“ ... Yes, Pharais is mine. It is a book out of my heart, out of the core of my heart. I wrote it with the pen dipped in the very ichor of my life. It has reached people more than I dreamt of as likely. In Scotland especially it has stirred and created a new movement. Here, men like George Meredith, Grant Allen, H. D. Traill, and Theodore Watts hailed it as a ‘work of genius.’ Ignored in some quarters, abused in others, and unheeded by the ‘general reader,’ it has yet had a reception that has made me deeply glad. It is the beginning of my true work. Only one or two know I am ‘Fiona Macleod.’ Let you and my dear T.A.J. preserve my secret. I trust you.
“You will find more of me in Pharais than in anything I have written. Let me add that you will find The Mountain Lovers, at which I am now writing when I can, more elemental still, while simpler.... By blood I am part Celt, and partly so by upbringing, by Spirit wholly so.... One day I will tell you of some of the strange old mysteries of earlier days I have part learned, part divined, and other things of the spirit. You can understand how I cannot do my true work, in this accursed London.”
A little later he wrote:
“ ... I resent too close identification with the so-called Celtic renaissance. If my work is to depend solely on its Gaelic connection, then let it go, as go it must. My work must be beautiful in itself—Beauty is a Queen and must be served as a Queen.
“ ... You have asked me once or twice about F. M., why I took her name: and how and when she came to write Pharais. It is too complex to tell you just now.... The name was born naturally: (of course I had associations with the name Macleod.) It, Fiona, is very rare now. Most Highlanders would tell you it was extinct—even as the diminutive of Fionaghal (Flora). But it is not. It is an old Celtic name (meaning “a fair maid”) still occasionally to be found. I know a little girl, the daughter of a Highland clergyman, who is called Fiona. All my work is so intimately wrought with my own experiences that I cannot tell you about Pharais, etc., without telling you my whole life.”
As a matter of fact Pharais was not the first written expression of the new work. It was preceded by a short story entitled “The Last Fantasy of James Achanna” that in the autumn of 1893 was sent to The Scots Observer. It was declined by Mr. Henley who, however, wrote a word of genuine encouragement. He accepted Mr. Henley’s decision, and the story was never reprinted in its first form. It was re-written several times; it was included in The Dominion of Dreams as “The Archer.” During the writing of Pharais the author began to realise how much the feminine element dominated in the book, that it grew out of the subjective, or feminine side of his nature. He, therefore, decided to issue the book under the name of Fiona Macleod, that “flashed ready made” into his mind. Mrs. Janvier wrote later and asked why he, a man, chose to send forth good work under the signature of a woman. He answered:
“ ... I can write out of my heart in a way I could not do as William Sharp, and indeed I could not do so if I were the woman Fiona Macleod is supposed to be, unless veiled in scrupulous anonymity....
“This rapt sense of oneness with nature, this cosmic ecstasy and elation, this wayfaring along the extreme verges of the common world, all this is so wrought up with the romance of life that I could not bring myself to expression by my outer self, insistent and tyrannical as that need is.... My truest self, the self who is below all other selves, and my most intimate life and joys and sufferings, thoughts, emotions and dreams, must find expression, yet I cannot save in this hidden way.”
He was wont to say “Should the secret be found out, Fiona dies.” Later in the year he wrote: “Sometimes I am tempted to believe I am half a woman, and so far saved as I am by the hazard of chance from what a woman can be made to suffer if one let the light of the common day illuminate the avenues and vistas of her heart....”