Fiona Macleod has suddenly begun to attract a great deal of attention. There have been leaders as well as long and important reviews: and now the chief North of Scotland paper, The Highland News, is printing two long articles devoted in a most eulogistic way to F. M. and her influence “already so marked and so vital, so that we accept her as the leader of the Celtic Renaissance in Scotland.” There is, also, I hear, to be a Magazine article on her. This last week there have been long and favourable reviews in the Academy and The New Age.
I am glad you like my other book, I mean W. S’s! [Ecce Puella] There are things in it which are as absolutely out of my real self as it is possible to be: and I am glad that you recognise this. I have not yet seen my book of short stories published in America under the title The Gypsy Christ, though it has been out some weeks: and I have heard from one or two people about it. America is more indulgent to me just now than I deserve. For a leading American critic writes of The Gypsy Christ that, “though it will offend some people and displease others, it is one of the most remarkable volumes I have read for long. The titular story has an extraordinary, even a dreadful impressiveness: ‘Madge o’ the Pool’ is more realistic than ‘realism’: and alike in the scathing society love-episode, ‘The Lady in Hosea,’ and in that brilliant Algerian conte, ‘The Coward,’ the author suggests the method and power of Guy de Maupassant.”
I hope to get the book soon, and to send you a copy. As I think I told you, the setting of the G/C is entirely that which I knew through you. I have made use of one or two features—exaggerated facts and half facts—which I trust will not displease you. Do you remember my feeling about those gaunt mine-chimneys: I always think of them now when I think of the G/C. Fundamentally, however, the story goes back to my own early experiences—not as to the facts of the story, of course.... Then again, Arthur Sherburne Hardy, who is by many considered the St. Beuve of American criticism—in surety and insight—has given his opinion of a book i. e. of all he has seen of it (a comedy of the higher kind) for which Stone and Kimball have given me good terms—Wives in Exile—that it is “quite unlike anything else—at once the most brilliant, romantic, and witty thing I have read for long—to judge from the opening chapters and the scheme. It will stand by itself, I think.”
Personally, I think it shows the best handicraft of anything W. S. has done in fiction. It is, of course, wholly distinct in manner and method from F. M.’s work. It ought to be out by May. Sunshine and blithe laughter guided my pen in this book. Well, I have given you my gossip about myself: and now I would much rather hear about you. I wish you were here to tell me all about what you have been doing, thinking, and dreaming.
Yours,
W. S.
I received the following letter from him in Rome:
London, 21st Feb.
I am sure The Highland News must have delighted you. Let me know what you think of Fiona’s and W. S.’s letters.... I am so sorry you are leaving Siena.... I follow every step of your movements with keenest interest. But oh the light and the colour, how I envy you!
I am hoping you are pleased with Lyra Celtica. It is published today only—so of course I have heard nothing yet from outsiders. Yesterday I finished my Matthew Arnold essay[3]—and in the evening wrote the first part of my F. M. story, “Morag of the Glen”—a strong piece of work I hope and believe though not finished yet. I hope to finish it by tonight. I am so glad you and Mona liked the first of “The Three Marvels of Hy” (pronounced Eo or Hee) so well. Pieces like “The Festival of the Birds” seem to be born out of my brain almost in an inspirational way. I hardly understand it. Yes, you were in the right place to read it—St. Francis’ country. That beautiful strange Umbria! After all, Iona and Assisi are not nearly so remote from each other as from London or Paris. I send you the second of the series “The Blessing of the Flies.” It, too, was written at Pettycur—as was “The Prologue.” ... There is a strange half glad, half morose note in this Prologue which I myself hardly apprehend in full significance. In it is interpolated one of the loveliest of the ‘legendary moralities’ which I had meant to insert in Section I—that of ‘The King of the Earth.’ I will send it to you before long....