A distinctive feature of DGR's notebooks is the body of prose and poetic
“Scraps” and “Sentences and
Notes”, as WMR labelled them in his posthumous editions of his
brother's work. Sometimes his prose jottings assume a vesified form,
sometimes they remain in prose. The latter comprise an interesting body of
material, not the least interesting part of which are the critical
observations that DGR makes about his contemporary world and himself.
Comments on writers and artists, particularly DGR's contempories, come into
the notebooks along with brief philosophical reflections of various kinds.
Many of the best of these were printed by WMR in his posthumous collected
editions: for example, his remarks on the work of Thackeray, Dickens, his
sister Christina, Leighton, and so forth. Some were left out, however,
including the
The notebooks also show that DGR's quotidian life and his life as an
artist/writer merged and blended together. Merchant bills and appointment
dates get jotted down along with draft passages for poems, lists of poetical
words, ideas for pictures, quotations that he found interesting. (See the
commentaries of DGR's
Some of the miscellaneous prose descends to us on loose integral
sheets—for instance, the studio painting notes (in the Harry
Ransom Center at Texas) with directions for mixing
These materials are various and widely scattered in the Archive's manuscripts. They can also be located by searching Manuscripts under the term “miscprose”.
WMR printed portions of this material in his posthumous editions under different headings. In the first of these, the