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While Gabriel seemed inclined to take it as a sign of future disaster, Christina, whose poetry is so full of symbolism, would smile at such a notion. This is remarkable, for one would have thought that it was impossible to read those extraordinary works of the elder Rossetti’s without being impressed by the rare intellectual subtlety of the Italian scholar.
John Morley, we may be sure, was something more than willing to let Rossetti review the book in The Fortnightly Review; and, again, when ‘New Symbols’ appeared, there was some talk about Rossetti’s reviewing it in The Fortnightly Review; but this, for certain reasons which Rossetti explained to me—reasons which have been misunderstood, but which were entirely adequate—was abandoned.
And yet I should find it difficult to say wherein lay the charm of Rossetti’s chameleon-like personality. So with other men and women I could name. This is not so in regard to the great man now lying dead at Aldworth. Nothing is easier than to define the charm of Tennyson.
I shall stick to áspirant till the end of the chapter.” And Christina said, “Then so will I.” Among Mrs. Rossetti’s accomplishments was reading aloud, mainly from imaginative writers, and I cannot recall without a thrill of mingled emotions a delightful stay of mine at Kelmscott in the summer of ’73, when she, whose age then was seventy-three, used to read out to us all sorts of things.
Fairfax Murray say that he heard him say so. But indisputable also is many another saying of Rossetti’s, equally ill-considered and equally impracticable. That he ever seriously thought of doing so is most unlikely. In his memoir of his brother, Mr. William Michael Rossetti thus makes mention of a ballad left by the poet which still remains unpublished:—
When between the first form of a sonnet and the second an interval of twenty-seven years elapses, no student of poetry can fail to compare one form with the other. And so with regard to that poem which is, on the whole, Rossetti’s masterpiece—‘Sister Helen’—sent as early as 1854 to Mrs. Howitt for the German publication the Düsseldorf Annual; the changes in it are extremely interesting.
I was never more struck with this than on the memorable day when I first met him, and was blessed with a friendship that lasted without interruption for nearly a quarter of a century. It was shortly after he and Rossetti entered upon the joint occupancy of Kelmscott Manor on the Thames, where I was staying as Rossetti’s guest.
Those who have heard Tennyson speak of Rossetti know that to use this phrase in relation to any letter of his dealing with Rossetti’s poetry was to misunderstand it. Yet here are the unpleasant words of a hasty mood, “rather shabby,” in print. And why? Because the public has become so demoralized that its feast of facts, its feast of documents it must have, come what will.
W. M. Rossetti has mainly quoted. The volume is divided into two parts: first, documents relating to the production of certain of Rossetti’s pictures and poems; and second, a prose paraphrase of ‘The House of Life.’ The documents consist of abstracts of and extracts from such portions of Rossetti’s correspondence as have fallen into his brother’s hands as executor.
I have told elsewhere the whimsical story of Hake and Rossetti, of Rossetti’s delightful account of his reading as a boy, in a coffee-house in Chancery Lane, Hake’s remarkable romance ‘Vates,’ afterwards called ‘Valdarno,’ in a magazine; his writing a letter about it to the unknown author, and getting no reply until many years had passed.
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