Complete Poetical Works of Dante Gabriel Rossetti

by Dante Gabriel Rossetti

  I must admit, at all hazards, that my friends here consider

  me exceptionally averse to politics; and I suppose I must

  be, for I never read a parliamentary debate in my life! At

  the same time I will add that, among those whose opinions I

  most value, some think me not altogether wrong when I

  venture to speak of the momentary momentousness and eternal

  futility of many noisiest questions. However, you must

  simply view me as a nonentity in any practical relation to

  such matters. You have spoken but too generously of a sonnet

  of mine in your lecture just received. I have written a few

  others of the sort (which by-the-bye would not prove me a

  Tory), but felt no vocation — perhaps no right — to print

  them. I have always reproached myself as sorely amenable to

  the condemnations of a very fine poem by Barberino, On

  Sloth against Sin, which I translated in the Dante volume.

  Sloth, alas! has but too much to answer for with me; and is

  one of the reasons (though I will not say the only one), why

  I have always fallen back on quality instead of quantity in

  the little I have ever done. I think often with Coleridge:

  Sloth jaundiced all: and from my graspless hand

  Drop friendship’s precious pearls like hour-glass sand.

  I weep, yet stoop not: the faint anguish flows,

  A dreamy pang in morning’s feverish doze.

  However, for all I might desire in the direction spoken of,

  volition is vain without vocation; and I had better really

  stick to knowing how to mix vermilion and ultramarine for a

  flesh-grey, and how to manage their equivalents in verse. To

  speak without sparing myself, — my mind is a childish one, if

  to be isolated in Art is child’s-play; at any rate I feel

  that I do not attain to the more active and practical of the

  mental functions of manhood. I can say this to you, because

  I know you will make the best and not the worst of me; and

  better than such feasible best I do not wish to appear. Thus

  you see I don’t think my name ought to head your

  introductory paragraph — and there an end. And now of your

  new lecture, and of the long letter I lately had from you.

  At some moment I should like to know which pieces among the

  translations are specially your favourites. Of the three

  names you leash together as somewhat those of sensualists,

  Cecco Angiolieri is really the only one — as for the

  respectable Cino, he would be shocked indeed, though

  certainly there are a few oddities bearing that way in the

  sonnets between him and Dante (who is again similarly

  reproached by his friend Cavalcanti), but I really do

  suspect that in some cases similar to the one in question

  about Cino (though not Guido and Dante) politics were really

  meant where love was used as a metaphor.... I assure you,

  you cannot say too much to me of this or any other work of

  yours; in fact, I wish that we should communicate about

  them. I have been thinking yet more on the relations of

  politics and art. I do think seriously on consideration that

  not only my own sluggishness, but vital fact itself, must

  set to a great extent a veto against the absolute

  participation of artists in politics. When has it ever been

  effected? True, Cellini was a bravo and David a good deal

  like a murderer, and in these capacities they were not

  without their political use in very turbulent times. But

  when the attempt was made to turn Michael Angelo into a

  “utility man” of that kind, he did (it is true) some

  patriotic duty in the fortification of Florence; but it is

  no less a fact that, when he had done all that he thought

  became him, he retired to a certain trackless and forgotten

  tower, and there stayed in some sort of peace (though much

  in request) till he could lead his own life again; nor

  should we forget the occasion on which he did not hesitate

  even to betake himself to Venice as a refuge. Yet M. Angelo

  was in every way a patriot, a philosopher, and a hero. I do

  not say this to undervalue the scope of your theory. I think

  possibilities are generally so much behind desirabilities

  that there is no harm in any degree of incitement in the

  right direction; and that is assuredly mental activity of

  all kinds. I judge you cannot suspect me of thinking the

  apotheosis of the early Italian poets (though surely

  spiritual beauty, and not sensuality, was their general aim)

  of more importance than the “unity of a great nation.” But

  it is in my minute power to deal successfully (I feel) with

  the one, while no such entity, as I am, can advance or

  retard the other; and thus mine must needs be the poorer

  part. Nor (with alas, and again alas!) will Italy or another

  twice have her day in its fulness.

  I happened to have said in speaking of self-indulgence among artists, that there probably existed those to whom it seemed more important to preserve such a pitiful possession as the poetical remains of Cecco Angiolieri than to secure the unity of a great nation. Rossetti half suspected I meant this for a playful backhanded blow at himself (for Cecco was a great favourite with him), and protested that no such individual could exist. I defended my charge by quoting Keats’s —

  ... the silver flow

  Of Hero’s tears, the swoon of Imogen,

  Fair Pastorella in the bandit’s den,

  Are things to brood on with more ardency

  Than the death-day of empires.

  But Rossetti grew weary of the jest:

  I must protest that what you quote from Keats about “Hero’s

  tears,” etc., fails to meet the text. Neither Shakspeare nor

  Spenser assuredly was a Cecco; Marlowe may be most meant as

  to “Hero,” and he perhaps affords the shadow of a parallel

  in career though not in work.

  The extract from Rosetti’s letters with which I shall close this chapter is perhaps the most interesting yet made:

  One point I must still raise, viz., that I, for one, cannot

  conceive, even as the Ghost of a Flea, the ideal individual

  who considers the Poetical Remains of Cecco Angiolieri of

  more importance than the unity of a great nation! I think

  this would have been better if much modified. Say for

  instance— “A thing of some moment even while the contest is

  waging for the political unity of a great nation.” This is

  the utmost reach surely of human comparative valuation. I

  think you have brought in Benvenuto and Michael much to the

  purpose. Shall I give you a parallel in your own style?

  During the months for which poet Coleridge became private

  Cumberback (a name in which he said his horse would have

  concurred), it seems strange that, in such stirring times,

  his regiment should not have been ordered off on foreign

  service. In such case that pre-eminent member of the awkward

  squad would assuredly have been the very first man killed.

  Should we have been more the gainers by his patriotism or

  the losers by his poetry? The very last man killed in the

  last sortie from Paris during the Prussian siege (he

  would go behind a buttress to “pot” a Pru
ssian after

  orders were given to retire, and so got “potted” himself)

  was Henri Regnault, a painter, whose brilliant work was a

  guiding beacon on the road of improvement in French methods

  of art, if not in intellectual force. Who shall fail to

  honour the noble ardour which drew him from the security of

  his studies in Tunis to partake his country’s danger? Yet

  who shall forbear to sigh in thinking that, but for this,

  his progressing work might still yearly be an element in

  art-progress for Europe? Gérome and others betook themselves

  to England instead, and are still benefiting the cause for

  which they were before all things born. It was David who

  said, “Si on tirait à mitraille sur les artistes, on n’y

  tuerait pas un seul patriote!” He was a patriot homicide,

  and spoke probably what was true in the sense in which he

  meant it. As I said, I am glad you turned Ben and Mike to

  account, but the above is in some respects an open question.

  I have, as I say, a further batch of letters to introduce, but as these were, for the most part, written after an event which forms a land-mark in our acquaintance (I mean the occasion of our first meeting), I judge it is best to reserve them for a later section of this book. There are two forms, and, so far as I know, two only, in which a body of letters can be published with justice to the writer. Of these the first and most obvious form is to offer them chronologically in extenso or with only such eliminations as seem inevitable, and the second is to tabulate them according to subject-matter, and print them in the order not of date but substance. There are advantages attending each method, and corresponding disadvantages also. The temptation to adopt the first of these was, in this case of Rossetti’s letters, almost insurmountable, for nothing can be more charming in epistolary style than the easy grace with which the writer passes from point to point, evolving one idea out of another, interlinking subject with subject, and building up a fabric of which the meaning is everywhere inwoven. In this respect Rossetti’s letters are almost as perfect as anything that ever left his hand; and, in freedom of phrase, in power of throwing off parenthetical reflections always faultlessly enunciated, in play of humour, often in eloquence (never becoming declamatory, and calling on “Styx or Stars”), sometimes in pathos, Rossetti’s letters are, in a word, admirable. They are comparable in these respects with the best things yet done in English, — as pleasing and graceful as Cowper’s letters, broader in range of subject than the letters of Keats, easier and more colloquial than those of Coleridge, and with less appearance of being intended for the public eye than is the case with the letters of Byron and of Shelley. Rossetti’s letters have, moreover, a value quite apart from the merits of their epistolary style, in so far as they contain almost the only expression extant of his opinions on literary questions. And this is the circumstance that has chiefly weighed with me to offer them in fragmentary form interspersed with elucidatory comment bearing principally upon the occasions that called them forth.

  Such then as I have described was the nature of my intercourse with Rossetti during the first year and a half of our correspondence, and now the time had come when I was to meet my friend for the first time face to face. The elasticity of sympathy by which a man of genius, surrounded by constant friends, could yet bend to a new-comer who was a stranger and twenty-five years his junior, and think and feel with him; the generous appreciativeness by which he could bring himself to consider the first efforts of one quite unknown; and then the unselfishness that seemed always to prefer the claims of others to his own great claims, could command only the return of unqualified allegiance. Such were the feelings with which I went forth to my first meeting with Rossetti, and if at any later date, the ardour of my regard for him in any measure suffered modification, be sure when the time comes to touch upon it I shall make no more concealment of the causes that led to such a change than I have made of those circumstances, however personal in primary interest, that generated a friendship so unusual and to me so serious and important.

  CHAPTER VII.

  It was in the autumn of 1880 that I saw Rossetti for the first time. Being then rather reduced in health I contemplated a visit to the sea-side and wrote saying that in passing through London I should avail myself of his oft-repeated invitation to visit him. I gave him this warning of my intention, remembering his declared dread of being taken unawares, but I came to know at a subsequent period that for one who was within the inner circle of his friends the necessity to advise him of a visit was by no means binding. His reception of my intimation of an intention to call upon him was received with an amount of epistolary ceremony which I recognise now by the light of further acquaintance as eminently characteristic of the man, although curiously contradictory of his unceremonious habits of daily life. The fact is that Rossetti was of an excessively nervous temperament, and rarely if ever underwent an ordeal more trying than a first meeting with any one to whom for some time previously he had looked forward with interest. Hence by return of the post that bore him my missive came two letters, the one obviously written and posted within an hour or two of the other. In the first of these he expressed courteously his pleasure at the prospect of seeing me, and appointed 8.30 p.m. the following evening as his dinner hour at his house in Cheyne Walk. The second letter begged me to come at 5.30 or 6 p.m., so that we might have a long evening. “You will, I repeat,” he says, “recognise the hole-and-cornerest of all existences in this big barn of mine; but come early and I shall read you some ballads, and we can talk of many things.” An hour later than the arrival of these letters came a third epistle, which ran: “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 had before me a five hours’ journey to London, so that in order to reach Chelsea at 6 P.M., I must needs set out at mid-day, but oblivious of this necessity, Rossetti had actually posted a fourth letter on the morning of the day on which we were to meet begging me not on any account to talk, in the course of our interview, of a certain personal matter upon which we had corresponded. This fourth and final message came to hand the morning after the meeting, when I had the satisfaction to reflect that (owing more perhaps to the plethora of other subjects of interest than to any suspicion of its being tabooed) I had luckily eschewed the proscribed topic.

  Cheyne Walk was unknown to me at the time in question, except as the locality in and near which many men and women eminent in literature resided. It seems hard to realise that this was the case as recently as two years ago, now that so short an interval has associated it in one’s mind with memories which seem to cover a large part of one’s life. The Walk is not now exactly as picturesque as it appears in certain familiar old engravings; the new embankment and the gardens that separate it from the main thoroughfare have taken something from its beauty, but it still possesses many attractions, and among them a look of age which contrasts agreeably with the spic-and-span newness of neighbouring places. I found Rossetti’s house, No. 16, answering in external appearances to the frank description he gave of it. It stands about mid-way between the Chelsea pier and the new redbrick mansions erected on the Chelsea embankment. It seems to be the oldest house in the Walk, and the exceptional proportions of its gate-piers, and the weight and mass of its gate and railings, suggests that probably at some period it stood alone, and commanded as grounds a large part of the space now occupied by the adjoining residences. Behind the house, during eighteen years of Rossetti’s occupancy, there was a garden of almost an acre in extent, covering by much the larger part of the space enclosed by a block of four streets forming a square. At No. 4 Maclise had lived and died; at the same house George Eliot, after her marriage with Mr. Cross, had come to live; at No. 5, in the second street to the westward, Thomas Carlyle was still living, and a little beyond Cheyne Row s
tood the modest cottage wherein Turner died. Rossetti’s house had to me the appearance of a plain Queen Anne erection, much mutilated by the introduction of unsightly bay-windows; the brickwork seemed to be falling into decay; the paint to be in serious need of renewal; the windows to be dull with the accumulation of the dust of years; the sills to bear the suspicion of cobwebs; the angles of the steps and the untrodden flags of the courtyard to be here and there overgrown with moss and weeds; and round the walls and up the reveals of doors and windows were creeping the tangled branches of the wildest ivy that ever grew untouched by shears. Such was the exterior of the home of the poet-painter when I walked up to it on the autumn evening of my first visit, and the interior of the house was at once like and unlike the exterior. The hall had a puzzling look of equal nobility and shabbiness. The floor was paved with beautiful white marble, which however, was partly covered with a strip of worn cocoa-nut matting; the ceiling was in one of its sections gracefully groined, and in each of the walls, which were lofty, there was an arched recess containing a piece of sculpture; an old inlaid rosewood clock filled a bulkhead on one side facing the door, and on the corresponding side stood a massive gas branch. A mezzotint lithograph by Legros was the only pictorial decoration of the walls, which were plain, and seemed not to have been distempered for many years. Three doors led out of the hall, one at each side, and one in front, and two corridors opened into it, but there was no sign of staircase, nor had it any light except such as was borrowed from the fanlight that looked into the porch. These facts I noted in the few minutes I stood waiting in the hall, but during the many months in which subsequently that house was my own home as well as Rossetti’s, I came to see that the changes which the building must have undergone since the period of its erection, had so filled it with crooks and corners as to bewilder the most ingenious observer to account for its peculiarities.

  Very soon Rossetti came to me through the doorway in front, which proved to be the entrance to his studio. Holding forth both hands and crying ‘Hulloa,’ he gave me that cheery, hearty greeting which I came to recognise as his alone, perhaps, in warmth and unfailing geniality among all the men of our circle. It was Italian in its spontaneity, and yet it was English in its manly reserve, and I remember with much tenderness of feeling that never to the last (not even when sickness saddened him, or after an absence of a few days or even hours) did it fail him when meeting with those friends to whom to the last he was really attached. Leading the way into the studio, he introduced me to his brother, who was there upon one of the evening visits, which at intervals of a week he was at that time making, with unfailing regularity. I should have described Rossetti, at this time, as a man who looked quite ten years older than his actual age, which was fifty-two, of full middle height and inclining to corpulence, with a round face that ought, one thought, to be ruddy but was pale, large grey eyes with a steady introspecting look, surmounted by broad protrusive brows and a clearly-pencilled ridge over the nose, which was well cut and had large breathing nostrils. The mouth and chin were hidden beneath a heavy moustache and abundant beard, which grew up to the ears, and had been of a mixed black-brown and auburn, and were now streaked with grey. The forehead was large, round, without protuberances, and very gently receding to where thin black curls, that had once been redundant, began to tumble down to the ears. The entire configuration of the head and face seemed to me singularly noble, and from the eyes upwards, full of beauty. He wore a pair of spectacles, and, in reading, a second pair over the first: but these took little from the sense of power conveyed by those steady eyes, and that “bar of Michael Angelo.” His dress was not conspicuous, being however rather negligent than otherwise, and noticeable, if at all, only for a straight sack-coat buttoned at the throat, descending at least to the knees, and having large pockets cut into it perpendicularly at the sides. This garment was, I afterwards found, one of the articles of various kinds made to the author’s own design. When he spoke, even in exchanging the preliminary courtesies of an opening conversation, I thought his voice the richest I had ever known any one to possess. It was a full deep barytone, capable of easy modulation, and with undertones of infinite softness and sweetness, yet, as I afterwards found, with almost illimitable compass, and with every gradation of tone at command, for the recitation or reading of poetry. The studio was a large room probably measuring thirty feet by twenty, and structurally as puzzling as the other parts of the house. A series of columns and arches on one side suggested that the room had almost certainly been at some period the site of an important staircase with a wide well, and on the other side a broad mullioned window reaching to the ceiling, seemed certainly to bear record of the occupant’s own contribution to the peculiarities of the edifice. The fireplace was at an end of the room, and over and at each side of it were hung a number of fine drawings in chalk, chiefly studies of heads, with here and there a water-colour figure piece, all from Rossetti’s hand. At the opposite end of the room hung some symbolic designs in chalk, Pandora and Proserpina being among the number, and easels of various sizes, some very large, bearing pictures in differing stages of completion, occupied positions on all sides of the floor, leaving room only for a sofa, with a bookcase behind, two old cabinets, two large low easy chairs, and a writing desk and chair at a window at the side, which was heavily darkened by the thick foliage of the trees that grew in the garden beyond.