IN THE LIBRARY

Northern Advocate, 17 September 1927, Page 7

IN THE LIBRARY

WHO WAS FIONA MACLEOD? Not a few of our readers may have been mystified by the name of Fiona MacLeod, says a writer in John o’ London’s Weekly. Who, they will ask, is Fiona MacLeod? I remember the tinxe When Fiona MacLeod was regarded through a haze of literary rapture as a spiritual sister or a forbidden streetheart. For a time, and not a very short time, she sent her stories to London out of the realms of Hebridean Space and Dream. She was supposed to be a vestal virgin of Celticism, whatever Celticism may mean now or meant then. She wrote in terms of mist and fury and surmising cows and omens and moaning winds and death warnings, and I know not what else, in Gaelic twilight. WHO WAS FIONA MACLEOD? Yet Fiona Macleod was a fascinating writer in her brief time, and it was worth while to try the effect of a revival. Personally, I wash my hands of the whole business, and humbly express my inability to respond to such writing as follows:' — “ In the quiet moonlight the chant, with its long, alow cadences, sung as no other man in the isles could sing it, sounded sweet and remote beyond words to tell. The glittering shine was upon the water of the haven, and moved in waving lines of lire along the stone ledges. Sometimes a fish rose, and spilt a ripple of pale gold; or a j sea-nettle swam to the surface, and turned its blue or greenish globe of living. jelly to the moon dazzle.” WHO WAS FIONA MACLEOD? Fiona -Macleod was that very accomplished literary man and critic, Mr William Sharp, When her identity first became suspect she was supposed to be uo other than Mr W. B. Yeats, the poet. Actually she was Mr Sharp, though that! did not prevent her from protesting hotly against “this continued identification of myself with this or that man or woman of letters —in one or two instances with people whom I,have never seen, and do not even know by correspondence,” As a matter of fact, 1 Fiona Macleod never saw, nor was ever seen by, a single one of her correspondents, for the same rdason that Betsy Prig never set her eyes on Mrs Harris. However, even Fiona was mot so Celtic, as the professed Celts. She (he) wrote, with much good sense: — “There is no law set upon beauty. It has no geography. It is an open land. And if, of those who enter there, peradventure any comes again, he is welcomed for what he brings; nor do we demand if he be dark or fair, Latin or Teuton or Celt. . I do not know any Celtic visionary so rapt and absolute as the Londoner William Blake, or the Scandinavian Swedenborg, or the Flemish Euysbroeek; > or any Celtic poet of nature to surpass the Englishman Keats.” She (he) also wrote: — ‘ * When I hear that * only a Celt ’ could have written this or that passage of emotion or description, I am become impatient of these parrot-cries, for I remember that if all Celtic literature were to disappear the world would mot be so impoverished as by the loss of English literature, or French literature, or that of Rome or Greece. ”

The beautiful, Mysterious, Fiona: of the Isles never lived. She was the last exhalation of “The Yellow Book,” and a very pretty invention. Someone —I wish I eould name the poet —wrote of her in his dark hour of disillusion:— “She never Mved. ’Tishard to bear! Fiona of the windblown hair! Fiona of the wistful eyes, Far-looking into Paradise! Fiona of the rhythmic speech* iLike water breaking on "the beach! Who heard the tale the low wind tells, Who read the rune of moorland’wells, And spake with rushes when they stir — Methinks that I have walked with her! Holding her hand, and hushed to hear Her soft voice rising, falling near!

never better nor more appealing, and Miss Fazenda never funnier. Ethel Shannon, Lou Archer and Arthur Stone are among the supporting players, all with intriguing characterisations. The ftorv, based on Gerald Beaumont’s magazine serial, “Said With Soap.” begins with the heroine as a laundry girl, and soiled baseball uniforms link the laundry with the diamond. The girl goes to investigate, sees the hero play and receives a foul tip in the eye as an introduction. Then the comedy develops at a-fast and furious'pace, y “Jazz Mad Youth” would make a sub-title to “The Dixie Flyer” which with the superb action of Cullen Landis and Eva Novak runs in tandem on Saturday night with “Babe Comes Home.” In “The Dixie Flyer” there is what the younger generation calls n <<vdld noftv,” .staged in the home of Vice-President Bedford of the S. and W. Bailroad. The scenic investiture of this sequence is as lovelv as anything to be found in any production. Gorgeously gowned women and perfectlv appointed men move through scenes of rare boantv, wherein fountains play an i fantastically garbed characters disport themselves. By way of contrast, there are the scehe t f in a railroad construction eatnp at Bl n ek Biver. wVre life at beat is a primitive, sort of thing, and whore men'B Passions lie very close to the outward voneer of civilisation. But bo the sotting vrhat it W’V —palace nr shook-—tliere ate- thrills. <hril> o —and still more thrills. Cullen Landis contributes some of them; so. too, does Bva Bovak. All in all—and viewed from every angle—“ The Dixie Fiver” is said bv the Press to be- a pcreen ootcvtnihtnept of extraordinarily hi<*h calibre. reflecting great credit nnoti B. it. Van Loan, its author. (Ihkriea Bunt, its directol nnd Bav.art Biijtnres dbrporatidn. #ho are sponsorill it* iMi cdtest.

(BY “THE BOOKMAN.”) V ■. * m \ a

A sister of the wind and sup, A sweet, self-vowed, upeloistered nun — , Unwed: yet reading in some fashion The elemental heart of passion. How often my fancy painted this Lone woman with the artist’s bliss —• I’ve seen her mount the rugged path Of some deserted mountain strath, And in some shieling sheltered .free <Draw all the children , round her knee With -chanted tale, or mufmnred strain, ,: And vanish like p ghost again. -She -never lived? Nay, is she not Some .princess of an age forgot ? Who passed into the, Land ' With lips unkissed ah 4 ringless'hahd, And then went weary evenrhore. k With uncommunicated lore. ' She chose, as skilled musicians choose, Fit instrument, her song to loose; Yet He was He, and she was still ‘ '. Fiona of the misty hill.. Death touched his wrist and took his - •pen, \ * And lured him from the world of men. She mourns by that Sicilian grave. Not roams to find another slave. Nay! These be vain imaginings, ' '-fflfi Where Fancy drifts with idle wings No grey dietafcresa set the task! ■ I’ve loved—-a feigned deceitful maskf, : She never lived—oh, Nature's Bride—* ’ 1 Fiona! iHadsf thou lived and died!” From all this it will appear that Mr - William Sharp was ap ; literary man. • ' /v> JOHNSON’S SCOTTISH JOURNEY

His "Journey to the Western lands ’ ’ is, with Wordsworth ’s lyricSfthe rarest product of these '• , The islanders who said of Jbhhaois \/s "Honest man, he’s pleased erything, ’ ’ did not guess thetfibugll(#| at the back of his head; "but Scotland the pungent interest .of book, and its broad sweep of made up for the strictures,, and use it now as a school text-book. in -<:t Skye. It has as much modesty dogmatism; this stands confessedthe final sentence where owns that his thoughts on national manners are those of one who -haa seen little. But it lives, above all, by the quality of the prose. no narrative of place or people, has L -ip been so nakedly unadorned since Caesar’s; it leaves almost thing to the imagination. Curiously} however, this defiance of makes it the very book for a wUdßtil country. The spare, crisp’ Johnson being here ■ at his suggest the sharp lines of r 4 dek:. MB hill; the abstract style chills sense of empty, desert Arthur McDowall, in ‘ 1 tions.” - .'" c " I "■ , ■— LITEEAEY NOTES. / a “Peacocks,” a volume stories, by Mrs Yennette -■ Selb , peared during May with the' who think highly of it. Gerald Ho,we is publishingva|.hm : i novel “The Door’Unlatched; ’l' Marie Cher, the author of of "Life in Still Life.’! ' S''*?®'? * • • • t; . /Jl "The Ex-Duke” is the . title J Of v % another romance which PhillipsOp- £ penheim has appearing with <Stdder/-.£ and Stoughton. ' 1 ‘ \.V ;-*$ • . 1A book Constable announces prfisentfi^ for the first time in collected form serlw ous work of George Gissing’S, >prdrj* viously lost. in magazines or. in cases left by him in manuscript. preface by his son, Alfred '3 cussed, the .pros and cons of realism in fiction. It seeks especially H to show that the righteous /determine- ' tion of George Gissing to. depict the sordid realities of lifeda their exact colours inevitably caused him to paint in sombre greys rather than in the vivid hues of romance. The stories take a. .V general title, "The victim of Circumstances, ” and they are nearly all tales. of misfortune, told with pathos, with anger, or with irony.

*•« « . Basil Carey, who wrote 4, Thtf Hah l * ' gerous Isles,” has another story 'with' 4 Constable, “The Dreaming God.” • ■ ■ * • . . : i; i The “Quill Library” is the name..of ijt a new series of volumes Bodley Head has decided to .publish* It i V<’ mill consist of selections from the personal letters of great men, edited by , ,’ Brimley Jolmson, who has already'clone'" '*' a similar service for women letterwriters. The “Quill Library” will <open t ? with the letters of Laurence \ n*l they will be followed by; ters of Bichard Steele. ' ' • * • 4 •>'-! - A collected edition of poems -of.; /f Edward Thomas is announced by" new London publishing house, XagpenViy' and Grant. ■ *■ President Masaryk's book “The Making of, a State,” which Widkham Steed has rendered into English, is’J.; published by Allen and tTnwin. |n substance, a detailed account, - bIT J| the movement for Czechoslovak 1 \;|| pendence, ahd of MasiarykhS leader of the movement. facts and philosophical reSCciiUh j iy the narrative, which, saga Mf ham Steed, “if not drainage In* ordinary sense of -the mental - contribution? to I bublie: ledge of the woHd . ißj djhpiocfßtlc ■ v