Theodore Watts-Dunton Part 1

Theodore Watts-Dunton.

by James Douglas.

Introduction

'It was necessary for Thomas Hood still to do one thing ere the wide circle and profound depth of his genius were to the full acknowledged: that one thing was-to die.'-DOUGLAS JERROLD.

ALTHOUGH in the inner circle of English letters this study of a living writer will need no apology, it may be well to explain for the general reader the reasons which moved me to undertake it.

Some time ago a distinguished scholar, the late S. Arthur Strong, Librarian of the House of Lords, was asked what had been the chief source of his education. He replied: "Cambridge, scholastically, and Watts-Dunton's articles in the 'Encyclopaedia Britannica' and the 'Athenaeum' from the purely literary point of view. I have been a reader of them for many years, and it would be difficult for me to say what I should have been without them." Mr. Richard Le Gallienne has said that he bought the 'Encyclopaedia Britannica' simply to possess one article-Mr.

Watts-Dunton's article on Poetry. There are many other men of letters who would give similar testimony. With regard to his critical work, Mr.

Swinburne in one of his essays, speaking of the treatise on Poetry, describes Mr. Watts-Dunton as 'the first critic of our time, perhaps the largest-minded and surest-sighted of any age,' {1} a judgment which, according to the article on Mr. Watts-Dunton in Chambers's 'Encyclopaedia,' Rossetti endorsed. In this same article it is further said:-

"He came to exercise a most important influence on the art and culture of the day; but although he has written enough to fill many volumes-in the 'Examiner,' the 'Athenaeum' (since 1876), the 'Nineteenth Century,' the 'Fortnightly Review,' etc.-he has let year after year go by without his collecting his essays, which, always dealing with first principles, have ceased to be really anonymous, and are quoted by the press both in England and in Germany as his.

But, having wrapped up his talents in a weekly review, he is only ephemerally known to the general public, except for the sonnets and other poems that, from the 'Athenaeum,' etc., have found their way into anthologies, and for the articles on poetic subjects that he has contributed to the 'Encyclopaedia Britannica,' 'Chambers's Encyclopaedia,' etc. The chief note of his poetry-much of it written in youth-is its individuality, the source of its inspiration Nature and himself. For he who of all men has most influenced his brother poets has himself remained least influenced by them. So, too, his prose writings-literary mainly, but ranging also over folk-lore, ethnology, and science generally-are marked as much by their independence and originality as by their suggestiveness, harmony, incisive vigour, and depth and breadth of insight. They have made him a force in literature to which only Sainte-Beuve, not Jeffrey, is a parallel." {2}

These citations from students of Mr. Watts-Dunton's work, written before his theory of the 'Renascence of Wonder' was exemplified in 'Aylwin' and 'The Coming of Love,' show, I think, that this book would have had a right to exist even if his critical writings had been collected into volumes; but as this collection has never been made, and I believe never will be made by the author, I feel that to do what I am now doing is to render the reading public a real service. For many years he has been urged by his friends to collect his critical articles, but although several men of letters have offered to relieve him of that task, he has remained obdurate.

Speaking for myself, I scarcely remember the time when I was not an eager student of Mr. Watts-Dunton's writings. Like most boys born with the itch for writing, I began to spill ink on paper in my third l.u.s.tre. The fermentation of the soul which drove me to write a dreadful elegy, modelled upon 'Lycidas,' on the death of an indulgent aunt, also drove me to welter in drowsy critical journals. By some humour of chance I stumbled upon the 'Athenaeum,' and there I found week by week writing that made me tingle with the rapture of discovery. The personal magic of some unknown wizard led me into realms of gold and kingdoms of romance. I used to count the days till the 'Athenaeum' appeared in my Irish home, and I spent my scanty pocket money in binding the piled numbers into ponderous tomes. Well I remember the advent of the old, white-bearded Ulster book-binder, bearing my precious volumes: even now I can smell the pungent odour of the damp paste and glue. In those days I was a solitary bookworm, living far from London, and I vainly tried to discover the name of the magician who was carrying me into so 'many goodly states and kingdoms.' With boyish audacity I wrote to the editor of the 'Athenaeum,'

begging him to disclose the secret; and I am sure my nave appeal provoked a smile in Took's Court. But although the editor was dumb, I exulted in the meagre apparition of my initials, 'J. D.,' under the solemn rubric, 'To Correspondents.'

It was by collating certain signed sonnets and signed articles with the unsigned critical essays that I at last discovered the name of my hero, Theodore Watts. Of course, the sonnets set me sonneteering, and when my execrable imitation of 'Australia's Mother' was printed in the 'Belfast News-Letter' I felt like Byron when he woke up and found himself famous.

Afterwards, when I had plunged into the surf of literary London, I learnt that the writer who had turned my boyhood into a romantic paradise was well known in cultivated circles, but quite unknown outside them.

There was, indeed, no account of him in print. It was not till 1887 that I found a brief but masterly memoir in 'Celebrities of the Century.' The article concluded with the statement that in the 'Athenaeum' and in the Ninth Edition of the 'Encyclopaedia Britannica' Mr. Watts-Dunton had 'founded a school of criticism which discarded conventional authority, and sought to test all literary effects by the light of first principles merely.' These words encouraged me, for they told me that as a boy I had not been wrong in thinking that I had discovered a master and a guide in literature. Then came the memoir of Philip Bourke Marston by the American poetess, Louise Chandler Moulton, in which she described Mr.

Watts-Dunton as 'a poet whose n.o.ble work won for him the intimate friendship of Rossetti and Browning and Lord Tennyson, and was the first link in that chain of more than brotherly love which binds him to Swinburne, his housemate at present and for many years past.' I also came across Clarence Stedman's remarks upon the opening of 'The Coming of Love,' 'Mother Carey's Chicken,' first printed in the 'Athenaeum.' He was enthusiastic about the poet's perception of 'Nature's grander aspects,'

and spoke of his poetry as being 'quite independent of any bias derived from the eminent poets with whom his life has been closely a.s.sociated.'

When afterwards I made his acquaintance, our intercourse led to the formation of a friendship which has deepened my grat.i.tude for the spiritual and intellectual guidance I have found in his writings for nearly twenty years. Owing to the popularity of 'The Coming of Love' and of 'Aylwin'-which the late Lord Acton, in 'The Annals of Politics and Culture,' placed at the head of the three most important books published in 1898-Mr. Watts-Dunton's name is now familiar to every fairly educated person. About few men living is there so much literary curiosity; and this again is a reason for writing a book about him.

The idea of making an elaborate study of his work, however, did not come to me until I received an invitation from Dr. Patrick, the editor of Chambers's 'Cyclopaedia of English Literature,' to write for that publication an article on Mr. Watts-Dunton-an article which had been allotted to Professor Strong, but which he had been obliged through indisposition to abandon at the last moment. I undertook to do this.

But within the limited s.p.a.ce at my command I was able only very briefly to discuss his work as a poet. Soon afterwards I was invited by my friend, Dr. Robertson Nicoll, to write a monograph upon Mr. Watts-Dunton for Messrs. Hodder & Stoughton, and, if I should see my way to do so, to sound him on the subject. My only difficulty was in approaching Mr.

Watts-Dunton, for I knew how constantly he had been urged by the press to collect his essays, and how persistently he had declined to do so.

Nevertheless, I wrote to him, telling him how gladly I should undertake the task, and how sure I was that the book was called for. His answer was so characteristic that I must give it here:-

"MY DEAR MR. DOUGLAS,-It must now be something like fifteen years since Mr. John Lane, who was then compiling a bibliography of George Meredith, asked me to consent to his compiling a bibliography of my articles in the 'Athenaeum' and elsewhere, and although I emphatically declined to sanction such a bibliography, he on several occasions did me the honour to renew his request. I told him, as I have told one or two other generous friends, that although I had put into these articles the best criticism and the best thought at my command, I considered them too formless to have other than an ephemeral life. I must especially mention the name of Mr. Alfred Nutt, who for years has been urging me to let him publish a selection from my critical essays. I am really proud to record this, because Mr. Nutt is not only an eminent publisher but an admirable scholar and a man of astonishing accomplishments. I had for years, let me confess, cherished the idea that some day I might be able to take my various expressions of opinion upon literature, especially upon poetry, and mould them into a coherent and, perhaps, into a harmonious whole.

This alone would have satisfied me. But year by year the body of critical writing from my pen has grown, and I felt and feel more and more unequal to the task of grappling with such a ma.s.s. To the last writer of eminence who gratified me by suggesting a collection of these essays-Dr. Robertson Nicoll-I wrote, and wrote it with entire candour, that in my opinion the view generally taken of the value of them is too generous. Still, they are the result of a good deal of reflection and not a little research, especially those in the 'Encyclopaedia Britannica,' and I am not so entirely without literary aspiration as not to regret that, years ago, when the ma.s.s of material was more manageable, I neglected to collect them and edit them myself. But the impulse to do this is now gone. Owing to the quite unexpected popularity of 'The Coming of Love' and of 'Aylwin,'

my mind has been diverted from criticism, and plunged into those much more fascinating waters of poetry and fiction in which I used to revel long before. If you really think that a selection of pa.s.sages from the articles, and a critical examination and estimate of the imaginative work would be of interest to any considerable body of readers, I do not know why I should withhold my consent. But I confess, judging from such work of your own as I have seen, I find it difficult to believe that it is worth your while to enter upon any such task.

I agree with you that it is difficult to see how you are to present and expound the principles of criticism advanced in the 'Encyclopaedia Britannica,' the 'Athenaeum,' etc., without discussing those two imaginative works the writing of which inspired the canons and generalizations in the critical work-'Aylwin' and 'The Coming of Love.' As regards 'Aylwin,' however, I cannot help wincing under the thought that in these days when so much genius is at work in prose fiction, your discussion will seem to give quite an undue prominence to a writer who has published but one novel. This I confess does disturb me somewhat, and I wish you to bear well in mind this aspect of the matter before you seriously undertake the book. As to the prose fiction of the present moment, I constantly stand amazed at its wealth. If, however, you do touch upon 'Aylwin,' I hope you will modify those generous-too generous-expressions of yours which, I remember, you printed in a review of the book when it first appeared."

After getting this sanction I set to work, and soon found that my chief obstacle was the superabundance of material, which would fill several folio volumes. But although it is undoubtedly 'a mighty maze,' it is 'not without a plan.' In a certain sense the vast number of Mr.

Watts-Dunton's generalizations upon literature, art, philosophy, and what Emerson calls 'the conduct of life,' revolve round certain fixed principles which have guided me in the selection I have made. I also found that to understand these principles of romantic art, it was necessary to make a thorough critical study of the romance, 'Aylwin,' and of the book of poems, 'The Coming of Love.' I think I have made that study, and that I have connected the critical system with the imaginative work more thoroughly than has been done by any other writer, although the work of Mr. Watts-Dunton, both creative and critical, has been acutely discussed, not only in England but also in France and in Italy.

The creative originality of his criticism is as absolute as that of his poetry and fiction. He poured into his criticism the intellectual and imaginative force which other men pour into purely artistic channels, for he made criticism a vehicle for his humour, his philosophy, and his irony. His criticisms are the reflections of a lifetime. Their vitality is not impaired by the impermanence of their texts. No critic has surpa.s.sed his universality of range. Out of a full intellectual and imaginative life he has evolved speculations which cut deep not only into the fibre of modern thought but into the future of human development.

Great teachers have their day and their disciples. Mr. Watts-Dunton's day and disciples belong to the young future whose dawn some of us already descry. For, as Mr. Justin McCarthy wrote of 'Aylwin,' 'it is inspired by the very spirit of youth,' and this is why so many of the younger writers are beginning to accept him as their guide. Mr.

Watts-Dunton has built up a new optimistic philosophy of life which, I think, is sure to arrest the devastating march of the pessimists across the history of the soul of man. That is the aspect of his work which calls for the comprehension of the new generation. The old cosmogonies are dead; here is the new cosmogony, the cosmogony in which the impulse of wonder rea.s.serts its sovereignty, proclaiming anew the n.o.bler religion of the spiritual imagination, with a faith in Natura Benigna which no a.s.saults of science can shake.

But, although the main object of this book is to focus, as it were, the many scattered utterances of Mr. Watts-Dunton in prose and poetry upon the great subject of the Renascence of Wonder, I have interspersed here and there essays which do not touch upon this theme, and also excerpts from those obituary notices of his friends which formed so fascinating a part of his contributions to the 'Athenaeum.' For, of course, it was necessary to give the charm of variety to the book. Rossetti used to say, I believe, that there is one quality necessary in a poem which very many poets are apt to ignore-the quality of being amusing. I have always thought that there is great truth in this, and I have also thought that the remark is applicable to prose no less than to poetry. This is why I have occasionally enlivened these pages with extracts from his picturesque monographs; indeed, I have done more than this. Not having known Mr. Watts-Dunton's great contemporaries myself, I have looked about me for the aid of certain others who did know them. I have not hesitated to collect from various sources such facts and details connected with Mr.

Watts-Dunton and his friends as are necessarily beyond the scope of my own experience and knowledge. Among these I must prominently mention one to whom I have been specially indebted for reminiscences of Mr.

Watts-Dunton and his circle. This is Mr. Thomas St. E. Hake, eldest son of the 'parable poet,' a gentleman of much too modest and retiring a disposition, who, from Mr. Watts-Dunton's first appearance in London right onwards, was brought into intimate relations with himself, his relatives, Rossetti, William Morris, Westland Marston, Philip Bourke Marston, Madox Brown, George Borrow, Stevenson, Minto, and many others.

I have not only made free use of his articles, but I have had the greatest aid from him in many other respects, and it is my bare duty to express my grat.i.tude to him for his services. I have also to thank the editor of the 'Athenaeum' for cordially granting me permission to quote so freely from its columns; and I take this opportunity of acknowledging my debt to the many other publications from which I have drawn materials for this book.

Chapter I THE RENASCENCE OF WONDER

"'The renascence of wonder,' to employ Mr. Watts-Dunton's appellation for what he justly considers the most striking and significant feature in the great romantic revival which has transformed literature, is proclaimed by this very appellation not to be the achievement of any one innovator, but a general reawakening of mankind to a perception that there were more things in heaven and earth than were dreamt of in Horatio's philosophy."-DR. R. GARNETT: Monograph on Coleridge.

UNDOUBTEDLY the greatest philosophical generalization of our time is expressed in the four words, 'The Renascence of Wonder.' They suggest that great spiritual theory of the universe which, according to Mr.

Watts-Dunton, is bound to follow the wave of materialism that set in after the publication of Darwin's great book. This phrase, which I first became familiar with in his 'Encyclopaedia Britannica' article on Rossetti, seems really to have been used first in 'Aylwin.' The story seems originally to have been called 'The Renascence of Wonder,' but the t.i.tle was abandoned because the writer believed that an un-suggestive name, such as that of the autobiographer, was better from the practical point of view. For the knowledge of this I am indebted to Mr. Hake, who says:-

"During the time that Mr. Swinburne was living in Great James Street, several of his friends had chambers in the same street, and among them were my late father, Dr. Gordon Hake-Rossetti's friend and physician-Mr. Watts-Dunton and myself. Mr. Watts-Dunton, as is well known, was a brilliant raconteur long before he became famous as a writer. I have heard him tell scores of stories full of plot and character that have never appeared in print. On a certain occasion he was suffering from one of his periodical eye troubles that had used occasionally to embarra.s.s him. He had just been telling Mr.

Swinburne the plot of a suggested story, the motive of which was the 'renascence of wonder in art and poetry' depicting certain well-known characters.

I offered to act as his amanuensis in writing the story, and did so, with the occasional aid of my father and brothers. The story was sent to the late F. W. Robinson, the novelist, then at the zenith of his vogue, who declared that he 'saw a fortune in it,' and it was he who advised the author to send it to Messrs. Hurst & Blackett. As far as I remember, the time occupied by the work was between five and six months. When a large portion of it was in type it was read by many friends,-among others by the late Madox Brown, who thought some of the portraits too close, as the characters were then all living, except one, the character who figures as Cyril. Although unpublished, it was so well known that an article upon it appeared in the 'Liverpool Mercury.' This was more than twenty years ago."

The important matter before us, however, is not when he first used this phrase, which has now become a sort of literary shorthand to express a wide and sweeping idea, but what it actually imports. Fortunately Mr.

Watts-Dunton has quite lately given us a luminous exposition of what the words do precisely mean. Last year he wrote for that invaluable work, Chambers's 'Cyclopaedia of English Literature,' the Introduction to volume iii., and no one can any longer say that there is any ambiguity in this now famous phrase:-

"As the storm-wind is the cause and not the effect of the mighty billows at sea, so the movement in question was the cause and not the effect of the French Revolution. It was nothing less than a great revived movement of the soul of man, after a long period of prosaic acceptance in all things, including literature and art. To this revival the present writer, in the introduction to an imaginative work dealing with this movement, has already, for convenience' sake, and in default of a better one, given the name of the Renascence of Wonder. As was said on that occasion, 'The phrase, the Renascence of Wonder, merely indicates that there are two great impulses governing man, and probably not man only, but the entire world of conscious life: the impulse of acceptance-the impulse to take unchallenged and for granted all the phenomena of the outer world as they are-and the impulse to confront these phenomena with eyes of inquiry and wonder.'

It would seem that something works as inevitably and as logically as a physical law in the yearning which societies in a certain stage of development show to get away, as far away as possible, from the condition of the natural man; to get away from that despised condition not only in material affairs, such as dress, domestic arrangements and economies, but also in the fine arts and in intellectual methods, till, having pa.s.sed that inevitable stage, each society is liable to suffer (even if it does not in some cases actually suffer) a reaction, when nature and art are likely again to take the place of convention and artifice. Anthropologists have often asked, what was that lever-power lying enfolded in the dark womb of some remote semi-human brain, which, by first stirring, lifting, and vitalizing other potential and latent faculties, gave birth to man? Would it be rash to a.s.sume that this lever-power was a vigorous movement of the faculty of wonder? But certainly it is not rash, as regards the races of man, to affirm that the more intelligent the race the less it is governed by the instinct of acceptance, and the more it is governed by the instinct of wonder, that instinct which leads to the movement of challenge. The alternate action of the two great warring instincts is specially seen just now in the j.a.panese. Here the instinct of challenge which results in progress became active up to a certain point, and then suddenly became arrested, leaving the instinct of acceptance to have full play, and then everything became crystallized. Ages upon ages of an immense activity of the instinct of challenge were required before the Mongolian savage was developed into the j.a.panese of the period before the nature-worship of 'Shinto' had been a.s.saulted by dogmatic Buddhism. But by that time the instinct of challenge had resulted in such a high state of civilization that acceptance set in and there was an end, for the time being, of progress. There is no room here to say even a few words upon other great revivals in past times, such, for instance, as the Jewish-Arabian renascence of the ninth and tenth centuries, when the interest in philosophical speculation, which had previously been arrested, was revived; when the old sciences were revived; and when some modern sciences were born. There are, of course, different kinds of wonder."

This pa.s.sage has a peculiar interest for me, because I instinctively compare it with the author's speech delivered at the St. Ives old Union Book Club dinner when he was a boy. It shows the same wide vision, the same sweep, and the same rush of eloquence. It is in view of this great generalization that I have determined to quote that speech later.

The essay then goes on in a swift way to point out the different kinds of wonder:-

"Primitive poetry is full of wonder-the nave and eager wonder of the healthy child. It is this kind of wonder which makes the 'Iliad' and the 'Odyssey' so delightful. The wonder of primitive poetry pa.s.ses as the primitive conditions of civilization pa.s.s; and then for the most part it can only be succeeded by a very different kind of wonder-the wonder aroused by a recognition of the mystery of man's life and the mystery of nature's theatre on which the human drama is played-the wonder, in short, of aeschylus and Sophocles. And among the Romans, Virgil, though living under the same kind of Augustan acceptance in which Horace, the typical poet of acceptance, lived, is full of this latter kind of wonder. Among the English poets who preceded the great Elizabethan epoch there is no room, and indeed there is no need, to allude to any poet besides Chaucer; and even he can only be slightly touched upon. He stands at the head of those who are organized to see more clearly than we can ourselves see the wonder of the 'world at hand.' Of the poets whose wonder is of the simply terrene kind, those whose eyes are occupied by the beauty of the earth and the romance of human life, he is the English king. But it is not the wonder of Chaucer that is to be specially discussed in the following sentences. It is the spiritual wonder which in our literature came afterwards. It is that kind of wonder which filled the souls of Spenser, of Marlowe, of Shakespeare, of Webster, of Ford, of Cyril Tourneur, and of the old ballads: it is that poetical att.i.tude which the human mind a.s.sumes when confronting those unseen powers of the universe who, if they did not weave the web in which man finds himself entangled, dominate it. That this high temper should have pa.s.sed and given place to a temper of prosaic acceptance is quite inexplicable, save by the theory of the action and reaction of the two great warring impulses advanced in the foregoing extract from the Introduction to 'Aylwin.' Perhaps the difference between the temper of the Elizabethan period and the temper of the Chaucerian on the one hand, and Augustanism on the other, will be better understood by a brief reference to the humour of the respective periods."

Then come luminous remarks upon his theory of absolute and relative humour, which I shall deal with in relation to that type of absolute humour, his own Mrs. Gudgeon in 'Aylwin.'

I will now quote a pa.s.sage from an article in the 'Quarterly Review' on William Morris by one of Morris's intimate friends:-

"The decorative renascence in England is but an expression of the spirit of the pre-Raphaelite movement-a movement which has been defined by the most eminent of living critics as the renascence of the 'spirit of wonder' in poetry and art. So defined, it falls into proper relationship with the continuous development of English literature, and of the romantic movement, during the last century and a half, and is no longer to be considered an isolated phenomenon called into being by an erratic genius. The English Romantic school, from its first inception with Chatterton, Macpherson, and the publication of the Percy ballads, does not, as Mr. Watts-Dunton has finely pointed out, aim merely at the revival of natural language; it seeks rather to reach through art and the forgotten world of old romance, that world of wonder and mystery and spiritual beauty of which poets gain glimpses through

magic cas.e.m.e.nts, opening on the foam Of perilous seas, in faery lands forlorn."

In an essay on Rossetti, Mr. Watts-Dunton says:-

"It was by inevitable instinct that Rossetti turned to that mysterious side of nature and man's life which to other painters of his time had been a mere fancy-land, to be visited, if at all, on the wings of sport. It is not only in such masterpieces of his maturity as Dante's Dream, La Pia, etc., but in such early designs as How they Met Themselves, La Belle Dame sans Merci, Ca.s.sandra, etc., that Rossetti shows how important a figure he is in the history of modern art, if modern art claims to be anything more than a mechanical imitation of the facts of nature.

For if there is any permanent vitality in the Renascence of Wonder in modern Europe, if it is not a mere pa.s.sing mood, if it is really the inevitable expression of the soul of man in a certain stage of civilization (when the sanctions which have made and moulded society are found to be not absolute and eternal, but relative, mundane, ephemeral, and subject to the higher sanctions of unseen powers that work behind 'the shows of things'), then perhaps one of the first questions to ask in regard to any imaginative painter of the nineteenth century is, In what relation does he stand to the newly-awakened spirit of romance? Had he a genuine and independent sympathy with that temper of wonder and mystery which all over Europe had preceded and now followed the temper of imitation, prosaic acceptance, pseudo-cla.s.sicism, and domestic materialism? Or was his apparent sympathy with the temper of wonder, reverence and awe the result of artistic environment dictated to him by other and more powerful and original souls around him? I do not say that the mere fact of a painter's or poet's showing but an imperfect sympathy with the Renascence of Wonder is sufficient to place him below a poet in whom that sympathy is more nearly complete, because we should then be driven to place some of the disciples of Rossetti above our great realistic painters, and we should be driven to place a poet like the author of 'The Excursion' and 'The Prelude' beneath a poet like the author of 'The Queen's Wake'; but we do say that, other things being equal or anything like equal, a painter or poet of our time is to be judged very much by his sympathy with that great movement which we call the Renascence of Wonder-call it so because the word romanticism never did express it even before it had been vulgarized by French poets, dramatists, doctrinaires, and literary harlequins.

To struggle against the prim traditions of the eighteenth century, the unities of Aristotle, the delineation of types instead of character, as Chateaubriand, Madame de Stael, Balzac, and Hugo struggled, was well. But in studying Rossetti's works we reach the very key of those 'high palaces of romance' which the English mind had never, even in the eighteenth century, wholly forgotten, but whose mystic gates no Frenchman ever yet unlocked. Not all the romantic feeling to be found in all the French romanticists (with their theory that not earnestness but the grotesque is the life-blood of romance) could equal the romantic spirit expressed in a single picture or drawing of Rossetti's, such, for instance, as Beata Beatrix or Pandora.