ways sound.
187Are you ever in New York? I expect to be there (with possibly a day or two in Boston later in December) from about mid-November till mid-December — as private matters make it advisable for me to be there for a few weeks: & thereafter my wife & I sail direct for Italy. It would be a pleasure to meet you if feasible. (We sail about the beginning of November.)
188Yours faithfully, | William Sharp
189P. S. Please let me have a line from you by return to let me know that you have received this.
190ALS Yale University
To Mrs. Edmund Clarence Stedman, September 22, [1904]
19160 Leinster Square | London W. | 22/Sept.
192Dear Mrs. Stedman
193Just a hurried line to catch the mail — and a short one because my wife (at the moment at Tunbridge Wells) told me before she left this morning that she was going to write more fully to you — to thank you for your affectionate letter — and to add how very sorry I am to learn that both you two dear friends are so far from well. May things soon go better, I wish from my heart. Of course we quite understand. You must not let either yourself or Mr. Stedman have a moment’s worry about that. What we do hope for is to find you both well enough to be at Lawrence Park, and to let us come to you some afternoon.
194In any case, now, for health’s sake & other reasons we shall not remain long in New York. In all (including a few days in Boston) we do not intend to remain more than a month in all — as about 15th Dec. (accordingly as steamers sail) we hope to set out for Algiers.
195What would suit us best (if it can be found — & if your granddaughter would help in the quest we should be grateful to her & to you) would be a small & as moderate as possible (but clean and airy) hotel on the European plan — i.e, where we could get two adjacent bedrooms (if possible roomy & pleasant enough to use also occasionally for writing in etc.) with morning coffee etc., & be free to have our other meals there or elsewhere. Are there any houses in New York like the foreign Hotels garnis? (i.e. simply rooms, attendance, fires, & morning coffee etc.)?
196It shd. be in a fairly central position, but preferably well up Central Park Way. (We are so accustomed to foreign hotels, that if there are any good French or Italian small ones, one might do — but not likely, I fancy.) As my wife will explain I’m very restricted as to diet (for my serious ailment) & that’s another reason for not “boarding,” in any case unsuitable for so short a visit.
197With all affectionate greetings to you and yours,
198Ever most cordially yours, | William Sharp
199ALS Columbia University Library
To Mrs. Frederick Stedman?, [September 22, 1904]37
- 37 The intended recipient of this letter must have been the widow of E. C. Stedman’s son, Frederick, w (...)
20060 Leinster Sq. | London W.
201Dear Mrs. Stedman,
202Since writing to Mrs. Stedman I find I’ve left myself almost no time to catch the mail — and besides, I need not reiterate: so let me only hurriedly thank you for your very kind letter, which I much appreciate. You may rest assured that we quite understand, and sympathize.
203In great haste now,
204Most sincerely yours | William Sharp
- 38 The Sharps left England on the SS. Menominee on Thursday, November 3, and arrived in New York on Su (...)
205In my other note I forgot to say that we sail by the “Atlantic Transport” SS. Menominee on Nov. 3rd. due in N. Y. on Saty 13th, Nov.38
206ALS Columbia University
To Edmund Clarence Stedman, [late September, 1904]
207Murrayfield, Midlothian | For the 8th
208My dear Stedman
209I have been travelling all day from London to Scotland, and now that I have arrived and am feeling very tired I find that if I don’t post tonight for the U. S. A. mail tomorrow morning there will be no other from here for 4 days.
- 39 Sharp wrote a letter to Stedman each year and mailed it so it would arrive on or near his October 8 (...)
210So that must excuse my brevity, for I would gladly write a long letter. However short it may be it will carry to you my most fervent goodwill and affectionate greetings for your birthday.39 May your new year bring you a better measure of serene health, and strength and leisure for what you most want to do, and quiet happiness within, without, and around you.
211You will know by this time I dare say that my wife and I are to be in New York by the middle of November (on or about the l3th) — tho’ only for 3 weeks. We go straight to the Janvier’s rooms now, on arrival — as they have to go to Mexico, and have to keep on their rooms. They will be back by about the 1st or 2nd of December — & as we don’t sail from New York for the Mediterranean till either December 10th or 12th (12th I think is the date — & the last date the doctors want me to be in a cold & damp climate, where I shouldn’t be at all, tho’ I am wonderfully better) we’ll see something of them.
212It will be a very great disappointment if you are not to be at Bronxville, and if we cannot at least get a glimpse of you some afternoon — but a still greater one if indisposition be the cause. Get well, dear Poet, for all our sakes, who love the Singer and the Songs.
- 40 William McLennan (1856–1904) was a Canadian writer who often contributed to H. M. Alden’s Harper’s (...)
213After so much of Sicily and Greece we are going no further south this year than to Rome — but I love Rome better than any winter-place, any winter city that is, and we hope to spend the spring. So poor William McLennan is gone: I’ve just heard the sad news, and of his wife left at Leghorn (tho’ it happened over a month ago I fancy).40
214With love to dear Mrs. Stedman, to all near and dear to you, Ever dear Stedman,
215Your ever affectionate friend, | William Sharp
216P. S. I shall expect no answer to this. It is only a letter of loving wishes and greeting for your birthday and new year: and it is bad for you to write.
217ALS Columbia University Library
To Laura Stedman, [October 15, 1904]
21860 Leinster Square | London
219My dear Miss Stedman
220Many thanks for your letter. I find I have just time to answer it and no more, in order to catch today’s mail — the next not being till 4 days hence.
221Since we wrote of our projected visit, we have heard from our dear friends the Janviers that they are going to Mexico, and will not he back till a fortnight after our arrival — and as they are retaining their rooms (at 233 West 49th St.) in any case, they offer them to us to go there at first. This, of course, is a great convenience in every way, and also obviates all further trouble such as that you are so kindly ready to undertake.
222If on the other hand the Janviers do not go, and make no other arrangement for us, I think with pleasure of the possible alternative on 54th St., and of your grandfather’s kind suggestion. Very likely you’ll know about what the Janviers have done before this reaches you.
223In great haste | dear Miss Stedman, | Believe me most truly yours, |
224William | Sharp
225ALS Yale University
To Benjamin Burgess Moore, October 20, 1904
226(Address) | Miss Macleod | C/o 22 Ormidale Terrace
227Murrayfield, Midlothian | 20th Oct l904.
228My Dear Mr. Moore,
229By a series of mischances your very kind and welcome letter of 11th September, from the French mail-steamer, reached me only yesterday. There seems a malign sprite interfering in our correspondence! The last time I wrote to you, about a year or perhaps 9 or ten months ago — and it was a long letter, “making up” for unavoidable tardiness — it was returned to me in another envelope! I hope this will reach you.
230I am very glad you feel as you do about “The House of Usna.” I wish you had seen it at the Strand Theater in London. The impersonation and acting left much to be desired — and yet, I think, many felt, as you feel, that something of the essential had been “got at.” The ordinary literary drama seems to me to go blindly down a wrong alley.
- 41 The “dedicatory prelude” was the “Prefatory Epistle to Esther Mona” in Fiona Macleod’s Deirdrê and (...)
231Mr. Mosher has now reissued, in two charming little volumes, “The Four Swans of Lir” and “Ulad of the Dreams” — and so the story of “Deirdre” has its natural companion. It also, though briefly, is dedicated to the same little girl, “Esther Mona.” You please me very deeply by your liking so well that dedicatory prelude to the story of “Deirdre.”41 It reappears as “The Ancient Beauty” in my just published new volume, The Winged Destiny.
232If you see that book, you will gain from its forepage some idea of what I am now engaged on, though only in part. I am also writing a series of nature papers (Nature and Dream I may ultimately call them) every second week or so for Country Life.
233As you will know (for he wrote to me that after hearing from you he had written to you) Mr. Sharp leaves in a fortnight for New York) though only for a month’s stay, or less, as he and Mrs. Sharp sail from Boston on (I think he said) the 10th December direct for Genoa or Naples, as they are to spend the winter and spring in Rome. For myself, I leave soon also, and may sail straight from the Clyde to Algiers. I must be away from the damp and raw and cold from November till May, the doctors urge. If Algiers does not suit, I shall go elsewhere, and in any case, later in the spring, hope to join my friends in Rome for a time. Is there any chance of your coming there? Please let me know if this reaches you. And if, later, you see “The Winged Destiny” I would be glad to hear from you if you care for it.
234Believe me, dear Mr. Moore, | Most sincerely yours, | Fiona Macleod.
235ALS Huntington Library
To Richard Garnett, [October 24?, 1904]
23660 Leinster Sq. | W
237My dear Garnett
- 42 This letter was written early in the week before the Sharps left England on November 3.
238I postponed writing till this evening after receipt of your letter yesterday — as I had a faint hope I might get Hampstead-ward to see you. But alas, impossible. And next week I go to New York.42
- 43 See Endnotes 20 and 35.
239No, I have relinquished doing that book for Mr. Jessup in that American series.43 I cannot well go into the matter here, but if your friend is not a man of leisure & quite indifferent to the question of remuneration, then I can only counsel him to refrain.
- 44 Garnett’s play, entitled William Shakespeare, Pedagogue and Poacher, was published in 1905.
240It will be a sincere pleasure to me to read the Shakespeare play:44 as you know, I follow everything you write with vivid appreciation.
241I do not know if I’ll be at the B. M. any day this week, but I may be. Do you ever go? Have you any special days? If we meet, I’d explain about Mr. Jessup & his series. Of course my hint is “entre nous.”
- 45 Robert Farquharson Sharp was married to Hildur Wildebrand in October 1904. Richard Garnett (1835–19 (...)
242Do you know that my cousin Farquharson Sharp is about to be married to a charming Swedish girl, Miss Hildur Willebrand?45
243Ever sincerely yours | William Sharp
244ALS University of Texas, Austin
To Caroline Hazard,46 November 22, [1904]
- 46 Caroline Hazard (1856–1945) was born in Rhode Island and educated by private tutors at Mary A. Shaw (...)
245234 W. 49th Street | 22 Nov.
246Dear Miss Hazard
247Mr. Sharp and I accept with great pleasure your kind invitation to dinner and to stay the night with you on Monday, Dec 5th.
248How very delightful that we may be present at the opening of one of the new halls, and it will be a pleasure to us to meet your friends, and yourself.
249Indeed we look forward so much to the 5th Dec. We have known your name for long, through the Janviers. And I just missed you in London this summer, when the Lyceum Club of which I am a member, had the pleasure of seeing you. I was, unfortunately, in Scotland.
250I look forward with deep interest to seeing the Colleges at Wellesley — if I may do so, on the following morning. I am making a study of the modern woman, under certain aspects — and it is one of my chief wishes in this country, to see what my limited time permits of women’s colleges etc. etc.
- 47 Here is the following description of Halidon Hall in Newport and the Masons’ residence by Avis Gunt (...)
251We leave New York on the 1st and go to Newport to stay with Mrs. Livingstone Mason and shall go direct from Rhode Island to Wellesley. I hope to catch the 4.40 train; but I will [write] again about this from Halidon Hall.47
252I hope it will not inconvenience you if we bring with us the trunk we shall have with us at Mrs. Mason’s.
253Mr. Sharp joins me in anticipatory greetings to you.
254Sincerely yours, | Elizabeth
255ALS Wellesley College Library
To Henry Mills Alden, [late November, 1904]
- 48 According to E. A. S., Sharp, while in New York, wrote to Alden on Fiona Macleod’s behalf proposing (...)
256… Some months ago, by special request from the Editor of Country Life Miss M. began contributing one or two of these papers. From the first they attracted notice, and then the Editor asked her if she would contribute a series to appear as frequently as practicable — averaging two a month — till next May when they would be issued in book-form. As Miss M. enjoys writing them, she agreed… . I have long been thinking over the material of an article on the Fundamental Science of Criticism, to be headed, say “A New Degree: D. Crit.”48
257[William Sharp]
258Memoir, p. 392
To Bliss Perry, November 24, 190449
- 49 Bliss Perry edited the Atlantic Monthly from 1899 until 1909. See Endnote 42, Chapter 23 (Volume 3) (...)
259234 West 49th Street | New York City
260My Dear Sir,
261I hope I may have the pleasure of seeing you in Boston, on one of the three or four days my wife & I are to be there prior to sailing thence to Italy on the 10th by the “Romanic.”
262We go from here on Thursday (1st) to stay till Monday with friends at Halidon Hall, Newport, R.I. — & then go on to spend that afternoon & evening with Miss Hazard at Wellesley College. We shall be in Boston (I think likely at a hotel called the “Thorndike,” on Tu, Wed, Thurs, and Friday. If, as I hope, you are in town, would it be convenient for you if I were to call on Tuesday — or would you prefer some other day?
263Believe me | Yours faithfully | William Sharp
264Dr Bliss Perry
265P.S. Our common friend E. C. Stedman kindly (on hearing I was going to Boston) gave me the enclosed note to you.
266ALS Harvard University, Houghton Library
To Thomas Mosher, November 28, 190450
- 50 This letter was written on the stationery of The Century Association | 7 West 43rd Street | New Yor (...)
267Nov. 28, 1904 | 234 West 49th St. | New York City
268Dear Sir
- 51 Helen Bartlett Bridgman. See Endnote 33.
269Is there any likelihood of your being in Boston between Tuesday 6th Decr. and Friday 9th incl.? I fear it will be impracticable for me to get to Portland on Tuesday. How long does it take? Miss Macleod asked me to see you if I could manage it. (By the way she spoke also of a lady, a Mrs. Bridgman (?),51 a friend of yours I understand, who lives in Brooklyn: but either she did not give me the address or I have mislaid it, and in any case I find myself too hopelessly pressed for time to call.
270In case you are from home or cannot answer at once I may add that from Thursday 1st Dec. till morning of Monday 5th I shall be | c/o Livingston Mason Esq. | Halidon Hall | Newport | R. I.
271I shall be in Boston only from Tuesday forenoon (the 6th) till night of Friday 9th — as I sail on Saty morning. I write thus early as I already have many engagements to fit in somehow.
272Yours faithfully | William Sharp
273ALS New York Public Library, Berg Collection
To Thomas Mosher, December 2, 1904
274Halidon Hall | Newport, Rhode Island | Friday 2nd. Dec. 1904 Dear Mr. Mosher,
275I received your note and your very kind and courteous despatch of the Bibelot for 1904 — a most delightful series (of which the last seems to me a peculiarly happy and welcome selection) just before leaving New York — after a day’s delay through a mistake on the part of the postman. And now this forenoon I have your friendly reminder in case of miscarriage.
- 52 Julia Ward Howe (1819–1910) was an American author and lecturer who wrote “The Battle Hymn of the R (...)
276As Friday is more convenient for you, by all means let us fix that date. At the moment I have no fixt engagements for that day, except a promise to go to the “afternoon” of an old friend, Mrs. Louise Chandler Moulton. (I have an idea that “Thursday or Friday” was given as a lunch date on behalf of Mrs. Julia Ward Howe52 — if I find there is the alternative I’ll so fix it). So, is it feasible for you to be in Boston by the early forenoon?
277If not, shall you have occasion to come there on Thursday?
278To my regret I find that a flying visit to Portland is quite impracticable for me now.
279It will be a pleasure to meet you & Miss Macleod wants me to talk-over one or two suggestions or projects.
280Yours faithfully | William Sharp
281We leave here on Monday morning for Wellesley, and shall be from Tuesday at the Thorndike Hotel, Boylston St, Boston.
282Thomas B. Mosher Esq.
283ALS New York Public Library, Berg Collection
To Roger Livingston Scaife, [December 6, 1904]53
- 53 Roger Livingston Scaife (1875–1951) graduated from Harvard in 1897 and two years later joined the s (...)
284The Thorndike
285Dear Mr. Scaife
286Herewith the long letter, written fully & explanatorily as practicable in the circumstances.
287By chance I found among some Memda the enclosed five Sicilian ills postal cards which will give some idea of the fine remains in one part alone of Sicily — also a photograph taken by Constantinos Embiricos (an eminent Athenian friend) at the few remains of the ancient temple & shrine of Aphrodite on the Sacred Way about halfway between Athens & Eleusis. Kindly let me have these again.
288Let me thank you again for all your courteous friendliness today. I hope to see you again, sometime tomorrow or Thursday, either at Park St. or the Club.
289In haste (to meet Mrs. Sharp on arrival), Sincerely yours
290William Sharp
291ALS Harvard University, Houghton Library
To Messrs. Houghton Mifflin & Co, December 6, 1904
- 54 The St. Botolph Club was a club for men founded in 1880 for artists and prominent members of Boston (...)
292St. Botolph Club54 | The Thorndike Hotel |
293Boylston St | Boston | 6th Dec. ‘06
294Dear Sirs
295The general scheme of the book (for which I have long been gathering material, and project under the indicative title Greek Backgrounds) of which I have spoken to Mr. Scaife and Mr. Greenslet, is as follows: —
296Sicily, Southern Italy, and Greece are now receiving that general and wide interest which hitherto has largely been attracted to the Riviera, Northern Italy, & Spain: & this applies both to the great numbers of American & British visitors, last year to be numbered in thousands, and to the growing large public which has to be content with vicarious travel but is eager in that.
297During the last four or five years (the greater part of four of which I have spent in Sicily, Calabria, & the Graeco-Italian & Graeco-French maritime regions — and the fifth in Corfu, the Isles, Athens, and the Peloponnesus etc. I have scores of times been asked to impart information as to books which would give more & in a different way than Baedeker or Murray and yet not be specialistically archaeological; or historical, too bulky & too technical for ordinary use & pleasure, and in particular for any book which would give, in a vivid way, some realisable idea of certain famous places & localities (or places & localities identified with famous persons or events) both as they are and as they were. From this arose my idea of writing Greek Backgrounds. So far as I know, no such book exists, Freeman’s and Addington Symonds’ travel-sketches are well known, tho’ now somewhat jejune; but they are without sequence or interrelation, and are rather general impressions of certain places or regions in their aesthetic or historical relations than what is now indicated. (The only other books at all in the same way dealing with Magna Graecia are Charles Lenormant’s standard & still valuable work on the Calabrian coast-towns & regions La Grande Gréce, Gissing’s personal travel-notes By the Ionian Sea, and a vol. of travel-sketches by Paul Bourget.)
298I would have begun the book a couple of years or so back had it not been that I realised it would be far more thorough & valuable if it were done systematically — therefore I contented myself with notes.
299The general idea is to take those beautiful & more or less famous sites in Sicily, Southern Italy (Calabria, what is known as “By the Ionian Sea”), and Greece (including Corfu & the Isles) which have association with “the great ones” of old: to write of them as it were on the spot, conveying vividly an impression of these places as they are today, and then by one way or another, whether through the writer’s themselves or Pausanias or other chronicler or historian, recreate some image of the places as they were of old, with, throughout, partly by interpretative narration, partly by excerpt, & otherwise, information as illuminative as possible concerning the story, achievement, & influence etc. of the great person immediately associated,
300My aim is to write a book that will not only be desirable to those about to visit Sicily & Greece ( & since the recent opening of the mainland route to Athens via Thebes from the Principalities this annual advent will be still further immensely enhanced), to those travelling or temporarily residing there, and to the many who already know one or both, but also that will appeal to that still greater public which wants to know more about places & countries now so much “in the air” to use a convenient colloquialism.
- 55 In 1927, the town of Girgenti took the name of its province, Agrigento. The Greeks called the town (...)
301Places (to take at random a few instances) like Thebes, Eleusis, Kolonos (Athens), Lesbos, in Greece, or Crotone (Kroton) in Calabria, or Ithaka among the Ionian Isles, or Syracuse or Girgenti55 in Sicily, are, respectively (for all readers for whom the past means anything vital & significant) inevitably associated with Pindar, Aeschylos, Sophocles, Sappho, Pythagoras, Homer, Theocritus, Empedocles. Sometimes, a great name will be closely associated with both Greece and Sicily — as Pindar in particular, as Aeschylos who lived long at Syracuse after he left Athens, & died at Gela (now a strange & all but wholly unvisited place on the remote & somewhat wild south-western Sicilian coast, where I went a year ago), as Theocritus etc.
302There are places, too, like Taormina, the chief tourist resort in Sicily & one of the most picturesque & beautiful places in Europe, which have a singular sequence of conflicting associations from Pythagoras to St. Paul, from Timoleon to Garibaldi.
303At first I thought of one book. But the immense amount of material, combined with the dislike of travelers to bulky volumes, and other reasons, made me think, and still think, that it would be best to make the work in two distinct and self-contained volumes — i.e. each complete in itself, independent of the other, yet recognizably two divisions of one work, — “Greek Backgrounds,”,
304One vol. to be “Sicily and Calabria” (G.B. First Series)
305One vol. “Greece and the Ionian Isles” Second Series
306I believe they will be far more saleable thus separately issued. Thousands may visit Sicily without going to Greece, & many would-be buyers among these would be deterred by a half-volume dealing with a country they were not to visit, though others again, interested in the one part, whether Sicily or Greece, might desire to have the other.
307[Indeed if the book or two series of Greek Backgrounds proved successful, there might well someday be a third series dealing with the Cyclades & Turkish Isles, Crete & Ephesos Smyrna, Alexandria etc etc on the Asian mainland.]
308A real continuity & interrelation of interest would thus be maintained, for the two series of Greek Backgrounds would each supplement the other, while for reasons of convenience, price, etc as well as for literary reasons, the gain is obvious. I believe, too, this plan would give more enduring results.
309I would rather the book were published primarily in this country — partly for copyright & connected reasons: and am agreeable to leave it so, — that is, to come to an agreement here, & leave the matter to be arranged from here later by the American publishers themselves as found convenient & suitable.
310A difficulty to a “general agreement” exists in the fact that to write Greek Backgrounds, & especially without (as I had originally projected) using much of the material in magazines first, means so great an outlay of time & energy that for one who is dependent upon his pen an ordinary royalty arrangement becomes impractical. In a word I could not undertake Greek Backgrounds without as liberal an advance against royalties as could, agreeably to both, be arranged: the method, times, & amount etc etc. etc. to be discussed if you care to take up the book. Naturally, at the same time, I wish no one-side advantage arrangement, and fully understand where ordinary precautions must be observed by any firm in any such arrangement,
311As to illustrations — not too many, I would like. I have already spoken to Mr. Scaife and Mr. Greenslet as to the fine Sicilian photographs I could get from my friend the Duke of Bronte (vide for example, my article on “Nelson’s Duchy” in the Pall Mall Magazine of June last), as to Mr. Chas. Wood (a young Amer artist resident in Taormina) doing some Calabrian sketches — & as to photographs of Greek places.
312As I leave for Italy on Saturday morning ( & on Friday am pre-engaged for the greater part of forenoon, middle-day, & afternoon) I hope I may hear from you at your early convenience.
313Believe me, | Dear Sirs, | Yours faithfully | William Sharp
314ALS Harvard University, Houghton Library
To Caroline Hazard, [December 7, 1904]
315Thorndike Hotel | Boylston St. | Boston | (at the St. Botolph Club)
316Dear Miss Hazard,
317Just a brief line to thank you again most cordially for your most kind and friendly courtesy, and to tell you what very great pleasure it was to me in all ways to meet you, and in your beautiful home amid your interesting and in truth fascinating environment and work.
318It is a happy memory to carry away oversea.
319Most sincerely yours | William Sharp
320P.S. Will you or your sister (whom also it was a very sincere pleasure to meet) kindly send a P/C with the name of the relatives (or friends?) who are also going by the “Romantic” — perhaps your sister will kindly remember her promise to write to them.
321ALS Wellesley College Library
To Thomas Mosher, December 7, 1904
322The Thorndike Hotel | Boylston St. | Boston | Wednesday 7 Dec. 04
323My Dear Sir
324Possibly you have written to Newport or to this address about when you will be in Boston. In case of miscarriage will you let me know by return when I may anticipate the pleasure of meeting you. If you are coming from Portland on Friday morning I presume you can’t be in Boston till noon or later. I have an appointment at 2: 30, and, in immediate sequence, others that will take me here and there till about 6. So I hope you may be here earlier on Friday than seems feasible to me sans railway time-tables. I am a pro-tem member of the St. Botolph Club, Arlington and Newbury Sts close by the Thorndike — and we could adjourn there whenever you call for me at the Thorndike. But so that I may be sure to be in, and also for the prearranging of my short remaining time here, I’m anxious to know just when I may see you.
325If perchance you are to be in Boston on Thursday (tomorrow) evening, I should be free (I believe) from 8 or so.
326Yours faithfully | William Sharp
327ALS New York Public Library, Berg Collection
To Caroline Hazard, [December 8, 1904]
328Hotel Thorndike | Thursday Evening
329My Dear Miss Hazard,
330Yesterday I made my pilgrimage to Radcliffe. Unfortunately Miss Irwin was not there, she was starting yesterday for Providence. But a Miss Shaw was kind enough to take me over the College buildings and to tell me points of interest.
- 56 For Julia Ward Howe, see Endnote 52.
- 57 Isabella Stewart Gardner (1840–1924) was a wealthy art collector, philanthropist, and patron of the (...)
331And today we called upon Mrs. Julia Ward Howe56 and had an interesting chat with her. Tomorrow we go to Fen Court to see Mrs. Gardner’s Collection57 and then my delightful Boston experience will be finished.
332I carry away such happy, picturesque memories and impressions of Wellesley, and of your great kindness to us. There is plenty of material round about you, near that beautiful lake, for an enterprising painter!
333Mr. Sharp joins me in friendly greetings to you, and in the hope that we may meet you again before very long.
334Very sincerely yours, | Elizabeth A. Sharp
335ALS Wellesley College Library
To Miss Katherine Lee Bates, December [8], 190458
- 58 Katharine Lee Bates (1859–1929) was an American poet, literary critic, and dramatist. Among her wor (...)
336The Thorndike Hotel | Boylston St. | Boston
337Dear Miss Bates,
- 59 After meeting the Sharps at Wellesley, Katherine Bates sent the Sharps Margaret Pollock Sherwood’s (...)
- 60 Spanish Highways and Byways (New York: Macmillan and Co., 1900).
338How kind you are: — the very welcome copy of “Daphne”59 and your “Bon Voyage” will help to make the trip to Italy a very pleasant one. It was a pleasure to meet you, and I hope we may meet again, in London, or Italy, or here, or elsewhere. I had already ordered your delightful book on Spain,60 of which I had sometime ago a brief and seductive glance: so I shall have that too a-board.
339Most sincerely yours | William Sharp
340ALS Private
To Messrs Houghton Mifflin & Co., December 9, 1904
341Friday Night | 9th Dec. / 04 | The Thorndike Hotel | Boston
342Dear Sirs
343I have returned late tonight & just received your kind letter of this morning’s date.
- 61 Houghton Mifflin accepted Sharp’s proposal to produce a book called Greek Background that would foc (...)
344I have not time now (or paper! — as everything packed & dispatched) to recapitulate the several points in your letter: but as you will have a duplicate of it, that doesn’t matter: So let me state, merely, that I concur in every item, including the P.S. as to the succeeding volume of Greek Backgrounds.61
345With thanks for all your courtesy and consideration, and with the expression of my pleasure at having again met Mr. Mifflin
346Believe me, | dear Sirs, | Yours faithfully | William Sharp Messrs Houghton Mifflin & Co.
347ALS Harvard University, Houghton Library
To Katherine Bates, December 15, [1904]
348C/o Sig. Karl Walter | The Eng. Agency & Bank |
349Bordighera | Italy | S.S. “Romanic”
350Dear Miss Bates
351I have just, so far as a heavy gale — continuous from one “airt” or another ever since in a snow-blizzard we emerged from Boston six days ago — permits one to write at all except in snatched intervals between roll and heave, written to Miss Sherwood to tell her with how much pleasure I have read “Daphne,” truly an idyll of Italy, told with beauty, sympathy and distinction.
352It was most kind of you to send it. Both Mrs. Sharp & I are not only grateful for the pleasant Italian interlude on this purgatorial voyage (tomorrow we reach the Azores — things then & thereafter will doubtless be better) but to the giver for her kind thought and generous camaraderie in the matter of another’s work.
353It was a pleasure to meet you at Wellesley, & we both hope that the acquaintance so pleasantly begun may be continued & cemented. It wd be pleasant to meet in the Spain you have so charmingly depicted and sympathetically interpreted ( & I hope your delightful book has met with the success it unquestionably deserves?) — or in Italy, whither we are now so gladly bound — or in London, where we’ll be for May and June — or in Scotland which I think you also love.
354It seems a long time since that pleasant evening at Miss Hazard’s delightful home — but we shall always remember it with true pleasure.
355Believe me, | dear Miss Bates, | Sincerely yours
356William Sharp
357ALS Wellesley College Library
To Murray Gilchrist, [late December, 1904]
- 62 The Sharp’s sailed from Boston aboard the S. S. Romantic on Saturday, December 10. After the snow i (...)
358We are back from America (thank God) and are in Italy (thank Him more)… . For myself I am crawling out of the suck of a wave whose sweep will I hope be a big one of some months and carry me far.62
359[William Sharp]
360Memoir, p. 393
To Ethel M. Goddard, December 27, 1904
361(On The Mediterranean) | 27th. Dec. 04
- 63 Ethel Goddard was an intensely patriotic and religious Irish writer. Her Dreams of Ireland was firs (...)
362My dear Miss Goddard63
363You may have been surprised why you have not heard from me before this; but I have been far away from our home-shores, now by the Canaries or the Azores, now off the Portuguese or Spanish or Algerian coasts, and it was only on Christmas day, at Gibraltar, that I found among many letters etc. etc. a copy of the Fortnightly for December.
364I have not time to write to you as fully as I would like for this must go in a packet of many other letters, proofs, etc, to my secretary in Edinburgh to be stamped & forwarded thence — which will be quicker than to send it c/o the editor of the Fortnightly.
- 64 “The Winged Destiny and Fiona Macleod,” The Fortnightly Review, 76 (December, 1904), 1037–44.
365I have read your article64 with keen interest, and am grateful to you for so balanced and intimately sympathetic a criticism — one that has pleased me far more than anything else that has been written concerning “The Winged Destiny.” But I value it most of all because of its suggestiveness. It has made me think more searchingly over certain matters connected with my work and its issues and the influences which have shaped and are shaping it: and it has touched forward to a greater surety much that I have of late pondered over and still more that has been more or less unconsciously “fermenting.”
366I had heard of your article from at least six or seven sources, and always appreciatively, and one Irish correspondent wrote (and with truth)… “I shall be surprised if you are not more interested in this carefully thought out and suggestive paper than by anything else that has appeared on The Winged Destiny.”
367Perhaps someday later — tho’ I seldom allude either in speech or writing to what is only in process of being thought out or while in process of achievement — I may write to you on certain matters touched upon in your article with so much sympathy and insight. But meanwhile let me add two things: namely, that I am not really turning aside from the things of the homeland and the ideals and hopes and lesser and greater destinies of our common Gaelic world, and, secondly, that I already think with you and other sympathetic critics that it would be a mistake for me to withhold myself from those tales and that Gaelic background where in every sense of the word I am most at home. Certainly before any further work of the nature of The Divine Adventure volume and The Winged Destiny, I hope to publish at least two books more in the nature of my earlier work, and perhaps a third (and much “bigger” one) on which I have long been silently at work.
- 65 Wind und Woge, Keltische Sagen, Authoristert Ausgabe aus dem Englishen ubersitzt und einegeleiten v (...)
- 66 This entire paragraph is crossed out, and someone wrote “type this” in the left margin next to the (...)
368Concurrently with the December number of the Fortnightly I received a Mercure de France with a gratifying notice of “The Winged Destiny” and also a copy of a charmingly printed and “got-up” copy of a German selection of my tales published by Eugen Diederichs of Jena, and called Wind und Woge65 (after the title, Wind and Wave, given to the Tauchnitz selection of my tales) — admirably translated by one Winnibald Mey. So you may imagine what pleasurable encouragement and elation Christmas day brought me.66
369I hope you are at work yourself? I want much to see more from your pen. Have you tried fiction?
370Let me wish you in the New Year peace and hope and joy, but also unrest and longing and the eager heart. An unknown Gaelic correspondent writes to me with a beautiful wish, in a simple and beautiful letter, so let me pass it on to you, a Gaelic sister.… “May you walk by the Waters of Life, and may you rest by Still Waters, and may you know the mystery of God.”
371Believe me, | Dear Miss Goddard, | Your friend, | F.M.
372ALS National Library of Scotland
To Thomas Mosher, December 31, 1904
373C/o 22. Ormidale Terrace | Murrayfield, Midlothian |
374Scotland | 31: Dec. 1904
375Dear Mr. Mosher,
376I have made a flying visit to Scotland — for even the cordial welcome of those near to me at New Year’s Tide cannot make East or West suitable for me at this season of cold and damp, and I must at once hasten back to the shores of the Mediterranean. I am always well at sea, whatever the weather is, but I cannot work or be well in land-cold and midwinter chills and damps. You will have received before this, I hope, my small Christmas card of greeting and the copy I sent you of Herr Winnibald Mey’s German translation of selected tales etc. by myself, Wind und Woge (a title he has evidently “lifted” from the Tauchnitz edition of the selected tales I prepared at Baron Tauchnitz’s request). Do you not think that the publisher (Herr Eugen Diederichs, of Jena & Leipsic) has brought it out exceptionally well for a cheap book? The type is new and distinctive, and the Celtic designs of the green-ink head pieces and initial-letters are delightful. I forget if I sent you the cloth- bound or the cheaper paper-bound, but I find that I much prefer the latter. Did I write — I know I meant to do so, but in the confusion of much to see to and do I may have forgotten — to thank you for the books you so generously sent to me. They are a delight. As for the lovely “Tristram of Lyonesse,” it is a joy to possess it. How delighted Mr. Swinburne must be with it. It is most kind of you to send me those books. Thank you again. Later I shall write to you on publishing matters, after I have seen our mutual friend, whom I hope to see shortly in Italy, as he has now arrived on the Riviera from Boston. I am glad you met. I send you a little spray of Highland heather in token of cordial New Year greeting, and with all friendliest good wishes for you and yours in 1905.
377Believe me ever | Most sincerely yours | Fiona Macleod
378ALS New York Public Library, Berg Collection
To Lawrence Gilman, December 31, [1904]
37922 Ormidale Terrace | Murrayfield, 31st Dec.
380Dear Mr. Gilman,
- 67 Lawrence Gilman (1878–1939) was a critic who wrote extensively about the music of Charles Loeffler (...)
381Some time ago a friend played to me one or two lovely airs by Mr. Loeffler, and I was so much impressed by their unique quality and their atmosphere of subtle beauty that I wrote to find out what I could about this composer, and also about another, Mr. MacDowell, whose beautiful Keltic Sonata I have heard. And now I have been sent a copy of your winsome and deeply interesting and informing little book, Phases of Modern Music. There I not only find much of deep interest to me about Mr. Loeffler and Mr. MacDowell,67 but find your whole book at once informing and fascinating. In addition I had the great pleasure of coming unexpectedly upon allusions to myself and my writings: and I would like you to know how truly I appreciate these, and how glad I am that a critic touched to such fine issues in the great art of Music, and with so keen a sense for the new ideals of beauty, the new conceptions of style and distinction, should care for what I am trying to do in my own art.
382I hope you are writing another book. Whether on musical subjects only, or on literary and musical subjects in conjunction (which of course would appeal to a wider section of the reading public), any such book would I am sure, be welcomed by all who know Phases of Modern Music.
383I wish I knew more of the music of these two composers. There is a spirit abroad just now, full of a new poignancy of emotion, uplifted on a secret wave of passion and ecstasy, and these men seem to me of that small but radiant company who have slept and dreamed in the other world and drank moon-dew.
384Let me thank you again for all the pleasure you have given me, and
385Believe me, | Most truly yours, | Fiona Macleod
386Memoir, pp. 390 –91
Notes
1 Ernest Rhys printed and transcribed in his Letters from Limbo this page of the letter he received from Sharp. Watts-Dunton edited The Athenaeum from 1876 to 1898. In 1904, he remained in a position to commission an article from Sharp. See the “Life” section of this chapter for the context in which Rhys set this fragment.
2 Theodore Watts-Dunton.
3 Following this ellipsis, Rhys wrote: “Then he runs on to speak of plans for further wanderings in Greece: ”
4 Alfred Turner Nutt (1856–1916) took over his father’s publishing business in 1878 and continued heading the firm until his death. He founded the Goethe Society in 1886 and jointly founded the Irish Texts Society in 1898. He was the author of The Legend of the Holy Grail (1888) and The Voyage of Bran, Son of Febal to the Land of the Living (1895). This letter is in Sharp’s hand for Mary to copy.
5 Supposedly Fiona had been staying with the Sharps in Athens. Here Sharp describes her as “having left,” but does not describe her location. The Sharps stayed on in Greece through March. It would not have been wise to have her so long in one place in case the news got out and someone tried to visit her.
6 Poets and Dreamers: Studies and Translations from the Irish (1903) for which Yeats wrote the introduction.
7 Nutt must have suggested Fiona undertake a compendium of Gaelic tales in English to compete with and improve upon Lady Gregory’s recently published book.
8 This comment reflects Yeats’ estrangement from Sharp which was partially due to Sharp’s increasing absence from London and partially due to the contempt for Sharp among some of Yeats’ Irish compatriots. It also reflects Sharp/Macleod’s belief that Yeats’ involvement in the cause of Irish nationalism and his relationship with Maud Gonne, an active Nationalist, interfered with his imaginative work and his devotion to spiritualism and the occult. After Sharp died in 1905, Yeats came to regret the estrangement and to believe he had not sufficiently valued Sharp’s friendship. Later he lost interest in the Celtic movement, as represented by Fiona Macleod, and in Sharp, and joined others in ridiculing him for inventing a female mouthpiece.
9 The Winged Destiny: Studies in the Spiritual History of the Gael which was published by Chapman and Hall in October 1904.
10 Neither of these books was completed.
11 Pentelicos is a mountain in Attica, northeast of Athens overlooking Kephisia, a deme (suburb) of ancient Athens which was the home of the dramatist Menander (342–291 BC) who wrote more than a hundred Greek comedies. This and other descriptions of Sharp’s walks in the hills around Athens moved Ernest Rhys to comment in Letters from Limbo: “Not a bad way-bill for a sick wanderer, but whatever else he might be he always took his ailments and his threatened fate with courage and at times with a histrionic relish of his own predicament” (p. 80).
12 The Sharps spent four months in Greece — December through March — and this letter states they will leave Greece “this day week.” Thus, the date of March 24.
13 Since the typed letter is not signed in Mary’s Fiona Macleod hand, it must have been typed in London and sent by Edith Rinder to Mosher. Sharp wanted to get its message to Mosher quickly, and this procedure was faster than sending the penciled letter to Edinburgh for Mary to copy into the Fiona Macleod hand. For a discussion of the content of the letter and the genesis and content of Fiona Macleod’s The Winged Destiny, see the “Life” section of this chapter.
14 This volume was published posthumously as Where the Forest Murmurs: Nature Essays (London: George Newnes, Ltd., and New York: Charles Scribner and Son, 1906). It did not include “The Magic Kingdoms.”
15 This new proposed edition did not materialize in 1904. Rather, Mosher reissued in 1904 his 1901 edition of From the Hills of Dream: Threnodies, Songs and Other Poems (Old World Series). A new edition of From the Hills of Dream did not appear until 1907 when it was published in England by William Heinemann.
16 Although Sharp began this letter complaining about Mosher’s including an essay intended for The Winged Destiny in The Bibelot, here he suggests Mosher publish an entire section of the volume as a book. Since it would take time for a book to appear, it would not interfere with the sale of the Chapman and Hall volume in the United States. More important, Mosher would pay Fiona for a book, but not for an essay in The Bibelot, a publication designed to advertise Mosher’s books.
17 Henri David Davray (1873–1944) translated several Fiona Macleod tales into French for the Mercury de France, but the collection of tales did not materialize. He was the author of Chez les Anglia’s Pendant la Grande Guerre (1916); Through French Eyes (1916); and Lord Kitchener: His Work and His Prestige (1917).
18 This reviewer was probably Helen Bartlett Bridgman. Mosher must have sent a copy of her review of earlier Fiona Macleod works to Fiona which occasioned the long letter of appreciation to Mrs. Bridgeman in September.
19 Edith Rinder wanted to assure Mosher that the six additional copies he sent had arrived.
20 Alexander Jessup, born in 1871, was the General Editor of a series called French Men of Letters for the J. P. Lippincott Company in Philadelphia. He was also the General Editor of a series called Little French Masterpieces for G. P. Putnam’s Sons in New York. He is best known for his editions of American short stories, the most popular being The Best American Humorous Short Stories which was first published in 1920.
21 The south of France.
22 The nature of the “concurrent work” is unknown. See letter To [Alexander Jessup], September 20, 1904 (Volume 3), in which Sharp tells Jessup he is too ill to continue with the Leconte de L’Isle book they agreed he would write. He also told Jessup that the terms he originally accepted — a volume of 75,000 words for an advance of twenty pounds — were insufficient. He said he had recently received a much better offer for a shorter Leconte de L’Isle volume from another American publisher of a similar series, but there is no supporting evidence for such an offer.
23 E. A. S. gave no date for this letter, but she placed it in the Memoir following a long quotation from the “Dedicatory Introduction” of The Winged Destiny and preceding two letters regarding that volume. It is reasonable to date the letter in July. The essay that gave its title to the book deals extensively with fate and destiny as do several other pieces in the book. The topic was much on his mind as he contemplated the likelihood that he did not have much longer to achieve the highest ideals of “beauty” in the Fiona writings.
24 “The Lynn of Dreams,” The Contemporary Review, 82 (December, 1902), 863–65.
25 This letter describes a day spent with Dr. John Goodchild at Glastonbury and identifies that day as August 1. Since he said in the letter that this day was yesterday, it was written on August 2. Its recipient was not in England on that lovely day which increases the likelihood Roselle Lathrop Shields was its recipient. See the “Life” section of this chapter.
26 A heavily edited version of this letter appears in the Memoir, pp. 386–87.
27 The phrases “in more ways than one” and “a garden of Eden” are covert references to his new-found love for Roselle Lathrop Shields who had a salutary effect on his health and spirits. For a further discussion of Sharp’s relationship with Mrs. Shields, see the “Life” section of this chapter.
28 Sharp’s Literary Geography (London: Pall Mall Publications, 1904).
29 Elizabeth Sharp’s Rembrandt: with Forty Illustrations (London: Methuen and Company, 1903).
30 Printed in the September 14, 1904 London Daily Chronicle, this letter was preceded by the following editorial comment: “We have received the following very interesting letter, which we regret we cannot acknowledge in a personal way, because it bears no address”.
31 Mosher published The Tale of the Four White Swans in his Brocade Series in April 1904. It was one of the tales in Fiona Macleod’s The Laughter of Peterkin, a book of stories for children published by Archibald Constable in 1897 where it was titled “The Four White Swans”. Ulad of the Dreams, which Mosher published in his Brocade Series in September 1904, appeared first in Fiona’s The Dominion of Dreams published by Archibald Constable in 1899.
32 Sharp enclosed with this letter both Fiona’s September 14 letter in the Chronicle and her letter to Helen Bridgman, a close friend of Mosher.
33 Helen Bartlett Bridgman (1855–1935) was an American writer and world traveler. Born in Milwaukee in 1855, she spent most of her childhood in New England. Among her books are An American Woman’s Plea for Germany (1915); Looking Toward Peace (1915); Play Fair! (1915); Gems (1916); Within My Horizon (1920); Conquering the World (1925); and The Last Passion (1925). In 1887, she married Herbert Lawrence Bridgman (1844–1924), an explorer and journalist who has been described as the “Ulysses of journalists” for his work in organizing the Robert Perry expedition to the North Pole. Perry sent Bridgman the code cable “Sun” (meaning “We have reached the world’s end”). Bridgman led the relief expedition in 1894 after Perry was lost in the Arctic. With no surviving children, Bridgman specified that his estate, upon the death of his widow, would go to the State University of New York to establish scholarships for New York students. Mrs. Bridgman died at her home in Brooklyn in 1935. This letter responds to a letter to Fiona from Mrs. Bridgman which Mosher forwarded with some favorable reviews of the Fiona writings by Mrs. Bridgman.
34 Robert Donald (1860–1933) was Editor of The Daily Chronicle from 1904 until 1918. He was thoughtful and principled, with a firm belief in objective reporting and editorial independence. Under his direction, the paper was broadly supportive of the radical wing of the Liberal Party under David Lloyd George. The subject of the letter is a prefatory note Donald added to the Fiona Macleod letter he published in the September 14, 1904 issue of The Daily Chronicle.
35 In June, Alexander Jessup asked Sharp to do a volume in the French Men of Letters series he was editing for Lippincott. Sharp replied that because of “concurrent work” he would like to do a volume on Mistral, Leconte de L’Isle, or Villiers de L’Isle Adam. He could do the work during the coming winter and let Jessup have it in the spring, but he could make no commitment until he heard Jessup’s terms. Aside from the health problems that would prevent his going forward with a book on Le Conte de L’Isle, Sharp found Jessup’s monetary terms insufficient.
36 Alfred de Vigny (1797–1863) was a poet and dramatist. Among his works are Cinq-Mars (1847); Servitude et grandeur militaires (1857) and, posthumously published, Daphne (1873); Journal d’un poète (1882); Laurette (1890). Joseph Albert Glatigny (1839–1873) was a poet. Among his works are Les Vignes folles (1860); Les Flèches d’or (1864); L’illustre Brizacier (1873). José Maria Heredia (1803–1839) was a Spanish poet who wrote Poesias de Don José Maria Heredia (1853); Sonnets of José Maria de Heredia (1897); Los Trofeos, Romancero y los Conquistadores de Oro Poesias (1908).
37 The intended recipient of this letter must have been the widow of E. C. Stedman’s son, Frederick, who also seems to have written to Sharp expressing regret that the Stedmans could not have the Sharps as house guests and offering the service of her daughter Laura in helping the Sharps find lodging in New York. Laura served as E. C. Stedman’s literary secretary from 1898 until his death in 1908.
38 The Sharps left England on the SS. Menominee on Thursday, November 3, and arrived in New York on Sunday November 13. This was Elizabeth’s first visit to the United States.
39 Sharp wrote a letter to Stedman each year and mailed it so it would arrive on or near his October 8 birthday.
40 William McLennan (1856–1904) was a Canadian writer who often contributed to H. M. Alden’s Harper’s Magazine. He died in late August while visiting Italy with his wife.
41 The “dedicatory prelude” was the “Prefatory Epistle to Esther Mona” in Fiona Macleod’s Deirdrê and the Sons of Usna (Portland, ME: Mosher, 1903). The little girl, to whom the epistle was dedicated, was the daughter of Edith and Frank Rinder. Mosher’s Ulad of the Dreams (September 1904 and reprinted in 1907) appeared first as an essay in Fiona’s Dominion of Dreams (London: Archibald Constable, 1899). The Mosher volume was also dedicated “To Esther Mona,” but without the prelude. The Four Swans of Lir was published by Mosher in April 1904 (reprinted in 1907 and 1911). It appeared first as “The Four White Swans” in Fiona’s The Laughter of Peterkin, A Retelling of Old Tales of the Celtic Wonderworld (London: Archibald Constable, 1897). See Endnote 31.
42 This letter was written early in the week before the Sharps left England on November 3.
43 See Endnotes 20 and 35.
44 Garnett’s play, entitled William Shakespeare, Pedagogue and Poacher, was published in 1905.
45 Robert Farquharson Sharp was married to Hildur Wildebrand in October 1904. Richard Garnett (1835–1906) was Keeper of Printed Books at the British Museum from 1890–1899 when he retired from the Museum. Robert Farquharson Sharp (1865–1945) served as Keeper of Printed Books at the Museum from 1924–1929. His son, Noel Farquharson Sharp, was a mainstay of that Department from the 1930s well into the 1970s.
46 Caroline Hazard (1856–1945) was born in Rhode Island and educated by private tutors at Mary A. Shaw’s School in Providence. After further study in Europe, she helped her father in business and created a welfare center in Rhode Island where she taught sewing and other domestic skills. In 1899, she was appointed the third President of Wellesley College, a position she held with distinction until 1910. She introduced household economics into the curriculum, created a department of hygiene and physical education, and founded the college choir. Following her years at Wellesley, she traveled widely and championed the education of women. She was also active in many philanthropic organizations in Rhode Island, New York, and California where she had a home in Santa Barbara and where she died in 1945. She was a good friend of Catherine Janvier whose brother was President of Lehigh College (Henry S. Drinker) and of Edith Bucklin Hartshorn Mason who entertained the Sharps for a weekend in Rhode Island on their way to Boston. Well-established among the elite of Rhode Island society, Hazard and Mason were members of the Colonial Dames of Rhode Island and the Daughters of the American Revolution. Catherine Janvier, Caroline Hazard, and Edith Mason were, like Elizabeth Sharp, intelligent and accomplished advocates of the advancement of women.
47 Here is the following description of Halidon Hall in Newport and the Masons’ residence by Avis Gunther-Rosenberg (The Providence Journal, February 14, 2004): “‘Teahouse Steeped in Newport History’ Aerie Cottage is the former teahouse of Halidon Hill, a 19th-century estate that once consisted of three large houses and three barns on 14 acres. Built in 1853 by a Scottish stone mason, the Gothic 20-something-room Halidon Hall was named after a battle in 1333 at which the English defeated the Scottish, with a loss of 14,000 lives. In 1894, Arthur Livingston Mason and wife Edith Bucklin Hartshorn Mason took up residence at Halidon Hall, according to the youngest of the eight children, Lion Gardiner Mason. Mason published his memoirs — A Lion’s Share — on his 87th birthday, Oct. 5, 1983. The Mason family had several claims to fame. Arthur Livingston Mason owned the Newport Engineering Works, an automobile and marine business, and was narrowly defeated in the Newport mayoral race of 1898 by Patrick Boyle, losing by only 198 votes. His wife Edith organized the R.I. Sanitary and Relief Association during the Spanish-American War and was responsible for two inventions designed to help wounded soldiers — a lamp shade that shielded patients’ eyes from light while leaving the bulb exposed on one side to aid the surgeons, and a flannel abdominal bandage called the ‘Mason band.’”
48 According to E. A. S., Sharp, while in New York, wrote to Alden on Fiona Macleod’s behalf proposing that he take some of her nature essays for Harper’s Magazine. Sharp and Alden had been good friends for many years, and Sharp had told Alden the truth about Fiona. They saw each other when Sharp was in New York, and this letter was intended to formalize proposals Sharp made orally. The W. S. essay proposing a new Doctor of Criticism degree was, according to E. A. S., a project amongst many others which was “never worked out” (Memoir, p. 392).
49 Bliss Perry edited the Atlantic Monthly from 1899 until 1909. See Endnote 42, Chapter 23 (Volume 3). The letterhead on this stationery is Lawrence Park, Bronxville, N. Y. where the Stedmans lived. In his letter To Edmund Clarence Stedman, [late September, 1905] (Volume 3) in late September 1905, Sharp recalled his spending Thanksgiving with the Stedmans in 1904. That year Thanksgiving was on November 24. Hence the date of this letter.
50 This letter was written on the stationery of The Century Association | 7 West 43rd Street | New York with the letterhead crossed out. Established in 1847, the Century Association was, at that time, a New York City club of “authors, artists, and amateurs of letters and the fine arts,” whose early members included editor/poet William Cullen Bryant and painters Asher Durand, Winslow Homer, and John Frederick Kensett, and architect Stanford White. The Century evolved from an earlier organization, the Sketch Club, founded by Bryant and his friends in 1829. The Century has a notable art collection, including important works by Durand, Thomas Cole, Thomas Doughty, and other Hudson River School painters. It is also an important venue for the exhibition of contemporary art created by its members. In 1989, after a strenuous legal battle, the club began admitting women. Located on West 43rd Street since 1891, the Century occupies a club house designed by Stanford White. Stedman, among other New York luminaries in the arts and letters, was a member of the Century and arranged a temporary membership for Sharp when he was in New York.
51 Helen Bartlett Bridgman. See Endnote 33.
52 Julia Ward Howe (1819–1910) was an American author and lecturer who wrote “The Battle Hymn of the Republic.” She was married to Samuel Gridley Howe, a reformer and teacher of the blind, and they lived in Boston. The author of numerous travel books, biographies, dramas, and verse books for children, Mrs Howe was a strong advocate of equal education for all children as well as professional and business opportunities for women.
53 Roger Livingston Scaife (1875–1951) graduated from Harvard in 1897 and two years later joined the staff of the Atlantic Monthly, which was published by the Houghton, Mifflin Company. Shortly thereafter he transferred to Houghton Mifflin and soon became a Director. He retained that position until 1934 when he left to become Vice President and a Director at Little, Brown. In 1943, he was appointed Director of the Harvard University Press, a position he held until his retirement in 1948. Through the years he interacted with many well-known writers and exercised considerable influence within the publishing business. When Sharp called on Bliss Perry, the Atlantic’s Editor, with an introduction from Stedman, he mentioned not only articles Perry might like for the magazine, but also a book for which he had been taking notes on monuments of ancient Greek civilization. Perry introduced Sharp to Scaife who asked for a written proposal which Sharp hastily wrote on the afternoon of Tuesday, December 6. The lengthy proposal, in the form of a letter to Houghton Mifflin, succeeds this letter to Scaife.
54 The St. Botolph Club was a club for men founded in 1880 for artists and prominent members of Boston society. Like the Century Club in New York, it held annual exhibitions. Among its founders were Thomas Jefferson Coolidge, Frederic Porter Vinton, William Dean Howells, architect Henry Hobson Richardson, and sculptor Daniel Chester French. Someone arranged for Sharp to use the club during his few days in Boston.
55 In 1927, the town of Girgenti took the name of its province, Agrigento. The Greeks called the town Akragas, later known as Agrigentum by the Romans, and the Saracens corrupted this name to Kerkent from which later residents derived Girgenti. An important Greek port city on the southwest coast of Sicily, Akragas was the home of Empedocles (490–430) and has the best-preserved series of Doric temples outside Greece.
56 For Julia Ward Howe, see Endnote 52.
57 Isabella Stewart Gardner (1840–1924) was a wealthy art collector, philanthropist, and patron of the arts whose collection is housed in the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston. Shortly after her marriage to the wealthy John Lowell “Jack” Gardner in 1860, the couple settled in Boston and began collecting works of art. Before he died in 1898, Jack Gardner decided their Boston House was not large enough for their growing collection and began planning a museum to house it. After his death, Isabella acquired a piece of land in the newly developing fens area and hired Willard T. Sears, a Boston architect, to design a museum modeled on the Renaissance palaces of Venice. In the early years, an apartment on the fourth floor was Mrs. Garner’s home. She entertained guests frequently, often for musicals, but also opened the museum to the public two days each year. For the museum’s opening night — January 1, 1903 — four hundred guests were entertained by members of the Boston Symphony. Aware that the Sharps had served as London art critics for the Glasgow Herald and written extensively about art, Caroline Hazard arranged for the Sharps to visit Mrs. Gardner for a private tour of Fenway Court.
58 Katharine Lee Bates (1859–1929) was an American poet, literary critic, and dramatist. Among her works are The College Beautiful and Other Poems (1887); American Literature (1898); Spanish Highways and Byways (1900); English Drama (1902); Once Upon a Time (1921). The Sharps met her when they visited Wellesley on 5 December. This letter was written shortly before they sailed from Boston on the Romantic on Saturday, December 10.
59 After meeting the Sharps at Wellesley, Katherine Bates sent the Sharps Margaret Pollock Sherwood’s Daphne which Houghton Mifflin published in 1903.
60 Spanish Highways and Byways (New York: Macmillan and Co., 1900).
61 Houghton Mifflin accepted Sharp’s proposal to produce a book called Greek Background that would focus on Sicily and Calabria. They would wait to see how that volume sold before committing to a proposed second volume on Greece.
62 The Sharp’s sailed from Boston aboard the S. S. Romantic on Saturday, December 10. After the snow in Boston and the rough sea voyage, they landed in Naples, grateful for the warmth of Italy. They went north to spend Christmas with Doctor John Goodchild and other friends in Bordighera, a resort town on the Italian Riviera where Sharp wrote this letter to Gilchrist. In the next week, the couple travelled south to Rome and took rooms in a fashionable hotel where they planned to stay several months.
63 Ethel Goddard was an intensely patriotic and religious Irish writer. Her Dreams of Ireland was first published in 1903 (Dublin: Hodges, Figgis, & Co.) and went through many editions. It is a collection of sentimental reflections on rural Ireland, past and present. This letter is transcribed from a document among the Sharp papers in the National Library of Scotland. It is in Sharp’s hand and was sent from Italy to Edinburgh for Mary Sharp to copy into the Fiona Macleod hand and mail. A note from Sharp to Mary on the manuscript reads as follows: “if you do not have her address in Ireland, then post to her | c/o The Editor ‘The Fortnightly Review’ | 11 Henrietta St. | Covent Garden | London.” Sharp then crossed through that note and wrote “Donard Demesne | Donard | Co. Wicklow | Ireland.” Sharp wrote “Return” in the upper left corner of the first page. Writing as Fiona Macleod, Sharp said of Goddard’s book in “Anima Celtica”: “Surcharged with the intensest spirit of Ireland in the less mystical and poetic sense, is the slim volume of a handful of prose papers by Miss Ethel Goddard, entitled Dreams for Ireland. This book is uplifted with a radiant hope and with an ecstasy of spiritual conviction that make the heart young to contemplate: and would God that its glad faith and untroubled prophecies could be fulfilled in our time, or that in our time even the shadows of the great things to come could lighten the twilight road.”
64 “The Winged Destiny and Fiona Macleod,” The Fortnightly Review, 76 (December, 1904), 1037–44.
65 Wind und Woge, Keltische Sagen, Authoristert Ausgabe aus dem Englishen ubersitzt und einegeleiten von Winnibald Mey (Jena und Leipzig: Eugen Diederichs, 1905).
66 This entire paragraph is crossed out, and someone wrote “type this” in the left margin next to the paragraph. Mary must not have included it in the letter she sent to Miss Goddard.
67 Lawrence Gilman (1878–1939) was a critic who wrote extensively about the music of Charles Loeffler (1861–1935) and Edward MacDowell (1861– 1908), major figures in American music in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. Among his publications are Phases of Modern Music (1904); The Music of Tomorrow (1907); Stories of Symphonic Music (1907); Edward MacDowell (1906); Music and the Cultivated Man (1929); and Wagner’s Operas (1937). From 1896 to 1898, Gilman worked for the New York Herald, then from 1901 to 1913 as a music critic for Harper’s Weekly, where he advanced to the position of Managing Editor. From 1915 to 1923, he was a critic in multiple arts for The North American Review, and for the Herald Tribune from 1925 until his death. Sharp would have met Gilman at the office of Harper’s Weekly in Boston in early December, and this letter is an effort to establish a bond between Fiona and Gilman in the hope of encouraging favorable notices for the Fiona writings.
Table des illustrations
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Légende | Fig. 21. William Sharp from a photograph by Frederick Hollyer, The Chap-book, September 15, 1894, Wikimedia, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:William_Sharp_1894.jpg#/media/File:William_Sharp_1894.jpg |
URL | http://books.openedition.org/obp/docannexe/image/15277/img-1.jpg |
Fichier | image/jpeg, 28k |
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Légende | Fig. 22. Photograph of William Sharp, taken by Alexander Nelson Hood, the Duke of Bronte, at his Castle Maniace in November 1903. Reproduced by Elizabeth Sharp in her Memoir, p. 358. |
URL | http://books.openedition.org/obp/docannexe/image/15277/img-2.jpg |
Fichier | image/jpeg, 25k |
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Légende | Fig. 23. Statue of Anteros, Shaftesbury Memorial, Piccadilly Circus, London. Sculpted by Alfred Gilbert and erected in 1893. Photograph by Diego Delso (2014), Wikimedia, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Fuente_Eros,_Piccadilly_Circus,_Londres,_Inglaterra,_2014-08-11,_DD_159.JPG |
URL | http://books.openedition.org/obp/docannexe/image/15277/img-3.jpg |
Fichier | image/jpeg, 26k |
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Légende | Fig. 24. Interior Courtyard of the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston, built in 1903 to house the Gardner collection. The building replicates a fifteenth-century Venetian palace. Photograph by Sean Dungan (2017). Wikimedia, CC BY 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Courtyard,_Isabella_Stewart_Gardner_Museum,_Boston.jpg#/media/File:Courtyard,_Isabella_Stewart_Gardner_Museum,_Boston.jpg |
URL | http://books.openedition.org/obp/docannexe/image/15277/img-4.jpg |
Fichier | image/jpeg, 74k |
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