In good company

by Coulson Kernahan

“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.