Skerryvore, Bournemouth.
Dear Mr. Watts,—The sight of the last ‘Athenæum’ reminds me of you, and of my debt now too long due. I wish to thank you for your notice of ‘Kidnapped’; and that not because it was kind, though for that also I valued it; but in the same sense as I have thanked you before now for a hundred articles on a hundred different writers. A critic like you is one who fights the good fight, contending with stupidity, and I would fain hope not all in vain; in my own case, for instance, surely not in vain.
What you say of the two parts in ‘Kidnapped’ was felt by no one more painfully than by myself. I began it, partly as a lark, partly as a pot-boiler; and suddenly it moved, David and Alan stepped out from the canvas, and I found I was in another world. But there was the cursed beginning, and a cursed end must be appended; and our old friend Byles the Butcher was plainly audible tapping at the back door. So it had to go into the world, one part (as it does seem to me) alive, one part merely galvanised: no work, only an essay. For a man of tentative method, and weak health, and a scarcity of private means, and not too much of that frugality which is the artist’s proper virtue, the days of sinecures and patrons look very golden: the days of professional literature very hard. Yet I do not so far deceive myself as to think I should change my character by changing my epoch; the sum of virtue in our books is in a relation of equality to the sum of virtues in ourselves; and my ‘Kidnapped’ was doomed, while still in the womb and while I was yet in the cradle, to be the thing it is.
And now to the more genial business of defence. You attack my fight on board the ‘Covenant,’ I think it literal. David and Alan had every advantage on their side, position, arms, training, a good conscience; a handful of merchant sailors, not well led in the first attack, not led at all in the second, could only by an accident have taken the roundhouse by attack; and since the defenders had firearms and food, it is even doubtful if they could have been starved out. The only doubtful point with me is whether the seamen would have ever ventured on the second onslaught; I half believe they would not; still the illusion of numbers and the authority of Hoseason would perhaps stretch far enough to justify the extremity.—I am, dear Mr. Watts, your very sincere admirer,
Robert Louis Stevenson.
Mr. Watts-Dunton has always been a warm admirer of Stevenson, of his personal character no less than his undoubted genius, and Stevenson, on his part, in conversation never failed to speak of himself, as in this letter he subscribes himself, as Mr. Watts-Dunton’s sincere admirer. But Mr. Watts-Dunton’s admiration of Stevenson’s work was more tempered with judgment than was the admiration of some critics, who afterwards, when he became too successful, disparaged him. Greatly as he admired ‘Kidnapped’ and ‘Catriona,’ there were certain of Stevenson’s works for which his admiration was qualified, and certain others for which he had no admiration at all. His strictures upon the story which seems to have been at first the main source of Stevenson’s popularity, ‘Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde,’ were much resented at the time by those insincere and fickle worshippers to whom I have already alluded. Yet these strictures are surely full of wisdom, and they specially show that wide sweep over the entire field of literature which is characteristic of all his criticism. As they contain, besides, one of his many tributes to Scott, I will quote them here:—
“Take the little story ‘Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde,’ the laudatory criticism upon which is in bulk, as regards the story itself, like the comet’s tail in relation to the comet. On its appearance as a story, a ‘shilling shocker’ for the railway bookstalls, the critic’s attention was directed to its vividness of narrative and kindred qualities, and though perfectly conscious of its worthlessness in the world of literary art, he might well be justified in comparing it to its advantage with other stories of its class and literary standing. But when it is offered as a classic—and this is really how it is offered—it has to be judged by critical canons of a very different kind. It has then to be compared and contrasted with stories having a like motive—stories that deal with an idea as old as the oldest literature—as old, no doubt, as those primeval days when man awoke to the consciousness that he is a moral and a responsible being—stories whose temper has always been up to now of the loftiest kind.
It is many years since, in writing of the ‘Parables of Buddhaghosha,’ it was our business to treat at length of the grand idea of man’s dual nature, and the many beautiful forms in which it has been embodied. We said then that, from the lovely modern story of Arsène Houssaye, where a young man, starting along life’s road, sees on a lawn a beautiful girl and loves her, and afterwards—when sin has soiled him—finds that she was his own soul, stained now by his own sin; and from the still more impressive, though less lovely modern story of Edgar Poe, ‘William Wilson,’ up to the earliest allegories upon the subject, no writer or story-teller had dared to degrade by gross treatment a motive of such universal appeal to the great heart of the ‘Great Man, Mankind.’ We traced the idea, as far as our knowledge went, through Calderon, back to Oriental sources, and found, as we then could truly affirm, that this motive—from the ethical point of view the most pathetic and solemn of all motives—had been always treated with a nobility and a greatness that did honour to literary art. Manu, after telling us that ‘single is each man born into the world—single dies,’ implores each one to ‘collect virtue,’ in order that after death he may be met by the virtuous part of his dual self, a beautiful companion and guide in traversing ‘that gloom which is so hard to be traversed.’ Fine as this is, it is surpassed by an Arabian story we then quoted (since versified by Sir Edwin Arnold)—the story of the wicked king who met after death a frightful hag for an eternal companion, and found her to be only a part of his own dual nature, the embodiment of his own evil deeds. And even this is surpassed by that lovely allegory in Arda Viraf, in which a virtuous soul in Paradise, walking amid pleasant trees whose fragrance was wafted from God, meets a part of his own dual nature, a beautiful maiden, who says to him, ‘O youth, I am thine own actions.’
And we instanced other stories and allegories equally beautiful, in which this supreme thought has been treated as poetically as it deserves. It was left for Stevenson to degrade it into a hideous tale of murder and Whitechapel mystery—a story of astonishing brutality, in which the separation of the two natures of the man’s soul is effected not by psychological development, and not by the ‘awful alchemy’ of the spirit-world beyond the grave, as in all the previous versions, but by the operation of a dose of some supposed new drug.
If the whole thing is meant as a horrible joke, in imitation of De Quincey’s ‘Murder considered as One of the Fine Arts,’ it tells poorly for Stevenson’s sense of humour. If it is meant as a serious allegory, it is an outrage upon the grand allegories of the same motive with which most literatures have been enriched. That a story so coarse should have met with the plaudits that ‘Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde’ met with at the time of its publication—that it should now be quoted in leading articles of important papers every few days, while all the various and beautiful renderings of the motive are ignored—what does it mean? Is it a sign that the ‘shrinkage of the world,’ the ‘solidarity of civilisation,’ making the record of each day’s doings too big for the day, has worked a great change in our public writers? Is it that they not only have no time to think, but no time to read anything beyond the publications of the hour? Is it that good work is unknown to them, and that bad work is forced upon them, and that in their busy ignorance they must needs accept it and turn to it for convenient illustration? That Stevenson should have been impelled to write the story shows what the ‘Suicide Club’ had already shown, that underneath the apparent health which gives such a charm to ‘Treasure Island’ and ‘Kidnapped,’ there was that morbid strain which is so often associated with physical disease.
Had it not been for the influence upon him of the healthiest of all writers since Chaucer—Walter Scott—Stevenson might have been in the ranks of those pompous problem-mongers of fiction and the stage who do their best to make life hideous. It must be remembered that he was a critic first and a creator afterwards. He himself tells us how critically he studied the methods of other writers before he took to writing himself. No one really understood better than he Hesiod’s fine saying that the muses were born in order that they might be a forgetfulness of evils and a truce from cares. No one understood better than he Joubert’s saying, ‘Fiction has no business to exist unless it is more beautiful than reality; in literature the one aim is the beautiful; once lose sight of that, and you have the mere frightful reality.’ And for the most part he succeeded in keeping down the morbid impulses of a spirit imprisoned and fretted in a crazy body.
Save in such great mistakes as ‘Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde,’ and a few other stories, Stevenson acted upon Joubert’s excellent maxim. But Scott, and Scott alone, is always right in this matter—right by instinct. He alone is always a delight. If all art is dedicated to joy, as Schiller declares, and if there is no higher and more serious problem than how to make men happy, then the ‘Waverley Novels’ are among the most precious things in the literature of the world.”
Another writer of whose good-nature Mr. Watts-Dunton always speaks warmly is Browning. Among the many good anecdotes I have heard him relate in this connection, I will give one. I do not think that he would object to my doing so.
“It is one of my misfortunes,” said he, “to be not fully worthy (to use the word of a very dear friend of mine), of Browning’s poetry. Where I am delighted, stimulated, and exhilarated by the imaginative and intellectual substance of his work, I find his metrical movements in a general way not pleasing to my ear. When a certain book of his came out—I forget which—it devolved upon me to review it. Certain eccentricities in it, for some reason or another, irritated me, and I expressed my irritation in something very like chaff. A close friend of mine, a greater admirer of Browning than I am myself—in fact, Mr. Swinburne—chided me for it, and I feel that he was right. On the afternoon following the appearance of the article I was at the Royal Academy private view, when Lowell came up to me and at once began talking about the review. Lowell, I found, was delighted with it—said it was the most original and brilliant thing that had appeared for many years. ‘But,’ said he, ‘You’re a brave man to be here where Browning always comes.’ Then, looking round the room, he said: ‘Why there he is, and his sister immediately on the side opposite to us. Surely you will slip away and avoid a meeting!’
‘Slip away!’ I said, ‘to avoid Browning! You don’t know him as well as I do, after all! Now, let me tell you exactly what will occur if we stand here for a minute or two. Miss Browning, whose eyes are looking busily over the room for people that Browning ought to speak to, in a moment will see you, and in another moment she will see me. And then you will see her turn her head to Browning’s ear and tell him something. And then Browning will come straight across to me and be more charming and cordial than he is in a general way, supposing that be possible.’
‘No, I don’t believe it.’
‘If you were not such a Boston Puritan,’ I said, ‘I would ask you what will you bet that I am wrong.’
No sooner had I uttered these words than, as I had prophesied, Miss Browning did spot, first Lowell and then me, and did turn and whisper in Browning’s ear, and Browning did come straight across the room to us; and this is what he said, speaking to me before he spoke to the illustrious American—a thing which on any other occasion he would scarcely have done:
‘Now,’ said he, ‘you’re not going to put me off with generalities any longer. You promised to write and tell me when you could come to luncheon. You have never done so—you will never do so, unless I fix you with a distinct day. Will you come to-morrow?’
‘I shall be delighted,’ I said. And he turned to Lowell and exchanged a few friendly words with him.
After these two adorable people left us, Lowell said: ‘Well, this is wonderful. You would have won the bet. How do you explain it?’
‘I explain it by Browning’s greatness of soul and heart. His position is so great, and mine is so small, that an unappreciative review of a poem of his cannot in the least degree affect him. But he knows that I am an honest man, as he has frequently told Tennyson, Jowett, and others. He wishes to make it quite apparent that he feels no anger towards a man who says what he thinks about a poem.’”
After hearing this interesting anecdote I had the curiosity to turn to the bound volume of my ‘Athenæum’ and read the article on ‘Ferishtah’s Fancies,’ which I imagine must have been the review in question. This is what I read:—
‘The poems in this volume can only be described as parable-poems—parable-poems, not in the sense that they are capable of being read as parables (as is said to be the case with the ‘Rubá’iyát’ of Omar Khayyàm), but parable-poems in the sense that they must be read as parables, or they show no artistic raison d’être at all.
Now do our English poets know what it is to write a parable poem? It is to set self-conscious philosophy singing and dancing, like the young Gretry, to the tune of a waterfall. Or rather, it is to imprison the soul of Dinah Morris in the lissome body of Esmeralda, and set the preacher strumming a gypsy’s tambourine. Though in the pure parable the intellectual or ethical motive does not dominate so absolutely as in the case of the pure fable, the form that expresses it, yet it does, nevertheless, so far govern the form as to interfere with that entire abandon—that emotional freedom—which seems necessary to the very existence of song. Indeed, if poetry must, like Wordsworth’s ideal John Bull, ‘be free or die’; if she must know no law but that of her own being (as the doctrine of ‘L’art pour l’art’ declares); if she must not even seem to know that (as the doctrine of bardic inspiration implies), but must bend to it apparently in tricksy sport alone—how can she—‘the singing maid with pictures in her eyes’—mount the pulpit, read the text, and deliver the sermon?
In European literature how many parable poems should we find where the ethical motive and the poetic form are not at deadly strife? But we discussed all this in speaking of prose parables, comparing the stories of the Prodigal Son and Kiságotamí with even such perfect parable poetry as that of Jami. We said then what we reiterate now: that to sing a real parable and make it a real song requires a genius of a very special and peculiar, if somewhat narrow order—a genius rare, delicate, ethereal, such as can, according to a certain Oriental fancy, compete with the Angels of the Water Pot in floriculture. Mr. Browning, being so fond of Oriental fancies, and being, moreover, on terms of the closest intimacy with a certain fancy-weaving dervish, Ferishtah, must be quite familiar with the Persian story we allude to, the famous story of ‘Poetry and Cabbages.’ Still, we will record it here for a certain learned society.
The earth, says the wise dervish Feridun, was once without flowers, and men dreamed of nothing more beautiful then than cabbages. So the Angels of the Water Pot, watering the Tûba Tree (whose fruit becomes flavoured according to the wishes of the feeder), said one to another, ‘The eyes of those poor cabbage growers down there may well be horny and dim, having none of our beautiful things to gaze upon; for as to the earthly cabbage, though useful in earthly pot, it is in colour unlovely as ungrateful in perfume; and as to the stars, they are too far off to be very clearly mirrored in the eyes of folk so very intent upon cabbages.’ So the Angels of the Water Pot, who sit on the rainbow and brew the ambrosial rains, began fashioning flowers out of the paradisal gems, while Israfel sang to them; and the words of his song were the mottoes that adorn the bowers of heaven. So bewitching, however, were the strains of the singer—for not only has Israfel a lute for viscera, but doth he not also, according to the poet—
Breathe a stream of otto and balm,
Which through a woof of living music blown
Floats, fused, a warbling rose that makes all senses one?—so astonishing were the notes of a singer so furnished, that the angels at their jewel work could not help tracing his coloured and perfumed words upon the petals. And this was how the Angels of the Water Pot made flowers, and this is the story of ‘Poetry and Cabbages.’
But the alphabet of the angels, Feridun goes on to declare, is nothing less than the celestial charactery of heaven, and is consequently unreadable to all human eyes save a very few—that is to say, the eyes of those mortals who are ‘of the race of Israfel.’ To common eyes—the eyes of the ordinary human cabbage-grower—what, indeed, is that angelic caligraphy with which the petals of the flowers are ornamented? Nothing but a meaningless maze of beautiful veins and scents and colours.
But who are ‘of the race of Israfel’? Not the prosemen, certainly, as any Western critic may see who will refer to Kircher’s idle nonsense about the ‘Alphabet of the Angels’ in his ‘Ædipus Egyptiacus.’ Are they, then, the poets? This is indeed a solemn query. ‘If,’ says Feridun, ‘the mottoes that adorn the bowers of Heaven have been correctly read by certain Persian poets, who shall be nameless, what are those other mottoes glowing above the caves of hell in that fiery alphabet used by the fiends?’
One kind of poet only is, it seems, of the race of Israfel—the parable-poet—the poet to whom truth comes, not in any way as reasoned conclusions, not even as golden gnomes, but comes symbolized in concrete shapes of vital beauty; the poet in whose work the poetic form is so part and parcel of the ethical lesson which vitalizes it that this ethical lesson seems not to give birth to the music and the colour of the poem, but to be itself born of the sweet marriage of these, and to be as inseparable from them as the ‘morning breath’ of the Sabæan rose is inalienable from the innermost petals—‘the subtle odour of the rose’s heart,’ which no mere chemistry of man, but only the morning breeze, can steal.”
It was such writing as this which made it quite superfluous for Mr. Watts-Dunton to sign his articles, and we have only to contrast it—or its richness and its rareness—with the naïve, simple, unadorned style of ‘Aylwin’ to realize how wide is the range of Mr. Watts-Dunton as a master of the fine shades of literary expression.
Chapter XV
THE GREAT BOOK OF WONDER
And now begins the most difficult and the most responsible part of my task—the selection of one typical essay from the vast number of essays expressing more or less fully the great heart-thought which gives life to all Mr. Watts-Dunton’s work. I can, of course, give only one, for already I see signs that this book will swell to proportions far beyond those originally intended for it. Naturally, I thought at first that I would select one of the superb articles on Victor Hugo’s works, such for instance as ‘La Legénde des Siècles,’ or that profound one on ‘La Religion des Religion.’ But, after a while, when I had got the essay typed and ready for inclusion, I changed my mind. I thought that one of those wonderful essays upon Oriental subjects which had called forth writings like those of Sir Edwin Arnold, would serve my purpose better. Finally, I decided to choose an essay, which when it appeared was so full of profound learning upon the great book of the world, the Bible, that it was attributed to almost every great specialist upon the Bible in Europe and in America. Mr. Watts-Dunton has often been urged to reprint this essay as a brief text-book for scholastic use, but he has never done so. It will be noted by readers of ‘Aylwin’ that even so far back as the publication of this article in the ‘Athenæum ‘, in 1877, Mr. Watts-Dunton—to judge from the allusion in it to ‘Nin-ki-gal, the Queen of Death’—seems to have begun to draw upon Philip Aylwin’s ‘Veiled Queen’:—