My dear Miss Macleod,
It would not be easy for me to tell you, without seeming extravagance, of the keen pleasure I have had in your cordial letter concerning my book, Phases of Modern Music. The deep impression which your own work has made upon me must already have become evident to you through even the most cursory reading of my book—an impression the extent and definiteness of which I myself had scarcely realised. You will know, then, how great a satisfaction it is for me to hear that you have been interested in my thoughts on musical subjects, and that they have seemed to you worthy of the friendly praise which you have spoken in your letter.
So you know and like the music of Loeffler and MacDowell! That is good to hear; for few, even in this country, where they have been active in their art for so long, are sensible of the beauty and power of their work. Do you know Loeffler’s latest production—“Quatre Poëmes,” settings of verses by Verlaine and Baudelaire? They are written for voice, piano, and viola: a singular and admirable combination. Mr. MacDowell will be glad to hear of your pleasure in his “Keltic Sonata,” for he is one of your most sensitive admirers: it was he, indeed, who first made me acquainted with your work. Have you heard his earliest sonatas—the “Norse,” “Eroica,” and “Tragica”? They are not very far behind the “Keltic” in distinction and force, though lacking the import and exaltation of the latter.
You would be surprised, I think, to know how the Celtic impulse is seizing the imaginations of some of the younger and more warmly-tempered of American composers. I am enclosing a programme of a concert given recently in Boston, consisting entirely of music written on Celtic themes.
Thank you again.
Very faithfully yours,
Lawrence Gilman.
When in New York William Sharp had written to Mr. Alden “on behalf of Miss Macleod” concerning her later nature-essay work, and explained that “Some months ago, by special request from the Editor of Country Life Miss M. began contributing one or two of these papers. From the first they attracted notice, and then the Editor asked her if she would contribute a series to appear as frequently as practicable—averaging two a month—till next May when they would be issued in book-form. As Miss M. enjoys writing them, she agreed.”
In the same letter he spoke of a subject on which he had long meditated. He proposed it for Harper’s Magazine:—“I have long been thinking over the material of an article on the Fundamental Science of Criticism, to be headed, say ‘A New Degree: D. Crit.’” This project among many others was never worked out. But the ‘nature-papers’ were a great pleasure to him, and in 1904 and 1905 he wrote on many subjects for Country Life, over the signature of F. M., also several poems that were afterwards included in the second edition of From the Hills of Dream.
As month by month the number of nature essays grew, he planned to issue them in two, and later in three volumes. To the second volume he thought to give the title “Blue Days and Green Days” (from a line of R. L. Stevenson’s), and to call the third, which was to deal with the stars and the skies at night, “Beyond the Blue Septentrion.” Not all the projected essays for each book, however, were written; but those which appeared serially were published posthumously in 1906, by Country Life under the title of Where the Forest Murmurs. Concerning the titular essay, Mr. Alfred Noyes wrote: “It is one of those pieces of nature-study which, in Matthew Arnold’s phrase, have that rarest of all modern qualities—‘Healing Power.’”