Theodore Watts-Dunton Part 23

In relating this anecdote Mr. Watts-Dunton, however, insisted that with all his love of England, Lowell never bated one jot of his loyalty to his own country. There never was a stauncher American than James Russell Lowell. Let one unjust word be said about America, and he was a changed man. Mr. Watts-Dunton has always contended that the present good feeling between the two great branches of the Anglo-Saxon race was due mainly to Lowell. Indeed, he expressed this conviction in one of his finest sonnets. It appeared in the 'Athenaeum' after Lowell's death, and it has been frequently reprinted in the United States. It now appears in 'The Coming of Love.' It was addressed 'To Britain and America: On the Death of James Russell Lowell,'

Ye twain who long forgot your brotherhood And those far fountains whence, through glorious years, Your fathers drew, for Freedom's pioneers, Your English speech, your dower of English blood- Ye ask to-day, in sorrow's holiest mood, When all save love seems film-ye ask in tears- 'How shall we honour him whose name endears The footprints where beloved Lowell stood?'

Your hands he joined-those fratricidal hands, Once trembling, each, to seize a brother's throat: How shall ye honour him whose spirit stands Between you still?-Keep Love's bright sails afloat For Lowell's sake, where once ye strove and smote On waves that must unite, not part, your strands.

This perhaps is the place to say a word about Mr. Watts-Dunton's feelings towards America, which were once supposed to be hostile. Apart from his intimacy with Lowell, he numbered among his American friends Clarence Stedman, Mrs. Moulton (between whom and himself there has been the most cordial intimacy during twenty-five years), Bret Harte, Edwin Abbey, Joaquin Miller, Colonel Higginson, and, indeed, many prominent Americans.

Between Whistler and himself there was an intimacy so close that during several years they saw each other nearly every day. That was before Whistler's genius had received full recognition. I may recall that during a certain controversy concerning Whistler's animosity against the Royal Academy the following letter from Mr. Watts-Dunton appeared in the 'Times' of August 12, 1903:-

"In the 'Times' of to-day Mr. G. D. Leslie, R.A., says: 'I was on friendly terms with Whistler for nearly forty years, and I never heard him at any time testify animosity against the Academy or its members.'

My own acquaintance with Whistler did not extend over forty years, but for about ten years I was very intimate with him, so intimate that during part of this period we met almost every day. Indeed, at one time we were jointly engaged on a weekly periodical called 'Piccadilly,' for which Du Maurier designed the cover, and for which Whistler furnished his very first lithographs, by the valuable aid of Mr. T. Way. During that time there were not many days when he failed to 'testify animosity' against the Academy and its members. To say the truth, the testifications on this subject by 'Jimmy,' as he was then called, were a little afflictive to his friends. Whether he was right or wrong in the matter is a point on which I feel unqualified to express an opinion.

May I be allowed to conclude this note by expressing my admiration of your New York Correspondent's amazingly vivid portrait of one of the most vivid personalities of our time? It is a masterpiece... . "

When Bret Harte died, in May 1902, one of the best and most appreciative estimates of him was written by Mr. Watts-Dunton for the 'Athenaeum.' I am tempted to quote it nearly in full, as it shows deep sympathy with American literature, and it will prove more conclusively than any words of mine how warm are Mr. Watts-Dunton's feelings towards Americans:-

"As a personality Bret Harte seems to have exercised a great charm over his intimate friends, and I am not in the least surprised at his being a favourite. It is many years since I last saw him. I think it must have been at a club dinner given by William Black; but I have a very vivid remembrance of my first meeting him, which must have been more than twenty-six years ago, and on that occasion it occurred to me that he had great latent histrionic gifts, and, like Charles d.i.c.kens, might have been an admirable actor. On that account the following incident is worth recording. A friend of mine, an American poet, who at that time was living in London, brought him to my chambers, and did me the honour of introducing me to him. Bret Harte had read something about the London music-halls, and proposed that we should all three take a drive round the town and see something of them. At that time these places took a very different position in public estimation from what they appear to be doing now. People then considered them to be very c.o.c.kney, very vulgar, and very inane, as, indeed, they were, and were shy about going to them. I hope they have improved now, for they seem to have become quite fas.h.i.+onable.

Our first visit was to the Holborn Music Hall, and there we heard one or two songs that gave the audience immense delight-some comic, some more comic from being sentimental-maudlin. And we saw one or two shapeless women in tights. Then we went to the 'Oxford,' and saw something on exactly the same lines. In fact, the performers seemed to be the same as those we had just been seeing. Then we went to other places of the same kind, and Bret Harte agreed with me as to the distressing emptiness of what my fellow-countrymen and women seemed to be finding so amusing. At that time, indeed, the almost only interesting entertainment outside the opera and the theatres was that at Evans's supper-rooms, where, under the auspices of the famous Paddy Green, one could enjoy a Welsh rarebit while listening to the 'Chough and Crow' and 'The Men of Harlech,' given admirably by choir-boys. Years pa.s.sed before I saw Bret Harte again. I met him at a little breakfast party, and he amused those who sat near him by giving an account of what he had seen at the music-halls-an account so graphic that I think a fine actor was lost in him. He not only vivified every incident, but gave verbal descriptions of every performer in a peculiarly quiet way that added immensely to the humour of it. His style of acting would have been that of Jefferson of 'Rip Van Winkle' fame. This proved to me what a genius he had for accurate observation, and also what a remarkable memory for the details of a scene. His death has touched English people very deeply.

It is easy to be unjust to Bret Harte-easy to say that he was a disciple of d.i.c.kens-easy to say that in richness, ma.s.siveness, and variety he fell far short of his great and beloved master. No one was so ready to say all this and more about Bret Harte as Bret Harte himself. For of all the writers of his time he was perhaps the most modest, the most un.o.btrusive, the most anxious to give honour where he believed honour to be due.

But the comparison between the English and American story-tellers must not be pushed too far to the disadvantage of the latter. If d.i.c.kens showed great superiority to Bret Harte on one side of the imaginative writer's equipment, there were, I must think, other sides of that equipment on which the superiority was Bret Harte's.

Therefore I am not one of those who think that in a court of universal criticism Bret Harte's reputation will be found to be of the usual ephemeral kind. It is, of course, impossible to speak on such matters with anything like confidence. But it does seem to me that Bret Harte's reputation is more likely than is generally supposed to ripen into what we call fame. For in his short stories-in the best of them, at least-there is a certain note quite indescribable by any adjective-a note which is, I believe, always to be felt in the literature that survives. The charge of not being original is far too frequently brought against the imaginative writers of America. What do we mean by 'originality'? Scott did not invent the historic method. d.i.c.kens simply carried the method of Smollett further, and with wider range. Thackeray is admittedly the nineteenth century Fielding. Perhaps, indeed, there is but one absolutely original writer of prose fiction of the nineteenth century-Nathaniel Hawthorne. By original I mean simply original. I do not mean that he was the greatest imaginative writer of his epoch.

But he invented a new kind of fiction altogether, a fiction in which the material world and the spiritual world were not merely brought into touch, but were positively intermingled one with the other.

Bret Harte had the great good fortune to light upon material for literary treatment of a peculiarly fresh and a peculiarly fascinating kind, and he had the artistic instinct to treat it adequately. This is what I mean: in the wonderful history of the nineteenth century there are no more picturesque figures than those goldseekers-those 'Argonauts' of the Pacific slope-who in 1848 and 1849 showed the world what grit lies latent in the racial amalgam we agree to call 'the Anglo-Saxon race.' The Australian gold-diggers of 1851 who followed them, although they were picturesque and st.u.r.dy too, were not exactly of the strain of the original Argonauts. The romance of the thing had been in some degree worn away. The land of the Golden Fleece had degenerated into a Tom Tiddler's Ground. Moreover, the Tom Tiddler's Grounds of Ballarat and Bendigo were at a comparatively easy distance from the Antipodean centre of civilization. 'Canvas Town' could easily be reached from Sydney. But to reach the Golden Fleece sought by the original Californian Argonauts the adventurer had before him a journey of an almost unparalleled kind. Every Argonaut, indeed, was a kind of explorer as well as seeker of gold.

He must either trek overland-that is to say, over those vast prairies and then over those vast mountain chains which to men of the time of Fenimore Cooper and Dr. Bird made up the limitless 'far West' regions which only a few pioneers had dared to cross-or else he must take a journey, equally perilous, round Cape Horn in the first crazy vessel in which he could get a pa.s.sage. It follows that for an adventurer to succeed in reaching the land of the Golden Fleece at all implied in itself that grit which adventurers of the Anglo-Saxon type are generally supposed to show in a special degree. What kind of men these Argonauts were, and what kind of life they led, the people of the Eastern states of America and the people of England had for years been trying to gather from newspaper reports and other sources; but had it not been for the genius of Bret Harte this most picturesque chapter of nineteenth-century history would have been obliterated and forgotten. Thanks to the admirable American writer whom England had the honour and privilege of entertaining for so many years, those wonderful regions and those wonderful doings in the Sierra Nevada are as familiar to us as is d.i.c.kens's London. Surely those who talk of Bret Harte as being 'd.i.c.kens among the Californian pines' do not consider what their words imply. It is true, no doubt, that there was a kind of kins.h.i.+p between the temperament of d.i.c.kens and the temperament of Bret Harte. They both held the same principles of imaginative art, they both felt that the function of the artist is to aid in the emanc.i.p.ation of man by holding before him beautiful ideals; both felt that to give him any kind of so-called realism which lowers man in his aspirations-which calls before man's imagination degrading pictures of his 'animal origin'-is to do him a disservice. For man has still a long journey before he reaches the goal. Yet though they were both by instinct idealists as regards character-drawing, they both sought to give their ideals a local habitation and a name by surrounding those ideals with vividly painted real accessories, as real as those of the ugliest realist.

With regard to Bret Harte's Argonauts and the romantic scenery in which they lived and worked, it would, no doubt, be a bold thing to say whether d.i.c.kens could or could not have painted them, and whether, if he had painted them, the pictures would or would not have been as good as Bret Harte's pictures. But d.i.c.kens never did paint these Argonauts; he never had the chance of painting them. Bret Harte did paint them, and succeeded as wonderfully as d.i.c.kens succeeded in painting certain cla.s.ses of London life. Now, a.s.suredly, I should have never dreamt of inst.i.tuting a comparison of this kind between two of the most delightful writers and the most delightful men that have lived in my time had not critics been doing so to the disparagement of one of them. But if one of these writers must be set up against another, I feel that something should be said upon the other side of the question-I feel that something should be said on those points where the American had the advantage. Take the question of atmosphere, for instance. Let us not forget how enormously important is atmosphere in any imaginative picture of life. Without going so far as to say that atmosphere is as important, or nearly as important, as character, let me ask, What was it that captured the readers of 'Robinson Crusoe'? Was it the character of Defoe's hero, or was it the scenery and the atmosphere in which he placed him? Again, see what an important part scenery and atmosphere played in 'The Lay of the Last Minstrel,' in 'The Lady of the Lake,' in 'Marmion,' and in 'Waverley.' And surely it was the atmosphere of Byron's 'Giaour,' 'The Bride of Abydos,' and 'The Corsair,' that mainly gave these poems their vogue. And, in a certain sense, it may be said that d.i.c.kens gave to his readers a new atmosphere, for he was the first to explore what was something new to the reading world-the great surging low-life of London and the life of the lower stratum of its middle cla.s.s. It seems that the pure novelist of manners only can dispense with a new and picturesque atmosphere. It was natural for England to look to American writers to enrich English literature with a new imaginative atmosphere, and she did not look in vain. But, notwithstanding all that had been done by writers like Brockden Brown, Fenimore Cooper, Dr. Bird, and others to bring American atmosphere into literature, Bret Harte gave us an atmosphere that was American and yet as new as though the above-mentioned writers had never written. He had the advantage of depicting a scenery that was as unlike the backwoods of his predecessors as it was unlike everything else in the world. It is doubtful whether there is any scenery in the world so fascinating as the mountain ranges of the Pacific side of the United States and Canada.

Every one is born with an instinct for loving some particular kind of scenery, and this bias has not so much to do with the birth-environment as is generally supposed. It would have been of no avail for Bret Harte to be familiar with the mighty canons, peaks, and cataracts of the Nevada regions unless he had had a natural genius for loving and depicting them; and this, undoubtedly, he had, as we see by the effect upon us of his descriptions. Once read, his pictures are never forgotten. But it was not merely that the scenery and atmosphere of Bret Harte's stories are new-the point is that the social mechanism in which his characters move is also new. And if it cannot be denied that in temperament his characters are allied to the characters of d.i.c.kens, we must not make too much of this.

Notwithstanding all the freshness and newness of d.i.c.kens's characters they were entirely the slaves of English sanctions. Those incongruities which gave them their humourous side arose from their contradicting the English social sanctions around them. But in Bret Harte's Argonauts we get characters that move entirely outside those sanctions of civilization with which the reader is familiar. And this is why the violent contrasts in his stories seem, somehow, to be better authenticated than do the equally violent contrasts in d.i.c.kens's stories. Bret Harte's characters are amenable to no laws except the improvised laws of the camp; and the final arbiter is either the six-shooter or the rope of Judge Lynch. And yet underlying this apparent lawlessness there is that deep 'law-abidingness' which the late Grant Allen despised as being 'the Anglo-Saxon characteristic.' To my mind, indeed, there is nothing so new, fresh, and piquant in the fiction of my time as Bret Harte's pictures of the mixed race we call Anglo-Saxon finding itself right outside all the old sanctions, exercising nevertheless its own peculiar instinct for law-abidingness of a kind.

We get the Anglo-Saxon beginning life anew far removed from the old sanctions of civilization, retaining of necessity a good deal of that natural liberty which, according to Blackstone, was surrendered by the first human compact in order to secure its subst.i.tute, civil liberty. We get vivid pictures of the racial qualities which enable the Anglo-Saxon to plant his roots and flourish in almost every square mile of the New World that lies in the temperate zone. Let a group of this great race of universal squatters be the dwellers in Roaring Camp, or a party of whalers in New Zealand when it is a 'no man's land,' or even a gang of mutineers from the Bounty, it is all one as regards their methods as squatters. The moment that the mutineers set foot on Pitcairn Island they improvise a code of laws something like the camp laws of Bret Harte's Argonauts, and the code on the whole works well.

Therefore I think that, apart altogether from the literary excellence of the presentation, Bret Harte's pictures of the Anglo-Saxon in these conditions will, even as doc.u.ments, pa.s.s into literature. And again, year by year, as nature is being more and more studied, are what I may call the open-air qualities of literature being more sought after. This accounts in a large measure for the growing interest in a writer once strangely neglected, George Borrow; and if there should be any diminution in the great and deserved vogue of d.i.c.kens, it will be because he is not strong in open-air qualities.

Bret Harte's stories give the reader a sense of the open air second only to Borrow's own pictures. And if I am right in thinking that the love of nature and the love of open-air life are growing, this also will secure a place in the future for Bret Harte.

And now what about his power of creating new characters-not characters of the soil merely, but dramatic characters? Well, here one cannot speak with quite so much confidence on behalf of Bret Harte; and here he showed his great inferiority to d.i.c.kens. d.i.c.kens, of course, used a larger canvas-gave himself more room to depict his subjects.

If Bret Harte's scenes and characters seem somewhat artificial, may it not be often accounted for by the fact that he wrote short stories and not long novels? For it is very difficult in a short story to secure the freedom and flexibility of movement which belong to nature-the last perfection of imaginative art.

All artistic imitations of nature, of course, consist of selection.

In actual life we form our own picture of a character not by having the traits selected for us and presented to us in a salient way, as in art, but by selecting in a semi-conscious way for ourselves from the great ma.s.s of characteristics presented to us by nature. The shorter the story, the more economic must be its methods, and hence the more rigid must its selection of characteristics be; and this, of course, is apt to give an air of artificiality to a short story from which a long novel may be free."

Chapter XIX WALES

[Picture: Ogwen and the Glyders from Carnedd Dafydd]

IT is impossible within the s.p.a.ce at my command to follow Mr.

Watts-Dunton into Wales, or through those Continental journeys described by Dr. Hake in 'The New Day.' I can best show the impression that Alpine scenery made upon him by quoting further on the end of 'The Coming of Love.' But with regard to Wales, it seems necessary that a word or two should be said, for it is a fact that the Welsh nation has accepted 'Aylwin' as the representative Welsh novel. And this is not surprising, because, as many Welsh writers have averred, Mr. Watts-Dunton's pa.s.sionate sympathy for Wales is as sincere as though he had been born upon her soil. The 'Arvon' edition is thus dedicated:-

"To Ernest Rhys, poet and romancist, and my very dear friend, this edition of 'Aylwin' is affectionately inscribed.

It was as far back as those summer days when you used to read the proofs of 'Aylwin'-used to read them in the beautiful land the story endeavours to depict-that the wish came to me to inscribe it to you, whose paraphrases of 'The Lament of Llywarch Hen,' 'The Lament of Urien,' and 'The Song of the Graves' have so entirely caught the old music of Kymric romance.

When I described my Welsh heroine as showing that 'love of the wind'

which is such a fascinating characteristic of the Snowdonian girls I had only to recall that poetic triumph, your paraphrase of Taliesin's 'Song of the Wind'-

Oh, most beautiful One!

In the wood and in the mead, How he fares in his speed!

And over the land, Without foot, without hand, Without fear of old age, Or Destiny's rage.

His banner he flings O'er the earth as he springs On his way, but unseen Are its folds; and his mien, Rough or fair, is not shown, And his face is unknown.

Had I antic.i.p.ated that 'Aylwin' would achieve a great success among the very people for whom I wrote it, I should without hesitation have asked you to accept the dedication at that time. But I felt that it would seem like endeavouring to take a worldly advantage of your friends.h.i.+p to ask your permission to do this-to ask you to stand literary sponsor, as it were, to a story depicting Wales and the great Kymric race with which the name of Rhys is so memorably and so grandly a.s.sociated. For although my heart had the true 'Kymric beat'-if love of Wales may be taken as an indication of that 'beat'-the privilege of having been born on the sacred soil of the Druids could not be claimed by me, and I feared that in the vital presentation of that organic detail, which is the first requisite in all true imaginative art, I might in some degree be found wanting.

You yourself always prophesied, I remember, that 'Aylwin' would win the hearts of your countrymen and countrywomen; but I knew your generous nature; I knew also if I may say it, your affection for me.

How could I then help feeling that the kind wish was father to the kind thought?

But now that your prophecies have come true, now that there is, if I am to accept the words of another Welsh writer, 'scarcely any home in Wales where a well-thumbed copy of "Aylwin" is not to be found,' and now that thousands of Welsh women and Welsh girls have read, and, as I know by letters from strangers, have smiled and wept over the story of their countrywoman, Winifred Wynne, I feel that the time has come when I may look for the pleasure of a.s.sociating your name with the book.

[Picture: Moel Siabod and the River Lledr]

Sometimes I have been asked whether Winifred Wynne is not an idealised Welsh girl; but never by you, who know the characteristics of the race to which you belong-know it far too well to dream of asking that question. There are not many people, I think, who know the Kymric race so intimately as I do; and I have said on a previous occasion what I fully meant and mean, that, although I have seen a good deal of the races of Europe, I put the Kymric race in many ways at the top of them all. They combine, as I think, the poetry, the music, the instinctive love of the fine arts, and the humour of the other Celtic peoples with the practicalness and bright-eyed sagacity of the very different race to which they are so closely linked by circ.u.mstance-the race whom it is the fas.h.i.+on to call the Anglo-Saxon.

And as to the charm of the Welsh girls, no one who knows them as you and I do can fail to be struck by it continually. Winifred Wynne I meant to be the typical Welsh girl as I have found her-affectionate, warm-hearted, self-sacrificing, and brave. And I only wish that my power to do justice to her and to the country that gave her birth had been more adequate. There are, however, writers now among you whose pictures of Welsh scenery and Welsh life can hold their own with almost anything in contemporary fiction; and to them I look for better work than mine in the same rich field. Although I am familiar with the Alps and the other mountain ranges of Europe, in their wildest and most beautiful recesses, no hill scenery has for me the peculiar witchery of that around Eryri. And what race in Europe has a history so poetic, so romantic, and so pathetic as yours? That such a country, so beautiful in every aspect, and surrounded by such an atmosphere of poetry, will soon give birth to its Walter Scott is with me a matter of fervid faith."

As to the descriptions of North Wales in 'Aylwin,' they are now almost cla.s.sic; especially the descriptions of the Swallow Falls and the Fairy Glen. Long before 'Aylwin' was published, Welsh readers had been delighted with the 'Athenaeum' article containing the description of Mr.

Watts-Dunton and Sinfi Lovell walking up the Capel Curig side of Snowdon at break of day.

Fine as is that description of a morning on Snowdon, it is not finer than the description of a Snowdon sunset, which forms the n.o.bly symbolic conclusion of 'Aylwin':-

"We were now at the famous spot where the triple echo is best heard, and we began to shout like two children in the direction of Llyn Ddu'r Arddu. And then our talk naturally fell on Knockers' Llyn and the echoes to be heard there. She then took me to another famous sight on this side of Snowdon, the enormous stone, said to be five thousand tons in weight, called the Knockers' Anvil. While we lingered here Winnie gave me as many-anecdotes and legends of this stone as would fill a little volume. But suddenly she stopped.

'Look!' she said, pointing to the sunset. 'I have seen that sight only once before. I was with Sinfi. She called it "The Dukkeripen of the Trushul."'

The sun was now on the point of sinking, and his radiance, falling on the cloud-pageantry of the zenith, fired the flakes and vapoury films floating and trailing above, turning them at first into a ruby-coloured ma.s.s, and then into an ocean of rosy fire. A horizontal bar of cloud which, until the radiance of the sunset fell upon it, had been dull and dark and grey, as though a long slip from the slate quarries had been laid across the west, became for a moment a deep lavender colour, and then purple, and then red-gold. But what Winnie was pointing at was a dazzling shaft of quivering fire where the sun had now sunk behind the horizon. Shooting up from the cliffs where the sun had disappeared, this shaft intersected the bar of clouds and seemed to make an irregular cross of deep rose."

It is no wonder, therefore, that the path Henry Aylwin and Sinfi Lovell took on the morning when the search for Winifred began was a source of speculation, notably in 'Notes and Queries.' Mr. Watts-Dunton deals with this point in the preface to the twenty-second edition:-