From then till the end of his life there was a continual play of the two forces in him, or of the two sides of his nature: of the intellectually observant, reasoning mind—the actor, and of the intuitively observant, spiritual mind—the dreamer, which differentiated more and more one from the other, and required different conditions, different environment, different stimuli, until he seemed to be two personalities in one. It was a development which, as it proceeded, produced a tremendous strain on his physical and mental resources; and at one time between 1897-8 threatened him with a complete nervous collapse.
And there was for a time distinct opposition between these two natures which made it extremely difficult for him to adjust his life, for the two conditions which were equally imperative in their demands upon him. His preference, naturally, was for the intimate creative work which he knew grew out of his inner self; though the exigencies of life, his dependence on his pen for his livelihood—and, moreover the keen active interest ‘William Sharp’ took in all the movements of the day, literary and political, at home and abroad—required of him a great amount of applied study and work.
During those two years at Phenice Croft, to which he always looked back with deep thankfulness, he was the dreamer—he was testing his new powers, living his new life, and delighting in the opportunity for psychic experimentation. And for such experimentation the place seemed to him to be peculiarly suited. To me it seemed “uncanny,” and to have a haunted atmosphere—created unquestionably by him—that I found difficult to live in, unless the sun was shining. This uncanny effect was felt by more than one friend; by Mr. Murray Gilchrist, for instance, whose impressions were described by his host in one of the short “Tragic Landscapes.”
Pharais was the first of the books written and published under the pseudonym of “Fiona Macleod.” The first reference to it is in the afore noted diary: “Have also done the first part of a Celtic romance called Pharais.” The next is in a letter written to Mrs. Janvier from St. Andrews, on 12th August, 1893, before the author had decided on the use of a pseudonym:
“ ... The white flowers you speak of are the moondaisies, are they not?—what we call moonflowers in the west of Scotland and ox-eye daisies in England, and marguerites in France?... It is very strange that you should write about them to me just as I was working out a scene in a strange Celtic tale I am writing, called Pharais, wherein the weird charm and terror of a night of tragic significance is brought home to the reader (or I hope so) by a stretch of dew-wet moonflowers glimmering white through the mirk of a dusk laden with sea mists. Though this actual scene was written a year or two ago—and one or two others of the first part of Pharais—I am going to re-write it, your letter having brought some subtle inspiration with it. Pharais is a foil to the other long story I am working at. While it is full of Celtic romance and dream and the glamour of the mysterious, the other is a comedy of errors—somewhat in the nature, so far, of “A Fellowe and His Wife” (I mean as to style). In both, at least the plot, the central action, the germinal motif, is original: though I for one lay little stress on extraneous originality in comparison with that inner originality of individual life.... I have other work on the many occupied easels in the studio of my mind: but of nothing of this need I speak at present. Of minor things, the only one of any importance is a long article on a subject wherein I am (I suppose) the only specialist among English men of letters—the Belgian literary Renaissance since 1880. It is entitled “La Jeune Belgique,” and will appear in (I understand) the September number of The Nineteenth Century....”
“ ... We must each ‘gang our ain gait.’ I’m singularly indifferent to what other people think in any matter where I feel strongly myself. Perhaps it is for this reason that I am rarely ‘put out’ by adverse criticism or opinion—except on technical shortcomings. I do a lot of my own work here lying out on the sand-dunes by the sea. Yesterday I had a strange experience. I was writing in pencil in Pharais of death by the sea—and almost at my feet a drowned corpse was washed in by the tide and the slackening urgency of the previous night’s gale. The body proves to be that of a man from the opposite Forfar coast. It had been five days in the water, and death had played havoc with his dignity of lifeless manhood. I learned later that his companion had been found three days ago, tide-drifted in the estuary of the Tay. It was only a bit of flotsam, in a sense, but that poor derelict so sullenly surrendered of the sea changed for me, for a time, the aspect of those blithe waters I love so well. In the evening I walked along the same sands. The sea purred like a gigantic tigress, with a whisper of peace and rest and an infinite sweet melancholy. What a sepulchral fraud....
“Life seems to move, now high and serene and incredibly swift as an albatross cleaving the upper air, now as a flood hurled across rocks and chasms and quicksands. But it is all life—even the strangely still and quiet backwaters, even, indeed, the same healthful commonplace lagoons where one havens so gladly often....”
Three months later, he wrote to Mr. Richard Stoddart and proposed for serial publication in Lippincotts a romance to be called Nostalgia—which was never written. In the same letter he speaks of “another story, Pharais,” which he describes as “written deeply in the Celtic spirit and from the Celtic standpoint.” Neither suggestion was accepted; and the author decided to issue Pharais as soon as possible in book form, and not under his own name.
When in the following year the book was published the author, forgetting that he had ever written Mrs. Janvier about it, sent a copy of it to her, and said merely that it was a book in which he was interested. Whereupon she wrote and asked if the book were not his own, and he replied: