book i. e. of all he has seen of it (a comedy of the higher kind) for

which Stone and Kimball have given me good terms—_Wives in Exile_—that it is “quite unlike anything else—at once the most brilliant, romantic, and witty thing I have read for long—to judge from the opening chapters and the scheme. It will stand by itself, I think.”

Personally, I think it shows the best handicraft of anything W. S. has done in fiction. It is, of course, wholly distinct in manner and method from F. M.’s work. It _ought_ to be out by May. Sunshine and blithe laughter guided my pen in this book. Well, I have given you my gossip about myself: and now I would much rather hear about _you_. I wish you were here to tell me all about what you have been doing, thinking, and dreaming.

Yours, W. S.

I received the following letter from him in Rome:

LONDON, 21st Feb.

I am sure _The Highland News_ must have delighted you. Let me know what you think of Fiona’s and W. S.’s letters.... I am so sorry you are leaving Siena.... I follow every step of your movements with keenest interest. But oh the light and the colour, how I envy you!

I am hoping you are pleased with _Lyra Celtica_. It is published today only—so of course I have heard nothing yet from outsiders. Yesterday I finished my Matthew Arnold essay[3]—and in the evening wrote the first part of my F. M. story, “Morag of the Glen”—a strong piece of work I hope and believe though not finished yet. I hope to finish it by tonight. I am so glad you and Mona liked the first of “The Three Marvels of Hy” (pronounced _Eo_ or _Hee_) so well. Pieces like “The Festival of the Birds” seem to be born out of my brain almost in an inspirational way. I hardly understand it. Yes, you were in the right place to read it—St. Francis’ country. That beautiful strange Umbria! After all, Iona and Assisi are not nearly so remote from each other as from London or Paris. I send you the second of the series “The Blessing of the Flies.” It, too, was written at Pettycur—as was “The Prologue.” ... There is a strange half glad, half morose note in this Prologue which I myself hardly apprehend in full significance. In it is interpolated one of the loveliest of the ‘legendary moralities’ which I had meant to insert in Section I—that of ‘The King of the Earth.’ I will send it to you before long....

To a correspondent he wrote about the “Three Marvels of Hy”: “They are studies in old Religious Celtic sentiment so far as that can be recreated in a modern heart that feels the same beauty and simplicity of the Early Christian faith.”

And to me again: “... I know you will rejoice to hear that there can be no question that F. M’s deepest and finest work is in this “_Washer of the Ford_” volume. As for the spiritual lesson that nature has taught me, and that has grown within me otherwise, I have given the finest utterance to it that I can. In a sense my inner life of the spirit is concentrated in the three pieces “The Moon-Child,” “The Fisher of Men,” and “The Last Supper.” Than the last I shall never do anything better. Apart from this intense inner flame that has been burning within me so strangely and deeply of late—I think my most imaginative work will be found in the titular piece “The Washer of the Ford,” which still, tho’ written and revised some time ago, haunts me! and in that and the pagan and animistic “Annir Choille.” We shall read those things in a gondola in Venice?”

He joined me in Venice on the 16th May—glad of sunshine and rest. We journeyed back to England by way of the Lakes, in a time of early roses, and returned to London to find the first copies of _The Washer of the Ford_ awaiting us. Two out of many letters concerning the book that came to him from friends who were in the secret and watched the development of the “F. M.” work, were a strong incentive to further effort.

The first is from Mr. Frank Rinder:

MY DEAR WILL,

From my heart I thank you for the gift of this book. It adds to the sum of the precious, heaven-sent things in life. It will kindle the fire of hope, of aspiration and of high resolve in a thousand hearts. As one of those into whose life you have brought a more poignant craving for what is beautiful in word and action, I thank you for writing it.

Your friend, FRANK.

The second was from Mr. Janvier:

SAINT REMY DE PROVENCE, June 22, 1896.

MY DEAR WILL,

If _The Washer of the Ford_ were the first of Fiona’s books I am confident that the sex of its author would not pass unchallenged. A great part of it is essentially masculine—all the “Seanachas,” and “The Annir Choille,” and the opening of “The Washer”: not impossible for a woman to write, but unlikely. Nor would a woman have written “The Annir Choille,” I think, as it is written here. Fiona has shown her double sex in this story more completely, it seems to me, than in any other. It is written with a man’s sense of decency and a woman’s sense of delicacy—and the love of both man and woman is in it to a very extraordinary degree. The fighting stories seem to me to be pure man—though I suppose that there are Highland women (like Scott’s “Highland Widow”) capable of their stern savagery. But on these alone, Fiona’s sex scarcely could have been accepted unchallenged. But what seems to me to show plainest, in all the stories together, is not the trifle that they are by a man or by a woman but that they have come out of your inspired soul. They seem to be the result of some outside force constraining you to write them. And with their freshness they have a curious primordial flavour—that comes, I suppose, from the deep roots and full essences of life which are their substance of soul. Being basic, elementary, they are independent of time; or even race. In a literary—technically literary—way they seem to me to be quite your most perfect work. I am sensitive to word arrangement, and some of your work has made me rather disposed to swear at you for carelessness. You have not always taken the trouble to hunt for the word that you needed. But these stories are as nearly perfect in finish, I think, as literary endeavour can make them. And they have that effect of flow and ease that can only come—at least, I can imagine it only as arriving—from the most persistent and laborious care. In the detail of make-up, I am especially impressed by the insertion of the Shadow Seers just where the key is changed radically. They are at once your justifying pieces for what has gone before, and an orchestral interlude before the wholly different Seanachas begin. Of all in the book, my strongest affection is for “The Last Supper.” It seems to me to be the most purely beautiful, and the profoundest thing that you have done.

I feel that some strong new current must have come into your life; or that the normal current has been in some way obstructed or diverted—for the animating spirit of these new books reflects a radical change in your own soul. The Pagan element is entirely subordinated to and controlled by the inner passions of the soul. In a word you have lifted your work from the flesh-level to the soul-level....

What you say in your letter of worry and ill-health saddens me. It is unjust that your rare power of creation should be hampered in any way. But it seems to me that there must be great consolation in your certain knowledge that you have greatly created, in spite of all.

Always affectionately yours, T. A. J.