en permanence

Dante Gabriel Rossetti to William Allingham

Monday [summer of 1861].

My Dear Allingham,

I am sending you by book post with this a sewed copy of my book. I have only just got a few, and do not offer it you en permanence in this state, as I am going to make an etching, or perhaps two, for it, and there is another index to come at the end, but had 6 copies sent me now to use in getting a publisher, etc. My first offer of it will be to Macmillan, with whom I have had some talk.

What I want chiefly to get rid of is the printer's bill, but I am led to think by some friends that I ought to expect something in money also. What think you? Will you tell me, and say all you have time to say in the way of criticism? Cancels are still possible. There are 5 cancel leaves already in the book (chiefly on score of decorum!), which you will notice by their being in the rough as yet.

My wife progresses well, I am glad to tell you. With her love to you, I am, yours affectionately,

D. G. R.

[Notes: "My Book " was The Early Italian Poets, now called Dante and his Circle. No etchings were included in it, though one was made, now in Mr. Fairfax Murray's collection. Macmillan did not publish the work, but Smith and Elder. For the ''something in money" which his friends led him to think he ought to expect he had to wait eight years. By 1869, about six hundred copies having been sold, he received, Mr. W. M. Rossetti says, "a minute dole of less than nine pounds."]

-from Letters of Dante Gabriel Rossetti to William Allingham, 1854-1870 by George Birkbeck Hill (London: T.F. Unwin, 1897). p. 260-61.

as the circle spreads

Dante Gabriel Rossetti to William Allingham

Paris, Wednesday, [June 1860].

My Dear Allingham,

Have you heard yet that I'm married? * The news is hardly a month old, so it may not have reached you, though I have meant to write you word of it all along, as you are one of the few valued friends whom Lizzie and I have in common as yet; nor, as the circle spreads, will she be likely to feel a warmer regard for any than she does for you.

Of her health all I can say is that it is possible to give rather better news of it than I could have given a month ago. Paris seems to agree so well with her that I am fearful of returning to London (which, however, we must do in a day or two) lest it should throw her back into the terrible state of illness she had been in for some time before. But in that case I shall make up my mind to settle in Paris for a time, as I could no doubt paint here well enough. In any case I expect a move, as winter comes on, will be necessary.

You know I have been meaning to inflict my vol. of MS. rhymes on you for some time, but have been so busy lately and wanted to copy a little more first. I shall try and send them yet. When shall we be likely to see you again in London? Jones is married, too, only a week ago. He and his wife (a charming and most gifted little woman) were to have met us in Paris, but he has not been well enough to travel with pleasure. With love from both of us I remain.

Your affectionate

D. G. ROSSETTI.

* Rossetti and Lizzie Siddal were married in Hastings, May 23, 1860.

-from Letters of Dante Gabriel Rossetti to William Allingham, 1854-1870 by George Birkbeck Hill (London: T.F. Unwin, 1897). p. 223-24.

joining the party

Dante Gabriel Rossetti to William Allingham

Sunday, July, 1855.

Dear Allingham,

How beastly of them Customs' ogs! I and every one had been on the look out for you. I wish I could come to the lakes with you, but it's quite out of the question just now, though nothing would delight me more. I think it seems possible I may be going on the Continent this autumn. Miss S. is going--to Florence possibly, and a lady, a cousin of mine, is to be with her most likely, so this might render my joining the party possible. She will in any case settle abroad for some time, in a climate less changeable than this--France or Italy. The wizard in the case being of course J. R. [John Ruskin] who you know is to have all she does for some time.

Thus, till this move is settled or quashed, i.e., my part in it, I must bide at my work, such as it is. I don't find what I'm about at all amusing, and should have been peculiarly solaced by a sight of you--but it wasn't to be. Let's go on writing to each other instead at any rate.

Your affectionate

D. G. R.

-from Letters of Dante Gabriel Rossetti to William Allingham, 1854-1870 by George Birkbeck Hill (London: T.F. Unwin, 1897). p. 149.

some thoroughly fine day

Dante Gabriel Rossetti to William Allingham

Blackfriars Bridge, [Postmark, March 22, 1855].

Dear Allingham,

I have been looking at the mangled remains of my drawing again by the light of your friendly letter, but really can only see it, in its present state, as a conceited-looking failure, and as to the execution, it is on a par with woodcut "Executions" in general; only in such cases the "copy of verses" ought to be made to match.

My wish was, and is, to make you a small water-colour, or pen and ink drawing, of the subject, as I should feel pleasure in doing it, and in your having it, in some shape; and that, since we cannot hang the engraver, the drawing, at any rate, should receive no quarter. By the bye, I have written to Dalziel, and though my letter was not indited, at a severe crisis of punning, it seems to have treated the subject in a manner to make him crusty, as he has never answered. . .

. . . Perhaps before this reaches you I shall get from you Ruskin's letter to Miss S., but if you have not posted it before, pray do so at once on receiving this, as I think I may want it. Ruskin's interest* in her continues unabated, and he is most desirous of benefiting her in any way in his power, and of her becoming a frequent visitor at his house. Some thoroughly fine day she and I are to pay him our first visit together.

Now to answer your question about Dr. Polidori. The fact of his suicide does not, unfortunately, admit of a doubt, though the verdict on the inquest was one of natural death; but this was a partly pardonable insincerity, arising from pity for my grandfather's great grief, and from a schoolfellow of my uncles happening to be, strangely enough, on the jury. This death happened in the year '21, and he was only in his 26th year. I believe that, though his poems and tales give an impression only of a cultivated mind, he showed more than common talents both for medicine, and afterwards for law, which pursuit he took to, in a restless mood, alter his return from Italy. The "pecuniary difficulties" were only owing, I believe, to sudden losses and liabilities incurred at the gaming-table, whither, in his last feverish days, he had been drawn by some false friend, though such tastes had always, in a healthy state, been quite foreign to him. I have met accidentally, from time to time, persons who knew him, and he seems always to have excited admiration by his talents, and with those who knew him well affection and respect by his honourable nature; but I have no doubt that vanity was one of his failings, and should think he might have been in some degree of unsound mind. He was my mother's favourite brother, and I feel certain her love for him is a proof that his memory deserves some respect. In Medwin, in Moore, and in Leigh Hunt, and elsewhere, I have seen allusions to him which dwelt on nothing but his faults, and therefore I have filled this sheet on the subject, though, of course, as far as your proposed criticism goes, I am only telling you that the book tells truth in this particular. Write soon, and believe me

Yours affectionately,

D. G. ROSSETTI.

By the bye, I am delighted at your appreciation of Scott. I shrewdly suspect that the last time I heard you talk of him there "was nothing in him." [Allingham grates a little.] I think myself that Maryanne, with all its faults, is better worth writing than The Angel in the House. As exemplified in this poem, as well as in other respects, Scott is a man something of Browning's order, as regards his place among poets, though with less range and even much greater incompleteness, but also, on the other hand, quite without affectation ever to be found among his faults, and I think, too, with a more commonly appreciable sort of melody in his best moments.

* Ruskin, upon seeing the drawings and sketches of Elizabeth Siddal, began to purchase all of them. He later provided her with an annual sum of 150 pounds in exchange for her drawings up to that value.

-from Letters of Dante Gabriel Rossetti to William Allingham, 1854-1870 by George Birkbeck Hill (London: T.F. Unwin, 1897). p. 113-17.

esses and isms

Dante Gabriel Rossetti to William Allingham

Finchley, November, 1854.

My Dear Allingham,

Your last letter has been carried carefully in my pocket all this time, with the view of its being answered, as it ought to have been long ere now. To-night I search my pockets for it at last for that immediate purpose, and of course it has somehow flown. I hope I shall not have forgotten anything that ought to be spoken of in this. One thing I must not forget is to say how very busy and bothered I have been, and to beg that may plead my excuse for delay, not only with the letter, but with the more important wood-block, which is not yet sent in. It would have been so before now, but that staying out here, I am prevented from working on it from nature except by flying visits to London on Sundays, and I am loth to finish it without nature. The delay in this has kept me from writing, as I wanted to say it was done, as I trust it now will be very soon. I shall like, if at all practicable, to do another, but meanwhile Hughes is drawing the last block to prevent disappointment, and my second, if done, must take its chance with the publishers as an additional illustration. I hope, above all, they mean to have the drawings well cut. For my part I should like to tell them that they had better in my own case give the price of the drawing as an extra bonus to the engraver, and that then they must let me see a proof as soon as cut--the thing to be cancelled altogether if not approved of by me. I expect this might partly impress upon them that some care was necessary, and that there was a reputation of some sort in some quarters that I had to take care of.

Do you see any objection to my following this plan ? I feel it both pleasure and credit to be associated at all with your volume, and should not like to cut too sorry a figure there, as it is a book which every one will be sure to see.

I have had a hasty look (such as my leisure lately has left possible) through your MS., much of which is as exquisite as can be or ever has been--pure beauty and delight. The Queen of the Forrest, Hughes tells me, is to be withdrawn, as capable of fuller treatment. I am quite of your mind about it, and chiefly because it is already so peculiarly lovely as to be worthy of any elaboration. The Aeolian Harp in long lines is equal to any of that series, and I should have many things to say of many others, if the MS. were only by me. I must write of them when they are printed, and I hope talk of them too with you by that time. You mention having sent a copy of Day and Night Songs to Ruskin: did you remember that I had already given him one? I trust he and you will meet when next in London. He has been back about a month or so, looking very well and in excellent spirits. Perhaps you know that he has joined Maurice's scheme for a Working Men's College, which has now begun to be put in operation at 31, Red Lion Square. Ruskin has most liberally undertaken a drawing-class, which he attends every Thursday evening, and he and I had a long confab about plans for teaching. He is most enthusiastic about it, and has so infected me that I think of offering an evening weekly for the same purpose, when I am settled in town again.

At present I am hard at work out here on my picture, painting the calf and cart. It has been fine clear weather, though cold, till now, but these two days the rain has set in (for good, I fear), and driven me to my wits' end, as even were I inclined to paint notwithstanding, the calf would be like a hearth-rug after half an hour's rain; but I suppose I must turn out to-morrow and try. A very disagreeable part of the business is that I am being obliged to a farmer whom I cannot pay for his trouble in providing calf and all, as he insists on being good natured. As for the calf, he kicks and fights all the time he remains tied up, which is 5 or 6 hours daily, and the view of life induced at his early age by experience in art appears to be so melancholy that he punctually attempts suicide by hanging himself at 3 1/2 daily p.m. At these times I have to cut him down, and then shake him up and lick him like blazes. There is a pleasure in it, my dear fellow: the Smithfield drovers are a kind of opium-eaters at it, but a moderate practitioner might perhaps sustain an argument. I hope soon to be back at my rooms, as I have been quite long enough at my rhumes. (The above joke did service for MacCrac's benefit last night.)

Before I came here I had been painting ever so long on a brick wall at Chiswick which is in my foreground. By the bye, that boating sketch of yours is really good in its way, and would bear showing' to Ruskin as an original Turner--and perhaps selling to Windus afterwards.

Many thanks for your minute criticism on my ballad, which was just of the kind I wanted. Not, of course, that a British poet is going to knock under on all points;--accordingly, I take care to disagree from you in various respects--as regards abruptnesses, improbabilities, prosaicisms, coarsenesses, and other esses and isms, not more prominent, I think, in my production than in its models. As to dialect there is much to be said, but I doubt much whether, as you say, mine is more Scotticised than many or even the majority of genuine old ballads. If the letter and poem were here, I might perhaps bore you with counter-analysis. But in very many respects I shall benefit greatly by your criticisms, if ever I think the ballad worth working on again, without which it would certainly not be worth printing.

I have read Patmore's poem which he sent me, and about which I might say a good deal of all kinds, if I felt up to it to-night; but I don't. He was going to publish (and had actually printed the title) with the pseudonym of C. K. Dighton; but was induced at the last moment to cancel the title, as well as a marvellous note at the end, accounting for some part of the poem being taken out of his former book by some story of a butterman and a piece of waste paper, or something of that sort! (I see my description is as lucid as the note.)

Did you see a paragraph in the Illus. Lond. News headed Americans at Florence, and giving a longish account of a backwoods poem called The New Pastoral, to be immediately published by Read? Have you seen anything of W. B. Scott's volume? I may be able to send it you sooner or later, if you like. The title-page has a vignette with the words Poems by a Painter printed very gothically indeed. A copy being sent to old Carlyle, he did not read any of the poems, but read the title "Poems by a Printer." He wrote off at once to the imaginary printer to tell him to stick to his types and give up his metaphors. Woolner saw the book lying at Carlyle's, heard the story, and told him of his mistake, at which he had the decency to seem a little annoyed, as he knows Scott, and esteems him and his family. Now that we are allied with Turkey, we might think seriously of the bastinado for that old man. on such occasions as the above.

This is the last of Brown's note-paper (I am staying with him here), so I must leave some other thing till next time, especially as it is fearfully late. Miss Siddal is moderately well and making designs, etc.

Yours affectionately,

D. G. ROSSETTI.

P.S.--Hughes asked me for Millais' address from [? for] you. The surest way I know of reaching him is to address to him at M. Halliday. Esq., 3. Robert St., Adelphi.

-from Letters of Dante Gabriel Rossetti to William Allingham, 1854-1870 by George Birkbeck Hill (London: T.F. Unwin, 1897). p. 81-86.

as many I's as Argus

Dante Gabriel Rossetti to William Allingham

Sept. 19 [1854].

Dear Allingham,

I've just got your letter this morning. About the woodcut, I fancy the poem and extracts you send to-day are hardly so much in my "line" for illustration as the two others you sent before. The Maids of Elfin Mere will be the one, I dare say, after all. This chiefly because the Nursery Rhyme on which S. M.'s Eve [Saint Margaret's Eve] is founded is included and illustrated in Child's Play by the Hon. Mrs. Boyle, and is there very well done.

I made a sketch for the Maids the first day you sent it--i.e., for the arrangement, and think it would come nice. At any rate of that or of one of the others I hope you will soon hear that a block is drawn, and Hughes has sent me one.

Hughes was here the other evening, and showed me several sketches and wood-blocks he has drawn,--all of them excellent in many ways; but the blocks I think, especially the one of the man and girl at a stile, rather wanting in force for the engraver. He agreed with me, and I believe will do something to amend this. He has made a few very nice little sketches for cuts in the text, if such should prove admissible. One or two for the Fairies are remarkably original. I should really, I believe, have got mine in hand before this, but various troublesome anxieties have interfered with that and other work, among the rest with my duty to the Folio, which is still by me. I shan't put in my modern design, and must finish one of two or three I have going on, instead. I am doing one, which I think will be the one, of Hamlet and Ophelia, so treated as I think to embody and symbolise the play without obtrusiveness or interference with the subject as a subject.

By the bye Hughes showed me a little poem about What it is they say and do, which I think, if treated carefully, would illustrate very well. It was one of my favorites in your old vol.--but I think on reflexion (sic) would not illustrate except in the text. Are you not going to include the Young Man and Death (if that is the title) one of your very best? There is among those translations of mine a longish dialogue with Death by Guido Cavalcant which always reminds me of that poem--i.e. the original.

I've been very unwell this morning, but have taken some physic and am much better. This must account for the flatness of my writing, for it is flat. I fear you must get the Athenaeum rather late. When I began to have it sent on to you, I found, what I knew not, that they were in the habit of sending it to an uncle of mine at Gloucester. I gave you the priority, but it seems he "appealed" (though he does not care a dump about it), and we thought it better not to hurt his feelings. This will account if it reaches you now later than at first. I'll mention to them at Albany St. about the label. No doubt you saw the review of Hannay's excellent book on Satire; it will put him on a first-rate footing with that fool Dixon, and be of use no doubt. The book has proved a hit. I think, if you liked, I could send you it to read--a copy (i.e.) belonging to the Spectator. Hannay has also brought out a little book with Routledge called Sand and Shells and is writing a novel called Hilton of the Lotus, to be published in the Home Circle, and which pays very well. He has just come back to settle in London, and I spent last Wednesday evening with him. William has been back in London a day or two, after walking through a great part of Devon and Cornwall with Paul, and enjoying it vastly. I do not know whether he has yet left again en route for Belgium, where he is to end his holidays.

I wanted to send you a letter Stephens had from Hunt, but it seems there is some mystic matter in it, so he has copied what I enclose for you. It is the latest news, I believe. The Chief of Zanquebar is a lark, but I confess I begrudge him that whole sheet of note paper. The Times on Massey is loathsome indeed. Really some one ought to write to them about that prig from Poe, which has roused Hannay's bile. I've been reading a Spectator copy of Firmilian in its complete state--on second thoughts I'll post it now for you instead of describing it. Please return it soon. I've also read some of the Stones of Venice having received all Ruskin's books from him, really a splendid present, including even the huge plates of Venetian architecture. I've heard again from him at Chamounix. I've been greatly interested in Wuthering Heights, the first novel I've read for an age and the best (as regards power and sound style) for two ages, except Sidonia. But it is a fiend of a book--an incredible monster, combining all the stronger female tendencies from Mrs. Browning to Mrs. Brownrigg. The action is laid in hell,--only it seems places and people have English names there. Did you ever read it?

I think you're quite right about leaving out a few of my translations from the volume, and should like to know which you think. I had thought so myself, but shall copy out all I have done before determining. I am very glad you like them so much, and will send more when copied.

My plan as to their form is, I think, a preface for the first part, containing those previous to Dante, and a connecting essay (but not bulky) for the second part, containing Dante and his contemporaries, as many of them are in the form of correspondence, etc., very interesting, and require some annotation. I think you have few or none of this class. I shall include the Vita Nuova I am almost sure, and then the vol. will be a thick one. I think, if it were possible to bring some or all out first, as you say, in a good magazine, the plan might be a very good one. Indeed, anything that paid would be very useful just now, as I do not forget my debts. I've a longish story more than half done, which might likely be even more marketable in this way. It is not so intensely metaphysical as that in the Germ. If I possibly can manage to copy what I've done of it, I'd like to send it you. By the bye, in my last long letter (a long letter, Allingham) I put two sonnets which I'm afraid you didn't like. Pray tell me, too, about the alteration I there proposed in the last lines of one, which you objected to.

I fear this letter has as many I's as Argus : argal it is snobbish.

Tenez vous bien for the present and good bye.

Yours sincerely,

D. G. Rossetti.

-from Letters of Dante Gabriel Rossetti to William Allingham, 1854-1870 by George Birkbeck Hill (London: T.F. Unwin, 1897). p. 54-59.