And Even Now
masses of auburn hair and with tiny hands clasped in supplication--‘Tell
me more, Aunt Ashburnham, tell me more!’
And now, clearlier still, as I write in these after-years, do I see that
dining-room of The Pines; the long white stretch of table-cloth,
with Swinburne and Watts-Dunton and another at the extreme end of it;
Watts-Dunton between us, very low down over his plate, very cosy and
hirsute, and rather like the dormouse at that long tea-table which Alice
found in Wonderland. I see myself sitting there wide-eyed, as Alice sat.
And, had the hare been a great poet, and the hatter a great gentleman,
and neither of them mad but each only very odd and vivacious, I might
see Swinburne as a glorified blend of those two.
When the meal ended--for, alas! it was not, like that meal in
Wonderland, unending--Swinburne would dart round the table, proffer his
hand to me, bow deeply, bow to Watts-Dunton also, and disappear. ‘He
always walks in the morning, writes in the afternoon, and reads in the
evening,’ Watts-Dunton would say with a touch of tutorial pride in this
regimen.
That parting bow of Swinburne to his old friend was characteristic of
his whole relation to him. Cronies though they were, these two, knit
together with bonds innumerable, the greater man was always aux petits
soins for the lesser, treating him as a newly-arrived young guest might
treat an elderly host. Some twenty years had passed since that night
when, ailing and broken--thought to be nearly dying, Watts-Dunton
told me--Swinburne was brought in a four-wheeler to The Pines. Regular
private nursing-homes either did not exist in those days or were less
in vogue than they are now. The Pines was to be a sort of private
nursing-home for Swinburne. It was a good one. He recovered. He was most
grateful to his friend and saviour. He made as though to depart, was
persuaded to stay a little longer, and then a little longer than that.
But I rather fancy that, to the last, he never did, in the fullness of
his modesty and good manners, consent to regard his presence as a matter
of course, or as anything but a terminable intrusion and obligation. His
bow seemed always to convey that.
Swinburne having gone from the room, in would come the parlourmaid. The
table was cleared, the fire was stirred, two leather arm-chairs were
pushed up to the hearth. Watts-Dunton wanted gossip of the present. I
wanted gossip of the great past. We settled down for a long, comfortable
afternoon together.
Only once was the ritual varied. Swinburne (I was told before luncheon)
had expressed a wish to show me his library. So after the meal he did
not bid us his usual adieu, but with much courtesy invited us and led
the way. Up the staircase he then literally bounded--three, literally
three, stairs at a time. I began to follow at the same rate, but
immediately slackened speed for fear that Watts-Dunton behind us might
be embittered at sight of so much youth and legerity. Swinburne waited
on the threshold to receive us, as it were, and pass us in. Watts-Dunton
went and ensconced himself snugly in a corner. The sun had appeared
after a grey morning, and it pleasantly flooded this big living-room
whose walls were entirely lined with the mellow backs of books. Here, as
host, among his treasures, Swinburne was more than ever attractive.
He was as happy as was any mote in the sunshine about him; and the
fluttering of his little hands, and feet too, was but as a token of so
much felicity. He looked older, it is true, in the strong light. But
these added years made only more notable his youngness of heart. An
illustrious bibliophile among his books? A birthday child, rather, among
his toys.
Proudly he explained to me the general system under which the volumes
were ranged in this or that division of shelves. Then he conducted me to
a chair near the window, left me there, flew away, flew up the rungs of
a mahogany ladder, plucked a small volume, and in a twinkling was at
my side: ‘This, I think, will please you! ‘It did. It had a beautifully
engraved title-page and a pleasing scent of old, old leather. It was
editio princeps of a play by some lesser Elizabethan or Jacobean. ‘Of
course you know it?’ my host fluted.
How I wished I could say that I knew it and loved it well! I revealed to
him (for by speaking very loudly towards his inclined head I was able
to make him hear) that I had not read it. He envied any one who had
such pleasure in store. He darted to the ladder, and came back thrusting
gently into my hands another volume of like date: ‘Of course you know
this?’
Again I had to confess that I did not, and to shout my appreciation of
the fount of type, the margins, the binding. He beamed agreement, and
fetched another volume. Archly he indicated the title, cooing, ‘You are
a lover of this, I hope?’ And again I was shamed by my inexperience.
I did not pretend to know this particular play, but my tone implied that
I had always been meaning to read it and had always by some mischance
been prevented. For his sake as well as my own I did want to acquit
myself passably. I wanted for him the pleasure of seeing his joys shared
by a representative, however humble, of the common world. I turned the
leaves caressingly, looking from them to him, while he dilated on the
beauty of this and that scene in the play. Anon he fetched another
volume, and another, always with the same faith that this was a
favourite of mine. I quibbled, I evaded, I was very enthusiastic and
uncomfortable. It was with intense relief that I beheld the title-page
of yet another volume which (silently, this time) he laid before me--The
Country Wench. ‘This of course I have read,’ I heartily shouted.
Swinburne stepped back. ‘You have? You have read it? Where?’ he cried,
in evident dismay.
Something was wrong. Had I not, I quickly wondered, read this play? ‘Oh
yes,’ I shouted, ‘I have read it.’
‘But when? Where?’ entreated Swinburne, adding that he had supposed it
to be the sole copy extant.
I floundered. I wildly said I thought I must have read it years ago in
the Bodleian. ‘Theodore! Do you hear this? It seems that they have now
a copy of “The Country Wench” in the Bodleian! Mr. Beerbohm found one
there--oh when? in what year?’ he appealed to me.
I said it might have been six, seven, eight years ago. Swinburne knew
for certain that no copy had been there twelve years ago, and was
surprised that he had not heard of the acquisition. ‘They might have
told me,’ he wailed.
I sacrificed myself on the altar of sympathy. I admitted that I might
have been mistaken--must have been--must have confused this play with
some other. I dipped into the pages and ‘No,’ I shouted, ‘this I have
never read.’
His equanimity was restored. He was up the ladder and down again,
showing me further treasures with all pride and ardour. At length,
Watts-Dunton, afraid that his old friend would tire himself, arose from
his corner, and presently he and I went downstairs to the dining-room.
It was in the course of our session together that there suddenly flashed
across my mind the existence of a play called ‘The Country Wife,’
by--wasn’t it Wycherley? I had once read it--or read something about
it.... But this matter I kept to myself. I thought I had appeared fool
enough already.
I loved those sessions in that Tupperossettine dining-room, lair of
solid old comfort and fervid old romanticism. Its odd duality befitted
well its owner. The distinguished critic and poet, Rossetti’s closest
friend and Swinburne’s, had been, for a while, in the dark ages, a
solicitor; and one felt he had been a good one. His frock-coat, though
the Muses had crumpled it, inspired confidence in his judgment of other
things than verse. But let there be no mistake. He was no mere bourgeois
parnassien, as his enemies insinuated. No doubt he had been very useful
to men of genius, in virtue of qualities they lacked, but the secret of
his hold on them was in his own rich nature. He was not only a born man
of letters, he was a deeply emotional human being whose appeal was
as much to the heart as to the head. The romantic Celtic mysticism of
‘Aylwin,’ with its lack of fashionable Celtic nebulosity, lends itself,
if you will, to laughter, though personally I saw nothing funny in
it: it seemed to me, before I was in touch with the author, a work of
genuine expression from within; and that it truly was so I presently
knew. The mysticism of Watts-Dunton (who, once comfortably settled at
the fireside, knew no reserve) was in contrast with the frock-coat and
the practical abilities; but it was essential, and they were of the
surface. For humorous Rossetti, I daresay, the very contrast made
Theodore’s company the more precious. He himself had assuredly been,
and the memory of him still was, the master-fact in Watts-Dunton’s
life. ‘Algernon’ was as an adopted child, ‘Gabriel’ as a long-lost
only brother. As he was to the outer world of his own day, so too to
posterity Rossetti, the man, is conjectural and mysterious. We know that
he was in his prime the most inspiring and splendid of companions. But
we know this only by faith. The evidence is as vague as it is emphatic.
Of the style and substance of not a few great talkers in the past we can
piece together some more or less vivid and probably erroneous notion.
But about Rossetti nothing has been recorded in such a way as to make
him even faintly emerge. I suppose he had in him what reviewers seem
to find so often in books a quality that defies analysis. Listening to
Watts-Dunton, I was always in hope that when next the long-lost turned
up--for he was continually doing so--in the talk, I should see him, hear
him, and share the rapture. But the revelation was not to be. You might
think that to hear him called ‘Gabriel’ would have given me a sense of
propinquity. But I felt no nearer to him than you feel to the Archangel
who bears that name and no surname.
It was always when Watts-Dunton spoke carelessly, casually, of some to
me illustrious figure in the past, that I had the sense of being wafted
right into that past and plumped down in the very midst of it. When he
spoke with reverence of this and that great man whom he had known, he
did not thus waft and plump me; for I, too, revered those names. But I
had the magical transition whenever one of the immortals was mentioned
in the tone of those who knew him before he had put on immortality.
Browning, for example, was a name deeply honoured by me. ‘Browning,
yes,’ said Watts-Dunton, in the course of an afternoon, ‘Browning,’ and
he took a sip of the steaming whisky-toddy that was a point in our day’s
ritual. ‘I was a great diner-out in the old times. I used to dine out
every night in the week. Browning was a great diner-out, too. We were
always meeting. What a pity he went on writing all those plays! He
hadn’t any gift for drama--none. I never could understand why he took to
play-writing.’ He wagged his head, gazing regretfully into the fire, and
added, ‘Such a clever fellow, too!’
Whistler, though alive and about, was already looked to as a hierarch by
the young. Not so had he been looked to by Rossetti. The thrill of the
past was always strong in me when Watts-Dunton mentioned--seldom without
a guffaw did he mention--‘Jimmy Whistler.’ I think he put in the surname
because ‘that fellow’ had not behaved well to Swinburne. But he could
not omit the nickname, because it was impossible for him to feel the
right measure of resentment against ‘such a funny fellow.’ As heart-full
of old hates as of old loves was Watts-Dunton, and I take it as high
testimony to the charm of Whistler’s quaintness that Watts-Dunton did
not hate him. You may be aware that Swinburne, in ‘88, wrote for one of
the monthly reviews a criticism of the ‘Ten O’Clock’ lecture. He paid