Dante Gabriel Rossetti
VOL. I.
By Himself. 1855.
Dante Gabriel Rossetti.
Figure: Self-portrait. Three-quarter view, head and shoulders, facing
right. Date in lower right corner, Sept 20, 1855.
Dante Gabriel Rossetti
HIS FAMILY-LETTERS
WITH A MEMOIR
BY
WILLIAM MICHAEL ROSSETTI
VOL I.
AMS PRESS
NEW YORK
Note: The call number is written in pencil at the top of the page.
Reprinted from the edition of 1895, London
First AMS EDITION published 1970
Manufactured in the United States of America
International Standard Book Number:
Complete Set: 0—404—05434—X
Volume 1: 0—404—05435—8
Library of Congress Number: 70—130231
AMS PRESS INC.
New York, N.Y. 10003
DEDICATED TO
MY FOUR CHILDREN
WITH A FATHER'S HOPE
THAT RELATIVES OF
DANTE AND CHRISTINA ROSSETTI
AND DESCENDANTS OF
GABRIELE AND FRANCES ROSSETTI
WILL UPHOLD THE CREDIT OF
THEIR PATRONYMIC..
In his
Recollections of Dante Gabriel
Rossetti
(1882) Mr. Hall Caine has informed us: “It was always known to be
Rossetti's wish that, if at any moment after his death it should appear
that the story of his life required to be written, the one friend who,
during many of his later years, knew him most intimately, and to whom he
unlocked the most sacred secrets of his heart, Mr. Theodore Watts,
should write it, unless indeed it were undertaken by his brother
William.”
Dante Rossetti died on 9 April 1882; and after the lapse of a few months I
decided to put his Family-Letters into shape for early publication. Mr. Watts
acquiesced in the wish which I then entertained, and which I should still
entertain, that he, rather than myself, should be the biographer, writing a
Memoir to accompany the Letters. Doubtless he saw reason for not producing his
Memoir so soon as I had been expecting it; therefore, after a rather long
interval of years, I resolved in July 1894 that the Letters must now come out,
and, as they could not be unlinked with a Memoir, that I myself would write it.
The result is before the reader. If he would have preferred a Memoir from Mr.
Watts, I sympathize with him, but the option had ceased to be mine. There are
several reasons why a brother neither is nor can be the best biographer. Feeling
this, I had always intended
not to write a Life of Dante Rossetti. But circumstances have
proved too strong for me, and I submit to their dictate.
Had the book been published towards 1883, the Letters would have extended
very little beyond those addressed to my Mother and to myself. There were then
also a couple to my Father, and a very few to my Sister Christina. I am now
enabled to add some to my Grandfather Gaetano Polidori, my Uncle Henry Francis
Polydore, my Aunt Charlotte, Lydia Polidori, and my Wife Lucy Madox Rossetti;
also some others to Christina which, as they contain expressions of approval
with regard to her writings, she had herself with-held. No letters to other
members of the family appear to be in existence, though several must have been
written.
The technical arrangement of the printed correspondence can easily be
understood. The letters are all thrown into a single sequence, according to the
order of date: they are lettered from A to H, for the persons respectively
addressed, and each sub-division is progressively numbered within its own
limits. In every case where a letter seems to require any explanatory note or
observation, I have supplied this in a few preliminary words. The dates, when
not written by my brother himself, were in most cases jotted down at the time by
the recipient: in a few instances, where this was omitted, the dates now given
are approximate. Addresses are also frequently inserted in like manner. I have
preserved (and must ask the reader to pardon my mentioning so minute a point)
one instance of each form of subscribed name; and have also reproduced the name
in other cases where it seems more apposite to do so. In contrary instances I
omit both the name and the words of subscription which precede it. Some other
Family-Letters exist, addressed to the same
persons; but these are such as even a brother cannot
suppose to be of any public interest. From those here collected some passages
are omitted which, on one ground or another, are considered to be unsuited for
printing; but on the whole I have been sparing of excisions. Of the items
admitted, several are indeed short and scrappy; I have not however included
anything which appears to me to be entirely uninteresting to persons interested
in Dante Rossetti. Some letters, otherwise slight, fix the date of a picture or
poem; others show some trait of character, or contain some pointed or diverting
expression.
The letters, such as they are, shall be left to speak mainly for
themselves. Their language is constantly unadorned, often colloquial; the tone
of mind in them, concentrated; the feeling, while solid and sincere, uneffusive.
Their subject-matter is very generally personal to the writer, without
discursiveness of outlook, or eloquent or picturesque description; yet the
spirit is not egotistical or self-assertive. If I am wrong in these opinions,
the reader will decide the point for himself.
My brother was a rapid letter-writer, and on occasion a very prompt one,
but not negligent or haphazard. He always wrote to the point, without
amplification, or any effort after the major or minor graces of diction or
rhetoric. Multitudes of his letters must still presumably be extant in private
hands: a representative collection of them might be found to confirm the
impression which I should like to ensue from the present series—that
as a correspondent he was straight-forward, pleasant, and noticeably free from
any calculated self-display. “Disinvolto” would be the Italian word.
Some persons may approve, others will disapprove, of the publication of
these Family-Letters. I print them because the doing so commends itself to my
own mind. At a very
childish age I was familiar with the old apologue of
the Man and his Son and the Donkey: it impressed me as equally true and
practical. I have always been conscious that opinions will be as numerous as
readers, and prefer to suit the opinions of those who happen to agree with
myself.
Recently I have had a painful reason for realizing to myself a very
pleasurable fact—that of the high estimation in which my brother,
himself no less than his work, is now publicly held, some thirteen years after
he passed away. The death of my beloved sister Christina, on 29 December 1894,
called forth a flood of not undeserved but assuredly very fervent praise; and in
the eulogies of her were intermixed many warm tributes to my
brother—I might say, without a dissentient voice.
As regards my Memoir, I, having large knowledge and numerous materials,
have not consulted a single person except Christina, who, during the earlier
weeks of my undertaking, gave me orally the benefit of many reminiscences
relating chiefly to years of childhood, and often kept me right upon details as
to which I should have stumbled. On her bed of pain and rapidly approaching
death she preserved a singularly clear recollection of olden facts, and was
cheered in going over them with me.
Some readers of the Memoir may be inclined to ask me—
“Have you told everything, of a substantial kind, that you know about
your deceased brother?”—My answer shall be given
beforehand, and without disguise: “No; I have told what I choose to
tell, and have left untold what I do not choose to tell; if you want more, be
pleased to consult some other informant.”
One word in conclusion. In case the present book should find favour with
the public, I should be disposed to rummage
among my ample stock of materials, and produce a
number of details relating not only to my brother, but also to other members or
connexions of the family. But at the age of sixty-five a man finds the horizon
of his work narrowed, and rapidly narrowing; and possibly this will not be.
St. Edmund's Terrace, London.
April 1895.
-
I.
BIRTH.
Dante Rossetti's birth in London, 1828—His
Godfathers. . . 3
-
II.
PARENTAGE.
Gabriele (Father of Dante) Rossetti—His birth in
Vasto—His Parents and Brothers—His drawings,
studies, and writings, in Italy— His political lyrics and
exile—Malta and John Hookham Frere— Life in
London—His death—His character, opinions, person,
etc.— His writings in England on Dante,
etc.—Carducci's opinion of his poetry—The
centenary of his birth, Vasto—Descriptions of him by Bell
Scott and Frederic Stephens—Mrs. Gabriele Rossetti, her life,
character, and person—Some versicles of hers. . . 3
-
III.
RELATIVES.
Dante Rossetti's Great-grandfathers—His maternal
Grandfather, Gaetano Polidori, Secretary to Alfieri, and Italian teacher
in London— Anecdotes of the French Revolution and of
Alfieri—Polidori's person, character, and
writings—Mrs. Polidori—Her Father, William
Pierce—Connexions of the Pierce family, Mrs. Bray,
etc.—Mrs. Polidori's closing
years—Her sister and children— Dr. John William
Polidori and his writings—Teodorico
Pietrocola-Rossetti—Extinction of the Rossetti family in
Vasto— Instances of longevity. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . 24
-
IV.
CHILDHOOD.
The four children of Gabriele Rossetti—Houses in
Charlotte Street— Dante Rossetti and his Sister
Maria—Walks about London, etc.— Pet
animals—Sights and entertainments in
London—Singing, card-playing, illness, etc.—First
attempt at drawing, and resolve to be a painter—Theatrical
and other prints. . . . . . . . . . 36
-
V.
ACQUAINTANCES IN CHILDHOOD.
The Potters and other British friends—Numerous
Italian friends of Gabriele Rossetti—Pistrucci, Sangiovanni,
etc.—Protestantizing Italians—Mazzini and
Panizzi—Talks on politics—John Stuart Mill on
Continental and English Life . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44
-
VI.
CHILDISH BOOK-READING AND SCRIBBLING.
Dante Rossetti's early training—The Bible, Shakespear, Göthe, Walter Scott,
etc.—Childish drawings from
Henry VI.—Rossetti's opinion of Scott's novels,
1871—Books of prints and the National Gallery
—Dante's poems read later on—Childish drama,
The Slave
, etc.— Childish drawings—Dante Rossetti
fortunate in his family surroundings. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . 57
-
VII.
SCHOOL.
Dante Rossetti's first school, Mr. Paul's,
1836—School-life not favourable to his
character—To King's College School, 1837—The
Cayley brothers—What Dante Rossetti learned—His
various Masters, including John Sell Cotman the painter—Mr.
Caine's account of Rossetti's school-life discussed—Parallel
with Edgar Poe's
school-life—School-fellows—School-exercise on
China, and Christina Rossetti's verses thereon . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . 68
-
VIII.
HOME-LIFE DURING SCHOOL—SIR HUGH THE
HERON.
Polidori's country-house at Holmer Green, and his house in
London— Accident with a chisel—Boyish
drawings from the Iliad—Dante Rossetti reads Byron, Dickens,
Brigand Tales, French novels, etc. —He writes a prose tale,
Roderick and Rosalba
, and a ballad-poem,
Sir Hugh the Heron
, which is privately printed, also
William and Marie
— His note on
Hugh Heron
—Boyish drawings—Studies German under Dr.
Heimann—Intimacy with the Heimann family . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79
-
IX.
STUDY FOR THE PAINTING PROFESSION—CARY'S AND
THE R.A.
Dante Rossetti leaves school, 1842, and goes to Cary's Drawing
Academy—His American friend, Thomas Doughty, and his family
—Charley Ware, and his portrait-group—Bailey's
Festus, and verses
The Atheist—Studies and habits at Cary's—Sonnets from
the Italian, and Bouts-rimés sonnets—The
Westminster Hall cartoon-competitions—Proceeds to the R.A.
antique school, 1846 —Disinclination to any obligatory study
or work—Millais, Holman Hunt, Stephens—The
Ghiberti Gates—Hunt on Rossetti's appearance and
demeanour—A fellow-student's reminiscence—
Rossetti's immethodical habits—Theatre-going . . . . . . . .
. . . . 88
-
X.
STUDENT-LIFE—SKETCHING, READING, AND
WRITING.
Rossetti's early sketches influenced by
Gavarni—Lithographed playing-cards, etc.—Designs
to Christina Rossetti's
Verses, 1847—His first uncompleted oil-picture,
Retro me Sathana
—Reads Shelley, Charles Wells, Maturin, Thackeray, etc.,
and with great predilection Browning—No solid
reading—His prose tale,
Sorrentino
, 1843—Translations from the German,
The Nibelungenlied
,
Henry the Leper
, etc.—Translations from the
Vita Nuova, and
Early Italian Poets—Tennyson's opinion of these—The printed
opinions of Swinburne and Placci—Writes
The Blessed Damozel
, 1847—Admiration of Edgar Poe—Other poems,
My Sister's Sleep
,
Ave
,
Dante at Verona
,
Jenny
, etc.—The unpublished Ballad,
Jan van Hunks
, now begun, and finished on his deathbed —
Political burlesque poem,
unprinted—Purchase of the MS. book by
Blake—Rossetti's work, towards 1862, on Gilchrist's
Life of Blake
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .97
-
XI.
FRIENDS TOWARDS 1847.
Major Calder Campbell, Alexander Munro, William Bell
Scott—Meets Ebenezer Jones—Rossetti's first letter
to Scott, 1847—Observations on his poems—Rossetti
sends
The Blessed Damozel
, and other
Songs of the Art Catholic
, to Scott—His turn of mind in religious
matters—Scott's first visit—Rossetti writes to
Browning about
Pauline, and knows him afterwards . . . . . . . . . . . 110
-
XII.
MADOX BROWN, HOLMAN HUNT, MILLAIS.
Letter to Madox Brown, 1848, asking to be allowed to study
painting under him—Rossetti's relation to the course of study
at the R.A.— Details about Brown, and his first call on
Rossetti—Rossetti set to still-life painting,
etc.—He calls on Hunt, and consults him as to further
painting-work—His design of
Gretchen in the Church
— The Cyclographic Society—Opinions of
Millais and Hunt on the
Gretchen
—Rossetti's indifference to perspective, in which
Stephens gives him some lessons—Forwards some poems to Leigh
Hunt, who (letter quoted) praises them, but dissuades him from trusting
to literature as a profession—
Head of
Gaetano Polidori
, June 1848 —Rossetti adopts
Holman Hunt's advice as to painting, and shares a studio with him in
Cleveland Street—Stephens's description of it—Hunt
takes Rossetti round to Millais in Gower Street. 115
-
XIII.
THE PRÆRAPHAELITE BROTHERHOOD.
Lasinio's engravings from the pictures in the Campo Santo of
Pisa lead on directly to the Præraphaelite movement,
1848—Remarks on Millais, Hunt, and Rossetti, in this
connexion—The British school of painting in 1848, and the
term Præraphaelite—The three inventors of the
movement equally concerned in bringing it to bear—Rossetti's
letter to Chesneau on this point—Their close attention to
detail subsidiary to other objects in the movement— Madox
Brown's relation to the Brotherhood—Four other members of
it—Details as to Woolner, Collinson, Stephens, and
myself—Great intimacy among the P.R.B.'s.—Hunt on
Rossetti's literary attainments—The aims of the Brotherhood
discussed— Not a religious movement, nor directly promoted by
Ruskin— Rossetti, in later life, disliked the term
Præraphaelite—Diary of the P.R.B. kept by me as
Secretary—Defaced by Dante Rossetti
—Details from this Diary as to
election of Deverell, etc.—The P.R.B., as an organization,
dropped in January 1851—Christina's sonnet
The P.R.B.—“The Queen of the
Præraphaelites”—Rules adopted
1851—The pictures of Millais, Hunt, and Rossetti, exhibited
in 1849—Rossetti's
Girlhood of Mary Virgin
—Three sonnets of his bearing on the
movement—His
portrait of Gabriele Rossetti, 1848 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 125
-
XIV.
FIRST EXHIBITED PICTURE, 1849.
Rossetti sends
The Girlhood of Mary Virgin
to the Free Exhibition— The works of the
Præraphaelites favourably received by critics and others in
1849, but very adversely afterwards—The
Athenæum
notice of Rossetti's first picture quoted—Sale of the
picture, and its general success—Treatment in this book of
his pictures etc. in later years, and reference to another book,
Dante Gabriel Rossetti as Designer and
Writer
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 144
-
XV.
THE GERM.
Rossetti bent upon starting a magazine, July
1849—Proposed titles and publisher—He writes the
prose story
Hand and Soul
— Meeting at his studio, and choice of the title
The Germ
—Contents of No. 1, and its sale—Nos. 3 and 4
appear under the title
Art and Poetry
—Notices of the magazine—Debt upon its
issue— Anecdotes relating to
Hand and Soul
—Rossetti makes
an etching
(destroyed)
for this story, and begins another story
An Autopsychology
(or
St. Agnes of Intercession
)—His various contributions to the
magazine— Verses by John L. Tupper on its expiry . . 149
-
XVI.
PAINTINGS AND WRITINGS, 1849-53.
Trip with Holman Hunt to Paris and Belgium—Paintings
and Designs—Rossetti's attainments in draughtsmanship,
etc.—Details as to
Ecce Ancilla Domini
—Press-criticism of this picture, and other
Præraphaelite works of 1850—Extract from the
Athenæum
—The Queen and Millais's
Carpenter's Shop
—Details as to
Giotto painting Dante's Portrait
,
Head of Holman Hunt,
Mary Magdalene at the Door of Simon the
Pharisee
, and
Found
—
Discussion as to the statement that
Found
is an illustration of Bell Scott's poem
Rosabell—Rossetti's
sonnet to Woolner in Australia—Collinson's picture of
St. Elizabeth of Hungary — Sketching-club
proposed in 1854—Poems,
Dante at Verona
,
Burden of Nineveh
,
Sister Helen
, etc.—Rossetti desultory in youth, and sometimes at
odds with his Father—He drops writing poetry,
1852—Project of his becoming a telegraphist on the
railway—Notion of renting No. 16 Cheyne Walk—His
studios in Newman Street and Red Lion Square—Brown paints
Rossetti's head as Chaucer—Rossetti settles in Chambers in
Chatham Place, 1852 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 157
-
XVII.
MISS SIDDAL.
Rossetti falls in love with Miss Elizabeth Eleanor Siddal,
1850— Walter H. Deverell first sees her as assistant in a
bonnet-shop— Her appearance—Deverell gets her to
sit for the head of Viola in
his picture
from
Twelfth Night—She also sits to Hunt and Millais—Her
family—She sits to Rossetti for
Rossovestita
, and a
subject from the
Vita Nuova, and many other paintings—An engagement between Miss
Siddal and Rossetti dating towards 1851—Her tone in
conversation, etc.—Her paintings and verses
—Swinburne's estimate of her quoted, also her poem
A Year and a Day—Her extreme ill-health—She is introduced to
the Howitt family—Rossetti as a lover—Death of
Deverell, 1854 171
-
XVIII.
JOHN RUSKIN.
Ruskin not connected with the Præraphaelite movement
when first started—In 1851 Patmore suggests to him to write
something on the subject, and he sends a letter to the
Times—In 1853 MacCracken calls his attention to Rossetti, and
Ruskin praises two of his water-colours—Ruskin calls on
Rossetti, April 1854—Their intimacy begins, partly
interrupted by the death of Gabriele Rossetti, and the absence of Dante
Rossetti at Hastings, and of Ruskin abroad—Affectionate and
free-spoken relations between Ruskin and Rossetti—Madox
Brown's dislike of Ruskin, who becomes the chief purchaser for a while
of Rossetti's works— Rossetti ceases to
exhibit—Ruskin's opinion of Rossetti after his
decease—Extracts from Ruskin's letters, 1854-7—His
high regard
Note: In section xx,
“Morte” should read
“Mort”
for Miss Siddal—He settles on her
£150 a year, taking her paintings in
proportion—Cessation of this arrangement, 1857—
She goes abroad with Mrs. Kincaid, 1855, returning
1856—Decline of her health—My own acquaintance
with Ruskin—Rossetti admires him as a
lecturer—Letters from Rossetti to MacCracken, Extract . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 178
-
XIX.
WORK IN 1854-5-6.
Water-colours from Dante, etc.—
Paolo and Francesca
,
Passover in Holy Family
,
Head of Browning
,
Dante's Dream
, Designs from Tennyson, etc.—
The Seed of David
, Triptych in Llandaff Cathedral—General characteristics
of Rossetti's style at this period— Troubles with the
Tennyson designs, and Tennyson's own views of them—Sketches
of
Tennyson reading Maud—The Seddons and the Triptych—
The Blue Closet
, water-colour, and William Morris—
The Wedding of St. George
—James Smetham, and his remarks hereon . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 187
-
XX.
OXFORD MEN AND WORK—BURNE-JONES, MORRIS,
SWINBURNE
.
Friends of Rossetti between 1847 and
1855—Burne-Jones calls upon him, June 1856, and is advised by
Rossetti to adopt painting as a profession—Afterwards
Rossetti knows Morris and Swinburne —The architect of the
Oxford Museum, Woodward, invites Rossetti in 1855 to undertake some
decorative work there—He does not do this, but in 1857 begins
painting in the Union Debating- Hall from the
Morte d' Arthur—Morris co-operates—Details as to the
Union-work—In 1856 Rossetti
publishes
The Burden of Nineveh
and some other poems in the
Oxford and Cambridge Magazine
—Ruskin on
The Burden of Nineveh
—Other painters in the Union Hall—Ultimate
spoiling of the work—Swinburne's introduction to
Rossetti—Rossetti and his friends see in Oxford Miss Burden,
who becomes Mrs. Morris, and from whom Rossetti paints many
heads—The Præraphaelite Exhibition in Russell
Place, 1857—Miss Siddal's ill-health takes Rossetti to Bath,
etc. —Proposal, not carried out, for a
“College,” in which he and other artists would
settle—Miss Siddal's dissent—Hunt's statement as
to an “offence” by Rossetti . . . .
. . 193
-
XXI.
WORK IN 1858-59.
Water-colour of
Mary in the House of John
, oil-picture
Bocca Baciata
, etc.—Bell Scott's reference to the sitter for
Bocca Baciata
—Miss Herbert—Poems,
Love's Nocturn
, and
The Song of the Bower
— The Hogarth Club, 1858, and paintings there exhibited
. . 202
-
XXII.
MARRIAGE.
Reasons for postponing marriage—Mr. Plint and other
purchasers of Rossetti's pictures—Extreme ill-health of Miss
Siddal at Hastings, April 1860—Marriage, 23
May—Wedding-trip to Paris—Enlargement of
Rossetti's view of pictorial art—His designs in Paris,
How They Met Themselves
, etc.—He returns with his wife to the Chambers,
afterwards enlarged, in Chatham Place . . . 204
-
XXIII.
MARRIED LIFE.
Bell Scott on Rossetti's unsuitableness for married
life—Remarks hereon—Mrs. Rossetti intimate with
the Brown, Morris, and Burne-Jones families—Ruskin on
drawings made by Rossetti from her—Rossetti's intimacy with
Swinburne—also with Meredith, Sandys, Gilchrist,
etc.—Death of Gilchrist, 1861—Mrs. Madox Brown's
offer to help during his illness—Mrs. Rossetti's infirm
health, and birth of a stillborn infant—Death of Mrs. H. T.
Wells —Rossetti speaks of “
getting awfully
fat and torpid” . . . 208
-
XXIV.
WORK IN 1860-61—
THE EARLY
ITALIAN POETS—THE
MORRIS FIRM.
Death of Plint, and embarrassment ensuing to Rossetti,
1860—The Plint sale—Water-colours of
Lucrezia Borgia
and of Swinburne, design of
Cassandra
, oil-picture of
Fair Rosamund
, etc.—Preparations for publishing
The Early Italian Poets
—Opinions of Ruskin and Patmore—Published by
Smith and Elder, with some subsidizing from Ruskin—Favourable
reception of the book, and result of its sale—Proposed
etchings to it not produced—Rossetti
shows some original poems to Ruskin, with a
view, unsuccessful, to publication in
The Cornhill Magazine—He announces a volume,
Dante at Verona and other Poems
, not actually published— Foundation in 1860 of the
firm, Morris, Marshall, Falkner, & Co. —Seven
members, including Rossetti—Details as to Webb, Marshall, and
Falkner—Money ventured on the firm—Good-fellowship
of Rossetti and his partners—Methods of business, more
especially of Morris as leading partner and manager—
Warrington Taylor—Rossetti's designs for stained glass, etc.
213
-
XXV.
DEATH OF MRS. DANTE ROSSETTI.
Her illness, phthisis and neuralgia—The last
painting for which she sat—10 February 1862, she dines at an
hotel with her husband and Swinburne—My contemporary note as
to her death next morning from taking over-much laudanum—Dr.
John Marshall— Newspaper-paragraph, showing inquest, and
verdict of accidental death—Rossetti's sorrow and
agitation—Ruskin calls, and exhibits a change in religious
opinion—The funeral—Rossetti consigns to the
coffin his book of MS. poems—Caine's account of this incident
—Rossetti's letter to Mrs. Gilchrist on his wife's death . .
. 220
-
XXVI.
SETTLING IN CHEYNE WALK.
Rossetti resolves to leave Chatham Place, and proposes to
combine with his family and Swinburne in getting a new
house—He fixes on No. 16 Cheyne Walk—Relinquishes
the proposal as to the family—His water-colour,
Girl at a Lattice
, and
crayon-head of his
Mother
—Takes chambers provisionally, 59 Lincoln's Inn
Fields—New arrangement for Cheyne Walk, Dante Rossetti as
tenant, with Swinburne, Meredith, and myself, as sub-tenants—
Condition of Cheyne Walk in 1862—Caine's account of the house
in 1880—Further details as to the drawing-room
etc.—Taking possession of the house, October
1862—Rossetti not constantly melancholy after his wife's
death—Meredith and Swinburne as sub-tenants for the first two
or three years—Meredith's opinion of
Rossetti—Extracts from letters from Ruskin and Burne-Jones,
1862—Rossetti makes acquaintance with Whistler and
Legros— His art-assistant Knewstub—Advance in
Rossetti's professional income . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . 227
-
XXVII.
WORK FROM 1862
TO 1868.
Oil-pictures,
Joan of Arc
,
Beata Beatrix
,
The Beloved
,
Lilith
,
Venus Verticordia
,
Sibylla Palmifera
,
Monna Vanna
,
Mrs. Morris
, etc. —Water-colours,
Paolo and Francesca
,
Return of Tibullus to Delia
,
Tristram and Yseult
, etc.—Designs,
Michael Scott's Wooing
,
Aurea Catena
, etc.—Details as to most of these works, also
Helen of Troy
,
Aurelia
,
The Boat of Love
,
The Blue Bower
,
Il Ramoscello
,
La Pia
,
Heart of the Night
,
Washing Hands
,
Socrates taught to Dance by Aspasia
,
Aspecta Medusa
—Erroneous impression that Rossetti painted only from
Mrs. Morris—Other sitters named, Christina Rossetti, Lizzie
Rossetti, Mrs. Hannay, Mrs. Beyer, Mrs. H—, Miss Wilding,
Miss Mackenzie, Keomi, Ellen Smith, Miss Graham, Mrs. Stillman, Mrs.
Sumner, etc.—Remarks on Mrs. Morris as his
type—His letter to the
Athenæum
as to his being a painter in oils—Shields on Rossetti's
use of compressed chalk—Purchasers of his works, Leathart,
Rae, Graham, Leyland, Valpy, Mitchell, Craven, Lord Mount-Temple,
Colonel Gillum, Trist, Gambart, Fairfax Murray—Insufficiency
of Rossetti's studio, and its ultimate alteration—Dunn
succeeds Knewstub as his art-assistant—Large income made by
Rossetti in 1865 and other years—His friendly relations with
purchasers—His work 1862-3, in connexion with Gilchrist's
Life of Blake
. . . 238
-
XXVIII.
INCIDENTS, 1862
TO 1868.
Rossetti's animals at Cheyne Walk—His notions about
ghosts—The wombat, woodchuck, and zebu—Attempts to
communicate with his deceased wife by table-turning—The
Burlington and other Clubs—The
Bab Ballads—Rossetti houses Sandys for a while, and George
Chapman—Other friends—Charles Augustus Howell, who
becomes Ruskin's secretary—Bell Scott and Woolner—
Intimacy with Ruskin comes to an end—Extracts from Ruskin's
letters in 1865—Rossetti collects works of decorative art,
especially blue china and Japanese prints—Buys a picture by
Botticelli 251
-
XXIX.
BEGINNINGS OF ILL-HEALTH—PENKILL CASTLE.
Rossetti generally healthy in youth—1866, a
complaint requiring surgical treatment—1867, insomnia, and
failure of eyesight—
Doctors consulted—Trip to
Warwickshire in 1868, and stay at Penkill Castle, Ayrshire, with Miss
Boyd, Miss Losh, and Bell Scott—The Leeds Exhibition of
Art—Loan made by Miss Losh —Return to Cheyne Walk,
and details as to eyesight—Resumes art-work in December . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 264
-
XXX.
PREPARATIONS FOR PUBLISHING POEMS.
Rossetti re-visits Penkill, 1869—Urged, in 1868, by
Scott to “live for his poetry”—Sonnets
previously published in 1868, others in 1869—Estimate for
printing—Poems written at Penkill, 1869 —Alleged
impulse towards suicide—Fancy about a
chaffinch—“A curiously ferocious
look”—Poems printed, not for immediate
publication—The unburying of the MS. deposited in his wife's
coffin—Arrangement with Ellis as
publisher—Rossetti's combination of self-reliance and
self-mistrust—He is anxious to secure a favourable critical
reception of the
Poems
at starting —Extracts on this point from my Diary and
from Scott's book —Rossetti's habits as to
drinking—Death of Michael Halliday —Acquaintance
with Nettleship, Hake, and Hueffer—Hake's estimate of
Rossetti's character . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 270
-
XXXI.
ART-WORK FROM 1869
TO SUMMER 1872.
Oil-pictures of
Pandora
,
Mariana
,
Dante's Dream
,
Veronica Veronese
, etc.—Water-colour of
Michael Scott
—Designs of
Penelope
, Dr. Hake, etc.—Details as to some of these works,
especially
Dante's Dream
—W. A. Turner becomes a purchaser . . . 282
-
XXXII.
THE POEMS, 1870—
CHLORAL—KELMSCOTT MANOR-HOUSE.
The
Poems forthcoming—Sojourn at Scalands—Rossetti's
American friend Stillman, who recommends chloral as a
soporific—Rossetti's excess in chloral-dosing, washed down by
whiskey, and the bad effects resulting—Publication of the
Poems
, April 1870—Rapid sale—Swinburne's review,
extracts—Other reviews,
The Catholic World, etc.—Letters from acquaintances—Adverse
criticism in
Blackwood's Magazine, coolly received by Rossetti—Republica-
tion of the Italian translations as
Dante and his Circle
, 1873—Rossetti in 1871 at Kelmscott Manor-house, which
he shares with the Morris family—Philip Bourke Marston and
Edmund Gosse on Rossetti—Turguenieff—Poems written
at Kelmscott . . . 285
-
XXXIII.
THE FLESHLY SCHOOL OF POETRY.
Robert Buchanan, as Thomas Maitland, publishes in the
Contemporary Review
an attack thus
entitled
on Rossetti's
Poems
, October 1871 —His previous attack on Swinburne, 1866,
and my
Criticism— Review of my edition of Shelley, 1870—
The Fleshly School enlarged and
re-issued as a pamphlet—Extracts from
it—Rossetti not much troubled by the
review-article—A dinner at Bell Scott's —Rossetti
replies, publishing, in the
Athenæum
,
The Stealthy School of Criticism
, and writing a pamphlet, which is withheld— Aggravated
imputations in the pamphlet form of
The Fleshly School—Buchanan's retractation, 1881-2,
extracts—Summary of the facts—Quilter's article
The Art of Rossetti, 1883, extract 293
-
XXXIV
HYPOCHONDRIA AND ILLNESS.
Dividing line in Rossetti's life, spring 1872—He is
perturbed by
The Fleshly School of Poetry in its book-form, and has fancies of a conspiracy against
him—Other adverse critiques—Evidences of mental
unsettlement on 2 June—Browning regarded with suspicion
—Rossetti not insane, but affected by hypochondria, resulting
largely from chloral—Physical delusions—Mr.
Marshall and Dr. Maudsley—Extract from the
Memoirs of Eighty Years, written by Dr. Hake, who takes Rossetti off to his house at
Roehampton —Scott's remarks—Attempt at suicide by
laudanum on the night of 8 June—Mistake as to serous
apoplexy—I fetch my Mother and Sister Maria, Christina being
ill—Brown calls-in Marshall, who, along with Hake, saves
Rossetti's life—Mental disturbance continues, and Rossetti
moves into Brown's house, followed by three houses in
Perthshire—Hemiplegia—Rossetti's companions in
Perthshire—Extracts from Scott and Hake—Resumption
of painting, and gradual recovery—Surgical
treatment—Money-affairs —Sale of the collection of
china, and removal of pictures to Scott's house . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 303
-
XXXV.
STAY AND WORK AT KELMSCOTT, 1872-4—
THEODORE
WATTS.
Rossetti, with George Hake, returns from Scotland, and
re-settles at Kelmscott Manor-house—His health and spirits at
first good, afterwards re-injured by chloral—Personal
details—Knows Theodore Watts as a lawyer, and soon as an
intimate literary and personal friend—Fixes upon Howell as
his professional agent— Advantages accruing from this
connexion—J. R. Parsons, Howell's partner—Rossetti
paints
Proserpine
, also
La Ghirlandata
,
The Bower Maiden
,
The Blessed Damozel
,
Dante's Dream
(smaller replica),
The Roman Widow
—Re-publishes
Dante and his Circle
—Nonsense-verses—Recurrence of gloomy
fancies—Scott's cheque for £200—Quarrel
with anglers—Rossetti leaves Kelmscott in July 1874, and
never returns thither . . . . . . . . . . . . 321
-
XXXVI.
LONDON AND ELSEWHERE, 1874-8.
Discussion of Bell Scott's statements about Rossetti's
seclusion, his desertion by old friends, George Hake, Browning, his new
friends, his want of candour—Rossetti's condition of health
and mental tone—Theodore Watts—Rossetti goes to
Aldwick Lodge, Bognor —Libel-case, Buchanan,
v. Taylor—Goes to Broadlands—The
Mount-Temples and Mrs.
Sumner—“Deafening” of Rossetti's
studio—Mesmerism—Surgical operation, as narrated
by Watts— Stay at Hunter's Forestall—Disappearance
of letters—Details as to chloral—Brown ceases to
see Rossetti for some months— Renewal of lease in Cheyne
Walk—Death of Oliver Brown, and Rossetti's impression as to
his posthumous writings—Death of Maria F. Rossetti . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 331
-
XXXVII.
INCIDENTS AND TRANSACTIONS, 1874-81—
HALL CAINE.
Dissolution of the Partnership, Morris, Marshall, Falkner,
& Co., 1874 —Rossetti obtains possession of the
portrait of him painted by G. F. Watts, R.A.—He drops his
connexion with Howell, 1876, and the reasons for
this—Drawings falsely attributed to Rossetti
—Fluctuations in his income—Funds for the families
of James Hannay and J. L. Tupper, and exertions to benefit James Smetham
—Declines to exhibit in the Grosvenor Gallery,
1877—An exception, for the benefit of an art-institution, to
his system of not
exhibiting—Unfounded report as
to a visit from the Princess Louise—Rossetti's correspondence
with Hall Caine begins, 1879 —Extract from Caine's
Recollections
as to his first visit to Rossetti, 1880—Reference to
various details given by Caine as to Rossetti's opinions,
etc.—His view debated as to Rossetti's natural irresolution
and melancholy—Friends who arranged to visit Rossetti from
day to day—Continued activity in painting, along with poetry,
and the re-edition of Gilchrist's
Life of Blake . . . . 346
-
XXXVIII.
PAINTINGS AND POEMS, 1874-81.
Pictures of
The Blessed Damozel
,
Dante's Dream
(replica),
La Pia
,
La Bella Mano
,
Venus Astarte
,
The Sea-spell
,
Mnemosyne
,
Beata Beatrix
(finished by Madox Brown),
A Vision of Fiammetta
,
La Donna della Finestra
,
The Daydream
—Designs of
The Sphinx
,
The Spirit of the Rainbow
,
Perlascura
,
Desdemona's Death-song
,
Sancta Lilias
,
The Sonnet
—Water-colour,
Bruna Brunelleschi
— Details as to
The Sea-spell
,
Vision of Fiammetta
,
Daydream
—Scott's narrative as to
The Sphinx
—Details as to
Desdemona's Death-song
and
Bruna Brunelleschi
—
Haydon's Etching of
Hamlet and Ophelia
—Caine's account as to how Rossetti resumed poetical
composition towards 1878—
Sonnet on Cyprus—Other Sonnets— The historical ballads,
The White Ship
and
The King's Tragedy
— The
Beryl-songs in
Rose Mary
. . . . . . . . . . . 362
-
XXXIX.
DANTE'S DREAM—BALLADS AND SONNETS.
In July 1881 Hall Caine becomes an inmate of Rossetti's
house—His somewhat trying position there—Dunn
leaves the house—
Dante's Dream
returned to Rossetti, at his own wish, by Valpy, who is to receive
other works in exchange—Caine suggests to the authorities of
the Walker Gallery, Liverpool, the purchase of this
picture—Alderman Samuelson favours the
proposal—Mr. R. and his proceedings in the same
matter—Purchase carried out for £1,650, September
1881—Recognition by Rossetti of the friendliness of Caine and
Samuelson—Transactions with Valpy and Graham—March
1881, Rossetti contemplates bringing out a new volume,
Ballads and Sonnets
, and re-issuing, in a modified form, the
Poems
of 1870—Publishing-arrangements, and rapid sale of
Ballads and Sonnets
in October—Proposed ballads on
Joan of Arc,
Abraham Lincoln, and
Alexander III. of
Scotland
—Critics favourable to the new
volume—Rossetti derives little pleasure from these successes
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 369
-
XL.
CUMBERLAND AND LONDON—FINAL ILLNESS.
Rossetti's state of health: blood-spitting, etc.—He
goes with Caine to the Vale of St. John, Keswick, September
1881—Returns worse than he
went—“Absolution for my sins”: Scott's
narrative, and observations on Rossetti's opinions upon
religion—Paintings:
Salutation of Beatrice
, duplicates of
Proserpine
and of
Joan of Arc
,
Donna della Finestra
—Visit from Dr. and Philip Marston—
Quasi-paralytic attack and discontinuance of chloral—Account
by Caine, and extracts from my Diary—Scott and Morris on the
same subject—The Medical Resident Henry Maudsley, and the
Nurse Mrs. Abrey—Rossetti, with Caine and Miss Caine, goes to
Birchington-on-Sea—Scott's remarks on Rossetti's later
years— Miss Caine's reminiscences . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . 375
-
XLI.
BIRCHINGTON-ON-SEA.
Birchington and Westcliff Bungalow—Rossetti's
condition there—He is joined by his Mother and
Sister—Other friends—Paintings of
Proserpine
and of
Joan of Arc
, and sketches of his Father [
sketch 1] for Vasto—Ballad of
Jan van Hunks
, and
Sonnets on
The Sphinx
— Novel-reading—Correspondence with Joseph
Knight and Ernest Chesneau—Extracts from Mrs. Rossetti's
Diary . . . . 390
-
XLII.
DEATH AND FUNERAL.
My visit to Birchington, 1 April 1882—Extracts from
my Diary, showing Dante's very grave condition of
health—Extracts from Mrs. Rossetti's Diary, 4 to 9
April—Rossetti's death, 9 April—My memorandum of
it—His will—Arrival of Lucy Rossetti and Charlotte
Polidori—The funeral, further extracts from Mrs. Rossetti's
Diary, and letter from Judge Lushington—The tombstone,
stained-glass window, and monument in Cheyne Walk
395
-
XLIII.
PERSONAL DETAILS—EXTRACTS.
Rossetti's character—Canon Dixon's
statement—Remarks by Knight, Patmore, and
Watts—His appearance—His feeling as to the
beauties of Nature—His views on
politics—Various remarks of his on fine art, literature, and
other matters, along with observations by Hunt, Caine, Sharp, Oliver
Brown, and myself . . 404
-
XLIV.
ROSSETTI AS PAINTER AND POET—EXTRACTS.
Decision not to offer my own criticism on this
matter—Extracts: upon Fine Art, Leighton, Royal Scottish
Academy, Hunt, Stephens, Quilter, Ruskin, Smetham, Shields, Hake, Rod,
Mourey, Sartorio —Upon Literature, Swinburne, Watts, Caine,
Forman, Knight, Hueffer, Sharp, Mrs. Wood, Patmore, Myers, William
Morris, Pater, Madame Darmesteter, Skelton, Sarrazin,
Gamberale— other Translators and Critics named . . . . . .
423
- I.
Dante Gabriel Rossetti, 1855. By Himself .
Frontispiece
- II.
Gabriele Rossetti, 1853. By D. G. Rossetti .
To face p.
20
- III.
Gaetano Polidori, 1848. By D. G. Rossetti . ,, 123
- IV.
Elizabeth Eleanor Siddal (Rossetti), 1854. By Herself . . . . . . . . . ,, 175
- V.
Christina G. Rossetti, 1848. By D. G. Rossetti ,, 342
- Page xxi, line 12 from bottom,
for Morte read Mort
- ,, 14, line 11,
for dark-speaking
read
dark speaking
- ,, 54 ,, 8,
for Rufini
read Ruffini
- ,, 59 ,, 6,
for Fitz-Eustace
read De
Wilton
- ,, 119, lines 14, 15,
for I have not the least
recollection of what it was
read the
Study in
the manner of the Early Masters
- ,, 135, line 5,
for Fuhrich
read
Steinle
- ,, 166 ,, 11,
for never
read hardly
- ,, 199 ,, 17 etc.,
for I do not know—
etc. to end of paragraph, read These expressions occur in
a letter to Mr. Skelton
- ,, 235 ,, 19,
for the earlier days of 1864
read August 1863
- ,, 254 ,, 21,
for perhaps in 1863
read
in 1864
- ,, 274 ,, 17 etc.,
for I cannot say—
down to prominent among them
read Two of
these friends were Mr. Scott and Mr. Howell; perhaps also Mr. Henry Virtue
Tebbs—
down to Doctors' Commons
- ,, 290 ,, 6 from bottom,
for forgot
read forget
- ,, 304 ,, 16,
for while
read wile
- ,, 336 ,, 22,
for public
read
published
- ,, 359 ,, 4 from bottom,
for latter
read former
- ,, 401 ,, 21,
for if not
read and
indeed
- ,, 409 ,, last,
for XXX
read IX
- ,, 418 ,, 17,
for lkely
read likely
- ,, 436 ,, 2,
for reputations
read
reputation,
- ,, ,, ,, 9,
for object
read
objects
MEMOIR
OF
DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI
BY
WILLIAM MICHAEL ROSSETTI.
- Be sure that Love ordained for souls more meek
- His roadside dells of rest.
Gabriel Charles Dante Rossetti, commonly known as Dante
Gabriel Rossetti, was born on 12 May 1828, at No. 38 Charlotte Street,
Portland Place, London. This house is the last or most northerly
house, but one,
1 on the right-hand or eastern side of the street, as you turn into
it to the left, down Weymouth Street, out of Portland Place. Charlotte
Street, beyond No. 39, forms a
cul-de-sac. The infant was baptized at the neighbouring All Souls' Church,
Langham Place, as a member of the Church of England. From his father he
received the name Gabriel; from his godfather the name Charles; and from
poetical and literary associations the name Dante. His godfather was Mr.
Charles Lyell, of Kinnordy, Kirriemuir, Forfarshire; a keen votary of Dante
and Italian literature, a helpful friend to our father, and himself father
of the celebrated geologist, Sir Charles Lyell. Some living members of the
Lyell family continue to be well known to the present generation.
Transcribed Footnote (page 3):
1 No. 39 is now to the right hand of No. 38. It
appears to me that this was not the case when we lived in No. 38, but
that that was then the last house of all. The closed-up end of the
street has been wholly altered since my boyish days.
Our parents were Gabriele Pasquale Giuseppe Rossetti
(always called Gabriele Rossetti), and Frances Mary Lavinia
Rossetti,
née Polidori; and, before proceeding further with my narrative, I
shall give some particulars about them, and about other members of the
family.
Gabriele Rossetti was born on 28 February 1783, in the city of Vasto,
named also (by a corruption from Longobard nomenclature) Vasto Ammone, in
the Province of Abruzzo Citeriore, on the Adriatic coast of the then Kingdom
of Naples. Vasto is a very ancient place, a municipal town of the Romans,
then designated Histonium. We are not bound—though some
enthusiasts feel themselves permitted— to believe that it was
founded by the Homeric hero Diomed: its patron saint is the Archangel
Michael. Gabriele was the youngest son of Nicola Rossetti, and his wife
Maria Francesca,
née Pietrocola. Nicola Rossetti was a Blacksmith,
of very moderate means;
1 a man of somewhat severe and irascible nature, whose death ensued
not long after the French-republican invasion of the Kingdom of Naples in
1799. The French put some affront upon him—I believe they gave
him a smart beating for failing or neglecting to furnish required
provisions; and, being unable to stomach this, or to resent it as he would
have liked, his health declined, and soon he was no more. His wife belonged
to a local family of fair credit: but, like other Italian women of that
period, she received no scholastic training; she could not write nor even
read. The name Rossetti might be translated into
“Ruddykins” or “Redkins” as an
English
Transcribed Footnote (page 4):
1 A Vastese connexion of mine, Signor Giuseppe
Marchesani, favoured me, early in 1895, with a number of mortuary
and other inscriptions which he had composed to various members of
the family. I will give here the one relating to Nicola Rossetti,
who probably remains otherwise unrecorded, unless by some
“forlorn hic jacet.” Of course anything
written in a lapidary style reads less well in my English than in
Marchesani's Italian. “Nicola Rossetti, Blacksmith
poor and honourable, lovingly sent in boyhood to their first
studies his sons, carefully nurtured in childhood. If Fortune
neglected him, provident Nature ultimately distinguished, in the
obscure Artizan, the well-graced Father, who, to the strokes of
his hammer on the battered anvil, sent forth the sonorous and
glorious echo, beyond remote Abruzzo, into Italy and other
lands.”
equivalent. My father used to say that the Rossetti
race was an offshoot of the Della Guardia family, well known and still
subsisting in Vasto; and that at some date or other certain children of the
Della Guardia stock were noted for florid complexion and reddish hair, and
thus got called “the Rossetti,” in accordance with the
Italian hobby for nicknames, and that this name gradually stuck to them as a
patronymic.
Nicola and Maria Francesca Rossetti had a rather large family, four
sons and three daughters, and three of the sons earned distinction. There
was Domenico, who was versed (as a local historian records)
“in medical science, in civil and canonical law, and
in theology,” writing in Italian, Latin, French, and
to some extent Hebrew, and was “the first among mortals
who daringly descended into the Grotto of Montecalvo near
Nice.” On this theme he wrote a poem in three cantos,
besides other poems (two volumes, printed in Parma) and prose: he was
besides an Improvisatore. Born in 1772, he
died comparatively young in 1816. There was also Andrea, the eldest brother,
who became a Canon of San Giuseppe in Vasto; and thirdly, Gabriele, whom I
may be excused for regarding as a more important writer than even the
polyglot Domenico. I might include, as showing that verse-writing ran in the
family, the fourth son, Antonio, who exercised the humble calling of a
wig-maker and barber: he likewise versified in an off-hand popular manner,
and was of some note to his fellow-townsmen.
Gabriele Rossetti came into the world well endowed for the arts. As it
turned out, he took to poetry and other forms of literature; but he might
equally have excelled in drawing or in vocal music. I have before me as I
write three MSS. containing specimens of his early skill as a draughtsman,
done when he was twenty years old or thereabouts. The drawings are
illustrations to poems (juvenile enough) of his own composition, and are
surprisingly precise and dainty in execution. One would have little
hesitation in calling them copper-engravings; but they are, in fact,
pen-designs done with sepia, which he himself extracted
from the cuttlefish or “calamarello,” so dear to Neapolitan
gourmands. An ornamental headpiece, two decorative title- pages, and two
landscapes founded on traditions of Claude or Gaspar Poussin, are his own
inventions. One drawing is a group of two women after Mignard; and two or
three others may also be copies. From my earliest childhood I have looked
with astonishment on these performances as pieces of manipulation; and,
after a lifetime spent among artists, I hardly know what to put beside them
in their own limited line of attempt. Then, as to music, Gabriele had a
beautiful tenor-voice, sweet and sonorous in a high degree. It received no
regular cultivation, but was such that he was more than once urged to train
himself for the operatic stage —a mode of life, however, for
which he had no sort of inclination.
The local magnate was the Marchese del Vasto, of the great historic
house of D'Avalos, into which the famous Vittoria Colonna married. He was
feudal Lord of the Vastese, and they acknowledged themselves his
“vassals,” though this state of things, in the epoch
of a Robespierre and a Napoleon, was not destined to continue long. The
attention of the Marchese was soon called to the uncommon promise of his
growing-up vassal Gabriele Rossetti, and, after some well-conducted
schooling in Vasto, the youth was sent in 1804, under the patronage of this
nobleman, to study in the University of Naples. His education here was cut
short after a year and a month, and consequently had not a very wide range.
In middle life he read Latin with ease, and retained some remnant of
geometry and mathematics, but of Greek he had no knowledge. In French he was
well versed, speaking the language with great fluency and an amusing
assumption of the tone of a Frenchman. English he acquired by practice in
Malta and in this country, and could both read and talk it tolerably enough,
though he never did so when he had the option of Italian.
Rossetti was just twenty-three years of age when the Bourbon king,
Ferdinand I., was turned out of his continental
dominion, and had to retire into Sicily, and Joseph
Bonaparte reigned in his stead. With Ferdinand vanished the Marchese del
Vasto, who was his Court-Majordomo. Thus all the years of Rossetti's early
manhood were passed in association with a Napoleonic and not a Bourbon order
of ideas. As a sequel to his first volume of poems, published in 1807, he
obtained an appointment as librettist in the operatic theatre of San Carlo,
writing three or more opera-books, one of them named
Giulio Sabino. He was kept in hot water, however, by the exigencies of managers
and vocalists, and got transferred to the Curatorship of Ancient Marbles and
Bronzes in the Museum of Naples. He figured in the Academy of the Arcadi as
“Filidauro
Labidiense.” There used to be a catch,—
- “Rossini,
Rossetti,
- Divini,
imperfetti”;
but whether my father was ever linked with Rossini in any operatic
production I am unable to say. Rossetti was well received at the Court of
King Joachim (Murat), the successor of Joseph. I have heard him say that he
knew something of almost all the Bonapartes, except only the great Napoleon.
I possess a slight portrait of him done by the Princess Charlotte Bonaparte;
and another of the family, Lady Dudley Stuart, acted as godmother to his
daughter Christina. In my own time Prince Pierre Bonaparte (too notorious as
the homicide of Victor Noir) was frequently in our house; occasionally also
Prince Louis Napoleon, the unduly glorified and duly execrated Napoleon
III., of whom my father would emphatically declare that he could never trace
in him one grain (
neppure un' ombra) of Liberalism. King Joachim fell in 1815, and King Ferdinand was
restored to his capital city, Naples; a state of things not likely to be
much to the taste of Gabriele Rossetti—who in 1813 had acted as
Secretary to that part of the provisional government, sent by Joachim to
Rome, which looked after public instruction and the fine arts. He did not,
however, under the
restored Bourbon, lose his post in the Museum. An
agitation ensued for a constitution similar to that which the Spaniards
established in 1819—the secret society of the Carbonari, in which
Rossetti was a member of the General Assembly, being especially active in
this direction. In 1820 there was a military uprising, and Ferdinand had to
grant the constitution —probably with a fixed intention of
revoking it at the first opportunity. Rossetti's ode to the Dawn of the
Constitution-day, “Sei pur bella cogli astri sul
crine” (“Lovely art thou with stars in
hair”), was in every Neapolitan mouth. In 1821 the king,
then sojourning in Austria, abolished the constitution, and suppressed it
with the aid of Austrian troops. Carbonarism was made a capital offence, and
the leading constitutionalists were denounced and proscribed, among them
Rossetti. He is said to have been viewed by the king with especial
abhorrence, partly because various writings, not really his, were attributed
to him, and partly because one of his lyrics contained the lines—
- “I Sandi ed i
Luvelli
- Non son finiti
ancor,”
(Sands and Louvels are not yet extinct.) The reference, it will be
perceived, is to the political assassination of Kotzebue by Sand, and of the
Duc de Berri by Louvel, with a suggestion that a like fate might easily
befall King Ferdinand. Rossetti did not say that it
ought
to befall him; but the king was not inclined to take a good-natured view of
the matter, or to construe the phrase rather as a loyal warning than as an
incitement to a deed of blood. The peccant poet lay concealed in Naples for
three months, beginning in March 1821; finally the British admiral, Sir
Graham Moore, pressed by his generous wife who knew and liked Rossetti,
furnished him with a British uniform, got him off in a carriage to the
harbour, and shipped him to Malta. I have before me a printed proclamation
of King Ferdinand— the original document, dated 28 September
1822—granting an amnesty to persons concerned in the
revolutionary or
constitutional movement, with the exception of
thirteen men expressly named. My father is the thirteenth. In Malta he
remained about two years and a half, holding classes (as indeed he had
previously done in Naples) for instruction in the Latin and Italian
languages and literature, and most liberally befriended by the English poet
and diplomatist, John Hookham Frere, the translator of Aristophanes: their
amicable relations continued after distance had separated them. Deep indeed
were the affection and respect which Rossetti entertained for Frere. One of
my vivid reminiscences is of the day when the death of
Frere was announced to him,
1 in 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!”
2
Rossetti had long been a noted Improvisatore, as well as a poet in the accustomed way (he
continued to improvise to some extent for a while, even after coming to
London), and this, with his other gifts, made him popular in Maltese
society. After a while, however, he was harassed by the spies or other
emissaries of the Bourbon Government, which embittered his position so much
that he resolved to have done with Malta, and settle in England. Here he
arrived in January or February 1824, and fixed himself in London. He soon
made acquaintance with the Polidori family, and a mutual attachment united
him in marriage with the second daughter, Frances Mary Lavinia, in April
1826. He subsisted by teaching Italian, and held perhaps the foremost place
in that vocation. In 1831 he was appointed Professor of Italian in King's
College, London. This professorship was not a sinecure; but the students
were few, and became fewer from about 1840 onwards, when the German language
began decidedly to supersede the Italian in public favour. My
Transcribed Footnote (page 9):
1 The person who announced it was Mr. Edward
Graham, the associate of Shelley in early youth. He had taken to the
musical profession, and was a man of uncommonly handsome presence:
his bodily were superior to his mental endowments.
Transcribed Footnote (page 9):
2 “Noble soul, blessed be thou
wherever thou art.”
father made at the best a very moderate income;
yet this sufficed for all the requirements of himself, and his wife and four
children, and no man could be more heartily contented with what he
got—more strenuous and cheerful in working for it, or more
willing “to cut his coat” (he never
turned it) “according to his cloth.” The
British religion of “keeping up appearances” was
unknown—thank Heaven—in my paternal home; my father
disregarded it from temperament and foreign way of thinking and living, and
my mother contemned it with modest or noble superiority. The tolerably
thriving condition of our household declined with my father's decline in
health, which began towards 1842: interruption of professional work, waning
employment, inability to take up such employment as offered, necessarily
ensued. In 1843 (having hitherto had uncommonly keen eyesight) he suddenly
lost one eye through amaurosis, and the other eye was greatly weakened and
in constant peril, though he was never bereft of sight totally. A real
tussle for the means of subsistence now arose, but by one method or other
all was tided over. Our scale of living, if somewhat more threadbare and
dingy, did not materially dwindle from its unassuming yet comfortable
average; and no butcher nor baker nor candlestick-maker ever had a claim
upon us for a sixpence unpaid. In his closing years my father had more than
one stroke of paralysis. Some of these were of a formidable kind; yet he got
over them to a substantial extent, lived on in a suffering state of body,
and with mental faculties weakened, though not impaired in any definite and
absolute way, and continued diligent in reading and writing almost to the
last day of his life. His sufferings, often severe, were borne with patience
and courage (he had an ample stock of both qualities), though not with that
unemotional calm which would have been foreign to his Italian nature. For
nearly a year before his death he lived, with his wife and daughter
Christina, at Frome Selwood in Somerset; but finally he returned to London,
and died at No. 166 Albany Street, Regent's Park, on 26 April 1854,
firm-minded and placid, and glad to be
released, in the presence of all his family. His
young cousin, Teodorico Pietrocola-Rossetti, was also there. He lies buried
in Highgate Cemetery.
Gabriele Rossetti was man of energetic and lively temperament, of warm
affections, sensitive to slight or rebuff, and well capable of repelling it,
devoted to his family and home, full of good-nature and good-humour, a
fervent patriot, honourable and aboveboard in all his dealings, and as
pleasant and inspiriting company as one could wish to meet. Though sensitive
as above stated, he was not in the least quarrelsome, and never began a
conflict about either literary or personal matters: this disposition he
transmitted to his son Dante Gabriel. For some years after settling in
London he went a good deal into society, and was welcomed in several houses.
This had diminished at the date of my earliest reminiscences, and soon it
had wholly ceased. He could tell an amusing story most
capitally—I have hardly known his equal at that —with
good dramatic “take-off”; and, though his ordinary
speech was, to the best of my judgment, very pure Italian, he could readily
throw himself back, when he liked, into the Neapolitan dialect, or the
Abruzzese, which is not a little provincial.
1 He always spoke Italian in the family, never English; and his
children from the earliest years, as well as his wife, answered in Italian.
Apart from domestic simplicity or sportiveness, his conversation was always
high-minded, implying a solid standard of public and private virtue: nothing
about it mean or sly or worldly, or tampering with principle. There was
indeed a certain tinge of self-opinion or self-applause in his temperament;
he rather liked “to ride the high
horse” (as I have heard my brother phrase
Transcribed Footnote (page 11):
1 I possess two good books showing the dialect
of Vasto, sent to me by the courtesy of their authors: the
Vocabolario dell' Uso
Abruzzese
, by Gennaro Finamore, and the
Fujj' Ammesche, by
Luigi Anelli. The latter volume is a series of sonnets, which appear
to me highly excellent of their popular kind. When I say that the
Vastese words “Fujj'
Ammesche” represent the Italian words
“Foglie
Miste,” my English reader will be able to judge
whether Vastese is a pure or impure form of Italian.
it); but this was quite free from envy or
disparagement of others, and did no one any harm. Of what one calls
“personal vanity” he had a plentiful lack, and was
indeed very careless (like many other Italians) in all matters of the outer
man. As a father he was most kind, and would often allow his four children
to litter and rollick about the room while he plodded through some laborious
matter of literary composition. He always retained, however, a perceptible
tone of the
patria potestas. Rossetti was a
splendid declaimer or reciter, with perfect elocution. He put his heart into
whatsoever he did. His MSS. are models of fine and minute penmanship, and
show enormous pains in the way of revision and recasting.
He was an ardent lover of liberty, in thought and in the constitution
of society. In religion he was mainly a free-thinker, strongly anti-papal
and anti-sacerdotal, but not inclined, in a Protestant country, to abjure
the faith of his fathers. He never attended any place of worship. Spite of
his free-thinking, he had the deepest respect for the moral and spiritual
aspects of the Christian religion, and in his later years might almost be
termed an unsectarian and undogmatic Christian. As a freethinker, he was
naturally exempt from popular superstitions—did not believe in
ghosts, second sight, etc.; and the same statement holds good of our mother.
In this respect Dante Gabriel, as soon as his mind got a little formed,
differed from his parents; being quite willing to entertain, in any given
case, the question whether a ghost or demon had made his appearance or not,
and having indeed a decided bias towards suspecting that he had. One point,
however, of popular superstition, or I should rather say of superstitious
habit, my father had not discarded. A fancy existed in the Abruzzi (I dare
say it still exists) that, if one steps over a child seated or lying on the
ground, the child's growth would be arrested; and I have more than once seen
my father divert his path to avoid stepping over any one of us. In politics
he belonged more to the party of constitutional monarchy than to that of
republicanism, but welcomed
anything that told for freedom. He always
advocated the
unity of Italy, long before that aspiration
was considered a very practical one; indeed, I have seen him described, on
good authority, as the
first apostle of unity, but am not
clear that his is strictly accurate.
In estimating Rossetti's work as a national or patriotic poet, and his
general attitude of mind in matters of politics, or of government in State
and Church, we should remember the conditions (already referred to) under
which his life had been passed. He was born under the feudal and despotic
system of the Neapolitan Bourbons; his youth witnessed the more open-minded
but still despotic Napoleonic rule; the Bourbon restoration brought-on a
constitution sworn to by the sovereign, who soon after perjured himself in
suppressing it; lifelong exile ensured to Rossetti and other
constitutionalists. Then he lived through many abortive insurrections
against the temporal and ecclesiastical dominators of Italy; through the
brilliant promise and the retrogression of Pope Pius IX. (whom at first he
acclaimed with unmeasured fervour); through the high deeds, glorious
prospects, and dolorous collapse, of the revolutionary years 1848-49, and
through the fuliginous beginnings of the Neapolitan King Bomba; followed by
a genuinely liberal government in Piedmont under Victor Emmanuel and Cavour,
by the
coup d'état of Napoleon
III., and by general stagnancy of political thought and act throughout
Europe. He died five years before 1859, which produced the alliance between
France and Piedmont, the expulsion of the Austrians from Lombardy, and the
commencement of the unification of Italy. When he died in 1854 the outlook
seemed extremely dark; yet heart and hope did not abate in him. The latest
letter of his which I have seen published was written in September or
October 1853, and contains this passage, equally strong-spirited and prophetic—
“The
Arpa Evangelica . . . ought to find free circulation through all Italy. I do not
say the like of three other unpublished volumes, which all seethe with
love of country and hatred for tyrants. These
Note: In the first paragraph, “dark-speaking” should read
“dark speaking”.
await a better time—which will come, be very
sure of it. The present fatal period will pass, and serves to whet the
universal desire. . . . Let us look to the future. Our tribulations,
dear madam, will not finish very soon, but finish they will at last.
Reason has awakened in all Europe, although her enemies are strong. We
shall pass various years in this state of degradation; then we shall
rouse up. I assuredly shall not see it, for day by day, nay hour by
hour, I expect the much-longed-for death; but
you will
see it.”
In person Gabriele Rossetti was rather below the middle height, and
full in flesh till his health failed; with a fine brow, a marked prominent
nose and large nostrils, dark-speaking eyes, pleasant mouth, engaging smile,
and genuine laugh. He indulged in gesticulation, not to any great extent,
but of course more than an Englishman. His hands were rather
small—not a little spoiled by a life-long habit of munching his
nails. As to other personal habits, I may mention free snuff-taking without
any smoking; and a hearty appetite while health lasted, with more of
vegetable diet than Englishmen use. In his later years teeth and palate had
failed, and all viands “tasted like hay.” Fermented
liquors he only touched seldom and sparingly. He had liked the English beer,
but had to leave it off altogether in 1836, to avoid recurrent attacks of
gout. In fact, he liked most things English—the national and
individual liberty, the constitution, the people and their moral tone,
though the British leaven of social Toryism was far from being to his taste.
He certainly preferred the English nation, on the whole, to the French, and
had a kind of prepossession against Frenchwomen, which he pushed to a
humorous over-plus in speech—saying for instance that, if a
Frenchwoman and himself were to be the sole tenants of an otherwise
uninhabited island, the human race on that island would decidedly not be
prolonged into a second generation. My father also took very kindly to the
English coal-fires, and was an adept in keeping them up; he would jocularly
speak of “buying his climate at the
coal-merchant's.” In all my earlier years I used
frequently to see my father come home in the dusk rather fagged with his
round of teaching, and after dining he would lie
down flat on the hearthrug close by the fire, and fall asleep for an hour or
two, snoring vigorously. Beside him would stand up our old familiar tabby
cat, poised on her haunches, and holding on by the fore-claws inserted into
the fender-wires, warming her furry front. Her attitude (I have never seen
any feline imitation of it) was peculiar, somewhat in the shape of a capital
Y—“the cat making the Y”
was my father's phrase for this performance. She was the mother of a
numerous progeny; one of her daughters—also long an inmate of our
house—was a black-and-white cat named Zoe by my elder sister
Maria, who had a fancy for anything Greekish; but Zoe never made a Y.
Rossetti had produced a tolerable amount of verse in Italy, also the
descriptive account (which passes under the name of Cavalier Finati) of the
Naples Museum; but all his more solid and voluminous writing was done after
he had settled in London. The principal works are as follows:
1826—
Dante, Commedia (the
Inferno alone was
published), with a Commentary aiming to show that the poem is chiefly
political and anti-papal in its inner meaning. A great deal of controversy
was excited at the time by this work, and by others which succeeded it.
1832—
Lo Spirito Antipapale che
produsse la Riforma
(
The Anti-Papal Spirit which produced the
Reformation
), following up and extending the same line of thought. An
English translation was also published. 1833—
Iddio e l'Uomo,
Salterio
(
God and Man, a Psaltery), poems. The two
last-named books have the honour of being in the Pontifical
Index Librorum
Prohibitorum
, edition 1838, and perhaps others are there now.
1840—
Il Mistero dell' Amor
Platonico del Medio Evo
(
The Mysterious Platonic Love of the Middle Ages),
five volumes; a book of daring and elaborately ingenious speculation,
enforcing the analogy of many illustrious writers, as forming a secret
society of anti-Catholic thought, with the doctrines of Gnosticism and
Freemasonry (Rossetti was himself a Freemason). This book was printed and
prepared for publication, but was withheld
Note: Type damage obscures page number.
(partly at the instance of Mr. Frere) as likely to be
accounted rash and subversive. 1842—
La Beatrice di Dante, contending that Dante's Beatrice was a symbolic personage, not a
real woman. 1846—
Il Veggente in
Solitudine
(
The Seer in Solitude), a poem of patriotic aim,
in a discursive and rhapsodical form, embodying a good deal of autobiography
and of earlier material. It circulated largely though clandestinely in
Italy, and a medal of Rossetti was struck there in commemoration.
1847—
Versi (miscellaneous poems). 1852—
L'Arpa Evangelica (
The Evangelic Harp), religious poems.
As regards my father's writings on Dante and other
authors—the outcome of an immense amount of miscellaneous, often
curious and abstruse, reading—I may be allowed to say that I
regard his views and arguments as cogent, without being convincing. They
affect one more in beginning one of his books than in ending it. He
certainly made some mistakes, and urged some details to a wiredrawn or
futile extreme, and in especial he was not sufficiently master of the happy
instinct when to leave off, so that his longest and most important book, the
Mistero dell' Amor
Platonico
, becomes cumbrous with subsidiary matter. In his poems also he was
over-fond of amplifying and loading, being too unwilling to leave a
composition as it stood; though he wrote with great mastery and ease, and a
brilliant command of metre, rhythm, and melody. Many snatches of his verse
are forcible and moving in a high degree, and rouse a contagious enthusiasm.
He has left in MS. a versified account of his life, written between 1846 and
1851. It is not long, nor yet very short, and is about the completest as
well as the most authentic account that exists of his career. I should like
to translate it some day, and publish it in England.
To give some idea of Rossetti's poetry, I cannot do better than
extract here one of the remarks upon it made by the pre-eminent Italian poet
of our own day, Giosuè Carducci, in a selection from Rossetti
which he edited in 1861. Carducci, after contrasting him with some of his
contemporary writers, terms him—
Note: Type damage obscures page signature and final word of page, as
well as page number.
“The singer who, notwithstanding his
defects, conforms the most to the poetic taste and the harmonic faculty
of the Italian people. No plethora of murky inventions, and of recondite
and strange forms, and of versified disquisitions, and of nebulous
swathings; but a daring and serene fancy, impetus of emotion,
plenteousness and sometimes superabundance of colouring, facility,
harmony, melody, make these poems truly Italian, make them singable.
Singable, I say; and I know that this praise may, in the opinion of
some, amount to blame, now that for the most part singable poetry is of
the worst.”
Not in Vasto alone, but in all Italy, Rossetti's reputation as a
patriotic poet stood high—more perhaps among the men of action
and the ardent youth than among the critical assessors of literary merit. A
proposal was made to transfer his remains to a sepulchre in Italy, as an act
of national recognition. My mother having demurred, an inscription was set
up to him in the Florentine cloister of Santa Croce, which counts as the
Italian Walhalla or Westminster Abbey. In Vasto the centenary of his birth
was celebrated in 1883 with much evidence of enthusiasm. The principal
Piazza (del Pesce, as first entitled) and
the Communal Theatre are named after him; and it has long been
proposed—though perhaps rather half-heartedly—to erect
his statue, and to purchase for the town the house in a part of which he was
born—an ancient and somewhat stately-looking though plain
edifice, battered by time and neglect. I am tempted to extract here a few of
the many eulogiums pronounced upon Rossetti at the centenary—not
unconscious, however, of the caution with which any utterances on such an
occasion are to be received.
From the speech of Professor Francesco di Rosso:—
“He then conceived that love of his
oppressed country, and that indignation against the oppressors, which
were to be (as I may say) the religion of his entire life, and were to
dictate to him the most beautiful strains, and make him the
Tyrtæus of the battles of the Italian liberty, unity, and
independence, the poet sacred to Italy and Europe labouring under
tyranny, under political and religious re-action.”
From the speech of the sub-prefect Cavalier Domenico Fabretti:—
“Many were the public-spirited poets of
Italy: but none conjectured the cycle of her evolution, shadowed forth
its agents, designed its forms, with the forecasting precision, the
exact intuition, of your Rossetti. He was not only the sweet poet of the
Arcadian stylus, was not only the studious and elegant verse-writer, was
not only the fervent patriot, but was the seer of the Italian
re-arising.”
From a pamphlet by signor Adelfo Mayo,
1 addressed to the workmen of Vasto:—
“You, citizens and workmen, will deserve
well of your country if you will imitate the domestic and civil virtues
of that great man, if you strive with all your efforts to preserve
intact the sacred deposit of the Italian liberties under the sceptre of
the Kings of Savoy, and if you also co-operate, as best you may, in
raising a worthy monument to one who, conferring honour upon our city,
has honoured likewise the Abruzzi and the entire
peninsula.”
In England very little has got into print showing Gabriele Rossetti
“in his habit as he lived.” There are, however, two
recent books which give an idea of him in his later years, and in each
instance the idea is a true one as far as it goes. Mr. William Bell Scott's
Autobiographical Notes (1892) contain the following passage, relating to the close of 1847
or beginning of 1848:—
“I entered the small front parlour or
dining-room of the house [50 Charlotte Street],
and found an old gentleman sitting by the fire in a great chair, the
table drawn close to his chair, with a thick manuscript book open before
him, and the largest snuff-box I ever saw beside it conveniently open.
He had a black cap on his head furnished with a great peak or shade for
the eyes, so that I saw his face only partially. . . . The old gentleman
signed to a chair for
Transcribed Footnote (page 18):
1 With this fine-minded and cultivated gentleman,
well meriting his high position in the Vastese community, I have had the
pleasure of keeping up some correspondence ever since the date of the
centenary meeting.
my sitting down, and explained that his son
was now painting in the studio he and a young friend had taken together:
this young friend's name was Holman Hunt.
1 . . . The old gentleman's pronunciation of English was very
Italian; and, though I did not know that, both of them—he and
his daughter [Christina]—were probably
at that moment writing poetry of some sort, and might wish me far
enough, I left very soon.”
The second portrait of my father, and a very good one it is, is traced
by Mr. Frederic George Stephens in his monograph named
Dante Gabriel Rossetti
(1894): it shows a memory highly retentive of characterizing details:—
“As might be expected of one possessing so
many accomplishments, and whose career had been marked by so much
courage, the Professor was a man of striking character and aspect; so
that, when I was introduced to him in 1848 [some few months
perhaps after Mr. Scott's first visit to our house], and his
grand climacteric was past, and (as with most Italians) a life of
studies told upon him heavily, I could not but be struck with the noble
energy of his face, and by the high culture his expression attested,
while a sort of eager, almost passionate resolution seemed to glow in
all he said and did. To a youngster, such as I was then, he seemed much
older than his years; and, while seated reading at a table with two
candles behind him, and (because his sight was failing) with a wide
shade over his eyes, he looked a very Rembrandt come to life. The light
was reflected from a manuscript placed close to his face, and, in the
shadow which covered them, made distinct all the fineness and vigour of
his sharply moulded features. It was half lost upon his somewhat
shrunken figure wrapped in a student's dressing-gown, and shone fully
upon the lean, bony, and delicate
Transcribed Footnote (page 19):
1 According to Mr. Scott, this was his first call at
No. 50 Charlotte Street, and the interview took place
“about Christmas 1847-48.” I
consider that the correct date of his first call was in December 1847 or
January 1848. But Mr. Scott's memory must have been entirely wrong as to
his then hearing about the studio shared by Holman Hunt and Dante
Rossetti, for there was no such sharing of any studio until late in
August 1848, and the words put into our father's mouth, if spoken at
all, must have been spoken later than “about Christmas
1847-48.”
Ex uno disce
multos
.
hands in which he held the paper. He looked
like an old and somewhat imperative prophet, and his voice had a
slightly rigorous ring, speaking to his sons and their
visitors.”
I am not sure that the word
“rigorous” would here convey quite the
right impression. My father's address in such cases was clear and emphatic,
and as if no dissent were expected to ensue; but it was not marked by
anything hard or brusque.
Good-natured and indulgent though he in fact was, and animated with
the most resolute desire to do his very best for the present and future of
his children, our love nevertheless was chiefly concentrated upon our
mother—and never did mother deserve it better. This preference
may have been rather less marked in my elder sister Maria than with the rest
of us. Frances Mary Lavinia Polidori was born in London, 42 Broad Street,
Golden Square (the same street in which William Blake had been born
forty-three years before), on 27 April 1800. Thus she was seventeen years
younger than her husband. Of her parents I shall say something in my next
Section. She was brought up with a view to her becoming a governess; and at
the early age of sixteen she took charge of her first pupil, the adopted
daughter of Mr. Thomas Dickins, of Vale Lodge, Leatherhead, Surrey. I have
heard my mother say that in this house she used to see from time to time
John Shelley, the brother of the poet. He was a very handsome youth, aged
then some thirteen or fourteen, and all mention of the name of that
world-abandoned rebel, the versifying atheist, was strictly forbidden. Hence
my mother passed into the families of Mr. Justice Bolland (whom she highly
respected), and of Sir Patrick Macgregor. One of her pupils, Miss Georgina
Macgregor, became the second godmother of my sister, Christina Georgina. A
brother of Sir Patrick, a Colonel, fell not a little in love with Miss
Polidori. Whether this highly estimable gentleman (as such he was always
represented to me) would have made up his mind to “proposing for
the governess” I am unable to say; but anyhow he was forestalled
by the Neapolitan refugee
By D. G. Rossetti. 1853.
Gabriele Rossetti.
Figure: Profile. Torso. Seated at writing desk.
Rossetti, who rapidly won the damsel's heart, and was promptly
accepted. The marriage proved a truly happy one, spite of narrow
circumstances, and the harrassing troubles of my father's long illnesses and
decay. On his side there was deep unwavering affection, and the most
absolute esteem and confidence; on hers, affection and confidence in no less
measure, and a cordial admiration for his uncommon gifts and attainments.
Mrs. Rossetti was well bred and well educated, a constant reader, full
of clear perception and sound sense on a variety of subjects, and perfectly
qualified to hold her own in society; a combination of abnormal modesty of
self-estimate (free, however, from the silliness or insincerity of
self-disparagement), and of retirement and repose of character, and of
devotion to home duties, kept her back. The idea of “making an
impression” never appeared to present itself to her
mind— still less the idea of outshining or rivalling any one
else. I doubt whether in the whole course of my life I once saw her go out
to an ordinary “evening party.” Perfect simplicity of
thought, speech, and manner, characterized her always; I venture to think
that it was dignity under another name. For conscientiousness, veracity, the
keeping confidences inviolate, the utter absence of censoriousness or
tittle-tattle, she was an absolute model: all this came so natural to her
that it passed almost unnoticed, or seemed a matter of course. Day and night
she attended to the household—doing needlework, teaching her
girls, keeping things in order, etc. In all the central years of her life
there was only one servant in the house. She was deeply but unpretentiously
religious, a member of the Church of England, very constant in
church-attendance. In my earlier years she might be regarded as belonging
rather to the “Evangelical” branch of the Church, but
later on her associations grew to be of the “high
church” kind. This only made a difference of habitude, not of
essentials. She took a reasonable interest in matters of politics, her
sympathies being on the Liberal side. She wrote correctly in prose, and some
few times even in verse; but
without having, at any time of her life, any
notion of doing aught for publication. I have heard that in youth she was
considered rather a “quiz” (as the phrase then ran),
or a person with a sharp eye for the ridiculous in others. Of this I myself
remember few symptoms or none; but certainly she knew a pretender or a
humbug when she saw one, and could express her perception by clear word of
mouth. With all the reserve of her character, her total want of forwardness,
her mostly unspoken scorn of semblances which have not realities behind
them, there was nothing about her of the merely stolid or negative; her
feelings were warm, and even her temper might have been less unruffled than
it was, but for a life-long practice of moderating self-control. She was
just, liberal, kind, forgiving, steadfast. A son who has any evil to say of
his mother might feel embarrassed until he had managed to say it mildly: I
am spared any such embarrassment. To sum up—she was one of the
most womanly of women.
My mother once said—it may have been towards 1872 or 1873:
“I always had a passion for intellect, and my wish was
that my husband should be distinguished for intellect, and my children
too. I have had my wish [and this she might well say in
reference to her elder son and her younger daughter, not to bring the
remaining two into question]; and I now wish that there were
a little less intellect in the family, so as to allow for a little more
common sense.” I have always set store by that
utterance of my mother, as equally sound and characteristic.
Frances Rossetti was of an ordinary female middle height, or a trifle less than that,
1 with a full-sized head, fresh complexion, features more than
commonly regular, shapely
Transcribed Footnote (page 22):
1 Miss Hall Caine, in her pleasant article
A Child's Recollections of
Rossetti
, in the
New Review for September 1894, describes my mother as
“very little.” This is a
mistake. Miss Caine only saw my mother in the early part of 1882,
when the latter was nearly eighty-two years of age. Her figure had
then fallen in, and she looked short; but the statement in my text
is the correct one.
Madonna-like eyelids, and an air of innate
composure. Her general aspect was English, not Italian. Her eyes were grey,
her hair in youth abundant and pretty, worn then in long ringlets, of a
full-tinted brown. It altered colour but little, even in her extreme old
age; and she always looked to me— and I believe to
others—some five or six years younger than she was. Her voice was
extremely clear and uniform, excellent for reading. There is a good likeness
of her in one of Sir John Millais's pictures—the
Departure of the Crusaders, painted towards
1856.
After the definite failure of my father's health, or from about 1844
until his death in 1854, the chief support of the family devolved upon my
mother—the eldest child, Maria, being in 1844 only seventeen
years of age. My mother made great and most laudable
efforts—going out to teach French and Italian (both of which she
knew and spoke perfectly well) and other things, and afterwards holding
precarious day-schools—at No. 38 Arlington Street, Mornington
Crescent (our residence for a year or two beginning in 1851), and at Frome
Selwood. The schools produced no income of any account; and my mother's
small expectations (from the property left by her maternal grandfather), and
then her small capital, had to be trenched upon. After her return however
from Frome, in 1854, it no longer became necessary for her to exert herself;
she continued living with me and my two sisters, and in 1876 removed with
Christina to another house, 30 Torrington Square. In her later years her
hearing was imperfect, though by no means gone, and her general strength
abated considerably. Her mind remained always clear, but necessarily less
strong with the inroads of age. She died, rather of gradual decline than of
anything else, on 8 April 1886, the very day which completed four years
after the death of Dante Gabriel. Had she lived a few more days, she would
have been eighty-six years of age. She rests by her husband's side in
Highgate Cemetery.
I have observed that my mother “wrote correctly in
prose, and some few times even in verse.” It has
lately been my
melancholy task to hunt through drawers,
pigeon-holes, etc., in the house (30 Torrington Square) occupied by my
sister Christina—of memory gracious to many—up to the
date of her death, 29 December 1894. I came upon a little red writing-case,
given by Dante Rossetti to our mother in 1849; in the writing-case were
these verses of her composition. They are dated 1876, the year when my
sister Maria Francesca died; after Dante's death in 1882 a final couplet was
added. To me the lines, recording a succession of family losses, are
pathetic; they come from a heart full of affection. Perhaps the reader will
think it ridiculous that I should print them; at worst, the ridicule will
apply to me alone, and not to the writer, who in youth and age kept all such
things very much to herself.
- “No longer I hear the welcome sound
- Of Father's foot upon the ground;
- No longer see the loving face
- Of Mother beam with kindly grace;
- No longer hear ‘how I
rejoice’
- At sight of me, from Sister's
voice;
1
- No more from Husband loved will be a
- ‘Cara Francesca, moglie mia’;
- And from dear Daughter sore I miss
-
10‘My dearest
Dodo,’
2 and her
kiss:—
- I never more shall hear him speak,
- The dearly loved who called me
‘Tique.’”
3
Transcribed Footnote (page 24):
1 This was Margaret, who died in 1867.
Transcribed Footnote (page 24):
2 A pet name much used by Maria for her mother.
Transcribed Footnote (page 24):
3 Dante Gabriel was addicted to calling his mother,
in her later years, “the Antique,” or simply
“Antique,” shortened sometimes into
“Tique.”
Frances Rossetti was the daughter of Gaetano Polidori,
and of Anna Maria Polidori,
née Pierce.
My maternal great-grandfathers were both born an immense time ago;
Agostino Ansaldo Polidori in 1714, and William Pierce in 1736: strange to
think of. Even my maternal
grandfather dates as far back as 1764, and my
grandmother as far back as 1769. The year 1714 witnessed the accession of
George I. to the British throne; 1736 the death of Prince Eugene; 1764, the
death of Hogarth; 1769, the publication of the first
Letter of Junius.
The name Polidori is of course Greek, not Italian; but of any Greek
ancestry which there may possibly have been I know nothing. The Polidori
family, so far as I ever heard of it, was Tuscan, the profession of medicine
being customary from father to son; authorship was also frequent in the
race, at any rate in the later generations. Agostino Ansaldo, author of two
poems,
Tobias and
Osteology (the latter has been privately printed), was a Doctor settled at
Bientina near Pisa: here was born his son Gaetano. There was also a brother
of Agostino, named Francesco. He produced a poem entitled
Losario (privately printed), more or less in the vein of Ariosto. Gaetano was
intended for the law, which he studied in the University of Pisa. In 1785,
however, he deserted the law, and, on the recommendation of the Abate
Fassini, became secretary to the famous tragedian Conte Alfieri, with whom
he stayed at Brisach, Colmar, and Paris. Naturally he saw, along with
Alfieri, the Countess of Albany, whose husband, “the Young
Pretender,” was then still living. Polidori was in Paris at the
taking of the Bastille in July 1789; and a little anecdote which he relates
of that day may deserve reproduction here:—
“I was passing by the Palais Royal while
the populace were running to assault the fortress; and, having
encountered a highly-powdered wig-maker, with a rusty sword raised
aloft, I, not expecting any such thing, and hardly conscious of the act,
had the sword handed over to me, as he cried aloud—‘
Prenez, citoyen, combattez pour la
patrie.
’ I had no fancy for such an enterprise; so, finding
myself sword in hand, I at once cast about for some way to get rid of
it; and, bettering my instruction from the man of powder, I stuck it
into the hand of the first unarmed person I met; and, repeating, ‘
Prenez, citoyen, combattez pour la
patrie
,’ I passed on and returned home.”
Polidori (as he intimates) had no taste for political convulsions, and
little for politics of any sort. Almost immediately afterwards Alfieri got
put out at finding that on a single occasion his secretary was not at home
when summoned, and the Count wrote him a note, asking him
“to change his style, or else his
dwelling.” Polidori, one of the least pliable of mortals,
closed at once with the second alternative, and determined to clear out of
France, and repair to England to teach Italian. He asked for and readily
obtained three letters of introduction from Alfieri and the Countess of
Albany. These were addressed to Mrs. Cosway, the painter, Captain Masseria,
a relative of Napoleon, and the famous Corsican General De' Paoli. The last
remained up to his death on intimate terms with Polidori, and left him a
mourning ring, which I now possess. In 1791 Alfieri, then in France, wished
to get Polidori back as his secretary; but the latter declined with thanks,
preferring conservative England very much to revolutionary France.
In February 1793 Polidori married Miss Anna Maria Pierce, who had acted
as a governess. He taught Italian for a great number of years, retiring in
1836, after having made a fair moderate competence. He then lived for a
while wholly in Buckinghamshire—Holmer Green, near Little
Missenden, in a house which he had purchased years before for personal and
family convenience—but in 1839 he returned to London, Park
Village East, Regent's Park. There he died of apoplexy in December 1853,
aged eighty-nine.
My anecdote about the wig-maker and the sword is taken from a little
narrative which Polidori wrote, as an appendix to one of his privately
printed books; for he kept a printing-press in Park Village East, and there
he produced, with some aid from practical hands, several volumes of his own
works, and a few others. Dante Rossetti's boyish poem
Sir Hugh the Heron
, and Christina's
Verses, were among these—printed respectively in 1843 and 1847.
Another was the poem by Erasmo di Valvasone,
L'Angeleida; with passages extracted by Polidori from Milton's
Paradise Lost, presumably founded
more or less upon this Italian poem. The personal
narrative above mentioned relates chiefly to Alfieri, and contains several
particulars of some interest. I give here a few of the general observations
upon him: —
“Curious and strange was the character of
that singular man: proud as Milton's Satan, and more choleric than
Homer's Achilles. He esteemed himself far beyond his real worth, and
very few were the poets or men of letters for whom he had any regard. He
was proud of his reddish hair, which he always wore studiously curled
and tended; of his fine and speckless apparel, and especially of his
uniform as a captain in the Piedmontese Infantry, which he donned for
more solemn occasions; of his pure gold buckles for shoes and breeches,
as then worn; of his handsome English horses, of which, counting
together saddle and carriage horses, he had sixteen; and of his fine and
elegant phaëton, which he generally drove four-in-hand, and
went in pomp, taking the air in city and high-road. Yet, amid many
defects, Count Alfieri had some good qualities: that of paying his debts
most punctually, of limiting his outlay so that at the end of the year
some money remained over, rather than be indebted for a penny, and of
being just, when justice was clear to him. As I never had to dispute
with him, in four years that I was in his house, save with the reason on
my side, and, whenever we had disputed, he, upon recognizing that he was
in the wrong, had confessed it and taken the blame to himself, I
esteemed and loved him [various anecdotes had been previously
given in the narrative, amply confirming this statement as to disputes
between Alfieri and his secretary]. . . . In 1789 began the
French Revolution, in which he exulted, and I saw him leap with joy upon
the ruins of the Bastille.”
It is a matter of notoriety, however, that after a while Alfieri
entirely altered his view of French affairs, and became a Gallophobist of
prime virulence.
Polidori was a man of good stature and very vigorous build; his health
was strong, and his faculties not seriously impaired by age. He liked almost
any occupation—writing, reading, cabinet-work (he produced many
pretty boxes, tables, etc., in wood-mosaic, after the Florentine manner),
and miscellaneous country work. He was a man of
the most sturdy and independent character, a sworn enemy to pretence and
frivolity of all sorts; for instance, he would not allow any of his
daughters to learn dancing. He always remained nominally a Roman-catholic,
but without taking any part in religious observances of whatsoever kind. For
his son-in-law Rossetti he had a sincere liking, and owned his great
superiority to himself as a poet. But the divergence between them was
frequently marked in little things: Polidori solid, unbending, somewhat
dogged; Rossetti not any less earnest in essentials, but vivacious, facile,
with more grace of manner and feeling, and comparatively mercurial. As a
grandfather Polidori was both kind and tolerant, and was looked up to by us
with much warmth of regard.
Gaetano Polidori had all the habits and likings of a literary man, and
was more decidedly bookish than my father. Like the latter, he was a member
of the Academy of the Arcadi, and bore the high-sounding designation of
“Fileremo Etrusco.” I possess his Arcadian diploma, a
curious document. He wrote a large number of things in prose and verse, both
published, privately printed, and unprinted. His first work was a poem,
L'Infedeltà
Punita
(
Faithlessness Punished). Among the others
are—
Novelle Morali (
Moral Tales);
Grammaire de la Langue
Italienne
;
A Dictionary in three volumes, Italian with French and English, French with
Italian and English, and English with Italian and French— a very
handy little book, and no doubt no small labour to its compiler;
Translation of all Milton's Poems;
Translation of Lucan's Pharsalia, with a sequel of his own;
Tragedie e Drammi. Unprinted is a
Life of Boccaccio, written in English, which my grandfather knew and spoke well. This
MS. I possess; likewise an Italian
Life of General de' Paoli, up to his return to Corsica during the French Revolution—a
work which, considering Polidori's intimacy with his hero, might be of some
worth.
As I have already said, the wife of Gaetano Polidori was Anna Maria
Pierce; and I will now give some few particulars
Note: The period of the third to last complete sentence on this page
has been omitted.
about the Pierce family, which is, as will be perceived, the
only source from which Dante Gabriel Rossetti had any English blood in his
veins.
I know nothing of the Pierces beyond Richard Pierce, my
great-great-grandfather, who was a schoolmaster in Burlington Gardens,
London. He had a son, William, a writing-master, who maintained himself from
the age of sixteen onwards, married twice, and had ten children. William
Pierce (I referred to this at the beginning of the present Section) was born
as far back as 1736; and it would appear that the vocation of a
writing-master must in his prime have been far more lucrative than it is at
present, for he made a very comfortable competence (the chief source of
whatever money there has been in the family since his time), and
“kept his carriage.” Possibly his first marriage
(which seems to have been into a grade somewhat above his own) had to do
with this result. He was always represented to me as a curiously
well-preserved specimen of “the old school”; formal,
precise, upright, rather formidable to a younger generation, yet kind too in
his way. Among his grandchildren he had a special predilection for my
mother; though like a good British Tory as he was, he thought it
“very odd” that, after his daughter Anna Maria had
married one foreigner, his grand-daughter Frances should marry another
foreigner. It looked like flying in the face of the blessed shades of a
Chatham, Wolfe, Nelson, and George III., and truckling to the far from
blessed shades of a Voltaire, a Mirabeau, and a Bonaparte, not to speak of
the Pope of Rome. Mr. Pierce had in fact a strong feeling against marriages
with foreigners, as his favourite sister had made a marriage of this kind
which proved very unhappy He died in 1829, aged ninety-three, shortly before
my birth; and after him I was named William. His ten children, other than
Mrs. Polidori, shall not concern us here; except to say that one of his
sons, Frederick, became a Brigadier-General, and was highly esteemed, I
believe, in the Army of India. I will also observe in passing that, through
the first wife of William Pierce, Jane Arrow, and a brother and sister of hers,
the present generation of Rossettis are some sort
of cousins to that distinguished cleric, the Rev. J. E. Kempe, of St.
James's Church, London, and also to the late Mrs. Eliza Anna Bray, whose
first husband was a son of the painter Thomas Stothard. She published a
Life of Stothard, various romances, tales of Devonshire life, an
Autobiography, and other works. My uncle Henry Polydore once took the pains of
drawing out a scanty pedigree of the Pierce and Arrow families; and I find
in it, as connected by marriage, the surnames Wrather, Hunter, Maunsell, Le
Mésurier, Jump, Lester, Porter, Hutchins, Mose, Kitchener,
Austin, Cooper, Sandrock, and Brown (nothing to do with Madox Brown). These
surnames—except Wrather, Austin, and Brown—represent
nothing to my memory. Of the Austins I have some direct or collateral
knowledge. There was a Bishop Austin in the West Indies, and an Austin
Governor of Honduras; and in 1887 at San Remo I met a very pleasant young
lady, Miss Burrows (now Mrs. Martin), who informed me that she was some
connexion of mine—I believe through the Austin family.
As I have said, my great-grandfather, William Pierce, married a Miss
Jane Arrow. My own knowledge of the Arrow family is of the scantiest; but I
find it mentioned in Mrs. Bray's
Autobiography that James Arrow, the father of Jane, belonged to an old race, much
damaged in the cause of Charles I. He had a small landed estate in
Berkshire, and married an Irish lady, Elizabeth Jerdan, “related
to the Whartons.” She died at the age of ninety-nine!
To return to Anna Maria Pierce, Mrs. Polidori, whom, as she lived on
to May 1853, I remember perfectly well. Before my recollection begins she
had already become an invalid, owing to an internal complaint, and she never
left her bedroom, and not often her bed. Her youngest daughter, Eliza
Harriet, was her constant and devoted attendant, sacrificing for this
purpose all the pleasures and interests of youth. Mrs. Polidori was a fine
old lady, with very correct features, and an air which, in spite of her age
and infirmity, was
comely as well as reverend. Her bed-room had to me
all the dignity of a presence-chamber, which I entered at sparse intervals
with a certain awe. She was, like several others of her race, a high Tory,
and an earnest member of the Church of England; and the arrangement made at
her marriage was that any daughters should be brought up in that Church,
while any sons should belong to the Roman communion. It comes apposite to
say here that in the Rossetti family the understanding was different, and
all the children were trained in their mother's faith. Mrs. Polidori had
attained her eighty-fourth year at the date of her death. The only other
member of her generation of the Pierce family whom I knew was her elder
sister Harriet, who, though unmarried, was always in my time styled Mrs.
Pierce, and we children were admonished to term her
“Granny.” After passing many years as governess in the
family of the Earl of Yarborough, she spent the evening of her life in nice
apartments in London, which she made a model of spick-and-span comfort, not
unmixed with elegance. I have just now said that she was unmarried; but
there ran a rumour, not totally uncorroborated, that Lord Yarborough had in
fact wedded her without publicity. He had become a widower in 1813, and
lived on to 1846. This rumour I of course in no sort of way avouch.
“Granny” was the liberal purveyor of many a
serviceable household-present to my mother, her favourite niece. She
inherited all the faultless precision and imposing decorum of her father,
and was the most nitid little old lady you could easily pick out in London.
She died in 1849—the first time that I looked upon the visible
face of death.
The Polidoris had a family of four daughters and four sons
—one of the latter dying in infancy. In my notes to my brother's
letters sufficient details will be given about three of
these—Charlotte Lydia, Philip Robert, and Henry Francis (the
latter modified his surname into Polydore). There remain the eldest
daughter, Maria Margaret, and the youngest (whom I have just now mentioned),
Eliza Harriet. Maria
Margaret—or Margaret, as she was always
called—was in her youth a governess, but retired pretty early,
and lived with her family, and finally in my house, 166 Albany Street, where
she died in 1867. She was much affected with nervous tremor, and troubled by
hysterical fits, in which she would fall into peals of long-continued
quasi-laughter, which rang over the house—more like the vocal
gymnastics of a laughing hyena than like anything else I know. No other
symptom of the hyena appeared about my aunt, who, apart from a touchy
temper, was a good old soul, much addicted to “daily
service” twice a day in church. The youngest daughter, Eliza
Harriet, had always a housekeeping managing turn, without any literary
leanings. In 1854, the year succeeding her mother's death, she determined to
make her knowledge of nursing useful to the nation, and went out with Miss
Nightingale to the Crimean expedition, being then about forty-five years of
age. To her disappointment no actual nursing was assigned to her, but she
had the supervision of the hired nurses, and the management of
bedding-stores etc., at the Barrack Hospital, Scutari, and rendered
excellent service, which was recognized by the bestowal of a Turkish medal.
I remember that after her return to England some case relating to the
nursing transactions came into a London police-court, and she had to give
evidence; and we were amused at finding her, in the newspaper reports,
designated as “Miss Polly Dory.” The Crimean affair
was about the only “adventure” of her long life. She
died in London in 1893, aged nearly eighty-four. Eliza was the last of the
English Polidoris; some of the name are still in Florence.
Only one other Polidori has to be accounted for in my
narrative—Dr. John William Polidori, who lives faintly in some
memories as the travelling physician of the famous Lord Byron. He was born
in London on 7 September 1795, educated at some Catholic schools and at the
Benedictine Ampleforth College near York, and took his degree as M.D. in
Edinburgh at the singularly youthful age of nineteen. He was only twenty
when, on the recommendation of Sir Henry
Halford, he became the travelling physician of Byron, who on
24 April 1816 left England for the last time. They went along the Rhine to
Geneva, where Polidori made acquaintance also with Shelley and his two
companions, Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin (the second Mrs. Shelley) and Clare
Clairmont. Polidori, who had poetical and literary ambitions of his own,
took too much upon him to suit Byron for long; so on 16 September the two
parted company, and the young Doctor travelled on alone to Pisa, and then
returned to England. He became one of the physicians in the Norwich
Hospital; but soon gave up medicine, partly because he would not have been
allowed to practise in London before completing twenty-six years of age, and
he began studying in London for the Bar. It has been said that in Norwich
Miss Harriet Martineau was somewhat in love with him; and this would not be
unlikely, as Polidori—apart from his intellectual gifts, which
were by no means so flimsy as some people seem now to suppose—was
a noticeably fine young man, of striking feature and presence. In August
1821 the end came in a melancholy way: he committed suicide with
poison—having, through losses in gambling, incurred a debt of
honour which he had no present means of clearing off. A coroner's jury was
summoned; the jurors took, probably through good-nature towards the family,
no steps for eliciting requisite evidence, and returned a verdict of
“Died by the visitation of God.” His death was a
grievous blow to his father, all whose leading hopes centred in this son.
Gaetano Polidori, to the end of his long life, a lapse of thirty-two years,
was never equal to hearing any mention of him, and we children of a younger
generation were strictly warned not to name him, however casually, in our
grandfather's presence.
John Polidori published two volumes of verse:
Ximenes, a Tragedy, and Other Poems, 1819; and
The Fall of the Angels, 1821. It may at once be admitted that his poetry was not good. Two
prose tales are much better—
Ernestus Berchtold, and
The Vampyre, both published in 1819.
The Vampyre has continually been misascribed to Byron,
who in reality wrote the mere beginning of another
tale (quite different in its incidents) named likewise
The Vampyre. Polidori left some other writings, both
published and unpublished. The latter include a diary, partly detailed and
partly mere jottings, of his sojourn with Byron and Shelley, and his
subsequent tour. It was commissioned by Murray for publication at no less a
price than £525, and contains some particulars
of substantial interest.
1
I have no finished all that I need to say about the relatives of Dante
Rossetti on the mother's side. The only relative on our father's side whom
we have personally known—with some others I have
corresponded—was Teodorico (or properly Teodoro) Pietrocola, who
adopted the compound surname of Pietrocola-Rossetti. He was a Vastese, and
studied medicine to some extent. In 1851, being then about twenty-four years
of age, he came to London, hoping to find an opening of some kind; but found
nothing except semi-starvation, which he bore with a cheerful constancy
touching to witness. In 1856 or thereabouts he returned to Italy, practised
for a moderate while medicine as a Homœopathist, married a Scotch
lady (originally Miss Steele, now Mrs. Cole, an amiable, accomplished, and
admirable woman), and, with her co-operation, devoted himself to preaching
evangelical Christianity, somewhat of the Vaudois type, in Florence and
elsewhere. He died very suddenly in 1883, just as he was giving out a hymn
or text to his small congregation. He published a few
things—among others, a biography of my father, a translation of
Alice in Wonderland, and one of Christina Rossetti's
poem,
Goblin-Market. A man of more native unselfish kindliness, of stricter morals, or of
nicer concientiousness, never breathed.
Since writing the above, I have observed in the book of Mr. W. G.
Collingwood,
The Life and Work of John Ruskin, a reference to Pietrocola-Rossetti which is of so much
interest
Transcribed Footnote (page 34):
1 On the details about Shelley in this diary I
wrote a few years ago, and delivered to the Shelley Society, a
lecture which has not as yet been printed.
to me, and in itself so noticeable, that I extract
it here; it relates to the year 1882:—
“Miss [Francesca]
Alexander . . . was as friendly, not only in society but in spiritual
things, with the worthy village priest as with T. P. Rossetti, the
leader of the Protestant ‘Brethren,’ whom she
called her pastor—a cousin of the artist, and in his way no
less remarkable a man. It is hardly too much to say that he did, for
evangelical religion in Italy, what Gabriel Rossetti did for poetical
art in England: he showed the path to sincerity and simplicity. And Mr.
Ruskin, who had been driven away from Protestantism by the Waldensian at
Turin [this refers to an incident in the year
1858], and had wandered through many realms of doubt, and
voyaged through strange seas of thought alone, found harbour at last
with the disciple of a modern evangelist, the frequenter of the poor
little meeting-house of outcast Italian Protestants.”
If this statement is literally accurate, it would appear that the
latest development of Mr. Ruskin's religious opinions was mainly influenced
by Miss Alexander, who was not a little influenced by Pietrocola-Rossetti: a
matter worth remembering for many a day to come.
I have often reflected how utterly different this cousin of mine was
from the ordinary English notion of a Southern Italian. My father also was
very different from that notion; my grandfather, a Central Italian, quite
the reverse of it. Peace be with the honoured and honourable memory of all
three.
The Rossetti family in Vasto became extinct while I was composing this
Memoir: the latest survivor was Vincenzo Rossetti, who died, aged forty, on
11 November 1894. “With him,” so runs a
billet de faire part which was sent to
me, “was lost the last germ of so glorious a stem in
Italy.” I presume, but cannot say for certain, that
in the female line the race of Nicola and Maria Francesca Rossetti may still
subsist.
The reader may have observed, in the course of my family narrative,
several instances of longevity in the races of Arrow, Pierce, and Polidori.
I have under my eye a list
of nine persons, among whom the lowest age was
eighty-three, the highest ninety-nine—average eighty-eight.
Nothing of the sort appears in the Rossetti race, though my father attained
a not inconsiderable age—seventy-one. It may also be noted that
in the three lines from which Dante Rossetti came—Polidori,
Pierce, and Rossetti—the work of tuition held a very large place.
Hence perchance he inherited a certain readiness at linguistics, and at
seeing literary matters from a literary point of view; but there was little
or nothing in him of the man born to teach by ordinary teaching
methods.
My mother, marrying on 10 April 1826, had four
children— there were never any more—in four successive
years: Maria Francesca, born on 17 February 1827; Gabriel Charles Dante, 12
May 1828; William Michael, 25 September 1829; and Christina Georgina, 5
December 1830. The famous Surgeon and Physician, Dr.
Locock—afterwards Sir William Locock, the Queen's accoucheur— ushered, I believe, all
of us into the world; for our father—though a man of thrift, and
in personal expenses heedfully sparing—grudged no cost needed for
the well-being of his household. To Gabriel Charles Dante I shall here
generally apply the name “Dante,” which he adopted as
if it had stood first in order; in his own family, however, he was
invariably termed Gabriel —or, by our sister Maria,
“Gubby,” a pet name which other members of the
household did not affect.
Our house, No. 38 Charlotte Street, was a fairly neat but decidedly
small one: it is smaller inside than it looks viewed from outside. I can
remember a little about it, but not much. Towards 1836 the family had
outgrown it, and removed to No. 50 in the same street—a larger
but still far indeed from being a spacious dwelling. This house is now the
office of a Registrar of births, deaths, and marriages; and, singularly
enough, when I had to record in 1876 the death of
my sister Maria, I found that the place for dong this was the very house in
which she had so long resided. Soon after Gabriele Rossetti settled in
Charlotte Street it began to go down in character, and at times it became
the extreme reverse of “respectable.” Dante Rossetti
in his early childhood was a pleasing, spirited-looking boy, with bright
eyes, auburn hair, and fresh complexion. He remembered in after-years
nothing distinctly earlier than this: That there used to be a Punch and Judy
show which came at frequent intervals to perform just before our house, but
for the delectation of our opposite neighbours, so that he himself only saw
the back of the show. This was not at all what he wanted; so he motioned to
go out into the street, and turn round and see the front of the Punch and
Judy (there was no Dog Toby in those distant days), but was wofully
disconcerted at being told that such a proceeding would be
infra dig, and not to be condoned. Dante shared with
Maria the ascendency over his two juniors: but Maria, in these opening
years, was not easily to be superseded—being of a very
enthusiastic temperament and lively parts; and indeed she always remained
the best of the four at what we call acquired knowledge. In her fifth year
she could read anything in either English or Italian, and read she did with
tireless persistency. Our early years were passed wholly at home in London,
with occasional visits to our grandparents at Holmer Green, our Aunts
Margaret and Eliza, and our Uncle Philip, being continuously there as well.
Our daily walks were with our mother in and about Regent's Park, which was
opened to the public much towards the date of my birth. I can still
recollect how palatial I used to consider the frontage of the Terraces
facing the Park, and how our mother would explain to us which of the columns
or pilasters was Ionic, which Corinthian, and so on. The Colosseum, a big
Exhibition building pulled down towards 1870, was then in existence, and was
occasionally visited by us. It comprised a Camera Obscura, in which we
viewed with wonder the groups of people disporting themselves
in the Park. Primrose Hill was ascended every now
and then. It led immediately on into fields (how different from now!) which
brought one into the rural village of Hampstead, to which our father
escorted us at rare intervals. Railways were just beginning not far from
Regent's Park; to see the puffs of their steam as the trains rolled onward
appeared little short of magic.
Two of my childish reminiscences of my brother relate to animals. Some
one gave him a dormouse, which he named “Dwanging,”
and, on the approach of winter, he shut it up in a drawer to hibernate. In
its long sleep he looked at it from time to time, but was careful not to
disturb it; and his glee was proportionate when the little creature revived
in the spring. Later on there was a hedgehog, to whom Dante's conduct was
not equally correct. The hedgehog was wont to trot about on the table in our
dining and sitting room, or “parlour” as we mostly
termed it (the drawing-room was little used, save by our father in his
literary work, or occasionally with a pupil); and one day my bother insisted
on leaving upon the table some beer for his prickly favourite. The latter
freely partook of the beverage, and his unsteady gait evinced the effects of
it. Our mother forbade the repetition of any such experiments; and I think
Dante himself had no wish to recur to them, for at no period of his life did
he relish the sight of anything repellent or degrading. One of my brother's
first books was
Peter Parley's Natural
History
, which he enjoyed, both text and cuts. We went pretty often to the
Zoological Gardens, then a very recent foundation, and would run shrieking
through its tunnel, to rouse the echo. The animals were at that date much
fewer than now, yet still numerous—their housing very inferior.
There was a striated monkey, whose designation was explained to us (I have
not seen any such animal of late years); also a singsing antelope, of whom
my father would say (in English), “Sing, sing, antelope;
antelope, sing, sing; but he never sang.”
Armadilloes, and a sloth walking with his head downwards, were among our
favourites—not to speak of screaming parrots,
bears, lions, tigers, and elephants. A collared
peccary gave Christina a vicious bite, which came to nothing. No wombat
figured at that early date; but several dogs used to be there, more or less
domestic, which were tethered in a rather dejected and yell-abounding file.
They were afterwards abolished, on the ground that such a treatment of them
was not far remote from cruelty.
Another amusement, as Dante progressed in childhood, was the Adelaide
Gallery, close to St. Martin's Church, now occupied by Gatti's Restaurant.
It was a semi-scientific entertainment, exhibiting
inter alia fearsome microscopic enlargements of the infusoria in a
few drops of water. The Adelaide Gallery was succeeded by the Polytechnic
Institution in Regent Street, with a more varied programme of like
kind— diving-bell, electric shocks, dissolving views, chemical
demonstrations, etc. This also is now gone, the present Polytechnic being
quite a different sort of establishment. The Soho Bazaar, and more
especially the Pantheon Bazaar in Oxford Street (now Gilbey's liquor
stores), were often our resort. The Pantheon exhibited many pictures from
time to time, including Haydon's
Raising of
Lazarus
. Astley's Riding Circus, with dramatic entertainments
(such as
Mazeppa), we saw once or twice, but in childhood we hardly at all entered a
regular theatre. To pay for going to the Italian Opera (the building near
Charing Cross, now gone) was what we could not afford. Occasionally,
however, the great singer Lablache, whom my father had known in Naples,
would give us a ticket for that house, and we enjoyed the performance
vastly. My recollections carry me back to the first (or may-be the second)
London season of the celebrated Madame Julia Grisi, whom I saw in the
Gazza Ladra. The appearance of her husband
Mario was a matter of some years later on. I remember also the first season
of Madlle Rachel, who was acting Chimène in the
Cid of Corneille. There was likewise a ballet,
The Daughter of the Danube, with various
“fiends” in it. This hit our fancy uncommonly, and we
made at home some kind of pretence at “the Blue Demon”
and other of its characters in 1838. My first (and
for years it must have remained my sole) pantomime is also a lively
reminiscence. There was a race run by jockeys on pigs, and each touch of the
whip raised a shower of sparks out of the porcine steeds, to my
uncontrollable laughter and delight. My brother must have been with me, but
I forget his demeanour.
Beyond an opera or a concert at rare intervals, we heard little music
as children; except that our father, with his rich voice and fine
declamation, would at times, unaccompanied, strike up a stave of some
glorious chant of the French revolutionary epoch—
- “La
Victoire en chantant nous ouvre la
barrière”—
or (sung to the same spirit-stirring air)—
- “Romain, lève les yeux.
Là fut le Capitol,”
1
or the Marseillaise. Another customary song of his was a popular
and rather long grotesque tirade about a Jewish wedding,
Baruccabà, from which he sang several
snatches. Our mother also would frequently play on the pianoforte, for our
delectation,
The Battle of Prague, with
the “groans of the wounded,” and other
less lugubrious details. She had an agreeable voice for singing; but it had
received no sort of cultivation, as singing was, like dancing, one of the
worldly vanities which my grandfather discountenanced. In my first
Transcribed Footnote (page 40):
1 This Lyric must belong to the year 1798, when
the French army entered Rome, and set up a short-lived Republic;
perhaps it is now a curiosity. I can recall the opening
lines—being all, I think, that my father sang:—
- “Romain, lève les yeux. Là fut
le Capitol:
- Ce pont fut le pont de
Coclès:
- La Brutus immola sa
race:
- Et César dans cette
autre place
- Fut poignardé par
Cassius.
- Rome, la Liberté
t'appelle;
- Sache vaincre ou sache
périr:
- Un Romain doit vivre pour
elle,
- Pour elle un Romain doit
mourir.”
years I often heard her sing these lines, and the
tune still lingers with me:—
- “The sun sets by night and the stars
shun the day,
- But glory remains when their lights fade away:
- Begin, ye tormentors, your threats are in vain,
- For the sons of Alnomuk shall never
complain.
- “Remember the arrows we shot from our
bow,
- Remember the chiefs by our hatchets laid low:
- Now, the flames rising fast, we exult in our
pain,
- For the sons of Alnomuk shall never
complain.”
Where do these mediocre lines come from? My mother (it seems to me)
associated them with the story of Guatimozin and the Spaniards under Cortes,
but that does not look correct.
I hardly think that I ever saw my father touch a pack of playing cards;
he played pretty often at chess. My mother would at times take part in a
family game without any stakes. Upon us children nothing was more strongly
impressed than a horror of gambling, which had led to the death of Dr. John
Polidori: but we were allowed to play at simple games; Patience, and Beggar
my Neighbour, and (what I never hear of now) The Duchess of Rutland's Whim.
The last I associated in my mind with the notion of arithmetical
subtraction, as contrasted with addition, which the other two games might be
held to represent. Later on there came Whist, and the Italian game of
Tre Sette. We identified ourselves in a
sort of way with the four suits of cards; and clubs were thus made the
appurtenance of Maria, hearts of Dante, diamonds of Christina, and spades of
myself. I may here say that the dislike to the idea of gambling clung to us
through life; and neither Dante nor any other of us ever played for money,
in any sense worth naming. Besides cards, a rocking-horse, a spinning-top, a
teetotum, ball, ninepins, blindman's buff, and puss-in-the-corner, used to
amuse us—hardly anything else in the way of games. Even marbles
we never rightly learned, nor efficient kite-flying, still less anything to
be called athletics. As to mental games, we were much addicted to what is called
“animal, vegetable, or
mineral”; and there must occasionally have been some
“capping verses,” but this (which seems odd under the
circumstances) was quite infrequent.
Of events in the opening years of Dante Rossetti I find none to record;
unless it be that, at the age of five, he suddenly became weak on his legs,
and, after the celebrated surgeon Sir Benjamin Brodie had been consulted, he
had to wear splints for a longish while—say three or four months.
I can recollect the look of him, carried, or afterwards hobbling, upstairs.
One day he thought he would try how he could do without the splints; he did
very well, and the affair was at an end. He was a sprightly little fellow,
and liked to play a trick or two. One trick he played more than once was
walking in the street in a huddled-up attitude, as if he were crippled or
almost hunchbacked. When a passenger looked at him sympathetically, the
limbs suddenly straightened, and perhaps an impish laugh accompanied the
change of form. In our unluxurious household he was regarded as rather
“dainty” in his diet; inclined to eat such things as
he liked, and doing without those he disliked. For beer he had a marked
distaste; there was no wine going to speak of, so he stuck to water. Meat
also he would scarcely touch until turned of eight years.
I believe the first attempt at drawing made by the future painter of
Beata Beatrix
was on this wise. At the age of about four he stationed himself in
the passage leading to the street-door, and with a pencil of our father's
began drawing his
rocking-horse; later on in his
childhood and boyhood he seldom made any attempt at drawing from any real
object, but only “out of his own head.” A milkman came
in at the moment, and was not a little surprised: “I saw a
baby making a picture,” he said to the servant. I
have here mentioned “the age of about
four,” because that is the age which my brother himself
named to me one day in April 1872 when we were talking over our earliest
reminiscences. I still possess a
drawing by him of the
rocking-horse
, on which our mother has marked the date 1834, when
he was at least five
years of age. I could believe this to be that very
first drawing of all, were it not that the performance comes so near to
being pretty tolerably good that I find some difficulty in conceiving that
he had never before taken pencil in hand.
Having once begun, Dante never dropped this notion of
drawing—of handling a pencil or a brush; and I cannot remember
any date at which it was not understood in the family that
“Gabriel meant to be a painter.” He, and also I, were
incessantly buying sheets of slight engravings of actors and actresses in
costume—“Skelt's Theatrical Characters” was
the name of one leading series of them. I do not think any such engravings
are now produced, which seems strange in this period of dramatic activity.
There was a good-natured little stationer named Hardy, perhaps in Clipstone
Street, from whom we bought these things; and another named Marks, in Great
Titchfield Street, who was a trifle less accommodating, and on one occasion
nonplussed us both by insisting that we should ask for the required
“characters” by the number printed on the sheet, and
not by the title of the play or the personage. The quantity of these figures
which Dante and I coloured is marvellous to reflect upon—he in
chief, but I was a good second; our sisters counted for little. We also
“tinselled” the figures, but this was comparatively
rare. Now and then we made some attempt at acting a play with such
personages on a toy-stage; but, as none of us had the least manual or
mechanical dexterity, this came to nothing. I seem to recollect
The Miller and his Men and
Der Freischütz. In
colouring our taste was all for bright hues—red, blue, yellow,
etc. Neither of us had the least of a colourist's sympathy for fused,
subdues, or mottled tints.
In those days another amusement was current, which has, I fancy, died
out entirely. It might well be revived. “Magic
Shadows” was the name of it. One bought full-sized sheets of
paper, on which heads, figures, or groups, were rudely printed, in coarse
outline, and with numerous half-formless splotches
of black. One had to cut out a figure etc. along
its outline, and to cut out also the splotches of black; and then one held
up the figure between a candle and the wall, so that the shadow of the
unexcised portions was cast on to the wall. This shadow looked surprisingly
neat and expressive in comparison with the original aspect of the printed
figures. We all—but principally myself—enjoyed this
ocular amusement, and practised it diligently for various years.
Mr. Hall Caine has cited from one of Dante Rossetti's
letters the phrase, “
Our household was all
of Italian, not English, environment.” This is wholly correct.
The only English family that we used to see pretty frequently was that
of Mr. Cipriani Potter, the Pianist, and Principal of the Royal Academy of
Music. He was one of my godfathers, and had children of much the same age as
ourselves; an excellent undersized man, with a somewhat saturnine expressive
face, an abundance of shrewd sense, and a bantering habit of talk. Mr.
Charles Lyell, though intimate with my father, was seldom in London. There
was also Mr. Thomas Keightley, the historian, and author of
The Fairy Mythology—a book which formed one of the leading delights of our
childhood. He likewise was in London only occasionally—a
scholarly, shortsighted Irishman, of a high sense of honour, rather easily
nettled now and again. He was a great believer in my father's views
concerning Dante. At a much later date, towards 1849, Mr. Keightley settled
in a suburb of London; and his nephew and adopted son, Mr. Alfred Chaworth
Lyster, became, and still remains, one of my most affectionate friends. Two
of the families in which my father taught Italian—those of Mr.
Swynfen Jervis, and of Sir Isaac Lyon Goldsmid—had a particular
regard for him, and on some high occasions we children were inside their
doors. Mr. Jervis, a relative of Lord St. Vincent,
took some minor part in verse-writing and Shakespearean comment. He was
father of Mrs. George Henry Lewes, and I remember her well before her
marriage, but never saw her afterwards; her unfortunate story shall not here
be touched upon. To Sir Isaac Goldsmid, one of the wealthiest Hebrew
stockbrokers in London, I may record my obligation, which proved to be a
life-long one. He it was who, when my father, in failing health and waning
employment, was looking out for some career into which I could be
introduced, spoke a word in season to one of his colleagues on the Council
of the London University, Mr. John Wood, then Chairman of the Board of
Excise—and Mr. Wood lost no time in giving me employment there
which, though temporary at first starting, lasted in fact from February 1845
to August 1894. These seem to be about the only English people whom I need
mention in this connexion, allowing besides for the English family of an
Anglo-Italian music-master, Signor Rovedino. This family, like that of Mr.
Potter, comprised children of our own age. With Mrs. Rovedino resided an
aunt, whom I mention for the sake of her sounding old Saxon name, Miss
Waltheof, which was always pronounced Walthew.
We knew in childhood a perfect specimen of the “Poor
Relation,” who used to call upon our mother at regular intervals
for purposes easily surmisable. She was named Miss Sarah Brown—a
middle-aged spinster tending to the elderly, of that order of faculty which
is termed “weak-minded.” At a very early age we
became, in some casual way, familiar with Charles Lamb's excellent little
essay called
Poor Relations, containing the words (as near as I remember them):—
“There is one person more embarrassing
than a male Poor Relation, and that is a female Poor Relation; no woman
dresses below her station from caprice.”
I used to ponder these words in regard to Sarah Brown, and to think,
“Is it or is it not true that no woman dresses below her station
from caprice?”
If English acquaintances were at a minimum with us, Italian
acquaintances were at a maximum. It seems hardly an exaggeration to say that
every Italian staying in or passing through London, of a Liberal mode of
political opinion, sought out my father, to make or renew acquaintance with
him; not to speak of numerous relays of tatterdemalions, who came
principally or solely for alms. If they made the Masonic knock at the door,
or a Masonic digital sign on entering, they were immediately relieved, as an
act of obligation on the part of my father as a Freemason; and many were
relieved who had no claim of that particular kind. There were two terms
which I have heard my father apply—how often!—to
persons of this class: “
un cercatore” was an applicant or beggar, “
un seccatore” was an intrusive person, or
bore. Others, to whom these designations did not relate (though some of
these also were manifest
seccatori, and perhaps on occasion
cercatori as
well), would come evening after evening, and almost all evenings, to our
house—in various instances, for months or years together. My
father, as the offspring of a blacksmith in a country town, was not entitled
to have any caste-prejudices, and in fact he had none. To be an Italian was
a passport to his good-will; and, whether the Italian was a nobleman, a
professional gentleman, a small musical hanger-on, a maccaroni-man, or a
mere waif and stray churned by the pitiless sea of expatriation, he equally
welcomed him, if only he were an honest soul, and not a
spia (spy)—the latter being a class of men much rumoured of
among the Italian refugees and Londoners, and abhorred with a loathing
indignation. Hardly an organ-man or plaster-cast vendor passed our street-door
without being interrogated by my father, “
Di che paese siete?” (“What
part of Italy do you come from?”) The plaster-cast vendor is seen
no more in London streets, but the organ-man remains. The natives of the
Sunny South who frequented our house seemed all to be
indifferent— singularly indifferent, in British
eyes—to any form of social entertainment; what they came for was
talk—chiefly on political topics, mingled at moments with a
little literature,
and constantly with a liberal sprinkling of my
father's poems, which were received with sonorous eulogy, founded at least
as much on political or national as on literary considerations. Gabriele
Rossetti's noble declamation, taken along with his subject-matter, was
indeed enough to carry any sympathizer away on the wave and whirl of
excitement. I seldom heard him read any of his prose-writings on such
occasions. His auditors hardly appeared to have any fleshly appetites. Such
a thing as a solid supper was never in question, neither did they ever
propose to smoke. They would come into our small sitting-room, greet the
“Signora Francesca” and their host, and sit down, as
the chance offered, amid the whole family, adult and semi-infantine. A cup
or two of tea or of coffee, with a slice of bread and butter, was all the
provender wont to be forthcoming.
It would be difficult to give an idea of the atmosphere of thought and
feeling in which Dante Rossetti grew to boyhood and to youth, unless I were
to say something about the foreign visitors. I shall endeavour to be
reasonably brief. Some he remembered a little, but I, his junior, scarcely
or not at all. Such were Angeloni, a literary purist,
1 who became blind in his last years; General Michele Carrascosa,
who was my second godfather; the famous
prima donna Giuditta Pasta; Guido Sorelli, who maligned in a book the character of
Italian women, and was gibbeted by my father in a sonnet; Dragonetti, a
leading violoncellist at the Italian opera; Petroni, compiler of a
dictionary. The celebrated author Ugo Foscolo was barely known to my father
in London; well known was the not less celebrated violinist Paganini. There
was a Conte Farò, who took, I believe, to coal-dealing.
“Farò” means in Italian “I will
do”; and my father (possibly
Transcribed Footnote (page 47):
1 Purism in the use of the Italian language was
a great controversy among Italians in all those years. The purists
insisted upon recurring to the standard of literary diction, mainly
the Tuscan of the fourteenth century, to the exclusion of everything
modern, provincial, or imported from abroad. Gabriele Rossetti cared
little for such niceties, but was willing to write much as he
thought and spoke. Polidori was stricter, yet not a purist.
without any reason beyond the purport of the name)
used to call him “
Farò, farò, e non
farà mai niente
” (“I will do, I will do, and never will he do
anything”). One curious character, fearfully addicted to drawing
the long bow, was named the Marchese Moscati, who actually persuaded the
very eminent physician, Dr. Elliotson, that Moscati had a double stomach,
and was a ruminating animal. Elliotson introduced him to Rossetti, and was
(I may take this opportunity of saying) our accustomed family doctor,
resolutely refusing—for he was a most kind and generous
man—to accept any fees for his valuable advice. Thackeray
dedicated
Pendennis to him. After a while my father left Moscati to ruminate by himself,
and they became avowed enemies.
Among Italians well remembered by me, some are mentioned in my Notes to
Dante Rossetti's
letters
:—Filippo Pistrucci (I recollect also, though
faintly, his brother Benedetto the eminent medallist, who designed our
“George-and-the-Dragon” coinage); Sangiovanni, the
clever modeller in clay, the most picturesque figure of all, who had, I
believe, “knifed” somebody in early youth, and had
later on (chiefly after the suppression of the Neapolitan constitution in
1821) had many a romantic adventure in the kingdom, as captain of a band for
the suppression of brigandage, which bore a partly politico-reactionary
character; the Cavalier Mortara; Baron Calfapietra. Other intimates in our
early childhood were—Janer (he subsequently called himself
Janer-Nardini), a Tuscan, scholarly and courteous, keen in politics, and of
a very biting tongue; Ciciloni, a teacher of Italian, of high character in
all respects, who took up Rossetti's work at some times when the latter was
laid aside, and especially during his very severe illness in 1843; Foresti,
who had been in China; Sarti, the plaster-cast vendor; De' Marsi, a teacher;
Ferrari, an aged musician whom blindness had overtaken; Sir Michael Costa,
the musician and conductor, and his brother Raffaele, both of whom we saw
occasionally; Count Carlo Pepoli, a good-looking, cultivated Bolognese of
high honour and ancient family, regarded in our retired household as rather
a dandy—he had been addressed in a
striking poetical epistle by the great poet Leopardi, and
eventually an English lady of some fortune “proposed to
him,” and he married her, returned to Italy when liberal politics
prevailed there, and died a Senator of the realm; Rolandi, the bookseller, a
very worthy man of small stature; Count Giuseppe Ricciardi, a South
Neapolitan, an ardent patriot of the revolutionary-republican type. I
remember seeing once or twice in our house a handsome stately lady, rather
advanced in years, who called herself, I think, Ida Saint Elme. She was the
daughter of a Hungarian nobleman, Leopold de Tolstoy, had led an agitated
and far from correct life, and was authoress of the
Mémoires d'une Contemporaine, published in Paris in 1827. Two old friends passed some days in my
father's house, vaguely remembered by me— Dr. Curci, and
Smargiassi, the latter a Vastese, and a landscape-painter of considerable
name in the Neapolitan kingdom. Curci had quite a passionate attachment to
my father, and I believe visited England for the express purpose of seeing
him once again. Later on were Cornaro, a descendant (and I think I was told
the sole remaining descendant) of the great Venetian family—a
noticeable man, in early middle age, with long nose and reddish
hair—he was said to be an inveterate gambler, and he died
accidentally by drowning; Parodi, a dancing-master, who gave us lessons in
dancing, in return for Italian lessons imparted to his son by my
father—he was a man not wanting in good sense, but uninstructed
in a marked degree, and spoke the most curious lingo that I ever
heard— French, German, and English, grafted on to his native
Italian; Aspa, a vigorous Sicilian, pianoforte-tuner in Broadwood's house;
Gallenga, the political and miscellaneous writer, as expert in the English
as in the Italian tongue; Dr. Maroncelli, brother of a well-known exile who
suffered a rigid imprisonment; the musician Sperati; Signora Monti
(afterwards Monti-Baraldi), to whom some of Rossetti's latest letters were
written. Dr. Maroncelli gave him some medical advice towards 1843; and later
on another doctor, Gilioli, seemed to have some partial success in treating
his eyesight.
Of one of these Italians, Sangiovanni, I will say a few words further,
as he and his had more to do with our early family life than any of the
others; Pistrucci came next. Sangiovanni was a tall gaunt man, with an air
of having gone through a deal of wearing work, aged about fifty-two when I
first remember him. It is rather a curious fact that two Spanish painters,
having to depict St. Joseph, adopted a type of visage not at all unlike
Sangiovanni's, but in each instance (especially the second) less strained
and rugged. I refer to the pictures in our National Gallery,
The Adoration of the Shepherds, by Velasquez, and
The Holy
Family
, by Murillo. Of school knowledge Sangiovanni had little, but
plenty of intelligence; of religious belief (I should say) nothing; but in
this respect he was on a par with a large proportion of his London
compatriots. My father once narrated to him the story of the Patriarch
Joseph, from the Book of Genesis, which came perfectly new to him, and
interested him extremely. In 1833 he went over to America, on business
proper to Achille Murat, to look after an estate and its slave-labourers. In
the United States he saw an Anglo-American young woman whom he liked; he
proposed for her, and brought her back to England as his wife. She became
the mother of an ailing boy, Guglielmo. Sangiovanni, as a husband, was not
unkind in his way, but had all the jealousy (perfectly gratuitous in this
instance) and the dominance of a Southern Italian; and his wife was almost a
prisoner in her dingy tenement, Nassau Street, Marylebone, where her spouse
carried on his clay-modelling art. My mother, with some of us children,
often looked in upon her solitude, and held her in deserved esteem. After
some years she came to understand (I know not how) that Sangiovanni was
already a married man, having a wife still living in Italy. This was, I
suppose, true; and not less true that Sangiovanni had heard nothing of his
first wife for many years, and had genuinely believed her to be no more.
About the same time our Mrs. Sangiovanni got to know something about the
Mormons; so one day she vanished with her son to Mormon-
land, and was never again traced. This may have been in
1846. Sangiovanni, after much agitated inquiry, resumed his ordinary work,
and he died at Brighton in 1853.
Other names and reminiscences crowd upon me as I write. There was an
odd personage, Albera, whom we considered not entirely sane. He was a great
believer in one of the professing Dauphins of France, Louis
XVII.—I think this one was the so-called Naundorf—and
he insisted upon taking my father to see him, and believe in him too. My
father saw him, but did not believe in him; though he allowed that Naundorf looked very like a Bourbon,
1 and had a daughter resembling Marie Antoinette. After a while
Naundorf took to a sort of religious revelation, as well as to Gallic
royalty, and my father, regarding him as a decided impostor, visited him no
more. Then came a little snuffy senile Frenchman, the Comte de Neubourg, who
was, I suppose, a Legitimist or Carlist. If his linen was not spotless, his
manners were exquisitely polite. He had a mania for puns; and, when my
father was conversing on some subject with his usual energetic zest, the
Comte would at times both embarrass and exasperate him by interjecting
something which, on reflection, proved to have no
raison d'être beyond punning. Another singular person was the “Babylonish
Princess” (introduced into our house by Cavalier Mortara),
“Maria Theresa Asmar, daughter of Emir Abdallah
Asmar,” who published her Memoirs in two volumes in 1844. She was a small, very dark woman, of middle
age and subdued manners, and decidedly plain. A Vastese named Rulli appeared
in our house towards 1842, and made some pretence at bringing Dante Rossetti
on in his artistic studies. I believe his instruction was limited to
propounding to the youth, for copying, a drawing or engraving of an
architectonic ram's
Transcribed Footnote (page 51):
1 This question of Naundorf, or of other persons
who claimed to be Louis XVII., has of late acquired added
importance, as it seems to be established, by the investigation
ordered by the French Government, that the remains which were
produced and medically inspected in 1795 as being those of the
deceased Louis XVII. cannot really have been his.
head. Rulli appeared to us an unmeaning and not
easily intelligible sort of character; he had something in him, however, for
he died in a battle for Italian liberation. An Avvocato Teodorani adopted,
and even wrote or lectured on, some of Rossetti's ideas concerning Dante and
other Italian poets; and a cultivated gentleman, De' Filippi, saw a good
deal of his closing years. A native of the Kingdom of Naples was generally
to be known (apart from dialect or physiognomy) by his addressing my father
as “Don Gabriele”—for that mode still
subsists from the old days of the Spanish occupation. To other Italians my
father was “Signor Rossetti,” or (if on a formal
footing, which was not wont to last long) “Signor
Professore.”
The determined character of some of these men may be illustrated by a
passage from a letter written by Gabriele Rossetti in April 1851. I can
hardly have failed to see the Galanti here mentioned, but I do not remember
his person.
“Hither had fled from Naples, after the
infamous treason of 15 May 1848, a man of great talent, the Avvocato
Giacinto Galanti, who piqued himself on a spirit of prophecy. At that
time our national affairs were flourishing; but he foresaw disasters
which, since then, have come but too true. One evening he called to read
me a writing of his entitled
The Three Years, 1848 (it was just in June of that year), 1849, and 1850. The
first of these three years he defined as a Year of Roses and Thorns (and
you will take note that the thorns had not yet begun); the second, Year
all Thorns; and the third, Year of Death. And such, haplessly, they all
turned out. He arraigned the Roman Popedom as the principal cause of all
the reverses which he foresaw; and Pius IX. was, at that date, still
enacting the comedy which he afterwards turned into a tragedy. On
hearing that writing I was staggered; and yet, not being able then to
give credence to it, I smiled incredulously, and, shaking my head, I
called Galanti a bird of ill omen and a visionary. He rose incensed, and
exclaimed: ‘You will see whether I speak the truth,
and you will confess it; but not to me, for I will not await the
direful time that is coming upon us.’ Saying
this, he departed, returned to his house, not far from mine, and cut his
throat. This terrible event produced the deepest impression on me; and soon
afterwards began our disasters. The days of
Novara, Verona, and Mantua, ensued; and then the flight of the Impius
who is called Pius, and so to the roses succeeded the thorns. Of the
other two years I do not speak; you know what
they
were.”
Towards the close of my father's life various protestantizing
Italians, most of them ex-Catholic priests, got about him, and worked the
anti-papal side of his opinions and writings. They started a review called
the
Eco di Savonarola. We did not relish them much, though we thought Crespi and Di Menna
(the latter a very feeble-minded personage) honest in their views. There
were also Ferretti and Mapei—the last little to our taste. I
cannot recollect that we ever saw Gavazzi, the admired pulpit orator, but we
certainly did see Dr. Achilli —whose character came much
bespattered out of his action against Cardinal Newman for libel—a
heavy beetle-browed man, who looked fit for most things evil.
I have not yet named the two foremost London-dwelling Italians of my
boyhood, Mazzini and Panizzi. That great man, Mazzini, was naturally well
known to my father, and highly esteemed by him—a feeling which
Mazzini reciprocated. They dissented however, to some extent, as to what
should be regarded as practical aims to work for, and practical means of
working. Mazzini was, of course, for a republic, and for any number of
revolutionary attempts, even though manifestly destined to present failure;
whereas Rossetti was fundamentally for a unified constitutional monarchy,
and for a plan of action which would preserve rather than sacrifice valuable
lives. Mazzini was perhaps, of the two, the more nearly in the right; for it
seems as if the result would not, without his ceaseless incitements, have
been attained nearly as soon as it was. I do not think that I ever set eyes
on Mazzini in my father's house; but I well remember seeing him, towards
1842, at a meeting attended by a number of poor Italians, organ-grinders and
others, for whom a school was being started. He spoke after my father; and
the noble, simple utterance of the word with which he began his address
—“Fratelli”—still sounds upon my ear. As to
Panizzi, my
Note: In the first paragraph, “Rufini” should read
“Ruffini”.
father knew him likewise in the early years; but he understood
(I believe correctly) that Panizzi was the writer of an adverse and partly
sneering critique on his theories concerning Dante and other writers; this
he resented, and they met no more. Garibaldi and Saffi, who came into fame
when my father was declining and withdrawn from society, he never saw; nor
do I think he saw the patriot-assassin Felice Orsini, nor Rufini, author of
the admired tale
Doctor Antonio. General Guglielmo Pepe he had known very intimately in Naples, and
they kept up some correspondence to a late date, when Pepe was acting as one
of the heroic defenders of Venice, 1848-49; but the General, so far as I am
aware, never came to England.
The
bête noire of the
political Italians whom we so constantly saw was the King of the French,
Louis Philippe, or Luigi Filippo, as they called him. He was more abhorred,
because more powerful for good or for evil, than even the Pope, the King of
Naples, or the pettier tyrants of Italy. Of course too he was regarded as a
traitor, having come to the throne by a popular revolution, and then
reinforced the cause of retrogression and coercion. There were also the
Austrians —“Gli
Austriaci”—and their hell-hound Metternich.
The number of times I have heard Luigi Filippo denounced would tax the
resources of the Calculating Boy. My mind's eye presents a curious group,
though it seemed natural enough at the time. My father and three or four
foreigners engaged in animated talk on the affairs of Europe, from the point
of view of patriotic aspiration, and hope long deferred till it became
almost hopeless, with frequent and fervent recitations of poetry
intervening; my mother quiet but interested, and sometimes taking her mild
womanly part in the conversation; and we four children—Maria more
especially, with her dark Italian countenance and rapt
eyes—drinking it all in as a sort of necessary atmosphere of the
daily life, yet with our own little interests and occupations as
well—reading, colouring prints, looking into illustrated books,
nursing a cat, or whatever came uppermost. The talk was essentially of a serious
and often an elevated kind, but varied with any
amount of lively banter, anecdote, or jest, and with those familiar
reminiscences of the old days and the old country so poignantly dear to the
exile's heart. As has already been partly indicated, no period passed, even
in our infancy, at which we were much less capable of following a
conversation in Italian than in English; and we could pick out tolerably
something of French in talk, even before being set to learn the language
grammatically. Italian grammar we—with the exception of
Maria—hardly looked into at all as a matter of system, and
English grammar was counted as pretty well explaining itself.
I regard it as more than probable that the perpetual excited and of
course one-sided talk about Luigi Filippo and other political matters had
something to do with the marked alienation from current politics which
characterized my brother in his adolescent and adult years. He was not of a
long-suffering temper, and may have thought the whole affair a considerable
nuisance at times, and resolved that he at least would leave Luigi Filippo
and the other potentates of Europe and their ministers, to take care of
themselves.
I find some remarks in John Stuart Mill's
Autobiography (1873) which appear well worth attention; here I quote them as
indicating the kind of intellectual savour which we absorbed in childhood,
and which I conceive to have been eminently well adapted for ripening the
faculties and keeping the feelings undebased. Mill, it will be perceived, is
speaking of French (as contrasted with English) society, but what he says
would apply in a general way to those Italians whom we were in the habit of
seeing; though it must be allowed that several of them were commonplace
persons in the fullest sense of the term. Mill says, speaking of the
fifteenth year of his life—I abridge the passage here and there:—
“The greatest perhaps of the many
advantages which I owed to this episode in my education was that of
having breathed for a whole year the free and genial atmosphere of
continental life. Having so little experience of English life, and the
few people I knew being mostly such as had public objects, of a large and
personally disinterested kind, at heart, I was
ignorant of the low moral tone of what in England is called Society; the
habit of, not indeed professing, but taking for granted in every mode of
implication, that conduct is of course always directed towards low and
petty objects. I could not then know or estimate the difference between
this manner of existence, and that of a people like the French, whose
faults, if equally real, are at all events different; among whom
sentiments, which by comparison at least may be called elevated, are the
current coin of human intercourse, both in books and in private life;
and, though often evaporating in profession, are yet kept alive in the
nation at large by constant exercise, and stimulated by sympathy, so as
to form a living and active part of the existence of great numbers of
persons, and to be recognized and understood by all. Neither could I
then appreciate the general culture of the understanding which results
from the habitual exercise of the feelings, and is thus carried down
into the most uneducated classes of several countries on the continent,
in a degree not equalled in England among the so-called educated, except
where an unusual tenderness of conscience leads to a habitual exercise
of the intellect on questions of right and wrong. I even then felt,
though without stating it clearly to myself, the contrast between the
frank sociability and amiability of French personal intercourse, and the
English mode of existence, in which everybody acts as if everybody else
(with few or no exceptions) was either an enemy or a bore. In France, it
is true, the bad as well as the good points, both of individual and of
national character, come more to the surface, and break out more
fearlessly in ordinary intercourse, than in England; but the general
habit of the people is to show, as well as to expect, friendly feeling
in every one towards every other, wherever there is not some positive
cause for the opposite.”
I will add here one word or two on the contrary side. I think that the
base passion of envy is more common among Italian than among English people;
likewise a certain penurious or stingy habit, which may
however—among the Italians I knew in boyhood—have been
chiefly due to the much greater expense of living which they found in
England, beyond what they had known in Italy. To spend a pound sterling
wore, in their eyes, a different aspect from what it
does in a Londoner's. As to what is commonly
called “morality,” those Italians (so far as I can
review them now) look to me, as a class, quite up to the British level; but
of course the point could not be estimated by me in boyhood, and since the
close of my father's life my knowledge of Italians in England is practically
a blank; and the same was the case with my brother.
Dante Rossetti's earliest education was conducted by our
mother; little or not at all by our father, apart from the general mental
incitement (and this assuredly counted for a good deal) which his
conversation, his using the Italian language, and his readings of his poems,
supplied. I may say in this connexion that my own
education—allowing for the moderate difference of
age—proceeded
pari passu with my brother's; and that my two sisters owed
everything in the way of early substantial instruction to our
mother. To school they never went at all. Thus all four of us were
constantly together in infancy and childhood. Wherever one was, there the
other was—and that was almost always at home. In what I have next
to say I shall aim at confining myself to Dante Gabriel, but it will be
understood that what is true of him applies mainly to the other three
children as well.
Of course our religious mother gave Dante some rudiments of Christian
knowledge, from the Bible and the “Church Catechism,”
and at a suitable age took him to church. He got to know the whole Bible
fairly well, and necessarily regarded it with reverence as one of the
greatest and sublimest books in the world.
Job,
Ecclesiastes, and the
Apocalypse, were the sections of the Scripture which, before he attained
manhood and ever afterwards, he viewed with peculiar interest and homage. He
must have been able to read currently, and to write with moderate neatness, soon
after completing five years of age. His early
reading seems to have been all in English; although, as he spoke Italian,
for ordinary household purposes, about as readily as English, and as the
reading process in Italian is incomparably the easier of the two for a
beginner, no reason is apparent to me why this was the case.
I lately came across two letters addressed by my father to my mother,
August and September 1836, which give a clear indication as to the knowledge
of Italian then possessed by Dante, in his ninth year. The first expresses
some surprise at finding that Dante and his two juniors (Christina was not
yet six) had perfectly understood a letter in Italian from their mother,
read out to them. In his second letter, my father says that Dante and I,
having received notes from Maria, chanted aloud, with great demonstrations
of glee, the following stave:—
- “L'amabile
Maria
- Ringraziata sia
- De' due biglietti suoi
- Mandati ad ambi noi.”
1
This extemporized effusion must, I suppose, have been the performance
of Dante Gabriel. These seem to be the first rhymes he ever concocted, and,
if so, he rhymed in Italian earlier than in English. My father of course
smiles over verses of such a calibre—which are, nevertheless,
correct in rhyme and rhythm, and not (I should say) wrong in diction.
I think that the very first book my brother took to with strong
personal zest was Shakespear's
Hamlet—
i.e., certain scenes of
Hamlet, giving a fairly complete idea of the story, which were printed to
accompany the outlines to that tragedy engraved after the then universally
celebrated German artist, Retzsch. Both outlines and scenes interested him
vastly at the age of five, or it may be even of four; and soon a relative
(probably one of our aunts) gave him a Bowdler's Shakespear, in which he
read numerous plays—and indeed
Transcribed Footnote (page 58):
1 Thanks to good-natured Maria for her two notes
sent to both of us.
Note: In the last paragraph,
“Fitz-Eustace” should read “De
Wilton”.
he read, unchecked, in un-Bowdlerised editions as well. A
little incident serves to fix my memory as to dates etc. in this matter.
Before I was six years of age, and therefore before the close of September
1835, I had a dangerous gastric illness; and, while I was recovering from
that, Dante produced for my diversion, “out of his own
head,” a little
series of drawn and
coloured figures of the leading personages
in the three parts
of
Henry VI. I need not say that these were childish performances in the most
absolute sense. He can then have been at the utmost seven years and four
months old, and was, I fancy, some months younger. The trilogy of
Henry VI. was a great favourite with all of us; but, by the time when Dante was
familiar with that drama, he was not less versed in several other plays of
Shakespear. I might with confidence specify
The Tempest,
Midsummer Night's Dream,
The Merchant of Venice,
Henry IV.,
Richard III.,
Romeo and Juliet,
Macbeth, and there were others as well. Of four of these we had outline-books
similar to that of
Hamlet—the designs by Retzsch, or by a less prominent German
artist, Ruhl. There were also Retzsch's famous outlines to
Göthe's
Faust. Through these, with their accompanying text in English, my brother
got to know, and to admire, something of
Faust, not very long after
Hamlet. Here was, at any rate, a good beginning for taste in poetry. Two
other books with similar outlines were
Fridolin, translated from Schiller (which we thought feeble stuff), and the
Dragon of Rhodes.
The next immense favourite was Walter Scott. Some relative presented a
pocket-edition of
Marmion to Dante Rossetti at a very childish age. He ramped through it, and
recited whole pages at a stretch—the death of Constance, the
battle and death of Marmion, etc. Fitz-Eustace was regarded as a tame and
correct-minded character rousing no interest.
The Lay of the Last Minstrel and
The Lady of the Lake excited fully as much delight as
Marmion;
The Lord of the Isles and
Rokeby only a little less. I can still recollect that one afternoon the
junior master at our first school, the younger Mr.
Paul, called at our house for some purpose, and
found us all four racing and tumbling about the floor, repeating in semi-drama the Battle of Clan Alpin, from
The Lady of the Lake. Dante was then just about nine years of age. Along with Scott's poems
the
Arabian Nights went on at a great
rate; the old English translation after Galland, and not long afterwards Lane's very different version.
The Waverly Novels ensued pretty soon after the poems—
Ivanhoe (the prime favourite),
Kenilworth,
Quentin Durward, etc. It may perhaps be as well to give here the opinion which, at a
mature age, Dante Rossetti entertained of Walter Scott's novels. It is
expressed in a letter of October 1871, addressed to Mr. William Bell Scott:—
“
I have read several
of Scott's novels here, and been surprised both at their usual
melodramatic absurdities of plot, and their astounding command of
character in the personages by whom all these improbabilities are
enacted. The novels are wonderful works, with all their faults.
Guy Mannering and
St. Ronan's Well—neither of which I knew before—delighted
me extremely. Another I read is
The Fair Maid of Perth; which is on a level with the Victoria drama in some respects,
but, in some points of conception and vivid reality in parts, can
only be compared to the greatest imaginative works
existing.”
These books—Shakespear,
Faust, Scott, and the
Arabian Nights—and, along with these, Keightley's
Fairy Mythology (mentioned in a previous section), Monk Lewis's verse-collection
Tales of Wonder (
Alonzo the Brave, etc.), and the stirring ballad of
Chevy Chase—may certainly be regarded as the staple and the
fine fleur of what Dante Rossetti revelled
in up to the close of his tenth year or thereabouts. He always discerned the
difference between the “Ghost in
Hamlet” and a ghost by Monk Lewis. Other things are present to me
as well: Carleton's
Traits and Stories of the Irish Peasantry,
Robinson Crusoe,
Gulliver, Gay's
Fables,
Pascal Bruno (a tale translated from Dumas), Fitzgreene Halleck's short poem of
Marco Bozaris, an incident
of the Greek War of Independence. Of Burns he had
a kind of idea, through looking into an edition sparsely illustrated by
Westall; but the dialect was a bar to his taking very kindly to the poems.
Lamb's
Tales from Shakespear he skimmed and slighted. Of directly “funny”
things I remember only
John Gilpin and some jocosities of Hood in a
Comic Annual. Naturally, too, there were the old nursery-rhymes in infantine years,
and
The Peacock at Home; and the old Fairy-tales, such as
Puss in Boots,
Bluebeard,
Cinderella,
Jack the Giant-Killer,
Beauty and the Beast, etc. Our mother kept us adequately supplied with books having a
directly religious or didactic aim—stories about “good
little boys and girls,” or the alternative naughty ones, and
other such matter; but she, like a sensible woman, did not tie us down to
liking them, in case we happened to dislike them—which we
generally did. There were some of Miss Edgeworth's stories for children,
such as
Frank; Day's
Sandford and Merton;
The Fairchild Family, by Mrs. Sherwood, which last we were far from relishing. The one
which I recollect as best esteemed was
The Son of a Genius, by Mrs. Hofland; a companion story was
The Daughter of a Genius. A minute edition of
Stories from English History, by James Mill, was very frequently in our hands, with prints
—the Druids burning victims in wicker cages to their gods, Queen
Margaret and the Robber, and so on.
Illustrated books and engravings were not very numerous in our house,
but still in fair quantity. One that Dante and the rest of us looked at
continually, beginning well nigh in infancy, was an old-fashioned little
book (1700) in the Dutch language, named
Metamorphosis Naturalis, by a painter (Goedaerdt), with coloured prints of insects and their
transformations. Blank wonderment, with much of stimulating pleasure and
something of repulsion, was the result. Later on, and never tired of, came
Martin and Westall's Illustrations of the
Bible
; and to his last day Dante would have told you that Martin was an
imaginative pictorial genius of no mean power. Afterwards some one gave him
a book of
rather large outline engravings from Scripture,
after the Old Masters—emptyish-looking things which he frequently
inspected, with little real sympathy. I have always thought that his
indifference to the respectable conventions of Old-Masterhood, leading on
to the Præraphaelite movement, had something to do with this
book. Our grandfather had at Holmer Green some engravings after Rubens, the
subjects from the story of Achilles. They met his fancy in a certain way,
but he did not like their fleshy forms and florid manner. Also (belonging
probably to Eliza Polidori) a book of English engravings from Raphael's
Cartoons, with highly laudatory descriptions. Another of our grandfather's
possessions was a fine large edition of Ariosto, with French engravings of
last century. These were an endless delight to Dante, from the age of eleven
or so onwards. He owned much earlier, as a present from the same relative, a
little book of French or Flemish woodcut-illustrations to Bible history,
dating towards 1580. They were probably artistic things of their kind, and
he enjoyed their arbitrary treatment and unreasonable costumes. Among our
father's books were a
Poliphili Hypnerotomachia; Gombauld's
Endymion, in English, with engravings, dated 1639; and a volume of pagan
mythology with startling woodcuts of about the early seventeenth
century—I presume it to have been the
De Naturâ Deorum of Boccaccio. All these Dante inspected from time to time, with some
gusto not unmingled with awe—each book being pronounced by our
father to be a “
libro sommamente mistico,
1” according to his system of
interpretation of mediæval and renaissance literature. In his
opening years no prints were more frequently in Dante's hands than a series
of lithographs from Roman history, the work of Filippo Pistrucci (there was
also a different series, coloured allegorical
designs); not very superior efforts of art, but far from being amiss
in treatment of the subjects. At one time, after Dante had passed out of
mere childhood, some one brought into our
Transcribed Footnote (page 62):
1 Book in the highest degree mystical.
house Pinelli's outlines from
Roman history. These we admired most heartily, and I suppose
with good reason. Some of Pinelli's subjects of Italian peasant and street
life we knew already. Various other prints and drawings occur to my mind;
but somewhere I must stop, and I stop here. Occasionally—it seems
to me by no means often—he went to the National Gallery in
childhood. Mr. Frederick J. Shields has recorded an interesting point that
he heard from Dante Rossetti, who mentioned it to show the sound direction
which, in many instances, his mother gave to his taste. On his first visit
to the National Gallery—he may, I suppose,
have been then just ten years of age
1 —he was inclined to admire the big, showy, and (to an
untrained eye) somewhat telling picture by Benjamin West,
Christ healing the Sick; but his mother, who made no
pretence to technical knowledge in art, at once set him right by remarking
that it was “commonplace and
expressionless.” What two epithets could go closer to the
root of the thing?
It has often been said, by writers who know nothing very definite about
the matter, that Dante Rossetti was, from childhood or early boyhood, a
devoted admirer of the stupendous poet after whom he was christened. This is
a mistake. No doubt our father's Dantesque studies saturated the household
air with wafts and rumours of the mighty Alighieri; therefore the child
breathed Dante (so to speak), but he did not think Dante, nor lay him to
heart. On the contrary, our father's speculations and talk about
Dante— which, although he highly valued the poetry as such, all
took an abstruse or theoretic turn—rather alienated my brother
than otherwise, and withheld him from “looking up” the
Florentine, to see whether his poems were things readable, like those of
Shakespear, Scott, or Göthe. With all of us children the case was
the same. I question whether my
Transcribed Footnote (page 63):
1 The National Gallery, in its present building,
opened to the public in April 1838. The first nucleus of the
collection had previously been housed in Pall Mall, but I surmise
that none of my family ever went there.
brother had ever read twenty consecutive lines of
Dante until he was some fifteen or sixteen years of age; no doubt after that
he rapidly made up for lost time. Our father, when writing about the
Comedia or the
Vita Nuova, was seen surrounded by ponderous folios in italic type,
“libri mistici”
and the like (often about alchemy, freemasonry, Brahminism, Swedenborg, the
Cabbala, etc.), and filling page after page of prose, in impeccable
handwriting, full of underscorings, interlineations, and cancellings. We
contemplated his labours with a certain hushed feeling, which partook of
respect and also of levity, but were assuredly not much tempted to take up
one of his books, and see whether it would “do to
read.” The
Convito was always a name of dread to us, as being the very essence of arid
unreadableness. Dante Alighieri was a sort of banshee in the Charlotte
Street houses; his shriek audible even to familiarity, but the message of it
not scrutinized.
As to all this, a passage in my brother's Preface to his book
Dante and his Circle
ought to have prevented any misapprehension concerning the supposed
constant reading of Alighieri in very childish years. He says:—
“
The first associations I
have are connected with my father's devoted studies, which, from his
own point of view, have done so much towards the general
investigation of Dante's writings. Thus, in those early days, all
around me partook of the influence of the great Florentine; till,
from viewing it as a natural element, I also,
growing
older
, was drawn within the circle.”
There was an English artist named Seymour Kirkup, domiciled in
Florence. He was made a Barone of the Italian Kingdom, and must be
remembered by many persons now living, as he only died towards 1879, aged
ninety-two or thereabouts. He was an enthusiast for Dante, and was a
profound believer in my father's scheme of Dantesque interpretation. He
began corresponding with my father towards 1837, and kept this up for
several years. It was in 1839 that he took a leading part in discovering the
portrait of the youthful
Dante, by Giotto, in the Bargello of Florence, long lost under
whitewash. He made at once a good full-sized coloured drawing of this
invaluable portrait (now, sad to say, no longer in a perfectly authentic
state), and sent the drawing as a present to my father; from him it came to
my brother, and was only disposed of in the sale of his effects which
followed his death in 1882. The receipt of this portrait probably put the
mind and feelings of Dante Rossetti as much
en
rapport
with the Florentine poet as any incident which had preceded
it; but even so he did not take any immediate steps for acquainting himself
with the poems.
My brother's first “poem”—his almost solitary drama
1— was written in his own handwriting, towards the age of
five. He may have been just six, rather than five, but I am not certain. It
is entitled
The Slave
, and it lies before me at this moment. Why he wrote
The Slave
, or what he supposed himself to mean in writing it, is not clear to
me. One can, however, form one safe inference—that his
inspiration derived from seeing,
passim in
Shakespear, the words “Slave, Traitor, Villain,” and
what not.
The Slave
consists of three Scenes in two “Acts”; it only
fills nine small pages of large writing. The writing begins by imitating
print, but goes on into an ordinary (very childish) cursive hand. Probably
Dante Gabriel learned how to write cursively while the drama was in course
of composition. It surprises me to note that the spelling is strictly
correct: the blank verse (when it occurs, for some parts are in truncated
verse, or practical prose) is also correct enough—as here:—
- “Ho, if thou be alive, come out
and fight me!”
- “Down, slave, I dare thee on!
Coward, thou diest!”
- “But yet I will not live to see
thee thus.”
This matter of versification correct in accent and number of feet,
however puerile in other respects, may to some readers seem stranger than it
does to me; for I cannot, with reference
Transcribed Footnote (page 65):
1 I say “
almost solitary,” because I
possess another trifle in the dramatic form—a mere piece
of grotesque banter—of a late date, 1878.
to any one of us four, remember any time when,
knowing what a verse was, we did not also know and feel what a
correct verse was. The early reading of really good poetry, and
perhaps quite as much the constant hearing of our father's verses recited
with perfect articulation and emphasis, may account for this.
The
Dramatis Personæ of
The Slave
are set down thus:—“
Don Manuel, a Spanish Lord; Traitor,
an Officer; Slave, a Servant to Traitor; Mortimer, an English
Knight; Guards, Messengers, etc.” No plot is apparent, only constant objurgation and
fighting. The utmost stretch of conjecture as to a plot would amount simply
to this: Don Manuel is entitled to the allegiance of Traitor, who has
deserted him, and sides with Mortimer; Slave is viewed with suspicion by all
three; Traitor, getting the worst of it in a fight, kills himself; Mortimer,
as an act of condolence for Traitor, kills
himself; Slave
is killed by Don Manuel, who is left surviving,
faute de mieux. It will be observed that there is no
“female interest” in the
The Slave
; and in fact the “gushing or ecstatic female”
was, to all us infants, a personage less provocative of sentiment than of
mirth. Often and fatuously did we laugh over Coleridge's poem of
Love (
Genevieve)—the very poem which, in an
edition of Coleridge that I possess, my brother, in one of his latest years,
marked with the word “Perfection.”
In the same minute paper-book which contains
The Slave
Dante followed on, in a rather less rudimentary handwriting, with
The Beauties of Shakespeare. These
consist singly of Portia's speech, “The quality of mercy
is not strained.” Then comes
Alladin, or The Wonderful Lamp, by Gabriel
Rossetti, Painter of Play-Pictures
(this refers to his constant industry in colouring prints of
stage-characters).
Alladin
is in prose, and only a few lines were written, totally uninteresting.
The sole amusing point about it is the List of Personages, which are
assigned to such minor performers as “
Mrs. Siddons, Mr. Kemble, Mr.
Kean,” and others whose names he got no doubt from his
theatrical prints. The three
above named were already dead at the time. Mrs.
Siddons, and more particularly Kemble (John Philip), had been well
known—I may here observe—to Gaetano Polidori. After
Alladin
, a few pages of the book are filled with drawings (of a kind). One is
Guy Fawkes, with lantern and dagger. He is done in heavy ink-silhouette, which
is blotted down upon the page that faces him.
And so much for
The Slave
and its adjuncts; which I might barely have mentioned, but for the
fact that this “drama” has been adverted to in print
before now, and it seemed desirable to settle once for all what it amounted
to.
I must say a little more about infantine drawings—some in
pencil, most in pen and ink, many of them coloured. Two
represent
his dormouse “Dwanging”; and, as Dwanging (so it
appears to me) hardly existed at a date later than the completion of Dante's
sixth year (12 May 1834), these must be extremely early affairs, not wholly
unlike the look of the animal. To 1834 belongs also (as I have said) a
portrait of his rocking-horse. These three are so
far tolerable as to show that it was a pity he did not draw a little oftener
from actual objects, but almost always mere inventions (such as they were),
prompted to a large extent by his theatrical-character prints, with
straddling legs and irrational pretences at costume. One that seems to my
memory very early indeed is
Macbeth contemplating the aërial
dagger
. A little book of childish drawings exists, chiefly from various
plays. I will only name one subject from each play, as marked in our
mother's handwriting—a pretty good indication that Dante himself
was barely competent to write neatly at the time. These comprise
Talbot rescuing his son John from Orleans
(Shakespear's
Henry VI.);
Buckingham and Catesby presenting the crown to
Richard
;
Prince Henry throwing Falstaff's bottle of sack
at him
;
Combat between Macbeth and young Siward
;
Casca stabbing Cæsar;
Rolla carrying off the Child
(from Sheridan's
Pizarro).
In concluding this account of Dante Rossetti's earliest years, I must
observe that he was certainly fortunate in his
family surroundings. His father was a poet and man
of letters, his grandfather the same; his mother had a good appreciation of
literary matters; his sisters and brother all watched with interest and
seconded with zest whatever he did as a beginning at writing and at drawing.
He had also the vast advantage of speaking two languages, of which one
served as a direct introduction to Latin. In no quarter did he encounter
anything to thwart his inclinations, to divert his steps, or to throw cold
water on his small performances. He was not wilfully spoiled nor absurdly
petted, nor was any difference made between him and the other children; but
he felt himself to be encouraged as well as loved, and in most matters he
had his own way. This, with the temper which was innate in him, he would
perhaps have got anyhow; as things went, he got it unenforced. Naturally
this favourable condition of family relations continued to grow with his
growth.
It must have been after the midsummer holidays of 1836
that Dante Rossetti first went to school; I followed him after the Christmas
holidays. The school was that of the Rev. Mr. Paul, in Foley Street,
Portland Place—a day-school for most of the pupils, or perhaps
all. There was, I think, only one assistant master, Mr. Paul's son. The
pupils were not numerous—say twenty-five to thirty-five. They
must chiefly have been sons of local tradesmen. I remember one set of
boys—three brothers—of gentle birth and breeding, the
Cummings; also Aikman, who (I have an impression) became an officer of some
distinction in the Indian army. We were instructed in some rudimentary
matters—writing, arithmetic (Dante Gabriel was always bad at
this, and to the end of his days I fancy he would have been at fault here
and there in the multiplication table), English grammar, geography,
history, and the first steps in Latin. We also had
to do a “theme” once or twice—a composition upon some given subject;
1 and we received some little drawing tuition from a French Master,
M. Abeille, whom we considered deft in his touch of foliage. We liked the
younger Mr. Paul; to the elder we had—and ought to have
had—no objection, but I remember little of him. One of my few
individual recollections of the school is that of hearing there the tolling
bell which announced the death of King William the Fourth. Among our
school-books was a volume of selections, prose and poetry, named
The Rhetorical Class-book, containing such
pieces as Campbell's
Lochiel's Warning, and his
Last Man, with marginal directions as to the proper tone, inflexion, gesture,
etc., for reciting them. We enjoyed a great deal of the text in this book,
and giggled over the directions—having always had in our father,
and indeed in our mother too, models that would have bettered that form of
instruction.
An English school such as that of Mr. Paul (and I must say the same of
King's College School, to which we went afterwards) is not an academy of
good manners, nor yet of high thinking; and it would be too true to
acknowledge that Dante Rossetti rapidly deteriorated here. I would add the
same very emphatically of myself, but that I am not exactly in question, and
need not intrude my small personality. At home he had witnessed nothing but
resolute and cheerful performance of duty, and heard nothing that was not
pure right, high-minded, and looking to loftier things. School first brought
him face to face with that which is “common and
unclean.” There is always some nasty-thinking boy to egg-on his
juniors upon a path of unsavouriness. A certain
Transcribed Footnote (page 69):
1 If the reader would like a laugh, he may
perhaps get it out of the following. One of the schoolboys (I do not
mean either Dante or myself) was told to do a theme on Candour. His
theme—I have never forgotten it—was in the
following words, as near as may be: “My dear
father—I want to write to you on the subject of
Candour. He is a most benevolent, candid, honourable, sordid,
and surly young man. His friends love him
dearly.”
A. (his initial shall stand instead of his name),
who sat next to Dante Gabriel, beset him with promptings of a worse than
useless kind. One thing was pointing out phrases in the Bible which he held
to be vastly amusing, but which little Dante did not want to be teazed with.
Dante mentioned the matter to his father, who conferred with Mr. Paul; and
A. was ordered to take a different seat in the school, and stick to it. This
is nearly all that I remember in a definite way about Mr. Paul's school.
Dante was a ready learner, and a willing one enough. The last performance,
as the school was breaking up for the holidays, was an evening of
recitations in the presence of parents and friends. Dante delivered (from
Shakespear's
Julius Cæsar) the speech of Antony over the body of Cæsar, and I the
speech of Brutus. We were clapped to our heart's content.
As a Professor in King's College, Gabriele Rossetti was entitled to
send one son to the day-school there free of charge, and a second son at
reduced fees. It had therefore always been intended that we boys should go
to that school as soon as a little preliminary instruction had been gained
at Mr. Paul's establishment; and thither accordingly we went after the
midsummer holidays of 1837. Dante was rightfully admissible, having attained
the regulation age of nine; I was not so, being not quite eight, but was
allowed to pass muster. As this is a day-school (although a few pupils were
housed as boarders), we went daily to and fro. At first we took the route by
Regent Street and the Strand to Somerset House, but afterwards preferred the
more plebeian, and to us more amusing, shops of Tottenham Court Road and St.
Giles's (no New Oxford Street then existed). The Head Master was the Rev.
Dr. Major, of whom, in Dante Gabriel's time, we saw little. The Principal
was Dr. Lonsdale, Bishop of Lichfield. The school was then, as it is now, of
strict Church-of England principle, and most of the masters were clergymen.
On one or two occasions I saw prizes distributed by the Archbishop of
Canterbury, Dr. Howley—a little old man, still wearing the
episcopal white wig, of the gentlest manner and address, almost apologetic
to the students (so it seemed)
for so far putting himself forward. He
was—in regard at least to aspect and
demeanour—anything but one of those
vescovi pettoruti (bishops high in flesh) who were frequently in my father's mouth; for
the latter disliked the worldly well-being and brow-beating respectability
of the Anglican clergy only a little less than the arrogant bigotry of their
Roman compeers. The great prize-receiver in those days was Arthur Cayley,
the pre-eminent Cambridge Mathematician, who would come up for three or four
successive prizes in one afternoon. His younger brother, Charles Bagot
Cayley, was one of my father's pupils in Italian, and learned the language
admirably, as shown by his fine translations of Dante and
Petrarca—a most estimable scholarly man, without a taint of
mundane self-seeking. I forget how many languages he knew. If he did not
know one, he only had to learn it. He was once asked, by some missionary or
other society, to translate the Gospels for the Iroquois. He went to the
British Museum Library, looked up an Iroquois grammar or two, and, at the
end of six weeks or so, he undertook the task, and performed it.
My brother and myself entered King's College School in the lowest
class—the Lower First—of which the Rev. Mr. Hayes was
the Master. Some schoolboy called him “Bantam,” from
his red complexion and facial angle; and every other schoolboy followed
suit. To us he was kind; and he perhaps stretched a point by returning our
“characters,” in the first quarterly report, as
“in every respect satisfactory” for
Dante, and for myself “in the highest degree
commendable.” Some other good reports of us may have
followed, but certainly none so flowery as that.
Dante Rossetti's school-life at King's College lasted just five years,
from the autumn of 1837 to the summer of 1842. He had no further schooling
of any kind, except some German lessons taken at home, and his instruction
for the pictorial profession. When he left school, he wrote an excellent
hand; knew Latin reasonably well, up to Sallust, Ovid, Virgil, etc.; had the
beginning of a knowledge of Greek, but I can hardly
say whether, after a few years' interval, he could
even read the Greek characters with any readiness; understood French
well—well enough to begin forthwith, which he did, reading any
number of French novels for himself; and had some inkling on subjects of
history, geography, etc. He always saw easily into linguistic and
grammatical matters, so far as he cared to pursue them. He had also been
brought on a little in drawing, of a more or less sketchy kind. In the
classes generally (but not in the drawing-class) the boys had to be seated
in the order of their proficiency, one of them “taking the
place” of another as occasion arose; and Dante was usually pretty
near the head of a class. Of anything even distantly tending to
science—algebra, geometry, etc.— he learned nothing
whatever. The religious instruction at King's College School counted for
little: there were some prayers and a chapter of the Bible in the morning.
But all this time he continued going to church
en famille, without much liking or any serious distaste. In early childhood came
Trinity Church, Marylebone Road; then St. Katharine's, Regent's Park; then
Christ Church, Albany Street.
I will run over a few other particulars—I hope, with due
brevity. The Upper First Class was conducted by the Rev. Mr. Cockayne, who
became—or possibly then was—a good scholar in Early
English. The Second, by the Rev. Swinburne Carr, author of a serviceable
History of Greece. The Third, by the Rev. Mr. Hodgson, an ungainly little man whom the
boys did not like. I cannot say that Dante or myself had any reason to
complain of him. There was a legend that he knew very little about the
matters on which he instructed the boys, and that he had to prepare his own
lessons over-night. As to this I of course know nothing. In the Fourth
Class, the last which Dante Gabriel entered, the Master was the Rev. Mr.
Fearnley. Of him also a legend was current, purporting to account for a seam
visible in his throat. It was really, I presume, a seam of a scrofulous
nature; but the legend ran that he had once cut his throat with suicidal
intention, and had only been saved at the last gasp. Mr. Fearnley,
a large stalwart man, was considered severe, and
the boys were not very fond of being promoted into his
class—which may be a reason why some one concocted the legend.
Each of these classes numbered some thirty boys, more or less; perhaps one
or two of them attained to forty.
There were also the Writing and Arithmetic Masters, the French Masters,
and the Drawing Masters. Mr. Allsop, the Head Writing Master, was a great
adept in his craft, and would at times come round to one class or another
displaying a
chef d'œuvre of
caligraphy, full of the most astonishing flourishes. He was odd, and left
the school not long after we entered it; and I fear that the story I was
told, that he had gone out of his mind, was a true one. His successor was a
small old man, Mr. Hutton, of venerable grandfatherly aspect, with white
hair. He was easily put out, and some of the boys, being as pitiless as
other boys, put him out when they could. Dante held aloof from this
indignity. The French Masters were Mm. Gassion and Wattez, and Professor
Brasseur, all very competent men; the first two considerate to their pupils,
and the third, who could be sarcastic as well as considerate, a scholar of
some rank. He was afterwards French Preceptor to the Prince of Wales, and
died at a recent date, aged, I think, about ninety. The Drawing Master was
the most interesting personage of all—the celebrated member of
the Norwich School of Painting, John Sell Cotman. He was aged fifty-five
when Dante Rossetti entered King's College School—an alert,
forceful-looking man, of moderate stature, with a fine well-moulded face,
which testified to an impulsive nature somewhat worn and wearied. He seemed
sparing of speech, but high-strung in whatever he said. In fact, the seeds
of madness lurked in this distinguished artist, although, apart from a
rather excitable or abrupt manner in ruling his bear-garden, I never noticed
any symptoms of it. Pretty soon he left the school, and, just as Dante also
was leaving it, in July 1842, he died insane. Mr. Cotman's course of
instruction did not extend far beyond giving us pencil-sketches, often of
his own, to copy—fisher-folk, troopers, peasants,
boating, etc. Dante's copies were, I suppose,
considered to count among the more satisfactory, but I am not aware that
Cotman ever fixed particular attention upon him. As Drawing Master he was
succeeded by his son, Miles Edward Cotman. The latter died in 1858, aged
only forty-seven; and I fancy that he also, though perfectly quiet and
collected in manner, was a little peculiar.
In Mr. Hall Caine's book—
Recollections of Dante Gabriel
Rossetti
, 1882— there is a passage which deserves quotation here:—
“He is described, by those who remember
him at this period, as a boy of a gentle and affectionate nature, albeit
prone to outbursts of masterfulness. It is said that he was brave and
manly of temperament, courageous as to personal suffering, eminently
solicitous of the welfare of others, and kind and considerate to such as
he had claims upon. This is no doubt true portraiture; but it must be
stated (however open to explanation, on grounds of laudable
self-depreciation) that it is not the picture which he himself used to
paint of his character as a boy. He often described himself as being
destitute of personal courage when at school, as shrinking from the
amusements of school-fellows, and fearful of their
quarrels—not wholly without generous impulses, but in the
main selfish of nature, and reclusive in habit of life. He would have
had you believe that school was to him a place of semi-purgatorial
probation.”
All this is put in a very fair spirit by Mr. Caine, and it merits a
little reflection. No one now alive perhaps, except myself, could, with any
clear knowledge and recollection, say whether Dante Rossetti was
“destitute of personal courage when at
school.” I do not consider that he was by any means thus
destitute. I have seen him fight with a proper degree of tenacity when the
occasion arose; but it is strictly true that he was
“fearful of the quarrels” of
schoolfellows, in the sense that he totally disliked that loutish horse-play
and that scrambling pugnacity which are so eminently distinctive of the
British stripling. The meaningless defiance, the bullying onset, and the
mauling scuffle, looked to him ugly, base, detestable, and semi-human. If he
was mistaken, I should
Note: Toward the end of the page, “be passed it off lightly”
should read “he passed it off lightly”.
like to know wherein. The bull-dog propensity to pin somebody
by the muzzle, whether deserving to be so pinned or not, was not any part of
his character, inborn or acquired. Neither had he any liking for being set
up by his schoolfellows, without quarrel of his own, to fight a boy two or
three inches taller than himself, and with half as much again in thews and
sinews. That he was “in the main selfish of
nature” is true when the statement is properly
understood, but it might easily be misconstrued. He was selfish, in the
sense of self-centred. His own aims, his own opportunities, the working-out
of such faculty as he found within himself —these were always his
chief concern. To term him
“self-willed”—which he most eminently was
from first to last— would give a much more correct idea than to
term him “selfish.” He was not selfish
in the sense of being dull in affection to others, indifferent to their
welfare, or unwilling to exert himself to do them a benefit. He had a
theory, which I have heard him express at various periods of life, that men
who have an originating gift—or, in a broad sense, what we call
men of genius—are all selfish in that same mood of being
self-centred. He would say it of such poets as Dante, Milton,
Göthe, Wordsworth, Shelley, or of Shakespear if the facts of his
life were adequately known—of such painters and sculptors as
Titian, Cellini, Rembrandt, Blake, and Turner. And here again I apprehend
that he was remote from being wrong. That “school was to
him a place of semi-purgatorial probation” is, I dare
say, nearly true. It is a fact however that, if in reality he felt this at
the time deeply, be passed it off lightly; for to me, who was his daily
colleague and confidant, he never, so far as I can remember, unbosomed
himself to any such effect. That contact with school-life did the reverse of
good to the character of the boyish Rossetti is what I have already avowed.
His regard for veracity, the strictness of his sense of honour, his
readiness to brave inconvenience for principle, were subject to daily
undermining; for the moral atmosphere around reeked too perceptibly of
unveracity, slipperiness, and
shirking. His temper too, which was always an
arbitrary and peremptory one, did not improve; but he retained unimpaired
two valuable qualities—an easy good-nature, and a facility at
forgiving and forgetting. From infancy onwards he was always a great
favourite with servants, shoe-blacking men, organ-grinders, and people of
the like class. Brightness of parts and brightness of manner ensured this.
I have not yet referred to the statement reported by Mr. Caine about
“shrinking from the amusements of
schoolfellows.” This is entirely true, if
“shrinking” means “abstaining.”
He cared nothing for rough pastimes—though he would race about in
the scanty playground with others, bear a hand in snowballing, and so on;
but anything which would derive from personal liking, and would require
time, pains, and practice—such as skating, fishing, or
cricket—he left entirely aside. He did not want it; therefore he
did not pursue it. To learn swimming, boating, and riding, would, no doubt,
at school and after school, have been a benefit to him—a benefit
which the habits and circumstances of the family and his own indifference
withheld.
I was interested lately at finding, in a little
Memorial Volume on Edgar Allan Poe, a poet of my brother's marked predilection, an
account of that singular genius as a schoolboy which might almost have been
penned for Dante Rossetti. The volume was published at Baltimore in 1877,
and cannot be widely known on this side of the Atlantic. The writer of the
passage is Poe's schoolfellow at Richmond, Virginia, Colonel J. T. L.
Preston. He says:—
“Poe, as I recall my impressions now, was
self-willed, capricious, inclined to be imperious, and, though of
generous impulses, not steadily kind or even amiable.”
For Rossetti, the last clause should rather
run—“not definitely amiable, nor even always steadily
kind.”
The punishments in King's College School were of a mild character.
There was no flogging. Now and again an irritated master would cuff a boy,
or give him a bang on the
head with a book. This was an extempore, and I
suppose an unsanctioned, performance. An offender was made to stand out in
the middle of the room, or to stand upon a form for a while; or he was
“kept in” during playtime; or he had to do an
“imposition,” such as copying out the same line from
Virgil fifty times over. An ingenious boy would brace together two or three
pens at a proper gradient, and thus write two or three lines with one turn
of the hand.
There was no schoolfellow with whom Dante Rossetti contracted an
intimate acquaintance, far less a life-long friendship; but two or three
were in our house at times, or we in theirs. One of these was young
Lockhart, a grandson of Sir Walter Scott, aged about thirteen when Dante was
nine; a handsome, slim, straight-built youth, with very correct features. He
was a great hand at cutting out little models of boats. He became the
Lieutenant Walter Scott Lockhart-Scott, owner of Abbotsford, and died in
1853, aged only twenty-seven. Another boy was a son of William Westall the
Landscape-painter (brother of the Richard Westall so well-known to Dante
Rossetti through
Martin and Westall's Illustrations of the
Bible
, a painter of some note in his day, who gave instructions to the
Princess Victoria). This boy had a brother of weak mind and sometimes rather
dangerous (not in King's College School), who went by the undignified name
of “Sillikin.” Another boy was Geldart Evans Riadore,
who became a clergyman, and (I believe) Domestic Chaplain to the Duke of
Buccleuch, a lad of good parts and refinement, son of a Doctor. Also the
Wrays, sons of a deceased Colonial Judge; Boys, son of a leading
printseller; Capper, whose father was a coal-merchant; Charles Anderson, who
became a clergyman, doing good service in the East End of London; and the
Willoughbys, sons of a legal gentleman living in Lancaster Place, close to
King's College. Their family had the
entrée to the Terrace of Somerset House overlooking the
river; and we would sometimes join them on a half-holiday or holiday, taking
possession of a little lodge there, burning shavings in an empty grate, and
making an amount of noise
which was not kindly taken by the Government
Clerks whose windows opened on to the Terrace. These several boys are about
all I could specify. I make no mention of a very few others who were little
or not at all known to my brother in his schooldays, but only to myself
while my schooling was prolonged beyond his.
Dante Rossetti had a certain faint repute among his class-fellows as
being addicted to drawing or sketching—making, on an
exercise-book or the margin of a school-book, something that was understood
to figure a knight, cavalier, trooper, brigand, or what not—or as
buying and colouring theatrical characters, illustrated serials, and the
like. To this small extent, therefore, he was noted as a little uncommon;
and of course his foreign name and comparatively unschoolboy-like habits
counted for something. I suppose also—though I do not recollect
precise instances in point—that he was known for reciting verses.
A certain schoolfellow, probably after Dante had left, handed over to me
three or four poetical compositions which he himself had produced, one of
them beginning with the words, “I would I were a smiling
bird.” Dante laughed over the term, and made a portrait of the bird
in the act of smiling.
The Year 1842, when he quitted school, was the year of the
Anglo-Chinese Opium War. He and I were told by a Master to make an original
composition on the subject of China, and I think the composition had to be
in verse. What he or I wrote I have totally forgotten: seemingly each of us
must have produced some lines. Christina saw us at work, and chose to enter
the poetic lists. She was then eleven years of age. She indited the
following epical lines, which must (I apprehend) have been nearly the
first verses she ever wrote.
1 Will the reader pardon my printing them?
Transcribed Footnote (page 78):
1 There was a neat couplet which
may have been earlier:—
- “‘Come cheer up,
my lads, 'tis to glory we steer!’
- As the soldier remarked whose post lay
in the rear.”
Two stanzas, dated 27 April 1842, for our mother's birthday
(our grandfather printed them on a card) were, I consider, earlier
also. The original MS.—of a very childish
aspect—is now in the British Museum.
THE CHINAMAN.
- “‘Centre of
Earth!’ a Chinaman he said,
- And bent over a map his pig-tailed
head,—
- That map in which, portrayed in colours bright,
- China, all dazzling, burst upon the sight:
- ‘Centre of Earth!’
repeatedly he cries,
- ‘Land of the brave, the beautiful,
the wise!’
- Thus he exclaimed; when lo his words arrested
- Showed what sharp agony his head had tested.
- He feels a tug—another, and
another—
-
10And quick exclaims, ‘Hallo! what's
now the bother?’
- But soon alas perceives. And, ‘Why,
false night,
- Why not from men shut out the hateful sight?
- The faithless English have cut off my tail,
- And left me my sad fortunes to bewail.
- Now in the streets I can no more appear,
- For all the other men a pig-tail
wear.’
- He said, and furious cast into the fire
- His tail: those flames became its
funeral-pyre.”
I have already said that Dante Rossetti (as well as the
rest of us) used in early childhood to get some countrifying at our
grandfather's house, Holmer Green in Buckinghamshire. There he loitered
about a little, doing nothing particular. His chief amusement was to haunt a
pond in the grounds, and catch frogs. It concerned him to notice that, if he
held a frog any considerable while in his hand, the skin of the amphibian's
throat, lacking its proper quota of moisture, would split across. This did
not cure him of catching frogs; but he was fain to hope that his captive, on
being restored to its pond, would find its throat “sewing itself
up again.” All his life he liked most animals (though he had
little ado with dogs, and none with horses), and was not ill-natured to any.
Even a black beetle was regarded with a certain indulgence; it was an
animal, much like another.
These little and never frequent country excursions came to an end in
1839, when our grandfather resettled in London; and then Dante Rossetti, for
two or three years, went out of London not at all, for our father had not
the habit of making any annual seaside or rural trip. Dante's holidays, when
school closed, were spent at home in London, varied by casual walks up to
Hampstead, or the like. He painted theatrical characters, read books, and
amused himself as the chance offered; and now he had at least the resource
of going to his grandfather's house near Regent's Park whenever he felt so
inclined. The house contained many books. It had, at the back, a
moderate-sized garden, sloping down towards Regent's Canal; and in this
garden a shed or summer-house sheltered the private printing-press which
Polidori used. The fact—such I believe it to be—that
Dante never once tried what he could do as a compositor is one more symptom
of his great inaptitude at anything of a mechanical or directly practical
kind. The workaday world was not
his world.
In this house occurred a small incident which Mr. Caine has
related—not with perfect accuracy. It did not take place when
Dante was “rather less than nine years of
age,” for he was already eleven when our grandfather
entered the house. The incident may really belong to his twelfth, or
possibly his thirteenth, year. He did not deliberately set-to at reciting
the closing scene of
Othello; but, taking up a chisel, he playfully motioned to strike Christina
with it. As Maria had sense enough to object that it might hurt, he insisted
that it would not; and (then for the first time speaking a few lines from
Othello, ending—
- “I took by the throat the circumcisèd
dog,
- And smote him thus”)
he struck the chisel forcibly against his chest. Naturally there was an
incision, but not a serious one. Sangiovanni probed it, and pretty soon it
was healed. The small matter is hardly worth adverting to, but may as well
be set right.
Another small matter, a little more symptomatic as to the
boyhood of Rossetti, is the following. Maria was, as
previously intimated, of an uncommonly enthusiastic temper, which eventually
settled down into religious devotion. As she read very early and very
constantly, her enthusiasms developed in divers directions: British tars,
Napoleon, Englishmen
versus Scotchmen (in
relation to Walter Scott's writings), Grecian mythology, and the
Iliad. Pope's translation alone was known to her. When Dante and I began learning Greek she
resolved to learn some too, partly to help us in our lessons; and she made
her way into the Greek New Testament, and could in her later years still
read it fairly with the aid of a dictionary. While the
Iliad fit was at its height, Dante, to please her, undertook to do a
series of pen-and-ink designs for the epic, on a
small scale, one design to each Book. This was in February 1840, when he was
eleven years of age. These drawings—they still
exist—are not in any tolerable degree good, nor even distinctly
promising; but they may count for something as showing the lad's ambitious
temper in design, and his willingness to take up any attempt that offered,
however ludicrously inadequate his means for coping with it. I may add that
Dante at this time, although he had not that glowing love of the
Iliad which his sister entertained, liked it highly, and read it much. In
later years he knew, and he also preferred, the
Odyssey.
From the
Iliad I pass to other books read by Dante in his school-days, as a sequel to
the details previously given relating to a still earlier period. The poet
who superseded Walter Scott as prime favourite (always allowing for
Shakespear, who was never superseded though he may have been less constantly
read) was Byron.
The Siege of Corinth came first in the boy's esteem, and next
Mazeppa and
Manfred, with
The Corsair and others to follow.
Childe Harold he read, but without special zest; in fact, throughout his life, the
poetry of sentimental or reflective description had a very minor attraction
for him. Of Dickens's
Pickwick, which came out in 1836, he seems to me to have known comparatively
little; but
Nicholas Nickleby, 1838-9, was very potent with
him, followed by
Oliver Twist,
The Old Curiosity Shop,
Barnaby Rudge, etc. An illustrated serial named
Tales of Chivalry (but chivalry is not more prominent in its pages than some other
things) was constantly read, and its woodcuts inspected and coloured; also
another serial, of earlier date, called
Legends of Terror, full of ghosts, fiends, and magic, in prose and verse. There was
likewise
The Seven Champions of Christendom, abounding in dragons, enchanters, and other marvels of
pseudo-chivalry.
Hone's Every-day Book, with its amusing woodcuts, and the
Newgate Calendar, were marked favourites. The mere thieves in the last-named repertory
excited but a languid interest, but the murderers, and their
“last dying speeches and
confessions,” were conned with decided gusto. Of
highly-reputed romances there were Bulwer's
Rienzi and
Last Days of Pompeii, and, of minor romances, three serials—
Robin Hood and
Wat Tyler, both by Pierce Egan the younger, and
Ada the Betrayed, or The Murder at the Old
Smithy
, by some obscure author whose name did not transpire.
Gil Blas and
Don Quixote were enjoyed, though not in any extreme degree. But perhaps in his
earlier school-days—or from the age of nine to eleven—
nothing delighted Dante quite so much as a small-sized series entitled
Brigand Tales, with coloured illustrations. A subsequent series appeared, which he
relished somewhat less, whether because he was growing out of them, or on
account of their being more forced and worked up in incident. The opening
series comprised
Moriano the Outlaw, or the Bandit of the Charmed
Wrist
;
Beauty and the Bear, or The Bandit's
Stratagem
;
The Female Brigand, or The Lover's Doom; and a number of others: with such illustrations as
Desperate Encounter between Benedetto the Brigand and Jeronymo
Arondini
;
Guillen Martino plundering
the Monks of the Abbey of San Isidor
;
Pietro d'Armorelli, Captain of Banditti, refusing to stay the
Execution of his own Son
, etc., etc. This publication was
followed by
Dramatic Tales, a set of narratives from popular plays, contemporary or antecedent.
These also were highly appreciated by Dante Rossetti. By
the time he left school—turned of
fourteen—he had devoured numerous novels, poems, and dramas,
apart from those here specified, almost all of them being in English. In
Italian there was little beyond Ariosto; in French, it may be that Hugo's
Notre Dame de Paris preceded the close of his schooling, but I am not sure. At any rate
this, and many other works of Hugo, both prose and verse, fascinated him
hugely very soon afterwards; and French novels by a variety of authors were
greatly in the ascendant for two or three years. It may be feared there was
no solid reading —whether history,
biography, or anything else—irrespectively of the few and
fragmentary things that he had to get up as a part of the school course. His
intellectual life was nurtured upon fancy and sympathy, not upon knowledge
or information.
Dante Rossetti did not write much in boyhood, but he wrote something. I
question whether
The Slave
and
Aladdin
had any successor until in 1840 a grand scheme was started that every
one of us four should write a romantic tale. I suppose each made a
beginning, but I cannot affirm that any one of the quartette made an ending,
unless it was Dante. His tale alone has been preserved, and it is so far
completed as to bring a single set of incidents to a climax, without
implying that anything else remains to be added. The tale is named
Roderick and Rosalba, a Story of the Round
Table
. Its first chapter is headed,
The Knight,
the Messenger, the Departure, the Hostelry, the Quarrel
; and it
begins with the following sentence:—
“
It was a dark and stormy night in the month of
December when a figure, closely wrapped in the sable folds of his
cloak, and mounted on a jaded steed, was seen hurrying across a
bleak common towards a stately castle in the distance, whose lofty
towers and time-worn battlements frowned over the wide expanse
beneath.”
This may suffice; with the bare addition that the tale narrates how a
lady was captured by a “marauder” who wanted to wed
her perforce, and how she was rescued by her affianced
knight. At some later date—it was 1843,
or possibly just afterwards—Dante took up his old MS., and
evidently regarded it as much behind the time. He altered its title to
The Free Companions, a Tale of the Days of King
Stephen
, cut it down freely, revised the phraseology of several remaining
passages, and added a concluding sentence.
Rossetti's first printed “poem,”
Sir Hugh the Heron, a Legendary Tale in Four
Parts
, seems to have been begun and nearly completed much about the same
time as
Roderick and Rosalba
, or not later than May 1841. It is founded on a prose story by Allan
Cunningham, which Rossetti had read in the
Legends of Terror, and I think elsewhere as well. His zest in writing this ballad-poem
waned, and he laid it aside: but later on his grandfather Polidori told him
that, if he would finish it, the luxury of print should be his at the
private printing-press. So it was wound up, and printed in 1843, when Dante
was either fourteen or fifteen years of age. The title-page is marked
“for private circulation only”; and
even private circulation was more than commensurate to the merit of
Sir Hugh the Heron
. The story is substantially that of a knight who quits England for a
foreign war, leaving his betrothed to the care of his cousin. While abroad,
he discovers, by a vision in a magic mirror, that the cousin has betrayed
his trust, and is offering violence to the lady. The knight hastens home,
slays the aggressor, and recovers his bride. The ballad is versified with
ease and correctness, in three or four different metres, and is not wholly
destitute of spirit in its boyish way; but the way is boyish in the fullest
sense, and the poem cannot be said to show any express faculty or superior
promise. Rossetti, when he grew up, hated to hear this puerile attempt
alluded to. I used to have a large remainder-stock of
Sir Hugh the Heron
; but at his particular request, somewhere towards 1875, I rather
reluctantly destroyed the whole impression, with the exception of a very few
copies, and the ballad exists only for a dozen or so of curious collectors
here and there, and for readers in the British Museum Library. My brother left
behind him a little memorandum (the handwriting
indicates a date towards 1881), which runs as follows:—
“
I make this note
after a conversation with a friend who had been reading in the
British Museum a ridiculous first attempt of mine in verse,
called
Sir Hugh the Heron
, which was printed when I was fourteen, but written (except
the last page or two) at twelve—as my family would
probably remember. When I was fourteen my grandfather (who amused
himself by having a small private printing-press) offered, if I
would finish it, to print it. I accordingly added the last precious
touches two years after writing the rest. I leave this important
explanation, as there is no knowing what fool may some day foist the
absurd trash into print as a production of mine. It is curious and
surprising to myself, as evincing absolutely no promise at
all—less than should exist even at twelve. When I wrote
it, the
only English poet I had read was Sir. W.
Scott, as is plain enough in it.”
This last statement is not wholly correct. There had been Shakespear,
and I am sure, before my brother was twelve, a good deal of Byron as well.
I have by me a MS. of an effusion,
William and Marie
, shorter than
Sir Hugh the Heron
, written when my brother was fifteen, in a style which is compounded
of Walter Scott and the old Scottish ballads; it may also present some trace
of Bürger's
Lenore. This may be accounted a trifle inferior even to the performance
denounced by its author in such vigorous terms. It narrates how a wicked
Knight slew a virtuous one, hurled into a moat the virtuous one's lady-love,
and got killed by an avenging flash of lightning. This my brother offered
for publication to the Editor of some magazine —I fancy
Smallwood's Magazine—along with an outline design to illustrate it. The outline,
not so greatly amiss, is adapted from a group in one of Filippo Pistrucci's
lithographs from Roman history, the Rape of the Sabines. The Editor was too
sensible to publish either poem or design. It will be perceived that this
small transaction belongs to a date a little later than that when Rossetti
left school; but it is mentioned
Note: The third drawing of Bulwer's
Rienzi mentioned
at the bottom of the page is unknown.
here so as to close my references to these very
early efforts in verse. There may possibly have been a few others, but I
fail to recollect any. The reader may have noticed that the times of
chivalry always furnished his boyish inspiration; in fact, he thought of
little else about this date. Neither the antique nor the modern exercised
the least sway over his fancy.
A few words more may be bestowed upon childish drawings; I mention
such only as I find inscribed with a distinct date. Two are coloured
designs, October 1836 (age eight), from Monk Lewis's thrilling drama of
The Castle Spectre. One is
Percy and Motley
, the other
Osmond and Kenrick
, each personage being in full face, which may suggest that little
Dante hardly knew how to set about a profile. In 1838 he produced a scene of
school-life from his “Lower First” class. It is
lettered
Bantam battering (
i.e.,
pummelling a boy);
Lower Division—Upper
Division
. These two Divisions of the schoolboys are represented as indulging
in a free fight. The design is not quite so bad as might be expected, the
actions having a certain degree of natural spirit and diversity. Then comes,
1840, an illustrated title-page, forming a neat and rather prettyish
decorative combination, for the four juvenile stories of which
Roderick and Rosalba
was one. Anyhow he got a great deal into the small space of a page of
note-paper. There are
four circular half-figures of armoured knights, and
four oblong compositions
exhibiting incidents in the tales. The four knights
are inscribed thus:
A Romance of the 14th Century, Sir Aubrey de
Metford
;
Roderick and Rosalba, Sir Roderick de
Malvon
;
Raimond and Matilda, Sir Raimond de Meryl;
Retribution, Sir Guy de Linton. And the four compositions thus:
Sir Aubrey killing Herman Rudesheim;
Sir Roderick rescuing Rosalba de Clare;
Sir Raimond conquering Sir Richard;
Sir Guy finding the letter of Ali. Next are three small designs, 1840, from the
Arabian Nights—
The Genius about to kill the Princess of the Isle
of Ebony
, and two others. Three largeish separate figures
[drawing 1]
[drawing 2]
from
Bulwer's
Rienzi, May to July 1840, come next; done with pen and ink in a
painstaking manner, though not with anything, in
character or costume, above the types which Dante derived from his beloved
theatrical characters. November 1840 witnessed the production of
Earl Warenne
(dictating, it would seem, the signing of Magna Charta). This is a
companion-drawing to the
Rienzi trio, but perceptibly better. Last we find a
modern subject of a patriotic turn, taken, I assume, from a
little volume of naval anecdotes which Maria used to cherish. Its theme is
inscribed as follows:—
“‘As you are not of my
parish,’ said a gentleman to a begging sailor,
‘I cannot think of relieving you.’
‘Sir,’ replied the tar with an air of heroism,
‘I lost my leg fighting for
all
parishes.’”
This is dated August 1841, and certainly shows some increased degree of
facility in putting a couple of figures together so as to form a group and
tell a story.
It must have been, I think, just before Dante Rossetti left school
that he began learning German. He learned it well up to a certain point, yet
not so as to read freely; and I suppose that, by the age of twenty-five to
thirty, he may have forgotten four-fifths of what he had acquired. One day
Dr. Adolf Heimann, the Professor of German at University College, presented
himself in our house, saying that he wished to learn Italian from our
father, and would be prepared in recompense to teach German to the four
children. He was a German-Jew, an excellent little man of considerable
acquirements, and as kind-hearted, open, genial a person as any one could
wish to know. The arrangement was assented to; and Dante, with the rest of
us, set to at German, learning the grammar and pronunciation, reading the
Sagen und
Mährchen
(folk-stories), some easy things in Schiller, etc. For several years
after this date—or up to 1848 or thereabouts—we saw
more of the Heimann family than of any other. The Doctor married towards
1843, and soon there were children in the house.
Dante Rossetti now—summer of
1842—craved to launch into the definite study of pictorial art.
Of ordinary schooling he supposed himself to have had about as much as would
serve his turn. Our father's health was already so far broken as to give
cause for serious anxiety; he therefore concurred with Dante in holding that
the sooner artistic studies were undertaken the better. My brother did not
return to King's College School after the summer vacation, but looked out
for an Academy of Art.
Gabriele Rossetti had known the Rev. Mr. Cary, the translator of Dante,
whose son, F. S. Cary, a painter of no great mark, kept at this time that
well-reputed drawing academy which was termed
“Sass's,” in Bloomsbury Street, Bedford Square. To
this institution my brother betook himself— perhaps as soon as he
left King's College School, but at all events not long afterwards. Our
father's acquaintance in the world of art was far from extensive. He knew
pretty well Mr. Eastlake, afterwards Sir Charles Eastlake, P.R.A., Mr.
Severn the friend of Keats, and Mr. and Mrs. Bartholomew the
flower-painters; he also saw once or twice John Martin, and Mr. Solomon
Hart, R.A., but this latter may have been at a date rather after that of
which I am now speaking. These appear to have been all.
Of what my brother did at Cary's, and whom he knew there, I can give
but a meagre account; his Family-letters throw a little, but only a little,
light on the subject. He and I were still always together in the evening;
but in the day, while he was at the drawing academy, I continued in
attendance at King's College School, up to February 1845, and then I went to
the Excise Office in Old Broad Street. He drew from the antique and the
skeleton, with immense liking for the profession of art, but with only
moderate interest in
these preliminaries. He also studied anatomy in
some books, but never, I think, in the actual subject, human or animal. Of
his class-fellows we saw little. I can vaguely recollect Sintzenich, a youth
whose sympathies were shared between painting and music, and who finally
took to the latter. There was also a youth named Thomas Doughty, son of a
self-taught American Landscape-painter, who had come over to London in
quest of fortune, which did not smile upon him. I cannot say with certainty
that the younger Doughty was a student at Cary's rather than the Royal
Academy, but I am pretty sure that so he was. For a year or two he was my
brother's chief intimate. I have not unfrequently accompanied Dante to drink
tea and spend the evening in the house of the Doughtys, a small semi-villa
residence close to Gloucester Gate, Regent's Park. The father was a rather
convivial plain-spoken man; the mother a pleasant bright-mannered little
lady, who had, I dare say, more than enough of domestic disquietude. The
intimacy with young Doughty may have begun early in 1846, and, lasting
throughout 1847, was brought to a close by the return of the family to
America—presumably before the middle of 1848. We saw them off on
their ship. Thomas Doughty must have been two years or more older than my
brother, and had seen a good deal more of “life.” I
recollect he introduced us to two odd characters. One was a semi-artistic
working shoemaker, living near Westminster Bridge. The other was a
quick-witted lively young American, Charley Ware, leading a harum-scarum
kind of life in lodgings off Leicester Square. I will not here tread rashly
into his domestic penetralia. He had literary likings, much concerned with
Edgar Poe, which was a bond of sympathy with my brother; and he was the
first person to reveal to the latter the glories of Bailey's
Festus (which Dante read over and over again for a while) by reciting the
sublime opening—
- “Eternity hath snowed its years upon
them;
- And the white winter of their age is come,
- The world and all its worlds, and all shall
end.”
Charley Ware had some hankerings also after pictorial art, without any
training. He produced a little oil-picture of a queer kind. I would give
something to see it now, but presume it has long since
“ended” among the
“world and all its worlds.” It
represented the Devil, with Ware himself, Doughty, and Dante Gabriel;
possibly one or two others. They were either playing whist at Ware's
lodgings, or enjoying a light symposium. Each head was a tolerably
characteristic likeness. Mr. Ware returned to America, perhaps before the
Doughtys. I have often been rather surprised that, in all my miscellaneous
readings, I never came across the name of him as doing something or
other—for his sharpness of faculty was a good deal beyond the
average. Thomas Doughty, I believe, remained in America quite
undistinguished. I take him to be dead for many years past.
It may have been through the Doughty connexion that my brother got to
see, in an American journal, a little copy of verses whose monumental
imbecility delighted him beyond measure. It is named
The Atheist, by Flora McIver. Often and to many an auditor have I heard my brother repeat
The Atheist, and I suppose he could have done so to his dying day.
“The idea,” he would say,
“of a confirmed Atheist who has never yet considered
whether or not a flower was made by a God!” I am
tempted to extract the poem here; it may perhaps again excite some of that
glee with which I have often seen it greeted aforetime.
- “The Atheist in his garden stood
- At twilight's pensive hour;
- His little daughter by his side
- Was gazing on a flower.
- “‘Oh pick that blossom,
Pa, for me,’
- The little prattler said;
- ‘It is the fairest one that blooms
- Within that lowly bed.’
- “The father plucked the chosen
flower,
-
10And gave it to his child;
- With parted lips and sparkling eye
- She seized the gift, and smiled.
- “‘Oh Pa, who made this
pretty flower,
- This little violet blue?
- Who gave it such a fragrant smell
- And such a lovely hue?’
- “A change came o'er the father's
brow,
- His eye grew strangely wild;
- New thoughts within him had been stirred
-
20By that sweet artless child.
- “The truth flashed on the father's
mind,
- The truth in all its power;
- ‘There is a God, my
child,’ he said,
- ‘Who made that little
flower.’”
This matter of Thomas Doughty and his circle has let me somewhat out of
my track of date. I now return to the days of Cary's Academy, which lasted
for my brother from about July 1842 to July 1846. As to what he did there I
am unable to distinguish much between the earlier and the later years. In
Mrs. Esther Wood's book,
Dante Rossetti and the
Præraphaelite Movement
(1894),
1 some anecdotes are given upon the authority of a fellow-student,
Mr. J. A. Vinter. They speak of waywardness as a pupil, irregular
attendance, “a certain brusquerie and unapproachableness
of bearing,” combined with warm affection and
generosity, fondness for practical jokes, boisterous hilarity, loud singing,
especially of a song about Alice Gray, the sketching of caricatures of
antiques, and attractive outlining produced by a process contrary to his
master's precepts. Some of these points I know, and others I readily
surmise, to be correct; am not however so sure about
“practical jokes.” A practical joke
played off by one young student upon another is usually something
Transcribed Footnote (page 91):
1 This book has been loudly and widely praised,
and also severely criticized. It is very laudatory of Rossetti, a
fact which I cannot view without some favourable bias towards the
book. In other respects I may perhaps be permitted to say that Mrs.
Wood, having commendably lofty ideals and ideas of her own, reads
these (in my opinion) far too freely into the performances of the
so-called Præraphaelite painters and poets, and has not
much notion of the sort of thing that comes uppermost with a painter
when he sets to work.
which either mortifies the victim, or traverses
his work in a troublesome and annoying way; and to jokes of this sort I
should say that Dante Rossetti was not at any time given, but rather
noticeable for shunning and censuring them. However, Mr. Vinter ought to
know best, and I am sure that he does not mean to lead to any mistaken
inference; moreover, one practical joke is clearly traceable in my Letter B.
8. At home my brother never played any such jokes; neither was he addicted
to them at school, nor in the slightest degree at any period of his fully
adult life. For singing he had naturally a more than tolerable voice; but,
apart from mere juvenile outbursts, he never cared to use it, still less to
train it, and was even put out if the subject was alluded to.
One of the principal anecdotes developes the following dialogue.
Cary: Why were you not here yesterday?
Rossetti: I had a fit of idleness—this reply being
succeeded by the distribution among the students of “a
bundle of manuscript sonnets.” Mr. Vinter (or else
Mrs. Wood) assumes that these sonnets were juvenile affairs, which Rossetti,
at a later date, would have been sorry to see forthcoming. To the best of my
recollection, Rossetti, up to July 1846 when he left Cary's, did not produce
any sonnets of his own—unless
possibly (and
even these seem to me to have begun rather later) sonnets written to
bouts rimés, of which at one period he rattled
off a very large number. The Vinter sonnets may perhaps have been some of
his translations from Dante and other Italian poets; these commenced as
early as 1845. They were, from the first, good work—indeed
excellent work—of which he would not at any date have been
ashamed; although it is true that at starting the youthful translator
indulged in some mannerisms and quaintnesses which he corrected before the
versions appeared in print in 1861.
Apart from the direct course of his studies, the greatest artistic
event to Dante Rossetti during his time at Cary's was the opening of the
Exhibitions, at Westminster Hall, of Cartoons, prior to the pictorial
decoration of the new Houses of Parliament. These displays took place in
1843, '44, and '45.
His letter of 7 July 1843 bears testimony to the
extreme interest he took in the first of these Exhibitions; the second was a
still more marking event in his career, as it made known to him, by the
Cartoons of
Wilhelmus Conquistator
(the Body of Harold brought to William of Normandy), and
Adam and Eve after the Fall, the genius of
Mr. Ford Madox Brown; the third contained the Cartoon of
Justice and some examples of fresco-painting by the same
artist.
1 Rossetti also saw at an early date two of Brown's oil-pictures,
The Death-bed of the Giaour
, and
Parisina
.
In July 1846, having sent-in the requisite probation-drawings, Rossetti
was admitted as a student in the Antique School of the Royal Academy, and
Cary's knew him no more. Mr. George Jones, R.A., was the Keeper of the
Antique School; a rather aged painter, noted as resembling, on a feeble
scale, the great Duke of Wellington, whose costume he imitated. Towards this
date he chiefly exhibited sepia-drawings of scriptural or military subjects.
A gradual and reasonable amount of progress was made in the Academy School,
but only (I apprehend) on the same general lines as in the initial stages at
Cary's; in other words, Rossetti worked with a genuine sense of enthusiasm
as to the end in view, but with something which might count as indifference
and laxity with regard to the means dictated to him as conducing to that
end. He once said to me—it may have been towards 1857 or
later—“As soon as a thing is imposed on me
as an obligation, my aptitude for doing it is gone; what I
ought to do is what I
can't
do.” This went close to the essence of his character, and
was true of him through life. As the years rolled on, what he ought to do
was very often what he chose and liked to do, and then the difficulty
vanished; but in his student days it consisted in attending assiduously to
matters for which, in themselves, he cared little or not at all, and a real
obstruction was the result. As his gift for fine art was indisputably far
superior to that of the great majority of his fellow-
Transcribed Footnote (page 93):
1 I
believe I am correct as to
these several dates; far wrong I cannot be.
students, and as his drawings from the antique
etc. were (I presume) in reasonable proportion to his gift, I know of no
reason why he did not rapidly complete his course in the Antique School, and
proceed to the Life and the Painting Schools—which he never
did—except this same:—That the obligation which lay
upon him was to fag over the antique and cognate first steps in art, and
that, being obliged, he found the will to be lacking. A resolute sense of
duty, firm faith in his instructors, and a disposition to do what was wanted
in the same way as other people, might have furnished the will. But all
these qualities were also at that time lacking, or present in a scanty
degree. He liked to do what he himself chose, and, even if he did what some
one else prescribed, he liked to do that more or less in his own way.
We are now approaching, though we have not yet reached, the period
when the “Præraphaelite idea” developed
itself in the minds of three Academy students—John Everett
Millais and William Holman Hunt, each of whom had already exhibited some
pictures of his own, and Dante Gabriel Rossetti, who had not exhibited. It
will be well therefore that I should guide my narrative of Rossetti's
student-days, as far as manageable, by the details
published by Mr. Hunt, and also by another of the original
Præraphaelites, Mr. Stephens.
1 Rossetti preceded Hunt as an Academy student. Up to May 1848, as
Mr. Hunt says,—
“I had only been on nodding-terms with him
in the school. He had always a following of noisy students there, and
these had kept me from approaching him with more than a nod, except when
once I found him perched on some steps drawing Ghiberti, whom I also
studied; that nobody else did so had given us subject for five minutes'
talk.”
The statement that Rossetti was “drawing
Ghiberti”
Transcribed Footnote (page 94):
1 Mr. Hunt's contribution consists of three
articles in
The Contemporary Review
for 1886,
The
Præraphaelite Brotherhood
. Mr. Stephens's
monograph has been already referred to. Mr. Hunt has also published
an able article
Præraphaelitism, in
Chambers's Encyclopædia.
means, of course, that he was drawing from a cast
of the famous Florentine bronze doors, Ghiberti's work in the early
fifteenth century. I remember that he used to speak to me with great
fervency of the grace of motive, the abundance of artistic invention, and
the fine handling, of the doors; and Mr. Hunt's statement on this small
point is of substantial interest, as showing that both he and Rossetti had
gravitated towards this mediæval work at a date possibly a full
year before Præraphaelitism took any sort of definite shape.
I will also extract (with a few comments) Mr. Hunt's description of
Rossetti's person and manner. It is better—at any rate, in some
respects—than any which I could supply, and will moreover be more
readily believed in by the public.
“A young man of decidedly foreign aspect,
about 5 feet 7¼ in height, with long brown hair touching his
shoulders [this is strongly shown in
the pencil drawing by
Rossetti now in the National Portrait Gallery
, but it did not continue
long], not taking care to walk erect, but rolling carelessly
as he slouched along, pouting with parted lips, staring with dreaming
eyes—the pupils not reaching the bottom lids—grey
eyes, not looking directly at any point, but gazing listlessly about;
the openings large and oval, the lower orbits dark-coloured. His nose
was aquiline but delicate, with a depression from the frontal sinus
shaping the bridge [a very observable point]; the
nostrils full, the brow rounded and prominent, and the line of the jaw
angular and marked, while still uncovered with beard [the
angularity departed or diminished with advancing years]. His
shoulders were not square, but yet fairly masculine in shape. The
singularity of gait depended upon the width of hip, which was unusual.
Altogether he was a lightly built man [later on he was often
decidedly but varyingly fat], with delicate hands and feet:
although neither weak nor fragile in constitution, he was nevertheless
altogether unaffected by any athletic exercises. He was careless in his
dress, which then was, as usual with professional men, black and of
evening cut [this matter of black evening dress altered very
soon; and indeed, from 1851 or thereabouts, my brother ceased to be, in
any noticeable way, careless or odd in attire, and at times was even
rather particular about it]. So superior
was he to the ordinary vanities of young men
that he would allow the spots of mud to remain dry on his legs for
several days. His overcoat was brown, and not put on with ordinary
attention; and, with his pushing stride and loud voice [I
feel some doubt as to the
loud voice—should
call it emphatic and full-toned rather than loud], a special
scrutiny would have been needed to discern the reserved tenderness that
dwelt in the breast of the apparently careless and defiant youth. But
any one who approached and addressed him was struck with sudden surprise
to find all his critical impressions dissipated in a moment; for the
language of the painter was refined and polished, and he proved to be
courteous, gentle, and winsome, generous in compliment, rich in interest
in the pursuit of others, and in every respect, so far as could be shown
by manner, a cultivated gentleman. . . . In these early days, with all
his headstrongness and a certain want of consideration, his life within
was untainted to an exemplary degree, and he worthily rejoiced in the
poetic atmosphere of the sacred and spiritual dreams that then encircled
him, however some of his noisy demonstrations at the time might hinder
this from being recognized by a hasty judgment.”
Mr. Stephens, quoting from “a fellow-student,”
says that —
“Fame of a sort had
preceded” Rossetti from Cary's to the Academy School.
Other Caryites had talked of him “as a poet whose verses
had been actually printed [this can only mean
Sir Hugh the Heron
], and as a clever sketcher of chivalric and satiric
subjects, who in addition did all sorts of things in all sorts of
unconventional ways. His rather high cheek-bones were the more
observable because his cheeks were roseless and hollow enough to
indicate the waste of life and midnight oil to which the youth was
addicted.” He, on his first appearance in the Academy
School, “came forward among his fellows with a jerky step,
tossed the falling hair back from his face, and having both hands in his
pockets, faced the student-world with an
insouciant air which savoured of defiance, mental pride, and thorough
self-reliance.”
The reference here to “waste of midnight
oil” is quite true. My brother had already acquired
habits, which stuck to him through life, of not going to bed until he
happened to be so disposed, often at two or three in the morning, and
of not getting up until necessity compelled or fancy
suggested. “Always wilful, never methodical, and the consequences
to take care of themselves,” might have been his motto. It is
true, however, that in mature life he settled down into habits of the utmost
day-by-day regularity in professional work.
Rossetti went a great deal to the theatre towards 1845, and for some
six or seven years ensuing, and again about 1861; little at other dates, and
after 1868 or so not at all. He liked—in its
way—almost any theatre, and almost any piece that was either
genuinely poetical, or exciting, or entertaining; nothing of a dull or
stuck-up kind. Miss Woolgar (Mrs Mellon) at the Adelphi, and afterwards Miss
Glyn at Sadler's Wells, were two of his favourite actresses. If Shakespear
or John Webster was not “going,” an Adelphi drama by
Buckstone or a burlesque of the Forty Thieves would do perfectly well. He
was also much amused at thoroughly
bad drama and acting,
such as could be seen at the Queen's Theatre near Tottenham Court Road
(afterwards Prince of Wales's Theatre).
As we have just seen, Dante Rossetti was known at Cary's
Academy for sketching “chivalric and satiric
subjects.” There must have been great numbers of these,
proper both to the Cary period and to the Royal Academy period. Possibly
some still exist, in the hands of his companions of those days; I myself
know of but few. There is nothing in them tending to what we call
Præraphaelitism.
The early letters of Rossetti show that no artist delighted him more
intensely than Gavarni (Guillaume Sulpice Chevalier), the French designer
for lithographs and woodcuts. Among his series are
Les Artistes,
Les Coulisses,
Le Carnaval,
Les Enfants
Terribles
,
Les Étudiants de Paris,
Les Lorettes,
Fourberies de Femmes en
matière de Sentiment
etc. He was a designer of
supreme facility, with much of elegance and
esprit, and in his way a master; but
naturally the way does not tend towards anything castigated or ideal. It
will be observed in the Letters that in 1843 and 1844 my brother spent some
time in Boulogne with the Maenza family. This served to fix his attention
still further upon Gavarni and other French designers of a vivacious and
picturesque kind; though not wholly to the exclusion of British artists,
among whom he greatly (and indeed permanently) admired Sir John Gilbert as a
woodcut-draughtsman, and soon afterwards as a painter. In some pen-and-ink
designs by Dante Rossetti, of the close of 1844 and on to September 1846, I
trace much of what he saw in Gavarni, and tried to reproduce in his own
practice. They are sketchy, and rather rough or unrefined in execution, but
not wanting in spirit—the work now of an artist, though only of
an artist at the beginning of his career. One is termed
Quartier Latin, the Modern Raphael and his
Fornarina
. To April 1846 belongs a half-figure of
Mephistopheles at the door of Gretchen's cell. The malignant expression is telling. Undated, but belonging I
suppose to 1847, is a drawing, clever in its way, of
a
man seated, and reaching towards a flitting ghost
; two other
figures are evidently unconscious of the apparition.
Lady Anne Bothwell's Lament
, from
Percy's Reliques, is a drawing, not fully completed, of some sentiment and some
picturesqueness. At one time, I suppose 1845, he tried his hand at
lithographing, and produced a
figure of
Juliette
, from Frédéric Soulié's
novel (a prime favourite with him in these days)
Les Mémoires du
Diable
. This is poor enough, yet not destitute of a certain
chique. He also lithographed a set of humorous
playing-cards—
Ireland as the Queen of Clubs,
Shakespear as the King of Hearts,
Death as the King of Spades, etc. They have some fancy and point, with pleasing arrangement here
and there, and might perhaps have been popular if published. He thought of
trying for a publisher, but I doubt whether he ever took any practical steps
for this end. Death is represented as a Grave-digger, wearing a pair of
baggy breeches, and standing in a grave. One sees only a part of
his leg-bones. These may perhaps be meant for his
thigh-bones; but it seems quite as likely that they are intended for the
bones of the lower leg. If so, it is worthy of remark that Rossetti gave
this skeleton only one bone to each of his lower legs, instead of the normal
two, and his anatomical knowledge could thus have been small indeed towards
1845. Strange to say, Holbein, in his
Dance of
Death
knew no better. Of more present interest is an illustrated
copy of the little privately-printed volume,
Verses by Christina G. Rossetti, 1847. I possess the copy of this volume bearing the inscriptions,
“Frances Mary Lavinia Rossetti, from her loving
daughter Christina, 24 July 1854,” and then
“Fratri Soror, C.G.R., Sept. 25,
1890” (my sixty-first birthday). It contains five pencil
drawings by Dante, all of them produced, I should say, before the year 1847
had closed. The frontispiece is a profile
portrait of Christina, carefully and delicately done. The
illustrations are to the poems,
A Ruined Cross [
DGR
illustration
],
Tasso and Leonora [
DGR
illustration
],
The Dream [
DGR
illustration
], and
Lady Isabella [
DGR
illustration
] (who was Lady Isabella Howard, a daughter of
the Earl of Wicklow, and a pupil of our Aunt Charlotte Polidori). These
designs, though inferior to the portrait, are also handled with nicety and
good taste. The last-named must have been produced a little later than the
others, as it is not bound into the volume. A noteworthy point about the
designs is the total absence of any feeling for costume. There are clothes,
but of that nondescript kind which, in the male figures, is evidenced by
little more than a slight line at the throat, and two others at the wrists.
Tasso and Leonora might be anybody or nobody.
Before Præraphaelitism came at all into question my brother
began an oil-picture of good dimensions. It was named
Retro me Sathana
, and formed a group of three mediæval-costumed
figures—an aged churchman and a youthful lady, and the devil
slinking behind them baffled. He was a human being with a tail. This must
have been undertaken in 1847, when my brother had no practice with pigments,
and was continued for some three or four months. It was not, I
apprehend, altogether amiss; at what date it was
destroyed I hardly know. He had begun the colouring, and showed the work
privately to Sir Charles Eastlake, who did not encourage him to proceed with
any such subject. Soon after this it was abandoned.
Rossetti's taste for reading, in all the days of his youth, was never
stationary; it continued shifting and developing. Having drunk deep of one
author, he went on to another. In 1844 some one told him that there was
another poet of the Byronic epoch, Shelley, even greater than Byron. He
bought a small pirated Shelley, and surged through its pages like a flame. I
do not think that he ever afterwards read much of Byron; although, as his
mind matured, he was not inclined to allow that the poet of such an
actuality as
Don Juan could be deemed inferior to the poet of such a vision as
Prometheus Unbound. (Not indeed that he
approved of
Don Juan, as regards the spirit in which it is written. Early in 1880 he went
so far as to tell me that he considered it a truly immoral and harmful
book.) Keats followed not long after Shelley, in 1846, or perhaps 1845. My
brother considered himself to have been one of the earliest strenuous
admirers of Keats, but this can only be correct in a certain sense. The Old
British Ballads and Mrs. Browning were read with endless enjoyment; also
Alfred de Musset (I have previously mentioned Victor Hugo), Dumas (dramas,
and afterwards novels), Tennyson, Edgar Poe, Coleridge, Blake, Sir Henry
Taylor's
Philip van Artevelde, Thomas Hood—more especially some of his serious poems,
such as
Lycus the Centaur and
The Haunted House, and the semi-serious
Miss Killmansegg and her Precious Leg, though some of his roaring jocularities were also much in favour. As
to Dr. Hake's nebulous but impressive romance,
Vates, some details will appear elsewhere. Hoffmann's
Contes Fantastiques (in French), and in English Chamisso's
Peter Schlemihl, and Lamotte-Fouqué's
Undine and other stories, represented the Teutonic element in romance and
legend. It may have been towards 1846 that my brother came upon the prose
Stories after Nature of Charles Wells, and his poetic
drama of
Joseph and his Brethren. These works, already half-forgotten at that date, were enormously
admired by Rossetti, and the ultimate outcome of his admiration, transfused
through the potent faculty and pen of Mr. Swinburne, was the republication
of the drama about 1877. Earlier than most of these— beginning, I
suppose, in 1844—was the Irish romancist Maturin, who held Dante
Rossetti spellbound with the gloomy and thrilling horrors of
Melmoth the Wanderer. He and I used often to sit far into the night reading the pages one
over the other's shoulder; and, if to stir the imagination of an imaginative
youth is one aim of such a romance as
Melmoth, no author can ever have succeeded more manifestly than Maturin with
Dante Rossetti. There was another grim romance of his, named
Montorio, which we thought a splendid pendent to
Melmoth; not to speak of
Women,
The Wild Irish Boy, and
The Albigenses; Maturin's once-celebrated verse-drama of
Bertram, and some other poems of his, were eagerly inspected, but without any
genuine result to correspond. Two other English novels which he read in
these years with keen enjoyment were the
Tristram Shandy of Sterne, and the
Richard Savage of Charles Whitehead; and in French, by Reybaud,
Jérôme Paturot
à la recherche d'une Position Sociale
and, by Eugène Sue, the
Mystères de Paris, the
Juif Errant, and
Mathilde. In Dickens my brother's interest may have been on the wane when
Dombey and Son began in 1846, though I suppose he also read
David Copperfield, 1849. In his last days he was much struck with the
Tale of Two Cities. To Dickens succeeded Thackeray, who was most highly appreciated: his
early tales in
Fraser's Magazine, such as
Fitzboodle's Confessions and
Barry Lyndon, and
The Paris Sketchbook (even before
Vanity Fair appeared in 1846), also
The Book of Snobs. Later on, a novel ascribed to Lady Malet,
Violet or the Danseuse, was a great favourite; and he had a positive passion for Meinhold's
wondrous
Sidonia the Sorceress (translated), which he much preferred to the
Amber Witch of the same phenomenal author.
At last—it may have been in 1847—everything took a
secondary place in comparison with Robert
Browning.
Paracelsus,
Sordello,
Pippa Passes,
The Blot on the Scutcheon, and the short poems in the
Bells and Pomegranates series, were endless delights; endless were the readings, and endless
the recitations. Allowing for a labyrinthine passage here and there,
Rossetti never seemed to find this poet difficult to understand; he
discerned in him plenty of sonorous rhythmical effect, and revelled in what,
to some other readers, was mere crabbedness. Confronted with Browning, all
else seemed pale and in neutral tint. Here were passion, observation,
aspiration, mediævalism, the dramatic perception of character,
act, and incident. In short, if at this date Rossetti had been accomplished
in the art of painting, he would have carried out in that art very much the
same range of subject and treatment which he found in Browning's poetry; and
it speaks something for his originality and self- respecting independence
that, when it came to verse-writing, he never based himself upon Browning to
any appreciable extent, and for the most part pursued a wholly diverse path.
It should not be supposed that, in glorifying Browning, Rossetti slighted
other poets previously the objects of his homage. He valued them at the same
rate as before, though he thought Browning a step further in advance. I need
scarcely add that Shakespear and Dante are to be excepted, for at no time
would he have denied or contested the superiority of these, even to the poet
of
Sordello. The time of Dante had come some three years before that of Browning
began, and the current of Rossetti's love for the Florentine flowed wider
and deeper month by month.
It may be noted that (as in a previous instance) I have not specified
any books of a so-called solid kind—history, biography, or
voyages. Science and metaphysics were totally out of Rossetti's ken. I do
not believe that he read any such books at this period—very few
at any later period, among the few
Boswell's Johnson holding a high place. In current talk Rossetti did not appear to be
much behind other persons when history or biography was referred to; but I hardly
know what historical volumes he opened, other
than Carlyle's
French Revolution, Merivale's
Roman Empire, and something of Plutarch and of Gibbon. The great Duke of
Marlborough's English History came out of Shakespear's plays; Rossetti's
English and other history derived largely from the same source, supplemented
by those adust chroniclers, Walter Scott, Bulwer, Victor Hugo, and Dumas.
This was not to our father's liking. I have more than once heard him say,
“When you have read a novel of Walter Scott, what do
you know? The fancies of Walter Scott.”
Rossetti had commenced some prose story before he left King's College
School in the summer of 1842. I am not certain whether that story was or was
not the same thing as
Sorrentino
. At any rate, a prose tale named
Sorrentino
was in course of composition in August 1843. I remember something of
it, but not in clear detail. The Devil (a personage of great predilection
with my brother ever since his early acquaintance with Göthe's
Faust, which drama he read and re-read afterwards in Filmore's translation)
was a principal character. There was a love-story, in the course of which
the Devil interfered in a very exasperating way between the lover and his
fair one. He either personated the lover, or conjured-up a phantom of the
lady, and made love to her, and was seen by the lover in the
act—or something of this kind. There was also a duel in which he
intermixed. Rossetti wrote some four or five chapters of this story, on the
scale of chapters in an ordinary novel, and he contemplated offering
Sorrentino
for publication. Finally he abandoned it, and I dare say he had
destroyed the MS. before he was of age. I have always rather regretted the
disappearance of
Sorrentino
. To my boyish notion, it was spirited, effective, and well told; and I
fancy that, were it extant, it would be found by far better than his
previous small literary attempts. That he entered fully into the spirit of a
story of
diablerie is certain; and, having by this time some moderate command over his
pen, he may have been not incapable of doing something in that line himself.
His next literary incentive arose out of his German studies
—which began, as already mentioned, towards the earlier part of
1842. Dr. Heimann brought him so far on in German that Dante Rossetti made a
verse-translation of
Bürger's
Lenore, perhaps in 1844. This likewise has perished. I suppose it was much on
a par with most other versions of the ballad. I can recollect two stanzas
(and might, were there a little prompting, recollect others as well), one
close to the beginning of the poem, and the other at its end:—
- “The Empress and the King,
- With ceaseless quarrel tired,
- At length relaxed the stubborn hate
- Which rivalry inspired.”
And
- “Patience, patience, while thy
heart is breaking—
- With thy God there is no question-making;
- Of thy body thou art quit and
free—
- Heaven keep thy soul
eternally!”
From
Lenore he proceeded to a more ambitious adventure —no less than a
translation of the
Nibelungenlied.
This mighty old poem seized hold upon him with a vice-like clench;
yet I do not suppose he ever read the whole of it, his knowledge of German,
unaided, being hardly sufficient for such an effort. Neureuther's
illustrated edition, combined with Dr. Heimann's explanations, showed him
the course of the narrative. The translation was begun in October 1845, and
went on to the end of the 5th Geste, or thereabouts, where Siegfried first
sees Kriemhild. No trace of it remains. Speaking from long-past memory, I
should say that this was really a fine translation, with rolling march and a
sense of the heroic. The merits of the next translation are not matter of
conjecture, for it got finally printed in Rossetti's
Collected Works
, 1886. It is from the
Arme Heinrich of the twelfth-century poet Hartmann von Aue, and belongs probably to
the year 1846. For simplicity, vigour, perception of the character of the
original, and tact in conveying this along
with a certain heightened and spontaneous
colouring of his own, this version could not easily be excelled. My brother
put some finishing touches to the translation in 1871. Probably he cut out
some juvenilities, but it remains substantially and essentially the
performance of his adolescence.
Even before the
Arme Heinrich Rossetti's translations from the early Italian poets must have begun.
The dates of most of these range from 1845 to 1849. Glowing from the
flame-breath of Dante Alighieri, Dante Rossetti made continual incursions
into the Old Reading-room of the British Museum, hunting up volumes of the
most ancient Italian lyrists, and also volumes of modern British poets, and
maybe of French as well. No doubt this pursuit involved some partial neglect
of his artistic studies. When he found an Italian poem that pleased him he
set-to at translating it. He had soon got together a good deal of material,
and gradually the idea of collecting all into a book, including a
version of Dante's
Vita Nuova grew into shape. Almost all the translations from Dante may have been
done at home, where of course the youth had ready access to his writings,
and to those of several other old Italians. I cannot say which branch of the
subject may have been undertaken first; possibly the
version of the
Vita Nuova, prose and poetry, had been made before any researches at the British
Museum commenced. This
version was shown in
November 1850 to Tennyson, with whom my brother and others of our circle had
made some acquaintance through Mr. Conventry Patmore. He returned the MS.,
saying that it was very strong and earnest, but disfigured by some cockney
rhymes, such as “
calm” and “
arm.” Rossetti at once determined to remove these. The book
of
The Early Italian Poets
did not appear in print until 1861, and meanwhile my brother had often
gone over his first MSS., revising, improving, and suppressing crudities or
quaintnesses. Still (as in the case of the
Arme Heinrich) the published translations are, in main essentials, the same which
Rossetti wrote down in these juvenile years—the impulse and the
savour of them are the same; and any praise
deserved by and awarded to the man who issued the
book in 1861 appertains rightfully to the youth who worked upon it in 1845
and the few following years. The translations have been very generally
recognized as first-class work of their order—re-castings of
poems into another language such as could only be accomplished by a poet in
his own right. Instead of expressing any opinion of my own, I will reproduce
two verdicts by writers of exceptional competence from their respective
standpoints. Mr. Swinburne, the most lavishly generous of critics when he
finds something that he can have the luxury of praising, says in that review
of the
Poems
of Rossetti which he published in 1870: “All Mr.
Rossetti's translations bear the same evidence of a power not merely
beyond reach but beyond attempt of other artists in
language.” My other authority is Signor Carlo Placci of
Florence, who, immediately after Rossetti's death in 1882, produced a
brochure entitled
Dante Gabriele Rossetti. The testimony of a native Italian well versed in English may carry
with it a weight hardly inferior to that of the greatest contemporary master
of English verse. I quote it with the more pleasure as it does justice also
to Mr. Swinburne's own powers as a translator:—
“The
collection
of the Poets of Italy of the first centuries
is a work
undoubtedly extraordinary. The diverse styles, the opposite turns of
sentiment, the various and complicated forms, the difficult allegories,
the intricate rhymes, all is rendered in a surprising way; and the very
spirit of our language seems reflected, with all its poetry and its
pictorial aspect, in these translations—which certainly do
not yield to the best version of a foreign poet done in our days, I mean
that of Villon executed by Swinburne. Like him, Rossetti has been able
not only to enter into that life so different from the English, and
steal the spark proper to another idiom, in such wise as to astound even
those who know the original thoroughly; but, preserving all the grace
and elegance and candour of his model, he has sought, and successfully,
to re-fashion, without visible effort, their metres and repeated rhymes,
and all the devices of alliteration, assonance, and repetition, which
are certainly not less difficult in
the
canzoni
of our thirteen-century men than in the daring
ballades of François Villon. In the case of both poets this has
been not merely a masterpiece, but a true struggle crowned with success,
especially when we reflect on the intrinsic difference which exists
between the Teutonic and the Latin families of
language.”
Not as a translator only but also as an original poet, Rossetti's
faculty was fully developed by 1847. One proof of this
suffices—that he wrote
The Blessed Damozel
before 12 May of that year, or while still in the nineteenth year of
his age. By saying that his faculty was now fully developed, I do not mean
to imply that it did not afterwards ripen—which assuredly it
did—in several important respects; but that he had now ideas of a
memorable kind to express, and could and did express them in verse wholly
adequate for their embodiment. He meant something good—he knew
what he meant—and he knew how to convey it to others.
The Blessed Damozel
was written with a view to its insertion in a MS. Family-magazine, of
brief vitality. In 1881 Rossetti gave Mr. Caine an account of its origin, as
deriving from his perusal and admiration of Edgar Poe's
Raven. “I saw” (this is Mr. Caine's
version of Rossetti's statement) “that Poe had done the
utmost it was possible to do with the grief of the lover on earth, and I
determined to reverse the conditions, and give utterance to the yearning
of the loved one in heaven.” Along with
The Raven, other poems by Poe—
Ulalume,
For Annie,
The Haunted Palace, and many another —were a deep well of delight to Rossetti
in all these years. He once wrote a
parody
of
Ulalume
. I do not rightly remember it, nor has it left a vestige behind.
The poem named
My Sister's Sleep
was, I think, even earlier than
The Blessed Damozel
;
The Portrait
and
Ave
very little later, also all the opening portion of
Dante at Verona
,
A Last Confession
, and
The Bride's Prelude
.
Jenny
(in its first form, which had none of that slight framework of
incident now belonging to the poem) was begun almost as soon as
The Blessed Damozel
; only some fifty lines of the original draft are retained. The sonnet
Retro me Sathana
must belong to 1847, being intended to pair with
his picture of the same name; and the trio of sonnets named
The Choice
appertain to the same year, or perhaps to an early date in 1848. This
trio is important, as indicating Rossetti's youthful conception of life as a
moral discipline and problem. He propounds three theories—1,
Eat thou and drink,
to-morrow thou shalt die; 2,
Watch thou and
pray; 3,
Think thou and
act. Each sonnet exhibits its own theme, without any direct reference
to the themes of the other two. It is manifest, however, that Rossetti
intends us to set aside the “
Eat thou and
drink” theory of life, and not to accept, without much
reservation, the “
Watch thou and
pray” theory. “
Think thou and
act” is what he abides by.
There was another very early poem, begun perhaps in 1846 rather than
1847, and nearly completed at the time. It then remained wholly neglected,
until, on his deathbed, my brother took it up, and supplied the finishing
touches. Its final name is
Jan van Hunks
. For this long ballad-poem Rossetti found his main subject (but by no
means all his incidents) in a prose story,
Henkerwyssel's Challenge, printed in his old favourite, the
Tales of Chivalry. The ballad relates how a Dutchman, celebrated for his prowess in
smoking, treated certain members of his family with callous cruelty, and was
then challenged by the Devil in human form to engage in a smoking-duel. Of
course the Devil's capabilities at such an exercise exceeded even the
Dutchman's; so Van Hunks, dying of over-smoking, was marched off to hell,
where his carcass was converted into a pipe for the devil's accustomed use.
The ballad is humorously grim, treated with great force and no compromise,
and is a pleasant piece of unpleasant reading. It is most fully deserving of
publication; but has not been included in Rossetti's
Collected Works
, because he gave the MS. to his devoted friend Mr. Theodore Watts,
with whom alone now rests the decision of presenting it or not to the
public.
I may mention yet another “copy of verses,”
belonging to March 1848. It is named
The English Revolution of 1848
,
and ridicules the street-spoutings of Chartists
and others in that year of vast continental upheavals. It is more than
tolerably good in its burlesque way, but is not likely to be published. My
brother had some feeling for political ideals and great movements, but none,
except one of annoyance and disdain, for noise and bluster. It may well be
that he did not always appreciate correctly the distinction between the
noise and the ideals.
A small incident, of literary and artistic bearing, proved to be
hardly less important in Rossetti's career than the composition of an
original poem. He was already a hearty admirer of William Blake's
Songs of Innocence and Experience. One day, while attending at the British Museum Reading-room on one of
his ordinary errands, he received, from an attendant named Palmer, the offer
of a MS. book by Blake, crammed with prose and verse, and with designs. This
was in April 1847. The price asked was ten shillings. Dante's pockets were
in their normal state of depletion, so he applied to me, urging that so
brilliant an opportunity should not be let slip, and I produced the required
coin. He then proceeded to copy out, across a confused tangle of false
starts, alternative forms, and cancellings, all the poetry in the book, and
I did the like for the prose. His ownership of this truly precious volume
certainly stimulated in some degree his disregard or scorn of some aspects
of art held in reverence by
dilettanti and routine-students, and thus conduced to the
Præraphaelite movement; for he found here the most outspoken (and
no doubt, in a sense, the most irrational) epigrams and jeers against such
painters as Correggio, Titian, Rubens, Rembrandt, Reynolds, and
Gainsborough—any men whom Blake regarded as fulsomely florid, or
lax, or swamping ideas in mere manipulation. These were balsam to Rossetti's
soul, and grist to his mill. The volume was moreover the origin of all his
after-concern in Blake literature; as Alexander Gilchrist, when preparing
the
Life of Blake
published in 1863, got to hear of the MS. book, which my brother then
entrusted to him, and, after Gilchrist's premature death, Rossetti did a
good deal towards completing certain parts of the
biography, and in especial edited all the poems introduced into the second
Section. He again did something for the re-edition dated 1880. At the sale
of my brother's library and effects the Blake MS. sold for £110.
5
s., so that the venture of ten shillings turned out a
pretty good investment.
Besides the families which I have already
mentioned—Dr. Heimann and his wife, a very pretty pleasant young
English Jewess, whose maiden name was Amelia Barnard, and the American
Doughtys—Dante Rossetti knew, as he grew up towards manhood, two
persons more particularly, of whom I ought here to give some account. They
were Major Calder Campbell and Mr. William Bell Scott.
To Major Campbell Rossetti was, I think, introduced by an affectionate
friend, a year or two older than himself, the sculptor Alexander
Munro—an Inverness man who had come to London under the patronage
of the Duke and Duchess of Sutherland, and who, being ingenuous and
agreeable in manner, and of graceful gift as a sculptor, made some way both
in society and in art. He died abroad towards the beginning of 1871. Calder
Campbell was a retired officer from the Indian army, a bachelor turned of
fifty. He took to my brother most heartily; was a firm believer in his
future, and watched with the kindliest interest his actual stage of
development. He was the author of a large number of verses, tales, and
sketches, in Annuals and other fleeting forms of publication, and from time
to time produced a volume as well. To pretend that he was an author of high
mark, or capable of something greatly better than what he gave forth, would
be futile; but he was a lively writer in a minor way, an amusing chatty
talker, who had seen many things here and there, and knew something of the publishing
world, and a straightforward, most unassuming
gentleman, whose society could do nothing but good to a youth like Rossetti.
For a couple of years or so my brother and I used to pass an evening weekly
at his lodgings in University Street, Tottenham Court Road. Tea, literature,
and a spice of bantering scandal, were the ingredients for a light-hearted
and not unimproving colloquy. Mostly no one else was present. On one
occasion—to please Dante Rossetti, who took a great deal of
interest in a rather eccentric but certainly able volume of poems entitled
Studies of Sensation and Event —Major Campbell secured the attendance of its author,
Ebenezer Jones. He was a well-grown, thin, pale man, still young, with
decayed teeth and a general air of shaky health, which brought him to his
grave before many years had passed. He seemed pleased in a way, but without
any ease of manner or flow of spirits. We never saw him again. Dante did
not, however, lose his interest in Ebenezer Jones. As late as February 1870
he made some emphatic observations upon this poet in
Notes and Queries
; and his remarks led ultimately to a re-publication of the
Studies, and to a good deal of printed matter about Jones in the
Athenæum.
Rossetti was quite inclined now to make a little way in the literary
world, if he could find an opening. Major Campbell was more than willing to
assist him, and he showed
My Sister's Sleep
to the editress of the
Belle Assemblée, a philandering magazine which had seen better days. The editress
expressed great admiration of the poem, but did not publish it. Perhaps
payment was wanted, and funds were at a low ebb. This may have been before
the year 1848 was far advanced. I cannot recollect that my brother made any
further endeavour for publication. Pretty soon
The Germ
was projected, and was to be the medium for introducing to the public
the writings of himself and others.
Mr. Bell Scott has narrated (
Autobiographical Notes) the origin of his acquaintance with Dante Rossetti. On 25 November
1847 the latter took the first step by sending to Mr. Scott, then Master of
the Government School of
Design in Newcastle-on-Tyne, a letter of which
the Autobiographist gives an abstract. I condense still further.
“
A few years
ago,” said Rossetti, “
I met for the first
time, in a publication called
The Story-teller, with your two poems,
Rosabell and
A Dream of Love. So beautiful, so original, did they appear to me, that I
assure you I could think of little else for several days; and I
became possessed by quite a troublesome anxiety to know what else
you had written, and where it was to be found. Seeing that the two
poems were extracted from
The Monthly Repository, I went to the Museum, where I found a set of that magazine,
but met only with a paper on Art. . . . At the beginning of the
present year I fell in with a most inadequate paragraph, in the
Art-Union Journal, which informed me of the publication of
The Year of the World. I was about to bid you imagine my delight, but that would not
be easy. I rushed from my friend's house where I had seen the
announcement (for the wretched thing was no more), and, having got
the book, fell upon it like a vulture. You may be pretty certain
that you had in me one of those readers who read the volume at a
single sitting. A finer, a more dignitous,
1 a more deeply thoughtful production, a work that is more
truly a
work, has seldom indeed shed its light
upon me. To me I can truly say that it revealed
- ‘Some depth unknown, some
inner life unlived.’”
This is the first line of
The Year of the World.—Rossetti proceeded to say that he was aware of the
existence of another poem by Scott named
Hades or the Transit; and, being unable to light upon this or other works by the same
author, he ventured to enquire at headquarters.
It may be questioned whether readers of the present day know very much
about Mr. Scott's poems. I will therefore say a few words about
Rosabell and
The Year of the World.
Rosabell—afterwards reissued under the name of
Mary Anne— is a poem, in irregular form and various metres, about an
innocent country-girl who becomes a gentleman's mistress,
Transcribed Footnote (page 112):
1 So in Mr. Scott's book. My brother was not
fond of such strained or affected words, and was much more likely to
write “dignified.” Still I suppose that the
printed word is correct, and that he was misled for a moment by the
analogy of the Italian adjective
dignitoso.
and finally sinks into the lowest depths of shame and
destitution. Though deficient in some executive respects, it reads an
impressive lesson in impressive and poignant terms, and deserves to live.
The Year of the World is a much longer poem in blank verse. The subject extends (to use the
author's own words) “from the golden age of the Garden of
Eden, the period of instinct and innocence, to the end of the race,
when, all the adverse powers of Nature subjugated, Man will have
attained a happy and quiescent immortality.” I have
read this ambitious and remarkable poem several times, but not of late
years. I will, however, undertake to say that it contains a large amount of
strong thought mixed with ideal aspiration; that it comprises many lines of
true poetry, and many passages of majestic scope; and that, if a reading
public who do not greatly want such productions would consent to read the
work, they would find in it much to reward their pains, and to uphold the
claims of its author as a poet of a high standard, and of some veritable
though not uniformly realized attainment. I do not coincide with some
critics of the present day (and of past days as well) who hold that Scott's
executive touch is so uncertain, and the instances where he falls short of
his aim so numerous, as to disentitle him altogether to the name of poet. On
the contrary, I can and do still admire his work to a large extent, although
far from unconscious of its too frequently obvious, and sometimes almost
unaccountable, blemishes.
Mr. Scott, now aged thirty-six, naturally had not the least idea who
“Gabriel Charles Rossetti” might be, beyond what
appeared in his letter as to his being a student of painting, etc. He made
some sort of reply, and soon received a further letter enclosing a number of
verse MSS., which included
The Blessed Damozel
,
My Sister's Sleep
, and (as Scott expresses it) “many other admirable
poems, marshalled under the title of
Songs of the Art Catholic
.” I hardly think that my brother had by this
date completed “many” poems, unless
translations are to be reckoned in. There may easily, however, have been a
round half dozen of original compositions,
comprising, in all probability,
Ave
—also the beginnings of some others, such as
The Bride's Prelude
(which at this time was called
Bride-Chamber Talk
). My brother's general title of
Songs of the Art Catholic
is worth a moment's attention. By “Art” he
decidedly meant something more than “
poetic
art.” He meant to suggest that the poems embodied conceptions and
a point of view related to pictorial art—also that this art was,
in sentiment though not necessarily in dogma,
Catholic—mediæval and un-modern. He never was, and
never affected to be, a Roman-catholic, nor yet an Anglican-catholic. All
the then excited debates concerning “Puseyism,”
Tractarianism, and afterwards Ritualism, passed by him like the idle wind.
If he knew anything about “the Gorham Controversy,” it
was only that Carlyle coupled “prevenient grace” with
“supervenient moonshine.” Indeed, by this
date—so far as opinion went, which is a very different thing from
sentiment and traditional bias—he was already a decided sceptic.
He was never confirmed, professed no religious faith, and practised no
regular religious observances; but he had (more especially two or three
years after this) sufficient sympathy with the abstract ideas and the
venerable forms of Christianity to go occasionally to an Anglican
church—very occasionally, and only as the inclination ruled him.
Not long after this letter-writing (I have already expressed the
opinion that it was about the new year of 1848) Mr. Scott called in 50
Charlotte Street, and saw Dante and other members of the family. I well
remember his first appearance, in the evening. He was then a handsome and
highly impressive-looking man; of good stature, bony and well-developed but
rather thin frame, pondering and somewhat melancholy air, and deliberate
low-toned utterance. His hair (which he lost entirely some years afterwards)
was blackish, and of free abundant growth, his eyebrows bushy, his eyes of a
very pale clear blue. This hue must have been too cold and steely for a
southern sympathy; for, when he and I were travelling in Italy in 1862, a
Pisan female fellow-
traveller felt disconcerted under its influence,
and whispered to me that he certainly had “the evil
eye.” We in Charlotte Street did not think so, but took very
warmly indeed to Mr. Scott, and found him not only attractive but even
fascinating.
Some time after he had written to Mr. Scott—it seems to have
been in the summer of 1850—Dante Rossetti wrote likewise to
Robert Browning. In the British Museum he had come across an anonymous poem
entitled
Pauline. He admired it much, and copied out every line of it. He observed one
or two verses which he already knew in Browning's avowed poems. From this
circumstance, and from general internal evidence, he came to the conclusion
that the author of
Pauline could be no other than Browning, and he wrote to the poet at a venture
to enquire whether his inference was correct. Browning was at that time in
Venice. He replied in the affirmative; and, being two years afterwards back
in London, he made the acquaintance of Rossetti, who called upon him
companioned by the poet William Allingham.
A certain day in March 1848—I don't know
which day— formed one of the most important
landmarks in the career of Dante Rossetti. It was on that day that he wrote
to Mr. Ford Madox Brown, personally quite unknown to him, asking whether he
could become Brown's pupil in the practical work of painting. He thus
commenced the most intimate friendship of his life; and the letter led on to
his familiar companionship with Holman Hunt, and hence to the
Præraphaelite movement, and all subsequent developments of his
art.
It may be questioned—Why did Rossetti look out for private
instruction in painting, when he might, with moderate exertion, have
advanced from the Antique School of the Royal Academy to the Life School and
the Painting School, and might, in the last-named section, have obtained, from
accredited painters, all the training that he
could want? My recollections on this point do not supply me with any very
precise information. Some
data are however clear enough to
me. Few young men were more impetuous or more impatient than my brother, or
more ambitious to boot. He had now been an art-student for nearly six years,
and he wanted to be a student no longer, but a practising painter, testing
by actual performance the faculty that was within him, and the recognition
which the public might be willing or compelled to accord thereto. His study
in the Academy's Antique School had not yet lasted two years. Fully as much
might still be needed before he would get into the Painting School, and,
when there, he might find little to respect in his instructors (for he had
no belief in an R.A., merely as such), and little furtherance in that
particular line of work which attracted him. He had plenty of ideas. What he
needed was such an immediate knowledge of brush-work as would enable him to
cover a canvas. I do not say—to cover it well or ill; for the
idea of doing the thing ill would at this time, as at all others, have been
most repugnant to him. He wanted to cover the canvas, and to do it as well
as his utmost endeavour would permit. These considerations were amply
sufficient to impel him to look out for a prompt training in painting
elsewhere than by the graduated processes of the Royal Academy. As he was
not yet twenty years of age, it could not be held that he was at all
belated, if only now he could make a real beginning.
The letter to Mr. Brown is so important from all points of view that I
think well to transcribe it here verbatim.
“
March 1848.
“50 Charlotte
Street, Portland Place.
“Sir,—
“I am a student in the Antique School of
the Royal Academy. Since the first time I ever went to an
exhibition (which was several years ago, and when I saw a
picture of yours from Byron's
Giaour) I have always listened with avidity if your name
happened to be mentioned, and rushed first of all to your
number in the Catalogue.
The
Parisina
, the
Study in the Manner
of the Early Masters
,
Our Lady of
Saturday-night
, and the other glorious works you have exhibited, have
successively raised my admiration, and kept me standing on
the same spot for fabulous lengths of time. The outline from
your
Abstract Representation of
Justice
which appeared in one of the Illustrated Papers constitutes, together with an engraving after that
great painter Von Holst,
1 the sole pictorial adornment of my room
[this was a room, originally our father's
dressing-room, quite at the top of the house 50 Charlotte
Street. Small and bare and uncared-for it was, but how many
hours, which in retrospect seem glorious hours, have I not
passed in it with my brother! how many books have we not
read to one another, how many
bouts-rimés sonnets have we not
written, over its scanty fireplace!]. And, as for
the
Mary Queen of Scots
, if ever I do anything in the art, it will certainly
be attributable in a great degree to the constant study of
that work [this was a very large painting,
The Execution of Mary Queen of
Scots
, now in the possession of Mr. Boddington. My brother
had seen it in the Pantheon Bazaar, where it hung for years
rather than months].
“It is not therefore to be wondered at if,
wishing to obtain some knowledge of colour (which I have as
yet scarcely attempted), the hope suggests itself that you
may possibly admit pupils to profit by your invaluable
assistance. If, such being the case, you would do me the
honour to inform me what your terms would be for six months'
instruction, I feel convinced that I should then have some
chance in the Art.
“I remain, Sir, very
truly yours,
“Gabriel C.
Rossetti.”
It is somewhat remarkable that, apart from his allusion to a print of
the
Justice, my brother did not here
refer to Madox Brown's three Cartoons in Westminster Hall—works
which he assuredly and very rightly admired as much at least as any of the
paintings specified, and more than most
Transcribed Footnote (page 117):
1 Von Holst is not much remembered now. He was
an Anglo-German painter, greatly addicted to supernatural subjects,
which he treated with imaginative impulse and considerable pictorial
skill—
Lord Lyttelton and the Ghost,
Faust and Mephistopheles in the
Wine-cellar
,
The Death of Lady Macbeth,
etc. He died towards 1850, in early middle age.
of them. Apparently he dwelt on paintings alone,
because his immediate object was to obtain guidance in the use of colour.
Mr. Brown, born on 16 April 1821, was close upon twenty-seven years of
age when he received this letter, or about seven years older than Rossetti.
He was a vigorous-looking young man, with a face full of insight and
purpose; thick straight brown hair, fair skin, well-coloured visage, blueish
eyes, broad brow, square and rather high shoulders, slow and distinct
articulation. His face was good-looking as well as fine; but less decidedly
handsome, I think, than it became towards the age of forty. As an old
man—he died on 6 October 1893— he had a grand
patriarchal aspect; his hair, of a pure white, being fully as abundant as
when first I knew him, supplemented now by a long beard. Born in Calais of
English parents, and brought up chiefly abroad, he was the sort of man who
had no idea of being twitted without exacting the reason why. Such profuse
praise as he now received from his unknown correspondent was what fortune
had not accustomed him to, and he suspected that some ill-advised person was
trying to make game of him. From his studio in Clipstone Street, very near
Charlotte Street, he sallied forth with a stout stick in his hand. Knocking
at No. 50, he would not give his name, nor proceed further than the passage.
When Dante came down, Brown's enquiry was “Is your name
Rossetti, and is this your writing?” An affirmative
being returned, the next question was, “What do you mean
by it?” to which Rossetti rationally replied that he
meant what he had written. Brown now perceived that after all the whole
affair was
bonâ fide; and (as the
Family-letters show) he not only consented to put his neophyte in the right
path of painting, but would entertain no offer of payment, and made Rossetti
his friend on the spot—a friend for that day, in the spring of
1848, and a friend for life.
For these details I have relied chiefly on the book of Mr. Bell Scott,
who relates the interview in the words (such they purport to be) of Rossetti
himself in conversation with Scott.
Note: In the second paragraph, “I have not the least recollection
of what it was” should read “the Study in the
manner of the Early Masters”.
Mr. Stephens gives a similar though briefer narrative, on the
authority of Brown's anecdotic discourse, which was often of a very amusing
kind, and replete with minute particulars. For truth's sake I will say that
I cannot remember having ever heard either Brown or my brother refer to
these minor incidents of the stout stick, etc.; but I am bound to believe
Mr. Scott and Mr. Stephens, and I do believe them.
After paying a visit or two to the studio of Madox Brown
—who was then engaged on his important picture of
Wiclif and John of Gaunt
(or possibly it was
Cordelia watching the bedside of Lear
)—Rossetti was informed by his instructor that he should
set-to at copying a picture, and at painting some
still-life—pickle-jars or bottles. According to Mr. Holman Hunt,
he copied the picture (I have not the least recollection of what it was),
but his aspiring soul chafed sorely against the pickle-jars. This, however
reasonably enjoined by Mr. Brown, was the very sort of drudgery which, in
applying to him, Rossetti had hoped to avoid. The
pickle-jars were nevertheless painted. The study remained in the
hands of Mr. Madox Brown, and, at the sale which was held at his house in
May 1894, it turned up, and was purchased by Mr. Herbert H. Gilchrist. My
brother made also many original drawings or slight paintings under Brown's
eye. These I no longer remember; but I have lately seen one, which is said
to be the first of all, and which was presented by Brown, only a few days
before his death, to the young lady who is now Mrs. Ford M. Hueffer. It is a
drawing of long narrow shape, in body-colour barely a little tinted, with a
plain gilt ground; and represents
a young
woman
, auburn-haired, standing with joined hands. The face seems to
be a reminiscence of Christina, but the nose is unduly long; the drapery is
delicately felt and done, and the whole thing has a forecast of the
“Præraphaelite” manner. Without being
exactly good, the work shows distinct promise for a youth, almost a novice
at handling the brush.
From the pickle-jars ensued the second stage in this pictorial
progress, and the beginning of my brother's close
intimacy with Hunt, who was about thirteen months
his senior. Just towards the date when Dante was getting adequately, or more
than adequately, disgusted with his still-life probation, the annual
Exhibition of the Royal Academy opened at the commencement of May. He saw
there Hunt's picture—an uncommonly fine one for so youthful a
painter— of
The Eve of St. Agnes
(escape of Madeline and Porphyro from the castle). He
“came up boisterously” (says Mr.
Hunt), “and in loud tongue made me feel very confused by
declaring that mine was the best picture of the
year.” It seems that the like had occurred in 1847, when
Hunt's exhibited picture was from Walter Scott's
Woodstock. “Rossetti frankly asked me to let him call upon
me.” When he did call,
1 he bewailed the pickle-jars or bottles, and sounded Hunt as to
whether he need do any more of them. Hunt, without detracting from the
general correctness of Br