Circumstances connected with the increasing delicacy of Lady Ripon’s health brought me into nearer relations with the family, and although I kept up my own establishment, I lived much at Putney Heath. I may say I was made a friend of by this good lady, whom it was a pleasure to serve, and was engaged by her often in matters pertaining toher private life. She liked me sometimes to visit Nocton, her paternal home, and report to her of people and things which, on account of her inability to visit the place herself, were drifting from her, though her interest in them was unbroken.
She was gifted with a very fine intellect: she had been carefully trained in her childhood, and given all the knowledge that is becoming in a woman. She had a natural wit, and her conversation was much to be desired, full of anecdotes on past events in which she had taken part. When I came to know her she lived retired, at the same time exercising hospitality without limit towards many pleasant guests. When she returned from Carlton Gardens to Putney Heath for the winter, I found it difficult to go to and fro from town, so I settled down at Roehampton, which was near. Among those who visited her were Sir Charles and Lady Douglas and Mrs. Charles Lushington, sister of Sir Stafford Northcote, all very old friends, and these would be with her for the week or month together. Lord and Lady de Grey, too, were, of course, much with her.
At this time George Borrow, having sickened, like myself, of the charm of country life, was living in Hereford Square; so we met again and had many dinners together, and as many pleasant walks; these chiefly in Richmond Park, which my home overlooked, being close to the Robinhood Gate.
While at Roehampton I accidentally made the acquaintance of Dr. Robert Latham, the grammarian;not exactly a nice person to see much of, though a good companion, and one overflowing with every sort of knowledge.
While at Roehampton, too, it was that I called on Rossetti. I saw him then for the first time, and was received by him very warmly, so much so that he accepted my invitation to dine with me the next day, and many hours were passed in conversation of the most exhilarating kind.
A generation before, Rossetti had written to me regarding my “Valdarno, or the Ordeal of Art Worship,” then appearing inAinsworth’s Magazine.
Before that visit to him I had returned to Poetry, my first and last love, having plenty of leisure, with my imagination unemployed. Spending some weeks at Nocton, where I went by Lady Ripon’s request, to look over her beautiful estate and visit the tomb of the late earl, I was often of a morning in the ancient wood, revelling in it for hours, the ground covered with hyacinths and lilies of the valley, the stock doves pouring out their sweet notes from every bough. It was there, to commemorate my visit, that I committed to paper my pastoral poem of “The Lily of the Valley,” which will take any one who reads it into Nocton Wood.
“Old Souls” I wrote while staying in Lady Ripon’s house at Putney: Mrs. Lushington and her beautiful family of daughters were guests. One Sunday, on returning from church with her to lunch, the idea of that poem crossed my mind, impressed by the finely dressed crowd that was chatting andlaughing on the way to the fashionable villas in Wimbledon Park.
These two poems were the beginning of a volume named “The World’s Epitaph,” which was printed anonymously and distributed at random among friends and strangers, as well as editors of the press, and apparently it attracted no sort of notice, except from the librarian of a Cambridge college, who said that he had made it his companion during a pleasant tour.
I have forgotten the name of this gentleman, and of his college, but I will one day try to recall it. I must have distributed over a hundred copies.
One copy, sold at W. B. Scott’s sale, the words “D. G. Rossetti, with the author’s compliments,” written on the title-page, found its way into a bookseller’s, who advertised it in his catalogue, price eight shillings and sixpence. A relative of mine, who called to see it, was informed that it had been purchased for the library of the British Museum.
Evidently Rossetti had lent the volume to Scott; in his keeping it shared the lot of so many borrowed books, in being never returned.
A literary celebrity once pointed out to me four hundred books on his shelves, all of which, he said, had been borrowed.
Mr. Buxton Forman told me only the other day (Nov. ’91), that he was one evening at Madox Brown’s, when Rossetti entered in a state of excitement, with the “World’s Epitaph” in his pocket, which he produced, and did little but talk about“Old Souls.” It must have been the copy of which I have spoken, dated 1866, a beautifully printed little book from the press of Woodfall and Kinder.
Dr. R. Latham was good enough to send some copies of the book to his friends, and they took it as his in their reply, which he regarded as too good a joke to disturb.
Latham was a singular anomaly of our organization. No one could help liking and disliking him. He was logical in mind, illogical in action. As captain of Eton College, he became a Fellow of King’s, and before long was the greatest authority on English grammar. He was Physician to the Middlesex Hospital; he was Professor of the English Language at University College. He dressed like a respectable clergyman. Then, from being a great man, he gradually became a little man, and dressed like a clergyman of a less reputable type; his white necktie unlaundressed, his fine chin ill-shaven, his black coat unskilfully brushed, if at all; but his eye and tongue continued in full practice for satire or fun. Unable to finance in his own affairs, he thought his true function in life would have been that of Chancellor of the Exchequer, and that he had so missed his mark. A common saying of his, with an earnest look and his hand on a friend’s shoulder, was, “Will you lend me a sovereign that you willnever see again?” An acquaintance of his, feeling touched at his outward display of poverty, almost amounting to boastfulness, inwardly gifted as he was, on putting gold apologetically on his table, received the reply: “I am glad you are in a position to do it; what may your income be?” Another, treating him similarly, heard a laugh, with the words, “It is very nice to put your hand in your waistcoat pocket and do that. What income tax do you chance to pay?”
Nature ought not to put such organic prescriptions through the process of being dispensed.
He was heir-presumptive to a fine landed property, the reversion of which he sold for a sum not larger than a year of its rental. The heir-apparent died, and the estate fell in, never to reach him. His wife said she thought it a pity to have lost the property as he had done. He answered, “But, my dear, you cannot say you have lost what has never been yours!”
Like a good chancellor of the exchequer, he had the habit of assessing people’s incomes at a guess, for the purpose of determining what they ought to give towards the subscriptions so constantly on foot for his benefit.
Latham once made the effort to ask Mr. Gladstone for a pension. The minister said that it was a matter resting with Lord Palmerston, the premier, who was very jealous of his rights, and advised the applicant to state his claim in the proper quarter.
On this, Latham let the subject drop, when sometime afterwards he received a notice that he was placed on the civil list for £100 a year, and received, according to custom, the amount in advance.
His difficulties occupied the attention of many, and he was made more easy in his circumstance as age overtook him; but on his pension being alluded to, he related, as a joke, that he had sold that before its first year had expired.
Latham had a very handsome person, with a smiling, knowing look, the most knowing I ever saw.
He was decidedly of a kindly nature: fond of his family, genial to excess, recognisant of his friends. He was probably spoiled by falling into the worst habits of college life, instead of the best.
Nothing that I have written would offend his shade. He was proud intellectually, but he abandoned position, and, I really believe, purposely exhibited himself as poor, when he would walk home with a cabbage balanced upon his arm. It was meant as a reproach to the world, on which he had so decided a claim.
One day Latham called on me and brought Mr. Theodore Watts with him, an old friend of his, and the son of a yet older friend. Watts and I came into concord on the same octave, and we soon attuned ourselves in friendly duets.
Later on, George Borrow turned up while Watts was there, and we went through a pleasant trio, in which Borrow, as was his wont, took the first fiddle. The reader must not here take metaphor for music. Borrow made himself very agreeable to Watts,recited a fairy tale in the best style to him, and liked him.
This was not their only meeting, for both came often to my house, from which we strolled for an hour or two into the park—strolls deserving of remembrance, as shown in sonnet form by me in my “New Day.”
Latham wanted much to meet Borrow at my table; I told him it would not do. He said he would be on his best behaviour, and promised to say nothing that could offend the most sensitive.
I proposed it to Borrow; he was willing, and they met.
All, like most things else that are planned, began well. But with Latham life was a game of show. He had to put forth all his knowledge of subjects in which he deemed Borrow an adept. He began with horse-racing. Borrow quietly assented. He showed off all he knew of the ring. Borrow freely responded. He had to show what he knew of publishers, instancing the Longmans. Borrow said, “I suppose you dine with your publishers sometimes?” It was Latham’s opportunity; he could not resist it, and replied, “Never; I hope I should never do anything so low. You do not dine with John Murray, I presume?” “Indeed, I do,” said Borrow emotionally. “He is a most kind friend. When I have had sickness in my house, he has been unfailing in his goodness towards me. There is no man I value more.”
Latham’s conversation was fast falling under theinfluence of wine; with this his better taste departed from him. “I have heard,” he said, “that you are a brave man over a bottle of good wine. Now, how many bottles can you get through at a sitting?”
Borrow saw what the other was; he was resolved not to take offence at what was only impertinent and self-asserting, so he said, “When I was in Madrid, I knew a priest who would sit down alone to his two bottles.”
“Yes,” replied Latham, with his knowing look, and his head on one side like a bird, “but what I want to know is, how many bottles you can manage at one sitting?”
“I once knew another priest,” said Borrow. “It was at Oporto; I have seen him get through two bottles by himself.”
By this time Latham was a little unsteady; he slipped from his chair as if it had been an inclined plane, and lay on the carpet, on which he made his mark as betokening more than nausea. He was unable to rise, but he held his head up, with a cunning smile, saying, “This must be a very disreputable house.”
Borrow saw Latham after this at times on his way to me, and always stopped to say a kind word to him, seeing his forlorn condition.
It must have been in 1871 that I made the acquaintance of Rossetti. This was some time after Lady Ripon’s death, on which I visited my married daughter in Germany, but finally returned to Roehampton. It was then that I called on the poet-painter, as described. After dining with me, he was so good as to send me a note, in which he said he should like to ask some of his friends to meet me at dinner. In reply, I said that it would be a pleasure to me to dine with him, but begged him not to inconvenience himself on my account, as it would suit me at any time to visit him.
On the day finally fixed there were many at dinner, and as many later. Many of these, at the time, had good positions as editors, writers, and painters. W. B. Scott was at the table, also Mr. Sidney Colvin, Mr. Joseph Knight, Dr. Hüffer, Mr. William Rossetti, and so on; and in the evening, Dr. Westland Marston, Mr. O’Shaugnessy, Philip Marston, Madox Brown, Dr. Appleton, a wife or two, and not a few besides.
Some of these have increased in fame since then, some are dead, some are forgotten. Madox Brown, a painter with a fine historic imagination, flourishes still.
Rossetti’s topic was still “Old Souls;” Scott was his echo. They said it was a subject that could never be written on again.
At this date Rossetti’s poems were passing through the press, and I had a bundle of verse myself ready for it.
I was very much moved by the contents of Rossetti’s volume. I still admire it much, but with a severer criticism than then.
I could say much of Rossetti’s later life, but am compelled to omit all such details, for they are intimately mixed up with illness, which to a physician the witness of it, is sacred ground. Then again, friends are bad biographers, because they know too much and cannot shape the character to that ideal which those personally unknown to a great poet might expect.
Rossetti’s intellectual force was not of a striking order, but it was adequate; his charm lay in the artistic colouring of his mind, arrayed as it was in the fascinations of a Provençal attire. This is very different to the charm in which Nature invests her lovers; and yet it is so bewitching as to claim a rivalry, and to almost appear the subject of her inspirations in some enchanted guise.
I had heard that paintings were leaving Cheyne Walk, such as in colouring had not been seen since Titian lived; and, with a claim on his acquaintance, I was induced to visit him.
What Reynolds’s faded works once were we no longer know, but when I saw Rossetti’s paintings I was reminded of what was said of one—the Infant Hercules, sent to Russia—that it looked as if it had been boiled in brandy.
It is a pleasure to me to think that I was once a comfort to Rossetti in his trying illness. I went to him on his summoning me to Scotland. I passed six weeks with him there; first at Stobbs Hall, afterwards outside Crieff, to which place, among others, I travelled to find him a suitable abode. I walked with him by day, I sat at his bedside by night, relating to him the history of almost every one I had ever known, and by diverting his mind from itself, I left him comparatively restored.
If he forgot all this, it was no fault of his own making; his illness never fully subsided. But I was among the favoured still who had known him in his best days, and was appointed to serve him in his most trying hour.
I can further say that when I saw Rossetti in his prime, a healthy man, he was the noblest of men, and had a heart so good that I have never known a better, seldom its equal.
Illness changed him, but then he was no longer himself.
Taking Rossetti’s pictures and his verse together as one, he was a great poet; his poetics and paintings help each other, as did Blake’s in a vastly inferior degree, but their separation shows faults in each with distinctness. When one reads his poems, one thinks of his paintings; when one looks at his paintings, one thinks of his poems; whence the charm that surrounds all his work.
The celebrity that awaited Rossetti’s poems among critics was latent in his paintings, whichwere already famous for their emotional colouring and fine portraiture of women; and, being in intimate social relation with many leading members of the press, his poetical pretensions were accepted by acclamation. Then he had a powerfulclientèleamong buyers. Those who possessed his pictures were very ready to receive and admire the poems of their favourite artist, and to push them about in the fashionable and the wealthy world, as the works of the poet-painter, a title rarely obtained, so many gifts does it imply.
It was this that at once secured him his deserved success. He had published the “Blessed Damozel,” one of the poems on which his reputation rests, when a young man unknown to art, and it attracted no attention in the world at large; for justice is not done to merit of any kind unless it can pay its way.
The “Blessed Damozel” may be characterized as a drawing with tender descriptions of convent life, with the Virgin Mary as lady abbess; the whole lifted into remotest space, where lies the boundary-line of Heaven; the damozel being a sort of nun living among the holy, while all her reflections are human; the burden of them from first to last on love for an absent one, without whose presence she can find no happiness in her purgatorial heaven. It reads like the suggestion of a picture done in mediæval times—as old as the court cards in the pack used by players—at a period when the glory of saints and of christs was symbolized by a sort of curtain-ring round the head, or by circularfireworks which emitted sparks in perpetual corruscation.
I do not feel that the antique moulding of this poem is a fair excuse for its being illogical in places. The sun was so far off that it was scarcely visible—say two billion miles or so, like Uranus or Neptune; but that it looked like a bridge, is a simile that cannot be made suggestive of any round body save the moon. That she can see the earth spin like a fretful midge, does not please the logical understanding, when that body is at least as far off as the scarce-visible sun. We are comparatively close to our neighbouring orbs, Venus and Mars, which do not exhibit the slightest motion to our eyes—how then should a world as remote from the damozel as Uranus is from us be seen in motion?
We are made to realize that the “Blessed Damozel” is of flesh and blood; she stoops and bends forward until her bosom makes the bar she leans on warm. But the souls mounting up to God were spirits; they passed by her like thin flame. This does not show the logical consistency which poetry demands even more rigidly than prose.
The poem is strictly sentimental. The one feeling of love-longings runs through every stanza.
The subject was painted for Lord Mount Temple. I have not seen the work, but doubtless it is composed of the three first verses of the poem, which must have been painted on the author’s mind long before it reached the canvas. The poem, which is not very musical or imaginative beyondthemotifit carries out, has a great charm for many. It is simple in diction and emotional, and a merit not often found in Rossetti’s love poetry is its spiritual character, the lover not being near to incite the girl to passion of the naked kind which pervades his sonnets.
The author cannot be said to exhibit himself personally in this poem, nor in the other with which his fame is equally bound up, namely, “Sister Helen.” Both appear to tell their own story, which is the perfection of narrative, a truth which critics cannot too forcibly insist on. It is no easy matter for a writer himself to appear beautiful in the midst of his beautiful verses, unless his subject and its treatment is of the most elevated kind, as in Coleridge’s “Love,” which is so deliciously pure, and in the first verse or two of Wordsworth’s “Intimations.”
A subject overwrought, like the sermon of a Calvin, must verge on the satanic. The poem of “Sister Helen” escapes this only through the pangs of hate being mollified in every verse by the despairing, heart-broken utterance of a refrain addressed to the Virgin Mother, and poured out in the agony of a once-religious, still-believing, soul, wailing with a bitterness which nothing can soften—an eternal hatred of her seducer; nothing short of seeing him in the flames of hell,—willing herself to suffer inthem a torment that is only less than her thirst of revenue.
That she should breathe forth all this in a subdued voice of sorrow in the ear of the blessed Mary Mother is almost too touching for perusal; yet the pathos of the situation is even further enhanced by the tender and sad replies she gives to her innocent little brother, from whom she struggles to conceal, almost vainly, the anguish of her heart and its wicked aim. The refrains, for the most part full, are not always equal to the occasion, but might easily have been so rendered by so feeling a writer.
Of course the time must come when the poetry of England is melted down and merged into an anthology, and it is probable that the “Sister Helen,” as being the strongest emotional poem, as yet, in the language, will be among the most lasting works, and escape dissolution for a long time to come; perhaps will survive all change. And here a very remarkable fact thrusts itself before the mind; a representative one, which is that if Rossetti had written not another line besides this poem, his genius would have appeared all the greater: for lesser work is a fatal commentary on greater.
All suffer from this comparison with themselves except Gray, who wrote so little; and even he, after his Elegy, is scarcely saved the self-reproach.
Rossetti, in his writings, did not exercise much imagination, and none of the philosophic kind, by means of which the idea ascends, metaphor abovemetaphor, as high as the perspective of thought can attain. He did not look to musical sonance in his metre and his choice of words. He did not realize that love, to be acceptable in verse to the higher orders of mind, must be spiritual and chaste, that when carnal we possess it only in common with the beasts of the field. He could not have put on canvas the scenery of his fifth sonnet for exhibition, except in contravention of Lord Campbell’s Act.
From what I have read of his sonnets in his first edition, the vehicle of expression which such composition should formulate was beyond his reach. Above all other forms it demands the philosophic imagination, which scarcely any poet has enjoyed, because its possessors revert to science, as being within their compass, and as subject to higher reward. In Rossetti’s sonnet the expression of the thought rises no higher than its first statement, it has no grand climacteric. His imagination, in fact, was introspective rather than retrospective, and was scarcely prospective at all.
Rossetti was a charming companion: he spoke well and freely on all subjects, literary and artistic, and with much knowledge of contemporary writings. His studio was a favourite resort of men whose names were on title pages, to whom he showed the work he had in progress; and, to his intimate friends, he would sometimes read a poem in a rich and sonorous voice. He had a very just mind. When an author was discussed, whatever might be said against him, he would insist on his merits beingremembered. From rivalship and its jealousies he was absolutely free, and his hospitality was without limit. Above all, he was ready at all times to serve a friend, and to exert his influence to that end.
Interesting as Rossetti must always be to a large section of society, I have not considered myself justified in entering at any length on his domestic life, intimately as at one time it was mixed up with my own. Still, without impropriety, I may rest lightly on it, in such manner as to contribute some touches towards the picture of a man whose influence on art will last longer than the canvas on which his ideas are so brilliantly spread. I, therefore, propose to myself the task of narrating my visits to him, in Perthshire, and afterwards at Kelmscott, and at Bognor.
One morning I visited him at Cheyne Walk, when I saw that the restlessness of the past night had pursued him into daytime. Qualifying his request with an expression of great regard, he asked me not to stay. His medical attendants were consulting in another room: I joined them there, and told them that my house at Roehampton was open to Rossetti if they decided that he needed change.
On the same evening, in company with his brother and Mr. Madox Brown, he came to Roehampton, and I remember well his saying, as he sat in my quiet drawing-room, that he was enjoying what he had so long ceased to feel, and that was peace. He sat up late in conversation with his brother on various family matters, but hisnight was the most troubled one that he had hitherto passed through. The next day he was visited by his mother, and other members of his family, his medical attendant from town preceding them. Miss Rossetti, the gifted author of “The Shadow of Dante,” and her brother, took a walk with me in Richmond Park, while the mother remained with her son.
Mr. Madox Brown joined us later, and the party left the invalid in the evening.
But when the mind is restless, a sick man imagines there is relief to be found in change, and, after a few days, Rossetti returned to town, not to his own house, but to that of Madox Brown, where I saw him again, his restlessness unrelieved.
He had a good friend in Mr. Graham, the member for Glasgow. That gentleman rented two sporting seats in Perthshire, and he placed them at the disposal of Rossetti, who then went to Scotland. But he soon moved from one of these mansions to Stobbs Castle, the other, a place belonging to Lady Willouby de Eresby. While there he felt the want of my assistance, and urgently requested that I would leave without delay. I had a garden-party for the next day from London; this I left to my housekeeper and sons to conduct, and went by the next train.
W. B. Scott and Madox Brown, two faithful friends, were at the castle, ministering to their brother artist. My son George, who had finished his terms at Oxford, and had no present engagement,was there too, and I found all so far satisfactory that Rossetti was contented, enjoying the quiet which was not to be found in his own home.
Stobbs Hall is an ancient inheritance of the Drummonds, a solitude on the heights over-reaching the Tay, with a parapet wall and a Dutch garden, in which is a sundial erected on masonry, which might have been there before the invention of clocks. Below and to the right is a fine reach of the river; on the opposite side is a vast plain of cornfield, planted at intervals, and stretching on northwards to the forest and Grampian hills. On that side, the lords Mansfield enjoy the salmon fisheries; their lands extending eastward to Scone Palace. The two families take it by turns to fish both sides of the river.
Any one wishing to read an account of this scenery in poetic form, can turn to a sonnet called “Rest,” in “New Symbols.”
Scott and Brown soon left the castle, a place with not too much furnished accommodation. Over the mantelpiece, in the one sitting-room, hung a framed set of verses by Drummond, the Scotch poet.
It was not very long before Rossetti’s occupation of the place came to a close. He was fast improving in health; he took long walks, but without any enjoyment of the scenery which was made romantic by water-fall and splashed leaves, ever fresh, the elastic boughs bending under the weight of a torrent. So far recovered, he desired to remainin Perthshire, but still craved for the utmost solitude. In search of such a home I took the train to Perth, visited St. Andrews, returned to Perth, and proceeded to Crieff, where I remained for some days and scoured the environs. At last it occurred to me to call on the leading practitioner, Dr. Gairdner, and was directed by him to a farm-house two or three miles from the town, on the river side. The house had every requirement, and was kept by a lady-farmer, whose manner and person had every agreeable trait. On this, I telegraphed to Rossetti and my son to follow me at once to Crieff, and at the right time I met them at the station there, and we drove to the new home.
It was a pleasant spot, with a walk into Crieff by the river-side, down to a wilderness of waters. There was plenty of mountain scenery in view, with pine forest to the summits, and lake not remote; not to forget the sky-threading mists and the abundance of water from above. Descriptive of this aspect is my sonnet called “Unrest.” Rossetti rapidly improved in health, stumping his way over long areas of path and road, with his thick stick in hand, but holding no intercourse with Nature. It was not long before he summoned his assistant, with the implements of his art, and he was once more happy.
At this time he made a chalk drawing of me, and one of my son.
The first of these was reproduced in a volume of sonnets, called by me, “The New Day.”
The portrait of George was somewhat peculiar; the neck was outstretched, and the expression was heightened by the face being free of hair, which elicited from Latham one of his quaint remarks. He gazed at it for some time with his head like a connoisseur’s on one side; then said, “Yes, a South American slave-driver, who had returned to Portugal to be shaved.”
There are very few male portraits by Rossetti: the only three others are one of Mr. Stillman; one of a youth, in his large picture of Dante’s Dream; and one of Theodore Watts, which is a very good one, but more vivacious than the original, and there is more of the military air than was ever assumed by that peaceful citizen, which makes him look at least a lieutenant-colonel.
As a domestic trait, I would mention that Rossetti was very hearty at all times over his meals. He would wear out three knives and forks to my one; and to me, whose breakfast seldom exceeded one cup of coffee, his plate of bacon, surrounded by eggs that overlapped the rim, was amazing. I may further truly say that he, not being a believer in physiological things, did not regard tea as possessing the attributes of Totality.
While at this farm residence, he read with great eagerness and delight the newly published life of Edmund Kean.
By a careful treatment of him I procured him good nights, effecting this object chiefly by remaining at his bedside and draining my memory ofevery anecdote I had ever heard, and relating to him every amusing incident that I had encountered during life in my intercourse with the world.
Finding him so well recovered, I left him in the hands of his assistant and of my son, after an absence of many weeks.
Towards the end of the year—it was 1872—Rossetti, with my son, left Scotland and proceeded to Kelmscott Manorhouse, which he tenanted with his friend Mr. Morris. I visited him there, and found him in good health and spirits, after a journey spent, as I heard, with great joviality, the travellers taking a third-class carriage to themselves. He was already settled down to his art in a pleasant studio, loving to talk while he painted; at other times deep in the works of Dumas. In the afternoon he took vigorous walks in the meadows which one after another stretch out in front of the mansion.
The next day we went over the house and grounds. It is an old place, with its seven or rather twelve gables—such a sample of antiquity as you don’t meet with often. The windows are square casements with stone mullions, and the walls very thick. The garden has its yew-tree hedges, cut into fantastic shapes. The river is flooded like a lake, so that old Thames don’t know itself again. It is a most primitive village that surrounds the place—a few scattered free-stone habitations, some ivy-covered. There are no neighbours to interfere with the liberty of the subject.
George was a good boatman, and he often rowedme up the river, which half-way was spanned by an elegant arched bridge, and bounded further on by a weir. The scenery was very satisfying: on the left bank one overlooked a gay meadow, the cattle crowding to the bank to stare us out of sight; on the other side were lofty trees, while in midstream we had often to cut our way through islands of weed. The memory of this and of a later visit to the place was embodied in a poem, which I called “Reminiscence,” in which the scenery lives.
I found opportunities of talking with Rossetti about Mr. Theodore Watts, whose acquaintance I wished him to make more fully, for I had already introduced them to each other. While leading a country life Watts had not only acquired a knowledge of books, but had written poetry, and had thought out many literary problems for himself.
The Manorhouse was adequately furnished, but some exquisite chalk drawings, one especially, of female heads, gave it a charm. I thought that no one ever could paint a woman’s eyes like Rossetti. There was a softness, a delicacy, a life, a soul in them, never seen elsewhere but in living beings, and that how rarely!
Rossetti was unwilling to separate himself from George, and I consented to his retaining him as his secretary, for such a one was very necessary to him at that time.
I saw Mr. Morris at Kelmscott, and afterwards in society; he was inscrutable then, and has since been inscrutability in his career. W. B. Scott wasalso there, and when I left it was with him. Like his countrymen, he practised an exemplary carefulness in money matters, a habit which makes every Scotchman well off. In the train he counted his money with the dry remark, “One does not save anything by making a visit to a friend!”
A letter from my son George, dated December 19, 1875, written at Aldwich Lodge, Bognor, begins by a rejoicing to hear that I had accepted Rossetti’s invitation to spend Christmas with him at the seaside.
I sometimes look at the bottom of an antique silver snuff-box, a reservoir more than two hundred years old, the lid of elephant’s tooth, and I read—
“T. G. H.,fromD. G. R.,1875.”
A memorial to me of better things than an old-fashioned Christmas gathering.
And I use this snuff-reservoir every day; it affords me nasal recreation.
Snuff-taking did not go out with the pigtails, but it is on the wane; it has given way to smoking: and diminished is the number of gifts, such graceful objects for monarchs to present to men like myself—if they did but know me!—of platinum or golden boxes set in diamonds. And would you know the reason of my persistence in taking snuff? It not only wakes up that torpor so prevalent betweenthe nose and the brain, making the wings of an idea uncurl like those of a new-born butterfly, but while others sneeze, and run at the eyes and nose, my schneiderian membrane is impervious to weather, or, to be explicit, I never take cold in my head.
Bath was my tarrying-place when Rossetti’s invitation came to me, and I went to Bognor. The great poet-painter occupied a commodious villa and grounds in a lane, west of the town, and near to the roughest bit of beach on the Sussex coast.
Rossetti had packed his house. Mrs. Rossetti, the mother; Miss Maria and Miss Christina, the sisters; Misses Polidori, who were the aunts; and Watts, who was the friend, were there, together with my sons, Edmund and Henry, for the festive week. The villa had good rooms; upstairs was a gallery with bedchambers on both sides, and ending in a large apartment which became a studio. There Rossetti worked, and liked to be read to while he improved his canvas, till the afternoon, when he took a violent walk over the boulders by the sea, towards Selsey Bay, among the ruined wooden groynes which had become seaweed gardens, hideous of aspect, as if invented and laid out by fish made man.
I walked with Rossetti daily over this penal shore, reflecting on absent pleasure, he unconscious of present pain. He talked but little while his feet crunched the boulders, and took no heed of the aspects of the scene, but seemed to be stampinghealth out of what was left unused for the six days’ creation.
Mrs. Rossetti was a sweet lady, and Christina, who still lives, a higher poet than her brother, is of the noblest brand. The family, one and all, are almost purely Italian. The father, a poet, was a Neapolitan; the mother was a Tuscan, with some Scotch blood. Rossetti may be regarded, not as English, but as one of those powerful leavens with which the genius of one country sometimes ferments that of another, to give it a new vitality.
Watts, who was now on terms of brotherly intimacy with him, bore him through any passing difficulties that needed only better guidance than his own.
That holiday was made cheerful, less perhaps by the host himself than by his guests. In truth, I saw regretfully that Rossetti was much unstrung; as so many do, even when in health, he got tired of his visitors, and ere long the party dispersed.
Circumstances brought me into intimate association with Mr. Noble, a most excellent and useful sculptor. He was employed in producing a recumbent statue of Lord Ripon. This memorial figure was placed in Nocton church, the more welcome there since the structure, a design of Gilbert Scott, was due to Lady Ripon’s bounty.He also made a fine bust of the deceased earl, all of which work was done by order of his devoted countess, whose name and the date of whose death are inscribed on the tomb beneath his.
During the lifetime of the good Lady Ripon, I spent several weeks from year to year during the summer at Nocton Hall, by her wish, having some of my family with me, and, on one occasion, the boy Lord Goderich. During these visits I looked well over the estate and reported my observations, or any suggestions for changes, with Lord de Grey’s approval.
The climate of the eastern country, from my experience in East Anglia, and later in Lincolnshire, I pronounce the best in England during the warm season, when the air is well “cooked” by the sun. I once wrote to Lady Ripon from Nocton, that it was as if cod-liver oil was floating in the air. But I must say that in the early months of the year, when the east wind is “raw,” the climate is not fit for a pet dog.
This very summer of ’91, when rain has turned all our houses in the south and west into arks, and ourselves into Noahs, I have said to friends, some going to the Isle of Wight, others still farther into the wet lands towards the Atlantic, “Go eastward as far as you can away from the rain; go to Aldeburgh; go to Cromer; go to Lowestoft; go to Mablesthorpe, where wind and rain part company before reaching so far.” They abided by my advice; and while the millions on the west side were soakedthrough, those on the east had not a wet day once a week, and, departing in sickly condition, came back in health too good to last!
Ask the people on the west and on the east of Scotland what sort of weather they have had in any summer. When I was in Perthshire for six weeks, it rained pretty well every day; and as I left by the train I saw the September harvest between Crieff and Perth cut and afloat on the meadows.
A fearful loss of oats! I had a friend that very same season living on the coast of Fifeshire. It was a lady. She informed me that all was sunshine, scarce a drop of rain, during the period I speak of.
Why should Egypt be said to monopolize all the dry weather!
“Madeline and other Poems” appeared not long after Rossetti’s volume. I kept myself clear of all models and other modes of thought—a fact recognized by every writer that reviewed my book. Rossetti was the first to say this, which he did in the Academy, the generosity of which proceeding cannot be too strongly put forward when one recollects that his own poems were in the hands of the critics at the same time. He read the poem before publication, and from what he wrote to me I learned that the metre itself in “Madeline” had a great charm for him.
I became known to Theodore Watts about the time “Madeline” came out. He was then comparatively young, and had formed for himself, in thecountry, certain poetic tenets which twenty years of experience have since greatly enlarged. He did not then think that “Madeline” had the elements of success within it. In intellect, in isolated quotable passages, according to his view, it abounded; for the rest it came strange to him.
Twenty years of experience and change of feeling affects us all; we becomeblaséfor better or worse; authors in whom we revelled go stale; others, that we found it hard to bite at, seem to yield a light that was but a spark before. The change is in ourselves.
Not many months ago, after the publication of “The New Day,” Watts was with me, and said, “I have been reading ‘Madeline’ again; for sheer originality, both of conception and of treatment, I consider that it stands alone.”
I do not intend to submit this sentence to him for further consideration; it was once in his mouth, and thence it issued!
I may tell the origin of “Madeline” in a brief sentence. I had framed and delivered a lecture, scientifically treated, on “Sleep, Dreams, Sleep-walking, Sleep-talking and the Mesmeric State,” which last I explained by the facts of hypnotism. It was many years after this that I conceived theidea of conducting a character, in metre, through all these states of the human soul, and “Madeline” became that character.
Dr. Marston said, and I think truly, that the poem had too much machinery—a mistake which I have now corrected by erasure, in case an edition of the work should ever be required.
Watts is a man of many rich endowments; he has a fine poetic faculty, logical, yet warm; with an imagination not introspective only, but one that ranges over nature, and which might be called circumspective. His sonnets will bear the analysis to which I have submitted Shakespeare, Coleridge, and Wordsworth, in a previous page.
Watts is now one of our most esteemed critics.
I had a close acquaintance with Harrison Ainsworth among novelistic editors; he tried to obtain for me the separate publication of “Valdarno,” and, failing, wrote me his confident belief that it must be resuscitated one day.
Ainsworth was a manly and handsome-looking person. His romances gave great pleasure to the readers of his time, which showed how willing people are to live others’ lives without the penalties, though they would very firmly decline living their own over again, without the experience they had too late acquired.
I suppose, in reading every novel, one tastes of all the vices and virtues that have ever been indulged in. One likes to be great and generous vicariously; one even enjoys the sufferings of thewicked at second hand, and to commit even murder on the like terms.
We have all the character, insubstrata, not only of the savage, but of the wild beast, of the vulture, of the shark, of the boa constrictor, of the clawed crab, of the animalcule itself. Some feel this, some are wholly unconscious of it until it is accidentally roused, some possess it only in a state of inanimate suppression.
A novel founded on vulture life would have a great run. It should dwell on the domestic virtues of the bird, and show how it held an appointment under Providence to follow in the wake of armies.
One of the finest novels I have read of late years is that of Mr. Eden, entitled “George Donnington,” a work replete with experiences, sympathetic in character, in purpose wise; less a fiction than a narrative of true Russian life, and written with as firm a hand as was ever trained for literary success.
Though I could wish to have done with the “strange eventful history” of a life, thus lived over again, I must not rush on too fast, but must revert to “Parables and Tales.”
The publisher of “Madeline” asked me to add four more poems to “Old Souls,” and the three others of the same metre, for an illustrated work; accordingly, I gave him “Mother and Child,” “The Blind Boy,” “The Cripple,” and “Old Morality.”
One morning at Cheyne Walk I read “The Cripple” to Rossetti and Hüffer, and saw them both in tears.
I had written “The Blind Boy” before the new volume was contemplated, and I sent it to Rossetti. In answer he wrote to me, saying that he was on the point of going out when it reached him, but that he stayed in to read it, and was so impressed on doing so, that he at once sat down and wrote to Mr. John Morley, advising its insertion in theFortnightly Review. But Morley had recently printed in that vehicle a long poem of W. B. Scott’s, and had thereupon resolved never to admit again another verse of any author whatsoever.
When “Parables and Tales” appeared Rossetti selected theFortnightlyfor his review of the new volume. He never wrote any reviews except of my poems. All the notices I ever received of my writings were by strangers, except those kindly given of them by Rossetti and his brother: that is all I owe to friendship.
At this time I was personally free from professional engagements. Lady Ripon was no more, greatly to my sorrow, so I went for a few weeks to Bath.
It was a great pleasure to me when staying in that beautiful and healthful city to visit the grave of Beckford, the wonderful author of “Vatec.”
The cemetery and tomb of Beckford would have been a scene for Volney, though it is not a ruin, unless it be regarded as one of human vanity. “Vatec” is monument enough without a sarcophagus of polished porphyry, and a tower lined with the same costly stone.
A medical friend of Mr. Beckford’s told me some curious details respecting that gentleman’s will. He had sunk his remaining property in an annuity, with the exception of a unique collection of pictures and statues valued at £100,000, destined for Hamilton Palace, his daughter’s home. The result is one of many instances which show how little influence the dead exercise over the living.
There was an insuperable difficulty in the dead being buried in his own beautiful cemetery, which was unconsecrated ground, so the heir, the then Duke of Hamilton, had the sarcophagus deposited in the cemetery on the opposite side of the river. The grounds of the one laid out with so much loving care by the deceased, with their tower and exquisitely carved gateway and their finely wrought palings, the porphyry of the tower alone having been brought from Egypt at an expense of £50,000, were sold for £1500, and were about to be converted into a tea-garden for the Lansdown races held hard by.
These preliminaries got through, of course by the duke’s agents, preparations were made for the removal of the pictures and sculptures, but the executors of the will stepped in, and announced that those treasures were not to be given up until Mr. Beckford’s cemetery held his remains.
This was a cruel dilemma, for the property had to be repurchased at an enormous advance on the price paid; but it was done, and the terms of the bishop to consecrate the soil, previously declined,were acceded to. These were that the cemetery should become the property of the Church!
The game was thus cleverly won and profitably; the cemetery is fashionable, people pay high prices for being buried in such good company. Every one visits Beckford’s tomb, and the Church, in acquiring the freehold, will be thought by many to have done well for religion. But my mind is of a perverse nature, and is apt to wander. It sometimes comes across the word “infernal,” in relation to things on high, and is sometimes arrested, as by an erratic block, by the word “humbug,” but it would not like to see the two words in juxtaposition in reference to Church doings.
Beckford had desired that his sarcophagus should be placed on the summit of his tower, whence, should he open his eyes again, and be able to see through porphyry, he would behold Fonthill Abbey.
But this pleasure was denied him, and he only lies above the grass instead of below.
On the tomb one reads—