“Every serious student will see at a glance that ‘Aylwin’ is a concrete expression of the author’s criticism of life and literature, and even—though this must be said with more reserve—a concrete expression of his theory of the universe. This theory I will venture to define as an optimistic confronting of the new cosmogony of growth on which the author has for long descanted. Throughout all his writings there is evidence of a mental struggle as severe as George Eliot’s with that materialistic reading of the universe which seemed forced upon thinkers when the doctrine of evolution passed from hypothesis to an accepted theory. Those who have followed Mr. Watts-Dunton’s writings in the ‘Examiner’ and in the ‘Athenæum’ must have observed with what passionate eagerness he insisted that Darwinism, if properly understood, would carry us no nearer to materialism than did the spiritualistic cosmogonies of old, unless it could establish abiogenesis against biogenesis. As every experiment of every biologist has failed to do so, a new spiritualist cosmogony must be taught.”
And yet the student of ‘Aylwin’ must bear in mind that some critics, taking the very opposite view, have said that its final teaching is not meant to be mystical at all, but anti-mystical—that what to Philip Aylwin and his disciples seems so mystical is all explained by the operation of natural laws. This theory reminds me of a saying of Goethe’s about the enigmatic nature of all true and great works of art. I forget the exact words, but they set me thinking about the chameleon-like iridescence of great poems and dramas.
With regard to the fountain-head of all the mysticism of the story, Philip Aylwin, much has been said. Philip is the real protagonist of the story—he governs, as I have said, the entire dramatic action from his grave, and illustrates at every point Sinfi Lovell’s saying, ‘You must dig deep to bury your daddy.’ Everything that occurs seems to be the result of the father’s speculations, and the effect of them upon other minds like that of his son and that of Wilderspin.
The appearance of this new epic of spiritual love came at exactly the right moment—came when a new century was about to dawn which will throw off the trammels of old modes of thought. While I am writing these lines Mr. Balfour at the British Association has been expounding what must be called ‘Aylwinism,’ and (as I shall show in the last chapter of this book) saying in other words what Henry Aylwin’s father said in ‘The Veiled Queen.’ In the preface to the edition of ‘Aylwin’ in the ‘World’s Classics’ the author says:—
“The heart-thought of this book being the peculiar doctrine in Philip Aylwin’s ‘Veiled Queen,’ and the effect of it upon the fortunes of the hero and the other characters, the name ‘The Renascence of Wonder’ was the first that came to my mind when confronting the difficult question of finding a name for a book that is at once a love-story and an expression of a creed. But eventually I decided, and I think from the worldly point of view wisely, to give it simply the name of the hero.
The important place in the story, however, taken by this creed, did not escape the most acute and painstaking of the critics. Madame Galimberti, for instance, in the elaborate study of the book which she made in the ‘Rivista d’Italia,’ gave great attention to its central idea; so did M. Maurice Muret, in the ‘Journal des Débats’; so did M. Henri Jacottet in ‘La Semaine Littéraire.’ Mr. Baker, again, in his recently published ‘Guide to Fiction,’ described ‘Aylwin’ as “an imaginative romance of modern days, the moral idea of which is man’s attitude in face of the unknown, or, as the writer puts it, ‘the renascence of wonder.’” With regard to the phrase itself, in the introduction to the latest edition of ‘Aylwin’—the twenty-second edition—I made the following brief reply to certain questions that have been raised by critics both in England and on the Continent concerning it. The phrase, I said, ‘The Renascence of Wonder,’ ‘is used to express that great revived movement of the soul of man which is generally said to have begun with the poetry of Wordsworth, Scott, Coleridge, and others, and after many varieties of expression reached its culmination in the poems and pictures of Rossetti.’
The painter Wilderspin says to Henry Aylwin, ‘The one great event of my life has been the reading of “The Veiled Queen,” your father’s book of inspired wisdom upon the modern Renascence of Wonder in the mind of man.’ And further on he says that his own great picture symbolical of this renascence was suggested by Philip Aylwin’s vignette. Since the original writing of ‘Aylwin,’ many years ago, I have enlarged upon its central idea in the ‘Encyclopædia Britannica,’ in the introductory essay to the third volume of ‘Chambers’s Cyclopædia of English Literature,’ and in other places. Naturally, therefore, the phrase has been a good deal discussed. Quite lately Dr. Robertson Nicoll has directed attention to the phrase, and he has taken it as a text of a remarkable discourse upon the ‘Renascence of Wonder in Religion.’
Mr. Watts-Dunton then quotes Dr. Nicoll’s remarks upon the Logia recently discovered by the explorers of the Egypt Fund. He shows how men came to see ‘once more the marvel of the universe and the romance of man’s destiny. They became aware of the spiritual world, of the supernatural, of the lifelong struggle of soul, of the power of the unseen.’
“The words quoted by Dr. Nicoll might very appropriately be used as a motto for ‘Aylwin’ and also for its sequel ‘The Coming of Love: Rhona Boswell’s Story.’”
When ‘Aylwin’ first appeared, the editor of a well-known journal sent it to me for review. I read it: never shall I forget that reading. I was in Ireland at the time—an Irish Wedding Guest at an Irish Wedding. Now an Irish Wedding is more joyous than any novel, and Irish girls are lovelier than any romance. A duel between Life and Literature! Picture it! Behold the Irish Wedding Guest spell-bound by a story-teller as cunning as ‘The Ancient Mariner’ himself! He heareth the bridal music, but Aylwin continueth his tale: he cannot choose but hear, until ‘The Curse’ of the ‘The Moonlight Cross’ of the Gnostics is finally expiated, and Aylwin and Winnie see in the soul of the sunset ‘The Dukkeripen of the Trushùl,’ the blessed Cross of Rose and Gold. Amid the ‘merry din’ of the Irish Wedding Feast the Irish Wedding Guest read and wrote. And among other lyrical things, he said that ‘since Shakespeare created Ophelia there has been nothing in literature so moving, so pathetic, so unimaginably sorrowful as the madness of Winnie Wynne.’ And he also said that “the majority of readers will delight in ‘Aylwin’ as the most wonderful of love stories, but as the years go by an ever increasing number will find in it the germ of a new religion, a clarified spiritualism, free from charlatanry, a solace and a consolation for the soul amid the bludgeonings of circumstance and the cruelties of fate.”
Mr. Watts-Dunton, when I told him that I was going to write this book, urged me to moderate my praise and to call into action the critical power that he was good enough to say that I possessed. He especially asked me not to repeat the above words, the warmth of which, he said, might be misconstrued; but the courage of my opinions I will exercise so long as I write at all. The ‘newspaper cynics’ that once were and perhaps still are strong, I have always defied and always will defy. I am glad to see that there is one point of likeness between us of the younger generation and the great one to which Mr. Watts-Dunton and his illustrious friends belong. We are not afraid and we are not ashamed of being enthusiastic. This, also, I hope, will be a note of the twentieth century.
No doubt mine was a bold prophecy to utter in a rapid review of a romance, but time has shown that it was not a rash one. The truth is that the real vogue of ‘Aylwin’ as a message to the soul is only beginning. Five years have elapsed since the publication of ‘Aylwin,’ and during that time it has, I think, passed into twenty-four editions in England alone, the latest of all these editions being the beautiful ‘Arvon Edition,’ not to speak of the vast issue in sixpenny form.