Delphi Works of Ford Madox Ford (Illustrated) (655 page)

But supposing this story to be a mere delusion of Madox Brown’s — though I can well believe it to be true enough — there is no reason why something of the sort should not have happened, and why Meredith should not equally truthfully represent that Rossetti’s methods of housekeeping were trying to his refined sensibilities. For in person and in habits Mr. Meredith, with his mordant humour, his clean, quick intelligence and his impatience of anything approaching the slovenly, was exactly the man to suffer the keenest anguish in any household that was conducted by the poet-artist. It is true that at that time Rossetti was not sole ruler of the house, but he was certainly the dominant spirit; and his was a spirit, in matters of the world, easy-going, disorderly and large in the extreme. You have to consider the Cheyne Walk house as a largish, rather gloomy, Queen Anne mansion, with portions of a still older architecture. The furnishings were in no sense aesthetic. It is true there were rather garish sofas designed for and executed by Morris & Company, but most of the things had been picked up by Rossetti without any particular regard for coherence of aesthetic scheme. Gilded sun-fishes hung from the ceilings along with drop lustres of the most excruciatingly Victorian type, and gilded lamps from the palace of George IV at Brighton. There were all sorts of chinoiseries, cabinets, screens, blue china and peacocks’ feathers. The dustbins were full of priceless plates off which Rossetti dined and which the servants broke in the kitchen. Rossetti, in fact, surrounded himself with anything that he could find that was quaint and bizarre whether of the dead or the live world. So that the image of his house, dominated as it was by his wonderful personality was that of a singular warren of oddities. Speaking impressionistically we may say that supposing an earthquake had shaken the house down, or still more, supposing that some gigantic hand could have taken it up and shaken its contents out as from a box, there would have issued out a most extraordinary collection — racoons, armadillos, wombats, a Zebu bull, peacocks, models, mistresses, and an army of queer male and female “bad hats” who might be as engagingly criminal as they liked as long as they were engaging, as long as they were quaint, as long as they were interesting. They cadged on Rossetti, they stole from him, they blackmailed him, they succeeded indeed in driving him mad, but I think they all worshipped him. He had, in fact, a most extraordinary gift of inspiring enthusiasm, this singular Italianate man, who had all an Italian’s powers of extracting money from clients, who worried people to death with his eccentricities, who drove them crazy with his jealousies, who charmed them into ecstasies with his tongue and with his eyes.

“Why is he not some great king,” wrote one Pre-Raphaelite poet, who was stopping with him, to another, “that we might lay down our lives for him?” And curiously enough one of the watchers at Whistler’s bedside during that painter’s last hours has informed me that, something to the discredit of Rossetti having been uttered in conversation, Whistler opened his eyes and said: “You must not say anything against Rossetti. Rossetti was a king.”

This may have been said partly to tease his listeners whose styles of painting were anything rather than Rossettian, but Whistler certainly received nothing but kindness at the hands of the Pre-Raphaelite group. Looking through some old papers the other day I came upon a circular that Madox Brown had had printed, drawing the attention of all his own patrons to the merits of Whistler’s etchings and begging them in the most urgent terms to make purchases because Whistler was “a great genius.” Now upon one occasion Madox Brown, going to a tea party at the Whistlers’ in Chelsea, was met in the hall by Mrs. Whistler, who begged him to go to the poulterer’s and purchase a pound of butter. The bread was cut but there was nothing to put upon it. There was no money in the house, the poulterer had cut off his credit, and Mrs. Whistler said she dare not send her husband for he would certainly punch that tradesman’s head.

So that not nearly all the men whom this circle encouraged, helped, taught or filled with the contagion of enthusiasm, were by any means ignoble. Indeed, every one of them had some quality or other.

Thus there was a painter whom we will call P. whose indigence was remarkable but whose talents are now considerably recognized. This painter had a chance of a commission to make illustrations for a guidebook dealing with Wales. The commission, however, depended upon the drawings meeting with approval and Mr. P. being without the necessary means of paying for his travels applied to Madox Brown for a loan. Madox Brown produced the money and then, remembering that he had intended to take a holiday himself, decided to accompany his friend. They arrived upon a given morning towards two o’clock in some Welsh watering-place, having walked through the day and a greater part of the night with their knapsacks on their backs. They were unable to rouse anybody at the inn, there was not a soul in the streets, there was nothing but a long esplanade with houses whose windows gave on to the ground.

“Well, I’m going to have a sleep,” P. said. “But that is impossible,” Madox Brown answered. “Not at all,” P. rejoined with a happy confidence, and pulling his knapsack round his body he produced his palette-knife. With this in his hand, to the horror of Madox Brown he approached the drawing-room window of one of the lodging-houses. He slipped the knife through the crack, pushed back the catch, opened the window and got in, followed eventually by his more timid companion. Having locked the door from the inside to prevent intrusion they lay down upon the sofa and on chairs, and proceeded to sleep till the morning when they got out of the window once more, closed it and went on their way. I have always wondered what the housemaid thought when she came down and found the drawing-room door locked from the inside.

On the next night they appeared to be in an almost similar danger of bedlessness. They arrived at a small village which contained only one inn and that was filled with a large concourse of Welsh-speaking people. The landlord, in broken English, told them that they could not have a room or a bed. There was a room with two beds in it but they could not have it. This enraged Mr. P. beyond description. He vowed that not only would he have the law of the landlord but he would immediately break his head, and Mr. P. being a redoubtable boxer, his threat was no mean one. So that having consulted with his Welsh friends, the host made signs to them that they could have the room in an hour, which he indicated by pointing at the clock. In an hour, accordingly, they were ushered into a room which contained a large and comfortable double bed. Mr. P. undressed and retired. Madox Brown similarly undressed and was about to step into bed when he placed his bare foot upon something of an exceedingly ghastly coldness. He gave a cry which roused Mr. P. Mr. P. sprang from the bed and bending down caught hold of a man’s hand. He proceeded to drag out a body which displayed a throat cut from ear to ear. “Oh, is that all?” Mr. P. said, and having shoved the corpse under the bed he retired upon it and slept tranquilly. Madox Brown passed the night in the coffee room.

Upon this walking tour Mr. P. picked up a gipsy girl who afterwards served as a model to many famous Academicians. He carried her off with him to London where he installed her in his studio. There was nothing singular about this, but what amazed Mr. P.’s friends was the fact that Mr. P., the most bellicose of mortals, from that moment did not go outside his house. The obvious reason for this was a gipsy of huge proportion and forbidding manner who had taken up his quarters at a public-house at the corner of the street. P.’s friends gibed at him for his want of courage, but P. continued sedulously and taciturnly to paint. At last he volunteered the information that he could not afford to damage his hands before he had finished his Academy picture. The picture finished, he sallied forth at once, knocked all the gipsy’s teeth down his throat and incidentally broke both his knuckles. The gipsy girl was credited with a retort that was once famous in London. When P., who had been given a box at the Opera proposed to take her with him she refused obdurately to accompany him, and for a long time would give no reason. Being pressed she finally blurted out: “Ye don’t put a toad in your waistcoat pocket.” In this saying she under-rated the charm of one, who, till quite a short time ago, was a popular and beloved hostess in London, for she married one of P.’s wealthiest patrons, whilst poor P. remained under a necessity of borrowing small loans to the end of his life.

CHAPTER II
I

GLOOM AND THE POETS

IT has always seemed at first sight a mystery to me how in the ‘seventies and ‘eighties such an inordinate number of poets managed to live in the gloom of central London. Nowadays, English poets live as far as I know — and I have reasons for knowing the addresses of an infinite number of them — English poets live — they cannot by any stretch of the imagination be said to flourish, unless they have what is called private means — they live in Bedford Park, a few in Chelsea and a great many in the country. Bedford Park is a sort of rash of villas crowded not so very close together or so very far out of town; Chelsea has the river to give it air. At any rate the poets of to-day crowd towards the light.

But in those old days they seemed filled with a passion for gloom. For I cannot imagine anything much more Cimmerian than Bloomsbury and the west central districts of the capital of England. Yet here — I am speaking only impressionistically — all the Pre-Raphaelite poets seemed to crowd together, full of enthusiasms, pouring forth endless songs about the loves of Launcelot and Guinevere, about music and moonlight. You have to think of it as a region of soot-blackened brick houses, with here and there black squares whose grimy trees reach up into a brownish atmosphere. What there is not black is brownish. Yet here all these dead poets seemed to live. Fitzroy Square, of which I have written, is such a square; the Rossettis always circled round Bloomsbury. Though D. G. Rossetti travelled as far afield as Chelsea, William Rossetti until very lately lived in Euston Square which, to celebrate a murder, changed its name to Endsleigh Gardens; and Christina, who for me is the most satisfactory of all the poets of the nineteenth century, died in times of fog in Woburn Square.

I suppose they sang of Launcelot and Guinevere to take their own minds off their surroundings, having been driven into their surroundings by the combined desire for cheap rents and respectable addresses. Some of them were conscious of the gloom, some no doubt were not. Mr. Joaquin Miller, coming from Nicaragua and Arizona to stay for a time in Gower Street — surely the longest, the grayest and the most cruel of all London streets — this author of “Songs of the Sierras” was greeted rapturously by the Pre-Raphaelite poets and wrote of life in London as a rush, a whirl, a glow — all the motion of the world. He wrote ecstatically and at the same time with humility, pouring out his verses as one privileged to be at table with all the great ones of the earth. In the mornings he rode in the Row amongst the “swells,” wearing a red shirt, cowboy boots and a sombrero; in the evenings he attended in the same costume at the dinners of the great Intellectuals where “brilliantly” he was a “feature.” Had he not been with Walker the Filibuster in Nicaragua? I can dimly remember the face of Mark Twain — or was it Bret Harte? — standing between open folding doors at a party, gazing in an odd, puzzled manner at this brilliant phenomenon. I fancy the great writer, whichever it was, was not too pleased that this original should represent the manners and customs of the United States in the eyes of the poets. Mr. Miller did them good, if it were an injustice to Boston. He represented for the poets Romance.

But if Mr. Miller saw in London life, light and the hope of fame, and if some others of the poets saw it in similar terms, there were others who saw the city in terms realistic enough. Thus poor James Thomson, writing as B.V., sang of the City of Dreadful Night and, we are told, drank himself to death. That was the grisly side of it. If you were a poet you lived in deep atmospheric gloom and to relieve yourself, to see colour, you must sing of Launcelot and Guinevere. If the visions would not come you must get stimulants to give you them. I remember as a child being present in the drawing-room of a relative just before a dinner at which Tennyson and Browning had been asked to meet a rising poet to whom it was desired to give a friendly lift. It was the longest and worst quarter-of-an-hour possible. The celebrities fidgeted, did not talk, looked in olympian manners at their watches. At last they went into dinner without the young poet. I was too little and too nervous to tell them that half-an-hour before I had seen the poor fellow lying hopelessly drunk across a whelk-stall in the Euston Road.

One of the grimmest stories that I have heard even of that time and neighbourhood was told me by the late Mr. William Sharp. Mr. Sharp was himself a poet of the Pre-Raphaelites, though later he wrote as Fiona Macleod and thus joined the Celtic School of poetry that still flourishes in the person of Mr. W. B. Yeats. Mr. Sharp had gone to call on Philip Marston, the blind author of “Songtide” and of many other poems that in their day were considered to be a certain passport to immortality. Going up the gloomy stairs of a really horrible house near Gower Street Station he heard proceeding from the blind poet’s rooms a loud sound of growling, punctuated with muffled cries for help. He found the poor blind man in the clutches of the poet I have just omitted to name — crushed beneath him and, I think, severely bitten. This poet had had an attack of delirium tremens and imagined himself a Bengal tiger. Leaving Marston he sprang on all fours towards Sharp, but he burst a blood vessel and collapsed on the floor. Sharp lifted him on to the sofa, took Marston into another room and then rushed hatless through the streets to the hospital that was round the corner. The surgeon in charge, himself drunk and seeing Sharp covered with blood, insisted on giving him in charge for murder; Sharp always a delicate man, fainted. The poet was dead of hæmorrhage before assistance reached him.

But in gloom and amidst horror they sang on bravely of Launcelot and Guinevere, Merlin and Vivien, ballads of staffs and scrips, of music and moonlight. They did not, that is to say, much look at the life that was around them; in amidst the glooms they built immaterial pleasure houses. They were not brave enough — that, I suppose, is why they are very few of them remembered and few of them great.

I have, however, very little sense of proportion in this particular matter. There were Philip Bourke Marston, Arthur O’Shaughnessy, “B. V.,” Theo Marzials, Gordon Hake, Christina Rossetti, Mr. Edmund Gosse, Mr. Hall Caine, Oliver Madox Brown, Mr. Watts-Dunton, Mr. Swinburne, D. G. Rossetti, Robert Browning!... All these names have been exceedingly familiar to my mouth and ears ever since I could speak or hear. In their own day each of them was a great and serious fact. For there was a time — yes, really there was a time! — when the publication of a volume of poems was still an event — an event making great names and fortunes not merely mediocre. I do not mean to say that in the ‘seventies and ‘eighties carriages still blocked Albemarle Street, but if Mr. O’Shaughnessy was understood to be putting the finishing touches to the proof-sheets of his next volume there arose an immense excitement amongst all the other poets, amongst all the Pre-Raphaelite Circle and all the outsiders connected with the Circle and all the connections of all the outsiders. What the book was going to be like was discussed eagerly. So-and-so was understood to have seen the proof-sheets, and what the
Athenæum
would say, or what the
Athenæum
did say, excited all the circumjacent authors quite as much as would nowadays the winning of the Derby by a horse belonging to His Majesty the King. All these things are most extraordinarily changed. Small volumes of poems descend upon one’s head in an unceasing shower. They come so quickly that one cannot even imagine the authors have time themselves to read the proof-sheets. How much less, then, their friends! But as for fame or fortune!...

I am acquainted with an author — I am much too well acquainted with an author who one day had what in the language of the ‘nineties was called “a boom.” At the height of this agreeable period he published a volume of poems. It cannot be said that the press did not welcome him rapturously: he received a column and a half of praise in the
Daily Telegraph,
something more than a column in the
Daily Chronicle,
just over two columns in
The Times
itself, and three lines of contempt in the
Spectator,
which alone in the ‘eighties would have sufficed to make the fortune of any poet. Of this volume of poems, heralded and boomed as it was, and published in the year 1908, the public demanded seventeen copies. Exactly seventeen! I remember being informed by a person in authority that the sale of the last volume of poems that Swinburne published was exactly six hundred copies, of which four hundred and eighty were bought in Germany, leaving one hundred and twenty enthusiasts for the British Isles and the rest of the Continent. And this seems to me to be a record of indifference heroic in itself. I do not know that it is a record particularly interesting, however, to anybody who is not interested in poets. But faced with these facts both of the outside and inside I may well be excused if I say that I have not any sense of proportion, or any but the remotest idea as to the relative value of the Pre-Raphaelite or Semi-Pre-Raphaelite poets.

My childhood was in many respects a singular one. The names of these distinguished persons were as much in daily use in my grandfather’s house when I was a child, and many of the distinguished persons were nearly as often in the house itself, as are in England such ordinary household things as Black’s Mustard, Dash’s Worcestershire Sauce; or as, in the case of the United States, that beverage which lately I saw everywhere advertised in enormous letters that seemed to flame from New York to Philadelphia conveying the command, “Drink Boxie. You will not like it at first.” I could not think that D. G. Rossetti was a person any more remarkable than the gentleman with gold braid round his hat who opened for me the locked gates of Fitzroy Square, nor when I shook hands with a clergyman called Franz Liszt was it any more of an event than when, as I was enjoined to do, I performed the same ceremony with the cook’s husband. Dimly, but with vivid patches, I remember being taken for a walk by my father along what appeared to me to be a grey stone quay. I presume it was the Chelsea Embankment. There we met a very old, long-bearded man. He frightened me quite as much as any of the other great Victorian figures who, to the eye of a child, appeared monumental, loud-voiced and distressing. This particular gentleman, at the instance of my grandfather, related to me how he had once been at Weimar. In a garden restaurant beneath a may-tree in bloom he had seen Schiller and Goethe drinking coffee together. He had given a waiter a thaler to be allowed to put on a white apron and to wait upon these two world-shaking men, who, in court dress with wigs and swords, sat at a damask-covered table. He had waited upon them. Later, I remember that whilst I was standing with my father beside the doorstep in Tite Street of the house that he was entering, I fell down and he bent over to assist me to rise. His name was Thomas Carlyle, but he is almost confounded in my mind with a gentleman called Pepper. Pepper very much resembled Carlyle except that he was exceedingly dirty. He used to sell penny dreadfuls which I was forbidden to purchase, and I think the happiest times of my childhood were spent in a large coal-cellar. Into this I used to lock myself to read of the exploits of Harkaway Dick, who lived in a hollow tree, possessed a tame, black panther and a pair of Winchester repeating rifles, with which at one sitting he shot no less than forty-five pirates through a loophole in the bark of the tree. I think I have never since so fully tasted of the joys of life, not even when Captain Hook... But what was even Peter Pan to compare with Harkaway Dick!

There were all these things jumbled up in my poor little mind together. I presume I should not remember half so vividly the story of Carlyle and the author of
Wilhelm Meister
if my father had not afterwards frequently jogged my memory upon the point. My father was a man of an encyclopaedic knowledge and had a great respect for the attainments of the distinguished. He used, I remember, habitually to call me “the patient but exceedingly stupid donkey.” This phrase occurred in Mayor’s spelling book, which he read as a boy in the city of Münster in Westphalia where he was born. He had a memory that was positively extraordinary and a gift of languages no less great. Thus whilst his native language was German he was for a long course of years musical critic to
The Times
, London correspondent to the
Frankfurter Zeitung,
London musical correspondent to
Le Menestrel
of Paris and the
Tribuna
of Rome. He was also, I believe, in his day the greatest authority upon the troubadours and the romance languages, and wrote original poems in modern Provençal; he was a favourite pupil of Schopenhauer and the bad boy of his family. He was a doctor of philosophy of Gottingen University, at that time premier university of Germany, though he had made his studies at the inferior institution in Berlin. From Berlin he was expelled because of his remarkable memory. The circumstances were as follow:

My father occupied a room in an hotel which had a balcony overlooking the Spree. In the same hotel, but in the next room, there dwelt the rector of the university, and it happened that one of the Prussian princes was to be present at the ceremony of conferring degrees. Thus one evening my father was sitting upon his balcony whilst next door the worthy rector read the address that he was afterwards to deliver to the prince. Apparently the younger members of the institution addressed the prince before the dons. At any rate, my father having heard it only once, delivered word for word the rector’s speech to His Royal Highness. The result was that the poor man, who spoke only with difficulty, had not a single word to say and my father was forthwith expelled without his degree. Being, though freakish, a person of spirit, that same day he took the express to Gottingen and as a result in the evening he telegraphed to his mother: “Have passed for doctor with honours at Gottingen” to the consternation of his parents, who had not yet heard of his expulsion from Berlin. The exploit pleased nobody. Berlin did not desire that he should be a doctor at all: Gottingen was disgusted that a student from an inferior university should have passed out on top of their particular tree, and I believe that in consequence, in Germany of today, a student can only take his “doctor” at his own particular university.