Letters of D. G. Rossetti: Iv. 1859-1870

AT the period at which we have arrived in the correspondence of Dante Rossetti and William Allingham there is a gap of about three years. The letter which closed the third part of this series was written at the end of 1856 ; the present part, my fourth and last, opens with one written in December, 1859. During some portion of this time the official duties of Allingham, I believe, kept him in London, so that doubtless the two men often met. That this was not the only cause of the absence of correspondence is shown by Rossetti’s next letter. The circle of friends of both men had been rapidly extending in these latter years, so that probably they had not continued to each other all that they once were. That the great painter had no wish to break with his brother poet we can see by the kind way in which he now writes to him : —

XX.

Thursday [shortly before Christmas, 1859].

MY DEAR ALLINGHAM, — Many thanks for your volume just received. I was agreeably surprised to see my sister’s name on your list, — deservedly, I think.

The book is all the welcomer that it leads me to hope I was mistaken in a conclusion I had begun arriving at, that I must unwittingly have incurred the displeasure of one of my oldest and most valued friends, no other than yourself. Your silence before going and since I wrote to you had led me to fear this possibility. Now, if it is so, will you tell me downright, and the why ? But perhaps you are only paying me out in my own coin, — if utter absence of answer can be considered payment in any sense,—in which case I must confess I could only cry, Mea Culpa !

By the bye, that is the title of a queer little poem, evidently modern, in your collection, with no name to it. Whose is it ? Or where got you it ?

A merry Christmas and “ warious games of that sort ” to you.

Yours affectionately,

D. G. ROSSETTI.

The “volume just received” was Allingham’s Nightingale Valley. Christina Rossetti’s An End is given on page 194.

“ Warious games of that sort,” from one of Dickens’s novels, would seem to have been a favorite quotation with Rossetti, for this was the second time he made it in his correspondence with Allingham.

XXI.

[Undated. Christmas, 1859.]

. . . Now I really think, to continue, there ’s much too much Wordsworth. He’s good, you know, but unbearable. I don’t pretend to have read all you’ve put in of his, but noticed with sorrow he has two more pieces in the book than Tennyson, who comes next, and six more than Shakespeare. One morceau of Wordsworth, which I had not met with anywhere else (To my Maiden Sister, sent by my Dear Wife’s (and my own) darling boy, — or something like that), drew my pencil, I confess, to the margin in a moment, with the compound adjective “ puffy-muffy,” not inapplicable to much I have found in the same excellent writer.

Then of the Shakespeare sonnets inserted, the only one which, to my thinking, ranks among the very first is the Love’s Consolation. In The Wife of Usher’s Well, I do not think the inserted stanza indispensable to the sense, and don’t you agree with me that modern additions are best avoided, if possible ?

Barthram’s Dirge is, I believe, undoubtedly by Surtees. Sic Vita, you probably know, is often printed with two or three more stanzas of the same length as the one you give, but these perhaps you reject as spurious. I do not bear them in mind. . . .

So there I have made enough objections, — humbly, mostly, I beg you to believe, — and not said a word yet of all the praise the book deserves ; full as much as Ruskin gives it. Your preface is most excellent, and will show the wise ones that the editor is “ somebody” besides Giraldus. And why Giraldus ? And why, I would almost say, Nightingale Valley ? had I not almost said too much already.

Mea Culpa I described as a queer poem, in my last, lest by any possibility it should be written by any one I hated. The fact, as I thought then and think now, is that it is an extremely fine one ; I think one of your very finest. I half suspected you, but it is not very recognizable as yours. What a splendid version you have of Auld Robin Gray ! Is it altered at all by W. A. ?

Yours affectionately,

D. G. R.

The “ morceau of Wordsworth ” is entitled, “ To my Sister. Written at a Small Distance from my House, and sent by my Little Boy.” According to Hall Caine, as quoted by W. M. Rossetti, “ Rossetti thought Wordsworth was too much the high priest of Nature to be her lover.” Mr. Caine speaks also of “ Rossetti’s grudging Wordsworth every vote he gets.” His indifference to the beautiful poet was perhaps due to his having spent all his childhood and youth, and most of his manhood, in London.

“ Ruskin,” as Allingham told W. M. Rossetti, “ wrote a warm little note to the ‘ editor of Nightingale Valley,’ calling it the best collection he ever saw.” On the title-page it is described as “edited by Giraldus.”

XXII.

PARIS, Wednesday [June, 1860].

MY DEAR ALLINGHAM, — Have you heard yet that I am married ? The news is hardly a month old, so it may not have reached you, though I have meant to write you word of it all along, as you are one of the few valued friends whom Lizzie and I have in common as yet; nor, as the circle spreads, will she be likely to feel a warmer regard for any than she does for you. . . .

Jones is married, too, only a week ago. He and his wife (a charming and most gifted little woman) were to have met us in Paris, but he has not been well enough to travel. . . .

Rossetti was married to Miss Siddal at Hastings on May 23, 1860. On April 13, in a letter to his mother about the approaching event, he wrote : “ Like all the important things I ever meant to do, — to fulfill duty or secure happiness, — this one has been deferred almost beyond possibility.” Ruskin, writing to congratulate him, said: “ I think Ida should be very happy to see how much more beautifully, perfectly, and tenderly you draw when you are drawing her than when you draw anybody else. She cures you of all your worst faults when you look at her.”

W. M. Rossetti, speaking of Lady Burne-Jones, says: “Two of her sisters are Mrs. Poynter, wife of the director of the National Gallery, and Mrs. Kipling, mother of Mr. Rudyard Kipling.”

It was during this visit to Paris (according to Mr. William Sharp) that Rossetti completed his drawing called Dr. Johnson and the Methodistical Young Ladies at the Mitre Tavern. Among the very few works of history and biography that he had read “ Boswell’s Johnson held a high place.”

XXXIII.

SPRING COTTAGE, DOWNSHIRE HILL, HAMPSTEAD [end of July, I860].

. . . I am anxious about the Sawdust Poem, but am not sure that that product is better adapted for wholesome spiritual bread than it is for the bodily. Sawdust, more or less, however, is the fashion of the day ; —’s wooden puppet-show of enlarged views instead of Veronese’s flesh, blood, and slight stupidity. Give me the latter, however, or even Millais’ when Veronese’s is not to be had. But oh that Veronese at Paris !

As to Ruskin’s ten years’ rest, I do not know about his writing, but I will answer for my reading, if he only writes like his article in the Cornhill this month. Who could read it, or anything about such bosh ? . . .

By the bye, I remember sending you a little book of bogy poems in emblematic green cover, and hearing from you that you had one already. If you still have mine, would you oblige me by sending it back, as I sometimes think of it when I want to be surprised.

Do write me again, and I ’ll try to be a better correspondent, now I ’m married and settled. My wife and I are Yours affectionately,

D. G. E. E. } ROSSETTI.

The Sawdust Poem is perhaps described in the following letter of Allingham’s, dated March 12, 1860 : —

“ I am doing something occasionally at a poem on Irish matters, to have two thousand lines or so, and can see my way through it. One part out of three is done. But alas ! when all’s done, who will like it? Think of the Landlord and Tenant Question in flat decasyllabics ! Did you ever hear of the Irish coaster that was hailed, ‘ Smack ahoy ! what’s your cargo ? ’ ‘ Timber and fruit! ’ ‘ What sort ? ’ ‘ Besoms and potatoes ! ’ I fear my poem will no better fulfill expectations.”

Rossetti, a month earlier, had seen Veronese’s Marriage in Cana. He described it as “ the greatest picture in the world, beyond a doubt.” His brother writes that “later on, 1871, he had got to think Veronese (and also Tintoret)

‘ simply detestable without their color and handling.’ ”

The August number of The Cornhill Magazine contained the first part of Ruskin’s Unto this Last.

“ By the book of bogy poems Rossetti means a small, thick volume (I still possess it) called Improvisations of the Spirit, purporting to be written under the influence of ‘ spirits.’ The author was Dr. Garth Wilkinson.” (W. M. R.)

Mrs. Rossetti’s Christian names were Elizabeth Eleanor.

XXIV.

[September or October, 1860.]

MY DEAR ALLINGHAM, — I am sending you these things at last, — that is, the manuscripts, which Ruskin has only just returned me ; I having asked him to send one, namely Jenny, to the Cornhill for me ; he of course refusing to send that, offering to send some of the mystical ones which I don’t cave to print by themselves.

My delay has been partly through this, and partly through wanting to add more before sending them to you. But they ’d better e’en go now, for no more will get done for the nonce. The only one very unfinished, both in what is written and unwritten (I think), is The Bride’s Chamber. I wish you’d specially tell me of any you don’t think worth including. You will find that your advice has been followed often (if you remember what you gave), and so it is not time wasted to advise me. When I think how old most of these things are, it seems like a sort of mania to keep thinking of them still; but I suppose one’s leaning still to them depends mainly on their having no trade associations, and being still a sort of thing of one’s own. I have no definite ideas as to doing anything with them, but should like, even if they lie at rest, to make them as good as I can.

And what are you doing? How goes the sawdust poem you spoke of ? And is it to be visible that wine is packed therein, or is a pure surface of sawdust, betraying no wine, the duty of the modern bard ? So may the shade of Wordsworth smile on him and repay him by reading all his (W.’s) poems through to him when the kindred spirits meet.

I wish you were in town, to see you sometimes, for I literally see no one now except, Madox Brown pretty often, and even he is gone now to join Morris, who is out of reach at Upton, and with them is married Jones painting the inner walls of the house Top built. But as for the neighbors, when they see men portrayed by Jones upon the wall, the images of the Chaldeans portrayed (by him. !) in extract vermilion, exceeding all probability in dyed attire upon their heads, after the manner of no Babylonians of any Chaldea, the land of any one’s nativity, — as soon as they see them with their eyes, shall they not account him doting, and send messengers into Colney Hatch ?

Lizzie has been rather better of late, I hope ; certainly not subject to the same extent to violent fits of illness. She is at Brighton just now for a few days, but I know I may send you her love with mine. We are sorely put to it for pied-à-terre, every house we try for seeming to slip through just as we think we have got it. For one in Church Row, Hampstead, which has just escaped us, my heart is in doleful dumps ; it having a glorious oldworld garden worth £200 a year to me for backgrounds.

Do let me hear from you (to Blackfriars) when you have got the book which goes with this, and believe me Yours affectionately,

D. G. ROSSETTI.

William has gone to Florence to old Browning.

Jenny was begun as early as 1847, was almost finished about 1858, and was published in 1870. Bride-Chamber Talk was begun as soon, but was not published till 1881, when its title was changed to The Bride’s Prelude.

Rossetti took part in painting Mr. Morris’s house. In the record of his work for 1858—59 his brother mentions the “ Salutatio Beatricis, representing Dante meeting Beatrice in Florence, and in the garden of Eden, painted in oil in a week on a door in Mr. Morris’s residence. The Red House, Upton, near Bexley Heath, Woolwich.” I remember the beautiful paintings on the doors and furniture in this pleasant house. I have not forgotten, moreover, a long and eager talk on pigments between my host and a friend, of which I did not understand a single word.

“Top” is explained by the following quotation from W. M. Rossetti : “ The nickname Top (oftener Topsy) had clung to Mr. Morris ever since his undergraduate days at Oxford.”

Colney Hatch is a lunatic asylum near London.

XXV.

BLACKFRIARS, 1 November [1860].

. . . I wrote to Patmore after reading his book, which he sent me, saying all that I (most sincerely) admired in it, but perhaps leaving some things unsaid ; for what can it avail to say some things to a man after his third volume ? “ Of love which never finds its published close, what sequel ? ” And how many ? !

A man (one Gilchrist, who lives next door to Carlyle, and is as near him in other respects as he can manage) wrote to me the other day, saying he was writing a life of Blake, and wanted to see my manuscript by that genius. Was there not some talk of your doing something in the way of publishing its contents ? I know William thought of doing so, but fancy it might wait long for his efforts ; and I have no time, but really think its contents ought to be edited, especially if a new Life gives a “ shove to the concern ” (as Spurgeon expressed himself in thanking a liberal subscriber to his Tabernacle). I have not yet engaged myself in any way to said Gilchrist on the subject, though I have told him he can see it here if he will give me a day’s notice.

By the bye, talking of Blake, did I (I think I did) solicit from you one of the two copies you have, or had, of a certain greenish Book of Bogies, one whereof was once sent you by the present applicant, who lately found out from the Ghost’s publisher that that literary character is quite out of print and has no further views on the British press ? . . .

You know William is back from Florence, etc., having found the Brownings at Siena, the great one exuberant as ever. I had a request the other day to illustrate Aurora Leigh, from, or rather on the part of, the publisher, but really I don’t think I could make much of it. However, if it were done by various hands, I should like to make one among them. R. B. was not very explicit to William on the subject of his present labors.

Have you seen a new volume, — however, I’m not quite sure the copies are all out yet, — namely, two plays by Algernon Swinburne ? And did you meet him in London ? He is very Topsaic, with a decided dash of Death’s Jest Book, if you ever read that improving book. But there’s no mistake about some of his poems — much more, indeed, than these published plays. The other day, Jones, his wife, my wife, and I went to Hampton Court and lost ourselves in the Maze. I wish you had been one of the party, and so would Jones have wished, I know, as you are on his select list, which is not too large. . . .

Rossetti, in the line which he incloses in quotation marks, applying it so humorously to Patmore’s Angel in the House, parodies Tennyson’s Love and Duty : —

“ Of love that never found his earthly close,

What sequel ? ”

“ One Gilchrist ” was Alexander Gilchrist, author of Lives of Etty and Blake. “ For him the feeling of Rossetti was one of genuine friendliness. He liked the writer and his writings, and had a high regard for his insight as a critic of art.” Gilchrist’s sudden death in the following November came as “ a staggering blow ” to his friend. When, a few months later, Rossetti lost his wife, he wrote to Mrs. Gilchrist, I feel forcibly the bond of misery which exists between us, and the unhappy right we have of saying to each other what we both know to be fruitless.”

The manuscript by Blake had been offered Rossetti in 1847 for ten shillings. “ Dante’s pockets,” writes his brother, “ 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. His ownership of this volume conduced to the Preraphaelite 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. These were balsam to Rossetti’s soul, and grist to his mill. At the sale of his library the Blake manuscript sold for £110.”

“ Mr. Swinburne,” writes William Rossetti, “ dedicated to Rossetti his first volume. The Queen Mother, and Rosamond. His brilliant intellect, his wide knowledge of poetry and astonishing memory in quotation, his enthusiasm for whatsoever he recognized as great, his fascinating audacity and pungency in talk, and the singular and ingenuous charm of his manner to any one whom he either liked or respected made him the most welcome of comrades to Rossetti.”

Rossetti wrote to “ Shirley ” in 1865 : “ You will find Swinburne’s Atalanta a most noble thing ; never surpassed, to my thinking.”

XXVI.

[November 22, 1860.]

. . . About the poems, I never meant,

I believe, to print the Hymn (which was merely written to see if I could do Wesley, and copied, I believe, to enrage my friends) nor the Duke of Wellington. The Mirror I will sacrifice to you, and have no prejudice myself in favor of Ave, but should be smothered by certain friends it has if it did not go in. Are your objections to it on poetic or dogmatic grounds ? and does Dennis Shand displease you for anything but its impropriety ? But perhaps I shall find my answers in the margins. The one of any length I most thought of omitting, myself, is The Portrait, which is rather spoon-meat; but this, I see, you do not name, and perhaps I may leave it. My chief reason for including as much as I could would be to make the volume look as portly as may be from such a middleaged novice. I would throw The Bride’s Chamber over altogether if I could muster energy to supply an equal amount of new matter, but fear I shall have to finish it off somehow if I rush into print, as I almost think of doing now. . . .

“ I believe I have this Hymn somewhere. It was never published. I can remember that some years after Rossetti’s death it was produced to me as being his, and I pronounced it spurious ; but since then I have seen reason to alter my opinion. Wellington’s Funeral was finally published by him ; The Mirror, not by him, but by me, in the Collected Works.” (W. M. R.)

Dennis Shand, W. M. Rossetti describes as “ a ballad of a rather light kind, not published.”

About The Portrait Rossetti wrote to his mother in 1873 : “ I remember that, for the family Hotch-Potch, long and long ago, I first wrote The Blessed Damozel, and also a poem about a portrait. Have you these ancient documents, and could you let me have the same if in my own handwriting ? ”

XXVII.

[Postmark. November 20, 1800, LONDON, E. C.]

MY DEAR ALLINGHAM,—The book comes safe. I have not yet had time to look well through your suggestions, but am glad to see there are fewest in the things done later. Some of the others I know can never be set quite right, but I dare say I shall find some help thereto in your notes. Would you tell me as regards Jenny (which I reckon the most serious thing I have written) whether there is any objection you see in the treatment, or any side of the subject left untouched which ought to be included ? I really believe I shall print the things now, and see whether the magic presence of proof-sheets revives my muse sufficiently for a new poem or two to add to them.

Indeed and of course my wife does draw still. Her last designs would, I am sure, surprise and delight you, and I hope she is going to do better than ever now. I feel surer every time she works that she has real genius — none of your makebelieve— in conception and color, and if she can only add a little more of the precision in carrying out which it so much needs health and strength to attain, she will, I am sure, paint each picture as no woman has painted yet. But it is no use hoping for too much,

I quite agree with you in loathing Once a Week, illustrations and all. By the bye, what could be more astonishingly bad than —’s two or three ? Meredith’s novel, however, has very great merit of a wonderfully queer kind, I thought. Did you ? But through your poem (how long have such little commodities as five-hundred-line poems been lying by with you ?) I should like greatly to open a connection even with Once a Week, though it is only once a century that I feel disposed to illustrate. (I had an application through Chapman, the other day, about doing Aurora Leigh all through, as I understood, but could n’t, though I should like to join with others, if feasible, for a block or two, for Browning’s sake.)

I wish you would let me know what the subject is in your poem. If modern, so much the better ; only, if Irish, I fear failing in character and truth. But I am not so despairingly dilatory quite now, I think, as I used to be in those famous old days, and might not perhaps turn your poem into, a posthumous one.

As for Swinburne’s plays, I don’t think they will be to your liking. For my own part, I think he is much better suited for ballad-writing and such like, but there are real beauties in the plays too. . . .

On May 24, 1870. Rossetti wrote to his maiden aunt : “ I just hear from mamma, with a pang of remorse, that you have ordered a copy of my Poems. You may be sure I did not fail to think of you when I inscribed copies to friends and relatives ; but, to speak frankly, I was deterred from sending it to you by the fact of the book including one poem (Jenny) of which I felt uncertain whether you would lie pleased with it. I am not ashamed of having written it (indeed, I assure you that I would never have written it if I thought it unfit to be read with good results), but I feared it might startle you somewhat. . . . My mother likes it, on the whole, the best in the volume, after some consideration.”

George Meredith’s novel in Once a Week was Evan Harrington.

XXVIII.

[January, 1861.]

. . . We have got our rooms quite jolly now. Our drawing-room is a beauty, I assure you, already, and on the first country trip we make we shall have it newly papered from a design of mine which I have an opportunity of getting made by a paper-manufacturer, somewhat as below. I shall have it printed on common brown packing-paper and on blue grocer’s-paper, to try which is best. [Here follows, in the original letter, a design of the wall-paper.]

The trees are to stand the whole height of the room, so that the effect will be slighter and quieter than in the sketch, where the tops look too large. Of course they will be wholly conventional: the stems and fruit will be Venetian red, the leaves black ; the fruit, however, will have a line of yellow to indicate roundness and distinguish it from the stem ; the lines of the ground black, and the stars yellow with a white ring round them. The red and black will be made of the same key as the brown or blue of the ground, so that the effect of the whole will be rather sombre, but I think rich, also. When we get the paper up, we shall have the doors and wainscoting painted summer-house green. . . .

We are organizing (but this is quite under the rose as yet) a company for the production of furniture and decoration of all kinds, for the sale of which we are going to open an actual shop ! The men concerned are Madox Brown, Jones, Topsy, Webb (the architect of T.’s house), P. P. Marshall, Faulkner, and myself. Each of us is now producing, at his own charges, one or two (and some of us more) things towards the stock. We are not intending to compete with costly rubbish or anything of that sort, but to give real good taste at the price as far as possible of ordinary furniture. We expect to start in some shape about May or June, but not to go to any-expense in premises at first. . . .

“ Our rooms ” were the old quarters by Blackfriars Bridge, somewhat enlarged. W. M. Rossetti, describing “ the foundation of the decorative firm, which, known at first as ‘ Morris, Marshall, Faulkner & Co.,’ is now named ‘ Morris & Company,’” continues: “ The Preraphaelite Brotherhood introduced into painting something that might well be called a revolution, and the firm introduced into decoration something still more revolutionary for widespread and as yet permanent effect.”

XXIX.

[Indorsed LONDON, May 10, 1861.]

. . . Now, there is a world of words about myself when I had to tell you about your work ; that is, Morley Park, which I read and found full of beauties. — best where most impassioned, as all poetry is and must be. The monologue of the deserted woman seemed to me most sustained in this respect, and you will say truly ought to be. In the rest I must say I found a certain degree of constraint in style, a rather willful stiffness of expression (of which the opening couplet shows as good an example as any), and I thought also too much dwelling here and there on minute objects in nature, particularly in the bridegroom’s speech to the bride. I have it not by me, so am speaking from memory. Moreover, the speeches struck me sometimes as having rather too literary — or clever — a turn. I recall as an instance what the main speaker says to his returned friend about his grown-up sweetheart, towards the end. The work is quite yours, however, and really a work, and would harmonize much better with a volume of your poems than with Macmillan’s Macademy of stones for bread. By the bye, I dare say you liked my sister’s little pennyworths of wheat prominent among the pebbles. . . .

The title of Morley Park was changed first into Southwell Park, and finally into Bridegroom’s Park. It is included in a volume called Life and Phantasy in the last edition of Allingham’s works. The opening couplet is as follows : —

“ Friend Edward, from this turn remark The sweep of woodland. Bridegroom’s Park, we call it.”

“ ‘ My sister’s little pennyworths of wheat’ were poems by Christina in Macmillan’s Magazine. One of them (the first) was Up-Hill, now of considerable celebrity.” (W. M. R.)

XXX.

Monday [summer of 1861].

MY DEAR ALLINGHAM, — I am sending you by book post with this a sewn copy of my book. I have only just got a few, and do not offer it you en permanence in this state, as I am going to make an etching, or perhaps two, for it, and there is another index to come at the end, but had six copies sent me now to use in getting a publisher, etc. My first offer of it will be to Macmillan, with whom I have had some talk.

What I want chiefly to get rid of is the printer’s bill, but I am led to think by some friends that I ought to expect something in money also. What think you ? Will you tell me. and say all you have time to say in the way of criticism ? Cancels are still possible. There are five cancel leaves already in the book (chiefly on score of decorum !). which you will notice by their being in the rough as yet. . . .

“ ‘ My book ’ was The Early Italian Poets, now called Dante and his Circle. No etchings were produced in it. Macmillan did not publish it, but Smith and Elder.” (W. M. R.)

For the “something in money ” which his friends led him to think he ought to expect he had to wait eight years. By 1869, about six hundred copies having been sold, he received “ a minute dole of less than nine pounds.”

XXXI.

August 10, 1863,

16 CHEYNE WALK, CHELSEA.

MY DEAR ALLINGHAM, — I have been meaning to write any day since last seeing you, though in truth without much to say, but I am anxious to hear in return how you get on in your new quarters. I have not been out of London since seeing you, except for a couple of days to Brighton; and indeed, though I have earned this year more than any previous one, I seem never to have a penny wherewith to run away for a little, like other people. Perhaps I may yet, though, in another month, and who knows but I may see Venice? But I suppose it will not be. . . .

Have you seen a new volume of poems by Jean Ingelow ? Really there seems a good deal in it.

This house goes on getting more settled, and I more restless. I do not know where it will take me to nor how soon. I see hardly any one. Swinburne is away, Meredith has evaporated for good, and my brother is seldom here. There is only one more to unite with me in good wishes to you.

I would begin another sheet, however, but for the little to say, so to make something I will direct your attention to the headings of these sheets, which are a combined effort of self as designer and Knewstub’s (my pupil’s) brother’s firm as executants; he insisting on making me a present of a small stack of paper, headed in various colors, which stuff up every drawer in my studio, and will last half my lifetime, or indeed head the news of my death when that occurs, before the black-edged paper has arrived. The above morbidity reminds me of the green bogy book, which you know you promised to send up when it came to hand.

Have you seen the Blue Book on the Royal Academy, and would you like to see it ? If so, I will send it you as a good cupboard skeleton in return for your bogies. There is abundance of rotten and decayed matter shoveled up in it, with much overfed sweltering thereby engendered, gorged creatures and starved anatomies, with some will-o’-the-wisps and the ghosts of various reputations. The only evidence of the lot which is worth reading as original thought and insight is Ruskin’s. Him I saw the other day, and pitched into, he talked such awful rubbish; but he is a dear old chap, too, and as soon as he was gone I wrote my sorrows to him. Browning was here at same time, very jolly indeed, and stayed and walked many times round the rooms, and many times stood still, with his hands in his pockets and his eyes wide open.

My love to you, and believe me ever

yours,

D. G. ROSSETTI.

Rossetti lost his wife on February 11, 1862. He had no heart to go on living in his old home by Blackfriars Bridge, and removed up the river to Chelsea. There he took a large house, in which his brother, Mr. Swinburne, and Mr. George Meredith were to have rooms, as sub-tenants.

Why Rossetti, with the large income that he was making, seemed “ never to have a penny wherewith to run away,” why he never saw Venice, is indicated by the following passage in his letter to his brother, dated April 23, 1864: “ I have seen the owner of the zebu, and undertaken to buy him for £20, — £5 payable on Monday, and the rest within a fortnight. I shall then have plenty, but just now have none. Could you pay your £5 as the first installment? ” The zebu was a small Brahmin bull, who chased his new master round a tree, and was at once resold.

Of Jean Ingelow’s new volume of poems Matthew Arnold wrote: "She seemed to me to be quite ‘ above the common,’ but I have not read enough of her to say more. It is a great deal to give one true feeling in poetry, and I think she seemed to be able to do that; but I do not at present very much care for poetry unless it can give me true thought as well. It is the alliance of these two that makes great poetry, the only poetry really worth very much.”

“ The headings of these sheets ” are thus described by W. M. Rossetti : “ My father owned a largish seal marked with a cross, — a tree having the motto ‘ Frangas non flectas,’— and he said this was regarded as his crest. Mr. Knewstub, my brother’s art assistant, who was connected with the firm of Jenner and Knewstub, got that firm to present to Gabriel a die with the crest and a monogram.”

The Blue Book was The Report of the Commissioners appointed to inquire into the Present Position of the Royal Academy in Relation to the Fine Arts.

“ Mr. Ruskin,” writes W. M. Rossetti, “ took keen delight in Rossetti’s paintings and designs. He praised freely and abused heartily both him and them. The abuse was good humored and was taken good humoredly. . . . They took in good part, with mutual banter and amusement, whatever was deficient or excessive in the performance of the painter or in the comments of the purchaser and critic.”

XXXII.

24 December, 1865,

16 CHEYNE WALK, CHELSEA.

. . . I heard of your being in town but for a flying visit, in which I am sorry you did not find time to look me up. However, if I scramble once more through the fogs and duns of a London Christmas. I ’ll hope to visit you again yet.

Worse, however, than not having yet thanked you for a pleasure offered is my omission to do so for one actually bestowed and enjoyed ; namely, the gift of your Fifty Poems. I remember they fared well with me, for I read them one evening right through when I felt much in want of other voices than plaguy ones from inside and outside ; and I found them full of good words and true. Every one is a study, — not work thrown away, or no-work shoveled together ; those new to me were to the full as good as the old ones, and many of the old gained greatly on reacquaintance. So here come my late but real thanks to you.

Ever affectionately yours,

D. G. ROSSETTI.

Allingham wrote to W. M. Rossetti on March 19, 1865: “My volume of Fifty Modern Poems is just coming out. Most of the pieces have been in magazines, etc. The whole is to myself already a thing of the past and not very interesting. I am occupied with other ideas. One quality the book has (implied in ‘ Modern ’), — it is in harmony with the best minds of our day as to religion, being at once reverent and antidogmatic.”

XXXIII.

22 March [1867].

MY DEAR ALLINGHAM, — I inclose an answer to Aidé, which will tell you my mind, except that I may add to you that £1400 is £1400 to me, or rather to anybody rather than me, as I never see it at all, and that my plan is to rent, not to buy. I have been pot-boiling to an extent lately that does not hold out much hope of estate buying or even renting. Moreover, as I have n’t been outside my door for months in the daytime, I should n’t have had much opportunity of enjoying pastures and pleasances. I have accordingly no news whatever, except of my easel, which is too mean a slave to small needs to be worth reporting on. I do not see a fellow of any sort really much oftener than you do, I imagine. . . .

There should not have been any need for “ pot-boiling.” In this year Rossetti made “ little or not at all less than

£3000.”

His habit of not going outside his door in the daytime is thus accounted for by his brother: “ He rose late; painted all day, as long as light served him ; then dined : and whether winter or summer, all was darkness, tempered by gaslight or moonlight, by the hour he left the house.”

XXXIV.

Monday [September 30, 1867].

MY DEAR ALLIXGHAM, — Do by all means come up, not for a day, but for as long as you can. I am most wishful to return with you for another spell of country air and exercise, but must tell you that since returning to town I have found the confusion in nay head and the strain on my eyes decidedly rather on the increase than otherwise, and am getting really anxious about it. I mention this quite in confidence, as it would be injurious to me if it got about. The only two to whom I have named it are Brown and Howell, and I do not mean to say more about it. To-morrow I shall finish a drawing I have been at work on, and on Wednesday shall probably go to Bowman, the oculist. . . .

Rossetti had had a “ spell of country air” at Lymington, in Hampshire, near the Isle of Wight, where Allingham was living. About this time “ his eyesight began to fail. Sunlight or artificial light became increasingly painful to him, producing sensations of giddiness.”

Howell had been Ruskin’s secretary. Later on he was employed by Rossetti “ to transact the sale of uncommissioned work. As a salesman he was unsurpassable.”

XXXV.

Thursday [October 10, 1867].

DEAR ALLINGHAM, — . . . I went to Bowman, who gave me the information that if it did n’t get better it might get worse. Your D. G. R.

To his mother he wrote, nearly two years later: “I suppose I told you of my seeing Bowman before I left London, and that instead of taking a guinea fee (which he refused) he proposes to pay me one hundred and fifty for a little water-color.”

XXXVI.

25 August, 1868, 16 CHEYNE WALK.

. . . I’m going to start away somewhere, but fancy seaside. There’s a deadly-lively or very quiet place called Southwold, in Suffolk, where the Morrises, Howells, and others have been lately, and I think perhaps of going there. I don’t know exactly what my moves may be ; but would it be in the nature of things for you to take a trip with me anywhither, at present ? I think we rather used up the walks about Lymington last year, and seaside is desirable, and certainly no impending female photographers or even poets laureate. . . .

“ The last line of this letter refers to Tennyson at Freshwater, in the Isle of Wight, and to his near neighbor, Mrs. Cameron, a lady of good position and a very cordial friend of Rossetti. She had taken to photographing, and produced many remarkable things of broad pictorial effect.” (W. M. R.)

XXXVII.

Wednesday [Christmas, 1868].

MY DEAR ALLINGHAM, — Many are Christmas nuisances, and here comes another, — accompanied, however, by all affectionate wishes.

I have been looking up a few old sonnets, and writing a few new ones, to make a little bunch in a coming number of the Fortnightly, — not till March, however, as they are full till then.

Among them are the inclosed two, about which I want an opinion. It seems to me doubtful whether the second adds anything of much value to the first, and whether it (the second) is not in itself rather far fetched and obscure. I wish you would tell me what you think. I would excise the second if the first is best by itself.

I suppose you heard that I have been queer with my eyes. This has caused inaction and the looking up of raveled rags of verse. I am now at work again, however.

Affectionately yours,

D. G. ROSSETTI.

P. S. Is n’t there a chance of your coming up this Christmas ? Come and stay with me.

Rossetti describes these sonnets in a letter to his mother, which begins : “ I send you my sonnets, which are such a lively band of bogies that they may join with the skeletons of Christina’s various closets and entertain you with a ballet.”

XXXVIII.

21 February, 1870,

16 CHEYNE WALK, CHELSEA.

MY DEAR ALLINGHAM, — As you expressed a willingness for a little more scratching and sifting at my poetic diggings, I trouble you on a rather abject dilemma regarding a very old piece of work, — Sister Helen, inclosed. The family name used in it was originally “ Keith.” This I altered because of Dobell’s ballad, Keith of Ravelston, which bears also on faithless love and supernaturaltsm. (I may add, however, that D.’s ballad was never published till some years after mine had been originally in print, but still I hate coincidences of the kind.) This I have changed to “ Holm,” which is objected to now, from a quarter I think worth considering, as not being a well-sounding territorial name. My reason for asking you about it is that (the Boyne being mentioned in the poem) an Irish name might perhaps do best. Would “Neville” do, and would it fit in with “ Eastholm,” “ Westholm,” and “ Neill of Neill ” ? Would you give me a hint or a suggestion of some better name or system of nomenclature, if such occurs to you ? The father being “ of that ilk” should stand, I think, as elucidatory. I write in great hurry, as I am trying to get the thing off for a new revise, and should be much obliged, therefore, if you could answer my question without delay.

I suppose you saw the evidently personal onslaught on William’s Shelley in the Athenæum, — by Buchanan, I believe. I suppose I may expect to fare likewise, if nothing interferes.

Ever yours, D. G. ROSSETTI.

So early as 1853 Rossetti mentions having given “ a ghastly ballad called Sister Helen ” to a magazine edited by Mrs. Howitt. Of Keith of Ravelston Rossetti wrote in 1868 : “ I have always regarded that poem as being one of the finest, of its length, in any modern poet ; ranking with Keats’s La Belle Dame sans Merci, and the other masterpieces of the condensed and hinted order so dear to imaginative minds.” Of Dobell’s poem the following is the first stanza: —

In 1866, Mr. Buchanan, in a burlesque poem, had made “ a gratuitous and insolent attack upon Mr. Swinburne.” W. M. Rossetti, in a review of Swinburne’s poems, retaliated by saying that “ the advent of so poor and pretentious a poetaster as Robert Buchanan stirs storms in teapots.”Mr. Buchanan replied by his “personal onslaught” on W. M. Rossetti’s edition of Shelley, which he followed up a little later by a severe review of Dante Rossetti’s Poems. This he enlarged and published under the title of The Fleshly School of Poetry, and other Phenomena ofthe Day. “ I have,” writes W. M. Rossetti, “ more than once been told by friends that the animus against my brother apparent in the article should he regarded as a vicarious expression of resentment at something which I myself had written.” On Dante Rossetti, who was already in a nervous state of health, Mr. Buchanan’s attack had a disastrous effect. “ He was a changed man, and so continued till the close of his life.

I venture to quote, without first obtaining Mr. W. M. Rossetti s leave, the following passage from a letter in which he informs Allingham of the proposal made to him that he should edit Shelley : “ Is it not a glorious chance, this Shelley editing and biographizing ? Willingly would I not only be doing it for pay, but do it for nothing, or pay to do it.”

XXXIX.

28 February, 1870.

DEAR ALLINGHAM, — Thanks for attending so promptly to my bewilderments. I have adopted “ Weir,” which seems to answer well. “ Kerr ” has not emphasis enough — runs too much off the tongue — for the poise of the verse.

As for that kind, good, overwhelming Lady A., she has written to me from at least six different parts of the British Islands during the past year, asking me to come down instantly and meet a sympathizing circle. But such things are quite impossible to me at the pitch of brutal bogyism at which I have arrived. You seem somehow to keep your own man, but I am hardly my own ghost. . . . I shall get into the country somewhere — where, I don’t yet know — within a few days and for a few weeks, to try if there is any marrow left in me that can be squeezed out in the form of rhyme before I go finally to press. I mean to be out in April, — latter end, I suppose,— and should like a few more pages if possible. I want to get near three hundred if I can, but have been obliged to give up the idea of finishing several things I had in hand for the purpose ; and for all that, have done no work to speak of in painting, with this divided mind. I must cart the things off now, and then get to my easel again.

Ever yours, D. G. ROSSETTI.

“ Lady A.” was, I conjecture. Lady Ashburton. Rossetti wrote to his aunt in 1874: “ Lady A. spoke of you in a friendly, even an affectionate way.”

Of the Poems published by Rossetti in the spring of this year his brother says : “This date, 1870, should be borne in mind by any amateurs of Rossetti’s work; for the volume named Poems of 1881, though partly a reissue of the book of 1870, is very far from being identical with it.”

XL.

SCALANDS, ROBERTSBRIDGE, HAWKHURST, KENT [March 7, 1870].

DEAR ALLINGHAM, — You will be surprised at my address, which is Barbara’s Cottage, not far from Hastings (but in Kent, as I find, or at least the above seems the proper form). I have been here a few days in company with Stillman, William’s American friend ; having come for the purpose of recruiting and “ working off” my book with the conscientious decency of Mr. Dennis the hangman. I shall have it out before the end of April. Stillman and I have this house to ourselves, and he is an utterly unobstructive man. . . . Barbara does not indulge in bell-pulls, hardly in servants to summon thereby, so I have brought my own. W hat she does affect is any amount of thorough draught, a library bearing the stern stamp of “ Bodichon,” and a kettle-holder with the uncompromising initials of B. B. She is the best of women, but I fear from what I last saw of her that her health is failing, like my own.

Ever yours, D. G. ROSSETTI.

P. S. By the bye, I fell back on “Keith,” after all, in that ballad. I could not quite please myself otherwise.

Scalands was the house of Madame Bodichon (Miss Barbara Leigh Smith of an earlier letter), who had been the kindest of friends to Rossetti’s wife. In May, 1854, he wrote : “ Lizzie and I spent a pleasant day at Scalands, where Barbara and Anna Mary [Howitt] have been staying. They made themselves very jolly, and it is a most stunning country there.” Madame Bodichon was also a warm friend of Allingham. “ I love William Allingham,” she was one day heard to say.

Of Mr. Stillman W. M. Rossetti writes : “ Few men could have been better adapted than he, none could have been more willing, to solace Rossetti in his harasses from insomnia and other troubles ; but it is a fact that a remedy worse than the disease was the result of his friendly ministrations. Chloral as a soporific was then a novelty. Mr. Stillman had heard of its potency in procuring sleep, and he introduced the drug to Rossetti’s attention. My brother was one of the men least fitted to try any such experiment with impunity. He began, I understand, with nightly doses of chloral of ten grains. In course of time it got to one hundred and eighty grains ! ” It wrecked his mind, and at last destroyed his life.

XLI.

[Undated. About November, 1870.]

DEAR ALLINGHAM, — I can put your books on my basement floor (stone-paved servants’ hall), where they will not be in the damp, I believe, and can stand clear of the floor if thought necessary. Or if you think it absolutely needed, I can clear space in a lumber-room upstairs.

Ever yours, D. G. ROSSETTI.

XLII.

16 CHEYNE WALK, Friday [about November, 1870].

DEAR ALLINGHAM, — I’m very sorry to tell you the high tide yesterday got into my basement floor, and that three of your boxes were a foot or more deep in water for some time. It is most vexatious to think what may have happened to the books. Will you look in to-day at dusk and stay to dinner at six ? I am only sorry that I have to go out about seven.

Ever yours, D. G. ROSSETTI.

“ On the basement of Rossetti’s house at Chelsea there were spacious kitchen-rooms and an oddly complicated range of vaults, which perhaps had at one time led directly off to the river-side.” The Thames Embankment had not as yet been raised in front of Cheyne Walk. In one of the boxes deposited on the basement floor it chanced that Allingham had placed the letters he had received from Rossetti. Some of them still bear marks of the floor; two or three have been much injured, and one has been rendered illegible.

With this brief note the correspondence between the two men came to an end. Their friendship, once so strong and close, was not to last till death should come to give the final separation. So early as 1864 Allingham recorded in a note, “ Our intimacy is a thing of the past.” It must have revived to a certain extent, for in 1867 Rossetti passed some time with him at his house in Lymington. With the lapse of years, the letters, as has been seen, became less frequent and far briefer. So late as Christmas, 1868, we find the great painter signing himself, Yours affectionately ; ” after that date he is merely, “ Ever yours.” Warm hearted though he was in his friendships, nevertheless few of them lasted to the end of life. “ It is a fact,” writes his brother, “ and a melancholy one, that Dante Rossetti, as the years progressed, lost sight of all his Preraphaelite Brothers, except only of Stephens at sparse intervals, — ‘ dear stanch Stephens, one of my oldest and best friends,’ as he wrote of him.” He became estranged from Ruslan and Browning. Between him and Allingham, happily, there was no open and direct breach. The long friendship slowly died away.

George Birkbeck Hill.