Chapter II: Introduction

Through the agency of various persons, myself not the least active, a considerable bulk of materials about the Præraphaelite Brotherhood, or P.R.B., has by this time been published. Some of these materials are in the nature of narratives or essays; others, of documents of old date--letters, diaries, and so on. I now offer to the public a further instalment of materials of the second class.

This instalment, as the reader will readily perceive, consists of three several things, not directly connected the one with the other, but all bearing upon the Præraphaelite movement. There is:--1. An early correspondence of Dante Gabriel Rossetti, beginning (for curiosity’s sake) in April 1835, when he was not quite seven years of age, and going on to March or April 1854, just before the date when my compilation entitled _Ruskin, Rossetti, Præraphaelitism_ (1899) begins; and with this are included two letters from our Father. 2. Some letters from Ford Madox Brown to his first Wife, Elizabeth (Bromley), December 1844 to May 1845, followed by a much longer item, extracts from his Diary from 4th September 1847 to 6th January 1856: some passages from this Diary, relating to Dante Rossetti and his surroundings, were given in my compilation above-named, and these are, of course, omitted here. 3. Extracts from the P.R.B. Journal, which I, as a member of the Brotherhood acting as its Secretary, kept from 15th May 1849 to 29th January 1853. Thus the entire range of dates in this volume is from April 1835 to January 1856; and from 1847 to 1856 it is tolerably detailed and copious.

It will be seen that the three constituent parts of this book overlap to a large extent. The most important of the three is--as I think most readers will say--the writing of Madox Brown. I have given the precedence to the Rossetti correspondence simply because it begins at the earlier date.

It seems superfluous for me to write any more here. My object in the present volume (as in one or more that have preceded it) is not to give any continuous narrative or dissertation of my own, but to set forth original documents, with such introductory or annotating matter as may make them plain. Matter of this sort is furnished in connexion with each of the three items which make up the book: and so I leave it in the reader’s hands. He may perchance find it informing in some parts, and amusing in at any rate as many.

WM. M. ROSSETTI.

London.
July 1899.

PRÆRAPHAELITE
DIARIES AND LETTERS.

SOME EARLY CORRESPONDENCE OF DANTE
GABRIEL ROSSETTI.

SOME EARLY CORRESPONDENCE OF DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI.

In the course of some recent researches among old family documents I put together the enclosed specimens--consisting of twenty-four letters from Dante Gabriel Rossetti to various persons, 1835 to 1854, and of two letters addressed to him by his father, 1853.

I have more than once had occasion to confute a current misconception that Dante Rossetti could be adequately described as a sentimentalist, a dreamer, a mystic, an æsthete, and the like, without allowance being made for a considerable counterbalance of attributes of a very opposite character. Certainly he had some sentiment; he dreamed several dreams, asleep and awake; he may have been a mystic (though I never quite understood what a mystic is); and he had a passion for art in various forms, and for the word “art” we now often substitute the word “æsthetics”--a term which Rossetti seldom, if ever, pronounced. But it is not the less true that he was full of vigour and buoyancy, full of _élan_, well alive to the main chance, capable of enjoying the queer as well as the grave aspects of life, by no means behindhand in contributing his quota to the cause of high spirits--and generally a man equally natural and genial. In youth these qualities had not been overclouded by some troubles which beset his later years--although indeed, like other men, he had at all periods of life his troubles and his glooms. The present correspondence belongs all to the years of his youth; and I think readers will say that, whatever else Dante Rossetti may have been, he was a quick-blooded, downright-speaking man, with plenty of will and an abundant lack of humbug. People who take an interest in him may depend upon it that the more they learn about him--of an authentic kind--the more will the masculine traits of his character appear in evidence, and the less will room be left for the notion of a pallid and anæmic “æsthete,” a candidate for the sunflowers of a Du Maurier design. He did not “yearn.” All this is said without at all derogating from the fact that in the very essence of his mind and temperament Dante Rossetti was a poet--a poet who expressed himself in verse and in form and colour.

I have appended several headnotes and one or two footnotes to these letters; and will only add here a few observations, in the form of a _Dramatis Personæ_, on some persons not otherwise accounted for:

John Lucas Tupper, Sculptor, intimate associate of the
Præraphaelite Brothers; a selection of his poems was published
posthumously in 1897.

Frederic George Stephens, Student of Painting, P.R.B., now a
leading Art-Critic.

Walter Howell Deverell, Painter, nominated for election into the
P.R.B.

Thomas Seddon, Painter: produced the picture of _Jerusalem_ now
in the National Gallery.

John P. Seddon, Architect.

Charles A. Collins, Painter and Author; became son-in-law of
Dickens.

James Hannay, Novelist and Essayist; was British Consul at
Barcelona in his later years.

Francis McCracken, Shipping Agent at Belfast, an early purchaser
of “Præraphaelite” pictures.

John Marshall, Surgeon, ultimately President of the Royal College
of Physicians.

William Allingham, Poet and Essayist.

Thomas Woolner, Sculptor and R.A.

Bernhard Smith, Sculptor; he settled in Australia, and there died.