Chapter 40

Life's ocean, breaking round thy senses' shore, Struck golden song, as from the strand of Day: For us the joy, for thee the fell foe lay-- Pain's blinking snake around the fair isle's core, Turning to sighs the enchanted sounds that play Around thy lovely island evermore.

Certain remarks that have been made upon the character of _D'Arcy_ in _Aylwin_ have rendered it an imperative--nay, a sacred--duty for the author to seize an opportunity that may never occur again of saying here a few words upon the subject.

It is universally acknowledged that characters in fiction are not creations projected from the author's inner consciousness, but are founded more or less upon characters that he was brought into contact with in real life.

Mr. A. C. Benson, in his monograph on D. G. Rossetti, in _English Men of Letters_, says, 'It was for a long time hoped that Mr. Watts-Dunton would give the memoir of his great friend to the world, but there is such a thing as knowing a man too well to be his biographer. It is, however, an open secret that a vivid sketch of Rossetti's personality has been given to the world in Mr. Watts-Dunton's well-known romance _Aylwin_, where the artist D'Arcy is drawn from Rossetti.'

Since the appearance of these words many people who take an increasing interest in the most mysterious and romantic figure in the artistic world of the mid-Victorian period, have urged the author to tell them whether the portrait of Rossetti in _Aylwin_ is a true one, or whether it is not idealized as certain cynical critics have affirmed. Nothing but the dread of being charged with egotism has prevented the author's stating publicly, and once for all, that the portrait of Rossetti in _Aylwin_ showing him to be the creature of varying moods, gay and even frolicsome at one moment, profoundly meditative at the next, deeply dejected at the next, but always the most winsome of men, is true to the life. It is more than hinted in the story that _D'Arcy's_ melancholy was the result of the loss of one he deeply loved. From such a loss it was that Rossetti's melancholy moods resulted. There are documentary evidences of the verisimilitude of the picture in every respect. Let one be given out of many. There exists a pathetic record that has never yet been published, by one who knew Rossetti--knew him with special intimacy--the poet Swinburne--depicting the great tragedy which darkened Rossetti's life--the loss of his wife.

It gives the only authorized account of that tragedy--a tragedy which ever since the publication of William Bell Scott's _Autobiographical Notes_ has been so grievously misunderstood and misrepresented. In this narrative Swinburne tells how, when first introduced to Rossetti, he himself was an Oxford undergraduate of twenty. He records how he and Rossetti had lived on terms of affectionate intimacy: shaped and coloured on Rossetti's side by the cordial kindness and exuberant generosity which, to the last, distinguished his recognition of younger men's efforts: on his (Swinburne's) part by gratitude as loyal and admiration as fervent as ever strove and ever failed to express 'all the sweet and sudden passion of youth towards greatness in its elder.' He records how, during that year, he had come to know, and to regard with little less than a brother's affection, the noble lady whom Rossetti had recently married. He records how on the evening of her terrible death, they all three had dined together at a restaurant which Rossetti had been accustomed to frequent. He records how next morning, on coming by appointment to sit for his portrait, he heard that she had died in the night, under circumstances which afterwards made necessary his (Swinburne's) appearance and evidence at the inquest held on her remains. He dwells upon the anguish of the widower, when next they met, under the roof of the mother with whom he had sought refuge. He records how Rossetti appealed to his friendship in the name of the dead lady's regard for him--a regard such as she had felt for no other of Rossetti's friends--to cleave to him in this time of sorrow, to come and keep house with him as soon as a residence could be found.

Can there be a more convincing and a more beautiful testimony as to a friend's sorrow and its cause?

Over and above the touching testimony of Swinburne, no one will deny that if ever one man knew another too well to be his biographer, as Mr. Benson says, the author of _Aylwin_ was that man with regard to Rossetti. No one has ever ventured to challenge the assertion in the article on Rossetti in the _Encyclopædia Britannica_ that there was a time when with the exception of his own family the poet-painter saw scarcely any one save the writer of this book, whom he was never tired of designating his friend of friends. There is no need to multiply instances of this friendship, which has been enlarged upon by Rossetti's brother, and by many others. Elizabeth Luther Gary, in the best of all the books upon Rossetti, published by G. P. Putnam's Sons two years after the first edition of _Aylwin_, speaks of _D'Arcy_ as being 'the mouthpiece of Rossetti.'

It may be added that Rossetti's _Ballads and Sonnets_, published in 1882, were dedicated to the author in these words: 'To the Friend whom my verse won for me, these few more pages are affectionately inscribed.' When he drew his last breath at Birchington it was in that friend's arms. It is necessary to dwell upon such facts as the above to show how fully equipped is the author of _Aylwin_ for understanding and depicting the great poet-painter, to whose memory he addressed the sonnet at the head of this note.

As to the personality of Rossetti, to which Mr. Benson alludes, to say that it was the one that stood out among the lives of the Victorian poets is to state the case very feebly. It has been the fortune of the delineator of D'Arcy to be thrown intimately across several of the great poets of his time, not one of whom displayed a personality so dominant as Rossetti's. Fine as is Rossetti's poetry and fine as are his paintings, they but inadequately represent the man. As to his personal fascination, among all the poets of England we have no record of anything equal to it. It asserted itself not only in relation to the pre-Raphaelite group, but in relation to all other members of society with whom he was brought into contact. To describe the magnetism of such a man is, of course, impossible. Much has been written upon what is called the _demonic_ power in certain individuals--the power of casting one's own influence over all others. Napoleon's case is generally instanced as a typical one. But Napoleon's demonic power was of a self-conscious kind. It would seem, however, that there is another kind of demonic power--the power of shedding quite unconsciously one's personality upon all brought into contact with it. The demonic power of Rossetti, like that of _D'Arcy_ in this story, was quite unconscious. In Rossetti's presence, as in _D'Arcy's_, it was impossible not to yield to this strange, mysterious power. At the time when he was not so entirely reclusive as he afterwards became, when he used to meet all sorts of people, the author had many opportunities of noticing its effect upon others. He has seen them try to resist it, and in vain. On a certain occasion a very eminent man, much used to society, and much used to the brilliant literary clubs of London, was quite cowed and silenced before Rossetti. It is necessary to dwell upon these subtle distinctions, because this is the D'Arcy who, as a critic has remarked, 'is the real protagonist of _Aylwin_--although the reader does not discover it until the very end of the story, where D'Arcy is the character who unravels and explains all.' Without D'Arcy, indeed, and the demonic power possessed by him, the story would have no existence.

It is, of course, in the illustrated editions of _Aylwin_ that D'Arcy's identification with Rossetti and his importance in the story become specially manifest. On page 204 of the illustrated editions an exact picture has been given by Rossetti's pupil, Dunn, of the famous studio at 16 Cheyne Walk--the studio which will always be associated with Rossetti's name. It has been immortalized by his friend, Dr. Gordon Hake, in the following lines addressed to the author of _Aylwin_ in the sonnet-sequence, _The New Day_:

Sitting with him, his tones as Petrarch's tender, With many a speaking vision on the wall, The fire, a-blaze, flashing the studio fender, Closed in from London shouts and ceaseless brawl-- Twas you brought Nature to the visiting, Till she herself seemed breathing in the room, And Art grew fragrant in the glow of Spring With homely scents of gorse and heather bloom. Or sunbeams shone by many an Alpine fountain, Fed by the waters of the forest stream; Or glacier-glories in the rock-girt mountain, Where they so often fed the poet's dream; Or else was mingled the rough billow's glee With cries of petrels on a sullen sea.

Again on page 393 of the same editions will be found Miss May Morris's beautiful water colour of Kelmscott Manor, the country-house jointly occupied by Rossetti and William Morris in which takes place what has been called 'the crucial scene in _Aylwin_.'

APPENDIX II

So many questions about the characters depicted in _Aylwin_ were put to the editor of _Notes and Queries_ that he suggested that a key to the novel would he found acceptable. Some weeks after this suggestion was made there appeared in that journal (7th June 1902) the following contribution by Mr. Thomas St. E. Hake, an intimate friend of Rossetti, and of other leading characters of the story. The republication of it here has been kindly sanctioned by Mr. J. C. Francis, a name so indissolubly associated both with the _Athenæum_ and _Notes and Queries_. Mr. Hake writes as follows:

Ever since the publication of _Aylwin_ I have, at various times, seen in _Notes and Queries_, the _Daily Chronicle_, the _Contemporary Review_, and other organs, inquiries as to the identification of the characters that appear in that story. And now that an inquiry comes from so remote a place as Libau in Russia, I think I may come forward and say what I know on the subject. But, of course, within the limited space that could possibly be allotted to me in _Notes and Queries_, I can only say a few words on a subject that would require many pages to treat adequately. Until _Aylwin_ appeared, Mr. Joseph Knight's monograph on Rossetti in the 'Great Writers' series was, with the sole exception of what has been written about him by his own family and by my late father, Dr. Gordon Hake, in his _Memoirs of Eighty Years_, the only account that gave the reader the least idea of the man--his fascination, his brilliance, his generosity, and his whimsical qualities. But in _Aylwin_ Rossetti lives as I knew him; it is impossible to imagine a more living picture of the man. I have stayed with Rossetti at 16 Cheyne Walk for weeks at a time, and at Bognor also, and at Kelmscott--the 'Hurstcote' of _Aylwin_. With regard to 'Hurstcote,' I well knew 'the large bedroom with low-panelled walls and the vast antique bedstead made of black carved oak' upon which Winifred Wynne slept. In fact, the only thing in the description of this room that I do not remember is the beautiful _Madonna and Child_ upon the frame of which was written 'Chiaro dell' Erma' (readers of _Hand and Soul_ will remember that name). This quaint and picturesque bedroom leads by two or three steps to the tapestried room 'covered with old faded tapestry--so faded, indeed, that its general effect was that of a dull grey texture'--depicting the story of Samson. Rossetti used the tapestry room as a studio, and I have seen in it the very same pictures that so attracted the attention of Winifred Wynne: the 'grand brunette' (painted from Mrs. Morris) 'holding a pomegranate in her hand'; the 'other brunette, whose beautiful eyes are glistening and laughing over the fruit she is holding up' (painted from the same famous Irish beauty named Smith who appears in _The Beloved_), and the blonde 'under the apple blossoms' (painted from a still more beautiful woman--Mrs. Stillman). These pictures were not permanently placed there, but, as it chanced, they were there (for retouching) on a certain occasion when I was visiting at Kelmscott. With regard to the green room in which Winifred took her first breakfast at 'Hurstcote' I am a little in confusion. It seems to me more like the green dining-room in Cheyne Walk, decorated with antique mirrors, which was painted by Dunn, showing Rossetti reading his poems aloud. This is the only portrait of Rossetti that really calls up the man before me. As Mr. Watts-Dunton is the owner of Dunn's drawing, and as so many people want to see what Rossetti's famous Chelsea house was like inside, it is a pity he does not give it as a frontispiece to some future edition of _Aylwin_. Unfortunately, Mr. G. F. Watts's picture, now in the National Portrait Gallery, was never finished, and I never saw upon Rossetti's face the dull, heavy expression which that portrait wears. I think the poet told me that he had given the painter only one or two sittings. As to the photographs, none of them is really satisfactory.

The 'young gentleman from Oxford who has been acting as my secretary,' as mentioned in _Aylwin_, was my brother. [Footnote] With regard to the two circular mirrors surrounded by painted designs telling the story of the Holy Grail, 'in old black oak frames carved with knights at tilt,' I do not remember seeing these there. But they are evidently the mirrors decorated with copies of the lost Holy Grail frescoes once existing on the walls of the Union Reading-Room at Oxford. These beautiful decorations I have seen at 'The Pines,' but not elsewhere. I have often seen 'D'Arcy' in the company of several of the other characters introduced into _Aylwin_; for instance, 'De Castro' and 'Symonds' (the late F. R. Leyland, at that time the owner of the Leyland line of steamers, living at Prince's Gate, where was the famous Peacock Room painted by Mr. Whistler). I did not myself know that quaint character Mrs. Titwing, but I have been told by people who knew her well that she is true to the life. With regard to 'De Castro,' it is a matter of regret to those who knew him that, after giving us that most vivid scene between 'D'Arcy' and 'De Castro' at Scott's oyster-rooms (a place which Rossetti was very fond of frequenting in those nocturnal rambles that caused 'De Castro' to give him the name of Haroun al Raschid), the author did not go on and paint to the full the most extraordinary man of the very extraordinary group, the centre of which was Rossetti's Chelsea house. Rossetti was a well-known figure at Scott's and at Rule's oyster-rooms at the time he encountered 'Henry Aylwin.' That scene at Scott's is, in my opinion, the most living thing in the book--a picture that whenever I turn to it makes me feel that everything said and done must have occurred. 'De Castro' seemed to belong not merely to the Rossetti group, but to all groups, for he was brought into touch with almost every remarkable man of his time, and fascinated every one of them. Literary and artistic London was once full of stories of him, and no one that knew him doubted he was what must be called a man of genius--although a barren genius. Among others, he was brought into close relations with Ruskin, Burne-Jones, and, I think, Smetham ('Wilderspin'), and others.

[Footnote: This was George Hake, who died in Central Africa a few years ago.]

Rossetti used to say that since Blake there has been no more visionary painter in the art world than Smetham. Rossetti had a quite affectionate feeling towards Smetham, and several of his pictures (small ones) were on Rossetti's studio walls. I remember one or two extraordinary pictures of his--especially one depicting a dragon in a fen, of which Rossetti had a great opinion; and I believe this, with other pictures of Smetham's, is in the hands of Mr. Watts-Dunton. The author of _Aylwin_ would have been much amused had he seen, as I did, in an American magazine the statement that 'Wilderspin' was identified with William Morris--a man who was as much the opposite of the visionary painter as a man can be. Morris, whom I had the privilege of knowing very well, and with whom I have stayed at Kelmscott during the Rossetti period, is alluded to in _Aylwin_ (chap. ix. book xv.) as the 'enthusiastic angler' who used to go down to 'Hurstcote' to fish. At that time this fine old seventeenth-century manor house was in the joint occupancy of Rossetti and Morris. 'Wilderspin' was Smetham with a variation: certain characteristics of another painter of genius were introduced, I believe, into the portrait of him in _Aylwin_; and the story of 'Wilderspin's' early life was not that of Smetham. The series of 'large attics in which was a number of enormous oak beams' supporting the antique roof was a favourite resort of my own; but all the ghostly noise that I there heard was the snoring of young owls--a peculiar sound that had a special fascination for Rossetti; and after dinner Rossetti, my brother, and I would go to the attics to listen to them.

But a more singular mistake with regard to the _Aylwin_ characters than that of Morris being confounded with 'Wilderspin' was that of confounding, as certain newspaper paragraphs at the time did, 'Cyril Aylwin' with Mr. Whistler. I am especially able to speak of this character, who has been inquired about more than any other in the book. I knew him, I think, even before I knew Rossetti and Morris, or any of that group. He was a brother of Mr. Watts-Dunton's--Mr. Alfred Eugene Watts. He lived at Park House, Sydenham, and died suddenly either in 1870 or 1871, very shortly after I had met him at a wedding party. Among the set in which I moved at that time he had a great reputation as a wit and humorist. His style of humour always struck me as being more American than English. While bringing out humorous things that would set a dinner-table in a roar, he would himself maintain a perfectly unmoved countenance. And it was said of him, as 'Wilderspin' says of 'Cyril Aylwin,' that he was never known to laugh. The pen-picture of him in _Aylwin_ is one of the most vivid things in the book.

With regard to the most original character in the story, those who knew Clement's Inn, where I myself once resided, and Lincoln's Inn Fields, will be able at once to identify Mrs. Gudgeon, who lived in one of the streets running into Clare Market. Her business was that of night coffee-stall keeper. At one time, I believe--but I am not certain about this--she kept a stall on the Surrey side of Waterloo Bridge, and it might have been there that, as I have been told, her portrait was drawn for a specified number of early breakfasts by an unfortunate artist who sank very low, but had real ability. Her constant phrase was 'I shall die o' laughin'--I know I shall!' On account of her extra-ordinary gift of repartee, and her inexhaustible fund of wit and humour, she was generally supposed to be an Irishwoman. But she was not: she was cockney to the marrow. Recluse as Rossetti was in his later years, he had at one time been very different, and could bring himself in touch with the lower orders of London in a way such as was only known to his most intimate friends. With all her impudence, and I may say insolence, Mrs. Gudgeon was a great favourite with the police, who were the constant butts of her chaff.

With regard to the gipsies, although I knew George Borrow intimately, and saw a great deal of Mr. Watts-Dunton's other Romany Rye friend, the late Frank Groome, I did not know Sinfi Lovell or Rhona Boswell. But I may say that those who have said that Sinfi Lovell was painted from the same model as Mr. Meredith's Kiomi are mistaken. Sinfi Lovell was extremely beautiful, whereas Kiomi, I believe, was never very beautiful. But that they are represented as being contemporaries and friends is shown by D'Arcy's mention of Kiomi in Scott's oyster-rooms. The characters who figure in the early Raxton scenes I cannot speak of for reasons which may be pretty obvious; nor can I speak of the Welsh chapters in _Aylwin_, which have been a good deal discussed in recent numbers of _Notes and Queries_. But being myself an East Anglian by birth--one of my Christian names is St. Edmund, because I was born at Bury St. Edmunds--I can say something about what the East Anglian papers call 'Aylwinland,' and of the truth of the pictures of the east coast to be found in the story, Since _Aylwin_ was published an interesting attempt has been made by a correspondent in the _Lowestoft Standard_ (25th August 1900) to identify Pakefield Church as the 'Raxton' Church of the story, and the writer of the letter mentions the most remarkable, and to me quite new fact, that although the guide-books of Lowestoft and the district are quite silent as to a curious crypt at the east end of Pakefield Church, there is exactly such a crypt as that described in _Aylwin_, and that in the early days of the correspondent in question it was used as a storehouse for bones. The readers of _Aylwin_ will remember the author's words: 'The crypt is much older than the church, and of an entirely different architecture. It was once the depository of the bones of Danish warriors killed before the Norman conquest.'

THOMAS ST. E. HAKE.

In _Notes and Queries_ [9th S., ix. 369, 450; x. 16] a letter had appeared, signed 'Jay Aitch,' inquiring as to the school of mystics founded by Lavater, alluded to on page 83 of the _Illustrated Aylwin_. This afforded Mr. Thomas St. E. Hake another opportunity of unloading his wallet of Rossetti and _Aylwin_ lore. And in the same journal, for 2nd August 1902, he wrote as follows:

The question raised by Jay Aitch as to the school of mystics founded by Lavater, and the large book _The Veiled Queen_, by 'Philip Aylwin,' which contains quotations that Jay Aitch affirms have haunted him ever since he read them, are certainly questions about as interesting as any that could have been raised in connexion with the story. And in answering these queries I find an opportunity of saying a few authentic words on a subject upon which many unauthentic ones have been-uttered--that of the occultism of D. G, Rossetti and some of his friends. It has been frequently said that Rossetti was a spiritualist, and it is a fact that he went to several _séances_; but the word 'spiritualism' seems to have a rather elastic meaning. A spiritualist, as distinguished from a materialist, Rossetti certainly was, but his spiritualism was not, I should say, that which in common parlance bears this name. It was exactly like 'Aylwinism,' which seems to have been related to the doctrines of the Lavaterian sect about which Jay Aitch inquires. As a matter of fact, it was not the original of 'Wilderspin' nearly so much as the original D'Arcy who was captured by the doctrine of what is called in the story the 'Aylwinian.'

With regard to Johann Kaspar Lavater, Jay Aitch is no doubt aware that, although this once noted writer's fame rests entirely upon his treatise _Physiognomische Fragmente_, he founded a school of mystics in Switzerland. This was before what is called spiritualism came into vogue. I believe that the doctrines of _The Veiled Queen_ are closely related to the doctrines of the Lavaterians; but my knowledge on this matter is of a second-hand kind, and is derived from conversations upon Lavater and his claims as a physiognomist, which I heard many years ago at Coombe and during walks in Richmond Park, between the author of _Aylwin_ and my father, who, admittedly a man of intellectual grasp, went even further than Lavater.