The publication, in 1870, of Rossetti’s volume of “Poems,” containing, together with some of his loveliest short lyrics, “The Blessed Damozel,” and the “House of Life” sonnets, led the way for that unfortunate attack upon him in the critical press which undoubtedly contributed to the shortening of his days, however regrettable may have been the hyper-sensitive manner in which the poet met his arraignment. In 1871 an article signed “Thomas Maitland” was published in the “Contemporary Review,” entitled “The Fleshly School of Poetry,” in which Rossetti’s poems were attacked, from an avowedly moral point of view, on the ground of sensuality. Ignoring the essential principles of all Rossetti’s work—the sacredness of the senses as the instruments of the soul—the meaning of all physical beauty as the witness of an immanent God—the writer deliberately charged him with pandering to the lowest instincts of his readers, and being, in short, the prophet of that later and grossly materialistic phase of European art of which the very name Pre-Raphaelite was a repudiation. It is not surprising that to a deeply (if undefinedly) religious nature like Rossetti’s this should have seemed the hardest blow that could have been dealt at his art and at him. The publication of the magazine article, however, seriously disconcerted him at the moment. It was not until the offensive and wholly unfair indictment was re-issued in the following year in pamphlet form that it began to assume a more serious aspect in the victim’s eyes. Criticism of his poetic methods he could have borne with equanimity. Indifference and neglect seldom troubled him. He cared little for popularity, and was no seeker after fame, although he naturally desired the appreciation of those whose judgment was of real account in literature. But he did care for his general reputation as a clean-lived and pure-minded man. This charge assailed the ethical foundations of all his work. He had seen in the loveliest things of earth the vessels and channels of the loveliness of heaven. And that this should be counted to him for sensuality—that the love which had been to him “a worship and a regeneration” should be held up to scorn as a gross and carnal passion—that was the intolerable thing!
Not that he lacked defenders. His own answer, under the title of “The Stealthy School of Criticism,” in the columns of the “Athenæum,” was more than supported by Mr. Swinburne’s indignant challenge, “Under the Microscope;” and other loyal friends contributed to a sufficient vindication. Save in the too morbid imagination of the poet, the attack soon lapsed, for the most part, into the oblivion it deserved; more especially since the writer, a few years later, had the manliness to retract his charge, and to make a candid apology, though a tardy one,for having uttered it. But not so easily could the pain given to Rossetti be overcome. He now began to shrink intensely from society, fearing at all points to encounter that suspicion of his artistic work. Suffering acutely from nervous prostration and insomnia, he yielded himself the more fully to the fatal chloral habit which only aggravated his condition. In the autumn of 1872 he spent some weeks at the house of Dr. Gordon Hake at Roehampton, and proceeded thence with Mr. Madox Brown, Mr. George Hake, and Mr. Bell Scott to Stobhall in Perthshire, on the Tay. Returning to the south in improved health, Rossetti and Mr. George Hake proceeded at once to Kelmscott Manor, where they settled for a considerable time. Rossetti indeed remained for nearly two years, gradually resuming his artistic work, and regaining at times something of his old vivacity and high spirits: only a few friends went to and fro in visits full of mutual delight and inspiration. The beautiful old house, and the quaint, romantic chamber that served for studio, became the resort of poets and artists, critics and connoisseurs, disciples and aspirants, in companies small indeed, but brilliant and memorable as any that gathered round the young Pre-Raphaelites in Newman Street or the maturer masters of art and song that assembled in Cheyne Walk, Chelsea. Mr. William Morris and his family were there frequently; Dr. Gordon Hake made a visit, and afterwards embodied his memories in his sequence of sonnets addressed to Mr.Theodore Watts, “The New Day,” one of which deserves quotation:
“O happy days with him who once so loved us!
We loved as brothers, with a single heart,
The man whose iris-woven pictures moved us
From Nature to her blazoned shadow—Art.
How often did we trace the nestling Thames
From humblest waters on his course of might,
Down where the weir the bursting current stems—
There sat till evening grew to balmy night,