The Project Gutenberg eBook, Aylwin, by Theodore Watts-Dunton This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.net Title: Aylwin Author: Theodore Watts-Dunton Release Date: September 14, 2004 [eBook #13454] Language: English ***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK AYLWIN*** E-text prepared by Roy Brown, Trowbridge, England AYLWIN With Two Appendices, One Containing a Note on the Character of D'arcy; the Other a Key to the Story, Reprinted from Notes and Queries by THEODORE WATTS-DUNTON Author of 'The Coming of Love: Rhona Boswell's Story,' etc etc TO C J R IN REMEMBRANCE OF SUNNY DAYS AND STARLIT NIGHTS WHEN WE RAMBLED TOGETHER ON CRUMBLING CLIFFS THAT ARE NOW AT THE BOTTOM OF THE SEA THIS EDITION OF A STORY WHICH HAS BEEN A LINK BETWEEN US IS INSCRIBED CAUGHT IN THE EBBING TIDE A REMINISCENCE OF RAXTOX CLIFFS 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,[Footnote] 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 [Footnote: A famous swimming dog.] THE VISION _With Barton 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 Shakespeare'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 yon 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? 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 his master 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 She taught him in these very waves to swim— 'The prince of pups,' she said, 'for wind and limb'— And now those lessons come to save—to bless ENVOY (The day after the rescue: Gelert and his master 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 PREFACE TO THIS EDITION The heart-thought of this hook being the peculiar doctrine in Philip Aylwin's Veiled Queen, and the effect of it upon the fortunes of the hero and the other characters, the name 'The Renascence of Wonder' was the first that came to my mind when confronting the difficult question of finding a name for a book that is at once a love-story and an expression of a creed But eventually I decided, and I think from the worldly point of view wisely, to give it simply the name of the hero The important place in the story, however, taken by this creed did not escape the most acute and painstaking of the critics Madame Galimberti, for instance, in the elaborate study of the book which she made in the Rivista d' Italia, gave great attention to its central idea: so did M Maurice Muret, in the Journal des Débats; so did M Henri Jacottet in La Semaine Littéraire Mr Baker, again, in his recently published work on fiction, described Aylwin as 'an imaginative romance of modern days, the moral idea of which is man's attitude in face of the unknown,' or, as the writer puts it, 'the renascence of wonder.' With regard to the phrase itself, in the introduction to the latest edition of Aylwin—the twentysecond edition—I made the following brief reply to certain questions that have been raised by critics both in England and on the Continent concerning it The phrase, I said, 'The Renascence of Wonder,' Is used to express that great revived movement of the soul of man which is generally said to have begun with the poetry of Wordsworth, Scott, Coleridge, and others, and after many varieties of expression reached its culmination in the poems and pictures of Rossetti The phrase 'The Renascence of Wonder' merely indicates that there are two great impulses governing man, and probably not man only but the entire world of conscious life—the impulse of acceptance—the impulse to take unchallenged and for granted all the phenomena of the outer world as they are, and the impulse to confront these phenomena with eyes of inquiry and wonder The painter Wilderspin says to Henry Aylwin, 'The one great event of my life has been the reading of The Veiled Queen, your father's hook of inspired wisdom upon the modern Renascence of Wonder in the mind of man.' And further on he says that his own great picture symbolical of this renascence was suggested by Philip Aylwin's vignette Since the original writing of Aylwin, many years ago, I have enlarged upon its central idea in the Encyclopaedia Britannica and in the introductory essay to the third volume of Chambers's Cyclopædia of English Literature, and in other places Naturally, therefore, the phrase has been a good deal discussed Quite lately Dr Robertson Nicoll has directed attention to the phrase, and he has taken it as a text of a remarkable discourse upon the 'Renascence of Wonder in Religion.' I am tempted to quote some of his words:— Amongst the Logia recently discovered by the explorers of the Egypt Fund, there is one of which part was already known to have occurred in the Gospel according to the Hebrews It runs as follows:—'Let not him that seeketh cease from his search until he find, and when he finds he shall wonder: wondering he shall reach the kingdom, and when he reaches the kingdom he shall have rest.'…We believe that Butler was one of the first to share in the Renascence of Wonder, which was the renascence of religion….Men saw once more the marvel of the universe and the romance of man's destiny They became aware of the spiritual world, of the supernatural, of the lifelong struggle of the soul, of the power of the unseen The words quoted by Dr Nicoll might very appropriately be used as a motto for Aylwin and also for its sequel The Coming of Love: Rhona Boswells Story PREFACE TO THE TWENTY-SECOND EDITION OF 1904 Nothing in regard to Aylwin has given me so much pleasure as the way in which it has been received both by my Welsh friends and my Romany friends I little thought, when I wrote it, that within three years of its publication the gypsy pictures in it would be discoursed upon to audiences of 4000 people by a man so well equipped to express an opinion on such a subject as the eloquent and famous 'Gypsy Smith,' and described by him as 'the most trustworthy picture of Romany life in the English language, containing in Sinfi Lovell the truest representative of the Gypsy girl.' And as regards my Welsh readers, they have done me the honour of suggesting that an illustrated edition of the work would be prized by all lovers of 'Beautiful Wales.' Although such an edition is, I am told, an expensive undertaking, my friend and publisher, Mr Blackett, sees his way, he tells me, to bringing it out Since the first appearance of the book there have been many interesting discussions by Welsh readers, in various periodicals, upon the path taken by Sinfi Lovell and Aylwin in their ascent of Snowdon A very picturesque letter appeared in Notes and Queries on May 3rd, 1902, signed C C B in answer to a query by E W., which I will give myself the pleasure of quoting because it describes the writer's ascent of Snowdon (accompanied by a son of my old friend Harry Owen, late of Pen-y-Gwryd) along a path which was almost the same as that taken by Aylwin and Sinfi Lovell, when he saw the same magnificent spectacle that was seen by them:— The mist was then clearing (it was in July) and in a few moments was entirely gone So marvellous a transformation scene, and so immense a prospect, I have never beheld since For the first and only time in my life I saw from one spot almost the whole of North and Mid-Wales, a good part of Western England, and a glimpse of Scotland and Ireland The vision faded all too quickly, but it was worth walking thirty-three or thirty-four miles, as I did that day, for even a briefer view than that Referring to Llyn Coblynau this interesting writer says— Only from Glaslyn would the description in Aylwin of y Wyddfa standing out against the sky 'as narrow and as steep as the sides of an acorn' be correct, but from the north and north-west sides of Glaslyn this answers with quite curious exactness to the appearance of the mountain We must suppose the action of the story to have taken place before the revival of the copper-mining industry on Snowdon With regard, however, to the question here raised, I can save myself all trouble by simply quoting the admirable remarks of Sion o Ddyli in the same number of Notes and Queries:— None of us are very likely to succeed in placing this llyn, because the author of Aylwin, taking a privilege of romance often taken by Sir Walter Scott before him, probably changed the landmarks in idealising the scene and adapting it to his story It may be, indeed, that the Welsh name given to the llyn in the book is merely a rough translation of the gipsies' name for it, the 'Knockers' being gnomes or goblins of the mine; hence 'Coblynau' equals goblins If so, the name itself can give us no clue unless we are lucky enough to secure the last of the Welsh gipsies for a guide In any case, the only point from which to explore Snowdon for the small llyn, or perhaps llyns (of which Llyn Coblynau is a kind of composite ideal picture), is no doubt, as E W has suggested, Capel Curig; and I imagine the actual scene lies about a mile south from Glaslyn, while it owes something at least of its colouring in the book to that strange lake The 'Knockers,' it must be remembered, usually depend upon the existence of a mine near by, with old partly fallen mine-workings where the dropping of water or other subterranean noises produce the curious phenomenon which is turned to such imaginative account in the Snowdon chapters of Aylwin There is another question—a question of a very different kind—raised by several correspondents of Notes and Queries, upon which I should like to say a word—a question as to The Veiled Queen and the use therein of the phrase 'The Renascence of Wonder'—a phrase which has been said to 'express the artistic motif of the book.' The motif of the book, however, is one of emotion primarily, or it would not have been written There is yet another subject upon which I feel tempted to say a few words D'Arcy in referring to Aylwin's conduct in regard to the cross says:— You were simply doing what Hamlet would have done in such circumstances —what Macbeth would have done, and what he would have done who spoke to the human heart through their voices All men, I believe, have Macbeth's instinct for making 'assurance doubly sure,' and I cannot imagine the man who, entangled as you were in a net of conflicting evidence—the evidence of the spiritual and the evidence of the natural world—would not, if the question were that of averting a curse from acting on a beloved mistress, have done as you did That paralysis of Hamlet's will which followed when the evidence of two worlds hung in equipoise before him, no one can possibly understand better than I Several critics have asked me to explain these words Of course, however, the question is much too big and much too important to discuss here I will merely say that Shakespeare having decided in the case of 'Macbeth' to adopt the machinery he found in Holinslied, and in the case of 'Hamlet' the machinery he found in the old 'Hamlet,' seems to have set himself the task of realising the situation of a man oscillating between the evidence of two worlds, the physical and the spiritual—a man in each case unusually sagacious, and in each case endowed with the instinct for 'making assurance doubly sure'—the instinct which seems, from many passages in his dramas, to have been a special characteristic of the poet's own, such for instance as the words in Pericles: For truth can never be confirm'd enough, Though doubts did ever sleep Why is it that, in this story, Hamlet, the moody moraliser upon charnel-houses and mouldy bones, is identified with the jolly companion of the Mermaid, the wine-bibbing joker of the Falcon, and the Apollo saloon? It is because Hamlet is the most elaborately-painted character in literature It is because the springs of his actions are so profoundly touched, the workings of his soul so thoroughly 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 séances; 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 mastermystic 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 booklover 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.' ***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK AYLWIN*** ******* This file should be named 13454-8.txt or 13454-8.zip ******* This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: http://www.gutenberg.net/1/3/4/5/13454 Updated editions will replace the previous one—the old editions will be renamed Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no one owns a United States 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works Professor Michael S Hart is the originator of the Project Gutenberg-tm concept of a library of electronic works that could be freely shared with anyone For thirty years, he produced and distributed Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of volunteer support Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the U.S unless a copyright notice is included Thus, we do not necessarily keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search facility: http://www.gutenberg.net This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm, including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks ... of Wonder, which was the renascence of religion….Men saw once more the marvel of the universe and the romance of man's destiny They became aware of the spiritual world, of the supernatural, of the lifelong struggle of the soul, of the power of the unseen The words quoted by Dr... PREFACE TO THIS EDITION The heart-thought of this hook being the peculiar doctrine in Philip Aylwin' s Veiled Queen, and the effect of it upon the fortunes of the hero and the other characters, the name 'The Renascence of Wonder' was the first that came to my... and American readers inquiring whether 'the Gypsy girl described in the introduction to Lavenyro is the same as the Sinfi Lovell of Aylwin, ' and also whether 'the Rhona Boswell that figures in the prose story is the same as the