in good company 19

in good company 19

“To Coulson Kernahan,

 

whom Swinburne dearly loved, and who as dearly loved him.

 

From Theodore Watts-Dunton.”

 

My unhappy connection with the “Buchanan affair” had, it will be

seen, passed entirely from Swinburne’s memory, and indeed the name of

Robert Buchanan, who was something of a disturbing element even in

death, as he had been in life, was never mentioned among us again.

How entirely the, to me, distressing if brief rift in my friendship

with Watts-Dunton--a friendship which I shall always count one of the

dearest privileges of my life--was closed and forgotten, is clear

from the following letter. It was written in reply to a telegram

I sent, congratulating him on celebrating his 81st birthday--the

last birthday on earth, alas, of one of the most generous and

great-hearted of men:

 

THE PINES, PUTNEY, S.W.

_Oct. 20th, 1913._

 

MY DEAR KERNAHAN,

 

Your telegram congratulating me upon having reached my 81st

birthday affected me deeply. Ever since the beginning of our

long intimacy I have had from you nothing but generosity and

affection, almost unexampled, I think, between two literary

men. My one chagrin is that I can get only glimpses of you of

the briefest kind. Your last visit here was indeed a red-letter

day. Don’t forget when occasion offers to come and see us. Your

welcome will be of the most heartfelt kind.

 

Most affectionately yours,

THEODORE WATTS-DUNTON

 

 

 

 

THE LAST DAYS OF THEODORE WATTS-DUNTON

 

 

The pathetic side of the last two or three years of Watts-Dunton’s

life was that he had outlived nearly every friend of youth and middle

age, and, with the one or two old friends of his own generation who

survived, he had lost touch. Tennyson, Rossetti, Swinburne, William

Morris, Browning, Matthew Arnold, Borrow, William Black, Dr. Gordon

Hake, Westland and Philip Marston, Jowett, Louise Chandler Moulton,

William Sharp, James Russell Lowell, George Meredith, were gone.

Mr. William Rossetti, the only one of the old fraternity left,

now rarely, he tells me, leaves his own home. In any case he and

Watts-Dunton had not met for years. Mr. Edmund Gosse, once a frequent

and always an honoured visitor to The Pines, was rarely if ever there

during the years that I came and went.

 

It was between Swinburne and Mr. Gosse that the intimacy existed,

though by both the inmates he was to the last held in high regard.

Mr. Gosse would have the world to believe that he grows old, but no

one who knows him either personally or by his writings can detect

any sign of advancing years. On the contrary, both in the brilliance

of his personality and of his later intellectual achievements, he

appears to possess the secret of eternal youth. It was neither

oncoming years nor any lessening of friendship between him and

Swinburne which was responsible for Mr. Gosse’s defection, but the

fact that he had added to his other duties that of Librarian to

the House of Lords. This, and his many and increasing official and

literary activities, kept, and keep him closely occupied, and so it

was that his name gradually, insensibly, dropped out of the list of

visitors at The Pines.

 

Mr. Thomas Hake was with Watts-Dunton to the end, and indeed it was

not a little due to the help of “The Colonel” (the name by which

from his boyhood Mr. Hake was known at The Pines on account of his

cousinship with and his likeness to Colonel, afterwards General

Charles Gordon) that Watts-Dunton accomplished so much literary work

in his last decade. Some of the younger men, Mr. Clement Shorter,

accompanied now and then by his poet-wife, Mr. James Douglas, Mr.

Henniker-Heaton, Dr. Arthur Compton-Rickett, and Mr. F. G. Bettany,

remained in touch with The Pines until Watts-Dunton’s death. I met

none of them there myself, as after I went to live a long way from

London my own visits were less frequent, and being a friend of older

standing, with memories in common which none of the newer friends

whom I have mentioned shared, it was generally arranged that I was

the only guest. That there was no forgetfulness or lessening of

friendship on Watts-Dunton’s part towards the friends whom he now

rarely met, is evident by the following extract from a letter in

reply to a question on my part whether it would be possible for him

to be my guest at one of the Whitefriars’ Club weekly gatherings.

 

“I should look forward,” he said, “to seeing some of the truest and

best friends I have in the world, including yourself, Robertson

Nicoll, Richard Whiteing, and Clement Shorter. And when you tell

me that F. C. Gould is a Friar (the greatest artistic humorist now

living in England) I am tempted indeed to run counter to my doctor’s

injunctions against dining out this winter.

 

“The other day I had the extreme good luck to find and buy the famous

lost water-colour drawing of the dining-room at 16 Cheyne Walk, with

Rossetti reading out to me the proofs of _Ballads and Sonnets_. I

am sending photographs of it to one or two intimate friends, and I

enclose you one. The portrait of Rossetti is the best that has ever

been taken of him.”

 

Of all the friendships which Watts-Dunton formed late in life none

was so prized by him as that with Sir William Robertson Nicoll. As it

was I who made the two known to each other, and in doing so, removed

an unfortunate and what might have been permanent misunderstanding, I

may perhaps be pardoned for referring to the matter here.

 

The name of Sir William coming up one day in a conversation, I

discovered to my surprise that Watts-Dunton was feeling sore about

some disparaging remark which Sir William was supposed to have made

about him. I happened to know how the misunderstanding came about,

and I told Watts-Dunton the following true story, illustrating how

easily such misunderstandings arise, and illustrating too the petty

and “small beer” side of “literary shop” gossip. It concerned an

editor and an author. The author employed a literary agent, who

offered the editor one of the author’s stories. “I have set my face

against the middleman in literature,” the editor replied. “If Mr.

---- likes to offer me his story direct, I’ll gladly take it, and pay

his usual price per thousand words, but buy it through an agent I

won’t.”

 

This came to the ears of the author, who remarked: “That’s rather

unreasonable on ----’s part. I buy, through an agent, the periodical

he edits. I don’t expect him to stand in the gutter, like a newsboy,

selling me his paper himself at a street corner, and I don’t see why

he should object to my offering him my wares by means of an agent.”

 

This not unfriendly remark was overheard by some one, who told it

to some one else, who repeated it to another person, that person in

his turn passing it on, and so it went the round of Fleet Street and

certain literary clubs. The copper coinage of petty personal gossip,

unlike the pound sterling coin of the realm, becomes magnitudinally

greater, instead of microscopically less, by much circulation.

Instead of infinitesimal attritions, as in the case of the coin,

there are multitudinous accretions, until the story as it ultimately

started life, and the story as it afterwards came to be told, would

hardly recognise each other, at sight, as blood relatives. By the

time the innocent remark of the author came to the ears of the editor

concerned, it had so grown and become so garbled, that its own father

would never have known it. “Have you heard what So-and-so the

author said about you?” the editor was asked. “He said that he hoped

to live to see you in the gutter, selling at the street corner the

very paper you now edit.” Not unnaturally the editor’s retort was

uncomplimentary to the author, who, when the retort came to his ears,

expressed an opinion about the editor which was concerned with other

matters than the editorial objection to the middleman in literature,

and so a misunderstanding (fortunately long since removed) arose in

good earnest.

 

I should not put this chronicle of journalistic small beer--a

version as it is of the famous Three Black Crows story--on record,

were it not that it was exactly in the same way that an innocent

remark of Sir William Robertson Nicoll’s had been misrepresented to

Watts-Dunton. This I did my best to explain to the latter, but not

feeling as sure as I wished to be that all soreness was removed,

I asked him to lunch with me at the Savage Club, and then invited

Dr. Nicoll, as he then was, to meet him. There was at first just a

suspicion of an armed truce about Watts-Dunton, in whose memory the

supposed attack upon himself was still smouldering, but his interest

and pleasure in the conversation of a student and scholar of like

attainments to his own soon dispelled the stiffness. A chance but

warmly affectionate reference to Robertson Smith by Dr. Nicoll drew

from Watts-Dunton that long-drawn “Ah!” which those who knew him well

remember as meaning that he was following with profound attention and

agreement what was being said.

 

“Why, I knew that man--one of the salt of the earth,” he

interpolated. Then he added gravely, more reminiscently than as if

addressing anyone, “I had affection for him!” Leaning over the table,

his singularly brilliant and penetrating eyes full upon the other, he

said almost brusquely, “Tell me what you knew of Robertson Smith!”

 

Dr. Nicoll responded, and within five minutes’ time the two of them

were talking together, comparing notes and exchanging experiences and

confidences like old friends. As we were parting, Watts-Dunton said

to me:

 

“You are coming to lunch on Monday. I wish I could persuade our

friend Nicoll here to accompany you, so that Swinburne could share

the pleasure of such another meeting as we have had here to-day.”

 

The invitation was accepted by Dr. Nicoll with the cordiality with

which it was offered, and I may add with the usual result, for the

intervener. “Patch up a quarrel between two other persons--and find

yourself left out in the cold,” Oscar Wilde once said to me. I had

merely removed a misunderstanding, not patched up a quarrel, but the

result of my bringing Watts-Dunton, Nicoll, and Swinburne together