William Sharp (Fiona Macleod): A Memoir Compiled by His Wife Elizabeth A. Sharp

by Elizabeth A. Sharp

It is only right, however, to add that I, and I only, was the author—in the literal and literary sense—of all written under the name of “Fiona Macleod.”

In watching the development of the “Fiona Macleod” phase of expression it has seemed to me that the writer, in that work, lived a new sequent life, and passed through its successive phases of growth and development independently of the tenor of his ordinary life as “W. S.” He passed from the youth in Pharais and The Mountain Lovers, through the mature manhood of The Barbaric Tales and Tragic Romances to the greater serenity of later contemplative life in The Divine Adventure, The Winged Destiny and Where the Forest Murmurs.

In surveying the dual life as a whole I have seen how, from the early partially realised twin-ship, “W. S.” was the first to go adventuring and find himself, while his twin, “F. M.,” remained passive, or a separate self. When “she” awoke to active consciousness “she” became the deeper, the more impelling, the more essential factor. By reason of this severance, and of the acute conflict that at times resulted therefrom, the flaming of the dual life became so fierce that “Wilfion”—as I named the inner and third Self that lay behind that dual expression—realised the imperativeness of gaining control over his two separated selves and of bringing them into some kind of conscious harmony. This was what he meant when he wrote to Mrs. Janvier in 1899, “I am going through a new birth.”

For, though the difference between the two literary expressions was so marked, there was, nevertheless, a special characteristic of “Wilfion” that linked the dual nature together—the psychic quality of seership if I may so call it. Not only did he, as F. M. “dream dreams” and “get in touch with the ancient memory of the race” as some of ‘her’ critics have said; but as W. S. he also saw visions by means of that seership with which he had been dowered from childhood. And though, latterly, he gave expression to it only under shelter of the Fiona Macleod writings—as for instance in The Divine Adventure, because he was as sensitive about it as he was to the subtler, more imaginative side of his dual self—a few of his friends knew William Sharp as psychic and mystic, who knew nothing of him as Fiona Macleod.

I have said little concerning my husband as a psychic; a characteristic that is amply witnessed to in his writings. From time to time he interested himself in definite psychic experimentation, occasionally in collaboration with Mr. W. B. Yeats; experimentation that sometimes resulted in such serious physical disturbance that he desisted from it in later years.

In a lecture given by Mr. Yeats to the Aberdeen Centre of the Franco-Scottish Society in 1907 the Irish poet referred to his friend. He considered that “Sharp had in many ways an extraordinarily primitive mind. He was fond of speaking of himself as the representative of the old bards,” and the Irish poet thought there was really something in the claim. (In a letter Mr. Yeats had expressed his opinion that my husband was imaginative in “the old and literal sense of image-making; not like a man of this age at all.”) He continued that W. S. was the most extraordinary psychic he had ever encountered. He really believed that “Fiona Macleod was a secondary personality—as distinct a secondary personality as those one reads about in books of psychical research. At times he (W. S.) was really to all intents and purposes a different being.” He would “come and sit down by my fireside and talk, and I believe that when ‘Fiona Macleod’ left the house he would have no recollection of what he had been saying to me.”

It is true, as I have said, that William Sharp seemed a different person when the Fiona mood was on him; but that he had no recollection of what he said in that mood was not the case. That he did not understand it, is true. For that mood could not be commanded at will. Different influences awakened it, and its duration depended largely on environment. “W. S.” could set himself deliberately to work normally, and was, so far, master of his mind. But for the expression of the “F. M.” self he had to wait upon mood, or seek conditions to induce it. But, as I have said, the psychic, visionary power belonged exclusively to neither; it influenced both, and was dictated by laws he did not fully understand. For instance, “Lilith,” “The Whisperer,” “Finis,” by W. S. and “The Woman with the Net,” “The Last Supper,” “The Lynn of Dreams” by F. M., were equally the result of direct vision.

I remember from early days how he would speak of the momentary curious “dazzle in the brain” which preceded the falling away of all material things and preluded some inner vision of Great Beauty, or Great Presences, or of some symbolic import—that would pass as rapidly as it came. I have been beside him when he has been in trance and I have felt the room throb with heightened vibration. I regret now that I never wrote down such experiences at the time. They were not infrequent, and formed a definite feature in our life. There are, however, two or three dream-visions belonging to his last summer that I recollect. Two he had noted down in brief sentences for future use. One was:

“The Lily of the World, and its dark concave, dark with excess of light and the stars falling like slow rain.”

The other is headed “Elemental Symbolism,” “I saw Self, or Life, symbolised all about me as a limitless, fathomless and lonely sea. I took a handful and threw it into the grey silence of ocean air, and it returned at once as a swift and potent flame, a red fire crested with blown sunrise, rushing from between the lips of sky and sea to the sound as of innumerable trumpets.”