Many of Swinburne’s friends have testified to his personal charm and courtliness of bearing. “Unmistakably an aristocrat, and with all the ease and polish which one associates with high breeding, there was, even in the cordiality with which he would rise and come forward to welcome a visitor a suspicion of the shy nervousness of the introspective man and of the recluse on first facing a stranger.” Mr. Coulson Kernahan has said, “I have seen him angry, I have heard him furiously dissent from, and even denounce the views put forward by others, but never once was what, for want of a better word, I must call his personal deference to those others relaxed. “To no one would he defer quite so graciously and readily, to no one was he so scrupulously courtly in bearing as to those who constituted his own household.” If he felt that he had monopolized the conversation he would turn to Watts-Dunton and apologize, and for a time become transformed into an attentive listener. Lord Ronald Gower writes of Swinburne’s remarkable powers as a talker. Telling of a luncheon at “The Pines” in 1879, he writes:—“Swinburne’s talk after luncheon was wonderful . . . What, far beyond the wonderful flow of words of the poet, struck me, was his real diffidence and modesty; while fully aware of the divine gifts within him, he is as simple and unaffected as a child.” {18} [Picture: Theodore Watts-Dunton] But conversation at “The Pines” was not always of the serious things of life. It very frequently partook of the playful, when the hearers would be kept amused with a humour and whimsicality, cauterized now and then with some biting touch of satire which showed that neither Swinburne nor Watts-Dunton had entirely grown up. Reading aloud was also a greatly favoured form of entertainment. Swinburne was a sympathetic reader, possessed of a voice of remarkable quality and power of expression, and he would read for the hour together from Dickens, Lamb, Charles Reade, and Thackeray. To Mrs. Mason’s little boy he was a wizard who could open many magic casements. He would carry off the lad to his own room, and there read to him the stories which caused the hour of bedtime to be dreaded. When the nurse arrived to fetch the child to bed he would imperiously wave her away, hoping that Swinburne would not notice the action and so bring the evening’s entertainment to a close. On one occasion the child stole down to Swinburne’s room after he had been safely put to bed, where the interrupted story was renewed. When eventually discovered both seemed to regard the incident as a huge joke, and Swinburne carried the child to the nursery and tucked him up for the night.