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It was here that the Preraphaelites made history: Madox Brown, Burne-Jones, Ruskin, William Morris and the MacDonalds. Burne-Jones married one of the MacDonald daughters; Mr. Poynter, now Director of the National Gallery, another; Mr. Kipling still another with Rudyard Kipling as a result, followed in due course by Mulvaney, Ortheris and Learoyd, who are quite as immortal as the rest.
When Rossetti began serious work as a painter he thought of Madox Brown as the one man from whom he would willingly receive practical guidance, and wrote to him at random. From this time Madox Brown became his intimate friend and artistic monitor. In painting, however, Rossetti was during this time exercising only half his genius. From his childhood it became evident that he was a poet.
The almost morbid love of beauty which a civilisation, whose outward expression are the lines and lines of black boxes, with slits for doors and windows of Bloomsbury, produced in men like Coleridge, Blake, and Turner, naturally escaped Mme. d'Albany; but the second great rebellion of imagination and love of beauty, the rebellion led by Madox Brown and Morris, and Rossetti and Burne Jones, escaped Taine.
The only person who would really care to have me, whether I had a fortune or not, is Sir Hugh Pryse, and I could no more marry him than than Mr Rice Rice, or Major Madox, who thinks only of the heiress of Glanyravon. 'But you have refused half-a-dozen more, and have not even taken the trouble to try to like any one of them!
In the diary of Ford Madox Brown, published by William Rossetti, there is an amusing story of Dante's keeping Brown's overcoat, and keeping the room needed for other occupants, with the unconscious oblivion of any other convenience than his own, which was quite characteristic of the man, and which was shown on a larger scale at Robertsbridge.
I have selected these few instances from a great number of the like kind, which Madox had selected from a still greater number, preserved in the ancient rolls of the exchequer. Sometimes a party litigant offered the king a certain portion, a half, a third, a fourth, payable out of the debts which he, as the executor of justice, should assist in recovering.
Other important artists known as Pre-raphaelites, not belonging to the Brotherhood, are Ford Madox Brown and Burne Jones, as well as the water-color painters, Mason, Walker, Boyce, and Goodwin.
Manchester bids against Liverpool, Liverpool bids against Manchester; the results of the bidding are discussed, and so an interest in art is created. It was Manchester that first threw her strength into this artistic rivalry. It began with the decorations which Manchester commissioned Mr. Madox Brown to paint for the town hall. Manchester's choice of an artist was an excellent and an original one.
Mr. Madox Brown was not an Academician; he was not known to the general public; he merely commanded the respect of his brother-artists. The painting of these pictures was the work of years; the placing of every one was duly chronicled in the press, and it was understood in London that Manchester was entirely satisfied.
In the privacy of the parlour Merle had a good laugh with Mavis over what they termed her first love-letter. "'Oh, for the wings of a dove!" quoted Merle. "It's so Biblical, isn't it? He's a dear, all the same! I love him better even than Constable. He's such a bright little chap. Don't tell Clive, or he'd tease Madox to death about this. It must be an absolute secret.
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