Mr. Watts-Dunton, speaking about ‘The Water of the Wondrous Isles,’ tells this amusing story:—
“Once, many years ago, Morris was inveigled into seeing and hearing the great poet-singer Stead, whose rhythms have had such a great effect upon the ‘art poetic,’ the author of ‘The Perfect Cure,’ and ‘It’s Daddy this and Daddy that,’ and other brilliant lyrics. A friend with whom Morris had been spending the evening, and who had been talking about poetic energy and poetic art in relation to the chilly reception accorded to ‘Sigurd,’ persuaded him—much against his will—to turn in for a few seconds to see Mr. Stead, whose performance consisted of singing a song, the burden of which was ‘I’m a perfect cure!’ while he leaped up into the air without bending his legs and twirled round like a dervish. ‘What made you bring me to see this damned tomfoolery?’ Morris grumbled; and on being told that it was to give him an example of poetic energy at its tensest, without poetic art, he grumbled still more and shouldered his way out. If Morris were now alive—and all England will sigh, ‘Ah, would he were!’—he would confess, with his customary emphasis, that the poet had nothing of the slightest importance to learn, even from the rhythms of Mr. Stead, marked as they were by terpsichorean pauses that were beyond the powers of the ‘Great Vance.’”
Chapter XIII
THE ‘EXAMINER’
Long before Mr. Watts-Dunton printed a line, he was a prominent figure in the literary and artistic sets in London; but, as Mr. Hake has said, it was merely as a conversationalist that he was known. His conversation was described by Rossetti as being like that of no other person moving in literary circles, because he was always enunciating new views in phrasings so polished that, to use Rossetti’s words, his improvized locutions were as perfect as ‘fitted jewels.’ Those who have been privileged to listen to his table-talk will attest the felicity of the image. Seldom has so great a critic had so fine an audience. Rossetti often lamented that Theodore Watts’ spoken criticism had never been taken down in shorthand. For a long time various editors who had met him at Rossetti’s, at Madox Brown’s, at Westland Marston’s, at Whistler’s breakfasts, and at the late Lord Houghton’s, endeavoured to persuade him to make practical use in criticism of the ideas that flowed in a continuous stream from his lips. But, as Rossetti used to affirm, he was the one man of his time who, with immense literary equipment, was without literary ambition. This peculiarity of his was eloquently described by the late Dr. Gordon Hake in his ‘New Day’:—
You say you care not for the people’s praise,
That poetry is its own recompense;
You care not for the wreath, the dusty bays,
Given to the whirling wind and hurried hence.
The first editor who secured Theodore Watts, after repeated efforts to do so, was the late Professor Minto, and this only came about because during his editorship of the ‘Examiner’ both he and Watts resided in Danes Inn, and were constantly seeing each other.
It was Minto who afterwards declared that “the articles in the ‘Examiner’ and the ‘Athenæum’ are goldmines, in which we others are apt to dig unconsciously without remembering that the nuggets are Theodore Watts’s, who is too lazy to peg out his claim.” The first article by him that appeared in Minto’s paper attracted great attention and roused great curiosity. This indeed is not surprising, for, as I found when I read it, it was as remarkable for pregnancy of thought and of style as the latest and ripest of his essays. A friend of his, belonging to the set in which he moved, who remembers the appearance of this article, has been kind enough to tell me the following anecdote in connection with it. The contributors to the paper at that time consisted of Minto, Dr Garnett, Swinburne, Edmund Gosse, ‘Scholar’ Williams, Comyns Carr, Walter Pollock, Duffield (the translator of ‘Don Quixote’), Professor Sully, Dr. Marston, William Bell Scott, William Black, and many other able writers. On the evening of the day when Theodore Watts’s first article appeared, there was a party at the house of William Bell Scott in Chelsea, and every one was asking who this new contributor was. It was one of the conditions under which the article was written that its authorship was to be kept a secret. Bell Scott, who took a great interest in the ‘Examiner,’ was especially inquisitive about the new writer. After having in vain tried to get from Minto the name of the writer, he went up to Watts, and said: “I would give almost anything to know who the writer is who appears in the ‘Examiner’ for the first time today.” “What makes you inquire about it?” said Watts. “What is the interest attaching to the writer of such fantastic stuff as that? Surely it is the most mannered writing that has appeared in the ‘Examiner’ for a long time!” Then, turning to Minto, he said: “I can’t think, Minto, what made you print it at all.” Scott, who had a most exalted opinion of Watts as a critic, was considerably abashed at this, and began to endeavour to withdraw some of his enthusiastic remarks. This set Minto laughing aloud, and thus the secret got out.
From that hour Watts became the most noticeable writer among a group of critics who were all noticeable. Week after week there appeared in this historic paper criticism as fine as had ever appeared in it in the time of Leigh Hunt, and as brilliant as had appeared in it in the time of Fonblanque. At this time Minto used to entertain his contributors on Monday evening in the room over the publisher’s office in the Strand, and I have been told by one who was frequently there that these smoking symposia were among the most brilliant in London. One can well imagine this when one remembers the names of those who used to attend the meetings.
It was through the ‘Examiner’ that Watts formed that friendship with William Black which his biographer, Sir Wemyss Reid, alludes to. Between these two there was one subject on which they were especially in sympathy—their knowledge and love of nature. At that time Black was immensely popular. In personal appearance there was, I am told, a superficial resemblance between the two, and they were constantly being mistaken for each other; and yet, when they were side by side, it was evident that the large, dark moustache and the black eyes were almost the only points of resemblance between them.
It was at the then famous house in Gower Street of Mr. Justin McCarthy that Black and Mr. Watts-Dunton first met. Speaking as an Irishman of a younger but not, I fear, of so genial a generation, I hear tantalizing accounts of the popular gatherings at the home of the most charming and the most distinguished Irishman of letters in the London of that time, where so many young men of my own country were welcomed as warmly as though they had not yet to win their spurs. No one speaks more enthusiastically of the McCarthy family than Mr. Watts-Dunton, who seems to have been on terms of friendship with them almost as soon as he settled in London. Mr. Watts-Dunton was always a lover of McCarthy’s novels, but on his first visit to Gower Street Mr. McCarthy was, as usual, full of the subject not of his own novels, but of another man’s. He urged his new friend to read ‘Under the Greenwood Tree,’ almost forcing him to take the book away with him, which he did: this was the way in which Mr. Watts-Dunton became for the first time acquainted with a story which he always avers is the only book that has ever revived the rich rustic humour of Shakespeare’s early comedies. A perfect household of loving natures, warm Irish hearts, bright Irish intellects, cultivated and rare, according to Mr. Watts-Dunton’s testimony, was that little family in Gower Street. I think he will pardon me for repeating one quaint little story about himself and Black in connection with this first visit to the McCarthys. On entering the room Mr. Watts-Dunton was much struck with what appeared to be real musical genius in a bright-eyed little lady who was delighting the party with her music. This was at the period in his own life which Mr. Watts-Dunton calls his ‘music-mad period.’ And after a time he got talking with the lady. He was a little surprised that he was at once invited by the musical lady to go to a gathering at her house. But he was as much pleased as surprised to be so welcomed, and incontinently accepted the invitation. It never entered his mind that he had been mistaken for another man, until the other man entered the room and came up to the lady. She, on her part, began to look in an embarrassed way from one to the other of the two swarthy, black-moustached gentlemen. She had mistaken Mr. Watts-Dunton for William Black, with whom her acquaintance was but slight. The contretemps caused much amusement when the husband of the lady, an eminent novelist, who knew Mr. Watts-Dunton well, introduced him to his wife. I do not know what was the end of the comedy, but no doubt it was a satisfactory one. It could not be otherwise among such people as Justin McCarthy would be likely to gather round him.