Recollections of Dante Gabriel Rossetti Part 10

Your young friend Watson [he said in a subsequent letter]

wrote me in a very modest mood for one who can do as he can at his age. I think I must have hurriedly mis-expressed myself in writing to him, as he seems to think I wished to dissuade him from following narrative poetry. Not in the least--I only wished him to try his hand at clearer dramatic life. The dreamy romantic really hardly needs more than one vast Morris in a literature--at any rate in a century. Not that I think him derivable from Morris--he goes straight back to Keats with a little modification. The narrative, whether condensed or developed, is at any rate a far better impersonal form to work in than declamatory harangue, whether calling on the stars or the Styx. I don't know in the least how Watson is faring with the critics. He must not be discouraged, in any case, with his real and high gifts.

The young poet, in whom Rossetti saw so much to applaud, can scarcely be said to have fared at all at the hands of the critics.

Here is a pleasant piece of literary portraiture, as valuable from the peep it affords into Rossetti's own character as from the description it gives of the rustic poet:

The other evening I had the pleasant experience of meeting one to whom I have for about two years looked with interest as a poet of the native rustic kind, but often of quite a superior order. I don't know if you noticed, somewhere about the date referred to, in _The Athenaeum_, a review of poems by Joseph Skipsey. Skip-sey has exquisite--though, as in all such cases (except of course Burns's) not equal--powers in several directions, but his pictures of humble life are the best. He is a working miner, and describes rustic loves and sports, and the perils and pathos of pit-life with great charm, having a quiet humour too when needed. His more ambitious pieces have solid merit of feeling, but are much less artistic. The other night, as I say, he came here, and I found him a stalwart son of toil, and every inch a gentleman. In cast of face he recalls Tennyson somewhat, though more bronzed and brawned. He is as sweet and gentle as a woman in manner, and recited some beautiful things of his own with a special freshness to which one is quite unaccustomed.

Mr. Skipsey was a miner of North s.h.i.+elds, and in the review referred to much was made, in a delicate way, of his stern environments. His volume of lyrics is marked by the quiet humour. Rossetti speaks of, as well as by a rather exasperating inequality. Perhaps the best piece in it is a poem ent.i.tled _Thistle and Nettle_, treating with peculiar freshness of a country courts.h.i.+p. The coming together of two such entirely opposite natures was certainly curious, and only to be accounted for on the ground of Rossetti's breadth of poetic sympathy. It would be interesting to hear what the impressions were of such a rude son of toil upon meeting with one whose life must have seemed the incarnation of artistic luxury and indulgence. Later on I received the following:

Poor Skipsey! He has lost the friend who brought him to London only the other day (T. Dixon), and who was his only hold on intellectual life in his district. Dixon died immediately on his return to the North, of a violent attack of asthma to which he was subject. He was a rarely pure and simple soul, and is doubtless gone to higher uses, though few could have reached, with his small opportunities, to such usefulness as he compa.s.sed here. He was Ruskin's correspondent in a little book called (I think) _Work by Tyne and Wear_. I got a very touching note from Skipsey on the subject.

From Mr. Skipsey he received a letter only a little while before his death, and to him he addressed one of the last epistles he penned.

The following letter explains itself, and is introduced as much for the sake of the real humour which it displays, as because it affords an excellent idea of Rossetti's view of the true function of prose:

I don't like your Shakspeare article quite as well as the first _Supernatural_ one, or rather I should say it does not greatly add to it in my (first) view, though both might gain by embodiment in one. I think there is _some_ truth in the charge of metaphysical involution--the German element as I should call it--and surely you are strong enough to be English pure and simple. I am sure I could write 100 essays, on all possible subjects (I once did project a series under the t.i.tle, _Essays written in the intervals of Elephantiasis, Hydro-phobia, and Penal Servitude_), without once experiencing the "aching void" which is filled by such words as "mythopoeic," and "anthropomorphism." I do not find life long enough to know in the least what they mean. They are both very long and very ugly indeed--the latter only suggesting to me a Vampire or Somnambulant Cannibal. (To speak rationally, would not "man-evolved G.o.dhead" be an _English_ equivalent?) "Euhemeristic" also found me somewhat on my beam-ends, though explanation is here given; yet I felt I could do without Euhemerus; and _you_ perhaps without the _humerous_. You can pardon me now; for _so_ bad a pun places me at your mercy indeed. But seriously, simple English in prose writing and in all narrative poetry (however monumental language may become in abstract verse) seems to me a treasure not to be foregone in favour of German innovations. I know Coleridge went in latterly for as much Germanism as his time could master; but his best genius had then left him.

It seems necessary to mention that I lectured in 1880, on the relation of politics to art, and in printing the lecture I asked Rossetti to accept the dedication of it, but this he declined to do in the generous terms I have already referred to. The letter that accompanied his graceful refusal is, however, so full of interesting personal matter that I offer it in this place, with no further explanation than that my essay was designed to show that just as great artists in past ages had partic.i.p.ated in political struggles, so now they should not hold themselves aloof from controversies which immediately concern them:

I must admit, at all hazards, that my friends here consider me exceptionally averse to politics; and I suppose I must be, for I never read a parliamentary debate in my life! At the same time I will add that, among those whose opinions I most value, some think me not altogether wrong when I venture to speak of the momentary momentousness and eternal futility of many noisiest questions. However, you must simply view me as a nonent.i.ty in any practical relation to such matters. You have spoken but too generously of a sonnet of mine in your lecture just received. I have written a few others of the sort (which by-the-bye would not prove me a Tory), but felt no vocation--perhaps no right---to print them. I have always reproached myself as sorely amenable to the condemnations of a very fine poem by Barberino, _On Sloth against Sin_, which I translated in the Dante volume.

Sloth, alas! has but too much to answer for with me; and is one of the reasons (though I will not say the only one), why I have always fallen back on quality instead of quant.i.ty in the little I have ever done. I think often with Coleridge:

Sloth jaundiced all: and from my graspless hand Drop friends.h.i.+p's precious pearls like hour-gla.s.s sand.

I weep, yet stoop not: the faint anguish flows, A dreamy pang in morning's feverish doze.

However, for all I might desire in the direction spoken of, volition is vain without vocation; and I had better really stick to knowing how to mix vermilion and ultramarine for a flesh-grey, and how to manage their equivalents in verse. To speak without sparing myself,--my mind is a childish one, if to be isolated in Art is child's-play; at any rate I feel that I do not attain to the more active and practical of the mental functions of manhood. I can say this to you, because I know you will make the best and not the worst of me; and better than such feasible best I do not wish to appear. Thus you see I don't think my name ought to head your introductory paragraph--and there an end. And now of your new lecture, and of the long letter I lately had from you.

At some moment I should like to know which pieces among the translations are specially your favourites. Of the three names you leash together as somewhat those of sensualists, Cecco Angiolieri is really the only one--as for the respectable Cino, he would be shocked indeed, though certainly there are a few oddities bearing that way in the sonnets between him and Dante (who is again similarly reproached by his friend Cavalcanti), but I really _do_ suspect that in some cases similar to the one in question about Cino (though not Guido and Dante) politics were really meant where love was used as a metaphor.... I a.s.sure you, you cannot say too much to me of this or any other work of yours; in fact, I wish that we should communicate about them. I have been thinking yet more on the relations of politics and art. I do think seriously on consideration that not only my own sluggishness, but vital fact itself, must set to a great extent a _veto_ against the absolute partic.i.p.ation of artists in politics. When has it ever been effected? True, Cellini was a bravo and David a good deal like a murderer, and in these capacities they were not without their political use in very turbulent times. But when the attempt was made to turn Michael Angelo into a "utility man" of that kind, he did (it is true) some patriotic duty in the fortification of Florence; but it is no less a fact that, when he had done all that he thought became him, he retired to a certain trackless and forgotten tower, and there stayed in some sort of peace (though much in request) till he could lead his own life again; nor should we forget the occasion on which he did not hesitate even to betake himself to Venice as a refuge. Yet M. Angelo was in every way a patriot, a philosopher, and a hero. I do not say this to undervalue the scope of your theory. I think possibilities are generally so much behind desirabilities that there is no harm in any degree of incitement in the right _direction_; and that is a.s.suredly mental activity of _all_ kinds. I judge you cannot suspect _me_ of thinking the apotheosis of the early Italian poets (though surely spiritual beauty, and not sensuality, was their general aim) of more importance than the "unity of a great nation." But it is in my minute power to deal successfully (I feel) with the one, while no such ent.i.ty, as I am, can advance or r.e.t.a.r.d the other; and thus mine must needs be the poorer part. Nor (with alas, and again alas!) will Italy or another twice have her day in its fulness.

I happened to have said in speaking of self-indulgence among artists, that there probably existed those to whom it seemed more important to preserve such a pitiful possession as the poetical remains of Cecco Angiolieri than to secure the unity of a great nation. Rossetti half suspected I meant this for a playful backhanded blow at himself (for Cecco was a great favourite with him), and protested that no such individual could exist. I defended my charge by quoting Keats's--

... the silver flow Of Hero's tears, the swoon of Imogen, Fair Pastorella in the bandit's den, Are things to brood on with more ardency Than the death-day of empires.

But Rossetti grew weary of the jest:

I must protest that what you quote from Keats about "Hero's tears," etc., fails to meet the text. Neither Shakspeare nor Spenser a.s.suredly was a Cecco; Marlowe may be most meant as to "Hero," and he perhaps affords the shadow of a parallel in career though not in work.

The extract from Rosetti's letters with which I shall close this chapter is perhaps the most interesting yet made:

One point I must still raise, viz., that I, for one, cannot conceive, even as the Ghost of a Flea, the ideal individual who considers the Poetical Remains of Cecco Angiolieri of more importance than the unity of a great nation! I think this would have been better if much modified. Say for instance--"A thing of some moment even while the contest is waging for the political unity of a great nation." This is the utmost reach surely of human comparative valuation. I think you have brought in Benvenuto and Michael much to the purpose. Shall I give you a parallel in your own style?

During the months for which poet Coleridge became private c.u.mberback (a name in which he said his horse would have concurred), it seems strange that, in such stirring times, his regiment should not have been ordered off on foreign service. In such case that pre-eminent member of the awkward squad would a.s.suredly have been the very first man killed.

Should we have been more the gainers by his patriotism or the losers by his poetry? The very last man killed in the last _sortie_ from Paris during the Prussian siege (he _would_ go behind a b.u.t.tress to "pot" a Prussian after orders were given to retire, and so got "potted" himself) was Henri Regnault, a painter, whose brilliant work was a guiding beacon on the road of improvement in French methods of art, if not in intellectual force. Who shall fail to honour the n.o.ble ardour which drew him from the security of his studies in Tunis to partake his country's danger? Yet who shall forbear to sigh in thinking that, but for this, his progressing work might still yearly be an element in art-progress for Europe? Gerome and others betook themselves to England instead, and are still benefiting the cause for which they were before all things born. It was David who said, "Si on tirait a mitraille sur les artistes, on n'y tuerait pas un seul patriote!" _He_ was a patriot homicide, and spoke probably what was true in the sense in which he meant it. As I said, I am glad you turned Ben and Mike to account, but the above is in some respects an open question.

I have, as I say, a further batch of letters to introduce, but as these were, for the most part, written after an event which forms a land-mark in our acquaintance (I mean the occasion of our first meeting), I judge it is best to reserve them for a later section of this book. There are two forms, and, so far as I know, two only, in which a body of letters can be published with justice to the writer. Of these the first and most obvious form is to offer them chronologically _in extenso_ or with only such eliminations as seem inevitable, and the second is to tabulate them according to subject-matter, and print them in the order not of date but substance. There are advantages attending each method, and corresponding disadvantages also. The temptation to adopt the first of these was, in this case of Rossetti's letters, almost insurmountable, for nothing can be more charming in epistolary style than the easy grace with which the writer pa.s.ses from point to point, evolving one idea out of another, interlinking subject with subject, and building up a fabric of which the meaning is everywhere inwoven. In this respect Rossetti's letters are almost as perfect as anything that ever left his hand; and, in freedom of phrase, in power of throwing off parenthetical reflections always faultlessly enunciated, in play of humour, often in eloquence (never becoming declamatory, and calling on "Styx or Stars"), sometimes in pathos, Rossetti's letters are, in a word, admirable. They are comparable in these respects with the best things yet done in English,--as pleasing and graceful as Cowper's letters, broader in range of subject than the letters of Keats, easier and more colloquial than those of Coleridge, and with less appearance of being intended for the public eye than is the case with the letters of Byron and of Sh.e.l.ley.

Rossetti's letters have, moreover, a value quite apart from the merits of their epistolary style, in so far as they contain almost the only expression extant of his opinions on literary questions. And this is the circ.u.mstance that has chiefly weighed with me to offer them in fragmentary form interspersed with elucidatory comment bearing princ.i.p.ally upon the occasions that called them forth.

Such then as I have described was the nature of my intercourse with Rossetti during the first year and a half of our correspondence, and now the time had come when I was to meet my friend for the first time face to face. The elasticity of sympathy by which a man of genius, surrounded by constant friends, could yet bend to a new-comer who was a stranger and twenty-five years his junior, and think and feel with him; the generous appreciativeness by which he could bring himself to consider the first efforts of one quite unknown; and then the unselfishness that seemed always to prefer the claims of others to his own great claims, could command only the return of unqualified allegiance. Such were the feelings with which I went forth to my first meeting with Rossetti, and if at any later date, the ardour of my regard for him in any measure suffered modification, be sure when the time comes to touch upon it I shall make no more concealment of the causes that led to such a change than I have made of those circ.u.mstances, however personal in primary interest, that generated a friends.h.i.+p so unusual and to me so serious and important.

CHAPTER VII.

It was in the autumn of 1880 that I saw Rossetti for the first time.

Being then rather reduced in health I contemplated a visit to the sea-side and wrote saying that in pa.s.sing through London I should avail myself of his oft-repeated invitation to visit him. I gave him this warning of my intention, remembering his declared dread of being taken unawares, but I came to know at a subsequent period that for one who was within the inner circle of his friends the necessity to advise him of a visit was by no means binding. His reception of my intimation of an intention to call upon him was received with an amount of epistolary ceremony which I recognise now by the light of further acquaintance as eminently characteristic of the man, although curiously contradictory of his unceremonious habits of daily life. The fact is that Rossetti was of an excessively nervous temperament, and rarely if ever underwent an ordeal more trying than a first meeting with any one to whom for some time previously he had looked forward with interest. Hence by return of the post that bore him my missive came two letters, the one obviously written and posted within an hour or two of the other. In the first of these he expressed courteously his pleasure at the prospect of seeing me, and appointed 8.30 p.m. the following evening as his dinner hour at his house in Cheyne Walk. The second letter begged me to come at 5.30 or 6 p.m., so that we might have a long evening. "You will, I repeat," he says, "recognise the hole-and-cornerest of all existences in this big barn of mine; but come early and I shall read you some ballads, and we can talk of many things." An hour later than the arrival of these letters came a third epistle, which ran: "Of course when I speak of your dining with me, I mean tete-a-tete and without ceremony of any kind. I usually dine in my studio and in my painting coat!" I had before me a five hours' journey to London, so that in order to reach Chelsea at 6 P.M., I must needs set out at mid-day, but oblivious of this necessity, Rossetti had actually posted a fourth letter on the morning of the day on which we were to meet begging me not on any account to talk, in the course of our interview, of a certain personal matter upon which we had corresponded. This fourth and final message came to hand the morning after the meeting, when I had the satisfaction to reflect that (owing more perhaps to the plethora of other subjects of interest than to any suspicion of its being tabooed) I had luckily eschewed the proscribed topic.

Cheyne Walk was unknown to me at the time in question, except as the locality in and near which many men and women eminent in literature resided. It seems hard to realise that this was the case as recently as two years ago, now that so short an interval has a.s.sociated it in one's mind with memories which seem to cover a large part of one's life. The Walk is not now exactly as picturesque as it appears in certain familiar old engravings; the new embankment and the gardens that separate it from the main thoroughfare have taken something from its beauty, but it still possesses many attractions, and among them a look of age which contrasts agreeably with the spic-and-span newness of neighbouring places. I found Rossetti's house, No. 16, answering in external appearances to the frank description he gave of it. It stands about mid-way between the Chelsea pier and the new redbrick mansions erected on the Chelsea embankment.

It seems to be the oldest house in the Walk, and the exceptional proportions of its gate-piers, and the weight and ma.s.s of its gate and railings, suggests that probably at some period it stood alone, and commanded as grounds a large part of the s.p.a.ce now occupied by the adjoining residences. Behind the house, during eighteen years of Rossetti's occupancy, there was a garden of almost an acre in extent, covering by much the larger part of the s.p.a.ce enclosed by a block of four streets forming a square. At No. 4 Maclise had lived and died; at the same house George Eliot, after her marriage with Mr. Cross, had come to live; at No. 5, in the second street to the westward, Thomas Carlyle was still living, and a little beyond Cheyne Row stood the modest cottage wherein Turner died. Rossetti's house had to me the appearance of a plain Queen Anne erection, much mutilated by the introduction of unsightly bay-windows; the brickwork seemed to be falling into decay; the paint to be in serious need of renewal; the windows to be dull with the acc.u.mulation of the dust of years; the sills to bear the suspicion of cobwebs; the angles of the steps and the untrodden flags of the courtyard to be here and there overgrown with moss and weeds; and round the walls and up the reveals of doors and windows were creeping the tangled branches of the wildest ivy that ever grew untouched by shears.

Such was the exterior of the home of the poet-painter when I walked up to it on the autumn evening of my first visit, and the interior of the house was at once like and unlike the exterior. The hall had a puzzling look of equal n.o.bility and shabbiness. The floor was paved with beautiful white marble, which however, was partly covered with a strip of worn cocoa-nut matting; the ceiling was in one of its sections gracefully groined, and in each of the walls, which were lofty, there was an arched recess containing a piece of sculpture; an old inlaid rosewood clock filled a bulkhead on one side facing the door, and on the corresponding side stood a ma.s.sive gas branch. A mezzotint lithograph by Legros was the only pictorial decoration of the walls, which were plain, and seemed not to have been distempered for many years. Three doors led out of the hall, one at each side, and one in front, and two corridors opened into it, but there was no sign of staircase, nor had it any light except such as was borrowed from the fanlight that looked into the porch. These facts I noted in the few minutes I stood waiting in the hall, but during the many months in which subsequently that house was my own home as well as Rossetti's, I came to see that the changes which the building must have undergone since the period of its erection, had so filled it with crooks and corners as to bewilder the most ingenious observer to account for its peculiarities.

Very soon Rossetti came to me through the doorway in front, which proved to be the entrance to his studio. Holding forth both hands and crying 'Hulloa,' he gave me that cheery, hearty greeting which I came to recognise as his alone, perhaps, in warmth and unfailing geniality among all the men of our circle. It was Italian in its spontaneity, and yet it was English in its manly reserve, and I remember with much tenderness of feeling that never to the last (not even when sickness saddened him, or after an absence of a few days or even hours) did it fail him when meeting with those friends to whom to the last he was really attached.

Leading the way into the studio, he introduced me to his brother, who was there upon one of the evening visits, which at intervals of a week he was at that time making, with unfailing regularity. I should have described Rossetti, at this time, as a man who looked quite ten years older than his actual age, which was fifty-two, of full middle height and inclining to corpulence, with a round face that ought, one thought, to be ruddy but was pale, large grey eyes with a steady introspecting look, surmounted by broad protrusive brows and a clearly-pencilled ridge over the nose, which was well cut and had large breathing nostrils. The mouth and chin were hidden beneath a heavy moustache and abundant beard, which grew up to the ears, and had been of a mixed black-brown and auburn, and were now streaked with grey. The forehead was large, round, without protuberances, and very gently receding to where thin black curls, that had once been redundant, began to tumble down to the ears.

The entire configuration of the head and face seemed to me singularly n.o.ble, and from the eyes upwards, full of beauty. He wore a pair of spectacles, and, in reading, a second pair over the first: but these took little from the sense of power conveyed by those steady eyes, and that "bar of Michael Angelo." His dress was not conspicuous, being however rather negligent than otherwise, and noticeable, if at all, only for a straight sack-coat b.u.t.toned at the throat, descending at least to the knees, and having large pockets cut into it perpendicularly at the sides. This garment was, I afterwards found, one of the articles of various kinds made to the author's own design. When he spoke, even in exchanging the preliminary courtesies of an opening conversation, I thought his voice the richest I had ever known any one to possess.

It was a full deep barytone, capable of easy modulation, and with undertones of infinite softness and sweetness, yet, as I afterwards found, with almost illimitable compa.s.s, and with every gradation of tone at command, for the recitation or reading of poetry. The studio was a large room probably measuring thirty feet by twenty, and structurally as puzzling as the other parts of the house. A series of columns and arches on one side suggested that the room had almost certainly been at some period the site of an important staircase with a wide well, and on the other side a broad mullioned window reaching to the ceiling, seemed certainly to bear record of the occupant's own contribution to the peculiarities of the edifice. The fireplace was at an end of the room, and over and at each side of it were hung a number of fine drawings in chalk, chiefly studies of heads, with here and there a water-colour figure piece, all from Rossetti's hand. At the opposite end of the room hung some symbolic designs in chalk, _Pandora_ and _Proserpina_ being among the number, and easels of various sizes, some very large, bearing pictures in differing stages of completion, occupied positions on all sides of the floor, leaving room only for a sofa, with a bookcase behind, two old cabinets, two large low easy chairs, and a writing desk and chair at a window at the side, which was heavily darkened by the thick foliage of the trees that grew in the garden beyond.

Dropping down on the sofa with his head laid low and his feet thrown up in a favourite att.i.tude on the back, which must, I imagine, have been at least as easy as it was elegant, he began the conversation by bantering me upon what he called my "robustious" appearance compared with what he had been led to expect from gloomy reports of uncertain health. After a series of playful touches (all done in the easiest conceivable way, and conveying any impression on earth save the right one, that a first meeting with any man, however young and harmless, was little less than a tragic event to Rossetti) he glanced one by one at certain of the topics that had arisen in the course of our correspondence. I perceived that he was a ready, fluent, and graceful talker, with a remarkable incisiveness of speech, and a trick of dignifying ordinary topics in words which, without rising above conversation, were so exactly, though freely enunciated, as would have admitted of their being reported exactly as they fell from his lips. In some of these respects I found his brother William resemble him, though, if I may describe the talk of a dead friend by contrasting it with that of a living one bearing a natural affinity to it, I will say that Gabriel's conversation was perhaps more spontaneous, and had more variety of tone with less range of subject, together with the same precision and perspicuity. Very soon the talk became general, and then Rossetti spoke without appearance of reserve of his two or three intimate friends, telling me, among other things, of Theodore Watts, that he "had a head exactly like that of Napoleon I., whom Watts," he said with a chuckle, "detests more than any character in history; depend upon it," he added, "such a head was not given to him for nothing;" that Frederick s.h.i.+elds was as emotional as Sh.e.l.ley, and Ford Madox Brown, whom I had met, as sententious as Dr. Johnson. I kept no sort of record of what pa.s.sed upon the occasion in question, but I remember that Rossetti seemed to be playfully battering his friends in their absence in the a.s.sured consciousness that he was doing so in the presence of a well-wisher; and it was amusing to observe that, after any particularly lively sally, he would pause to say something in a sobered tone that was meant to convey the idea that he was really very jealous of his friends' reputation, and was merely for the sake of amus.e.m.e.nt giving rein to a sportive fancy. During dinner (and contrary to his declared habit, we did not dine in the studio) he talked a good deal about Oliver Madox Brown, for whom I had conceived a warm admiration, and to whom I had about that time addressed a sonnet.

"You had a sincere admiration of the boy's gifts?" I asked.

"a.s.suredly. I have always said that twenty years after his death his name will be a familiar one. _The Black Swan_ is a powerful story, although I must honestly say that it displays in its central incident a certain torpidity that to me is painful. Undoubtedly Oliver had genius, and must have done great things had he lived. His death was a grievous blow to his father. I'm glad you've written that sonnet; I wanted you to toss up your cap for Nolly." He spoke of Oliver's father as indisputably one of the greatest of living colourists, inquired earnestly into the progress of his frescoes at Manchester, for one of the figures in which I had sat, and showed me a little water-colour drawing made by Oliver himself when very young. Dinner being now over, I asked Rossetti to redeem his promise to read one of his new ballads; and as his brother, who had often heard it before, expressed his readiness to hear it again, he responded readily, and, taking a small ma.n.u.script volume out of a section of the bookcase that had been locked, read us _The White s.h.i.+p_.

I have spoken of the ballad as a poem at an earlier stage, but it remains to me, in this place, to describe the effect produced upon me by the author's reading. It seemed to me that I never heard anything at all matchable with Rossetti's elocution; his rich deep voice lent an added music to the music of the verse: it rose and fell in the pa.s.sages descriptive of the wreck with something of the surge and sibilation of the sea itself; in the tenderer pa.s.sages it was soft as a woman's, and in the pathetic stanzas with which the ballad closes it was profoundly moving. Effective as the reading sounded in that studio, I remember at the moment to have doubted if it would prove quite so effective from a public platform. Perhaps there seemed to be so much insistence on the rhythm, and so prolonged a tension of the rhyme sounds, as would run the risk of a charge of monotony if falling on ears less concerned with points of metrical beauty than with fundamental substance. Personally, however, I found the reading in the very highest degree enjoyable and inspiring.

The evening was gone by the time the ballad was ended; and it was arranged that upon my return to London from the house of a friend at the sea-side I should again dine with Rossetti, and sleep the night at Cheyne Walk. I was invited to come early in order to see certain pictures by day-light, and it was then I saw the painter's most important work,--the _Dantes Dream_, which finally (and before Rossetti was made aware of any steps being taken to that end) I had prevailed with Alderman Samuelson to purchase for the public gallery at Liverpool.

At my request, though only after some importunity, Rossetti read again his _White s.h.i.+p_, and afterwards _Rose Mary_, the latter of which he told me had been written in the country shortly after the appearance of the first volume of poems. He remarked that it had occupied three weeks in the writing, and that the physical prostration ensuing had been more than he would care to go through again. I observed on this head, that though highly finished in every stanza, the ballad had an impetuous rush of emotion, and swift current of diction, suggesting speed in its composition, as contrasted with the laboured deliberation which the sonnets, for example, appeared to denote. I asked if his work usually took much out of him in physical energy.

"Not my painting, certainly," he replied, "though in early years it tormented me more than enough. Now I paint by a set of unwritten but clearly-defined rules, which I could teach to any man as systematically as you could teach arithmetic; indeed, quite recently I sat all day for that very purpose with s.h.i.+elds, who is not so great a colourist as he is a draughtsman: he is a great draughtsman--none better now living, unless it is Leighton or Sir Noel Paton."

"Still," I said, "there's usually a good deal in a picture of yours beside what you can do by rule."

"Fundamental conception, no doubt, but beyond that not much. In painting, after all, there is in the less important details something of the craft of a superior carpenter, and the part of a picture that is not mechanical is often trivial enough. I don't wonder, now," he added, with a suspicion of a twinkle in the eye, "if you imagine that one comes down here in a fine frenzy every morning to daub canvas?"

"I certainly imagine," I replied, "that a superior carpenter would find it hard to paint another _Dante's Dream_, which some people consider the best example yet seen of the English school."

"That is friendly nonsense," rejoined my frank host, "there is now no English school whatever."

"Well," I said, "if you deny the name to others who lay more claim to it, will you not at least allow it to the three or four painters who started with you in life?"

"Not at all, unless it is to Brown, and he's more French than English; Hunt and Jones have no more claim to the name than I have. As for all the prattle about pre-Raphaelitism, I confess to you I am weary of it, and long have been. Why should we go on talking about the visionary vanities of half-a-dozen boys? We've all grown out of them, I hope, by now."

I remarked that the pre-Raphaelite movement was no doubt a serious one at the beginning.

"What you call the movement was serious enough, but the banding together under that t.i.tle was all a joke. We had at that time a phenomenal antipathy to the Academy, and in sheer love of being outlawed signed our pictures with the well-known initials." I have preserved the substance of what Rossetti said on this point, and, as far as possible, the actual words have been given. On many subsequent occasions he expressed himself in the same way: a.s.suredly with as much seeming depreciation of the painter's "craft," although certain examples of modern art called forth his warmest eulogies. In serious moods he would speak of pictures by Millais, Watts, Leighton, Burne Jones, and others, as works of the highest genius.

Reverting to my inquiry as to whether his work took much out of him, he remarked that his poetry usually did. "In that respect," he said, "I am the reverse of Swinburne. For his method of production inspiration is indeed the word. With me the case is different. I lie on the couch, the racked and tortured medium, never permitted an instant's surcease of agony until the thing on hand is finished."

It was obvious that what Rossetti meant by being racked and tortured, was that his subject possessed him; that he was enslaved by his own "shaping imagination." a.s.suredly he was the reverse of a costive poet: impulse was, to use his own phrase, fully developed in his muse.