Distressed as I was at her words, that inflexible look on her face I understood only too well. 'But there is Mr. D'Arcy to consider,' I said. 'Winnie tells me that it is the particular wish of Mr. D'Arcy that you and she should return to him at Hurstcote Manor. He has been wonderfully kind, and his wishes should be complied with.'

'No, brother,' said Sinfi, 'I shall never go to Hurstcote Manor no more.'

'Surely you will, Sinfi. Winnie tells me of the deep regard that Mr. D'Arcy has for you.'

'Never no more. Winifred's dukkeripen on Snowdon has come true, and it wur me what made it come true. Yis, it wur Sinfi Lovell and nobody else what made that dukkeripen come true.'

And again her face was illuminated by the triumphant expression which it wore when she returned to Knockers' Llyn with Winnie.

'It was indeed your noble self-sacrifice for Winnie and me that made the dukkeripen of the Golden Hand come true.'

'It worn't all for you and Winnie, Hal. I ain't a-goin' to let you think better on me than I desarve. It wur partly for you, and it wur partly for my dear mammy, and it wur partly for myself. Listen to me, Hal Aylwin. When I made Winnie's dukkeripen come true I made my own dukkeripen come to naught at the same time. The only way to make a dukkeripen come to naught is to make another dukkeripen what conterdicks it come true. That's the only way to master a dukkeripen. It ain't often that Romanies or Gorgios or anything that lives can master his own dukkeripen. I've been thinkin' a good deal about sich things since I took that cuss on me. Night arter night have I laid awake thinkin' about these 'ere things, and, brother, I believe I have done what no livin' creatur ever done before—I've mastered my own dukkeripen. My mammy used to say that the dukkeripen of every livin' thing comes true at last. "Is there anythink in the whole world," she would say, "more crafty nor one o' those old broad-finned trouts in Knockers' Llyn? But that trout's got his dukkeripen, an' it comes true at last. All day long he's p'raps bin a-flashin' his fins an' a-twiddlin' his tail round an' round the may-fly or the brandlin' worrum, though he knows all about the hook; but all at wonst comes the time o' the bitin', and that's the time o' the dukkeripen, when every fish in the brook, whether he's hungry or not, begins to bite, an' then up comes old red-spots, an' grabs at the bait because he must grab, an' swallows it because he must swallow it; an' there's a hend of old red-spots jist as sure as if he didn't know there wur a hook in the bait." That's what my mammy used to say. But there wur one as could, and did, master her own dukkeripen—Shuri Lovell's little Sinfi.'

'You have mastered your dukkeripen, Sinfi?' 'Yes, I've mastered mine,' she said, with the same look of triumph on her face—'I swore I'd master my dukkeripen, brother, an' I done it. I said to myself the dukkeripen is strong, but a Romany chi may be stronger still if she keeps a-sayin' to herself "I WILL master it; I WILL, I WILL."'

'Then that explains something I have often noticed, Sinfi. I have often seen your lips move and nothing has come from them but a whisper, "I will, I will, I will."'

'Ah, you've noticed that, have you? Well then, now you know what it meant.'

'But, Sinfi, you have not told me what your dukkeripen is. You have often alluded to it, but you have never allowed me even to guess what it is.'

Sinfi's face beamed with pride of triumph.

'You never guessed it? No, you never could guess it. An' months an' months have we lived together an' you heard me whisper "I will, I will," an' you never guessed what them words meant. Lucky for you, my fine Gorgio, that you didn't guess it,' she said, in an altered tone.

'Why?'

''Cos if you had a-guessed it you'd ha' cotch'd a left-hand body-blow that 'ud most like ha' killed you. That's what you'd ha' cotch'd. But now as we're a-goin' to part for ever I'll tell you.'

'Part for ever, Sinfi?'

'Yis, an' that's why I'm goin' to tell you what my dukkeripen wur. Many's the time as you've asked me how it was that, for all that you and I was pals, I hate the Gorgios in a general way as much as Rhona Boswell likes 'em. I used to like the Gorgios wonst as well as ever Rhona did—else how should I ever ha' been so fond o' Winnie Wynne? Tell me that,' she said, in an argumentative way as though I had challenged her speech. 'If I hadn't ha' liked the Gorgios wonst, how should I ha' been so fond o' Winnie Wynne? An' why don't I like Gorgios now? Many's the time you've ax'd me that question, an' now's the time for me to tell you. I know'd the time 'ud come, an' this is the time to tell you, when you and me and Winnie are a-goin' to part for ever at the top o' the biggest mountain in the world, this 'ere blessed Snowdon, as allus did seem somehow to belong to her an' me. When I wur fond o' the Gorgios,—fonder nor ever Rhona Boswell wur at that time ('cos she hadn't never met then with the Gorgio she's a-goin' to die for),—it wur when I war a little chavi, an' didn't know nothink about dukkeripens at all; but arterwards my mammy told my dukkeripen out o' the clouds, an' it wur jist this: I wur to beware o' Gorgios, 'cos a Gorgio would come among the Kaulo Camloes an' break my heart. An' I says to her, "Mammy dear, afore my heart shall break for any Gorgio I'll cut it out with this 'ere knife," an' I draw'd her knife out o' her frock an' put it in my own, and here it is.' And Sinfi pulled out her knife and showed it to me. 'An' now, brother, I'm goin' to tell you somethink else, an' what I'm goin' to tell you'll show we're goin' to part for ever an' ever. As sure as ever the Golden Hand opened over Winnie Wynne's head an' yourn on Snowdon, so sure did I feel that you two 'ud be married, even when it seemed to you that she must he dead. An' as sure as ever my mammy said I must beware o' Gorgios, so sure was I that you wur the very Gorgio as wur to break the Romany chi's heart—if that Romany chi's heart hadn't been Sinfi Lovell's. You hadn't been my pal long afore I know'd that. Arter I had been with you a-lookin' for Winnie or fishin' in the brooks, many's the time, when I lay in the tent with the star-light a-shinin' through the chinks in the tent's mouth, that I've said to myself, "The very Gorgio as my mother seed a-comin' to the Lovells when she penned my dukkerin, he's asleep in his livin'-waggin not five yards off." That's what made me seem so strange to you at times, thinkin' o' my mammy's words, an' sayin' "I will, I will." An' now, brother, fare you well.'

'But you must bid Winnie good-bye,' I said, as I saw her returning.

'Better not,' said she. 'You tell her I've changed my mind about goin' to Carnarvon. She'll think we shall meet again, but we sha'n't. Tell her that they expect you and her at the inn at Llanberis. Rhona will be there to-night with Winnie's clo'es and things.'

'Sinfi,' I said, 'I cannot part from you thus. I should be miserable all my days. No man ever had such a noble, self-sacrificing friend as you. I cannot give you up. In a few days I shall go to the tents and see you and Rhona, and my old friends, Panuel and Jericho; I shall indeed, Sinfi. I mean to do it.'

'No, no,' cried Sinfi; 'everythink says "No" to that; the clouds an' the stars says "No," an' the win' says "No," and the shine and the shadows says "No," and the Romany Sap says "No." An' I shall send your livin'-waggin away, reia; yis, I shall send it arter you, Hal, and your two beautiful gries; an' I shall tell my daddy—as never conterdicks his chavi in nothink, 'cos she's took the seein' eye from Shuri Lovell—I shall tell my dear daddy as no Gorgio and no Gorgie, no lad an' no wench as ever wur bred o' Gorgio blood an' bones, mustn't never live with our breed no more. That's what I shall tell my dear daddy; an' why? an' why? 'cos that's what my mammy comes an' tells me every night, wakin' an' sleepin'—that's what she comes an' tells me, reia, in the waggin an' in the tent, an' aneath the sun an' aneath the stars—an' that's what the fiery eyes of the Romany Sap says out o' the ferns an' the grass, an' in the Londra streets, whenever I thinks o' you. "The kair is kushto for the kairengro, but for the Romany the open air." [Footnote] That's what my mammy used to say.'

[Footnote: The house is good for the house-dweller, the open air for the Gypsy.]

She then left me and descended the path to Capel Curig, and was soon out of sight.



XVIII

THE WALK TO LLANBERIS

When, on coming to rejoin us, Winnie learnt that Sinfi had left for Capel Curig, she seemed at first somewhat disconcerted, I thought. Her training, begun under her aunt, and finished under Miss Dalrymple, had been such that she was by no means oblivious of Welsh proprieties; and, though I myself was entirely unable to see in what way it was more eccentric to be mountaineering with a lover than with a Gypsy companion, she proposed that we should follow Sinfi.

'I have seen your famous living-waggon,' she said. 'It goes wherever the Lovells go. Let us follow her. You can stay at Bettws or Capel Curig, and I can stay with Sinfi.'

I told her how strong was Sinfi's wish that we should not do so. Winnie soon yielded her point, and we began leisurely our descent westward, along that same path which Sinfi and I had taken on that other evening, which now seemed so far away, when we walked down to Llanberis with the setting sun in our faces. If my misery could then only find expression in sighs and occasional ejaculations of pain, absolutely dumb was the bliss that came to me now, growing in power with every moment, as the scepticism of my mind about the reality of the new heaven before me gave way to the triumphant acceptance of it by my senses and my soul.

The beauty of the scene—the touch of the summer breeze, soft as velvet even when it grew boisterous, the perfume of the Snowdonian flowerage that came up to meet us, seemed to pour in upon me through the music of Winnie's voice which seemed to be fusing them all. That beloved voice was making all my senses one.

'You leave all the talk to me,' she said. But as she looked in my face her instinct told her why I could not talk. She knew that such happiness and such bliss as mine carry the soul into a region where spoken language is not.

Looking round me towards the left, where the mighty hollow of Cwm Dyli was partly in sunshine and partly in shade, I startled Winnie by suddenly calling out her name. My thoughts had left the happy dream of Winifred's presence and were with Sinfi Lovell. As I looked at the tall precipices rising from the chasm right up to the summit of Snowdon, I recalled how Sinfi, notwithstanding her familiarity with the scene, appeared to stand appalled as she gazed at the jagged ridges of Crib-y-Ddysgyl, Crib Goch, Lliwedd, and the heights of Moel Siabod beyond. I recalled how the expression of alarm upon Sinfi's features had made me almost see in the distance a starving girl wandering among the rocks, and this it was that made me now exclaim 'Winnie!' With this my lost power of speech returned.

We went to the ruined huts where Sinfi had on that memorable day lingered by the spring, and Winnie began to scoop out the water with her hand and drink it. She saw how I wanted to drink the water out of the little palm, and she scooped some out for me, saying, 'It's the purest, and sweetest, and best water on Snowdon.'

'Yes,' I said, 'the purest, and sweetest, and best water in the world when drunk from such a cup.'

She drew her hand away and let the water drop through her fingers, and turned round to look at the scene we had left, where the summit of Snowdon was towering beyond a reach of rock, bathed in the rapidly deepening light.

'No idle compliments between you and me, sir,' she said, with a smile. 'Remember that I have still time and strength to go back to the top and follow Sinfi down to the camp.'

And then we both laughed together, as we laughed that afternoon in Wilderness Road when she enunciated her theories upon the voices of men and the voices of birds. She then stood gazing abstractedly into a pool of water, upon which the evening lights were now falling. As I saw her reflected in the surface of the stream, which was as smooth as a mirror—saw her reflected there sometimes on an almost colourless surface, sometimes amid a procession in which every colour of the rainbow took part, I sighed. 'Why do you sigh?' said she.

I could not tell her why, for I was recalling Wilderspin's words about her matchless beauty and its inspiring effect upon the painter who painted it. It would indeed, as Wilderspin had said, endow mediocrity with genius.

'Why do you sigh?' she repeated.

'Oh, if I could paint that, Winnie, if I could paint that picture in the water.'

'And why should you not?' she said, in a dreamy way. And then a sudden thought seemed to strike her, and she said with much energy, 'Become a painter, Henry! Become a painter! No man ever yet satisfied a true woman who did not work—work hard at something—anything—if not in the active affairs of life, in the world of art. My love you must always have now—you must always have it under any circumstances. I could not help under any circumstances giving you love. But I fear I could not give a rich, idle man—even if he were Henry himself—enough love to satisfy a yearning like yours.'

She bent her face again over the water, and looked at the picture.

'You have often told me that my face is beautiful, Henry, and you know you never could make me believe it. But suppose you should be right after all, and suppose that you were a painter, and used it for a picture of the Spirit of Snowdon, I should then thank God for having given me a beautiful face, for it would enable you to win your goal. And afterwards, when its beauty had passed away, as it soon would, I should have no further need for beauty, for my painter-husband would, partly through me, have won.'

As we walked along, she pointed to the tubular bridge over the Menai Straits and to the coast of Anglesey. The panorama had that fairy-like expression which belongs so peculiarly to Welsh scenery. Other mountainous countries in Europe are beautiful, and since that divine walk I have become intimately acquainted with them, but for associations romantic and poetic, there is surely no land in the world equal to North Wales.

'Do you remember, Winnie,' I murmured, 'when you so delighted me by exclaiming, "What a beautiful world it is!"?'

'Ah, yes,' said Winnie, 'and how I should love to paint its beauty. The only people I really envy are painters.'

We were now at the famous spot where the triple echo is best heard, and we began to shout like two children in the direction of Llyn Ddu'r Arddu. And then our talk naturally fell on Knockers' Llyn and the echoes to be heard there. She then took me to another famous sight on this side of Snowdon, the enormous stone, said to be five thousand tons in weight, called the Knockers' Anvil. While we lingered here Winnie gave me as many anecdotes and legends of this stone as would fill a little volume. But suddenly she stopped.

'Look!' she said, pointing to the sunset. 'I have seen that sight only once before. I was with Sinfi. She called it "the Dukkeripen of the Trushul."'

The sun was now on the point of sinking, and his radiance, falling on the cloud-pageantry of the zenith, fired the flakes and vapoury films floating and trailing above, turning them at first into a ruby-coloured mass, and then into an ocean of rosy fire. A horizontal bar of cloud which, until the radiance of the sunset fell upon it, had been dull and dark and grey, as though a long slip from the slate quarries had been laid across the west, became for a moment a deep lavender colour, and then purple, and then red-gold. But what Winnie was pointing at was a dazzling shaft of quivering fire where the sun had now sunk behind the horizon. Shooting up from the cliffs where the sun had disappeared, this shaft intersected the bar of clouds and seemed to make an irregular cross of deep rose.

When Winnie turned her eyes again to mine I was astonished to see tears in them. I asked her what they meant. She said, 'While I was looking at that cross of rose and gold in the clouds it seemed to me that there came on the evening breeze the sound of a sob, and that it was Sinfi's, my sister Sinfi's; but of course by this time Snowdon stands between us and her.'



POSTSCRIPT

In every case where I have brought into this story facts connected with medical matters, I have been most cautious to avail myself of the authority of medical men. I will give here the words of Mr. James Douglas upon this matter. After stating the fact that the story was in part dictated to my dear friend Dr. Gordon Hake during a stay with him at Roehampton, he says:—

Dr. Hake is mainly known as the 'parable poet,' but as a fact he was a physician of extraordinary talent who had practised first at Bury St. Edmunds and afterwards at Spring Gardens, London, until he partly retired to be private physician to the late Lady Ripon. After her death he left practice altogether in order to devote himself to literature, for which he had very great equipments. As Aylwin touched upon certain subtle nervous phases, it must have been a great advantage to the author to dictate these portions of the story to so skilled and experienced a friend. The rare kind of cerebral exaltation into which Henry Aylwin passed after his appalling experience in the cove, in which the entire nervous system was disturbed, was not what is known as brain fever. The record of it in Aylwin is, I understand, a literal account of a rare and wonderful case brought under the professional notice of Dr. Hake.

But I am now going to touch upon a much more important medical subject. Since the appearance of Aylwin, I have received many letters enquiring whether the transmission of hysteria from one patient to another by means of a magnet is an imaginary experiment, or whether it is based on fact. It has been impossible for me to answer all these letters. But some of them, coming from loving relatives of those who have suffered from hysteria, have been couched in such earnest and pathetic words that they could not be left unanswered, and this has caused me great inconvenience. I have therefore determined to give the reader some tangible data upon this subject. The extract from the Daily Telegraph which appears on page 465 is a real extract, and records a real case of transmission of hysteria. Upon the same subject I take the following admirable remarks from an article in the Quarterly Review for July 1890, called 'Mesmerism and Hypnotism.'

The Influence of Magnets.—We have briefly referred to the action of magnets on the muscles in speaking of the physiological phenomena, but they possess other properties which hardly come under that head. They have the power of attracting hypnotised subjects. Thus, if a good-sized magnet is placed at some little distance from the subject, and behind a screen so that he cannot see it, after a time he will get up and go towards it. If now another magnet be placed at an equal distance behind him, he will stop and remain as it were balanced between the two. By withdrawing one or other he can be drawn backwards or forwards. Further, he can be charged with magnetism by placing near him a large magnet with five ends. If it be suddenly removed and hidden in another room, he is impelled to follow it with such force that he will fling aside all obstacles in his way, and tracking it step by step will walk straight up to it. 'Once he sights it, he either remains in dumb contemplation of it in front of its two poles, or else lays his hands on both of the poles with a kind of profound satisfaction.' These experiments with magnets are very exhausting.

* * * * *

Finally, if the senses can be so heightened as in the cases already cited from Braid and the clinique of La Salpetriere, it requires no great stretch of imagination to suppose them carried still further until they become comparable to those inexplicable faculties which we call instinct in animals, that for instance by which animals—cats, dogs, and sheep—can find their way home, sometimes over hundreds of miles of unknown country.

Concerning the faculty of presensation, it is worth while to say a little more. The early mesmerists made a great point of the power of some patients to diagnose the condition of another. Dr. Puysegur's patient Joly, mentioned above, possessed the faculty to an unusual degree. He was an educated man, of good position, and could express himself intelligibly:—

C'est une sensation veritable que j'eprouve dans un endroit correspondant a la partie qui souffre chez celui que je touche: ma main va naturellement se porter a l'endroit de son mal, et je ne peux pas plus m'y tromper que je ne pourrois le faire en portant ma main ou je souffrirois moi-meme.

Now, the following experiment has been carried out by Charcot at La Salpetriere. A young girl suffering from hysterical hemiplegia (paralysis of one side) came up one day from the country. She was placed in a chair behind a screen and a hypnotic patient sent for from the wards. The latter was placed on the other side of the screen and hypnotised. Neither of the patients was aware of the other's presence. At the end of a minute the hypnotised patient was found to have acquired the other's hemiplegia. The experiment was repeated every day, and in four days the new comer was relieved of her trouble, which had lasted over a year. The same experiment was tried in many cases, and always succeeded, although in some of them the affections imitated were of a very complex character, such as paralysis of half the tongue. With these facts in view, the alleged experiences of the older mesmerists appear by no means impossible.



APPENDICES

I. IN DEFENCE OF A GREAT AND BELOVED POET WHOSE CHARACTER IS DELINEATED IN THIS STORY.

II. A KEY TO "AYLWIN," BY THOMAS ST. E. HAKE, REPRINTED FROM "NOTES AND QUERIES."



APPENDIX I

D. G. R.

Thou knewest that island, far away and lone, Whose shores are as a harp, where billows break In spray of music and the breezes shake O'er spicy seas a woof of colour and tone, While that sweet music echoes like a moan In the island's heart, and sighs around the lake, Where, watching fearfully a watchful snake. A damsel weeps upon her emerald throne.

Life's ocean, breaking round thy senses' shore, Struck golden song, as from the strand of Day: For us the joy, for thee the fell foe lay— Pain's blinking snake around the fair isle's core, Turning to sighs the enchanted sounds that play Around thy lovely island evermore.

Certain remarks that have been made upon the character of D'Arcy in Aylwin have rendered it an imperative—nay, a sacred—duty for the author to seize an opportunity that may never occur again of saying here a few words upon the subject.

It is universally acknowledged that characters in fiction are not creations projected from the author's inner consciousness, but are founded more or less upon characters that he was brought into contact with in real life.

Mr. A. C. Benson, in his monograph on D. G. Rossetti, in English Men of Letters, says, 'It was for a long time hoped that Mr. Watts-Dunton would give the memoir of his great friend to the world, but there is such a thing as knowing a man too well to be his biographer. It is, however, an open secret that a vivid sketch of Rossetti's personality has been given to the world in Mr. Watts-Dunton's well-known romance Aylwin, where the artist D'Arcy is drawn from Rossetti.'

Since the appearance of these words many people who take an increasing interest in the most mysterious and romantic figure in the artistic world of the mid-Victorian period, have urged the author to tell them whether the portrait of Rossetti in Aylwin is a true one, or whether it is not idealized as certain cynical critics have affirmed. Nothing but the dread of being charged with egotism has prevented the author's stating publicly, and once for all, that the portrait of Rossetti in Aylwin showing him to be the creature of varying moods, gay and even frolicsome at one moment, profoundly meditative at the next, deeply dejected at the next, but always the most winsome of men, is true to the life. It is more than hinted in the story that D'Arcy's melancholy was the result of the loss of one he deeply loved. From such a loss it was that Rossetti's melancholy moods resulted. There are documentary evidences of the verisimilitude of the picture in every respect. Let one be given out of many. There exists a pathetic record that has never yet been published, by one who knew Rossetti—knew him with special intimacy—the poet Swinburne—depicting the great tragedy which darkened Rossetti's life—the loss of his wife.

It gives the only authorized account of that tragedy—a tragedy which ever since the publication of William Bell Scott's Autobiographical Notes has been so grievously misunderstood and misrepresented. In this narrative Swinburne tells how, when first introduced to Rossetti, he himself was an Oxford undergraduate of twenty. He records how he and Rossetti had lived on terms of affectionate intimacy: shaped and coloured on Rossetti's side by the cordial kindness and exuberant generosity which, to the last, distinguished his recognition of younger men's efforts: on his (Swinburne's) part by gratitude as loyal and admiration as fervent as ever strove and ever failed to express 'all the sweet and sudden passion of youth towards greatness in its elder.' He records how, during that year, he had come to know, and to regard with little less than a brother's affection, the noble lady whom Rossetti had recently married. He records how on the evening of her terrible death, they all three had dined together at a restaurant which Rossetti had been accustomed to frequent. He records how next morning, on coming by appointment to sit for his portrait, he heard that she had died in the night, under circumstances which afterwards made necessary his (Swinburne's) appearance and evidence at the inquest held on her remains. He dwells upon the anguish of the widower, when next they met, under the roof of the mother with whom he had sought refuge. He records how Rossetti appealed to his friendship in the name of the dead lady's regard for him—a regard such as she had felt for no other of Rossetti's friends—to cleave to him in this time of sorrow, to come and keep house with him as soon as a residence could be found.

Can there be a more convincing and a more beautiful testimony as to a friend's sorrow and its cause?

Over and above the touching testimony of Swinburne, no one will deny that if ever one man knew another too well to be his biographer, as Mr. Benson says, the author of Aylwin was that man with regard to Rossetti. No one has ever ventured to challenge the assertion in the article on Rossetti in the Encyclopaedia Britannica that there was a time when with the exception of his own family the poet-painter saw scarcely any one save the writer of this book, whom he was never tired of designating his friend of friends. There is no need to multiply instances of this friendship, which has been enlarged upon by Rossetti's brother, and by many others. Elizabeth Luther Gary, in the best of all the books upon Rossetti, published by G. P. Putnam's Sons two years after the first edition of Aylwin, speaks of D'Arcy as being 'the mouthpiece of Rossetti.'

It may be added that Rossetti's Ballads and Sonnets, published in 1882, were dedicated to the author in these words: 'To the Friend whom my verse won for me, these few more pages are affectionately inscribed.' When he drew his last breath at Birchington it was in that friend's arms. It is necessary to dwell upon such facts as the above to show how fully equipped is the author of Aylwin for understanding and depicting the great poet-painter, to whose memory he addressed the sonnet at the head of this note.

As to the personality of Rossetti, to which Mr. Benson alludes, to say that it was the one that stood out among the lives of the Victorian poets is to state the case very feebly. It has been the fortune of the delineator of D'Arcy to be thrown intimately across several of the great poets of his time, not one of whom displayed a personality so dominant as Rossetti's. Fine as is Rossetti's poetry and fine as are his paintings, they but inadequately represent the man. As to his personal fascination, among all the poets of England we have no record of anything equal to it. It asserted itself not only in relation to the pre-Raphaelite group, but in relation to all other members of society with whom he was brought into contact. To describe the magnetism of such a man is, of course, impossible. Much has been written upon what is called the demonic power in certain individuals—the power of casting one's own influence over all others. Napoleon's case is generally instanced as a typical one. But Napoleon's demonic power was of a self-conscious kind. It would seem, however, that there is another kind of demonic power—the power of shedding quite unconsciously one's personality upon all brought into contact with it. The demonic power of Rossetti, like that of D'Arcy in this story, was quite unconscious. In Rossetti's presence, as in D'Arcy's, it was impossible not to yield to this strange, mysterious power. At the time when he was not so entirely reclusive as he afterwards became, when he used to meet all sorts of people, the author had many opportunities of noticing its effect upon others. He has seen them try to resist it, and in vain. On a certain occasion a very eminent man, much used to society, and much used to the brilliant literary clubs of London, was quite cowed and silenced before Rossetti. It is necessary to dwell upon these subtle distinctions, because this is the D'Arcy who, as a critic has remarked, 'is the real protagonist of Aylwin—although the reader does not discover it until the very end of the story, where D'Arcy is the character who unravels and explains all.' Without D'Arcy, indeed, and the demonic power possessed by him, the story would have no existence.

It is, of course, in the illustrated editions of Aylwin that D'Arcy's identification with Rossetti and his importance in the story become specially manifest. On page 204 of the illustrated editions an exact picture has been given by Rossetti's pupil, Dunn, of the famous studio at 16 Cheyne Walk—the studio which will always be associated with Rossetti's name. It has been immortalized by his friend, Dr. Gordon Hake, in the following lines addressed to the author of Aylwin in the sonnet-sequence, The New Day:

Sitting with him, his tones as Petrarch's tender, With many a speaking vision on the wall, The fire, a-blaze, flashing the studio fender, Closed in from London shouts and ceaseless brawl— Twas you brought Nature to the visiting, Till she herself seemed breathing in the room, And Art grew fragrant in the glow of Spring With homely scents of gorse and heather bloom. Or sunbeams shone by many an Alpine fountain, Fed by the waters of the forest stream; Or glacier-glories in the rock-girt mountain, Where they so often fed the poet's dream; Or else was mingled the rough billow's glee With cries of petrels on a sullen sea.

Again on page 393 of the same editions will be found Miss May Morris's beautiful water colour of Kelmscott Manor, the country-house jointly occupied by Rossetti and William Morris in which takes place what has been called 'the crucial scene in Aylwin.'



APPENDIX II

So many questions about the characters depicted in Aylwin were put to the editor of Notes and Queries that he suggested that a key to the novel would he found acceptable. Some weeks after this suggestion was made there appeared in that journal (7th June 1902) the following contribution by Mr. Thomas St. E. Hake, an intimate friend of Rossetti, and of other leading characters of the story. The republication of it here has been kindly sanctioned by Mr. J. C. Francis, a name so indissolubly associated both with the Athenaeum and Notes and Queries. Mr. Hake writes as follows:

Ever since the publication of Aylwin I have, at various times, seen in Notes and Queries, the Daily Chronicle, the Contemporary Review, and other organs, inquiries as to the identification of the characters that appear in that story. And now that an inquiry comes from so remote a place as Libau in Russia, I think I may come forward and say what I know on the subject. But, of course, within the limited space that could possibly be allotted to me in Notes and Queries, I can only say a few words on a subject that would require many pages to treat adequately. Until Aylwin appeared, Mr. Joseph Knight's monograph on Rossetti in the 'Great Writers' series was, with the sole exception of what has been written about him by his own family and by my late father, Dr. Gordon Hake, in his Memoirs of Eighty Years, the only account that gave the reader the least idea of the man—his fascination, his brilliance, his generosity, and his whimsical qualities. But in Aylwin Rossetti lives as I knew him; it is impossible to imagine a more living picture of the man. I have stayed with Rossetti at 16 Cheyne Walk for weeks at a time, and at Bognor also, and at Kelmscott—the 'Hurstcote' of Aylwin. With regard to 'Hurstcote,' I well knew 'the large bedroom with low-panelled walls and the vast antique bedstead made of black carved oak' upon which Winifred Wynne slept. In fact, the only thing in the description of this room that I do not remember is the beautiful Madonna and Child upon the frame of which was written 'Chiaro dell' Erma' (readers of Hand and Soul will remember that name). This quaint and picturesque bedroom leads by two or three steps to the tapestried room 'covered with old faded tapestry—so faded, indeed, that its general effect was that of a dull grey texture'—depicting the story of Samson. Rossetti used the tapestry room as a studio, and I have seen in it the very same pictures that so attracted the attention of Winifred Wynne: the 'grand brunette' (painted from Mrs. Morris) 'holding a pomegranate in her hand'; the 'other brunette, whose beautiful eyes are glistening and laughing over the fruit she is holding up' (painted from the same famous Irish beauty named Smith who appears in The Beloved), and the blonde 'under the apple blossoms' (painted from a still more beautiful woman—Mrs. Stillman). These pictures were not permanently placed there, but, as it chanced, they were there (for retouching) on a certain occasion when I was visiting at Kelmscott. With regard to the green room in which Winifred took her first breakfast at 'Hurstcote' I am a little in confusion. It seems to me more like the green dining-room in Cheyne Walk, decorated with antique mirrors, which was painted by Dunn, showing Rossetti reading his poems aloud. This is the only portrait of Rossetti that really calls up the man before me. As Mr. Watts-Dunton is the owner of Dunn's drawing, and as so many people want to see what Rossetti's famous Chelsea house was like inside, it is a pity he does not give it as a frontispiece to some future edition of Aylwin. Unfortunately, Mr. G. F. Watts's picture, now in the National Portrait Gallery, was never finished, and I never saw upon Rossetti's face the dull, heavy expression which that portrait wears. I think the poet told me that he had given the painter only one or two sittings. As to the photographs, none of them is really satisfactory.

The 'young gentleman from Oxford who has been acting as my secretary,' as mentioned in Aylwin, was my brother. [Footnote] With regard to the two circular mirrors surrounded by painted designs telling the story of the Holy Grail, 'in old black oak frames carved with knights at tilt,' I do not remember seeing these there. But they are evidently the mirrors decorated with copies of the lost Holy Grail frescoes once existing on the walls of the Union Reading-Room at Oxford. These beautiful decorations I have seen at 'The Pines,' but not elsewhere. I have often seen 'D'Arcy' in the company of several of the other characters introduced into Aylwin; for instance, 'De Castro' and 'Symonds' (the late F. R. Leyland, at that time the owner of the Leyland line of steamers, living at Prince's Gate, where was the famous Peacock Room painted by Mr. Whistler). I did not myself know that quaint character Mrs. Titwing, but I have been told by people who knew her well that she is true to the life. With regard to 'De Castro,' it is a matter of regret to those who knew him that, after giving us that most vivid scene between 'D'Arcy' and 'De Castro' at Scott's oyster-rooms (a place which Rossetti was very fond of frequenting in those nocturnal rambles that caused 'De Castro' to give him the name of Haroun al Raschid), the author did not go on and paint to the full the most extraordinary man of the very extraordinary group, the centre of which was Rossetti's Chelsea house. Rossetti was a well-known figure at Scott's and at Rule's oyster-rooms at the time he encountered 'Henry Aylwin.' That scene at Scott's is, in my opinion, the most living thing in the book—a picture that whenever I turn to it makes me feel that everything said and done must have occurred. 'De Castro' seemed to belong not merely to the Rossetti group, but to all groups, for he was brought into touch with almost every remarkable man of his time, and fascinated every one of them. Literary and artistic London was once full of stories of him, and no one that knew him doubted he was what must be called a man of genius—although a barren genius. Among others, he was brought into close relations with Ruskin, Burne-Jones, and, I think, Smetham ('Wilderspin'), and others.

[Footnote: This was George Hake, who died in Central Africa a few years ago.]

Rossetti used to say that since Blake there has been no more visionary painter in the art world than Smetham. Rossetti had a quite affectionate feeling towards Smetham, and several of his pictures (small ones) were on Rossetti's studio walls. I remember one or two extraordinary pictures of his—especially one depicting a dragon in a fen, of which Rossetti had a great opinion; and I believe this, with other pictures of Smetham's, is in the hands of Mr. Watts-Dunton. The author of Aylwin would have been much amused had he seen, as I did, in an American magazine the statement that 'Wilderspin' was identified with William Morris—a man who was as much the opposite of the visionary painter as a man can be. Morris, whom I had the privilege of knowing very well, and with whom I have stayed at Kelmscott during the Rossetti period, is alluded to in Aylwin (chap. ix. book xv.) as the 'enthusiastic angler' who used to go down to 'Hurstcote' to fish. At that time this fine old seventeenth-century manor house was in the joint occupancy of Rossetti and Morris. 'Wilderspin' was Smetham with a variation: certain characteristics of another painter of genius were introduced, I believe, into the portrait of him in Aylwin; and the story of 'Wilderspin's' early life was not that of Smetham. The series of 'large attics in which was a number of enormous oak beams' supporting the antique roof was a favourite resort of my own; but all the ghostly noise that I there heard was the snoring of young owls—a peculiar sound that had a special fascination for Rossetti; and after dinner Rossetti, my brother, and I would go to the attics to listen to them.

But a more singular mistake with regard to the Aylwin characters than that of Morris being confounded with 'Wilderspin' was that of confounding, as certain newspaper paragraphs at the time did, 'Cyril Aylwin' with Mr. Whistler. I am especially able to speak of this character, who has been inquired about more than any other in the book. I knew him, I think, even before I knew Rossetti and Morris, or any of that group. He was a brother of Mr. Watts-Dunton's—Mr. Alfred Eugene Watts. He lived at Park House, Sydenham, and died suddenly either in 1870 or 1871, very shortly after I had met him at a wedding party. Among the set in which I moved at that time he had a great reputation as a wit and humorist. His style of humour always struck me as being more American than English. While bringing out humorous things that would set a dinner-table in a roar, he would himself maintain a perfectly unmoved countenance. And it was said of him, as 'Wilderspin' says of 'Cyril Aylwin,' that he was never known to laugh. The pen-picture of him in Aylwin is one of the most vivid things in the book.

With regard to the most original character in the story, those who knew Clement's Inn, where I myself once resided, and Lincoln's Inn Fields, will be able at once to identify Mrs. Gudgeon, who lived in one of the streets running into Clare Market. Her business was that of night coffee-stall keeper. At one time, I believe—but I am not certain about this—she kept a stall on the Surrey side of Waterloo Bridge, and it might have been there that, as I have been told, her portrait was drawn for a specified number of early breakfasts by an unfortunate artist who sank very low, but had real ability. Her constant phrase was 'I shall die o' laughin'—I know I shall!' On account of her extra-ordinary gift of repartee, and her inexhaustible fund of wit and humour, she was generally supposed to be an Irishwoman. But she was not: she was cockney to the marrow. Recluse as Rossetti was in his later years, he had at one time been very different, and could bring himself in touch with the lower orders of London in a way such as was only known to his most intimate friends. With all her impudence, and I may say insolence, Mrs. Gudgeon was a great favourite with the police, who were the constant butts of her chaff.

With regard to the gipsies, although I knew George Borrow intimately, and saw a great deal of Mr. Watts-Dunton's other Romany Rye friend, the late Frank Groome, I did not know Sinfi Lovell or Rhona Boswell. But I may say that those who have said that Sinfi Lovell was painted from the same model as Mr. Meredith's Kiomi are mistaken. Sinfi Lovell was extremely beautiful, whereas Kiomi, I believe, was never very beautiful. But that they are represented as being contemporaries and friends is shown by D'Arcy's mention of Kiomi in Scott's oyster-rooms. The characters who figure in the early Raxton scenes I cannot speak of for reasons which may be pretty obvious; nor can I speak of the Welsh chapters in Aylwin, which have been a good deal discussed in recent numbers of Notes and Queries. But being myself an East Anglian by birth—one of my Christian names is St. Edmund, because I was born at Bury St. Edmunds—I can say something about what the East Anglian papers call 'Aylwinland,' and of the truth of the pictures of the east coast to be found in the story, Since Aylwin was published an interesting attempt has been made by a correspondent in the Lowestoft Standard (25th August 1900) to identify Pakefield Church as the 'Raxton' Church of the story, and the writer of the letter mentions the most remarkable, and to me quite new fact, that although the guide-books of Lowestoft and the district are quite silent as to a curious crypt at the east end of Pakefield Church, there is exactly such a crypt as that described in Aylwin, and that in the early days of the correspondent in question it was used as a storehouse for bones. The readers of Aylwin will remember the author's words: 'The crypt is much older than the church, and of an entirely different architecture. It was once the depository of the bones of Danish warriors killed before the Norman conquest.'

THOMAS ST. E. HAKE.

In Notes and Queries [9th S., ix. 369, 450; x. 16] a letter had appeared, signed 'Jay Aitch,' inquiring as to the school of mystics founded by Lavater, alluded to on page 83 of the Illustrated Aylwin. This afforded Mr. Thomas St. E. Hake another opportunity of unloading his wallet of Rossetti and Aylwin lore. And in the same journal, for 2nd August 1902, he wrote as follows:

The question raised by Jay Aitch as to the school of mystics founded by Lavater, and the large book The Veiled Queen, by 'Philip Aylwin,' which contains quotations that Jay Aitch affirms have haunted him ever since he read them, are certainly questions about as interesting as any that could have been raised in connexion with the story. And in answering these queries I find an opportunity of saying a few authentic words on a subject upon which many unauthentic ones have been-uttered—that of the occultism of D. G, Rossetti and some of his friends. It has been frequently said that Rossetti was a spiritualist, and it is a fact that he went to several seances; but the word 'spiritualism' seems to have a rather elastic meaning. A spiritualist, as distinguished from a materialist, Rossetti certainly was, but his spiritualism was not, I should say, that which in common parlance bears this name. It was exactly like 'Aylwinism,' which seems to have been related to the doctrines of the Lavaterian sect about which Jay Aitch inquires. As a matter of fact, it was not the original of 'Wilderspin' nearly so much as the original D'Arcy who was captured by the doctrine of what is called in the story the 'Aylwinian.'

With regard to Johann Kaspar Lavater, Jay Aitch is no doubt aware that, although this once noted writer's fame rests entirely upon his treatise Physiognomische Fragmente, he founded a school of mystics in Switzerland. This was before what is called spiritualism came into vogue. I believe that the doctrines of The Veiled Queen are closely related to the doctrines of the Lavaterians; but my knowledge on this matter is of a second-hand kind, and is derived from conversations upon Lavater and his claims as a physiognomist, which I heard many years ago at Coombe and during walks in Richmond Park, between the author of Aylwin and my father, who, admittedly a man of intellectual grasp, went even further than Lavater.

A writer in the Literary World, in some admirable remarks upon this story, is, as far as I know, the only critic who has dwelt upon the extraordinary character of 'Philip Aylwin.' He says:

'The melancholy, the spiritual isolation, and the passionate love of this master-mystic for his dead wife are so finely rendered that the reader's sympathies go out at once to this most pathetic and lonely figure....It would be difficult for any sensitive man or woman to follow Philip Aylwin's story as related by his son without the tribute of aching heart and scalding tears. To our thinking, the man's sanity is more moving, more supremely tragic, than even the madness of Winifred, which is the culminating tragedy of the book.'

I must say that I agree with this writer in thinking 'Philip Aylwin' to be the most impressive character in the story. The most remarkable feature of the novel, indeed, is that, although 'Philip Aylwin' disappears from the scene so early, his opinions, his character, and his dreams are cast so entirely over the book from beginning to end that the novel might have been called Philip Aylwin. I have a special interest in this character, because I knew the undoubted original of the character with a considerable amount of intimacy. Without the permission of the author of Aylwin, I can only touch on outward traits—the deep, spiritual life of this man is beyond me. Although a very near relation, he was not, as has been so often surmised, the author's father. [Footnote] He was a man of extraordinary learning in the academic sense of the word, and possessed still more extraordinary general knowledge. He lived for many years the strangest kind of hermit life, surrounded by his books and old manuscripts. His two great passions were philology and occultism. He knew more, I think, of those strange writers discussed in Vaughan's Hours with the Mystics than any other person—including, perhaps, Vaughan himself; but he managed to combine with his love of Mysticism a deep passion for the physical sciences, especially astronomy. He seemed to be learning languages up to almost the last year of his life. His method of learning languages was the opposite of that of George Borrow, that is to say, he made great use of grammars; and when he died it is said that from four to five hundred treatises on grammar were found among his books. He used to express great contempt for Borrow's method of learning languages from dictionaries only.

[Footnote: He was Mr. Watts-Dunton's uncle—Mr. James Orlando Watts.]

I do not think that any one connected with literature—with the exception of Mr. Watts-Dunton, Mr. Swinburne, my father, and Dr. R. G. Latham—knew so much of him as I did. His personal appearance was exactly like that of 'Philip Aylwin,' as described in the novel. Although he never wrote poetry, he translated, I believe, a good deal from the Spanish and Portuguese poets. I remember that he was an extraordinary admirer of Shelley. His knowledge of Shakespeare and the Elizabethan dramatists was a link between him and Mr. Swinburne.

At a time when I was a busy reader at the British Museum Reading-Room, I used frequently to see him, and he never seemed to know any one among the readers except myself, and whenever he spoke to me it was always in a hushed whisper, lest he should disturb the other readers, which in his eyes would have been a heinous offence. For very many years he had been extremely well known to the second-hand booksellers, for he was a constant purchaser of their wares. He was a great pedestrian, and, being very much attached to the north of London, would take long, slow tramps ten miles out in the direction of Highgate, Wood Green, etc. I have a very distinct recollection of calling upon him in Myddelton Square at the time when I was living close to him in Percy Circus. Books were piled up from floor to ceiling, apparently in great confusion, but he seemed to remember where to find every book and what there was in it. It is a singular fact that the only person outside those I have mentioned who seems to have known him was that brilliant but eccentric journalist, Thomas Purnell, who had an immense opinion of him and used to call him 'the scholar.' How Purnell managed to break through the icy wall that surrounded the recluse always puzzled me; but I suppose they must have come across one another at one of those pleasant inns in the north of London where 'the scholar' was taking his chop and bottle of Beaune. He was a man that never made new friends, and as one after another of his old friends died he was left so entirely alone that, I think, he saw no one except Mr. Swinburne, the author of Aylwin, and myself. But at Christmas he always spent a week at 'The Pines,' when and where my father and I used to meet him. His memory was so powerful that he seemed to be able to recall not only all that he had read, but the very conversations in which he had taken a part. He died, I think, at a little over eighty, and his faculties up to the last were exactly like those of a man in the prime of life. He always reminded me of Charles Lamb's description of George Dyer.

Such is my outside picture of this extraordinary man; and it is only of externals that I am free to speak here, even if I were competent to touch upon his inner life. He was a still greater recluse than the 'Philip Aylwin' of the novel. I think I am right in saying that he took up one or two Oriental tongues when he was seventy years of age. Another of his passions was numismatics, and it was in these studies that he sympathized with the author of Aylwin's friend, the late Lord de Tabley. I remember one story of his peculiarities which will give an idea of the kind of man he was. He had a brother who was the exact opposite of him in every way—strikingly good-looking, with great charm of mariner and savoir faire, but with an ordinary intellect and a very superficial knowledge of literature, or, indeed, anything else, except records of British military and naval exploits—where he was really learned. Being full of admiration of his student brother, and having a parrot-like instinct for mimicry, he used to talk with great volubility upon all kinds of subjects wherever he went, and repeat in the same words what he had been listening to from his brother, until at last he got to be called the 'walking encyclopedia.' The result was that he got the reputation of being a great reader and an original thinker, while the true student and book-lover was frequently complimented on the way in which he took after his learned brother. This did not in the least annoy the real student, it simply amused him, and he would give with a dry humour most amusing stories as to what people had said to him on this subject.

THOMAS ST. E. HAKE.

The editor of Notes and Queries has the following footnote:

'We hail some acquaintance with the being Mr. Hake depicts (Mr. James Orlando Watts) and can testify to the truth of the portraiture.'

THE END