THE friends he found for distraction in London were few, his
acquaintances still fewer; thus his biographer, in falling back on such
slight records as would go unnoticed in a life more thickly peopled,
believes that they have at any rate the value of rarity.
But in any case the chapter of his meetings could be more than matched
with the chapter of his evasions. Thus ran the excuses:--
"Dear Wilfrid, I could not come in to tea with Blunt and Yeats, for
I had to go down to the _Academy_, and was back much too late. Had I
known on Thursday I would have altered my arrangements so as to accept
your invitation. I am very sorry to have missed this chance of meeting
Yeats, as I have long desired to do. You know I heartily admire his
work."
* * * * *
Meredith's invitations he could not permanently resist. At Box Hill
he spent a night in June 1896. Meredith had written to A. M., "You
and the poet will have Heaven's welcome to the elect. But the cottage
will be wounded if you desire not to sleep in it after having tried
its poor resources. Be kind." To dine and sleep and wake in that small
cottage was to be at very close quarters with nature and a man. With
birds at the window, trees bowing and rustling at the back door, and at
the front the vivid grass ready for his feet, Francis was thrust into
the presence of a showy bit of nature, and was hardly more easy than
if he had been thrust at the theatre into a box directly adjoining a
crowded stage. He would pull at his necktie, and smooth his coat, and
be most warily conscious of his companion's eye, microscopic, like a
husband's, for defect. The singing of Meredith's blackbirds would be no
less confusing than the stream of Meredith's talk; the nodding flowers
and the thousand shadows, the sunshine and the talker, were too strange
to him. For years he had evaded nature and an eye; here he was forced
to be seen and to see in the unclouded atmosphere of this garden on
a hill, and during a long drive. Talk and caviare for breakfast were
alike foreign to him, who never breakfasted even on toast. To be on
tremendously good terms with Nature for her own sake, with talk for
its own sake, with French literature, with the Celt, was Meredith's
triumph; Thompson was shy of all these.
Meredith's method was one of acceptance, of bird's song and of
Burgundy. Thompson's method was of refusal because he was not hardy
enough for one or the other. With that mixture of precision and
involved evasion that was his habit, Meredith praised "Love in Dian's
Lap," quoting the lines--
And on this lady's heart, looked you so deep,
Poor Poetry has rocked himself to sleep;
Upon the heavy blossom of her lips
Hangs the bee Musing; nigh her lids eclipse
Each half-occulted star beneath that lies;
And in the contemplation of those eyes,
Passionless passion, wild tranquillities.
The lady, too, was in the garden to hear.
In his written comments on _Poems_, Meredith had fastened on the
misprinted passages as if they were evidences of the wilfulness of the
poet, and he recalled these in talk, slow to relinquish an opportunity
for his golden chaff. With the _Edinburgh_ praise of Thompson he
proclaimed himself in agreement, writing (July 19, 1896) "I subscribe
to the words on Francis Thompson's verse." But he also called Thompson
turgid, on the eve of passing to the writing of his own ode on the
French Revolution; _Sister Songs_ he had called at first sight a
"voluntary."
He discovered no consecutive argument in _Sister Songs_; but for his
banter he found an immediate opening; he invented a landlady for
Thompson--Amelia Applejohn--to whom imaginary sonnets were addressed.
He told how Amelia was summoned to Thompson's room to listen to the
latest, rolling down her sleeves the while, and brushing the flour from
her elbows.
After Thompson's death, Meredith wrote to W. M.:--
"BOX HILL, _February 3, 1909._
"DEAR MR. MEYNELL,--The love of all the Meynells, let
all the Meynells know, is precious to me. And the book
of the poems (_Selected Poems_) was very welcome,
though a thought of the poet's broken life gives pain.
What he might further have done hangs at the closing
page. Your part in his history should help to comfort
you. What we have of him is mainly due to the Meynell
family.
"Our Portia I may suppose to be now in Italy, and Italy
seems to me her natural home. For me, I drag on,
counting more years and not knowing why. I have to have
an arm when I would walk. I am humiliated by requiring
at times a repetition of sentences. This is my state
of old age. But my religion of life is always to be
cheerful; though I see little of my friends, I live
with them.--Ever to be counted yours,
GEORGE MEREDITH."
One of the few occasions on which Francis entered a friend's house
(always excepting W. M.'s) in London was when, in December 1896, he
spent some weeks with Mr. and Mrs. Doubleday. Like a little boy, he
posted word to W. M., as to a father, across the few intervening miles
of London, of his safe arrival there, of his friend's kindness, and of
his admiration of Mrs. Doubleday's music making:--"Mrs. Doubleday is
very kind, and she is a simply exquisite pianist. Doubleday and I have
fraternised over music."
"My friend Alfred Hayes," he used to say, almost with ostentation. And
the phrase remains because he so rarely proclaimed or could proclaim a
relationship of the sort. That he paid a visit and wrote letters and
verses to Mr. Hayes were, even if he forgot to despatch one of the
letters, unusual marks of consideration. The visit planned, it followed
that he did not turn up in the expected way, so that his host, in his
anxiety, asked W. M. for news, and later wrote:--
"20 CARPENTER ROAD, EDGBASTON,
_October 13, 1896._
"DEAR MR. MEYNELL,--I am very sorry that, as all turned
out well, I wrote to you in some apprehension as to
Thompson. He turned up at the wrong railway-station and
performed some other singular feats, but those were
mere details, and we enjoyed his visit very much. I
hope it did him good in spite of the fact that owing
to its happening to be a very busy week for me at the
office, I was obliged to leave him a good deal to
his own devices, which consisted mainly in smoking
innumerable pipes over the books he found in my study.
The weather was so forbidding that we were only able to
make two excursions afield. I hope he will come again
in the summer when no infant daughter must again bar
the way.--Yours,
ALFRED HAYES."
Mr. Hayes gives me a reminiscence of his guest:--
"In the Autumn of the year 1896 Francis Thompson was
my guest for a week at Edgbaston. The evenings were
veritable _Noctes Ambrosianæ_; but though the general
impression of deep insight and opulent imagination,
of many a flash of inspiration and radiant turn of
speech, lingers as a precious recollection, the details
of his conversation have vanished, for the most part,
from memory, as completely as the precise hues and
cloud-shapes of the sunsets of those memorable days.
"One indelible impression, however, remains--his
amazing range of reading, the infallibility of his
literary memory, and the consequent wealth of allusion
he had at his command.
"At meals he would sit mostly silent, sometimes
quitting the table, his food half consumed, as if at
some imperious mandate, but somehow without leaving
behind him the slightest suspicion of discourtesy.
These sudden disappearances, whose cause I never
sought to discover, soon came to be expected, and only
provoked a smile--it was Thompson's way. But let it not
be supposed that he was uncouth or affected; his manner
was that of a great child; he was simply incapable of
pose or unkindness.
"His personal appearance is deeply engraved on the
tablets of my memory. He was a pathetic figure. His
form and face bore, only too clearly, the marks of
those grim years of tribulation of soul and torment
of body from which he had so recently been delivered.
His appearance smote me with deep pity, but even
deeper respect; and within a few hours he had won my
affection. I was struck, as were the few intimate
friends who once met him at my house, with a strange
other-worldliness about him, as if he were conscious
of making only a hasty sojourn on earth in the course
of an illimitable journey. . . . I remember how the
discoloured face would suddenly light up, and the dazed
eyes flash, in such moments of happy excitement, as
if a volcanic eruption of delight had broken through
the crust of his soul. He gave me the impression of
concealing within him two inexhaustible reservoirs of
sorrow and joy; ebullitions from each appear in his
poetry; but in his long talks with me he rarely drew
except from the fountain of joy."
Some time after this visit he wrote to Mr. Hayes of his journalism, his
book, and his desire to see his friend again:--
"I met Norman Gale, for a brief moment, at my
publishers', in January or thereabouts. I was charmed
with him. Alas, I am farther off from you than ever; it
is not likely that I can visit you again for an unknown
time to come. And I entertain such a happy recollection
of you, your dear wife, and your charming children! Let
us pray for the unexpected, which always happens, you
know!--Always yours, dear Hayes,
FRANCIS THOMPSON.
"I am very busy, or I would write at more length to
you. Believe me, that I do not forget you ever."
From her invalid's couch Mrs. Hamilton King sent Francis treasured
messages of trust and commendation, and, guessing his need, wrote
him many things that sounded bravely to one who accused himself of
something worse than futility in friendship:--
"It is true that everyone must live out his own life,
and I am not sure that it is good that another should
live it for him; but you at least have done much for
your friends. Coventry Patmore relied on you; and when
I last saw Mr. Wilfrid Meynell he told me that both
he and Mrs. Meynell felt themselves entirely your
debtors--your poetry was so much for them. And you may
have much more to do. I wish it were possible for you
to live nearer and within reach of your friends. . . .
It is a great consolation to feel that one has
ministered to the most sensitive and precious among
the children of God, and also it is a great joy and
privilege to me to have your friendship."
Between 1896 and 1900 he also had correspondence with one who was
especially his friend, Miss Katharine Douglas King, Mrs. Hamilton
King's daughter. Before meeting her he had written to W. M.:--
"Do you know that Miss K. Douglas King is--together with Winifred
Lucas--one of the few women I ever desired particularly to meet? She
has a temperament of genius heaped up and running over. I read through
all her _Merry England_ stories some months ago, and was startled by
their individual and impressive note."
Her book, _The Child who will never Grow Old_, published two years
later, bears on its first page his line, "The heart of Childhood, so
divine for me." Miss King played with the Palace Court children, and
worked among the poor children of the East End who often figure in her
stories. Francis once visited her and her charges at the hospital in
Leonard Square. Writing subsequently, Miss King says:--
"I count you as an old friend, but I know now I did
not really know you until Saturday. When you were by
your little 'genius's'--Harry's--bed, and the baby
boy Percy with the white shoes was at your knee, that
was to me a revelation! I think of you now with that
infant's serious, confiding face upturned to you.
It was all so natural. To some people a child is a
pretty ornamental _addition_. Your personality now
seems incomplete without the child as the natural and
exquisite finish to the whole man. Adieu, dear friend."
A later letter announces her impending marriage:--
"FOREST HALL, _April 1900._
"MY DEAR FRANCIS,--I have been wanting to write to
you for so long, and yet have not been able to find
time until now; and now I find it a little difficult,
because one feels reluctant to speak of one's own great
happiness to one whose life has been so sad and lonely
as yours, even though that one should be so firm and
true a friend as you have ever been to me. My marriage
is fixed for the early part of July. Although my new
home will be far away, we both hope that in time we may
come to live nearer London, and I hope that my marriage
will not bring me less, but more, in touch with my
friends, amongst whom, Francis, I hope that I may ever
count you as one of the first and nearest, and may God
bless you.--Believe me, Your always affectionately,
KATHARINE D. KING."
It was after this that he wrote the following description of his
friend:--
"There is no need of courage in the feminine woman,
and I love her for the fact. Yet my dear friend (now
removed by marriage) was a brave woman, and I loved
her for it against all my wont. Perhaps, because she
took me by surprise; perhaps because--who knows why?
She was not self-reliant with all her bravery, and I
suppose the combination made her real femininity the
more piquant. Perhaps it was rather her crystal truth
than the courage which (I think) came from it, not
caused it, that won me at sight. Truth--_integrity_ (or
_oneness_) _of nature_--is what calls to me."
In the matter of his close friendships, he wrote to Miss Agnes
Tobin,[55] a lover of his poetry and herself a translator of Petrarch's
sonnets:--
"Of what you say of me in relation to your spiritual
development I dare not trust myself to write, lest I
offend the modesty of words: it comes as a great prop
to a life very lonely of support."
Mrs. Vernon Blackburn is elsewhere named; but of other acquaintances
among women he had none, or only such as lasted during one or two
meetings. The Duchess of Sutherland's invitations were found retained
among his dusty papers like adventurous Sisters of Charity, stiff and
clean in the ragged company of a neglected correspondence, old pipes
and newspaper-cuttings.
The people he did not know yet counted for something in his history;
he has been associated with some he might have known, but did not, and
with others he could never have known. Oscar Wilde, on hearing some
of _Sister Songs_ read aloud, said, "Why can't I write poetry like
that? That is what I've wanted to do all my life." The two, however,
did not meet. In a letter from Mrs. Wilde, January 1895, I find, "I
so enjoyed Mr. Thompson's visit to me on Friday," and in another,
June 1894, "Oscar was quite charmed with the lines you read him of
Francis Thompson." "Of the living poets whose work I like, he is one
of the very few whom I like as well as their work," wrote Mr. Vincent
O'Sullivan after meeting him at about the same time.
Of the invitations he did not accept were those from Mrs. Louise
Chandler Moulton that he should sometimes go to her "for a quiet talk
_à deux_"; from Elliot and Fry that he should be photographed "in
his study"; from a _World_ writer that he should be interviewed as a
subject for one of the "Celebrities at Home."
In 1897 Mr. Lewis Hind found that the _Academy_ might welcome something
every week from Thompson, and wrote telling him so. Then he came into
touch, slowly as was his way, with the office staff. "I saw what I
concluded was Clarence Rook at the _Academy_ on Wednesday, but we did
not even exchange a look, for Hind did not introduce us. So I left
convinced that Hind meant to get out the _Academy_ by hook or by C.
Rook." From this time began his friendship with Mr. E. V. Lucas and Mr.
Wilfred Whitten. All these, along with the "management," learnt how to
smile on the trials provided by this contributor. Mr. Lucas is quoted
on an earlier page devoted to cricket. Mr. Whitten has written:--
"I first met Francis Thompson at the _Academy_ office
in Chancery Lane, in 1897, the year in which, with his
_New Poems_, he took farewell of poetry and began, I
fear, to look on life as so much dead lift, so much
needless postscript to his finished epistle. . . .
We gave Thompson as many books of theology, history,
biography, and, of course, poetry as he cared to
review. It was a usual thing, in reading the proofs,
for one of us to exclaim aloud on his splendid handling
of a subject demanding the best literary knowledge and
insight. Thompson came frequently to the office to
receive books for review, and to bring in his 'copy.'
Every visit meant a talk, which was never curtailed by
Thompson. This singer, who had soared to themes too
dazzling for all but the rarest minds; this poet of the
broken wing and the renounced lyre had not become moody
or taciturn. At his best he was a fluent talker, who
talked straight from his knowledge and convictions, yet
never for victory. He weighed his words, and would not
hurt a controversial fly. On great subjects he was slow
or silent; on trifles he became grotesquely tedious.
This dreamer seemed to be surprised into a kind of
exhilaration at finding himself in contact with small
realities. And then the fountains of memory would be
broken up, or some quaint corner of his _amour propre_
would be touched. He would explain nine times what
was clear, and talk about snuff or indigestion or the
posting of a letter until the room swam round us.
"A stranger figure than Thompson's was not to be seen
in London. Gentle in looks, half-wild in externals,
his face worn by pain and the fierce reactions of
laudanum, his hair and straggling beard neglected,
he had yet a distinction and an aloofness of bearing
that marked him in the crowd; and when he opened his
lips he spoke as a gentleman and a scholar. A cleaner
mind, a more naïvely courteous manner, were not to
be found. It was impossible and unnecessary to think
always of the tragic side of his life. He still had
to live and work in his fashion, and his entries
and exits became our most cheerful institution. His
great brown cape, which he would wear on the hottest
days, his disastrous hat, and his dozen neglects and
make-shifts were only the insignia of our 'Francis'
and of the ripest literary talent on the paper. No
money (and in his later years Thompson suffered more
from the possession of money than from the lack of it)
could keep him in a decent suit of clothes for long.
Yet he was never 'seedy.' From a newness too dazzling
to last, and seldom achieved at that, he passed at
once into a picturesque nondescript garb that was all
his own and made him resemble some weird pedlar or
packman in an etching by Ostade. This impression of him
was helped by the strange object--his fish-basket, we
called it--which he wore slung round his shoulders by a
strap. It had occurred to him that such a basket would
be a convenient receptacle for the books which he took
away for review, and he added this touch to an outward
appearance which already detached him from millions. . . .
He had ceased to make demands on life. He ear-marked
nothing for his own. As a reviewer, enjoying the run of
the office, he never pounced on a book; he waited, and
he accepted. Interested still in life, he was no longer
intrigued by it. He was free from both apathy and
desire. Unembittered, he kept his sweetness and sanity,
his dewy laughter, and his fluttering gratitude. In
such a man outward ruin could never be pitiable or
ridiculous, and, indeed, he never bowed his noble head
but in adoration. I think the secret of his strength
was this: that he had cast up his accounts with God and
man, and thereafter stood in the mud of earth with a
heart wrapt in such fire as touched Isaiah's lips."
He had no valet of whom to make a conquest; but a friendly editor, at
any rate, was at his feet, even when they were unpunctual. Mr. Lewis
Hind writes:--
"During the seven years that I edited the _Academy_,
I knew the poet intimately, seeing him two or three
times a week. It amused him to write articles, and to
know that his landlady was being paid, although such
matters were of no real importance to him; but the
weekly wage gave him pocket-money to buy the narcotics
of his choice, and that _was_ important.
"In memory I see him one miserable November afternoon
communing with the Seraphim, and frolicking with the
young-eyed Cherubim in Chancery Lane. The roads were
ankle-deep in slush; a thin, icy rain was falling; the
yellow fog enwrapped the pedestrians squelching down
the lane; and, going through them in a narrow-path, I
saw Francis Thompson, wet and mud-spattered. But he was
not unhappy. What is a day of unpleasant weather to one
who lives in eternity? His lips were moving, his head
was raised, his eyes were humid with emotion, for above
the roof of the Chancery Lane Safe Deposit Company, in
the murk of the fog, he saw beatific visions. They were
his reality, not the visible world.
"He was on his way to the office of the _Academy_
with the manuscript of a book review, and on his damp
back was slung the weather-worn satchel in which he
would carry away volumes for the ensuing week. A
Thompson article in _The Academy_ gave distinction to
the issue. What splendid prose it was! Reading the
proofs, we would declaim passages aloud for the mere
joy of giving utterance to his periods. He wrote a
series of articles on 'Poets as Prose Writers' which
must some day be recovered from the files; he wrote on
anything. I discovered that his interest in battles,
and the strategy of great commanders was as keen as his
concern with cricket. So the satchel was filled with
military memoirs, and retired generals ensconced in the
armchairs of service clubs wondered. Here was a man
who manipulated words as they manipulated men. Once or
twice in those seven years of our intercourse a flame
of his old poetic fire blazed out, and once I was able
to divert the flame into the pages of the _Academy_.
When Cecil Rhodes died I telegraphed to Thompson to
hasten to the office. That was on a Monday. He appeared
on the Tuesday. I asked him point blank if he would
write an ode on Cecil Rhodes for the next issue of
the paper, and without waiting for his refusal talked
Rhodes to him for half an hour, roused his enthusiasm,
and he departed with a half promise to deliver the ode
on Thursday morning. Thursday came and nearly passed.
I sent him three telegrams, but received no answer.
It was necessary to go to press at eight o'clock. At
half-past six he arrived, and proceeded to extract from
his pockets a dozen and more scraps of crumpled paper,
each containing a fragment of the ode. I pieced them
together, sent the blurred manuscript to the printers,
gave him money for his dinner, and exacted a promise
that he would return in an hour to read the proof. He
returned dazed and incoherent, read the proof standing
and swaying as he read, and murmured: 'It's all right.'
It was all right. I am prouder of having published
that ode than of anything else that the _Academy_ ever
contained. In 1904, when I resigned the editorship of
the _Academy_, we no longer met regularly; but I saw
Thompson at infrequent intervals at Mrs. Meynell's
house. He would come to dinner at any hour that suited
his mood, take his bite and sip, and pace the room with
a book in his hand, striking innumerable matches, never
keeping his pipe alight, rarely taking part in the
general conversation, but ever courteous and ever ready
to laugh at the slightest pleasantry."
[Illustration: "Mr Thompson of Fleet Street"
Drawn by Everard Meynell, 1903
Emery Walker Ph. sc.]
Of his editor, and to his editor, Thompson writes:--
"39 GOLDNEY ROAD, HARROW ROAD,
_Sunday Nigh.t_
"DEAR HIND,--Since I was betrayed so unfortunately into
putting a hasty definition into clumsy words, I beg to
be allowed to define my intended meaning--to define
my definition, in fact. I called you, I believe, 'a
man of the world with a taste for letters.' It would
be nearer my meaning if I had called you a man of
action with a love for letters--and art. Wilfrid Blunt,
Wyndham, &c., are examples of the class. I might also
say Henley. It is true that you no more than Henley
have ever been a man of action like Blunt or Wyndham.
Some more inclusive term is needed. The essential thing
is, that _life_ occupies the principal place in your
regard--not life as it should be lived, the ideal of
life in other words--but actual everyday life, 'life
as she _is_ lived.' This is foremost, letters or art
second. Raleigh and a host of the great Elizabethans
belonged to the same school. 'Man of action first' is
perhaps the nearest I can get to it. 'Man of the world'
is bungling because it bears so many significations.
Anyway, _now_, I hope, you have some idea of my
meaning. It was an antithesis between the pure thinker
and recluse, on one hand; the man interested in
action for its own sake, yet with a foothold in
letters, on the other.--Yours ever,
F. T."
Scruples in criticism, anxiety over ten shillings overdrawn from
the _Academy's_ cashier, and the imaginary coldness of his editor
in consequence, brought Mr. Wilfred Whitten letters a column long,
and though abbreviated (as most given in this book are), they are
sufficiently characteristic of a profuse manner:--
"DEAR HIND,--I muddled up the time altogether to-day.
How, I do not now understand. I started off soon
after 2. Thinking I had time for a letter to the
_Academy_ which it had been in my mind to write, I
delayed my journey to write it. When I was drawing to
a conclusion, I heard the clock strike 3 (as it seemed
to me). I thought I should soon be finished, so went on
to the end. A few minutes later, as it appeared, the
clock struck again, and I counted 4. Alarmed, I rushed
off--vexed that I should get in by half-past 4 instead
of half-past 3, as I intended--and finished the thing
in the train. I got to the _Academy_, and was struck
all of a heap. There was nobody there, and it was ten
past six! How I did it, I do not even now understand.
I will be with you in good time to-morrow. But that
cannot make amends to myself for such a _fiasco_ and
waste of time.--Yours,
F. T."
At other times his copy is late because he has no stamp; or, thinking
he has delivered an article, the next day he finds half of it still in
his pocket; but illness is his stand-by, his most robust excuse.
The two following letters tell of books lost on either side:--
"16 ELGIN AVENUE, W.
_November 2, 1897._
"MY DEAR HIND,--I will do as you wish about the
Crashaw. I think you are right, but in the absence of
any notification I kept to the stipulated length of two
columns.
"I received the letter you forwarded from Arthur Waugh;
but the book which should have accompanied it has not
been sent me. Will you please see what has become of
it, and have it forwarded at once. I am afraid it
may have got mixed with the books for review; and it
is a book I value, sent me as a gift by Waugh, in
recognition of my last 'Excursion.' Please let the
matter be looked into without delay.
"I am glad to hear that Wells has given you
well-deserved recognition in the _Saturday_.--Yours
sincerely,
FRANCIS THOMPSON.
"_P.S._--For fear of any confusion, I may add that
Waugh's book is a volume of 'Political Pamphlets,'
belonging to the same 'Library' as the volume noticed
in my last 'Excursion.'"
"DEAR HIND,--I regret exceedingly to find that the
Menpes was disposed of along with an accumulation
of back review books, nor can I get it back, for it
sold almost at once. I am very sorry it should have
happened; because it should not and would not have
been sold, had it not gone among others when I was
in a hurry, and my mind occupied only with the work
I had in hand. Of course, under such circumstances,
I hold myself responsible for replacing it as soon
as I can. Or if you cannot wait, I would suggest you
get the book and dock it out of my extra money. The
only alternative is for me to pick oakum (if they do
that in debtors' gaols). And I have not the talents
for oakum-picking. Though I enjoyed the distinguished
tuition of a burglar, who had gone through many
trials--and houses--in the pursuit of this little-known
art, I showed such mediocre capacity that the Master
did not encourage me to persevere. Besides, seeing how
overcrowded the profession is, it would be a pity for
me to take the oakum out of another man's fingers.
"Seriously, I am very upset that this should have
happened. I can think of nothing but what I have
suggested.--Yours sincerely,
F. THOMPSON."
"DEAR HIND,--I was taken sick on my way to the station,
not having been to bed all night, and having been
working a good part of to-day; and though I came on
as soon as I could pull myself together again, I was
too late. So I leave here the Dumas article, which I
brought with me, and will be down to-morrow morning,
when I am told you will be here.--Yours in haste,
F. THOMPSON.
"_P.S._--You had another very interesting article last
week; but I had qualms whether your art of artistic
romance, or of the Thing Seen, or the Thing which Ought
to have been Seen if it Wasn't, was taking me in again
with its realism more real than fact."
"DEAR HIND,--I was so unwell yesterday that I could
not come--neuralgia in the eye. I am the more sorry
because the Watson article was ready to bring with me,
as you desired. The acute pain drove it out of my head.
Nor could I see to write an explanation of my absence.
To-day, when I remembered the unsent article, I thought
it of course too late to be of use to you this week.
So, my eye being still weak, I decided to bring it
(not the eye) to-morrow, with personal explanation.
But getting your telegram I send it herewith. A really
fine Ode[56]--though close (in point of style) to
my 'Nineteenth Century' Ode in the _Academy_. Thorp
perceived it, without any 'lead' from me; so it is not
merely my own fancy. But it is, on the whole, a better
poem than the original. If all made such fine use of
the model, I would not mind imitation.--Yours in haste,
F. THOMPSON."
"16 ELGIN AVENUE, W.
_Monday._
"MY DEAR HIND,--I was taken very ill last week,
and was totally unable to get in my work for the
_Academy_. Having pulled round, I send you herewith the
Wordsworth, and trust to let you have the Fiona Macleod
in the course of to-morrow, or at any rate by Wednesday
morning by the latest.
"With regard to your request for articles on Shelley,
Browning, and Tennyson, I am sorry that, after careful
consideration, I must ask you to hand them over to
someone else. Considering the importance--the great
importance--of what I am asked to treat, I do not
feel that I could do justice either to my subject
or my own reputation within the limit of 1000 words
proposed. In the case of such minor men as Landor, or
even possibly Macaulay, I should not object to the
limitation--biographical details being omitted. But I
simply cannot pledge my name to a disposal of Tennyson
or Browning in about two columns. It would be a mere
clumsy spoiling of material which I might to greater
advantage use elsewhere. I could only undertake it on
the terms that the length of the article should be
determined by the organic exigencies of my treatment
alone. Of course I have never dreamed of anything
beyond five columns as what you could reasonably allow
me for important articles. If some have extended to
more, it has been the result of miscalculation, and
I should have quite acquiesced in your cutting such
excessive articles down.--Yours very sincerely,
FRANCIS THOMPSON."
Of the ethics of reviewing he writes at length, to the Editor:--
"I regret that--in pressure of work and
ill-health--Miss Frances Power Cobbe's letter, which
you forwarded me, has not received the immediate
attention which it deserved. I regret that my review
should strike her as a personal attack. But I cannot
see that it exceeded the limits of impartial criticism.
Miss Power Cobbe seems to imply that I in some way
found Miss Shore's poems 'morally objectionable.' I
am unaware of any sentence which could create such an
impression. For the rest, I was necessarily unaware
of Miss Shore's personal circumstances. I was not
even aware of its being her first book of poems. When
a book comes before a reviewer for criticism, he
cannot be expected to know or take account of personal
matters--of anything outside the book itself. Many
things might plead that he should be very gentle with
the author, but he has no knowledge of them. The book
is an impersonal thing to him; and the author who
publishes a book becomes impersonal, and must expect
to be treated as a mere name at the head of so many
printed pages; it is the inevitable consequence of
publication.
"The critic can but register his impressions, coldly
impartial by his very function. Did he abstain from
the blame he thought just, because (for example) of
the writer's sex, it would be equivalent to abdicating
criticism where women are concerned, extending the
privileges of the drawing-room to the reviewing-column.
But women of literary power would be the first to
protest against the insincerity of 'letting them off'
because of their sex."
But it may be judged that reviewing is not always so strict a
business:--
"16 ELGIN AVENUE, W.
_Saturday._
"MY DEAR HIND,--I have been very unwell for the last
two or three weeks, or your urgent requests should
have been better attended to. The Dunlop article was
finished on Monday week, when I got your letter from
Henley, and consequently had partly to re-write it.
And unluckily an attack of sickness which confined me
to bed prevented my getting it in yesterday, although
it was actually done. But I trust I am now much better
all round, and shall be able to give the _Academy_
proper attention. It is cutting my own throat for
me to neglect it, and you may be sure I should not
wilfully keep you waiting as I have done the last two
or three weeks. I trust I have met Henley's wishes in
the article as it now stands. I had no notion, to begin
with, that there was so much to do over the book; and
so I had treated it slightly. I will call in on Monday,
in case you have anything you might wish to say in
regard to it.
"With much regrets for my delay (but really I have been
having a pretty beastly time of it)--Yours sincerely,
FRANCIS THOMPSON."
This was no longer the Henley of the great time, when every issue of
the _Scots Observer_ contained a poem or essay fit to make a beginning
of fame for one of the "young men"; when this week the new cadences of
Mr. Kipling's "Barrack-Room Ballads" sent city readers swinging and
chanting back from their offices towards suburban sunset and supper.
Those contributors fronted a famous future, their organ observed of
all observers, their editor the instantaneous boisterous welcomer
of the talent that served his turn. All the precious persons of his
choice made the bluff figure of the chief the more defined. "I am the
Captain of my Soul" was his boast, but others knew him as the captain
of a newspaper staff. Famous for the young men he made his own, he is
here recalled for the young man he rejected. My father sent him a poem
by Francis Thompson which, consistently enough, he refused. Indocile,
he would probably still have resolution to refuse verses "reeking of
Shelley, whom I detest." It is proof of his perception that from the
first he knew the newcomer was no shipmate for the Captain Silver
of the literary weeklies. In the description of the lame pirate of
_Treasure Island_ the likening of his face to a ham suggests that the
image of the editor, more massive than those of any two contributors,
was before Stevenson as he wrote; pirate and editor had each a crutch,
and each threw it at an intruder. Thompson's words of Henley and his
last book impute to him, too, a Silver's grip:--
". . . We know exactly the best he has done, and resent
instinctively the slightest deflection from it. Well,
here there are such deflections--that is all which
can be said; and we feel them in exact proportion to
our love of the Henley who took us masterfully by the
throat of old. He still takes us by the throat, but
his grip is not compulsive. Yet now and again the old
mastery thrills us, and we remember. It is good to
remember."
And Henley on his side learnt to admire. Where the poet had failed,
the journalist writing about _The Centenary Burns_ had his strong
approval:--
"_March 7, 1897._
"DEAR HIND,--Thompson's article, which came in this
morning, is quite masterly throughout. The worst I can
say against it is, indeed, that it anticipates some
parts of my own terminal essay, so that I shall have to
quote it instead of writing out of my own stomach. All
manner of compliments to him, and a thousand thanks.
I know not which to admire the more: his critical
intelligence or his intellectual courage.
"To one point only must I take exception. The book
is referred to throughout as 'Mr. Henley's.' This
it is _not_; so, in justice to Henderson (who feels
the slight the more keenly because of the uncommon
brilliancy of the work) I must ask you to find room for
the protest herewith enclosed. . . .--Sincerely yours,
W. E. H."
Henley's half-capitulation shows a streak of unsuspected tolerance. F.
T. reeked of so many things, besides Shelley, that Henley detested.
The Burns article itself, to which Henley makes allusion, says
uncompromising things of Burns:--
"Imagination and tenderness demand either the
refinement of education or the refinement of pure and
sweet life. These things _might_ be in peasant song.
They are in the songs of the Dimbovitza, which are
higher as absolute poetry than anything within Burns'
compass. Not because these songs are the outcome of
greater genius, but because they are the outcome of a
healthier and sweeter rustic state; a state in which
the women were chaste and tender, the men brave and
sober. Burns could well have sung it had he known it."
Writing a year later, Henley, on the defensive, said:--
"MY DEAR HIND,--What a jackass is your F. Thompson! I
have never babbled the _Art for Art's Sake_ babble. If
I have, I'll eat the passage publicly. What I've said
is, the better the writer the better the poet: that, in
fact, good writing's better than bad. That is my only
formula, and that I'm no more likely to swallow than F.
T. is to write invariably well.--Yours ever sincerely,
W. E. HENLEY."
But Henley and Thompson were to make friends:--
"MY DEAR THOMPSON,--I saw Henley on Saturday. He
wants us to call on him next Friday afternoon. Will
you be here at three _sharp_? Henley said some very
nice things about you, and is quite anxious to meet
you. He also bids me say that he is looking forward
to your excursions on the Prophets. So do hurry
them up. He tells me that many of the lyrics in his
Anthology are from the Old Testament. This is _entre
nous_.--Sincerely yours,
LEWIS HIND."
His only encounter with the sage of Muswell Hill followed, but not at
three _sharp_. To his escort, Mr. E. V. Lucas and Mr. Hind, Henley was
the mighty overseer of men who had not found, save through him, their
journalistic souls. The escort still marvels at F. T.'s unpunctuality.
Francis owed neither his soul nor hours to any man, and was late. "I
have had no time to eat, Hind," was his gloomy beginning. Mr. Hind has
described what followed a meal at the station:--
"Suddenly he became rigid, his body swayed, and a film
came over his eyes. A minute or two passed; then he
recovered, lighted his pipe, and did not refer to the
episode. We arrived at Henley's house two hours late."
Doubtless his timorousness was as great as theirs, only his timeliness
was less. But it was he who fronted and appeased the wrathful master
with talk of "London Voluntaries" and Henley's influence. Instead of
reeking of Shelley he showed himself reeking of Henley, who was not
abhorrent. The escort were left well to the rear in flatteries no less
sincere than theirs. Thompson's admirations were always well set up
and bright-eyed because they were so well reasoned. No prepossessions,
whims, or sloths made up his opinion. No author was carelessly shelved
or unshelved; he did not put Swinburne aside although his angels and
Swinburne's never rested nor flew on the wing together. His attention
was widely inclusive. Often would he come with some cutting of
fugitive verse and tender it for what it was worth, reading it aloud
and expecting from his audience the controlled and properly adjusted
pleasure he himself experienced. So tolerant was he, that anybody's
complaint that there "was nothing in it," would cause him to reconsider
his cutting; the "anybody" of poetry or criticism was the recipient of
his constant courtesy. He was very slow--too slow for the short span
of his life to alter his allegiance to the literature that had ever
seriously contented him. The novels of Lord Lytton he read again at the
end of his life because he had early cared for them, and reasonably,
he found. So with Hardy; of one passage I remember him to have often
spoken with particular admiration--that in which Sergeant Troy thralls
a woman by sword play and the swinging of his flashing steel round and
round her person. So with Meredith, over whose novels I have found him
sitting in a Westbourne Grove confectioner's, with, I am sure, "review"
books unreviewed in his bag, and in his pocket telegrams from Hind. Of
Meredith's poetry his admiration was of the established sort that needs
no questioning. And Jacobs had his laugh, always readier than his tear,
for pathetic print is more liable to stand suspect on the page than
humorous. Whatever modern author he discussed it was his relish rather
than his distaste that flavoured his opinion.
Henley and he were amiable for an afternoon; but the difference between
them could hardly have been bridged for longer. The differences between
them were made up of crude difference of speech, of the actual lipping
of feelings and phrases. Thompson writes lightly in the following
note-book comment, but he is treading lightly because the ground
beneath quakes with radical conflict:--
"We are convinced Mr. H. has been misled by a false
report. It is the more probable because Spring, of late
years, has been flighty, and given rise to dissatisfied
comment. We are aware that C. P. has spoken of 'all
amorous May,' and yet another poet has gone so far
as to call the same lady 'wanton.' But 'the harlot
spring'--Captain, these be very bitter words. Why in
the name of wilfulness, why must poor Spring--of all
seasons, poor Spring--be a harlot? Even the author
of _Dolores_, with all his disrelish for 'lilies and
languors,' has not committed defloration of the poor
young maid--'the girl child Spring'; he leaves her as
he found her. If she escaped the dangerous society of
Mr. S. (whose verse would 'thaw the consecrated snow
that lies on Dian's lap') we cannot believe she should
later make this slip."
Of Henley's "fads, blindnesses, wilful crotchets" as also of his
critical prose, "the swift and restless brilliance of a leaping salmon
in the sunlight," F. T. wrote in the _Academy_ and brought, in doing
so, the thought to one's mind of his own dissimilarity.
Perhaps nowhere in all the thousand columns F. T. contributed to the
Press is a single wilful word. The unexpected must never be expected
of him. His views on the general literature of the past may be taken
for granted, or sought in their proper place. He will seldom be found
at variance with the accepted estimates. Perhaps only once does he
stand nearly alone. One of his earliest essays--"Bunyan in the Light
of Modern Criticism"--approved Mr. Richard Dowling's assault upon
_The Pilgrim's Progress_. Thompson could not tolerate the dulness and
insufficiency of Bunyan's descriptions:--
"In the account of the Valley of Despair he does
flicker into a meagre glimmer of description; but its
only effect is to leave the darkness of his fancy
visible, and he flickers feebly out again. The Mouth of
Hell is by the way; and, after his usual commonplace
manner of vision, he introduces this tremendous idea
with a dense flippancy, such as never surely was
accorded it before."
If he essayed other reversals of conventional opinion, he did so in
good faith. But one goes to his critical work, not for its consistent
good faith and sound sense, but for the few dominant, vital enthusiasms
that hold him and would have been written of, even if he had never
contributed to the papers. The "Shelley" has been quoted incidentally
in these pages; his "Crashaw," in its carefully critical tone, seems to
deny an admiration often obvious in Thompson's work. As a reviewer he
put by some of his impulsive affection. De Quincey and Patmore entered
into his life; to place them among the "reviewer's" authors would
be absurd. Rossetti's name got into Thompson's criticisms from every
quarter; it is in "Paganism Old and New," in the "Don Quixote," in
"Crashaw," and in a dozen other papers; it dogs de Quincey's in and out
of all the prose work.
He professed no learning, boasted no single proficiency. In a young
family that was finding its way about in journalism and painting and
other professions, he offered no unfriendly criticism, and seemed to
know of none. I wonderingly remember now how he let me help him in
an article on Hardy. At first there had been a difficulty about the
re-reading of the novels; "No, Wilfrid, it's no good. As I thought,
it's no good, Wilfrid," he had said after searching the shops of
Kilburn for the books he wanted. "Your own copies are gone--gone from
the shelves, and I've no way of procuring others." Even when supplied
with copies he needed help, and wrote, as I know from the printed
article, a thing of patchwork, with a centre-piece of his own well-knit
prose, and a beginning and end; the rest the bedraggled fringes, which
I recognise with reluctance as I read them now for my own.
His earlier admiration of Swinburne is restated with reserves in his
_Academy_ review of the collected works of that poet, of whom it was
rumoured that he disapproved of Thompson's liberties with the English
language. Many younger poets might have been made the happier had they
been aware whose was the pen that praised them in print. In _Hand in
Hand, Verses by a Mother and Daughter_, F. T. makes the discovery of a
sonnet with a last line that "is a touch of genius"--a sonnet by the
daughter, Mr. Rudyard Kipling's sister, and called "Love's Murderer."
Under the heading "Above Average," 1901, he deals with the books of Mr.
Aleister Crowley and Mr. Madison Cawein. Mr. Crowley he had reviewed
before. "The Mother's Tragedy" contains the "old vigour and boldness,
the sinewy phrase that draws the praise out of you." At less length
we read of Mr. Cawein, whose "strength lies in luxuriant descriptive
power. . . . Assuredly, in this single gift, Mr. Cawein shows very great
promise and no small accomplishment." He welcomes in the _Academy_ the
poetry of Mr. Sturge Moore, Mr. Alfred Noyes, and Lord Alfred Douglas;
and anticipating George Meredith, he praises Dora Sigerson Shorter for
her gifts of metrical narrative, adding: "Her ballads touch a deep and
poignant feeling. The unconsciousness of a child contrasted with the
sorrow of its earthly lot--this is a familiar theme, yet Mrs. Shorter
handles it with unfamiliar freshness and power." He pulls the ropes for
Mr. Newbolt's _Admirals All_; he ducks his head to Mr. Owen Seaman's
parodies. He gathers "the teeming felicities" from the _Studies in
Prose and Verse_ of Mr. Arthur Symons. F. T. was one of the few critics
who "lived by admiration." At the end of a day of reviewing he would
still have the spirit to cut occasional verses from his evening paper
and carry them for approbation to friends far quicker than he to shrug
fastidious shoulders.
Aubrey de Vere, a man mellow in ancient stateliness, he met at Palace
Court. The obituary notice of de Vere in the _Academy_ was written by
him. From the "Ode to the Daffodil" and "Autumnal Ode" he quotes enough
to justify, with reservation, a high admiration:--
"Of warmth he was capable, especially in his younger
days, but not of pathos or subtle suggestion. His
general manner, it must be owned, was somewhat coldly
grave. One of his odes is fine, with passages of
absolute grandeur; some of his sonnets are only not
among the best in that kind."
His appreciations were not ordered by papers committed to a policy of
praise. On the contrary, he wrote: "My editors complain that I don't
_go_ for people--that I am too lenient." For all that, he knew the
distress of the vapid verse that came his way, and he stopped to note
it in rhyme:--
Of little poets, neither fool nor seer,
Aping the larger song, let all men hear
How weary is our heart these many days!
Of bards who, feeling half the thing they say,
Say twice the thing they feel, and in such way
Piece out a passion . . .
* * * * *
Of bards indignant in an easy chair
(Because just so great bards before them were)
Who yet can only bring
With all their toil
Their kettle of verse to sing,
But never boil,--
How weary is our heart these many days!
But the solace he had to the drudgery of reviewing was generally
ancient. When he could set to and write a solid _Academy_ page on
the "clod-paced Drayton," note the sluggishness of "his thick-coming
ideas in the strait pen of a defined stanza," chaff him for the room
he needs to turn about in, and cry "hear, hear!" to his minor metres,
he was doing lively work and was lively at it. Or when Samuel Daniel
comes up for judgment, the critic is manifestly happy--happier than
in the presence of Mr. Maurice Hewlett or Mr. Kipling. A review of
an Elizabethan is touched with a quicker interest than that of the
weightiest in contemporary literature. The evenness of his judgment,
the unbiassed distribution of his attention makes for fairness, but
somewhat spoils the current and local effectiveness. He enjoyed getting
at Butler's wit more than getting at Oscar Wilde's. _Hudibras_ was a
book of the moment for him, whereas _The Yellow Book_ was not. St.
Francis de Sales might tempt him on a bookstall, but he never bought
a new work. D'Annunzio and publishers' announcements did not catch his
pennies; nor were his borrowings much more modern. The authors he had
from my shelves were Swedenborg and Shakespeare, with W. W. Jacobs, in
whose jolly company he spent a few of the last hours of his life.
FOOTNOTES:
[55] To this lady's "genius for friendship" the dedication of Mr.
Joseph Conrad's _Under Western Eyes_ bears witness.
[56] William Watson's on the Coronation of Edward VII.