Kessock Cottage,
Nairn.
Dear Mr. Maesfield,
A brief word to tell you what pleasure I have had in your little book A Mainsail Haul. It is not only that it is written with delicate art: but it is rich in atmosphere—a much rarer thing. The simplicity, the charm, the subtle implication of floating, evasive yet fluctuating romance, your own keen sense of the use of words and their veiled life and latent as well as obvious colour, combine to a winning and often compelling effect. I do not think any who has read Don Alfonso’s drinking bout with the little red man and the strange homegoing of the weed and flower-grown brigantine with the Bible name, will forget it: and what dream charm also there is in “Port of Many Ships,” “Sea Superstition,” “The Spanish Sailor’s Yarn.” In such a splendid and delightful colour fabric as “From the Spanish” “high words and rare” are of course apt—but is it not a mistake to introduce in “Sea Superstition” words such as “august” and “wrought” in a sailor’s mouth? (In the text the effect seems to be enhanced not lessened, by the omission of these words—“were like things in bronze,” “the roof of which was of dim branches.”)
In “From the Spanish” I would, as a matter of personal taste, prefer that the end came at the close of the penultimate para, the shore-drift of the Italian lute. I think the strange dream-like effect would be much enhanced without (what seems to me) the superfluous ‘realistic’ tag. Otherwise the piece is a gem of its kind.
But you will forgive the critic (and it shows he has read closely) in the admirer, I hope?
Let us have more work of the kind. There is much need of it, and you are of the few who can give it.
Yours sincerely
William Sharp.
Mr. Maesfield—who had written concerning Fiona Macleod to a friend: “I think the genius of a dead people has found re-incarnation in her. Wherever the Celt is, thence come visions and tears”—replied: