A more exhaustive summing up—not, I admit, of the evidence on both sides, but of the evidence which appealed to his individual judgment, his individual imagination, and his individual taste—I have never heard. Prejudiced as he was, however, in favour of Marston, he would not go so far as Rossetti, for his last word on the subject was:
“When Gabriel spoke of Philip’s poem, The Rose and the Wind, as ‘worthy of Shakespeare in his subtlest lyrical mood,’ he let his personal affection run away with his critical judgment, and his verdict must always be discounted by the fact that Philip was the aptest pupil in the School of Poetry in which Rossetti was the acknowledged master. Watts-Dunton is a much surer guide, and when he said that ‘So perfect a lyric as The Rose and the Wind should entitle Marston to a place of his own, and that no inconsiderable one,’ he said the true word, the deserved word, and the word which I do not think anyone will have the hardihood to dispute.”
IV
When next I met Swinburne, nearly twelve months had gone by, and, in spite of the eager way in which at our first meeting he had talked of the men and women and things within his own mental horizon, I should not have been in the least surprised to find that he had practically forgotten me. I do not say this in any spirit of mock modesty, but because I remembered that, at that first meeting, I had mentioned, in the course of conversation, a book by a certain author who to my knowledge had been a visitor to The Pines on several occasions, and so must personally have been well known to Swinburne.
“Oh, really!” he said. “Yes, now that you mention it, I believe that someone of that name has been so good as to come and see us. I seem to recall him. And I seem to remember hearing someone say that he had written something, though I don’t remember exactly what. So he has published a book upon the subject of which we are talking. Really? I did not know.”
This was said with perfect courtesy, and without the remotest intention of administering a snub either to me or to the literary reputation of the writer in question. It meant no more than that Swinburne lived so apart from the rest of the world, had such power of detachment, and kept so habitually the company only of his books and of his peers, that the personality of the rest of us left no impression on him.
On this occasion, only Watts-Dunton, Miss Teresa Watts, his sister, Swinburne, and myself were present, and the talk turned at first upon William Rossetti, with whom, in his home at St. Edmund’s Terrace, Regent’s Park, I had spent an hour or two on the previous afternoon. Both Swinburne and Watts-Dunton were interested to hear news of their old friend whom both regretted seeing so seldom. They plied me with innumerable questions in regard to his health, his plans, even in regard to trivial details about his home life, not omitting mention of his sister Christina’s beloved cat “Muff,” and the red plush sofa on which Shelley was supposed to have slept, the night before his death, and that now stands in the library. Both my hearers were touched when I spoke of Rossetti’s affectionate words about William Morris, for whom, though “Topsy” (as he called Morris) and he had not met five times in twenty years, Rossetti to the last entertained the old affection. Rossetti’s vivid recollection of the day of the funeral of Watts-Dunton’s mother, some fifteen years before, when there was so terrible a blizzard that he could get no conveyance to Endsleigh Gardens—where he was then living—and had to fight his way home on foot in a blinding snowstorm, was naturally of special interest to Watts-Dunton. Much more was said, and many other questions were asked, upon which I do not propose here to linger, passing on, instead, to speak of the sudden flaming up of Swinburne at the mention by Rossetti of William Bell Scott as having once been a drawing master.
“Perfectly true! Perfectly true!” interpolated Swinburne angrily, “and a drawing master he remained to his life’s end.”
For the remainder of my stay he talked vivaciously, and here I should like to say that in all that has been written about his personality—his eccentricities, excitability and exclusiveness; his passionate love of the sea and of little children; the changes that his political views underwent; his chivalrous championship of his friends against all comers, and the savage onslaught upon Robert Buchanan; his sturdy patriotism, and his historic friendships—very little has been said of the lighter side of his nature. That he could wield in controversy the lash of satire and irony, and wield it mercilessly, more than one combatant has had cause to know, and there are alive to-day ancient enemies of his whose backs must still tingle at memory of some of his onslaughts. But of his wit and humour in daily life and the sunny playfulness of his banter in conversation with his friends, one seldom hears. I have known him keep the table alive for an hour at a time by whimsical and deliciously humorous and caustic comments on the topics—political, literary, or artistic—of the day.
On this particular morning he was anxious to show me a review of Kriegspiel, that most remarkable novel by the late Francis Hinde Groome, son of the famous archdeacon, the intimate of Edward FitzGerald, with whom Frank Groome had himself been well acquainted as a boy.