Dante Gabriel Rossetti. His Family
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Dante Gabriel Rossetti

VOL. I.

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By Himself. 1855.

Dante Gabriel Rossetti.

Figure: Self-portrait. Three-quarter view, head and shoulders, facing right. Date in lower right corner, Sept 20, 1855.

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Dante Gabriel Rossetti

HIS FAMILY-LETTERS

WITH A MEMOIR

BY

WILLIAM MICHAEL ROSSETTI

MANUS ANIMAM PINXIT

VOL I.

AMS PRESS

NEW YORK

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Note: The call number is written in pencil at the top of the page.

Reprinted from the edition of 1895, London

First AMS EDITION published 1970

Manufactured in the United States of America

International Standard Book Number:

Complete Set: 0—404—05434—X

Volume 1: 0—404—05435—8

Library of Congress Number: 70—130231

AMS PRESS INC.

New York, N.Y. 10003

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DEDICATED TO

MY FOUR CHILDREN

WITH A FATHER'S HOPE

THAT RELATIVES OF

DANTE AND CHRISTINA ROSSETTI

AND DESCENDANTS OF

GABRIELE AND FRANCES ROSSETTI

WILL UPHOLD THE CREDIT OF

THEIR PATRONYMIC..

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In his Recollections of Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1882) Mr. Hall Caine has informed us: “It was always known to be Rossetti's wish that, if at any moment after his death it should appear that the story of his life required to be written, the one friend who, during many of his later years, knew him most intimately, and to whom he unlocked the most sacred secrets of his heart, Mr. Theodore Watts, should write it, unless indeed it were undertaken by his brother William.”

Dante Rossetti died on 9 April 1882; and after the lapse of a few months I decided to put his Family-Letters into shape for early publication. Mr. Watts acquiesced in the wish which I then entertained, and which I should still entertain, that he, rather than myself, should be the biographer, writing a Memoir to accompany the Letters. Doubtless he saw reason for not producing his Memoir so soon as I had been expecting it; therefore, after a rather long interval of years, I resolved in July 1894 that the Letters must now come out, and, as they could not be unlinked with a Memoir, that I myself would write it. The result is before the reader. If he would have preferred a Memoir from Mr. Watts, I sympathize with him, but the option had ceased to be mine. There are several reasons why a brother neither is nor can be the best biographer. Feeling this, I had always intended

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not to write a Life of Dante Rossetti. But circumstances have proved too strong for me, and I submit to their dictate.

Had the book been published towards 1883, the Letters would have extended very little beyond those addressed to my Mother and to myself. There were then also a couple to my Father, and a very few to my Sister Christina. I am now enabled to add some to my Grandfather Gaetano Polidori, my Uncle Henry Francis Polydore, my Aunt Charlotte, Lydia Polidori, and my Wife Lucy Madox Rossetti; also some others to Christina which, as they contain expressions of approval with regard to her writings, she had herself with-held. No letters to other members of the family appear to be in existence, though several must have been written.

The technical arrangement of the printed correspondence can easily be understood. The letters are all thrown into a single sequence, according to the order of date: they are lettered from A to H, for the persons respectively addressed, and each sub-division is progressively numbered within its own limits. In every case where a letter seems to require any explanatory note or observation, I have supplied this in a few preliminary words. The dates, when not written by my brother himself, were in most cases jotted down at the time by the recipient: in a few instances, where this was omitted, the dates now given are approximate. Addresses are also frequently inserted in like manner. I have preserved (and must ask the reader to pardon my mentioning so minute a point) one instance of each form of subscribed name; and have also reproduced the name in other cases where it seems more apposite to do so. In contrary instances I omit both the name and the words of subscription which precede it. Some other Family-Letters exist, addressed to the same

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persons; but these are such as even a brother cannot suppose to be of any public interest. From those here collected some passages are omitted which, on one ground or another, are considered to be unsuited for printing; but on the whole I have been sparing of excisions. Of the items admitted, several are indeed short and scrappy; I have not however included anything which appears to me to be entirely uninteresting to persons interested in Dante Rossetti. Some letters, otherwise slight, fix the date of a picture or poem; others show some trait of character, or contain some pointed or diverting expression.

The letters, such as they are, shall be left to speak mainly for themselves. Their language is constantly unadorned, often colloquial; the tone of mind in them, concentrated; the feeling, while solid and sincere, uneffusive. Their subject-matter is very generally personal to the writer, without discursiveness of outlook, or eloquent or picturesque description; yet the spirit is not egotistical or self-assertive. If I am wrong in these opinions, the reader will decide the point for himself.

My brother was a rapid letter-writer, and on occasion a very prompt one, but not negligent or haphazard. He always wrote to the point, without amplification, or any effort after the major or minor graces of diction or rhetoric. Multitudes of his letters must still presumably be extant in private hands: a representative collection of them might be found to confirm the impression which I should like to ensue from the present series—that as a correspondent he was straight-forward, pleasant, and noticeably free from any calculated self-display. “Disinvolto” would be the Italian word.

Some persons may approve, others will disapprove, of the publication of these Family-Letters. I print them because the doing so commends itself to my own mind. At a very

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childish age I was familiar with the old apologue of the Man and his Son and the Donkey: it impressed me as equally true and practical. I have always been conscious that opinions will be as numerous as readers, and prefer to suit the opinions of those who happen to agree with myself.

Recently I have had a painful reason for realizing to myself a very pleasurable fact—that of the high estimation in which my brother, himself no less than his work, is now publicly held, some thirteen years after he passed away. The death of my beloved sister Christina, on 29 December 1894, called forth a flood of not undeserved but assuredly very fervent praise; and in the eulogies of her were intermixed many warm tributes to my brother—I might say, without a dissentient voice.

As regards my Memoir, I, having large knowledge and numerous materials, have not consulted a single person except Christina, who, during the earlier weeks of my undertaking, gave me orally the benefit of many reminiscences relating chiefly to years of childhood, and often kept me right upon details as to which I should have stumbled. On her bed of pain and rapidly approaching death she preserved a singularly clear recollection of olden facts, and was cheered in going over them with me.

Some readers of the Memoir may be inclined to ask me— “Have you told everything, of a substantial kind, that you know about your deceased brother?”—My answer shall be given beforehand, and without disguise: “No; I have told what I choose to tell, and have left untold what I do not choose to tell; if you want more, be pleased to consult some other informant.”

One word in conclusion. In case the present book should find favour with the public, I should be disposed to rummage

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among my ample stock of materials, and produce a number of details relating not only to my brother, but also to other members or connexions of the family. But at the age of sixty-five a man finds the horizon of his work narrowed, and rapidly narrowing; and possibly this will not be.

W. M. ROSSETTI.

St. Edmund's Terrace, London.

April 1895.

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PAGE

Note: This notation is located flush right, above the page numbers. A similar notation appears at the top of each page of the table of contents.

Dedication. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . vii

Preface . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ix

Memoir . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3

I.

BIRTH.

Dante Rossetti's birth in London, 1828—His Godfathers. . . 3

II.

PARENTAGE.

Gabriele (Father of Dante) Rossetti—His birth in Vasto—His Parents and Brothers—His drawings, studies, and writings, in Italy— His political lyrics and exile—Malta and John Hookham Frere— Life in London—His death—His character, opinions, person, etc.— His writings in England on Dante, etc.—Carducci's opinion of his poetry—The centenary of his birth, Vasto—Descriptions of him by Bell Scott and Frederic Stephens—Mrs. Gabriele Rossetti, her life, character, and person—Some versicles of hers. . . 3

III.

RELATIVES.

Dante Rossetti's Great-grandfathers—His maternal Grandfather, Gaetano Polidori, Secretary to Alfieri, and Italian teacher in London— Anecdotes of the French Revolution and of Alfieri—Polidori's person, character, and writings—Mrs. Polidori—Her Father, William Pierce—Connexions of the Pierce family, Mrs. Bray,

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etc.—Mrs. Polidori's closing years—Her sister and children— Dr. John William Polidori and his writings—Teodorico Pietrocola-Rossetti—Extinction of the Rossetti family in Vasto— Instances of longevity. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24

IV. CHILDHOOD.

The four children of Gabriele Rossetti—Houses in Charlotte Street— Dante Rossetti and his Sister Maria—Walks about London, etc.— Pet animals—Sights and entertainments in London—Singing, card-playing, illness, etc.—First attempt at drawing, and resolve to be a painter—Theatrical and other prints. . . . . . . . . . 36

V.

ACQUAINTANCES IN CHILDHOOD.

The Potters and other British friends—Numerous Italian friends of Gabriele Rossetti—Pistrucci, Sangiovanni, etc.—Protestantizing Italians—Mazzini and Panizzi—Talks on politics—John Stuart Mill on Continental and English Life . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44

VI.

CHILDISH BOOK-READING AND SCRIBBLING.

Dante Rossetti's early training—The Bible, Shakespear, Göthe, Walter Scott, etc.—Childish drawings from Henry VI.—Rossetti's opinion of Scott's novels, 1871—Books of prints and the National Gallery —Dante's poems read later on—Childish drama, The Slave , etc.— Childish drawings—Dante Rossetti fortunate in his family surroundings. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57

VII.

SCHOOL.

Dante Rossetti's first school, Mr. Paul's, 1836—School-life not favourable to his character—To King's College School, 1837—The Cayley brothers—What Dante Rossetti learned—His various Masters, including John Sell Cotman the painter—Mr. Caine's account of Rossetti's school-life discussed—Parallel with Edgar Poe's school-life—School-fellows—School-exercise on China, and Christina Rossetti's verses thereon . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 68

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Sig. VOL. I. b

VIII.

HOME-LIFE DURING SCHOOL—SIR HUGH THE HERON.

Polidori's country-house at Holmer Green, and his house in London— Accident with a chisel—Boyish drawings from the Iliad—Dante Rossetti reads Byron, Dickens, Brigand Tales, French novels, etc. —He writes a prose tale, Roderick and Rosalba , and a ballad-poem, Sir Hugh the Heron , which is privately printed, also William and Marie — His note on Hugh Heron —Boyish drawings—Studies German under Dr. Heimann—Intimacy with the Heimann family . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79

IX.

STUDY FOR THE PAINTING PROFESSION—CARY'S AND

THE R.A.

Dante Rossetti leaves school, 1842, and goes to Cary's Drawing Academy—His American friend, Thomas Doughty, and his family —Charley Ware, and his portrait-group—Bailey's Festus, and verses The Atheist—Studies and habits at Cary's—Sonnets from the Italian, and Bouts-rimés sonnets—The Westminster Hall cartoon-competitions—Proceeds to the R.A. antique school, 1846 —Disinclination to any obligatory study or work—Millais, Holman Hunt, Stephens—The Ghiberti Gates—Hunt on Rossetti's appearance and demeanour—A fellow-student's reminiscence— Rossetti's immethodical habits—Theatre-going . . . . . . . . . . . . 88

X.

STUDENT-LIFE—SKETCHING, READING, AND WRITING.

Rossetti's early sketches influenced by Gavarni—Lithographed playing-cards, etc.—Designs to Christina Rossetti's Verses, 1847—His first uncompleted oil-picture, Retro me Sathana —Reads Shelley, Charles Wells, Maturin, Thackeray, etc., and with great predilection Browning—No solid reading—His prose tale, Sorrentino , 1843—Translations from the German, The Nibelungenlied , Henry the Leper , etc.—Translations from the Vita Nuova, and Early Italian Poets—Tennyson's opinion of these—The printed opinions of Swinburne and Placci—Writes The Blessed Damozel , 1847—Admiration of Edgar Poe—Other poems, My Sister's Sleep , Ave , Dante at Verona , Jenny , etc.—The unpublished Ballad, Jan van Hunks , now begun, and finished on his deathbed — Political burlesque poem, unprinted—Purchase of the MS. book by Blake—Rossetti's work, towards 1862, on Gilchrist's Life of Blake . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .97

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XI.

FRIENDS TOWARDS 1847.

Major Calder Campbell, Alexander Munro, William Bell Scott—Meets Ebenezer Jones—Rossetti's first letter to Scott, 1847—Observations on his poems—Rossetti sends The Blessed Damozel , and other Songs of the Art Catholic , to Scott—His turn of mind in religious matters—Scott's first visit—Rossetti writes to Browning about Pauline, and knows him afterwards . . . . . . . . . . . 110

XII.

MADOX BROWN, HOLMAN HUNT, MILLAIS.

Letter to Madox Brown, 1848, asking to be allowed to study painting under him—Rossetti's relation to the course of study at the R.A.— Details about Brown, and his first call on Rossetti—Rossetti set to still-life painting, etc.—He calls on Hunt, and consults him as to further painting-work—His design of Gretchen in the Church — The Cyclographic Society—Opinions of Millais and Hunt on the Gretchen —Rossetti's indifference to perspective, in which Stephens gives him some lessons—Forwards some poems to Leigh Hunt, who (letter quoted) praises them, but dissuades him from trusting to literature as a profession— Head of Gaetano Polidori , June 1848 —Rossetti adopts Holman Hunt's advice as to painting, and shares a studio with him in Cleveland Street—Stephens's description of it—Hunt takes Rossetti round to Millais in Gower Street. 115

XIII.

THE PRÆRAPHAELITE BROTHERHOOD.

Lasinio's engravings from the pictures in the Campo Santo of Pisa lead on directly to the Præraphaelite movement, 1848—Remarks on Millais, Hunt, and Rossetti, in this connexion—The British school of painting in 1848, and the term Præraphaelite—The three inventors of the movement equally concerned in bringing it to bear—Rossetti's letter to Chesneau on this point—Their close attention to detail subsidiary to other objects in the movement— Madox Brown's relation to the Brotherhood—Four other members of it—Details as to Woolner, Collinson, Stephens, and myself—Great intimacy among the P.R.B.'s.—Hunt on Rossetti's literary attainments—The aims of the Brotherhood discussed— Not a religious movement, nor directly promoted by Ruskin— Rossetti, in later life, disliked the term Præraphaelite—Diary of the P.R.B. kept by me as Secretary—Defaced by Dante Rossetti

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—Details from this Diary as to election of Deverell, etc.—The P.R.B., as an organization, dropped in January 1851—Christina's sonnet The P.R.B.—“The Queen of the Præraphaelites”—Rules adopted 1851—The pictures of Millais, Hunt, and Rossetti, exhibited in 1849—Rossetti's Girlhood of Mary Virgin —Three sonnets of his bearing on the movement—His portrait of Gabriele Rossetti, 1848 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 125

XIV.

FIRST EXHIBITED PICTURE, 1849.

Rossetti sends The Girlhood of Mary Virgin to the Free Exhibition— The works of the Præraphaelites favourably received by critics and others in 1849, but very adversely afterwards—The Athenæum notice of Rossetti's first picture quoted—Sale of the picture, and its general success—Treatment in this book of his pictures etc. in later years, and reference to another book, Dante Gabriel Rossetti as Designer and Writer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 144

XV.

THE GERM.

Rossetti bent upon starting a magazine, July 1849—Proposed titles and publisher—He writes the prose story Hand and Soul — Meeting at his studio, and choice of the title The Germ —Contents of No. 1, and its sale—Nos. 3 and 4 appear under the title Art and Poetry —Notices of the magazine—Debt upon its issue— Anecdotes relating to Hand and Soul —Rossetti makes an etching (destroyed) for this story, and begins another story An Autopsychology (or St. Agnes of Intercession )—His various contributions to the magazine— Verses by John L. Tupper on its expiry . . 149

XVI.

PAINTINGS AND WRITINGS, 1849-53.

Trip with Holman Hunt to Paris and Belgium—Paintings and Designs—Rossetti's attainments in draughtsmanship, etc.—Details as to Ecce Ancilla Domini —Press-criticism of this picture, and other Præraphaelite works of 1850—Extract from the Athenæum —The Queen and Millais's Carpenter's Shop —Details as to Giotto painting Dante's Portrait , Head of Holman Hunt, Mary Magdalene at the Door of Simon the Pharisee , and Found —

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Discussion as to the statement that Found is an illustration of Bell Scott's poem Rosabell—Rossetti's sonnet to Woolner in Australia—Collinson's picture of St. Elizabeth of Hungary — Sketching-club proposed in 1854—Poems, Dante at Verona , Burden of Nineveh , Sister Helen , etc.—Rossetti desultory in youth, and sometimes at odds with his Father—He drops writing poetry, 1852—Project of his becoming a telegraphist on the railway—Notion of renting No. 16 Cheyne Walk—His studios in Newman Street and Red Lion Square—Brown paints Rossetti's head as Chaucer—Rossetti settles in Chambers in Chatham Place, 1852 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 157

XVII.

MISS SIDDAL.

Rossetti falls in love with Miss Elizabeth Eleanor Siddal, 1850— Walter H. Deverell first sees her as assistant in a bonnet-shop— Her appearance—Deverell gets her to sit for the head of Viola in his picture from Twelfth Night—She also sits to Hunt and Millais—Her family—She sits to Rossetti for Rossovestita , and a subject from the Vita Nuova, and many other paintings—An engagement between Miss Siddal and Rossetti dating towards 1851—Her tone in conversation, etc.—Her paintings and verses —Swinburne's estimate of her quoted, also her poem A Year and a Day—Her extreme ill-health—She is introduced to the Howitt family—Rossetti as a lover—Death of Deverell, 1854 171

XVIII.

JOHN RUSKIN.

Ruskin not connected with the Præraphaelite movement when first started—In 1851 Patmore suggests to him to write something on the subject, and he sends a letter to the Times—In 1853 MacCracken calls his attention to Rossetti, and Ruskin praises two of his water-colours—Ruskin calls on Rossetti, April 1854—Their intimacy begins, partly interrupted by the death of Gabriele Rossetti, and the absence of Dante Rossetti at Hastings, and of Ruskin abroad—Affectionate and free-spoken relations between Ruskin and Rossetti—Madox Brown's dislike of Ruskin, who becomes the chief purchaser for a while of Rossetti's works— Rossetti ceases to exhibit—Ruskin's opinion of Rossetti after his decease—Extracts from Ruskin's letters, 1854-7—His high regard

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Note: In section xx, “Morte” should read “Mort”

for Miss Siddal—He settles on her £150 a year, taking her paintings in proportion—Cessation of this arrangement, 1857— She goes abroad with Mrs. Kincaid, 1855, returning 1856—Decline of her health—My own acquaintance with Ruskin—Rossetti admires him as a lecturer—Letters from Rossetti to MacCracken, Extract . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 178

XIX.

WORK IN 1854-5-6.

Water-colours from Dante, etc.— Paolo and Francesca , Passover in Holy Family , Head of Browning , Dante's Dream , Designs from Tennyson, etc.— The Seed of David , Triptych in Llandaff Cathedral—General characteristics of Rossetti's style at this period— Troubles with the Tennyson designs, and Tennyson's own views of them—Sketches of Tennyson reading Maud—The Seddons and the Triptych— The Blue Closet , water-colour, and William Morris— The Wedding of St. George —James Smetham, and his remarks hereon . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 187

XX.

OXFORD MEN AND WORK—BURNE-JONES, MORRIS,

SWINBURNE .

Friends of Rossetti between 1847 and 1855—Burne-Jones calls upon him, June 1856, and is advised by Rossetti to adopt painting as a profession—Afterwards Rossetti knows Morris and Swinburne —The architect of the Oxford Museum, Woodward, invites Rossetti in 1855 to undertake some decorative work there—He does not do this, but in 1857 begins painting in the Union Debating- Hall from the Morte d' Arthur—Morris co-operates—Details as to the Union-work—In 1856 Rossetti publishes The Burden of Nineveh and some other poems in the Oxford and Cambridge Magazine —Ruskin on The Burden of Nineveh —Other painters in the Union Hall—Ultimate spoiling of the work—Swinburne's introduction to Rossetti—Rossetti and his friends see in Oxford Miss Burden, who becomes Mrs. Morris, and from whom Rossetti paints many heads—The Præraphaelite Exhibition in Russell Place, 1857—Miss Siddal's ill-health takes Rossetti to Bath, etc. —Proposal, not carried out, for a “College,” in which he and other artists would settle—Miss Siddal's dissent—Hunt's statement as to an “offence” by Rossetti . . . . . . 193

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XXI.

WORK IN 1858-59.

Water-colour of Mary in the House of John , oil-picture Bocca Baciata , etc.—Bell Scott's reference to the sitter for Bocca Baciata —Miss Herbert—Poems, Love's Nocturn , and The Song of the Bower — The Hogarth Club, 1858, and paintings there exhibited . . 202

XXII.

MARRIAGE.

Reasons for postponing marriage—Mr. Plint and other purchasers of Rossetti's pictures—Extreme ill-health of Miss Siddal at Hastings, April 1860—Marriage, 23 May—Wedding-trip to Paris—Enlargement of Rossetti's view of pictorial art—His designs in Paris, How They Met Themselves , etc.—He returns with his wife to the Chambers, afterwards enlarged, in Chatham Place . . . 204

XXIII.

MARRIED LIFE.

Bell Scott on Rossetti's unsuitableness for married life—Remarks hereon—Mrs. Rossetti intimate with the Brown, Morris, and Burne-Jones families—Ruskin on drawings made by Rossetti from her—Rossetti's intimacy with Swinburne—also with Meredith, Sandys, Gilchrist, etc.—Death of Gilchrist, 1861—Mrs. Madox Brown's offer to help during his illness—Mrs. Rossetti's infirm health, and birth of a stillborn infant—Death of Mrs. H. T. Wells —Rossetti speaks of “ getting awfully fat and torpid” . . . 208

XXIV.

WORK IN 1860-61— THE EARLY ITALIAN POETS—THE

MORRIS FIRM.

Death of Plint, and embarrassment ensuing to Rossetti, 1860—The Plint sale—Water-colours of Lucrezia Borgia and of Swinburne, design of Cassandra , oil-picture of Fair Rosamund , etc.—Preparations for publishing The Early Italian Poets —Opinions of Ruskin and Patmore—Published by Smith and Elder, with some subsidizing from Ruskin—Favourable reception of the book, and result of its sale—Proposed etchings to it not produced—Rossetti

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shows some original poems to Ruskin, with a view, unsuccessful, to publication in The Cornhill Magazine—He announces a volume, Dante at Verona and other Poems , not actually published— Foundation in 1860 of the firm, Morris, Marshall, Falkner, & Co. —Seven members, including Rossetti—Details as to Webb, Marshall, and Falkner—Money ventured on the firm—Good-fellowship of Rossetti and his partners—Methods of business, more especially of Morris as leading partner and manager— Warrington Taylor—Rossetti's designs for stained glass, etc. 213

XXV.

DEATH OF MRS. DANTE ROSSETTI.

Her illness, phthisis and neuralgia—The last painting for which she sat—10 February 1862, she dines at an hotel with her husband and Swinburne—My contemporary note as to her death next morning from taking over-much laudanum—Dr. John Marshall— Newspaper-paragraph, showing inquest, and verdict of accidental death—Rossetti's sorrow and agitation—Ruskin calls, and exhibits a change in religious opinion—The funeral—Rossetti consigns to the coffin his book of MS. poems—Caine's account of this incident —Rossetti's letter to Mrs. Gilchrist on his wife's death . . . 220

XXVI.

SETTLING IN CHEYNE WALK.

Rossetti resolves to leave Chatham Place, and proposes to combine with his family and Swinburne in getting a new house—He fixes on No. 16 Cheyne Walk—Relinquishes the proposal as to the family—His water-colour, Girl at a Lattice , and crayon-head of his Mother —Takes chambers provisionally, 59 Lincoln's Inn Fields—New arrangement for Cheyne Walk, Dante Rossetti as tenant, with Swinburne, Meredith, and myself, as sub-tenants— Condition of Cheyne Walk in 1862—Caine's account of the house in 1880—Further details as to the drawing-room etc.—Taking possession of the house, October 1862—Rossetti not constantly melancholy after his wife's death—Meredith and Swinburne as sub-tenants for the first two or three years—Meredith's opinion of Rossetti—Extracts from letters from Ruskin and Burne-Jones, 1862—Rossetti makes acquaintance with Whistler and Legros— His art-assistant Knewstub—Advance in Rossetti's professional income . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 227

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XXVII.

WORK FROM 1862 TO 1868.

Oil-pictures, Joan of Arc , Beata Beatrix , The Beloved , Lilith , Venus Verticordia , Sibylla Palmifera , Monna Vanna , Mrs. Morris , etc. —Water-colours, Paolo and Francesca , Return of Tibullus to Delia , Tristram and Yseult , etc.—Designs, Michael Scott's Wooing , Aurea Catena , etc.—Details as to most of these works, also Helen of Troy , Aurelia , The Boat of Love , The Blue Bower , Il Ramoscello , La Pia , Heart of the Night , Washing Hands , Socrates taught to Dance by Aspasia , Aspecta Medusa —Erroneous impression that Rossetti painted only from Mrs. Morris—Other sitters named, Christina Rossetti, Lizzie Rossetti, Mrs. Hannay, Mrs. Beyer, Mrs. H—, Miss Wilding, Miss Mackenzie, Keomi, Ellen Smith, Miss Graham, Mrs. Stillman, Mrs. Sumner, etc.—Remarks on Mrs. Morris as his type—His letter to the Athenæum as to his being a painter in oils—Shields on Rossetti's use of compressed chalk—Purchasers of his works, Leathart, Rae, Graham, Leyland, Valpy, Mitchell, Craven, Lord Mount-Temple, Colonel Gillum, Trist, Gambart, Fairfax Murray—Insufficiency of Rossetti's studio, and its ultimate alteration—Dunn succeeds Knewstub as his art-assistant—Large income made by Rossetti in 1865 and other years—His friendly relations with purchasers—His work 1862-3, in connexion with Gilchrist's Life of Blake . . . 238

XXVIII.

INCIDENTS, 1862 TO 1868.

Rossetti's animals at Cheyne Walk—His notions about ghosts—The wombat, woodchuck, and zebu—Attempts to communicate with his deceased wife by table-turning—The Burlington and other Clubs—The Bab Ballads—Rossetti houses Sandys for a while, and George Chapman—Other friends—Charles Augustus Howell, who becomes Ruskin's secretary—Bell Scott and Woolner— Intimacy with Ruskin comes to an end—Extracts from Ruskin's letters in 1865—Rossetti collects works of decorative art, especially blue china and Japanese prints—Buys a picture by Botticelli 251

XXIX.

BEGINNINGS OF ILL-HEALTH—PENKILL CASTLE.

Rossetti generally healthy in youth—1866, a complaint requiring surgical treatment—1867, insomnia, and failure of eyesight—

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Doctors consulted—Trip to Warwickshire in 1868, and stay at Penkill Castle, Ayrshire, with Miss Boyd, Miss Losh, and Bell Scott—The Leeds Exhibition of Art—Loan made by Miss Losh —Return to Cheyne Walk, and details as to eyesight—Resumes art-work in December . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 264

XXX.

PREPARATIONS FOR PUBLISHING POEMS.

Rossetti re-visits Penkill, 1869—Urged, in 1868, by Scott to “live for his poetry”—Sonnets previously published in 1868, others in 1869—Estimate for printing—Poems written at Penkill, 1869 —Alleged impulse towards suicide—Fancy about a chaffinch—“A curiously ferocious look”—Poems printed, not for immediate publication—The unburying of the MS. deposited in his wife's coffin—Arrangement with Ellis as publisher—Rossetti's combination of self-reliance and self-mistrust—He is anxious to secure a favourable critical reception of the Poems at starting —Extracts on this point from my Diary and from Scott's book —Rossetti's habits as to drinking—Death of Michael Halliday —Acquaintance with Nettleship, Hake, and Hueffer—Hake's estimate of Rossetti's character . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 270

XXXI.

ART-WORK FROM 1869 TO SUMMER 1872.

Oil-pictures of Pandora , Mariana , Dante's Dream , Veronica Veronese , etc.—Water-colour of Michael Scott —Designs of Penelope , Dr. Hake, etc.—Details as to some of these works, especially Dante's Dream —W. A. Turner becomes a purchaser . . . 282

XXXII.

THE POEMS, 1870— CHLORAL—KELMSCOTT MANOR-HOUSE.

The Poems forthcoming—Sojourn at Scalands—Rossetti's American friend Stillman, who recommends chloral as a soporific—Rossetti's excess in chloral-dosing, washed down by whiskey, and the bad effects resulting—Publication of the Poems , April 1870—Rapid sale—Swinburne's review, extracts—Other reviews, The Catholic World, etc.—Letters from acquaintances—Adverse criticism in Blackwood's Magazine, coolly received by Rossetti—Republica-

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tion of the Italian translations as Dante and his Circle , 1873—Rossetti in 1871 at Kelmscott Manor-house, which he shares with the Morris family—Philip Bourke Marston and Edmund Gosse on Rossetti—Turguenieff—Poems written at Kelmscott . . . 285

XXXIII.

THE FLESHLY SCHOOL OF POETRY.

Robert Buchanan, as Thomas Maitland, publishes in the Contemporary Review an attack thus entitled on Rossetti's Poems , October 1871 —His previous attack on Swinburne, 1866, and my Criticism— Review of my edition of Shelley, 1870— The Fleshly School enlarged and re-issued as a pamphlet—Extracts from it—Rossetti not much troubled by the review-article—A dinner at Bell Scott's —Rossetti replies, publishing, in the Athenæum , The Stealthy School of Criticism , and writing a pamphlet, which is withheld— Aggravated imputations in the pamphlet form of The Fleshly School—Buchanan's retractation, 1881-2, extracts—Summary of the facts—Quilter's article The Art of Rossetti, 1883, extract 293

XXXIV

HYPOCHONDRIA AND ILLNESS.

Dividing line in Rossetti's life, spring 1872—He is perturbed by The Fleshly School of Poetry in its book-form, and has fancies of a conspiracy against him—Other adverse critiques—Evidences of mental unsettlement on 2 June—Browning regarded with suspicion —Rossetti not insane, but affected by hypochondria, resulting largely from chloral—Physical delusions—Mr. Marshall and Dr. Maudsley—Extract from the Memoirs of Eighty Years, written by Dr. Hake, who takes Rossetti off to his house at Roehampton —Scott's remarks—Attempt at suicide by laudanum on the night of 8 June—Mistake as to serous apoplexy—I fetch my Mother and Sister Maria, Christina being ill—Brown calls-in Marshall, who, along with Hake, saves Rossetti's life—Mental disturbance continues, and Rossetti moves into Brown's house, followed by three houses in Perthshire—Hemiplegia—Rossetti's companions in Perthshire—Extracts from Scott and Hake—Resumption of painting, and gradual recovery—Surgical treatment—Money-affairs —Sale of the collection of china, and removal of pictures to Scott's house . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 303

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XXXV.

STAY AND WORK AT KELMSCOTT, 1872-4— THEODORE

WATTS.

Rossetti, with George Hake, returns from Scotland, and re-settles at Kelmscott Manor-house—His health and spirits at first good, afterwards re-injured by chloral—Personal details—Knows Theodore Watts as a lawyer, and soon as an intimate literary and personal friend—Fixes upon Howell as his professional agent— Advantages accruing from this connexion—J. R. Parsons, Howell's partner—Rossetti paints Proserpine , also La Ghirlandata , The Bower Maiden , The Blessed Damozel , Dante's Dream (smaller replica), The Roman Widow —Re-publishes Dante and his Circle —Nonsense-verses—Recurrence of gloomy fancies—Scott's cheque for £200—Quarrel with anglers—Rossetti leaves Kelmscott in July 1874, and never returns thither . . . . . . . . . . . . 321

XXXVI.

LONDON AND ELSEWHERE, 1874-8.

Discussion of Bell Scott's statements about Rossetti's seclusion, his desertion by old friends, George Hake, Browning, his new friends, his want of candour—Rossetti's condition of health and mental tone—Theodore Watts—Rossetti goes to Aldwick Lodge, Bognor —Libel-case, Buchanan, v. Taylor—Goes to Broadlands—The Mount-Temples and Mrs. Sumner—“Deafening” of Rossetti's studio—Mesmerism—Surgical operation, as narrated by Watts— Stay at Hunter's Forestall—Disappearance of letters—Details as to chloral—Brown ceases to see Rossetti for some months— Renewal of lease in Cheyne Walk—Death of Oliver Brown, and Rossetti's impression as to his posthumous writings—Death of Maria F. Rossetti . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 331

XXXVII.

INCIDENTS AND TRANSACTIONS, 1874-81— HALL CAINE.

Dissolution of the Partnership, Morris, Marshall, Falkner, & Co., 1874 —Rossetti obtains possession of the portrait of him painted by G. F. Watts, R.A.—He drops his connexion with Howell, 1876, and the reasons for this—Drawings falsely attributed to Rossetti —Fluctuations in his income—Funds for the families of James Hannay and J. L. Tupper, and exertions to benefit James Smetham —Declines to exhibit in the Grosvenor Gallery, 1877—An exception, for the benefit of an art-institution, to his system of not

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exhibiting—Unfounded report as to a visit from the Princess Louise—Rossetti's correspondence with Hall Caine begins, 1879 —Extract from Caine's Recollections as to his first visit to Rossetti, 1880—Reference to various details given by Caine as to Rossetti's opinions, etc.—His view debated as to Rossetti's natural irresolution and melancholy—Friends who arranged to visit Rossetti from day to day—Continued activity in painting, along with poetry, and the re-edition of Gilchrist's Life of Blake . . . . 346

XXXVIII.

PAINTINGS AND POEMS, 1874-81.

Pictures of The Blessed Damozel , Dante's Dream (replica), La Pia , La Bella Mano , Venus Astarte , The Sea-spell , Mnemosyne , Beata Beatrix (finished by Madox Brown), A Vision of Fiammetta , La Donna della Finestra , The Daydream —Designs of The Sphinx , The Spirit of the Rainbow , Perlascura , Desdemona's Death-song , Sancta Lilias , The Sonnet —Water-colour, Bruna Brunelleschi — Details as to The Sea-spell , Vision of Fiammetta , Daydream —Scott's narrative as to The Sphinx —Details as to Desdemona's Death-song and Bruna Brunelleschi — Haydon's Etching of Hamlet and Ophelia —Caine's account as to how Rossetti resumed poetical composition towards 1878— Sonnet on Cyprus—Other Sonnets— The historical ballads, The White Ship and The King's Tragedy — The Beryl-songs in Rose Mary . . . . . . . . . . . 362

XXXIX.

DANTE'S DREAM—BALLADS AND SONNETS.

In July 1881 Hall Caine becomes an inmate of Rossetti's house—His somewhat trying position there—Dunn leaves the house— Dante's Dream returned to Rossetti, at his own wish, by Valpy, who is to receive other works in exchange—Caine suggests to the authorities of the Walker Gallery, Liverpool, the purchase of this picture—Alderman Samuelson favours the proposal—Mr. R. and his proceedings in the same matter—Purchase carried out for £1,650, September 1881—Recognition by Rossetti of the friendliness of Caine and Samuelson—Transactions with Valpy and Graham—March 1881, Rossetti contemplates bringing out a new volume, Ballads and Sonnets , and re-issuing, in a modified form, the Poems of 1870—Publishing-arrangements, and rapid sale of Ballads and Sonnets in October—Proposed ballads on Joan of Arc, Abraham Lincoln, and Alexander III. of Scotland —Critics favourable to the new volume—Rossetti derives little pleasure from these successes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 369

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XL.

CUMBERLAND AND LONDON—FINAL ILLNESS.

Rossetti's state of health: blood-spitting, etc.—He goes with Caine to the Vale of St. John, Keswick, September 1881—Returns worse than he went—“Absolution for my sins”: Scott's narrative, and observations on Rossetti's opinions upon religion—Paintings: Salutation of Beatrice , duplicates of Proserpine and of Joan of Arc , Donna della Finestra —Visit from Dr. and Philip Marston— Quasi-paralytic attack and discontinuance of chloral—Account by Caine, and extracts from my Diary—Scott and Morris on the same subject—The Medical Resident Henry Maudsley, and the Nurse Mrs. Abrey—Rossetti, with Caine and Miss Caine, goes to Birchington-on-Sea—Scott's remarks on Rossetti's later years— Miss Caine's reminiscences . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 375

XLI.

BIRCHINGTON-ON-SEA.

Birchington and Westcliff Bungalow—Rossetti's condition there—He is joined by his Mother and Sister—Other friends—Paintings of Proserpine and of Joan of Arc , and sketches of his Father [ sketch 1] for Vasto—Ballad of Jan van Hunks , and Sonnets on The Sphinx — Novel-reading—Correspondence with Joseph Knight and Ernest Chesneau—Extracts from Mrs. Rossetti's Diary . . . . 390

XLII.

DEATH AND FUNERAL.

My visit to Birchington, 1 April 1882—Extracts from my Diary, showing Dante's very grave condition of health—Extracts from Mrs. Rossetti's Diary, 4 to 9 April—Rossetti's death, 9 April—My memorandum of it—His will—Arrival of Lucy Rossetti and Charlotte Polidori—The funeral, further extracts from Mrs. Rossetti's Diary, and letter from Judge Lushington—The tombstone, stained-glass window, and monument in Cheyne Walk 395

XLIII.

PERSONAL DETAILS—EXTRACTS.

Rossetti's character—Canon Dixon's statement—Remarks by Knight, Patmore, and Watts—His appearance—His feeling as to the

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beauties of Nature—His views on politics—Various remarks of his on fine art, literature, and other matters, along with observations by Hunt, Caine, Sharp, Oliver Brown, and myself . . 404

XLIV.

ROSSETTI AS PAINTER AND POET—EXTRACTS.

Decision not to offer my own criticism on this matter—Extracts: upon Fine Art, Leighton, Royal Scottish Academy, Hunt, Stephens, Quilter, Ruskin, Smetham, Shields, Hake, Rod, Mourey, Sartorio —Upon Literature, Swinburne, Watts, Caine, Forman, Knight, Hueffer, Sharp, Mrs. Wood, Patmore, Myers, William Morris, Pater, Madame Darmesteter, Skelton, Sarrazin, Gamberale— other Translators and Critics named . . . . . . 423

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LIST OF PORTRAITS.

VOL. I.

I. Dante Gabriel Rossetti, 1855. By Himself . Frontispiece

II. Gabriele Rossetti, 1853. By D. G. Rossetti . To face p. 20

III. Gaetano Polidori, 1848. By D. G. Rossetti . ,, 123

IV. Elizabeth Eleanor Siddal (Rossetti), 1854. By Herself . . . . . . . . . ,, 175

V. Christina G. Rossetti, 1848. By D. G. Rossetti ,, 342

page: [xxxii]

Note: Blank page

page: [xxxiii]

ERRATA.

Vol. I.

Page xxi, line 12 from bottom, for Morte read Mort

,, 14, line 11, for dark-speaking read dark speaking

,, 54 ,, 8, for Rufini read Ruffini

,, 59 ,, 6, for Fitz-Eustace read De Wilton

,, 119, lines 14, 15, for I have not the least recollection of what it was read the Study in the manner of the Early Masters

,, 135, line 5, for Fuhrich read Steinle

,, 166 ,, 11, for never read hardly

,, 199 ,, 17 etc., for I do not know— etc. to end of paragraph, read These expressions occur in a letter to Mr. Skelton

,, 235 ,, 19, for the earlier days of 1864 read August 1863

,, 254 ,, 21, for perhaps in 1863 read in 1864

,, 274 ,, 17 etc., for I cannot say— down to prominent among them read Two of these friends were Mr. Scott and Mr. Howell; perhaps also Mr. Henry Virtue Tebbs— down to Doctors' Commons

,, 290 ,, 6 from bottom, for forgot read forget

,, 304 ,, 16, for while read wile

,, 336 ,, 22, for public read published

,, 359 ,, 4 from bottom, for latter read former

,, 401 ,, 21, for if not read and indeed

,, 409 ,, last, for XXX read IX

,, 418 ,, 17, for lkely read likely

,, 436 ,, 2, for reputations read reputation,

,, ,, ,, 9, for object read objects

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Note: Blank page

page: [1]

MEMOIR

OF

DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI

BY

WILLIAM MICHAEL ROSSETTI.

Be sure that Love ordained for souls more meek

His roadside dells of rest.

page: [2]

Note: Blank page

page: 3

Gabriel Charles Dante Rossetti, commonly known as Dante Gabriel Rossetti, was born on 12 May 1828, at No. 38 Charlotte Street, Portland Place, London. This house is the last or most northerly house, but one, 1 on the right-hand or eastern side of the street, as you turn into it to the left, down Weymouth Street, out of Portland Place. Charlotte Street, beyond No. 39, forms a cul-de-sac. The infant was baptized at the neighbouring All Souls' Church, Langham Place, as a member of the Church of England. From his father he received the name Gabriel; from his godfather the name Charles; and from poetical and literary associations the name Dante. His godfather was Mr. Charles Lyell, of Kinnordy, Kirriemuir, Forfarshire; a keen votary of Dante and Italian literature, a helpful friend to our father, and himself father of the celebrated geologist, Sir Charles Lyell. Some living members of the Lyell family continue to be well known to the present generation.

Transcribed Footnote (page 3):

1 No. 39 is now to the right hand of No. 38. It appears to me that this was not the case when we lived in No. 38, but that that was then the last house of all. The closed-up end of the street has been wholly altered since my boyish days.

Our parents were Gabriele Pasquale Giuseppe Rossetti (always called Gabriele Rossetti), and Frances Mary Lavinia

page: 4

Rossetti, née Polidori; and, before proceeding further with my narrative, I shall give some particulars about them, and about other members of the family.

Gabriele Rossetti was born on 28 February 1783, in the city of Vasto, named also (by a corruption from Longobard nomenclature) Vasto Ammone, in the Province of Abruzzo Citeriore, on the Adriatic coast of the then Kingdom of Naples. Vasto is a very ancient place, a municipal town of the Romans, then designated Histonium. We are not bound—though some enthusiasts feel themselves permitted— to believe that it was founded by the Homeric hero Diomed: its patron saint is the Archangel Michael. Gabriele was the youngest son of Nicola Rossetti, and his wife Maria Francesca, née Pietrocola. Nicola Rossetti was a Blacksmith, of very moderate means; 1 a man of somewhat severe and irascible nature, whose death ensued not long after the French-republican invasion of the Kingdom of Naples in 1799. The French put some affront upon him—I believe they gave him a smart beating for failing or neglecting to furnish required provisions; and, being unable to stomach this, or to resent it as he would have liked, his health declined, and soon he was no more. His wife belonged to a local family of fair credit: but, like other Italian women of that period, she received no scholastic training; she could not write nor even read. The name Rossetti might be translated into “Ruddykins” or “Redkins” as an English

Transcribed Footnote (page 4):

1 A Vastese connexion of mine, Signor Giuseppe Marchesani, favoured me, early in 1895, with a number of mortuary and other inscriptions which he had composed to various members of the family. I will give here the one relating to Nicola Rossetti, who probably remains otherwise unrecorded, unless by some “forlorn hic jacet.” Of course anything written in a lapidary style reads less well in my English than in Marchesani's Italian. “Nicola Rossetti, Blacksmith poor and honourable, lovingly sent in boyhood to their first studies his sons, carefully nurtured in childhood. If Fortune neglected him, provident Nature ultimately distinguished, in the obscure Artizan, the well-graced Father, who, to the strokes of his hammer on the battered anvil, sent forth the sonorous and glorious echo, beyond remote Abruzzo, into Italy and other lands.”

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equivalent. My father used to say that the Rossetti race was an offshoot of the Della Guardia family, well known and still subsisting in Vasto; and that at some date or other certain children of the Della Guardia stock were noted for florid complexion and reddish hair, and thus got called “the Rossetti,” in accordance with the Italian hobby for nicknames, and that this name gradually stuck to them as a patronymic.

Nicola and Maria Francesca Rossetti had a rather large family, four sons and three daughters, and three of the sons earned distinction. There was Domenico, who was versed (as a local historian records) “in medical science, in civil and canonical law, and in theology,” writing in Italian, Latin, French, and to some extent Hebrew, and was “the first among mortals who daringly descended into the Grotto of Montecalvo near Nice.” On this theme he wrote a poem in three cantos, besides other poems (two volumes, printed in Parma) and prose: he was besides an Improvisatore. Born in 1772, he died comparatively young in 1816. There was also Andrea, the eldest brother, who became a Canon of San Giuseppe in Vasto; and thirdly, Gabriele, whom I may be excused for regarding as a more important writer than even the polyglot Domenico. I might include, as showing that verse-writing ran in the family, the fourth son, Antonio, who exercised the humble calling of a wig-maker and barber: he likewise versified in an off-hand popular manner, and was of some note to his fellow-townsmen.

Gabriele Rossetti came into the world well endowed for the arts. As it turned out, he took to poetry and other forms of literature; but he might equally have excelled in drawing or in vocal music. I have before me as I write three MSS. containing specimens of his early skill as a draughtsman, done when he was twenty years old or thereabouts. The drawings are illustrations to poems (juvenile enough) of his own composition, and are surprisingly precise and dainty in execution. One would have little hesitation in calling them copper-engravings; but they are, in fact, pen-designs done with sepia, which he himself extracted

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from the cuttlefish or “calamarello,” so dear to Neapolitan gourmands. An ornamental headpiece, two decorative title- pages, and two landscapes founded on traditions of Claude or Gaspar Poussin, are his own inventions. One drawing is a group of two women after Mignard; and two or three others may also be copies. From my earliest childhood I have looked with astonishment on these performances as pieces of manipulation; and, after a lifetime spent among artists, I hardly know what to put beside them in their own limited line of attempt. Then, as to music, Gabriele had a beautiful tenor-voice, sweet and sonorous in a high degree. It received no regular cultivation, but was such that he was more than once urged to train himself for the operatic stage —a mode of life, however, for which he had no sort of inclination.

The local magnate was the Marchese del Vasto, of the great historic house of D'Avalos, into which the famous Vittoria Colonna married. He was feudal Lord of the Vastese, and they acknowledged themselves his “vassals,” though this state of things, in the epoch of a Robespierre and a Napoleon, was not destined to continue long. The attention of the Marchese was soon called to the uncommon promise of his growing-up vassal Gabriele Rossetti, and, after some well-conducted schooling in Vasto, the youth was sent in 1804, under the patronage of this nobleman, to study in the University of Naples. His education here was cut short after a year and a month, and consequently had not a very wide range. In middle life he read Latin with ease, and retained some remnant of geometry and mathematics, but of Greek he had no knowledge. In French he was well versed, speaking the language with great fluency and an amusing assumption of the tone of a Frenchman. English he acquired by practice in Malta and in this country, and could both read and talk it tolerably enough, though he never did so when he had the option of Italian.

Rossetti was just twenty-three years of age when the Bourbon king, Ferdinand I., was turned out of his continental

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dominion, and had to retire into Sicily, and Joseph Bonaparte reigned in his stead. With Ferdinand vanished the Marchese del Vasto, who was his Court-Majordomo. Thus all the years of Rossetti's early manhood were passed in association with a Napoleonic and not a Bourbon order of ideas. As a sequel to his first volume of poems, published in 1807, he obtained an appointment as librettist in the operatic theatre of San Carlo, writing three or more opera-books, one of them named Giulio Sabino. He was kept in hot water, however, by the exigencies of managers and vocalists, and got transferred to the Curatorship of Ancient Marbles and Bronzes in the Museum of Naples. He figured in the Academy of the Arcadi as “Filidauro Labidiense.” There used to be a catch,—

“Rossini, Rossetti,

Divini, imperfetti”;

but whether my father was ever linked with Rossini in any operatic production I am unable to say. Rossetti was well received at the Court of King Joachim (Murat), the successor of Joseph. I have heard him say that he knew something of almost all the Bonapartes, except only the great Napoleon. I possess a slight portrait of him done by the Princess Charlotte Bonaparte; and another of the family, Lady Dudley Stuart, acted as godmother to his daughter Christina. In my own time Prince Pierre Bonaparte (too notorious as the homicide of Victor Noir) was frequently in our house; occasionally also Prince Louis Napoleon, the unduly glorified and duly execrated Napoleon III., of whom my father would emphatically declare that he could never trace in him one grain ( neppure un' ombra) of Liberalism. King Joachim fell in 1815, and King Ferdinand was restored to his capital city, Naples; a state of things not likely to be much to the taste of Gabriele Rossetti—who in 1813 had acted as Secretary to that part of the provisional government, sent by Joachim to Rome, which looked after public instruction and the fine arts. He did not, however, under the

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restored Bourbon, lose his post in the Museum. An agitation ensued for a constitution similar to that which the Spaniards established in 1819—the secret society of the Carbonari, in which Rossetti was a member of the General Assembly, being especially active in this direction. In 1820 there was a military uprising, and Ferdinand had to grant the constitution —probably with a fixed intention of revoking it at the first opportunity. Rossetti's ode to the Dawn of the Constitution-day, “Sei pur bella cogli astri sul crine” (“Lovely art thou with stars in hair”), was in every Neapolitan mouth. In 1821 the king, then sojourning in Austria, abolished the constitution, and suppressed it with the aid of Austrian troops. Carbonarism was made a capital offence, and the leading constitutionalists were denounced and proscribed, among them Rossetti. He is said to have been viewed by the king with especial abhorrence, partly because various writings, not really his, were attributed to him, and partly because one of his lyrics contained the lines—

“I Sandi ed i Luvelli

Non son finiti ancor,”

(Sands and Louvels are not yet extinct.) The reference, it will be perceived, is to the political assassination of Kotzebue by Sand, and of the Duc de Berri by Louvel, with a suggestion that a like fate might easily befall King Ferdinand. Rossetti did not say that it ought to befall him; but the king was not inclined to take a good-natured view of the matter, or to construe the phrase rather as a loyal warning than as an incitement to a deed of blood. The peccant poet lay concealed in Naples for three months, beginning in March 1821; finally the British admiral, Sir Graham Moore, pressed by his generous wife who knew and liked Rossetti, furnished him with a British uniform, got him off in a carriage to the harbour, and shipped him to Malta. I have before me a printed proclamation of King Ferdinand— the original document, dated 28 September 1822—granting an amnesty to persons concerned in the revolutionary or

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constitutional movement, with the exception of thirteen men expressly named. My father is the thirteenth. In Malta he remained about two years and a half, holding classes (as indeed he had previously done in Naples) for instruction in the Latin and Italian languages and literature, and most liberally befriended by the English poet and diplomatist, John Hookham Frere, the translator of Aristophanes: their amicable relations continued after distance had separated them. Deep indeed were the affection and respect which Rossetti entertained for Frere. One of my vivid reminiscences is of the day when the death of Frere was announced to him, 1 in 1846. With tears in his half-sightless eyes and the passionate fervour of a southern Italian, my father fell on his knees, and exclaimed, “Anima bella, benedetta sii tu, dovunque sei!” 2

Rossetti had long been a noted Improvisatore, as well as a poet in the accustomed way (he continued to improvise to some extent for a while, even after coming to London), and this, with his other gifts, made him popular in Maltese society. After a while, however, he was harassed by the spies or other emissaries of the Bourbon Government, which embittered his position so much that he resolved to have done with Malta, and settle in England. Here he arrived in January or February 1824, and fixed himself in London. He soon made acquaintance with the Polidori family, and a mutual attachment united him in marriage with the second daughter, Frances Mary Lavinia, in April 1826. He subsisted by teaching Italian, and held perhaps the foremost place in that vocation. In 1831 he was appointed Professor of Italian in King's College, London. This professorship was not a sinecure; but the students were few, and became fewer from about 1840 onwards, when the German language began decidedly to supersede the Italian in public favour. My

Transcribed Footnote (page 9):

1 The person who announced it was Mr. Edward Graham, the associate of Shelley in early youth. He had taken to the musical profession, and was a man of uncommonly handsome presence: his bodily were superior to his mental endowments.

Transcribed Footnote (page 9):

2 “Noble soul, blessed be thou wherever thou art.”

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father made at the best a very moderate income; yet this sufficed for all the requirements of himself, and his wife and four children, and no man could be more heartily contented with what he got—more strenuous and cheerful in working for it, or more willing “to cut his coat” (he never turned it) “according to his cloth.” The British religion of “keeping up appearances” was unknown—thank Heaven—in my paternal home; my father disregarded it from temperament and foreign way of thinking and living, and my mother contemned it with modest or noble superiority. The tolerably thriving condition of our household declined with my father's decline in health, which began towards 1842: interruption of professional work, waning employment, inability to take up such employment as offered, necessarily ensued. In 1843 (having hitherto had uncommonly keen eyesight) he suddenly lost one eye through amaurosis, and the other eye was greatly weakened and in constant peril, though he was never bereft of sight totally. A real tussle for the means of subsistence now arose, but by one method or other all was tided over. Our scale of living, if somewhat more threadbare and dingy, did not materially dwindle from its unassuming yet comfortable average; and no butcher nor baker nor candlestick-maker ever had a claim upon us for a sixpence unpaid. In his closing years my father had more than one stroke of paralysis. Some of these were of a formidable kind; yet he got over them to a substantial extent, lived on in a suffering state of body, and with mental faculties weakened, though not impaired in any definite and absolute way, and continued diligent in reading and writing almost to the last day of his life. His sufferings, often severe, were borne with patience and courage (he had an ample stock of both qualities), though not with that unemotional calm which would have been foreign to his Italian nature. For nearly a year before his death he lived, with his wife and daughter Christina, at Frome Selwood in Somerset; but finally he returned to London, and died at No. 166 Albany Street, Regent's Park, on 26 April 1854, firm-minded and placid, and glad to be

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released, in the presence of all his family. His young cousin, Teodorico Pietrocola-Rossetti, was also there. He lies buried in Highgate Cemetery.

Gabriele Rossetti was man of energetic and lively temperament, of warm affections, sensitive to slight or rebuff, and well capable of repelling it, devoted to his family and home, full of good-nature and good-humour, a fervent patriot, honourable and aboveboard in all his dealings, and as pleasant and inspiriting company as one could wish to meet. Though sensitive as above stated, he was not in the least quarrelsome, and never began a conflict about either literary or personal matters: this disposition he transmitted to his son Dante Gabriel. For some years after settling in London he went a good deal into society, and was welcomed in several houses. This had diminished at the date of my earliest reminiscences, and soon it had wholly ceased. He could tell an amusing story most capitally—I have hardly known his equal at that —with good dramatic “take-off”; and, though his ordinary speech was, to the best of my judgment, very pure Italian, he could readily throw himself back, when he liked, into the Neapolitan dialect, or the Abruzzese, which is not a little provincial. 1 He always spoke Italian in the family, never English; and his children from the earliest years, as well as his wife, answered in Italian. Apart from domestic simplicity or sportiveness, his conversation was always high-minded, implying a solid standard of public and private virtue: nothing about it mean or sly or worldly, or tampering with principle. There was indeed a certain tinge of self-opinion or self-applause in his temperament; he rather liked “to ride the high horse” (as I have heard my brother phrase

Transcribed Footnote (page 11):

1 I possess two good books showing the dialect of Vasto, sent to me by the courtesy of their authors: the Vocabolario dell' Uso Abruzzese , by Gennaro Finamore, and the Fujj' Ammesche, by Luigi Anelli. The latter volume is a series of sonnets, which appear to me highly excellent of their popular kind. When I say that the Vastese words “Fujj' Ammesche” represent the Italian words “Foglie Miste,” my English reader will be able to judge whether Vastese is a pure or impure form of Italian.

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it); but this was quite free from envy or disparagement of others, and did no one any harm. Of what one calls “personal vanity” he had a plentiful lack, and was indeed very careless (like many other Italians) in all matters of the outer man. As a father he was most kind, and would often allow his four children to litter and rollick about the room while he plodded through some laborious matter of literary composition. He always retained, however, a perceptible tone of the patria potestas. Rossetti was a splendid declaimer or reciter, with perfect elocution. He put his heart into whatsoever he did. His MSS. are models of fine and minute penmanship, and show enormous pains in the way of revision and recasting.

He was an ardent lover of liberty, in thought and in the constitution of society. In religion he was mainly a free-thinker, strongly anti-papal and anti-sacerdotal, but not inclined, in a Protestant country, to abjure the faith of his fathers. He never attended any place of worship. Spite of his free-thinking, he had the deepest respect for the moral and spiritual aspects of the Christian religion, and in his later years might almost be termed an unsectarian and undogmatic Christian. As a freethinker, he was naturally exempt from popular superstitions—did not believe in ghosts, second sight, etc.; and the same statement holds good of our mother. In this respect Dante Gabriel, as soon as his mind got a little formed, differed from his parents; being quite willing to entertain, in any given case, the question whether a ghost or demon had made his appearance or not, and having indeed a decided bias towards suspecting that he had. One point, however, of popular superstition, or I should rather say of superstitious habit, my father had not discarded. A fancy existed in the Abruzzi (I dare say it still exists) that, if one steps over a child seated or lying on the ground, the child's growth would be arrested; and I have more than once seen my father divert his path to avoid stepping over any one of us. In politics he belonged more to the party of constitutional monarchy than to that of republicanism, but welcomed

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anything that told for freedom. He always advocated the unity of Italy, long before that aspiration was considered a very practical one; indeed, I have seen him described, on good authority, as the first apostle of unity, but am not clear that his is strictly accurate.

In estimating Rossetti's work as a national or patriotic poet, and his general attitude of mind in matters of politics, or of government in State and Church, we should remember the conditions (already referred to) under which his life had been passed. He was born under the feudal and despotic system of the Neapolitan Bourbons; his youth witnessed the more open-minded but still despotic Napoleonic rule; the Bourbon restoration brought-on a constitution sworn to by the sovereign, who soon after perjured himself in suppressing it; lifelong exile ensured to Rossetti and other constitutionalists. Then he lived through many abortive insurrections against the temporal and ecclesiastical dominators of Italy; through the brilliant promise and the retrogression of Pope Pius IX. (whom at first he acclaimed with unmeasured fervour); through the high deeds, glorious prospects, and dolorous collapse, of the revolutionary years 1848-49, and through the fuliginous beginnings of the Neapolitan King Bomba; followed by a genuinely liberal government in Piedmont under Victor Emmanuel and Cavour, by the coup d'état of Napoleon III., and by general stagnancy of political thought and act throughout Europe. He died five years before 1859, which produced the alliance between France and Piedmont, the expulsion of the Austrians from Lombardy, and the commencement of the unification of Italy. When he died in 1854 the outlook seemed extremely dark; yet heart and hope did not abate in him. The latest letter of his which I have seen published was written in September or October 1853, and contains this passage, equally strong-spirited and prophetic—

“The Arpa Evangelica . . . ought to find free circulation through all Italy. I do not say the like of three other unpublished volumes, which all seethe with love of country and hatred for tyrants. These

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Note: In the first paragraph, “dark-speaking” should read “dark speaking”.

await a better time—which will come, be very sure of it. The present fatal period will pass, and serves to whet the universal desire. . . . Let us look to the future. Our tribulations, dear madam, will not finish very soon, but finish they will at last. Reason has awakened in all Europe, although her enemies are strong. We shall pass various years in this state of degradation; then we shall rouse up. I assuredly shall not see it, for day by day, nay hour by hour, I expect the much-longed-for death; but you will see it.”

In person Gabriele Rossetti was rather below the middle height, and full in flesh till his health failed; with a fine brow, a marked prominent nose and large nostrils, dark-speaking eyes, pleasant mouth, engaging smile, and genuine laugh. He indulged in gesticulation, not to any great extent, but of course more than an Englishman. His hands were rather small—not a little spoiled by a life-long habit of munching his nails. As to other personal habits, I may mention free snuff-taking without any smoking; and a hearty appetite while health lasted, with more of vegetable diet than Englishmen use. In his later years teeth and palate had failed, and all viands “tasted like hay.” Fermented liquors he only touched seldom and sparingly. He had liked the English beer, but had to leave it off altogether in 1836, to avoid recurrent attacks of gout. In fact, he liked most things English—the national and individual liberty, the constitution, the people and their moral tone, though the British leaven of social Toryism was far from being to his taste. He certainly preferred the English nation, on the whole, to the French, and had a kind of prepossession against Frenchwomen, which he pushed to a humorous over-plus in speech—saying for instance that, if a Frenchwoman and himself were to be the sole tenants of an otherwise uninhabited island, the human race on that island would decidedly not be prolonged into a second generation. My father also took very kindly to the English coal-fires, and was an adept in keeping them up; he would jocularly speak of “buying his climate at the coal-merchant's.” In all my earlier years I used frequently to see my father come home in the dusk rather fagged with his

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round of teaching, and after dining he would lie down flat on the hearthrug close by the fire, and fall asleep for an hour or two, snoring vigorously. Beside him would stand up our old familiar tabby cat, poised on her haunches, and holding on by the fore-claws inserted into the fender-wires, warming her furry front. Her attitude (I have never seen any feline imitation of it) was peculiar, somewhat in the shape of a capital Y—“the cat making the Y” was my father's phrase for this performance. She was the mother of a numerous progeny; one of her daughters—also long an inmate of our house—was a black-and-white cat named Zoe by my elder sister Maria, who had a fancy for anything Greekish; but Zoe never made a Y.

Rossetti had produced a tolerable amount of verse in Italy, also the descriptive account (which passes under the name of Cavalier Finati) of the Naples Museum; but all his more solid and voluminous writing was done after he had settled in London. The principal works are as follows: 1826— Dante, Commedia (the Inferno alone was published), with a Commentary aiming to show that the poem is chiefly political and anti-papal in its inner meaning. A great deal of controversy was excited at the time by this work, and by others which succeeded it. 1832— Lo Spirito Antipapale che produsse la Riforma ( The Anti-Papal Spirit which produced the Reformation ), following up and extending the same line of thought. An English translation was also published. 1833— Iddio e l'Uomo, Salterio ( God and Man, a Psaltery), poems. The two last-named books have the honour of being in the Pontifical Index Librorum Prohibitorum , edition 1838, and perhaps others are there now. 1840— Il Mistero dell' Amor Platonico del Medio Evo ( The Mysterious Platonic Love of the Middle Ages), five volumes; a book of daring and elaborately ingenious speculation, enforcing the analogy of many illustrious writers, as forming a secret society of anti-Catholic thought, with the doctrines of Gnosticism and Freemasonry (Rossetti was himself a Freemason). This book was printed and prepared for publication, but was withheld

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Note: Type damage obscures page number.

(partly at the instance of Mr. Frere) as likely to be accounted rash and subversive. 1842— La Beatrice di Dante, contending that Dante's Beatrice was a symbolic personage, not a real woman. 1846— Il Veggente in Solitudine ( The Seer in Solitude), a poem of patriotic aim, in a discursive and rhapsodical form, embodying a good deal of autobiography and of earlier material. It circulated largely though clandestinely in Italy, and a medal of Rossetti was struck there in commemoration. 1847— Versi (miscellaneous poems). 1852— L'Arpa Evangelica ( The Evangelic Harp), religious poems.

As regards my father's writings on Dante and other authors—the outcome of an immense amount of miscellaneous, often curious and abstruse, reading—I may be allowed to say that I regard his views and arguments as cogent, without being convincing. They affect one more in beginning one of his books than in ending it. He certainly made some mistakes, and urged some details to a wiredrawn or futile extreme, and in especial he was not sufficiently master of the happy instinct when to leave off, so that his longest and most important book, the Mistero dell' Amor Platonico , becomes cumbrous with subsidiary matter. In his poems also he was over-fond of amplifying and loading, being too unwilling to leave a composition as it stood; though he wrote with great mastery and ease, and a brilliant command of metre, rhythm, and melody. Many snatches of his verse are forcible and moving in a high degree, and rouse a contagious enthusiasm. He has left in MS. a versified account of his life, written between 1846 and 1851. It is not long, nor yet very short, and is about the completest as well as the most authentic account that exists of his career. I should like to translate it some day, and publish it in England.

To give some idea of Rossetti's poetry, I cannot do better than extract here one of the remarks upon it made by the pre-eminent Italian poet of our own day, Giosuè Carducci, in a selection from Rossetti which he edited in 1861. Carducci, after contrasting him with some of his contemporary writers, terms him—

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Note: Type damage obscures page signature and final word of page, as well as page number.

Sig. VOL. I. [2]

“The singer who, notwithstanding his defects, conforms the most to the poetic taste and the harmonic faculty of the Italian people. No plethora of murky inventions, and of recondite and strange forms, and of versified disquisitions, and of nebulous swathings; but a daring and serene fancy, impetus of emotion, plenteousness and sometimes superabundance of colouring, facility, harmony, melody, make these poems truly Italian, make them singable. Singable, I say; and I know that this praise may, in the opinion of some, amount to blame, now that for the most part singable poetry is of the worst.”

Not in Vasto alone, but in all Italy, Rossetti's reputation as a patriotic poet stood high—more perhaps among the men of action and the ardent youth than among the critical assessors of literary merit. A proposal was made to transfer his remains to a sepulchre in Italy, as an act of national recognition. My mother having demurred, an inscription was set up to him in the Florentine cloister of Santa Croce, which counts as the Italian Walhalla or Westminster Abbey. In Vasto the centenary of his birth was celebrated in 1883 with much evidence of enthusiasm. The principal Piazza (del Pesce, as first entitled) and the Communal Theatre are named after him; and it has long been proposed—though perhaps rather half-heartedly—to erect his statue, and to purchase for the town the house in a part of which he was born—an ancient and somewhat stately-looking though plain edifice, battered by time and neglect. I am tempted to extract here a few of the many eulogiums pronounced upon Rossetti at the centenary—not unconscious, however, of the caution with which any utterances on such an occasion are to be received.

From the speech of Professor Francesco di Rosso:—

“He then conceived that love of his oppressed country, and that indignation against the oppressors, which were to be (as I may say) the religion of his entire life, and were to dictate to him the most beautiful strains, and make him the Tyrtæus of the battles of the Italian liberty, unity, and independence, the poet sacred to Italy and Europe labouring under tyranny, under political and religious re-action.”

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From the speech of the sub-prefect Cavalier Domenico Fabretti:—

“Many were the public-spirited poets of Italy: but none conjectured the cycle of her evolution, shadowed forth its agents, designed its forms, with the forecasting precision, the exact intuition, of your Rossetti. He was not only the sweet poet of the Arcadian stylus, was not only the studious and elegant verse-writer, was not only the fervent patriot, but was the seer of the Italian re-arising.”

From a pamphlet by signor Adelfo Mayo, 1 addressed to the workmen of Vasto:—

“You, citizens and workmen, will deserve well of your country if you will imitate the domestic and civil virtues of that great man, if you strive with all your efforts to preserve intact the sacred deposit of the Italian liberties under the sceptre of the Kings of Savoy, and if you also co-operate, as best you may, in raising a worthy monument to one who, conferring honour upon our city, has honoured likewise the Abruzzi and the entire peninsula.”

In England very little has got into print showing Gabriele Rossetti “in his habit as he lived.” There are, however, two recent books which give an idea of him in his later years, and in each instance the idea is a true one as far as it goes. Mr. William Bell Scott's Autobiographical Notes (1892) contain the following passage, relating to the close of 1847 or beginning of 1848:—

“I entered the small front parlour or dining-room of the house [50 Charlotte Street], and found an old gentleman sitting by the fire in a great chair, the table drawn close to his chair, with a thick manuscript book open before him, and the largest snuff-box I ever saw beside it conveniently open. He had a black cap on his head furnished with a great peak or shade for the eyes, so that I saw his face only partially. . . . The old gentleman signed to a chair for

Transcribed Footnote (page 18):

1 With this fine-minded and cultivated gentleman, well meriting his high position in the Vastese community, I have had the pleasure of keeping up some correspondence ever since the date of the centenary meeting.

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my sitting down, and explained that his son was now painting in the studio he and a young friend had taken together: this young friend's name was Holman Hunt. 1 . . . The old gentleman's pronunciation of English was very Italian; and, though I did not know that, both of them—he and his daughter [Christina]—were probably at that moment writing poetry of some sort, and might wish me far enough, I left very soon.”

The second portrait of my father, and a very good one it is, is traced by Mr. Frederic George Stephens in his monograph named Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1894): it shows a memory highly retentive of characterizing details:—

“As might be expected of one possessing so many accomplishments, and whose career had been marked by so much courage, the Professor was a man of striking character and aspect; so that, when I was introduced to him in 1848 [some few months perhaps after Mr. Scott's first visit to our house], and his grand climacteric was past, and (as with most Italians) a life of studies told upon him heavily, I could not but be struck with the noble energy of his face, and by the high culture his expression attested, while a sort of eager, almost passionate resolution seemed to glow in all he said and did. To a youngster, such as I was then, he seemed much older than his years; and, while seated reading at a table with two candles behind him, and (because his sight was failing) with a wide shade over his eyes, he looked a very Rembrandt come to life. The light was reflected from a manuscript placed close to his face, and, in the shadow which covered them, made distinct all the fineness and vigour of his sharply moulded features. It was half lost upon his somewhat shrunken figure wrapped in a student's dressing-gown, and shone fully upon the lean, bony, and delicate

Transcribed Footnote (page 19):

1 According to Mr. Scott, this was his first call at No. 50 Charlotte Street, and the interview took place “about Christmas 1847-48.” I consider that the correct date of his first call was in December 1847 or January 1848. But Mr. Scott's memory must have been entirely wrong as to his then hearing about the studio shared by Holman Hunt and Dante Rossetti, for there was no such sharing of any studio until late in August 1848, and the words put into our father's mouth, if spoken at all, must have been spoken later than “about Christmas 1847-48.” Ex uno disce multos .

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hands in which he held the paper. He looked like an old and somewhat imperative prophet, and his voice had a slightly rigorous ring, speaking to his sons and their visitors.”

I am not sure that the word “rigorous” would here convey quite the right impression. My father's address in such cases was clear and emphatic, and as if no dissent were expected to ensue; but it was not marked by anything hard or brusque.

Good-natured and indulgent though he in fact was, and animated with the most resolute desire to do his very best for the present and future of his children, our love nevertheless was chiefly concentrated upon our mother—and never did mother deserve it better. This preference may have been rather less marked in my elder sister Maria than with the rest of us. Frances Mary Lavinia Polidori was born in London, 42 Broad Street, Golden Square (the same street in which William Blake had been born forty-three years before), on 27 April 1800. Thus she was seventeen years younger than her husband. Of her parents I shall say something in my next Section. She was brought up with a view to her becoming a governess; and at the early age of sixteen she took charge of her first pupil, the adopted daughter of Mr. Thomas Dickins, of Vale Lodge, Leatherhead, Surrey. I have heard my mother say that in this house she used to see from time to time John Shelley, the brother of the poet. He was a very handsome youth, aged then some thirteen or fourteen, and all mention of the name of that world-abandoned rebel, the versifying atheist, was strictly forbidden. Hence my mother passed into the families of Mr. Justice Bolland (whom she highly respected), and of Sir Patrick Macgregor. One of her pupils, Miss Georgina Macgregor, became the second godmother of my sister, Christina Georgina. A brother of Sir Patrick, a Colonel, fell not a little in love with Miss Polidori. Whether this highly estimable gentleman (as such he was always represented to me) would have made up his mind to “proposing for the governess” I am unable to say; but anyhow he was forestalled by the Neapolitan refugee

page: [20a recto]

By D. G. Rossetti. 1853.

Gabriele Rossetti.

Figure: Profile. Torso. Seated at writing desk.

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Note: Blank page

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Rossetti, who rapidly won the damsel's heart, and was promptly accepted. The marriage proved a truly happy one, spite of narrow circumstances, and the harrassing troubles of my father's long illnesses and decay. On his side there was deep unwavering affection, and the most absolute esteem and confidence; on hers, affection and confidence in no less measure, and a cordial admiration for his uncommon gifts and attainments.

Mrs. Rossetti was well bred and well educated, a constant reader, full of clear perception and sound sense on a variety of subjects, and perfectly qualified to hold her own in society; a combination of abnormal modesty of self-estimate (free, however, from the silliness or insincerity of self-disparagement), and of retirement and repose of character, and of devotion to home duties, kept her back. The idea of “making an impression” never appeared to present itself to her mind— still less the idea of outshining or rivalling any one else. I doubt whether in the whole course of my life I once saw her go out to an ordinary “evening party.” Perfect simplicity of thought, speech, and manner, characterized her always; I venture to think that it was dignity under another name. For conscientiousness, veracity, the keeping confidences inviolate, the utter absence of censoriousness or tittle-tattle, she was an absolute model: all this came so natural to her that it passed almost unnoticed, or seemed a matter of course. Day and night she attended to the household—doing needlework, teaching her girls, keeping things in order, etc. In all the central years of her life there was only one servant in the house. She was deeply but unpretentiously religious, a member of the Church of England, very constant in church-attendance. In my earlier years she might be regarded as belonging rather to the “Evangelical” branch of the Church, but later on her associations grew to be of the “high church” kind. This only made a difference of habitude, not of essentials. She took a reasonable interest in matters of politics, her sympathies being on the Liberal side. She wrote correctly in prose, and some few times even in verse; but

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without having, at any time of her life, any notion of doing aught for publication. I have heard that in youth she was considered rather a “quiz” (as the phrase then ran), or a person with a sharp eye for the ridiculous in others. Of this I myself remember few symptoms or none; but certainly she knew a pretender or a humbug when she saw one, and could express her perception by clear word of mouth. With all the reserve of her character, her total want of forwardness, her mostly unspoken scorn of semblances which have not realities behind them, there was nothing about her of the merely stolid or negative; her feelings were warm, and even her temper might have been less unruffled than it was, but for a life-long practice of moderating self-control. She was just, liberal, kind, forgiving, steadfast. A son who has any evil to say of his mother might feel embarrassed until he had managed to say it mildly: I am spared any such embarrassment. To sum up—she was one of the most womanly of women.

My mother once said—it may have been towards 1872 or 1873: “I always had a passion for intellect, and my wish was that my husband should be distinguished for intellect, and my children too. I have had my wish [and this she might well say in reference to her elder son and her younger daughter, not to bring the remaining two into question]; and I now wish that there were a little less intellect in the family, so as to allow for a little more common sense.” I have always set store by that utterance of my mother, as equally sound and characteristic.

Frances Rossetti was of an ordinary female middle height, or a trifle less than that, 1 with a full-sized head, fresh complexion, features more than commonly regular, shapely

Transcribed Footnote (page 22):

1 Miss Hall Caine, in her pleasant article A Child's Recollections of Rossetti , in the New Review for September 1894, describes my mother as “very little.” This is a mistake. Miss Caine only saw my mother in the early part of 1882, when the latter was nearly eighty-two years of age. Her figure had then fallen in, and she looked short; but the statement in my text is the correct one.

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Madonna-like eyelids, and an air of innate composure. Her general aspect was English, not Italian. Her eyes were grey, her hair in youth abundant and pretty, worn then in long ringlets, of a full-tinted brown. It altered colour but little, even in her extreme old age; and she always looked to me— and I believe to others—some five or six years younger than she was. Her voice was extremely clear and uniform, excellent for reading. There is a good likeness of her in one of Sir John Millais's pictures—the Departure of the Crusaders, painted towards 1856.

After the definite failure of my father's health, or from about 1844 until his death in 1854, the chief support of the family devolved upon my mother—the eldest child, Maria, being in 1844 only seventeen years of age. My mother made great and most laudable efforts—going out to teach French and Italian (both of which she knew and spoke perfectly well) and other things, and afterwards holding precarious day-schools—at No. 38 Arlington Street, Mornington Crescent (our residence for a year or two beginning in 1851), and at Frome Selwood. The schools produced no income of any account; and my mother's small expectations (from the property left by her maternal grandfather), and then her small capital, had to be trenched upon. After her return however from Frome, in 1854, it no longer became necessary for her to exert herself; she continued living with me and my two sisters, and in 1876 removed with Christina to another house, 30 Torrington Square. In her later years her hearing was imperfect, though by no means gone, and her general strength abated considerably. Her mind remained always clear, but necessarily less strong with the inroads of age. She died, rather of gradual decline than of anything else, on 8 April 1886, the very day which completed four years after the death of Dante Gabriel. Had she lived a few more days, she would have been eighty-six years of age. She rests by her husband's side in Highgate Cemetery.

I have observed that my mother “wrote correctly in prose, and some few times even in verse.” It has lately been my

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melancholy task to hunt through drawers, pigeon-holes, etc., in the house (30 Torrington Square) occupied by my sister Christina—of memory gracious to many—up to the date of her death, 29 December 1894. I came upon a little red writing-case, given by Dante Rossetti to our mother in 1849; in the writing-case were these verses of her composition. They are dated 1876, the year when my sister Maria Francesca died; after Dante's death in 1882 a final couplet was added. To me the lines, recording a succession of family losses, are pathetic; they come from a heart full of affection. Perhaps the reader will think it ridiculous that I should print them; at worst, the ridicule will apply to me alone, and not to the writer, who in youth and age kept all such things very much to herself.

“No longer I hear the welcome sound

Of Father's foot upon the ground;

No longer see the loving face

Of Mother beam with kindly grace;

No longer hear ‘how I rejoice’

At sight of me, from Sister's voice; 1

No more from Husband loved will be a

‘Cara Francesca, moglie mia’;

And from dear Daughter sore I miss

10‘My dearest Dodo,’ 2 and her kiss:—

I never more shall hear him speak,

The dearly loved who called me ‘Tique.’” 3

Transcribed Footnote (page 24):

1 This was Margaret, who died in 1867.

Transcribed Footnote (page 24):

2 A pet name much used by Maria for her mother.

Transcribed Footnote (page 24):

3 Dante Gabriel was addicted to calling his mother, in her later years, “the Antique,” or simply “Antique,” shortened sometimes into “Tique.”

Frances Rossetti was the daughter of Gaetano Polidori, and of Anna Maria Polidori, née Pierce.

My maternal great-grandfathers were both born an immense time ago; Agostino Ansaldo Polidori in 1714, and William Pierce in 1736: strange to think of. Even my maternal

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grandfather dates as far back as 1764, and my grandmother as far back as 1769. The year 1714 witnessed the accession of George I. to the British throne; 1736 the death of Prince Eugene; 1764, the death of Hogarth; 1769, the publication of the first Letter of Junius.

The name Polidori is of course Greek, not Italian; but of any Greek ancestry which there may possibly have been I know nothing. The Polidori family, so far as I ever heard of it, was Tuscan, the profession of medicine being customary from father to son; authorship was also frequent in the race, at any rate in the later generations. Agostino Ansaldo, author of two poems, Tobias and Osteology (the latter has been privately printed), was a Doctor settled at Bientina near Pisa: here was born his son Gaetano. There was also a brother of Agostino, named Francesco. He produced a poem entitled Losario (privately printed), more or less in the vein of Ariosto. Gaetano was intended for the law, which he studied in the University of Pisa. In 1785, however, he deserted the law, and, on the recommendation of the Abate Fassini, became secretary to the famous tragedian Conte Alfieri, with whom he stayed at Brisach, Colmar, and Paris. Naturally he saw, along with Alfieri, the Countess of Albany, whose husband, “the Young Pretender,” was then still living. Polidori was in Paris at the taking of the Bastille in July 1789; and a little anecdote which he relates of that day may deserve reproduction here:—

“I was passing by the Palais Royal while the populace were running to assault the fortress; and, having encountered a highly-powdered wig-maker, with a rusty sword raised aloft, I, not expecting any such thing, and hardly conscious of the act, had the sword handed over to me, as he cried aloud—‘ Prenez, citoyen, combattez pour la patrie. ’ I had no fancy for such an enterprise; so, finding myself sword in hand, I at once cast about for some way to get rid of it; and, bettering my instruction from the man of powder, I stuck it into the hand of the first unarmed person I met; and, repeating, ‘ Prenez, citoyen, combattez pour la patrie ,’ I passed on and returned home.”

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Polidori (as he intimates) had no taste for political convulsions, and little for politics of any sort. Almost immediately afterwards Alfieri got put out at finding that on a single occasion his secretary was not at home when summoned, and the Count wrote him a note, asking him “to change his style, or else his dwelling.” Polidori, one of the least pliable of mortals, closed at once with the second alternative, and determined to clear out of France, and repair to England to teach Italian. He asked for and readily obtained three letters of introduction from Alfieri and the Countess of Albany. These were addressed to Mrs. Cosway, the painter, Captain Masseria, a relative of Napoleon, and the famous Corsican General De' Paoli. The last remained up to his death on intimate terms with Polidori, and left him a mourning ring, which I now possess. In 1791 Alfieri, then in France, wished to get Polidori back as his secretary; but the latter declined with thanks, preferring conservative England very much to revolutionary France.

In February 1793 Polidori married Miss Anna Maria Pierce, who had acted as a governess. He taught Italian for a great number of years, retiring in 1836, after having made a fair moderate competence. He then lived for a while wholly in Buckinghamshire—Holmer Green, near Little Missenden, in a house which he had purchased years before for personal and family convenience—but in 1839 he returned to London, Park Village East, Regent's Park. There he died of apoplexy in December 1853, aged eighty-nine.

My anecdote about the wig-maker and the sword is taken from a little narrative which Polidori wrote, as an appendix to one of his privately printed books; for he kept a printing-press in Park Village East, and there he produced, with some aid from practical hands, several volumes of his own works, and a few others. Dante Rossetti's boyish poem Sir Hugh the Heron , and Christina's Verses, were among these—printed respectively in 1843 and 1847. Another was the poem by Erasmo di Valvasone, L'Angeleida; with passages extracted by Polidori from Milton's Paradise Lost, presumably founded

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more or less upon this Italian poem. The personal narrative above mentioned relates chiefly to Alfieri, and contains several particulars of some interest. I give here a few of the general observations upon him: —

“Curious and strange was the character of that singular man: proud as Milton's Satan, and more choleric than Homer's Achilles. He esteemed himself far beyond his real worth, and very few were the poets or men of letters for whom he had any regard. He was proud of his reddish hair, which he always wore studiously curled and tended; of his fine and speckless apparel, and especially of his uniform as a captain in the Piedmontese Infantry, which he donned for more solemn occasions; of his pure gold buckles for shoes and breeches, as then worn; of his handsome English horses, of which, counting together saddle and carriage horses, he had sixteen; and of his fine and elegant phaëton, which he generally drove four-in-hand, and went in pomp, taking the air in city and high-road. Yet, amid many defects, Count Alfieri had some good qualities: that of paying his debts most punctually, of limiting his outlay so that at the end of the year some money remained over, rather than be indebted for a penny, and of being just, when justice was clear to him. As I never had to dispute with him, in four years that I was in his house, save with the reason on my side, and, whenever we had disputed, he, upon recognizing that he was in the wrong, had confessed it and taken the blame to himself, I esteemed and loved him [various anecdotes had been previously given in the narrative, amply confirming this statement as to disputes between Alfieri and his secretary]. . . . In 1789 began the French Revolution, in which he exulted, and I saw him leap with joy upon the ruins of the Bastille.”

It is a matter of notoriety, however, that after a while Alfieri entirely altered his view of French affairs, and became a Gallophobist of prime virulence.

Polidori was a man of good stature and very vigorous build; his health was strong, and his faculties not seriously impaired by age. He liked almost any occupation—writing, reading, cabinet-work (he produced many pretty boxes, tables, etc., in wood-mosaic, after the Florentine manner),

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and miscellaneous country work. He was a man of the most sturdy and independent character, a sworn enemy to pretence and frivolity of all sorts; for instance, he would not allow any of his daughters to learn dancing. He always remained nominally a Roman-catholic, but without taking any part in religious observances of whatsoever kind. For his son-in-law Rossetti he had a sincere liking, and owned his great superiority to himself as a poet. But the divergence between them was frequently marked in little things: Polidori solid, unbending, somewhat dogged; Rossetti not any less earnest in essentials, but vivacious, facile, with more grace of manner and feeling, and comparatively mercurial. As a grandfather Polidori was both kind and tolerant, and was looked up to by us with much warmth of regard.

Gaetano Polidori had all the habits and likings of a literary man, and was more decidedly bookish than my father. Like the latter, he was a member of the Academy of the Arcadi, and bore the high-sounding designation of “Fileremo Etrusco.” I possess his Arcadian diploma, a curious document. He wrote a large number of things in prose and verse, both published, privately printed, and unprinted. His first work was a poem, L'Infedeltà Punita ( Faithlessness Punished). Among the others are— Novelle Morali ( Moral Tales); Grammaire de la Langue Italienne ; A Dictionary in three volumes, Italian with French and English, French with Italian and English, and English with Italian and French— a very handy little book, and no doubt no small labour to its compiler; Translation of all Milton's Poems; Translation of Lucan's Pharsalia, with a sequel of his own; Tragedie e Drammi. Unprinted is a Life of Boccaccio, written in English, which my grandfather knew and spoke well. This MS. I possess; likewise an Italian Life of General de' Paoli, up to his return to Corsica during the French Revolution—a work which, considering Polidori's intimacy with his hero, might be of some worth.

As I have already said, the wife of Gaetano Polidori was Anna Maria Pierce; and I will now give some few particulars

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Note: The period of the third to last complete sentence on this page has been omitted.

about the Pierce family, which is, as will be perceived, the only source from which Dante Gabriel Rossetti had any English blood in his veins.

I know nothing of the Pierces beyond Richard Pierce, my great-great-grandfather, who was a schoolmaster in Burlington Gardens, London. He had a son, William, a writing-master, who maintained himself from the age of sixteen onwards, married twice, and had ten children. William Pierce (I referred to this at the beginning of the present Section) was born as far back as 1736; and it would appear that the vocation of a writing-master must in his prime have been far more lucrative than it is at present, for he made a very comfortable competence (the chief source of whatever money there has been in the family since his time), and “kept his carriage.” Possibly his first marriage (which seems to have been into a grade somewhat above his own) had to do with this result. He was always represented to me as a curiously well-preserved specimen of “the old school”; formal, precise, upright, rather formidable to a younger generation, yet kind too in his way. Among his grandchildren he had a special predilection for my mother; though like a good British Tory as he was, he thought it “very odd” that, after his daughter Anna Maria had married one foreigner, his grand-daughter Frances should marry another foreigner. It looked like flying in the face of the blessed shades of a Chatham, Wolfe, Nelson, and George III., and truckling to the far from blessed shades of a Voltaire, a Mirabeau, and a Bonaparte, not to speak of the Pope of Rome. Mr. Pierce had in fact a strong feeling against marriages with foreigners, as his favourite sister had made a marriage of this kind which proved very unhappy He died in 1829, aged ninety-three, shortly before my birth; and after him I was named William. His ten children, other than Mrs. Polidori, shall not concern us here; except to say that one of his sons, Frederick, became a Brigadier-General, and was highly esteemed, I believe, in the Army of India. I will also observe in passing that, through the first wife of William Pierce, Jane Arrow, and a brother and sister of hers,

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the present generation of Rossettis are some sort of cousins to that distinguished cleric, the Rev. J. E. Kempe, of St. James's Church, London, and also to the late Mrs. Eliza Anna Bray, whose first husband was a son of the painter Thomas Stothard. She published a Life of Stothard, various romances, tales of Devonshire life, an Autobiography, and other works. My uncle Henry Polydore once took the pains of drawing out a scanty pedigree of the Pierce and Arrow families; and I find in it, as connected by marriage, the surnames Wrather, Hunter, Maunsell, Le Mésurier, Jump, Lester, Porter, Hutchins, Mose, Kitchener, Austin, Cooper, Sandrock, and Brown (nothing to do with Madox Brown). These surnames—except Wrather, Austin, and Brown—represent nothing to my memory. Of the Austins I have some direct or collateral knowledge. There was a Bishop Austin in the West Indies, and an Austin Governor of Honduras; and in 1887 at San Remo I met a very pleasant young lady, Miss Burrows (now Mrs. Martin), who informed me that she was some connexion of mine—I believe through the Austin family.

As I have said, my great-grandfather, William Pierce, married a Miss Jane Arrow. My own knowledg