Recollections of Dante Gabriel Rossetti T. Hall Caine 1 This electronic document is a partial reconstruction of the original edition. The complete document is scheduled for transcription later. Recollections of Dante Gabriel Rossetti T. Hall Caine Roberts Brothers Boston 1883 Alderman Library, U of Virginia pr5246.c3 Commentary
Introduction

Published in the year of the poet's death, Caine's volume was the first and one of the most influential biographical treatments of DGR. Caine first became acquainted with DGR in 1879, and thus the book deals only with the last years of DGR's life. As Francis Fennell puts it, “This book begins the tradition of viewing Rossetti as a morbid recluse, largely because the author did not know his subject during the subject's youth” (45). Caine was “a young builder's clerk from Liverpool with journalistic ambitions”, who in 1881 “had come to live with Rossetti as a kind of attendant” (Doughty, 632). Although Caine had been a much-needed companion to DGR in his final period of illness and depression, the Rossetti family did not approve of this hasty and melodramatic biography, which sensationalized the poet's drug-addiction, paranoia, and obsession with death.

Textual History: Composition

Textual History: Revision

Printing History

Pictorial

Historical

Literary

Translation

Autobiographical

Bibliographic

Doughty, <hi rend="i">A Victorian Romantic</hi> 632ff. Fennell, <hi rend="i">An Annotated Bibliography</hi> 45.

I could not be much concerned about the unwillingness to give me a new sonnet which Rossetti at first exhibited, for I knew full well that sooner or later the sonnet would come. Not that I recognised in him the faintest scintillation of the affectation so common among authors as to the publication of work. But the fear of any appearance of collusion between himself and his critics was, as he said, a bugbear that constantly haunted him. Owing to this, a stranger often stood a better chance of securing his ready and open co-operation than the most intimate of friends. I frequently yielded to his desire that in anything that I might write his name should not be mentioned—too frequently by far, to my infinite vexation at the time, and now to my deep and ineradicable regret. The sonnet-book out of which arose much of the correspondence printed in this chapter, contains in its preface and notes hardly an allusion to him, and yet he was, in my judgment, out of all reach and sight, the greatest sonnet-writer of his time. The sonnet first sent was <xref doc="a.10-1871.raw">“Pride of Youth”</xref> , but as this formed part of “The House of Life” series, it was withdrawn, and “Raleigh's Cell in the Tower” was substituted. The following hitherto unpublished sonnet was also contributed but withdrawn at the last moment, because of its being out of harmony with the sonnets selected to accompany it:

 <hi rend="c">ON CERTAIN ELIZABETHAN REVIVALS.</hi> O ruff-embastioned vast Elizabeth, Bush to these bushel-bellied casks of wine, Home-growth, 'tis true, but rank as turpentine,— What would we with such skittle-plays at death? Say, must we watch these brawlers' brandished lathe, Or to their reeking wit our ears incline, Because all Castaly flowed crystalline In gentle Shakspeare's modulated breath? What! must our drama with the rat-pit vie, Nor the scene close while one is left to kill? Shall this be poetry? And thou—thou man Of blood, thou cannibalic Caliban, What shall be said to thee?—a poet?—Fie! “An honourable murderer, if you will.”