TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES:
—Obvious print and punctuation errors were corrected.
—The transcriber of this project created the book cover image using the title page of the original book. The image is placed in the public domain.
WILLIAM SHARP
(FIONA MACLEOD)
A MEMOIR
COMPILED BY HIS WIFE
ELIZABETH A. SHARP
NEW YORK
DUFFIELD & COMPANY
1910
Copyright, 1910, by
DUFFIELD & COMPANY
THE TROW PRESS · NEW YORK
WILLIAM SHARP
A MEMOIR
PREFACE
When the secret of the identity of Fiona Macleod—soloyally guarded by a number of friends for twelve years—wasfinally made known, much speculation arose as tothe nature of the dual element that had found expressionin the collective work of William Sharp. Many suggestions,wide of the mark, were advanced; among others,that the writer had assumed the pseudonym as a joke,and having assumed it found himself constrained to continueits use. A few of the critics understood. Prof.Patrick Geddes realised that the discussion was productiveof further misunderstanding, and wrote to me:“Should you not explain that F. M. was not simply W. S.,but that W. S. in his deepest moods became F. M., a sortof dual personality in short, not a mere nom-de-guerre?”It was not expedient for me at that moment to do so. Ipreferred to wait till I could prepare as adequate an explanationas possible. My chief aim, therefore, in writingabout my husband and in giving a sketch of his life,has been to indicate, to the best of my ability, the growthand development in his work of the dual literary expressionof himself.
The most carefully compiled record of a life can be butpartially true, since much of necessity must be left unsaid.A biographer, moreover, can delineate anotherhuman being only to the extent of his understanding ofthat fellow being. In so far as he lacks, not only knowledgeof facts, but also the illumination of intuition andsympathy, to that extent will he fail to present a finishedstudy of his subject. And because no one can whollyknow another: because one of necessity interprets anotherthrough the colour of his or her mind, I am veryconscious of my own limitations in this respect. As, however,I have known William Sharp for more consecutive[vi]years than any other of his intimate friends, I perhapsam able therefore to offer the fullest survey of the unfoldingof his life; though I realise that others may haveknown him better than I on some