The Pre-Raphaelites- From Rossetti to Ruskin
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PENGUIN CLASSICS
THE PRE-RAPHAELITES
DINAH ROE is an independent scholar and freelance writer whose interests include the nineteenth-century novel, Victorian poetry, and women’s writing. Born and raised in the United States, she holds degrees from Vassar College (USA) and University College London. She has taught English Literature at UCL and the University of Hertfordshire. She has written Christina Rossetti’s Faithful Imagination (2006), edited Christina Rossetti: Selected Poems for Penguin Classics (2008) and is currently working on a biography of the Rossetti family.
The Pre-Raphaelites
From Rossetti to Ruskin
Selected with an Introduction by
DINAH ROE
PENGUIN BOOKS
PENGUIN CLASSICS
Published by the Penguin Group
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This selection first published in Penguin Classics 2010
Selection and editorial material copyright © Dinah Roe, 2010
All rights reserved
The moral right of the editor has been asserted
Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser
ISBN: 978-0-14-196259-7
Contents
Acknowledgements
Chronology
Introduction
Further Reading
A Note on the Texts
WILLIAM BELL SCOTT
From Rosabell
Morning Sleep
Sonnet: Early Aspirations
To the Artists Called P.R.B.
‘I Go to be Cured at Avilion’
Art for Art’s Sake
JOHN RUSKIN
The Last Smile
Christ Church, Oxford
The Mirror
The Old Water-Wheel
The Hills of Carrara
FORD MADOX BROWN
Angela Damnifera
For the Picture ‘The Last of England’
For the Picture Called ‘Work’
COVENTRY PATMORE
The Seasons
Stars and Moon
From The Angel in the House: The Betrothal
The Gracious Chivalry
Love Liberal
WILLIAM ALLINGHAM
The Fairies
Lady Alice
The Maids of Elfen-Mere
Three Sisters of Haworth
Express
Vivant!
JAMES COLLINSON
From The Child Jesus
THOMAS WOOLNER
My Beautiful Lady
Of My Lady in Death
O When and Where
Emblems
JOHN TUPPER
A Sketch from Nature
Viola and Olivia
A Quiet Evening
WALTER HOWELL DEVERELL
The Sight Beyond
A Modern Idyl
GEORGE MEREDITH
From Modern Love
DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI
The Blessed Damozel
The Card-Dealer
The Burden of Nineveh
Jenny
The Portrait
Nuptial Sleep
The Woodspurge
The Honeysuckle
The Sea-Limits
For ‘The Wine of Circe’ by Edward Burne-Jones
Mary’s Girlhood
On the ‘Vita Nuova’ of Dante
Beauty and the Bird
A Match with the Moon
John Keats
Words on the Window-Pane
Astarte Syriaca
From The House of Life
A Sonnet is a moment’s monument
V. Heart’s Hope
VI. The Kiss
X. The Portrait
XI. The Love-Letter
XVIII. Genius in Beauty
XIX. Silent Noon
XXV. Winged Hours
XXVII. Heart’s Compass
XXIX. The Moonstar
XL. Severed Selves
XLIX, L, LI, LII. Willowwood
LIII. Without Her
LXIII. Inclusiveness
LXIX. Autumn Idleness
LXXVIII. Body’s Beauty
LXXXIII. Barren Spring
LXXXV. Vain Virtues
LXXXVI. Lost Days
XCV. The Vase of Life
XCVII. A Superscription
CI. The One Hope
To the P.R.B.
St Wagnes’ Eve
Nonsense Verses
There’s an infantine Artist named Hughes
There is a young Artist named Jones
There is a young Painter called Jones
There’s a combative Artist named Whistler
A Historical Painter named Brown
There was a young rascal called Nolly
There’s a Scotch correspondent named Scott
There once was a painter named Scott
There’s the Irishman Arthur O’Shaughnessy
There is a poor sneak called Rossetti
As a critic, the Poet Buchanan
ELIZABETH SIDDAL
True Love
Dead Love
Shepherd Turned Sailor
Gone
Speechless
The Lust of the Eyes
Worn Out
At Last
Early Death
He and She and Angels Three
A Silent Wood
Love and Hate
The Passing of Love
Lord, May I Come?
A Year and a Day
WILLIAM MICHAEL ROSSETTI
Her First Season
‘Jesus Wept’
The Evil Under the Sun
Dedication
Mary Shelley
CHRISTINA GEORGINA ROSSETTI
Dream Land
An End
A Pause of Thought
Sweet Death
Goblin Market
A Birthday
After Death
My Dream
The World
From The Prince’s Progress
The Queen of Hearts
From Monna Innominata
Babylon the Great
On Keats
Portraits
In an Artist’s Studio
The P.R.B.
ARTHUR HUGHES
To a Child
In a Letter to William Bell Scott at Penkill
WILLIAM MORRIS
The Chapel in Lyoness
Riding Together
The Defence of Guenevere
The Gilliflower of Gold
The Judgment of God
Spell-Bound
The Blue Closet
The Tune of Seven Towers
Golden Wings
The Haystack in the Floods
Two Red Roses Across the Moon
Near Avalon
Praise of My Lady
Summer Dawn
From The Earthly Paradise
An Apology
The Wanderers
May
ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE
A Ballad of Life
Laus Veneris
A Match
A Cameo
The Leper
A Ballad of Burdens
The Garden of Proserpine
Before Parting
Love and Sleep
The King’s Daughter
A Ballad of Dreamland
Sonnet for a Picture
From Tristram of Lyonesse
A Death on Easter Day
A Ballad of Appeal
JOHN PAYNE
This is the House of Dreams. Whoso is fain
From Sir Floris
A Birthday Song
Dream-Life
Love’s Amulet
Faded Love
Rondeau
Sad Summer
ARTHUR O’SHAUGHNESSY
Ode
Song [‘I made another garden, yea’]
Song [‘I went to her who loveth me no more’]
The Great Encounter
Living Marble
The Line of Beauty
Pentelicos
Paros
Carrara
PHILIP BOURKE MARSTON
Love’s Shrines
Love Past Utterance
Shake Hands and Go
Love’s Warfare
Stronger Than Sleep
The New Religion
OLIVER MADOX BROWN
Sonnet: Written at the Age of Thirteen for a Picture by Mrs Stillman
Song [‘Lady, we are growing tired!’]
Abbreviations
Biographical Notes
Selected List of Paintings and Illustrations
Notes
Index of Titles
Index of First Lines
Acknowledgements
No work of this kind is ever produced alone, and thanks are owed to enough friends and colleagues to fill a separate collection. But I would like to acknowledge the following: my parents Ralph and Kathy Roe (as always) and Hamish and Dors Kidd for their humbling generosity and support; the magnificent, indispensable James Kidd; Oliver and Alyse Roe; David Shelley and his father Alan, a man whose love of books will always be an inspiration; the irrepressible Darren Cohen, Rhian Edwards and Fran Varian; Stephen Gerson, whose kindness and intelligence are reflected in his daughter Meredith.
I would also like to thank Diane D’Amico, Mary Arseneau, Joseph Bristow and Margaret Reynolds for their valuable advice and encouragement. Their generosity with both their time and experience has enriched this selection. Special thanks goes to Daniel Karlin, who has long helped to transform my ugly-duckling thoughts into elegant swans. In particular, I am grateful to him for casting his keen editorial eye over this selection’s introduction, and for his fine reading of ‘The Blessed Damozel’. Thanks also to Kate Parker and Alexis Kirschbaum, whose professionalism and support have helped make this project a pleasure.
Chronology
1830 Publication of Alfred Tennyson’s Poems, Chiefly Lyrical.
1833 Anonymous publication of Pauline: A Fragment of a Confession. Dante Gabriel Rossetti correctly identifies Robert Browning as the author.
1837 Coronation of Queen Victoria.
1842 Publication of Tennyson’s Poems and Browning’s Dramatic Lyrics.
1843 Publication of John Ruskin’s Modern Painters I. William Wordsworth becomes Poet Laureate.
1846 Publication of Ruskin’s Modern Painters II and Poems by Currer, Ellis and Acton Bell (Charlotte, Emily and Anne Brontë).
1848 Publication of the Communist Manifesto in London. Revolution in France, Germany and Italy. Chartist mass demonstration on Kennington Common in London. Publication of Richard Monckton Milnes’s Life, Letters and Literary Remains of John Keats. Formation of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood (PRB).
1849 PRB members William Holman Hunt and John Everett Millais exhibit at the Royal Academy (RA). Rossetti exhibits at the Free Exhibition, Hyde Park Corner, London.
1850 Death of Wordsworth. Tennyson becomes Laureate. Publication of Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s Sonnets from the Portuguese. Exhibitions of PRB paintings attract adverse criticism. Publication of Pre-Raphaelite magazine the Germ. James Collinson resigns from the PRB.
1851 Ruskin’s letter to The Times and his pamphlet Pre-Raphaelitism published. The Great Exhibition takes place at Crystal Palace.
1852 Thomas Woolner sails for Australia.
1853 Millais elected Associate Member of the RA.
1854 Holman Hunt leaves for his tour of the Holy Land. Working Men’s College established in London; Ruskin, Rossetti, Ford Madox Brown and Arthur Hughes teach here. Publication of Coventry Patmore’s The Angel in the House, part 1.
1855 Publication of Browning’s Men and Women and Tennyson’s Maud and Other Poems. William Bell Scott begins painting the Northumbrian History Cycle murals at Wallington.
1856 Holman Hunt returns from the Middle East. The Oxford and Cambridge Magazine created by second-wave Pre-Raphaelites Edward Burne-Jones and William Morris at Oxford. Publication of Ruskin’s Modern Painters III and IV.
1857 Rossetti, Burne-Jones, Morris, Hughes, Valentine Prinsep and others begin to paint the Oxford Union murals. Exhibition of Pre-Raphaelite paintings held at Fitzroy Square, London, including works by Elizabeth Siddal. Pre-Raphaelite exhibition held in New York. Publication of the Moxon edition of Tennyson’s Poems and Charles Baudelaire’s Les Fleurs du mal.
1858 Publication of Morris’s The Defence of Guenevere and Other Poems. Formation of the Hogarth Club.
1859 Publication of the first version of Tennyson’s Idylls of the King and Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species.
1860 Publication of Ruskin’s Modern Painters V.
1861 Morris, Rossetti, Burne-Jones and Ford Madox Brown, among others, form the decorating firm William Morris, Marshall, Faulkner & Co.
1862 Death of Elizabeth Siddal. Publication of Christina Rossetti’s Goblin Market and Other Poems and George Meredith’s Modern Love and Poems of the English Roadside.
1865 Ford Madox Brown’s Work exhibited. Publication of Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.
1866 Algernon Charles Swinburne’s Poems and Ballads, dedicated to Burne-Jones, is published then withdrawn by Moxon. Republished by John Camden Hotten. William Michael Rossetti publishes a pamphlet defending Swinburne.
1867 Publication of Morris’s The Life and Death of Jason.
1868 Publication of Browning’s The Ring and the Book. William Gladstone becomes Prime Minister.
1869 Publication of the second version of Tennyson’s Idylls of the King.
1870 Rossetti publishes his first collection, Poems.
1871 Robert Buchanan’s article ‘The Fleshly School of Poetry’ appears in the October issue of Contemporary Review. Buchanan expands this article for a pamphlet in 1872. Rossetti’s reply, ‘The Stealthy School of Criticism’, appears in the December issue of the Athenaeum.
1872 Publication of Swinburne’s reply to Buchanan, Under the Microscope.
1873 Publication of Walter Pater’s The Renaissance: Studies in Art and Poetry.
1874 Woolner elected as a member of the RA. Disraeli becomes Prime Minister.
1875 Morris becomes the sole owner of the reorganized ‘William Morris & Co.’.
1880 Gladstone becomes Prime Minister.
1881 Publication of Dalziels’ Bible Gallery with illustrati
ons by Ford Madox Brown, Burne-Jones, Holman Hunt, Simeon Solomon and George Frederick Watts, among others.
1882 Death of Rossetti; Buchanan publicly retracts his criticism of Rossetti in a poem and preface to the second edition of his novel God and the Man.
1885 Burne-Jones becomes an Associate of the RA. Publication of the final ‘Idyll’ of Tennyson’s Idylls of the King.
1891 Publication of Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray. Formation of the Rhymers’ Club. Morris sets up the Kelmscott Press.
1892 George Meredith elected President of the Society of Authors. Death of Tennyson. Publication of Bell Scott’s Autobiographical Notes.
1894 The Yellow Book literary magazine begins.
1896 Millais elected President of the RA.
1897 Tate Gallery (the National Gallery of British Art) opens.
1901 Death of Queen Victoria.
1905 Publication of Holman Hunt’s autobiography, Pre-Raphaelitism and the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood.
1906 Holman Hunt retrospective exhibitions held in London and Manchester.
Introduction
In 1872, W. H. Mallock published a mock-literary cookbook for aspiring poets. One ‘recipe’ was entitled ‘How to Write a Modern Pre-Raphaelite Poem’. Among the recommended ingredients were: ‘obsolete and unintelligible’ words, ‘a perfectly vacant atmosphere’, ‘three damozels, dressed in straight nightgowns’, ‘a stone wall’, ‘trees and flowers’, as well as stars, aureoles and lilies. ‘When you have arranged all these objects rightly,’ the recipe continued, ‘take a cast of them in the softest part of your brain, and pour in your word-composition.’1
Mallock was not the first critic to accuse Pre-Raphaelite poetry of being soft in the head. From the outset, Pre-Raphaelitism was taken to task for its pretentiousness and unreality, aggravated by a self-opinion at odds with the Victorian virtues of modesty and reserve. Championed by the Aesthetes and Decadents of the fin de siècle, Pre-Raphaelite poetry has yet to shake off its reputation as a ‘fleshly’, self-indulgent trend enjoyed ‘by young gentlemen with animal faculties morbidly developed by too much tobacco and too little exercise’.2
It is true that if we ask such poetry to emulate the engagement of the Victorian novel with contemporary social and political issues, we shall (with rare exceptions such as Dante Gabriel Rossetti’s ‘Jenny’) be disappointed. Pre-Raphaelitism helped to popularize the notion of ‘art for art’s sake’ (in painting and the decorative arts as well as poetry), often explicitly in opposition to the utilitarian ethos which, we should not forget, formed the dominant ideology of the mid-century.3 This helps to explain the concentration of Pre-Raphaelite poems on sexual yearning and artistic introspection, and the movement’s consciously idealized medievalism. Devoid of the political edge of Benjamin Disraeli’s Young England, Pre-Raphaelite writing explored a world where art and beauty were more important than the growth of the railway, market fluctuations or the ‘Two Nations’.4 At the time, Pre-Raphaelitism (and especially its poetry) was dismissed as naïve, over-sexualized, immoral and, most damningly, ‘unmanly’; since then, the movement’s atmosphere of middle-class Bohemianism has made it an easy target for satire. Yet this ‘counter-culture’ also had an aspect of recognizably ‘Victorian’ earnestness and high-mindedness, and, as we shall see, its artistic programme originally promoted a ‘modern’ aesthetic which was found shocking not because it was dreamy and nostalgic, but quite the reverse: because it was hyper-realistic and given to recording supposedly sacred events in repulsive detail. Like many such movements, in other words, it is a compound phenomenon, and its principal figures are not easily categorized, whether according to the preconceptions of their own day or of ours.