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And this, added to his slight knowledge of anatomy, made all his nude pictures undesirable save those few painted from the beautiful girl who stood for ‘The Spirit of the Rainbow’ and ‘Forced Music.’ What his work from the nude suffered from this is incalculable, as may be seen in the crayon called ‘Ligeia Siren,’ a naked siren playing on a kind of lute, which Rossetti described as “certainly one of his best things.” The beauty and value of a crayon which for weird poetry—especially in the eyes—must be among Rossetti’s masterpieces are ruined by the drawing of the breasts.
Down to the very last moment of his life Rossetti’s feeling towards his great contemporary Tennyson was that of the deepest admiration, and yet what says the documentary evidence as given to the world by Rossetti’s brother? It shows that Rossetti used an extremely unpleasant phrase concerning a letter from Tennyson acknowledging the receipt of Rossetti’s first volume of poems in 1870.
“I have preserved a number of Rossetti’s letters, and there is barely one, I think, which is not mainly devoted to warm commendation of obscure poets and painters—obscure at the time of writing, but of whom more than one has since become famous.” Nor was his interest in other men’s work confined to that of his personal friends.
To wax eloquent in praise of this and that illustrious name, and thus to claim a kind of kinship with it, is a very different thing from Rossetti’s noble championship of a name, whether that of a friend or otherwise, which has never emerged from obscurity.
Splendid as are Gabriel Rossetti’s ‘Sister Helen’ and ‘Rose Mary,’ the literary aura surrounding them prevents them from seeming—as the best of the Border ballads seem—Nature’s very voice muttering in her dreams of the pathos and the mystery of the human story. Is there ony room at your head, Saunders? Is there ony room at your feet?
Never did it appear in print without suffering some important variation. Sometimes, indeed, the change of a word or two in a line would entirely transfigure the stanza. As to the new stanzas added to the ballad just before Rossetti’s death, these turned the ballad from a fine poem into a great one.
But the reader will say, “Truth is great, and must prevail. The picture of Rossetti that now exists in the public mind is the true one. The former picture was a lie.” But here the reader will be much mistaken. The romantic picture which existed in the public mind during Rossetti’s life was the true one; the picture that now exists of him is false.
It was at Kelmscott, in the famous tapestried room, that besides painting the ‘Proserpine,’ ‘The Roman Widow,’ &c., he wrote many of his later poems, including ‘Rose Mary.’ Considering how deep is Mr. W. M. Rossetti’s affection for his brother’s memory, and how great is his admiration for his brother’s work, it is remarkable how judicial is his mind when writing about him.
Perhaps for strength both of subject and of treatment, Christina Rossetti’s masterpiece is ‘Amor Mundi.’ Here we get a lesson of human life expressed, not didactically, but in a concrete form of unsurpassable strength, harmony, and concision.
Christina Rossetti’s peculiar form of the Christian sentiment she inherited from her mother, the sweetness of whose nature was never disturbed by that exercise of the egoism of the artist in which Christina indulged and without whose influence it is difficult to imagine what the Rossetti family would have been.
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