in good company 16

in good company 16

THEODORE WATTS-DUNTON

 

AS AN AMATEUR IN AUTHORSHIP AND AS A GOOD FELLOW

 

TWO SIDES OF HIS MANY-SIDEDNESS

 

 

The one thing of all others upon which Watts-Dunton set store was

good-fellowship, which he counted as of greater worth even than

genius. If ever he went critically astray, if ever intellectually he

overrated his man, it was because he allowed his heart to outride his

head. Once convince him that this or that young writer was a good

fellow, and, born critic though he was, even criticism went by the

board in Watts-Dunton’s intellectual estimate. If I illustrate this

by a personal experience it is not to speak of myself, but because,

though I have personal knowledge of many similar instances, in this

instance I have the “documents” in the case before me. It concerns

the circumstances by which I first came to know Watts-Dunton.

 

In the New Year of 1885 there appeared the first number of a weekly

(afterwards a monthly) magazine with the somewhat infelicitous if

not feeble title of _Home Chimes_. It was edited and owned by F. W.

Robinson, then a popular novelist. To the first number Swinburne

and Theodore Watts contributed poems, and in that now dead and

forgotten venture the early work of many men and women who thereafter

became famous is to be found. For instance, Jerome K. Jerome’s _Idle

Thoughts of an Idle Fellow_ as well as his _Three Men in a Boat_

first saw the light there. There, much of Sir James Barrie’s early

work appeared, for I once heard the author of _A Window in Thrums_

say, though I do not suppose he meant to be taken too seriously, that

there was a time when to him “London” meant the place where _Home

Chimes_ was published. There, early work by Eden Phillpotts, Israel

Zangwill, G. B. Burgin, and a host of others who have since “come

into their own” was printed, and there, I may say incidentally, part

of my own first little book appeared.

 

“Yes,” Robinson once said to me reminiscently, “it is true that

Jerome, Barrie, Phillpotts, Zangwill, Burgin and yourself all more

or less ‘came out’ in _Home Chimes_, but I have my doubts sometimes

whether the whole of you ever raised the sale of the magazine by so

much as a number.”

 

“On the contrary,” I replied, “my own opinion is that, between us, we

killed it.”

 

Be that as it may, Robinson lost heavily upon _Home Chimes_ and was

hit even harder by the death of the “three-decker”--I mean by the

ousting of novels in three volumes at thirty shillings in favour of

novels in one volume at six shillings. The change, indeed, caused

such a drop in his income that he decided to look about him for

another means of livelihood outside literature, and when, soon after,

an Inspectorship of H.M. Prisons became vacant, he decided to apply

for the appointment. For this he had special qualifications, as he

had for years closely and critically studied our Prison System and

had, in fact, written and published much upon the subject. Knowing

how eager he was, for pecuniary reasons, to secure the appointment,

and being anxious to do what I could to assist his candidature (I

plead guilty to “log-rolling” in this most justifiable instance), I

asked the late Mr. Passmore Edwards, proprietor and editor of the

_Echo_, the only halfpenny evening paper in those days, to let me

write a sketch of Robinson in the “Echo Portrait Gallery” to which I

was a contributor. In this sketch--it was signed “C. K.” merely--I

touched, purposely, upon Robinson’s close study and special knowledge

of the workings and defects of our Prison System. My article was seen

by Theodore Watts, who wrote Robinson a letter which the latter sent

on to me. It was as follows:

 

MY DEAR ROBINSON,

 

I have been delighted by a notice of you in the _Echo_, which I

am told is by Coulson Kernahan. That must be a charming fellow

who wrote it. Why don’t you collect your loyal supporters around

you (there are only two of us, Kernahan and Watts) over a little

dinner at your Club?

 

Yours ever,

THEODORE WATTS.

 

“Robinson, if you had not been the most modest and delicate-minded

man in contemporary literature, you would have trebled your fame and

trebled your income. That is what C. K. says of you, but I have said

it for a quarter of a century.”

 

This was the beginning of my long friendship with Watts-Dunton, and

I enter thus fully into a merely trivial and personal matter for

the reason that the letter I have quoted is very characteristic of

the writer. “Good fellowship” was, I repeat, the first article in

Watts-Dunton’s creed. His very religion was based upon it. He once

said to me that were it not that some good men and women would see

irreverence where he meant none, and of which he was by temperament

and by his very sense of wonder incapable, he should like to write an

article “The Good-fellowship of God,” taking as his text the lines of

Omar Khayyám, in which the old tent-maker speaks of those who picture

a “surly” God:

 

“And daub His Visage with the Smoke of Hell;

They talk of some strict testing of us--Pish!

He’s a Good Fellow and ’twill all be well.

 

“To word it thus may sound profanely to some ears,” commented

Watts-Dunton, “but old Khayyám was only trying to express in his

pagan way--though I suspect there is as much of FitzGerald as of

Omar in the rendering--his belief in the loving Fatherhood of God

which is held by every Christian. In fact ‘good-fellowship’ stands

to Shakespeare’s ‘cakes-and-ale’-loving, and jolly fraternity, for

the ‘Human Brotherhood’ of which the stricter church and chapel going

folk speak, and I suspect that there is sometimes less acrimony and a

broader human outlook over cakes and ale in an inn than there is over

urn-stewed tea, bread and butter and buns in some of the Church or

Chapel Tea-meetings that went on when I was a boy.”

 

My article about Robinson was merely an attempt to set out his

qualifications for the post of Inspector of Prisons. Those

qualifications were many and my space was limited. Hence the article

was as dull and stodgy a recital of facts as ever was written. There

was as much in it from which to infer that the writer was a “charming

fellow” as there is in a rice pudding by which to prove that the cook

can sing divinely. But Robinson was a “good fellow.” My article,

among other things, made that at least clear. According to the gospel

of good-fellowship as held by Watts-Dunton, a good fellow could be

appreciated only by a good fellow, just as he once wrote to me, “My

theory always is that a winsome style in prose comes from a man whose

heart is good.” I had shown appreciation of his friend, and, partisan

and hero of friendship that he was, he was willing to take the rest

on trust. Rightly to appreciate his friend was to win Watts-Dunton’s

heart at the start.

 

One sometimes hears or sees it stated that Watts-Dunton was

indifferent alike to literary fame and to criticism, adverse or

favourable. No one who knew him other than very slightly could think

thus. Watts-Dunton was, in scriptural phrase, “a man in whom was no

guile.” He was transparently ingenuous of thought and purpose and did

not attempt to conceal his gratification at the success of _Aylwin_

or the pleasure which a discriminating and sympathetic appreciation

afforded him. This only added to the respect and affection of his

friends. It would have wounded us to think that the man we bore

intellectually in such profound reverence, personally in such deep

affection, could play the _poseur_ and affect to despise the deserved

success and recognition which his work had won. W. E. Henley is said

to have thanked God that he had “never suffered the indignity of a

popular success.” Henley deserved success, popular or otherwise, if

ever writer did, for he never stooped to do less than his best, nor

sought to achieve by shoddy means the success which thus attained

is indeed to be despised. But a success deservedly won, even if a

so-called popular success, every writer in his heart desires. To

pretend otherwise is mere insincerity. It is not “playing the game,”

for even the pursuit of Letters is none the worse for a touch of the

English sporting spirit. It is indeed the chief reproach of those

of us who follow the craft of Letters that we are “artists” rather

than sportsmen. Englishmen fight the better and write the better for

seeing alike in writing and in fighting something of a “game.”[A]

Literature is a race in which every competitor hopes, and rightly,

to come in first. If he be fairly beaten on his merits, he will

admit and ungrudgingly, if a sportsman as well as a writer, that

the better man has won. This does not mean he is content tamely to

sit down under defeat. It means, on the contrary, harder work and

severer training, so that on other occasions, by redoubling his

exertions, he himself may be the man who wins on his merits. And if

he fail again and yet again, instead of sneering at the prize as

worthless, he will, if he ever heard it, recall the story of the

two artists. A very young painter, who afterwards became great,

stood in his obscure and struggling days, when no one had heard his

name or would look at his pictures, before the greatest canvas of

the greatest painter of the time. The grandeur of the work, alike

in conception and in execution, staggered him. Possibly there was

despair at his heart as he asked himself how could he, too poor for

proper opportunity of study, too poor even to afford a model, or to

buy oils, ever hope to emulate such a masterpiece as this. But at

least there was at his heart no meanness, no envy, no disposition

to belittle or to grudge the other his high place. Throwing back

his head, with flashing eyes and a throb in his voice he exclaimed

proudly, radiantly, “And I, too, am an artist!”

 

[A] This was penned before the war.

 

But when Henley, who strained and strained splendidly to carry

off the first prize--and missed--belittles its value, and would

have us to believe that he is better pleased to carry off “the

last event”--the “Consolation Prize”--of “never having suffered

the indignity of a popular success,” we distrust his sportsmanship

and his sincerity. Watts-Dunton never posed after that manner. He

was glad of his success and proud of it. It was because success,

instead of increasing his literary stature in his own eyes as

not infrequently happens, only made him increasingly modest and

diffident, that he was sometimes supposed to care nothing for his

literary laurels. In one respect his success was something of a