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Whatever may have been those experiences with the gryengroes which made Groome, when speaking of the gypsies of ‘Aylwin,’ say ‘the author writes only of what he knows,’ it seems to have been after his intercourse with the gypsies that he and a younger brother, Alfred Eugene Watts (elsewhere described), were articled as solicitors to their father. His bent, however, was always towards literature, especially poetry, of which he had now written a great deal—indeed, the major part of the volume which was destined to lie unpublished for so many years. But before I deal with the most important period of Mr. Watts-Dunton’s life—his life in London—it seems necessary to say a word or two about his visits to East Anglia, and especially to the Norfolk coast. There are some admirable remarks upon the East Coast in Mr. William Sharp’s chapter on ‘Aylwinland’ in ‘Literary Geography,’ and he notes the way in which Rhona Boswell links it with Cowslip Land; but he does not give examples of the poems which thus link it, such as the double roundel called ‘The Golden Hand.’

THE GOLDEN HAND [73a]

Percy

Do you forget that day on Rington strand

When, near the crumbling ruin’s parapet,

I saw you stand beside the long-shore net

The gorgios spread to dry on sunlit sand?

Rhona

Do I forget?

Percy

You wove the wood-flowers in a dewy band

Around your hair which shone as black as jet:

No fairy’s crown of bloom was ever set

Round brows so sweet as those the wood-flowers spanned.

I see that picture now; hair dewy-wet:

Dark eyes that pictures in the sky expand:

Love-lips (with one tattoo ‘for dukkerin’ [73b]) tanned By sunny winds that kiss them as you stand.

Rhona

Do I forget?

The Golden Hand shone there: it’s you forget,

Or p’raps us Romanies ondly understand

The way the Lover’s Dukkeripen is planned

Which shone that second time when us two met.

Percy

Blest ‘Golden Hand’!

Rhona

The wind, that mixed the smell o’ violet

Wi’ chirp o’ bird, a-blowin’ from the land

Where my dear Mammy lies, said as it fanned My heart-like, ‘Them ’ere tears makes Mammy fret.’ She loves to see her chavi [74] lookin’ grand, So I made what you call’d a coronet, And in the front I put her amulet: She sent the Hand to show she sees me yet.

Percy

Blest ‘Golden Hand’!

In the same way that the velvety green of Hunts is seen in the verses I have already quoted, so the softer side of the inland scenery of East Anglia is described in the following lines, where also we find an exquisite use of the East Anglian fancy about the fairies and the foxglove bells.

At a waltz during certain Venetian revels after the liberation from the Austrian yoke, a forsaken lover stands and watches a lady whose child-love he had won in England:—

Has she forgotten for such halls as these

The domes the angels built in holy times,

When wings were ours in childhood’s flowery climes

To dance with butterflies and golden bees?—

Forgotten how the sunny-fingered breeze

Shook out those English harebells’ magic chimes

On that child-wedding morn, ’neath English limes,

’Mid wild-flowers tall enough to kiss her knees?

The love that childhood cradled—girlhood nursed—

Has she forgotten it for this dull play,

Where far-off pigmies seem to waltz and sway

Like dancers in a telescope reversed?

Or does not pallid Conscience come and say,

‘Who sells her glory of beauty stands accursed’?

But was it this that bought her—this poor splendour

That won her from her troth and wild-flower wreath

Who ‘cracked the foxglove bells’ on Grayland Heath,

Or played with playful winds that tried to bend her, Or, tripping through the deer-park, tall and slender, Answered the larks above, the crakes beneath, Or mocked, with glitter of laughing lips and teeth, When Love grew grave—to hide her soul’s surrender?

Mr. Sharp has dwelt upon the striking way in which the scenery and atmosphere are rendered in ‘Aylwin,’ but this, as I think, is even more clearly seen in the poems. And in none of these is it seen so vividly as in that exhilarating poem, ‘Gypsy Heather,’ published in the ‘Athenæum,’ and not yet garnered in a volume. This poem also shows his lyrical power, which never seems to be at its very best unless he is depicting Romany life and Romany passion. The metre of this poem is as original as that of ‘The Gypsy Haymaking Song,’ quoted in an earlier chapter. It has a swing like that of no other poem:—

GYPSY HEATHER

‘If you breathe on a heather-spray and send it to your man it’ll show him the selfsame heather where it wur born.’—Sinfi Lovell.

[Percy Aylwin, standing on the deck of the ‘Petrel,’ takes from his pocket a letter which, before he had set sail to return to the south seas, the Melbourne post had brought him—a letter from Rhona, staying then with the Boswells on a patch of heath much favoured by the Boswells, called ‘Gypsy Heather.’ He takes from the envelope a withered heather-spray, encircled by a little scroll of paper on which Rhona has written the words, ‘Remember Gypsy Heather.’]

I

Remember Gypsy Heather?

Remember Jasper’s camping-place

Where heath-bells meet the grassy dingle,

And scents of meadow, wood and chase,

Wild thyme and whin-flower seem to mingle?

Remember where, in Rington Furze,

I kissed her and she asked me whether

I ‘thought my lips of teazel-burrs,

That pricked her jis like whin-bush spurs,

Felt nice on a rinkenny moey [76] like hers?’— Gypsy Heather!

II

Remember Gypsy Heather?

Remember her whom nought could tame

But love of me, the poacher-maiden

Who showed me once my father’s game

With which her plump round arms were laden

Who, when my glances spoke reproach,

Said, “Things o’ fur an’ fin an’ feather

Like coneys, pheasants, perch an’ loach,

An’ even the famous ‘Rington roach,’

Wur born for Romany chies to poach!”—

Gypsy Heather!

III

Remember Gypsy Heather?

Atolls and reefs, you change, you change

To dells of England dewy and tender;

You palm-trees in yon coral range

Seem ‘Rington Birches’ sweet and slender

Shading the ocean’s fiery glare:

We two are in the Dell together—

My body is here, my soul is there

With lords of trap and net and snare,

The Children of the Open Air,—

Gypsy Heather!

IV

Remember Gypsy Heather?

Its pungent breath is on the wind,

Killing the scent of tropic water;

I see her suitors swarthy skinned,

Who pine in vain for Jasper’s daughter.

The ‘Scollard,’ with his features tanned

By sun and wind as brown as leather—

His forehead scarred with Passion’s brand—

Scowling at Sinfi tall and grand,

Who sits with Pharaoh by her hand,—

Gypsy Heather!

V

Remember Gypsy Heather?

Now Rhona sits beneath the tree

That shades our tent, alone and weeping;

And him, the ‘Scollard,’ him I see:

From bush to bush I see him creeping—

I see her mock him, see her run

And free his pony from the tether,

Who lays his ears in love and fun,

And gallops with her in the sun

Through lace the gossamers have spun,—

Gypsy Heather!

VI

Remember Gypsy Heather?

She reaches ‘Rington Birches’; now,

Dismounting from the ‘Scollard’s’ pony,

She sits alone with heavy brow,

Thinking, but not of hare or coney.

The hot sea holds each sight, each sound

Of England’s golden autumn weather:

The Romanies now are sitting round

The tea-cloth spread on grassy ground;

Now Rhona dances heather-crowned,—

Gypsy Heather!

VII

Remember Gypsy Heather?

She’s thinking of this withered spray

Through all the dance; her eyes are gleaming

Darker than night, yet bright as day,

While round her a gypsy shawl is streaming;

I see the lips—the upper curled,

A saucy rose-leaf, from the nether,

Whence—while the floating shawl is twirled, As if a ruddy cloud were swirled— Her scornful laugh at him is hurled,— Gypsy Heather!

VIII

Remember Gypsy Heather?

In storm or calm, in sun or rain,

There’s magic, Rhona, in the writing

Wound round these flowers whose purple stain

Dims the dear scrawl of Love’s inditing:

Dear girl, this spray between the leaves

(Now fading like a draggled feather

With which the nesting song-bird weaves)

Makes every wave the vessel cleaves

Seem purple of heather as it heaves,—

Gypsy Heather!

IX

Remember Gypsy Heather?

Oh, Rhona! sights and sounds of home

Are everywhere; the skylark winging

Through amber cloud-films till the dome

Seems filled with love, our love, a-singing.

The sea-wind seems an English breeze

Bearing the bleat of ewe and wether

Over the heath from Rington Leas,

Where, to the hymn of birds and bees,

You taught me Romany ’neath the trees,—

Gypsy Heather!

Another reason that makes it necessary for me to touch upon the inland part of East Anglia is that I have certain remarks to make upon what are called ‘the Omarian poems of Mr. Watts-Dunton.’ Although, as I have before hinted, St. Ives, being in Hunts, belongs topographically to the East Midlands, its sympathies are East Anglian. This perhaps is partly because it is the extreme east of Hunts, and partly because the mouth of the Ouse is at Lynn: to those whom Mr. Norris affectionately calls St. Ivians and Hemingfordians, the seaside means Yarmouth, Lowestoft, Cromer, Hunstanton, and the towns on the Suffolk coast. The splendour of Norfolk ale may also partly account for it. This perhaps also explains why the famous East Anglian translator of Omar Khayyàm would seem to have been known to a few Omarians on the banks of the Ouse and Cam as soon as the great discoverer of good things, Rossetti, pounced upon it in the penny box of a second-hand bookseller. Readers of Mr. Watts-Dunton’s obituary notice of F. H. Groome in the ‘Athenæum’ will recall these words:—

“It was not merely upon Romany subjects that Groome found points of sympathy at ‘The Pines’ during that first luncheon; there was that other subject before mentioned, Edward FitzGerald and Omar Khayyàm. We, a handful of Omarians of those antediluvian days, were perhaps all the more intense in our cult because we believed it to be esoteric. And here was a guest who had been brought into actual personal contact with the wonderful old ‘Fitz.’ As a child of eight he had seen him, talked with him, been patted on the head by him. Groome’s father, the Archdeacon of Suffolk, was one of FitzGerald’s most intimate friends. This was at once a delightful and a powerful link between Frank Groome and those at the luncheon table; and when he heard, as he soon did, the toast to ‘Omar Khayyàm,’ none drank that toast with more gusto than he. The fact is, as the Romanies say, true friendship, like true love, is apt to begin at first sight.”

This is the poem alluded to: it is entitled, ‘Toast to Omar Khayyàm: An East Anglian echo-chorus inscribed to old Omarian Friends in memory of happy days by Ouse and Cam’:—

Chorus

In this red wine, where memory’s eyes seem glowing,

And days when wines were bright by Ouse and Cam,

And Norfolk’s foaming nectar glittered, showing

What beard of gold John Barleycorn was growing,

We drink to thee, right heir of Nature’s knowing,

Omar Khayyàm!

I

Star-gazer, who canst read, when Night is strowing

Her scriptured orbs on Time’s wide oriflamme,

Nature’s proud blazon: ‘Who shall bless or damn?

Life, Death, and Doom are all of my bestowing!’

Chorus: Omar Khayyàm!

II

Poet, whose stream of balm and music, flowing

Through Persian gardens, widened till it swam—

A fragrant tide no bank of Time shall dam—

Through Suffolk meads, where gorse and may were blowing,—

Chorus: Omar Khayyàm!

III

Who blent thy song with sound of cattle lowing,

And caw of rooks that perch on ewe and ram,

And hymn of lark, and bleat of orphan lamb,

And swish of scythe in Bredfield’s dewy mowing?

Chorus: Omar Khayyàm!

IV

’Twas Fitz, ‘Old Fitz,’ whose knowledge, farther going

Than lore of Omar, ‘Wisdom’s starry Cham,’

Made richer still thine opulent epigram:

Sowed seed from seed of thine immortal sowing.—

Chorus: Omar Khayyàm!

V

In this red wine, where Memory’s eyes seem glowing,

And days when wines were bright by Ouse and Cam,

And Norfolk’s foaming nectar glittered, showing What beard of gold John Barleycorn was growing, We drink to thee till, hark! the cock is crowing! Omar Khayyàm!

It was many years after this—it was as a member of another Omar Khayyàm Club of much greater celebrity than the little brotherhood of Ouse and Cam—not large enough to be called a club—that Mr. Watts-Dunton wrote the following well-known sonnet:—

PRAYER TO THE WINDS

On planting at the head of FitzGerald’s grave two rose-trees whose ancestors had scattered their petals over the tomb of Omar Khayyàm.

“My tomb shall be on a spot where the north wind may strow roses upon it.”

Omar Khayyàm to Kwájah Nizami.

Hear us, ye winds! From where the north-wind strows

Blossoms that crown ‘the King of Wisdom’s’ tomb,

The trees here planted bring remembered bloom,

Dreaming in seed of Love’s ancestral rose,

To meadows where a braver north-wind blows

O’er greener grass, o’er hedge-rose, may, and broom,

And all that make East England’s field-perfume

Dearer than any fragrance Persia knows.

Hear us, ye winds, North, East, and West, and South!

This granite covers him whose golden mouth

Made wiser ev’n the Word of Wisdom’s King:

Blow softly over Omar’s Western herald

Till roses rich of Omar’s dust shall spring

From richer dust of Suffolk’s rare FitzGerald.

I must now quote another of Mr. Watts-Dunton’s East Anglian poems, partly because it depicts the weird charm of the Norfolk coast, and partly because it illustrates that sympathy between the poet and the lower animals which I have already noted. I have another reason: not long ago, that good East Anglian, Mr. Rider Haggard interested us all by telling how telepathy seemed to have the power of operating between a dog and its beloved master in certain rare and extraordinary cases. When the poem appeared in the ‘Saturday Review’ (December 20, 1902), it was described as ‘part of a forthcoming romance.’ It records a case of telepathy between man and dog quite as wonderful as that narrated by Mr. Rider Haggard:—

CAUGHT IN THE EBBING TIDE

The mightiest Titan’s stroke could not withstand

An ebbing tide like this. These swirls denote

How wind and tide conspire. I can but float

To the open sea and strike no more for land.

Farewell, brown cliffs, farewell, beloved sand

Her feet have pressed—farewell, dear little boat

Where Gelert, [82] calmly sitting on my coat, Unconscious of my peril, gazes bland!

All dangers grip me save the deadliest, fear:

Yet these air-pictures of the past that glide—

These death-mirages o’er the heaving tide—

Showing two lovers in an alcove clear,

Will break my heart. I see them and I hear

As there they sit at morning, side by side.

The First Vision

With Raxton elms behind—in front the sea, Sitting in rosy light in that alcove, They hear the first lark rise o’er Raxton Grove; ‘What should I do with fame, dear heart?’ says he. ‘You talk of fame, poetic fame, to me Whose crown is not of laurel but of love— To me who would not give this little glove On this dear hand for Shakspeare’s dower in fee.

While, rising red and kindling every billow, The sun’s shield shines ’neath many a golden spear, To lean with you against this leafy pillow, To murmur words of love in this loved ear— To feel you bending like a bending willow, This is to be a poet—this, my dear!’

O God, to die and leave her—die and leave

The heaven so lately won!—And then, to know

What misery will be hers—what lonely woe!—

To see the bright eyes weep, to see her grieve

Will make me a coward as I sink, and cleave

To life though Destiny has bid me go.

How shall I bear the pictures that will glow

Above the glowing billows as they heave?

One picture fades, and now above the spray

Another shines: ah, do I know the bowers

Where that sweet woman stands—the woodland flowers,

In that bright wreath of grass and new-mown hay—

That birthday wreath I wove when earthly hours

Wore angel-wings,—till portents brought dismay?

The Second Vision

Proud of her wreath as laureate of his laurel, She smiles on him—on him, the prouder giver, As there they stand beside the sunlit river Where petals flush with rose the grass and sorrel: The chirping reed-birds, in their play or quarrel, Make musical the stream where lilies quiver— Ah! suddenly he feels her slim waist shiver: She speaks: her lips grow grey—her lips of coral!

‘From out my wreath two heart-shaped seeds are swaying, The seeds of which that gypsy girl has spoken— ’Tis fairy grass, alas! the lover’s token.’ She lifts her fingers to her forehead, saying, ‘Touch the twin hearts.’ Says he, ‘’Tis idle playing’: He touches them; they fall—fall bruised and broken.

* * * * *

Shall I turn coward here who sailed with Death

Through many a tempest on mine own North Sea,

And quail like him of old who bowed the knee—

Faithless—to billows of Genesereth?

Did I turn coward when my very breath

Froze on my lips that Alpine night when he

Stood glimmering there, the Skeleton, with me,

While avalanches rolled from peaks beneath?

Each billow bears me nearer to the verge

Of realms where she is not—where love must wait.—

If Gelert, there, could hear, no need to urge

That friend, so faithful, true, affectionate,

To come and help me, or to share my fate.

Ah! surely I see him springing through the surge.

[The dog, plunging into the tide and striking

towards him with immense strength, reaches

him and swims round him.]

Oh, Gelert, strong of wind and strong of paw

Here gazing like your namesake, ‘Snowdon’s Hound,’

When great Llewelyn’s child could not be found,

And all the warriors stood in speechless awe—

Mute as your namesake when his master saw

The cradle tossed—the rushes red around—

With never a word, but only a whimpering sound

To tell what meant the blood on lip and jaw.

In such a strait, to aid this gaze so fond,

Should I, brave friend, have needed other speech

Than this dear whimper? Is there not a bond

Stronger than words that binds us each to each?—

But Death has caught us both. ’Tis far beyond

The strength of man or dog to win the beach.

Through tangle-weed—through coils of slippery kelp

Decking your shaggy forehead, those brave eyes

Shine true—shine deep of love’s divine surmise

As hers who gave you—then a Titan whelp!

I think you know my danger and would help!

See how I point to yonder smack that lies

At anchor—Go! His countenance replies. Hope’s music rings in Gelert’s eager yelp!

[The dog swims swiftly away down the tide.

Now, life and love and death swim out with him!

If he should reach the smack, the men will guess

The dog has left his master in distress.

You taught him in these very waves to swim—

‘The prince of pups,’ you said, ‘for wind and limb’—

And now those lessons, darling, come to bless.

Envoy

(The day after the rescue: Gelert and I walking along the sand.)

’Twas in no glittering tourney’s mimic strife,—

’Twas in that bloody fight in Raxton Grove,

While hungry ravens croaked from boughs above,

And frightened blackbirds shrilled the warning fife—

’Twas there, in days when Friendship still was rife,

Mine ancestor who threw the challenge-glove

Conquered and found his foe a soul to love,

Found friendship—Life’s great second crown of life.

So I this morning love our North Sea more

Because he fought me well, because these waves

Now weaving sunbows for us by the shore

Strove with me, tossed me in those emerald caves

That yawned above my head like conscious graves—

I love him as I never loved before.

In these days when so much is written about the intelligence of the lower animals, when ‘Hans,’ the ‘thinking horse,’ is ‘interviewed’ by eminent scientists, the exploit of the Second Gelert is not without interest. I may, perhaps, mention a strange experience of my own. The late Betts Bey, a well-known figure in St. Peter’s Port, Guernsey, had a fine black retriever, named Caro. During a long summer holiday which we spent in Guernsey, Caro became greatly attached to a friend, and Betts Bey presented him to her. He was a magnificent fellow, valiant as a lion, and a splendid diver and swimmer. He often plunged off the parapet of the bridge which spans the Serpentine. Indeed, he would have dived from any height. His intelligence was surprising. If we wished to make him understand that he was not to accompany us, we had only to say, ‘Caro, we are going to church!’ As soon as he heard the word ‘church’ his barks would cease, his tail would drop, and he would look mournfully resigned. One evening, as I was writing in my room, Caro began to scratch outside the door, uttering those strange ‘woof-woofs’ which were his canine language. I let him in, but he would not rest. He stood gazing at me with an intense expression, and, turning towards the door, waited impatiently. For some time I took no notice of his dumb appeal, but his excitement increased, and suddenly a vague sense of ill seemed to pass from him into my mind. Drawn half-consciously I rose, and at once with a strange half-human whine Caro dashed upstairs. I followed him. He ran into a bedroom, and there in the dark I found my friend lying unconscious. It is well-nigh certain that Caro thus saved my friend’s life.