Old Familiar Faces

by Theodore Watts-Dunton

In his preface Mr. W. M. Rossetti says:—

“I have not attempted to write a biographical account of my brother, nor to estimate the range or value of his powers and performances in fine art and in literature. I agree with those who think that a brother is not the proper person to undertake a work of this sort. An outsider can do it dispassionately, though with imperfect knowledge of the facts; a friend can do it with mastery, and without much undue bias; but a brother, however equitably he may address himself to the task, cannot perform it so as to secure the prompt and cordial assent of his readers.”

These words will serve as a good example of the dignified modesty which is a characteristic of Mr. W. M. Rossetti’s, and is one of the best features of this volume. [77] In these days of empty pretence it is always refreshing to come upon a page written in the spirit of scholarly self-suppression which informs every line this patient and admirable critic writes. And as to the interesting question glanced at in the passage above quoted, though the contents of this volume will, no doubt, form valuable material for the future biography of Rossetti,

we wonder whether the time is even yet at hand when that biography, whether written by brother, by friend, or by outsider, is needed. That mysterious entity “the public,” would, no doubt, like to get one; but we have always shared Rossetti’s own opinion that a man of genius is no more the property of the “public” than is any private gentleman; and we have always felt with him that the prevalence in our time of the opposite opinion has fashioned so intolerable a yoke for the neck of any one who has had the misfortune to pass from the sweet paradise of obscurity into the vulgar purgatory of Fame, that it almost behoves a man of genius to avoid, if he can, passing into that purgatory at all.

Can any biography, by whomsoever written, be other than inchoate and illusory—nay, can it fail to be fraught with danger to the memory of the dead, with danger to the peace of the living, until years have fully calmed the air around the dead man’s grave? So long as the man to be portrayed cannot be separated from his surroundings, so long as his portrait cannot be fully and honestly limned without peril to the peace of those among whom he moved—in a word, so long as there remains any throb of vitality in those delicate filaments of social life by which he was enlinked to those with whom he played his part—that brother, or that friend, or that outsider who shall attempt the portraiture

must feel what heavy responsibilities are his—must not forget that with him to trip is to sin against the head. And how shall he decide when the time has at last come for making the attempt? Before the incidents of a man’s life can be exploited without any risk of mischief, how much time should elapse? “A month,” say the publishers, each one of whom runs his own special “biographical series,” and keeps his own special bevy of recording angels writing against time and against each other. “Thirty years,” said one whose life-wisdom was so perfect as to be in a world like ours almost an adequate substitute for the morality he lacked—Talleyrand.

Of all forms of literary art biography demands from the artist not only the greatest courage, but also the happiest combination of the highest gifts. To succeed in painting the portrait of Achilles or of Priam, of Hamlet or of Othello, may be difficult, but is it as difficult as to succeed in painting the portrait of Browning or Rossetti? Surely not. In the one case an intense dramatic imagination is needed, and nothing more. If Homer’s Achaian and Trojan heroes were falsely limned, not they, but Homer’s art, would suffer the injury. If for the purposes of art the poet unduly exalted this one or unduly abased that—if he misread one incident in the mythical life of Achilles, and another in the mythical life of Hector—he did

wrong to his art undoubtedly, but none to the memory of a dead man, and none to the peace of a living one. But with him who would paint the portrait of Browning or Rossetti how different is the case! Although he requires the poet’s vision before he can paint a living picture of his subject, the task he has set himself to do is something more than artistic: before everything else it is fiduciary.

A trustee whose trust fund is biographical truth, he has, after collecting and marshalling all the facts that come to his hand, to decide what is truth as indicated by those generalized facts. But having done this, he has to decide what is the proper time for giving the world the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth—what is the proper time? In the biographer’s relation to the dead man on the one-hand and to the public on the other should he be so unhappy as to forget that time is of the very “essence of the contract”—should he forget that so inwoven is human life that truth spoken at the wrong moment may be a greater mischief-worker than error—he may, if conscientious, have to remember that forgetfulness of his during the remainder of his days. He who thinks that truth may not be sometimes as mischievous as a pestilence knows but little of this mysterious and wonderful net of human life. But if this is so with regard to truth, how much more is it so with regard to mere matter

of fact? Fact-worship, document-worship, is at once the crowning folly and the crowning vice of our time. To mistake a fact for a truth, and to give the world that; to throw facts about and documents about heedless of the mischief they may work—wronging the dead and wronging the living—this is actually paraded as a virtue in these days.