Certainly it was the publication of these papers that formed the occasion of my making the acquaintance of several of the artists whose talent I had endeavoured to appreciate. It was my intention at the time to refashion the series and to issue them as a separate volume, and with that view I wrote to several of them asking them for some personal details of the earlier days of their studentship. The answers I received were in nearly every case characteristic, and it was by means of my correspondence with Rossetti that I afterwards became a visitor at his house.
It was through my friend Mr. George Hake, who was at that time staying with him, that I first obtained a personal introduction to Rossetti, but we were already known to each other by correspondence.
In his letter to me dated from Kelmscott in November 1873 he writes: “As a painter, and I am ashamed at my age to say it, I have never even approached satisfaction with my own progress until within the last five years. My youth was spent chiefly in planning and designing, and whether I shall still have time to do anything I cannot tell.”
As a matter of fact, Rossetti had at that date produced most of the work by which he will be best remembered. As a lad of twenty he had painted “The Girlhood of Mary the Virgin,” followed shortly afterwards by “The Annunciation”; and some of the most beautiful of his drawings, the exquisite portrait of “Miss Siddal,” the “Hamlet and Ophelia,” and the large drawing of “Helen arming Paris,” already stood to his credit.
At the time I first knew him he had already painted “The Loving Cup,” “The Beloved,” “Mona
Hollyer
DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI
From the painting by G. F. Watts, R.A., in the National Portrait Gallery.
To face page 65.