By the invitation of the present Lord Tennyson, Mr. Watts-Dunton was one of the few friends of the poet, including Jowett, F. W. H. Myers, F. T. Palgrave, the late Duke of Argyll, and others, who contributed reminiscences of him to the ‘Life.’ In a few sentences he paints this masterly little miniature of Tennyson, entitled, ‘Impressions: 1883–1892’ [291]:—
“All are agreed that D. G. Rossetti’s was a peculiarly winning personality, but no one has been in the least able to say why. Nothing is easier, however, than to find the charm of Tennyson. It lay in a great veracity of soul: it lay in a simple single-mindedness, so childlike that, unless you had known him to be the undoubted author of poems as marvellous for exquisite art as for inspiration, you could not have supposed but that all subtleties—even those of poetic art—must be foreign to a nature so simple.
Working in a language like ours—a language which has to be moulded into harmony by a myriad subtleties of art—how can this great, inspired, simple nature be the delicate-fingered artist of ‘The Princess,’ ‘The Palace of Art,’ ‘The Day-Dream,’ and ‘The Dream of Fair Women’?
Tennyson knew of but one justification for the thing he said—viz. that it was the thing he thought. Behind his uncompromising directness was apparent a noble and a splendid courtesy of the grand old type. As he stood at the porch of Aldworth meeting a guest or bidding him good-bye—as he stood there, tall far beyond the height of average men, his skin showing dark and tanned by the sun and wind—as he stood there, no one could mistake him for anything but a great forthright English gentleman. Always a man of an extraordinary beauty of presence, he showed up to the last the beauty of old age to a degree rarely seen. He was the most hospitable of men. It was very rare indeed for him to part from a guest without urging him to return, and generally with the words, ‘Come whenever you like.’
Tennyson’s knowledge of nature—nature in every aspect—was simply astonishing. His passion for ‘stargazing’ has often been commented upon by readers of his poetry. Since Dante, no poet in any land has so loved the stars. He had an equal delight in watching the lightning; and I remember being at Aldworth once during a thunderstorm, when I was alarmed at the temerity with which he persisted, in spite of all remonstrances, in gazing at the blinding lightning. For moonlight effects he had a passion equally strong, and it is especially pathetic to those who know this to remember that he passed away in the light he so much loved—in a room where there was no artificial light—nothing to quicken the darkness but the light of the full moon, which somehow seems to shine more brightly at Aldworth than anywhere else in England.
In a country having a composite language such as ours it may be affirmed with special emphasis that there are two kinds of poetry: one appealing to the uncultivated masses, the other appealing to the few who are sensitive to the felicitous expression of deep thought and to the true beauties of poetic art.
Of all poets Shakespeare is the most popular, and yet in his use of what Dante calls the ‘sieve for noble words’ his skill transcends that of even Milton, Coleridge, Shelley, and Keats. His felicities of thought and of diction in the great passages seem little short of miraculous, and there are so many that it is easy to understand why he is so often spoken of as being a kind of inspired improvisatore. That he was not an improvisatore, however, any one can see who will take the trouble to compare the first edition of ‘Romeo and Juliet’ with the received text, the first sketch of ‘The Merry Wives of Windsor’ with the play as we now have it, and the ‘Hamlet’ of 1603 with the ‘Hamlet’ of 1604, and with the still further varied version of the play given by Heminge and Condell in the Folio of 1623. Next to Shakespeare in this great power of combining the forces of the two great classes of English poets, appealing both to the commonplace public and to the artistic sense of the few, stands, perhaps, Chaucer; but since Shakespeare’s time no one has met with anything like Tennyson’s success in effecting a reconciliation between popular and artistic sympathy with poetry in England.”
Chapter XVIII
AMERICAN FRIENDS: LOWELL, BRET HARTE, AND OTHERS
I feel that my hasty notes about Mr. Watts-Dunton’s literary friendships would be incomplete without a word or two upon his American friends. There is a great deal of interest in the story of the first meeting between him and James Russell Lowell. Shortly after Lowell had accepted the post of American Minister in England, Mr. Watts-Dunton met him at dinner. During the dinner Mr. Watts-Dunton was somewhat attracted by the conversation of a gentleman who sat next to him but one. He observed that the gentleman seemed to talk as if he wished to entice him into the conversation. The gentleman was passing severe strictures upon English writers—Dickens, Thackeray, and others. As the dinner wore on, his conversation left literary names and took up political ones, and he was equally severe upon the prominent political figures of the time, and also upon the prominent political men of the previous generation—Palmerston, Lord John Russell, and the like. Then the name of the Alabama came up; the gentleman (whom Mr. Watts-Dunton now discovered to be an American), dwelt with much emphasis upon the iniquity of England in letting the Alabama escape. This diatribe he concluded thus: ‘You know we owe England nothing.’ In saying this he again looked at Mr. Watts-Dunton, manifestly addressing his remarks to him.
These attacks upon England and Englishmen and everything English had at last irritated Mr. Watts-Dunton, and addressing the gentleman for the first time, he said: “Pardon me, sir, but there you are wrong. You owe England a very great deal, for I see you are an American.”
“What do we owe England?” said the gentleman, whom Mr. Watts-Dunton now began to realize was no other than the newly appointed American Minister.
“You owe England,” he said, “for an infinity of good feeling which you are trying to show is quite unreciprocated by Americans. So kind is the feeling of English people towards Americans that socially, so far as the middle classes are concerned, they have an immense advantage over English people themselves. They are petted and made much of, until at last it has come to this, that the very fact of a person’s being American is a letter of introduction.”
Mr. Watts-Dunton spoke with such emphasis, and his voice is so penetrating, that those on the opposite side of the table began to pause in their conversation to listen to it, and this stopped the little duel between the two. After the ladies had retired, Mr. Lowell drew up his chair to Mr. Watts-Dunton and said:
“You were very sharp upon me just now, sir.”
“Not in the least,” said Mr. Watts-Dunton. “You were making an onslaught on my poor little island, and you really seemed as though you were addressing your conversation to me.”