WITH ROSSETTI IN CHEYNE WALK
Passing along the Chelsea Embankment a while ago I was reminded by the sight of Rossetti’s old house of the number of studios where I was once a constant visitor, which time had long since left untenanted. Millais, Leighton, Whistler, Fred Walker, Cecil Lawson, and Burne-Jones were among the names that crowded upon my recollection; and thinking of these men and of their work, I could not but be reminded of the changed spirit in which art has come to be regarded in these later days of restless experiment and ceaseless research after novelty of form and expression.
And yet those earlier times of which I am speaking were also marked by conflict and controversy; for even in the seventies, when I first became actively engaged in the study of painting, the stirring spirit of English Art still throbbed in response to the message that had been delivered by the pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood more than twenty years before. It may be a fancy, but I hardly think the workers or students of a later generation can quite understand the concentrated eagerness and expectation which awaited each new achievement of that small group of men upon whom the hope of the time had been set. We did not, perhaps, then quite realise that the revolution, so far as they were concerned, was already complete, and that what was to come was not destined to signalise any new or important development of what had already been accomplished.
Millais, Holman Hunt, and Rossetti, the three men who stand as the authentic founders of the pre-Raphaelite movement, had all, in the only sense in which their names still stand in linked association, produced the work by which they will be best remembered. During the twenty years that had passed since the movement took birth, the output of these three men, at first bitterly disputed and sometimes keenly resented, was in a sense the best that any or all of them were destined to give to the world—in a sense, I say, because their after-career, whatever new triumphs it proclaimed, exhibited a partial desertion of the aims which had held them in close comradeship during the brief season of their youth. It is probable that no three stronger or more distinct personalities ever laboured in the pursuit of a common purpose; and it was therefore inevitable that as the years passed they should each assert in separate ways the widely divergent tendencies which at the time I am speaking of were held in subjection to a common ideal. But when it is remembered what their combined efforts had already produced, the result must stand, I think, as a record unmatched in the domain of painting by any contemporary achievement in the art of Europe. Millais had painted and exhibited, among many other and less notable works, “The Feast of Lorenzo,” “The Carpenter’s Shop,” the “Ophelia,” the “Huguenot,” and the “Blind Girl”; Holman Hunt, whose methods as a painter were not calculated to win such ready acceptance, had none the less firmly established his fame by his picture of the “Light of the World,” at first roundly denounced by most of the organs of public opinion, but in the end, as much perhaps by reason of its intense religious sentiment as by its qualities of pure art, achieving through the advocacy of Mr. Ruskin a settled place in public esteem; and Rossetti, although during these years little or nothing had been shown to the world, was already accepted by those of the inner circle who were admitted to his confidence as the chief exponent of the spiritual tendencies of the new movement.
In 1873, when I first made the acquaintance of Rossetti, I knew more of his verse than of his painting. The first volume of his poems had been before the world for nearly three years, and it was hardly wonderful that the picturesque beauty of his writing, with its occasional direct reference to paintings and designs of his own, should have stirred within me an eager curiosity to make acquaintance with the pictures themselves. It happened about this time that I gained access to the small but choice collection of Mr. Rae of Birkenhead, which contained several of the most beautiful of Rossetti’s works; and filled with admiration of what I had seen, I had written, over the signature of Ignotus, an article in one of the daily papers containing an incomplete but enthusiastic appreciation of Rossetti’s powers. Searching where I could, I afterwards made myself acquainted with some of his designs in black and white; but still eager for a wider knowledge of a man whose poetic invention had laid so strong a hold upon me, I ventured to address myself directly to the recluse of Cheyne Walk, praying that if he could see his way to grant my request I might be permitted to visit his studio. From that time our acquaintance began. His letter in reply to mine, wherein I had mentioned a project then in my mind of enlarging my brief essay so as to make it more worthy of its subject, already revealed to me some part of that reticent side of his nature which our later friendship helped me the better to understand.
“My youth,” he wrote to me, “was spent chiefly in planning and designing, and whether I shall still have time to do anything I cannot tell.” And then, in conclusion, he added: “As to what you ask me about views connected with my work, I never had any theories on the subject, or derived, as far as a painter may say so, suggestions of style or tendency from any source save my own natural impulse.”
This letter, dated, as I have said, in 1873, shows how little an artist may be aware what part of his life’s work is destined to constitute his enduring title to fame. Still eagerly looking forward, he had already produced the work by which he will be best remembered, for although in years a young man—he was not more than forty-five at the time of our first acquaintance—his progress as a painter was not afterwards destined to record any notable development. “Beata Beatrix,” “The Loving Cup,” “The Beloved,” the “Monna Vanna,” the “Blue Bower,” and the “Lady Lilith” already stood to his credit, besides the series of water-colours, including “Paolo and Francesca,” and the beautiful pen-and-ink design of “Cassandra.”
The room into which I was shown on the occasion of my first visit to Cheyne Walk came to seem to me as aptly characteristic of the man. It offered few or none of the ordinary features of a studio, and in its array of books around the walls spoke rather of the man of letters than of the painter; and the careless disposition of the simple furniture, though it bore some tokens of the newer fashion introduced by William Morris and Rossetti himself, made no very serious appeal on the score of deliberate decoration. It was obviously the painter’s living room as well as his workshop, and as I came to know it afterwards, remains associated in my mind with many long evenings of vivid and fascinating talk, in which Rossetti roamed at will over the fields of literature and art. But the thing that at once took me by surprise on that first visit was the masculine and energetic personality of the man himself.
From what I knew of his persistent seclusion, and in part, also, from what I had gleaned from the subtle and delicate qualities expressed both in his painting and in his poetry, I was prepared to find in their author a man of comparatively frail physique and of subdued and retiring address. Nothing could be less like the reality that confronted me on that May afternoon, as he stood beside his easel at work upon the picture before him. It was not till much later, and then only by indications half-consciously conveyed, that I recaptured the picture of Rossetti as I had first found it reflected in his verse and in his painting. Little by little, as I got to know him better, I realised that my fancied image of him did indeed mirror qualities that lay deeply resident in his character; but at the first encounter it was the dominating strength and vigour of his intellect and the overpowering influence of a personality rich in varied sympathies, that struck itself in vivid outline upon the imagination of the observer.
As our intercourse and our friendship advanced, it was easy enough to comprehend the source of that potent spell which he wielded over all who came within the sphere of his influence. Without any reservation, I may say of him that he was beyond comparison the most inspiring talker with whom I have ever been brought into contact: certainly the most inspiring to a youth, for his conversation, although it sought no set phrase of eloquence, flowed in a stream that was irresistible; and yet so quick was his appreciation and so keen his sympathy that the youngest man of the company could always draw from him encouragement to speak without fear upon any theme that sincerely engaged him. I have heard him sometimes “gore and toss” without mercy any one who ventured to enter the debate with an empty ambition of display. Of insincerity of view, of any mere flimsy preciousness or prettiness of phrase, he was always impatiently intolerant; but he was equally quick to recognise and to welcome a thought truly held and modestly stated. At such times his ready power of evoking a full and fearless statement of what even the most insignificant of his visitors had to say was scarcely less inspiring than the rich and rounded tones of his own voice, as it glowed in enthusiastic appreciation of some worshipped hero in the field of art or letters. And though his work owns to a concentration and intensity of purpose that would seem sometimes to imply a corresponding narrowness of vision, it was in his work only that such a limited outlook could be said to be characteristic of the man.
That he dwelt by preference on the imaginative side of life, and chiefly chose for eulogy achievements in which the imagination was the dominating factor, is unquestionably true; but his taste within the wide limits of the region he had explored was catholic and comprehensive to a degree that I have not known equalled by any of his contemporaries. And lest this should seem an exaggerated estimate of the man as I knew him then, I may here quote the testimony of others who stood nearer to him than I did. Burne-Jones, his pupil and disciple, wrote long afterwards: “Towards other men’s ideas he was decidedly the most generous man I ever knew. No one so threw himself into the ideas of the other men; but it was part of his enormous imagination. The praises he had first lavished upon me, had I not had any inborn grains of modesty, would have been enough to turn my head altogether.” And at another time he wrote: “What I chiefly gained from him was not to be afraid of myself, and to do the thing I liked most; but in those first years I only wanted to think as he did, and all he did and said fitted me through and through. He never harangued or persuaded; he had a gift of saying things authoritatively, such as I have never heard in any man.”
But there is, indeed, no surer testimony to the magic of his personality than is betrayed in the restive spirit with which his two comrades of those earlier days endeavoured afterwards to assert their independence of his influence. Both Sir John Millais and Mr. Holman Hunt, in their later life, went out of their way to try to prove to the world that the pre-Raphaelite movement would have been in no way changed in its direction if Rossetti had not been one of the original group. I often talked with Millais on this subject, and it was easy to perceive that he harboured something almost of resentment at the bare suggestion that the direction of his art was in any sense due to the example or teaching of Rossetti; and of the Millais of later years, who had partly discarded the poetic impulses of his youth, it may be readily conceded that he owed nothing to the man whose art, whether in its splendour or in its decay, was governed always by the spirit of imaginative design.
And equally of Holman Hunt who, in his two long volumes, has so laboriously and so needlessly laboured to vindicate his own independence, it may be admitted without reservation that his kinship with the spirit in which Rossetti worked was transient and almost accidental. But it remains, nevertheless, unquestionably true that during that brief season of close comradeship, the supremacy of Rossetti’s genius is very clearly reflected in the work of both. The aftergrowth of talents as great as—and in some respects greater than—his, led each of these men into ways of Art that owned, it may be freely confessed, no obligation to Rossetti; and of the rich gifts of Millais as a painter, extraordinary in their precocity and developed in increasing power almost to the end of his career, no one could exhibit keener or truer appreciation than Rossetti himself. I recall on one of those nights in Cheyne Walk with what power and fulness of expression he paid willing homage to Millais’ genius. “Since painting began,” he said, “I do not believe there has ever been a man more greatly endowed.” And then he went on to speak with genuine humility of his own many shortcomings in technical accomplishment, wherein he admitted that Millais stood as the unchallenged master of his time.
Rossetti was the kindest, but most careless, of hosts, and the many little dinners at which I was permitted to be a guest always had about them something of the air of improvisation. Of the actual details of the feast, from a culinary point of view, he seemed to take little heed, and there was something quaint and humorous in the way in which, at the head of his table, he would attack the fowl or joint that happened to be set before him, lunging at it with the carving knife and fork almost as if it were an armoured foe who had challenged him to mortal combat. I remember on one of those occasions an incident occurred that showed in striking fashion the quick warmth of his heart at the sudden call of friendship. We were in the midst of cheeriest converse. Fred Leyland, one of his staunchest and earliest patrons, was of the company, when the news came by special messenger that young Oliver Madox Brown was stricken with serious illness. It chanced that we had been talking of the young man’s youthful essays, both in art and in literature, and Rossetti had spoken in almost exaggerated praise of the promise they displayed, when the letter was handed to him. He remained silent for a moment, though it was easy to see by the working of his face that he was deeply distressed. “Brown is my oldest friend,” he said. “His boy is ill, and I must go to him; but that need not break the evening for you.” And then, without any added word of farewell, he left us where we sat, and in a moment we heard the street door close, and we knew that he had gone. For a time we lingered over the table, but Cheyne Walk was no longer itself without the presence of its host. We passed into the studio, where Rossetti was wont to coil himself up on the sofa in preparation for long hours of talk, and we felt as by common consent that the evening was at an end.
The circumstance was slight enough in itself, but I remember feeling afresh how magical and inspiring was the spell he exercised over us all, and I little realised then that this friendship with Rossetti, which had proved so powerful a factor in moulding the intellectual tendencies of my own life, was not destined much longer to endure. For a time, indeed, the old welcome always awaited me, but after a time I thought I detected a certain reserve and restraint in our intercourse which I was unable to explain. A little later those longed-for invitations to dine at Cheyne Walk ceased altogether, and once or twice when I called the studio door, always open to me heretofore, was closed, on the excuse that the painter was too busily engaged. It was not, indeed, until after his death, that I learnt from his truest and most trusted friend the cause of our alienation.
Rossetti, although he never exposed his own pictures to public criticism, was, like every artist who has ever lived, eager for the praise of those whose praise he valued; and his nature, already grown morbid under the stress of influences that were undermining his health, was not without an element of jealousy that seemed strangely inconsistent with the tribute he could on many an occasion offer to the work of others. He saw but little of Burne-Jones in those days, but he knew that I saw him often. He knew, also, from my published criticism, that I was strongly attracted to his genius, and although I have heard Rossetti himself speak of his pupil and follower in terms of laudation that could not be surpassed, the thought, as I learnt later, had already begun to poison his mind that my allegiance to himself had suffered diminution; and he frankly confessed to the friend from whom little in his life was hidden that my presence in Cheyne Walk became to him, for this reason, a source of irritation, which, in the condition of his health, he was unable to endure.
Such flaws in a nature so splendidly endowed count for nothing in remembrance of the picture of him that remains to me as I first knew him in the plenitude of his intellectual powers. For a time it seemed as if the great movement at the head of which his name must enduringly remain was likely to suffer eclipse. The taste of later years had taken an entirely different direction, and the ideals which the small band he led had striven so manfully to recapture from a renewed study of nature and a finer understanding of the artistic achievements of the past appeared to have sunk into oblivion. It was therefore a delight to find in Rome in the spring of two years ago how enthusiastic was the welcome accorded to a man who, while he ranks so high among English painters, owned in his veins the blood of Italy and from whose painters, at that bewitching season when the spirit of the Renaissance was in its youth, he had drawn the inspiration which was destined to kindle his own genius.