Recollections of Dante Gabriel Rossetti

by Sir Hall Caine

ENDIMION
AN EXCELLENT FANCY FIRST COMPOSED IN FRENCH
By Monsieur GOMBAULD
AND NOW ELEGANTLY INTERPRETED
By RICHARD HURST, Gentleman
1639.
?

It has very finely engraved plates of the late Flemish type.
There is a poem of Vaughan’s on Gombauld’s Endimion, which
might make one think it more fascinating than it really is.
Though rather prolix, however, it has attractions as a
somewhat devious romantic treatment of the subject. The
little book is one of the first I remember in this world,
and I used to dip into it again and again as a child, but
never yet read it through. I still possess it. I dare say it
is not easily met with, and should suppose Keats had
probably never seen it. If he had, he might really have
taken a hint or two for his scheme, which is hardly so clear
even as Gombauld’s, though its endless digressions teem with
beauty.... I do not think you would benefit at all by seeing
Gombauld’s Endimion. Vaughan’s poem on it might be worth
quoting as showing what attention the subject had received
before Keats. I have the poem in Gilfillan’s Less-Known
Poets.

Rossetti took a great interest in the fund started for the relief of Mme. de Llanos, Keats’s sister, whose circumstances were seriously reduced. He wrote:

By the bye, I don’t know whether the subscription for
Keats’s old and only surviving sister (Madme de Llanos) has
been at all ventilated in Liverpool. It flags sorely. Do you
think there would be any chance in your neighbourhood? If
so, prospectuses, etc., could be sent.

I did not view the prospect of subscriptions as very hopeful, and so conceived the idea of a lecture in the interests of the fund. On this project, Rossetti wrote:

I enclose prospectuses as to the Keats subscription. I may
say that I did not know the list would accompany them—still
less that contributions would be so low generally as to
leave me near the head of the list—an unenviable sort of
parade.... My own opinion about the lecture question is
this. You know best whether such a lecture could be turned
to the purposes of your Keats article (now in progress), or
rather be so much deduction from the freshness of its
resources: and this should be the absolute test of its
being done or not done.... I think, if it can be done
without impoverishing your materials, the method of getting
Lord Houghton to preside and so raising as much from it as
possible is doubtless the right one. Of course I view it as
far more hopeful than mere distribution of any number of
prospectuses.... Even £25 would be a great contribution to
the fund.

The lecture project was not found feasible, and hence it was abandoned. Meantime the kindness of friends enabled me to add to the list a good number of subscriptions, but feeling scarcely satisfied with any such success as I might be likely to have in that direction, I opened, by the help of a friend, a correspondence with Lord Houghton with a view to inducing him to apply for a pension for the lady. It then transpired that Lord Houghton had already applied to Lord Beaconsfield for a pension for Mme. Llanos, and would doubtless have got it, had not Mr. Buxton Forman applied for a grant from the Royal Bounty, which was easier to give. I told Rossetti of this fact and he said:

I am not surprised about Lord H., and feel sure it is a pity
he was not left to try Beaconsfield, but I judge the
projectors on the other side knew nothing of his intentions.
However, I was in no way a projector.

In the end Lord Houghton repeated to Mr. Gladstone the application he had made to Lord Beaconsfield, and succeeded.

Rossetti must have been among the earliest admirers of Keats. I remarked on one occasion that it was very natural that Lord Houghton should consider himself in a sense the first among men now living to champion the poet and establish his name, and Rossetti admitted that this was so, and was ungrudging in his tribute to Lord Houghton’s services towards the better appreciation of Keats; but he contended, nevertheless, that he had himself been one of the first writers of the generation succeeding the poet’s own to admire and uphold him, and that this was at a time when it made demand of some courage to class him among the immortals, when an original edition of any of his books could be bought for sixpence on a bookstall, and when only Leigh Hunt, Cowden Clarke, Hood, Benjamin Haydon, and perhaps a few others, were still living of those who recognised his great gifts.