Sitting with him, his tones as Petrarch's tender,
With many a speaking vision on the wall,
The fire, a-blaze, flashing the studio fender,
Closed in from London shouts and ceaseless brawl—
Twas you brought Nature to the visiting,
Till she herself seemed breathing in the room,
And Art grew fragrant in the glow of Spring
With homely scents of gorse and heather bloom.
Or sunbeams shone by many an Alpine fountain,
Fed by the waters of the forest stream;
Or glacier-glories in the rock-girt mountain,
Where they so often fed the poet's dream;
Or else was mingled the rough billow's glee
With cries of petrels on a sullen sea.
Again on page 393 of the same editions will be found Miss May Morris's beautiful water colour of Kelmscott Manor, the country-house jointly occupied by Rossetti and William Morris in which takes place what has been called 'the crucial scene in Aylwin.'
APPENDIX II
So many questions about the characters depicted in Aylwin were put to the editor of Notes and Queries that he suggested that a key to the novel would he found acceptable. Some weeks after this suggestion was made there appeared in that journal (7th June 1902) the following contribution by Mr. Thomas St. E. Hake, an intimate friend of Rossetti, and of other leading characters of the story. The republication of it here has been kindly sanctioned by Mr. J. C. Francis, a name so indissolubly associated both with the Athenæum and Notes and Queries. Mr. Hake writes as follows:
Ever since the publication of Aylwin I have, at various times, seen in Notes and Queries, the Daily Chronicle, the Contemporary Review, and other organs, inquiries as to the identification of the characters that appear in that story. And now that an inquiry comes from so remote a place as Libau in Russia, I think I may come forward and say what I know on the subject. But, of course, within the limited space that could possibly be allotted to me in Notes and Queries, I can only say a few words on a subject that would require many pages to treat adequately. Until Aylwin appeared, Mr. Joseph Knight's monograph on Rossetti in the 'Great Writers' series was, with the sole exception of what has been written about him by his own family and by my late father, Dr. Gordon Hake, in his Memoirs of Eighty Years, the only account that gave the reader the least idea of the man—his fascination, his brilliance, his generosity, and his whimsical qualities. But in Aylwin Rossetti lives as I knew him; it is impossible to imagine a more living picture of the man. I have stayed with Rossetti at 16 Cheyne Walk for weeks at a time, and at Bognor also, and at Kelmscott—the 'Hurstcote' of Aylwin. With regard to 'Hurstcote,' I well knew 'the large bedroom with low-panelled walls and the vast antique bedstead made of black carved oak' upon which Winifred Wynne slept. In fact, the only thing in the description of this room that I do not remember is the beautiful Madonna and Child upon the frame of which was written 'Chiaro dell' Erma' (readers of Hand and Soul will remember that name). This quaint and picturesque bedroom leads by two or three steps to the tapestried room 'covered with old faded tapestry—so faded, indeed, that its general effect was that of a dull grey texture'—depicting the story of Samson. Rossetti used the tapestry room as a studio, and I have seen in it the very same pictures that so attracted the attention of Winifred Wynne: the 'grand brunette' (painted from Mrs. Morris) 'holding a pomegranate in her hand'; the 'other brunette, whose beautiful eyes are glistening and laughing over the fruit she is holding up' (painted from the same famous Irish beauty named Smith who appears in The Beloved), and the blonde 'under the apple blossoms' (painted from a still more beautiful woman—Mrs. Stillman). These pictures were not permanently placed there, but, as it chanced, they were there (for retouching) on a certain occasion when I was visiting at Kelmscott. With regard to the green room in which Winifred took her first breakfast at 'Hurstcote' I am a little in confusion. It seems to me more like the green dining-room in Cheyne Walk, decorated with antique mirrors, which was painted by Dunn, showing Rossetti reading his poems aloud. This is the only portrait of Rossetti that really calls up the man before me. As Mr. Watts-Dunton is the owner of Dunn's drawing, and as so many people want to see what Rossetti's famous Chelsea house was like inside, it is a pity he does not give it as a frontispiece to some future edition of Aylwin. Unfortunately, Mr. G. F. Watts's picture, now in the National Portrait Gallery, was never finished, and I never saw upon Rossetti's face the dull, heavy expression which that portrait wears. I think the poet told me that he had given the painter only one or two sittings. As to the photographs, none of them is really satisfactory.
The 'young gentleman from Oxford who has been acting as my secretary,' as mentioned in Aylwin, was my brother. [Footnote] With regard to the two circular mirrors surrounded by painted designs telling the story of the Holy Grail, 'in old black oak frames carved with knights at tilt,' I do not remember seeing these there. But they are evidently the mirrors decorated with copies of the lost Holy Grail frescoes once existing on the walls of the Union Reading-Room at Oxford. These beautiful decorations I have seen at 'The Pines,' but not elsewhere. I have often seen 'D'Arcy' in the company of several of the other characters introduced into Aylwin; for instance, 'De Castro' and 'Symonds' (the late F. R. Leyland, at that time the owner of the Leyland line of steamers, living at Prince's Gate, where was the famous Peacock Room painted by Mr. Whistler). I did not myself know that quaint character Mrs. Titwing, but I have been told by people who knew her well that she is true to the life. With regard to 'De Castro,' it is a matter of regret to those who knew him that, after giving us that most vivid scene between 'D'Arcy' and 'De Castro' at Scott's oyster-rooms (a place which Rossetti was very fond of frequenting in those nocturnal rambles that caused 'De Castro' to give him the name of Haroun al Raschid), the author did not go on and paint to the full the most extraordinary man of the very extraordinary group, the centre of which was Rossetti's Chelsea house. Rossetti was a well-known figure at Scott's and at Rule's oyster-rooms at the time he encountered 'Henry Aylwin.' That scene at Scott's is, in my opinion, the most living thing in the book—a picture that whenever I turn to it makes me feel that everything said and done must have occurred. 'De Castro' seemed to belong not merely to the Rossetti group, but to all groups, for he was brought into touch with almost every remarkable man of his time, and fascinated every one of them. Literary and artistic London was once full of stories of him, and no one that knew him doubted he was what must be called a man of genius—although a barren genius. Among others, he was brought into close relations with Ruskin, Burne-Jones, and, I think, Smetham ('Wilderspin'), and others.
[Footnote: This was George Hake, who died in Central Africa a few years ago.]
Rossetti used to say that since Blake there has been no more visionary painter in the art world than Smetham. Rossetti had a quite affectionate feeling towards Smetham, and several of his pictures (small ones) were on Rossetti's studio walls. I remember one or two extraordinary pictures of his—especially one depicting a dragon in a fen, of which Rossetti had a great opinion; and I believe this, with other pictures of Smetham's, is in the hands of Mr. Watts-Dunton. The author of Aylwin would have been much amused had he seen, as I did, in an American magazine the statement that 'Wilderspin' was identified with William Morris—a man who was as much the opposite of the visionary painter as a man can be. Morris, whom I had the privilege of knowing very well, and with whom I have stayed at Kelmscott during the Rossetti period, is alluded to in Aylwin (chap. ix. book xv.) as the 'enthusiastic angler' who used to go down to 'Hurstcote' to fish. At that time this fine old seventeenth-century manor house was in the joint occupancy of Rossetti and Morris. 'Wilderspin' was Smetham with a variation: certain characteristics of another painter of genius were introduced, I believe, into the portrait of him in Aylwin; and the story of 'Wilderspin's' early life was not that of Smetham. The series of 'large attics in which was a number of enormous oak beams' supporting the antique roof was a favourite resort of my own; but all the ghostly noise that I there heard was the snoring of young owls—a peculiar sound that had a special fascination for Rossetti; and after dinner Rossetti, my brother, and I would go to the attics to listen to them.
But a more singular mistake with regard to the Aylwin characters than that of Morris being confounded with 'Wilderspin' was that of confounding, as certain newspaper paragraphs at the time did, 'Cyril Aylwin' with Mr. Whistler. I am especially able to speak of this character, who has been inquired about more than any other in the book. I knew him, I think, even before I knew Rossetti and Morris, or any of that group. He was a brother of Mr. Watts-Dunton's—Mr. Alfred Eugene Watts. He lived at Park House, Sydenham, and died suddenly either in 1870 or 1871, very shortly after I had met him at a wedding party. Among the set in which I moved at that time he had a great reputation as a wit and humorist. His style of humour always struck me as being more American than English. While bringing out humorous things that would set a dinner-table in a roar, he would himself maintain a perfectly unmoved countenance. And it was said of him, as 'Wilderspin' says of 'Cyril Aylwin,' that he was never known to laugh. The pen-picture of him in Aylwin is one of the most vivid things in the book.
With regard to the most original character in the story, those who knew Clement's Inn, where I myself once resided, and Lincoln's Inn Fields, will be able at once to identify Mrs. Gudgeon, who lived in one of the streets running into Clare Market. Her business was that of night coffee-stall keeper. At one time, I believe—but I am not certain about this—she kept a stall on the Surrey side of Waterloo Bridge, and it might have been there that, as I have been told, her portrait was drawn for a specified number of early breakfasts by an unfortunate artist who sank very low, but had real ability. Her constant phrase was 'I shall die o' laughin'—I know I shall!' On account of her extra-ordinary gift of repartee, and her inexhaustible fund of wit and humour, she was generally supposed to be an Irishwoman. But she was not: she was cockney to the marrow. Recluse as Rossetti was in his later years, he had at one time been very different, and could bring himself in touch with the lower orders of London in a way such as was only known to his most intimate friends. With all her impudence, and I may say insolence, Mrs. Gudgeon was a great favourite with the police, who were the constant butts of her chaff.