I Letters
of
Dante Gabriel Rossetti
1854-1870
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Letters
of
Dante Gabriel Rossetti
to William Allingham
1854-1870
Letters
of
Dante Gabriel Rossetti
to William AUinaham
1 854- 1 870
GEORGE BIRKBECK HILL. D.C.L., LL.D.
HONORARY FELLOW OK PEMBROKE COLLEGE, OXFORD
EDITOR OF BOSWELL'S " LIFE OF JOHNSON," ETC.
CHELSEA
%on^on
T. FISHER UNWIN
PATERNOSTER S(^UARE
1S97
[AH rights reserved.]
PREFACE
"Thk best of all Rossetti's letters, so far as hitherto
published, are those to William Allingham, printed
by Dr. Birkbeck Hill in the Atlantic Monthly for
1S96." Such is the judgment passed by Dr. Garnett
in his article on Dante Gabriel Rossetti in the Dic-
tionary of National Biooraphy. Though the editor
of the American magazine was liberal in the space
which he allowed me. nevertheless in my four papers
it was only a selection, though a large selection, that
I was able to give. In reading through the original
letters a second time this summer I was surprised
to find how much of necessity had been omitted that
in point of interest was scarcely inferior to what had
been inserted. All these passages I am including
in the present volume, with the exception of one or
two which might, it was thought, give pain either
to those criticised by Rossetti or to their surviving
friends. Were I, however, to print all that he
wrote litde fault could be found with it on the score
of severity. In these letters, at all events, the
writer was not often harsh in his judgment of his
fellow-men.
The additions, both in the text and in the notes,
V
255265
vi PREFACE
are so considerable that it will be found, I believe,
that the four articles have been increased to nearly
thrice their original size.
In writing- my notes I have made great use of
the following works : — The Letters and Meuiou'
of Dante Gabriel Rossetti, by William Michael
Rossetti ; Dante Gabriel Rossetti as Designer and
Writer^ by the same author ; The Autobiography
of Williani Bell Scott ; The Life of Ford Madox
Broivn, by Ford H. Hiieffer; The Life of Anne
Gilchrist, by H. H. Gilchrist, and three articles
in the Conteniporary Review for 1886 by Holman
Hunt.
In the Introduction will be found an acknowledg-
ment of my obligations to Mrs. Allingham, Mr. W.
M. Rossetti, and Mr. Arthur Hughes. Without
their assistance my part of the work would have
been imperfect indeed.
For the illustrations and fac-similes I have to
thank Mrs. Allingham, Mr. G. F. Watts, R.A., Mr.
W. M. Rossetti, Mr. Arthur Hughes. Mr. J. G.
Kershaw, and Mr. C. Fairfax Murray.
G. B. H.
Ociobci 30. 1897.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
DATE. LETTER
I'AGE
Introduction ... ... ••• xvii-xxviii
1854. I. Spring. Reproaches himself for neglect i
2. Spring. Dinner at Mr. Marshall's. Lost MS. ... 2
3. April. Day and Xight Songs. Miss Siddal at
Hastings ... ... ••■ 3
4. April 26. Death of his father. Teodorico Rossetti 7
5. May. 2. Miss Siddal's health. Debt to AUingham 11
6. May. Miss Siddal's health 12
7. May. Hastings. Miss Barbara Smith. Wood-
blocks. Ruskin ... ... ... 13
8. May. Hastings. Anxiety about Miss Siddal.
Calder Campbell ... ... ... 17
9. June 26. Hastings. MacCracken. Sale of Pr«-
raphaelite pictures. Thomas Woolner.
James Hannay. Dense fogs. Belle
Sauvage ... ... ... . • ■ 19
10. July 24. C. B. Cayley. Early Italian Poets.
Original poems. MacCracken Sonnet.
Lost on Both Sides. Woolner. Hol-
manHunt. Hannay. Arthur Hughes.
Miss Siddal's health. The Folio ... 29
11. August. Early Italian Poets. AUingham's ballads.
The Hill Sninniit. The Birth-Bond.
The Folio. Sutton's poetry. Picture
buyers 43
12. \Jnda.tcd. Early Italian Poets ... ... ... 53
TABLE OF CONTEXTS
DATE. LETTER.
1854. 13. Sept. 19. Miiiils of Elfcii Mere. Arthur Hughes's
Fail it's. Hiiiiilct and Ophelia. Han-
nay's novels. Holrnan Hunt. TJie
Times on Massey. Finiiiliaii. Rus-
kin's gift. Witllicrin^ Heights. Early
lialian Poets. Tlie Genu ... ... 54
14. Oct. 15. Woohier. ^Mistake over a wood-cut.
Found. Working Men's College.
Allingham's Fairies and Dream.
Hughes's Orlando. The Hill Snnnnit.
Stratton ]Va!er ... ... ... 70
15. Nov. Madox Brown's gue.st. A reputation to
take care of. Ruskin and the
^^■orking Men"s College. Painting
a calf. Allingham"s criticism. The
Angel in the House. Poems by a
Painter. Carlyle ... ... ... 81
1855. 16. Jan. 23. Wood-cut finished. Millais. Ulnstrated
Tennyson. Found. Working Men's
College. Miss Siddal's water-colours.
The Angel in the House. ^Voolner.
Millais' Resene. Thomas Seddon.
William North. Early Italian Poets.
Hannay"s pill for Tupper. A Dark
Day 95
17. Mar. 18. Dalziel and the wood-cut. Ruskin and
Miss Siddal. Ulnstrated Tennyson 108
18. Mar. 22. Dalziel and the wood-cut. Ruskin and
:sliss Siddal. Dr. Polydori. W. B.
Scott's .l/<?/;\v/////f ... ... ... 113
19. Mar. 2T,. Dalziel and the wood-cut ... ... 120
20. May II. Early Italian Poets. AUingham's criti-
cisms. Dalziel. Millais' "awful
row "■ with the hanging committee.
Leighton's Ciniabne. Matthew Ar-
nold's Haii'orth Chnrehvard. jSIac-
TABL1<: OF COXTKXTS
IX
22. July 1
2 3- July
24. July
25. July 2(
DATE. LEITER. I'M.I-;
Cracken sells his pictures. James
Collinson, \\'oolner and Wentworth 121
1855. 21. June 15. At Clevedon. I)a\ and Xiglil Soii<^s.
The balcony of Chatham Place. E.
S. Dallas. Ruskin's friendship. The
Marchioness of Waterford. Benjamin
A\'ood\vard. Trinity College, Dublin 136
Miss Bessie Parkes. The narrow gaugers 147
Allingham in Dublin .. ... ... 148
Miss Siddal to winter abroad. Ruskin's
kindness ... ... ... ... 149
Li\erpool Exhibition. John Miller.
Thomas Seddon ... ... ... 150
26. August. Liverpool Exhibition ... ... ... 152
27. August. Millais" marriage. The .^///c'//<r/////'.s review
o( Tilt Miisi\- Master ... ... 153
28. Nov. 25. "Small account" owing by Routledge.
Trip to Paris. Men ami Women.
Miss Siddal at Nice. Blake and
Hayley. Articles on Browning. "\\'ith
Browning in Paris. Browning's father
and uncle. J. Milsand. Sketch of
Tennyson. Portrait of Browning.
\Vork for Ruskin. French Exhibition 155
1856. 29. Mar. 7. Aubrey de Vere. Poels of llie XiueteeniJi
Cenliiiy. Oxfoi\l and L'amhridi^e
Magazine. Burne-Jones. Dante's
Dream. Llandajf Cathedra! Altar-
pi eee ... ... ... ... ... 1 72
30. April. Italian frescoes. Dante s Dream. Ruskin
on Browning and Longfellow.
Academy pictures ... ... ... 179
31. May. Hughes's Ei-e of St. Agnes. A\'indus"s
Bnrd Helen 186
32. Dec. iS. Anrora LeigJi. The Brownings. AN'oolner.
Holman LIunt's Finding of the
ILLUSTRATIONS
Portrait of Dante Gabriel Rossetti. by George
Frederick Watts, R.A., from the original,
presented by the artist to the National
Portrait Gallery in 1895. IMr. W. M.
Rossetti informs me "that it is a good and
a pleasing presentment of Gabriel, but it
is certainly a little too mild, dreamy, and
subdued in expression." It is not the
portrait mentioned in the Autobiography of
W. B. Scott and in the Letters and Memoir
of D. G. Rossetti, for which Rossetti gave
Mr. Watts but two sittings ... Frontispiece
"Ballvshannon, County Doneoal." from a water-
colour drawing by Mrs. Allingham, in the
possession of the artist. The quarter of the
town which she has chosen for her view is
known as the Purt ; the river flowing by it
is the Erne ... ... ... To face page xx
*' William Allingham," from a pencil sketch by
Arthur Hughes, taken while the poet was
xvi ILLUSTRATIONS
A design for wall-paper, from an autograph
letter of D. G. Rossetti's, in the possession
of M rs. Allingham To face page 2 5 1
Profile of Christina G. Rossetti, from a tracing
of a drawing by D. G. Rossetti. Mr. Arthur
Hughes, in whose possession the tracing is,
believes that the drawing is made as a study
for the head of the Virgin in Rossetti's first
Praeraphaelite picture, The GirlJiood of Mary
Virgin, painted in 1848-49 ... To face page 259
INTRODUCTION
Life seems to me strangely varied this sunny
January day, as, sitting- at my desk in the parlour
of a pleasant villa on the outskirts of the little town
of Alassio, I look beneath palm-trees upon the blue
waters of the Mediterranean, and listen to the
measured beat of the waves on the sandy shore.
Lying open before me are copies of the letters
which Dante Gabriel Rossetti wrote to his friend
William Allingham. In the table drawer are copies
of another set of letters, which, more than a century
and a half ao-o, Swift wrote to an Irish countrv
gentleman. This double correspondence, written
by men wide as the poles asunder, I have brought
from England to edit in Italy for readers on both
sides of the Atlantic. Have I not good reason
for finding a strange variety in life ?
Delightful as is this spot where winter seems to
have gone a-maying, yet it better suits a poet or a
painter than an editor, who needs long shelves of
books far more than trees laden with oranges and
xviii INTRODUCTION
bushes weicrhed down with roses. From Enoland
and Hbraries I have been driven far away by weak-
ness of health. In editino- Rossetti's letters — that
part of my twofold task to which I have turned
first — I have had the help of friends at home.
Mr. W. M. Rossetti has read a great part of the
correspondence, and has furnished me with eluci-
datory notes. My old friend Mr. Arthur Hughes,
of Eastside House, Kew Green, who, thouo-h
not one of the seven Przeraphaelite Brothers,
lived in great intimacy with many of them, has let
me draw on his reminiscences. More than forty
years ago he was painting in Rossetti's studio ; his
hand, happily, has lost none of its exquisite skill,
Mrs. Allingham, whose pictures of English cottages
are not surpassed in refinement and in beauty by
the best of her husband's verses, enables me to o-ive
a brief sketch of that graceful poet's uneventful life.
He had made some beo-innino- in writinaf his auto-
biography. From what he had written she sends
me a few extracts. Some day, I am told, a memoir
of him will be published. It will be delightful
indeed if it contains the full records he kept of his
long talks with Tennyson and Carlyle. Of Carlyle
he saw much more than most of that o'reat man's
friends, for during some years scarcely a week went
by in which they did not walk together. Strange
to say, this intimacy has been passed over in total
INTRODUCTION xix
silence by Mr. Froude. In the four volumes of his
hero's Life there are sins of omission as well as of
admission.
Aliingham used to recount how C^arlyle would
sometimes be^^in by flatly contradicting- him. and
end by tacitly adopting- what he had said. One
day the old man was describini^- his interview with
the Queen at the Dean of W estminster's. " She
came slidino" into the room," he said — " as if on
wheels," exclaimed Ailing-ham. interruptino- him.
" Not at all. Allinoham," he o-ruffly replied. A few
days later his friend overheard him tellino- the story
to Mr. Lecky. "The Queen," he said, "came
sliding- into the room as if on wheels," and in that
form he ever afterwards told it. He used to add
that he saw that he was expected to stand during
the interview ; but that he took hold of a chair, and
saying- that Her Majesty would allow an old man to
sit down, down he sat.
William Allingham was born at Ballyshannon.
County Donegal, in March, 1S24, of a good stock,
for he was sprung from one of Cromwell's settlers.
Of his birthplace he gives the following description :
" The little old town where I was born has a \'oice
of its own, low, solemn, persistent, humming through
the air day and night, summer and winter. W'hen-
ever I think of that town I seem to hear the voice.
The river which makes it rolls over rockv ledges
XX INTRODUCTION
into the tide. Before spreads a great ocean in sun-
shine or storm ; behind stretches a many-islanded
lake. On the south runs a wavy line of blue moun-
tains ; and on the north, over green, rocky hills, rise
peaks of a more distant range. The trees hide in
glens or cluster near the river ; grey rocks and
boulder lie scattered about the windy pastures.
The sky arches wide over all, giving room to multi-
tudes of stars by night and long processions of
clouds blown from the sea, but also, in the childish
memory where these pictures live, to deeps of
celestial blue in the endless days of summer. An
odd, out-of-the-way little town ours, on the extreme
western verge of Europe ; our next neighbours,
sunset way, being citizens of the great new republic,
which indeed, to our imaoination, seemed little, if
at all, farther off than England in the opposite
direction."
Of the cottage in which he spent most of his
childhood and youth he writes : " Opposite the hall
door a good-sized walnut-tree leaned its wrinkled
stem towards the house, and brushed some of the
second-story panes with its broad, fragrant leaves.
To sit at that little upper window when it was open
to a summer twilight, and the great tree rustled
gently, and sent one leafy spray so far that it even
touched my face, was an enchantment beyond all
telling. Killarney, Switzerland, Venice, could not,
THE PURT, BALLYSHANXOX.
(From a ivater-coloir ilctch b;' Mrs. AUingham.)
To face page xx.
INTRODUCTION xxi
in later life, come near it. On three sides the
cottage looked on Mowers and branches, which I
count as one of the fortunate chances of my child-
hood ; the sense of natural beauty thus receiving its
due share of nourishment, and of a kind suitable to
those early years."
Allineham's schooling was far too brief to satisfy
his thirst for knowledge. He was scarcely fourteen,
if indeed quite so old, when he was placed as a
clerk in the town bank, of which his father was
manao-er. The books which he had to keep for the
next seven years were not those on which his heart
was set. He was a great reader. Year after year
he kept adding to the scanty stock of learning
which he had brought from school, till in the end
he had mastered Greek, Latin, French, and Ger-
man. His father, proud though he was of his son's
intelligence, had litde sympathy with his constant
craving for knowledge. In the bank manager's
eyes it was not the scholar, but the thorough busi-
ness man who ranked highest. From the counting-
house the young poet at last succeeded in escaping.
" Heart-sick of more than seven years of bank-
clerking. I found a door suddenly opened, not into
an ideal region or anything like one. but at least into
a roadway of life somewhat less narrow and tedious
than that in which I was plodding." A place had
been found for him in the customs, as it was found
xxii INTRODUCTION
for another and a greater dreamer on the other side
of the Atlantic.
"In the spring of 1846 I gladly took leave for
ever of discount ledgers and current accounts, and
went to Belfast for two months' instruction in the
duties of Principal Coast Officer of Customs, a
tolerably well-sounding tide, but which carried with
it a salary of but /,'8o a year. I trudged daily
about the docks and timber-yards, learning to
measure logs, piles of planks, and, more trouble-
some, ships for tonnage ; indoors, part of the time
practised customs book-keeping, and talked to the
clerks about literature and poetry in a way that
excited some astonishment, but on the whole, as I
found at parting, a certain degree of curiosity and
respect. I preached Tennyson to them. My spare
time was mosdy spent in reading and haunting-
booksellers' shops, where, I venture to say, I laid
out a good deal more than most people, in propor-
tion to my income, and managed to get glimpses of
many books which 1 could not afford or did not care
to buy. I enjoyed my new position, on the whole,
without analysis, as a great improvement on the
bank ; and for the rest, my inner mind was brimful
of love and poetry, and usually all external things
appeared trivial save in their relation to it. Yet I
am reminded by old memoranda that there were
sometimes overcloudino- anxieties : sometimes, but
IXTRODUCTIOX xxiii
not very frequently, from lack of money ; more
often from longing for culture, conversation, oppor-
tunity ; oftenest from fear of a sudden development
of some form of lung disease, the seeds of which I
supposed to be sown in my b(xlil\- C(jnstitution."
This weakness he outgrew.
Having gone through his apprenticeship, he
returned to Donegal, where he was stationed for
some years. Close to his office he had a back
room, where he kept all his books and where
he read for hours together. Here, no doubt,
he covered many a sheet of paper with verse.
From Mr. Arthur Hughes I have the following
account of the young poet : —
" D. G. R.. and I think \V. A. himself, told me,
in the early days of our acquaintance, how. in re-
mote Ballyshannon. where he was a clerk in the
customs, in evening walks he would hear the Irish
girls at their cottage doors singing old ballads,
which he would pick up. If they were broken or
incomplete, he would add to them or finish them ;
if they were improper, he would refine them. He
could not get them sung till he got the Dublin
' Catnach " of that day to print them, on long-
strips of blue paper, like old songs ; and if about
the sea, with the old rough woodcut of a ship on
the top. He either gave them away or they were
sold in the neighbourhood. Then, in his evening
xxiv INTRODUCTION
walks, he had at last the pleasure of hearing some
of his own ballads suno; at the cottao-e doors bv the
crooning lasses, who were quite unaware that it was
the author who was passing by."
He liked, his widow tells me. to see all sorts of
people and all sides of life. He knew every
cottage for twenty miles round Ballyshannon.
When she visited the place with their children,
after his death, "very many," she writes, "were
the friendlv o-reetinP"s we had from folk who
remembered him kindlv." He soua"ht for svm-
pathy outside the narrow limits of this secluded
spot. "I had," he says, "for literary correspon-
dents. Leicfh Hunt. Georo-e Gilfillan, and Samuel
Ferguson, and for love correspondent F. [one of his
cousins], whose handwriting always sent a thrill
througfh me at the first orlance and the fiftieth
perusal." Gilfillan had not the good fortune to
win the esteem of Coventry Patmore, who wrote
to Allino-ham in i8so : — *' I hear that vou have had
the misfortune to be publicly praised by that cox-
comb of coxcombs, Gilfillan." To Samuel Fer-
guson AUingham dedicated his Laurence B/ooni-
Jie/d w'lxh "admiration, gratitude, and love."
In lune, 1S47, he paid his first visit to London, and
called on Leigh Hunt. " I was shown into his study,
and had some minutes to look round at the book-
cases, busts, old tramed eno-ravinofs, and to o-lance
INTRODUCTION xxv
at some of the books on the table, dili_Li'entlv marked
and noted in the well-known neatest of handwritings.
Outside the window climbed a hop on its trellis.
The door opened, and in came the or n ins loci, a
tallish yoLino- old man. in dark dressin^'-s^'own and
wide, turndown shirt collar, his copious iron-grey
hair falling almost to the shoulders. The friendly
brown eyes, a simple yet fine-toned voice, easy
hand-pressure, gave me greeting as to one already
well known to him. Our talk fell first on reason
and instinct. He maintained (for argument's sake,
I thought) that beasts may be equal or superior to
men. He has a light earnestness of manner, a
toleration for almost every possible different view
from his own. I ask him about certain highly
interesting men. ' Dickens, a pleasant fellow, very
busy now. lives in an old house in Devonshire
Terrace. Marylebone. Carl vie. I know him well.
Browning lives at Peckham. because no one else
does ! He's a pleasant fellow, has few readers,
and will be glad to find that you admire him (I!).'
" In 1850 I ventured to send my first volume of
verse to Tennyson. I d(^n't think he wrote to me,
but 1 heard incidentally that he thought well of it ;
and during a subsequent visit to London (in 1852,
perhaps) Coventry Patmore. to my boundless
joy. proposed to take me to call on the great poet,
then not lonof married, and livinp- at Twickenham.
xxvi INTRODUCTION
We were admitted, shown upstairs, and soon a tall
and swarthy man came in. with loose dark hair and
beard, very near-sighted ; shook hands cordially,
yet with a profound quietude of manner ; imme-
diately afterwards asked us to stay to dine. I
stayed. He took up my volume of poems, which
bore tokens of much usage, saying, ' You can see it
has been read a good deal ! ' Then, turning the
pages, he asked. ' Do you dislike to hear your own
things read ? ' and, receiving a respectfully en-
couraging reply, read two of the ^^o/ian Harps.
The rich, slow, solemn chant of his voice glorified
the little poems."
These two poems, which are included in Ailing-
ham's Day and Alight Songs, are mentioned by
Rossetti in one of his letters as among his favourites.
He too glorified his friend's verse by his recitation.
"I remember," writes Mr. Hughes, "before I knew
Allingham. Rossetti speaking of him to me and of
his poems, and reciting, as he only could. The
Ruined Chape/, beginning : —
" ' By the shore a plot of ground
Clips a ruined chapel round,
Buttressed with a grassy mound,
Where day and night and day go by,
And bring no touch of human sound.'
He was the most splendid reciter of poetry, deep,
INTRODUCTION xxvii
full, mellow, rich, so full of the merits of the j)oem
and its music." Nevertheless, his recitation, fine
though it was, must have been marred by (Mie threat
defect ; the man who made " calm " rhyme with
"arm " had no ear for one of the most beautiful
sounds in the Eng'lish lanouage. Tennyson, to
whom in early years he sent some of his poems in
manuscript, found fault with these " cockney
rhymes," though he himself had been guilty of
them, and guilty of them in print. In the first
version of The Lady of Shalott "river" rhymes
with "lira."
As years went by, Allingham saw much more of
the world and of those men of letters whose society
he loved. In the course of his official duties he was
moved first to one station and then to another in
England. Twice he had an appointment in London.
In 1 870 he retired from the customs, being appointed
sub-editor of Frasci' s Magazine under Froude. He
succeeded him as chief editor in 1874. In the
same year he married. He died in 1889.
"He had," as Mr. W. M. Rossetti tells me, "a
o'ood critical iudo-ment ; he was a man who could
pounce on defects in a poem." Madox Brown
described him as " keen and cutting." It will be
seen in the course of these letters that Rossetti not
only sought his criticism of his poetry, but often
acknowledged its justice. Coventry Patmore was
xxviii INTRODUCTION
scarcely less eager to have his opinion, but was not
so willing to submit to it. " You horrify me with
your talk about pruning," he once wrote to his
friend, who had found The Angel in the House
somewhat too long. " You have marked for omis-
sion several of my pet passages." Early in their
correspondence he described Allingham as "a
o-rave and truthful character, combined with a stronir
and quick intelligence."
It is much to be regretted that of Allingham's
letters to Rossetti not a single one has been pre-
served. The great painter was in the habit from
time to time of clearing out his drawers by the
simple method of destroying all their accumulations.
The loss, however, is the less serious owing to
Rossetti's admirable clearness as a letter writer.
However thick may be the mist which in places
covers his poetry, when he writes in prose his
thoughts and the words in which they are set forth
are as clear as day. It is time, however, to bring
this introduction to an end, and allow him to speak
for himself.
I.
Chatham Place,
[Blackfriars Bridge],
Midui^rht iH ^Friday Iprobably Spring
^ - [Saturday of 1854].
Dear Allix(;ham,
Yea, unto 70 times 7 I — and what a
beast I was not to write all that time. And
you to call after all on such a beast ! And I to
be absolutely prevented from being here just now
in the daytime — as I am painting elsewhere.
Pray do come instead in the evening after 8, —
or else write me word where we can meet. In
a day or two I trust to be free. I will wait here
for you to-morrow evening. But if impracticable
to come, never mind keeping me in.
Yours affectionately,
D. G. R.
Note ox I.
Nathaniel Hawthorne recorded at Liverpool on
February 23, 1854: — "There came to see me the
other day a young gendeman with a moustache
2 ■•' UAXTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI
and a blue cloak, who announced himself as
William Allingham. His face was intelligent,
dark, pleasing, and not at all John-Bullish. He
said that he had been employed in the Customs
in Ireland, and was now going to London to live
bv literature. His manners are o-ood, and he
appears to possess independence of mind." Alling-
ham did not this time succeed in escaping from
the counting-house into literature. Rossetti. writing
from Hastings on May 25th of this same year,
says : — " I heard from Millais yesterday, who
tells me Allingham is going back to Ireland and
the Customs."
H.
Safuj'day ^probably spring of 1854].
Dear Allingham,
We forcrot. I believe, to settle last nieht
whether we go to dinner at Mr. Marshall's, 85,
Eaton Square, at 7 to-morrow. I am going. If
you do not, will you write to him, or indeed in any
case. Perhaps we had better go separately to
avoid trouble in meeting.
Your D. G.
In turning your things over, will you keep an
eye to that lost MS. of mine.
Let's call together on the Martins soon.
TO WILLIAM ALLIXGIIAM 3
XoTK ON II.
"Mr. Marshall was a millionaire from Leeds,
who had a laro-e estate in Cumberland." Rossetti
wrote of him on May 15, 1856 : — " He is disposed
to be very useful to me, I think, in purchasing my
works, and also in very generously paying for them,
as he always declares the prices I ask to be trities."
III.
Monday, \ past 6 clock.
[April, 1854.]
Dear ALLiNciiiAM,
I suppose you are gone to bask in the
Southon [5/r] ray. I should follow, but feel very
sick, and moreover have lunched late to-day with
Ruskin. We read half the Day and iVig-ht Sojigs
toeether, and I crave him the book. He was most
delighted, and said some of it was heavenly.
I took Miss S. to Hastings, and Bessie P.
behaved like a brick. I have told Ruskin of my
pupil, and he yearneth. Perhaps I may come down
on Anna Mary to-night, as I believe she leaves
on Wednesday with Barbara S. I am going now
to my family, and if you feel inclined to come down
to 45, Upper A. St., we will go to the Hermitage
together. Otherwise I am not sure of going.
Your G. D. R.
4 DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI
Notes on III.
On April 14th of this year, a few days before the
date of this letter. Rossetti wrote to INIadox Brown :
" Mac Cracken sent my drawing [^Dante drawing
an Angel in Memory of Beatrice^ to Ruskin, \\-ho
the other day wrote me an incredible letter about
it, remaining mine respectfully (!!), and wanting to
call. I of course stroked him down in my answer,
and yesterday he called. His manner was more
acrreeable than I had always expected. ... He
seems in a mood to make my fortune."
A few months later Ruskin wrote to Rossetti :
" 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 ^^■on't ha\'e
them after they have been more than nine times
rubbed entirely out — remember that."
Miss S. was Miss Siddal, with whom Rossetti
had fallen in love so early as 1850. though it was
not till i860 that he married her. His brother has
told us how her striking face and "coppery-golden
hair" were discovered, as it were, by Deverell in a
bonnet-shop. She sat to him, to Holman Hunt,
and to Millais, but most of all to Rossetti. The
following account was given me one day as I sat
in the studio of Mr. Arthur Hughes, surrounded
by some beautiful sketches he had lately taken on
the coast of Cornwall : —
" Deverell accompanied his mother one day to a
milliner's. Through an open door he saw a girl
TO WILLIAM ALLlNCiHAM 5
workiiiL; wiiH h(-'r needle ; he o'ot his mother to
ask her to sit to him. She was the future Mrs.
Rossetti. Millais painted her for his Ophelia—
wonderfully like her. She was tall and slender,
with red coppery hair and brig-ht consumptive
complexion, though in these early years she had
no striking- signs of ill health. She was exceed-
ingly quiet, speaking very little. She had read
Tennvson, having first come to know something
about him by finding one or two of his poems on
a piece of paper which she brought home to her
mother wrapped round a pat of butter. Rossetti
taught her to draw. She used to be drawing while
sitting to him. Her drawings were beautiful, but
without force. They were feminine likenesses of
his own."
Rossetti's pet names for her were Guggum,
Guo-o-ums. or Guor. A child one dav overheard
him. as he stood before his easel, utter to himself
over and over again the words. " Guggum, Guggum."
"All the Ruskins were most delighted with Guggum."
he wnjte. " lohn Ruskin said she was a noble,
crlorious creature, and his father said bv her look
and manner she mio-ht have been a countess."
Ruskin used to call her Ida.
Anna Mary was Miss Howitt (atterwards Mrs.
Howitt-W'atts). The Hermitage ( Highgate Rise),
her father's house, was swept away long ago.
Barbara S. was Barbara Leigh Smith (afterwards
Madame Bodichon). by whose munificence was laid
the foundation of Girton College. Cambridge, the
6 DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI
first institution in which a university education was
criven to women. Rossetti wrote to his sister on
November 8, 1853 : — "Ah, if you were only Hke
Miss Barbara Smith ! a young lady I meet at the
Howitts', blessed with large rations of tin, fat,
enthusiasm, and golden hair, who thinks nothing- of
climbing up a mountain in breeches, or wading
through a stream in none, in the sacred name of
pigment." " She was a most admirable woman,"
adds ?ylr. \V. M. Rossetti, " full of noble zeal in
every good cause, and endowed with a fine pictorial
capacity."
Bessie P. was ^liss Bessie Rayner Parkes.
daughter of " Joe " Parkes, whom Carlyle hits off
in his Reminiscences (vol. i. p. 254). afterwards
Madame Belloc. In A Passing World ^\\^ writes :
— ,' Barbara Smith suggested the conception of
Romola to George Eliot, who has thus sketched
an immortal [.^] portrait of her face and bearing in
early youth."
Speaking of Rossetti at the time of his visit to
Hastings, she says : — " There was about him in his
youth a singular good breeding, enforced and
cherished by all the women of his family. ... I
did not think his wife in the least like 'a countess,' "
she adds ; " but she had an unworldly simplicity and
purity of aspect which Rossetti has recorded in his
pencil drawings of her face. Millais has also given
this look in his Ophelia, for which she was the
model. The expression of Beatrice \Beata Beafnx,
now in the National Gallery] was not hers. . . . She
TO WILLI a:\i ALLIXGHAM 7
had the look of one who read her Bible and said her
prayers every nis^ht, which she probably did."
In 45, I'ppcr Albany Street (now 166, Albany
Street), Rossetti's father died. Here the painter,
on the death of his wife, soueht refusze for a time.
IV.
26th April, 1854.
My dear Allixgham.
We lost my father to-day at ^-past 5. He
had not, I think, felt much pain this day or two, but
it has been a wearisome, protracted state of dull
suffering", from which we cannot but feel in some
sort happy at seeing him released.
I shall call on you soon, and meanwhile and ever
am yours sincerely,
D. G. ROSSETTI.
Will you tell Mrs. Howitt, should you see her?
P.S. I have forgotten two or three times to re-
mind )'ou of your promise to write a word of
introduction to Routledge for my cousin. ]\Ir.
Teodorico Rossetti.
Would you kindly do so, and send it me ? It
is merely to say that he has a MS., which he
wants Routledge to look at, and advise him about,
and of course buy it it is possible.
8 DAXTE GABRIEL ROSSETTl
Notes on IV.
Dante Rossetti, a year before his father's death,
sketched the old man as he sat at his desk deep
in study. This striking Hkeness is reproduced in
the Letters and Memoir. The son of an ItaHan
blacksmith, early in life Gabriel Rossetti showed
that he had that double gift by which his own son
was to become famous, The painter's art, how
ever, he neglected for poetry. His love of freedom,
under the despotic Bourbons, brought his life into
danger. After lying hid in Naples for three
months of the spring of 182 1, he escaped to Malta
on an English man-of-war. There he was be-
friended by that witty versifier, Hookham Frere.
" One of my vivid reminiscences," writes his son
William, " is of the day when the death of Frere
was announced to him, in 1846. 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 ! ' (Noble soul, blessed be thou
wherever thou art!)" He settled in London,
where he supported himself by teaching Italian.
With all the fervour of a poet and the enthusiasm
of an exiled patriot, he was, like Mazzini, a man
of the strictest conduct. By hard work and thrift,
aided by an excellent wife, he always kept his
family in decent comfort, and never owed a penny
to any man. "He put his heart into whatever
he did." His learning- was o-reat, though his
application of it was often fanciful. In the Htera-
TO WILLIAM ALLIXGHAM 9
ture of the Middle Ay-es and the Renaissance he
found tar deeper meanings than had ever been
dreamed of by the authors. As his Httle son
looked over the woodcuts of some old \-olume,
he would be awed by his father's declaration that
it was a libro sonimanioitc uiistico — a book in the
highest degree mystical. Freethinker though he
was. nevertheless " for the moral and spiritual
aspects ot the Christian religion he had the deepest
respect." In his early years he had been a famous
improvisatore. Throughout life he was great in
declamation and recitation. If on one side of his
character he affected his son by sympathy, on
another side he no less affected him by a spirit of
antagonism. Of politics he and his brothers in
exile talked far too much for the young painter.
Of gli Aiistriaci (the Austrians) and Luigi Filippo
(Louis Philippe) Dante Rossetti heard so much in
his youth that he seems to have registered a vow
" that he, at least, would leave Luigi Filippo and
the other potentates of Europe and their ministers
to take care of themselves." At all events, for
the whole of his life, as regards current politics,
he was a second Gallio — he cared for none of those
things."
The old man bore his banishment the more
easilv "as he liked most things Eno'lish — 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 also took verv kindiv to
lo DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI
the English coal hres. He would jocularly speak
of ' buying- his climate at the coal merchant's.' "
Paralysis struck him in his closing years. Never-
theless, "he continued dilio-ent in readinor 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 foreio-n to his Italian nature.
He died firm-minded and placid, and glad to be
released, in the presence of all his family."
" Teodorico (or properly, Teodoro) Pietrocola,"
writes Mr. W. M. Rossetti, " who adopted the
compound surname of Pietrocola- Rossetti, came to
London in 1851, hoping to find an opening of
some kind ; but found nothing except semi-starva-
tion, which he bore with a cheerful constancy
touching to witness. In 1856 he returned to Italy,
and later on devoted himself to preaching evan-
gelical Christianity, somewhat of the Vaudois type,
in Florence and elsewhere." One of his disciples
was Miss Francesca Alexander, who in her turn
had a great influence on Mr. Ruskin. "It is
hardly too much to say (writes Mr. \V. G. Colling-
wood in his Life of Ruskin) that T. P. Rossetti
did for evano-elical relioion in Italv 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 Protes-
tantism by the Waldensian at Turin, and had
wandered through many realms of doubt, and
TO WILLIAM ALLIXcniAM ii
voyag'ed through strang-e seas of th(jught alone,
found harbour at last with the disciple of a modern
evangelist, the frequenter of the poor little meeting-
house of outcast Italian Protestants."
V.
Tuesday \_May 2, 1854 J.
My dear ALLIXCHiAM,
I have heard from Miss Smith from near
Hastings to-day about Miss Siddal. who. she seems
to think, is worse, and she encloses a letter from
Miss Parkes also tending to make me very uneasy.
However, I have one of Lizzy's own (29th April,
i\Iiss Smith's being ist ?^Iay), which speaks of no
change for the worse, so that I hope it may be a
mistake. I shall q-q down to Hastings to-morrow
after my father's funeral if possible, and should go
to-day but for that. If, however. I should be quite
unable to go to-morrow, I shall go Thursday.
There seems to be some talk of getting her
into a Sussex hospital till she can enter the
B romp ton.
I have called because I wish you would get those
wood-blocks (at any rate 2 or 3) sent by Routledge
at oiicc, if possible, to 45, Upper Albany Street.
If thev come in time I will take them to Hastings,
12 DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI
otherwise they can be sent after me. I have made
a sketch for one, and must set about them and
other slight things to raise tin. You may depend
on my stopping the 30s. you lent me out of the
first money for you. I am sorry to have broken
my promise last week, but will redeem it very soon.
I may perhaps call here again after going some-
where else now. But write lest I should not be
able.
Your D. G. R.
Note ox V.
The wood-blocks were for illustrations of Allino--
ham's forthcoming Day and N^ight Songs.
VI.
Saturday [J/ay, 1854].
My dear Allin(;ham,
Feeling very anxious about poor Miss
Siddal I have iust written to Wilkinson, beo-o-ingr
him either to write to me on the subject or appoint
an interview at his house, Tuesday or any day
after Wednesday. I write this in case I should
not see you to-day, as I hope I shall be in till
6 or so, and almost sure to dine at the [/e//er
imperfect^
TO WILLIAM ALLINGHAM 13
In case W. should appoint Thursday and so
prevent our sitting, I ani sure you will excuse
and fix another.
Your 1). G. R.
NOTK ON VL
For an account of Dr. Wilkinson see note on
Letter XLVII.
VII.
5, Hk;h Street, Hastings,
[Afaj, 1854.]
Mv DEAR AlLINGHAM,
I got here on Wednesday night, and am
glad to tell you that I do not find Miss Siddal
worse, either by her own account or in appearance.
I should judge her, indeed, to be rather better, and
she thinks so herself. Before leaving town I saw
W^ilkinson, who gave me some more powders for
her, as well as the address of a Dr. Haile here, to
whom he has also written about her. He thinks it
very unadvisable that she should go into the Sussex
Infirmary, or be shut up at all just now. I have
written to him a minute account of her state from
her own hps. Barbara and Anna Mary came over
yesterday, and walked some time with us ; and
Lizzy did not seem overfatigued. Several ladies
14 DAXTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI
here are very attentive to her, and seem quite fond
of her. Her spirits are much better, and some of
her worst symptoms have abated.
I trust the glorious weather which seems setting
in now will do everything for her. If you have
any thoughts of a trip just now come here. I
am going with "SUss S. to-morrow to spend the
day at Roberts Bridge, some miles hence, where
Barbara Smith is.
Thanks for the wood-blocks which I have brought
with me. I fear neither is large enough for the
sketch I have made ; but no doubt they will do
for some of them. Routledge's prescribed size will
admit of a rather larger block. I find Miss Siddal
has made a sketch from Clerk Saiindej's, which
promises to be beautiful when drawn on the wood.
You shall hear again soon, if I stay here any
time.
On the dav of mv father's funeral (at Hiofhcrate
Cemeterv) I heard from Ruskin. . . . He is leavingr
town till Auo-ust about, and savs he has o-iven
orders for all his works to be sent to me, so I
suppose they are at my rooms now. He asks me
to correspond with him, which I shall try to do.
Do you still dine at the Belle pas Sauvage ?
I shall have no chance against you now any
more. \\ rite soon.
D. G. R.
TO WILLIAM ALLIXGHAM 15
Thanks for what you say of the 30s. which I
hope soon to send. Routledge, I suppose, will
pay eventually for the blocks — otherwise I, and
not you. ouo'ht to pay.
Notes ox VI I.
The first reference to Miss Siddal's ill-health Mr.
W. ^L Rossetti finds in a letter dated August 25,
1853. "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."
Miss Smith lived at Scalands near Robertsbridge.
William Howitt, who was a guest there in April, 1 864,
thus describes the place : — " The country is a hop-
arowino- one, and is pleasantlv diversified with hill,
dale, and woods. The house stands on a hill in
the midst of one of these woods. In the openings
are various kennels of pointers, retrievers, and
beagles, which are used in the shooting-season
by Madame Bodichon's brothers. They give us
plenty of dog-music. This property is three miles
long, so we can range about without fear of
trespass."
Madame Bodichon used to tell how Rossetti,
noticing the ost-houses (the kilns in which the
hops are dried) each with its tapering roof and
vane at the top, innocently remarked, " W^hat a
devout people they seem to be, with a chapel to
every farm-house ! "
Writingr to his brother durino- this visit he
i6 DAXTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI
described Scalands as "a stunning crib, but rather
slow."
In another letter he says: — "Miss Smith has
lent me Ruskin's Lectures, where there is only a
slight, though very friendly mention of me." In
the Addenda to the Lectures on Ai'chitecttLre and
Painting Ruskin nientions him twice as follows : —
" Xot only can all the members of the [Prse-
raphaelite] school compose a thousand times better
than the men who pretend to look down upon
them, but I question whether even the greatest
men of old times possessed more exhaustless in-
vention than either Millais or Rossetti. ... As
I was copying this sentence a pamphlet was put
into mv hand, written bv a clerofvman, denouncing
' Woe, woe, woe ! to exceedingly young men of
stubborn instincts, calling themselves Praeraphaelites.'
I thank God that the Prseraphaelites are young,
and that strength is still with them, and life, with
all the war of it, still in front of them. Vet Everett
Millais is this year of the exact age at which
Raphael painted the Disputa, his greatest work ;
Rossetti and Hunt are both of them older still,
nor is there one member of the bodv so younor
■I Jo
as Giotto, when he was chosen from amone the
painters of Italy to decorate the Vatican. But
Italy, in her great period, knew her great men
and did not ' despise their youth.' It is reserved
for E no-land to insult the strenoth of her noblest
children — to wither their enthusiasm early into the
bitterness of patient battle, and leave to those whom
TO WILLIAM ALLINGHAM 17
she shoiikl have cherished and aided no hope hut in
revolution, no refuge but in disdain."
"The Belle pas Sauvage " I shall explain in a
note on Letter IX.
VIII.
5. Hicai Strket, HAsxiNcis,
Friday \^Ma)\ 1854].
AIv DEAR Allix(;ham,
A little note of yours invitino- me to
breakfast on Tuesday last has just been sent on
to me here. I hope to be in London again soon,
though probably not to stay long, but must get
my things together and replenish my colour box,
&c. Hitherto I have been disofracefullv idle here
— poor Miss Siddal even has done better than I
have, and I ha\'e no doubt when I come to town
I shall brino- with me a wood-block which she
has begun beautifully. Her health varies a little,
but I think not very materially — in some things
she is better. Miss Smith continues to suo-o-est
kind plans for her benefit, and has lately hit on
one which seems promising in some respects, of
which I CcUi tell you when I see you, which I
shall do as soon as I reach London again. Lizzy
and I have been twice to a farm of Miss Smith's
3
i8 DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI
near here, which is a stunning" place. Miss S. as
well as Miss Howitt have left here, and will both
soon be in London ao-ain.
.... I am melancholy enouo-h here sometimes,
and shall be glad to discuss our concerns with you
in London as soon as possible. Lizzy is a sweet
companion, but the fear which the constant sight
of her varying state suggests is much less pleasant
to live with. She has just come in to breakfast.
Goodbye.
Yours most sincerely,
D. G. RoSSETTI.
P.S. — Calder Campbell, who wrote to me the
other day, begged me to say to you that he had
called twice, once at Southampton Row and once
at Queen Square, but in neither case had been
able to make any one hear or come to the door.
His number in L^niversity Street is 27. I believe
he leaves town very soon.
Notes ox \'II1.
Rossetti's colour-box had to be replenished, as
one of his letters shows, before he began Found
on the canvas — that picture which he never lived
to finish, though his life was prolonged for nearly
thirty more years.
The plan of "the indefatigable and active
Barbara" was for Miss Siddal's entering the Sana-
torium in Harley Street, New Road, London,
TO WILLIAM ALLINGHAM 19
" where o-Qvernesscs and ladies of small means are
taken in and cured." Miss Smith's relative "con-
nected widi the management of this place" was,
Mr. W. J\I. Rossetti says, probably Miss Night-
ingale, who towards the close of the year was to
set out for the Crimea.
" xAs m\' brother was growing up towards man-
hood," writes Mr. Rossetti "he became acquainted
with Major Calder Campbell, an officer retired
from the Indian army, and a rather prolific pro-
ducer of verses and tales in annuals and magazines ;
an eminently amiable and kindly elderly bachelor,
gossipy, and a little scandal-loving, who conceived
a very high idea of my brother's powers. He
must. I think, have been the first literary man
familiar with the ups and downs of London pub-
lishing whom Rossetti knew. For a year or two
my brother and I had an appointed weekly evening
when we called upon Major Campbell in his quiet
lodgings in University Street, Tottenham Court
Road,"
IX.
Hastings,
Monday, 26 Jitnc, 1S54.
My dear Allingham,
I am here again you see. but return
immediately to London ; so when you write again.
20 DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI
write thither (Chatham Place). I shall not fail to
keep up our correspondence. Miss S. returns with
me for the present, till she can get her picture
en train at any rate. I think she has certainly
benefited a good deal by her stay in Hastings,
and has done some more sketches from the ballads.
She desires particularly to be remembered to you,
and did so several times when writing to me in
London, which I always forgot to convey.
I should certainly have seen you in town before
your exodus, if I had known in time. As it w^as,
I only heard of your change of plan on Saturday
evening at ]\Iunro's. The day before, perhaps,
you heard that I called on you with the mighty
Mac Cracken, who was in town for a few days,
but we did not find you. What do you think of
Mac coming to town on purpose to sell his Hunt,
his r^Iillais. his Brown, his Hughes, and several
other pictures ! He squeezed my arm with some
pathos on communicating his purpose, and added
that he should part with neither of mine. Full
well he knows that the time to sell them is not
come vet. The Brown he sold privately to White
of Maddox Street. The rest he put into a sale
at Christie's, after taking my advice as to the
reserve he ought to put on the Hunt, which I fixed
at 500 gs. It reached 300 in real biddings, after
which Mac's touters ran it up to 430. trying to
TO WILLIAM ALLIXCxIIAM 21
revive it. but of course it remains with him. The
Millais did not reach his reserve, either, but
he afterwards exchanged it with White tor a
small Turner. The Hughes sold for 67 gs., which
real]}-, diough by no means a large price for it.
surprised me, considering that the people in the
sale-room must have heard of Hughes for the
hrst time, though the auctioneer unblushingly
described him as "a great artist, though a young
one." I have no doubt, if ?vlac had put his
pictures into the sale in good time, instead of
adding them on at the last moment, they would
all have gone at excellent prices.
Some of the pictures in the body ot the sale
went tremendously. Goodall's daub of Raising
the May- Pole fetched (at least ostensibly) 850. I
like Mac Crac pretty well enough, but he is quite
different in appearance — of course — from my idea
of hini. My stern treatment of hini was untem-
pered by even a moment's weakness. I told him
I had nothing whatever to show him, and that
his picture was not begun, which |)laced us at
once on a perfect understanding. He seems
hard up.
If I were to send you one of those Australian
paragraphs about W^iolner and the statue do you
think you could get it in anywhere with or with-
out a short accessory putf ot your own ? Millais
22 DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI
and I have both besieged Eastlake, and Millais
and Dickinson Mulready. Dyce will be written
to by one of us. Hannay Is going to get a
paragraph In somewhere, and I think of trying
for the same sort of thing with Masson and
Patmore. or any one else who seems likely.
Hannay was In town the other day, and I am
going down to Barnet on Friday to see him, and
take a walk to Saint Albans. He Is looking much
better than I have seen him look for a year or
two, and had just parted with the copyright of
his Lectures to Bogue for 50 In addition to the
50 he got first.
I hope my next letter will have more news and
be a longer one. There are dense fogs ot heat
here now, through which sea _ and sky loom as
one wall, with the webbed craft creeping on it
like flies, or standing there as if they would drop
off dead. I wander over the baked cliffs, seeking
rest and findino- none. And It will be even worse
in London. I shall become like the Messer
Brunetto of the " cotto aspetto," which, by the
bye, Carlyle bestows upon Sordello Instead ! It
Is doing him almost as shabby a turn as
BrownlnQ-'s.
The crier Is just going up this street and moan-
ing out notices of sale. Why cannot one put all
one's plagues and the skeletons of one's house
TO WILLIAM ALLINGHAM 23
into his hands, and tell them and sell them
"without reserve"? Perhaps they would suit
somebody at least except this horrid fork of a
pen ! 1 went to the Belle S. the other day, and
was smiled on by the cordial stunner, who came
in on purpose in a lilac walking" costume. / am
quite ccr/aiii s/ic docs not rcgj-ct vou at all.
Your 13. G. R.
\0n the e live lope. \
P.S. — Nous pouvons vous envoyer L'Athenceum
chaque semaine, si vous voulez. Soyez certain
qu'une certaine petite affaire de /, s. d. n'est pas
oubliee.
Notes on IX.
Of W hite the picture-dealer Madox Brown has
the following- entries in his diary : " Jcmv- 27, 1856.
On Monday White called, but did not like the Hay-
Jiehi — said the hay was pink, and he had never seen
such. — Thursday. After niuch moaning over my
brick-dusty colour he took off Kiug Lear for /,^20.
— March 6. Called on Gabriel. I saw a lot of his
works o-athered there from Ruskin's and others, as a
bait to induce Old White to come and bu)' his works."
Rossetti's humorous sallies against Francis
MacCracken must not be taken too seriousl)'.
" He really liked him," says Mr. W. M. Rossetti,
"and had reason for doing so." This Belfast
shipping-agent "was a profound believer in the
24 DAXTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI
'graduate,' as he termed Ruskiii. He was always
hard up for money, but he was devoted to Prse-
raphaeHtism." In 1852 he bought Madox Brown's
Wickliffe, giving for it ^63 together with a picture
by Dighton, " which," says Brown, " I sold for
^8 los."
The following letter with which Mr. Holman
Hunt has honoured me oives an account of his
doings with MacCracken.
Draycott Lodge, Fulham,
Febi'2iary 27, 1896.
Dear Mr. Birkbeck Hill,
I trust that I am not now too late —
althouQ-h so verv much so, owino- to a \'arietv of
causes — in gi^■ing you the information you desired.
The only picture that Mr. MacCracken bought of
me was TJic Two Gentleinen of Verona. It was
painted in 1850-51, and was assailed by the critics
in the R.A., together with works by Millais, in the
most violent manner, until Ruskin came forward
quite unexpectedly and assailed the critics, to the
lastino- confusion of one or two of the craft. The
picture did not, how^ever, sell in London, and I
sent it to Liverpool, when again it was attacked
most acrimoniously ; but the committee of the
exhibition, to my surprise, ended by giving me
the ^50 prize awarded to the best picture in the
exhibition, and vet it did not sell there ; but from
Belfast Mr. MacC. wrote, saying he very much
wanted to get to Liverpool to see it. He could
TO WILLIAM ALLINGHAM 25
not, however, get away, and at last asked whether
I would take a painting by young Danljy as pay-
ment for £^0 or /,6o of the price, which was, I
think, £iS7- (^^ might, however, have been 200
guineas.) Eventually 1 agreed, and he paid me the
money, part in installments of ^10 at the time.
The picture was bought at Christie's by Sir T,
Fairbairn for 500 guineas, and he sold it about
eight years since for ^1,000 to the Birmingham Art
Gallery, where it now is.
I am yours ever truly,
W. Holm AN Hunt.
MacCracken, as will be seen later on, made
another attempt to sell the picture, but in vain.
The day of the great Prajraphaelite painter was
still in its dawn. It was, no doubt, some years
later that Sir T. Fairbairn made his purchase.
Mr. Hunt, speaking of the sale of this picture in
the Contemporary Revieiv tor May, 1886, says: —
" When the dates for payment came, a letter invari-
ably arrived proposing to give instead of money
further paintings, so that the transaction became a
continual torment to me."
From Rossetti MacCracken bjught the Ecce
Ancilla Domini, which had been exhibited three
years earlier, and had been returned unsold. Its
price was only /"50. In 1886 it was added to the
London National Gallery at the cost of ^840. For
Mr. Arthur Hughes's Ophelia he had undertaken to
give sixty guineas. He gave in reality thirty
26 DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI
guineas and two small pictures by Wilson, a
painter at that time of no account, though highly
esteemed now. Unfortunately, the young Prae-
raphaelite could not bide his time, and had to
turn his pictures into cash. Being sent to the
leading art auctioneers, they were sold for five
pounds. At Ophelia Mr. Hughes had been long
working, when one day Alexander Munro, a young-
sculptor, burst into his studio, with most of the
Prairaphaelites at his back. Deverell found fault
with a bat iiying across the stream, but Rossetti
warmly defended it, as " one of the finest things
in the picture." "He always was," Mr. Hughes
tells me, " most generous in his admiration ; any-
thing that he did not like he hated as heartily.
His manners were fascinating, enthusiastic, and
generous."
'' I remember," writes Mrs. Howitt, " one of the
most distinguished [of the P.R.B.] asking us, as he
had no banker, to cash a cheque for ^14, given him
by a Manchester gentleman for a small oil-painting."
Madox Brown, writing of the Academy of 1851,
says : — " Goodall is excessive in all that is low and
to the public taste."
For " Woolner and the statue" see a note on the
next letter.
" James Hannay," writes Mr. W. M. Rossetti,
" was a bright and cherished figure in the literary
Bohemia of those days ; my brother and I had
known him since 1850 or earlier. He was in early
youth a naval officer ; but, while still young, he took
TO WILLIAM ALLINGHAM 27
to authorship, and pubHshed various sketches and
novels connected with sea-life. He was busy with
reviewinor, comic writint^", and journalism ; a fluent,
wiity, and telling- speaker in pri\ate and in public,
taking with great zest, as the years lapsed, to what-
soever savoured of High Toryism, whether in
politics or in the minor matters of genealogy and
heraldry. Ultimately he obtained an appointment
as British Consul in Barcelona ; and there he died,
in middle age, very suddenly, in 1873."
Coventry Patmore, speaking of Rossetti's " extra-
ordinary faculty for seeing objects in such a fierce
light of imagination as very few poets have been
able to throw upon external things," continues : —
" He can be forgiven tor 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 fiat skies, ^
Where the lean black craft, like flies.
Seem well-nigh stagnated,
Soon to drop off dead.' "
This stanza of Even So finds its first sketch — by no
means a rough one — in Rossetti's description of the
" dense foos of heat " at Hastings.
Carlyle, in his third lecture on Heroes and Hero-
Worship, spoke of " that poor Sordello with the
cotto aspetto. 'face baked,' referring to a celebrated
passage in Dante's Inferno (canto xv. line 26). It
was not Sordello, but Brunetti Latini whom the poet
described. This error ran throuo-h the earlv editions
28 DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI
of the Lectures, but was corrected in the later. Mr.
W. M. Rossetti tells me that " the suofeestion that
Browning- did a shabby turn to Sordello by writing
the poem is of course mere chaff; for Rossetti, in
all those years, half worshipped the poem, and
thrust it down everybody's throat."
He used often to dine at the Bell Savage Inn on
Ludgate Hill. "As for the Bell Savage," writes
Addison in the Spectator, No. 28, "which is the
sign of a savage man standing by a bell, I was
formerly very much puzzled upon the conceit of it,
till I accidentally fell into the reading of an old
romance translated out of the French ; which eives
an account of a very beautiful woman who was
found in a wilderness, and is called in the French
La Belle Sairuage ; and is everywhere translated by
our countrymen the Bell Savao-e." Bv Pennant's
time the sign was disused. Mr. W. M. Rossetti
has no doubt that "the cordial stunner" was a
waitress with whom his brother had an innocent
flirtation. " In these early days." writes Mr.
Holman Hunt, "with all his headstrongness and a
certain want of consideration, Rossetti's life within
w^as 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 recognised
by a hasty judgment."
TO WILLIAM ALLIXr.HAM 29
X.
Sunday {^Endorsed July 24, 1854 J.
Dear Allingham,
I have been waiting" to write Lintil I could
see Ca\ley who has my MS. translations {i.e.. such
as are copied of them — cctei^a dcsuut, that is, are
not decent), in order that I might send them on to
you at the same time as this letter. Not that my
writing now implies that 1 have had vision of
Cayley (a fair type of Divine Cojuedy) — of course
you can guess that — but merely that every day
after chnner it has seemed a very long way from
the B. S. to Chancery Lane, and that my interview
with the great unshaved seeming no nearer, I may
as well write at once, trusting very soon neverthe-
less to get hold of the Poems and send them, as I
should much like to have your dictum, and espe-
ciallv anv suoo-estions of vours, which I wish you
would mark on the margin, regardless of the original
Italian, as I can always compare what you suggest
with that, and see if it be compatible. I am still
hoping to get them out as soon as possible, and
think I should include the Vita Nuova of Dante,
which I translated some 5 years ago, and which
would only want some revision. Title perhaps
thus : Italian Lyrical Poetry of the First Epoch
from Ciullo d' Alcanio to D. Alighieri (i 197-1300) ;
30 DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI
translated in the orioinal metres, includino- Dante's
Vita Nnova or autobiography of his youth.
Can you think of any better title ? or is this too
long ?
Maclennan (whom you once met at my rooms)
visited Cambridge with my brother the other day,
and at some gathering there they met Macmillan,
the publisher, to whom Maclennan spoke of my
translations, which he expressed every good dispo-
sition to publish. He also said he had some time
been wishing to propose to Millais, Hunt, and me
to illustrate a Life of Christ.
My original poems are all (or all the best) in an
aboriginal state, beino- beoinnino-s, thouoh some of
them very long beginnings, and not one, I think,
fairly copied. Moreover, I am always hoping to
finish those I like, and know they would have no
chance if shown to you unfinished, as I am sure
they would not please you in that state, and then
I should feel disgusted with them. This is the
sheer truth. Of short pieces I have seldom or
never done anything tolerable, except perhaps
sonnets ; but if I can find any which I think in
any sense legible, I will send them with the
translations. I wish, if you write anything you
care to show, you would reciprocate, as you may
be sure I care to see. As a grand installment I
send you the Mac Crac sonnet : it hangs over him
TO WILLIAM ALLIXC.ILXM 3'
as yet like the sword of Dciniocles. I dare say
you remember Tennyson's sonnet, The Krakcn :
it is in the ALS. book of mine you have by you,—
so compare.
MAC CRACIvEN.
(letting his pictures, like his supper, cheap,
Far, far awa)- in Belfast by the sea.
His scaly, one-eyed, uninvaded sleep
Mac Cracken sleepeth. A\'hile the P. R. B.
Must keep the shady side, he walks a swell
Through spungings of perennial growth and height ;
And far away in Belfast out of sight.
By many an open do and secret sell
Fresh daubers he makes shift to scarify.
And fleece with pliant sheers the slumb'ring green.
There he has lied, though aged, and will lie.
Fattening on ill-got pictures in his sleep.
Till some Pre-Raphael prove for him too deep.
Then once by ?Iunt and Ruskin to be seen
Insolvent he shall turn, and in the Queen's Bench die.
You'll find it very close to the original — as well as
to fact.
I'll add my last sonnet, made two days ago,
though at the risk of seeming trivial after the stern
reality of the above : —
As when two men have loved a woman well,
Each hating each ; and all in all, deceit ;
Since not for either this straight marriage-sheet
And the long pauses of this wedding-bell ;
But o'er her grave, the night and day dispel
At last their feud forlorn, with cold and heat ;
Nor other than dear friends to death may fleet
The two lives left which most of her can tell :
So separate hopes, that in a soul had wooed
32 DAXTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI
The one same Peace, strove with each other long ;
And Peace before their faces, perish'd since ;
So from that soul, in mindful brotherhood,
(When silence may not be) sometimes they throng
Through high-streets and at many dusty inns.
But my sonnets are not generally finished till I
see them ao-ain after foro-ettino- them, and this is
only 2 days old.
But now about friends. Outside your letter you
tell me to tell you something of Woolner, and I
cannot recollect whether I mentioned to you that
he had written up [sic] touching a statue for which
he was competing there, or rather which he stood
every chance of getting without competition, until
the people determined to ask Eastlake, Dyce, and
Mulready about his competency. I have been to
Eastlake to see about it, and Millais has written
to all three. Between us I think Eastlake is safe,
Mulready has not answered either Millais or
Dickinson, who also wrote (but he knew Woolner
in England, and I know liked him personally.
thouo-h I do not think he ever saw anv work of
his) ; and Dyce has answered Millais that he can-
not remember W'.'s works but wants to see some.
The \\ ordsworth group is therefore going to be
sent to the Royal Academy, that Dyce may see it
there. Dyce and Eastlake were both among those
members of the Committee who were named in that
letter which Woolner got on the occasion of the
TO WILLIAM ALLIXGHAM 33
Wordsworth job, as having- stuck out to the last
in tavoLir of W'.s model ; but it is ver\- possible
they did not know his name, as I suppose the
competition was anonymous. Thus far as yet
about this. W^^olner is very probably now on his
wav to Enorjand. I will send vou his letter, if vou
write me that \ou did not see it. of which I am
uncertain.
Hunt has written Millais another letter at last ;
the first since his second to me, months ago. It
was sent to me by M., but I had to send it on to
Lear, or would have let you have it, as it is full
ot curious depths and difficulties in style and
matter, and contains an account of his penetrating"
to the central chamber of the Pyramids, He is at
Jerusalem now, where he has taken a house, and
seems in great ravishment, so I suppose he is not
likely to be back yet. Have you seen the lying
dullness of that ass W'aaoen, anent the Lio"ht of
the World, in Times last week ? There is a still
more incredible paragraph, amounting to blas-
phemy, in yesterday's AthenceiLni. which you will
see soon. 1 hope you got the last one.
I spent two or three days at Ridge, near Barnet,
with Hannay lately, where he is staying at his
lather's, and will remain probably for some months.
His babe has grown quite beautiful, and I saw
him put in a tub in a \ery vigorous state. Hanna\'
4
34 DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI
and I walked to St. xAlbans, and saw Bacon's tomb,
the Cathedral, &c. We purported writing to you
jointly thence after dinner, but somehow out of the
fulness ot the stomach the speech wouldn't come.
Satire and Satirists is out.
I hav'n't seen much lately of Munro, but hope
he will come to-morrow eveninof when Collins and
Stephens are to come too. I wish you had met
Collins.
Huo'hes, I think, is in the country aorain — at
Burnham. What a capital sketch of one, though
not the best of your face's phases, Hughes did
before you left ! I suppose it must supersede, for
posterity, that railway portrait, which was so
decidedly ev^ train. I trust certainly to join Hughes
in at any rate one of the illustrations of Day and
Night Songs, of which I hope his and hiine will
be worthy — else there is nothing so much spoils
a good book as an attempt to embody its ideas,
only going halfway. Is Saint Margaret's Eve to be
in } That would be illustratable. By the bye.
Miss S. has made a splendid design from that
Sister Helen of mine. Those she did at Hastines
for the old ballads illustrate The Lass of Loehryan
and The Gay Goss Hawk, but the\- are only first
sketches. As to all you say about her and the
hospital, etc., I think just at present, at any rate,
she had better keep out, as she has made a design
PORTRAIT OF W. ALLIXGHAM.
(By Arthur Hughes.)
Yl'ofaupage 34.
TO WILLIAM ALLIXGHAM 35
which is practicable for her to paint quietly at my
rooms, having convinced herself that nothino- which
involved her moving- constantly from place to place
is possible at present. She will begin it now at
once, and try at least whether it is possible to carry
it on without increased danger to her health. The
subject is the A^athity, designed in a most lovely
ami original way. For my own part, the more I
think of the B.H. [Brompton Hospital] for her, the
more I become con\-inced that when left there to
brood over her inactixitv, with imao-es of disease
and perhaps death on every side, she could not but
feel very desolate and miserable. If it seemed at
this moment urgently necessary that she should go
there, the matter would be different ; but Wilkinson
says that he considers her better. I wish, and she
wishes, that somethino- should be done bv her to
make a beginning, and set her mind a little at ease
about her pursuit of art, and we both think that
this more than anything would be likely to have
a o-ood effect on her health. It seems hard to me
when I look at her sometimes, working" or too ill to
work, and think how many without one tithe of her
genius or greatness of spirit have granted them
abundant health and opportunity to labour through
the little they can do or will do, while perhaps her
soul is never to bloom nor her bright hair to lade,
but after hardly escaping from degradation and
36 DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI
corruption, all she might have been must sink out
again unprofitably in that dark house where she
was born. How truly she may say, " No man
cared for my soul." I do not mean to make myself
an exception, for how long I have known her, and
not thought of this till so late — perhaps too late.
But it is no use writing more about this subject ;
and I fear, too, my writing at all about it must
prevent your easily believing it to be, as it is, by
far the nearest thing to my heart.
I will write you something of my own doings
soon, I hope ; at present I could only speak of
discomfitures. About the publication of the ballads,
or indeed of your songs either, it has occurred to
me we might reckon Macmillan as one possible
string to the bow. Smith ought to be bowstrung
himself, or hamstrung, or something, for fighting-
shy of so much honour. By the bye, I turned up
the other day, at my rooms, that copy of Routledge's
poets which you brought as a specimen. Ought
I to send it back? Good-mornino-. '
Your D. G. RossETTi.
P.S. — I hav'n't seen the Howitts very lately,
but A. M. [Anna Mary] is very busy, I know.
I shall get there soon. She has the Folio, which
is beginning to circulate.
P. P.S. — W^rite soon and Ell answer soon.
' He had at first written " tfood-nie-ht."
TO WILLIAM .\LLI\(}IL\M 37
Notes ox X.
Charles Bai^ot Cayley. translator of Dante and
Petrarch, sat for the fifth head on the left (omittino-
Judas) in Madox Brown's picture of Christ washino-
Pctci-s Feet. Mr. W. M. Rossetti describes him as
"the most modest, retiring, and shyly taciturn man
of noticeable talent whom it has ever been mv
fortune to meet." He was for some years in the
Patent Office in Chancery Lane. Rossetti must
have dined well if the distance thither from the Bell
Savage seemed very long.
John Ferguson ^Llclennan is known bv his work
on Priiuitii'C Marnao-e.
Rossetti was obliged to wait seven years longer
before he could find a publisher for his poems.
John Sterling, writing to Emerson on December
28, 1841, mentions "the singular fact, I believe,
quite unexampled in England for three hundred
years, that there is no man living among us —
literallv, I believe, not one — under the ao"e of fiftv,
whose verses will pay the expense of publication."
Browning, when Sterling wrote, was twenty-nine
years old, Tennyson thirty-two, and Henry Taylor
forty-two.
The following is Tennyson's sonnet so humorously
parodied by Rossetti.
THE KRAKEX.
Below the thunders of the upper deep ;
Far, far beneath in the abysmal sea,
His ancient, dreamless, uninvaded sleep
38 DAXTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI
The Kraken sleepeth : faintest sunlights flee
About his shadowy sides : above him swell
Huge sponges of millennial growth and height :
And far away into the sickly light,
From many a wondrous grot and secret cell
Unnumber'd and enormous polypi
\\'innow with giant arms the slumbering green.
There hath he lain for ages and will lie
Battening upon huge seaworms in his sleep,
Until the latter fire shall heat the deep :
Then once by man and angels to be seen,
In roaring he shall rise and on the surface die.
The sonnet which Rossetti " made two days aa"o "
he orave himself time to foro-et aorain and aci'ain, for
it was not published till 1881. Under the title (jf
Lost on Both Sides it forms Sonnet XCI, o{ Ballads
and Sonnets, in the following version :
As when two men have loved a woman well,
Each hating each, through Love's and Death's deceit ;
Since not for either this stark marriage-sheet
And the long pauses of this wedding-bell ;
Yet o'er her grave the night and day dispel
At last their feud forlorn, with cold and heat ;
Nor other than dear friends to death may fleet
The two lives left that most of her can tell :
So separate hopes, which in a soul had wooed
The one same Peace, strove with each other long.
And Peace before their faces perished since :
So through that soul, in restless brotherhood.
They roam together now, and wind among
Its by-streets, knocking at the dustv inns.
Rossetti wrote to \V. B. Scott on a Tuesday in
1852: — "I saw W'oolner on board the vessel on
Thursday. He is accompanied by Bernhard Smith
and Bateman, and all of them plentifully stocked
TO WILLIAM ALLINGIIAM 39
with corduroys, sou'-westers, jerseys, firearms, and
belts full of little bao^s to hold the expected nu(^q"ets.
Hunt, W'illiani, and myself, deposited them in
their tour months' home with a due mixture of
solemnity and joviality. All his friends con-
gratulate him on the move, with the sole exception
of Carlyle, who seems to espy in it some savour of
the mammon of unrighteousness. Tennyson was
especially encouraging. The great Alfred even
declares that were it not for Mrs. T., he should
go himself. His expectations seem, however, to be
rather poetical, as he gravely asked W^oolner ' if
he expected to come back with ^10,000 a year.'"
Later on Rossetti wrote : — " After seven months'
digging they gave it up as a losing game ; having
made ^50 worth of gold apiece, and spent each
about ^90." Woolner soon found work as a
sculptor at Melbourne, where he did several
medallions at ^25 each. On his coming back to
England he wrote to W. B. Scott on October 23,
1854 : — " I should not have returned so soon, had
I not returned to look after a statue of Mr.
Wentworth, to be put up to his glory in Sydney.
I am not sure of o-ettinof it now, after comino- all
this way. I saw Carlyle the other evening, who
congratulated me on not being successful in my gold-
seeking. In this, as in everything, how different
are his opinions from the world's ! " In May, 1855,
Woolner wrote : — " Concerning Wentworth's statue,
which brouoht me home, it has turned out a failure.
Wentworth has resolved on founding a fellowship
40 DAXTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI
at the Sydney University with the money instead.
This is at least fifteen hundred out of my pocket,
coming back to England when I did. It was the
only chance I ever had of making money."
A subscription of /^2,ooo had been raised for a
statue to William Charles Wentworth, the foremost
statesman of his time in New South Wales. His
bust by Woolner was exhibited in the Royal
Academy in 1856.
Mr. W. M. Rossetti wrote to \W Allingham on
March 21. 1 85 I : — "Woolner has a monument to
do for Wordsworth's tomb." Mr. Rossetti tells me
" that the group represented the poet seated in the
centre ; on one side of him a man controlling a
refractory boy ; on the other side, as a representa-
tion of the transition from the worship of nature to
the worship of God, a girl holding a flower with a
woman bv her side directing her thouo-hts from it to
the heaven above : Carlyle and Tennyson thought
highly of it." The disappointment which followed
on the rejection of the design had much to do in
sending Woolner to Australia. In the words of
Madox Brown, "He went to the gold-diggings
hoping to amass millions to carry on his art."
He was elected an Associate of the Royal
Academy in 1871. and a full Academician in
1874. He died, a wealthy man, on October 7,
1892 ; part of his fortune he had made by judicious
purchases of pictures.
Lear was Edward Lear, the author of The Book
of Nonsense.
ro WILLIAM ALLINGHAM 41
Thomas Seddon wrote from Iv^ypt (no date
oiven) : — " Old Hunt came to join me yesterday,
lor I have spent the principal part of the last two
months in a tomb, just at the hack of the Sphinx,
away from all the petty evening bustle of an hotel.
We began in a tent, but a week's experience showed
that the tomb possessed in comfort what it lost in
picturesqueness. It is a spacious apartment. 25
feet by 14 feet, and about 6 feet high. My end
is matted, and I recline, dine, and sleep on a sump-
tuous divan consisting of a pair of iron trestles with
two soft boards laid across them. Poor Hunt is
half-bothered out of his life here in painting figures ;
but. between ourselves, he is rather cxigcant in
expecting Arabs and Turks in this climate to sit
still (standing) for six or eight hours. Don't tell
any one this, not even Rossetti."
Dr. Waagen's letter in the Times of July 13,
[854. thus ends: — " The smallness of the head in
proportion with the figure is probably attributable
to that ambition to imitate the early masters, even
in their defects. . . . For the green shadows in the
hand, though the picture is otherwise most carefully
painted, the painter himself must be held respon-
sible, as this is a defect which cannot be laid to the
account of those early masters whom he may have
studied." The "blasphemy" in the AtheiicEiini was
probably Frank Stone's.
Mrs. Combe told my wife that many years ago she
visited the studio of . a Royal Academician. He
said to the lady who had taken her there : "Would
42 DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI
you believe it? Holman Hunt has found some
fool to buy his Light of the World.'' She replied,
" Yes, I do believe it, for my friend here is the wife
oi the man who bouo-ht it." tried to wrieele
out of it by pretending- really to admire the picture.
Mr. Hunt, writing of the neglect each new pic-
ture met with, says : — " So constant was such
experience that I was obliged to avoid taking up
a new idea, knowing that I should be starved while
the world was finding out the shallowness of the
critic's strictures. I could only pay my way by
doing replicas of pictures which had run the gauntlet
of abuse, and at last had won favour."
" Bacon was buried privately in St. Michael's
Church near St. Alban's. The spot that contains
his remains lay obscure and undistinguished till the
gratitude of a private man, formerly his servant,
erected a monument to his name and memory." It
was, of course, the Abbey, not the Cathedral, which
Rossetti visited.
Satire and Satirists was by Hannay.
For an account of Collins see note on Letter
XX.
For Allingham's Day and N'ight Songs Rossetti
and Millais each did a single illustration, Arthur
Husfhes doino- eioht.
" Smith who ought to have been bowstrung " has
lived to do letters a noble, if ill-requited service,
by the publication of the great Dictionary of
N^ational Biography.
The Folio was to contain the drawings of a newly
TO WILLIAM A L LING HAM 43
formed sketchin^--clul). of which Mr. Iluohes oives
me the following- account : " Millais, who was the
only man amon^- us who had an\- monc)', provided
a nice L^-rcen [)orlfolio with a lock, in which to keep
the drawings. Each meml)er of the club was to
put into it every month one drawing in black and
white, the case going the round. Millais did his,
and one or two others did theirs. Then the Folio
came to Rossetti, where it stuck for ever. It never
reached me. According to his wont, he had at hrst
been most enthusiastic over the scheme, and had so
infected Millais with his enthusiasm that he at once
ordered the case."
XL
Blackfriars,
Tuesday, A2tgnst, '54.
Dear x'\llingham,
I have got out my work this morning, but
it looks so hopelessly beastly, and I feel so hope-
lessly beasdy, that I must try to revive myself
before beginning, by some exercise that goes
quicker than the Fine Arts. So I'll e'en begin my
answer to your last, wishing heartily that instead of
writing to you I could have you here this glorious
morning, that I might take a run with )-ou some-
where and try to feel a little lively.
44 DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI
Two or three fellows were here last night, and
among them Cayley, to whom I notified the call for
my MSS. translations. Ell get them either to-day
or to-morrow, and send them to you — I suppose by
post, as I know of no other way. You will receive
only those which have been copied by William, as
my own first drafts are in a hopeless limbo of scrawl.
\V. has put no names of authors to them, on account
of the necessity of classing them, when all copied,
and only putting the name to the first production of
each poet.
Of the two ballads you sent me, I prefer the one
I knew already, and which is one of the very few
really fine things of the kind written in our day.
The other has many beauties, though— indeed, is all
beautiful, except, I think, the last couplet, which
seems a trifle homely, a little in the broadsheet-
song style. The subject you propose for my wood-
cut from it is a first-rate one, and I have already
made some scratches for its arrangement. I have
got one of the blocks from Hughes, and hope soon
to tell you it is done. What a pity they will not let
the blocks be a little larger! Ls not the Maids of
E if en-Mere founded on some Northern legend or
other ? I seem to have read something about it in
Keightley or somewhere.
Tell me whether I shall send you back the copy
of it vou sent, and the one of St. Mar^aref s Eve.
TO WILLIAM ALLINGHAM 45
I tlon't bully the last lines of your Lallad, by the 1)ye,
because you didn't like the last lines of in\' sonnet,
which are certainly fo^^gy. Would they be better
thus ? —
So in that soul,-- a inindful brotherhood, —
(\\^hen silence may not be), they wind among
Its bye-streets, knocking at the dusty iiuis.
Or I should like better —
— they fare along
Its high street, knocking, etc.,
but fear the rhyme "long" and "along" is hardly
admissible. What say you ? Or can you propose
any other improvement ?
Lve referred to my notebook for the above
alteration, and therein are various sonnets and
beginnings of sonnets written at crisises {? !) of
happy inspiration. Here's one which I remember
writing in great glory on the top of a hill which I
reached one after-sunset in Warwickshire last year.
Lm afraid, though, it isn't much good.
This feast-day of the sun, his altar there
In the broad west has blazed for vesper-song ;
And I have loitered in the vale too long.
And gaze now, a belated worshipper.
Yet may I not forget that I was 'ware,
So journeying, of his face at intervals, —
Where the whole land to its horizon falls.
Some fiery bush with corruscating [sic] hair.
And now that I have climbed and tread this height,
I may lie down where all the slope is shade,
46 DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI
And cover up my face, and have till night
With silence, darkness ; or may here be stayed,
And see the gold air and the silver fade,
And the last bird fly into the last light.
It Strikes me, in copying, what a good thing I
did not adopt the first alternative, or I mightn't be
here to copy. Here's a rather better sonnet, I
hope, written only two or three days ago. I believe
the afifection in the last half was rather "looked
up," at the time of writing, to suit the parallel in the
first. Do you not always like your last thing the
best for a little while ?
Have you not noted, in some family
\\'here two remain from the first marriage bed.
How still they own their fragrant bond, though fed
And nurst upon an unknown breast and knee ?
That to their father's children they shall be
In act and thought of one good will ; but each
Shall for the other have in silence speech,
And in one word, complete community?
Even so, when first I saw you, seemed it, love,
That among souls allied to mine was yet
One nearer kindred than I wotted of.
O born with me somewhere that men forget,
And though in years of sight and sound unmet.
Known for my life's own sister well enough 1
What you say about my printing and yuur
reviewing, &c., is very kind, and may be very
true ; but the fact is, I think well of very little I
have written, and am afraid of people agreeing with
me, which I should find a bore. I believe my
poetry and painting prevented each other from
TO WILLIAM ALLIXGIIAM 47
doino- much oood for ;i \o\vy while, and ikjw I think
I could do better in either, but can't write, lor then
I sha'n't paint. However, one day I hope at least
to finish the few rhymes I have by me that I care
for at all, and then there they'll be, at any rate.
Your plan of a joint volume among us ot poems
and pictures is a capital one — and how man\' capital
plans we have !
Lve got the Fo/io here. It contains a design by
Millais, of the Recall of the Romans from Britain ;
one by Stephens, oi Death and the Rioters ; one by
Barbara S. — a "len scene ; and one bv A. AL H.,
called the Castaivays, which is a rather strong-
minded subject, involving a dejected female, mud
with lilies lying in it, a dust-heap, and other details.
Of course, seriously. Miss H. is quite right in
painting it, if she chooses, and she is doing so.
I daresay it will be a good picture. William,
Christina, and I were there lately. The Howitts
asked me for your address, as they wanted to write
to you. I don't know what design I shall put into
the Folio. I'm doing one of Hamlet and Ophelia,
which I meant for it — deeply symbolical and far-
sicrhted, of course — but I fear I shall not get it done
in time to start the Folio again soon, so may put in
a desio-R I have made of Fonnd.
I'm finishing this late in the day (N.B. I've
done no L^ood and had better ha\-e cut work for
48 DAXTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI
the day), and must go out to that meal which
combines the sweets of an assia"nation. I enclose
a copy ot an extract about W'oolner. in case you
can make use of it. I'll send you one of Hunt's
letters with the I\ISS.
The other day, looking over papers, I turned
up those sheets of Sutton's poetry, about which I
remember a slio-ht shru^' of shoulders and con-
traction of eyebrows on your part, under the idea
that the Fleet Ditch had engulfed them. I'll
enclose them too.
What do you think of MacCrac having been
again in town ? I fear he is taking to wild habits.
The epithet one-eyed, in his sonnet, had better stand
dozvnv. as the other is certainlv ambiofuous. Bv the
bye, that is a kind accompaniment to his visit and
my most cordial reception, isn't it .•*
I'll keep an eye on all whom I know who have
contracted the bad habit of picture-buying, with a
view to their ultimately finding themselves possessed
of a r^Iillais or a Boyce, as per instructions.
W rite soon, and believe me.
Yours affectionately,
D. G. ROSSETTI.
P.S. — I hear this W'entworth (the ''model" of
\\ oolner's statue) is now in London ; and I dare
say anything in the papers would meet his eye
and do good. ^^lillais and I have done all that
could be done about the affair.
TO WILLIAM ALLIXCMAM 49
NOTKS DX XI.
In the following' account 1)\' Mr. Ilolinaii limit
we see how Rossetti in a fit of impatience would
throw clown the brush: — '•The last time Rossetti
and I worked tos^'ether was at Sevenoaks. He
set himself to paint, near to my place of w(^rk,
a boscage for a back^rouiul. I went sometimes
to see hini at work, but I found him nearl\- always
as if engaged in a mortal quarrel with some leaf
which had perversely shaken itself ofi" its l)ranch
just as he had begun to paint it. until he would
have no more of such conduct, and would go back
to his lodoino-s to write, and to trv desiyfns,"
Rossetti's translations of the Ear/y Italian Poets,
which are frequently mentioned in these letters,
were not published till 1861.
The "too homely" couplet in Allingham's Maids
of Elfen-Mere is as follows : —
" The pastor's son did pine and die ;
Because true love should never lie."
It was this ballad which Rossetti illustrated.
Of the first of the two new sonnets [^Thc Hill
Suniiuit, Sonnet LXX. of Ballads and Sonnets),
the first six lines were not changed. The last
eiofht were modified as follows : — -
&
" Transfigured where the fringed horizon falls, — ■
A fiery bush with coruscating hair.
And now that I have climbed and won this height,
50 DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI
I must tread downward through the sloping shade,
And travel the bewildered tracks till night.
Yet for this hour I still may here be stayed
And see the gold air and the silver fade,
And the last bird fly into the last light."
In the second sonnet (No. XV.) there are some
slig-ht changes.
The beHef that Rossetti's poetry hindered his
progress in painting led his father, writes ?^Ir.
W. M. Rossetti, "to reprehend him sharply, and
even severely ; and to reprehension he was at all
times more than sufficiently stubborn. He grieved
over the matter of our father's displeasure to his
dvinu- dav."
Of Mr. Frederic George Stephens, one of the
P.R. B., Millais. as Mr. Hughes informs me,
"painted a perfect portrait as Ferdinand In red by
Arieir
A. M. H. was Anna Mary Howitt. Of her
Rossetti wrote to his sister a few months earlier :
"Anna ?^Iary has painted a sunlight picture of
Margaret (Faust) in a congenial wailing state."
"The meal which combined the sweets of an
assio-nation " was no doubt to be taken at " the
Belle /^.j Sauvage " of Letters \\\. and IX.
"Sutton was (if I remember right)," Mr. W. M.
Rossetti tells me, "a man in a humble position
of life, who professed to be descended from George
Herbert. The Fleet Ditch ran under my brother's
windows overlooking Blackfriars Bridge. There
was a funny anecdote (true) about his throwing
TO WILLIAM ALLIXGIL\:\r 51
away Into the ditch some book he scorned ; he
did this two or three times over, and each time
it was brought back by a ' nuid-Iark.' Periiaps
the book was this of Sutton's."
Patmore, writing" to AlHnghani on August 15,
1849, says: — "I long to hear something of my
admired, though unseen friend, Mr. Sutton."
Many years ago a friend ot mine told me that
a stranger wished to hire trom him an arch under
one of the London railways, in which he meant to
conduct a religious service every Sunday. " Of
what sect .^ " asked my friend. "Of the Sutto-
nians." "Who are the Suttonians .-^ " "The
followers of Sutton." "Who is Sutton .•* " "I
am Sutton." Perhaps this holy man was Rossetti s
Sutton.
In the last paragraph of this letter is seen an
instance of that zeal of Rossetti's which never
failed when there was a chance of helping a friend.
The following record by my wife of a talk she had
with an old friend of ours and his illustrates this,
and explains, though it does not justify, one side
of the great painter's character : —
" I said that these Rossetti letters had gi\-en us
so much higher an opinion of the man than we
had ever had before that we all the more regretted
the want of honesty he had about the execution of
commissions. He looked very sad, and, I could
see, felt the subject painfully. 'Ves,' he said, 'it
was much to be regretted ; but, after all, I don't
think W. B. Scott need have said what he did.
52 DAXTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI
He was not the man to judge fairly Here was
Scott, a typical Scotchman, caring for money and
knowing its worth, and at the same time possessed
of all a Scotchman's integrity as regards money
matters : and here was Rossetti, an Italian all over,
caring for money, too. but lavish and generous,
wanting it to give away as much as for himself. He
was awfully generous, and he was a sort of Robin
Hood in art ; he thought the rich ought to be made
to pav for the good of the poor artists, and he
would get all the money he could out of them ; but
he would do this as much for others as for himself.
Oh, he would work night and day to help a poor
friend ; he would give a rich man. who he thought
ought to buy a friend's picture, no peace, till the
rich man bought it only to get rid of his impor-
tunity. And then how generous he was in his
judgment of a friend's work!' Here he paused,
and I could see his mind wandering back to the
old days, fondly dwelling on the various acts of
kindness he had himself received from Rossetti.
I could say no more of shortcomings."
To his zeal for his friends others have borne
like testimony. Madox Brown wrote of him in
18-5 ; — " Xo one ever perhaps showed such a
vehement disposition to proclaim any real merit
if he thinks he discovers it in an unknown or rising-
artist. I could narrate a hundred instances of the
most noble and disinterested conduct towards his
art-rivals, which places him far above [others] in
his oreatness of soul, and vet he will, on the most
TO WILLIAM ALLINCiIIAM 53
trivial occasion, hate ami backbite any one who
o-jves him offence."
Mr. Skelton says in The Tablc-Talk of Shirley : —
" I have preserved a number of Rossetti's letters,
and there is ])arelv one, I think, which is not
niainly devoted to warm commendation of obscure
poets and painters, — obscure at the time of writing",
but ot whom more than one has since become
famous."
XII.
\Eudorsed, '54-]
Dear A.,
Here are all the translations copied as yet
— a large close, though there are many more behind,
but very likely you'll find these quite enough.
Please acknowledge their receipt at once, as I
feel rather anxious about their safe carriage.
I send the only tw^o letters I have of Hunt's.
One is hardly worth sending, as it is before he
reached his journey's end. The second is a very
old one ; perhaps my not having any since may
be owing to the simple and shameful fact of my
not having answered it yet, which I'm going
to do.
Your D. Cx. R.
I've numbered the MSS. to prevent their
54 DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI
eettincr out of order. I hav'n't mustered courasi'e
or \lettcr imperfecf\ to look up my original
scrawls, but if I can find anything- I'll send it
one day.
Note on XII.
These translations were published in 1861 under
the title of The Early Italian Poets. " Self reliant
though my brother was when he made the transla-
tions," writes Mr. W. M. Rossetti, "and still more
so when he was preparing to publish them, he was
nevertheless extremely ready to consult well-qualified
friends as to this book. In this way he showed his
MS. to Mr. Allingham, Mr. Ruskin, Mr. Patmore.
Count Aurelio Saffi, and no doubt to Mr. Swinburne
and some others as well."
XIII.
Sept. 19 [1854].
Dear Allin(;ham,
I've just got your letter this morning.
About the woodcut, I fancy the poem and
extracts you send to-day are hardly so much in
my "line" for illustration as the two others you
sent before. The Maids of Elfin Mere will be
the one, I dare say. after all. This chiefly be-
cause the Nursery Rhyme on which S. Afs. Eve
TO WILLIAM ALLINGHAM 55
\_Sai)ii Margivrcfs ]ivc\ is fouiulcd is incliKlcd and
illustrated in CliiUfs Pla\\ b\' the Hon. Mrs.
Boyle, and is there very well done.
I made a sketch for the Maids the hrst day
you sent it — i.e., for the arrangement, and think
it would come nice. At any rate of that or of
one of the others I hope you will soon hear
that a block is drawn, and Huohes has sent me
one.
Huo-hes was here the other evenino", and
showed me several sketches and wood-blocks
he has drawn, — all of them excellent in many
ways ; but the blocks I think, especially the one
of the man and s^irl at a stile, rather wanting- in
force for the engraver. He agreed with me, and
I believe will do something" to amend this. He
has made a few very nice little sketches for cuts
in the text, if such should prove admissible. One
or two for the Fairies are remarkably original.
I should really, I believe, have got mine in hand
before this, but various troublesome anxieties have
interfered with that and other work, among the
rest with my duty to the Folio, which is still by
me. I sha'n't put in my modern design, and
must finish one of two or three I have going
on, instead. 1 am doing one, which I think will
be the one, of Hamlet and Ophelia, so treated as
I think to embody and symbolise the play without
56 DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI
obtrusiveness or interference with the subject (?s a
subject.
By the bye Hughes showed me a Httle poem
about JV/ia/ it is they say and do, which I think,
if treated carefully, would illustrate very well. It
was one of my favorites in your old vol. — but I
think on reflexion \sic^ would not illustrate except
in the text. Are you not going to include the
Young Alan and Death {if that is the title) one
of your very best ? There is among those trans-
lations of mine a longish dialogue with Death by
Guido Cavalcant' which always reminds me of
that poem — i.e. the original.
I've been very unwell this morning, but have
taken some physic and am much better. This
must account for the flatness of my writing, for it
is flat. I fear you must get the Athenc^nm rather
late. When I began to have it sent on to you, I
found, what I knew not, that they were in the
habit of sending it to an uncle of mine at
Gloucester. I gave you the priority, but it seems
he " appealed " (though he does not care a dump
about it), and we thought it better not to hurt
his feelings. This will account if it reaches you
now later than at first. I'll mention to them at
Albany St. about the label. No doubt you saw
the review of Hannay's excellent book on Satii-e ;
it will put him on a first-rate footing with that
TO WILLIAM ALLIX(;iL\M 57
fool Dixon, and 1)0 of use no cloiiLt. The book
has proved a hit. I think, if you Hked, I coukl
send you it to read — a copy {i.e.) belono^ini^- to
the Spectator. Hannay has also brou^-ht out a
little book with Routled^-e called Sand and Shells
and is writing a novel called Hilton of the Lotus,
to be published in the Home Circle, and which
pays verv well. He has just come back to settle
in London, and I spent last W^ednesday evening-
with him. William has been back in London a
day or two, after walking through a great part of
Devon and Cornwall with Paul, and enjoying it
vasdy. I do not know whether he has yet left
again en route for Belgium, where he is to end
his holidays.
I wanted to send you a letter Stephens had
from Hunt, but it seems there is some mystic
matter in it, so he has copied what I enclose for
you. It is the latest news, I believe. The Chief
of Zanquebar is a lark, but I confess I begrudge
him that whole sheet of note paper. The Times
on Massey is loathsome indeed. Really some one
ought to write to them about that prig from Poe,
which has roused Hannay 's bile. Pve been read-
ing a Spectator copy of Firmilian in its complete
state — on second thoughts Pll post it now for you
instead of describing it. Please return it soon.
I've also read some of the Stones of Venice
58 DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI
having received all Ruskin's books from him,
really a splendid present, including' even the
huge plates of Venetian architecture. I've heard
again from him at Chamounix. I've been greatly
interested in IJ^niheriug Heio/ifs, the first novel
I've read for an age. and the best (as regards
power and sound style) for two ages, except
Sicionia. But it is a fiend of a book — an
incredible monster, combining all the stronger
female tendencies from Mrs. Browning to Mrs.
BrownrieQ:. The action is laid in hell, — onlv it
seems places and people have English names
there. Did you ever read it ?
I think you're quite right about leaving out a
few of my translations from the volume, and
should like to know which you think. I had
thought so myself, but shall copy out all I have
done before determining. I am very glad you
like them so much, and will send more when
copied.
My plan as to their form is, I think, a preface
for the first part, containing those previous to
Dante, and a connecting essay (but not bulky)
for the second part, containing Dante and his
contemporaries, as many of them are in the form
of correspondence, etc., very interesting, and re-
quire some annotation. I think you ha\-e few or
none of this class. I shall include the Jlta
TO WILLIAM ALLLXGILXM 59
^Vnoz-a, I am almost sure, and then the vol.
will be a thick one. I think, if it were possible
to bring some or all out hrst. as you say, in a
good magazine, the plan might be a \ery good
one. Indeed, anything that /<:?'/</ would be very
useful just now, as I do not forget my debts.
I've a longish story more than half done, which
might likely be even more marketable in this
way. It is not so intensely metaphysical as that
in the Govii. If I possibly can manage to copy
what I've done of it, I'd like to send it you. By
the bye, in my last long letter (a /oug- letter,
Allingham) I put two sonnets which I'm afraid
you didn't like. Pray tell me, too, about the
alteration I there proposed in the last lines of
one, which you objected to.
I fear this letter has as many I's as Argus :
argal it is snobbish.
Tenez vous bien for the present and good bye.
Yours sincerely,
D. G. ROSSETTI.
Notes ox XIII.
Rossetti. writing to W . B. Scott in the spring of
this year, mentions a sketching-club which Millais
was trying to found among the P. R. B. and their
close allies, with the addition of the Marchioness of
Waterford and the Honourable Mrs. Bovle. known
6o DAXTK GABRIEL ROSSKTTI
as E. V. B. "The two ladies," wrote Rossetti,
"are great in design." Child s Play, Seventeen
Drazuings, by E. V. B., was published by Addey
& Co., Old Bond Street (no date given).
The sketches were for Allingham's Day and
Night Songs. The Fairies is the charming nursery
song, Up the Airy Mountain, known to thousands
and thousands of children. Mr. Hughes's woodcut
is the frontispiece of the volume.
Mr. \\\ M. Rossetti says that in 1859 "Mr.
Flint bought a pen-and-ink drawing — a Hamlet
{Hamlet and Ophelia I suppose) for ^42." About
the same time, or perhaps a little later. I saw a pen-
and-ink Havilet and Ophelia in Colonel Gillum's
collection.
The following is Allingham's "little poem which
would illustrate very well " : —
WOULD I KNEW.
" Plays a child in a garden fair
\\'here the demigods are walking ;
Playing unsuspected there
As a bird within the air,
Listens to their wondrous talking :
' \A'ould I knew — would I knew
^^'hat it is they say and do ! '
" Stands a youth at city-gate,
Sees the knights go forth together,
Parleying superb, elate,
Pair by pair in princely state,
Lance and shield and haughty feather :
'Would I knew — would I knew
^^'hat it is they say and do I '
TO WILLIAM ALLIX(;iL\M 6i
'* Bends a man with trembling knees
By a gulf of cloudy border ;
Deaf, he hears no voice from these
Winged shades he dimly sees
Passing by in solemn order :
' A\'ould I knew — O would I knew
What it is they say and do ! " "
The title of the Voiiiig J/an and Death is Death
Deposed. It is to be tound on page ']'^ of Thought
and Word.
Of Rossettis uncle in Gloucester, Henry F.
Polydore. a portrait by his nephew is given in
Rossettis Letters and Mcuioii'. vol. ii. p. i8i.
"That tool Dixon" was William Hepworth
Dixon, the editor of the Athencruui.
Sands and Shells were sketches of "modern
sea-life seen through the glasses of fiction." The
Home Circle came to an end with this year. If
Hannay's novel was finished it was not published,
at least, under the title given by Rossetti.
Paul was Benjamin Horatio Paul, a scientific
chemist.
The Chief of Zanqnehar was mentioned, I
had conjectured, in Mr. Holman Hunt's letter ;
but he cannot explain the allusion.
The Times, reviewing Gerald Massey's Poems
on August 24. 1S54, quoted the following verse: — -
" Ah ! 'tis like a tale of olden
Time, long, long ago 1
^Vhen the world was in its golden
Prime, and love was lord below.'"
62 Dx^NTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI
This, probably recalled to Rossetti, the second
verse in Poe's Haunted Palace : —
" Banners yellow, glorious, golden,
On its roof did float and flow,
(This — all this — was in the olden
Time long ago.)
"There is," wrote Rossetti on May ii, 1854,
"a very rich skit on A. Smith, Balder, &c., in
Blackivood, professing to be a review of Firniilian,
a Tragedy by Percy Jones. " Sir Theodore Martin
in his Life of W. E. Aytoun in the Dictionary of
National Biography, says : — " Firniilian was written
[by Aytoun] in ridicule of the extravagant themes
and style of Bailey, Dobell, and A. Smith. It
was, however, so full of imaoination in fine
rhythmical swing, that its object was mistaken,
and what was meant for caricature was accepted
as serious poetry."
Rossetti, writino- about the b(joks Ruskin i»"ave
him, says : — " He wished me to accept these as a
gift, but it is such a costly one that I have told
him I shall make him a small water-colour in
exchange."
According to Mr. Clement Shorter, " Mr. Swin-
burne placed the authoress of Wuthering Heights
[Emily Bronte] in the very forefront of English
women of oenius."
Sidonia the Sorcej^ess is by William Meinhold.
" P"or this work," writes Mr. W. M. Rossetti. "my
TO WILLIAM ALLINGHAM 63
brother had a positive passion ; he much preferred
it to The .liiibci- ll'i/c/i of the same author."
Writing" to his sister Christina, on 1 )ecem]jer
3, 1875, ^bout her new volume of poems, he says : —
"The first of the two poems [on the Franco-
Prussian warj seems to me just a Httle echoish
of the Barrett-Browning style. ... A real . taint,
to some extent, of modern vicious style, derived
from the same source — what might be called a
falsetto muscularity — always seemed to me much
too prominent in the long piece called The Lozvest
Room.''
Mrs. Brownrigg is best illustrated by the follow-
ing parody, in The Anti-Jacobin, of Southey's
Inscription for the Apartment in Chepstoiv Castle
where Henry Marten, the Regicide, zvas imprisoned
Thirty Years.
INSCRIPTION
FOR THli DOOR OF THE CELL IN NEWGATE, WHERE MRS.
BROWNRIGG, THE 'PRENTI-Cn:)E, WAS CONFINED PREVIOUS
TO HER EXECUTION.
For one long term, or e'er her trial came,
Here Brownrigg linger'd. Often have these cells
Echoed her blasphemies, as with shrill voice
She screamed for fresh Geneva. Not to her
Did the blithe fields of Tothill, or thy street,
St. (}iles, its fair varieties expand ;
Till at the last, in slow-drawn cart she went
To execution. Dost thou ask her crime ?
She whipp'd two female 'prentices to death
And hid them in the coal-hole. For her mind
Shaped strictest plans of discipline. Sage schemes !
64 DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI
Such as Lycurgus taught, when at the shrine
Of the Orthian goddess he bade flog
The Httle Spartans ; such as erst chastised
Our Milton when at college. ¥or this act
Did Brownrigg swing. Harsh laws ! But time shall come
When France shall reign, and laws be all repealed.
Rossetti's translation of the y/fa Niiova wa.s
included in his Early Italian Poets, now named
Dante and his Circle.
His debts, which he says he does not forget,
troubled hini through life. Of his old father, the
poor exile, even when his sight was failing" and
"a real tussle for the means of subsistence arose,"
his son William could say : "No butcher, nor
baker, nor candlestick-maker ever had a claim
upon us for a sixpence unpaid." On April 24,
1876, Rossetti told his mother that in the last
year he had made Z 3,725. He added : "I believe
this is somewhere about my average income, yet
I am always hard up for ^50."
"'A longish story,' says Mr. W. M. Rossetti,
must be the one which was first called An
Autopsyckology, and afterwards St. Agnes of
Intercession, written towards 1850. It is published
(uncompleted) in his Collected Works." It was
to have been published in The Germ. " Millais
did an etching for it."
Of the "metaphysical" story, Hand and Sonl,
in the first number of The Germ, Rossetti writes : —
" I wrote it (with the exception of an opening page
or two) all in one night, in December, 1849;
/^ 'K^^^n- - ^ ^C^^ /U*Z c/iS^
SUGGESTED TITLES FOR THE PR^RAPHAELITE
MAGAZINE.
[To face page 65.
TO WILTJAM ALLIXGHAM 6$
beginning;-, 1 suppose, about two a.m., and ending
about seven."
" T/ic Germ;' writes Mr. W. M. Rossetti, "was
projected as the organ of the P.R.B. for pro-
mulgating their views in art and in Hterature —
especially poetic literature. The seven members
of the Brotherhood were owners of the concern.
The prime-mover was Dante Rossetti, who was at
this date just as keen in literary as in pictorial
interest and ambition. Next to him, \\\:)olner was
the most active spirit, and. for artistic purposes,
Holman Hunt. I (at the mature age of twenty)
was appointed editor. The title of the magazine
w^as not my brother's invention. I recollect a
conclave which was held one evening in his studio,
then in Newman Street. A great number of titles
were proposed, and jotted down on a fly-sheet
which I still possess, Mr. W. C. Thomas, the
painter, suggested The Geriuy Mr. Rossetti has
kindly lent me two fly-sheets on which the following
titles were written down. The first ends with a
note by Mr. Thomas.
" The Germ. Qy. better than Seed.
Several zvords expressing Progress.
The Acclerator.
The Precursor ! ! !
The Advent.
6
66
DAXTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI
The Harbino'er ! ! !
The Innovator.
Modcsf Titles.
The Expansive.
The United Arts.
The Mirror of Nature.
The Anti-Archeoloq-ist.
The Circle.
The Sphere.
The prism.
The print. First thoughts.
The Atom. Earnest thoughts.
The Ant. Accumulator.
The lantern. The Aspirant.
The Adventurer.
The Student.
The Scholar.
The Chalice.
The Casket.
The Repertory.
The Investigator.
The Enterprise.
The Lustre.
The Illuminator.
The Appeal.
The Die.
The ^lould.
The principle.
"As your brother Gabriel was speaking of
christening the journal, I've sent you all that I can
think of, which may perhaps suggest something
to you or yours which may be much better than
anything I've thought of.
" It is an important matter. There is something
in a name.
"Yours \V. C. T.
TO WILLIAM ALLINCillAM
67
"The number of Notes of Admiration represent
my notion of the x'aliie of each. L'ive bein^- the
highest vakie.
\\\ C. T.
The Sower ! ! ! ! !
The progressist ! ! ! !
The Seed ! ! ! ! !
Aspects of Nature ! ! ! !
The Guide to Nature
The prospective ! !
The View.
The Alert.
The Opinion.
The Meditator!!!
The Reflector.
The Effort.
The Attempt.
Aspirations towards Truth ! ! !
The Truthseeker ! ! !
The Dawn,
The Well.
The Spring.
The fountain.
The Dawn.
"The first four names are the best."
The Messenger.
The Chariot.
The Wheel.
The Spur.
The Goad.
The Bud.
The Acorn.
The Germ changed its name after the second
number. " For numbers three and four," writes
Mr. W. M. Rossetti, "which were brought out at
the risk of our friendly printing-firm, a new tide,
68 DAXTK GABRIEL ROSSETTI
Art and Poetry, was invented by a member of the
firm, Mr. Alexander Tupper."
Patmore wrote to Alllngham on January 5, 1850 :
— "'A few artists — young, and for the most part
illustrious, though as yet obscure — (Hunt, Millais,
G. Rosetti \sic.\ &c.), have set a-going a small
magazine upon a sound system. The first number
has appeared, and it is full of good poetry, and
noticeable criticism, and has an exquisite etching
bv Hunt. I think vou would like to form one oi
the little corporation, subscribing (one shilling per
month) and contributing (gratis). The title is The
Germ. I will send you a number to judge of. The
little poem called The Seasons is mine."
Holman Hunt, writing of his Rienzi, says : — " I
asked /, 100 for it, and had great need of the
money, for my store was well-nigh exhausted.
With the little remaininof, however, I beran The
Christian Missionary picture, and became part-
proprietor and co-operator as illustrator ot The
Germ, which was started soon after this without
stock of either matter or capital — of nothing but
faith, in short. As weeks and months went by, the
indignation of our opponents became fiercer, and
made itself heard through the Press. By the end
of July 1 had well-nigh come to my last penny,
some work that 1 had been commissioned to do,
and on which I had spent time and money, coming
to nothino- from the chanofe of feelino- about our
school. The unpunctuality of so important a con-
tributor as Rossetti made it impossible to go on.
§&^oXc)l
No. 1. (Price One Shilling.) JANUARY, 1850.
With an Etching hy W. HOLMAN HUNT.
"8^
©_
^
m
Cjiaiigjjts tntDttrte HatiirB
M
©
3n ^nrtri}, fittratiire, aiiii 5lrt
^^e^^^^^^^
3®^?n tof)oso mcrdp fiat!) a Kttir tf)ougI)t
Saill platnip t})inh if)c tf)ougf)i toi^icf) is in !)tm,-
i^t imaging anotf)cr's brig!)t or ttim,
i^ot mangling Soitf; njto toorts tof)at others t3Ug!)t;
2Qf)fn Ld!joso spraks, (rom f)abing £itf)cr sougfjt
©r only founti,— toill spcali, not fust to sfeim
"3 iStjallotD surface fioiti^ tooriis mate antr trim,
33ut In tf)at bcro spcft^ ifjc matter brougfft:
13c not too keen to trn — " So tfjis is all ! —
■a tfjing J: migf)t mnsclf f)abe t{)ougf)t as fioell,
^ut tooulli not sao it, for it teas not tnortf) ! "
%si. : " Es tf)i3 truii) ?" i^or is it still to tell
tr^at, be t\}t tf)£mc a point or t!)e tcfjole eartf),
©rttti^ is a elrcli, perfect, great or small ?
•^^e^^^^^^S^b^
AYLOTT & JONES, 8, PATERNOSTER ROW.
TO WILLIAM ALLIX(;iL\M 69
although Millais tlicn had his plate ready to
illustrate a mystic story 1)\- him. Of course the
want of capital also told, and the j)oor Genu died,
but not without making- itself heard."
"After balancing- receipts and expenditure,"
writes Mr. W. M. Rossetti. "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.
For many years past it has been a literary curiosity,
fetching high fancy prices." For the four numbers
so much as ^^9 has been given. Mr. Hughes tells
me that one day when he was working among the
students at the Royal Academy, ]\Iunro brought in
the first number. It was handed round, and on all
sides jeered at. When it came to hini, he was
o-reatlv struck with it, above all with Mr. W. M.
Rossetti's sonnet on the title-page, which had a real
influence on his life. His admiration of it made
him known to Munro, and through him to Rossetti
and the other Prai^raphaelites.
Mr. Ruskin in his Lectures on ArchitcituTC and
Painting speaking of the P.R.B. in 1854, says: —
"Their fellow-students hiss them when they enter
the room."
70 DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI
XIV.
Sunday, 15 October \^i'6^^\
Dear Allingham,
What do you think ? Woohier is back.
Rather broader and stouter, and certainly looking
healthier, but unaltered otherwise. \Letter ini-
perfecf\ manner, which I expected perhaps to find
a little changed and sobered, but it is just the
same. William and I have spent last night and
this mornino- with him, and talked of all thino-s
and all friends, of yourself more than once, to
whom he sends friendly greetings.
It is jolly to have him again among us, and I
hope with good prospect of success before him.
As far as he can judge hitherto, he has a right
to think himself almost sure of the statue com-
mission of which I wrote to you, and if so he
will be set up for life, there can hardly be a
doubt. He is going to find a studio \Jcttcr iin-
pcrf€ct\ and there I trust we may all meet and
enjoy ourselves when you are next in London.
Hunt may be back too perhaps, and the old circle
meet again — poor Deverell excepted.
Now to speak of your volume. I have drawn
the Maids of E.M. [^E/Jiii Mere] once on the
wood, and find I have committed a stupid mistake
in not drawing the actions reversed, so that, when
TO WILLIAM ALLIXGHAM 71
printed, the fitrures will be left-handed. I ann
therefore going- to trace and draw it again on
another block, which I trust will soon be done,
and in Routledge's hands. I shall like, if I can
find time, to do a second drawing from some other
of the poems.
My time has lately been engrossed by the back-
ground of my modern subject, which I have been
painting out of doors at Chiswick — cold work these
last days, but much finer weather hitherto than I
dare to hope for again in all probability. It will
be a disappointment to me if I am baulked, alter
all, and cannot get done before the unnianageable
weather. I paint daily within earshot almost of
HoQ^arth's o-rave — a crood omen for one's modern
picture ! This work has left ine no time at all tor
anything else lately. Ruskin is back again, and
wrote to me, namino- a dav when he meant to
call, but I was obliged to write I could not be
at my rooms. He has written again since, saying
he wants to consult with me about plans for
"teaching the masons"; so you may soon expect
to find every man shoulder his hod, "with up-
turned fervid face and hair put back." I am
painting near the house of some old friends of
ours at Chiswick, the family of Mr. Keightley,
whom you have heard me name. They are Irish
people, and of course I introduced the So/^^'s.
72 DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI
Old K. was taken with the Fairies, and there
is a very nice girl who especially delights in
Aiolian Harp N'o. i, and dreamt your Dream
right through the night after reading it.
I can't make out why the Atitumn Eveninz
forms a section by itself in your list. I shall try
to call at Routledge's, and look at the MS., as
I have no doubt of a pleasure in store from the
new ones, though there do not seem to be many.
Hughes showed me some pretty and very simple
sketches he had made, and meant to propose to
R. for titles and sections and heads of pages.
He also showed me his picture of Orlando, which
he has immensely improved this year ; in fact,
made quite another thing of the background. I
trust Routledge means to do you and us justice
in the cuttinof of the blocks. I shall lecture him
about it, and tell him that if they are to be badly
done and I could know it beforehand, he should
not have one from me on any consideration. I
have really not been forgetting my blocks, but
the background painting has been peremptory and
impossible to defer.
Thanks for your kind suggestions and offers of
mediation as to printing some of my Italian poems
in a magazine. Erasers, if attainable, would be
the one I should prefer to any other. But I have
had no time to think about this vet since readino"
TO WILLIAM ALLINGHAM 73
your letter, aiul must answer at more leni^th next
time. Wlien you send me back the MSS, you
have, I think there will be another batch ready
copied for you. I am very anxious indeed to see
your annotations, and doubt not to profit by them.
Thanks also for your criticism on the SouiicL
The construction of those four lines is thus :
" Yet may I not forget that I was ware,
So journeying, of his face at intervals.
Some fiery bush with coruscating ' hair,
Where the whole land to its horizon falls ! "
Only the metre forced me to transpose. It is
meant to refer to the effect one is nearly sure to
see in passing" along a road at sunset, when the
sun glares in a radiant focus behind some low
bush or some hedge on the horizon of the
meadows. But it is obscure, I believe, though
if I were disposed to be stiff-necked, I might lug-
up William, to whom I have just showed the
sonnet, and who understood the line in question
at once. But I'll try to alter it — if worth working
at. In the hateful mechanical brick-painting I
have been at I have had time to make verses,
and have finished a ballad — professedly modern-
antique, of which I remember once telling you
the story as we were walking about Mrs. Orme's
garden. I'll copy it for you and inclose it with
' "? Has coruscating one or two r's." — -Note by Rossetti.
74 DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI
this, asking your severest criticism. I doubt my-
self whether it at all succeeds in its attempt.
However, I don't think it is finished yet, and if
any feature should suggest itself to you as \Ictter
imperfect] to the story or preferable, pray mention
it. I have purposely taken an unimportant phrase
here and there from the old things. I was doubting
whether it would not be better to make the im-
proper lord and lady slip into a new-made grave,
while wadine throuoh the churchyard, and be
drowned. This might make a good description
and conclusion, and I fear the thing is at present
almost too unpoetical in style. Tell me what you
think — or whether the present ending seems the
more or less hackneyed of the two.
I send you the last bit of Hunt received last
night. Let me have it again, please, at once, as
I must answer it soon for conscience' sake, as that
projected letter he writes that he was expecting
from me was never written, after all.
I think I remember your speaking to me of
Wutheriug Heights, long ago. I never read any
of Currer Bell. Is she half as good? I see by
the advertisements of Smith & Elder that \V. B.
Scott's Poems are out, and hope soon to get one
from him. He and his family have happily
escaped from any injury in that dreadful affair at
Newcastle.
TO WILLIAM ALLIXGHAM 75
Write soon, and with a better pen than this,
lest your letter should be a torment to write and
read. I lay awake this morninLi' \lcttcy i)uperfect\
with W'oolner till 5 o'clock talking- of old times,
so sleepiness now must account lor stuj)idity.
Yours always D. G. R.
[On the margin of the first page of the letter
the following is written :] " Rossetti kindly gives
me this border t(_) myself, which I use to say, what
you of course know, that I shall rejoice to meet
and ha\"e a yarn and talk o\-er the world's \Jctter
imp6i'fecP\ ours and our friends' prospects. I never
thanked you for the sweet little poems you sent
me 2:^ years ago at Plymouth.
"Your, Dear Allingham.
"Thus. Woolxer."
Notes ox XI\^
Rossetti, writing in the autumn of 1853. says : —
" Woolner has sent an Australian newspaper. It
says that ' ^Ir. W'oolner is a gentleman of very
affable and agreeable manners.' which is rather
rich." On this Mr. \\ . ^L Rossetti remarks that
" Woolner was much more laudable for sturdy in-
dependence and resolute decision than tor any-
thing- to be classed under the term ' affable.' "
" For sculpture, " writes Mr. Holman Hunt.
" Rossetti in pri\-ate expressed little regard ; he
•j6 DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI
professed admiration for the minds of many men
enu-ao-ed in it, but he could scarcely understand
their devotion to work which seemed in modern
hands so cold and nieaningless, and which was so
limited in its power of illustration."
" Poor Deverell " had died a few months earlier.
" He was." ^Ir. Arthur Hughes tells me. " a manly
young- fellow, with a feminine beauty added to his
manliness ; exquisite manners and a most affec-
tionate disposition. He died early, after painting
two or three pictures. Had he lived he would
have been a poetic painter, but not a strong one.
Millais, hard-working and ambitious though he
was, used to sit hour after hour by his bedside
reading to him." I have seen him described by
one of the artist set in a letter to Allingham as
"little Deverell. with his soft, effeminate, alluring
face." W. 13. Scott wrote of him as "a youth, like
the rest of them, of great but impatient ability, and
of so lovely yet manly a character of face, with its
finely-formed nose, dark eyes and eyebrows, and
young silky moustache, that it was said ladies had
ofone hurriedlv round bv side streets to catch
another sight of him." He sat for the page i
Madox Brown's Chai-icer at the Court of Edward
III. At the sale this summer at Christie's of
Mr. Leathart's collection his picture of A Lady
with a Birdcage fetched only six guineas.
" To the best of my recollection." writes Mr. \\\
rM. Rossetti, •• the very first woodcut my brother
actually produced was The Maids of Elfin Merc.''
n
TO WILLIAM ALLIXCiIIAM n
This inexperience would accoLint lor his "stupid
mistake."
Rossetti's "modern subject" is the picture called
Found. "It represents a rustic lover, a drover
[a farmer?], who finds his old sweatheart at a low-
depth of degradation, both from vice and penury,
in the streets of London. He endeavours to lift
her as she crouches on the pavement." Madox
Brown sat for the head of the man. It was the
brick wall in this picture that was painted at
Chiswick. The calf and cart, as the next letter
shows, were painted at Finchley. "This picture,"
writes Mr. W. M. Rossetti, " was a source of
lifelong- vexation to my brother and to the gentle-
men — some three or four in succession — who com-
missioned him to tinish it. It was nearly completed,
but not quite, towards the close of his life." In
1859 a commission was given him for the picture
at three hundred and tw^enty guineas. On Feb-
ruary 4, 1 88 1, he wrote: — Found progresses
rapidly." " There is no knowing (he once said)
in such a lottery as painting, where all things
have a chance against (jne — weather, stomach,
temper, model, paint, patience, self-esteem, self-
abhorrence, and the devil into the bargain."
The epitaph on Hogarth's gra\e was composed
by Garrick, "working upon" some lines furnished
to him by Johnson.
Raskin's "plans for ' teaching the masons,' " are
explained in the next letter.
That "upturned fervid face and hair put back"
is from Sordtd/o, ed., 1885, p. 214.
78 DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI
Mr. Keightley was " the historian and author
of The Fairy Mythology, a book," writes Mr. W.
M. Rossetti, " which formed one of the leadino-
deHo"hts of our childhood."
The Dream which the girl " dreamt right
through " is as follows : —
" I heard the dogs howl in the moonlight night,
And I went to the window to see the sight ;
All the dead that ever I knew
Going one by one and two by two.
On they pass'd and on they pass'd ;
Townsfellows all from first to last ;
Born in the moonlight of the lane,
And quench'd in the heavy shadow again.
Schoolmates, marching as when we play'd
At soldiers once — but now more staid ;
Those were the strangest sights to me
Who were drown'd, I knew, in the awful sea.
Straight and handsome folk ; bent and weak too ;
And some that I loved, and gasp'd to speak to ;
Some but a day in their churchyard bed ;
And some that I had not known were dead.
A long, long crowd — where each seem'd lonely.
And yet of them all there was one, one only,
That rais'd a head, or look'd my way ;
And she seem'd to linger, but might not stay.
How long since I saw that fair pale face !
Ah, mother dear, might I only place
My head on thy breast, a moment to rest,
While thy hand on my tearful cheek were prest !
TO WILLIAM ALLINGHAM 79
On, on, a moving bridge they made
Across the moon-stream, from shade to sliade,
Voung and old, women and men :
Many long-forgot, but remember'd then.
And first there came a bitter laughter ;
And a sound of tears a moment after ;
And then a music so lofty and gay.
That every morning, day by day,
I strive to recall it if I may."
An Aittumu Evening, as it is printed, does not
" form a section by itself" any more than any other
poem in the collection.
^Ir. Arthur Hughes's Orlando is mentioned
again in Letter XX.
Into Frasers Mao;a.zinc Rossetti was not likely to
find admittance. The Table Talk of Shirley shows
how hostile John Parker, the editor, was to the
new school of poetry. Some six years later
Rossetti tried, through Ruskin, to get some of
his poems published in The Cornhill Magazine,
but nothing came ot it.
Mr. W. ^I. Rossetti has done much to smooth
the reader's course through his brother's sonnets in
his Prose Paraphrase of the House of Life in his
work entitled Dante Gabriel Rossetti as Designer
and Writer. " Xot long ago." he writes, "one
of his most intimate friends put it to me pointedly
in the phrase, 'They cannot be understood.' I
.should like them to be understood ; and, as I
appear to myself to understand the great majority
So DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI
of their bulk and contents, I have thought it not
inconsistent with respect to my brother's memory,
and with a desire to extend the right estimate of
his writing, that I should take it upon me to
expound their meaning."
The ballad which Rossetti had finished was
Stratton Water. Fifteen years later he added a
few stanzas.
He wrote to his sister on November 8, 1853 : —
" Last night Miss Barbara Smith invited us all to
lunch with her on Sunday ; and perhaps I shall go,
as she is quite -a. jolly felloiv — which was Thackeray's
definition of Mrs. Orme." On this Mr. W. M.
Rossetti remarks, " Mrs. Orme, whom Thackeray
called 'a jolly fellow,' was the sister-in-law of Mr.
Coventry Patmore. Hers was a rich abundant
nature, only partially indicated in Thackeray's
phrase, for her whole type of character was most
essentially that of a woman and not a man ; among
many kind friends of my youth she was nearly
the kindest of all."
For so young a man, Rossetti had been strangely
careless of the talk of the day. He had never
read any of Charlotte Bronte's stories, and yet he
was but nineteen years old when Jane Eyre was
published. I well remember, boy though I was
at the time, the stir it made. I remember, too,
the affectation of a prude who, in my father's house,
when a man came into the parlour, hid the book
away under the sofa cushion, as imfit for a spinster's
readino'.
TO WILLIAM ALLIXCillAM 8i
W. B. Scotts new volume of Pocins is mentioned
in the next letter. He was head of the Newcastle
School of Design. On October 6th of this year
there had been "a great destruction of lite and
propertx" in that town and Gateshead, b}' the ex-
plosion of vast st(jres of combustibles."
XV.
FiNCHLEV, Xoveinber, 1854.
Mv DEAR AlLIXGHAM.
Your last letter has been carried carefully
in my pocket all this time, with the view of its
being- answered, as it ought to have been long ere
now. To-night I search my pockets tor it at last
for that immediate purpose, and of course it has
somehow flown. I hope I shall not ha\e forgotten
anything that ought to be spoken of in this. One
thing I must not forget is to sav h( )w \-erv busv and
bothered I have been, and to beg that may plead
my excuse for delay, not only with the letter, but
with the niore important wood-block, which is not
yet sent in. It would have been so before now,
but that staying out here, I am prevented from
working on it from nature except by flying visits
to London on Sundays, and I ani loth to finish it
without nature. The delay in this has kept me
82 DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI
from writing, as I wanted to say it was clone, as
I trust it now will be very soon. I shall like, if at
all practicable, to do another, but meanwhile
Hughes is drawing the last block to prevent
disappointment, and my second, if clone, must take
its chance with the publishers as an additional
illustration. I hope, above all, they mean to have
the drawings well cut. F'or my part I should like
to tell them that they had better in my own case
give the price of the draiving as an extra bonus
to the engraver, and that then they must let me see
a proof as soon as cut — the thing to be cancelled
altogether if not approved of by me. I expect this
might partly impress upon them that some care was
necessary, and that there was a reputation of some
sort in some quarters that I had to take care of.
Do you see any objection to my following this
plan ? I feel it both pleasure and credit to be
associated at all with your volume, and should not
like to cut too sorry a figure there, as it is a book
which every one will be sure to see.
I have had a hasty look (such as my leisure
lately has left possible) through your MS., much of
which is as exquisite as can be or ever has been
— pure beauty and delight. The Queen of the
Forrest, Hughes tells me, is to be withdrawn, as
capable of fuller treatment. I am quite of your
mind about it, and chiefly because it is already so
TO WILLIAM ALLINGHAM 83
peculiarly lovel)' as to be worthy of any elaboration.
The .Eoliaii Harp in long" lines is equal to any of
that series, and I should have many things to say
of man\- others, if the IMS. were only by me. I
must write of them when they are printed, and
I hope talk of them too with you by that time.
You mention having sent a copy of Day and Night
Songs to Ruskin : did you remember that I had
already given him one } I trust he and you will
meet when next in London. He has been back
about a month or so, looking very well and in
excellent spirits. Perhaps you know that he has
joined Maurice's scheme for a Working Mens
College, which has now begun to be put in operation
at 31, Red Lion Square. Ruskin has most liberally
undertaken a drawing-class, which he attends every
Thursday evening, and he and I had a long confab
about plans for teaching. He is most enthusiastic
about it, and has so infected me that I think of
offering an evening weekly for the same purpose,
when I am settled in town again. xAt present I am
hard at work out here on my picture, painting the
calf and cart. It has been fine clear weather,
though cold, till now, but these two days the rain
has set in (for good, I fear), and driven me to my
wits' end, as even were I inclined to paint notwith-
standini!-, the calf would be like a hearth-rug- after
half an hour's rain ; but I suppose 1 must turn out
84 DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI
to-morrow and try. A very disagreeable part of
the business is that I am being" obHged to a farmer
whom I cannot pay for his trouble in providing calf
and all, as he insists on being good natured. As
for the calf, he kicks and fights all the time he
remains tied up, which is 5 or 6 hours daily, and
the view of life induced at his early age by
experience in art appears to be so melancholy that
he punctually attempts suicide by hanging himself
at 2)2 daily p.m. At these times I have to cut
him down, and then shake him up and lick him
like blazes. There ^'s a pleasure in it, my dear
fellow : the Smithfield drovers are a kind of opium-
eaters at it, but a moderate practitioner might
perhaps sustain an argument. I hope soon to be
back at my rooms, as I have been quite long
enough at my rhuines. (The above joke did
service for MacCrac's benefit last night.)
Before I came here I had been painting ever so
long on a brick wall at Chiswick which is in my
foreground. By the bye, that boating sketch of
yours is really good in its way, and would bear
showing' to Ruskin as an original Turner — and
perhaps selling to Windus afterwards.
Many thanks for your minute criticism on my
ballad, which was just of the kind 1 wanted. Not,
of course, that a British poet is going to knock
under on all points ; — accordingly, I take care to
TO WILLIAM ALLlXCilLAM <S5
disagree from noli in Narioiis respects — as rei^ards
abruptnesses, improbabilities, prosaicisms, coarse-
nesses, and other cssrs and isms, not more
prominent, I think, in my production than in its
models. As to dialect there is much to be said,
but I doubt much whether, as you say, mine is
more Scotticised than many or even the majority
of genuine old ballads. If the letter and poem were
here, I might perhaps bore you with counter-
analysis. But in very many respects I shall benefit
greatly by your criticisms, if ever I think the ballad
worth workino- on arain, without which it would
certainly not be worth printing.
I have read Patmore's poem which he sent me,
and about which I might say a good deal of all
kinds, if I felt up to it to-night ; but I don't. He
was going to publish (and had actually printed the
title) with the pseudonym of C. K. Dighton ; but
was induced at the last moment to cancel the title,
as well as a marvellous note at the end, accounting
for some part of the poem being taken out of his
former book by some story of a butterman and
a piece of waste paper, or something of that sort !
(I see my description is as lucid as the note.)
Did you see a paragraph in the ///. Loud. News
headed /Americans at Florence, and giving a longish
account of a backwoods poem called The N'eiv
Pastoral, to be immediately published by Read ?
86 DAXTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI
Have you seen anything of \\\ B. Scott's volume?
I may be able to send it you sooner or later, if you
like. The title-page has a vignette with the words
Poems by a Painter printed very gothically indeed.
A copy being sent to old Carlyle, he did not read
any of the poems, but read the title " Poems b}"
a Printer." He wrote off at once to the imaginary
printer to tell him to stick to his types and give up
his metaphors. W'oolner saw the book lying at
Carlyle's, heard the story, and told him of his
mistake, at which he had the decency to seem
a little annoyed, as he knows Scott, and esteems
him and his family. Now that we are allied with
Turkey, we might think seriously of the bastinado
for that old man. on such occasions as the above.
This is the last of Brown's note-paper (I am
staying with him here), so I must leave some other
thing till next time, especially as it is fearfully late.
Miss Siddal is moderately well and making
designs, etc.
Yours affectionately,
D. G. ROSSETTI.
P.S. — Hughes asked me for Millais' address from
[? for] you. The surest way I know of reaching
him is to address to him at M. Halliday. Esq.,
3. Robert St., xAdelphi.
TO WILLIAM ALLIXGILAM 87
NOTKS ON X\^
The manuscript poems throuL^h which Rossetti
had a hasty look form the second series of Day and
N^ioJit Songs. The Queen of the Forest was
pubHshed in Flower Pieces, a \olume which bears
the following' inscription : " To L^ante Gabriel
Rossetti. whose early friendship brightened manv
days ot m\' lite, antl whoni 1 ne\'er can forg-et.
\V. A."
In Preterita (volume iii.) Ruskin thus traces
"the story of his relations with the Working Men's
College : — ' I knew of its masters only the Principal,
F. D. Maurice, and my own friend Rossetti. It is
to be remembered ot Rossetti with loving honour,
that he was the only one of our modern painters
who taught disciples for love of them. He was
really not an Englishman, but a great Italian
tormented in the Inferno of London ; doing the
best he could, and teaching the best he could ; but
the ' could ' shortened by the strength of his animal
passions, without anv trained control, or guiding-
faith.
" I loved Frederick Maurice, as everv one did
who came near him ; and have no doubt he did
all that was in him to do of good in his dav.
Which could by no means be said of Rossetti and
me. . . . Maurice, in all his addresses to us,
dwelt mainly on the simple function of a college as
a collection or collation of friendly persons — not
in the least as a place in which such and such things
88 DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI
were to be taught and others denied ; such and such
conduct vowed, and other such and such abjured.
"So the college went on — collecting, carpentering,
sketching, Bible criticising, etc., virtually with no
head ; but only a clasp to the strap of its waist,
and as many heads as it had students. The leaven
of its affectionate temper has gone far ; but how
far also the leaven of its pride, and defiance of
everything above it, nobody quite knows. . . .
And finally, in this case, and many more, I have
very clearly ascertained that the only proper school
for workmen is of the work their fathers bred them
to, under masters able to do better than any of
their men, and with common principles of honesty
and the fear of God to guide the firm.'"
Rossetti wrote to W. B. Scott about this time : —
"You think I have turned humanitarian perhaps,
but you should see my class for the model ! None
of your Freehand Di-awing- Books used ! The
British mind is brought to bear on the British
vmo- at once, and with results that would astonish
you." Of his method of teaching I have received
the following account from a drawing-master who
was one of the students of the college : —
" I was not exactly a pupil of Rossetti's, although
I was of Ruskin's. The classes were on the same
Moor, and there was constant communication be-
tween them. We saw the work done, and discussed
the methods and incidents. Rossetti began at once
with colour, not with light and shade. At a time
when this was heresy, when even Mr. Ruskin
TO WILLIAM ALLIXGHAM 89
objected, Rossetti o-ave his students colour, and
full colour, to be,Li"in with. Most of them could
draw a little; but even that would not have
stopped him. Draw or not, he gave them colour.
A teacher is supposed to analyze his subject, and
prepare for its difficulties b)- giving- beforehand
its elements in a simple form, one at a time.
Rossetti put a Ijird or a boy before his class, and
said, 'Do it ' ; and the spirit of the teacher was
of more value than any system. I look back to
those times with great pleasure ; they ha\-e helped
me much. Only about a month since a new
syllabus for drawing for elementary schools was
issued bv the G(jvernment, in which children are
allowed to use colour as soon as they begin.
Here to-day we ha\'e, forty years afterwards,
Rossetti's principle acknowledged by the Govern-
ment. That it did not come direct from Rossetti.
but by another and independent course, is some
evidence in its favour.
"Asrain, Rossetti often brought the works he
was engaged on, in their incomplete state, for
us to see. I remember some of them, and here
again he helped me years afterwards ; but he
did not generally get the class to do what he
was doing himself. I think he should have
required imaginative work from all the class, —
pictures from their own imagination ot scenes
from poetry, story, and myths."
On March 19, 1858, Madox Brown recorded in
his diary: — "At night went with Gabriel to the
90 DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI
Working" Men's College. There was a public
meeting, and we heard Professor Maurice and
Ruskin spouting. Ruskin was as eloquent as ever,
and as wildly popular with the men. He flattered
Rossetti hugely, and spoke of Munro in conjunction
with Baron Marochetti, as the two noble sculptors
of England whom all the aristocracy patronised."
Towards November, 1858. Madox Brown took
over Rossetti's class.
The following account has been given me of
Rossetti's residence at Finchley while he was
working at Foimd. He had for some time been
painting in Madox Brown's studio in town, when
his friend took a small cottage at Finchley for
himself, wife, and baby. Besides the kitchen it
had but two rooms, a parlour and a bedroom.
Rossetti wanted to paint a white calf. Brown,
thinking- that he w^ould take only a day or two
over such a piece of w^ork, asked him to visit
him. There was, he said, a farmyard on the
other side of the road, where there were several
calves ; as for a bed, he could have a mattress
on the floor of the parlour. Rossetti, who had
never painted a calf before, found greater diffi-
culties in the subject than either he or his friend
expected. Moreover, his ideas of the picture grew.
Lono- before the sketch was finished the calf had
grown too big, and another had to be provided.
The visit was prolonged, to the great discomfort
of the little family. Brown, who was most good-
natured, took it all good-humouredly, though he
TO WILLIAM ALLINGIIAM 91
would now aiul them complain to a Iricnd that
Gabriel would sit up half the nii4"ht talking" poetry,
and lie half the day in bed in their one sitting-room,
excluding- Mrs. Brown and the baby.
Before Rossetti went to Chiswick to paint the
brick wall he wrote to his mother : — " Have you or
Christina any recollection of an eligible and ac-
cessible brick wall ? I should want to get up and
paint it early in the mornings, as the light ought
to be that of dawn. It should be not too countrified
(yet beautiful in colour), as it is to represent a city
wall. A certain modicum of moss would therefore
be admissible, but no prodigality of grass, weeds,
ivy, etc."
Windus, w^io was to buy Allingham's sketch, was
a retired man of business, who lived in the village
in which I spent my early days. He had inherited
a fortune, it was said, from an uncle after whom he
was named, the proprietor of a cordial by which
many fretful infants had been soothed into the
next world. He had a fine collection of the early
Praeraphaelite pictures. Whether he had any real
knowledge of painting' I do not know. I have
rarely seen any one who, to judge by external
appearances, was farther removed from poetry or
art. The following anecdote I have from my
wife : — " I one day took some friends from the
country to see Mr. Windus's collection of paintings
in his very pretty old-fashioned house on Totten-
ham Green. He was one of the earliest buyers
of the P. R. B. work, and in one of the quaint
92 DAXTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI
panelled drawing-rooms Holman Hunt's Scapegoat
hung over the fireplace, with one of Turner's
drawings in his latest style on each side of it. and
Millais's Vale of Rest on the opposite wall. Four
rooms were thickly hunLC with pictures, and we
found enough to keep us interested for some time.
Before leavinor, ' Let us cro back into the first room,'
I said, 'and have one more look at the Scapegoat.'
We did so, and then I gazed for some time at the
Turner drawings, trying very hard to make out
what they were about, and feeling that I was very
dull of comprehension. " It's of no use ! ' I ex-
claimed at last : ' I cannot see what it means !
Those lovely shades of orange and blue and grey
are beautiful, but I cannot for the life of me tell
what they are meant to represent.' ' That only
shows that vou know nothing at all about it I '
said a squeaky little voice o\'er my shoulder ; and
lookino- round, I saw that the owner of the
pictures had come in, unperceived, and had over-
heard mv remark. "
Rossetti, in spite of his parentage (of his grand-
parents, three were Italian, and only one was
English), speaks of himself in this letter as "a
British poet." " He liked England and the
English," writes his brother, " better than any
other country and nation. He was in many
respects an Englishman in grain, and even a
prejudiced Englishman. He was quite as ready
as other Britons to reckon to the discredit of
Frenchmen, and generally of foreigners, a certain
TO WILLIAM ALLI\(;M.\M 93
shallow and frothy dcmonstrativcness ; loo ready,
I ah\ays thought."
Patniore's poem was The Angel in the House.
He wrote to Allingham in October. 1854: — "You
will receive in a day or two a copy of a Poem by
' C. K. Dighton.' under which name I wish, if
possible, to pass for the present — chiefly because
the weight of the Times attack on my father's
book has fallen on me — even Punch abusing' me
bv mv full name on account of it. Onlv two or
three of the P. R. B. coterie are in the secret."
His full name was Coventry Kearsey Dighton
Patmore. In the Ti?nes of August 19, 1854,
there was a very long and unfavourable review
of My Friends and Acquaintance, being memorials,
mind portraits, and personal recollections of deceased
celebrities of the nineteenth century. B\' T. G.
Patmore. There is, I believe, no mention of
Co\'entry Patmore in Punch.
Thomas Buchanan Read was an American |K)et,
and a painter by profession as well, author of
Rui-al Poenis, Lays, and Ballads. He died in
1872. "He was a curiously small man in stature.
and had a pleasant little wife on exactlv a corres-
ponding scale." He had suffered with Rossetti
under the unjust law of distraint. Mr. \\\ M.
Rossetti wrote to Allingham on August 10, 1850: —
" As for Read, he left on Friday week in sc^mething
of a hurrv and confusion, owing to an execution
for rent put into Gabriel's lodgings on the fugitive
landlord's account ; wherebv Read's trunk, etc.
94 DAXTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI
were, inter alia, laid under embargo ; indeed, he
has been compelled to leave them behind."
Rossetti's landlord was a dancing-master, "who
failed to pay his rent. xAccording to the oppressive
system of those days, the goods of his sub-tenant
were seized to make good the default. Dante
and I," continues his brother, "carried away a
considerable number of books. The bulk of his
small belongings was confiscated, and appeared
to his eyes no more."
xAccording to Mrs. Howitt, Rossetti had come
across some hrics in the Philadelphia Courier,
written from Hazeldell on the Schuylkill. " I
was so delio-hted with them," he one dav said to
Allingham, "that 1 sent to Philadelphia for all
the papers containing the poems from Hazeldell,
cut them out and pasted them in a book." Alling-
ham asked Read, whom he had met at the
Howitts, whether he knew the unknown poet's
name. As he spoke of Rossetti's admiration of
the lyrics, " Read's face became crimson and his
entire form agitated. ' I am the writer of those
poems,' he replied with tears in his eyes." He
had at first seemed to the Howitts "a timid
nonentity, but we found him," Mrs. Howitt
continues, "a verv o-enerous, o-rateful voung man,
possessing much original power and fine discrimina-
tion of art. At the close of 1870 we met him
once more in Rome, where he was then residing
with his gentle and wealthy wife (his second wife),
and dispensing hospitality with a most lavish hand."
TO WILLIAM ALLIXGHAM 95
Carlyle's blunder about W. B. Scott's book was
the stranger as the title-page is as clear as a
title-page can be. He could have looked only
at the frontispiece. When he found out his mistake
he wrote to Scott poetry which keeps showering on
his head very fast. He ought to put up the
umbrella of utter neglect, and talks of doing so.
He praised the P. R. B. designs to his poems in
a general way, but cares nothing about the whole
affair." This mention of Coniston reminds me
how, in my boyhood, I one day heard the curate
of that village tell some brother clergymen that he
could not think of knowing Mr. Tennyson, as the
poet never went to church.
The first of the two passages in The Angel in
tlie House, which Rossetti praised is the following: —
TO WILLIAM ALLIXGHAM 105
" Whene'er I come where ladies are,
How sad soever I was before,
Though Hke a ship frost-bound and far
Withheld in ice from the ocean's roar.
Third-wintered in that dreadful dock
With stiffen'd cordage, sails decay'd,
A crew that care for calm and shock
Alike, too dull to be dismay'd.
Yet if I come where ladies are.
How sad soever I was before,
Then is my sadness banish'd far,
And I am like that ship no more ;
Or like that ship if the ice-field splits,
Burst by the sudden Polar spring.
And all thank (lod with their warming wits,
And kiss each other, and dance and sing.
And hoist fresh sails, that make the breeze
Blow them along the liquid sea,
Out of the North, where life did freeze,
Into the haven where they would be."
How "resolute a poet" Patmore was is shown
by the following passage in a letter he wrote to
Allingham more than four years earlier : — "I am
working hard at my Poem, and average six lines
or so a day, which will bring the affair about in
six years or so ! "
Hawthorne, who met him on the last day of
1857, recorded in his note-book: — " The Angel in
the House is a most beautiful and original poem ;
but I doubt whether the generality of English
people are capable of appreciating it. I told Mr.
Patmore that I thought his popularity in America
would be greater than at home, and he said that it
was already so ; and he appeared to estimate highly
io6 DAXTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI
his American fame, and also our o-eneral orift of
quicker and more subde recognition of genius than
the English public."
The Committee was that mentioned in Letter
X., which was to report on Woolner's "com-
petency " to make a statue of W. C. Wentworth.
Of Thomas Seddon some account will be found
in notes on Letters XXXI I L and XXXIV.
" Poor North " was William North, whom Mr.
\\\ M. Rossetti describes as "an eccentric literary
man, not without a spice of genius, of whom we
then [about 1849] saw a goodish deal — author of
Anti-Coningsby and The Infinite Republic. He
emigrated to the United States, and in 1854 com-
mitted suicide."
The literary editor of the Leader was G. H.
Lewes. It is recorded in the Life of Anne Gil-
chi'ist that Carlyle one day speaking to him about
that journal, "asked, 'When will those papers on
Positivism come to an end ? ' 'I can assure you
they are making a great impression at Oxford,'
says Lewes. ' Ah ! I never look at them, it's so
much blank paper to me. I looked into Comte
once ; found him to be one of those men who go
up in a balloon and take a lighted candle to look
at the stars.'" The papers on Comte were by
Lewes.
Of Hannay's review of the eighteenth edition
of Provcj'bial Philosophy in the Athenceuiii for
December 30, 1854, the following is a specimen: —
" Probably Mr. Tupper's most distinguished talent
TO WILLL'\M ALLINGHAM 107
is a certciin judicious knowino-ness, which enables
him to turn his labours to o-ood pecuniary account.
So at least it would appear from an advertisement
at the end of this 'eighteenth edition,' where a
French version of it is ' hi^-hly recommended for
schools in conjunction with the English edition ! '
Mr. Tupper, in the frenzies of his inspiration, has
still, it seems, an eye to the oven, and mounts the
tripod to heave in coals at the kitchen window."
Of Crabbe I only find one mention in D. G.
Rosscttis Family Letters. WVitino- on October 8,
1849, to Mr. W. M. Rossetti, who had written a
poem entitled Mrs. Holmes Grey, he says:— "Its
story is more like Crabbe than any other poet I
know of ; not lacking no small share of his harsh
reality — less healthy and at times more poetical."
It was, I suppose, Crabbe's "harsh reality" which
so attracted Rossetti.
Rossetti's "last sonnet," under the title of A
Dark Day, is No. LXVIII. in Ballads and
Sonnets. The only important alterations are in
the tenth and eleventh lines, which now stand : —
" Along the hedgerows of this journey shed,
Lie by Time's grace till night and sleep may soothe."
io8 DAXTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI
XVII.
Saturday. March i8, 1855.
Dear Allingham.
I am goiiiLi" to write a most vexatious
letter — however, the news cannot be more so to
you than to me, and its extreme disagreeableness
has prevented my writing it before. That wood-
block ! Dalziel has made such an incredible mull
of it in the cutting that it cannot possibly appear.
The fault, however, is no doubt in great measure
mine — not of deficient care, for I took the very
greatest, but of over-elaboration of parts, perplexing
them for the engraver. However, some (jt the fault
is his too, as he has not always followed my lines,
but a rather stupid preconceived notion of his
about intended "severity" in the design, which
has resulted in an euLiravino- as hard as a nail, and
yet flabby and vapid to the last degree. In short,
it is such a pnjduction as could give no idea ot
anything like care or skill on the part ot the
desiorner — of anvthing but the most conceited at-
tempt of a beginner to be grand and "severe."
Before I sent in my drawing, however, to the
engraver. I consulted a friend — Clavton. who has
drawn much on wood — as to whether it were done
in the right way for cutting, and he assured me it
was not only adaptable but remarkably so : cer-
TO WILLIAM ALLIXGHAM 109
t;iinlv I kept every line as distinct as I could ; and
on this account Clayton was of opinion that it was
very much more the thing for the purpose than
the drawings made by Hughes, which, however,
turns out a cc^nplete mistake, as Hughes's draw-
ings, also cut by Dalziel, have come, with one
exception, quite remarkablv well. Three or four
of them are most beautitul designs, and will be
worthy of your book. Before sending in the
block I took the precaution to write to Routledge
that, if not approved by me when cut. it must not
appear, and Dalziel himself called on me before
cutting it. and understood this, so that I must
trust they will act accordingly, as I have written
to Dalziel since also. If you like, I will send you
the proof of it which I have, though at cost of
considerable humiliation to myself, as you cannot
possibly imagine by looking at it. even after this
letter, how far different it is from my drawing —
Hughes, Boyce. Woolner, and Clayton, who saw
it before the cutting would tell you this. I would
enclose the proof now, but really don't like to,
before you've been prepared for the horror of it.
All this is of course most vexatious for you
and for me, especially after the delay which was
made for the sake of this abortive attempt, ^[ais
que /aire ? I have done my best and failed. As
things have turned out, you could not wish it to
no DAXTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI
be published more than I do, for it would disgrace
your book as much as my capacities.
Let me try to devote the rest of this second
sheet to more pleasant news — news which would
compensate me for a hundred bothers, and will,
I am sure, go far to put you in a good temper,
even after I have gone so far to try it.
About a week ai^-o, Ruskin saw and bouo-ht on
the spot every scrap of designs hitherto produced
by Miss Siddall. He declared that they were far
better than mine, or almost than any one's, and
seemed quite wild with delio^ht at o-ettino- them.
He asked me to name a price for them, after
asking and hearing that they were for sale ; and
I, of course, considerino' the immense advantage
of their getting them into his hands, named a very
low price, ^25, which he declared to be too low
even for a low price, and increased to ^30. He
is going to have them splendidly mounted and
bound together in gold ; and no doubt this will
be a real opening for her, as it is already a great
assistance and encourao-ement. He has since
written her a letter, which I enclose, and which,
as you see, promises further usefulness. She is
now doing the designs wanted. Pray, after read-
ing IT, ENXLOSE IT AND RETURN IT TO ME AT ONCE, as
I want much to have it by me and show to one or
two friends ; and accompany it with a word or two
''m^-.
ItT^ ^ ' '^ '^^^^!:
'/!'
A DESIGN BY MISS SIDDAL.
[To face page ill.
TO WILLIAM ALLINGHAM in
as I want to know that yon are not qnitc disgusted
with mc on acconnt ot that unluck\" jol). Ruskin's
praise is beginning to bear fruit already. I wrote
about it to Woohier, who has been staying for a week
or two with the Tennysons ; and they, hearing that
several of Miss Siddal's designs were from Tenny-
son, and being told about Ruskin, etc., wish her
exceedingly to join in the illustrated edition ; and
Mrs. T. wrote immediateh^ to Moxon about it,
declaring that she had rather pay for Miss S.'s
designs herself than not ha\'e them in the book.
There is only one damper in this affair, and that
is the lesson as to the difficulty of wood-drawing
which I am still wincing under ; but she and I
must adopt a simpler method, and then I hope
for better luck. All this will, I know, o"ive vou
real pleasure, so I write it at such length.
By the bye. Miss Siddal reminded me after the
sale of the design, which was my doing and quite
unexpected, that we owe you a compensation, as
one of them, the two nigger girls playing to the
lovers, belonged to you, which I had, I am
ashamed to say, forgotten, but remembered when
she named it. She means to do another and
better one for you, from one of your own poems,
and meanwhile apologises with me for the mistake.
Yours affectionately,
D. G. ROSSETTI.
112 DAXTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI
Notes ox XVII.
" My brother," says Mr. \\\ 'M. Rossetti, " was
exceedingly (I think overmuch) cUssatisliecl with
the wood-cutting of the design of T/ie Maids of
Elfin-Mere^ In a letter written a few months
later Rossetti said : "It used to be by me till it
became the exclusive work of Dalziel, who cut it.
I was resolved to cut it out. but Allino'ham would
not, so I can only wish Dalziel had the credit as
well as the authorship." Dalziel said to Mr.
Huorhes : " How is one to eno-rave a drawinof
that is partly in ink. partly in pencil, and partly
in red chalk?" "He took," Mr. Hughes tells
me, "a great deal of trouble; but Rossetti was
as impatient as a genius usually is. He wanted
to crowd more into a picture than it could hold."
Of J. R. Clayton I find mention in the following-
entry made by Madox Brown in his journal at
the beginning of 1856: — "The room was too full
to talk, and Bill with a man named Clayton,
jawed so nauseously about Ruskin and art. that
I felt quite disgusted and said nothing." It was
probably not so much art as Ruskin which made
the "jaw" so nauseous. His constant silence about
Brown's pictures sank deep into the painter's soul.
Mr. W. M. Rossetti, writing of a period a few
weeks later than the date of this letter, says : —
" 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
TO WILLIAM ALLINGHAM 113
things, and by his heroic prose. He wanted to
effect one of two plans for Miss Siddal's advantage :
either to purchase all her drawings one by one, as
they should be produced, or else to settle on her
an annual / i 50, he taking in exchange her various
works up to that value. . . . This latter plan was
carried into actual effect by May 3. 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." None of her
designs were included in the illustrated edition of
Tennvson.
XVIII.
Blackfriars Bridge,
[^Posinnij'k, March 22, 1855].
Dear Allingham,
I have been looking at the mangled
remains of my drawing again by the light of your
friendly letter, but really can only see it, in its
present state, as a conceited-looking failure, and as
to the execution, it is on a par with woodcut
"Executions" in general; only in such cases the
"copy of verses" ought to be made to match.
My wish was, and is, to make you a small water-
colour, or pen and ink drawing, of the subject,
as I should feel pleasure in doing it, and in your
having it, in some shape ; and that, since we cannot
9
114 DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI
hang the engraver, the drawing, at any rate, should
receive no quarter. By the bye, I have written to
Dalziel, and though my letter was not indited, at
a severe crisis of punning, it seems to have treated
the subject in a manner to make him crusty, as he
has never answered.
I showed the proof yesterday to Woolner, who
saw the orio'inal drawino- and he was as shocked
as myself Nevertheless, I am not wholly unim-
pressed by your unprejudiced view of it, I confess.
Moreover, it would be possible to improve it a
good deal, I believe — not by adding shadows,
which, though very advisable (as in the finger you
mention) would not be practicable ; but by cutting
out lines, by which means the human character
might be partially substituted for the oyster and
goldfish cast of features, and other desirable changes
effected. On getting your letter I marked parts
of the proof with white, and find something might
probably be done. But first I should like to show
the whitened proof to one or two friends, and take
their opinion as to whether, even if the changes
were properly made, the thing could possibly be
allowed to come out. I write to you before doing
this, as I cio not wish to delay answering. I confess
I was most sincerely of opinion that, as I said,
you would have an equal horror with myself at its
appearing in your poems. At any rate I cannot
TO WILLIAM ALLINGHAM 115
at present conceive of its beini^ brought to any-
state in which my name could be put to it. much as
I should like my name to appear in your book. But
the water-colour substitute would be the best.
Perhaps before this reaches you I shall get from
you Ruskin's letter to Miss S , but if you have
not posted it before, pray do so at once on receiving
this, as I think I may want it. Ruskin's interest
in her continues unabated, and he is most desirous
of benetiting her in any way in his power, and of
her becoming a frequent visitor at his house. Some
thoroughly fine day she and I are to pay him our
first visit together.
Now to answer your question about Dr. Polidori.
The fact of his suicide does not, unfortunately,
admit of a doubt, though the verdict on the inquest
was one of natural death ; but this was a partly
pardonable insincerity, arising from pity for my
grandfather's gfreat crrief, and from a schoolfellow
of my uncles happening to be, strangely enough,
on the jury. This death happened in the year '21,
and he was only in his 26th year. I believe that,
though his poems and tales give an impression only
of a cultivated mind, he showed more than common
talents both for medicine, and afterwards tor law,
which pursuit he took to, in a restless mood, alter
his return from Italy. The "pecuniary difficulties"
were only owing, I believe, to sudden losses and
ii6 DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI
liabilities incurred at the gaming-table, whither, in
his last feverish clays, he had been drawn by some
false friend, though such tastes had always, in a
healthy state, been quite foreign to him. I have
met accidentally, from time to time, persons who
knew him, and he seems always to have excited
admiration by his talents, and with those who knew
him well affection and respect by his honourable
nature ; but I have no doubt that vanity was one
of his failings, and should think he might have
been in some degree of unsound mind. He was
my mother's favourite brother, and I feel certain
her love for him is a proof that his memory
deserves some respect. In Medwin, in Moore, and
in Leigh Hunt, and elsewhere, I have seen allusions
to him which dwelt on nothing but his faults, and
therefore I have filled this sheet on the subject,
though, of course, as far as your proposed criticism
goes, I am only telling you that the book tells truth
in this particular.
Write soon, and believe me.
Yours affectionately,
D. G. ROSSETTI.
By the bye, I am delighted at your appreciation
of Scott. I shrewdly suspect that the last time I
heard you talk of him there "was nothing in him."
[Allingham grates a little.] I think myself that
Maryanne, with all its faults, is better worth writing
TO WILLIAM ALLIXGHAM 117
than The Angel in the House. As exemplified in
this poem, as well as in other respects, Scott is a
man something- of Browning-'s order, as regards his
place among poets, though with less range and even
much greater incompleteness, but also, on the other
hand, quite without affectation ever to be found
among his f^iults, and I think, too. with a more
commonly appreciable sort of melody in his best
moments.
Notes on XVIII.
The following passage in Mr. \V. M. Rossetti's
work, entitled D. G. Rossetti as Designer and Il'7'i/er,
illustrates the difficulty Dalziel had in working with
him : — " My brother was, no doubt, a difficult man
with whom to carry on work in cs showing goes, that he possesses
quaHties which the mass of our artists aim at
chiefly, and only seem to possess ; whether he
have those of which neither they nor he give
sign, I cannot yet tell ; but he is said to be only
24 years old. There is something very French in
his work, at present, which is the most disagree-
able thing about it ; but this I dare say would
leave him if he came to England.
I suppose there is no chance of your having
written an unrhymed elegy on Currer Bell, called
Haworth Churchyard, in this Eraser, and signed
" A." There is some tho7'ough appreciation of
poor Wuthcring Heights in it, but then the same
stanza raves of Byron, so you can't have done it ;
not to add that it wouldn't be up to any known
mark of yours, I think.
You heard, I suppose, that Mac Cracken was
going finally to sell his pictures in a lump at
Christie's, but perhaps I wrote to you since the
event. The utmost offered for Hunt's was 220 ors.,
so he retains it still, having put a reserve of ^^300
on it. My An7iunciation, 76 gs. ; water-colour
Dante, 50. These are both sold : ist to one
Pearse, I hear ; 2nd, to Combe of Oxford.
Collins' St. Elizabeth only had 31 gs. bid, so he
keeps that too. None of the other pictures went
well, but I think the Bernal humbug has been
126 DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI
settling all other sales lately. Hunt's father, who
was at the sale, called on me with the above
information, w^hich I suppose is right.
What do you think ? Collinson is back in
London, and has 2 pictures in the R.A. The
Jesuits have found him fittest for painting, and
have restored him to an eager world. Woolner's
Wentworth job is up, I fancy, altogether. How-
ever, lately, owing to Woolner's writing a cheeky
answer to a very snobbish letter of old W.'s,
that magnanimous crittur seems to have restored
him his confidence ; and if the statue is done
(which seems very doubtful) I think Woolner
may possibly do it. Your bust is in the R.A.
and in rather a good place, and your lines also
appear to Munro's Lovers in the catalogue, as
well as to an admirable little picture by Hughes
In the Patriotic Fund Exhibition. Munro's group
of Ingram's children has been put by MacDowell
in the place of honour in the Sculpture-room at
the R.A. ! and is likely to do him great good.
I would greatly like the walking tour you pro-
pose this summer, and better w^ith you than any
one — now in good sooth, la! But I don't know
well yet what my abilities and advisabilities may
be ; will write you of my probable movements as
soon as I know them.
Good - morning. I am just told very loudly
TO WILLIAM ALLINGHAM 127
that it is 3 A.M.; and lo ! it is horridly Hght.
Write soon, and Fll lorifc soon.
By the bye, this niornino- (12 May), through
the hrst 2 hours of which I have slept over this
letter, is the very morning" on which I first woke
up, or fell a-dreaniing, or began to be, or was
transported for life, or what is it .■* — 27 years ago!
It isn't your birthday, so / can wish yon many
happy returns of it.
Yours affectionately,
D. G. RuSSETTI.
Notes on XX.
The MSS. which Rossetti took to Ruskin were,
as the next letter shows, the translations of the
Eai'ly Italian Poets with Allingham's critical
remarks on the margin.
Millais's design is entitled The Fireside Story.
It illustrates the following stanza of Frost in the
Highlands, in the second series of Day and
Night Songs : —
" At home are we by the merry fire,
Ranged in a ring to our heart's desire.
And who is to tell some wondrous tale.
Almost to turn the warm cheeks pale,
Set chin on hands, make grave eyes stare,
Draw slowly nearer each stool and chair ? "
His picture in the Royal Academy was The Rescue.
On November 8, 1853, Rossetti wrote to his
sister Christina : — " Millais, I just hear, was last
128 DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI
nio-ht elected Associate. ' So now the whole Round
Table is dissolved.'" His "awful row with the
hanging committee " is mentioned in the Life of
W. B. Scott ^ to whom " Woolner writing in May,
1855, said that the Academy Committee hung
Millais — even Millais, their crack student — in a
bad place ; he being too attractive now ; but that
celebrity made such an uproar the old fellows were
glad to give in and place him better, Millais's
amusement, when Woolner wrote, was to go about
and rehearse the scene that took place at the
Academy between him and the ancient magnates."
Seddon wrote on May 3, 1855: — "The Academy
opens on Monday. The hangers were of the old
school, and they have kicked out everything tainted
with Prseraphaelitism. My Pyramids, and a head in
chalk of Hunt's ; and all our friends are stuck out
of sight or rejected. Millais's picture was put where
it could not be seen. ... He carried his
point by threatening to take away his picture and
resisfn at once, unless thev re-huno him, which
they did. He told them his mind very freely,
and said they were jealous of all rising men, and
turned out or hung their pictures where they
could not be seen."
Mark Anthony, the landscape painter, is
described by Mr. W. M. Rossetti as "a fine
genius, not adequately valued now."
The drawing by Hunt turned out of the
Academy was "a life-size crayon of his father,
admirably finished."
TO WILLIAM ALLIXGHAM 129
"Some new Davis" was William Davis, an
Irish landscape painter, settled in Liverpool.
Madox Brown wrote in May, 1856: — "There is
a litde landscape by Davis, of Liverpool, of some
leafless trees and some ducks, which is perfection. I
do not remember ever having- seen such an English
landscape ; it is far too good to be understood,
and is on the floor."" Four months later he
wrote: — "This Davis, who has been one of the
most unlucky artists in England (now about
forty, with a wife and family), is a man with
a fine-shaped head and well-cut features, and his
manners are not without a certain modest dignity,
though crushed by disappointment. Miller is the
only man who buys his pictures.'" He died
in April, 1874. xAt the sale of Mr. Leathart's
collection on June 19, 1897, a small picture of his
entided An effect of Mist on the Mersey, was sold
for fifty guineas. He and Inchbold were a second
time companions in misfortune. In May, 1865,
Madox Brown wrote : — " By the Daily Telegraph
this morning it would appear that Davis as well
as Inchbold has been rejected in toto!'
On Orlando, one of the two pictures kicked out
of the Academy, ^Ir. Arthur Hughes had worked
for some time in Rossetti"s studio. He had long
been painting scenes from As You Like It. This
Orlando, he tells me, was done before he had
attained sufficient mastery. How well he succeeded
in the end is seen in the beautiful triptych illustrat-
ing scenes from Shakespeare's play, in Mr. Sing's
10
I30 DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI
collection in Aigburth, Liverpool. The "child
in a flannel nightgown " was his nephew, Edward
Huehes, now w^ell known as an artist.
The "new man named Leighton " was Lord
Leighton, the late President of the Royal Academy.
His picture was entitled Cimabues Madonna cari'icd
in Procession through the Streets of Florence.
Twenty-seven years later, at the Academy banquet,
speaking of two artists lately dead, after mentioning
one, he continued: — "The other 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,
a considerable influence in the world of art and
poetry, — Dante Gabriel Rossetti, painter and poet."
Hazvorth Churchyard, in Eraser s Magazine,
" sio-ned 'A,'" was not by Allingham, but by
Matthew Arnold, who wrote to his mother on
April 25th of this year :— " There will be some lines
of mine in the next Eraser (without name) on
poor Charlotte Bronte." The stanza which contains
"some thorough appreciation of poor Wuthering
Heights, but raves of Byron," is the following : —
" Round thee they lie — the grass
Blows from their graves to thy own !
She, whose genius, though not
Puissant like thine, was yet
Sweet and graceful ; — and she
(How shall I sing her ?) whose soul
Knew no fellow for might,
Passion, vehemence, grief.
Daring, since Byron died,
TO WILLIAM ALLIXGHAM 131
That world-famed son of fire, — she, who sank
Baffled, unknown, self-consumed ;
Whose too bold dying song
Stirr'd, like a clarion-blast, my soul."
In his boyhood Rossetti had dehghted in Byron.
When he was sixteen years old, "some one told
him." writes Mr. W. ^l. Rossetti, "that there
was another poet of the Byronic epoch, Shelley,
even greater than Byron. I do not think that he
ever afterwards read much of Byron."
Rossetti's Anmmciatioii was his Ecce Ancilla
Domini; the "water-colour Dante" was Dante
drawing an Angel in Memory of Beatrice. Of
this picture Mr. W. M. Rossetti gives the following
explanation : —
" Dante relates that, on the first anniversary of
his ladv's death, he was eno-aored in drawing an
angel, in memory of her, when he found that certain
persons had entered his chamber unperceived ; and
he then saluted them savin©-, ' Another was with
me.'" On May 11, 1854. Rossetti wrote to his
brother: — " I heard from MacCrac. who offers ^50
for the water-colour, with all manner of soap and
sawder into the bargain, — a princely style of thing."
On this Mr. \V. M. Rossetti remarks : — "That my
brother should have regarded ^50 for the water-
colour as ' a princely style of thing ' shows how
scanty was then the market for his productions."
" Combe of Oxford " was the printer to the
Clarendon Press. He made a collection of Praera-
phaelite paintings ; among them was Holman
132 DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI
Hunt's Light of the ]]^orld. which his widow gave
to Keble College, Oxford, and this water-colour
of Rossetti's, which, with other pictures, she be-
queathed to the University Gallery.
" Charles Alston Collins," a brother of W'ilkie
Collins, " was a young painter much under Millais's
influence, and though not a member of the ' Brother-
hood,' practically a Pra^raphaelite." He died early.
Why he and one or two others were never chosen
into the Brotherhood is shown in the following
quotation from Mr. Holman Hunt's article in the
Contemporary Reviezv for May, 1886: — "Outside
of the enrolled body [the P.R.B.] were several
artists of real calibre and enthusiasm, who were
working diligently with our views guiding them.
W. H. Deverell, Charles Collins, and Arthur
Hughes may be named. It was a question whether
any of these should be elected. It was already
evident that to have authority to put the mystic
monogram upon their paintings could confer no
benefit on men striving to make a position. We
ourselves even determined for a time to discontinue
the floating of this red rag before the eyes of
infuriate John Bull, and we decided it was better
to let our converts be known only bv their works,
and so nominally Pr^eraphaelitism ceased to be. W^e
agreed to resume the open profession of it later,
but the time has not yet come. I often read in
print that I am now the only Pra;raphaelite. Yet
I can't use the distinguishing letters, for I have
no 'B,'"
TO WILLIAM ALLIXGHAM 133
I have heard Mrs. Combe relate a story, told also
by Mr. Holman Hunt in this same paper, how
Millais and Collins, when very young men, once
lodged in a cottage nearly opposite the entrance
of Lord Abingdon's park close to Oxford. She
learnt from them that they got but poor fare, so
soon afterwards she drove over in her carriage, and
left for them a large meat-pie. Millais, she added,
one day said to Mr. Combe : — " People had better
buy my pictures now, when I am working for fame,
than a few years later, when I shall be married and
working for a wife and children." It was in these
later years that old Linnell exclaimed to him : —
"Ah, Mr. Millais, you have left your first love;
you have left your first love."
"The Bernal humbug" was the sale for nearly
/71.000 of Ralph Bernal's collection of glass, plate,
china, and miniatures.
Of James Collinson the following account is given
by Mr. Holman Hunt in the Contemporary Review. —
"He had been a meek fellow student ; painstaking
he was in all his drawings, and accurate in a sense,
but tame and sleepy, and so were all the figures he
drew. ... It was a surprise to all when, in the
year 1848. he appeared in the Exhibition with a
picture called The Charity Boys Debut. ... It
transpired that he had roused himself up of late to
enter the Roman Church, and that thus inspirited
he had made the further effort to paint this picture.
It was natural for all the students to blame them-
selves for having ignored Collinson, but Rossetti
134 DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI
went further, and declared that ' Collinson was a
born stunner,' and at once struck up an intimate
friendship with him. When the PraeraphaeHte
Brotherhood was inaugurated he at once enrolled
Collinson as one who wanted only the enthusiasm
which we had to make him a great force in the
battle. ... At our monthly meetings he invariably
fell asleep at the beginning, and had to be waked
up at the conclusion of the noisy evening to receive
our salutations. He never could see the fun of
anything, and I fear we did not make his life more
joyful. . . . Even in the day he was asleep over
the fire, with his model waiting idle, earning his
shilling per hour all the time. But at the last
moment he unexpectedly ' waked up, sent in his
resignation as a Prseraphaelite Brother — ungrateful
man ! — sold his lay figure and painting material by
forced sale, and departed to Stonyhurst to graduate.
At the end of a twelvemonth or so he abandoned
the idea of conventual or priestly life, again took
to painting, and, I believe, executed many very
creditable pictures of a modest character."
According to W. B. Scott, "at the seminary they
set Collinson to clean the boots as an apprenticeship
in humility and obedience. They did not want him
as a priest ; they were already getting tired of that
species of convert, so he left, turned to painting
again, and disappeared."
Allingham's bust was by Munro. The lines in
The Academy Catalogue on that sculptor's Lovely's
Walk are from Allingham's Wayside Well : —
TO WILLIAM ALLIXGHAM 135
" Sweet shall fall the whisper'd tale,
Soft the double shadow."
Mr. Huohes tells me that " the Patriotic F"und
Exhibition was a collection of drawings and paint-
ino-s chiefly bv amateurs, oot up for exhibition and
sale for the benefit of the widows and orphans of
the soldiers who fell in the Crimean W^ar. I gave
a little painting of a soldier returned minus an arm
to his wife and baby, both of whom he managed to
embrace, I remember, somehow with the remaining
one. I quoted for it from Spring is Conic : — ■
' Some voices answer not thy call
When sky and woodland ring,
Some voices come not back at all
AVith primrose blossoming.' "
Patrick Macdowell was an Irish sculptor — -a
miember of the Royal xAcademy.
" Rossetti was born on May 12, 182S, at No. 38,
Charlotte Street, Portland Place, London, and was
baptized at All Souls' Church, Langham Place, as a
member of the Church of England."
To sit up till three in the morning was no un-
common thing with Rossetti. One of his comrades
in his student days describes how " his cheeks were
roseless and hollow enouo-h to indicate the waste
of life and midnight oil to which the youth was
addicted."
136 DAXTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI
XXI.
Clevedox, Somersetshire,
June 25, 1855.
Dear Allixgham.
I'm thanking you here for your book
received in London a week or so ago. and don't
exactly know whether you are at Xew Ross or
Ballyshannon now. and have a suspicion you'll
soon be visible (and heartily ^^■elcome) in London.
whither I return to-da\\ after a day or two only
here ; and write now, having got up at 6 in the
mornino-, and beino- too earlv to tro to breakfast
with ?vliss Siddal, whom I came to see here. She
is rather better just now. and will probably go
to winter somewhere abroad. Your volume has
accompanied her and me on excursions, and been
read at home too.
I have such a strono- idea that I am to see vou
soon that I shan't enter so much into the poems as
I otherwise should now, but mv favourites amone
the new ones are the 2 Harps. The Pilot's Daughter,
St. Margaref s Eve, The Girfs Lamentation, The
Sailor (both these last most admirable), and JJ^outd
I Kneiv. The N^oblenian's JJ^edding I really don't
think at all improved [Ah I it is I W. A.], and am
not at all sure about the close of The Pilot's
Daughter. The Music Master is full of beauty
and nobility, but I'm not sure it is not TOO
noble or too resolutelv healthv.
TO WILLIAM ALLINGHAM 137
London, July 4.
I had to break off in the above, and go on with
it to-day. instead of beginning afresh, to prove that
I was not waiting for you to write, as I remem-
bered well owing you two or three, though one of
mine had been lost for some time. Yours was very
welcome on Monday. Going on about The Music
Master. I see the sentence already written looks
very iniquitous, and perhaps is ; but one can only
speak of one's own needs and cravings : and I must
confess to a need, in narrative dramatic poetry
(unless so simple in structure as Azdd Robin Gray,
for instance), of something rather " exciting," and
indeed I believe somethino- of the " romantic " ^
element, to rouse my mind to anything like the
moods produced by personal emotion in m)' own
life. That sentence is shockingly ill worded, but
Keats's narratives would be of the kind I mean.
Not that I would place the expressions of pure
love and life, or of anv calm, trradual feelinor or
experience, one step below their place, — the very
hio-hest ; but I think them better conveved at less
length, and chietiy as froDi oiiese/f. W ere I speak-
ing to any one else, I might instance (as indeed I
often do) the best of your own lyrics as examples ;
and these will always have for me much more
' In the original scJioclgirl, which preceded romantic, has been
scored out.
138 DAXTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI
attraction than The Music Master. The latter, I
think, by its cahn subject and course during a
longish reading, chiefly awakens contemplation, like
a walk on a fine day with a churchyard in it, instead
of rousing one like a part of one's own life, and
leaving one to walk it off as one might live it off.
The only part where I remember being much
affected was at the old woman's narrative of Milly's
gradual decline. Of course the poem has artistic
beauties constantly, though I think it flags a little
at some of its joints, and am not sure that its
turning-point would not have turned in vain for
me at first readino-, if I had not in time remembered
your account of the story one day on a walk. After
all, I fancy its chief want is that it should accom-
pany a few more stories of deeper incident and
passion from the same hand, when what seem to
me its shortcomino-s mio-ht, I believe, as a leavenino-
of the mass, become des qiialites. As I have stated
them, too, they are merely matters of feeling, and
those who felt differently (as Patmore, who thinks
the poems perfect) might probably be at the higher
point of view. P. was here last night with Cayley
and one or two more. W^e sat all the eveninsf on
my balcony, and had ice and strawberries there,
and I wished for you many times, and meanwhile
put in your book as a substitute (having, you may
be sure, torn out that thing of Dalziel's).
TO WILLIAM ALLINGHAM 139
I have propaoated you a little — among other
cases, to a man named Dallas the other day, who
has just come to settle in London, having- written
a book called Podics, and being a great chum of
A. Smith — i.e., the Smith— and Dobell. After
reading him much of you I enunciated opinions
of a decisive kind as to the relative positions of
our rising geniuses, and was rather sorry for argu-
ment's sake to find him not unsympathising.
I'm glad you've heard from Ruskin, and hope
that you may find time in your week to arrange
somehow a meeting with him. He has been into
the country, and unwell part of the time, but is now
set up again and very hard at work. I have no
more valued friend than he, and shall have
much to say of him. Of other friends, you'll
find Woolner (27, Rutland St., Hampstead Road,
his house; 64, Margaret St., Cavendish Sq.,
his study), Patmore, and Hannay get-at-able,
besides Munro and Hughes, with whom you've
been eii rapport. Aly rapports you ask of with
that "stunner" stopped some months ago, alter a
long stay away from Chatham Place, partly from a
wish to narrow the circle of flirtations, in which she
had begun to figure a little ; but I often find myself
sighing after her, now that "roast beef, roast
mutton, gooseberry tart," have faded into the light
of common day. " O what is gone Irom them I
fancied theirs ? "
HO DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI
Have you seen Eustace Conyers ? It is admir-
able in all Hannay's qualities, and a decided
advance on Fontenoy. I congratulate you on
your change of place, and myself on the prospect
of your going farther, i.e., London, so soon for a
while, and I trust not farino- worse. Mind, 1 have
nothing to show worth showing. Ruskin has been
reading those translations since you, and says he
€ould wish no better than to ink your pencil-marks
as his criticisms. He sent here, the other day, a
stunner, called the Marchioness of Waterford, who
had expressed a wish to see me paint in water-
colours, it seems, she herself being really first-rate
as a designer in that medium. I think I am o-oino-
to call on her this afternoon. There, sir ! R. has
asked to be introduced to my sister, who accord-
ingly, will accompany Miss S. and myself to dinner
there on P'riday.
That building you saw at Dublin is the one. I
must have met Woodward, the architect of it, at
Oxford (where he is doing the new museum), and
talked of you to him, just at the time you were in
Dublin, as I heard immediately after, and therefore
did not send on to you his full directions how you
should find him (or his partner, if he were away)
and see all his doings there, which, however, can
come off another time. He is a particularly nice
fellow, and very desirous to meet you. Miss S. made
TO WILLIAM ALLIXGIIAM 141
several lovely designs for hiin. but Ruskin thought
them too eood for his workmen at Dublin to carve.
One, however, was clone (how I know not), and is
there ; it represents an anoel with some chiklren
and all manner of other things, and is. I beliex'e,
close to a design by Millais of mice eating- corn.
Perhaps though they were carved after your visit.
I haven't seen Owen Meredith, and don't feel
the least curiosity about him. There is an interest-
inorish article on the three " Bells " in Tait this
month, where Wuthcying Heights is placed above
Currer for dramatic individuality, and it seems
C. B. herself quite thought so.
I'll say no more, as I hope so soon to see you,
but am ever your affectionate friend,
\). G. R.
Notes on XXI.
Rossetti had been at Clevedon with Miss Siddal,
who had eone there for the sake of her health.
Writing to his mother he said : — " The junction of
the Severn with the Bristol Channel is there, so
that the water is hardly brackish, but looks like sea,
and you can see across to Wales, only eight miles
off, I think. Arthur Hallam, on whom Tennyson
wrote In AIemoria?Ji, is buried at Clevedon, and we
visited his grave."
142 DAXTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI
'■ There twice a day the Severn fills :
The salt sea-water passes by,
And hushes half the babbling ^^'ye,
And makes a silence in the hills."
The poems mentioned by Rossetti are in Day
and Alight So7igs. " Throughout his hfe," writes
his brother, " the poetry of sentimental or reflective
description had a very minor attraction for him."
To Mr. Edmund Gosse Rossetti wrote in 1873 : —
'•It seems to me that all poetry, to be really en-
during, is bound to be as anuising (however trivial
the word may sound) as any other class of litera-
ture ; and I do not think that enough amusement to
keep it alive can ever be got out of incidents not
amounting to events." Rossetti here uses amusing
much as Johnson used it when he wrote that
''Coriolanus is one of the most amusing of our
author's performances."
From his balcony Rossetti had a fine outlook on
the Thames. The house was swept away when the
river was embanked. It stood in front of the site
now occupied by the eastern end of Keyser's Royal
Hotel, so near to Blackfriars Bridge that a stone
could have been pitched on to it from the balcony.
One of the rooms facing southwards was verv sunnv.
At the window he would loll sometimes for hours
together, looking at the people passing over the
bridge. To watch this living stream flow by had
an endless fascination for him. He used to tell the
story that, one day, he and another of the Brother-
hood were thus lolling, when they both cried out,
TO WILLIAM ALLINGHAM 143
" Why, there goes Deverell ! " At that hour
Deverell died.
Eneas Sweetland Dallas published Poch'cs, an
Essay on Poetry. \\\ 1852. Mr. G. C. Boase in
his article on him in the Dictionajy of National
Biography, says that for many years he was on the
brilliant staff of John T. Delane, the editor of the
Times. In 1868 he edited Once a Jf'eek. He
died in 1879. " He had a singularly handsome
presence and charming- manners — his conversation
was bright and courteous."
Of Alexander Smith there is further mention in
Letter XXXII. Of Sidney Dobell's A'eit/i of
Ravelston Rossetti wrote in 1868 ; — " I have always
regarded that poem as being one of the finest, of
its length, in any modern poet. What a pity it is
that he generally insists on being so long-winded,
when he can write like that ! "
The friendship between Rossetti and Ruskin did
not last. "Gradually," writes Mr. W. M. Rossetti,
" the intimacy between the tw^o friends relaxed.
Rossetti, as he advanced in years, in reputation, and
in art, became less and less disposed to conform his
work to the likings of any Mentor — even of one for
whom he had so o-enuine an esteem as he enter-
tained for Mr. Ruskin ; while the latter, serenely
conscious of being always in the right, laid down
the law, and pronounced judgment tempered by
mercy, with undeviating exactness. At last the
relations between the painter and critic became
strained — one was so earnest to enlighten the other,
144 DAXTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI
and the other was so difficult to be enHghtened out
of his own perceptions and predilections ; and it
may have been in 1865 or 1866 that Ruskin and
Rossetti saw the last of one another — mutually
regretful, and perhaps mutually relieved, that it
should be the last."
"That 'stunner'" was clearly the "Belle pas
Sauvage " of Letters \TI. and IX. In my under-
graduate days at Oxford when not unfrequently I
was in Rossetti's company, I one day heard him
maintain that a beautiful young woman, who was on
her trial on a charore of murdering" her lover, oucfht
not to be hanged, even if found guilty, as she was
" such a stunner." Wlien I ventured to assert that
I would have her hano-ed, beautiful or uoflv, there
was a general outcry of the artistic set. One of
them, now famous as a painter, cried out, " Oh,
Hill, vou would never hang a stunner!"
" O what is gone from them I fancied theirs ? " is
borrowed with a slight change from the last line of
y^olian Harp in the second series of Allingham's
Day and Alight Soiigs.
" Gift books have rather poured in on me lately,"
wrote Rossetti to his mother a few days after the
date of this letter; " Hannay's new novel, Eustace
Conyers, very first-rate in Hannay's qualities, and a
decided advance on Fontenoyy
xA little earlier he had written to her: — "An
astounding event is to come off to-morrow. The
Marchioness of Waterford has expressed a wish to
Ruskin to see me paint in water-colour, as she says
TO WIT.LIAM ALT. INGHAM 145
111)" method is inscrutable to her. She is herself an
excellent artist, and would have been really great, I
believe, if not born such a swell and such a stunner."
Mr. Holman Hunt gives the following account of
a visit he received from her : — ■" With The Light of
the /r'6>;'A/ standing nearly complete upon the easel.
I was surprised one morning by the sound of
carriage wheels driven up to the side door, a very
loud knocking, and the names of Lady Canning and
the Countess of Waterford preluding the ascent of
the ladies. I think they said that Mr. Ruskin had
assured them that they might call to see the picture.
Mv room, with windows free, overlookino- the river,
was as cheerful as any to be found in London ; but
I had not made any effort to remove traces of the
pinching suffered till the previous month or so, and
to find chairs with perfect seats to them was not
easy. But the beautiful sisters were supremely
superior to giving trace of any surprise. It might
have seemed that they had always lived with broken
furniture by preference." An account of the sisters
has been lately written by Mr. Augustus J. C. Hare
under the title of The Story of Tivo Noble Lives.
There is no mention of these visits to the two
painters.
On Benjamin Woodward's death in 1861 Rossetti
wrote of him to Alexander Gilchrist : — " He built
the new Crown Insurance Office in New Brido-e
Street, Blackfriars, close to my studio. It seems to
me the most perfect piece of civil architecture of the
new school that I have seen in London, I never
II
146 DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI
cease to look at it with delight. I must have been
the last friend who saw him in England. ... 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."
Allingham wrote to Mr. VV. M. Rossetti on May
28. 1855 : — " Yesterday in Dublin I saw but hastily
the part-finished building in Trinity College, with
numberless capitals delicately carved over with
holly leaves, shamrocks, various flowers, birds, and
so on. Ruskin has written to the architect, a young-
man, expressing his high approval of the plans ; so
by and by all your cognoscenti will be rushing over
to examine the Stones of Dublin."
My friend. Professor Dowden, tells me that he
has looked in vain for the mice eating corn. Sir
Thomas Deane, the son of Woodward's partner, is
sure that neither Millais's nor Miss Siddal's design
was used.
The second Lord Lytton, under the name of
Owen Meredith, published this year Clyteninestra,
The EarPs Return and Other Poems.
TO WILLIAM ALLIXGIIAM HZ
XXIL
Tuesday 17 \Jul)\ 1S55I.
Dear Ai.linc.iiam,
I think the enclosed is from Miss Bessie
Parkes, and I have from the same kidy a copy
of her poems sent here for you. Arc you coming
up after all, or will the narrow gaugers clip your
wings? I've been expecting and wishing much
for you.
Scott has been in town and leaves to-morrow.
I write this note in great haste. Am I to send the
book on ?
Your affectionate,
D. G. R.
Note on XXI I.
"The narrow gaugers" — though perhaps it is
hardly necessary to explain the pun — were Ailing-
ham's superior officers in the Customs, who were,
Rossetti implies, ungenerous in their treatment of
him. There is a reference of course to the narrow--
gauge railways.
148 DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI
XXIII.
Chatham Place.
Saturday {July. 1855].
Dear AllinCxHam,
Come here by all means. Bed, too, if
you like.
If you have time and inclination while in Dublin
to call on Woodward, his address is 3, Upper
Merrion Street. If he were away, he told me his
partner Sir Thos. Deane, or their managing man,
whose name I forget, would with pleasure show
you their works in hand.
All here will be glad to see you, and I not the
least.
Your D. G. R.
Should I by any chance be out when you come
here, feel for key of centre door under right hand
door mat. In key's absence call at top of kitchen
stairs for housekeeper, Mrs. Burrell.
Excuse dirty paper — only bit I could find.
TO WILLIAM ALLINGHAM 149
XXIV.
Sunday \ July. 1855].
Dkar Allixciiam.
How beastly of them Customs' oo-.s! I
and e\'er\- one had been on the look out for \'ou.
I wish I could come to the lakes WMth you, but
it's quite out of the question just now, though
nothino- would delio'ht me more. I think it seems
possible I may be going on the Continent this
autumn. Miss S. is going — to Florence possibly,
and a lady, a cousin of mine, is to be with her
most likely, so this might render my joining the
party possible. She will in any case settle abroad
for some time, in a climate less changeable than
this — France or Italy. The wizard in the case
being of course J. R. [John Ruskin] who you know
is to have all she does for some time.
Thus, till this m()ve is settled or quashed, i.e..
my part in it. I must bide at my work, such as it
is. I don't find what I'm about at all amusing,
and should have been peculiarly solaced by a sight
of vou — but it wasn't to be. Let's otq on writin""
to each other instead at any rate.
Your affectionate D. G. R.
Note ox XXI\\
Dr. (now Sir Henry) Acland, who had been
ISO DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI
consulted about Miss Siddal's health, " opined,"
writes Mr. W. M. Rossetti, " 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. Kincaird,
a cousin of ours, who knew something of French
and continental life."
XXV.
Sunday night,
2<^th ^post-mark J ul)\ 1855].
Dear Allingham,
" I had this pleasure " (Mac Crackice)
this morning, and this evening Seddon is wanting
to send a picture to Liverpool Exhibition, and
doesn't know how, and I undertook to communicate
for him with Mr. Oakes, who is, I believe. Sec.
to the L. Ex. But I don't know Mr. O.'s address
(Allingham— " Well, do I ? ") No ; but Mr. Miller
could no doubt put you in the way of it, and you
could put it on the envelope and seal and post
same in some Liverpool letter-box, or deliver, if so
inclined.
If Mr. Oakes should bv chance be no loncrer in
TO WILLIAM ALLIXGHAM 151
the above capacity, would you (if you can without
any awkwardness) ask Mr. Miller himself to read
the letter (apologising for the liberty I should be
taking), as I feel confident he could expedite
Seddon's affair equally well.
If you ivoiild find this at all awkward, let me
know at once of Mr. O.'s unavailability, and I'd
write at once to Mr. M. Please do as much of
all this as proves necessary and excuse trouble. . . .
I'm very sleepy. Good-night.
Your D. G. R.
Would you oblige me with a prompt word in
answer.
Notes ox XXV.
Of Mr. John Miller of Liverpool Madox Brown
wrote on September 25. 1856 : — " This Miller is
a jolly, kind old man, with streaming white hair,
fine features, and a beautiful keen eye like Mul-
ready's ; a rich brogue [he was Scotch not Irish]
a pipe of Cavendish, and a smart rejoinder, with
a pleasant word for every man, woman, and child
he meets, are characteristics of him. His house
is full of pictures, even to the kitchen. Many
pictures he has at all his friends' houses, and his
house at Bute is also filled with his inferior ones.
His hospitality is somewhat peculiar of its kind.
His dinner, which is at six, is of one joint and
vegetables, ivii/iouf pudding — bottled beer tor drink
152 DAXTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI
— I never saw any wine. xAfter dinner he instantly
hurries you off to tea, and then back again to
smoke. He calls it a meat tea. and boasts that
few people who have ever dined with him come
back aofain."
Mr. \\\ M. Rossetti describes him as " one of
the most cordial, large-hearted and lovable men
I ever knew." He was so strong in belief as to
be a sceptic as regards the absence of belief I
once heard him say, in his strong Scotch accent,
"An atheist, if such an animal ever really existed."
What the suppositious animal would do I forget.
XXVI.
Friday [A ngust, 1855]-
Dear Allixgham,
I'm sending you on two letters to Mr.
Miller's at I[sle] of Bute, as you told us, thinking
you'll have left Edinb[urgh] by now. I'd have
sent them on before this to Liverpool, but thought
letters wouldn't reach you if you had left L., and
had given up the idea of your getting mine for
Mr. Oakes. As it is, pray thank Mr. Miller much
from Seddon and self for the trouble we're putting
him to. I'm sure he'd aeree with me as to the
advantage of securing S's picture for the L.
Exhibition.
TO WILLIAM ALLINGHAM 153
But now further — I have a loni^ parcel for
Miss C. Allingham to W. A. Es(}., care of
D. G. R., dated July 30, and brouo'lit by carrier : —
further — I have B. R. Parkes' volume for you ; —
further — a Mr. Delap (I think) called for you, and
I told him I'd tell you. Furthest — What am I
to do with the two parcels ?
Miss S. is here, and thanks you very much for
your book with which she's delighted.
In haste,
Yours affect.
D. G. R.
Note on XXVI.
The book for which Miss Siddal thanked
Allingham was his Da)' and N'ight Songs.
XXVII.
Tuesday [A ngiist, 1855].
Dear Allingha^i,
I've just got your note and sent on the
long parcel, with Miss Bessie's book, to Chancery
Lane.
I'm surprised you didn't know of Millais' mar-
riage, as it was in the papers — the Leader had slip-
ped it in somehow among the Deaths ! He is going
154 DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI
to live for a year at or near Perth, and wrote to
some one the other day that he was "perfectly
aghast at his own happiness."
That's a stupid enough notice of The Music
Master, Slc, in the AtliencEum, in all conscience.
I wonder who did it — some fearful ass evidently,
from the way he speaks of Millais as well as of
you. I saw some notes for a notice by William
the other day, which of course is to be the Koh-i-
noor of the lot. W. has just returned from a
trip (walking chiefly), to Stratford-on-Avon, Kenil-
worth, &c., which I made and revelled in two
years back. He is going on immediately to Paris.
. . . Did I offer you the loan of Hannay's
novel ? It is engaged to one person yet, after
which I'll send it if you like.
Write soon and so will I. This is written in
a hurry, with a water-colour (which I hate) waiting
for me.
Yours affectionately,
D. G. R.
I re-open the letter to enclose a little excite-
ment which please return.
Notes on XXVII.
The following is the notice of Millais's marriage
in the Leader of July 7, 1855 : —
TO WILLIAM ALLINGHAM 155
" Deaths.
" Millais — Gray. June 3. at Bowerswell, John
Everett Milhiis, Esq., A. R. A., to luiphemia
Chahiiers, eldest daughter of George Gray, Esq..
writer, Perth."
The "fearful ass" in the Athcnccuni of August
18, 1855, thus wrote of Millais : — ''The Fireside
Sto)')' by the last-named gentleman, is a proof
that he can be in earnest without being absurd,
and reproduce nature w^ithout administering on
the occasion a dose of uQ'liness as a tonic."
XXVII I.
Sunday, 25 Nov., '55.
Dear Allingham,
I'm quite ashamed ol the long delay in
answering your letter — especially when I remem-
ber (as such things generally happen) that on
receiving it I sat down to answer on the spot,
and was only compelled by some accident to
postpone it — of course no further than the same
evening. I believe that must be a good month
ago.
I have not the letter bv me in beo-innine this
answer, but remember it opened with a question
about Routledge. At that time I could only
have uiven a verv bad answer on this head :
156 DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI
as some time after the publication of your vol. I
had (hearing nothing from R. & Co.) sent in my
" small account," but with no result up to the time
of hearing from you, which was ever so long an
interval ; I havinor, on their showincr no siorns of
lite, let the matter go its way. Some short time
ago. however, Hughes hearing this, in a fit of
virtuous and friendlv indignation, crave them a
look up about it, and they have now paid me at
the same rate as him, with which I am perfectly
well satisfied. I know no further about ^lillais,
and am very sorry you should have been worried
about it all.
I have just come back frcjm a ten day's trip to
Paris, in pursuit of various things and persons.
The Brownings are there for the winter, on account
ot the cholera at Florence, and had pre\"iously been
some time in London, where I saw them a g'ood
many times, and indeed may boast of some intimacy
with the glorious Robert by this time. What a
magnificent series is J/cn and JJ^onicji. Of
course you have it half by heart ere this. The
comparati\'e stagnation, cvcji auiong i/iosc I see,
and complete torpor elsewhere, which greet this
my Elixir of Life, are awful signs of the times to
me — "and I must hold my peace!" — for it isn't
fair to Browning (besides, indeed, being too much
trouble) to bicker and flicker about it. 1 tancv we
TO WILLIAM ALLLXGIIAM i
3/
shall agree pretty well on favourites, thoui^-h one's
mind has no ri^ht to be quite made up so soon
on such a subject. l^'or m)- own })art. I don't
reckon I've read them at all yet. as I only o"ot
them the day before leaving' town, and couldn't
possibly read them then, — the best proof to you
how hard at work I was for once, — so heard them
read by William ; since then read them on the
journey again, and some a third time at intervals ;
but they'll bear lots of squeezing- yet. My prime
tavourites hitherto (without the book bv me) are
Childe Roland. B'- Bloiiorani. Karshis/i, the
Contemporary \^Hoik.' it Strikes a Conteniporar)'\
Lippo Lippi. C/eou, and Popu/arity ; about the
other lyrical ones I can't quite speak yet, and
their names don't stick in my head : but I'm afraid
The Heretic s Tragedy rather gave me the gripes
at first, though I've tried since to think it didn't,
on finding the Athenceuni similarly affected.
8 Jan.. 1856.
A month and a half actually, dear A., since the
last sheet, alreadv lono- behindhand, vet which has
lain in my drawer ever since, till it is too late now
to wish you merry Christmas, too late to wish }"ou
happy New Year, only not too late to feel just
the same towards you as if I were the best cor-
respondent in the world, and to know you feel the
158 DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI
same towards me. I am sure, too, you believe
that, little as I do to deserve and obtain frequent
letters from you. your letters are as great a pleasure
to me as anv I o-et, — o-rcatc7\ I think, than anv,
except certain ones which you'll be glad to hear
come now dated Xict\ their writer having left
Eno-Jand three months ao-o, and benefitino- alreadv,
I trust, by the genial climate she is now enjoying,
which, while that bitter cold weather was ailing us
here, remained as warm as the best English May.
Manv thanks indeed for vour new vear's orift —
a most delightful one. Old Blake is quite as
loveable by his oddities as by his genius, and the
drawings to the Ballads abound with both. The
two nearly faultless are the Eagle and the Hcnnifs
Dog. Ruskin's favourite (who has just been look-
ing at it) is the Horse ; but I can't myself quite
get over the intensity of comic decorum in the
brute's face. He seems absolutely snuffling with
propriety. The Lion seems singing a comic song
with a pen behind his ear, but the glimpse of
distant landscape below is lovely. The only draw-
ing where the comic element riots almost unre-
buked is the one of the dog jumping down the
crocodile.
As reoards engraving, these drawings, with the
Job, present the only good medium between etching
and formal line that 1 e\er met with. I see that
TO WILLIAM ALLIXGHAM 159
in comino- to me the book returns home ; having
set out from Xo. 6 Bridge St.. Blackfriars, just
^o years ago. Strange to think of it as then, new
Hterature and art. Those ballads of Hayley — some
of the quaintest human bosh in the world— picked
their way. no doubt, in highly respectable quarters,
where poor Blake's unadorned hero at Page i was
probably often stared at, and sometimes torn out.
I broke off at the last sheet in mid- Browning.
Of course I've been drenching myself with him at
intervals since, only he gets carried off by friends,
and I have him not always by me. I wish you'd
let me hear in a s/^ltc/v answer (there's cheek for
you I) all you think about his new work, and it shall
nerve me to express my ideas in return ; but since
I have given up poetry as a pursuit of my own. I
really find mv thoughts on the subject generally
require a starting-point from somebody else to
brinor them into activitv ; and as you're the only
man I know who'd be really in my mood of re-
ceptiveness in regard to Browning, and as I can't
get at you. I've been bottled up ever since J/. aji(/
IJ\ came out. By the bye. I don't reckon William
— the intensity of fellow-feeling on the subject
makino- the discussion of it between us rather flat.
I went the other day to a id. reading-room. — a real
blessing — which now occupies the place of Burford's
Panorama, and where all papers and reviews what-
i6o DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI
soever are taken in. There I saw two articles on
Brownings one by Masson — ^ really thoroughly
appreciative, but s/ozv — in the British Quarterly —
and one by a certain Brimley, of Trin, Col., Cam.,
in Fraser, — the cheekiest of human products. This
man, less than two years ago, had not read a line
of Browning, as I know through my brother ; and
I have no doubt he has just read him up to write
this article ; which opens, nevertheless, with accusa-
tions against R. B. of nothing less than personal
selfishness and vanity, so plumply put as to be
justifiable by nothing less than personal intimacy
of many years. When I went to Paris, I took my
copy of Men and JVo»ic?i (which had been sent me
the day before) with me, and got B. to write my
name in it. Did you get a copy ? We spoke often
of you, — he with great personal and poetical regard
— I of course with loathing. I inclose herewith a
note which reached me before the book, containing
emendations. Copy them, if you please, and return
the note. I spent some most delightful time with
Browning at Paris, both in the evenings and at
the Louvre, where (and throughout conversation) I
found his knowledge of early Italian art beyond
that of any one I ever met, — encyclopcedically
beyond that of Ruskin himself. What a jolly thing
is Old Pictures at Florence ! It seems all the
pictures desired by the poet are in his possession
TO WILLIAM ALLIXGHAM i6i
in fact. At Paris 1 met his father, aiul in London
an uncle of his and his sister, who, it appears,
performed the singular female feat of copyinL;-
Sordcl/o for him, to which some of its eccentricities
may possibly be referred. However, she remem-
bers it all. and even Sqiiarciahtpc, Ziu the Horrid,
and the sad dishevelled ghost. But no doubt you
know her. The father and uncle — father especially
— show just that submissive yet highly cheerful
and capable simplicity of character which often, I
think, appears in the family of a great man who
uses at last what the others have kept for him.
The father is a complete oddity — with a real genius
for drawing — but caring for nothing in the least
except Dutch boors, — fancy the father of Browning!
— and as innocent as a child. In the New \'olumes,
the onlv thino- he seemed to care for much was that
about the Sermon to the Jews.
At B.'s house at Paris I met a miraculous French
critic named Milsand. who actually before ever
meeting Browning knew his works to the very
dregs — and had e\'en been )-ears in search ot
Pauline, — how heard of I know not, — and wrote a
famous article on him in the Rez'/ie dcs Dcnx
Mondes, through which B. somehow came to know
him. 1 hear he has translated some of the Men
and Women, which must be curiosities. In London
I showed Browning Miss Siddal's drawing from
12
i62 DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI
Pippa Passes, with which he was deHghted beyond
measure, and wanted excessively to know her.
However, though afterwards she was in Paris at
the same time that he and I were, he only met her
once for a few minutes : she being very unwell then
and averse to going anywhere ; and ^Irs. B. being-
forbidden to go out. and so unable to call. What
a delightfully unliterary person Mrs. B. is to meet !
Durine two evenino-s when Tennvson was at their
house in London, Mrs. Browning left T. with her
husband and William and me (who were the
fortunate remnant of the male party) to discuss
the universe, and gave all her attention to some
certainly not very exciting ladies in the next room.
... I made a sketch of Tennyson reading,
which I gave to Browning, and afterwards dupli-
cated it for Miss S. . . . He is quite as glorious
in his way as Browning, and perhaps of the 2 even
more impressive on the w^hole personally. . . .
Have vou reviewed Brownino- anvwhere, or shall
you? Hannay has my copy for a similar purpose,
but I see no fruit coming of it. In B.'s note
enclosed, the portrait referred to is one ot himselt
by Page, an American living at Rome, which he
has confided to my care with some idea of its
eoinQ: to the R.A. After much delav I have onlv
just got hold of it, and am much disappointed
in it. so shall advise its non-exhibition, as a por-
TO WILLIAM ALLIXGHAM 163
trait ot Hro\vnin«4- uuo-htn't to be put out of sin'ht
or kicked out. 1 ha\'e clone one in water-colours
myself, which han^s now oxer my mantelpiece,
and which every one says is very like. Next
time I have the chance I shall paint him in oil, and
probably Mrs. B. too, with him. Ruskin, on read-
ing Men and ]]\vucn (and with it some of the other
works which he didn't know before), declared them
rebelliously to be a mass of conundrums, and com-
pelled me to sit down before him and lay siege for
one whole night ; the result of which was that he
sent me next morning a bulky letter to be forwarded
to B., in which I trust he told him he was the
greatest man since Shakespeare.
Of other friends there is little news I think.
Hughes is painting Porphyria and Madeline in 3
compartments. Hunt is (I believe with better
grounds than hitherto) expected back almost daily.
Woolner has made some lovely sketches in clav.
Patmore has just lost his father, and is on the
eve of bringing out the Espousals. Ruskin's new-
volume will be in my hands I believe, on Tuesday.
What are you at ? I have just seen a capital
sonnet of yours, — a star shot as rubbish into a
dust-bin labelled the Idler. Lve done lots of work
lately {i.e., for nie), but all in water-colours, and
nearly all for Ruskin. Among the later of my
drawings tinished are Francesca da Rimini in 3
i64 DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI
compartments ; Dante cut by Beatrice at a marriage
feast ; Lancelot and Gue never parting at tomb of
Arthur: at finishing of each of which, and of
various others I have done, 1 have very much
wished you were by to show them to. I'm sorry
to say my modern picture remains untouched since
last Xmas ; but this has really not been through
idleness, as I have done more during the past year
than for a long while previously, and I think I can
myself perceive an advance in my later work.
Pray, again, what are yon up to ?
I've left no space for the French Exhibition, to
which indeed I devoted only one of the lo days I
spent in Paris, — my head not being a teetotum nor
my mind an old-clothes shop. Delacroix is one of
the mighty ones of the earth, and Ingres misses
being so creditably. There is a German, Knaus,
who is perfection in a way something between
Hoo-arth and Wilkie; Millais and Hunt are marvels
and omens. Water-colour Hunt and Lewis are
the only things in their department. The rest is
silence ; or must be so for the present.
What do you think of Browning being able to
read The Mystake ? Could you ?
Yours affectionately,
D. G. Rossi:tti.
Notes on XXVIIL
Of this trip to Paris Munro wrote to W. B.
TO WILLIAM ALLIXGHAM 165
Scott :— " I have been to Paris to see the great
exhibition with 1 ). G. R. We enjoyed Paris
immensely; in different ways, of course, for Rossetti
was every clay with his sweetheart, of whom he
is more fooHshlv fond than I ever saw lover."
Mr. W. M. Rossetti. tracing his brother's early
favourites among the poets, says : — " At last — it
may have been 1847 [when he was nineteen years
old] — everything took a secondary place in com-
parison with Robert Browning. Paracelsus, Sor-
ciello, Pippa Passes, The Blot in the 'Scutcheon, and
the short poems in the Bells and Pomegranates
series were endless delights ; endless were the
readings, and endless the recitations."
The letter from Nice was from Miss Siddal, who
was spending the winter there in the vain hope
of winning back health.
The book that " returns home ; ha\ing set out
from No. 6, Brido-e Street. Blackfriars. just hfty
vears ago."' was Ballads by JVilliani Hayley, founded
on anecdotes relating to animals, iinth prints, de-
sioned and enoraved by ]Villiam Blake. Chichester,
printed by J. Seagrave for Richard Phillips. Bridge
Street, Blackfriars, London, 1805. On May 16.
1802, Hayley wrote of Blake: — "He is at this
moment by my side, representing on copper an
Adam of his own. surrounded by animals. — a
frontispiece to the projected ballads." Gibbon
wrote of Hayley on July 3, 1782 : — " He rises with
his subject, and. since Pope's death. I am satisfied
that England has not seen so happy a mixture ot
i66 DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI
strong sense and flowing numbers." Porson thus
ridiculed the mutual flattery of Hayley and Miss
Seward : —
Miss Seivnrd loquitur.
Tuneful poet, Britain's glory,
Mr. Hayley, that is you.
Hiiylcy rcspondct.
Ma'am, you carry all before you,
Trust me, Lichfield Swan, you do.
Miss Scivard.
Ode, didactic, epic, sonnet,
Mr. Hayley, you're divine.
Hayley.
Ma'am, I'll take my oath upon it,
You yourself are all the Nine.
It was in 1853 that Rossetti "first definitely
decided to adhere to painting as his profession,
to the comparative neglect of poetry." At a still
earlier date, on August 13. 1852, he wrote to his
brother, " I have abandoned poetry." Neverthe-
less, so late as August 12, 187 1, he wrote to Madox
Brown : — " I wish one could live by writing poetry,
I think I'd see painting d d if one could."
I remember seeing, about the year 1856, a
pen-and-ink drawing by Rossetti, of Browning,
with a look of angry scorn, tearing out from a
magazine the pages in which his poems were
criticised. I have little doubt that it was Brimley's
article that was thus treated. We see a different
side of this reviewer's character in the followinsf
TO WILLIAM ALLIXGHAM 167
extract from a letter by T. S. Baynes, published
in The l\iblc-Talk of Shirley: — "Only a day or
two ago, in looking- over some papers. I met with
the note I received when with you last year froni
poor Brimley, in which he speaks so calmly, yet so
despondingly, about his health. He died last week.
For a long- time he had worked on at his post in
the immediate presence of death, waiting calmly
amidst pain and toil for the moment of release and
rest."
Six years before Rossetti "spent some most
delightful time with Browning at the Louvre," he
had visited it with Holman Hunt, as he thus
describes in the last six lines of a sonnet : —
" Meanwhile Hunt and myself race at full speed
Along the Louvre, and yawn from school to school,
Wishing worn-out those masters known as old.
And no man asks of Browning ; though indeed
(As the book travels with me) any fool
Who would might hear Sordello's story told."
Sqnarciahtpe is found on page 66, The sad dis-
hevelled fo7nn (not ghost) on page 99, and Zin the
Horrid o\\ page 104 oi Sordello. edition of 1885.
Hawthorne, who met Browning in the summer
of 1856, describes him as "a younger man than
I expected to see, handsome, with brown hair. He
is very simple and agreeable in manner, gendy
impulsive, talking as if his heart were uppermost."
The following anecdote Mr. Arthur Hughes had
from Rossetti, who in his turn had it from Brown-
i6S DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI
ing's father. Once when the poet was kept in-
doors a few clays by illness his father, who was
livinof in another house, on a-oinor to visit him
was each day received boisterously and cheer-
fully with the words : — "I have done another
act, father." He was writing T/ie Blot on the
Scutcheon, and he finished it in fi\^e days.
Mr. Hughes described to nie Browning's uncle
as "a good-looking, well-to-do city gentleman,
with a gray head." He had met him at a party
and fell into talk with him. " 'No doubt you admire
your nephew's poetry very much,' I said. ' I like
my nephew,' he replied, 'but I do not know that
I appreciate poetry properly. I cannot say that
I understand his. What I say to him is this : —
" Poetry of a difficult character should be printed
on a large pa-ge with a wide margin at side, as
official documents are printed with a space for
notes, \\1iy do not you print your poetry in the
usual way, and then on the side say what it
means ? " ' "
J. Milsand reviewed Browning in the Reiue des
Deux Monde s of August 15, 1851, the second part
of an article on La Po^sie Anglaise depuis Byron ;
and also in the Revue Couteuiporaine of September
15, 1856. In 1864 he published L' Esth^tique
Anglaise, Etude sur M. John Ruskin. Of Pauline
for which " he had been years in search," the
following anecdote is told by Mr. \\\ M. Ros-
setti : — " In the British Museum my brother had
come across an anonymous poem entitled Pauline.
TO WILLIAM ALLIXGMAM 169
He admired it much, and copied out every line
of it." He inferred that it was 1)\- Ih-ownin^-. On
writing- to the poet, he learned that his inference
was right.
In 1863 Browning dedicated a new edition ot
Sordello " to J. Milsand of Uijon ; " and later on he
honoured his memor\- by the following dedication
of Pa)-lcyings iL'itli Certain People : —
IX MEMORIAM
J. MILSAND
Obht IV Sept. mdccclxxxvi
Absens absentem auditque videtque
Matthew Arnold, writing on Xovember 9. 1866,
says : — "I had asked Lake to dine quite alone
with us ; then a M. Milsand, a Frenchman and a
remarkable writer, called unexpectedly, and I
added him to Lake ; then I found Milsand was
staving: with Browning, and I added Browning ;
I found that Lord Houghton was a friend of Mil-
sand's, and so I asked him too. Everybody made
themselves pleasant, and it did extremely well."
Last year ^175 was given for a copy of the first
edition of Pauline, a poem of which the author in
the preface to the collected edition of his works
says : — " The first piece in the series I acknow-
ledge and retain with extreme repugnance, indeed
purely of necessity."
/^On one of the two evenings which Tennyson
spent at Browning's house Rossetti heard one poet
read aloud his Maud, and the other his P^?-a Lipt>o
I70 DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI
Lippi. Mr. \V. M, Rossetti. describing this evening,
says: — " My brother made two pen-and-ink sketches
of Tennyson, 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 after-
wards. His deep, grand voice, with slightly
chaunting intonation, was a noble vehicle for
mighty verse. On it rolled, sonorous and emo-
tional." Rossetti, according to Mr. Hall Caine,
spoke of the incident in these terms : — " I once
heard Tennyson read Matid, 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." Patmore, in a letter to Ailing-
ham, dated September 12, 1S55, speaking of Tenny-
son, who had read to him "a passage here and
there in Maud^^ continues : — " His reading magnifies
the merit of everything ; it is so grand."/
Mr. W. M. Rossetti tells me that the portrait his
brother drew of Browning, "after he took a fanciful
prejudice against him he gave away."
The Espousals is the second part of The Angel
in the House. " I am sorry," wrote Henry Taylor
on February 7, 1856, "that Patmore is writing a
second part. Nothing is more important to a light
poem of that kind than to be rounded off briefly
and lie in a ring fence."
" Ruskin's new volume " was, I think, the third
volume of Modern Painters. On July ist of
this year Rossetti had written : — " Ruskin is very
TO WILLIAM ALLI\GIL\M 171
hard at work (mi the third x'olume of Modern
Painters, who, I tell him, will be old masters before
the work is ended." In the summer of 1856,
Rossetti. as will be seen, was reading- the fourth
volume.
AlHncrham's sonnet is entitled The Tliree Sisters
(the three Brontes). The Idler was edited by E.
Wilberforce. It came to an end with its sixth
number.
That Rossetti at this time did "nearly all" his
pictures for Ruskin is explained by the following-
statement by Mr. W. M. Rossetti : — " 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 he would
have asked from any other purchaser, and up to a
certain maximum of expenditure on his own part.
. . . My brother availed himself of Ruskin's easy
liberality without abusing it. In fact, he was made
comfortable in his professional position."
The picture which he describes as Dante cut by
Beatrice at a marriage Feast bears the title Beatrice
at a Marriage Feast denies Dante her Salutation.
His "modern picture" was Found.
Of Delacroix, whom he praises so highly in this
letter, he wrote from Paris in 1849: — "Delacroix
(except in two pictures, which show a kind of savage
genius) is a perfect beast, though almost worshipped
here." Mr. Holman Hunt, who was Rossetti's
companion in this visit to Paris, writes : — " Delacroix
was to me only a very far removed old master of
poor capacity."
172 DAXTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI
Of Ingres Rossetti wrote : — '' This fellow is quite
unaccountable. One picture of his in the Luxem-
bourg- is unsurpassed for exquisite perfection by
anvthing I have ever seen, and he has others there
for which I would not give two sous." For his
Ruggicro and Angelica he composed two sonnets.
The Mystake was Rossetti's per\-ersion of The
Mystic, by P. J. Bailey, published this year. That
author's Festns he had in earlier years " read over
and over again."
XX LX.
Thursday {^Endorsed March 7, 1S56].
Dear Allix(;iiam.
Lve been putting off writing to you in
hopes of doing so at some length, but have been so
busy that at length in despair I snatch a half hour
before model comes this morning to do my bare
dutv to vou, still deferring my pleasure.
Manv thanks for Aubrey de \'ere. whom I have
hardly looked into yet, but will prove. I suspect,
more in my line than yours — not that I either have
quite given over backbone as unaccessary to human
structure. But I have rather a weakness to the
man, though this vol.. as far as I see, doesn't seem
up to the best of the Proserpine one.
I have had 3 parcels here for you — two Art
TO WTTJ.IAAr .\T.T.T\r,IIA:\I 173
Union ones (!), which a considerate hantl relieved
me of (bv vour order as I understood) from tlie
Ofhce yesterday. 1 still ha\e a largish parcel trom
some one whose name the bearer ti»ld me (begin-
ning- with S, I think). What shall 1 do with it ?
Or is it possible these are forerunners ot your
coming- ? May it be so. Now something else.
Dalziel (very good naturedly, cousidc?-iiio) called
here the other day to enlist me for an illustrated
selection of Poets which he has the getting up of,
it being edited by Revd. \\ ilmott. That venerable
parson had not, it seems, included Browning, for
whose introduction I made an immediate stand, and
said in that case I would illustrate him. I think it
will probably be done, and I shall propose ( I fancy
as yet) Count CTisnioiid, — "Say, hast thou lied?"
— which I designed some years ago. But I should
also like to do one from you, if anything illustratable
of yours is included and you are not pre-engaged.
Somcthuio- o'[ vours, I oatherecl from D., was to be
in. Would you tell me what? /.r., if you know. I
told him 1 should not be able to do them for sc:'c/-a/
months, as the Tennyson ones still hang on my
hands ; but he seemed to say that would do. I am
to write to him about subject trom Browning, so
would you let me also hear of yours at once, if
you can ?
That notice in The Oxford and Cambridge Mag. w^s
174 DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI
the most gratifying thing by far that ever happened
to me — being unmistal^eably [i-zV] genuine. I thought
it must be by your old acquaintance Fryer, of
Cambridge, he having called on me once about
those same things. But it turns out to be by a
certain youthful Jones, who was in London the
other day, and whom (being known to some of the
Working Men's Coll. council) I have now met.
One of the nicest young fellows in — Dreamland.
For there most of the writers in that miraculous
piece of literature seem to be. Surely this cometh
in some wise of the Germ, with which it might bind
up. But how much more the right thing — in kind
— than the Idler! I see it monthly. The new-
No. has a story called A Dream, which really is
remarkable,' I think, in colour.
This brings me to my water-colours. I'm doing
a large one I'd like you to see — Dante's vision of
Beatrice dead. Vita N^iwva — one of my very best.
I've done, too, lately, a monk illuminating and
other beginnings. I've got (I think) a commis-
sion to paint a reredos (altar-piece) for Llandaff
Cathedral — a bio' thini^, which I shall cro into
with a howl of delight after all my small work.
I fancy it will pay wellish, too.
Your affectionate
D. G. ROSSETTI.
' He had at first written " remarkable in some respects."
-^ *
EARLY SKETCH FOR DANTE S "VISION
f£y D. G. Rossetti.J
[To /ace f age 174.
TO WILLIAM ALLIXGHAM 175
XuTKS UN XXIX.
Four years later Rossetti described Aubrey deV'ere
as " surely one of the wateriest of the well-meaning."
Sir Henry Taylor, writing- to the poet on April 9,
I 855, said : — " I have considered your volume a great
deal, and written to you not a little upon it with
the mind's pen, curious to know, it you be not a
great poet, wherein you fail. Xot in intellect, cer-
tainly, for therein you range with Coleridge and
Wordsworth, and above Tennyson ; not in art or
the rhythmic sense, for in that you are equal to
Wordsworth ; not in fancy, of which you have more
than any of them. Is it. then, in human and
imaginative passion ? That. I think, is the only
question." In 1843 de Yere had published The
Search after Proserpine, Recollections of Greece, and
other Poems.
Rossetti was not enlisted for this " illustrated
selection of poets." which, towards the end of
the year, was published under the title ot The
Poets of the A'ineteenth Century, selected and
edited by R. A. Willmott.
To The Oxford and Cambridge Magazine
Rossetti contributed The Burden of Nineveh,
The Staff and the Scrip, and The Blessed
Damozel, slightly altered from the form it bore
in The Germ. The mention of this magazine
brings back to my memory a little front parlour
in a small lodcrino- - house in Pembroke Street,
Oxford, in which, in the Michaelmas term of
1/6 DAXTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI
1855. I heard a knot of eager young men talk
of the forthcoming first number. They were all
my seniors in standing, some of them by two or
three years. I was only in my second term. The
two leaders were Burne-Jones and William Morris.
Next to them was Richard Watson Dixon (now a
canon of the Church of England), whom Rossetti
"described, towards 1880, as 'an admirable but
totally unknown living poet. His finest passages."
he added, "are as fine as any living man can
write.'" The most generally beloved in the little
set was Charles Joseph Faulkner, scholar ot Pem-
broke College, who. after winning the highest
honours in examinations, became Fellow and
Tutor of University College. It was a distin-
guished Common Room which he joined, number-
ing as it did among its members John Conington,
Goldwin Smith. A. P. Stanley, and Canon Bright.
" Most whist-loving of the sad socialist race, and
affectionately remembered as ' Citizen F'aulkner ' " —
so he is described in the recent History of Pem-
broke College. Till an insidious malad\- had begun
to work its ruin on his fine niind he was the
pleasantest of companions as he was always the
truest of friends. He inherited a love of art from
his father, who, he told me, in early manhood had
been a designer in metal- work, and had once gained
a prize offered by some Society of Arts. Being
a poor artisan, he walked all the way from Bir-
mino-ham to London to receive it. and back again.
In the few davs which he stayed in the town to
TO WILLIAM ALLIXGHAM 177
see the sights he lived chieHy on dry bread and
raisins. What the son could have done as an artist
he showed by enLiraxinL;- the frontispiece in Miss
Rossetti's Goblin Market. " The principal draw-
ing-." writes Mr. W. M. Rossetti, " was cut on
the wood by Mr. Morris with uncommon spirit —
I believe his first attempt in that line." It was
by Charles Faulkner, and not by William Morris,
that this drawing" was cut. It was his first, and, I
believe, his last attenipt. He gave an earlv im-
pression of it to my little daughter, his god-child.
He was the third member in the art firm of Morris,
^larshall. Faulkner & Co. To mv long friend-
ship with this most upright and truthful of men
I owe more than I can tell. All of these men
but Morris had been born, or at all events had
been educated, in Birmingham. Another of the
set. the late Edwin Hatch, afterwards became
distinguished as a theological scholar. Between
him and the others I ne\'er discovered any bond
of sympathy but this common Birmingham origin.
One evening, when I was absent, he described me
as " the personification of all the intellectual vices
of the age."' I had been brought up a LTilitarian.
I was, I fear, less pained by the vices which were
laid to mv charLre than flattered bv " intellectual "'
which qualified them.
I was introduced to this little fraternity- by the
future editor of the mao-azine, William Fulford,
a poet of no mean power. It was, in fact, "a nest
of singing birds," who. night after night, were
I ^
178 DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI
found together in the close neighbourhood of Dr.
Johnson's old college, often in the college itself.
It was a new world into which I was brought. I
knew nothing- of art, and nothing;- of Tennyson,
Browning, and Ruskin. The subjects which I had
always heard discussed were never discussed here,
while matters on which I had never heard any one
speak formed here the staple of the talk. I recall
how, one evening, the nineteenth century was de-
nounced for its utter want of poetry. This was
more than I could bear, for the nineteenth century
was almost an object of adoration in my father's
house. I ventured to assert that it could boast, at
all events, of one piece of poetry — the steam-
eno-ine. The roar of laughter which burst forth
nearly overwhelmed me. The author of The
Em-thly Paradise almost overturned his chair as
he flung himself backwards, overpowered w4th
mirth. I was too much abashed to explain that
I was recalling the sight I had once had of an
engine rushing through the darkness along a high
embankment, drawing after it a cloud of flame
and fiery steam.
In the first number of the magazine, the editor,
in an article on Tennyson, praised the music to
which Sweet and Low had been set. I recall the
pleasure with which he read to us a letter from the
poet, asking for the name of the publisher of the
music, as no setting that he knew of pleased either
himself or his wife.
What the "youthful Jones" thought of Rossetti
TO WILLIAM ALLINGHAM 179
we learn from Canon Dixon, who wrote, "The
great painter who first took me to him said, ' We
shall see the greatest man in Europe.' "
The water-colour of Dante's vision, says Mr.
W. M. Rossetti, "is the same subject as the large
oil-picture now in the Walker Gallery at Liverpool,
but not at all the same composition." " The Monk
Illuuiinatins: is the water-colour named Fra Pace!'
For the triptych for Llandaff Cathedral Rossetti
was to receive ^400. It was not finished till 1864.
XXX.
Friday {^April, 1856].
Dear Allingham,
Many thanks for your "sunny memory"
of me. The photograph interests me as in some
degree embodying your whereabouts.
I have just been turning over the 3 parcels of
books left for you with me, and a dismaller collec-
tion I never saw. Is it possible you read all that .^
The only one to my taste is a nice clean Mrs.
Boddington. I have met lately with a lady — one
Mrs. Burr — who always brings her to my mind —
having the same tendency to poetic travelling, and
being much what I fancy her in age and person —
about 32, refined and very nearly beautiful, ener-
i8o DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI
getic withal to an extraordinary degree in Ruskin's
style, but quite mild and feminine — lo hours at the
top of a ladder to copy a Giotto ceiling being-
nothing; to her. She has been travellino- all over
Italy with Layard, and they together have given
one one's first real chance of forming a cono-ruous
idea of early art without going there — he having
traced all he could get at by single figures and
groups — and she having made coloured drawings
of the whole compositions, and the chapels, etc.,
where they are painted on the walls. They have
hundreds — whole reams of these things — of course
more interesting than one can say. Benozzo
Gozzoli was a god. It is fearful to hear them
describe the havoc o-oino- on amono- the orio-inals
o o o o
of their tracings, etc. In one instance, specially
admiring a glorious fresco by Pietro della Fran-
cesca — I was told that while the tracing was beino-
made, some demons came with an order to knock
it out of the wall to make a window — which was
done ! I believe some means will be taken to
publish or show publicly all these things. A most
glorious treat which I had yesterday is the sight
of the Giotto tracinos made for the Arundel
Society, and now in the Crystal Palace. I hope
you'll be in time for them. The woodcuts pub-
lished give no idea.
I've just finished a largish drawing for one Miss
TO WILLIA^I ALLIXGHA^I i8i
Heaton. of Leeds, of Uante's dream of Beatrice
lying dead. It has taken nie nearly 2 months,
and is the best I have done. I fear it must go
before you come, or I should like of all things to
show it you.
Being short of news (and time) I enclose 2 or
3 notes of Browning's as a peace - offering. You
ought to see one passage. His portrait by Page
is accepted at R.A., but I dare say they'll gibbet
it in some way, and it isn't good.
I agree pardy about Ruskin as far as I've read
the 4th vol., but there are glorious things, of course;
Calais CJiurch at beginning is one.
Really, the omissions in Browning's passage are
awful, and the union with Longfellow worse. How
I loathe JVis/ii-washi, — of course without reading it.
I have not been so happy in loathing anything for a
long while — except, I think. Leaves of Grass, by
that Orson of yours. I should like just to have the
writino- of a valentine to him in one of the reviews.
Perhaps you've heard of Academy pictures — so I
give you but a summary. Millais sends 5 : Peace
concluded, a stupid affair to suit the day — but very
big, and fetching him /'900 ! without copyright, lor
which he expects ^i.coo more; Children burning
Autumn leaves, very lovely indeed ; Blind Ciirl and
rainboiv, one of the most touching and perfect
things I know ; Church besieged in CronvwelFs tune.
i82 DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI
with child Ivincr wounded on knio-ht's tomb, haven't
seen ; Boy looking at LeecJi s picture book. Hunt
sends only Scapegoat — a grand thing, but not for
the public — and a few lovely landscape drawings.
His big picture of Christ and the Doctors in the
Temple is about the greatest thing, perhaps, he has
done, but only half done yet. Hughes' Eve of St.
Agnes will make his fortune, I feel sure.
Bessie P.'s [Parkes's] Gabriel \s Shelley, I hear.
Your lovino- D. G. R.
Notes on XXX.
"Sunny memory" Rossetti perhaps borrowed
from Mrs. Stowe's Sunny Memories of Foj-eign
Lands, which had been brought out a year earlier.
Mary Boddington published a volume of poems
in 1839. "I fancy," writes Mr. W. M. Rossetti,
" that her name has now passed out of all remem-
brance. It may be as far back as 1847 that my
brother (and myself) grew very familiar with a few
specimens of poetry by her. and had a great liking
for them. I could still repeat most of one poem
about a lady who had drowned herself, beginning —
' They laid my lady in her grave,
My lady with the deep blue eye.' "
This poem is given in Allingham's Xightingale
Valley, page 184.
In 1868 Sir H. A. Layard published for the
\
-4
TO WTLLIA^I ALLIXGHAM 183
Ariiiulel Society a mono^Taph on The Hrancacci
Chapel, at Florence, in which he described the
mosaics. This was his first publication on Italian
art. "At Millais' house one night," writes Mr.
Holman Hunt, " we found a book of engravings of
the frescoes in the Campo Santo at Pisa. It was
probably the finding of this book at this special time
which caused the establishment of the Pra^raphaelite
Brotherhood." "These engravings," says Mr. W.
M. Rossetti. "give some idea of the motives, feel-
ing, and treatment of the paintings of Gozzoli."
"The omissions in Browning's passage" were
omissions in a quotation in Modern Painters, vol.
i"^'- P- oll^ from The Bishop orders his Tomb at
Saint P raxed s Chureh. "The union with Long-
fellow " is in the following passage on the same
page : — " Thus Longfellow in The Golden Legend
has entered more closely into the temper of the
monk, for good and for evil, than ever yet theo-
logical writer or historian, though they may have
ofiven their life's labour to the analvsis ; and ao'ain,
Robert Brownino- is unerrino- in everv sentence he
writes of the Middle Ao-es," &c.
Matthew Arnold, this same spring, described
Ruskin's new volume as "full of excellent apereus,
as usual, but the man and character too febrile,
irritable, and weak to allow him to possess the ordo
concatenatioque veriT
Leaves of Grass must be W^hitman's poems ;
though why Rossetti should describe the author
as "that Orson of vours " I cannot understand.
i84 DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTl
The followinor extracts from two of Allinorham's
letters to ^Ir. AV. AI. Rossetti show that AlHngham
had not at this time read the book : —
March 15, 1857. ''Leaves of Grass I have
bought partly from what you say (7.V. 6d., mind!),
but not read. First glimpse shows something of a
got-up air. Is ' Wliitman ' real ? Do vou know
Thoreau's Concord and Life in the Jl^oods ? They
are worth ha vino."
o
xApril 10, 1857. " I've read Leaves of Grass, and
found it rather pleasant, but little new or original ;
the portrait the best thing. Of course, to call it
poetry, in any sense, would be mere abuse of
language. In poetry there is a special freedom,
which, however, is not lawlessness and incoherence."
On May 19 of the same year he returns to the
subject : —
" I ha\-e been very flat and heavy lately, and out
of humour with poetry-writing. The fact is I am
dismal for want of some society. I'm weary of
wandering about the fields — sermons in stones, and
no good in anything. ' Rusty ' is derived from
'rus.' I must get out of this desolate Ballyshannon
village — and long for it again, perhaps, in another
mood. Ikit in any mood, case, or tense. I couldn't
allow Leaves of Grass to be poetry. I wish we had
some accepted word like 'poeticality.' The Leaves
are suggestive, like the advertisement columns of a
newspaper, or a stroll along Fleet Street and
Thames Street, but poetry without form is — what
shall I say ? Proportion seems to me the most
TO WILLIAM! AI.TJXGHAM 185
inalienable quality of a pocin. From the chaos ot
incident and reflection arise the rounded worlds of
poetry, and go singing on their way."
Rossetti. writing in 1878 about his brother's Lives
of FaDious Poets, says of Whitman : — " By the bye.
I am sorry to see that nanie winding up a sunimary
of great poets ; he is really out of court in com-
parison with any one who writes what is not subli-
mated Tupper ; though you know that I am not
without appreciation of his fine qualities." The two
brothers differed gready in their estimate of Whit-
man. Mr. W. M. Rossetti wrote to Mrs. Gilchrist
in 1869: — "That glorious man Whitman will one
day be known as one of the greatest sons of Earth,
a few steps below Shakespeare on the throne of
immortality. "
About three of Millais' live Academy pictures
Madox Brown thus wrote : -" I saw Millais" picture
of the year. Aiituinn Leaves — the finest in painting
and colour he has yet done, but the subject some-
what without purpose and looking like portraits.
His large picture is, I believe, sold to Miller for a
thousand guineas. I don't like it much ; the subject
is stupidish and the colour bad, but some of the
expressions beautiful and lovely parts. The Blind
Girl is altogether the finest subject — a religious
picture and a glorious one. It is a pity he has
scamped the execution. '
Mr. Holman Hunt had returned to England in
February of this year. " For four years after my
return," he writes, " I had to keep The Finding of
i86 DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI
the Saviour often with its face to the wall, while I
was working at pot-boilers to get the means to
advance it at all ; and frequently when I obtained a
little money I could only work a week at the picture
before the demand for rent, taxes, or some debt
made itself heard. Had we found a public showing
only a reasonable amount of interest and indepen-
dence of taste, and of faith that our countrymen
could and should win glory for the nation, I know
that my two companions [Rossetti and Millais]
would have done greater things than can easily be
imagined, and I can assert that what I now show of
my life's work would be but a tithe of what there
would be ; but even yet, I thank God, the day
leaves me opportunity to work with my might."
Miss Parkes had published a poem under the
title of Gabriel.
XXXI.
Monday {_M ay, 1856].
Dear Allingham,
Would you kindly, in coming to town,
bring Miss S.'s ivood-block of the old ballad. She
wants to horroiv it of you, as she thinks of painting
the subject at once, and has no other design of it.
I only write this word or two, as I am so soon to
enjoy the sight of you. The R.A. Ex. is full of
TO WILLIAM ALLINGHAM 187
P.R. work this year. Hughes' Eve of St. Agnes
is a real success. The finest thing of all in the
place, to my feeling, is a picture by one VYindus (of
Liverpool), from the old ballad of Burd Ilclcu
another version of Childc ]Vatcrs. It belongs, I
hear, to your friend Miller.
Your U. G. RossETTi.
Notes on XXXI.
Madox Brown recorded in May, 1856: — "Off
solus to the Royal Academy. Hunt and Millais
unrivalled except by Hook, who, for colour and in-
describable charm is pre-eminent, even to hugging
him in one's arms. A perfect poem is each of his
little pictures. Millais' looks ten times better than
in his room, owing to contrast with surrounding
badness. Hunt's Scapegoat requires to be seen t(;
be believed in. Only then can It be understood
how, by the might of genius, out of an old goat,
and some saline incrustations, can be made one of
the most tragic and impressive works in the annals
of art."
Gambart, the picture-dealer, "who had given Mr.
Hunt a commission, when he went to the Holy
Land, for a large picture similar to his Light of the
World, complained to Linnell : — ' I wanted a nice
religious bicture, and he bainted me a great goat.' "
After Mr. Hunt had painted these two pictures he
received one vote when he stood for election to the
Royal Academy.
i88 DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI
Windus was a Liverpool painter, Madox Brown,
writing about his picture on May 14 of this year
said : — " Rossetti forced Ruskin to po with him to
see it mstanter, because he had not noticed it in his
pamphlet, and extorted the promise of a postscript
on its behalf." In the postscript to the third edition
of Notes on Pictuj'es in the Royal Academy, 1856,
Ruskin says : — " Generally speaking, the arrange-
ment of the pictures in the Academy this year is
better than usual : but the errors which are usually
notable in various parts of the room seem to have
been all concentrated in the one crying error of
putting No. 122 nearly out of sight. ... I passed
this Burd Helen by. . . . Further examination of
it leads me to class it as the second picture of the
year ; its aim being higher, and its reserved strength
greater than those of any other work except the
Antitnin Leaves^
XXXII.
Mrs. Green's, 17, Orange Grove, Bath.
\^Post)nark, Deceiube?- 18, 1856. J
My dear Allingham,
Very glad was I of your undeserved letter.
How long have I meant to write to you ! It was
sent on to me here, where I have been a week or
two, and may still be a week.
TO WILLIAM ALLIXGHAM 189
The piece of news freshest in my mind is Aurora
Leigh, — an astoundini;- work, surely. Vou said no-
thing- of it. I know that St. Francis and Poverty
do not wed in these days of St. James' Church, with
rows of portrait figures on either side, and the
corners neatly finished with anL;els. I know that
if a blind man were to enter the room this evenino-
and talk to me for some hours, I should, with the
best intentions, be in danger of twigoing his blind-
ness before the right moment came, if such there
were, for the chord in the orchestra and the proper
theatrical start ; yet with all my knowledge I have
felt something like a bug ever since v^t^dmg Aurora
Leigh. Oh, the wonder of it ! and oh, the bore of
writino' about it.
The Brownings are long gone back now. and
with them one of my delights, — an evening resort
where I never felt unhappy. How large a part
of the real world. I wonder, are those two small
people? — taking meanwhile so little room in any
railway carriage, and hardly needing a double bed
at the inn.
Litde Read has been in London lately, and I
saw him once or twice — just the same as ever —
with a new wife, I hear, but he did not say so.
They are going on to Rome.
What of London friends ? Woolner is still doing
his bust of Tennyson, and his medallion, you know.
I90 DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI
is to face the title of the new edition. His statue
of Bacon, for the Oxford Museum, turned out a very
first-rate thing, and is Hkely, I hope, to do him great
good. There was an article on it in the Daily
Nezvs, written by one Revd. Elliott, and an allu-
sion, I hear, in the Athencruni. By the bye, your
mowing song was one of your best. Hunt is
going on with his great picture, and is painting
at present in the Alhambra Court at the Crystal
Palace, where he finds some architectural matters
for his background. Hughes has 3 or 4 pictures
in hand; but of these you are likely to have
heard. Munro is still at work for Woodward.
Brown has lately got the prize of ^50 at Liver-
pool for his Christ zuashing Peter s Feet, which is
proving of use to him. He has a 400 guinea
commission from Mr. Flint, of Leeds, for a laroe
modern picture which he began some time ago,
called Work, and illustrating all kinds of Carly-
lianisms. It will be a most noble affair, and will
at last, I should hope, settle the question of his
fame, which is making some steps at last. Did
you see his woodcut in The Poets of the \<^th
Century ? — very fine still, though rather mauled.
They have treated you snobbily enough there. I
had engaged to do Browning ; but what could
have been done with Evelyn Hope or Tivo in the
Campagna ? Count Gisnwnd now ! — but they
J^CC/l/iy . y^ t'^o^ fncrut Act,(c<i ''f^ ^ ^/-^i^
Z^.:^ <fcL^k^ T^ccd. J ^^ io<7Y^ "^'^y/K.
fff/^c4_ . y^ ^^<^•~ , J /^^^''-^ ^<i^T ^*n-^^
dalziel's "caxmbal jig,"
\To face page 191.
TO WILLIAM ALLIXGHAM 191
wouldn't. LIow truly glorious are both of Millais'
dravvinos ! Amon^- his very finest doino's, I think,
and preferable to any I have yet seen by him in
the Tennyson.
Hunt's Oriaua and Lady of Sha/ott are my
favorites, both masterpieces. I have done, as
)-et, four, — Mariana i/i South, Sir Galahad, and
two to the Palace of Art. I hope to do a
second to Sir Galahad, but am very uncertain as
to any more. — But these engravers ! What
ministers of wrath ! Your drawing" comes to them,
like Agag, delicately, and is hewn in pieces before
the Lord Harry. I took more pains with one block
lately than I had with anything for a long while.
It came back to me on paper, the other day, with
Dalziel performing his cannibal jig in the corner, and
I have really felt like an invalid ever since. As yet,
I fare best with W. J. Linton. He keeps stomache
aches for you, but Dalziel deals in fevers and agues.
By the bye, what do you think of Alex. Smith's
Tennysonian poem in the National Mag. ? I
think it an advance — indeed, very fine in parts.
Woolner met him and Dobell in Edinburgh lately —
liked Smith much, who inquired a great deal about
you, on whose head he heaps coals of appreciation.
Read told me that the Angel in the House has had
a wild success in America.
How about Blackivood, where you say your poem
192 DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI
is probably to come out ? I knew not that you had
diggings in that direction. Stokes and Ormsby I
see sometimes, and dine with them at the "Cheshire
Cheese " at intervals — o^ood fellows both — I will
not forget your remembrances.
You will see no more of the poor Oxford and
Cambridge. It was " too like the Spirit of Germ,
Down, down ! " and has vanished into the witches'
cauldron. Morris and Jones have now been some
time settled in London, and are both, I find,
wonders after their kind. Jones is doing designs
which quite put one to shame, so full are they of
everything — AiLrora LeigJis of art. He will take
the lead in no time. Morris, besides writing those
capital tales, writes poems which are really better
than the tales, though one or two short ones in the
Mag. were not of his best. By the bye, though,
The Chapel in Lyoncss was glorious, — did you not
think so? In his last tale — Golden Wings — the
printer, after no doubt considering himself per-
sonally insulted all along by the nature of those
compositions, wound up matters with an avenging
blow, and inserted some comic touches, such as
prefixing old to ivonian or lady in several in-
stances, and other commissions and omissions.
Morris's facility at poetising puts one in a rage.
He has been writing at all for little more than a
year, I believe, and has already poetry enough
TO WILLIAM ALLIXGHAM 193
for a big book. You know he is a millionaire, and
buys pictures. He bought Hughes's April Lovt\
and lately several water-colours of mine, and a
landscape by Hrown, — indeed, seems as if he would
never stop, as I have 3 or 4 more commissions
from him. To one of my water-colours, called
The BliLc Closet, he has written a stunning poem.
You would think him one of the hnest little fellows
alive — with a touch of the incoherent, but a real
man. He and Jones have taken those rooms in
Red Lion Square which poor Deverell and I
used to have, and where the only sign of life,
when I found them the other day, on going to
enquire, all dusty and unused, was an address
written up by us on the wall of a bedroom, — so
pale and watery had been all subsequent inmates,
not a trace of whom remained. Morris is rather
doing the magniticent there, and is having- some
intensely mediaeval furniture made — tables and
chairs Hke incubi and succubi. He and I have
painted the back of a chair with figures and
inscriptions in gules and vert and azure, and we
are all three going to cover a cabinet with pictures.
Morris means to be an architect, and to that end
has set about becoming a painter, at which he is
making progress. In all illuniination and work
of that kind he is quite unrivalled by anything
modern that I know — Ruskin says, better than
H
194 DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI
anvthinor ancient. Bv the bve, it was Ruskin made
me alter that Hne in The Blessed D. I had never
meant to show him any of my versityings, but he
wrote t(j me one da\- asking if I knew the author
of Xineveh, and could introduce him — being really
io^norant. as I found — so after that the flesh was
weak. Indeed. I do not know that it will not end
in a volume of mine, one of these days. But first
I want to brinof out those translations, which 1
have not found time vet to oret together for Mac-
millan, so busy have I been. Do you not think
X'ernon Lushington's Carlyle very good in O. and
C. Mag. ? His things and his brother's, Morris's,
and the one or two by Jones (who never wrote
before or since) are the staple of that magazine.
The rest — had better have been — silence. Another
matter which shall be silence — mainly — on my part
is your picture at Tom Taylor's — merciful silence.
O I W. A. I were it better, wouldn't I tell its faults !
A lady, to whose doings you once inferred a
comparison of the above, has been, you will be
sorry to hear, most terribly ill a month or two ago,
but is now somewhat better acrain. She has be^un
an oil picture from that wood-block subject, though
a ofood deal altered, but it seems as if her health
could set all her efforts at naught. There were
some thoughts of her going this winter to Algiers
(whither Barbara Smith and her sick sister are
TO WILLIAM ALLIXGHAM 195
gone) but Miss Siddal seems to have no fancy for
the place. Medical men are recommendinL^- it this
winter, but earthcjuakes seem rather a shy feature
of the entertainments.
Ha\'e you heard of the fL:»\vitts? I hav^e seen
them, though not very lately, and fear that Miss H.
is an\-thing but well. SpiritualisDi has begun to
be in the ascendant at the Hermitage, and this
to a degree which you could not conceive possible
without witnessino- it. Do not sav anvthinof to
anybody, though. I elicited from W. Howitt,
before his family, his opinion of it with some
trouble, and found it to be a modified form of mv
own, which of course I give without reserve — but
the ladies of the house seem to take but one view
of the subject, and, astounding as it may appear,
Mrs. Browning has given in her adherence. I
hope Aurora Leigh is not to be followed by " that
style only." Browning, of course, pockets his
hands and shakes his mane over the question, with
occasional foamings at the mouth, and he and I
laid siege to the subject one night, but to no
purpose.
Here we are in the 3rd sheet and 3rd hour, \.^.\.
Goodbye for the present. Do let us keep it up
now.
Yours ever affectionately,
D. G. ROSSETTI.
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TO WILLIAM ALLINGLLAM 197
al the Fair he was attacked. "On one or two
occasions." writes Mr. W. AL Rossetti, "when the
i^Tcat j)0('t, the object of ni\- hrotlier's early and
unbounded honia^'e, kindl\' in(|uired ot nie concern-
ini4' lii'i"". 'ind expressed a wish to look him up, 1 was
compelled to fence with the suggestion, lest worse
should ensue."
On April II, 1856, Madox Brown wrote: —
" Woolner's bust of Tennyson is fine, but hard and
disaofreeable. Somehow there is a hitch in
Woolner as a sculptor. The capabilities for execu-
tion do not go with his intellect."
Hawthorne recorded on July 30, 1857 : — "Going
into the saloon of the old masters [at the Man-
chester Exhibition] we saw Tennyson there, in
company with Mr. Woolner, whose bust of him is
now in the Exhibition. Gazing at him with all my
eyes I liked »him well, and rejoiced more in him
than in all the other wonders of the Exhibition. I
would most gladly have seen more of this one poet
of our day, but forebore to follow him ; for I must
own that it seemed mean to be dogging him through
the saloons, or even to look at him, since it was to
be done stealthily, if at all." What a line subject is
there here for a painter — the old masters on the
wall looking down on the poet, with his sculptor
b\' his side, and the shy dreamer of beautiful dreams
from the other side of the wide sea looking at hini
by stealth !
Rossetti wrote to his brother on August 2,
1856: — "I have been twice to see Ristori, with a
198 DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI
Rev. William Elliott, a friend of Patmore and
Woolner, who is a tremendous Browningian."
The Moivej's is given on page 58 of Allingham's
F/oiucr Pieces. The following stanza is perhaps the
prettiest in the poem : —
" White falls the brook from steep to steep
Among the rocks and heather —
A scythe-sweep and a scythe-sweep,
"We mow the dale together."
Madox Brown's picture of Christ iK^ashing Peters
Feet, now in the National Gallery, contains portraits
of four of the P. R. B.— Holman Hunt. D. G.
Rossetti and his brother, and F. G. Stephens. In
the Royal Academy it had been hung near the
ceiling. "When Grant, the future President, came
to offer his congratulations. Brown, whose eye had
only just fallen on it, turned his back in speechless
indignation, and walked out of the building." Of
IVork, which is in the Manchester Public Gallery,
he made the first studies in June, 1852 ; it was
finished in August. 1863. It was in November,
1856, that Mr. Plint. giving him the commission for
it, wrote : — " I hope we may both, in God's mercy,
be spared to see it happily finished." Only half the
praver was granted. The liberal patron of art died
nearlv two years before the last touch was given.
The long delay was mainly due to the need the
painter was under, to borrow Johnson's words, "of
making provision for the day that was passing over
him." That his fame was slow in " making steps"
TO WILLIAM ALLIXGIIAM 199
was owinjj;- in some measure, writes Mr. \V. M.
Rossetti, to "the absolute silence which Mr.
Ruskin in all his published writings preserved
as to his works." Rossetti was the warm friend
of both men. "Brown soon got to hate the very
name of Ruskin. So Rossetti had, in some degree,
to steer a middle course between his warm feelings
for Brown on one side, and for Ruskin on the
other."
Allingham had only a single poem in T/ie Poets
of the Nineteenth Century — An Aiitnmnal Sonnet.
Rossetti contributed no illustration.
Dalziel's "cannibal jig" was his signature in very
unequal letters at the bottom of the engraving, of
which Rossetti gives Allingham an imitation.
In a letter to W. B. Scott, two months later,
Rossetti again brought in Agag : " After a fort-
night's work, my block goes to the engraver, like
Agag. delicately, and is hewn to pieces before the
— Lord Harry."
Alexander Smith's poem in the National
Magazine for December, 1856, was entitled The
Night before the Wedding. The "coals of appre-
ciation" heaped by Smith are explained by the
following passage in Allingham's letter to Mr.
\V. ^L Rossetti, dated March 15, 1857: "Don't
waste sympathy on Alexander Smith. I hear he is
coming out with Macmillan shortly ; but if he ever
produces a good book I undertake to eat it, literally,
as St. John did, miraculously, I suppose, that one
in the Revelation. Smith, Dobell, Festus, and all
200 DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI
that sort of thing- is a mere passing hubbub."
Matthew Arnold, in one of his letters, says of
Smith : '"It can do me no o-ood to be irritated with
o
that young man, who has certainly an extraordinary
faculty, although I think he is a phenomenon of a
very dubious character : but il fait son metier —
faisons le notre." Matthew Arnold is quoting the
words of the usurer in the eighth chapter of Le
Diable Boifenx, who, after listening to an eloquent
sermon against usury, says to a young spendthrift :
" C'est un savant homme ; il a fort bien fait son
metier, allons-nous-en faire le notre."
Stokes is Mr. Whidey Stokes, CLE., LL.D.
Rossetti wrote to Miss Rossetti in January, 1861 : —
" Last night I read some of your poems to Stokes
— a very good judge and conversant with pub-
lishers." " Mr. Ormesby," writes Mr. \V. AL
Rossetti, "a bright writer on the press, died some
years ago."
Rossetti at one time used to dine frequently at
that famous old Fleet Street tavern, the "Cheshire
Cheese." He mentions it twice in his letters to
Alexander Gilchrist.
Golden U'lngs was published in the December
number of the Oxford and Caiubridgc Magazine.
The printer's "comic touches" are found in the
following passages : — " Old knights who fought in
that battle, and who told me it was all about an
old lady," &c. " I put my shield before me and
drew my sword, and the old women drew together
aside and whispered fearfully."
TO WILLIAM ALLIXGIIAM 201
Morris's first book, The Defence of Giienevere
and Olher Poems, was dedicated to Rossetti. Of
"his facility at poetizing"" I can o"i\c the followini^"
instance : Charles Faulkner, coming to my house
from Morris's, told me that on the previous day
the poet had written seven hundred lines of Jason.
Rossetti's statement that he was "a millionaire"
was the wild exaggeration of a poor painter.
"The subject of The Blue Closet," Rossetti
wrote, "is some people playing" music." Mr. \\\
M. Rossetti tells us that when Mr. Rae "inserted
in a catalogue of his pictures certain quotations
from Morris's poems as illustrating" The Tune of
Seven Toivejs and The Blue Closet, Rossetti
remarked, ' The quotations should have been left
out, as the poems were the result of the pictures,
but do not at all tally to any purpose with them,
though beautiful in themselves.' " John Parker,
the editor of Trasers Magazine, wrote to " Shirley"
on May 14, 1S60 : — " I saw Morris's poems in
manuscript. Surely i9-20ths of them are of the
most obscure, watery, mystical, affected stuff pos-
sible. The man who brought the manuscript
(himself well known as a poet) said that ' one of
the poems which described a picture of Rossetti
was a very fine poem ; that the picture was not
understandable, and the poem made it no clearer,
but that it was a fine poem, nevertheless.' "
It was on the first floor of Xo. 17, Red Lion
Square, that first Rossetti and Deverell, and after-
wards Burnes-Jones and Morris, had their rooms.
202 DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI
In June, 1857,1 I rowed down the Thames from
Oxford to a villao'e on the outskirts of London
in company with William Morris and Charles
Faulkner. With the improvidence of youth, by
the time we reached Henley we had spent all our
money except just enough to enable Faulkner to
buy a return-ticket to Oxford, where he had to
attend a colleoe meetinof. He was to brine back
a supply in the evening. The weather was un-
usually hot. Morris and I sauntered along the
river-side. I have not forofotten the long-inof oflances
he cast on a large basket of strawberries. He had
always been so plentifully supplied with money that
he bore with far greater impatience than I did this
privation. At last the shadows had grown long
and the heat was more bearable. We went with
light hearts to the railway station to meet our
comrade. "Well, Faulkner," cried out Morris
cheerfully, "how much money have you brought?"
Our friend gave a start. " Good heavens ! " he
replied, " I forgot all about it." Morris thrust both
his hands into his lono- dark curlv hair, tuQ^Qred at
it wildly, ground his teeth, swore like a trooper,
and stamped up and down the platform — in fact,
^ Most of the following narrative will be found in my Talks
aboiil Autographs, page 136. Now that unhappily, by the death
of William Morris, I am the sole survivor of the boats crew, I
can without impropriety add one or two circumstances which I
had omitted. By a blunder I had given the date as 1858. I
made another mistake in saying that Rossetti occupied the room
with Burne-Jones. He must have been a visitor that night like
myself.
TO WILLIAM ALLINGHAM 203
behaved just like Sinl)acrs capUiin when he found
that his ship was driving u[)()n the rocks. His out-
bursts of raoe. I hasten to say, were always harm-
less. They left no suUenness behind, and as each
rapidly passed away he was ready to join in a
hearty laugh at it. Faulkner, who was not the
most patient of men, noticed that passengers,
stationmaster, porters, engine-driver, and stoker
were all gazing in astonishment. He, too, lost
his temper, and, though in a far lower key and with
far fewer gesticulations, stormed back. Morris
soon quieted down, and a council of war was held.
He fortunately had a gold watch-chain, on which
he raised enough money to pay all needful expenses.
I remember well how the rest of our journey we
rowed by many a tavern on the bank as effectually
constrained as ever was Ulysses not to listen to its
siren call. It was through no Earthly Paradise that
the young poet and artist passed on the afternoon
of our last day. When we reached the landing-
stage where we were to leave our boat, our common
stock of money amounted to just one penny. We
were still six or seven miles from our destination ;
but by neither train nor omnibus would our empty
pockets allow us to travel, so we hired a cab. We
were in some alarm lest we should come to a turn-
pike-gate. At last we reached Red Lion Square,
where we found Burne-Jones and Rossetti. At
night five mattresses were spread on the carpetless
floor, and there I slept amidst painters and poets. '
' There may have been one or even two bedsteads in the
room. Most of us, I am sure, slept on mattresses laid on the floor.
204 DAXTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI
Next morning I watched Burne- Jones paintino-
some lilies in the garden of the Square. It was,
I believe, the first time he painted in oils.
The following is Ruskin's letter to Rossetti : —
" Dear Rossetti. — I am wild to know who is
the author of The Burden of Xincvch, in No. 8 of
Oxford and Cambridge. It is glorious. Please
find out for me. and see if 1 can get acquainted
with him."
On Rossetti's mention of Spiritualism in this
letter, his brother remarks : " He here speaks
scornfully of it. In later years (beo-innino-, say. in
1864) he believed in it not a little."
Madox Brow^n wrote on April 9, 1868: "Blank
gave a spirit soiree, at which Rossetti attended, and
flowers orew under Blank's hands out of the dining-
table and eau de Cologne was squirted over the
guests in the dark ; but Gabriel, growing irreverent,
and addressing the S.'s by the too familiar appella-
tion of ' Bogies,' they squirted plain (it must be
hoped cleaii) water over those present and with-
drew. So the report runs — I was not there."
" Our daughter," wTOte Mrs. Howitt, " had,
both by her pen and pencil, taken her place
amongst the successful artists and writers of the
day, when, in the spring of 1856, a severe private
censure of one of her oil-paintings by a king among
critics so crushed her sensitive nature as to make
her yield to her bias for the supernatural and with-
draw from the ordinary arena of the fine arts. In
the spring of 1856 we had become acquainted with
TO WILLIAM ALLINGHAM 205
several most arclenl and honest spirit-mediunis. I
was invited to a seaiuc at Professor Ue Morgan's,
and was much astonished and affected by communi-
cations purporting" to come to me from my dear son
Claude. With constant prayer for enlig-htenment
and guidance we experimented at home. I felt
thankful for the assurance thus gained of an
invisible world, but resolved to neglect none of my
common duties for spiritualism."
Hawthorne, who had met Mrs. Browning in the
summer of this year, recorded in his note-book :
" She introduced the subject of spiritualism, which,
she says, interests her very much ; indeed, she
seems to be a believer. Mr. Browning, she told
me, utterly rejects the subject, and will not believe
even in the outward manifestation, of which there
is such overwhelming evidence."
A year or two earlier I was present at an evening
party at Professor De Morgan's, where a German
exhibited a plan of ancient Jerusalem, which he had
drawn, he said, by the aid of clairvoyance.
XXXIIL
14, Chatham Place, Blackfriars.
[End of i^-:,6.\
Dear Allingha.m,
I wish, in writing again to me (which of
course you're yearning to do by this time) you'd
2o6 DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI
tell me whereabouts it was in the Brit. Mus.
Print Room, that you saw an indescribable print
which you described to me at the time — Early
German. I believe, and in several compartments,
if I remember rightly. I am going sometimes
there now, and having made some fruitless searches
after that print, which excited me at the time I
thought I wouldn't be licked, if a note by you
would help.
What sort of Xmas weather have you out there ?
Is it anv eood wishino; vou merriment out of it?
To-day here is neither a bright day nor a dark day,
but a white smutty day, — piebald, — wherein, accord-
ingly, life seems neither worth keeping nor getting
rid of. The thick sky has a thin red sun stuck
in the middle ot it. like the specimen wafer stuck
outside a box of them. Even if you turned back
the lid, there would be nothing behind it, be sure,
but a jumble of such flat dead suns. I am going
to sleep.
Are you to write the next great modern epic ?
If so, you may put the above into blank verse.
I o-ive it vou. And meanwhile, be sure to talk
to me about Aurora Leigh.
I have little news tor you. One sad piece though,
by the bye, for which you'll be sorry. Poor Tom
Seddon died last month at Cairo. He had been
married, and had a bov since last returning thence.
TO WILLIAM ALTJXGHA^I 207
and went back there to pursue the path he had
struck out. and is dead. I am pretty sure you knew
him.
Ruskin wants me very much to enter the okl
water-cok:)ur society, and says John Lewis will do
anything- to facilitate my entrance. This would be
a great advantage to the sale of my water-colours,
but I fear it might chance to bonnet my oil-painting
for good. 1 don't know what to do.
Your friend.
D. G. ROSSETTI.
p,S. — Lll certainly claim your photograph. I
enclose you one in return from one of my blocks
— SL Cicely (Palace of Art). It is a horrid bad
photograph, but as D 1 has had the setding
of the thino- since it becomes of some interest.
Notes ox XXXI I L
" Thomas Seddon," writes Mr. \V. M. Rossetti,
" died of dysentery very soon after his arrival at
Cairo, and a life full of brightness, and a career
full of high promise, were suddenly cut short at
the early age of thirty-five." His health, which
had long been delicate, had suffered much on
the vovaee from ^^larseilles to Alexandria. The
weather was rough and the accommodation and
food were bad. On his arrival he gave himself
no rest. He was attacked by dysentery, which
2o8 DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI
soon carried him off. Over his pure spirit the
gloom of Sabbatarianism was cast. From his
deathbed he wrote to his wife: — "This is a sharp
curb, just as I fek ready to set to at my work ;
but God has humbled me, and I trust proved me,
and I believe punished me for a want of sufficient
attention to his Sabbath, for if instead of walking"
about all day before and after church I had spent
both Sundays quietly at home I might have been
spared this." Mr. Holman Hunt tells me that of
this inner o-loom little was known even by his
intimate friends. He was fond of playing prac-
tical jokes — somewhat cruel ones, too.
Rossetti never entered the Old Water-Colour
Society.
Towards the end of 1856 jNIadox Brown wrote : —
" Rossetti has been here nearly a fortnight, coming
about twelve, and workino- or not workinaf at his
drawing on wood for S/. Cecilia. It is jolly quaint
but very lovely."
XXXIV.
14, Chatham Place, E.G.
Friday \^Post]]iark Jan. 31, 1S57].
Dear Allingham,
Will you be on the Committee as per en-
closure ? And will you answer at once — as I fancy
the list may be makino- out.
TO WILLIAM ALLIXGHAM 209
I enclose also a little poem, jMtched on — where?
— in Reynolds Miscellany ! and the authorship of
which I want to find out. Do not xou ?
I shall write ai^ain soon, and trust to have another
photograph for \oli.
Your I). G. R.
Some people say here you wrote A.S. Of course
I have iindeceix^ed some, and did not spread the
report. I believe [cntrc nans) Maclennan did. being'
a great friend of Smith. I like Abbey Easaroe.
Notes ox XXXIV.
The Committee was that of the Seddon Subscrip-
tion Fund. In a resolution moved by Holman
Hunt and seconded by D. G. Rossetti. Thomas
Seddon was described as " an artist, who, havincr
proposed to himself the application of absolute truth
in landscape to scenes of high historic and sacred
interest, undertook two journeys to the East, in
which he unHinchingly grappled with difficulties
previously deemed insurmountable, and the second
of which terminated his life at an early age."
With the money which was raised his "admirably
faithful view of Jerusalem" was purchased for the
National Gallery.
The following is "the little poem pitched on in
Reynolds Miscellanyl' — vol. xvii. p. 360.
2IO DANTE CxABRIEL ROSSETTI
A LOVER'S PASTIME.
Before the daybreak I arise
And search, to find if earth or air
Hold anywhere
The hkeness of thy sweet, sweet eyes.
In nature's book.
Where semblances of thee I trace,
I mark the place,
With flowers that have a pleading look.
For pity, gentleness and grace.
With lilies white ;
And roses that are burning bright
I take for blushes : then I catch
The sunbeams from the jealous air,
And with them match
The amber crowning of thy hair.
The dews that shine on withering wood,
Or thirsty lands,
Quietly busy doing good,
Are like thy hands.
The brown-eyed sunflower, all the day
Looking one way,
I take for patience, made divine
By melancholy fears like thine.
Ere break of day
I'm up and searching earth and air.
To find out where.
If find I may,
Nature hath copied to her praise
The beauty of thy gracious ways.
The wild sweet-brier
Shows through the book in many a place.
But for the smiling in thy face
She would not have her good attire.
TO WILLIAM ALLIXGHAM 211
Sometimes 1 walk the stubbly ways
That have small praise,
But spy out ne'ertheless,
Some patch of moss, all softly pied.
Or rude stone, with a speckled side,
Telling thy loveliness.
I make believe the brooks that run
A\'ith pleasant noise,
From sun to shade, and shade to sun.
Mimic thy murmured joys.
So, dearest heart,
I cheat the cruelty
That keeps us all so long apart.
With many a poor conceit of thee.
The songs of birds.
Floating the orchard tops among.
Echo the music of thy tongue ;
And fancy tries to find what words
Come nestling to my breast
With melody so excellently dressed.
Before the daybreak I arise,
And search through earth, and sky, and air.
But find I never anywhere
The likeness of thy sweet, sweet eyes,
My modest lady, my exceeding fair."
The authorship of these Hnes I have not been able
to discover.
Abbey Asajvc (not £asa/ve) is printed in Ailing-
ham's In's/i SoJi£'s and Poems, p. 45.
212 DAXTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI
XXXV.
[ Undated. Water-mark of letter paper 1858.]-
My dear Allixgham,
... I ha\'e one of the Magdalene photo-
graphs for you — but do not know how to reach
you with it. If I knew I woukl accompany it
with one of the Henry Taylor photos (Quoth
tongue &c.) of which I expect an instalment.
. . . I think you told me long ago that you had
recovered those proof sheets of my Italian Poets
(on whose loss, by the bye. I hope you have not
really based my lazy silence, which was pure lazi-
ness) and that they contain some notes of yours.
If so, I should like to have the benefit of these,
and would be glad to see them. I expect soon to
have copied all of my own verses which I care to
copy, with a view to printing some day. I have
often benefited by your criticism, and if you would
not find it a bore I would send you the MS. book,
and ask you to annotate it freely, and to tell me
of any pieces therein contained which you would
omit altogether. A good number of my perpe-
trations I have already excluded. Of course you
know our common race too well to think that I
should ak<:ays benefit by a warning though one
rose from the grave — but I am sure I should get
somethinor out of vou. If I can be of anv use at
TO WILLIAM ALLIXGHAM 213
all in your dealings with Bell & Daldy, throuoh
their being such near neighbours of mine, pray
tell me.
And believe me,
dear Allingham,
yours affectionately
D. G. ROSSETTI.
Notes on XXXV.
"The Magdalene photograph" was of the pen-
and-ink drawing of Mary Magdalene at the door
of Simon the Pharisee.
" The Henry Taylor photograph " is of another
pen-and-ink drawing, Hesterna: Rosce. "It repre-
sents," to quote the words of ?^Ir. \\\ M. Rossetti,
" a tent occupied by a group of men and women —
the men throwing dice, one of the women sadly
reminiscent of the vanished days of her innocence ;
and it bears the motto of Sir Henry Taylor's verses
in Philip van Artevelde (Part ii., act v.).
" ' Quoth tongue of neither maid nor wife
To heart of neither wite nor maid,
Lead we not here a jolly life
Betwixt the shine and shade ?
Quoth heart of neither maid nor wife
To tongue of neither wife nor maid,
Thou wagg'st, but I am worn with strife,
And feel like flowers that fade.' "
214 DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI
XXXVI.
Thursday, [shortly before Christmas, 1859].
My dear xAllingham.
Many thanks for your volume just received.
I was agreeably surprised to see my sister's name on
your list, — deservedly, I think.
The book is all the welcomer that it leads me to
hope I was mistaken in a conclusion I had begun
arrivino- at. that I must unwittinolv have incurred
the displeasure of one of my oldest and most
valued friends, no other than yourself. Your
silence before going and since I wrote to you
had led me to fear this possibilitv. Xow. if it
is so. will vou tell me downrio-ht. and the whv ^
But perhaps you are only paying me out in my
own coin, — if utter absence of answer can be
considered payment in any sense, — in which case
I must confess I could only crv. Mea Culpa !
By the bye. that is the title of a queer little
poem, evidently modern, in your collection, with
n(.) name to it. Whose is it ? Or where o-ot
you it }
A merry Christmas and " warious games of that
sort " to you.
Yours affectionately,
D. G. ROSSETTI.
TO WILLIAM! ALLINGHAM 215
Notes on XXXVI.
In Allinohan-i"s lYio^hfijioa/c J'a//c]\ a Collection
of Choice Lyrics and Shorl J\)enis, just published,
Christina Rossetti's An End was Included.
" Warious games of that sort" would seem to
have been a favourite quotation with Rossetti.
for this was the second time he made it in his
correspondence with Allinghani.
XXXVII.
[C/iristnias, 1859.]
Mv DEAR AlLIXGHAM,
I was very glad to hear from you at last,
but sorry and surprised to hear that your ailments
have not quite left you even yet. I had understood
from William that you were very much better when
he saw you shortly before you went back. May
health come to you as the chief pleasure of the
season, and all the others with it.
Apart from the defect found by Ruskin in N, Y .
[Nightingale Valley] — and more apparent (sin-
cerely) to him than to me, as I should wish almost
any printed poem of mine to appear when next
printed with certain revisions — there are various
holes I have to pick in the book. I will turn
3 :>
2i6 DAXTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI
over my copy now I have read it and marked it.
and pull you up by it. First then, I have scored
the follo\vin«j" as doubtful " Choicest Enolish
Poems " — 2 ?"s denoting double doubt.
? ? Wake. Lady. [Joanna Baillie.]
Fair Ines. [Thomas Hood.]
The Seven Sisters. [William Wordsworth.]
The Amulet. [R. W. Emerson.]
Abou Ben Adhem. [Leigh Hunt.]
Ode to the Cuckoo. [John Logan.]
Season for \\ ooing. [W. C. Bryant.]
The Idle \'oyager. [Hartley Coleridge.]
The Last Day of Autumn. [From the
German.]
To Mary in Heaven.' [Robert Burns.]
The Northern Star. [Anonymous.]
To Lucasta. [R. Lovelace.]
The Fugitives.- [P. B. Shelley.]
Song from the Spanish. [W. C. Bryant.]
Adieu. [Thomas Carlyle.]
To a Sky Lark. [William Wordsworth.]
Xed Bolton (hardly as good as Dibden's
' The Heavens nevertheless as yet not faUing on me.
- Xor the mountains hitherto covering me. This always seems
to me a desperately loose piece of writing.
" In the court of the fortress,
Beside the pale portress " —
Fancy a fortress with a portress to keep the thieves out, vS:c .
<S:c. [Xote by Rossetti.]
:> :>
TO WILLIAM ALLINGHAM 217
best, \\1iy is not Tom Bow/ino- in
at this rate?). [William Kennedy.]
An Ano-el in the House. | Leii^h Hunt.]
Disdain Returned. [Thomas Carew.]
Inscription for Fountain. [Barry Cornwall.]
The Exile. [Thomas Hood.]
Lord UUin's Daughter. [Thomas Camp-
bell.]
? ? ? The Hour of Prayer. [Felicia Hemans.]
Song from Lady of Lake. ["Soldier rest !
thy warfare o'er." Walter Scott.]
To a Cold Beauty.
Evening. [Alfred Tennyson.]
Phillida and Corydon. [Nicholas Breton.]
The Knight's Tomb (the only good lines, at
the end, being old). [S. T. Cole-
ridge.]
The Angel (hardly Blake's best).
The Skylark. [James Hogg.]
Ballad. ["She's up and gone." Thomas
Hood.]
Down on the Shore (more than 2 thirds
of this author being better). [William
Allingham].
I^Iay and Death (not B.'s best). [Robert
Browning.]
I don't mean to say that, taking all the lump of
British Poetry, I mightn't have even further sub-
2i8 DAXTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI
stitutions to propose (absentees occurring at the
moment. Herbert — Byron — Henry Taylor I !), but
those marked above I think misplaced even apart
from the question of varying taste — most on abso-
lute artistic grounds — the others as compared with
their writers' powers.
Now I really think, to continue, there's much
too much Wordsworth. He's good, you know, but
unbearable. I don't pretend to have read all you've
put in of his. but noticed with sorrow that he has
two more pieces in the book than Tennyson, who
comes next, and 6 more than Shakespeare — one
morceau of Wordsworth, which I had not met
with anywhere else {To my Maiden Sister, sent
by uiy Dear Wifes {and my own) darling boy, —
or something like that), drew my pencil. I confess,
to the margin in a moment, with the compound
adjective " puffy-mufty." not inapplicable to much
I have found in the same excellent writer.
Then of the Shakespeare sonnets inserted, the
onlv one which, to my thinking, ranks among his
verv first is the Lores Consolation. In The
Wife of Ushers Well. I do not think the inserted
stanza indispensible \sic'\ to the sense, and don't
vou ao-ree with me that modern additions are best
avoided, if possible ?
Barthranis Diroe is. I believe, undoubtedlv bv
Surtees. Sic Vita, you probably know, is often
TO WILLIAM ALLINGHAM 219
printed with two or three more stanzas of the
same length as the one you give, but these
perhaps you reject as spurious. I do not bear
them in mind.
In Ulalunie you have omitted two Hnes at the
close of stanza 6 I believe. Ought it not to run
thus .^
" In terror she spoke letting sink her
Flumes till [Wings until] they trailed in the dust,
//; agony sobbed letting sink her
Wings [Plumes] //// they tnuled in I lie liiist,
Till they sorrowfully trailed in the dust."
Au reste, you have cut out that abominable
z'is/a.
So there I have made enough objections, —
humbly, mostly, I beg you to believe, — and not
said a word yet of all the praise the book
deserves — full as much as Ruskin gives it. Your
preface is most excellent, and will show the wise
ones that the editor is " somebody " besides
Giraldus. And why Giraldus ? And why, I
would almost say. Nightingale Valley, had I not
almost said too much already.
Mea Culpa I described as a queer poem, in my
last, lest by any possibility it should be written
by any one I hated. The fact, as I thought then
and think now, is that it is an extremely fine one
— I think one of your very finest. I half suspected
220 DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI
you, but it is not very recognizable as yours.
What a splendid version you have of Auld Robin
Gray ! Is it altered at all by W. A. ?
Yours affectionately,
D. G. R.
Notes on XXXVII.
" The defect found by Ruskin " in Nightingale
Valley was, it seems probable, Allingham's re-
vision of some of the poems.
Rossetti's admiration of Henry Taylor's poetry
in his early manhood is mentioned by Mr. Holman
Hunt in the following passage: — "Rossetti delighted
most in those poems for which the world then had
shown but little appreciation. Sordcllo and Para-
celsus he would give by forty and fifty pages at a
time, and what were more fascinating, the shorter
poems of Browning. Then would follow the grand
rhetoric from Taylors Philip van Artevelde, in the
scene between the herald and the Court at Ghent
with Philip in reply."
The " uiorceatc of Wordsworth" is entitled, To
my Sister. Written at a Small Distance from my
House, and sent by my Little Boy. Matthew
Arnold included it in that selection of the poet's
works of which he writes : " The volume contains,
I think, everything, or nearly everything, which
may best serve him with the majority of lovers of
poetry, nothing which may disserve him." Accord-
ing to Mr. Hall Caine, as quoted by Mr. W. M.
TO \VILLIA:\I ALLIXGHAM 221
Rossetti. " Rossetti thought Wordsworth was too
much the high priest of Nature to be her lover."
Mr. Caine speaks also of " Rossetti's grudging
Wordsworth everv vote he gets." His indifference
to the beautiful poet was perhaps due to his having
spent all his childhood and youth, and most of his
manhof)d, in London.
It was no doubt by mistake that the two lines
had been omitted in Ulalume. " That abominable
vista " is found in the eighth stanza : —
" Thus I pacified Psyche and kissed her,
And tempted her out of her gloom —
And conquered her scruples and gloom ;
And we passed to the end of the vista,
But were stopped by the door of a tomb."
Allingham edited Poe's Poems for Roudedge in
1857. In the preface he says: "In our private
copy of Ulalmnc we have taken the liberty to ex-
punge the rhyme of vista in the eighth stanza,
readinof the line thus : —
t>
" And we passed from the shade as I kissed her."
It was this emendation, introduced in A^ightingale
Valley without acknowledgment, that Rossetti
praised. This poem and others of Poe's "were
a deep well of delight to Rossetti in his early
years," as his brother tells us. The ordinary
reader may perhaps be forgiven if he looks upon
Ulalume as highly melodious rant. If the cockney
rhyme which Rossetti found abominable seemed
222 DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI
correct to Poe's ear, it was perhaps due to the
five years he spent in his boyhood in a school at
Stoke Newington. Rossetti, it will be remem-
bered, had himself made calm rhyme with arm,
so that he had litde reason to be offended.
"Ruskin," as Allingham told Mr. W. M.
Rossetti, "wrote a warm litde note to the 'editor
of Nightingale Valley^ calling it the best collection
he ever saw." On the tide-page it is described
as "edited by Giraldus."
Allingham's Mea Culpa is as follows : —
" At me one night the angry moon,
Suspended to a rim of cloud,
Glared through the courses of the wind.
Suddenly there my spirit bow'd,
And shrank into a fearful swoon,
That made me deaf and blind.
We sinn'd — we sin — is that a dream ?
We wake — there is no voice nor stir ;
Sin and repent from day to day,
As though some reeking murderer
Should dip his hand in a running stream,
And lightly go his way.
Embrace me fiends and wicked men,
For I am of your crew. Draw back,
Pure women, children with clear eyes.
Let scorn confess me on his rack, —
Stretch'd down by force, uplooking then
Into the solemn skies !
Singly we pass the gloomy gate ;
Some robed in honour, full of peace.
TO WILLIAM ALLIXGHAM
Who of themselves are not aware ;
Being fed with secret wickedness,
And comforted with lies ; my fate
Moves fast ; I shall come there.
All is so usual, hour by hour.
Men's spirits are so lightly twirl'd
By every little gust of sense ;
Who lays to heart this common world ?
Who lays to heart the Ruling Power,
Tust, infinite, intense?
Thou wilt not frown, O Ood. Vet we
Escape not Thy transcendent law :
It reigns within us and without.
^Vhat earthly vision never saw
Man's naked soul may suddenly see.
Dreadful, past thought or doubt."'
XXXVIII.
Paris, Wednesday, \^Ju)u\ i860].
Mv DEAR AlLINGHAM,
Have you heard yet that I'm married?
The new.s is hardly a month old, so it may not
have reached you, though I have meant to write
vou word of it all along, as you are one of the
few valued friends w^hom Lizzie and I have in
common as yet ; nor, as the circle spreads, will she
224 DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI
be likely to feel a warmer regard for any than she
does for you.
Of her health all I can say is that it is possible
to give rather better news of it than I could have
given a month ago. Paris seems to agree so well
with her that I am fearful of returning to London
(which, however, we must do in a day or two) lest
it should throw her back into the terrible state of
illness she had been in for some time before. But
in that case I shall make up my mind to settle in
Paris for a time, as I could no doubt paint here
well enough. In any case I expect a move, as
winter comes on, will be necessary.
You know I have been meaning" to inflict my
vol. of MS. rhymes on you for some time, but
have been so busy lately and wanted to copy a
little more first. I shall try and send them* yet.
When shall we be likely to see you again in
London? Jones is married, too, only a week ago.
He and his wife (a charming and most gifted little
woman) were to have met us in Paris, but he has
not been well enough to travel with pleasure.
With love from both of us I remain.
Your affectionate
D. G. ROSSETTI.
Notes on XXXVIII.
Rossetti was married to Miss Siddal at Hastings
TO WILLIAM ALLIXGHAM 225
on May 23, i860. On April 13, in a letter to his
mother about the approaching" event, he wrote : —
" Like all the important things 1 e\er meant to do,
— to fulhll duty or secure happiness, this one has
been deferred almost beyond possibility." Ruskin,
writing- to congratulate him, said : — " I think Ida
should be very happy to see how much more
beautifully, perfectly, and tenderly you draw when
you are drawino- her than when vou draw anvbodv
else. She cures you of all your worst faults when
you look at her."
Mr. \\\ M. Rossetti, speaking- of Lady Burne-
Jones, says : " Two of her sisters are Mrs. [now
Lady] Poynter, wife of the director of the National
Gallery [now President of the Royal Academy],
and Mrs. Kipling, mother of Mr. Rudyard Kip-
lino-."
It was during- this visit to Paris (according to
Mr. William Sharp) that Rossetti completed his
drawing called Dr. Johnson and the Methodistical
Young Ladies at the Mitre Tavern. Among the
ver)- few works of history and biography that he
had read '' Boswell's Johnson held a high place."
The following anecdote of the end of Rossetti's
wedding trip I have from xMr. Arthur Hughes : —
" It was from Munro I had the story that D. G. R.,
having spent his honeymoon and all his money in
Paris, was returning, when he read in the tirst
paper he got on the way, of the sudden death of
a friend (not a great friend at all, I think), a writer
named Brough, one of the class of which James
16
226 DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI
Hannay was a prominent type — a young man with
a wife and two little children. Rossetti knew that
ways and means would be doubly deficient to the
widow in such circumstances. He had spent all
his own now ; but a certain portion of that existed
in jewelry upon Mrs. Rossetti, who no doubt fully
sympathised with the trouble in question, so that
when they reached London they did not go straight
home, but drove first to a pawnbroker, and then to
the Brough lodgings, and after that home, with
entirely empty pockets ; but, I expect, two very
full hearts."
XXXIX.
Spring Cottage, Downshire Hill, Hampstead,
\^ J lily 3L i860].
My dear Allingham,
I was very sorry to miss you, and very
cdad to hear from you. At the time you were
still in town I was so harrassed \sic'\ with house-
hunting and my wife was so unwell that I found
it daily impossible to see you till the time was past.
I hope it may come again as soon as possible, and
at a more propitious time. I have succeeded in
getting no permanent quarters yet, but we have a
very nice little lodging as above, and I am obliged
to go in and out every day to my work, which I
could postpone no longer. I have the Blackfriars
TO WTLLIA^r ALT.IXGIIAM 227
rooms till Michaelmas in any case — so before then
I hope we may be settled down elsewhere. It
must be hereabouts, as no other part near London
would be half so suitable to m\- wife. The dlfti-
culties are manifold : — all houses to let are either
too large, or else must be taken on too long a lease
for us who do not know whether we may not be
forced away altogether, or at any rate for every
winter.
Lizzie is getting a little stronger now after a very
bad attack of illness ; but she is still so weak that
the least excitement knocks her up again, and
always so obstinately plucky in illness that there
is no keeping her down if she can only be up and
doing. The other day she saw Ned and his wife
for the first time, and we all went with the Browns
to the Zoological Gardens, but it was more than she
outrht to have done. To-dav is the last dav of the
Academv, and we are still uncertain this morning
whether it will be wise for her to afo, thouo-h I have
cut my day's work for the purpose. It is very
provoking to be unable to take her to see so many
kind friends, all so pressing and anxious, or even to
let them come to us.
I am anxious about the Sawdust Poem, but am
not sure that that product is better adapted for
wholesome spiritual bread than it is for the bodily.
Sawdust, more or less, however, is the fashion ot
228 DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI
the day ; 's wooden puppet-show of enlarged
views instead of Veronese's flesh, blood, and slight
stupidity. Give me the latter, however, — or even
Millais' when Veronese's is not to be had. But O
that Veronese at Paris !
As to Ruskin's ten years' rest, I do not know
about his writing, but I will answer for my reading,
if he only writes like his article in the Cornhill this
month. Who could read it, or anything about such
bosh !
Ruskin, by the bye, carried off that MS. book of
mine sonie little while before he left England, and
has not returned it ; but I am trying to get it
through the servants at his place, and still trust to
send it you, though indeed I sincerely suspect it
would be better for me to stick to painting only
and let it be. However, I do not mean to let it
interfere at all with that, and then, if it is rot, it
will not matter much. You tell me vou are in
Part 2 of your Poem, but not when Part 3 and
publication seem likely. I know no more than
yourself of the matter of Browning's Poem, though
he told me of it (and of an additional series of Men
and Women in progress !) when he wrote to me
lately, and sent the portraits. I had given him
a splendid cast of Keats's head, which I got from
Donovan (the same I once had before and broke, if
you remember). I had a mould taken by Munro
TO WILLIAM ALLIXGIIAM 229
before I sent the cast off, so can let you have a
copy, if you care to be put in mintl of mere straw-
berry-merchants. . . .
By the bye I remember sending" you a little book
of bogy poems in emblematic green coxier, and
hearing from you that you had one already. If
you still have mine, would you oblige me by send-
ino- it back, as I sometimes think of it when I want
to be surprised.
Do write to me again, and I'll try to be a better
correspondent, now Lm married and settled. My
wife and I are
Yours affectionately,
D. G. I .,
E. E. i
Notes ox XXXIX.
Spring Cottage has disappeared. It was within
two or three minutes' walk of the house in which
Keats haci lodged some forty years earlier.
Some time in the following year Rossetti wrote
to Madox Brow^n : — " Dear Brown, Lizzie and I
propose to meet Georgie and Ned [Mr. and Mrs.
Burne-Jones] at 2 I'.^r. to-morrow at the Zoo-
logical Gardens — place of meeting the Wombat's
Lair." The wombat had a strange attraction for
Rossetti. On September 15, 1869, he wrote to
his brother : — " Will you thank Maggie for her
most complete information about the Passover,
230 DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI
Also Christina for the Shrine in the Italian taste
which she has reared for the wombat. I fear his
habits tend inveterately to drain architecture."
Six days later he wrote: — "The Wombat is 'A
Joy, a Triumph, a Delight, a Madness.'" Madox
Brown used to tell how at Rossetti's house one day
at dinner, the wombat, "who occupied a place of
honour on the epergne, descending unobserved
during a heated discussion, devoured the entire
contents of a valuable box of cigars."
" The Sawdust Poem " is probably described in
the following letter of Allingham's, dated March 12,
i860 : — " I am doing something occasionally at a
poem on Irish matters, to have two thousand lines
or so, and can see my way through it. One part
out of three is done. But alas ! when all's done,
who will like it ? Think of the Landlord and
Tenant Question in tiat decasyllables ! Did you
ever hear of the Irish coaster that was hailed,
' Smack ahoy ! what's your cargo ? ' ' Timber and
fruit ! ' ' What sort ? ' ' Besoms and potatoes ! '
I fear my poem will no better fulfil expectations."
This poem was first published in Eraser s Magazine,
1862 3, under the title of Laurence Bloovifield, or
Rich and Poor in Ireland. In the preface Ailing-
ham says : — " A man who was neither English nor
Irish, Ivan Tourganief, after reading the book, said
to a friend of the author (who may be forgiven for
recalling the words), ' I never understood Ireland
before.' "
Rossetti, a month earlier, had seen Veronese's
TO WILLIAM ALLIXGIIAM 231
Marriaoe in Cana. He described it as "the
greatest picture in the world, beyond a doubt."
His brother writes that "later on, 1871, he had
got to think V'enjnese (and also Tintoret) ' simply
detestable without their colour and handling.' "
The August number of the Cornhill Magazine
contained the first part of Ruskin's Unto this Last.
Mr. Collinowood, writino- of Ruskin's stav at
Chamounix in July, i860, says: — "He was far
from well ; feelino-, for the first time to a serious
degree, the morbid depression which some of the
letters of the period indicate ; and turning over in
his mind the thoughts he was embodying in a new
series of Essays on Political Economy. These new
papers, painfully thought out and carefully set down
in his room at the Hotel de T Union, he sent to his
friend Thackeray. His reputation as a writer and
philanthropist, together with the friendliness of editor
and publisher, secured the insertion ot the first three
from August to October. Thackeray then wrote to
say that they were so unanimously condemned and
disliked that, with all apologies, he could only admit
one more. So the series was brought hastily to a
conclusion in November ; and the author, beaten
back as he had never been beaten before, dropped the
subject and 'sulked.' as he called it. all the winter."
Donovan was a phrenologist of King William
Street, who was known by the casts he used to
take of murderers as soon as they were hanged.
The cast of Keats's head is reproduced in Mr.
Buxton Forman's Letters of John Keats.
232 DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI
Of " the little book of bogy poems " I give an
account in a note on Letter XLVII.
Mrs. Rossetti's Christian names were Elizabeth
Eleanor.
XL.
\Septeiuber or October, i860.]
Mv DEAR AlLINGHAM,
I am sending you them things at last,
i.e., the MSS. which Ruskin has only just re-
turned me ; I having asked him to send one —
viz. Jenny, to the Corn In// for me — he of course
refusing to send that, offering to send some of
the mystical ones that I don't care to print by
themselves.
My delay has been partly through this, and
partly through wanting to add more before send-
ing them to you. But they'd better e'en go now,
for no more will get done for the nonce. The
only one very unfinished, both in what is written
and unwritten (I think), is The Bride s Chamber.
I wish you'd specially tell me of any you don't
think worth including. You will find that your
advice has been followed often (if you remember
what you gave), and so it is not time wasted to
advise me. When I think how old most of these
TO WILLI. \^I ALLIXGHAM 233
things are, it seems like a sort of mania to keep
thinking of them still ; but I suppose one's leaning
still to them depends mainly on their having no
trade associations, and being still a sort of thing
of one's own. I have no definite ideas as to doing
anything with them, but should like, even if they
lie at rest, to make them as good as I can.
And what are you doing? How goes the saw-
dust poem you spoke of? And is it to be
visible that wine is packed therein, or is a pure
surface of sawdust, betraying iw wine, the duty of
the modern bard ? So may the Shade of Words-
worth smile on him and repay him by reading all
his (W'.'s) Poems through to him when the kindred
Spirits meet.
I wish you were in town, to see you sometimes,
for I literally see no one now except Madox Brown
pretty often, and even he is gone now to join
Morris, who is out of reach at L^pton, and with
them is married Jones painting the inner walls of
the house that Top built. But as for the neigh-
bours, when they see men pourtrayed by Jones
upon the walls, the images of the Chaldeans
pourtrayed (by hif)i /) in Extract \'ermilion, ex-
ceeding all probability in dyed attire upon their
heads, after the manner of no Babylonians of any
Chaldea, the land of any one's nativity, — as soon
as they see them with their eyes, shall they not
234 DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI
account him doting, and send messengers into
Colney Hatch ?
Lizzie has been rather better of late, I hope —
certainly not subject to the same extent to violent
fits of illness. She is at Brighton just now for a
few days, but I know I may send you her love
with mine. We are sorely put to it for a pied-d-
terre, every house we try for seeming to slip
through just as we think we have got it. For one
in Church Row, Hampstead, which has just escaped
us, my heart is in doleful dumps ; it having a
glorious old-world garden worth ^200 a year to
me for backgrounds.
Do let me hear from you (to Blkfrs [Blackfriars])
when you have got the book which goes with this,
and believe me
Yours affectionately,
D. G. ROSSETTI.
William is gone to Florence to old Browning.
Notes on XL.
Jenny was begun as early as 1847, was almost
finished about 1858, and was published in 1870.
"Mr. Ruskin," writes Mr. W. M. Rossetti, "sent
a letter criticising the poem, one of his objections
being that ' Jenny ' is not a true rhyme to ' guinea,'
as in the opening couplet :
TO WILLIAM ALLIXGHAM 235
Lazy, laughing, languid Jenny,
Fond of a kiss and fond of u guinea.'
This I reeard as the stricture of a Scotchman."
Bridc-Chaiiiber Talk was begun as soon as
Jciniw but was not published till 1881, when its
title was changed to The Bride s Prelude.
Rossetti took part in painting ^Morris's house.
In the record of his work for 1858-59 his
brother mentions the '' Saint alio Beatricis, repre-
sentino- Dante vieetins^ Beatrice in Florence, and
/;/ 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."
1 remember the beautiful paintings on the doors
and furniture in this pleasant house. I have not
forgotten, moreover, a long and eager talk on
pigments between my host and Charles Faulkner,
of which I did not understand a single word.
Towards the close of 1865 Madox Brown re-
corded : — " Morris leaves his house, and takes up
with the Firm in a large house in Queen Square."
Morris in his Oxford days, and indeed long after-
wards, was always known by the name of Topsy or
Top, given him after the girl in Uncle Tonis Cabin.
Colney Hatch is a lunatic asylum near London.
The house in Church Row with its garden worth
^200 a year for backgrounds recalls the anecdote of
Linnell's purchase of Redstone Wood. "His solicitor
told him the price asked was excessive. Linnell's
reply was : ' Never mind, the land will prove a good
236 DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI
investment ; it will give me foregrounds — indeed,
most of the materials I need for my pictures.' "
XLI.
Blackfriars,
\st November [i860].
Dear Allixgham,
I'm wanting to copy and illustrate some
poem of mine in the album of a kind and good lady
— Mrs. Dalrymple — whether known or unknown
to you I am not sure. Now do not hurry any
consideration you may mean to bestow on my
MSS., as I feel sure they will benefit thereby ;
but when vou can, let me have them ao-ain, without
their losino- such advantao^e. I have thus much
need of them as I have no other copies now.
And what do you think of Faithful for Ever?
And have you seen Ruskin's letter to the Critic
about it, in answer to a spiteful attack there ? I
was very sorry to hear w^hat you wrote me about
the Author's wife — poor thing — but I hope she may
be mending as one hears no more. I wrote to
Patmore after reading" his book, which he sent me,
saying all that I (most sincerely) admired in it,
but perhaps leaving some things unsaid ; for what
TO WILLIAM ALLIXGHAM 237
can it avail to say some thiiv^s to a man alter his
third volume? "Of love which never finds its
published close, what sequel ? "' And how many ? !
A man (one Gilchrist, who lives next door to
Carlyle, and is as near him in other respects as he
can manage) wrote to me the other day, saying he
was writing a life of Blake, and wanted to see my
manuscript by that genius. Was there not some
talk of j'(?//;' doing something in the way of publishing
its contents ? I know William thought of doing so,
but fancy it might wait long for his efforts ; and I
have no time, but really think its contents ought to
be edited, especially if a new Life gives a "shove
to the concern "' (as Spurgeon expressed himselt in
thanking a liberal subscriber to his Tabernacle). I
have not yet engaged myself any way to said
Gilchrist on the subject, though I have told him he
can see it here if he will give me a day's notice.
By the bye, talking of Blake, did I (I think I
did) solicit from you one of the two copies you
have, or had, of a certain greenish Book of Bogies,
one whereof was once sent you by the present
applicant, who lately found out from the Ghost's
publisher that the literary character is quite out of
print and has no further views on the British press ?
And again — how am I to send a certain photo-
o-raph which lies here inscribed to you ? Or shall I
keep it till you conie ^
238 DANTP: GABRIEL ROSSETTI
Lizzie has been rather stronger lately, and we
have resolved (after much vain house-hunting about
Hampstead and Highgate) to weather out the
winter here at Blackfriars, taking the 2nd floor
in the next house in addition to these rooms (the
landlord of both being the same, and he offering
us the floor at a moderate rent). We could have
a door opened between the two floors — a plan
adopted throughout the two houses — and feel at
home, and settled for the time being.
You know William is back from Florence, etc. —
having found the Brownings at Siena — the great
one exuberant as ever. I had a request the other
day to illustrate Aurora Leigh, from, or rather on
the part of, the publisher, but really I don't think I
could make much of it. However, if it were done
by various hands, I should like to make one among
them. R. B. was not very explicit to William on
the subject of his present labours.
Have you seen a new vol., — however, I'm not
quite sure the copies are all out yet, — viz., 2 plays
by Algernon Swinburne and did you meet him in
London ? He is very Topsaic, with a decided dash
of DeatJis Jest Book, if you have read that improv-
ing book. But there's no mistake about some of
\-{\'~y poems — much more, indeed, than these published
plays. The other day Ned. Jones, his wife, my
wife, and I went to Hampton Court and lost our-
TO WILLIAM ALLIXGHAM 239
selves in the maze. I wish you had l)een one of
the party, and so would [ones lia\-e wished, I know,
as you are on his select list, which is not too large.
Really I still believe you ou^ht to come to London.
At the end of the winter the Jones's and we mean
to take a house together, if we can fmd one to our
liking.
\\ ith kindest remembrances from both of us,
I am.
Yours affectionately,
D. G. ROSSETTI.
What of your poem ? Do tell.
Notes ox XLI.
Mrs. Dalrymple was sister of Mrs. Cameron,
famous for her photography, and of Mrs. Prinsep
(the mother of the Royal Academician).
Patmore wrote to Allingham on November 25,
1 86 1 : — " T/^e Victims of Love is the completion of
Faithful for Ever, which was abandoned by me in
an unfinished state when my wife's condition of
health seemed quite hopeless. I hope you will not
read it till it appears as part of the second and
revised edition of Faithfil for Ever, which will
probably appear in the spring."
In a letter in The Critic, October 27, i860,
Ruskin wrote : — " The poem is, as I said, to the
best of my belief, a finished and tender work of
very noble art." To this the editor replied : — " If
240 DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI
we be not very much mistaken, Mr. Ruskin said
that he preferred Aurora Leigh to any poem since
Milton. ... A re-perusal leads to the belief that
the ' poem ' is about as jejune, puerile, and inartistic
a piece of writing- as it would be possible to produce."
He o-oes on to quote "Mr. Patmore's never-to-be-
forgotten couplet : —
" ' A gentlewoman's twice as cheap,
As well as pleasanter to keep.' "
Rossetti, in the line which he incloses in quotation
marks, applying it so humorously to Fatmores Ajige/
in the Hotise, parodies Tennyson's Love and Duty : —
" Of love that never found his earthly close,
What sequel ? "
Allingham, in a letter to Patmore dated March 29,
1856, had told him that he was writing at too great
length. The poet replied : — " You horrify me with
your talk about pruning. The poem wants at least
one third more to make it a complete statement of
the matter." An amusing instance of his vanity is
shown in the following passage in a letter he wrote
to Allingham on September 12, 1855 : — " What do
you think of the gratuitous slight put upon you and
me in Kingsley's notice of Maud? I would not
change Tamer ton Church Tower [one of his own
poems] nor, if I was the author of it, The Mztsic
Master for fifty Mauds ^
TO WILLIAM ALLINGHAM 241
"One Gilchrist " was Alcxcinder (iilcbrist, author
of Lives of Etty and Blake. " L^)r him," writes
Mr. \\\ M. Rossetti, "the feehni;- of Rossetti was
one of oenuine friendliness. He liked the writer
and his writings, and had a hi^h regard for his
insight as a critic of art." (lilchrist's sudden death
in the following No\-eniber came as "a staggering-
blow" to his friend. \\'hen, a few months later,
Rossetti lost his wife, he wrote to Mrs. Gilchrist :
— " I 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." He and his brother helped the widow
to complete her husband's Life of Blake.
The manuscript by Blake had been offered
Rossetti in 1847 for ten shillings. " Dante's
pockets," wTites his brother, "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.
His ownership of this volume conduced to the
Przeraphaelite 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. These were balsam
to Rossetti's soul, and grist to his mill. At the sale
of his library the Blake manuscript sold for i^iio."
Mr. W. AL Rossetti, describing to \V. Allingham
his trip to Italy, says : — " The Brownings were not
at Florence, but at their summer haunts, the Villa
17
242 DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI
Alberti, Marciano, near Sienna. Old Browning
jolly and lovable beyond description, looking very
healthy and alive ; Mrs. Browning moderately well.""
" Mr. Swinburne," writes' Mr. \V. M. Rossetti,
" dedicated to Rossetti his tirst volume. TJic Queen
Mother, and Rosaniunei. His brilliant intellect, his
wide knowledge of poetry and astonishing memory
in quotation, his enthusiasm for whatsoever he
recognised 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.""
Rossetti wrote to " Shirley " in 1865 : — " You will
find Swinburne's Atalanta a most noble thing ;
never surpassed, to my thinking."
Thonias Lovell Beddoes wrote to a friend from
Pembroke roUege, Oxford, on June 8, 1825 : —
" Oxford is the most indolent place on earth. I
have fairly done nothing in the world but read a
play or two of Schiller, .-Eschylus, and Euripides.
I am thinking of a very Gothic-styled tragedy, for
which I have a jewel of a name — Deatlis Jest
Book. Of course no one will ever read it."
TO WILLIAM ALLINC.IIA.M 243
XLII.
\Novciubcr 22, 1860.J
Mv 1)i:ar Allixciiam,
I know I'm \vr0nj4" to be nervous, but as
your letter of the 13th talks of my ?vLSS. coming-
back in a day or two (I have no copies besides),
it looks as if something might ha\c happened ; but
no doubt, after all, it hasn't.
I'm going to take the photograph with me as
you direct the very first time I pass that way at
any leisure, which is seldomer than would seem in
the rational order of things ; but it shall soon
reach you now. There are several questions in
your letter which I'll proceed to answer.
1. I have no copy of the letter of Ruskin's
about Patmore in The Critic, or would have sent
it you.
2. Swinburne's volume is in print certainly, as I
have one ; but I doubt if yet issued, or even all
printed, as I believe he purposed some corrections.
On second thoughts, Lll send you mine ; but please
return it at earliest, as I haven't yet read the first
play, and may get found out. He read it me
in MS.
3. 1 will enquire at Triibner's forthwith about
vour Yankee edition.
244 DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI
4. I suspect such an Opie as you describe
cannot be worth much, but am not quite sure
about it. Am much too ignorant to make a
guess.
5. I never to my knowledge promised to get
you a Tennyson portrait, and fear one is hardly
get-at-able now ; as I have been trying myself to
get one of the slouch-hatted ones (I have the
other from ^Irs. Cameron), but judge they are
all distributed, as it does not turn up. I am
having a 4 - vol. Tennyson of the Tauchnitz
edition bound for my wife, and wanted to face
the 4 titles with the 2 photos and W'oolner's
2 photo-portraits, but fear I shall be one short.
Have you seen the Tauchnitz Tennyson? It
contains all — even to the Idylls.
By the bye, if you have one, I wish you would
send me one of those photos of yourself, as
we are hanging pictures in profusion about our
rooms here, and would hang you, if we could
get you.
But mine seems lost (the one you gave long-
ago), as I can find it nowhere. If you haven't
ancuher to give, can one still be got at Bond
Street?
About the Poems, I never meant. I believe, to
print the Hymn (which was written merely to see if
I could do Wesley, and copied, I believe, to enrage
TO WILLIAM ALLIXGHAM 245
my friends) nor the Duke of Wellington. The
Min-or I will sacrifice to you, ;uul have no pre-
judice myself in fa\-our of Avi\ but should be
smothered by certain friends it has if it did not
g'o in. Are \'our objections to it on poetic or
doo'matic "'rounds ? and does Dennis Shand dis-
please you for auN'thin^" l:>ut its impropriety? But
perhaps I shall find my answers in the margins.
The one of any length I most thought of omitting
myself is the Portrait, which is rather spoon-meat ;
but this, I see, you do not name, and perhaps
I may leave it. My chief reason for including-
as much as I could would be to make the volume
look as portly as may be from such a middle-aged
novice. I would throw the Bride s Chamber over
altog'ether if I could muster energy to supply an
equal amount of new matter, but fear I shall have
to hnish it off somehow if I rush into print, as
I almost think of doino- now.
Your accusation of the canse of my anxiety
about your poem is a little bit of genuine ill-
nature now, is it not, to scold a reader of yours
as I am — eh, now ?
I am sorry to learn that in all these years you
ha\'e had no better specimen of London at Bally-
shannon than Aubrey de \ ere, who is surely one
of the wateriest of the well - meaning. I wish
Lizzie and I could turn up some time in your
246 DANTE GABRIEL] ROSSETTI
neighbourhood for a change, or see you here, if
not there, till when and ever,
I am and we are,
Yours affectionately,
D. G. ROSSETTI.
P.S. — We have got one of our rooms completely
hung round with Lizzie's drawings, which I should
like to show you.
Notes on XLIL
" I believe I have this Hymn somewhere," Mr.
W. M. Rossetti informs me. "It was never pub-
lished, I can remember that some years after
Rossetti's death it was produced to me as being
his, and I pronounced it spurious ; but since then
I have seen reason to alter my opinion. Welling'
toil s Funeral was finally published by him ; The
Mirror, not by him, but by me, in the Collected
Works." Dennis Sliand, Mr. W. M. Rossetti
describes as "a ballad of a rather light kind,
not published."
About The Portrait Rossetti wrote to his mother
in 1873: "I remember that, for the family //f/r/^-
Potch, long and long ago, J first wrote The Blessed
Daniozel, and also a poem about a portrait. Have
you these ancient documents, and could you let
me have the same if in my own handwriting } "
" The Hodgepodge,'' says Mr. W. M. Rossetti,
"was a sort of manuscript family magazine, never
TO WILLIAM ALLIXGILAM 247
passiiiL;" beyond the ran^-e of the family circle,
which was concocted ckirini;' some months or
weeks of 1847, ^^^ possibly 1846."
XLIII.
{^Postmark, N'oveiiibcr 29, i860.]
Mv DEAR AlLIXGHAM,
The book comes safe. I've not yet had
time to look well through your suggestions, but am
glad to see there are fewest in the things done
later. Some of the others I know can never be
set quite right, but I dare say I shall find some
help thereto in your notes. \\ ould you tell me
as reg"ards y^v/z/j' (which I reckon the most serious
thing I have written), whether there is any objec-
tion you see in the treatment, or any side of the
subject left untouched which ought to be included }
I really believe I shall print the things now, and
see whether the magic presence of proof-sheets
revives my muse sufficiently for a new poem or
two to add to them.
Indeed, and of course, my wife docs draw still.
Her last designs would, I am sure, surprise and
delight you, and I hope she is going to do better
than e\^er now. I feel surer every time she works
248 DAXTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI
that she has real genius — none of your make-
beheve — in conception and colour, and if she can
only add a little more of the precision in carrying
out which it so much needs health and strenQth
to attain, she will. I am sure, paint such pictures
as no woman has painted yet. But it is no use
hoping for too much.
I quite agree with you in loathing Once a Week,
illustrations and all. Meredith's novel, however,
has very great merit of a wonderfully queer kind,
I thought. Did you ? But through your poem
(how long have such little commodities as 500-
line poems been lying by with you ?) I should
like greatly to open a connection even with Once
a Week, though it is only once a century that
I feel disposed to "illustrate." (I had an applica-
tion through Chapman, the other day, about doing
Azu'ora Leigh all through [as I understood], but
couldn't, though I should like to join with others,
if feasible, for a block or two, for Brownings
sake. )
I wish you would let me know what the subject
is in your poem. If modern, so much the better ;
onlv, if Irish, I fear failino- in character and truth.
But I am not so despairingly dilatory quite now, I
think, as I used to be in those famous old days,
and might not perhaps turn your poem into a
posthumous one.
TO WILLIAM ALLINGHAM 249
As for Swinburne's Plays, I don't think they will
be to your liking. For my own part, I think he
is much better suited to ballad-writing and such
like, but there are real beauties in the plays too.
I have been to-day to Triil^ner and asked
tor )-our book from America. They showed me
Ticknor & Fields' last list, wherein it is not ;
but said also that they were seeing Mr. Ticknor
every day, and would enquire. I left them your
address and my own.
Yours affectionately,
D. G. ROSSETTI.
The Magdalene shall soon reach you.
Notes on XLIII.
On May 24, 1870, Rossetti wrote to his maiden
aunt : — " I just hear from mamma, with a pang of
remorse, that you have ordered a copy of my
Poems. You may be sure I did not fail to think
of you when I inscribed copies to friends and
relatives ; but, to speak frankly, I was deterred
from sending it to you by the fact of the book
including one poem (Jenny) of which I felt un-
certain whether you would be pleased with it. I
am not ashamed of having written it (indeed, I
assure you that I would never have written it
if I thought it unfit to be read with good results),
but I feared it might startle you somewhat. . . .
250 ■ DAXTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI
My mother likes it. on the whole, the best in the
volume, after some consideration."
Mrs. Gilchrist, writing- to Rossetti about his
poems, after speaking of The Blessed Daniozel,
goes on to say oi Jenny : — "There is another
poem — other, indeed ! — which moves me even to
anguish : one which comes upon a woman with
appalling- force after she has been standing gazing
into the very Sanctuary of Love where woman-
hood sits divinely enthroned. For she knows
that it, looking up joyfully, the brightness shlning
on her also, she may say. 'my sister.' she must
also, though shame should rise up and cover her.
look down and say, ' O. my sister.' "
Mr. George Meredith's no\el in Once a Week
w^as Evan Harrington.
I cannot find any poem by Allingham in Once a
]]'eek about the time Rossetti wrote this letter.
XLIV.
\^January\ 1861.]
Dear Allixcjham.
I hope you've had all the luck of the
Season, and that it's to last all the year. I write
this more specially to say that I sent off the Mag-
dalene photograph some time back by Green, and
that I hope it reached you safely.
DESIGN FOR WALL PAPER.
[To face page 251.
TO WILLIAM ALLLXGHAM 251
Lizzie is pretty well for her, and we are in expec-
tation (but this is (^Liite in confidence, as such things
are better waited for quietly) of a httle accident
which has just befallen Topsy and Mrs. T. who
ha\'e become parients [sic]. Ours however will not
be (if at all) for 2 or 3 months yet.
We have got our rooms quite jolly now. Our
drawing-room is a beauty, I assure you. already,
and on the first country trip we make we shall ha\-e
it newly papered from a design of mine which I
have an opportunity of getting made bv a paper-
manufacturer, somewhat as below. I shall have it
printed on common brown packing-paper and on
blue grocer's-paper, to try which is best. [Here
follows, in the orioinal letter, a desio-n of the wall-
paper.]
The trees are to stand the whole height of the
room, so that the effect will be slighter and quieter
than in the sketch, where the tops look too large.
Of course they will be wholly conventional : the
stems and fruit will be Venetian Red. the leaves
black — the fruit, however, will have a line of yellow
to indicate roundness and distinguish it from the
stem ; the lines of the ground black, and the stars
vellow with a white riuLT round them. The red and
black will be made of the same key as the brown or
blue of the ground, so that the effect of the whole
will be rather sombre, but I think rich, also. When
s^z
DAXTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI
we get the paper up, we shall have the doors and
wainscoting painted summer-house green. We got
into the room in such a hurry that we had no time
to do anything to the paper and painting, which had
just been clone by the landlord. I should like you
to see how nice the rooms are looking, and how
many nice things we have got in them.
However you have yet to see a real wonder of
the age — viz., Topsy's house, which baffles all de-
scription now.
We are organising (but this is quite under the
rose as yet) a company for the production of furni-
ture and decoration of all kinds, for the sale of
which we are going to open an actual shop ! The
men concerned are Madox Brown, Jones, Topsy,
Webb (the architect of T.'s house), P. P. Marshall,
Faulkner, and myself Each of us is now pro-
ducing, at his own charges, one or two (and some
ot us more) things towards the stock. We are not
intending to compete with 's costly rubbish or
anvthino- of that sort, but to crive real Qrood taste at
the price as far as possible of ordinary furniture.
\\ e expect to start in some shape about May or
June, but not to go to anv expense in premises at
first.
Here is the last piece of news, and other there is
none available I think. Description of pictures in
hand is barren work. I am making use ot your
TO WILLIAM ALLIXGILAM 253
notes on my Poems and bettering;' some of them. I
hope. I am now j4oing' to print all those written
except the Bride s Chamber, and those you advised
omitting. When printed, I shall see how much
more is needed for a volume, and try to do it in the
evenings, while the printed sheets wait, and then
bring the book out. I am actually continuing the
printing of the Translations now, and hope to get
both books out tOQ-ether.
What became of the Poem you meant to send to
Once a Week ? Did you send it ? I have not
seen the paper regularly, but should have nosed it
out nevertheless. I fancy, if it had appeared.
\\ rite me as soon as you can, and believe me,
with love trom Lizzie and self,
Your affectionate
d. g. rossetti.
Notes ox XLI\'.
"Our rooms" were the old quarters by Black-
friars Bridge, somewhat enlaro-ed.
]Mr. W. M. Rossetti, describing ''the foundation
of the decorative firm, which, known at first as
' Morris, Marshall. Faulkner & Co.." is now named
'Morris & Company,'" continues: — "The Prse-
raphaelite Brotherhood introduced into painting
something that might well be called a revolution,
and the firm introduced into decoration somethino-
still more revolutionary for widespread and as yet
254 DAXTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI
permanent eftect. The first suggestion for forming
some such hrm," adds ^h. Rossetti, " came from
Mr. Peter Paul Marshall, an engineer, son-in-law of
Mr. John Miller of Liverpool." However true this
may be, nevertheless, as Mr. Arthur Hughes points
out to me, the germs of it are to be found in "the
intensely mediaeval furniture " which Morris had
made for his rooms in Red Lion Square, and in the
cabinet which he, Rossetti, and Burne-Jones
covered with pictures. A further development
is seen in the decorations of Morris's house at
Upton.
Morris had of course to learn by experience.
?^Ir. Hughes remembers a sofa designed by him,
with a long bar beneath projecting six inches at
each end, so that it tripped up some one who
hastilv went round it. Amid loud lauo-hter each
projection was at once shortened by three inches
with a saw ; but even then there was danger to the
passer-by. My study table was one of the earliest
productions of the firm. Neither it nor an arm-
chair which they made for me was such a thorough
piece of workmanship as they would have produced
later on. They were at hrst, as Faulkner told me,
sometimes tricked by their men. How earnest
Morris was in mastering every trade which he
undertook the following anecdote shows. One day
on my way to Oxford I fell in with him at Padding-
ton and we travelled together. His hands were
deeply stained with blue. He told me that he was
working at a dyer's in the Midland Counties, as he
TO WILLIAM ALLIXCIIAM 255
meant to make car[)ets and han^in^s. What he
had ah'eady learnt showed him that the usual pro-
cesses were very imperfect.
He used frequently to lunch at L^aulkner's house
in Queen's S(][uare, coming" in the French blouse in
which he worked from the business-place of the
tlrm " the shop " as they always called it — close
by. FaLilkner told me that the servant thought he
was a butcher whom her master for some unaccount-
able reason had to lunch.
XLV.
[^Endorsed L ondou , May 10, 1 8 6 1 . ]
Mv DEAR AlLINGIIAM,
I ha\'e had to thank several people for
expressions of sympathy, but few can be so worthy
of thanks as yours, which I well know to be sincere.
My wile is progressing very well, all things con-
sidered, and got over her confinement much better
than we had ventured to hope. The child had been
dead tor 2 or 3 weeks before, and you may imagine
that mv forebodings were none of the briQ-htest.
I had delayed WTiting to you for some time till I
could send )ou my book — i.e., the Translations,
which is now just finished printing, and will reach
you in a fe\^■ da)"S I hope, if I can get at a copy ;
256 DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI
but I must be chary of what I do till I know whether
it is to be my own or a publisher's. However I
trust to send one to you now, as I am anxious to
have your advice in case of prolonged negotiations
with publishers. I try Macmillan first, as he has
been again expressing wishes about it, but am not
very sanguine of him. For one thing, I have been
obliged to introduce, in order to give a full view of
the epoch of Poetry, some matter to which objec-
tions may probably be raised ; but I should not
have cared to do the work at all unless completely
from a literary point of view. I have also had to
put in a good deal of my own prose, and, as far as
I know, there is nothing more which could be added
to the book, which makes nearly 500 pages.
It has interfered a good deal with my painting-
till lately, I am sorry to say. My own original
Pomes (de Terre et de Ciel) niust stand over as yet.
But as I shall certainly not get the first book out
till November, the second may possibly be ready
too. I am going to do one, or perhaps two, etchings
for the first.
Now, there is a world of words about myself
when I had to tell you about your work ; that is,
Morley Park — which I read and found full of
beauties, — best where most impassioned, as all
poetry is and must be. The monologue of the
deserted woman seemed to me most sustained in
TO WILLIAM ALLIXGIIAM 257
this respect — and you will say tniK- ou^ht to be.
In the rest I must say 1 found a certain degree of
constraint in style — a rather wilful stiffness of ex-
pression (of which the opening- couplet affords as
good an example as any), and I thought also too
much dwelling here and there on minute objects in
nature — particular!)- in the bridegroom's speech to
the bride. I have it not by me, so am speaking
from memory. Moreover, the speeches struck me
sometimes as having rather too literary — or clever
— a turn. I recall as an instance what the main
speaker says to his returned friend about his grown-
up sweetheart, towards the end. The work is quite
yours, however, and really a work, and would har-
monize much better with a volume of your poems
than with Macmillan's Macademy ot stones for
bread. By the bye, I dare say you liked my sister's
little pennyworths of wheat prominent among the
pebbles.
The /\cademy is rather seedy, only has a refresh-
ing- look through beino- more fairlv huno" than usual.
Leighton might, as you say, have made a burst had
his pictures not been very ill placed mostly — indeed
one of them (the only very good one, Lieder ohne
Worte) is the only instance of very striking unfair-
ness in the place. Hughes has got a good place,
and looks very well indeed with a picture of a
Laborer's return to his family. Hook's pictures are
18
258 DAXTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI
among the best, but one seems to have seen them
before. Hunt's Lanthorn maker may be really the
best picture there, spite of several decided short-
comings. Watts has two very good portraits (or
more like pictures), one of Alice Prinsep. ?^Irs.
W^ells (Boyce's sister) has some first-rate things,
and her husband (who has been driven from minia-
ture to oil by the progress of photography) is not
far behind her. There is a Scotchman named
Archer, who has a picture I like as well as anything
of a lady " Playing at Queen," with her quaint chil-
dren holdincr her train and trotting' after. But
really there is not a single work of importance in
the place which belongs to quite the first rank.
Pardon oreat hurrv in this letter which is written
before breakfast, and believe me (with love from
wife),
Your affectionate
D. G. ROSSETTI.
I will give your love to and wife. They
have a nice pretty elder sister of Mrs. 's in
town. There might be a chance for you ! ! Only a
litde elder ! ! !
Notes ox XLV.
On April 20. 1861, Rossetti had written to
Alexander Gilchrist : — " My great anxiety about
CHRISTINA ROSSETTI.
(From a tracing of a sketch ty Dante Gabriel Rossetti.J
[To face page 259.
TO WILLIAM .\LLL\(;iL\M 259
my wife lasts still. She has too much courag'e to
be in the least downcast herself."
On October 3. 1862, Mrs. Oilchrist. writlnn" to
Mr. W. ^L Rossetti about the republication of
Blake's Daughters of Albiod says : — " It was no use
to put in what I was perfectly certain Macmillan
(who reads all the proofs) would take out again.
He is far more inexorable against any shade of
heterodoxy in morals than in religion."
The title of Morlcx Park was changed first into
Sout/iiccI/ Park, and hnalK' into Bridegrooui s Park.
It is included in a volume called Life and Phantasy
in the last edition of Allingham's works. The open-
ing couplet is as follow^s : —
" Friend Edward, from this turn remark
The sweep of woodland. Bridegroom's Park
We call it."
" ' My sister's little pennyworths of wheat ' " (Mr.
W. M. Rossetti tells me) "were poems by Christina
in Macjnil/aifs Magazine. One of them (the first)
was Up-HilL now of considerable celebrity."
It was in Cairo, Mr. Holman Hunt tells us, that
he began " the little picture called The Lantern
Makers Courtship. It was of an incident I saw in
the bazaar. " Madox Brown recorded on Julv 28,
1856: — "Saw Hunt's Lantern Maker, which is
lovely in colour and one of the best he has painted,
but like much he has done of late, very quaint in
drawing and composition, but admirably painted.'
Mrs. Wells died in the summer of this vear.
26o DAXTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI
" She was," writes 'Sir. \V. M. Rossetti, " a painter
of exceptional talent, from which my brother and
many more hoped much. He took a portrait of her
as she lay in death."
J. Archer's picture wd.s P laying' at a Queen ivitk a
Painter s Wardrobe.
XLVI.
Monday \sumnier t^" 1861].
]\Iv DEAR AlLINGHAM,
I am sending you by book post with this
a sewed copy of my book. I have only just got
a few, and do not offer it you en permanence in this
state, as I am going to make an etching, or perhaps
two, for it. and there is another index to come at
the end, but had 6 copies sent me now to use in
getting a publisher, etc. Vl\ first offer of it will
be to Macmillan, with whom I have had some talk.
What I want chiefly to get rid of is the printer's
bill, but I am led to think by some friends that I
ought to expect something in money also. What
think you } Will you tell me, and say all you have
time to say in the way of criticism ? Cancels are
still possible. There are 5 cancel leaves already in
the book (chiefly on score of decorum !), which you
will notice by their being in the rough as yet.
TO WILLIAM ALLIXGIIAM 261
My wife progresses well, I am !_;lad Lo Icll you.
W ilh liLT lo\e lo you,
1 am, yours affectionately,
D. G. R.
NOTKS ON XLYI.
" My Book " was T/w Early Italian Poets, now
called Dante and his Circle. No etchings were
included in it, though one was made, now in Mr.
Fairfax Murray's collection. Macmillan did not
publish the work, but Smith and Elder.
For the ''something in money" which his friends
led him to think he ought to expect he had to wait
eight years. By 1869, about six hundred copies
having been sold, he received, Mr. W. M. Rossetti
says, "a minute dole of less than nine pounds."
XLVIL
\A^ear the end ^7/1862.]
My dear Allinciham,
. . . You will remember my troubling
you once or twice about that Bogie poem book of
Wilkinson's. I am w^anting it now to mention in
a passage on Blake's poetry which I am writing for
the Life never quite completed. Could you kindly
262 DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI
let me have the loan of yours as soon as you
can. ...
Yours affectionately,
d. g. rossetti.
Notes on XLVII.
"That Bogie poem" was Improvisations from
the Spirit, by Dr. J. Garth Wilkinson, the homoeo-
pathist who was Miss Siddal's physician in 1854.
Hawthorne, whose children he attended in Decem-
ber, 1857, wrote of him: — " He is a homoeopathist,
and is known in scientific or general literature ; at
all events, a sensible and enlightened man, with an
un-English freedom of mind on some points. For
example, he is a Swedenborgian and a believer in
modern spiritualism. He showed me some draw-
ings that had been made under the spiritual in-
fluence by a miniature-painter who possesses no
imaginative power of his own, and is merely a good
mechanical and literal copyist ; but these drawings,
representing angels and allegorical people, were
done by an infiuence which directed the artist's
hand, he not knowing what his next touch would
be, nor what the final result." Hawthorne con-
cludes : " This matter of spiritualism is surely
the strangest that ever was heard of; and yet I
feel unaccountably little interest in it — a sluggish
distrust and repugnance to meddle with it — inso-
much that I hardly feel as if it were worth this
page or two in my not very eventful journal." It
TO WILLIAM .\LLIX(;iL\M 263
does not appear thai the doctor ever compounded
his draughts and his pills under spiritual inlluence.
though it seems hard that his patients should not
have had the benefit of this supernatural aid.
Rossetti thus described this "bogy book" in the
supplementary chapter he wrote for Gilchrist's Life
of Blake : — " A very singular example of the closest
and most absolute resemblance to Blake's poetry
may be met with (if only one could meet with it)
in a phantasmal sort of little book, published, or
perhaps not published but only printed, some years
since, and entitled. Iiuprovisatioiis of the Spirit. It
bears no author's name, but was written by Dr.
J. Garth Wilkinson, the highly-gifted editor of
Swedenboror's writinos, and author of a Life of
him. to whom we owe a reprint of the poems in
Blake s Songs of Lnnocence and Experience. These
improvisations profess to be written under precisely
the same kind of spiritual guidance, amounting to
abnegation of personal effort in the writer, which
Blake supposed to have presided over the pro-
duction of his Jerusaleni, &c. The little book has
passed into the general (and in all other cases
richly-deserved) limbo of the modern ' spiritualist '
muse. It is a very thick little book, however un-
substantial its origin ; and contains, amid much
that is disjointed or hopelessly obscure (but then,
why be the polisher of poems for which a ghost,
and not even your own ghost, is alone responsible ?)
many passages and indeed whole compositions of
a remote and charming beauty, or sometimes of a
264 DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI
grotesque figurative relation to things of another
sphere, which are startHngly akin to Blake's
writings — could pass in fact for no one's but his.
Professing as they do the same new kind of author-
ship, they might afford plenty of material for com-
parison and bewildered speculation, if such were
in any request."
Dr. Wilkinson in a note at the end of his Iin-
provisatious says : — " Suffice it to say that every
piece was produced without premeditation or pre-
conception : had these processes stolen in, such
production would have been impossible. The pro
duction was attended by no feeling and bv no
fervour, but only by an anxiety of all the circum-
stant faculties to observe the unlooked-for evolution
and to know what would come of it."
According to \\\ B. Scott. " Emerson said
' Wilkinson was most like Bacon of all men
living.'" Scott adds that "Wilkinson was as tall
and as straight as a spear, and looked steadilv at
you from behind his spectacles as if he saw vour
thoughts as distinctly as your nose, while Tenny-
son cared little and noted little of either."
Rossetti had helped Vix. Gilchrist in editing
Blake's poems. He wrote to him : — " I am glad
you approve of my rather unceremonious shaking
up of Blake's rhymes [/.r., the correction of Blake's
grammar]. I really believe that is what ought to
be done." Later on y^w \\ . AL Rossetti was
reproached with these emendations. His brother
wrote to him on October 8, 1874: — "I know you
TO WILLIAM ALLIXGHAM 265
would not (jLiiic ha\'e coinculccl with mv method
of treatment, nor should I ncjw have adopted it
to the same extent." Mr. W. M. Rossetti in a
letter to Allingham about a proposed edition of
Shelley, after speaking- of " Shelley's mixing up
you and thou in dialogue. " continued : — " Gabriel
said, ' Make everything uniform ; ' but I have not
the remotest idea of doine that."
XLVIII.
16, Chevxe Walk. Chelsea,
Tuesday [1863].
]My dear ALLI^■GHA^L
My friend Taylor (of H.?^I. Theatre)
writes me that he will reserve for me his two pit
tickets for Mire I la to-night (being unable to get
better places for a new attraction). I shall not
be able to go myself, but I write him word with
this that you perhaps may. alone or with a friend.
If vou can go. ask any official about the place for
Mr. Taylor, and he will do the needtul. , Vou need
not think there is any awkwardness about it. as
my plan with him, at his own request, has always
been to send friends if 1 wished, instead oi going
myself?
266 DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI
When am I to see you again ? I shall be going
on Friday to Hughes's with Madox Brown and
Ned Jones. They are to be here at 6. and I hope
dine with me before ©"oinor. Will vou do the same,
if vou like to q-q on to Huo-hes's ?
Yours affectionately,
D. Gabriel R.
Notes on XL\'1II.
W arrington Taylor, 'Sir. W. M. Rossetti tells
me. was a man of orood family who had come down
in the world and w^as a check-taker at the Opera.
He had a great love of music and art. Rossetti
got for him the post of book-keeper in the firm of
Morris & Co., where he did very well, having a
eood head for fiofures. Within four vears after
receiving the appointment he died of consumption.
Mirclla or Mireille was an opera by Gounod.
Accordino- to Mr. Holman Hunt, "Rossetti reofarded
music as positively offensive. " Mr. W. M. Rossetti
tells me that while his brother would never have
willingly listened to an oratorio, or indeed to any
music of that kind which Dr. Johnson, when he
was told that it was very difficult, wished were
impossible, nevertheless he was fond of the opera.
He would moreover listen with pleasure to the
singing of a simple ballad.
TO WILLIAM ALLIXGHAM 267
XLIX.
AitQiisf, 1863,
16 CiiEvxi: Walk. Chelsea.
Mv DEAR AlLINGHA^F,
I have been meanino- to write any day
since last seeing you, though in truth without much
to say, but I am anxious to hear in return how you
get on in your new quarters. I have not been out
of London since seeing you, except for a couple
of days to Brighton ; and indeed, though I have
earned this year more than any previous one, I
seem never to ha\'e a penny wherewith to run
away for a little, like other people. Perhaps I
may yet, though, in another month, and who knows
but I may see Venice ? But I suppose it will not
be.
Have you seen a new volume of poems by one
Jean Ingelow.'^ Really there seems a good deal
in it.
This house goes on getting more settled, and I
more restless. I do not know where it will take
me to and how soon. I see hardly any one.
Swinburne is away. Meredith has evaporated for
o-Qod, and mv brother is seldom here. There is
onlv one more to unite with me in good wishes to
you.
I would betiin another sheet, however, but lor
268 DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI
the little to say. So to make something I will
direct your attention to the headings of these
sheets, which are a combined effort of self as
designer and Knewstub's (my pupil's) brother's
firm as executants — he insistino- on makino- me a
present of a small stack of paper headed in various
colours, which stuff up every drawer in my studio,
and will last half my lifetime — or indeed perhaps
head the news of my death when that occurs, before
the black-edged paper has arrived. The above
morbidity reminds me of the green bogie book,
which you know you promised to send up when
it came to hand.
You are somewhere near the New Forest, are
you not ? Or is this, as highly probably, a topo-
graphical bull which is opening your eyes and
mouth at this moment. If so, it is only one of a
large family of mine. But if you are near there,
I really ain't sure that I sha'n't come and see you,
and walk about for a day or two, if you can. Could
you, supposing such a case ? I am awfully done up
for want of a change of some sort.
By the bye, Ned Jones said he should be in your
neighbourhood before long, and should look you up.
He is a dear old chap, and said much at same time
which I was glad he should say, both for your and
his sake.
Have you seen the blue book on the Royal
TO WILIJAM ALLINGHAM 269
Academy — and would you like to see it? It so, I
will send it )"ou as a good cupboard skeleton in
return, for your bogies. There is abundance of
rotten and decayed matter shovelletl up in it, with
much overfed sweltering thereby engendered,
crorg"ed creatures and starved anatomies, with some
will-o'-the-wisps and the ghosts of various reputa-
tions. The only evidence of the lot which is worth
reading- as original thought and insight is Ruskin's.
Him I saw the other day, and pitched into, he
talked such awful rubbish ; but he is a dear old
chap, too, and as soon as he was gone I wrote my
sorrows to him. Browning was here at same time,
very jolly indeed, and stayed and walked many
times round the room, and many times stood still,
with his hands in his pockets and his eyes wide
open.
My love to you, and believe me ever yours
D. G. ROSSETTI.
Would you like me to send to you Blake's Life ?
Not out yet, but I have one in sheets.
Notes ox XLIX.
Rossetti lost his wife on February 11, 1862.
He had no heart to go on living in his old home
by Blackfriars Bridge, and removed up the river
to Chelsea. There he took a large house, in which
2/0 DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI
his brother, Mr. Swinburne, and Mr. George
Meredith were to have rooms, as sub-tenants.
That he should never have seen Venice, that he
who was a Florentine of the Florentines should
never have passed a single day in Florence, seems
strange indeed. To borrow the words ]\Ir. Holman
Hunt used of him, he held that "people had no
right to be different from the people of Dante's
time." He cared for none of the discoveries of
modern science. " What could it matter," he said.
" whether the earth moved round the sun, or the
sun travelled round the earth ? " \\'h\', with the
large income that he was making, he seemed
"never to have a penny wherewith to run away,"
why he never saw Venice, was due to his reckless
expenditure. " Money," writes Mr. W . M. Rossetti,
"dripped from my brother's fingers in all sorts of
ways, unforecast at the time, and not always easih"
accounted for afterwards." Of this "dripping" an
instance is given in the following passage in his
letter to his brother, dated April 23. 1864 : " I have
seen the owner of the zebu, and undertaken to buy
him for ^'20, — ^5 payable on Monday, and the
rest within a fortnight. I shall then have plenty,
but just now have none. Could you pay your /^5
as the first installment ? " The zebu was a small
Brahmin bull, who chased his new master round a
tree, and was at once resold.
Of Jean Ingelow's new volume of poems Matthew
Arnold wrote : — " She seemed to me to be quite
'above the common,' but 1 have not read enough
TO WILLIAM ALLIXGHAM 271
of her to say more. It is a i^reat deal to 141 ve one
true feeling" in poetr\-, antl 1 think she seemed to
be able to do that ; but I do not at present very
much care for poetry unless it can give me true
thought as well. It is the alliance of these two
that makes great poetrx', the only poetry really
worth very much."
"The headings of these sheets" are thus described
by Mr. \\\ M. Rossetti : "My father owned a
larorish seal marked with a cross, — a tree havino-
the motto ' Frangas non tiectas,' — and he said this
was regarded as his crest. Mr. Knewstub, my
brother's art assistant, who was connected with the
hrm of Jenner & Knewstub, got that firm to pre-
sent to Gabriel a die with the crest and a mono-
gram."
AUingham was living at Lymington, a little south
of the New Forest, and over against the Isle of
Wight.
The Blue Book was The Report of the Coinuiis-
sioners appointed to inquire into the Present Position
of the Royal Aeacteniy in Relation to the Fine Arts.
"Mr. Ruskin," writes ^Ir. \\. M. Rossetti, "took
keen delight in Rossetti "s paintings and designs.
He praised freely and abused heartily both him and
them. The abuse was oood-humoured and was
taken good-humouredly. . . , They took in good
part, with mutual banter and amusement, whatever
was deficient or excessive in the performance of
the painter or in the comments of the purchaser
and critic." Rossetti wrote to Madox Brown on
2/2 DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI
January 19, 1873 : — " I do not call John Ruskin's
work criticism, but rather brilliant poetic rhapsody."
L.
16, Chevxe Walk, Chelsea.
\^2^rd SepL, 1863.]
My dear Allingham,
My serious thoughts of coming to you
have come to nothino; as vet, as I need not tell vou.
The fact is, while I was still revolving the idea, but
almost too seedy to move at all William dropped
in with a request that I would accompany him to
Belgium for a week. Finding that all was ready
for this start on his part, which half helped me to
be so too, and remembering that the other depended
all on myself, and so was more problematical, I was
induced to o-q with him, to verv moderate results
as regards enjoyment, but still to some benefit in
that wav as well as in health ; though haviny" come
back to finish the very nauseous job I ran away
from — viz., some copies, only doing for filthy lucre's
sake from some thmgs of my own — I feel already
quite as bad again as before I went. But whether
I shall have the chance of another trip I am tar
from sure. If I should see vou. after all, it will, I
TO WILLIAM ALLIXGHAM 273
know, be with true pleasure ; but the year is c^^ettino-
late and the dun is at the door. Moreover, I niake
no doubt of reviving when 1 i^'et to more likeable
work, and being tolerably well rooted to it.
But present or absent believe me always,
Trulv your friend,
D. G. ROSSETTI.
A man asked me the other day if 1 would do
Blake for the Westminster. I said, no ; but
ventured to name you as possible. Would you,
if I hear more ?
LL
16, Chevne Walk, Chelsea.
Saturday {^probably 1863].
Dear Allixc;ham,
If fine, I expect to start for Lymington
on Monday at 5.10 l^^L This intention however
renders rain so probable that it is not certain you
will see me then after all, as in case of bad weather
looking likely to last I should put off coming till it
was finer.
Ever yours D. G. Rossettl
p.S. — However, on the whole I expect to come,
and if not will telegraph.
19
274 DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI
LII.
[ Ch ristmas, 1865.]
My dear Allixgham,
Several months ago I got a good letter
of yours asking me to come and see you. This
had been uppermost in my mind to do. had I found
myself able to do anything of the sort, even before
getting your letter. However, it seemed quite
hopeless already at the time of your writing, and
proved more and more so afterwards. Yet I for-
bore answering No, in the hope of Yes for some
time. Xow on Christmas Eve No seems the word
and no mistake. I have not had a single day out
of London this year except once to Greenwich with
Boyce, and once walking to Tottenham. For all
that I've not done half I meant to do. Now the
onlv thino- left is to wish vou all luck next vear,
and myself the luck of coming to see you then.
I heard of your being in town but for a flying
visit, in which I am sorry you did not find time to
look me up. However, if I scramble once more
throuP"h the foofs and duns of a London Christmas,
I'll hope to meet you again yet.
Worse, however, than not having yet thanked
you for a pleasure offered is my omission to do so
for one actually bestowed and enjoyed ; namely, the
gift of your Fifty Poems. I remember they fared
TO WILLIAM ALLINGIIAM 275
well with me. for I read them one evenino- rioht
through when I felt niuch in want of other voices
than plaguey ones from inside and outside ; and I
found them full of good words and true. I^ very-
one is a study — not work thrown away, or no-work
shovelled together ; those new to me were to the
full as good as the old ones, and many of the old
gained greatly on reacquaintance. So here come
my late but real thanks to you.
Ever affectionately yours,
d. g. rossetti.
Notes o\ LII.
Rossetti wrote to his uncle on November 15th of
this year : — " Referring to my diary, I find there
have been only twelve days during the five months
ending with the close of October which have not
been spent by me in work at my easel. I have
completely missed all exercise and change of air
this year, yet have no reason to complain as regards
health."
On October ist of the same year Madox Brown
recorded : — " \\ alked to Tottenham with P. P.
Marshall and Rossetti." Mr. Marshall lived at
Tottenham, where he has left a memorial of his art
in the small buildinof above a well near the Hieh
Cross. The villao-e — for a villao-e it still was
— was also the home of two men who bouLfht
2/6 DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI
Prseraphaelite pictures, Colonel Gillum and Mr.
Goss.
AUingrham wrote to Mr. W. M. Rossetti on
March 19, 1865 : — "My volume of Fifty Modern
Poems is just coming out. Most of the pieces have
been in magazines, etc. The whole is to myself
already a thing of the past and not very interesting.
I am occupied with other ideas. One quality the
book has (implied in ' Modern '), — it is in harmony
with the best minds of our day as to religion,
being at once reverent and anti-dogmatic."
LIII.
16, Chf.ynf. Walk, Chelsea.
{^Nov. 8, 1866].
My dear Allingha^f,
Herewith I send you a set of the photos,
hitherto made from Lizzie's sketches — many mere
scraps, but all interesting. I shall have the water-
colours photo'd in due course, but this is a trouble-
some job, as a first negative will be necessary, then
a touched proof, and then a second negative, or
the effect will be all false. I shall also print des-
criptions of each design. Room is left in the port-
folio I think to contain these additions when ready.
One of these days I hope to see you at home. I
TO WILLIAM ALLlXCilIAM 277
was obliged to run away from the gallery on Satur-
day last, as I had an appointment to catch a train.
Your affectionately
D. G. Rossf.TTi.
Note on LIII.
Mr. \V. AL Rossetti tells me that these descrip-
tions of Mrs. Rossetti's designs were never printed.
LIV.
22 March, [1867].
j\Iv DEAR AlLIXGHA.M.
I inclose an answer to Aide, which will
tell you my mind, except that I may add to you
that /,'i400 is /1400 to me, or rather to any
body rather than me as I never see it at all, and
that my plan is to rent, not to buy. I have
been pot-boiling to an extent lately that does
not hold out much hope of estate buying or even
renting. Moreover, as I haven't been outside my
door for months in the daytime. I shouldn't have
had much opportunity of enjoying pastime and
pleasances. I have accordingly no news whatever,
except of my easel, which is too mean a slave to
small needs to be worth reporting on. I do not see
2/8 DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI
a fellow of any sort really much oftener than you
do, I imag'ine.
I lately heard from Aubrey de Vere, with a re-
quest to my sister and self to contribute something
to a verse collection. We looked up scraps, and
were promised proofs, but these come not ; and I
imagine that the result when in type will be the
usual incentive to blasphemy. I wonder do you
sail in the same boat — or "funny," as it is likely to
prove according to my experience.
Yours always,
d. g. rossktti.
Notes on LIV.
There should have been no need for "pot-boil-
ing." In this year Rossetti made "little or not at
all less than ^3000."
His habit of not going outside his door in the
daytime is thus accounted for by his brother : " 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 moon-
light, by the hour he left the house."
Mr. Aubrey de \^ere could not have completed
this "verse collection." In 1893 he published The
Household Poetry Book, but it contains nothing
by Rossetti or his sister.
A "funny " is the name given to a boat so frail
that it oversets verv easilv.
TO WILLIAM ALLINGHAM 279
LV.
Monday, \Septcinber 2^0, ICS67].
Mv DEAR AlLIXGHA.M,
Do by all means come up — not for a day,
but for as long as you can. I am niost wishful to
return with you for another spell of country air
and exercise, but must tell you that since returning
to town I have found the confusion in my head and
the strain on my eyes in working decidedly rather
on the increase than otherwise, and am getting
really anxious about it. I mention this quite in
confidence, as it w'' be injurious to me if it got
about. The only 2 to whom I have named it are
Brown and Howell, and I do not mean to say
more about it. To-morrow I shall finish a draw-
ing I have been at work on, and on Wednesday
shall probably go to Bowman, the oculist. I must
take his advice about going away, but am rather
under the impression at present that the light
rooms and sunlight outside at Lymington did me
more harm than good. I saw Howell yesterday,
who is prepared to come to Lymington if I do. It
would give me much pleasure indeed to see you
here it you can come, so do at once.
Yours ever,
D. Gabriel R.
28o DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTl
Notes on LV.
" About this time Rossetti's eyesight began to
fail. Sunlio-ht or artificial li^ht became increas-
ingly painful to him, producing sensations of giddi-
ness."
Howell had been Ruskin's secretary. Later on
he was employed by Rossetti " to transact the sale
of uncommissioned work. As a salesman he was
unsurpassable."
LVL
Thu7'sday\0ctobcr lo, 1867].
/// case I don't see you to-day I write word that,
as I expected you to-day, blokes are coming to-
morrow to meet you at dinner at 7.
I went to Bowman, who gave me the information
that if it didn't get better it might get worse.
Your D. G. R.
Notes on LVL
Rossetti wrote to Brown in 1861 : — " Dear
Brown, a few blokes and coves are comino- at 8 or
so on Friday evening to participate in oysters and
.obloquy."
He makes the followino- mention of the famous
TO WILLIAM ALLIXCIIAM 281
oculist, Sir William Bowman, in a letter to his
mother nearly two years later : — " I suppose I told
\"ou of my seeing' Bowman before I left London,
and that instead of taking a guinea fee (which
he refused) he proposes to pay me one hundred and
fifty for a little water-colour."
LVII.
16, Chevne Walk,
28 AiioiisL 1868.
My dear Allingham,
I've been very seedy, and still am rather
so, but doctors have been doing me some good.
I'm o'ointr to start awav somewhere, but fancv
seaside. There's a deadly-lively or very quiet
place called Southwold, in Suffolk, where the
Morris's, Howells, and others have been lately,
and I think perhaps of going there. I don't know-
exactly what my moves may be ; but would it be
in the nature of things for you to take a trip with
me anywhere at present ? I think we rather used
up the walks about Lymington last year, and
seaside is desirable, and certainly no impending
female photographers or even poets laureate.
I merely ask you the question as a guide in my
282 DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI
plans. We might go to several places even — say
including a new visit to Stratford-on-Avon and
neighbourhood, which will bear seeing often.
Will you kindly answer at once, as I ought to
start at once.
Your affect.,
D. Gabriel R.
Notes on LVII.
" The terrible affliction of sleeplessness," writes
Mr. W. M, Rossetti, "which was the origin of all
the breaking-up of my brother's health, had already
been ooino- on some while before the autumn of
1868." He paid the visit to Stratford-on-Avon in
September, and later on in the month he went to
Penkill Castle, Ayrshire, where he stayed some
weeks.
" The line about ' impending female photo-
graphers or even poets laureate ' refers," Mr. W.
M. Rossetti tells me, " to Tennyson at Freshwater,
in the Isle of Wio-ht, and to his near neisfhbour,
Mrs. Cameron, a lady of good position and a very
cordial friend of Rossetti. She had taken to
photographing, and produced many remarkable
things of broad pictorial effect."
T(3 WILLIAM ALLINGHAM 283
L\MII.
lVed)icsday \Clirist)uas, 1868 J,
Mv i)i:ar Allingiiam,
Many are Xmas nuisances, and here comes
another — accompanied, however, by all affectionate
wishes.
I have been looking up a few old Sonnets, and
writing a few new ones, to make a little bunch in
a coming- number of the Fo7'tnightly — not till
March, however, as they are full till then,
Amonof them are the enclosed two, about which
I want an opinion. It seems to me doubtful
whether the 2nd adds anything of much value to
the first, and whether it (the 2nd) is not in itself
rather far-fetched and obscure. I wish you would
tell me what you think. I would excise the 2nd if
the first is best by itself
I suppose you heard that I have been queer with
my eyes — this has caused inaction and the looking
up of ravelled rags of verse. I am now at work
again, however.
Affectionately yours,
D. G. ROSSKTTI.
P.S. — Isn't there a chance of your coming up
this Xmas ? Come and stay with me.
P. P.S. — How do you like the Ring aiid the
284 DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI
Book ? It is full of wonderful work, but it seems
to me that, whereas other poets are the more liable
to get incoherent the more fanciful their starting-
point happens to be. the thing that makes
Browning drunk Is to give him a dram of prosaic
reality, and unluckily this time the "gum-tickler"
is less like pure Cognac than 7 Dials gin. Whether
the consequent evolutions will be bearable to their
proposed extent without the intervening walls of
the station-house to tone down their exuberance
may be dubious. This cutrc nous.
Notes ox L\'III.
Rossetti describes these sonnets in a letter to his
mother, which begins : — " I send you my sonnets,
which are such a lively band of bogies that they
may join with the skeletons of Christina's various
closets and entertain you with a ballet."
Mrs. Gilchrist wrote to a friend : — " I dined with
the Rossettis on Thursday [April 19. 1869].
Gabriel Rossetti told a good story, which Carlyle,
I believe, tells of himself — how he met Brownino-
and meant to say something to please about The
Ring and the Book, but somehow ultimately found
himselt landed in the reverse of a compliment : —
' It is a wonderful book, one of the most wonderful
poems ever written. I re-read it all through — all
made out of an Old Bailey story that might have
been told in ten lines, and onlv wants foro-ettincr.'
TO WILLIAM ALLIXGHAM 285
G. n. R. seemed himself to lean a little to this
view, and to think there was perversity in the
choice of the subject, though of course redeemed
by superb treatment."
LIX.
16. Chevne Walk. Chelsea.
21 February. 1870.
Mv DEAR AlLIXGHA.M,
As you expressed a willingness for a little
more scratching and sifting at my poetic diggings.
I trouble you on a rather abject dilemma regard-
ing a very old piece of work. — Sister Helen,
enclosed. The family name used in it was
orio-inallv " Keith." This I altered because of
Dobell's ballad. Keith of Ravelstoii which bears
also on faithless love and supernaturalism. (I
mav add. however, that D."s ballad was never
published till some years after mine had been
originally in print, but still I hate coincidences of
the kind.) This I have changed to "Holm."
which is objected to now. from / ///////' a quarter
worth considerino-, as not beino- a well-soundino-
territorial name. My reason for asking you about
it is that (the Boyne being mentioned in the
286 DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI
poem) an Irish name might perhaps do best.
Would " Neill " do? — and would it fit in with
"Eastholm," "Westholm," and "Neill of Neill"?
Would you give me a hint or a suggestion of
some better name or system of nomenclature, if
such occurs to you? The father being "of that
ilk " should stand, I think, as elucidatory. I write
in great hurry, as I am trying to get the thing off
for a new revise, and should be much obliged,
therefore, if you could answer my question without
delay.
I suppose you saw the evidently personal on-
slaught on William's Shelley in the Athenceiun, —
by Buchanan, I believe. I suppose I may expect
to fare likewise, if nothing interferes.
Ever yours,
D, G. Rossf:tti.
Notes on LIX.
Rossetti, writing on January 3, ICS54, "says that
he had consigned the ballad of Sister Helen to
Mrs. Howitt, ' for an Ena-jish edition of a German
something or other, which will be coming out now.'
This German publication was named The Diisseldoi^f
Annual. The ballad appeared in it, without the
author's name, but only with the initials ' H. H. H.'
attached."
Of Keith of Ravelston Rossetti wrote in 1868 : —
TO WILLIAM ALLINGHAM 287
" I have always regarded that poem as hcing one
of the finest, of its length, in any modern poet ;
ranking with Keats's La Belle Danic sans Mcrci,
and the other masterpieces of the condensed and
hinted order so dear to imaginative minds." Of
Dobell's poem the following is the first stanza :—
" The murmur of the mourning ghost
That keeps the shadowy kine,
O Keith of Ravelston,
The sorrows of thy Hne."
In 1866, Mr. Buchanan, in a burlesque poem, had
made " a gratuitous and insolent attack upon Mr.
Swinburne." Mr. W. M. Rossetti, in a review of
Swinburne's poems, retaliated by saying that "the
advent of so poor and pretentious a poetaster as
Robert Buchanan stirs storms in teapots." Mr.
Buchanan replied by his "personal onslaught" on
Mr. W. M. Rossetti's edition of Shelley, which he
followed up a little later by a severe review of
Dante Rossetti's Poems. This he enlarged and
published under the title of The Fleshy Sehool of
Poetry and othe7' Phenomena of the Day. " I
have, " writes Mr. W. M. Rossetti, " more than
once been told by friends that the animus against
my brother apparent in the article should be
regarded as a vicarious expression of resentment
at something which I myself had written." On
Dante Rossetti, who was already in a nervous state
of health, Mr. Buchanan's attack had a disastrous
288 DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI
effect. "He was a changed man, and so con-
tinued till the close of his life."
I venture to quote, without first obtaining- Mr.
W. M. Rossetti's leave, the following passage from
a letter in which he informs Allingham of the
proposal made to him that he should edit Shelley :
"Is it not a glorious chance, this Shelley editing
and biographizing ? Willingly would I not only
be doing it for pay, but do it for nothing, or pay
to do it."
LX.
28 February, 1870.
Dear Allixciiiam,
Thanks for attending so promptly to my
bewilderments. I have adopted Weir, which seems
to answer well. Kerr has not emphasis enough
— runs too much off the tongue — for the poise of
the verse.
As for that kind, good, overwhelming Lady A.,
she has written to me from at least 6 different
parts of the British Islands during the past year,
asking me to come down instantly and meet a
sympathising circle. But such things are quite
impossible to me at the pitch of brutal bogyism
at which I have arrived. You seem somehow to
TO WILLIAM ALLIXGHAM 289
keep your own man, l)ut I am liardly mv own
"host, I saw Xcd the other evening", and he
seemed well on the whole, thouuh rather colly-
wobblyish. I shall qct into the country somewhere
— where, I don't vet know within a few days and
for a few weeks, to try if there is any marrow left
in me that can be squeezed out in the form of
rhyme before I g"o finally to press. I mean to
be out in April — latter end, I suppose, — and should
like a few more pages if possible. I want to get
near three hundred if I can, but have been
obliged to give up the idea of finishing several
things I had in hand for the purpose ; and for all
that, having done no work to speak of in painting,
with this divided mind. I must cart the things
off now, and then get to my easel again.
Ever yours,
D. G. ROSSETTI.
Christina has done a book of Nursery Rhymes,
and is publishing with Ellis, who offers her much
better terms than ?^Iac. [Macmillan] does. She
will leave Mac. altogether.
Notes ox LN.
" Lady A." was, I conjecture. Lady Ashburton.
Rossetti wrote to his aunt in 1S74: — "Lady A.
20
290 DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI
[Ashburton] spoke of you in a friendly, even an
affectionate way."
Far and wide as Dr. Murray has cast his nets for
the great Oxford English Dictionary he has not
caught collyzvobblyish.
LXI.
SCALANDS, ROBERTSBRIDGE,
H AW K H U R S T , K K N T
[March 7, 1870).
Dear Allin(;ham,
You will be surprised at my address,
which is Barbara's Cottage, not far from Hastings
(but in Kent, as I find, or at least the above
seems the proper form). I have been here a
few days in company with Stillman, \\^m's.
American friend ; having come for the purpose
of recruiting and " working off" my book with
the conscientious decency of Mr. Dennis the
hangman. I shall have it out before the end of
April. Stillman and I have this house to our-
selves, and he is an utterly unobstructive man.
Had your letter reached me in town I might
probably have come down to you at once, and
discussed the plan you propose, which seems pro-
mising — only I don't know whether such near
TO WILLIAM ALLINGHAM 291
seaside is likely to suit my eyes, to which, I
believe, sea air is not suitable. Howev^er I must
take the matter into consideration, and suppose
I mio-ht even, if convenient to you, close at
once with the proposal of joining you in rent for
halt a year, as it seems this wd only involve me
in an expense of ,^15. So be it so, if you like
— I shd reckon on probable advantage in a
summary niove to Lymington at some moment
before that time is out, but if this should by
possibility not come to pass, must stipulate
beforehand that there be no question as to my
being liable for mv share, as I can only under-
take it on those terms. '
There is really no news I know of since last
writing. Barbara does not indulge in bell-pulls,
hardly in ser\-ants to summon thereby — so I have
brought my own. What she does affect is any
amount of thorough draught — a library bearing
the stern stamp of " Bodichon," and a kettle-
holder with the uncompromising initials B. B.
She is the best of women, but I fear from what
I last saw of her that her health is failing, like
my own.
Ever yours,
D. G. ROSSETTI.
^ " Means that he will pay, come or not come." Note in
Mr. Allintrham's handwriting
292 DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI
P.S. — By the bye, I fell back on Keith, after
all, in that ballad. I couldn't quite please myself
otherwise.
Notes on LXI.
Scalands, it will be remembered, was the house
of Madame Bodichon (Miss Barbara Leigh Smith
of earlier letters), who had been the kindest of
friends to Rossetti's wife. She was also a warm
friend of Allingham. "I love William Allingham,"
she was one day heard to say.
Of Mr. Stillman, Mr. W. M. Rossetti writes :—
** Few men could have been better adapted than
he, 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 ministra-
tions. Chloral as a soporific was then a novelty.
Mr. Stillman had heard of its potency in procuring
sleep, 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.
He began, I understand, with nightly doses of
chloral of ten orains. hi course of time it o-ot to
one hundred and eighty grains!" It wrecked his
mind, and at last destroyed his life.
On May 4th Rossetti wrote to his mother: — " Dear
Old Darling of 70. You will be glad to hear that
the first edition is almost exhausted, and that Ellis
is going to press with the second thousand. It
TO WILLIAM ALLINGHAM 293
will have brought me ^300 in less thcin a month."
Of these Pocuis his brother says : — " This date,
1870, should be borne in mind by any amateurs of
Rossetti's work ; for the volume named Poems of
1 88 1, though partly a reissue of the book of 1870,
is verv far from beine identical with it."
LXII.
SCALANDS, R0]5EUTSBRII)GE.
\_Postuiark, March 7, 1870].
Dear Allingham,
I now just hear casually that my book
has been applied for to the AthencEuiu by one of
its critics, I believe with friendly intentions. So-
I ought to let you know after my suggestion.
Of course I should be very sorry if I had
missed you.
Ever yours
D. G. ROSSETTI.
Note on LXII.
On February 3rd Rossetti had written to John
Skelton : — " I am anxious that some influential
article or articles by the well-affected should
appear at once when the book comes out. Swin-
294 DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI
burne wishes to ' do ' it in the Fortnightly, and
Morris elsewhere ; and if these and yours, with
perhaps another or so, could appear at once,
certain spite which I judge to be brewing in at
least one quarter might find itself at fault." On
March 22nd he wrote to his mother: — "I shall
certainly get the book out before the end of April,
as three or four kindly hands are already at work
on it for the May periodicals."
LXIII.
7 ucsday \A ugust., 1870].
Dear Allingham,
I'm sorry to have missed you yesterday.
Surely my letter went out to you before 5. Could
you come to-morrow (Wed- ) instead } 7 o'clock
dinner.
Have you seen the last Blackivood} If you
have not, and need a relish before dinner, try it
instead of gin and bitters. What Brother Bard
but must find an added zest in the meat dispensed
by the hand of detected mediocrity .^
Ever yours
D. G. ROSSETTI.
TO WILLIAM ALLL\(ilL\M 295
Notes ox LXIII.
B/ackwoods Magazine for Auf^ust of this year
contained a severe criticism of the Poems. 1 do not
find in it, as 1 half expected, the words "detected
mediocrity." The review is written in the tollcjw-
ing- style : — " There is something in the character
and temper of a painter so contemptuous of
common public opinion that he refuses to exhibit
his pictures — and of a poet who keeps his pro-
ductions for some twenty years in the dark before
he condescends to unfold them to the common eye
— which in the first place attracts the imagination.
Such a man walks serene at a height inaccessible
to the common din, the comments and criticisms
of lower earth. Such a man is too far removed
from us to desire to be understood upon our level ;
he addresses himself to the choice souls — the world
within a world — the select of humanity." The
reviewer says towards the close : — " In none ot
these poems, however, is there the least indication
of a new poet arisen to bless us."
Rossetti's friend, John Skelton, the " Shirley "
of Blacki\.'ood, had not been able to help him, at
all events in that periodical.
296 DAXTE GABRIEL ROSSETTl
LXIV.
\_Abo2tt N'oz'cniber, 1870].
Dear Allixgham,
I can put your books on my basement
floor — (stone-paved servants' hall) — where they will
not be in the clamp, I believe, and can stand clear
of the floor if thought necessary. Or if you think
it absolutely needed, I can clear space in a lumber-
room upstairs.
Ever yours,
D. G. ROSSETTI.
LXV.
16, Chkvxk \\\\lk,
Friday \aboiit N'ovevibcr. 1870].
Dear Allixgha.m,
I'm very sorry to tell you the high tide
yesterday got into my basement floor, and that 3
of your boxes were a foot or more deep in water
for some time. It is most vexatious to think what
may have happened to the books. Will you look
in to-day at dusk and stay to dinner at 6 ? I am
only sorry that I have to go out about 7.
Ever yours,
D. G. ROSSETTI.
TO WILLIAM ALLIXGHAM 297
NOTK OX LX\'.
" On the basement of Rossetti's house at
Chelsea." writes his brother, "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 Thames Embankment
had not as yet been raised in front of Cheyne
Walk. In one of the boxes deposited on the
basement floor it chanced that Allinorham had
placed the letters he had received from Rossetti.
Some of them still bear marks of the flood ; two
or three have been much injured, and one has
been rendered illegible.
With this brief note the correspondence between
the two men came to an end. Their friendship,
once so strong and close, was not to last till death
should come to give the final separation. So early
as 1864 Allingham recorded in a note, "Our in-
timacy is a thing of the past." It must have
revived to a certain extent, for in 1867 Rossetti
passed some time with him at his house in Lym-
ington. With the lapse of years, the letters, as
has been seen, became less frequent and far briefer.
So late as Christmas, 1868, we find the great
painter signing himself, "Yours affectionatelv " ;
after that date he is merely, " Ever yours."
Warm hearted though he was in his friendships,
nevertheless few of them lasted to the end of life.
"It is a fact," writes his brother, "and a melan-
298 DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI
choly one, that Dante Rossetti, as the years
progressed, lost sight of all his Prseraphaelite
Brothers, except only of Stephens at sparse in-
tervals — ' clear stanch Stephens, one of my oldest
and best friends,' as he wrote of him." He became
estranged from Ruskin and Browning. Between
him and Allingham, happily, there was no open
and direct breach. The long friendship slowly
died away.
THE EN IX
I N D E X
Acland, Sir Henry, 149
Addison, Joseph, 28
Alexander, Miss Francesca, 10
AUingham, William, sketch of his
life, xvii-xxviii ; calls on Haw-
thorne, 1 ; portrait, 34 : criti-
cises Rossetti's poems, xxvii, 45,
54, 73, 84, loi, 121, 140, 247;
at Coniston, 104: bust, 126,
134; at Dublin, 146; customs,
147, 149; life at Ballyshannon,
184; edits Poe's poems, 221:
at Lymington, 268, 271, 291 :
books flooded, 296. Poems:
Abbey Asa roc, 209, 211 : Day
ami Xlglit Songs, 3, 12, 34,
44, 49, 54, 60, 71, 82, 87;
Tlic Dim III, 78 ; Fifty Modern
Poems, 274, 276; The Riiiiu'tl
Chape!, xxvi; Laurence Bloom-
fiehi, 227, 230; Mea Culpa,
214, 219, 222; Morley Park,
256, 259; The Moii'crs, 190,
198 ; The Music Master, 136,
154, 240: Xightingale ]'allev,
214-2 2 2 ; Spring is Come, 135;
The Three Sisters, 171; Il^zv-
side Well, 134; ]]\vihl I Knen',
56, 60
1 AUingham, Mrs., xviii
AUingham, Miss C, 153
Anthony, Mark, 123, 128
Archer, J., 258, 260
Arnold, Matthew, 125, 130, 169,
183, 200, 220, 270
Ashburton, Lady, 289
Athcncemii, The, 33, 154, 157
Aytoun, U'. E., 57, 62
B
Bacon, Francis, 34, 42, 264
Bailey, Philip James, 62, 172,
199
Baynes, T. S., 167
Beddoes, Thomas Lovell, 238,
242
Bell Savage 'J'avern, 14, 23, 28,
50, 139, 144
Benozzo Gozzoli, 180, 183
Bernal, Ralph, 125, 133
Blackn'OOcrs Magazine, 191, 294
Blake, William, 158, 165, 237,
241, 259, 261-4
Blanchard, E., loi
Boase, G. C, 143
Boddington, Mary, 179, 182
Bodichon, Madame, see Smith
" Bogie book," see Wilkinson
Boswell, James, 225
: Bowman, Sir William, 279-81
293
?oo
INDEX
Boyce, George Price, 48, 96, 103,
109, 196, 274
Boyle, Hon. INIrs., 55, 59
Bright, Canon, 176
Brimley, George, 160, 167
Bronte, Charlotte, 74, 80, 125,
130, 141
Bronte, Emily, 58, 62, 74, 125,
130, 141
Brough, — , 225
Brown, Ford Madox, 40, 52, 77,
89, 90, 97, 112, 185, 187, 188,
199, 204, 252, 259; Chaucer at
the Court of Edivard III., 76 ;
ycsus K'asliiiig Peter's Feet, 37,
190, 198; Hayfield ; Kin<>
Lear, 23 ; Poets of Xiuetecuih
Century, 190 ; Wickliffe, 20,
24; Work, 190, 198
Browning, Robert, Rossetti's ad-
miration of him, 28, 156, 163,
165, 189; — suspicions, 170,
196, 298; — proposed illus-
trations of his poems, 173,
1 90 ; compared with W. B.
Scott, 117, 120: Italian art,
160; father, uncle, and sister,
161, 168 ; portrait by Page,
162, 181 ; — by Rossetti, 163,
166, 170; reads The Mystic,
1 64 ; described by Hawthorne,
167 ; evening with Tennyson,
169; coupled with Longfellow,
181, 183; spiritualism, 195,
205 ; at Siena, 238, 241.
Poems : B/ot on the Scutcheon,
168; Men and Wonien, 156,
159, 228; Pauline, 168; Ring
and the Book, 283 ; Sordello,
22, 28, 161
Browning, Mrs., 58, 63, 162, 1S9,
195-6, 205-6, 238, 248
Brownrigg, Elizabeth, 58, 63
Buchanan, Robert, 286
Burne-Jones, Sir Edward, Oxford
and Cambridge Magazine, 1 74,
176-8, 194; admiration of
Rossetti, 179; designs, 192,
233; Red Lion Square, 193,
201, 203; marriage, 224; in-
timacy with Rossetti, 227, 229,
238, 239; art firm, 252, 254,
268
Burr, Mrs., 179
Byron, Lord, 118, 130, 218
C
Caine, T. Hall, 170, 221
Cameron, Mrs., 239, 244, 282
Campbell, Major Calder, 18
Canning, Countess, 145
Carlyle, Thomas, xviii, 6, 22, 27,
86, 95, 106, 237, 284
Cayley, Charles Bagot, 29, 37,
44> 138
Cheshire Cheese Tavern, 200
Clayton, J. R., 108, 112
Clough, Arthur Hugh, 104
Coleridge, Samuel Taylor, 175
CoUingwood, W. G., 10, 231
Collins, Charles Alston, 34, 125,
132
CoUinson, James, 126, 133
Combe, Thomas, 125, 131, 133
Combe, Mrs., 41, 132-3
Conington, John, 176
Crabbe, Rev. George, 102, 107
Creswick, Thomas, 97
D
Dallas, Eneas Sweetland, 139
143
Dalrymple, Mrs., 236, 239
IXDKX
^oi
Dalziel, Messrs., 96, 108, 112,
114, 117, 120, 122, 138, 173,
191, 199, 207
Davis, A\'illiam, 123, 129
Deane, Sir Thomas, 146, 148
Delacroix, 164, 171
Delane, John T., 143
De Morgan, Professor, 205
De Vere, Aubrey, 172, 175, 245,
278
Deverell A\'alter H., 4, 26, 70,
76, loi, 132, 143, 193, 201
Dickinson, Lowes, ;^2
Dixon, Canon, 176, 179
Dixon, WiUiam Hepworth, 57, 61
Dobell, Sidney, 62, 139, 143, 191,
199, 285, 287
Donovan, — , 228, 231
Dowden, Professor Edward, 146
Dyce, William, 22, 32
Eastlake, Sir Charles L., 22, 32
Elliott, Rev. \^'illiam, 190, 198
Ellis, F. S., 289
Emerson, Ralph Waldo, 37, 264
F
Fairbairn, Sir Thomas, 25
Faulkner, Charles Joseph, 176,
201-2, 235, 252,254-5
Ferguson, Samuel, xxiv
Folio, The, 36, 42, 47, 55
Frere, Hookham, 8
Froude, James Anthony, xix, xxvii
Fulford, Rev. William, 177
G
Gambart, 187
Garrick, David, 77
Genu, The, 59, 64-9, 174
Gibbon, Edward, 165
Gilchrist, Alexander, 200, 237,
241, 264
Gilchrist, Mrs., 185, 241, 250,
259, 284
(iilfillan, George, xxiv
Gillum, Colonel, 60, 276
Giotto, 16, 180
Goodall, Frederick, R.A., 21, 26
Goss, George, 276
Go.sse, Edmund, 142
Grant, Sir Francis, R.A., 198
H
Haile. Dr., 13
Hallam, Arthur, 141
Hannay, James, 22, 26, 2,3, 56,
61, 102, 106, 139-40, 144, 154
Hare, Augustus J. C, 145
Hatch, Rev. Dr. Edwin, 177
Hawthorne, Nathaniel, i, 105
167, 197, 205, 262
Hayley, William, 159, 165
Heaton, Miss, 181
Heine, 96
Herbert, George, 218
Hobbies, 122
Hogarth, William, 71, 77
Hood, Thomas, 122
Hook, James Clarke, R.A., 187,
257
Horsley, John Callcott, R.A., 97
Houghton, Lord, 169
Howell, Charles A., 279
Howitt, Anna Mary (Mrs. Howitt-
Watts), 3, 13, 18, 36, 47, 50,
98, 195, 204
Howitt, Mrs., 26, 94, 204, 286
Howitt, ^\'illiam, 15, 195
Hughes, Arthur, 69, 97, 132, 156,
254. Pictures and designs :
April Love, 1 93 ; Eve of St.
302
INDEX
Agues, 182, 187 ; I II us! rat ions of
Day and Xiglit Songs, 42, 55,
60, 82, 109; Labourer s Return
from U\}rk, 257 ; Ophelia, 20,
25; Orlando, 72, 123, 129;
PorpJivro and Madeline, 163 ;
portrait of Allinghani, 34:
Soldier's Return, 126, 135;
Sketches in Cornn'all, 4
Hughes, Edward, 130
Hunt, Leigh, xxiv, 116
Hunt, WilHam Henry, 164
Hunt, WilHam Holman, defended
by Ruskin, 16, 24 ; in the
East, 33, 41, 57, 74, 100, 163,
208; Rossetti's youth, 28; —
impatience, 49 ; — opinion of
sculpture, 75; — memory, 119;
— recitation, 220; — indifference
to music, 266 ; The Germ, 65,
68; Royal Academy, 123-4,
128, 187 ; P.R.B., 132-4, 183 ;
Paris Exhibition, 164, 167,
171; likeness, 198; Thomas
Seddon, 208-9. Pictures :
Christian Missionary, 68 ;
Finding of the Saviour, 182,
186, 190; Lantern Maker's
Courtship, 258-9 ; Light of the
World, ss, 41, 132, 145 ;
Rienzi, 68 ; Scapegoat, 92,
182, 187 ; Tennyson Illus-
trations, 97, 191 ; Tii'o Gentle-
men of ]'erona, 20, 24, 125
I
Idler, The, 163, 171
Illustrated Books, 97
Inchbold, J. T., 123, 129
Ingelow, Jean, 267, 270
Ingres, 164, 172
J
Tenner and Knewstub, 268, 271
Johnson, Dr., 77, 142, 225
K
Keats, John, 228-9, '3i» 287
Keightley, Thomas, 71, 78
Kincaird, Mrs., 150
Kingsley, Rev. Charles, 240
Kipling, Rudyard, 225
Knaus, Ludwig, 164
Landseer, Sir Edwin, 97
Layard, Sir Austen Henry, 180,
182
Leader, The, 102
Lear, Edward, 40
Leathart, James, 76, 129
Leighton, Lord, R.A., 123, 130,
257
Lewes, George Henry, 106
Lewis, John, 164
Linnell, John, 133, 235
Linton, W. J., 191
Longfellow, Henry ^\^adsworth,
181, 183
Lushington, ^"ernon, 194
M
MacCracken, Francis, 4, 20, 23,
30, 48, 84, 125, 131
MacDowell, Patrick, R.A., 126,
135
Maclennan, John Ferguson, 30,
37> 209
Maclise, Daniel, R.A., 97
Macmillan, Messrs., 30, 256,
257, 259, 289
Marochetti, Baron, 90
L\Di<:x
303
Marshall, Peter Paul, 252, 254,
Marshall, — , 2
Martin, Sir Theodore, 62
Massey, Gerald, 57, 61
Masson, Professor, 22, 160
Maurice, Rev. F. 1)., 83, 87
Mazzini, Giuseppe, 8
Meinhold, Wilhelm, 58, 62
Meredith, (ieorge, 248, 250, 267,
270
Millais, Sir John Everett, P.R.B.,
16, 24, 183 ; dealings with
MacCracken, 20 ; recommends
Woolner, 22 ; TJic Folio, 43,
47 ; Sketching Club, 59 ; The
Germ, 64, 68; Royal Academy,
123, 127 ; at Oxford, 133 ;
marriage, 153 ; Paris Exhibi-
tion, 164; neglected, 186.
Pictures : Antuuin Leaves,
181, 185, 187 ; Blind Girl,
181, 185 ; Day aii.i XigJit
Son^i^s illns'raleil, 96, 127, 155;
Design for Triiiily College,
Dublin, 141, 146 : Ferdinand
lured by Ariel, 50; Ophelia,
5, 6; Peace Concluded, 181 ;
Poets of the Xineleenth Cen-
tury illnstra.ed, 191 ; The
Rescue, 100, 123, 127 ; Tenny-
son illnslrated, 97 ; Vale of
Res', 92
Miller, John, 129, 150-2, 187,
254
Milsand, J., r6i, 168
Moore, Thomas, ii8
Morris, William, Oxford anil
Cambridge Magazine, 176-8,
192, 194, 200 : poems, 192,
201 ; illumination, 193: Oxford
to London, 202 ; house at
Upton, 233, 235 ; art firm,
235, 252-5 ; birth ofa daughter,
251 ; reviews Rossetti, 294
Moxon, Edward, 97
Mulready, William, 22, 32, 97,
151
Munro, Alexander, 20, 26, 34, 69,
90, 126, 134, 139, 164, 190,
225
Murray, Dr. James A. H., 290
N
Nightingale, Miss, 19
North, William, 100, 106
O
Oake.s, — , 150, 152
Once a U^eek, 248
Opie, John, 244
Orme, Mrs., 73, So
Ormesby, — , 192, 200
Oxford and Cambridge Mailazine,
i73> 175' 192, 194, 200, 204
Page, \\'illiam, 162, 181
Parker, John, 79, 201
Parkes, Miss Bessie Rayner
(Mme. Belloc), 3, 11, 147,
153, 182, 186
Patmore, Coventry, xxiv, xxv, 22,
27, 51. 54. 68, 80, 85, 93, 99,
104, 117, 138-9, 163, 170, 191,
236, 239
Patmore, T. (i., 93
Paul, B. H., 57, 61
Paul Veronese, 124, 228, 230
Pennant, Thomas, 28
Pietro della Francesca, 180
Plint, T. E., 60, 190, 198
Poe, Edgar Allan, 57, 62, 219,
221
304
INDEX
debts
Poetry, 137, 142, 184
Pocfs of the Xiudccntli Century,
i73> 175, 190
Polydore, Henry F., 56, 61
Polydori, Dr., 115, 118
Porson, Richard, 166
Poynter, Sir Edward John, R.A.,
225 I
PrjeraphaeUtes, 16, 65, 103, 132, '
183, 241, 253, 298
R
Read, Thomas Buchanan, 85, 93,
189, 191
Rexnolds Miscellany, 209
Ristori, 197
Rossetti, Christina G., 63, 177,
2i5> 257, 259, 289
Rossetti, Dante Gabriel, Bath,
visits, 188; Belgium, 272;
birthday, 127, 135; Chatham
Place, 142, 238, 251 ; Cheyne
Walk, 269, 297 ; Clevedon,
136, 141 : Cockney rhymes,
xxvii, 222; co-operator, 117;
Correggio, <S:c., contempt of,
241 correspondence destroyed,
xxviii: criticism sought, 54, 84 :
critics, provides friendly, 293 :
23, 59> 64;
described by Mme. Belloc, 6 ;
— by Leighton, 130; — by
Burne-Jones, 179; Englishman,
92 ; " fierce light of imagina-
tion," 27; Folio, 43; friend-
ships, 21, 26, 48, 51, 188, 225,
297 ; goods seized, 93 ; Hamp-
stead, 226, 234; Hastings, 3,
13, 17, 19; impatience, 49;
income, 64, 131,261, 270, 277-
8, 293; Italy, 267, 270; late
hours, 135; marriage, 223;
memory, 119; money-making,
23, 51 ; music, 266 ; neglected,
186; painting versus poetry,
46, 50, 166; Paris, 156, 164,
167, 223 ; politics, 9 ; portrait,
198: recitation, xxvi, 120; Red
Lion Square, 193, 201, 203;
Robertsbridge, 15, 29o;Ruskin,
friendship with, 16, 139, 143,
204, 298 ; — , lays siege to, 163;
— buys his pictures, 163, 171;
— criticises them, 271; science,
270; sculpture, 75; Siddal,
Miss, love for, 4, 18, 35, 113,
165, 196 : — death, 241, 269;
sight failing, 280 ; sleeplessness,
282,292 ; spiritualism, 195, 204;
town-bred, 221 ; water-colours
and oil-painting, 207 ; wombat,
229 ; work, hours of, 275, 277 ;
youth untainted, 28 ; zebu,
270. Paintings, &:c. : — Beata
Beatrix, 6 ; Beatrice at a Mar-
riage Feast, 164, 171 ; Blue
Closet, 193, 201 ; Dante ctraic-
ingan Angel, 1 25, 131 ; Dante's
]lsion, 174, 179, 181; Ecce
Ancilla Domini, 25, 125, 131;
Found, 18, 47> 7i> 73. 77,83,90,
120, 164; Fra Pace, 174, 179;
Francesca da Rimini, 163 ;
Hamlet and Ophelia, 47, 55,
60 : Hesterna- Rosiv, 213;
Johnson, &c., 225 ; Launcclot
and Guenevere, 164; Llandaff
CatJiedral Altar-piece, 174,
179 ; Maids of Elf en Mere, 44,
55. 7o> 76, 82, 95, 109, 112,
113: Mary Magdalene, 212;
Morris's house, paintings in,
235 ■ replicas, 272 : Saint alio
Bcairicis, 235 ; Tennyson il-
INDEX
305
lust rated, 97, 103, 173, 191,
207-8; — portrait, 162, 170;
wall-papcr design, 251. Wri-
tings: — A Dark Day, 102, 107:
Ave, 245; Birth- Bond, 46;
Blake, Supplement to Life of,
263 : Blesseil Daniozel,ig4, 246 ;
Bride Chamber Talk, 232, 235,
245 : Burden of Xinevch, 194,
204 : Dennis Shand, 245 ; Early
Italian Poets, 29, 37, 44, 49,
53-4, 58, 64, loi, 127, 212,
253> 255, 260 ; Even So, 27 ;
Hill Summit, 45, 49 ; Hodge-
podge, 246 ; House of Life, 79 ;
Hvmn, 244 ; 246 ; yenny, 232,
234, 247, 249 : Lost on Both
Sides, 31, 38, 45 ; MaeCraeken,
31 ; Mirror, 245 ; Pt)t'//;s (1870),
292 ; Portrait, 245 ; Sister
Helen, 285, 292 : Sonnets in
the Fortnightly Revien', 283 ;
St. Agnes of Intereession, 64;
Stratton Water, 80, 84; Wel-
lington's Funeral, 245
Rossetti, Gabriele, 7-10, 50, 64,
271
Rossetii, Frances M. L., 292
Rossetti, Teodorico Pietrocola-,
7, 10
Rossetti, William, his father's
death, 8 : intimacy with Major
Campbell, 19 ; tours, 57, 154,
272 ; edits The Germ, 65 ;
Prose Paraphrase of the House
of Life, 79 ; Mrs. Holmes
Grey, 107 ; reads Browning,
157 : fellow-feeling with his
brother, 159; at Browning's
house, 162, 238, 241 : admira-
tion of Walt Whitman, 185 ;
sketched by Madox Brown,
198; Blake's MSS., 241;
shares his brother's house,
269 ; edits Shelley, 265, 286-8
Routledge, Messrs., 7, 72, 96, 156
Royal Academy, 123, 128, 257,
269
Ruskin, John, Allingham's poems,
83, 215, 219, 222; Blake's
engravings, 158; Brown, F-
M., neglects, 112, 199 ; Essays
on Political Economy, 22S, 231 ;
Evidence on Royal Academy,
269: "the graduate," 24;
Lectures on Architecture, &c.,
16, 69; Letter to the Critic, 236,
239, 243 ; Modern Painters,
170, 181, 183: Morris's work,
193: Prceraphaelites, defends
the, 16, 69 ; Rossetti's friendship
with, 14, 16, 58, 79, 139, 143'
207, 271, 298 ; — pictures
bought, 4, 163, 171 ; — poems,
140, 194, 204, 234 ; — reads
Men and Women to him, 163;
— influences his criticism, 188;
Rossetti, T. P., influences
him, 10 ; Siddal, kindness to
Miss, 3, 5, no, 113, 115, 118,
149, 225; "talks rubbish,"
269 ; Working Men's College,
71, 83, 87-90, 98
Safifi, Count Aurelio, 54
Scott, William Bell, 38, 51, 74,
76, 81, 86, 88, 95, 116, 119,
134
Seddon, Thomas, 41, 100, 106,
128, 150, T52, 206
Seward, Miss, 166
Shakespeare, William, 218
3o6
INDEX
Shelley, Percy Bysshe, 131, 182,
287
Shorter, Clement, 62
Siddal, Elizabeth Eleanor (Mrs.
Rossetti), at Hastings, 3, 13;
Ruskin's kindness, 3, no, 113,
115, 118, 149; Rossetti's love
for her, sec under Rossetti ;
described, 4, 6 ; sketches, 14,
17, 34) 99> iii> i4o> 146, 161,
186, 246, 276 ; proposed il-
lustrations of Tennyson, 97,
103, III, 113: ill-health, 15,
18, 35, 227, 255 ; at Clevedon,
136, 141 ; winters abroad, 149,
158, 165 ; at Bath, 196 ; mar-
riage, 223-7 ; death, 269
Skelton, John, 53, 79, 293, 295
Smith, Alexander, 139, 143, 191,
199, 209
Smith, Barbara . Leigh (Mme.
Bodichon), 5, 11, 13, 15, 17,
47, 80, 99, 194, 290-2
Smith, Bernhard, 38
Smith, Goldwin, 176
Smith and Elder, 42, loi, 261
Southey, Robert, 63
Spiritualism, 195, 204
Stanfield, William Clarkson, R.A.,
97
Stanley, Dean, xix, 176
Stephens, Frederick George, 34,
47, 50, 57> 198, 298
Sterling, John, 37
Stillman, William, 290, 292
Stokes, Whitley, 192, 200
Stone, Frank, 41
Stowe, Mrs., 182
Stunner, 144
Surtees, Robert, 218
Sutton, — , 48, 50
Swinburne, Algernon Charles,
admires Wiitliering Heights,
62 ; Rossetti seeks his criticism,
54; — sub-tenant, 267, 270;
— Poems, 293 ; Plays, 238,
242-3, 249 ; attacked by
Buchanan, 287
Taylor, Sir Henry, 37, 170, 175,
212-3, 218, 220
Taylor, Warrington, 265
Tennyson, Alfred, " cockney
rhymes," xxiii; The Kraken,^i,
37 ; Woolner and the gold-
diggings, 39 ; illustrated edition,
97, 103, III, 191 ; at Coniston,
104 ; In Memorlani, 141 ; por-
trait by Rossetti, 162, 170;
Maiuf, 169, 240 ; recitation,
xxvi, 1 70 ; compared with
Aubrey de Vere, 175 ; Oxford
and Cambridge Magazine, 1 78 ;
bust, 189, 197 ; Manchester
Exhibition, 197 ; Nightingale
Valley, 218; photographs, 244 :
at Freshwater, 282
Tennyson, Mrs., in
Thackeray, William Makepeace,
80, 231
Thomas, William Cave, 65
Tinies, The, 57
Tintoret, 231
Tourganief, Ivan, 230
Tupper, Alexander, 68
Tupper, Martin Farquhar, 102
106, 185
Turner, J. M. W., 4, 92
V
Victoria, Queen, xix, 123
INDEX
507
W
Waagen, Dr., ^^, 41
Waterford, Marchioness of, 59,
140, 144
Watts, George Frederick, R.A.,
258
Webb, Philip, 252
Wells, Mrs., 258
Wentworth,' William Charles, 39-
40, 48, 106, 126
White, — , 20, 23
Whitman, Walt, 181, 183-5
Wilberforce, E., 171
Wilkinson, Dr. J. Garth, 12-13,
237> 261-4
Willmott, Rev. R. A., 173, 175
Wilson, Richard, R.A., 26
Windus (a Liverpool painter),
187-8
Windus, B. G., 84, 91
Woodward, Benjamin, 140, 145
148
Woolner, 'I'homas, WentworllTs
statue, 21, 32, 39, 48, 100, 106,
126; ^\'ords\vorth group, 32,
40 ; success in life, 40 ; gold-
diggings, 38 ; returns to Eng-
land, 70, 139 ; Tlic (icriii, 65 ;
manners, 75 ; Carlylc and W.
B. Scott, 86 ; 1 )alziers en-
graving, 114; Millais and the
Royal Academy, 128 ; sketches
in clay, 163 ; bust of Tennyson,
189, 197 ; meets A. Smith, 191 ;
Aurora Lcigli, 196
Wordsworth, William, Woolner's
statue, 32, 40 ; compared with
Crabbe, 102 ; — with Aubrey
de Vere, 175 ; "good but un-
bearable," 218, 220, 233
Working Men's College, 71, 83,
87-90, 98
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