Old Familiar Faces Part 9

Here, for instance, is a puzzling case to be tried _in foro conscientiae_.

In the first edition of 'Goblin Market,' published in 1862, appeared three poems of more breadth of treatment than any of the others: 'Cousin Kate,' a ballad, 'Sister Maude,' a ballad, and 'A Triad,' a sonnet. In subsequent issues of the book these were all omitted. Mr. W. M.

Rossetti, speaking of 'Sister Maude,' says: "I presume that my sister, with overstrained scrupulosity, considered its moral tone to be somewhat open to exception. In such a view I by no means agree, and I therefore reproduce it." If Christina's objection was valid when she raised it, it is, of course, valid now, when the beloved poet is in the "country beyond Orion," and knows what sanctions are of man's imagining, and what sanctions are more eternal than the movements of the stars.

The question here is, What were Christina Rossetti's wishes? not whether her brother "agrees" with them. Hence, if it were not certain that some one would soon have restored them, would Mr. W. M. Rossetti have hesitated before doing so? For they are among the most powerful things Christina Rossetti ever wrote, and it was a subject of deep regret to her friends that she suppressed them. Yet she withdrew them from conscientious motives. In 'Sister Maude' she showed how great was her power in the most difficult of all forms of poetic art-the romantic ballad. Splendid as are Gabriel Rossetti's 'Sister Helen' and 'Rose Mary,' the literary _aura_ surrounding them prevents them from seeming-as the best of the Border ballads seem-Nature's very voice muttering in her dreams of the pathos and the mystery of the human story. It was not, perhaps, given even to Rossetti to get very near to that supreme old poet (not forgotten, because never known) who wrote "May Margaret's" appeal to the ghost of her lover Clerk Saunders:-

Is there ony room at your head, Saunders?

Is there ony room at your feet?

Is there ony room at your side, Saunders, Where fain, fain I wad sleep?

where the very imperfections of the rhymes seem somehow to add to the pathos and the mystery of the chant. But if, indeed, it has been given to any modern poet to get into this atmosphere, it has been given to Christina Rossetti. And so with the ballad of simple human pa.s.sion no modern writer has quite done what Christina Rossetti has done in one of the poems here restored:-

SISTER MAUDE.

Who told my mother of my shame, Who told my father of my dear?

Oh who but Maude, my sister Maude, Who lurked to spy and peer.

Cold he lies, as cold as stone, With his clotted curls about his face: The comeliest corpse in all the world, And worthy of a queen's embrace.

You might have spared his soul, sister, Have spared my soul, your own soul too: Though I had not been born at all, He'd never have looked at you.

My father may sleep in Paradise, My mother at Heaven-gate: But sister Maude shall get no sleep Either early or late.

My father may wear a golden gown, My mother a crown may win; If my dear and I knocked at Heaven-gate Perhaps they'd let us in: But sister Maude, O sister Maude, Bide _you_ with death and sin.

But it is for the personal poems that this volume will be prized most dearly by certain readers.

Mr. W. M. Rossetti speaks of "the very wide and exceedingly strong outburst of eulogy" of his sister which appeared in the public press after her death. Yet that outburst was far from giving adequate expression to what was felt by some of her readers-those between whom and herself there was a bond of sympathy so sacred and so deep as to be something like a religion. It is not merely that she was the acknowledged queen in that world (outside the arena called "the literary world") where poetry is "its own exceeding great reward," but to other readers of a different kind altogether-readers who, drawing the deepest delight from such poetry as specially appeals to them, never read any other, and have but small knowledge of poetry as a fine art-her verse was, perhaps, more precious still. They feel that at every page of her writing the beautiful poetry is only the outcome of a life whose almost unexampled beauty fascinates them.

Although Christina Rossetti had more of what is called the unconsciousness of poetic inspiration than any other poet of her time, the writing of poetry was not by any means the chief business of her life. She was too thorough a poet for that. No one felt so deeply as she that poetic art is only at the best the imperfect body in which dwells the poetic soul. No one felt so deeply as she that as the notes of the nightingale are but the involuntary expression of the bird's emotion, and, again, as the perfume of the violet is but the flower's natural breath, so it is and must be with the song of the very poet, and that, therefore, to write beautifully is in a deep and true sense to live beautifully. In the volume before us, as in all her previously published writings, we see at its best what Christianity is as the motive power of poetry. The Christian idea is essentially feminine, and of this feminine quality Christina Rossetti's poetry is full.

In motive power the difference between cla.s.sic and Christian poetry must needs be very great. But whatever may be said in favour of one as against the other, this at least cannot be controverted, that the history of literature shows no human development so beautiful as the ideal Christian woman of our own day. She is unique, indeed. Men of science tell us that among all the fossilized plants we find none of the lovely family of the rose, and in the same way we should search in vain through the entire human record for anything so beautiful as that kind of Christian lady to whom self-abnegation is not only the first of duties, but the first of joys. Yet, no doubt, the Christian idea must needs be more or less flavoured by each personality through which it is expressed.

With regard to Christina Rossetti, while upon herself Christian dogma imposed infinite obligations-obligations which could never be evaded by her without the risk of all the penalties fulminated by all believers-there was in the order of things a sort of ether of universal charity for all others. She would lament, of course, the lapses of every soul, but for these there was a forgiveness which her own lapses could never claim. There was, to be sure, a sweet egotism in this. It was very fascinating, however. This feeling explains what seems somewhat to puzzle the editor, especially in the poem called 'The End of the First Part,' written April 18th, 1849, of which he says, "'Tears for guilt' is in reference to Christina a very exaggerated phrase":-

THE END OF THE FIRST PART.

My happy dream is finished with, My dream in which alone I lived so long.

My heart slept-woe is me, it wakeneth; Was weak-I thought it strong.

Oh, weary wakening from a life-true dream!

Oh pleasant dream from which I wake in pain!

I rested all my trust on things that seem, And all my trust is vain.

I must pull down my palace that I built, Dig up the pleasure-gardens of my soul; Must change my laughter to sad tears for guilt, My freedom to control.

Now all the cherished secrets of my heart, Now all my hidden hopes, are turned to sin.

Part of my life is dead, part sick, and part Is all on fire within.

The fruitless thought of what I might have been, Haunting me ever, will not let me rest.

A cold North wind has withered all my green, My sun is in the West.

But, where my palace stood, with the same stone I will uprear a shady hermitage; And there my spirit shall keep house alone, Accomplis.h.i.+ng its age.

There other garden beds shall lie around, Full of sweet-briar and incense-bearing thyme: There I will sit, and listen for the sound Of the last lingering chime.

It was the beauty of her life that made her personal influence so great, and upon no one was that influence exercised with more strength than upon her ill.u.s.trious brother Gabriel, who in many ways was so much unlike her.

In spite of his deep religious instinct and his intense sympathy with mysticism, Gabriel remained what is called a free thinker in the true meaning of that much-abused phrase. In religion as in politics he thought for himself, and yet when Mr. W. M. Rossetti affirms that the poet was never drawn towards free thinking women, he says what is perfectly true. And this arose from the extraordinary influence, scarcely recognized by himself, that the beauty of Christina's life and her religious system had upon him.

This, of course, is not the place in which to say much about him; nor need much at any time and in any place be said, for has he not written his own biography-depicted himself more faithfully than Lockhart could depict Walter Scott, more faithfully than Boswell could depict Dr.

Johnson? Has he not done this in the immortal sonnet-sequence called 'The House of Life'? What poet of the nineteenth century do we know so intimately as we know the author of 'The House of Life'?

Christina Rossetti's peculiar form of the Christian sentiment she inherited from her mother, the sweetness of whose nature was never disturbed by that exercise of the egoism of the artist in which Christina indulged and without whose influence it is difficult to imagine what the Rossetti family would have been. The father was a poet and a mystic of the cryptographic kind, and it is by no means unlikely that had he studied Shakespeare as he studied Dante he would in these days have been a disciple of the Baconians, and, of course, his influence on the family in the matter of literary activity and of mysticism must have been very great. And yet all that is n.o.blest in Christina's poetry, an ever-present sense of the beauty and power of goodness, must surely have come from the mother, from whom also came that other charm of Christina's, to which Gabriel was peculiarly sensitive, her youthfulness of temperament.

Among the many differences which exist between the s.e.xes this might, perhaps, be mentioned, that while it is beautiful for a man to grow old-grow old with the pa.s.sage of years-a woman to retain her charm must always remain young. In a deep sense woman may be said to have but one paramount charm, youth, and when this is gone all is gone. The youthfulness of the body, of course, soon vanishes, but with any woman who can really win and retain the love of man this is not nearly so important as at first it seems. It is the youthfulness of the soul that, in the truly adorable woman, is invulnerable. It is one of the deep misfortunes of the very poor of cities that as a rule the terrible struggle with the wolf at the door is apt to sour the nature of women and turn them into crones at the age when in the more fortunate cla.s.ses the true beauty of woman often begins; and even where the environment is not that of poverty, but of straitened means, it is as a rule impossible for a woman to retain this youthfulness.

In the case of the Rossettis, in the early period they were in a position of straitened means. Nor was this all: the children, Gabriel alone excepted, felt themselves to be by nationality aliens. Christina, though she made only one visit to Italy, felt herself to be an Italian, and would smile when any one talked to her of the John Bullism of her brother Gabriel, and yet, with these powerful causes working against their natural elasticity of temperament, both mother and daughter retained that juvenility which Gabriel Rossetti felt to be so refres.h.i.+ng. So strong was it in the mother that it had a strange effect upon the mere physique, and at eighty the expression in the eyes, and, indeed, on the face throughout, retained so much of the winsomeness of youth that she was more beautiful than most young women:-

1882.

My blessed mother dozing in her chair On Christmas Day seemed an embodied Love, A comfortable Love with soft brown hair Softened and silvered to a tint of dove; A better sort of Venus with an air Angelical from thoughts that dwell above; A wiser Pallas in whose body fair Enshrined a blessed soul looks out thereof.

Winter brought holly then, now Spring has brought Paler and frailer snowdrops s.h.i.+vering; And I have brought a simple humble thought- I her devoted duteous Valentine- A lifelong thought which thrills this song I sing, A lifelong love to this dear saint of mine.

Although this was not so with Christina, upon whose face ill-health worked its ravages, her temperament, as we say, remained as young as ever. The lovely relations-sometimes staid and sometimes playful-between mother and daughter, are seen throughout the book before us. But especially are they seen in one little group of poems-"The Valentines to her Mother"-in regard to which Christina left the following pencilled note:-

"These Valentines had their origin from my dearest mother's remarking that she had never received one. I, her C. G. R., ever after supplied one on the day; and (so far as I recollect) it was a surprise every time, she having forgotten all about it in the interim."

Mrs. Rossetti's first valentine was received when she was nearly seventy-six years of age, and she continued every year to receive a valentine until 1886, when she died. Surely there is not in the history of English poetry anything more fascinating than these valentines.

It is pleasing to see the book open with the following dedication by Mr.

W. M. Rossetti:-

"To Algernon Charles Swinburne, a generous eulogist of Christina Rossetti, who hailed his genius and prized himself the greatest of living British poets, my old and constant friend, I dedicate this book."

V. DR. GORDON HAKE.

18091895.

I little thought when I recently quoted from Dr. Hake's account of that Christmas gathering of the Rossettis at Bognor in 1875-a gathering which he has made historic-that to-day I should be writing an obituary notice of the "parable-poet" himself. It is true that, having fractured a leg in a lamentable accident which befell him, he had for the last few years been imprisoned in one room and compelled during most of the time to lie in a horizontal position. But notwithstanding this, and notwithstanding his great age, his mental faculties remained so unimpaired that it was hard to believe his death could be so near.

[Picture: Dr. Gordon Hake. From a crayon-drawing by D. G. Rossetti reproduced by the kind permission of Mr. Thomas Hake]