Chapter X: Dante Gabriel Rossetti

Thou knowest that island, far away and lone,
Whose shores are as a harp, where billows break
In spray of music and the breezes shake
O'er spicy seas a woof of colour and tone,
While that sweet music echoes like a moan
In the island's heart, and sighs around the lake,
Where, watching fearfully a watchful snake,
A damsel weeps upon her emerald throne.

Life's ocean, breaking round thy senses' shore,
Struck golden song, as from the strand of Day:
For us the joy, for thee the fell foe lay--
Pain's blinking snake around the fair isle's core,
Turning to sighs the enchanted sounds that play
Around thy lovely island evermore.

I am now brought to a portion of my study which may well give me pause--the relations between Mr. Watts-Dunton and Rossetti. The latest remarks upon them are, I think, the best; they are by Mr. A. C. Benson in his monograph on Rossetti in the 'English Men of Letters':--

"It would be impossible to exaggerate the value of his friendship for
Rossetti. Mr. Watts-Dunton understood him, sympathized with him, and
with self-denying and unobtrusive delicacy shielded him, so far as
any one can be shielded, from the rough contact of the world. It was
for a long time hoped that Mr. Watts-Dunton would give the memoir of
his great friend to the world, but there is such a thing as knowing a
man too well to be his biographer. It is, however, an open secret
that a vivid sketch of Rossetti's personality has been given to the
world in Mr. Watts-Dunton's well-known romance 'Aylwin,' where the
artist D'Arcy is drawn from Rossetti. . . . Though singularly
independent in judgment, it is clear that, at all events in the later
years of his life, Rossetti's taste was, unconsciously, considerably
affected by the critical preferences of Mr. Watts-Dunton. I have
heard it said by one {139} who knew them both well that it was often
enough for Mr. Watts-Dunton to express a strong opinion for Rossetti
to adopt it as his own, even though he might have combated it for the
moment. . . .

At the end of each part [of 'Rose Mary'] comes a curious lyrical
outburst called the Beryl-songs, the chant of the imprisoned spirits,
which are intended to weld the poem together and to supply
connections. It is said that Mr. Watts-Dunton, when he first read
the poem in proof, said to Rossetti that the drift was too intricate
for an ordinary reader. Rossetti took this to heart, and wrote the
Beryl-songs to bridge the gaps; Mr. Watts-Dunton, on being shown
them, very rightly disapproved, and said humorously that they turned
a fine ballad into a bastard opera. Rossetti, who was ill at the
time, was so much disconcerted and upset at the criticism, that Mr.
Watts-Dunton modified his judgment, and the interludes were printed.
But at a later day Rossetti himself came round to the opinion that
they were inappropriate. They are curiously wrought, rhapsodical,
irregular songs, with fantastic rhymes, and were better away. . . .

Then he began to settle down into the production of the single-figure
pictures, of which Mr. Watts-Dunton wrote that 'apart from any
question of technical shortcomings, one of Rossetti's strongest
claims to the attention of posterity was that of having invented, in
the three-quarter length pictures painted from one face, a type of
female beauty which was akin to none other, which was entirely new,
in short--and which, for wealth of sublime and mysterious suggestion,
unaided by complex dramatic design, was unique in the art of the
world."

[Picture: Pandora. Crayon by D. G. Rossetti at 'The Pines']

It is well known that Rossetti wished his life--if written at all--to be written by Mr. Watts-Dunton, unless his brother should undertake it. It is also well known that the brother himself wished it, but pressure of other matters prevented Mr. Watts-Dunton from undertaking it. I expected difficulties in approaching with regard to the delicate subject of his relations with Rossetti, but I was not prepared to find them so great as they have proved to be. When I wrote to him and asked him whether the portrait of D'Arcy in 'Aylwin' was to be accepted as a portrait of Rossetti, and when I asked him to furnish me with some materials and facts to form the basis of this chapter, I received from him the following letter:--

"MY DEAR MR. DOUGLAS,--I have never myself affirmed that D'Arcy was
to be taken as an actual portrait of Rossetti. Even if I thought
that a portrait of him could be given in any form of imaginative
literature, I have views of my own as to the propriety of giving
actual portraits of men with whom a novelist or poet has been brought
into contact. It is quite impossible for an imaginative writer to
avoid the imperious suggestions of his memory when he is conceiving a
character. Thousands of times in a year does one come across
critical remarks upon the prototypes of the characters of such great
novelists as Scott, Dickens, Thackeray, the Brontes, George Eliot,
George Meredith, Thomas Hardy, and the rest. And I believe that
every one of these writers would confess that his prominent
characters were suggested to him by living individuals or by
individuals who figure in history--but suggested only. And as to the
ethics of so dealing with friends and acquaintances I have also views
of my own. These are easily stated. The closer the imaginative
writer gets to the portrait of a friend, or even of an acquaintance,
the more careful must he be to set his subject in a genial and even a
generous light. It would be a terrible thing if every man who has
been a notable figure in life were to be represented as this or that
at the sweet will of everybody who has known him. Generous
treatment, I say, is demanded of every writer who makes use of the
facets of character that have struck him in his intercourse with
friend or acquaintance. I will give you an instance of this. When I
drew De Castro in 'Aylwin' I made use of my knowledge of a certain
individual. Now this individual, although a man of quite
extraordinary talents, brilliance, and personal charm, bore not a
very good name, because he was driven to live upon his wits. He had
endowments so great and so various that I cannot conceive any line of
life in which he was not fitted to excel--but it was his irreparable
misfortune to have been trained to no business and no profession, and
to have been thrown upon the world without means, and without useful
family connections. Such a man must either sink beneath the oceanic
waves of London life, or he must make a struggle to live upon his
wits. This individual made that struggle--he struck out with a
vigour that, as far as I know, was without example in London society.
He got to know, and to know intimately, men like Ruskin, G. F. Watts,
D. G. Rossetti, Mr. W. M. Rossetti, William Morris, Mr. Swinburne,
Sir Edward Burne Jones, Cruikshank, and I know not what important
people besides. When he was first brought into touch with the
painters, he knew nothing whatever of art; in two or three years, as
I have heard Rossetti say, he was a splendid 'connoisseur.' If he
had been brought up as a lawyer he must have risen to the top of the
profession. If he had been brought up as an actor he must, as I have
heard a dramatist say, have risen to the top. But from his very
first appearance in London he was driven to live upon his wits. And
here let me say that this man, who was a bitter unfriend of my own,
because I was compelled to stand in the way of certain dealings of
his, but whom I really could have liked if he had not been obliged to
live upon his wits at the expense of certain friends of mine, formed
the acquaintance of the great men I have enumerated, not so much from
worldly motives, as I believe, as from real admiration. But being
driven to live upon his wits, he had not sufficient moral strength to
afford a conscience, and the queerest stories were told--some of them
true enough--of his dealings with those great men. Whistler's
anecdotes of him at one period set many a table in a roar; and yet so
winsome was the man that after a time he became as intimate with
Whistler as ever. If he had possessed a private income, and if that
income had been carefully settled upon him, I believe he would have
been one of the most honest of men; I know he would have been one of
the most generous. His conduct to the late Treffry Dunn, from whom
he could not have expected the least return except that of gratitude,
was proof enough of his generosity. Of course to make use of so
strange a character as this was a great temptation to me when I wrote
'Aylwin.' But in what has been called my 'thumb-nail portrait of
him,' I treated the peccadilloes attributed to him in a playful and
jocose way. It would have been quite wrong to have painted otherwise
than in playful colours a character like this. Like every other man
and woman in this world, he left behind him people who believed in
him and loved him. It would have been cruel to wound these, and
unfair to the man; and yet because I gave only a slight suggestion of
his sublime quackery and supreme blarney, a writer who also knew
something about him, but of course not a thousandth part of what I
knew, said that I had tried my hand at depicting him in 'Aylwin,' but
with no great success. As a matter of fact, I did not attempt to
give a portrait of him: I simply used certain facets of his character
to work out my story, and then dismissed him. On the other hand,
where the character of a friend or acquaintance is noble, the
imagination can work more freely--as in the case of Philip Aylwin,
Cyril Aylwin, Wilderspin, Rhona Boswell, Winifred Wynne, Sinfi
Lovell. And as to Rossetti, whom I have been charged by certain
critics with having idealized in my picture of D'Arcy, all I have to
say on that point is this--that if the noble and fascinating
qualities which Rossetti showed had been leavened with mean ones I
should not, in introducing his character into a story, have
considered it right or fair or generous to dwell upon those mean
ones. But as a matter of fact, during my whole intercourse with him
he displayed no such qualities. The D'Arcy that I have painted is
not one whit nobler, more magnanimous, wide-minded, and generous,
than was D. G. Rossetti. As I have said on several occasions, he
could and did take as deep an interest in a friend's work as in his
own. And to benefit a friend was the greatest pleasure he had in
life. I loved the man so deeply that I should never have introduced
D'Arcy into the novel had it not been in the hope of silencing the
misrepresentations of him that began as soon as ever Rossetti was
laid in the grave at Birchington, by depicting his character in
colours as true as they were sympathetic. It has been the grievous
fate of Rossetti to be the victim of an amount of detraction which is
simply amazing and inscrutable. I cannot in the least understand why
this is so. It is the great sorrow of my life. There is a fatality
of detraction about his name which in its unreasonableness would be
grotesque were it not heartrending. It would turn my natural
optimism about mankind into pessimism were it not that another dear
friend of mine--a man of equal nobility of character, and almost of
equal genius, has escaped calumny altogether--William Morris. This
matter is a painful puzzle to me. The only great man of my time who
seems to have shared something of Rossetti's fate, is Lord Tennyson.
There seems to be a general desire to belittle him, to exaggerate
such angularities as were his, and to speak of that almost childlike
simplicity of character which was an ineffable charm in him as
springing from boorishness and almost from loutishness. On the other
hand, another great genius, Browning, for whom I had and have the
greatest admiration, seems to be as fortunate as Morris in escaping
the detractor. But I am wandering from Rossetti. I do not feel any
impulse to write reminiscences of him. Too much has been written
about him already--of late a great deal too much. The only thing
written about him that has given me comfort--I may say joy, is
this--it has been written by a man who knew him before I did, who
knew him at the time he lost his wife. Mr. Val Prinsep, R.A., has
declared that in Rossetti's relations with his wife there was nothing
whatever upon which his conscience might reasonably trouble him. I
do not remember the exact words, but this was the substance of them.
Mr. Val Prinsep is a man of the highest standing, and he knew
Rossetti intimately, and he has declared in print that Rossetti could
have had no qualms of conscience in regard to his relations with his
wife. This, I say, is a source of great comfort to me and to all who
loved Rossetti. That he was whimsical, fanciful, and at times most
troublesome to his friends, no one knows better than I do.

No one, I say, is more competent to speak of the whims and the
fancies and the troublesomeness of Rossetti than I am; and yet I say
that he was one of the noblest-hearted men of his time, and
lovable--most lovable."

It would be worse than idle to enter at this time of day upon the painful subject of the "Buchanan affair." Indeed, I have often thought it is a great pity that it is not allowed to die out. The only reason why it is still kept alive seems to be that, without discussing it, it is impossible fully to understand Rossetti's nervous illness, about which so much has been said. I remember seeing in Mr. Watts-Dunton's essay on Congreve in 'Chambers's Encyclopaedia' a definition of envy as the 'literary leprosy.' This phrase has often been quoted in reference to the case of Buchanan, and also in reference to a recent and much more ghastly case between two intimate friends. Now, with all deference to Mr. Watts-Dunton, I cannot accept it as a right and fair definition. It is a fact no doubt that the struggle in the world of art--whether poetry, music, painting, sculpture, or the drama--is unlike that of the mere strivers after wealth and position, inasmuch as to praise one man's artistic work is in a certain way to set it up against the work of another. Still, one can realize, without referring to Disraeli's 'Curiosities of Literature,' that envy is much too vigorous in the artistic life. Now, whatever may have been the good qualities of Buchanan--and I know he had many good qualities--it seems unfortunately to be true that he was afflicted with this terrible disease of envy. There can be no question that what incited him to write the notorious article in the 'Contemporary Review' entitled 'The Fleshly School of Poetry,' was simply envy--envy and nothing else. It was during the time that Rossetti was suffering most dreadfully from the mental disturbance which seems really to have originated in this attack and the cognate attacks which appeared in certain other magazines, that the intimacy between Mr. Watts-Dunton and Rossetti was formed and cemented. And it is to this period that Mr. William Rossetti alludes in the following words: "'Watts is a hero of friendship' was, according to Mr. Caine, one of my brother's last utterances, easy enough to be credited."

That he deserved these words I think none will deny; and that the friendship sprang from the depths of the nature of a man to whom the word 'friendship' meant not what it generally means now, a languid sentiment, but what it meant in Shakespeare's time, a deep passion, is shown by what some deem the finest lines Mr. Watts-Dunton ever wrote--I mean those lines which he puts into the mouth of Shakespeare's Friend in 'Christmas at the Mermaid,' lines part of which have been admirably turned into Latin by Mr. E. D. Stone, {147} and published by him in the second volume of that felicitous series of Latin translations,' Florilegium Latinum':--

'MR. W. H.'

To sing the nation's song or do the deed
That crowns with richer light the motherland,
Or lend her strength of arm in hour of need
When fangs of foes shine fierce on every hand,
Is joy to him whose joy is working well--
Is goal and guerdon too, though never fame.
Should find a thrill of music in his name;
Yea, goal and guerdon too, though Scorn should aim
Her arrows at his soul's high citadel.

But if the fates withhold the joy from me
To do the deed that widens England's day,
Or join that song of Freedom's jubilee
Begun when England started on her way--
Withhold from me the hero's glorious power
To strike with song or sword for her, the mother,
And give that sacred guerdon to another,
Him will I hail as my more noble brother--
Him will I love for his diviner dower.

Enough for me who have our Shakspeare's love
To see a poet win the poet's goal,
For Will is he; enough and far above
All other prizes to make rich my soul.
Ben names my numbers golden. Since they tell
A tale of him who in his peerless prime
Fled us ere yet one shadowy film of time
Could dim the lustre of that brow sublime,
Golden my numbers are: Ben praiseth well.

It seems to me to be needful to bear in mind these lines, and the extremely close intimacy between these two poet-friends in order to be able to forgive entirely the unexampled scourging of Buchanan in the following sonnet if, as some writers think, Buchanan was meant:--

THE OCTOPUS OF THE GOLDEN ISLES
'WHAT! WILL THEY EVEN STRIKE AT ME?'

Round many an Isle of Song, in seas serene,
With many a swimmer strove the poet-boy,
Yet strove in love: their strength, I say, was joy
To him, my friend--dear friend of godlike mien!
But soon he felt beneath the billowy green
A monster moving--moving to destroy:
Limb after limb became the tortured toy
Of coils that clung and lips that stung unseen.

"And canst thou strike ev'n me?" the swimmer said,
As rose above the waves the deadly eyes,
Arms flecked with mouths that kissed in hellish wise,
Quivering in hate around a hateful head.--
I saw him fight old Envy's sorceries:
I saw him sink: the man I loved is dead!

Here we get something quite new in satire--something in which poetry, fancy, hatred, and contempt, are mingled. The sonnet appeared first in the 'Athenaeum,' and afterwards in 'The Coming of Love.' If Buchanan or any special individual was meant, I doubt whether any man has a moral right to speak about another man in such terms as these.

All the friends of Rossetti have remarked upon the extraordinary influence exercised upon him by Mr. Watts-Dunton. Lady Mount Temple, a great friend of the painter-poet, used to tell how when she was in his studio and found him in a state of great dejection, as was so frequently the case, she would notice that Rossetti's face would suddenly brighten up on hearing a light footfall in the hall--the footfall of his friend, who had entered with his latch-key--and how from that moment Rossetti would be another man. Rossetti's own relatives have recorded the same influence. I have often thought that the most touching thing in Mr. W. M. Rossetti's beautiful monograph of his brother is the following extract from his aged mother's diary at Birchington-on-Sea, when the poet is dying:--

'March 28, Tuesday. Mr. Watts came down; Gabriel rallied
marvellously.

This is the last cheerful item which it is allowed me to record
concerning my brother; I am glad that it stands associated with the
name of Theodore Watts.'

Here is another excerpt from the brother's diary:--

'Gabriel had, just before Shields entered the drawing-room for me,
given two violent cries, and had a convulsive fit, very sharp and
distorting the face, followed by collapse. All this passed without
my personal cognizance. He died 9.31 p.m.; the others--Watts,
mother, Christina, and nurse, in room; Caine and Shields in and out;
Watts at Gabriel's right side, partly supporting him.'

That Mr. Watts-Dunton's influence over Rossetti extended even to his art as a poet is shown by Mr. Benson's words already quoted. I must also quote the testimony of Mr. Hall Caine, who says, in his 'Recollections':--

"Rossetti, throughout the period of my acquaintance with him, seemed
to me always peculiarly and, if I may be permitted to say so without
offence, strangely liable to Mr. Watts' influence in his critical
estimates; and the case instanced was perhaps the only one in which I
knew him to resist Mr. Watts's opinion upon a matter of poetical
criticism, which he considered to be almost final, as his letters to
me, printed in Chapter VIII of this volume, will show. I had a
striking instance of this, and of the real modesty of the man whom I
had heard and still hear spoken of as the most arrogant man of genius
of his day, on one of the first occasions of my seeing him. He read
out to me an additional stanza to the beautiful poem 'Cloud
Confines.' As he read it, I thought it very fine, and he evidently
was very fond of it himself. But he surprised me by saying that he
should not print it. On my asking him why, he said:

'Watts, though he admits its beauty, thinks the poem would be better
without it.'

'Well, but you like it yourself,' said I.

'Yes,' he replied, 'but in a question of gain or loss to a poem I
feel that Watts must be right.'

And the poem appeared in 'Ballads and Sonnets' without the stanza in
question."

Here is another beautiful passage from Mr. Hall Caine's 'Recollections'--a passage which speaks as much for the writer as for the object of his enthusiasm:--

"As to Mr. Theodore Watts, whose brotherly devotion to him and
beneficial influence over him from that time forward are so well
known, this must be considered by those who witnessed it to be almost
without precedent or parallel even in the beautiful story of literary
friendships, and it does as much honour to the one as to the other.
No light matter it must have been to lay aside one's own
long-cherished life-work and literary ambitions to be Rossetti's
closest friend and brother, at a moment like the present, when he
imagined the world to be conspiring against him; but through these
evil days, and long after them, down to his death, the friend that
clung closer than a brother was with him, as he himself said, to
protect, to soothe, to comfort, to divert, to interest and inspire
him--asking, meantime, no better reward than the knowledge that a
noble mind and nature was by such sacrifice lifted out of sorrow.
Among the world's great men the greatest are sometimes those whose
names are least on our lips, and this is because selfish aims have
been so subordinate in their lives to the welfare of others as to
leave no time for the personal achievements that win personal
distinction; but when the world comes to the knowledge of the price
that has been paid for the devotion that enables others to enjoy
their renown, shall it not reward with a double meed of gratitude the
fine spirits to whom ambition has been as nothing against fidelity of
friendship. Among the latest words I heard from Rossetti was this:
'Watts is a hero of friendship'; and indeed, he has displayed his
capacity for participation in the noblest part of comradeship, that
part, namely, which is far above the mere traffic that too often goes
by the name, and wherein self-love always counts upon being the
gainer. If in the end it should appear that he has in his own person
done less than might have been hoped for from one possessed of his
splendid gifts, let it not be overlooked that he has influenced in a
quite incalculable degree, and influenced for good, several of the
foremost among those who in their turn have influenced the age. As
Rossetti's faithful friend and gifted medical adviser, Mr. John
Marshall, has often declared, there were periods when Rossetti's very
life may be said to have hung upon Mr. Watts' power to cheer and
soothe."

This anecdote is also told by Mr. Caine:--

"Immediately upon the publication of his first volume, and incited
thereto by the early success of it, he had written the poem 'Rose
Mary,' as well as two lyrics published at the time in 'The
Fortnightly Review'; but he suffered so seriously from the subsequent
assaults of criticism, that he seemed definitely to lay aside all
hope of producing further poetry, and, indeed, to become possessed of
the delusion that he had for ever lost all power of doing so. It is
an interesting fact, well known in his own literary circle, that his
taking up poetry afresh was the result of a fortuitous occurrence.
After one of his most serious illnesses, and in the hope of drawing
off his attention from himself, and from the gloomy forebodings which
in an invalid's mind usually gather about his own too absorbing
personality, a friend prevailed upon him, with infinite solicitation,
to try his hand afresh at a sonnet. The outcome was an effort so
feeble as to be all but unrecognizable as the work of the author of
the sonnets of 'The House of Life,' but, with more shrewdness and
friendliness (on this occasion) than frankness, the critic lavished
measureless praise upon it and urged the poet to renewed exertion.
One by one, at longer or shorter intervals, sonnets were written, and
this exercise did more towards his recovery than any other medicine,
with the result besides that Rossetti eventually regained all his old
dexterity and mastery of hand. The artifice had succeeded beyond
every expectation formed of it, serving, indeed, the twofold end of
improving the invalid's health by preventing his brooding over
unhealthy matters, and increasing the number of his accomplished
works. Encouraged by such results, the friend went on to induce
Rossetti to write a ballad, and this purpose he finally achieved by
challenging the poet's ability to compose in the simple, direct, and
emphatic style, which is the style of the ballad proper, as
distinguished from the elaborate, ornate, and condensed diction which
he had hitherto worked in. Put upon his mettle, the outcome of this
second artifice practised upon him was that he wrote 'The White Ship'
and afterwards 'The King's Tragedy.'

Thus was Rossetti already immersed in this revived occupation of
poetic composition, and had recovered a healthy tone of body, before
he became conscious of what was being done with him. It is a further
amusing fact that one day he requested to be shown the first sonnet
which, in view of the praise lavished upon it by the friend on whose
judgment he reposed, had encouraged him to renewed effort. The
sonnet was bad: the critic knew it was bad, and had from the first
hour of its production kept it carefully out of sight, and was now
more than ever unwilling to show it. Eventually, however, by reason
of ceaseless importunity, he returned it to its author, who, upon
reading it, cried: 'You fraud! You said this sonnet was good, and
it's the worst I ever wrote!' 'The worst ever written would perhaps
be a truer criticism,' was the reply, as the studio resounded with a
hearty laugh, and the poem was committed to the flames. It would
appear that to this occurrence we probably owe a large portion of the
contents of the volume of 1881."

Mr. William Rossetti is ever eager to testify to the beneficent effect of Mr. Watts-Dunton's intimacy upon his brother; and quite lately Madox Brown's grandson, Mr. Ford Madox Hueffer, who, from his connection with the Rossetti family, speaks with great authority, wrote: 'In 1873 came Mr. Theodore Watts, without whose practical friendship and advice, and without whose literary aids and sustenance, life would have been from thenceforth an impracticable affair for Rossetti.' Mr. Hueffer speaks of the great change that came over Rossetti's work when he wrote 'The King's Tragedy' and 'The White Ship':--

"It should be pointed out that 'The White Ship' was one of Rossetti's
last works, and that in it he was aiming at simplicity of narration,
under the advice of Mr. Theodore Watts. In this he was undoubtedly
on the right track, and the 'rhymed chronicles' might have
disappeared had Rossetti lived long enough to revise the poem as
sedulously as he did his earlier work, and to revise it with the
knowledge of narrative-technique that the greater part of the poem
shows was coming to be his."

It was impossible for a man of genius to live so secluded a life as Rossetti lived at Cheyne Walk and at Kelmscott for several years, without wild, unauthenticated stories getting about concerning him. Among other things Rossetti, whose courtesy and charm of manner were, I believe, proverbial, was now charged with a rudeness, or rather boorishness like that which with equal injustice, apparently, is now being attributed to Tennyson. Stories got into print about his rude bearing towards people, sometimes towards ladies of the most exalted position. And these apocryphal and disparaging legends would no doubt have been still more numerous and still more offensive, had it not been for the influence of his watchful and powerful friend. Here is an interesting letter which Rossetti addressed to the 'World,' and which shows the close relations between him and Mr. Watts-Dunton:--

"16 CHEYNE WALK, CHELSEA, S.W.
December 28, 1878.

My attention has been directed to the following paragraph which has
appeared in the newspapers: 'A very disagreeable story is told about
a neighbour of Mr. Whistler's, whose works are not exhibited to the
vulgar herd; the Princess Louise in her zeal therefore, graciously
sought them at the artist's studio, but was rebuffed by a 'Not at
home' and an intimation that he was not at the beck and call of
princesses. I trust it is not true,' continues the writer of the
paragraph, 'that so medievally minded a gentleman is really a
stranger to that generous loyalty to rank and sex, that dignified
obedience,' etc.

The story is certainly disagreeable enough; but if I am pointed out
as the 'near neighbour of Mr. Whistler's' who rebuffed, in this rude
fashion, the Princess Louise, I can only say that it is a canard
devoid of the smallest nucleus of truth. Her Royal Highness has
never called upon me, and I know of only two occasions when she has
expressed a wish to do so. Some years ago Mr. Theodore Martin spoke
to me upon the subject, but I was at that time engaged upon an
important work, and the delays thence arising caused the matter to
slip through. And I heard no more upon the subject till last summer,
when Mr. Theodore Watts told me that the Princess, in conversation,
had mentioned my name to him, and that he had then assured her that I
should feel 'honoured and charmed to see her,' and suggested her
making an appointment. Her Royal Highness knew that Mr. Watts, as
one of my most intimate friends, would not have thus expressed
himself without feeling fully warranted in so doing; and had she
called she would not, I trust, have found me wanting in that
'generous loyalty' which is due, not more to her exalted position,
than to her well-known charm of character and artistic gifts. It is
true that I do not run after great people on account of their mere
social position, but I am, I hope, never rude to them; and the man
who could rebuff the Princess Louise must be a curmudgeon indeed.

D. G. ROSSETTI."

At the very juncture in question Lord Lorne was suddenly and unexpectedly appointed Governor-General of Canada, and, leaving England, Her Royal Highness did not return until Rossetti's health had somewhat suddenly broken down, and it was impossible for him to see any but his most intimate friends.

My account of the friendship between Mr. Watts-Dunton and Rossetti would not be complete without the poem entitled, 'A Grave by the Sea,' which I think may be placed beside Milton's 'Lycidas,' Shelley's 'Adonais,' Matthew Arnold's 'Thyrsis,' and Swinburne's 'Ave Atque Vale,' as one of the noblest elegies in our literature:--

A GRAVE BY THE SEA

I

Yon sightless poet {157} whom thou leav'st behind,
Sightless and trembling like a storm-struck tree,
Above the grave he feels but cannot see,
Save with the vision Sorrow lends the mind,
Is he indeed the loneliest of mankind?
Ah no!--For all his sobs, he seems to me
Less lonely standing there, and nearer thee,
Than I--less lonely, nearer--standing blind!

Free from the day, and piercing Life's disguise
That needs must partly enveil true heart from heart,
His inner eyes may see thee as thou art
In Memory's land--see thee beneath the skies
Lit by thy brow--by those beloved eyes,
While I stand by him in a world apart.

II

I stand like her who on the glittering Rhine
Saw that strange swan which drew a faery boat
Where shone a knight whose radiant forehead smote
Her soul with light and made her blue eyes shine
For many a day with sights that seemed divine,
Till that false swan returned and arched his throat
In pride, and called him, and she saw him float
Adown the stream: I stand like her and pine.

I stand like her, for she, and only she,
Might know my loneliness for want of thee.
Light swam into her soul, she asked not whence,
Filled it with joy no clouds of life could smother,
And then, departing like a vision thence,
Left her more lonely than the blind, my brother.

III

Last night Death whispered: 'Death is but the name
Man gives the Power which lends him life and light,
And then, returning past the coast of night,
Takes what it lent to shores from whence it came.
What balm in knowing the dark doth but reclaim
The sun it lent, if day hath taken flight?
Art thou not vanished--vanished from my sight--
Though somewhere shining, vanished all the same?

With Nature dumb, save for the billows' moan,
Engirt by men I love, yet desolate--
Standing with brothers here, yet dazed and lone,
King'd by my sorrow, made by grief so great
That man's voice murmurs like an insect's drone--
What balm, I ask, in knowing that Death is Fate?

IV

Last night Death whispered: 'Life's purblind procession,
Flickering with blazon of the human story--
Time's fen-flame over Death's dark territory--
Will leave no trail, no sign of Life's aggression.
Yon moon that strikes the pane, the stars in session,
Are weak as Man they mock with fleeting glory.
Since Life is only Death's frail feudatory,
How shall love hold of Fate in true possession?'

I answered thus: 'If Friendship's isle of palm
Is but a vision, every loveliest leaf,
Can Knowledge of its mockery soothe and calm
This soul of mine in this most fiery grief?
If Love but holds of Life through Death in fief,
What balm in knowing that Love is Death's--what balm?'

V

Yea, thus I boldly answered Death--even I
Who have for boon--who have for deathless dower--
Thy love, dear friend, which broods, a magic power,
Filling with music earth and sea and sky:
'O Death,' I said, 'not Love, but thou shalt die;
For, this I know, though thine is now the hour,
And thine these angry clouds of doom that lour,
Death striking Love but strikes to deify.'

Yet while I spoke I sighed in loneliness,
For strange seemed Man, and Life seemed comfortless,
And night, whom we two loved, seemed strange and dumb;
And, waiting till the dawn the promised sign,
I watched--I listened for that voice of thine,
Though Reason said: 'Nor voice nor face can come.'

BIRCHINGTON,
EASTERTIDE, 1882.

Mr. Watts-Dunton has written many magnificent sonnets, but the sonnet in this sequence beginning--

Last night Death whispered: 'Life's purblind procession,'

is, I think, the finest of them all. The imaginative conception packed into these fourteen lines is cosmic in its sweep. In the metrical scheme the feminine rhymes of the octave play a very important part. They suggest pathetic suspense, mystery, yearning, hope, fear; they ask, they wonder, they falter. But in the sestet the words of destiny are calmly and coldly pronounced, and every rhyme clinches the voice of doom, until the uttermost deep of despair is sounded in the iterated cry of the last line. The craftsmanship throughout is masterly. There is, indeed, one line which is not unworthy of being ranked with the great lines of English poetry:

Yon moon that strikes the pane, the stars in session.

Here by a bold use of the simple verb 'strikes' a whole poem is hammered into six words. As to the interesting question of feminine rhymes, while I admit that they should never be used without an emotional mandate, I think that here it is overwhelming.

* * * * *

I have tried to show the beauty of the friendship between these two rare spirits by means of other testimony than my own, for although I have been granted the honour of knowing Rossetti's 'friend of friends,' I missed the equal honour of knowing Rossetti, save through that 'friend of friends.' But to know Mr. Watts-Dunton seems almost like knowing Rossetti, for when at The Pines he begins to recall those golden hours when the poets used to hold converse, the soul of Rossetti seems to come back from the land of shadows, as his friend depicts his winsome ways, his nobility of heart, his generous interest in the work of others, that lovableness of nature and charm of personality which, if we are to believe Mr. Ford Madox Hueffer, worked, in some degree, ill for the poet. Mr. Hueffer, who, as a family connection, may be supposed to represent the family tradition about 'Gabriel,' has some striking and pregnant words upon the injurious effect of Rossetti's being brought so much into contact with admirers from the time when Mr. Meredith and Mr. Swinburne were his housemates at Cheyne Walk. "Then came the 'Pre-Raphaelite' poets like Philip Marston, O'Shaughnessy, and 'B. V.' Afterwards there came a whole host of young men like Mr. William Sharp, who were serious admirers, and to-day are in their places or are dead or forgotten; and others again who came for the 'pickings.' They were all more or less enthusiasts."

[Picture: 'The Green Dining Room,' 16 Cheyne Walk. (From a Painting by
Dunn, at 'The Pines.')]

Mr. Hake, in 'Notes and Queries' (June 7, 1902), says:

"With regard to the green room in which Winifred took her first
breakfast at 'Hurstcote,' I am a little in confusion. It seems to me
more like the green dining-room in Cheyne Walk, decorated with
antique mirrors, which was painted by Dunn, showing Rossetti reading
his poems aloud. This is the only portrait of Rossetti that really
calls up the man before me. As Mr. Watts-Dunton is the owner of
Dunn's drawing, and as so many people want to see what Rossetti's
famous Chelsea house was like inside, it is a pity he does not give
it as a frontispiece to some future edition of 'Aylwin.'
Unfortunately, Mr. G. F. Watts's picture, now in the National
Portrait Gallery, was never finished, and I never saw upon Rossetti's
face the dull, heavy expression which that portrait wears. I think
the poet told me that he had given the painter only one or two
sittings. As to the photographs, none of them is really
satisfactory."

I am fortunate in being able to reproduce here the picture of the famous 'Green Dining Room' at 16 Cheyne Walk, to which Mr. Hake refers. Mr. Hake also writes in the same article: "With regard to the two circular mirrors surrounded by painted designs telling the story of the Holy Grail, 'in old black oak frames carved with knights at tilt,' I do not remember seeing these there. But they are evidently the mirrors decorated with copies by Dunn of the lost Holy Grail frescoes once existing on the walls of the Union Reading-Room at Oxford. These beautiful decorations I have seen at 'The Pines,' but not elsewhere." I am sure that my readers will be interested in the photograph of one of these famous mirrors, which Mr. Watts-Dunton has generously permitted to be specially taken for this book.

[Picture: One of the Carved Mirrors at 'The Pines,' decorated with Dunn's
copy of the lost Rossetti Frescoes at the Oxford Union]

And here again I must draw upon Dr. Gordon Hake's fascinating book of poetry, 'The New Day,' which must live, if only for its reminiscences of the life poetic lived at Chelsea, Kelmscott, and Bognor:--

THE NEW DAY

I

In the unbroken silence of the mind
Thoughts creep about us, seeming not to move,
And life is back among the days behind--
The spectral days of that lamented love--
Days whose romance can never be repeated.
The sun of Kelmscott through the foliage gleaming,
We see him, life-like, at his easel seated,
His voice, his brush, with rival wonders teeming.
These vanished hours, where are they stored away?
Hear we the voice, or but its lingering tone?
Its utterances are swallowed up in day;
The gabled house, the mighty master gone.
Yet are they ours: the stranger at the hall--
What dreams he of the days we there recall?

II

O, happy days with him who once so loved us!
We loved as brothers, with a single heart,
The man whose iris-woven pictures moved us
From Nature to her blazoned shadow--Art.
How often did we trace the nestling Thames
From humblest waters on his course of might,
Down where the weir the bursting current stems--
There sat till evening grew to balmy night,
Veiling the weir whose roar recalled the strand
Where we had listened to the wave-lipped sea,
That seemed to utter plaudits while we planned
Triumphal labours of the day to be.
The words were his: 'Such love can never die;'
The grief was ours when he no more was nigh.

III

Like some sweet water-bell, the tinkling rill
Still calls the flowers upon its misty bank
To stoop into the stream and drink their fill.
And still the shapeless rushes, green and rank,
Seem lounging in their pride round those retreats,
Watching slim willows dip their thirsty spray.
Slowly a loosened weed another meets;
They stop, like strangers, neither giving way.
We are here surely if the world, forgot,
Glides from our sight into the charm, unbidden;
We are here surely at this witching spot,--
Though Nature in the reverie is hidden.
A spell so holds our captive eyes in thrall,
It is as if a play pervaded all.

IV

Sitting with him, his tones as Petrarch's tender,
With many a speaking vision on the wall,
The fire, a-blaze, flashing the studio fender,
Closed in from London shouts and ceaseless brawl--
'Twas you brought Nature to the visiting,
Till she herself seemed breathing in the room,
And Art grew fragrant in the glow of spring
With homely scents of gorse and heather bloom.
Or sunbeams shone by many an Alpine fountain,
Fed by the waters of the forest stream;
Or glacier-glories in the rock-girt mountain,
Where they so often fed the poet's dream;
Or else was mingled the rough billow's glee
With cries of petrels on a sullen sea.

V

Remember how we roamed the Channel's shore,
And read aloud our verses, each in turn,
While rhythmic waves to us their music bore,
And foam-flakes leapt from out the rocky churn.
Then oft with glowing eyes you strove to capture
The potent word that makes a thought abiding,
And wings it upward to its place of rapture,
While we discoursed to Nature, she presiding.
Then would the poet-painter gaze in wonder
That art knew not the mighty reverie
That moves earth's spirit and her orb asunder,
While ocean's depths, even, seem a shallow sea.
Yet with rare genius could his hand impart
His own far-searching poesy to art.

The fourth of these exquisite sonnets delights me most of all. It makes me see the recluse in his studio, sitting snugly with his feet in the fender, when suddenly the door opens and the poet of Nature brings with him a new atmosphere--the salt atmosphere which envelops 'Mother Carey's Chicken,' and the attenuated mountain air of Natura Benigna. And yet perhaps the description of

'The sun of Kelmscott through the foliage gleaming'

is equally fascinating.

Mr. Watts-Dunton himself, with a stronger hand and more vigorous brush, has in his sonnet 'The Shadow on the Window Blind,' made Kelmscott Manor and the poetic life lived there still more memorable:--

Within this thicket's every leafy lair
A song-bird sleeps: the very rooks are dumb,
Though red behind their nests the moon has swum--
But still I see that shadow writing there!--
Poet, behind yon casement's ruddy square,
Whose shadow tells me why you do not come--
Rhyming and chiming of thine insect-hum,
Flying and singing through thine inch of air--

Come thither, where on grass and flower and leaf
Gleams Nature's scripture, putting Man's to shame:
'Thy day,' she says, 'is all too rich and brief--
Thy game of life too wonderful a game--
To give to Art entirely or in chief:
Drink of these dews--sweeter than wine of Fame.'

'Aylwin,' too, is full of vivid pictures of Rossetti at Chelsea and Kelmscott.

The following description of the famous house and garden, 16 Cheyne Walk, has been declared by one of Rossetti's most intimate friends to be marvellously graphic and true:--

"On sending in my card I was shown at once into the studio, and after
threading my way between some pieces of massive furniture and
pictures upon easels, I found D'Arcy lolling lazily upon a huge sofa.
Seeing that he was not alone, I was about to withdraw, for I was in
no mood to meet strangers. However, he sprang up and introduced me
to his guest, whom he called Symonds, an elegant-looking man in a
peculiar kind of evening dress, who, as I afterwards learnt, was one
of Mr. D'Arcy's chief buyers. This gentleman bowed stiffly to me.

He did not stay long; indeed, it was evident that the appearance of a
stranger somewhat disconcerted him.

After he was gone D'Arcy said: 'A good fellow! One of my most
important buyers. I should like you to know him, for you and I are
going to be friends, I hope.'

'He seems very fond of pictures,' I said.

'A man of great taste, with a real love of art and music.'

A little while after this gentleman's departure, in came De Castro,
who had driven up in a hansom. I certainly saw a flash of anger in
his eyes as he recognized me, but it vanished like lightning, and his
manner became cordiality itself. Late as it was (it was nearly
twelve), he pulled out his cigarette case, and evidently intended to
begin the evening. As soon as he was told that Mr. Symonds had been
there, he began to talk about him in a disparaging manner. Evidently
his metier was, as I had surmised, that of a professional talker.
Talk was his stock-in-trade.

The night wore on and De Castro, in the intervals of his talk, kept
pulling out his watch. It was evident that he wanted to be going,
but was reluctant to leave me there. For my part, I frequently rose
to go, but on getting a sign from D'Arcy that he wished me to stay I
sat down again. At last D'Arcy said:

'You had better go now, De Castro--you have kept that hansom outside
for more than an hour and a half; and besides, if you stay still
daylight our friend here will stay longer, for I want to talk with
him alone.'

De Castro got up with a laugh that seemed genuine enough, and left
us.

D'Arcy, who was still on the sofa, then lapsed into a silence that
became after a while rather awkward. He lay there, gazing
abstractedly at the fireplace.

'Some of my friends call me, as you heard De Castro say the other
night, Haroun-al-Raschid, and I suppose I am like him in some things.
I am a bad sleeper, and to be amused by De Castro when I can't sleep
is the chief of blessings. De Castro, however, is not so bad as he
seems. A man may be a scandal-monger without being really malignant.
I have known him go out of his way to do a struggling man a service.'

Next morning, after I had finished my solitary breakfast, I asked the
servant if Mr. D'Arcy had yet risen. On being told that he had not,
I went downstairs into the studio, where I had spent the previous
evening. After examining the pictures on the walls and the easels, I
walked to the window and looked out at the garden. It was large, and
so neglected and untrimmed as to be a veritable wilderness. While I
was marvelling why it should have been left in this state, I saw the
eyes of some animal staring at me from a distance, and was soon
astonished to see that they belonged to a little Indian bull. My
curiosity induced me to go into the garden and look at the creature.
He seemed rather threatening at first, but after a while allowed me
to go up to him and stroke him. Then I left the Indian bull and
explored this extraordinary domain. It was full of unkempt trees,
including two fine mulberries, and surrounded by a very high wall.
Soon I came across an object which, at first, seemed a little mass of
black and white oats moving along, but I presently discovered it to
be a hedgehog. It was so tame that it did not curl up as I
approached it, but allowed me, though with some show of nervousness,
to stroke its pretty little black snout. As I walked about the
garden, I found it was populated with several kinds of animals such
as are never seen except in menageries or in the Zoological Gardens.
Wombats, kangaroos, and the like, formed a kind of happy family.

My love of animals led me to linger in the garden. When I returned
to the house I found that D'Arcy had already breakfasted, and was at
work in the studio.

After greeting me with the greatest cordiality, he said:

'No doubt you are surprised at my menagerie. Every man has one side
of his character where the child remains. I have a love of animals
which, I suppose, I may call a passion. The kind of amusement they
can afford me is like none other. It is the self-consciousness of
men and women that makes them, in a general way, intensely unamusing.
I turn from them to the unconscious brutes, and often get a world of
enjoyment. To watch a kitten or a puppy play, or the funny antics of
a parrot or a cockatoo, or the wise movements of a wombat, will keep
me for hours from being bored.'

'And children,' I said--'do you like children?'

'Yes, so long as they remain like the young animals--until they
become self-conscious, I mean, and that is very soon. Then their
charm goes. Has it ever occurred to you how fascinating a beautiful
young girl would be if she were as unconscious as a young animal?
What makes you sigh?'

My thoughts had flown to Winifred breakfasting with her 'Prince of
the Mist' on Snowdon. And I said to myself, 'How he would have been
fascinated by a sight like that!'

My experience of men at that time was so slight that the opinion I
then formed of D'Arcy as a talker was not of much account. But since
then I have seen very much of men, and I find that I was right in the
view I then took of his conversational powers. When his spirits were
at their highest he was without an equal as a wit, without an equal
as a humourist. He had more than even Cyril Aylwin's quickness of
repartee, and it was of an incomparably rarer quality. To define it
would be, of course, impossible, but I might perhaps call it poetic
fancy suddenly stimulated at moments by animal spirits into rapid
movements--so rapid, indeed, that what in slower movement would be
merely fancy, in him became wit. Beneath the coruscations of this
wit a rare and deep intellect was always perceptible.

His humour was also so fanciful that it seemed poetry at play, but
here was the remarkable thing: although he was not unconscious of his
other gifts, he did not seem to be in the least aware that he was a
humourist of the first order; every 'jeu d'esprit' seemed to leap
from him involuntarily, like the spray from a fountain. A dull man
like myself must not attempt to reproduce these qualities here.

While he was talking he kept on painting."