Chapter XVIII: American Friends: Lowell, Bret Harte, and Others

I feel that my hasty notes about Mr. Watts-Dunton's literary friendships would be incomplete without a word or two upon his American friends. There is a great deal of interest in the story of the first meeting between him and James Russell Lowell. Shortly after Lowell had accepted the post of American Minister in England, Mr. Watts-Dunton met him at dinner. During the dinner Mr. Watts-Dunton was somewhat attracted by the conversation of a gentleman who sat next to him but one. He observed that the gentleman seemed to talk as if he wished to entice him into the conversation. The gentleman was passing severe strictures upon English writers--Dickens, Thackeray, and others. As the dinner wore on, his conversation left literary names and took up political ones, and he was equally severe upon the prominent political figures of the time, and also upon the prominent political men of the previous generation--Palmerston, Lord John Russell, and the like. Then the name of the Alabama came up; the gentleman (whom Mr. Watts-Dunton now discovered to be an American), dwelt with much emphasis upon the iniquity of England in letting the Alabama escape. This diatribe he concluded thus: 'You know we owe England nothing.' In saying this he again looked at Mr. Watts-Dunton, manifestly addressing his remarks to him.

These attacks upon England and Englishmen and everything English had at last irritated Mr. Watts-Dunton, and addressing the gentleman for the first time, he said: "Pardon me, sir, but there you are wrong. You owe England a very great deal, for I see you are an American."

"What do we owe England?" said the gentleman, whom Mr. Watts-Dunton now began to realize was no other than the newly appointed American Minister.

"You owe England," he said, "for an infinity of good feeling which you are trying to show is quite unreciprocated by Americans. So kind is the feeling of English people towards Americans that socially, so far as the middle classes are concerned, they have an immense advantage over English people themselves. They are petted and made much of, until at last it has come to this, that the very fact of a person's being American is a letter of introduction."

Mr. Watts-Dunton spoke with such emphasis, and his voice is so penetrating, that those on the opposite side of the table began to pause in their conversation to listen to it, and this stopped the little duel between the two. After the ladies had retired, Mr. Lowell drew up his chair to Mr. Watts-Dunton and said:

"You were very sharp upon me just now, sir."

"Not in the least," said Mr. Watts-Dunton. "You were making an onslaught on my poor little island, and you really seemed as though you were addressing your conversation to me."

"Well," replied Mr. Lowell, "I will confess that I did address my conversation partially to you; you are, I think, Mr. Theodore Watts."

"That is my little name," said Mr. Watts-Dunton. "But I really don't see why that should induce you to address your conversation to me. I suppose it is because absurd paragraphs have often appeared in the American newspapers stating that I am strongly anti-American in my sympathies. An entire mistake! I have several charming American friends, and I am a great admirer of many of your most eminent writers. But I notice that whensoever an American book is severely handled in the 'Athenaeum,' the article is attributed to me."

"I do not think," said Mr. Lowell, "that you are a lover of my country, but I am not one of those who attribute to you articles that you never wrote."

And he then drew his chair nearer to his interlocutor, and became more confidential.

"Well," he said, "I will tell you something that, I think, will not be altogether unpleasant to you. When I came to take up my permanent residence in London a short time ago, I was talking to a friend of mine about London and Londoners, and I said to him: 'There is one man whom I very much want to meet.' 'You!' said he, 'why, you can meet anybody from the royal family downwards. Who is the man you want to meet?' 'It is a man in the literary world,' said I, 'and I have no doubt you can introduce me to him. It is the writer of the chief poetical criticism in the "Athenaeum."' My friend laughed. 'Well, it is curious,' he replied: 'that is one of the few men in the literary world I cannot introduce you to. I scarcely know him, and, besides, not long ago he passed strictures on my writing which I don't much approve of.' Does that interest you?" added Mr. Lowell.

"Very much," said Mr. Watts-Dunton.

"Would it interest you to know that ever since your first article in the 'Athenaeum' I have read every article you have written?"

"Very much," said Mr. Watts-Dunton.

"Would it interest you to know that on reading your first article I said to a friend of mine: 'At last there is a new voice in English criticism?'"

"Very much," said Mr. Watts-Dunton. "But you must first tell me what that article was, for I don't believe there is one of my countrymen who could do so."

"That article," said Lowell, "was an essay upon the 'Comedy of the Noctes Ambrosianae,' and it opened with an Oriental anecdote."

"Well," said Mr. Watts-Dunton, "that does interest me very much."

"And I will go further," said Lowell: "every line you have written in the 'Athenaeum' has been read by me, and often re-read."

"Well," said Mr. Watts-Dunton, "I confess to being amazed, for I assure you that in my own country, except within a narrow circle of friends, my name is absolutely unknown. And I must add that I feel honoured, for it is not a week since I told a friend that I have a great admiration for some of your critical essays. But still, I don't quite forgive you for your onslaught upon my poor little island! My sympathies are not strongly John Bullish, and they tell me that my verses are more Celtic than Anglo-Saxon in temper. But I am somewhat of a patriot, in my way, and I don't quite forgive you."

The meeting ended in the two men fraternizing with each other.

"Won't you come to see me," said Lowell, "at the Embassy?"

"I don't know where it is."

"Then you ought to know!" said Lowell. "Another proof of the stout sufficiency of the English temper--not to know where the American Embassy is! It is in Lowndes Square." Then he named the number.

"Why," said Mr. Watts-Dunton, "that is next door to Miss Swinburne, aunt of the poet, a perfectly marvellous lady, possessing the vitality of the Swinburne family--a lady who makes watercolour landscape drawings in the open air at I don't know what age of life--something like eighty. She was a friend of Turner's, and is the possessor of some of Turner's finest works."

"So you actually go next door, and don't know where the American Embassy is! A crowning proof of the insolent self-sufficiency of the English temper! However, as you come next door, won't you come and see me?"

"I shall be delighted," said Mr. Watts-Dunton; "but I am perfectly sure you can spare no time to see an obscure literary man."

"On the contrary," said Lowell, "I always reserve to myself an hour, from five to six, when I see nobody but a friend over a cigarette."

Some time after this Mr. Watts-Dunton did call on Lowell, and spent an hour with him over a cigarette; and at last it became an institution, this hour over a cigarette once a week.

This went on for a long time, and Mr. Watts-Dunton is fond of recalling the way in which Lowell's Anglophobia became milder and milder, 'fine by degrees and beautifully less,' until at last it entirely vanished. Then it was followed by something like Anglo-mania. Lowell began to talk with the greatest appreciation of a thousand English institutions and ways which he would formerly have deprecated. The climax of this revolution was reached when Mr. Watts-Dunton said to him:

"Lowell, you are now so much more of a John Bull than I am that I have ceased to be able to follow you. The English ladies are--let us say, charming; English gentlemen are--let us say, charming, or at least some of them. Everything is charming! But there is one thing you cannot say a word for, and that is our detestable climate."

"And you can really speak thus of the finest climate in the world!" said Lowell. "I positively cannot live out of it."

"Well," said Mr. Watts-Dunton, "you and I will cease to talk about England and John Bull, if you please. I cannot follow you."

In relating this anecdote Mr. Watts-Dunton, however, insisted that with all his love of England, Lowell never bated one jot of his loyalty to his own country. There never was a stauncher American than James Russell Lowell. Let one unjust word be said about America, and he was a changed man. Mr. Watts-Dunton has always contended that the present good feeling between the two great branches of the Anglo-Saxon race was due mainly to Lowell. Indeed, he expressed this conviction in one of his finest sonnets. It appeared in the 'Athenaeum' after Lowell's death, and it has been frequently reprinted in the United States. It now appears in 'The Coming of Love.' It was addressed 'To Britain and America: On the Death of James Russell Lowell,'

Ye twain who long forgot your brotherhood
And those far fountains whence, through glorious years,
Your fathers drew, for Freedom's pioneers,
Your English speech, your dower of English blood--
Ye ask to-day, in sorrow's holiest mood,
When all save love seems film--ye ask in tears--
'How shall we honour him whose name endears
The footprints where beloved Lowell stood?'

Your hands he joined--those fratricidal hands,
Once trembling, each, to seize a brother's throat:
How shall ye honour him whose spirit stands
Between you still?--Keep Love's bright sails afloat
For Lowell's sake, where once ye strove and smote
On waves that must unite, not part, your strands.

This perhaps is the place to say a word about Mr. Watts-Dunton's feelings towards America, which were once supposed to be hostile. Apart from his intimacy with Lowell, he numbered among his American friends Clarence Stedman, Mrs. Moulton (between whom and himself there has been the most cordial intimacy during twenty-five years), Bret Harte, Edwin Abbey, Joaquin Miller, Colonel Higginson, and, indeed, many prominent Americans. Between Whistler and himself there was an intimacy so close that during several years they saw each other nearly every day. That was before Whistler's genius had received full recognition. I may recall that during a certain controversy concerning Whistler's animosity against the Royal Academy the following letter from Mr. Watts-Dunton appeared in the 'Times' of August 12, 1903:--

"In the 'Times' of to-day Mr. G. D. Leslie, R.A., says: 'I was on
friendly terms with Whistler for nearly forty years, and I never
heard him at any time testify animosity against the Academy or its
members.'

My own acquaintance with Whistler did not extend over forty years,
but for about ten years I was very intimate with him, so intimate
that during part of this period we met almost every day. Indeed, at
one time we were jointly engaged on a weekly periodical called
'Piccadilly,' for which Du Maurier designed the cover, and for which
Whistler furnished his very first lithographs, by the valuable aid of
Mr. T. Way. During that time there were not many days when he failed
to 'testify animosity' against the Academy and its members. To say
the truth, the testifications on this subject by 'Jimmy,' as he was
then called, were a little afflictive to his friends. Whether he was
right or wrong in the matter is a point on which I feel unqualified
to express an opinion.

May I be allowed to conclude this note by expressing my admiration of
your New York Correspondent's amazingly vivid portrait of one of the
most vivid personalities of our time? It is a masterpiece. . . . "

When Bret Harte died, in May 1902, one of the best and most appreciative estimates of him was written by Mr. Watts-Dunton for the 'Athenaeum.' I am tempted to quote it nearly in full, as it shows deep sympathy with American literature, and it will prove more conclusively than any words of mine how warm are Mr. Watts-Dunton's feelings towards Americans:--

"As a personality Bret Harte seems to have exercised a great charm
over his intimate friends, and I am not in the least surprised at his
being a favourite. It is many years since I last saw him. I think
it must have been at a club dinner given by William Black; but I have
a very vivid remembrance of my first meeting him, which must have
been more than twenty-six years ago, and on that occasion it occurred
to me that he had great latent histrionic gifts, and, like Charles
Dickens, might have been an admirable actor. On that account the
following incident is worth recording. A friend of mine, an American
poet, who at that time was living in London, brought him to my
chambers, and did me the honour of introducing me to him. Bret Harte
had read something about the London music-halls, and proposed that we
should all three take a drive round the town and see something of
them. At that time these places took a very different position in
public estimation from what they appear to be doing now. People then
considered them to be very cockney, very vulgar, and very inane, as,
indeed, they were, and were shy about going to them. I hope they
have improved now, for they seem to have become quite fashionable.
Our first visit was to the Holborn Music Hall, and there we heard one
or two songs that gave the audience immense delight--some comic, some
more comic from being sentimental-maudlin. And we saw one or two
shapeless women in tights. Then we went to the 'Oxford,' and saw
something on exactly the same lines. In fact, the performers seemed
to be the same as those we had just been seeing. Then we went to
other places of the same kind, and Bret Harte agreed with me as to
the distressing emptiness of what my fellow-countrymen and women
seemed to be finding so amusing. At that time, indeed, the almost
only interesting entertainment outside the opera and the theatres was
that at Evans's supper-rooms, where, under the auspices of the famous
Paddy Green, one could enjoy a Welsh rarebit while listening to the
'Chough and Crow' and 'The Men of Harlech,' given admirably by
choir-boys. Years passed before I saw Bret Harte again. I met him
at a little breakfast party, and he amused those who sat near him by
giving an account of what he had seen at the music-halls--an account
so graphic that I think a fine actor was lost in him. He not only
vivified every incident, but gave verbal descriptions of every
performer in a peculiarly quiet way that added immensely to the
humour of it. His style of acting would have been that of Jefferson
of 'Rip Van Winkle' fame. This proved to me what a genius he had for
accurate observation, and also what a remarkable memory for the
details of a scene. His death has touched English people very
deeply.

* * * * *

It is easy to be unjust to Bret Harte--easy to say that he was a
disciple of Dickens--easy to say that in richness, massiveness, and
variety he fell far short of his great and beloved master. No one
was so ready to say all this and more about Bret Harte as Bret Harte
himself. For of all the writers of his time he was perhaps the most
modest, the most unobtrusive, the most anxious to give honour where
he believed honour to be due.

But the comparison between the English and American story-tellers
must not be pushed too far to the disadvantage of the latter. If
Dickens showed great superiority to Bret Harte on one side of the
imaginative writer's equipment, there were, I must think, other sides
of that equipment on which the superiority was Bret Harte's.

Therefore I am not one of those who think that in a court of
universal criticism Bret Harte's reputation will be found to be of
the usual ephemeral kind. It is, of course, impossible to speak on
such matters with anything like confidence. But it does seem to me
that Bret Harte's reputation is more likely than is generally
supposed to ripen into what we call fame. For in his short
stories--in the best of them, at least--there is a certain note quite
indescribable by any adjective--a note which is, I believe, always to
be felt in the literature that survives. The charge of not being
original is far too frequently brought against the imaginative
writers of America. What do we mean by 'originality'? Scott did not
invent the historic method. Dickens simply carried the method of
Smollett further, and with wider range. Thackeray is admittedly the
nineteenth century Fielding. Perhaps, indeed, there is but one
absolutely original writer of prose fiction of the nineteenth
century--Nathaniel Hawthorne. By original I mean simply original. I
do not mean that he was the greatest imaginative writer of his epoch.
But he invented a new kind of fiction altogether, a fiction in which
the material world and the spiritual world were not merely brought
into touch, but were positively intermingled one with the other.

Bret Harte had the great good fortune to light upon material for
literary treatment of a peculiarly fresh and a peculiarly fascinating
kind, and he had the artistic instinct to treat it adequately. This
is what I mean: in the wonderful history of the nineteenth century
there are no more picturesque figures than those goldseekers--those
'Argonauts' of the Pacific slope--who in 1848 and 1849 showed the
world what grit lies latent in the racial amalgam we agree to call
'the Anglo-Saxon race.' The Australian gold-diggers of 1851 who
followed them, although they were picturesque and sturdy too, were
not exactly of the strain of the original Argonauts. The romance of
the thing had been in some degree worn away. The land of the Golden
Fleece had degenerated into a Tom Tiddler's Ground. Moreover, the
Tom Tiddler's Grounds of Ballarat and Bendigo were at a comparatively
easy distance from the Antipodean centre of civilization. 'Canvas
Town' could easily be reached from Sydney. But to reach the Golden
Fleece sought by the original Californian Argonauts the adventurer
had before him a journey of an almost unparalleled kind. Every
Argonaut, indeed, was a kind of explorer as well as seeker of gold.
He must either trek overland--that is to say, over those vast
prairies and then over those vast mountain chains which to men of the
time of Fenimore Cooper and Dr. Bird made up the limitless 'far West'
regions which only a few pioneers had dared to cross--or else he must
take a journey, equally perilous, round Cape Horn in the first crazy
vessel in which he could get a passage. It follows that for an
adventurer to succeed in reaching the land of the Golden Fleece at
all implied in itself that grit which adventurers of the Anglo-Saxon
type are generally supposed to show in a special degree. What kind
of men these Argonauts were, and what kind of life they led, the
people of the Eastern states of America and the people of England had
for years been trying to gather from newspaper reports and other
sources; but had it not been for the genius of Bret Harte this most
picturesque chapter of nineteenth-century history would have been
obliterated and forgotten. Thanks to the admirable American writer
whom England had the honour and privilege of entertaining for so many
years, those wonderful regions and those wonderful doings in the
Sierra Nevada are as familiar to us as is Dickens's London. Surely
those who talk of Bret Harte as being 'Dickens among the Californian
pines' do not consider what their words imply. It is true, no doubt,
that there was a kind of kinship between the temperament of Dickens
and the temperament of Bret Harte. They both held the same
principles of imaginative art, they both felt that the function of
the artist is to aid in the emancipation of man by holding before him
beautiful ideals; both felt that to give him any kind of so-called
realism which lowers man in his aspirations--which calls before man's
imagination degrading pictures of his 'animal origin'--is to do him a
disservice. For man has still a long journey before he reaches the
goal. Yet though they were both by instinct idealists as regards
character-drawing, they both sought to give their ideals a local
habitation and a name by surrounding those ideals with vividly
painted real accessories, as real as those of the ugliest realist.

With regard to Bret Harte's Argonauts and the romantic scenery in
which they lived and worked, it would, no doubt, be a bold thing to
say whether Dickens could or could not have painted them, and
whether, if he had painted them, the pictures would or would not have
been as good as Bret Harte's pictures. But Dickens never did paint
these Argonauts; he never had the chance of painting them. Bret
Harte did paint them, and succeeded as wonderfully as Dickens
succeeded in painting certain classes of London life. Now,
assuredly, I should have never dreamt of instituting a comparison of
this kind between two of the most delightful writers and the most
delightful men that have lived in my time had not critics been doing
so to the disparagement of one of them. But if one of these writers
must be set up against another, I feel that something should be said
upon the other side of the question--I feel that something should be
said on those points where the American had the advantage. Take the
question of atmosphere, for instance. Let us not forget how
enormously important is atmosphere in any imaginative picture of
life. Without going so far as to say that atmosphere is as
important, or nearly as important, as character, let me ask, What was
it that captured the readers of 'Robinson Crusoe'? Was it the
character of Defoe's hero, or was it the scenery and the atmosphere
in which he placed him? Again, see what an important part scenery
and atmosphere played in 'The Lay of the Last Minstrel,' in 'The Lady
of the Lake,' in 'Marmion,' and in 'Waverley.' And surely it was the
atmosphere of Byron's 'Giaour,' 'The Bride of Abydos,' and 'The
Corsair,' that mainly gave these poems their vogue. And, in a
certain sense, it may be said that Dickens gave to his readers a new
atmosphere, for he was the first to explore what was something new to
the reading world--the great surging low-life of London and the life
of the lower stratum of its middle class. It seems that the pure
novelist of manners only can dispense with a new and picturesque
atmosphere. It was natural for England to look to American writers
to enrich English literature with a new imaginative atmosphere, and
she did not look in vain. But, notwithstanding all that had been
done by writers like Brockden Brown, Fenimore Cooper, Dr. Bird, and
others to bring American atmosphere into literature, Bret Harte gave
us an atmosphere that was American and yet as new as though the
above-mentioned writers had never written. He had the advantage of
depicting a scenery that was as unlike the backwoods of his
predecessors as it was unlike everything else in the world. It is
doubtful whether there is any scenery in the world so fascinating as
the mountain ranges of the Pacific side of the United States and
Canada.

Every one is born with an instinct for loving some particular kind of
scenery, and this bias has not so much to do with the
birth-environment as is generally supposed. It would have been of no
avail for Bret Harte to be familiar with the mighty canons, peaks,
and cataracts of the Nevada regions unless he had had a natural
genius for loving and depicting them; and this, undoubtedly, he had,
as we see by the effect upon us of his descriptions. Once read, his
pictures are never forgotten. But it was not merely that the scenery
and atmosphere of Bret Harte's stories are new--the point is that the
social mechanism in which his characters move is also new. And if it
cannot be denied that in temperament his characters are allied to the
characters of Dickens, we must not make too much of this.
Notwithstanding all the freshness and newness of Dickens's characters
they were entirely the slaves of English sanctions. Those
incongruities which gave them their humourous side arose from their
contradicting the English social sanctions around them. But in Bret
Harte's Argonauts we get characters that move entirely outside those
sanctions of civilization with which the reader is familiar. And
this is why the violent contrasts in his stories seem, somehow, to be
better authenticated than do the equally violent contrasts in
Dickens's stories. Bret Harte's characters are amenable to no laws
except the improvised laws of the camp; and the final arbiter is
either the six-shooter or the rope of Judge Lynch. And yet
underlying this apparent lawlessness there is that deep
'law-abidingness' which the late Grant Allen despised as being 'the
Anglo-Saxon characteristic.' To my mind, indeed, there is nothing so
new, fresh, and piquant in the fiction of my time as Bret Harte's
pictures of the mixed race we call Anglo-Saxon finding itself right
outside all the old sanctions, exercising nevertheless its own
peculiar instinct for law-abidingness of a kind.

We get the Anglo-Saxon beginning life anew far removed from the old
sanctions of civilization, retaining of necessity a good deal of that
natural liberty which, according to Blackstone, was surrendered by
the first human compact in order to secure its substitute, civil
liberty. We get vivid pictures of the racial qualities which enable
the Anglo-Saxon to plant his roots and flourish in almost every
square mile of the New World that lies in the temperate zone. Let a
group of this great race of universal squatters be the dwellers in
Roaring Camp, or a party of whalers in New Zealand when it is a 'no
man's land,' or even a gang of mutineers from the Bounty, it is all
one as regards their methods as squatters. The moment that the
mutineers set foot on Pitcairn Island they improvise a code of laws
something like the camp laws of Bret Harte's Argonauts, and the code
on the whole works well.

Therefore I think that, apart altogether from the literary excellence
of the presentation, Bret Harte's pictures of the Anglo-Saxon in
these conditions will, even as documents, pass into literature. And
again, year by year, as nature is being more and more studied, are
what I may call the open-air qualities of literature being more
sought after. This accounts in a large measure for the growing
interest in a writer once strangely neglected, George Borrow; and if
there should be any diminution in the great and deserved vogue of
Dickens, it will be because he is not strong in open-air qualities.

Bret Harte's stories give the reader a sense of the open air second
only to Borrow's own pictures. And if I am right in thinking that
the love of nature and the love of open-air life are growing, this
also will secure a place in the future for Bret Harte.

And now what about his power of creating new characters--not
characters of the soil merely, but dramatic characters? Well, here
one cannot speak with quite so much confidence on behalf of Bret
Harte; and here he showed his great inferiority to Dickens. Dickens,
of course, used a larger canvas--gave himself more room to depict his
subjects.

If Bret Harte's scenes and characters seem somewhat artificial, may
it not be often accounted for by the fact that he wrote short stories
and not long novels? For it is very difficult in a short story to
secure the freedom and flexibility of movement which belong to
nature--the last perfection of imaginative art.

All artistic imitations of nature, of course, consist of selection.
In actual life we form our own picture of a character not by having
the traits selected for us and presented to us in a salient way, as
in art, but by selecting in a semi-conscious way for ourselves from
the great mass of characteristics presented to us by nature. The
shorter the story, the more economic must be its methods, and hence
the more rigid must its selection of characteristics be; and this, of
course, is apt to give an air of artificiality to a short story from
which a long novel may be free."