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 seances; 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 master-mystic 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.’