It is a sweet and comforting thought for every poet that, whether or not
the public cares during his life to read his verses, it will after his
death care very much to read his letters to his mistress, to his wife, to
his relatives, to his friends, to his butcher, and to his baker. And
some letters are by that same public held to be more precious than
others. If, for instance, it has chanced that during the poet’s life he,
like Rossetti, had to borrow thirty shillings from a friend, that is a
circumstance of especial piquancy. The public likes—or rather it
demands—to know all about that borrowed cash. Hence it behoves the
properly equipped editor who understands his duty to see that not one
allusion to it in the poet’s correspondence is omitted. If he can also
show what caused the poet to borrow those thirty shillings—if he can by
learned annotations show whether the friend in question lent the sum
willingly or unwillingly, conveniently or inconveniently—if he can show
whether the loan was ever repaid, and if repaid when—he will be a happy
editor indeed. Then he will find a large and a grateful public to whom
the mood in which the poet sat down to write ‘The Blessed Damosel’ is of
far less interest than the mood in which he borrowed thirty shillings.
We do not charge the editor of this volume {104} with exhibiting unusual
want of taste. On the whole, he is less irritating to the poetical
student than those who have laboured in kindred “fields of literature.”
Indeed, we do not so much blame the editors of such books as we blame the
public, whose coarse and vulgar mouth is always agape for such pabulum.
The writer of this review possesses an old circulating-library copy of a
book containing some letters of Coleridge. One page, and one only, is
greatly disfigured by thumb marks. It is the page on which appears, not
some precious hint as to the conclusion of ‘Christabel,’ but a domestic
missive of Coleridge’s ordering broad beans for dinner.
If, then, the name of those readers who take an interest in broad beans
is legion compared with the name of those who take an interest in ‘Kubla
Khan,’ is not the wise editor he who gives all due attention to the
poet’s favourite vegetable? Those who will read with avidity Rossetti’s
allusion to his wife’s confinement in the letter in which he tells
Allingham that “the child had been dead for two or three weeks” will
laugh to scorn the above remarks, and as they are in the majority the
laugh is with them.
The editor of this volume laments that Allingham’s letters to Rossetti
are beyond all editorial reach. But who has any right to ask for
Allingham’s private letters? Rossetti, who was strongly against the
printing of private letters, had the wholesome practice of burning all
his correspondence. This he did at periodical holocausts—memorable
occasions when the coruscations of the poet’s wit made the sparks from
the burning paper seem pale and dull. He died away from home, or not a
scrap of correspondence would have been left for the publishers.
Although the “public” acknowledges no duties towards the man of literary
or artistic genius, but would shrug up its shoulders or look with dismay
at being asked to give five pounds in order to keep a poet from the
workhouse, the moment a man of genius becomes famous the public becomes
aware of certain rights in relation to him. Strangely enough, these
rights are recognized more fully in the literary arena than anywhere
else, and among them the chief appears to be that of reading an author’s
private letters. One advantage—and surely it is a very great one—that
the “writing man” has over the man of action is this: that, while the
portrait of the man of action has to be painted, if painted at all, by
the biographer, the writing man paints his own portrait for himself.
And as, in a deep sense, every biographer is an inventor like the
novelist—as from the few facts that he is able to collect he infers a
character—the man of action, after he is dead, is at the mercy of every
man who writes his life. Is not Alexander the Great no less a figment of
another man’s brain than Achilles, or Macbeth, or Mr. Pickwick? But a
poet, howsoever artistic, howsoever dramatic, the form of his work may
be, is occupied during his entire life in painting his own portrait. And
if it were not for the intervention of the biographer, the reminiscence
writer, or the collector of letters for publication, our conception of
every poet would be true and vital according to the intelligence with
which we read his work.
This is why, of all English poets, Shakespeare is the only one whom we do
thoroughly know—unless perhaps we should except his two great
contemporaries Webster and Marlowe. Steevens did not exaggerate when he
said that all we know of Shakespeare’s outer life is that he was born at
Stratford-on-Avon, married, went to London, wrote plays, returned to
Stratford, and died. Owing to this circumstance (and a blessed one it
is) we can commune with the greatest of our poets undisturbed. We know
how Shakespeare confronted every circumstance of this mysterious life—we
know how he confronted the universe, seen and unseen—we know to what
degree and in what way he felt every human passion. There is no careless
letter of his, thank God! to give us a wrong impression of him. There is
no record of his talk at the Mermaid, the Falcon, or the Apollo saloon to
make readers doubtful whether his printed utterances truly represent him.
Would that the will had been destroyed! then there would have been no
talk about the “second-best bed” and the like insane gabble. Suppose, by
ill chance, a batch of his letters to Anna Hathaway had been preserved.
Is it not a moral certainty that they would have been as uninteresting as
the letters of Coleridge, of Scott, of Dickens, of Rossetti, and of
Rossetti’s sister?
Why are the letters of literary men apt to be so much less interesting
than those of other people? Is it not because, the desire to express
oneself in written language being universal, this desire with people
outside the literary class has to be of necessity exercised in
letter-writing? Is it not because, where there is no other means of
written expression than that of letter-writing, the best efforts of the
letter-writer are put into the composition, as the best writing of the
essayist is put into his essays? However this might have been in
Shakespeare’s time, the half-conscious, graphic power of the non-literary
letter-writer of to-day is often so great that if all the letters written
in English by non-literary people, especially letters written from abroad
to friends at home in the year 1897, {108} were collected, and the cream
of them extracted and printed, the book would be the most precious
literary production that the year has to show. If, on the other hand,
the letters of contemporary English authors were collected in the same
way, the poverty of the book would be amazing as compared with the
published writings of the authors. With regard to Dickens’s letters,
indeed, the contrast between their commonplace, colourless style and the
pregnancy of his printed utterances makes the writing in his books seem
forced, artificial, unnatural.
The same may in some degree be said of such letters of Rossetti as have
hitherto been published. The charming family letters printed by his
brother come, of course, under a different category. With the exception
of these, perhaps the letters in the volume before us are the most
interesting Rossetti letters that have been printed. Yet it is
astonishing how feeble they are in giving the reader an idea of Rossetti
himself. And this gives birth to the question: Do we not live at a time
when the unfairness of printing an author’s letters is greater than it
ever was before? To go no further back than the early years of the
present century, the facilities of locomotion were then few, friends were
necessarily separated from each other by long intervals of time, and
letters were a very important part of intercommunication, consequently it
might be expected that even among authors a good deal of a man’s
individuality would be expressed in his letters. But even at that period
it was only a quite exceptional nature like that of Charles Lamb which
adequately expressed itself in epistolary form. Keats’s letters, no
doubt, are full of good sense and good criticism, but taking them as a
body, including the letters to Fanny Brawne, we think it were better if
they had been totally destroyed. As to Byron’s letters, they, of course,
are admirable in style and full of literary life, but their very
excellence shows that his natural mode of expression was brilliant,
slashing prose. But if it was unfair to publish the letters of Coleridge
and Keats, what shall we say of the publication of letters written by the
authors of our own day, when, owing to an entire change in the conditions
of life, no one dreams of putting into his letters anything of literary
interest?
When Rossetti died he was, as regards the public, owing to his
exclusiveness, much in the same position as Shakespeare has always been.
The picture of Rossetti that lived in the public mind was that of a poet
and painter of extraordinary imaginative intensity and magic, whose
personality, as romantic as his work, influenced all who came in contact
with him. He was, indeed, the only romantic figure in the imagination of
the literary and art world of his time. It seemed as if in his very name
there was an unaccountable music. The present writer well remembers
being at a dinner-party many years ago when the late Lord Leighton was
talking in his usual delightful way. His conversation was specially
attended to only by his interlocutor, until the name of Rossetti fell
from his lips. Then the general murmur of tongues ceased. Everybody
wanted to hear what was being said about the mysterious poet-painter.
Thus matters stood when Rossetti died. Within forty-eight hours of his
death the many-headed beast clamoured for its rights. Within forty-eight
hours of his death there was a leading article in an important newspaper
on the subject of his suspiciousness as the result of chloral-drinking.
And from that moment the romance has been rubbed off the picture as
effectually by many of those who have written about him as the bloom is
fingered off of a clumsily gathered peach.
But the reader will say, “Truth is great, and must prevail. The picture
of Rossetti that now exists in the public mind is the true one. The
former picture was a lie.” But here the reader will be much mistaken.
The romantic picture which existed in the public mind during Rossetti’s
life was the true one; the picture that now exists of him is false.
Does any one want to know what kind of a man was the painter of ‘Dante’s
Dream’ and the poet of ‘The Blessed Damosel,’ let him wipe out of his
mind most of what has been written about him, let him forget if he can
most of the Rossetti letters that have been published, and let him read
the poet’s poems and study the painter’s pictures, and he will know
Rossetti—not, indeed, so thoroughly as we know Shakespeare and Æschylus
and Sophocles, but as intimately as it is possible to know any man whose
biography is written only in his works.
It must be admitted, however, that for those who had a personal knowledge
of Rossetti some of the letters in this volume will have an interest,
owing to the evidence they afford of that authorial generosity which was
one of his most beautiful characteristics. His disinterested
appreciation of the work of his contemporaries sets him apart from all
the other poets of his time and perhaps of any other time. To wax
eloquent in praise of this and that illustrious name, and thus to claim a
kind of kinship with it, is a very different thing from Rossetti’s noble
championship of a name, whether that of a friend or otherwise, which has
never emerged from obscurity. It is perhaps inevitable and in the nature
of things that most poets are too much absorbed in their own work to have
time to interest themselves in the doings of their fellow-workers.
But, with regard to Rossetti, he could feel, and often did feel, as deep
an interest in the work of another man as in his own. There was no
trouble he would not take to aid a friend in gaining recognition. This
it was more than anything else which endeared him to all his friends, and
made them condone those faults of his which ever since his death have
been so freely discussed. The editor of this volume quotes this sentence
from Skelton’s ‘Table-Talk of Shirley’:—
“I have preserved a number of Rossetti’s letters, and there is barely
one, I think, which is not mainly devoted to warm commendation of
obscure poets and painters—obscure at the time of writing, but of
whom more than one has since become famous.”
Nor was his interest in other men’s work confined to that of his personal
friends. His discovery of Browning’s ‘Pauline,’ of Charles Wells, and of
the poems of Ebenezer Jones may be cited as instances of this. Moreover,
he was always looking out in magazines—some of them of the most obscure
kind—for good work. And if he was rewarded, as he sometimes was, by
coming upon precious things that might otherwise have been lost, his
heart was rejoiced.
One day, having turned into a coffee-house in Chancery Lane to get a cup
of coffee, he came upon a number of _Reynolds’s Miscellany_, and finding
there a poem called ‘A Lover’s Pastime,’ he saw at once its extraordinary
beauty, and enclosed it in a letter to Allingham. In this case, however,
he unfortunately did not make his usual efforts to discover the
authorship of a poem that pleased him; and a pity it is, for the poem is
one of the loveliest lyrics that have been written in modern times. We
hope it will find a place in the next anthology of lyrical poetry.
Though his criticisms were not always sure and impeccable, he was of all
critics the most independent of authority. Had he chanced to find in the
poets’ corner of _The Eatanswill Gazette_ a lyric equal to the best of
Shelley’s, he would have recognized its merits at once and proclaimed
them; and had he come across a lyric of Shelley’s that had received
unmerited applause, he would have recognized its demerits for himself,
and proclaimed them with equal candour and fearlessness.
Again, certain passages in these letters will surprise the reader by
throwing light upon a side of Rossetti’s life and character which was
only known to his intimate friends. Recluse as Rossetti came to be, he
knew more of “London life” in the true sense of the word than did many of
those who were supposed to know it well—diners-out like Browning, for
instance, and Richard Doyle. That the author of ‘The House of Life’ knew
London on the side that Dickens knew it better than any other poet of his
time will no doubt surprise many a reader. His visits to Jamrach’s mart
for wild animals led him to explore the wonderful world, that so few
people ever dream of, which lies around Ratcliffe Highway. He observed
with the greatest zest the movements of the East-End swarm. Moreover,
his passion for picking up “curios” and antique furniture made him
familiar with quarters of London that he would otherwise have never
known. And not Dickens himself had more of what may be called the
“Haroun al Raschid passion” for wandering through a city’s streets at
night. It was this that kept him in touch on one side with men so unlike
him as Brough and Sala.
In this volume there is a charming anecdote of his generosity to Brough’s
family, and Sala always spoke of him as “dear Dante Rossetti.” The
transpontine theatre, even the penny gaff of the New Cut, was not quite
unfamiliar with the face of the poet-painter. Hence no man was a better
judge than he of the low-life pictures of a writer like F. W. Robinson,
whose descriptions of the street arab in ‘Owen, a Waif,’ &c., he would
read aloud with a dramatic power astonishing to those who associated him
exclusively with Dante, Beatrice, and mystical passion.
Frequently in these letters an allusion will puzzle the reader who does
not know of Rossetti’s love of nocturnal rambling, an allusion, however,
which those who knew him will fully understand. Here is a sentence of
the kind:—
“As I haven’t been outside my door for months in the daytime, I
should not have had much opportunity of enjoying pastime and
pleasaunces.”
The editor quotes some graphic and interesting words from Mr. W. M.
Rossetti which explain this passage.
In summer, as in winter, he rose very late in the day and made a
breakfast, as he used to say, which was to keep him in fuel for something
under twelve hours. He would then begin to paint, and scarcely leave his
work till the daylight waned. Then he would dine, and afterwards start
off for a walk through the London streets, which to him, as he used to
say, put on a magical robe with the lighting of the gas lamps. After
walking for miles through the streets, either with a friend or alone,
loitering at the windows of such shops as still were open, he would turn
into an oyster shop or late restaurant for supper. Here his frankness of
bearing was quite irresistible with strangers whenever it pleased him to
approach them, as he sometimes did. The most singular and bizarre
incidents of his life occurred to him on these occasions—incidents which
he would relate with a dramatic power that set him at the head of the
_raconteurs_ of his time. One of these _rencontres_ in the Haymarket was
of a quite extraordinary character.
In the latter years of his life, when he lived at Cheyne Walk, he would
often not begin his perambulations until an hour before midnight. It
will be a pity if some one who accompanied him in his nocturnal
rambles—the most remarkable man of our time—does not furnish the world
with reminiscences of them.
Another point of interest upon which these letters will throw light is
that connected with his method of work. He himself, like Tennyson, used
to say that those who are the most curious as to the way in which a poem
was written are precisely those who have the least appreciation of the
beauties of the poem itself. If this is true, the time in which we live
is not remarkable, perhaps, for its appreciation of poetry. These
letters, at any rate, will be appreciated, for the light that some of
them throw upon Rossetti at work is remarkable. When a subject for a
poem struck him, it was his way to make a prose note of it, then to
cartoon it, then to leave it for a time, then to take it up again and
read it to his friends, and then to finish it. In a letter to Allingham,
dated July 18th, 1854, enclosing the first form of the sonnet called
‘Lost on Both Sides’—which sonnet did not appear in print till
1881—Rossetti says: “My sonnets are not generally finished till I see
them again after forgetting them; and this is only two days old. When
between the first form of a sonnet and the second an interval of
twenty-seven years elapses, no student of poetry can fail to compare one
form with the other.
And so with regard to that poem which is, on the whole, Rossetti’s
masterpiece—‘Sister Helen’—sent as early as 1854 to Mrs. Howitt for the
German publication the _Düsseldorf Annual_; the changes in it are
extremely interesting. Never did it appear in print without suffering
some important variation. Sometimes, indeed, the change of a word or two
in a line would entirely transfigure the stanza. As to the new stanzas
added to the ballad just before Rossetti’s death, these turned the ballad
from a fine poem into a great one.
Equally striking are the changes in ‘The Blessed Damosel.’ But the most
notable example of the surety of his hand in revising is seen in regard
to a poem several times mentioned in this volume, called originally
‘Bride’s Chamber Talk.’ It was begun as early as ‘Jenny,’ read by
Allingham in 1860, but not printed till more than a quarter of a century
later. The earliest form is still in existence in MS., and although some
of the lines struck out are as poetry most lovely, the poem on the whole
is better without them. It was a theory of Rossetti’s, indeed, that the
very riches of the English language made it necessary for the poet who
would achieve excellence to revise and manipulate his lines. And in
support of this he would contrast the amazing passion for revision
disclosed by Dr. Garnett’s ‘Relics of Shelley,’ in which sometimes
scarcely half a dozen of the original words are left on a page, with
Scott’s metrical narratives, which were sent to the printer in cantos as
they were written, like one of the contemporary novels thrown off for the
serials. The fact seems to be, however, that the poet’s power of
reaching, as Scott reached, his own ideal expression _per saltum_, or
reaching it slowly and tentatively, is simply a matter of temperament.
For whose verses are more loose-jointed than Byron’s? whose diction is
more commonplace than his? And yet this is what the greatest of Byron
specialists, Mr John Murray, says in his extremely interesting remarks
upon Byron’s autograph:—
“If we except Byron’s dramatic pieces and ‘Don Juan,’ the first draft
of Byron’s longer poems formed but a nucleus of the work as it was
printed. For example, ‘English Bards and Scotch Reviewers’ grew out
of the ‘British Bards,’ while ‘The Giaour,’ by constant additions to
the manuscript, the proofs, and even to the work after publication,
was expanded to nearly twice its original size. . . . When the
inspiration was on him, the printer had to be kept at work the
greater part of the night, and fresh ‘copy’ and fresh revises were
crossing one another hour by hour.”
The conclusion is that poets cannot be classified according to their
methods of work, but only in relation to the result of those methods, and
that our two great elaborators, Byron and Rossetti, may still be more
unlike each other in essentials than are any other two nineteenth-century
poets.
On the whole, we cannot help closing this book with kindly feelings
towards the editor, inasmuch as it aids in the good work of restoring the
true portrait of the man who has suffered more than any other from the
mischievous malignity of foes and the more mischievous indiscretion of
certain of his friends.
III. ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON.
1809–1892.