Complete Poetical Works of Dante Gabriel Rossetti

by Dante Gabriel Rossetti

  “It was right of you to tell me when I asked you,” he said, “though my friends usually keep such facts from my knowledge. As to Jenny, it is a sermon, nothing less. As I say, it is a sermon, and on a great world, to most men unknown, though few consider themselves ignorant of it. But of this conspiracy to persecute me — what remains to say but that it is widespread and remorseless — one cannot but feel it.”

  I assured him there existed no conspiracy to persecute him: that he had ardent upholders everywhere, though it was true that few men had found crueller critics. He shook his head, and said I knew that what he had alleged was true, namely that an organised conspiracy existed, having for its object to annoy and injure him. Growing a little impatient of this delusion, so tenaciously held, against all show of reason, I told him that it was no more than the fever of an oppressed brain brought about by his reclusive habits of life, by shunning intercourse with all save some half dozen or more friends. “You tell me,” I said, “that you have rarely been outside these walls for some years, and your brain has meanwhile been breeding a host of hallucinations, like cobwebs in a dark corner. You have only to go abroad, and the fresh air will blow these things away.” But continuing for some moments longer in the same strain, he came to closer quarters and distressed me by naming as enemies three or four men who had throughout life been his friends, who have spoken of him since his death in words of admiration and even affection, and who had for a time fallen away from him or called on him but rarely, from contingencies due to any cause but alienated friendship.

  At length the time had arrived when it was considered prudent to retire. “You are to sleep in Watts’s room to-night,” he said: and then in reply to a look of inquiry he added, “He comes here at least twice a week, talking until four o’clock in the morning upon everything from poetry to the Pleiades, and driving away the bogies, and as he lives at Putney Hill, it is necessary to have a bed for him.” Before going into my room he suggested that I should go and look, at his. It was entered from another and smaller room which he said that he used as a breakfast room. The outer room was made fairly bright and cheerful by a glittering chandelier (the property once, he told me, of David Garrick), and from the rustle of trees against the window-pane one perceived that it overlooked the garden; but the inner room was dark with heavy hangings around the walls as well as the bed, and thick velvet curtains before the windows, so that the candles in our hands seemed unable to light it, and our voices sounded thick and muffled. An enormous black oak chimney-piece of curious design, having an ivory crucifix on the largest of its ledges, covered a part of one side and reached to the ceiling. Cabinets, and the usual furniture of a bedroom, occupied places about the floor: and in the middle of it, and before a little couch, stood a small table on which was a wire lantern containing a candle which Rossetti lit from the open one in his hand — another candle meantime lying by its side. I remarked that he probably burned a light all night. He said that was so. “My curse,” he added, “is insomnia. Two or three hours hence I shall get up and lie on the couch, and, to pass away a weary hour, read this book” — a volume of Boswell’s Johnson which I noticed he took out of the bookcase as we left the studio. It did not escape me that on the table stood two small bottles sealed and labelled, together with a little measuring-glass. Without looking further at it, but with a terrible suspicion growing over me, I asked if that were his medicine.

  “They say there is a skeleton in every cupboard,” he said in a low voice, “and that’s mine; it is chloral.”

  When I reached the room that I was to occupy during the night, I found it, like Rossetti’s bedroom, heavy with hangings, and black with antique picture panels, with a ceiling (unlike that of the other rooms in the house), out of all reach or sight, and so dark from various causes, that the candle seemed only to glimmer in it — indeed to add to the darkness by making it felt. Mr. Watts, as Rossetti told me, was entirely indifferent to these eerie surroundings, even if his fine subjective intellect, more prone to meditate than to observe, was ever for an instant conscious of them; but on myself I fear they weighed heavily, and augmented the feeling of closeness and gloom which had been creeping upon me since I entered the house. Scattered about the room in most admired disorder were some outlandish and unheard-of books, and all kinds of antiquarian and Oriental oddities, which books and oddities I afterwards learnt had been picked up at various times by the occupant in his ramblings about Chelsea and elsewhere, and never yet taken away by him, but left there apparently to scare the chambermaid: such as old carved heads and gargoyles of the most grinning and ghastly expression, Burmese and Chinese Buddhas in soapstone of every degree of placid ugliness, together, I am bound by force of truth to admit, with one piece of carved Italian marble in bas-relief, of great interest and beauty. Such was my bed-chamber for the night, and little wonder if it threatened to murder the innocent sleep. But it was later than 4 A.M., and wearied nature must needs assert herself, and so I lay down amidst the odour of bygone ages.

  Presently Rossetti came in, for no purpose that I can remember, except to say that he had enjoyed my visit I replied that I should never forget it. “If you decide to settle in London,” he said, “I trust you ‘ll come and live with me, and then many such evenings must remove the memory of this one.” I laughed, for I thought what he hinted at to be of the remotest likelihood. “I have just taken sixty grains of chloral,” he said, as he was going out; “in four hours I take sixty more, and in four hours after that yet another sixty.”

  “Does not the dose increase with you?”

  “It has not done so perceptibly in recent years. I judge I’ve taken more chloral than any man whatever: Marshall says if I were put into a Turkish bath I should sweat it at every pore.”

  There was something in his tone suggesting that he was even proud of the accomplishment. To me it was a frightful revelation, accounting entirely for what had puzzled and distressed me in his delusions already referred to. And now let me say that whilst it would have been on my part the most pitiful weakness (because the most foolish tearfulness of injuring a great man who was strong enough to suffer a good deal to be discounted from his strength), to attempt to conceal this painful side of Rossetti’s mind, I shall not again allude to those delusions, unless it be to show that, coming to him with the drug which blighted half his life, they disappeared when it had been removed.

  None may rightly say to what the use of that drug was due, or what was due to it; the sadder side of his life was ever under its shadow; his occasional distrust of friends: his fear of enemies: his broken health and shattered spirits, all came of his indulgence in the pernicious thing. When I remember this I am more than willing to put by all thought of the little annoyances, which to me, as to other immediate friends, were constantly occurring through that cause, which seemed at the moment so vexatious and often so insupportable, but which are now forgotten.

  Next morning — (a clear autumn morning) — I strolled through the large garden at the back of the house, and of course I found it of a piece with what I had previously seen. A beautiful avenue of lime-trees opened into a grass plot of nearly an acre in extent. The trees were just as nature made them, and so was the grass, which in places was lying long, dry and withered under the sun, weeds creeping up in damp places, and the gravel of the pathway scattered upon the verges. This neglected condition of the garden was, I afterwards found, humorously charged upon Mr. Watts’s “reluctance to interfere with nature in her clever scheme of the survival of the fittest,” but I suspect it was due at least equally to the owner’s personal indifference to everything of the kind.

  Before leaving I glanced over the bookcase. Rossetti’s library was by no means a large one. It consisted, perhaps, of 1000 volumes, scarcely more; and though this was not large as comprising the library of one whose reading must have been in two arts pursued as special studies, and each involving research and minute original inquiry, it cannot be considered noticeably small, and it must have been sufficient. R
ossetti differed strangely as a reader from the man to whom in bias of genius he was most nearly related. Coleridge was an omnivorous general reader: Rossetti was eclectic rather than desultory. His library contained a number of valuable old works of more interest to him from their plates than letterpress. Of this kind were Gerard’s Herbal (1626), supposed to be the source of many a hint utilised by the Morris firm, of which Rossetti was a member; Poliphili Hypnerotomachia (1467); Heywood’s History of Women (1624); Songe de Poliphile (1561); Bonnard’s Costumes of 12th, 13th, and l4th Centuries; Habiti Antichi (of which the designs are said to be by Titian) — printed Venice, (1664); Cosmographia, a history of the peoples of the world (1572); Ciceronis Officia (1534), a blackletter folio, with woodcuts by Burgkmaier; Jost Amman’s Costumes, with woodcuts coloured by hand; Cento Novelle (Venice, 1598); Francesco Barberino’s Documenti (d’Amore (Rome, 1640); Décoda de Titolivio, a Spanish blackletter, without date, but probably belonging to the 16th century. Besides these were various vellum-bound works relating to Greek and Roman allegorical and mythological subjects, and a number of scrap-books and portfolios containing photographs from nearly all the picture-galleries of Europe, but chiefly of the pictures of the early Florentine and Venetian schools, with an admixture of Spanish art. Of Michael Angelo’s designs for the Sistine Chapel there was a fine set of photographs.

  These did not make up a very complete ancient artistic library, but Rossetti’s collection of the poets was more full and valuable. There was a pretty little early edition of Petrarch, which appeared to have been presented first by John Philip Kemble to Polidori (Rossetti’s grandfather) in 1812; then in 1853 by Polidori to his daughter, Rossetti’s mother, Frances Rossetti; and by her in 1870 to her son. A splendid edition (1552) of Boccaccio’s Decamerone contained a number of valuable marginal notes, chiefly by Rossetti, the first being as follows:

  This volume contains 40 woodcuts besides many initial letters. The greater number, if not the whole, must certainly be by Holbein. I am in doubt as to the pictures heading the chapters, but think these most probably his, only following the usual style of such illustrations to Boccaccio, and consequently more Italianised than the others. The initial letters present for the most part games of strength or skill.

  There were various editions of Dante, including a very large folio edition of the Commedia, dated Florence, 1481, and the works of a number of Dante’s contemporaries. Besides two or three editions of Shakspeare (the best being Dyce’s, in 9 vols.), there were some of the Elizabethan dramatists. Coming to later poetry, I found a complete set of Gilfillan’s Poets, in 45 vols. There was the curious little manuscript quarto (much like a shilling school-exercise book) labelled Blake, and this was, perhaps, by far the most valuable volume in the library. The contents and history of this book have already been given.

  There were two editions of Gilchrist’s Blake; complete (or almost complete) sets of the works of William Morris and A. C. Swinburne, inscribed in the authors’ autographs — the copy of Atalanta in Calydon being marked by the poet, “First copy; printed off before the dedication was in type.” It may be remembered that Robert Brough translated Béranger’s songs, and dedicated his volume in affectionate terms to Rossetti. The presentation copy of this book bore the following inscription:— “To D. G. Rossetti, meaning in my heart what I have tried to say in print. Et. B. Brough. 1856.” There were also several presentation copies from Robert Browning, Coventry Patmore, W. B. Scott, Sir Henry Taylor, Aubrey de Vere, Tom Taylor, Westland Marston, F. Locker, A. O’Shaughnessy, Sir Theodore Martin; besides volumes bearing the names of nearly every well-known younger writer of prose or verse.

  Five volumes of Modern Painters, together with The Seven Lamps of Architecture and the tract on Pre-Raphaelitism, bore the author’s name and Rossetti’s in Mr. Ruskin’s autograph. There was a fine copy in ten volumes of Violet-le-Duc’s Dictionnaire de l’Architecture, and also of the Biographie Générale in forty-six volumes, besides several dictionaries, concordances, and the like. There was also a copy of Fitzgerald’s Calderon. Rossetti seemed to be a reader of Swedenborg, as White’s book on the great mystic testified; also to have been at one time interested in the investigation of the phenomena of Spiritualism. Of one writer of fiction he must have been an ardent reader, for there were at least 100 volumes by Alexandre Dumas. German writers were conspicuously absent, Goethe’s Faust and Carlyle’s translation of Wilhelm, Meister, being about the only notable German works in the library. Rossetti did not appear to be a collector of first editions, nor did it seem that he attached much importance to the mere outsides of his books, but of the insides he was master indeed. The impression left upon the mind after a rapid survey of the poet-painter’s library was that he was a careful, but slow and thorough reader (as was seen by the marginal annotations which nearly every volume contained), and that, though very far from affected by bibliomania, he was not without pride in the possession of rare and valuable books.

  When I left the house at a late hour that morning Rossetti was not yet stirring, and so some months passed before I saw him again. If I had tried to formulate the idea — or say sensation — that possessed me at the moment, I think I should have said, in a word or two, that outside the air breathed freely. Within, the gloom, the mediaeval furniture, the brass censers, sacramental cups, lamps; and crucifixes conspired, I thought, to make the atmosphere heavy and unwholesome. As for the man himself who was the central spirit amidst these anachronistic environments, he had, if possible, attached me yet closer to himself by contact. Before this I had been attracted to him in admiration of his gifts: but now I was drawn to him, in something very like pity, for his isolation and suffering. Not that at this time he consciously made demand of much compassion, and least of all from me. Health was apparently whole with him, his spirits were good, and his energies were at their best. He had not yet known the full bitterness of the shadowed valley: not yet learned what it was to hunger for any cheerful society that would relieve him of the burden of the flesh. All that came later. Rossetti was one of the most magnetic of men, but it was not more his genius than his unhappiness that held certain of his friends by a spell.

  CHAPTER VIII.

  It was characteristic of Rossetti that he addressed me in the following terms probably before I had left his house: for the letter was, no doubt, written in that interval of sleeplessness which he had spoken of as his nightly visitant:

  I forgot to say — Don’t, please, spread details as to story of Rose Mary. I don’t want it to be stale or to get forestalled in the travelling of report from mouth to mouth. I hope it won’t be too long before you visit town again, — I will not for an instant question that you would then visit me also.

  Six months or more intervened, however, before I was able to visit Rossetti again. In the meantime we corresponded as fully as before: the subject upon which we most frequently exchanged opinions being now the sonnet.

  By-the-bye [he says], I cannot understand what you say of

  Milton’s, Keats’s, and Coleridge’s sonnets. The last, it is

  true, was always poor as a sonnetteer (I don’t see much in

  the Autumnal Moon). My own only exception to this verdict

  (much as I adore Coleridge’s genius) would be the ludicrous

  sonnet on The House that Jack built, which is a

  masterpiece in its way. I should not myself number the one

  you mention of Keats’s among his best half-dozen (many of

  his are mere drafts, strange to say); and cannot at all

  enter into your verdict on those of Milton, which seem to me

  to be every one of exceptional excellence, though a few are

  even finer than the rest, notably, of course, the one you

  name. Pardon an egotistic sentence (in answer to what you

  say so generously of Lost Days), if I express an opinion

  that Known in Vain and Still-born Love may perhaps be

  said to head the series in value, though Lo
st Days might

  be equally a favourite with me if I did not remember in what

  but too opportune juncture it was wrung out of me. I have a

  good number of sonnets for The House of Life still in MS.,

  which I have worked on with my best effort, and, I think,

  will fully sustain their place. These and other things I

  should like to show you whenever we meet again. The MS. vol.

  I proposed to send is merely an old set of (chiefly)

  trifles, about which I should like an opinion as to whether

  any should be included in the future.