Theodore Watts-Dunton Part 22

Who loves a G.o.d should be of G.o.dlike mould.

Then spake my heart, rebuking Sorrow's shame: 'So great he was, striving in simple strife With Art alone to lend all beauty life- So true to Truth he was, whatever came- So fierce against the false when lies were rife- That love o'erleapt the golden fence of Fame.'

By the invitation of the present Lord Tennyson, Mr. Watts-Dunton was one of the few friends of the poet, including Jowett, F. W. H. Myers, F. T.

Palgrave, the late Duke of Argyll, and others, who contributed reminiscences of him to the 'Life.' In a few sentences he paints this masterly little miniature of Tennyson, ent.i.tled, 'Impressions: 18831892'

{291}:-

"All are agreed that D. G. Rossetti's was a peculiarly winning personality, but no one has been in the least able to say why.

Nothing is easier, however, than to find the charm of Tennyson. It lay in a great veracity of soul: it lay in a simple single-mindedness, so childlike that, unless you had known him to be the undoubted author of poems as marvellous for exquisite art as for inspiration, you could not have supposed but that all subtleties-even those of poetic art-must be foreign to a nature so simple.

Working in a language like ours-a language which has to be moulded into harmony by a myriad subtleties of art-how can this great, inspired, simple nature be the delicate-fingered artist of 'The Princess,' 'The Palace of Art,' 'The Day-Dream,' and 'The Dream of Fair Women'?

Tennyson knew of but one justification for the thing he said-viz.

that it was the thing he thought. Behind his uncompromising directness was apparent a n.o.ble and a splendid courtesy of the grand old type. As he stood at the porch of Aldworth meeting a guest or bidding him good-bye-as he stood there, tall far beyond the height of average men, his skin showing dark and tanned by the sun and wind-as he stood there, no one could mistake him for anything but a great forthright English gentleman. Always a man of an extraordinary beauty of presence, he showed up to the last the beauty of old age to a degree rarely seen. He was the most hospitable of men. It was very rare indeed for him to part from a guest without urging him to return, and generally with the words, 'Come whenever you like.'

Tennyson's knowledge of nature-nature in every aspect-was simply astonis.h.i.+ng. His pa.s.sion for 'stargazing' has often been commented upon by readers of his poetry. Since Dante, no poet in any land has so loved the stars. He had an equal delight in watching the lightning; and I remember being at Aldworth once during a thunderstorm, when I was alarmed at the temerity with which he persisted, in spite of all remonstrances, in gazing at the blinding lightning. For moonlight effects he had a pa.s.sion equally strong, and it is especially pathetic to those who know this to remember that he pa.s.sed away in the light he so much loved-in a room where there was no artificial light-nothing to quicken the darkness but the light of the full moon, which somehow seems to s.h.i.+ne more brightly at Aldworth than anywhere else in England.

In a country having a composite language such as ours it may be affirmed with special emphasis that there are two kinds of poetry: one appealing to the uncultivated ma.s.ses, the other appealing to the few who are sensitive to the felicitous expression of deep thought and to the true beauties of poetic art.

Of all poets Shakespeare is the most popular, and yet in his use of what Dante calls the 'sieve for n.o.ble words' his skill transcends that of even Milton, Coleridge, Sh.e.l.ley, and Keats. His felicities of thought and of diction in the great pa.s.sages seem little short of miraculous, and there are so many that it is easy to understand why he is so often spoken of as being a kind of inspired improvisatore.

That he was not an improvisatore, however, any one can see who will take the trouble to compare the first edition of 'Romeo and Juliet'

with the received text, the first sketch of 'The Merry Wives of Windsor' with the play as we now have it, and the 'Hamlet' of 1603 with the 'Hamlet' of 1604, and with the still further varied version of the play given by Heminge and Condell in the Folio of 1623. Next to Shakespeare in this great power of combining the forces of the two great cla.s.ses of English poets, appealing both to the commonplace public and to the artistic sense of the few, stands, perhaps, Chaucer; but since Shakespeare's time no one has met with anything like Tennyson's success in effecting a reconciliation between popular and artistic sympathy with poetry in England."

Chapter XVIII AMERICAN FRIENDS: LOWELL, BRET HARTE, AND OTHERS

I feel that my hasty notes about Mr. Watts-Dunton's literary friends.h.i.+ps would be incomplete without a word or two upon his American friends.

There is a great deal of interest in the story of the first meeting between him and James Russell Lowell. Shortly after Lowell had accepted the post of American Minister in England, Mr. Watts-Dunton met him at dinner. During the dinner Mr. Watts-Dunton was somewhat attracted by the conversation of a gentleman who sat next to him but one. He observed that the gentleman seemed to talk as if he wished to entice him into the conversation. The gentleman was pa.s.sing severe strictures upon English writers-d.i.c.kens, Thackeray, and others. As the dinner wore on, his conversation left literary names and took up political ones, and he was equally severe upon the prominent political figures of the time, and also upon the prominent political men of the previous generation-Palmerston, Lord John Russell, and the like. Then the name of the Alabama came up; the gentleman (whom Mr. Watts-Dunton now discovered to be an American), dwelt with much emphasis upon the iniquity of England in letting the Alabama escape. This diatribe he concluded thus: 'You know we owe England nothing.' In saying this he again looked at Mr. Watts-Dunton, manifestly addressing his remarks to him.

These attacks upon England and Englishmen and everything English had at last irritated Mr. Watts-Dunton, and addressing the gentleman for the first time, he said: "Pardon me, sir, but there you are wrong. You owe England a very great deal, for I see you are an American."

"What do we owe England?" said the gentleman, whom Mr. Watts-Dunton now began to realize was no other than the newly appointed American Minister.

"You owe England," he said, "for an infinity of good feeling which you are trying to show is quite unreciprocated by Americans. So kind is the feeling of English people towards Americans that socially, so far as the middle cla.s.ses are concerned, they have an immense advantage over English people themselves. They are petted and made much of, until at last it has come to this, that the very fact of a person's being American is a letter of introduction."

Mr. Watts-Dunton spoke with such emphasis, and his voice is so penetrating, that those on the opposite side of the table began to pause in their conversation to listen to it, and this stopped the little duel between the two. After the ladies had retired, Mr. Lowell drew up his chair to Mr. Watts-Dunton and said:

"You were very sharp upon me just now, sir."

"Not in the least," said Mr. Watts-Dunton. "You were making an onslaught on my poor little island, and you really seemed as though you were addressing your conversation to me."

"Well," replied Mr. Lowell, "I will confess that I did address my conversation partially to you; you are, I think, Mr. Theodore Watts."

"That is my little name," said Mr. Watts-Dunton. "But I really don't see why that should induce you to address your conversation to me. I suppose it is because absurd paragraphs have often appeared in the American newspapers stating that I am strongly anti-American in my sympathies. An entire mistake! I have several charming American friends, and I am a great admirer of many of your most eminent writers. But I notice that whensoever an American book is severely handled in the 'Athenaeum,' the article is attributed to me."

"I do not think," said Mr. Lowell, "that you are a lover of my country, but I am not one of those who attribute to you articles that you never wrote."

And he then drew his chair nearer to his interlocutor, and became more confidential.

"Well," he said, "I will tell you something that, I think, will not be altogether unpleasant to you. When I came to take up my permanent residence in London a short time ago, I was talking to a friend of mine about London and Londoners, and I said to him: 'There is one man whom I very much want to meet.' 'You!' said he, 'why, you can meet anybody from the royal family downwards. Who is the man you want to meet?' 'It is a man in the literary world,' said I, 'and I have no doubt you can introduce me to him. It is the writer of the chief poetical criticism in the "Athenaeum."' My friend laughed. 'Well, it is curious,' he replied: 'that is one of the few men in the literary world I cannot introduce you to. I scarcely know him, and, besides, not long ago he pa.s.sed strictures on my writing which I don't much approve of.' Does that interest you?"

added Mr. Lowell.

"Very much," said Mr. Watts-Dunton.

"Would it interest you to know that ever since your first article in the 'Athenaeum' I have read every article you have written?"

"Very much," said Mr. Watts-Dunton.

"Would it interest you to know that on reading your first article I said to a friend of mine: 'At last there is a new voice in English criticism?'"

"Very much," said Mr. Watts-Dunton. "But you must first tell me what that article was, for I don't believe there is one of my countrymen who could do so."

"That article," said Lowell, "was an essay upon the 'Comedy of the Noctes Ambrosianae,' and it opened with an Oriental anecdote."

"Well," said Mr. Watts-Dunton, "that does interest me very much."

"And I will go further," said Lowell: "every line you have written in the 'Athenaeum' has been read by me, and often re-read."

"Well," said Mr. Watts-Dunton, "I confess to being amazed, for I a.s.sure you that in my own country, except within a narrow circle of friends, my name is absolutely unknown. And I must add that I feel honoured, for it is not a week since I told a friend that I have a great admiration for some of your critical essays. But still, I don't quite forgive you for your onslaught upon my poor little island! My sympathies are not strongly John Bullish, and they tell me that my verses are more Celtic than Anglo-Saxon in temper. But I am somewhat of a patriot, in my way, and I don't quite forgive you."

The meeting ended in the two men fraternizing with each other.

"Won't you come to see me," said Lowell, "at the Emba.s.sy?"

"I don't know where it is."

"Then you ought to know!" said Lowell. "Another proof of the stout sufficiency of the English temper-not to know where the American Emba.s.sy is! It is in Lowndes Square." Then he named the number.

"Why," said Mr. Watts-Dunton, "that is next door to Miss Swinburne, aunt of the poet, a perfectly marvellous lady, possessing the vitality of the Swinburne family-a lady who makes watercolour landscape drawings in the open air at I don't know what age of life-something like eighty. She was a friend of Turner's, and is the possessor of some of Turner's finest works."

"So you actually go next door, and don't know where the American Emba.s.sy is! A crowning proof of the insolent self-sufficiency of the English temper! However, as you come next door, won't you come and see me?"

"I shall be delighted," said Mr. Watts-Dunton; "but I am perfectly sure you can spare no time to see an obscure literary man."

"On the contrary," said Lowell, "I always reserve to myself an hour, from five to six, when I see n.o.body but a friend over a cigarette."

Some time after this Mr. Watts-Dunton did call on Lowell, and spent an hour with him over a cigarette; and at last it became an inst.i.tution, this hour over a cigarette once a week.

This went on for a long time, and Mr. Watts-Dunton is fond of recalling the way in which Lowell's Anglophobia became milder and milder, 'fine by degrees and beautifully less,' until at last it entirely vanished. Then it was followed by something like Anglo-mania. Lowell began to talk with the greatest appreciation of a thousand English inst.i.tutions and ways which he would formerly have deprecated. The climax of this revolution was reached when Mr. Watts-Dunton said to him:

"Lowell, you are now so much more of a John Bull than I am that I have ceased to be able to follow you. The English ladies are-let us say, charming; English gentlemen are-let us say, charming, or at least some of them. Everything is charming! But there is one thing you cannot say a word for, and that is our detestable climate."

"And you can really speak thus of the finest climate in the world!" said Lowell. "I positively cannot live out of it."

"Well," said Mr. Watts-Dunton, "you and I will cease to talk about England and John Bull, if you please. I cannot follow you."