Part 10 (1/2)

Your young friend Watson [he said in a subsequent letter]

wrote me in a very modest mood for one who can do as he can at his age. I think I must have hurriedly mis-expressed myself in writing to him, as he seems to think I wished to dissuade him from following narrative poetry. Not in the least--I only wished him to try his hand at clearer dramatic life. The dreamy romantic really hardly needs more than one vast Morris in a literature--at any rate in a century. Not that I think him derivable from Morris--he goes straight back to Keats with a little modification. The narrative, whether condensed or developed, is at any rate a far better impersonal form to work in than declamatory harangue, whether calling on the stars or the Styx. I don't know in the least how Watson is faring with the critics. He must not be discouraged, in any case, with his real and high gifts.

The young poet, in whom Rossetti saw so much to applaud, can scarcely be said to have fared at all at the hands of the critics.

Here is a pleasant piece of literary portraiture, as valuable from the peep it affords into Rossetti's own character as from the description it gives of the rustic poet:

The other evening I had the pleasant experience of meeting one to whom I have for about two years looked with interest as a poet of the native rustic kind, but often of quite a superior order. I don't know if you noticed, somewhere about the date referred to, in _The Athenaeum_, a review of poems by Joseph Skipsey. Skip-sey has exquisite--though, as in all such cases (except of course Burns's) not equal--powers in several directions, but his pictures of humble life are the best. He is a working miner, and describes rustic loves and sports, and the perils and pathos of pit-life with great charm, having a quiet humour too when needed. His more ambitious pieces have solid merit of feeling, but are much less artistic. The other night, as I say, he came here, and I found him a stalwart son of toil, and every inch a gentleman. In cast of face he recalls Tennyson somewhat, though more bronzed and brawned. He is as sweet and gentle as a woman in manner, and recited some beautiful things of his own with a special freshness to which one is quite unaccustomed.

Mr. Skipsey was a miner of North s.h.i.+elds, and in the review referred to much was made, in a delicate way, of his stern environments. His volume of lyrics is marked by the quiet humour. Rossetti speaks of, as well as by a rather exasperating inequality. Perhaps the best piece in it is a poem ent.i.tled _Thistle and Nettle_, treating with peculiar freshness of a country courts.h.i.+p. The coming together of two such entirely opposite natures was certainly curious, and only to be accounted for on the ground of Rossetti's breadth of poetic sympathy. It would be interesting to hear what the impressions were of such a rude son of toil upon meeting with one whose life must have seemed the incarnation of artistic luxury and indulgence. Later on I received the following:

Poor Skipsey! He has lost the friend who brought him to London only the other day (T. Dixon), and who was his only hold on intellectual life in his district. Dixon died immediately on his return to the North, of a violent attack of asthma to which he was subject. He was a rarely pure and simple soul, and is doubtless gone to higher uses, though few could have reached, with his small opportunities, to such usefulness as he compa.s.sed here. He was Ruskin's correspondent in a little book called (I think) _Work by Tyne and Wear_. I got a very touching note from Skipsey on the subject.

From Mr. Skipsey he received a letter only a little while before his death, and to him he addressed one of the last epistles he penned.

The following letter explains itself, and is introduced as much for the sake of the real humour which it displays, as because it affords an excellent idea of Rossetti's view of the true function of prose:

I don't like your Shakspeare article quite as well as the first _Supernatural_ one, or rather I should say it does not greatly add to it in my (first) view, though both might gain by embodiment in one. I think there is _some_ truth in the charge of metaphysical involution--the German element as I should call it--and surely you are strong enough to be English pure and simple. I am sure I could write 100 essays, on all possible subjects (I once did project a series under the t.i.tle, _Essays written in the intervals of Elephantiasis, Hydro-phobia, and Penal Servitude_), without once experiencing the ”aching void” which is filled by such words as ”mythopoeic,” and ”anthropomorphism.” I do not find life long enough to know in the least what they mean. They are both very long and very ugly indeed--the latter only suggesting to me a Vampire or Somnambulant Cannibal. (To speak rationally, would not ”man-evolved G.o.dhead” be an _English_ equivalent?) ”Euhemeristic” also found me somewhat on my beam-ends, though explanation is here given; yet I felt I could do without Euhemerus; and _you_ perhaps without the _humerous_. You can pardon me now; for _so_ bad a pun places me at your mercy indeed. But seriously, simple English in prose writing and in all narrative poetry (however monumental language may become in abstract verse) seems to me a treasure not to be foregone in favour of German innovations. I know Coleridge went in latterly for as much Germanism as his time could master; but his best genius had then left him.

It seems necessary to mention that I lectured in 1880, on the relation of politics to art, and in printing the lecture I asked Rossetti to accept the dedication of it, but this he declined to do in the generous terms I have already referred to. The letter that accompanied his graceful refusal is, however, so full of interesting personal matter that I offer it in this place, with no further explanation than that my essay was designed to show that just as great artists in past ages had partic.i.p.ated in political struggles, so now they should not hold themselves aloof from controversies which immediately concern them:

I must admit, at all hazards, that my friends here consider me exceptionally averse to politics; and I suppose I must be, for I never read a parliamentary debate in my life! At the same time I will add that, among those whose opinions I most value, some think me not altogether wrong when I venture to speak of the momentary momentousness and eternal futility of many noisiest questions. However, you must simply view me as a nonent.i.ty in any practical relation to such matters. You have spoken but too generously of a sonnet of mine in your lecture just received. I have written a few others of the sort (which by-the-bye would not prove me a Tory), but felt no vocation--perhaps no right---to print them. I have always reproached myself as sorely amenable to the condemnations of a very fine poem by Barberino, _On Sloth against Sin_, which I translated in the Dante volume.

Sloth, alas! has but too much to answer for with me; and is one of the reasons (though I will not say the only one), why I have always fallen back on quality instead of quant.i.ty in the little I have ever done. I think often with Coleridge:

Sloth jaundiced all: and from my graspless hand Drop friends.h.i.+p's precious pearls like hour-gla.s.s sand.

I weep, yet stoop not: the faint anguish flows, A dreamy pang in morning's feverish doze.

However, for all I might desire in the direction spoken of, volition is vain without vocation; and I had better really stick to knowing how to mix vermilion and ultramarine for a flesh-grey, and how to manage their equivalents in verse. To speak without sparing myself,--my mind is a childish one, if to be isolated in Art is child's-play; at any rate I feel that I do not attain to the more active and practical of the mental functions of manhood. I can say this to you, because I know you will make the best and not the worst of me; and better than such feasible best I do not wish to appear. Thus you see I don't think my name ought to head your introductory paragraph--and there an end. And now of your new lecture, and of the long letter I lately had from you.

At some moment I should like to know which pieces among the translations are specially your favourites. Of the three names you leash together as somewhat those of sensualists, Cecco Angiolieri is really the only one--as for the respectable Cino, he would be shocked indeed, though certainly there are a few oddities bearing that way in the sonnets between him and Dante (who is again similarly reproached by his friend Cavalcanti), but I really _do_ suspect that in some cases similar to the one in question about Cino (though not Guido and Dante) politics were really meant where love was used as a metaphor.... I a.s.sure you, you cannot say too much to me of this or any other work of yours; in fact, I wish that we should communicate about them. I have been thinking yet more on the relations of politics and art. I do think seriously on consideration that not only my own sluggishness, but vital fact itself, must set to a great extent a _veto_ against the absolute partic.i.p.ation of artists in politics. When has it ever been effected? True, Cellini was a bravo and David a good deal like a murderer, and in these capacities they were not without their political use in very turbulent times. But when the attempt was made to turn Michael Angelo into a ”utility man” of that kind, he did (it is true) some patriotic duty in the fortification of Florence; but it is no less a fact that, when he had done all that he thought became him, he retired to a certain trackless and forgotten tower, and there stayed in some sort of peace (though much in request) till he could lead his own life again; nor should we forget the occasion on which he did not hesitate even to betake himself to Venice as a refuge. Yet M. Angelo was in every way a patriot, a philosopher, and a hero. I do not say this to undervalue the scope of your theory. I think possibilities are generally so much behind desirabilities that there is no harm in any degree of incitement in the right _direction_; and that is a.s.suredly mental activity of _all_ kinds. I judge you cannot suspect _me_ of thinking the apotheosis of the early Italian poets (though surely spiritual beauty, and not sensuality, was their general aim) of more importance than the ”unity of a great nation.” But it is in my minute power to deal successfully (I feel) with the one, while no such ent.i.ty, as I am, can advance or r.e.t.a.r.d the other; and thus mine must needs be the poorer part. Nor (with alas, and again alas!) will Italy or another twice have her day in its fulness.

I happened to have said in speaking of self-indulgence among artists, that there probably existed those to whom it seemed more important to preserve such a pitiful possession as the poetical remains of Cecco Angiolieri than to secure the unity of a great nation. Rossetti half suspected I meant this for a playful backhanded blow at himself (for Cecco was a great favourite with him), and protested that no such individual could exist. I defended my charge by quoting Keats's--

... the silver flow Of Hero's tears, the swoon of Imogen, Fair Pastorella in the bandit's den, Are things to brood on with more ardency Than the death-day of empires.

But Rossetti grew weary of the jest:

I must protest that what you quote from Keats about ”Hero's tears,” etc., fails to meet the text. Neither Shakspeare nor Spenser a.s.suredly was a Cecco; Marlowe may be most meant as to ”Hero,” and he perhaps affords the shadow of a parallel in career though not in work.

The extract from Rosetti's letters with which I shall close this chapter is perhaps the most interesting yet made:

One point I must still raise, viz., that I, for one, cannot conceive, even as the Ghost of a Flea, the ideal individual who considers the Poetical Remains of Cecco Angiolieri of more importance than the unity of a great nation! I think this would have been better if much modified. Say for instance--”A thing of some moment even while the contest is waging for the political unity of a great nation.” This is the utmost reach surely of human comparative valuation. I think you have brought in Benvenuto and Michael much to the purpose. Shall I give you a parallel in your own style?

During the months for which poet Coleridge became private c.u.mberback (a name in which he said his horse would have concurred), it seems strange that, in such stirring times, his regiment should not have been ordered off on foreign service. In such case that pre-eminent member of the awkward squad would a.s.suredly have been the very first man killed.

Should we have been more the gainers by his patriotism or the losers by his poetry? The very last man killed in the last _sortie_ from Paris during the Prussian siege (he _would_ go behind a b.u.t.tress to ”pot” a Prussian after orders were given to retire, and so got ”potted” himself) was Henri Regnault, a painter, whose brilliant work was a guiding beacon on the road of improvement in French methods of art, if not in intellectual force. Who shall fail to honour the n.o.ble ardour which drew him from the security of his studies in Tunis to partake his country's danger? Yet who shall forbear to sigh in thinking that, but for this, his progressing work might still yearly be an element in art-progress for Europe? Gerome and others betook themselves to England instead, and are still benefiting the cause for which they were before all things born. It was David who said, ”Si on tirait a mitraille sur les artistes, on n'y tuerait pas un seul patriote!” _He_ was a patriot homicide, and spoke probably what was true in the sense in which he meant it. As I said, I am glad you turned Ben and Mike to account, but the above is in some respects an open question.

I have, as I say, a further batch of letters to introduce, but as these were, for the most part, written after an event which forms a land-mark in our acquaintance (I mean the occasion of our first meeting), I judge it is best to reserve them for a later section of this book. There are two forms, and, so far as I know, two only, in which a body of letters can be published with justice to the writer. Of these the first and most obvious form is to offer them chronologically _in extenso_ or with only such eliminations as seem inevitable, and the second is to tabulate them according to subject-matter, and print them in the order not of date but substance. There are advantages attending each method, and corresponding disadvantages also. The temptation to adopt the first of these was, in this case of Rossetti's letters, almost insurmountable, for nothing can be more charming in epistolary style than the easy grace with which the writer pa.s.ses from point to point, evolving one idea out of another, interlinking subject with subject, and building up a fabric of which the meaning is everywhere inwoven. In this respect Rossetti's letters are almost as perfect as anything that ever left his hand; and, in freedom of phrase, in power of throwing off parenthetical reflections always faultlessly enunciated, in play of humour, often in eloquence (never becoming declamatory, and calling on ”Styx or Stars”), sometimes in pathos, Rossetti's letters are, in a word, admirable. They are comparable in these respects with the best things yet done in English,--as pleasing and graceful as Cowper's letters, broader in range of subject than the letters of Keats, easier and more colloquial than those of Coleridge, and with less appearance of being intended for the public eye than is the case with the letters of Byron and of Sh.e.l.ley.

Rossetti's letters have, moreover, a value quite apart from the merits of their epistolary style, in so far as they contain almost the only expression extant of his opinions on literary questions. And this is the circ.u.mstance that has chiefly weighed with me to offer them in fragmentary form interspersed with elucidatory comment bearing princ.i.p.ally upon the occasions that called them forth.

Such then as I have described was the nature of my intercourse with Rossetti during the first year and a half of our correspondence, and now the time had come when I was to meet my friend for the first time face to face. The elasticity of sympathy by which a man of genius, surrounded by constant friends, could yet bend to a new-comer who was a stranger and twenty-five years his junior, and think and feel with him; the generous appreciativeness by which he could bring himself to consider the first efforts of one quite unknown; and then the unselfishness that seemed always to prefer the claims of others to his own great claims, could command only the return of unqualified allegiance. Such were the feelings with which I went forth to my first meeting with Rossetti, and if at any later date, the ardour of my regard for him in any measure suffered modification, be sure when the time comes to touch upon it I shall make no more concealment of the causes that led to such a change than I have made of those circ.u.mstances, however personal in primary interest, that generated a friends.h.i.+p so unusual and to me so serious and important.