Rossetti

Preface

I DESIRE to make grateful acknowledgment to the following for the ready assistance that they have afforded me in a delicate and difficult task. To Mr. W. M. Eossetti first, for his cordial encouragement, as well as his readiness to give information, and for kind permission to make use of his writings on the subject, and detailed assistance with regard to mss. and pictures; to Mr. Theodore Watts-Dunton for his unfailing kindness, vivid reminiscences, and generous sympathy ; to Mr. C. Fairfax Murray, who has given me abundance of information on many points, and has shown a willingness to answer questions and to criticise detailed statements for which I cannot be sufficiently grateful. He also allowed me to make use of his unique collections, and placed at my disposal the large number of Rossetti mss. which he possesses; to Mr. Hall Caine for his expressed interest, and permission to make use of his memorable Recollections; to Mr. Edmund Gosse for patient and invaluable criticism; to Mr. M. H. Spielmann for courteous help and fruitful suggestions ; to Mr. Lionel Gust for his willingness vi KOSSETTI

to be consulted and his excellent advice; to Dr.

Richard Garnett for sound and judicious criticism on

Rossetti as a translator; to Mr. J. R. Clayton for

interesting information; to Messrs. Ellis and Elvey

for permission to quote from the Collected Works and

other copyright volumes dealing with the subject;

to my sister Miss Margaret Benson; to the Hon.

Maurice Baring; to Mr. Percy Lubbock for careful

and perspicacious criticism; and to Miss Beatrice

Layman, for simply invaluable aid in verification and

correction.

A. C. B.

AUTHORITIES

The principal books I have consulted, and to which reference is made in the following pages, besides Rossetti's own publications, are the following : —

The Collected Works of D. G. Bossetti, 2 vols., 1901; D. G. Bossetti as Designer and Writer, 1889; Dante Gabriel Bossetti, Letters and Memoir, 2 vols., 1895 ; Buskin, Rossetti, Pre-Baphaelitism (1854-1862), 1899; Fre-Baphaelite Diaries and Letters (1835-1856), 1900; Bossetti Papers (1862-1870), 1903 ; the above all edited or written by Mr. W. M. Bossetti.

Letters of D. G. Bossetti to William Allingham (1854- 1870), edited by G. Birkbeck Hill, 1897 ; Becollections of D. G. Bossetti, by T. Hall Caine, 1882 ; Dante Gabriel Bossetti, by William Sharp, 1882 ; Life of D. G. Bossetti, by Joseph Knight, 1887 ; Dante Bossetti and the Fre-Baphaelite Movement, by Esther Wood, 1894 ; Dante Gabriel Bossetti, with illustrations, by H. C. Marillier, 1901.

Autobiographical Notes of William Bell Scott, 1892 ; Ford Madox Brown, by F. M. Hueffer, 1896 ; The Life of William Morris, by J. W. Mackail, 1899.

Essays — Modern, by F. W. H. Myers, 1883 ; Essays and Studies, by A. C. Swinburne, 1875 ; Ward^s English Poets, Introduction to Rossetti's poems, by Walter Pater, 1883 ; Dictionary of National Biography, article on D. G. Bossetti, viii ROSSETTI

by B. Ganiett, 1897 ; but the list is by no means exhaustive, as there are many contributions to periodical literature such as The Fre-Baphaelite Brotherhood, by W. Holman Hunt, in the Contemporary Beview, vol. xlix., 1886; and The Truth about Bossetti, by Theodore Watts (Watts-Dunton) in the Nineteenth Century, March 1883, vfhich contain interesting criticism and information not otherwhere given.

A. C. B.

Chapter I Early Tears

RossETTi's life, it has been well said, has been treated by his biographers too much in the Pre-Raphaelite method: we have been presented with a great mass of detail, highly interesting in itself, but tending somewhat to obscure the distinctness of the central figure. Yet it is hard to see how it could have been otherwise. The seclusion in which in later life Rossetti lived, the fascinated interest which he inspired in those who were admitted within the close-shut doors, the strange light, so to speak, which the initiated brought away glimmering round their brows, from visits to the inmost presence-chamber, the pictures, guarded so jealously from all public displays, the poems, springing from a source of which the secret was so deeply hidden — all these things stimulated public curiosity to an extravagant degree. The result was that a host of distorted legends sprang up round the name of Rossetti, exaggerating all that was morbid, darkening every shadow, dwelling mainly on lapses from conventional standards, and substituting for the brave, genial, robust personality, which the chosen friends

B 1 still discerned under the overshadowing of doom, an affected, decadent, fantastic figure, posturing in a gloomy clause macabre, or wandering in an airless labyrinth of poisonous loveliness.

It was necessary then, at all hazards, for his biographers to tell the truth about Kossetti. But the outcome is that we have been told almost too much of him, and yet not enough. Of the earlier and brighter years the record is comparatively slight. Yet we can follow his footsteps, print by print, along the darkening pilgrimage, while the sombre figure of the dreamer marches heavily along, with sometimes a word and sometimes a glance flashed upon us, but severe, inscrutable, sad with a wilful sadness. With what philosophy he faced the doom that threatened him, how his eager pursuit of the beautiful harmonised, if it did harmonise, with the stubborn insistence of pain and decay, whether he increased in a grim and stoical resistance, or turned his back upon the awful mystery, beguiling the time that still remained to be told ; or whether the whole character broadened and deepened under the pressure of the elemental sadness — all this we can never know. And here, I think, lies the deepest tragedy of Kossetti's life. A man of infinite self-will, of intense though limited outlook, sets out upon a certain pilgrimage, with a radiant goal in view, resolutely disregarding all that does not at once accommodate itself to his aims and faiths ; and then the vision changes, and he is confronted in the saddest and sternest way with the darkest problems that try and torture the mortal nature. The very gloom of the tragedy lends a deeper augustness to the great figure that slowly moves to meet it. But we may dare to hope that a

1.] EARLY YEARS 3

soul which, though knit with a temperament open in a singular degree to all the nearer seductions of beauty, kept its gaze resolutely on the ultimate hope, the further issue, the central vision, and which looked so earnestly through the symbol to the force symbolised, must attain in some freer region to the knowledge of the secret, that murmured like a phantom music, in divine, mysterious tones round the clouded earthly tabernacle.

Gabriel Charles Dante Rossetti, commonly known as Dante Gabriel Rossetti, was born on May 12, 1828, at No. 38 Charlotte Street, Portland Place. He was baptized at All Souls Church, Langham Place, according to the rites of the Church of England, his mother being a devoted Anglican, of an Evangelical type in early days, but later holding High Church views. The name Gabriel was his father's name. Charles came from his godfather, Mr. Charles Lyell of Kinnordy, a family friend, a keen student of Italian literature, and father of the celebrated geologist. Sir Charles Lyell. He was called Dante after his father's favourite poet. Rossetti dropped the name Charles in early life ; and it is strange that one who never even visited the land of his ancestors, who, as his brother says, " was always ready to reckon to the discredit of foreigners a certain shallow and frothy demonstrativeness," who loved the free country of his nativity so well, should have parted with his only English inheritance. He transposed his other names, probably to avoid being confused with his father, and we find him in early manhood writing to his aunt, who addressed him by his legal initials, to ask her to use the nomenclature that he had permanently adopted.

Of his four grandparents, three were pure Italians, one English. His father was Gabriele Rossetti (p. 1783), the youngest son of Nicola Rossetti, a blacksmith of Vasto, a town on the Adriatic coast of South Italy. They were simple people : Rossetti's grandmother could neither read nor write.

His mother was Frances Mary Lavinia Polidori, daughter of Gaetano Polidori and his wife Anna Maria (Pierce). Gaetano Polidori was the son of a physician of Bientina, a Tuscan town. He was at one time secretary to Alfieri, and settling in England in 1789, married Miss Pierce, a governess, and taught Italian.

Gabriele Rossetti was a man of active mind, with strong literary tastes, in early days a skilful draughtsman, and always a beautiful reader and reciter. He was an improvisatore, a poet, and in early life librettist to the operatic theatre of San Carlo at Naples, being afterwards a Curator in the Museum of Naples. He was in high favour with Murat, King of Naples, and held a secretaryship in the department of public instruction. When the Bourbon king, Ferdinand I., was restored to his kingdom in 1815, Rossetti became a revolutionary, and was proscribed in 1821 when Ferdinand, with the aid of the Austrians, suppressed constitutional government. He escaped to Malta in 1821, in a British uniform, on a man-of-war. Eventually, in 1824, he settled in England and married in 1826. He was appointed Professor of Italian in King's College, London, in 1831. His health declined in 1842, and after some years of invalid life he died in 1854, " glad to be released."

The elder Kossetti was a sensitive, lively, activeminded man, sociable, good-humoured, and affectionate. He was a fervent patriot, and had a high standard of virtue. In religion he was a free-thinker, but with a strongly spiritual nature. He wrote voluminously, patriotic and religious poems, political treatises, mystical commentaries. His memory was greatly revered in Italy, and is commemorated by an inscription in the cloister of Santa Croce in Florence. The centenary of his birth was celebrated at Vasto in 1883, and the central piazza of the town renamed after him.

There is a delightful picture of him by his son drawn in 1853, which represents him sitting at a table, in a cap and overcoat, closely scanning a manuscript which throws an upward light on the brow. His white hair grows thickly; the long, thin nose, the compressed lips, the tired but penetrating eyes, all show the man of high enthusiasm, intense intellectuality, and refined character. It is not fanciful to see a certain strain of asceticism and unworldliness in the face, combined with the gentle submission that comes of a faith in ideas and principles lying behind the material world.

There was, it seems, a " certain tinge of self-opinion or self-applause in his temperament " ; he liked, said his son Dante, " to ride the high horse." But he was quite without personal vanity, full of kindness, and generously appreciative of the merits of others.

Rossetti's mother was a cultivated woman, fond of reading, characterised by great simplicity of nature ; self-controlled, just, kind, abhorring gossip, strongly religious, and entirely devoted to her husband and children. She said once, in 1872, "I always had a passion for intellect, and my wish was that my husband should be distinguished for intellect, and my children too. I have had my wish; and I now wish that there was a little less intellect in the family, so as to allow for a little more common-sense." She had herself no lack of the latter quality. They lived simply enough, and for ten years, when Gabriele Rossetti was disabled by illness, she took pupils, and worked hard for the support of the household. She was, too, an excellent woman of business, and they always lived within their means.

Eossetti's brothers and sisters were three in number : Maria Francesca (1827-1876), who became a member of an Anglican sisterhood ; William Michael (6. 1829), who still survives, his brother's careful and accomplished biographer; and Christina (1830-1894), the illustrious poetess. They were thus a family of marked characteristics, with strong literary and artistic gifts, with which was combined, in the sisters, a deep and mystical religion. The early years of the children were passed almost wholly in London. The household had few English acquaintances, but Mr. W. M. Eossetti says that " it seems hardly an exaggeration to say that every Italian staying in or passing through London, of a Liberal mode of political opinion, sought out my father, to make or renew acquaintance with him." There was also a perpetual flow of foreigners requiring assistance, and if a Masonic signal was given, as was often the case, Gabriele Eossetti being a Freemason, they were immediately relieved. Italian patriots, artists, literary men, musicians, venders of plaster-casts, dancing-masters, eclectics of every kind congregated there, among whom the most famous were Paganini the violinist, Mazzini, and Panizzi.

The children spoke Italian in the house, and listened to perpetual declamatory political talk, idealistic aspirations, recitations of poetry, and reminiscences of Italy.

It is interesting to note that this seems to have developed in D. G. Rossetti an extreme hatred of politics. It is often to be remarked, in men of strong individuality, that the influences of early life seem to have had a curiously antagonistic effect upon their tastes and character ; and the result of this animated political society seems to have confirmed the young poet in a deeply rooted dislike of the lesser or practical politics. " He heard so much," it is said, " in his youth, of gli Austriaci (the Austrians) and Luigi Filippo (Louis Philippe), that he seems to have registered a vow to leave Luigi Filippo and the other potentates of Europe and their ministers to take care of themselves." For political ideals and principles he seems to have had a faint sympathy, but for practical politics he had what can only be called an aversion, almost amounting to detestation.

A similar influence can be detected in the boy's literary tastes. Gabriele Eossetti was an ardent student of Dante, and fond of abstruse mystical speculations on the subject of the poems. He would sit surrounded with huge folios in ancient type, " about alchemy, freemasonry, Brahminism, Swedenborg, the Cabbala, etc., and filling page after page of prose, in impeccable handwriting full of underscorings, interlineations, and cancellings." Nothing that Dante wrote was allowed to be capable of simple and natural interpretation ; every passage and every word was an elaborate vehicle for the concealment of some mystical speculation or political idea, and the highest praise for a book, in Gabriele Kossetti's mouth, was that it was a " libro sommamente mistico."

The result on the children was that though they viewed their father's studies with respect, the books which he loved were understood not to " do to read." But Rossetti re-discovered Dante for himself when he was fifteen or sixteen ; and then, relieved of the fear of being obliged to interpret the poems in some remote sense, he mastered them with burning avidity. He wrote in the Preface to Early Italian Poets, "In those early days, all around me partook of the influence of the great Florentine ; till, from viewing it as a natural element, I also, growing older, was drawn within the circle." But, speaking generally, the studies of their father may be said to have thrown the children, by a species of reaction, rather decidedly into the study of English literature. They read poetry, tales, and wholesome old books, and began very early to try their hand at writing. Neither the early writings nor the early pictures of the child seem to have been markedly promising, but it is interesting that he preferred imaginative designs, such as scenes from Shakespeare, to transcriptions of natural objects, and chose to create rather than copy.

The only one of the early writings which deserves a passing mention, from the fact that it is a bibliographical curiosity, is a poem in four parts called Sir Hugh the Heron, which was written at the age of twelve, and printed in 1843 by his grandfather, Mr. Polidori, who had then moved into London, at a private printing-press which he had set up.

An interesting autobiographical reminiscence of his early days occurs in a mystical story, St. Agnes of Intercession, written at a later date. " Among my earliest recollections, none is stronger than that of my father standing before the fire when he came home in the London winter evenings, and singing to us in his sweet, generous tones ; sometimes ancient English ditties, — such songs as one might translate from the birds, and the brooks might set to music ; sometimes those with which foreign travel had familiarised his youth, — among them the great tunes which have rung the world's changes since '89. I used to sit on the hearthrug, listening to him, and look between his knees into the fire till it burned my face, while the sights swarming up in it seemed changed and changed with the music : till the music and the fire and my heart burned together, and I would take paper and pencil, and try in some childish way to fix the shapes that rose within me. For my hope, even then, was to be a painter."

The boy went in 1836 to a day-school in Portland Place, and to King's College School in 1837, where he stayed till 1842. Here, he learned Latin and French well, German fairly, and Greek but a little. He had some linguistic aptitude, but held science and mathematics in contempt. He was said to have been a quiet, affectionate boy, courageous, kind, and considerate of others. But his own recollection was different. He described himself to Mr. Hall Caine as having been destitute of personal courage, shrinking from the amusements of his schoolfellows, and fearful of their quarrels, selfish, though not without some generous impulses, and reclusive in habits. The truth probably is that he was intensely preoccupied, like all children of strong individuality, with his own ideas and dreams, and apt to resent anything that diverted the current of them ; but he was pre-eminently genial and sociable by nature, and it is impossible that he should not have displayed these qualities to a certain extent when at school. He was always a favourite with simple people, servants, shoe-blacks, organgrinders, and never had, to the end of his life, the faintest consciousness of or subservience to social position. No doubt the uncongenial atmosphere of school threw him back decidedly upon the circle of home interests. He appears to have made no special friends at school.

In 1842 it was decided that Kossetti had received a sufficient education, and that his professional life had better begin. He was bent on becoming an artist, though it does not appear that up to this date his drawings had shown any special promise. It is interesting that he seems to have been allowed to have his own way in the matter, as the household must have been under the pressure of considerable anxiety owing to the failing health of Gabriele Rossetti. He went first to the drawing academy of Mr. F. S, Gary in Bloomsbury Street. He was there for four years. He appears to have been irregular in attendance, and with moods of brusquerie and unapproachableness, alternating with hilarious gaiety and affectionate generosity. He paid little heed to Gary's instructions, but followed his own methods. "Why were you not here yesterday ? " says his instructor, according to the legend. " I had a fit of idleness," says the pupil, and shortly after distributes a sheaf of verses among the stvideuts. He said once to his brother, many years after, "As soon as a thing is imposed on me as an obligation, my aptitnde for doing it is gone ; what I ought to do is what I cayiH do." His imagination was, however, strongly stirred by the exhibition of some cartoons in Westminster Hall, prior to the decoration of the Houses of Parliament. Here he first saw the work of Ford Madox Brown, and recognised a new spirit at work, a spirit of originality and fidelity, of revolt against stereotyped traditions.

This had an important bearing on his after career. He entered the Antique School of the Royal Academy in 1846, and there is an interesting description of his appearance in those days, given by a fellow-student. "Thick, beautiful, and closely curled masses of rich brown much-neglected hair fell about an ample brow, and almost to the wearer's shoulders; strong eyebrows marked [masked ?] with their dark shadows a pair of rather sunken eyes, in which a sort of fire, instinct with what may be called proud cynicism, burned with furtive energy. His rather high cheekbones were the more observable because his cheeks were roseless and hollow enough to indicate the waste of life and midnight oil to which the youth was addicted. Close shaving left bare his very full, not to say sensuous lips, and squarecut masculine chin. Rather below the middle height, and with a slightly rolling gait, Rossetti came forward among his fellows with a jerky step, tossed the falling hair back from his face, and, having both hands in his pockets, faced the student world with an insouciant air which savoured of thorough self-reliance. A bare throat, a falling, ill-kept collar, boots not over-familiar with brushes, black and well-worn habiliments, including not the ordinary jacket of the period, but a loose dress-coat which had once been new — these were the outward and visible signs of a mood which cared even less for appearances than the art-student of those days was accustomed to care, which undoubtedly was little enough."

Mr. Holman Hunt says that, on speaking to him, the impression of his insouciance was much modified; "he proved to be courteous, gentle, and winsome, generous in compliment, rich in interest in the pursuits of others, and in every respect ... a cultivated gentleman."

At this time Eossetti's intellectual ardour was very great. He read Shelley and Keats with profound admiration, and many other poets; in prose he had a taste for the legendary, the strange, the supernatural, combined with a great relish for humorous writing of any kind. He eschewed philosophy, science, history, and politics. In 1847 he discovered Browning, and everything else sank into the background : he revelled in the passion, the dramatic perception, the mediaevalism of Browning. He wrote a prose romance called Sorrentino, the ms. of which he afterwards destroyed. He began to translate the Nibelungenlied. He had also taken up Dante and the Italian lyrists, and translated everything that pleased him, including Dante's Vita Naova. Some of these translations were shown to Tennyson, who pronounced the work to be strong and earnest, but disfigured by superficial faults. But what is still more striking is that, before entering his twentieth year, he had written The Blessed Damozel, in many respects his finest and most characteristic poem; moreover, in the next year or two he wrote the Ave, the beginning of Dante at Verona, The Last Confession, The BricWs Prelade,Sind an original draft of Jenny, oi whicli the greater part was afterwards cancelled. The whole period gives the impression of intense vitality and strength, but it is even more remarkable to find how early maturity was reached. He seems to have served no patient apprenticeship in literature, but to have come suddenly and swiftly into the possession of his full inheritance.

A good instance of his poetical insight is revealed by the fact that he fell in with an anonymous book at the British Museum called Pauline, which he admired sufficiently to copy out; he came to the conclusion that this must be the work of Robert Browning, and wrote to him to ask if it was so. Browning replied in the affirmative, from Venice ; but it was not till two years after that the poets met.

In 1848 Rossetti, yielding to impulse in a characteristic way, wrote a remarkable letter to Ford Madox Brown. He said that he had always admired his "glorious" work. "I have always listened with avidity if your name happened to be mentioned, and rushed first of all to your number in the catalogue." The letter goes on to say that Brown's pictures had kept him "standing on the same spot for fabulous lengths of time." He concludes by asking that Madox Brown would accept him as a pupil, as he desired " to obtain some knowledge of colour."

Mr. W. M. Rossetti says that his brother was sick of the slow progress of his artistic education, and desired just to gain sufficient technical knowledge of brush-work to start upon original designs.

Madox Brown was twenty-seven at this date. He was already working in the spirit of the artistic creed which he afterwards formulated in the two words " emotional truth." Neither then nor later did he receive adequate recognition, though he slowly emerges as one of the most profound and impressive painters of the century. He appears to have been astonished by the letter, and particularly by the lavish praise it contained, as he was by no means accustomed to be so admiringly regarded. He seems to have imagined that some jest was intended, and marched straight to Rossetti's house with a stout stick. Madox Brown was a vigorous-looking man of formidable aspect, with a strongly marked face. He knocked at the door at 50 Charlotte Street,^ and desired to see Rossetti, but would not come in or give his name. Rossetti came down. " Is your name Rossetti, and is this your writing ? " he asked. Rossetti replied that it was. " What do you mean by it ? " said Madox Brown, in his distinct and slow articulation. Rossetti explained that he meant what he said, and Madox Brown, seeing that the request was genuine, accepted him on the spot as a pupil and declined to accept, with characteristic indifference to money, any payment. Rossetti went almost immediately afterwards to the studio, and was at once, to his disgust, set down to paint some pickle-jars.

At this date Rossetti made two friends among the Academy students, whose association with him made a great difference in his life. These were Mr. Holman Hunt, about a year older than himself, and John Everett Millais, a year younger. Rossetti had seen Mr. Hunt's picture Tlie Eve of St. Agnes in the Academy,

1 To which house the Rossettis had removed in 1836.

and had said boisterously that it was the best picture of the year. Through Mr. Hunt, Rossetti got to know Millais well, having previously been on terms of mere acquaintanceship with him. Millais had already exhibited several pictures, and was regarded as a paragon of promise. Mr. Hunt advised Rossetti, who had loudly lamented the degrading character of the work he was doing, to begin a large picture, and gain technique by using the still-life objects which he was set to paint as direct pictorial accessories to it. Rossetti eventually chose Tlie Girlhood of Ifary Virgin as a subject.

But Rossetti was still doubtful at this time as to whether he should definitely take up art or literature. He wrote to Leigh Hunt, to whom he was unknown, sending him some of his poems and translations, and asking his advice. Leigh Hunt replied in a very kindly letter, which is preserved. He seems, like Tennyson, to have been impressed with the roughness of the versification in the translations. " I guess indeed," he wrote, " that you are altogether not so musical as pictorial." But Leigh Hunt expressed himself most generously about the original poems, seeing in them the work of " an unquestionable poet, thoughtful, imaginative, and with rare powers of expression. I hailed you as such at once, without any misgiving." He concludes with some kindly words warning the aspirant against thinking of poetry as a profession. "Poetry," he says, "... is not a thing for a man' to live upon while he is in the flesh, however immortal it may render him in spirit."

Rossetti joined Mr. Holm an Hunt in a studio in Cleveland Street (now No. 46 Fitzroy Square), a dismal and squalid place, looking out upon a timber-yard, and rendered additionally disagreeable by the fact that a boys' school was kept in the house.

The friendship with Millais was established one night at Millais' house (7 Gower Street), where Millais, the only one of the group whose family was in easy circumstances, worked in a long, shed-like studio at the back of the house. There they turned over a book of engravings by Lasinio of the frescoes by early masters in the Campo Santo at Pisa — engravings which Euskin calls execrable. This was in August 1848, and the incident was to have important consequences.

I cannot but believe that his early entourage had a great and lasting effect, both in poetry and art, upon so perceptive a spirit as Eossetti's. In these first years, except for half a dozen visits to the country, to Chalfont and Little Missenden, and a few weeks at Boulogne, he knew nothing of the country pure and simple. He was thus, I think, thrown strongly back into himself, and the desire for beauty driven into one special channel. He has delicate and informing touches of natural observation in his poetry. But so eager an eye for beauty is bound to feed itself upon what it sees, and one can imagine Eossetti, like Leonardo da Vinci, wandering about the streets in search of rare and remote types of human expression. The landscape both of his pictures and poems is rather of the pictorial than of the natural order, imagined ideal places, gardens seen in dreams, with a tender light of evening over lawns and thick-grown trees.

Moreover, the time at which natural impressions sink deepest is when they are studied with the relentless, inquisitive gaze, tlie eager curiosity, the busy hands of childhood. Natural phenomena are not at an early age interpreted or apprehended in the light of beauty, but the harvest is then gathered and the habit acquired ; and thus the early London life no doubt accounts for the fact that Rossetti's natural imagery does not rise, as it were, out of a full source, but consists more of little effects noted in some moment of country observation.