Theodore Watts-Dunton Part 13

I answered thus: 'If Friendship's isle of palm Is but a vision, every loveliest leaf, Can Knowledge of its mockery soothe and calm This soul of mine in this most fiery grief?

If Love but holds of Life through Death in fief, What balm in knowing that Love is Death's-what balm?'

V

Yea, thus I boldly answered Death-even I Who have for boon-who have for deathless dower- Thy love, dear friend, which broods, a magic power, Filling with music earth and sea and sky: 'O Death,' I said, 'not Love, but thou shalt die; For, this I know, though thine is now the hour, And thine these angry clouds of doom that lour, Death striking Love but strikes to deify.'

Yet while I spoke I sighed in loneliness, For strange seemed Man, and Life seemed comfortless, And night, whom we two loved, seemed strange and dumb; And, waiting till the dawn the promised sign, I watched-I listened for that voice of thine, Though Reason said: 'Nor voice nor face can come.'

BIRCHINGTON, EASTERTIDE, 1882.

Mr. Watts-Dunton has written many magnificent sonnets, but the sonnet in this sequence beginning-

Last night Death whispered: 'Life's purblind procession,'

is, I think, the finest of them all. The imaginative conception packed into these fourteen lines is cosmic in its sweep. In the metrical scheme the feminine rhymes of the octave play a very important part. They suggest pathetic suspense, mystery, yearning, hope, fear; they ask, they wonder, they falter. But in the sestet the words of destiny are calmly and coldly p.r.o.nounced, and every rhyme clinches the voice of doom, until the uttermost deep of despair is sounded in the iterated cry of the last line. The craftsmanship throughout is masterly. There is, indeed, one line which is not unworthy of being ranked with the great lines of English poetry:

Yon moon that strikes the pane, the stars in session.

Here by a bold use of the simple verb 'strikes' a whole poem is hammered into six words. As to the interesting question of feminine rhymes, while I admit that they should never be used without an emotional mandate, I think that here it is overwhelming.

I have tried to show the beauty of the friendship between these two rare spirits by means of other testimony than my own, for although I have been granted the honour of knowing Rossetti's 'friend of friends,' I missed the equal honour of knowing Rossetti, save through that 'friend of friends.' But to know Mr. Watts-Dunton seems almost like knowing Rossetti, for when at The Pines he begins to recall those golden hours when the poets used to hold converse, the soul of Rossetti seems to come back from the land of shadows, as his friend depicts his winsome ways, his n.o.bility of heart, his generous interest in the work of others, that lovableness of nature and charm of personality which, if we are to believe Mr. Ford Madox Hueffer, worked, in some degree, ill for the poet.

Mr. Hueffer, who, as a family connection, may be supposed to represent the family tradition about 'Gabriel,' has some striking and pregnant words upon the injurious effect of Rossetti's being brought so much into contact with admirers from the time when Mr. Meredith and Mr. Swinburne were his housemates at Cheyne Walk. "Then came the 'Pre-Raphaelite'

poets like Philip Marston, O'Shaughnessy, and 'B. V.' Afterwards there came a whole host of young men like Mr. William Sharp, who were serious admirers, and to-day are in their places or are dead or forgotten; and others again who came for the 'pickings.' They were all more or less enthusiasts."

[Picture: 'The Green Dining Room,' 16 Cheyne Walk. (From a Painting by Dunn, at 'The Pines.')]

Mr. Hake, in 'Notes and Queries' (June 7, 1902), says:

"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."

I am fortunate in being able to reproduce here the picture of the famous 'Green Dining Room' at 16 Cheyne Walk, to which Mr. Hake refers. Mr.

Hake also writes in the same article: "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 by Dunn 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 am sure that my readers will be interested in the photograph of one of these famous mirrors, which Mr. Watts-Dunton has generously permitted to be specially taken for this book.

[Picture: One of the Carved Mirrors at 'The Pines,' decorated with Dunn's copy of the lost Rossetti Frescoes at the Oxford Union]

And here again I must draw upon Dr. Gordon Hake's fascinating book of poetry, 'The New Day,' which must live, if only for its reminiscences of the life poetic lived at Chelsea, Kelmscott, and Bognor:-

THE NEW DAY

I

In the unbroken silence of the mind Thoughts creep about us, seeming not to move, And life is back among the days behind- The spectral days of that lamented love- Days whose romance can never be repeated.

The sun of Kelmscott through the foliage gleaming, We see him, life-like, at his easel seated, His voice, his brush, with rival wonders teeming.

These vanished hours, where are they stored away?

Hear we the voice, or but its lingering tone?

Its utterances are swallowed up in day; The gabled house, the mighty master gone.

Yet are they ours: the stranger at the hall- What dreams he of the days we there recall?

II

O, happy days with him who once so loved us!

We loved as brothers, with a single heart, The man whose iris-woven pictures moved us From Nature to her blazoned shadow-Art.

How often did we trace the nestling Thames From humblest waters on his course of might, Down where the weir the bursting current stems- There sat till evening grew to balmy night, Veiling the weir whose roar recalled the strand Where we had listened to the wave-lipped sea, That seemed to utter plaudits while we planned Triumphal labours of the day to be.

The words were his: 'Such love can never die;'

The grief was ours when he no more was nigh.

III

Like some sweet water-bell, the tinkling rill Still calls the flowers upon its misty bank To stoop into the stream and drink their fill.

And still the shapeless rushes, green and rank, Seem lounging in their pride round those retreats, Watching slim willows dip their thirsty spray.

Slowly a loosened weed another meets; They stop, like strangers, neither giving way.

We are here surely if the world, forgot, Glides from our sight into the charm, unbidden; We are here surely at this witching spot,- Though Nature in the reverie is hidden.

A spell so holds our captive eyes in thrall, It is as if a play pervaded all.

IV

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.

V

Remember how we roamed the Channel's sh.o.r.e, And read aloud our verses, each in turn, While rhythmic waves to us their music bore, And foam-flakes leapt from out the rocky churn.

Then oft with glowing eyes you strove to capture The potent word that makes a thought abiding, And wings it upward to its place of rapture, While we discoursed to Nature, she presiding.

Then would the poet-painter gaze in wonder That art knew not the mighty reverie That moves earth's spirit and her orb asunder, While ocean's depths, even, seem a shallow sea.

Yet with rare genius could his hand impart His own far-searching poesy to art.

The fourth of these exquisite sonnets delights me most of all. It makes me see the recluse in his studio, sitting snugly with his feet in the fender, when suddenly the door opens and the poet of Nature brings with him a new atmosphere-the salt atmosphere which envelops 'Mother Carey's Chicken,' and the attenuated mountain air of Natura Benigna. And yet perhaps the description of

'The sun of Kelmscott through the foliage gleaming'

is equally fascinating.

Mr. Watts-Dunton himself, with a stronger hand and more vigorous brush, has in his sonnet 'The Shadow on the Window Blind,' made Kelmscott Manor and the poetic life lived there still more memorable:-

Within this thicket's every leafy lair A song-bird sleeps: the very rooks are dumb, Though red behind their nests the moon has swum- But still I see that shadow writing there!- Poet, behind yon cas.e.m.e.nt's ruddy square, Whose shadow tells me why you do not come- Rhyming and chiming of thine insect-hum, Flying and singing through thine inch of air-

Come thither, where on gra.s.s and flower and leaf Gleams Nature's scripture, putting Man's to shame: 'Thy day,' she says, 'is all too rich and brief- Thy game of life too wonderful a game- To give to Art entirely or in chief: Drink of these dews-sweeter than wine of Fame.'

'Aylwin,' too, is full of vivid pictures of Rossetti at Chelsea and Kelmscott.

The following description of the famous house and garden, 16 Cheyne Walk, has been declared by one of Rossetti's most intimate friends to be marvellously graphic and true:-

"On sending in my card I was shown at once into the studio, and after threading my way between some pieces of ma.s.sive furniture and pictures upon easels, I found D'Arcy lolling lazily upon a huge sofa.

Seeing that he was not alone, I was about to withdraw, for I was in no mood to meet strangers. However, he sprang up and introduced me to his guest, whom he called Symonds, an elegant-looking man in a peculiar kind of evening dress, who, as I afterwards learnt, was one of Mr. D'Arcy's chief buyers. This gentleman bowed stiffly to me.