Produced by David Widger
RECOLLECTIONS OF DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI
By T. Hall Caine
Roberts Brothers - 1883
PREFACE.
One day towards the close of 1881 Rossetti, who was then very ill, said
to me:
“How well I remember the beginning of our correspondence, and how little
did I think it would lead to such relations between us as have ensued! I
was at the time very solitary and depressed from various causes, and
the letters of so young and ardent a well-wisher, though unknown to me
personally, brought solace.”
“Yours,” I said, “were very valuable to me.”
“Mine to you were among the largest bodies of literary letters I ever
wrote, others being often letters of personal interest.”
“And so admirable in themselves,” I added, “and so free from the
discussion of any but literary subjects that many of them would bear to
be printed exactly as you penned them.”
“That,” he said, “will be for you some day to decide.”
This was the first hint of any intention upon my part of publishing the
letters he had written to me; indeed, this was the first moment at which
I had conceived the idea of doing so. Nothing further on the subject was
said down to the morning of the Thursday preceding the Sunday on which
he died, when we talked together for the last time on subjects of
general interest,--subsequent interviews being concerned wholly with
solicitous inquiries upon my part, in common with other anxious friends,
as to the nature of his sufferings, and the briefest answers from him.
“How long have we been friends?” he said.
I replied, between three and four years from my first corresponding with
him.
“And how long did we correspond?”
“Three years, nearly.”
“What numbers of my letters you must possess! They may perhaps even yet
be useful to you.”
From this moment I regarded the publication of his letters as in some
sort a trust; and though I must have withheld them for some years if I
had consulted my own wishes simply, I yielded to the necessity that they
should be published at once, rather than run any risk of their not been
published at all.
What I have just said will account for the circumstance that I, the
youngest and latest of Rossetti’s friends, should be the first to seem
to stand towards him in the relation of a biographer. I say _seem_ to
stand, for this is not a biography. 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. But though
I know that whenever Mr. Watts sets pen to paper in pursuance of
such purpose, and in fulfilment of such charge, he will afford us a
recognisable portrait of the man, vivified by picturesque illustration,
the like of which few other writers could compass, I also know from
what Rossetti often told me of his friend’s immersion in all kinds and
varieties of life, that years (perhaps many years) may elapse before
such a biography is given to the world. My own book is, I trust, exactly
what it purports to be: a volume of Recollections, interwoven with
letters and criticism, and preceded by such a summary of the leading
facts in Rossetti’s life as seems necessary for the elucidation of
subsequent records. I have drawn Rossetti precisely as I found him in
each stage of our friendship, exhibiting his many contradictions of
character, extenuating nothing, and, I need hardly add, setting down
naught in malice. Up to this moment I have never inquired of myself
whether to those who have known little or nothing of Rossetti
hitherto, mine will seem to be on the whole favourable or unfavourable
portraiture; but I have trusted my admiration of the poet and affection
for the friend to penetrate with kindly and appreciative feeling every
comment I have had to offer. I was attracted to Rossetti in the first
case by ardent love of his genius, and retained to him ultimately by
love of the man. As I have said in the course of these Recollections,
it was largely his unhappiness that held me, with others, as by a spell,
and only too sadly in this particular did he in his last year realise
his own picture of Dante at Verona:
Yet of the twofold life he led
In chainless thought and fettered will
Some glimpses reach us,--somewhat still
Of the steep stairs and bitter bread,--
Of the soul’s quest whose stern avow
For years had made him haggard now.
I am sensible of the difficulty and delicacy of the task I have
undertaken, involving, as it does, many interests and issues; and in
every reference to surviving relatives as well as to other persons now
living, with whom Rossetti was in any way allied, I have exercised in
all friendliness the best judgment at my command.
Clement’s Inn, October 1882.
*** It has not been thought necessary to attach dates to the
letters printed in this volume, for not only would the
difficulty of doing so be great, owing to the fact that
Rossetti rarely dated his letters, but the utility of dates
in such a case would be doubtful, because the substance of
what is said is often quite impersonal, and, where
otherwise, is almost independent of the time of production.
It may be sufficient to say that the letters were written in
the years 1879,1880, and 1881.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER I.
Gabriele Rossetti--Boyhood--The pre-Raphaelite Movement--Early
Manhood--The Blessed Damozel--Jenny--Sister Helen--The Translations--The
House of Life--The Germ--Oxford and Cambridge Magazine--Blackfriars
Bridge--Married Life