One day towards the close of 1881 Rossetti, who was then very
ill, said to me:
"How well I remember the beginning of our correspondence, and
how little did I think it would lead to such relations between us
as have ensued! I was at the time very solitary and depressed from
various causes, and the letters of so young and ardent a
well-wisher, though unknown to me personally, brought
solace."
"Yours," I said, "were very valuable to me."
"Mine to you were among the largest bodies of literary
letters I ever wrote, others being often letters of personal
interest."
"And so admirable in themselves," I added, "and so free from
the discussion of any but literary subjects that many of them would
bear to be printed exactly as you penned them."
"That," he said, "will be for you some day to
decide."
This was the first hint of any intention upon my part of
publishing the letters he had written to me; indeed, this was the
first moment at which I had conceived the idea of doing so. Nothing
further on the subject was said down to the morning of the Thursday
preceding the Sunday on which he died, when we talked together for
the last time on subjects of general interest,—subsequent
interviews being concerned wholly with solicitous inquiries upon my
part, in common with other anxious friends, as to the nature of his
sufferings, and the briefest answers from him.
"How long have we been friends?" he said.
I replied, between three and four years from my first
corresponding with him.
"And how long did we correspond?"
"Three years, nearly."
"What numbers of my letters you must possess! They may
perhaps even yet be useful to you."
From this moment I regarded the publication of his letters as
in some sort a trust; and though I must have withheld them for some
years if I had consulted my own wishes simply, I yielded to the
necessity that they should be published at once, rather than run
any risk of their not been published at all.
What I have just said will account for the circumstance
that I, the youngest and latest of Rossetti's friends, should be
the first to seem to stand towards him in the relation of a
biographer. I say seem to stand,
for this is not a biography. It was always known to be Rossetti's
wish that if at any moment after his death it should appear that
the story of his life required to be written, the one friend who
during many of his later years knew him most intimately, and to
whom he unlocked the most sacred secrets of his heart, Mr. Theodore
Watts, should write it, unless indeed it were undertaken by his
brother William. But though I know that whenever Mr. Watts sets pen
to paper in pursuance of such purpose, and in fulfilment of such
charge, he will afford us a recognisable portrait of the man,
vivified by picturesque illustration, the like of which few other
writers could compass, I also know from what Rossetti often told me
of his friend's immersion in all kinds and varieties of life, that
years (perhaps many years) may elapse before such a biography is
given to the world. My own book is, I trust, exactly what it
purports to be: a volume of Recollections, interwoven with letters
and criticism, and preceded by such a summary of the leading facts
in Rossetti's life as seems necessary for the elucidation of
subsequent records. I have drawn Rossetti precisely as I found him
in each stage of our friendship, exhibiting his many contradictions
of character, extenuating nothing, and, I need hardly add, setting
down naught in malice. Up to this moment I have never inquired of
myself whether to those who have known little or nothing of
Rossetti hitherto, mine will seem to be on the whole favourable or
unfavourable portraiture; but I have trusted my admiration of the
poet and affection for the friend to penetrate with kindly and
appreciative feeling every comment I have had to offer. I was
attracted to Rossetti in the first case by ardent love of his
genius, and retained to him ultimately by love of the man. As I
have said in the course of these Recollections, it was largely his
unhappiness that held me, with others, as by a spell, and only too
sadly in this particular did he in his last year realise his own
picture of Dante at Verona:
Yet of the twofold life he led
In chainless thought and
fettered will
Some glimpses reach
us,—somewhat still
Of the steep stairs and bitter
bread,—
Of the soul's quest whose
stern avow
For years had made him haggard
now.
I am sensible of the difficulty and delicacy of the task I
have undertaken, involving, as it does, many interests and issues;
and in every reference to surviving relatives as well as to other
persons now living, with whom Rossetti was in any way allied, I
have exercised in all friendliness the best judgment at my
command.
Clement's Inn, October 1882.
*** It has not been thought
necessary to attach dates to the
letters printed in this volume, for not
only would the
difficulty of doing so be great, owing to
the fact that
Rossetti rarely dated his letters, but the
utility of dates
in such a case would be doubtful, because
the substance of
what is said is often quite impersonal,
and, where
otherwise, is almost independent of the
time of production.
It may be sufficient to say that the
letters were written in
the years 1879,1880, and
1881.