Theodore Watts-Dunton: Poet, Novelist, Critic

And while Sterne’s abiding sense of the struggle between man’s spiritual nature and the conditions of his physical nature accounts for the metaphysical depth of some of his humour, it greatly accounts for his indecencies too. Sterne had that instinct for idealizing women, and the entire relations between the sexes which accompanies the poetic temperament. To such natures the spiritual side of sexual relations is ever present; and as a consequence of this the animal side never loses with them the atmosphere of wonder with which it was enveloped in their boyish days. Not that we are going to justify Sterne’s indecencies. Coleridge’s remark that the pleasure Sterne got from his double entendre was akin to ‘that trembling daring with which a child touches a hot teapot because it has been forbidden,’ partly explains, but it does not excuse, Sterne’s transgressions herein. The fact seems to be that if we divide love into the passion of love, the sentiment of love, and the appetite of love, and inquire which of these was really known to Sterne, we shall come to what will seem to most readers the paradoxical conclusion that it was the sentiment only. There is abundant proof of this. In the ‘Letter to the Earl of – ,’ printed by his daughter, after dilating upon the manner in which the writing of the ‘Sentimental Journey’ has worn out both his spirits and body, he says: ‘I might indeed solace myself with my wife (who is come to France), but, in fact, I have long been a sentimental being, whatever your lordship may think to the contrary. The world has imagined because I wrote “Tristram Shandy” that I was myself more Shandian than I really ever was.’ Upon this passage Mr. Traill has the pertinent remark: ‘The connubial affections are here, in all seriousness and good faith apparently, opposed to the sentimental emotions – as the lower to the higher. To indulge the former is to be “Shandian,” that is to say, coarse and carnal; to devote oneself to the latter, or, in other words, to spend one’s days in semi-erotic languishings over the whole female sex indiscriminately, is to show spirituality and taste.’ Now, to men of this kind there is not uncommonly, perhaps, a charm in a licentious double entendre which is quite inscrutable to those of a more animal temperament. The incongruity between the ideal and the actual relations brings poignant distress at first, and afterwards a sense of irresistible absurdity. Originally the fascination of repulsion, it becomes the fascination of attraction, and it is not at all fanciful to say that in Uncle Toby and the Widow Wadman, Sterne (quite unconsciously to himself perhaps) realized to his own mind those two opposite sides of man’s nature whose conflict in some form or another was ever present to Sterne’s mind. And, as we say, it has a deep relation to the kind of humour with which Sterne was so richly endowed. After one of his most sentimental flights, wherein the spiritual side of man is absurdly exaggerated, there comes upon him a sudden revulsion (which at first was entirely natural, if even self-conscious afterwards). The incongruity of all this sentiment with man’s actual condition as an animal strikes him with irresistible force, and he says to man, ‘What right have you in that galley after all – you who came into the world in this extremely unspiritual fashion and keep in it by the agency of functions which are if possible more unspiritual and more absurd still?’

No doubt the universal sense of shame in connection with sexual matters, which Hartley has discussed in his subtle but rather far-fetched fashion, arises from an acute apprehension of this great and eternal incongruity of man’s existence – the conflict of a spiritual nature and such aspirations as man’s with conditions entirely physical. And perhaps the only truly philosophical definition of the word ‘indecency’ would be this: ‘A painful and shocking contrast of man’s spiritual with his physical nature.’ When Hamlet, with his finger on Yorick’s skull, declares that his ‘gorge rises at it,’ and asks if Alexander’s skull ‘smelt so,’ he shocks us as deeply in a serious way as Sterne in his allusion to the winding up of the clock shocks us in a humourous way, and to express the sensation they each give there is, perhaps, no word but ‘indecent.’”

I have now cited the opinions of Mr. Watts-Dunton upon the metaphysical meaning of humour. In order to show what are his opinions upon wit, I think I shall do well to turn from the ‘Athenæum’ articles, and to quote from the ‘Encyclopædia Britannica’ a few sentences upon wit, and upon the distinction between comedy and farce. For the obvious reason that the ‘Athenæum’ articles are buried in oblivion, and the ‘Encyclopædia Britannica’ articles are certainly not so deeply buried, it is from the former that I have been mainly quoting; but some of the most important parts of Mr. Watts-Dunton’s work are to be found in the ‘Encyclopædia Britannica.’ Perhaps, however, I had better introduce my citations by saying a few words about Mr. Watts-Dunton’s connection with that work.

The story of the way in which he came to write in the ‘Encyclopædia’ has been often told by Prof. Minto. At the time when the ninth edition was started, he and Mr. Watts-Dunton were living in adjoining chambers and were seeing each other constantly. When Minto was writing his articles upon Byron and Dickens, he told Mr. Watts-Dunton that Baynes would be delighted to get work from him. But at that time Mr. Watts-Dunton had got more critical work in hand than he wanted, and besides he had already a novel and a body of poetry ready for the press, and wished to confine his energies to creative work. Besides this, he felt, as he declared, that he could not do the work fitted for the compact, businesslike pedestrian style of an encyclopædia. But when the most important treatise in the literary department of the work – the treatise on Poetry – was wanted, a peculiar difficulty in selecting the writer was felt. The article in the previous edition had been written by David Macbeth Moir, famous under the name of ‘Delta’ as the author of ‘The Autobiography of Mansie Wauch.’ Moir’s article was intelligent enough, but quite inadequate to such a work as the publishers of the ‘Encyclopædia’ aspired to make. A history of Poetry was, of course, quite impossible; it followed that the treatise must be an essay on the principles of poetic art in relation to all other arts, as exemplified by the poetry of the great literatures. It was decided, according to Minto’s account, that there were but three men, that is to say, Swinburne, Matthew Arnold, and Theodore Watts, who could produce this special kind of work, the other critics being entirely given up to the historic method of criticism. The choice fell upon Watts, and Baynes went to London for the purpose of inviting him to do the work, and explaining exactly what was wanted.

I think all will agree with me that there never was a happier choice. Mr. Arthur Symons, in an article on ‘The Coming of Love’ in the ‘Saturday Review’ has written very luminously upon this subject. He tells us that, wide as is the sweep of the treatise, it is but a brilliant fragment, owing to the treatise having vastly overflowed the space that could be given to it. The truth is that the essay is but the introduction to an exhaustive discussion of what the writer believes to be the most important event in the history of all poetry – the event discussed under the name of ‘The Renascence of Wonder.’ The introduction to the third volume of the new edition of Chambers’s ‘Cyclopædia of English Literature’ is but a bare outline of Mr. Watts-Dunton’s writings upon this subject. It has been said over and over again that since the best critical work of Coleridge there has been nothing in our literature to equal this treatise on Poetry. It has been exhaustively discussed in England, America, and on the Continent, especially in Germany, where it has been compared to the critical system of Goethe. Those who have not read it will be surprised to hear that it is not confined to the formulating of generalizations on poetic art; it is full of eloquent passages on human life and human conduct.

It was in an article upon a Restoration comic dramatist, Vanbrugh, that Mr. Watts-Dunton first formulated his famous distinction between comedy and farce: —

“In order to find and fix Vanbrugh’s place among English comic dramatists, an examination of the very basis of the comedy of repartee inaugurated by Etheredge would be necessary, and, of course, such an examination would be impossible here. It is chiefly as a humourist, however, that he demands attention.

Given the humorous temperament – the temperament which impels a man to get his enjoyment by watching the harlequinade of life, and contrasting it with his own ideal standard of good sense, which the harlequinade seems to him to mock and challenge – given this temperament, then the quality of its humourous growth depends of course on the quality of the intellectual forces by means of which the temperament gains expression. Hence it is very likely that in original endowment of humour, as distinguished from wit, Vanbrugh was superior to Congreve. And this is saying a great deal: for, while Congreve’s wit has always been made much of, it has, since Macaulay’s time, been the fashion among critics to do less than justice to his humour – a humour which, in such scenes as that in ‘Love for Love,’ where Sir Sampson Legend discourses upon the human appetites and functions, moves beyond the humour of convention and passes into natural humour. It is, however, in spontaneity, in a kind of lawless merriment, almost Aristophanic in its verve, that Vanbrugh’s humour seems so deep and so fine, seems indeed to spring from a fountain deeper and finer and rarer than Congreve’s. A comedy of wit, like every other drama, is a story told by action and dialogue, but to tell a story lucidly and rapidly by means of repartee is exceedingly difficult, not but that it is easy enough to produce repartee. But in comic dialogue the difficulty is to move rapidly and yet keep up the brilliant ball-throwing demanded in this form; and without lucidity and rapidity no drama, whether of repartee or of character, can live. Etheredge, the father of the comedy of repartee, has at length had justice done to him by Mr. Gosse. Not only could Etheredge tell a story by means of repartee alone: he could produce a tableau too; so could Congreve, and so also could Vanbrugh; but often – far too often – Vanbrugh’s tableau is reached, not by fair means, as in the tableau of Congreve, but by a surrendering of probability, by a sacrifice of artistic fusion, by an inartistic mingling of comedy and farce, such as Congreve never indulges in. Jeremy Collier was perfectly right, therefore, in his strictures upon the farcical improbabilities of the ‘Relapse.’ So farcical indeed are the tableaux in that play that the broader portions of it were (as Mr. Swinburne discovered) adapted by Voltaire and acted at Sceaux as a farce. Had we space here to contrast the ‘Relapse’ with the ‘Way of the World,’ we should very likely come upon a distinction between comedy and farce such as has never yet been drawn. We should find that farce is not comedy with a broadened grin – Thalia with her girdle loose and run wild – as the critics seem to assume. We should find that the difference between the two is not one of degree at all, but rather one of kind, and that mere breadth of fun has nothing to do with the question. No doubt the fun of comedy may be as broad as that of farce, as is shown indeed by the celebrated Dogberry scenes in ‘Much Ado about Nothing’ and by the scene in ‘Love for Love’ between Sir Sampson Legend and his son, alluded to above; but here, as in every other department of art, all depends upon the quality of the imaginative belief that the artist seeks to arrest and secure. Of comedy the breath of life is dramatic illusion. Of farce the breath of life is mock illusion. Comedy, whether broad or genteel, pretends that its mimicry is real. Farce, whether broad or genteel, makes no such pretence, but, by a thousand tricks, which it keeps up between itself and the audience, says, ‘My acting is all sham, and you know it.’ Now, while Vanbrugh was apt too often to forget this the fundamental difference between comedy and farce, Congreve never forgot it, Wycherly rarely. Not that there should be in any literary form any arbitrary laws. There is no arbitrary law declaring that comedy shall not be mingled with farce, and yet the fact is that in vital drama they cannot be so mingled. The very laws of their existence are in conflict with each other, so much so that where one lives the other must die, as we see in the drama of our own day. The fact seems to be that probability of incident, logical sequence of cause and effect, are as necessary to comedy as they are to tragedy, while farce would stifle in such an air. Rather, it would be poisoned by it, just as comedy is poisoned by what farce flourishes on; that is to say, inconsequence of reasoning – topsy-turvy logic. Born in the fairy country of topsy-turvy, the logic of farce would be illogical if it were not upside-down. So with coincidence, with improbable accumulation of convenient events – farce can no more exist without these than comedy can exist with them. Hence we affirm that Jeremy Collier’s strictures on the farcical adulterations of the ‘Relapse’ pierce more deeply into Vanbrugh’s art than do the criticisms of Leigh Hunt and Hazlitt. In other words, perhaps the same lack of fusion which mars Vanbrugh’s architectural ideas mars also his comedy.”

Without for a moment wishing to institute comparisons between the merit of Mr. Watts-Dunton’s literary articles and the merit of other literary articles by other contemporary writers, I may at least say that between his articles and theirs the difference is not one of degree, it is one of kind. Theirs are compact, business-like compressions of facts admirably fitted for an Encyclopædia. No attempt is made to formulate generalizations upon the principles of literary art, and this must be said in their praise – they are faultless as articles in a book of reference. But no student of Mr. Watts-Dunton’s work who turns over the pages of an article in the ‘Encyclopædia Britannica’ can fail after reading a few sentences to recognize the author. Generalizations, hints of daring theories, novel and startling speculations, graze each other’s heels, until one is dazzled by the display of intellectual brilliance. That his essays are out of place in an Encyclopædia may be true, but they seem to lighten and alleviate it and to shed his fascinating idiosyncrasy upon their coldly impersonal environment.

Chapter XVII

‘THE LIFE POETIC’

I have been allowed to enrich this volume with photographs of ‘The Pines’ and of some of the exquisite works of art therein. But it is unfortunate for me that I am not allowed to touch upon what are the most important relations of Mr. Watts-Dunton’s life – important though so many of them are. I mean his intimacy with the poet whose name is now beyond doubt far above any other name in the contemporary world of letters. I do not sympathize with the hyper-sensitiveness of eminent men with regard to privacy. The inner chamber of what Rossetti calls the ‘House of Life’ should be kept sacred. But Rossetti’s own case shows how impossible it is in these days to keep those recesses inviolable. The fierce light that beats upon men of genius grows fiercer and fiercer every day, and it cannot be quenched. This was one of my arguments when I first answered Mr. Watts-Dunton’s own objection to the appearance of this monograph. The times have changed since he was a young man. Then publicity was shunned like a plague by poets and by painters. If such men wish the light to be true as well as fierce, they must allow their friends to illuminate their ‘House of Life’ by the lamp of truth. If Rossetti during his lifetime had allowed one of his friends who knew the secrets of his ‘House of Life’ to write about him, we might have been spared those canards about him and the wife he loved which were rife shortly after his death. Byron’s reluctance to take payment for his poetry was not a more belated relic of an old quixotism than is this dying passion for privacy. Publicity may be an evil, but it is an inevitable evil, and great men must not let the wasps and the gadflies monopolize its uses. It may be a reminiscence of an older and a nobler social temper, the temper under the influence of which Rossetti in 1870 said that he felt abashed because a paragraph had appeared in the ‘Athenæum’ announcing the fact that a book from him was forthcoming. But that temper has gone by for ever. We live now in very different times. Scores upon scores of unauthorized and absolutely false paragraphs about eminent men are published, especially about these two friends who have lived their poetic life together for more than a quarter of a century. Only the other day I saw in a newspaper an offensive descriptive caricature of Mr. Swinburne, of his dress, etc. It is interesting to recall the fact that mendacious journalism was the cause of Mr. Watts-Dunton’s very first contribution to the ‘Athenæum,’ before he wrote any reviews at all. At that time the offenders seem to have been chiefly Americans. The article was not a review, but a letter signed ‘Z,’ entitled ‘The Art of Interviewing,’ and it appeared in the ‘Athenæum,’ of March 11, 1876. As it shows the great Swinburne myth in the making, I will reproduce this merry little skit: —

“‘Alas! there is none of us without his skeleton-closet,’ said a great writer to one who was congratulating him upon having reached the goal for which he had, from the first, set out. ‘My skeleton bears the dreadful name of “American Interviewer.” Pity me!’ ‘Is he an American with a diary in his pocket?’ was the terrified question always put by another man of genius, whenever you proposed introducing a stranger to him. But this was in those ingenuous Parker-Willisian days when the ‘Interviewer’ merely invented the dialogue – not the entire dramatic action – not the interview itself. Primitive times! since when the ‘Interviewer’ has developed indeed! His dramatic inspiration now is trammelled by none of those foolish and arbitrary conditions which – whether his scene of action was at the ‘Blue Posts’ with Thackeray, or in the North with Scottish lords – vexed and bounded the noble soul of the great patriarch of the tribe. Uncribbed, uncabined, unconfined, the ‘Interviewer’ now invents, not merely the dialogue, but the ‘situation,’ the place, the time – the interview itself. Every dramatist has his favourite character – Sophocles had his; Shakspeare had his; Schiller had his; the ‘Interviewer’ has his. Mr. Swinburne has, for the last two or three years, been – for some reason which it might not be difficult to explain – the ‘Interviewer’s’ special favourite. Moreover, the accounts of the interviews with him are always livelier than any others, inasmuch as they are accompanied by brilliant fancy-sketches of his personal appearance – sketches which, if they should not gratify him exactly, would at least astonish him; and it is surely something to be even astonished in these days. Some time ago, for instance, an American lady journalist, connected with a ‘Western newspaper,’ made her appearance in London, and expressed many ‘great desires,’ the greatest of all her ‘desires’ being to know the author of ‘Atalanta,’ or, if she could not know him, at least to ‘see him.’

The Fates, however, were not kind to the lady. The author of ‘Atalanta’ had quitted London. She did not see him, therefore – not with her bodily eyes could she see him. Yet this did not at all prevent her from ‘interviewing’ him. Why should it? The ‘soul hath eyes and ears’ as well as the body – especially if the soul is an American soul, with a mission to ‘interview.’ There soon appeared in the lady’s Western newspaper a graphic account of one of the most interesting interviews with this poet that has ever yet been recorded. Mr. Swinburne – though at the time in Scotland – ‘called’ upon the lady at her rooms in London; but, notwithstanding this unexampled feat of courtesy, he seems to have found no favour in the lady’s eyes. She ‘misliked him for his complexion.’ Evidently it was nothing but good-breeding that prevented her from telling the bard, on the spot, that he was physically an unlovely bard. His manners, too, were but so-so; and the Western lady was shocked and disgusted, as well she might be. In the midst of his conversation, for example, he called out frantically for ‘pen and ink.’ He had become suddenly and painfully ‘afflated.’ When furnished with pen and ink he began furiously writing a poem, beating the table with his left hand and stamping the floor with both feet as he did so. Then, without saying a word, he put on his hat and rushed from the room like a madman! This account was copied into other newspapers and into the magazines. It is, in fact, a piece of genuine history now, and will form valuable material for some future biographer of the poet. The stubborn shapelessness of facts has always distressed the artistically-minded historian. But let the American ‘Interviewer’ go on developing thus, and we may look for History’s becoming far more artistic and symmetrical in future. The above is but one out of many instances of the art of interviewing.”

It is all very well to say that irresponsible statements of this kind are not in the true sense of the word believed by readers; they create an atmosphere of false mist which destroys altogether the picture of the poet’s life which one would like to preserve. And I really think that it would have been better if I or some one else among the friends of the poets had been allowed to write more freely about the beautiful and intellectual life at ‘The Pines.’ But I am forbidden to do this, as the following passage in a letter which I have received from Mr. Watts-Dunton will show:

“I cannot have anything about our life at ‘The Pines’ put into print, but I will grant you permission to give a few reproductions of the interesting works of art here, for many of them may have a legitimate interest for the public on account of their historic value, as having come to me from the magician of art, Rossetti. And I assure you that this is a concession which I have denied to very many applicants, both among friends and others.”

Mr. Watts-Dunton’s allusion to the Rossetti mementoes requires a word of explanation. Rossetti, it seems, was very fond of surprising his friends by unexpected tokens of generosity. I have heard Mr. Watts-Dunton say that during the week when he was moving into ‘The Pines,’ he spent as usual Wednesday night at 16 Cheyne Walk, and he and Rossetti sat talking into the small hours. Next morning after breakfast he strolled across to Whistler’s house to have a talk with the ever-interesting painter, and this resulted in his getting home two hours later than usual. On reaching the new house he saw a waggon standing in front of it. He did not understand this, for the furniture from the previous residence had been all removed. He went up to the waggon, and was surprised to find it full of furniture of a choice kind. But there was no need for him to give much time to an examination of the furniture, for he found he was familiar with every piece of it. It had come straight from Rossetti’s house, having been secretly packed and sent off by Dunn on the previous day. Some of the choicest things at ‘The Pines’ came in this way. Not a word had Rossetti said about this generous little trick on the night before. The superb Chinese cabinet, a photograph of which appears in this book, belonged to Rossetti. It seems that on a certain occasion Frederick Sandys, or some one else, told Rossetti that the clever but ne’er-do-well artist, George Chapman, had bought of a sea-captain, trading in Chinese waters, a wonderful piece of lacquer work of the finest period – before the Manchu pig-tail time. The captain had bought it of a Frenchman who had aided in looting the Imperial Palace. Rossetti, of course, could not rest until he had seen it, and when he had seen it, he could not rest until he had bought it of Chapman; and it was taken across to 16 Cheyne Walk, where it was greatly admired. The captain had barbarously mutilated it at the top in order to make it fit in his cabin, and it remained in that condition for some years. Afterwards Rossetti gave it to Mr. Watts-Dunton, who got it restored and made up by the wonderful amateur carver, the late Mr. T. Keynes, who did the carving on the painted cabinet also photographed for this book. There is a long and interesting story in connection with this piece of Chinese lacquer, but I have no room to tell it here.