It is an addition to the pleasant memories of my year of office to know that you are of the elect. You come in with Lang and Gissing. By the way, the next dinner is fixed for the sixth proximo. And it is an addition to a burden of obligation willingly borne which your kind gift imposes. For work such as yours has unending charm for me, because while Science was my first love and is still my dear mistress, I love her more for what she suggests than what she reveals. Facts, unrelated, bore me: only in their significance does one get abiding interest. That is why your ‘Vistas’ and such like delicate, throbbing things attract me. Some of these were especially welcome on a recent dull Sunday by our ‘cold restless sea,’ on which in bright days you promise to come with Allen to look at it from my window. Your delicious story of the critic sent me straight to the Journal of di Cosimo. How well you produce the archaic flavour: the style has a Celtic ring about it. As for ‘Ecce Puella’ I await the hearing of it from the voice of a ‘puella’ who likes your work. I was at Meredith’s on Sunday week: he keeps wonderfully well for him: his talk is bright as his face is beautiful. He has his fling at me over the Burford Bridge deception, and says that my duplicity cost you all a fine speech. I tell him that the speech we had was good enough for ‘the likes of us.’ So Fiona Macleod is your cousin! She is of the ‘elect.’ I take it as most kind of her to send me her new book, which I have as yet but partly read, and am about to acknowledge. She holds a weird, strong pen, and will help the Celt to make further conquest of the dullard Saxons. Meredith and I talked about her “Mountain Lovers” when I was with him in August.
Kindest regards to Mrs. Sharp and yourself.
Yours sincerely,
Edward Clodd.
In the Autumn of 1894 we had come in touch with Professor and Mrs. Patrick Geddes of Edinburgh, and a friendship with far reaching results for “Fiona Macleod” arose between the two men. Both were idealists, keen students of life and nature; cosmopolitan in outlook and interest, they were also ardent Celts who believed in the necessity of preserving the finer subtle qualities and the spiritual heritage of their race against the encroaching predominance of materialistic ideas and aims of the day.
It was the desire and dream of such idealists and thinkers as Professor Geddes, and those associated with him, to preserve and nurture what is of value and of spiritual beauty in the race, so that it should fuse into and work with, or become part of, the great acquisitions and marvellous discoveries of modern thought. To hold to the essential beauty and thought of the past, while going forward eagerly to meet the new and ever increasing knowledge, was the desire of both men. In their aims they were in sympathy with one another; their manner of approach and methods of work were different. Patrick Geddes—biologist—was concerned primarily with the practical and scientific expression of his ideals; William Sharp was concerned primarily with expression through the art of words. Mutually sympathetic, they were eager to find some way of collaboration.
It was the dream of Professor Geddes to restore to Scotland something of its older pre-eminence in the world of thought, to recreate in Edinburgh an active centre and so arrest the tremendous centralising power of the metropolis of London; to replace the stereotyped methods of education by a more vital and synthetic form; and to encourage national art and literature. Towards the carrying out of these aims he had built a University Hall and Settlement for students, artists, etc. Perhaps the most important of his schemes, certainly the most important from the modern scientific point of view was the planning of the Outlook Tower—once an observatory—now an educational museum on the Castle Rock commanding a magnificent view of the city, of the surrounding country, of sea and sky; “an institution that is designed to be a method of viewing the problems of the science of life.” According to Professor Geddes “Our little scholastic colony in the heart of Edinburgh symbolises a movement which while national to the core, is really cosmopolitan in its intellectual reach.”
Grouped with this scientific effort, was the aim to revive the Celtic influence in art and literature; and the little colony contained a number of men and women who were working to that end; notably among the painters were James Cadenhead, Charles Mackie, Robert Burns, John Duncan, also Pittendrigh MacGillivray the sculptor; and among the writers Professor Arthur Thomson, Dr. Douglas Hyde, Nora Hopper, Rosa Mulholland, A. Percival Graves, S. R. Crockett, Elisée Réclus, Alexander Carmichael, Victor Branford, Professor Patrick Geddes, F. M. and W. S.
Into that eager and sympathetic atmosphere of linked thought and aim my husband and I were speedily drawn; and before long a Publishing Firm was established for the issuing of Celtic Literature and Works on Science. To Mr. and Mrs. Geddes was confided the important secret relating to the personality of “Fiona Macleod,” to the thoughts and ideals that unlay ‘her’ projected work. It was arranged that William Sharp should be the Manager in the Firm of Patrick Geddes & Colleagues (which post he very soon relinquished for that of Literary Adviser); an arrangement which made it possible for that particular Colleague to publish three of his “F. M.” books under his immediate supervision and from what was then one of the centres of the Celtic movement. This post, naturally, necessitated frequent visits to Edinburgh. For the month of August 1895 we took a flat in the neighbourhood of the University settlement so that we might share actively in the Summer Session.
It was an interesting experience. The students came from England, Scotland, France, Italy, and Germany; among the lecturers in addition to Professors Geddes and Arthur Thomson were Elisée Réclus the geographer and his brother Elie Réclus, Edmond Demolins and Abbé Klein.