A characteristic of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood which has not yet been touched on, and which here calls for digression, was its remarkable literary strength. Of the seven original members, two—W. M. Rossetti and Stephens—were writers by preference. The former did not paint at all. Gabriel Rossetti was, as we have seen, a poet before he could be called a painter, and a poet of the first order. Woolner also was a poet, and in this capacity alone belonged to the movement. Collinson made a third; Deverell a weak fourth. Millais and Hunt showed no inclination this way; but, besides those mentioned, the coterie included Christina Rossetti, William Bell Scott, Coventry Patmore, and Madox Brown, who wrote occasionally in verse. Even without the need of a propaganda such a body was almost bound in the nature of things to produce literary thought allied in sentiment with its artistic ideas and aims. Hence came about the "Germ," that much-prized periodical, which had its origin in the fertile brain of Rossetti, and which was ostensibly formed to be the organ of the P.R.B., and to spread its opinions. The first number included "My Sister's Sleep" and the prose romance, "Hand and Soul," by Rossetti. Subsequent numbers contained "The Blessed Damozel," "The Carillon," "Sea Limits" (under its first title of "From the Cliffs"), and six or seven sonnets. Of the four numbers published the first two only were called "The Germ," the title in the third and fourth being altered to "Art and Poetry" at the suggestion of the Tuppers, who as printers of the magazine had taken over the responsibility on generous terms.
The "Germ," as its brief career sufficiently denotes, fell almost stillborn upon an ungrateful world; but amongst a small class of artists and admirers it undoubtedly served to strengthen Rossetti's reputation. There was nothing feeble or immature about the poetical ideas expressed in it, and one may even be surprised that such an original piece of work as the "Blessed Damozel" did not attract greater attention. Both it and "Hand and Soul" have frequently been reprinted. The latter is interesting for the light it throws upon Rossetti's mediaeval and mystical mind. To some extent it is an autobiographical record, a memory of mental perturbations and experiences which beset the young painter, striving to preserve and foster the spiritual side of his nature at the expense of more than commonly strong bodily inclinations. From an abstraction like this story of the mythical young painter Chiaro dell' Erma we may feel we get one truer glimpse of the real Rossetti than any number of life-histories, overlaid with trivial incidents which obscure rather than reveal his personality, can give us.
CHAPTER III
WORK FROM 1849 TO 1853
INFLUENCE OF BROWNING AND DANTE
Before the first number of the "Germ" had appeared, and while it was in progress, Rossetti, accompanied by Holman Hunt, paid a short and hurried visit to Paris and Belgium. A rhyming diary and a series of jocular sonnets, interspersed with a few serious ones, recall the vigour of his first impressions. A large proportion of the time was spent at the Louvre and other galleries, rushing through Old Masters at a furious rate.
After their return home Rossetti found his affairs in a bad way. The failure of the Ecce Ancilla to find a purchaser at once (it was not sold until June 1853), and the storm of unfavourable comment it provoked, caused him frankly to abandon as unprofitable the mine of semi-religious, semi-mystical feeling which he had begun to work, and it was some time before he could settle down to find another. Feeling his way pictorially towards the field of romance in which his thoughts wandered, he began to undertake subjects from this class of literature, from Browning, Dante, Keats, and later from the "Morte Darthur" of Malory. His first experiment was a large canvas illustrating the page's song in "Pippa Passes," which soon became impossible and had to be dropped. The composition of it remains, however, in a little painting called Hist, said Kate the Queen, dated 1851. Two other designs from Browning which were carried out at this time are a pen-and-ink drawing from "Sordello" entitled Taurello's first sight of Fortune and The Laboratory. The latter was, in all probability, Rossetti's first attempt at water-colour (it is painted over a pen-and-ink drawing, as several of his early ones were), and bears but slight resemblance either in thought or execution to the work by which he is popularly known.
In addition to these three subjects, Rossetti drew or painted in the years 1849-50 other themes of a romantic and mediaeval nature. Amongst them was his first illustration to Shakespeare, a scene from "Much Ado about Nothing," representing the happy lovers, Benedick and Beatrice, receiving the felicitations of those who had plotted their match.
From the "Vita Nuova" Rossetti took the incident of Dante drawing an Angel on the Anniversary of Beatrice's Death, executed first in pen-and-ink, and originally given to Millais. A water-colour of the same subject is of later date, 1853. The latter was bought by Mr. Thomas Combe, of the Oxford University Press, and was bequeathed by his widow to the Taylorian Museum, where it remains.
The "Vita Nuova" also furnished the subject of a small water-colour of 1849, representing Beatrice at the Wedding Feast denying her salutation to Dante. The poet, with a friend grasping his arm as if to restrain him, stands watching a procession of figures clad in blue and green, and adorned with roses in their hair. The central figure of the bridal procession is a portrait of Miss Elizabeth Eleanor Siddal, who first came into Rossetti's life at about this date. She was the daughter of a Sheffield cutler, and was employed in a milliner's shop off Leicester Square, where Walter Deverell discovered her one day when shopping with his mother. She was persuaded to sit to Deverell for his Viola, and later to Rossetti. Her portrait also occurs in a picture by Holman Hunt and in Millais's Ophelia.
Both on account of her romantic history and her individual attractions, the personality of Miss Siddal has always exercised a delicate charm over those who love Rossetti. She was the model for most of Rossetti's earliest and finest water-colours containing women, and probably for all his Beatrices except the last.