Complete Poetical Works of Dante Gabriel Rossetti
Page 63
I will be truly glad to meet you when you come to town. You
will recognise the hole-and-cornerest of all existences; but
I’ll read you a ballad or two, and have Brown’s report to
back my certainty of liking you.... I would propose that you
should dine with me at 8.30 on the Monday of your visit, and
spend the evening.... Better come at 5.30 to 6 (if feasible
to you), that I may try to show you a picture by daylight...
Of course, when I speak of your dining with me, I mean tête-
à-tête, and without ceremony of any kind. I usually dine in
my studio, and in my painting coat. I judge this will reach
you in time for a note to reach me. Telegrams I hate. In
hope of the pleasure of a meeting, yours ever.
How that “hole-and-cornerest of all existences” struck an ardent admirer of the poet-painter’s genius, and a devoted lover of his personal character, as then revealed to me, I hope to describe in a later section of this book. Meantime I must proceed to cull from the epistolary treasures I possess a number of interesting passages on literary subjects, called forth in the course of an intercourse which, at that stage, had few topics of a private nature to divert it from a channel of impersonal discussion. It is a fact that the letters written to me by Rossetti in the year 1880 deal so largely with literary affairs (chiefly of the past) as to be almost capable of verbatim reproduction, even at the present short interval after his death. If they were to be reproduced, they would be found to cover two hundred pages of the present volume, and to be so easy, fluent, varied, and wholly felicitous as to style, and full of research and reflection as to substance, as probably to earn for the writer a foremost place for epistolary power. Indeed, I am not without hope that this accession of a fresh reputation may result even upon the excerpts I have decided to introduce.
CHAPTER IV.
It was very natural that our earliest correspondence should deal chiefly with Rossetti’s own works, for those works gave rise to it. He sent me a copy of his translations from early Italian poets (Dante and his Circle), and a copy of his story, entitled Hand and Soul. In posting the latter, he said:
I don’t know if you ever saw a sort of story of mine called
Hand and Soul. I send you one with this, as printed to go
in my poems (though afterwards omitted, being, nevertheless,
more poem than story). I printed it since in the
Fortnightly — and, I believe, abolished one or two extra
sentimentalities. You may have seen it there. In case it’s
stale, I enclose with this a sonnet which must be new, for
I only wrote it the other day.
I have already, in the proper place in this volume, said how
the story first struck me. Perhaps I had never before
reading it seen quite so clearly the complete mission as
well as enforced limitations of true art. All the many
subtle gradations in the development of purpose were there
beautifully pictured in a little creation that was charming
in the full sense of a word that has wellnigh lost its
charm. For all such as cried out against pursuits
originating in what Keats had christened “the infant chamber
of sensation,” and for all such as demanded that everything
we do should be done to “strengthen God among men,” the
story provided this answer: “When at any time hath He cried
unto thee, saying, ‘My son, lend me thy shoulder, for I
fall’?”
The sonnet sent, and spoken of as having just been written
(the letter bears post-mark February 1880), was the sonnet
on the sonnet. It is throughout beautiful and in two of its
lines (those depicting the dark wharf and the black Styx)
truly magnificent. It appears most to be valued, however, as
affording a clue to the attitude of mind adopted towards
this form of verse by the greatest master of it in modern
poetry. I think it is Mr. Pater who says that a fine poem in
manuscript carries an aroma with it, and a sensation of
music. I must have enjoyed the pleasure of such a presence
somewhat frequently about this period, for many of the poems
that afterwards found places in the second volume of ballads
and sonnets were sent to me from time to time.
I should like to know what were the three or four vols. on
Italian poetry which you mentioned in a former letter, and
which my book somewhat recalled to your mind. I was not
aware of any such extensive English work on the subject.
Or do you perhaps mean Trucchi’s Italian Dugento Poésie
inédite? I am sincerely delighted at your rare interest in
what I have sent you — both the translations, story, etc. — I
enclose three printed pieces meant for my volume but
omitted: — the ballad, because it deals trivially with a base
amour (it was written very early) and is therefore really
reprehensible to some extent; the Shakspeare sonnet, because
of its incongruity with the rest of the poems, and also
because of the insult (however jocose) to the worshipful
body of tailors; and the political sonnet for reasons which
are plain enough, though the date at which I wrote it (not
without feeling) involves now a prophetic value. In a MS.
vol. I have a sonnet (1871) After the German Subjugation of
France, which enforces the prophecy by its fulfilment. In
this MS. vol. are a few pieces which were the only ones I
copied in doubt as to their admission when I printed the
poems, but none of which did I admit. One day I ‘ll send it
for you to look at. It contains a few sonnets bearing on
public matters, but only a few. Tell me what you think on
reading my things. All you said in your letter of this
morning was very grateful to me. I have a fair amount by me
in the way of later MS. which I may shew you some day when
we meet. Meanwhile I feel that your energies are already in
full swing — work coming on the heels of work — and that your
time cannot long be deferred as regards your place as a
writer.
The ballad of which Rossetti here speaks as dealing trivially with a base amour is entitled Dennis Shand. Though an early work, it affords perhaps the best evidence extant of the poet’s grasp of the old ballad style: it runs easiest of all his ballads, and is in some respects his best. Mr. J. A. Symonds has, in my judgment, made the error of speaking of Rossetti as incapable of reproducing the real note of such ballads as Chevy Chase and Sir Patrick Spens. Mr. Symonds was right in his eloquent comments (Macmillan’s Magazine, February 1882), so far as they concern the absence from Rose Mary, The King’s Tragedy, and The White Ship of the sinewy simplicity of the old singers. But in those poems Rossetti attempted quite another thing. There is a development of the English ballad that is entirely of modern product, being far more complex than the primitive form, and getting rid to some extent of the out-worn notion of the ballad being actually sung to set music, but retaining enough of the sweep of a free rhythm to carry a sensible effect as of being chanted when read. This is a sort of ballad-romance, such as Christabel and The Lay of the Last Minstrel; and this, and this only, was what Rossetti aimed after, and entirely compassed in his fine works just mentioned. But (as Rossetti himself remarked to me in conversation when I repeated Mr. Symonds’s criticism, and urged my own grounds of objection to it), that the poet was capable of the directness and simplicity which characterise the early ballad-writers, he had given proof in The Staff
and Scrip and Stratton Water. Dennis Shand is valuable as evidence going in the same direction, but the author’s objection to it, on ethical grounds, must here prevail to withhold it from publication.
The Shakspeare sonnet, spoken of in the letter as being withheld on account of its incongruity with the rest of the poems, was published in an early Academy, notwithstanding its jocose allusion to the worshipful body of tailors. As it is little known, and really very powerful in itself, and interesting as showing the author’s power over words in a new direction, I print it in this place.
ON THE SITE OF A MULBERRY TREE.
Planted by Wm. Shakspeare; felled by the Rev. F. Gastrell.
This tree, here fall’n, no common birth or death
Shared with its kind. The world’s enfranchised son,
Who found the trees of Life and Knowledge one,
Here set it, frailer than his laurel-wreath.
Shall not the wretch whose hand it fell beneath
Rank also singly — the supreme unhung?
Lo! Sheppard, Turpin, pleading with black tongue
This viler thief’s unsuffocated breath!
We ‘U search thy glossary, Shakspeare! whence almost,
And whence alone, some name shall be reveal’d
For this deaf drudge, to whom no length of ears
Sufficed to catch the music of the spheres;
Whose soul is carrion now, — too mean to yield
Some tailor’s ninth allotment of a ghost.
Stratford-on-Avon.
The other sonnets referred to, those, namely, on the French Liberation of Italy, and the German Subjugation of France, display all Rossetti’s mastery of craftsmanship. In strength of vision, in fertility of rhythmic resource, in pliant handling, these sonnets are, in my judgment, among the best written by the author; and if I do not quote them here, or altogether regret that they do not appear in the author’s works, it is not because I have any sense of their possibly offending against the delicate sensibilities of an age in which it seems necessary to hide out of sight whatever appears to impinge upon the domain of what is called our lower nature.
The circumstance has hardly obtained even so much as a passing mention that Rossetti made certain very important additions to the ballad of Sister Helen, just before passing the old volume through the press afresh for publication, contemporaneously with the new book. The letters I am now to quote show the origin of those additions, and are interesting, as affording a view of the author’s estimate of the gain in respect of completeness of conception, and sterner tragic spirit which resulted upon their adoption.
I was very glad to have the three articles together, including the one in which you have written on myself. Looking at this again, it seems to me you must possess the best edition (the Tauchnitz, which has my last emendations). Otherwise I have been meaning all along to offer you a copy of this edition, as I have some. Who was your informant as to dates of the poems, etc.? They are not correct, yet show some inkling. Jenny (in a first form) was written almost as early as The Blessed Damozel, which I wrote (and have altered little since), when I was eighteen. It was first printed when I was twenty-one. Of the first Jenny, perhaps fifty lines survive here and there, but I felt it was quite beyond me then (a world I was then happy enough to be a stranger to), and later I re-wrote it completely. I will give you correct particulars at some time. Sister Helen, I may mention, was written either in 1851 or beginning of 1852, and was printed in something called The Düsseldorf Annual {*} (published in Germany) in 1853; though since much revised in detail — not in the main. You will be horror-struck to hear that the first main addition to this poem was made by me only a few days ago! — eight stanzas (six together, and two scattered ones) involving a new incident!! Your hair is on end, I know, but if you heard the stanzas, they would smooth if not curl it. The gain is immense.
* In The Düsseldorf Annual the poem was signed H. H. H., and
in explanation of this signature Rossetti wrote on his own
copy the following characteristic note:— “The initials as
above were taken from the lead-pencil.”
In reply to this I told Rossetti that, as a “jealous honourer” of his, I confessed to some uneasiness when I read that he had been making important additions to Sister Helen. That I could not think of a stage of the story that would bear so to be severed from what goes before or comes after it as to admit of interpolation might not of itself go for much; but the entire ballad was so rounded into unity, one incident so naturally begetting the next, and the combined incidents so properly building up a fabric of interest of which the meaning was all inwoven, that I could not but fear that whatever the gain in certain directions, the additions of any stanzas involving a new incident might, in some measure, cripple the rest. Even though the new stanzas were as beautiful, or yet more beautiful than the old ones, and the incident as impressive as any that goes before it, or comes after it, the gain to the poem as an individual creation was not, I thought, assured because people used to say my style was hard.
Rossetti was mistaken in supposing that I possessed the latest and best edition of his Poems, but I had seen the latest of all English editions, and had noted in it several valuable emendations which, in subsequent quotation, I had been careful to employ. One of these seemed to me to involve an immeasurable gain. A stanza of Sister Helen, in its first form, ran:
Oh, the wind is sad in the iron chill,
Sister Helen,
And weary sad they look by the hill;
But Keith of Ewern ‘s sadder still,
Little brother. — etc. etc.
In the later edition the fourth line of this stanza ran:
But he and I are sadder still.
The change adds enormously to one’s estimate of the characterisation. All through the ballad one wants to feel that, despite the bitterness of her speech, the heart of the relentless witch is breaking. Like The Broken Heart of Ford, the ballad with the amended line was a masterly picture of suppressed emotion. I hoped the new incident touched the same chord. Rossetti replied:
Thanks for your present letter, which I will answer with
pleasurable care. At present I send you the Tauchnitz
edition of my things. The bound copy is hideous, but more
convenient — the other pretty. You will find a good many
things bettered (I believe) even on the latest English
edition. I did not remember that the line you quote from
Sister Helen appeared in the new form at all in an English
issue. I am greatly pleased at your thinking it, as I do,
quite a transfiguring change... The next point I have marked
in your letter is that about the additions to Sister
Helen. Of course I knew that your hair must arise from your
scalp in protest. But what should you say if Keith of Ewern
were a three days’ bridegroom — if the spell had begun on the
wedding-morning — and if the bride herself became the last
pleader for mercy? I fancy you will see your way now. The
culminating, irresistible provocation helps, I think, to
humanize Helen, besides lifting the tragedy to a yet sterner
height.
If I had felt (as Rossetti predicted I should) an uneasy sensation about the roots of the hair upon hearing that he was making important additions to the ballad which seemed to me to be the finest of his works, the sensation in that quarter was not less, but more, upon learning the nature of those additions. But I mistook the character of the new incidents. That Sister Helen should be herself the abandoned bride of Ewern (for so I understood the poet’s explanation), and, as such, the last pleader for mercy, pointed, I thought, in the direction of the humanizing emendation (“But he and I are sadder still “) which had given me so much pleasure. That Keith of Ewern should be a three-days’ bridegroom, and that the spell should begin on the wedding morning, were incidents tha
t seemed to intensify every line of the poem. In this view of Rossetti’s account of the additions, there were certainly difficulties out of which I could see no way, but I seemed to realise that Helen’s hate, like Macbeth’s ambition, had overleaped itself, and fallen on the other side, and that she would undo her work, if to return were not harder than to go on; her initiate sensibility had gained hard use, but even as hate recoils on love, so out of the ashes of hate love had arisen. In this view of the characterisation of Helen, the parallel with Macbeth struck me more and more as I thought of it. When Macbeth kills Duncan, and hears the grooms of the chamber cry in their sleep— “God bless us,” he cannot say “Amen,”
I had most need of blessing, and Amen
Stuck in my throat.
Helen pleading too late for mercy against the potency of the spell she herself had raised, seemed to me an incident that raised her to the utmost height of tragic creation. But Rossetti’s purpose was at once less ambitious and more satisfying.
Your passage as to the changes in Sister Helen could not
well (with all its fine suggestiveness) be likely to meet
exactly a reality which had not been submitted to your eye
in the verses themselves. It is the bride of Keith who is
the last pleader — as vainly as the others, and with a yet
more exulting development of vengeance in the forsaken
witch. The only acknowledgment by her of a mutual misery is
still found in the line you spotted as so great a gain
before, and in the last line she speaks. I ought to have
sent the stanzas to explain them properly, but have some
reluctance to ventilate them at present, much as I should
like the opportunity of reading them to you. They will meet
your eye in due course, and I am sure of your approval also
as regards their value to the ballad.... Don’t let the
changes in Helen get wind overmuch. I want them to be new
when published. Answer this when you can. I like getting