f, with his long neck strained
so tightly back that he all receded from the waist upwards. I noticed
afterwards that this deportment made the back of his jacket hang quite
far away from his legs; and so small and sloping were his shoulders that
the jacket seemed ever so likely to slip right off. I became aware, too,
that when he bowed he did not unbend his back, but only his neck--the
length of the neck accounting for the depth of the bow. His hands were
tiny, even for his size, and they fluttered helplessly, touchingly,
unceasingly.

Directly after my introduction, we sat down to the meal. Of course I had
never hoped to 'get into touch with him' reciprocally. Quite apart from
his deafness, I was too modest to suppose he could be interested in
anything I might say. But--for I knew he had once been as high and
copious a singer in talk as in verse--I had hoped to hear utterances
from him. And it did not seem that my hope was to be fulfilled.
Watts-Dunton sat at the head of the table, with a huge and very
Tupperesque joint of roast mutton in front of him, Swinburne and myself
close up to him on either side. He talked only to me. This was the more
tantalising because Swinburne seemed as though he were bubbling over
with all sorts of notions. Not that he looked at either of us. He smiled
only to himself, and to his plateful of meat, and to the small bottle of
Bass's pale ale that stood before him--ultimate allowance of one who had
erst clashed cymbals in Naxos. This small bottle he eyed often and with
enthusiasm, seeming to waver between the rapture of broaching it now and
the grandeur of having it to look forward to. It made me unhappy to see
what trouble he had in managing his knife and fork. Watts-Dunton told
me on another occasion that this infirmity of the hands had been
lifelong--had begun before Eton days. The Swinburne family had been
alarmed by it and had consulted a specialist, who said that it resulted
from 'an excess of electric vitality,' and that any attempt to stop it
would be harmful. So they had let it be. I have known no man of genius
who had not to pay, in some affliction or defect either physical or
spiritual, for what the gods had given him. Here, in this fluttering of
his tiny hands, was a part of the price that Swinburne had to pay. No
doubt he had grown accustomed to it many lustres before I met him, and
I need not have felt at all unhappy at what I tried not to see. He,
evidently, was quite gay, in h