Theodore Watts-Dunton Part 31

I have frequently thought that one of the most daring things, as well as one of the wisest, done by the editor of the 'Athenaeum,' was that of printing Rhona's letters, bristling with Romany words, with a glossary at the foot of the page, and printing them without any of the context of the poem to shed light upon it and upon Rhona. It certainly showed immense confidence in his contributor to do that; and yet the poems were a great success. The best thing said about Rhona has been said by Mr. George Meredith: "I am in love with Rhona, not the only one in that. When I read her love-letter in the 'Athenaeum,' I had the regret that the dialect might cause its banishment from literature. Reading the whole poem through, I see that it is as good as salt to a palate. We are the richer for it, and that is a rare thing to say of any poem now printed." And, discussing 'The Coming of Love,' Meredith wrote: 'I will not speak of the tours de force except to express a bit of astonishment at the dexterity which can perform them without immolating the tender spirit of the work.'

Indeed, the technical mastery of Mr. Watts-Dunton's poetry is so consummate that it is concealed from the reader. There is no sense of difficulty overcome, no parade of artifice. Yet the metrical structure of the very poem which seems the simplest is actually the subtlest.

'Rhona's Love Letter' is written in an extremely complex rhyme-pattern, each stanza of eight lines being built on two rhymes, like the octave of a sonnet. But so cunningly are the Romany words woven into a nave, unconscious charm that the reader forgets the rhyme-scheme altogether, and does not realize that this spontaneous sweetness and bubbling humour are produced by the most elaborate art.

I have emphasized the originality of Mr. Watts-Dunton's poetry. There can be no doubt that he is the most original poet since Coleridge, not merely in verbal, metrical, and rhythmical idiosyncrasy, but in the deeper quality of imaginative energy. By 'the most original poet' I do not mean the greatest poet: the student of poetry will know at once what I mean. Poe's 'Raven' is more 'original' than Sh.e.l.ley's 'Epipsychidion,'

but it is not so great. In my article on Blake in Chambers's 'Cyclopaedia of English Literature,' I pointed out that there are greater poets than Blake (or Donne) but none more original. There are many poets who possess that ordinary kind of imagination which is mainly a perpetual matching of common ideas with common metaphors. But few poets have the rarer kind of imagination which creates not only the metaphor but also the idea, and then fuses both into one piece of beauty. Now Mr.

Watts-Dunton has this supreme gift. He uses the symbol to suggest ideas which cannot be suggested otherwise. His theory of the universe is optimistic, but his optimism is interwoven with sombre threads. He sees the dualism of Nature, and he shows her alternately as malignant and as benignant. Indeed, he has concentrated his spiritual cosmogony into the two great sonnets, 'Natura Maligna' and 'Natura Benigna,' which I have already quoted.

All the critics were delighted with the humour of Rhona Boswell. Upon this subject Mr. Watts-Dunton makes some pregnant remarks in the introduction to the later editions of the poem:-

"But it is with regard to the humour of gypsy women that Gorgio readers seem to be most sceptical. The humourous endowment of most races is found to be more abundant and richer in quality among the men than among the women. But among the Romanies the women seem to have taken humour with the rest of the higher qualities.

A question that has been most frequently asked me in connection with my two gypsy heroines has been: Have gypsy girls really the esprit and the humourous charm that you attribute to them? My answer to this question shall be a quotation from Mr. Groome's delightful book, 'Gypsy Folk-Tales.' Speaking of the Romany chi's incomparable piquancy, he says:-

'I have known a gypsy girl dash off what was almost a folk-tale impromptu. She had been to a pic-nic in a four-in-hand with "a lot o' real tip-top gentry"; and "Reia," she said to me afterwards, "I'll tell you the comicalest thing as ever was. We'd pulled up to put the brake on, and there was a puro hotchiwitchi (old hedge-hog) come and looked at us through the hedge; looked at me hard. I could see he'd his eye upon me. And home he'd go, that old hedgehog, to his wife, and 'Missus,' he'd say, 'what d'ye think? I seen a little gypsy gal just now in a coach and four horses'; and 'Dabla,' she'd say, 'sawk.u.mni 'as varde kenaw'" ['Bless us! every one now keeps a carriage'].'

Now, without saying that this impromptu folklorist was Rhona Boswell, I will at least aver, without fear of contradiction from Mr. Groome, that it might well have been she. Although there is as great a difference between one Romany chi and another as between one English girl and another, there is a strange and fascinating kins.h.i.+p between the humour of all gypsy girls. No three girls could possibly be more unlike than Sinfi Lovell, Rhona Boswell, and the girl of whom Mr.

Groome gives his anecdote; and yet there is a similarity between the fanciful humour of them all. The humour of Rhona Boswell must speak for itself in these pages-where, however, the pa.s.sionate and tragic side of her character and her story dominates everything."

Chapter XXVII "CHRISTMAS AT THE 'MERMAID'"

SECOND in importance to 'The Coming of Love' among Mr. Watts-Dunton's poems is the poem I have already mentioned-the poem which Mr. Swinburne has described as 'a great lyrical epic'-"Christmas at the 'Mermaid.'"

The originality of this wonderful poem is quite as striking as that of 'The Coming of Love.' No other writer would have dreamed of depicting the doomed Armada as being led to destruction by a golden skeleton in the form of one of the burnt Incas, called up by 'the righteous sea,' and squatting grimly at the prow of Medina's flag-s.h.i.+p. Here we get 'The Renascence of Wonder' indeed. Some Aylwinians put it at the head of all his writings. The exploit of David Gwynn is accepted by Motley and others as historic, but it needed the co-operation of the Golden Skeleton to lift his narrative into the highest heaven of poetry. Extremely unlike 'The Coming of Love' as it is in construction, it is built on the same metrical scheme; and it ill.u.s.trates equally well with 'The Coming of Love' the remarks I have made upon a desideratum in poetic art-that is to say, it is cast in a form which gives as much scope to the dramatic instinct at work as is given by a play, and yet it is a form free from the restrictions by which a play must necessarily be cramped. The poem was written, or mainly written, during one of those visits which, as I have already said, Mr. Watts-Dunton used to pay to Stratford-on-Avon.

The scene is laid, however, in London, at that famous 'Mermaid' tavern which haunts the dreams of all English poets:-

"With the exception of Shakespeare, who has quitted London for good, in order to reside at New Place, Stratford-on-Avon, which he has lately rebuilt, all the members of the 'Mermaid' Club are a.s.sembled at the 'Mermaid' Tavern. At the head of the table sits Ben Jonson dealing out wa.s.sail from a large bowl. At the other end sits Raleigh, and at Raleigh's right hand, the guest he had brought with him, a stranger, David Gwynn, the Welsh seaman, now an elderly man, whose story of his exploits as a galley-slave in crippling the Armada before it reached the Channel had, years before, whether true or false, given him in the low countries a great reputation, the echo of which had reached England. Raleigh's desire was to excite the public enthusiasm for continuing the struggle with Spain on the sea, and generally to revive the fine Elizabethan temper, which had already become almost a thing of the past, save, perhaps, among such choice spirits as those a.s.sociated with the 'Mermaid' club."

It opens with a chorus:-

Christmas knows a merry, merry place, Where he goes with fondest face, Brightest eye, brightest hair: Tell the Mermaid where is that one place: Where?

Then Ben Jonson rises, fills the cup with wa.s.sail and drinks to Shakespeare, and thus comments upon his absence:-

That he, the star of revel, bright-eyed Will, With life at golden summit, fled the town And took from Thames that light to dwindle down O'er Stratford farms, doth make me marvel still.

Then he calls upon Shakespeare's most intimate friend-the mysterious Mr.

W. H. of the sonnets-to give them reminiscences of Shakespeare with a special reference to the memorable evening when he arrived at Stratford on quitting London for good and all.

To the sixth edition of the poem Mr. Watts-Dunton prefixed the following remarks, and I give them here because they throw light upon his view of Shakespeare's friend:-

"Since the appearance of this volume, there has been a great deal of acute and learned discussion as to the ident.i.ty of that mysterious 'friend' of Shakespeare, to whom so many of the sonnets are addressed. But everything that has been said upon the subject seems to fortify me in the opinion that 'no critic has been able to identify' that friend. Southampton seems at first to fit into the sacred place; so does Pembroke at first. But, after a while, true and unbia.s.sed criticism rejects them both. I therefore feel more than ever justified in 'imagining the friend for myself.' And this, at least, I know, that to have been the friend of Shakespeare, a man must needs have been a lover of nature;-he must have been a lover of England, too. And upon these two points, and upon another-the movement of a soul dominated by friends.h.i.+p as a pa.s.sion-I have tried to show Shakespeare's probable influence upon his 'friend of friends.' It would have been a mistake, however, to cast the sonnets in the same metrical mould as Shakespeare's."

Shakspeare's friend thus records what Shakespeare had told him about his return to Stratford:-

As down the bank he strolled through evening dew, Pictures (he told me) of remembered eves Mixt with that dream the Avon ever weaves, And all his happy childhood came to view; He saw a child watching the birds that flew Above a willow, through whose musky leaves A green musk-beetle shone with mail and greaves That s.h.i.+fted in the light to bronze and blue.

These dreams, said he, were born of fragrance falling From trees he loved, the scent of musk recalling, With power beyond all power of things beholden Or things reheard, those days when elves of dusk Came, veiled the wings of evening feathered golden, And closed him in from all but willow musk.

And then a child beneath a silver sallow- A child who loved the swans, the moorhen's 'cheep'- Angled for bream where river holes were deep- For gudgeon where the water glittered shallow, Or ate the 'fairy cheeses' of the mallow, And wild fruits gathered where the wavelets creep Round that loved church whose shadow seems to sleep In love upon the stream and bless and hallow; And then a child to whom the water-fairies Sent fish to 'bite' from Avon's holes and shelves, A child to whom, from richest honey-dairies, The flower-sprites sent the bees and 'suns.h.i.+ne elves'; Then, in the s.h.i.+fting vision's sweet vagaries, He saw two lovers walking by themselves-

Walking beneath the trees, where drops of rain Wove crowns of sunlit opal to decoy Young love from home; and one, the happy boy, Knew all the thoughts of birds in every strain- Knew why the cushat breaks his fond refrain By sudden silence, 'lest his plaint should cloy'- Knew when the skylark's changing note of joy Saith, 'Now will I return to earth again'- Knew every warning of the blackbird's shriek, And every promise of his joyful song- Knew what the magpie's chuckle fain would speak; And, when a silent cuckoo flew along, Bearing an egg in her felonious beak, Knew every nest threatened with grievous wrong.

He heard her say, 'The birds attest our troth!'

Hark to the mavis, Will, in yonder may Fringing the sward, where many a hawthorn spray Round summer's royal field of golden cloth s.h.i.+nes o'er the b.u.t.tercups like snowy froth, And that sweet skylark on his azure way, And that wise cuckoo, hark to what they say: 'We birds of Avon heard and bless you both.'

And, Will, the sunrise, flus.h.i.+ng with its glory, River and church, grows rosier with our story!

This breeze of morn, sweetheart, which moves caressing, Hath told the flowers; they wake to lovelier growth!

They breathe-o'er mead and stream they breathe-the blessing.

'We flowers of Avon heard and bless you both!'

When Mr. 'W. H.' sits down, the friend and brother of another great poet, Christopher Marlowe, who had been sitting moody and silent, oppressed by thoughts of the dead man, many of whose unfriends were at the gathering, recites these lines 'On Seeing Kit Marlowe Slain at Deptford':-

'Tis Marlowe falls! That last lunge rent asunder Our lyre of spirit and flesh, Kit Marlowe's life, Whose chords seemed strung by earth and heaven at strife, Yet ever strung to beauty above or under!

Heav'n kens of Man, but oh! the stars can blunder, If Fate's hand guided yonder villain's knife Through that rare brain, so teeming, daring, rife With dower of poets-song and love and wonder.

Or was it Chance? Shakspeare, who art supreme O'er man and men, yet sharest Marlowe's sight To pierce the clouds that hide the inhuman height Where man and men and G.o.ds and all that seem Are Nature's mutterings in her changeful dream- Come, spell the runes these b.l.o.o.d.y rivulets write!

After they have all drunk in silence to the memory of Marlowe, Marlowe's friend speaks:-

Where'er thou art, 'dead Shepherd,' look on me; The boy who loved thee loves more dearly now, He sees thine eyes in yonder holly-bough; Oh, Kit, my Kit, the Mermaid drinks to thee!

Then Raleigh rises, and the great business of the evening begins with the following splendid chorus:-

RALEIGH

(Turning to David Gwynn)

Wherever billows foam The Briton fights at home: His hearth is built of water-

CHORUS

Water blue and green;

RALEIGH

There's never a wave of ocean The wind can set in motion That shall not own our England-

CHORUS

Own our England queen. {427}

RALEIGH

The guest I bring to-night Had many a goodly fight On seas the Don hath found-

CHORUS