by Max Beerbohm
The frail, sweet voice rose and fell, lingered, quickened, in all manner of trills and roulades. That he himself could not hear it, seemed to me the greatest loss his deafness inflicted on him. One would have expected this disability to mar the music; but it didn’t; save that now and again a note would come out metallic and overshrill, the tones were under good control. The whole manner and method had certainly a strong element of oddness; but no one incapable of condemning as unmanly the song of a lark would have called it affected. I had met young men of whose enunciation Swinburne’s now reminded me. In them the thing had always irritated me very much; and I now became sure that it had been derived from people who had derived it in old Balliol days from Swinburne himself. One of the points familiar to me in such enunciation was the habit of stressing extremely, and lackadaisically dwelling on, some particular syllable.
In Swinburne this trick was delightful—because it wasn’t a trick, but a need of his heart. Well do I remember his ecstasy of emphasis and immensity of pause when he described how he had seen in a perambulator on the Heath to-day `the most BEAUT—iful babbie ever beheld by mortal eyes.’ For babies, as some of his later volumes testify, he had a sort of idolatry. After Mazzini had followed Landor to Elysium, and Victor Hugo had followed Mazzini, babies were what among live creatures most evoked Swinburne’s genius for self-abasement. His rapture about this especial `babbie’ was such as to shake within me my hitherto firm conviction that, whereas the young of the brute creation are already beautiful at the age of five minutes, the human young never begin to be so before the age of three years. I suspect WattsDunton of having shared my lack of innate enthusiasm. But it was one of Swinburne’s charms, as I was to find, that he took for granted every one’s delight in what he himself so fervidly delighted in. He could as soon have imagined a man not loving the very sea as not doting on the aspect of babies and not reading at least one play by an Elizabethan or Jacobean dramatist every day.
I forget whether it was at this my first meal or at another that he described a storm in which, one night years ago, with WattsDunton, he had crossed the Channel. The rhythm of his great phrases was as the rhythm of those waves, and his head swayed in accordance to it like the wave-rocked boat itself. He hymned in memory the surge and darkness, the thunder and foam and phosphorescence—`You remember, Theodore? You remember the PHOS—phorescence?’—all so beautifully and vividly that I almost felt stormbound and in peril of my life. To disentangle one from another of the several occasions on which I heard him talk is difficult because the procedure was so invariable: WattsDunton always dictating when I arrived, Swinburne always appearing at the moment of the meal, always the same simple and substantial fare, Swinburne never allowed to talk before the meal was half over. As to this last point, I soon realised that I had been quite unjust in suspecting WattsDunton of selfishness. It was simply a sign of the care with which he watched over his friend’s welfare. Had Swinburne been admitted earlier to the talk, he would not have taken his proper quantity of roast mutton. So soon, always, as he had taken that, the embargo was removed, the chance was given him. And, swiftly though he embraced the chance, and much though he made of it in the courses of apple-pie and of cheese, he seemed touchingly ashamed of `holding forth.’ Often, before he had said his really full say on the theme suggested by WattsDunton’s loud interrogation, he would curb his speech and try to eliminate himself, bowing his head over his plate; and then, when he had promptly been brought in again, he would always try to atone for his inhibiting deafness by much reference and deference to all that we might otherwise have to say. `I hope,’ he would coo to me, `my friend WattsDunton, who’—and here he would turn and make a little bow to WattsDunton—`is himself a scholar, will bear me out when I say’—or `I hardly know,’ he would flute to his old friend, `whether Mr. Beerbohm’—here a bow to me—`will agree with me in my opinion of’ some delicate point in Greek prosody or some incident in an old French romance I had never heard of.
On one occasion, just before the removal of the mutton, WattsDunton had been asking me about an English translation that had been made of M. Rostand’s `Cyrano de Bergerac.’ He then took my information as the match to ignite the Swinburnian tinder. `Well, Algernon, it seems that “Cyrano de Bergerac”’—but this first spark was enough: instantly Swinburne was praising the works of Cyrano de Bergerac. Of M. Rostand he may have heard, but him he forgot. Indeed I never heard Swinburne mention a single contemporary writer. His mind ranged and revelled always in the illustrious or obscure past. To him the writings of Cyrano de Bergerac were as fresh as paint—as fresh as to me, alas, was the news of their survival. Of course, of course, you have read “L’Histoire Comique des tats et des Empires de la Lune”?’ I admitted, by gesture and facial expression, that I had not. Whereupon he reeled out curious extracts from that allegory—`almost as good as “Gulliver”’—with a memorable instance of the way in which the traveller to the moon was shocked by the conversation of the natives, and the natives’ sense of propriety was outraged by the conversation of the traveller.
In life, as in (that for him more truly actual thing) literature, it was always the preterit that enthralled him. Of any passing events, of anything the newspapers were full of, never a word from him; and I should have been sorry if there had been. But I did, through the medium of WattsDunton, sometimes start him on topics that might have led him to talk of Rossetti and other old comrades. For me the names of those men breathed the magic of the past, just as it was breathed for me by Swinburne’s presence. For him, I suppose, they were but a bit of the present, and the mere fact that they had dropped out of it was not enough to hallow them. He never mentioned them. But I was glad to see that he revelled as wistfully in the days just before his own as I in the days just before mine. He recounted to us things he had been told in his boyhood by an aged aunt, or great-aunt—`one of the Ashburnhams’; how, for example, she had been taken by her mother to a county ball, a distance of many miles, and, on the way home through the frosty and snowy night, the family-coach had suddenly stopped: there was a crowd of dark figures in the way…at which point Swinburne stopped too, before saying, with an ineffable smile and in a voice faint with appreciation, `They were burying a suicide at the crossroads.’
Vivid as this Hogarthian night-scene was to me, I saw beside it another scene: a great panelled room, a grim old woman in a highbacked chair, and, restless on a stool at her feet an extraordinary little nephew with masses of auburn hair and with tiny hands clasped in supplication—`Tell me more, Aunt Ashburnham, tell me more!’
And now, clearlier still, as I write in these after-years, do I see that diningroom of The Pines; the long white stretch of table-cloth, with Swinburne and WattsDunton and another at the extreme end of it; WattsDunton between us, very low down over his plate, very cosy and hirsute, and rather like the dormouse at that long tea-table which Alice found in Wonderland. I see myself sitting there wide-eyed, as Alice sat. And, had the hare been a great poet, and the hatter a great gentleman, and neither of them mad but each only very odd and vivacious, I might see Swinburne as a glorified blend of those two.
When the meal ended—for, alas! it was not, like that meal in Wonderland, unending—Swinburne would dart round the table, proffer his hand to me, bow deeply, bow to WattsDunton also, and disappear.
`He always walks in the morning, writes in the afternoon, and reads in the evening,’ WattsDunton would say with a touch of tutorial pride in this regimen.
That parting bow of Swinburne to his old friend was characteristic of his whole relation to him. Cronies though they were, these two, knit together with bonds innumerable, the greater man was always aux petits soins for the lesser, treating him as a newly-arrived young guest might treat an elderly host. Some twenty years had passed since that night when, ailing and broken—thought to be nearly dying, WattsDunton told me—Swinburne was brought in a four-wheeler to The Pines.
Regular private nursing-homes either did not exist in those days or were le
ss in vogue than they are now. The Pines was to he a sort of private nursing-home for Swinburne. It was a good one. He recovered.
He was most grateful to his friend and saviour. He made as though to depart, was persuaded to stay a little longer, and then a little longer than that. But I rather fancy that, to the last, he never did, in the fullness of his modesty and good manners, consent to regard his presence as a matter of course, or as anything but a terminable intrusion and obligation. His bow seemed always to convey that.
Swinburne having gone from the room, in would come the parlourmaid.
The table was cleared, the fire was stirred, two leather armchairs were pushed up to the hearth. WattsDunton wanted gossip of the present. I wanted gossip of the great past. We settled down for a long, comfortable afternoon together.
Only once was the ritual varied. Swinburne (I was told before luncheon) had expressed a wish to show me his library. So after the meal he did not bid us his usual adieu, but with much courtesy invited us and led the way. Up the staircase he then literally bounded—three, literally three, stairs at a time. I began to follow at the same rate, but immediately slackened speed for fear that WattsDunton behind us might be embittered at sight of so much youth and legerity. Swinburne waited on the threshold to receive us, as it were, and pass us in.
WattsDunton went and ensconced himself snugly in a corner. The sun had appeared after a grey morning, and it pleasantly flooded this big living-room whose walls were entirely lined with the mellow backs of books. Here, as host, among his treasures, Swinburne was more than ever attractive. He was as happy as was any mote in the sunshine about him; and the fluttering of his little hands, and feet too, was but as a token of so much felicity. He looked older, it is true, in the strong light. But these added years made only more notable his youngness of heart. An illustrious bibliophile among his books? A birthday child, rather, among his toys.
Proudly he explained to me the general system under which the volumes were ranged in this or that division of shelves. Then he conducted me to a chair near the window, left me there, flew away, flew up the rungs of a mahogany ladder, plucked a small volume, and in a twinkling was at my side: `This, I think, will please you! `It did. It had a beautifully engraved title-page and a pleasing scent of old, old leather. It was editio princeps of a play by some lesser Elizabethan or Jacobean. `Of course you know it?’ my host fluted.
How I wished I could say that I knew it and loved it well! I revealed to him (for by speaking very loudly towards his inclined head I was able to make him hear) that I had not read it. He envied any one who had such pleasure in store. He darted to the ladder, and came back thrusting gently into my hands another volume of like date: `Of course you know this?’
Again I had to confess that I did not, and to shout my appreciation of the fount of type, the margins, the binding. He beamed agreement, and fetched another volume. Archly he indicated the title, cooing, `You are a lover of this, I hope?’ And again I was shamed by my inexperience.
I did not pretend to know this particular play, but my tone implied that I had always been meaning to read it and had always by some mischance been prevented. For his sake as well as my own I did want to acquit myself passably. I wanted for him the pleasure of seeing his joys shared by a representative, however humble, of the common world.
I turned the leaves caressingly, looking from them to him, while he dilated on the beauty of this and that scene in the play. Anon he fetched another volume, and another, always with the same faith that this was a favourite of mine. I quibbled, I evaded, I was very enthusiastic and uncomfortable. It was with intense relief that I beheld the title-page of yet another volume which (silently, this time) he laid before me—The Country Wench. `This of course I have read,’ I heartily shouted.
Swinburne stepped back. `You have? You have read it? Where?’ he cried, in evident dismay.
Something was wrong. Had I not, I quickly wondered, read this play?
`Oh yes,’ I shouted, `I have read it.’
`But when? Where?’ entreated Swinburne, adding that he had supposed it to be the sole copy extant.
I floundered. I wildly said I thought I must have read it years ago in the Bodleian. `Theodore! Do you hear this? It seems that they have now a copy of “The Country Wench” in the Bodleian! Mr. Beerbohm found one there—oh when? in what year?’ he appealed to me.
I said it might have been six, seven, eight years ago. Swinburne knew for certain that no copy had been there twelve years ago, and was surprised that he had not heard of the acquisition. `They might have told me,’ he wailed.
I sacrificed myself on the altar of sympathy. I admitted that I might have been mistaken—must have been—must have confused this play with some other. I dipped into the pages and `No,’ I shouted, `this I have never read.’
His equanimity was restored. He was up the ladder and down again, showing me further treasures with all pride and ardour. At length, WattsDunton, afraid that his old friend would tire himself, arose from his corner, and presently he and I went downstairs to the diningroom. It was in the course of our session together that there suddenly flashed across my mind the existence of a play called `The Country Wife,’ by—wasn’t it Wycherley? I had once read it—or read something about it…. But this matter I kept to myself. I thought I had appeared fool enough already.
I loved those sessions in that Tupperossettine diningroom, lair of solid old comfort and fervid old romanticism. Its odd duality befitted well its owner. The distinguished critic and poet, Rossetti’s closest friend and Swinburne’s, had been, for a while, in the dark ages, a solicitor; and one felt he had been a good one. His frock-coat, though the Muses had crumpled it, inspired confidence in his judgment of other things than verse. But let there be no mistake. He was no mere bourgeois parnassien, as his enemies insinuated. No doubt he had been very useful to men of genius, in virtue of qualities they lacked, but the secret of his hold on them was in his own rich nature. He was not only a born man of letters, he was a deeply emotional human being whose appeal was as much to the heart as to the head. The romantic Celtic mysticism of `Aylwin,’ with its lack of fashionable Celtic nebulosity, lends itself, if you will, to laughter, though personally I saw nothing funny in it: it seemed to me, before I was in touch with the author, a work of genuine expression from within; and that it truly was so I presently knew. The mysticism of WattsDunton (who, once comfortably settled at the fireside, knew no reserve) was in contrast with the frock-coat and the practical abilities; but it was essential, and they were of the surface. For humorous Rossetti, I daresay, the very contrast made Theodore’s company the more precious.
He himself had assuredly been, and the memory of him still was, the master-fact in WattsDunton’s life. `Algernon’ was as an adopted child, `Gabriel’ as a long-lost only brother. As he was to the outer world of his own day, so too to posterity Rossetti, the man, is conjectural and mysterious. We know that he was in his prime the most inspiring and splendid of companions. But we know this only by faith.
The evidence is as vague as it is emphatic. Of the style and substance of not a few great talkers in the past we can piece together some more or less vivid and probably erroneous notion. But about Rossetti nothing has been recorded in such a way as to make him even faintly emerge. I suppose he had in him what reviewers seem to find so often in books a quality that defies analysis. Listening to WattsDunton, I was always in hope that when next the long-lost turned up—for he was continually doing so—in the talk, I should see him, hear him, and share the rapture. But the revelation was not to be. You might think that to hear him called `Gabriel’ would have given me a sense of propinquity. But I felt no nearer to him than you feel to the Archangel who bears that name and no surname.
It was always when WattsDunton spoke carelessly, casually, of some to me illustrious figure in the past, that I had the sense of being wafted right into that past and plumped down in the very midst of it.
When he spoke with reverence of this and that great man
whom he had known, he did not thus waft and plump me; for I, too, revered those names. But I had the magical transition whenever one of the immortals was mentioned in the tone of those who knew him before he had put on immortality. Browning, for example, was a name deeply honoured by me.
`Browning, yes,’ said WattsDunton, in the course of an afternoon, `Browning,’ and he took a sip of the steaming whisky-toddy that was a point in our day’s ritual. `I was a great diner-out in the old times.
I used to dine out every night in the week. Browning was a great diner-out, too. We were always meeting. What a pity he went on writing all those plays! He hadn’t any gift for drama—none. I never could understand why he took to play-writing.’ He wagged his head, gazing regretfully into the fire, and added, `Such a clever fellow, too!’
Whistler, though alive and about, was already looked to as a hierarch by the young. Not so had he been looked to by Rossetti. The thrill of the past was always strong in me when WattsDunton mentioned—seldom without a guffaw did he mention—`Jimmy Whistler.’ I think he put in the surname because `that fellow’ had not behaved well to Swinburne.
But he could not omit the nickname, because it was impossible for him to feel the right measure of resentment against `such a funny fellow.’
As heart-full of old hates as of old loves was WattsDunton, and I take it as high testimony to the charm of Whistler’s quaintness that WattsDunton did not hate him. You may be aware that Swinburne, in ‘88, wrote for one of the monthly reviews a criticism of the `Ten O’Clock’ lecture. He paid courtly compliments to Whistler as a painter, but joined issue with his theories. Straightway there appeared in the World a little letter from Whistler, deriding `one Algernon Swinburne—outsider—Putney.’ It was not in itself a very pretty or amusing letter; and still less so did it seem in the light of the facts which WattsDunton told me in some such words as these: After he’d published that lecture of his, Jimmy Whistler had me to dine with him at Kettner’s or somewhere. He said “Now, Theodore, I want you to do me a favour.” He wanted to get me to get Swinburne to write an article about his lecture. I said “No, Jimmy Whistler, I can’t ask Algernon to do that. He’s got a great deal of work on hand just now—a great deal of work. And besides, this sort of thing wouldn’t be at all in his line.’ But Jimmy Whistler went on appealing to me. He said it would do him no end of good if Swinburne wrote about him. And—well, I half gave in: I said perhaps I would mention the matter to Algernon. And next day I did. I could see Algernon didn’t want to do it at all. But—well, there, he said he’d do it to please me. And he did it. And then Jimmy Whistler published that letter. A very shabby trick—very shabby indeed.’ Of course I do not vouch for the exact words in which WattsDunton told me this tale; but this was exactly the tale he told me. I expressed my astonishment. He added that of course he `never wanted to see the fellow again after that, and never did.’ But presently, after a long gaze into the coals, he emitted a chuckle, as for earlier memories of `such a funny fellow.’