The two finished works of 1878 are: “A Vision of Fiametta,” and a water-colour called “Bruna Brunelleschi.” To that year must be added the unfinished design called “Desdemona’s Death Song,” various studies for the figure of Desdemona, a design of the entire composition done on a scale about half-life size, as well as a beginning of the picture on canvas, which was not continued. The Faust subject that he intended to paint, “Gretchen, or Risen at Dawn,” was not more advanced. As time went on and his health failed his output diminished.
In 1879 Rossetti painted a replica of the “Blessed Damozel” with its predella, changing the background of lovers and substituting two angels’ heads. “La Donna de la Fenestra” was also completed in that year.
In 1880 and 1881 Rossetti was working on three large pictures, “The Day Dream,” “The Salutation of Beatrice,” and “La Pia,” as well as on “Found,” the early attempt at a modern subject that he was never able to finish. He painted several replicas, the most important being a smaller version of “Dante’s Dream.” The “Daydream” begun in 1868 was also completed at this time and the picture has since been given to the South Kensington Museum by its owner Mr. Ionidès. “The Salutation of Beatrice” is quite different from the earlier design of the same name and shows those defects of his later work that we have pointed out; it was not quite finished at the time of his death. “La Pia” is the last picture painted and shows the same faults as the last mentioned.
In September 1881 Rossetti went for a trip in the lake district of Cumberland accompanied by Mr. Hall Caine, but after a month his health grew worse and he returned in haste to London. A few days later he became so ill that he required very careful nursing. After a partial recovery from this illness he was once more interrupted in his work by an attack of nervous paralysis, which seized him suddenly. This last attack was due to the chloral he had been in the habit of taking for so long and it was then strictly forbidden. The habit of so many years was not to be broken without much discomfort and suffering, but he gradually got better. As soon as he was well enough he was taken to Birchington-on-Sea in February 1882, there he managed to work a little, but was soon attacked by an old disorder, and in his weakened state of health he could not throw it off. He grew weaker and worse. Death came with the 10th of April 1882, and the painter poet is buried in the little churchyard of Birchington.
In the last days of his life, when he could paint no more, he made an attempt to finish the story of “St. Agnes of Intercession” which was begun for the “Germ,” he also completed the ballad of “Jan Van Hunks,” and wrote a couple of sonnets for his drawing called the “Question.”
Most of the critics who have written on Rossetti deplore the fact that he did not learn to paint, but to artists one of the greatest charms of his pictures (especially the early ones) is the unexpectedness of their composition. We owe that charm in a great measure to the fact that happily he had not been spoiled by the sophisticated teaching of Academic Schools, but had kept the bloom of his poetical inspiration. We must thank the instinct of the young man, which made him avoid a teaching which is bound to be fatal to both realism and romanticism. It may be that he himself deplored the lack of training at certain moments of discouragement in his life, but the kind of training available at the time of his début would not have added much to his achievement. He managed to say what he had to say, and in many cases to say it well. He saved himself the loss of time necessary to forget certain of the artistic préjugés then in vogue, they would have been very much in his way, even if he had quite succeeded in getting rid of them. The rather amateurish side to Rossetti’s art is vastly compensated for by the precious qualities he has been able to preserve.
It is unfortunate that, through his refusal to exhibit, the public has been acquainted first with his later work, which shows the decline of his faculties caused by his ill health. Neither the fresh creations of his early work nor the gorgeous pieces of his middle period are as well known as they deserve to be.
As a young man Rossetti possessed an extraordinary influence over the members of the group round him. Later when his work became less sincere his influence declined and what promised to be at the beginning a great renaissance of the English School has ended with him. Such a disaster is certain to befall the school or the artists who do not refresh themselves continually by the “communion” with nature. Ruskin says in his Pre-Raphaelitism: “If they adhere to their principles, and paint nature as it is around them, with the help of modern science, with the earnestness of the men of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, they will, as I said, found a new and noble school in England. If their sympathies with the early artists lead them into mediævalism or Romanism, they will of course come to nothing.” These words were prophetic.
RECOLLECTIONS OF DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI by T. Hall Caine
CONTENTS
PREFACE.
CHAPTER I.
CHAPTER II.
CHAPTER III.
CHAPTER IV.
CHAPTER V.
CHAPTER VI.
CHAPTER VII.
CHAPTER VIII.
CHAPTER IX.
PREFACE.
One day towards the close of 1881 Rossetti, who was then very ill, said to me:
“How well I remember the beginning of our correspondence, and how little did I think it would lead to such relations between us as have ensued! I was at the time very solitary and depressed from various causes, and the letters of so young and ardent a well-wisher, though unknown to me personally, brought solace.”
“Yours,” I said, “were very valuable to me.”
“Mine to you were among the largest bodies of literary letters I ever wrote, others being often letters of personal interest.”
“And so admirable in themselves,” I added, “and so free from the discussion of any but literary subjects that many of them would bear to be printed exactly as you penned them.”
“That,” he said, “will be for you some day to decide.”
This was the first hint of any intention upon my part of publishing the letters he had written to me; indeed, this was the first moment at which I had conceived the idea of doing so. Nothing further on the subject was said down to the morning of the Thursday preceding the Sunday on which he died, when we talked together for the last time on subjects of general interest, — subsequent interviews being concerned wholly with solicitous inquiries upon my part, in common with other anxious friends, as to the nature of his sufferings, and the briefest answers from him.
“How long have we been friends?” he said.
I replied, between three and four years from my first corresponding with him.
“And how long did we correspond?”
“Three years, nearly.”
“What numbers of my letters you must possess! They may perhaps even yet be useful to you.”
From this moment I regarded the publication of his letters as in some sort a trust; and though I must have withheld them for some years if I had consulted my own wishes simply, I yielded to the necessity that they should be published at once, rather than run any risk of their not been published at all.
What I have just said will account for the circumstance that I, the youngest and latest of Rossetti’s friends, should be the first to seem to stand towards him in the relation of a biographer. I say seem to stand, for this is not a biography. 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. But though I know that whenever Mr. Watts sets pen to paper in pursuance of such purpose, and in fulfilment of such charge, he will afford us a recognisable portrait of the man, vivified by picturesque illustration, the like of which few other writers could compass, I also know from what Rossetti often told me of his fr
iend’s immersion in all kinds and varieties of life, that years (perhaps many years) may elapse before such a biography is given to the world. My own book is, I trust, exactly what it purports to be: a volume of Recollections, interwoven with letters and criticism, and preceded by such a summary of the leading facts in Rossetti’s life as seems necessary for the elucidation of subsequent records. I have drawn Rossetti precisely as I found him in each stage of our friendship, exhibiting his many contradictions of character, extenuating nothing, and, I need hardly add, setting down naught in malice. Up to this moment I have never inquired of myself whether to those who have known little or nothing of Rossetti hitherto, mine will seem to be on the whole favourable or unfavourable portraiture; but I have trusted my admiration of the poet and affection for the friend to penetrate with kindly and appreciative feeling every comment I have had to offer. I was attracted to Rossetti in the first case by ardent love of his genius, and retained to him ultimately by love of the man. As I have said in the course of these Recollections, it was largely his unhappiness that held me, with others, as by a spell, and only too sadly in this particular did he in his last year realise his own picture of Dante at Verona:
Yet of the twofold life he led
In chainless thought and fettered will
Some glimpses reach us, — somewhat still
Of the steep stairs and bitter bread, —
Of the soul’s quest whose stern avow
For years had made him haggard now.
I am sensible of the difficulty and delicacy of the task I have undertaken, involving, as it does, many interests and issues; and in every reference to surviving relatives as well as to other persons now living, with whom Rossetti was in any way allied, I have exercised in all friendliness the best judgment at my command.
Clement’s Inn, October 1882.
* * * It has not been thought necessary to attach dates to the
letters printed in this volume, for not only would the
difficulty of doing so be great, owing to the fact that
Rossetti rarely dated his letters, but the utility of dates
in such a case would be doubtful, because the substance of
what is said is often quite impersonal, and, where
otherwise, is almost independent of the time of production.
It may be sufficient to say that the letters were written in
the years 1879,1880, and 1881.
CHAPTER I.
Dante Gabriel Rossetti was the eldest son of Gabriele Rossetti and Frances Polidori, daughter of Alfieri’s secretary, and sister of the young physician who travelled with Lord Byron. Gabriele Rossetti was a native of Yasto, in the district of the Abruzzi, kingdom of Naples. He was a patriotic poet of very considerable distinction; and, as a politician, took a part in extorting from Ferdinand I. the Constitution of 1820. After the failure of the Neapolitan insurrection, owing to the treachery of the King (who asked leave of absence on a pretext of ill-health, and returned with an overwhelming Austrian army), the insurrectionists were compelled to fly. Some of them fell victims; others lay long in concealment. Rossetti was one of the latter; and, while he was in hiding, Sir Graham Moore, the English admiral, was lying with an English fleet in the bay. The wife of the admiral had long been a warm admirer of the patriotic hymns of Rossetti, and, when she learned his danger, she prevailed with her husband to make efforts to save him. Sir Graham thereupon set out with another English officer to the place of concealment, habited the poet in an English uniform, placed him between them in a carriage, and put him aboard a ship that sailed next day to Malta, where he obtained the friendship of the governor, John Hookham Frere, by whose agency valuable introductions were procured, and ultimately Rossetti established himself in England. Arrived in London about 1823, he lived a cheerful life as an exile, though deprived of the advantages of his Italian reputation. He married in 1826, and his eldest son was born May 12, 1828, in Charlotte Street, Portland Place, London. He was appointed Professor of Italian at King’s College, and died in 1854. His house was for years the constant resort of Italian refugees; and the son used to say that it was from observation of these visitors of his father that he depicted the principal personage of his Last Confession. He did not live to see the returning glories of his country or the consummation we have witnessed of that great movement founded upon the principles for which he fought and suffered. His present position in Italy as a poet and patriot is a high one, a medal having been struck in his honour. An effort is even now afoot to erect a statue to him in his native place, and one of the last occasions upon which the son put pen to paper was when trying to make a reminiscent rough portrait for the use of the sculptor. Gabriele Rossetti spent his last years in the study of Dante, and his works on the subject are unique, exhibiting a peculiar view of Dante’s conception of Beatrice, which he believed to be purely ideal, and employed solely for purposes of speculative and political disquisition. Something of this interpretation was fixed undoubtedly upon the personage by Dante himself in his later writings, but whether the change were the result of a maturer and more complicated state of thought, and whether the real and ideal characters of Beatrice may not be compatible, are questions which the poetic mind will not consider it possible to decide. Coleridge, no doubt, took a fair view of Rossetti’s theory when he said: “Rossetti’s view of Dante’s meaning is in great part just, but he has pushed it beyond all bounds of common sense. How could a poet — and such a poet as Dante — have written the details of the allegory as conjectured by Rossetti? The boundaries between his allegory and his pure picturesque are plain enough, I think, at first reading.” It was, doubtless, due to his devotion to studies of the Florentine that Gabriele Rossetti named after him his eldest son.
Dante Gabriel Rossetti, whose full baptismal name was Gabriel Charles Dante, was educated principally at King’s College School, London, and there attained to a moderate proficiency in the ordinary classical school-learning, besides a knowledge of French, which throughout life he spoke well. He learned at home some rudimentary German; Italian he had acquired at a very early age. There has always been some playful mention of certain tragedies and translations upon which he exercised himself from the ages of five to fifteen years; but it is hardly necessary to say that he himself never attached value to these efforts of his precocity; he even displayed, occasionally, a little irritation upon hearing them spoken of as remarkable youthful achievements.
One of these productions of his adolescence, Sir Hugh the Heron, has been so frequently alluded to, that it seems necessary to tell the story of it, as the author himself, in conversation, was accustomed to do. At about twelve years of age, the young poet wrote a scrap of a poem under this title, and then cast it aside. His grandfather, Polidori, had seen the fragment, however, and had conceived a much higher opinion of its merits than even the natural vanity of the young author himself permitted him to entertain. It had then become one of the grandfather’s amusements to set up an amateur printing-press in his own house, and occupy his leisure in publishing little volumes of original verse for semi-public circulation. He urged his grandson to finish the poem in question, promising it, in a completed state, the dignity and distinction of type. Prompted by hope of this hitherto unexpected reward, Rossetti — then thirteen to fourteen years of age — finished the juvenile epic, and some bound copies of it got abroad. No more was thought of the matter, and in due time the little bard had forgotten that he had ever done it. But when a genuine distinction had been earned by poetry that was in no way immature, Rossetti discovered, by the gratuitous revelation of a friend, that a copy of the youthful production — privately printed and never published — was actually in the library of the British Museum. Amazed, and indeed appalled as he was by this disclosure, he was powerless to remedy the evil, which he foresaw would some day lead to the poem being unearthed to his injury, and printed as a part of his work. The utmost he could do to avert the threatened mischief he did, and this was to make an entry in a commonplace-b
ook which he kept for such uses, explaining the origin and history of the poem, and expressing a conviction that it seemed to him to be remarkable only from its entire paucity of even ordinary poetic promise. But while this was indubitably a just estimate of these boyish efforts, it is no doubt true, as we shall presently see, that Rossetti’s genius matured itself early in life.
Whilst still a child, his love of literature exhibited itself, and a story is told of a disaster occurring to him, when rather less than nine years of age, which affords amusing proof of the ardour of his poetic nature. Upon going with his brother and sisters to the house of his grandfather, where as children they occupied themselves with sports appropriate to their years, he proposed to improvise a part of a scene from Othello, and cast himself for the principal rôle. The scene selected was the closing one of the play, and began with the speech delivered to Lodovico, Montano, and Gratiano, when they are about to take Othello prisoner. Rossetti used to say that he delivered the lines in a frenzy of boyish excitement, and coming to the words —
Set you down this:
And say, besides, — that in Aleppo once,
Where a malignant and a turban’d Turk
Beat a Venetian, and traduced the state,
I took by the throat the circumcised dog,
And smote him — thus! —
he snatched up an iron chisel, that lay somewhere at hand, and, to the consternation of his companions, smote himself with all his might on the chest, inflicting a wound from which he bled and fainted.
Complete Poetical Works of Dante Gabriel Rossetti Page 53
