P. S. The cold is very great, and it is a damp cold, you couldn’t stand it. When I got up my breath swarmed about the room like a clutch of phantom peewits. No wonder I had a dream I was a seal with my feet clemmed on to an iceberg. A duck went past a little ago seemingly with one feather and that blown athwart its beak, so strong was the north-wind blowing from that snowy mass that Ben Nevis wears like a delicate veil. Cruachan has covered herself with a pall of snow mist.
April 20.... Fiona Macleod has just been made an honorary member of a French League of writers devoted to the rarer and subtler use of Prose and Verse, a charming letter from Paul Fort acting for his colleagues Maeterlinck, Henri de Roquier, Jean Moréas, Emile Verhacren, Comte Antoine de la Rochefoucault, Duchesse de la Roche-Guyon, Richeguin, Sully Prudhomme, Henri Le Sidaner, Jules Claretie, etc. etc.
We’re glad, aren’t we, you and I? She’s our daughter, isn’t she?
23d April.... You will have got my note of yesterday telling you that I have reluctantly had to relinquish Iona. The primary reason is its isolation at present....
But from something I heard from old Mr. C. I fancy it’s as well for me not to visit there just now, where I’d be the only stranger, and every one would know of it—and where a look out for F. M. or W. S. is kept! And, too, anything heard there and afterwards utilised would be as easily traced to me.... After Tiree and Iona and Coll, and Arran in the South, I don’t care just now for anywhere else—nearer: as for Eigg, which I loved so much of old, Rum or Canna and the Outer Isles, they are too inaccessible just now and Skye is too remote and too wet and cold. However, it is isolation plus ‘atmosphere’ I want most of all—and I doubt if there is any place just now I could get so much good from as Lismore. I love that quiet isolated house on the rocks facing the Firth of Lorne, all Appin to Ben Naomhir, and the great mountains of Morven.
It was on the sandy bindweed-held slope of the little bay near the house, facing Eilean-nan-Coarach, that F. wrote the prelude to The Winged Destiny—and also the first piece, the “Treud-nan-Ron,” which describes that region, with Mr. MacC.’s seal legend, and the dear little island in the Sound of Morvern (do you remember our row to it one day?) There one could be quiet and given over to dreams and to the endless fascination of outer nature.... And I have got much of what I want—the in-touch above all, the atmosphere: enough to strike the keynote throughout the coming year and more, for I absorb through the very pores of both mind and body like a veritable sponge. Wild-life and plant-life too extremely interesting here. There does seem some mystery about that cave tho’ I cannot fathom it.
I’ve all but finished the preparation of the new Tauchnitz vol. (The Sunset of Old Tales) and expect to complete it (for May) tonight.
24th April.... Yes, I was sorry to leave Lismore. It may be my last time in the Gaelic west. (I don’t say this “down-ly”—but because I think it likely). There is much I want to do, and now as much by W. S. as by F. M. and that I realise must be done abroad where alone can I keep well and mentally even more than physically. (How I hope Fontainebleau may some day suit us.) Dear MacC. was sorry to part too. He shook hands (with both his) and when I said in Gaelic “Goodbye, and Farewell upon that, my friend” he said “No—no”—and then suddenly said “My blessing on you—and goodbye now!” and turned away and went down the pier-side and hoisted the brown sail and went away across the water, waving a last farewell.
The cold proved so disastrous that my husband was ordered to Neuenahr for special treatment. Thence he wrote to the Hon. A. Nelson Hood:
June, 1905.