In life, as in (that for him more truly actual thing) literature, it was always the preterit that enthralled him. Of any passing events, of anything the newspapers were full of, never a word from him; and I should have been sorry if there had been. But I did, through the medium of WattsDunton, sometimes start him on topics that might have led him to talk of Rossetti and other old comrades. For me the names of those men breathed the magic of the past, just as it was breathed for me by Swinburne’s presence. For him, I suppose, they were but a bit of the present, and the mere fact that they had dropped out of it was not enough to hallow them. He never mentioned them. But I was glad to see that he revelled as wistfully in the days just before his own as I in the days just before mine. He recounted to us things he had been told in his boyhood by an aged aunt, or great-aunt—`one of the Ashburnhams’; how, for example, she had been taken by her mother to a county ball, a distance of many miles, and, on the way home through the frosty and snowy night, the family-coach had suddenly stopped: there was a crowd of dark figures in the way…at which point Swinburne stopped too, before saying, with an ineffable smile and in a voice faint with appreciation, `They were burying a suicide at the crossroads.’
Vivid as this Hogarthian night-scene was to me, I saw beside it another scene: a great panelled room, a grim old woman in a highbacked chair, and, restless on a stool at her feet an extraordinary little nephew with masses of auburn hair and with tiny hands clasped in supplication—`Tell me more, Aunt Ashburnham, tell me more!’
And now, clearlier still, as I write in these after-years, do I see that diningroom of The Pines; the long white stretch of table-cloth, with Swinburne and WattsDunton and another at the extreme end of it; WattsDunton between us, very low down over his plate, very cosy and hirsute, and rather like the dormouse at that long tea-table which Alice found in Wonderland. I see myself sitting there wide-eyed, as Alice sat. And, had the hare been a great poet, and the hatter a great gentleman, and neither of them mad but each only very odd and vivacious, I might see Swinburne as a glorified blend of those two.
When the meal ended—for, alas! it was not, like that meal in Wonderland, unending—Swinburne would dart round the table, proffer his hand to me, bow deeply, bow to WattsDunton also, and disappear.
`He always walks in the morning, writes in the afternoon, and reads in the evening,’ WattsDunton would say with a touch of tutorial pride in this regimen.
That parting bow of Swinburne to his old friend was characteristic of his whole relation to him. Cronies though they were, these two, knit together with bonds innumerable, the greater man was always aux petits soins for the lesser, treating him as a newly-arrived young guest might treat an elderly host. Some twenty years had passed since that night when, ailing and broken—thought to be nearly dying, WattsDunton told me—Swinburne was brought in a four-wheeler to The Pines.
Regular private nursing-homes either did not exist in those days or were less in vogue than they are now. The Pines was to he a sort of private nursing-home for Swinburne. It was a good one. He recovered.
He was most grateful to his friend and saviour. He made as though to depart, was persuaded to stay a little longer, and then a little longer than that. But I rather fancy that, to the last, he never did, in the fullness of his modesty and good manners, consent to regard his presence as a matter of course, or as anything but a terminable intrusion and obligation. His bow seemed always to convey that.
Swinburne having gone from the room, in would come the parlourmaid.
The table was cleared, the fire was stirred, two leather armchairs were pushed up to the hearth. WattsDunton wanted gossip of the present. I wanted gossip of the great past. We settled down for a long, comfortable afternoon together.
Only once was the ritual varied. Swinburne (I was told before luncheon) had expressed a wish to show me his library. So after the meal he did not bid us his usual adieu, but with much courtesy invited us and led the way. Up the staircase he then literally bounded—three, literally three, stairs at a time. I began to follow at the same rate, but immediately slackened speed for fear that WattsDunton behind us might be embittered at sight of so much youth and legerity. Swinburne waited on the threshold to receive us, as it were, and pass us in.
WattsDunton went and ensconced himself snugly in a corner. The sun had appeared after a grey morning, and it pleasantly flooded this big living-room whose walls were entirely lined with the mellow backs of books. Here, as host, among his treasures, Swinburne was more than ever attractive. He was as happy as was any mote in the sunshine about him; and the fluttering of his little hands, and feet too, was but as a token of so much felicity. He looked older, it is true, in the strong light. But these added years made only more notable his youngness of heart. An illustrious bibliophile among his books? A birthday child, rather, among his toys.
Proudly he explained to me the general system under which the volumes were ranged in this or that division of shelves. Then he conducted me to a chair near the window, left me there, flew away, flew up the rungs of a mahogany ladder, plucked a small volume, and in a twinkling was at my side: `This, I think, will please you! `It did. It had a beautifully engraved title-page and a pleasing scent of old, old leather. It was editio princeps of a play by some lesser Elizabethan or Jacobean. `Of course you know it?’ my host fluted.
How I wished I could say that I knew it and loved it well! I revealed to him (for by speaking very loudly towards his inclined head I was able to make him hear) that I had not read it. He envied any one who had such pleasure in store. He darted to the ladder, and came back thrusting gently into my hands another volume of like date: `Of course you know this?’
Again I had to confess that I did not, and to shout my appreciation of the fount of type, the margins, the binding. He beamed agreement, and fetched another volume. Archly he indicated the title, cooing, `You are a lover of this, I hope?’ And again I was shamed by my inexperience.
I did not pretend to know this particular play, but my tone implied that I had always been meaning to read it and had always by some mischance been prevented. For his sake as well as my own I did want to acquit myself passably. I wanted for him the pleasure of seeing his joys shared by a representative, however humble, of the common world.
I turned the leaves caressingly, looking from them to him, while he dilated on the beauty of this and that scene in the play. Anon he fetched another volume, and another, always with the same faith that this was a favourite of mine. I quibbled, I evaded, I was very enthusiastic and uncomfortable. It was with intense relief that I beheld the title-page of yet another volume which (silently, this time) he laid before me—The Country Wench. `This of course I have read,’ I heartily shouted.
Swinburne stepped back. `You have? You have read it? Where?’ he cried, in evident dismay.
Something was wrong. Had I not, I quickly wondered, read this play?
`Oh yes,’ I shouted, `I have read it.’
`But when? Where?’ entreated Swinburne, adding that he had supposed it to be the sole copy extant.
I floundered. I wildly said I thought I must have read it years ago in the Bodleian. `Theodore! Do you hear this? It seems that they have now a copy of “The Country Wench” in the Bodleian! Mr. Beerbohm found one there—oh when? in what year?’ he appealed to me.
I said it might have been six, seven, eight years ago. Swinburne knew for certain that no copy had been there twelve years ago, and was surprised that he had not heard of the acquisition. `They might have told me,’ he wailed.