Theodore Watts-Dunton Part 24

"Nothing," he says, "in regard to 'Aylwin' has given me so much pleasure as the way in which it has been received both by my Welsh friends and my Romany friends. I little thought, when I wrote it, that within three years of its publication the gypsy pictures in it would be discoursed upon to audiences of 4,000 people by a man so well equipped to express an opinion on such a subject as the eloquent and famous 'Gypsy Smith,' and described by him as 'the most trustworthy picture of Romany life in the English language, containing in Sinfi Lovell the truest representative of the Gypsy girl.'

Since the first appearance of the book there have been many interesting discussions by Welsh readers, in various periodicals, upon the path taken by Sinfi Lovell and Aylwin in their ascent of Snowdon.

A very picturesque letter appeared in 'Notes and Queries' on May 3, 1902, signed C. C. B., in answer to a query by E. W., which I will give myself the pleasure of quoting because it describes the writer's ascent of Snowdon (accompanied by a son of my old friend, Harry Owen, late of Pen-y-Gwryd) along a path which was almost the same as that taken by Aylmin and Sinfi Lovell, when he saw the same magnificent spectacle that was seen by them:-

'The mist was then clearing (it was in July) and in a few moments was entirely gone. So marvellous a transformation scene, and so immense a prospect, I have never beheld since. For the first and only time in my life I saw from one spot almost the whole of North and Mid-Wales, a good part of Western England, and a glimpse of Scotland and Ireland. The vision faded all too quickly, but it was worth walking thirty-three or thirty-four miles, as I did that day, for even a briefer view than that.'

Referring to Llyn Coblynau, this interesting writer says:-

'Only from Glaslyn would the description in "Aylwin" of y Wyddfa standing out against the sky "as narrow and as steep as the sides of an acorn" be correct, but from the north and north-west sides of Glaslyn this answers with quite curious exactness to the appearance of the mountain. We must suppose the action of the story to have taken place before the revival of the copper-mining industry on Snowdon.'

[Picture: Snowdon and Glaslyn]

With regard, however, to the question here raised, I can save myself all trouble by simply quoting the admirable remarks of Sion o Ddyli in the same number of 'Notes and Queries':-

'None of us are very likely to succeed in "placing" this llyn, because the author of "Aylwin," taking a privilege of romance often taken by Sir Walter Scott before him, probably changed the landmarks in idealising the scene and adapting it to his story. It may be, indeed, that the Welsh name given to the llyn in the book is merely a rough translation of the gipsies' name for it, the "Knockers" being gnomes or goblins of the mine; hence "Coblynau"-goblins. If so, the name itself can give us no clue unless we are lucky enough to secure the last of the Welsh gipsies for a guide. In any case, the only point from which to explore Snowdon for the small llyn, or perhaps llyns (of which Llyn Coblynau is a kind of composite ideal picture), is no doubt, as E. W. has suggested, Capel Curig; and I imagine the actual scene lies about a mile south from Glaslyn, while it owes something at least of its colouring in the book to that strange lake.

The "Knockers," it must be remembered, usually depend upon the existence of a mine near by, with old partly fallen mine-workings where the dropping of water or other subterranean noises produce the curious phenomenon which is turned to such imaginative account in the Snowdon chapters of "Aylwin."'"

In 'Aylwin' Mr. Watts-Dunton is fond of giving his readers little pictorial glimpses of Welsh life:-

"The peasants and farmers all knew me. 'Sut mae dy galon? (How is thy heart?)' they would say in the beautiful Welsh phrase as I met them. 'How is my heart, indeed!' I would sigh as I went on my way.

Before I went to Wales in search of Winifred I had never set foot in the Princ.i.p.ality. Before I left it there was scarcely a Welshman who knew more familiarly than I every mile of the Snowdonian country.

Never a trace of Winifred could I find.

At the end of the autumn I left the cottage and removed to Pen-y-Gwryd, as a comparatively easy point from which I could reach the mountain llyn where I had breakfasted with Winifred on that morning."

His intense affection for Welsh characteristics is seen in the following description of the little Welsh girl and her fascinating lisp:-

"'Would you like to come in our garden? It's such a nice garden.'

I could resist her no longer. That voice would have drawn me had she spoken in the language of the Toltecs or the lost Zamzummin. To describe it would of course be impossible. The novelty of her accent, the way in which she gave the 'h' in 'which,' 'what,' and 'when,' the Welsh rhythm of her intonation, were as bewitching to me as the timbre of her voice. And let me say here, once for all, that when I sat down to write this narrative, I determined to give the English reader some idea of the way in which, whenever her emotions were deeply touched, her talk would run into soft Welsh diminutives; but I soon abandoned the attempt in despair. I found that to use colloquial Welsh with effect in an English context is impossible without wearying English readers and disappointing Welsh ones.

Here, indeed, is one of the great disadvantages under which this book will go out to the world. While a story-teller may reproduce, by means of orthographical devices, something of the effect of Scottish accent, Irish accent, or Manx accent, such devices are powerless to represent Welsh accent."

Chapter XX IMAGINATIVE AND DIDACTIC PROSE

BUT the interesting subjects touched upon in the last four chapters have led me far from the subject of 'The Renascence of Wonder.' In its biographical sketch of Mr. Watts-Dunton the 'Encyclopaedia Britannica'

says: "Imaginative glamour and mysticism are prominent characteristics both of 'The Coming of Love' and 'Aylwin,' and the novel in particular has had its share in restoring the charms of pure romance to the favour of the general public." This is high praise, but I hope to show that it is deserved. When it was announced that a work of prose fiction was about to be published by the critic of the 'Athenaeum,' what did Mr.

Watts-Dunton's readers expect? I think they expected something as unlike what the story turned out to be as it is possible to imagine. They expected a story built up of a discursive sequence of new and profound generalizations upon life and literature expressed in brilliant picturesque prose such as had been the delight of my boyhood in Ireland; they expected to be fascinated more than ever by that 'easy authoritative greatness and comprehensiveness of style' with which they had been familiar for long; they expected also that subtle irony after the fashion of Fielding, which suggests so much between the lines, that humour which had been an especial joy to me in scores of articles signed by the writer's style as indubitably as if they had been signed by his name. I think everybody cherished this expectation: everybody took it for granted that heaps of those 'intellectual nuggets' about which Minto talked would smother the writer as a story-teller, that the book as literature would be admirable-but as a novel a failure. Great as was Mr. Watts-Dunton's esoteric reputation, I believe that many of the booksellers declined (as the author had prophesied that they would decline) to subscribe for the book. They expected it to fail as a marketable novel-to fail in that 'artistic convincement' of which Mr. Watts-Dunton has himself so often written. What neither I nor any one else save those who, like Mr.

Swinburne, had read the story in ma.n.u.script, did expect, was a story so poetic, so unworldly, and so romantic that it might have been written by a young Celt-a love story of intense pa.s.sion, which yet by some magic art was as convincingly realistic as any one of those 'flat-footed'

sermon-stories which the late W. E. Henley was wont to deride.

In fact, from this point of view 'Aylwin' is a curiosity of literature.

The truth seems to be, however, that, as one of Mr. Watts-Dunton's most intimate friends has said, its style represents one facet only of Watts-Dunton's character. Like most of us, he has a dual existence-one half of him is the romantic youth, Henry Aylwin, the other half is the world-wise philosopher of the 'Athenaeum.' This other half of him lives in the style of another story altogether, where the creator of Henry Aylwin takes up the very different role of a man of the world. Now I have views of my own upon this duality. I think that if the brilliant worldly writing of the ma.s.s of his work be examined, it will be found to be a 'shot' texture scintillating with various hues where sometimes repressed pa.s.sion and sometimes mysticism and dreams are constantly shining through the glossy silk of the style. Sometimes from the smooth, even flow of the criticisms gleams of a pa.s.sion far more intense than anything in 'Aylwin' will flash out. I will cite a pa.s.sage in his critical writings wherein he discusses the inadequacy of language to express the deepest pa.s.sion:-

"As compared with sculpture and painting the great infirmity of poetry, as an 'imitation' of nature, is of course that the medium is always and of necessity words-even when no words could, in the dramatic situation, have been spoken. It is not only Homer who is obliged sometimes to forget that pa.s.sion when at white heat is never voluble, is scarcely even articulate; the dramatists also are obliged to forget that in love and in hate, at their tensest, words seem weak and foolish when compared with the silent and satisfying triumph and glory of deeds, such as the plastic arts can render. This becomes manifest enough when we compare the Niobe group or the Laoc.o.o.n group, or the great dramatic paintings of the modern world, with even the finest efforts of dramatic poetry, such as the speech of Andromache to Hector, or the speech of Priam to Achilles; nay, such as even the cries of Ca.s.sandra in the 'Agamemnon,' or the wailings of Lear over the dead Cordelia. Even when writing the words uttered by dipus, as the terrible truth breaks in upon his soul, Sophocles must have felt that, in the holiest chambers of sorrow and in the highest agonies of suffering reigns that awful silence which not poetry, but painting sometimes, and sculpture always, can render. What human sounds could render the agony of Niobe, or the agony of Laoc.o.o.n, as we see them in the sculptor's rendering? Not articulate speech at all; not words, but wails. It is the same with hate; it is the same with love. We are not speaking merely of the unpacking of the heart in which the angry warriors of the 'Ilaid' indulge. Even such subtle writing as that of aeschylus and Sophocles falls below the work of the painter.

Hate, though voluble perhaps as Clytaemnestra's when hate is at that red-heat glow which the poet can render, changes in a moment whenever that redness has been fanned into hatred's own last complexion-whiteness as of iron at the melting-point-when the heart has grown far too big to be 'unpacked' at all, and even the bitter epigrams of hate's own rhetoric, though brief as the terrier's snap before he fleshes his teeth, or as the short snarl of the tigress as she springs before her cubs in danger, are all too slow and sluggish for a soul to which language at its tensest has become idle play.

But this is just what cannot be rendered by an art whose medium consists solely of words."

Could any one reading this pa.s.sage doubt that the real work of the writer was to write poetry and not criticism?

But this makes it necessary for me to say a word upon the question of the style of 'Aylwin'-a question that has often been discussed. The fascination of the story is largely due to the magnetism of its style.

And yet how undecorated, not to say how plain, the style in the more level pa.s.sages often is! When the story was first written the style glittered with literary ornament. But the author deliberately struck out many of the poetic pa.s.sages. Coleridge tells us that an imaginative work should be written in a simple style, and that the more imaginative the work the simpler the style should be. I often think of these words when I labour in the sweat of my brow to read the word-twisting of precious writers! It is then that I think of 'Aylwin,' for 'Aylwin' stands alone in its power of carrying the reader away to climes of new and rare beauty peopled by characters as new and as rare. It was clearly Mr.

Watts-Dunton's idea that what such a story needed was mastery over 'artistic convincement.' He has more than once commented on the acuteness of Edgar Poe's remark that in the expression of true pa.s.sion there is always something of the 'homely.' 'Aylwin' is one long unbroken cry of pa.s.sion, mostly in a 'homely key,' but this 'homely key' is left for loftier keys whenever the proper time for the change comes. In beginning to write, the author seems to have felt that 'The Renascence of Wonder' and the quest of beauty, although adequately expressed in the poetry of the newest romantic school-that of Rossetti, Morris, and Swinburne-had only found its way into imaginative prose through the highly elaborate technique of his friend, George Meredith. He seems to have felt that the great imaginative prose writers of the time, Thackeray, d.i.c.kens, and Charles Reade, were in a certain sense Philistines of genius who had done but little to bring beauty, romance and culture into prose fiction. And as to Meredith, though a true child of romanticism who never did and never could breathe the air of Philistia, he had adopted a style too self-conscious and rich in literary qualities to touch that great English pulse that beats outside the walls of the Palace of Art.

Mrs. Craigie has lately declared that at the present moment all the most worthy English novelists, with the exception of Mr. Thomas Hardy, are distinguished disciples of Mr. George Meredith. But to belong to 'the mock Meredithians' is not a matter of very great glory. No one adores the work of Mr. Meredith more than I do, though my admiration is not without a certain leaven of distress at his literary self-consciousness.

I say this with all reverence. Great as Meredith is, he would be greater still if, when he is delivering his priceless gifts to us, he would bear in mind that immortal injunction in 'King Henry the Fourth'-'I prithee now, deliver them like a man of this world.' I can imagine how the great humourist must smile when the dolt, who once found 'obscurity' in his most lucid pa.s.sages, praises him for the defects of his qualities, and calls upon all other writers to write Meredithese.

To be a cla.s.sic-to be immortal-it is necessary for an imaginative writer to deliver his message like 'a man of this world.' Shakespeare himself, occasionally, will seem to forget this, but only occasionally, and we never think of it when falling down in worship before the shrine of the greatest imaginative writer that has ever lived. Dr. Johnson said that all work which lives is without eccentricity. Now, entranced as I have been, ever since I was a boy, by Meredith's incomparable romances, I long to set my imagination free of Meredith and fly away with his characters, as I can fly away with the characters of the cla.s.sic imaginative writers from Homer down to Sir Walter Scott. But I seldom succeed. Now and then I escape from the obsession of the picture of the great writer seated in his chalet with the summer sunshine gleaming round his picturesque head, but illuminating also all too vividly his inkstand, and his paper and his pens; but only now and then, and not for long. If it had pleased Nature to give him less intellectual activity, less humour and wit and literary brilliance, I feel sure that he would have lived more securely as an English cla.s.sic. I adore him, I say, and although I do not know him personally, I love him. We all love him: and when I am in a very charitable mood, I can even forgive him for having begotten the 'mock Meredithians.' As to those who, without a spark of his humourous imagination and supple intellect can manage to mimic his style, if they only knew what a torture their word-twisting is to the galled reviewer who wants to get on, and to know what on earth they have got to tell him, I think they would display a little more mercy, and even for pity's sake deliver their gifts like 'men of this world.'

In 'Aylwin' Mr. Watts-Dunton seems to have determined to be as romantic and as beautiful as the romanticists in poetry had ever dared to be, and yet by aid of a simplicity and a navete of diction of which his critical writings had shown no sign, to carry his beautiful dreams into Philistia itself. Never was there a bolder enterprise, and never was there a greater success. That 'Aylwin' would appeal strongly to imaginative minds was certain, for it was written by 'the most widely cultivated writer in the English belles lettres of our time.' But the strange thing is that a story so full of romance, poetry, and beauty, should also appeal to other minds.

I am no believer in mere popularity, and I confess that when books come before me for review I cannot help casting a suspicious eye upon any story by any of the very popular novelists of the day. But it is necessary to explain why the most poetical romance written within the last century is also one of the most popular. It was in part owing to its simplicity of diction, its navete of utterance, and its freedom from superfluous literary ornamentation. I do not as a rule like using a foreign word when an English word will do the same work, but neither 'artlessness,' 'candour' nor 'simplicity' seem to express the unique charm of the style of 'Aylwin,' so completely as does the word 'navete.'

It was by navete, I believe, that he carried the Renascence of Wonder into quarters which his great brothers in the Romantic movement could never reach.

For such a writer as he, the critic steeped in all the latest subtleties of the style of to-day, and indeed the originator of many of these subtleties, the intimate friend of such superb and elaborate literary artists as Tennyson, Browning, George Meredith, Rossetti and Swinburne, it must have been inconceivably difficult to write the 'working portions'

of his narrative in a style as unbookish at times as if he had written in the pre-Meredithian epoch. Having set out to convince his readers of the truth of what he was telling them, he determined to sacrifice all literary 'self-indulgence' to that end. I do not recollect that any critic, when the book came out, noted this. But if 'Aylwin' had been a French book published in France, the nave style adopted by the autobiographer would have been recognized by the critics as the crowning proof of the author's dramatic genius. Whenever the style seems most to suggest the pre-Meredithian writers, it is because the story is an autobiography and because the hero lived in pre-Meredithian times.

Difficult as was Thackeray's tour de force in 'Esmond,' it was nothing to the tour de force of 'Aylwin.' The tale is told 'as though inspired by the very spirit of youth' because the hero was a youth when he told it.

It is hard to imagine a writer past the meridian of life being able to write a story 'more flushed with the glory and the pa.s.sion and the wonder of youth than any other in English fiction.'

It should be noted that whenever the incidents become especially tragic or romantic or weird or poetic, the 'homeliness' of the style goes-the style at once rises to the occasion, it becomes not only rich, but too rich for prose. I have now and then heard certain word-twisters of second-hand Meredithese speak of the 'baldness' of the style of 'Aylwin.'

Roll fifty of these word-twisters into one, and let that one write a sentence or two of such prose as this, published at the time that 'Aylwin' was written. It occurs in a pa.s.sage on the greatest of all rich writers, Shakespeare:-

"In the quality of richness Shakespeare stood quite alone till the publication of 'Endymion.' Till then it was 'Eclipse first-the rest nowhere.' When we think of Shakespeare, it is his richness more than even his higher qualities that we think of first. In reading him, we feel at every turn that we have come upon a mind as rich as Marlowe's Moor, who

Without control can pick his riches up, And in his house heap pearls, like pebble-stones.

Nay, he is richer still; he can, by merely looking at the 'pebble-stones,' turn them into pearls for himself, like the changeling child recovered from the gnomes in the Rosicrucian story.

His riches burden him. And no wonder: it is stiff flying with the ruby hills of Badakhshan on your back. Nevertheless, so strong are the wings of his imagination, so lordly is his intellect, that he can carry them all; he could carry, it would seem, every gem in Golconda-every gem in every planet from here to Neptune-and yet win his goal. Now, in the matter of richness this is the great difference between him and Keats, the wings of whose imagination, aerial at starting, and only iridescent like the sails of a dragon-fly, seem to change as he goes-become overcharged with beauty, in fact-abloom 'with splendid dyes, as are the tiger-moth's deep-damasked wings.' Or, rather, it may be said that he seems to start sometimes with Shakespeare's own eagle-pinions, which, as he mounts, catch and retain colour after colour from the earth below, till, heavy with beauty as the drooping wings of a golden pheasant, they fly low and level at last over the earth they cannot leave for its loveliness, not even for the holiness of the skies."

I will give a few instances of pa.s.sages in 'Aylwin' quite as rich as this. One shall be from that scene in which Winifred unconsciously reveals to her lover that her father has stolen the jewelled cross and brought his own father's curse upon her beloved head:-

"Winifred picked up the sea weed and made a necklace of it, in the old childish way, knowing how much it would please me.

'Isn't it a lovely colour?' she said, as it glistened in the moonlight. 'Isn't it just as beautiful and just as precious as if it were really made of the jewels it seems to rival?'

'It is as red as the reddest ruby,' I replied, putting out my hand and grasping the slippery substance.

'Would you believe,' said Winnie, 'that I never saw a ruby in my life? And now I particularly want to know all about rubies.'

'Why do you want particularly to know?'

'Because,' said Winifred, 'my father, when he wished me to come out for a walk, had been talking a great deal about rubies.'