In the design for “The Lady of Shalott” Holman Hunt exhibits traces—very unusual for him—of the influence of Rossetti upon his own work. For pathetic dignity and sensuous grace, the entangled lady, girt about with the web of dreams, might well stand among Rossetti’s children, and not be detected as of other birth. Rossetti’s own “Lady of Shalott” is much less fair a type, and belongs to the earliest and most archaic manner of his Arthurian period. Much more characteristic of the painter’s individuality is Holman Hunt’s “Oriana,” a grave, strong woman like his later Madonnas, whose mien belies the conventional sex-theory which ascribes to man alone the “wisdom-principle,” and assigns to womanhood the principle of “love.”
Rossetti, again, seems to have been largely influenced by Madox Brown in his illustration to “The Palace of Art,” save for the highly characteristic drawing of the girl at the organ, whose pose is almost identical with that of the dead Beatrice in “Dante’s Dream,” of a much later date. “Sir Galahad” is, however, entirely original in manner, and represents the best level of Rossetti’s Arthurian designs. It shows the knight halting, weary but not dispirited, at a wayside shrine, and bending with worn and yet resolute face over the holy water that awaits the pilgrim-worshippers. His horse, bearing the white banner marked with the red cross of sacred chivalry, stands at the gate, and a group of nuns are seen within, ringing the chapel bell.
The facile simplicity and grace of Millais, who was more accustomed to the task of book-illustration than his collaborateurs, found favourable scope in “Edward Grey” and “The Day-dream,” in which the figure of the half-awakened girl in the Sleeping Palace is drawn with exquisitely tender charm.
The edition, on the whole, probably tended to increase the reputation of the Pre-Raphaelites as draughtsmen, and to dispel some hard-dying illusions as to their distinguishing qualities in design, though its independent merits were not of exceptional mark.
Only once again does Rossetti appear in the field of book illustration. In 1862 he executed two designs for the first volume of poems published by his sister, Miss Christina Rossetti, under the title of “Goblin Market.” These drawings (“Buy from us with a golden curl” and “Golden head by Golden head”) were followed in 1866 by two more of a similar character (“The long hours go and come and go,” and “You should have wept her yesterday”), to illustrate the second volume of poetry from the same pen, entitled, “The Prince’s Progress.”
But the fame of the Pre-Raphaelites as poets was already enhanced, within an increasing circle of appreciators, by the publication, in 1856, of a journal which may, to some extent, be regarded as a successor to the “The Germ.” “The Oxford and Cambridge Magazine,” edited by Mr. Godfrey Lushington, had the better fortune to survive for a year, in monthly numbers; though all its contents were anonymous, and its issue involved no less labour and anxiety on the part of its sponsors, if not so much pecuniary onus as in the case of the more luxuriously printed and illustrated “Germ.” The new publication contained several of Rossetti’s finest poems, such as “The Staff and Scrip,” and “Nineveh,” and a series of mediæval romances and poems by two young artists destined henceforth to be intimately associated with the Pre-Raphaelite movement, and to exert important influence on its later developments—William Morris and Edward Burne-Jones. Both were Oxford men, and had been close friends at Exeter College, whence in 1856 came Burne-Jones to London with the express desire of meeting and knowing Dante Rossetti, his senior by five years; he having been born in Birmingham on the 28th of August, 1833, and educated at King Edward’s School in that city, proceeding to Oxford in 1853.
It was at the Working Men’s College in Great Ormond Street that Burne-Jones first saw Rossetti, and, through the introduction of Mr. Vernon Lushington, entered upon the friendship which was to save him (as his friend William Morris was similarly saved) from adopting, as had been intended, the Church as his profession, and thus depriving, the world of a service no less religious in the highest sense, and no less potent a factor in the ethical awakening of to-day.
The Working Men’s College, now rich in annals of some of the most significant intellectual movements of the mid-century, was at that time a centre of enthusiastic work in art and literature. Rossetti and his friends took a considerable share in the lecturing and class-teaching of which Charles Kingsley and F.D. Maurice were the popular and indefatigable leaders. Hither also came Ruskin, of whom Rossetti records with loyal admiration how one night, being asked in an emergency to address the drawing-class, he made, without any preparation, “the finest speech I ever heard.”
Rossetti’s growing intimacy with Oxford collegians, and the ties of sympathy already formed in Oxford round the Pre-Raphaelite painters by the clientèle of Millais and Hunt, now led him into an enterprise which has been the subject of much Philistine mirth, and of some laboured apologetics on the part of the too-serious historian. There is no doubt that Rossetti and his collaborateurs made quite as merry as any of their critics over the ludicrous failure of their début as fresco-painters in 1857. But it was very natural that Rossetti, with his early enthusiasm for the fresco style yet awaiting an outlet, should have seized eagerly at the chance of trying his ’prentice hand on so engagingly favourable an area as the new hall of the Oxford Union Debating Society. Visiting the city in company with William Morris during the summer months, Rossetti was shown over the freshly completed building by his friend Mr. Woodward; and observing the blank spaces of the gallery window-bays, impulsively offered to paint on them a series of the “Morte D’Arthur” subjects which had so much engrossed his fancy during the past three years. The suggestion was readily agreed to, and Rossetti began to collect recruits for the campaign, which he perceived would afford ample scope for other labour than his own. Accordingly, at the commencement of the long vacation, a company of six young enthusiasts, embarrassingly ignorant of the first technical elements of mural painting, but unabashed by any such details in the path of success, fell confidently upon their fascinating task. The party consisted of Rossetti, Burne-Jones, William Morris, Arthur Hughes, Val Prinsep, Spencer Stanhope, Alexander Monro, and J. Hungerford Pollen, then Proctor at the University, who had already won some distinction by his painting of the beautiful roof in Merton College Chapel. The roof of the Debating Hall was now successfully painted, in a grotesque design, by William Morris, who also undertook one of the window-bays, and proposed as his subject “Sir Palomides’ Jealousy of Sir Tristram and Iseult.” Alexander Monro, the sculptor of the party, executed the stone shield over the porch. Burne-Jones selected for his fresco “Nimuë brings Sir Peleus to Ettarde after their Quarrel;” Arthur Hughes proposed “Arthur Conveyed by the Weeping Queens to Avalon after his Death;” Val Prinsep, “Merlin Lured into the Pit by the Lady of the Lake,” and J. Hungerford Pollen, “King Arthur Receiving the Sword Excalibur from the Lady of the Lake.” Rossetti’s subjects were “Sir Galahad Receiving the Sangrael” and “Sir Launcelot before the Shrine of the Sangrael.” The knight, in this last design, has just attained the sacred goal of his pilgrimage, and in his weariness has sunk down in sleep upon the threshold; but his sleep, even in that hour, is haunted by the face of Guinevere. So powerful was this composition in romantic force and imaginative fervour, especially in the haunting, passionate face of the Queen, as to make the speedy obliteration of this and its companion frescoes the more deplorable, in spite of the obvious crudities and incompetencies that blemish the whole series of designs. Obliterated they became, however, and hopelessly beyond restoration, within a very short time of their commencement;—finished they never were. Incredible as it seems, in these days of superior wisdom in the Young Person anent matters of Art, these brilliant young painters of 1857—three at least of them now in the first rank of fame in their several spheres—had not even attempted to prepare the raw brick surface for the reception of their pigments, but had cast their ordinary oil-colours direct upon the inhospitable wall. Time and the atmosphere made short work of such artless challenges of decay; and before any of the frescoes had attained completion the ardent little band were obliged to confess themselves defeated, and to retire somewhat ignominiously from the field. The enterprise had its pathetic, its humorous, and its entirely delightful side. The financial arrangement with the Oxford Union Council was that they should defray all necessary expenses incurred by the artists; and of this advantage the young Bohemians appear to have availed themselves to the full. Anecdotes abound to tell of the hilarious but very harmless festivities which mitigated the discouragements of their task. A contemporary undergraduate well recalls the mirth and chatter which he heard day by day as he sat in the adjacent library. Such a group of congenial spirits could not fail to enjoy the conditions of their companionship as much as the audacity of their task. They were favoured, further, with a new acquaintanceship of a very welcome kind; for it was here that another young poet, Algernon Charles Swinburne, was now introduced, as an undergraduate at the university, to the artists at their work, and added an important link to the chain of memorable friendships woven in these early years among the galaxy of genius which has illumined the England of to-day. It was in Oxford also, at the theatre one evening, that Rossetti saw, and succeeded in getting introduced to, the beautiful lady who afterwards became William Morris’s wife, and Rossetti’s most cherished friend through all his troubles. She was the model for his “Day-dream” and several others of the finest of his maturer works.
The hapless frescoes are now hardly recognizable upon the Oxford walls, but their dim ghosts linger, like the kindly witnesses of days fruitful, at least, in loves and friendships of sacred import on the lives of the young sojourners in that “home of lost causes, and forsaken beliefs, and unpopular names, and impossible loyalties,” as Matthew Arnold called it.