Fiona Macleod : A Forgotten Mystery BOOKS OF THE DAY
By ARTHUR WAUGH
RATHER more than thirty years have passed since the after- noon when, sitting at my office desk in Henrietta Street, Covent Garden, I was handed a telegram which ran something }lice this : " Tomorrow's papers will record the death today of William Sharp, poet and critic, and reveal the fact that he was the author of all the works hitherto published under the name of Fiona Macleod." The telegram was addressed to the firm ; and, as there was no special reason why we should have been selected for the confidence, I could only conclude that this was one of a shoal of such messages, broadcast in the service of an embryo publicity campaign among publishers and bookmen. Next morning the ripple broke upon the comparatively placid mirror of such journals as set store by an item of " book-news." There were the customary headlines, " Literary Mystery Solved," or " Fiona Macleod Unveiled At Last," according to the temper and taste of the sub-editor. After luncheon, at the National Club in Whitehall Gardens, Edmund Gosse, presiding as usual over a'sn'udl symposium of coffee and cigarettes round the billiard- room fire, delivered his brief, authoritative comment. " I have always understood," he said, " that certain of the less saleable productions of William Sharp were being foisted upon editors under the forged name of this Celtic siren. I think I have said so more than once." There followed a . glancing reference to Macpherson's Ossian and the Rowley Poems of Thomas . Chatterton ; and then Gosse gave the signal for the circle to break up. " That dig o;es of yet one more forgery," he added, his eyes flashing behind their glasses. " But there will be another tomorrow." The case of Fiona Macleod was judged and closed, so far as that tribunal . was concerned ; and its epitaph was an epigram by Gosse. . " Yet one more forgery " ! The words came trippingly from the-tongue, too trippingly to be just. The now-forgotten mystery of Fiona Macleod was something more than that, as the more intimate friends- of William Sharp protested at . the time. There were even those who found in it a strange -example of dual entity, of complex, psychic possession, a case for the psychologist and the thought-reader. And, when all the accretions of self-deception and half-unconscious trickery have been stripped away, there does seem to have been something abnormal about the ease. In an age more sympathetic to such obsessions, the story may have a new interest today. Let us consider it for a moment ; and let us begin by recalling the long-missing figure of William Sharp himself.
When he died, in 1905, Sharp was in his fiftieth year, a familiar apparition in editorial offices and literary gatherings. With his Olympian stature, bright complexion, full head of hair,' and well-kempt beard, he attracted attention at once, and took good care to retain it. His manner was a mixture of suavity and aggression, and he knew (no man better) how 'to overcome the hesitation of editors. He was in at the birth -of every new literary journal, and comfortably absent at its death. He knew whose money was behind every fresh venture, and exactly how much money there was. He was early on the scene with a string of suggestions, and editors found it more convenient to accept two or three of them off-hand than to await the outburst of a fresh barrage. Besides, Sharp could always be relied upon for lively, readable " copy," according to the rather dilettante, affected fashion of the -hour. He was saturated with the spirit of John Addington • Symonds and Pater ; a skilful euphuist, he could supply pleasant imitations of his models upon almost any literary ' subject. He knew all the big men, and could quote their judgements at• first hand. But his books had more reputation than sale, until he invented Fiona Macleod; and found a new public for an imaginary genius. Perhaps he did not altogether invent her. She was the figment of a dream. He was struck down by a virulent
fever ; and in its delirium was attended by romantic visions. Out of these visions Fiona arose ; and, when his health was restored, he himself hardly realised how much of her was dream, and how much pure deception. Mr. Ernest Rhys, in his revealing autobiography, Everyman Remembers, has
given the story as William Sharp himself related it. It was a story of a wonderful encounter with an exquisite maiden, who was enjoying a sun-bath on the banks of Lake Nemi, who resigned her soul into Sharp's keeping, and opened her mind to his interpretation. " That moment," he declared, "began my regeneration. I was a New Man, a mystic, where before I had been only a mechanic in art. Carried away by my passion, my pen wrote as if dipped in fire, and when I sat down to write prose, a spirit-hand would seize the pen, and guide it into inspired verse." So far, so good. The prophets of old had much the same experience. Unfor- tunately William Sharp went a little further.
To confirm the truth of Fiona's separate existence, he must needs provide ocular evidence. He exhibited a portrait of her—" a lovely young woman, dark, tall, with coils of dark hair and mysterious eyes." He dictated letters in her name, letters which went outside the enchanted forest of imagination, and trespassed upon by-paths of personal confidence. No theory of " dual entity " could explain such palpable tricks as these.
What, then, was the truth of it all ? And what was the separate value of Fiona's inspiration, as apart from Sharp's
own competent and sensitive journalism ? There was cer- tainly something about " Fiona " which Sharp, writing solely as hiinself, could not command. With her in mind, merging
himself in her imagined personality, retreating into his lost paradise of feverish dreams, he caught a certain glamour from Gaelic and Scandinavian legends, which was not his by nature ; he conceived bonds of mystic alliance between Paganism and Christianity ; and he embodied them in a moonlit atmosphere which was not without a fugitive beauty of its own, and which (perhaps) so surprised him by its quality, as to make a traitor of his memory, almost con- vincing him of the truth of his fabrications. His " moon- children " became as real to him as Elia's dream-children to Charles Lamb. " The Green Lady " grew from a phantasm of spring fields into a living companion by his side.
" Wild fawn, wild fawn, Dost thou flee the Green Lady Her wild flowers will race thee, Her sunbeams will chase thee, Her laughter is ringing aloud in the dawn- 0, the Green Lady With yellow flowers strewing the ways of the dawn, Wild fawn, wild fawn ! "
Give the imagination rein enough, and all Nature is trans- formed into a mirror of life ; the Kingdom of Pan is trans- lated into the Kingdom of Christ.
" The stars wailed when the reed was born, And heaven wept at the birth of the thorn : Joy was pluckt like a flower and torn, For time foreshadowed Good Friday morn.
But the stars laughed like children free, And heaven was hung with the rainbow's glee, When on Easter Sunday, so fair to see, Time bowed, before eternity."
There is surely a touch of beauty there, a flash of inspiration which William Sharp could never have reached without the aid of his Dream-Lady. It may be held to excuse some of the self-deceit, even if it cannot palliate the photograph, or the confidential, but lying, letters.
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