All I am allowed to say about the relations between Mr. Watts-Dunton and Mr. Swinburne is that the friendship began in 1872, that it soon developed into the closest intimacy, not only with the poet himself, but with all his family. In 1879 the two friends became house-mates at ‘The Pines,’ Putney Hill, and since then they have never been separated, for Mr. Watts-Dunton’s visits to the Continent, notably those with the late Dr. Hake recorded in ‘The New Day,’ took place just before this time. The two poets thenceforth lived together, worked together; saw their common friends together, and travelled together. In 1882, after the death of Rossetti they went to the Channel Islands, staying at St. Peter’s Port, Guernsey, for some little time, and then at Petit Bot Bay. Their swims in this beautiful bay Mr. Watts-Dunton commemorated in two of the opening sonnets of ‘The Coming of Love’:—

NATURE’S FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH

(A MORNING SWIM OFF GUERNSEY WITH A FRIEND)

As if the Spring’s fresh groves should change and shake
To dark green woods of Orient terebinth,
Then break to bloom of England’s hyacinth,
So ’neath us change the waves, rising to take
Each kiss of colour from each cloud and flake
Round many a rocky hall and labyrinth,
Where sea-wrought column, arch, and granite plinth,
Show how the sea’s fine rage dares make and break.
Young with the youth the sea’s embrace can lend,
Our glowing limbs, with sun and brine empearled,
Seem born anew, and in your eyes, dear friend,
Rare pictures shine, like fairy flags unfurled,
Of child-land, where the roofs of rainbows bend
Over the magic wonders of the world

THE LANGUAGE OF NATURE’S FRAGRANCY

(THE TIRING-ROOM IN THE ROCKS)

These are the ‘Coloured Caves’ the sea-maid built;
Her walls are stained beyond that lonely fern,
For she must fly at every tide’s return,
And all her sea-tints round the walls are spilt.
Outside behold the bay, each headland gilt
With morning’s gold; far off the foam-wreaths burn
Like fiery snakes, while here the sweet waves yearn
Up sand more soft than Avon’s sacred silt.
And smell the sea! no breath of wood or field,
From lips of may or rose or eglantine,
Comes with the language of a breath benign,
Shuts the dark room where glimmers Fate revealed,
Calms the vext spirit, balms a sorrow unhealed,
Like scent of sea-weed rich of morn and brine.

The two friends afterwards went to Sark. A curious incident occurred during their stay in the island. The two poet-swimmers received a bravado challenge from ‘Orion’ Horne, who was also a famous swimmer, to swim with him round the whole island of Sark! I need hardly say that the absurd challenge was not accepted.

During the cruise Mr. Swinburne conceived and afterwards wrote some glorious poetry. In the same year the two friends went to Paris, as I have already mentioned, to assist at the Jubilee of ‘Le Roi s’Amuse.’ Since then their love of the English coasts and the waters which wash them, seems to have kept them in England. For two consecutive years they went to Sidestrand, on the Norfolk coast, for bathing. It was there that Mr. Swinburne wrote some of his East Anglian poems, and it was there that Mr. Watts-Dunton conceived the East coast parts of ‘Aylwin.’ It was during one of these visits that Mr. Swinburne first made the acquaintance of Grant Allen, who had long been an intimate friend of Mr. Watts-Dunton’s. The two, indeed, were drawn together by the fact that they both enjoyed science as much as they enjoyed literature. It was a very interesting meeting, as Grant Allen had long been one of Swinburne’s most ardent admirers, and his social charm, his intellectual sweep and brilliance, made a great impression on the poet. Since then their visits to the sea have been confined to parts of the English Channel, such as Eastbourne, where they were near neighbours of Rossetti’s friends, Lord and Lady Mount Temple, between whom and Mr. Watts-Dunton there had been an affectionate intimacy for many years—but more notably Lancing, whither they went for three consecutive years. For several years they stayed during their holiday with Lady Mary Gordon, an aunt of Mr. Swinburne’s, at ‘The Orchard,’ Niton Bay, Isle of Wight. During the hot summer of 1904 they were lucky enough to escape to Cromer, where the temperature was something like twenty degrees lower than that of London. A curious incident occurred during this visit to Cromer. One day Mr. Watts-Dunton took a walk with another friend to ‘Poppy-land,’ where he and Mr. Swinburne had previously stayed, in order to see there again the landslips which he has so vividly described in ‘Aylwin.’ While they were walking from ‘Poppyland’ to the old ruined churchyard called ‘The Garden of Sleep,’ they sat down for some time in the shade of an empty hut near the cliff. Coming back Mr. Watts-Dunton said that the cliff there was very dangerous, and ought to be fenced off, as the fatal land-springs were beginning to show their work. Two or three weeks after this a portion of the cliff at that point, weighing many thousands of tons, fell into the sea, and the hut with it.

A friendship so affectionate and so long as the friendship between these two poets is perhaps without a parallel in literature. It has been frequently and beautifully commemorated. When Mr. Swinburne’s noble poem, ‘By the North Sea,’ was published, it was prefaced by this sonnet:—

TO WALTER THEODORE WATTS

‘WE ARE WHAT SUNS AND WINDS AND WATERS MAKE US.’

Landor.

Sea, wind, and sun, with light and sound and breath
The spirit of man fulfilling—these create
That joy wherewith man’s life grown passionate
Gains heart to hear and sense to read and faith
To know the secret word our Mother saith
In silence, and to see, though doubt wax great,
Death as the shadow cast by life on fate,
Passing, whose shade we call the shadow of death.

Brother, to whom our Mother, as to me,
Is dearer than all dreams of days undone,
This song I give you of the sovereign three
That are, as life and sleep and death are, one:
A song the sea-wind gave me from the sea,
Where nought of man’s endures before the sun.

1882 was a memorable year in the life of Mr. Watts-Dunton. The two most important volumes of poetry published in that year were dedicated to him. Rossetti’s ‘Ballads and Sonnets,’ the book which contains the chief work of his life, bore the following inscription:—

TO
THEODORE WATTS
THE FRIEND WHOM MY VERSE WON FOR ME,
THESE FEW MORE PAGES
ARE AFFECTIONATELY INSCRIBED.