Louisa Anne Stuart Marchioness Waterford 1818-1891

Letters of Dante Gabriel Rossetti 1855. 4th July 1855. London. To William Allingham [aged 31].

I had to break off in the above, and go on with it to-day, instead of beginning afresh, to prove that I was not waiting for you to write, as I remembered well owing you two or three, though one of mine had been lost for some time. Yours was very welcome on Monday. Going on about The Music Master, I see the sentence already written looks very iniquitous, and perhaps is ; but one can only speak of one's own needs and cravings : and I must confess to a need, in narrative dramatic poetry (unless so simple in structure as Auld Robin Gray, for instance), of something rather "exciting," and indeed I believe something of the "romantic" l element, to rouse my mind to anything like the moods produced by personal emotion in my own life. That sentence is shockingly ill worded, but Keats's narratives would be of the kind I mean. Not that I would place the expressions of pure love and life, or of any calm, gradual feeling or experience, one step below their place, — the very highest ; but I think them better conveyed at less length, and chiefly as from oneself Were I speaking to any one else, I might instance (as indeed I often do) the best of your own lyrics as examples ; and these will always have for me much more attraction than The Music Master. The latter, I think, by its calm subject and course during a longish reading, chiefly awakens contemplation, like a walk on a fine day with a churchyard in it, instead of rousing one like a part of one's own life, and leaving one to walk it off as one might live it off. The only part where I remember being much affected was at the old woman's narrative of Milly's gradual decline. Of course the poem has artistic beauties constantly, though I think it flags a little at some of its joints, and am not sure that its turning-point would not, have turned, in vain for me at first reading, if I had not in time remembered your account of the story one day on a walk. After all, I fancy its chief want is that it should accompany a few more stories of deeper incident and passion from the same hand, when what seem to me its shortcomings might, I believe, as a leavening of the mass, become des qualith. As I have stated them, too, they are merely matters of feeling, and those who felt differently (as Patmore, who thinks the poems perfect) might probably be at the higher point of view. P. was here last night with Cayley and one or two more. We sat all the evening on my balcony, and had ice and strawberries there, and I wished for you many times, and meanwhile put in your book as a substitute (having, you may be sure, torn out that thing of Dalziel's).

I have propagated you a little — among other cases, to a man named Dallas the other day, who has just come to settle in London, having written a book called Poetics, and being a great chum of A. Smith — i.e., the Smith — and Dobell. After reading him much of you I enunciated opinions of a decisive kind as to the relative positions of our rising geniuses, and was rather sorry for argument's sake to find him not unsympathising.

I'm glad you've heard from Ruskin, and hope that you may find time in your week to arrange somehow a meeting with him. He has been into the country, and unwell part of the time, but is now set up again and very hard at work. I have no more valued friend than he, and shall have much to say of him. Of other friends, you'll find Woolner (27, Rutland St., Hampstead Road, his house; 64, Margaret St., Cavendish Sq., his study). Patmore, and Hannay get-at-able, besides Munro [aged 29] and Hughes, with whom you've been en rapport. My rapports you ask of with that "stunner" stopped some months ago, after a long stay away from Chatham Place, partly from a wish to narrow the circle of flirtations, in which she had begun to figure a little ; but I often find myself sighing after her, now that "roast beef, roast mutton, gooseberry tart," have faded into the light of common day. "O what is gone from them I fancied theirs?"

Have you seen Eustace Conyers? It is admirable in all Hannay's qualities, and a decided advance on Fontenoy. I congratulate you on your change of place, and myself on the prospect of your going farther, i.e., London, so soon for a while, and I trust not faring worse. Mind, I have nothing to show worth showing. Ruskin has been reading those translations since you, and says he could wish no better than to ink your pencil-marks as his criticisms. He sent here, the other day, a stunner, called the Marchioness of Waterford [aged 37], who had expressed a wish to see me paint in watercolours, it seems, she herself being really first-rate as a designer in that medium. I think I am going to call on her this afternoon. There, sir! R. has asked to be introduced to my sister, who accordingly, will accompany Miss S. and myself to dinner there on Friday.

That building you saw at Dublin is the one. I must have met Woodward, the architect of it, at Oxford (where he is doing the new museum), and talked of you to him, just at the time you were in Dublin, as I heard immediately after, and therefore did not send on to you his full directions how you should find him (or his partner, if he were away) and see all his doings there, which, however, can come off another time. He is a particularly nice fellow, and very desirous to meet you. Miss S. made several lovely designs for him, but Ruskin thought them too good for his workmen at Dublin to carve. One, however, was done (how I know not), and is there ; it represents an angel with some children and all manner of other things, and is, I believe, close to a design by Millais of mice eating corn. Perhaps though they were carved after your visit.

I haven't seen Owen Meredith, and don't feel the least curiosity about him. There is an interestingish article on the three "Bells" in Tail this month, where Wtithering Heights is placed above Currer for dramatic individuality, and it seems C. B. herself quite thought so.

I'll say no more, as I hope so soon to see you, but am ever your affectionate friend,

D. G. R.

Note. Rossetti had been at Clevedon with Miss Siddal, who had gone there for the sake of her health. Writing to his mother he said : — " The junction of the Severn with the Bristol Channel is there, so that the water is hardly brackish, but looks like sea, and you can see across to Wales, only eight miles off, I think. Arthur Hallam, on whom Tennyson wrote In Memoriam, is buried at Clevedon, and we visited his grave."

"That 'stunner'" was clearly the "Belle pas Sauvage" of Letters VII and IX. In my undergraduate days at Oxford when not unfrequently I was in Rossetti's company, I one day heard him maintain that a beautiful young woman, who was on her trial on a charge of murdering her lover, ought not to be hanged, even if found guilty, as she was "such a stunner." When I ventured to assert that I would have her hanged, beautiful or ugly, there was a general outcry of the artistic set. One of them, now famous as a painter, cried out, "Oh, Hill, you would never hang a stunner!"

"O what is gone from them I fancied theirs?" is borrowed with a slight change from the last line of Æolian Harp in the second series of Allingham's Day and Night Songs.

"Gift books have rather poured in on me lately," wrote Rossetti to his mother a few days after the date of this letter; "Hannay's new novel, Eustace Conyers, very first-rate in Hannay's qualities, and a decided advance on Fontenoy."

A little earlier he had written to her: — "An astounding event is to come off to-morrow. The Marchioness of Waterford has expressed a wish to Ruskin to see me paint in water-colour, as she says my method is inscrutable to her. She is herself an excellent artist, and would have been really great, I believe, if not born such a swell and such a stunner."

Mr. Holman Hunt gives the following account of a visit he received from her : — " With The Light of the TJ^orM standing nearly complete upon the easel, I was surprised one morning by the sound of carriage wheels driven up to the side door, a very loud knocking, and the names of Lady Canning and the Countess of Waterford preluding the ascent of the ladies. I think they said that Mr. Ruskin had assured them that they might call to see the picture. My room, with windows free, overlooking the river, was as cheerful as any to be found in London ; but I had not made any effort to remove traces of the pinching suffered till the previous month or so, and to find chairs with perfect seats to them was not easy. But the beautiful sisters were supremely superior to giving trace of any surprise. It might have seemed that they had always lived with broken furniture by preference." An account of the sisters has been lately written by Mr. Augustus J. C. Hare under the title of The Story of Two Noble Lives. There is no mention of these visits to the two painters.