Will.
The few entries in William Sharp’s Diary for 1903 begin with New Year’s Day:
Taormina.
Thursday, 1st Jan., 1903. Yesterday afternoon I ended literary work for the year, at p. 62 on my MS. of “The King’s Ring” with the sentence: “Flora Macdonald saw clearly that the hearts of these exiles and New Englanders would follow a shepherd more potent than any kind, the shepherd called Freedom, who forever keeps his flocks of hopes and ideals on the hills of the human heart.” To-day, this afternoon, wrote till end of p. 70. In the evening we dined with Robert Hichens at the Hotel Timeo.
Sat. 3rd. Finished “The King’s Ring.” Revised: and sent off to Mary to type. We lunched at the Timeo. After lunch we spent an hour or more in the Greek Theatre with Hichens. Then we walked to Miss Valerie White’s villa and had tea with her. In evening ‘turned in’ about 9 and read Bourget’s Calabria Ricordi, and Lenormant on Crotone and Pythagorus.”
Saturday, 9th Jan.
To the Editor of The Pall Mall Magazine:
Dear Sir,
I have written a story somewhat distinct in kind from the work associated with my name, and think it is one that should appeal to a far larger public than most of my writings do: for it deals in a new way with a subject of unpassing interest, the personality of Flora Macdonald. “The King’s Ring,” however, is not concerned with the hackneyed Prince Charlie episode. It is, in a word, so far as I know, the only narrative presentment of the remarkable but almost unknown late-life experiences of Flora Macdonald: for few know that, long after her marriage, she went with her husband and some of her family and settled in South Carolina, just before the outbreak of the War of Independence: how her husband was captured and imprisoned: how two of her sons in the Navy were lost tragically at sea: and how she herself with one daughter with difficulty evaded interference, and set sail from a southern port for Scotland again, and on that voyage was wounded in an encounter with a French frigate. True, all these things are only indicated in “The King’s Ring,” for fundamentally the story is a love-story, that of Flora M.’s beautiful eldest daughter Anne and Major Macleod, with the tragical rivalry of Alasdair Stuart, bearer of the King’s Ring.
Practically the facts of the story are authentic: save the central episode of Alasdair Stuart, which is of my own invention. I think the story would appeal to many not only in Scotland and England but in America.