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 disappointment to him, not so much because it illustrated the truth of Goethe’s saying—nearer seventy than sixty as Watts-Dunton was when he achieved that success—“the wished-for comes too late,” but because it was not the success he expected and to which he believed himself most to be entitled.
Mr. Douglas calls his book on Watts-Dunton Theodore Watts-Dunton, Poet, Novelist, and Critic, and the description and the order in which those descriptions appear were of Watts-Dunton’s own choosing. It was first as a poet, secondly as a novelist, and only thirdly, if at all, as a critic, that he wished and hoped to be remembered, whereas those who held the balance of values in letters were inclined to reverse that order and to place the critic first and the poet last.
Watts-Dunton was—I would emphasise this point strongly—an amateur in letters to the last, never the professional “literary man.” It is because he was by temperament the amateur, not the professional, that he took his success so seriously and did not conceal a certain almost childlike gratification (which was not vanity) that it afforded him. Your shrewd professional writer would have spent less time in contemplation of his success, and more in seeking how best to exploit and advertise that success to his professional advantage.
Watts-Dunton, on the contrary, took the success of Aylwin very much as a young mother takes her firstling. He dandled it, toyed with it, hugged it, not altogether without something of the wonder and the awe with which a fond mother regards her firstborn. An amateur, as I say, and to the last he could hardly believe his own ears, his own eyes, at finding that his work had a high “market” value, and that one publisher was ready to bid against another for his next book. Truth to tell he was not a little flustered by it all. “Hostages to posterity” of his sort carried responsibilities with them, not the least of which was the expectation that he would follow up Aylwin with other books. I remember the portentous, almost troubled knitting of his brows when perhaps a little maliciously I hinted that it was no use his bringing out new editions of Aylwin, or brooding over new prefaces for new editions of the same novel. “What your public and your publishers demand from you,” I said, “is Aylwin’s successor, not new editions, but a new book.”
“Ah!” he said with deep meaning—no one could put so much into an “ah” as he—and, figuratively, collapsed.
ONE ASPECT OF THE MANY-SIDEDNESS OF
THEODORE WATTS-DUNTON
I have often been asked by those who did not know Theodore Watts-Dunton what was the secret of the singular power he appeared to exercise over others and the equally singular affection in which he was held by his friends.
My answer was that Watts-Dunton’s hold upon his friends, partly personal as it was and partly intellectual, was chiefly due to his extraordinary loyalty. Of old, certain men and women were supposed to be possessed of the “evil eye.” Upon whom they looked with intent—be it man, woman, or beast—hurt was sooner or later sure to fall.