Recollections of Dante Gabriel Rossetti Part 5

. . . By-the-bye, I have since remembered that Burne Jones, many years ago, had such an experience as you spoke of before--quite as bad certainly. He was weak for some time after, and has frequently been reminded in minor ways of it, but seems now (at about forty-six or forty-seven) to be more settled in health and stronger, perhaps, than ever before.... Your letter holds out the welcome probability of meeting you here ere long.

This friendly solicitude regarding my health was excited by the revelation of what seemed to me at the time a startling occurrence, but has doubtless frequently happened to others, and has certainly since happened to myself without provoking quite so much outcry. The blood-spitting to which Rossetti here alleges he was liable was of a comparatively innocent nature. In later years he was a.s.suredly not altogether a hero as to personal suffering, and I afterwards found that, upon the periodical recurrence of the symptom, he never failed to become convinced that he spat arterial blood, and that on each occasion he had received his death-warrant. Proof enough was adduced that the blood came from the minor vessels of the throat, and this was undoubtedly the case in the majority of instances, but whether the same explanation applied to one alarming occurrence which I shall now recount, seems to me uncertain.

During the two or three weeks preceding our departure for c.u.mberland, in the autumn of 1881, during the time of our residence there and during the first few weeks after our return to London, Rossetti was afflicted by a violent cough. I noticed that it troubled him almost exclusively in the night-time, and after the taking of chloral; that it was sometimes attended by vomiting; and that it invariably shook his whole system so terribly as to leave him for a while entirely prostrate from sheer physical exhaustion. The spectacle was a painful one, and I watched closely its phenomena, with the result of convincing myself that whatever radical mischief lay at the root of it, the damage done was seriously augmented by a conscious giving way to it, induced, I thought, by hope of the relief it sometimes afforded the stomach to get rid of the nauseous drug at a moment of reduced digestive vitality. Then it became my fear that in these violent and prolonged retchings internal injury might be sustained, and so I begged him to try to restrain the tendency to cough so much and often. He took the remonstrance with great goodnature (observing that he perceived I thought he was putting it on), but I was not conscious that at any moment he acted upon my suggestion.

At the time in question I was under the necessity of leaving him for a day or two every week in order to fulfil, a course of lecturing engagements at a distance; and upon my return in each instance I was told much of all that had happened to him in the interval. On one occasion, however, I was conscious that something had occurred of which he desired to make a disclosure, for amongst the gifts that Rossetti had not got was that of concealing from his intimate friends any event, however trifling, or however important, which weighed upon his mind.

At length I begged him to say what had happened, whereupon, with great reluctance and many protestations of his intention to observe silence, and constant injunctions as to secrecy, he told me that during the night of my absence, in the midst of one of his bouts of coughing, he had discharged an enormous quant.i.ty of blood. "I know this is the final signal," he said, "and I shall die." I did my utmost to compose him by recounting afresh the personal incident hinted at, with many added features of (I trust) justifiable exaggeration, but it is hardly necessary to say that I did not hold the promise I gave him as to secrecy sufficiently sacred, or so exclusive, as to forbid my revealing the whole circ.u.mstance to his medical attendant. I may add that from that moment the cough entirely disappeared.

To return from this reminiscence of a later period to the beginnings, three years earlier, of our correspondence, I will bring the present chapter to a close by quoting short pa.s.sages from three letters written on the eve of my first visit to Rossetti, in 1880:

I will be truly glad to meet you when you come to town. You will recognise the hole-and-cornerest of all existences; but I'll read you a ballad or two, and have Brown's report to back my certainty of liking you.... I would propose that you should dine with me at 8.30 on the Monday of your visit, and spend the evening.... Better come at 5.30 to 6 (if feasible to you), that I may try to show you a picture by daylight...

Of course, when I speak of your dining with me, I mean tete- a-tete, and without ceremony of any kind. I usually dine in my studio, and in my painting coat. I judge this will reach you in time for a note to reach _me_. Telegrams I hate. In hope of the pleasure of a meeting, yours ever.

How that "hole-and-cornerest of all existences" struck an ardent admirer of the poet-painter's genius, and a devoted lover of his personal character, as then revealed to me, I hope to describe in a later section of this book. Meantime I must proceed to cull from the epistolary treasures I possess a number of interesting pa.s.sages on literary subjects, called forth in the course of an intercourse which, at that stage, had few topics of a private nature to divert it from a channel of impersonal discussion. It is a fact that the letters written to me by Rossetti in the year 1880 deal so largely with literary affairs (chiefly of the past) as to be almost capable of _verbatim_ reproduction, even at the present short interval after his death. If they were to be reproduced, they would be found to cover two hundred pages of the present volume, and to be so easy, fluent, varied, and wholly felicitous as to style, and full of research and reflection as to substance, as probably to earn for the writer a foremost place for epistolary power.

Indeed, I am not without hope that this accession of a fresh reputation may result even upon the excerpts I have decided to introduce.

CHAPTER IV.

It was very natural that our earliest correspondence should deal chiefly with Rossetti's own works, for those works gave rise to it. He sent me a copy of his translations from early Italian poets (_Dante and his Circle_), and a copy of his story, ent.i.tled _Hand and Soul_. In posting the latter, he said:

I don't know if you ever saw a sort of story of mine called _Hand and Soul_. I send you one with this, as printed to go in my poems (though afterwards omitted, being, nevertheless, more poem than story). I printed it since in the _Fortnightly_--and, I believe, abolished one or two extra sentimentalities. You may have seen it there. In case it's stale, I enclose with this a sonnet which _must_ be new, for I only wrote it the other day.

I have already, in the proper place in this volume, said how the story first struck me. Perhaps I had never before reading it seen quite so clearly the complete mission as well as enforced limitations of true art. All the many subtle gradations in the development of purpose were there beautifully pictured in a little creation that was charming in the full sense of a word that has wellnigh lost its charm. For all such as cried out against pursuits originating in what Keats had christened "the infant chamber of sensation," and for all such as demanded that everything we do should be done to "strengthen G.o.d among men," the story provided this answer: "When at any time hath He cried unto thee, saying, 'My son, lend me thy shoulder, for I fall'?"

The sonnet sent, and spoken of as having just been written (the letter bears post-mark February 1880), was the sonnet on the sonnet. It is throughout beautiful and in two of its lines (those depicting the dark wharf and the black Styx) truly magnificent. It appears most to be valued, however, as affording a clue to the att.i.tude of mind adopted towards this form of verse by the greatest master of it in modern poetry. I think it is Mr. Pater who says that a fine poem in ma.n.u.script carries an aroma with it, and a sensation of music. I must have enjoyed the pleasure of such a presence somewhat frequently about this period, for many of the poems that afterwards found places in the second volume of ballads and sonnets were sent to me from time to time.

I should like to know what were the three or four vols. on Italian poetry which you mentioned in a former letter, and which my book somewhat recalled to your mind. I was not aware of any such extensive _English_ work on the subject.

Or do you perhaps mean Trucchi's Italian _Dugento Poesie inedite?_ I am sincerely delighted at your rare interest in what I have sent you--both the translations, story, etc.--I enclose three printed pieces meant for my volume but omitted:--the ballad, because it deals trivially with a base amour (it was written _very_ early) and is therefore really reprehensible to some extent; the Shakspeare sonnet, because of its incongruity with the rest of the poems, and also because of the insult (however jocose) to the worshipful body of tailors; and the political sonnet for reasons which are plain enough, though the date at which I wrote it (not without feeling) involves now a prophetic value. In a MS.

vol. I have a sonnet (1871) _After the German Subjugation of France_, which enforces the prophecy by its fulfilment. In this MS. vol. are a few pieces which were the only ones I copied in doubt as to their admission when I printed the poems, but none of which did I admit. One day I 'll send it for you to look at. It contains a few sonnets bearing on public matters, but only a few. Tell me what you think on reading my things. All you said in your letter of this morning was very grateful to me. I have a fair amount by me in the way of later MS. which I may shew you some day when we meet. Meanwhile I feel that your energies are already in full swing--work coming on the heels of work--and that your time cannot long be deferred as regards your place as a writer.

The ballad of which Rossetti here speaks as dealing trivially with a base amour is ent.i.tled _Dennis Shand_. Though an early work, it affords perhaps the best evidence extant of the poet's grasp of the old ballad style: it runs easiest of all his ballads, and is in some respects his best. Mr. J. A. Symonds has, in my judgment, made the error of speaking of Rossetti as incapable of reproducing the real note of such ballads as _Chevy Chase_ and _Sir Patrick Spens_. Mr. Symonds was right in his eloquent comments (_Macmillan's Magazine_, February 1882), so far as they concern the absence from _Rose Mary, The King's Tragedy, and The White Ship_ of the sinewy simplicity of the old singers. But in those poems Rossetti attempted quite another thing. There is a development of the English ballad that is entirely of modern product, being far more complex than the primitive form, and getting rid to some extent of the out-worn notion of the ballad being actually sung to set music, but retaining enough of the sweep of a free rhythm to carry a sensible effect as of being chanted when read. This is a sort of ballad-romance, such as _Christabel_ and _The Lay of the Last Minstrel_; and this, and this only, was what Rossetti aimed after, and entirely compa.s.sed in his fine works just mentioned. But (as Rossetti himself remarked to me in conversation when I repeated Mr. Symonds's criticism, and urged my own grounds of objection to it), that the poet was capable of the directness and simplicity which characterise the early ballad-writers, he had given proof in _The Staff and Scrip and Stratton Water. Dennis Shand_ is valuable as evidence going in the same direction, but the author's objection to it, on ethical grounds, must here prevail to withhold it from publication.

The Shakspeare sonnet, spoken of in the letter as being withheld on account of its incongruity with the rest of the poems, was published in an early _Academy_, notwithstanding its jocose allusion to the worshipful body of tailors. As it is little known, and really very powerful in itself, and interesting as showing the author's power over words in a new direction, I print it in this place.

ON THE SITE OF A MULBERRY TREE.

Planted by Wm. Shakspeare; felled by the Rev. F. Gastrell.

This tree, here fall'n, no common birth or death Shared with its kind. The world's enfranchised son, Who found the trees of Life and Knowledge one, Here set it, frailer than his laurel-wreath.

Shall not the wretch whose hand it fell beneath Rank also singly--the supreme unhung?

Lo! Sheppard, Turpin, pleading with black tongue This viler thief's unsuffocated breath!

We 'U search thy glossary, Shakspeare! whence almost, And whence alone, some name shall be reveal'd For this deaf drudge, to whom no length of ears Sufficed to catch the music of the spheres; Whose soul is carrion now,--too mean to yield Some tailor's ninth allotment of a ghost.

Stratford-on-Avon.

The other sonnets referred to, those, namely, on the _French Liberation of Italy_, and the _German Subjugation of France_, display all Rossetti's mastery of craftsmanship. In strength of vision, in fertility of rhythmic resource, in pliant handling, these sonnets are, in my judgment, among the best written by the author; and if I do not quote them here, or altogether regret that they do not appear in the author's works, it is not because I have any sense of their possibly offending against the delicate sensibilities of an age in which it seems necessary to hide out of sight whatever appears to impinge upon the domain of what is called our lower nature.

The circ.u.mstance has hardly obtained even so much as a pa.s.sing mention that Rossetti made certain very important additions to the ballad of _Sister Helen_, just before pa.s.sing the old volume through the press afresh for publication, contemporaneously with the new book. The letters I am now to quote show the origin of those additions, and are interesting, as affording a view of the author's estimate of the gain in respect of completeness of conception, and sterner tragic spirit which resulted upon their adoption.

I was very glad to have the three articles together, including the one in which you have written on myself. Looking at this again, it seems to me you must possess the _best_ edition (the Tauchnitz, which has my last emendations). Otherwise I have been meaning all along to offer you a copy of this edition, as I have some. Who was your informant as to dates of the poems, etc.? They are not correct, yet show some inkling. _Jenny_ (in a first form) was written almost as early as _The Blessed Damozel_, which I wrote (and have altered little since), when I was eighteen. It was first printed when I was twenty-one. Of the first _Jenny_, perhaps fifty lines survive here and there, but I felt it was quite beyond me then (a world I was then happy enough to be a stranger to), and later I re-wrote it completely. I will give you correct particulars at some time. _Sister Helen_, I may mention, was written either in 1851 or beginning of 1852, and was printed in something called _The Dusseldorf Annual_ {*} (published in Germany) in 1853; though since much revised in detail--not in the main. You will be horror-struck to hear that the first main addition to this poem was made by me only a few days ago!--eight stanzas (six together, and two scattered ones) involving a new incident!! Your hair is on end, I know, but if you heard the stanzas, they would smooth if not curl it. The gain is immense.

* In The Dusseldorf Annual the poem was signed H. H. H., and in explanation of this signature Rossetti wrote on his own copy the following characteristic note:--"The initials as above were taken from the lead-pencil."

In reply to this I told Rossetti that, as a "jealous honourer" of his, I confessed to some uneasiness when I read that he had been making important additions to _Sister Helen_. That I could not think of a stage of the story that would bear so to be severed from what goes before or comes after it as to admit of interpolation might not of itself go for much; but the entire ballad was so rounded into unity, one incident so naturally begetting the next, and the combined incidents so properly building up a fabric of interest of which the meaning was all inwoven, that I could not but fear that whatever the gain in certain directions, the additions of any stanzas involving a new incident might, in some measure, cripple the rest. Even though the new stanzas were as beautiful, or yet more beautiful than the old ones, and the incident as impressive as any that goes before it, or comes after it, the gain to the poem as an individual creation was not, I thought, a.s.sured because people used to say my style was hard.

Rossetti was mistaken in supposing that I possessed the latest and best edition of his _Poems_, but I had seen the latest of all English editions, and had noted in it several valuable emendations which, in subsequent quotation, I had been careful to employ. One of these seemed to me to involve an immeasurable gain. A stanza of _Sister Helen_, in its first form, ran:

Oh, the wind is sad in the iron chill, Sister Helen, And weary sad they look by the hill; But Keith of Ewern 's sadder still, Little brother.--etc. etc.

In the later edition the fourth line of this stanza ran:

But he and I are sadder still.

The change adds enormously to one's estimate of the characterisation.

All through the ballad one wants to feel that, despite the bitterness of her speech, the heart of the relentless witch is breaking. Like _The Broken Heart_ of Ford, the ballad with the amended line was a masterly picture of suppressed emotion. I hoped the new incident touched the same chord. Rossetti replied:

Thanks for your present letter, which I will answer with pleasurable care. At present I send you the Tauchnitz edition of my things. The bound copy is hideous, but more convenient--the other pretty. You will find a good many things bettered (I believe) even on the _latest_ English edition. I did not remember that the line you quote from _Sister Helen_ appeared in the new form at all in an English issue. I am greatly pleased at your thinking it, as I do, quite a transfiguring change... The next point I have marked in your letter is that about the additions to _Sister Helen_. Of course I knew that your hair must arise from your scalp in protest. But what should you say if Keith of Ewern were a three days' bridegroom--if the spell had begun on the wedding-morning--and if the bride herself became the last pleader for mercy? I fancy you will see your way now. The culminating, irresistible provocation helps, I think, to humanize Helen, besides lifting the tragedy to a yet sterner height.

If I had felt (as Rossetti predicted I should) an uneasy sensation about the roots of the hair upon hearing that he was making important additions to the ballad which seemed to me to be the finest of his works, the sensation in that quarter was not less, but more, upon learning the nature of those additions. But I mistook the character of the new incidents. That Sister Helen should be herself the abandoned _bride_ of Ewern (for so I understood the poet's explanation), and, as such, the last pleader for mercy, pointed, I thought, in the direction of the humanizing emendation ("But he and I are sadder still ") which had given me so much pleasure. That Keith of Ewern should be a three-days' bridegroom, and that the spell should begin on the wedding morning, were incidents that seemed to intensify every line of the poem. In this view of Rossetti's account of the additions, there were certainly difficulties out of which I could see no way, but I seemed to realise that Helen's hate, like Macbeth's ambition, had overleaped itself, and fallen on the other side, and that she would undo her work, if to return were not harder than to go on; her initiate sensibility had gained hard use, but even as hate recoils on love, so out of the ashes of hate love had arisen. In this view of the characterisation of Helen, the parallel with Macbeth struck me more and more as I thought of it.

When Macbeth kills Duncan, and hears the grooms of the chamber cry in their sleep--"G.o.d bless us," he cannot say "Amen,"

I had most need of blessing, and Amen Stuck in my throat.

Helen pleading too late for mercy against the potency of the spell she herself had raised, seemed to me an incident that raised her to the utmost height of tragic creation. But Rossetti's purpose was at once less ambitious and more satisfying.

Your pa.s.sage as to the changes in _Sister Helen_ could not well (with all its fine suggestiveness) be likely to meet exactly a reality which had not been submitted to your eye in the verses themselves. It is the _bride of Keith_ who is the last pleader--as vainly as the others, and with a yet more exulting development of vengeance in the forsaken witch. The only acknowledgment by her of a mutual misery is still found in the line you spotted as so great a gain before, and in the last line she speaks. I ought to have sent the stanzas to explain them properly, but have some reluctance to ventilate them at present, much as I should like the opportunity of reading them to you. They will meet your eye in due course, and I am sure of your approval also as regards their value to the ballad.... Don't let the changes in _Helen_ get wind overmuch. I want them to be new when published. Answer this when you can. I like getting your epistles.

The fresh stanzas in question, which had already obtained the suffrages of his brother, of Mr. Bell Scott, and other qualified critics, were subsequently sent to me. They are as follows. After Keith of Keith, the father of Sister Helen's sometime lover, has pleaded for his son in vain, the last suppliant to arrive is his son's bride:

A lady here, by a dark steed brought, Sister Helen, So darkly clad I saw her not.

"See her now or never see aught, Little brother!"

(_O Mother, Mary Mother_, _Whit more to see, between h.e.l.l and Heaven?_)

"Her hood falls back, and the moon shines fair, Sister Helen, On the Lady of Ewern's golden hair."

"Blest hour of my power and her despair, Little brother!"

(O Mother, Mary Mother, Hour blest and bann'd, between h.e.l.l and Heaven!)

"Pale, pale her cheeks, that in pride did glow, Sister Helen, 'Neath the bridal-wreath three days ago."

"One morn for pride and three days for woe, Little brother!"

(O Mother, Mary Mother, Three days, three nights, between h.e.l.l and Heaven!)

"Her clasp'd hands stretch from her bending head, Sister Helen; With the loud wind's wail her sobs are wed."

"What wedding-strains hath her bridal bed, Little brother?"

(O Mother, Mary Mother, What strain but death's, between h.e.l.l and Heaven?)

"She may not speak, she sinks in a swoon, Sister Helen,-- She lifts her lips and gasps on the moon."