‘I understand your smile,’ said Madox Brown; ‘but you will find it better than you think.’
At this time Oliver Madox Brown seemed a loose-limbed hobbledehoy, young enough to be at school. After dinner Oliver began to read the opening chapters of the story in a not very impressive way, and Mr. Watts-Dunton suggested that he should take it home and read it at his leisure. This was agreed to. Pressure of affairs prevented him from taking it up for some time. At last he did take it up, but he had scarcely read a dozen pages when he was called away, and he asked a member of his family to gather up the pages from the sofa and put them into an escritoire. On his return home at a very late hour he found the lady intently reading the manuscript, and she declared that she could not go to bed till she had finished it.
On the next day Mr. Watts-Dunton again took up the manuscript, and was held spellbound by it. It was a story of passion, of intense love, and intense hate, told with a crude power that was irresistible.
Mr. Watts-Dunton knew Smith Williams (the reader of Smith, Elder & Co.), whose name is associated with ‘Jane Eyre.’ He showed it to Williams, who was greatly struck by it, but pointed out that it terminated in a violent scene which the novel-reading public of that time would not like, and asked for a concluding scene less daring. The ending was modified, and the story, when it appeared, attracted very great attention. Madox Brown was so grateful to Mr. Watts-Dunton for his services in the matter that he insisted on expressing his gratitude in some tangible form. Miss Lucy Madox Brown (afterwards Mrs. W. M. Rossetti) was consulted, and at once suggested a portrait of the painter, painted by himself. This was done, and the result was the masterpiece which has been so often exhibited. From that moment Oliver Madox Brown took his place in the literary world of his time. The mention of Oliver Madox Brown will remind the older generation of his friendship with Philip Bourke Marston, the blind poet, one of the most pathetic chapters in literary annals.
Although Rossetti never fulfilled his intention of illustrating what he called ‘Watts’s magnificent star sonnet,’ he began what would have been a superb picture illustrating Mr. Watts-Dunton’s sonnet, ‘The Spirit of the Rainbow.’ He finished a large charcoal drawing of it, which is thus described by Mr. William Sharp in his book, ‘Dante Gabriel Rossetti: a Record and a Study’:—
“It represents a female figure standing in a gauzy circle composed of a rainbow, and on the frame is written the following sonnet (the poem in question by Mr. Watts-Dunton):
THE WOOD-HAUNTER’S DREAM
The wild things loved me, but a wood-sprite said:
‘Though meads are sweet when flowers at morn uncurl,
And woods are sweet with nightingale and merle,
Where are the dreams that flush’d thy childish bed?
The Spirit of the Rainbow thou would’st wed!’
I rose, I found her—found a rain-drenched girl
Whose eyes of azure and limbs like roseate pearl
Coloured the rain above her golden head.But when I stood by that sweet vision’s side
I saw no more the Rainbow’s lovely stains;
To her by whom the glowing heavens were dyed
The sun showed naught but dripping woods and plains:
‘God gives the world the Rainbow, her the rains,’
The wood-sprite laugh’d, ‘Our seeker finds a bride!’
Rossetti meant to have completed the design with the ‘woods and plains’ seen in perspective through the arch; and the composition has an additional and special interest because it is the artist’s only successful attempt at the wholly nude—the ‘Spirit’ being extremely graceful in poise and outline.
I am able to give a reproduction of another of Rossetti’s beautiful studies which has never been published, but which has been very much talked about. Many who have seen it at ‘The Pines’ agree with the late Lord de Tabley that Rossetti in this crayon created the loveliest of all his female faces. It is thus described by Mr. William Sharp: “The drawing, which, for the sake of a name, I will call ‘Forced Music,’ represents a nude half-figure of a girl playing on a mediæval stringed instrument elaborately ornamented. The face is of a type unlike that of any other of the artist’s subjects, and extraordinarily beautiful.”
I should explain that the background and the ragged garb of the girl in the version of the picture here reproduced, are by Dunn. These two exquisite drawings were made from the same girl, who never sat for any other pictures. Her face has been described as being unlike that of any other of Rossetti’s models and yet combining the charm of them all.