Theodore Watts-Dunton Part 7

It is interesting to know that in the original form of 'Aylwin' the important part taken in the development of the story by D'Arcy was taken by Dr. Hake, under the name of Gordon, and that afterwards, when all sorts of ungenerous things were written about Rossetti, D'Arcy was subst.i.tuted for Gordon in order to give the author an opportunity of bringing out and showing the world the absolute n.o.bility and charm of Rossetti's character.

[Picture: A Corner in 'The Pines,' showing the Painted and Carved Cabinet]

Among the many varieties of life which Mr. Watts-Dunton saw at this time was life in the slums; and this was long before the once fashionable pastime of 'slumming' was invented. The following lines in Dr. Hake's 'New Day' allude to the deep interest that Mr. Watts-Dunton has always shown in the poor-shown years before the writers who now deal with the slums had written a line. Artistically, they are not fair specimens of Dr. Gordon Hake's verses, but nevertheless it is interesting to quote them here:-

Know you a widow's home? an orphanage?

A place of shelter for the crippled poor?

Did ever limbless men your care engage Whom you a.s.sisted of your larger store?

Know you the young who are to early die- At their frail form sinks not your heart within?

Know you the old who paralytic lie While you the freshness of your life begin?

Know you the great pain-bearers who long carry The bullet in the breast that does not kill?

And those who in the house of madness tarry, Beyond the blest relief of human skill?

These have you visited, all these a.s.sisted, In the high ranks of charity enlisted.

That Mr. Watts-Dunton has retained his interest in the poor is shown by the sonnet, 'Father Christmas in Famine Street,' which was originally printed as 'an appeal' on Christmas Eve in the 'Athenaeum':-

When Father Christmas went down Famine Street He saw two little sisters: one was trying To lift the other, pallid, wasted, dying, Within an arch, beyond the slush and sleet.

From out the glazing eyes a glimmer sweet Leapt, as in answer to the other's sighing, While came a murmur, 'Don't 'ee keep on crying- I wants to die: you'll get my share to eat.'

Her knell was tolled by joy-bells of the city Hymning the birth of Jesus, Lord of Pity, Lover of children, Shepherd of Compa.s.sion.

Said Father Christmas, while his eyes grew dim, 'They do His bidding-if in thrifty fashion: They let the little children go to Him.'

With this sonnet should be placed that ent.i.tled, 'd.i.c.kens Returns on Christmas Day':-

A ragged girl in Drury Lane was heard to exclaim: 'd.i.c.kens dead?

Then will Father Christmas die too?'-June 9, 1870.

'd.i.c.kens is dead!' Beneath that grievous cry London seemed shivering in the summer heat; Strangers took up the tale like friends that meet: 'd.i.c.kens is dead!' said they, and hurried by; Street children stopped their games-they knew not why, But some new night seemed darkening down the street.

A girl in rags, staying her wayworn feet, Cried, 'd.i.c.kens dead? Will Father Christmas die?'

City he loved, take courage on thy way!

He loves thee still, in all thy joys and fears.

Though he whose smile made bright thine eyes of grey- Though he whose voice, uttering thy burthened years, Made laughters bubble through thy sea of tears- Is gone, d.i.c.kens returns on Christmas Day!

Let me say here, parenthetically, that 'The Pines' is so far out of date that for twenty-five years it has been famous for its sympathy with the Christmas sentiment which now seems to be fading, as this sonnet shows:-

THE CHRISTMAS TREE AT 'THE PINES.'

Life still hath one romance that naught can bury- Not Time himself, who coffins Life's romances- For still will Christmas gild the year's mischances, If Childhood comes, as here, to make him merry- To kiss with lips more ruddy than the cherry- To smile with eyes outshining by their glances The Christmas tree-to dance with fairy dances And crown his h.o.a.ry brow with leaf and berry.

And as to us, dear friend, the carols sung Are fresh as ever. Bright is yonder bough Of mistletoe as that which shone and swung When you and I and Friendship made a vow That Childhood's Christmas still should seal each brow- Friendship's, and yours, and mine-and keep us young.

I may also quote from 'Prophetic Pictures at Venice' this romantic description of the Rosicrucian Christmas:-

(The morning light falls on the Rosicrucian panel-picture called 'The Rosy Scar,' depicting Christian galley-slaves on board an Algerine galley, watching, on Christmas Eve, for the promised appearance of Rosenkreutz, as a 'rosy phantom.' The Lover reads aloud the descriptive verses on the frame.)

While Night's dark horses waited for the wind, He stood-he shone-where Sunset's fiery glaives Flickered behind the clouds; then, o'er the waves, He came to them, Faith's remnant sorrow-thinned.

The Paynim sailors cl.u.s.tering, tawny-skinned, Cried, 'Who is he that comes to Christian slaves?

Nor water-sprite nor jinni of sunset caves, The rosy phantom stands nor winged nor finned.'

All night he stood till shone the Christmas star; Slowly the Rosy Cross, streak after streak, Flushed the grey sky-flushed sea and sail and spar, Flushed, blessing every slave's woe-wasted cheek.

Then did great Rosenkreutz, the Dew-King speak: 'Sufferers, take heart! Christ lends the Rosy Scar.'

Chapter IX GEORGE BORROW

IT was not until 1872 that Mr. Watts-Dunton was introduced to Borrow by Dr. Gordon Hake, Borrow's most intimate friend.

The way in which this meeting came about has been familiar to the readers of an autobiographical romance (not even yet published!) wherein Borrow appears under the name of Dereham, and Hake under the name of Gordon.

But as some of these pa.s.sages in a modified form have appeared in print in an introduction by Mr. Watts-Dunton to the edition of Borrow's 'Lavengro,' published by Messrs. Ward, Lock & Co., in 1893, there will be nothing incongruous in my quoting them here:-

"Great as was the difference in age between Gordon and me, there soon grew up an intimacy between us. It has been my experience to learn that an enormous deal of nonsense has been written about difference of age between friends of either s.e.x. At that time I do not think I had one intimate friend of my own age except Rosamond, while I was on terms of something like intimacy with two or three distinguished men, each one of whom was certainly old enough to be my father. Basevi was one of these: so was Lineham. I daresay it was owing to some idiosyncrasy of mine, but the intimacy between me and the young fellows with whom I was brought into contact was mainly confined to matters connected with field-sports. I found it far easier to be brought into relations of close intimacy with women of my own age than with men. But as Basevi told me that it was the same with himself, I suppose that this was not an eccentricity after all. When Gordon and I were together it never occurred to me that there was any difference in our ages at all, and he told me that it was the same with himself.

One day when I was sitting with him in his delightful house near Roehampton, whose windows at the back looked over Richmond Park, and in front over the wildest part of Wimbledon Common, one of his sons came in and said that he had seen Dereham striding across the common, evidently bound for the house.

'Dereham!' I said. 'Is there a man in the world I should so like to see as Dereham?'

And then I told Gordon how I had seen him years before swimming in the sea off Yarmouth, but had never spoken to him.

'Why do you want so much to see him?' asked Gordon.

'Well, among other things I want to see if he is a true Child of the Open Air.'

Gordon laughed, perfectly understanding what I meant. But it is necessary here to explain what that meaning was.

We both agreed that, with all the recent cultivation of the picturesque by means of watercolour landscape, descriptive novels, 'Cook's excursions,' etc., the real pa.s.sion for Nature is as rare as ever it was-perhaps rarer. It was, we believed, quite an affair of individual temperament: it cannot be learned; it cannot be lost.

That no writer has ever tried to explain it shows how little it is known. Often it has but little to do with poetry, little with science. The poet, indeed, rarely has it at its very highest; the man of science as rarely. I wish I could define it. In human souls-in one, perhaps, as much as in another-there is always that instinct for contact which is a great factor of progress; there is always an irresistible yearning to escape from isolation, to get as close as may be to some other conscious thing. In most individuals this yearning is simply for contact with other human souls; in some few it is not. There are some in every country of whom it is the blessing, not the bane that, owing to some exceptional power, or to some exceptional infirmity, they can get closer to 'Natura Benigna'

herself, closer to her whom we now call 'Inanimate Nature,' than to brother, sister, wife, or friend. Darwin among English savants, and Emily Bronte among English poets, and Sinfi Lovell among English gypsies, showed a good deal of the characteristics of the 'Children of the Open Air.' But in regard to Darwin, besides the strength of his family ties, the pedantic inquisitiveness, the methodizing pedantry of the man of science; in Emily Bronte, the sensitivity to human contact; and in Sinn Lovell, subjection to the love pa.s.sion-disturbed, and indeed partially stifled, the native instinct with which they were undoubtedly endowed. I was perfectly conscious that I belonged to the third case of Nature-worshippers-that is, I was one of those who, howsoever strongly drawn to Nature and to a free and unconventional life, felt the strength of the love pa.s.sion to such a degree that it prevented my claiming to be a genuine Child of the Open Air.

Between the true 'Children of the Open Air' and their fellows there are barriers of idiosyncrasy, barriers of convention, or other barriers quite indefinable, which they find most difficult to overpa.s.s, and, even when they succeed in overpa.s.sing them, the attempt is not found to be worth the making. For, what this kind of Nature-worshipper finds in intercourse with his fellow-men is, not the unegoistic frankness of Nature, his first love, inviting him to touch her close, soul to soul-but another ego enisled like his own-sensitive, shrinking, like his own-a soul which, love him as it may, is, nevertheless, and for all its love, the central ego of the universe to itself, the very Alcyone round whom all other Nature-worshippers revolve like the rest of the human constellations.

But between these and Nature there is no such barrier, and upon Nature they lavish their love, 'a most equal love' that varies no more with her change of mood than does the love of a man for a beautiful woman, whether she smiles, or weeps, or frowns. To them a Highland glen is most beautiful; so is a green meadow; so is a mountain gorge or a barren peak; so is a South American savannah. A balmy summer is beautiful, but not more beautiful than a winter's sleet beating about the face, and stinging every nerve into delicious life.

To the 'Child of the Open Air' life has but few ills; poverty cannot touch him. Let the Stock Exchange rob him of his bonds, and he will go and tend sheep in Sacramento Valley, perfectly content to see a dozen faces in a year; so far from being lonely, he has got the sky, the wind, the brown gra.s.s, and the sheep. And as life goes on, love of Nature grows, both as a cultus and a pa.s.sion, and in time Nature seems 'to know him and love him' in her turn.

Dereham entered, and, suddenly coming upon me, there was no retreating, and we were introduced.

He tried to be as civil as possible, but evidently he was much annoyed. Yet there was something in the very tone of his voice that drew my heart to him, for to me he was the hero of my boyhood still.

My own shyness was being rapidly fingered off by the rough handling of the world, but his retained all the bloom of youth, and a terrible barrier it was; yet I attacked it manfully. I knew from his books that Dereham had read but little except in his own out-of-the-way directions; but then, unfortunately, like all specialists, he considered that in these his own special directions lay all the knowledge that was of any value. Accordingly, what appeared to Dereham as the most striking characteristic of the present age was its ignorance. Unfortunately, too, I knew that for strangers to talk of his own published books, or of gypsies, appeared to him to be 'prying,' though there I should have been quite at home. I knew, however, from his books that in the obscure English pamphlet literature of the last century, recording the sayings and doings of eccentric people and strange adventures, Dereham was very learned, and I too chanced to be far from ignorant in that direction. I touched on Bamfylde Moore Carew, but without effect. Dereham evidently considered that every properly educated man was familiar with the story of Bamfylde Moore Carew in its every detail. Then I touched upon beer, the British bruiser, 'gentility nonsense,' and other 'nonsense'; then upon etymology-traced hoity-toityism to 'toit,' a roof-but only to have my shallow philology dismissed with a withering smile. I tried other subjects in the same direction, but with small success, till in a lucky moment I bethought myself of Ambrose Gwinett. There is a very scarce eighteenth century pamphlet narrating the story of Ambrose Gwinett, the man who, after having been hanged and gibbeted for murdering a traveller with whom he had shared a double-bedded room at a seaside inn, revived in the night, escaped from the gibbet-irons, went to sea as a common sailor, and afterwards met on a British man-of-war the very man he had been hanged for murdering. The truth was that Gwinett's supposed victim, having been seized on the night in question with a violent bleeding at the nose, had risen and left the house for a few minutes' walk in the sea-breeze, when the press-gang captured him and bore him off to sea, where he had been in service ever since. I introduced the subject of Ambrose Gwinett, and Douglas Jerrold's play upon it, and at once the ice between us thawed and we became friends.

We all went out of the house and looked over the common. It chanced that at that very moment there were a few gypsies encamped on the sunken road opposite to Gordon's house. These same gypsies, by the by, form the subject of a charming sketch by Herkomer which appeared in the 'Graphic.' Borrow took the trouble to a.s.sure us that they were not of the better cla.s.s of gypsies, the gryengroes, but basket-makers. After pa.s.sing this group we went on the common. We did not at first talk much, but it delighted me to see the mighty figure, strengthened by the years rather than stricken by them, striding along between the whin bushes or through the quags, now stooping over the water to pluck the wild mint he loved, whose lilac-coloured blossoms perfumed the air as he crushed them, now stopping to watch the water wagtails by the ponds.

After the stroll we turned back and went, at Dereham's suggestion, for a ramble through Richmond Park, calling on the way at the 'Bald-Faced Stag' in Kingston Vale, in order that Dereham should introduce me to Jerry Abershaw's sword, which was one of the special glories of that once famous hostelry. A divine summer day it was I remember-a day whose heat would have been oppressive had it not been tempered every now and then by a playful silvery shower falling from an occasional wandering cloud, whose slate-coloured body thinned at the edges to a fringe of lace brighter than any silver.

These showers, however, seemed, as Dereham remarked, merely to give a rich colour to the sunshine, and to make the wild flowers in the meadows on the left breathe more freely. In a word, it was one of those uncertain summer days whose peculiarly English charm was Dereham's special delight. He liked rain, but he liked it falling on the green umbrella (enormous, s.h.a.ggy, like a gypsy-tent after a summer storm) he generally carried. As we entered the Robin Hood Gate we were confronted by a sudden weird yellow radiance, magical and mysterious, which showed clearly enough that in the sky behind us there was gleaming over the fields and over Wimbledon Common a rainbow of exceptional brilliance, while the raindrops sparkling on the ferns seemed answering every hue in the magic arch far away.

Dereham told us some interesting stories of Romany superst.i.tion in connection with the rainbow-how, by making a 'trus'hul' (cross) of two sticks, the Romany chi who 'pens the dukkerin can wipe the rainbow out of the sky,' etc. Whereupon Gordon, quite as original a man as Dereham, and a humourist of a rarer temper, launched out into a strain of wit and whim, which it is not my business here to record, upon the subject of the 'Spirit of the Rainbow' which I, as a child, went out to find.