Chapter XXIII: The Renascence of Wonder in Religion

AND now as to the real inner meaning of 'Alwyin,' about which so much has been written. "'Aylwin,'" says Groome, "is a passionate love-story, with a mystical idee mere. For the entire dramatic action revolves around a thought that is coming more and more to the front--the difference, namely, between a materialistic and a spiritualistic cosmogony." And Dr. Nicoll, in his essay on "The Significance of 'Aylwin,'" in the 'Contemporary Review,' says:--

"Every serious student will see at a glance that 'Aylwin' is a
concrete expression of the author's criticism of life and literature,
and even--though this must be said with more reserve--a concrete
expression of his theory of the universe. This theory I will venture
to define as an optimistic confronting of the new cosmogony of growth
on which the author has for long descanted. Throughout all his
writings there is evidence of a mental struggle as severe as George
Eliot's with that materialistic reading of the universe which seemed
forced upon thinkers when the doctrine of evolution passed from
hypothesis to an accepted theory. Those who have followed Mr.
Watts-Dunton's writings in the 'Examiner' and in the 'Athenaeum' must
have observed with what passionate eagerness he insisted that
Darwinism, if properly understood, would carry us no nearer to
materialism than did the spiritualistic cosmogonies of old, unless it
could establish abiogenesis against biogenesis. As every experiment
of every biologist has failed to do so, a new spiritualist cosmogony
must be taught."

And yet the student of 'Aylwin' must bear in mind that some critics, taking the very opposite view, have said that its final teaching is not meant to be mystical at all, but anti-mystical--that what to Philip Aylwin and his disciples seems so mystical is all explained by the operation of natural laws. This theory reminds me of a saying of Goethe's about the enigmatic nature of all true and great works of art. I forget the exact words, but they set me thinking about the chameleon-like iridescence of great poems and dramas.

* * * * *

With regard to the fountain-head of all the mysticism of the story, Philip Aylwin, much has been said. Philip is the real protagonist of the story--he governs, as I have said, the entire dramatic action from his grave, and illustrates at every point Sinfi Lovell's saying, 'You must dig deep to bury your daddy.' Everything that occurs seems to be the result of the father's speculations, and the effect of them upon other minds like that of his son and that of Wilderspin.

The appearance of this new epic of spiritual love came at exactly the right moment--came when a new century was about to dawn which will throw off the trammels of old modes of thought. While I am writing these lines Mr. Balfour at the British Association has been expounding what must be called 'Aylwinism,' and (as I shall show in the last chapter of this book) saying in other words what Henry Aylwin's father said in 'The Veiled Queen.' In the preface to the edition of 'Aylwin' in the 'World's Classics' the author says:--

"The heart-thought of this book being the peculiar doctrine in Philip
Aylwin's 'Veiled Queen,' and the effect of it upon the fortunes of
the hero and the other characters, the name 'The Renascence of
Wonder' was the first that came to my mind when confronting the
difficult question of finding a name for a book that is at once a
love-story and an expression of a creed. But eventually I decided,
and I think from the worldly point of view wisely, to give it simply
the name of the hero.

The important place in the story, however, taken by this creed, did
not escape the most acute and painstaking of the critics. Madame
Galimberti, for instance, in the elaborate study of the book which
she made in the 'Rivista d'Italia,' gave great attention to its
central idea; so did M. Maurice Muret, in the 'Journal des Debats';
so did M. Henri Jacottet in 'La Semaine Litteraire.' Mr. Baker,
again, in his recently published 'Guide to Fiction,' described
'Aylwin' as "an imaginative romance of modern days, the moral idea of
which is man's attitude in face of the unknown, or, as the writer
puts it, 'the renascence of wonder.'" With regard to the phrase
itself, in the introduction to the latest edition of 'Aylwin'--the
twenty-second edition--I made the following brief reply to certain
questions that have been raised by critics both in England and on the
Continent concerning it. The phrase, I said, 'The Renascence of
Wonder,' 'is used to express that great revived movement of the soul
of man which is generally said to have begun with the poetry of
Wordsworth, Scott, Coleridge, and others, and after many varieties of
expression reached its culmination in the poems and pictures of
Rossetti.'

The painter Wilderspin says to Henry Aylwin, 'The one great event of
my life has been the reading of "The Veiled Queen," your father's
book of inspired wisdom upon the modern Renascence of Wonder in the
mind of man.' And further on he says that his own great picture
symbolical of this renascence was suggested by Philip Aylwin's
vignette. Since the original writing of 'Aylwin,' many years ago, I
have enlarged upon its central idea in the 'Encyclopaedia
Britannica,' in the introductory essay to the third volume of
'Chambers's Cyclopaedia of English Literature,' and in other places.
Naturally, therefore, the phrase has been a good deal discussed.
Quite lately Dr. Robertson Nicoll has directed attention to the
phrase, and he has taken it as a text of a remarkable discourse upon
the 'Renascence of Wonder in Religion.'

Mr. Watts-Dunton then quotes Dr. Nicoll's remarks upon the Logia recently discovered by the explorers of the Egypt Fund. He shows how men came to see 'once more the marvel of the universe and the romance of man's destiny. They became aware of the spiritual world, of the supernatural, of the lifelong struggle of soul, of the power of the unseen.'

"The words quoted by Dr. Nicoll might very appropriately be used as a motto for 'Aylwin' and also for its sequel 'The Coming of Love: Rhona Boswell's Story.'"

When 'Aylwin' first appeared, the editor of a well-known journal sent
it to me for review. I read it: never shall I forget that reading.
I was in Ireland at the time--an Irish Wedding Guest at an Irish
Wedding. Now an Irish Wedding is more joyous than any novel, and
Irish girls are lovelier than any romance. A duel between Life and
Literature! Picture it! Behold the Irish Wedding Guest spell-bound
by a story-teller as cunning as 'The Ancient Mariner' himself! He
heareth the bridal music, but Aylwin continueth his tale: he cannot
choose but hear, until 'The Curse' of the 'The Moonlight Cross' of
the Gnostics is finally expiated, and Aylwin and Winnie see in the
soul of the sunset 'The Dukkeripen of the Trushul,' the blessed Cross
of Rose and Gold. Amid the 'merry din' of the Irish Wedding Feast
the Irish Wedding Guest read and wrote. And among other lyrical
things, he said that 'since Shakespeare created Ophelia there has
been nothing in literature so moving, so pathetic, so unimaginably
sorrowful as the madness of Winnie Wynne.' And he also said that
"the majority of readers will delight in 'Aylwin' as the most
wonderful of love stories, but as the years go by an ever increasing
number will find in it the germ of a new religion, a clarified
spiritualism, free from charlatanry, a solace and a consolation for
the soul amid the bludgeonings of circumstance and the cruelties of
fate."

Mr. Watts-Dunton, when I told him that I was going to write this book, urged me to moderate my praise and to call into action the critical power that he was good enough to say that I possessed. He especially asked me not to repeat the above words, the warmth of which, he said, might be misconstrued; but the courage of my opinions I will exercise so long as I write at all. The 'newspaper cynics' that once were and perhaps still are strong, I have always defied and always will defy. I am glad to see that there is one point of likeness between us of the younger generation and the great one to which Mr. Watts-Dunton and his illustrious friends belong. We are not afraid and we are not ashamed of being enthusiastic. This, also, I hope, will be a note of the twentieth century.

No doubt mine was a bold prophecy to utter in a rapid review of a romance, but time has shown that it was not a rash one. The truth is that the real vogue of 'Aylwin' as a message to the soul is only beginning. Five years have elapsed since the publication of 'Aylwin,' and during that time it has, I think, passed into twenty-four editions in England alone, the latest of all these editions being the beautiful 'Arvon Edition,' not to speak of the vast issue in sixpenny form.

I will now quote the words of a very accomplished scholar and critic upon the inner meaning of 'Aylwin' generally. They appeared in the 'Saturday Review' of October 1904, and they show that the interest in the book, so far from waning, is increasing:--

"Public taste has for once made a lucky shot, and we are only too
pleased to be able to put an item to the credit of an account in
taste, where the balance is so heavily on the wrong side. How
'Aylwin' ever came to be a popular success is hard indeed to
understand. We cannot wonder at the doubts of a popular reception
confessed to by Mr. Watts-Dunton in his dedication of the latest
edition to Mr. Ernest Rhys. How did a book, notable for its poetry
and subtlety of thought, come to appeal to an English public? That
it should have a vogue in Wales was natural; Welsh patriotism would
assure a certain success, though by itself it could not indeed have
made the book the household word it has now become throughout all
Wales. And undoubtedly its Welsh reception has been the more
intelligent; it has been welcomed there for the qualities that most
deserved a welcome; while in England we fear that in many quarters it
has rather been welcomed in spite of them. The average English man
and woman do not like mystery and distrust poetry. They have little
sympathy with the 'renascence of wonder,' which some new passages
unfold to us in the Arvon edition, passages originally omitted for
fear of excessive length and now restored from the MS. We are glad
to have them, for they illustrate further the intellectual motive of
the book. We are of those who do not care to take 'Aylwin' merely as
a novel."

These words remind me of two reviews of 'Aylwin,' one by Mr. W. P. Ryan, a fellow-countryman of mine, which was published when 'Aylwin' first appeared, the other by an eminent French writer.

"The salient impression on the reader is that he is looking full into
deep reaches of life and spirituality rather than temporary pursuits
and mundane ambitions. In this regard, in its freedom from
littleness, its breadth of life, its exaltation of mood, its sense of
serene issues that do not pass with the changing fashions of a
generation, the book is almost epic.

But 'Aylwin' has yet other sides. It is a vital and seizing story.
The girl-heroine is a beautiful presentment, and the struggle with
destiny, when, believing in the efficacy of a mystic's curse she
loses her reason, and flies from poignantly idyllic life to harrowing
life, her stricken lover in her wake, is nearly Greek in its
intensity and pathos. The long, long quest through the mountain
magic of Wales, the wandering spheres of Romany-land, and the
art-reaches of London, could only be made real and convincing by
triumphant art. A less expert pioneer would enlarge his effects in
details that would dissipate their magic; Mr. Watts-Dunton knows that
one inspired touch is worth many uninspired chapters, as Shakespeare
knew that 'she should have died hereafter.'

Death came on her like an untimely frost,
Upon the fairest flower of all the field.

or

Childe Rowland to the dark tower came,

is worth an afternoon of emphasis, a night of mystical elaboration.

Incidentally, the Celtic and Romany types of character reveal their
essence. Here, too, the author preserves the artistic unities.
Delightful as one realizes these characters to be, full-blooded
personalities though they are, it is still their spirit, and through
it the larger spirit of their race, that shines clearest. Their
story is all realistic, and yet it leaves the flavour of a fairy tale
of Regeneration. At first sight one is inclined to speak of their
beautiful kinship with Nature; but the truth is that Nature and they
together are seen with spiritual eyes; that they and Nature are
different but kindred embodiments of the underlying, all-extending,
universal soul; that Henry's love, and Winnie's rapture, and
Snowdon's magic, and Sinfi's crwth, and the little song of y Wydffa,
and the glorious mountain dawn are but drops and notes in a melodic
mystic ocean, of which the farthest stars and the deepest loves are
kindred and inevitable parts--parts of a whole, of whose ministry we
hardly know the elements, yet are cognisant that our highest joy is
to feel in radiant moments that we, too, are part of the harmony. In
idyll, despair or tragedy, the beauty of 'Aylwin' is that always the
song of the divine in humanity is beneath it. Everything merges into
one consistent, artistically suggested, spiritual conception of life;
love tried, tortured, finally rewarded as the supreme force utilized
to drive home the intolerable negation and atrophy of materialism; in
Henry's gnostic father, in the scientific Henry himself, the Romany
Sinfi, Winnie whose nature is a song, Wilderspin who believes that
his model is a heavenly visitant with an immaterial body, D'Arcy who
stands for Rossetti, the end is the same; and the striking trait is
the felicity with which so many dissimilar personalities, while
playing the drama of divergent actuality to the full, yet realize and
illustrate, without apparent manipulation by the author, the one
abiding spiritual unity.

In execution, 'Aylwin' is far above the accomplished English
novel-work of latter years; as a conception of life it surely
transcends all. The 'schools' we have known: the realistic, the
romantic, the quasi-historical, the local, seem but parts of the
whole when their motives are measured with the idea that permeates
this novel. They take drear or gallant roads through limited lands;
it rises like a stately hill from which a world is clearer, above and
beyond whose limits there are visions, Voices, and the verities."

With equal eloquence M. Jacottet on the same day wrote about "Aylwin" in 'La Semaine Litteraire':--

"The central idea of this poetic book is that of love stronger than
death, love elevating the soul to a mystical conception of the
universe. It is a singular fact that at the moment when England,
intoxicated with her successes, seems to have no room for thought
except with regard to her fleet and her commerce, and allows herself
to be dazzled by dreams of universal empire, the book in vogue should
be Mr. Watts-Dunton's romance--the most idealistic, the farthest
removed from the modern Anglo-Saxon conception of life that he could
possibly conceive. But this fact has often been observable in
literary history. Is not the true charm of letters that of giving to
the soul respite from the brutalities of contemporary events?"