Some Reminiscences of Christina Rossetti

ONE of the saintliest of women, as well as one of our finest poets, passed into that rest for which she craved so long while, when Christina Rossetti died. Her life was a song of praise. This song had two strains. Both were ever present, but the austerer was the dominant and the more prolonged. For the last twenty years her muse has been cloistral; but at all times the pain of the world lay against her heart. When she was a girl, and when she was a woman old in suffering, in experience, and relatively old in years, she wrote in the same strain. A child-woman at sixteen, she already felt, with something of pain and much of bitterness, the poignancy of that old worldcry, “ Vanity of Vanities, all is Vanity ! An extraordinary lyric utterance from one so young, and, in externals, so happily circumstanced, is this sonnet, written before the author was seventeen : —

I have no record of the exact date when I met Miss Rossetti for the first time ; but as it was not more than a few months after I had come to know Frederick Shields, the artist with whom, Rossetti was wont to declare, lay the hopes of Religious Art in England, it must have been in the autumn of 1880.¹ Though my memory for dates is bad, I recall easily the other particulars of this first meeting.

I had called upon some friends in Bloomsbury, and found there members of the family, with two guests, all seated before a recently replenished and for the moment flameless fire. Neither gas nor lamp illumined the room, and, having just come from the strong light of the hall and stairway, I could scarce distinguish my hostess. I was not surprised at the gloom, for this “ shadow-time,” as it was called in that house, was a luxury habitual there. The appearance of a caller who was not a stranger caused only a momentary interruption in what had been an animated conversation ; and almost immediately the lady whose voice was audible as I entered resumed the rapid course of an extraordinarily fluent diction. It is not necessary to mention her name, though it would be one familiar to many readers of this article. She was giving a vivid account of her experiences with slum children in the country, and had apparently been endeavoring to refute certain objections or arguments as to the best way to fulfill the aims of the Holiday Charity, and indeed as to the soundness of the views from which these aims arose. Some one had argued that a brief “ snatch of the country ” merely unsettled the children, and made things worse for them at home, and for their parents. “ Moreover,” she interpolated, in the course of her argument, “ I am convinced that it is not possible for any one to live a happy life unless he or she has at least a brief sojourn in the country every year.”

At this point a singularly clear, rippling laugh interrupted the speaker. I recollect that I noticed at once its quality, as well as its spontaneity and winsomeness. This was followed by a few words, and pleased as I was by the laugh, I was more pleased by the words ; that is, by the tone in which they were spoken. The voice had a bell-like sound, like that of resonant crystal. The pronunciation was unusually distinct, and the words came away from the mouth and lips as cleanly as a trill from a bird. Though so exquisitely distinct, the voice was not in the least mannered or affected ; and except for a peculiar lift in the intonation, more suggestive of Edinburgh than of London, there was no reason to suppose it was not that of an Englishwoman.

“ Ah,” she said, “ there comes in the delightful enthusiast. But, Mrs. —, I assure you that your good heart is mistaken. There are hundreds and thousands of us who, for one reason or another, never escape from London. I may speak for myself, alas, who am not only as confirmed a Londoner as was Charles Lamb, but really doubt if it would be good for me, now, to sojourn long or often in the country; and you must remember that there are more Lambs than Wordsworths among us town folk, and that as we are bred so we live.”

“ But,” broke in the lady to whom she was speaking, “ you yourself must admit that you would be far happier in the peace and beauty of the country, which is so infinitely more poetic, in every way so much more beautiful, than the town ! ”

How cool and quiet the bell-like voice sounded, after the impetuous utterance which had interrupted it! “ I am of those who think with Bacon that the Souls of the living are the Beauty of the World.”

“ That is a beautiful saying ; but now let me ask, do not you yourself find your best inspiration in the country ? ”

“ I ? ” with a sweet, low, deprecating laugh. “ Oh dear, no ! I know it ought to be so. But I don’t derive my inspiration, as you call it, —though, if you will allow me to say so, I think the word quite inapposite, and to be used of very few, and then only in a most literal and sacred sense, — I don’t derive anything from the country at first hand ! Why, my knowledge of what is called nature is that of the town sparrow, or, at most, that of the pigeon which makes an excursion occasionally from its home in Regent’s Park or Kensington Gardens. And, what is more, I am fairly sure that I am in the place that best suits me. After all, we may enjoy the magic and mystery of ocean without ever adventuring upon it ; and I, and thousands of other Londoners, from the penniless to those who are as relatively poor as I am, are in the position of those who love the sea, and understand too, in a way, its beauty and wonder, even though we reside in Whitechapel or Bloomsbury.”

I forget what followed, but a minute or two later the door opened, and another visitor was announced. The servant returned immediately with a lamp. As she did so, I caught a glimpse of my sweet-voiced neighbor, — a short, plain woman, apparently advanced in middle age, with, as the most striking feature at a first glance, long, heavy eyelids over strangely protrusive eyes. I noticed that she veiled herself abruptly, as she rose and said good-by. As she moved away, it was with what I can describe only as an awkward grace.

One thing after another interfered with the question that was on my lips, and the outcome was that I left without knowing who the lady was whose words and voice had impressed me so much. Two things remained with me beyond that day : not, strangely enough, primarily, the memory of the delicate precision and natural rhythm of her speech or the peculiar quality of her voice, but the rapid, almost furtive way in which she had drawn her veil over her too conspicuous eyes, as soon as the room was lighted, and her concurrent haste to be gone, — this, and the quotation from Bacon, “ The Souls of the living are the Beauty of the World.” It is a noble saying, and its significance would then have been enhanced for me if I had known that I heard it for the first time from the lips of Christina Rossetti.

Ultimately I came to know her through Dante Gabriel Rossetti. But before this event I had been misled as to her attributes and idiosyncrasies. My informant would have it that Miss Rossetti was a gloomy and even bigoted religionist ; that, recluse as she was socially, she was correspondingly morose in herself ; and that she was morbidly sensitive to her appearance, having at one time been comely, and even, in her youth, beautiful ; in a word, that she was now unable to reconcile herself to her altered looks, a change due to an illness which had affected the eyeballs.

One night, when Rossetti was narrating some anecdotes of the Germ days, he began to speak of his sister Christina. Noting my interest, he added further particulars not only concerning “ the genius of the family,” as he called her, but also about his other sister, Maria Francesca, his brother, and his parents, — details then unknown to me, though in the main now so familiar to all lovers of the poetry of Gabriel and Christina Rossetti.

He had a great admiration for his elder sister. “ She was the Dante in our family.” he said incidentally. “ Christina,” he added, “ is the daughter of what was noblest in our father and beautiful in our mother. But no one was ever afraid of Christina. Maria was a born leader ; Christina, a born apostle. In my boyhood I loved Maria more than any one in the world. I don’t think she ever came into her proper inheritance. She might have topped us all, though of course she had n’t Christina’s genius. She used to be pitiful of her younger sister, who was delicate and rather demure ; and Christina simply worshiped her. I remember how shocked they were when, both having expressed their envy of their martyred sisters of olden days, I said they were both far nicer and sweeter as they were, and that they had more than their share of martyrdom in having such a vagabond brother to look after.”

When she was still a child (not more than twelve, if Rossetti was right), Christina became poignantly melancholy whenever alone. About this time she had a great wish to write the most beautiful hymn of modern days. Her earnest efforts, however, were absolutely commonplace, till one memorable Sunday afternoon when she composed some lines which were good enough to make Maria prophesy that the young writer would be “ the poet of the family.” A native shyness was enhanced by the habitual self-disparagement with which she treated herself, in contrast with her sister. Her intellectual development, however, was rapid. How, indeed, could it have been other than precocious ? The Rossetti household was, probably, the most remarkable in London. Gabriele Rossetti, patriot exile, poet, philosopher, mystic, student, artist, and a most genial and winsome man of strong character, was “ a father in a million, as his elder son loved to speak of him. Mrs. Frances Mary Lavinia Rossetti, though English by birth and maternal parentage, was daughter of an Italian gentleman well known in his day, Gaetano Polidori, the translator of the poetry of Milton into sympathetic if not majestic or masterly Italian. Many distinguished people came to the Rossetti household, and divers eddies of the new thought of the age circulated through that little society. Then, were there ever four such children in one family as Maria, Gabriel, William, and Christina ? Two were endowed with high as well as rare and distinctive genius, and all four moved in an atmosphere pregnant with stirring ideals, deep emotions of strong minds, and vivid aspirations.

Christina’s childhood was spent almost wholly in London. Her first real excitement, she declared once, her first real excitement away from home-life and the familiar aspects of the streets of western London, was afforded by a visit she paid with Gabriel to the Zoölogical Gardens. The two amused themselves, after their first vivid interest, by imagining the thoughts of the caged animals. Christina thought that the birds should be honored by plaintive verses, but Gabriel narrated such whimsical biographies of the birds and beasts that poetry gave way to fun. Distinct as the impression was, it was not so durably vivid as that of the walk of the two children, hand in hand, across the solitudes of Regent’s Park, “ with a magnificent sunset which, Gabriel declared, he could see setting fire to the distant trees and roof-ridges.” Despite his interest in animals, an interest which became a freakish fad with him in later life, Rossetti never really observed lovingly and closely, except from the artist’s point of view. He would notice the effect of light on the leaves, or the white gleam on windy grass : but he could never tell whether the leaves were those of the oak or the elm, the beech or the chestnut. If he cared for birds and bird-music, it was without heed of distinctions, and with no knowledge of the individuality of lilt in the song of thrush or blackbird, robin or linnet. But sometimes, his sister told me, he would come home with a spray of blossom (“ it was always ‘ blossom ’ merely, not pear or apple or cherry blossom "), and once or twice with a bird or small animal in a little wicker cage, and would be as earnest and closely observant of all details as any naturalist would be.

It was about this time Christina Rossetti had a dream, which Gabriel promised to depict, and “ send to the Academy.” (This was before the Germ days.) She dreamed that she was walking in Regent’s Park at dawn, and that, just as the sun rose, she saw what looked like a wave of yellow light sweep from the trees. This “ wave “ was a multitude of canaries. Thousands of them rose, circled in a gleaming mass, and then dispersed in every direction. In her dream it was borne in upon her that all the canaries in London had met, and were now returning to their cages! Rossetti was delighted with the idea. He projected some pictorial touches, notably that the visionary was to be clad in yellow, and that the ground underfoot was to be covered with primroses. But either the impulse waned, or he did not feel able to do justice to the subject just then, and so postponed it, or, most likely, other matters of moment dissipated the intention.

When she told me this episode, Miss Rossetti added that Gabriel had the idea of writing a poem on the motive ; so had she, but she did not write, as she was always waiting for the promised poem from him. “He declared the ‘ motive ’ was symbolical, and had some strange personal significance ; but he never explained the one or the other, and I don’t believe there was anything but whim behind his words. He was always like that, as far back as I can remember, though less whimsical and more moody as a youth than as boy or man. In this respect he was very different from William, who was invariably simple, direct, and as quietly cordial as he is now. In fact, I was the ill-tempered one of the family ; and my dear sister used to say that she had the good sense, William the good nature, Gabriel the good heart, and I the bad temper of our much-loved father and mother.”

It is quite true that Christina Rossetti had to cope with an irritable temper, due to physical ailment. For myself, I never saw a trace of it, hut no doubt this tendency had been subdued long before I knew her. An old friend of hers informs me that she changed completely in this respect after the death of her sister, in 1876, to whom she was passionately attached, and for whose strong and saintly character she had an admiration that was almost extreme. Christina was wont to declare that if Maria had been the younger instead of the elder sister, she would have become famous, but that her home duties and yearly intensifying religious scruples and exercises prevented her. Certainly, the elder Miss Rossetti shared in that precocity which distinguished the whole family. Christina began to compose at the age of eleven ; Gabriel was in his teens when he wrote a poem which has become a classic, and stands as one of the most remarkable lyric achievements in English literature; and William wrote verse of a high quality before he was twenty. It was in her fourteenth year — “when Gabriel was either an idle and dreamy or else a feverishly active and eager boy, ‘ a born rapscallion,’ as our father sometimes called him ” — that Miss Maria Rossetti translated into blank verse the greater part of an ode by the Cavaliere Campana on the Death of Lady Gwendalina Talbot, Princess Borghese. In her early womanhood she began the work by which she is known to the public, though A Shadow of Dante was not published till her forty-fourth year ; that is, about five years before her death. Referring to this, Christina exclaimed once, “ I wish I too could have done something for Dante in England ! Maria wrote her fine and helpful book, William’s translation of the Divina Commedia is the best we have, and Gabriel’s Dante and his Circle is a monument of loving labor that will outlast either. But I, alas, have neither the requisite knowledge nor the ability.’

The elder Miss Rossetti had also something of her elder brother’s artistic faculty. Two or three of the designs in A Shadow of Dante were her own work. In addition to this book, there is one imaginative essay in fiction by her which is practically unknown. It is very scarce indeed ; possibly not half a dozen copies are extant. I have seen one copy only, that which was lent me by Miss Christina Rossetti. It was printed privately in 1846, when the authoress was in her nineteenth year. The title is The Rivulets : A Dream not all a Dream, and the matter is an allegory of life and religion, where the personalities are introduced as Liebe (Love), Selbsucht (Selfishness), Eigendünkel (Presumption), and Faule (Indolence). The “ rivulets ” represent the natural heart of man ; the serpents, whose breaths are forever fouling the waters, the devil; the fruits and flowers overhanging the banks, and poisonous when they fall into the streams, “ the grosser and less palpably sinful allurements of the world ; ” the crystal mirror which the guardian of each rivulet has In keeping represents the Scriptures ; the vase of perfumes, prayer ; and the healing water, baptism. The booklet is animated by the same extreme religious sentiment of renunciation that so many years later prompted the authoress to enter the All Saints’ sisterhood.

It is, of course, generally known that the exiled Gabriele Rossetti was a poet, though it is not commonly understood how great was his reputation. Christina Rossetti was wont to speak with gratified pleasure of the wish of the citizens of Vasto (in the Abruzzi) to see a suitable memorial, in their chief piazza, of the poet patriot and fellow-citizen, “ who was hatched in little Vasto, but whose flight extended throughout all Italy,” as his Italian biographer says. It is not commonly known that the poetic strain in the family was also shared by others of the same generation. In 1763, Nicola Rossetti, a student, and a man of standing in Vasto d’Ammone, married a girl of the same town, Maria Francesca Pietrocòla. Of their several children, four achieved distinction. Andrea, born in 1765, became known as a canonical orator and poet; five years later was born Antonio, a poet also ; next, in 1772, came Domenico, who, as poet, journalist, and medical writer, filled well his comparatively short lease of life ; and then, youngest of the family (1783) and most famous, Gabriele.

One day I heard some one speak of this to Christina Rossetti. She replied that, far from stimulating her, the knowledge was of the nature of a wet blanket. “ I feel that we — I, at least — ought to be far worthier after so much pioneering on the part of our relatives. I am afraid they would look upon us as mere appendices to the Rossetti Chapter ! ”

It was not long after my first (though ignorant) meeting with Miss Rossetti that her brother Gabriel spoke to me, in casual conversation one night, about The Germ, and in particular about Christina’s early poetry. He told me of the little book of hers, privately printed by her grandfather, Mr. Polidori (not, as often stated, Byron’s Polidori, who was Mrs. Gabriele Rossetti’s brother, but Gaetano Polidori, who had been secretary to Alfieri) in 1847. The poetry comprised in this slim booklet, now worth literally more than its weight in gold, was composed between the young poet’s twelfth and seventeenth years. Rossetti enlarged upon the significance of this collection. He recited the poem called The Dead City, and indicated the premonitions afforded there of Miss Rossetti’s best known long poem, — actual premonitions of now familiar passages, though the formative motive of The Dead City is quite distinct from that of Goblin Market. It was he who pointed out that Blake might have written the four verses called Mother and Child. The powerful and remarkable sonnet quoted on the first page of this article appeared in the little book before it saw the light (this was Rossetti’s phrase, and he added, “ or rather, the twilight ”) in The Germ.

Much impressed by The Dead City, I asked Rossetti to lend me his copy of the booklet in question. He had, however, no copy. It was then that he suggested I should request the loan of Christina’s, and added, on my reply that I did not know her, “ Well, you certainly ought to know her. She is the finest womanpoet since Mrs. Browning, by a long way; and in artless art, if not in intellectual impulse, is greatly Mrs. Browning’s superior. She could n’t write, or have written, the Sonnets from the Portuguese, but neither could Mrs. Browning have composed some of the flawless lyrics which Christina has written. I tell you what, you go and call on her. I ’ll write to her about you. And be sure you ask to see my mother.”

Of course I went. When, early one afternoon, I reached the dull, quiet house in “ Torrington Oblong,” as Rossetti humorously called Torrington Square, on account of its shape, — one of the many drowsy, faded, ebb-tide squares of central London, — I was shown into a room on the ground floor. There I saw an elderly lady, with a large green shade over her eyes, who, I hoped with all my heart, was not the poet. I spoke. The old lady bowed. I spoke again, but received no answer. The awkward silence was interrupted by the opening of the door, and, simultaneously, by a clear, bell-like intonation strangely familiar to me. I turned, and in Miss Christina Rossetti recognized not only the lady I had met at my friend’s in Bloomsbury, but the Christina Rossetti of Gabriel’s portraiture. Sufficient likeness lingered in the placid, rather stout face before me to prove that Rossetti’s crayon drawing must have been, as I had always understood, excellent in outward similitude as well as in expressional veracity.²

“ I am very pleased to see you, and have been expecting you, for I heard from my brother Gabriel of your promised visit. All,” she added, with a quick little gesture, an uplift of the right hand, in the manner of a musician recalling some fugitive strain, “ but I have seen you before, sorely ? ”

Before I could answer she turned, and indicated her seated companion, who looked up, and bowed again as formally as before.

“ This is my aunt, Miss Polidori. She is rather deaf to-day, so you need not trouble to speak to her.”

Meanwhile I was unconsciously noting the speaker’s appearance. In some ways she reminded me of Mrs. Craik, the author of John Halifax, Gentleman ; that is, in the Quaker-like simplicity of her dress, and the extreme and almost demure plainness of the material, with, in her mien, something of that serene passivity which has always a charm of its own. She was so pale as to suggest anæmia, though there was a bright and alert look in her large and expressive azuregray eyes, a color which often deepened to a dark, shadowy, velvety gray ; and though many lines were imprinted on her features, the contours were smooth and young. Her hair, once a rich brown, now looked dark, and was thickly threaded with solitary white hairs rather than sheaves of gray. She was about the medium height of women, though at the time I thought her considerably shorter. With all her quietude of manner and self-possession there was a certain perturbation from this meeting with a stranger, though one so young and unknown. I noted the quick, alighting glance, its swift withdrawal; also the restless, intermittent fingering of the long, thin, double watch-guard of linked gold which hung from below the one piece of color she wore, a quaint, old-fashioned how of mauve or pale purple ribbon, fastening a white frill at the neck.

“ Now where have I seen you ? ” she resumed, with pretended provoked perplexity.

“ Though I did not know who you were. Miss Rossetti,” I replied. “ the occasion was made memorable to me by something you said, — ‘ The Souls of the living are the Beauty of the World.’ ”

“ Ah, now I remember ! Of course ! But oh, it was not I who said that, you know. I merely repeated it. Strangely enough, I cannot remember where in Bacon it occurs. Do you know ? No ? Then you must help me to find out. Do you know Richard Garnett, — Dr. Garnett of the British Museum ? He knows everything, I am told, — fortunate man ! — and he will help us out of our dilemma.”

Thus chatting, she preceded me upstairs to the small drawing-room. I recollect noticing the delicate courtesy of the “ us,” and also my surprise at the blithe cheerfulness of mien and manner, so utterly unlike the description given me by one who professed to know her, but whose knowledge must have been at sight only, — perhaps from a glimpse, possibly an obtruded interview, during one of the poet’s almost daily pilgrimages to Christ Church, close by.

She was laughing at Gabriel’s name for Torrington Square, a nickname which appeared to be new to her. when she opened the door of the sitting-room where she had been reading to Mrs. Rossetti.

The dear old lady — one of the most winsome and delightful women of advanced age I have ever met, I can say, and who ever lived, I would say — won my allegiance at once. She insisted on rising, held my hand in hers, looked benignly, but keenly, into my eyes, and said, “ So you are a young friend of Gabriel’s ? That alone makes you welcome. How is he ? When did you see him last? So late as last week ? And he is well ? I am glad. Ah, Christina,” she added, looking at her daughter, as she reseated herself, “ I am afraid our young friend is repeating one of Gabriel’s kindly fibs, when he says that Gabriel is sleeping well and is in much better health.”

Suddenly she took my hand again, and asked me to sit near her, as she was rather deaf, or at least was so at first with strangers. She asked what we were laughing at as we came in, and when the little joke was repeated she smiled pleasantly, adding, “ Christina, when next we write to Gabriel, we must head the letter ‘ Torrington Oblong.’ ” I noticed that she constantly appealed or referred to her daughter, whose anxious service of her mother was equally noticeable.

After tea Mrs. Rossetti asked me if I had ever read Southwell’s poetry; and on my reply that I had not, she added, “ My dear Christina was reading a wonderful little poem of his just as your visit was announced. I am sure you would like to hear it. My dear, do read it again.” It was thus I came to know that wonderful Elizabethan precursor of the Songs of Innocence, The Burning Babe. The poem is in itself strangely moving; how much more impressive, then, when recited by one of the chief Victorian poets in her own home, and during the auditor’s first visit!

I can still see that small and rather gloomy room, with Mrs. Rossetti sitting back, with a woolen Shetland shawl across her shoulders, and the lamplight falling on her white hair and clear-cut, ivorylined features, as she waited with closed eyes, the better to listen; at the table, Miss Rossetti, leaning her head on her right hand, with her right elbow on the table, and with her left hand turning over the leaves of the book, —if I remember rightly, a new edition of F. T. Palgrave’s Children’s Treasury of Lyrical Poetry.

With an exquisitely clear and vibrant voice, though with a singular rise and fall, correspondent to Gabriel Rossetti’s moving and sonorous organ music, Miss Rossetti read, with infinite feeling, the lines beginning, “ As I in hoary winter’s night stood shivering in the snow.” Occasionally she prolonged the music of a line into a slow rhythm, with a strange saspiration that, I imagine, was characteristic, particularly when she was strongly moved. It was in this way that — late in 1885 or early in 1886 — I heard her read the lyric beginning, —

with, I recollect, an unexpected and haunting iterance of the line, —

each word as complete and separate in enunciation as notes of music slowly struck on the piano.

There was one line of Southwell’s in particular which she read with communicative emotion, — an emotion felt by Mrs. Rossetti, who opened her eyes, glanced at her daughter, and, with murmuring lips, reclosed her eyes. It was the line, —

During that first visit, again, I had cause to note how scrupulous, if at the same time reticent, Christina Rossetti was in any matter where conscience impelled her to a protest, though always one gentle, or at least courteous. Nor did the rigor of her views involve her in any narrowness of judgment, much less in bigotry. I may quote aptly here one or two letters from among those she wrote to me on several occasions. At the beginning of May, 1884, I called to see Miss Rossetti, and to leave with her a copy of a just published — and, I am now far from sorry to say, justly forgotten — volume of verse, but failed to find her at home. The poem I cared most for was the epilogue, Madre Natura, but instinct told me Miss Rossetti would neither like nor approve so pagan an utterance, and the surmise was correct.

30 TORRINGTON SQUARE,

May 3, 188S4.

. . . I might say, “ Why do you call just when we are out ? ” only that, you might retort, “ Why are you out just when I call ? ”

Thank you very much for your new volume, and yet more for the kindness which enriches the gift. You know how my mother and I hold you in friendly remembrance.

[Then follow some kindly words of discrimination and praise; and, finally, this: —]

Shall I or shall I not say anything about Madre Natura? I dare say, without my taking the liberty of expressing myself, you can (if you think it worth while) put my regret into words. . . .

Though I cannot recall what I wrote, write I did, evidently; and obviously, also, with eagerness to prove that, while I accepted her gentle reproof in the spirit she advanced it, I held the point of view immaterial; and no doubt a very crude epistle it was, in both thought and diction.

May 5, 1884.

. . . Your friendliness and courtesy invite mine. Pray believe in mine whatever I say, as I believe in yours in spite of what you say.

Will you not, on consideration, agree with me that it is out of the question for a Christian really to believe what every Christian professes to believe, and yet to congratulate a friend on believing something contrary ? On your having passed from a cruder form of negation I do heartily congratulate you. And now . . . nothing but good will and the desire to do right move my pen. . . .

I quote these extracts from personal letters only because of their inherent interest, as illustrative of a distinctive trait in the character of Christina Rossetti. Most of her letters to me are too personal for publicity ; but here, from one written in 1886, is a point of interest concerning Christina Rossetti the poet: “ I heartily agree in setting the essence of poetry above the form.” This point she extended on a later occasion, when she said that the whole question of the relative value of the poetic spirit of a poem and the form of that poem lay in this : that the spirit could exist without the form, whereas the form was an impossibility without the spirit, of which it was the lovely body.

One further letter only I may quote, that written after the death of Mrs. Rossetti, — a loss which Christina Rossetti felt, and said she felt, as the last snap but one of a chain that had long been snapping.

30 TORRINGTON SQUARE.

. . . I feel the kind sympathy of your letter so much that you must let me answer it out of my deep mourning. And I am glad it is I who am grieving, and not my dearest mother enduring this grief of separation. Thank you for bearing her in affectionate remembrance. She regarded you with true good will.

I hope that you are gaining ground daily, and that soon your illness will be a thing of the past. And I am sure that at a moment so solemn and moving to me you will suffer me to express the wish I cannot but entertain for you and yours, just because I entertain it for myself and mine, — that you too may never experience from any you love more than a temporary separation. . . .

More than ever after the death of Mrs. Rossetti, with broken health and a deep-seated ill beginning to wear her away, Christina Rossetti turned her face to that world of the soul, which indeed had always been to her a near and living reality. The rumor of other waters was ever in her ears. The breath of another air was upon her brow.

The circumstance that a clergyman came regularly to talk and pray with her — to be, in fact, her confessor — is no doubt responsible for the assertion sometimes made that, in later life, she was a Roman Catholic. This was not so. From her girlhood to her death she was strictly a member of the Anglican Church. Naturally, she had much sympathy with the Church of Rome, and had a great admiration for its ordered majesty of organization ; but, strangely enough, the rock which she took to be a beacon of wreck was Mariolatry. This, at all times, seemed to her the most cardinal error in Roman Catholicism. It is interesting to note that Gabriel Rossetti was more attracted by the spiritual and human significance of the worship of Mary than by any other dogma of Rome. He told me once that the world would come to see that the lasting grit in the Romish faith — "a ‘ grit ’ which would probably make it survive all other Christian sects ” — was based upon this idealization of humanity, through the mother-idea, in the person of Mary ; and that, whatever potent development the Protestant sects might have, “ they would always, lacking exalted recognition of Mary, be like church services without music wherein all can join.” On the other hand, it must be admitted that Christina’s belief was a profoundly felt and lifelong conviction, while that of Gabriel was, if not intermittent or accidental, more an expression of the opining temperament than of the convinced intellect.

In one place explicitly, as in a hundred places indirectly, Miss Rossetti has affirmed her faith. In one of the little known prose books she wrote in later life (which, as she said once, smiling rather sadly the while, the literary world that praised her so much studiously ignored) there is this significant passage : “ To myself it is in the beloved Anglican Church of my Baptism that these things are testified, a living Branch of that One Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church which is authoritatively commended and endeared to me by the Word of God. Christ, Whose mystical Body she is, is her Head, and the Holy Ghost. Whose Temple she is, is her overruling Will and Power ! ” ³

I think it was in January of 1886 that, for the last time, I heard Miss Rossetti read anything of her own. It was not long — some months, perhaps — since she had published one of the least known of her books, though one most characteristic and strangely fascinating, for all its Daily Companion appearance and, in a sense, style. I am inclined to believe that Time Flies gave her more pleasure in the contemplation than was afforded by any other book of hers. It is, of course, a religious “ daily companion,” and is occupied largely with strictly Scriptural comments; but it has many delightful (and, to those who knew Miss Rossetti, most characteristic) passages and anecdotes. Above all, however, it is notable for its lovely lyrics, interspersed throughout the volume like white and purple lilac-bushes in a lawned and graveled convent garden. Sometimes there are lines of extraordinary poignancy and beauty, straight from the lyric emotion wrought of the ecstasy in heart and brain; as, for example, these lines, so appealing as well as so idiosyncratic : —

But indeed the whole poem should be quoted : —

In some of these lyrics there is a strange note of impassioned mysticism, as in the short rondeau for January 16, exemplified in these three lines : —

In the lyric for March 7 there is a music like that of Gabriel Rossetti’s Sea-Limits, a haunting ululation such as that of Tennyson’s Crossing the Bar : —

Of those she read to me, I am haunted most, because of the exquisite cadence of her intonation, by the memory of one (that for March 5) beginning, —

How well, too, I remember that for February 11, No More; that for April 5, already quoted, beginning, “ Heaven’s chimes are slow, but sure to strike at last;” that for February 19; and this for March 3, a dialogue of Life and Death, with the Soul as the protagonist, — an actual protagonist, though here rather a hall between two players, dumb and passive in all its blind baffings to and fro: —

Since then how often have I recalled that marvelous yet so simple and obvious line, as Shakespearean as Gabriel Rossetti’s “ The sunrise blooms and withers on the hill, Like any hill flower ” —

There were other fragmentary lines or couplets which impressed themselves keenly on the memory; for example,—

and

Time Flies is dedicated “ To my Beloved Example, Friend, Mother.” Two earlier dedications to Mrs. Rossetti ran, “ My Mother, to whom I inscribe my Book in all Reverence and Love,” and “ My Dear and Honoured Example ;” while the last of her books once more bears the mother’s name, “ To her Beloved. Revered, and Cherished Memory.”

After the death of Mrs. Rossetti her daughter devoted herself to almost hourly ministration to her two old aunts. Miss Charlotte Lydia Polidori died in 1890, at the age of eighty-seven ; Miss Eliza Harriett Polidori, in 1893, at the age of eighty-four. There is now in Christ Church, Woburn Square, the pendant, with star and crescent in diamonds, which his Imperial Majesty the Sultan presented to Miss Harriett Polidori, in recognition of her distinguished services as a nurse in the Crimean campaign.

In these sad and lonely last years — which would have been so far lonelier but for the frequent visitation of her muchloved brother William — Christina Rossetti published two books : a volume of Collected Devotional Poems (1893), and one of prose, consisting of keen and vivid commentaries on the Revelation of St. John, yet, as her friend and clergyman, the Rev. J. J. Glendinning Nash, indicates, with characteristic humility entitled The Face of the Deep ; for these, she thought, were but an individual ripple on the surface of revealed truth.

One of my most cherished memories is of a night at Birchington, on the Kentish coast, in March of 1882. It had been a lovely day. Rossetti asked me to come out with him for a stroll on the cliff; and though he leaned heavily, and dragged his limbs wearily and as if in pain, he grew more cheerful as the sunlight warmed him. The sky was a cloudless blue, and the singing of at least a score of larks was something wonderful to listen to. Everywhere spring odors prevailed, with an added pungency from the sea-wrack below. Beyond, the sea reached to far horizons of purple-shaded azure. At first I thought Rossetti was indifferent: the larks made merely a confused noise; the sun-glare spoilt the pleasure of the eyes ; the sea-breath carried with it a damp chill. But this mood gave way. He let go my arm, and stood staring seaward silently; then, still in a low and tired voice, but with a new tone in it, he murmured, “ It is beautiful, — the world, and life itself. I am glad I have lived.” Insensibly thereafter the dejection lifted from off his spirit, and for the rest of that day and evening he was noticeably less despondent.

The previous evening, Christina Rossetti, — then at Birchington on a nursing visit, — Rossetti, and myself were seated in semi-twilight in the long, low-roofed sitting-room of the Bungalow. She had been reading to him, but he had grown weary and somewhat fretful. Not wishing to disturb him, Miss Rossetti made a sign to me to come over to the window, and there drew my attention to a quiethued but very beautiful sunset. While we were gazing at it, Rossetti, having overheard an exclamation of almost rapturous delight from Christina, rose from his great armchair before the fire and walked feebly to the window. Thence he stared blankly upon the dove-tones and pale amethyst of the sky. I saw him glance curiously at his sister, and then again look long and earnestly. But at last, with a voice full of chagrin, he turned away pettishly, with the remark that he could not see what it was we admired so much. “ It is all gray and gloom,”he added ; nor would he hear a word to the contrary, so ignorant was he of the havoc wrought upon his optic nerve by the chloral poison which did so much to shorten his life.

After he had gone to bed, Miss Rossetti spoke sadly of this dulling of his sensitiveness, and feared that it was indeed the beginning of the end. “ Poor Gabriel,” she added, “ I wish he could have at least one hopeful hour again.” It was with pleasure, therefore, that, next day, she heard what he had said upon the cliff, and how he had brightened.

The evening that followed was a happy one, for, as already mentioned, Rossetti grew so cheerful, relatively, that it seemed as though the shadow of death had lifted. What makes the episode so doubly memorable to me is that, as I opened the door for Miss Rossetti when she bade me goodnight, she turned, took my hand again, and said in a whisper, “ I am so glad about Gabriel, and grateful.”

After the death of Miss Harriett Rolidori, Christina Rossetti was an almost absolute recluse. A cancerous evil developed, and added to the burden of life, — a burden of which she had long been weary, and for surcease from which she longed without ceasing. Her death, at the festival of the Epiphany, a season which she herself has chronicled in lovely verse, must have come to her as the floodtide of a long-delayed happiness.

The weight of the pain of the world, of the sorrow of life, had long made hard the blithe cheerfulness which she wore so passing well, though it was no garment chosen for its own comeliness, but because of its refreshment for others. An ordered grace was hers in all things, and in this matter of cheerfulness she created what she did not inherit ; rather, she gained, by prayer and renunciation and long control, a sunlit serenity which made her mind, for others, a delectable Eden, and her soul a paradise of fragrance and song. Cheerfulness became a need of spiritual growth, as well as a thing seemly and delightful in itself. She had ever, in truth, at least in later life (and my acquaintanceship with her extended through a period of over twelve years), a gracious sweetness that was all her own. An exquisite taciturnity alternated with a not less exquisite courtesy of self-abandonment. She was too humble to speak much opinionatively, unless directly challenged or skillfully allured; while it seemed natural in her to consider that the centre of interest was in her companion of the moment, and not in herself. Habitually she preferred the gold-glooms of silence, but would, at the word of appeal, or even at that shyer lure which can express itself only through the eyes, come into the more garish light, or, as it might be, the dusk of another’s sorrow, or the starry cold of another’s grief. It was impossible to have with her even the least degree of intimacy, and not experience this quietude of charm, — a quality that made her so remote of approach, but so near when reached. How often, thinking of her, I have considered those lines of Herbert’s ! —

This “ cleannesse of sweet abstinence ” was characteristic of the poetic inheritor of Herbert and Crashaw, whom most she resembles in the quality of her genius, though she had more of fire and heat than the one, and less of sensuous exuberance than the other.

This is not the occasion for any critical analysis of her beautiful poetry. Its delicate music, its exquisite charm, are its proper ambassadors. Of her marvelous spontaneous art scarce anything better could be said by the most authoritative and discriminating critic than is expressed in these lines of Shakespeare (The Winter’s Tale) : —

It is but the other day she was given that rest for which she craved. If knowledge was hers, it must have pleased her that two of her poems (The Porter Watches at the Gate, and Lord, grant us Grace to Mount) were sung at the quiet but deeply impressive funeral service at Christ Church. Yet a more fitting elegy would have been that poem from Time Flies, that homing-song which I meant to quote here, but now must be content to indicate only by its opening words, “ Home by different ways.”

As I came away from the funeral service, with her old friends, Mr. Frederick Shields and Mr. John Clayton, — listening to the one speak of her flamelike ardor of Christian faith, and to the other’s narration of her brooding melancholy and of her anticipations of early death, about the time that Gabriel Rossetti painted her as Mary in The Girlhood of Mary Virgin (1848), and in Ecce Ancilla Domini (1849), — a stanza in one of her latest lyrics made a music in my mind: —

Wrapt in fire, indeed, was that pure and perfect spirit, that disembodied soul of song.

William Sharp.