At Birchington-on-Sea one of the most rarely gifted men of our time has
just died [April 9th, 1882] after a lingering illness. During the time
that his ‘Ballads and Sonnets’ was passing through the press last autumn
his health began to give way, and he left London for Cumberland. A stay
of a few weeks in the Vale of St. John, however, did nothing to improve
his health, and he returned much shattered. After a time a numbness in
the left arm excited fear of paralysis, and he became dangerously ill.
It is probable, indeed, that nothing but the skill and unwearied
attention of Mr. John Marshall saved his life then, as it had done upon
several previous occasions. Such of his friends as were then in
London—W. B. Scott, Burne Jones, Leyland, F. Shields, Mr. Dunn, and
others—feeling the greatest alarm, showed him every affectionate
attention, and spared no effort to preserve a life so precious and so
beloved. Mr. Seddon having placed at his disposal West Cliff Bungalow,
Birchington-on-Sea, he went thither, accompanied by his mother and sister
and Mr. Hall Caine, about nine weeks since, but received no benefit from
the change, and, gradually sinking from a complication of disorders, he
died on Sunday last at 10 P.M.
[Picture: Dante Gabriel Rosette. From a crayon-drawing by himself
reproduced by the kind permission of Mrs. W. M. Rossetti]
Were I even competent to enter upon the discussion of Rossetti’s gifts as
a poet and as a painter, it would not be possible to do so here and at
this moment. That the quality of romantic imagination informs with more
vitality his work than it can be said to inform the work of any of his
contemporaries was recognized at first by the few, and is now (judging
from the great popularity of his last volume of poetry) being recognized
by the many. And the same, I think, may be said of his painting. Those
who had the privilege of a personal acquaintance with him knew how “of
imagination all compact” he was. Imagination, indeed, was at once his
blessing and his bane. To see too vividly—to love too intensely—to
suffer and enjoy too acutely—is the doom, no doubt, of all those “lost
wanderers from Arden” who, according to the Rosicrucian story, sing the
world’s songs; and to Rossetti this applies more, perhaps, than to most
poets. And when we consider that the one quality in all poetry which
really gives it an endurance outlasting the generation of its birth is
neither music nor colour, nor even intellectual substance, but the
clearness of the seeing; the living breath of imagination—the very
qualities, in short, for which such poems as ‘Sister Helen’ and ‘Rose
Mary’ are so conspicuous—we are driven to the conclusion that Rossetti’s
poetry has a long and enduring future before it.
A life more devoted to literature and art than his it is impossible to
imagine. Gabriel Charles Dante Rossetti was born at 38, Charlotte
Street, Portland Place, London, on the 12th of May, 1828. He was the
first son and second child of Gabriele Rossetti, the patriotic poet, who,
born at Vasto in the Abruzzi, settled in Naples, and took an active part
in extorting from the Neapolitan king Ferdinand I. the constitution
granted in 1820, which constitution being traitorously cancelled by the
king in 1821, Rossetti had to escape for his life to Malta with various
other persecuted constitutionalists. From Malta Gabriele Rossetti went
to England about 1823, where he married in 1826 Frances Polidori,
daughter of Alfieri’s secretary and sister of Byron’s Dr. Polidori. He
became Professor of Italian in King’s College, London, became also
prominent as a commentator on Dante, and died in April, 1854. His
children, four in number—Maria Francesca, Dante Gabriel, William Michael,
and Christina Georgina—all turned to literature or to art, or to both,
and all became famous. There can, indeed, be no doubt that the Rossetti
family will hold a position quite unique in the literary and artistic
annals of our time.
Young Rossetti was first sent to the private school of the Rev. Mr. Paul
in Foley Street, Portland Place, where he remained, however, for only
three quarters of a year, from the autumn of 1835 to the summer of 1836.
He next went to King’s College School in the autumn of 1836, where he
remained till the summer of 1843, having reached the fourth class, then
conducted by the Rev. Mr. Framley.
Having from early childhood shown a strong propensity for drawing and
painting, which had thus been always regarded as his future profession,
he now left school for ever and received no more school learning. In
Latin he was already fairly proficient for his age; French he knew well;
he had spoken Italian from childhood, and had some German lessons about
1844–5. On leaving school he went at once to the Art Academy of Cary
(previously called Sass’s) near Bedford Square, and thence obtained
admission to the Royal Academy Antique School in 1844 or 1845. To the
Royal Academy Life School he never went, and he was a somewhat negligent
art student, but always regarded as one who had a future before him.
In 1849 Rossetti exhibited ‘The Girlhood of the Virgin’ in the so-called
Free Exhibition or Portland Gallery. The artist who had perhaps the
strongest influence upon Rossetti’s early tastes was Ford Madox Brown,
who, however, refused from the first to join the Pre-Raphaelite
Brotherhood on the ground that coteries had in modern art no proper
function. Rossetti was deeply impressed with the power and designing
faculty displayed by Madox Brown’s cartoons exhibited in Westminster
Hall. When Rossetti began serious work as a painter he thought of Madox
Brown as the one man from whom he would willingly receive practical
guidance, and wrote to him at random. From this time Madox Brown became
his intimate friend and artistic monitor.
In painting, however, Rossetti was during this time exercising only half
his genius. From his childhood it became evident that he was a poet. At
the age of five he wrote a sort of play called ‘The Slave,’ which, as may
be imagined, showed no noteworthy characteristic save precocity. This
was followed by the poem called ‘Sir Hugh Heron,’ which was written about
1844, and some translations of German poetry. ‘The Blessed Damozel’ and
‘Sister Helen’ were produced in their original form so early as 1846 or
1847. The latter of these has undergone more modifications than any
other first-class poem of our time. To take even the new edition of the
‘Poems’ which appeared last year [1881], the stanzas introducing the wife
of the luckless hero appealing to the sorceress for mercy are so
important in the glamour they shed back over the stanzas that have gone
before, that their introduction may almost be characterized as a
rewriting of every previous line.
The translations from the early Italian poets also began as far back as
1845 or 1846, and may have been mainly completed by 1849. Rossetti’s
gifts as a translator were, no doubt, of the highest. And this arose
from his deep sympathy with literature as a medium of human expression:
he could enter into the temperaments of other writers, and by sympathy
criticize the literary form from the author’s own inner standpoint,
supposing always that there was a certain racial kinship with the author.
Many who write well themselves have less sympathy with the expressional
forms adopted by other writers than is displayed by men who have neither
the impulse nor the power to write themselves. But this sympathy
betrayed him sometimes into a free rendering of locutions such as a
translator should be chary of indulging in. Materials for a volume
accumulated slowly, but all the important portions of the ‘Poems’
published in 1870 had been in existence some years before that date. The
prose story of ‘Hand and Soul’ was also written as early as 1848 or 1849.
In the spring of 1860 he married Elizabeth Eleanor Siddall, who being
very beautiful was constantly painted and drawn by him. She had one
still-born child in 1861, and died in February, 1862. He felt her death
very acutely, and for a time ceased to write or to take any interest in
his own poetry. Like Prospero, indeed, he literally buried his wand, but
for a time only. From this time to his death he continued to produce
pictures, all of them showing, as far as technical skill goes, an
unfaltering advance in his art.
Yet wonderful as was Rossetti as an artist and poet, he was still more
wonderful, I think, as a man. The chief characteristic of his
conversation was an incisiveness so perfect and clear as to have often
the pleasurable surprise of wit. It is so well known that Rossetti has
been for a long time the most retired man of genius of our day, and so
many absurd causes for this retirement have been spoken of, that there is
nothing indecorous in the true cause of it being made public by one who
of late years has known more of him, perhaps, than has any other person.
About 1868 the curse of the artistic and poetic
temperament—insomnia—attacked him, and one of the most distressing
effects of insomnia is a nervous shrinking from personal contact with any
save a few intimate friends. This peculiar kind of nervousness may be
aggravated by the use of sleeping draughts, and in his case was thus
aggravated.
But, although Rossetti lived thus secluded, he did not lose the
affectionate regard of the illustrious men with whom he started in his
artistic life. Nor, assuredly, did he deserve to lose it, for no man
ever lived, I think, who was so generous as he in sympathizing with other
men’s work, save only when the cruel fumes of chloral turned him against
everything. And his sympathy was as wide as generous. It was only
necessary to mention the name of Leighton or Millais or Madox Brown or
Burne Jones or G. F. Watts, or, indeed, of any contemporary painter, to
get from him a glowing disquisition upon the merits of each—a
disquisition full of the subtlest distinctions, and illuminated by the
brilliant lights of his matchless fancy. And it was the same in poetry.
But those who loved Rossetti (that is to say, those who knew him) can
realize how difficult it is for me, a friend, to pursue just now such
reminiscences as these.