Part 3 (1/2)
Having from early childhood shown a strong propensity for drawing and painting, which had thus been always regarded as his future profession, he now left school for ever and received no more school learning. In Latin he was already fairly proficient for his age; French he knew well; he had spoken Italian from childhood, and had some German lessons about 18445. On leaving school he went at once to the Art Academy of Cary (previously called Sa.s.s's) near Bedford Square, and thence obtained admission to the Royal Academy Antique School in 1844 or 1845. To the Royal Academy Life School he never went, and he was a somewhat negligent art student, but always regarded as one who had a future before him.
In 1849 Rossetti exhibited 'The Girlhood of the Virgin' in the so-called Free Exhibition or Portland Gallery. The artist who had perhaps the strongest influence upon Rossetti's early tastes was Ford Madox Brown, who, however, refused from the first to join the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood on the ground that coteries had in modern art no proper function. Rossetti was deeply impressed with the power and designing faculty displayed by Madox Brown's cartoons exhibited in Westminster Hall. When Rossetti began serious work as a painter he thought of Madox Brown as the one man from whom he would willingly receive practical guidance, and wrote to him at random. From this time Madox Brown became his intimate friend and artistic monitor.
In painting, however, Rossetti was during this time exercising only half his genius. From his childhood it became evident that he was a poet. At the age of five he wrote a sort of play called 'The Slave,' which, as may be imagined, showed no noteworthy characteristic save precocity. This was followed by the poem called 'Sir Hugh Heron,' which was written about 1844, and some translations of German poetry. 'The Blessed Damozel' and 'Sister Helen' were produced in their original form so early as 1846 or 1847. The latter of these has undergone more modifications than any other first-cla.s.s poem of our time. To take even the new edition of the 'Poems' which appeared last year [1881], the stanzas introducing the wife of the luckless hero appealing to the sorceress for mercy are so important in the glamour they shed back over the stanzas that have gone before, that their introduction may almost be characterized as a rewriting of every previous line.
The translations from the early Italian poets also began as far back as 1845 or 1846, and may have been mainly completed by 1849. Rossetti's gifts as a translator were, no doubt, of the highest. And this arose from his deep sympathy with literature as a medium of human expression: he could enter into the temperaments of other writers, and by sympathy criticize the literary form from the author's own inner standpoint, supposing always that there was a certain racial kins.h.i.+p with the author.
Many who write well themselves have less sympathy with the expressional forms adopted by other writers than is displayed by men who have neither the impulse nor the power to write themselves. But this sympathy betrayed him sometimes into a free rendering of locutions such as a translator should be chary of indulging in. Materials for a volume acc.u.mulated slowly, but all the important portions of the 'Poems'
published in 1870 had been in existence some years before that date. The prose story of 'Hand and Soul' was also written as early as 1848 or 1849.
In the spring of 1860 he married Elizabeth Eleanor Siddall, who being very beautiful was constantly painted and drawn by him. She had one still-born child in 1861, and died in February, 1862. He felt her death very acutely, and for a time ceased to write or to take any interest in his own poetry. Like Prospero, indeed, he literally buried his wand, but for a time only. From this time to his death he continued to produce pictures, all of them showing, as far as technical skill goes, an unfaltering advance in his art.
Yet wonderful as was Rossetti as an artist and poet, he was still more wonderful, I think, as a man. The chief characteristic of his conversation was an incisiveness so perfect and clear as to have often the pleasurable surprise of wit. It is so well known that Rossetti has been for a long time the most retired man of genius of our day, and so many absurd causes for this retirement have been spoken of, that there is nothing indecorous in the true cause of it being made public by one who of late years has known more of him, perhaps, than has any other person.
About 1868 the curse of the artistic and poetic temperament-insomnia-attacked him, and one of the most distressing effects of insomnia is a nervous shrinking from personal contact with any save a few intimate friends. This peculiar kind of nervousness may be aggravated by the use of sleeping draughts, and in his case was thus aggravated.
But, although Rossetti lived thus secluded, he did not lose the affectionate regard of the ill.u.s.trious men with whom he started in his artistic life. Nor, a.s.suredly, did he deserve to lose it, for no man ever lived, I think, who was so generous as he in sympathizing with other men's work, save only when the cruel fumes of chloral turned him against everything. And his sympathy was as wide as generous. It was only necessary to mention the name of Leighton or Millais or Madox Brown or Burne Jones or G. F. Watts, or, indeed, of any contemporary painter, to get from him a glowing disquisition upon the merits of each-a disquisition full of the subtlest distinctions, and illuminated by the brilliant lights of his matchless fancy. And it was the same in poetry.
But those who loved Rossetti (that is to say, those who knew him) can realize how difficult it is for me, a friend, to pursue just now such reminiscences as these.
II.
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 dispa.s.sionately, 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 a.s.sent 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 refres.h.i.+ng 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 pa.s.sage 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 ent.i.ty ”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 fas.h.i.+oned so intolerable a yoke for the neck of any one who has had the misfortune to pa.s.s 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, pa.s.sing 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 subst.i.tute 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 Oth.e.l.lo, 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-wors.h.i.+p, doc.u.ment-wors.h.i.+p, 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 doc.u.ments 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.
Here is a case in point. Down to the very last moment of his life Rossetti's feeling towards his great contemporary Tennyson was that of the deepest admiration, and yet what says the doc.u.mentary evidence as given to the world by Rossetti's brother? It shows that Rossetti used an extremely unpleasant phrase concerning a letter from Tennyson acknowledging the receipt of Rossetti's first volume of poems in 1870.
Those who have heard Tennyson speak of Rossetti know that to use this phrase in relation to any letter of his dealing with Rossetti's poetry was to misunderstand it. Yet here are the unpleasant words of a hasty mood, ”rather shabby,” in print. And why? Because the public has become so demoralized that its feast of facts, its feast of doc.u.ments it must have, come what will. But even supposing that the public had any rights whatsoever in regard to a man of genius, which we deny, what are letters as indications of a man's character? Of all modes of expression is not the epistolary mode that in which man's instinct for using language ”to disguise his thought” is most likely to exercise itself? There is likely to be far more deep sincerity in a sonnet than in a letter. It is no exaggeration to say that the common courtesies of life demand a certain amount of what is called ”blarney” in a letter-especially in an eminent man's letter-which would ruin a sonnet. And this must be steadily borne in mind at a time like ours, when private letters are bought and sold like any other article of merchandise, not only immediately after a man's death, but during his lifetime.
With regard to literary men, their letters in former times were simply artistic compositions; hence as indications of character they must be judged by the same canons as literary essays would be judged. In both cases the writer had full s.p.a.ce and full time to qualify his statements of opinion; in both cases he was without excuse for throwing out anything heedlessly. Not only in Walpole's case and Gray's, but also in Charles Lamb's, we apply the same rules of criticism to the letters as we apply to the published utterances that appeared in the writer's lifetime. But now, when letters are just the hurried expression of the moment, when ill-considered things-often rash things-are said which either in literary compositions or in conversation would have been, if said at all, greatly qualified-the greatest injustice that can be done to a writer is to print his letters indiscriminately. Especially is this the case with Rossetti.
All who knew him speak of him as being a superb critic, and a superb critic he was. But his printed letters show nothing of the kind. On literary subjects they are often full of over-statement and of biased judgment. Here is the explanation: in conversation he had a way of perpetrating a brilliant critical paradox for the very purpose of qualifying it, turning it about, colouring it by the lights of his wonderful fancy, until at last it became something quite different from the original paradox, and full of truth and wisdom. But when such a paradox went off in a letter, there it remained unqualified; and they who, not having known him, scoff at his friends who claim for him the honours of a great critic, seem to scoff with reason.
No one was more conscious of the treachery of letters than was Rossetti himself. Comparatively late in his life he realized what all eminent men would do well to realize, that owing to the degradation of public taste, which cries out for more personal gossip and still more every day, the time has fully come when every man of mark must consider the rights of his friends-when it behoves every man who has had the misfortune to pa.s.s into fame to burn all letters; and he began the holocaust that duty to friends.h.i.+p demanded of him. But the work of reading through such a correspondence as his in order to see what letters must be preserved from the burning took more time and more patience than he had contemplated, and the destruction did not progress further than to include the letters of the early sixties. Business letters it was, of course, necessary to preserve, and very properly it is from these that Mr. W. M. Rossetti has mainly quoted.
The volume is divided into two parts: first, doc.u.ments relating to the production of certain of Rossetti's pictures and poems; and second, a prose paraphrase of 'The House of Life.'
The doc.u.ments consist of abstracts of and extracts from such portions of Rossetti's correspondence as have fallen into his brother's hands as executor. Dealing as they necessarily do with those complications of prices and those involved commissions for which Rossetti's artistic career was remarkable, there is a commercial air about the first portion of the book which some will think out of harmony with their conception of the painter, about whom there used to be such a mysterious interest until much writing about him had brought him into the light of common day. In future years a summary so accurate and so judicious as this will seem better worth making than it, perhaps, seems at the present moment; for Mr. W. M. Rossetti's love of facts is accompanied by an equally strong love of making an honest statement of facts-a tabulated statement, if possible; and no one writing of Rossetti need hesitate about following his brother to the last letter and to the last figure.
To be precise and perspicuous is, he hints in his preface, better than to be graphic and entertaining; and we entirely agree with him, especially when the subject discussed is Rossetti, about whom so many fancies that are neither precise nor perspicuous are current. Still, to read about this picture being offered to one buyer and that to another, and rejected or accepted at a greatly reduced price after much chaffering, is not, we will confess, exhilarating reading to those to whom Rossetti's pictures are also poems. It does not conduce to the happiness of his admirers to think of such works being produced under such prosaic conditions. One buyer-a most worthy man, to be sure, and a true friend of Rossetti's, but full of that British superst.i.tion about the saving grace of clothes which is so wonderful a revelation to the pensive foreigner-had to be humoured in his craze against the nude. After having painted a beautiful partly-draped Gretchen (which, we may remark in pa.s.sing, had no relation, as Mr. W. M. Rossetti supposes, to the Marguerite alluded to in a letter to Mr. Graham in 1870) from a new model whose characteristics were a superb bosom and arms, he, Rossetti, was obliged to consent to conceal the best portions of the picture under drapery.