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 THE LIBRARY OF THE 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF 
 
 NORTH CAROLINA 
 
 AT CHAPEL HILL 
 
 ENDOWED BY THE 
 
 DIALECTIC AND PHILANTHROPIC 
 
 SOCIETIES 
 
 b 
 
 PR5246. 
 .A51 
 
This book is due at the WALTER R. DAVIS LIBRARY on 
 the last date stamped under "Date Due." If not on hold it 
 may be renewed by bringing it to the library 
 
 DATE 
 
 DUE R ET. 
 
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Dante Gabriel Rossetti 
 
 VOL. I. 
 
Digitized by the Internet Archive 
 
 in 2012 with funding from 
 
 University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill 
 
 http://archive.org/details/dantegabrielross01ross 
 
By Himself. 
 
 1855. 
 
 Dante Gabriel Rossetti. 
 
V, \ 
 
 Dante Gabriel Rossetti /"£«■ 
 
 HIS FAMILY-LETTERS 
 
 WITH A MEMOIR 
 
 WILLIAM MICHAEL ROSSETTI 
 
 WAN US ANIMAM PINXIT 
 
 VOL. I. 
 
 BOSTON 
 
 ROBERTS BROTHERS 
 1895 
 
DEDICATED TO 
 
 MY FOUR CHILDREN 
 
 WITH A FATHER'S HOPE 
 THAT RELATIVES OF 
 
 DANTE AND CHRISTINA ROSSETTI 
 
 AND DESCENDANTS OF 
 
 GABRIELE AND FRANCES ROSSETTI 
 
 WILL UPHOLD THE CREDIT OF 
 
 THEIR PATRONYMIC. 
 
 ■? r 518880 
 
 v. / 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 IN his Recollections of Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1882) Mr. 
 Hall Caine has informed us : " It was always known to 
 be Rossetti's wish that, if at any moment after his death it 
 should appear that the story of his life required to be written, 
 the one friend who, during many of his later years, knew him 
 most intimately, and to whom he unlocked the most sacred 
 secrets of his heart, Mr. Theodore Watts, should write it, 
 unless indeed it were undertaken by his brother William." 
 Dante Rossetti died on 9 April 1882; and after the lapse 
 of a few months I decided to put his Family-Letters into shape 
 for early publication. Mr. Watts acquiesced in the wish 
 which I then entertained, and which I should still entertain, 
 that he, rather than myself, should be the biographer, writing 
 a Memoir to accompany the Letters. Doubtless he saw 
 reason for not producing his Memoir so soon as I had been 
 expecting it ; therefore, after a rather long interval of years, 
 I resolved in July 1894 that the Letters must now come 
 out, and, as they could not be unlinked with a Memoir, that 
 I myself would write it. The result is before the reader. 
 If he would have preferred a Memoir from Mr. Watts, I 
 sympathize with him, but the option had ceased to be mine. 
 There are several reasons why a brother neither is nor can 
 be the best biographer. Feeling this, I had always intended 
 
X PREFACE. 
 
 not to write a Life of Dante Rossetti. But circumstances 
 have proved too strong for me, and I submit to their 
 dictate. 
 
 Had the book been published towards 1883, the Letters 
 would have extended very little beyond those addressed to 
 my Mother and to myself. There were then also a couple 
 to my Father, and a very few to my Sister Christina. I am 
 now enabled to add some to my Grandfather Gaetano 
 Polidori, my Uncle Henry Francis Polydore, my Aunt 
 Charlotte Lydia Polidori, and my Wife Lucy Madox 
 Rossetti ; also some others to Christina which, as they 
 contain expressions of approval with regard to her writings, 
 she had herself with-held. No letters to other members of 
 the family appear to be in existence, though several must 
 have been written. 
 
 The technical arrangement of the printed correspondence 
 can easily be understood. The letters are all thrown into a 
 single sequence, according to the order of date : they are 
 lettered from A to H, for the persons respectively addressed, 
 and each sub-division is progressively numbered within its 
 own limits. In every case where a letter seems to require 
 any explanatory note or observation, I have supplied this 
 in a few preliminary words. The dates, when not written 
 by my brother himself, were in most cases jotted down at 
 the time by the recipient : in a few instances, where this was 
 omitted, the dates now given are approximate. Addresses 
 are also frequently inserted in like manner. I have preserved 
 (and must ask the reader to pardon my mentioning so minute 
 a point) one instance of each form of subscribed name ; and 
 have also reproduced the name in other cases where it seems 
 more apposite to do so. In contrary instances I omit both 
 the name and the words of subscription which precede it. 
 Some other Family-Letters exist, addressed to the same 
 
PREFACE. xi 
 
 persons ; but these are such as even a brother cannot suppose 
 to be of any public interest. From those here collected 
 some passages are omitted which, on one ground or another, 
 are considered to be unsuited for printing; but on the whole 
 I have been sparing of excisions. Of the items admitted, 
 several are indeed short and scrappy ; I have not however 
 included anything which appears to me to be entirely unin- 
 teresting to persons interested in Dante Rossetti. Some 
 letters, otherwise slight, fix the date of a picture or poem ; 
 others show some trait of character, or contain some pointed 
 or diverting expression. 
 
 The letters, such as they are, shall be left to speak mainly 
 for themselves. Their language is constantly unadorned, 
 often colloquial ; the tone of mind in them, concentrated ; 
 the feeling, while solid and sincere, uneffusive. Their 
 subject-matter is very generally personal to the writer, 
 without discursiveness of outlook, or eloquent or picturesque 
 description ; yet the spirit is not egotistical or self-assertive. 
 If I am wrong in these opinions, the reader will decide the 
 point for himself. 
 
 My brother was a rapid letter-writer, and on occasion a 
 very prompt one, but not negligent or haphazard. He always 
 wrote to the point, without amplification, or any effort after 
 the major or minor graces of diction or rhetoric. Multitudes 
 of his letters must still presumably be extant in private 
 hands : a representative collection of them might be found 
 to confirm the impression which I should like to ensue from 
 the present series — that as a correspondent he was straight- 
 forward, pleasant, and noticeably free from any calculated 
 self-display. " Disinvolto " would be the Italian word. 
 
 Some persons may approve, others will disapprove, of the 
 publication of these Family-Letters. I print them because 
 the doing so commends itself to my own mind. At a very 
 
xii PREFACE. 
 
 childish age I was familiar with the old apologue of the Man 
 and his Son and the Donkey : it impressed me as equally 
 true and practical. I have always been conscious that 
 opinions will be as numerous as readers, and prefer to suit 
 the opinions of those who happen to agree with myself. 
 
 Recently I have had a painful reason for realizing to 
 myself a very pleasurable fact — that of the high estimation 
 in which my brother, himself no less than his work, is now 
 publicly held, some thirteen years after he passed away. The 
 death of my beloved sister Christina, on 29 December 1894, 
 called forth a flood of not undeserved but assuredly very 
 fervent praise ; and in the eulogies of her were intermixed 
 many warm tributes to my brother — I might say, without a 
 dissentient voice. 
 
 As regards my Memoir, I, having large knowledge and 
 numerous materials, have not consulted a single person 
 except Christina, who, during the earlier weeks of my under- 
 taking, gave me orally the benefit of many reminiscences 
 relating chiefly to years of childhood, and often kept me right 
 upon details as to which I should have stumbled. On her 
 bed of pain and rapidly approaching death she preserved a 
 singularly clear recollection of olden facts, and was cheered 
 in going over them with me. 
 
 Some readers of the Memoir may be inclined to ask me — 
 " Have you told everything, of a substantial kind, that you 
 know about your deceased brother ? " — My answer shall be 
 given beforehand, and without disguise : " No ; I have told 
 what 1 choose to tell, and have left untold what I do not 
 choose to tell ; if you want more, be pleased to consult some 
 other informant." 
 
 One word in conclusion. In case the present book should 
 find favour with the public, I should be disposed to rummage 
 
PREFACE. Xlll 
 
 among my ample stock of materials, and produce a number 
 of details relating not only to my brother, but also to other 
 members or connexions of the family. But at the age of 
 sixty-five a man finds the horizon of his work narrowed, and 
 rapidly narrowing ; and possibly this will not be. 
 
 W. M. ROSSETTI. 
 
 St. Edmund's Terrace, London. 
 April 1895. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Dedication vii 
 
 Preface ix 
 
 Memoir 3 
 
 I. 
 
 BIRTH. 
 
 Dante Rossetti's birth in London, 1828— His Godfathers 3 
 
 II. 
 
 PARENTAGE. 
 
 Gabriele (Father of Dante) Rossetti — His birth in Vasto— His Parents 
 and Brothers — His drawings, studies, and writings, in Italy — 
 His political lyrics and exile — Malta and John Hookham Frere — 
 Life in London — His death — His character, opinions, person, etc. — 
 His writings in England on Dante, etc. — Carducci's opinion of 
 his poetry — The centenary of his birth, Vasto — Descriptions of 
 him by Bell Scott and Frederic Stephens — Mrs. Gabriele Rossetti, 
 her life, character, and person — Some versicles of hers ... 3 
 
 III. 
 
 RELA TIVES. 
 
 Dante Rossetti's Great-grandfathers — His maternal Grandfather, Gae- 
 tano Polidori, Secretary to Alfieri, and Italian teacher in London — 
 Anecdotes of the Frencli Revolution and of Alfieri — Polidori's 
 person, character, and writings — Mrs. Polidori — Her Father, 
 William Pierce — Connexions of the Pierce family, Mrs, Bray, 
 
xvi CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 etc. — Mrs. Polidori's closing years — Her sister and children — 
 Dr. John William Polidori and his writings — Teodorico Pietro- 
 cola-Rossetti — Extinction of the Rossetti family in Vasto — 
 Instances of longevity ......... 24 
 
 IV. 
 
 CHILDHOOD. 
 
 The four children of Gabriele Rossetti — Houses in Charlotte Street — ■ 
 Dante Rossetti and his Sister Maria — Walks about London, etc. — 
 Pet animals — Sights and entertainments in London — Singing, 
 card-playing, illness, etc. — First attempt at drawing, and resolve 
 to be a painter — Theatrical and other prints . . . . .36 
 
 V. 
 
 ACQUAINTANCES IN CHILDHOOD. 
 
 The Potters and other British friends — Numerous Italian friends of 
 Gabriele Rossetti — Pistrucci, Sangiovanni, etc. — Protestantizing 
 Italians — Mazzini and Panizzi — Talks on politics — John Stuart 
 Mill on Continental and English Life 44 
 
 VI: 
 
 CHILDISH BOOK-READING AND SCRIBBLING. 
 
 Dante Rossetti's early training — The Bible, Shakespear, Gothe, Walter 
 Scott, etc. — Childish drawings from Henry VI. — Rossetti's opinion 
 of Scott's novels, 1871 — Books of prints and the National Gallery 
 — Dante's poems read later on — Childish drama, The Slave, etc.- — 
 Childish drawings— Dante Rossetti fortunate in his family 
 surroundings ........... 57 
 
 VII. 
 
 SCHOOL. 
 
 Dante Rossetti's first school, Mr. Paul's, 1836 — School-life not favour- 
 able to his character — To King's College School, 1837 — The Cayley 
 brothers — What Dante Rossetti learned — His various Masters, 
 including John Sell Cotman the painter — Mr. Caine's account of 
 Rossetti's school-life discussed — Parallel with Edgar Poe's school- 
 life — School-fellows — School-exercise on China, and Christina 
 Rossetti's verses thereon ........ 68 
 
CONTENTS. XV11 
 
 VIII. 
 HOME-LIFE DURING SCHOOL— SIR HUGH THE HERON. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Polidori's country-house at Holmer Green, and his house in London — 
 Accident with a chisel — Boyish drawings from the Iliad — Dante 
 Rossetti reads Byron, Dickens, Brigand Tales, French novels, etc. 
 — He writes a prose tale, Roderick and Rosalba, and a ballad- 
 poem, Sir Hugh the Heron, which is privately printed, also 
 William and Marie — His note on Hugh Heron — Boyish draw- 
 ings — Studies German under Dr. Heimann — Intimacy with the 
 Heimann family . . . . . . 79 
 
 IX. 
 
 STUDY FOR THE PAINTING PROFESSION— CARY'S AND 
 THE R.A. 
 
 Dante Rossetti leaves school, 1842, and goes to Cary's Drawing 
 Academy — His American friend, Thomas Doughty, and his family 
 — Charley Ware, and his portrait-group — Bailey's Festus, and 
 verses The Atheist — Studies and habits at Cary's — Sonnets from 
 the Italian, and Bouts-rimes sonnets — The Westminster Hall 
 cartoon-competitions — Proceeds to the R.A. antique school, 1846 
 — Disinclination to any obligatory study or work — Millais, Hol- 
 man Hunt, Stephens — The Ghiberti Gates — Hunt on Rossetti's 
 appearance and demeanour — A fellow-student's reminiscence — ■ 
 Rossetti's immethodical habits — Theatre-going . . . .88 
 
 X. 
 
 STUDENT-LIFE— SKETCHING, READING, AND WRITING. 
 
 Rossetti's early sketches influenced by Gavarni — Lithographed play- 
 ing-cards, etc. — Designs to Christina Rossetti's Verses, 1847 — 
 His first uncompleted oil-picture, Retro me Sathana — Reads 
 Shelley, Charles Wells, Maturin, Thackeray, etc., and with great 
 predilection Browning — No solid reading — His prose tale, Sor- 
 rentino, 1843 — Translations from the German, The Nibelungen- 
 lied, Henry the Leper, etc. — Translations from the Vita Nuova, 
 and lEarly Italian Poets — Tennyson's opinion of these — The 
 printed opinions of Swinburne and Placci — Writes The Blessed 
 Damozel, 1847 — Admiration of Edgar Poe — Other poems, My 
 Sister's Sleep, Ave, Dante at Verona, Jenny, etc. — The unpublished 
 Ballad, Jan van Hunks, now begun, and finished on his deathbed 
 ■ — Political burlesque poem, unprinted — Purchase of the MS. 
 book by Blake — Rossetti's work, towards 1862, on Gilchrist's 
 Life of Blake .......... 97 
 
 VOL. I. b 
 
xviii CONTENTS. 
 
 XI. 
 
 FRIENDS TOWARDS 1847. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Major Calder Campbell, Alexander Munro, William Bell Scott — Meets 
 Ebenezer Jones — Rossetti's first letter to Scott, 1847 — Observa- 
 tions on his poems — Rossetti sends The Blessed Damozel, and 
 other Songs of the Art Catholic, to Scott — His turn of mind in 
 religious matters — Scott's first visit — Rossetti writes to Browning 
 about Pauline, and knows him afterwards . . . . .110 
 
 XII. 
 
 MADOX BROWN, HOLM AN HUNT, MILLAIS. 
 
 Letter to Madox Brown, 1848, asking to be allowed to study painting 
 under him — Rossetti's relation to the course of study at the R.A. — 
 Details about Brown, and his first call on Rossetti — Rossetti set 
 to still-life painting, etc. — He calls on Hunt, and consults him as 
 to further painting-work — His design of Gretchen in the Church — 
 The Cyclographic Society — Opinions of Millais and Hunt on the 
 Gretchen — Rossetti's indifference to perspective, in which Stephens 
 gives him some lessons — Forwards some poems to Leigh Hunt, 
 who (letter quoted) praises them, but dissuades him from trusting 
 to literature as a profession — Head of Gaetano Polidori, June 1848 
 — Rossetti adopts Holman Hunt's advice as to painting, and 
 shares a studio with him in Cleveland Street — Stephens's descrip- 
 tion of it — Hunt takes Rossetti round to Millais in Gower Street. 1 1 5 
 
 XIII. 
 
 THE PRAZRAPHAELITE BROTHERHOOD. 
 
 Lasinio's engravings from the pictures in the Campo Santo of Pisa 
 lead on directly to the Prseraphaelite movement, 1848 — Remarks 
 on Millais, Hunt, and Rossetti, in this connexion — The British 
 school of painting in 1848, and the term Prasraphaelite — The 
 three inventors of the movement equally concerned in bringing 
 it to bear — Rossetti's letter to Chesneau on this point — -Their 
 close attention to detail subsidiary to other objects in the move- 
 ment— Madox Brown's relation to the Brotherhood — Four other 
 members of it — Details as to Woolner, Collinson, Stephens, and 
 myself— Great intimacy among the P.R.B.'s. — Hunt on Rossetti's 
 literary attainments — The aims of the Brotherhood discussed — 
 Not a religious movement, nor directly promoted by Ruskin — 
 Rossetti, in later life, disliked the term Praeraphaelite — Diary of 
 the P.R.B. kept by me as Secretary — Defaced by Dan-te Rossetti 
 
CONTENTS. XIX 
 
 PAGE 
 
 — Details from this Diary as to election of Deverell, etc. — The 
 P.R.B., as an organization, dropped in January 185 1 — Christina's 
 sonnet The P.R.B, — " The Queen of the Praeraphaelites " — Rules 
 adopted 1851 — The pictures of Millais, Hunt, and Rossetti, 
 exhibited in 1849 — Rossetti's Girlhood of Mary Virgin — Three 
 sonnets of his bearing on the movement — His portrait of Gabriele 
 Rossetti, 1848 125 
 
 XIV. 
 FIRST EXHIBITED PICTURE, 1849. 
 
 Rossetti sends The Girlhood of Mary Virgin to the Free Exhibition — 
 The works of the Praeraphaelites favourably received by critics 
 and others in 1849, but very adversely afterwards — The Athenaeum 
 notice of Rossetti's first picture quoted — Sale of the picture, and 
 its general success — -Treatment in this book of his pictures etc. 
 in later years, and reference to another book, Dante Gabriel 
 Rossetti as Designer a?id Writer . 144 
 
 XV. 
 
 THE GERM. 
 
 Rossetti bent upon starting a magazine, July 1849 — Proposed titles 
 and publisher — He writes the prose story Hand and Soul — 
 Meeting at his studio, and choice of the title The Germ — Contents 
 of No. 1, and its sale — Nos. 3 and 4 appear under the title Art 
 and Poetry — Notices of the magazine — Debt upon its issue — 
 Anecdotes relating to Hand and Soul — Rossetti makes an etching 
 (destroyed) for this story, and begins another story An Autopsy - 
 chology (or St. Agnes of Intercession} — His various contributions 
 to the magazine — Verses by John L. Tupper on its expiry . .149 
 
 XVI. 
 
 PAINTINGS AND WRITINGS, 1849-53. 
 
 Trip with Holman Hunt to Paris and Belgium — Paintings and 
 Designs— Rossetti's attainments in draughtsmanship, etc. — Details 
 as to Ecce Ancilla Domini — Press-criticism of this picture, and 
 other Prseraphaelite works of 1850 — Extract from the Athenaeum 
 — The Queen and Millais's Carpenter 's Shop — Details as to 
 Giotto painting Dante's Portrait, Head of Holman Hunt, Mary 
 Magdalene at the Door of Simon the Pharisee, and Found — 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Discussion as to the statement that Found is an illustration of 
 Bell Scott's poem Rosabell — Rossetti's sonnet to Woolner in 
 Australia — Collinson's picture of St. Elizabeth of Hungary — 
 Sketching-club proposed in 1854 — Poems, Dante at Verona, 
 Burden of Nineveh, Sister Helen, etc. — Rossetti desultory in 
 youth, and sometimes at odds with his Father — He drops writing 
 poetry, 1852 — Project of his becoming a telegraphist on the 
 railway — Notion of renting No. 16 Cheyne Walk — His studios 
 in Newman Street and Red Lion Square — Brown paints Rossetti's 
 head as Chaucer — Rossetti settles in Chambers in Chatham 
 Place, 1852 157 
 
 XVII. 
 
 MISS SID DAL. 
 
 Rossetti falls in love with Miss Elizabeth Eleanor Siddal, 1850 — 
 Walter H. Deverell first sees her as assistant in a bonnet-shop — 
 Her appearance — Deverell gets her to sit for the head of Viola 
 in his picture from Twelfth Night — She also sits to Hunt and 
 Millais — Her family — She sits to Rossetti for Rossovcstita, and a 
 subject from the Vila Nziova, and many other paintings — An 
 engagement between Miss Siddal and Rossetti dating towards 
 1851 — Her tone in conversation, etc. —Her paintings and verses 
 — Swinburne's estimate of her quoted, also her poem A Year 
 and a Day — Her extreme ill-health — She is introduced to the 
 Howitt family — Rossetti as a lover — Death of Deverell, 1854 . 171 
 
 XVIII. 
 
 JOHN RUSK IN. 
 
 Ruskin not connected with the Prseraphaelite movement when first 
 started — In 1851 Patmore suggests to him to write something 
 on the subject, and he sends a letter to the Times — In 1853 
 MacCracken calls his attention to Rossetti, and Ruskin praises two 
 of his water-colours— Ruskin calls on Rossetti, April 1854 — Their 
 intimacy begins, partly interrupted by the death of Gabriele 
 Rossetti, and the absence of Dante Rossetti at Hastings, and of 
 Ruskin abroad — Affectionate and free-spoken relations between 
 Ru~kin and Rossetti — Madox Brown's dislike of Ruskin, who 
 becomes the chief purchaser for a while of Rossetti's works — 
 Rossetti ceases to exhibit — Ruskin's opinion of Rossetti after his 
 decease — Extracts from Ruskin's letters, 1854-7 — His high regard 
 
CONTENTS. XXI 
 
 PACE 
 
 for Miss Siddal — He settles on her ^150 a year, taking her 
 paintings in proportion — Cessation of this arrangement, 1857 — 
 She goes abroad with Mrs. Kincaid, 1855, returning 1856 — Decline 
 of her health — My own acquaintance with Ruskin — Rossetti 
 admires him as a lecturer— Letter from Rossetti to MacCracken, 
 Extract . . . . . .178 
 
 XIX. 
 
 WORK IN 1854-5-6. 
 
 Water-colours from Dante, etc. — Paolo and Franccsca, Passover in 
 Holy Family, Head of Browning, Dante s Dream, Designs from 
 Tennyson, etc. — The Seed of David, Triptych in Llandaff Cathe- 
 dral — General characteristics of Rossetti's style at this period — - 
 Troubles with the Tennyson designs, and Tennyson's own views 
 of them — Sketches of Tennyson reading Maud — The Seddon^ 
 and the Triptych — The Elite Closet, water-colour, and William 
 Morris — The Wedding of St. George — James Smetham, and his 
 remarks hereon 187 
 
 XX. 
 
 OXFORD MEN AND WORK—BURNE-JONES, MORRIS, 
 SWINBURNE. 
 
 Friends of Rossetti between 1847 and 1855 — Burne-Jones calls upon 
 him, June 1856, and is advised by Rossetti to adopt painting as 
 a profession — Afterwards Rossetti knows Morris and Swinburne 
 — The architect of the Oxford Museum, Woodward, invites 
 Rossetti in 1855 to undertake some decorative work there— He 
 does not do this, but in 1857 begins painting in the Union Debat- 
 ing-Hall from the Morte d' Arthur — Morris co-operates — Details 
 as to the Union-work — In 1856 Rossetti publishes The Burden of 
 Nineveh and some other poems in the Oxford and Cambridge 
 Magazine — Ruskin on The Burden of Nineveh — Other painters 
 in the Union Hall — Ultimate spoiling of the work — Swinburne's 
 introduction to Rossetti — Rossetti and his friends see in Oxford 
 Miss Burden, who becomes Mrs. Morris, and from whom Rossetti 
 paints many heads — The Praeraphaelite Exhibition in Russell 
 Place, 1857 — Miss Siddal's ill-health takes Rossetti to Bath, etc. 
 — Proposal, not carried out, for a " College," in which he and 
 other artists would settle — Miss Siddal's dissent — Hunt's state- 
 ment as to an " offence " by Rossetti . . . . . . 193 
 
xxii CONTENTS. 
 
 XXI. 
 
 WORK IN 1858-59. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Water-colour of Mary in the House of John, oil-picture Bocca Baciata, 
 etc.— Bell Scott's reference to the sitter for Bocca Baciata — Miss 
 Herbert — Poems, Love's Noctum, and The Song of the Bower — 
 The Hogarth Club, 1858, and paintings there exhibited . . 202 
 
 XXII. 
 
 MARRIAGE. 
 
 Reasons for postponing marriage — Mr. Plint and other purchasers of 
 Rossetti's pictures — Extreme ill-health ofMissSiddal at Hastings, 
 April i860 — Marriage, 23 May — Wedding-trip to Paris— Enlarge- 
 ment of Rossetti's views of pictorial art — His designs in Paris, 
 How They Met Themselves, etc. — He returns with his wife to 
 the Chambers, afterwards enlarged, in Chatham Place . . . 204 
 
 XXIII. 
 
 MARRIED LIFE. 
 
 Bell Scott on Rossetti's unsuitableness for married life — Remarks 
 hereon — Mrs. Rossetti intimate with the Brown, Morris, and 
 Burne-Jones families — Ruskin on drawings made by Rossetti from 
 her — Rossetti's intimacy with Swinburne — also with Meredith, 
 Sandys, Gilchrist, etc. — Death of Gilchrist, 1861 — Mrs. Madox 
 Brown's offer to help during his illness — Mrs. Rossetti's infirm 
 health, and birth of a stillborn infant — Death of Mrs. H. T. Wells 
 — Rossetti speaks of " getting awfully fat and torpid " . . . 208 
 
 XXIV. 
 
 WORK IN 1860-61— THE EARLY ITALIAN POETS— THE 
 MORRIS FIRM. 
 
 Death of Plint, and embarrassment ensuing to Rossetti, i860 — The 
 Plint sale — Water-colours of Lttcrezia Borgia and of Swinburne, 
 design of Cassandra, oil-picture of Fair Rosamund, etc. — Pre- 
 parations for publishing The Early Italian Poets — Opinions of 
 Ruskin and Patmore — Published by Smith and Elder, with some 
 subsidizing from Ruskin — Favourable reception of the book, and 
 result of its sale — Proposed etchings to it not produced — Rossetti 
 
CONTENTS. XXlll 
 
 I'AOF. 
 
 shows some original poems to Ruskin, with a view, unsuccessful, 
 to publication in The Cornhill Magazine — -He announces a volume, 
 Dante at Verona and other Poems, not actually published — 
 Foundation in i860 of the firm, Morris, Marshall, Falkner, & Co. 
 — Seven members, including Rossetti — Details as to Webb, 
 Marshall, and Falkner — Money ventured on the firm — Good- 
 fellowship of Rossetti and his partners— Methods of business, 
 more especially of Morris as leading partner and manager— 
 Warrington Taylor — Rossetti's designs for stained glass, etc. . 213 
 
 XXV. 
 
 DEATH OF MRS. DANTE ROSSETTI. 
 
 Her illness, phthisis and neuralgia — The last painting for which she 
 sat — 10 February 1862, she dines at an hotel with her husband 
 and Swinburne — My contemporary note as to her death next 
 morning from taking over-much laudanum — Dr. John Marshall — 
 Newspaper-paragraph, showing inquest, and verdict of accidental 
 death — Rossetti's sorrow and agitation— Ruskin calls, and exhibits 
 a change in religious opinion — The funeral — Rossetti consigns to 
 the coffin his book of MS. poems — Caine's account of this incident 
 — Rossetti's letter to Mrs. Gilchrist on his wife's death . . . 220 
 
 XXVI. 
 
 SETTLING IN CHEYNE WALK. 
 
 Rossetti resolves to leave Chatham Place, and proposes to combine 
 with his family and Swinburne in getting a new house — He fixes 
 on No. 16 Cheyne Walk — Relinquishes the proposal as to the 
 family — His water-colour, Girl at a Lattice, and crayon-head of 
 his Mother — Takes chambers provisionally, 59 Lincoln's Inn 
 Fields — New arrangement for Cheyne Walk, Dante Rossetti as 
 tenant, with Swinburne, Meredith, and myself, as sub-tenants — 
 Condition of Cheyne Walk in 1862 — Caine's account of the house 
 in 1880 — Further details as to the drawing-room etc. — Taking 
 possession of the house, October 1862 — Rossetti not constantly 
 melancholy after his wife's death — Meredith and Swinburne as 
 sub-tenants for the first two or three years — Meredith's opinion 
 of Rossetti — Extracts from letters from Ruskin and Burne-Jones, 
 1862 — Rossetti makes acquaintance with Whistler and Legros — 
 His art-assistant Knewstub — Advance in Rossetti's professional 
 income ..,.,.....,. 227 
 
XXIV CONTENTS. 
 
 XXVII. 
 WORK FROM 1862 TO 1868. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Oil-pictures, Joan of Arc, Bcata Beatrix, The Beloved, Lilith, Venus 
 Verticordia, Sibylla Palmifera, Monna Vanna, Mrs. Morris, etc. 
 — Water-colours, Paolo and Fra?icesca, Return of Tibullus to 
 Delia, Tristram and Yseult, etc. — Designs, Michael Scoff s Wooing, 
 Aurea Catena, etc. — Details as to most of these works, also Helen 
 of Troy, Aurelia, The Boat of Love, The Blue Bower, II Bamo- 
 scello, La Pia, Heart of the Night, Washing Hands, Socrates 
 taught to Da?ice by Aspasia, Aspecta Medusa — Erroneous impres- 
 sion that Rossetti painted only from Mrs. Morris — Other sitters 
 named, Christina Rossetti, Lizzie Rossetti, Mrs. Hannay, Mrs. 
 
 Beyer, Mrs. H , Miss Wilding, Miss Mackenzie, Keomi, Ellen 
 
 Smith, Miss Graham, Mrs. Stillman, Mrs. Sumner, etc. — Remarks 
 on Mrs. Morris as his type — His letter to the Athenceum as to 
 his being a painter in oils — Shields on Rossetti's use of com- 
 pressed chalk — Purchasers of his works, Leathart, Rae, Graham, 
 Leyland, Valpy, Mitchell, Craven, Lord Mount-Temple, Colonel 
 Gillum, Trist, Gambart, Fairfax Murray — Insufficiency of Rossetti's 
 studio, and its ultimate alteration — Dunn succeeds Knewstub as 
 his art-assistant — Large income made by Rossetti in 1865 and 
 other years — His friendly relations with purchasers — His work 
 1862-3, in connexion with Gilchrist's Life of Blake . . . 238 
 
 XXVIII. 
 
 INCIDENTS, 1862 TO 1868. 
 
 Rossetti's animals at Cheyne Walk — His notions about ghosts — The 
 wombat, woodchuck, and zebu — Attempts to communicate with 
 his deceased wife by table-turning — The Burlington and other 
 Clubs — The Bab Ballads — Rossetti houses Sandys for a while, 
 and George Chapman — Other friends — Charles Augustus Howell, 
 who becomes Ruskin's secretary — Bell Scott and Woolner — 
 Intimacy with Ruskin comes to an end — Extracts from Ruskin's 
 letters in 1865 — Rossetti collects works of decorative art, especially 
 blue china and Japanese prints — Buys a picture by Botticelli . 251 
 
 XXIX. 
 
 BEGINNINGS OF ILL-HEALTH— PENKILL CASTLE. 
 
 Rossetti generally healthy in youth— 1866, a complaint requiring 
 surgical treatment — 1867, insomnia, and failure of eyesight — 
 
CONTENTS. XXV 
 
 PACE 
 
 Doctors consulted — Trip to Warwickshire in 1868, and stay at 
 Penkill Castle, Ayrshire, with Miss Boyd, Miss Losh, and Bell 
 Scott — The Leeds Exhibition of Art — Loan made by Miss Losh 
 — Return to Cheyne Walk, and details as to eyesight — Resumes 
 art-work in December ... . . . . . . . 264 
 
 XXX. 
 
 PREPARATIONS FOR PUBLISHING POEMS. 
 
 Rossetti re-visits Penkill, 1869 — Urged, in 1868, by Scott to "live 
 for his poetry" — Sonnets previously published in 1868, others 
 in 1869 — Estimate for printing — Poems written at Penkill, 1869 
 — Alleged impulse towards suicide — Fancy about a chaffinch — " A 
 curiously ferocious look " — Poems printed, not for immediate 
 publication — -The unburying of the MS. deposited in his wife's 
 coffin — Arrangement with Ellis as publisher — Rossetti's com- 
 bination of self-reliance and self-mistrust — He is anxious to 
 secure a favourable critical reception of the Poems at starting 
 — Extracts on this point from my Diary and from Scott's book 
 — Rossetti's habits as to drinking — Death of Michael Halliday 
 — Acquaintance with Nettleship, Hake, and Hueffer — Hake's esti- 
 mate of Rossetti's character ........ 270 
 
 XXXI. 
 
 ART-WORK FROM 1869 TO SUMMER 1872. 
 
 Oil-pictures of Pandora, Mariana, Dante's Dream, Veronica Vero- 
 nese, etc. — Water-colour of Michael Scott — Designs of Penelope, 
 Dr. Hake, etc. — Details as to some of these works, especially 
 Dante's Dream — W. A. Turner becomes a purchaser . . . 282 
 
 XXXII. 
 
 THE POEMS, 1870— CHLORAL— KELMSCOTT MANOR-HOUSE. 
 
 The Poems forthcoming — Sojourn at Scalands — Rossetti's American 
 friend Stillman, who recommends chloral as a soporific — Rossetti's 
 excess in chloral-dosing, washed down by whiskey, and the bad 
 effects resulting — Publication of the Poems, April 1870 — Rapid 
 sale — Swinburne's review, extracts — Other reviews, The Catholic 
 World, etc. — Letters from acquaintances — Adverse criticism in 
 Blackwood's Magazine, coolly received by Rossetti— Republica- 
 
xxvi CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 tion of the Italian translations as Dante and his Circle, 1873 — 
 Rossetti in 1871 at Kelmscott Manor-house, which he shares with 
 the Morris family — Philip Bourke Marston and Edmund Gosse on 
 Rossetti — Turguenieff — Poems written at Kelmscott . . .285 
 
 XXXIII. 
 
 THE FLESHLY SCHOOL OF POETRY. 
 
 Robert Buchanan, as Thomas Maitland, publishes in the Contemporaiy 
 Review an attack thus entitled on Rossetti's Poems, October 1871 
 — His previous attack on Swinburne, 1866, and my Criticism — 
 Review of my edition of Shelley, 1870 — The Fleshly School en- 
 larged and re-issued as a pamphlet — Extracts from it — Rossetti 
 not much troubled by the review-article— A dinner at Bell Scott's 
 — Rossetti replies, publishing, in the Athenceum, The Stealthy 
 School of Criticistn, and writing a pamphlet, which is withheld — 
 Aggravated imputations in the pamphlet form of The Fleshly 
 School — Buchanan's retractation, 188 1-2, extracts — Summary of 
 the facts — Quitter's article The Art of Rossetti, 1883, extract . 293 
 
 XXXIV 
 
 HYPOCHONDRIA AND ILLNESS. 
 
 Dividing line in Rossetti's life, spring 1872 — He is perturbed by The 
 Fleshly School of Poetry in its book-form, and has fancies of a 
 conspiracy against him — Other adverse critiques — Evidences of 
 mental unsettlement on 2 June — Browning regarded with sus- 
 picion — Rossetti not insane, but affected by hypochondria, result- 
 ing largely from chloral — Physical delusions — Mr. Marshall and 
 Dr. Maudsley — Extract from the Memoirs of Eighty Years, written 
 by Dr. Hake, who takes Rossetti off to his house at Roehampton 
 — Scott's remarks — Attempt at suicide by laudanum on the night 
 of 8 June — Mistake as to serous apoplexy — I fetch my Mother 
 and Sister Maria, Christina being ill — Brown calls-in Marshall, 
 who, along with Hake, saves Rossetti's life — Mental disturbance 
 continues, and Rossetti moves into Brown's house, followed by 
 three houses in Perthshire— Hemiplegia — Rossetti's companions in 
 Perthshire — Extracts from Scott and Hake — Resumption of paint-' 
 ing, and gradual recovery — Surgical treatment — Money-affairs 
 — Sale of the collection of china, and removal of pictures to Scott's 
 house .,....,,..,. 303 
 
CONTENTS. XXV11 
 
 XXXV. 
 
 STAY AND WORK AT KELMSCOTT, 1872-4— THEODORE 
 IV A TTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Rossetti, with George Hake, returns from Scotland, and re-settles at 
 Kelmscott Manor-house — His health and spirits at first good, 
 afterwards re-injured by chloral — Personal details — -Knows Theo- 
 dore Watts as a lawyer, and soon as an intimate literary and 
 personal friend — Fixes upon Howell as his professional agent — 
 Advantages accruing from this connexion — J. R. Parsons, Howell's 
 partner — Rossetti paints Proserpine, also La Ghirlandata, The 
 Bower Maiden, The Blessed Damozel, Dante's Dream (smaller 
 replica), The Roman Widow — Re-publishes Dante and his Ciixle 
 — Nonsense-verses — Recurrence of gloomy fancies— Scott's cheque 
 for ^200 — Quarrel with anglers — Rossetti leaves Kelmscott in 
 July 1874, and never returns thither . . . . . .321 
 
 XXXVI. 
 
 LONDON AND ELSEWHERE, 1874-8. 
 
 Discussion of Bell Scott's statements about Rossetti's seclusion, his 
 desertion by old friends, George Hake, Browning, his new friends, 
 his want of candour — Rossetti's condition of health and mental 
 tone — Theodore Watts — Rossetti goes to Aldwick Lodge, Bognor 
 — Libel-case, Buchanan v. Taylor — Goes to Broadlands — The 
 Mount-Temples and Mrs. Sumner — "Deafening" of Rossetti's 
 studio — Mesmerism — Surgical operation, as narrated by Watts — 
 Stay at Hunter's Forestall — Disappearance of letters — Details as 
 to chloral — Brown ceases to see Rossetti for some months — 
 Renewal of lease in Cheyne Walk — Death of Oliver Brown, and 
 Rossetti's impression as to his posthumous writings — Death of 
 Maria F. Rossetti 331 
 
 XXXVII. 
 
 INCIDENTS AND TRANSACTIONS, 1874-81— HALL CAINE. 
 
 Dissolution of the Partnership, Morris, Marshall, Falkner, & Co., 1874 
 — Rossetti obtains possession of the portrait of him painted by 
 G. F. Watts, R.A.- — He drops his connexion with Howell, 1876, 
 and the reasons for this — Drawings falsely attributed to Rossetti 
 — Fluctuations in his income — Funds for the families of James 
 Hannay and J. L. Tupper, and exertions to benefit James Smetham 
 — Declines to exhibit in the Grosvenor Gallery, 1877 — An excep- 
 tion, for the benefit of an art-institution, to his system of not 
 
XXV111 CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 exhibiting — Unfounded report as to a visit from the Princess 
 Louise — Rossetti's correspondence with Hall Caine begins, 1879 
 — Extract from Caine's Recollections as to his first visit to Rossetti, 
 1880 — Reference to various details given by Caine as to Rossetti's 
 opinions, etc. — His view debated as to Rossetti's natural irresolu- 
 tion and melancholy — -Friends who arranged to visit Rossetti from 
 day to day — Continued activity in painting, along with poetry, 
 and the re-edition of Gilchrist's Life of Blake .... 346 
 
 XXXVIII. 
 
 PAINTINGS AND POEMS, 1874-81. 
 
 Pictures of The Blessed Damosel, Dante's Dream (replica), La Pia, La 
 Bella Mano, Venus Astarte, The Sea-spell, Mnemosyne, Beata 
 Beatrix (finished by Madox Brown), A Vision of Fiammetta, La 
 Donna delta Finestra, The Daydream — Designs of The Sphinx, 
 The Spirit of the Rainbow, Perlascura, Desdemonds Death-song, 
 Sancta Lilias, The Sonnet — Water-colour, Bruna Brunelleschi — 
 Details as to The Sea-spell, Vision of Fiammetta, Daydream — 
 Scott's narrative as to The Sphinx — Details as to Desdemona's 
 Death-song and Bruna B? unelleschi — Haydon's Etching of Hamlet 
 and Ophelia — Caine's account as to how Rossetti resumed poetical 
 composition towards 1878 — Sonnet on Cyprus — Other Sonnets — 
 The historical ballads, The White Ship and The King's Tragedy — 
 The Beryl-songs in Rose Mary ....... 362 
 
 XXXIX. 
 
 DANTE'S DREAM— BALLADS AND SONNETS. 
 
 In July 1881 Hall Caine becomes an inmate of Rossetti's house — His 
 somewhat trying position there — Dunn leaves the house — Dante's 
 Dream returned to Rossetti, at his own wish, by Valpy, who 
 is to receive other works in exchange — Caine suggests to the 
 authorities of the Walker Gallery, Liverpool, the purchase of this 
 picture — Alderman Samuelson favours the proposal — Mr. R. and 
 his proceedings in the same matter — Purchase carried out for 
 ,£1,650, September 1881 — Recognition by Rossetti of the friendli- 
 ness of Caine and Samuelson — Transactions with Valpy and 
 Graham — March 1 88 1, Rossetti contemplates bringing out a new 
 volume, Ballads and Sonnets, and re-issuing, in a modified form, 
 the Poems of 1870 — Publishing-arrangements, and rapid sale of 
 Ballads a?id Sonnets in October — Proposed ballads on Joan of 
 Arc, Abraham Lincoln, and Alexander III. of Scotland— Critics 
 favourable to the new volume— Rossetti derives little pleasure 
 from these successes .,.,-..,,. 369 
 
CONTENTS. XXIX 
 
 XL. 
 
 CUMBERLAND AND LONDON— FINAL ILLNESS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Rossetti's state of health : blood-spitting, etc. — He goes with Caine to 
 the Vale of St. John, Keswick, September 1881 — Returns worse 
 than he went — "Absolution for my sins": Scott's narrative, and 
 observations on Rossetti's opinions upon religion — Paintings : 
 Salutation of Beatrice, duplicates of Proserpine and of Joan of 
 Arc, Donna delta Fincstra— Visit from Dr. and Philip Marston — 
 Quasi-paralytic attack and discontinuance of chloral — Account by 
 Caine, and extracts from my Diary — Scott and Morris on the 
 same subject — The Medical Resident Henry Maudsley, and the 
 Nurse Mrs. Abrey — Rossetti, with Caine and Miss Caine, goes to 
 Birchington-on-Sea — Scott's remarks on Rossetti's later years — 
 Miss Caine's reminiscences ........ 375 
 
 XLI. 
 
 B1RCHINGTON-ON-SE. 1 . 
 
 Birchington and Westcliff Bungalow — Rossetti's condition there — He 
 is joined by his Mother and Sister — Other friends — Paintings of 
 Proserpine and of Joan of Arc, and sketches of his Father for 
 Vasto — Ballad oijan van Hunks, and Sonnets on The Sphinx — 
 Novel-reading — Correspondence with Joseph Knight and Ernest 
 Chesneau — Extracts from Mrs. Rossetti's Diary .... 390 
 
 XLII. 
 
 DEATH AND FUNERAL. 
 
 My visit to Birchington, 1 April 1882 — Extracts from my Diary, show- 
 ing Dante's very grave condition of health — Extracts from Mrs. 
 Rossetti's Diary, 4 to 9 April — Rossetti's death, 9 April— My 
 memorandum of it — His will — Arrival of Lucy Rossetti and 
 Charlotte Polidori — The funeral, further extracts from Mrs. 
 Rossetti's Diary, and letter from Judge Lushington — The tomb- 
 stone, stained-glass window, and monument in Cheyne Walk . 395 
 
 XLIII. 
 
 PERSONAL DETAILS— EXTRACTS. 
 
 Rossetti's character — Canon Dixon's statement — Remarks by Knight, 
 Patmore, and Watts — His appearance — His feeling as to the 
 
X CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 beauties of Nature — His views on politics — Various remarks of 
 his on fine art, literature, and other matters, along with observa- 
 tions by Hunt, Caine, Sharp, Oliver Brown, and myself . . 404 
 
 XLIV. 
 
 ROSSETTI AS PAINTER AND POET— EXTRACTS. 
 
 Decision not to offer my own criticism on this matter — Extracts : upon 
 Fine Art, Leighton, Royal Scottish Academy, Hunt, Stephens, 
 Ouilter, Ruskin, Smetham, Shields, Hake, Rod, Mourey, Sartorio 
 — Upon Literature, Swinburne, Watts, Caine, Forman, Knight, 
 Hueffer, Sharp, Mrs. Wood, Patmore, Myers, William Morris, 
 Pater, Madame Darmesteter, Skelton, Sarrazin, Gamberale — 
 other Translators and Critics named ...... 423 
 
LIST OF PORTRAITS. 
 
 VOL. I. 
 
 I. Dante Gabriel Rossetti, 1855. By Himself . Frontispiece 
 II. Gabriele Rossetti, 1853. By D. G. Rossetti . To face p. 20 
 
 III. Gaetano Polidori, 1848. By D. G. Rossetti . „ 123 
 
 IV. Elizabeth Eleanor Siddal (Rossetti), 1854. By 
 
 Herself „ 1 75 
 
 V. Christina G. Rossetti, 1848. By D. G. Rossetti „ 342 
 
ERRATA. 
 
 Vol. I. 
 
 ;e xxi, line 12 from bottom, for Morte read Mort 
 14, line 1 1, for dark-speaking read dark speaking 
 54 „ 8, for Rufini read Ruffini 
 59 >< 6) f or Fitz-Eustace read De Wilton 
 119, lines 14, 15, for I have not the least recollection of what it was read the 
 
 Study in the manner of the Early Masters 
 135, line $,for Fuhrich read Steinle 
 166 ,, 11, for never read hardly 
 
 199 ,, 17 etc., for I do not know — etc. to end of paragraph, read These ex- 
 pressions occur in a letter to Mr. Skelton 
 2 35 11 I 9if or the earlier days of 1864 read August 1863 
 254 ,, 21, for perhaps in 1863 read in 1864 
 
 274 „ 17 etc., for I cannot say — down to prominent among them read Two of 
 these friends were Mr. Scott and Mr. Howell ; perhaps also Mr. 
 Henry Virtue Tebbs — down to Doctors' Commons 
 290 ,, 6 from bottom, for forgot read forget 
 304 ,, 16, for while read wile 
 336 ,, 22, for public read published 
 359 ,, 4 from bottom, for latter read former 
 401 ,, 21, /or if not read and indeed 
 409 „ last, /or XXX read IX 
 418 ,, 17, for Ikely read likely 
 436 11 2, for reputations read reputation, 
 11 11 9> for object read objects 
 
MEMOIR 
 
 DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI 
 
 BY 
 
 WILLIAM MICHAEL ROSSETTI. 
 
 Be sure that Love ordained for souls more meek 
 His roadside dells of rest. 
 
 VOL. 1. 
 
BIRTH. 
 
 GABRIEL CHARLES DANTE ROSSETTI, com- 
 monly known as Dante Gabriel Rossetti, was born on 
 12 May 1828, at No. 38 Charlotte Street, Portland Place. 
 London. This house is the last or most northerly house, 
 but one, 1 on the right-hand or eastern side of the street, as 
 you turn into it to the left, down Weymouth Street, out of 
 Portland Place. Charlotte Street, beyond No. 39, forms a 
 cul-de-sac. The infant was baptized at the neighbouring All 
 Souls' Church, Langham Place, as a member of the Church 
 of England. From his father he received the name Gabriel ; 
 from his godfather the name Charles ; and from poetical and 
 literary associations the name Dante. His godfather was Mr. 
 Charles Lyell, of Kinnordy, Kirriemuir, Forfarshire ; a keen 
 votary of Dante and Italian literature, a helpful friend to 
 our father, and himself father of the celebrated geologist, Sir 
 Charles Lyell. Some living members of the Lyell family 
 continue to be well known to the present generation. 
 
 II. 
 
 PARENTAGE. 
 
 Our parents were Gabriele Pasquale Giuseppe Rossetti 
 (always called Gabriele Rossetti), and Frances Mary Lavinia 
 
 1 No. 39 is now to the right hand of No. 38. It appears to me that this 
 was not the case when we lived in No. 38, but that that was then the last 
 house of all. The closed-up end of the street has been wholly altered 
 since my boyish days. 
 
 3 
 
4 DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI. 
 
 Rossetti, nee Polidori ; and, before proceeding further with 
 my narrative, I shall give some particulars about them, and 
 about other members of the family. 
 
 Gabriele Rossetti was born on 28 February 1783, in the 
 city of Vasto, named also (by a corruption from Longobard 
 nomenclature) Vasto Ammone, in the Province of Abruzzo 
 Citeriore, on the Adriatic coast of the then Kingdom of 
 Naples. Vasto is a very ancient place, a municipal town 
 of the Romans, then designated Histonium. We are not 
 bound — though some enthusiasts feel themselves permitted — 
 to believe that it was founded by the Homeric hero Diomed : 
 its patron saint is the Archangel Michael. Gabriele was 
 the youngest son of Nicola Rossetti, and his wife Maria 
 Francesca, nee Pietrocola. Nicola Rossetti was a Black- 
 smith, of very moderate means ; x a man of somewhat severe 
 and irascible nature, whose death ensued not long after the 
 French-republican invasion of the Kingdom of Naples in 
 1799. The French put some affront upon him — I believe 
 they gave him a smart beating for failing or neglecting to 
 furnish required provisions ; and, being unable to stomach 
 this, or to resent it as he would have liked, his health declined, 
 and soon he was no more. His wife belonged to a local 
 family of fair credit : but, like other Italian women of that 
 period, she received no scholastic training ; she could not 
 write nor even read. The name Rossetti might be trans- 
 lated into " Ruddykins " or " Redkins " as an English 
 
 1 A Vastese connexion of mine, Signor Giuseppe Marchesani, favoured 
 me, early in 1895, with a number of mortuary and other inscriptions which 
 he had composed to various members of the family. I will give here 
 the one relating to Nicola Rossetti, who probably remains otherwise 
 unrecorded, unless by some " forlorn hie jacet." Of course anything 
 written in a lapidary style reads less well in my English than in Marche- 
 sani's Italian. "Nicola Rossetti, Blacksmith poor and honourable, lovingly 
 sent in boyhood to their first studies his sons, carefully nurtured in 
 childhood. If Fortune neglected him, provident Nature ultimately dis- 
 tinguished, in the obscure Artizan, the well-graced Father, who, to the 
 strokes of his hammer on the battered anvil, sent forth the sonorous and 
 glorious echo, beyond remote Abruzzo, into Italy and other lands." 
 
PARENTAGE. 5 
 
 equivalent. My father used to say that the Rossetti race 
 was an offshoot of the Delia Guardia family, well known and 
 still subsisting in Vasto ; and that at some date or other 
 certain children of the Delia Guardia stock were noted for 
 florid complexion and reddish hair, and thus got called " the 
 Rossetti," in accordance with the Italian hobby for nicknames, 
 and that this name gradually stuck to them as a patronymic. 
 
 Nicola and Maria Francesca Rossetti had a rather large 
 family, four sons and three daughters, and three of the sons 
 earned distinction. There was Domenico, who was versed 
 (as a local historian records) " in medical science, in civil and 
 canonical law, and in theology," writing in Italian, Latin, 
 French, and to some extent Hebrew, and was " the first 
 among mortals who daringly descended into the Grotto of 
 Montecalvo near Nice." On this theme he wrote a poem 
 in three cantos, besides other poems (two volumes, printed 
 in Parma) and prose : he was besides an Improvisatore. 
 Born in 1772, he died comparatively young in 18 16. There 
 was also Andrea, the eldest brother, who became a Canon 
 of San Giuseppe in Vasto ; and thirdly, Gabriele, whom I 
 may be excused for regarding as a more important writer 
 than even the polyglot Domenico. I might include, as 
 showing that verse-writing ran in the family, the fourth son, 
 Antonio, who exercised the humble calling of a wig-maker 
 and barber : he likewise versified in an off-hand popular 
 manner, and was of some note to his fellow-townsmen. 
 
 Gabriele Rossetti came into the world well endowed for 
 the arts. As it turned out, he took to poetry and other 
 forms of literature ; but he might equally have excelled in 
 drawing or in vocal music. I have before me as I write 
 three MSS. containing specimens of his early skill as a 
 draughtsman, done when he was twenty years old or there- 
 abouts. The drawings are illustrations to poems (juvenile 
 enough) of his own composition, and are surprisingly precise 
 and dainty in execution. One would have little hesitation 
 in calling them copper-engravings ; but they are, in fact, 
 pen-designs done with sepia, which he himself extracted 
 
6 DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI. 
 
 from the cuttlefish or " calamarello," so dear to Neapolitan 
 gourmands. An ornamental headpiece, two decorative title- 
 pages, and two landscapes founded on traditions of Claude 
 or Gaspar Poussin, are his own inventions. One drawing is 
 a group of two women after Mignard ; and two or three 
 others may also be copies. From my earliest childhood I 
 have looked with astonishment on these performances as 
 pieces of manipulation ; and, after a lifetime spent among 
 artists, I hardly know what to put beside them in their own 
 limited line of attempt. Then, as to music, Gabriele had 
 a beautiful tenor-voice, sweet and sonorous in a high degree. 
 It received no regular cultivation, but was such that he was 
 more than once urged to train himself for the operatic stage 
 — a mode of life, however, for which he had no sort of 
 inclination. 
 
 The local magnate was the Marchese del Vasto, of the 
 great historic house of D'Avalos, into which the famous 
 Vittoria Colonna married. He was feudal Lord of the 
 Vastese, and they acknowledged themselves his " vassals," 
 though this state of things, in the epoch of a Robespierre 
 and a Napoleon, was not destined to continue long. The 
 attention of the Marchese was soon called to the uncommon 
 promise of his growing-up vassal Gabriele Rossetti, and, after 
 some well-conducted schooling in Vasto, the youth was sent 
 in 1804, under the patronage of this nobleman, to study in 
 the University of Naples. His education here was cut short 
 after a year and a month, and consequently had not a very 
 wide range. In middle life he read Latin with ease, and 
 retained some remnant of geometry and mathematics, but 
 of Greek he had no knowledge. In French he was well 
 versed, speaking the language with great fluency and an 
 amusing assumption of the tone of a Frenchman. English 
 he acquired by practice in Malta and in this country, and 
 could both read and talk it tolerably enough, though he 
 never did so when he had the option of Italian. 
 
 Rossetti was just twenty-three years of age when the 
 Bourbon king, Ferdinand I., was turned out of his con- 
 
PARENTAGE. 7 
 
 tinental dominion, and had to retire into Sicily, and Joseph 
 Bonaparte reigned in his stead. With Ferdinand vanished 
 the Marchese del Vasto, who was his Court-Majordomo. Thus 
 all the years of Rossetti's early manhood were passed in 
 association with a Napoleonic and not a Bourbon order of 
 ideas. As a sequel to his first volume of poems, published 
 in 1807, he obtained an appointment as librettist in the 
 operatic theatre of San Carlo, writing three or more opera- 
 books, one of them named Giulio Sabino. He was kept in 
 hot water, however, by the exigencies of managers and 
 vocalists, and got transferred to the Curatorship of Ancient 
 Marbles and Bronzes in the Museum of Naples. He figured 
 in the Academy of the Arcadi as " Filidauro Labidiense." 
 There used to be a catch, — 
 
 " Rossini, Rossetti, 
 Divini, imperfetti " ; 
 
 but whether my father was ever linked with Rossini in any 
 operatic production I am unable to say. Rossetti was well 
 received at the Court of King Joachim (Murat), the successor 
 of Joseph. I have heard him say that he knew some- 
 thing of almost all the Bonapartes, except only the great 
 Napoleon. I possess a slight portrait of him done by the 
 Princess Charlotte Bonaparte ; and another of the family, 
 Lady Dudley Stuart, acted as godmother to his daughter 
 Christina. In my own time Prince Pierre Bonaparte (too 
 notorious as the homicide of Victor Noir) was frequently in 
 our house ; occasionally also Prince Louis Napoleon, the 
 unduly glorified and duly execrated Napoleon III., of whom 
 my father would emphatically declare that he could never 
 trace in him one grain (iieppure un* ombrd) of Liberalism. 
 King Joachim fell in 181 5, and King Ferdinand was restored 
 to his capital city, Naples ; a state of things not likely to be 
 much to the taste of Gabriele Rossetti— who in 181 3 had 
 acted as Secretary to that part of the provisional government, 
 sent by Joachim to Rome, which looked after public instruc- 
 tion and the fine arts. He did not, however, under the 
 
8 DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI. 
 
 restored Bourbon, lose his post in the Museum. An agitation 
 ensued for a constitution similar to that which the Spaniards 
 established in 1819 — the secret society of the Carbonari, in 
 which Rossetti was a member of the General Assembly, being 
 especially active in this direction. In 1820 there was a 
 military uprising, and Ferdinand had to grant the consti- 
 tution — probably with a fixed intention of revoking it at the 
 first opportunity. Rossetti's ode to the Dawn of the Con- 
 stitution-day, " Sei pur bella cogli astri sul crine " (" Lovely art 
 thou with stars in hair "), was in every Neapolitan mouth. 
 In 1821 the king, then sojourning in Austria, abolished the 
 constitution, and suppressed it with the aid of Austrian 
 troops. Carbonarism was made a capital offence, and the 
 leading constitutionalists were denounced and proscribed, 
 among them Rossetti. He is said to have been viewed by 
 the king with especial abhorrence, partly because various 
 writings, not really his, were attributed to him, and partly 
 because one of his lyrics contained the lines — 
 
 " I Sandi ed i Luvelli 
 Non son finiti ancor," 
 
 (Sands and Louvels are not yet extinct.) The reference, 
 it will be perceived, is to the political assassination of 
 Kotzebue by Sand, and of the Due de Berri by Louvel, 
 with a suggestion that a like fate might easily befall King 
 Ferdinand. Rossetti did not say that it ought to befall 
 him ; but the king was not inclined to take a good-natured 
 view of the matter, or to construe the phrase rather as a 
 loyal warning than as an incitement to a deed of blood. 
 The peccant poet lay concealed in Naples for three months, 
 beginning in March 1821 ; finally the British admiral, Sir 
 Graham Moore, pressed by his generous wife who knew and 
 liked Rossetti, furnished him with a British uniform, got him 
 off in a carriage to the harbour, and shipped him to Malta. I 
 have before me a printed proclamation of King Ferdinand — 
 the original document, dated 28 September 1822 — granting 
 an amnesty to persons concerned in the revolutionary or 
 
PARENTAGE. 9 
 
 constitutional movement, with the exception of thirteen men 
 expressly named. My father is the thirteenth. In Malta 
 he remained about two years and a half, holding classes (as 
 indeed he had previously done in Naples) for instruction in 
 the Latin and Italian languages and literature, and most 
 liberally befriended by the English poet and diplomatist, John 
 Hookham Frere, the translator of Aristophanes : their ami- 
 cable relations continued after distance had separated them. 
 Deep indeed were the affection and respect which Rossetti 
 entertained for Frere. One of my vivid reminiscences is of 
 the day when the death of Frere was announced to him, 1 in 
 1 846. With tears in his half-sightless eyes and the passionate 
 fervour of a southern Italian, my father fell on his knees, and 
 exclaimed, " Anima bella, benedetta sii tu, dovunque sei ! " 2 
 
 Rossetti had long been a noted Improvisatore, as well as 
 a poet in the accustomed way (he continued to improvise 
 to some extent for a while, even after coming to London), 
 and this, with his other gifts, made him popular in Maltese 
 society. After a while, however, he was harassed by the 
 spies or other emissaries of the Bourbon Government, which 
 embittered his position so much that he resolved to have 
 done with Malta, and settle in England. Here he arrived 
 in January or February 1824, and fixed himself in London. 
 He soon made acquaintance with the Polidori family, and a 
 mutual attachment united him in marriage with the second 
 daughter, Frances Mary Lavinia, in April 1826. He subsisted 
 by teaching Italian, and held perhaps the foremost place in 
 that vocation. In 183 1 he was appointed Professor of Italian 
 in King's College, London. This professorship was not a 
 sinecure ; but the students were few, and became fewer from 
 about 1840 onwards, when the German language began 
 decidedly to supersede the Italian in public favour. My 
 
 1 The person who announced it was Mr. Edward Graham, the associate 
 of Shelley in early youth. He had taken to the musical profession, and 
 was a man of uncommonly handsome presence : his bodily were superior 
 to his mental endowments. 
 
 2 " Noble soul, blessed be thou wherever thou art." 
 
10 DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI. 
 
 father made at the best a very moderate income ; yet this 
 sufficed for all the requirements of himself, and his wife and 
 four children, and no man could be more heartily contented 
 with what he got — more strenuous and cheerful in working 
 for it, or more willing " to cut his coat " (he never turned it) 
 " according to his cloth." The British religion of " keeping up 
 appearances " was unknown— thank Heaven — in my paternal 
 home ; my father disregarded it from temperament and foreign 
 way of thinking and living, and my mother contemned it 
 with modest or noble superiority. The tolerably thriving 
 condition of our household declined with my father's decline 
 in health, which began towards 1842 : interruption of pro- 
 fessional work, waning employment, inability to take up such 
 employment as offered, necessarily ensued. In 1843 (having 
 hitherto had uncommonly keen eyesight) he suddenly lost 
 one eye through amaurosis, and the other eye was greatly 
 weakened and in constant peril, though he was never bereft 
 of sight totally. A real tussle for the means of subsistence 
 now arose, but by one method or other all was tided over. 
 Our scale of living, if somewhat more threadbare and dingy, 
 did not materially dwindle from its unassuming yet comfort- 
 able average ; and no butcher nor baker nor candlestick- 
 maker ever had a claim upon us for a sixpence unpaid. In 
 his closing years my father had more than one stroke of 
 paralysis. Some of these were of a formidable kind ; yet he 
 got over them to a substantial extent, lived on in a suffering 
 state of body, and with mental faculties weakened, though 
 not impaired in any definite and absolute way, and continued 
 diligent in reading and writing almost to the last day of his 
 life. His sufferings, often severe, were borne with patience 
 and courage (he had an ample stock of both qualities), though 
 not with that unemotional calm which would have been 
 foreign to his Italian nature. For nearly a year before his 
 death he lived, with his wife and daughter Christina, at 
 Frome Selwood in Somerset ; but finally he returned to 
 London, and died at No. 166 Albany Street, Regent's Park, 
 on 26 April 1854, firm-minded and placid, and glad to be 
 
PARENTAGE. 1 1 
 
 released, in the presence of all his family. His young cousin, 
 Teodorico Pietrocola-Rossetti, was also there. He lies buried 
 in Highgate Cemetery. 
 
 Gabriele Rossetti was a man of energetic and lively 
 temperament, of warm affections, sensitive to slight or rebuff, 
 and well capable of repelling it, devoted to his family and 
 home, full of good-nature and good-humour, a fervent patriot, 
 honourable and aboveboard in all his dealings, and as pleasant 
 and inspiriting company as one could wish to meet. Though 
 sensitive as above stated, he was not in the least quarrelsome, 
 and never began a conflict about either literary or personal 
 matters : this disposition he transmitted to his son Dante 
 Gabriel. For some years after settling in London he went 
 a good deal into society, and was welcomed in several houses. 
 This had diminished at the date of my earliest reminiscences, 
 and soon it had wholly ceased. He could tell an amusing 
 story most capitally — I have hardly known his equal at that 
 — with good dramatic "take-off"; and, though his ordinary 
 speech was, to the best of my judgment, very pure Italian, 
 he could readily throw himself back, when he liked, into the 
 Neapolitan dialect, or the Abruzzese, which is not a little 
 provincial. 1 He always spoke Italian in the family, never 
 English ; and his children from the earliest years, as well 
 as his wife, answered in Italian. Apart from domestic 
 simplicity or sportiveness, his conversation was always high- 
 minded, implying a solid standard of public and private 
 virtue : nothing about it mean or sly or worldly, or tampering 
 with principle. There was indeed a certain tinge of self- 
 opinion or self-applause in his temperament ; he rather liked 
 " to ride the high horse " (as I have heard my brother phrase 
 
 1 I possess two good books showing the dialect of Vasto, sent to me by 
 the courtesy of their authors: the Vocabolmio dell Uso Abruzzese, by 
 Gennaro Finamore, and the Fujf Ammesche, by Luigi Anelli. The latter 
 volume is a series of sonnets, which appear to me highly excellent of their 
 popular kind. When I say that the Vastese words "Fujj' Ammesche" 
 represent the Italian words "Foglie Miste," my English reader will be 
 able to judge whether Vaatese is a pure or impure form of Italian. 
 
12 DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI. 
 
 it) ; but this was quite free from envy or disparagement of 
 others, and did no one any harm. Of what one calls " personal 
 vanity " he had a plentiful lack, and was indeed very careless 
 (like many other Italians) in all matters of the outer man. 
 As a father he was most kind, and would often allow his four 
 children to litter and rollick about the room while he plodded 
 through some laborious matter of literary composition. He 
 always retained, however, a perceptible tone of the patria 
 potestas. Rossetti was a splendid declaimer or reciter, with 
 perfect elocution. He put his heart into whatsoever he 
 did. His MSS. are models of fine and minute penmanship, 
 and show enormous pains in the way of revision and re- 
 casting. 
 
 He was an ardent lover of liberty, in thought and in the 
 constitution of society. In religion he was mainly a free- 
 thinker, strongly anti-papal and anti-sacerdotal, but not 
 inclined, in a Protestant country, to abjure the faith of his 
 fathers. He never attended any place of worship. Spite of 
 his free-thinking, he had the deepest respect for the moral 
 and spiritual aspects of the Christian religion, and in his 
 later years might almost be termed an unsectarian and undog- 
 matic Christian. As a freethinker, he was naturally exempt 
 from popular superstitions — did not believe in ghosts, second 
 sight, etc. ; and the same statement holds good of our mother. 
 In this respect Dante Gabriel, as soon as his mind got a 
 little formed, differed from his parents ; being quite willing 
 to entertain, in any given case, the question whether a ghost 
 or demon had made his appearance or not, and having indeed 
 a decided bias towards suspecting that he had. One point, 
 however, of popular superstition, or I should rather say of 
 superstitious habit, my father had not discarded. A fancy 
 existed in the Abruzzi (I dare say it still exists) that, if one 
 steps over a child seated or lying on the ground, the child's 
 growth would be arrested ; and I have more than once seen 
 my father divert his path to avoid stepping over any one of 
 us. In politics he belonged more to the party of constitu- 
 tional monarchy than to that of republicanism, but welcomed 
 
PARENTAGE. 1 3 
 
 anything that told for freedom. He always advocated the 
 unity of Italy, long before that aspiration was considered a 
 very practical one ; indeed, I have seen him described, on 
 good authority, as the first apostle of unity, but am not 
 clear that this is strictly accurate. 
 
 In estimating Rossetti's work as a national or patriotic poet, 
 and his general attitude of mind in matters of politics, or of 
 government in State and Church, we should remember the 
 conditions (already referred to) under which his life had been 
 passed. He was born under the feudal and despotic system of 
 the Neapolitan Bourbons ; his youth witnessed the more open- 
 minded but still despotic Napoleonic rule; the Bourbon restora- 
 tion brought-on a constitution sworn to by the sovereign, 
 who soon after perjured himself in suppressing it ; lifelong- 
 exile ensued to Rossetti and other constitutionalists. Then he 
 lived through many abortive insurrections against the temporal 
 and ecclesiastical dominators of Italy ; through the brilliant 
 promise and the retrogression of Pope Pius IX. (whom at 
 first he acclaimed with unmeasured fervour) ; through the 
 high deeds, glorious prospects, and dolorous collapse, of the 
 revolutionary years 1848-49, and through the fuliginous 
 beginnings of the Neapolitan King Bomba ; followed by a 
 genuinely liberal government in Piedmont under Victor 
 Emmanuel and Cavour, by the coup d'etat of Napoleon III., 
 and by general stagnancy of political thought and act 
 throughout Europe. He died five years before 1859, which 
 produced the alliance between France and Piedmont, the 
 expulsion of the Austrians from Lombardy, and the com- 
 mencement of the unification of Italy. When he died in 
 1854 the outlook seemed extremely dark; yet heart and 
 hope did not abate in him. The latest letter of his which 
 I have seen published was written in September or October 
 1853, and contains this passage, equally strong-spirited and 
 prophetic — 
 
 " The Arpa Evangelica . . . ought to find free circulation through 
 all Italy. I do not say the like of three other unpublished volumes, 
 which all seethe with love of country and hatred for tyrants. These 
 
14 DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI. 
 
 await a better time — which will come, be very sure of it. The 
 present fatal period will pass, and serves to whet the universal desire. 
 . . . Let us look to the future. Our tribulations, dear madam, 
 will not finish very soon, but finish they will at last. Reason has 
 awakened in all Europe, although her enemies are strong. We shall 
 pass various years in this state of degradation ; then we shall rouse 
 up. I assuredly shall not see it, for day by day, nay hour by hour, 
 I expect the much-longed-for death ; but you will see it." 
 
 In person Gabriele Rossetti was rather below the middle 
 height, and full in flesh till his health failed ; with a fine brow, 
 a marked prominent nose and large nostrils, dark-speaking 
 eyes, pleasant mouth, engaging smile, and genuine laugh. 
 He indulged in gesticulation, not to any great extent, but of 
 course more than an Englishman. His hands were rather 
 small — not a little spoiled by a life-long habit of munching his 
 nails. As to other personal habits, I may mention free 
 snuff-taking without any smoking ; and a hearty appetite while 
 health lasted, with more of vegetable diet than Englishmen 
 use. In his later years teeth and palate had failed, and all 
 viands " tasted like hay." Fermented liquors he only touched 
 seldom and sparingly. He had liked the English beer, but 
 had to leave it off altogether in 1836, to avoid recurrent 
 attacks of gout. In fact, he liked most things English — the 
 national and individual liberty, the constitution, the people 
 and their moral tone, though the British leaven of social 
 Toryism was far from being to his taste. He certainly pre- 
 ferred the English nation, on the whole, to the French, and had 
 a kind of prepossession against Frenchwomen, which he pushed 
 to a humorous over-plus in speech — saying for instance that, 
 if a Frenchwoman and himself were to be the sole tenants 
 of an otherwise uninhabited island, the human race on that 
 island would decidedly not be prolonged into a second genera- 
 tion. My father also took very kindly to the English coal- 
 fires, and was an adept in keeping them up ; he would 
 jocularly speak of " buying his climate at the coal-mer- 
 chant's." In all my earlier years I used frequently to see 
 my father come home in the dusk rather fagged with his 
 
PARENTAGE. 1 5 
 
 round of teaching, and after dining he would lie down flat 
 on the hearthrug close by the fire, and fall asleep for an hour 
 or two, snoring vigorously. Beside him would stand up our 
 old familiar tabby cat, poised on her haunches, and holding 
 on by the fore-claws inserted into the fender-wires, warming 
 her furry front. Her attitude (I have never seen any feline 
 imitation of it) was peculiar, somewhat in the shape of a 
 capital Y — "the cat making the Y" was my father's phrase 
 for this performance. She was the mother of a numerous 
 progeny ; one of her daughters — also long an inmate of our 
 house — was a black-and-white cat named Zoe by my elder 
 sister Maria, who had a fancy for anything Greekish ; but 
 Zoe never made a Y. 
 
 Rossetti had produced a tolerable amount of verse in Italy, 
 also the descriptive account (which passes under the name 
 of Cavalier Finati) of the Naples Museum ; but all his more 
 solid and voluminous writing was done after he had settled 
 in London. The principal works are as follows : 1826 — 
 Dante, Commedia (the Inferno alone was published), with a 
 Commentary aiming to show that the poem is chiefly political 
 and anti-papal in its inner meaning. A great deal of con- 
 troversy was excited at the time by this work, and by others 
 which succeeded it. 1832 — Lo Spirito Antipapale che pro- 
 dusse la Riforma (The Anti-Papal Spirit zvhich produced the 
 Reformation), following up and extending the same line 
 of thought. An English translation was also published. 
 1833 — Iddio e I'Uomo, Salterio {God and Man, a Psaltery), 
 poems. The two last-named books have the honour of being 
 in the Pontifical Index Librorum Prohibitorum, edition 
 1838, and perhaps others are there now. 1840 — // Mistero 
 delV Amor Platonico del Medio Evo {The Mysterious Platonic 
 Love of the Middle Ages), five volumes ; a book of daring 
 and elaborately ingenious speculation, enforcing the analogy 
 of many illustrious writers, as forming a secret society of 
 anti-Catholic thought, with the doctrines of Gnosticism and 
 Freemasonry (Rossetti was himself a Freemason). This book 
 was printed and prepared for publication, but was withheld 
 
1 6 DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI. 
 
 (partly at the instance of Mr. Frere) as likely to be accounted 
 rash and subversive. 1842— La Beatrice di Dante, contending 
 that Dante's Beatrice was a symbolic personage, not a real 
 woman. 1846—// Veggente in Solitudine {The Seer in 
 Solitude), a poem of patriotic aim, in a discursive and rhap- 
 sodical form, embodying a good deal of autobiography and 
 of earlier material. It circulated largely though clandestinely 
 in Italy, and a medal of Rossetti was struck there in com- 
 memoration. 1847 — Versi (miscellaneous poems). 1852 — 
 LArpa Evangelica {The Evangelic Harp), religious poems. 
 
 As regards my father's writings on Dante and other 
 authors — the outcome of an immense amount of miscellaneous, 
 often curious and abstruse, reading — I may be allowed to 
 say that I regard his views and arguments as cogent, without 
 being convincing. They affect one more in beginning one 
 of his books than in ending it. He certainly made some 
 mistakes, and urged some details to a wiredrawn or futile 
 extreme, and in especial he was not sufficiently master of 
 the happy instinct when to leave off, so that his longest 
 and most important book, the Mistero deW Amor Platonico, 
 becomes cumbrous with subsidiary matter. In his poems 
 also he was over-fond of amplifying and loading, being too 
 unwilling to leave a composition as it stood ; though he wrote 
 with great mastery and ease, and a brilliant command of 
 metre, rhythm, and melody. Many snatches of his verse 
 are forcible and moving in a high degree, and rouse a con- 
 tagious enthusiasm. He has left in MS. a versified account 
 of his life, written between 1846 and 1851. It is not long, 
 nor yet very short, and is about the completest as well as 
 the most authentic account that exists of his career. I should 
 like to translate it some day, and publish it in England. 
 
 To give some idea of Rossetti's poetry, I cannot do better 
 than extract here one of the remarks upon it made by the 
 pre-eminent Italian poet of our own day, Giosue Carducci, 
 in a selection from Rossetti which he edited in 1861. 
 Carducci, after contrasting him with some of his contemporary 
 writers, terms him — 
 
PARENTAGE. 1 7 
 
 "The singer who, notwithstanding his defects, conforms the most 
 to the poetic taste and the hacmonic faculty of the Italian people. 
 No plethora of murky inventions, and of recondite and strange 
 forms, and of versified disquisitions, and of nebulous swathings ; but 
 a daring and serene fancy, impetus of emotion, plenteousness and 
 sometimes superabundance of colouring, facility, harmony, melody, 
 make these poems truly Italian, make them singable. Singable, I 
 say; and I know that this praise may, in the opinion of some, 
 amount to blame, now that for the most part singable poetry is 
 of the worst." 
 
 Not in Vasto alone, but in all Italy, Rossetti's reputation 
 as a patriotic poet stood high — more perhaps among the 
 men of action and the ardent youth than among the critical 
 assessors of literary merit. A proposal was made to transfer 
 his remains to a sepulchre in Italy, as an act of national 
 recognition. My mother having demurred, an inscription 
 was set up to him in the Florentine cloister of Santa Croce, 
 which counts as the Italian Walhalla or Westminster Abbey. 
 In Vasto the centenary of his birth was celebrated in 1883 
 with much evidence of enthusiasm. The principal Piazza 
 (del Pesce, as first entitled) and the Communal Theatre are 
 named after him ; and it has long been proposed — though 
 perhaps rather half-heartedly — to erect his statue, and to 
 purchase for the town the house in a part of which he was 
 born — an ancient and somewhat stately-looking though 
 plain edifice, battered by time and neglect. I am tempted 
 to extract here a few of the many eulogiums pronounced 
 upon Rossetti at the centenary — not unconscious, however, 
 of the caution with which any utterances on such an occasion 
 are to be received. 
 
 From the speech of Professor Francesco di Rosso : — 
 
 " He then conceived that love of his oppressed country, and that 
 indignation against the oppressors, which were to be (as I may say) the 
 religion of his entire life, and were to dictate to him the most beautiful 
 strains, and make him the Tyrtaeus of the battles of the Italian 
 liberty, unity, and independence, the poet sacred to Italy and Europe 
 labouring under tyranny, under political and religious re-action." 
 
 VOL. I. 2 
 
1 8 DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI. 
 
 From the speech of the sub-prefect Cavalier Domenico 
 Fabretti : — 
 
 " Many were the public-spirited poets of Italy : but none con- 
 jectured the cycle of her evolution, shadowed forth its agents, designed 
 its forms, with the forecasting precision, the exact intuition, of your 
 Rossetti. He was not only the sweet poet of the Arcadian stylus, 
 was not only the studious and elegant verse-writer, was not only the 
 fervent patriot, but was the seer of the Italian re-arising." 
 
 From a pamphlet by signor Adelfo Mayo, 1 addressed to 
 the workmen of Vasto : — 
 
 " You, citizens and workmen, will deserve well of your country if 
 you will imitate the domestic and civil virtues of that great man, 
 if you strive with all your efforts to preserve intact the sacred deposit 
 of the Italian liberties under the sceptre of the Kings of Savoy, and 
 if you also co-operate, as best you may, in raising a worthy monument 
 to one who, conferring honour upon our city, has honoured likewise 
 the Abruzzi and the entire peninsula." 
 
 In England very little has got into print showing Gabriele 
 Rossetti " in his habit as he lived." There are, however, two 
 recent books which give an idea of him in his later years, and 
 in each instance the idea is a true one as far as it goes. Mr. 
 William Bell Scott's Autobiographical Notes (1892) contain 
 the following passage, relating to the close of 1847 or 
 beginning of 1848 : — 
 
 " I entered the small front parlour or dining-room of the house 
 [50 Charlotte Street], and found an old gentleman sitting by the 
 fire in a great chair, the table drawn close to his chair, with a thick 
 manuscript book open before him, and the largest snuff-box I ever 
 saw beside it conveniently open. He had a black cap on his head 
 furnished with a great peak or shade for the eyes, so that I saw his 
 face only partially. . . . The old gentleman signed to a chair for 
 
 1 With this fine-minded and cultivated gentleman, well meriting his 
 high position in the Vastese community, I have had the pleasure of 
 keeping up some correspondence ever since the date of the centenary 
 meeting. 
 
PARENTAGE. 1 9 
 
 my sitting down, and explained that his son was now painting in the 
 studio he and a young friend had taken together : this young friend's 
 name was Holman Hunt. 1 . . . The old gentleman's pronunciation 
 of English was very Italian ; and, though I did not know that, both 
 of them — he and his daughter [Christina] — were probably at that 
 moment writing poetry of some sort, and might wish me far enough, 
 I left very soon." 
 
 The second portrait of my father, and a very good one it 
 is, is traced by Mr. Frederic George Stephens in his mono- 
 graph named Daiite Gabriel Ross&tti ( 1 894) : it shows a 
 memory highly retentive of characterizing details : — 
 
 " As might be expected of one possessing so many accomplish- 
 ments, and whose career had been marked by so much courage, the 
 Professor was a man of striking character and aspect ; so that, when 
 I was introduced to him in 1848 [some few months perhaps after 
 Mr. Scott's first visit to our house], and his grand climacteric was 
 past, and (as with most Italians) a life of studies told upon him 
 heavily, I could not but be struck with the noble energy of his 
 face, and by the high culture his expression attested, while a sort 
 of eager, almost passionate resolution seemed to glow in all he said 
 and did. To a youngster, such as I was then, he seemed much 
 older than his years ; and, while seated reading at a table with two 
 candles behind him, and (because his sight was failing) with a wide 
 shade over his eyes, he looked a very Rembrandt come to life. 
 The light was reflected from a manuscript placed close to his face, 
 and, in the shadow which covered them, made distinct all the 
 fineness and vigour of his sharply moulded features. It was half 
 lost upon his somewhat shrunken figure wrapped in a student's 
 dressing-gown, and shone fully upon the lean, bony, and delicate 
 
 1 According to Mr. Scott, this was his first call at No. 50 Charlotte 
 Street, and the interview took place "about Christmas 1847-48." I 
 consider that the correct date of his first call was in December 1847 or 
 January 1848. But Mr. Scott's memory must have been entirely wrong as 
 to his then hearing about the studio shared by Holman Hunt and Dante 
 Rossetti, for there was no such sharing of any studio until late in August 
 1848, and the words put into our father's mouth, if spoken at all, must 
 have been spoken later than " about Christmas 1847-48." Ex tiuo disce 
 multos. 
 
20 DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI. 
 
 hands in which he held the paper. He looked like an old and 
 somewhat imperative prophet, and his voice had a slightly rigorous 
 ring, speaking to his sons and their visitors." 
 
 I am not sure that the word " rigorous " would here convey- 
 quite the right impression. My father's address in such cases 
 was clear and emphatic, and as if no dissent were expected 
 to ensue ; but it was not marked by anything hard or 
 brusque. 
 
 Good-natured and indulgent' though he in fact was, and 
 animated with the most resolute desire to do his very best for 
 the present and future of his children, our love nevertheless 
 was chiefly concentrated upon our mother — and never did 
 mother deserve it better. This preference may have been 
 rather less marked in my elder sister Maria than with the 
 rest of us. Frances Mary Lavinia Polidori was born in 
 London, 42 Broad Street, Golden Square (the same street in 
 which William Blake had been born forty- three years before), 
 on 27 April 1800. Thus she was seventeen years younger 
 than her husband. Of her parents I shall say something in 
 my next Section. She was brought up with a view to her 
 becoming a governess ; and at the early age of sixteen she 
 took charge of her first pupil, the adopted daughter of Mr. 
 Thomas Dickins, of Vale Lodge, Leatherhead, Surrey. I 
 have heard my mother say that in this house she used to see 
 from time to time John Shelley, the brother of the poet. He 
 was a very handsome youth, aged then some thirteen or four- 
 teen, and all mention of the name of that world-abandoned 
 rebel, the versifying atheist, was strictly forbidden. Hence 
 my mother passed into the families of Mr. Justice Bolland 
 (whom she highly respected), and of Sir Patrick Macgregor. 
 One of her pupils, Miss Georgina Macgregor, became the 
 second godmother of my sister, Christina Georgina. A brother 
 of Sir Patrick, a Colonel, fell not a little in love with Miss 
 Polidori. Whether this highly estimable gentleman (as such 
 he was always represented to me) would have made up his 
 mind to " proposing for the governess " I am unable to say ; 
 but anyhow he was forestalled by the Neapolitan refugee 
 
By D. G. Rossetti. 
 
 Gabriele Rossetti. 
 
PARENTAGE. 21 
 
 Rossetti, who rapidly won the damsel's heart, and was 
 promptly accepted. The marriage proved a truly happy one, 
 spite of narrow circumstances, and the harrassing troubles 
 of my father's long illnesses and decay. On his side there was 
 deep unwavering affection, and the most absolute esteem and 
 confidence ; on hers, affection and confidence in no less 
 measure, and a cordial admiration for his uncommon gifts 
 and attainments. 
 
 Mrs. Rossetti was well bred and well educated, a constant 
 reader, full of clear perception and sound sense on a variety 
 of subjects, and perfectly qualified to hold her own in society ; 
 a combination of abnormal modesty of self-estimate (free, 
 however, from the silliness or insincerity of self-disparage- 
 ment), and of retirement and repose of character, and of 
 devotion to home duties, kept her back. The idea of " making 
 an impression " never appeared to present itself to her mind — 
 still less the idea of outshining or rivalling any one else. I 
 doubt whether in the whole course of my life I once saw her 
 go out to an ordinary " evening party." Perfect simplicity of 
 thought, speech, and manner, characterized her always ; I 
 venture to think that it was dignity under another name. For 
 conscientiousness, veracity, the keeping confidences inviolate, 
 the utter absence of censoriousness or tittle-tattle, she was an 
 absolute model : all this came so natural to her that it passed 
 almost unnoticed, or seemed a matter of course. Day and 
 night she attended to the household — doing needlework, 
 teaching her girls, keeping things in order, etc. In all the 
 central years of her life there was only one servant in the 
 house. She was deeply but unpretentiously religious, a 
 member of the Church of England, very constant in church- 
 attendance. In my earlier years she might be regarded as 
 belonging rather to the " Evangelical " branch of the Church, 
 but later on her associations grew to be of the " high church " 
 kind. This only made a difference of habitude, not of 
 essentials. She took a reasonable interest in matters of 
 politics, her sympathies being on the Liberal side. She wrote 
 correctly in prose, and some few times even in verse ; but 
 
22 DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI. 
 
 without having, at any time of her life, any notion of doing 
 aught for publication. I have heard that in youth she was 
 considered rather a " quiz " (as the phrase then ran), or a 
 person with a sharp eye for 'the ridiculous in others. Of this 
 I myself remember few symptoms or none ; but certainly she 
 knew a pretender or a humbug when she saw one, and could 
 express her perception by clear word of mouth. With all 
 the reserve of her character, her total want of forwardness, 
 her mostly unspoken scorn of semblances which have not 
 realities behind them, there was nothing about her of the 
 merely stolid or negative ; her feelings were warm, and even 
 her temper might have been less unruffled than it was, but 
 for a life-long practice of moderating self-control. She was 
 just, liberal, kind, forgiving, steadfast. A son who has any 
 evil to say of his mother might feel embarrassed until he had 
 managed to say it mildly : I am spared any such embarrass- 
 ment. To sum up — she was one of the most womanly of 
 women. 
 
 My mother once said — it may have been towards 1872 or 
 1873 : " I always had a passion for intellect, and my wish was 
 that my husband should be distinguished for intellect, and 
 my children too. I have had my wish [and this she might 
 well say in reference to her elder son and her younger 
 daughter, not to bring the remaining two into question] ; and 
 I now wish that there were a little less intellect in the family, 
 so as to allow for a little more common sense." I have 
 always set store by that utterance of my mother, as equally 
 sound and characteristic. 
 
 Frances Rossetti was of an ordinary female middle height, 
 or a trifle less than that, 1 with a full-sized head, fresh com- 
 plexion, features more than commonly regular, shapely 
 
 1 Miss Hall Caine, in her pleasant article A Child's Recollections of 
 Rossetti, in the New Review for September 1894, describes my mother 
 as "very little." This is a mistake. Miss Caine only saw my mother in 
 the early part of 1882, when the latter was nearly eighty-two years of 
 age. Her figure had then fallen in, and she looked short ; but the state- 
 ment in my text is the correct one. 
 
PARENTAGE. 23 
 
 Madonna-like eyelids, and an air of innate composure. Her 
 general aspect was English, not Italian. Her eyes were grey, 
 her hair in youth abundant and pretty, worn then in long 
 ringlets, of a full-tinted brown. It altered colour but little, 
 even in her extreme old age ; and she always looked to me — 
 and I believe to others— some five or six years younger than 
 she was. Her voice was extremely clear and uniform, excel- 
 lent for reading. There is a good likeness of her in one of 
 Sir John Millais's pictures — the Departure of the Crusaders, 
 painted towards 1856. 
 
 After the definite failure of my father's health, or from 
 about 1844 until his death in 1854, the chief support of the 
 family devolved upon my mother — the eldest child, Maria, 
 being in 1844 only seventeen years of age. My mother 
 made great and most laudable efforts — going out to teach 
 French and Italian (both of which she knew and spoke 
 perfectly well) and other things, and afterwards holding 
 precarious day-schools — at No. 38 Arlington Street, Morn- 
 ington Crescent (our residence for a year or two beginning 
 in 1 851), and at Frome Selwood. The schools produced no 
 income of any account ; and my mother's small 'expectations 
 (from the property left by her maternal grandfather), and 
 then her small capital, had to be trenched upon. After her 
 return however from Frome, in 1854, it no longer became 
 necessary for her to exert herself ; she continued living with 
 me and my two sisters, and in 1876 removed with Christina 
 to another house, 30 Torrington Square. In her later years 
 her hearing was imperfect, though by no means gone, and 
 her general strength abated considerably. Her mind remained 
 always clear, but necessarily less strong with the inroads of 
 age. She died, rather of gradual decline than of anything 
 else, on 8 April 1886, the very day which completed four 
 years after the death of Dante Gabriel. Had she lived a few 
 more days, she would have been eighty-six years of age. She 
 rests by her husband's side in Highgate Cemetery. 
 
 I have observed that my mother " wrote correctly in prose, 
 and some few times even in verse." It has lately been my 
 
24 DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI. 
 
 melancholy task to hunt through drawers, pigeon-holes, etc., 
 in the house (30 Torrington Square) occupied by my sister 
 Christina — of memory gracious to many — up to the date of 
 her death, 29 December 1894. I came upon a little red 
 writing-case, given by Dante Rossetti to our mother in 1849 > 
 in the writing-case were these verses of her composition. 
 They are dated 1876, the year when my sister Maria Francesca 
 died ; after Dante's death in 1882 a final couplet was added. 
 To me the lines, recording a succession of family losses, are 
 pathetic ; they come from a heart full of affection. Perhaps 
 the reader will think it ridiculous that I should print them ; 
 at worst, the ridicule will apply to me alone, and not to the 
 writer, who in youth and age kept all such things very much 
 to herself. 
 
 " No longer I hear the welcome sound 
 
 Of Father's foot upon the ground ; 
 
 No longer see the loving face 
 
 Of Mother beam with kindly grace ; 
 
 No longer hear ' how I rejoice ' 
 
 At sight of me, from Sister's voice ; ' 
 
 No more from Husband loved will be a 
 
 ' Cara Francesca, moglie mia ' ; 
 
 And from dear Daughter sore I miss 
 
 'My dearest Dodo,' 2 and her kiss: — 
 
 I never more shall hear him speak, 
 
 The dearly loved who called me ' Tique.' " 3 
 
 III. 
 
 RELATIVES. 
 
 FRANCES ROSSETTI was the daughter of Gaetano Polidori, 
 and of Anna Maria Polidori, nee Pierce. 
 
 My maternal great-grandfathers were both born an immense 
 time ago ; Agostino Ansaldo Polidori in 17 14, and William 
 Pierce in 1736: strange to think of. Even my maternal 
 
 1 This was Margaret, who died in 1867. 
 
 2 A pet name much used by Maria for her mother. 
 
 3 Dante Gabriel was addicted to calling his mother, in her later years, 
 "the Antique," or simply " Antique," shortened sometimes into " Tique." 
 
RELATIVES. 2$ 
 
 grandfather dates as far back as 1764, and my grandmother 
 as far back as 1769. The year 17 14 witnessed the accession 
 of George I. to the British throne ; 1736, the death of Prince 
 Eugene; 1764, the death of Hogarth; 1769, the publication 
 of the first Letter of Junius. 
 
 The name Polidori is of course Greek, not Italian ; but of 
 any Greek ancestry which there may possibly have been I 
 know nothing. The Polidori family, so far as I ever heard 
 of it, was Tuscan, the profession of medicine being customary 
 from father to son ; authorship was also frequent in the race, 
 at any rate in the later generations. Agostino Ansaldo, 
 author of two poems, Tobias and Osteology (the latter has been 
 privately printed), was a Doctor settled at Bientina near 
 Pisa : here was born his son Gaetano. There was also a 
 brother of Agostino, named Francesco. He produced a poem 
 entitled Losario (privately printed), more or less in the vein 
 of Ariosto. Gaetano was intended. for the law, which he 
 studied in the University of Pisa. In 1785, however, he deserted 
 the law, and, on the recommendation of the Abate Fassini, 
 became secretary to the famous tragedian Conte Alfieri, with 
 whom he stayed at Brisach, Colmar, and Paris. Naturally 
 he saw, along with Alfieri, the Countess of Albany, whose 
 husband, "the Young Pretender," was then still living. 
 Polidori was in Paris at the taking of the Bastille in July 1789 ; 
 and a little anecdote which he relates of that day may deserve 
 reproduction here : — 
 
 " I was passing by the Palais Royal while the populace were 
 running to assault the fortress ; and, having encountered a highly- 
 powdered wig-maker, with a rusty sword raised aloft, I, not expecting 
 any such thing, and hardly conscious of the act, had the sword 
 handed over to me, as he cried aloud — ' Prenez, citoyen, combattez 
 pour la patrie? I had no fancy for such an enterprise ; so, finding 
 myself sword in hand, T at once cast about for some way to get rid 
 of it ; and, bettering my instruction from the man of powder, I stuck 
 it into the hand of the first unarmed person I met ; and, repeating, 
 ' Prenez, citoyen, combattez pour la patrie] I passed on and returned 
 home." 
 
26 DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI. 
 
 Polidori (as he intimates) had no taste for political 
 convulsions, and little for politics of any sort. Almost 
 immediately afterwards Alfieri got put out at finding that 
 on a single occasion his secretary was not at home when 
 summoned, and the Count wrote him a note, asking him " to 
 change his style, or else his dwelling." Polidori, one of the 
 least pliable of mortals, closed at once with the second alter- 
 native, and determined to clear out of France, and repair to 
 England to teach Italian. He asked for and readily obtained 
 three letters of introduction from Alfieri and the Countess of 
 Albany. These were addressed to Mrs. Cosway, the painter, 
 Captain Masseria, a relative of Napoleon, and the famous 
 Corsican General De' Paoli. The last remained up to his 
 death on intimate terms with Polidori, and left him a mourning 
 ring, which I now possess. In 1791 Alfieri, then in France, 
 wished to get Polidori back as his secretary ; but the latter 
 declined with thanks, preferring conservative England very 
 much to revolutionary France. 
 
 In February 1793 Polidori married -Miss Anna Maria 
 Pierce, who had acted as a governess. He taught Italian for 
 a great number of years, retiring in 1836, after having made 
 a fair moderate competence. He then lived for a while wholly 
 in Buckinghamshire — Holmer Green, near Little Missenden, 
 in a house which he had purchased years before for personal 
 and family convenience — but in 1839 he returned to London, 
 Park Village East, Regent's Park. There he died of apoplexy 
 in December 1853, aged eighty-nine. 
 
 My anecdote about the wig-maker and the sword is taken 
 from a little narrative which Polidori wrote, as an appendix 
 to one of his privately printed books ; for he kept a printing- 
 press in Park Village East, and there he produced, with some 
 aid from practical hands, several volumes of his own works, 
 and a few others. Dante Rossetti's boyish poem Sir Hugh 
 the Heron, and Christina's Verses, were among these — printed 
 respectively in 1843 and 1847. Another was the poem by 
 Erasmo di Valvasone, L Angeleida .; with passages extracted 
 by Polidori from Milton's Paradise Lost, presumably founded 
 
RELATIVES. 27 
 
 more or less upon this Italian poem. The personal narrative 
 above mentioned relates chiefly to Alfieri, and contains 
 several particulars of some interest. I give here a few of the 
 general observations upon him : — 
 
 " Curious and strange was the character of that singular man : 
 proud as Milton's Satan, and more choleric than Homer's Achilles. 
 He esteemed himself far beyond his real worth, and very few were 
 the poets or men of letters for whom he had any regard. He was 
 proud of his reddish hair, which he always wore studiously curled 
 and tended ; of his fine and speckless apparel, and especially of his 
 uniform as a captain in the Piedmontese Infantry, which he donned 
 for more solemn occasions ; of his pure gold buckles for shoes 
 and breeches, as then worn ; of his handsome English horses, of 
 which, counting together saddle and carriage horses, he had sixteen ; 
 and of his fine and elegant phaeton, which he generally drove four- 
 in-hand, and went in pomp, taking the air in city and high-road. 
 Yet, amid many defects, Count Alfieri had some good qualities : 
 that of paying his debts most punctually, of limiting his outlay so 
 that at the end of the year some money remained over, rather than 
 be indebted for a penny, and of being just, when justice was clear to 
 him. As I never had to dispute with him, in four years that I was 
 in his house, save with the reason on my side, and, whenever we 
 had disputed, he, upon recognizing that he was in the wrong, had 
 confessed it and taken the blame to himself, I esteemed and loved 
 him [various anecdotes had been previously given in the narrative, 
 amply confirming this statement as to disputes between Alfieri and 
 his secretary]. . . . In 1789 began the French Revolution, in which 
 he exulted, and I saw him leap with joy upon the ruins of the 
 Bastille." 
 
 It is matter of notoriety, however, that after a while Alfieri 
 entirely altered his view of French affairs, and became a 
 Gallophobist of prime virulence. 
 
 Polidori was a man of good stature and very vigorous 
 build ; his health was strong, and his faculties not seriously 
 impaired by age. He liked almost any occupation — writing, 
 reading, cabinet-work (he produced many pretty boxes, 
 tables, etc., in wood-mosaic, after the Florentine manner), 
 
28 DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI. 
 
 and miscellaneous country work. He was a man of the most 
 sturdy and independent character, a sworn enemy to pretence 
 and frivolity of all sorts ; for instance, he would not allow any 
 of his daughters to learn dancing. He always remained 
 nominally a Roman-catholic, but without taking any part in 
 religious observances of whatsoever kind. For his son-in- 
 law Rossetti he had a sincere liking, and owned his great 
 superiority to himself as a poet. But the divergence between 
 them was frequently marked in little things : Polidori solid, 
 unbending, somewhat dogged ; Rossetti not any less earnest 
 in essentials, but vivacious, facile, with more grace of manner 
 and feeling, and comparatively mercurial. As a grandfather 
 Polidori was both kind and tolerant, and was looked up to 
 by us with much warmth of regard. 
 
 Gaetano Polidori had all the habits and likings of a literary 
 man, and was more decidedly bookish than my father. 
 Like the latter, he was a member of the Academy of the 
 Arcadi, and bore the high-sounding designation of " Fileremo 
 Etrusco." I possess his Arcadian diploma, a curious docu- 
 ment. He wrote a large number of things in prose and verse, 
 both published, privately printed, and unprinted. His first 
 work was a poem, U Infedelta Punita {Faithlessness Punished). 
 Among the others are — Novelle Morali {Moral Tales) ; 
 Grammaire de la Langue Ltalie?me ; A Dictionary in three 
 v61umes, Italian with French and English, French with 
 Italian and English, and English with Italian and French — 
 a very handy little book, and no doubt no small labour to 
 its compiler ; Translation of all Milton's Poems ; Trans- 
 lation of Lucan's Pharsalia. with a sequel of his own ; 
 Tragedie e Drammi. Unprinted is a Life of Boccaccio, 
 written in English, which my grandfather knew and spoke 
 well. This MS. I possess ; likewise an Italian Life of 
 General de Paoli, up to his return to Corsica during the 
 French Revolution — a work which, considering Polidori's 
 intimacy with his hero, might be of some worth. 
 
 As I have already said, the wife of Gaetano Polidori was 
 Anna Maria Pierce ; and I will now give some few particulars 
 
RELATIVES. 29 
 
 about the Pierce family, which is, as will be perceived, the 
 only source from which Dante Gabriel Rossetti had any 
 English blood in his veins. 
 
 I know nothing of the Pierces beyond Richard Pierce, my 
 great-great-grandfather, who was a schoolmaster in Burlington 
 Gardens, London. He had a son, William, a writing-master, 
 who maintained himself from the age of sixteen onwards, 
 married twice, and had ten children. William Pierce (I 
 referred to this at the beginning of the present Section) was 
 born as far back as 1736 ; and it would appear that the 
 vocation of a writing-master must in his prime have been far 
 more lucrative than it is at present, for he made a very com- 
 fortable competence (the chief source of whatever money 
 there has been in the family since his time), and "kept his 
 carriage." Possibly his first marriage (which seems to have 
 been into a grade somewhat above his own) had to do with 
 this result. He was always represented to me as a curiously 
 well-preserved specimen of " the old school " ; formal, precise, 
 upright, rather formidable to a younger generation, yet kind 
 too in his way. Among his grandchildren he had a special 
 predilection for my mother ; though like a good British Tory 
 as he was, he thought it " very odd " that, after his daughter 
 Anna Maria had married one foreigner, his grand-daughter 
 Frances should marry another foreigner. It looked like flying 
 in the face of the blessed shades of a Chatham, Wolfe, Nelson, 
 and George III., and truckling to the far from blessed shades 
 of a Voltaire, a Mirabeau, and a Bonaparte, not to speak of 
 the Pope of Rome. Mr. Pierce had in fact a strong feeling 
 against marriages with foreigners, as his favourite sister had 
 made a marriage of this kind which proved very unhappy 
 He died in 1829, aged ninety-three, shortly before my birth ; 
 and after him I was named William. His ten children, other 
 than Mrs. Polidori, shall not concern us here ; except to say 
 that one of his sons, Frederick, became a Brigadier-General, 
 and was highly esteemed, I believe, in the Army of India. 
 I will also observe in passing that, through the first wife of 
 William Pierce, Jane Arrow, and a brother and sister of hers, 
 
30 DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI. 
 
 the present generation of Rossettis are some sort of cousins 
 to that distinguished cleric, the Rev. J. E. Kempe, of St. 
 James's Church, London, and also to the late Mrs. Eliza 
 Anna Bray, whose first husband was a son of the painter 
 Thomas Stothard. She published a Life of Stothard, various 
 romances, tales of Devonshire life, an Autobiography, and 
 other works. My uncle Henry Polydore once took the pains 
 of drawing out a scanty pedigree of the Pierce and Arrow 
 families ; and I find in it, as connected by marriage, the 
 surnames Wrather, Hunter, Maunsell, Le Mesurier, Jump, 
 Lester, Porter, Hutchins, Mose, Kitchener, Austin, Cooper, 
 Sandrock, and Brown (nothing to do with Madox Brown). 
 These surnames — except Wrather, Austin, and Brown — repre- 
 sent nothing to my memory. Of the Austins I have some 
 direct or collateral knowledge. There was a Bishop Austin 
 in the West Indies, and an Austin Governor of Honduras ; 
 and in 1887 at San Remo I met a very pleasant young lady, 
 Miss Burrows (now Mrs. Martin), who informed me that she 
 was some connexion of mine — I believe through the Austin 
 family. 
 
 As I have said, my great-grandfather, William Pierce, 
 married a Miss Jane Arrow. My own knowledge of the 
 Arrow family is of the scantiest ; but I find it mentioned in 
 Mrs. Bray's Autobiography that James Arrow, the father 
 of Jane, belonged to an old race, much damaged in the cause 
 of Charles I. He had a small landed estate in Berkshire, and 
 married an Irish lady, Elizabeth Jerdan, " related to the 
 Whartons." She died at the age of ninety-nine ! 
 
 To return to Anna Maria Pierce, Mrs. Polidori, whom, as 
 she lived on to May 1853, I remember perfectly well. Before 
 my recollection begins she had already become an invalid, 
 owing to an internal complaint, and she never left her bed- 
 room, and not often her bed. Her youngest daughter, Eliza 
 Harriet, was her constant and devoted attendant, sacrificing 
 for this purpose all the pleasures and interests of youth. 
 Mrs. Polidori was a fine old lady, with very correct features, 
 and an air which, in spite of her age and infirmity, was 
 
RELATIVES. 3 1 
 
 comely as well as reverend. Her bed-room had to me 
 all the dignity of a presence-chamber, which I entered at 
 sparse intervals with a certain awe. She was, like several 
 others of her race, a high Tory, and an earnest member of 
 the Church of England ; and the arrangement made at her 
 marriage was that any daughters should be brought up in 
 that Church, while any sons should belong to the Roman 
 communion. It comes apposite to say here that in the 
 Rossetti family the understanding was different, and all the 
 children were trained in their mother's faith. Mrs. Polidori 
 had attained her eighty-fourth year at the date of her death. 
 The only other member of her generation of the Pierce family 
 whom I knew was her elder sister Harriet, who, though 
 unmarried, was always in my time styled Mrs. Pierce, and 
 we children were admonished to term her " Granny." After 
 passing many years as governess in the family of the Earl 
 of Yarborough, she spent the evening of her life in nice 
 apartments in London, which she made a model of spick-and- 
 span comfort, not unmixed with elegance. I have just now 
 said that she was unmarried ; but there ran a rumour, not 
 totally uncorroborated, that Lord Yarborough had in fact 
 wedded her without publicity. He had become a widower 
 in i8i3,and lived on to 1846. This rumour I of course in no 
 sort of way avouch. " Granny " was the liberal purveyor of 
 many a serviceable household-present to my mother, her 
 favourite niece. She inherited all the faultless precision and 
 imposing decorum of her father, and was the most nitid little 
 old lady you could easily pick out in London. She died 
 in 1849 — the first time that I looked upon the visible face 
 of death. 
 
 The Polidoris had a family of four daughters and four sons 
 — one of the latter dying in infancy. In my notes to my 
 brother's letters sufficient details will be given about three 
 of these — Charlotte Lydia, Philip Robert, and Henry Francis 
 (the latter modified his surname into Polydore). There 
 remain the eldest daughter, Maria Margaret, and the youngest 
 (whom I have just now mentioned), Eliza Harriet. Maria 
 
32 DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI. 
 
 Margaret — or Margaret, as she was always called — was in 
 her youth a governess, but retired pretty early, and lived with 
 her family, and finally in my house, 166 Albany Street, 
 where she died in 1867. She was much affected with nervous 
 tremor, and troubled by hysterical fits, in which she would 
 fall into peals of long-continued quasi-laughter, which rang 
 over the house— more like the vocal gymnastics of a laughing 
 hyena than like anything else I know. No other symptom 
 of the hyena appeared about my aunt, who, apart from a 
 touchy temper, was a good old soul, much addicted to " daily 
 service" twice a day in church. The youngest daughter, 
 Eliza Harriet, had always a housekeeping managing turn, 
 without any literary leanings. In 1854, the year succeeding 
 her mother's death, she determined to make her knowledge 
 of nursing useful to the nation, and went out with Miss 
 Nightingale to the Crimean expedition, being then about 
 forty-five years of age. To her disappointment no actual 
 nursing was assigned to her, but she had the supervision of 
 the hired nurses, and the management of bedding-stores 
 etc., at the Barrack Hospital, Scutari, and rendered excellent 
 service, which was recognized by the bestowal of a Turkish 
 medal. I remember that after her return to England some 
 case relating to the nursing transactions came into a London 
 police-court, and she had to give evidence ; and we were 
 amused at finding her, in the newspaper reports, designated 
 as " Miss Polly Dory." The Crimean affair was about the 
 only " adventure " of her long life. She died in London in 
 1893, aged nearly eighty-four. Eliza was the last of the 
 English Polidoris ; some of the name are still in Florence. 
 
 Only one other Polidori has to be accounted for in my 
 narrative — Dr. John William Polidori, who lives faintly in 
 some memories as the travelling physician of the famous Lord 
 Byron. He was born in London on 7 September 1795, 
 educated at some Catholic schools and at the Benedictine 
 Ampleforth College near York, and took his degree as M.D. 
 in Edinburgh at the singularly youthful age of nineteen. He 
 was only twenty when, on the recommendation of, Sir Henry 
 
RELATIVES. 33 
 
 Halford, he became the travelling physician of Byron, who 
 on 24 April 18 16 left England for the last time. They 
 went along the Rhine to Geneva, where Polidori made 
 acquaintance also with Shelley and his two companions, 
 Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin (the second Mrs. Shelley) and 
 Clare Clairmont. Polidori, who had poetical and literary 
 ambitions of his own, took too much upon him to suit Byron 
 for long ; so on 16 September the two parted company, 
 and the young Doctor travelled on alone to Pisa, and then 
 returned to England. He became one of the physicians in 
 the Norwich Hospital ; but soon gave up medicine, partly 
 because he would not have been allowed to practise in 
 London before completing twenty-six years of age, and he 
 began studying in London for the Bar. It has been said that 
 in Norwich Miss Harriet Martineau was somewhat in love 
 with him ; and this would not be unlikely, as Polidori — apart 
 from his intellectual gifts, which were by no means so flimsy 
 as some people seem now to suppose — was a noticeably fine 
 young man, of striking feature and presence. In August 1821 
 the end came in a melancholy way : he committed suicide 
 with poison — having, through losses in gambling, incurred a 
 debt of honour which he had no present means of clearing off. 
 A coroner's jury was summoned ; the jurors took, probably 
 through good-nature towards the family, no steps for eliciting 
 requisite evidence, and returned a verdict of " Died by the 
 visitation of God." His death was a grievous blow to his 
 father, all whose leading hopes centred in this son. Gaetano 
 Polidori, to the end of his long life, a lapse of thirty-two years, 
 was never equal to hearing any mention of him, and we 
 children of a younger generation were strictly warned not 
 to name him, however casually, in our grandfather's presence. 
 
 John Polidori published two volumes of verse : Ximenes, 
 a Tragedy, and Other Poems, 18 19 ; and The Fall of the 
 Angels, 1 821. It may at once be admitted that his poetry 
 was not good. Two prose tales are much better — Ernestus 
 Berchtold, and The Vampyre, both published in 18 19. 
 The Vampyre has continually been misascribed to Byron, 
 
 VOL. I. 3 
 
34 DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI. 
 
 who in reality wrote the mere beginning of another tale 
 (quite different in its incidents) named likewise The Vampyre. 
 Polidori left some other writings, both published and un- 
 published. The latter include a diary, partly detailed and 
 partly mere jottings, of his sojourn with Byron and Shelley, 
 and his subsequent tour. It was commissioned by Murray 
 for publication at no less a price than £525, and contains 
 some particulars of substantial interest. 1 
 
 I have now finished all that I need say about the relatives 
 of Dante Rossetti on the mother's side. The only relative 
 on our father's side whom we have personally known — with 
 some others I have corresponded — was Teodorico (or properly 
 Teodoro) Pietrocola, who adopted the compound surname of 
 Pietrocola-Rossetti. He was a Vastese, and studied medicine 
 to some extent. In 1851, being then about twenty-four years 
 of age, he came to London, hoping to find an opening of 
 some kind ; but found nothing except semi-starvation, which 
 he bore with a cheerful constancy touching to witness. In 
 1856 or thereabouts he returned to Italy, practised for a 
 moderate while medicine as a Homceopathist, married a 
 Scotch lady (originally Miss Steele, now Mrs. Cole, an amiable, 
 accomplished, and admirable woman), and, with her co-opera- 
 tion, devoted himself to preaching evangelical Christianity, 
 somewhat of the Vaudois type, in Florence and elsewhere. 
 He died very suddenly in 1883, just as he was giving out 
 a hymn or text to his small congregation. He published 
 a few things — among others, a biography of my father, a 
 translation of Alice in Wonderland, and one of Christina 
 Rossetti's- poem, Goblin-Market, A man of more native 
 unselfish kindliness, of stricter morals, or of nicer concientious- 
 ness, never breathed. 
 
 Since writing the above, I have observed in the book of 
 Mr. W. G. Collingwood, The Life and Work of John Ruskin, 
 a reference to Pietrocola-Rossetti which is of so much interest 
 
 1 On the details about Shelley in this diary I wrote a few years ago, and 
 delivered to the Shelley Society, a lecture which has not as yet been 
 printed. 
 
RELATIVES. 3 5 
 
 to me, and in itself so noticeable, that I extract it here ; it 
 relates to the year 1882 : — 
 
 "Miss [Francesca] Alexander . . . was as friendly, not only in 
 society but in spiritual things, with the worthy village priest as with 
 T. P. Rossetti, the leader of the Protestant ' Brethren,' whom she 
 called her pastor — a cousin of the artist, and in his way no less 
 remarkable a man. It is hardly too much to say that he did, for 
 evangelical religion in Italy, what Gabriel Rossetti did for poetical 
 art in England : he showed the path to sincerity and simplicity. 
 And Mr. Ruskin, who had been driven away from Protestantism by 
 the Waldensian at Turin [this refers to an incident in the year 1858], 
 and had wandered through many realms of doubt, and voyaged 
 through strange seas of thought alone, found harbour at last with 
 the disciple of a modern evangelist, the frequenter of the poor little 
 meeting-house of outcast Italian Protestants." 
 
 If this statement is literally accurate, it would appear that 
 the latest development of Mr. Ruskin's religious opinions was 
 mainly influenced by Miss Alexander, who was not a little 
 influenced by Pietrocola-Rossetti : a matter worth remember- 
 ing for many a day to come. 
 
 I have often reflected how utterly different this cousin of 
 mine was from the ordinary English notion of a Southern 
 Italian. My father also was very different from that notion ; 
 my grandfather, a Central Italian, quite the reverse of it. 
 Peace be with the honoured and honourable memory of all 
 three. 
 
 The Rossetti family in Vasto became extinct while I was 
 composing this Memoir : the latest survivor was Vincenzo 
 Rossetti, who died, aged forty, on 11 November 1894. "With 
 him," so runs a billet de /aire part which was sent to me, 
 " was lost the last germ of so glorious a stem in Italy." 
 I presume, but cannot say for certain, that in the female line 
 the race of Nicola and Maria Francesca Rossetti may still 
 subsist. 
 
 The reader may have observed, in the course of my 
 family narrative, several instances of longevity in the races 
 of Arrow, Pierce, and Polidori. I have under my eye a list 
 
36 DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI. 
 
 of nine persons, among whom the lowest age was eighty- 
 three, the highest ninety-nine — average eighty-eight. Nothing 
 of the sort appears in the Rossetti race, though my father 
 attained a not inconsiderable age — seventy-one. It may also 
 be noted that in the three lines from which Dante Rossetti 
 came — Polidori, Pierce, and Rossetti — the work of tuition 
 held a very large place. Hence perchance he inherited a 
 certain readiness at linguistics, and at seeing literary matters 
 from a literary point of view ; but there was little or nothing 
 in him of the man born to teach by ordinary teaching 
 methods. 
 
 IV. 
 
 CHILDHOOD. 
 
 My mother, marrying on 10 April 1826, had four children- 
 there were never any more — in four successive years : Maria 
 Francesca, born on 17 February 1827 ; Gabriel Charles 
 Dante, 12 May 1828 ; William Michael, 25 September 
 1829; and Christina Georgina, 5 December 1830. The 
 famous Surgeon and Physician, Dr. Locock — afterwards Sir 
 William Locock, the Queen's accoucheur — ushered, I believe, 
 all of us into the world ; for our father — though a man of 
 thrift, and in personal expenses heedfully sparing — grudged 
 no cost needed for the well-being of his household. To 
 Gabriel Charles Dante I shall here generally apply the name 
 " Dante," which he adopted as if it had stood first in order ; 
 in his own family, however, he was invariably termed Gabriel 
 — or, by our sister Maria, " Gubby," a pet name which other 
 members of the household did not affect. 
 
 Our house, No. 38 Charlotte Street, was a fairly neat but 
 decidedly small one : it is smaller inside than it looks viewed 
 from outside. I can remember a little about it, but not 
 much. Towards 1 836 the family had outgrown it, and removed 
 to No. 50 in the same street — a larger but still far indeed 
 from being a spacious dwelling. This house is now the office 
 of a Registrar of births, deaths, and marriages; and, singularly 
 
CHILDHOOD. 37 
 
 enough, when I had to record in 1876 the death of my 
 sister Maria, I found that the place for doing this was the 
 very house in which she had so long resided. Soon after 
 Gabriele Rossetti settled in Charlotte Street it began to go 
 down in character, and at times it became the extreme reverse 
 of " respectable." Dante Rossetti in his early childhood was 
 a pleasing spirited-looking boy, with bright eyes, auburn hair, 
 and fresh complexion. He remembered in after-years nothing 
 distinctly earlier than this : That there used to be a Punch 
 and Judy show which came at frequent intervals to perform 
 just before our house, but for the delectation of our opposite 
 neighbours, so that he himself only saw the back of the show. 
 This was not at all what he wanted ; so he motioned to go 
 out into the street, and turn round and see the front of the 
 Punch and Judy (there was no Dog Toby in those distant 
 days), but was wofully disconcerted at being told that such 
 a proceeding would be infra dig, and not to be condoned. 
 Dante shared with Maria the ascendency over his two juniors : 
 but Maria, in these opening years, was not easily to be 
 superseded — being of a very enthusiastic temperament and 
 lively parts ; and indeed she always remained the best of the 
 four at what we call acquired knowledge. In her fifth year 
 she could read anything in either English or Italian, and 
 read she did with tireless persistency. Our early years 
 were passed wholly at home in London, with occasional visits 
 to our grandparents at Holmer Green, our Aunts Margaret 
 and Eliza, and our Uncle Philip, being continuously there as 
 well. Our daily walks were with our mother in and about 
 Regent's Park, which was opened to the public much towards 
 the date of my birth. I can still recollect how palatial I 
 used to consider the frontage of the Terraces facing the Park, 
 and how our mother would explain to us which of the 
 columns or pilasters was Ionic, which Corinthian, and so on. 
 The Colosseum, a big Exhibition building pulled down 
 towards 1870, was then in existence, and was occasionally 
 visited by us. It comprised a Camera Obscura, in which we 
 viewed with wonder the groups of people disporting them- 
 
38 DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI. 
 
 selves in the Park. Primrose Hill was ascended every now 
 and then. It led immediately on into fields (how different 
 from now !) which brought one into the rural village of 
 Hampstead, to which our father escorted us at rare intervals. 
 Railways were just beginning not far from Regent's Park ; 
 to see the puffs of their steam as the trains rolled onward 
 appeared little short of magic. 
 
 Two of my childish reminiscences of my brother relate to 
 animals. Some one gave him a dormouse, which he named 
 " Dwanging," and, on the approach of winter, he shut it up 
 in a drawer to hibernate. In its long sleep he looked at it 
 from time to time, but was careful not to disturb it ; and his 
 glee was proportionate when the little creature revived in the 
 spring. Later on there was a hedgehog, to whom Dante's 
 conduct was not equally correct. The hedgehog was wont 
 to trot about on the table in our dining and sitting room, or 
 " parlour " as we mostly termed it (the drawing-room was 
 little used, save by our father in his literary work, or occa- 
 sionally with a pupil) ; and one day my brother insisted on 
 leaving upon the table some beer for his prickly favourite. 
 The latter freely partook of the beverage, and his unsteady 
 gait evinced the effects of it. Our mother forbade the repeti- 
 tion of any such experiments ; and I think Dante himself had 
 no wish to recur to them, for at no period of his life did he 
 relish the sight of anything repellent or degrading. One of 
 my brother's first books was Peter Parley's Natural History, 
 which he enjoyed, both text and cuts. We went pretty often 
 to the Zoological Gardens, then a very recent foundation, and 
 would run shrieking through its tunnel, to rouse the echo. 
 The animals were at that date much fewer than now, yet still 
 numerous — their housing very inferior. There was a striated 
 monkey, whose designation was explained to us (I have not 
 seen any such animal of late years) ; also a singsing antelope, 
 of whom my father would say (in English), " Sing, sing, 
 antelope ; antelope, sing, sing ; but he never sang." Arma- 
 dilloes, and a sloth walking with his head downwards, were 
 among our favourites — not to speak of screaming parrots, 
 
CHILDHOOD. 39 
 
 bears, lions, tigers, and elephants. A collared peccary gave 
 Christina a vicious bite, which came to nothing. No wombat 
 figured at that early date ; but several dogs used to be there, 
 more or less domestic, which were tethered in a rather 
 dejected and yell-abounding file. They were afterwards 
 abolished, on the ground that such a treatment of them was 
 not far remote from cruelty. 
 
 Another amusement, as Dante progressed in childhood, 
 was the Adelaide Gallery, close to St. Martin's Church, now 
 occupied by Gatti's Restaurant. It was a semi-scientific enter- 
 tainment, exhibiting inter alia fearsome microscopic enlarge- 
 ments of the infusoria in a few drops of water. The Adelaide 
 Gallery was succeeded by the Polytechnic Institution in 
 Regent Street, with a more varied programme of like kind — 
 diving-bell, electric shocks, dissolving views, chemical demon- 
 strations, etc. This also is now gone, the present Polytechnic 
 being quite a different sort of establishment. The Soho 
 Bazaar, and more especially the Pantheon Bazaar in Oxford 
 Street (now Gilbey's liquor stores), were often our resort. 
 The Pantheon exhibited many pictures from time to time, 
 including Haydon's Raising of Lazarus. Astley's Riding 
 Circus, with dramatic entertainments (such as Mazeppd), we 
 saw once or twice, but in childhood we hardly at all entered 
 a regular theatre. To pay for going to the Italian Opera 
 (the building near Charing Cross, now gone) was what we 
 could not afford. Occasionally, however, the great singer 
 Lablache, whom my father had known in Naples, would 
 give us a ticket for that house, and we enjoyed the perform- 
 ance vastly. My recollections carry me back to the first (or 
 may-be the second) London season of the celebrated Madame 
 Julia Grisi, whom I saw in the Gazza Ladra. The appear- 
 ance of her husband Mario was a matter of some years later 
 on. I remember also the first season of Madlle Rachel, 
 who was acting Chimene in the Cid of Corneille. There 
 was likewise a ballet, The Daughter of the Danube, with 
 various " fiends " in it. This hit our fancy uncommonly, and 
 we made at home some kind of pretence at " the Blue Demon " 
 
40 DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI. 
 
 and other of its characters in 1838. My first (and for years 
 it must have remained my sole) pantomime is also a lively 
 reminiscence. There was a race run by jockeys on pigs, and 
 each touch of the whip raised a shower of sparks out of the 
 porcine steeds, to my uncontrollable laughter and delight. 
 My brother must have been with me, but I forget his 
 demeanour. 
 
 Beyond an opera or a concert at rare intervals, we heard 
 little music as children ; except that our father, with his rich 
 voice and fine declamation, would at times, unaccompanied, 
 strike up a stave of some glorious chant of the French 
 revolutionary epoch — 
 
 "La Victoire en chantant nous ouvre la barriere" — 
 
 or (sung to the same spirit-stirring air) — 
 
 " Romain, leve les yeux. La fut le Capitol," 1 
 
 or the Marseillaise. Another customary song of his was a 
 popular and rather long grotesque tirade about a Jewish 
 wedding, Bdruccaba, from which he sang several snatches. 
 Our mother also would frequently play on the pianoforte, for 
 our delectation, The Battle of Prague, with the " groans of the 
 wounded," and other less lugubrious details. She had an 
 agreeable voice for singing ; but it had received no sort of 
 cultivation, as singing was, like dancing, one of the worldly 
 vanities which my grandfather discountenanced. In my first 
 
 1 This Lyric must belong to the year 1798, when the French army 
 entered Rome, and set up a short-lived Republic ; perhaps it is now a 
 curiosity. I can recall the opening lines — being all, 1 think, that my father 
 
 sang : — 
 
 ' ' Romain, leve les yeux. La fut le Capitol : 
 Ce pont fut le pont de Codes : 
 La Brutus immola sa race : 
 Et C6sar dans cette autre place 
 Fut poignarde' par Cassius. 
 Rome, la Liberte' t'appelle ; 
 Sache vaincre ou sache perir : 
 Un Romain doit vivre pour elle, 
 Pour elle un Romain doit mourir. " 
 
CHILDHOOD. 41 
 
 years I often heard her sing these lines, and the tune still 
 lingers with me : — 
 
 " The sun sets by night and the stars shun the day, 
 But glory remains when their lights fade away : 
 Begin, ye tormentors, your threats are in vain, 
 For the sons of Alnomuk shall never complain. 
 
 "Remember the arrows we shot from our bow, 
 Remember the chiefs by our hatchets laid low: 
 Now, the flames rising fast, we exult in our pain, 
 For the sons of Alnomuk shall never complain." 
 
 Where do these mediocre lines come from ? My mother 
 (it seems to me) associated them with the story of Guatimozin 
 and the Spaniards under Cortes, but that does not look 
 correct. 
 
 I hardly think that I ever saw my father touch a pack of 
 playing cards ; he played pretty often at chess. My mother 
 would at times take part in a family game without any stakes. 
 Upon us children nothing was more strongly impressed than 
 a horror of gambling, which had led to the death of Dr. John 
 Polidori : but we were allowed to play at simple games ; 
 Patience, and Beggar my Neighbour, and (what I never hear 
 of now) The Duchess of Rutland's Whim. The last I asso- 
 ciated in my mind with the notion of arithmetical subtraction, 
 as contrasted with addition, which the other two games might 
 be held to represent. Later on there came Whist, and the 
 Italian game of Tre Sette. We identified ourselves in a sort 
 of way with the four suits of cards ; and clubs were thus made 
 the appurtenance of Maria, hearts of Dante, diamonds of 
 Christina, and spades of myself. I may here say that the 
 dislike to the idea of gambling clung to us through life ; and 
 neither Dante nor any other of us ever played for money, in 
 any sense worth naming. Besides cards, a rocking-horse, a 
 spinning-top, a teetotum, ball, ninepins, blindman's buff, and 
 puss-in-the-corner, used to amuse us — hardly anything else 
 in the way of games. Even marbles we never rightly learned, 
 nor efficient kite-flying, still less anything to be called athletics. 
 As to mental games, we were much addicted to what is called 
 
42 DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI. 
 
 " animal, vegetable, or mineral " ; and there must occasionally 
 have been some " capping verses," but this (which seems odd 
 under the circumstances) was quite infrequent. 
 
 Of events in the opening years of Dante Rossetti I find 
 none to record ; unless it be that, at the age of five, he 
 suddenly became weak on his legs, and, after the celebrated 
 surgeon Sir Benjamin Brodie had been consulted, he had to 
 wear splints for a longish while — say three or four months. 
 I can recollect the look of him, carried, or afterwards hobbling, 
 upstairs. One day he thought he would try how he could 
 do without the splints ; he did very well, and the affair was 
 at an end. He was a sprightly little fellow, and liked to 
 play a trick or two. One trick he played more than 
 once was walking in the street in a huddled-up attitude, as 
 if he were crippled or almost hunchbacked. When a pas- 
 senger looked at him sympathetically, the limbs suddenly 
 straightened, and perhaps an impish laugh accompanied the 
 change of form. In our unluxurious household he was regarded 
 as rather " dainty " in his diet ; inclined to eat such things as 
 he liked, and doing without those he disliked. For beer he 
 had a marked distaste ; there was no wine going to speak of, 
 so he stuck to water. Meat also he would scarcely touch 
 until turned of eight years. 
 
 I believe the first attempt at drawing made by the future 
 painter of Beata Beatrix was on this wise. At the age of 
 about four he stationed himself in the passage leading to the 
 street-door, and with a pencil of our father's began drawing 
 his rocking-horse ; later on in his childhood and boyhood he 
 seldom made any attempt at drawing from any real object, 
 but only " out of his own head." A milkman came in at the 
 moment, and was not a little surprised : " I saw a baby 
 making a picture," he said to the servant. I have here 
 mentioned " the age of about four," because that is the age 
 which my brother himself named to me one day in April 1 872 
 when we were talking over our earliest reminiscences. I still 
 possess a drawing by him of the rocking-horse, on which our 
 mother has marked the date 1834, when he was at least five 
 
CHILDHOOD. 43 
 
 years of age. I could believe this to be that very first 
 drawing of all, were it not that the performance comes so 
 near to being pretty tolerably good that I find some difficulty 
 in conceiving that he had never before taken pencil in 
 hand. 
 
 Having once begun, Dante never dropped this notion of 
 drawing — of handling a pencil or a brush ; and I cannot 
 remember any date at which it was not understood in the 
 family that " Gabriel meant to be a painter." He, and also I, 
 were incessantly buying sheets of slight engravings of actors 
 and actresses in costume — " Skelt's Theatrical Characters " 
 was the name of one leading series of them. I do not think 
 any such engravings are now produced, which seems strange 
 in this period of dramatic activity. There was a good-natured 
 little stationer named Hardy, perhaps in Clipstone Street, 
 from whom we bought these things ; and another named 
 Marks, in Great Titchfield Street, who was a trifle less accom- 
 modating, and on one occasion nonplussed us both by 
 insisting that we should ask for the required " characters " 
 by the number printed on the sheet, and not by the title 
 of the play or the personage. The quantity of these figures 
 which Dante and I coloured is marvellous to reflect upon — he 
 in chief, but I was a good second ; our sisters counted for 
 little. We also " tinselled " the figures, but this was com- 
 paratively rare. Now and then we made some attempt at 
 acting a play with such personages on a toy-stage ; but, as 
 none of us had the least manual or mechanical dexterity, this 
 came to nothing. I seem to recollect The Miller and his 
 Men and Der Freiscliutz. In colouring our taste was all 
 for bright hues — red, blue, yellow, etc. Neither of us had the 
 least of a colourist's sympathy for fused, subdued, or mottled 
 tints. 
 
 In those days another amusement was current, which has, 
 I fancy, died out entirely. It might well be revived. " Magic 
 Shadows " was the name of it. One bought full-sized sheets of 
 paper, on which heads, figures, or groups, were rudely printed, 
 in coarse outline, and with numerous half-formless splotches 
 
44 DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI. 
 
 of black. One had to cut out a figure etc. along its outline, 
 and to cut out also the splotches of black ; and then one held 
 up the figure between a candle and the wall, so that the 
 shadow of the unexcised portions was cast on to the wall. 
 This shadow looked surprisingly neat and expressive in 
 comparison with the original aspect of the printed figures. 
 We all — but principally myself — enjoyed this ocular amuse- 
 ment, and practised it diligently for various years. 
 
 V. 
 ACQUAINTANCES IN CHILDHOOD. 
 
 Mr. Hall CAINE has cited from one of Dante Rossetti's 
 letters the phrase, " Our household was all of Italian, not 
 English, environment." This is wholly correct. 
 
 The only English family that we used to see pretty 
 frequently was that of Mr. Cipriani Potter, the Pianist, and 
 Principal of the Royal Academy of Music. He was one of 
 my godfathers, and had children of much the same age as 
 ourselves ; an excellent undersized man, with a somewhat 
 saturnine expressive face, an abundance of shrewd sense, 
 and a bantering habit of talk. Mr. Charles Lyell, though 
 intimate with my father, was seldom in London. There was 
 also Mr. Thomas Keightley, the historian, and author of The 
 Fairy Mythology — a book which formed one of the leading 
 delights of our childhood. He likewise was in London only 
 occasionally — a scholarly, shortsighted Irishman, of a high 
 sense of honour, rather easily nettled now and again. He was 
 a great believer in my father's views concerning Dante. At 
 a much later date, towards 1849, Mr. Keightley settled in a 
 suburb of London ; and his nephew and adopted son, Mr. 
 Alfred Chaworth Lyster, became, and still remains, one of my 
 most affectionate friends. Two of the families in which my 
 father taught Italian — those of Mr. Swynfen Jervis, and of 
 Sir Isaac Lyon Goldsmid — had a particular regard for him, 
 and on some high occasions we children were inside their 
 
ACQUAINTANCES IN CHILDHOOD. 45 
 
 doors. Mr. Jervis, a relative of Lord St. Vincent, took some 
 minor part in verse-writing and Shakespearean comment. 
 He was father of Mrs. George Henry Lewes, and I remember 
 her well before her marriage, but never saw her afterwards ; 
 her unfortunate story shall not here be touched upon. To Sir 
 Isaac Goldsmid, one of the wealthiest Hebrew stockbrokers in 
 London, I may record my obligation, which proved to be a 
 life-long one. He it was who, when my father, in failing health 
 and waning employment, was looking out for some career into 
 which I could be introduced, spoke a word in season to one 
 of his colleagues on the Council of the London University, 
 Mr. John Wood, then Chairman of the Board of Excise — and 
 Mr. Wood lost no time in giving me employment there 
 which, though temporary at first starting, lasted in fact from 
 February 1845 to August 1894. These seem to be about the 
 only English people whom I need mention in this connexion, 
 allowing besides for the English family of an Anglo-Italian 
 music-master, Signor Rovedino. This family, like that of 
 Mr. Potter, comprised children of our own age. With Mrs. 
 Rovedino resided an aunt, whom I mention for the sake of 
 her sounding old Saxon name, Miss Waltheof, which was 
 always pronounced Walthew. 
 
 We knew in childhood a perfect specimen of the " Poor 
 Relation," who used to call upon our mother at regular 
 intervals for purposes easily surmisable. She was named 
 Miss Sarah Brown — a middle-aged spinster tending to the 
 elderly, of that order of faculty which is termed " weak-minded." 
 At a very early age we became, in some casual way, familiar 
 with Charles Lamb's excellent little essay called Poor Relations, 
 containing the words (as near as I remember them) : — 
 
 "There is one person more embarrassing than a male Poor 
 Relation, and that is a female Poor Relation ; no woman dresses 
 below her station from caprice." 
 
 I used to ponder these words in regard to Sarah Brown, and 
 to think, " Is it or is it not true that no woman dresses below 
 her station from caprice ? " 
 
46 DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI. 
 
 If English acquaintances were at a minimum with us, 
 Italian acquaintances were at a maximum. It seems hardly 
 an exaggeration to say that every Italian staying in or pass- 
 ing through London, of a Liberal mode of political opinion, 
 sought out my father, to make or renew acquaintance with him ; 
 not to speak of numerous relays of tatterdemalions, who came 
 principally or solely for alms. If they made the Masonic 
 knock at the door, or a Masonic digital sign on entering, 
 they were immediately relieved, as an act of obligation on 
 the part of my father as a Freemason ; and many were 
 relieved who had no claim of that particular kind. There 
 were two terms which I have heard my father apply — how 
 often ! — to persons of this class : " un cercatore " was an appli- 
 cant or beggar, " un seccatore " was an intrusive person, or bore. 
 Others, to whom these designations did not relate (though 
 some of these also were manifest seccatori, and perhaps on 
 occasion cercatori as well), would come evening after evening, 
 and almost all evenings, to our house — in various instances, 
 for months or years together. My father, as the offspring of 
 a blacksmith in a country town, was not entitled to have any 
 caste-prejudices, and in fact he had none. To be an Italian 
 was a passport to his good-will ; and, whether the Italian was 
 a nobleman, a professional gentleman, a small musical hanger- 
 on, a maccaroni-man, or a mere waif and stray churned by the 
 pitiless sea of expatriation, he equally welcomed him, if only 
 he were an honest soul, and not a spia (spy) — the latter being 
 a class of men much rumoured of among the Italian refugees 
 and Londoners, and abhorred with a loathing indignation. 
 Hardly an organ-man or plaster-cast vendor passed our street- 
 door without being interrogated by my father, " Di che paese 
 siete?" ("What part of Italy do you come from?") The 
 plaster-cast vendor is seen no more in London streets, but 
 the organ-man remains. The natives of the Sunny South 
 who frequented our house seemed all to be indifferent — 
 singularly indifferent, in British eyes — to any form of social 
 entertainment ; what they came for was talk — chiefly on 
 political topics, mingled at moments with a little literature, 
 
ACQUAINTANCES IN CHILDHOOD. 47 
 
 and constantly with a liberal sprinkling of my father's poems, 
 which were received with sonorous eulogy, founded at least 
 as much on political or national as on literary considerations. 
 Gabriele Rossetti's noble declamation, taken along with his 
 subject-matter, was indeed enough to carry any sympathizer 
 away on the wave and whirl of excitement. I seldom heard 
 him read any of his prose-writings on such occasions. His 
 auditors hardly appeared to have any fleshly appetites. Such 
 a thing as a solid supper was never in question, neither did 
 they ever propose to smoke. They would come into our small 
 sitting-room, greet the " Signora Francesca " and their host, 
 and sit down, as the chance offered, amid the whole family, 
 adult and semi-infantine. A cup or two of tea or of coffee, 
 with a slice of bread and butter, was all the provender wont 
 to be forthcoming. 
 
 It would be difficult to give an idea of the atmosphere of 
 thought and feeling in which Dante Rossetti grew to boyhood 
 and to youth, unless I were to say something about the 
 foreign visitors. I shall endeavour to be reasonably brief. 
 Some he remembered a little, but I, his junior, scarcely or not 
 at all. Such were Angeloni, a literary purist, 1 who became 
 blind in his last years ; General Michele Carrascosa, who was 
 my second godfather ; the famous prima donna Giuditta 
 Pasta ; Guido Sorelli, who maligned in a book the character 
 of Italian women, and was gibbeted by my father in a sonnet ; 
 Dragonetti, a leading violoncellist at the Italian opera ; 
 Petroni, compiler of a dictionary. The celebrated author Ugo 
 Foscolo was barely known to my father in London ; well known 
 was the not less celebrated violinist Paganini. There was a 
 Conte Faro, who took, I believe, to coal-dealing. " Faro " 
 means in Italian " I will do" ; and my father (possibly 
 
 1 Purism in the use of the Italian language was a great controversy 
 among Italians in all those years. The purists insisted upon recurring to 
 the standard of literary diction, mainly the Tuscan of the fourteenth 
 century, to the exclusion of everything modern, provincial, or imported 
 from abroad. Gabriele Rossetti cared little for such niceties, but was 
 willing to write much as he thought and spoke. Polidori was stricter, yet 
 not a purist. 
 
48 DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI. 
 
 without any reason beyond the purport of the name) used to 
 call him " Faro, faro, e nonfard mai niente " (" I will do, I will 
 do, and never will he do anything "). One curious character, 
 fearfully addicted to drawing the long bow, was named the 
 Marchese Moscati, who actually persuaded the very eminent 
 physician, Dr. Elliotson, that Moscati had a double stomach, 
 and was a ruminating animal. Elliotson introduced him to 
 Rossetti, and was (I may take this opportunity of saying) our 
 accustomed family doctor, resolutely refusing — for he was a 
 most kind and generous man — to accept any fees for his 
 valuable advice. Thackeray dedicated Pendennis to him. 
 After a while my father left Moscati to ruminate by himself, 
 and they -became avowed enemies. 
 
 Among Italians well remembered by me, some are men- 
 tioned in my Notes to Dante Rossetti's letters : — Filippo 
 Pistrucci (I recollect also, though faintly, his brother Benedetto 
 the eminent medallist, who designed our " George-and-the- 
 Dragon " coinage) ; Sangiovanni, the clever modeller in clay, 
 the most picturesque figure of all, who had, I believe, " knifed " 
 somebody in early youth, and had later on (chiefly after the 
 suppression of the Neapolitan constitution in 1821) had many 
 a romantic adventure in the kingdom, as captain of a band for 
 the suppression of brigandage, which bore a partly politico- 
 reactionary character ; the Cavalier Mortara ; Baron Calfapietra. 
 Other intimates in our early childhood were — Janer (he subse- 
 quently called himself Janer-Nardini), a Tuscan, scholarly and 
 courteous, keen in politics, and of a very biting tongue ; Cici- 
 loni, a teacher of Italian, of high character in all respects, who 
 took up Rossetti's work at some times when the latter was laid 
 aside, and especially during his very severe illness in 1843 \ 
 Foresti, who had been in China ; Sarti, the plaster-cast vendor; 
 De' Marsi, a teacher ; Ferrari, an aged musician whom blindness 
 had overtaken ; Sir Michael Costa, the musician and conductor, 
 and his brother Raffaele, both of whom we saw occasionally ; 
 Count Carlo Pepoli, a good-looking, cultivated Bolognese of 
 high honour and ancient family, regarded in our retired 
 household as rather a dandy — he had been addressed in a 
 
ACQUAINTANCES IN CHILDHOOD. 49 
 
 striking poetical epistle by the great poet Leopardi, and 
 eventually an English lady of some fortune " proposed to 
 him," and he married her, returned to Italy when liberal 
 politics prevailed there, and died a Senator of the realm ; 
 Rolandi, the bookseller, a very worthy man of small stature ; 
 Count Giuseppe Ricciardi, a South Neapolitan, an ardent 
 patriot of the revolutionary-republican type. I remember 
 seeing once or twice in our house a handsome stately lady, 
 rather advanced in years, who called herself, I think, Ida 
 Saint Elme. She was the daughter of a Hungarian nobleman, 
 Leopold de Tolstoy, had led an agitated and far from correct 
 life, and was authoress of the Memoires d'une Contem- 
 poraine, published in Paris in 1827. Two old friends passed 
 some days in my father's house, vaguely remembered by me — 
 Dr. Curci, and Smargiassi, the latter a Vastese, and a land- 
 scape-painter of considerable name in the Neapolitan kingdom. 
 Curci had quite a passionate attachment to my father, and I 
 believe visited England for the express purpose of seeing him 
 once again. Later on were Cornaro, a descendant (and I 
 think I was told the sole remaining descendant) of the great 
 Venetian family — a noticeable man, in early middle age, with 
 long nose and reddish hair — he was said to be an inveterate 
 gambler, and he died accidentally by drowning ; Parodi, a 
 dancing-master, who gave us lessons in dancing, in return for 
 Italian lessons imparted to his son by my father — he was a 
 man not wanting in good sense, but uninstructed in a marked 
 degree, and spoke the most curious lingo that I ever heard — 
 French, German, and English, grafted on to his native Italian ; 
 Aspa, a vigorous Sicilian, pianoforte-tuner in Broadwood's 
 house ; Gallenga, the political and miscellaneous writer, as 
 expert in the English as in the Italian tongue ; Dr. Maron- 
 celli, brother of a well-known exile who suffered a rigid 
 imprisonment ; the musician Sperati ; Signora Monti (after- 
 wards Monti-Baraldi), to whom some of Rossetti's latest 
 letters were written. Dr. Maroncelli gave him some medical 
 advice towards 1843 ; and later on another doctor, Gilioli, 
 seemed to have some partial success in treating his eyesight. 
 VOL. 1. 4 
 
50 DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI. 
 
 Of one of these Italians, Sangiovanni, I will say a few words 
 further, as he and his had more to do with our early family life 
 than any of the others ; Pistrucci came next Sangiovanni 
 was a tall gaunt man, with an air of having gone through 
 a deal of wearing work, aged about fifty-two when I first 
 remember him. It is rather a curious fact that two Spanish 
 painters, having to depict St. Joseph, adopted a type of 
 visage not at all unlike Sangiovanni's, but in each instance 
 (especially the second) less strained and rugged. I refer 
 to the pictures in our National Gallery, The Adoration of 
 the Shepherds, by Velasquez, and The Holy Family, by 
 Murillo v Of school knowledge Sangiovanni had little, but 
 plenty of intelligence ; of religious belief (I should say) 
 nothing ; but in this respect he was on a par with a large 
 proportion of his London compatriots. My father once 
 narrated to him the story of the Patriarch Joseph, from the 
 Book of Genesis, which came perfectly new to him, and 
 interested him extremely. In 1833 he went over to America, 
 on business proper to Achille Murat, to look after an estate 
 and its slave-labourers. In the United States he saw an 
 Anglo-American young woman whom he liked ; he proposed 
 for her, and brought her back to England as his wife. She 
 became the mother of an ailing boy, Guglielmo. Sangiovanni, 
 as a husband, was not unkind in his way, but had all the 
 jealousy (perfectly gratuitous in this instance) and the 
 dominance of a Southern Italian ; and his wife was almost 
 a prisoner in her dingy tenement, Nassau Street, Marylebone, 
 where her spouse carried on his clay-modelling art. My 
 mother, with some of us children, often looked in upon her 
 solitude, and held her in deserved esteem. After some years 
 she came to understand (I know not how) that Sangiovanni 
 was already a married man, having a wife still living in Italy. 
 This was, I suppose, true ; and not less true that Sangiovanni 
 had heard nothing of his first wife for many years, and had 
 genuinely believed her to be no more. About the same time 
 our Mrs. Sangiovanni got to know something about the 
 Mormons ; so one day she vanished with her son to Mormon- 
 
ACQUAINTANCES IN CHILDHOOD. 5 1 
 
 land, and was never again traced. This may have been in 
 1846. Sangiovanni, after much agitated inquiry, resumed his 
 ordinary work, and he died at Brighton in 1853. 
 
 Other names and reminiscences crowd upon me as I 
 write. There was an odd personage, Albera, whom we con- 
 sidered not entirely sane. He was a great believer in one 
 of the professing Dauphins of France, Louis XVII. — I think 
 this one was the so-called Naundorf — and he insisted 
 upon taking my father to see him, and believe in him too. 
 My father saw him, but did not believe in him ; though he 
 allowed that Naundorf looked very like a Bourbon, 1 and had 
 a daughter resembling Marie Antoinette. After a while Naun- 
 dorf took to a sort of religious revelation, as well as to 
 Gallic royalty, and my father, regarding him as a decided 
 impostor, visited him no more. Then came a little snuffy 
 senile Frenchman, the Comte de Neubourg, who was, I sup- 
 pose, a Legitimist or Carlist. If his linen was not spotless, 
 his manners were exquisitely polite. He had a mania for 
 puns ; and, when my father was conversing on some subject 
 with his usual energetic zest, the Comte would at times both 
 embarrass and exasperate him by interjecting something 
 which, on reflection, proved to have no raison d'etre beyond 
 punning. Another singular person was the " Babylonish 
 Princess " (introduced into our house by Cavalier Mortara), 
 " Maria Theresa Asmar, daughter of Emir Abdallah Asmar," 
 who published her Memoirs in two volumes in 1844. She 
 was a small, very dark woman, of middle age and subdued 
 manners, and decidedly plain. A Vastese named Rulli 
 appeared in our house towards 1842, and made some pretence 
 at bringing Dante Rossetti on in his artistic studies. I believe 
 his instruction was limited to propounding to the youth, for 
 copying, a drawing or engraving of an architectonic ram's 
 
 1 This question of Naundorf, or of other persons who claimed to be 
 Louis XVII., has of late acquired added importance, as it seems to be 
 established, by the investigation ordered by the French Government, that 
 the remains which were produced and medically inspected in 1795 as being 
 those of the deceased Louis XVII, cannot really have been his. 
 
52 DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI. 
 
 head. Rulli appeared to us an unmeaning and not easily 
 intelligible sort of character ; he had something in him, how- 
 ever, for he died in a battle for Italian liberation. An 
 Avvocato Teodorani adopted, and even wrote or lectured on, 
 some of Rossetti's ideas concerning Dante and other Italian 
 poets ; and a cultivated gentleman, De' Filippi, saw a good 
 deal of his closing years. A native of the Kingdom of Naples 
 was generally to be known (apart from dialect or physiog- 
 nomy) by his addressing my father as " Don Gabriele "—for 
 that mode still subsists from the old days of the Spanish 
 occupation. To other Italians my father was " Signor 
 Rossetti," or (if on a formal footing, which was not wont to 
 last long) " Signor Professore." 
 
 The determined character of some of these men may be 
 illustrated by a passage from a letter written by Gabriele 
 Rossetti in April 185 1. I can hardly have failed to see the 
 Galanti here mentioned, but I do not remember his person. 
 
 " Hither had fled from Naples, after the infamous treason of 
 15 May 1848, a man of great talent, the Avvocato Giacinto 
 Galanti, who piqued himself on a spirit of prophecy. At that time 
 our national affairs were flourishing ; but he foresaw disasters which, 
 since then, have come but too true. One evening he called to read 
 me a writing of his entitled The Three Years, 1848 (it was just in 
 June of that year), 1849, an< ^ 1850. The first of these three years 
 he defined as a Year of Roses and Thorns (and you will take note 
 that the thorns had not yet begun) ; the second, Year all Thorns ; 
 and the third, Year of Death. And such, haplessly, they all turned 
 out. He arraigned the Roman Popedom as the principal cause of 
 all the reverses which he foresaw ; and Pius IX. was, at that date, still 
 enacting the comedy which he afterwards turned into a tragedy. 
 On hearing that writing I was staggered ; and yet, not being able 
 then to give credence to it, I smiled incredulously, and, shaking my 
 head, I called Galanti a bird of ill omen and a visionary. He rose 
 incensed, and exclaimed : ' You will see whether I speak the truth, 
 and you will confess it ; but not to me, for I will not await the 
 direful time that is coming upon us.' Saying this, he departed, 
 returned to his house, not far from mine, and cut his throat. This 
 terrible event produced the deepest impression on me ; and soon 
 
ACQUAINTANCES IN CHILDHOOD. 53 
 
 afterwards began our disasters. The days of Novara, Verona, and 
 Mantua, ensued ; and then the flight of the Impius who is called 
 Pius, and so to the roses succeeded the thorns. Of the other two 
 years I do not speak ; you know what they were." 
 
 Towards the close of my father's life various protestantizing 
 Italians, most of them ex-Catholic priests, got about him, and 
 worked the anti-papal side of his opinions and writings. 
 They started a review called the Eco di Savonarola. We 
 did not relish them much, though we thought Crespi and 
 Di Menna (the latter a' very feeble-minded personage) honest 
 in their views. There were also Ferretti and Mapei — the last 
 little to our taste. I cannot recollect that we ever saw Gavazzi, 
 the admired pulpit orator, but we certainly did see Dr. Achilli 
 — whose character came much bespattered out of his action 
 against Cardinal Newman for libel — a heavy beetle-browed 
 man, who looked fit for most things evil. 
 
 I have not yet named the two foremost London-dwelling 
 Italians of my boyhood, Mazzini and Panizzi. That great 
 man, Mazzini, was naturally well known to my father, and 
 highly esteemed by him — a feeling which Mazzini recipro- 
 cated. They dissented however, to some extent, as to what 
 should be regarded as practical aims to work for, and practical 
 means of working. Mazzini was, of course, for a republic, 
 and for any number of revolutionary attempts, even though 
 manifestly destined to present failure ; whereas Rossetti was 
 fundamentally for a unified constitutional monarchy, and for 
 a plan of action which would preserve rather than sacrifice 
 valuable lives. Mazzini was perhaps, of the two, the more 
 nearly in the right ; for it seems as if the result would not, 
 without his ceaseless incitements, have been attained nearly 
 so soon as it was. I do not think that I ever set eyes on 
 Mazzini in my father's house ; but I well remember seeing 
 him, towards 1842, at a meeting attended by a number of 
 poor Italians, organ-grinders and others, for whom a school 
 was being started. He spoke after my father ; and the noble, 
 simple utterance of the word with which he began his address 
 — " Fratelli " — still sounds upon my ear. As to Panizzi, my 
 
54 DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI. 
 
 father knew him likewise in the early years ; but he under- 
 stood (I believe correctly) that Panizzi was the writer of an 
 adverse and partly sneering critique on his theories concerning 
 Dante and other writers ; this he resented, and they met no 
 more. Garibaldi and Saffi, who came into fame when my 
 father was declining and withdrawn from society, he never 
 saw ; nor do I think he saw the patriot-assassin Felice Orsini, 
 nor Rufini, author of the admired tale Doctor Antonio. 
 General Guglielmo Pepe he had known very intimately in 
 Naples, and they kept up some correspondence to a late date, 
 when Pepe was acting as one of the heroic defenders of 
 Venice, 1848-49 ; but the General, so far as I am aware, never 
 came to England. 
 
 The bete noire of the political Italians whom we so con- 
 stantly saw was the King of the French, Louis Philippe, or 
 Luigi Filippo, as they called him. He was more abhorred, 
 because more powerful for good or for evil, than even the 
 Pope, the King of Naples, or the pettier tyrants of Italy. Of 
 course too he was regarded as a traitor, having come to the 
 throne by a popular revolution, and then reinforced the cause 
 of retrogression and coercion. There were also the Austrians 
 — " Gli Austriaci " — and their hell-hound Metternich. The 
 number of times' I have heard Luigi Filippo denounced would 
 tax the resources of the Calculating Boy. My mind's eye 
 presents a curious group, though it seemed natural enough at 
 the time. My father and three or four foreigners engaged in 
 animated talk on the affairs of Europe, from the point of 
 view of patriotic aspiration, and hope long deferred till it 
 became almost hopeless, with frequent and fervent recitations 
 of poetry intervening ; my mother quiet but interested, and 
 sometimes taking her mild womanly part in the conversation ; 
 and we four children— Maria more especially, with her dark 
 Italian countenance and rapt eyes — drinking it all in as a 
 sort of necessary atmosphere of the daily life, yet with our 
 own little interests and occupations as well — reading, colouring 
 prints, looking into illustrated books, nursing a cat, or what- 
 ever came uppermost. The talk was essentially of a serious 
 
ACQUAINTANCES IN CHILDHOOD. 55 
 
 and often an elevated kind, but varied with any amount of 
 lively banter, anecdote, or jest, and with those familiar reminis- 
 cences of the old days and the old country so poignantly 
 dear to the exile's heart. . As has already been partly indicated, 
 no period passed, even in our infancy, at which we were much 
 less capable of following a conversation in Italian than in 
 English ; and we could pick out tolerably something of 
 French in talk, even before being set to learn the language 
 grammatically. Italian grammar we — with the exception of 
 Maria — hardly looked into at all as a matter of system, and 
 English grammar was counted as pretty well explaining itself. 
 
 I regard it as more than probable that the perpetual excited 
 and of course one-sided talk about Luigi Filippo and other 
 political matters had something to do with the marked aliena- 
 tion from current politics which characterized my brother in 
 his adolescent and adult years. He was not of a long-suffering 
 temper, and may have thought the whole affair a considerable 
 nuisance at times, and resolved that he at least would leave 
 Luigi Filippo and the other potentates of Europe and their 
 ministers, to take care of themselves. 
 
 I find some remarks in John Stuart Mill's Autobiography 
 (1873) which appear well worth attention ; here I quote them 
 as indicating the kind of intellectual savour which we absorbed 
 in childhood, and which I conceive to have been eminently 
 well adapted for ripening the faculties and keeping the 
 feelings undebased. Mill, it will be perceived, is speaking of 
 French (as contrasted with English) society, but what he 
 says would apply in a general way to those Italians whom we 
 were in the habit of seeing ; though it must be allowed that 
 several of them were commonplace persons in the fullest sense 
 of the term. Mill says, speaking of the fifteenth year of his 
 life — I abridge the passage here and there : — 
 
 " The greatest perhaps of the many advantages which I owed 
 to this episode in my education was that of having breathed for 
 a whole year the free and genial atmosphere of continental life. 
 Having so little experience of English life, and the few people 
 I knew being mostly such as had public objects, of a large and 
 
56 DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI. 
 
 personally disinterested kind, at heart, I was ignorant of the low 
 moral tone of what in England is called Society ; the habit of, not 
 indeed professing, but taking for granted in every mode of implica- 
 tion, that conduct is of course always directed towards low and 
 petty objects. I could not then know or estimate the difference 
 between this manner of existence, and that of a people like the 
 French, whose faults, if equally real, are at all events different; 
 among whom sentiments, which by comparison at least may be 
 called elevated, are the current coin of human intercourse, both in 
 books and in private life ; and, though often evaporating in pro- 
 fession, are yet kept alive in the nation at large by constant exercise, 
 and stimulated by sympathy, so as to form a living and active part 
 of the existence of great numbers of persons, and to be recognized 
 and understood by all. Neither could I then appreciate the general 
 culture of the understanding which results from the habitual exercise 
 of the feelings, and is thus carried down into the most uneducated 
 classes of several countries on the continent, in a degree not equalled 
 in England among the so-called educated, except where an unusual 
 tenderness of conscience leads to a habitual exercise of the intellect 
 on questions of right and wrong. I even then felt, though without 
 stating it clearly to myself, the contrast between the frank sociability 
 and amiability of French personal intercourse, and the English mode 
 of existence, in which everybody acts as if everybody else (with few 
 or no exceptions) was either an enemy or a bore. In France, it is 
 true, the bad as well as the good points, both of individual and of 
 national character, come more to the surface, and break out more 
 fearlessly in ordinary intercourse, than in England ; but the general 
 habit of the people is to show, as well as to expect, friendly feeling 
 in every one towards' every other, wherever there is not some 
 positive cause for the opposite." 
 
 I will add here one word or two on the contrary side. 
 I think that the base passion of envy is more common among 
 Italian than among English people ; likewise a certain penu- 
 rious or stingy habit, which may however — among the 
 Italians I knew in boyhood — have been chiefly due to the 
 much greater expense of living which they found in England, 
 beyond what they had known in Italy. To spend a pound 
 sterling wore, in their eyes, a different aspect from what it 
 
CHILDISH BOOK-READING AND SCRIBBLING. 57 
 
 does in a Londoner's. As to what is commonly called 
 " morality," those Italians (so far as I can review them now) 
 look to me, as a class, quite up to the British level ; but of 
 course the point could not be estimated by me in boyhood, 
 and since the close of my father's life my knowledge of 
 Italians in England is practically a blank ; and the same was 
 the case with my brother. 
 
 VI. 
 CHILDISH BOOK-READING AND SCRIBBLING. 
 
 Dante Rossetti's earliest education was conducted by our 
 mother ; little or not at all by our father, apart from the 
 general mental incitement (and this assuredly counted for a 
 good deal) which his conversation, his using the Italian 
 language, and his readings of his poems, supplied. I may 
 say in this connexion that my own education — allowing 
 for the moderate difference of age — proceeded pari passu with 
 my brother's ; and that my two sisters owed everything in the 
 way of early substantial instruction to our mother. To school 
 they never went at all. Thus all four of us were constantly 
 together in infancy and childhood. Wherever one was, there 
 the other was — and that was almost always at home. In 
 what I have next to say I shall aim at confining myself to 
 Dante Gabriel, but it will be understood that what is true 
 of him applies mainly to the other three children as well. 
 
 Of course our religious mother gave Dante some rudiments 
 of Christian knowledge, from the Bible and the " Church 
 Catechism," and at a suitable age took him to church. He 
 got to know the whole Bible fairly well, and necessarily 
 regarded it with reverence as one of the greatest and 
 sublimest books in the world. Job, Ecclesiastes, and the 
 Apocalypse, were the sections of the Scripture which, before 
 he attained manhood and ever afterwards, he viewed with 
 peculiar interest and homage. He must have been able to 
 read currently, and to write with moderate neatness, soon 
 
58 DANTE GABRIEL R0SSETT1. 
 
 after completing five years of age. His early reading seems 
 to have been all in English ; although, as he spoke Italian, 
 for ordinary household purposes, about as readily as English, 
 and as the reading process in Italian is incomparably the 
 easier of the two for a beginner, no reason is apparent to me 
 why this was the case. 
 
 I lately came across two letters addressed by my father to 
 my mother, August and September 1836, which give a clear 
 indication as to the knowledge of Italian then possessed 
 by Dante, in his ninth year. The first expresses some 
 surprise at finding that Dante and his two juniors (Christina 
 was not yet six) had perfectly understood a letter in Italian 
 from their mother, read out to them. In his second letter, 
 my father says that Dante and I, having received notes from 
 Maria, chanted aloud, with great demonstrations of glee, the 
 following stave : — 
 
 " L'amabile Maria 
 Ringraziata sia 
 De' due biglietti suoi 
 Mandati ad ambi noi." 1 
 
 This extemporized effusion must, I suppose, have been the 
 performance of Dante Gabriel. These seem to be the first 
 rhymes he ever concocted, and, if so, he rhymed in Italian 
 earlier than in English. My father of course smiles over 
 verses of such a calibre — which are, nevertheless, correct in 
 rhyme and rhythm, and not (I should say) wrong in diction. 
 
 I think that the very first book my brother took to with 
 strong personal zest was Shakespear's Hamlet — i.e., certain 
 scenes of Hamlet, giving a fairly complete idea of the story, 
 which were printed to accompany the outlines to that tragedy 
 engraved after the then universally celebrated German artist, 
 Retzsch. Both outlines and scenes interested him vastly 
 at the age of five, or it may be even of four ; and soon a 
 relative (probably one of our aunts) gave him a Bowdler's 
 Shakespear, in which he read numerous plays — and indeed 
 
 1 Thanks to good-natured Maria for her two notes sent to both of us. 
 
CHILDISH BOOK-READING AND SCRIBBLING, 59 
 
 he read, unchecked, in un-Bowdlerised editions as well. A 
 little incident serves to fix my memory as to dates etc. in 
 this matter. Before T was six years of age, and therefore 
 before the close of September 1835, I had a dangerous gastric 
 illness ; and, while I was recovering from that, Dante pro- 
 duced for my diversion, " out of his own head," a little series 
 of drawn and coloured figures of the leading personages in 
 the three parts of Henry VI. I need not say that these 
 were childish performances in the most absolute sense. He 
 can then have been at the utmost seven years and four months 
 old, and was, I fancy, some months younger. The trilogy 
 of Henry VI. was a great favourite with all of us ; but, 
 by the time when Dante was familiar with that drama, he 
 was not less versed in several other plays of Shakespear. I 
 might with confidence specify The Tempest, Midsummer 
 Night's Dream, The Merchant of Venice, Henry IV., 
 Richard III, Romeo and Juliet, Macbeth, and there were 
 others as well. Of four of these we had outline-books 
 similar to that of Hamlet — the designs by Retzsch, or by 
 a less prominent German artist, Ruhl. There were also 
 Retzsch's famous outlines to Gothe's Faust. Through these, 
 with their accompanying text in English, my brother got to 
 know, and to admire, something of Faust, not very long after 
 Hamlet. Here was, at any rate, a good beginning for taste 
 in poetry. Two other books with similar outlines were 
 Fridolin, translated from Schiller (which we thought feeble 
 stuff), and the Dragon of Rhodes. 
 
 The next immense favourite was Walter Scott. Some rela- 
 tive presented a pocket-edition of Marmion to Dante Rossetti 
 at a very childish age. He ramped through it, and recited 
 whole pages at a stretch — the death of Constance, the battle 
 and death of Marmion, etc. Fitz-Eustace was regarded as a 
 tame and correct-minded character rousing no interest. The 
 Lay of the Last Minstrel and The Lady of the Lake excited 
 fully as much delight as Marmion ; The Lord of the Isles and 
 Rokeby only a little less. I can still recollect that one after- 
 noon the junior master at our first school, the younger Mr. 
 
60 DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTl. 
 
 Paul, called at our house for some purpose, and found us all 
 four racing and tumbling about the floor, repeating in semi- 
 drama the Battle of Clan Alpin, from The Lady of the Lake, 
 Dante was then just about nine years of age. Along with 
 Scott's poems the Arabian Nights went on at a great rate ; 
 the old English translation after Galland, and not long after- 
 wards Lane's very different version. TJie Waverley Novels 
 ensued pretty soon after the poems — Ivanhoe (the prime 
 favourite), Kenilworth, Quentin Durward, etc. It may perhaps 
 be as well to give here the opinion which, at a mature age, 
 Dante Rossetti entertained of Walter Scott's novels. It is 
 expressed in a letter of October 1871, addressed to Mr. 
 William Bell Scott :— 
 
 " I have read several of Scott's novels here, and been surprised 
 both at their usual melodramatic absurdities of plot, and their 
 astounding command of character in the personages by whom all 
 these improbabilities are enacted. The novels are wonderful works, 
 with all their faults. Guy Mannering and St. Ronarts Well — 
 neither of which I knew before — delighted me extremely. Another 
 I read is The Fair Maid of Perth ; which is on a level with the 
 Victoria drama in some respects, but, in some points of conception 
 and vivid reality in parts, can only be compared to the greatest 
 imaginative works existing." 
 
 These books — Shakespear, Faust, Scott, and the Arabian 
 Nights — and, along with these, Keightley's Fairy Mytho- 
 logy (mentioned in a previous section), Monk Lewis's verse- 
 collection Tales of Wonder {Alonzo the Brave, etc.), and the 
 stirring ballad of Chevy Chase — may certainly be regarded 
 as the staple and the fine fieur of what Dante Rossetti 
 revelled in up to the close of his tenth year or there- 
 abouts. He always discerned the difference between the 
 "Ghost in Hamlet" and a ghost by Monk Lewis. Other 
 things are present to me as well : Carleton's Traits and 
 Stories of the Irish Peasantry, Robinson Crusoe, Gulliver, 
 Gay's Fables, Pascal Bruno (a tale translated from Dumas) } 
 Fitzgreene Halleck's short poem of Marco Bozaris, an in- 
 
CHILDISH BOOK-READING AND SCRIBBLING. 6 1 
 
 cident of the Greek War of Independence. Of Burns he 
 had a kind of idea, through looking into an edition sparsely 
 illustrated by Westall ; but the dialect was a bar to his 
 taking very kindly to the poems. Lamb's Tales from 
 Shakespear he skimmed and slighted. Of directly "funny" 
 things I remember only John Gilpin and some jocosities 
 of Hood in a Comic Annual. Naturally, too, there were the 
 old nursery-rhymes in infantine years, and The Peacock at 
 Home ; and the old Fairy-tales, such as Puss in Boots, Blue- 
 beard, Cinderella, Jack the Giant-Killer, Beauty and the 
 Beast, etc. Our mother kept us adequately supplied with 
 books having a directly religious or didactic aim — stories 
 about " good little boys and girls," or the alternative naughty 
 ones, and other such matter ; but she, like a sensible woman, 
 did not tie us down to liking them, in case we happened to 
 dislike them — which we generally did. There were some 
 of Miss Edgeworth's stories for children, such as Frank ; 
 Day's Sandford and Merton ; The Fairchild Family, by Mrs. 
 Sherwood, which last we were far from relishing. The one 
 which I recollect as best esteemed was The Son of a Genius, 
 by Mrs. Hofland ; a companion story was The Daughter of a 
 Genius. A minute edition of Stories from English History, 
 by James Mill, was very frequently in our hands, with prints 
 — the Druids burning victims in wicker cages to their gods, 
 Queen Margaret and the Robber, and so on. 
 
 Illustrated books and engravings were not very numerous 
 in our house, but still in fair quantity. One that Dante and 
 the rest of us looked at continually, beginning well nigh in 
 infancy, was an old-fashioned little book (1700) in the Dutch 
 language, named Metamorphosis Naturalis, by a painter 
 (Goedaerdt), with coloured prints of insects and their trans- 
 formations. Blank wonderment, with much of stimulating 
 pleasure and something of repulsion, was the result. Later 
 on, and never tired of, came Martin and WestaWs Illus- 
 trations of the Bible ; and to his last day Dante would have 
 told you that Martin was an imaginative pictorial genius of 
 no mean power. Afterwards some one gave him a book of 
 
62 DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI. 
 
 rather large outline engravings from Scripture, after the Old 
 Masters — emptyish-looking things which he frequently in- 
 spected, with little real sympathy. I have always thought 
 that his indifference to the respectable conventions of Old- 
 Masterhood, leading on to the Praeraphaelite movement, had 
 something to do with this book. Our grandfather had at 
 Holmer Green some engravings after Rubens, the subjects 
 from the story of Achilles. They met his fancy in a certain 
 way, but he did not like their fleshy forms and florid manner. 
 Also (belonging probably to Eliza Polidori) a book of English 
 engravings from Raphael's Cartoons, with highly laudatory 
 descriptions. Another of our grandfather's possessions was 
 a fine large edition of Ariosto, with French engravings of 
 last century. These were an endless delight to Dante, from 
 the age of eleven or so onwards. He owned much earlier, as 
 a present from the same relative, a little book of French or 
 Flemish woodcut-illustrations to Bible history, dating towards 
 1580. They were probably artistic things of their kind, and 
 he enjoyed their arbitrary treatment and unreasonable 
 costumes. Among our father's books were a Poliphili 
 Hypnerotomachia ; Gombauld's Endymion, in English, with 
 engravings, dated 1639 ; and a volume of pagan mytho- 
 logy with startling woodcuts of about the early seventeenth 
 century- — I presume it to have been the De Naturd Deorum 
 of Boccaccio. All these Dante inspected from time to time } 
 with some gusto not unmingled with awe — each book being 
 pronounced by our father to be a " libro sommamente mistical" 
 according to his system of interpretation of mediaeval and 
 renaissance literature. In his opening years no prints were 
 more frequently in Dante's hands than a series of litho- 
 graphs from Roman history, the work of Filippo Pistrucci 
 (there was also a different series, coloured allegorical designs) ; 
 not very superior efforts of art, but far from being amiss in 
 treatment of the subjects. At one time, after Dante had 
 passed out of mere childhood, some one brought into our 
 
 1 Book in the highest degree mystical. 
 
CHILDISH BOOK-READING AND SCRIBBLING. 6$ 
 
 house Pinelli's outlines from Roman history. These we 
 admired most heartily, and I suppose with good reason. 
 Some of Pinelli's subjects of Italian peasant and street life 
 we knew already. Various other prints and drawings occur 
 to my mind ; but somewhere I must stop, and I stop here. 
 Occasionally — it seems to me by no means often — he went 
 to the National Gallery in childhood. Mr. Frederick J. 
 Shields has recorded an interesting point that he heard from 
 Dante Rossetti, who mentioned it to show the sound direction 
 which, in many instances, his mother gave to his taste. On 
 his first visit to the National Gallery — he may, I suppose, have 
 been then just ten years of age 1 — he was inclined to admire 
 the big, showy, and (to an untrained eye) somewhat telling 
 picture by Benjamin West, Christ Jiealing the Sick ; but his 
 mother, who made no pretence to technical knowledge in art, 
 at once set him right by remarking that it was " common- 
 place and expressionless." What two epithets could go closer 
 to the root of the thing ? 
 
 It has often been said, by writers who know nothing very 
 definite about the matter, that Dante Rossetti was, from 
 childhood or early boyhood, a devoted admirer of the 
 stupendous poet after whom he was christened. This is a 
 mistake. No doubt our father's Dantesque studies saturated 
 the household air with wafts and rumours of the mighty 
 Alighieri ; therefore the child breathed Dante (so to speak), 
 but he did not think Dante, nor lay him to heart. On the 
 contrary, our father's speculations and talk about Dante — 
 which, although he highly valued the poetry as such, all took 
 an abstruse or theoretic turn — rather alienated my brother 
 than otherwise, and withheld him from " looking up " the 
 Florentine, to see whether his poems were things readable, 
 like those of Shakespear, Scott, or Gothe. With all of us 
 children the case was the same. I question whether my 
 
 1 The National Gallery, in its present building, opened to the public in 
 April 1838. The first nucleus of the collection had previously been 
 housed in Pall Mall, but I surmise that none of my family ever went 
 there. 
 
64 DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI. 
 
 brother had ever read twenty consecutive lines of Dante until 
 he was some fifteen or sixteen years of age ; no doubt after 
 that he rapidly made up for lost time. Our father, when 
 writing about the Comedia or the Vita Nuova, was seen 
 surrounded by ponderous folios in italic type, " libri mistici" 
 and the like (often about alchemy, freemasonry, Brahminism > 
 Swedenborg, the Cabbala, etc.), and filling page after page of 
 prose, in impeccable handwriting, full of underscorings, inter- 
 lineations, and cancellings. We contemplated his labours with 
 a certain hushed feeling, which partook of respect and also of 
 levity, but were assuredly not much tempted to take up one 
 of his books, and see whether it would " do to read." The 
 Convito was always a name of dread to us, as being the 
 very essence of arid unreadableness. Dante Alighieri was a 
 sort of banshee in the Charlotte Street houses ; his shriek 
 audible even to familiarity, but the message of it not 
 scrutinized. 
 
 As to all this, a passage in my brother's Preface to his 
 book Dante and his Circle ought to have prevented any 
 misapprehension concerning the supposed constant reading of 
 Alighieri in very childish years. He says : — 
 
 "The first associations I have are connected with my father's 
 devoted studies, which, from his own point of view, have done so 
 much towards the general investigation of Dante's writings. Thus, 
 in those early days, all around me partook of the influence of the 
 great Florentine ; till, from viewing it as a natural element, I also, 
 growing older, was drawn within the circle." 
 
 There was an English artist named Seymour Kirkup, 
 domiciled in Florence. He was made a Barone of the Italian 
 Kingdom, and must be remembered by many persons now 
 living, as he only died towards 1879, aged ninety-two or 
 thereabouts. He was an enthusiast for Dante, and was a 
 profound believer in my father's scheme of Dantesque inter- 
 pretation. He began corresponding with my father towards 
 1837, and kept this up for several years. It was in 1839 that he 
 took a leading part in discovering the portrait of the youthful 
 
CHILDISH BOOK-READING AND SCRIBBLING. 65 
 
 Dante, by Giotto, in the Bargello of Florence, long lost under 
 whitewash. He made at once a good full-sized coloured 
 drawing of this invaluable portrait (now, sad to say, no longer 
 in a perfectly authentic state), and sent the drawing as a 
 present to my father ; from him it came to my brother, and 
 was only disposed of in the sale of his effects which followed 
 his death in 1882. The receipt of this portrait probably put 
 the mind and feelings of Dante Rossetti as much en rapport 
 with the Florentine poet as any incident which had preceded 
 it ; but even so he did not take any immediate steps for 
 acquainting himself with the poems. 
 
 My brother's first " poem " — his almost solitary drama x — 
 was written in his own handwriting, towards the age of five. 
 He may have been just six, rather than five, but I am not 
 certain. It is entitled The Slave, and it lies before me at 
 this moment. Why he wrote The Slave, or what he sup- 
 posed himself to mean in writing it, is not clear to me. One 
 can, however, form one safe inference — that his inspiration 
 derived from seeing, passim in Shakespear, the words "Slave, 
 Traitor, Villain," and what not. The Slave consists of three 
 Scenes in two " Acts " ; it only fills nine small pages of large 
 writing. The writing begins by imitating print, but goes on 
 into an ordinary (very childish) cursive hand. Probably 
 Dante Gabriel learned how to write cursively while the drama 
 was in course of composition. It surprises me to note that the 
 spelling is strictly correct : the blank verse (when it occurs, 
 for some parts are in truncated verse, or practical prose) is 
 also correct enough — as here : — 
 
 "Ho, if thou be alive, come out and fight me!" 
 
 " Down, slave, I dare thee on ! Coward, thou diest ! " 
 
 "But yet I will not live to see thee thus." 
 
 This matter of versification correct in accent and number of 
 feet, however puerile in other respects, may to some readers 
 seem stranger than it does to me ; for I cannot, with reference 
 
 1 I say "almost solitary," because I possess another trifle in the dramatic 
 form— a mere piece of grotesque banter — of a late date, 1878, 
 VOL. I. 5 
 
66 DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI. 
 
 to any one of us four, remember any time when, knowing 
 what a verse was, we did not also know and feel what a 
 correct verse was. The early reading of really good poetry, 
 and perhaps quite as much the constant hearing of our 
 father's verses recited with perfect articulation and emphasis, 
 may account for this. 
 
 The Dramatis Personcz of The Slave are set down 
 thus : — " Don Manuel, a Spanish Lord ; Traitor, an Officer ; 
 Slave, a Servant to Traitor; Mortimer, an. English Knight; 
 Guards, Messengers, etc." No plot is apparent, only constant 
 objurgation and fighting. The utmost stretch of conjecture 
 as to a plot would amount simply to this : Don Manuel is 
 entitled to the allegiance of Traitor, who has deserted him, 
 and sides with Mortimer ; Slave is viewed with suspicion by 
 all three ; Traitor, getting the worst of it in a fight, kills him- 
 self ; Mortimer, as an act of condolence for Traitor, kills 
 himself ; Slave is killed by Don Manuel, who is left surviving, 
 faute de mieux. It will be observed that there is no " female 
 interest " in the The Slave ; and in fact the " gushing or 
 ecstatic female " was, to all us infants, a personage less provo- 
 cative of sentiment than of mirth. Often and fatuously did 
 we laugh over Coleridge's poem of Love [Genevieve) — the 
 very poem which, in an edition of Coleridge that I possess, 
 my brother, in one of his latest years, marked with the word 
 " Perfection." 
 
 In the same minute paper-book which contains The Slave 
 Dante followed on, in a rather less rudimentary handwriting, 
 with The Beauties of Shakespeare. These consist singly of 
 Portia's speech, " The quality of mercy is not strained." 
 Then comes Aladdin, or The Wonderful Lamp, by Gabriel 
 Rossetti, Painter of Play-Pictures (this refers to his constant 
 industry in colouring prints of stage-characters). Aladdin 
 is in prose, and only a few lines were written, totally 
 uninteresting. The sole amusing point about it is the List 
 of Personages, which are assigned to such minor performers 
 as " Mrs. Siddons, Mr. Kemble, Mr. Kean," and others whose 
 names he got no doubt from his theatrical prints. The three 
 
CHILDISH BOOK-READING AND SCRIBBLING. 6y 
 
 above named were already dead at the time. Mrs. Siddons, 
 and more particularly Kemble (John Philip), had been well 
 known — I may here observe — to Gaetano Polidori. After 
 Aladdin, a few pages of the book are filled with drawings 
 (of a kind). One is Guy Fawkes, with lantern and dagger. 
 He is done in heavy ink-silhouette, which is blotted down 
 upon the page that faces him. 
 
 And so much for The Slave and its adjuncts ; which I 
 might barely have mentioned, but for the fact that this 
 " drama " has been adverted to in print before now, and it 
 seemed desirable to settle once for all what it amounted to. 
 
 I must say a little more about infantine drawings — some 
 in pencil, most in pen and ink, many of them coloured. Two 
 represent his dormouse " Dwanging " ; and, as Dwanging (so 
 it appears to me) hardly existed at a date later than the 
 completion of Dante's sixth year (12 May 1834), these 
 must be extremely early affairs, not wholly unlike the look 
 of the animal. To 1834 belongs also (as I have said) a 
 portrait of his rocking-horse. These three are so far tolerable 
 as to show that it was a pity he did not draw a little oftener 
 from actual objects, but almost always mere inventions 
 (such as they were), prompted to a large extent by his 
 theatrical-character prints, with straddling legs and irrational 
 pretences at costume. One that seems to my memory very 
 early indeed is Macbeth contemplating the aerial dagger. 
 A little book of childish drawings exists, chiefly from various 
 plays. I will only name one subject from each play, as 
 marked in our mother's handwriting — a pretty good indica- 
 tion that Dante himself was barely competent to write neatly 
 at the time. These comprise Talbot rescuing his son John 
 from Orleans (Shakespear's Henry VI.); Buckingham and 
 Catesby presenting the crown to RicJiard ; Prince Henry throw- 
 ing Falstajfs bottle of sack at him ; Combat between Macbeth 
 and young Siward ; Casca stabbing Ccesar ; Rolla carrying off 
 the Child (from Sheridan's Pizarro). 
 
 In concluding this account of Dante Rossetti's earliest 
 years, I must observe that he was certainly fortunate in his 
 
68 DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI. 
 
 family surroundings. His father was a poet and man of 
 letters, his grandfather the same ; his mother had a good 
 appreciation of literary matters ; his sisters and brother all 
 watched with interest and seconded with zest whatever he 
 did as a beginning at writing and at drawing. He had also 
 the vast advantage of speaking two languages, of which one 
 served as a direct introduction to Latin. In no quarter did 
 he encounter anything to thwart his inclinations, to divert 
 his steps, or to throw cold water on his small performances. 
 He was not wilfully spoiled nor absurdly petted, nor was any 
 difference made between him and the other children ; but he 
 felt himself to be encouraged as well as loved, and in most 
 matters he had his own way. This, with the temper which 
 was innate in him, he would perhaps have got anyhow ; as 
 things went, he got it unenforced. Naturally this favourable 
 condition of family relations continued to grow with his 
 growth. 
 
 VII. 
 SCHOOL. 
 
 It must have been after the midsummer holidays of 1836 
 that Dante Rossetti first went to school ; I followed him 
 after the Christmas holidays. The school was that of the 
 Rev. Mr. Paul, in Foley Street, Portland Place — a day- 
 school for most of the pupils, or perhaps all. There was, I 
 think, only one assistant master, Mr. Paul's son. The pupils 
 were not numerous — say twenty-five to thirty-five. They 
 must chiefly have been sons of local tradesmen. I remember 
 one set of boys — three brothers^of gentle birth and breeding, 
 the Cummings ; also Aikman, who (I have an impression) 
 became an officer of some distinction in the Indian army. 
 We were instructed in some rudimentary matters — writing, 
 arithmetic (Dante Gabriel was always bad at this, and to the 
 end of his days I fancy he would have been at fault here and 
 there in the multiplication table), English grammar, geography, 
 
SCHOOL. 69 
 
 history, and the first steps in Latin. We also had to do 
 a " theme " once or twice — a composition upon some given 
 subject ; 1 and we received some little drawing tuition from 
 a French Master, M. Abeille, whom we considered deft in 
 his touch of foliage. We liked the younger Mr. Paul ; 
 to the elder we had — and ought to have had — no objection, 
 but I remember little of him. One of my few individual 
 recollections of the school is that of hearing there the tolling 
 bell which announced the death of King William the Fourth. 
 Among our school-books was a volume of selections, prose 
 and poetry, named The Rhetorical Class-book, containing such 
 pieces as Campbell's LochieVs Warning, and his Last Man, 
 with marginal directions as to the proper tone, inflexion, 
 gesture, etc., for reciting them. We enjoyed a great deal of the 
 text in this book, and giggled over the directions — having 
 always had in our father, and indeed in our mother too, 
 models that would have bettered that form of instruction. 
 
 An English school such as that of Mr. Paul (and I must 
 say the same of King's College School, to which we went 
 afterwards) is not an academy of good manners, nor yet of 
 high thinking ; and it would be too true to acknowledge that 
 Dante Rossetti rapidly deteriorated here. I would add the 
 same very emphatically of myself, but that I am not exactly 
 in question, and need not intrude my small personality. At 
 home he had witnessed nothing but resolute and cheerful 
 performance of duty, and heard nothing that was not pure 
 right, high-minded, and looking to loftier things. School first 
 brought him face to face with that which is " common and 
 unclean." There is always some nasty-thinking boy to 
 egg-on his juniors upon a path of unsavouriness. A certain 
 
 1 If the reader would like a laugh, he may perhaps get it out of the 
 following. One of the schoolboys (I do not mean either Dante or myself) 
 was told to do a theme on Candour, His theme — I have never forgotten 
 it — was in the following words, as near as may be : " My dear father — -I 
 want to write to you on the subject of Candour. He is a most benevolent, 
 candid, honourable, sordid, and surly young man. His friends love him 
 dearly." 
 
yo DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI. 
 
 A. (his initial shall stand instead of his name), who sat next 
 to Dante Gabriel, beset him with promptings of a worse than 
 useless kind. One thing was pointing out phrases in the Bible 
 which he held to be vastly amusing, but which little Dante did 
 not want to be teazed with. Dante mentioned the matter to 
 his father, who conferred with Mr. Paul ; and A. was ordered 
 to take a different seat in the school, and stick to it. This is 
 nearly all that I remember in a definite way about Mr. Paul's 
 school. Dante was a ready learner, and a willing one enough. 
 The last performance, as the school was breaking up for the 
 holidays, was an evening of recitations in the presence of 
 parents and friends. Dante delivered (from Shakespear's 
 Julius CcEsar) the speech of Antony over the body of Caesar, and 
 I the speech of Brutus. We were clapped to our heart's content. 
 As a Professor in King's College, Gabriele Rossetti was 
 entitled to send one son to the day-school there free of charge, 
 and a second son at reduced fees. It had therefore always 
 been intended that we boys should go to that school as soon 
 as a little preliminary instruction had been gained at Mr. 
 Paul's establishment ; and thither accordingly we went after 
 the midsummer holidays of 1837. Dante was rightfully ad- 
 missible, having attained the regulation age of nine ; I was 
 not so, being not quite eight, but was allowed to pass muster. 
 As this is a day-school (although a few pupils were housed 
 as boarders), we went daily to and fro. At first we took the 
 route by Regent Street and the Strand to Somerset House, 
 but afterwards preferred the more plebeian, and to us more 
 amusing, shops of Tottenham Court Road and St. Giles's 
 (no New Oxford Street then existed). The Head Master 
 was the Rev. Dr. Major, of whom, in Dante Gabriel's time, 
 we saw little. The Principal was Dr. Lonsdale, Bishop of 
 Lichfield. The school was then, as it is now, of strict Church- 
 of England principle, and most of the masters were clergymen. 
 On one or two occasions I saw prizes distributed by the 
 Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr. Howley — a little old man, 
 still wearing the episcopal white wig, of the gentlest manner 
 and address, almost apologetic to the students (so it seemed) 
 
school. yi 
 
 for so far putting himself forward. He was — in regard at least 
 to aspect and demeanour — anything but one of those vescovi 
 pettorati (bishops high in flesh) who were frequently in my 
 father's mouth ; for the latter disliked the worldly well-being 
 and brow-beating respectability of the Anglican clergy only 
 a little less than the arrogant bigotry of their Roman com- 
 peers. The great prize-receiver in those days was Arthur 
 Cayley, the pre-eminent Cambridge Mathematician, who 
 would come up for three or four successive prizes in one 
 afternoon. His younger brother, Charles Bagot Cayley, was 
 one of my father's pupils in Italian, and learned the language 
 admirably, as shown by his fine translations of Dante and 
 Petrarca — a most estimable scholarly man, without a taint 
 of mundane self-seeking. I forget how many languages he 
 knew. If he did not know one, he only had to learn it. 
 He was once asked, by some missionary or other society, 
 to translate the Gospels for the Iroquois. He went to the 
 British Museum Library, looked up an Iroquois grammar or 
 two, and, at the end of six weeks or so, he undertook the 
 task, and performed it. 
 
 My brother and myself entered King's College School in 
 the lowest class — the Lower First — of which the Rev. Mr. 
 Hayes was the Master. Some schoolboy called him " Ban- 
 tam," from his red complexion and facial angle ; and every 
 other schoolboy followed suit. To us he was kind ; and he 
 perhaps stretched a point by returning our " characters," in 
 the first quarterly report, as "in every respect satisfactory " for 
 Dante, and for myself " in the highest degree commendable." 
 Some other good reports of us may have followed, but 
 certainly none so flowery as that. 
 
 Dante Rossetti's school-life at King's College lasted just 
 five years, from the autumn of 1837 to the summer of 1842. 
 He had no further schooling of any kind, except some German 
 lessons taken at home, and his instruction for the pictorial 
 profession. When he left school, he wrote an excellent hand ; 
 knew Latin reasonably well, up to Sallust, Ovid, Virgil, etc. ; 
 had the beginning of a knowledge of Greek, but I can hardly 
 
72 DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI. 
 
 say whether, after a few years' interval, he could even read 
 the Greek characters with any readiness ; understood French 
 well — well enough to begin forthwith, which he did, reading 
 any number of French novels for himself; and had some 
 inkling on subjects of history, geography, etc. He always 
 saw easily into linguistic and grammatical matters, so far as 
 he cared to pursue them. He had also been brought on a 
 little in drawing, of a more or less sketchy kind. In the 
 classes generally (but not in the drawing-class) the boys had 
 to be seated in the order of their proficiency, one of them 
 " taking the place " of another as occasion arose ; and Dante 
 was usually pretty near the head of a class. Of anything 
 even distantly tending to science — algebra, geometry, etc. — 
 he learned nothing whatever. The religious instruction at 
 King's College School counted for little : there were some 
 prayers and a chapter of the Bible in the morning. But all 
 this time he continued going to church en famille, without 
 much liking or any serious distaste. In early childhood came 
 Trinity Church, Marylebone Road ; then St. Katharine's, 
 Regent's Park ; then Christ Church, Albany Street. 
 
 I will run over a few other particulars — I hope, with due 
 brevity. The Upper First Class was conducted by the Rev. 
 Mr. Cockayne, who became — or possibly then was — a good 
 scholar in Early English. The Second, by the Rev. Swinburne 
 Carr, author of a serviceable History of Greece. The Third, 
 by the Rev. Mr. Hodgson, an ungainly little man whom the 
 boys did not like. I cannot say that Dante or myself had 
 any reason to complain of him. There was a legend that he 
 knew very little about the matters on which he instructed 
 the boys, and that he had to prepare his own lessons over- 
 night. As to this I of course know nothing. In the Fourth 
 Class, the last which Dante Gabriel entered, the Master was 
 the Rev. Mr. Fearnley. Of him also a legend was current, 
 purporting to account for a seam visible in his throat. It 
 was really, I presume, a seam of a scrofulous nature ; but the 
 legend ran that he had once cut his throat with suicidal inten- 
 tion, and had only been saved at the last gasp. Mr. Fearnley, 
 
SCHOOL. 73 
 
 a large stalwart man, was considered severe, and the boys 
 were not very fond of being promoted into his class — which 
 may be a reason why some one concocted the legend. Each 
 of these classes numbered some thirty boys, more or less ; 
 perhaps one or two of them attained to forty. 
 
 There were also the Writing and Arithmetic Masters, the 
 French Masters, and the Drawing Masters. Mr. Allsop, the 
 Head Writing Master, was a great adept in his craft, and 
 would at times come round to one class or another displaying 
 a chef cTceuvre of caligraphy, full of the most astonishing 
 flourishes. He was odd, and left the school not long after we 
 entered it ; and I fear that the story I was told, that he had 
 gone out of his mind, was a true one. His successor was a 
 small old man, Mr. Hutton, of venerable grandfatherly aspect, 
 with white hair. He was easily put out, and some of the boys, 
 being as pitiless as other boys, put him out when they could. 
 Dante held aloof from this indignity. The French Masters 
 were Mm. Gassion and Wattez, and Professor Brasseur, all 
 very competent men ; the first two considerate to their pupils, 
 and the third, who could be sarcastic as well as considerate, 
 a scholar of some rank. He was afterwards French Preceptor 
 to the Prince of Wales, and died at a recent date, aged, I 
 think, about ninety. The Drawing Master was the most 
 interesting personage of all — the celebrated member of the 
 Norwich School of Painting, John Sell Cotman. He was 
 aged fifty-five when Dante Rossetti entered King's College 
 School — an alert, forceful-looking man, of moderate stature, 
 with a fine well-moulded face, which testified to an impulsive 
 nature somewhat worn and wearied. He seemed sparing of 
 speech, but high-strung in whatever he said. In fact, the 
 seeds of madness lurked in this distinguished artist, although, 
 apart from a rather excitable or abrupt manner in ruling his 
 bear-garden, I never noticed any symptoms of it. Pretty soon 
 he left the school, and, just as Dante also was leaving it, in 
 July 1842, he died insane. Mr. Cotman's course of instruc- 
 tion did not extend far beyond giving us pencil-sketches, 
 often of his own, to copy — fisher-folk, troopers, peasants, 
 
74 DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI. 
 
 boating, etc. Dante's copies were, I suppose, considered to 
 count among the more satisfactory, but I am not aware that 
 Cotman ever fixed particular attention upon him. As 
 Drawing Master he was succeeded by his son, Miles Edward 
 Cotman. The latter died in 1858, aged only forty-seven ; and 
 I fancy that he also, though perfectly quiet and collected in 
 manner, was a little peculiar. 
 
 In Mr. Hall Caine's book — Recollections of Dante Gabriel 
 Rossetti, 1882 — there is a passage which deserves quotation 
 here : — 
 
 " He is described, by those who remember him at this period, as 
 a boy of a gentle and affectionate nature, albeit prone to outbursts of 
 masterfulness. It is said that he was brave and manly of tempera- 
 ment, courageous as to personal suffering, eminently solicitous of the 
 welfare of others, and kind and considerate to such as he had claims 
 upon. This is no doubt true portraiture ; but it must be stated 
 (however open to explanation, on grounds of laudable self-depre- 
 ciation) that it is not the picture which he himself used to paint 
 of his character as a boy. He often described himself as being 
 destitute of personal courage when at school, as shrinking from the 
 amusements of school-fellows, and fearful of their quarrels — not 
 wholly without generous impulses, but in the main selfish of nature, 
 and reclusive in habit of life. He would have had you believe that 
 school was to him a place of semi-purgatorial probation." 
 
 All this is put in a very fair spirit by Mr. Caine, and it 
 merits a little reflection. No one now alive perhaps, except 
 myself, could, with any clear knowledge and recollection, say 
 whether Dante Rossetti was " destitute of personal courage 
 when at school." I do not consider that he was by any means 
 thus destitute. I have seen him fight with a proper degree 
 of tenacity when the occasion arose ; but it is strictly true 
 that he was " fearful of the quarrels " of schoolfellows, in the 
 sense that he totally disliked that loutish horse-play and that 
 scrambling pugnacity which are so eminently distinctive of 
 the British stripling. The meaningless defiance, the bullying 
 onset, and the mauling scuffle, looked to him ugly, base, 
 detestable, and semi-human. If he was mistaken, I should 
 
SCHOOL. 75 
 
 like to know wherein. The bull-dog propensity to pin some- 
 body by the muzzle, whether deserving to be so pinned or 
 not, was not any part of his character, inborn or acquired. 
 Neither had he any liking for being set up by his school- 
 fellows, without quarrel of his own, to fight a boy two or 
 three inches taller than himself, and with half as much again 
 in thews and sinews. That he was " in the main selfish of 
 nature " is true when the statement is properly understood, 
 but it might easily be misconstrued. He was selfish, in the 
 sense of self-centred. His own aims, his own opportunities, 
 the working-out of such faculty as he found within himself 
 — these were always his chief concern. To term him " self- 
 willed " — which he most eminently was from first to last- — 
 would give a much more correct idea than to term him 
 " selfish." He was not selfish in the sense of being dull in 
 affection to others, indifferent to their welfare, or unwilling 
 to exert himself to do them a benefit. He had a theory, 
 which I have heard him express at various periods of life, 
 that men who have an originating gift — or, in a broad sense, 
 what we call men of genius — are all selfish in that same mood 
 of being self-centred. He would say it of such poets as 
 Dante, Milton, Gothe, Wordsworth, Shelley, or of Shake- 
 spear if the facts of his life were adequately known — of such 
 painters and sculptors as Titian, Cellini, Rembrandt, Blake, 
 and Turner. And here again I apprehend that he was remote 
 from being wrong. That " school was to him a place of 
 semi-purgatorial probation" is, I dare say, nearly true. It is 
 a fact however that, if in reality he felt this at the time 
 deeply, be passed it off lightly ; for to me, who was his 
 daily colleague and confidant, he never, so far as I can 
 remember, unbosomed himself to any such effect. That 
 contact with school-life did the reverse of good to the 
 character of the boyish Rossetti is what I have already 
 avowed. His regard for veracity, the strictness of his sense 
 of honour, his readiness to brave inconvenience for principle, 
 were subject to daily undermining ; for the moral atmosphere 
 around reeked too perceptibly of unveracity, slipperiness, and 
 
j6 DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI. 
 
 shirking. His temper too, which was always an arbitrary and 
 peremptory one, did not improve ; but he retained unimpaired 
 two valuable qualities — an easy good-nature, and a facility at 
 forgiving and forgetting. From infancy onwards he was 
 always a great favourite with servants, shoe-blacking men, 
 organ-grinders, and people of the like class. Brightness of 
 parts and brightness of manner ensured this. 
 
 I have not yet referred to the statement reported by 
 Mr. Caine about " shrinking from the amusements of 
 schoolfellows." This is entirely true, if " shrinking " means 
 " abstaining." He cared nothing for rough pastimes — though 
 he would race about in the scanty playground with others, 
 bear a hand in snowballing, and so on ; but anything which 
 would derive from personal liking, and would require time, 
 pains, and practice — such as skating, fishing, or cricket — he 
 left entirely aside. He did not want it ; therefore he did not 
 pursue it. To learn swimming, boating, and riding, would, 
 no doubt, at school and after school, have been a benefit to 
 him — a benefit which the habits and circumstances of the 
 family and his own indifference withheld. 
 
 I was interested lately at finding, in a little Memorial 
 Volume on Edgar Allan Poe, a poet of my brother's marked 
 predilection, an account of that singular genius as a schoolboy 
 which might almost have been penned for Dante Rossetti. 
 The volume was published at Baltimore in 1877, and cannot 
 be widely known on this side of the Atlantic. The writer 
 of the passage is Poe's schoolfellow at Richmond, Virginia, 
 Colonel J. T. L. Preston. He says : — 
 
 " Poe, as I recall my impressions now, was self-willed, capricious, 
 inclined to be imperious, and, though of generous impulses, not 
 steadily kind or even amiable." 
 
 For Rossetti, the last clause should rather run — " not 
 definitely amiable, nor even always steadily kind." 
 
 The punishments in King's College School were of a mild 
 character. There was no flogging. Now and again an 
 irritated master would cuff a boy, or give him a bang on the 
 
school. 77 
 
 head with a book. This was an extempore, and I suppose an 
 unsanctioned, performance. An offender was made to stand 
 out in the middle of the room, or to stand upon a form for 
 a while ; or he was " kept in " during playtime ; or he had to 
 do an " imposition," such as copying out the same line from 
 Virgil fifty times over. An ingenious boy would brace 
 together two or three pens at a proper gradient, and thus 
 write two or three lines with one turn of the hand. 
 
 There was no schoolfellow with whom Dante Rossetti 
 contracted an intimate acquaintance, far less a life-long friend- 
 ship ; but two or three were in our house at times, or we in 
 theirs. One of these was young Lockhart, a grandson of Sir 
 Walter Scott, aged about thirteen when Dante was nine ; 
 a handsome, slim, straight-built youth, with very correct 
 features. He was a great hand at cutting out little models of 
 boats. He became the Lieutenant Walter Scott Lockhart- 
 Scott, owner of Abbotsford, and died in 1853, aged only 
 twenty-seven. Another boy was a son of William Westall 
 the Landscape-painter (brother of the Richard Westall so 
 well-known to Dante Rossetti through Martin and WestalPs 
 Illustrations of the Bible, a painter of some note in his day, 
 who gave instructions to the Princess Victoria). This boy had 
 a brother of weak mind and sometimes rather dangerous (not 
 in King's College School), who went by the undignified name 
 of " Sillikin." Another boy was Geldart Evans Riadore, who 
 became a clergyman, and (I believe) Domestic Chaplain to 
 the Duke of Buccleuch, a lad of good parts and refinement, 
 son of a Doctor. Also the Wrays, sons of a deceased Colonial 
 Judge ; Boys, son of a leading printseller ; Capper, whose 
 father was a coal-merchant ; Charles Anderson, who became 
 a clergyman, doing good service in the East End of London ; 
 and the Willoughbys, sons of a legal gentleman living in 
 Lancaster Place, close to King's College. Their family had 
 the entree to the Terrace of Somerset House overlooking the 
 river ; and we would sometimes join them on a half-holiday 
 or holiday, taking possession of a little lodge there, burning 
 shavings in an empty grate, and making an amount of noise 
 
78 DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI. 
 
 which was not kindly taken by the Government Clerks whose 
 windows opened on to the Terrace. These several boys are 
 about all I could specify. I make no mention of a very few 
 others who were little or not at all known to my brother in 
 his schooldays, but only to myself while my schooling was 
 prolonged beyond his. 
 
 Dante Rossetti had a certain faint repute among his class- 
 fellows as being addicted to drawing or sketching — making, 
 on an exercise-book or the margin of a school-book, some- 
 thing that was understood to figure a knight, cavalier, trooper, 
 brigand, or what not — or as buying and colouring theatrical 
 characters, illustrated serials, and the like. To this small 
 extent, therefore, he was noted as a little uncommon ; and of 
 course his foreign name and comparatively unschoolboy-like 
 habits counted for something. I suppose also — though I do 
 not recollect precise instances in point — that he was known for 
 reciting verses. A certain schoolfellow, probably after Dante 
 had left, handed over to me three or four poetical compositions 
 which he himself had produced, one of them beginning with 
 the words, " I would I were a smiling bird." Dante laughed over 
 the term, and made a portrait of the bird in the act of smiling. 
 
 The year 1842, when he quitted school, was the year of 
 the Anglo-Chinese Opium War. He and I were told by 
 a Master to make an original composition on the subject of 
 China, and I think the composition had to be in verse. What 
 he or I wrote I have totally forgotten : seemingly each of us 
 must have produced some lines. Christina saw us at work, 
 and chose to enter the poetic lists. She was then eleven years 
 of age. She indited the following epical lines, which must 
 (I apprehend) have been nearly the first verses she ever 
 wrote. 1 Will the reader pardon my printing them ? 
 
 1 There was a neat couplet which may have been earlier : — - 
 
 " ' Come cheer up, my lads, 'tis to glory we steer ! ' 
 As the soldier remarked whose post lay in the rear." 
 
 Two stanzas, dated 27 April 1842, for our mother's birthday (our grand- 
 father printed them on a card) were, I consider, earlier also. The original 
 MS. — of a very childish aspect — is now in the British Museum. 
 
HOME-LIFE DURING SCHOOL — SIR HUGH THE HERON. 79 
 
 THE CHINAMAN. 
 
 " ' Centre of Earth ! ' a Chinaman he said, 
 And bent over a map his pig-tailed head, — ■ 
 That map in which, portrayed in colours bright, 
 China, all dazzling, burst upon the sight : 
 ' Centre of Earth ! ' repeatedly he cries, 
 ' Land of the brave, the beautiful, the wise ! ' 
 Thus he exclaimed ; when lo his words arrested 
 Showed what sharp agony his head had tested. 
 He feels a tug — another, and another — 
 And quick exclaims, ' Hallo ! what's now the bother ? ' 
 But soon alas perceives. And, ' Why, false night, 
 Why not from men shut out the hateful sight ? 
 The faithless English have cut off my tail, 
 And left me my sad fortunes to bewail. 
 Now in the streets I can no more appear, 
 For all the other men a pig-tail wear.' 
 He said, and furious cast into the fire 
 His tail : those flames became its funeral-pyre." 
 
 VIII. 
 HOME-LIFE DURING SCHOOL— SIR HUGH THE HERON. 
 
 I HAVE already said that Dante Rossetti (as well as the rest 
 of us) used in early childhood to get some countrifying at 
 our grandfather's house, Holmer Green in Buckinghamshire. 
 There he loitered about a little, doing nothing particular. His 
 chief amusement was to haunt a pond in the grounds, and 
 catch frogs. It concerned him to notice that, if he held a 
 frog any considerable while in his hand, the skin of the 
 amphibian's throat, lacking its proper quota of moisture, 
 would split across. This did not cure him of catching frogs ; 
 but he was fain to hope that his captive, on being restored 
 to its pond, would find its throat "sewing itself up again." 
 All his life he liked most animals (though he had little ado 
 with dogs, and none with horses), and was not ill-natured 
 to any. Even a black beetle was regarded with a certain 
 indulgence ; it was an animal, much like another. 
 
So DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTl. 
 
 These little and never frequent country excursions came 
 to an end in 1839, when our grandfather resettled in London ; 
 and then Dante Rossetti, for two or three years, went out 
 of London not at all, for our father had not the habit of 
 making any annual seaside or rural trip. Dante's holidays, 
 when school closed, were "spent at home in London, varied 
 by casual walks up to Hampstead, or the like. He painted 
 theatrical characters, read books, and amused himself as the 
 chance offered ; and now he had at least the resource of going 
 to his grandfather's house near Regent's Park whenever he 
 felt so inclined. The house contained many books. It had, 
 at the back, a moderate-sized garden, sloping down towards 
 Regent's Canal ; and in this garden a shed or summer-house 
 sheltered the private printing-press which Polidori used. 
 The fact — such I believe it to be — that Dante never once 
 tried what he could do as a compositor is one more symptom 
 of his great inaptitude at anything of a mechanical or directly 
 practical kind. The workaday world was not his world. 
 
 In this house occurred a small incident which Mr. Caine 
 has related — not with perfect accuracy. It did not take place 
 when Dante was " rather less than nine years of age," for he 
 was already eleven when our grandfather entered the house. 
 The incident may really belong to his twelfth, or possibly 
 his thirteenth, year. He did not deliberately set-to at reciting 
 the closing scene of Othello ; but, taking up a chisel, he play- 
 fully motioned to strike Christina with it. As Maria had 
 sense enough to object that it might hurt, he insisted that 
 it would not ; and (then for the first time speaking a few 
 lines from Othello, ending — 
 
 " I took by the throat the circumcised dog, 
 And smote him thus") 
 
 he struck the chisel forcibly against his chest. Naturally 
 there was an incision, but not a serious one. Sangiovanni 
 probed it, and pretty soon it was healed. The small matter 
 is hardly worth adverting to, but may as well be set right. 
 Another small matter, a little more symptomatic as to the 
 
HOME-LIFE DURING SCHOOL — SIR HUGH THE HERON. 8 1 
 
 boyhood of Rossetti, is the following. Maria was, as pre- 
 viously intimated, of an uncommonly enthusiastic temper, 
 which eventually settled down into religious devotion. As 
 she read very early and very constantly, her enthusiasms 
 developed in divers directions : British tars, Napoleon, English- 
 men versus Scotchmen (in relation to Walter Scott's writings), 
 Grecian mythology, and the Iliad. Pope's translation alone 
 was known to her. When Dante and I began learning Greek 
 she resolved to learn some too, partly to help us in our 
 lessons ; and she made her way into the Greek New Testa- 
 ment, and could in her later years still read it fairly with the 
 aid of a dictionary. While the Iliad fit was at its height, 
 Dante, to please her, undertook to do a series of pen-and-ink 
 designs for the epic, on a small scale, one design to each 
 Book. This was in February 1 840, when he was eleven years 
 of age. These drawings— they still exist — are not in any 
 tolerable degree good, nor even distinctly promising ; but 
 they may count for something as showing the lad's ambitious 
 temper in design, and his willingness to take up any attempt 
 that offered, however ludicrously inadequate his means for 
 coping with it. I may add that Dante at this time, although 
 he had not that glowing love of the Iliad which his sister 
 entertained, liked it highly, and read it much. In later years 
 he knew, and he also preferred, the Odyssey. 
 
 From the Iliad I pass to other books read by Dante in 
 his school-days, as a sequel to the details previously given 
 relating to a still earlier period. The poet who superseded 
 Walter Scott as prime favourite (always allowing for Shake- 
 spear, who was never superseded though he may have been 
 less constantly read) was Byron. The Siege of Corinth came 
 first in the boy's esteem, and next Mazeppa and Manfred, 
 with The Corsair and others to follow. Childe Harold he 
 read, but without special zest ; in fact, throughout his life, 
 the poetry of sentimental or reflective description had a very 
 minor attraction for him. Of Dickens's Pickwick, which came 
 out in 1836, he seems to me to have known comparatively 
 little ; but Nicholas Nickleby, 1838-9, was very potent with 
 
 VOL. I. 6 
 
82 DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI. 
 
 him, followed by Oliver Twist, The Old Qiriosity Shop, 
 Barnaby Rudge, etc. An illustrated serial named Tales of 
 Chivalry (but chivalry is not more prominent in its pages than 
 some other things) was constantly read, and its woodcuts 
 inspected and coloured ; also another serial, of earlier date, 
 called Legends of Terror, full of ghosts, fiends, and magic, 
 in prose and verse. There was likewise The Seven Champions 
 of Christendom, abounding in dragons, enchanters, and other 
 marvels of pseudo-chivalry. Hone's Every -day Book, with its 
 amusing woodcuts, and the Newgate Calendar, were marked 
 favourites. The mere thieves in the last-named repertory 
 excited but a languid interest, but the murderers, and their 
 " last dying speeches and confessions," were conned with 
 decided gusto. Of highly-reputed romances there were 
 Bulwer's Rienzi and Last Days of Pompeii, and, of minor 
 romances, three serials — Robin Hood and Wat Tyler, both 
 by Pierce Egan the younger, and Ada the Betrayed, or The 
 Murder at the Old Smithy, by some obscure author whose 
 name did not transpire. Gil Bias and Don Quixote were 
 enjoyed, though not in any extreme degree. But perhaps 
 in his earlier school-days — or from the age of nine to eleven — 
 nothing delighted Dante quite so much as a small-sized 
 series entitled Brigand Tales, with coloured illustrations. 
 A subsequent series appeared, which he relished somewhat 
 less, whether because he was growing out of them, or on 
 account of their being more forced and worked up in incident 
 The opening series comprised Moriano the Outlaw, or the 
 Bandit of the Charmed Wrist ; Beauty and the Bear, or The 
 Bandits Stratagem ; The Female Brigand, or The Lover's 
 Doom; and a number of others : with such illustrations as 
 Desperate Encoitnter between Benedetto the Brigand and 
 Jeronymo Arondini ; Guillen Martino plundering the Monks of 
 the Abbey of San Lsidor ; Pietro d'Armorelli, Captain of Ban- 
 ditti, refusing to stay the Execution of his own Son, etc., etc. 
 This publication was followed by Dramatic Tales, a set of 
 narratives from popular plays, contemporary or antecedent. 
 These also were highly appreciated by Dante Rossetti. By 
 
HOME-LIFE DURING SCHOOL— SIR HUGH THE HERON. 83 
 
 the time he left school — turned of fourteen — he had devoured 
 numerous novels, poems, and dramas, apart from those here 
 specified, almost all of. them being in English. In Italian 
 there was little beyond Ariosto ; in French, it may be that 
 Hugo's Notre Dame de Paris preceded the close of his 
 schooling, but I am not sure. At any rate this, and many 
 other works of Hugo, both prose and verse, fascinated him 
 hugely very soon afterwards ; and French novels by a 
 variety of authors were greatly in the ascendant for two or 
 three years. It may be feared there was no solid reading 
 — whether history, biography, or anything else — irrespectively 
 of the few and fragmentary things that he had to get up 
 as a part of the school course. His intellectual life was 
 nurtured upon fancy and sympathy, not upon knowledge or 
 information. 
 
 Dante Rossetti did not write much in boyhood, but he 
 wrote something. I question whether The Slave and Aladdin 
 had any successor until in 1840 a grand scheme was started 
 that every one of us four should write a romantic tale. I 
 suppose each made a beginning, but I cannot affirm that any 
 one of the quartette made an ending, unless it was Dante. 
 His tale alone has been preserved, and it is so far completed 
 as to bring a single set of incidents to a climax, without 
 implying that anything else remains to be added. The tale 
 is named Roderick and Rosalba, a Story of the Round Table. 
 Its first chapter is headed, The Knight, the Messenger, the 
 Departure, the Hostelry, the Quarrel ; and it begins with the 
 following sentence : — 
 
 " It was a dark and stormy night in the month of December when 
 a figure, closely wrapped in the sable folds of his cloak, and mounted 
 on a jaded steed, was seen hurrying across a bleak common towards 
 a stately castle in the distance, whose lofty towers and time-worn 
 battlements frowned over the wide expanse beneath." 
 
 This may suffice ; with the bare addition that the tale nar- 
 rates how a lady was captured by a " marauder " who wanted 
 to wed her perforce, and how she was rescued by her affianced 
 
84 DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI. 
 
 knight. At some later date — it was 1843, or possibly just 
 afterwards — Dante took up his old MS., and evidently regarded 
 it as much behind the time. He altered its title to The Free 
 Companions, a Tale of the Days o'f King Stephen, cut it 
 down freely, revised the phraseology of several remaining 
 passages, and added a concluding sentence. 
 
 Rossetti's first printed " poem," Sir Hugh the Heron, a 
 Legendary Tale in Four Parts, seems to have been begun and 
 nearly completed much about the same time as Roderick and 
 Rosalba, or not later than May 1841. It is founded on a 
 prose story by Allan Cunningham, which Rossetti had read 
 in the Legends of Terror, and I think elsewhere as well. 
 His zest in writing this ballad-poem waned, and he laid it 
 aside : but later on his grandfather Polidori told him that, if 
 he would finish it, the luxury of print should be his at the 
 private printing-press. So it was wound up, and printed 
 in 1843, when Dante was either fourteen or fifteen years 
 of age. The title-page is marked " for private circulation 
 only " ; and even private circulation was more than com- 
 mensurate, to the merit of Sir Hugh the Heron. The story 
 is substantially that of a knight who quits England for a 
 foreign war, leaving his betrothed to the care of his cousin. 
 While abroad, he discovers, by a vision in a magic mirror, 
 that the cousin has betrayed his trust, and is offering violence 
 to the lady. The knight hastens home, slays the aggressor, 
 and recovers his bride. The ballad is versified with ease and 
 correctness, in three or four different metres, and is not wholly 
 destitute of spirit in its boyish way ; but the way is boyish 
 in the fullest sense, and the poem cannot be said to show 
 any express faculty or superior promise. Rossetti, when 
 he grew up, hated to hear this puerile attempt alluded to. 
 I used to have a large remainder-stock of Sir Hugh the 
 Heron ; but at his particular request, somewhere towards 1875, 
 I rather reluctantly destroyed the whole impression, with 
 the exception of a very few copies, and the ballad exists 
 only for a dozen or so of curious collectors here and there, and 
 for readers in the British Museum Library. My brother left 
 
HOME-LIFE DURING SCHOOL— SIR HUGH THE HERON. 85 
 
 behind him a little memorandum (the handwriting indicates a 
 date towards 1881), which runs as follows : — 
 
 " I make this note after a conversation with a friend who had 
 been reading in the British Museum a ridiculous first attempt 
 of mine in verse, called Sir Hugh the Heron, which was printed 
 when I was fourteen, but written (except the last page or two) at 
 twelve — as my family would probably remember. When I was 
 fourteen my grandfather (who amused himself by having a small 
 private printing-press) offered, if I would finish it, to print it. I 
 accordingly added the last precious touches two years after writing 
 the rest. I leave this important explanation, as there is no knowing 
 what fool may some day foist the absurd trash into print as a 
 production of mine. It is curious and surprising to myself, as 
 evincing absolutely no promise at all — less than should exist even 
 at twelve. When I wrote it, the only English poet I had read 
 was Sir W. Scott, as is plain enough in it." 
 
 This last statement is not wholly correct. There had been 
 Shakespear, and I am sure, before my brother was twelve, 
 a good deal of Byron as well. 
 
 I have by me a MS. of an effusion, William and Marie, 
 shorter than Sir Hugh the Heron, written when my brother 
 was fifteen, in a style which is compounded of Walter Scott 
 and the old Scottish ballads ; it may also present some trace 
 of Burger's Lenore. This may be accounted a trifle inferior 
 even to the performance denounced by its author in such 
 vigorous terms. It narrates how a wicked Knight slew a 
 virtuous one, hurled into a moat the virtuous one's lady-love, 
 and got killed by an avenging flash of lightning. This my 
 brother offered for publication to the Editor of some magazine 
 — I fancy Smallwood's Magazine — along with an outline 
 design to illustrate it. The outline, not so greatly amiss, is 
 adapted from a group in one of Filippo Pistrucci's lithographs 
 from Roman history, the Rape of the Sabines. The Editor 
 was too sensible to publish either poem or design. It will be 
 perceived that this small transaction belongs to a date a little 
 later than that when Rossetti left school ; but it is mentioned 
 
86 DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI. 
 
 here so as to close my references to these very early efforts 
 in verse. There may possibly have been a few others, but I 
 fail to recollect any. The reader may have noticed that the 
 times of chivalry always furnished his boyish inspiration ; 
 in fact, he thought of little else about this date. Neither the 
 antique nor the modern exercised the least sway over his 
 fancy. 
 
 A few words more may be bestowed upon childish draw- 
 ings ; I mention such only as I find inscribed with a distinct 
 date. Two are coloured designs, October 1836 (age eight), 
 from Monk Lewis's thrilling drama of The Castle Spectre. 
 One is Percy and Motley, the other Osmond and Kenrick, each 
 personage being in full face, which may suggest that little 
 Dante hardly knew how to set about a profile. In 1838 he 
 produced a scene of school-life from his " Lower First " class. 
 It is lettered Bantam battering {i.e., pummelling a boy) ; 
 Lower Division — Upper Division. These two Divisions of the 
 schoolboys are represented as indulging in a free fight. The 
 design is not quite so bad as might be expected, the actions 
 having a certain degree of natural spirit and diversity. Then 
 comes, 1840, an illustrated title-page, forming a neat and 
 rather prettyish decorative combination, for the four juvenile 
 stories of which Roderick and Rosalba was one. Anyhow he 
 got a great deal into the small space of a page of note-paper. 
 There are four circular half-figures of armoured knights, and 
 four oblong compositions exhibiting incidents in the tales. 
 The four knights are inscribed thus : A Romance of the 14th 
 Century, Sir Aubrey de Metford; Roderick and Rosalba, Sir 
 Roderick de Malvon ; Raimond and Matilda, Sir Raimond de 
 Meryl ; Retribution, Sir Guy de Linton. And the four compo- 
 sitions thus: Sir Aubrey killing Herman Rudesheim ; Sir 
 Roderick rescuing Rosalba de Clare; Sir Raimond conquering 
 Sir Richard; Sir Guy finding the letter of AH. Next are 
 three small designs, 1840, from the Arabian Nights — The 
 Genius about to kill the Princess of the Lsle of Ebony, and two 
 others. Three largeish separate figures from Bulwer's Rienzi, 
 May to July 1840, come next; done with pen and ink in a 
 
HOME-LIFE DURING SCHOOL— SIR HUGH THE HERON. 87 
 
 painstaking manner, though not with anything, in character 
 or costume, above the types which Dante derived from his 
 beloved theatrical characters. November 1840 witnessed the 
 production of Earl Warenne (dictating, it would seem, the 
 signing of Magna Charta). This is a companion-drawing to 
 the Rienzi trio, but perceptibly better. Last we find a 
 modern subject of a patriotic turn, taken, I assume, from a 
 little volume of naval anecdotes which Maria used to cherish. 
 Its theme is inscribed as follows : — 
 
 " ' As you are not of my parish,' said a gentleman to a begging 
 sailor, ' I cannot think of relieving you.' 'Sir,' replied the tar with 
 an air of heroism, ' I lost my leg fighting for all parishes.'" 
 
 This is dated August 1841, and certainly shows some 
 increased degree of facility in putting a couple of figures 
 together so as to form a group and tell a story. 
 
 It must have been, I think, just before Dante Rossetti left 
 school that he began learning German. He learned it well up 
 to a certain point, yet not so as to read freely ; and I suppose 
 that, by the age of twenty-five to thirty, he may have for- 
 gotten four-fifths of what he had acquired. One day Dr. 
 Adolf Heimann, the Professor of German at University 
 College, presented himself in our house, saying that he 
 wished to learn Italian from our father, and would be pre- 
 pared in recompense to teach German to the four children. 
 He was a German-Jew, an excellent little man of considerable 
 acquirements, and as kind-hearted, open, genial a person as 
 any one could wish to know. The arrangement was assented 
 to ; and Dante, with the rest of us, set to at German, learning 
 the grammar and pronunciation, reading the Sagen und 
 Mdhrchen (folk-stories), some easy things in Schiller, etc. 
 For several years after this date — or up to 1848 or there- 
 abouts — we saw more of the Heimann family than of any 
 other. The Doctor married towards 1843, and soon there 
 were children in his house. 
 
DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI. 
 
 IX. 
 
 STUDY FOR THE PAINTING PROFESSION— CARY'S AND 
 
 THE R.A. 
 
 DANTE ROSSETTI now — summer of 1842— craved to launch 
 into the definite study of pictorial art. Of ordinary schooling 
 he supposed himself to have had about as much as would 
 serve his turn. Our father's health was already so far broken 
 as to give cause for serious anxiety ; he therefore concurred 
 with Dante in holding that the sooner artistic studies were 
 undertaken the better. My brother did not return to King's 
 College School after the summer vacation, but looked out for 
 an Academy of Art. 
 
 Gabriele Rossetti had known the Rev. Mr. Cary, the trans- 
 lator of Dante, whose son, F. S. Cary, a painter of no great 
 mark, kept at this time that well-reputed drawing academy 
 which was termed " Sass's," in Bloomsbury Street, Bedford 
 Square. To this institution my brother betook himself — 
 perhaps as soon as he left King's College School, but at all 
 events not long afterwards. Our father's acquaintance in the 
 world of art was far from extensive. He knew pretty well 
 Mr. Eastlake, afterwards Sir Charles Eastlake, P.R.A., Mr. 
 Severn the friend of Keats, and Mr. and Mrs. Bartholomew 
 the flower-painters ; he also saw once or twice John Martin, 
 and Mr. Solomon Hart, R.A., but this latter may have been 
 at a date rather after that of which I am now speaking. 
 These appear to have been all. 
 
 Of what my brother did at Cary's, and whom he knew 
 there, I can give but a meagre account ; his Family-letters 
 throw a little, but only a little, light on the subject. He and 
 I were still always together in the evening ; but in the day, 
 while he was at the drawing academy, I continued in attend- 
 ance at King's College School, up to February 1845, and 
 then I went to the Excise Office in Old Broad Street. He 
 drew from the antique and the skeleton, with immense liking 
 for the profession of art, but with only moderate interest in 
 
STUDY FOR THE PAINTING PROFESSION. 89 
 
 these preliminaries. He also studied anatomy in some books, 
 but never, I think, in the actual subject, human or animal. 
 Of his class-fellows we saw little. I can vaguely recollect 
 Sintzenich, a youth whose sympathies were shared between 
 painting and music, and who finally took to the latter. There 
 was also a youth named Thomas Doughty, son of a self- 
 taught American Landscape-painter, who had come over to 
 London in quest of fortune, which did not smile upon him. 
 I cannot say with certainty that the younger Doughty was 
 a student at Cary's rather than the Royal Academy, but I 
 am pretty sure that so he was. For a year or two he was 
 my brother's chief intimate. I have not unfrequently accom- 
 panied Dante to drink tea and spend the evening in the 
 house of the Doughtys, a small semi-villa residence close to 
 Gloucester Gate, Regent's Park. The father was a rather 
 convivial plain-spoken man ; the mother a pleasant bright- 
 mannered little lady, who had, I dare say, more than enough 
 of domestic disquietude. The intimacy with young Doughty 
 may have begun early in 1846, and, lasting through- 
 out 1847, was brought to a close by the return of the 
 family to America — presumably before the middle of 1848. 
 We saw them off on their ship. Thomas Doughty must 
 have been two years or more older than my brother, and 
 had seen a good deal more of " life." I recollect he introduced 
 us to two odd characters. One was a semi-artistic working 
 shoemaker, living near Westminster Bridge. The other was 
 a quick-witted lively young American, Charley Ware, leading 
 a harum-scarum kind of life in lodgings off Leicester Square. 
 I will not here tread rashly into his domestic penetralia. 
 He had literary likings, much concerned with Edgar Poe, 
 which was a bond of sympathy with my brother ; and he 
 was the first person to reveal to the latter the glories of 
 Bailey's Festus (which Dante read over and over again for 
 a while) by reciting the sublime opening — 
 
 " Eternity hath snowed its years upon them ; 
 And the white winter of their age is come, 
 The world and all its worlds, and all shall end." 
 
90 DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI. 
 
 Charley Ware had some hankerings also after pictorial art, 
 without any training. He produced a little oil-picture of a 
 queer kind. I would give something to see it now, but pre- 
 sume it has long since " ended " among the " world and all its 
 worlds." It represented the Devil, with Ware himself, Doughty, 
 and Dante Gabriel ; possibly one or two others. They were 
 either playing whist at Ware's lodgings, or enjoying a light 
 symposium. Each head was a tolerably characteristic like- 
 ness. Mr. Ware returned to America, perhaps before the 
 Doughtys. I have often been rather surprised that, in all 
 my miscellaneous readings, I never came across the name of 
 him as doing something or other — for his sharpness of faculty 
 was a good deal beyond the average. Thomas Doughty, I 
 believe, remained in America quite undistinguished. I take 
 him to be dead for many years past. 
 
 It may have been through the Doughty connexion that my 
 brother got to see, in an American journal, a little copy of 
 verses whose monumental imbecility delighted him beyond 
 measure. It is named The Atheist, by Flora M elver. Often 
 and to many an auditor have I heard my brother repeat The 
 Atheist, and I suppose he could have done so to his dying 
 day. " The idea," he would say, " of a confirmed Atheist who 
 has never yet considered whether or not a flower was made 
 by a God ! " I am tempted to extract the poem here ; it may 
 perhaps again excite some of that glee with which I have 
 often seen it greeted aforetime. 
 
 " The Atheist in his garden stood 
 At twilight's pensive hour ; 
 His little daughter by his side 
 Was gazing on a flower. 
 
 " ' Oh pick that blossom, Pa, for me,' 
 The little prattler said ; 
 ' It is the fairest one that blooms 
 Within that lowly bed.' 
 
 " The father plucked the chosen flower, 
 And gave it to his child ; 
 With parted lips and sparkling eye 
 She seized the gift, and smiled. 
 
STUDY FOR THE PAINTING PROFESSION. 9 1 
 
 " ' Oh Pa, who made this pretty flower, 
 This little violet blue ? 
 Who gave it such a fragrant smell 
 And such a lovely hue ? ' 
 
 " A change came o'er the father's brow, 
 His eye grew strangely wild ; 
 New thoughts within him had been stirred 
 By that sweet artless child. 
 
 " The truth flashed on the father's mind, 
 The truth in all its power ; 
 ' There is a God, my child,' he said, 
 1 Who made that little flower.' " 
 
 This matter of Thomas Doughty and his circle has led me 
 somewhat out of my track of date. I now return to the days 
 of Cary's Academy, which lasted for my brother from about 
 July 1842 to July 1846. As to what he did there I am unable 
 to distinguish much between the earlier and the later years. 
 In Mrs. Esther Wood's book, Dante Rossetti and the Prce- 
 rapliaelite Movement (1894), 1 some anecdotes are given upon 
 the authority of a fellow-student, Mr. J. A. Vinter. They 
 speak of waywardness as a pupil, irregular attendance, " a 
 certain brusquerie and unapproachableness of bearing," com- 
 bined with warm affection and generosity, fondness for 
 practical jokes, boisterous hilarity, loud singing, especially of 
 a song about Alice Gray, the sketching of caricatures of 
 antiques, and attractive outlining produced by a process con- 
 trary to his master's precepts. Some of these points I know, 
 and others I readily surmise, to be correct ; am not however 
 so sure about " practical jokes." A practical joke played off 
 by one young student upon another is usually something 
 
 1 This book has been loudly and widely praised, and also severely criti- 
 cized. It is very laudatory of Rossetti, a fact which I cannot view without 
 some favourable bias towards the book. In other respects I may perhaps 
 be permitted to say that Mrs. Wood, having commendably lofty ideals and 
 ideas of her own, reads these (in my opinion) far too freely into the per- 
 formances of the so-called Praeraphaelite painters and poets, and has not 
 much notion of the sort of thing that comes uppermost with a painter when 
 he sets to work. 
 
92 DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI. 
 
 which either mortifies the victim, or traverses his work in a 
 troublesome and annoying way ; and to jokes of this sort I 
 should say that Dante Rossetti was not at any time given, 
 but rather noticeable for shunning and censuring them. 
 However, Mr. Vinter ought to know best, and I am sure that 
 he does not mean to lead to any mistaken inference ; more- 
 over, one practical joke is clearly traceable in my Letter B. 8. 
 At home my brother never played any such jokes ; neither 
 was he addicted to them at school, nor in the slightest degree 
 at any period of his fully adult life. For singing he had 
 naturally a more than tolerable voice ; but, apart from mere 
 juvenile outbursts, he never cared to use it, still less to train 
 it, and was even put out if the subject was alluded to. 
 
 One of the principal anecdotes developes the following 
 dialogue. Cary : Why were you not here yesterday ? Ros- 
 setti : I had a fit of idleness — this reply being succeeded by 
 the distribution among the students of" a bundle of manuscript 
 sonnets." Mr. Vinter (or else Mrs. Wood) assumes that these 
 sonnets were juvenile affairs, which Rossetti, at a later date, 
 would have been sorry to see forthcoming. To the best of 
 my recollection, Rossetti, up to July 1846 when he left Cary's, 
 did not produce any sonnets of his own — unless possibly (and 
 even these seem to me to have begun rather later) sonnets 
 written to bouts rimes, of which at one period he rattled off 
 a very large number. The Vinter sonnets may perhaps have 
 been some of his translations from Dante and other Italian 
 poets ; these commenced as early as 1845. They were, from 
 the first, good work — indeed excellent work — of which he 
 would not at any date have been ashamed ; although it is true 
 that at starting the youthful translator indulged in some 
 mannerisms and quaintnesses which he corrected before the 
 versions appeared in print in 1861. 
 
 Apart from the direct course of his studies, the greatest 
 artistic event to Dante Rossetti during his time at Cary's was 
 the opening of the Exhibitions, at Westminster Hall, of 
 Cartoons, prior to the pictorial decoration of the new Houses 
 of Parliament. These d isplays took place in 1843, '44> ar >d '45- 
 
STUDY FOR THE PAINTING PROFESSION. 93 
 
 His letter of 7 July 1843 bears testimony to the extreme 
 interest he took in the first of these Exhibitions ; the second 
 was a still more marking event in his career, as it made known 
 to him, by the Cartoons of Wilhelmus Conquistator (the Body 
 of Harold brought to William of Normandy), and Adam and 
 Eve after the Fall, the genius of Mr. Ford Madox Brown ; 
 the third contained the Cartoon of Justice and some examples 
 of fresco-painting by the same artist. 1 Rossetti also saw at 
 an early date two of Brown's oil-pictures, The Death-bed of 
 the Giaour, and Parisina. 
 
 In July 1 846, having sent-in the requisite probation-drawings, 
 Rossetti was admitted as a student in the Antique School 
 of the Royal Academy, and Cary's knew him no more. Mr. 
 George Jones, R.A., was the Keeper of the Antique School ; 
 a rather aged painter, noted as resembling, on a feeble scale, 
 the great Duke of Wellington, whose costume he imitated. 
 Towards this date he chiefly exhibited sepia-drawings of 
 scriptural or military subjects. A gradual and reasonable 
 amount of progress was made in the Academy School, but 
 only (I apprehend) on the same general lines as in the initial 
 stages at Cary's ; in other words, Rossetti worked with a 
 genuine sense of enthusiasm as to the end in view, but with 
 something which might count as indifference and laxity with 
 regard to the means dictated to him as conducing to that end. 
 He once said to me — it may have been towards 1857 or later — 
 " As soon as a thing is imposed on me as an obligation, my 
 aptitude for doing it is gone ; what I ought to do is what I 
 can't do." This went close to the essence of his character, 
 and was true of him through life. As the years rolled on, 
 what he ought to do was very often what he chose and liked 
 to do, and then the difficulty vanished ; but in his student 
 days it consisted in attending assiduously to matters for 
 which, in themselves, he cared little or not at all, and a real 
 obstruction was the result. As his gift for fine art was indis- 
 putably far superior to that of the great majority of his fellow- 
 
 1 I believe I am correct as to these several dates ; far wrong I cannot be. 
 
94 DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI. 
 
 students, and as his drawings from the antique etc. were (I 
 presume) in reasonable proportion to his gift, I know of no 
 reason why he did not rapidly complete his course in the 
 Antique School, and proceed to the Life and the Painting 
 Schools — which he never did — except this same : — That the 
 obligation which lay upon him was to fag over the antique 
 and cognate first steps in art, and that, being obliged, he 
 found the will to be lacking. A resolute sense of duty, firm 
 faith in his instructors, and a disposition to do what was 
 wanted in the same way as other people, might have furnished 
 the will. But all these qualities were also at that time lack- 
 ing, or present in a scanty degree. He liked to do what he 
 himself chose, and, even if he did what some one else pre- 
 scribed, he liked to do that more or less in his own way. 
 
 We are now approaching, though we have not yet reached, 
 the period when the " Praeraphaelite idea " developed itself 
 in the minds of three Academy students — John Everett 
 Millais and William Holman Hunt, each of whom had 
 already exhibited some pictures of his own, and Dante 
 Gabriel Rossetti, who had not exhibited. It will be well 
 therefore that I should guide my narrative of Rossetti's 
 student-days, as far as manageable, by the details published 
 by Mr. Hunt, and also by another of the original Praeraphael- 
 ites, Mr. Stephens. 1 Rossetti preceded Hunt as an Academy 
 student. Up to May 1848, as Mr. Hunt says,— 
 
 " I had only been on nodding-terms with him in the school. He 
 had always a following of noisy students there, and these had kept 
 me from approaching him with more than a nod, except when once 
 I found him perched on some steps drawing Ghiberti, whom I also 
 studied ; that nobody else did so had given us subject for five 
 minutes' talk." 
 
 The statement that Rossetti was " drawing Ghiberti " 
 
 1 Mr. Hunt's contribution consists of three articles in The Contemporary 
 Review for 1886, The Praraphaelite Brotherhood. Mr. Stephens's mono- 
 graph has been already referred to. Mr. Hunt has also published an 
 able article Praraphaelitism, in Chambers's Encyclopaedia. 
 
STUDY FOR THE PAINTING PROFESSION. 95 
 
 means, of course, that he was drawing from a cast of 
 the famous Florentine bronze doors, Ghiberti's work in the 
 early fifteenth century. I remember that he used to speak 
 to me with great fervency of the grace of motive, the 
 abundance of artistic invention, and the fine handling, of 
 the doors ; and Mr. Hunt's statement on this small point 
 is of substantial interest, as showing that both he and 
 Rossetti had gravitated towards this mediaeval work at a 
 date possibly a full year before Praeraphaelitism took any 
 sort of definite shape. 
 
 I will also extract (with a few comments) Mr. Hunt's 
 description of Rossetti's person and manner. It is better — 
 at any rate, in some respects — than any which I could supply, 
 and will moreover be more readily believed in by the public. 
 
 "A young man of decidedly foreign aspect, about 5 feet 7! 
 in height, with long brown hair touching his shoulders [this is 
 strongly shown in the pencil drawing by Rossetti now in the 
 National Portrait Gallery, but it did not continue long], not taking 
 care to walk erect, but rolling carelessly as he slouched along, 
 pouting with parted lips, staring with dreaming eyes — the pupils not 
 reaching the bottom lids — grey eyes, not looking directly at any 
 point, but gazing listlessly about; the openings large and oval, the 
 lower orbits dark-coloured. His nose was aquiline but delicate, 
 with a depression from the frontal sinus shaping the bridge [a very 
 observable point] ; the nostrils full, the brow rounded and prominent, 
 and the line of the jaw angular and marked, while still uncovered 
 with beard [the angularity departed or diminished with advancing 
 years]. His shoulders were not square, but yet fairly masculine in 
 shape. The singularity of gait depended upon the width of hip, 
 which was unusual. Altogether he was a lightly built man [later 
 on he was often decidedly but varyingly fat], with delicate hands 
 and feet : although neither weak nor fragile in constitution, he was 
 nevertheless altogether unaffected by any athletic exercises. He 
 was careless in his dress, which then was, as usual with professional 
 men, black and of evening cut [this matter of black evening dress 
 altered very soon; and indeed, from 1851 or thereabouts, my 
 brother ceased to be, in any noticeable way, careless or odd in 
 attire, and at times was even rather particular about it]. So superior 
 
96 DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI. 
 
 was he to the ordinary vanities of young men that he would allow 
 the spots of mud to remain dry on his legs for several days. His 
 overcoat was brown, and not put on with ordinary attention ; and, 
 with his pushing stride and loud voice [I feel some doubt as to the 
 loud voice — should call it emphatic and full-toned rather than loud], 
 a special scrutiny would have been needed to discern the reserved 
 tenderness that dwelt in the breast of the apparently careless and 
 defiant youth. But any one who approached and addressed him 
 was struck with sudden surprise to find all his critical impressions 
 dissipated in a moment; for the language of the painter was refined 
 and polished, and he proved to be courteous, gentle, and winsome, 
 generous in compliment, rich in interest in the pursuit of others, 
 and in every respect, so far as could be shown by manner, a culti- 
 vated gentleman. ... In these early days, with all his headstrong- 
 ness and a certain want of consideration, his life within was untainted 
 to an exemplary degree, and he worthily rejoiced in the poetic 
 atmosphere of the sacred and spiritual dreams that then encircled 
 him, however some of his noisy demonstrations at the time might 
 hinder this from being recognized by a hasty judgment." 
 
 Mr. Stephens, quoting from " a fellow-student," says that — 
 
 " Fame of a sort had preceded " Rossetti from Cary's to the 
 Academy School. Other Caryites had talked of him " as a poet 
 whose verses had been actually printed [this can only mean Sir 
 Hugh the Heron], and as a clever sketcher of chivalric and satiric 
 subjects, who in addition did all sorts of things in all sorts of 
 unconventional ways. His rather high cheek-bones were the more 
 observable because his cheeks were roseless and hollow enough to 
 indicate the waste of life and midnight oil to which the youth was 
 addicted." He, on his first appearance in the Academy School, 
 " came forward among his fellows with a jerky step, tossed the falling 
 hair back from his face, and, having both hands in his pockets, faced 
 the student-world with an insouciant air which savoured of defiance, 
 mental pride, and thorough self-reliance." 
 
 The reference here to " waste of midnight oil '' is quite 
 true. My brother had already acquired habits, which stuck 
 to him through life, of not going to bed until he happened 
 to be so disposed, often at two or three in the morning, and 
 
STUDENT-LIFE— SKETCHING, READING, AND WRITING. 97 
 
 of not getting up until necessity compelled or fancy suggested. 
 " Always wilful, never methodical, and the consequences to 
 take care of themselves," might have been his motto. It is 
 true, however, that in mature life he settled down into habits 
 of the utmost day-by-day regularity in professional work. 
 
 Rossetti went a great deal to the theatre towards 1845, and 
 for some six or seven years ensuing, and again about 1861 ; 
 little at other dates, and after 1 868 or so not at all. He liked 
 — in its way — almost any theatre, and almost any piece that 
 was either genuinely poetical, or exciting, or entertaining ; 
 nothing of a dull or stuck-up kind. Miss Woolgar (Mrs 
 Mellon) at the Adelphi, and afterwards Miss Glyn at Sadler's 
 Wells, were two of his favourite actresses. If Shakespear or 
 John Webster was not "going," an Adelphi drama by Buck- 
 stone or a burlesque of the Forty Thieves would do perfectly 
 well. He was also much amused at thoroughly bad drama and 
 acting, such as could be seen at the Queen's Theatre near 
 Tottenham Court Road (afterwards Prince of Wales's Theatre). 
 
 X. 
 
 STUDENT-LIFE— SKETCHING, READING, AND WRITING. 
 
 As we have just seen, Dante Rossetti was known at Cary's 
 Academy for sketching " chivalric and satiric subjects." There 
 must have been great numbers of these, proper both to the 
 Cary period and to the Royal Academy period. Possibly 
 some still exist, in the hands of his companions of those days ; 
 I myself know of but few. There is nothing in them tending 
 to what we call Praeraphaelitism. 
 
 The early letters of Rossetti show that no artist delighted 
 him more intensely than Gavarni (Guillaume Sulpice 
 Chevalier), the French designer for lithographs and woodcuts. 
 Among his series are Les Artistes, Les Coulisses, Le Carnaval, 
 Les Enfants Terribles, Les Etudiants de Paris, Les Lorettes, 
 Fourberies de Femnies en mature de Sentiment etc. He was 
 a designer of supreme facility, with much of elegance and 
 
 vol. 1. 7 
 
98 DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI. 
 
 esprit, and in his way a master ; but naturally the way does 
 not tend towards anything castigated or ideal. It will be 
 observed in the Letters that in 1843 and 1844 my brother 
 spent some time in Boulogne with the Maenza family. This 
 served to fix his attention still further upon Gavarni and 
 other French designers of a vivacious and picturesque kind ; 
 though not wholly to the exclusion of British artists, among 
 whom he greatly (and indeed permanently) admired Sir 
 John Gilbert as a woodcut-draughtsman, and soon afterwards 
 as a painter. In some pen-and-ink designs by Dante Rossetti, 
 of the close of 1844 and on to September 1846, I trace much 
 of what he saw in Gavarni, and tried to reproduce in his own 
 practice. They are sketchy, and rather rough or unrefined 
 in execution, but not wanting in spirit — the work now of an 
 artist, though only of an artist at the beginning of his career. 
 One is termed Quartier Latin, the Modem Raphael and his 
 Fornarina. To April 1846 belongs a half-figure of Mephis- 
 topheles at the door of Gretchen's cell. The malignant expres- 
 sion is telling. Undated, but belonging 1 suppose to 1847, is 
 a drawing, clever in its way, of a man seated, and reaching 
 towards a flitting ghost ; two other figures are evidently 
 unconscious of the apparition. Lady Anne BotJiwell 's Lament, 
 from Percy's Reliques, is a drawing, not fully completed, of 
 some sentiment and some picturesqueness. At one time, 
 I suppose 1845, he tried his hand at lithographing, and pro- 
 duced a figure of Juliette, from Frederic Soulier's novel (a 
 prime favourite with him in these days) Les Memoires du 
 Diable. This is poor enough, yet not destitute of a certain 
 cliique. He also lithographed a set of humorous playing- 
 cards — Ireland as the Queen of Clubs, Shakespear as the 
 King of Hearts, Death as the King of Spades, etc. They 
 have some fancy and point, with pleasing arrangement here 
 and there, and might perhaps have been popular if published. 
 He thought of trying for a publisher, but I doubt whether 
 he ever took any practical steps for this end. Death is 
 represented as a Grave-digger, wearing a pair of baggy 
 breeches, and standing in a grave. One sees only a part of 
 
STUDENT-LIFE— SKETCHING, READING, AND WRITING. 99 
 
 his leg-bones. These may perhaps be meant for his thigh- 
 bones ; but it seems quite as likely that they are intended for 
 the bones of the lower leg. If so, it is worthy of remark that 
 Rossetti gave this skeleton only one bone to each of his 
 lower legs, instead of the normal two, and his anatomical 
 knowledge could thus have been small indeed towards 1845. 
 Strange to say, Holbein, in his Dance of Death, knew no 
 better. Of more present interest is an illustrated copy of 
 the little privately-printed volume, Verses by Christina G. 
 Rossetti, 1847. I possess the copy of this volume bearing the 
 inscriptions, " Frances Mary Lavinia Rossetti, from her loving 
 daughter Christina, 24 July 1854," and then " Fratri Soror, 
 C.G.R., Sept. 25, 1890" (my sixty-first birthday). It contains 
 five pencil drawings by Dante, all of them produced, I should 
 say, before the year 1847 na d closed. The frontispiece is 
 a profile portrait of Christina, carefully and delicately done. 
 The illustrations are to the poems, A Ruined Cross, Tasso 
 and Leonora, The Dream, and Lady Lsabella (who was Lady 
 Isabella Howard, a daughter of the Earl of Wicklow, and 
 a pupil of our Aunt Charlotte Polidori). These designs, 
 though inferior to the portrait, are also handled with nicety 
 and good taste. The last-named must have been produced 
 a little later than the others, as it is not bound into the 
 volume. A noteworthy point about the designs is the total 
 absence of any feeling for costume. There are clothes, but 
 of that nondescript kind which, in the male figures, is evi- 
 denced by little more than a slight line at the throat, and two 
 others at the wrists. Tasso and Leonora might be anybody 
 or nobody. 
 
 Before Praeraphaelitism came at all into question my brother 
 began an oil-picture of good dimensions. It was named 
 Retro me Sathana, and formed a group of three mediaeval- 
 costumed figures — an aged churchman and a youthful lady, 
 and the devil slinking behind them baffled. He was a human 
 being with a tail. This must have been undertaken in 1847, 
 when my brother had no practice with pigments, and was 
 continued for some three or four months. It was not, I 
 
100 DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI. 
 
 apprehend, altogether amiss ; at what date it was destroyed 
 I hardly know. He had begun the colouring, and showed the 
 work privately to Sir Charles Eastlake, who did not encourage 
 him to proceed with any such subject. Soon after this it 
 was abandoned. 
 
 Rossetti's taste for reading, in all the days of his youth, 
 was never stationary ; it continued shifting and developing. 
 Having drunk deep of one author, he went on to another. In 
 1844 some one told him that there was another poet of the 
 Byronic epoch, Shelley, even greater than Byron. He bought 
 a small pirated Shelley, and surged through its pages like a 
 flame. I do not think that he ever afterwards read much of 
 Byron ; although, as his mind matured, he was not inclined to 
 allow that the poet of such an actuality as Don Juan could 
 be deemed inferior to the poet of such a vision as Prometheus 
 Unbound. (Not indeed that he approved of Don Juan, as 
 regards the spirit in which it is written. Early in 1880 he 
 went so far as to tell me that he considered it a truly immoral 
 and harmful_ book.) Keats followed not long after Shelley, 
 in 1846, or perhaps 1845. My brother considered himself to 
 have been one of the earliest strenuous admirers of Keats, 
 but this can only be correct in a certain sense. The Old 
 British Ballads and Mrs. Browning were read with endless 
 enjoyment ; also Alfred de Musset (I have previously men- 
 tioned Victor Hugo), Dumas (dramas, and afterwards novels), 
 Tennyson, Edgar Poe, Coleridge, Blake, Sir Henry Taylor's 
 Philip van Artevelde, Thomas Hood — more especially some of 
 his serious poems, such as Lycus the Centaur and The Haunted 
 House, and the semi-serious Miss Killi nans egg and her Precious 
 Leg, though some of his roaring jocularities were also much 
 in favour. As to Dr. Hake's nebulous but impressive romance, 
 Vates, some details will appear elsewhere. Hoffmann's Contes 
 Fantastiques (in French), and in English Chamisso's Peter 
 Schlemihl, and Lamotte-Fouques Undine and other stories, 
 represented the Teutonic element in romance and legend. 
 It may have been towards 1846 that my brother came upon 
 the prose Stories after Nature of Charles Wells, and his poetic 
 
STUDENT-LIFE— SKETCHING, READING, AND WRITING. IOI 
 
 drama of Joseph and his Brethren. These works, already half- 
 forgotten at that date, were enormously admired by Rossetti, 
 and the ultimate outcome of his admiration, transfused through 
 the potent faculty and pen of Mr. Swinburne, was the republi- 
 cation of the drama about 1877. Earlier than most of these — 
 beginning, I suppose, in 1844 — was the Irish romancist 
 Maturin, who held Dante Rossetti spellbound with the 
 gloomy and thrilling horrors of Melmoth the Wanderer. He 
 and I used often to sit far into the night reading the pages 
 one over the other's shoulder ; and, if to stir the imagination 
 of an imaginative youth is one aim of such a romance as 
 Melmoth, no author can ever have succeeded more manifestly 
 than Maturin with Dante Rossetti. There was another grim 
 romance of his, named Montorio, which we thought a splendid 
 pendent to Melmoth ; not to speak of Women, The Wild Irish 
 Boy, and The Albigenses ; Maturin's once-celebrated verse- 
 drama of Bertram, and some other poems of his, were eagerly 
 inspected, but without any genuine result to correspond. Two 
 other English novels which he read in these years with keen 
 enjoyment were the Tristram Shandy of Sterne, and the 
 Richard Savage of Charles Whitehead ; and in French, by 
 Reybaud, Jerome Paturot a la recherche d'une Position Sociale, 
 and, by Eugene Sue, the Mysteres de Paris, the JuiJ Errant, 
 and Mathilde. In Dickens my brother's interest may have 
 been on the wane when Dombey and Son began in 1846, 
 though I suppose he also read David Copperfield, 1849. In 
 his last days he was much struck with the Tale oj Two Cities. 
 To Dickens succeeded Thackeray, who was most highly 
 appreciated : his early tales in Frasers Magazine, such as 
 Fitzboodle" s Conjessions and Barry Lyndon, and The Paris 
 Sketchbook (even before Vanity Fair appeared in 1 846), also 
 The Book oj Snobs. Later on, a novel ascribed to Lady 
 Malet, Violet or the Danseuse, was a great favourite ; and 
 he had a positive passion for Meinhold's wondrous Sidonia 
 the Sorceress (translated), which he much preferred to the 
 Amber Witch of the same phenomenal author. 
 
 At last — it may have been in 1847 — everything took a 
 
102 DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI. 
 
 secondary place in comparison with Robert Browning. 
 Paracelsus, Sordello, Pippa Passes, The Blot on the Scutcheon, 
 and the short poems in the Bells and Pomegranates series, 
 were endless delights ; endless were the readings, and end- 
 less the recitations. Allowing for a labyrinthine passage here 
 and there, Rossetti never seemed to find this poet difficult 
 to understand ; he discerned in him plenty of sonorous 
 rhythmical effect, and revelled in what, to some other 
 readers, was mere crabbedness. Confronted with Browning, 
 all else seemed pale and in neutral tint. Here were passion, 
 observation, aspiration, medisevalism, the dramatic perception 
 of character, act, and incident. In short, if at this date 
 Rossetti had been accomplished in the art of painting, he 
 would have carried out in that art very much the same range 
 of subject and treatment which he found in Browning's 
 poetry ; and it speaks something for his originality and self- 
 respecting independence that, when it came to verse-writing, 
 he never based himself upon Browning to any appreciable 
 extent, and for the most part pursued a wholly diverse path. 
 It should not be supposed that, in glorifying Browning, 
 Rossetti slighted other poets previously the objects of his 
 homage. He valued them at the same rate as before, though 
 he thought Browning a step further in advance. I need 
 scarcely add that Shakespear and Dante are to be excepted, 
 for at no time would he have denied or contested the 
 superiority of these, even to the poet of Sordello. The time 
 of Dante had come some three years before that of Browning 
 began, and the current of Rossetti's love for the Florentine 
 flowed wider and deeper month by month. 
 
 It may be noted that (as in a previous instance) I have 
 not specified any books of a so-called solid kind — history, 
 biography, or voyages. Science and metaphysics were totally 
 out of Rossetti's ken. I do not believe that he read any such 
 books at this period — very few at any later period, among 
 the few BosweWs Jolmso7i holding a high place. In current 
 talk Rossetti did not appear to be much behind other persons 
 when history or biography was referred to ; but I hardly 
 
STUDENT-LIFE— SKETCHING, READING, AND WRITING. 103 
 
 know what historical volumes he opened, other than Carlyle's 
 French Revolution, Merivale's Roman Empire, and something 
 of Plutarch and of Gibbon. The great Duke of Marl- 
 borough's English History came out of Shakespear's plays ; 
 Rossetti's English and other history derived largely from the 
 same source, supplemented by those adust chroniclers, Walter 
 Scott, Bulwer, Victor Hugo, and Dumas. This was not to 
 our father's liking. I have more than once heard him say, 
 " When you have read a novel of Walter Scott, what do you 
 know? The fancies of Walter Scott." 
 
 Rossetti had commenced some prose story before he left 
 King's College School in the summer of 1842. I am not 
 certain whether that story was or was not the same thing 
 as Sorrentino. At any rate, a prose tale named Sorrentino 
 was in course of composition in August 1843. I remember 
 something of it, but not in clear detail. The Devil (a per- 
 sonage of great predilection with my brother ever since his 
 early acquaintance with Gothe's Faust, which drama he 
 read and- re-read afterwards in Filmore's translation) was 
 a principal character. There was a love-story, in the course 
 of which the Devil interfered in a very exasperating way 
 between the lover and his fair one. He either personated 
 the lover, or conjured-up a phantom of the lady, and made 
 love to her, and was seen by the lover in the act- -or 
 something of this kind. There was also a duel in which 
 he intermixed. Rossetti wrote some four or five chapters 
 of this story, on the scale of chapters in an ordinary novel, 
 and he contemplated offering Sorrentino for publication. 
 Finally he abandoned it, and I dare say he had destroyed 
 the MS. before he was of age. I have always rather 
 regretted the disappearance of Sorrentino. To my boyish 
 notion, it was spirited, effective, and well told ; and I fancy 
 that, were it extant, it would be found by far better than 
 his previous small literary attempts. That he entered fully 
 into the spirit of a story of diablerie is certain ; and, having by 
 this time some moderate command over his pen, he may have 
 been not incapable of doing something in that line himself. 
 
104 DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTl. 
 
 His next literary incentive arose out of his German studies 
 — which began, as already mentioned, towards the earlier 
 part of 1 842. Dr. Heimann brought him so far on in German 
 that Dante Rossetti made a verse-translation of Burger's 
 Lenore, perhaps in 1844. This likewise has perished. I 
 suppose it was much on a par with most other versions of 
 the ballad. I can recollect two stanzas (and might, were 
 there a little prompting, recollect others as well), one close to 
 the beginning of the poem, and the other at its end : — 
 
 "The Empress and the King, 
 With ceaseless quarrel tired, 
 At length relaxed the stubborn hate 
 Which rivalry inspired." 
 
 And 
 
 " Patience, patience, while thy heart is breaking — 
 With thy God there is no question-making ; 
 Of thy body thou art quit and free — 
 Heaven keep thy soul eternally ! " 
 
 From Lenore he proceeded to a more ambitious adventure 
 — no less than a translation of the Nibelungenlied. This 
 mighty old poem seized hold upon him with a vice-like 
 clench ; yet I do not suppose he ever read the whole of it, 
 his knowledge of German, unaided, being hardly sufficient for 
 such an effort. Neureuther's illustrated edition, combined 
 with Dr. Heimann's explanations, showed him the course of 
 the narrative. The translation was begun in October 1845, 
 and went on to the end of the 5 th Geste, or thereabouts, 
 where Siegfried first sees Kriemhild. No trace of it remains. 
 Speaking from long-past memory, I should say that this was 
 really a fine translation, with rolling march and a sense of 
 the heroic. The merits of the next translation are not matter 
 of conjecture, for it got finally printed in Rossetti's Collected 
 Works, 1886. It is from the Anne Heinrich of the twelfth- 
 century poet Hartmann von Aue, and belongs probably to 
 the year 1846. For simplicity, vigour, perception of the 
 character of the original, and tact in conveying this along 
 
STUDENT-LIFE— SKETCHING, READING, AND WRITING. 10$ 
 
 with a certain heightened and spontaneous colouring of his 
 own, this version could not easily be excelled. My brother 
 put some finishing touches to the translation in 1871. Pro- 
 bably he cut out some juvenilities, but it remains substantially 
 and essentially the performance of his adolescence. 
 
 Even before the Anne Heinrich Rossetti's translations 
 from the early Italian poets must have begun. The dates of 
 most of these range from 1845 to 1849. Glowing from the 
 flame-breath of Dante Alighieri, Dante Rossetti made con- 
 tinual incursions into the Old Reading-room of the British 
 Museum, hunting up volumes of the most ancient Italian 
 lyrists, and also volumes of modern British poets, and maybe 
 of French as well. No doubt this pursuit involved some 
 partial neglect of his artistic studies. When he found an 
 Italian poem that pleased him he set-to at translating it. He 
 had soon got together a good deal of material, and gradually 
 the idea of collecting all into a book, including a version of 
 Dante's Vita Nuova, grew into shape. Almost all the trans- 
 lations from Dante may have been done at home, where of 
 course the youth had ready access to his writings, and to 
 those of several other old Italians. I cannot say which branch 
 of the subject may have been undertaken first ; possibly the 
 version of the Vita Nuova, prose and poetry, had been made 
 before any researches at the British Museum commenced. 
 This version was shown in November 1850 to Tennyson, with 
 whom my brother and others of our circle had made some 
 acquaintance through Mr. Coventry Patmore. He returned 
 the MS., saying that it was very strong and earnest, but 
 disfigured by some cockney rhymes, such as " calm " and 
 " arm." Rossetti at once determined to remove these. The 
 book of The Early Italian Poets did not appear in print until 
 1 86 1, and meanwhile my brother had often gone over his 
 first MSS., revising, improving, and suppressing crudities or 
 quaintnesses. Still (as in the case of the Anne HeinricJi) 
 the published translations are, in main essentials, the same 
 which Rossetti wrote down in these juvenile years — the 
 impulse and the savour of them are the same ; and any praise 
 
106 DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTl. 
 
 deserved by and awarded to the man who issued the book in 
 1 86 1 appertains rightfully to the youth who worked upon it 
 in 1845 and the few following years. The translations have 
 been very generally recognized as first-class work of their 
 order — re-castings of poems into another language such as 
 could only be accomplished by a poet in his own right. 
 Instead of expressing any opinion of my own, I will repro- 
 duce two verdicts by writers of exceptional competence from 
 their respective standpoints. Mr. Swinburne, the most 
 lavishly generous of critics when he finds something that he 
 can have the luxury of praising, says in that review of the 
 Poems of Rossetti which he published in 1 870 : " All Mr. 
 Rossetti's translations bear the same evidence of a power not 
 merely beyond reach but beyond attempt of other artists in 
 language." My other authority is Signor Carlo Placci of 
 Florence, who, immediately after Rossetti's death in 1882, 
 produced a brochure entitled Dante Gabriele Rossetti. The 
 testimony of a native Italian well versed in English may carry 
 with it a weight hardly inferior to that of the greatest con- 
 temporary master of English verse. I quote it with the more 
 pleasure as it does justice also to Mr. Swinburne's own 
 powers as a translator : — 
 
 "The collection of the Poets of Italy of the first centuries is a 
 work undoubtedly extraordinary. The diverse styles, the opposite 
 turns of sentiment, the various and complicated forms, the difficult 
 allegories, the intricate rhymes, all is rendered in a surprising way ; 
 and the very spirit of our language seems reflected, with all its 
 poetry and its pictorial aspect, in these translations — which certainly 
 do not yield to the best version of a foreign poet done in our days, 
 I mean that of Villon executed by Swinburne. Like him, Rossetti 
 has been able not only to enter into that life so different from the 
 English, and steal the spark proper to another idiom, in such wise 
 as to astound even those who know the original thoroughly; but, 
 preserving all the grace and elegance and candour of his model, he 
 has sought, and successfully, to re-fashion, without visible effort, 
 their metres and repeated rhymes, and all the devices of alliteration, 
 assonance, and repetition, which are certainly not less difficult in 
 
STUDENT-LIFE— SKETCHING, READING, AND WRITING. 107 
 
 the canzoni of our thirteenth-century men than in the daring ballades 
 of Francois Villon. In the case of both poets this has been not 
 merely a masterpiece, but a true struggle crowned with success, 
 especially when we reflect on the intrinsic difference which exists 
 between the Teutonic and the Latin families of language." 
 
 Not as a translator only but also as an original poet, 
 Rossetti's faculty was fully developed by 1847. One proof of 
 this suffices — that he wrote The Blessed Damozel before 12 
 May of that year, or while still in the nineteenth year of his 
 age. By saying that his faculty was now fully developed, I 
 do not mean to imply that it did not afterwards ripen — which 
 assuredly it did — in several important respects ; but that he 
 had now ideas of a memorable kind to express, and could 
 and did express them in verse wholly adequate for their 
 embodiment. He meant something good — he knew what 
 he meant — and he knew how to convey it to others. The 
 Blessed Damozel was written with a view to its insertion in a 
 MS. Family-magazine, of brief vitality. In 1881 Rossetti 
 gave Mr. Caine an account of its origin, as deriving from his 
 perusal and admiration of Edgar Foe's Raven. " I saw " 
 (this is Mr. Caine's version of Rossetti's statement) " that Poe 
 had done the utmost it was possible to do with the grief of 
 the lover on earth, and I determined to reverse the conditions, 
 and give utterance to the yearning of the loved one in 
 heaven." Along with The Raven, other poems by Poe — 
 Ulalume, For Annie, The Haunted Palace, and many another 
 — were a deep well of delight to Rossetti in all these years. 
 He once wrote a parody of Ulalume. I do not rightly 
 remember it, nor has it left a vestige behind. 
 
 The poem named My Sister's Sleep was, I think, even 
 earlier than The Blessed Damozel; The Portrait and Ave very 
 little later, also all the opening portion of Dante at Verona, 
 A Last Confession, and The Bride's Prelude. Jenny (in its 
 first form, which had none of that slight framework of 
 incident now belonging to the poem) was begun almost as 
 soon as The Blessed Damozel; only some fifty lines of the 
 original draft are retained. The sonnet Retro me Sathana 
 
Io8 DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI. 
 
 must belong to 1847, being intended to pair with his picture 
 of the same name ; and the trio of sonnets named The Choice 
 appertain to the same year, or perhaps to an early date in 
 1848. This trio is important, as indicating Rossetti's youthful 
 conception of life as a moral discipline and problem. He 
 propounds three theories — 1, Eat thou and drink, to-morrow 
 thou shalt die ; 2, Watch thou and pray ; 3, Think thou and 
 act. Each sonnet exhibits its own theme, without any direct 
 reference to the themes of the other two. It is manifest, 
 however, that Rossetti intends us to set aside the " Eat thou 
 and drink" theory of life, and not to accept, without much 
 reservation, the " Watch thou and pray " theory. " Think 
 thou and act " is what he abides by. 
 
 There was another very early poem, begun perhaps in 
 1846 rather than 1847, and nearly completed at the time. It 
 then remained wholly neglected, until, on his deathbed, my 
 brother took it up, and supplied the finishing touches. Its 
 final name is Jan van Hunks. For this long ballad-poem 
 Rossetti found his main subject (but by no means all his 
 incidents) in a prose story, Henkerzvyssel's Challenge, printed 
 in his old favourite, the Tales of Chivalry. The ballad relates 
 how a Dutchman, celebrated for his prowess in smoking, 
 treated certain members of his family with callous cruelty, 
 and was then challenged by the Devil in human form to 
 engage in a smoking-duel. Of course the Devil's capabilities 
 at such an exercise exceeded even the Dutchman's ; so Van 
 Hunks, dying of over-smoking, was marched off to hell, where 
 his carcass was converted into a pipe for the devil's accus- 
 tomed use. The ballad is humorously grim, treated with 
 great force and no compromise, and is a pleasant piece of 
 unpleasant reading. It is most fully deserving of publication ; 
 but has not been included in Rossetti's Collected Works, 
 because he gave the MS. to his devoted friend Mr. Theodore 
 Watts, with whom alone now rests the decision of presenting 
 it or not to the public. 
 
 I may mention yet another " copy of verses," belonging to 
 March 1848. It is named The English Revolution of 1848, 
 
STUDENT-LIFE— SKETCHING, READING, AND WRITING. 109 
 
 and ridicules the street-spoutings of Chartists and others in 
 that year of vast continental upheavals. It is more than 
 tolerably good in its burlesque way, but is not likely to be 
 published. My brother had some feeling for political ideals 
 and great movements, but none, except one of annoyance 
 and disdain, for noise and bluster. It may well be that he 
 did not always appreciate correctly the distinction between 
 the noise and the ideals. 
 
 A small incident, of literary and artistic bearing, proved 
 to be hardly less important in Rossetti's career than the 
 composition of an original poem. He was already a hearty 
 admirer of William Blake's Songs of Innocence and Experience. 
 One day, while attending at the British Museum Reading- 
 room on one of his ordinary errands, he received, from an 
 attendant named Palmer, the offer of a MS. book by Blake, 
 crammed with prose and verse, and with designs. This was 
 in April 1847. The price asked was ten shillings. Dante's 
 pockets were in their normal state of depletion, so he applied 
 to me, urging that so brilliant an opportunity should not be 
 let slip, and I produced the required coin. He then proceeded 
 to copy out, across a confused tangle of false starts, alternative 
 forms, and cancellings, all the poetry in the book, and I did 
 the like for the prose. His ownership of this truly precious 
 volume certainly stimulated in some degree his disregard or 
 scorn of some aspects of art held in reverence by dilettanti 
 and routine-students, and thus conduced to the Praeraphaelite 
 movement ; for he found here the most outspoken (and no 
 doubt, in a sense, the most irrational) epigrams and jeers 
 against such painters as Correggio, Titian, Rubens, Rembrandt, 
 Reynolds, and Gainsborough— any men whom Blake regarded 
 as fulsomely florid, or lax, or swamping ideas in mere 
 manipulation. These were balsam to Rossetti's soul, and 
 grist to his mill. The volume was moreover the origin of all 
 his after-concern in Blake literature ; as Alexander Gilchrist, 
 when preparing the Life of Blake published in 1863, got to 
 hear of the MS. book, which my brother then entrusted to 
 him, and, after Gilchrist's premature death, Rossetti did a 
 
110 DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI. 
 
 good deal towards completing certain parts of the biography, 
 and in especial edited all the poems introduced into the 
 second Section. He again did something for the re-edition 
 dated 1880. At the sale of my brother's library and effects 
 the Blake MS. sold for ;£iio. $s., so that the venture of ten 
 shillings turned out a pretty good investment. 
 
 XI. 
 
 FRIENDS TOWARDS 1847 
 
 BESIDES the families which I have already mentioned — Dr. 
 Heimann and his wife, a very pretty pleasant young English 
 Jewess, whose maiden name was Amelia Barnard, and the 
 American Doughtys — Dante Rossetti knew, as he grew up 
 towards manhood, two persons more particularly, of whom I 
 ought here to give some account. They were Major Calder 
 Campbell and Mr. William Bell Scott. 
 
 To Major Campbell Rossetti was, I think, introduced by 
 an affectionate friend, a year or two older than himself, the 
 sculptor Alexander Munro — an Inverness man who had come 
 to London under the patronage of the Duke and Duchess of 
 Sutherland, and who, being ingenuous and agreeable in 
 manner, and of graceful gift as a sculptor, made some way 
 both in society and in art. He died abroad towards the 
 beginning of 1871. Calder Campbell was a retired officer 
 from the Indian army, a bachelor turned of fifty. He took 
 to my brother most heartily ; was a firm believer in his 
 future, and watched with the kindliest interest his actual 
 stage of development. He was the author of a large number 
 of verses, tales, and sketches, in Annuals and other fleeting 
 forms of publication, and from time to time produced a 
 volume as well. To pretend that he was an author of high 
 mark, or capable of something greatly better than what he 
 gave forth, would be futile ; but he was a lively writer in a 
 minor way, an amusing chatty talker, who had seen many 
 things here and there, and knew something of the publishing 
 
FRIENDS TOWARDS 1 847. Ill 
 
 world, and a straightforward, most unassuming gentleman, 
 whose society could do nothing but good to a youth like 
 Rossetti. For a couple of years or so my brother and I 
 used to pass an evening weekly at his lodgings in University 
 Street, Tottenham Court Road. Tea, literature, and a spice 
 of bantering scandal, were the ingredients for a light-hearted 
 and not unimproving colloquy. Mostly no one else was 
 present. On one occasion — to please Dante Rossetti, who 
 took a great deal of interest in a rather eccentric but certainly 
 able volume of poems entitled Studies of Sensation and Event 
 — Major Campbell secured the attendance of its author, 
 Ebenezer Jones. He was a well-grown, thin, pale man, still 
 young, with decayed teeth and a general air of shaky health, 
 which brought him to his grave before many years had 
 passed. He seemed pleased in a way, but without any ease 
 of manner or flow of spirits. We never saw him again. 
 Dante did not, however, lose his interest in Ebenezer Jones. 
 As late as February 1870 he made some emphatic observa- 
 tions upon this poet in Notes and Queries ; and his remarks 
 led ultimately to a re-publication of the Studies, and to a 
 good deal of printed matter about Jones in the Athenceum. 
 
 Rossetti was quite inclined now to make a little way in 
 the literary world, if he could find an opening. Major Camp- 
 bell was more than willing to assist him, and he showed 
 My Sister's Sleep to the editress of the Belle Assemblee, a 
 philandering magazine which had seen better days. The 
 editress expressed great admiration of the poem, but did not 
 publish it. Perhaps payment was wanted, and funds were at 
 a low ebb. This may have been before the year 1848 was far 
 advanced. I cannot recollect that my brother made any 
 further endeavour for publication. Pretty soon The Germ 
 was projected, and was to be the medium for introducing to 
 the public the writings of himself and others. 
 
 Mr. Bell Scott has narrated {Autobiographical Notes) the 
 origin of his acquaintance with Dante Rossetti. On 
 25 November 1847 the latter took the first step by sending 
 to Mr. Scott, then Master of the Government School of 
 
112 DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI. 
 
 Design in Newcastle-on-Tyne, a letter of which the Autobio- 
 graphist gives an abstract. I condense still further. 
 
 "A few years ago," said Rossetti, "I met for the first time, in 
 a publication called The Story-teller, with your two poems, Rosabell 
 and A Dream of Love. So beautiful, so original, did they appear 
 to me, that I assure you I could think of little else for several days ; 
 and I became possessed by quite a troublesome anxiety to know 
 what else you had written, and where it was to be found. Seeing 
 that the two poems were extracted from The Monthly Repository, I 
 went to the Museum, where I found a set of that magazine, but met 
 only with a paper on Art. ... At the beginning of the present year 
 I fell in with a most inadequate paragraph, in the Art-Union Journal, 
 which informed me of the publication of The Year of the World. 
 I was about to bid you imagine my delight, but that would not be 
 easy. I rushed from my friend's house where I had seen the 
 announcement (for the wretched thing was no more), and, having 
 got the book, fell upon it like a vulture. You may be pretty certain 
 that you had in me one of those readers who read the volume at 
 a single sitting. A finer, a more dignitous, 1 a more deeply thoughtful 
 production, a work that is more truly a work, has seldom indeed 
 shed its light upon me. To me I can truly say that it revealed 
 
 ' Some depth unknown, some inner life unlived.' " 
 
 This is the first line of The Year of the World. — Rossetti 
 proceeded to say that he was aware of the existence of 
 another poem by Scott named Hades or the Transit ; and, 
 being unable to light upon this or other works by the same 
 author, he ventured to enquire at headquarters. 
 
 It may be questioned whether readers of the present day 
 know very much about Mr. Scott's poems. I will therefore 
 say a few words about Rosabell and The Year of the World. 
 Rosabell — afterwards reissued under the name of Mary Anne — 
 is a poem, in irregular form and various metres, about an 
 innocent country-girl who becomes a gentleman's mistress, 
 
 1 So in Mr. Scott's book. My brother was not fond of such strained or 
 affected words, and was much more likely to write " dignified." Still I 
 suppose that the printed word is correct, and that he was misled for a 
 moment by the analogy of the Italian adjective dignitoso. 
 
FRIENDS TOWARDS 1 847. 113 
 
 and finally sinks into the lowest depths of shame and destitu- 
 tion. Though deficient in some executive respects, it reads 
 an impressive lesson in impressive and poignant terms, and 
 deserves to live. The Year of the World is a much longer 
 poem in blank verse. The subject extends (to use the 
 author's own words) (< from the golden age of the Garden 
 of Eden, the period of instinct and innocence, to the end of 
 the race, when, all the adverse powers of Nature subjugated, 
 Man will have attained a happy and quiescent immortality." 
 I have read this ambitious and remarkable poem several times, 
 but not of late years. I will, however, undertake to say that 
 it contains a large amount of strong thought mixed with ideal 
 aspiration ; that it comprises many lines of true poetry, and 
 many passages of majestic scope ; and that, if a reading 
 public who do not greatly want such productions would con- 
 sent to read the work, they would find in it much to reward 
 their pains, and to uphold the claims of its author as a poet 
 of a high standard, and of some veritable though not uniformly 
 realized attainment. I do not coincide with some critics of 
 the present day (and of past days as well) who hold that 
 Scott's executive touch is so uncertain, and the instances 
 where he falls short of his aim so numerous, as to disentitle 
 him altogether to the name of poet. On the contrary, I can 
 and do still admire his work to a large extent, although far 
 from unconscious of its too frequently obvious, and sometimes 
 almost unaccountable, blemishes. 
 
 Mr. Scott, now aged thirty-six, naturally had not the least 
 idea who " Gabriel Charles Rossetti " might be, beyond what 
 appeared in his letter as to his being a student of painting, 
 etc. He made some sort of reply, and soon received a further 
 letter enclosing a number of verse MSS., which included 
 The Blessed Damozel, My Sister's Sleep, and (as Scott 
 expresses it) " many other admirable poems, marshalled 
 under the title of Songs of the Art Catholic!' I hardly think 
 that my brother had by this date completed " many " poems, 
 unless translations are to be reckoned in. There may easily, 
 however, have been a round half dozen of original composi- 
 vol. I. 8 
 
114 DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI. 
 
 tions, comprising, in all probability, Ave — also the beginnings 
 of some others, such as The Bride's Prelude (which at this 
 time was called Bride-Chamber Talk). My brother's general 
 title of Songs of the Art Catholic is worth a moment's 
 attention. By " Art " he decidedly meant something more 
 than "poetic art." He meant to suggest that the poems 
 embodied conceptions and a point of view related to pictorial 
 art — also that this art was, in sentiment though not neces- 
 sarily in dogma, Catholic — mediaeval and un-modern. He 
 never was, and never affected to be, a Roman-catholic, nor 
 yet an Anglican-catholic. All the then excited debates 
 concerning " Puseyism," Tractarianism, and afterwards Ritual- 
 ism, passed by him like the idle wind. If he knew anything 
 about "the Gorham Controversy," it was only that Carlyle 
 coupled " prevenient grace " with " supervenient moonshine." 
 Indeed, by this date — so far as opinion went, which is a very 
 different thing from sentiment and traditional bias — he was 
 already a decided sceptic. He was never confirmed, professed 
 no religious faith, and practised no regular religious observ- 
 ances ; but he had (more especially two or three years after 
 this) sufficient sympathy with the abstraqt ideas and the 
 venerable forms of Christianity to go occasionally to an 
 Anglican church — very occasionally, and only as the inclina- 
 tion ruled him. 
 
 Not long after this letter-writing (I have already expressed 
 the opinion that it was about the new year of 1848) Mr. 
 Scott called in 50 Charlotte Street, and saw Dante and other 
 members of the family. I well remember his first appear- 
 ance, in the evening. He was then a handsome and highly 
 impressive-looking man ; of good 9tature, bony and well- 
 developed but rather thin frame, pondering and somewhat 
 melancholy air, and deliberate low-toned utterance. His 
 hair (which he lost entirely some years afterwards) was 
 blackish, and of free abundant growth, his eyebrows bushy, 
 his eyes of a very pale clear blue. This hue must have been 
 too cold and steely for a southern sympathy ; for, when he 
 and I were travelling in Italy in 1862, a Pisan female fellow- 
 
MADOX BROWN, HOLMAN HUNT, MILLAIS. 1 1 5 
 
 traveller felt disconcerted under its influence, and whispered 
 to me that he certainly had " the evil eye." We in Charlotte 
 Street did not think so, but took very warmly indeed to Mr. 
 Scott, and found him not only attractive but even fascinating. 
 Some time after he had written to Mr. Scott — it seems to 
 have been in the summer of 1850 — Dante Rossetti wrote 
 likewise to Robert Browning. In the British Museum he 
 had come across an anonymous poem entitled Pauline. He 
 admired it much, and copied out every line of it. He ob- 
 served one or two verses which he already knew in Browning's 
 avowed poems. From this circumstance, and from general 
 internal evidence, he came to the conclusion that the author 
 of Pauline could be no other than Browning, and he wrote to 
 the poet at a venture to enquire whether his inference was 
 correct. Browning was at that time in Venice. He replied 
 in the affirmative ; and, being two years afterwards back in 
 London, he made the acquaintance of Rossetti, who called 
 upon him companioned by the poet William Allingham. 
 
 XII. 
 
 MADOX BROWN, HOLMAN HUNT, MILLAIS. 
 
 A CERTAIN day in March 1 848 — I don't know which day — 
 formed one of the most important landmarks in the career 
 of Dante Rossetti. It was on that day that he wrote to 
 Mr. Ford Madox Brown, personally quite unknown to him, 
 asking whether he could become Brown's pupil in the practical 
 work of painting. He thus commenced the most intimate 
 friendship of his life; and the letter led on to his familiar 
 companionship with Holman Hunt, and hence to the Prsera- 
 phaelite movement, and all subsequent developments of his art. 
 It may be questioned — Why did Rossetti look out for 
 private instruction in painting, when he might, with moderate 
 exertion, have advanced from the Antique School of the 
 Royal Academy to the Life School and the Painting School, 
 and might, in the last-named section, have obtained, from 
 
Il6 DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI. 
 
 accredited painters, all the training that he could want ? My 
 recollections on this point do not supply me with any very 
 precise information. Some data are however clear enough 
 to me. Few young men were more impetuous or more 
 impatient than my brother, or more ambitious to boot. He 
 had now been an art-student for nearly six years, and he 
 wanted to be a student no longer, but a practising painter, 
 testing by actual performance the faculty that was within 
 him, and the recognition which the public might be willing 
 or compelled to accord thereto. His study in the Academy's 
 Antique School had not yet lasted two years. Fully as much 
 might still be needed before he would get into the Painting 
 School, and, when there, he might find little to respect in 
 his instructors (for he had no belief in an R.A., merely as 
 such), and little furtherance in that particular line of work 
 which attracted him. He had plenty of ideas. What he 
 needed was such an immediate knowledge of brush-work as 
 would enable him to cover a canvas. I do not say — to cover 
 it well or ill ; for the idea of doing the thing ill would at this 
 time, as at all others, have been most repugnant to him. He 
 wanted to cover the canvas, and to do it as well as his 
 utmost endeavour would permit. These considerations were 
 amply sufficient to impel him to look out for a prompt 
 training in painting elsewhere than by the graduated processes 
 of the Royal Academy. As he was not yet twenty years 
 of age, it could not be held that he was at all belated, if only 
 now he could make a real beginning. 
 
 The letter to Mr. Brown is so important from all points of 
 view that I think well to transcribe it here verbatim. 
 
 "March 1848. 
 "50 Charlotte Street, Portland Place. 
 
 « Sir,— 
 
 "lama student in the Antique School of the Royal Academy. 
 Since the first time I ever went to an exhibition (which was several 
 years ago, and when I saw a picture of yours from Byron's Giaour) 
 I have always listened with avidity if your name happened to be 
 mentioned, and rushed first of all to your number in the Catalogue. 
 
MADOX BROWN, HOLMAN HUNT, MILLAIS. WJ 
 
 The Parisina, the Study in the Manner of the Early Masters, Our 
 Lady of Saturday-night, and the other glorious works you have 
 exhibited, have successively raised my admiration, and kept me 
 standing on the same spot for fabulous lengths of time. The 
 outline from your Abstract Representatation of Justice which appeared 
 in one of the Illustrated Papers constitutes, together with an en- 
 graving after that great painter Von Hoist, 1 the sole pictorial 
 adornment of my room [this was a room, originally our father's 
 dressing-room, quite at the top of the house 50 Charlotte Street. 
 Small and bare and uncared-for it was, but how many hours, which 
 in retrospect seem glorious hours, have I not passed in it with my 
 brother ! how many books have we not read to one another, 
 how many bouts-rimes sonnets have we not written, over its scanty 
 fireplace !]. And, as for the Mary Queen of Scots, if ever I do 
 anything in the art, it will certainly be attributable in a great degree 
 to the constant study of that work [this was a very large painting, 
 The Execution of Mary Queen of Scots, now in the possession of 
 Mr. Boddington. My brother had seen it in the Pantheon Bazaar, 
 where it hung for years rather than months]. 
 
 " It is not therefore to be wondered at if, wishing to obtain some 
 knowledge of colour (which I have as yet scarcely attempted), the 
 hope suggests itself that you may possibly admit pupils to profit by 
 your invaluable assistance. If, such being the case, you would do 
 me the honour to inform me what your terms would be for six 
 months' instruction, I feel convinced that I should then have some 
 chance in the Art. 
 
 " I remain, Sir, very truly yours, 
 
 "Gabriel C. Rossetti." 
 
 It is somewhat remarkable that, apart from his allusion 
 to a print of the Justice, my brother did not here refer to 
 Madox Brown's three Cartoons in Westminster Hall — works 
 which he assuredly and very rightly admired as much at 
 least as any of the paintings specified, and more than most 
 
 1 Von Hoist is not much remembered now. He was an Anglo-German 
 painter, greatly addicted to supernatural subjects, which he treated with 
 imaginative impulse and considerable pictorial skill — Lord Lyttelton and 
 the Ghost, Faust and Mephistopheles in the Wine-cellar, The Death of 
 Lady Macbeth, etc, He died towards 1850, in early middle age. 
 
Il8 DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI 
 
 of them. Apparently he dwelt on paintings alone, because 
 his immediate object was to obtain guidance in the use of 
 colour. 
 
 Mr. Brown, born on 16 April 1821, was close upon twenty- 
 seven years of age when he received this letter, or about seven 
 years older than Rossetti. He was a vigorous-looking young 
 man, with a face full of insight and purpose ; thick straight 
 brown hair, fair skin, well-coloured visage, blueish eyes, broad 
 brow, square and rather high shoulders, slow and distinct 
 articulation. His face was good-looking as well as fine ; but 
 less decidedly handsome, I think, than it became towards the 
 age of forty. As an old man — he died on 6 October 1893 — 
 he had a grand patriarchal aspect ; his hair, of a pure white, 
 being fully as abundant as when first I knew him, sup- 
 plemented now by a long beard. Born in Calais of English 
 parents, and brought up chiefly abroad, he was the sort of 
 man who had no idea of being twitted without exacting the 
 reason why. Such profuse praise as he now received from 
 his unknown correspondent was what fortune had not accus- 
 tomed him to, and he suspected that some ill-advised person 
 was trying to make game of him. From his studio in Clip- 
 stone Street, very near Charlotte Street, he sallied forth with 
 a stout stick in his hand. Knocking at No. 50, he would not 
 give his name, nor proceed further than the passage. When 
 Dante came down, Brown's enquiry was, "Is your name 
 Rossetti, and is this your writing ? " An affirmative being 
 returned, the next question was, " What do you mean by it ? " 
 to which Rossetti rationally replied that he meant what he 
 had written. Brown now perceived that after all the whole 
 affair was bona fide ; and (as the Family-letters show) he not 
 only consented to put his neophyte in the right path of paint- 
 ing, but would entertain no offer of payment, and made 
 Rossetti his friend on the spot — a friend for that day, in the 
 spring of 1848, and a friend for life. 
 
 For these details I have relied chiefly on the book of Mr. 
 Bell Scott, who relates the interview in the words (such they 
 purport to be) of Rossetti himself in conversation with Scott. 
 
MADOX BROWN, HOLMAN HUNT, MILLAIS. 119 
 
 Mr. Stephens gives a similar though briefer narrative, on the 
 authority of Brown's anecdotic discourse, which was often 
 of a very amusing kind, and replete with minute particulars. 
 For truth's sake I will say that I cannot remember having 
 ever heard either Brown or my brother refer to these minor 
 incidents of the stout stick, etc. ; but I am bound to believe 
 Mr. Scott and Mr. Stephens, and I do believe them. 
 
 After paying a visit or two to the studio of Madox Brown 
 — who was then engaged on his important picture of Wiclif 
 and John of Gaunt (or possibly it was Cordelia watching the 
 bedside of Lear) — Rossetti was informed by his instructor that 
 he should set-to at copying a picture, and at painting some 
 still-life — pickle-jars or bottles. According to Mr. Holman 
 Hunt, he copied the picture (I have not the least recollection 
 of what it was), but his aspiring soul chafed sorely against 
 the pickle-jars. This, however reasonably enjoined by Mr. 
 Brown, was the very sort of drudgery which, in applying to 
 him, Rossetti had hoped to avoid. The pickle-jars were 
 nevertheless painted. The study remained in the hands of 
 Mr. Madox Brown, and, at the sale which was held at his house 
 in May 1894, it turned up, and was purchased by Mr. Herbert 
 H. Gilchrist. My brother made also many original drawings 
 or slight paintings under Brown's eye. These I no longer 
 remember ; but I have lately seen one, which is said to be 
 the first of all, and which was presented by Brown, only a few 
 days before his death, to the young lady who is now Mrs. 
 Ford M. Hueffer. It is a drawing of long narrow shape, in 
 body-colour barely a little tinted, with a plain gilt ground ; 
 and represents a young woman, auburn-haired, standing with 
 joined hands. The face seems to be a reminiscence of 
 Christina, but the nose is unduly long ; the drapery is deli- 
 cately felt and done, and the whole thing has a forecast of the 
 " Prseraphaelite " manner. Without being exactly good, the 
 work shows distinct promise for a youth, almost a novice 
 at handling the brush. 
 
 From the pickle-jars ensued the second stage in this 
 pictorial progress, and the beginning of my brother's close 
 
120 DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI. 
 
 intimacy with Hunt, who was about thirteen months his 
 senior. Just towards the date when Dante was getting 
 adequately, or more than adequately, disgusted with his still- 
 life probation, the annual Exhibition of the Royal Academy 
 opened at the commencement of May. He saw there Hunt's 
 picture — an uncommonly fine one for so youthful a painter — 
 of Tlie Eve of St. Agnes (escape of Madeline and Porphyro 
 from the castle). He " came up boisterously " (says Mr. Hunt), 
 " and in loud tongue made me feel very confused by declaring 
 that mine was the best picture of the year." It seems that 
 the like had occurred in 1847, when Hunt's exhibited picture 
 was from Walter Scott's Woodstock. " Rossetti frankly asked 
 me to let him call upon me." When he did call, 1 he bewailed 
 the pickle-jars or bottles, and sounded Hunt as to whether 
 he need do any more of them. Hunt, without detracting 
 from the general correctness of Brown's scheme of training, 
 opined that Rossetti might permit himself to select for 
 painting some composition of his own, and might begin on 
 the canvas with the still-life proper to such a composition ; 
 and then this accessory part of the subject would no longer 
 be repulsive, for it would be the mere adjunct or preparation 
 for the interesting part. No advice could possibly have been 
 more reasonable, considering on the one hand the tempera- 
 ment and aspirations of Rossetti, and on the other his great 
 inexperience in the use of pigment. Mr. Hunt recommended 
 that he should at once select for his picture a design recently 
 contributed to a Sketching Society, and approved by Millais. 
 This design must have been either La Belle Dame sans 
 Merci, from Keats, or the scene of GretcJien in Church, from 
 Faust ; in all probability the latter. The Belle Dame seems 
 
 1 Mr. Hunt says that the encounter at the Academy exhibition was on 
 the opening day (first Monday in May), and the visit to his studio "in a 
 few days more." Considering the date when the Gretchen design (men- 
 tioned by me in this context) was sent round and criticized, July 1848, and 
 the date, 20 August, when Rossetti was finally settled with Hunt in a 
 studio, I incline to think that the visit in question must have been about 
 a couple of months later than the writer puts it. 
 
MADOX BROWN, HOLMAN HUNT, MILLAIS. 121 
 
 to have passed out of observation, though 1 suppose not out of 
 existence. At any rate, the Gretchen exists, and was exhibited 
 in 1883 in the Burlington Club collection of my brother's 
 works. 
 
 A word or two must be given to the Sketching Society 
 here in question. It was termed the Cyclographic Society. 
 Each member produced a design, and sent it round to col- 
 leagues in a portfolio, to be inspected and criticized. The 
 members, besides Millais and Rossetti, were Hunt, John ■ 
 Hancock the sculptor, William Dennis, N. E. Green, J. T. 
 Clifton, Walter Howell Deverell, J. B. Keene, T. Watkins, 
 James Collinson, Richard Burchett, F. G. Stephens, Thomas 
 Woolner, and J. A. Vinter. As Sir John Millais's criticism 
 on the Gretchen is interesting on every ground, and especially 
 in this connexion, I give it here : — 
 
 "A very clever and original design, beautifully executed. The 
 figures which deserve the greatest attention are the four figures 
 praying to the left. The young girl's face is very pretty, but the 
 head is too large ; the other three are full of piety. The Devil is 
 in my opinion a mistake ; his head wants drawing, and the horns 
 through the cowl are commonplace, and therefore objectionable. 
 The right arm of Margaret should have been shown, for, by hiding 
 the Devil's right hand (which is not sufficiently prominent), you 
 are impressed with the idea that he is tearing her to pieces for a 
 meal. The drawing and composition of Margaret are original, and 
 expressive of utter prostration. The greatest objection is the figure 
 with his back towards you, who is unaccountably short ; the pleasing 
 group of lovers should have occupied his place. The girl and child 
 in the foreground are exquisite in feeling, the flaming sword well 
 introduced and highly emblematic of the subject, which is well 
 chosen, and, with a few alterations in its treatment, should be 
 painted. Chairs out of perspective." 
 
 I can easily believe this last item ; for Rossetti never paid 
 any attention, worth speaking of, to perspective, and indeed 
 — so far as his own interest in matters of art was concerned — 
 was at all times almost indifferent to the question whether 
 
122 DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI. 
 
 his works were in perspective or out of it. Mr. Stephens 
 did something to arrange the perspective of Rossetti's picture 
 (1849-50) of The Annunciation, now in the National Gallery, 
 and in 1850 gave him a few lessons — and would not have 
 minded giving many more — in this bugbear science. The 
 reader will not fail to note the thoroughly practical and well- 
 balanced tone of Millais's remarks in all other respects. The 
 Cyclographic Society did not last long, as may be gathered 
 from Rossetti's letter of 30 August 1848. I think the more 
 progressive artists among its members got tired of association 
 with some others, and hastened its dissolution. I can remember 
 attending one or two meetings of the Society ; though why I 
 was admitted — unless it be that Dante sic voluit, sicjussit — 
 I fail to see. 
 
 At the interview of which I have been speaking Rossetti 
 (according to Holman Hunt) gave the latter to understand 
 that, being oppressed by the pickle-jars, he had written to 
 Leigh Hunt (whom he did not know), submitting some of 
 his poems, original and translated, for courteous perusal, 
 and asking whether it might seem feasible for him to 
 trust to literature rather than fine art as a profession. 
 A copy of Leigh Hunt's letter in reply is still extant. 
 The date (it will be perceived) is 31 March, and it was 
 written " at length " — i.e., some good while after he had 
 received the poems. Rossetti's letter to Brown was only 
 sent at some date in March ; and, looking to these dates, 
 I rather question whether his communication to Leigh Hunt 
 could have been consequent upon his affliction over the 
 pickle-jars. Here is the veteran poet's very kind and con- 
 siderate letter to a youth in all ways totally unknown : — 
 
 "Kensington, March 31, 1848. 
 "My dear Sir, — 
 
 " I have at length had the pleasure of reading your manu- 
 scripts, but am still forced to be very brief. I hope the agreeableness 
 of my remarks will make amends for their shortness, since you have 
 been good enough to constitute me a judge of powers of which you 
 ought to have no doubt. I felt perplexed, it is true, at first, by 
 
'•" 
 
 By D. G. Rossctti. 
 
 Gaetano Polidori. 
 
 t S 4 8. 
 
MADOX BROWN, HOLMAN HUNT, MILLAIS. 1 23 
 
 the translations, which, though containing evidences of a strong 
 feeling of the truth and simplicity of the originals, appeared to me 
 harsh, and want correctness in the versification. I guess indeed 
 that you are altogether not so musical as pictorial. But, when I 
 came to the originals of your own, I recognized an unquestionable 
 poet, thoughtful, imaginative, and with rare powers of expression. 
 I hailed you as such at once, without any misgiving ; and, besides 
 your Dantesque heavens (without any hell to spoil them), admired 
 the complete and genial round of your sympathies with humanity. 
 I know not what sort of painter you are. If you paint as well as 
 you write, you may be a rich man ; or at all events, if you do not 
 care to be rich, may get leisure enough to cultivate your writing. 
 But I hardly need tell you that poetry, even the very best — nay, 
 the best, in this respect, is apt to be the worst — is not a thing for 
 a man to live upon while he is in the flesh, however immortal it 
 may render him in spirit. — When I have succeeded in finding 
 another house, I hope you will give me the pleasure of your 
 acquaintance : and meantime I am, Dear Sir, with hearty zeal in 
 the welfare of your genius, 
 
 "Your obliged and faithful Servant, 
 
 "Leigh Hunt. 
 
 " P.S. — You will see some pencil-marks at the side of the passages 
 I most admired." 
 
 I possess a portrait done by my brother in pencil in June 
 1848, representing our grandfather, head and shoulders. It is 
 excellently good ; and so strongly and exactly realistic as to 
 prove to demonstration that Rossetti, a short while before the 
 Prseraphaelite scheme began, required no further prompting 
 from outside as to the artistic virtues inherent in a scrupulous 
 fidelity to Nature. Mr. Brown had no doubt impressed this 
 upon him, if he had not already found it out for himself. In 
 one way or another he had laid the lesson thoroughly to heart, 
 and was more than a mere apprentice to Truth. My reader 
 can judge for himself of this portrait, as it is here reproduced. 
 
 Rossetti closed eagerly with Holman Hunt's suggestion as 
 to beginning a picture, to combine practice in still-life and 
 accessory with more palatable work ; and he asked to be 
 
124 DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI. 
 
 allowed to become joint-tenant of a studio which Hunt was 
 about to take. To this his new friend acceded ; and nothing; 
 surely could have been more serviceable to my brother as a 
 beginner in the painting-art. The studio selected was a back- 
 room on the first floor at No. 7 (now 46) Cleveland Street, 
 Fitzroy Square, close to Howland Street. Mr. Stephens has 
 given an amusingly cheerless account of this establishment. 
 I will borrow a few sentences from him ; though my own 
 reminiscences of the place, tinted as they are by the light- 
 heartedness of youth, do not present quite so gloomy a 
 picture. 
 
 "Dans un grenier qu'on est bien a vingt ans ! " 
 
 And indeed I was not fully nineteen when my brother 
 entered upon his studio at No 7 Cleveland Street, his living 
 and sleeping rooms being still at No 50 Charlotte Street. 
 
 " It was even then a dismal place, the one big window of which 
 looked to the East, and through which, when neither smoke, fog, 
 nor rain, obscured the unlovely view, you could see the damp 
 orange-coloured piles of timber a neighbouring dealer in that 
 material had, within a few yards of the room, piled in monstrous 
 heaps upon his backyard. Nothing could be more depressing than 
 the large gaunt chamber, . . . where the dingy walls, distempered 
 of a dark maroon which dust and smoke stains had deepened, 
 added a most undesirable gloom. The approach to it was by a 
 half-lighted staircase up which the fuss and clatter of a boys'-school 
 kept by the landlord of the house . . . frequently arose." 
 
 And now we come to the third link in this chain of 
 acquaintanceship — namely, to Rossetti's close fellowship with 
 Millais. Brown had indirectly led on to Hunt, and Hunt led 
 on directly to Millais. The latter, born in the summer of 
 1829, was Rossetti's junior by more than a year, but vastly in 
 advance of him as an artist. I need not enter here upon the 
 early career of this great painter ; his quite singular promise 
 in mere boyhood, his conspicuous successes in his first youth. 
 Miliais was the pattern — the unattainable pattern — for all 
 
THE PR^RAPHAELITE BROTHERHOOD. 125 
 
 Academy-students, and was by this date an exhibiting 
 painter of some performance and any amount of promise. 
 My brother could not but know him by sight long before 
 now, and must have exchanged speech with him more than 
 once both at the Royal Academy and at the Cyclographic 
 Society. With Millais however he was not as yet on a 
 footing of friendship, which Hunt was. " The companionship 
 of Rossetti and myself," says Mr. Hunt, " soon brought about 
 a meeting with Millais, at whose house one night we found 
 a book of engravings of the frescoes in the Campo Santo at 
 Pisa." The house was that at which Millais lived with his 
 parents, No. 83 (now 7) Gower street, having a long rather 
 shed-like studio, built out on the ground-floor along the line 
 of a narrow turning. The juncture was a momentous one 
 for all the three young painters. 
 
 XIII. 
 THE PR^RAPHAELITE BROTHERHOOD. 
 
 Mr. HOLMAN Hunt considers, and I would be willing to 
 confirm his view if it needed any confirmation, that it was 
 the inspection of the Campo Santo engravings, " at this 
 special time, which caused the establishment of the Praera- 
 phaelite Brotherhood." They are not engravings doing 
 justice to the works represented — indeed, Ruskin has some- 
 where termed them " Lasinio's execrable engravings." But 
 they give some idea of the motives, feeling, and treatment, 
 of the paintings of Gozzoli, and of those ascribed to Orcagna 
 and other mediaeval masters. It seems that Rossetti was not 
 quite prepared beforehand to believe in these very olden 
 painters, and Brown specially cautioned him not to undervalue 
 them. I well recollect the enthusiasm with which, subse- 
 quently to seeing the engravings, Dante spoke to me on the 
 subject, and soon afterwards I was allowed an opportunity of 
 examining the prints for myself. Most things, whether books 
 or ideas, were in common, at this time and for years after- 
 
126 DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI. 
 
 wards, between my brother and myself, and whatever one 
 of us lighted upon was rapidly imparted to the other. 
 Mr. Hunt makes some valuable observations on the direction 
 of mind which started the Prseraphaelite idea, and on the 
 respective contributions which the very diverse temperaments 
 and gifts of its three initiators brought to the common stock. 
 I will not take the liberty of borrowing his remarks en bloc ; 
 but, bearing them needfully in mind, I will say what I can 
 on the subject from my own standing-point. 
 
 The Lasinio incident may be proper to the month of 
 August or of September 1848, when Hunt was twenty-one 
 years of age, Rossetti twenty, and Millais nineteen. They 
 had thus barely ceased to be big boys ; but Hunt and Millais 
 were already very capable and recognized painters, and 
 all three were enthusiasts— enthusiasts with a difference. 
 Millais perceived within himself powers which far exceeded 
 those of most of the acknowledged heads of his profession, 
 but which had been exercised as yet without any inbreathing 
 of new and original life ; Hunt was not only stubbornly 
 persistent, but eagerly desirous of developing something at 
 once solid and uncommon ; Rossetti, a beginner in the art, 
 was fired with inventive imaginings and a love of beauty, 
 and was just as anxious as his colleagues to distinguish 
 himself, though as yet not equally certain to do so. All three 
 contemned the commonplace anecdotical subjects of most 
 British painters of the day, and their flimsy pretences at 
 cleverness of execution, unsupported either by clear intuition 
 into the facts of Nature, or by lofty or masculine style, or by 
 an effort at sturdy realization. There were of course excep- 
 tions, some distinguished and some noble exceptions ; but 
 the British School of Painting, as a school, was in 1848 wishy- 
 washy to the last degree ; nothing imagined finely, nor 
 descried keenly, nor executed puissantly. The three young 
 men hated all this. They hated the cant about Raphael and 
 the Great Masters, for utter cant it was in the mouths of such 
 underlings of the brush as they saw all around them ; and 
 they determined to make a new start on a firm basis. What 
 
THE PR/ERAPHAELITE BROTHERHOOD. 1 27 
 
 was the basis to be? It was to be serious and elevated 
 invention of subject, along with earnest scrutiny of visible 
 facts, and an earnest endeavour to present them veraciously 
 and exactly. 
 
 This does not fully account for their calling themselves 
 Praeraphaelites. Mr. Hunt says — and he must be correct — 
 that the word Praeraphaelites " had first been used as a term 
 of contempt by our enemies " ; founded, it would seem, more 
 upon the talk of the young men than upon anything (apart 
 from such minor matters as the study of the Ghiberti Gates) 
 which they had actually done. Hunt's pictures as yet had 
 no distinctively Praeraphaelite quality, Millais's were quite in 
 the contrary line, and Rossetti was not known to have painted 
 at all. But they saw, in the Italian painters from Giotto to 
 Leonardo, and in certain early Flemish and German painters 
 so far as they knew about them (which was little), a manifest 
 emotional sincerity, expressed sometimes in a lofty and solemn 
 way, and sometimes with a candid nai'vetd ; they saw strong 
 evidences of grace, decorative charm, observation and defini- 
 tion of certain appearances of Nature, and patient and loving 
 but not mechanical labour. In the language of art there is, 
 or ought to be, a certain distinction between the terms " con- 
 ventionalism " and "conventionality." Of conventionalism — 
 an adherence to certain types, traditions, and preconceptions 
 — there is assuredly a vast deal in these early masters ; but 
 of conventionality, as a lifeless application of school-precepts, 
 accepted on authority, muddled in the very act of acceptance, 
 and paraded with conceited or pedantic self-applause, there 
 is, in the men who carried the art forward from point to 
 point, no defined trace. Each of them did his best as he 
 best could, and handed on the art to be bettered by his 
 successor. 
 
 It was with this feeling, and obviously not with any idea 
 of actually imitating any painters who had preceded Raphael, 
 that the youths adopted as a designation, instead of re- 
 pelling as an imputation, the word Praeraphaelite. The word 
 " Brotherhood " was, it seems, Rossetti's term, put forward as 
 
128 DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI. 
 
 being preferable — which it most clearly was — to any such 
 term as Clique or Association. And thus was the Praeraphaelite 
 Brotherhood constituted as the autumn of 1848 began. 
 
 Some writers have said that Rossetti was the originator 
 of Praeraphaelitism. This ignores the just claims of Hunt 
 and Millais, which I regard as co-equal with his. Rossetti 
 had an abundance of ideas, pictorial and also literary, and 
 was fuller of " notions " than the other two, and had more 
 turn for proselytizing and " pronunciamentos " ; but he was 
 not at all more resolute in wanting to do something good 
 which should also be something new. He was perhaps the 
 most defiant of the three ; and undoubtedly a kind of 
 adolescent defiance, along with art-sympathies highly de- 
 veloped in one direction, and unduly or even ignorantly 
 restricted in others, played a part, and no small part, in 
 Prseraphaelitism. But Hunt, if less strictly defiant, was still 
 more tough, and Millais was all eagerness for the fray — 
 " longing to be at 'em," and to show his own mettle. The 
 fact is that not one of the three could have done much 
 as an innovator without the other two. A bond of mutual 
 support was essential, and an isolated attempt might have 
 fizzed off as a mere personal eccentricity. As it was, 
 Prseraphaelitism proved to be very up-hill work. It was 
 more abused, as being the principle of a few men in unison, 
 than it would have been if exemplified by one of them only ; 
 but the very abuse was the beginning of its triumph. Any 
 one of them, if acting by himself, might have been recognized 
 as a man of genius ; he would hardly have become a power 
 in art. If the invention of " the Praeraphaelite Brotherhood " 
 was a craze, it was a craze spiced with a deal of long- 
 headedness. Some method in that sort of madness. 
 
 But, on these points as to his own relation to other Praera- 
 phaelite painters, Dante Rossetti has himself given a very 
 distinct explanation. It appears in a letter which he ad- 
 dressed on 7 November 1868 to M. Ernest Chesneau, 
 consequent on the publication of that able critic's book Les 
 Nations Rivales dans I' Art. The passage which I here quote 
 
THE PR/ERAPHAELITE BROTHERHOOD. 1 29 
 
 is printed in Professor Edouard Rod's volume, Etudes sur le 
 Dix-neuvieme Steele, 1888, and the Professor leaves unaltered 
 Rossetti's " incorrections de langue " : — 
 
 " En ce qui concerne la qualification de ' Chef de l'Ecole Pre- 
 raphaelite' que vous m'attribuez d'apres vos renseignements, je dois 
 vous assurer le plus chaudement possible qu'elle ne m'est nullement 
 due. Loin d'etre ' Chef de l'Ecole ' par priorite ou par merite, je 
 puis a peine me reconnaitre comme y appartenant, si le style du 
 peu que j'ai fait en peinture venait a etre compare avec les ouvrages 
 des autres peintres nommes Preraphaelites. Ainsi, quand je trouve 
 un peintre si absolument original que l'est Holman Hunt decrit 
 comme etant mon ' disciple,' il m'est impossible de ne pas me sentir 
 humilie en face de la verite, et de ne pas vous assurer du contraire 
 avec le plus grand empressement. Les qualites de realisme, emoti- 
 onnel mais extremement minutieux, qui donnent le cachet au style 
 nomme Preraphaelite, se trouvent principalement dans tous les 
 tableaux de Holman Hunt, dans la plupart de ceux de Madox 
 Brown, dans quelques morceaux de Hughes, et dans l'ceuvre ad- 
 mirable de la jeunesse de Millais. C'est la camaraderie, plutot que 
 la collaboration reelle du style, qui a uni mon nom aux leurs dans 
 les jours d'enthousiasme d'il y a vingt ans." 
 
 The charge that the Prseraphaelite trio applied themselves 
 slavishly to mere copyism, microscopic detail, and the like, 
 has been so often alleged that it had better be dealt with 
 here at once. Mr. Hunt puts the matter plainly, and is a 
 final authority upon it. I will therefore extract a few of his 
 words : — 
 
 " It may be seen that we were never, what often we have been 
 called, ' Realists.' I think the art would have ceased to have the 
 slightest interest for any one of the three painters concerned, had 
 the object been only to make a representation, elaborate or un- 
 elaborate, of a fact in Nature. ... In agreeing to use the utmost 
 elaboration in painting our first pictures, we never meant more than 
 that the practice was essential for training the eye and the hand of 
 the young artist. We should never have admitted that the relinquish- 
 ment of this habit of work by a matured painter would make him 
 less of a PrEeraphaelite." 
 
 VOL. I. 9 
 
130 DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI. 
 
 To add anything to Mr. Hunt's dictum on this matter is 
 almost an impertinence. I will nevertheless confirm it, as 
 being a point of which I also was cognizant — and indeed the 
 like view was expressed in a kind of declaration of principles 
 of the Brotherhood which I drew up at the beginning of 185 1, 
 but which seems to be lost this long while. I will however 
 concede thus much to the antagonist — that, although it is 
 certainly true that the Prseraphaelites looked upon elaboration 
 of detail as being rather a discipline for students than a 
 necessary practice for proficients, they were not always 
 sufficiently careful to affirm this, but, in the heat of con- 
 troversy, would sometimes seem to imply that such elabora- 
 tion was really requisite, as well as admissible and useful. 
 
 I will advert briefly to one other point. It has been 
 said that Madox Brown declined to join the Prasraphaelite 
 Brotherhood (and that he did decline is true) on the ground 
 partly that he had no faith in coteries, and partly that the 
 Praeraphaelites insisted upon copying from a model exactly 
 as he or she stood, and without permitting any modification 
 of visage, etc., to suit the picture. The objection to coteries 
 was, I believe, made by Brown, and was far from unreason- 
 able ; but, as for the objection to not deviating from the 
 model, I entertain considerable doubt. Some such rule as 
 a theory may perhaps have been in some degree of favour 
 with the Brotherhood at one time or other ; but I am certain 
 it was not acted upon even in their first fervid year. The 
 head of Lorenzo, in Millais's picture of 1848-9, Lorenzo and 
 Isabella from Keats's poem, was painted from me, but the 
 hair was made golden, whereas mine was black. The head 
 of the Virgin Mary, in Rossetti's picture of the same year, 
 was painted from our sister Christina, and here again the 
 hair was made golden instead of dark brown. From Hunt's 
 picture I have no doubt that some similar detail might be cited. 
 All this 1 say without implying that that notion of strictest 
 adherence to the model has no value. I think it has some, as 
 conducing to a general air of genuineness and vvaisemblance, 
 though it should not be pushed to a pragmatical extreme. 
 
THE PRAERAPHAELITE BROTHERHOOD. 131 
 
 The three youths who founded the Praeraphaelite Brother- 
 hood did not aim at confining it to themselves, supposing 
 that other eligible men could be discovered and enlisted. 
 This was done with four young men — Thomas Woolner the 
 sculptor, James Collinson a painter, Frederic George Stephens, 
 an Academy-student of painting, and myself. I hardly 
 know whether any of the three former had been sounded 
 before the Lasinio evening, and the consequent formation of 
 a Praeraphaelite Brotherhood consisting of Millais, Hunt, and 
 Rossetti. I presume not. Mr. Stephens was a particular ally 
 of Mr. Hunt, who must, I apprehend, have been his introducer 
 into the Brotherhood. Mr. Woolner was probably known 
 to all three, and I could not affirm to which of them most — 
 maybe Mr. Millais. Mr. Collinson, and of course myself, 
 were nominated by my brother. I will say a little about three 
 members of the Praeraphaelite Brotherhood, or " P.R.B." ; the 
 " P.R.B.'s," as they called and for a while signed themselves. 
 I omit Millais and Hunt, as being living men of renown with 
 whom I need not meddle. 
 
 Thomas Woolner was a Suffolk man, born in December 
 1825, and was therefore about two years and a half older than 
 Rossetti. He studied under the sculptor Behnes, and had 
 already exhibited some few works before the P.R.B. was 
 formed. Ultimately he became an R.A., and he died in 
 October 1892. 3HIe produced some ideal works of superior 
 quality, but became chiefly known as a portrait and bust 
 sculptor. In this branch of the art, an energetic insight into 
 character, and scrupulous skill in modelling and finish, were 
 his leading merits. He was a genial manly personage, full 
 of gusto for many things in life ; a vigorous believer in himself 
 and his performances, and (it may be allowed) rather dis- 
 inclined to admit the deservings of any rivals in his art. 
 
 James Collinson, born in May 1825, was a small thick- 
 necked man, chiefly a domestic painter, who began with 
 careful and rather timid practice ; in demeanour, modest and 
 retiring. He had been a steady church-goer in the Anglican 
 communion ; but, about the date of the formation of the 
 
132 DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI. 
 
 Brotherhood, he became a Roman-catholic, and after a while 
 saw fit, as a religionist, to resign his position as a P.R.B. He 
 did not rise to distinction in the pictorial art, and died in the 
 spring of 1881. 
 
 Frederic George Stephens, a little older than Hunt, ex- 
 hibited a very few pictures in the early years of Praera- 
 phaelitism ; but, while still young, he relinquished painting 
 as a definite profession, and became an Art-critic, capable 
 and influential. He had — or rather still has — an uncommonly 
 well-moulded and picturesque face ; painted by Millais as 
 Ferdinand in the early picture Ferdinand lured by Ariel, and 
 by Madox Brown soon afterwards as Jesus in the admirable 
 work, now in the National Gallery, of Jesus washing Peter's 
 Feet. It is a fact, and a melancholy one, that Dante Rossetti, 
 as the years progressed, lost sight of all his " Praeraphaelite 
 Brothers " except only of Stephens at sparse intervals — " dear 
 staunch Stephens, one of my oldest and best friends," as he 
 wrote to Mr. Caine towards 1879. 
 
 Mr. Stephens had a great liking for the early schools of 
 art, Italian and other. Possibly his knowledge of them ex- 
 ceeded that of any other P.R.B. , and so far he might reason- 
 ably be called a " Praeraphaelite." As to Woolner and 
 Collinson, neither of them, from natural inclination or from 
 course of study and practice, went at all in that direction ; a 
 fact which confirms the true view of the matter — that the 
 Praeraphaelites had no notion of recurring to or imitating old 
 art, but simply aimed at pursuing the art in that spirit of 
 personal earnestness and modesty, both as to the treatment 
 of ideals and as to the contemplation of natural truths, which 
 had animated the earlier Old Masters, and had faltered or 
 failed in the later ones, and of which, in the current British 
 School, the traces were few and far between. For myself, I 
 obviously was, and I remained, an outsider, so far as the 
 practice of fine art goes. I was made Secretary of the 
 Brotherhood ; and pretty soon I became an Art-critic- — in 
 The Critic (a weekly paper something like the Athenceuni) 
 from the summer of 1850, and in The Spectator from 
 
THE PR.ERAPHAELITE BROTHERHOOD. 1 33 
 
 November in the same year. I sometimes ponder with 
 astonishment the fact that the first of these papers allowed 
 me to instruct its public on matters of fine art before I was 
 twenty-one years of age, and the second immediately after- 
 wards. It is true that The Germ had appeared before I wrote 
 in The Critic. 
 
 As soon as the Praeraphaelite Brotherhood was formed it 
 became a focus of boundless companionship, pleasant and 
 touching to recall. We were really like brothers, continually 
 together, and confiding to one another all experiences 
 bearing upon questions of art and literature, and many 
 affecting us as individuals. We dropped using the term 
 " Esquire " on letters, and substituted " P.R.B." I do not 
 exaggerate in saying that every member of the fraternity 
 was just as much intent upon furthering the advance and 
 promoting the interests of his " Brothers " as his own. There 
 were monthly meetings, at the houses or studios of the various 
 members in succession ; occasionally a moonlight walk or a 
 night on the Thames. Beyond this, but very few days can 
 have passed in a year when two or more P.R.B.'s did not fore- 
 gather for one purpose or another, The only one of us who 
 could be regarded as moderately well off, living en famille on 
 a scale of average comfort, was Millais ; others were struggling 
 or really poor. All that was of no account. We had our 
 thoughts, our unrestrained converse, our studies, aspirations, 
 efforts, and actual doings ; and for every P.R.B. to drink a 
 cup or two of tea or coffee, or a glass or two of beer, in the 
 company of other P.R.B.'s, with or without the accompani- 
 ment of tobacco (without it for Dante Rossetti, who never 
 smoked at all), was a heart-relished luxury, the equal of which 
 the flow of long years has not often presented, I take it, to 
 any one of us. Those were the days of youth ; and each man 
 in the company, even if he did not project great things of his 
 own, revelled in poetry or sunned himself in art. Hunt, to 
 my thinking, was the most sagacious talker ; Woolner the 
 most forceful and entertaining ; Dante Rossetti the most 
 intellectual. Such men could not be mere plodders in con- 
 
134 DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI. 
 
 versation : but all — to their credit be it spoken — were perfectly 
 free-and-easy, and wholly alien from anything approaching 
 to affectation, settled self-display, or stilted " tall talk." And 
 this holds good of every member of the Brotherhood. Mr. 
 Hunt has done more than ample justice to Rossetti's literary 
 acquirements, saying of him, at the, date when he entered 
 upon the studio in Cleveland Street : — 
 
 " Rossetti had then perhaps a greater acquaintance with the poetical 
 literature of Europe than any living man. His storehouse of treasures 
 seemed inexhaustible. If he read twice or thrice a long poem, it 
 was literally at his tongue's end ; and he had a voice rarely equalled 
 for simple recitations. . . . Sordello and Paracelsus he would give 
 by forty and fifty pages at a time. . . . Then would come the 
 pathetic strains of W. B. Scott's Rosabell. . . . These, and there 
 were countless other examples, all showed a wide field of interest 
 as to poetic schools." 
 
 Had the Praeraphaelite Brotherhood any ulterior aim be- 
 yond that of producing good works of art ? Yes, and No. 
 Assuredly it had the aim of developing such ideas as are 
 suited to the medium of fine art, and of bringing the arts 
 of form into general unison with what is highest in other 
 arts, especially poetry. Likewise the aim of showing by con- 
 trast how threadbare were the pretensions of most painters 
 of the day, and how incapable they were of constituting or 
 developing any sort of School of Art worthy of the name. 
 In the person of two at least of its members, Hunt and 
 Collinson, it had also a definite relation to a Christian, and 
 not a pagan or latitudinarian, line of thought On the other 
 hand, the notion that the Brotherhood, as such, had anything 
 whatever to do with particular movements in the religious 
 world — whether Roman Catholicism, Anglican Tractarianism, 
 or what not — is totally, and, to one who formed a link in 
 its composition, even ludicrously, erroneous. To say that 
 Praeraphaelitism was part of " the ever-rising protest and 
 rebellion of our century against artificial authority," as in 
 the cases of " the French Revolution " and Wordsworth and 
 
THE PR^ERAPHAELITE BROTHERHOOD. 1 35 
 
 Darwin, etc., 1 is not indeed untrue, but is far too vague to ac- 
 count for anything. Again, the so-called German Praeraphael- 
 ites — such as Schnorr, Overbeck, and Cornelius — were in no 
 repute with the young British artists. They did, however, 
 admire very much certain designs by-Fu-kri-eh from the Legend 5"e Inl e 
 of St. Genevieve. Neither was Ruskin their inciter, though 
 it is true that Hunt had read and laid to heart in 1847 the 
 first volume of Modern Painters, the only thing then current 
 as Ruskin's work. I do not think any other P.R.B. (with 
 the possible exception of Collinson) had, up to 1848 or 
 later, read him at all. That the Praeraphaelites valued moral 
 and spiritual ideas as an important section of the ideas 
 germane to fine art is most true, and not one of them was 
 in the least inclined to do any work of a gross, lascivious, or 
 sensual description ; but neither did they limit the province 
 of art to the spiritual or the moral. I will therefore take it 
 upon me to say that the bond of union among the Members 
 of the Brotherhood was really and simply this — 1, To have 
 genuine ideas to express ; 2, to study Nature attentively, so 
 as to know how to express them ; 3, to sympathize with 
 what is direct and serious and heartfelt in previous art, to 
 the exclusion of what is conventional and self-parading 
 and learned by rote ; and 4, and most indispensable of all, 
 to produce thoroughly good pictures and statues. 
 
 After the first fervour of youth was past, Rossetti was 
 somewhat impatient of the terms Praeraphaelitism and Praera- 
 phaelite. In 1880 he said to Mr. Caine something which that 
 author records in the following words : " As for all the 
 prattle about Praeraphaelitism, I confess to you 1 am weary 
 of it, and long have been. Why should we go on talking 
 about the visionary vanities of half-a-dozen boys? What 
 you call the movement was serious enough, but the banding 
 together under that title was all a joke." And Mr. William 
 Sharp says that, to a lady enquiring whether he was the 
 Praeraphaelite Rossetti (perhaps towards 1870), he replied, 
 
 1 See Mrs. Wood's Dante Rossetti and the Prceraphaelite Move?ne?it, p. 9. 
 
136 DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI. 
 
 " Madam, I am not an ' ite ' of any kind ; I am only a painter." 
 These statements I accept; but it is not the less true that 
 in 1848 and for some years afterwards he meant a good deal 
 by calling himself Praeraphaelite, and meant it very heartily. 
 
 I will complete here a few details about the Brotherhood, 
 although these will lead me some way beyond the date 
 which we have as yet reached, the autumn of 1848. In 
 May 1849 it was settled that I, as Secretary to the Brother- 
 hood, or its only non-professional member, should keep a 
 Diary of the proceedings of the Society, and of the art-work 
 of the several P.R.B.'s so far as that came within my 
 cognizance. This I proceeded to do ; and up to 8 April 1850 
 I kept the Diary without the omission of a day. Afterwards 
 I was less regular ; but still, allowing for several intervals, the 
 Diary goes on to 29 January 1853. In my hands it con- 
 tinues ; but I am sorry to say that at some date — possibly 
 about 1855 — Dante inspected the MS. when I was not by ; and, 
 finding some entries which, for one reason or another, he did 
 not relish, he tore the pages up freely here and there — a 
 summary proceeding quite in his style. I surmise that he saw 
 some particulars about Miss Siddal (shortly to be mentioned) ; 
 certainly nothing invidious about her, but he may have 
 decreed in his own mind that her name should not appear in 
 the record at all. Nevertheless a great deal still remains ; 
 and furnishes a very authentic, if also an unentertaining, 
 account of what the seven Prseraphaelites were doing in those 
 now remote years. There is a copy of Collinson's letter, 
 May 1850, withdrawing from the Brotherhood — a step which 
 he attributes to religious considerations as a Roman-catholic, 
 though these are not defined with any extreme clearness. 
 After this, in the autumn of the same year, is an entry pur- 
 porting that Walter Howell Deverell " has worthily filled up 
 the place left vacant by Collinson " — his nominator (I have 
 no doubt, speaking from memory) being Dante Rossetti. But 
 it appears that this election was considered not entirely valid 
 by some other member or members, and, at a meeting of 
 9 February 1851, it was ruled that any such new member 
 
THE PRAERAPHAELITE BROTHERHOOD. 1 37 
 
 must be subjected to annual re-election. At a previous 
 meeting, 13 January, Millais expressed a doubt whether the 
 name P.R.B. should be continued, as being liable to miscon- 
 struction ; and a resolution was passed that each member 
 should put down in writing what meaning he attached to the 
 name, these declarations to be submitted to the next ensuing 
 meeting. I feel considerable doubt whether any member, 
 except myself, gave practical effect to the resolution. At any 
 rate, the Diary shows nothing further about the matter. These 
 were last dying efforts at a continuance of regular meetings, 
 which, as recorded on 2 December 1850, had then already 
 become " thoroughly obsolete." With virtuous intentions, 
 new and stringent rules about meetings, etc., were adopted 
 on 13 January 1851 ; but they were forthwith disobeyed, and 
 the Praeraphaelite Brotherhood, as a practical working organi- 
 zation, and something more than a mere knot of friends, may 
 be regarded as from that date sinking into desuetude. For 
 this there was at the time no sort of real reason ; only that 
 the several members were developing each in his own proper 
 direction, were hard at work and scattered in local position, 
 and found that any inclination for assembling together was 
 subject to too many interruptions and obstacles. I fancy 
 that Mr. Stephens and myself were the two members who 
 most sincerely regretted this disruption. And so, as a definite 
 scheme in the art- world, ended the Praeraphaelite Brother- 
 hood. The members got to talk less and less of Praera- 
 phaelitism, the public more and more ; and the name still 
 subsists in a very active condition — which is also a very lax 
 and undefined one, and in many instances wholly misapplied. 
 In Rossetti's letter to his sister, dated 8 November 1853, 
 a quotation may be observed, consequent upon the election 
 of Millais as an Associate of the Royal Academy — 
 
 " So now the whole Round Table is dissolved." 
 
 And so it proved to be — if indeed the dissolution is not 
 to be reckoned as dating earlier, which for most practical 
 purposes it did. Christina hereupon, 10 November, wrote 
 
138 DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI. 
 
 a sonnet, neat though irregular, to which I will give a niche in 
 my narrative : — 
 
 THE P.R.B. 
 
 "The P.R.B. is in its decadence: 
 
 For Woolner in Australia cooks his chops, 
 And Hunt is yearning for the land of Cheops ; 
 
 D. G. Rossetti shuns the vulgar optic ; 
 While William M. Rossetti merely lops 
 
 His B's in English disesteemed as Coptic ; 
 Calm Stephens in the twilight smokes his pipe, 
 But long the dawning of his public daj' ; 
 And he at last the champion great Millais, 
 Attaining Academic opulence, 
 
 Winds up his signature with A.R.A. 
 So rivers merge in the perpetual sea; 
 
 So luscious fruit must fall when over-ripe ; 
 And so the consummated P.R.B." 
 
 This sonnet had wholly lapsed from my recollection until 
 I happened to light upon it during the progress of the present 
 Memoir. The only point in it which in our time seems 
 rather obscure is the reference to myself — which must mean 
 that I, in my press-criticisms, made light of my P.R.B. col- 
 leagues (which is joke, not fact), and that my utterances met 
 with no public regard (which is partial but not entire fact ; 
 for these criticisms, appearing in a paper of such high repute 
 as The Spectator, and being, in 1850 to 1852, nearly the only 
 press-reviews which upheld the Prseraphaelite cause ; did 
 excite some attention, and I suppose some anger. Mr. 
 Stephens, who succeeded me on The Critic, must have 
 co-operated). I will take this opportunity of saying that the 
 statement, which has been constantly repeated in recent 
 months, that Christina went among us by the name of " the 
 Queen of the Praeraphaelites," is, to the best of my knowledge 
 and remembrance, a mere invention. It was first put forward, 
 I apprehend, by Mrs. Tooley, in an article on Christina which 
 she published, in the autumn of 1894, in a serial entitled The 
 Young Woman. I knew nothing of such an appellative ; 
 Christina, to whom I mentioned it, knew nothing also ; and 
 
THE PR^RAPHAELITE BROTHERHOOD. 1 39 
 
 Mr. Stephens, who has a long memory on all such details, 
 neither knows nor believes anything of it. 
 
 I am minded — and I hope not to the reader's serious dis- 
 gust — to insert here those Rules of the Brotherhood which, as 
 aforesaid, were adopted on 13 January 185 1, and were never 
 carried into effect. They show or suggest not only what 
 we then intended to do, but a great deal of what had been 
 occupying our attention since the autumn ©f 1848. The day 
 when we codified proved also to be the day when no code 
 was really in requisition. The document, which is of course 
 in my handwriting, runs as follows : — 
 
 "P.R.B. — Present, at Hunt's, himself, Millais, Stephens, and 
 W. M. Rossetti, 13 January 1851. 
 
 " In consideration of the unsettled and unwritten state of the 
 Rules guiding the P.R.B., it is deemed necessary to determine and 
 adopt a recognized system. 
 
 "The P.R.B. originally consisted of seven members — Hunt, 
 Millais, Dante and William Rossetti, Stephens, Woolner, and another • 
 and has been reduced to six by the withdrawal of the last. It was 
 at first positively understood that the P.R.B. is to consist of these 
 persons and no others — secession of any original member not being 
 contemplated ; and the principle that neither this highly important 
 rule nor any other affecting the P.R.B. can be repealed or modified, 
 nor any finally adopted, unless on unanimous consent of the members, 
 is hereby declared permanent and unalterable. 
 
 "Rule 1. That William Michael Rossetti, not being an artist, be 
 Secretary of the P.R.B. 
 
 " 2. Considering the unforeseen vacancy as above stated, Resolved 
 that the question of the election of a successor be postponed until 
 after the opening of the year's art-exhibitions. This Rule to be 
 acted on as a precedent in case of any future similar contingency. 
 
 " 3. That, in case a new election be voted, the person named as 
 eligible be on probation for one year, enjoying meanwhile all the 
 advantages of full membership, except as to voting. 
 
 "4. That, on the first Friday of every month, a P.R.B. meeting, 
 such as has hitherto been customary, be held. 
 
 "5. That the present meeting be deemed the first in rotation 
 under the preceding Rule; and that the future meetings be held 
 
140 DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI. 
 
 at the abodes of the several members, in order as follows — Millais, 
 Dante Rossetti, William Rossetti, Stephens, Woolner. 
 
 " 6. That, in the event of the absence of the Member at whose 
 house any meeting falls due, or other obstacle — to be allowed as 
 valid by the others — the Secretary be made aware of the fact ; and 
 that the Member next in rotation act for the absent Member : the 
 ensuing meetings to follow as before provided. 
 
 " 7. That unjustified absence under such circumstances subject 
 the defaulter to a fine of 5^. 
 
 " 8. That a Probationary Member be not* required to take his 
 turn in this rotation. 
 
 " 9. That at each such monthly meeting the Secretary introduce 
 any business that may require consideration — to the exclusion of 
 other topics until such business shall have been dispatched. 
 
 " 10. That any Member unavoidably absent be entitled to send 
 his written opinion on any subject fixed for consideration. 
 
 "11. That, failing full attendance at a meeting, or unanimously 
 expressed opinion, the members present may adopt Resolutions, — 
 to remain in force until a dissenting opinion shall be made known. 
 
 "12. That any member absent from a meeting without valid 
 excuse — to be allowed by the others — shall forfeit zs. 6d. ; and that 
 no engagement with any other person whatever be held to supersede 
 the obligation of a P.R.B. meeting. 
 
 " 13. That the January meeting of each year be deemed the 
 Anniversary Meeting. 
 
 " 14. That the application of fines accruing as before specified 
 be determined, by majority of votes, at each such annual meeting. 
 
 " 15. That at each annual meeting the conduct and position of 
 each P.R.B. during the past year, in respect of his membership, 
 be reviewed; it being understood that any member who shall not 
 appear to have acted up to the best of his opportunities in furtherance 
 of the objects of the Brotherhood is expected, by tacit consent, to 
 exert himself more actively in future. 
 
 "16. That the Secretary be required, as one chief part of his 
 duty, to keep a Journal of the P.R.B. 
 
 "17. That the Journal remain the property of the Brotherhood 
 collectively, and not of the Secretary or any other individual 
 member ; that it be considered expedient in ordinary cases to read 
 the Journal at each meeting at the Secretary's residence ; and that 
 
THE PR^ERAPHAELITE BROTHERHOOD, 141 
 
 any member have the power to require its production whenever he 
 may think fit. 1 
 
 "18. That any election which may be hereafter proposed be 
 determined by ballot. 
 
 " 19. That any such election be renewable annually by vote of 
 the six original members. 
 
 " 20. That any member considered unworthy to continue in the 
 Brotherhood cease to be a P.R.B. on the unanimous vote of his 
 peers — i.e., of those in the same class, as regards date of election, 
 as himself. 2 
 
 "21. That the fines be received by the Secretary. 
 
 "22. That the 23rd of April be kept sacred annually to 
 Shakespear, as an obligation equally binding as that of a P.R.B. 
 meeting. 
 
 "23. That, in case any P.R.B. should feel disposed to adopt 
 publicly any course of action affecting the Brotherhood, the subject 
 be in the first instance brought before the other members." 
 
 Having now disposed of the Praeraphaelite Brotherhood 
 as an organization, I must revert to the doings of Dante 
 Rossetti in the studio which from the latter end of August 
 1848 he shared with Mr. Hunt. It seems that the idea at 
 starting was that Hunt, Millais, and Rossetti, should each 
 produce an etching from Keats's Isabella, and thus show forth 
 to the public their close connexion in purpose and in work. 
 This intention however did not take effect. Millais, in lieu 
 of an etching, proceeded to paint his celebrated picture from 
 Isabella ; Hunt undertook Rienzi swearing Revenge over his 
 
 1 Up to this point the Rules are written out by me in a clear deliberate 
 script, being evidently a recast, done at leisure, from my first hasty jottings. 
 The subsequent Rules are written hurriedly, and must have reached me 
 in some different way: I forget the details. The restrictive clause, 17, 
 as to the Journal, was proposed by myself. It was not a precautionary 
 measure against me taken by some one else. 
 
 2 No doubt this must be imperfectly expressed. The real intention 
 must be that, whereas an original P.R.B. could only be discarded by the 
 votes of the other original members, a subsequently elected P.R.B. could 
 be discarded by the votes of the original members, and also of any 
 members of his own standing in point of date. 
 
142 DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI. 
 
 Brother s Corpse ; and Rossetti chose as his subject The 
 Girlhood of Mary Virgin, painted on panel, 33 inches by 
 25. I have no clear recollection of any details leading up 
 to this selection. He must have thought that the subject 
 was one particularly worthy of a " Praeraphaelite " painter ; 
 and perhaps the consideration that he could treat it without 
 any strained or difficult actions, and without any plethora 
 of accessory, and with a certain reserve of style rather than 
 energetic realism in this his first attempt, may have weighed 
 with him. Of course however the plan was to paint all parts 
 of the picture carefully from Nature, and this he did not fail 
 to do. Hunt was of much use to him as an adviser, and 
 Madox Brown frequently came in to inspect and control. 
 Rossetti, according to Mr. Hunt, displayed "unchecked 
 impatience at difficulties " ; and I can remember something 
 of this. A remonstrance from Hunt had a good effect, and 
 the young painter managed to curb himself somewhat. 
 " When he had once sat down," says Mr. Hunt, " and was 
 immersed in the effort to express his purpose, and the 
 difficulties had to be wrestled with, his tongue was hushed, 
 he remained fixed, and inattentive to all that went on about 
 him ; he rocked himself to and fro, and at times he moaned 
 lowly or hummed for a brief minute, as though telling off 
 some idea." He found time also for sitting to Hunt for the 
 head of Rienzi, and to Brown for that of the Fool of King 
 Lear in the picture (previously mentioned) of Cordelia watching 
 the Bedside of Lear. Both of these are good likenesses, and 
 must remain of the highest interest to sympathizers with 
 Rossetti as showing what he appeared in the birth-year of 
 Praeraphaelitism. Moreover he painted in oils a head of 
 Christina, which must thus be the very first finished painting 
 he produced. 
 
 Perhaps Rossetti had never been forestalled in representing 
 an ideal scene of the home-life of the Virgin Mary with her 
 parents ; certainly not in the particular invention which this 
 picture embodies. The Virgin, aged about seventeen, is 
 shown working at an embroidery under the eye of her mother 
 
THE PRyERAPHAELITE BROTHERHOOD. 143 
 
 St. Anna. The embroidery represents a lily, the emblem of 
 purity, which she copies from a plant watered by a child- 
 angel. The father St. Joachim l is behind, trailing up a vine. 
 The Holy Ghost, in the form of a dove, is also present. The 
 head of the Virgin was painted from Christina Rossetti, that 
 of St. Anna from our mother : both very faithful likenesses. 
 The vase containing the lily is mounted upon six large 
 volumes lettered with the names of virtues, Charity being 
 the uppermost. There are numerous other details, each with 
 a symbolic or spiritual meaning ; and I will venture to say 
 that every one of the meanings is well conceived and rightly 
 indicated. For the frame of the picture my brother had a 
 slip of gilt paper printed (I still possess a copy of it) con- 
 taining two sonnets of his composition — the first setting forth 
 the general purport of the work, and the second its individual 
 symbols. The sonnets have been reproduced elsewhere, and 
 with some reluctance I omit them here ; but may observe 
 that the leading conception of the picture is expressed in the 
 close of the second sonnet — 
 
 " She soon shall have achieved 
 Her perfect purity ; yea God the Lord 
 Shall soon vouchsafe His son to be her son." 
 
 This picture is painted in rather bright but not crude colours — 
 a love for the primary hues, so much affected by painters of 
 the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, being a very marked 
 trait in the practice of the Praeraphaelite Brotherhood at its 
 inception. The handling is delicate and finished, aiming at 
 nicety rather than strength, but it should hardly perhaps 
 be called timid ; the surface is rather thin. If I remember 
 right, the only medium used was copal, for the P.R.B.'s had 
 a horror of thick and cloggy vehicles. There is certainly not 
 the least bravura in the work, neither did its painter wish 
 that there should be any ; but it is very far from being 
 
 1 Mr. Bell Scott says " St. Joseph," and laughs at his being occupied 
 otherwise than as a carpenter; but, the personage being mis-stated, the 
 laugh is misapplied. 
 
144 DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI. 
 
 incompetent, and, considered as the first painting of a youth 
 of twenty, it may claim to be highly remarkable. There is 
 (or was) some gilding in the hair of the Virgin and in the 
 nimbus round the Dove. The forms are pure and simple, 
 but not ascetic, and of course with no sort of copyism from 
 archaic art. The point most approaching to rigidity is the 
 straight contour-line formed by Mary's legs, running parallel 
 to the embroidery-frame. This would have been improved 
 by some modification. 
 
 There are three sonnets by Rossetti which belong to the 
 early days of Praeraphaelitism, and which well deserve to be 
 considered by persons who would like to understand that 
 movement, and the temper in which Rossetti viewed it. 
 They now form a portion of The House of Life, and are 
 named collectively Old and New Art. The second and third — 
 bearing the titles Not as These, and The Husbandman — were 
 written in 1848 ; the first, St. Luke the Painter, in 1849 ; and 
 this was intended to illustrate a picture (never painted) of 
 Luke preaching, having beside him pictures, his own work, 
 of Christ and the Virgin Mary. These three sonnets testify 
 to a highly religious (not necessarily dogmatic) view of the 
 function of the Art, to love of the old painters, and revolt 
 against the more modern ones, and to a modest and yet 
 resolute desire to aid in reinstating the Art in its legitimate 
 place. The spirit which animates the sonnets is that of a 
 man destined to dare and do, and to overcome. 
 
 Another painting — his second oil portrait — was produced 
 by Dante Rossetti towards the close of 1848 — the likeness 
 of our father, half-length life-size, commissioned by Dante's 
 godfather Mr. Lyell. Both as a likeness and as a picture 
 this work is creditable and interesting, without being excellent. 
 
 XIV. 
 
 FIRST EXHIBITED PICTURE— 1849. 
 
 As this is a Memoir of Rossetti, and not a Monograph on the 
 Praeraphaelite Brotherhood, I shall not apply myself to 
 
FIRST EXHIBITED PICTURE — 1 849. 145 
 
 following out the course of the several members ; but will 
 only say that the three chief painters, Millais, Hunt, and 
 Rossetti, were ready with their pictures in time for the 
 Exhibiting-season of 1849. Millais and Hunt sent to the 
 Royal Academy, Rossetti to the so-called Free Exhibition 
 near Hyde Park Corner. This was the second year of that 
 Exhibition as a Picture Gallery. Its first year, 1848, had been 
 distinguished by the display of Madox Brown's highly 
 interesting and important painting, Wiclif reading his 
 Translation of the New Testament to John of Gaunt ; a 
 painting which, in its bright but rather pale colouring, light- 
 ness of surface, and general feeling of quietism, x had beyond a 
 doubt served in some respects to mould the ideas and beacon 
 the practice of the P.R.B.'s. The Free Exhibition was not 
 really free. The exhibiting artists had to pay for their space, 
 and a percentage upon sales, and the public had to pay for 
 admission. I suppose that it professed to be free on the 
 very ground that all artists were free to hang pictures there 
 if only they would pay for the space ; and I further suppose 
 that this was a principal incentive to my brother for betaking 
 himself to that gallery rather than the Royal Academy. Mr. 
 Brown's example (for he again exhibited here in 1849) must 
 also have influenced him. My brother was proud, and in his 
 way prudent as well ; and he must have contemplated with 
 revulsion the mere possibility of being rejected at the 
 Academy — an institution which (apart from any crudities 
 or peculiarities in his first picture) might perhaps view him 
 with some disfavour as having abandoned the Academy 
 course of instruction, and learned from an outsider how 
 to handle pigments and brushes. Next year, 1850, the 
 Free Exhibition quitted Hyde Park Corner, and went to 
 Regent Street near Langham Place, and was there entitled 
 the National Institution, or Portland Gallery. It continued 
 for some years, dying out towards 1855. The Girlhood oj 
 
 1 I have not seen this picture in late years ; have some idea that it was 
 re-worked upon, and strengthened in tint and tone. 
 
 VOL. I. 10 
 
146 DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI. 
 
 Mary Virgin was signed " Dante Gabriele Rossetti, P.R.B.," * 
 and the same initials appeared on the pictures of Millais and 
 Hunt, and also of Collinson. This year the initials passed 
 without exciting~any definite notice. 
 
 It is a fact that the paintings of our three Prasraphaelites 
 were well received by press and public, and Millais and Hunt 
 were more than tolerably well hung in the Academy. This 
 becomes a remarkable fact when we consider the storm of 
 disapprobation, rage, and contumely, which the pictures of 
 the same men — certainly showing an advance in pictorial 
 quality — encountered in the exhibitions of 1850. The reason 
 for this differing treatment is obvious enough, and not less 
 discreditable than obvious. In 1849 the pictures were judged 
 on their merits, as three independent productions of young 
 and promising men. In 1850 the initials P.R.B. were under- 
 stood ; the young men were discovered to be working on 
 a common principle, in antagonism more or less decided to 
 established rules and current reputations ; and the floodgates 
 of virulence were let loose, not because the pictures were 
 bad — they are now well known to be good — but because their 
 authors were regarded and detested as pestilent heretics. It 
 is a humiliating retrospect, but not for the P.R.B.'s. 
 
 The Free Exhibition opened at the end of March 1849, the 
 Academy of course at its usual date, the first Monday in 
 May ; and thus, of all the Praeraphaelites, Rossetti happened 
 to be the first to challenge a public verdict. As I have 
 already intimated, it proved a favourable one. I cannot say 
 how many papers criticized him. I have before me five 
 extracts, and possibly these — along with The Builder, which 
 was also laudatory — were all. They come from the Art 
 Journal, Literary Gazette, Morning Chronicle, Observer, and 
 Athenaeum. In all of them there is high praise, intermixed 
 with blame, more or less mild. Soon after that date I came 
 to know something of Art-critics, their ways and means ; and 
 
 1 So Mr. Sharp says. This seems to be the earliest instance in which 
 Rossetti used "Dante" as his first christian name. In the printed 
 Catalogue the name stands " G. D. Rossetti." 
 
FIRST EXHIBITED PICTURE — 1 849. 147 
 
 I can safely say that in my youth — I will go no further than 
 that — they knew, as a body of men, only a very moderate 
 proportion of what they talked about. But clearly Dante 
 Rossetti had no reason to complain at this period. The critics 
 were more than courteous to a youth as yet totally unknown. 
 I will give here the notice from the Athenaeum, being the 
 most elaborate of the five. In 1850 it was generally under- 
 stood by the Prseraphaelites — -and I believe correctly so — that 
 Mr. Frank Stone the painter was the Art-critic of the 
 Athenceum. He was then highly abusive. Whether he was 
 the same writer who had sounded a very different note in 
 1849 I do not profess to know. 
 
 " It is pleasant to turn from the mass of commonplace, the record 
 of mere fact or the extravagant conceits exhibited in the illustra- 
 tions of some of our most cherished writers, prose and poetic, to a 
 manifestation of true mental power, in which Art is made the 
 exponent of some high aim, and what is ' of the earth, earthy,' and 
 of the Art, material, is lost sight of in a dignified and intellectual 
 purpose. Such a work will be found here; not from a long- 
 practised hand, but from one young in experience, new to fame, 
 Mr. G. D. Rossetti. He has painted The Girlhood of Mary Virgin 
 (368) ; a work which, for its invention and for many parts of its 
 design, would be creditable to any exhibition. In idea it forms a 
 fitting pendent to Mr. Herbert's Christ subject to his Parents at 
 Nazareth. A legend may possibly have suggested to Mr. Rossetti 
 also the subject of his present work [I am sure this was not the 
 fact]. The Virgin is, in this picture, represented as living amongst 
 her family, and engaged in the task of embroidering drapery — to 
 supply possibly some future sacred vestment [no such intention]. 
 The picture, which is full of allegory, has much of that sacred 
 mysticism inseparable from the works of the early masters, and 
 much of the tone of the poets of the same time. While immature 
 practice is visible in the executive department of the work, every 
 allusion gives evidence of maturity of thought — every detail that 
 might enrich or amplify the subject has found a place in it. The 
 personification of the Virgin is an achievement worthy of an older 
 hand. Its spiritualized attributes, and the great sensibility with 
 which it is wrought, inspire the expectation that Mr. Rossetti will 
 
148 DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTT. 
 
 continue to pursue the lofty career which he has here so successfully 
 begun. The sincerity and earnestness of the picture remind us 
 forcibly of the feeling with which the early Florentine monastic 
 painters wrought ; and the form and face of the Virgin recall the 
 words employed by Savonarola in one of his powerful sermons : 
 'Or pensa quanta bellezza avea la Vergine, che aveatanta santita 
 che risplendeva in quella faccia della quale dice San Tommaso che 
 nessuno che la vedesse mai la guardb per concupiscenza, tanta era 
 la santita che rilustrava in lei.' Mr. Rossetti has, perhaps un- 
 knowingly, entered into the feelings of the renowned Dominican, 
 who in his day wrought as much reform in Art as in morals. The 
 coincidence is of high value to the picture." 
 
 The whole transaction with The Girlhood of Mary Virgin, 
 considered as a first picture, was a most encouraging success. 
 Rossetti hung it at his own discretion ; he was complimented 
 by the press ; his sonnets passed not unnoticed, Sir Theodore 
 Martin in especial being singularly struck by them ; and he 
 sold the painting promptly for his own price of £%o. The 
 purchaser was the Marchioness Dowager of Bath, in whose 
 family our aunt, Charlotte Polidori, was governess, and after- 
 wards companion. The Marchioness after a while presented 
 the picture to her daughter Lady Louisa Feilding. With this 
 lady the work remained until a recent date. Who the present 
 owner may be I know not. After getting it back from 
 the exhibition Dante painted a fresh head to the girl-angel. 
 By 25 August he despatched her purchase to Lady Bath. 
 Perhaps the best success of all was that, in 1864, receiving the 
 picture for re-framing, he found it to be " a long way better 
 than he thought." " It quite surprised me (and shamed me 
 a little) to see what I did fifteen years ago," is an expression 
 in one of his letters. 
 
 It has appeared to me no other than requisite to dwell at 
 some length on the early years of my brother — his family 
 surroundings, his beginnings in drawing and writing, his 
 sympathies for painters and authors, his studies, and the com- 
 mencement of his professional practice. We have now reached 
 the point where he is an exhibiting and well-accepted painter, 
 
THE GERM. 1 49 
 
 and a poet of considerable though as yet not public per- 
 formance. Were I to pursue with equal minuteness his 
 doings from year to year in art and in literature, I should 
 exceed the bounds which I contemplate — should perhaps 
 exceed any reasonable bounds. Many matters remain which 
 will require copious and free treatment ; but I do not propose 
 to turn this Memoir into an accurate — still less an exhaustive — 
 record of all the pictures and designs, and all the writings, 
 which he continued to produce from year to year. Some 
 things stand out as landmarks or milestones in his career, and 
 these will receive due consideration ; others will be- passed 
 over or summarized. Besides, I have already produced a 
 book, Dante Gabriel Rossetti as Designer and Writer} giving 
 in chronological order a great number of details, major and 
 minor, about his performances, their sales and purchasers, etc. 
 etc. ; and some readers of the present narrative, feeling any 
 interest in those particulars, can supplement, by reference to 
 that volume, anything which they may hold to be deficient 
 in this. My present scope is wider and more personal. The 
 things which Dante Rossetti produced will indeed be of 
 primary importance to it ; but rather as being a symptom 
 and outcome of his personality — a portion of his life — than as 
 forming my main subject-matter. 
 
 XV. 
 
 THE GERM. 
 
 If Dante Rossetti cannot rightly be credited (in derogation 
 of Hunt and Millais) with inventing the Praeraphaelite move- 
 ment and Brotherhood, a very significant enterprize, he 
 certainly can be credited with inventing The Germ. He was 
 eager to distinguish himself in literature, no less than painting, 
 and wanted to have some safe vehicle both for ushering his 
 writings before the public, and for diffusing abroad the Prasra- 
 phaelite principles in art. I feel pretty sure that at first every 
 
 1 Published by Cassell & Co., 1889. It is now out of print. 
 
150 DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI. 
 
 one of his colleagues regarded the enterprize as rash, costly, 
 foredoomed to failure, and an interruption to other more 
 pressing and less precarious work. But Rossetti was not to 
 be denied. The magazine was enacted in his mind ; it was to 
 be, and was to enlist the energies of all the P.R.B.'s, and of 
 some other persons as well. With varying degrees of reluct- 
 ance his friends yielded. As the project progressed, some of 
 them seem even to have yielded with willing assent. Among 
 these, Hunt, Woolner, and myself, may have stood foremost. 
 
 The " P.R.B. Diary" shall be my chief guide in relating the 
 history- of The Germ; several relevant details will be found 
 also in the Family-letters. The first entry which I find bearing 
 upon this subject is dated 13 July 1849, and runs as follows : — 
 
 " In the evening Gabriel and I went to Woolner's with the view of 
 seeing North (whom however we did not find at home) about a 
 project for a monthly sixpenny magazine, for which four or five of 
 us would write, and one make an etching — each subscribing a 
 guinea, and thus becoming a proprietor. [As to North — a very 
 familiar figure in those days with Woolner, Dante, and myself, but 
 scarcely so with the other P.R.B.'s — some particulars will be found 
 in my note to Letter C 8.] The full discussion of the subject is 
 fixed for to-morrow at Woolner's." 
 
 The title first thought of was Monthly Thoughts in Litera- 
 ture, Poetry, and Art; and it was immediately projected to 
 increase the magazine to forty pages, two etchings, and a 
 price of one shilling. On 23 September, being in the Isle of 
 Wight, I received a letter informing me that I was appointed 
 Editor, " as difficulties in keeping back the ardour of our new 
 proprietors [not all of them P.R.B.'s] began to rise up " ; and 
 a prospectus had been sent off to the printer's, with the title 
 altered to Thoughts towards Nature, which was Dante's idea. 
 Messrs. Aylott & Jones, of Paternoster Row, were selected 
 as publishers. Soon afterwards a different title was proposed, 
 The P.R.B. Journal; but to this I objected, partly on the 
 ground that some of the writers, and even of the proprietors, 
 
THE GERM. 1 51 
 
 would not belong to the Brotherhood. In November we 
 resolved to do no advertizing, owing to the expense. This 
 decision was almost, yet not absolutely, adhered to. There 
 was some small amount of ordinary advertizing ; and in May 
 placards were posted and carried about in front of the 
 Academy exhibition. 
 
 We now come to December, the month which was to be 
 devoted to the printing of our opening number, so that it 
 might appear at the close of that month, or the beginning 
 of January. On 17 December Rossetti resumed writing his 
 prose story Hand and Soul, for our No. 1 ; on the 21st he 
 was at it all day and all night, 1 and finished the nar- 
 rative — the epilogue remaining over till the following day. 
 Meanwhile, on the 19th, there had been a meeting of no 
 small moment to us at his studio — which was, since 10 October, 
 No. 72 Newman Street, the rent £26 per annum. We had 
 finally to decide upon the title of our magazine ; and the 
 company consisted not only of the seven members of the 
 Brotherhood, but also of the painters Madox Brown, Cave 
 Thomas, and Deverell, the sculptor Hancock, and two 
 brothers Tupper. One of these, George, was a partner in 
 the Firm which had undertaken to print the magazine. The 
 other, John Lucas, who had been an Academy-student well 
 known to Hunt, and aiming at sculpture rather than painting ) 
 was now Anatomical Designer at Guy's Hospital, and later 
 on he became Drawing-master at Rugby School, where he 
 died in 1879 — a very capable conscientious man, quite as 
 earnest after truth in form and presentment as any P.R.B., 
 learned in his department of art, and with a real gift for 
 poetry, which received partial expression, and as yet, it may 
 be feared, next to no recognition. 2 The title Thoughts towards 
 
 1 So stated in the P.R.B. Diary; Dante Rossetti, in my Section 43, gives 
 a slightly different account. 
 
 2 I believe he has left a large quantity of unprinted verse and prose. 
 Some of it ought to be published. He issued anonymously a noticeable 
 book, 1869, entitled Hiatus, the Void in Modem Education, by Outis 
 There was a little lyric of Tupper's on the Garden of Eden in ruinous 
 
152 DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI. 
 
 Nature was not viewed with much predilection. Mr. Cave 
 Thomas had some while before proposed The Seed] and he 
 now offered (with others) two new names, The Scroll, and 
 The Germ. The last was ultimately approved by a vote of 
 six to four. 
 
 The Germ No. I appeared on or about I January 1850. 
 I do not propose to go minutely into the contents of the 
 magazine — still less into its merits and demerits ; but, as 
 regards No. 1, I may perhaps as well recite the full contents. 
 No authors' names were here given (a point contrary to my 
 liking) ; but in subsequent numbers some names, and also 
 some pseudonyms, were supplied on the wrappers. No. 1 
 opens with Woolner's poem My Beautiful Lady, and Of my 
 Lady in Death, accompanied by an etching by Hunt, con- 
 sisting of two separate compositions. Then come — The Love 
 of Beauty, sonnet, by Madox Brown ; The Subject in Art, 
 No. 1, by J. L. Tupper ; The Seasons, by Coventry Patmore 
 (known first to Woolner, and by this time to most of us) ; 
 Dreamland, by Christina Rossetti ; My Sister's Sleep (being 
 No. 1 of Songs of one Household), by Dante Rossetti ; Hand 
 and Soul, by the same ; a Review, by myself, of Clough's 
 poem, The Bothie of Toper na Fuosich ( Toper-na- Vuolich in 
 later issues) ; Her First Season, sonnet, also by myself; A 
 Sketch from Nature, by J. L. Tupper ; and An End, by 
 Christina Rossetti. On the first page of the wrapper was 
 a sonnet, my performance, intended to indicate the point 
 of view from which the Prseraphaelites contemplated the 
 expression of ideas, and the record of appearances, whether 
 in literature or in art. The last page contained a slight pro- 
 gramme of what the nature of the contents of the magazine 
 generally would be. I cannot say that it is effectively done, 
 nor do I now remember who did it. I incline to think that 
 Dante Rossetti made the first draft, which, being freely over- 
 decay, of which Dante Rossetti thought very highly. He compared it to 
 Ebenezer Jones's lyric, " When the world is burning" ; and said that, had 
 it been the writing of Edgar Poe, it would have enjoyed world-wide 
 celebrity. 
 
THE GERM. I 53 
 
 hauled by others, got muddled more or less. It contains the 
 following deliverance regarding Fine Art — a deliverance 
 which shows to a certain extent the principle of the P.R.B., 
 but in a very meagre and stunted condition : — 
 
 "The endeavour held in view throughout the writings on Art will 
 be to encourage and enforce an entire adherence to the simplicity 
 of Nature ; and also to direct attention, as an auxiliary medium, to 
 the comparatively few works which Art has yet produced in this 
 spirit." 
 
 A different programme — which was not however much 
 more than a topsy-turvy of the original one — appeared on 
 the wrappers of Nos. 3 and 4, which were less directly under 
 the control of myself as editor, or of the other members of 
 the Brotherhood. 
 
 The issue of No. 1 of The Germ was 700 copies, for No. 2 
 only 500. About 100 of No. 1 were sold by the publishers, 
 besides nearly or quite as many through our own exertions 
 among friends and sympathizers ; No. 2 went off even less 
 well than this. There was a' fancy in our circle for speaking 
 of the magazine as " The Gurm." I am not quite sure how 
 this originated, but believe that some outsider, seeing the 
 magazine in a shop, and not realizing to himself what the 
 title meant, asked for it in that form of pronunciation. For 
 Nos. 3 and 4, which were brought out at the risk of our 
 friendly printing-firm, a new title, Art and Poetry, was in- 
 vented by a member of the firm, Mr. Alexander Tupper. I 
 hardly know how these numbers sold, but am sure it was very 
 little. With No. 4, issued towards the close of April 1850, 
 the magazine came to an end. If not before, it was behind, 
 its time. There were some laudatory notices of the various 
 parts — in The Dispatch, John Bull, The Guardian, The Critic, 
 Howitt's Standard of Freedom ; a faintly patronizing one in 
 the Art Journal, which disappointed us, as the editor, Mr. S. 
 Carter Hall (whom Madox Brown was wont to call " Shirt- 
 Collar Hall," as designating the high respectability of his 
 exterior) had previously written to one of us speaking of our 
 
154 DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI. 
 
 band as " the future great artists of the age and country " ; 
 others in The Morning Chronicle, The Spectator, and else- 
 where. After balancing receipts and expenditure, we had to 
 meet a printer's bill of ,£33 odd. This seems now a very 
 moderate burden ; but it was none the less a troublesome one 
 to all or most of us at that period. In course of time it was 
 cleared off, with the result — perhaps a salutary one — that 
 none of us ever again made any proposal for publishing a 
 magazine. For many years past The Germ has been a 
 literary curiosity, fetching high fancy-prices ; and more 
 publishers than one have made proposals for re-printing it, 
 but, owing to the dissent of one or other contributor, these 
 proposals have had to be set aside. Even a single contribu- 
 tion to The Germ — the Hand and Soul of Dante Rossetti, as 
 privately re-printed towards 1869 — has been priced at no less 
 than six guineas. 
 
 I will add here a couple of anecdotes about Hand and Soul, 
 which is, from all points of" view, a very interesting specimen 
 of my brother's early work. The motto on my title-page is 
 taken from it, and seems to me very appropriate, both to my 
 brother's intrinsic quality as painter and poet, and to the 
 material of these volumes. Readers of this tale may 
 remember that it relates to a supposed Italian painter of the 
 thirteenth century, Chiaro dell' Erma, who in 1239 saw his 
 own soul in a visible female form, and painted her ; a matter, 
 by the way, which shows that Rossetti's knowledge of art- 
 history was at this period extremely slight (unless indeed he 
 voluntarily chose to go wrong, in the interest of his idea for 
 the story), as it is totally impossible that, at so remote a date 
 as 1239, any painter whatever should have produced a work 
 at all corresponding with the details given concerning this 
 picture. The Epilogue to the tale is written in a highly 
 realistic tone, and contains many particulars about the picture, 
 purporting for instance that it is to be found in the Pitti 
 Gallery of Florence (had Rossetti known more about the 
 likelihoods of such a case, he would have substituted the 
 Accademia). There was a young lady of some fortune in 
 
THE GERM. I 55 
 
 Worcestershire — Kidderminster, I think — who became the 
 first wife of the landscape-painter Mr. Andrew McCallum ; 
 one of the prettiest and pleasantest little women I ever saw, 
 with a most beaming splendid pair of eyes. She read Hand 
 and Soul in The Germ, admired it, and believed it to be 
 substantially true. Either before or after her marriage she 
 was in Florence, and enquired at the Pitti for this picture, 
 and was grievously disconcerted to find that nobody knew 
 anything about it. In Mr. Sharp's book there is a story of 
 some other lady who, at a much later date, professed to 
 Rossetti that she had actually seen the picture at the Pitti, 
 adding other relevant but not rigidly veracious details. This 
 story also may be true ; but I know (or at any rate remember) 
 nothing about it, whereas I do know the story about Mrs. 
 McCallum to be correct. My second anecdote relates to an 
 etching which my brother undertook to do for The Germ. 
 It has been more than once stated in print that this etching 
 was to illustrate a different tale which he began writing, 
 called An Autopsy chology, suggested to him by an image of 
 his own introduced into his poem The Brides Prelude. The 
 tale was not finished, but its beginning appears in his 
 Collected Works, under the title St. Agnes of Intercession. 
 The fact is that Millais offered to do for The Germ an etching 
 for The AutopsycJiology ; and he did it, and prints from the 
 etching are still in existence. But the etching which Dante 
 contemplated was for Hand and Soul, to be published in a 
 number of The Germ later than that in which the tale itself 
 had appeared. This etching — representing Chiaro in the act 
 of painting his Soul — he drew in March 1850, and he got it 
 bitten-in by Mr. Shenton the engraver ; but, upon seeing a 
 print of it on 28 March, he was so displeased with the result 
 that, in his vehement mood, he tore up the impression, and 
 scratched the plate over. I hardly think that I ever saw the 
 design ; would gladly do so now, were that but possible. 
 
 Though I do not want to dwell at any further length upon 
 The Germ, I will specify the contributions of Dante Rossetti 
 to Nos. 2, 3, and 4. They are — The Blessed Damozel, The 
 
156 DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTl. 
 
 Carillon, From the Cliffs — Noon, Pax Vobis, and six Somiets 
 for Pictures (Memling, Mantegna, Giorgione, and Ingres). 1 
 The Blessed Damosel, as I have said, had been written in his 
 nineteenth year. Of that first form of the poem no copy 
 appears to be now extant. Before printing it in The Germ 
 he added four stanzas. I might make some guess as to 
 which they are ; but it would only be a guess, and it shall 
 not here trouble my readers. 
 
 Perhaps some of them might be amused to hear the dirge 
 of The Germ, as it was chanted at the time by Mr. John 
 Tupper. 
 
 " Dedicated to the P.R.B. on the Death of ' The Germ,' otherwise 
 known as ' Art and Poetry.' 
 
 " Bring leaves of yew to intertwine 
 
 With ' leaves ' that evermore are dead, 
 Those leaves as pallid-hued as you 
 
 Who wrote them never to be read : 
 
 And let them hang across a thread 
 Of funeral-hemp, that, hanging so, 
 Made vocal if a wind should blow, 
 
 Their requiem shall be anthemed. 
 
 " Ah rest, dead leaves ! — Ye cannot rest 
 
 Now ye are in your second state ; 
 
 Your first was rest so perfect, fate 
 Denies you what ye then possessed. 
 For you, was not a world of strife, 
 
 And seldom were ye seen of men : 
 If death be the reverse of life, 
 
 You never will have peace again. 
 
 " Come, Early Christians, bring a knife, 
 
 And cut these woful pages down : 
 
 Ye would not have them haunt the town 
 Where butter or where cheese is rife ! 
 
 No, make them in a foolscap-crown 
 For all whose inexperience utter 
 
 Believes High Art can once go down 
 Without considerable butter. 
 
 1 Mr. W. M. Hardinge published, in Temple Bar, a very suggestive 
 article on these sonnets. 
 
PAINTINGS AND WRITINGS, 1 849— 53. I 57 
 
 " Or cut them into little squares 
 
 To curl the long locks of those Brothers 
 
 Prseraphaelite who have long hairs — 
 
 Tremendous long, compared with others. 1 
 
 As dust should still return to dust, 
 The P.R.B. shall say its prayers 
 That come it will or come it must — a 
 
 " A time Sordello shall be read, 
 
 And arguments be clean abolished, 
 And sculpture punched upon the head, 
 
 And mathematics quite demolished ; 
 And Art and Poetry instead 
 
 Come out without a word of prose in, 
 And all who paint as Sloshua did 
 
 Have all their sloshy fingers frozen." 3 
 
 XVI. 
 PAINTINGS AND WRITINGS, 1849—53. 
 
 From the early autumn of 1849 to the late spring of 1850 
 was a busy time with Dante Rossetti. Besides all the 
 eagerness of planning and the flurry of working for The 
 Germ, there was his small continental trip with Holman 
 Hunt in the autumn, along with the production of a new 
 picture for exhibition. Of the continental trip his Family- 
 letters bear ample record in prose and verse. It was a 
 
 1 This, I suppose, is a hit at my brother and Stephens, rather than 
 other members of the P.R.B. The after reference to abolishing arguments 
 and mathematics, and disliking sculpture, would also relate principally to 
 my brother. He did not really dislike sculpture, but he much preferred 
 painting. 
 
 2 A line seems to be wanting in this stanza. I am copying from a 
 transcript made at the time by myself, but I don't think the oversight 
 can be mine. 
 
 3 I have noted elsewhere that "slosh" was a term much in vogue with 
 the Praeraphaelites in their early days, to indicate a hasty, washy, in- 
 determinate manner in painting, neglectful of severe form and accurate 
 detail, and lavish of unctuous vehicle. "Sloshua" was Sir Joshua 
 Reynolds (!) 
 
I 58 DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI. 
 
 valuable experience to him, but not one which he unreservedly- 
 enjoyed. He liked England and the English better than 
 any other country and nation ; and he never crossed the sea 
 without severe discomfort, or contemplated the crossing of 
 it without repulsion. The few acquaintances that he made 
 abroad played no part in his after-life. Strange to say, this 
 small trip to Paris and Belgium was the longest, in point of 
 duration and space combined, that he ever undertook. 
 
 I shall give here a brief account of the painting and design- 
 ing work of Rossetti between the date in 1849 when he 
 exhibited his first picture, and the date in 1854, 13 April, 
 when Mr. Ruskin became personally known to him ; followed 
 by a similar summary of his writing-work between the same 
 dates. I name both in order of time as nearly as I can. 
 
 There was the beginning of a large oil-picture, with 
 numerous figures, from a song in Browning's dramatic poem 
 Pippa Passes, entitled Hist, said Kate the Queen. It was not 
 finished, but a water-colour of the full composition exists. 
 A pen-and-ink drawing, 1849, given to Millais, of Dante 
 drawing an Angel in Memory of Beatrice — quite a different 
 design from the subsequent water-colour, 1853, of the same 
 subject. This pen-and-ink drawing is perhaps more decidedly 
 marked by the " Prasraphaelite " peculiarities of that date 
 than anything else which Rossetti produced ; it is likewise 
 his earliest subject taken from the Vita Nuova, to which he 
 so frequently recurred afterwards. The Laboratory (from 
 Browning's poem), which may be called his first water-colour. 
 The pen-and-ink design Hesterna Rosa, with a motto from 
 a song in Henry Taylor's Philip van Artevelde. The oil- 
 picture, his second exhibited work, Ecce Ancilla Domini (or 
 The Annunciation), now in the National Gallery. The land- 
 scape of trees etc. which he painted at Sevenoaks, while 
 Mr. Hunt was in the same neighbourhood, in the very rainy 
 autumn of 1850. I cannot recollect what was to have been 
 the subject of this oil-picture. Long afterwards, 1872, he 
 completed it under the title of The Bower-meadow. A water- 
 colour, Beatrice at a Marriage-feast denies Dante her Salutation, 
 
PAINTINGS AND WRITINGS, 1 849 — 53. I 59 
 
 exhibited. The pen-and-ink design, How they met Themselves 
 — a lover and his lady encountering their own wraiths in a 
 forest, an incident ominous of approaching death. A crayon 
 portrait of William Bell Scott. An exhibited water-colour, 
 Giotto painting the Portrait of Dante. The scene, water- 
 colour, from Dante's Purgatorio, where Beatrice says, " Guar- 
 dami ben, ben son ben son Beatrice " He repeated this 
 subject more than once, but always, I think, in varying 
 compositions. A very interesting attempt at the beginning 
 of 1853, not long persisted in, being an oil-picture in two 
 compartments, life-sized half-figures, representing Dante's 
 resolve to write the Comedia in memory of Beatrice. A 
 pencil-head of Holman Hunt. The elaborate pen-and-ink 
 design (begun in 1853, but not finished till 1858) of Mary 
 Magdalene at the Door of Simon the Pharisee. The beginning 
 of the oil-picture named Found. 
 
 These are the chief, but by no means the only, products 
 of the years of which we are speaking. They show a con- 
 siderable range in choice of subject and mode of treatment. 
 Regarding execution, it may be said in general terms that 
 Rossetti continued to progress, both in force and in facility, 
 but did not evince any great disposition for attaining strenuous 
 mastery in draughtsmanship, or resource in the management 
 of perspective, or of architectural or landscape accessory. 
 As to draughtsmanship of human and animal form, he of 
 course always recognized the high importance of this, whether 
 he fully achieved it or not. But for the other matters he 
 retained till the last a large measure of personal indifference, 
 though necessarily conscious — none more so — that these also 
 are required in order to make a picture conformable to the 
 modern standard. The fact is that he preferred the tone of 
 mind which governed the treatment of such elements of the 
 subject in Olden art. That they should convey their message 
 in a suggestive way he thought fully requisite ; that they 
 should be rigorously realized by scientific rule or naturalistic 
 presentment he did not care ; and, if under a system of that 
 sort they usurped the place of the main idea or of human 
 
l60 DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI. 
 
 emotion and expressional force, he wished them well away. 
 I do not aver that he was right in this view — the reader 
 may judge for himself — but only that his view it assuredly 
 was. 
 
 As to five of these works I may add a few details. 
 
 For Ecce Ancilla Domini Rossetti began a sketch on 25 
 October 1849. To supplement this picture of the Annuncia- 
 tion he intended to execute a companion-subject, the Death of 
 the Virgin. The latter he never even began, having come to 
 the conclusion that such themes were " not for the market." 
 Both pictures were to be chiefly white in hue. For the 
 Annunciation — " The Virgin," so he told me, " is to be in bed, 
 but without any bedclothes on, an arrangement which may 
 be justified in consideration of the hot climate ; and the 
 Angel Gabriel is to be presenting a lily to her." This last 
 point connects the picture with The GirlJwod of Mary Virgin ; 
 and the remark as to bedclothes testifies that, even in so ideal 
 a subject as this, Rossetti was not unheedful of the Prae- 
 raphaelite doctrine that the treatment should be consistent 
 with probable facts. More persons than one sat for the head 
 of the Angel — two models named Maitland and Lambert, and 
 myself, at any rate ; for the Virgin's head, Christina, and also 
 a Miss Love, who was I suppose a model. The head 
 resembles Christina sufficiently to be accounted a likeness, 
 but it is less like her than the head in The Girlhood of Mary 
 Virgin. Rossetti had all along purposed sending this picture 
 to the Royal Academy ; but at the last moment he altered 
 his mind, and recurred to the National Institution (Free 
 Exhibition). Its price was .£50, but it remained unsold until 
 the opening of 1853 ; when Mr. Francis McCracken, a ship- 
 owner or packing-agent of Belfast, prompted by a friendly 
 suggestion from Holman Hunt (from whom and from Madox 
 Brown he had already bought some works), became the 
 purchaser. At the end of 1850, on receiving the picture back 
 from the National Institution, my brother again worked upon 
 it, improving it materially by showing the Angel's left hand — 
 for at first the Angel, like the Virgin herself, had only one 
 
PAINTINGS AND WRITINGS, 1 849— 53. 161 
 
 hand visible. He did some further work when Mr. McCracken 
 settled to buy the picture ; and to him he despatched it on 
 29 January 1853, altering the Latin title into The Annunciation, 
 as a precaution against any charges (then equally rife and 
 gratuitous) of " popery." " The blessed white eyesore " and 
 " the blessed white daub " had come to be his terms for this 
 now national possession, so long left on his hands. But his 
 real sentiment on a question of art-work may have received 
 truer expression in one of his Family-letters (September 1853) 
 — " I shall never, I suppose, get over the weakness of making 
 a thing as good as I can manage." Even as late as 1874 
 something was again done to the " white daub," but I think 
 very little. He wrote : " It is best left alone, except just for 
 a touch or two. Indeed, my impression on seeing it was that 
 I couldn't do quite so well now ! " 
 
 I have already referred to the very different reception which 
 the Praeraphaelite pictures of 1850 encountered from artists, 
 press, and public, from that which had been accorded to the 
 works of 1849. The pictures were still signed " P.R.B. " ; and 
 my brother had explained to his friend the sculptor Alexander 
 Munro the meaning of those mysterious initials, which were 
 not intended to be unduly pressed upon the attention of 
 Academicians. Munro, a man of easy access to all sorts of 
 people, divulged the matter to a brother-Scotchman, Angus 
 Reach, 1 who was a light writer of those days ; and the latter 
 published it in the Illustrated London News. Hence much of 
 the fluster, and much of the virulence. When Ecce Ancilla 
 Domini appeared in the National Institution, prior to the 
 opening of the Royal Academy, the Athenmim came down 
 upon it on 20 April, in the following terms — and even these 
 
 1 I need scarcely say that I bear no sort of grudge against Mr. Reach, 
 who died a great number of years ago ; but, to give my reader a moment's 
 amusement, I will here retail a joke of Douglas Jerrold's which had, so far as 
 I know, not yet got into print. Reach is a Gaelic name, properly pronounced 
 as a dissyllable, Ree-ach ; but naturally Londoners were wont to read it 
 as a monosyllable, Reech. Jerrold, being admonished to pronounce the 
 name accurately, rejoined — " He is Ree-ach if you hear him, but Reech 
 [retch, spue] if you read him." 
 
 VOL. I. II 
 
l62 DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI. 
 
 were mild in comparison with what befell the Christian 
 Missionary persecuted by the Druids of Holman Hunt, and 
 the so-called Carpenter's Shop of Millais : — 
 
 " But what shall we say of a work hanging by the side of Mr. 
 Newenham's historical picture — which we notice less for its merits 
 than as an example of the perversion of talent which has recently 
 been making so much way in our school of art, and wasting the 
 energies of some of our most promising aspirants ? We allude to 
 the Ecce Ancilla Domini of Mr. D. G. Rossetti (225). Here a 
 certain amount of talent is distorted from its legitimate course by a 
 prominent crotchet. Ignoring all that has made the art great in the 
 works of the greatest masters, the school to which Mr. Rossetti 
 belongs would begin the work anew, and accompany the faltering 
 steps of its earliest explorers. This is archaeology turned from its 
 legitimate uses, and made into a mere pedant. Setting at nought all 
 the advanced principles of light and shade, colour, and composition, 
 these men, professing to look only to Nature in its truth and sim- 
 plicity, are the slavish imitators of artistic inefficiency. Granted 
 that in these early masters there is occasionally to be seen all that 
 is claimed for them of divine expression and sentiment, accompanied 
 by an earnestness and devotion of purpose which preserved their 
 productions from oblivion — are such qualities inconsistent with all 
 subsequent progress in historical excellence, or do these crotchet- 
 mongers propose that the art should begin and end there? The 
 world will not be led to that deduction by such puerilities as the one 
 before us ; which, with the affectation of having done a great thing, 
 is weakness itself. An unintelligent imitation of the mere tech- 
 nicalities of old art — golden glories, fanciful scribblings on the 
 frames, and other infantine absurdities — constitutes all its claim. A 
 certain expression in the eyes of the ill-drawn face of the Virgin 
 affords a gleam of something high in intention, but it is still not the 
 true inspiration. The face of the Angel is insipidity itself. One 
 arm of the Virgin is well drawn, and there is careful though timid 
 workmanship in the inferior and accessorial part of the work, but 
 this is, in many places, where it would have been better left out. 
 Yet with this we have exhausted all the praise due, in our opinion, to 
 a work evidently thrust by the artist into the eye of the spectator 
 more with the presumption of a teacher than in the modesty of a 
 hopeful and true aspiration after excellence." 
 
PAINTINGS AND WRITINGS, 1 849— 53. 1 63 
 
 It is a pity that the authorities of the National Gallery 
 have not yet seen their way to purchasing " Mr. Newenham's 
 historical picture" (which represented The Princes in the 
 Tower) ; the British public would then have the opportunity 
 of realizing to themselves its marked superiority over Ecce 
 Ancilla Domini. — The Times wrote in a tone partially resem- 
 bling that of the Athenceum, but on the whole agreeable, 
 recognizing the picture as " the work of a poet." 
 
 There is a little anecdote of this year which has never, I 
 believe, been recorded, but which I understand to be indis- 
 putably true. About the time of the opening of the Academy- 
 exhibition the Duke of Connaught had been born, and Queen 
 Victoria could not visit the gallery ; but, noticing all the 
 hullaballoo in the newspapers about Millais's Carpenter's 
 Shop, she required to have the picture sent to the Palace for 
 her inspection. Whether Her Majesty liked it or not I have 
 no idea. 
 
 As for the other four works which I have specified, the 
 water-colour of Giotto painting the Portrait of Dante is in 
 itself a noticeably complete invention, illustrating Dante's 
 relation to painting and to poetry, present and future, and his 
 love for Beatrice. But it was intended to be only the centre 
 in a triptych, one wing representing Dante, as Priore in 
 Florence, banishing the chiefs of both contending factions, 
 and the other wing the exiled Dante and the Jester at the 
 Court of Can Grande della Scala (the incident introduced 
 into Rossetti's poem Dante in Verona}. Rightly executed, 
 this picture would have been his greatest work. The pencil 
 head of Holman Hunt was done on 12 April 1853, when the 
 Praeraphaelites met together at Millais's house to produce 
 portraits of one another, to be presented to their absent 
 brother Woolner, who in July 1852 had gone to Australia; 
 Millais doing Stephens and myself, and Hunt doing Millais 
 and Dante Rossetti (I now possess the last). The design of 
 Mary Magdalene was begun as a large picture towards i860. 
 This proceeded not very far, and was ultimately laid aside for 
 good, nor do I know what became of the painted com- 
 
164 DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI. 
 
 mencement. A moderate-sized oil-sketch was completed 
 about a year later. The oil-picture Found was a source of 
 lifelong vexation to my brother, and to the gentlemen — some 
 three or four in succession — who commissioned him to finish 
 it. This work was nearly completed, but not quite, towards 
 the close of Rossetti's life. An oil-monochrome, produced in 
 May 1879, and showing the full composition, is extant. So 
 far as the painting is concerned I will not here enter into 
 further detail, but may spare a few words to a question 
 often mooted — whether Rossetti did or did not take the 
 subject of the picture from Mr. Bell Scott's poem of Rosabell. 
 The facts are these. 
 
 Scott's poem relates to a country-girl, Rosabell (afterwards 
 named Mary Anne), who, having gone to town as a milliner's 
 assistant, becomes the mistress of a gentleman, Archer, and 
 afterwards of another gentleman, Thorn, who supplies her 
 with every luxury. Eventually he leaves her, and she goes 
 from bad to worse, and dies a human wreck in a hospital. 
 Before Thorn had left her, and therefore while she was still 
 in high prosperity, her old rustic lover saw her. This scene is 
 not introduced into the poem at all, but it is hinted at in an 
 interview which the lover has with Rosabell's parents. One 
 may surmise that the young man saw her flaunting in the 
 Park or some such place, and did not so much as speak 
 to or accost her. Now what does Rossetti's picture repre- 
 sent ? It represents a rustic lover, a drover, who finds his 
 old sweetheart at a low depth of degradation, both from vice 
 and from penury, in the streets of London. He endeavours to 
 lift her as she crouches on the pavement. This is an incident 
 wholly diverse from Scott's incident. It may be said — If 
 Rossetti had never read Scott's poem, he would not have 
 thought of any such subject for his own picture. This may 
 or may not be correct — I see no reason for thinking it correct ; 
 but at all events he has not taken his subject out of Rosabell. 
 Mr. Scott's account of this matter, in his Autobiographical 
 Notes, is highly inaccurate. He thinks that Rossetti trifled 
 with him in June 1853 (the date of my brother's first visit to 
 
PAINTINGS AND WRITINGS, 1849 — 53. 165 
 
 Mr. Scott in Newcastle) by professing an intention of there- 
 after painting this subject as coming from Rosabell (which it 
 does not) ; whereas (says Scott) he had already begun the 
 picture, and had already painted the drover's cart and calf. 
 The truth is that he had not then begun the picture, and did 
 not paint the cart and calf until the end of 1854 ; but he had, 
 I fancy, designed the subject towards 1852, if not earlier. 
 To sum up — Rossetti did not borrow his subject from Scott, 
 and did not mislead Scott as to any details pertaining to the 
 subject or the picture. 
 
 I was referring just now to the departure of Mr. Woolner 
 to Australia in July 1852, and to the meeting of his Prsera- 
 phaelite Brothers, in April 1853, to draw portraits of one 
 another as a gift to him. Intermediate between these dates 
 was a sonnet addressed by Dante Rossetti to Woolner. It 
 has never yet been published, but deserves to find a place 
 among his poems, and I give it here. 
 
 TO THOMAS WOOLNER. 
 First Snow, 9 February 1853. 
 
 Woolner, to-night it snows for the first time. 
 
 Our feet know well the path where in this snow 
 Mine leave one track : how all the ways we know 
 
 Are hoary in the long-unwonted rime ! 
 
 Grey as their ghosts which now in your new clime 
 Must haunt you while those singing spirits reap 
 All night the fields of hospitable sleep — 
 
 Whose song, past the whole sea, finds counter-chime. 
 
 Can the year change, and I not think of thee, 
 With whom so many changes of the year 
 
 So many years were watched — our love's degree 
 
 Alone the same ? Ah still for thee and me, 
 Winter or summer, Woolner, here or there, 
 
 One grief, one joy, one loss, one victory. 
 
 I find in Mrs. Wood's book a statement on another point, 
 not better founded (so far as I am aware) than Mr. Scott's 
 allegation. She says that Rossetti seceded from " sacred art " 
 because he was repelled by the morbid character of a picture 
 
1 66 DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI. 
 
 of religious bearing by James Collinson, St. Elizabeth of 
 Hungary. I do not know from whom Mrs. Wood derived 
 this information, nor have I the least recollection of any such 
 fact. My impression is that the prolonged lack of any 
 purchaser for the Annunciation picture had much more to do 
 \vith his resolve. 
 
 A letter from Rossetti, dated 24 February 1854, and 
 printed by Mr. Scott, is of some interest as showing a certain 
 cohesion between the Praeraphaelite Brothers at that compara- 
 tively late time. Millais is here mentioned as the prime 
 mover in a plan — which never came to anything — to get up 
 a sketching-club on much the same system as that of the 
 long-defunct Cyclographic Society. There were to be four 
 Praeraphaelite members — Millais himself, Hunt, Stephens, 
 and Rossetti ; also their close allies — Madox Brown, Charles 
 Collins, Scott, Arthur Hughes, and Munro. In addition to 
 these came the landscape-painters, Mark Anthony (a fine 
 genius, not adequately valued now), Inchbold, and Carrick ; 
 the renowned designers Leech and Richard Doyle ; the 
 excellent animal-painter Wolf ; the painter-amateur Michael 
 Halliday ; and two ladies, the Marchioness of Waterford and 
 the Honourable Mrs. Boyle (known as E.V.B.). I was to be 
 secretary. " The two ladies " — said Rossetti, and with good 
 reason — " are both great in design." 
 
 The writings of most importance belonging to this period 
 are — The Bride's Prelude, Dante at Verona, A Last Con- 
 fession, Jenny, Dennis Sband (a ballad of a rather light kind, 
 not published), The Burden of Nineveh, Stratton Water, 
 Wellington's Funeral, The Staff and Scrip, Sister Helen. 
 Some of these however were not finished so early as the 
 beginning of 1854. For instance, Jenny appears to have 
 reached substantial completion about 1858, and something 
 further was done to the poem in 1869, soon before its 
 publication. Sister Helen, which may have been written in 
 185 1 or early in 1852, was first printed in a Magazine — 
 German, with an English issue supervised by Mrs. Mary 
 Howitt, whom Rossetti now knew well — named The Dussel- 
 
PAINTINGS AND WRITINGS, 1 849 — 53. 167 
 
 dorf Artists' Annual — I believe, the Part for 1854. It 
 appeared with the initials H.H.H. (the letters stamped upon 
 lead pencils of exceptional hardness), because, as once jotted 
 down by Rossetti, " people used to say that my style was 
 hard " — surely a stricture which does not come very near 
 the mark, and has not been confirmed by a later generation 
 of readers. Dr. Gordon Hake the poet has termed Sister 
 Helen " the strongest emotional poem as yet in the language." 
 The sonnet Known in Vain 
 
 ("As two whose love, first foolish, widening scope") 
 
 was written in January 1853, and presents the conception 
 (to repeat my own words used elsewhere) " of a man who 
 in youth has been feeble in will, indolent and scattered, 
 but who, when too late, wakes up to the duty and the 
 privileges of work." This must be more or less autobio- 
 graphical. It may be as well to say here that my brother 
 was, in the years of his studentship and first practice as 
 a painter, very much what is defined by the word " de- 
 sultory" (a word which figures in this very sonnet); partly 
 because he disliked routine-work and plodding application, 
 and partly because he was divided between literary and 
 pictorial interests, and often wanted to write when, to all 
 appearance, he ought to have been drawing. I say " to all 
 appearance," because it is now only reasonable to admit that 
 in the long run his readings and writings in these early years 
 proved to be of no less import in his career than drawing- 
 work could have been. This state of things was irritating to 
 our invalided and anxious father, who every now and then 
 found occasion to reprehend Dante sharply, and even se- 
 verely ; and to reprehension my brother was at all times more 
 than sufficiently stubborn. These rifts in cordial family- 
 affection were always distressing when they occurred, though 
 they soon healed over again. My brother, more than our 
 father, was in the wrong ; yet not so much in the wrong as 
 at first sight he seemed. He grieved over the matter of our 
 father's displeasure to his dying day. 
 
168 DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI. 
 
 Among letters addressed by Rossetti to Madox Brown, 
 the latest which bears the cipher P.R.B. on the envelope is 
 dated before March 1853. It has been stated that in this 
 same year he first definitely decided to adhere to painting as 
 his profession, to the comparative neglect of poetry. Perhaps 
 it was before this, for the phrase " I have abandoned poetry " 
 appears in a Family-letter dated 13 August 1852. An 
 article in the Atliencsum, 15 September 1894, mentions the 
 fact that at one time he was near to undertaking the work 
 of Telegraphy on the North- Western Railway, owing to his 
 indifferent prospects, some while after the Praeraphaelite 
 movement began, of making a subsistence as a painter. This, 
 which I had never previously seen stated in print, is correct. 
 I do not remember much in detail about the matter, nor the 
 exact date, which, but for the statement about Praeraphaeli- 
 tism, I should have fixed in a still earlier year. Perhaps it 
 was in 1 851, or the later part of 1850, when the want of any 
 customer for the " white daub " was becoming irksome. If so, 
 it is curious that the very same picture which first represented 
 Rossetti in the National Gallery had gone nigh to ousting 
 him from the profession. Of course the very straitened 
 money-condition of the family generally was the main con- 
 sideration. In 1 85 1 there was our father incapacitated; our 
 mother and Christina fagging over an unremunerative attempt 
 at a day-school ; Maria giving lessons in Italian etc., at two 
 or three houses ; myself with a small salary in the Excise- 
 office, and another smaller stipend from the Spectator. I 
 can recollect that Dante Rossetti went round once to some 
 suburban station to see what a telegraph was like. The sight, 
 and the moderate amount of information given to him, 
 afforded him no satisfaction ; but, feeling the family diffi- 
 culties, he did not refuse to entertain the project. For one 
 reason or another, and luckily for all parties concerned — 
 including maybe the railway passengers — it very rapidly 
 came to nothing. 
 
 Another curious circumstance is that in October 1849 
 Rossetti and his associates were pretty near settling in the 
 
PAINTINGS AND WRITINGS, 1 849 — 53. 1 69 
 
 house, 16 Cheyne Walk, Chelsea, which he did actually rent 
 from Michaelmas 1862 onwards. Mr. Hunt and Mr. Stephens, 
 along with Rossetti, looked over the house, and were much 
 taken with it. The idea was that some P.R.B.'s and one or two 
 of their closest friends — such as Munro and Deverell — should 
 jointly tenant the house, and set up studios. To inscribe 
 P.R.B. somewhere or other on the premises' seemed a sine 
 qua non. A suggestion of mine that it might be written near 
 the bell-pull, and interpreted by the uninitiated as " Please 
 Ring Bell," was hailed as an opportune solution of the pro- 
 blem. The rent required was singularly low, £jO ; but we 
 were so far impecunious that even this was regarded as 
 beyond our conjoint means, and the idea of taking the house 
 only lasted two or three days. It is moreover a fact that 
 the building contained not a single good studio. 
 
 This reference to the studio which Rossetti did not take 
 after leaving the one which he shared with Hunt in Cleveland 
 Street leads me on to speaking of those which he did take. 
 As I said, he was first at No. 72 Newman Street, a house 
 where the ground-floor was occupied as a Dancing- Academy. 
 The Dancing- Master failed to pay his rent; and, according 
 to the oppressive system of those days, the goods of his sub- 
 tenant Rossetti were seized to make good the default. The 
 landlord was Mr. McQueen, a Printer in Tottenham Court 
 Road. Dante and I carried away a considerable number of 
 books, and I suppose some other things as well. This was 
 probably not strictly legal — although, as regards the books, 
 they were in fact as much mine as his, for all books were in 
 common between us. Anyhow, the bulk of Dante's small 
 belongings was confiscated, and appeared to his eyes no 
 more. He then took a studio at No. 74, next door but 
 one. It had a sort of slanting skylight, and few places were 
 dismaller when a brisk rain came down pattering upon the 
 glass. My brother was in this studio (still sleeping at No. 50 
 Charlotte Street) in October 1850, and perhaps for some 
 while previously. At the beginning of 185 1 he took, along 
 with Deverell, the first floor at No. 17 Red Lion Square, a 
 
1 70 DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI. 
 
 house which happened to belong to Mr. North, the father of 
 our eccentric literary crony. In May he gave notice to 
 leave this apartment ; and he accepted Madox Brown's 
 obliging offer to accommodate him for a while in his own 
 large studio, which was now in the house in Newman Street, 
 No. 17, occupied by the sculptor Baily. Here he sat to 
 Brown for the head of Chaucer in the very large picture — 
 now in the museum of Sydney, Australia — of Chaucer reading 
 to the Court of Edward 3 the Legend of Custance. The head 
 was painted in one night, 1 1 P.M. to 4 A.M., and was never 
 afterwards touched upon. This is recognizably like Chaucer, 
 and is also a very fair portrait of Rossetti. It is held by 
 some writers that Rossetti at this time resembled Chaucer ; 
 by others that he was like the Stratford bust of Shakespear ; 
 while Mr. Joseph Knight (who knew him later on) considers 
 that the nearest affinity was to the great Italian actor Salvini 
 — and I am more disposed to acquiesce in this last opinion. 
 It was, I gather, on 23 November 1852 that Rossetti finally 
 removed into Chambers of his own, and thus ceased to 
 belong to the household at Charlotte Street, or rather then 
 at Arlington Street. These Chambers were on the second 
 floor of No. 14 Chatham Place, Blackfriars Bridge, a line of 
 street demolished now many years ago. He had a very fine 
 outlook on the river, and remained in this house until after 
 the death of his wife in February 1862. There were a 
 spacious painting-room, a commodious living-room, a small 
 but well-lighted bedroom, and a little dusky passage-room 
 between these two, chiefly used for storing books. In these 
 Chambers I very frequently passed the evening with my 
 brother, going thither from my office at Somerset House. 
 Not seldom, up to the date of his marriage in i860, I passed 
 the night there as well. 
 
MISS SIDDAL. 171 
 
 XVII. 
 MISS SIDDAL} 
 
 Dante ROSSETTI — though there was nothing of the Puritan 
 in his feelings, nor in his demeanour or conversation — had 
 no juvenile amours, liaisons, or flirtations. In 1850 he fell 
 seriously in love. 
 
 Outside the compact circle of the Prseraphaelite Brother- 
 hood there was no man he liked better than Walter Howell 
 Deverell, a youthful painter, son of the Secretary of the 
 Government Schools of Design — artistic, clever, genial, and re- 
 markably good-looking. One day — early in 1850, if not late 
 in 1849 — Deverell accompanied his mother to a bonnet-shop 
 in Cranborne Alley (now gone— close to Leicester Square) ; 
 and among the shop-assistants he saw a young woman who 
 lifted down a bandbox or what not. She was a most beautiful 
 creature, with an air between dignity and sweetness, mixed 
 with something which exceeded modest self-respect, and 
 partook of disdainful reserve ; tall, finely formed, with a 
 lofty neck, and regular yet somewhat uncommon features, 
 greenish-blue unsparkling eyes, large perfect eyelids, brilliant 
 complexion, and a lavish heavy wealth of coppery-golden hair. 
 It was what many people call red hair, and abuse under that 
 name — but the colour, when not rank and flagrant, happens 
 to have been always much admired by Dante Rossetti, and 
 I dare say by Deverell as well. All this fine development, 
 and this brilliancy of hue, were only too consistent with a 
 consumptive taint in the constitution. Her voice was clear 
 and low, but with a certain sibilant tendency which reduced 
 its attractiveness. Deverell got his mother to enquire whether 
 he might be privileged to have sittings from this beauty, and 
 the petition was granted. He painted from her the head 
 of Viola in the picture, which he exhibited in the early spring 
 of 1850, from Shakespear's Tivelfth Night, The Duke with 
 
 1 My brother always spelled the name thus. Some members of the 
 family wrote " Siddall." 
 
172 DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI. 
 
 Viola listening to the Court Minstrels ; he also drew from her 
 the head of Viola in the etching of Olivia and Viola which 
 appeared in the final number of The Germ. In the oil-picture 
 Rossetti sat for the head of the Jester. It is a fair likeness, 
 but rather grim. 1 I may as well add here that Hunt, not 
 long afterwards, painted from the same damsel the Sylvia 
 in his picture from the Two Gentlemen of Verona, and 
 Millais his drowning Ophelia — but I fancy that both these 
 heads, or at any rate the first, have been a good deal altered 
 at a more recent date. This milliner's girl was Elizabeth 
 Eleanor Siddal. When Deverell first saw her, she was, I 
 believe, not fully seventeen years of age. 2 
 
 The father of Miss Siddal was a Sheffield Cutler (Mr. 
 Stephens says a watchmaker, but I hardly suppose that to be 
 correct), who had removed to the neighbourhood of Newington 
 Butts. His wife was alive in 1850, but not I think himself. 
 I never saw her ; but I did see once or twice Elizabeth's 
 younger sister, a pleasing unmarried woman, and once her 
 brother, who seemed a sensible well-conducted man, perhaps 
 a trifle hard in manner. There was also a younger brother, 
 said to be somewhat weak-minded. I find it stated that 
 Mrs. Siddal. had in some way been intimately associated with 
 Madox Brown's second wife, a Miss Hill. This must have 
 promoted a more than common cordiality which (after 
 Elizabeth Siddal had, through a different train of circum- 
 stances, come into the artistic circle) subsisted between 
 Mrs. Brown and herself, and only terminated with death. 
 A neighbouring tradesman in Newington Butts, in Miss 
 Siddal's infancy or early childhood, was named Greenacre. 
 
 1 This picture, a large one, belonged, some while after Deverell's death, 
 to Mr. Bell Scott. He sold it not very long before his decease, and I do 
 not know who may be its present possessor. 
 
 2 My brother, when his wife died on 11 February 1862, believed her to 
 be twenty-nine years old ; but I can distinctly recollect that her younger 
 sister (whom they were wont to call " the Roman," from her aquiline nose, 
 quite different from the rather noticeably rounded one of Elizabeth Eleanor) 
 told him in my presence that the correct age was twenty~eight. 
 
MISS SIDDAL. 173 
 
 To the British public he is a murderer, more than commonly 
 execrable, and duly hanged. To Miss Siddal he was a good- 
 natured neighbour, who would on occasion help her toddling 
 steps over a muddy or crowded crossing. Such is the difference 
 in " the environment." Miss Siddal — let me say here once 
 for all — was a graceful lady-like person, knowing how to 
 behave in company. She had received an ordinary education, 
 and committed no faults of speech. In our circle she was 
 always termed " Lizzie," and I shall sometimes speak of her 
 under that name. 
 
 Not long after Miss Siddal had begun to sit to Deverell, 
 Dante Rossetti saw her, admired her enormously, and was 
 soon in love with her — how soon I cannot- exactly say. She 
 had a face and demeanour very suitable indeed for a youthful 
 Madonna ; but I presume the head of the Virgin in the 
 Annunciation picture had been painted before he knew her — 
 and, under any circumstances, he would perhaps have taken 
 this head from Christina, to keep the work in harmony with 
 The Girlhood of Mary Virgin. The first painting in which 
 I find the head of Miss Siddal is the rich little water-colour 
 of 1850 (presented to Madox Brown) called Rossovestita (Red- 
 clad). This is not greatly like Lizzie, but it can hardly have 
 been done from any one else. Soon followed a true likeness 
 in the water-colour, Beatrice at a Marriage Feast denies Dante 
 her Salutation, which was exhibited in the winter of 1852-53. 
 Here the Beatrice is Miss Siddal, and every other Beatrice he 
 drew for some years following is also, I think, from her — like- 
 wise the Virgin in a water-colour of The Annunciation, 1852. 
 She is here represented bathing her feet in a rivulet, and the 
 composition bears of course no analogy to that of the oil- 
 picture. 
 
 I do not know at what date a definite engagement existed 
 between Miss Siddal and my brother — very probably before 
 or not long after the close of 185 1. That she was sincerely 
 in love with him — he being most deeply and profusely in love 
 with her — is readily to be presumed. Her character was 
 somewhat singular — not quite easy to understand, and not 
 
174 DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI. 
 
 at all on the surface. Often as I have been in her company 
 — and yet this was less often than might under the conditions 
 be surmised — I hardly think that I ever heard her say a single 
 thing indicative of her own character, or of her serious under- 
 lying thought. All her talk was of a " chaffy " kind — its tone 
 sarcastic, its substance lightsome. It was like the speech of 
 a person who wanted to turn off the conversation, and leave 
 matters substantially where they stood before. Now and again 
 she said some pointed thing, which might cast a dry light, 
 but ushered one no further. She was not ill-natured in talk, 
 still less was she scandal-mongering, or chargeable with 
 volatility or levity personal to herself; but she seemed to 
 say — " My mind and my feelings are my own, and no out- 
 sider is expected to pry into them." That she had plenty 
 of mind is a fact abundantly evidenced by her designs and 
 water-colours, and by her verses as well. Indeed, she was a 
 woman of uncommon capacity and varied aptitude. In what 
 religious denomination she had been brought up I know not. 
 Of her own, I fancy she had no religion. I should feel the 
 more confident of this, were it not that Dante Rossetti, un- 
 defined as his faith was, had no sort of liking for irreligion 
 in women. He had even a certain marked degree of prejudice 
 against women who would not believe. 
 
 When one wants chivalrous generosity, one goes to 
 Algernon Swinburne for it. This is what he once said of 
 Miss Siddal 1 :— 
 
 "It is impossible that even the reptile rancour, the omnivorous 
 malignity, of Iago himself, could have dreamed of trying to cast a 
 slur on the memory of that incomparable lady whose maiden name 
 was Siddal and whose married name was Rossetti. To one at least 
 who knew her better than most of her husband's friends the memory 
 of all her marvellous charms of mind and person — her matchless 
 
 1 In The Academy, 24 December 1892. Mr. Swinburne is here writing 
 about Bell Scott's Autobiographical Notes, and about an interpretation — 
 more or less fanciful — which had been put upon a couple of phrases in 
 that book. 
 
By Herself. EuzABETH ELEANOR SlDDAL (RoSSETTl). 
 
 1853- 
 
MISS SIDDAL. 175 
 
 grace, loveliness, courage, endurance, wit, humour, heroism, and 
 sweetness — is too dear and sacred to be profaned by any attempt at 
 expression. The vilest of the vile could not have dreamed of trying 
 £ to cast a slur on her memory.' " 
 
 In these years, 1850 to 1854, Dante Rossetti was so 
 constantly in the company of Lizzie Siddal that this may 
 even have conduced towards the break-up of the P.R.B. as 
 a society of comrades. He was continually painting or 
 drawing from her, and pretty soon his example and incite- 
 ment brought her on to designing and painting for herself. 
 He gave her some instruction ; but, of systematic training 
 of the ordinary kind, she appears to me to have had scarcely 
 any. Certain it is that she had a gift very superior, in its 
 quality if not in its actual outcome, to that which belongs 
 to most female debutantes. The tone of her work was 
 founded on that of Rossetti, with much less draughtsmanship, 
 limper forms, and cruder colour. His own was partly crude, 
 as well as brilliant, in the water-colours to which he chiefly 
 confined himself in these years. On the other hand, she had 
 much of sweet and chastened invention, and an ingenious 
 romantic turn in it as well, and a graceful purity is stamped 
 upon everything she did. One of her first productions was, 
 I think, We are Seven, from Wordsworth's poem. It is 
 mentioned in a letter dated 12 January 1853. Then came 
 a pen-and-ink design, rather large, of Pippa and the Women 
 of loose Life, from Browning's drama, one of Miss Siddal's 
 best drawings, and in essence a very good one ; the water- 
 colour of the Wailing Ladies on the Seashore from the old 
 ballad of Sir Patrick Spens ; another from St. Agnes' Eve, 
 by Tennyson ; another from the same great poet's Lady 
 Clare ; and not a few more. Her portrait was painted by 
 herself in 1853-4. It is an absolute likeness, and the readers 
 of this book may judge whether it is a laudable work of art. 
 " Lizzie," said my brother, writing to Madox Brown on 
 25 August 1853, "has made a perfect wonder of her portrait, 
 which is nearly done, and which I think we shall send to the 
 Winter Exhibition." But this, I take it, was not carried out. 
 
1/6 DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI. 
 
 And again, in 1854 : " Her fecundity of invention and facility 
 are quite wonderful — much greater than mine." This may 
 have been a lover's exaggeration, but it was not mere non- 
 sense. She continued designing and painting for some years, 
 not perhaps to any very large extent beyond 1857. Ill-health 
 interfered, and stopped the settled practice. She did some- 
 thing however even after marriage ; for a letter from Rossetti 
 to Mr. Alexander Gilchrist, 18 June 1861, says: "She has 
 been working very hard these few days, and made a beautiful 
 water-colour sketch." 
 
 Of her verse — which is but scanty in quantity, so far as 
 any traces remain to me — I will present one specimen. 
 Possibly it had never yet been read by any one out of my 
 family. 
 
 A YEAR AND A DAY. 
 
 Slow days have passed that make a year, 
 
 Slow hours that make a day, 
 Since I could take my first dear love, 
 
 And kiss him the old way: 
 Yet the green leaves touch me on the cheek, 
 
 Dear Christ, this month of May. 
 
 I lie among the tall green grass 
 
 That bends above my head, 
 And covers up my wasted face, 
 
 And folds me in its bed 
 Tenderly and lovingly 
 
 Like grass above the dead. 
 
 Dim phantoms of an unknown ill 
 
 Float through my tiring brain; 
 The unformed visions of my life 
 
 Pass by in ghostly train ; 
 Some pause to touch me on the cheek, 
 
 Some scatter tears like rain. 
 
 The river ever running down 
 
 Between its grassy bed, 
 The voices of a thousand birds 
 
 That clang above my head, 
 Shall bring to me a sadder dream 
 
 When this sad dream is dead. 
 
MISS SIDDAL. 177 
 
 A silence falls upon my heart, 
 
 And hushes all its pain. 
 I stretch my hands in the long grass, 
 
 And fall to sleep again, 
 There to lie empty of all love, 
 
 Like beaten corn of grain. 
 
 The letter from which I lately quoted, 25 August 1853, 
 contains the first reference that I find to Miss Siddal's ill- 
 health. It says, following the praise of her portrait, " she 
 has been very ill though lately." The consumptive turn 
 of her constitution became apparent ; and from this time 
 forth the letters about her are shadowed with sorrow which 
 often deepens almost into despair. In a letter of March 
 1854 it is stated that Dante had introduced Lizzie to the 
 Howitts — William and Mary Howitt, with their daughter 
 Anna Mary (the painter, who afterwards became Mrs. Alfred 
 Alaric Watts), then living in Highgate Rise ; and that the 
 Howitts were quite fond of her, and admired her pro- 
 ductions. He had also introduced her to Christina ; but 
 was at times a little put out with the latter, thinking that 
 her appreciation of Lizzie was not up to the mark. The 
 Howitts had got her to see Dr. Wilkinson (the distinguished 
 Homceopathist and writer), who pronounced that there was 
 curvature of the spine, and the case was an anxious one, 
 but not at all hopeless. From one of the Family-letters, 
 June 1853, it will be observed that she was then painting in 
 the Chatham Place Chambers, while Dante was in Newcastle. 
 
 My brother was a lover of boundless enthusiasm and 
 fondness. He made no secret of his condition in the close 
 circle of his nearer intimates. To all other persons he 
 wrapped himself in impenetrable silence, not without some 
 defiant tone ; and he employed pet names for his fair one, 
 of which Guggum, Guggums, or Gug, was the most frequent, 
 if not the most euphonious. His Family-letters bear adequate 
 marks of all this, but more especially his correspondence 
 with Mr. Madox Brown. I observe, from some of her very 
 few still extant letters, that Lizzie also addressed Rossetti 
 
 VOL. I. 12 
 
178 DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI. 
 
 as " Gug." Possibly she invented the term, using it as a 
 sort of short for " Gabriel." 
 
 I will here finish up with our lovable friend Deverell. 
 He died on 2 February 1854, having for some months 
 previously been a victim to Bright's disease. His age appears 
 to have been only twenty-six. Had he lived a few years 
 longer, he would not have failed to distinguish himself. 
 Dante Rossetti was his chief intimate, but he was a favourite 
 with all of our circle, and deserved to be so. He painted 
 himself as the Duke in the Twelfth Night picture ; Mr. 
 Brown painted him finely as the gallant page in the Chaucer 
 subject ; and Mr. Holman Hunt made a very careful drawing 
 of his handsome, head. 1 cannot remember that my brother 
 ever did the like. 
 
 XVIII. 
 
 JOHN RUSKIN. 
 
 The relation of Mr. Ruskin to the Praeraphaelite Brother- 
 hood has often been misunderstood or mis-stated. It has 
 been alleged — and this, in substance, I have already denied — 
 that the young artists who called themselves Praeraphaelites 
 were prompted to their enterprise by reading some writing 
 of Ruskin's ; also that he encouraged them from the first. 
 This is an error. There is nothing to show that he paid the 
 least attention to their works while these were on exhibition 
 in 1849 and 1850: in 1849, praised for the most part; in 
 1850, greeted with little other than extreme and envenomed 
 abuse. 
 
 In 1 85 1 Rossetti did not contribute to any of the Exhibi- 
 tions. Sir John Millais sent to the Royal Academy three 
 oil-pictures — The Woodman's Daughter (from a poem by 
 Coventry Patmore), The Return of the Dove to the Ark, and 
 Mariana (from Tennyson). Mr. Holman Hunt sent thither 
 Valentine rescuing Sylvia from Proteus. It appears that 
 Mr. Ruskin's father (a wealthy wine-merchant, whom I 
 
JOHN RUSKIN. 179 
 
 remember well) liked The Return of the Dove to the Ark, 
 and was minded to purchase it ; but the picture was already 
 sold. Mr. Patmore suggested to John Ruskin to write some- 
 thing about Millais and Hunt. Ruskin complied ; and on 
 13 May a letter of his appeared in The Times, and was no 
 doubt of very high service to the Prseraphaelite cause. 
 Neither this letter, nor the pamphlet PrcerapJiaelitism published 
 in the same year, referred in any way to the pictures of 
 Rossetti exhibited in the two preceding years. It may be 
 worth observing here that Mr. Ruskin, who was at that time 
 a very earnest Protestant Christian, had had a vague idea, 
 fostered by public rumour, that the Prseraphaelites were 
 leagued in some Puseyite or Roman-catholic propaganda. 
 This error was now dispelled from his mind. 
 
 The first trace which I find of Ruskin in connexion with 
 Rossetti comes in a letter which my brother addressed to 
 Madox Brown on 1 March 1853. He here speaks of Mr. 
 McCracken, the Belfast Packing-Agent who had bought 
 the Annunciation picture, and who was a profound believer 
 in " the Graduate " (as he constantly termed Ruskin) ; and 
 Rossetti refers to " those sketches now exhibiting " — which 
 were the Giotto painting the Portrait of Dante, the Beatrice 
 at a Marriage-feast denies Dante Ji&r Salutation, and the 
 Rossovestita. He then proceeds : — 
 
 " Ruskin has written him some extravagant praises (though with 
 obtuse accompaniments) upon one of them — I cannot make out 
 which— and McCracken seems excited, wanting it." 
 
 I presume the water-colour in question was most probably 
 the Beatrice subject. Afterwards McCracken bought from 
 my brother the water-colour (now in the Fine-Art Gallery 
 of Oxford) named Dante drawing an Angel in Memory of 
 Beatrice ; and the sequel was this, as noted in another letter 
 to Brown, 14 April 1854 : — 
 
 "McCracken of course sent my drawing to Ruskin, who the 
 other day wrote me an incredible letter about it, remaining mine 
 respectfully (! !), and wanting to call. I of course stroked him down 
 
l8o DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI. 
 
 in my answer, and yesterday he called. His manner was more 
 agreeable than I had always expected. . . . He seems in a mood 
 to make my fortune." 
 
 Ruskin was then thirty-five years old, while my brother 
 was not quite twenty-six. He called again very soon after- 
 wards ; and my brother was dining with him en famille on 
 25 April at Denmark Hill, Camberwell, when he had to be 
 summoned away to attend the death-bed of our father, who 
 expired on the 26th. These were days of great trouble to 
 Dante Rossetti. Immediately after our father's funeral he 
 found it necessary to run down to Hastings for a while, to 
 join Miss Siddal, who was in a very suffering state of health. 
 They were also days of trouble to Mr. Ruskin, for a different sort 
 of reason, on which I need not dwell here. He went abroad 
 much about the same time when my brother left for Hastings, 
 and for three or four months they met no more, but inter- 
 changed some letters. 
 
 Mr. Ruskin took keen delight in Rossetti's paintings apd 
 designs. He praised freely, and abused heartily, both him 
 and them. The abuse was good-humoured, and was taken 
 good-humouredly ; still it was enough to nettle many a nature 
 more enduring than that of Rossetti. Mr. Ruskin found 
 him over-confident in the use of unsafe pigments, capricious 
 in his character and his products, and careless of his sur- 
 roundings : his room was never orderly. Dante Rossetti, 
 like most artists of any inventive genius, was at bottom 
 scornful of art-critics. He was not in the least self-satisfied 
 as to his own performances — on the contrary, he looked upon 
 most of them with a good deal of disfavour, as being inade- 
 quate expressions of the adequate idea which was within 
 him ; still he considered that an artist generally knows what 
 he is about much better than an outsider can instruct him. 
 Besides, the idea, and the method of presenting it, were his 
 own, and, for better for worse, his own they must remain. 
 I consider that in these years there was no irritation what- 
 ever between Ruskin and Rossetti. They were heartily 
 
JOHN RUSKIN. l8l 
 
 friendly, and indeed heartily affectionate, and took in good 
 part, with mutual banter and amusement, whatever was 
 deficient or excessive in the performances of the painter, 
 or in the comments of the purchaser and critic. The only 
 counteraction to their entire cordiality lay in the fact that 
 Madox Brown soon got to hate the very name of Ruskin. 
 He considered himself both slighted and damnified by the 
 absolute silence which that pre-eminent and most influential 
 art-critic, in all his published writings, preserved as to Brown's 
 works, while lauding some other painters who might be 
 deemed fully equal to himself, and several who were most 
 manifestly inferior. Rossetti, who was zealous in friendship, 
 endeavoured to bring about a different condition of things, 
 but did not succeed ; so he had, in some degree, to steer a 
 middle course between his warm feelings for Brown on one 
 side and for Ruskin on the other. Ruskin and Rossetti saw 
 each other constantly, and kept up an active correspondence 
 as well. The letters of the former are still rather numerous, 
 and are full of diverting " digs " at Rossetti's designs and 
 paintings. Rossetti's responses are not within my cognizance, 
 but, if they did not " give as good as he got," I have mis- 
 apprehended his character, and his settled habits of mind 
 and act. 
 
 From an early date in their acquaintance Mr. Ruskin 
 undertook to buy, if he happened to like it, whatever 
 Rossetti produced, at a range of, prices such as the latter 
 would have asked from any other purchaser, and up to a 
 certain maximum of expenditure on his own part. If he did 
 not relish a work, Rossetti could offer it to any one else. 
 I cannot imagine any arrangement more convenient to my 
 brother, who thus secured a safe market for his performances, 
 and could even rely upon not being teazed to do on the nail 
 work for which he received payment in whole or in part. In 
 this respect Ruskin appears to have been always friendly and 
 accommodating, and Rossetti not unduly troublesome. He 
 availed himself of Ruskin's easy liberality, without abusing 
 it. In fact he was made comfortable in his professional 
 
1 82 DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI. 
 
 position ; though it should be understood that his prices were 
 very moderate, and his income was small in proportion, and 
 he was often enough in straits to meet some current demand. 
 He now ceased to exhibit in any of the ordinaiy galleries, 
 and to this system he ever afterwards adhered. The arrange- 
 ment with Mr. Ruskin set him free to consult his own likings 
 in the matter, and may have had much to do with his 
 resolve. 
 
 Ruskin's permanent opinion of Rossetti as a painter appears 
 in the following words : — 
 
 " I believe Rossetti's name should be placed first on the list of 
 men, within my own range of knowledge, who have raised and 
 changed the spirit of modern art; raised in absolute attainment, 
 changed in direction of temper." 
 
 And again : — 
 
 " Rossetti was the chief intellectual force in the establishment of 
 the modern Romantic School in England." 
 
 I will extract here a few passages from the letters which 
 Mr. Ruskin wrote to my brother. They are scrappy, but 
 tend to show how the two very diverse natures were getting 
 on together ; and here and there comes a touch of that tender 
 and exquisite amiability which has made Ruskin (if his genius 
 had not done it for him) a man apart. He hardly ever dated 
 his letters ; but I shall add dates which are nearly enough 
 right for the present purpose. 
 
 (October 1854) " I forgot to say also that I really do covet your 
 drawings as much as I covet Turner's ; only it is useless self- 
 indulgence to buy Turner's, and useful self-indulgence to buy yours. 
 Only I won't have them after they have been more than nine times 
 rubbed entirely out — remember that." — (24 April 1855) " It may be 
 as well that you should keep this letter, if you can keep anything 
 safe in that most disreputable litter of yours." — (June 1855) "At the 
 eleventh hour I am going to put off my lesson of to-morrow [i.e., a 
 little friendly instruction, pretty frequently repeated, which, at Mr. 
 Ruskin's request, Rossetti gave him in the use of water-colour. I 
 
JOHN RUSKIN. 183 
 
 think the instruction extended not much beyond the attendance of 
 Ruskin at times when my brother was in the act of painting, with 
 question and answer as to the why and wherefore of his modes of 
 work] ; for I find my eyes to-day quite tired with an etching I 
 expected to have finished, and haven't. But, as you have that 
 drawing to finish, you will still be kept in town now ; so I may have 
 my lesson when this nasty etching is done."— (July 1855) "Can you 
 dine with us on Thursday at 6? (and not be too P.R.B., as Stanfield 
 is coming too !). But I've no other time for a chat." — (November 
 
 1855) "Please oblige me in two matters, or you will make me ill 
 again. Take all the pure green out of the flesh in the Nativity 
 I send, and try to get it a little less like worsted-work by Wednes- 
 day. I want The Passover in such a state as it may be in, and the 
 sketch of Passover." — (November 1855) "It's ail your own pride, 
 not a bit of fine feeling, so don't think it. If you wanted to oblige 
 me, you would keep your room in order, and go to bed at night. All 
 your fine speeches go for nothing with me till you do that." — (May 
 
 1856) "I forgot to say to you when I saw you that, if you think 
 there is anything in which I can be of any use to Miss Siddal, you 
 have only to tell me. I mean, she might be able, and like, as the 
 weather comes finer, to come out here sometimes to take a walk in 
 the garden, and feel the quiet fresh air, and look at a missal or two ; 
 and she shall have the run of the house. And, if you think she 
 would like an Albert Durer or a photograph for her own room, 
 merely tell me, and I will get them for her. And I want to talk to 
 you about her, because you seem to me to let her wear herself out 
 with fancies, and she really ought to be made to draw in a dull way 
 sometimes from dull things." — (January 1857) " I was put out to-day, 
 as you must have seen, for I can't hide it when I am vexed. I don't 
 at all like my picture now [possibly the oil-picture of St. Katharine 
 — a mediaeval painter painting a lady as this saint]. The alteration 
 of the head from the stoop forward to the throw back makes the 
 whole figure quite stiff and stupid ; besides, the off-cheek is a 
 quarter of a yard too thin. That Magdalene is magnificent to my 
 mind in every possible way; it stays by me." [This is the design of 
 The Magdalene at the Door of Simon the Pharisee.] 
 
 In one of these passages the reader will have observed the 
 reference to Miss Siddal. Soon after Ruskin had returned 
 
184 DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI. 
 
 to London from his visit to the Continent in 1854, Rossetti 
 brought him acquainted with Miss Siddal, and with the 
 designs and water-colours she was producing. Ruskin admired 
 her much, and liked her intensely ; and he took a most hearty- 
 interest and pleasure in the refinement and feeling displayed 
 in her designs, although far from blind (as will have been 
 perceived) to their executive shortcomings. A letter from 
 Rossetti to Madox Brown, 13 April 1855, says that she and 
 he had been spending a day at the house of the Ruskin 
 family : — 
 
 " All the Ruskins were most delighted with Guggum. John 
 Ruskin said she was a noble, glorious creature, and his father said 
 by her look and manner she might have been a Countess." 
 
 Immediately afterwards Mr. Ruskin committed one of 
 those unnumbered acts of generosity by which he will be 
 remembered hardly less long than by his vivid insight into 
 many things, and his heroic prose. He wanted to effect 
 one of two plans for her advantage— either to purchase all 
 her drawings one by one, as they should be produced, or 
 else to settle on her an annual ^150 — he taking in exchange 
 her various works up to that value, and retaining them, or 
 (if preferred) selling some of them, and handing over to her 
 any extra proceeds. This latter plan was carried into actual 
 effect by 3 May. It will easily and rightly be supposed 
 that Rossetti used to find funds for Miss Siddal whenever 
 required ; but his means were both small and fitful, and 
 Ruskin's scheme was of some relief and of great satisfaction 
 to him. How long it continued I am not sure. There is a 
 letter from Mr. Ruskin, dated I fancy in or about 1857, con- 
 taining the following passage, which I need only preface by 
 saying that he constantly applied the fancy-name "Ida" to 
 Miss Siddal, taking it no doubt from Tennyson's Princess : — 
 
 " I shall rejoice in Ida's success with her picture, as I shall in 
 every opportunity of being useful either to you or her. The only 
 feeling I have about the matter is of some shame at having allowed 
 
JOHN RUSKIN. 185 
 
 the arrangement between us to end as it did ; and the chief pleasure 
 I could have about it now would be her simply accepting it as she 
 would have accepted a glass of water when she was thirsty, and never 
 thinking of it any more." 
 
 From this I infer that Miss Siddal had then discontinued 
 delivering her designs or paintings to Mr. Ruskin — probably 
 because her very frail state of health prevented her pro- 
 ducing them with any regularity ; and that, being thus unable 
 to fulfil her part in the scheme, she, and also my brother as 
 her adviser, renounced the money-benefit hence accruing to 
 her. 
 
 Meantime, for health's sake, she had been abroad. I have 
 already referred to the medical opinion obtained from Dr. 
 Wilkinson. Towards June 1855 another opinion was obtained 
 from Dr. Acland of Oxford, to whom Ruskin recommended 
 her. The Doctor and others, including a lady of the Pusey 
 family, received her with great attentions. He opined that 
 her lungs were nearly right, the chief danger consisting in 
 " mental power long pent up, and lately overtaxed." He 
 advised her to leave England before cold weather set in ; and 
 this she did towards the latter end of September, having as 
 companion a Mrs. Kincaid, a cousin of ours, who knew some- 
 thing of French and Continental life. This lady was only 
 recently known to us. She had (I think) been discovered by 
 my uncle Henry Polydore as being a member of the Pierce 
 family, at a time when, in consequence of an informality in 
 the will of my grand-aunt Harriet Pierce (who died in 1849), 
 it became requisite to ferret out her various next of kin. I 
 remember Mrs. Kincaid pretty well towards 1855 — a matronly 
 sort of person, aged forty or upwards ; her husband much 
 better, a sharp-looking solicitor. He took a decided fancy to 
 Dante Rossetti, and haunted not a little his studio and his 
 dinner-hour — his dinner, while he tenanted his Chambers in 
 Chatham Place, being almost invariably taken at some eating- 
 house. Miss Siddal with Mrs. Kincaid went to Nice ; she 
 was also for a while in Paris, and Dante, with his friend 
 
1 86 DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI. 
 
 Munro, saw her there in connexion with the Great Exhibition 
 of that year, he returning in October. For some reason or 
 other — I am not sure that I ever understood it well — she lost 
 her liking for Mrs. Kincaid. Dante of course sided with 
 Lizzie, and we saw the married couple no more. It may 
 have been in the late Spring of 1856 that Miss Siddal returned 
 to London, without any such material renovation of health 
 as had been hoped for. From this time onward variations 
 occurred at intervals ; but as a whole it must be said that 
 there was a continual decline of vital force, and often she was 
 distressingly ill. 
 
 I may here add that my own first sight of Mr. Ruskin was 
 on 25 November 1854, when he was delivering a lecture at 
 the Architectural Museum. I afterwards saw him pretty 
 frequently, often in company with my brother, and I regarded 
 him with warm liking and respect both as man and as writer 
 and critic. As a public speaker, Ruskin was a subject of 
 highest admiration to my brother, who never, I think, 
 addressed a general audience at all. That Rossetti wholly 
 avoided and shrank from any such form of self-display is 
 certain. It is not by any means equally certain to me that, 
 if he had chosen to make the attempt, he would not or could 
 not have succeeded. His address was good, his voice excellent, 
 his manner adapted for exciting sympathy and warmth, his 
 ideas were clear and well to hand, and he could converse 
 extremely well whenever he liked. 
 
 Some years ago a copy of a letter from my brother to 
 Mr. McCracken, 15 May 1854, came into my hands. It shows 
 so clearly the opinion which he entertained upon various 
 questions of art, about the time when he first knew Ruskin, 
 that I shall here introduce a few sentences of it : — 
 
 " I believe colour to be a quite indispensable quality in the highest 
 art, and that no picture ever belonged to the highest order without 
 it ; while many, by possessing it — as the works of Titian — are raised 
 certainly into the highest class, though not to the very highest grade 
 of that class, in spite of the limited degree of their other great 
 qualities. Perhaps the only exception which I should be inclined to 
 
WORK IN 1854-55-56. 187 
 
 admit exists in the works of Hogarth, to which I should never dare 
 to assign any but the very highest place, though their colour is 
 certainly not a prominent feature in them. I must add however 
 that Hogarth's colour is seldom other than pleasing to myself, and 
 that for my own part I should almost call him a colourist, though 
 not aiming at colour. On the other hand, there are men who, 
 merely on account of bad colour, prevent me from thoroughly 
 enjoying their works, though full of other qualities. For instance, 
 Wilkie, or Delaroche (in nearly all his works, though the Hemicycle 
 is fine in colour). From Wilkie I would at any time prefer a 
 thoroughly good engraving — though of course he is in no respect 
 even within hail of Hogarth. Colour is the physiognomy of a 
 picture ; and, like the shape of the human forehead, it cannot be 
 perfectly beautiful without proving goodness and greatness. Other 
 qualities are its life exercised ; but this is the body of its life, by 
 which we know and love it at first sight. ... I have once seen a 
 small picture by the H. Wallis you ask about, and should venture 
 to say that any work of his must have some degree of value, if not a 
 very high one — at any rate something preferable to any Mill by any 
 Brandard, to any ' vacant ' thing whatever by John Bridges, or even 
 to anything I could suppose likely to fall under Redgrave's notice 
 while ' returning from church.' " 
 
 XIX. 
 
 WORK IN 1854-55-56. 
 
 In these years the painting-work of Rossetti had its source 
 principally in Dantesque or in general romantic themes, with 
 some sacred subjects interspersed, and his method was 
 water-colour. He produced a triptych of Paolo and Francesca ; 
 The Passover in the Holy Family ; a portrait of himself ; 
 Launcelot and Guenevere at the Tomb of Arthur; a head of 
 Browning, a fine likeness, doing justice to so great a sitter ; 
 The Chapel before the Lists ; Dante's Dream ; the five 
 designs to Tennyson's Poems ; Eliza Polidori (oil-portrait) ; 
 The Blue Closet ; The Wedding of St. George ; Bonifa.zws 
 Mistress ; The Tune of Seven Towers ; and several other 
 
1 88 DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI. 
 
 works. Some of them were prolonged into the year 1857. 
 He also made the water-colour preparatory to his oil-triptych 
 for Llandaff Cathedral — The Seed of David. Mr. Ruskin 
 became the owner of a good proportion of these productions — 
 by no means of all. 
 
 Rossetti's invention was fertile, and — according to the 
 varying and sometimes merely fanciful themes — appropriate ; 
 his colour high and brilliant, and, though at whiles a little 
 over-positive, not forced. Allowing himself very free scope 
 in his treatment of the subjects, he yet seldom if ever painted 
 a figure without taking it from Nature. Miss Siddal was his 
 model for all the leading female personages. Of thoughtfully 
 considered or elaborately realized light and shade, or of 
 diversified planes in the composition, there is very little in any 
 of these works. Rossetti's sympathies did not go in such 
 directions, and he was never an adept at these highly impor- 
 tant processes of the art — and at this period still less an 
 adept than he became later on. 
 
 To some of the above-named works a few details may here 
 be spared. 
 
 The Paolo a?id Francesca triptych, begun as a design in 
 October 1849, shows the Lovers' Kiss, and their souls in Hell, 
 and in the centre Dante or some other figure. He repeated 
 these compositions more than once. Mr. James Leathart, of 
 Gateshead-on-Tyne, owns the best version of them, and a 
 very fine example it is of Rossetti's power in pathos and in 
 colour. The Passover in the Holy Family, a prime favourite 
 with Mr. Ruskin, had also been invented as far back as July 
 1849. This likewise was intended to be part of a triptych; 
 the other subjects were to be — The Virgin planting a Lily 
 and a Rose, and The Virgin in the House of JoJin. The 
 central subject remained uncompleted, though moderately 
 advanced ; the second was (I think) never done ; the third 
 was eventually treated as a separate water-colour painting, 
 one of his very best. The portrait of Rossetti himself, in 
 Indian ink executed with pen or brush, is dated 20 September 
 1855, and is now the property of Mr. Charles Fairfax Murray. 
 
WORK IN 1854-55-56. 189 
 
 I think it superior to all other renderings, and, by Mr. Murray's 
 obliging permission, it forms our frontispiece. The Dante s 
 Dream, which was purchased by Miss Heaton of Leeds (who 
 died at Christmas 1894), is the same subject as the large oil- 
 picture now in the Walker Gallery of Liverpool, but not at 
 all the same composition. 
 
 The Tennyson designs, which were engraved on wood, and 
 published in the Illustrated Tennyson in which Millais, Hunt, 
 Mulready, and others, co-operated, have in the long run done 
 not a little to sustain my brother's reputation with the public. 
 At the time they gave him endless trouble, and small satisfac- 
 tion. Not indeed that the invention or the mere designing 
 of these works was troublesome to him. He took great pains 
 with them, but, as what he wrought at was always something 
 which informed and glowed in his mind, he was not more 
 tribulated by these than by other drawings. It must be said 
 also that himself only, and not Tennyson, was his guide. He 
 drew just what he chose, taking from his author's text 
 nothing more than a hint and an opportunity. The trouble 
 came in with the engraver and the publisher. With some 
 of the doings of the engraver — Dalziel, not Linton whom 
 he found much more conformable to hrs notion — he was 
 grievously disappointed. He probably exasperated Dalziel, 
 and Dalziel certainly exasperated him. Blocks were re- 
 worked upon, and proofs sent back with rigour. The 
 publisher Mr. Moxon was a still severer affliction. He called 
 and he wrote. Rossetti was not always up to time, though 
 he tried his best to be so. In other instances he was up to 
 time, but his engraver was not up to his mark. I believe that 
 poor Moxon suffered much, and soon afterwards he died ; 
 but I do not lay any real blame upon my brother, who 
 worked strenuously and well. As to our great poet Tennyson 
 — who also ought to have counted for something in the whole 
 affair- — I gather that he really liked Rossetti's designs when 
 he saw them, and he was not without a perceptible liking and 
 regard for Rossetti himself, so far as he knew him (they had 
 first met at Mr. Patmore's house in December 1849); but 
 
190 DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI. 
 
 the illustration of St. Cecilia puzzled him not a little, and he 
 had to give up the problem of what it had to do with his 
 verses. If I may be allowed to express my opinion of so 
 great a man as Tennyson — whom I met on several occasions, 
 and who honoured me by much freedom of converse — I 
 should say that he had not any particular insight into matters 
 of pictorial art as such, although he appreciated and prized 
 the art as one of the forms in which the mind of man 
 expresses beautiful ideas. I did not observe him to be at all 
 a " connoisseur." Rossetti put this affair of the wood-blocks 
 in entertaining terms in a letter to Mr. Bell Scott dated 
 February 1857 : — 
 
 " I have designed five blocks for Tennyson, some of which are 
 still cutting and maiming. It is a thankless task. After a fortnight's 
 work my block goes to the engraver, like Agag delicately, and is 
 hewn to pieces before the Lord Harry. 
 
 " ADDRESS TO THE DALZIEL BROTHERS. 
 
 "O Woodman, spare that block, 
 Oh gash not anyhow ! 
 It took ten days by clock; 
 I'd fain protect it now. 
 
 " Chorus — Wild Laughter from Dalziel's Workshop." 
 
 As I am here speaking of Tennyson, I take occasion to 
 mention two sketches of him which my brother made ; not 
 of superior import as works of art, yet from all points of view 
 highly interesting. It was on 27 September 1855 that the 
 Brownings, being then for a while in London, invited two or 
 three friends to the house they were occupying, 13 Dorset 
 Street, to meet Tennyson, who had undertaken to read aloud 
 his poem of Maud, recently published. The audience was a 
 small one, the privilege accorded to each individual all the 
 higher : Mr. and Mrs. Browning, Miss Browning, my brother, 
 and myself, and I think there was one more — either Madox 
 Brown, or else Hunt or Woolner. The latter had returned to 
 London from Australia in the autumn of 1854. Tennyson, 
 
WORK IN 1854-55-56. IQI 
 
 seated on a sofa in a characteristic attitude, and holding the 
 volume near his eyes (for he was decidedly short-sighted, 
 though one would hardly think so from his descriptive poems), 
 read Maud right through. My brother made two pen-and-ink 
 sketches of him, and gave one of them to Browning. So far 
 as I remember, the Poet Laureate neither saw what Dante 
 was doing, nor knew of it afterwards. His deep grand voice, 
 with slightly chaunting intonation, was a noble vehicle for 
 the perusal of mighty verse. On it rolled, sonorous and 
 emotional. Rossetti, according to Mr. Hall Caine, spoke of 
 the incident in these terms : " I once heard Tennyson read 
 Maud; and, whilst the fiery passages were delivered with a 
 voice and vehemence which he alone of living men can 
 compass, the softer passages and the songs made the tears 
 course down his cheeks." I remember that on a later occa- 
 sion Tennyson told me that he knew no one so well-fitted 
 as himself for reading Milton aloud ; as he had a deep chest 
 and long-drawn breath, and could finish the weighty periods 
 of many lines together without a second inhalation. After 
 Tennyson and Maud came Browning and Fra Lippo Lippi 
 — read with as much of sprightly variation as there was in 
 Tennyson of sustained continuity. Truly a night of the 
 gods, not to be remembered without pride and pang. 
 
 The Seed of David was an important matter in my brother's 
 professional life. The Cathedral at Llandaff was in 1856 
 undergoing a complete restoration. One of the Architects 
 employed was Mr. John P. Seddon, who had already become, 
 and always continued, a very steady friend to Rossetti, alert 
 in promoting his interests whenever he could. A painting 
 was wanting for the reredos of the renewed Cathedral ; and 
 Mr. John Seddon, seconded by his elder brother Thomas the 
 painter, bethought himself of Rossetti. Mr. Thomas Seddon 
 had lately been abroad in the East with Mr. Holman Hunt, 
 and had painted, among other things, an admirably faithful 
 view of Jerusalem, which is now in the National Gallery, 
 consigned thither by a public subscription in which my brother 
 bore an active part. This subscription took place after the 
 
192 DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI. 
 
 melancholy death of Mr. Seddon in Cairo, to which city he 
 had gone in the autumn of 1856. There he died of dysentery 
 very soon after his arrival, and a life full of brightness, and 
 a career full of high promise, were suddenly cut short at the 
 early age of thirty-five. In March 1856, prior to starting for 
 Egypt, Mr. Thomas Seddon brought round to Rossetti's 
 studio a Member of Parliament connected with Llandaff, Mr. 
 Henry Austin Bruce (the late Lord Aberdare) ; and it was 
 agreed that my brother should undertake the painting of the 
 reredos for a sum of ^400. The subject — named by himself 
 The Seed of David, though other titles have often been applied 
 to it — had to take the form of a triptych. In the centre is 
 the Infant Christ adored by a Shepherd and a King ; on one 
 side His ancestor the shepherd David standing forth to battle 
 with Goliath ; on the other side, the same ancestor as King 
 harping to the glory of Jehovah. The work was completed 
 in 1864, and continues to occupy its place in the Cathedral. 
 
 The water-colours of The Blue Closet, The Wedding of St. 
 George, and The Tune of Seven Towers, bring us into a 
 different relation of life and work. They may be referred 
 to that phase of Rossetti's painting which more especially 
 fostered his connexion with certain young men — now of 
 world-wide fame — at Oxford University, and which led to 
 his own pictorial experiments in Oxford. One of these 
 young men, William Morris, took from Rossetti, as titles for 
 poems, the first and the third of these titles for pictures : 
 the poems however are not founded on the pictures in any 
 material degree. Both pictures and poems are pure phantasies, 
 and independent phantasies. 
 
 To some eyes Rossetti's chivalric-romantic inventions are 
 mere knell-echoes of chivalry, or mere fleeting suggestions of 
 romance. It is interesting to observe what was one quarter 
 in which they were very differently construed. There was 
 a deeply devout Methodist, James Smetham, who was also a 
 painter. Painting was his profession and his enjoyment ; 
 religion was his life. He produced many works, not of large 
 dimension, full of fine threads of imagination, and of refined 
 
OXFORD MEN AND WORK. 1 93 
 
 though not powerful art. He is at present better known by 
 his remarkable Letters, published in 1892. He appears to 
 have seen something of Rossetti in 1 843, at Cary's Academy ; 
 again after 1851 ; and more especially from 1863 through all 
 the ensuing years, until his own mental and physical break- 
 down, owing to overstrained religious notions, withdrew him 
 from all society. This, expressed in a letter of December 
 1865, is what he thought of Rossetti's works of the class 
 referred to : — 
 
 " Your St. Georges and Sir Galahads are almost the only modern 
 pictures of heroes that reach the Christian ideal, in my judgment, as 
 to expression. Not to be invidious in naming artists, the modern 
 knight is a proud, vain, truculent rascal. Yours are ' renewed in the 
 spirit of their minds ' — couldn't do a mean or wrong thing — fear 
 nothing and nobody ; but would not hurt a fly or strike an un- 
 necessary blow. So I greatly esteem and respect them." 
 
 An earlier letter, September i860, relates in detail to the 
 water-colour lately mentioned of The Wedding of St. George : — 
 
 "One of the grandest things, like a golden dim dream. Love 
 ' credulous all gold,' gold armour, a sense of secret enclosure in 
 'palace-chambers far apart ' ; but quaint chambers in quaint palaces, 
 where angels creep in through sliding-panel doors, and stand behind 
 rows of flowers, drumming on golden bells, with wings crimson and 
 green. There was also a queer remnant of a dragon's head which 
 he had brought up in a box." 
 
 As to writing, there was not in these years anything of 
 such importance as to claim record here. Dante Rossetti 
 adhered faithfully to his resolve that he would for the present 
 be a painter and not a poet. 
 
 XX. 
 
 OXFORD MEN AND WORK—BURNE-JONES, MORRIS, 
 SWINBURNE. 
 
 The circle of Rossetti's intimacies had gradually changed, 
 and by the middle of 1856 a new and stimulating environ- 
 VOL. 1. 13 
 
194 DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI. 
 
 ment was his. I will go back upon my steps a little, prior 
 to going forward again. 
 
 As friends towards the year 1847 I specified the Heimanns, 
 Munro, Major Calder Campbell, and Bell Scott. Then came 
 Madox Brown, Hunt, and Millais ; and, in the train of the 
 last two, the other Praeraphaelites — Collinson, Woolner, and 
 Stephens, along with Deverell and the Tuppers, or more 
 especially John L. Tupper. There were also — William 
 North; James Hannay; the Seddons, with the portrait-painter 
 Lowes Dickinson, and the glass-painter John R. Clayton ; the 
 Howitts and Miss Barbara Leigh Smith (Mrs. Bodichon) ; 
 the Patmores, along with the Orme family (Mrs. Orme being 
 sister to Mrs. Patmore), and the Irish poet William Ailing- 
 ham ; the painters George Price Boyce and Arthur Hughes ; 
 and the Brownings. Then came Ruskin and his connexion — 
 including the Working Men's College, in which my brother 
 took a drawing-class for two or three years, ending towards 
 the close of 1858. Madox Brown then conducted it for 
 a while ; yet Rossetti's link with the College was not 
 entirely broken, and he was still doing something there in 
 February 1862. 
 
 Some of these were now dead : Deverell, North, and 
 Thomas Seddon. Major Campbell and the first Mrs. Patmore 
 did not long survive. Others, for one reason or another, had 
 passed wholly or chiefly out of my brother's ken — Millais, 
 Collinson, and the hospitable Orme family. Hannay, the 
 brilliant novelist, writer, and talker, was now or soon after- 
 wards settled in Edinburgh, with his beautiful and admirable 
 wife (highly valued by Rossetti), and his young family. The 
 Brownings were mostly in Florence, John Seddon in Wales, 
 Allingham in Ireland, and Scott in Newcastle. Hunt, owing 
 to his absences in the East and other circumstances, was not 
 very often seen ; nor yet the Heimanns, Stephens, Tupper, 
 Dickinson, Clayton, the Howitts, Miss Barbara Smith, or 
 Patmore. There remained Madox Brown and Ruskin con- 
 stantly but separately ; Munro, Woolner, and Boyce, pretty 
 frequently. Of course there were others as well, but hardly 
 
OXFORD MEN AND WORK. 195 
 
 any who counted as more than casual and pleasant acquaint- 
 ances. Robert Brought, Charles Bagot Cayley, Whitley 
 Stokes, and George Augustus Sala, were among these. 
 
 The first mention which I find of Burne-Jones — the Sir 
 Edward Burne-Jones of our present day — is in a letter from 
 my brother to Brown, dated 6 June 1856. This young 
 Oxford student — a Birmingham man destined for the Church, 
 but with a strong bias towards art, which found vent at this 
 time in romantic pen-and-ink designs of remarkable richness 
 and quality — had conceived a high idea of Rossetti's powers. 
 He called upon him, showed a design or two, and was forth- 
 with recognized by Rossetti — with an instinctive power, in 
 which he had few rivals, of seeing at a glance what is 
 intrinsically excellent, as well as what is predestined to remain 
 second-rate — as a born artist of quite exceptional faculty, and 
 capable of doing consummate work. He urged Mr. Jones to 
 become a professional painter. Jones obeyed .the external, 
 and also the internal, monitor, and the world is the richer for 
 his decision. 
 
 Through Burne-Jones my brother soon came to know 
 William Morris, and soon afterwards — but this I think was 
 only in Oxford — Algernon Charles Swinburne. It is a 
 natural temptation to say something in detail about these 
 three most highly distinguished men — their looks in youth, 
 their character, demeanour, and attainments. I shall however 
 forbear. Their personality, along with their work, forms part 
 of the annals of England, and indeed of Europe, in the 
 nineteenth century, and my hand might prove infirm to limn 
 them as they were and are. 
 
 Prior to his knowledge of Burne-Jones, my brother had 
 already been invited to take some part in art-work in Oxford. 
 In 1855 the Oxford Museum was in course of erection, much 
 under the influence of Mr. Ruskin, and his theories in archi- 
 tecture and decoration ; and the architect, Mr. Benjamin 
 Woodward, in July 1855, asked Rossetti to do some of the 
 designing-work in connexion with it. Mr. Woodward was 
 an Irishman, of excellent ability and highly refined taste. 
 
196 DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI. 
 
 He was the very reverse of what Irishmen are currently 
 assumed to be, and was (without any exception, unless it be 
 that of Mr. Cayley, the translator of Dante, Petrarca, and 
 Homer) the most modest, retiring, and shyly taciturn man 
 of noticeable talent whom it has ever been my fortune to 
 meet. He was of handsome and rather stately presence, 
 eminently gentle and courteous. His health was poor, and 
 he died in 1861, when he had barely attained middle age. 
 Among other edifices, he built a very elegant Insurance- 
 office, in Venetian Gothic, almost opposite my brother's 
 Chambers in Chatham Place. It has long been demolished, 
 and London contains perhaps nothing equal to it in its own 
 way. I do not think that my brother did anything for the 
 Oxford Museum, to which some of his friends contributed 
 statues— Woolner being the sculptor of Lord Bacon, Munro 
 of Galileo, and John Tupper of Linnaeus, a work of observably 
 faithful naturalism. Rossetti however soon undertook some 
 work for another Oxford structure with which Mr. Woodward 
 was concerned, the Union Debating-rooms. The proposal 
 was Rossetti's own. He had accompanied Mr. Woodward to 
 the building at the outset of the Long Vacation of 1857, and 
 he thought the bays of the Debating-room would be suitable 
 for wall-paintings, and suggested that they should be covered 
 with tempera-pictures from the Romance of King Arthur. 
 Thfs was not a specially appropriate theme, but Rossetti had 
 not at that time any very clear notion of the purpose which 
 the room was to serve. Malory's Morte (T Arthur is a book to 
 which, so far as memory serves me, he had not paid any 
 marked attention in earlier years. Perhaps Mr. Morris, rather 
 than his self-directed readings, had impressed its interest upon 
 him, and Morris, at the same time as Rossetti, offered to 
 paint something in the Union Room. At any rate my 
 brother was now in a vigorously Arthurian mood, which 
 lasted some years, and never left him entirely. 
 
 Mr. (Lord) Bowen was then the President of the Union, 
 and took an active part in bringing the project to bear. 
 Rossetti gave his work gratis, lasting for several months, 
 
OXFORD MEN AND WORK. 197 
 
 beginning in that Long Vacation, and so did the other 
 artists who co-operated with him ; but all costs, including 
 travelling expenses and the living of the artists (or of those 
 who were not Oxford residents), were borne by the Society ; 
 and I have understood that — as the young men made them- 
 selves much at their ease — these charges finally amounted to 
 a heavy sum, more very possibly than would have been 
 demanded and paid as mere commissions for painting. 
 
 Rossetti's work in the Union Building was done after he 
 had contributed something to a monthly publication, The 
 Oxford and Cambridge Magazine, in which Morris was a 
 leading writer. This serial, under the editorship of the Rev. 
 William Fulford, was started in January 1856, and lasted a 
 year. Towards the summer of 1856 Rossetti published here 
 The Burden of Nineveh, and The Staff and Scrip ; he also 
 re-printed The Blessed Damozel, slightly altered from the 
 form which it bore in The Germ. Most readers may agree 
 with me in thinking that all these three poems are among 
 the very best that Rossetti ever produced. The Burden of 
 Nineveh was begun, and probably completed, in the autumn 
 of 1850; The Staff and Scrip may date in 1852. The 
 Nineveh struck Ruskin most forcibly, and he wrote the 
 following letter : — 
 
 " Dear Rossetti, — 
 
 " I am wild to know who is the author of The Burden of 
 Nineveh, in No. 8 of Oxford and Cambridge. It is glorious. . 
 Please find out for me, and see if I can get acquainted with him." 
 
 The uncertainty here expressed appears, from the con- 
 cluding phrase, to be genuine, but it was hardly needful. 
 Rossetti must of course have written back that he was the 
 author ; and I fancy that a very large " Bravo ! " which forms 
 the commencement of another letter from Mr. Ruskin may 
 be the response to this avowal. The word is shaped out of 
 a series of notes of admiration. 
 
 For the painting-work at the Union Rossetti associated 
 several young painters with himself besides Morris — Burne- 
 
198 DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI. 
 
 Jones, Arthur Hughes, Valentine Prinsep (whom he got to 
 know about this time, visiting at the pleasant and fashionable 
 residence of his parents, Little Holland House), Spencer 
 Stanhope, and J. Hungerford Pollen. He asked Bell Scott 
 to join, but this did not take effect. Munro carved in stone, 
 from a design by Rossetti, the bas-relief of the tympanum, 
 King Arthur and the Round Table. Rossetti undertook a 
 large subject, Sir Launcelot before the Shrine of the Sangrael ; 
 and, at a later date, a second, Sir Galahad receiving the 
 Sangrael. Some good work was done in the room, and some 
 other work which, without being exactly good, was at least 
 interesting and noticeable ; but the whole affair ended in 
 material failure. Not one of these artists knew much — 
 hardly one of them anything — about wall-painting. They 
 worked with reckless self-confidence, and one might almost 
 say upon a mere system of " happy-go-lucky." The walls 
 were new, and not properly prepared — not even flattened. 
 The tempera-process adopted was little more than water- 
 colour painting, and of course the pictures flaked off — be- 
 coming a phantom, and then a wreck. After a while things 
 did not go entirely smooth with the Union Committee. Most 
 of the pictures — including the two by Rossetti — were not 
 brought to completion. In 1869 Mr. Thursfield renewed 
 negociations. They were entertained with some good-will, 
 but came to nothing. Before this, a local painter had been 
 called in, and tried his hand. That also proved to be in 
 vain ; and for many years past the painted surface of the 
 Union walls has been a confused hybrid between a smudge 
 and a blank. 
 
 There is a letter from my brother to Madox Brown, which 
 forecasts one of the morals of this enterprise. He says that 
 he is doing the work in a more painstaking method than he 
 had anticipated. " It is very jolly work in itself, but really 
 one is mad to do such things." 
 
 If I am not mistaken, it was while Rossetti was painting in 
 the Union room that an under-graduate, looking equally 
 youthful and brilliant, came forward, and was introduced to 
 
OXFORD MEN AND WORK. 199 
 
 the painter, or possibly introduced himself. This was 
 Algernon Charles Swinburne. So my brother's sojourn in 
 Oxford had at least one good result — that of bringing him 
 into personal contact, and soon into very intimate friendship, 
 with the greatest figure in our poetical literature since the 
 advent of Tennyson and of Browning. Mr. Swinburne 
 dedicated to him his first volume, The Queen Mother, and 
 Rosamund ; Mr. Morris the like with The Defence of Guenevere, 
 and other Poems. In fact Rossetti was now in the position of 
 what the French term a Chef d 'E 'cole. He had not only borne 
 a leading part in founding and guiding the Praeraphaelite 
 movement, but he had formed a totally different group of 
 believing admirers in the very diverse centre of Oxford 
 University. It has been stated that Rossetti called Mr. 
 Morris " the greatest literary identity of our time," and Mr. 
 Swinburne " highest in inexhaustible splendour of execution." 
 I do not know where these expressions occur ; but can 
 believe that they intimate exactly, or pretty nearly, what he 
 felt on the subject. 
 
 Another incident of importance took place in Oxford. 1 
 give some details which I find in Mr. Scott's book, and 
 I regard them as correct. The Union artists, or some of 
 them, went to the Oxford Theatre one evening, and saw, in 
 the front box above them, a very youthful lady whose aspect 
 fascinated them all. My brother was the first to observe her. 
 Her face was at once tragic, mystic, passionate, calm, 
 beautiful, and gracious — a face for a sculptor, and a face for 
 a painter — a face solitary in England, and not at all like that 
 of an Englishwoman, but rather of an Ionian Greek. It was 
 not a face for that large class of English people who only 
 take to the " pretty," and not to the beautiful or superb. 
 Her complexion was dark and pale, her eyes a deep pene- 
 trating grey, her massive wealth of hair gorgeously rippled, 
 and tending to black, yet not without some deep-sunken 
 glow. Soon she was traced to be Miss Burden, daughter of 
 a business-man in the University-city. My brother obtained 
 the privilege of painting from her, and several of his paintings 
 
200 DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI. 
 
 and designs in Oxford bear trace of her countenance. In later 
 years hers was the ideal face which speaks to you out of very 
 many of his principal works. Others among the Oxford 
 band of painters secured the like privilege ; and soon Miss 
 Burden became Mrs. William Morris. If Rossetti had done 
 nothing else in painting (and some people seem to suppose, 
 most erroneously, that he did little else) except the ideal, and 
 also very real, transcription of this unique type of female 
 beauty, he might still, on that ground alone, survive in the 
 chronicles of the art. 
 
 In 1857 a semi-public exhibition, which came to be 
 termed " the Prasraphaelite Exhibition," was got up at No. 4 
 Russell Place, Fitzroy Square (now embodied in Charlotte 
 Street). My brother contributed to it the water-colours of 
 Dante s Dream, Dante drawing an Angel in Memory of 
 Beatrice, Mary Nazarene (which is I suppose the Annunciation 
 water-colour previously mentioned), and The Blue Closet ; 
 along with Hesterna Rosa, and The Magdalene at the Door 
 of Simon the PJiarisee — being presumably the pen-and-ink 
 designs — and photographs of the Tennyson designs, taken 
 before the engraving process. This small display, by himself 
 and his colleagues, excited a considerable amount of atten- 
 tion, more among those critics and visitors who were well- 
 disposed towards the school than among those who were 
 hostile. It served to confirm the impression that something 
 was still going on in the country very different from what 
 could be seen in the ordinary picture-shows. Other con- 
 tributors were Messrs. Millais, Hunt, Brown, Hughes, Inch- 
 bold, Collins, Brett, William Davis, and Windus, with the 
 late Thomas Seddon. 
 
 Miss Siddal's health continued a subject of great anxiety 
 in these years, and she repaired to' one or another health- 
 resort from time to time — Dante Rossetti joining her there. 
 In one instance they were in Bath (I think towards the end 
 of 1856) ; in a second instance, 1857-8, at Matlock, where 
 they made a stay of several months, getting on towards a 
 year. In February 1857 there was a scheme of a sort of 
 
OXFORD MEN AND WORK. 201 
 
 joint establishment, or " College," for various artists. Burne- 
 Jones and Morris entered into the project, and at least one 
 other painter was proposed, besides Rossetti, who was under 
 the impression that, before the plan could take actual effect, 
 he and Lizzie would be married. He found however, on 
 speaking to her, that she was decidedly indisposed to enter 
 into any plan which would domicile her in the same place 
 with the third painter here referred to ; and Rossetti himself, 
 writing to Madox Brown, said — " I do not think he has lately 
 acted as a friend towards me in her regard." These are 
 circumstances which I need not speak of further, and indeed 
 they are not clearly within my knowledge or recollection. 
 The project never came to anything ; nor was it perchance, 
 in itself, a very feasible one. 
 
 Those readers who have perused Mr. Bell Scott's book 
 with diligence will have observed in it a letter from Mr. 
 Holman Hunt written within a few days after the close of 
 my brother's life. It contains the following passage :— 
 
 " Rossetti's death is ever in my mind. ... I had long ago for- 
 given him, and forgotten the offence, which in fact, taken altogether, 
 worked me good rather than harm. Indeed, I had intended in 
 recent times to call upon him. . . . Our talk over the past is 
 deferred until our meeting in the Elysian Fields, when ... we may 
 talk over back history as having nothing in it not atoned for and 
 wiped out long ago, and as having value only as experience which 
 has done its work in making us both wiser and better." 
 
 I understand perfectly well what it is that Mr. Hunt terms 
 " the offence," but will not dwell upon any details ; only 
 remarking that, if my reader chooses to ask the old question 
 " Who was the woman ? " he will not be far wrong, though 
 his query may chance to remain for ever unanswered. She 
 was not any person whose name occurs in these pages. The 
 incident belongs to the year 1857. It behoves me to add 
 that Mr. Hunt was wholly blameless in this matter ; not so my 
 brother, who was properly, though I will not say very deeply, 
 censurable. This transaction left no trace in his after career. 
 
202 DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI. 
 
 XXI. 
 
 WORK IN 1858-59. 
 
 The tale of work in these years is not very extensive ; 
 but naturally some things were going on which have been 
 previously mentioned — more especially the Triptych for 
 LlandafT Cathedral. There were — the pen-and-ink design 
 of Hamlet and Ophelia ; the water-colour Mary in the House 
 of John ; Salutatio Beatricis, representing Dante meeting 
 Beatrice in Florence, and in the Garden of Eden, painted in 
 oil in a week on a door in Mr. Morris's residence, The Red 
 House, Upton, near Bexley Heath, Woolwich ; a water-colour, 
 A Christmas Carol, in which a lady is shown chaunting as her 
 hair is combed out ; and a small oil-picture, Bocca Baciata. 
 Some other examples can be here passed over ; though I 
 might specify the very beautiful head, Indian ink, of Mrs. 
 Morris, before her marriage, entitled Queen Guenevere, and 
 now in the Dublin National Gallery. 
 
 " Bocca Baciata " is a phrase occurring in Boccaccio, 
 meaning " kissed mouth," or " a mouth that has been kissed." 
 This picture, a very complete and elegant specimen of the 
 skill which Rossetti had by this time, the autumn of 1859, 
 attained in the painting-art, is a bust fancy-portrait of a 
 woman, with a number of marigolds. The sitter was the 
 one whom Mr. Bell Scott describes in the following terms : — 
 
 " The paradoxical conclusion that women and flowers were the 
 only objects worth painting was brought about by the appearance 
 of other ladies besides Miss Siddal coming within his [Rossetti's] 
 orbit. Among these the most important was one who must have 
 had some overpowering attractions for him, although I never could 
 see what they were. He met her in the Strand. She was cracking 
 nuts with her teeth, and throwing the shells about. Seeing Rossetti 
 staring at her, she threw some at him. Delighted with this brilliant 
 naivete, he forthwith accosted her, and carried her off to sit to him 
 for her portrait." 
 
 I knew this person extremely well, and shall call her Mrs. 
 
WORK IN 1858-59. 203 
 
 H- , which was the correct initial at, or soon after, the time 
 
 when my brother first met her. I cannot recollect ever 
 hearing anything about the nuts, but do not contest Mr. 
 Scott's statement on that point. I do contest the allegation 
 that my brother concluded that " women and flowers were the 
 only objects worth painting," and several of his works, executed 
 later than 1859, are there to confute it. That he often did 
 paint beautiful women with floral adjuncts is however quite 
 true. The gentlemen who commissioned or purchased his 
 pictures are chiefly responsible for this result ; as he, on the 
 contrary, would in several instances have preferred to carry 
 out as paintings some of his more important designs, includ- 
 ing sometimes numerous figures of both sexes. If Mr. Scott 
 
 " never could see " what were the attractions of Mrs. H , 
 
 his eyesight must have differed from that of many other 
 people. She was a pre-eminently fine woman, with regular 
 and sweet features, and a mass of the most lovely blonde hair 
 — light-golden or "harvest yellow." Bocca Baciata, which is 
 a most faithful portrait of her, might speak for itself. If 
 
 Mr. Scott meant not so much to deny that Mrs. H was 
 
 " fair to see," but rather to intimate that she had no charm 
 of breeding, education, or intellect, he was right enough. 
 Another lady of whom my brother saw a great deal in 1859, 
 and for some little while after, was Mrs. Crabb, known as an 
 actress by the name of Miss Herbert. He greatly admired 
 her refined and stately classical face, was pleased with her 
 company, and got her to favour him with sittings in various 
 instances. 
 
 In the way of verse, I think Love's Nocturn and The Song 
 of the Bower belong to 1859 — two lyrics of passion, and in 
 the former case of fancy as well, which stand at about the 
 summit of Rossetti's lyrical performance. TJie Song of the 
 Bower I regard as relating to Miss Siddal. Circumstances 
 had kept him more apart from her than had been the case 
 in earlier years, and he gave voice to his feelings in this poem. 
 So at least I regard it. 
 
 In 1858 Rossetti and some other artists, along with a few 
 
204 DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI. 
 
 amateurs or outsiders (myself one of them), promoted the 
 formation of a body called the Hogarth Club — quite a differ- 
 ent body from the one which now bears the same name. 
 One object was to hold exhibitions of works by members. 
 These exhibitions, being visited by card of admission, and 
 thus not strictly public, were convenient to such members as 
 did not want to run counter to a rule of the Royal Academy 
 whereby any works previously exhibited in public are ex- 
 cluded from the Academy shows. The first meeting of the 
 Club was in July 1858, at No. 178 Piccadilly; later on the 
 meetings were at No. 6 Waterloo Place, and the Club con- 
 tinued until April 1861. There were two or three exhibi- 
 tions, to which my brother contributed. He was not much 
 contented with these displays, being of opinion that some 
 of the artists elected into the Club, and sending works of 
 their own, were not partakers in the pictorial aims, nor in 
 harmony with the style, of himself and his leading associ- 
 ates, such as Madox Brown and Burne-Jones. I hardly 
 know now why the Club was dissolved, or allowed to drop. 
 Perhaps its chief promoters found that it did not fully answer 
 their expectations, and that the endeavour to "keep things 
 coins " cost them more trouble than it was worth. 
 
 XXII. 
 MARRIAGE. 
 
 My brother, as I said before, was in love with Miss Siddal as 
 far back as 1850, and soon after that year there had been 
 a definite engagement between them. Nevertheless we have 
 now come up to the year i860, and they remained as yet 
 unmarried. There were two principal reasons for this delay. 
 First and foremost came her deplorable ill-health, which was 
 often such as to prevent either of them from entertaining the 
 idea of matrimony at a time when other circumstances would 
 have been propitious to it. She looked delicate, and to a 
 skilled eye probably very ill, but had not in the least degree 
 
MARRIAGE. 205 
 
 lost her beauty, nor even her comeliness. Second, his money- 
 position, though by no means so bad orjwith so little outlook 
 as that of many another young painter, continued for some 
 while precarious ; his receipts small, his habits, if not exactly 
 extravagant, unthrifty to the extent of improvidence, his 
 purse often empty, and needing to be replenished by some 
 expedient or other apart from that of the regular day's work. 
 A pawnbroker was a frequent resource — necessarily a very 
 scanty one, and ultimately on the losing side. Besides all 
 this, it may be true that, when a moment came for making 
 the plunge, he hesitated, temporized, and lost it ; and this 
 would be only natural for a man immersed in pictorial and 
 partly in literary projects and doings, to whom every hour 
 was precious and bespoken, and who moreover — such was my 
 brother's case — was very difficult to be stirred out of his daily 
 groove of habit and association. 
 
 By the beginning of i860 Rossetti's position, as regards 
 commissions and consequent income, had improved ; though 
 it was still far from being so prosperous and secure as it 
 became some years later. The Triptych for Llandaff was 
 going on. The arrangement with Mr. Ruskin had probably 
 come to an end, or was proceeding languidly and intermit- 
 tently. Mr. Boyce remained an occasional purchaser, and 
 Colonel Gillum, who first came to my brother with an intro- 
 duction from Browning, and who is now well known as a 
 zealous philanthropist, the founder and director of a " Boys' 
 Home." Mr. Leathart of Newcastle-on-Tyne took several 
 specimens of Rossetti's art ; and more particularly Mr. 
 Thomas E. Plint, of Leeds, a stockbroker and prominent 
 Nonconformist leader. He began purchasing towards the 
 end of 1856, and seemed ready to acquire, on terms more 
 than tolerably liberal, almost anything that the painter had 
 to offer him. I do not remember how he first came into this 
 particular artistic circle. He bought from several so-called 
 Praeraphaelite painters, and possibly Mr. Holman Hunt, as 
 having exceptional hold on the religious world, may have 
 come foremost. Rossetti, with his constant alertness for his 
 
206 DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI. 
 
 friends' interests, got Mr. Plint to purchase from Madox 
 Brown, Burne-Jones, and Morris. This professional advan- 
 tage however was not to continue long, for in the course of 
 i860 Mr. Plint died very suddenly, leaving Rossetti's affairs 
 with his estate much embroiled, what between payments made 
 and pictures due but not yet brought to completion. 
 
 In April i860, and also in May, my brother was down 
 with Lizzie at Hastings. The reader of these Family-letters 
 will observe one addressed to me on 17 April, showing the 
 very alarming condition of her health at that time, as well as 
 the fact that he had then in his possession an ordinary license 
 for marriage. A letter to Madox Brown, 22 April, is couched 
 in still stronger terms, saying that Lizzie " has seemed ready 
 to die daily, and more than once a day." At last however 
 the moment arrived, and on 23 May they were married at 
 St. Clement's Church, Hastings. It is pleasant to observe, 
 from the note which Rossetti addressed to Brown on this 
 very day, that he had beforehand paid his bride the little 
 attention of getting her initials, E. E. R., stamped in cipher 
 on the notepaper. 
 
 They went away at once on a wedding-trip by Folkestone 
 and Boulogne to Paris — a city which had in previous instances 
 seemed favourable to Lizzie's health. At Boulogne Rossetti 
 saw again his good old friends the Maenzas, and his bride 
 viewed them both, but more especially Signor Maenza, with 
 great predilection. Her constitution rallied to some extent, 
 and they stayed in Paris until near the close of June, my 
 brother continuing there to do something in the way of his 
 profession. His ideas on matters of art were now considerably 
 different from what they had been when he visited Paris with 
 Holman Hunt in 1849. He had shed the prejudices — a 
 compound between the juvenile, the half-informed, the wilful, 
 and the humoursome — of P.R.B'ism, and no longer scampered 
 through the Louvre until he found some picture of the less 
 fully matured period of art which hit his fancy. In i860 he 
 pronounced the gorgeous Paul Veronese of The Marriage in 
 Cana to be " the greatest picture in the world." This again, 
 
MARRIAGE. 207 
 
 if free from clear perversity, was rash for a pictorial student 
 and practitioner whose " world " of art consisted only of 
 London, Paris, and Belgium, to the exclusion of all those 
 masterpieces of which one knows nothing solid until one 
 has been elsewhere — more especially in Italy. And later on, 
 1 87 1, he had got to think Veronese (and also Tintoret) 
 " simply detestable without their colour and handling " ; but, 
 as the colour and handling are in the Marriage of Cana 
 picture, he must have retained a very vivid admiration for 
 that. 
 
 As I have said, Rossetti did some amount of art-work in 
 Paris. He brought into its present form the pen-and-ink 
 design named How they met Themselves, and designed, if he 
 did not partly paint, the subject of Dr. JoJinson and tJie 
 MetJwdistical Young Ladies at the Mitre Tavern. As he 
 was not a little superstitious, and sensitive to ill omens, I 
 am somewhat surprised that he took up the former of these 
 drawings. Here the lady — studied from Lizzie, and very 
 like her — is represented swooning away as she encounters 
 her own wraith — not to speak of her lover or husband, who 
 grasps his sword on seeing the wraith of himself. To meet 
 one's wraith is ominous of death, and to figure Lizzie as 
 meeting her wraith might well have struck her bridegroom 
 as uncanny in a high degree. In less than two years the 
 weird was wofully fulfilled. 
 
 From Paris the bride and bridegroom returned to the old 
 quarters in London, 14 Chatham Place — enlarged later on 
 by breaking through the wall of an adjoining house, and 
 adding some apartments on the same floor. With this 
 addition the domicile became compact, comfortable, sightly, 
 and fully sufficient for all present wants. They also took 
 for a while part of a house in Downshire Hill, Hampstead, 
 where they were near the Madox Browns. This was princi- 
 pally or w r holly with a view to Lizzie's health. 
 
208 DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI. 
 
 XXIII. 
 
 MARRIED LIFE. 
 
 Mr. Bell Scott has expressed the opinion that Rossetti 
 was not well adapted for married life. He terms marriage 
 " an even way of life the most unlikely possible to suit his 
 late development." By the phrase " his late development " 
 Mr. Scott means apparently that Rossetti, not having in- 
 dulged in any juvenile amours or entanglements, had in the 
 process of years become more susceptible to influences of 
 that character. On this point I have already had my say, 
 and have made my reader aware that Rossetti was in love 
 with his future wife as far back as his twenty-third year, 
 and had deferred marriage for reasons all of them intelligible, 
 and some cogent. I do not, however, dissent from Mr. 
 Scott's opinion that my brother, at the age of thirty-two, 
 was less likely to settle down into the ordinary habits of 
 married life than many other men would have been. 
 
 His poetical and artistic temperament, his devotion to the 
 ideas and practice of an artist and poet, his now rooted 
 bachelor-customs of working when he could or when he liked, 
 of keeping any hours or no recognized hours, of living in 
 chambers without a regular home-dinner, of seeing any people 
 he chose just as they happened to come, most of them men, 
 of eschewing the minor observances of society in the way of 
 visiting and dressing, etc. — and in short his propensity for 
 doing whatever he liked simply because he liked it, and 
 without any self-accommodation to what other people might 
 like instead — all this made it improbable that he would prove 
 a complaisant or well-matching husband on the ordinary lines 
 of complaisance. He was not what I should call " Bohemian " 
 — he neither drank nor gambled nor betted nor smoked nor 
 amused himself in any rough-and-ready manner ; but certainly 
 he did not belong to the tribe of those decorous citizens whose 
 highest ambition seems to be that they should demean them- 
 selves the one like the other, and all in some conformity to 
 
MARRIED LIFE. 200, 
 
 " the upper classes." Besides, he had long been inured to 
 having things his own way, and to a certain ungrudgingly 
 conceded leadership even among the men of genius who 
 formed his inner circle. 'He might have modified Iago's 
 phrase, and said, " For I am nothing if not dominant." It is 
 to be remembered that his wife was perfectly accustomed to 
 his habits, had much of tendency and feeling in the same 
 direction as himself, and, from her constant and severe ill- 
 health if from no other cause, was very little in the way of 
 polite visiting or elegant sight-seeing. 
 
 Two families she did very frequently visit with — the Madox 
 Browns and the Morrises ; and I suppose in a minor degree 
 the Burne-Joneses, for Mr. Jones had married (Miss Georgina 
 Macdonald) very soon after my brother's wedding. The 
 Macdonalds were a rather numerous family, all or most of 
 whom were in some degree known to my brother, and were 
 probably not unknown to his wife. Two of the sisters are now 
 Mrs. Poynter, wife of the Director of the National Gallery, 
 and Mrs. Kipling, mother of Mr. Rudyard Kipling. With 
 the Brown and Morris families Mrs. Rossetti stayed every 
 now and then along with her husband, and at some other 
 times without him. The Ruskins they saw occasionally, but 
 not so regularly as might have been expected. For one 
 reason or another I happen to have witnessed very little of 
 my brother's married life. We lived at opposite ends of the 
 town — he by Blackfriars Bridge, and I, with my mother and 
 sisters, near Regent's Park (166 Albany Street), and each of 
 us had his separate unavoidable occupations. 
 
 There is a pretty little letter from Mr. Ruskin, congratulating 
 Dante and Lizzie on their marriage. It is dated 4 September 
 i860, as he had been away at a prior date. I extract the 
 postscript : — 
 
 " I looked over all the book of sketches at Chatham Place yester- 
 day [the book of sketches was a large handsome volume given to 
 Rossetti by Lady Dalrymple, a most obliging friend of his, sister 
 to Mrs. Prinsep. He inserted into its commodious leaves a great 
 
 VOL. I. 14 
 
2IO DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI. 
 
 number of pencil and other drawings, many of which remained 
 undisposed-of up to the date of his death. Mr. Ruskin, it is to be 
 inferred, had called in Chatham Place on some day when the 
 Rossettis were staying at their lodgings at Hampstead]. I think 
 Ida should be very happy to see how much more beautifully, per- 
 fectly, and tenderly, you draw when you are drawing her than when 
 you draw anybody else. She cures you of all your worst faults when 
 you only look at her." 
 
 These drawings of Lizzie, very considerable in number from 
 first to last, were made some before and some after marriage. 
 There is a substantial measure of truth in what Mr. Ruskin 
 said as to their quality, pure and exquisite in a high degree, 
 as pitted against even the finest drawings which my brother 
 made from other sitters at any period of his pictorial career. 
 
 After allowing for the three married couples whom I have 
 named, there was not, I think, any person whom Rossetti 
 saw, during his wedded life, so constantly and so delightedly 
 as Mr. Swinburne. This poet's first volume — the two dramas 
 of The Queen MotJier and Rosamund — came out in the only 
 completed year, 1861, of my brother's marriage. It did not 
 create any particular stir, but Rossetti knew perfectly well 
 what to think of the volume, and of its author and his future. 
 Mr. Swinburne's brilliant intellect, his wide knowledge of 
 poetry and astonishing memory in quotation, his enthusiasm 
 for whatsoever he recognized as great, his fascinating audacity 
 and pungency in talk, and the singular and ingenuous charm 
 of his manner to any one whom he either liked or respected, 
 made him the most welcome of comrades to Rossetti. For 
 what this archimage of verse thought of Mrs. Rossetti I may 
 refer back to a previous section, XVII. At this time my 
 brother came also into habits of some intimacy with Mr. 
 George Meredith the celebrated novelist, and with Mr. 
 Frederick A. Sandys the painter — of whom Rossetti had' 
 heard something in 1857, when Mr. Sandys published a 
 caricature of Millais's picture Sir Isumbras at the Ford, 
 containing figures of Millais himself, along with Hunt and 
 Rossetti, but intended chiefly as a pasquinade against Ruskin, 
 
MARRIED LIFE. 2 1 I 
 
 Another person who was often in Rossetti's apartments was 
 Mr. James Anderson Rose, a solicitor and art-collector,- who 
 continued on easy and pleasant terms with my brother for 
 several years, though the latter eventually (whatever the 
 cause) preferred to lose sight of him. Yet another was Mr. 
 Alexander Gilchrist, author of The Life of Etty, who was at 
 this time engaged in writing his most praiseworthy Life of 
 Blake. For Gilchrist the feeling of Rossetti, who first met 
 him in the spring of 1861 in relation to the Blake work, was 
 one of genuine friendliness. He liked the writer and his 
 writings, and had a high regard for his insight as a critic of 
 art. Few of the events occurring at any time of his life seem 
 to have affected Rossetti as a more staggering blow than the 
 sudden death of Gilchrist from scarlet fever, 1 at the age of 
 only thirty-three, on 30 November 1861. While his short 
 and fierce illness lasted, Rossetti wrote to Mrs. Gilchrist 
 offering that either himself or I would keep up the invalid's 
 current literary work ; and he made another nearly similar 
 offer immediately after Gilchrist's death. But soon a far 
 crueller blow was to strike him. 
 
 Let me repeat here, from The Life of Anne Gilchrist — her- 
 self a noble-natured woman, whom my brother knew and 
 appreciated from 1861 until his life closed in 1882 — a trait 
 which does honour to a lady occasionally mentioned in my 
 pages, the second Mrs. Madox Brown. It should be under- 
 stood that scarlet fever was then raging in the Gilchrist 
 household — not only Gilchrist himself, who succumbed, but 
 also two of his children, who recovered, being dangerously 
 attacked : — 
 
 " In the tragedies of life there seem to be among our fellow- 
 beings always one or two with a dash of heroism in their natures. 
 Mrs. Madox Brown offered to come and help. Anne Gilchrist, even 
 then, remembered that Mrs. Brown possessed children — a thought 
 which made her decline the noble offer." 
 
 1 Several letters from Rossetti, on this subject and others, are in the 
 book Anne Gilchrist, Edited by Herbert H, Gilchrist. Unwin, 1887. 
 
212 DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI. 
 
 Married life cannot be exactly happy when one of the 
 spouses is perpetually and grievously ill. Affectionate and 
 tender it may be, but not happy ; indeed the very affection 
 bars the possibility of happiness. I hardly think that at any 
 time in her brief period of marriage was Lizzie Rossetti quite 
 so alarmingly ill as she had been just before it commenced ; 
 but health was irrecoverably gone, and sickness, more or less 
 serious, was her constant portion. She was compelled — no 
 doubt under medical advice — to take laudanum or some opiate 
 continually, and stimulants alternated with opiates. On 
 2 May 1861 she was confined of a stillborn female infant — 
 Dr. Babington, the Head Physician of the Lying-in Hospital, 
 being called in, as well as another doctor. Immediately before 
 this occurrence Rossetti had written, " She has too much 
 courage to be in the least downcast herself " ; and she rallied 
 from the confinement rapidly enough. 
 
 In the summer of 1 861 another of Rossetti's friends had 
 passed away — Mrs. Wells, the sister of Mr. Boyce, and wife 
 of the R.A. Portrait-painter. Pier age may have been under 
 thirty. She was herself an exhibiting painter of exceptional 
 talent, from which my brother and many more hoped much. 
 He took a portrait of her as she lay in death ; and Gilchrist, 
 so soon to follow her to the grave, wrote an obituary-notice 
 of her, highly and deservedly eulogistic. 
 
 A phrase in one of my brother's letters to Madox Brown, 
 2 December 1861, may be worth observing : he professes to be 
 "getting awfully fat and torpid." In early youth he was slim 
 and rather attenuated. This had now for some while ceased 
 to be the case ; and the phrase which he used, though ex- 
 aggerated, was not repugnant to fact. After this date he 
 was sometimes (as for instance in 1873) still fatter than then, 
 but with marked variations from time to time. In his closing 
 years he might be considered thin again. 
 
WORK IN 1 860-6 1. 213 
 
 XXIV. 
 
 WORK IN 1860-61— "THE EARLY ITALIAN POETS"— THE 
 . MORRIS FIRM. 
 
 At no period of his life was my brother more busily employed 
 than during his brief term of marriage, May 1 860 to February 
 1862. He was much engaged in painting, in a literary 
 project, and in a general scheme of art-work. 
 
 The death in i860 of the then principal purchaser of his 
 paintings, Mr. Plint, has been previously mentioned. This, 
 at the very outset of married life, was a most serious mis- 
 fortune and embarrassment to him — and a sorrow as well, for 
 he entertained a cordial liking for this liberal and estimable 
 man. Mr. Plint had paid him in advance no less a sum than 
 £714., for three pictures not yet completed, perhaps hardly 
 begun ; and Rossetti had to execute and send in the works 
 without so far neglecting other employment as to wrong 
 surviving buyers, or to deprive himself and his wife of the 
 means of subsistence from month to month. The details appear 
 to some extent in his Family-letters. Some pictures probably 
 were completed without any great delay, and my brother re- 
 paid also a part of the purchase-money. In 1865 the whole 
 of Mr. Flint's collection of art was sold off. It included five 
 works by Rossetti : the small oil-picture named Burd Alane, 
 and the water-colours of The Lovers (called also Carlisle Toiver), 
 The Bower-garden, The Wedding of St. George, and Dr. Johnson 
 with the Methodistical Young Ladies at the Mitre Tavern. 
 Another small oil-picture of his had belonged to Mr. Plint — 
 The Queen of Hearts (or Regina Cordiuni), being a portrait 
 of Lizzie Rossetti ; but this, as the sale was determined upon 
 very soon after Lizzie's death, was, out of consideration for 
 the painter's feelings, withdrawn from the auction under some 
 arrangement. There were also paintings by Turner, Etty, 
 Burne-Jones, Madox Brown, Millais, Holman Hunt, Hughes, 
 Wallis, Windus, Brett, Alfred Hunt, William Hunt, Lewis, 
 Holland, Oakes, Hook, Edouard Frere, Leys, and various 
 others. This seems a sufficiently tempting list ; but for some 
 
214 DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI. 
 
 reason or other (possibly, but I cannot affirm it, there was 
 a combination of picture-dealers inimical to the new school) 
 the sale proved a very great failure — so far, at any rate, as 
 pictures of the " Praeraphaelite " order were concerned. Scarcely 
 any even tolerable prices were realized save by Rossetti's 
 pictures, and for these the prices were much less than Mr. 
 Plint had not extravagantly given. For years afterwards, or 
 indeed for the remainder of his life, my brother mistrusted the 
 chances of auction-sales, and did his best to shut out from 
 them any works of his own. 
 
 Among the productions of Rossetti in these two years were 
 — the water-colour of Lucrezia Borgia (preparing a poison- 
 draught) ; the finished oil-sketch of the old Magdalene 
 subject ; the crowded pen-and-ink design of Cassandra 
 (prophesying the death of Hector) ; The Annunciation, painted 
 in oil on a pulpit in the Church of St. Martin-on-the-Hill, 
 Scarborough ; a water-colour head of Mr. Swinburne, I suppose 
 the most vigorous and finished record of his youth which 
 posterity will have to cherish ; a red-chalk life-sized head of 
 Ruskin ; the oil-picture Fair Rosamund; and an oil-picture 
 named Dautis Amor, of symbolical character. The same 
 design appears in a pen-and-ink drawing. There were also 
 the two designs for Christina Rossetti's volume (published in 
 1862) Goblin Market, and other Poems. The Magdalene 
 stands very fully described in a letter which my brother in 
 1865 addressed to the wife of the purchaser, Mr. Clabburn 
 of Norwich. This is printed in the Pall Mall Gazette of 
 16 January 1891. The Cassandra is one of the most important 
 among all my brother's inventions. Many a time did he wish 
 to set-to at painting it, but something always interfered — chiefly 
 the constant run of commissions for pictures of a less exacting 
 and less costly kind. It was certainly one of his lifelong re- 
 grets that this subject remained only a design, and not a picture. 
 
 The time had now come for Rossetti to appear before the 
 public as author of a volume — The Early Italian Poets. I 
 have already spoken at some length about this very interesting 
 series of translations, the work almost entirely of his 
 
WORK IN 1 860-6 1. 215 
 
 eighteenth to his twenty-second year ; and I will avow my 
 belief that there was not in the United Kingdom another man 
 who could have done them half as well — with half the insight 
 into the poetic motives and character of the originals, or half 
 the personal power of poetic transfusion, which he brought to 
 the task. Self-reliant though he was when he made the 
 translations, and still more so when he was preparing to 
 publish them, and, by his innermost nature, immutably biassed 
 in certain directions and not in others, he was nevertheless 
 extremely ready to consult well-qualified friends as to this 
 book, and to take some practical advantage of the advice 
 which they might offer him. In this way he showed his MS. 
 to Mr. Allingham, Mr. Ruskin, Mr. Patmore, Count Aurelio 
 Saffi (then in Oxford, once the noble Triumvir of Rome along 
 with Mazzini and Armellini), and no doubt to Mr. Swinburne 
 and some others as well. To myself he committed the MS. 
 of the Vita Nuova, asking me to introduce any change of 
 diction, etc., which I might judge expedient. 
 
 Ruskin liked the translations, but urged that crudities (and 
 there must have been many in MSS. going back to that 
 remote period of youth) should be removed. Patmore wrote 
 a letter of so much generous elan, and so stringently ex- 
 pressed, that I will not scruple to re-produce it here : — 
 
 " 21 May 1861. 
 
 " My dear Rossetti, 
 
 " A thousand thanks for what I see at a glance is one of the 
 very few really precious books in the English or any other language. 
 It seems to me to be the first time that a translator has proved him- 
 self, by his translations alone, to be a great poet. Your book is so 
 exquisitely to my taste that I almost dread to read it — as one dreads 
 other great enjoyments which will diminish with enjoyment. How 
 I envy the iron muscle and the electric nerve which appears every- 
 where in your poetic diction ! It would be absurd to wish you 
 success after such intrinsic success as the book itself is. 
 
 " Yours ever, 
 
 " Coventry Patmore. 
 
 " I am rejoiced to hear of your wife's health." 
 
2l6 DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI. 
 
 Mr. Ruskin's good-will to The Early Italian Poets was not 
 confined to words. After another publisher had been con- 
 sulted without definite upshot, the MS. was offered to 
 Ruskin's publishers Messrs. Smith and Elder, and they 
 agreed to undertake the risk, subject (it would seem) to an 
 advance or guarantee of .£100 by Ruskin. The book came 
 out in 1 86 1, and was extremely well received. I might even 
 say it was received with general acclaim, so far as a work of 
 poetical translation ever can be welcomed and applauded in 
 England. By 1869 about 600 copies of it had sold ; and the 
 profits covered the £100 of Mr. Ruskin, and a minute dole of 
 less than £9 to Rossetti. A few copies, 64, still remained 
 on hand. It has been stated that Mr. Ruskin subsidized 
 Rossetti in bringing out not only The Early Italian Poets, 
 but also the volume of original Poems, 1870. But this is quite 
 erroneous. 
 
 My brother had intended to produce some etchings to 
 illustrate the volume. He made a graceful design of two 
 lovers kissing, 1 which was engraved, and formed the founda- 
 tion of his water-colour entitled TJie Rose-garden. Even as 
 late as 18 June 1861 he thought of doing the etchings, 
 and giving them in gratis if the publishers would not com- 
 pensate him. At last this project was abandoned, and the 
 book appeared without any designs. 
 
 At some time — it may have been before 1861 — Rossetti 
 showed a number of his original poems to Ruskin, with a 
 direct view to the publication of some of them in the Corn hill 
 Magazine, issued by Messrs. Smith and Elder, and then 
 edited by Thackeray (the latter must have been known to 
 my brother by sight, but I question whether they ever 
 interchanged a word). Ruskin admired the poems to a large 
 extent, but raised objections to one and another, and no 
 magazine-publishing ensued. Rossetti however was still bent 
 
 1 To my surprise, I lately saw, in an American journal, this design, 
 modernized in costume, adopted to bedeck the advertisement of some 
 tradesman for his "washing-powder" — a queer phase of metempsy- 
 chosis. 
 
WORK IN 1 860-6 1. 217 
 
 upon bringing the poems out ; and the volume of The Early 
 Italian Poets contained an intimation that Dante at Verona, 
 and other Poems, would shortly be printed. This also, as will 
 soon be seen, came to nothing. 
 
 It was, I believe, in i860 that an enterprise which has 
 proved to be of no less than national importance was set on 
 foot. I mean the foundation of the Decorative Firm which, 
 known at first as " Morris, Marshall, Falkner, and Co.," is now 
 named " Morris and Company." One may note it as rather 
 curious that this Firm consisted of the same number of men, 
 seven, as the Praeraphaelite Brotherhood. The Brotherhood 
 introduced into painting something that might well be called 
 a revolution, and the Firm introduced into decoration some- 
 thing still more revolutionary for widespread and as yet 
 permanent effect. Rossetti was prominent in both adventures. 
 
 The seven members of the Firm — I will name them in 
 what appears to me to be the approximate order of chei*' 
 importance in bringing this scheme into working-order — 
 were William Morris, Madox Brown, Burne-Jones, Rossetti, 
 Philip Webb, Peter Paul Marshall, and Charles Falkner. 
 Mr. Webb is an architect of much originality of view, and 
 practical attainment and skill. He built, among other things, 
 the Red House at Upton tenanted by Mr. Morris. He 
 has also marked ability in designing for stained glass and 
 other forms of decoration, especially in the way of animal 
 life. Mr. Marshall was the first originator of the idea of 
 such a Firm. He is an engineer (now for many years settled 
 in Norwich), son-in-law to Mr. John Miller, the merchant and 
 picture-collector in Liverpool, and is besides a capable painter 
 who might, under differing circumstances, have passed out 
 of the amateur into the professional stage of work. I believe 
 Rossetti was the first person to whom he broached his idea ; 
 he eagerly caught at it, and imparted it to others. Mr. 
 Falkner, an Oxford Mathematician and close friend of Mr. 
 Morris, took no part in the practical work of the Firm, but 
 gave it his willing support ; and I suppose that he, like each 
 of the others, put a modicum of money into it. What this 
 
218 DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI 
 
 modicum was — in my brother's or in any case — I do not 
 know. As to Rossetti, at any rate, I presume it to have been 
 decidedly small. Mr. Morris was on a different footing in 
 this respect. He ventured something very substantial, and, 
 but for him, it may be safely said that the Firm would not 
 have been constituted at all. They set up in the secluded 
 but decorous quarters of Queen Square, Bloomsbury ; or I 
 think, first of all, in Red Lion Square. 
 
 They were all young men — the senior, Madox Brown, 
 being aged thirty-nine in i860; and there was a deal of 
 jollity among them. Indeed there was always jollity where 
 Rossetti was present — not to speak of Morris and Brown, 
 who were the heartiest of the hearty, or of any of the other 
 members ; for nothing is more contrary to fact, or more 
 absurd to the reminiscence of those who knew him in the 
 old days, than the current notion that Rossetti was a vague 
 and gloomy phantasist, combined of mysticism and self- 
 opinion, who was always sunk in despondency, or fizzing 
 with affectation, or airing some intangible ideal. I must 
 apologize to his loved memory for even alluding to such 
 a trumpery misconception. Winged was the jest and loud 
 and contagious the laugh from his full lips. Had there been 
 no one else to keep his colleagues in heart and humour, 
 his own resources would have sufficed. To some of these 
 highly distinguished colleagues it would be unjust to say 
 that Rossetti was primus inter pares ; but certainly he was 
 nidli secundus. Nature had endowed him in ample measure 
 with one of her most precious secrets — that of dominance, 
 leadership, and comradeship, each in its proper place. No 
 more downright and no more unpretentious man existed 
 within the four seas. How long his vigorous temperament 
 continued to scintillate into high spirits we shall see as we 
 proceed. There were flashes of it till the last. 
 
 The more one reflects upon it, the more surprising it seems 
 that three youths, almost boys, started, in great lightness of 
 heart and disregard of externals, if also with a most resolute 
 purpose at the core, so serious a movement as that of 
 
WORK IN 1 860-6 1. 219 
 
 Praeraphaelitism ; and that, with some assistance from the 
 same quarter, other youths — I mean more especially Morris 
 and Jones — founded, in very much the same temper of mind, 
 so vast a recasting and reform of decorative art as is 
 identified with the name and the fortunes of " Morris, 
 Marshall, Falkner, and Co." Clearly, without reality of genius, 
 of insight, and of labour, neither of these enterprises would 
 have made the least headway. A puff of wind, a treacherous 
 sand-bank, a sunken reef, or a rock-bound coast — and more 
 than enough of all these were at hand — would have made 
 short work of the whole craft. 
 
 Light or boisterous chaff among themselves, and something 
 very like dictatorial irony towards customers, were the 
 methods by which this singular commercial firm was con- 
 ducted, and was turned, after a longish period of uncertain 
 probation, into a flourishing success. There was no com- 
 promise. Mr. Morris, as the managing partner, laid down 
 the law, and all his clients had to bend or break. Frequent 
 meetings — of the least business-like aspect of business, and 
 yet thoroughly efficient, as the event proved — were held ; and 
 the only designation for the undertaking which passed current 
 with the partners or their intimates was " the Shop." From 
 the first the Firm turrjed out whatever any one wanted in the 
 way of decorative material — architectural adjuncts, furniture, 
 tapestries, embroideries, stained glass, wall-papers, and what 
 not. The goods were first-rate, the art and the workmanship 
 excellent, the prices high. No concession was made to indi- 
 vidual tastes or want of taste, no question of abatement was 
 entertained. You could have the things such as the Firm 
 chose that they should be, or you could do without them. 
 
 A detailed history of the Firm of Morris, Marshall, 
 Falkner, and Co., or Morris and Company, would by this 
 time be an interesting thing ; but it is not my affair to 
 write one, nor indeed have I any means of doing so, even if 
 the inclination served. I must limit myself to a few particu- 
 lars regarding my brother's work in this connexion. As I 
 have before implied, he was not the leading spirit in the Firm. 
 
220 DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI. 
 
 Mr. Morris came much the foremost, not only by being 
 constantly on the spot, to work, direct, and transact, but also 
 by his abnormal and varied aptitude at all kinds of practical 
 processes. Mr. Madox Brown had always taken a more than 
 common interest in decorative art as applied to household- 
 requirements ; and his activity, as well as that of Mr. Burne- 
 Jones, in designing for stained glass and other such matters, 
 far exceeded any that Rossetti was called upon to display. 
 Mr. Webb must likewise have done a solid amount of work. 
 Towards the beginning of 1865 an acquaintance of my 
 brother, Mr. Warrington Taylor, was brought into the busi- 
 ness as a manager and accountant. He did excellent service 
 in keeping things straight and safe ; but this only lasted a 
 few years, as he died young of consumption. He had very 
 good perceptions in various matters of art, especially music. 
 
 My brother was entitled to a certain proportional share in 
 the profits of the partnership, and besides he was paid at a 
 regulated rate for such designs as he produced. With few 
 exceptions, these were for stained glass. For St. Martin's, 
 Scarborough, he designed two lights — Adam and Eve in 
 Paradise. There were also seven glass-cartoons of The 
 Parable of the Vineyard (very able compositions, with plenty 
 of dramatic character) ; six of St. George and the Dragon ; 
 and The Last Judgment, nine subjects within a circle. At a 
 later date, 1869, he drew The Sermon on the Plain, for a 
 window in Christ Church, Albany Street, in memory of our 
 Aunt Margaret Polidori. These are the only designs for the 
 Morris firm (besides the pulpit-painting, previously specified, 
 of The Annunciatioii) which appear to be known to me. 
 There may perhaps be others in a set of glass-cartoons now 
 in the possession of Mr. Theodore Watts. 
 
 XXV. 
 DEATH OF MRS. DANTE ROSSETTI. 
 
 ROSSETTI'S married life lasted from 23 May i860 to 11 
 February 1862. The essence of his wife's illness was, I 
 
DEATH OF MRS. DANTE ROSSETTI. 221 
 
 apprehend, phthisis, with the accompaniment of a great deal 
 of acute and wearing neuralgia. It was for the neuralgia that 
 she had been medically authorized or directed to take frequent 
 doses of laudanum. The phthisis had not as yet brought on 
 any noticeable degree of emaciation ; but it was running its 
 course, and he would have been a sanguine person who, at 
 the beginning of [862, could anticipate for her more than 
 some five or six years of life at the utmost. Though she was 
 often kept within-doors by illness, her habits were not those 
 of a recluse, and she frequently accompanied her husband to 
 dinner at some public dining-room or other. She had very 
 little of a housewifely turn. She often sat to him — and did 
 this, only a few days before her last, for the figure of the 
 Princess Sabra in the water-colour which is called either 
 St. George and the Princess Sabra, or St. George and the 
 Dragon. She is shown holding the knight's helmet, filled with 
 water to lave the bloodstains of his recent conflict. This 
 was the latest occasion on which Lizzie sat for any head. 
 
 On 10 February 1862 Rossetti and his wife, with Mr. 
 Swinburne, dined at the Sabloniere Hotel in Leicester Square. 
 She was not less well than usual, and joined in the talk with 
 animation. She returned with her husband to their home 
 in Chatham Place. He went out again, and was back late. I 
 will quote here the few words which I jotted down on the 
 following day, as a memento for my own use. It is of the 
 scantiest, but must serve for our present purpose : — 
 
 "February 11. Death of poor Lizzie, Gabriel's wife. Coming 
 home last night past it from the Working Men's College, he 
 found her almost gone from the effects of laudanum; and, spite 
 of the efforts of four doctors, she died towards 7! this morn- 
 ing. [One of the doctors was Mr. John Marshall, at that time 
 a Surgeon, finally M.D. He became Professor of Anatomy to the 
 Royal Academy, and President of the Royal College of Surgeons. 
 He was intimate with Madox Brown, and hence with Rossetti, who 
 very frequently consulted him on his own account in after years.] 
 I was called from Somerset House about 12^ [by Mrs. Birrell, 
 the housekeeper of the Chambers 14 Chatham Place, who had 
 
222 DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI. 
 
 been there during the entire duration of my brother's stay]. Brown, 
 whom Gabriel had called on before 5 in the morning, was there 
 [his residence was then near Highgate Rise], and told me the 
 circumstances. Lizzie and Gabriel had dined at a Hotel with 
 Swinburne that afternoon. The poor thing looks wonderfully calm 
 now and beautiful. 
 
 " ' Ed avea in se umilta. si verace 
 
 Che parea che dicesse, Io sono in pace.' 1 
 
 I could not but think of that all the time I looked at her, it is so 
 exactly like." 
 
 The only further particulars I find in any book regarding 
 Mrs. Rossetti's death are given by Mr. Bell Scott, who must 
 apparently have heard them from the widower. He simply 
 says that Rossetti, after taking her back to Chatham Place, 
 " advised her to go to bed " ; and " on his next and final 
 home-coming he had to grope about for a light, and called to 
 her without receiving a reply." 
 
 Of course there was an inquest, of which I shall proceed to 
 give the only newspaper account which I possess. It may 
 come from the Daily News, but I am not sure. I do not 
 think that any other newspaper account, in the least degree 
 detailed, appeared — a fact which sufficiently shows that to the 
 great bulk of the British public the name of Dante Gabriel 
 Rossetti continued practically unknown at the beginning of 
 1862. I was present at the inquest, but omitted to keep 
 any record of it. My brother braced himself manfully to 
 
 1 This couplet comes from Dante's Vita Nuova, the poem which relates 
 his prevision of the death of Beatrice. In my brother's translation it is 
 
 rendered thus : — 
 
 "And with her was such very humbleness 
 That she appeared to say, I am at peace." 
 
 This subject had been already painted by Rossetti as a water-colour, and 
 it forms the theme of his largest oil-picture, Dante's Dream, now in the 
 Walker Art-gallery of Liverpool. In neither of these works was his wife 
 represented as Beatrice. Mrs. Hannay sat in the first instance, and Mrs. 
 Morris in the second. 
 
DEATH OF MRS. DANTE ROSSETTI. 223 
 
 the painful effort of giving evidence ; and his deposition was 
 followed (though not so shown in the newspaper) by those of 
 Mr. Swinburne, and of Mrs. Birrell who testified to uniformly 
 affectionate relations between the husband and wife. 
 The following is the newspaper-paragraph : — 
 
 "Death of a Lady from an Overdose of Laudanum. — On 
 Thursday Mr. Payne held an inquest at Bridewell Hospital on the 
 body of Eliza Eleanor Rosetti, aged twenty-nine, wife of Dante 
 Gabriel Rosetti, Artist, of No. 14 Chatham Place, Blackfriars, who 
 came to her death under very melancholy circumstances. Mr. 
 Rosetti stated that on Monday afternoon, between six and seven 
 o'clock, he and his wife went out in the carriage for the purpose of 
 dining with a friend at the Sabloniere Hotel, Leicester Square [the 
 term ' the carriage ' seems to suggest that my brother kept a carriage 
 of his own, which was most assuredly not the fact]. When they had 
 got about halfway there his wife appeared to be very drowsy, and 
 he wished her to return. She objected to their doing so, and they 
 proceeded to the Hotel, and dined there. They returned home at 
 eight o'clock, when she appeared somewhat excited. He left home 
 again at nine o'clock, his wife being then about to go to bed. On 
 his return at half-past eleven o'clock he found his wife in bed, snoring 
 loudly and utterly unconscious. She was in the habit of taking 
 laudanum, and he had known her take as much as 100 drops 
 at a time, and he thought she had been taking it before they 
 went out. He found a phial on a table at the bedside, which had 
 contained laudanum, but it was then empty. A doctor was sent 
 for, and promptly attended. She had expressed no wish to die, but 
 quite the reverse. Indeed she contemplated going out of town in 
 a day or two, and had ordered a new mantle which she intended 
 wearing on the occasion. He believed she took the laudanum to 
 soothe her nerves. She could not sleep or take food unless she 
 used it. — Mr. Hutchinson, of Bridge Street, Blackfriars, said he had 
 attended the deceased in her confinement in April with a stillborn 
 child. He saw her on Monday night at half-past eleven o'clock, 
 and found her in a comatose state. He tried to rouse her, but could 
 not, and then tried the stomach-pump without avail. He injected 
 several quarts of water into the stomach, and washed it out, when 
 the smell of laudanum was very distinct. He and three other 
 
224 DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI. 
 
 medical gentlemen stayed with her all night, and she died at twenty 
 minutes past seven o'clock on Tuesday morning. — The jury returned 
 a verdict of Accidental Death." 
 
 Our mother and sisters and myself were constantly with 
 Dante during those harrowing days which intervene between 
 a death and a funeral. His anguish was keen, but his mind 
 clear. He was not prostrated in that kind of way which 
 makes a man incapable of self-regulation. Brown was often 
 there, and the sister of Lizzie playfully nicknamed " the 
 Roman." I recollect a moment of great agitation, when my 
 brother, standing by the corpse, was crying out, " Oh Lizzie, 
 Lizzie, come back to me ! " With a woman's kindly tact the 
 sister felt that this was an instant when emotion should be 
 seconded, and not controlled ; and she reminded him of some 
 old touches of sportive and now pathetic affection, to give 
 the freer flow to his tears. Mr. Ruskin called one day, and 
 saw the rest of us, but not Dante. He spoke with his usual 
 tenderness of feeling, and I then for the first time became 
 aware of the great change which had taken place in his views 
 on religion. On the second or third day after death Lizzie 
 looked still lovelier than before, and Dante almost refused 
 to believe that she was really dead — it might be a mere 
 trance consequent upon the laudanum. He insisted that 
 Mr. Marshall should be called in to decide — with what result 
 I need not say. 
 
 The day of the funeral came. On this also I have a very 
 brief note : — 
 
 "February 17. The funeral. Grave 5779, Highgate [the same 
 grave in which my father lay buried — my mother is now there too, 
 and, even since I wrote this very sentence, my dear sister Christina]. 
 Gabriel put the book of his MS. poems into the coffin." 
 
 I remember this incident. There were some friends as- 
 sembled in one of the rooms in Chatham Place ; the coffin, 
 not yet close-shut, was in another. My brother, unwitnessed, 
 deposited the MS. in the coffin. He then joined his friends, 
 
DEATH Of MRS. DANTE ROSSETTf. 22$ 
 
 and informed Madox Brown of what he had done, saying — 
 " 1 have often been writing at those poems when Lizzie was 
 ill and suffering, and I might have been attending to her, 
 and now they shall go." Brown disapproved of such a 
 sacrifice to a mere impulse of grief or of self-reproach, and 
 he appealed to me to remonstrate. I replied — " Well, the 
 feeling does him honour, and let him do as he likes." The 
 sacrifice was no doubt a grave one. Rossetti thus not only 
 renounced any early or definite hopes of poetic fame, which 
 had always been a ruling passion with him, but he also 
 abandoned a project already distinctly formulated and noti- 
 fied ; for, as we have seen, a forthcoming volume of his 
 original poems was advertised in The Early Italian Poets. 
 
 Mr. Caine relates this matter somewhat differently. I do 
 not know from whom he obtained his details ; where they 
 may be considered incompatible with my reminiscence, I 
 abide by my own. He says : — 
 
 " The poems he had written, so far as they were poems of love, 
 were chiefly inspired by and addressed to her. At her request he 
 had copied them into a little book presented to him for the purpose ; 
 and on the day of the funeral he walked into the room where the 
 body lay, and, unmindful of the presence of friends, he spoke to his 
 dead wife as though she heard, saying, as he held the book, that the 
 words it contained were written to her and for her, and she must 
 take them with her, for they could not remain when she had gone. 
 Then he put the volume into the coffin between her cheek and 
 beautiful hair, and it was that day buried with her in Highgate 
 Cemetery." 
 
 Probably very few letters from Rossetti are extant written 
 immediately after and relating to his wife's death. With his 
 closest friends he was in personal communication, and to 
 others he would be by no means expansive on such a topic. 
 There is, however, one letter in print, addressed to Mrs. 
 Gilchrist, and I think it as well to reproduce it here. In 
 the opening paragraph he refers to the fact that he had so 
 recently had to condole with Mrs. Gilchrist on her husband's 
 death, and now she was condoling with himself on his wife's. 
 
 VOL. I. 15 
 
226 DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI. 
 
 "45 Upper Albany Street, 1 2 March 1862. 
 
 " My dear Mrs. Gilchrist, — 
 
 " I thank you sincerely in my turn for the words of sorrow 
 and sympathy which, coming from you, seem more terribly real than 
 any I have received. I remember clearly the mistrustful feeling of 
 insufficiency with which I sat down to write to you so short a time 
 ago, and know now what it is both to write and to receive even the 
 sincerest words at such a time. 
 
 " I have now to be thankful for obligations connected with my 
 work which were a source of anxiety before ; for without them it 
 seems to me that I could never work again. But I already begin to 
 find the inactive moments the most unbearable, and must hope for 
 the power, as I feel most surely the necessity, of working steadily 
 without delay. Of my dear wife I do not dare to speak now, nor to 
 attempt any vain conjecture whether it may ever be possible for 
 me, or I be found worthy, to meet her again. 
 
 " I am staying at my mother's just now, and hope that some of my 
 family, if not all, may join with me in seeking a new home together, 
 as in any case I cannot any longer bear to remain in the old one. 
 I have thoughts of coming if possible to Chelsea, 2 and have already, 
 in the impossibility I find of remaining inactive, been seeking for 
 fresh quarters in that and other directions. Your photograph [of 
 Alexander Gilchrist] I still have, and hope to send you some result 
 from it, if I find such possible [he was thinking of drawing some 
 likeness of Gilchrist, founded partly on the photograph, but in this 
 he did not succeed]. Whenever it may be necessary to be thinking 
 about the Life of Blake I hope you will let me know, as my 
 brother is equally anxious with myself, and perhaps at the present 
 moment better able, to be of any service in his power. 
 
 " While writing this, I have just read your letter again, and again 
 feel forcibly the bond of misery which exists between us, and the 
 unhappy right we have of saying to each other what we both know 
 to be fruitless. Pray believe that I am not the less grateful to you, 
 at least for the heartfelt warmth with which it is said." 
 
 1 This was the residence of my mother and sisters and myself. Later 
 on it was called 166 Albany Street. 
 
 2 The joint home of Mr. and Mrs. Gilchrist had been in Chelsea, close to 
 Carlyle's house. Mrs. Gilchrist was now just about removing into the 
 country, Shottermill near Haslemere. 
 
SETTLING IN CHEYNE WALK. 227 
 
 XXVI. 
 SETTLING IN CHEYNE WALK. 
 
 THE letter just cited has shown two points : that Rossetti, 
 after his bereavement, did not feel equal to continuing to 
 reside at Chatham Place — I hardly believe that he slept there 
 even a single night after his wife's funeral — and that he 
 thought, upon settling in some new house, of obtaining the 
 companionship of some or all of the members of his family. 
 These were our mother, our two sisters, myself, and our 
 rather aged aunt, Margaret Polidori, now considerably in- 
 valided, and living a very secluded life in my house 
 166 Albany Street. My brother also particularly wanted 
 to have Mr. Swinburne in the same house with himself, 
 thinking, not unreasonably, that, in his own depressed state 
 of mind, he needed some inspiriting association such as he 
 could scarcely obtain from mere family-life, and that he could 
 procure this better from Mr. Swinburne than from any other 
 available person. The Chambers in Chatham Place were, 
 after Rossetti's departure, tenanted by Mr. Boyce, who 
 remained there until 1868, shortly preceding the final demoli- 
 tion of the building. 
 
 The various members of the family did in fact entertain the 
 proposal raised by Dante ; the only serious difficulty arising 
 in relation to our sister Maria, who went out giving lessons 
 in Italian etc., and for whom any such locality as Chelsea — 
 then more suburban than it is now — would have been a very 
 remote centre for such purposes. This obstacle was, however, 
 set aside ; and, my brother having pretty soon fixed upon 
 No. 16 Cheyne Walk, Chelsea, termed Tudor House, as his 
 future home, we were all prepared to join there with him and 
 with Mr. Swinburne. But this arrangement did not take 
 effect. Before the time came for actually removing to Cheyne 
 Walk my brother reached the conclusion — a sound one — that 
 that would not be the most apposite of homes for his female 
 relatives, who therefore remained in Albany Street ; glad to 
 
228 DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTl. 
 
 house with and look after Dante, if that had been his ultimate 
 wish, and glad also, when the wish was relinquished, to abide 
 where they were. 
 
 At first Dante stayed with us in the Albany Street house, 
 and he was also at times with Madox Brown. It is stated by 
 Mr. William Sharp that the earliest thing which he painted 
 after his wife's death was done at Brown's residence — "a 
 small but richly toned water-colour, known simply as Girl at 
 a Lattice" pourtrayed from a person he saw in this position. 
 I think, however, that a crayon head of our mother, which 
 bears the date February 1862, may have preceded even the 
 Girl at a Lattice. It remains in my possession, and used con- 
 stantly to hang in my brother's little breakfast-room in Cheyne 
 Walk. Next, pending a definite settlement as to a house, he 
 took Chambers, by himself, on the first floor of No. 59 Lin- 
 coln's Inn Fields. The first distracting shock of his calamity 
 being past, he found himself capable of working and acting 
 like other men, and the Chambers proved to be quite suitable 
 for his requirements ; so much so indeed that, when he had 
 to leave them and take up his engagement in Cheyne Walk, 
 he almost regretted that he had assumed so serious, and for 
 him so novel, a responsibility, with all the upset (to which he 
 was always highly disinclined) of removal and re-settling. 
 The die was cast, however, and nothing remained but to meet 
 its chances as they came. 
 
 For the Cheyne Walk house a new plan had meanwhile 
 been determined. Rossetti was to be the tenant, paying a 
 rent (assuredly a very moderate one) of ;£ioo a year, besides 
 — if I remember right — a premium of .^225 upon entering. 
 As his sub-tenants for defined portions of the building there 
 were to be three persons — Mr. Swinburne, Mr. George Mere- 
 dith, and myself. Of course each of us three was to pay 
 something to Dante ; though the latter did not wish me, 
 and in fact did not allow me, to continue any such payment 
 after affairs had got into their regular course. We were all 
 to dine together, if present together in the house. Mr. 
 Swinburne was generally present, Mr. Meredith much less 
 
SETTLING IN CHEYNE WALK. 229 
 
 constantly. I came on three fixed days of the week, but 
 not on any others unless some particular occasion arose. 
 Swinburne, and I think Meredith, had their respective separate 
 sitting-rooms, in which they received their personal visitors. 
 I had, and required, a bedroom only. Dante Rossetti was 
 by this time familiar with Mr. Meredith, whom he had seen 
 increasingly for some three years past, and whose talents and 
 work he seriously, though not uncritically, admired ; familiar, 
 yet by no means so much so as with Mr. Swinburne. 
 
 Tudor House got not slightly altered in external appear- 
 ance — not perhaps in structural essentials — soon after my 
 brother's death. When he entered it, neither Cheyne Walk 
 nor any part of London had a Thames Embankment ; in 
 front of the house there were all the boating bustle and 
 longshore litter of the old days : there was also no Cadogan 
 Bridge, and across the river no Battersea Park. Cremorne 
 Gardens, at a moderate distance to the West, were still open 
 as a place of demi-reputable entertainment — dancing, music, 
 fireworks, and assignations, with all their accompaniments 
 and sequels. The look of things was far more picturesque 
 than now — less of decorum and of stateliness, more of noise 
 and movement. The house itself was a fine old solid edifice, 
 without anything peculiar or showy in external aspect. Inside 
 it was old-fashioned, many-roomed, homelike, and comfortable, 
 with any number of wall-cupboards, and needing nothing 
 beyond good furniture and proper keeping-up to be a highly 
 enjoyable residence. Furniture was supplied by my brother 
 — even from the first, but more especially as years went on — 
 with profuse abundance and distinguished gusto for whatso- 
 ever was good and appropriate. Before going into the house 
 he had found out in Buckingham Street, Strand (through 
 Mr. Allingham), a retired old gentleman named Minister, 
 who had a deal of antiquated and capital furniture, and from 
 him he bought largely with a free hand. As to the keeping- 
 up of the house, Rossetti did not take the like interest and 
 pains ; but still, for several years after his tenancy began, 
 there was no defined ground of complaint. 
 
23O DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI. 
 
 Mr. Hall Caine has given several particulars about the 
 residence and its garden, and I shall take leave to borrow 
 some of them. He has had experience in an Architect's office, 
 and knows what he is talking about in matters of this sort. 
 It will be understood that he never saw the premises until 
 1880; and many of his details indicate a state of neglect 
 and gloom which did not exist in 1862, and still less towards 
 1865 and for a few years onwards, when Rossetti had accu- 
 mulated large quantities of handsome and out-of-the-way 
 furniture, blue china, and other articles of curiosity and 
 virtu. A great store of such things remained in the house 
 in July 1882, when, consequent upon his death, they came 
 to the hammer. But even these were but a moderate pro- 
 portion of what he had introduced and used from time to 
 time. Much had been already sold, much given away or 
 otherwise dispersed. Mr. Caine says, and I interpolate a 
 remark here and there : — 
 
 " It was called Tudor House when he became its tenant, from 
 the tradition that Elizabeth Tudor had lived in it [the statement 
 which I always heard as current was that the house had been used 
 as a nursery for the children of Henry VIII. ; but this, if true at 
 all, can only apply to some previous house on the same site, for the 
 existing structure must belong to the Georgian time, or at earliest 
 to that of Queen Anne] : and it is understood to be the same that 
 Thackeray describes in Esmond as the home of the old Countess 
 of Chelsey. A large garden, which recently has been cut off for 
 building purposes, lay at the back, . . . dotted over with lime-trees, 
 and enclosed by a high wall [the garden, about four-fifths of an 
 acre in extent, was partly, but not wholly, cut off towards 1881 : it 
 contained a very prolific mulberry -tree, called Queen Elizabeth's 
 mulberry-tree]. . . . Old oak then became for a time his passion ; 
 and, in hunting it up, he rummaged the brokers' shops round 
 London for miles, buying for trifles what would eventually (when the 
 fashion he started grew to be general) have fetched large sums. . . . 
 No. 16 . . . seems to be the oldest house in the Walk; and the 
 exceptional proportions of its gate-piers, and the weight and mass 
 of its gate and railings, suggest that probably at some period it stood 
 
SETTLING IN CHEYNE WALK. 23 I 
 
 alone, and commanded as grounds a large part of the space now 
 occupied by the adjoining residences. . . . Rossetti's house had to 
 me the appearance of a plain Queen Anne's erection, much mutilated 
 by the introduction of unsightly bay-windows [I cannot but think 
 this rather hard on the bay-windows — to me, and to my brother 
 also, always a pleasant feature of a house to live in] ; the brickwork 
 seemed to be falling into decay ; . . . the angles of the steps, and 
 the untrodden flags of the courtyard, to be here and there overgrown 
 with moss and weeds. . . . The hall had a puzzling look of equal 
 nobility and shabbiness. . . . Three doors led out of the hall, one 
 on each side and one in front, and two corridors opened into it ; 
 but there was no sign of staircase, nor had it any light except such 
 as was borrowed from the fan-light that looked into the porch [the 
 door to the right led into the small dining-room ; that to the left, 
 into the sitting-room first used by Mr. Swinburne, and ultimately by 
 Mr. Caine himself; the one in front, into the studio, which, for 
 an ordinary tenant, would have been the dining-room]. . . . The 
 changes which the building must have undergone since the period 
 of its erection had so filled it with crooks and corners as to bewilder 
 the most ingenious observer to account for its peculiarities. . . . The 
 studio was a large room, probably measuring thirty feet by twenty, 
 and structurally as puzzling as the other parts of the house. A 
 series of columns and arches on one side suggested that the room 
 had almost certainly been at some period the site of an important 
 staircase with a wide well ; and on the other side a broad mullioned 
 window, reaching to the ceiling, seemed certainly to bear record 
 of the occupant's own contribution to the peculiarities of the edifice 
 [this window had been enlarged, but not constructed, at Rossetti's 
 instance some while after he entered the house]. . . . [Also] a 
 window at the side, which was heavily darkened by the thick foliage 
 of the trees that grew in the garden beyond. . . . [Rossetti's bed- 
 room, which was on the first floor] was entered from another and 
 smaller room which he said that he used as a breakfast-room [many 
 a breakfast have I eaten in it, but almost invariably without the 
 company of my brother, who rose much later than I did]. The 
 outer room was made fairly bright and cheerful by a glittering 
 [coloured porcelain] chandelier (the property once, he told me, of 
 David Garrick), and, from the rustle of trees against the window- 
 pane, one perceived that it overlooked the garden ; but the inner 
 room was dark with heavy hangings, around the walls as well as 
 
232 DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI. 
 
 the bed, and thick velvet curtains before the windows. . . . An 
 enormous black-oak chimney-piece of curious design [it was Rossetti's 
 own design, and constructed out of decorated slabs, etc., picked up 
 here and there by himself], having an ivory crucifix on the largest 
 of its ledges, covered a part of one side, and reached to the ceiling. . . . 
 When I reached the room that I was to occupy during the night 
 [it is on a landing between the ground-floor and first-floor], I found 
 it, like Rossetti's bedroom, heavy with hangings, and black with 
 antique picture-panels, with a ceiling (unlike that of the other rooms 
 in the house) out of all reach or sight; and so dark from various 
 causes that the candle seemed only to glimmer in it. ... I strolled 
 through the large garden at the back of the house. ... A beautiful 
 avenue of lime-trees opened into a grass-plot of nearly an acre in 
 extent [it is the grass-plot which, allowing for a small strip retained, 
 was afterwards built over ; the avenue continues to be attached to 
 the house]. The trees were just as Nature made them, and so was 
 the grass, which in places was lying long, dry, and withered, under 
 the sun — -weeds creeping up in damp places, and the gravel of the 
 pathway scattered upon the verges." 
 
 A few words should still be added to Mr. Caine's expres- 
 sive description of the house. On the basement there were 
 spacious kitchen-rooms, and an oddly complicated range of 
 vaults, which perhaps had at one time led directly off to 
 the river-side. The two ground-floor sitting-rooms looked 
 out to the front and the river ; the studio had a second door 
 opening on the hinder part of the corridor, and conducting, 
 down a few steps, into the garden-avenue. Though not 
 apparent to Mr. Caine from the front hall, there were two 
 staircases, to the right and to the left of the entrance-door 
 of the studio. I may here take occasion to give an emphatic 
 denial to a statement which Mr. Val Prinsep (writing in 
 The Art-Journal about the picture-collection of his father-in- 
 law Mr. Leyland) made with regard to the studio or painting- 
 room — that it " was a sanctum unvisited by the housemaid." 
 It was constantly visited, and adequately attended to, by 
 the housemaid ; and a housemaid who might have neglected 
 it in a serious degree would not have remained long on the 
 
SETTLING IN CHEYNE WALK. 233 
 
 premises. Mr. Caine makes no mention of the chief feature 
 of the house — the unusually long and sightly drawing-room 
 on the first floor, running the whole length of the large 
 frontage, and presenting from its three spacious bay-windows 
 a most enjoyable view of the river, and of the big old trees 
 which yield umbrage to Cheyne Walk. On the second floor 
 were a large number of rooms used as bed-chambers, hardly 
 less than a dozen, and some of them very pleasant and com- 
 modious. There may also, but my recollection is not clear 
 as to this, have been two or three lofts under the roof. On 
 the roof was a great deal of lead ; and, at one time during 
 my brother's occupancy, some thieves attempted to make 
 free with it. Mr. Herbert Gilchrist produced a very good 
 drawing of the studio before the sale had finished in 1882 ; 
 Mr. G. T. Robinson favoured me with a water-colour of the 
 drawing-room ; and three rooms were pourtrayed by Mr. 
 Henry Treffry Dunn (of whom more anon), and photographs 
 were taken from his designs. 
 
 It was on 24 October 1862 that Rossetti first took posses- 
 sion of Tudor House. His three sub-tenants were there on 
 the same day, or immediately afterwards. On 3 November he 
 wrote to Madox Brown, " I have reclaimed my studio from 
 the general wilderness, and got to work." 
 
 Some writers have supposed that Rossetti was constantly 
 mournful and dejected after his wife's death. If it were so, 
 I would be the first to confirm the statement, and to put 
 forward reasons partially if not wholly justifying him for such 
 a tribute to sentiment, and such a revolt against the irre- 
 versible will of Fate. But the fact was not so, and, as a 
 faithful biographer, I shall not pretend that it was. He had 
 too much energy of mind and character, too many interests 
 in the world of thought and art, too many ideas of his own, 
 too earnest a desire to turn these into realized work, to be 
 perpetually dwelling upon the grievousness of the past, or 
 moping over what once had been, and could never be again. 
 He found himself capable of living in the ties and associations 
 of the present, applied himself vigorously to his professional 
 
234 DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI. 
 
 occupations, and developed much eagerness — of which there 
 had been few symptoms in earlier days — in the collection of 
 works of decoration or curiosity. To live in the company 
 of such men as Meredith and Swinburne, and of many other 
 friends older and newer, was not the basis for a life of morbid 
 gloom and piteous unavailing retrospect. Certainly many 
 tender and some dreadful memories haunted him ; but it 
 would be useless to fancy or to suggest that he was at this 
 time, or for some years to come, a personation of settled 
 melancholy. As we proceed, we shall see what new gusts 
 assailed him, and in what mood he encountered them. 
 Christina has put into print a few apt words 1 upon the general 
 subject. She says : — 
 
 " Family or friendly parties used to assemble at Tudor House, 
 there to meet with an unfailing affectionate welcome. Gloom and 
 eccentricity, such as have been alleged, were at any rate not the sole 
 characteristics of Dante Gabriel Rossetti. When he chose he became 
 the sunshine of his circle, and he frequently chose so to be. His 
 ready wit and fun amused us ; his good-nature and kindness of heart 
 endeared him to us." 
 
 Though my proper date for the present is only that when 
 Rossetti started upon his tenancy of Tudor House, I will 
 finish here what has to be said of Mr. Meredith and Mr. 
 Swinburne as inmates of the same dwelling. Mr. Meredith 
 and Rossetti entertained a solid mutual regard, and got on 
 together amicably, yet without that thorough cordiality of 
 give-and take which oils the hinges of daily intercourse. It 
 would have been difficult for two men of the literary order of 
 mind to be more decisively unlike. The reader of their works 
 — not to speak of the student of Rossetti's paintings— will 
 not fail to perceive this. Rossetti was not at all a mere 
 recluse, incapable of taking very good care of himself in the 
 current transactions of life ; he had, on the contrary, a large 
 
 1 The article, a very brief one, is named The House of Dante Gabriel 
 Rossetti, with a woodcut of the house. It appeared in some magazine, but 
 I forget which. The date was some little while after my brother's death. 
 
SETTLING IN CHEYNE WALK. 235 
 
 share of shrewdness and of business aptitude, and a quick eye 
 for " the main chance " in all contingencies where he chose to 
 exercise it. He understood character, and (though often too 
 indulgent to its shadier side) he knew how to deal with it, 
 and had indeed a rather marked distaste for that inexpert 
 class of persons who waver on the edge of life without ever 
 throwing themselves boldly into it, and gripping at the facts. 
 But Mr. Meredith was (or I should rather say, is) incom- 
 parably more a man of the world and man of society, scrutini- 
 zing all sorts of things, and using them as his material in the 
 commerce of life and in the field of intellect. Even in the 
 mere matter of household -routine, he found that Rossetti's 
 arrangements, though ample for comfort of a more or less 
 off-hand kind, were not conformable to his standard. Thus it 
 pretty soon became apparent that Mr. Meredith's sub-tenancy 
 was not likely to stand much wear and tear, or to outlast the 
 temporary convenience which had prompted it. I could not 
 now define precisely how long it continued — perhaps up to 
 the earlier days of 1864. It then ceased, without, I think, any 
 disposition on either side that it should be renewed. Friendly 
 intercourse between the two men continued for some few 
 years, and gradually wore out without any cause or feeling 
 of dissension. In Mr. Joseph Knight's pleasant Life of Dante 
 Gabriel Rossetti I find some observations made by " a friend, 
 himself a poet," which I unhesitatingly (let me hope not 
 rashly) attribute to our pre-eminent novelist. I quote them 
 here less as throwing light on the character of Rossetti — 
 highly deserving though they are of attention in that regard 
 — than as pointing to the sort of relation which subsisted 
 between the two during their joint sojourn in Cheyne 
 Walk:— 
 
 " I liked him much, though I was often irritated by his preju- 
 dices, and his strong language against this or that person or subject. 
 He was borne too, somewhat, in his interests, both on canvas and in 
 verse, and would not care for certain forms of literature and life 
 which he admitted were worth caring for. However, his talk was 
 always full of interest and of rare knowledge; and he himself, his 
 
236 DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI. 
 
 pictures, and his house, altogether, had I think an immense influence 
 for good on us all, and on English art and work — being not insular 
 yet not un-English, and bringing into our world new and delightful 
 subjects, and a personal character very striking and unusual and 
 loveable." 
 
 Mr. Swinburne remained in Tudor House for some con- 
 siderable while after Mr. Meredith had left. He composed 
 there the stupendous drama of Atalanta in Calydon, and 
 wrote or finished Chastelard, and much of the Poems and 
 Ballads (first series), and of William Blake, a Critical Essay. 
 I hardly remember whether he was still in the house when 
 the Poems and Ballads were published, 1866, and (amid the 
 leers and the yells of British respectability) immediately 
 withdrawn. If not then resident in the house, he was con- 
 tinually looking in there, and (I need not say) was received 
 with all the welcome of long-standing friendship, and of 
 admiration for astonishing genius and attainment. Ultimately 
 it suited both himself and Rossetti that his quarters should 
 be fixed elsewhere. One element in the case was that the 
 painter's professional income continued to augment from year 
 to year, and he no longer found any advantage in getting 
 friends to share the expense of the house. 
 
 In the summer of 1862 both Ruskin and Burne-Jones 
 were abroad in Italy. Ruskin was out of health and out 
 of spirits owing to vexations with his studies in Political 
 Economy. In July he wrote to my brother from Milan : — 
 
 " I do trust that henceforward I may be more with you, as I am 
 able now better to feel your great powers of mind, and am myself 
 more in need of the kindness with which they are joined. I've 
 been thinking of asking if I could rent a room in your Chelsea 
 house." 
 
 I cannot say what answer my brother returned to this 
 friendly, and in some respects attractive, proposal. Clearly 
 the house was sufficiently full as it was ; and, so far as I 
 recollect, no more was heard of Mr. Riiskin as a possible 
 inmate. 
 
SETTLING IJN CHEYNE WALK. Itf 
 
 Mr. Jones wrote to Rossetti from Venice : — 
 
 " The other day I saw a letter of Titian's. The handwriting was, 
 absolutely, exactly like yours, as like as a forged letter of yours could 
 be ; the whole writing a little bit bigger, I think, but the shapes of 
 the letters as exact as could be." x 
 
 In a letter written by my brother soon before he left 
 Lincoln's Inn Fields for Cheyne Walk, 21 August, I find 
 the first mention of a painter with whom he soon became 
 very familiar, Mr. Whistler. For several years ensuing they 
 were on terms which, partaking of real friendliness, were 
 more especially of great good-fellowship. This must have 
 continued till 1872, when there was a wide gap in Rossetti's 
 London associations. After that date the two saw little — 
 and at last nothing — of one another. Through Mr. Whistler, 
 Rossetti after a while came to know the distinguished painter 
 from Dijon, Alphonse Legros, who later on held the office of 
 Slade-Professor in the London University for some years. 
 This also was an intimate connexion, but terminated earlier 
 than that with Whistler himself. Another letter belonging 
 to 1862 shows that my brother was then about to engage a 
 professional assistant, Mr. W. J. Knewstub, who housed with 
 him for a year or two, preparing duplicates of pictures, and 
 aiding him in various ways. Mr. Knewstub's chief tendency 
 at this time — not of direct service to Rossetti — was as a 
 sketcher of comic or humorous subjects, for which he had a 
 ready gift ; later on, as a painter chiefly in water-colours, he 
 developed marked colourist talent. He and Rossetti were 
 always on pleasant terms together. 
 
 A painter who seeks the help of an assistant must be 
 supposed to be in good employ. Such was already the case 
 with Rossetti, as soon as he began to settle down after his 
 
 1 If Sir E. Burne-Jones formed a correct opinion as to this letter from 
 Titian, the handwriting of it must have differed entirely from that of 
 another letter by the great painter which I saw in the Venetian Exhibition 
 in London in 1895. In this last-named letter the writing is singularly pre- 
 cise and sharp, presenting no zoxt of resemblance to Rossetti's. 
 
238 DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI. 
 
 wife's death. He produced a good deal, and whatever he 
 produced, if not previously bespoken, was soon sold. It is 
 true he still was not always in command of ready money 
 when this was in requisition, and he continued at times to 
 have recourse to a convenient pawnbroker, or an accommo- 
 dating relative or intimate. But he was prospering, and 
 he prospered more and more, and might soon be regarded 
 as one of those (not too numerous) painters who make a 
 steady and very sufficient income. What he received he 
 liked to spend. Money never clung to his fingers, nor rested 
 in his pocket, and he never either accumulated or invested. 
 A letter of his, dated in June 1867, shows that even then 
 he had no banking account, which seems surprising enough. 
 How soon afterwards he began one I am not sure, but it 
 was well before 1872. Had the will been there, the power 
 of adding money to money would easily have come. It 
 should in justice be added that, if he was indulgent to 
 himself, he was also liberal and even generous to others. 
 
 XXVII. 
 
 WORK FROM 1862 TO 1868. 
 
 I HAVE lumped together here no less than seven years, when 
 my brother's powers — though somewhat less developed than 
 they afterwards became in the direction of abstract style — 
 ■ were truly at their best. The dates extend from the beginning 
 of his widowerhood to the time when, from various causes, a 
 rather serious decline in his health set in. I shall name the 
 several works (and there were of course many others) under 
 the headings of Oil-pictures, Water-colours, and Designs, each 
 class in order of date, and shall append a few details, such 
 as my plan admits of. 
 
 Oil-pictures. — Joan of Arc (kissing the sword of deliverance) ; 
 Helen of Troy; Beata Beatrix; Aurelia (called also Fazio's 
 Mistress, but this title was finally rejected by Rossetti as 
 inapposite) ; The Beloved, or The Bride (from the Song of 
 
WORK FROM 1862 TO 1 868. 239 
 
 Solomon) ; The Boat of Love (monochrome — from a sonnet 
 in the Vita Nuovd) ; Lilith ; Venus Verticordia ; The Blue 
 Bower ; 7/ Ramoscello (or Bellebuond) ; Portrait of his Mother ; 
 The Loving-cup ; Sibylla Palmifera ; Manna Vanna (called 
 also Belcolore) ; Mrs. William Morris ; La Pia (from Dante's 
 Purgatorid). 
 
 Water-colours. — Paolo and Fraucesca, triptych (the best 
 version of this subject, belonging to Mr. Leathart) ; Heart of 
 the Night (or Mariana in the Moated Grange) ; Monna Pomona ; 
 The First Madness of Ophelia ; Socrates taught to dance by 
 Aspasia ; Washing Hands ; The Return of Tibullus to Delia ; 
 Tristram and Yseult drinking the Love-potion ; La Bionda del 
 Balcone ; Rosa Triplex. 
 
 Designs. — Designs for Christina Rossetti's poem, The 
 Prince s Progress ; Portrait of Christina (head poised on , 
 hands) ; Michael Scott's Wooing ; Aspecta Medusa ; Head of 
 Madox Brown ; Aurea Catena (has sometimes been incor- 
 rectly named La Pia) ; Orpheus and Eurydice. 
 
 Nothing that my brother produced was, to my mind, more 
 thoroughly satisfactory than the [o an of Arc — the oil-picture 
 which was sold to Mr. Anderson Rose, and by him re-sold 
 not many years afterwards. It is somewhat singular that 
 this head was painted from a German (not a French) woman — 
 named, if I remember right, Mrs. Beyer. She had one of the 
 most classically correct and strongest profiles that one could 
 see anywhere. Something of the same kind might be said of 
 the English original of Helen of Troy — a face less heroically 
 but not less exactly moulded. Beata Beatrix — a reminiscence 
 of the painter's lost wife, pourtrayed with perfect fidelity out 
 of the inner chambers of his soul — is now in the National 
 Gallery, the gift of Lady Mount-Temple. It was less well re- 
 peated on commission more than once, but always reluctantly. 
 Though I have called this a " reminiscence " of his wife, it is I 
 believe a fact that some preparation for the picture had been 
 made during her lifetime, perhaps as far back as 1856. Aurelia, 
 a small half-figure of a lady at her toilet, is one of the most 
 finished specimens of Rossetti's execution. The Beloved is 
 
540 t)ANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTf. 
 
 by many persons accounted his very best work. I would not 
 call it the best in the sense of being better than any other ; 
 but, in balanced brilliancy of colour, sweetness and variety 
 of facial type, and first salient and not the less permanent 
 impression of manifest and triumphant beauty, it certainly 
 yields to none. Monna Vanna (belonging to the same 
 purchaser, Mr. George Rae) has also and deservedly been 
 a great general favourite. The Boat of Love, now in the 
 Birmingham Art-Gallery, was a preparation for a full-coloured 
 picture, never executed, owing partly to fast-and-loose pro- 
 ceedings on the part of an intending purchaser in these same 
 years. The Blue Bower, a female half-figure done with more 
 than wonted rapidity, is perhaps the most forcible piece of 
 colour and handling that Rossetti ever produced (or may 
 share that praise with La Bella Mano), as the Ramoscello is 
 in all respects one of the most delicate. The Portrait of 
 Mrs. Morris, in a gown of sumptuous blue, rivals The Blue 
 Bower for vigour, and far exceeds it in tone of feeling. Lilith 
 and Sibylla Pahnifera are both works of thought as well as 
 matured skill, and stand recorded in the painter's sonnets as 
 Body's Beauty and Soul's Beauty. L.a Pia was only begun 
 in 1868. It was then set aside for several years, and not 
 completed until 1881. 
 
 Among the water-colours I may specify as exceptionally 
 successful the Paolo and Francesca ; the Heart of the Night, 
 which is the same design as in the Tennyson woodcut ; and 
 the Tristram and Yseult. The Return of Tibullus to Delia 
 is also one of Rossetti's best considered and most energetic 
 designs. Washing Hands — a lady, with her lover no longer 
 favoured — is noticeable as being one of the very few subjects 
 which he treated in the costume of the eighteenth century. 
 The Dr. Johnson group seems to be the only other such 
 coloured work that is known to me. Equally out of his 
 ordinary line is Socrates taught to dance by Aspasia. I recall 
 very well a sketch made of this subject, and a very sprightly 
 one it was, but I doubt whether I ever saw the water-colour. 
 
 The design of Michael Scott's Wooing was frequently in 
 
WORK FROM 1862 TO 1 868. 24I 
 
 Rossetti's head, and every now and then tried by his hand 
 in different compositions. Aspecta Medusa (Perseus allowing 
 Andromeda to contemplate, reflected in a tank, the severed 
 head of Medusa) was also designed more than once. But the 
 courage of the proposing purchaser failed him — he thought 
 the subject too " horrid " — and this again swelled the over- 
 long list of paintings which my brother did not do. 
 
 In Section XX., speaking of Mrs. William Morris, I 
 have referred to the equally frequent and erroneous assertion 
 that this lady constituted Rossetti's one sole type of facial 
 beauty. This allegation is not only absurdly incorrect, but 
 it amounts to a depreciation of his art. It implies that he was 
 far more monotonous than he really was, and also that he had 
 little or no discrimination as to the type which would be the 
 most suitable according to diversity of subject and treatment. 
 I have elsewhere 1 said something on that ill-understood or 
 ill-reported matter ; and I will now, without re-producing my 
 previous words, enter rather more at large upon the same 
 topic. This furnishes, besides the direct object, an oppor- 
 tunity of saying something collectively about various persons 
 who ought not to pass unmentioned. I shall confine myself 
 chiefly, yet not rigidly, to oil-pictures. 
 
 Rossetti began painting in 1848 ; and it is of course impos- 
 sible that in the early years of his practice he should ever 
 have painted from Mrs. Morris, whom he did not see until 
 late in 1857. We have noticed before that his sister Christina 
 sat for Mary in The GirlJiood of Mary Virgin, and in Ecce 
 Ancilla Domini ; his wife for Beatrice in a number of instances, 
 and for Princess Sabra — and for very many other figures as 
 well ; Mrs. Hannay for Beatrice in the water-colour of Danle's 
 Dream ; Mrs. Beyer for Joan of Arc; Mrs. H. for Bocca 
 Baciata. The latter also sat for the woman in Found, 
 Aurelia, The Blue Bower, and The Loving Cup, and in the 
 first instance for Lilith ; but another head — that of Miss Alexa 
 Wilding, soon to be mentioned — was, after an interval of 
 
 1 In the Art-Journal lox June 1884 — Article, Notes on Rossetti and his 
 Works. 
 
 VOL. I. 16 
 
242 DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI. 
 
 years, substituted in Lilith, and, to my thinking, very dis- 
 advantageous^ so. 
 
 I proceed to other sitters not as yet mentioned. For The 
 Magdalene at the Door of Simon the Pharisee, and for Helen 
 of Troy, an Englishwoman sat, remarkable for beauty, but 
 not for depth of expression. Her head appears also in the 
 water-colour, just mentioned, of Dante's Dream. In The 
 Beloved the chief head is from a young woman who was in 
 much request at that time among various artists. She had 
 a Scotch name, I think Mackenzie. This is one of the very 
 few instances in which my brother painted an important head 
 from a professional model, and, as an exceptional case, the 
 experiment was conspicuously successful. The dark woman 
 to the spectator's right is a pure-blooded gipsy, named 
 Keomi, who became known to my brother through Mr. 
 Sandys. To the left is a pretty face, of an espiegle rather than 
 an exalted order — Ellen Smith, whom Rossetti pourtrayed 
 several times, beginning not long after he first knew Mr. 
 Boyce. With Sibylla Palmifera we come to Miss Alexa 
 Wilding, a damsel of respectable parentage whom he saw 
 casually in the street, in April 1865, and whom he at once 
 determined to paint from, were it at all possible — which it 
 proved to be. Having thus found a head of fine and rather 
 peculiar mould, eminently strong in contour and also capable 
 of much varying expression, which he regarded as almost a 
 sine qua non, Rossetti resolved to secure Miss Wilding to his 
 own canvases, and with this object he paid her a regular 
 annual salary, which went on for a long time. He was more 
 than commonly indisposed, and many artists are to some 
 extent the same, to share his discovery with any others, even 
 of his intimates. Her face re-appears in Regina Cordium (ot 
 which I have seen an unsuccessful woodcut — the same title 
 was bestowed upon two or three other pictures from different 
 sitters), in Monna Vanna, Rosa Triplex, the oil-painting of 
 Dante's Dream (the lady at the foot of the bed), Veronica 
 Veronese, The Blessed Damozel, La Ghirlandata, The Roman 
 Widow, La Bella Mano, and The Sea-spell. The last six of 
 
WORK FROM 1862 TO 1 868. 243 
 
 these works were executed at a date beyond the latest, 1! 
 which is properly covered by my present section ; but, for 
 our immediate purpose, that cannot be helped. It will be 
 observed that Rossetti did not see Miss Wilding until several 
 years after he had known Mrs. Morris ; and this large 
 number of paintings from the former — not to speak of a 
 number of minor productions with or without colour — is of 
 itself enough to show that he was far from confining his 
 pictorial study to the wife of the poet of The Earthly Para- 
 dise. Venus Verticordia was painted from yet another person 
 — a remarkably handsome cook whom he met in the street ; 
 Monna Pomona from a Scotch girl, Jessie — a damsel of no 
 rigid virtue who had a most energetic as well as beautiful pro- 
 file, not without some analogy to that of the great Napoleon. 
 // Ramoscello is a portrait of a daughter of one of his best 
 purchasers and friends, Mr. William Graham, M.P. for Glas- 
 gow. Mrs. Stillman — a celebrated beauty, and the most 
 cordial, accomplished, and amiable of ladies, herself a very 
 elegant painter, daughter of Mr. Spartali, Consul-General for 
 Greece — appears in the figure at the bed's head in the oil- 
 painting of Dante s Dream, and in the Vision of Fiammetta. 
 I seem to see also, in The Roman Widow, almost as much of 
 her head as of Miss Wilding's. Mrs. Stillman had a rather 
 younger sister, Christine (who became the Countess Edmond dc 
 Cahen). She also was a beauty, but in a way less sympathetic 
 to Rossetti, who did not, I think, ever draw from her. The 
 sisters became known to him through Brown, who super- 
 intended the artistic studies of the elder Miss Spartali. Mrs. 
 Sumner, a daughter-in-law of a late Archbishop of Canterbury, 
 was the original of the oil-painting (left unfinished) of 
 Domizia Scaligera, and of some other heads produced 
 towards 1876. The ideal women of Rossetti were, as a rule, 
 always tall and stately persons, and with Mrs. Sumner this 
 was especially the case. The pleasant simple picture called 
 Fleurs de Marie was done from the niece of the gardener at 
 Kelmscott Manor-house — a dwelling to be mentioned in the 
 sequel. 
 
244 DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI. 
 
 I have here specified no fewer than seventeen female sitters 
 from whom important heads were painted, some of them 
 known before Mrs. Morris, and some afterwards. One of 
 them, Miss Wilding, seems to have sat at least as often as 
 Mrs. Morris for coloured, and barely less often for uncoloured, 
 works. To read this account of the facts, and to persist 
 afterwards in saying that Rossetti had only one model and 
 one ideal, would be a case of wilful uncandour. In affirming 
 this, I do not wish at all to derogate from the widespread 
 belief that, in the extraordinarily impressive — the profound 
 and abstract — type of beauty of Mrs. Morris, he found an 
 ideal more entirely responsive than any other to his aspira- 
 tion in art. It seemed a face created to fire his imagination, 
 and to quicken his powers — a face of arcane and inexhaustible 
 meaning. To realize its features was difficult ; to transcend 
 its suggestion, impossible. There was one fortunate circum- 
 stance — if you could but represent its appearance, you stood 
 thereby already high in the region of the typical or symbolic. 
 For idealizing there was but one process — to realize. I will 
 not conceal my opinion that my brother succeeded where few 
 painters would have done other than fail ; he did some 
 genuine justice to this astonishing countenance. 
 
 As we have seen, Miss Burden — -before she became Mrs. 
 Morris — obliged Rossetti by sitting for several heads while 
 he was working in Oxford in and about 1857. In her earlier 
 married days she sat also for the Madonna in the Llandaff 
 Triptych, and for one or two heads of Beatrice. At the 
 beginning of 1862 Rossetti was bereft for ever of another 
 exquisite type of beauty — the pure loveliness and self-with- 
 drawn suavity of his wife's face, as little matchable, in its 
 very different way, as that of Mrs. Morris. Still an interval 
 of years ensued ; and (so far as I trace) it was only in 1868 
 that Mrs. Morris re-commenced to favour him with sittings. 
 To this year appertain the oil portrait of her, and La Pia, 
 and the crayon heads named Aurea Catena and Reverie. 
 Numerous other examples followed. Some of the crayon 
 heads or half-figures are unsurpassed amid Rossetti's work, 
 
WORK FROM 1862 TO 1 868. 245 
 
 both as consummate likenesses, and as achievements in art ; 
 but I will only name the oil- pictures — Pandora, Mariana 
 (with the Page singing), Dante s Dream (the head of Beatrice), 
 Proserpine, Water-willow (which is practically a portrait), 
 Venus Astarte, Mnemosyne (which was originally intended for 
 Hero, with her signal-lamp for Leander), La Donna della 
 Finestra, The Daydream, and The Salutation of Beatrice (left 
 rather less than completed at my brother's death). 
 
 It is apparent that Rossetti — although, as previously 
 demonstrated, he did not by any means confine himself to 
 the head of Mrs. Morris as his type — found this countenance 
 available for subjects of very diverse kinds. And so indeed it 
 is. For a Pia, Pandora, Mariana, Proserpine, Venus Astarte, or 
 Mnemosyne, there was hardly such another head to be found 
 in England. For a Madonna, a Beatrice, a Daydream, or a 
 Donna della Finestra (from the Vita Nuova — the same per- 
 sonage as " The Lady of Pity," so designated in some other 
 works by Rossetti), a different head might have been equally 
 appropriate in essence, and, to some eyes and from some 
 points of view, even more appropriate : but, as apprehended and 
 treated by Rossetti, both the mould of face and the expres- 
 sion educed from it seem to be " in choral consonancy " with 
 the personages, and to leave nothing at which a reasonable 
 mind can cavil. The works are there to tell their own tale. 
 Any one who dissents from my view will abide undis- 
 turbed in his own. Of course I am not here speaking of any 
 executive merit or demerit in the pictures, but only of the 
 selection and application of the type. 
 
 As to male sitters — professional hired models — Rossetti 
 considered that those of Italian nationality were, as a rule, 
 preferable to all others. He used an expression to Christina 
 which I have often heard her quote with a laugh : " An 
 Italian comes to your studio, and he looks to you very like a 
 Guy Fawkes ; but, when you set about drawing him, you find 
 that he is much more like the Antinous." 
 
 These considerations about sitters for my brother's works 
 have led me a long way beyond our present limit of date, 
 
246 DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI. 
 
 and indeed on to the very end of his life. I must now recur 
 to matters proper to the years 1 862-68. 
 
 For Dante Rossetti to figure as the correspondent of any 
 newspaper was a rare thing. An occasion did however arise 
 on 15 October 1865, when he wrote to the Athenaeum to 
 correct a misapprehension into which that paper had fallen, 
 as to his being practically a water-colour painter who only 
 at times worked in oils. He considered it to be " of great 
 professional importance to him " that the point should be 
 rightly understood ; and explained that, having originally 
 appeared as an oil-painter, and never having abandoned that 
 medium although he had sometimes worked in water-colour, 
 he had " now, for a good many years past," reverted to oil 
 for " all his chief works." 
 
 Another matter of technical practice is brought out in an 
 interesting way in a paper which my brother's intimate friend 
 Mr. Frederick J. Shields, the distinguished painter, contributed 
 to The Century-Guild Hobby-Horse (No. 18). Mr. Shields 
 may have been known to Rossetti before 1864, but I cannot 
 fix the precise year. My brother always valued much the 
 works of this artist, and held him in the highest esteem as a 
 devout-natured man of the strictest principle and the warmest 
 feeling ; the bond between the two friends being singularly 
 close in the last four or five years of my brother's life, when 
 Shields became his frequent and unflagging visitor, sparing 
 no effort to keep him in heart and hope. Mr. Shields, it 
 seems, had towards 1864 lit upon a certain French "com- 
 pressed charcoal," which he approved, and showed to 
 Rossetti. The latter at once adopted this material alone for all 
 his larger studies, which were altogether very numerous, and 
 as high in quality as anything he produced, and many of them 
 done in varying tints. When the Franco-German war broke 
 out in 1870 — "this truly atrocious and insufferable war," as 
 Rossetti called it in writing to Shields — that chalk became 
 unprocurable, and it has never again been in the market. 
 Fortunately Rossetti had previously laid-in a large stock of it, 
 which he continued using, and even at his death it was not 
 
WORK FROM l862 TO 1 868. 247 
 
 nearly exhausted. Mr. Shields describes with some minute- 
 ness the method adopted by Rossetti in the execution of his 
 crayon-drawings — crayon-pictures several of them might 
 deservedly be called ; and he remarks that these works can 
 easily be marred if taken out of their protecting glass. Mr. 
 Shields's particulars are well worthy of the attention of 
 artists ; and, were my Memoir more closely concerned with 
 details of technique, they should here be summarized. 
 
 In these years, lasting up to 1868, the circle of the 
 purchasers of Rossetti's works got pretty nearly completed. 
 Ruskin was no longer among them, nor yet Boyce ; Anderson 
 Rose ceased for the time to be in a position to continue ; 
 McCracken and Plint, both of them for a while mainstays of 
 my brother's fortunes, were dead. I have heretofore had 
 occasion to mention Mr. Leathart of Newcastle (afterwards 
 of Gateshead), Mr. Rae of Birkenhead, and Mr. Graham of 
 Glasgow and London. These three were kind and pleasant 
 friends, as well as steady liberal purchasers. They all proved 
 to be discerning judges of works of art, and my brother could 
 safely commit to their hands anything that he produced — 
 satisfied that, if he himself had ground to be fairly content 
 with it, their sympathy would rival or even exceed his own. 
 The same may be said of Mr. Frederick R. Leyland, a wealthy 
 ship-owner of Liverpool, and of Mr. L. R. Valpy, a London 
 solicitor, both of whom seem to have begun commissioning 
 towards the middle of 1867. Mr. Graham came later — about 
 the close of 1868. There were also Mr. Mitchell of Bradford, 
 who bought the Venus Verticordia ; Mr. Craven of 
 Manchester, who bought the Tibullus and Delia, and a large 
 number of other works ; Lord Mount-Temple, owner of the 
 Beata Beatrix ; Colonel Gillum, for water-colours and drawings ; 
 Mr. Trist, a wine-merchant at Brighton ; Mr. Gambart, the 
 great picture-dealer, who, after surmounting some tiffs over 
 the affairs of the Plint estate, took several of Rossetti's works ; 
 and some others as well, whom I do not stay to particularize. 
 In course of time the principal collections of Rossetti's art 
 came to be those of Leyland, Graham, and Rae. The former 
 
248 DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTl. 
 
 two have now been dispersed. With the exception of Mr. 
 Rae and Mr. Leathart, I am not certain that there is now any- 
 single person owning a large number of the paintings. In the 
 way of studies and sketches Mr. Charles Fairfax Murray, of 
 London and Florence, is well provided. 
 
 My brother had not been long settled in Cheyne Walk 
 before he began to find that his studio was below the range 
 of his requirements. As a room it was commodious and 
 ample, but it was not properly a studio. He cast about for 
 various expedients, consulting his friend the architect Mr. 
 Philip Webb. At one time an iron studio in the large garden 
 was thought of; at another, a more solid structure in the 
 same space ; at another, the resumption of a biggish set of 
 cab-stables which formed part of the property, and their 
 conversion into a studio. Finally all these more speculative 
 projects were given up, and my brother was contented to 
 carry out a fair amount of alteration in the lighting etc. of 
 his existing studio-apartment. This was in 187 1. It served 
 his turn reasonably well, though never quite satisfactory ; 
 and, in spite of occasional schemes of a total change of 
 residence, he went on upon this plan up to the close of his 
 life. 
 
 Rossetti's art-assistant, Mr. Knewstub, left him after a 
 while, to try his own independent fortunes as a painter ; and 
 Mr. Henry Treffry Dunn (who became known to my brother 
 through Mr. Charles Augustus Howell, to be hereafter named) 
 was engaged in his stead. Mr. Dunn had 1 a good deal of 
 artistic experience and aptitude, and proved to be of no 
 small service to Rossetti, both in matters of art, and also, 
 as he was a steady-going man of business, in the general 
 management of the house. He ceased to be an inmate in 
 1 88 1, but remained in communication with my brother. 
 
 The money-affairs of Rossetti, having once become pro- 
 
 1 I speak of Mr. Dunn in the past tense, but not as implying that he is 
 no longer alive. I believe him to be alive ; but regret to say that, from 
 the year 1884 or thereabouts, I have not seen and have seldom heard 
 of him. 
 
Work from 1862 to 1868. 249 
 
 sperous, continued to be so increasingly for many years ; and 
 indeed, notwithstanding some interruptions from ill-health or 
 the fluctuations of the picture-market, they never declined 
 seriously up to the last. He earned what may be called a 
 large income. From notes made at the time I find that in 
 1865 he realized about £2,050 ; in 1866, upwards of £1,080 ; 
 in 1867, little or not at all less than £3,000. At this last 
 date he still owed about £1,000 in one quarter or another. 
 In one of the Family-letters, 29 April 1876, it will be seen 
 that he had made £3,725 in the preceding twelvemonth, and 
 that he regarded this as about his then average. I surmise, 
 however, that it was seldom if ever reached again. For a 
 non-exhibiting painter, selling his works in a somewhat close 
 circle of friends, and (though he was not at all a recluse until 
 a late date in his life) mixing little in general society, this 
 was really a surprising success. It could not have been 
 attained if he had been other than an exceedingly discerning 
 man in the conduct of his professional affairs. Eulogist and 
 detractor alike confess that there was no better hand at a 
 bargain. I incline to think that, on the principle of " diamond 
 cut diamond," this was one of the reasons why Rossetti was 
 in such special favour with Mr. Leyland, of whom Mr. Prinsep 
 testifies " it was the one real friendship of his life." No 
 keener man of business existed than Leyland ; and he may 
 have relished — and partly disrelished — finding in Rossetti a 
 foeman or a friend worthy of his steel. My brother under- 
 stood how far he could go — so far he went ; and, having 
 fixed the terms, he knew how to stick by them, unregardful 
 of dubiety or demur. He was abundantly popular, as well 
 as most warmly admired, not only by Mr. Leyland, but 
 generally within his own circle. His naturalness, heartiness, 
 and good-humour were a standing passport to cordiality ; 
 and to these endowments, combined with nous, something 
 was probably conceded which would have been denied to the 
 mere trafficker in paint. A business-man who is a picture- 
 buyer — and for the last half-century almost all our picture- 
 buyers have been business-men — has his weak side, and, so 
 
250 DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI. 
 
 far as his relation to art goes, he feels it a privilege to be 
 made free of the art-precincts, and promoted into the intimacy 
 of a great or a distinguished painter. He is apt to find the 
 world of art much more entertaining than the world of 
 commerce ; and, while pluming himself upon having converse 
 with persons whose names are in all men's mouths, he can 
 still feel that, in a certain sense, he himself " rules the roast," 
 as all these fine performances would collapse without a 
 purchaser to sustain them. No one knew this better than 
 Rossetti. His net was spread in the sight, but not too 
 obviously in the sight, of several birds. Of the least tinge 
 of servility he was by his very nature — but this I need hardly 
 say — incapable. 
 
 Of literary product in these times there was but little. 
 The poems lay buried in Highgate Cemetery, and for some 
 years no more were written, and no .thoughts of poetic 
 publicity entertained. So far as I observe, the first fresh 
 verses which he wrote were for his design, Aspecta Medusa 
 — eight lines — in 1865. In January 1868 he wrote a 
 sonnet for his picture of Venus Verticordia, followed by 
 a Latin distych for his Portrait of Mrs. Morris, and in 
 December by his sonnets named Willozv-wood (and he then 
 declared that he ought never to have been a painter, 
 but rather a poet), and by the sonnet Newborn Death. In 
 prose, as far back as 1862-63, he had done a good deal of 
 work upon the Blake book which Alexander Gilchrist had 
 left not quite completed. The amount of what he wrote for 
 insertion in the text of the Life has sometimes been over- 
 rated. Its sum-total appears in his Collected Works. Besides 
 this, he edited, with a great deal of pains as well as of insight, 
 the poetical compositions of Blake. I will extract, from the 
 volume Anne Gilchrist, two of Rossetti's utterances, both 
 quite characteristic : — 
 
 " I am working closely this morning at the concluding chapter, in 
 hope of sending it off to-night, or, if not, certainly to-morrow. I was 
 delayed by the necessity I found of going to the Print-room [of the 
 
INCIDENTS, 1862— 1868. 251 
 
 British Museum] to study Blake's coloured works there, as all I 
 could think of was to dwell on some of these. Facts, and descrip- 
 tions of facts, are in my line ; but to talk about a thing merely is 
 what I could never well manage. 
 
 " I really found it impossible to know what to say more of the 
 poems, individually ; but am sincerely of the opinion I express in 
 the text as to the uselessness of doing so. The truth is that, as 
 regards such a poem as My Spectre, I do not understand it a bit 
 better than anybody else ; only I know, better than some may know, 
 that it has claims as poetry apart from the question of understanding 
 it, and is therefore worth printing." 
 
 XXVIII. 
 
 INCIDENTS, 1862— 1868. 
 
 It has often been stated that my brother, at Cheyne Walk, 
 kept from time to time a large number of animals. This is 
 entirely true. Being fond of " beasts," and having a large 
 garden, with plenty of space for accommodating them either 
 in the open or in corners partitioned off, he freely indulged 
 his taste. He had no particular liking for an animal on the 
 mere ground of its being " pretty " — his taste being far more 
 for what is quaint, odd, or semi-grotesque. Dante's specimens 
 of fauna however were often very sightly, as also often 
 funny and out-of-the-way. I will name some, as they happen 
 to come ; others have passed from memory into the limbo of 
 oblivion. 
 
 There were a Pomeranian puppy named Punch, a grand 
 Irish deerhound named Wolf, a barn-owl named Jessie, 
 another owl named Bobby (described by Christina as "a 
 little owl with a very large face and a beak of a sort of egg- 
 shell green "), rabbits, dormice, hedgehogs, two successive 
 wombats, a Canadian marmot or woodchuck, an ordinary 
 marmot, armadilloes, kangaroos, wallabies, a deer, a white 
 mouse with her brood, a racoon, squirrels, a mole, peacocks, 
 wood-owls, Virginian owls, Chinese horned owls, a jackdaw, 
 laughing jackasses (Australian kingfishers), undulated grass- 
 
252 DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTt. 
 
 parrakeets, a talking grey parrot, a raven, chameleons, green 
 lizards, and Japanese salamanders. 1 
 
 Persons who are familiar with the management of pets will 
 easily believe that several of these animals came to a bad 
 end. Punch the puppy would get lost ; one or other bird 
 would get drowned ; the dormice would fight and kill one 
 another, or would eat up their own tails, and gradually perish ; 
 Wolf the deerhound could get no adequate exercise, and was 
 given away ; the parrakeets were, neglected at some time that 
 Rossetti was absent from home, and on his return they were 
 found dead. Other animals, owing to their burrowing or 
 reclusive habits, disappeared. An armadillo was not to be 
 found ; and the tale went — I believe it to be not far from true 
 — that, having followed his ordinary practice of burrowing, 
 he turned up from under the hearthstone of a neighbour's 
 kitchen, to the serious dismay of the cook, who opined that, 
 if he was not the devil, there was no accounting for what he 
 could possibly be. The racoon, as winter set in, made up his 
 mind to hibernate. He ensconced himself in a drawer of a 
 large heavy cabinet which stood in the passage outside the 
 studio-door. The drawer was shut upon him, without his 
 presence in it transpiring, and after a while he was supposed 
 to be finally lost to the house. When spring ensued, many 
 mysterious rumbling or tramping or whimpering noises were 
 heard in the passage, or in the studio as coming from the 
 passage. My brother mentioned them to me more than once, 
 and was ready to regard them as one more symptom, by no 
 means the first or only one, that the house was haunted. At 
 last, and I think by mere casualty, the drawer was opened, 
 and the racoon emerged, rather thinner than at his entry. 
 What the other stories of ghosts about the old mansion 
 
 1 Some years ago two or three amusing and authentic articles on 
 Rossetti's "beasts" appeared in some journal — I forget its name. I have 
 the articles somewhere, but have not succeeded in laying hands upon 
 them, to be consulted for my present purpose. I think it manifest that 
 the author of them must be my brother's art-assistant, Mr. Henry Treffry 
 Dunn. 
 
INCIDENTS, 1862 — 1868. 253 
 
 amounted to I have mainly forgotten, but am aware that a 
 servant, a sufficiently strong-minded young woman, saw a 
 spectre by a bed-room door in November 1870. The ghost, 
 according to Miss Caine, " was a woman, and appeared some- 
 times at the top of the second flight of stairs. She retreated 
 to the room overlooking the Embankment." My brother 
 never beheld any such miscellaneous ghosts, nor did the 
 idea of them disturb him in any sort of way, although in 
 this and other instances he was not at all hostile to the 
 notion that they might possibly be there. I will not here 
 start the question whether a belief in ghosts is in itself 
 evidence of unreason ; but I will say that, after making 
 allowance for belief in their possibility, my brother's attitude 
 of mind on the subject was not unreasonable, as he thought 
 that, assuming their existence, they are just as much a part 
 of the scheme of Nature and the Universe as any other part, 
 and therefore not to be regarded with mere panic. A disem- 
 bodied spirit is the same, mutatis mutandis, as an embodied one. 
 The beasts upon which Dante's affections were prodigalized 
 were the first wombat and his successor the woodchuck. 
 The second wombat, having died immediately, counts for 
 little. No more engagingly lumpish quadruped than the 
 first wombat could be found, and none more obese and 
 comfortable than the woodchuck. They were both tame, 
 especially the woodchuck ; and Dante would sit with either 
 in his arms by the half-hour together, dandling them paunch 
 upward, scratching gently at their cheeks or noses, or making 
 the woodchuck's head and hind-paws meet. With the wombat 
 ho such operation was possible. Each of them was his house- 
 mate for some time, and each expired without premonition. I 
 do not assume that my brother wept over them, but certainly 
 " his heart was sair." For the wombat (not having yet seen 
 it) he wrote from Penkill Castle the following quatrain : — 
 
 " Oh how the family affections combat 
 Within this heart, and each hour flings a bomb at 
 My burning soul ! Neither from owl nor from bat 
 Can peace be gained until I clasp my wombat." 
 
2 54 DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI. 
 
 The matutinal screeching of one or more of Rossetti's 
 peacocks proved so afflictive to his neighbours that Lord 
 Cadogan, the Ground-landlord, afterwards introduced into 
 all Cheyne Walk leases, as has been stated on good authority, 
 a clause to the effect that the tenants were not to keep any 
 peacocks. Here, extracted from my Diary for December 
 1 87 1, is a curious anecdote about the peacock, which may 
 perhaps deserve a moment's attention : — 
 
 " The deer that Gabriel used to have, now dead, one day saw the 
 peacock making a great display of his train. . . . The deer followed 
 him about ; and, though not displaying any peculiarly marked ill-will, 
 systematically trampled out all his train feathers, one after the other. 
 Shortly after this, Gabriel gave the peacock away." 
 
 There was one of Rossetti's animals — a zebu, or small 
 Brahmin bull — as to which some burlesque particulars have 
 got into print. Mr. Knight relates the story, giving as his 
 authority Mr. Whistler, who is just the man (and so Mr. 
 Knight puts it) for a few humorous embellishments. Mr. 
 Prinsep also relates it to nearly the same effect, and he gives 
 Rossetti himself as his authority. The zebu was seen by 
 my brother and myself, perhaps in 1863, m a beast-show held 
 in Cremorne Gardens. He was a beautiful animal, not larger 
 than a pony of small size. My brother wanted to buy him 
 for some £20, and I co-operated. All that I remember about 
 the subsequent circumstances is the following. The zebu 
 was brought to Tudor House, and charged at a fine pace 
 through the passage into the garden. There he was tethered 
 to a tree by Rossetti's man-servant. My brother, after a day 
 or two, was engaged in inspecting him, when the zebu, more 
 or less irritated by confinement, went in a hostile mood 
 towards the painter, who naturally dodged round the tree- 
 trunk. As this experience showed that the zebu was not 
 a convenient tenant for the garden, Rossetti re-sold him, and 
 he departed in peace. I question whether the animal " tore 
 up by the roots the tree to which it was attached," though it 
 did display a large amount of physical strength ; or that it 
 
INCIDENTS, 1862 — 1868. 255 
 
 " chased its tormentor round the garden," in any sense rightly- 
 belonging to these words. I was not however present on the 
 occasion, and cannot aver that I even saw the zebu after he 
 had once entered the premises. 
 
 I have just been referring to the superstitious or semi- 
 superstitious traits in my brother's character, which were 
 very clearly marked. " Thirteen at table " was a contingency 
 which did not escape his notice. In a letter of his to Madox 
 Brown, dated in 1864, he authorizes his friend to bring, with 
 others, his younger daughter to a dinner, if Brown does not 
 mind the result of thirteen at table— and he was about the 
 last person to mind it. A later dinner was planned for 
 fourteen, which number was reduced to thirteen by a defec- 
 tion at the last moment, and Rossetti hurried away his 
 servant to catch a fourteenth somewhere or other. Mr. Bell 
 Scott says that " he began to call up the spirit of his wife by 
 table-turning," and relates an incident of the kind happening 
 in 1866; and he adds that "long before that year" my 
 brother had "gone into spiritualism." I cannot say with 
 accuracy how soon such attempts began. I myself witnessed 
 some in 1865, '66, '68, and '70. I will not enter into details, 
 but will only say that now and again demonstrations occurred 
 (especially some in which a Mr. Bergheim was concerned) 
 which astonished me not a little, and for which I was and 
 am unable to account ; at other times there were mere 
 confusion and cross-purposes. Although Rossetti was, as I 
 have already said, not plunged into monotonous gloom by 
 the death of his wife, the idea of her was in these years very 
 constantly present to him. Poignant memories and painful 
 associations were his portion ; and he was prone to think 
 that some secret might yet be wrested from the grave. 
 
 With the family of his deceased wife my brother did not 
 keep up any close personal relations, yet he did not entirely 
 lose knowledge of them. I observe that in August 1867 he 
 was sending ;£io to her brother Harry ; and evidence of like 
 kind goes on as late as 1878. 
 
 His general habits were social enough. He became a 
 
256 DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI. 
 
 member of the Garrick Club before 1865 ; afterwards of the 
 Arundel Club ; and, upon its foundation early in 1 866, of 
 the Burlington Fine Arts Club. This last membership he 
 (and also I) relinquished at the end of 1867, owing to the 
 expulsion — which was contrary to his sense of fair play, and 
 also to his individual liking — of a fellow-member, a painter 
 of much distinction. I do not give the name, nor other 
 particulars. The other memberships died out in course of 
 time — with no special reason except a change in habits and 
 interests on his part. At the Arundel Club he used to meet 
 Mr. Knight, Mr. Rose, and others with whom he was on very 
 easy terms. Here also he met Mr. W. S. Gilbert, who has 
 become the inexhaustible purveyor of laughter to two 
 continents. He did not take to Mr. Gilbert personally ; but, 
 when the Bab Ballads began appearing in Fun in 1867, 
 Rossetti was enormously tickled with their eccentricities of 
 humour and gymnastics of the ludicrous, and I have heard 
 him recite many of these examples of " excellent fooling " 
 in all sorts of companies. He was never tired of them, and 
 loud and contagious guffaws attested that neither were his 
 auditors tired. I mention this small matter, not so much for 
 its own sake as because it illustrates my brother's alacrity at 
 doing profuse justice to the talents even of a writer for whom 
 he neither professed nor felt the least predilection. Besides 
 his general sociality in these years — evidenced by liking to 
 see his friends about him, whether to dinner or otherwise, 
 and by going out to dine not unfrequently, which was 
 perhaps principally towards 1869 — my brother was really a 
 good-natured and even an accommodating host to some of 
 his familiars, when it served their convenience. Thus Mr. 
 Sandys became an established inmate of the house for about 
 a year and a quarter, terminating in the summer of 1867 ; 
 and another painter, Mr. George Chapman, who was in 
 serious ill-health and otherwise " out of luck," was there for 
 a shorter period, some three or four months. He died before 
 attaining middle age ; viewed by my brother with consider- 
 able regard for his facility of invention and grace in 
 
INCIDENTS, 1862 — 1868. 257 
 
 portraiture, though his loose and haphazard methods of work 
 were often the subject of some amicable remonstrance. 
 Other friends of this period were Mr. and Mrs. Spartali and 
 their beautiful daughters ; some other members of the Greek 
 community in London, especially the Dilberoglues, and 
 various branches of the Itmides family ; Mr. Dodgson (the 
 " Lewis Carroll " of Alice in Wonderland), who, being a good 
 amateur photographer, took some few excellent likenesses 
 of Rossetti ; and Mr. Charles Fairfax Murray, who, when 
 a mere youth, became known to my brother as an artistic 
 aspirant, and who developed into a painter of good standing, 
 and a vendor and collector of works of art. 
 
 There was another young man who, at one time or other, 
 played a considerable part in Rossetti's life, and of whom it 
 may behove me here to say something definite. His name 
 was Charles Augustus Howell. He survived my brother, but 
 has been dead now some few years. It was in or about 1856 
 that I casually met a man of some twenty-five years of age, 
 of gentlemanly address, who had once been in the army. 
 I will designate him by his initials, J. F. H. (the name is not 
 Howell). Through me, and through his own rather pushing 
 ways, he became known to various members of my circle, 
 including my brother ; who, being kind-heartedly anxious to 
 help him out of circumstances of great money-embarrassment, 
 promoted his interests to the best of his power. J. F. H. 
 made acquaintance with Mr. Howell, an Anglo-Portuguese 
 young gentleman about seventeen years of age, and intro- 
 duced him to us ; a very well-grown, pleasant-spoken, 
 sprightly youth, looking some few years older than he then 
 was. After a while, but not until some mischief had been 
 done in attempts to serve him, J. F. H. was found by Howell 
 to be a very disgraceful character. Howell gave us notice 
 of this, and J. F. H. was abandoned to his fate — which 
 proved to be an equally dismal and well-deserved one. This 
 disclosure may have been towards the end of 1857. Mr. 
 Howell knew something (we did not) of the Italian patriot 
 Felice Orsini, who figures in most memories as more assassin 
 
 VOL. I. 17 
 
258 DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI. 
 
 than patriot, but in fact he was both ; and Howell was in 
 some way (but I am sure without any conscious connivance) 
 mixed up with the procuring or the dispatching of the 
 infernal machine or machines which in January 1858 Orsini 
 exploded against Napoleon III. ^Before the explosion took 
 place Howell had quitted England, and returned to his 
 family in Portugal. In 1864 ne was back in London ; and 
 he sought out my brother and myself, who had always liked 
 him, and felt much indebted to him for unmasking J. F. H., 
 and so preventing us from continuing to countenance the 
 latter in any way. 
 
 London can have contained in 1864 few more agreeable 
 young men than Charles Augustus Howell. He united the 
 attractions of youthfulness and of aplomb. His face was 
 handsome though rather outre ; not a little like that of King 
 Philip IV. in the magnificent full-length by Velasquez in the 
 National Gallery, but superior in manliness, the expression of 
 talent, and hair which, being dark chestnut in tint, was free 
 from the vapid effeminacy which marks the flaxen locks of 
 Philip. Howell had seen a good deal of the world, had many 
 accomplishments and a ready insight in fine art, and was 
 a capital and most entertaining talker. He had not any 
 artistic faculty of his own ; but was nevertheless an excellent 
 facsimilist (and as such acknowledged by Ruskin) of water- 
 colours and the like. Throughout Rossetti's circle he at once 
 became a prime favourite. He thus formed the acquaintance 
 of Mr. Ruskin, who engaged him as his secretary, and who, 
 I believe, cherished him extremely for some while, and placed 
 the most implicit confidence in him. I am neither required 
 nor qualified to enter into an account of the relations between 
 Mr. Ruskin and Mr. Howell. I know that they came to a 
 close towards the end of 1870 ; and my impression is that a 
 highly distinguished friend of Rossetti, one who liked Howell 
 enormously at first, and disliked him intensely afterwards, 
 had something to do with this result. This change of feeling 
 put Rossetti into a position of embarrassment, between the 
 friend who wanted him to cut Howell, and Howell himself, 
 
INCIDENTS, 1862— 1868. 259 
 
 who as yet continued to be much to his taste. Mr. 
 Collingwood, in his book on Ruskin, 1 makes some statements 
 disadvantageous to Howell, impugning his honesty. As I 
 know nothing about the details, I will leave them as they 
 stand, and will also for the present leave Howell, who will 
 more than once re-appear as we proceed. 
 
 Mr. Bell Scott and his wife, leaving Newcastle-on-Tyne, 
 settled in London in 1864, and from this date forward 
 Rossetti saw his old friend frequently, and continued to value 
 him highly. He had visited Scott in Newcastle at the end of 
 1862, and then sat (to Mr. Downey) for that photograph 
 which is the best known of all his portraits — a standing 
 figure, three-quarters length, in an Inverness cape (or Tyneside 
 wrapper, as the garment was then frequently called). In the 
 autumn of 1863 he revisited with me a few Belgian cities ; 
 and in 1864 he was in Paris for a short while — I think, the 
 very last of his small foreign trips. Towards the same time 
 when Scott settled in London, another old friend, Thomas 
 Woolner, dropped out of Rossetti's circle — a matter which I 
 always deeply regretted. I cannot say that my brother was 
 to blame, although a person much more tolerant or much 
 meeker than he might have deserved commendation for 
 adopting a different course. He once gave me a very explicit 
 account of the facts, to the following effect. He was among 
 friends, talking of Woolner with his accustomed cordiality, 
 when one of them — the same whom, in referring to Howell, I 
 designated as " highly distinguished " — said to him, " I am 
 rather surprised to hear you speaking of Woolner in such 
 terms, for he, to my knowledge, speaks of you in very different 
 terms." This staggered Rossetti, who, pursuing the point, 
 became convinced that Woolner, not on one occasion only but 
 as the general tone of his speech when the subject arose, 
 talked of him in a way quite inconsistent with genuine regard, 
 or even with considerate allowance. That my brother had 
 his faults is amply true, and it is quite possible that what 
 
 1 Vol. ii., pp. 59-61, 115. 
 
260 DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI. 
 
 Woolner commented upon with asperity were real faults, 
 and not vamped-up imputations ; but to Woolner himself 
 Rossetti had given no cause of complaint at any date, recent 
 or remote. My brother hereupon ceased to see Woolner ; he 
 got to regard him with antipathy, and sometimes to speak 
 of him with bitterness. The sculptor indeed was well known 
 for his biting tongue, and there were perhaps few of his 
 acquaintances who, present or absent, were not at some time 
 subjected to its sharpness. Some while afterwards — in 1868 
 — my brother dropped in to see me one evening, quickly 
 followed by Woolner (for I never myself was at variance with 
 him, although in the course of later years we drifted apart). 
 I viewed the encounter with some alarm ; but it passed off 
 without anything unpleasant, each of the two now sundered 
 friends treating the other with ease which faintly simulated 
 good-will. I was then in hopes that they might become 
 reconciled ; but no steps were taken by either with such an 
 object, and I imagine they never met again. Woolner did 
 indeed call at my brother's house in the summer of 1870; but 
 the latter on that day was " not at home " to any one, and he 
 did not hear of the visit until his once intimate comrade had 
 quitted his threshold. 
 
 From Mr. Ruskin also there was a most unfortunate 
 severance. The two men liked one another — at one time I 
 am sure they even loved one another— but ominous dis- 
 crepancies began to appear not very long after Rossetti had 
 settled in Cheyne Walk, and gradually these became irre- 
 mediable, or at any rate they remained unremedied. There 
 is a certain fatal divergence between an autocratic Mentor 
 who tells a painter what he ought and ought not to do, and 
 the painter himself, who, having an ardent invention, and 
 a decided opinion as to the range and the limitations of his 
 own powers of work, is expected to conform to the critic's 
 notions instead. It is notorious moreover — and therefore I 
 need not scruple to say it — that Mr. Ruskin's opinions as to 
 what is right or wrong, to be or not to be recommended, in 
 artistic execution, have differed very much at different times ; 
 
INCIDENTS, 1862— 1868. 26l 
 
 and that, with characteristic but embarrassing candour, he 
 has unsaid in one year several things which he had said in 
 previous years. This may have suited himself, but cannot 
 be supposed to have suited the living subjects of his comments. 
 I have by me four letters from Mr. Ruskin to my brother, 
 proper to the summer of 1865 ; the fourth alone is dated — 
 18 July 1865. They must all have been consequent upon 
 his seeing, in the painter's studio, the picture of Venus 
 Verticordia, with its foreground of roses and honeysuckles. 
 They are somewhat long, and I only extract a few sentences 
 (not always consecutive in the letters themselves) to show 
 how matters stood : — 
 
 " (1) It is very good and pretty of you to answer so. You are, it 
 seems, under the (for the present) fatal mistake of thinking that you 
 will ever learn to paint well by painting badly — i.e., coarsely. But 
 come back to me when you have found out your mistake,, or (if you 
 are right in your method) when you can do better. I am very glad, 
 at all events, to understand you better than I did, in the grace and 
 sweetness of your letters. — (2) I purposely used the word ' wonder- 
 fully ' painted about those flowers. They were wonderful to me,, in 
 their realism ; awful — I can use no other word — in their coarseness. 
 Come and see me now, if you like. — (3) Please come now the first 
 fine evening — tea at seven. —(4) I am very grateful to you for this 
 letter, and for the feelings it expresses towards me. You meant 
 them — the first and second — just as rightly as this pretty third ; and 
 yet they conclusively showed me that we could not at present — nor 
 for some time yet— be companions any more, though true friends, I 
 hope, as ever. I do not choose any more to talk to you until you 
 can recognize my superiorities as / can yours. You simply do not 
 see certain characters in me. A day may come when you will be 
 able ; then — without apology, without restraint, merely as being 
 different from what you are now — come back to me, and we will be 
 as we used to be." 
 
 Two things are clear from these extracts : 1, That the tone 
 of Rossetti's letters was such as Ruskin did not, and probably 
 could not, complain of; 2, That Ruskin, after encouraging 
 Rossetti to call upon him at once, stringently forbade him 
 
262 DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI. 
 
 to do so. I will in no wise discuss whether Ruskin was right 
 or wrong in all this ; but of one thing we may be tolerably 
 certain — that Rossetti did not call upon him. I assume that 
 he did not in any way reply to the last letter. 
 
 The only sequel that I know of to this correspondence 
 of 1865 is that on 4 December 1866 I dined with Mr. 
 Ruskin and his family, by invitation, and a very pleasant 
 evening did I spend in the house. Ruskin expressed to me 
 a wish to resume seeing my brother, and I suggested whether 
 he would call in Cheyne Walk, and, if he did so, would be 
 cautious in avoiding any topic of possible irritation. On the 
 following day Ruskin did, in the friendliest spirit, make the 
 visit. I was not present, but learned that " all went off most 
 cordially — Ruskin expressing great admiration of the Beatrice 
 in a Death-trance " (Beata Beatrix), on which my brother was 
 then engaged. I am afraid however that this call was not 
 followed up in any sort of way. Rossetti, very likely, did 
 not return the visit — partly from general indisposition to any 
 such regulated performance, and partly apprehending that 
 some new cause of difficulty or dissension might arise. He 
 had better have risked the chance, and gone without delay. 
 I think that the very last occasion when the old friends met 
 was in September 1868. Ruskin then called on Rossetti, 
 and raised some question whether the latter would not join 
 him in efforts for social ameliorations on a systematic scale ; 
 but this was not the painter's line, and he did not take any 
 practical steps about it. After this, there was, to the best of 
 my belief, no further personal meeting. In August 1869 Mr. 
 Ruskin was elected Slade Professor of Fine Art in Oxford 
 University ; and his time was at first shared between London 
 and Oxford, and ultimately he settled in the latter city. 
 Anyhow a sad ending had come to a friendship which had 
 once been so affectionate, and which, in the annals of art, 
 might some day almost count as historical. At least, their 
 parting was not in anger. Moreover, up to 1870 or there- 
 abouts, my brother continued to hear a good deal about 
 Mr. Ruskin, as Mr. Howell remained as yet his secretary : 
 
INCIDENTS, 1862— 1868. 263 
 
 and there is a letter from Ruskin to Rossetti, as late as 
 August 1870, perfectly amicable, and including a reference to 
 the Poems then published. 
 
 In these years Rossetti developed a kind of passion for 
 collecting curious objects of art — chairs and tables, cabinets, 
 hangings, looking-glasses (he had a special fancy for convex 
 mirrors), pictures in a very minor way, and most particularly 
 Japanese prints and oddities, and blue china, whether Japanese 
 or Chinese. With the European he never concerned himself. 
 He built up elaborate fireplaces in his house, with old carved 
 oak, antiquated Dutch tiles, and the like. He also raised in 
 his garden a large tent or marquee, in which we often dined 
 in the summer, beginning with 1868. A friendly rivalry 
 subsisted between Mr. Whistler and him, especially as to 
 China and Japan. There must of course have been in London 
 some fine collections of " blue china " before Rossetti's time. 
 Mr. Huth's collection was one ; but my brother's- zeal and 
 persistence were such as to send up prices in the market. 
 The well-known Art-dealers, Messrs Marks, acted for him in 
 many cases. One of his earliest purchases was that of the 
 whole collection of blue china formed by the retiring Italian 
 Ambassador, the Marquis d'Azeglio. Its cost to my brother 
 was I think ^"200. In March 1867 he bought of Messrs. 
 Marks two hawthorn-pots (Rossetti invented this name) 
 which, with their covers, cost him ^120. He paid in the form 
 of a picture, not of money down. In fact, what between free 
 expenditure and good taste in choice, he formed a very fine 
 display of blue china, which made his big sunlit drawing- 
 room a sight to see. As to " the Japanese mania," which has 
 by this time half-revolutionized European art of all kinds, I 
 hardly know what Londoner preceded Mr. Whistler and my 
 brother. They made bids against each other in Paris as well 
 as in London, and were possibly a little nettled to learn in 
 Paris that there was another painter — the renowned Tissot — 
 who outstripped them both in acquisition. Rossetti gave a 
 deal of time as well as energy to the collecting of china etc. 
 I have seen him come home late, rather fagged from his 
 
264 DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTl. 
 
 eager pursuit, with a cargo of blue either actually in hand 
 or ordered to arrive ; and, as he dropped into an easy-chair, 
 he called out " Pots, pots ! " with a thrilling accent. It spoke 
 at once of achievement and of despondency. Such may have 
 been the tone of Alexander of Macedon when he deplored 
 that there were no more worlds to conquer. 
 
 In the way of pictures his most notable purchase was a 
 moderate-sized Botticelli, obtained at Colnaghi's sale in 
 March 1867 for the small sum of £20 (towards 1880 he re- 
 sold it to a friend for £3 15) — a half-length figure, highly 
 characteristic of its painter, of a young woman in whitish 
 drapery, in a close architectural background. Botticelli was 
 little or not at all in demand at that now remote date. If 
 my brother had not something to do with the vogue which 
 soon afterwards began to attach to that fascinating master, 
 I am under a misapprehension. 
 
 In October 1869 I made a jotting : " The collecting-passion 
 seems extinct in Gabriel these several months." I cannot say 
 that it had not any recurrences from time to time ; but its 
 force was now spent, and never afterwards returned to a 
 like level. 
 
 XXIX. 
 
 BEGINNINGS OF ILL-HEALTH— PENKILL CASTLE. 
 
 DANTE ROSSETTl had naturally a strong constitution. His 
 muscular strength was only moderate, but neither in this 
 respect nor in others was he a weakling. He was not con- 
 stantly ailing, on and off, nor frequently laid aside from work 
 because the state of his health would not admit of his 
 attending to it. He had some decided illnesses, and every 
 now and then he was " out of sorts " — an indigestive or 
 feverish attack, a violent cold, or what not. On the whole 
 he was a healthy child and boy, and, up to the autumn of 
 1866, when his age was thirty-eight, a healthy man. Neither 
 should it be supposed that after that date he was continually 
 
BEGINNINGS OF ILL-HEALTH — PENKILL CASTLE. 265 
 
 ill. In various respects he remained well ; and there were 
 intervals when one could hardly say that anything distinct 
 was amiss with him. He as yet bore attacks of illness well 
 enough — impatiently, as was his bent, but not querulously 
 nor faint-heartedly. 
 
 Towards the autumn of 1866 he became subject to a com- 
 plaint (I do not care to define it) which required surgical 
 treatment from time to time. The first instance was in August 
 1868. He minded this not at all ; and I have seen him resume 
 painting within five minutes of one of the slight operations. 
 But there was worse in store for him. 
 
 Insomnia began in 1867. Why did it begin? I consider 
 that painful thoughts, partly but not wholly connected with 
 his wife and her death, were at the root of it. Rossetti was 
 one of the worst men living to cope with this fell antagonist. 
 No doubt there must be some persons of a sedate or phlegmatic 
 temperament who will make up their minds to do with little 
 sleep if they cannot get much, and will wile away the sleepless 
 hours in some quiet occupation, such as reading ; or they may 
 even fully submit to the inconvenience, and simply make their 
 working day all the longer for the privation. Rossetti was 
 not one of these, unhappily for himself. His active imagina- 
 tion gave him no respite ; and to be sleepless was to be 
 agitated and miserable and haggard as well. Haunted by 
 memories, harried by thoughts and fantasies, he tossed and 
 turned on the unrestful bed. 
 
 Towards the end of the summer of 1867 his eyesight began 
 to fail. Sunlight or artificial light became increasingly pain- 
 ful to him, producing sensations of giddiness etc. Even the 
 gas-lamps in the streets affected him distressingly. He 
 consulted the famous oculists, Sir William Bowman and Dr. 
 Bader. They both assured him that his eyes were not organi- 
 cally wrong, but that the weakness of sight depended upon 
 general overstrain and nervous upset. He also consulted Sir 
 William Gull and Mr. Marshall, and later on (1870) Dr. 
 Critchett, who confirmed the same opinion. Dr. Critchett's 
 view was that the eyes were naturally more than duly fiat ; 
 
266 DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTl. 
 
 and that unconscious muscular power, which had, when in 
 full health, been exerted to counteract this, was now no longer 
 at the patient's command in equal measure. All this was 
 well, so far as it went ; yet it was hardly capable of re-assuring 
 a painter who found himself impeded in painting, and who 
 too well remembered that his father had become nearly blind. 
 He began using strong spectacles, often two pairs one over 
 the other ; and, as the years progressed, he scarcely ever took 
 the spectacles off, persisting in wearing them even when he 
 was merely seated in talk with friends. In September 1868 
 he went with Mr. Dunn on a brief trip to Stratford-on-Avon, 
 Warwick, and Kenilworth ; and late in the month he again 
 left town for Penkill Castle, Ayrshire, visiting on the way 
 Leeds, where a large art-collection had been got up. With 
 the authorities of this exhibition he had already had some to- 
 do, as they had accepted from the owners certain pictures by 
 Rossetti, which he wanted to be withheld, and to this require- 
 ment they reluctantly yielded. He did not like that any of his 
 productions, possibly of secondary merit, should ever appear 
 here and there in a scattered sort of way, but wished to reserve 
 himself for any time — if ever this should come — when he might 
 collect a number of his best works, to be viewed in their proper 
 relation one with another. Such a time never did come, though 
 it was often kept in his mind's eye. 
 
 Penkill Castle is the seat of Miss (Alice) Boyd, a Scotch 
 lady then verging on middle age, who was on terms of very 
 intimate friendship with Mr. Bell Scott. She had been known 
 to my brother for some few years. Mr. Scott was then 
 staying at the Castle ; and both Miss Boyd and he did a 
 great deal to cheer and divert Rossetti. A lady of sweeter 
 character and temper than Miss Boyd, or of more delicacy 
 and liveliness of address, does not exist. Her intellectual 
 power is high, and her gift for painting noticeable. The 
 Family-letters show a few details as to this in some respects 
 most pleasant sojourn. At a rather later date, in writing to 
 Mr. Shields, the term which Rossetti used for Miss Boyd was 
 " a rarely precious woman." 
 
BEGINNINGS OF ILL-HEALTH— PENKILL CASTLE. 267 
 
 Besides Miss Boyd and Mr. Scott, there was a second lady- 
 staying in 1868 in Penkill Castle — Miss Losh, who was a 
 cousin of Miss Boyd, but much older, sixty-seven years of 
 age. Miss Losh took an extraordinary liking for my brother 
 — in whose manner, not to speak of his genius, there was 
 something singularly fascinating to many and to very diverse 
 persons. Mr. Scott, in his Autobiographical Notes, shows that 
 he himself had no great predilection for Miss Losh, saying 
 that she 
 
 "had somehow or other taken a jealous dislike to me, thinking I 
 had too much influence over her younger cousin, who entertained 
 me so much, and who lived with us in London in the winter. She 
 had therefore looked forward to Rossetti's appearance, fully intending 
 to play him off against me, which accordingly she did in the most 
 fantastic way." 
 
 Mr. Scott approved as little of Rossetti's dealings with 
 Miss Losh as of that lady's dealings with Rossetti. His 
 narrative continues as follows : — 
 
 " The old lady's admiration had culminated in an offer of a loan 
 of money to any amount, to prevent him using his eyes in painting, 
 or in any other trying occupation. He would get better and repay 
 her, but till then he might depend on her. . . . She intended indeed 
 that this plan should be a secret one between them ; but no sooner 
 had we [Scott and Rossetti] started on our daily constitutional than 
 he entrusted it to me [his impulsive nature was far from good at 
 keeping secrets] with much effusion and gratitude, at the same time 
 protesting he would never think of availing hinuelf of her kindness. 
 This determination I strenuously encouraged ; and we heard no 
 more of the matter until after the old lady's death, when the 
 evidences to the contrary were all too clear." 
 
 These "evidences to the contrary" consisted of an I.O.U., 
 or some such document, which Rossetti gave to Miss Losh, 
 and which was found after her death, and was destroyed (in 
 my brother's interest) by a friendly hand — I will not say 
 whose. The kind, generous Miss Losh died suddenly in 
 
268 DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI. 
 
 March 1872, after an operation, seemingly quite successful, 
 for cataract. That Mr. Scott entertained a very bad opinion 
 of my brother in connexion with this whole transaction I 
 know as a fact ; for, very soon after Dante's death, he narrated 
 the circumstances to me, in a tone and in terms of acrimony 
 which startled me not a little. But there may be two sides to 
 this affair, as to most others. In my Diary for 3 November 
 1 868 I find the following passage : — 
 
 " Gabriel came back to-night from Penkill. He says his eyes are 
 decidedly not better, though on the whole I think he seems a little 
 less despondent about their essential condition. Miss Losh, the 
 aunt [should be cousin] of Miss Boyd, has been at Penkill all this 
 time. She pressed Gabriel (whom she had never known before) 
 most urgently to accept a loan of ,-£1,000, to keep his affairs in a 
 comfortable condition in case of his having to intermit work. He 
 had much ado to stave off this offer ; and she has positively made 
 him accept ^"ioo loan, for which the cheque is to reach him 
 directly." 
 
 This is of course my brother's own account of the matter. 
 There is no corroboration of it known to me. Perhaps it 
 needs none. At all events, to my own mind, it is transparently 
 and absolutely true. I would not dispute that he ought, at 
 some time before the death of a benefactress who would take 
 no denial, to have made an opportunity for repaying the 
 loan ; but her death, as I have said, was sudden, and between 
 November 1868 and March 1872 there may have been 
 communications passing between the two, unknown both to 
 Mr. Scott and to myself. 
 
 At Penkill Rossetti's sleeping, though not his eyesight, 
 had improved. Returning to London on 3 November, 1 he 
 was unable to paint until the beginning of December ; a 
 tolerable proof, were any needed, that his notions about 
 failure of sight were not mere fancy. My Diary, 6 
 
 1 "The end of September" as mentioned in Mr. Scott's book, vol. ii., 
 p. no, is decidedly a mistake. 
 
BEGINNINGS OF ILL-HEALTH. — PENKILL CASTLE. 269 
 
 November, contains the following details, which I may as well 
 extract : — 
 
 " Gabriel says his eyes are certainly rather worse than better, in 
 comparison with what they were when he left for Penkill. At the 
 same time, they are by no means now so bad as his apprehensions 
 some little while ago had foreboded. His mind seems more quies- 
 cent on the subject altogether. He says the state of the eyes is now 
 in detail this :— Objects close by he can only see fairly well with 
 spectacles. This however is nothing new, and he has not found it 
 needful to adopt spectacles of such high power as some medical 
 advice had suggested. Objects a little way off, or distant, he sees 
 completely enough ; but invariably as if with a veil interposed, 
 which he describes as like a combination of the curling of smoke 
 and the effervescing of champagne. By experience he now believes 
 that this interposed veil is in fact the spectrum of the last preceding 
 object he had been looking at ; for he sees all spectra with extra 
 distinctness — would, for instance, after looking at Brown's profile, 
 and then at a blank wall, see the profile there distinctly enough 
 to know it as Brown, or to know the difference between such a 
 spectrum-profile of Brown and a like spectrum-profile of me. The 
 uncertainty of objects in a room, to his eyes, is sufficient to make 
 him keep on spectacles continually. In painting for a longish time, 
 the sight does not get worse at the end than the beginning ; but the 
 accumulated irritation of the weak sight makes him leave off." 
 
 About a month after this date, or at the opening of 
 December 1868, my brother was so far improved as to be 
 able to resume art-work. He began by doing some crayon- 
 heads of Mrs. Morris, one of them representing her as 
 Pandora. The state of his eyesight continued to give him 
 much serious anxiety from time to time. I question whether 
 it ever became quite so bad as in the autumn of 1868, unless 
 maybe in the spring of 1870. 
 
 From this account of the facts one sees that, long before 
 the year 1868 came to a close, and even before it began, 
 Rossetti had two formidable foes to his well-being and his 
 power of work ; not to speak of the surgical matter, though 
 that also was far from bein«; a mere trifle. If we reflect 
 
270 DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI. 
 
 what it must be to a man of high-strung nerves and restless 
 imagination to be unable to sleep at night, and what it must 
 be to a painter to be wholly or partially unable to paint by 
 day, we shall discern some reason for sympathizing with this 
 hard-bested artist, and may perhaps be inclined to reject with 
 some impatience the notion, put forward in one or other 
 book, that there was " nothing whatever the matter with 
 him." To suggest that a more or less uneasy conscience 
 was at the bottom of it all does not improve the case. This 
 only adds a shadowy insinuation of wrongdoing to a direct 
 imputation of fractious or pusillanimous fancies. 
 
 XXX. 
 
 PREPARATIONS FOR PUBLISHING POEMS. 
 
 In August 1869 my brother went back on a visit to Penkill, 
 first spending a day or two at Ravenshill near Carlisle, with 
 Miss Losh. Both Miss Boyd and Scott received him again 
 at Penkill. 
 
 Mr. Scott, in his Autobiographical Notes, has given some 
 pages to the two Scotch visits, and I must follow him into 
 a few details. He considers that it was himself who, on the 
 occasion of the first visit, seconded as he was by Miss Boyd 
 and Miss Losh, re-aroused the interest of Rossetti in his 
 poetry, past and prospective. When Rossetti was downcast 
 about the condition of his eyes and other things, Scott said, 
 " Live for your poetry " ; and this exhortation, he considers, 
 had a marked effect. My brother, being disabled for a while 
 from painting, would perchance of himself have bethought 
 him to some purpose of his other and not less important 
 faculty, that of a poet ; but of course I raise no objection to 
 what Mr. Scott here puts forward as a statement of fact. 
 Mr. Scott however writes as if he were quite unaware of 
 what is also a fact — namely, that in the spring of 1868 
 Rossetti had already made an appearance in public print as 
 a poet ; introducing, into a pamphlet-review of pictures of 
 
PREPARATIONS FOR PUBLISHING POEMS. 27 1 
 
 that year, three sonnets recently written for paintings of his 
 own — Lady Lilith, Sibylla Palmifera, and Verms Verticordia. 
 The two former have since been entitled Body's Beauty and 
 Soul's Beauty. This pamphlet-review was the joint work 
 of Mr. Swinburne and myself, and the sonnets were inserted 
 in Mr. Swinburne's section of the publication. I can re- 
 member that the issuing of these sonnets was done with 
 some definite idea of following them up by other public 
 appearances in verse, and therefore the conception of " living 
 for his poetry " was decidedly in Rossetti's mind before he 
 went to Penkill in September 1868. The publication in the 
 spring of 1868 was a sort of feeler, leading on to the printing 
 of several sonnets in the Fortnightly Review for March 1869. 
 In this latter year, soon before starting for Penkill, he 
 obtained a Printer's estimate for the printing of various 
 poems — those old compositions of which some copies remained 
 in his hands after the consignment of his chief MS. to his 
 wife's coffin, and some few others of later date. At Penkill 
 on this second occasion he wrote several other poems — the 
 ballad of Troy Town, part of Eden Bower, the beginning 
 of the long lyric of The Stream's Secret, The Orchard-pit 
 (prose synopsis for poem), etc. For The Stream's Secret he 
 appropriated bodily the felicitous title which Scott had already 
 bestowed upon a sonnet of his own. Scott was very properly 
 annoyed at this ; but Rossetti would have it so, and so it 
 was. The " stream " in this poem is (as Mr. Sharp says) 
 " the brown-pooled, birch-banked Penwhapple in Ayrshire, 
 that gurgles and lapses from slope to slope till it reaches 
 Girvan Water " ; and some of the verses were written down 
 in a cave going by the name of a Covenanter of the seven- 
 teenth century, Bennan's Cave. It has generally been stated 
 that The Stream's Secret was composed wholly at Penkill. 
 One of the Family-letters shows this to be a mistake, as the 
 great majority of the poem was only produced in March 1870, 
 at Scalands, Sussex. 
 
 Proceeding with his narrative for the year 1869, Mr. Scott 
 relates, not indeed an attempt at suicide on Rossetti's part, 
 
272 DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI. 
 
 but what he regarded as a manifest impulse towards suicide. 
 I will give his own words, which are vivid enough : — 
 
 " Miss Boyd sometimes drove us about the country, instead of 
 leaving us to take those long walks I found so trying in the previous 
 year. One day she took us to the Lady's Glen, a romantic ravine 
 in which the stream falls into a black pool round which the surround- 
 ing vertical rocks have been worn, by thousands of years of rotating 
 flood, into a circular basin, called, as many such have been desig- 
 nated, the Devil's Punchbowl. We all descended to the overhanging 
 margin of the superincumbent rock; but never shall I forget the 
 expression of Gabriel's face when he bent over the precipice, peering 
 into the unfathomed water dark as ink, in which sundry waifs flew 
 round and round like lost souls in hell. In no natural spectacle had 
 I ever known him to take any visible interest ; the expression on his 
 pale face did not indicate such interest ; it said, as both Miss Boyd 
 and I at the same moment interpreted it, ' One step forward, and I 
 am free ! ' But his daily talk of suicide had not given him courage. 
 The chance so suddenly and unexpectedly brought within his grasp 
 paralysed him. I advanced to him — trembling, I confess, for I 
 could not speak. I could not have saved him. We were standing 
 on a surface slippery as glass by the wet green lichen. Suddenly he 
 turned round, and put his hand in mine, an action which showed 
 he was losing self-command, and that fear was mastering him. 
 When we were safely away, we all sat down together without a word, 
 but with faces too conscious of each other's thoughts. . . . The 
 feeble-minded English law declares the suicide to be of unsound 
 mind, whereas he is anything but that. It is the privilege of man 
 alone, the only reasoning suicidal creature in the world." 
 
 I am not sure that I ever heard this matter in any way 
 mentioned during my brother's lifetime, or until the appear- 
 ance of Mr. Scott's book (1892). The only serious question 
 arising in connexion with it is this — Did Rossetti really 
 contemplate suicide ? This I think quite possible, but by 
 no means evident. Dismissing the rather unkind remarks 
 that certain talk " had not given him courage," and that 
 " fear was mastering him," I must observe that a man who 
 was " standing on a surface slippery as glass," on the brink 
 
PREPARATIONS FOR PUBLISHING POEMS. 273 
 
 of a " precipice," above an " unfathomed water dark as ink," 
 might very well put his hand into that of a friend, to be 
 assisted backwards, without having at the previous moment 
 projected self-destruction. For the rest, Mr. Scott seems, by 
 the last sentence in my extract, to consider that suicide is, 
 under certain conditions, a very rational act — an opinion in 
 which I take leave to agree with him. He is of course wrong 
 in saying that the " English law declares the suicide to be of 
 unsound mind " ; for there is no law whatever to this effect, 
 but only, in numerous instances, the opinion or the good- 
 nature of a Coroner's Jury. 
 
 Mr. Scott's next anecdote purports that Rossetti found in 
 a country road a chaffinch which he picked up, and which 
 he supposed at the time to be the spirit of his wife. I will 
 not give the details, but am fully satisfied that they are in 
 all essential respects perfectly true. I question however 
 whether, at one moment of this odd transaction, Rossetti's 
 face wore a " curiously ferocious look." To the eye of that 
 particular old friend — a friend, in the summer of 1869, already 
 of twenty-one years' standing * — there may have been a look 
 so describable. For myself, I knew my brother's face pretty 
 well. It was a fine face, with " looks " often varying. Most 
 of those known to me I should call noble, and not any of 
 them " curiously ferocious." Much about the date of the 
 "curiously ferocious" incident, or on 27 August 1869, 
 Rossetti was writing to Mr. Shields about Scott in the 
 following terms : " the best of philosophic and poetic natures, 
 a man of the truest genius, and one of my eldest companions." 
 " Look here upon this picture, and on this." 
 
 The printing of my brother's poems was now going on 
 actively, and he received and revised proofs at Penkill Castle. 
 His idea (as I had noted just before he started for the North) 
 
 1 I gather, from certain statements in Mr. Scott's book, that this was 
 chiefly written in 1877, and on to 1882, the year of my brother's death. 
 Scott himself died in 1890. So he was at that time, when he left his work 
 ready for publication, a friend of forty-two years' standing to my brother, 
 living and dead. 
 
 VOL. I. lS 
 
2^4 DANTE GABRIEL ROSSET TX. 
 
 was to have them " printed for future use in any way he may 
 like " ; or (to use his own words written from Penkill), " my 
 object is to keep them by me as stock for a future volume." 
 The prevalent notion appears to be that he wanted to diffuse 
 the poems in a limited circle as a privately printed volume. 
 This is but partially correct. He wanted to have the poems 
 by him in a convenient form, and therefore a printed form, 
 and, when he had so got them, to settle what might best be 
 done with the sheets. But the whole affair of the privately 
 printed copies soon became obsolete. 
 
 For some while past some friends had urged Rossetti to 
 recover the MS. buried in his wife's coffin, and thus to obtain 
 possession, not only of copies of several poems completer than 
 the copies (made up from scraps and reminiscence) which 
 were already in his hands, but also of some compositions 
 of which he retained no example whatever. The chief among 
 these was the important production named Jenny. I cannot 
 say with precision who these friends were. The facts seem 
 to mark Mr. Henry Virtue Tebbs (John Seddon's brother-in- 
 law), who was then a Proctor at Doctors' Commons, and Mr. 
 Charles Augustus Howell, as prominent among them. From 
 this suggestion Rossetti hung back for a while, but ultimately 
 he assented. The feelings which impelled him to hang back, 
 and those which induced him to assent, will be manifest to 
 any thoughtful and feeling mind. The subject, in all its 
 bearings, is a painful one, and I shall not dilate upon it. 
 I will only say that, when my brother finally wrote to me 
 explaining what had been done, I replied expressing the 
 opinion — to which I adhere — that he had acted aright. The 
 disinterment of the MS. was effected towards 10 October 1869. 
 My brother had returned from Penkill on 20 September. 
 Mr. Tebbs managed some legal business ; Mr. Howell was 
 present in the cemetery along with the workmen at the 
 moment of unearthing the MS. Along with Howell was, I 
 suppose, Dr. Llewellyn Williams, of Kennington, who imme- 
 diately afterwards undertook the disinfecting of the papers ; 
 not any one else, so far as I recollect. Though this affair was 
 
PREPARATIONS FOR PUBLISHING 1 POEMS. 275 
 
 conducted in all privacy, some gossip about it commenced 
 pretty soon, as I observe by a letter, dated in June 1870, from 
 Lord Aberdare, the Home Secretary, well known to my 
 brother ever since the first project of the Llandaff Triptych, 
 from whom it had been necessary to obtain a faculty for 
 opening the grave. Mr. Hall Caine's brief account of the 
 matter — no other details seem to have appeared in print — is 
 as follows : — 
 
 " At length preliminaries were complete ; and one night, seven 
 and a half years after the burial, a fire was built by the side of the 
 grave, and then the coffin was raised and opened. The body is 
 described as perfect upon coming to light. Whilst this painful work 
 was being done, the unhappy author of it was sitting, alone and 
 anxious and full of self-reproaches, at the house of the friend who 
 had charge of it. He was relieved and thankful when told that all 
 was over." 
 
 So now at last Rossetti was in possession of the correct 
 form of his old poems ; and he proceeded to get these, along 
 with some new ones, published in the ordinary mode. In 
 copying them out he was actively assisted by Mr. Fairfax 
 Murray. He thought of Mr. John Murray as publisher, and 
 some one else thought of Messrs. Blackwood, who indeed made 
 a direct proffer of their own ; but neither of these schemes came 
 to anything, and the publisher with whom an arrangement 
 was effected was Mr. F. S. Ellis, then of King Street, Covent 
 Garden, more generally known as a leading bookseller. Mr. 
 Ellis afterwards removed to the old-established book-shop, 
 No. 29 New Bond Street (Shelley's friend Mr. Hookham 
 had once been there). Here Mr. Ellis carried on business 
 with more than one successive partner, and the firm is now 
 represented by Messrs. Ellis (nephew of F. S. Ellis) and 
 Elvey, the publishers of the present volumes. My brother, 
 for some few years before 1 869, had been a customer of Mr. 
 F. S. Ellis for books, and their relation had become one of a 
 very friendly character ; and no one could have managed the 
 publishing business for Rossetti with more judicious zeal, or 
 
276 DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI. 
 
 in a more thoroughly liberal and confiding spirit, than Mr. 
 Ellis — a man of very good literary taste and acquirements, 
 as proved of late years by various performances of his own. 
 
 My brother was in some respects a singular compound of 
 self-reliance and self-mistrust. He relied on himself so far 
 as the working-impulse and the actual work were concerned. 
 He mistrusted himself with regard to the effect of his work 
 upon other minds. No man was prouder, or more resolved 
 to have his way, and make his way as well. Few men were 
 more entirely free from vanity — although indeed, in his 
 latest years, there was more of a fusion between vanity and 
 pride than there had been in all his boyhood, youth, and 
 mature manhood. Owing to pride present, and vanity absent, 
 he was the most natural of men. You could take him, or 
 you could leave him alone ; but, if you took him, you had 
 to take him such as he intrinsically was, without any attempt 
 on his part at adjusting the mutual relationship by concession, 
 compromise, half-measures, or a veneering of attributes not 
 his own. With most people he was easy, open, and hearty ; 
 with many, tolerant ; with others, intolerant ; with all, he was 
 himself. Intellectually he was so frank that it might almost 
 be said he blurted himself out. As to poetry, he was perfectly 
 conscious of having a special faculty, and of having done some 
 good work. In fact, he considered (and I think justly) that his 
 executive attainment in verse was riper and surer than in 
 painting. To most of us it might appear that a man of this 
 description would care next to nought for anything but the 
 work produced ; would abide in his own knowledge of where 
 he had succeeded to the full, and where he had faltered ; 
 and would view with solid or stolid indifference the opinions 
 entertained on the subject by other people. Yet this was 
 not the case. It was here that his self-mistrust as to the 
 effect of his work upon other minds came in. That he had 
 cordial admirers he knew very well ; but he thought he might 
 also have cordial detractors. As soon as he had decided to 
 publish, he became solicitous that persons well-affected to 
 the book should give expression to their views in print. I 
 
PREPARATIONS FOR PUBLISHING POEMS. 277 
 
 have no sort of recollection of the exact steps which were 
 taken ; but am sure that something was done, with his cogni- 
 zance, so that certain editors might entrust the book to 
 certain writers for reviewing, or certain writers might bespeak 
 it of certain editors. My diary for 1 1 October 1 869 contains 
 the following passage : — 
 
 " Gabriel called, and talked about his intended publication of 
 poems in the Spring. He thinks it desirable to make sure of the 
 reviewers as far as possible, and thinks he can count upon handsome 
 notices in various reviews. His plan therefore would be to send the 
 book first to two or three papers that he can count on, and that are 
 of leading importance ; wait for the appearance of the critiques in 
 these ; and only then send the book to other papers, which it would 
 reach, having already a considerable prestige about it. This is 
 skilful scheming ; but for my own part (as I told Gabriel) I would 
 not diplomatize at all, but just leave the book to take its chance, and 
 feel pretty confident of the result into the bargain." 
 
 I have been treating this matter with great plainness, and 
 
 openly showing that, in my opinion, my brother's feeling 
 
 and his line of action, in relation to public criticism, were 
 
 other than they should have been. I am therefore all the 
 
 better entitled to confute over-statements on the same subject 
 
 which appear elsewhere. Mr. Bell Scott (who has gone 
 
 further than other writers in this direction, and has served 
 
 as authority for some repetitions of the allegation) expresses 
 
 himself thus : — 
 
 I 
 
 " He to the last moment would work the oracle, and get all his 
 
 friends to prepare laudatory critical articles to fill all the leading 
 
 journals." 
 
 No reflective person will believe this averment about "all 
 his friends " and " all the leading journals." It bears on the 
 very face of it exaggeration, and exaggeration with a motive 
 the reverse of friendly. But I will go further, and express 
 my serious doubt whether Dante Rossetti did " get " any one 
 of his friends to prepare a critical article, laudatory or other- 
 
278 DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI. 
 
 wise. He had several ardent admirers who were also friends 
 or acquaintances ; and some of these were connected with 
 " leading journals," or could easily, in virtue of their own 
 eminence, obtain admission for articles of their writing 1 into 
 such papers. The names of five who are still living occur 
 to me at once — Messrs. Swinburne, Morris, Skelton, Colvin, 
 and Knight. I will not insult any one of these gentlemen 
 by raising an express question whether he was " got " by 
 Rossetti to write an article — in any sense which can, in this 
 connexion, be reasonably attached to that word " got." My 
 firm belief is that most or all of them volunteered — and 
 volunteered, not just because they liked Rossetti personally 
 (Mr. Skelton had only a slight knowledge of him), but because 
 their critical judgment avouched his poems to be good. And 
 I know as a fact that Mr. Swinburne's splendid outburst of 
 generous yet sincere eulogy contained at first some passages 
 which, while laudatory of my brother, might be considered 
 unwelcome to some other writers, and that it was my brother 
 who, by not a little pressure, " got " him to retrench these. 
 It is not all critics who think, with Mr. Scott, that the mass 
 of Rossetti's earlier poems, except Jenny and Sister Helen, 
 are " comparatively boyish and worthless." 
 
 Mr. Scott, in a very friendly tone as regards myself, next 
 proceeds to quote some words of mine, which (as he puts it) 
 I " said," but I fancy that in fact I wrote them, in the year 
 1872. I abide by them to the letter; but I do not repeat 
 them here, as I have no wish to thrust myself constantly 
 forward, and what I said or wrote to Scott appears, more 
 precisely defined, in the note already given from my Diary. 
 Then, after speaking of Rossetti's sensitiveness to adverse 
 criticism when ultimately it came, Mr. Scott says : — 
 
 " He had felt that such would be the effect of adverse strictures, 
 and feared them ; else why the reluctance to publish, the desire to 
 issue his privately-printed volume when we had prevailed upon him 
 to take up poetry again, and why the disagreeable expenditure of 
 energy in working the oracle, to furnish all the ordinary channels of 
 criticism with articles ready-made under his own eye ? " 
 
PREPARATIONS FOR PUBLISHING POEMS. 279 
 
 These questions seem a little captious. We have already 
 seen that " the reluctance to publish " arose from the fact 
 that, prior to the exhuming of the MS., Rossetti was not in 
 possession of some poems at all, nor of the final and best 
 form of other poems, and that, immediately after the exhum- 
 ing, he set about publishing ; also that " his privately-printed 
 volume " was prepared with a view quite as much to eventual 
 publication as to merely private issue. We have also seen 
 how far it was " we " — i.e., Mr. Scott, Miss Boyd, and Miss 
 Losh — who " had prevailed upon him to take up poetry 
 again." The phrase " articles ready-made wider his own eye " 
 can only be termed erroneous (unless we were to substitute a 
 stronger expression). An article ready-made under his own 
 eye must mean an article which Rossetti regulated, controlled 
 and more or less dictated. Whether those articles really were 
 so concocted is a question which some eminent living men 
 could answer if they deigned to do so. 
 
 I will sum up by saying : The articles were written by 
 competent men (some of them about the most competent in 
 the country) who considered the critical opinions expressed 
 in them to be true ; Rossetti was not part and parcel in the 
 writing of them ; they were published under the ordinary con- 
 ditions governing critical reviews. But it would have been all 
 the better if Rossetti had not cared and had not known who was 
 writing or not writing, or who was publishing or not publishing. 
 
 This matter of the critiques which were printed belongs 
 properly to a date after the poems themselves had been 
 published ; but I have dealt with it here because some steps 
 with regard to the critiques had been taken in anticipation, 
 and it seemed very requisite to discuss whether those steps 
 were underhand or aboveboard. I now go on to some par- 
 ticulars about Rossetti's health and his friends. 
 
 In speaking of my brother's first visit to Penkill Castle in 
 the autumn of 1868, Mr. Scott observes : — 
 
 " He never got up till near mid-day ; my difficulty every evening 
 being to leave him after we had emptied endless tumblers of the 
 wine of the country in the shape of whisky-toddy," 
 
28o DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI. 
 
 " Endless tumblers " is, as the newspaper men say, " a large 
 order " ; but, giving a reasonable interpretation to the term, 
 I suppose Mr. Scott's statement to be correct. The fact is 
 that my brother was, by nature and habit, one of the most 
 temperate of mortals. He from the first disliked beer, and 
 drank it hardly at all ; spirits he drank very little, and I 
 dare say a month or two would often pass without his so much 
 as touching them ; wine he liked well, and would drink in 
 moderation on and off, as the occasion happened. He had 
 not a bad head for drinking, and could dispose of a fair 
 ordinary quantity of liquor without its affecting him in any 
 degree whatever. I know that at Penkill he found some 
 whisky which he relished ; he would speak of it under the 
 name of the local purveyor, McKechnie. I think it probable 
 that from this time forward a certain increase in the readiness 
 to drink was perceptible in him. In 1869, after returning to 
 London, troubled by profuse perspirations and by nervous 
 symptoms — as well as by weakness of sight, which again 
 interrupted his painting at times — he consulted Sir William 
 Jenner, who prohibited spirits and opiates altogether, and 
 ordered bedtime not later than midnight, and a country-life 
 with but little work for a half-year to come. Rossetti wrote to 
 Mr. Shields as to this on 24 December, saying that doctors 
 
 " speak most warningly as to hours, exercise, and abstinence from 
 spirits — for which, Heaven knows, I have no taste, but had, for a 
 year and a half past, fallen into the constant habit of resorting to 
 them at night to secure sleep. I have now relinquished them 
 entirely." 
 
 In June 1869 Rossetti lost a very friendly acquaintance, 
 always glad to do him a good turn — Mr. Michael Halliday, 
 who was a Clerk in the House of Lords, and also a painter ; 
 at first an amateur painter, but after a while almost pro- 
 fessional. He died immediately after attending the funeral 
 of a brother-in-law. He was a well-dressed small man, very 
 manly in his ways — with high shoulders not much unlike 
 a hump. Soon before this, December 1868, my brother had 
 
PREPARATIONS FOR PUBLISHING POEMS. 28 1 
 
 made the acquaintance of Mr. Nettleship, well known now as 
 a painter of wild animals. He was then a young man, but 
 rather beyond the usual age for starting in the pictorial 
 career ; a great enthusiast for ideal and abstract forms of art, 
 such as that of William Blake, and a hardy inventor in the 
 like line. In October 1869 Dr. Thomas Gordon Hake 
 appeared in my brother's studio. In Section X. I have 
 made a brief reference to a romance published anonymously 
 by this gentleman, named Vates, much beloved by Rossetti 
 towards 1844. Its full title is Vates, or The Philosophy of 
 Madness ; or, in a later issue, Valdarno, or The Ordeal of Art- 
 worship. It appeared as a serial publication of large size, 
 with strange wild etchings by Thomas Landseer, very 
 stimulating to a boy's imagination. Vates seethed in my 
 brother's head, and towards i860 he took some steps for 
 ferreting out the author ; learning that his name was Hake, 
 and writing to him, but without any prompt result, as the 
 Doctor was then abroad. At last however they met, and 
 Rossetti found his visitor to be a poet as well as romancist. 
 This was in October 1869 (Dr. Hake, in his Memoirs of 
 Eighty Years, has inadvertently given the date as 1871). The 
 Doctor was then sixty years of age — a man of more than 
 common height, lithe and straight, with very self-possessed 
 gentle manners, and clear deliberate utterance. My brother 
 took to him at once, and cultivated his company ; and soon 
 he had reason to know him for a real friend. Rossetti found 
 Dr. Hake's poems singular, but very interesting and to a large 
 extent excellent. Only a few specimens had been published 
 at the date of the meeting in 1869. 
 
 Dr. Hake had attained a great age when— quite recently, 
 in January 1895 — his n T e came to a close. His Memoirs 
 contain several details about Rossetti — often eulogistic, but 
 not monotonously nor uncandidly so. I will extract a few 
 sentences — proper to this opening period of their acquaint- 
 ance : — 
 
 " When I saw Rossetti in his prime, a healthy man, he was the 
 noblest of men, and had a heart so good that I have never known a 
 
282 DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI. 
 
 better — seldom its equal. . . . He had a very just mind. When an 
 author was discussed, whatever might be said against him, he would 
 insist on his merits being remembered. From rivalship and its 
 jealousies he was absolutely free, and his hospitality was without 
 limit. Above all, he was ready at all times to serve a friend, and to 
 exert his influence to that end." 
 
 Another person who saw a great deal of Rossetti, beginning 
 towards 1869, was Franz Hueffer, Ph.D., a German from 
 Mtinster who talked excellent English — a man of learning 
 and great talent, equally accomplished at the pianoforte and at 
 Schopenhauer. He was a prominent leader in the Wagnerian 
 movement, and became musical critic of the Times. In 1872 
 he married Madox Brown's younger daughter, Cathy. He 
 edited the Tauchnitz issue of Rossetti's poetical writings, 
 and died rather suddenly in January 1889, aged only forty- 
 three ; a severe loss to some musical and literary causes, 
 and to all persons who were closely connected with him. 
 
 XXXI. 
 
 ART-WORK FROM 1869 TO SUMMER 1872. 
 
 My brother's principal works of art of this period were the 
 oil-pictures of Pandora, Mariana, Dante's Dream, Water- 
 willow, Beata Beatrix (duplicate), and Veronica Veronese ; 
 the water-colour of Michael Scott ; and the designs of Penelope, 
 The Death of Lady MacbetJi, Silence, La Donna del la Fiamma, 
 and Dr. Hake. Of some of these works I have already 
 spoken briefly in Section XXVII., in reference to the question 
 of my brother's types of feminine beauty. A few further 
 observations will now be apposite. 
 
 The Mariana represents Shakespear's Mariana in the 
 Moated Grange, with the Page singing to her the song 
 " Take oh take those lips away." It was originally schemed 
 as simply a portrait of Mrs. Morris, with an idea of music 
 annexed to it. This was to have been supplied by intro- 
 ducing a nightingale, to which the lady was listening. 
 
ART-WORK FROM 1 869 TO SUMMER 1 872. 283 
 
 Gradually the conception of the picture was modified or 
 expanded, and it assumed its present shape, the head of the 
 Page being painted from William Graham, the son of the 
 purchaser. Dante's Dream, now in the Walker Art Gallery 
 of Liverpool, was also executed for Mr. Graham, and is much 
 the largest painting that Rossetti ever produced. Its price 
 was £i,S75- Mr. Graham only wanted a picture of the size 
 of 6 feet by 3I, his house in Grosvenor Place not containing 
 available spaces adapted to works of a really great size ; but 
 Rossetti was bent upon doing a magnum opus, and he set-to 
 upon a canvas fully 10 feet by 7. As in so many another 
 case, he had his way, the purchaser being truly friendly and 
 admiring, and, spite of not a little well-grounded demur, 
 submissive. My brother had an abortive idea about this 
 picture, which is worth recording in his own terms, as con- 
 tained in a letter to Mr. Scott : — 
 
 " I should like to try and lithograph myself that big picture of 
 mine. If one could do something of this sort with one's inventions 
 (much the best quality I have as a painter), one might really get 
 one's brain into print before one died, like Albert Durer, and 
 moreover be freed perhaps from slavery to 'patrons' while one 
 lived." 
 
 The inconvenience which Mr. Graham had foreseen ensued 
 as of necessity. The picture, begun in 1869 and finished 
 towards the close of 1871, could only be hung on a staircase. 
 Afterwards it was transferred, throi.gh the painter's own 
 hands, from Mr. Graham to Mr. Valpy. The latter gentle- 
 man after a while quitted London, settling in Bath. Rossetti, 
 who could not bear the notion that this important example 
 of his art should be hidden away in a country-town, took 
 it back ; and, after a rather tedious delay, succeeded in 
 disposing of it to the Corporation of Liverpool in 1881. In 
 anticipation of this sale he again, with his constant desire 
 to do the very best for his art and his purchasers, worked 
 upon the picture. In some respects he certainly improved 
 it ; but I cannot help thinking that he made a serious mistake 
 
284 DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI. 
 
 in altering the colour of Beatrice's hair, from the very dark 
 tint proper to the sitter, Mrs. Morris, to a golden hue, which 
 is besides not wholly exempt from a pinkish' tendency. Far 
 be it from me however to undervalue, in essential respects, 
 a picture which may be fairly, and not by a brother alone, 
 called great as well as large. The Queen's Limner in 
 Scotland, Sir Joseph Noel Paton, is probably quite as 
 competent to estimate a painting as the majority of press- 
 critics. His opinion of Dante's Dream (which he saw in 
 Rossetti's studio in 1881 shortly before its being dispatched 
 to Liverpool) is expressed in a letter addressed to Mr. William 
 Sharp, which contains, among other enthusiastic utterances, 
 the following : " Fifty years hence it will be named among 
 the half-dozen supreme pictures of the world." This praise 
 may be somewhat excessive ; it is at any rate delightfully 
 generous. 
 
 The duplicate of Beata Beatrix was undertaken for Mr. 
 Graham, who delighted in the original to a singular degree. 
 Rossetti felt the greatest reluctance for this effort — chiefly, 
 as may well be surmised, on account of the painful asso- 
 ciations of the work with his dead wife. However, he 
 yielded, and proceeded with the duplicate at intervals, highly 
 dissatisfied with it in all respects. It was made to differ 
 from the first version by the addition of a predella, was 
 completed late in 1872, and was at last viewed by its author 
 with less disfavour than at most stages of its progress. 
 Veronica Veronese (an imaginary lady, touching a violin to 
 the note lilted by a canary) embodies, to my mind, some of 
 his more abstract ideas as to the relation between Nature 
 and Art. It might also seem that he put the subject into 
 this form after he had transmuted the old nightingale-subject 
 into a Mariana. The Veronica was sent to a London ex- 
 hibition in 1894, and was then received with loud acclaim as 
 a work of exceptional beauty — which indeed it is. 
 
 As to the water-colour of Michael Scott, I cannot recollect 
 ever seeing any such coloured work ; but I believe there was 
 one, the property either of Mr. Leyland or of Mr. Frederick 
 
THE POEMS, 1870— CHLORAL. 285 
 
 Craven of Manchester, who owned several of Rossetti's pictures. 
 I used to be very familiar with a cartoon-design named The 
 Wooing of Michael Scott, which my brother intended to paint. 
 It was one of his most fantastic, and in a sense one of his 
 most arbitrary, inventions. 
 
 The designs of Penelope and of Silence rank high among 
 the works in tinted crayons. Both the Silence and the Donna 
 delta Fiannna are from Mrs. Morris. The Portrait of Dr. 
 Hake, done in the same medium, may count as the best male 
 portrait ever produced by Rossetti, if one excepts — and I 
 incline to do so — a head of Mr. Theodore Watts, executed in 
 1874. It has been lately stated — and, as it happens, by Mr. 
 Watts — that the expression given to Dr. Hake is too heavy. 
 It never struck me to that effect, but there has been a lapse 
 of several years since I saw the portrait. 
 
 In January 1872 Rossetti first came into correspondence 
 with. Mr. W. A. Turner of Manchester, who later on became 
 the purchaser of some of his pictures — A Vision of Fiammetta, 
 a Proserpine, etc. Their relations were always very cordial. 
 The Vision of Fiammetta is not to be confounded with a 
 head named Fiammetta which Rossetti had ere now sold to 
 Mr. Gambart. This was in fact the head of " Kate the Queen," 
 excised from the large canvas on which a picture from 
 Browning had been begun towards 1850. 
 
 XXXII. 
 
 THE POEMS, 1870— CHLORAL— KELMSCOTT MANOR-HOUSE. 
 
 TOWARDS the close of 1869 and beginning of 1870, Rossetti's 
 attention was chiefly concentrated upon his forthcoming poetic 
 volume — the one which is known as Poems, 1870. This date, 
 1870, should be borne in mind by any amateurs of Rossetti's 
 work; for the volume named Poems of 1 881, though partly 
 a re-issue of the book of 1870, is very far from being identical 
 with it. At a recent date, 1894, I found that even the 
 
286 DANTE GABRtEL ROSSETTl. 
 
 authorities of the British Museum Library had allowed this 
 fact to slip their observation, and were not in possession of 
 any copy of the Poems, 1881, having assumed it to be a mere 
 reprint of the volume of 1870 ; and thus one of the author's 
 longest compositions, the (unfinished) Bride's Prelude, did 
 not then exist in that Library in any form printed during his 
 lifetime — not to speak of other and far from unimportant 
 alterations. 
 
 My brother's health continued to be not good, and his eye- 
 sight bad; and in the spring of 1870 he went down to an 
 estate belonging to his kind friend of old standing, Mrs. 
 Bodichon, who placed it quite at his disposal for a while — 
 Scalands, near Robertsbridge, Sussex. Here, after a period 
 of much depression, he at last revived considerably ; and, 
 when he came back to town in May, I found him much thinner 
 than he had been for years (which was a decided advantage), 
 and also much better. By March 1871 he was easier, as to 
 both health and eyes, than for some years preceding. 
 
 At Scalands Rossetti was joined by an American acquaint- 
 ance of his, a friend more especially of my own — Mr. William 
 J. Stillman, who not very long afterwards married Miss 
 Spartali. Mr. Stillman was originally a landscape-painter, 
 then a literary man and journalist ; and lately he had been 
 American Consul in Crete, during the vigorous insurrection 
 of that island against Turkish oppression. He openly sided 
 with the Cretans ; and, after suffering there many troubles 
 and a great domestic calamity, settled in London in the 
 autumn of 1869. He has now, for several years past, been 
 domiciled in Rome, holding a very important post in jour- 
 nalism. Few men could have been better adapted than Mr. 
 Stillman — -none could have been more willing — to solace 
 Rossetti in his harasses from insomnia and other troubles ; 
 but it is a fact that a remedy worse than the disease was the 
 result of his friendly ministrations. Chloral, as a soporific, 
 was then a novelty. In England little was known of it, and 
 not much elsewhere. It was supposed to produce no ill 
 effects worth taking into consideration. Mr. Stillman had 
 
WiE POEMS, 1870— CHLORAL. 287 
 
 heard of its potency in procuring sleep — possibly he had 
 himself tested this — and he introduced the drug to Rossetti's 
 attention. My brother was one of the men least fitted to 
 try any such experiment with impunity. With him it was 
 a case of any expedient and any risk to escape a present 
 evil ; and sleeplessness was no doubt, to such a temperament 
 as his, an evil of prime magnitude. He began, I understand, 
 with nightly doses of chloral of 10 grains. In course of 
 time it got to 180 grains ! So at least Rossetti supposed ; 
 but I have sound reason for thinking, with much thankful- 
 ness, that in this he was greatly mistaken. His doctor, 
 Mr. Marshall — knowing with whom he had to deal — would 
 not, save in some instances of crisis, prohibit the drug 
 altogether, but he took care that the chemists should dilute 
 it to a degree of which my brother was kept severely in 
 ignorance ; and, when he fancied that his dose was 180 
 grains, I dare say it was barely half of this, or maybe barely 
 a third. Even after the chloral entered his house elaborate 
 and clandestine precautions of further dilution were taken 
 by Mr. Dunn, Mr. George Hake, and others. It is rather 
 surprising to me that my brother never found this out ; for, 
 with all his extreme carelessness in many matters of daily 
 routine, he was observant, and grew to be suspicious — the 
 outcome, I believe, to a very large extent, of the chloral 
 itself. Notwithstanding all this dilution, the dosing with 
 chloral remained not less monstrous than the effects of it 
 were deplorable. " I am told " (says Mr. Edmund Gosse) 
 " that no case has been recorded in the annals of medicine 
 in which one patient has taken so much, or even half so 
 much, chloral as Rossetti took." I am fain to hope that this 
 estimate applies, not to the real doses taken, but to the nominal 
 doses as supposed by Rossetti himself. " Deep melancholy 
 and weakness of will " are set down as two of the detrimental 
 results of chloral. Too surely my brother did become at 
 times deeply melancholy, and his will — naturally so strong, 
 prompt, and indeed overbearing — did get enfeebled — I may 
 say, chronically enfeebled ; though there were many intervals 
 
288 DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTt. 
 
 and many contingencies when it reasserted itself in its olden 
 vigour. 
 
 Even the chloral was not the whole of the harm done. 
 My brother found it nauseous, and after a while not so effica- 
 cious as he wanted. Therefore, strictly as he had been warned 
 by the best medical advice against any tampering with spirits, 
 he took to drams of neat whisky in immediate sequence to 
 =v the chloral ; not, I think — unless in the most exceptional 
 instances — at any other period in the twenty-four hours. I 
 regret to say that I have more than once seen him take his 
 dose of chloral, and then forthwith toss down his throat a 
 brimming wineglass of the neat whisky, which was gone 
 almost in a gulp. Remonstrance was imperative, and also 
 futile. I have often surmised that this misuse of spirits was 
 at least as noxious to him as the chloral itself. But, while 
 he was at Scalands, and for some months ensuing, things had 
 no doubt not come to this pass. 
 
 Whatever may have been the evil they wrought in him, 
 my brother had good reason for believing in the chloral, 
 supplemented by the alcohol, as an opiate. Yet he would 
 not admit that they afforded him real natural sleep. Many 
 a time have I heard him declare that the so-called sleep could 
 only be called a trance. It gave unconsciousness, without 
 adequate repose and refreshment. Still, the drug counteracted 
 insomnia ; and who shall say what his condition would have 
 been if insomnia had persisted with him from week to week 
 and from month to month, totally uncounteracted ? How long 
 would his brain — how long would his life — have continued to 
 struggle on ? 
 
 The volume of Po'ems was published on 25 April 1870, or 
 thereabouts. Some advance copies had been sent to leading 
 reviews, so that there might be no delay in an expression of 
 opinion. The book was a great success. The first issue 
 consisted of a thousand copies ; of these, eight hundred were 
 sold by 3 May, and the remainder about the 20th. Two 
 hundred and fifty out of the thousand went to America. The 
 profit to the author was to be a quarter of the published price, 
 
THE POEMS, 1 870— CHLORAL. 289 
 
 paid as soon as the copies were put on sale, without waiting 
 for actual purchase ; and by the end of July Rossetti had thus 
 realized ^450. This rate of sale could not, in the nature of 
 things, last very long, and two events brought it to an early 
 conclusion — although later issues of the book (there were six 
 in all) continued going off for some while later. Dickens died 
 on 9 June, and the sale declined. France declared war on 
 Prussia in the middle of the summer, and the sale almost 
 ceased. These occurrences seemed to be, and probably were, 
 in the nature of cause and effect. Such are the odd and 
 extraneous chances affecting a book about Dante at Verona, 
 The Blessed Damozel, and The House of Life. A Tauchnitz 
 edition of the volume came out in 1873, with a preface by 
 Hueffer. 
 
 The chorus of praise for the Poems was eager, loud, and 
 prolonged ; and certainly any steps which Rossetti may have 
 taken for " working the oracle " (to recur to Mr. Scott's 
 favourite phrase) were not wholly responsible for this — far 
 from it. Mr. Swinburne led the van with what may well be 
 called a paean in the Fortnightly Review. Now Mr. Swinburne 
 is tolerably well known for three qualities : 1, supreme com- 
 petence for expressing an opinion on poetic art in general, 
 and on particular poems ; 2, gorgeous munificence of praise 
 where he sees it to be due ; and 3, rigorous silence as to what 
 he deems below the requisite standard, or on occasion resolute 
 denunciation of it. I will extract two passages from his 
 verdict upon Rossetti : — 
 
 " It [Rossetti's poetry] has the fullest fervour and fluency of 
 impulse, and the impulse is always towards harmony and perfection. 
 It has the inimitable note of instinct, and the instinct is always high 
 and right. What he would do is always what a poet should, and 
 what he would do is always done." 
 
 And next upon some matters of detail : — 
 
 " The influence which plainly has passed over the writer's mind, 
 attracting it as by a charm of sound or vision, by spell of colour or 
 of dream, towards the Christian forms and images, is in the main 
 
 VOL. I. 19 
 
29O DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI. 
 
 an influence from the mythologic side of the creed. Alone among 
 the higher artists of his age, Mr. Rossetti has felt and given the 
 mere physical charm of Christianity with no admixture of doctrine 
 or of doubt. . . . [And then as to poems in the old-ballad form, 
 such as Rossetti's Stratton Water] On this ground Mr. Morris has 
 a firmer tread than the great artist by the light of whose genius and 
 kindly guidance he put forth the firstfruits of his work, as I did 
 afterwards." 
 
 Mr. Colvin spoke of " personal passion " as a leading 
 element in Rossetti's poetry. Mr. Buxton Forman held him 
 to be remarkable for transfusing Italian blood into a newly 
 opened vein of English verse. I could extend my list of 
 writers and their encomiums very largely, were I minded to 
 do so ; but will content myself with observing that no critique 
 afforded the author more marked satisfaction than one which, 
 after a lengthened interval, appeared in an American paper, 
 The CatJwlic World. This naturally dealt more especially 
 with Rossetti's poems in their relation to Christian or Catholic 
 ideals, and was regarded by my brother as singularly dis- 
 cerning, on the part of a total stranger. One or other name 
 was suggested to him as that of the probable author, but he 
 did not succeed in obtaining any positive knowledge as to 
 this point. The article is now ascribed to Mr. J. J. Earle. 
 
 Among those who wrote letters to him in a laudatory strain 
 were Tennyson, Sir Henry Taylor, Dr. Marston (who also 
 published a review), Mrs. Lewes, Browning, George Meredith, 
 Sir Theodore Martin, Mr. Frank A. Marshall, Munro, Charles 
 Wells (of Joseph and his Brethren), Professor Charles Eliot 
 Norton, Miss Spartali, and Mrs. Gilchrist. 
 
 In those early days of publication there was, I believe, only 
 one review of a more or less distinctly unfavourable kind — 
 that in Blackwood's Magazine. I forgot what was said in 
 it, or possibly never knew. I will not suggest that the 
 publishers or conductors of this magazine were sore because 
 (as previously mentioned) Rossetti had not closed with their 
 offer of producing the volume ; but one may safely surmise 
 that, had that offer been accepted, the tone of the critique 
 
THE POEMS, 1870 — CHLORAL. 29 1 
 
 would have been different. My brother was not so absolutely- 
 thin-skinned about reviews as some people have supposed 
 and proclaimed — although it is too true that in one instance, 
 to be hereafter commented on, he took the matter to heart in 
 a most exaggerated and unreasonable degree. When the 
 Blackwood critique appeared, he wrote to his friend Shields 
 (August 1870) that he was surprised "to find such things 
 producing a much more transient and momentary impression 
 of unpleasantness than he would have expected — indeed he 
 might almost say none at all." Of course, in the real essence 
 of the matter, he was always and in all relations quite 
 indifferent to criticism, knowing well for himself what he 
 could do, and the worth of it, and what he could not do. 
 But this did not exempt him from being sensitive on the 
 score of personal attack, or in view of the effect which adverse 
 notices might produce upon the minds of others. 
 
 The great success attending the Poems induced my brother 
 to think at once of re-publishing his Early Italian Poets. This 
 scheme was in his head as soon as May 1870, but there-publi- 
 cation did not actually ensue till 1873, when the book came 
 out, through Mr. Ellis, with a change in the order of its con- 
 tents, and an altered name, Dante and his Circle. He preferred 
 now to give the first prominence to Alighieri, and to relegate 
 the preceding poets to a secondary position in the volume. 
 Mr. Ellis issued the book at his own cost, and halved with 
 Rossetti such profits as accrued. 
 
 Before the end of May 1871 Mr. William Morris for himself 
 and his family,, and Rossetti on his own behalf, were intending 
 to rent a house in the country — Kelmscott Manor-house in 
 Oxfordshire. The nearest town was Lechlade in Gloucester- 
 shire, famous through an early poem by Shelley. The nearest 
 having tolerable resources in the way of provisions etc. was 
 Farringdon in Berkshire. The rent was only £j^. Here 
 Rossetti stayed for many weeks, beginning towards the middle 
 of July 1871. There are in the Family-letters several details 
 about this picturesque and pleasurable old house, and my 
 brother's vivid enjoyment of it ; and I need not enlarge upon 
 
292 DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI. 
 
 the subject here. The building appears painted in the back- 
 ground of his small picture entitled Water-willow. Dr. Hake j 
 gives a few descriptive particulars : — 
 
 " It is an old place, with its seven, or rather twelve, gables — such 
 a sample of antiquity as you don't meet with often. The windows 
 are square casements with stone mullions, and the walls very thick. 
 The garden has its yew-tree hedges, cut into fantastic shapes. The 
 river is flooded like a lake, so that old Thames don't know itself 
 again. It is a most primitive village that surrounds the place — a 
 few scattered freestone habitations, some ivy-covered. There are no 
 neighbours to interfere with the liberty of the subject." 
 
 In my brother's letters to Scott there are amusing references 
 to a storied tapestry, one of the old-world house-properties at 
 Kelmscott. I combine passages from two different letters : — 
 
 " The subject of the tapestries is the history of Samson, which 
 is carried through with that uncompromising uncomfortableness 
 peculiar to this class of art-manufacture. Indeed I have come to 
 the conclusion that a tapestried room should always be much 
 dimmer than this one. These things, constantly obtruded on one 
 in a bright light, become a persecution. ... I am getting used a 
 little now to the tapestry ; though still the questions — Why a 
 Philistine leader should have a panther's tail, or Delilah a spike 
 sticking out of her head, or what Samson, standing over a heap of 
 slain, has done with the ass's jawbone — will obtrude themselves at 
 times between more abstract speculations." 
 
 I have already had occasion to mention Mr. Sidney Colvin 
 and Dr. Westland Marston in connexion with my brother's 
 Poems. He saw about this time a good deal of both these 
 gentlemen, and also of Mr. Marston's family, including his 
 blind poet-son Philip Bourke Marstorr; whose natural gift 
 Rossetti accounted genuine, and his attainment in the poetic 
 art, considering his mournful privation,' a matter for fervent 
 praise, and even astonishment. Another friendly acquaintance 
 was Mr. Gosse, who first met Rossetti towards Christmas 
 1870; and in 1871 the great Russian novelist Turgenieff 
 was introduced to the Cheyne Walk house by Mr. William 
 
THE FLESHLY SCHOOL OF POETRY. 293 
 
 Ralston, and he dined there once or twice, preserving a very- 
 pleasant recollection of his visits. Mr. Gosse's opinion of my 
 brother has been expressed in print in the handsomest 
 terms : — 
 
 " He was the most prompt in suggestion, the most regal in giving, 
 the most sympathetic in response, of the men I have known or 
 seen ; and this without a single touch of the prophetic manner, the 
 air of such professional seers as Coleridge or Carlyle." 
 
 Still more impulsive and indeed quaint in his enthusiasm 
 was Philip Marston, who in 1873 wrote thus in a private letter 
 to his youthful friend Oliver Madox Brown : — 
 
 " What a supreme man is Rossetti ! Why is he not some great 
 exiled king, that we might give our lives in trying to restore him to 
 his kingdom ? " 
 
 At Kelmscott Rossetti wrote a large amount of new poetry : 
 Cloud Confines (which he termed " my very best thing "), 
 Dozvn Stream (first called The River's Record, which was 
 written in a punt on the Thames), the beginning of Soothsay 
 (originally entitled Commandments), some thirty fresh sonnets 
 for The House of Life, Sunset Wings, and Rose Mary, which 
 was finished towards 13 September 1871. He began by 
 writing a prose synopsis of this poem, which did not as yet 
 contain the Beryl-songs. These had better not have been added, 
 and so he himself thought eventually. The Cloud Confines, 
 and also the old prose story of Hand and Soul, were published 
 in the Fortnightly Review. There was also a grotesque ballad 
 about Mr. Robert Buchanan, consequent upon the review- 
 article to be next mentioned. This slumbers in manuscript. 
 
 XXXIII. 
 THE FLESHLY SCHOOL OF POETRY. 
 
 In the Contemporary Revieiv for October 1871 an article 
 appeared entitled The Fleshly School of Poetry — Mr. D. G. 
 
294 DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTl. 
 
 Rossetti — and signed Thomas Maitland, For the purpose of 
 this article Thomas Maitland was non-existent, and the real 
 author was the verse- writer — or let us say the poet — Robert 
 Buchanan. Some skirmishing in the press rapidly ensued, 
 not free from confusion and self-conflicting. Its main upshot 
 was this — that Mr. Buchanan had intended to write an 
 anonymous attack upon Rossetti, and the publisher of the 
 Contemporary Review turned it into a pseudonymous attack. 
 One poet who assails another anonymously, in a magazine 
 where anonymity is in no degree the rule, does not occupy 
 a very graceful position ; and the publisher who pseudony- 
 mizes his anonymous and aggressive contributor occupies, I 
 apprehend, an ungraceful position. I have very positive 
 grounds for affirming (and I will produce them if wanted) 
 that Mr. Buchanan was from the first strongly urged, and this 
 by a person who had every right to intervene, not to be 
 anonymous, and a fortiori not pseudonymous. I shall not 
 repeat — what was said in some papers at the time — that 
 there was plain mendacity in some of the explanations offered. 
 But it seems to behove me to say a little about the antecedents 
 of The Fleshly School of Poetry — Mr. D. G. Rossetti, and to 
 take to myself any blame which may properly or plausibly 
 belong to me ; for I have more than once been told by friends 
 that the animus against my brother, apparent in the article of 
 Mr. Robert-Thomas Buchanan-Maitland, should be regarded 
 as a vicarious expression of resentment at something which I 
 myself had written. Thus then. 
 
 Mr. Swinburne's volume of Poems and Ballads having 
 excited a fluster in 1866, a burlesque poem appeared in the 
 Spectator for 1 5 September 1 866, named The Session of the 
 Poets. It was anonymous ; but rumour — since then confirmed 
 by himself — ascribed it to Mr. Buchanan. It contained the 
 following lines : — 
 
 " Up jumped, with his neck stretching out like a gander, 
 
 Master Swinburne, and squealed, glaring out through his hair, 
 ' All virtue is bosh ! Hallelujah for Landor ! 
 I disbelieve wholly in everything ! There ! ' 
 
THE FLESHLY SCHOOL OF POETRY. 295 
 
 " With language so awful he dared then to treat 'em, 
 
 Miss Ingelow fainted in Tennyson's arms ; 
 Poor Arnold rushed out, crying ' Saecl' inficetum ! ' 
 
 And great bards and small bards were full of alarms : 
 Till Tennyson, flaming and red as a gipsy, 
 
 Struck his fist on the table, and uttered a shout : 
 ' To the door with the boy ! Call a cab ! he is tipsy ! ' 
 
 And they carried the naughty young gentleman out. 
 
 " Then ' Ah ! ' cried the Chairman, ' this teaches me knowledge : 
 The future shall find me more wise, by the Powers ! 
 This comes of assigning to younkers from college 
 Too early a place in such meetings as ours.' " 
 
 About the same time I was writing for an American quarterly 
 a review of Mr. Swinburne's poems. It was eventually 
 published, not in America, but as a brochure in England, 
 under the name of Swinburne 's Poems and Ballads, a 
 Criticism, by William Michael Rossetti, 1866. Bearing in 
 mind Mr. Buchanan's — as I thought it — gratuitous and in- 
 solent attack upon a poet already so illustrious as Mr. 
 Swinburne, and entertaining the opinion that much more 
 than commensurate laudation had been bestowed by reviews 
 upon the volume (or volumes) of verse which Mr. Buchanan 
 had up to that time published, I opened my Criticism with 
 the following sentence : — 
 
 " The advent of a new great poet is sure to cause a commotion of 
 one kind or another ; and it would be hard were this otherwise in 
 times like ours, when the advent of even so poor and pretentious 
 a poetaster as a Robert Buchanan stirs storms in teapots." 
 
 When my first edition of Shelley appeared in 1870 it was 
 severely condemned in the Athenceum, in a criticism which I 
 was informed was written by Mr. Buchanan. Whether this is 
 correct I cannot affirm. At any rate, Mr. Buchanan considered 
 that to be " the worst edition of Shelley which has ever seen 
 the light," for so he has told us in The Fleshly School of 
 Poetry, adding one or two other partially relevant " digs " at 
 me. Somewhat later in 1870 than the Athenmcm article 
 
296 DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTl. 
 
 my brother's volume of Poems came out. It remained un- 
 criticized by Mr. Buchanan (so far as I am aware) until 
 October 1871, when the article in the Contemporary Review 
 appeared. 
 
 This article was (to use no other expression) severe against 
 Rossetti. It was afterwards considerably enlarged, and its 
 severity, direct and implied, was increased, and it was reissued 
 as a pamphlet- volume of about 100 pages — The Fleshly School 
 of Poetry, and other Phenomena of the Day, by Robert 
 Buchanan (Strahan & Co., 1872). I will give some extracts, 
 showing what opinion Mr. Buchanan entertained of Rossetti's 
 performances. These extracts come direct from the pamphlet, 
 and are (practically speaking) verbatim ; but it should be 
 understood that the " Thomas Maitland " article was in full 
 general conformity with them. 
 
 The Poems (we are told) exhibit morbid deviation from 
 healthy forms of life. Nothing is virile, nothing tender, 
 nothing completely sane. There is thorough nastiness in 
 many pieces. A sickening desire is evinced to reproduce the 
 sensual mood. Rossetti has not given us one rounded and 
 noteworthy piece of art. He is fleshly all over, from the roots 
 of his hair to the tips of his toes. There is bad blood in all 
 the poems, and breadth of poetic interest in none. Bad 
 rhymes become the rule, and not the exception. The burden 
 of Sister Helen is repeated with little or no alteration through 
 thirty-four verses (as a fact, it is repeated with invariable and 
 essential alteration, and Mr. Buchanan misquotes its close 
 "between Hell and Heaven," changing this into "between 
 Heaven and Hell," and so spoiling the cadence). Sister 
 Helen and Eden Bower are affected rubbish. The House of 
 Life is a very hotbed of nasty phrases. Sonnets 11 to 20 are 
 one profuse sweat of animalism. Sonnets 29, 30, and 31, are 
 very, very silly. 1 The Last Confession positively reeks of morbid 
 
 1 The thirteen Sonnets thus characterized are the following : The 
 Birth-Bo?id (Have you not noted in some family) ; A Day of Love 
 (Those envied places which do know her well) ; Love Sweetness (Sweet 
 dimness of her loosened hair's downfall) ; Love's Baubles (I stood where 
 
THE FLESHLY SCHOOL OF POETRY. 297 
 
 lust. In Rossetti's poetry there is a veritably stupendous 
 preponderance of sensuality and sickly animalism. He and 
 Mr. Swinburne merely echo what is vile. I see in Rossetti 
 no gleam of Nature, not a sign of humanity. [On a passage 
 from The Portrait] Was ever writing so formally slovenly 
 and laboriously limp? [Then, in general] Treatment, down 
 to the tiniest detail, frivolous, absurd, and reckless. As 
 shapeless and undigested as chaos itself. 
 
 On such abuse as this, wholesale and retail, I will not 
 express any view of my own, nor solicit the verdict of the 
 reader. About twenty-four years have elapsed since Mr. 
 Buchanan wrote. If public opinion in that interval has ratified, 
 or gone near to ratifying, his dicta, I remain under a mistake. 
 If public opinion at the present date should avouch that the 
 man who could thus express himself must have had in view 
 some object extraneous to the fair and moderate expression 
 of a candid conviction, I should be far from astonished. 
 
 According to my recollection of the facts — of which I had 
 adequate personal knowledge at the time — my brother was 
 but little troubled, and not downcast at all, by the article 
 such as it appeared in the Contemporary Review. He had all 
 along expected that some one or other would make a point 
 of assailing him. He knew himself to be above such an 
 assault as was now delivered, and felt moreover that the fact 
 of the pseudonym, and the ambiguities which had accompanied 
 it, gave him a considerable advantage as a defendant. Mr. 
 Scott — with an inaccuracy as to date which is very habitual 
 to him — relates how, "as midsummer 1872 was drawing on," 
 he gave a dinner-party which Rossetti attended ; and how 
 
 Love in brimming armfuls bore) ; Winged Hours (Each hour until we 
 meet is as a bird) ; Life in Love (Not in thy body is thy life at all) ; The 
 Love-Moon (When that dead face bowered in the furthest years) ; The 
 Morrow's Message (Thou Ghost, I said, and is thy name To-day ?) ; Sleep- 
 less Dreams (Girt in dark growths yet glimmering with one star) ; Secret 
 Parting (Because our talk was of the cloud-control) ; Lnclusiveness (The 
 changing guests each in a different mood) ; Known in Vain (As two 
 whose love, first foolish, widening scope) ; The Landmark (Was that the 
 landmark ? what, the foolish well). 
 
298 DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTl. 
 
 the latter shouted out the name of Robert Buchanan, whom 
 " he had discovered to be the writer of the article," and how 
 " from this time he occupied himself in composing a long 
 reply." It is certain (as one of the Family-letters shows) that 
 my brother had been informed about Mr. Buchanan towards 
 the middle of October 1871, and that soon after that time he 
 undertook a reply for publication. Mr. Scott's date is there- 
 fore quite erroneous. To his other statements I raise no 
 demur, but he seems to think the whole incident more note- 
 worthy than I can. My brother was impulsive and outspoken ; 
 and, being (it is to be supposed) among friends well known 
 to him, and known to be on his side of any such controversy, 
 he may very likely — and very harmlessly — have been a trifle 
 more vociferous than those drawing-room and dining-room 
 manners for which Dickens gave the formula of " prunes and 
 prisms " would dictate. 
 
 It is certainly true that he set-to at writing a reply to Mr. 
 Buchanan — a fact which is in no wise inconsistent with what 
 I have just been saying about his comparative coolness 
 under the Contemporary attack. He was vehemently, not to 
 say virulently, assailed ; and this more on the ground of 
 imputed moral obliquity than of poetic or literary short- 
 comings. To be ridiculed was what he did not like ; to be 
 vilified as writing from impure motives and as an incentive 
 to public impurity was what he disliked extremely. It 
 would have been much better — and I told him so at the 
 time — to take no part in the controversy, and to allow the 
 anonymo-pseudonymous attack to die out of itself, leaving 
 perhaps little general memory of its unsavoury existence, 
 and little warning to any one except the parties directly 
 concerned ; who would probably have found out that a " poet " 
 who abuses another poet under the shield of anonymity had 
 better not be loaded, by himself or another, with the thicker 
 shield of pseudonymity. However, my brother did not adopt 
 my well-meant advice. He wrote a pamphlet, and sent the 
 more serious parts of it to the AtJienceum, where these were 
 printed with his name appended, and under his own title, 
 
THE FLESHLY SCHOOL OF POETkY. 299 
 
 The Stealthy School of Criticism. 1 To me The Stealthy School 
 of Criticism appears a very sound and telling piece of self- 
 vindication. It rectifies some positive mis-statements con- 
 tained in Mr. Buchanan's article, and sets the whole question 
 in a much more correct light than the latter had succeeded 
 in casting upon it, or perhaps had been minded to supply. 
 The pamphlet itself, including this extracted portion, was put 
 into print, with a view to its being published by Mr. Ellis ; 
 but on consideration it was held to be such as might lay the 
 author or the publisher open to an action at law— possibly on 
 the ground, " the greater the truth, the greater the libel " — 
 and it was withheld, and ultimately destroyed. I heard it at 
 the time ; but long ago I had quite forgotten its treatment 
 and details — which were assuredly not scurrilous, but I dare 
 say sarcastic and stinging enough, for my brother was the 
 reverse of a bad hand at that sort of thing when he chose 
 to take it up. He was displeased, indignant, and perhaps 
 incensed, and disposed to " give as good as he got " ; but still, 
 as I have said, not seriously wounded nor deeply mortified, so 
 far as the Contemporary article went. I can even remember 
 that he was frankly amused at some remarks by Mr. Buchanan 
 upon certain rhymes in his volume — such as " wet " rhyming 
 with " Haymarket " ; and he thought that Mr. Buchanan 
 had made a very neat travestie of them as follows : — 
 
 " When winds do roar and rains do pour, 
 Hard is the life of the sailor : 
 He scarcely, as he reels, can tell 
 The side-lights from the binnacle : 
 He looketh on the wild water," etc. 
 
 And at a later date, hearing that the anonymously published 
 poem, St. Abe and his Seven Wives, was the work of Mr. 
 Buchanan, he told me that he had found it to be a production 
 of considerable force and spirit. He was indeed (and Dr. Hake 
 has told us so), though sufficiently downright in denouncing 
 works which he disrelished, whether in literature or in fine 
 
 1 Naturally, it is included in Rossetti's Collected Works. 
 
300 DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI. 
 
 art, always inclined to say a good word for such points in 
 them as he thought deserving of this. 
 
 Mr. Buchanan, having made one envenomed attack upon 
 Rossetti, was not to be appeased until he had made another 
 much more envenomed ; and in the spring of 1872 he issued (as 
 I have said) his pamphlet-volume, being a greatly extended, 
 more systematic, and more denunciatory version of the 
 original review. He here more definitely identified Rossetti, 
 as well as some other poets, with a supposed movement for 
 the propagation of whatsoever is most foul in vice, and most 
 disgusting in vicious display. Possibly this production, like 
 its predecessor, is only very partially remembered by the 
 living generation of readers. The sooner it is totally for- 
 gotten, the better for all concerned, and more especially for 
 Mr. Buchanan himself. 
 
 I can say this without any unfair bias towards my brother's 
 side. It must likewise be the opinion of Mr. Buchanan, for 
 whose feelings in the matter it is not my business to entertain 
 or express any especial concern. At the same time I willingly 
 acknowledge that, when at last he did retract, he retracted 
 straightforwardly, and in a spirit to which my brother might 
 perhaps have openly responded, had he then been less near 
 his grave. Mr. Buchanan, in 1881, dedicated to Rossetti, as 
 to " An Old Enemy," his romance entitled God and the Man ; 
 and, besides some other retractation (especially a phrase in TJie 
 Academy, 1 July 1882, " Mr. Rossetti, I freely admit now, 
 never was a Fleshly Poet at all "), he addressed to Mr. Hall 
 Caine, soon after Rossetti's death, a letter containing the 
 following phrases. I only extract some expressions relating 
 to Rossetti : others which show persistent rancour against 
 other people are best left in oblivion : — 
 
 " While admitting freely that my article in the Contemporary 
 Review was unjust to Rossetti's claims as a poet, I have ever held, 
 and still hold, that it contained nothing to warrant the manner in 
 which it was received by the poet and his circle [the poet's only 
 overt act, it will be remembered, was to write that very moderate 
 self-vindication called The Stealthy School of Criticism}. Well, my 
 
THE FLESHLY SCHOOL OF POETRY. 3OI 
 
 protest was received in a way which turned irritation into wrath, 
 wrath into violence. I was unjust, as I have said ; most unjust when 
 I impugned the purity, and misconceived the passion, of writings too 
 hurriedly read, and reviewed currente calamo [but several months 
 had elapsed between the publication of the review-article and that 
 of the pamphlet]. I make full admission of Rossetti's claims to the 
 purest kind of literary renown ; and, if I were to criticize his poems 
 now, I would write very differently." 
 
 There is another phrase which seems to go near to admit- 
 ting that Mr. Buchanan — in 1871, and also in 1872 — abused 
 Rossetti just because other critics had praised him :— 
 
 "At the time it [the review-article] was written, the newspapers 
 were full of panegyric. Mine was a mere drop of gall in an ocean of 
 eau sucree." 
 
 But even this is not quite apposite to the facts. The 
 " newspapers " had had their say about Rossetti's Poems 
 towards April and May 1870, whereas Mr. Buchanan's 
 pseudonymous article appeared in October 1871. 
 
 Let me sum up briefly the chief stages in this miserable, 
 and in some aspects disgraceful, affair. 1. Mr. Buchanan, 
 whether anonymously or pseudonymously — being a poet, 
 veritable or reputed — attacked another poet, a year and a 
 half after the works of the latter had been received with 
 general and high applause. 2. He attacked him on grounds 
 partly literary, but more prominently moral. 3. After he 
 had had every opportunity for reflection, he repeated the 
 attack in a greatly aggravated form. 4. At a later date he 
 knew that the author in question was not a bad poet, nor a 
 poet with an immoral purpose. The question naturally arises 
 — If he knew this in or before 1881, why did he know or 
 suppose the exact contrary in 1871 and 1872? Here is a 
 question to which no answer (within my cognizance) has 
 ever been given by Mr. Buchanan, and it is one to which 
 some readers may risk their own reply. That is their affair. 
 If Mr. Robert Buchanan concludes that Mr. Thomas Maitland 
 told an untruth, it is not for me to say him nay. 
 
302 DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI. 
 
 Not long after Rossetti's death an article named The Art 
 of Rossetti was written by Mr. Harry Quilter, and it was 
 published in that same Contemporary Review which had 
 reviled the man during his lifetime. It is laudatory, but 
 very far from being exclusively so. Some of the observations 
 in this article appear to me to be among the best and most 
 acute which have been spoken on that question of " fleshli- 
 ness," and I will give them here. I will only premise that, 
 while I regard it as a gross calumny to say that Rossetti was 
 in any marked sense an adherent of any " Fleshly School of 
 Poetry " (if such there was), I do not contest that there are 
 some things in his writings to which a puritan or a purist 
 may, from his own point of view, legitimately take exception. 
 The real question is not whether Rossetti, as a man or as 
 a poet, was " fleshly," but whether certain subjects, and 
 certain modes of treatment and forms of expression, are to 
 be admitted into poetry as a wide domain, or excluded from 
 it as a narrow domain. To this question perhaps the simplest 
 and the most sufficient answer is that all or nearly all the 
 greatest poets, in all countries and ages of the world, have 
 admitted them ; and I will go a step further, and (without 
 presuming to rank Dante Rossetti with those greatest poets) 
 will say that very few of them have admitted so little as he 
 did of those subjects, modes of treatment, and forms of 
 expression. I now cite from Mr. Quilter : — 
 
 " It was said once, by a writer anxious to make out a case against 
 the Prseraphaelite school of modern poetry, that one of the chief 
 characteristics of Rossetti's verse was its sensuality, and certain 
 quotations were given to prove this. Time has effectually disposed 
 of that charge, and the misrepresentations on which it was founded 
 have been adequately confuted ; but it has hardly been sufficiently 
 noticed that the real ground of the accusation is due to the fact of 
 the poet-painter being unable to dissever his pictorial from his 
 poetic faculty. He habitually thought (if such an expression is 
 allowable) in terms of painting. He could not dissever his most 
 purely intellectual ideas from colour and form ; and it is the intrusion 
 of these physical facts into his poetry, in places where they are 
 
HYPOCHONDRIA AND ILLNESS. 303 
 
 unexpected and unnecessary, that gives, to hasty readers and super- 
 ficial critics, such a wrong impression. And, in the same way as he 
 charges a poem with more colour and form than it can well bear 
 with reference to its special subject, so does he charge his pictures 
 with a weight of idea which their form and colour scarcely realize ; 
 and in both he calls upon the spectator to be at once the witness 
 and the interpreter of his work. From this there results in his 
 poetry the following effect — that he is at his finest when he has to 
 tell some plain story, or exemplify some comparatively simple thought, 
 the insertion into which of physical facts will heighten the meaning 
 rather than jar upon it ; or in verses which treat intellectual ideas 
 from a purely sensuous basis, such for instance as in those sonnets 
 which are concerned with the passion of love. When however he 
 seeks to treat either a purely intellectual or a purely spiritual subject, 
 he fails almost inevitably, and that apparently in painting as well as 
 in poetry. Like Anteus, if he is held off the earth too long his 
 strength fails him. It is this painter-like quality which makes his 
 verse so puzzling ; for in idea it is, almost without exception, of a 
 singularly pure and intellectual character. Turn from his verse to 
 his painting, and the same curious contradiction is forced upon our 
 attention. We find continually, in his pictures where the painter's 
 individuality is most manifest, that the reproduction of the sensuous 
 part of his subject is, so to speak, interfered with by the strange, 
 half-refining, half-abstract quality of his intellect. . . . All the other 
 physical peculiarities to be traced in his works are all due to the 
 passionately sensuous but equally passionately intellectual nature of 
 Rossetti. They are the record of a man whose sense of beauty was 
 always being disturbed by his sense of feeling." 
 
 XXXIV. 
 
 HYPOCHONDRIA AND ILLNESS. 
 
 We have now reached what may be called "the parting 
 of the waters" in Dante Rossetti's life. In earlier years he 
 had had his tribulations : difficulties in his professional career, 
 the ill-health of his loved Lizzie, with ensuing harasses in 
 relation to their engagement, and to their matrimonial life ; 
 her early and shocking death, with troublous memories 
 
304 DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI. 
 
 attending it, and anxieties and self-conflicts ensuing ; partial 
 failure of eyesight ; insomnia, only combated by perilous 
 palliatives. Still, on the whole, as he stood at the middle 
 of 1 87 1, and even on to the spring of 1872, he was a 
 moderately healthy man, and in many respects a thriving 
 if not exactly a happy one. For happiness some fair measure 
 of contentment is essential ; and Rossetti, a man of restless 
 imagination and vehement desires, better satisfied with his 
 surroundings than with himself and his performances, was 
 never contented, and therefore never, in a right sense, happy. 
 His aspirations, though to some extent assuaged, were by 
 no means soothed into serenity ; but this I need not say, 
 for no aspirations, properly to be thus called, will be so in 
 the little life which is rounded with a sleep. Nature had 
 endowed him with an ample stock of high-heartedness and 
 high spirits. These served to while the time for his external 
 self and for his friends, while moody distaste, and something 
 like a surging mist of gloom, were often active within. He 
 was a successful man : successful and admired as a painter 
 — necessarily in a small circle, as he would not exhibit ; still 
 more successful and acclaimed as a poet, and by a much 
 wider public. Achievement in art and in poetry he had 
 always longed for, for these he had passionately worked ; 
 to general recognition he was not indifferent. Fortune had 
 thrown in a more than wonted share of her capricious favours. 
 Loving and beloved by his family, warmly cherished by his 
 friends, acknowledged by his intellectual compeers, sought 
 out by strangers as a man of renown, he seemed to have 
 attained a singularly enviable position. It was indeed one 
 of those positions which Destiny begrudges to men, and 
 determines to reverse. 
 
 This was Dante Rossetti viewed from the outside in 1871. 
 " But I have that within which passeth show." Mental 
 trouble and a too active and unappeased imagination had 
 long ago brought on insomnia ; insomnia had brought on 
 chloral ; chloral had brought on depression, agitation, and a 
 turmoil of fantasies. I think it clear, judging from results, 
 
HYPOCHONDRIA AND ILLNESS. 305 
 
 that my brother — being " put out," though not gravely per- 
 turbed, by the Contemporary article, and by the announcement 
 that it would soon be enlarged and re-published separately — 
 must have got even worse sleep than usual, and must have 
 exceeded more than usual in his chloral-dosing and its con- 
 comitant of alcohol. Certain it is that, when the pamphlet- 
 edition appeared (which was towards the middle of May 
 1872), with its greatly enhanced virus of imputation and 
 suggestion, he received it in a spirit very different from that 
 with which he had encountered the review-article, and had 
 confuted it in The Stealthy School of Criticism. His fancies 
 now ran away with him, and he thought that the pamphlet 
 was a first symptom in a widespread conspiracy for crushing 
 his fair fame as an artist and a man, and for hounding him 
 out of honest society. Most of his friends, myself included, 
 combated these ideas. I question whether his closest con- 
 fidant, Madox Brown, did so with adequate energy, for he 
 himself, though reasonable and clear-headed, was of a very 
 suspicious temper in professional matters, and held himself 
 and his immediate circle to be not a little ill-used. My 
 brother's notions were, as I have said, fancies, and fancies 
 bred, not of a temperate consideration of facts, but of the 
 constitutional and mental upset caused by a noxious drug. 
 Still, it is manifest, upon the face of his booklet, that the 
 charges brought forward and reinforced by Mr. Buchanan 
 were by no manner of means light ones. They Were sufficient 
 — if believed, which I suppose they very scantily were — to 
 exclude Rossetti from the companionship of virtuous and 
 even of decent people ; and it was no fault of this " accuser 
 of sins" (to use Blake's expression) if such a result did not 
 ensue. 
 
 I do not remember, and do not wish to remember, all the 
 details about Mr. Buchanan's performances, and their reception 
 by the press. He had of course his supporters — not perhaps 
 extremely numerous. I don't suppose that a single poet of 
 renown was among them. Tennyson (as I have reason to 
 know positively) was one of the first to object to the attack 
 
 vol. 1. 20 
 
306 DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI. 
 
 that it was by no means a fair appraisement of Rossetti, 
 much of whose work he rated extremely high, the sonnets 
 especially. In January 1872, midway between the Con- 
 temporary article and the pamphlet, there was a critique in 
 the Quarterly Review (I have heard it ascribed to Mr. 
 Courthope) which was unfavourable to Rossetti, and more 
 especially to Mr. Morris, less so to Mr. Swinburne. Mr. 
 Hall Caine has spoken of other adverse articles in the 
 Edinburgh Review and the British Quarterly. Their dates 
 and other details, if ever known to me, have slipped my 
 recollection. I can dimly recall a leading article in the 
 Echo, one word in which, " coward " or " cowards," disturbed 
 my brother unduly. This article — possibly without the least 
 reason — has been ascribed to Mr. Buchanan himself. So 
 overstrained was the balance of his mind at the time that 
 my brother seriously consulted me as to whether it might 
 not be his duty to challenge the writer or the editor to a 
 duel. I need hardly record my reply — that duels in this 
 common-sensible country are equally illegal and risible. Mr. 
 Buchanan's own preface to his pamphlet makes use of the 
 same offensive word. After referring to " Mr. Rossetti's 
 defence, and the opinion of Mr. Rossetti's friends," he is 
 pleased to say (and to this also my brother greatly objected) 
 — " I have only one word to use concerning the attacks upon 
 myself. They are the inventions of cowards, too spoilt with 
 flattery to bear criticism, and too querulous and humoursome 
 to perceive the real issues of the case." It does not seem 
 to have occurred to Mr. Buchanan to ponder whether the 
 term " coward " applies more properly to a verse-writer who 
 anonymously (not to say pseudonymously) assails another 
 verse-writer, intermingling questions of morals with those 
 of poetry — or rather to the man who, being thus assailed, 
 defends himself under his own name, or to friends (or it may 
 be outsiders) who, with or without their names, retort on the 
 assailant. 
 
 I am sorry to dwell at so much length upon this really 
 contemptible, and by its very author discarded, affair of The 
 
Hypochondria and illness. 307 
 
 Fleshly School of Poetry ; but, as a biographer, I could not 
 from this point onward tell a word of truth unless I gave 
 it prominence. In my brother's life it was deplorably 
 prominent, though in itself of hardly more importance than 
 some one's bad breath passing across a looking-glass and 
 slurring it for a moment. The whole matter grieved me 
 exceedingly at the time, and will always continue to grieve 
 me in reminiscence or record. It is a simple fact that, from 
 the time when the pamphlet had begun to work into the 
 inner tissue of his feelings, Dante Rossetti was a changed 
 man, and so continued till the close of his life. Difficult 
 though it may be to believe this of a person so self-reliant 
 in essentials as Rossetti — one who had all his life been doing 
 so many things just as he chose, and because he so chose, 
 and whether other people liked them or not— it is nevertheless 
 the truth, as I know but too well. 
 
 On 2 June 1872 I was with my brother all day at No. 16 
 Cheyne Walk. It was one of the most miserable days 
 of my life, not to speak of his. From his wild way of 
 talking — about conspiracies and what not — I was astounded 
 to perceive that he was, past question, not entirely sane. I 
 went round for Mr. Scott, then living at No. 92 Cheyne 
 Walk ; and he (so I noted in my Diary), " as usual, acted 
 in a spirit of the truest and kindest friendship." This seems 
 to be the occasion of which Mr. Scott speaks in his Auto- 
 biographical Notes. He says that " Mr. Marshall and Dr. 
 Hake were there," but my own impression is that that was 
 on a slightly later day. It is a rather curious coincidence 
 that, on this same 2 June, my brother completed the sale 
 of the picture of which he had painted the background as 
 far back as 1850 at Sevenoaks (see Section XVI.), and which 
 he had recently completed under the name of The Bower- 
 meadow. Messrs. Pilgeram and Lefevre bought it for the 
 large price of £735. When Mr. Lefevre entered, Rossetti 
 was in a state of nervous agitation, possessed with the delusion 
 that all sorts of people were set against him, and trying to 
 undervalue him ; and I can recollect the stare of surprise 
 
308 DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTl. 
 
 with which the picture-dealer received Rossetti's suggestion 
 that, if the picture were not considered good value for its 
 price, the agreement might be cancelled. Indeed such a sugges- 
 tion was not less strange as coming from Rossetti, the paragon 
 of artists at making a bargain, than as addressed to a picture- 
 dealer (Gambart's successor) who was no novice at taking 
 care of himself. 
 
 Another most unfortunate circumstance happened about 
 the same time — I think a day or two later. Browning had 
 just published his singular poem Fifine at the Fair, and he 
 sent (as in previous instances) a presentation-copy to my 
 brother. The latter looked into the book ; and, to the 
 astonishment of bystanders, he at once fastened upon some 
 lines at its close as being intended as an attack upon him, 
 or as a spiteful reference to something which had occurred, 
 or might be alleged to have occurred, at his house. In a 
 moment he relented, with an effusion of tenderness to this old, 
 attached, and illustrious friend ; but in another moment the 
 scarcely credible delusion returned. Browning was regarded 
 as a leading member of the " conspiracy " ; and, from first 
 to last, I was never able to discern that this miserable bug- 
 bear had ever been expelled from the purlieus of my brother's 
 mind. He saw no more of Browning, and communicated 
 with him no more ; and on one or two occasions when the 
 great poet, the object of Rossetti's early and unbounded 
 homage, kindly enquired of me concerning him, and expressed 
 a wish to look him up, I was compelled to fence with the 
 suggestion, lest worse should ensue — no doubt putting myself 
 in a very absurd and unaccountable position. Whether 
 Browning ever knew that Dante Rossetti had conceived a 
 real dislike of him, or supposed himself to have motive of 
 definite complaint, I am unable to say. He was certainly 
 far too keen to miss seeing that there was something amiss, 
 and something which was kept studiously unexplained. 
 Another extravagant fantasy took hold of my brother's 
 mind at this or some other time — namely, that the wildly 
 grotesque verses of Mr. Dodgson (whom he knew fairly well) 
 
HYPOCHONDRIA AND ILLNESS. 309 
 
 called The Hunting of the Snark were in fact intended as 
 a pasquinade against himself. So Mr. Dodgson was another 
 member of the conspiracy. 
 
 Thus then on 2 June I was dismayed to find my brother 
 an actual monomaniac. I, who had known him from infancy, 
 had never before seen or surmised the faintest seed of 
 insanity in him. Wilful indeed he always was, but, so far 
 from being mad, his strong idiosyncrasy had never trenched 
 even upon what can be called the eccentric. He was 
 eminently natural, as very many Italians are ; and in this 
 quality he followed, to my thinking, rather the Italian model 
 than the English, which latter derives more from sturdy 
 straightforwardness than from direct temperament. He was 
 easy, abrupt when he liked, and transparently intelligible 
 — except in so far as a high and subtle mind baffles 
 one of a dull or conventional order. On that fatal 2 June, 
 and for many days and months ensuing, I was compelled 
 to regard my brother as partially insane, in the ordinary 
 sense of that term. It was only after an interval of time, 
 and as I had opportunity to compare and consider the 
 opinions expressed by medical men and others well qualified 
 to judge, that I came to the conclusion that he never had 
 been and never became thus insane at all, but was on the 
 contrary the victim of chloral, acting upon strained nerves, 
 mental disquiet, and a highly excitable imagination — all these 
 coupled with a grievous and fully justified sense of wrong. 
 For many years past my conviction has been that hypo- 
 chondria, consequent upon the over-dosing with chloral and 
 alcohol — this, and not anything dependent upon constitutional 
 unsoundness of mind — was the real secret of my brother's 
 frenzied collapse. Mr. Caine, speaking according to his 
 observation, which began in 1880, has expressed a like 
 opinion. 
 
 From this point onward I shall assume in good faith (and 
 my reader can part company with me if he chooses) that 
 my brother's fantasies were those of a hypochondriac, not 
 a madman ; and that the hypochondria was directly due to 
 
310 DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI. 
 
 the chloral, but without leaving out of account those other 
 incentives of which I have just spoken. Meanwhile, whatever 
 the cause, his mind was truly not a sound one. He not only 
 supposed things contrary to reason, but he had actual physical 
 delusions or hallucinations. I cannot remember — then or 
 afterwards — any visual delusions ; but there were auditive 
 delusions, as I shall have over-much occasion to specify. 
 
 Mr. Marshall was called in ; and by his directions I 
 summoned also Dr. Maudsley, the great authority on mental 
 diseases. My brother, in his perverse mood, did not like 
 Dr. Maudsley, and even went so far as to say that he was 
 probably no doctor, but some one foisted upon himself for 
 a sinister purpose. Of course I left the room during the 
 medical inspection and consultation ; nor can I affirm with 
 accuracy what was the precise opinion that Dr. Maudsley 
 formed of the case. 1 He agreed with Mr. Marshall that great 
 care was requisite, and a cessation from all work and excite- 
 ment. 
 
 Dr. Hake, in his Memoirs of Eighty Years, has written 
 with much good feeling about these matters, and with that 
 scrupulous reserve which marks an honourable medical man 
 in any reference to a patient. He was the earthly Providence 
 of the Rossetti family in those dark days. I shall borrow 
 some of his observations, and supplement them. He says*: — 
 
 " One morning [I consider that this must have been Friday 
 7 June] I visited him [Dante Rossetti] at Cheyne Walk, when I saw- 
 that the restlessness of the past night had pursued him into daytime. 
 Qualifying his request with an expression of great regard, he asked 
 me not to stay. His medical attendants were consulting in another 
 room. I joined them there, and told them that my house at 
 Roehampton was open to Rossetti, if they decided that he needed 
 change. [A very pleasant roomy house it was, with a large well- 
 kept garden.] On the same evening, in company with his brother 
 and Mr. Madox Brown [I suppose Dr. Hake is correct with regard 
 
 1 As to exact dates and details my Diary, which has sometimes stood 
 me in good stead, assists me no longer hereabouts. I gave it up in 
 despair on 5 June 1872, and did not resume it until 3 November, 
 
HYPOCHONDRIA AND ILLNESS. 311 
 
 to Brown, though I do not now realize to myself his presence], he 
 came to Roehampton ; and I remember well his saying, as he sat 
 in my quiet drawing-room, that he was enjoying what he had so long 
 ceased to feel, and that was peace." 
 
 I recollect that dismal cab-journey from Chelsea to 
 Roehampton. It brought out the state of physical delusion 
 besetting my brother as to sounds ; for he insisted, several 
 times during the transit, that a bell was being rung on the 
 roof of the cab, to his annoyance ; and, at the moment of 
 dismounting at Dr. Hake's door, he tartly apostrophized the 
 cabman with the words, " Why did you ring that bell ? " 
 The cabman looked blank, as might be expected. He had 
 often been called for my brother from a neighbouring rank ; 
 and it is probable that, on getting back there, he imparted 
 his opinion that " there must be something queer with Mr. 
 Rossetti." 
 
 Dr. Hake's next phrase (which" I shall proceed to quote 
 anon) is " He sat up late in conversation " etc. ; but to me 
 it seems that he here mixes up the transactions of two different 
 evenings. We arrived at Dr. Hake's house quite after dark, 
 perhaps towards 10 P.M. ; and little, I should say, was done 
 beyond settling down for the night. The next day— Saturday 
 by my reckoning — happened to be a very untoward one for 
 my brother's retirement. It was the day preceding Whit- 
 Sunday (or some such holiday-time) ; and, when we walked 
 out under Dr. Hake's pleasant escort, we found any number 
 of gipsy-vans and other vehicles encumbering the high-road. 
 Rossetti's roaming ideas being still in the ascendant, he 
 fancied that this might be a demonstration got up in his 
 disparagement ; and he was with difficulty restrained from 
 running after some of the conveyances, and interchanging a 
 wordy war with their drivers. Our walk was abridged ; we 
 returned to Dr. Hake's house, and the rest of the day passed 
 in comparative quiet. However, after dinner some reading 
 was proposed. Merivale's Roman Empire was handed to me, 
 and I began reading aloud where I was told ; and, as ill- 
 
312 DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI. 
 
 luck would have it, this passage detailed some of the tiger- 
 monkey pranks played by Caligula or Domitian, to drive 
 his submissive senators half out of their senses. The scenes 
 depicted bore a perilous analogy to the grotesque encum- 
 brances of my brother's brain. I came to a full stop, though 
 greatly urged by him to proceed, as he wanted to know the 
 too-appetizing details. I now recur to Dr. Hake : — 
 
 " He sat up late in conversation with his brother on various 
 family-matters ; but his night was the most troubled one that he had 
 hitherto passed through." 
 
 The Doctor's laudable reticence as to this matter is partly 
 followed by Mr. Bell Scott, who, in his Autobiographical Notes, 
 says : — 
 
 " A cab was brought at once. We all thought it strange to see 
 him [Rossetti] so willing to go ; but that night it was too evident he 
 wanted to be secluded, and for three days he lay as one dead, and 
 only by a treatment invented for the moment by Professor Marshall 
 was he cured." 
 
 It will be perceived that Mr. Scott shares the mistake of 
 Dr. Hake in mixing up the occurrences of Friday evening 
 and night with those of Saturday night ; nor is it clear why 
 Dante Rossetti should have been more " secluded " in the 
 house occupied by Dr. Hake, with one or more of his sons, 
 and with my company to boot, than in his own house, in 
 which he could command solitude if it so pleased him. 
 
 Putting together the statements made by these two writers, 
 the reader may readily infer that something of a very excep- 
 tional kind took place in that night, really the night of 
 Saturday. Rather than leave the matter open to dubious 
 conjecture — which may possibly have been indulged in at 
 large ever since the appearance of Scott's book in 1892 — I 
 will speak out, and relate the facts. In these, to a large 
 extent, I took part at the moment ; others I heard from my 
 brother soon afterwards. 
 
 Having gone to bed on the Saturday night, my brother 
 
HYPOCHONDRIA AND ILLNESS. 313 
 
 heard (this was of course a further instance of absolute 
 physical delusion) a voice which twice called out at him a 
 term of gross and unbearable obloquy — I will not here repeat 
 it. He would endure no longer a persecution from which he 
 perceived no escape. He laid his hand upon a bottle of 
 laudanum which, unknown to us all, he had brought with him, 
 swallowed its contents, and dropped the empty bottle into a 
 drawer. Of course his intention was suicide ; but it was 
 a case in which suicide was prompted not only by generally 
 morbid and fallacious ideas but by a real hallucination, and 
 one therefore in which the constant verdict of " unsound 
 mind " would have been both admissible and necessary. 
 How he had obtained the laudanum I never knew. Maybe 
 he had long had it about him as an opiate, even before he 
 began the nightly course of chloral. 
 
 The Sunday opened calmly and hopefully. The fact that 
 my brother did not appear at the family-breakfast was only 
 conformable to his ordinary habits. Dr. Hake went up in 
 two or three instances, and always found him sleeping with 
 extreme placidity. He encouraged me to hope that this 
 might be the beginning of a new lease of natural sleep, and 
 that Dante would soon be taking a marked turn for the 
 better. At last — this may have been towards four o'clock 
 in the afternoon — he came down again, with an exceedingly 
 grave face. He told me that such unusually prolonged sleep 
 did not seem natural ; that my brother's appearance was no 
 longer satisfying to a medical eye ; and that the symptoms 
 might almost point to serous apoplexy. I ran out for a 
 neighbouring doctor, who came at once. His name has now 
 lapsed from my recollection. He looked at Rossetti, and at 
 once confirmed our worst fears. It was an evident case of 
 " effusion of serum on the brain," and the sufferer was already 
 past all hope. He added that, if by chance he should survive 
 at all, his intellect would be irrecoverably gone — a sentence 
 far worse than death. 
 
 It became my harrowing duty to go to town as fast as a fly 
 would carry me, and fetch my mother and my sister Maria, 
 
314 DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI. 
 
 to whom Dr. Hake forthwith proffered the hospitality of his 
 house. Christina could not possibly accompany them. She 
 was bed-ridden, and had been so to a great extent ever since 
 April 1 87 1, when an illness of great rarity attacked her — one 
 of the most distressing in its symptoms I have ever witnessed 
 — termed " Exophthalmic Bronchocele," or " Dr. Graves's 
 Disease." This illness stuck to her until the earlier months 
 of 1873, and all that while her life hung upon a thread. In 
 fact some marks of the malady clung to her until, from a 
 different cause, she died on 29 December 1894. Mr. George 
 Hake, the doctor's youngest son, came up with me from 
 Roehampton to Endsleigh Gardens. He was then an Oxford 
 student, but some trouble with his eyes had compelled him to 
 interrupt the collegiate course — a particularly manly, frank, 
 kind-natured young man. Too well do I remember some of 
 the incidents of that dreadful drive across London, and of 
 my interview with members of the family ; these I suppress. 
 The family had advisedly been left uninformed of the sad 
 condition of mind and body into which Dante had fallen for 
 the last several days, although they knew that he was now at 
 Roehampton, and that I had been much along with him of 
 late. It is a singular fact that my mother — who was not at 
 all a woman of presentiments and panics — had, some half- 
 hour or so before I reached the house, been suddenly smitten 
 with a sense that something grievous was occurring or 
 impending, and with an eager desire to speed to Roe- 
 hampton, and make enquiry. 
 
 Hurriedly we packed a few necessaries, and returned to the 
 fly — all of us convinced that Dante must have ceased to live 
 before we could reach Roehampton. An aunt of mine, Eliza 
 Harriet Polidori, occupied separate apartments in the Ends- 
 leigh Gardens house, and engaged to look affectionately after 
 Christina. At the residence of Madox Brown, 37 Fitzroy 
 Square, I got out, and announced the crushing calamity. 
 Brown, the warmest and most helpful of friends, refused to 
 regard the case as absolutely desperate, and ran off at once 
 for Mr. Marshall, in Savile Row. And so — after nightfall in 
 
HYPOCHONDRIA AND ILLNESS. 3 I 5 
 
 early June, or towards nine in the evening — we started again, 
 and rolled onward to Roehampton. 
 
 Arriving, we learned that Dante was still alive. Dr. Hake 
 had stationed himself at his bed-head, and held to his nostrils 
 a large bottle of strong ammonia, which staved off his sinking 
 into total lethargy ; and I have little doubt that this wise 
 precaution was the first and indispensable stage in the process 
 which saved my brother's life. Very soon the Doctor took 
 me quietly aside, and produced an empty bottle which he had 
 found in a drawer. It was labelled " Laudanum — Poison." 
 We exchanged few words, but were quite at one as to the 
 meaning of this bottle ; and now we could at least dismiss 
 the horrible idea of any such mortal illness as serous apoplexy, 
 or of idiocy as its alternative, and could address ourselves to 
 what was needed to counteract laudanum-poisoning. I will 
 here add that the affair of the poisoning was never, from first 
 to last, intimated to my mother, my sisters, or any other 
 member of the family. They finished their days in ignorance 
 of the facts. 
 
 Pretty soon Mr. Marshall arrived. He ordered strong 
 coffee as the recognized antidote, which Dr. Hake himself 
 prepared and administered, and then, to give no handle to 
 prying curiosity, cleared away all the dregs. I do not see 
 how Mr. Scott can be correct in regarding this treatment as 
 " invented for the moment " by the distinguished surgeon ; 
 but certain it is that all his measures were equally simple and 
 efficient. Beyond the coffee, he did little or nothing except 
 to keep the necessary functions of the body in exercise. 
 When he left, our spirits were already considerably revived ; 
 for my brother showed no sign of going from bad to worse, 
 but something like a steady increase of vitality. His con- 
 sciousness returned in the course of Monday, and for some 
 hours he seemed free from any serious agitation. Mr. Scott 
 therefore is mistaken in saying that " for three days he lay as 
 one dead." The lethal trance only lasted from some hour in 
 the night between Saturday and Sunday to some hour in the 
 afternoon or even forenoon of Monday. 
 
316 DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI. 
 
 Unfortunately, when his bodily powers rallied a little, the 
 gloomy and exasperating fantasies of his mind recurred as 
 well, and by the evening of Tuesday things seemed in this 
 respect worse than ever. What to do was a difficult problem. 
 Dr. Hake's friendliness would have been equal to almost any 
 strain that could be put upon it ; but to propose to leave 
 Dante with him indefinitely was what we could not do. To 
 return for any length of time to Cheyne Walk, with all its 
 distressful memories of the last few weeks, was a notion 
 repugnant to my brother, and rejected by Mr. Marshall. In 
 my own house, with Christina on a bed of sickness, perhaps 
 of death, three other female inmates (not to speak of servants), 
 and myself daily called away to a Government-office, Dante 
 would just then have caused the most wearing anxiety. 
 Ominous colloquies were held as to the benefit which Dr. 
 Hake had known as ensuing from treatment in a private 
 asylum. But in a day or two the difficulty was solved by 
 the friend of friends, Madox Brown. Dante knew all the 
 Brown family most intimately ; Brown understood him at 
 least as thoroughly as did any member of the Rossetti house- 
 hold ; the house in Fitzroy Square was large and central. 
 So on the Thursday my brother, not so greatly out of health, 
 and in a state of mind passive, despondent, but no longer 
 keenly excited, quitted Hake's residence, and was escorted to 
 Cheyne Walk: on Monday 17 June to Brown's. In one 
 respect his physical state was very disheartening. He suffered 
 from hemiplegia, or partial paralysis in the region of the 
 hip-joint, brought on, as Mr. Marshall said, by his remaining 
 so long in a recumbent position, under the benumbing influ- 
 ence of the laudanum. He was in fact quite lame of one leg, 
 and could only walk by the help of a stick. This continued 
 very perceptible for some five or six months, and was not 
 wholly overcome for another year or so. At last it was sub- 
 dued — either entirely, or so greatly as not to raise any further 
 notice. At Brown's house — though extremely dejected for 
 the most part, and wholly unable to do any sort of work — my 
 brother proved manageable enough. He caused no trouble 
 
Hypochondria and illness. 317 
 
 other than what devoted friendship was cheerfully prepared 
 for. 
 
 I have given these painful details at some length, but 
 shall not pursue with equal minuteness the course of Rossetti's 
 troubles up to the date when his health and spirits took a very 
 decided rally. He remained at Brown's house not more than 
 some six or seven days, and was then, on 20 June, got off to 
 Scotland to recruit. Mr. William Graham, M.P., who had 
 bought the Dante s Dream and other pictures, placed at his 
 unreserved disposal for a while, with great kindness and 
 liberality, two mansions which he rented in Perthshire — first 
 Urrard, and then Stobhall. It was not considered desirable 
 that I should accompany my brother — partly because of my 
 official ties, and partly because I might be (and assuredly 
 should have been) depressed, and therefore depressing. 
 Brown and George Hake took him down to Urrard, where he 
 remained, I think, but a few days ; then they removed with him 
 to Stobhall, where Scott very considerately joined the party, 
 relieving Brown, and, soon before Scott left, arrived Dr. Hake. 
 Thus the company came to consist of the two Hakes along 
 with Rossetti. After a while, early in September, the Doctor 
 departed — from a farmhouse to which they had meanwhile 
 removed at Trowan near Crieff — and Mr. Dunn then came 
 down. My brother had by that time revived considerably, 
 and had resumed painting — completing towards the middle of 
 September the long-pending duplicate of Beata Beatrix for 
 Mr. Graham. I will give a few details of the Scotch sojourn 
 from Mr. Scott's book, and from Dr. Hake's. A very few 
 more appear in the Family-letters ; and, from letters addressed 
 by my brother's friends to me at the time, I could largely 
 increase them, but prefer to limit myself to these general 
 outlines of a great downbreak, seething troublous fancies, and 
 gradual but at last very marked recovery. Mr. Scott, who 
 preceded Dr. Hake, writes as follows (I extract some par- 
 ticulars, and omit others) : — 
 
 " The place where we lived — Stobhall, by the Tay near Perth — 
 was, two centuries ago, one of the houses of the ancient family of 
 
jl8 DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTi. 
 
 the Drummonds, the head of which— the Duke of Perth, as the 
 Jacobites called him — lost everything in the Rebellion of 17 15. 
 It was originally a peel-tower, with a very uncommon appendage, a 
 chapel of the same early date as the tower; and now it had one of 
 the most charming old gardens I have ever seen, with Irish yews 
 and hollies, trained by long years of careful shaping into straight 
 columns 25 feet high, and roses almost reaching to the same 
 height, supported on poles. The part we lived in was more 
 modern. He could not take much walking-exercise. He could not 
 bear reading, nor would he join us in the old game [whist]. I 
 cannot help feeling that his malady was unique— different from other 
 maladies, as he himself was different from other men. His de- 
 lusions had a fascination, like his personality. In a few months his 
 amazing power of resuscitation brought him back to health. He 
 still continued to assert that we were under delusions, and not he 
 himself, as to the number of his enemies ; and it was difficult to 
 make him own he had been ill at all." 
 
 He had in fact not been exactly " ill," apart from the 
 laudanum-poisoning, the merely local hemiplegia, the malady 
 treated surgically, and the mental disturbance resultant from 
 chloral-dosing. And now for Dr. Hake : — 
 
 " It was not long before Rossetti's occupation of the place 
 [Stobhall] came to a close. He was fast improving in health. He 
 took long walks, but without any enjoyment of the scenery, which 
 was made romantic by waterfall and splashed leaves ever fresh, the 
 elastic boughs bending under the weight of a torrent. So far 
 recovered, he desired to remain in Perthshire, but still craved for 
 the utmost solitude. In search of such a home, I took the train 
 to Perth, visited St. Andrew's, returned to Perth, and proceeded 
 to Crieff, where I remained for some days, and scoured the environs. 
 At last it occurred to me to call on the leading practitioner, Dr. 
 Gairdner, and was directed by him to a farmhouse two or three miles 
 from the town, on the riverside. The house had every requirement, 
 and was kept by a lady-farmer, whose manner and person had every 
 agreeable trait. We drove to the new home. It was a pleasant 
 spot, with a walk into Crieff by the riverside, down to a wilderness 
 of waters. There was plenty of mountain-scenery in view. Rossetti 
 rapidly improved in health, stumping his way over long areas of 
 
HYPOCHONDRIA AND ILLNESS. 319 
 
 path and road, with his thick stick in hand, but holding no inter- 
 course with Nature. It was not long before he summoned his 
 assistant [Mr. Dunn], with the implements of his art, and he was 
 once more happy. At this time he made a chalk drawing of me, 
 and one of my son. As a domestic trait, I would mention that 
 Rossetti was very hearty at all times over his meals. He would 
 wear out three knives and forks to my one ; and to me, whose 
 breakfast seldom exceeded one cup of coffee, his plate of bacon, 
 surrounded by eggs that overlapped the rim, was amazing. [My 
 own experience of my brother's breakfasts corresponds with this. 
 It should be understood however that he only ate two meals in a 
 day. In London he wholly eschewed every sort of lunch, and I 
 dare say at Trowan as well. He| breakfasted copiously towards ten 
 or eleven ; then set-to at painting, his ordinary allowance of which 
 was every ensuing scrap of daylight ; then, more or less late accord- 
 ing to season, but often as late as nine in the evening or even 
 afterwards, he dined, with abundance of appetite.] I may further 
 truly say that he, not being a believer in physiological things, did 
 not regard tea as possessing the attributes of totality. [Clearly, by 
 this facetious phrase, the doctor means that Rossetti was much the 
 reverse of a teetotaller. A teetotaller he never was ; but in youth 
 he was abstemious to a very unusual degree, and I question whether 
 I ever once saw him exceed in wine or other stimulants at table. 
 As to whisky-drams washing-down chloral, and now and then at 
 some other time of the day, I have already spoken.] By a careful 
 treatment of him I procured him good nights ; effecting this object 
 chiefly by remaining at his bedside, and draining my memory of 
 every anecdote I had ever heard, and relating to him every amusing 
 incident that I had encountered during life in my intercourse with 
 the world. Finding him so well recovered, I left him in the hands 
 of his assistant and of my son, after an absence of many weeks." 
 
 Here I may as well say that that malady requiring surgical 
 treatment of which I made mention in Section XXIX., and 
 which was ordinarily attended to by the eminent surgeon 
 Mr. Durham (an old acquaintance), troubled my brother a 
 good deal about this period ; and, soon after his arrival in 
 Scotland, it was even thought that Mr. Marshall might have 
 to go down to relieve him. Ultimately, however, a local 
 
3^0 DANTE GAfeRIEL ROSSETTI. 
 
 surgeon was employed, and with entire success for the 
 time. 
 
 Dante Rossetti was one of those men whose money -affairs, 
 however prosperous in a general sense, would be sure, at any 
 moment of crisis or disablement, to present difficulties and 
 complications ; one salient reason for this being that, upon 
 undertaking any commission for a picture, he received in- 
 stalments of payment to keep him going while the work was 
 in progress, and thus, if the work came to a standstill, he 
 owed money for paintings undelivered and undeliverable. 
 When the great upset of 1872 took place, followed by some 
 three months of enforced idleness, with an indisposition, 
 amounting to incapacity, for attending to any details of 
 business, the care of his money-matters devolved upon me. 
 Mr. Scott's reference to this minor affair is highly erroneous. 1 
 He thinks that I was " so prostrated with anxiety that F. M. 
 Brown took all business-matters out of my hand." Nothing 
 of the sort was done. I was not prostrated, though I as- 
 suredly was afflicted, and, had I not been so, the more shame 
 to me. My brother's money was removed from his own 
 bank, and placed in Brown's bank (I had no bank of my own 
 until two or three weeks later) in the joint names of Brown 
 and myself. We drew joint cheques for my brother's occa- 
 sions at first. After a very short time, a different arrangement 
 was made, and I myself banked the money, and alone drew 
 the cheques ; and, as matters rapidly righted themselves, no 
 sort of inconvenience ensued to my brother, his creditors, or 
 any one else. One of the first things done, to raise convenient 
 funds in hand, was to sell-off Rossetti's beautiful collection 
 of blue china. I alone transacted this business, and secured 
 an offer of £650. I informed my brother by letter, and he 
 replied by letter on 4 July, ratifying the arrangement. Here 
 again Mr. Scott was either much misinformed, or else he 
 wrote from some mere supposition of his own — speaking of 
 
 1 I said as much in a letter which I got published in The Academy 
 towards the close of 1892, soon after the appearance of Mr. Scott's 
 volumes. 
 
STAY AND WORK AT KELMSCOTT, 1 872-4. 32 i 
 
 " the disposal, without his [Dante Rossetti's] knowledge, of 
 this assemblage of pots and dishes." On another point Mr. 
 Scott is of course right — namely, that, when Dante quitted 
 his Cheyne Walk house for Brown's or for Scotland, " it was 
 thought proper to have all his pictures, finished or in progress, 
 removed elsewhere. They were accordingly taken to my 
 [Scott's] house, which was conveniently near, among them 
 the huge Dante's Dream." We were naturally very glad to 
 get these works out of Rossetti's house, left with no regular 
 tenant, and much obliged to Mr. Scott for storing them. 
 They were deposited in a large kind of brick-and-glass 
 structure which stood in his back-garden, and which he 
 himself used at times as a studio. 
 
 XXXV. 
 
 STAY AND WORK AT KELMSCOTT, 1872-4.— 
 THEODORE WATTS. 
 
 TRAVELLING southward from Scotland in the company of 
 Mr. George Hake, Rossetti reached Kelmscott Manor-house 
 on 24 September 1872 ; and, allowance being made for his 
 partial lameness, he seemed healthy, robust, full of working- 
 energy, and on the whole calm-minded, and even for the 
 most part in excellent spirits. The reader will recollect that 
 the Manor-house was occupied by Mr. Morris and his family 
 jointly with Rossetti. They were not always there ; but one 
 or other member of the family, sometimes all of them to- 
 gether, were present very frequently ; and thus my brother 
 was usually supplied with plenty of congenial society, even 
 apart from other friends of his from London who often ran 
 down for some days. Mr. George Hake also was permanently 
 with him, assisting him in secretarial and other work, at 
 which he was equally expert and obliging. I saw my brother 
 at Kelmscott for a week or so towards the end of October, 
 and found him in very good trim, although occasionally 
 something showed in his mind some trace of lurking suspicion 
 VOL. I. 21 
 
322 DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI. 
 
 or prejudice. He continued taking chloral. In one instance 
 at least, January 1874, I attended, under Mr. Marshall's 
 directions, to getting the drug, before its being dispatched to 
 Kelmscott, diluted, so that its strength was only half what 
 my brother was left to suppose. At Kelmscott he abandoned 
 shaving, and grew whiskers and beard all round — as some 
 people thought, to the detriment of his appearance ; mous- 
 taches he had worn for a long succession of years, though 
 not in his very earliest youth. Having once begun a beard, 
 he never left it off again. He continued keeping very late 
 hours. According to Oliver Madox Brown — his old friend's 
 son, then a youth of nineteen, who showed astonishing pre- 
 cocious faculty both in painting and in novel-writing, and 
 who visited him in March 1874 — the dinner-hour was 1*0 P.M. ; 
 and, according to Rossetti himself, on the occasion of a short 
 visit from Mr. Howell, " 3 A.M. gave place to 5 A.M. as bed- 
 time before the house was clear of him." What could be 
 expected for a man of forty-five, recovering from a fearful 
 state of nervous prostration and enfeebled health, who, dining 
 at 10, went to bed at 3 or 5, and dosed himself with chloral 
 and alcohol before hoping for a wink of sleep ? From these 
 unnatural conditions a natural consequence had to ensue, 
 and, after a longer interval than might have been counted 
 upon, it did ensue. 
 
 It is in the opening days of this Kelmscott sojourn that 
 I find the first trace of Mr. Theodore Watts in my brother's 
 correspondence. As a solicitor, Mr. Watts, a friend of Dr. 
 Hake, advised Rossetti in adjusting a provoking matter about 
 a forgery which had recently been committed upon him, and 
 of which the Family-letters exhibit something. As we all 
 know, however, Mr. Watts is much else besides being a 
 solicitor — a man of letters, poet, and critic ; and very soon 
 my brother found that this gentleman's converse and sym- 
 pathy in literary matters were quite as welcome to him as 
 his mastery of the law. As years went on, Mr. Watts became 
 by far the most constant companion and mainstay of Rossetti, 
 whether in relation to literary work, to business-affairs, or 
 
STAY AND WORK AT KELMSCOTT, 1 872-4. 323 
 
 to daily intercourse — daily, and indeed nightly as well. This 
 unweariable friend was by him in all his requirements ; and 
 it is difficult to conjecture how Rossetti would, without him, 
 have passed his closing years — certainly in some guise and 
 under some arrangements very different from those which 
 actually obtained. A letter from my brother to Madox 
 Brown — dating, it may be, early in 1873 — contains the follow- 
 ing words, which he had occasion to repeat inwardly, if not 
 outwardly, times out of number : — 
 
 " Watts left yesterday. He is a first-rate companion and a first- 
 rate fellow — few equal to him in sterling qualities and cultivation." 
 
 Mr. Charles Augustus Howell was a man of many 
 activities, and into all of them he threw himself with great 
 vivacity, enterprise, and push. He had ere now ceased to be 
 Ruskin's secretary, and had become a speculator and dealer 
 in works of art of many kinds. For the last year or two my 
 brother had lost sight of him mostly or wholly. The latter 
 had settled down at Kelmscott, an out-of-the-way place of 
 great seclusion, because he deemed it necessary for his health 
 and comfort, and for the avoidance of some of the worry and 
 harass which in London seemed certain either to beset him, 
 or to be regarded by himself as besetting him ; and he had 
 resumed painting with all zest and energy — equal at least to 
 what had marked him in any earlier years. His style was 
 now larger than aforetime, and his tone of mind for pictorial 
 work more tense, though certainly not more inventive, nor 
 so much a denizen of the realms of romance. With his 
 acute eye for business, he soon saw that his isolation on 
 the borders of four shires — Oxford, Gloucester, Berks, and 
 Wilts — was not exactly adapted for confirming or improving 
 his professional success. He had a few attached and steady 
 purchasers — chiefly now Leyland and Graham ; but these 
 and others could not be continually running after him, to 
 see what work was in hand, and to commission it if falling-in 
 with their tastes. Rossetti therefore, soon after housing 
 at Kelmscott, determined that he would have an agent in 
 
324 DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI. 
 
 London, to transact the sale of uncommissioned work and 
 any other business on hand ; and he decided that Howell 
 was his man for such purposes. Howell acquiesced with 
 great alacrity. Whatever his faults, he was a man of lively 
 feelings, capable of regarding a confiding friend with pre- 
 dilection, and even affection ; and I am satisfied that from 
 first to last there was a very warm corner in his heart for 
 Dante Rossetti. As a salesman — with his open manner, his 
 winning address, and his exhaustless gift of amusing talk, 
 not innocent of high colouring and of actual blague — Howell 
 was unsurpassable ; and he achieved for Rossetti, with ease 
 and also with much ingenious planning, many a stroke of 
 most excellent professional business, such as other men, less 
 capable of playing upon the hobbies or weaknesses of their 
 fellow-creatures, would have found arduous or impossible. 
 His very voice, with a scarcely perceptible foreign twang 
 in it, was a gift of Nature which no art could have rivalled. 
 He had a good footing in society, and in the world of art 
 many ins and outs of connexion. Howell and Rossetti 
 kept up at Kelmscott a very active correspondence ; and 
 the painter entrusted to his agent several works, which he 
 found to go off very much to his satisfaction. To all this 
 there was a less pleasing side, which developed in course of 
 time ; but I will here say with emphasis that my brother, 
 long after he and Howell had parted company, assured me 
 more than once that he had materially benefited in purse 
 from Howell's exertions, had at no other time experienced 
 equal facilities in disposing of his works, and had never been 
 conscious of the least direct unfairness towards himself in 
 the dealings of the highly resourceful Anglo-Portuguese. As 
 my brother (though in some ways extremely heedless and 
 lax in spending money) was always keenly alive to his own 
 interests in acquiring it, and not at all the man to be long 
 hoodwinked by anybody, and was in his later years more 
 than duly suspicious of various persons, this testimony to the 
 fair dealing of Mr. Howell — considerably decried in life and 
 after death — should in justice not be lost sight of. 
 
STAY AND WORK AT KELMSCOTT, 1 872-4. 325 
 
 It may be as well to add (without entering into many 
 details) that, at the beginning of the business-connexion 
 between Howell and Rossetti, the former had a partner or 
 quasi-partner, Mr. John R. Parsons, who was a relative of 
 our old family friends the Keightleys. Mr. Parsons, a very 
 pleasant young gentleman, had a financial backer who re- 
 mained unknown to both Howell and Rossetti, and, owing 
 to some dispute, mainly fomented or dictated by this backer, 
 about an early Proserpine picture which my brother had 
 forwarded for sale, the transactions with Mr. Parsons came 
 to an end pretty soon, but left quite unaffected the transactions 
 with Mr. Howell individually. 
 
 Very few things produced by Rossetti came so near to 
 satisfying him as the Proserpine, in those two versions (not 
 including the one just mentioned) which, in my other volume, 
 Dante Gabriel Rossetti as Designer and Writer, I have termed 
 Nos. 3 and 4. The latter was sold to Mr. Leyland, and the 
 former to Mr. W. A. Turner. Mrs. Morris, the ideal sitter 
 for such a subject, posed for the head. Proserpine, in perfect 
 beauty shadowed with doom, is represented holding the 
 pomegranate of which she had eaten in Hades, thereby 
 unknowingly sentencing herself to the immortality of the 
 nether world. A gleam of light from the outer sky strikes 
 upon the background. Rossetti, as in several other instances, 
 wrote a sonnet for this picture. It was first in Italian, and 
 then in English. Great were the tribulations of the Proserpine 
 canvases — seven in all, besides crayon-drawings. The first 
 three were rejected ; the fourth had ill-success with Mr. 
 Parsons. Then my so-called No. 3 had its glass twice 
 smashed and renewed, and twice it was lined to prevent 
 accidents. Then No. 4 had its frame smashed twice, its glass 
 once ; it was nearly spoiled while under transfer to a new 
 strainer ; and, in transit to the purchaser, the glass was again 
 much damaged, and some other things as well. Luckily there 
 was only a scratch on the neck and cheek. 
 
 Other works proper to this Kelmscott period are : in oils, 
 La Ghirlandata, a composition of three figures, in which 
 
326 DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI. 
 
 music is again, as in the Veronica Veronese, a principal 
 element ; The Bower-Maiden (or Fleurs de Marie), a pleasing 
 picture without ideal quality ; The Blessed Damozel (begun 
 in 1873, or even in 1871, but chiefly the product of succeeding 
 years on to 1877); Dante's Dream — the smaller, but still 
 large, replica for Mr. Graham, after that gentleman had parted 
 with the original work— was planned out by Mr. Dunn at 
 Chelsea while Rossetti was at Kelmscott, but all the painter's 
 own work upon this canvas belongs to a later date — a double 
 predella is added to the replica only ; The Roman Widow 
 (or Dis Manibus), a lady in a mortuary chamber, playing 
 on two harps. In water-colour there was nothing of leading 
 importance. In crayons or coloured chalk, Ligeia Siren, 
 a portrait of Mr. Theodore Watts, and that (one of our 
 illustrations) of my wife Lucy Brown, to whom I was 
 married in March 1874. Some of these works have been 
 mentioned before in another connexion. I will now only 
 say that La Ghirlandata is, more obviously than usual, a 
 picture having some symbolic intention, which different 
 minds may be disposed to interpret differently ; and that 
 The Roman Widow seems to me quite unsurpassed, amid 
 my brother's work, for pathetic sweetness and beautiful 
 simplicity. If he painted one supremely loveable picture, 
 it is, I think, The Roman Widow — even in preference to the 
 Beata Beatrix or The Beloved. 
 
 As to poetry, Rossetti produced scarcely anything in this 
 term of about two years. I could only name the sonnets on 
 the Proserpine and on Winter. Painting kept him busy, along 
 with correspondence, and sometimes personal colloquy, rela- 
 ting to the painting affairs. He brought out the re-cast of his 
 old Italian translations, Dante and his Circle ; thought, at the 
 beginning of 1873, of publishing a new volume of original 
 poems, but finally decided that these were not as yet suffi- 
 ciently numerous ; and projected a translation of all Michel- 
 angelo's poems, but never made a real commencement with 
 this. Some one has invidiously said that Rossetti was " snuffed 
 out by an article." Byron used this phrase erroneously, 
 
STAY AND WORK AT KELMSCOTT, 1 872-4. 327 
 
 though at that date excusably, about Keats ; but in relation 
 to Rossetti it is obviously untrue. We here see that, within a 
 few months after the Contemporary article had been re-issued 
 as a pamphlet, he was seriously thinking of publishing a new 
 volume of poems, and he did in fact publish one in 1881. 
 The author of The White Ship and The King's Tragedy was 
 not exactly snuffed out, whether critically or morally, whether 
 by an article or by a libel. 
 
 I will add a word or two here about certain " Nonsense- 
 verses " scribbled, or more generally extemporized and recited, 
 by Rossetti. A few of them must have got into print here 
 and there. In Mr. Scott's book four or more are inserted (one 
 at least of these being pitiably mauled by a hand and ear less 
 correct at rhythm than Rossetti's). Mr. Scott remarks as 
 follows : — 
 
 " The habit of making satirical rhymes like these [two staves by 
 Hueffer which had been cited] was an outcome of the appearance 
 of Lear's Book of Nonsense. D. G. R. began the habit with us, the 
 difficulty of finding a rhyme for the name being often the sole 
 inducement. Swinburne assisted him, and all of us ; and every day 
 for a year or two they used to fly about." 
 
 This practice may have commenced with Rossetti, I 
 suppose, towards 1864 or 1865, and may have lasted up to 
 1874, but hardly beyond that. He produced scores of these 
 Nonsense-verses, with the greatest ease ; many of them just 
 about as good as such things can be made. Now and again 
 one or other of them flits fitfully through my mind. If 
 nobody preserved a goodish string of them, it is a pity. 
 Possibly Mr. Swinburne's miraculous verbal memory, if he 
 cared to exercise it on such a trifle, would recover many of 
 Rossetti's stanzas, and also of those which other nimble- 
 witted heads produced, his own included. My brother was, 
 I think, the best of all for odd ear-catching spontaneity. 
 One of those given by Mr. Scott is a curious rhyming ingeni- 
 osity. It relates to a young poet (his name by this date better 
 remembered than his works) whom Rossetti knew and liked 
 
328 DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI. 
 
 well, and whose abilities he esteemed ; so of course the rhyme, 
 for all its grotesqueness, is not in the least ill-natured in 
 intention. I cite the lines as they appear in Mr. Scott's book, 
 but (even apart from the meaningless substitution of the 
 word " checkboard " for " chessboard ") am not sure of their 
 entire verbal accuracy :• — 
 
 " There's the Irishman Arthur O'Shaughnessy — 
 On the chessboard of poets a pawn is he ; 
 Though bishop or king 
 Would be rather the thing 
 To the fancy of Arthur O'Shaughnessy." 
 
 In another instance a lady's Christian name, Olive, was 
 named to my brother, and he was defied to rhyme to that. 
 Quick as lightning came the response, much to the following 
 effect : — 
 
 " There is a young female named Olive — 
 When God made her he made a doll live " etc. 
 
 But Rossetti admitted that this was just a rhyme, and not 
 an accurate description of the lady, to him (it may or may 
 not be) unknown. 
 
 Though my brother was on the whole extremely well 
 when he settled at Kelmscott in 1872, and only a little beset 
 — hardly perturbed— by those fanciful ideas of widespread 
 animosities and conspiracies etc. which had been so marked 
 at the close of the spring and during the summer, he relapsed 
 after a while, and I assume that chloral was again mainly 
 conducive to this unfortunate result. In May 1874 Dr. Hake 
 told me that, according to his son George, Rossetti exhibited 
 signs of faintness sometimes after a walk or any exertion. 
 When my wife and I visited him for a few days in the early 
 summer of that year, we perceived that he was once more 
 troubled with suspicions of servants and other persons, and 
 by no means exempt from disquieting symptoms. Mr. Scott 
 has seen fit to publish an anecdote relating to a slightly 
 earlier date, arid I will here extract it ; — 
 
STAY AND WORK AT KELMSCOTT, 1 872-4. 329 
 
 "On 19 April 1874 I received these words by post: 'My dear 
 Scotus, I am likely to be needing ,£200 in a few days, and 
 happen unluckily at this moment to be run rather dry. Could 
 you manage to lend it me ? and if so to oblige me with a cheque at 
 once ? ' Knowing his affairs to be prosperous at the time, I could 
 not view this request with composure. He was living quietly at 
 Kelmscott ; but I came to the conclusion that it was my duty as his 
 friend to keep his mind easy. Accordingly by next post the cheque 
 was dispatched. By next again it came back to me in a note, saying 
 he had 'just received some money, and he returned my cheque no 
 less thankfully than if he had needed it.' He had by that time lost 
 nearly every old friend save myself. Did he now suspect that I was 
 among his enemies, and had he done this to try me ? I fear this 
 semi-insane motive was the true one." 
 
 Throughout April 1874 I was abroad, and necessarily I 
 knew nothing of what was happening between Scott in 
 London and my brother at Kelmscott. Even had I been in 
 London, I might probably have remained alike uninformed. 
 I cannot therefore elucidate this matter unless by conjecture. 
 To me it seems abundantly probable that at some time in 
 April my brother found occasion for some such amount as 
 ,£200, and had it not at his immediate disposal ; and that he 
 acted bond fide in asking Scott for the sum, which Scott very 
 liberally, though as he shows reluctantly, sent. My brother, 
 it seems, returned the cheque forthwith, on the alleged ground 
 that he had meanwhile received money from another quarter. 
 This was, in itself, an unobjectionable and even a laudable 
 proceeding. Moreover the alleged ground seems so likely 
 that one might hardly have expected a different surmise to 
 be put forward in reference to a " dear friend." And again, 
 if the dear friend was really so stricken as to be " semi- 
 insane," his conduct might have been construed more in 
 sorrow than in anger. That Rossetti had then " lost nearly 
 every old friend " save Mr. Scott is a gratuitous and an 
 incorrect statement. There were Brown, Stephens, Hughes, 
 Seddon, Boyce, Lowes Dickinson, Tebbs, John Marshall, 
 Jones, Morris, Peter Paul Marshall, and Howell — not to cast 
 
330 DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI. 
 
 about for others. But it may well be that Scott was more 
 likely than some of these to have ready money available, and 
 he was the oldest friend of all. 
 
 Mr. Scott — I have more than once had occasion to say and 
 to prove it — was extremely shaky in his dates. If it so 
 happens that not 19 April, but 9 or 10 April, was the real 
 date of Rossetti's first letter, there is a coincidence regarding 
 money which seems to come particularly pat. On 10 April 
 Mr. Leyland (I possess his letter) sent Rossetti a sum of 
 £200 on account of The Roman Widow ; and this sum must 
 (assuming my conjecture to be accurate) have reached him just 
 about the same time as Scott's cheque for the like amount. 
 Of course I cannot affirm that Mr. Scott made here any such 
 mistake as to the date, but I can scarcely help regarding it as 
 the reverse of improbable. 
 
 Immediately after detailing this matter of the cheque 
 Mr. Scott proceeds as follows : — 
 
 " A very short time after, he suddenly left Kelmscott for altogether, 
 having got into a foundationless quarrel with some anglers by the 
 river, unnecessary to describe." 
 
 This is correct. I never knew with much precision the 
 details of the quarrel referred to, but understand it to have 
 been much on this wise. My brother was taking a riverside 
 stroll along with George Hake, and saw a party of three or 
 four anglers. He fancied that they called out to him in an 
 insulting way ; which was either a morbid mis-hearing of 
 something which they really said, or perhaps an actual 
 physical delusion. Ireful, impetuous as usual, and now totally 
 reckless of probable consequences, Rossetti ran up to the 
 anglers, and with vigorous abuse retorted upon the supposed 
 insult. Mr. Hake had to follow as fast as he could, and, 
 offering whatever explanation came uppermost, parted the 
 antagonists. The anglers could not fail to be astonished ; 
 rumours of the strange outburst began to circulate ; and 
 Rossetti found that Kelmscott had ceased to be a place of 
 comfort for him, and had become or would rapidly be 
 
LONDON AND ELSEWHERE, 1 874-8. 33 1 
 
 becoming a hotbed of discomfort. So he returned to London 
 and Cheyne Walk towards the latter end of July. He never 
 again set his foot in Kelmscott Manor-house. 
 
 XXXVI. 
 
 LONDON AND ELSEWHERE, 1874-8. 
 
 I AM now getting on towards the end of the life of that man 
 of astonishing genius, ardent initiative, vigorous and fas- 
 cinating personality, abundant loveableness, many defects, 
 and in late years overclouded temperament and bedimmed 
 outlook on the world, whom it was once my privilege to call 
 brother. I wish to present a true picture of him to the 
 reader. This, not an easy task even in the case of a far more 
 ordinary man, is truly difficult when one has to deal with so 
 complex a personage — one who, with so much height and 
 depth, combined so many excesses of feeling, inequalities of 
 impression, and discords of act. In some previous instances 
 Mr. Bell Scott's book has served to determine what is the least 
 favourable light in which the proceedings of Dante Rossetti 
 can be viewed. I will again have recourse to it for opening 
 the present Section, which will chiefly concern my brother's 
 condition of health mental and physical, and his demeanour 
 in that connexion. 
 
 No sooner has Mr. Scott disposed of the incident of the 
 anglers at Kelmscott than he continues in the following 
 terms : — 
 
 " He sent for me [on re-settling in Cheyne Walk]. I found him 
 quiet and taciturn. He only said the change would do him good. 
 From that time, till now that I write this, he has lived within the 
 house, never even going into the street, never seeing any one." 
 
 This turn of phrase makes it obvious that Mr. Scott was 
 writing at some date during Rossetti's lifetime ; and the 
 ensuing reference to Mr. George Hake suggests that the date 
 was not very long after the parting of my brother, January 1877, 
 
332 DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI. 
 
 from that gentleman. Now it is totally untrue that Rossetti, 
 between July 1874, when he returned to London from 
 Kelmscott, and some time in 1877, never went into the street. 
 It is quite correct that he did not go to and fro in the streets, 
 in a casual sort of way, to any extent worth mentioning ; but 
 he went out constantly — I believe only occasionally missing 
 a day — in the late evening. His habit was to enter a fly from 
 his own door with George Hake, and drive up to some airy 
 spot, very often the Circles of Regent's Park. There he got 
 out, took a longish walk with his companion, and then re- 
 entered the fly, and drove home. I am far from saying that 
 this was a wholly rational proceeding, or that it did not bespeak 
 a certain exaggerated craving for seclusion ; but it is a very 
 different thing from " living within the house, and never going 
 even into the street." Besides, as we shall see, there were 
 three absences in the country, two of them of considerable 
 duration, in 1875, 76, and 77. Mr. Scott's addendum, "never 
 seeing any one," is, in its literal sense, at least as incorrect as 
 the other statement about house and street. I suppose how- 
 ever that the real meaning is that Rossetti never went now to 
 other people's houses to see them. Even this is not absolutely 
 accurate ; but it approaches towards accuracy, and with this, 
 from our present author, we may count ourselves content. 
 
 It deserves some consideration moreover that the habit of 
 walking out in the late evening, and not in the day, was not 
 altogether a novelty with Rossetti, brought on by that general 
 change of feeling which resulted from the Buchanan pamphlet 
 of 1872. There is a letter of his to Mr. Shields, 24 Decem- 
 ber 1869 (published in The Century-guild Hobbyhorse, No. 16), 
 which says that he was then, in fine weather, in the practice 
 of taking long walks in Battersea Park, " whereas my habit 
 had long been to walk only at nights, except when in the 
 country." This habit, bad as it was in hygiene, can easily be 
 accounted for. He rose late ; painted all day as long as light 
 served him ; then dined ; and, whether winter or summer, all 
 was darkness tempered by gaslight or moonlight by the hour 
 he left the house. 
 
LONDON AND ELSEWHERE, 1 874-8. 333 
 
 Scott proceeds : — 
 
 " Holman Hunt, Woolner, and other artists, had left him long 
 ago ; now Swinburne and Morris were not to be seen there. Even 
 Dr. Hake deserted him, feeling aggrieved by his patient and long- 
 suffering son George being driven away after several years' sacrifice. 
 The old Doctor would see him no more." 
 
 About Hunt and Woolner I have already said something ; 
 but to speak of " other artists " who " had left " Rossetti, 
 without referring to Madox Brown, who continued to see him 
 with all the olden affection and much the same as the olden 
 frequency (so far as his calls in Cheyne Walk were concerned), 
 is, to say the least, an omission. There were others also — 
 especially Shields when in London- — and other details could be 
 added substantially diminishing the force of what Scott says 
 about artists ; but I need not enlarge upon this, nor upon the 
 poets Swinburne and Morris, who best know what line of con- 
 duct they did or did not adopt. The allegation that Dr. Hake 
 " deserted him," and " would see him no more," is not accurate. 
 He held aloof for a while ; but in October 1878 he himself 
 told me that he had then recently written to my brother, 
 intimating the continuance of his friendly feelings ; and it was 
 only because Rossetti replied in a tone which (although respon- 
 sive in cordiality) appeared to the Doctor like a farewell, that 
 he abstained from taking further steps for renewing the inti- 
 macy. I think his re-appearance would have been a satisfac- 
 tion, and am sure it would have been a benefit, to my brother. 
 In December 1878 they exchanged other friendly notes. 
 
 About Mr. George Hake there might be a good deal to 
 say. I don't know what his " several years' sacrifice " 
 amounted to. He was a young man without a profession, 
 and without (so far as I ever saw or heard) any definite 
 expectation of employment of whatsoever kind. My brother, 
 at the opening of their connexion, liked him much, found 
 him extremely pleasant and accommodating, and ready to 
 do whatever came to hand, and engaged him as secretary 
 at a salary which I suppose to be highly adequate if not 
 
334 DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTL 
 
 liberal, and which was punctually paid. Moreover the 
 residence at Kelmscott was quite convenient to Mr. George 
 Hake — the place being very near Oxford, where he com- 
 pleted his academical course during that interval of time. 
 I will openly say that from first to last I never witnessed 
 any solid ground of complaint given to my brother by Mr. 
 Hake ; but Dante did at times, as the connexion wore on, 
 mention circumstances to me which he clearly believed to 
 be true, and which, under that belief, he was warranted in 
 taking into account. That he was fanciful in these chloralized 
 years is plain ; and that he could at all times of his life get 
 more angry on a sudden than beseems a philosopher, and 
 comport himself with more of abruptness and vehemence, 
 is also allowed. For some while before the parting came, 
 he thought it had better come pretty soon, yet continued to 
 temporize. At last there was an outburst, and the parting 
 ensued. I, scanning the matter from my own point of view, 
 regretted this upshot not a little. After a while irritation 
 abated, and my brother met his late secretary again — at 
 any rate in August 1880. — But all this about Mr. George 
 Hake is really a private affair, and would not have appeared 
 in my pages at all, but that Mr. Scott saw fit to give it 
 prominence as derogatory to my brother. 
 
 Mr. Scott next adverts to that matter, proper to the year 
 1872, about Browning's Fifine at the Fair. It is noticed in 
 Section XXXIV. Scott's reference to it is exaggerated in 
 expression, but that need not detain us. One sentence is the 
 reverse of the fact — viz., " Browning, as his manner was, 
 had never acknowledged Rossetti's presentation-copy of his 
 Poems, and now this confirmed him to be among the enemies." 
 Browning did acknowledge that presentation-copy, and 
 acknowledge it with praise. I have said so in Section XXXII., 
 and I still possess his letter. Why did Mr. Scott make this 
 allegation ? Apparently because he misremembered a state- 
 ment, occurring in a letter from my brother, August 1871, 
 that Browning had not acknowledged the volume of 1861, 
 The Early Italian Poets. This statement (as its context 
 
London and elsewhere, 1874-8. 335 
 
 Shows) merely illustrates the thesis that Browning was hostile 
 to all translating work ; but one phase of Mr. Scott's inner 
 consciousness certified him that his " dearest of friends and 
 most interesting of men " * was a remarkably flabby creature, 
 and so he introduced this random assertion. It might indeed 
 be contended that the allegation that Browning did not reply 
 as to the Poems does not convey any imputation upon 
 Rossetti ; but it conveys, and appears aimed to convey, 
 the imputation that Rossetti's delusive notion about Browning 
 and Fifine was the outcome of wounded vanity, occasioned 
 by the non-acknowledgment of the recent volume. 
 I continue quoting : — 
 
 " Only two quite new men were now to be seen about him. One 
 was William Sharp, a poet to be ; the other, Theodore Watts, who, 
 being professionally a lawyer, managed everything for him, and who 
 was just then beginning to write criticisms in the weekly papers, so 
 was looked upon by poor D. G. R. as doubly important. Happily 
 Watts has been invaluable since then in many ways ; fascinated by 
 Rossetti, ill as he was, and always ready and able to serve him." 
 
 In this passage Madox Brown — not to speak of any one 
 else — is again ignored. The designation of date comes in 
 the word " now " in the opening sentence, and one does 
 not know what the " now " may have been. The suggestion 
 that Mr. Sharp was frequently with Rossetti by the date 
 when Mr. Watts " was just beginning to write criticisms in 
 the weekly papers " appears to me erroneous. But, consider- 
 ing that " poor D. G. R " is duly pitied by Mr. Bell Scott, and 
 Mr. Watts duly praised, one may excuse this. 
 
 Then comes the conclusion of this chapter of the Autobio- 
 graphical Notes : — 
 
 " For myself, Rossetti had been the last of a succession of men 
 I had loved, and had tried to make love me. For each of them I 
 would have given all but life, and I was again defeated by destiny. 
 Equal candour and confidence he never had to give ; but now his 
 
 1 Scott's Illustrations to the King's Quair, p. 19. 
 
336 bANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI. 
 
 singular manias made ordinary friendly intercourse impossible to 
 him. After having been both his banker and his nurse, I could not 
 depend upon him either in action or word. Still I remained faithful 
 to the old tie, and Miss Boyd agreed in doing so also. We con- 
 tinued our occasional visits, either morning or evening, the only two 
 of all his old circle." 
 
 All this seems (so far as its diction is concerned) to 
 relate to the same period when Mr. Watts was "just begin- 
 ning " etc. ; and, if so, it is monstrous to say that Miss Boyd 
 and Scott, to the exclusion of Brown, were " the only two of 
 all his old circle." It is however true that Brown did not 
 see Rossetti for some while at the close of 1877, and during 
 1878 and a part of 1879 ; and in August 1881 he settled in 
 Manchester, and the two old friends could barely meet again 
 some two or three times. Mr. Scott disparages Rossetti's 
 " candour and confidence " at all times of their intimacy, and 
 later on " could not depend upon him either in action or 
 word." As to the candour and confidence, I question whether 
 Rossetti showed any deficiency in these. He was cordial, out- 
 spoken, and in fact far too communicative of matters which, 
 affecting others as well as himself, he ought to have kept 
 locked up in his own breast. His public letters to Mr. Scott 
 have an air of great frankness and bonhomie joined with 
 affection. And, as to the statement that Mr. Scott " could 
 not depend on him either in action or word," I may observe 
 that Scott's letters to Rossetti, of which several belonging to 
 this period are extant in my hands, do not indicate any want 
 of such dependence — they have the external marks of free 
 interchange of thought and information upon such subjects 
 as came uppermost. It is indeed true that my brother 
 continued liable to morbid fancies and needless suspicions, 
 and, in relation to these, he must often have propounded as 
 fact something which was only supposition on his part, and 
 unfounded supposition. 
 
 I have now done with this passage in Scott's book ; and 
 can only regret having had to point out so much of mis- 
 statement and over-statement in the writing of a thoughtful 
 
LONDON AND ELSEWHERE, 1 874-8. 337 
 
 man, of many fine gifts and feelings, upon his " dearest of 
 friends," whom he knew moreover to be in some respects an 
 invalid, and thus one to whom indulgence might have been 
 an acquaintance's duty and an old familiar's prerogative. 
 
 In these years the state of my brother's health, his spirits, 
 and his mental impressions upon particular points, was 
 frequently unsatisfactory, though there were rallies in respect 
 both of physical well-being and of cheerfulness. Mr. Watts 
 was certainly much oftener with him than any one else, 
 serving to keep him in tone, and endlessly helpful in a variety 
 of ways. I regret to say that I myself saw my brother but 
 little— living at the other end of London, occupied with 
 official work all day, and commonly with literary work in the 
 evening, recently married, and with growing family-ties of my 
 own. Towards the end of 1875 Rossetti felt a great need of 
 changing from London and its associations. He went to 
 Bognor, renting a house named Aldwick Lodge, and here he 
 remained till about the end of June 1876. He was constantly 
 occupied in painting at Aldwick Lodge, and received there 
 several friends, and most of the members of his family. No 
 doubt my wife and I would have gone likewise at some time, 
 but there was a baby, and also a nurse ; and my brother 
 expressly said (the question arose in November 1875) that he 
 would not house the nurse. Dr. Hake speaks of the Lodge as 
 
 " a commodious villa and grounds, in a lane west of the town, 
 and near to the roughest bit of beach on the Sussex coast. The 
 villa had good rooms. Upstairs was a gallery, with bedchambers on 
 both sides, and ending in a large apartment which became a studio." 
 In the afternoons Rossetti " took a violent walk [his pace was 
 always a resolute and rather quick one] over the boulders by the sea 
 towards Selsey Bay, among the ruined wooden groynes which had 
 become sea-weed gardens, hideous of aspect, as if invented and laid 
 out by fish made man." 
 
 Dr. Hake holds that Rossetti took no heed of the scene ; 
 whereas another writer 1 (I cannot say an authority) assumes 
 
 1 Mrs. Wood. 
 VOL. I. 22 
 
338 DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI. 
 
 that he now first took pleasure in the sea and sea-walks. I 
 hardly know why this should be affirmed — he had from of old 
 known such places as Boulogne, Hastings, and Clevedon — 
 but it is true that, whether at Bognor or elsewhere, he indulged 
 in sea-trips scarcely at all. As he was a very qualmy sailor, 
 sea-sickness assailed him with great virulence and perti- 
 nacity. 
 
 During Rossetti's stay near Bognor a libel-case was going 
 on in London, Mr. Buchanan suing Mr. Peter Taylor, then 
 proprietor of The Examine}'. Rossetti was not in the faintest 
 degree concerned in writing or prompting any of the matter 
 charged as libellous ; but this matter involved in part an 
 attack upon the conduct of Mr. Buchanan in relation to 
 his article in the Contemporary Review. My brother was 
 extremely desirous of avoiding all sort of intermixture 
 in this trial, and that may, I think, have been one reason 
 why his stay at Aldwick Lodge was so prolonged. He 
 returned to Chelsea almost as soon as the trial was over. 
 Let me add, in fairness to Mr. Buchanan, that the jury 
 agreed with him in considering he had been libelled, and they 
 gave him damages to the amount of ^150. Whether they 
 were right or wrong is a question I can leave alone. 
 
 Hardly had my brother returned to London when he went 
 to Broadlands in Hampshire, staying there for the better part 
 of the month of August. Broadlands was the seat of the 
 Right Honourable William Cowper-Temple and his wife (soon 
 afterwards Lord and Lady Mount-Temple). The husband 
 had some years previously become the owner of Rossetti's pic- 
 ture of Beata Beatrix, now in the National Gallery. Of the pro- 
 fuse kindness which he received in this mansion, and of his 
 ardent admiration of his host and hostess, more especially the 
 latter, his Family-letters bear ample record. Here he met 
 Mrs. Georgina Sumner, a lady mentioned in Section XXVII. 
 Mrs. Sumner also became a greatly attached friend of his, and 
 favoured him in London with sittings for some of his works. 
 Rossetti was not at all well at Broadlands ; suffering from 
 pains in the limbs (which recurred at intervals afterwards), 
 
LONDON AND ELSEWHERE, 1 874-8. 339 
 
 and from " nights of utter unrest." His spirits however 
 improved. I apprehend that this flitting to Broadlands — 
 highly satisfactory though it proved in some respects — would 
 not have been undertaken, but for the fact that my brother 
 was now having some alterations effected in his studio. He 
 heard — or imagined — objectionable noises from an adjoining 
 house ; and he got the room-wall near the fireplace doubled, 
 and the space filled in with thick wadding. Mr. Watts and 
 Mr. Dunn attended to this cumbrous job, while Rossetti along 
 with George Hake was at Broadlands. The adjoining house 
 was occupied by a musician, Mr. Malcolm Lawson, and some 
 members of the family — Malcolm being a brother of the 
 distinguished young landscape-painter Cecil Lawson. I 
 have always had reason to suppose that the Lawsons and 
 their associates were perfectly well affected to my brother, 
 and would indeed have been proud to cultivate intercourse 
 with him ; but he did not think so, and fancied that there 
 was a large and frequent amount of unnecessary noise from 
 that house and its small grounds, audible both in his studio 
 and in his garden, and annoying, and intended to annoy, him. 
 I remember there was once a thrush hard by, which, to my 
 hearing, simply trilled its own lay on and off. My brother 
 discerned a different note, and conceived that the thrush 
 had been trained to ejaculate something insulting to him. 
 Such is perverted fantasy — or I may rather infer such is 
 an outcome of chloral-dosing. 
 
 Returned from Broadlands, Rossetti was constrained by 
 medical orders to face two nights without any chloral at 
 all ; and soon he tried mesmerism, with a result of better 
 nights and no pain in the limbs. A Miss Chandos appears 
 to have been the mesmerist, associated with Mr. Chandos 
 Leigh Hunt, a relative of the poet-essayist. 
 
 I must now recur to that matter which I have mentioned 
 before (Sections XXIX. and XXXIV.) of an inconvenience 
 from which my'brother suffered requiring surgical treatment. 
 This malady — which I surmise had not been at all attended 
 to since the late summer of 1872 — came to a severe crisis in 
 
340 DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI. 
 
 the middle of June 1877. It is referred to in an article which 
 Mr. Theodore Watts published in February 1895, 1 and I 
 could not perhaps do better than borrow his clear account of 
 the incident : — 
 
 " I cannot refrain from saying here a word about a certain occasion 
 in the year 1877 when he was extremely ill — not from the effects of 
 insomnia, but from a different cause altogether. He had for years 
 been subject to a certain organic disturbance which, though under 
 timely and skilful treatment it is not considered to be dangerous, 
 will become full of peril, and will indeed end fatally, if, in certain of 
 its developments, it is neglected or treated unskilfully. In 1877 this 
 ailment took a somewhat serious form. Yet our friend the eminent 
 surgeon John Marshall was not greatly alarmed, knowing that, 
 should it occur that the symptoms did take an aggravated turn, he 
 had but to perform a surgical operation in order to give relief. 
 This operation however was one of great delicacy, and the aggra- 
 vated symptoms necessitating it were apt to come on suddenly. 
 Marshall therefore left instructions with the housekeeper that, should 
 Rossetti seem to be suffering from an accession of illness, she was to 
 take a cab, and go at once to him at Savile Row. The symptoms 
 did come on quite suddenly ; but, as Rossetti was determined that 
 he would undergo no operation save in my presence, the house- 
 keeper, obeying his commands (which were always given with a 
 Napoleonic imperiousness), came to me at Putney, instead of going 
 straight to the doctor. On reaching Cheyne Walk, and seeing (as 
 I thought) that a serious rupture of internal blood-vessels had taken 
 place, I went to Marshall, and at once, and fortunately found him 
 in. My description of the state of things alarmed him. We called 
 for a chloroformist, and drove off to Cheyne Walk as fast as possible. 
 The operation was performed with all Marshall's usual skill, but 
 afterwards Rossetti fell into a state of the greatest weakness. I sent 
 for his unfailing friend Madox Brown to consult with Marshall, who 
 advised that Rossetti should be taken to the seaside. Heme Bay, 
 as being near to London, was the place selected, and thither he was 
 taken by Brown — or rather to a little place called Hunter's Forestall. 
 In a very little time Mrs. Rossetti, Christina, and myself, went down 
 to Heme Bay, and found Gabriel in a lamentable state of depression." 
 
 1 Recollections of Christina Rossetti, printed in The Nineteenth Century. 
 
LONDON AND ELSEWHERE, 1 874-8. 34I 
 
 I have only a few remarks to make in amplification of this 
 narrative. Although it is entirely true that this upset had no 
 direct connexion with insomnia, still Mr. Marshall informed me 
 at the time that the heavy doses of chloral retarded recovery 
 from the operation, and he once more urged that they should 
 be reduced ; and at the seaside they gradually were reduced, 
 standing at 30 or 40 grains instead of 180. But the notion of 
 leaving it off entirely was what Rossetti would not entertain. 
 He wrote to Brown, and not without a certain show of reason : 
 
 " The fact is that any man in my case must either do as I do, or 
 cease from necessary occupation, which cannot be pursued in the 
 day when the night is stripped of rest altogether." 
 
 The "Napoleonic imperiousness" is a good descriptive phrase 
 of Mr. Watts ; yet it should be understood that there was 
 always about as much of good-nature as of command in my 
 brother's address to servants and dependants, and he was 
 throughout life a prime favourite with all such people. They 
 would have done for him much more through liking than 
 for most other men through subservience. Two full months, 
 with a hired nurse in the house, elapsed between the operation 
 and the departure from London ; and it was only on 16 August 
 that Brown and I succeeded in almost forcing Dante into 
 Brown's house, and thence on the following day he proceeded 
 with his old friend to Heme Bay itself — Hunter's Forestall, 
 as being more peaceful and retired, coming two or three days 
 afterwards. The nurse remained with him all the while, only 
 leaving when my brother returned to town on 8 November. 
 Even after reaching his seaside retreat (at which Mr. Shields 
 also was a visitor for a time) Rossetti was for a good while 
 incapable of doing a stroke of designing-work, and greatly 
 feared that he would never be a painter again. At last the 
 power and the determination returned simultaneously ; he 
 drew an admirable crayon-group (head and shoulders) of our 
 mother and sister, two others equally good of the latter, and 
 yet another of our mother. Weather had been favourable, 
 spirits and energy revived, and he came back to town nerved 
 
342 DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI. 
 
 once more for the battle of art and of life. Mr. Marshall 
 declared that he looked ten years younger. It may be noted 
 that, in a letter to Brown from Hunter's Forestall, my brother 
 said : — 
 
 " I attribute any possible improvement to my having greatly 
 diminished my wine; I now may almost say that I take none in 
 daytime/and much less at night." 
 
 It must have been during my brother's stay at Hunter's 
 Forestall that he wrote a note to Mr. Dunn asking him to 
 collect together all the letters lying about in various receptacles 
 in the studio at Chelsea, 
 
 " and lock them in the iron safe outside the studio. The unaccount- 
 able wholesale disappearance of large batches of letters some time 
 back renders this more advisable." 
 
 This is an odd detail ; and gives me occasion to say that, 
 though my brother was, in his later years, unreasonably sus- 
 picious of various persons and things, some matter did never- 
 theless really occur now and again which suggested serious 
 tampering with his concerns, and called for corresponding 
 vigilance. I do not recollect — possibly I never heard — about 
 the " wholesale disappearance " etc. My brother, all through 
 his life, received very large numbers of letters, and at his death 
 comparatively few were to be found, belonging chiefly to his 
 last eight or nine years. I think that on leaving Chatham 
 Place he burned almost all the then extant correspondence. 
 In a later instance, which may have been towards 1 871, he got 
 Christina to destroy huge bundles of letters which had again 
 accumulated. This was quite in her line, for she always 
 burned, with the fewest exceptions, every scrap of writing that 
 she ever received. I cannot but regard with great regret the 
 loss of all the early correspondence of the P.R.B. days, which 
 would serve towards setting in its true light that movement 
 of not less than historical importance in the British School of 
 Art. 
 
 I must recur a little to the pitiable subject of chloral. Mr. 
 
By D. G. Rossetti. 
 
 Christina G. Rossetti. 
 
LONDON AND ELSEWHERE, 1 874-8. 343 
 
 Marshall, Rossetti's principal medical adviser, was not one of 
 those doctors who think it desirable to traverse beyond a 
 certain point the wishes and settled habits of their patients ; 
 although it is most true that he earnestly and repeatedly 
 endeavoured to check and diminish the chloral-dosing. A 
 letter of his, in July 1876, intimates that Sir William Jenner 
 then tried to reduce Rossetti's chloral to 20 grains a night ; 
 but Marshall thought this too restrictive, and sanctioned 36, 
 or in exceptional cases even 48, grains. In April 1878 Mr. 
 Dunn informed me that my brother was then taking about 
 50 grains, besides keeping his usual late hours, and limiting 
 his walking to his own garden — a practice which may I think 
 have begun soon after his return from Hunter's Forestall, and 
 which continued with hardly any interruption ever afterwards. 
 In January 1879 the chloral was 92 grains, and had recently 
 been even more. In November of the same year Mr. Marshall 
 wrote that Messrs. Bell & Co., the chemists, had protested 
 against supplying twelve bottles of chloral every eight or nine 
 days ; on the previous day they had sent two bottles, and 
 would henceforth make it only one per day. In this decision 
 Mr. Marshall concurred ; and he pointed out to Rossetti that, 
 as Mr. Dunn had then temporarily left the Chelsea house, and 
 his regulating influence was thus withdrawn, it became all the 
 more imperative to limit the supply of the drug. My brother 
 obtained chloral chiefly from two firms, Messrs. Bell and 
 Messrs. Dinneford. At his death their outstanding bills came 
 in to me. I forget the exact amounts, but am probably not 
 far wrong in saying that the two together reached well on 
 towards ,£100 ! This was for some months, ending in the 
 middle of December 1881. Chloral was then, at length, totally 
 abolished, and was never resumed. 
 
 The episode of Hunter's Forestall produced one unfortunate 
 result — a passing interruption to the intimate personal 
 relations between Madox Brown and Rossetti. Brown 
 thought that Rossetti was extravagant and heedless in house- 
 hold matters ; and so he was, though he made various 
 attempts at control and retrenchment, in which Mr. George 
 
344 DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI. 
 
 Hake, and more especially Mr. Dunn, seconded him to the 
 best of their power. Brown therefore, at the seaside, recom- 
 mended Rossetti to dismiss his two female servants. There 
 had recently been also a man named Albert (succeeding 
 various other men of earlier years), but he, I fancy, had left 
 soon after the nurse came. My brother reflected upon 
 Brown's advice, and came to the conclusion that his then 
 female servants suited him well enough (which was also my 
 own opinion), and he therefore declined to part with them. 
 Brown took this in some dudgeon, and determined not again 
 to call in Dante's London house while those servants were 
 there. He told me he "would not be made the laughing- 
 stock of all London " — which I could not but regard as a 
 very exaggerated view of the interest which Londoners would 
 or could take in any phase of the incident ; but my honoured 
 father-in-law was at all times rather sensitive to the actual or 
 supposed opinion of " the world." Brown therefore, upon my 
 brother's return to London, re-appeared for a while no more. 
 Ultimately those servants were gone, and others re-placed 
 them. This may have been towards August 1879 ; and it was 
 only then that he offered to return — receiving the cordial 
 response, " You would of course have been most welcome all 
 along, and will be simply the same now." No further 
 coolness ensued between the two old friends, and I am clear 
 that in this instance my brother had not put himself in the 
 wrong. 
 
 For some time past — ever since his health revived in 
 Scotland in 1872 — Rossetti had been entertaining projects 
 of leaving his Chelsea house, and finding accommodation < 
 somewhere else in the outskirts of London. He required 
 premises of good size, with a proper studio, spacious grounds, 
 retired situation, and none the less convenient access to and 
 from the heart of London. House after house was pro- 
 pounded and inspected — generally by Dunn or George Hake. 
 None of them met all the rather exceptional requirements. 
 So at last, in January 1878, Rossetti determined to renew his 
 tenancy of Tudor House, though at double his original rent — 
 
LONDON AND ELSEWHERE, 1 874-8. 345 
 
 i.e., at ,£200 per annum, and with the warning that sooner 
 or later his fine garden would for the most part be built over. 
 Even £200 was in fact not a very high rent, considering the 
 great rise in the value of property in that neighbourhood. 
 
 In the years 1874 and 1876 two deaths occurred which 
 afflicted my brother very sensibly. 
 
 The first, 5 November 1874, was the decease of Oliver 
 Madox Brown, not yet aged twenty. Rossetti had for years 
 entertained the highest opinion of the genius and the future 
 of this surprising youth, whether as painter or as novelist, 
 and even in part as poet. Pyaemia attacked him from some 
 unascertained cause, and he died after several weeks of acute 
 suffering. I need scarcely say that my brother was foremost 
 among those who came forward to soothe, so far as might, be, 
 the anguish of the heart-stricken father and family. I can 
 recollect that, on receiving a few lines of sympathy from my 
 brother in the first hours of bereavement, Brown said to me, 
 " It is always Gabriel who speaks the right word." 
 
 It is however an untoward fact that, when Oliver's 
 posthumous writings were published in 1876, Rossetti, then 
 at Aldwick, received such a " painful impression " from some- 
 thing he read in them that he laid the book aside altogether. 
 He must have thought that some character or incident in the 
 work was intended to animadvert upon himself. What this 
 was I never knew. To press my brother upon such a topic 
 was not judicious; "the less said the better." I doubt 
 whether there is in the book anything even distantly involving 
 my brother. There might have been, for Oliver did avowedly 
 base one or two of his personages upon individuals of his 
 acquaintance. Whatever his feelings about the young 
 novelist's performance, or about the spirit in which he had 
 written, my brother did not cease to speak highly of his 
 gifts. This is apparent in Mr. Hall Caine's book. 
 
 • The second death was that of our sister Maria, on 
 24 November 1876, aged forty-nine. Maria was intensely 
 devotional — I think more warmly and spontaneously so than 
 any other person I have known. She had long contemplated 
 
346 DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI. 
 
 finishing her days as a member of an Anglican sisterhood — 
 the All Saints' Home in Margaret Street, Regent Street. 
 When my approaching marriage was notified in the summer 
 of 1873, she, considering herself to be thus freer than before 
 from family-ties, announced that she would no longer defer 
 her project. She became a novice, and later on a professed 
 sister. She had before this, in 1871, published one book 
 of no little merit and repute, A Shadow of Dante, considered 
 very mainly from the religious point of view. In the Home 
 she was treated with all kindness and consideration, and 
 she delighted beyond measure in the religious life ; but her 
 health soon grew uncertain, and by the middle of September 
 1876 it became apparent that she was not long to survive. 
 There was an internal fibroid tumour, with dropsical com- 
 plications. Her severe sufferings were borne with more than 
 resignation and fortitude — almost with rapture, for to her 
 the promises of religion were the most assured certainties — 
 the only perfectly assured ones. With Dante, and also 
 with myself, she had more than one earnest colloquy on 
 religious subjects as the end approached. On 29 November 
 we all attended her funeral, as a " Sister of the Poor," in 
 Brompton Cemetery. This was, since the death of my father 
 in 1854, the first gap in the Rossetti household. The next 
 was to be the death of Dante himself in 1882, followed by 
 my mother in 1886, and by Christina in 1894. There were 
 also my own losses — an infant son in 1883, and in 1894 my 
 wife. Between 1854 and 1876 there had been three deaths 
 in the Polidori family — Philip in 1864, Margaret in 1867, 
 Henrietta Polydore (my uncle's daughter) in 1874. 
 
 XXXVII. 
 
 INCIDENTS AND TRANSACTIONS, 1874-81.— HALL CAINE. 
 
 After my brother's return from Kelmscott to London in 1874 
 one of the first matters which engaged his attention was the 
 dissolution of the partnership, Morris, Marshall, Falkner, 
 & Co. The firm was by this time fully established as of 
 
 / 
 
INCIDENTS AND TRANSACTIONS, 1 874-8 1. 347 
 
 high mark, but it was not yet a flourishing commercial con- 
 cern. Mr. Morris, as I have said from the first, was in every 
 sense the leading partner, the one who devoted most time 
 and energy to the work, and the one who had invested most 
 money in it. He now thought that he would like to be sole 
 master in the house ; not indeed discarding his old associates 
 so far as they might see fit to continue furnishing appropriate 
 work for pay, but no longer dividing with them the actual 
 profits of the firm. All the others had their own professions, 
 and consequent incomes. Mr. Morris had no other definite 
 profession — only his admirable work as a poet. In this view 
 of the affair most of his partners concurred — Burne-Jones, 
 Webb, Falkner, and my brother. Peter Paul Marshall might, 
 after the first impulse of irritation, be regarded as nearly 
 neutral. Madox Brown however was a determined opponent. 
 He saw no reason why he should forego advantages already 
 secured to him. He was getting on in years, with a wife and 
 son to support ; he had always calculated upon the firm as 
 an important eventual accession to his professional earnings ; 
 and he had no notion either of retiring voluntarily, or of being 
 bought out unless under compulsion. Circumstances were 
 too strong for him, and he was bought out, receiving a 
 handsome sum. The affair, both at the time and for some 
 years ensuing, was a painful one to the friends of Brown and 
 of Morris. I am glad to leave it undetailed, apart from the 
 one point which immediately concerns my narrative — and that 
 is that my brother's attitude was always one of conciliation, 
 and a wish to adjust contending claims, had that but been 
 possible. He himself retired from the firm without desiring 
 any compensation for his own benefit. A sum was however 
 assigned to him. He laid it apart for the eventual advantage 
 of a member of the Morris family, but, ere his death, circum- 
 stances had induced him to trench upon it not a little. 
 
 There is a small matter, detailed in Mr. Bell Scott's book, 
 which I would rather not have seen in print at all, 1 but which, 
 
 1 Professor Minto, the Editor of Mr. Scott's book, rightly and necessarily 
 asked me, before going to press, whether I would authorize the insertion 
 
348 DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTL 
 
 being in print, must not be left unnoticed here. Mr. Scott 
 summarizes a letter which my brother, being then at Aldwick 
 Lodge, addressed to Miss Boyd on 3 November 1875. The 
 letter relates to various topics having no connexion with that 
 which appears in its postscript, and which is thus put by 
 Mr. Scott:— 
 
 " In a postscript he says he is forced to reopen his letter to tell 
 what he designates a wondrous tale. Some four years ago G. F. 
 Watts, R.A., painted a head of him, for which he only gave that 
 artist two sittings, and which remained unfinished. His impression 
 of it was appalling (though possibly from the exactness of its like- 
 ness), and people have ever since kept telling him it was horrible. 
 Accordingly he executed a coup de main. He finished a spare 
 chalk-drawing, and sent Dunn with it to Little Holland House 
 [Mr. Watts's then residence], sending also a note saying that he 
 should be very much obliged if Watts would make an exchange, 
 as he wanted the picture, not for himself, and that the bearer would 
 call next day at same time for it, to save trouble. ' This resulted," 
 he continues, ' in my getting the picture next day, though Watts's 
 note with it showed plainly that it was even as a tooth out of his 
 
 of certain letters by my brother. He sent me copies of the letters, which 
 I read attentively. I cancelled a few sentences or phrases, and returned 
 the copies to Professor Minto, fully assenting to the publication of what 
 remained. When the published book reached me, I was surprised to 
 see in it this statement by my brother about his portrait painted by 
 Mr. G. F. Watts. It appeared to me that one of two things was certain : 
 first and most probable, that this passage had not been included in the 
 copy-letters sent to me ; second, that, if it had been so included, I must 
 have marked it for excision. The fact is that this is one of the instances 
 in which Mr. Scott does not quote a letter verbatim, but summarizes the 
 contents of a letter, merely citing between inverted commas two or three 
 of its clauses. He thus cites, for instance, the clause beginning " This 
 resulted in my getting" etc. I infer therefore that Professor Minto did 
 not regard this as a letter over which I had copyright authority, and so 
 did not send me a copy of it — failing to reflect that I had such authority 
 over (at any rate) those passages which are cited between inverted commas. 
 Admitting this explanation, the Professor (on whose memory I would not 
 willingly cast any reproach) only committed a venial oversight. On any 
 other assumption, his error would be a somewhat grave one. 
 
INCIDENTS AND TRANSACTIONS, I 874-8 1. 349 
 
 jaws. 1 Now that I have got it, I really think it very fine, and am 
 quite ashamed to have played him such a trick.' " 
 
 My brother's contrition may count for something in ex- 
 tenuation of his trick — which consisted in obtaining from the 
 highly-distinguished painter a portrait (in reality painted 
 towards the summer of 1870) which, I presume, had been 
 all along intended by its author to stand as Rossetti's property 
 in case he liked to claim it, and in tendering as equivalent 
 a chalk-drawing, which one may suppose to have been of 
 considerably less commercial value. Most likely the reader, 
 in perusing this item of Mr. Scott's book, infers also that my 
 brother told a positive lie in saying that " he wanted the 
 picture, not for himself? This however is not the case. It 
 is within my express knowledge that my brother did not 
 retain the portrait beyond a certain interval, but consigned 
 it to the person whom I have heretofore designated as 
 Mrs. H. It never returned to his own possession, and formed 
 no part of the estate which passed under his will. In 1883, 
 after my brother's death, it was exhibited at the Royal 
 Academy, not by any member of the family ; and the 
 exhibitor afterwards sold it to Mr. Leyland, with whose 
 collection it was, I assume, disposed of some years later. I 
 heartily wish that my brother had not " played such a trick," 
 prompted by the erroneous impression that the portrait did 
 him very scanty justice ; but one must not imagine that the 
 trick was a veritable fraud. It was something between sharp 
 practice and a boyish prank. 
 
 My brother's business-connexion with Mr. Howell became 
 less necessary after his return to London ; towards the close 
 of the summer of 1876 it ceased, and all acquaintance with 
 the vivacious Anglo-Portuguese ceased at the same time. 
 Dante spoke to me on this subject more than once. His 
 grounded complaint against Mr. Howell was not that the 
 latter had directly wronged him in any money-transaction, 
 
 1 This seems to be a humorous exaggeration. I possess Mr. Watts's 
 letter, and do not discern in it what my brother speaks of. 
 
350 DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI. 
 
 but that he played fast and loose with his name in a manner 
 which my brother found exceedingly embarrassing, and which 
 might easily produce complications of a formidable kind. 
 Howell would go to a person known both to himself and to 
 Rossetti, and would obtain funds from that person, offering as 
 security or equivalent certain drawings by Rossetti which, 
 according to Howell, were already due to him for money 
 disbursed. Mr. Valpy was more particularly affected by these 
 Howellian manoeuvres, and Mr. Clarence Fry, who became 
 the purchaser of my brother's picture named Venus Astarte. 
 Rossetti thus found himself liable to be called upon by the 
 third party to hand in drawings which he had never engaged 
 to the applicant, which he had no wish to deliver to him, and 
 which perhaps were not due, as individual specimens, even 
 to Howell himself. Such a position of risk and uncertainty 
 was intolerable to Rossetti, who liked to have full control 
 over his own affairs. There was also, in February 1876, a 
 most vexatious affair in which a Mr. Levy intended to sue 
 Howell for some matters, including a dress which (for artistic 
 purposes) had passed into Rossetti's hands ; and Rossetti, 
 though wholly uninvolved in the real cause of action, chose, 
 rather than appear in the witness-box, to pay a sum of £\o 
 to Levy. Soon afterwards he parted company with Howell, 
 and, spite of some pleadings from his old acquaintance, and 
 some remains of good-will on his own part, he adhered 
 unwaveringly to this resolve. They met no more. 
 
 In August 1878 my brother found that a drawing attributed 
 to him had been bought at the shop of a London pawnbroker 
 and art-dealer, and that other drawings of like character were 
 obtainable at the same place. The first-named work was 
 submitted to him for verification. He saw it to be spurious, 
 and wrote to the Times to say so. There were other instances, 
 both during his lifetime and after his death, in which pro- 
 ductions to which he had never lifted a finger were put 
 forward as being his. I will not lay any blame on Mr. 
 Howell which is not proved to pertain to him — -he is no 
 longer here to defend himself; but it is a fact (previously 
 
INCIDENTS AND TRANSACTIONS, 1 874-8 1. 35 I 
 
 stated) that he was an ingenious facsimilist, and there was a 
 lady of his acquaintance, known to my brother likewise, who 
 was a capable artist ; and many persons have, within my 
 knowledge, formed and expressed the opinion that the imita- 
 tion-Rossettis had their origin in that quarter. Certain it 
 is that a good deal of misdirected activity was displayed by 
 some person or persons working in this line. 
 
 I have more than once referred to the handsome scale of my 
 brother's professional earnings. In 1879 an d 1880 the picture- 
 market was depressed, as well as some other markets ; and 
 these were two of his least successful years. He told me 
 that in 1879 his income had been .£1,030, whereas, two or 
 three years before, it might be estimated at £3,000 per 
 annum. However, even £1,030 is far from being greatly 
 amiss ; and he took such fluctuations placidly, without allow- 
 ing them to add in any serious degree to his general tone of 
 disquietude. 
 
 The death of two friends, and the painful condition of a 
 third, engaged his sympathy and attention. James Hannay, 
 his old intimate towards 1850, died suddenly, as British 
 Consul at Barcelona, in 1873 (this was indeed while Rossetti 
 was settled at Kelmscott) ; and a subscription was got up for 
 the advantage of the family, and more especially the educa- 
 tion of the children. My brother was one of the most liberal 
 contributors, and was anxious to exert himself outside the 
 limits of the subscription. John Lucas Tupper, the friend of 
 the P.R.B. and Germ days, died in 1879, as Master of the 
 Drawing-classes in Rugby School. Here again Rossetti came 
 forward. James Smetham, from being the most industrious 
 as well as the most devout of painters, sank into a state of 
 religious monomania, and was totally withdrawn, not only 
 from the pursuit of his profession, but from almost every form 
 of human intercourse. This lasted for several years, until 
 death came to his relief. Rossetti took endless pains in 
 promoting the sale of his pictures, and succeeded in adding a 
 substantial sum to the funds needed by the highly estimable 
 and woe-stricken family. It is no more than justice to my 
 
352 DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI. 
 
 brother to say that in any matter of this description his 
 conduct was marked by sympathetic open-handedness in the 
 first place, and — hardly less valuable — by genuine delicacy of 
 method and by the most thorough good-nature. Long ago 
 did the character of the " cheerful giver " obtain the highest 
 form of praise. 
 
 Rossetti was urgently invited to become an exhibitor in 
 the first year of the Grosvenor Gallery in Bond Street, 1 877. 
 He reflected on the proposal, conferred with Madox Brown 
 and Burne-Jones, and finally declined. Brown likewise de- 
 clined ; Burne-Jones, as we all know, assented, and rapidly and 
 rightly established a splendid reputation. Rossetti was now a 
 painter of eminent performance and repute, about whom there 
 was a great deal of public curiosity, and on these grounds 
 of course had the invitation been based. He replied in a tone 
 of great modesty, as shown by a draft-letter now before me : — 
 
 "What holds me back is simply the lifelong feeling of dissatis- 
 faction which I have experienced from the disparity of aim and 
 attainment in what I have all my life produced as best I could." 
 
 He found occasion to write a letter to the Times in the 
 same strain, 27 March 1877. There might be a good deal 
 to say on this general subject. It is undoubtedly true that 
 Rossetti, being a painter with high ideals in art, and an 
 earnest desire to work in conformity to those ideals, was 
 not contented with what he actually produced, He knew 
 it to be good and skilful up to a certain point ; but there 
 was a loftier point to which his ideal and his conception 
 reached, and which his hand had not reached. Few successful 
 men would so ingenuously confess this to themselves, still 
 less to others. Dissatisfied with the result himself, Rossetti 
 thought that some other people would be dissatisfied also, 
 and would make some ado in proclaiming their dissatisfaction ; 
 and, having undergone, with profound disrelish and permanent 
 ill-effect, the inconveniences of a hullabaloo in relation to 
 his poetry, he had no wish to encounter the like in relation 
 to his painting. The fact is (as I have already intimated) 
 
INCIDENTS AND f RANSACTioNS, 1874-81. 35J 
 
 that Rossetti had, along with a great deal of pride, only a 
 very small modicum of vanity or self-conceit, and, until his 
 closing years, I might almost say not any. On his aspirations 
 he relied implicitly; on his performances — such as they were, 
 and seeing that no better they might be — he rested. Fame 
 he cherished ; for notoriety he cared not. That his name 
 and his doings should be champed in the mouths of men w^s 
 not among his desires. He apprehended that, while any 
 shortcoming would be made much of by critics and spectators, 
 the intrinsic and somewhat esoteric deservings of the work 
 would be overlooked or belittled. Nor should it be forgotten 
 that in all his later years he had a serious though fitful 
 intention of collecting together on exhibition such specimens 
 of painting and designing as he considered to come nearest 
 to doing justice to his powers. He was a man who thought 
 a great deal about " policy " in all such contingencies ; and 
 very generally his views of policy were sound, as the event 
 proved. In such a relation he did not regard anything as 
 trivial, or deserving to be left to chance. It may be as well 
 to add that, whenever any question arose of his exhibiting 
 under fair or advantageous conditions, my own wish was 
 that he should consent. 
 
 Not only with the Grosvenor Gallery, but in all instances 
 when he was invited and pressed to exhibit, sometimes by 
 owners of his pictures, my brother steadily refused. There 
 was however one exception, perhaps only one. Mr. Turner, 
 the purchaser of one of the two leading versions of the 
 Proserpine subject, was, in the spring of 1878, a member of 
 a Committee in Manchester for promoting the Art Schools 
 Building-fund. He asked whether my brother would sanction 
 the including of the Proserpine in an exhibition which was 
 being organized for the Fund ; and my brother acquiesced, 
 taking into consideration " the public object in view, one of 
 the greatest importance to all interested in Art." A few 
 other cases in which his works were exhibited did from time 
 to time occur ; but this was without his authority, and 
 contrary to his liking. Even a letter from Sir Noel Paton— ■ 
 
 VOL. 1. 2; 
 
354 DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTt. 
 
 whom, more than almost any other man, he would have liked 
 to oblige — could not extort assent. 
 
 Another of my brother's not frequent communications to 
 newspapers was made on 28 December 1878. The matter 
 is really a very small one, notwithstanding the great rank and 
 the personal charm of the lady concerned. It is recorded in 
 Mr. Caine's Recollections, and perhaps it should not be left 
 without some brief notice here. Some newspaper— I believe 
 The World — chose to say that the Princess Louise, having 
 called at Rossetti's house with a view to seeing his pictures, 
 had been " rebuffed with a ' not at home,' and an intimation 
 that he was not at the beck and call of Princesses." I cannot 
 think that my brother was (as Mr. Caine says) " deeply 
 moved by the imputation " ; but he very properly considered 
 that, being publicly charged with such ridiculous clownishness, 
 he ought not to leave the falsehood undenied. So he wrote 
 to the Times explaining that the Princess had never presented 
 herself at his house ; though she had, on two occasions at 
 some years' interval, indicated an inclination to do so, and 
 had in the second and quite recent instance been assured, 
 by Mr. Theodore Watts, to whom she was speaking, that 
 Rossetti would feel " honoured and charmed to see her." 
 Rossetti concluded his letter by saying :— 
 
 " It is true enough that I do not run after great people on account 
 of their mere social position, but I am, I hope, never rude to them ; 
 and the man who could rebuff the Princess Louise must be a 
 curmudgeon indeed." 
 
 This remark defines very correctly his feeling in relation 
 to such questions. He had a real liking, for the ease and 
 amenity which ordinarily go with birth and breeding, and 
 to these he could respond with proportionate ease,, and with 
 an openness from which amenity was not excluded ; but to 
 take any trouble in hunting up social di-gnitaries, or in 
 humouring them when found, was not at all his way. Mrs. 
 Glasse's famous though perhaps legendary recipe did not 
 define Rossetti's attitude towards the British aristocracy. 
 
Incidents and transactions, 1874-81. 355 
 
 He neither caught his hare first, nor put it into his jug 
 afterwards. 
 
 To his account of this incident of the visit which was not 
 made, and the rebuff which was not administered, Mr. Caine 
 adds : — 
 
 " At the very juncture in question Lord Lome was suddenly and 
 unexpectedly appointed Governor-General of Canada, and, leaving 
 England, Her Royal Highness did not return until Rossetti's health 
 had somewhat suddenly broken down, and it was impossible for 
 him to see any but his most intimate friends." 
 
 I question whether this is wholly accurate. It seems to me 
 that Lord Lome had been appointed some months before 
 28 December, the date of Rossetti's letter to the Times, and 
 that the Princess was already in Canada before that date. 
 She appears to have remained well-affected to Rossetti's 
 memory, as a newspaper paragraph in December 1893 P ur_ 
 ported that she had sent to a sale of ladies' work "a 
 book-cover for a volume of Rossetti's Poems, in green satin, 
 with a design of clusters of pomegranates worked in shaded 
 pinks and yellows," — the title being in silver thread. 
 
 It was apparently towards the beginning of 1879 that a 
 new intimacy of Rossetti's began — that with Mr. Hall Caine — 
 which proved of great moment for his closing years. I might 
 have more to say about it, but that Mr. Caine has himself 
 given so many and such precise details in his Recollections 
 of Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1882). It seems that Mr. Philip 
 James Bailey, the author of Festus, was the person, casually 
 encountered by Mr. Caine, who first roused in him an active 
 interest in Rossetti's poetry. Mr. Bailey met my brother 
 years previously, perhaps at Mrs. Gaskell's, but there was not 
 at any time any real acquaintance between the two. Mr. 
 Caine lectured twice or thrice in Liverpool, where he then 
 resided, on the Poetry of Rossetti ; and after a full year sent 
 him the printed discourse, with which my brother was very 
 much pleased, more especially on the ground of the lecturer's 
 recognition of the moral or spiritual tone marking the poems. 
 
356 DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTt. 
 
 A great deal of correspondence ensued, chiefly on poetic and 
 other literary topics. The first personal meeting was in the 
 autumn of 1880, when Mr. Caine came for a few days to 
 London, and called by appointment in Rossetti's studio. He 
 had been warned that he would " recognize the hole-and- 
 cornerest of all existences in this big barn of mine." Since 
 the time when he met my brother, and since that when he 
 published his Recollections, Mr. Caine has had many a literary 
 triumph ; and my readers will probably be well pleased if I 
 reproduce here his account of the impression which Rossetti 
 gave him. I condense and interpolate at will. 
 
 " Very soon Rossetti came to me through the doorway in front, 
 which proved to be the entrance to his studio. Holding forth both 
 hands, and crying ' Hulloa,' he gave me that cheery hearty greeting 
 which I came to recognize as his alone perhaps, in warmth and 
 unfailing geniality, among all the men of our circle. It was Italian 
 in its spontaneity, and yet it was English in its manly reserve ; and 
 I remember with much tenderness of feeling that never to the last 
 (not even when sickness saddened him, or after an absence of a few 
 days or even hours) did it fail him when meeting with those friends 
 to whom to the last he was really attached. Leading the way into 
 the studio, he introduced me to his brother, who was there upon 
 one of the evening visits which, at intervals of a week, he was at 
 that time making with unfailing regularity [at that time, and at all 
 times afterwards while both Dante and I were in London, until his 
 final departure for Birchington-on-Sea early in 1882 : the practice 
 began in October 1879, consequent upon some few days of great 
 prostration which affected him after an overdose of chloral]. I 
 should have described Rossetti at this time as a man who looked 
 quite ten years older [this is wholly contrary to my own view] than 
 his actual age, which was fifty-two ; of full [slightly low] middle 
 height and inclining to corpulence ; with a round face that ought, 
 one thought, to be ruddy, but was pale ; large grey eyes with a steady 
 introspecting look, surmounted by broad protrusive brows, and a 
 clearly pencilled ridge over the nose, which was well cut', and had 
 large breathing nostrils. The mouth and chin were hidden beneath 
 a heavy moustache and abundant beard, which grew up to the ears, 
 and had been of a mixed black-brown and auburn, and were now 
 
INCIDENTS AND TRANSACTIONS, 1 874-8 1. 357 
 
 streaked with grey [my brother's beard was of a darkish auburn — 
 not I think at all black-brown, though that might, in mature age, be 
 called the colour of his other hair]. The forehead was large, round, 
 without protuberances, and very gently receding to where thin black 
 curls, that had once been redundant, began to tumble down to the 
 ears. The entire configuration of the head and face seemed to me 
 singularly noble, and from the eyes upwards full of beauty. He 
 wore a pair of spectacles, and, in reading, a second pair over the 
 first ; but these took little from the sense of power conveyed by 
 those steady eyes, and that ' bar of Michelangelo.' x His dress was 
 not conspicuous, being however rather negligent than otherwise, 
 and noticeable, if at all, only for a straight sack-coat buttoned at the 
 throat, descending at least to the knees, and having large pockets 
 cut into it perpendicularly at the sides. This garment was, I 
 afterwards found, one of the articles of various kinds made to the 
 author's own design [and a most comfortable one it was]. When he 
 spoke, even in exchanging the preliminary courtesies of an opening 
 conversation, I thought his voice the richest I had ever known any 
 one to possess. It was a full deep baritone, capable of easy modula- 
 tion, and with undertones of infinite softness and sweetness, yet, 
 as I afterwards found, with almost illimitable compass, and with 
 every gradation of tone at command, for the recitation or reading of 
 poetry. I perceived that he was a ready, fluent, and graceful talker, 
 with a remarkable incisiveness of speech, and a trick of dignifying 
 ordinary topics in words which, without rising above conversation, 
 were so exactly though freely enunciated as would have admitted 
 of their being reported exactly as they fell from his lips. Dinner 
 being now over, I asked Rossetti to redeem his promise to read one 
 of his new ballads. He responded readily, and, taking a small 
 manuscript volume out of a section of the bookcase that had been 
 locked, read us The White Ship. It seemed to me that I never 
 heard anything at all matchable with Rossetti's elocution. His 
 rich deep voice lent an added music to the music of the verse. It 
 rose and fell, in the passages descriptive of the wreck, with some- 
 
 1 This Tennysonian phrase evidently applies to the continuous eyebrow 
 of Michelangelo. Mr. Caine must apply it either to the "broad protrusive 
 brows " [eyebrows] of Rossetti, which were not however continuous, or 
 to the " clearly pencilled ridge over the nose." In either case it does not 
 seem to be quite accurately applied. 
 
358 DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI. 
 
 thing of the surge and sibilation of the sea itself. In the tenderer 
 passages it was soft as a woman's, and in the pathetic stanzas with 
 which the ballad closes it was profoundly moving." 
 
 I shall resist the temptation — though it is considerable — 
 to extract in full, and discuss, various points raised in Mr. 
 Caine's account of my brother — such as his views on several 
 of his own poems ; his "grudging Wordsworth every vote 
 he gets " ; his deference to Theodore Watts's opinions on 
 questions of poetical execution ; his enormous admiration 
 of Chatterton (this was only in his last years, and I regarded 
 it as not merely excessive but a trifle fanciful) ; his favourable 
 opinion of William Watson as a poet then just beginning, 
 and his kindly feeling, both literary and personal, to Joseph 
 Skipsey the coal-miner poet, and his good friend Thomas 
 Dixon the cork-cutter ; his somewhat too copious contempt 
 for some old-fashioned poets, " Addison, Akenside, and the 
 whole alphabet down to Zany and Zero " ; his axiom that 
 " in painting there is, in the less important details, some- 
 thing of the craft of a superior carpenter " (quite sound, I 
 think, though liable to be misconstrued) ; his praise of sonnets 
 by Theodore Watts and by Bell Scott. There are a multi- 
 tude of other details, all stimulating to any biographer coming 
 into the field after Mr. Caine. 
 
 I cannot agree with that gentleman in his strong averment 
 that " irresolution with melancholy lay at the basis " of Dante 
 Rossetti's character. That Mr. Caine witnessed in him 
 chronic melancholy and frequent irresolution is indeed indis- 
 putable ; but that these qualities really were " at the basis 
 of his character " I, from lifelong experience, am far from 
 thinking. They developed in his later years, from a train 
 of untoward circumstances, viewed through the fumes of 
 chloral ; but I cannot imagine that anyone who knew Rossetti 
 either throughout his career, or up to and a little after the 
 age of about forty, would have said that he was marked by 
 irresolution or severely tainted with melancholy. In all his 
 earlier years, and beyond them too, he had that sort of 
 
INCIDENTS AND TRANSACTIONS, 1874-81. 359 
 
 resolution which fashions a man's life upon his own lines, 
 and not in subjection to the dicta or the promptings of any 
 one else. He was imperative, dominant, self-sustained, and 
 stiff-necked, and went straight to his mark. The sort of 
 irresolution which Mr. Caine noticed was concerned with 
 minor details — whether the terms of an appointment should 
 be varied, whether he should adhere to a project of going 
 out of town, and much of the like kind. No doubt, as his 
 nerves and spirits were unstrung, so was his will seriously 
 weakened in these years ; still I should not call him even 
 then exactly what is meant by an irresolute man. As to 
 melancholy, this also was not uppermost in his less advanced 
 years. In any company in which he found himself he was 
 generally the leading spirit, full of " go," fertile in bracing 
 and diverting sallies, and even jovial not infrequently. True, 
 he was always to some extent moody, and liable to the over- 
 cloudings of gloom. He had a sufficiency of mauvais quarts 
 d'keure, and was an initiate in the " nebular hypotheses " of 
 life. Yet this did not amount to a character of which the 
 basis was melancholy. The essential quality of his verse and 
 of his art is, I conceive, not melancholy but poignancy. 
 Certainly, by the time when Mr. Caine knew him personally — 
 a period altogether of about a year and a half — these tend- 
 encies to sadness had ceased to be mere tendencies, and had 
 merged into a settled habit of mind — settled, yet not un- 
 broken ; for in appropriate company my brother could still 
 command a variety of conversation, show cheerfulness, and 
 make himself highly agreeable. Many a pleasant evening 
 did I pass with him between the autumn of 1879 and that 
 of 1 88 1 ; I alone mostly, but my wife was often with me, 
 especially towards the beginning of the last-named year, and 
 he enjoyed her conversation — sensible, practical, and coloured 
 by high thought and sympathy in the pictorial and the 
 poetic arts. In the latter she was herself a considerable 
 adept. Dante also was often full of kindly reminiscences 
 from the old days, even those of our very early childhood. 
 The appropriate company, I am thankful to say, was not 
 
360 DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI. 
 
 wanting to him. Our mother and Christina took care to 
 leave him not long unvisited ; and he never dropped the habit 
 of calling at times upon them in the evening — these being 
 now the only occasions when he left his house, with its large 
 garden, which gave him some moderate amount of daily 
 exercise after he had abandoned going out otherwise. This 
 strict limitation to his house and garden may have begun 
 (as I have already said) upon his return to London from 
 Hunter's Forestall near the close of 1877, or possibly as soon 
 as George Hake had left him, early in the same year. After 
 Mr. Hake had departed there was Mr. Dunn in the. house ; 
 and, Dunn eventually ceasing to be. a regular inmate, there 
 was Mr. Caine. The latter, upon thus entering the Cheyne 
 Walk house in July 1881, did indeed induce my brother to 
 walk out with him in the evenings ; but this only lasted 
 a week; Rossetti was naturally of a sociable turn. He liked 
 to be in the company of persons for whom he had either a 
 serious regard or a casual predilection ; and, reclusive though 
 he became (after his return in 1874 from Kelmscott to 
 London) under the influence of chloral, with its exaggerated 
 fancies and morbid perturbations, he never enjoyed being 
 alone. He grew to dislike and shun it extremely. 
 
 " Canst thou not minister to a mind diseased — 
 Pluck from the memory a rooted sorrow — 
 Raze-out the written troubles of the brain, 
 And with some sweet oblivious antidote 
 Cleanse the stuffed bosom of that perilous stuff 
 Which weighs upon the heart ? 
 
 " Therein the patient 
 Must minister to himself." 
 
 But this was a patient who could not to himself minister 
 any oblivious antidote — rather, grievous thought after thought, 
 supposition after supposition of disquiet, and a nightmare of 
 waking dreams. It became highly desirable therefore that 
 his friends — and they were still by no means few, though 
 Mr, Scott appears to have supposed that so they were — 
 
INCIDENTS AND TRANSACTIONS, 1874-81. 361 
 
 should give him the mainstay of their frequent intercourse. I 
 myself, in writing to Dante in August 1 876, suggested whether 
 he would not get his intimates, now one and now another, to 
 call upon him, so that each evening might be provided with 
 its friendly converse; and, when I began in October 1879 
 my regular series of weekly visits, I found that this plan was 
 in steady operation. Besides myself, Mr. Watts had his 
 appointed evening (and he very frequently saw my brother 
 in other instances as well), and ao had Mr. Shields. The 
 other settled visitors were at that time — if my memory serves 
 me — Mr. William Sharp, Mr. S. J. B. Haydon, and perhaps 
 Mr. Scott. Mr. Sharp first came to my brother with a letter 
 of introduction from Sir J. Noel Paton. This ensured him a 
 welcome, which his own cordial pleasant ways, and his gift 
 for poetry and other literary work, amply confirmed. In his 
 visits to Rossetti he was accompanied every now and then 
 by Philip Bourke Marston. Mr. Haydon had, towards 1850 
 to 1855, been slightly known to Rossetti as a sculptor. He 
 was now a dealer in engravings and other works of art ; and 
 my brother met him on terms of much familiarity, finding a 
 good deal to gossip over in the ins-and-outs of British art, 
 present and past. Mr. Brown did not, I think, at any time 
 take part in this settled once-a-week plan, but he saw Rossetti 
 as opportunity allowed. He could not at any rate have joined 
 in the plan after August 1881, as he then left London, and 
 resided in or near Manchester, to attend to the very important 
 commission which he had received — and for which he was 
 better qualified, to my thinking, than any other man in the 
 country — to paint the historico-local pictures in the Man- 
 chester Town Hall, I have here mentioned six persons who 
 provided Dante with company for six days out of the seven. 
 I do not remember that there was any seventh person regularly 
 bespoken, but there may have been, or the vacant evening 
 might very often be filled up by some engagement made for 
 the purpose — as for instance with Boyce, Seddon, Tebbs, 
 Burne-Jones, Hueffer, or Leyland. Another gentleman who 
 rather frequently saw my brother, and was always welcomed. 
 
362 DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI. 
 
 was Mr. William Davies, the author of The Pilgrimage of the 
 Tiber, and other works, and of numerous dainty etchings. He 
 was not however a constant resident in London. In 1893 
 Mr. Davies very kindly presented to me the letters which he 
 had received from my brother, forming a small bound volume. 
 That Dante Rossetti appreciated his friend's poetry appears 
 from a letter (December 1873) in which he terms two of the 
 compositions " full-toned and complete things," a third 
 " charming in structure," a fourth and fifth " quite lovely and 
 sustained poems." 
 
 And so my brother jogged along, more than sufficiently 
 depressed in his own mind and feelings, but cheered by 
 friendly conversation and attentions, and always (it must be 
 remembered) as diligent in his art-work as he had ever been. 
 Moreover, early in 1880, his literary activity revived. He paid 
 not a little attention to the new edition of Gilchrist's Life of 
 Blake, and produced some of his very best poetical work. In 
 brief, chloral had little or no power over that part of his mind 
 which was purely intellectual or inventive, but only over that 
 other part which was emotional, and was applied to the 
 construing of himself and his surroundings. 
 
 XXXVIII. 
 
 PAINTINGS AND POEMS, 1874-81. 
 
 In Section XXXV. I have referred to two of the pictures 
 which occupied Rossetti in these years — The Blessed Damozel, 
 and the replica of Dante's Dream for Mr. Graham, on a scale, 
 though not small, considerably less large than the original 
 work ; La Pia, begun several years earlier than these, was 
 also brought to completion. It is probably true, as stated by 
 Mrs. Wood (though I am not clear where she got the infor- 
 mation), that the predella of The Blessed Damozel, where the 
 heart-stricken lover is represented in a sylvan scene, was 
 painted from the beechwoods near Broadlands. This, the 
 principal version of The Blessed Damozel composition, was 
 
PAINTINGS AND POEMS, 1 874-8 1. 363 
 
 owned by Mr. Graham. A somewhat less elaborate version 
 was eventually purchased by Mr. Leyland. The double pre- 
 della of the reduced Dante's Dream was designed and painted 
 without actual recourse to the living model ; my brother — 
 whose views upon some questions of art modified as he grew 
 older — having come to the conclusion that the treatment 
 would thus possess more unity and self-consistency of design. 
 The year 1875 produced La Bella Mano, a lady washing 
 her hands, attended by boy-Cupids ; and, in point of forcible, 
 rich, and harmonious execution, this may be regarded as 
 one of the very best of Rossetti's paintings. The Venus 
 Astarte (or Astarte Syriaca) was going on from 1875 to 1877 
 — a good deal of the work being painted at Aldwick Lodge. 
 It is obviously one of my brother's most rapt and abstract 
 works, and he considered it (not without fair grounds) nearly 
 or quite the best ; but popular taste has pronounced other- 
 wise, and the picture is regarded as somewhat strained, and 
 gloomy in ideal and in colouring. Of all his productions, 
 it was the greatest money-success. Mr. Howell the not 
 easily resistible secured for it a commission from Mr. Clarence 
 Fry (of the Photographing Firm) at the large price of £2, 100. 
 Another of his vigorous strokes was getting Mr. Valpy to 
 buy, at its original price of £i,S7S> the larger Dante's Dream, 
 after this had been resigned by Mr. Graham. It might almost 
 be said that Howell " planted " the spacious canvas upon 
 Valpy, who shortly protested that so considerable a venture 
 did not suit his purse-strings ; but the thing was done, and 
 was not to be undone. In the same years, 1875 to 1877, was 
 painted for Mr. Leyland T/ie Sea-spell, for which the title 
 first proposed had been Coleridge's couplet — 
 
 " A damsel with a dulcimer 
 In a vision once I saw." 
 
 Later on came the Mnemosyne (called also La Ricordanza, 
 or The Lamp of Memory) ; a duplicate Beata Beatrix, left 
 unfinished by Rossetti, and after his death completed by 
 Madox Brown (it is now in the Art Gallery of Birmingham) ; 
 
364 DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI. 
 
 A Vision of Fiammetta, for which Mrs. Stillman was so good 
 as to sit; La Donna delta Finestra (or The Lady of Pity, 
 from the Vita Nuovd), bought, as was also La Bella Mano, 
 by Mr. F. S. Ellis ; and The Daydream, a lady musing, seated 
 in the fork of a sycamore-tree. This, like the Venus Astarte, 
 was one of Rossetti's largest pictures, purchased by an ac- 
 quaintance of several years' standing, Mr. Constantine Ionides. 
 
 There were also some crayon and pencil drawings — The 
 Sphinx (pencil), where three men, a youth, a full adult, and 
 a greybeard, are shown as coming to consult the Sphinx on 
 the mystery of existence — the youth dies ere he can put 
 his question (the premature doom of Oliver Brown was in 
 the artist's mind as to this point) ; The Spirit of the Rainbow, 
 which belongs to Mr. Watts, and illustrates (so Mr. Sharp 
 says) a sonnet written by Watts himself ; Perlascura, which 
 was autotyped ; Desdemona's Death-song ; Sancta Lilias ; 
 a portrait of Mr. Leyland, as a wedding-present to his 
 daughter, Mrs. Hamilton ; and the design of The Sonnet, 
 illustrating a sonnet of my brother's on that form of poetical 
 composition, so often treated by himself. Only one water- 
 colour seems to call for mention — Bruna Brunelleschi, which 
 was a head of Mrs. Morris, 1877. 
 
 A few special remarks may be needed regarding these 
 various works. The Sea-spell was to serve as a pendant to 
 the Veronica Veronese, already owned by Mr. Leyland, and 
 it presents an inverse to the motive of that picture. Veronica 
 finds in the note of a canary an incentive to a musical 
 invention ; whereas the Siren of the The Sea-spell charms 
 a bird into the magic of her lay. The Vision of Fiammetta 
 exhibits Boccaccio's lady, with her head encircled (as in that 
 writer's text) by a mystical flame, and parting with her hand 
 the bloom-laden boughs of an apple-tree. This brilliant 
 joyous picture has proved a great favourite among Rossetti's 
 works. In 1888 it sold by auction for .£1,207, although its 
 purchaser, Mr. Turner, had obtained it for £840. The Day- 
 dream was painted with the most conscientious attention and 
 effort. After my brother had completed the head so as to 
 
PAINTINGS AND POEMS, 1874-81. 365 
 
 satisfy most eyes, he decided that it was not good enough 
 for himself. He painted it out entirely, and did it over again. 
 Mr. Shields, who was very constantly in Rossetti's studio at 
 this period, goes so far as to say that he changed a full half 
 of the picture. The pains were not misbestowed, for this — 
 the latest of his considerable works that was fully completed 
 — ranks also among the best. 
 
 As to the drawing of The Sphinx I must once again have 
 recourse to Mr. Scott's book. As my reader will perceive, 
 this takes us to a date rather more advanced than that which 
 my narrative has yet reached. 
 
 " When our time came for returning to town [I understand the 
 date indicated to be towards the middle of November 1881 — at 
 any rate between 17 October and n December], I was shocked to 
 find the dear old Gabriel prostrate on the old sofa we had so often 
 in the earlier times seen filled with the most genial friends. He 
 was, it now appeared to me, going down fast ; but I tried to keep 
 up the usual deception we apply to invalids. I had gone alone, 
 thinking it best to make this first visit so ; but he was by himself, 
 no one attending or trying to cheer the man whose spirits were down 
 to zero. [Under ordinary circumstances Mr. Caine would have been 
 in the house, but he may have been casually absent, lecturing in 
 Liverpool.] When he and I were alone [this phrase seems odd, for 
 the previous statement is that they two had been alone from the 
 first], he wept and complained, and made unkind speeches, or 
 showed me things he thought would wound me ; as when he made 
 his servant lay before me a large chalk sketch he called Questioning 
 the Sphinx. [I think the fixed title of the design was simply The 
 Sphinx, or else The Question : I know it as a pencil drawing, rather 
 fully elaborated, and have not any recollection of a chalk sketch.] 
 This wounded me, because it happened that I had made an illustra- 
 tion, in my first issue of The Year of the World (that juvenile ' poem 
 with a purpose '), of the hero traveller leaning on an augural staff 
 with his ear to the mouth of a Sphinx, which I called by that name, 
 and which the beloved D. G. R. of that early time used to make game 
 of, as if I had mistaken the ancient fable in which the Sphinx was 
 the questioner, not the questioned. [This seems to me to exhibit 
 a very strange state of feeling on Mr. Scott's part. He was 
 
366 DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTl. 
 
 "wounded" because Rossetti produced to him in 1881 a drawing, 
 executed in or about 1875, bearing in subject-matter some, though 
 not any very direct, analogy to a little woodcut design which Scott 
 had published in 1846, and had not even reproduced in a later issue 
 of his poem.] I had besides written a poem called To the Sphinx 
 considered as the Symbol of Religious Mystery [yes, and a very fine 
 poem it is in essentials; but why the writing by Scott of such a poem, 
 published in 1854, should in any way debar Rossetti from producing 
 towards 1875, an d showing to his old friend in 1881, a design 
 containing a Sphinx, remains to me almost as great a mystery as the 
 Sphinx itself]. 1 Lying on the sofa dying as he was, I saw that 
 singular expression of ferocity [see Section XXX.] that used to 
 take possession of his face if he surmised a quarrel was coming. I 
 laid the sketch aside, but he kept staring at me. I refused to take 
 up the gauntlet, and I could not venture to speak of the sketch 
 itself, the style of drawing being so bad as to show his illness was 
 destroying his work." [The style of drawing — the treatment of the 
 nude — in this design (which is tolerably well-known in a photo- 
 graphed form, and which, as aforesaid, was produced not late in 
 1881, when "illness was destroying his work," but some six years 
 earlier) does certainly not display the learned energy of a Michel- 
 angelo or a David, nor the suave accomplishment of a Leighton. If 
 one were to pit it against Mr. Scott's little " illustration of the hero 
 traveller " etc., the verdict might go in the contrary direction.] 
 
 I leave it to the reader to judge whether the spirit shown 
 in the foregoing extract is or is not such as might have been 
 expected from its author with regard to his " dearest of friends 
 and most interesting of men," whom he well perceived to be 
 then "dying," and who was dead long before the Aatobio- 
 
 1 Mr. Sharp was perhaps prompted by Mr. Scott to say (p. 241 of his 
 book on Rossetti) that my brother's design " is, as the few intimate friends 
 at this date are aware, indebted for suggestion to the fine poem by Mr. 
 William Bell Scott called The Sphinx, where — for the first time, if I am 
 not mistaken — questions are propounded to the Sphinx, instead of the 
 latter being the mystic questioner in riddles." This statement is wholly 
 fallacious. In Mr. Scott's poem not a single question of a substantial kind 
 is propounded to the Sphinx, and only one question by way of rhetorical 
 device. 
 
PAINTINGS AND POEMS, 1874-81. 367 
 
 graphical Notes were put into form for publication. Curious 
 indeed are the lurking-places and blind corners in the heart 
 of man. Expressions occur in this extract which seem 
 dictated by genuine affection, and so I believe they were, for 
 Scott was a man capable of true friendship, as no one knows 
 better than myself ; and other expressions which look as if 
 they were incompatible with anything save a resolute desire 
 to disparage and besmirch. But I will for the present leave 
 " dear old Gabriel prostrate on the old sofa — going down fast 
 and dying " — and resume what has to be said about his works 
 of art up to the earlier portion of 1881. 
 
 Desdemonds Death-song was a subject highly germane to 
 my brother's sympathies and his powers. He was greatly 
 bent upon making a picture of it, and designed it in two or 
 three varying compositions ; and it seems more than likely 
 that, had he succeeded in producing the painting, the public 
 liking of it would have surpassed that for almost any of his 
 other works. But he was not destined to make a beginning 
 in colour. Bruna Brunelleschi was his last water-colour 
 (except a Proserpine replica), and was also one of his best. 
 
 To this record of Rossetti's art-work I may add that 
 Mr. Haydon made towards 1880 an etching of the old design 
 of Hamlet and Ophelia, doing it with skill and with great 
 fidelity, but rather heavy-handedly. My brother preferred 
 that if should not be published, and the copper remains in 
 my hands. After all this lapse of years it might be quite as 
 well to publish the etching some day. 
 
 Mr. Caine gives a rather singular account of how Rossetti 
 was induced to resume poetical composition, of which he had 
 done nothing considerable since 1871. The friend of whom 
 he speaks is clearly Mr. Theodore Watts. I cannot remember 
 having heard of the circumstances otherwise than through 
 Mr. Caine's narrative, but this I assume to be substantially 
 correct : — 
 
 "After one of his most serious illnesses, and in the hope of 
 drawing-off his attention from himself, and from the gloomy fore- 
 bodings which in an invalid's mind usually gather about his own 
 
 
368 DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI. 
 
 too absorbing personality, a friend prevailed upon him, with infinite 
 solicitation, to try his hand afresh at a sonnet. The outcome was 
 an effort so feeble as to be all but unrecognizable as the work of the 
 author of the sonnets of The House of Life; but, with more shrewd- 
 ness and friendliness (on this occasion) than frankness, the critic 
 lavished measureless praise upon it, and urged the poet to renewed 
 exertion. One by one, at longer or shorter intervals, sonnets were 
 written ; and this exercise did more towards his recovery than any 
 other medicine, with the result besides that Rossetti eventually 
 regained all his old dexterity and mastery of hand. Encouraged by 
 such results, the friend went on to induce Rossetti to write a ballad ; 
 and this purpose he finally achieved by challenging the poet's ability 
 to compose in the simple, direct, and emphatic style which is the 
 style of the ballad proper, as distinguished from the elaborate, 
 ornate, and condensed diction which he had hitherto worked in 
 [it would be more correct to say " which he had generally hitherto 
 worked in," for there were instances to the contrary — such as 
 Stratton Water]. Put upon his mettle, the outcome of this second 
 artifice practised upon him was that he wrote The White Ship, and 
 afterwards The King's Tragedy" 
 
 Perhaps the incident of the ill-concocted sonnet belongs to 
 the year 1878, when Rossetti did in fact write some verses — 
 I presume a sonnet — about Cyprus, of all places in the world. 
 He knew and cared nothing about Cyprus, nor about Lord 
 Beaconsfield's supposed stroke of policy in securing in that 
 year the administration of the Island, and the sonnet could 
 thus hardly escape being a bad one. Mr. Watts undertook 
 to send the sonnet to the Athenceum, but withdrew it on the 
 alleged ground that the Pall Mall Gazette contained another 
 poem on the same theme — a reason which always looked to 
 me odd, and which may now yield to the more cogent reason 
 that the sonnet was a visibly bad one. My brother did after- 
 wards write several good sonnets — as for instance, in April 
 1880, The Song-throe (" By thine own tears thy song must 
 tears beget"), and, in February 1881, the sonnet for his picture 
 named Found. He sent two others in January 1881 to 
 Christina, with the dismal message—" With me, sonnets mean 
 
DANTE'S DREAM — BALLADS, AND SONNETS. 369 
 
 insomnia." I think the trio of sonnets entitled True Woman 
 may have been the very latest of his printed works, produced 
 before 15 September 1881. On his death-bed he finished (as 
 I mentioned before) his old ballad of Jan van Hunks, and 
 produced two sonnets on the Sphinx subject. These three 
 compositions, which he presented as a gift to Mr. Watts, 
 remain as yet unpublished. 
 
 The important ballad of The White Ship was composed 
 chiefly in 1880; it was finished towards the end of April in 
 that year. Some scraps of it had however been written " long 
 ago," as my brother told me. The still more important — but 
 I think certainly not superior — ballad of The King's Tragedy 
 may have been completed before the spring of 1881 had well 
 begun. This also had been undertaken some while before 
 the writing of it was attended to with regularity. The work 
 strained him severely. " It was as though my own life ebbed 
 out with it," he said to Mr. Caine. 
 
 XXXIX. 
 
 DANTE'S DREAM— BALLADS AND SONNETS. 
 
 Mr. Hall Caine was destined to be the last house-mate of 
 Dante Rossetti in Cheyne Walk. In the spring of 1881 he 
 spent a week with him by invitation ; and in July of that 
 year he took up his regular abode in the house. This was 
 naturally at my brother's urgency. Mr. Caine, from the 
 experience which he had now had of Rossetti's habits, low 
 spirits, and fitful impressibility, viewed the adventure not with- 
 out some apprehension ; and it would be vain to deny that, 
 spite of his sincere admiration of Rossetti's intellect and its 
 products, and his warm personal regard, he found the position 
 a somewhat trying one. He had free quarters and board in 
 the house, and was not bound to look after my brother other- 
 wise than as friendship and kind feeling should dictate. He 
 had now launched out on the literary profession, and neces- 
 sarily wanted to have the majority of his time at his own 
 VOL, I. 24 
 
370 DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI, 
 
 disposal. But Rossetti's gifts and his temperament always 
 made him a leader in any associateship, and now his infirmities 
 reinforced the claim ; and Mr. Caine was soon drawn within 
 a vortex from which escape — unless he had decided to escape 
 from the house altogether — was not easily manageable. His 
 own work got impeded ; his days and evenings were cut up 
 by numerous and miscellaneous attentions paid to his highly 
 sensitive and not seldom morbidly wayward friend and host. 
 If he looks back upon the months from July 1881 to April 
 1882 as a period of strain and self-sacrifice, he may at least 
 console himself with the reflection that he did a great deal to 
 soothe and tend a man of eminent genius and wide renown, 
 and that he amply earned the gratitude of those members of 
 the family who survived Dante Rossetti. 
 
 When the arrangement for Mr. Caine's settling in the house 
 was definitely fixed, Rossetti gave notice to Mr. Dunn — then 
 in his native city of Truro — that he would not again be 
 required as an inmate ; and Mr. Dunn, on returning to 
 London, took lodgings of his own in Chelsea. He still 
 received some artistic employment from Rossetti ; and, after 
 the death of the latter, he accommodated me by taking 
 charge of the house and keeping things straight until the 
 sale of the numerous effects was held in July, and for some 
 little while afterwards. 
 
 The year 1881 was really one of conspicuous success and 
 even triumph for Rossetti, as both painter and poet ; but not 
 all this availed to " minister to the mind diseased " — or 
 "dis-eased," as we might more appropriately write the word 
 for the immediate purpose. He sold his large picture of 
 Dante's Dream to the Public or Municipal Gallery of Liver- 
 pool, the Walker Art-Gallery ; and he produced, amid lavish 
 applause, his new volume of poetry, Ballads and Sonnets, as 
 well as a modified reissue of his old volume named Poems. 
 The Dante's Dream had now for some while been back in my 
 brother's studio, owing to the decision of its second purchaser, 
 Mr. Valpy, to leave London and reside in Bath ; and Rossetti 
 induced Valpy to re-consign it to him, with an undertaking 
 
DANTE'S DREAM— BALLADS AND SONNETS. 37 I 
 
 that he would eventually supply other works to an equal 
 and indeed a higher money-value. I have made some pre- 
 vious brief allusion to this affair. 
 
 Whatever credit may be due for the first suggestion of 
 the sale-and-purchase transaction with Liverpool has to be 
 assigned to Mr. Caine, followed up by his friendly and zealous 
 good-offices, and his tact in conducting a sometimes rather 
 thorny negotiation. He it was who, in December 1880, 
 wrote to Rossetti, from Liverpool, saying that, as Alderman 
 Samuelson had then succeeded another gentleman — whom 
 I shall term Mr. R. — as director of the gallery, a chance 
 seemed to have opened for bringing the sale to bear. 
 Alderman Samuelson did in fact prove a steady and even 
 strenuous friend to the project. In March 1881 he proposed 
 to call on Rossetti, and look at the picture. But it so hap- 
 pened that Mr. R. was to be in his company ; and this was 
 supremely distasteful to Rossetti, for a reason which he 
 notified thus in a letter to Mr. Samuelson : — 
 
 " Mr. R. thought fit some time ago to express himself, when 
 presiding at a public lecture, in the worst possible form of disparage- 
 ment respecting me and my art." And, as to his proposing to enter 
 the house, " I need hardly say that no question of interest could 
 induce me to waive such an objection." 
 
 This affair of Mr. R.'s observations at the lecture was for 
 a long while a sore point with Rossetti, who understood that 
 the remarks in question had involved a recurrence to the old 
 " Fleshly School " imputations upon his morale in the arts. 
 He may have taken an exaggerated view of the facts, or may 
 have felt unduly touchy concerning them ; but many persons 
 would probably agree with me in commending his high spirit, 
 which would neither bend nor break, and which made him 
 count as dross the coin which — in a business affair that he 
 had very much at heart on various grounds — might have 
 been earned with some tarnish to his self-respect. 
 
 Alderman Samuelson was thus brought to a standstill for 
 a time ; but he proposed anew to make a call, accompanied 
 
372 DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI. 
 
 by two other members of the committee, Mr. Bower and 
 Mr. Galloway. This was done, and all three were of one 
 mind, in favour of the purchase. Still Mr. R. had to be 
 dealt with, for his was an influential voice, without which 
 nothing could be securely effected. In July, after seeing and 
 admiring the smaller Dante s Dream in the house of Mr. 
 Graham, he wrote to my brother, saying that his remarks at 
 the lecture had been misunderstood or misreported, and that 
 he would like the purchase to come off, and would yet call 
 if authorized to do so. After such a disclaimer, any further 
 obstruction on Rossetti's part would have been an act of 
 mingled obduracy and weakness — and indeed he was bound 
 to accept, as a gentleman, the denial of fact tendered to him 
 in a gentlemanly spirit. So he made an appointment for 
 Mr. R. to call. The call was made, and Mr. R. also pro- 
 nounced in favour of the purchase. My brother, in view of 
 the probable sale, had already made some modifications in 
 the picture. He positively declined however to send it to the 
 annual exhibition in Liverpool, unless on the clear under- 
 standing that it was, to all intents and purposes, sold to the 
 permanent Art-Gallery, and could not under any conditions 
 be returned on his hands. At one time, in the beginning of 
 August, he concluded that this understanding had failed ; but 
 it was immediately renewed. The picture was sent off on the 
 16th of the month, and at the private view it stood marked 
 as sold. The price he wanted was his own old price, £i,$7$. 
 To allow of his receiving this sum unabated, the amount was 
 fixed at ^"1,650, thus providing for the usual commission to 
 the exhibiting body upon a work sold out of the Exhibition. 
 Mr. Caine would no doubt have been too high-minded to urge 
 any claim of his own on account of his first suggestion, and 
 the great pains he had taken in the matter ; but Rossetti, at 
 an early date, proposed to compensate him with a sum of 
 £150, and this I presume was done. He also got Alderman 
 Samuelson to accept a crayon-study for the head of Dante 
 in the painting — one of his finest works of this class. 
 
 Thus, with marked success, terminated the sale of Rossetti's 
 
dante's dream— ballads and sonnets. 373 
 
 largest picture, which continues to form one of the principal 
 features of the Walker Art-Gallery. The purchase being 
 now effected, it became incumbent on my brother to see 
 about executing and delivering the various works which he 
 had undertaken to hand over to Mr. Valpy after the purchase, 
 as an equivalent for the Dante s Dream. He made no delay 
 in setting to work upon them. But his health was rapidly 
 failing, only some months of shattered life remained to him, 
 and the tale of work was far from being completed at the 
 date of his death. Mr. Valpy had of course a claim for a 
 solid money-payment instead, and this was made in due 
 course. The like was the case with Mr. Graham, in relation 
 to the still unfinished picture Found, begun as far back as 
 1854. It may be as well to add that this picture would 
 undoubtedly have been brought to completion some months 
 before Rossetti's death, but for an unfortunate demur on the 
 part of Mr. Graham himself, who wanted to cumulate upon 
 the Found certain payments in advance which he had made 
 partly upon that work, and partly upon another work not 
 yet begun in colour but only schemed out in monochrome, 
 The Boat of Love (from the Vita Nuovd). He now wished 
 to abandon The Boat of Love altogether. To this Rossetti 
 was entitled to object, and he did object ; though, in the 
 instance of so old and proved a friend, with very great 
 reluctance. 
 
 My brother's volume of 1870, the Poems, went through 
 six editions. Towards the beginning of 1879 it was out of 
 print, and no further issue of it appeared. He made about 
 £700 by it altogether. By March 1881 he had determined 
 to re-print the Poems in a somewhat altered form ; and to 
 follow it up by a separate volume, containing Rose Mary, 
 The White Ship, The King's Tragedy, The House of Life 
 in a completed form, and various other compositions. But 
 very soon afterwards he decided to reverse the process, and 
 bring out first the new Ballads and Sonnets, and then in 
 close sequence the revised Poems. Into the latter — to com- 
 pensate for the removal of the original and unfinished House 
 
374 DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI. 
 
 of Life — some fresh work was introduced ; especially the 
 uncompleted yet rather long poem, chiefly of very early 
 years, named The Bride s Prelude. Before the end of March 
 the copy for Ballads and Sonnets was sent to the printer, to 
 be published by Messrs. Ellis & White. This liberal firm 
 offered for it the same terms as for the volume of 1870 — a 
 royalty of 25 per cent, to be paid down as soon as the book 
 should be published, without waiting for actual sale. For 
 the re-issued Poems the terms were to be a like royalty, but 
 only accruing in proportion as sales were effected. As in 
 the previous instance, I assisted my brother with the proofs. 
 The Ballads and Sonnets, very properly dedicated to Mr. 
 Watts, were fully in print by 16 September, and various 
 copies were distributed. The full publication ensued on 
 17 October. The book was a thorough success, for by the 
 25th of the latter month the first edition of 1,000 copies 
 was exhausted ; and before the end of November 2,000 
 copies altogether had been issued and paid for. Rossetti 
 wished to write two other historical ballads : foau of Arc, 
 for which he took some preparatory steps ; and the Death 
 of Abraham Lincoln, which was intended to include a tribute 
 to another great American, John Brown, the " faithful unto 
 death " ; also, according to Mr. Sharp, The Death Ride of 
 Alexander ILL of Scotland (1286). Of this I remember 
 nothing, nor does the subject seem to supply much material 
 for a ballad. The Poems, in their revised form, came out 
 likewise in 1881. This volume sold of course less rapidly, 
 but continuously until some while after my brother's 
 decease. 
 
 Critics were laudatory, some of them enthusiastic ; and, 
 so far as memory serves me, there was no repetition of abuse at 
 all resembling The Fleshly School of Poetry, or even following 
 on the same lines. " Live it down " is a very sound axiom. 
 My brother had lived it down, and might from the first have 
 been sure that he would do so. But, unhappily for himself and 
 all others concerned, he had supposed that the influence of 
 detraction and fallacy is much greater than it really is, and 
 
CUMBERLAND AND LONDON — FINAL ILLNESS. 375 
 
 the votaries of those powers much more numerous than in 
 fact they are. 
 
 Painful to say, no scintilla of pleasure or of cheerfulness 
 seemed to come to Dante Rossetti from his double achieve- 
 ment in 1881. He was of course, in a faint way, gratified that 
 his leading picture was sold to a public institution, and that 
 his poetry was, by a renewed experiment, recognized as an 
 honour to our period. He sometimes expressed to me — and 
 he did so particularly in February 1880 — a much higher 
 value for his poetical than for his pictorial work. But the 
 curtains were drawn round his innermost self, and the dusk 
 had closed over him, and was fast darkening into night. Not 
 for the applause of a big or a little crowd had he worked all 
 his life long, rather for adequate self-expression and attain- 
 ment in art. The work was done, but — except in a remote 
 or abstracted sense — it did not prove to be its own exceeding 
 great reward. 
 
 XL. 
 
 CUMBERLAND AND LONDON— FINAL ILLNESS. 
 
 THAT Dante Rossetti's health was really and very seriously 
 undermined in and before 1881 is a fact now too palpable for 
 discussion, for his life came to an end in April 1882. People 
 who thought that it was " all fancy," or the nervous appre- 
 hensions of a hypochondriac, were under a mistake. But it 
 is true that his uneasy imagination did at times suggest to 
 him — at any rate in his later years — that something particular 
 was going wrong, when in fact there was little or no solid 
 cause for disquietude. I have heard of more than one instance 
 in which, on hearing about the symptoms of a disease affecting 
 some one else, he forthwith proceeded to suppose that he him- 
 self was subject to the same malady. Mr. Caine relates a 
 curious circumstance, which deserves a little reflection. 
 
 It appears that at some time in 1879, before Mr. Caine had 
 made personal acquaintance with Rossetti, some troublesome 
 
376 DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI. 
 
 attack of ill-health befell Mr. Caine himself, then in Liverpool. 
 He wrote of it to Rossetti, and the latter, never deficient in 
 sympathy, replied as follows : — 
 
 " I was truly concerned to hear of the attack of ill-health you 
 have suffered from, though you do not tell me its exact nature. I 
 hope it was not accompanied by any such symptoms as you men- 
 tioned before. I myself have had similar symptoms (though not so 
 fully as you describe), and have spat Dlood at intervals for years ; 
 but now think nothing of it — nor indeed ever did — waiting for 
 further alarm-signals which never came." 
 
 Mr. Caine then says of Rossetti (apparently in 1881) that 
 
 " Upon the periodical recurrence of the symptom, he never failed 
 to become convinced that he spat arterial blood, and that on each 
 occasion he had received his death-warrant. Proof enough was 
 adduced that the blood came from the minor vessels of the throat." 
 
 This, especially as contrasted with Rossetti's own quoted 
 words, seems a little exaggerated in expression ; but on that 
 I need not dwell. Mr. Caine next proceeds to state that 
 " during the two or three weeks preceding our departure for 
 Cumberland in the autumn of 1881, during the time of our 
 residence there, and during the first few weeks after our return 
 to London, Rossetti was afflicted by a violent cough," which 
 our author regarded as aggravated " by a conscious giving 
 way to it." I remember at that period, and at one or two 
 others, this matter of the cough ; and I am quite at one with 
 Mr. Caine in thinking that it could have been considerably 
 controlled by my brother if he had chosen ; but for one reason 
 or another he appeared to me to prefer giving it the freest 
 course. Then comes Mr. Caine's narrative of a particular 
 incident, which probably pertains to about the middle of 
 November : — 
 
 " He told me that during the night of my absence, in the midst 
 of one of his bouts of coughing, he had discharged an enormous 
 quantity of blood. ' I know this is the final signal,' he said, ' and 
 I shall die.' I did not " (adds Mr. Caine) " hold the promise I gave 
 
CUMBERLAND AND LONDON— FINAL ILLNESS. $17 
 
 him as to secrecy sufficiently sacred, or so exclusive, as to forbid my 
 revealing the whole circumstance to his medical attendant. I may 
 add that from that moment the cough entirely disappeared." 
 
 All this about the blood-spitting " at intervals for years " — 
 not to speak of the superabundant coughing — sounds odd, 
 and perhaps some of my readers will suppose it was mere 
 fantasy or semi-conscious imposture on Rossetti's part. And 
 yet I believe it was real in its degree. As far back as 
 November 1871 (which was some months before the appear- 
 ance of the Buchanan pamphlet, and therefore before any 
 obvious disturbance of his mental equilibrium) he told me that 
 he had brought up blood that day, and had done so earlier 
 in the year at Kelmscott, which was prior to the appearance 
 even of the article in the Contemporary Review ; and he made 
 a similar statement at the beginning of April 1872. However, 
 I have not the least reason to think that his lungs were, from 
 first to last, otherwise than sound. 
 
 The departure for Cumberland, mentioned by Mr. Caine, 
 took place on 17 September 1881. Mr. Caine was thoroughly 
 familiar with the Vale of St. John, near Keswick ; and, as it 
 seemed highly desirable that Rossetti should have some break 
 in the monotonous course of his existence, and rouse himself 
 from habitual and increasing dejection, he was prevailed upon 
 to join Caine in an expedition to the Cumberland solitude, 
 at the Legberthwaite end of the Vale. As the Family-letters 
 show, this change seemed, at the first blush, not a little 
 beneficial ; but soon, under the malign influence of chloral, 
 with its accompanying whiskey, " the last state of that man 
 was worse than the first." Mr. Caine has given some 
 depressing details, which I need not draw upon here — the 
 sum of the whole being that the change proved visibly 
 harmful. Rossetti at last expressed a wish to return to 
 London. He was back on 17 October. As he re-entered his 
 now gloomy but accustomed and still cherished house, he 
 exclaimed, as Mr. Caine has recorded — " Thank God ! home 
 at last, and never shall I leave it again." He was indeed to 
 
378 DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI. 
 
 leave it once more, but only as the latest stage towards his 
 final resting-place. 
 
 On 24 October I received his letter saying that he was 
 " very ill." I went round, and found him in much the same 
 state as in October 1879. A nurse was called in, who left 
 him towards the beginning of November. On the 27th of that 
 month another nurse came, and none too soon, and one rule 
 strictly enforced was that my brother should go to bed 
 by nine o'clock. By 21 November I observed him to be 
 somewhat less shaken in health, but deeply melancholy. 
 Matters of very old as well as more recent date agitated his 
 mind ; even so old as the year 1847 or 1848, when his desultory 
 habits of work, or lack of filial deference, used to annoy our 
 father, and elicit some severe expressions from him. It must, 
 I think, have been immediately after 21 November that an 
 incident occurred, related at some length by Mr. Bell Scott. 
 It is singular in itself, and highly symptomatic of my brother's 
 then condition of mind and spirits, and I shall extract the 
 passage as it stands, only omitting some observations which, 
 without being irrelevant, are not quite to the immediate 
 purpose. 
 
 " A new idea had taken possession of his mind, which caused us 
 painful agitation [" us " would be Scott and Miss Boyd, and I 
 suppose some others, especially Shields and Watts : I cannot affirm 
 however that Miss Boyd was present on the occasion referred to, 
 nor who else was either present or in fact painfully agitated]. He 
 wanted a priest to give him absolution for his sins ! I mention this 
 hallucination [I cannot see that it was a hallucination, though it 
 may have been a weakness] as I have related previous ones ; for 
 example, that of the chaffinch on the highway so long ago as 1869 
 [see Section XXX.]— not loving him the less but the more, 
 sympathizing with him almost mesmerically. But the aesthetic side 
 of anything was his exclusive interest. In poetry and in painting the 
 mediaeval period of history was necessary to him [this, in its primary 
 sense, is remote indeed from the fact]. At first no one took any 
 notice of this demand for a confessor. We thought his mind 
 wandering, or that he was dreaming. But on its earnest repetition, 
 
CUMBERLAND AND LONDON — FINAL ILLNESS. 379 
 
 with his eyes open v I for one put him in mind of his not being a 
 papist, and of his extreme agnosticism. ' I don't care about that,' 
 was his puzzling reply. ' I can make nothing of Christianity, but 
 I only want a confessor to give me absolution for my sins.' This 
 was so truly like a man living or rather dying in a.d. 1300 that it 
 was impossible to do anything but smile. Yet he was serious, and 
 went on : ' I believe in a future life. Have I not had evidence of 
 that often enough ? Have I not heard and seen those that died 
 long years ago ? What I want now is absolution for my sins, that's 
 all.' 'And very little too,' some outsider in the room whispered, 
 as a gloomy joke [I have no idea who this outsider could have 
 been : did Mr. Scott possibly mean Mr. Caine ? It is exceedingly 
 unlikely that, during such a conversation as this, my brother would 
 have had in the room any person whom he himself regarded as an 
 outsider]. None of us, the deeply interested few who heard him, 
 could answer a word." 
 
 To this narrative — to the general authenticity of which I 
 lend full credence — I must add yet a few observations. On 
 the occasion to which I lately referred, 21 November, when 
 I was alone with my brother, he certainly showed very great 
 trouble of mind — the kind of trouble which, had he been a 
 Roman Catholic, he would at once have imparted to a priest 
 in confession, receiving in return admonition, advice, and 
 probably some large amount of consolation. He must then 
 have raised — or gone very near to raising — this question of a 
 Catholic priest. I say Catholic, because, although he had 
 been trained in the Anglican Church, such Christian sym- 
 pathies as he had went entirely in the direction of Catholicism, 
 and not in the least of Protestantism. Whatever may have 
 been the precise terms in which he spoke to me, my reply 
 was that, if he really felt any strong inclination that way, I, 
 were I in his place, would assuredly act upon it ; but that it 
 would be no use seeing a priest unless he were firmly 
 resolved to do what the priest should tell him to do, in the 
 nature of religious observance, penance, and aught else. 
 Were it possible for the like circumstances to arise again, I 
 would still give the like advice ; the question being, not what 
 
380 DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI. 
 
 my opinions are — and, as a fact, their current is totally 
 opposite — but what a man can rationally do who feels a 
 personal need of religious solace. If after this talk my 
 brother still wanted " absolution for his sins," the only really 
 surprising thing is that he did not take steps for soliciting 
 and procuring it. Here the other phase of his mind — that 
 which regarded the mysteries of the universe as inscrutable — 
 must have exercised the predominance. 
 
 Mr. Scott, it seems, urged upon Rossetti " his extreme 
 agnosticism." But Mr. Scott, in conceiving Rossetti to be an 
 extreme agnostic, only took count of one half of his mind, 
 often — it is true — in evidence. My brother was unquestion- 
 ably sceptical as to many alleged facts, and he disregarded 
 formulated dogmas, and the practices founded upon them. 
 For theological discussions of whatsoever kind he had not the 
 faintest taste, nor yet the least degree of aptitude. On the 
 other hand, his mind was naturally prone to the marvellous 
 and the supernatural, and he had an abiding and very deep 
 reverence for the person of Christ. I recollect that one 
 evening — it may have been late in 1879 — he wound up a 
 conversation with me on this subject by saying, in a tone of 
 decisive conviction, " Certainly He was something more than 
 man." To pass from the belief of something superhuman in 
 Christ to the admission of some more than human authority 
 in a minister of Christ is a not very unaccountable step. 
 
 It will be seen that I am not here arguing that my brother 
 was either reasonable or self-consistent in wishing to get 
 " absolution for his sins " — he was not a man of self-consistency 
 in either opinion or act ; but only that, if one understands 
 both sides of his mind, one can see how the notion arose, 
 whereas, if one erroneously supposes him to have been simply 
 and solely an "extreme agnostic," there is no traceable line 
 of connexion. When all is said, it must be added that the 
 " absolution " had quite as much to do with chloral as with 
 creed. 
 
 As to my brother's reported assertion " I believe in a future 
 life," this was partially true at all periods of his career, and 
 
CUMBERLAND AND LONDON — FINAL ILLNESS. 381 
 
 was entirely true in his closing years. 1 It depended partly 
 upon what we call " spiritualism," <on many of whose mani- 
 festations he relied, while ready to admit that some others 
 have been mere juggling. In November 1879 I found that 
 his mind was much occupied with spiritualism, and that he 
 was then fully convinced, or re-convinced, of immortality ; 
 and I am sure that from this belief he never afterwards 
 receded. I cannot say with any accuracy what he supposed 
 immortality to consist of. To all appearance his own surmises 
 were but vague. I have little doubt however that, in the case 
 of persons so faulty as he knew and acknowledged himself 
 to be, yet not ignoble in faculty or aim, he credited neither 
 immediate bliss after death nor irrevocable " damnation," but 
 rather a period of purgation and atonement, with gradual 
 ascent, comparable more or less to the purgatory of Roman 
 Catholics. On this momentous subject I never saw him to 
 be agitated, timorous, or mentally harassed. He seemed 
 willing to accept his fate, such as some eternal decree might 
 impose it. 
 
 Mr. Scott states also that Rossetti said — " Have I not 
 heard and seen those that died long years ago ? " Perhaps 
 this is even verbally accurate ; though I cannot recollect 
 having myself ever heard my brother allege that he had seen 
 a spiritual appearance, or what we term a ghost. 
 
 Perhaps the reader thinks that I have paid more attention 
 than was needed to this transitory craving for " absolution 
 for sins " ; but, at some point or other of my narrative, it 
 seemed requisite to say something about my brother's opinions 
 — or I might rather say feelings — on questions of religion, and 
 here the opportunity offered. His opinions on the subject 
 were highly indefinite ; his utterances often negative, some- 
 times positive ; his interior and essential feelings, a mixture 
 
 1 In my book entitled Dante Gabriel Rossetti as Designer and Writer 
 (p. 261) I have called attention to twelve sonnets in The House of Life 
 which bear upon the question of the destiny of the soul. Of these, 
 eight indicate a belief in immortality ; three a sense of uncertainty ; one 
 does not point clearly to anything. 
 
382 DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI. 
 
 of the two, coloured by passion and imagination, hazily 
 distinguishable by himself, and by no means to be neatly 
 ticketed by others. There is a very efficient phrase in Mr. 
 Swinburne's review of Rossetti's Poems of 1870 which comes 
 home to me as observably true : " Nor has he ever suffered 
 from the distemper of minds fretted and worried by gnatstings 
 and fleabites of belief and unbelief till the whole lifeblood 
 of the intellect is enfeebled and inflamed." Or take Rossetti's 
 own utterance in his short but well-pondered poem Soothsay 
 (published in 1881) : — 
 
 " Let lore of all Theology- 
 Be to thy soul what it can be ; 
 But know — the Power that fashions man 
 Measured not out thy little span 
 For thee to take the meting-rod 
 In turn, and so approve on God 
 Thy science of Theometry." 
 
 Mr. Caine regarded Rossetti as, " by religious bias, a monk 
 of the middle ages." To this I only very partially assent. 
 He may indeed have been so by " bias," but clearly not by 
 implicit belief. If we could imagine " a monk of the middle 
 ages" whose mind was in a mist as to religious doctrines, 
 who conformed to no religious rites, practised no monastic 
 austerities, and in profession and act led an anti-monastic life, 
 we might obtain some parallel to Dante Rossetti. But such 
 a personage would be very little of a monk, of the middle 
 or of any ages. It would be more admissible to say that 
 Rossetti was intrinsically a man of the middle ages, who, by 
 innate bias and by the course of circumstances, might not 
 unnaturally have been led to turn himself into a monk. In 
 that condition he would have painted a great number of 
 missals, written a verse-chronicle beginning with the Garden 
 of Eden or the " earth without form and void," indited 
 hymns as rapturous as those of Jacopone da Todi, exceeded 
 in austerity, exercised a vast influence over his penitents, and 
 perchance have become a Cardinal or a Pope — not indeed a 
 
CUMBERLAND AND LONDON — FINAL ILLNESS. 383 
 
 " pagan Pope," but still one who thought his own thoughts 
 under the cincture of the triple tiara. 
 
 From these large speculations I must return into the 
 hushed atmosphere of 16 Cheyne Walk, and mention what 
 were the latest art-productions of my brother. 
 
 In May 1881 his picture of The Salutation of Beatrice, 
 commissioned by Mr. Leyland, was in progress. For this 
 picture he hesitated for a while between the gracious type 
 of Mrs. Stillman and the intense type of Mrs. Morris. 
 Eventually he adhered to the latter. Spite of his shaken 
 health, the work proved very fully up to his mark. It was 
 not far from completed when he had to abandon the palette. 
 After the great crisis of illness of which I shall next have 
 to speak he resumed painting, though only to a minor extent, 
 early in January 1882. For Mr. Valpy he nearly or quite 
 finished a duplicate Proserpine, and brought well forward a 
 duplicate Joan of A re. There was also (but not so late as 
 these) a Donna della Finestra, with magnolia-blossoms, which 
 remained uncompleted. 
 
 No one had hailed the volume of Ballads and Sonnets with 
 more energetic or more acceptable praise than Rossetti's 
 friend now of long standing, Dr. Westland Marston. The 
 evening of 1 1 December was fixed for this poet, and his 
 blind poet-son Philip, to visit my brother. The only fourth 
 person present was Mr. Caine, who relates the facts as 
 follows : — 
 
 " For a while he [Rossetti] seemed much cheered by their bright 
 society ; but later on he gave those manifestations of uneasiness 
 which I had learned to know too well. Removing restlessly from 
 seat to seat, he ultimately threw himself upon the sofa in that rather 
 awkward attitude which I have previously described as characteristic 
 of him in moments of nervous agitation. Presently he called out 
 that his arm had become paralysed, and, upon attempting to rise, 
 that his leg also had lost its power. We were naturally startled ; 
 but, knowing the force of his imagination in its influence on his 
 bodily capacity, we tried playfully to banish the idea. Raising him 
 to his feet however, we realized that, from whatever cause, he had 
 
384 DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI. 
 
 lost the use of the limbs in question, and in the utmost alarm we 
 carried him to his bedroom, and hurried away for Mr. Marshall. 
 It was found that he had really undergone a species of paralysis — • 
 called, I think, loss of co-ordinative power. The juncture was a 
 critical one ; and it was at length decided, by the able medical 
 adviser just named, that the time had come when the chloral, which 
 was at the root of all this mischief, should be decisively, entirely, 
 and instantly cut off. To compass this end, a young medical man, 
 Mr. Henry Maudsley, was brought into the house as a resident, to 
 watch and manage the case in the intervals of Mr. Marshall's visits. 
 It is not for me to offer a statement of what was done, and done so 
 ably, at this period. I only know that morphia was at first injected 
 as a substitute for the narcotic the system had grown to demand ; 
 that Rossetti was for many hours delirious whilst his body was 
 passing through the terrible ordeal of having to conquer the craving 
 for the former drug ; and that, three or four mornings after the 
 experiment had been begun, he awoke calm in body and clear in 
 mind and grateful in heart [this favourable result seems to me a 
 little ante-dated]. His delusions, and those intermittent suspicions 
 of his friends which I have before alluded to, were now gone, as 
 things in the past of which he hardly knew whether in actual fact 
 they had or had not been." 
 
 I will add here a few extracts from my own Diary. There 
 are some others relating to my brother at this period, but of 
 less import : — 
 
 " Wednesday, December 14. Called again to see Gabriel, having 
 seen him also on Monday [the day following the attack]. He is 
 in bed, suffering from a numbness along the left side generally — 
 what might be regarded as paralytic numbness, but Marshall has 
 assured Watts that it is not really paralytic. To me also Marshall 
 spoke on Monday, partly in the same sense, but (to my thinking) 
 less positively. [Then follow a few details, forestalled by Mr. 
 Caine's narrative.] Of course Gabriel is not a little dispirited. 
 Marshall is now very anxious to get rid of the chloral [it would 
 appear therefore that chloral was not, as might be inferred from that 
 narrative, abolished on the very night of the attack], and he proposes 
 to inject morphia as a substitute. He was to have come to-day for 
 the purpose, but did not. He also wants to put a young medical 
 
CUMBERLAND AND LONDON — FINAL ILLNESS. 385 
 
 man in charge, to take care that his plan is fully carried out. Watts 
 is with Gabriel almost every day. This evening Jones also came, 
 and was very affectionate, and promises to return as often as he may 
 be wanted. On coming home I found Shields. 
 
 "Monday, December 19. Called on Gabriel. A young medical 
 man, Maudsley, nephew of the celebrated doctor, is now in the 
 house, and the system of injecting morphia near the wrist has been 
 begun. The chloral is wholly discontinued, and the whiskey which 
 accompanied it reduced to about a wineglass a day. Under this 
 system Gabriel gets a fair moderate amount of sleep ; but it is 
 perturbed by painful opium-dreams, and the same impressions 
 remain with him when awake. This was markedly the case to-day. 
 Throughout the evening he was under all sorts of delusions of a 
 more or less unpleasant character — seeing writings and printed 
 sheets where none existed, replying to questions which were not 
 asked, etc. Maudsley says that the real cause of these hallucina- 
 tions is not the morphia but the cessation of the chloral, which 
 seems to me odd. He re-affirms what Marshall said — that the 
 numbness of the left side of the body is not really paralysis. This 
 numbness seems slightly abated now, especially so far as the arm 
 and hand are concerned. 
 
 "Thursday, December 22. Called round at Gabriel's, and spoke 
 to Watts, Maudsley being absent at the time. Watts says that 
 Gabriel was sleepless on Monday and Tuesday nights ; but on 
 Wednesday night, without either chloral or morphia administered, 
 he got some five or six hours' sleep, and was this morning sensibly 
 better ; knew Watts, and conversed sensibly for the most part. 
 The numbness may have diminished a little. I was not minded to 
 see Gabriel, surmising that the best thing for him is to be left as 
 quiet as possible ; and in this Watts agreed with me." 
 
 Between the above date in my Diary, 22 December 
 1 88 1, and the next ensuing date, 6 January 1882, I shall 
 interpolate a professional memorandum by Mr. Maudsley, 
 which I found among my brother's papers after his death. 
 It is worded as follows : — 
 
 "Thursday, December 15-16. — 90 grains of chloral and | pint 
 of brandy in 2 doses, at intervals of 4 hours, 9 p.m. and 1 a.m. — 
 Friday [16] 4 minims of morphia at 9 p.m. ; sleep 4 hours; restless 
 
 VOL. I. 25 
 
386 DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI. 
 
 and craving for whiskey and chloral till 3 a.m. ; i| whiskey at 5 a.m. 
 — Saturday [17] restless, but condition much better. At 9 p.m. 
 5 minims of morphia ; dozing and sleep for one hour, and quiet 
 until 12. At 1 a.m. craving for whiskey and chloral; 3 minims of 
 morphia. At 2 a.m. doze for a short time ; then restless, craving 
 for whiskey; 2 oz. of whiskey at 4 a.m. — Sunday [18] horrible 
 dreams ; restless until 9 a.m., then sleep for 2 hours ; delusions 
 towards evening. — Monday [20] 9 a.m., 6 minims of morphia; 
 quiet sleep till 12. 1 a.m., restless, violent, and irritable; 
 delusions etc. ; 2 minims of morphia. Restless with delusions all 
 day; delusions etc., night. — Tuesday [21] 4 minims of morphia; 
 restless, no sleep, but quiet ; delusions. No chloral or whiskey. — 
 Wednesday [21] ether and bromine; quiet, delusions. No morphia; 
 sleep 8 hours. — Thursday [22] 3 minims of morphia at 9 p.m. ; sleep 
 quiet ever since." 
 
 My own Diary now resumes : — 
 
 "Friday, January 6, 1882. In the evening I went to Gabriel's. 
 He has for some days past been down in his studio, and the numb- 
 ness in the left leg is now greatly diminished ; in fact he walks about 
 the studio without any sort of assistance, and very much as before 
 the attack. The left arm he still regards as in the same state and 
 much the same degree of numbness. I suspect however that, by 
 a proper exertion of will, he would find it not so very much amiss. 
 Maudsley urges him to set his palette to-morrow, and see what he 
 can do. Gabriel's spirits are still extremely low — the uncertainty as 
 to his being able to resume his profession as a painter weighing 
 painfully upon him. I saw (copied out by Sharp) the verses ' To 
 an Old Enemy,' which Buchanan has prefixed to his latest novel 
 God and the Man. They are generally, and I think correctly, 
 assumed to be addressed to Gabriel, and they certainly form a 
 handsome retractation of past invidious attacks. Gabriel thinks the 
 verses may really be intended for Swinburne [but I don't believe that 
 he long persisted in any such supposition]. 
 
 "Friday, January 13. Evening with Gabriel. He can now 
 make a little use of his left hand for helping himself at meals etc. ; 
 and during the greater part of the evening he was conversible and 
 fairly cheerful, though always much depressed when he speaks of his 
 blighted professional prospects etc. 
 
CUMBERLAND AND LONDON — FINAL ILLNESS. 387 
 
 " Monday, January 23. Evening with Gabriel. He is now, I 
 think, somewhat better, in body and mental tone combined, than at 
 any time since his return from Cumberland ; yet his spirits are still 
 low, and his left arm partially numbed. Morphia — water." [This 
 last jotting means that by this date the injections of morphia had 
 been so far reduced that at last mere water was substituted ; but 
 my brother was not allowed to know that fact.] 
 
 Mr. Scott, in speaking of this attack of quasi-paralysis, 
 says : " He was carried upstairs to bed, and never came down 
 again." This, as will be seen from my Diary, is one more 
 instance of a rooted habit of inaccuracy. My brother was 
 carried upstairs on 11 December. He was down " some 
 days " before 6 January (it was in fact on 29 or 30 December), 
 and he continued coming down. Not only this, but he called 
 in our mother's house, in Torrington Square, Bloomsbury, 
 no less than four times between 14 January and I February. 
 A fair inference from Mr. Scott's statement is that he can 
 never have gone round from his own house in Cheyne Walk 
 to that of my brother after the close of 188 1 or so. He says 
 also that Mr. Morris asked him " if I really thought Rossetti 
 so ill, or was he only acting, to keep those about him in 
 suspense." It would be for Mr. Morris to say whether he 
 has here been correctly reported. I am not myself aware of 
 any reason he could have had for conjecturing that Rossetti 
 might be " acting," though he had, like other old friends, 
 sufficient cause for knowing that the invalid was fanciful. 
 But, as Mr. Caine has told us, Rossetti ceased even to be 
 fanciful when the origin of the fancies, the chloral-dosing, 
 had ceased, and my own experience of the facts mainly 
 confirms Mr. Caine's. 
 
 Mr. Maudsley, his beneficial work being done, finally 
 quitted my brother's house on 27 January. The nurse, Mrs. 
 Abrey, still remained, and she continued with the patient till 
 his dying^ day, always efficient, kindly disposed towards him 
 and others, and cheerful-tempered. As Mr. Marshall con- 
 sidered that my brother ought now to get change of air, 
 I suggested to the latter that a desirable place might be 
 
388 DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI. 
 
 Birchington-on-Sea, near Margate — a new marine health- 
 resort where our excellent and long-tried friend Mr. John 
 P. Seddon had built a number of bungalows, or one-storied 
 residences. Dante liked the idea. He wrote to Mr. Seddon, 
 and received a prompt response that a bungalow would be 
 placed at his disposal, and even, by sanction of the owner 
 Mr. Cobb, free of expense. This last item was really not 
 needed. Still, it was, from all points of view, pleasing, and 
 my brother gratefully accepted the offer. Mr. Caine, ever 
 ready to accommodate him, went down to Birchington at 
 the end of the month to make requisite arrangements, and 
 on 4 February he and Rossetti travelled thither in company. 
 There was also Caine's sister, a nice girl of thirteen, now an 
 actress of repute. As my brother's letter of 3 February shows, 
 he had hoped that our mother and Christina could come as 
 well ; but both were in a risky state from colds, and the 
 family-doctor, Mr. Stewart, would not for the present allow 
 it. The house was at that time named Westcliff Bungalow 
 — now Rossetti Bungalow, in Rossetti Road ; and I might 
 add here that the houses built along my brother's old garden- 
 space in Cheyne Walk are termed Rossetti Mansions. Mr. 
 Scott must surely be mistaken in saying that " the young 
 Doctor " (Mr. Maudsley) was along with Rossetti on his road 
 to Birchington. 
 
 Mr. Scott gives another sentence — but not quite his final 
 one — to Rossetti. 
 
 " The picture I have drawn had been a painful one to witness in 
 the original, and has been only less so to indicate in narrative, even 
 carefully omitting the most repulsive elements of the scene." 
 
 What these " most repulsive elements of the scene " may 
 have been I confess myself unable to surmise. To me it 
 seems that Mr. Scott was at some pains to make the scene 
 more repulsive than in fact it was. But, if he found " the 
 picture a painful one to indicate in narrative," a very obvious 
 question arises — Why did he indicate it ? He was professing 
 to write " Autobiographical Notes," and the doings or mis- 
 
CUMBERLAND AND LONDON— FINAL ILLNESS. 389 
 
 doings of Dante Gabriel Rossetti — apart from the aid which 
 he most constantly and determinately lent to this friend's 
 reputation as poet and painter, among acquaintances and 
 with the pubfic — formed no part of the Autobiography of 
 William Bell Scott. 
 
 Let me briefly recur to Miss Lily Hall Caine, and her 
 published reminiscences of my brother. These are only, it 
 is true, the reminiscences of a child ; but they are evidently 
 vivid, and I recognize in them several points which I know 
 to be accurately put. They bear strong testimony to the 
 fact that Dante Rossetti, even in the closing months of his 
 life, was very far other than harsh or morose, or so much as 
 invariably gloomy and despondent. Miss Caine was first 
 introduced to him in Cheyne Walk, shortly before the 
 departure for Birchington. She says, inter alia : — 
 
 " He chatted quite gaily [at the first introduction] until dinner 
 was ready. I had never met a man so full of ideas interesting and 
 attractive to a child ; indeed, now that I look back on it, I feel that 
 Mr. Rossetti was wondrously sweet, tender, and even playful, with a 
 child. . . . On this journey [for Birchington] from Cheyne Walk to 
 the Station he talked all the way, and had tales to tell me of every 
 conspicuous object that came into view. We travelled by the 
 London, Chatham, and Dover Railway, and, as the porter was 
 labelling the luggage, Mr. Rossetti took me by the hand. We were 
 interested in the porter's operations, and Mr. Rossetti was amused 
 at the Company's initial letters — ' L. C. D. R.' ' Why, Lily,' said he, 
 ' they knew we were coming. That stands for Lily Caine and Uante 
 Rossetti.' " x 
 
 1 As regards the house in Cheyne Walk Miss Caine makes a statement 
 which I do not well understand. She says that somewhere in the house 
 (one might infer in the studio) there was a very large and bad picture, " as 
 vulgar as a signpost " (signboard must be meant), which Rossetti, when 
 " a student of art," had bought for ^3, although the upset-price ironically 
 demanded was ,£3,000. I cannot recollect any picture corresponding to 
 this description. There was, however, in the dining-room (not the studio), 
 a well-sized picture, which my brother bought some while after he had 
 settled in Cheyne Walk ; and as to the purchase of some picture or other 
 (I believe it was this one) he used to tell an amusing story not much unlike 
 
390 DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI. 
 
 XLI. 
 
 BIRCHINGTON-ON-SEA. 
 
 The village or " ville " of Birchington, in the Isle of Thanet, 
 is an ancient locality, traceable into Saxon times. I see the 
 name recorded in a map of Kent dated 1645. The oldest 
 portions of the church belong to the later twelfth century. 
 As a seaside resort however the place is very recent — little 
 having been done for tourist or residential purposes until 
 Mr. Seddon took the work in hand. The Bungalow which 
 Rossetti tenanted is a good-looking wooden erection, without 
 being a beautiful one. Its interior is conveniently laid out 
 for an invalid — "a long corridor, and rooms on either side. 
 At the further end was the drawing-room, running the width 
 of the house." It stands conveniently near the railway- 
 station, yet not so close as to interfere with habits of retire- 
 ment. Here Rossetti, spite of some wayward distaste at the 
 first alighting, settled down, without (I should say) any 
 troublesome craving to get away again. 
 
 " The sands are numbered that make up my life : 
 Here must I stay, and here my life must end." 
 
 At Birchington my brother at first took some short walks ; 
 and he continued free from delusions, though not always, I 
 consider, from some rather fanciful or oblique impressions. 
 These may have been due to the morphia which he took to 
 a moderate extent — no longer injected, but as a dose. 
 Digestive inconveniences which now gave him a great deal 
 of harass are likely to have depended largely on the same 
 cause. The weather was not severe for the season, but at 
 times there was a great deal of wind ; and this wind, a most 
 untoward circumstance, constantly blew from the land, so 
 
 the above. It was a well-painted picture, though hard — Flemish or Dutch, 
 towards 1600; the subject being a woman (with two or three other figures) 
 making gaufres or hearth-cakes. At the sale of Rossetti s effects it fetched 
 fifty guineas. 
 
BIRCHINGTON-ON-SEA. 391 
 
 that Rossetti got no restorative sea-breezes. His health, it 
 is manifest, was really always going from bad to worse. Yet 
 this was not so clearly apparent from day to day as might 
 have been expected. The local physician, Dr. Harris, proved 
 attentive and discerning, and he acted in concert with written 
 advice received from Mr. Marshall. After a while (more 
 especially, I believe, from indications to which Christina had 
 called his notice) he pronounced that kidney-disease had 
 supervened. From the middle of March my brother had to 
 keep his bed to a great extent, though not by any means 
 without intermission. 
 
 On 2 March our mother and Christina, being at length 
 under medical leave to do so, went down to Birchington, 
 and there they stayed until all was over. Our mother was 
 now not far from eighty-two years old. Christina, aged fifty- 
 one, was always more or less an invalid in these years. 
 The effort therefore on their part was a somewhat serious 
 one, willingly, or rather gladly, as it was undertaken. It 
 would be superfluous for me, and only derogatory to them, 
 to speak of the devotion with which they ministered to the 
 beloved son and brother. Mr. Caine was almost always there ; 
 his sister left not long before the end ; Mr. Watts went from 
 time to time, and was more than welcome ; Mr. Shields also 
 once or twice, and Mr. Sharp ; Mr. Leyland, who was spending 
 the time on and off at Ramsgate, was also an assiduous and 
 a highly sympathizing visitor. " Watts is a hero of friend- 
 ship " was, according to Mr. Caine, one of my brother's last 
 utterances, easy enough to be credited. 
 
 Rossetti continued painter and poet to the last. At Birch- 
 ington he went on with the pictures for Mr. Valpy, Proserpine 
 and Joan of Arc, but I doubt whether this can have been 
 persisted in beyond the month of February. Possibly the 
 very last thing he produced in art was a sketch or two 
 aiming to show the characteristic aspect of our father ; for 
 some such memento was asked for, through Teodorico 
 Pietrocola-Rossetti, from Vasto, with a view to the designing 
 and erection of a statue (a project not yet actually carried 
 
392 DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI. 
 
 out), and Dante would not entirely neglect the request, 
 though he knew that he could no longer do justice to it. I 
 possess the slight sketches — not wholly unlike, but too 
 shakily done for any practical service. As to poetry, he 
 finished at the end of March his old grotesque ballad Jan 
 Van Hwtks ; and even later than that, 5 April, he dictated 
 to Caine two sonnets relevant to his design of The Sphinx. 
 I have always considered that his taking up on his deathbed 
 that extremely grim and uncanny though partly bantering 
 theme of Jan Van Hunks — a fatal smoking-duel with the 
 devil, who trundles soul and body off to hell — furnished 
 a strong attestation of the resolute spirit in which my 
 brother contemplated his own end, rapidly approaching 
 and (by himself still more than by any others) clearly fore- 
 seen ; for a man who is in a panic as to his own prospects in 
 any future world would be apt to drop any such subject like 
 a hot coal. He enjoyed immensely writing the ballad, so 
 Miss Caine says, " and laughed with us as he read it bit by 
 bit every night." At some other times also, according to this 
 lady, he was in high spirits ; and on one occasion he told her 
 some tales from the Arabian Nights, which he saw her 
 reading, and other amusing stories. It is only too obvious 
 however that at some other times his spirits were low — as 
 low as his sorely obstructed energies, and his life fast 
 flickering to extinction. 
 
 He read various books at Birchington, or got them read 
 to him by Christina — most or all of them novels — Miss 
 Braddon's Dead Men's Shoes, Dickens's Tale of Two Cities, 
 Wilkie Collins's Dead Secret, and others. 
 
 Two of the last things my brother did consisted in holding 
 a little correspondence with his old and highly genial friend 
 Mr. Joseph Knight (afterwards his biographer), 1 and with the 
 
 1 In his Life of D. G. Rossetti, p. 109, Mr. Knight says that the letter 
 which he received from my brother was " the last letter ever written by 
 Rossetti, dated 5 April 1882": but on p. 179 he quotes the letter 
 verbatim, giving its date as " 5 March '82." I have no doubt that 
 " March " is correct. In that case, it might still be that this was the last 
 
BIRCHINGTON-ON-SEA. 393 
 
 French art-writer, M. Ernest Chesneau. Mr. Knight had 
 published, in the French serial Le Livre, a very handsome 
 article on Rossetti's Ballads and Sonnets. My brother wrote 
 in cordial acknowledgement on 5 March, signing with the 
 pathetic phrase — " With love from all that is left of me, yours 
 affectionately." With M. Chesneau the correspondence 
 opened with a letter from that very accomplished writer 
 and worthy gentleman (whom I knew personally later on) at 
 some date in February, and concluded with his letter of 
 2 April, only a week prior to my brother's death. As far 
 back as 1868 M. Chesneau had sent to Rossetti his book 
 Les Nations Rivales dans I'Art, and had received a reply at 
 some length, from which a quotation is made in Section XIII. 
 He was now bringing out another book, La Peinture 
 Anglaise, and sought some information from Rossetti, not 
 only about his own works in painting, but generally about 
 the Prasraphaelite movement. My brother furnished several 
 details in answer ; and, being favoured with a copy of 
 Chesneau's remarkable romance named La Chimere, bearing 
 a striking frontispiece by Gustave Moreau, he wrote to the 
 French author expressing a very high opinion of the inventive 
 and artistic value of this design. I think it must have been 
 the first thing of Moreau's that he ever saw ; for, in or about 
 1880, having heard Moreau spoken of as a man of mark, he 
 had enquired of me what his paintings were like, and I 
 replied that they had something of the quality of Burne- 
 Jones intermixed with that of the Flemish painter Wiertz. 
 This, his last letter to Chesneau, was (I assume) his last letter 
 in this world, and, save for the two sonnets on The Sphinx, 
 about the latest thing he did at all except to resign himself 
 into the arms of Death. There is some pleasure in reflecting 
 that he was thus true till the end to one of his most con- 
 spicuous qualities — that of praising with eagerness and energy 
 
 letter written by Dante with his own hand, though I hardly suppose so ; 
 but it was certainly not the last which he composed and dictated. The 
 last of this kind (for 1 cannot assume it to have been holograph) was to all 
 appearance the one which M. Chesneau acknowledged on 2 April. 
 
394 DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI. 
 
 the work of such contemporaries as he at all valued, were 
 they painters or poets. 
 
 Our mother in these years kept a short Diary. From the 
 opening days of 1881 it stands in Christina's handwriting. 
 Its terms are neither much detailed nor strongly emotional, 
 but it furnishes some particulars not uninteresting in this 
 connexion. I extract here and there : — 
 
 " 2 March, Thursday. I and Christina went to Westcliff Bunga- 
 low, Birchington-on-Sea (a large one-storied commodious residence 
 lent by Mr. John Seddon), to visit Gabriel, who is staying there with 
 his trained nurse Mrs. Abrey, and Mr. Hall Caine, and his sister 
 Lily (thirteen years old), endeavouring to gain health and strength, 
 and in particular to recover the use of his left hand. But I was 
 grieved indeed to find him much wasted away, suffering, and in a 
 measure depressed, though making us most welcome, and chatty 
 enough on general subjects. 
 
 " 4 March, Saturday. Fuller particulars from Mrs. Abrey about 
 poor Gabriel's very ailing state. Mr. Watts came down. 
 
 " 6 March, Monday. Gabriel complains of something new in his 
 foot, which Mr. Watts confidently pronounces a touch of gout. In 
 the evening Mr. Martin, our very kind and helpful neighbour, 
 looked in. He is a builder in connexion with Mr. John Seddon, 
 and also keeps the Westcliff Hotel and Boarding-house close by. 
 
 " 7 March, Tuesday. Gabriel, suffering from his foot, kept his 
 bed nearly all day, and so doing was fairly comfortable. 
 
 " 10 March, Friday. Lily Caine returned home to Liverpool. 
 
 "18 March, Saturday. Mr. John Seddon, and his brother Major 
 Seddon, called ; Mr. Sharp came down. 
 
 " 24 March, Friday. Gabriel consulted Dr. Harris, who says 
 there is no paralysis, and nothing he judges irremediable, but a 
 serious condition of nerves. He prescribed at once, and will 
 communicate with Mr. Marshall. He resides near the Birchington 
 Railway-station, and was highly spoken of by Mr. Alcock [the 
 Rector]. 
 
 " March 26, Sunday. Christina went to Holy Communion. 
 While in church, the wind rose so that she got home with difficulty, 
 helped by a good-natured man, three times taking refuge in cottages, 
 and at last taking a fly. Mr. Leyland called. 
 
DEATH AND FUNERAL. 395 
 
 • " March 28, Tuesday. Mr. Watts came down ; Gabriel rallied 
 marvellously." 
 
 This is the last cheerful item which it is allowed me to 
 record concerning my brother ; I am glad that it stands 
 associated with the name of Theodore Watts. 
 
 XLII. 
 
 DEATH AND FUNERAL. 
 
 The final sentence in my brother's Family-letters runs, " It is 
 quieter now." It was soon to be still quieter for him, and 
 that for ever. 
 
 On 25 March, the day after I had returned to London from 
 a little lecturing at Wolverhampton, I received from Christina 
 a letter giving decidedly bad news of our brother. I deter- 
 mined to go to Birchington on Saturday, I April, and mean- 
 while I consulted Mr. Marshall. What followed was set 
 down by me in terms dismal enough : — 
 
 " Saturday, April 1. Went to Birchington. Found Gabriel in a 
 very prostrate condition physically, barely capable of tottering a few 
 steps, half blind, and suffering a good deal of pain. At least he 
 feels all this, whether it is or is not dependent on a morbid state of 
 the perceptions. In spirits he is not worse than might be expected ; 
 talks with reason, though not with animation, on any subject that 
 offers. He is writing some tale, but I don't know details [I have 
 since learned that he had taken up anew his old story St. Agnes of 
 Intercession, but he did not finish nor even progress with it] ; has 
 not attempted any painting-work for some weeks. 
 
 " Sunday, April 2. Gabriel, feeling a sensation (I believe delusive) 
 of oppressed breathing, sent round for the local doctor, Harris, who 
 has attended him various times. I was present at the conference, 
 and afterwards spoke at some length to Harris in private. His 
 opinion — as had before been intimated to me — is that the brain is 
 affected, probably some degree of softening of the brain, consequent 
 upon abuse of chloral etc. He regards this as the one nucleus of 
 all the symptoms — bad sight, moveless arm, etc. — which are in 
 
396 DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI. 
 
 themselves delusions, but not at all delusions as being impressions 
 deriving from the wrong condition of the brain. He thinks — as 
 we all do — that the great thing would be to get Gabriel occupied; 
 but how to attain this point is the unsolved problem. Thinks also 
 that some such treatment as that of a physician at Malvern, among 
 other patients, would be better than the dull seclusion of Birching- 
 ton. But, when I explained Gabriel's detestation of new faces etc., 
 he admitted this to be an obstacle. He thinks it quite possible that 
 Gabriel may again do good intellectual work, but of course the 
 tendency of the disease is to weaken the mind. All this is very 
 disheartening — not to me surprising. I shall probably soon speak 
 again to Marshall on the subject. Left Birchington about 7 — all of 
 us sufficiently low-spirited." 
 
 I came away from the Bungalow with a firm conviction 
 that my brother had not long to live, coupled with the feeling 
 (I do not scruple to admit it) that, rather than that so luminous 
 an intellect should be reduced to feebleness or torpor, it were 
 far better to die. My Diary shows a few other particulars, 
 as especially that there was an idea of calling in Sir Andrew 
 Clarke for consultation ; but it aids me little now, as I only 
 kept it on with regularity to 5 April, and then broke it off till 
 9 August. In leaving Birchington on 2 April, 1 had settled 
 to return for some days beginning on the 7th, which was 
 Good Friday. I did so, Mr. Watts bearing me company. 
 Mr. Marshall also had undertaken to attend, for the case was 
 then known to be urgent, as too clearly shown by the following 
 brief extracts from my mother's Diary : — 
 
 " April 4, Tuesday. After Gabriel had passed a very suffering 
 day in his own room, Christina sat up till about 1 o'clock, reading to 
 him. Dr. Harris came twice. 
 
 "April 5, Wednesday. Dr. Harris, after investigation, gives a 
 most serious opinion of poor Gabriel's state. 
 
 " April 6, Thursday. Gabriel so drowsy and sinking that William 
 and Mr. Watts were telegraphed to. I sat up till about midnight, 
 when Christina took my place till past six in the morning. 
 
 " April 7, Good Friday. The drowsiness continues. William in 
 great grief, and Mr. Watts, arrived. Mr. Leyland called, affectionately 
 
DEATH AND FUNERAL. 397 
 
 concerned at the unforeseen alarm. In consequence of Gabriel's 
 having one night expressed to Mrs. Abrey some inclination to see 
 Mr. Alcock, the Rector, having been informed of this, called late in 
 the evening, and prayed with him — I and Mr. Watts uniting. 
 
 " April 8, Saturday. Kind Mr. Martin had an awning put up to 
 keep the sick-room cool. Mr. Shields hurried down, but could not 
 see Gabriel at once, and slept here. Mr. Marshall arrived ; met Dr. 
 Harris in consultation ; declared all the present urgent symptoms to 
 point clearly to uraemia (blood-poisoning from uric acid) ; and took 
 instant vigorous measures to expel, if possible, the poison from the 
 system. To produce perspiration, Gabriel was wrapped in a hot 
 sheet, and made very hot in bed, besides medicine being adminis- 
 tered. The blessed result ensued of his regaining a more natural 
 appearance, and rallying to a less inert general condition. Food, 
 heat, and medicine (though no solid food), were kept up through the 
 night, the greater part of which Christina passed keeping Nurse 
 company at the bedside. Mr. Marshall missed his up-train, and so 
 remained on the spot for the night. Mr. Alcock called, and read, 
 and we think prayed, alone with Gabriel, exhorting him to simple 
 trust in God and our Saviour. 
 
 " April 9, Easter-day. Mr. Marshall left soon after 9 o'clock, 
 leaving word for me (I was not yet up) that Gabriel continued to 
 hold his own. He also says that, as soon as manageable, Gabriel 
 ought to quit Birchington as being too cold for him, and had best 
 simply return to Chelsea. I gather that the illness is very serious, 
 but not hopeless. Christina missed church, after sitting up towards 
 seven in the morning. Mr. Leyland came ; Mr. Alcock paid Gabriel 
 a short bedside visit. 1 — We had arranged to sit up, I till 10, William 
 till 2, Christina last ; when suddenly, just after nurse and Mr. 
 Watts together had put a poultice on Gabriel's back (Mr. Watts 
 had but just left the room, nurse was attending to the fire, I was 
 by the bed, rubbing Gabriel's back), Gabriel, who was sitting, fell 
 back, threw his arms out, screamed out loud two or three times close 
 together, and then lay, breathing but insensible. Nurse raised the 
 alarm. Mr. Watts hurried back, and, one on each side, they held 
 Gabriel down ; but there was not the slightest struggle or return of 
 
 1 These preceding words for 9 April must have been written at some 
 moderately early hour of that day ; what follows was evidently written on 
 10 April. 
 
398 DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI. 
 
 consciousness. All assembled round the bed. Mr. Shields flew for 
 Dr. Harris, and in the shortest time returned with him. Gabriel 
 still breathed, but that was all. Dr. Harris once or twice said he 
 still lived — then said he was dead. This took place shortly after 
 nine o'clock p.m. Gabriel had scarcely breathed his last when Lucy, 
 having travelled all day from Manchester, arrived. The instant cause 
 of death, assigned by Dr. Harris, was that the urasmic poison touched 
 the brain ; and he afterwards assured us that there was no pain." 
 
 I also, on the evening of 10 April, jotted down an account 
 of our great loss. It runs as follows : — 
 
 " Marshall, having stayed over Saturday night, saw Gabriel along 
 with Dr. Harris ; but I did not see Gabriel until after Marshall had 
 left Birchington. Went in to Gabriel soon afterwards, and sat with 
 him a considerable while — the nurse Mrs. Abrey in and out of the 
 room. His complexion was much more natural and less livid than 
 the previous day, but the lips not a good colour ; less wheezing 
 than on Friday, and not more than on Saturday; eyes somewhat 
 clearer. He talked but little at any time of the day. Did not seem 
 extremely melancholy, but languid, and not roused to any serious 
 effort of attention ; utterance indistinct (same on two previous days). 
 He said twice during the day to me, " I believe I shall die to-night,' 
 in a calm voice, not emotional. Also said, ' Yesterday I wished to 
 die, but to-day I must confess that I do not.' I replied that he 
 ought not to wish to die, but rather to continue working with 
 energy, and producing fine things. Every now and then he would 
 sit up and forward on the bed, and I — sometimes nurse — rubbed 
 his back with a circling motion of the hand. I was in and out of 
 the room various times, with Leyland once or twice. Went up on 
 the roof with Caine, to remedy the flapping of a tarpaulin which lay 
 along there, being part of an awning which Martin had on previous 
 day erected outside Gabriel's window. I asked more than once to 
 read to Gabriel (intending to propose Ecclesiastes), but he did not 
 wish it ; said ' Perhaps later.' \Ecclesiastes had been profoundly 
 impressive to my brother in boyhood and early youth ; and this 
 book, along with the more moving and spiritual portions of 
 the Gospels — I say nothing of dogmatic matter deducible from 
 the Epistles — may be said to have formed the staple of his religious 
 faith, such as it was.] Towards 5 I assisted nurse to put on his 
 
DEATH AND FUNERAL. 399 
 
 loins a large linseed-and-mustard poultice, and his drawers were put 
 on at same time — -both processes much against his will, as he 
 disliked and dreaded the heat in bed. He often demanded to have 
 both off; but this was wrong, and could not be granted. Nurse 
 and I both reasoned with and coaxed him on the subject. I was 
 called to dinner towards 7 ; and, lingering afterwards in talk 
 with friends, did not re-enter Gabriel's room till (say) 10 minutes 
 to g — my mother, Watts, and nurse, then with him. The poultice 
 had by that time been renewed, but I was not aware of the fact. 
 He was drowsy, and not taking any particular part in what was 
 going on. My mother having said that she was to leave the room 
 at ro, and Christina to succeed her through the night, I said I 
 would come at 10, and stay till 2, and then Christina could succeed 
 me; and meanwhile I would lie down till 10. Entered drawing- 
 room just about 9, lay down on sofa, and pretty soon dozed. Was 
 roused towards 9.20 by Shields rushing into the room, and loudly 
 summoning me to come at once to Gabriel. Found him with head 
 leaning over towards right, eyes starting but nearly closed, mouth 
 open and twitching. He drew hard breaths at intervals. Shields 
 ran for Dr. Harris, who came in towards 9.30. On entering he 
 replied to our enquiries that Gabriel was still alive. He then 
 proceeded to use the stethoscope, but it did not give the indication 
 of breathing, and Harris pronounced Gabriel dead. Gabriel had, 
 just before Shields entered the drawing-room for me, given two 
 violent cries, and had a convulsive fit, very sharp and distorting the 
 face, followed by collapse. All this passed without my personal 
 cognizance. He died 9.31 p.m.; the others — Watts, mother, 
 Christina, and nurse, in room ; Caine and Shields in and out ; 
 Watts at Gabriel's right side, partly supporting him." 
 
 To these details — painful to write, to remember, and to 
 transcribe — I am only disposed to add that on the evening 
 of Good Friday my brother had, under the guidance of Mr. 
 Watts, made his will, and I fancy he had never done the 
 like before. He left all his property in equal shares between 
 Christina and myself. Christina, being at once apprised of 
 this, absolutely refused to have her name, rather than that 
 of our mother, in the will. It was explained to her that this 
 had been done merely as the more convenient practical 
 
400 DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI. 
 
 arrangement of the two — the mother and daughter being 
 inseparably united in life, and the daughter being the more 
 probable survivor. But Christina was immoveable in her 
 resolve, and so the name of our mother was immediately 
 substituted for Christina's in the will. As to any money- 
 details arising out of the will, I limit myself to saying that, 
 after paying off my brother's debts (chiefly sums due to 
 Mr. Valpy and Mr. Graham in relation to pictures unfinished), 
 and after the sales of his household and decorative effects and 
 of his remaining works of art, there was a substantial sum 
 divisible between the legatees. Two exhibitions of his paint- 
 ings and designs, covering the whole of his career, were held, 
 but not under the control of the family ; one being at the 
 Royal Academy's winter exhibition of 1883, and the other at 
 the Burlington Fine-Arts Club in the same year ; there was a 
 third, a private speculation, called the Rossetti Gallery, in 
 Bond Street. 
 
 As mentioned in my mother's Diary, my wife arrived at 
 Westcliff Bungalow almost as soon as Dante had drawn his 
 latest breath. She had been on a visit to her father in 
 Manchester ; but, receiving my intimation of the precarious 
 and almost desperate condition of her brother-in-law, she 
 hurried southwards. On 13 April also Charlotte Polidori, 
 the aunt to whom some of the Family-letters are addressed, 
 and who had so often established a claim to Dante's gratitude, 
 joined the mourners in the Bungalow. These arrivals were 
 a great boon to all of us ; my wife's of course to me more 
 especially, and Charlotte's to my mother — for the dear tie of 
 sisterhood between these two had always been peculiarly 
 close. 
 
 I proceed with some extracts from my mother's Diary : — 
 
 "April 10, Easter Monday. A telegram sent by William brought 
 from London a man from Brucciani's to take a cast of Gabriel's 
 face and hand [these casts were taken with no less skill than that 
 which the Brucciani firm always command ; but it is a fact that the 
 head proved extremely disappointing to all of us, and seems barely 
 to suggest what my brother was like]. Gabriel looked quite peaceful, 
 
DEATH AND FUNERAL. 401 
 
 with a tendency towards a smile. Mr. Shields made a drawing of 
 him [this was done at my request, and it was a truly self-sacrificing 
 act of Shields, the most high-strung and susceptible of men, and my 
 brother's devoted friend, to whom such a task was a wrench indeed : 
 I possess the drawing, and the artist afterwards made a copy of it, 
 presented to Christina]. Lucy went with Christina and William to 
 the Rectory, for the purpose of meeting Mr. Alcock, who accom- 
 panied the three to the churchyard, where a spot was chosen for the 
 dear grave. Mr. Martin, with his usual kindness, undertakes to 
 make arrangements for the funeral. 
 
 "April 12, Wednesday. Mr. Sharp arrived, bent on having a 
 last look. 
 
 " April 14, Friday. Mr. Alcock performed the funeral simply and 
 solemnly. Besides myself, Christina, William, Lucy, and Charlotte, 
 there were present — Messrs. Graham, Leyland, Watts, Caine, Hueffer, 
 John Seddon, Stephens, Boyce, Aldam Heaton, 1 Martin, Sharp, 
 Philip Marston, and Shields, and Dr. Harris. Herbert Gilchrist and 
 two others attended spontaneously [the two others were Judge 
 Vernon Lushington, and Mr. Murray Marks, the art-dealer : the 
 former had been an admirer and genial acquaintance of my brother 
 ever since, if not before, the days of the Oxford and Cambridge 
 Magazine]. In the evening, Charlotte, William, Lucy, Christina, and 
 Mr. Shields, returned to the churchyard, to place on the grave 
 (already closed and peaceful, under a turf mound) a most beautiful 
 wreath of flowers which we believe was the one sent by Lady 
 Mount-Temple, and brought by Mr. Graham. A number of floral 
 decorations were contributed by different friends. Philip Marston 
 presented a wreath of bay ; the Leylands, wreaths and a lovely 
 white cross ; Mr. Sharp, a cross of primroses. I placed on the grave 
 a bunch of simple flowers, among which were woodspurge [this was 
 of course in memory of Dante's poem The Woodspurge] and forget- 
 me-nots. Christina had gathered these in the grounds and con- 
 servatory." 
 
 1 Mr. John Aldam Heaton, now well known as p. Decorative Artist in 
 London, had, while settled at Bradford in Yorkshire, known my brother on 
 an intimate footing from about 1861 to 1874. A serious difference then 
 arose between them. My brother had right on his side, but he showed 
 more of permanent resentfulness than should be unreservedly approved. 
 We at all events were glad to make peace with Mr. Heaton over the 
 open grave. 
 
 VOL. I. 26 
 
402 DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI. 
 
 Besides the persons above mentioned as attending the 
 funeral, some others had been asked, but, for one reason or 
 another, could not attend — Mrs. Hueffer, Eliza Polidori, 
 Burne-Jones, Bell Scott, Swinburne, Dunn, Dr. Hake, John 
 Marshall, Tebbs, and Valpy. Madox Brown was known to 
 be unavoidably so engrossed with his painting-work in Man- 
 chester that it would only have been unkind to ask him. He 
 had been in London towards Christmas, and had then seen 
 my brother two or three times with his unfailing affection. 
 
 I take leave to borrow from Mr. Scott's book the feeling 
 letter which Judge Lushington wrote to him on this occasion. 
 The few words given to the church and the churchyard 
 realize the scene well. 
 
 "14 April. 
 
 " Dear Mr. Scott, 
 
 " I think you will like to hear how your dear friend Gabriel 
 Rossetti was buried, so I will tell you — for, thanks to your kind 
 telegram, I was there. I had hoped to see you there, and was 
 grieved to hear that you were prevented by illness. 
 
 " The church at Birchington stands back about three-quarters of 
 a mile from the sea, on slightly rising ground which looks over the 
 open land and the sea. It is of grey country flint, built in the twelfth 
 or thirteenth century, and restored a few years ago — I thought, 
 simply. It is nicely kept, and to-day was full of Easter flowers. It 
 has an old grey tower, and grey shingle spire, which went up, as I 
 noticed during the ceremony, into a pure blue sky. The church- 
 yard is nicely kept too ; it was bright with irises and wallflowers in 
 bloom, and close to Gabriel's grave there was a laurestinus and a 
 lilac. The grave is on the south side, close to the porch. It was cut 
 so clearly it seemed carved out of the chalk. Altogether it was a 
 sweet open spot, I thought. 
 
 " At the graveside, wonderful to say, was the old mother, supported 
 by William on one side and Christina on the other — a most pathetic 
 sight. She was very calm, extraordinarily calm, but whether from 
 self-command or the passivity of age I do not know — probably from 
 both j but she followed all the proceedings with close interest. Then 
 around was a company of about fifteen or twenty • many of them 
 friends of yours, and several whom I did not know. The service was 
 
DEATH AND FUNERAL. 403 
 
 well read by the Vicar. Then we all looked into the resting-place 
 of our friend, and thought and felt our last farewells. Many flowers, 
 azaleas and primroses, were thrown in. I saw William throw in his 
 lily of the valley. This. is all I have to tell you. Sad it was, very 
 sad, but simple and full of feeling, and the fresh beauty of the day 
 made itself felt with all the rest. I shook hands with William, and 
 came away with Mr. Graham. Dear Gabriel, I shall not forget him. 
 " I hope you are getting better. Pray remember me to Mrs. 
 Scott." 
 
 There are three commemorations of Dante Rossetti — his 
 tombstone in Birchington churchyard, the stained-glass in 
 the church itself, and the fountain-and-bust monument out- 
 side his house in Cheyne Walk. 
 
 The tombstone, an Irish Cross, was designed by Madox 
 Brown, and is a work of observable excellence. It bears 
 three bas-reliefs — the Temptation in the Garden of Eden, 
 the Spiritual Marriage of Dante and Beatrice, and the Death 
 of St. Luke, the patron of painters. The inscription, which 
 is mine, is thus worded : — 
 
 " Here sleeps Gabriel Charles Dante Rossetti, honoured, under 
 the name of Dante Gabriel Rossetti, among painters as a painter, 
 and among poets as a poet. Born in London, of parentage mainly 
 Italian, 12 May 1828. Died at Birchington, 9 April 1882. This 
 Cruciform Monument, bespoken by Dante Rossetti's mother, was 
 designed by his lifelong friend Ford Madox Brown, executed by 
 J. and H. Patteson, and erected by his brother William and sister 
 Christina." 
 
 The stained-glass window, near the font, was commissioned 
 by my mother, and carried out by Shields. It has two lights, 
 the first being Rossetti's own design of The Passover in the 
 Holy Family, and the second by Shields himself, Christ leading 
 the Blind Man out of Bethsaida. 
 
 The monument in Cheyne Walk was erected by a sub- 
 scription of friends and admirers, my wife being the chief 
 subscriber. The fountain is the design of John Seddon ; 
 
4^4 DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI. 
 
 the bust of Rossetti was executed by Madox Brown in all its 
 details, and cast in bronze. 
 
 And so Dante Rossetti rests for ever, in the quiet Kentish 
 churchyard, within sight and distant rumour of the waves. 
 
 " Consider the sea's listless chime ; 
 Time's self it is, made audible — 
 The murmur of the earth's own shell. 
 Secret continuance sublime 
 
 Is the sea's end : our sight may pass 
 No furlong further. Since time was, 
 This sound hath told the lapse of time. 
 * # # # 
 
 "As the world's heart, of rest and wrath, 
 Its painful pulse is in the sands. 
 Last utterly, the whole sky stands, 
 Grey and not known, along its path." 
 
 XLIII. 
 
 PERSONAL DETAILS— EXTRACTS. 
 
 So much has been said about Dante Rossetti's character in 
 the preceding pages, here and there, and he comes out so 
 transparently himself in the Family-letters, that I do not feel 
 it necessary to attempt any elaborate portrait of him in 
 conclusion. Still, a few words of condensed summary may 
 be desirable. 
 
 My brother was essentially a man of the artistic, not the 
 ethical, type. From day to day and from year to year his 
 mind was occupied much more with ideas of art — and in 
 especial how to paint good pictures, and write good poems, 
 in both of which efforts he was as fastidious in execution as 
 he was free and energetic in invention — than with rigid or 
 nice considerations of morals or conduct. None the less, his 
 moral sense was just, if somewhat elastic. He prized rectitude, 
 disliked and shunned meanness, and understood, and mostly 
 conformed to, the fine impulses of honour. He appreciated 
 the generous far more than the regulative virtues. It may 
 indeed be said that he was replete with generosity of mind, 
 
PERSONAL DETAILS— EXTRACTS. 405 
 
 feeling, and act. The very core of his character was self-will, 
 which easily shelved into wilfulness. As his self-will was 
 sustained by very high powers of intellect and of performance, 
 he was not only a leader but a dominator all his life long. 
 On that footing he was easy and agreeable ; any other footing 
 would have been troublesome to himself, and not long to be 
 pursued by others. He would do and say odd things, 
 unreasonable things, and wrongful things. This was in his 
 nature — and, until he was reduced to subjection (not a facile 
 performance, nor accomplished by any one), he would persist 
 in this, car tel est won vouloir. In thought, deed, manner, 
 and speech, there was nothing of the precisian about him 
 If there had been somewhat at times, that would have been 
 all the better. Not scrupulosity was his, nor moveless fixity 
 of principle ; but warmth and breadth of feeling and of 
 perception. He was impetuous and impatient, but by no 
 means difficult to get on with if one approached him from 
 the right side. He could be managed too, but not driven. 
 Nothing in him stands clearer to my mind than his total 
 freedom from pretence, pretension, attitudinizing, and " tall 
 talk." He impressed you certainly as a man of genius, but 
 not in the least as one who made his genius his stalking- 
 horse. People of all kinds liked him, and, on seeing him 
 close, loved him. And I could not fix upon one who 
 genuinely disliked him, though there were assuredly several 
 who got ruffled and angry, and of these some may even, on 
 occasion, have dogged him with a certain animosity. 
 
 I have sometimes heard it suggested that Dante Rossetti 
 was " a spoilt child " ; but on this score I must acquit our 
 parents of blame. He was reasonably and heedfully trained 
 to whatsoever is of good report. His tendencies, for good 
 or evil, were innate, and developed according to the circum- 
 stances of his life. His faults were his own. He neither 
 would nor could be a leopard without leopardine spots. To 
 avoid being a jackal or a hyaena was what he could do, and 
 that he did. 
 
 No better portrait of my brother has been given, I think, 
 
406 DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI. 
 
 than that by the Reverend Canon Richard Watson Dixon, 
 which appears in Mr. Caine's book — possibly a too fully 
 laudatory portrait. Rossetti, writing to Caine towards 1880, 
 described the Canon as " an admirable but totally unknown 
 living poet. His finest passages are as fine as any living man 
 can do." The Canon is now not " totally unknown " as a 
 poet, but still is less known than he ought to be. I will 
 extract from his narrative what serves my present purpose. 
 
 " My knowledge of Dante Gabriel Rossetti was begun in connexion 
 with the Oxford and Cambridge Magazine, a monthly periodical 
 which was started in January 1856. Rossetti contributed to it The 
 JBtirden of Nineveh, The Blessed Damozel, and The Staff and Scrip. 
 The Staff and Scrip is, in my judgment, the finest of all Rossetti's 
 poems, and one of the most glorious writings in the language. 
 It exhibits in flawless perfection the gift that he had above all 
 other writers — absolute beauty and pure action. I saw Rossetti 
 for the first time in his lodgings over Blackfriars Bridge. It was 
 impossible not to be impressed with the freedom and kindness of 
 his manner, not less than by his personal appearance. His frank 
 greeting, bold but gentle glance — his whole presence — produced 
 a feeling of confidence and pleasure. His voice had a great charm, 
 both in tone and from the peculiar cadences that belonged to it. I 
 chink that the leading features of his character struck me more at 
 first than the characteristics of his genius ; or rather that my notion 
 of the character of the man was formed first, and was then applied 
 to his works, and identified with them. The main features of his 
 character were, in my apprehension, fearlessness, kindliness, a 
 decision that sometimes made him seem somewhat arbitrary, and 
 condensation or concentration. He was wonderfully self-reliant. 
 These moral qualities, guiding an artistic temperament as exquisite 
 as was ever bestowed on man, made him what he was — the greatest 
 inventor of abstract beauty, in form and colour, that this age, 
 perhaps that the world, has seen. They would also account for 
 some peculiarities that must be admitted in some of his works — 
 want of Nature, for instance. I heard him once remark that it was 
 ' astonishing how much the least bit of Nature helped if one put it 
 in ' ; which seemed like an acknowledgment that he might have 
 gone more to Nature. Hence, however, his works always seem 
 
PERSONAL DETAILS — EXTRACTS. 407 
 
 abstract, always seem to embody some kind of typical aim, and 
 acquire a sort of sacred character. 
 
 " I saw a good deal of Rossetti in London, and afterwards in 
 Oxford during the painting of the Union Debating-room. I saw 
 him occasionally almost to the time of his lamented death. My 
 recollection of him is that of greatness, as might be expected of one 
 of the few who have been ' illustrious in two arts,' and who stands 
 by himself and has earned an independent name in both. His work 
 was great ; the man was greater. His conversation had a wonderful 
 ease, precision, and felicity of expression. He produced thoughts 
 perfectly enunciated with a deliberate happiness that was indescri- 
 bable ; though it was always simple conversation, never haranguing or 
 declamation. He was a natural leader because he was a natural 
 teacher. When he chose to be interested in anything that was 
 brought before him, no pains were too great for him to take. His 
 advice was always given warmly and freely, and, when he spoke of 
 the works of others, it was always in the most generous spirit of 
 praise. It was in fact impossible to have been more free from 
 captiousness, jealousy, envy, or any other form of pettiness, than 
 this truly noble man. The great painter who first took me to him 
 [Burne-Jones, I have no doubt] said, ' We shall see the greatest 
 man in Europe.' I have it on the same authority that Rossetti 's 
 aptitude for art was considered amongst painters to be no less 
 extraordinary than his imagination. For example, that he would 
 take hold of the extremity of the brush, and be as certain of his 
 touch as if it had been held in the usual way ; that he never painted 
 a picture without doing something in colour that had never been 
 done before ; and in particular that he had a command of the 
 features of the human face such as no other painter ever possessed. 
 I also remember some observations by the same assuredly competent 
 judge to the effect that Rossetti might be set against the great 
 painters of the fifteenth century [rather perhaps the sixteenth ?], as 
 equal to them though unlike them ; the difference being that, while 
 they represented the characters whom they painted, in their ordinary 
 and unmoved mood, he represented his characters under emotion, 
 and yet gave them wholly. It may be added perhaps that he had a 
 lofty standard of beauty of his own invention, and that he both 
 elevated and subjected all to beauty. Such a man was not likely 
 to be ignorant of the great root of power in art ; and I once saw 
 him very indignant on hearing that he had been accused of irreligion, 
 
408 DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI. 
 
 or rather of not being a Christian. He asked with great earnestness, 
 ' Do not my works testify to my Christianity ? ' " 
 
 This last detail is interesting. I should like to know what 
 date it applies to. That my brother was a strict doctrinal 
 Christian is not a fact ; but he had an earnest reverence for a 
 Christian ideal, and a delight in Christian legend and symbol, 
 and an antipathy to mere arid or disputatious negation. If 
 he had been " accused of not being a Christian," in such a 
 sense as to imply that he reviled the religion, and dissociated 
 himself from it root and branch, I can well understand that 
 he may have gone rather to an opposite extreme in repelling 
 the imputation. On the general bearings of this matter I 
 have already had something to say. 
 
 Mr. Joseph Knight aptly observes, " To be his friend was 
 in a sense to be his disciple." He found Rossetti " essentially 
 virile and robust, a little stubborn, and dogmatic in tone — 
 joyous if not absolutely mirthful." 1 question however 
 whether the epithet " dogmatic " hits the mark exactly. I 
 should prefer " determined," or even " peremptory." Rossetti 
 was always wont to deal in concretes, and not in theoretic 
 system. " In his youth especially," says Mr. Coventry 
 Patmore, "he had the sweet and easy courtesy peculiar to 
 his nation " — i.e., the Italian nation. This I think correct ; 
 and in fact I must always regard my brother — spite of some 
 ultra-John-Bullish opinions and ways — as more an Italian 
 than an Englishman— Italian in temper of mind, in the quasi- 
 restriction of his interest to the beautiful and the passionate, 
 in disregard of those prejudices and conventions which we 
 call " Philistine," in general tone of moral perception. And 
 yet he was mentally very far from being like his Italian father, 
 and was wholly unlike his Italian grandfather.— And now for 
 a few words from Mr. Watts x : — 
 
 " Even at the time Mr. Caine depicts, when Rossetti was ill, his 
 intellectual brilliance showed as little real abatement as did his 
 
 1 From his article The Truth about Rossetti, in The Nineteenth Century, 
 March 188^. 
 
PERSONAL DETAILS— EXTRACTS. 409 
 
 genius. Late in the night, when the exhaustion of production was 
 recovered from, he would, even to the last, brighten up into his old 
 self— a self that had hardly a match, I should imagine, among his 
 contemporaries. The rapidity of his perceptive powers was some- 
 times bewildering. Before his interlocutor had well begun his 
 sentence, Rossetti had taken in the idea, and was ready with his 
 answer ; an answer clothed always in language so apt and so perfect 
 that no after-revision could have improved it. His wit, though not 
 abundant and not of ' the rarest water,' was quite unique. It 
 always had an intellectual basis, and seemed a singular combination 
 of those real analogies sought by the logician and the superficial and 
 fanciful analogies which are the quest of the mere wit." 
 
 To my brother's appearance I have referred casually in 
 some preceding pages, and I shall add but little now. As in 
 mind, so in body, he looked to me rather Italian than English, 
 though many persons entertained a contrary notion. Mr. 
 Knight (as we have seen) thinks that he was fairly like 
 Salvini, and so do I ; and I remember that Hueffer, on 
 returning from an Italian trip towards 1872, told me that, 
 rather to his surprise, he had found the type of my brother's 
 face to be a very usual, almost a commonplace, one in Italy — 
 an opinion to which I assent, with a certain demur. My 
 brother became eventually — not in boyhood and youth — 
 something like our father, yet not in such a way as would 
 have struck an ordinary eye. His complexion, 1 clear and 
 warm, was also dark — not dusky or sombre. The hair was 
 dark, and somewhat silky ; the full-sized eyes blueish-grey ; 
 the brow grandly spacious and solid ; the mouth moderately 
 well-shaped, but with a rather thick and unmoulded under- 
 lip ; the chin unremarkable ; the line of the jaw, narrow and 
 rather tapering in youth, was, after youth had passed, full, 
 rounded, and sweeping ; the ear well-formed, and rather small 
 
 1 Some of these items of description are repeated, without much modifica- 
 tion, from my Preface to Dante Rossetti's Collected Works; being true 
 there, they must be equally true here, and I need not beat about the bush 
 to vary them. Other telling details were given by Mr. Holman Hunt, as 
 in Section XXX. 
 
4 TO DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI. 
 
 than large. His bands and feet were small ; the hands quite 
 in character for an artist or author — white, delicate, plump, 
 and soft as a woman's. Miss Caine correctly notices that he 
 had a rather fidgeting habit of nicking (she says " cracking," 
 but I think that less accurate) his right thumb-nail with the 
 nail of the first finger ; also a habit of shaking very rapidly, 
 and for long whiles together, the foot of one leg crossed over 
 the other. His general aspect was compact and determined, 
 with the facial expression of a fiery and dictatorial mind 
 concentrated into repose. Some people regarded him as 
 eminently handsome, and no one could call him other than 
 a well-looking noticeable man. In habit of body he was more 
 than sufficiently indolent and lounging (" lolling about, and 
 behaving like a seal on a sandbank," as Smetham expressively 
 worded it), disinclined to any prescribed or trying exertion, 
 yet not at all wanting in active promptitude whenever it 
 suited his liking. He often seemed merely unoccupied, 
 especially of an evening ; the brain continued busy enough. 
 A reader, to be sure, he was, but not a great reader. 
 
 " Unto the man of yearning thought 
 And aspiration, to do nought 
 Is in itself almost an act, — 
 Being chasm-fire and cataract 
 Of the soul's utter depths unsealed. 
 Yet woe to thee if once thou yield 
 Unto the act of doing nought." 
 
 Various writers will have it that Rossetti cared nothing for 
 the beauties of Nature — was indifferent to scenery etc. I 
 think this an exaggeration. Italians however are not, as a 
 rule, so minute in observation of scenery, so full of " gush " 
 over hills and trees, so Wordsworthian in co-ordinating 
 phenomena and emotion, as some English people have 
 become : the Italians are open rather to the total impression 
 of a scene — whether it is cheerful, gloomy, homely, sublime, 
 or what not. In this relation again I consider my brother to 
 have been much more Italian than English. To the beauties 
 pf Nature he was not insensitive, but he was incurious, and 
 
PERSONAL DETAILS — EXTRACTS. 4II 
 
 he valued them more as being so much fuel to the fire of the 
 soul than as being objects of separate regard and analysis. 
 For him the Human Being was always the Lord of Creation 
 — the recipient and transformer and transmitter of the natural 
 influences. That he cared very little for descriptive poetry is 
 perfectly true — and just on that account ; that it exhibits and 
 extols objects instead of turning them into the " medium 
 of exchange " between the material world and the soul. Still 
 he saw for himself several things in Nature, both in mass and 
 in detail ; and his work in painting and in poetry testifies 
 no less. 
 
 Rossetti took no part, and belonged to no party, in politics. 
 He had ideas, and applied them to national as well as other 
 problems ; but he paid no attention at all to the hourly and 
 yearly scuffle over questions of practical legislation and 
 administration, whether in this country or in others. He 
 liked enlightenment, justice, and mercy, in public affairs ; he 
 disliked obtuseness, oppression, injustice, and ruthlessness. 
 I cannot call him either Liberal or Conservative, in the 
 current acceptation of those terms. He could see that there 
 was right in liberty, and right in conservation. In British 
 politics he was neutral ; in Italian politics — apart from a 
 general conviction that there was no reason why Austrians 
 should, as in the days of his youth, be lording it over Italians 
 — he was neutral also. And so in relation to other nations. 
 I can recollect one instance — there may have been others, but 
 certainly few — in which he expressed a decided opinion upon 
 a foreign national transaction. It was when all the hubbub 
 arose as to the shooting of Maximilian, the so-called Emperor 
 of Mexico. He asked me what it was all about ; and I feel 
 pretty sure that the whole affair came new to him. I ex- 
 plained to him that Maximilian was an Austrian prince whom 
 Napoleon III., for reasons of his own, had imposed upon the 
 Mexican Republic as an Emperor ; that Maximilian, in this 
 character, made military expeditions against Mexican Re- 
 publicans, and shot them when caught ; and that the ousted 
 Mexican President, Juarez, finally caught Maximilian, and 
 
412 DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI. 
 
 shot him as well. My brother replied, " I think it was just," 
 
 an opinion which entirely coincided with my own. Mr. 
 Caine's impression is that "It would be wrong to say that 
 he was wholly indifferent to important political issues, of 
 which he took often a very judicial view." And indeed I 
 think that, if Rossetti had been at the pains of forming and 
 formulating opinions on current questions of policy, they 
 would frequently have been found correct after the lapse of 
 a few years. 
 
 1 shall now proceed to give from various sources some of 
 his most marked observations on divers subjects. It would 
 perhaps be of little use to classify them, beyond a rough 
 division into those which relate respectively to fine art, to 
 literature, and to other topics. My extracts are of course 
 faithful, but they are frequently much curtailed. 
 
 Fine Art. — Mr. Holman Hunt says with regard to the early 
 days in the Cleveland Street studio : — 
 
 " We spoke of the improvement of design in household objects — 
 furniture, curtains, and interior decorations — and dress ; of how we 
 would exercise our skill, as the early painters had done, not in one 
 branch of art only, but in all. For sculpture, Rossetti in private 
 expressed little regard. He professed admiration for the minds of 
 many men engaged in it ; but he could scarcely understand their 
 devotion to work which seemed, in modern hands, so cold and 
 meaningless, and which was so limited in its power of illustration. 
 He confessed however that so far he had not thought of it enough. 
 Music he regarded as positively offensive " [and I regret to allow 
 that he never much receded from this narrowness of view in relation 
 to abstract or elaborate music, though he could enjoy an opera, or a 
 simple tuneable song]. 
 
 Mr. Caine reports : — 
 
 " I asked if his work usually took much out of him in physical 
 energy. ' Not my painting, certainly,' he replied, ' though in early 
 years it tormented me more than enough. Now I paint by a set of 
 unwritten but clearly-defined rules, which I could teach to any man 
 as systematically as you can teach arithmetic' " 
 
PERSONAL DETAILS— EXTRACTS. 413 
 
 In Paris, in 1864, he was much delighted with the paintings 
 of Millet, who was not then of the world-wide fame which he 
 afterwards attained ; and he spoke of this name, in writing to 
 Mr. George Rae, as " curiously identical with that of our best 
 English painter." 
 . Mr. Sharp says : — 
 
 " I once asked him how he would reply to the asseveration that he 
 was the head of the ' Art-for-Art's-sake ' school ; and his response 
 was to the effect that the principle of the phrase was two-thirds 
 absolutely correct, and one-third so essentially wrong that it negatived 
 the whole as an aphorism." 
 
 From letters to Mr. Scott, 1871 : — 
 
 " Your sorrows in connexion with that infernal word quaint recall 
 my own. Only quite lately I had it revived by a friendly critic on 
 my work, though a lapse of years had occurred since I last heard 
 it in such relation, and I had hoped it and I had parted company. 
 However, it will be ' in at the death ' with both of us. Good God, 
 I cannot see the faintest trace of this adjective in either of your 
 etchings which you mention. By the bye, on this point I have 
 always meant, and always forgotten, to ask if you noticed an 
 astounding controversy raised in Notes and Queries about a wretched 
 little daub of mine called Greensleeves. Bad the thing is, probably 
 enough ; but how it should suggest to any human mind the maniacal 
 farrago conjured up in these letters is incomprehensible, except as 
 revealing to one the degree to which the world considers oneself 
 insane. 1 On reading them my brain whirled, and I sent to Agnew 
 
 1 The utterances in Notes and Queries about Greensleeves are certainly 
 surprising enough. They begin on 3 June 1871. A lady, M. M. C, had 
 seen the picture in Messrs. Agnew's Exhibition in Manchester. She was 
 fascinated by it, but could not make it out, as one hand of the personage 
 seemed to be living, and the rest of her figure dead. She got a friend to 
 write on the subject to Notes and Queries. He conjectured that the living 
 hand must be touching emblems of the lady's lover, while the rest of her 
 figure indicated a state of suspended vitality. In a later number, 29 July, 
 Mr. William Chappell opined that as a "Greensleeves" was, in Tudor 
 times, a sort of demirep, the lady pictured by Rossetti was meant to have 
 " one side fair, and the other on the verge of the grave." 
 
414 DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTL 
 
 for the thing, to see if it bore any internal explanation with it. It 
 seemed a poor daub when examined, but certainly innocent of the 
 special enormities charged to it. However, once having laid hands 
 on it, I gave it a good daubing all over, and transmogrified it so 
 completely (title and all) as to separate it for ever, I hope, from this 
 Bedlam correspondence — which, by-the-bye, I find revived this 
 week, to end God knows when or where. ... It would really be 
 worth your while one day, if you keep Notes and Queries, to look 
 back at the first of these Greensleeves letters : it would enlarge your 
 ideas as to the gaping astonishment and perverse misconstruction 
 of which we were writing lately." 
 
 Again, 1871 : — 
 
 "Your article on Leys takes, I think, quite the true view, and is 
 equal to its important theme. However, I am not sure that you 
 dwell quite strongly enough on the fascination which Leys's intensity 
 as antiquarian and colourist gives him even to the most ideal class 
 of poetic minds— though, as you say, it be quite questionable 
 whether there were any absolute poetry in his springs of action. I 
 am much concerned to find that you have alluded in no way 
 whatever to Wiertz, whose works I never saw (with one large excep- 
 tion, quite noteworthy enough to increase curiosity), but who, I am 
 sure, must have been the greatest mental genius (except Leys in his 
 very different walk) whom they [the existing Belgian school] have 
 had yet." 
 
 Phrases reported by Mr. Shields : — ■ 
 
 " The man who, on seeing a work with claims to regard, does not 
 perceive its beauties before its faults, is a conceited fool. I am 
 ashamed to belong to a profession in which the possession of 
 intellect is rather a disqualification than an advantage. The men 
 of imagination in England have always been as a persecuted sect." 
 
 Literature. — From a letter to Mr. Caine : — 
 
 1 ' Surely you are strong enough to be English pure and simple. 
 I am sure I could write ico essays (I once did project a series 
 under the title, Essays written in the Intervals of Elephantiasis, 
 Hydrophobia. a?id Penal Servitude) without once experiencing 
 the ' aching void ' which is filled by such words as myt/wpceic and 
 
personal details — extracts. . 415 
 
 anthropomorphism. I do not find life long enough to know in the 
 least what they mean. They are both very long and very ugly 
 indeed — the latter only suggesting to me a Vampire or Somnam- 
 bulant Cannibal. To speak rationally — would not 'man-evolved 
 Godhead ' be an English equivalent ? [This shows that my brother 
 did really not accurately know what anthropomorphism means.] 
 Simple English, in prose-writing and in all narrative poetry (how- 
 ever monumental language may become in abstract verse), seems to 
 me a treasure not to be foregone in favour of German innovations." 
 [The context relieves Rossetti from the suspicion that he could have 
 supposed the two impugned words to be of Teutonic stock.] 
 
 From another letter to Mr. Caine : — 
 
 " I wrote the tale of Hand and Soul (with the exception of an 
 opening page or two) all in one night in December 1849, beginning 
 I suppose about 2 a.m., and ending about 7. In such a case a 
 landscape and sky all unsurmised open gradually in the mind — a 
 sort of spiritual Turner, among whose hills one ranges and in whose 
 waters one strikes out at unknown liberty. But I have found this 
 only in nightlong work, which I have seldom attempted, for it leaves 
 one entirely broken ; and this state was mine when I described the 
 like of it at the close of the story, how long ago ! " 
 
 Mr. Caine observes : — 
 
 " ' The three greatest English imaginations,' he would sometimes 
 add, ' are Shakespear, Coleridge, and Shelley.' I have heard him 
 give a fourth name, Blake. He thought Wordsworth was too much 
 the high-priest of Nature to be her lover." [Shelley has implied 
 much the same in his admirable Peter Bell the Third — a poem 
 which my brother read for the first time in 1880; and he then 
 expressed to me his astonishment at its brilliant handling of a theme 
 so little Shelleyan.] 
 
 Again from letters to Mr. Caine : — 
 
 " You must take care to be on the right tack about Chatterton. 
 I am very glad to find the gifted Oliver Madox Brown already an 
 embryo classic, as I always said he would be ; but those who com- 
 pare nett results in such cases cannot know what criticism means. 
 Oliver was the product of the most teeming hotbeds of art and 
 
416 DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI. 
 
 literature. Moreover Chatterton, at his death, was two years 
 younger than Oliver ; a whole lifetime of advancement at that age 
 frequently — indeed always, I believe, in leading cases. ... I must 
 protest finally about Chatterton that he lacks nothing, because lack- 
 ing the gradual growth of the emotional in literature which becomes 
 evident in Keats— still less its excess, which would of course have 
 been pruned, in Oliver. In the matter of Oliver (whom no one 
 appreciates more than I do), remember it was impossible to have 
 more opportunities than he had, or on the other side fewer than 
 Chatterton had." 
 
 I recur to Mr. Caine's narrative : — 
 
 " Reverting to my enquiry as to whether his work took much out 
 of him, he remarked that his poetry usually did. ' In that respect,' 
 he said, ' I am the reverse of Swinburne. For his method of pro- 
 duction inspiration is indeed the word. With me the case is 
 different. I lie on the couch, the racked and tortured medium, 
 never permitted an instant's surcease of agony until the thing on 
 hand is finished.' It was obvious that what Rossetti meant by 
 being racked and tortured was that his subject possessed him. 
 Assuredly impulse was, to use his own phrase, fully developed in his 
 Muse. [I fancy my brother's very strong expressions were a little 
 overstrained, partly to give glory to Mr. Swinburne by contrast. I 
 never witnessed such " agony," nor heard him speak of it. His 
 sonnet The Song-throe however proves how deeply impressed he 
 was with the conviction that, in order to move his reader, the poet 
 must himself be moved.] ' One benefit I do derive,' Rossetti 
 added, ' as a result of my method of composition. My work becomes 
 condensed. Probably the man does not live who could write what 
 I have written more briefly than I have done. All poetry, that is 
 really poetry, affects me deeply, and often to tears. It does not 
 need to be pathetic or yet tender to produce such a result.' " 
 
 From letters from Rossetti to Caine, in reference to that 
 gentleman's proposed volume, Sonnets of Three Centuries : — 
 
 " Sonnets of mine could not appear in any book which contained 
 such rigid rules as to rhyme as are contained in Watts's letter. 
 [Rossetti was afterwards satisfied that Watts had not intended the 
 degree of rigidity here supposed.] I neither follow them, nor agree 
 
PERSONAL DETAILS— EXTRACTS. 417 
 
 with them as regards the English language. Every sonnet-writer 
 should show full capability of conforming to them in many instances ; 
 but never to deviate from them in English must pinion both 
 thought and diction, and (mastery once proved) a series gains 
 rather than loses by such varieties as do not lessen the only absolute 
 aim — that of beauty. The English sonnet, too much tampered 
 with, becomes a sort of bastard madrigal ; too much, invariably, 
 restricted, it degenerates into a shibboleth. I would not be too 
 anxious, were I you, about anything, in choice of sonnets, except 
 the brains and the music. It would not be at all found that my 
 best sonnets are always in the mere form which I think the best. 
 The question with me is regulated by what I have to say. You 
 have much too great a habit of speaking of a special octave, 
 sestett, or line. Conception, my boy, fundamental brain-work — that 
 is what makes the difference in all art. Work your metal as much 
 as you like, but first take care that it is gold and worth working. 
 A Shakespearean sonnet is better than the most perfect in form 
 because Shakespear wrote it." 
 
 From a letter (apparently) addressed by Rossetti to Mr. 
 William Sharp : — 
 
 " Above all ideal personalities with which the poet must learn 
 to identify himself there is one supremely real which is the most 
 imperative of all — namely, that of his reader. And the practical 
 watchfulness needed for such assimilation is as much a gift and 
 instinct as is the creative grasp of alien character. It is a spiritual 
 contact hardly conscious yet ever renewed, and which must be 
 a part of the very act of production. . . . The quality of finish in 
 poetic execution is of two kinds. The first and highest is that when 
 the work has been all mentally ' cartooned,' as it were, beforehand, 
 by a process intensely conscious but patient and silent — an occult 
 evolution of life." 
 
 From a letter to Scott, 1853 : — 
 
 "The Life-drama [of Alexander Smith] has nothing particular 
 to say, except that it seems to bear vaguely towards the favourite 
 doctrine that scoundrelism is a sacred probation of the soul. But I 
 
 VOL. I. 27 
 
41 8 DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI. 
 
 find this everywhere. I am reading Wilhelm Meister, where the 
 hero's self-culture is a great process, amusing and amazing one. 
 On one page he is in despair about some girl he has been the death 
 of; in the next you are delighted with his enlarged views of 
 Hamlet. Nothing, plainly, is so fatal to the duty of self-culture as 
 self-sacrifice, even to the measure of a grain of mustard-seed. The 
 only other book I have read for more than a year is St. Augustine's 
 Confessions, and here you have it again. As soon as the Saint is 
 struck by the fact that he has been wallowing, and inducing others 
 to wallow, it is all horrible together, but involves no duty, except 
 the comfortable self-appeasement of getting out of it for himself. 
 As for the women, no doubt they are nascent for hell." 
 
 From another letter to Scott, 1871 : — 
 
 " Browning's poem, Balaustion's Adventure, looks alarming before- 
 hand. I have written to have it sent me, when out. However, no 
 doubt there will be plenty to admire and enjoy. Browning seems 
 Ikely to remain, with all his sins, the most original and varied mind, 
 by long odds, which betakes itself to poetry in our time." 
 
 Again, 1871 : — 
 
 " Another happy man, after all, seems to be Allingham, for all 
 his want of 'success.' Nothing but the most absolute calm and 
 enjoyment of outside Nature could account for so much gadding 
 hither and thither on the soles of his two feet. Fancy carrying 
 about grasses for hours and days from the field where Burns ploughed 
 up a daisy ! Good God, if I found the daisy itself there, I would 
 sooner swallow it than be troubled to carry it twenty yards. ... I 
 hardly ever do produce a sonnet except on some basis of special 
 momentary emotion. But I think there is another class admissible 
 also, and that is the only other I practise — viz., the class depending 
 on a line or two clearly given you, you know not whence, and 
 calling up a sequence of ideas. This also is a just raison d'etre 
 for a sonnet ; and such are all mine when they do not in some 
 sense belong to the ' occasional ' class. As for Commandments 
 [the poem now called Soothsay], the three verses came into my 
 head during a walk, and I think of carrying it further probably — 
 
PERSONAL DETAILS— EXTRACTS. 419 
 
 only such-like verses do not interest me much. ... I had some 
 painting task-work to do, and have set about a little, not task-work, 
 also ; and these have kept me from the other Muse, who, I believe, 
 after all is my true mistress. I am sure, when one has once got used 
 to brush-work, one cannot somehow do without it." 
 
 To Mr. Gosse, 1873 :— 
 
 " It seems to me that all poetry, to be really enduring, is bound 
 to be as amusing (however trivial the word may sound) as any other 
 class of literature ; and I do not think that enough amusement to 
 keep it alive can ever be got out of incidents not amounting to 
 events, or out of travelling-experiences of an ordinary kind, however 
 agreeably, observantly, or even thoughtfully treated. I would 
 eschew in writing all themes that are not so trenchantly individu- 
 alized as to leave no margin for discursiveness." 
 
 Oliver Madox Brown, writing to his father from Kelmscott 
 in 1874, reports : — 
 
 " Rossetti seems in a wonderfully good temper at present. He 
 has had several long discussions with me on the subject of novel- 
 writing, from which I see plainly that he has great facility of ex- 
 pression, but that he would be a dangerous preceptor. Thackeray 
 he will hardly hear the name of; George Eliot is vulgarity personi- 
 fied ; Balzac is melodramatic in plot, conceited, wishywashy, and 
 dull. Dumas is the one great and supreme man, the sole descendant 
 of Shakespear." 
 
 These are slightly surprising utterances, and I am sure they 
 lost nothing, in the way of downrightness, at the hands of 
 their reporter. That my brother, in his maturer manhood, 
 read Dumas with vastly more zest than the other three 
 novelists named, is decidedly true : that he here made a 
 mistake is, to some others besides myself, by no means 
 obvious. Thackeray, I consider, he always valued within 
 certain limitations ; perhaps he hardly read him at all after 
 1855 to 1858 or thereabouts. I scarcely know why — or 
 whether — he regarded George Eliot as " vulgarity personified." 
 
420 DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI. 
 
 He may have thought that there was in her a considerable 
 infusion of the commonplace tempering the stuck-up ; and 
 I remember that, when Romola first appeared, he spoke of 
 it to me as totally misapprehending the moral temper of 
 those times — which (but I never read the romance) is probably 
 true. Balzac he most highly admired from certain points 
 of view, and he certainly rated him as one of the most 
 intellectual and deep-probing men of our age : yet he may, 
 in a one-sided mood, have been prepared to apply to his 
 writings the epithets set forth by Oliver Brown, with the 
 possible exception of " wishywashy." 
 
 From a letter to James Smetham, consequent on his review 
 of Alexander Smith (in the London Quarterly Review), 1868 : — 
 
 " I was equally delighted with what you say about DobelPs 
 Keith l of Ravelston — not only because you have so flatteringly 
 lugged-in my name in connexion with it, but because I have always 
 regarded that poem as being one of the finest, of its length, in any 
 modern poet — ranking with Keats's La Belle Dame sans Merci, 
 and the other masterpieces of the condensed and hinted order 
 so dear to imaginative minds. What a pity it is that Dobell 
 generally insists on being so long-winded, when he can write like 
 that ! There is a snatch of sea-song (about the Betsy Jane) in 
 Balder which is fifty times as good as anything in Dibdin, who 
 is nevertheless not contemptible." 
 
 Two notes from my Diary, May 1869 and December 
 1879:- 
 
 " Gabriel has written several new sonnets. His practice with 
 poetry is first to write the thing in the rough, and then to turn over 
 dictionaries of rhymes and synonyms so as to bring the poem into 
 
 1 Some persons seem to suppose that Rossetti took his surname 
 " Keith" in Sister Helen from Dobell's Keith of Ravelston (in which, had 
 he done it, there could be no harm) ; but in fact Sister Helen was written 
 — I think it was even published — before Dobell s admirable ballad was 
 in print. 
 
PERSONAL DETAILS — EXTRACTS. 421 
 
 the most perfect form. . . . Gabriel's view of the subject-matter of 
 my Lectures, The Wives of Poets, is that those poets who have 
 been happy with their wives were, although truly poets in perform- 
 ance, personally of an unpoetic character, conventionally compliant 
 etc. — such as Wordsworth and Walter Scott." 
 
 General Subjects. — From letters from Rossetti to Caine, 
 following an offer from the latter to dedicate to him a 
 Lecture On the Relation of Politics to Art :• — 
 
 " I must admit, at all hazards, that my friends here consider me 
 exceptionally averse to politics ; and I suppose I must be, for I 
 never read a Parliamentary Debate in my life. At the same time 
 I will add that, among those whose opinions I most value, some 
 think me not altogether wrong when I venture to speak of the 
 momentary momentousness and eternal futility of many noisiest 
 questions. However, you must simply view me as a nonentity in 
 any practical relation to such matters. You have spoken but too 
 generously of a sonnet of mine, in your Lecture just received 
 [this must be the sonnet On Refusal of Aid between Nations]. I 
 have written a few others of the sort (which by-the-bye would not 
 prove me a Tory), but felt no vocation — perhaps no right — to print 
 them. I have always reproached myself as sorely amenable to the 
 condemnations of a very fine poem by Barberino, On Sloth against 
 Sin, which I translated in the Dante volume. Sloth, alas, has but 
 too much to answer for with me ; and is one of the reasons (though 
 I will not say the only one) why I have always fallen back on 
 quality instead of quantity in the little I have ever done. Volition 
 is vain without vocation ; and I had better really stick to knowing 
 how to mix vermilion and ultramarine for a flesh-grey, and how 
 to manage their equivalents in verse. To speak without sparing 
 myself — my mind is a childish one if to be isolated in Art is child's 
 play. ... I have been thinking yet more on the relations of politics 
 and art. I do think seriously on consideration that not only my 
 own sluggishness, but vital fact itself, must set to a great extent 
 a veto against the absolute participation of artists in politics. When 
 has it ever been effected? True, Cellini was a bravo, and David 
 a good deal like a murderer ; and in these qualities they were not 
 without their political use in very turbulent times." 
 
422 DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI. 
 
 To Mr. Scott, apropos of the poem Cloud Confines, 1871 : — 
 
 " I cannot suppose that any particle of life is extinguished, 
 though its permanent individuality may be more than questionable. 
 Absorption is not annihilation ; and it is even a real retributive 
 future for the special atom of life to be re-embodied (if so it were) 
 in a world which its own former identity x had helped to fashion for 
 pain or pleasure." 
 
 To Mr. Smetham, 1865 : — 
 
 " I am afraid you will think no better of me for pronouncing the 
 commonplace verdict that what you lack is simply ambition — i.e., 
 the feeling of pure rage and self-hatred when any one else does 
 better than you do. This, in an ambitious mind, leads not to envy 
 in the least, but to self-scrutiny on all sides, — and that, to some- 
 thing, if anything can. You comfort yourself with other things, 
 whereas Art must be its own comforter, or else comfortless." 
 
 To Alexander Gilchrist, 1861, relative to the death of 
 Benjamin Woodward, the Architect of the Oxford Museum, — 
 also in 1862 to Mrs. Gilchrist on her husband's death : — 
 
 " I must have been the last friend who saw Woodward in 
 England, as he called here [14 Chatham Place], after we had long 
 been unseen by each other, on his way to the Station, going this 
 last time to Paris. I am sitting now in the place, and I think in the 
 chair, he sat in — to write this. If I am ever found worthy to meet 
 him again, it will be where the dejection is unneeded which I 
 cannot but feel at this moment ; for the power of further and better 
 work must be the reward bestowed on the deserts and checked 
 aspirations of such a sincere soul as his. . . . What can be done 
 except to trust to what is surely a natural instinct in all ? — that is, 
 that such terrible partings from love and work must be, unless all 
 things are a mere empty husk of nothing, a guide to belief in a 
 new field of effort, and a second communion with those loved and 
 lost." 
 
 1 The word stands printed " ideality " ; but surely that is a mistake. 
 
ROSSETTI AS PAINTER AND POET — EXTRACTS. 423 
 
 XLIV. 
 
 ROSSETTI AS PAINTER AND POET— EXTRACTS. 
 
 THROUGHOUT the writing of my Memoir no question has 
 been more present to my mind than this — whether it would 
 or would not behove me to offer in concluding some remarks 
 of my own upon the general measure of attainment of Dante 
 Rossetti as painter and poet, and upon the quality and value 
 of his work in the two arts. Having been a critic of fine 
 art and of poetry all my life, I could address myself to the 
 task with some degree of self-confidence ; and I can safely 
 say that my praise would be less extreme, and my strictures 
 not less frank, than those of some other writers on the subject. 
 But finally I have decided to abstain altogether, and to leave 
 readers to surmise for themselves the opinions which one 
 brother, of very minor pretensions, entertains of another who 
 has made a considerable figure in the records of his time. 
 I shall limit myself to extracting a few observations from the 
 large amount of writing of which Dante Rossetti has been 
 the subject — writing done in some instances by the men who 
 themselves stand foremost as painters or as poets. Of opinions 
 unvouched by the author's name I shall take no count, 
 though some of these also are well known, to myself and to 
 others, to emanate from persons of the highest qualifications. 
 I do not, in my extracts, omit some comments much less 
 than eulogistic ; but I do omit such abuse as that of Mr. 
 Robert Buchanan (long ago recanted by himself), and such 
 theoretic depreciation as that of Herr Max Nordau. 
 
 Fine Art. — From the speech of Sir Frederick Leighton, 
 P.R.A., at the banquet of the Royal Academy, 1882 : — 
 
 " The other [he had already said something about John Linnell, 
 then also recently deceased] was a strangely interesting man, who, 
 living in almost jealous seclusion as far as the general world was 
 concerned, wielded nevertheless at one period of his life [at all 
 periods might well have been said] a considerable influence in the 
 
424 DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI. 
 
 world of Art and Poetry — Dante Gabriel Rossetti, painter and 
 poet. A mystic by temperament and right of birth, and steeped l in 
 the Italian literature of the middle age, his works in either art are 
 filled with a peculiar fascination and fervour, which attracted to him, 
 from those who enjoyed his intimacy, a rare degree of admiring 
 devotion." 
 
 The Royal Scottish Academy passed the following resolu- 
 tion, 1882. Probably Sir Noel Paton could say of its terms, 
 " Quorum pars magna fui " : — 
 
 " The Council have heard with much regret of the death, on 
 Sunday last, of Mr. Dante Gabriel Rossetti, whose many-sided and 
 original genius and high accomplishments, not only as a painter 
 but as a poet also, have shed a lustre on the artistic profession. 
 From his super-sensitive aversion to exhibitions, his thoughtful and 
 imaginative pictures are but little known to the general public ; 
 but his influence on contemporary English art has confessedly been 
 very great, while that of his poetry has been more widely and 
 markedly felt. Probably few artists of more distinct individuality 
 and intellectual force ever appeared; and his removal in the full 
 maturity of his power cannot but be regarded as a heavy loss to 
 art and literature." 
 
 Holman Hunt — with regard to Rossetti at the outset of 
 Prseraphaelitism : — 
 
 " Rossetti, with his spirit alike subtle and fiery, was essentially 
 a proselytizer, sometimes to an almost absurd degree, but possessed, 
 alike in his poetry and painting, with an appreciation of beauty of 
 the most intense quality." 
 
 Frederic G. Stephens : — 
 
 "Excepting one or two later works of the master, where sentiment 
 of a more exalted sort, as in Proserpina, inspired the designs, The 
 Beloved appears to me to be the finest production of his genius. 
 Of his skill, in the high artistic sense, implying the vanquishment 
 
 1 Thus printed. But perhaps it ought to run- — " A mystic by temperament, 
 and by right of birth steeped in the Italian literature " etc. 
 
ROSSETTI AS PAINTER AND POET — EXTRACTS. 425 
 
 of prodigious difficulties — difficulties the greater because of his 
 imperfect technical education — there cannot be two opinions as 
 to the pre-eminence of Mr. Rae's magnificent possession. It in- 
 dicates the consummation of Rossetti's powers in the highest order 
 of modern art, and is in perfect harmony with that poetical inspira- 
 tion which is found in every one of his more ambitious pictures. 
 This example can only be called Venetian, because of the splendid 
 colouring which obtains in it. The intensity of Venetian art is 
 exalted (if that term be allowed) in a modern strain ; while its 
 form, coloration, and chiaroscuro, are most subtly devised to 
 produce a whole which is thoroughly harmonized and entirely self- 
 sustained. Of how few modern instances could this be said ! 
 Rossetti's Beloved is in English art what Spenser's gorgeous and 
 passionate Epithalamiam is in English verse, and, if not more 
 rapturous, it is more compact of sumptuous elements." 
 
 Harry Ouilter : — 
 
 "In an age when painters have few beliefs, and hold those very 
 lightly, this man scarcely stirred a step in art except in obedience 
 to his own inspiration, and was strong enough, despite all his fail- 
 ings, to modify the practices, if he did not actually change the 
 creeds, of half the artists of his time. To him Millais owed his 
 poetical inspiration, and his most beautiful pictures were painted 
 under that influence ; to him Holman Hunt was even more indebted 
 [this I think highly disputable, or indeed erroneous] ; from him, 
 though soon able to strike out a line for himself, sprang Mr. Burne- 
 Jones, fully equipped for the fight, like a second Minerva from the 
 brain of a second Jove ; to his early friendship with William Morris 
 at Oxford we probably owe the determining influence [also disputable] 
 which set the author of The Earthly Paradise on the road to that 
 decoration which has changed the look of half the houses in London, 
 and substituted art for ugliness all over the kingdom ; and to him 
 probably, if we could trace it back, we owe, almost equally with 
 Ruskin who defended him, the growth of the feeling that art was 
 more than a mere trade, and that an artist has duties to himself 
 and his art, as well as to his pocket and his public. In the minds 
 of hundreds of young men who never even saw him there lurked 
 a satisfaction that down at Chelsea a man was living, painting, and 
 
426 DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI. 
 
 writing, without caring a brass farthing what any one thought of his 
 works ; and, though I do not mean to defend the morality or the 
 wisdom of such indifference, I do mean to assert that it is the 
 one temper that produces good artistic work. The place of his 
 painting is even harder to determine [than that of his poetry]. 
 Many artists would tell us that it is not painting at all, and from 
 one point of view they would be right. But is this really the 
 question ? Who shall decide what is and what is not painting, 
 if we once leave the broad track of beautiful colour applied to 
 a canvas so as to produce a beautiful result ? And, if the decision 
 can be made so as to exclude the work of which we are talking, 
 we should have to consider whether, if this be not painting, it is 
 not something else than painting which we require. It is at all 
 events — Art. There is no doubt of that ; and in the best examples 
 it possesses three qualities, which it is excessively rare to find in 
 combination. It is at once passionate, poetical, and refined, and 
 defies the spectator to associate it with ideas of manufacture. 
 Such as it is, the work has evidently grown from its author's cha 
 racter, like a flower from the earth, and bears scarcely a trace of 
 another's influence. As poems in colour, the world has seen 
 nothing finer since the days of Titian." 
 
 In this passage Mr. Quilter has spoken strongly of the 
 influence produced by Rossetti upon painting and the deco- 
 rative forms of art. His influence upon poetry was hardly 
 or not at all less considerable. Our two greatest living poets, 
 Swinburne and William Morris, allow this ; and I am fully 
 of opinion that his early preaching-forth of Browning counted 
 in the long run for a great deal. And so with blue china, 
 Japanese art, and the modern taste in bookbinding. It may 
 to some seem absurd — and yet I believe it to be quite true — 
 that he modified for some years the British taste in female 
 beauty ; promoting the possessors (or the imitators) of auburn- 
 golden hair, those who wore the hair low down on the 
 forehead, and the owners of strong-set profiles — rich lips, and 
 vigorous chiselled sweep of jaw and chin — also stateliness of 
 height and tall throats. " No Roman noses need apply." 
 Along with all this went fashions of dress. But of course 
 
ROSSETTI AS PAINTER AND POET— EXTRACTS. 427 
 
 fashions are fleeting, and there is a new generation which 
 " knows not Joseph." It may be said, and I think truly, 
 that the actual style of his paintings has not, since his death, 
 left any such traces on the British School as might by his 
 upholders have been looked for. But Burne-Jones remains 
 in the ascendant (long may he so continue !) — and this 
 betrays the vestiges of Rossetti. 
 
 Ruskin wrote, in a letter to Rossetti dating probably early 
 in 1855 :— 
 
 " It seems to me that, among all the painters I know, you on the 
 whole have the greatest genius ; and you appear to me also to be — 
 as far as I can make out — a very good sort of person. I see that 
 you are unhappy, and that you can't bring out your genius as you 
 should. It seems to me then the proper and necessary thing, if I 
 can, to make you more happy ; and that I shall be more really 
 useful in enabling you to paint properly, and keep your room in 
 order, than in any other way." 
 
 James Smetham, towards 1871 :— 
 
 " In two different ways I see and admire the stern toil of Ford 
 Madox Brown and Dante Gabriel Rossetti. No one knows what 
 work costs these men, and how profitable it is to see their example." 
 
 Frederick J. Shields : — 
 
 " The mere sum of work often accomplished in a day was 
 astounding ; for, when once he grappled with his picture, he never, 
 when in health, let go his grip till daylight failed him." 
 
 Dr. Hake :— 
 
 " The Manor-house [at Kelmscott] was adequately furnished ; but 
 some exquisite chalk-drawings — one especially — of female heads 
 gave it a charm. I thought that no one ever could paint a woman's 
 eyes like Rossetti. There was a softness, a delicacy, a life, a soul, 
 in them, never seen elsewhere but in living beings, and that how 
 rarely ! " 
 
428 DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI. 
 
 Professor Edouard Rod : — 
 
 "Je ne crois pas qu'on trouverait dans l'histoire des arts un cas 
 plus curieux que cette retraite d'un artiste tout jeune, celebre avant 
 l'age, doue des facultes les plus exceptionnelles, et qui, pendant plus 
 de trente ans, inconnu de la foule, exerca sur une partie conside- 
 rable de l'elite intellectuelle de son pays une sorte d'occulte royaute. 
 Rossetti a ce trait commun avec les grands peintres de la Renais- 
 sance italienne, qu'il s'attache plus a la peinture de Phomme qu'a 
 celle de la nature. Mais — et voici ou il est bien du Nord — ce n'est 
 pas l'homme physique qui l'attire, 1'animal humain (comme dit 
 M. Taine), c'est l'homme interieur. Aussi, dedaigneux des belles 
 jormes du corps, ne recherche-t-il que l'expression, et le genre de 
 beaute qui peut le mieux la faire ressortir. Ce qu'il y a de religieux 
 en lui ce n'est done pas la foi au surnaturel, l'ideal transcendental, 
 le besoin d'etablir la vie sur des bases fixes : c'est une disposition 
 toute subjective, une faculte tres moderne, l'extase. Ses figures ont 
 une immobilite, un silence, une attitude presque suspendue, une 
 hesitation lente dans leurs rares mouvements, qui les font ressembler 
 a ces figures de reve qui demeurent comme posees devant l'imagina- 
 tion, sans cependant se preciser entitlement. Parfois il se plait a, les 
 entourer de brillants accessoires, sans que pour cela elles perdent un 
 instant leur apparence surnaturelle, le je ne sais quoi qui montre 
 qu'elles n'ont pas d'existence reelle — que, meme fixees sur la toile, 
 elles sont encore en union profonde et discrete avec Fame de l'artiste. 
 Religieux, profanes, mythologiques, les sujets ne sont pour Rossetti 
 que des pretextes. Sous des formes diverses, il n'exprime jamais 
 que son reve : les attitudes, les traits, les couleurs, changent — et 
 c'est toujours lui. Rossetti, d'un bout a l'autre de son oeuvre, 
 demeure un pur poete. Son dessin est souvent mediocre, avec des 
 fautes evidentes. Presque toutes ses femmes ont des mains trop 
 grandes : tres souvent les etoffes qui les drapent paraissent reveler 
 d'etranges imperfections physiques — un bras trop court ou une 
 epaule rentree. Mais le coloriste fait pardonner les negligences du 
 dessinateur. L'art du peintre demeure intact, en dehors de la 
 technique, dans cette intensite supreme d'expression qu'il parvient 
 a donner a ses figures, sans le secours de grands gestes ni de mouve- 
 ments violents. C'est la, me semble-t-il, qu'est la valeur artistique 
 des toiles de Rossetti, dont la haute valeur poetique ne supporte 
 
ROSSETTI AS PAINTER AND POET— EXTRACTS. 429 
 
 aucun doute : il a compris qu'en une epoque toute intellectuelle la 
 peinture elle-meme devait obeir au courant general, et poursuivre 
 un autre ideal que celui de la forme pure, et que cet ideal ne 
 pouvait etre que /'expression. II a vu que l'attitude la plus calme et 
 le geste le plus lent sont parfaitement compatibles avec la plus 
 grande intensity de la vie interieure ; et il a rendu a Fart des qualites 
 qu'il avait perdu depuis la Renaissance." 
 
 Gabriel Mourey : — 
 
 " Au sortir de mes longues haltes devant la divine Beata Beatrix 
 et l'enchanteresse Rosa Triplex [both in the National Gallery], apres 
 tant de visites a travers tant de galeries privees recelant quelque chef- 
 d'oeuvre signe destrois initiales benies [D. G. R.], toujours je me suis 
 senti oppresse par le sentiment de Fineluctable impuissance des 
 mots a traduire la complexity des sensations, les extatiques vertiges, 
 ou venait de me ravir l'irresistible magie de ce genie exceptionnel 
 et radieux. Quel poete en effet, quel artiste, parla langage plus 
 profond, plus passionne ? Art plein de mystere et d'ardeur, debor- 
 dant de melancolie ; art mi-religieux, mi-profane ; art qui atteint les 
 limites dernieres de l'expression verbale ou plastique par la seule 
 valeur de Fame qu'il reflete (en dehors meme de toute realisation 
 technique, parfois incomplete ou avortee) ; art inquietant de com- 
 plexite, qui mele, a Finspiration renouvele du plus grand visionnaire 
 des temps, Dante, avec telles reminiscences de Fantiquite et d'un 
 paganisme lumineux, les inquietudes, les exasperations vers Fideal, 
 de Fhomme moderne ; art qui se cree a la fois d'images simples, 
 presque na'ives, jaillies d'un cour primitif, voiles de mystere septen- 
 trional, parmi la fougue epanchee d'un pur sang latin, et les 
 obscurites subtiles d'une nature raffinee d'Anglo-Saxon." 
 
 The following is by G. A. Sartorio, a very capable painter, 
 writing in the Italian magazine // Convito. Signor Sartorio 
 (so I gather from his article) has seen not many of the 
 pictures of Dante Rossetti, but judges of him partly from 
 photographs, books, and narratives. I should have regretted 
 to omit from my selection some utterance by a fully qualified 
 Italian upon his semi-compatriot Rossetti, considered as an 
 artist : — 
 
430 DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI. 
 
 "The struggle arose in the Exhibition of 1850. The picture 
 which Rossetti contributed was The Annunciation, now in the 
 National Gallery. The figure of the Virgin, the true gem of the 
 picture, is a very refined figure of a modern Virgin, of child-like 
 garb, painted with rare and loving perfection of form. I incline to 
 trace the ideal descent of this pure physiognomy, of impeccable 
 expression, from the early Flemish paintings, and notably from the 
 works of Memling. Just at that period Dante Gabriel had carried 
 out his tour in Flanders, and had written his sonnets in The Germ 
 on Memling and Bruges ; and, as I find in the art of the Nether- 
 lands a considerable portion of the inspiration, not only of the 
 Prseraphaelites but of much English art in general, I conceive 
 that the almost feminine nature of the genius of D. G. Rossetti 
 must necessarily have coalesced with the sentiment of Memling. 
 Rossetti, in all his subsequent works, shows himself imbued with 
 such sentiment — windows from which are to be seen belfries, close 
 gardens, silent canals, fruit-laden plants in damp orchards. The 
 turn of such compositions has no precedents in the English School ; 
 and the paintings of Rossetti, with veiled and calm light, with a 
 pious atmosphere which almost brings into the silence of the 
 dwellings the odour of candle and incense, show a clear filiation 
 from the sentiment divined from Memling. . . . While Millais 
 and Hunt were seeking, in the landscape of Surrey or of Palestine 
 copied in the open air, strong but not dusky tones, Rossetti obtained 
 them by daring essays in his studio through improvised overlayings 
 and continual experiments with the palette, animated by the 
 recollection of the brilliant pictures observed in Flanders and in the 
 Louvre. From that period began in him the personal evolution. 
 Rather than search for his design in the fact, he finds it in his own 
 idealisms. Hence, if Hunt may be called the fervid and constant 
 adherent of the first [Praeraphaelite] ideal, the evolution in Rossetti, 
 who developed his originality by working his brain in pursuit of his 
 dreams and his passion, penetrates into the laws of the cinquecento, 
 defers to the eclectic of Leonardo, and he becomes (in a strict sense 
 of the word) a Raphaelist. Looking to his successive changes of 
 style, one can easily perceive how rooted in the artist was a tendency 
 to overload his pictures with symbols. The myths and legends 
 are outlived by an aesthetic and moral significance, all the deeper 
 and more human the more it is devoid of self-regarding creed. 
 
ROSSETTI AS PAINTER AND POET — EXTRACTS. 43 I 
 
 Painter and poet, he animates the plastic product with an intimate 
 psychological sense ; and his effort, crowned with achievement, has 
 greater depth than a continuous and personal perfecting of the 
 
 Literature. — A poet praised by the Author of Atalanta in 
 Calydon must have something of the same sensation as a king 
 diademed by an emperor ; a fair-minded man — and Dante 
 Rossetti was one — loaded and almost assailed by the sublime 
 rage of generosity of Algernon Swinburne, may perhaps have 
 felt the consciousness of his own blemishes more keenly than 
 that of his powers. At any rate his brother can, on his 
 behalf, feel something of that. Here are a few words 
 extracted from the 29 large pages in which Mr. Swinburne 
 testified of the Poems of 1870: — 
 
 "In all great poets there must be an ardent harmony, a heat 
 of spiritual life, guiding without constraining the bodily grace of 
 motion, which shall give charm and power to their least work ; 
 sweetness that cannot be weak, and force that will not be rough. 
 There must be an instinct and a resolution of excellence which will 
 allow no shortcoming or malformation of thought or word. There 
 must also be so natural a sense of right as to make any such 
 deformity or defect impossible, and leave upon the work done no 
 trace of any effort to avoid or to achieve. It must be serious, 
 simple, perfect ; and it must be thus by evident and native impulse. 
 In all these points the style of Mr. Rossetti excels that of any 
 English poet of our day. Much of Mr. Rossetti's work is so intense 
 in aim, so delicate and deep in significance, so exuberant in offshoot 
 and undergrowth of sentiment and thought, that even the sweet 
 lucidity and steady current of his style may not suffice to save it 
 from the charges of darkness and difficulty. He is too great a 
 master of speech to incur the blame of hard or tortuous expression ; 
 and his thought is too sound and pure to be otherwise dark than 
 as a deep wellspring at noon may be, even where the sun is strongest 
 and the water brightest. Colour and sound are servants of his 
 thought, and his thought is servant of his will. The subject-matter 
 of his work is always great and fit; nothing trivial, nothing illicit, 
 nothing unworthy the workmanship of a master-hand, is to be swept 
 
43 2 DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI. 
 
 up from any corner of the floor. There is no misuse or waste of 
 good work on stuff too light or hard to take the impression of his 
 noble style. Among English-speaking poets of his age I know of 
 none who can reasonably be said to have given higher proof of the 
 highest qualities than Mr. Rossetti — if the qualities we rate highest 
 in poetry be imagination, passion, thought, harmony and variety 
 of singing-power." 
 
 From Theodore Watts, who is here writing as much about 
 Rossetti's fine art and his personality as about his poetry : — 
 
 " In permanence of the romantic feeling, in vitality of belief in 
 the power of the unseen, Rossetti stands alone. Even the finest 
 portions of his historical ballad The King's Tragedy are those which 
 deal with the supernatural. In all matters of taste Rossetti's in- 
 fluence has been immense ; it is doubtful whether any other Victorian 
 poet has left so deep an impression upon the poetic methods of his 
 time. . . . To eliminate asceticism from romantic art, and yet to 
 remain romantic ; to retain that mysticism which alone can give 
 life to romantic art, and yet to be as sensuous as the Titians who 
 revived sensuousness at the sacrifice of mysticism — was the quest, 
 more or less conscious, of Rossetti's genius. Throughout his life 
 he had taken an interest in only four subjects — poetry, painting, 
 mediaeval mysticism, and woman. But then how passionate and 
 how deep had been his interest in all these ! There is not one 
 love-sonnet in his book which is a merely literary production. He 
 was the slave of his own imagination — an imagination of a power 
 and dominance such as I have never seen equalled. Of its vividness 
 no artistic expression of his can give any notion. He had not the 
 smallest command over it." 
 
 Hall Caine : — 
 
 "Rossetti's sonnets are of varied metrical structure; but their 
 intellectual structure is uniform, comprising in each case a flow and 
 ebb of thought within the limits of a single conception. In this 
 latter respect they have a character almost peculiar to themselves 
 among English sonnets. Rossetti was not the first English writer 
 who deliberately separated octave and sestett ; but he was the first 
 who obeyed, throughout a series of sonnets, the canon of the 
 
ROSSETTI AS PAINTER AND POET— EXTRACTS. 433 
 
 contemporary structure requiring that a sonnet shall present the 
 twofold facet of a single thought or emotion. 27ie House of Life 
 touches many passions, and depicts life in most of its changeful 
 aspects. It would afford an adequate test of its comprehensiveness 
 to note how rarely a mind in general sympathy with the author 
 could come to its perusal without alighting upon something that 
 would be in harmony with its mood." 
 
 Harry Buxton Forman : — 
 
 " It is a great treat to come upon a volume bearing a weight of 
 earnestness in every page, and a burden of bestowed care in every 
 line ; and such a book must every reader of intelligence find Mr. 
 Rossetti's to be, even in a first skimming perusal. From title-page 
 to imprint no trivial thing is to be found ; and from first to last 
 word of each poem, be it never so small or modest, no syllable can 
 be detected standing in its present position without the deliberate 
 sanction of the authors thoughtful consideration visibly stamped 
 upon it. The whole collection is of that rare order that commands 
 immediate admiration, in the occult way wherein an admirable person 
 commands it. . . , An artist whose ideas are thus cut out as it were 
 with a red-hot blade on his very heart cannot always pick and choose 
 his subject; he must often be chosen by his subject; but, whatever 
 that be, we may feel sure of large affluent handling, and true human 
 tendencies, and just and masculine views of life." 
 
 Joseph Knight : — 
 
 "Taken as a whole, this series of sonnets [The House of Life] 
 constitutes, in its class, the greatest gift that poetry has received 
 since the days of Shakespear. Individual sonnets as fine as any in 
 The House of Life are to be found in Milton, Wordsworth, Mrs. 
 Browning, and some other poets. A series such as this — which is 
 in fact a life's utterance and a life's story — modern literature does 
 not possess. That passages are obscure, and that the sequence of 
 idea is not always to be traced, is true. The same however holds 
 good of every poem written under similar conditions, and in an 
 approximately similar form." 
 
 VOL. I. 2S 
 
434 DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI. 
 
 Franz Hueffer : — 
 
 " Rossetti has been called a Literary Poet — a poet writing for 
 poets ; and this is true in the sense that his work is never likely 
 to become popular, as Mr. Tennyson's work is, and Byron's was, 
 popular. For that purpose he lacks the immediate rapport with 
 contemporary feeling, and that broad human sympathy which Mr. 
 Tennyson alone among living English poets combines with the 
 highest degree of literary refinement. Rossetti, as a rule, takes 
 refuge among the idealized men and women of a remote age, whose 
 thoughts he has fathomed, and whose very language has to some 
 extent become his own. Hence the tone of the popular mediaeval 
 ballad struck with rare power in The -King's Tragedy. Even Rossetti's 
 warmest admirers would hardly have given him credit for the power 
 to grapple with a historical subject displayed in this remarkable 
 work — perhaps his masterpiece in narrative poetry, even as Cloud- 
 Confines is his highest effort in the field of contemplative, not to 
 say philosophic, verse. The defects of 'literary poetry,' in the 
 sense above alluded to, are most apparent in the lyrical portion of 
 the present volume, more especially in the sonnets. The poet is 
 supposed to utter his individual feelings ; and our faith in the 
 genuineness of those feelings is somewhat severely shaken if we find 
 that they are clad in a mode of expression which a poet of Dante's 
 age might have used if he had been able to read Shakespear." 
 
 William Sharp : — 
 
 "The ballad can still remain a choice form for expression in more 
 than one direction. It can be an historical or legendary poem treated 
 with the simple directness of the old method, or it can be a dramatic 
 lyric dealing with imaginative creations in place of real personalities 
 and actual facts. The ballad is the lyrically dramatic expression 
 of actions and events in the lives of others. Of the seven published 
 ballads by Rossetti, three belong to the historical or legendary 
 section, three to the section of individual imaginative creation, and 
 one stands midway between these two sections. The three that 
 more or less accurately conform to ballad-requirements are Stratton 
 Water, The King's Tragedy, and The White Ship; those that are 
 so strongly marked by individual characteristics and by general style 
 as to be better embraced by the freer term 'dramatic lyrics,' or 
 
ROSSETTI AS PAINTER AND POET— EXTRACTS. 435 
 
 lyrically dramatic poems, are Troy Town, Eden Bower, and Rose 
 Mary; and the seventh is Sister Helen." 
 
 Mrs. Esther Wood :— 
 
 " No other English poet has resolved the breadth and simplicity 
 of the Gothic, and the depth and intensity of the Italian, habit of 
 expression, into such distinctive poetic vehicles. But at the same 
 time few have blended the diverse elements of the modern English 
 tongue into the harmony and sonority with which Rossetti's music 
 thrills when he tempers the sharper Saxon with a deep undertone 
 of polysyllabic song, or stirs the languorous pulses of a sonnet with 
 some swift cadence of familiar words. . . . Jenny perhaps, being 
 cast in a more meditative form, lacks the poignancy and fervour of 
 the utterance which comes, in A Last Confession, from the lips of 
 the sinner himself, instead of from the spectator merely ; but it 
 surpasses all contemporary studies of its kind in its bold and masterly 
 handling of a difficult theme. . . . Nor is the effect of Rossetti's 
 universal preference for assonance over rhyme — a special charac- 
 teristic of romantic poetry — identical in the ballads, sonnets, and 
 monologues, just quoted." % 
 
 I am not quite sure which are the poems to which Mrs. 
 Wood here more especially refers ; but I understand that 
 The Brides Prelude, the sonnets Pandora, Fiammetta, Found, 
 Astarte Syriaca, and Mary Magdalene, Jenny, and the trans- 
 lated song in A Last Confession, are at all events some of 
 them. Feeling a little startled at the notion that my brother 
 evinced a " universal preference for assonance over rhyme," 
 I looked through the sonnets and the song, and through the 
 first three pages of The Bride's Prelude and of fenny. The 
 result is that I find 91 instances of true rhyme, and only 26 
 instances of what can, even by a stretch of phrase, be called 
 assonance. I concluded by quoting to myself the words in 
 Hamlet, "The lady doth protest too much me-thinks." If 
 she had limited herself to saying that, in his various classes 
 of composition, Rossetti showed a liking for mingling as- 
 sonance amid rhyme, no exception could be taken to that 
 statement. 
 
436 DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI. 
 
 Coventry Patmore writes : — 
 
 " In Rossetti, as in several other modern poets of great reputations 
 we are constantly being pulled up, in the professedly fiery course 
 of a tale of passion, to observe the moss on a rock or the note of 
 a chaffinch. High finish has nothing to do with this quality of 
 extreme definiteness in detail ; indeed, it is more often exercised by 
 the perfect poet in blurring outlines than in giving them acuteness. 
 It must be admitted however that Rossetti had an unusual temptation 
 to this kind of excess in his extraordinary faculty for seeing object, 
 in such a fierce light of imagination as very few poets have been 
 able to throw upon external things. He can be forgiven for spoiling 
 a tender lyric by a stanza such as this, which seems scratched with 
 an adamantine pen upon a slab of agate — 
 
 ' But the sea stands spread 
 As one wall with the flat skies, 
 Where the lean black craft, like flies, 
 
 Seem wellnigh stagnated, 
 
 Soon to drop off dead.' 
 
 In much of his work there is a rich and obscure glow of insight 
 into depths too profound and too sacred for clear speech, even if 
 they could be spoken; a sort of insight not at all uncommon in the 
 great art of past times, but exceedingly rare in the art of our own." 
 
 F. W. H. Myers:— 
 
 " He is not a prophet, but an artist ; yet an artist who, by the 
 very intensity of his artistic vision, and by some inborn bent towards 
 symbol and mysticism, stands on the side of those who see in 
 material things a spiritual significance, and utters words of universal 
 meaning from the fullness of his own heart." 
 
 William Morris : — 
 
 "It is certainly to be wondered at that a master in the supremely 
 difficult art of painting should have qualities which enable him to 
 deal with the other supremely difficult one of poetry; and to do 
 this not only with the utmost depth of feeling and thought but also 
 with the most complete and unfaltering mastery over its material ; 
 that he should find in its limitations and special conditions, not 
 stumbling-blocks or fetters, but just so many pleasures, so much 
 
ROSSETTI AS PAINTER AND POET — EXTRACTS. 437 
 
 whetting of invention and imagination. In no poems is the spon- 
 taneous and habitual interpenetration of matter and manner, which 
 is the essence of poetry, more complete than in these. Among 
 pieces where the mystical feeling is by necessity of subject most 
 simple and most on the surface, The Blessed Damozel should be 
 noticed ; a poem in which wild longing, and the shame of life, and 
 despair of separation, and the worship of love, are wrought into a 
 palpable dream, in which the heaven that exists as if for the sake 
 of the beloved is as real as the earthly things about the lover, while 
 these are scarcely less strange, or less pervaded with a sense of his 
 passion, than the things his imagination has made. ... I think 
 these lyrics, with all their other merits, the most complete of their 
 time. No difficulty is avoided in them — no subject is treated vaguely, 
 languidly, or heartlessly. As there is no commonplace or second- 
 hand thought left in them, to be atoned for by beauty of execution, 
 so no thought is allowed to overshadow that beauty of art which 
 compels a real poet to speak in verse and not in prose. Nor do 
 I know what lyrics of any time are to be called great if we are to 
 deny that title to these." 
 
 Walter Pater : — 
 
 "The reader of to-day may observe already, in The Blessed 
 Damozel written at the age of eighteen, a prefigurement of the chief 
 characteristics of that [Pra^raphaelite] school. Common to that 
 school and to him [Rossetti], and in both alike of primary signifi- 
 cance, was the quality of sincerity — a perfect sincerity, taking effect 
 in the deliberate use of the most direct and unconventional ex- 
 pression for the conveyance of a poetic sense which recognized no 
 conventional standard of what poetry was called upon to be. Here 
 was certainly one new poet more, with an accent which might count 
 as the very seal of reality on one man's proper speech — as that 
 speech itself was the wholly natural expression of certain wonderful 
 things he really felt and saw. The lovely little landscapes scattered 
 up and down his poems — glimpses of a landscape not indeed of 
 broad open-air effects, but rather that of a painter concentrated upon 
 the picturesque effect of one or two selected objects at a time — 
 attest, by their very freshness and simplicity, to a pictorial or 
 descriptive power, in dealing with the inanimate world, which is 
 certainly still one half of the charm in that other, more remote and 
 
438 DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI. 
 
 mystic, use of it. For with Rossetti this sense of (after all, lifeless) 
 Nature is translated to a higher service in which it does but in- 
 corporate itself with some phase of strong emotion. A sustained 
 impressibility towards the mysterious conditions of man's every-day 
 life, towards the very mystery itself in it, gives a singular gravity to 
 all his work. For Rossetti the great affections of persons to each 
 other — swayed and determined, in the case of his highly pictorial 
 genius, mainly by that so called ' material ' loveliness — formed the 
 great undeniable reality in things, the solid resisting substance in 
 a world where all beside might be but shadow. One monumental 
 lyrical piece, Soothsay, testifies — more clearly even than the Nineveh 
 — to the reflective force, the dry reason, always at work behind his 
 imaginative creations, which at no time dispensed with a genuine 
 intellectual structure. His characteristic, his really revealing, work 
 lay in the adding to poetry of fresh poetic material, of a new order 
 of phenomena — in the creation of a new ideal." 
 
 Madame Darmesteter (Miss Mary Robinson) : — 
 
 " A very few weeks after publication [of the Poems, 1870] he was 
 generally admitted to be one of the greatest of living English poets. 
 In passing, I would point out the chief features of this work by a 
 poet of great imaginative penetration who had the signal good 
 fortune to express his subtle and rare ideas with the vivid presentation 
 of the painter. Even the descriptions of unearthly phenomena 
 convey a sense of actual vision. The solemn pity and tenderness 
 of Jenny ', the angelic beauty of The Blessed Damozel, the tragic force 
 of Sister Helen, are qualities that only great poets possess. But 
 more solemn, more beautiful, more full of a finer force, than these 
 poems, are the unrivalled sonnets which build-up The House of Life. 
 Here, for the first time since Milton, the English language is used 
 with a sonority and power rivalling the natural harmonies of Italian 
 or Greek. A singular value is given to the motive of these sonnets 
 by the poet's belief in the eternal effect and continual existence 
 of the thoughts and deeds of man." 
 
 James Skelton : — 
 
 " Mr. Rossetti is never desultory nor garrulous. His poems 
 display the highest concentration of the poetic faculty. They are 
 terse as epigrams. Mr. Rossetti seldom uses a metaphor. There 
 
ROSSETTI AS PAINTER AND POET— EXTRACTS. 439 
 
 is little or no colour in his poems. He never indulges in elaborate 
 portraiture. But the pure idea is presented to us with surpassing 
 clearness. He realizes the emotion in the most absolute way. The 
 fire of his imagination is a spiritual flame which consumes whatever 
 is not essential." 
 
 Gabriel Sarrazin : — 
 
 "Voici done qu'elle reparait, mais plus endolorie et comme 
 rajeunie d'alanguissement tout moderne, l'antique extase de Dante. 
 De longues visions claires, d'une plastique achevee, ou de courtes 
 exaltations, d'une quintessence de reve presque nebuleuse, nous 
 en deroulent les mystiques peripeties. A une epoque ou l'idee de 
 l'amour s'est appauvrie ou materialisee, ou l'invasion des mille petits 
 besoins de l'esprit bourgeois, s'implantant sur la ruine totale des 
 deux ou trois grands instincts de l'esprit chevaleresque, a tue pour 
 jamais les passions dont vivaient les amoureux de la Renaissance ; 
 dans un age, en outre, ou l'amour platonique n'est plus qu'une 
 affectation, ou qui ' veut faire l'ange fait la bete ' ; dans cet age-la 
 Rossetti est un des seuls (avec Lamartine) a oser rearborer, en 
 parfaite sincerite de cceur, le grand Amour extatique des moines et 
 des chevaliers. Non pas qu'il n'y ait dans son ceuvre des adorations 
 teintees de sensualite : il y en a, et la plus exquise pudeur y preside. 
 Mais dans les grandes pieces, dans les pieces tout a fait significatives, 
 dans celles ou Fame travaille a se detacher des entraves terrestres 
 qui l'empechent d'atteindre au divin, e'est a dire a l'lmmateriel, 
 on sent qu'elle dchappe, vers par vers, a ses tyrans, et qu'un dernier 
 effort va liberer son vol." 
 
 Luigi Gamberale, who has translated into Italian verse 
 Rossetti's Last Confession, Jenny, and some other composi- 
 tions, expresses himself thus with regard to Mr. Swinburne's 
 criticism, already cited in this section : — 
 
 "This is simply the reasoned impression of a great poet, who 
 sees realized the ideal which he had conceived of a perfect writer. 
 And, since the ideal is very high, and the critic bears the name of 
 Swinburne, we may securely rest upon the truth and the soundness 
 of his judgment. Yet in some points he has gone beyond the mark. 
 I too fancy that I have sometimes observed the obscurity of Rossetti ; 
 
440 DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI. 
 
 and, if Swinburne explains and excuses it with his image of the 
 ' wellspring,' it might perchance, following that same image, be 
 remarked that no eye in the world can without blinking scan a deep 
 water which glisters in the rays of a meridian sun." 
 
 There are other translations of Rossetti's works to which 
 I ought to spare a word of acknowledgment : into Italian, 
 The Blessed Damozel, by Signor Ettore Ciccotti ; into French, 
 The House of Life, by Madame Clemence Couve ; into Danish, 
 some sonnets by Herr Adolf Hansen. And assuredly these 
 are not all. I should have liked moreover to quote some- 
 thing, about either pictures or poems, from Messrs. Comyns 
 Carr, Symonds, Ashcroft Noble, Hardinge, Colvin, and 
 Frederick Cooper, Professor Dowden, and Dr. Westland 
 Marston ; but considerations of space have admonished me 
 to the contrary. 
 
 Here I close. I have tried to pay my fraternal debt to 
 the memory of Dante Gabriel Rossetti ; a memory and a 
 name honoured throughout and beyond the precincts of the 
 two noble lands of his origin.