Recollections of Dante Gabriel Rossetti

by Sir Hall Caine

ON CERTAIN ELIZABETHAN REVIVALS.
O ruff-embastioned vast Elizabeth,
Bush to these bushel-bellied casks of wine,
Home-growth, ‘tis true, but rank as turpentine,—
What would we with such skittle-plays at death %
Say, must we watch these brawlers’ brandished lathe,
Or to their reeking wit our ears incline,
Because all Castaly flowed crystalline
In gentle Shakspeare’s modulated breath!
What! must our drama with the rat-pit vie,
Nor the scene close while one is left to kill!
Shall this be poetry % And thou—thou—man
Of blood, thou cannibalic Caliban,
What shall be said to thee?—a poet?—Fie!
“An honourable murderer, if you will”
I mentioned to you [he says] William Davies, author of
Songs of a Wayfarer (by the bye, another man has since
adopted his title). He has many excellent sonnets, and is a
valued friend of mine. I shall send you, on his behalf, a
copy of the book for selection of what you may please.... It
is very unequal, but the best truly excellent. The sonnets
are numerous, and some good, though the best work in the
book is not among them. There are two poems—The Garden,
and another called, I think, On a dried-up Spring, which
are worthy of the most fastidious collections. Many of the
poems are unnamed, and the whole has too much of a Herrick
air. . . .
It is quite refreshing to find you so pleased with my good
friend Davies’s book, and I wish he were in London, as I
would have shown him what you say, which I know would have
given him pleasure. He is a man who suffers much from moods
of depression, in spite of his philosophic nature. I have
marked fifty pieces of different kinds throughout his book,
and of these twenty-nine are sonnets. Had those fifty been
alone printed, Davies would now be remembered and not
forgotten: but all poets now-a-days are redundant except
Tennyson. ...
I am this evening writing to Davies, who is in Rome, and
could not resist enclosing what you say, with so much
experimental appreciativeness of his book, and of his
intention to fill it with moral sunshine. I am sure he ‘ll
send a new sonnet if he has one, but I fancy his bardic day
is over. I should think he was probably not subject to
melancholy when he wrote the Wayfarer. However, he tells
me that his spirits have improved in Italy. One other little
book of Herrickian verse he has written, called The
Shepherd!s Garden, but there are no sonnets in it. Besides
this, he published a volume containing a record of travel of
a very interesting kind, and called The Pilgrimage of the
Tiber. This is well known. It is illustrated, many of the
drawings being by himself, for he is quite as much painter
as poet. He also wrote in The Quarterly Review an article
on the sonnet (I should think about 1870 or so), and, a
little later, one which raised great wrath, on the English
School of Painting. These I have not seen. He “lacks
advancement,” however; having fertile powers and little
opportunity, and being none the luckier (I think) for a
small independence which keeps off compulsion to work,
though of willingness he has abundance in many directions.
There is an admirable but totally unknown living poet named
Dixon. I will send you two small vols, of his which he gave
me long ago, but please take good care of them, and return
them as soon as done with. I value them highly. I forgot
till to-day that he had written any sonnets, but I see there
are three in one vol. and one in another. I have marked my
two favourites. He should certainly be represented in your
book. If I live, I mean to write something about him in some
quarter when I can. His finest passages are as fine as any
living man can do. He was a canon of Carlisle Cathedral, and
at present has a living somewhere. If you wanted to ask him
for an original sonnet, you might mention my name, and
address him at Carlisle with Please forward. Of course he
is a Rev.
You will be sorry to hear that Davies has abandoned the hope
of producing a new sonnet to his own satisfaction. I have
again, however, urged him to the onslaught, and told him how
deserving you are of his efforts.
Swinburne, who is a vast admirer of my sister’s, thinks the
Advent perhaps the noblest of all her poems, and also
specially loves the Passing Away. I do not know that I
quite agree with your decided preference for the two sonnets
of hers you signalise,—the World is very fine, but the
other, Dead before Death, a little sensational for her. I
think After Death one of her noblest, and the one After
Communion. In my own view, the greatest of all her poems is
that on France after the siege—To-Day for Me. A very
splendid piece of feminine ascetic passion is The Convent
Threshold.
I have run the sonnet you like, St. Luke the Painter, into
a sequence with two more not yet printed, and given the
three a general title of Old and New Art, as well as
special titles to each. I shall annex them to The House of
Life.
Have you ever read Vaughan? He resembles Donne a good deal
as to quaintness, but with a more emotional personality.
I have altered the last line of octave in Lost Days. It
now runs—
“The undying throats of Hell, athirst alway.”
I always had it in my mind to make a change here, as the
in standing in the line in its former reading clashed with
in occurring in the previous line. I have done what I
think is a prime sonnet on the murdered Czar, which I
enclose, but don’t show it to a soul.
Theodore Watts is going to print a very fine sonnet of his
own in The Athenæum. It is the first verse he ever put in
print, though he wrote much (when a very young man). Tell me
how you like it. I think he is destined to shine in that
class of poetry.
I knew you must like Watts’s sonnets. They are splendid
affairs. I am not sure that I agree with you in liking the
first the better of the two: the second (Natura Maligna)
is perhaps the deeper and finer. I have asked Watts to give
you a new sonnet, and I think perhaps he will do so, or at
all events give you permission to use those he has printed.
He has just come into the room, and says he would like to
hear from you on the subject.
From one rather jocular sentence in your note I judge you
may include some sonnets of your own. I see no possible
reason why you should not. You are really now, at your
highest, among our best sonnet-writers, and have written two
or three sonnets that yield to few or none whatever. I am
forced, however, to request that you will not put in the one
referring to myself, from my constant bugbear of any
appearance of collusion. That sonnet is a very fine one—my
brother was showing it me again the other day. It is not my
personal gratification alone, though that is deep, because I
know you are sincere, which leads me to the conclusion that
it is your best, and very fine indeed. I think your
Cumberland sonnet admirable. The sonnet on Byron is
extremely musical in flow and the symbolic scenery of
exceptional excellence. The view taken is the question with
me. Byron’s vehement directness, at its best, is a lasting
lesson: and, dubious monument as Don Juan may be, it
towers over the century. Of course there is truth in what
you say; but ought it to be the case? and is it the case
in any absolute sense? You deal frankly with your sonnets,
and do not shrink from radical change. I think that on
Oliver much better than when I saw it before. The opening
phrases of both octave and sestette are very fine; but the
second quatrain and the second terzina, though with a
quality of beauty, both seem somewhat to lack distinctness.
The word rivers cannot be used with elision—the v is a
hard pebble in the flow, and so are the closing consonants.
You must put up with streams if you keep the line.
You should have Bailey’s dedicatory sonnet in Festus.
I am enclosing a fine sonnet by William Bell Scott, which I
wished him to let me send you for your book. It has not yet
been printed. I think I heard of some little chaffy matter
between him and you, but, doubtless, you have virtually
forgotten all about it. I must say frankly that I think the
day when you made the speech he told me of must have been
rather a wool-gathering one with you.... I suppose you know
that Scott has written a number of fine sonnets contained in
his vol of Poems published about 1875, I think.
I directed the attention of Mr. Waddington (whom, however, I
don’t know personally) to a most noble sonnet by Fanny
Kemble, beginning, “Art thou already weary of the way?” He
has put it in, and several others of hers, but she is very
unequal, and I don’t know if the others should be there, but
you should take the one in question. It sadly wants new
punctuation, being vilely printed just as I first saw it
when a boy in some twopenny edition.
In a memoir of Gilchrist, appended now by his widow to the
Life of Blake, there is a sonnet by G., perhaps
interesting enough, as being exceptional, for you to ask for
it; but I don’t advise you, if you don’t think it worth.
I have received from Mrs. Meynell, a sister of Eliz.
Thompson, the painter, a most genuine little book of poems
containing some sonnets of true spiritual beauty. I must
send it you.
This book had just then been introduced to Rossetti with
much warmth of praise by Mr. Watts, and he took to it
vastly.

This closes Rossetti’s interesting letters on sonnet literature. In reprinting his first volume of Poems he had determined to remove the sonnets of The House of Life to the new volume of Ballads and Sonnets, and fill the space with the fragment of a poem written in youth, and now called The Bride’s Prelude. He sent me a proof. The reader will remember that as a narrative fragment it is less remarkable for striking incident (though never failing of interest and picturesqueness) than for a slow and psychical development which ultimately gained a great hold of the sympathies. The poem leaves behind it a sense as of a sultry day. Judging first of its merits as a song (using the word in its broad and simple sense), the poem flows on the tongue with unbroken sweetness and with a variety of cadence and light and shade of melody which might admit of its pursuing its meanderings through five times its less than 50 pages, and still keeping one’s senses awake to the constantly recurring advent of new and pleasing literary forms. The story is a striking one, with a great wealth of highly effective incident,—notably the episode of the card-playing, and of the father striking down the sword which Raoul turns against the breast of the bride. Almost equally memorable are the scenes in which the lover appears, and the occasional interludes of incident in which, between the pauses of the narrative, the bridegroom’s retinue are heard sporting in the courtyard without.

The whole atmosphere of the poem is saturated in a medievalism of spirit to which no lapse of modernism does violence, and the spell of romance which comes with that atmosphere of the middle ages is never broken, but preserved in the minutest most matter-of-fact details, such as the bowl of water that stood amidst flowers, and in which the sister Amelotte “slid a cup” and offered it to Aloyse to drink. But the one great charm of the poem lies in its subtle and most powerful psychical analysis, seen foreshadowed in the first mention of the bride sitting in the shade, but first felt strongly when she begs her sister to pray, and again when she tells how, at God’s hint, she had whispered something of the whole tale to her sister who slept

The dread introspection pictured after the sin is in the highest degree tragic, and affects one like remorse in its relentlessness, although less remorse than fear of discovery. The sickness of the following condition, with its yearnings, longings, dizziness, is very nobly done, and delicate as is the theme, and demanding a touch of unerring strength, yet lightness, the part of the poem concerned with it contains certain of the most beautiful and stirring things. The madness (for it is not less than such) in which at the sea-side, believing Urscelyn to be lost, the bride tells the whole tale, whilst her curse laughed within her to see the amazement and anger of her brothers and of her father, is doubtless true enough to the frenzied state of her mind; but my sympathies go out less to that part of the poem than to the subsequent part, in which the bride-mother is described as leaning along in thought after her child, till tears, not like a wedded girl’s, fall among her curls. Highly dramatic, too, is the passage in which she fears to curse the evil men whose evil hands have taken her child, lest from evil lips the curse should be a blessing.

The characterisation seemed to be highly powerful, and, so far as it went, finely contrasted. I could almost have wished that the love for which the bride suffers so much had been more dwelt upon, and Urscelyn had been made somehow more worthy of such love and sacrifice. The only point in which the poem struck me, after mature reflection, as less admirable than certain others of the author’s, lay in the circumstance that the narrative moves slowly, but, of course, it should be remembered that the poem is one of emotion, not incident. There are most magical flashes of imagery in the poem, notably in the passage beginning

Her thought, long stagnant, stirred by speech,
Gave her a sick recoil;
As, dip thy fingers through the green
That masks a pool, where they have been,
The naked depth is black between.

Rossetti wrote a valuable letter on his scheme for the completion of The Bride’s Prelude:

I was much pleased with your verdict on The Bride’s
Prelude. I think the poem is saved by its picturesqueness,
but that otherwise the story up to the point reached is too
purely repellent. I have the sequel quite clear in my mind,
and in it the mere passionate frailty of Aloyse’s first love
would be followed by a true and noble love, rendered
calamitous by Urscelyn, who then (having become a powerful
soldier of fortune) solicits the hand of Aloyse. Thus the
horror which she expresses against him to her sister on the
bridal morning would be fully justified. Of course, Aloyse
would confess her fault to her second lover whose love
would, nevertheless, endure. The poem would gain so greatly
by this sequel that I suppose I must set to and finish it
one day, old as it is. I suppose it would be doubled, but
hardly more. I hate long poems.
I quite think the card-playing passage the best thing—as a
unit—in the poem: but your opinion encourages my own, that
it fails nowhere of good material. It certainly moves slowly
as you say, and this is quite against the rule I follow. But
here was no life condensed in an episode; but a story which
had necessarily to be told step by step, and a situation
which had unavoidably to be anatomised. If it is not
unworthy to appear with my best things, that is all I hope
for it. You have pitched curiously upon some of my favourite
touches, and very coincidently with Watts’s views.

Early in 1881, he wrote:

I am writing a ballad on the death of James I. of Scots. It
is already twice the length of The White Ship, and has a
good slice still to come. It is called The King’s Tragedy,
and is a ripper I can tell you!
The other day I got from Italy a paper containing a really
excellent and exceptional notice of my poems, written by the
author of a volume also sent me containing, among other
translations from the English, Jenny, Last Confession,
etc.
I have been re-reading, after many years, Keats’s Otho the
Great, and find it a much better thing than I remembered,
though only a draft.
I am much exercised as to what you mention as to a Michael
Scott scheme of Coleridge’s. Where does he speak of it, and
what is it? It is quite new to me; but curiously enough, I
have a complete scheme drawn up for a ballad, to be called
Michael Scott’s Wooing, not the one I proposed beginning
now—and also have long designed a picture under the same
title, but of quite different motif! Allan Cunningham wrote
a romance called Sir Michael Scott, but I never saw it.
I have heard from Walter Severn about a subscription
proposed to erect a gravestone to his father beside that of
Keats. I should like you to copy for me your sonnet on
Severn. I hear it is in The Athenæum, but have not seen
it. I was asked to prepare an inscription, which I send you.
Nothing would be so good as Severn’s own words.
I strongly urge you to go on with your book on the
Supernatural. The closing chapter should, I think, be on
the weird element in its perfection, as shown by recent
poets in the mess—i.e. those who take any lead. Tennyson
has it certainly here and there in imagery, but there is no
great success in the part it plays through his Idylls. The
Old Romaunt beats him there. The strongest instance of this
feeling in Tennyson that I remember is in a few lines of
The Palace of Art:
And hollow breasts enclosing hearts of flame;
And with dim-fretted foreheads all
On corpses three months old at morn she came
That stood against the wall.
I won’t answer for the precise age of the corpses—perhaps I
have staled them somewhat.