Part 2

Swinburne’s remarks upon the subject of my article--though I need hardly say I have forgotten no word of what he said--I pass over, but what I must not pass over is the witness these remarks bore to his extraordinary memory and to his equally extraordinary method of reading. Reading, in fact, is not the word. Had he parsed the article, schoolboy wise, sentence by sentence, he could not more effectually have mastered it; had he dissected it, part by part, surgeon-like, he could not more completely have torn the heart out of the matter.

Obviously Swinburne could only have read the thing once, yet had I, the writer, been called upon, even while it was fresh in my memory, to pass an examination on this very article, I doubt whether I should have known half as much of it as he. Hearing him thus deliver himself upon a casual contribution to a periodical, which, by reason of his love and friendship for the blind poet with whom the article dealt, had chanced to interest him, I could understand how his single brain had been able to deal illuminatingly with so vast a volume of literature as he had from time to time passed under review. His power of concentration, and of pouncing, hawk-like, upon what seemed to him to be memorable or salient, as well as his ability to recollect all he had read, must have been extraordinary.

A more exhaustive summing up--not, I admit, of the evidence on both sides, but of the evidence which appealed to his individual judgment, his individual imagination, and his individual taste--I have never heard. Prejudiced as he was, however, in favour of Marston, he would not go so far as Rossetti, for his last word on the subject was:

“When Gabriel spoke of Philip’s poem, _The Rose and the Wind_, as ‘worthy of Shakespeare in his subtlest lyrical mood,’ he let his personal affection run away with his critical judgment, and his verdict must always be discounted by the fact that Philip was the aptest pupil in the School of Poetry in which Rossetti was the acknowledged master. Watts-Dunton is a much surer guide, and when he said that ‘So perfect a lyric as _The Rose and the Wind_ should entitle Marston to a place of his own, and that no inconsiderable one,’ he said the true word, the deserved word, and the word which I do not think anyone will have the hardihood to dispute.”

IV

When next I met Swinburne, nearly twelve months had gone by, and, in spite of the eager way in which at our first meeting he had talked of the men and women and things within his own mental horizon, I should not have been in the least surprised to find that he had practically forgotten me. I do not say this in any spirit of mock modesty, but because I remembered that, at that first meeting, I had mentioned, in the course of conversation, a book by a certain author who to my knowledge had been a visitor to The Pines on several occasions, and so must personally have been well known to Swinburne.

“Oh, really!” he said. “Yes, now that you mention it, I believe that someone of that name has been so good as to come and see us. I seem to recall him. And I seem to remember hearing someone say that he had written something, though I don’t remember exactly what. So he has published a book upon the subject of which we are talking. Really? I did not know.”

This was said with perfect courtesy, and without the remotest intention of administering a snub either to me or to the literary reputation of the writer in question. It meant no more than that Swinburne lived so apart from the rest of the world, had such power of detachment, and kept so habitually the company only of his books and of his peers, that the personality of the rest of us left no impression on him.

On this occasion, only Watts-Dunton, Miss Teresa Watts, his sister, Swinburne, and myself were present, and the talk turned at first upon William Rossetti, with whom, in his home at St. Edmund’s Terrace, Regent’s Park, I had spent an hour or two on the previous afternoon. Both Swinburne and Watts-Dunton were interested to hear news of their old friend whom both regretted seeing so seldom. They plied me with innumerable questions in regard to his health, his plans, even in regard to trivial details about his home life, not omitting mention of his sister Christina’s beloved cat “Muff,” and the red plush sofa on which Shelley was supposed to have slept, the night before his death, and that now stands in the library. Both my hearers were touched when I spoke of Rossetti’s affectionate words about William Morris, for whom, though “Topsy” (as he called Morris) and he had not met five times in twenty years, Rossetti to the last entertained the old affection. Rossetti’s vivid recollection of the day of the funeral of Watts-Dunton’s mother, some fifteen years before, when there was so terrible a blizzard that he could get no conveyance to Endsleigh Gardens--where he was then living--and had to fight his way home on foot in a blinding snowstorm, was naturally of special interest to Watts-Dunton. Much more was said, and many other questions were asked, upon which I do not propose here to linger, passing on, instead, to speak of the sudden flaming up of Swinburne at the mention by Rossetti of William Bell Scott as having once been a drawing master.

“Perfectly true! Perfectly true!” interpolated Swinburne angrily, “and a drawing master he remained to his life’s end.”

For the remainder of my stay he talked vivaciously, and here I should like to say that in all that has been written about his personality--his eccentricities, excitability and exclusiveness; his passionate love of the sea and of little children; the changes that his political views underwent; his chivalrous championship of his friends against all comers, and the savage onslaught upon Robert Buchanan; his sturdy patriotism, and his historic friendships--very little has been said of the lighter side of his nature. That he could wield in controversy the lash of satire and irony, and wield it mercilessly, more than one combatant has had cause to know, and there are alive to-day ancient enemies of his whose backs must still tingle at memory of some of his onslaughts. But of his wit and humour in daily life and the sunny playfulness of his banter in conversation with his friends, one seldom hears. I have known him keep the table alive for an hour at a time by whimsical and deliciously humorous and caustic comments on the topics--political, literary, or artistic--of the day.

On this particular morning he was anxious to show me a review of _Kriegspiel_, that most remarkable novel by the late Francis Hinde Groome, son of the famous archdeacon, the intimate of Edward FitzGerald, with whom Frank Groome had himself been well acquainted as a boy.

With Groome--who, as my readers know, was, like Watts-Dunton and the late Charles Godfrey Leland, an accomplished student of Gipsy Life, Gipsy Language, and Gipsy Lore--I was myself on terms of friendship, and indeed had been of some small service to him in regard to the publication of _Kriegspiel_, knowing which, Swinburne was anxious to hear whether I thought the review could be used to assist the sale of the book, and so elected to go upstairs to his room to get it.

He returned with a face like that of a schoolboy intent upon mischief, and with a rolled up journal in his hand. After I had read the review of _Kriegspiel_, and proposed sending it on to the publisher, Watts-Dunton inquired, pointing to the roll which Swinburne was still holding:

“What have you got there?”

“To-day’s _Graphic_,” was the reply. “I noticed it sticking out of the pocket of your greatcoat, hanging in the hall, and peeping inside saw that there was an illustrated supplement, _Poets of the Day_, so I wouldn’t even look to see whether you and I are included, but brought it here that we might all go through it together. What heart-burning and hair-tearing there will be in the poetical dovecotes, in regard to who is in, and who is out! Why didn’t you tell me of it before?”

“Because I didn’t know anything about it,” was the reply. “It was from Kernahan’s coat, not mine, that you took it. We all pick each other’s brains in Grub Street, but picking pockets is quite another matter.”

Swinburne apologised, but held on to the _Graphic_ tenaciously. Then he opened it, smoothed out the page, and ran through the pictured poets, cataloguing them, complimenting them or chaffing them upon their appearance or their poetry, even improvising suitable epitaphs for their obsequies in Westminster Abbey, or composing, on the spur of the moment, Nonsense Verses and Limericks that hit off with delicious humour or mordant irony the personal or poetical peculiarities of the different “bards,” as he called them.

Now that he, and so many of these “bards” are, alas, gone, I hesitate to repeat in cold blood, and so long after, what was said on the spur of the moment, and among friends. But, tantalising as it may be to the reader, especially if that reader be a poet, and so possibly an interested party, to be told merely of witty sayings of which no specimen is forthcoming, I must hold my hand, as I have been compelled to hold it in other pages of these Recollections. We have it on the authority of Mr. Clement Shorter that one must be indiscreet to be entertaining, and I agree with him so far as to admit that, in Recollections, the best must always be that which remains unwritten.

After Swinburne had exhausted the _Graphic_, I produced, from the pocket of the pirated greatcoat, yet another journal, to which a certain critic had contributed a somewhat feeble article upon the work and poetry of Swinburne himself. I read it aloud, to the accompaniment of ironic laughter on the part of Watts-Dunton, Miss Watts and myself, but Swinburne, though he had hugely enjoyed it, and had interpolated sly comments of exaggerated gratitude, said, when I had made an end and with a wave of dismissal:

“It is meant kindly, and when the intention is so obviously kind one must not be too ungenerously critical.”

Thereafter we talked of Ireland, Swinburne having only recently learned or recently realised that I hailed from that land of poets turned politicians. I suspect that the fact of my nationality was responsible for much of his kindness to me, for, laugh at us as many Englishmen may and do, in their hearts they have a sneaking liking for men and women of Irish birth. I had said that I should be leaving soon after lunch, and after he had bidden me good-bye, and had retired for his afternoon sleep, he returned, not once, but two or three times, and with an impulsiveness which was almost Irish, to speak again and yet again of Ireland and especially of Irish poetry.

It had been my good fortune the night before to take in Mrs. Lynn Linton to dinner at the beautiful and hospitable home of Sir Bruce and Lady Seton at Chelsea, and Mrs. Lynn Linton and I had talked much of Ireland. Mentioning this to Swinburne, he said that he had once written to Mrs. Lynn Linton remonstrating violently with her about an article of hers on Ireland, and he had reason to believe that his words had not been without effect, as, since then, Mrs. Lynn Linton had come to think as he had on that question, and was of opinion that Gladstone, Morley and Harcourt ought to have been impeached for high treason. Reverting to books, he said that nothing so beautiful about Ireland had been written as the Hon. Emily Lawless’s novel _Grania_, then fresh from the press. He had bought a number of copies to send to his own friends, as well as some to send to his aunt, Lady Mary Gordon, for distribution in her circle. He went on to say that his old friend, Dr. Whitley Stokes, had shown him some of the Irish songs which were sung to the tunes to which Tom Moore afterwards wrote his “mawkish and sentimental songs.” One of these, Swinburne said, had since been reprinted in the _Academy_.

“And as poetry I can only compare it to the Book of Job--and what more superlatively splendid praise can I offer than that?”

Here Watts-Dunton put in a word for Wales and incidentally for Scotland, which reminds me that I ought to say that Watts-Dunton’s share in this, and in other conversations, was no less interesting, though less erratic and more considered than Swinburne’s.

Switched off thus from Ireland to Scotland, Swinburne launched out into enthusiastic praise of the islands of Rum and Eig, the nomenclature of which, he said, was phonetically and fatally suggestive of a nourishing, if nauseous drink, not to be despised, he understood, after an early morning swim, and declared that the one thing which made him regret he was not a man of wealth was that he could not afford to yield to the desire of his heart, and spend half his time cruising in a yacht around the western islands of Scotland.

V

Perhaps the most treasured possession on my bookshelves is a volume in which Swinburne has inscribed my name and his own. The volume in question is his _Studies in Prose and Poetry_, and as, among the contents, there is an article devoted entirely to a consideration of the merits and defects of _Lyra Elegantiarum_, in the editorial work of the last edition of which it was my honour and privilege to collaborate with the original compiler, the late Mr. Frederick Locker-Lampson, I may perhaps be pardoned for referring to it here.

The fact that Swinburne was making _Lyra Elegantiarum_ the subject of an important article (it appeared first in the _Forum_) was told to me when I was lunching one day at The Pines, and naturally I carried the news of the compliment which his book was to receive to Mr. Locker-Lampson.

“Compliment!” he exclaimed. “Yes, it will be a compliment. Any editors might well be proud that the result of their labours should be the subject of an article by Swinburne. But pray heaven he be merciful, for I fear our expected compliment is like to turn out to be something of a castigation.”

Mr. Locker-Lampson was not far wrong, for, when the article appeared, we found that Swinburne had as roundly rated the editors as he had generously praised.

I sent Swinburne a copy of the édition de luxe, a gift with which he was delighted, and indeed procured other copies to give to friends and relations, one in a binding of his own designing being, I think, for his mother. When next I was at The Pines, he inquired whether Mr. Locker-Lampson and I were pleased with his review.

“How could we be otherwise than pleased by any article upon the book by the author of _Atalanta in Calydon_?” I replied.

“But you were pleased with what I said?”

“Of course, but you must forgive me if I say that it was very much as if a schoolmaster had called up a boy out of the class, and, after lavishing undeserved praise upon him for good behaviour, had then taken him across his knee and thrashed him soundly for abominably bad conduct.”

He dived among the litter of papers, reviews, letters and manuscripts upon the floor, for a copy of his article, and then read aloud:

“‘There is no better or completer anthology in the language. I doubt indeed if there be any so good or so complete. No objection or suggestion that can reasonably be offered, can in any way diminish our obligation, either to the original editor, or to his evidently able assistant Mr. Kernahan.’

“Doesn’t that please you?” he enquired.

“Immeasurably,” I said.

“And there is more of it,” he went on, reading detached passages aloud. “‘The editors to their lasting honour ... the instinctive good sense, the manly and natural delicacy of the present editors ... this radiant and harmonious gallery of song.’ And so on and so on.”

“Yes,” I said, “it is the so ons that I’m thinking of. Suppose we dip into them.” Then I took the article from his hand and read as follows: “‘If elegance is the aim or the condition of this anthology, how comes it to admit such an unsurpassably horrible example as the line--I refrain from quoting it--which refers to the “settling” of “Gibson’s hash”?... The worst positive blemish--and a most fearful blemish it is ... will unluckily be found, and cannot be overlooked, on the fourth page. Sixth on the list of selected poems, is a copy of verses attributed to Shakespeare--of all men on earth!--by the infamous pirate, liar, and thief, who published a worthless little volume of stolen and mutilated poetry, patched up and padded out with dreary and dirty doggrel, under the preposterous title of _The Passionate Pilgrim_.... Happily there is here no second instance--but naturally there could not have been a second--of such amazing depravity of taste.’

“In fact,” I said, “your review of the book recalls to my mind the familiar lines by Bickerstaff, which are to be found in this very volume:

When late I attempted your pity to move What made you so deaf to my prayers? Perhaps it was right to dissemble your love, But why did you kick me downstairs?

You remember Jeffery Prowse’s lines about someone being ‘problematically sober, but indubitably drunk’?” I went on. “The ‘dissembling’ of ‘your love’ in the opening sentences of your article may be ‘problematical,’ but the ‘kicking’ of us ‘downstairs,’ and out of the door later on, is as ‘indubitable’ as is the fact that the book is profoundly honoured by being reviewed by Algernon Charles Swinburne at all.”

With that parting shot, at which he laughed heartily, I bade him good-bye and came away, to find on returning to my home, a letter from Mr. Locker-Lampson which, as it has no word that can be considered private, and deals with matters of general literary interest, as well as with some of the strictures by Swinburne that have been quoted above, I venture to append:

NEWHAVEN COURT, CROMER, _17th Oct._

DEAR KERNAHAN,

I have just been reading the _Forum_ for October, and I think that altogether we may be satisfied with A. C. S.’s article.

I venture to think that he rather overrates Landor and underrates Calverley.

We should not have inserted ‘Youth and Art’ [the lines by Browning referring to ‘Gibson’s hash’ to which Mr. Swinburne took such objection] or ‘The Passionate Pilgrim’ or Croker’s ‘Miss Peel.’ We ought to have put in Pope’s ‘I know a thing.’

I remember talking to Tennyson about Dirce, and he said it was too classical for English taste. I do not think many people would care for it, but perhaps it might be added. Stygean _Set_ is not a cultivated expression, not better than _lot_, and if Dirce was a shade it did not matter whether Charon forgot himself or not.

I really feel much obliged to Mr. Swinburne for whom I have sincere regard. Perhaps if you see him you will tell him of my obligation.

His article strengthens my decided opinion that the book is a _very_ difficult one to edit. All the experts have different ideas about it. Lang, Swinburne, Gosse, Dobson, and Palgrave are all opposed.

I hope you are quite well.

Always truly, F. L. L.

VI

In all my conversations with Swinburne, I cannot recall one instance of his interrupting a speaker. He would, it is true, go off at a conversational tangent, as when, talking of Francis Hinde Groome and Suffolk, he interpolated apparently irrelevant remarks upon the curious names of some Yorkshire villages, having presumably only discovered that morning that one of these villages bore the delightful name of “Beggar my Neighbour.” But, though one could see by his flashing eye that the hounds of utterance were chafing and fretting to fling themselves upon the quarry, he invariably waited till the other speaker had made an end of it before letting go the leash. To everything that Watts-Dunton said, then or at any time, he listened almost as a disciple might listen to a master, and again and again he urged me to use any influence I had with the author of _Aylwin_ to induce him to give that then unpublished work to the world, and to allow his _Athenæum_ essays to be collected and issued in book form.

“Only,” said Swinburne at a white heat of enthusiastic admiration, “if every page, on which they were printed, represented a hundred pound bank-note; if the back and the sides of the cover were of the finest beaten gold--that would not be too costly a raiment for the noblest critical work, dealing with first principles, that has ever been given to the world.”

That this was Swinburne’s deliberate opinion of the value of his brother poet’s and brother friend’s work, and was not the expression of a moment’s enthusiasm, I have reason to know, for he used similar expressions in my presence on many occasions. I observe, too, that Mr. James Douglas, in his book _Theodore Watts-Dunton, Poet, Novelist, and Critic_, quotes Swinburne as describing Watts-Dunton as “the first critic of his time, perhaps the largest minded and surest sighted of any age”--a judgment which, as Mr. Douglas reminds us, Rossetti endorsed.

Watts-Dunton, rumpling up his hair with one hand, tried to turn the conversation into other channels, but Swinburne was obdurate.

“You, who know Walter’s magnificent, magician-like power of concentrating into the fourteen lines of a sonnet what no other poet could have said with equal power and felicity in forty, will agree with me when I tell you what perhaps you do not know, for he never speaks of it himself. When he was a young man, he lost a manuscript book of poems of which he had no copy. By these lost poems the world is, I believe, as poor as if Gabriel Rossetti’s early poems had never been recovered from his wife’s coffin. It was an incomparable loss to literature, a loss which can never be replaced.”

I did not know of these lost poems, for, intimate as I had been with Watts-Dunton for many years, he had never even hinted at their existence, or rather at their non-existence. But, except to admit the loss and to make light of it, he refused to be drawn either by Swinburne or by myself, and turned the conversation upon the former’s _Ode to Music_, written, I think, for the opening of the Chicago Exhibition. But of this Swinburne, in his turn, refused to talk, averring that he had clean forgotten it--that a task like that, once completed, he never thought of again, and that his mind was full at the moment of his Tennyson Threnody.

On this occasion I saw yet another side of him. I had brought with me two bunches of exquisite flowers--arum lilies, lilies of the valley, snowdrops and some exotics--one for Miss Teresa Watts, one for Swinburne. A flower was to him as it had been to Philip Marston, the one unchanging and perfect thing in a changing and decaying world, as fair, as fresh and as immortal as in the days of our youth. In an ecstasy of delight, he took the flowers from my outstretched hand as reverently as the communicant takes into his hands the consecrated bread of the sacrament, as tenderly as a young mother takes into her arms her new-born child. He bent his head over them in a rapture that was almost like a prayer, his eyes when he looked up to thank me for the gift alight and brimming over with thoughts that were not far from tears. For many minutes he sat holding them, turning them this way and that, too rapt in his worship to speak or to think of anything else.

Then he turned to Miss Watts with his courtly bow.

“As you have been as equally honoured as I, you will not think me robbing you if I carry my bunch away with me to put them in water and to place them in my own room. I want to find them there when I wake in the morning.”

He rose in his quiet way, the flowers in his hand, bowed again to Miss Watts and myself and left the room. In a few minutes the door reopened, but only wide enough to let him slip through, and he stole, rather than walked, to the chair, where he seated himself among us again, almost as noiselessly as a card is shuffled back to its place in the pack.

VII

“Watts-Dunton writes poetry because he loves writing it,” said Swinburne to me once. “I write poetry, I suppose, to escape from boredom.”