In spite of his capacity for passionate outbursts and inspired invective, Swinburne was a most attentive listener, provided there were things being said to which it was worth listening. At meal times when his attention became engaged he would forget everything but the conversation. Indifferent as to what stage of the meal he was at, he would turn to whoever it might be that had introduced the subject, and would talk or listen oblivious of the fact that food might be spoiling. Fortunately, he was a small eater.
On one occasion when lunching at “The Pines” Mr. Coulson Kernahan happened to remark that he had in his pocket a copy of Christina Rossetti’s then unpublished poem, ‘The Death of a First-born,’ written in memory of the Duke of Clarence. Down went knife and fork as Swinburne half rose from his chair to reach across the table for the manuscript. “She is as a god to mortals when compared to most other living women poets,” he exclaimed. Then, in his thin-high-pitched, but exquisitely
modulated voice he half read, half chanted, two stanzas of the poem.
One young life lost, two happy young lives blighted
With earthward eyes we see:
With eyes uplifted, keener, farther sighted
We look, O Lord to thee.Grief hears a funeral knell: hope hears the ringing
Of birthday bells on high.
Faith, Hope and Love make answer with soft singing,
Half carol and half cry.
He stopped abruptly refusing to read the third and last stanza because it was unequal, and the poem was stronger and finer by its omission. Then he said in a hushed voice, “For the happy folk who are able to think as she thinks, who believe as she believes, the poem is of its kind perfect.”
With glowing eyes and with hand that marked time to the music, he read once more the second verse, repeating the line, “half carol and half cry” three times, lowering his voice with each repetition until it became little more than a whisper. Laying the manuscript reverently beside him, he sat perfectly still for a space with brooding eyes, then rising silently left the room with short swift strides. [17]
Many of Swinburne’s friends have testified to his personal charm and courtliness of bearing. “Unmistakably an aristocrat, and with
all the ease and polish which one associates with high breeding, there was, even in the cordiality with which he would rise and come forward to welcome a visitor a suspicion of the shy nervousness of the introspective man and of the recluse on first facing a stranger.” Mr. Coulson Kernahan has said, “I have seen him angry, I have heard him furiously dissent from, and even denounce the views put forward by others, but never once was what, for want of a better word, I must call his personal deference to those others relaxed.
“To no one would he defer quite so graciously and readily, to no one was he so scrupulously courtly in bearing as to those who constituted his own household.”
If he felt that he had monopolized the conversation he would turn to Watts-Dunton and apologize, and for a time become transformed into an attentive listener.