Theodore Watts-Dunton Part 21

Among the pleasant incidents in Mr. Watts-Dunton's life were these visits with Mr. Swinburne to Jowett's house, where he had the opportunity of meeting some of the most prominent men of the time. He has described the Balliol dinner parties, but I have no room here to do more than allude to them. I must, however, quote his famous pen portrait of Jowett which appeared in the 'Athenaeum' of December 22, 1894.

"It may seem difficult to imagine many points of sympathy between the poet of 'Atalanta' and the student of Plato and translator of Thucydides; and yet the two were bound to each other by ties of no common strength. They took expeditions into the country together, and Mr. Swinburne was a not infrequent guest at Balliol and also at Jowett's quiet autumnal retreat at Boar's Hill. The Master of Balliol, indeed, had a quite remarkable faculty of drawing to himself the admiration of men of poetic genius. To say which poet admired and loved him most deeply-Tennyson, Browning, Matthew Arnold, or Mr.

Swinburne-would be difficult. He seemed to join their hands all round him, and these intimacies with the poets were not the result of the smallest sacrifice of independence on the part of Jowett. He was always quite as frank in telling a poet what he disliked in his verses as in telling him what he liked. And although the poets of our own epoch are, perhaps, as irritable a race as they were in times past, and are as little impervious as ever to flattery, it is, after all, in virtue partly of a superior intelligence that poets are poets, and in the long run their friends.h.i.+p is permanently given to straightforward men like Jowett. That Jowett's judgment in artistic matters, and especially in poetry, was borne no one knew better than himself, and he had a way of letting the poets see that upon poetical subjects he must be taken as only a partially qualified judge, and this alone gained for him a greater freedom in criticism than would otherwise have been allowed to him. For, notwithstanding the Oxford epigram upon him as a pretender to absolute wisdom, no man could be more modest than he upon subjects of which he had only the ordinary knowledge. He was fond of quoting Hallam's words that without an exhaustive knowledge of details there can be no accurate induction; and where he saw that his interlocutor really had special knowledge, he was singularly diffident about expressing his opinion. They are not so far wrong who take it for granted that one who was able to secure the loving admiration of four of the greatest poets of the Victorian epoch, all extremely unlike each other, was not only a great and a rare intelligence, but a man of a nature most truly n.o.ble and most truly lovable. The kind of restraint in social intercourse resulting from what has been called his taciturnity pa.s.sed so soon as his interlocutor realized (which he very quickly did) that Jowett's taciturnity, or rather his lack of volubility, arose from the peculiarly honest nature of one who had no idea of talking for talking's sake. If a proper and right response to a friend's remark chanced to come to his lips spontaneously, he was quite willing to deliver it; but if the response was neither spontaneous nor likely to be adequate, he refused to manufacture one for the mere sake of keeping the ball rolling, as is so often the case with the shallow or uneducated man. It is, however, extremely difficult to write reminiscences of men so taciturn as Jowett. In order to bring out one of Jowett's pithy sayings, the interlocutor who would record it has also to record the words of his own which awoke the saying, and then it is almost impossible to avoid an appearance of egotism."

Still more pleasurable than these relaxations at Oxford were the visits that the two friends used to pay to Jowett's rural retreat at Boar's Hill, about three miles from Oxford, for the purpose of revelling in the riches of the dramatic room in the Bodleian. The two poets used to spend the entire day in that enchanted room, and then walk back with the Master to Boar's Hill. Every reader of Mr. Watts-Dunton's poetry will remember the following sonnets:-

THE LAST WALK FROM BOAR'S HILL To A. C. S.

I

One after one they go; and glade and heath, Where once we walked with them, and garden bowers They made so dear, are haunted by the hours Once musical of those who sleep beneath; One after one does Sorrow's every wreath Bind closer you and me with funeral flowers, And Love and Memory from each loss of ours Forge conquering glaives to quell the conqueror Death.

Since Love and Memory now refuse to yield The friend with whom we walk through mead and field To-day as on that day when last we parted, Can he be dead, indeed, whatever seem?

Love shapes a presence out of Memory's dream, A living presence, Jowett golden-hearted.

II

Can he be dead? We walk through flowery ways From Boar's Hill down to Oxford, fain to know What nugget-gold, in drift of Time's long flow, The Bodleian mine hath stored from richer days; He, fresh as on that morn, with sparkling gaze, Hair bright as suns.h.i.+ne, white as moonlit snow, Still talks of Plato while the scene below Breaks gleaming through the veil of sunlit haze.

Can he be dead? He shares our homeward walk, And by the river you arrest the talk To see the sun transfigure ere he sets The boatmen's children s.h.i.+ning in the wherry And on the floating bridge the ply-rope wets, Making the clumsy craft an angel's ferry.

III

The river crossed, we walk 'neath glowing skies Through gra.s.s where cattle feed or stand and stare With burnished coats, gla.s.sing the coloured air- Fading as colour after colour dies: We pa.s.s the copse; we round the leafy rise- Start many a coney and partridge, hern and hare; We win the scholar's nest-his simple fare Made royal-rich by welcome in his eyes.

Can he be dead? His heart was drawn to you.

Ah! well that kindred heart within him knew The poet's heart of gold that gives the spell!

Can he be dead? Your heart being drawn to him, How shall ev'n Death make that dear presence dim For you who loved him-us who loved him well?

Another and much lovelier retreat, whither Mr. Watts-Dunton has always loved to go, is the cottage at Box-hill. Not the least interesting among the beautiful friends.h.i.+ps between Mr. Watts-Dunton and his ill.u.s.trious contemporaries is that between himself and Mr. George Meredith. Mr.

William Sharp can speak with authority on this subject, being himself the intimate friend of Mr. Meredith, Mr. Swinburne, and Mr. Watts-Dunton.

Speaking of Swinburne's champions.h.i.+p, in the 'Spectator,' of Meredith's first book of poems, Mr. Sharp, in an article in the 'Pall Mall Magazine,' of December 1901, says:-

"Among those who read and considered" [Meredith's work] "was another young poet, who had, indeed, already heard of Swinburne as one of the most promising of the younger men, but had not yet met him... . If the letter signed 'A. C. Swinburne' had not appeared, another signed 'Theodore Watts' would have been published, to the like effect. It was not long before the logic of events was to bring George Meredith, A. C. Swinburne, and Theodore Watts into personal communion."

The first important recognition of George Meredith as a poet was the article by Mr. Watts-Dunton in the 'Athenaeum' on 'Poems and Lyrics of the Joy of Earth.' After this appeared articles appreciative of Meredith's prose fiction by W. E. Henley and others. But it was Mr. Watts-Dunton who led the way. The most touching of all the testimonies of love and admiration which Mr. Meredith has received from Mr Watts-Dunton, or indeed, from anybody else, is the beautiful sonnet addressed to him on his seventy-fourth birthday. It appeared in the 'Sat.u.r.day Review' of February 15, 1902:-

TO GEORGE MEREDITH (ON HIS SEVENTY-FOURTH BIRTHDAY)

This time, dear friend-this time my birthday greeting Comes heavy of funeral tears-I think of you, And say, "Tis evening with him-that is true- But evening bright as noon, if faster fleeting; Still he is spared-while Spring and Winter, meeting, Clasp hands around the roots 'neath frozen dew- To see the 'Joy of Earth' break forth anew, And hear it on the hillside warbling, bleating.'

Love's remnant melts and melts; but, if our days Are swifter than a weaver's shuttle, still, Still Winter has a sun-a sun whose rays Can set the young lamb dancing on the hill, And set the daisy, in the woodland ways, Dreaming of her who brings the daffodil.

The allusion to 'funeral tears' was caused by one of the greatest bereavements which Mr. Watts-Dunton has sustained in recent years, namely, that of Frank Groome, whose obituary he wrote for the 'Athenaeum.'

I have not the honour of knowing Meredith, but I have often heard Mr.

Watts-Dunton describe with a glow of affectionate admiration the fine charm of his character and the amazing pregnancy in thought and style of his conversation.

But the most memorable friends.h.i.+p that during their joint occupancy of 'The Pines' Mr Watts-Dunton formed, was that with Tennyson.

I have had many conversations with Mr. Watts-Dunton on the subject of Tennyson, and I am persuaded that, owing to certain incongruities between the external facets of Tennyson's character and the 'abysmal deeps' of his personality, Mr. Watts-Dunton, after the poet's son, is the only man living who is fully competent to speak with authority of the great poet.

Not only is he himself a poet who must be placed among his contemporaries nearest to his more ill.u.s.trious friend, but between Mr. Watts-Dunton and Tennyson from their first meeting there was an especial sympathy. So long ago as 1881 was published his sonnet to Tennyson on his seventy-first birthday. It attracted much attention, and although it was not sent to the Laureate, he read it and was much touched by it, as well he might be, for it is as n.o.ble a tribute as one poet could pay to another:-

TO ALFRED TENNYSON, ON HIS PUBLIs.h.i.+NG, IN HIS SEVENTY-FIRST YEAR, THE MOST RICHLY VARIOUS VOLUME OF ENGLISH VERSE THAT HAS APPEARED IN HIS OWN CENTURY.

Beyond the peaks of Kaf a rivulet springs Whose magic waters to a flood expand, Distilling, for all drinkers on each hand, The immortal sweets enveiled in mortal things.

From honeyed flowers,-from balm of zephyr-wings,- From fiery blood of gems, {286} through all the land, The river draws;-then, in one rainbow-band, Ten leagues of nectar o'er the ocean flings.

Rich with the riches of a poet's years, Stained in all colours of Man's destiny, So, Tennyson, thy widening river nears The misty main, and, taking now the sea, Makes rich and warm with human smiles and tears The ashen billows of Eternity.

Some two or three years after this Mr. Watts-Dunton met the Laureate at a garden party, and they fraternized at once. Mr. Watts-Dunton had an open invitation to Aldworth and Farringford whenever he could go, and this invitation came after his very first stay at Aldworth. One point in which he does not agree with Coleridge (in the 'Table Talk') or with Mr.

Swinburne, is the theory that Tennyson's ear was defective at the very first. He contends that if Tennyson in his earlier poems seemed to show a defective ear, it was always when in the great struggle between the demands of mere metrical music and those of the other great requisites of poetry, thought, emotion, colour and outline, he found it best occasionally to make metrical music in some measure yield. As an ill.u.s.tration of Tennyson's sensibility to the most delicate nuances of metrical music, I remember at one of those charming 'symposia' at 'The Pines,' hearing Mr. Watts-Dunton say that Tennyson was the only English poet who gave the attention to the sibilant demanded by Dionysius of Halicarna.s.sus; and I remember one delightful instance that he gave of this. It referred to the two sonnets upon 'The Omnipotence of Love' in the universe which I have always considered to be the keynote of 'Aylwin'

and 'The Coming of Love.' These sonnets appeared in an article called 'The New Hero' in the 'English Ill.u.s.trated Magazine' in 1883. Mr.

Watts-Dunton was staying at Aldworth when the proof of the article reached him. The present Lord Tennyson (who, as Mr. Watts-Dunton has often averred, has so much literary insight that if he had not been the son of the greatest poet of his time, he would himself have taken a high position in literature) read out in one of the little Aldworth bowers to his father and to Miss Mary Boyle the article and the sonnets. Tennyson, who was a severe critic of his own work, but extremely lenient in criticising the work of other men, said there was one feature in one of the lines of one of the sonnets which he must challenge. The line was this:-

And scents of flowers and shadow of wavering trees.

Now it so chanced that this very line had been especially praised by two other fine critics, D. G. Rossetti and William Morris, to whom the sonnet had been read in ma.n.u.script. Tennyson's criticism was that there were too many sibilants in the line, and that although, other things being equal, 'scents' might be more accurate than 'scent,' this was a case where the claims of music ought to be dominant over other claims. The present Lord Tennyson took the same view, and I am sure they were right, and that Mr. Watts-Dunton was right, in finally adopting 'scent' in place of 'scents.'

Mr. Watts-Dunton has always contended that Tennyson's sensibility to criticism was the result, not of imperious egotism, but of a kind of morbid modesty. Tennyson used to say that "to whatsoever exalted position a poet might reach, he was not 'born to the purple,' and that if the poet's mind was especially plastic he could never shake off the reminiscence of the time when he was n.o.body."

On a certain occasion Tennyson took Mr. Watts-Dunton into the summer-house at Aldworth to read to him 'Becket,' then in ma.n.u.script.

Although another visitor, whom he esteemed very highly, both as a poet and an old friend, was staying there, Tennyson said that he should prefer to read the play to Mr. Watts-Dunton alone. And this no doubt was because he desired an absolute freedom of criticism. Freedom of criticism we may be sure he got, for of all men Mr. Watts-Dunton is the most outspoken on the subject of the poet's art. The entire morning was absorbed in the reading; and, says Mr. Watts-Dunton, 'the remarks upon poetic and dramatic art that fell from Tennyson would have made the fortune of any critic.'

On the subject of what has been called Tennyson's gaucherie and rudeness to women I have seen Mr. Watts-Dunton wax very indignant. 'There was to me,' he said, 'the greatest charm in what is called Tennyson's bluntness.

I would there were a leaven of Tennyson's single-mindedness in the society of the present day.'

One anecdote concerning what is stigmatized as Tennyson's rudeness to women shows how entirely the man was misunderstood. Mrs. Oliphant has stated that Tennyson, in his own house, after listening in silence to an interchange of amiable compliments between herself and Mrs. Tennyson, said abruptly, 'What liars you women are!' 'I seem to hear,' said Mr.

Watts-Dunton, 'Tennyson utter the exclamation-utter it in that tone of humourous playfulness, followed by that loud guffaw, which neutralized the rudeness as entirely as Douglas Jerrold's laugh neutralized the sting of his satire. For such an incident to be cited as instance of Tennyson's rudeness to women is ludicrous. When I knew him I was, if possible, a more obscure literary man than I now am, and he treated me with exactly the same manly respect that he treated the most ill.u.s.trious people. I did not feel that I had any claim to such treatment, for he was, beyond doubt, the greatest literary figure in the world of that time. There seems unfortunately to be an impulse of detraction, which springs up after a period of laudation.'

The only thing I have heard Mr. Watts-Dunton say in the way of stricture upon Tennyson's work was that, considering his enormous powers as a poet, he seemed deficient in the gift of inventing a story:-"The stanzas beginning, 'O, that 'twere possible'-the nucleus of 'Maud'-appeared originally in 'The Tribute.' They were the finest lines that Tennyson ever wrote-right away the finest. They suggested some superb story of pa.s.sion and mystery; and every reader was compelled to make his own guess as to what the story could possibly be. In an evil moment some friend suggested that Tennyson should amplify this glorious lyric into a story.

A person with more of the endowment of the inventor than Tennyson might perhaps have invented an adequate story-might perhaps have invented a dozen adequate stories; but he could not have invented a worse story than the one used by Tennyson in the writing of his monodrama. But think of the poetic riches poured into it!"

I remember a peculiarly subtle criticism that Mr. Watts-Dunton once made in regard to 'The Princess.' "Shakspeare," he said, "is the only poet who has been able to put sincere writing into a story the plot of which is fanciful. The extremely insincere story of 'The Princess' is filled with such n.o.ble pa.s.sages of sincere poetry as 'Tears, idle tears,' 'Home they brought her warrior dead,' etc., pa.s.sages which unfortunately lose two-thirds of their power through the insincere setting."

Not very long before Tennyson died, the editor of the 'Magazine of Art'

invited Mr. Watts-Dunton to write an article upon the portraits of Tennyson. Mr. Watts-Dunton consulted the poet upon this project, and he agreed, promising to aid in the selection of the portraits. The result was two of the most interesting essays upon Tennyson that have ever been written-in fact, it is no exaggeration to say that without a knowledge of these articles no student of Tennyson can be properly equipped. It is tantalizing that they have never been reprinted. Tennyson died before their appearance, and this, of course, added to the general interest felt in them.

After Tennyson's death Mr. Watts-Dunton wrote two penetrating essays upon Tennyson in the 'Nineteenth Century,' one of them being his reminiscences of Tennyson as the poet and the man, and the other a study of him as a nature-poet in reference to evolution. It will be a great pity if these essays too are not reprinted. Mr. Knowles, the editor, also included Mr.

Watts-Dunton among the friends of Tennyson who were invited to write memorial verses on his death for the 'Nineteenth Century.' To this series Mr. Watts-Dunton contributed the following sonnet, which is one of the several poems upon Tennyson not published in 'The Coming of Love'

volume, which, I may note in pa.s.sing, contains 'What the Silent Voices Said,' the fine 'sonnet sequence' commemorating the burial of Tennyson:-

IN WESTMINSTER ABBEY

'THE CROWD IN THE ABBEY WAS VERY GREAT.'

Morning Newspaper.

I saw no crowd: yet did these eyes behold What others saw not-his lov'd face sublime Beneath that pall of death in deathless prime Of Tennyson's long day that grows not old; And, as I gazed, my grief seemed over-bold; And, 'Who art thou,' the music seemed to chime, 'To mourn that King of song whose throne is Time?'