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

by Elizabeth A. Sharp

Walter Pater.

It had been William Sharp’s intention to rewrite his Study on Rossetti; for in later years he was very dissatisfied with the early book, and considered his judgment to have been immature. He had indeed arranged certain publishing preliminaries; and he wrote the dedicatory chapter; but the book itself was untouched save one or two opening sentences. For this project, with many others planned by William Sharp, was laid aside when the more intimate, the more imperative work put forward under the pseudonym of “Fiona Macleod” began to shape itself in his brain. In his dedication to Walter Pater (the only portion of the book that was finished), the author explains his reasons for wishing to write a second Study of the painter-poet. He describes the new material available, and relates that in Rossetti’s lifetime it was planned that a “Life should be written by Philip Bourke Marston and myself, primarily for publication in America. Rossetti took a humorous interest in the scheme, and often alluded to it in notes or conversation as the Bobbies’ book (a whimsical substitute for the Boston firm of Roberts Brothers, whom we intended to honour with our great—unwritten—work): but nothing came of the project.... Rossetti was eager to help Marston; so he said he was charmed with the idea, and promised to give all the aid in his power. A week later he told me that ‘there was no good in it,’ and that ‘it had better drop’: but, instead he suggested that he should write an article upon Marston and his poetry for Harper’s, or Scribner’s, if it were more expedient that such an article should appear in an American periodical, or, if preferred, for some important Quarterly here.

“But you, cognizant as you are of much of this detail, will readily understand and agree with me when I say that no really adequate portrait of Rossetti is likely to be given to us for many years to come. Possibly never: for his was a nature wrought of so many complexities, his a life developed perplexedly by such divers elements, that he will reappear, for those who come after us, not in any one portraiture but as an evocation from many....

“Of all that has been written of Rossetti’s genius and achievement in poetry nothing shows more essential insight, is of more striking and enduring worth, than the essay by yourself, included in your stimulating and always delightful Appreciations. You, more than any one, it seems to me, have understood and expressed the secret of his charm. And though you have not written also of Rossetti the painter, I know of no one who so well and from the first perceived just wherein lies his innate power, his essential significance.

“Years ago, in Oxford, how often we talked these matters over! I have often recalled one evening, in particular, often recollected certain words of yours: and never more keenly than when I have associated them with the early work of Rossetti, in both arts, but preëminently in painting: ‘To my mind Rossetti is the most significant man among us. More torches will be lit from his flame—or torches lit at his flame—than perhaps even enthusiasts like yourself imagine.’

“We are all seeking a lost Eden. This ideal Beauty that we catch glimpses of, now in morning loveliness, now in glooms of tragic terror, haunts us by day and night, in dreams of waking and sleeping—nay, whether or not we will, among the littlenesses and exigencies of our diurnal affairs. It may be that, driven from the Eden of direct experience, we are being more and more forced into taking refuge within the haven guarded by our dreams. To a few only is it given to translate, with rare distinction and excellence, something of this manifold message of Beauty—though all of us would fain be, with your Marius, ‘of the number of those who must be made perfect by the love of visible beauty.’ Among these few, in latter years in this country, no one has wrought more exquisitely for us than Rossetti.

“To him, and to you and all who recreate for us the things we have vaguely known and loved, or surmised only, or previsioned in dreams, we owe what we can never repay save by a rejoicing gratitude. Our own Eden may be irrecoverable, its haunting music never be nearer or clearer than a vanishing echo, yet we have the fortunate warranty of those whose guided feet have led them further into the sunlit wilderness, who have repeated to us, as with hieratic speech, what they have seen and heard.

“‘From time to time,’ wrote Rossetti in one of those early prose passages of his which are so consecrated by the poetic atmosphere—‘from time to time, however, a poet or a painter has caught the music (of that garden), and strayed in through the close stems: the spell is on his hand and his lips like the sleep of the Lotus-eaters, and his record shall be vague and fitful; yet will we be in waiting, and open our eyes and our ears, for the broken song has snatches of an enchanted harmony, and the glimpses are glimpses of Eden.’”

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It was during the preparation of this early book that the first volume of William Sharp’s poems was published—too late however to be welcomed by either of the two friends who had taken so keen an interest in its growth: Rossetti, to whom all the poems had been read—and John Elder to whom it was originally dedicated. It is entitled The Human Inheritance; Motherhood; Transcripts from Nature (Elliot Stock), and contains a prefatory poem, and last lines dedicated to myself.