Into this collected edition are gathered all the writings of William
Sharp published under his pseudonym "Fiona Macleod," which he cared to
have preserved; writings characterised by the distinctive idiom he
recognised to be the expression of one side of his very dual nature--of
the spiritual, intuitive, subjective self as distinct from the mental,
reasoning, objective self.
In the preparation of this edition I have carefully followed the
author's written and spoken instructions as to selection, deletion, and
arrangement. To the preliminary arrangement he gave much thought,
especially to the revision of the text, and he made considerable changes
in the later version of certain of the poems and tales. In one instance
only have I acted on my own judgment, and have done so because I felt
satisfied he would have offered no objection to my suggestion. In
accordance with his decision the romance _Green Fire_ is not reissued
in its entirety, because he considered the construction of it to be
seriously defective. He rewrote the second half of the story--the only
portion he cared to keep--renamed it "The Herdsman" and included it in
_The Dominion of Dreams_. Scattered throughout _Green Fire_ there are a
number of "Thoughts" which I and other readers are desirous of
preserving; I have therefore gathered them together and have included
them in the form of detached "Fragments."
The _Laughter of Peterkin_ is also excluded, because it is a retelling
of old familiar Celtic tales and not primarily an original work. Two of
these retellings, however, _Deirdre and the Sons of Usna_, and _The Four
White Swans_ have been published separately in America by Mr. Mosher
(Portland, Maine).
Though the "Fiona Macleod" phase belongs to the last twelve years of
William Sharp's life, the formative influences which prepared the way
for it went back to childhood. Though "the pains and penalties of
impecuniosity" during his early struggles in London tended temporarily
to silence the intuitive subjective side of his nature in the necessary
development of the more objective intellectual "William Sharp"--critic,
biographer, essay and novel writer as well as poet--he never lost sight
of his desire to give expression to his other self.
William Sharp was born in 1855 of Scottish parents (he died at Maniace,
Sicily, in 1905), was educated at the Academy and University of Glasgow,
and spent much of his youth among the Gaelic-speaking fisher-folk and
shepherds of the West Highlands. After a voyage to Australia for his
health, he settled in London in 1878 and strove to make for himself a
place in the profession of Literature. His friendships with Rossetti,
Browning, Pater, Meredith were important factors in his development; and
later he came into valued personal touch with W. D. Howells, Richard
Stoddart, Edward Clarence Stedman, and other English and American men of
letters.
In 1886, not long after his marriage, he suffered a serious illness and
a protracted convalescence. During the enforced leisure he dreamed many
dreams, saw visions, and remembered many things out of the past both
personal and racial. He determined, should he recover, to bend every
effort to ensure the necessary leisure wherein to write that which lay
nearest his heart. Accordingly in 1889 he left London for a time. The
first outcome of a wonderful winter and spring in Rome was a volume of
verse, in unrhymed metre, _Sospiri di Roma_, privately published in
1891, and followed in 1893 by a volume of dramatic interludes, _Vistas_;
and, though both are a blending of the two elements of the poet's dual
nature, they to some extent foreshadowed the special phase of work that
followed. He was feeling his way, but did not find what he sought until
he wrote _Pharais_, the first of the series of books which he issued
under the pseudonym of "Fiona Macleod."
In the sunshine and quiet of a little cottage in Sussex; in the delight
in "the green life" about him; impelled by the stimulus of a fine
friendship, he had gone back to the influences of his early memories,
and he began to give expression to his vision of the Beauty of the
World, of the meaning of Life, of its joys and sorrows. The ultimate
characteristic expression of his "dream self" was due to the inspiration
and incentive of the friend to whom he dedicated _Pharais_. It was, as
he states in a letter to me written in 1896, "to her I owe my
development as 'Fiona Macleod,' though in a sense, of course, that began
long before I knew her, and indeed while I was a child"; and again,
"without her there would never have been any 'Fiona Macleod.'"
The volumes appeared in quick succession. _Pharais_ in 1894; _The
Mountain Lovers_ in 1895; _The Sin-Eater_ in 1895; _The Washer of the
Ford_ in 1896; _Green Fire_ in 1896; _The Laughter of Peterkin_ in 1897;
_The Dominion of Dreams_ in 1899; and a volume of poems, _From the Hills
of Dream_, in 1896. A second serious illness intervened, and in 1900 he
published _The Divine Adventure_, and in 1904 _The Winged Destiny_. Of
his two dramas, written in 1898-9, _The House of Usna_ was performed by
the Stage Society in London in 1900, and was issued in book form in
America by Mr. Mosher in 1903; _The Immortal Hour_ was published in
America in 1907 and in England in 1908. The volume of nature essays,
_Where the Forest Murmurs_, and an enlarged edition of _From the Hills
of Dream_ were also published posthumously.
For twelve years the name of "Fiona Macleod" was one of the mysteries of
contemporary literature. The question of "her" identity provoked
discussion on both sides of the Atlantic; conjecture at times touched
the truth and threatened disclosure. But the secret was loyally guarded
by the small circle of friends in whom he had confided. "'Fiona' dies"
he was wont to say, "should the secret be found out." These friends
sympathised with and respected the author's desire to create for
himself, by means of a pseudonym, the necessary seclusion wherein to
weave his dreams and visions into outward form; to write a series of
Celtic poems, romances and essays different in character from the
literary and critical work with which William Sharp had always
approached his public.
In a letter to an American friend written in 1893, before he had decided
on the use of the pseudonym, he relates: "I am writing a strange Celtic
tale called _Pharais_, wherein the weird charm and terror of the night
of tragic significance is brought home to the reader (or I hope so) by a
stretch of dew-sweet moonflowers glimmering white through the mirk of a
dust laden with sea-mist. Though the actual scene was written a year ago
and one or other of the first parts of _Pharais_, I am going to rewrite
it." In 1895 he wrote to the same friend who had received a copy of the
book, and who, remembering the statement, was puzzled by the name of the
author: "Yes, _Pharais_ is mine. It is a book out of the core of my
heart.... Ignored in some quarters, abused in others, and unheeded by
the general reader, it has yet had a reception that has made me deeply
glad. It is the beginning of my true work. Only one or two know that I
am 'Fiona Macleod.'" To the last the secret was carefully guarded for
him, until he passed "from the dream of Beauty to Beauty."
In the author's "Foreword" to the Tauchnitz selection of the Fiona
Macleod Tales, entitled _Wind and Wave_, he has set down in explanation
what here may be fittingly reprinted. He explains that in certain
sections are tales of the old Gaelic and Celtic-Scandinavian life and
mythology; that in others there is a blending of Paganism and
Christianity; in others again "are tales of the dreaming imagination
having their base in old mythology or in a kindred mythopœic source....
They divide broadly into tales of the world that was and tales of the
world that is, because the colour and background of the one series are
of a day that is past, and past not only for us, but for the forgetting
race itself; while the colour and background of the other, if
interchangeable, is not of a past, but only of a passing world which
lies in essential truth in nature, material or spiritual, the truth of
actual reality, and the truth of imaginative reality....
"Many of these tales are of the grey wandering wave of the West, and
through each goes the wind of the Gaelic spirit, which everywhere
desires infinitude, but in the penury of things as they are turns upon
itself to the dim enchantment of dreams. And what are these, whether of
a single heart on the braes of sorrow or of the weariness of unnumbered
minds in the maze of time and fate, but the dreams of the wavering
images of dreams, with which for a thousand years the Gael has met the
ignominies and sorrows of a tragical destiny; the intangible merchandise
which he continually creates and continually throws away, as the May
wind gathers and scatters the gold of the broom."
Elizabeth A. Sharp.