I.

In the death of Lord de Tabley, the English world of letters has lost a

true poet and a scholar of very varied accomplishments. His friends have

lost much more. Since his last attack of influenza, those who knew him

and loved him had been much concerned about him. The pallor of his

complexion had greatly increased; so had his feebleness. As long ago as

May last, when I called upon him at the Athenæum Club in order to join

him at a luncheon he was giving at the Café Royal, I found that he had

engaged a four-wheeled cab to take us over those few yards. The

expression in his kind and wistful blue-grey eyes showed that he had

noted the start of surprise I gave on seeing the cab waiting for us.

“You know my love of a growler,” he said; “this is just to save us the

bother of getting across the Piccadilly cataracts.” I thought to myself,

“I wish it were only the bother of crossing the cataracts which accounts

for the growler.”

Another sign that the physical part of him was in the grip of the demon

of decay was that, instead of coming to the Pines to luncheon, as had

been his wont, he preferred of late to come to afternoon tea, and return

to Elm Park before dinner. And on the occasion when he last came in this

way it seemed to us here that he had aged still more; yet his

intellectual forces had lost nothing of their power. And as a companion

he was as winsome as ever. That fine quality with which he was so richly

endowed, the quality which used to be called “urbanity,” was as fresh

when I saw him last as when I first knew him. That sweet sagacity,

mellowed and softened by a peculiarly quiet humour, shone from his face

at intervals as he talked of the pleasant old days when he was my

colleague on _The Athenæum_, and when I used to call upon him so

frequently on my way to Rossetti in Cheyne Walk to chat over “the walnuts

and the wine” about poetry.

My own friendship with him began at my first meeting him, and this was

long ago. Being at that time a less-known man of letters than I am now,

supposing that to be possible, I was astonished one day when my friend

Edmund Gosse told me that his friend Leicester Warren had expressed a

wish to meet me on account of certain things of mine which he had read in

_The Examiner_ and _The Athenæum_. I accepted with alacrity Mr. Gosse’s

invitation to one of those charming _salons_ of his on the banks of

Westbournia’s Grand Canal which have become historic. I was surprised to

find Warren, who was then scarcely above forty, looking so old, not to

say so old-fashioned. At that time he did not wear the moustache and

beard which afterwards lent a picturesqueness to his face. There was a

kind of rural appearance about him which had for me a charm of its own;

it suited so well with his gentle ways, I thought. This being the

impression he made upon me, it may be imagined how delighted I was

shortly afterwards to see him come to the door of Ivy Lodge, Putney,

where I was then living alone. Nor was I less surprised than delighted

to see him. On realizing at Gosse’s _salon_ that my new acquaintance was

a botanist, I had fraternized with him on this point, and had described

to him an extremely rare and lovely little tree growing in the centre of

my garden, which some unknown lover of trees had imported. I had given

Warren a kind of general invitation to come some day and see it. So

early a call as this I had not hoped to get. Perhaps I thought so

reclusive a man as he even then appeared would never come at all.

After having duly admired the tree he turned to the Rossetti crayons on

the walls of the rooms; but although he talked much about ‘The Spirit of

the Rainbow’ and the design from the same beautiful model which William

Sharp has christened ‘Forced Music,’ the loveliness of which attracted

him not a little, I perceived that he had something else that he wanted

to talk about, and allowed him to lead the conversation up to it. To my

surprise I found that, so far from having perceived how much he had

interested me, he had imagined that my attitude towards him was

constrained, and had explained it to his own discomfort after the

following fashion: “Watts has an intimate friend of whose poetry I am a

deep admirer—so deep indeed that some people, and not without reason,

have said that my own poetry is unduly influenced by it. But an article

by me in _The Fortnightly_ goes out of its way to dub as a ‘minor poet’

the very writer to whose influence I have succumbed. It is the

incongruity between my dubbing my idol a ‘minor poet’ and my real and

most obvious admiration of his work that makes Watts, in spite of an

external civility, feel unfriendly towards me. Yet there is no real

incongruity, for it was the editor, G. H. Lewes, who, after my proof had

been returned for press, interpolated the objectionable words about the

minor poet.”

This was how he had been reasoning. When I laughed and told him to

recast his syllogism—told him that I had never seen the article in

question, and doubted whether my friend had—matters became very bright

between us. He stayed to luncheon; we walked on the Common; I showed him

our Wimbledon sun-dews; in a word, I felt that I had discovered a richer

gold mine than the richest in the world, a new friend. Had I then known

him as well as I afterwards did, I should have been aware that he had a

strong dash of the sensitive, not to say the morbid, in his nature. He

had a habit of submitting almost every incident of his life to such an

analysis as that I have been describing.

On another occasion, when years later he had a difference with a friend,

I reminded him of the incident recorded above, and made him laugh by

saying, “My dear Warren, you are so afraid of treading on people’s corns

that you tread upon them.”

On first visiting him, as on many a subsequent occasion, I was struck by

the variety of his intellectual interests, and the thoroughness with

which he pursued them all. I have lately said in print what I fully

believe—that he was the most learned of English poets, if learning means

something more than mere scholarship. He was a skilled numismatist, and

in 1862 published, through the Numismatic Society, ‘An Essay on Greek

Federal Coinage,’ and an essay ‘On Some Coins of Lycia under Rhodian

Domination and of the Lycian League.’ He even took an interest in

book-plates, and actually, in 1880, published ‘A Guide to the Study of

Book-Plates.’ I should not have been at all surprised to learn that he

was also writing a guide for the collectors of postage stamps.

At this time he had published a good deal of verse; for instance,

‘Eclogues and Monodramas’ in 1865; ‘Studies in Verse’ in 1866; ‘Orestes’

in 1867; a collection of poems called ‘Rehearsals’ in 1873; another

collection, called ‘The Searching Net,’ in 1876. From this time, during

many years, I saw him frequently, although, for a reason which it is not

necessary to discuss here, he became seized with a deep dislike of the

literary world and its doings, and I am not aware that he saw any

literary man save myself and the late W. B. Scott, the bond between whom

and himself was “book-plates”! Then he took to residing in the country.

As a poet he seemed to be quite forgotten, save by students of poetry,

until his name was revived by means of Mr. Miles’s colossal anthology

‘The Poets and the Poetry of the Nineteenth Century,’ Mr. Miles, it

seems, was a great admirer of Lord de Tabley’s poetry, and managed to

reach the hermit in his cell. In the sixth volume of his work Mr. Miles

gave a judicious selection from Lord de Tabley’s poems and an admirable

essay upon them. The selection attracted a good deal of attention.

On finding that the public would listen to him, I urged him to bring out

a volume of selected pieces from all his works, an idea which for some

time he contested with his usual pessimistic vigour. Having, however,

set my heart upon it, I spoke upon the subject to Mr. John Lane, who at

once saw his way to bring out such a volume at his own risk. To the

poet’s astonishment the book was a success, and it at once passed into a

second edition. In the spring of this year he was emboldened to bring

out another volume of new poems, and his name became firmly

re-established as a poet. It was after the success of the first book

that he consulted me upon a question which was then upon his mind: Should

he devote his future energies to literature or to making himself a

position as a speaker in the Lords? He had lately had occasion to speak

both in the country and in the Lords upon some local matter of

importance, and his success had in some slight degree revived an old

aspiration to plunge into the world of politics. He was a Liberal, and

in 1868 he had contested—but unsuccessfully—Mid-Cheshire. This was on

the first election for that division after the Reform Act of 1867. His

support in a county so Conservative as Cheshire had really been very

strong, but he never made another effort to get into Parliament. “You

know my way,” he used to say. “I can make one spring—perhaps a pretty

good spring—but not more than one.”

On the whole, he leaned towards the idea of going into politics. The way

in which he put the case to me was thoroughly characteristic of him:

“Even if my verse were strong and vital, which I fear it is not, there is

almost no chance for men of my generation receiving more than a slight

attention at the present day. Things have altogether changed since the

sixties and seventies, when I published my most important work—at a time

when the prominent names were Tennyson, Browning, Matthew Arnold,

Rossetti, Morris, and Swinburne. The old critical oracles are now dumb;

the reviewers are all young men whose knowledge of poetry does not go

back so far as the sixties. Those who reviewed the selection from my

work in Miles’s book showed themselves to be entirely unconscious of the

name of Leicester Warren, and treated the poems there selected as being

the work of a new writer; and even when the poems published by Lane came

out, no one seemed to be aware that they were by a writer who was very

much to the fore a quarter of a century ago. That book has had a flutter

of success, but in how large a degree was the success owing to the

curiosity excited by the book of a man of my generation being brought out

now, and by the publisher of the men of this? With all my sympathy with

the work of the younger men and my admiration of some of it, things, I

say, have changed since those days.”

I did not share these pessimistic views. Moreover, knowing as I did how

extremely sensitive he was, I knew that his figuring in Parliament would

result in the greatest pain to him, and if I gave a somewhat exaggerated

expression with regard to my hopes of him in the literary world, it was a

kindly feeling towards himself that impelled me to do so. He took my

advice and proceeded to gather material for another volume.

To define clearly the impression left upon one by intercourse with any

man is difficult. In De Tabley’s case it is almost impossible. His

remarkable modesty, or rather diffidence, was what, perhaps, struck me

most. It was a genuine lack of faith in his own powers; it had nothing

whatever to do with “mock-modesty.” I had a singular instance of this

diffidence in the autumn of last year. Lord de Tabley, who was staying

at Ryde, having learnt that I was staying with a friend near Niton Bay,

wrote to me there saying that he somewhat specially wanted to see me, and

proposed our lunching together at an hotel at Ventnor. I was delighted

to accede to this, for, like all who fully knew Lord de Tabley, I was

thoroughly and deeply attached to him. He was so genuine and so modest

and so genial—unsoured by the great and various sorrows of which he used

sometimes to talk to me by the cosy study fire—nay, sweetened by them, as

I often thought—so grateful for the smallest service rendered in an arena

where ingratitude sometimes seems to be the _vis motrix_ of life—a truly

lovable man, if ever there was one.

I drove over to Ventnor. As I chanced to reach the hotel somewhat before

the appointed time, and he had not arrived, I drove on to Bonchurch along

the Shanklin road. On my way back, I passed a four-wheel cab; but not

dreaming that his love of the “growler” reached beyond London, I never

thought of him in connexion with it until I saw the well-known face with

its sweet thoughtful expression looking through the cab window. On this

occasion it looked so specially thoughtful that I imagined something

serious had occurred. At the hotel I found that he had secured a snug

room and a luxurious luncheon. An ominous packet of writing-paper

peering from his overcoat pocket convinced me that it was a manuscript

brought for me to read, and feeling that I should prefer to get it over

before luncheon, I asked him to show it to me. He then told me its

history. Having sent by special invitation a poem to _The Nineteenth

Century_, the editor had returned it—returned it with certain strictures

upon portions of it. This incident he had at once subjected to the usual

analysis, and had come to the conclusion that certain outside influences

of an invidious kind had been brought to play upon the editor.

Time was when I should have shrunk with terror from so thankless a task

as that of reading a manuscript with such a frightful history, but it is

astonishing what a long experience in the literary world will do for a

man in perplexities of this kind. I read the manuscript and the editor’s

courteous but sagacious comments, and I found that the poet had

undertaken a subject which was utterly and almost inconceivably alien to

his genius. As I read I felt the wistful gaze fixed upon me while the

waiter was moving in and out of the room, preparing the luncheon table.

“Well,” said he, as I laid the manuscript down, “what do you think? do

you agree with the editor?” “Not entirely,” I said. “Not entirely!” he

exclaimed; then turning to the waiter, he said, “You can leave the soup,

and I will ring when we are ready.” “Not entirely,” I repeated. “With

all the editor’s strictures I entirely agree, but he says that by working

upon it you may make it into a worthy poem: there I disagree with him. I

consider it absolutely hopeless. I regret now that we did not leave the

matter until after luncheon, but we will not let it spoil our appetites.”

I am afraid it did spoil our appetites nevertheless, for I felt that I

had been compelled, for his own sake, to give him pain. He was much

depressed, declared that the success of his late book was entirely

factitious, and vowed that nothing should ever persuade him to write

another line of verse, and that he would now devote his attention to a

peer’s duties in the House of Lords. I was so disturbed myself at thus

paining so lovable a friend that next day I wrote to him, trying to

soften what I had said, and urged him to do as the editor of _The

Nineteenth Century_ had suggested, write another poem—a poem upon some

classical subject, which he would deal with so admirably. The result of

it all was that he found the editor’s strictures on the unlucky poem to

be absolutely well grounded, and wrote for _The Nineteenth Century_

‘Orpheus,’ one of the finest of his later poems.

I think these anecdotes of Lord de Tabley will show why we who knew him

were so attached to him.