Theodore Watts-Dunton Part 25

'Your father had been talking about rubies, Winifred-how very odd!'

'Yes,' said Winifred, 'and he talked about diamonds too.'

'THE CURSE!' I murmured, and clasped her to my breast. 'Kiss me, Winifred!'

There had come a bite of sudden fire at my heart, and I shuddered with a dreadful knowledge, like the captain of an unarmed ship, who, while the unconscious landsmen on board are gaily scrutinizing a sail that like a speck has appeared on the horizon, shudders with the knowledge of what the speck is, and hears in imagination the yells, and sees the knives, of the Lascar pirates just starting in pursuit.

As I took in the import of those innocent words, falling from Winifred's bright lips, falling as unconsciously as water-drops over a coral reef in tropical seas alive with the eyes of a thousand sharks, my skin seemed to roughen with dread, and my hair began to stir."

Another instance occurs in Wilderspin's ornate description of his great picture, 'Faith and Love':-

"'Imagine yourself standing in an Egyptian city, where innumerable lamps of every hue are shining. It is one of the great lamp-fetes of Sais, which all Egypt has come to see. There, in honour of the feast, sits a tall woman, covered by a veil. But the painting is so wonderful, Mr. Aylwin, that, though you see a woman's face expressed behind the veil-though you see the warm flesh-tints and the light of the eyes through the aerial film-you cannot judge of the character of the face-you cannot see whether it is that of woman in her n.o.blest, or woman in her basest, type. The eyes sparkle, but you cannot say whether they sparkle with malignity or benevolence-whether they are fired with what Philip Aylwin calls "the love-light of the seventh heaven," or are threatening with "the hungry flames of the seventh h.e.l.l!" There she sits in front of a portico, while, asleep, with folded wings, is crouched on one side of her the figure of Love, with rosy feathers, and on the other the figure of Faith, with plumage of a deep azure. Over her head, on the portico, are written the words:-"I am all that hath been, is, and shall be, and no mortal hath uncovered my veil." The tinted lights falling on the group are shed, you see, from the rainbow-coloured lamps of Sais, which are countless. But in spite of all these lamps, Mr. Aylwin, no mortal can see the face behind that veil. And why? Those who alone could uplift it, the figures folded with wings-Faith and Love-are fast asleep, at the great Queen's feet. When Faith and Love are sleeping there, what are the many-coloured lamps of science!-of what use are they to the famished soul of man?'

'A striking idea!' I exclaimed.

'Your father's,' replied Wilderspin, in a tone of such reverence that one might have imagined my father's spectre stood before him. 'It symbolises that base Darwinian cosmogony which Carlyle spits at, and the great and good John Ruskin scorns. But this design is only the predella beneath the picture "Faith and Love." Now look at the picture itself, Mr. Aylwin,' he continued, as though it were upon an easel before me. 'You are at Sais no longer: you are now, as the architecture around you shows, in a Greek city by the sea. In the light of innumerable lamps, torches, and wax tapers, a procession is moving through the streets. You see Isis, as Pelagia, advancing between two ranks, one of joyous maidens in snow white garments, adorned with wreaths, and scattering from their bosoms all kinds of dewy flowers; the other of youths, playing upon pipes and flutes mixed with men with shaven shining crowns, playing upon sistra of bra.s.s, silver, and gold. Isis wears a Dorian tunic, fastened on her breast by a ta.s.selled knot,-an azure-coloured tunic bordered with silver stars,-and an upper garment of the colour of the moon at moon-rise. Her head is crowned with a chaplet of sea-flowers, and round her throat is a necklace of seaweeds, wet still with sea-water, and shimmering with all the shifting hues of the sea. On either side of her stand the awakened angels, uplifting from her face a veil whose folds flow soft as water over her shoulders and over the wings of Faith and Love. A symbol of the true cosmogony which Philip Aylwin gave to the world!'"

Another instance I take from that scene in the crypt whither Aylwin had been drawn against his will by the ancestral impulses in his blood to replace the jewelled cross upon the breast of his father:-

"Having, with much difficulty, opened the door, I entered the crypt.

The atmosphere, though not noisome, was heavy, and charged with an influence that worked an extraordinary effect upon my brain and nerves. It was as though my personality were becoming dissipated, until at last it was partly the reflex of ancestral experiences.

Scarcely had this mood pa.s.sed before a sensation came upon me of being fanned as if by clammy bat-like wings; and then the idea seized me that the crypt scintillated with the eyes of a malignant foe. It was as if the curse which, until I heard Winnie a beggar singing in the street, had been to me but a collocation of maledictory words, harmless save in their effect upon her superst.i.tious mind, had here a.s.sumed an actual corporeal shape. In the uncertain light shed by the lantern, I seemed to see the face of this embodied curse with an ever-changing mockery of expression; at one moment wearing the features of my father; at another, those of Tom Wynne; at another the leer of the old woman I had seen in Cyril's studio.

"'It is an illusion,' I said, as I closed my eyes to shut it out; 'it is an illusion, born of opiate fumes or else of an over-taxed brain and an exhausted stomach.' Yet it disturbed me as much as if my reason had accepted it as real. Against this foe I seemed to be fighting towards my father's coffin as a dreamer fights against a nightmare, and at last I fell over one of the heaps of old Danish bones in a corner of the crypt. The candle fell from my lantern, and I was in darkness. As I sat there I pa.s.sed into a semi-conscious state. I saw sitting at the apex of a towering pyramid, built of phosph.o.r.escent human bones that reached far, far above the stars, the 'Queen of Death, Nin-ki-gal,' scattering seeds over the earth below.

At the pyramid's base knelt the suppliant figure of a Sibyl pleading with the Queen of Death:

What answer, O Nin-ki-gal?

Have pity, O Queen of Queens!

I sprang up, struck a light and relit the candle, and soon reached the coffin resting on a stone table. I found, on examining it, that although it had been screwed down after the discovery of the violation, the work had been so loosely done that a few turns of the screwdriver were sufficient to set the lid free. Then I paused; for to raise the loosened lid (knowing as I did that it was only the blood's inherited follies that had conquered my rationalism and induced me to disturb the tomb) seemed to require the strength of a giant. Moreover, the fantastic terror of old Lantoff's story, which at another time would have made me smile, also took bodily shape, and the picture of a dreadful struggle at the edge of the cliff between Winnie's father and mine seemed to hang in the air-a fascinating mirage of ghastly horror ...

At last, by an immense effort of will, I closed my eyes and pushed the lid violently on one side ...

The 'sweet odours and divers kinds of spices' of the Jewish embalmer rose like a gust of incense-rose and spread through the crypt like the sweet breath of a newborn blessing, till the air of the charnel-house seemed laden with a mingled odour of indescribable sweetness. Never had any odour so delighted my senses; never had any sensuous influence so soothed my soul.

While I stood inhaling the scents of opobalsam, and cinnamon and myrrh, and wine of palm and oil of cedar, and all the other spices of the Pharaohs, mingled in one strange aromatic cloud, my personality seemed again to become, in part, the reflex of ancestral experiences.

I opened my eyes. I looked into the coffin. The face (which had been left by the embalmer exposed) confronted mine. 'Fenella Stanley!' I cried, for the great transfigurer Death had written upon my father's brow that self-same message which the pa.s.sions of a thousand Romany ancestors had set upon the face of her whose portrait hung in the picture-gallery. And the rubies and diamonds and beryls of the cross as it now hung upon my breast, catching the light of the opened lantern in my left hand, shed over the features an indescribable reflex hue of quivering rose.

Beneath his head I placed the silver casket: I hung the hair-chain round his neck: I laid upon his breast the long-loved memento of his love and the parchment scroll.

Then I sank down by the coffin, and prayed. I knew not what or why.

But never since the first human prayer was breathed did there rise to heaven a supplication so incoherent and so wild as mine. Then I rose, and laying my hand upon my father's cold brow, I said: 'You have forgiven me for all the wild words that I uttered in my long agony. They were but the voice of intolerable misery rebelling against itself. You, who suffered so much-who know so well those flames burning at the heart's core-those flames before which all the forces of the man go down like prairie-gra.s.s before the fire and wind-you have forgiven me. You who knew the meaning of the wild word Love-you have forgiven your suffering son, stricken like yourself.

You have forgiven me, father, and forgiven him, the despoiler of your tomb: you have removed the curse, and his child-his innocent child-is free.' ...

I replaced the coffin-lid, and s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g it down left the crypt, so buoyant and exhilarated that I stopped in the churchyard and asked myself: 'Do I, then, really believe that she was under a curse? Do I really believe that my restoring the amulet has removed it? Have I really come to this?'

Throughout all these proceedings-yes, even amidst that prayer to Heaven, amidst that impa.s.sioned appeal to my dead father-had my reason been keeping up that scoffing at my heart which I have before described."

My last instance shall be from D'Arcy's letter, in which he records the marvellous events that led to his meeting with Winifred:-

"And now, my dear Aylwin, having acted as a somewhat prosaic reporter of these wonderful events, I should like to conclude my letter with a word or two about what took place when I parted from you in the streets of London. I saw then that your sufferings had been very great, and since that time they must have been tenfold greater. And now I rejoice to think that, of all the men in this world who have ever loved, you, through this very suffering, have been the most fortunate. As Job's faith was tried by Heaven, so has your love been tried by the power which you call 'circ.u.mstance' and which Wilderspin calls 'the spiritual world.' All that death has to teach the mind and the heart of man you have learnt to the very full, and yet she you love is restored to you, and will soon be in your arms. I, alas!

have long known that the tragedy of tragedies is the death of a beloved mistress, or a beloved wife. I have long known that it is as the King of Terrors that Death must needs come to any man who knows what the word 'love' really means. I have never been a reader of philosophy, but I understand that the philosophers of all countries have been preaching for ages upon ages about resignation to Death-about the final beneficence of Death-that 'reasonable moderator and equipoise of justice,' as Sir Thomas Browne calls him. Equipoise of justice indeed! He who can read with tolerance such words as these must have known nothing of the true pa.s.sion of love for a woman as you and I understand it. The Elizabethans are full of this nonsense; but where does Shakespeare, with all his immense philosophical power, ever show this temper of acquiescence? All his impeachments of Death have the deep ring of personal feeling-dramatist though he was. But, what I am going to ask you is, How shall the modern materialist, who you think is to dominate the Twentieth Century and all the centuries to follow-how shall he confront Death when a beloved mistress is struck down? When Moschus lamented that the mallow, the anise, and the parsley had a fresh birth every year, whilst we men sleep in the hollow earth a long, unbounded, never-waking sleep, he told us what your modern materialist tells us, and he re-echoed the lamentation which, long before Greece had a literature at all, had been heard beneath Chaldean stars and along the mud-banks of the Nile. Your bitter experience made you ask materialism, What comfort is there in being told that death is the very nursery of new life, and that our heirs are our very selves, if when you take leave of her who was and is your world it is 'Vale, vale, in aeternum vale'?"

These quotations may be taken as specimens of the pa.s.sages of decorated writing which the author, in order to get closer to the imagination of the reader, mercilessly struck out in proof. Whether he did wisely or unwisely in striking them out is an interesting question for criticism.

But certainly the reader has only to go through the book with this criticism in his mind, and he will see that when the story pa.s.ses into such lofty speculation as that of the opening sentences of the book, or into some equally lofty mood of the love pa.s.sion, the style becomes not only full of literary qualities, but almost over-full; it becomes a style which can best be described in his own words about richness of style which I have quoted from the 'Athenaeum.' I do not doubt that Mr.

Watts-Dunton was quite right in acting upon Coleridge's theory; for, notwithstanding the 'fairy-like beauty' of the story it is as convincing as a story told upon a prosaic subject by Defoe. In fact, it would be hard to name any novel wherein those laws of means and ends in art which Mr. Watts-Dunton has formulated in the 'Athenaeum' are more fully observed than in 'Aylwin.'

Madame Galimberti says in the 'Rivista d'Italia':-"'Aylwin' was begun in verse, and was written in prose only when the plot, taking, so to say, the poet by the hand, showed the necessity of a form more in keeping with the nature of the work; and in 'The Coming of Love,' in which the facts are condensed so as to give full relief to the philosophical motive, the result is, in my opinion, more perfect." {339} My remarks upon 'The Coming of Love' will show that I agree with the accomplished wife of the Italian Minister in placing it above 'Aylwin' as a satisfactory work of art, but that is because I consider 'The Coming of Love' the most important as well as the most original poem that has been published for many years.

Madame Galimberti touches here upon a very important subject for the literary student. I may say for myself that I have invariably spoken of 'Aylwin' as a poem, and I have done so deliberately. Indeed, I think the fact that it is a poem is at once its strength and its weakness. It does not come under the critical canons that are applied to a prose novel or romance. As a prose novel its one defect is that the quest for mere beauty is pushed too far; lovely picture follows lovely picture until the novel reader is inclined at last to cry, 'Hold, enough!'

In one of his essays on Morris, Mr. Watts-Dunton asks, 'What is poetic prose?' And then follows a pa.s.sage which must always be borne in mind when criticizing 'Aylwin.'

"On no subject in literary criticism," says he, "has there been a more persistent misconception than upon this. What is called poetic prose is generally rhetorical prose, and between rhetoric and poetry there is a great difference. Poetical prose, we take it, is that kind of prose which above all other kinds holds in suspense the essential qualities of poetry. If 'eloquence is heard and poetry overheard,' where shall be placed the tremendous perorations of De Quincey, or the sonorous and highly-coloured descriptions of Ruskin?

Grand and beautiful are such periods as these, no doubt, but prose to be truly poetical must move far away from them. It must, in a word, have all the qualities of what we technically call poetry except metre. We have, indeed, said before that while the poet's object is to arouse in the listener an expectancy of caesuric effects, the great goal before the writer of poetic prose is in the very opposite direction; it is to make use of the concrete figures and impa.s.sioned diction that are the poet's vehicle, but at the same time to avoid the expectancy of metrical bars. The moment that the regular bars a.s.sert themselves and lead the reader's ears to expect other bars of the like kind, sincerity ends."

Mr. Watts-Dunton himself has given us the best of all canons for answering the question, 'What is a poem as distinguished from other forms of imaginative literature?' In his essay on Poetry he says:-

"Owing to the fact that the word _p???t??_ (first used to designate the poetic artist by Herodotus) means maker, Aristotle seems to have a.s.sumed that the indispensable basis of poetry is invention. He appears to have thought that a poet is a poet more on account of the composition of the action than on account of the composition of his verses. Indeed, he said as much as this. Of epic poetry he declared emphatically that it produces its imitations either by mere articulate words or by metre superadded. This is to widen the definition of poetry so as to include all imaginative literature, and Plato seems to have given an equally wide meaning to the word _p???s??_. Only, while Aristotle considered _p???s??_ to be an imitation of the facts of nature, Plato considered it to be an imitation of the dreams of man. Aristotle ignored, and Plato slighted, the importance of versification (though Plato on one occasion admitted that he who did not know rhythm could be called neither musician nor poet). It is impossible to discuss here the question whether an imaginative work in which the method is entirely concrete and the expression entirely emotional, while the form is unmetrical, is or is not ent.i.tled to be called a poem. That there may be a kind of unmetrical narrative so poetic in motive, so concrete in diction, so emotional in treatment, as to escape altogether from those critical canons usually applied to prose, we shall see when, in discussing the epic, we come to touch upon the Northern sagas.

"Perhaps the first critic who tacitly revolted against the dictum that substance, and not form, is the indispensable basis of poetry was Dionysius of Halicarna.s.sus, whose treatise upon the arrangement of words is really a very fine piece of literary criticism. In his acute remarks upon the arrangement of the words in the sixteenth book of the Odyssey, as compared with that in the story of Gyges by Herodotus, was perhaps first enunciated clearly the doctrine that poetry is fundamentally a matter of style. The Aristotelian theory as to invention, however, dominated all criticism after as well as before Dionysius. When Bacon came to discuss the subject (and afterwards), the only division between the poetical critics was perhaps between the followers of Aristotle and those of Plato as to what poetry should, and what it should not, imitate. It is curious to speculate as to what would have been the result had the poets followed the critics in this matter. Perhaps there are critics of a very high rank who would cla.s.s as poems romances so concrete in method and diction, and so full of poetic energy, as 'Wuthering Heights' and 'Jane Eyre,' where we get absolutely all that Aristotle requires for a poem."

Now, if this be so in regard to those great romances, it must be still more so with regard to 'Aylwin,' where beauty and nothing but beauty seems to be the be-all and the end-all of the work.

[Picture: Henry Aylwin and Winifred under the Cliff. (From an Oil Painting at 'The Pines.')]

As 'Aylwin' was begun in metre, it would be very interesting to know on what lines the metre was constructed. Readers of 'Aylwin' have been struck with the music of the opening sentences, which are given as an extract from Philip Aylwin's book, 'The Veiled Queen':-

"Those who in childhood have had solitary communings with the sea know the sea's prophecy. They know that there is a deeper sympathy between the sea and the soul of man than other people dream of. They know that the water seems nearer akin than the land to the spiritual world, inasmuch as it is one and indivisible, and has motion, and answers to the mysterious call of the winds, and is the writing tablet of the moon and stars. When a child who, born beside the sea, and beloved by the sea, feels suddenly, as he gazes upon it, a dim sense of pity and warning; when there comes, or seems to come, a shadow across the waves, with never a cloud in the sky to cast it; when there comes a shuddering as of wings that move in dread or ire, then such a child feels as if the bloodhounds of calamity are let loose upon him or upon those he loves; he feels that the sea has told him all it dares tell or can. And, in other moods of fate, when beneath a cloudy sky the myriad dimples of the sea begin to sparkle as though the sun were shining bright upon them, such a child feels, as he gazes at it, that the sea is telling him of some great joy near at hand, or, at least, not far off."

Many a reader will echo the words of a writer in 'Notes and Queries,' who says that this pa.s.sage has haunted him since first he read it: I know it haunted me after I read it. But I wonder how many critics have read this pa.s.sage in connection with Mr. Watts-Dunton's metrical studies which have been carried on in the 'Athenaeum' during more than a quarter of a century. They are closely connected with what he has said upon Bible rhythm in his article upon the Psalms, which I have already quoted, and in many other essays. Mr. Watts-Dunton, acknowledged to be a great authority on metrical subjects, has for years been declaring that we are on the verge of a new kind of metrical art altogether-a metrical art in which the emotions govern the metrical undulations. And I take the above pa.s.sage and the following to be examples of what the movement in 'Aylwin'

would have been if he had not abandoned the project of writing the story in metre:-

"Then quoth the Ka'dee, laughing until his grinders appeared: 'Rather, by Allah, would I take all the punishment thou dreadest, thou most false donkey-driver of the Ruby Hills, than believe this story of thine-this mad, mad story, that she with whom thou wast seen was not the living wife of Hasan here (as these four legal witnesses have sworn), but thine own dead spouse, Alawiyah, refashioned for thee by the Angel of Memory out of thine own sorrow and unquenchable fountain of tears.'

Quoth Ja'afar, bowing low his head: 'Bold is the donkey-driver, O Ka'dee! and bold the Ka'dee who dares say what he will believe, what disbelieve-not knowing in any wise the mind of Allah-not knowing in any wise his own heart and what it shall some day suffer.'"

Break these pa.s.sages up into irregular lines, and you get a new metre of a very emotional kind, governed as to length by the sense pause. Mr.

Watts-Dunton has been arguing for many years that English verse is, as Coleridge long ago pointed out, properly governed by the number of accents and not by the number of syllables in a line, and that this accentual system is governed, or should be governed, by emotion. It is a singular thing, by the bye, that writer after writer of late has been arguing over and over again Mr. Watts-Dunton's arguments, and seems to be saying a new thing by using the word 'stress' for 'accent.' 'Stress' may or may not be a better word than 'accent,' the word used by Coleridge, and after him by Mr. Watts-Dunton, but the idea conveyed is one and the same. I, for my part, believe that rare as new ideas may be in creative work, they are still rarer in criticism.

Chapter XXI THE METHODS OF PROSE FICTION

AND now a word upon the imaginative power of 'Aylwin.' Very much has been written both in England and on the Continent concerning the source of the peculiar kind of 'imaginative vividness' shown in the story. The rushing narrative, as has been said, 'is so fused in its molten stream that it seems one sentence, and it carries the reader irresistibly along through pictures of beauty and mystery till he becomes breathless.' The truth is, however, that the mere method of the evolution of the story has a great deal more to do with this than is at first apparent. Upon this artistic method very little has been written save what I myself said when it first appeared. If the unequalled grip of the story upon the reader had been secured by methods as primitive, as unconscious as those of 'Jane Eyre' and 'Wuthering Heights,' I should estimate the pure, unadulterated imaginative force at work even more highly than I now do.

But, as a critic, I must always inquire whether or not a writer's imaginative vision is strengthened by constructive power. I must take into account the aid that the imagination of the writer has received from his mere self-conscious artistic skill. Now it is not to praise 'Aylwin,' but, I fear, to disparage it in a certain sense to say that the power of the scenes owes much to the mere artistic method, amounting at times to subtlety. I have heard the greatest of living poets mention 'Tom Jones,' 'Waverley,' and 'Aylwin' as three great novels whose reception by the outside public has been endorsed by criticism. One of the signs of Scott's unique genius was the way in which he invented and carried to perfection the method of moving towards the denouement by dialogue as much as by narrative. This gave a source of new brilliance to prose fiction, and it was certainly one of the most effective causes of the enormous success of 'Waverley.' This masterpiece opens, it will be remembered, in distinct imitation of the method of Fielding, but soon broke into the new dramatic method with which Scott's name is a.s.sociated.