DOI chapter:
Chapter V: Our Friendship
DOI Page / Citation link:https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.62482#0299
OUR FRIENDSHIP 147
people who assert that Shakespeare was a drunkard ; and
though that is not to be admitted for a moment, it is probable
so strong a nature sometimes kicked over the traces.”
A dual nature often lays itself open to the accusation of
being insincere. Easy is it to say people are insincere, but
it is often a cheap way of avoiding taking the trouble to
estimate a character fully and to acquire a just understand-
ing of it. In Watts was a salient example of the possibility
of two apparently irreconcilable characters being neverthe-
less combined in one nature. It would be equally unin-
telligent and unjust to assert that the high level of his
better self was a fiction and a pretence quite incompatible
with the less worthy side of his nature, as it would be
untrue to say that all his actions and feelings were actuated
by that higher self. Nature asserted the contrary. What
may seem to our small human reasonings incompatible,
wider and more comprehensive laws prove are compatible.
Nature has proved the same in the case of many poets, and
in those even greater than mere poets.
Watts had a skeleton in his cupboard, a scare that would
possess his imagination, a morbid condition, probably result-
ing from his realising the incompatibilities existing in his
dual nature, saddened originally by the melancholy Celtic
temperament. From this unbearable, intangible scare he
was ever flying. His will, his conscience, his genius
asserted that it should not obtain the mastery; want of
physical vitality, latent consciousness of certain weaknesses,
shame for his own shortcomings, want of courage and
strength to face certain facts, were ever threatening that it
was about to secure a hold on him. But fly from it he
would, whatever the retreat involved, and it was such
retreats that determined many of the actions of his out-
ward life. Speaking to me of one, he said, “ I do not want
people who assert that Shakespeare was a drunkard ; and
though that is not to be admitted for a moment, it is probable
so strong a nature sometimes kicked over the traces.”
A dual nature often lays itself open to the accusation of
being insincere. Easy is it to say people are insincere, but
it is often a cheap way of avoiding taking the trouble to
estimate a character fully and to acquire a just understand-
ing of it. In Watts was a salient example of the possibility
of two apparently irreconcilable characters being neverthe-
less combined in one nature. It would be equally unin-
telligent and unjust to assert that the high level of his
better self was a fiction and a pretence quite incompatible
with the less worthy side of his nature, as it would be
untrue to say that all his actions and feelings were actuated
by that higher self. Nature asserted the contrary. What
may seem to our small human reasonings incompatible,
wider and more comprehensive laws prove are compatible.
Nature has proved the same in the case of many poets, and
in those even greater than mere poets.
Watts had a skeleton in his cupboard, a scare that would
possess his imagination, a morbid condition, probably result-
ing from his realising the incompatibilities existing in his
dual nature, saddened originally by the melancholy Celtic
temperament. From this unbearable, intangible scare he
was ever flying. His will, his conscience, his genius
asserted that it should not obtain the mastery; want of
physical vitality, latent consciousness of certain weaknesses,
shame for his own shortcomings, want of courage and
strength to face certain facts, were ever threatening that it
was about to secure a hold on him. But fly from it he
would, whatever the retreat involved, and it was such
retreats that determined many of the actions of his out-
ward life. Speaking to me of one, he said, “ I do not want