■yl
 
 MY STORY
 
 Books by Hall Caine 
 
 My Story 
 The Prodigal Son 
 The Eternal City 
 The Christian 
 The Manxman 
 
 The Deemster 
 
 The Bondman 
 
 The Scapegoat 
 
 The Little Manx Nation 
 
 Capt'n Davy's Honeymoon 
 
 D. APPLETON AND COMPANY, New York
 
 Hall Caine.
 
 MY STORY 
 
 By HALL CAINE 
 
 ILLUSTRATED 
 
 ■ * * A , 
 
 • » •» . - ' 
 
 
 D. APPLETON AND COMPANY 
 NEW YORK MCMIX
 
 Copyright, 1908, 1909, by 
 D. APPLETON AND COMPANY 
 
 Publinhed February, 1909 
 
 
 
 • « t • . 
 
 I til I t «. I 
 
 • • • f. I • , 
 
 ♦ . ' ' L » t t t I «
 
 
 INTRODUCTION 
 
 When I began to write this book I had no 
 other intention than that of revising and per- 
 haps enlarging a little volume of recollections 
 of Rossetti which I had published immediately 
 after the poet's death; but I had not gone far 
 before I realised that I was doing two things 
 which I had not contemplated — I was produc- 
 ing an entirely new book that owed little or 
 nothing to the earlier effort, and I was pre- 
 senting a portrait of my friend that could only 
 be of value to the student of life in relation 
 to its point of view. 
 
 That point of view, when I came to consider 
 it, was, I thought, fresh, and such as might be 
 found to be interesting. A young man of five- 
 and-twenty, brought up in the country, untu- 
 tored and unknown, with nothing to recom- 
 mend him but some knowledge and an immense 
 love of books, had by certain strange revolu- 
 tions of the wheel of chance become the inti- 
 mate friend, and for a while the companion 
 and housemate, of a great and illustrious poet-
 
 INTRODUCTION 
 
 painter, who had been born in a very hot-bed 
 of literature and art, and was then living out 
 in the closest seclusion the last days of a life 
 that was saddened by many unhappy experi- 
 ences, and quite unbrightened by world-wide 
 fame. Such was the basis of my relation with 
 Rossetti, and sitting down now, at more 
 than twice the age to which I had attained 
 when the poet and I lived together, to paint 
 in loving memory a picture of my friend 
 as he had presented himself to me, I soon 
 became aware that, however unwittingly, I 
 was a principal character in my own drama, 
 and was hardly doing more than making 
 a record of my first great literary friend- 
 ship. 
 
 Therefore the consciousness, from which I 
 could not esca])e, that, little as I had intended 
 to produce an auto])iography, I was at all 
 events writing an account of my beginning in 
 literature, led me at length to look frankly at 
 my task as such, with the result that the book, 
 as now published, contains much beside my 
 recollections of Rossetti, though these must 
 needs bulk largely in any story of my first 
 twenty-five years, so great was my debt to the 
 friend who did so much for me in those days, 
 and so lasting the influence which his friend- 
 
 vi
 
 INTRODUCTION 
 
 ship, if not his mind or his art, has since ex- 
 ercised upon me. 
 
 Knowing well, however, that there is much 
 in the life of nearly every man of letters, and 
 in my own life in particular, that can be of 
 little interest to the public, I made no attempt 
 whatever to tell a detailed story of my early 
 days, but confined my autobiographical frag- 
 ment to an account of my literary relations, 
 sometimes very intimate, sometimes very 
 slight, always very important to me, with Rus- 
 kin, R. D. Blackmore, Wilkie Collins, Robert 
 Buchanan, T. E. Brown, Henry Irving, Tenny- 
 son, and Gladstone, as well as the great and 
 unhappy poet whose sad comradeship during 
 his. last dark days gave me an excuse for the 
 majority of these pages. 
 
 Nevertheless, in eliminating my personal 
 narrative, except so far as it concerned these 
 large and lasting figures, I thought I might be 
 pardoned if I began my book with a sketch of 
 my childhood and youth in the Isle of Man, 
 partly for the sake of the picture it must needs 
 present of a curiously self-centred little com- 
 munity that was strangely out of touch and 
 harmony with the rest of our kingdom as re- 
 cently as half a century ago, and partly, per- 
 haps, for such interest as it might possibly 
 
 • « 
 
 Vll
 
 INTRODUCTION 
 
 possess for some of the readers of tlie novels 
 ■with which my name is usually associated. 
 
 Aside, however, from this section of its con- 
 tents, the volume I now offer to the public will, 
 I trust, be found to be not so much an auto- 
 biography of my first twenty-five years as my 
 grateful and affectionate story of those first 
 friendships which have been the most precious 
 rewards of my literary life, and the best things 
 I have got for my books. 
 
 H. C. 
 
 Khartoum, 1908.
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 PART ONE 
 
 CHAPTER 
 
 I. — Early Days in the Isle of Man . 
 II. — Early Days in Liverpool. 
 III. — My First Literary Friends 
 IV. — The Beginning of a Great Friendship 
 
 PAGE 
 
 3 
 
 30 
 44 
 60 
 
 PART TWO 
 
 I. — ^The Story of My Friend's Life 
 II. — My First Meeting with Rossetti 
 III. — A Xight at Cheyne Walk 
 IV. — I Become Rossetti 's Housemate 
 V. — Rossetti and His Friends 
 VI. — First Weeks in the Vale of St. John 
 VII. — Last Weeks in the Vale of St. John 
 
 VIII. — Back in Chelsea 
 
 IX. — The Last of Home .... 
 
 X. — At Birchington 
 
 XI. — "Whatever There Is to Know" . 
 
 XII.— "That Shall We Know One Day" 
 
 ix 
 
 75 
 100 
 112 
 133 
 150 
 165 
 183 
 200 
 208 
 218 
 228 
 236
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 PART THREE 
 
 CHAPTER PAGE 
 
 I. — I Become a Journalist 243 
 
 II. — John Ruskin 254 
 
 III. — Robert Buchanan 263 
 
 IV. — I Become a Novelist 272 
 
 V. — R. D. Blackmore 286 
 
 VI. — My First Manx Novel 300 
 
 VII.— WiLKiE Collins 319 
 
 VIII.— My First Play 336 
 
 IX. — My First Visits to America 350 
 
 X. — The Literary Life 365
 
 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 FACING 
 PAGE 
 
 Hall Caine Frontispiece 
 
 Manx Cottage, Sulley 12 
 
 Rushen Castle, Castletown, Isle of Man 28 
 
 Maughold Church, Isle of Man 40 
 
 A Letter from Rossetti 64 
 
 Rossetti's Green Dining Room 108 
 
 Sonnet by Rossetti 144 
 
 Ruskin and Rossetti 178 
 
 Ruskin's Study at Brantwood 260 
 
 Tynwold Hill, the Ancient Mount of Laws, Isle of Man . 302 
 
 Runic Crosses at Douglas Kirk, Braddon .... 312 
 
 Wilkie Collins 324 
 
 Peel, Isle of Man 348 
 
 Greeba Castle, the Home of Hall Caine, Isle of Man . . 360 
 
 Dining Room at Greeba Castle 368 
 
 Portrait of Tennyson 382
 
 PART ONE
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 EARLY DAYS IN THE ISLE OF MAN 
 
 THE story of how I became a novelist 
 takes me back nearly fifty years, when, 
 as a child of five, I was living off and 
 on at intervals in a little thatched cottage on 
 the high-road through one of the remoter par- 
 ishes in the Isle of Man. It was the home of 
 an micle who was a small farmer as well as 
 a butcher. In his character as farmer he cul- 
 tivated some thirty acres of land, much of it 
 hilly and hungry, and some of it boggy and 
 peaty. In his character as butcher he killed 
 the sheep he had grazed on the mountain slopes, 
 and made weekly journeys to Douglas, the 
 chief town of the island, to sell his meat from 
 a stall which stood in the market-place under 
 the turret of an old church. 
 
 On one of these journeys I was permitted to 
 go with him, and though I knew it so little at 
 the time, I think now that not only my first 
 clear impression of the Isle of Man, but also 
 
 3
 
 MY STORY 
 
 my earliest sense of life and the world, must 
 date from that experience. A range of hills 
 crosses the island from the northeast to the 
 northwest, and onr home lay on the north side 
 of them, while Douglas lies on the south. My 
 recollection is that, contrary to the usual prac- 
 tice of farmer butchers, which was to go round 
 the little range, my uncle travelled to Douglas 
 by a pass that crossed the mountains through 
 the valley called Sulby Glen. In order to real- 
 ise what that journey meant to me, and the im- 
 pression it made upon my mind, it is necessary 
 to think of me as a child. 
 
 We were in an open cart without springs, 
 and a comer was left for me amid the car- 
 casses of sheep and lambs, and the clusters of 
 " plucks " and " heads," while the uncle, in the 
 Garibaldian red shirt he generally wore, sat 
 on the front board with his feet on the shaft. 
 That ascent of Snaefell, and the getting to the 
 top, and then the wilderness of waste space 
 with the sea on every hand, and finally the de- 
 scent into the new world beyond, where the un- 
 known town lay far away in the depths below, 
 was a breathless adventure. I have crossed 
 most of the great passes of Europe since then, 
 but none of them have brought me such a thrill- 
 ing sense of the vastness of the world and the 
 
 4
 
 EARLY DAYS IN THE ISLE OF MAN 
 
 mighty things of nature. And yet it was only 
 our poor little Isle of Man seen through the 
 eyes of a child. 
 
 I remember that it was dark when we 
 reached Douglas, and that the bustle and stir 
 of the principal thoroughfare, Strand Street 
 (narrow still, but narrower then, I think, than 
 it now is), seemed to me perilous and bewilder- 
 ing. The little town with its ten thousand in- 
 habitants, or less, was full of the teeming and 
 tumultuous life of a vast and mighty city. We 
 put up for the night somewhere behind the 
 market-place, in a house frequented by other 
 farmer butchers from the country, and we 
 slept in the same room with four of them. In 
 the cottage in Ballaugh we had a room to our- 
 selves, though it was little and the roof lay low 
 over it, and when you were lying in bed, you 
 could smell the sweet " scraas," the dry turf 
 bedding, under the thatch; but this was a vast 
 chamber, some twelve feet by fifteen at the 
 least, with three beds and a sheepskin by the 
 side of each of them. 
 
 "We had brought our dog with us, a white- 
 eyed Manx collie, and I remember that he slept 
 on the sheepskin by the bedside, while the dogs 
 of our room-fellows, being of a quarrelsome 
 disposition, had to sleep outside the bedroom 
 3 5
 
 MY STORY 
 
 door. And thus, amid the gossip of the men as 
 tliey talked in the darlmess after going to bed, 
 very tired, yet with a large sense of being a 
 mighty traveller, I fell asleep. I have travelled 
 a good deal since then, but I do not think I have 
 ever gone to bed in Africa or Asia or America 
 or within the Arctic Circle with so strong a 
 sense of being a whole hemisphere away from 
 home. 
 
 Next morning I was the last to be stirring, 
 and by that time the booths were all up in the 
 market-place, and there was a great cackle and 
 cry there, and business was going like a forest 
 fire. I could see my uncle in a linen apron, and 
 he was putting the copper and silver of his cus- 
 tomers into the two pockets of a bag which 
 was stitched to the front of it, and their gold 
 into a stocking purse which he kept in his 
 breeches pocket. The bag became big and the 
 stocking became fat, and I had a sense of 
 boundless wealth which will never come again. 
 
 The great day came to an end at length, and 
 then the booth was taken down and our mare 
 was brought round and harnessed to her empty 
 cart, and we drove away in a long line of other 
 empty carts through the gathering darkness 
 of Saturday night — the farmer butcher in his 
 red shirt, and the great little traveller, very 
 
 6
 
 EARLY DAYS IN THE ISLE OF MAN 
 
 tired and sleepy, snoozing down under the cov- 
 ering of a moist new sheepskin, along the main 
 westerly road of the island, the Peel road, 
 under the house (which seemed so vast) where 
 I live now with my own children, up Creg 
 Willie's hill at the tail of the mountain range, 
 and thus home to the thatched cottage in Bal- 
 laugh. 
 
 This is a very simple story, but I think it 
 records in its homely way the birth of what the 
 public has been pleased to call the Manx novel- 
 ist. The child is father to the man, and what 
 I felt nearly fifty years ago about the Isle of 
 Man, that it was the whole world in little, that 
 all the interests, all the emotions, all the pas- 
 sions, and almost all the experiences of man- 
 kind lay there on that rock in the Irish Sea, 
 has been the motive inspiring my books. It 
 has inspired the books which have had the 
 island for their scene no more than those which 
 have not, for if I have learned anything l)y 
 five-and-twentv years of almost continuous 
 travel it is that humanity is one and the same 
 ever^^where, and that nothing I had known of 
 our tiny Manx race was out of harmony with 
 what I saw in races great and small at the far- 
 thest comers of the earth. 
 
 I hold myself, however, more fortunate than 
 
 7
 
 MY STORY 
 
 some of my fellow-novelists (though begin- 
 niug life with many obvious disadvantages, 
 and under conditions so little likely to develop 
 the literary faculty) in being brought up as a 
 boy in a little self-centred community where 
 it was possible to see the human drama very 
 plain because very close. We were forty or 
 fifty thousand all told in the Isle of Man, and 
 we were really as one big family whereof 
 nearly every member seemed to know some- 
 thing of nearly everybody else. Our isolation 
 from the rest of the kingdom, our inevitable 
 intermarriage, and the unity of our material 
 interests made our impulses, our passions, our 
 beliefs, our superstitions an open book for any 
 of us to read, and it must have been my own 
 fault if, with so many opportunities of reading 
 the human story in the impressionable days of 
 childhood, I did not learn a little of it by heart. 
 The thatched cottage in Ballaugh was the 
 home of my grandmother as well as my uncle, 
 and I remember her almost entirely (for she 
 died when I was still a child) as the source of 
 certain superstitious ])eliefs which to this hour 
 I find it impossible to shake off. She was a 
 little Manxwoman, very old and much bent, 
 dressed in the blue homespun of the island, 
 and occupied with the light labour of the house- 
 
 8
 
 EARLY DAYS IN THE ISLE OF MAN 
 
 hold, while the lustier members of the family 
 were at work in the fields. I see her in my 
 mind's eye yet gathering up the dry gorse that 
 lay about the stack yard, then feeding the fire 
 under the " oven pot " that hung from the 
 " sloughry," a long iron rod and hook, over the 
 open hearth. She called me " Ilommy-beg," 
 which was Manx for " little Tommy," and I 
 think I must have been much in her company, 
 for I have the clearest memory of countless 
 stories she told me of fairies and witches and 
 witch doctors and the evil eye. 
 
 One of her stories was of a troop of fairies 
 who chased her home on a moonlight night 
 when she was a girl. They were merry little 
 fellows, wearing cocked hats and velvet jack- 
 ets, and they kept prancing and dancing about 
 her as she ran in frantic terror along the lonely 
 road until she came within sight of the lighted 
 window of her mother's house on the " cur- 
 ragh," the marshy meadow land, and then they 
 suddenly disappeared. Some of them were 
 malignant as well as mischievous, and she had 
 seen them flitting along with lanterns, the night 
 after a storm, to the door of some lone woman 
 whose man was a fisherman away at the " her- 
 rings " and was afterward found to be lost at 
 sea. There were good fairies, too, and one of 
 
 9
 
 MY STORY 
 
 these, whose name was Phonoderee, would 
 come to poor people's houses at night, when 
 everybody was asleep, and card the wool for 
 the women and churn the milk for the girls. 
 You had to be kind to Phonoderee or he might 
 become angry and even spiteful, so last thing 
 at night, before going to bed, my grandmother 
 would lay out on the kitchen table a crock of 
 fresh water, with perhaps a bowl of new milk 
 and a plate of " bonnag," which was barley 
 bread. I remember to have seen her do it. 
 
 She believed in every kind of supernatural 
 influence, the earth and the air were full of 
 spiritual things for her, and I suppose some of 
 her simple faith must have fixed itself on the 
 cells of my brain, for, however stubborn the 
 scepticism of my waking hours, in my sleep 
 the superstitions of my childhood are with me 
 still. I cannot remember that she could read, 
 and yet she knew much of the Manx Bible by 
 heart, and by the exercise of some unaccount- 
 able sense she could turn up a text at the 
 l^roper page. She certainly could not write, 
 and one of the miracles of life to her was how 
 I, at five or six years of age, could " read writ- 
 ing," but she knew a world of things which I 
 did not know and have never in the same de- 
 gree been able to learn. She knew when the 
 
 10
 
 EARLY DAYS IN THE ISLE OP MAN 
 
 storms were coming by a look at the sky, and 
 she could tell the time within a few minutes by 
 sight of the stars. She knew a bad man as she 
 knew the clouds by the signs of trouble in his 
 face, and she could see a good heart through 
 a clear countenance as she saw the stones at 
 the bottom of the well. I think of her as she 
 used to sit on a low, three-legged stool, feed- 
 ing the fire with the crackling gorse, while she 
 told me wondrous tales of the " little men," and 
 I tell myself now that, bewildered as she would 
 have been to hear it, my old Manx grandmother 
 was a poet. 
 
 It will be gathered from what I have said 
 that my grandmother's house was a poor one, 
 but I can truly say that though poverty lived 
 under that simple roof-tree it was poverty so 
 sweet, so clean, so free from want that in all 
 the years since I have never seen wealth that 
 has seemed to me so human and so beautiful. 
 The kitchen was our dining-room as well as 
 our cooking-room, for the parlour was a chill 
 place, never entered except when the parson 
 called — a mausoleum of musty knitted things 
 and curious pieces of old china. But in the 
 warm and living kitchen the middle of the floor 
 might be only of hard earth, but the flagstones 
 around it and the big blue hearthstone in the 
 
 11
 
 MY STORY 
 
 open ingle were always washed and whitened; 
 the plates on the dresser were always bright, 
 and hams always hung with the whips from 
 hooks in the whitewashed joists of the floor 
 above. 
 
 We burned peat, for coal was dear in those 
 days, and whenever I smell a turf fire now I 
 am fifty years younger in a minute. Our tal- 
 low candles were made by my grandmother in 
 a kind of iron dip, which I have never seen 
 since, and she span yam from the wool of our 
 own sheep, and it was woven by an old weaver 
 who lived alone with his loom near by, and then 
 it was made into clothes for the men and some- 
 times into petticoats for the women by the trav- 
 elling tailor, who came and sat cross-legged on 
 the kitchen table. Our food was as simple as 
 it could be, and nothing could have been more 
 simply served. On Sundays we usually had 
 two or three boiled sheep's heads, hot for din- 
 ner and cold for supper, and on other days of 
 the week we generally had potatoes and her- 
 rings. The herrings were on separate plates 
 about the table, but the potatoes, which were 
 always boiled in their jackets, were piled up in 
 one great dish in the middle, and we helped 
 ourselves as we required. At breakfast we 
 often ate eggs, which were plentiful, and some- 
 
 12
 
 EARLY DAYS IN THE ISLE OF MAN 
 
 times drank tea, that cost four shillings a 
 pound, I remember; but we always had por- 
 ridge, which, being boiled in the oven pot and 
 poured into a large white liowl, stood in the 
 centre of the table with a big spoon in it l)y 
 which everybody helped himself, lifting what he 
 wanted into his basin of fresh milk — warm and 
 frothy for me from the morning's milking. We 
 had no well, and therefore no pump, and con- 
 sequently no pipes, but we got our water from 
 a stream that ran down the mountainside, and 
 kept it in a tall crock in a corner of the kitchen, 
 brown on the outside and blue-ljlack within, and 
 when we wanted a drink we dipped a little blue 
 basin into it. We all sat together at meals, the 
 master of the house and the farm man, the 
 casual caller, and even the passing beggar 
 (though we never thought of calling him so), 
 only the grandmother, like Martha, on her feet, 
 busy with much serving. 
 
 If I have painted this little picture of our 
 primitive patriarchal life in a remote parish 
 of the Isle of Man as recently as fifty years ago, 
 it has not been merely for its own sake, but 
 chiefly in order to say that poverty, if it is 
 sweet and not bitter, is in my view a condi- 
 tion far more blessed of God than wealth, 
 bringing human hearts closer together in mu- 
 
 13
 
 MY STORY 
 
 tual dependence and brotherhood. I think that 
 is why the poor are so good to each other, and 
 when I remember the intimacies of my own 
 earlier days, both in my grandmother's house 
 and in my mother's, my rapturous joy in the 
 possession of little things, I am almost sorry 
 for my own children because they were born 
 to a condition of life which I had worked so 
 hard to make better than my own. Certain I 
 am that for the work I had to do in reading 
 and describing the characters of people noth- 
 ing could have been so good for me as the life 
 I lived in my youth. 
 
 There was an aunt in our household at Bal- 
 laugh, a strapping country girl in her twenties, 
 not yet married, and through her I came to 
 learn something of more substantial aspects of 
 life. I remember that it was an accepted law 
 of Manx courtship in those days that it should 
 be done late at night after the elder members 
 of the family had put out the " dip " candles 
 and gone to bed, leaving the dark kitchen to 
 the girls, whose " boys " by an amiable fiction 
 were supposed to be imknown. I also remem- 
 ber that in other houses this custom had its 
 obvious consequences, and that there was too 
 often a " bye-child " in a country house. But 
 our community was generally indulgent to sins 
 
 14
 
 EARLY DAYS IN THE ISLE OF MAN 
 
 of the senses, and one of the insular laws, con- 
 ceived, I think, by the good Bishop Wilson, was 
 meant to make it easy for transgressors to 
 atone for their transgressions both to their off- 
 spring and to themselves. If a girl who had 
 given birth to a bastard married the father of 
 it " within a year or two," never having com- 
 promised herself by relations with another 
 man, her child became legitimate. I remember 
 that there was a curious ceremony of legitima- 
 tion, wherein the mother while being married 
 in church tucked her baby under her petticoat, 
 but whether I ever witnessed a scene like this 
 or only heard of it I cannot recall. What cer- 
 tainly remains with me is a vivid sense of the 
 spiritual righteousness of this old Manx law, 
 and I think more than one of my books derives 
 something from my memory of its beneficent 
 effect. 
 
 We were a litigious lot in the Isle of Man 
 fifty years ago, and the members of our big 
 family were constantly quarrelling in the 
 courts. I think our people liked the excitement 
 of legal disputes, and I have known two broth- 
 ers " put the law " on each other about a coil 
 of rope. As a result everybody knew every- 
 thing about everybody else, their quarrels, their 
 property and their prospects, so that the peo- 
 
 15
 
 MY STORY 
 
 pie of one parish were as the members not of 
 one family merely bnt of one household, and 
 a cow could not calve or a sow have a litter of 
 pigs but we all knew something about it. This 
 may have made good ground for envy and mal- 
 ice and all uncharitableness, but it made good 
 ground for Christian charity and brotherly af- 
 fection, too, and it certainly made good ground 
 for the student of life if there was a child 
 among us " takin' notes." 
 
 We had no poor law in the Isle of Man in 
 my boyhood, and the machinery whereby alms 
 were distributed to the old and incapable was 
 of the simplest and most patriarchal. AVlien 
 age or asthma, or more frequently rheumatism, 
 left a man unable to follow either of the twin 
 callings of the Manxman, fishing or farming, 
 he made up his mind without many qualms to 
 " go on the houses." This was a species of 
 pauperism which apparently hurt no man's 
 pride, for it merely consisted in paying calls 
 on his neighbours at certain seasons of the 
 year, once, twice, or thrice, and being assisted 
 in kind toward the maintenance of his own 
 household. He was generally an old "widda 
 man," a widower, living alone in some little 
 mud cottage on the curragh, but sometimes he 
 had an old invalid wife at home, bedridden for 
 
 16
 
 EARLY DAYS IN THE ISLE OP MAN 
 
 years, and he came with a sack into which his 
 neighbours poured measures of meal, both oat- 
 meal and barley meal, and then gave him per- 
 haps some pinches of tea screwed up in paper, 
 which he stowed away in his waistcoat pocket. 
 I saw many such visitors in my early days, 
 and one of them, known as Charles, was a kind 
 of privileged pet of everybody, being " hardly 
 wise," and yet capable of flashes of wit and sal- 
 lies of satire that were the current coin of the 
 whole country. As far as I can remember 
 Charles had no fixed abode, but tramped the 
 island from north to south, and therefore lived 
 " on the houses " in every sense. He came, as 
 by right, and took his seat without ado in the 
 " chollagh," the warm place in the open ingle. 
 There was a bed for him everywhere, if it was 
 only a shake-down in the loft of the stable, and 
 he went away when he was so minded. He was 
 welcomed in a spirit of charity that had not a 
 particle of pride in it, but he earned his board 
 by bringing " the newses " from other places. 
 Charles, like the travelling tailor who came at 
 intervals to make our clothes out of our own 
 homespun, was the perambulating reporter of 
 the period. He claimed a reporter's right to 
 subedit his intelligences, and exercised it with 
 an effect that was sometimes startling. I see 
 
 17
 
 MY STOKY 
 
 him still in my mind's eye, the wild-eyed old 
 beggar with a ram's horn swung about his neck, 
 for he was a great follower of Father Matthew 
 and a fierce foe of the publicans, and as often 
 as he came upon a brewery he went braying 
 round it by the hour in the full conviction that, 
 like the walls of Jericho, it must some day fall. 
 I am afraid it must be admitted that lunacy 
 was not rare in our little close community, for 
 consanguinity in marriage was commoner than 
 it is now, and I remember with a shiver and a 
 thrill the shifts our poor people were put to 
 as late as my own early days to provide for the 
 insane. There was no asylum in the island 
 then, and if a man went mad and was believed 
 to be dangerous he was put away in an out- 
 house with a chain to his leg and straw for his 
 bed. I must have seen many maniacs in this 
 condition, and nothing I have since learned of 
 insanity has left so strong a sense of its ter- 
 rors. Sometimes it was the father of the fam- 
 ily who was thus stowed away, sometimes a 
 son, but occasionally the mother, the " big 
 woman " of the farm and the person least easy 
 to spare, while the eldest girl took up the du- 
 ties of the woman of the house, as well as 
 tended and cleaned, and perhaps scolded and 
 chastised the lone one in the loft. I think of 
 
 18
 
 EAKLY DAYS IN THE ISLE OF MAN 
 
 the horror of the padlocked place, of the wild 
 cries in the middle of stormy nights, of the 
 possible moments of sanity in the insane, of 
 the feeling of the rest of the family that the 
 father, son, sister, mother is with them and 
 not of them, outside in the onthouse while they 
 lie warm in their beds, separated by something 
 more cruel than death, more asundering than 
 the grave, and I wonder that the awful con- 
 dition could have been allowed to last so long. 
 
 It lasted until Wilkie Collins visited the 
 island when he was .writing " Armadale," and I 
 remember hearing from a former attorney-gen- 
 eral, Sir James Gell, that after certain letters 
 written by Collins to the Times the Home Of- 
 fice told our insular Legislature that if they 
 did not quickly make proper provision for their 
 poor lunatics the imperial authorities would do 
 so and charge them with the expense. 
 
 Our Government in those days was an anom- 
 alous creation mingled of officialism and feudal 
 power. We had inherited a right to rule our- 
 selves without restraint from the English Par- 
 liament, and we did so by means of a people's 
 chamber, the House of Keys, whereof the mem- 
 bers elected themselves, and acted under a 
 governor and executive council appointed by 
 the English Crown. As a consequence, the peo- 
 
 19
 
 MY STORY 
 
 pie of the soil had sometimes to be grateful if 
 they were permitted to exist, and among my 
 earliest memories is that of my uncle in the 
 Garibaldian red shirt protesting to an inspec- 
 tor, who was calling for corvee — forced labour 
 on the roads — that if things went much farther 
 we should not be " able to call our souls our 
 own." 
 
 I do not know if it was a result of our au- 
 tocratic form of government that the banks 
 became so powerful that they were able to de- 
 mand higher and higher interest until the far- 
 mers could scarcely live, but I remember that 
 a kind of amateur banker, the parish money 
 lender, was created by this condition. One such 
 person, a gombeen woman, came very close to 
 my own family, and was supposed to have been 
 the ruin of my grandfather, who was a bit of 
 a Bohemian, God forgive him, and sold his 
 birthright for a mess of pottage. I must have 
 seen this lady at close quarters, for I have a 
 vivid recollection of certain incidents of her 
 last illness, when she " got religion " and began 
 to have misgivings about the way she had got 
 her gold. In the middle of a, stormy night she 
 sent for " Uncle Bill," and asked him what she 
 ought to do that she might make her peace with 
 God, whereupon Uncle Bill, being practical in 
 
 20
 
 EARLY DAYS IN THE ISLE OF MAN 
 
 his religion, advised the immediate return of 
 all the money she had made amiss. 
 
 " That's impossible," she said. " Some of 
 the people are under the sod these teens of 
 years." 
 
 " Then give the money to their children," 
 said Uncle Bill, and my recollection is that she 
 made a certain show of doing so. 
 
 It was a weird enough scene at her death- 
 bed, the withered old woman counting out her 
 ill-got gold and giving it back with a reluctant 
 hand to the children whose parents she had 
 wronged, while the " Primitive " class leader 
 " put up a word of prayer " or led the company 
 in the verse of a hymn. I gave it all at full 
 length, but with some inevitable embellish- 
 ments, in one of the books I wrote years after- 
 ward. 
 
 The religious life of the Isle of Man fifty 
 years ago was perhaps on the whole more vo- 
 cal than active. There was deep piety in many 
 places, and the best of my memories of those 
 days is of the sweet and simple faith which 
 expressed itself in the homely lives of the far- 
 mers and fishermen, with their good wives and 
 daughters, among whom I lived. I recall the 
 little Methodist chapels dotted over every part 
 of the island where, not on Sundays only but 
 3 21
 
 MY STORY 
 
 on the evenings of other days of the week, a 
 few rugged men, with their big coarse hands 
 and tlieir tanned and seamy faces, would pray 
 together with the fervor of saints, in language 
 gathered from the " old book " that had an el- 
 evation and a distinction that is lost to modern 
 speech. 1 recall, too, the camp meetings of 
 that time with their rugged peasant preachers, 
 great preachers as I think they must have 
 been, judging by the effects they produced 
 upon their hearers, and the delirious emotion 
 that used to pass over the people as with the 
 rush of a mighty wind. 
 
 But in the community as a whole there was 
 a curious mixture of sincerity and insincerity 
 that was often grotesque and sometimes hu- 
 morous. I remember that intemperance was 
 not one of the failings to which our religious 
 toleration denied frequent forgiveness, and I 
 recall an occasion on which a kinsman of my 
 own, who was equally famous for his love of 
 " jough," a kind of Manx ale, and his zealous 
 efforts on the " plan-beg," the little jAan, hav- 
 ing returned home from market on Saturday 
 night at the bottom of the cart, preached on 
 Sunday morning on the evils of backsliding. 
 
 Drink was the besetting evil of the island in 
 my early days, and I think I shall not wrong 
 
 22
 
 EARLY DAYS IN THE ISLE OF MAN 
 
 the truth if I say that nearly every house on 
 the main roads was in some sort a public house. 
 As a consequence there were high doings on 
 the highway on market days, and the Manx- 
 man's sense of being of one big family with 
 all other Manxmen was not carried so far as 
 to interfere with his right to administer a little 
 brotherly chastisement. Town was against 
 country in these domestic encounters of parish 
 against parish. I can even remember that in 
 a parish of both hill and dale, Kirk Maughold, 
 the men of the " up-side " looked askance at 
 the men of the " down-side," and were not 
 sorry if Saturday night gave them an oppor- 
 tunity of settling their geographical differences 
 on the road. It was all very like a ridiculous 
 travesty of the national quarrels about which 
 we hold cabinet councils in the great States of 
 the world, and as in their case so in ours, no 
 tame interpretation of the doctrine of Chris- 
 tianity was permitted to interpose. 
 
 I remember, too, that religion was kept in 
 its place with us, as with greater races, when- 
 ever it threatened to interfere with economic 
 interests, though of course in our tiny com- 
 munity the manifestations of dishonesty looked 
 large and crude and primitive. Among my 
 earliest memories is that of a terrible storm 
 
 23
 
 MY STORY 
 
 early in the spring, and of being awakened in 
 the middle of the night by shrill shouts out- 
 side, where the men of our little farm were 
 struggling to hold down the thatched roof of 
 the house by throwing ropes over it and weight- 
 ing them down with stones, while the wind car- 
 ried off their voices like the screams of sea- 
 gulls, and the boughs of an oak tree lashed the 
 window of the bedroom in which I found my- 
 self alone. Next morning the sun was shin- 
 ing, and the air was as still as a sleeping child, 
 and then we heard of a schooner that had 
 been wrecked on the coast a mile or two down 
 our side lane, and of rolls of English cloth 
 which had been washed ashore. I would not 
 say there was any suspicion of wrecking, but 
 there were whispers of a sort of smuggling, 
 and of a stone tomb in the old Ballaugh church 
 that showed signs of having been disturbed, 
 and perhaps these surmises derived a certain 
 confirmation when on Whitsunday the stal- 
 wart sons and smart daughters of the farmer 
 nearest to the sea presented themselves in 
 church in brand-new suits of a wondrous Eng- 
 lish pattern. 
 
 We were then, as we are now, a people 
 strong in Nonconformity, for when the clergy, 
 under the corrupting influence of the braggart 
 
 24
 
 EARLY DAYS IN THE ISLE OF MAN 
 
 court of the latest of our Lords of Man, neg- 
 lected tlie spiritual needs of the people, Wes- 
 ley came over and swept the island as with a 
 mighty wave, but never did Church and Dis- 
 sent live on easier terms together. I remem- 
 ber that one of my many uncles in varying 
 degrees removed, for we were all kinsfolk, was 
 at once a class leader among the " Primitives " 
 and Vicar's warden as well, and I cannot re- 
 call an instance in which his two functions were 
 found to conflict. 
 
 "What left perhaps the strongest impression 
 on my mind were the many proofs that the 
 church belonged to the people, and that there 
 were times when they could almost go the 
 length of turning the parson out of it. One 
 of these was Christmas Eve, when it was the 
 custom of the parishioners to hold a service 
 by themselves. The service was called " Oiel 
 Verree," the Eve of Mary, and consisted of the 
 singing of " carvals," carols, some of them sa- 
 cred and often shockingly crude in their lit- 
 erary colouring, but most of them secular and 
 sometimes profane in both senses. I daresay 
 the original aim of the Oiel Verree was to 
 deepen the spiritual life of the people by means 
 of the only old poetic literature the island pos- 
 sessed, but in my early days it was made an 
 
 25
 
 MY STORY 
 
 excuse for scenes tliat were often more amus- 
 ing than reverential. 
 
 We all took candles to church, I remember, 
 and held them lighted in our hands, as we sat 
 in the pews, while the carol singers, generally 
 two abreast, walked down the central " aisle," 
 beginning at the porch and facing the altar, 
 and taking a step forward at the conclusion of 
 every verse. The carols most in favour were 
 those that gave the raciest paraphrase of in- 
 cidents in the Old Testament, and one that con- 
 sisted of a running commentary on all the bad 
 women in the Bible was especially popular. 
 By way of punctuating the points of such pro- 
 ductions we threw dried peas and sometimes 
 our candles at the performers, with results that 
 were not always an honour to the parish 
 church. Naturally, the clergy were not usually 
 favourable to the annual service, as it used to 
 be performed, and being powerless to abolish 
 a time-honoured custom, they made many an- 
 gry protests. I remember one such protest 
 that came like a boomerang when it was aimed 
 at a half-witted carval singer, named Billy 
 Corkill. Old Billy and I were going to Oiel 
 Verree when he met the parson, a testy person, 
 coming out of the church. 
 
 " Mind you behave yourselves to-night," 
 
 26
 
 EARLY DAYS IN THE ISLE OF MAN 
 
 said the parson, " and don't turn my church 
 into a bear garden." 
 
 " The church is the people's, I'm thinkin'," 
 said Billy. 
 
 " The people are as impudent as goats," said 
 the parson, whereupon Billy, without turning 
 a hair, quietly replied : 
 
 " Aw, well, you are the shepherd, so just 
 make sheeps of them." 
 
 Such was the life of the Isle of Man as I saw 
 it through the eyes of a child, and I trust I 
 have reproduced a little of it in my books, with 
 its quaint and curious customs, its simple faith, 
 its terse and racy speech. We were cut off 
 from the mainland by thirty miles of sea on 
 every side, and though a steamer sailed to Liv- 
 erpool every day it was hardly once in a life- 
 time that any of our country people left our 
 shores unless perchance they were leaving 
 them for good. In the remoter parishes there 
 was no postman, and when letters came for 
 us they were put up in the windows of the post- 
 office in the village to be seen and called for. 
 We had one or two insular newspapers, but the 
 farmers rarely read them, and those who did 
 so learned little or nothing of the things going 
 on in the world outside. There were no rail- 
 ways in the island then, and when we travelled 
 
 27
 
 MY STOKY 
 
 to market or to the annual fairs of our four 
 little towns it was either afoot or on the jolt- 
 ing cross-board of the springless cart. 
 
 Naturally, there was another side to the life 
 of the Isle of Man; there was the life of the 
 towns, of Douglas, with its ten thousand inhab- 
 itants and its visiting industry already begun; 
 of Castletown, technically our capital and still, 
 I think, the seat of our Government; of Ram- 
 sey, the asylum of many half -pay officers liv- 
 ing cheap on our low customs and small rents ; 
 and of Peel, the home of the fishing trade with 
 its fleet of some hundreds of small " Nickeys " 
 and big boats. Then there was the life of our 
 landed gentry, very clannish and exclusive, of 
 our college professors, remote and austere, as 
 well as the parsons, often very sweet old souls 
 who acted as intermediaries between us and 
 the people above, especially the Lord Bishop, 
 our neighbour at Bishop's Court, who was 
 driven in a carriage with two high-stepping 
 horses by an English coachman in livery, and 
 was talked of with bated breath. But this was 
 a higher side of the insular life which in those 
 days I knew little or nothing about, and if the 
 loss was mine in many ways I do not regret it 
 too bitterly since it left me in close touch with 
 the soil, with the simple lives of a simple peo- 
 
 28
 
 iSi 
 
 ( i 
 
 *— 
 
 ^f 
 
 
 
 -/J 
 
 o 
 
 a 
 
 H 
 
 CO 
 
 <: 
 
 a" 
 
 <; 
 
 2 
 a 
 
 a
 
 EARLY DAYS IN THE ISLE OF MAN 
 
 pie ; and to have been brought up in these con- 
 ditions was, perhaps, for one who had my work 
 to do in later life, to be entered in the best if 
 the humblest university of the world. So 
 Manxland is my alma mater after all, for she 
 has taught me more than the lore of her own 
 little island, and when I set myself to under- 
 stand humanity in any quarter of the world, 
 whether it is among the Icelanders on the edge 
 of the Arctic Circle, or, as now happens, among 
 the Soudanese on the verge of the Equator, I 
 find myself going back in memory to what I 
 learned of the human heart in the days when 
 I lay in bed in the little thatched cottage in 
 Ballaugh, with the sweet-smelling "scraas" 
 so close overhead, listening for a while, before 
 dropping off to sleep, through the floor that 
 had no ceiling under it, to the voices of the 
 people who were talking in Manx in the kitchen 
 below.
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 EARLY DAYS IN LIVERPOOL 
 
 ALTHOUGH so much of my childhood and 
 boyhood was spent in the Isle of Man, 
 my real home, the home of my parents, 
 was in Liverpool. My father, as a yomiger son 
 of a farmer who had dissipated the little he in- 
 herited, had recognised the necessity of going 
 farther afield for a livelihood, and crossing to 
 Liverpool while still a young man he had es- 
 tablished himself there in a humble way of life. 
 If I were writing an autobiography in the ac- 
 cepted sense I think I should be tempted to tell 
 some touching stories of how my father, as a 
 friendless and penniless boy, scrambled and 
 starved himself through the seven long years 
 that were supposed to be necessary to teach 
 him a trade; and again, after he had married 
 and children had begun to come, starved and 
 scraml)led, or at least pinched and deprived 
 himself, with the cheerful co-operation of my 
 mother, through the years in which I and my 
 
 30
 
 EARLY DAYS IN LIVERPOOL 
 
 first brother and sister had to be sent to school. 
 The world went well with him in later days, and 
 his children of a younger brood knew nothing 
 of his privations, but it is not for me, as his 
 eldest son, to forget the stoical unselfishness 
 to which I owe so much. 
 
 I have spoken of the life of the Manx people 
 in their own island as that of a close communi- 
 ty, self-centred and conservative, and suffering 
 in various ways from this catlike devotion to 
 home. But there is the Gipsy in the Manx peo- 
 ple, too, and no lack of the adventurous spirit. 
 Inheriting something from their Viking an- 
 cestors, Manxmen are good colonists, and I 
 think there is no remote corner of the world 
 yet visited by me where I have not found a 
 Manxman settled. He does well nearly every- 
 where, and contentedly adapts himself to the 
 country that becomes his foster mother. But 
 he never forgets his natural mother for all that, 
 and whatever the greatness and grandeur of 
 the country he lives in, he always clings to the 
 belief that the Isle of Man is the most beauti- 
 ful and desirable place in the world. It is a 
 touching fact, and if it is a fallacy it is not 
 the less sweet on that account. Our little is- 
 land is a lovely place, and though the winds 
 sweep over it in winter, and the sea that sur- 
 
 31
 
 MY STOEY 
 
 rounds it is sometimes terrible, tliougli there 
 are greater and grander tilings in many coun- 
 tries, there are none of us to whom it is not 
 after all the fairest spot the sun shines upon. 
 But, whatever it is, it is our mother, and just 
 as blood calls to blood, though it may be over 
 many generations, so across the countries 
 which separate him from his home there is al- 
 ways a deep call to the Manxman's heart from 
 the soil that gave him birth. 
 
 My father had the root of this in him 
 through all the years of his exile in Liverpool, 
 but though he was so near to the island he was 
 rarely able to go back, and I find it a touching 
 instance of the call of blood that not being able 
 to go himself he was always sending me for 
 periods long or short, and thus in a second gen- 
 eration his Manxness expressed itself in the 
 end by the return of his family to his native 
 soil. 
 
 But, meanwhile, it was in Liverpool for the 
 most part that I went to school, and there, 
 while I was still a very young boy, I started in 
 life. I was something of an adventurous city 
 Gipsy myself when I first tramped out into the 
 world, and my recollection is that the direction 
 I took was due to nothing more serious than 
 an impression that I could draw and the sight 
 
 32
 
 EARLY DAYS IN LIVERPOOL 
 
 of an advertisement asking for a pupil to an 
 architect. The architect turned out to be a re- 
 mote member of the Gladstone family, and 
 through him I came into casual relations with 
 the great statesman. It must have been in the 
 year 1868 that I saw Gladstone first, for I have 
 some recollection of running all day long, on 
 the day of the great election, to his brother's 
 office in Union Court, with telegrams announc- 
 ing the results of the contests all over the coun- 
 try. I see him as he was then, sitting behind 
 an office table, a tall man in a stiff-looking 
 frock-coat of the fashion of an earlier day, with 
 a pale face and side whiskers and very straight 
 black hair, thin on the crown and brushed close 
 across his forehead. He was my hero, my idol, 
 my demi-god, in those days, but that did not 
 prevent my blurting out the big news of great 
 majorities before he had time to open his tele- 
 grams, and then his pale, serious, shadowed 
 face, almost sad, and apparently preoccupied, 
 would lighten to a smile that was like sunshine. 
 I saw Gladstone again a little later when he 
 was spending a few days on his property at 
 Seaforth which my master had been required 
 to survey. The surveyor-in-chief had not ap- 
 peared one morning, and I, the smallest of boys 
 of fifteen, acting as his deputy, was ordering 
 
 33
 
 MY STOKY 
 
 about two or three big hulking indolent chain 
 men, when the statesman, now Prime Minister 
 and paler and graver than ever, came out of 
 the Vicarage to look on. I could see that he 
 was more amused than I was, and then he 
 came up to me and asked to see my maps and 
 the figures in my survey book, and I remember 
 that I gave him a large explanation of the 
 peculiarities of his estate with its hedges that 
 ought to be straightened and its by-roads that 
 were bad. He listened quite attentively for a 
 considerable time, and then, not having made 
 any other remark, he patted me on the top of 
 my head — it was easy to do so — and said I 
 would do something some day. 
 
 I did not expect him to remember me, but I 
 think he must have done so, for quite two years 
 afterward, without any intervening incident 
 or other point of touch, I had a letter from the 
 office in Union Court saying that his brother 
 wished to make me the steward of the Glad- 
 stone estates in Lancashire. I was sorely 
 tempted to accept the offer, for Gladstone was 
 still my demi-god, and I suppose if I had done 
 so the whole current of my life might have 
 been different, but my friends advised me to 
 decline, having by this time conceived an idea 
 that I had the makings of an architect, and 
 
 34
 
 EARLY DAYS IN LIVERPOOL 
 
 that business, tlie inevitable adjunct of poli- 
 tics, would break my career. 
 
 Their expectations were, however, in no way 
 of being fulfilled, for, already, books had called 
 off the devotion that ought to have been given 
 to the drawing board and T-square, and I was 
 consuming every kind of literature that came 
 my way. The Free Lil)rary at Liverpool was 
 my great hunting ground in those days, and 
 surely no young reader ever ran so wild in a 
 wilderness of books. I read everything with- 
 out guidance of any kind — poetry, history, 
 drama, romance, metaphysics, theology — gal- 
 loping through all at equal pace, a fresh book 
 about every other day, until I had more mis- 
 cellaneous literature on the top of my head 
 than any boy I have ever known or ever wish 
 to know. This went on in its irregular and 
 scarcely serviceable way for several years, so 
 that in later life I seem to have been doing 
 little else than read over again, I trust with a 
 more tutored mind, a few of the books I read 
 before I was twenty years of age. 
 
 I was writing, too (I can hardly recall a time 
 when I did not write), with the same aimless 
 and unguided ardour, essays, poems, plays, nov- 
 els, and histories — generally histories whereof 
 facts were not always the principal factors. 
 
 35
 
 MY STORY 
 
 There was the " scribbling itch " in all this, but 
 I cannot remember that there was any of the 
 publishing mania, for as soon as a thing was 
 done it was done with, and it found its way to 
 the bottom of a trunk. Naturally, a desire to 
 enlighten the world came in its due course, and 
 how I began to publish is another story. 
 
 From my earliest school days I had had a 
 friend, a boy of Welsh parentage, whose up- 
 bringing had been not unlike my own. He is 
 dead now, but he lived long enough to hear 
 that Tolstoi had spoken of one of his works 
 as " the best example of modern English fic- 
 tion," and yet his beginnings were not such as 
 might lead any one to expect that he would be- 
 come known as a writer of books. When I saw 
 him first I can no more tell than one could say 
 when he began to know his own twin brother. 
 My earliest recollections are of a stiff-set little 
 chap with twinkling eyes, a merry laugh, and 
 two round cheeks like rosy apples, fond of 
 mimicry, always in mischief, often in disgrace, 
 frequently going through various forms of pun- 
 ishment, and taking his drubbings in the spirit 
 of one who thought they were part of the hu- 
 mour of daily life. 
 
 This was William Tirebuck, and after he, 
 too, had left school and launched himself in the 
 
 36
 
 EARLY DAYS IN LIVERPOOL 
 
 school of life, going through all manner of gro- 
 tesque experiences which he turned to high ac- 
 count in later life, we began, he and I, still in 
 our teens, to unite our powerful interest in 
 literature. Our activities were first directed 
 toward the establishment of a monthly manu- 
 script magazine, which we conducted for about 
 two months, with the strenuous assistance of 
 an elder and more staid-minded sister of my 
 friend. AVhat his own literary qualifications 
 were at that moment I cannot now remember, 
 except that he wrote a clear and rapid hand, 
 and that he was always ready to put this good 
 and gracious gift at the service of his chief 
 contributor. My recollection is that my friend 
 played the parts of editor, printer, publisher, 
 and postman, while I charged myself with the 
 duties of principal author. Of course ours was 
 a serious publication, and if it is anywhere 
 still extant it may at least be of interest as 
 the first book of two budding collaborators, 
 who at sixteen and seventeen, respectively, un- 
 dertook, each in his own way, to settle for a 
 select circle the problems of the universe. 
 
 Then came an event of immense consequence 
 to both of us. One of the contril)utors to our 
 manuscript magazine inherited a small for- 
 tune, and, by what means I cannot say, came 
 4 37 
 
 Xb
 
 MY STORY 
 
 into control of it while he was still a boy. That 
 was bad for the fortune and not good for 
 the boy, but it was decidedly stimulating to 
 our literary ambitions. The first thing we did 
 was to print our magazine. We only printed 
 it once, I remember, but I think the publication 
 must have been quite alone of its kind. It con- 
 sisted chiefly or entirely of a very long blank- 
 verse poem written by me, and a glowing ap- 
 preciation of it written by my friend. I believe 
 we struck off ten thousand, but I never heard 
 of anybody buying a copy. Nobody has ever 
 told me that he has seen that poem, and I doubt 
 if anybody ever will. 
 
 Thus our first free plunge into literature 
 proved to l)e a plunge into hot water, and when 
 the fortunes of our boy capitalist were finally 
 submerged, my friend put on the life belt of 
 sober sense for a time and swam back to com- 
 merce, his place as junior clerk in a merchant's 
 office, while I, with less wisdom, threw up my 
 architecture at the first hint of one of the ner- 
 vous attacks which even then beset me, and re- 
 turned to the Isle of Man. This time I went to 
 another uncle, in another part of the island, a 
 schoolmaster, and a man of some culture, who 
 comforted my father and mother, after I had 
 gone through many jDarental scoldings and 
 
 38
 
 EARLY DAYS IN LIVERPOOL 
 
 been the cause of many parental tears, by giv- 
 ing it as his opinion that if the worst came to 
 the worst I might some day be able to make a 
 living by my pen. 
 
 No such material consideration, however, 
 had any influence with me then, and I was fully 
 content to teach in the schoolhouse four or five 
 hours a day, if only during the rest of my time 
 I could be allowed to do what I liked. What I 
 liked just then was to write anonymous and 
 gratuitous articles for one of the little Manx 
 newspapers on religious and economic ques- 
 tions of the largest conceivable range. That 
 was the moment when Ruskin started his 
 " Guild of St. George," and rumours came to us 
 of undergraduates digging the ground outside 
 Oxford in pursuance of the principles which 
 the master was propounding in his " Fors 
 Clavigera." It was at this fire I lighted my 
 torch, and for many months I went on writing 
 denunciations of the social system and of the 
 accepted interpretation of the Christian faith. 
 Thus I was a Christian socialist a good many 
 years before the name was known, and per- 
 haps something of a New Theologian also. 
 That my articles affected me profoundly I was 
 perfectly sure, that they perplexed my uncle 
 I had some grounds to fear, but that they made 
 
 39
 
 MY STORY 
 
 so much as a ripple on the placid surface of 
 Manx life I had no reason to believe. No rea- 
 son, at least, except one, the fact that a hu- 
 morous clergyman, who must have got a 
 " scoot " into my anonymity, and discovered 
 the compromising name of the boyish scrib- 
 bler who was undertaking the defence of the 
 rights of man, preached a sermon by way of 
 reply to my socialism on the text, " Am I my 
 brother's keeper? " 
 
 Meantime mv uncle died, and in some in- 
 formal way I took up his place as schoolmas- 
 ter, with all the extraneous duties that per- 
 tained to it, such as the making of wills for 
 farmers round about, the drafting of agree- 
 ments and leases, the writing of messages to 
 banks protesting against crushing interest, 
 and occasionally the inditing of love letters for 
 young farm hands to their girls in service on 
 farms that were far away. It was all grist 
 that came to my mill, and it never troubled me 
 a ha'po'th that I got "nothing out of any- 
 thing," not even my schoolmastering, which 
 was not all cakes and ale. 
 
 The schoolhouse was a quaint-looking struc- 
 ture that stood alone like a lighthouse on the 
 bleakest of the Manx headlands, Kirk Maug- 
 hold Head, and the wind in winter swirled 
 
 40
 
 ■ ■/ ^■'V^ 
 
 o 
 
 72 
 

 
 EARLY DAYS IN LIVERPOOL 
 
 round it and lashed it as with a knout, and 
 once a seagull, driven helpless before the fury 
 of a storm, came crashing through a window- 
 pane. Sometimes we had to tie a rope from the 
 door of the dwelling-house to the door of the 
 school that I might shoulder my way round by 
 the walls without being swept off my feet, and 
 sometimes we saw the children, who came from 
 the farms in the valleys on either side, with 
 laughter and shrill cries, creeping up to our 
 aerie on hands and knees. It was a stem sort 
 of schooling for all of us, but I think we came 
 through it to our mutual content, though the 
 children taught me more than I was able to 
 teach them, and I have since put some of them 
 into my books. 
 
 I must have been there for the better part 
 of a year, and during that time the little school- 
 master was in his way a sort of centre of in- 
 tellectual life. For the dark nights we got up 
 penny readings and debates, and perhaps if it 
 were quite worth while I could tell of won- 
 drous speeches by my friend Billy Corkill and 
 others on such perilous subjects as " Early or 
 late marriage — which is best ? " It was not all 
 of our Manx folk who could shine in debate, 
 but it was astonishing how many attempted to 
 practise it, and I recall with a pang some of 
 
 41
 
 MY STORY 
 
 the efforts of my neighbours at public speaking 
 on delicate questions, for they were tragically 
 outspoken as orators. 
 
 But this, too, was all grist to my mill, being 
 a sort of puljlic confessional to which I had be- 
 guiled my unsuspecting countrymen, though 
 there was a side of my own life which they 
 could not share. That was the side that con- 
 cerned books, other books than they kept on 
 the "lath" (the ceiling shelf in the kitchen), 
 the Bible and " Pilgrim's Progress," and 
 " Clarke's Commentary," and " The Land and 
 the Book " — books that might have shocked 
 that Puritan sense which they did not yet Imow 
 as " the Nonconformist conscience," books of 
 poetry and even fiction, or perhaps drama, 
 whose authors (as an unforgiving Manx Meth- 
 odist afterward said of me) " made their liv- 
 ing by telling lies." 
 
 One such book whereof rumour came to me in 
 those days was the first of Rossetti's volumes 
 of poems, just published, and being greatly re- 
 viewed, but I recall no more of the impression 
 it made upon me than the effect of the tragic 
 story of how the original manuscript had been 
 buried with the coffin of the poet's wife, and 
 then exhumed after lying seven years in the 
 grave. I remember that a thrill came first with 
 
 42
 
 EARLY DAYS IN LIVERPOOL 
 
 that story, and then, close ])ehind it, a certain 
 sense of outrage, as if the grace of great re- 
 nunciation had been finally thrown away. 
 
 Such was my first point of touch with a man 
 whose friendship was in later years to play so 
 large a part in my life; such, too, were my 
 scene and my interests when one day a letter 
 came to me on my bleak headland that sent 
 me back to Liverpool within a week. It was 
 from my master, the architect, and it said: 
 
 "Why on earth are you wasting your life 
 over there? Come back to your proper work 
 at once." 
 
 I had certainly run away without completing 
 my apprenticeship, but I really believe he was 
 one of those who cherished the delusion that 
 I might become a great architect.
 
 CHAPTEE III 
 
 MY FIRST LITEEARY FRIENDS 
 
 THE only terms I attempted to make with 
 the expectations of my friends were those 
 of writing articles on architectural sub- 
 jects for the professional journals. This I be- 
 gan to do immediately after my return to Liver- 
 pool, and kept it up for a considerable period, 
 so that stowed away somewhere in The Builder 
 and The Building News there must be a 
 number of essays in architectural criticism 
 written by me in my youthful days at the draw- 
 ing-board. They were distinctly transcen- 
 dental, I remember, and never very practical, 
 and this was probably the reason my inexpe- 
 rience was not detected. 
 
 It was about the time when Ruskin was quite 
 rightly raising a loud outcry against the res- 
 toration of ancient buildings, and my articles 
 were, I think, for the most part intended to 
 support him in his propaganda. I know they 
 were written in a style that was a far-away 
 
 44
 
 MY FIRST LITERARY FRIENDS 
 
 imitation of the great critic's earlier manner, 
 being very florid, even flamboyant, full of pas- 
 sionate appeals for the reverent treatment of 
 decaying monuments, and fierce denunciations 
 of the great people who were then falsifying 
 history as it was written in our stones. My 
 articles were sincere enough, I think, and, 
 thanks to their model, they were not too mani- 
 festly immature, for Ruskin himself took no- 
 tice of them and wrote to me more than once 
 in words of sufficient encouragement. His let- 
 ters, if I could find them all, would, I think, be 
 interesting for what they reveal of the man, 
 apart from his subject, for they were written 
 at that period of storm and stress when his 
 tempestuous brain was swinging to and fro, 
 before it finally went down to that still and 
 vacant air in which it lingered so long. In one 
 of them, which I have recovered, Ruskin 
 speaks of " a bad fit of weariness, not to 
 say worse," which has kept him from ful- 
 filling Some promise he had made me, and 
 adds, " I am sincerely glad and grateful for 
 all you tell me of your work." In another he 
 says: 
 
 " I have of course the deepest interest in 
 your work — and for that reason must keep 
 wholly out of it. 
 
 45
 
 MY STOEY 
 
 " I should drive myself mad again in a week 
 if I thought of such things. 
 
 " I am doing botany and geology, and you, 
 who are able for it, must fight with rascals and 
 fools. I will be no more plagued by them." 
 
 Again, apparently on the same subject, he 
 says: 
 
 " I am entirely hopeless of any good what- 
 ever against these devilish modern powers and 
 fashions. My words choke me if I try to speak. 
 
 " I know nothing of Liverpool, and what can 
 I say there, but that it has first to look after 
 its poor, and the churches will take care of 
 themselves." 
 
 I remember that I had other letters from 
 Euskin at this period, some of them written 
 from Coniston, and some from Venice in the 
 full l)last of the torrential wrath in which his 
 great brain finally disappeared; but the most 
 immediate, if not the most practical, reward I 
 received for my articles came to me from an- 
 other source. The editor of one of my archi- 
 tectural journals, George Godwin, I think, 
 wrote to say that he would be glad if I would 
 go up to see him in London. 
 
 The perturbation created by this message 
 was increased by the rumour, whispered to me 
 by an architect friend, that Godwin, who was 
 
 46
 
 MY FIRST LITERARY FRIENDS 
 
 growing old, was on the lookout for an assist- 
 ant editor, who might perhaps succeed him 
 some day at the office of The Builder. The 
 prospect was glorious, but there was a lion in 
 the way, and no one could be so much in fear 
 of it as myself. It was before the days when 
 men were " too old at forty," and I had David 
 Copperfield's dread of being too young. I had 
 suffered from that malady for a considerable 
 time, and as often as I had had to tell my age 
 I had inwardly asked forgiveness and then 
 added a year to it, being only restrained from 
 adding more by the certainty that my face, 
 which was ridiculously youthful, would betray 
 and convict me. 
 
 I obeyed the editor's order, and went up to 
 see him at his private house in London, but I 
 shall never forget my miserable sense of being 
 so young when I was shown into a drawing- 
 room full of historic chairs, or the shiver that 
 passed over me as the old man entered and 
 looked at me for the first time. It seemed to 
 me that for a moment his eyes were starting 
 out of his head, and he was asking himself if 
 it could be possible that he had inflicted upon 
 the mature readers of his staid editorial col- 
 umns the effusions of this boy who was not 
 much more to look at than a girl. 
 
 47
 
 MY STORY 
 
 Fortunately for himself tlie editor did not 
 ask me to become his assistant editor, and per- 
 haps that (after the breakdown of the Glad- 
 stone stewardship) was the luckiest chance, 
 and the narrowest escape, that ever happened 
 to me in my life. In the making of imaginative 
 literature it is the rolling stone that gathers the 
 moss, and my stone was not yet done rolling. 
 
 Partly from the failure of faith in myself as 
 a draughtsman, and partly from a desire to be 
 moving on, I left my architect and became as- 
 sistant to a builder. That was for me the best 
 move I had yet made, though I remember with 
 a certain shame that it must have been con- 
 siderably less advantageous to my employer, 
 for my new employment fostered my literary 
 activity after a fashion that could hardly have 
 been contemplated by my indulgent chief. 
 Making no particular demand on my intellect, 
 it left me free to read more and more books 
 of many sorts, and to write stories and dramas 
 and essays and articles. I remember that I 
 had a snug little office to myself in which I did 
 these things for several years, while all the 
 time my face bore an expression of intense ab- 
 sorption in the affairs of the building trade. 
 The literary conscience in its early manifesta- 
 tions is an elastic conscience. 
 
 48
 
 MY FIRST LITERARY FRIENDS 
 
 My building employment brought me some- 
 thing even better than leisure for my amateur 
 literary efforts — it put me into touch with men. 
 I was in daily communication with one or two 
 hundred of them of various trades and classes 
 for at least five years, so it was my own 
 fault if I did not learn something of the work- 
 ing man. I learned a good deal about him, 
 both on his good side and his bad side, about 
 his thrift and his improvidence, his industry 
 and his malingering, his frequent self-sacrifice 
 for his family and his drunken indifference to 
 the cries of his children, his simple natural 
 manners, as of a born gentleman, and his fre- 
 quent foulness of speech, as of a low brute. 
 It would not be entirely safe to say that what 
 I saw of the working man at close quarters did 
 not tend to modify the more uncompromising 
 side of mv militant socialism, but better than 
 any knowledge which my building experience 
 brought me of the working man, as such, was 
 the daily sight of the inside of life which came 
 by giving " subs " to meet the expenses of sick- 
 ness at home that was sometimes real and 
 sometimes imaginary, and even of funerals 
 which were occasionally faked. Like my Manx 
 experience, it was all grist to my mill, and I 
 was unconsciously filling a big granary which 
 
 49
 
 MY STORY 
 
 I have never since been able to empty, though 
 I have made calls upon it many times. 
 
 Meantime, with the help of friend Tirebuck 
 and others, I was making various grandiose 
 efforts in Liverpool, and one of these was an 
 effort to establish a branch of the Shakespeare 
 Society, the Ruskin Society, and the Society 
 for the Protection of Ancient Buildings, all 
 rolled into one. We called our own organisa- 
 tion " Notes and Queries Society," held our 
 meetings at the local Royal Institution, and in- 
 vited public men to discourse to us in person 
 or by proxy. The " Notes " were often pro- 
 vided by persons of no less distinction than 
 Ruskin and William Morris, but the only 
 " Queries " I can remember came from our 
 landlords, and concerned the subject of rent. 
 Henry Irving, then a yoimg man in the first 
 flush of his success, came to us on one occasion 
 to defend what was called his " craven " view 
 of " Macbeth," and I remember that much to his 
 amusement a rugged Unitarian minister, who 
 had been, I think, a postman, dressed him down 
 as if he had been a naughty boy who required 
 the cane of a schoolmaster. 
 
 The local dignitaries gave us occasionally 
 the light of their countenance. Philip Rath- 
 bone told us stark naked truths about the 
 
 50
 
 MY FIRST LITERxVRY FRIENDS 
 
 " nude in art," and Edward Russell read to us, 
 I think, one of his masterly essays on Shake- 
 speare. There were, too, a good many young 
 Liverpool men in the enterprise, and though 
 " Notes and Queries " eventually subsided, a 
 few of us emerged. One became known to the 
 public as a poet (I think a great one), another 
 as a politician, a third as a preacher, and two 
 of us as writers of tales. 
 
 I was in my early twenties by this time, and 
 in spite of many discouragements life was full 
 of great dreams. Among them was one which 
 brought me back to the great writer and 
 painter, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, who was to 
 fill so large a space in my succeeding years. 
 Through a member of our society, a journalist 
 of much ability, Ashcroft Noble, I came to 
 know a young poet who has since attained to 
 a high and well-deserved renown. He was a 
 boy of seventeen or eighteen at that time, very 
 slight and pale, very modest and reticent, and 
 reminding us constantly of Keats, not alone by 
 his spiritual gifts, but also his physical in- 
 firmities, for he was very delicate then, and we 
 feared he would die of decline. This was "Will- 
 iam Watson, the son of a merchant in Liver- 
 pool, and he had written a long romantic poem 
 which we believed to be full of genius. I re- 
 
 51
 
 liY STORY 
 
 member that unlike the rest of us he had never 
 been to business, and that his father, partly 
 out of regard for his health, and partly, I 
 think, on the recommendation of Edward Dow- 
 den, of Dublin University, had left him free to 
 follow, if he wished to do so, the profession of 
 literature. 
 
 Both Watson and Noble were at that period 
 enthusiastic admirers of Eossetti, both as a 
 poet and as a painter, and through them I re- 
 vived my interest in the subject of the grim 
 story of the buried book which had so deeply 
 impressed me in the Isle of Man. I heard 
 of Eossetti through other channels also, for 
 through " Notes and Queries " I had come to 
 know Hawthorne's friend, H. A. Bright, and 
 through him the late Lord Houghton. 
 
 I remember Bright as a frail, sensitive man 
 with eager eyes, who read aloud to me with the 
 appearance of one who is passing delicious 
 wine over his palate, the choicest passages 
 from Hawthorne's letters; and I recall Lord 
 Houghton chiefly by his story of how he came 
 to write his life of Keats. When very young 
 (he was then very old) he had set off for Italy 
 in order to work up material for a life of Shel- 
 ley, and, putting up for a day or two at Flor- 
 ence, he had called on Walter Savage Landor. 
 
 52
 
 MY FIRST LITERARY FRIENDS 
 
 Landor, for some reason, threw cold water 
 on Houghton's enthusiasm, and then said: 
 
 " But a young fellow named Keats died at 
 Rome a while ago, and he was a real poet — 
 why not get up a life of himl " 
 
 Bright had known something of Rossetti, 
 and in reply to my eager questioning, which 
 was not to be satisfied without personal de- 
 tails, he told me that the poet was a little dark 
 man with fine eyes under a broad brow — a little 
 Italian, in short. I think it was Lord Hough- 
 ton who said Rossetti, in the days when he used 
 to meet him (probably at Mrs. Gaskell's), was 
 a young fellow of strong Bohemian habits 
 (meaning thereby, I presumed, a certain ten- 
 dency to recklessness or even indecorum), 
 known at that time principally as a painter 
 and the leader of an eccentric school of art, 
 but also as a poet whose poems, not yet pub- 
 lished as a whole, were much belauded by a 
 narrow circle in which they passed from hand 
 to hand. 
 
 I also recall, as one of the fountains from 
 which I quenched my thirst for any sort of 
 ana relating to Rossetti, that on a holiday in 
 the Lake Country I met a stranger whom I 
 thought I recognised as the author of " Fes- 
 tus," and that with much akin to the foregoing 
 5 53
 
 MY STORY 
 
 I also heard from liim that in his young man- 
 hood the poet's manners had been, to say the 
 least, robustious, suggesting a person in de- 
 liberate revolt against nearly all the conven- 
 tions of society, and delighting, if only out of 
 perversity or for devilish amusement, in every 
 opportunity to startle well-ordered people out 
 of their propriety by championing the worst 
 view of Neronian Rome, and to silence by sheer 
 vehemence of denunciation the seemly protests 
 of very good and very gentle folk. 
 
 But more arresting because obviously of 
 more serious import than such pictures of the 
 excesses of a vigorous physical and intellectual 
 youth, were the slight peeps I was able to get 
 from Bright, Houghton, and others of the life 
 the poet lived then. It appeared that Rossetti 
 had long been living in the strictest seclusion 
 in a large house in Chelsea, which had once 
 been the home of the Princess Elizabeth; that 
 neither the literary nor the artistic society of 
 London saw .anything of him; that his face 
 was unknown to the pictorial newspapers, and 
 unfamiliar to his contemporaries in either of 
 the two arts in which he was naw illustrious; 
 that outside a close and very limited circle he 
 was as one who was dead and buried, save for 
 the splendid achievements in poetry and paint- 
 
 54
 
 MY FIRST LITERARY FRIENDS 
 
 ing which emerged at intervals from the sealed 
 doors of his tomb. 
 
 It was natural that al)out an existence so 
 shrouded by mystery various myths should 
 have gathered, and in reply to my questioning 
 I received a number of fragmentary romances, 
 some of them having, as I now see, a certain 
 substratum of truth. Thus I was told that 
 Rossetti's seclusion had been due to the shock 
 occasioned by the death of his wife, and again 
 to the remorse that had followed on having al- 
 lowed himself to exhume her body for the re- 
 covery of the manuscripts which he had buried 
 in her grave, and yet again to the distress and 
 sense of degradation which had resulted upon 
 the adverse criticism of a brother poet, taken 
 up by a whole pack of critical hounds in full 
 cry. 
 
 Such were the portraits of Rossetti with 
 which I fed my curiosity in those early days in 
 Liverpool, and the first outcome of my enthusi- 
 asm was a lecture which I delivered at the local 
 Free Library, when, " Notes and Queries " hav- 
 ing subsided, the rolling stone was once more 
 moving on. The text of that lecture I have 
 long ago lost, but as it probably gave birth to 
 the friendship which it will be my duty and 
 pleasure to describe, I shall perhaps be doing 
 
 55
 
 MY STORY 
 
 well to trust to my memory in an effort to indi- 
 cate its drift. 
 
 I do not remember to have said anything 
 about Rossetti the man, though that might 
 have been a promising theme for a popular 
 audience, neither did I attempt to tell the story 
 of the origin and publication of his books, but 
 I gave a narrative account of the stories of 
 his greater poems, and then wound up with an 
 abstract analysis of the impulses animating his 
 work. In this analysis I argued that to place 
 Rossetti among the " aesthetic " poets was an 
 error of classification; that he had nothing in 
 common with the Caliban of Browning, who 
 worked " for work's sole sake " ; that the top- 
 most thing in him was indeed love of beauty, 
 but the deepest thing was love of truth, often 
 plain and uncomely truth; that the fusion of 
 these two passions had at the same time soft- 
 ened the Italian Catholic, which I recognised 
 as a leading element in him, and purified the 
 Italian troubadour; that while he was too true 
 an artist to follow art into its by-ways of 
 moral significance and so cripple its broader 
 aims, the absorption of the artist in his art 
 seemed always to live and work together with 
 the personal instincts of the man; that to do 
 good on other grounds was in Rossetti's art 
 
 56
 
 MY FIRST LITERARY FRIENDS 
 
 involved and inehided in l)eing good on its 
 own; that the manner of doing a thing could 
 never be more than the part of a thing done, 
 and that the most unmoral of all poetry, Poe's 
 for example, involved many meanings, pur- 
 poses, and results; that Rossetti's poetry 
 showed how possible it w^as, without making 
 conscious compromise with that Puritan prin- 
 ciple of *' doing good " of which Keats had been 
 enamoured, to be unconsciously making for 
 moral ends; and finally that there was a pas- 
 sive Puritanism in " Jenny " and in the most 
 ardent of the sonnets which lived and worked 
 together with the poet's artistic passion for 
 doing his work supremely well. 
 
 I cannot but smile when I cast my mind back 
 some thirty years and think of myself as a 
 young fellow of five-and-twenty, full to the 
 throat of the last phrase, not to say the last 
 jargon, of the "higher" literary criticism, 
 pouring out its abstract theories to an audience 
 consisting chiefly of working men and women, 
 who listened to me, I remember, in the most 
 indulgent silence. But sure I am that some 
 kindly Fate must have been directing my in- 
 congruous efforts, for knowing Rossetti's na- 
 ture as I afterward learned to know it, I see 
 that such pleading for the moral influences 
 
 57
 
 MY STORY 
 
 animating his work was of all things most 
 likely to enlist his sympathy and engage his 
 affections. Smarting still under the monstrous 
 accusation that he had by his poetry been en- 
 gaged with others in an attempt to demoralise 
 the public mind by the glorification of mere 
 lust, he jumped with eagerness at a whole- 
 hearted defence of his literary and human im- 
 pulses, as a writer who had been prompted by 
 the highest of spiritual emotions, and as a man 
 to whom the passions of the body were as noth- 
 ing unless sanctified by the concurrence of the 
 soul. 
 
 My lecture was printed about a year after its 
 delivery, and then eagerly but nervously, and 
 I think modestly, I sent a copy of it to the 
 poet, hardly exi^ecting more than a word of 
 response. A post or two later brought me, 
 however, the following reply: 
 
 16 Cheyne Walk, Chelsea, 29 July, 1879. 
 Dear Mr, Caine: I am much struck by the gener-- 
 ous enthusiasm displayed in your lecture, and by the 
 ability with which it is written. Your estimate of the 
 impulses influencing my poetry is such as I could wish 
 it to suggest, and this suggestion, I believe, it will 
 always have for a true-hearted nature. You say that 
 you are grateful to me; my response is that I am grateful 
 to you; for you have spoken up heartily and unfalter- 
 ingly for the work you love. 
 
 58
 
 MY FIRST LITEKAliY FRIENDS 
 
 I daresay you sometimes come to London. I should 
 
 be very glad to know you, and would ask you, if you 
 
 thought of calling, to give me a day's notice when to 
 
 expect you, as I am not always able to see visitors 
 
 without appointment. The afternoon about 5 might 
 
 suit you, or else the evening about 9.30. 
 
 With all best wishes, 
 
 Yours sincerely, 
 
 I). G. ROSSETTI.
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 THE BEGINNING OF A GREAT FRIENDSHIP 
 
 IF the foregoing letter seems to the reader 
 to be little more than a courteous acknowl- 
 edgment by a famous poet of an appre- 
 ciative criticism sent by a stranger, I must 
 urge that in order to realise what it meant to 
 me it is necessary to think of who and what T 
 was, as (for this purj^ose chiefly) I have tried 
 to show myself in the foregoing story — a young 
 man in the country who had begun life in the 
 most unlikely of all conditions for the pursuit 
 of the literary calling, who had scratched and 
 scrambled through a kind of miscellaneous edu- 
 cation, Heaven knows how, who had made ef- 
 forts to emerge from an environment for which 
 he was quite unfit, and thus far failed in all of 
 them. To this raw and untutored beginner, 
 quite unrecognised and unknown, a great man, 
 illustrious in two arts, in return for a little 
 essay, a mere lecture delivered in a provincial 
 city to an audience whose opinion could have no 
 
 60
 
 BEGINNING OF A GREAT FRIENDSHIP 
 
 sensible effect on his fame, held out his hand 
 and said, at a moment perhaps of deep discour- 
 agement, " I should be very glad to know you." 
 Is it a matter for much surprise that the day 
 I received that first letter from Rossetti seemed 
 to me to be the greatest day of my life? 
 
 I think it not improbable that my reply suf- 
 ficiently expressed the emotion I describe, for 
 the poet wrote to me again and again within 
 a very few days, with a warmth and tender- 
 ness which I still feel to be, under the circum- 
 stances of the great disparity between us, both 
 as to age and gifts and condition, almost inex- 
 pressibly touching. 
 
 " My dear Caine," he wrote, after a while, 
 " let me assure you at once that correspond- 
 ence with yourself is one of my best pleasures, 
 and that you cannot write too much or too 
 often for me; though after what you have told 
 me as to the apportioning of your time [I had 
 to be at my office at six in the morning in those 
 days] I would be unwilling to encroach un- 
 duly upon it. Neither should I on my side 
 prove very tardy in reply, as you are one to 
 whom I find there is something to say when I 
 sit down with a pen and paper. I have a good 
 deal of enforced evening leisure, as it is sel- 
 dom I can paint or draw by gas light. It would 
 
 61
 
 MY STOEY 
 
 not be right in me to refrain from saying that 
 to meet with one so ' leal and true ' to myself 
 as you are has been a consolation amid much 
 discouragement. 
 
 " Do please drop the ' Mr.' in writing to me 
 again." 
 
 Thus far Eossetti knew nothing more about 
 me than I h~ave indicated in this narrative, but 
 he was naturally curious to learn something 
 about his correspondent; in those early days 
 he put pointed questions occasionally. 
 
 " Some one to whom I showed your article," 
 he wrote, " would insist, from the last para- 
 graph, that you must be a Eoman Catholic. 
 Is this the case 1 Pardon my putting the query, 
 as I perceive rather abruptly." 
 
 On this hint I wrote freely enough, appar- 
 ently, and he replied : 
 
 " I am truly delighted to hear how young 
 you are: I suppose you are not married. In 
 original work a man does some of his best 
 things by your time of life, though he only 
 finds it out in a rage much later, at some date 
 when he expected to know no longer that he 
 had ever done them. Keats hardly died so 
 much too early — not at all if there had been 
 any danger of his taking to the modern habit 
 eventually — treating material as product, and 
 
 62
 
 BEGINNING OF A GREAT FRIENDSHIP 
 
 shooting- it all out as it comes. Of course, 
 however, lie wouldn't; he was getting always 
 choicer and simpler; my favourite piece in his 
 works is ' La Belle Dame sans Merci ' — I sup- 
 pose about his last. As to Shelley, it is really 
 a mercy that he has not been hatching yearly 
 universes till now. He might, I suppose, for 
 his friend Trelawney still walks the earth, with- 
 out greatcoat, stockings, or under clothing this 
 Xmas. [1879.] 
 
 " In criticism matters are very different as 
 to the seasons of production, though you have 
 done work already that should honour you yet. 
 Nothing strikes me about you to better purpose 
 than your simple lucidity where that alone is 
 wanted, as in the lecture you sent me. 
 
 " I am writing hurriedly and horridly in 
 every sense. Write again and I'll try and an- 
 swer better. All greetings to you." 
 
 Again, he wrote : " The comparative dates of 
 our births are curious. (I myself was born on 
 old May day [' 12 '] in the year [1828] after 
 that in which Blake died). You were born, in 
 fact, just as I was giving up poetry at about 
 25, on finding that it impeded attention to 
 what constituted another aim and a livelihood 
 into the bargain, i. e., painting. From that date 
 up to the year when I published my poems, I 
 
 63
 
 MY STORY 
 
 wrote extremely little. I might almost say 
 nothing-, except the renovated ' Jenny ' in 1858 
 or '59. To this again I added a passage or two 
 when publishing in 1870." 
 
 My employment in Liverpool delayed for 
 many months the moment when I was to meet 
 Eossetti in London, but our intimacy deepened 
 by correspondence and he began to send me 
 some of the shorter poems which he had not 
 yet published, and to ask me to show him such 
 work as I had done myself. 
 
 " Tell me what you think of my things," he 
 said. " All you said in your letter of this 
 morning was very grateful to me. I have a 
 fair amount by me in the way of later MS. 
 which I may show some day when we meet. 
 Meantime I feel that your energies are already 
 in full swing — work coming on the heels of 
 work — and that your time cannot be long de- 
 layed as regards your place as a writer. Do 
 you write poetry? I should think you must 
 surely do so." 
 
 In replies to inquiries like this I was nat- 
 urally very eager to show what I had done, so 
 I sent poetry, criticism, prose narrative, and, 
 T think, fragments of drama, most of it un- 
 published and some of it never to see print. 
 
 " I return your article on the ' Supernatural 
 
 64
 
 JiUai: W>U»>'«.'I1.-1H 
 
 
 
 __-»^ ^ ^ > .p • 
 
 
 
 
 
 '*^>^ 
 
 
 ■i^^jz p 
 
 ^ 
 
 ^^^^^^ 
 
 
 A Letter from Rossetti.
 
 BEGINNING OF A GREAT EKIENDSlilP 
 
 in Poetry,' " he said. " In reading it I feel it 
 a distinction that my minute plot in the poetic 
 field should have attracted the gaze of one who 
 is able to traverse its widest ranges with so 
 much command. I shall be much pleased if the 
 plan of calling on me is carried out soon — at 
 any rate I trust it will be so eventually. 
 
 " I have been reading again your article on 
 the ' Supernatural.' It is truly admirable — 
 such work must soon make you a place. The 
 dramatic paper [it was a pamphlet on Henry 
 Irving's Macbeth] I thought suffered from 
 some immaturity — moreover, if I were you, I 
 should eschew modern dramatic matters." 
 
 " I perceive," he wrote playfully, " you have 
 had a complete poetic career which you have 
 left behind to strike out into wider waters! 
 The passage on ' Night,' which you say was 
 written under the planet Shelley, seems to me 
 (and to my brother, to whom I read it) to 
 savour more of the ' mortal moon ' — that is of 
 a weird and sombre Elizabethanism, of which 
 Beddoes may be considered the modern repre- 
 sentative. But we both think it has an unmis- 
 takable force and value; and if you can write 
 better poetrj^ than this, let your angel say 
 unto YOU, TFr?^e." 
 
 But Rossetti's critical indulgence of the 
 
 65
 
 MY STORY 
 
 youngest of poetasters did not forbid the ex- 
 pression of a frank opinion. " You may be 
 sure," he said, " I do not mean essential dis- 
 couragement when I say that full as ' Nell ' is 
 of reality and jjathos, your swing of arm seems 
 to me firmer and freer in prose than in verse. 
 You know already how high I rate your future 
 career (short of the incalculable storms of 
 Fate), but I do think I see your field to lie 
 chiefly in the noble achievements of fervid and 
 impassioned prose. ... I thought the passage 
 on * Night ' showed an aptitude for choice ima- 
 gery. I should much like to see something 
 which you view as your best poetic effort hith- 
 erto. After all there is no need that every 
 gifted writer should take the path of poetry. I 
 am confident in your preference for frankness 
 on my part." 
 
 While the hampering conditions of my em- 
 ployment delayed our coming together, Ros- 
 setti showed a good deal of friendly anxiety to 
 bring me into contact with such of his friends 
 as were near to Liverpool or had occasion to 
 visit it. In this way I met Madox Brown, and 
 sat to him for one of the figures in his admira- 
 ble frescoes in the Town Hall at Manchester, 
 and in this way, too, I met Stephens, the art 
 critic. 
 
 66
 
 BEGINNING OF A GREAT FRIENDSHIP 
 
 " I am very glad you were welcomed by dear 
 stanch Stephens, as I felt sure you would be. 
 He is one of my oldest and best friends, of 
 whom few can be numbered at my age, from 
 causes only too varying. 
 
 "Go from me, summer friends, and tarry not — 
 I am no summer friend, but wintry cold. 
 
 " So be it, as needs must be — not for all, let 
 us hope, and not ivith all, as good Stephens 
 shows. I have not seen him since his return. 
 I wrote him a line to thank him for his friendly 
 reception of you, and he wrote in return to 
 thank me for your acquaintance, and spoke 
 very pleasantly of you. Your youth seems to 
 have surprised him. . . . You mention some- 
 thing he said to you of me and my surround- 
 ings. They are certainly quiet enough as far 
 as retirement goes, and I have often thought I 
 should enjoy the presence of a congenial and 
 intellectual house-fellow and board-fellow in 
 this big barn of mine, which is actually going 
 to rack and ruin for want of use. But where to 
 find the welcome, the willing, and the able com- 
 bined in one? . . . Your letter holds out the 
 welcome probability of meeting you here ere 
 long." 
 
 This note of his loneliness was only too in- 
 
 67
 
 MY STORY 
 
 sistent in his earlier letters. " I am sometimes 
 very solitary," lie said, " and then letter writ- 
 ing brings solace, when one addresses so young 
 and hox^eful a well-wisher as yourself. Accord- 
 ingly I sit down to-night to answer your last 
 letter." 
 
 My health failed me for a time, and though 
 Rossetti and I had not even yet seen each other 
 face to face, his anxiety about my condition 
 could not have been greater had I been his own 
 son. 
 
 " You are very young to be so beset with 
 dark moods," he said, " and I am much con- 
 cerned to hear it. Every one, I suppose, thinks 
 he only knows the full bitterness of the Shad- 
 owed Valley. I hope health is whole with you 
 — then all must come out well, with your mind 
 and such energy as yours to make its way. 
 
 " It is very late. Good-bye for to-night." 
 
 Such were the earliest of the letters which 
 formed the beginnings of my first great lit- 
 erary friendship, and if I havB permitted my- 
 self to transcribe the too generous words of 
 one whose personal affections may have been 
 already engaged, I have no fear of misconcep- 
 tion on the part of right-minded readers, and 
 shall not count as so much as the ghost of a 
 flea the soul of the critic who concludes that I 
 
 68
 
 BEGINNING OF A GREAT FRIENDSHIP 
 
 have quoted these passages in order to show 
 how in my youth a great man praised me. I 
 have quoted them because I believe they illus- 
 trate, as hardly anything else can, the sweet- 
 est and most intimate if not the highest and 
 noblest side of Rossetti's nature — that side, 
 namely, which showed his capacity for the 
 most disinterested friendship. And when I 
 think of the traffic which too often goes by that 
 name, the miserable commerce of give and take, 
 the little-hearted barter in which self-love usu- 
 ally counts on being the gainer, I cannot but 
 think that in letters like these, to an unknown 
 beginner. Rossetti shows that with his other 
 gifts he had the very genius of friendship it- 
 self. 
 
 Not to me only, as I now know, did he show 
 sympathy and unselfishness, for the stories are 
 not few or rare of how he gave his time and 
 energies, and even in some cases sacrificed a 
 little of his personal aims and ambitions, in 
 order to forward the interests of his friends, 
 but I think there was something exceptional in 
 the friendship he gave to me. If he lived a 
 solitary life in those days it was not because 
 he might not have found society enough among 
 importunate admirers round aliout him, who 
 would have been only too eager to give him 
 6 69
 
 MY STORY 
 
 their company at the faintest hint or wink; 
 but outside the narrow circle of intimate com- 
 rades he selected for his friend a young fellow 
 in the country, half his age, who could bring 
 him nothing but sympathy, and counted for so 
 very little in a world in which he counted for 
 so much. 
 
 I am not ashamed to say there are tears in 
 my eyes and a lump in my throat when I read 
 again in Rossetti's letters of the long evenings 
 in his studio, when it was impossible for him 
 to paint or draw by gas light, and his loneliness 
 was broken by writing to me, for I know that, 
 but for the unselfishness with which in this 
 way he gave me so many hours of his silent 
 company, and but for the encouragement, the 
 strength, and self-sacrifice he brought me, it 
 would have taken me long to emerge from the 
 commonplace round of daily life. Not that I 
 was in any sense an object of pity, for I was 
 no poor little drudge in a blacking warehouse, 
 but, on the contrary, a much-indulged servant 
 of an employer who had made me his friend; 
 but all the time I was a clerk in the lower mid- 
 dle class of provincial life, and that is perhaps 
 the wheel of life from which it is hardest of 
 all to escape. 
 
 That I escaped from it at all was jDerhaps 
 
 70
 
 BEGINNING OF A GREAT FRIENDSHIP 
 
 chiefly due to the generous extravagance with 
 which Rossetti told me, in so many ways, that 
 my " time could not be long delayed," and that 
 in spite of the dark moods " all 7nust come out 
 well." There was not much to justify such 
 bold predictions then, and when, years after- 
 ward, on the publication of the first of my 
 Manx novels, Rossetti's brother William said, 
 " After all Gabriel knew what he was doing," 
 I was more moved by that than by many fa- 
 vourable articles, and since then, if I have spent 
 countless precious hours reading the efforts of 
 beginners and struggling to say good words of 
 them, it has been only by way of balancing my 
 reckoning with one who, in my early and dark 
 days, did so much for me. 
 
 The correspondence from which I have quot- 
 ed some pages went on without interruption 
 for something more than a year, and during 
 that time there was not, I suppose, a single day 
 in which I did not either receive a letter from 
 Rossetti or write to him. What my own let- 
 ters were like I cannot any longer recall, nor 
 is it necessary to remember, but Rossetti's let- 
 ters, which were sometimes very long, being of 
 six, eight, twelve, and even sixteen pages, con- 
 stitute perhaps a larger body of writing than 
 all his published compositions put together. It 
 
 71
 
 MY STORY 
 
 will therefore be a matter for no surprise tliat 
 from that time forward, for several years to 
 come, my life was my friendship with Rossetti. 
 I shall try in the next section of this book to 
 tell the story of that friendship, the greatest, 
 the most intimate, the most beautiful that has 
 ever come to me. In order to do so I must 
 begin by giving an account of Rossetti's life 
 before I knew him, and if this proves to be a 
 thrice-told tale I can at least promise that it 
 will be brief.
 
 PART TWO
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 THE STORY OF MY FRIEND's LIFE 
 
 DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI (bap- 
 tised Gabriel Charles Dante) was the 
 eldest son of Gabriele Rossetti, a patri- 
 otic poet exiled from the Abruzzi, and of Fran- 
 ces Polidori, a daughter of Alfieri's secretary 
 and a sister of the young doctor who travelled 
 with Lord Byron. 
 
 Gabriel (the name by which his family al- 
 ways knew him) was bom, as he had told me, 
 on old May Day, the 12th of 1828, in Charlotte 
 Street, Portland Place. He had one brother, 
 William Michael, and two sisters, Christina 
 and Maria. 
 
 The elder Rossetti's house was, as long as he 
 lived, the constant resort of Italian refugees, 
 from which I judge that though he did not live 
 to see the returning glories of his country, he 
 remained true to the last to the principles for 
 which he had fought and suffered ; but I do not 
 gather that any of his children, least of all his 
 
 75
 
 MY STORY 
 
 eldest son, felt any call of blood to participate 
 actively in the struggles of Italy. From the be- 
 ginning to the end Rossetti was, I think, an 
 absolute Englishman. 
 \ The home of the Italian exile in London ap- 
 pears to have been that of a poor scholar, 
 and among the consequences of this condition 
 was the inevitable one that his children were 
 brought up in an atmosphere of culture, and 
 that his sons had to seek their own livelihood as 
 soon as possible. After a few years at King's 
 College School, Rossetti studied at the Royal 
 Academy Antique School, and he appears to 
 have been a fairly assiduous student. I remem- 
 ber that in later years when his habit of late 
 rising was a stock su])ject of banter between 
 us, he told me with pride that at this period 
 he would rise at six in the morning once a week 
 to attend a life class and breakfast on a but- 
 tered roll and a cuj) of cotfee at a stall at a 
 street corner, so as not to disturb the domestic 
 arrangements by requiring the servants to get 
 up in the middle of the night. 
 
 So far as I can gather he did not exercise the 
 self-denial very long, for he left the family roof 
 after a few years and, in the interests of his 
 studies, pitched his tent with certain of his 
 artist friends. These were Millais, Holman 
 
 76
 
 THE STORY OF MY FRIEND'S LIFE 
 
 Hunt, Wolner, Deverell, Stephens, and al)ove 
 all Madox Brown. With some of this group 
 of associates while he was still under age he 
 started an art movement, to which half in jest 
 he gave the name of Pre-Raphaelitism. 
 
 The group of young artists calling them- 
 selves Pre-Raphaelites had begun to exhibit, 
 to attract attention, to excite discussion and 
 provoke censure, when Ruskin, already a great 
 light in art criticism, came to the rescue of the 
 little brotherhood by writing a letter in their 
 defence in the Times, and thus placed their 
 movement in the category of serious efforts. 
 
 From early days Rossetti had written poetry, 
 and it is clear from a letter already quoted 
 that many of his most admired poems were the 
 work of his first twenty-five years. Some of 
 the best, showing marked originality of man- 
 ner and substance, were obviously the product 
 of his minority, and were accepted side by side 
 with Pre-Raphaelitism in art, as manifesta- 
 tions of Pre-Raphaelitism in literature. A 
 magazine called The Germ' was started to illus- 
 trate the new ideas, and later, in a kind of semi- 
 affiliated way, came a kindred magazine, called 
 The Oxford and Cambridge. Beyond contrib- 
 uting a few of his poems, however, to these pe- 
 riodicals, Rossetti made little or no attempt to 
 
 77
 
 MY STOEY 
 
 publish his poetry, which nevertheless acquired 
 a kind of subterranean reputation among his 
 private friends. 
 
 His 23ersonal character in these days of early 
 manhood is described as generous and genial, 
 but, also, a little masterful. He was admitted- 
 ly the king of his circle, and I fear it must be 
 said that in all that constituted kingship he 
 took care to rule. 
 
 Eossetti was never in any distinct sense a 
 humourist, but there came to him at this period 
 those outbursts of high si:>irits which act as 
 safety-valves to serious natures. At such times 
 he appears to have plunged into any mad-cap 
 escapade that might be afoot with complete 
 heedlessness of consequences. Stories of mis- 
 adventures, quips and quiddities of every kind 
 were then his delight, and he was by no means 
 above the innocent ruffianism of the practical 
 joke. 
 
 But, midway between the twenties and the 
 thirties, there came into his life an event that 
 was to touch the deepest side of his nature. 
 One day his friend Deverell, going with his 
 mother into a milliner's shop in Oxford Street, 
 saw through an open door a number of young 
 girls at work in an inner room. Among the 
 girls was one who had the most glorious mass 
 
 78
 
 THE STORY OF MY FRIEND'S LIFE 
 
 of reddish auburn hair, and as this was then 
 the favourite Pre-Raphaelite colour, Deverell's 
 interest was excited in a moment, and he whis- 
 pered to his mother, " Ask that girl with the 
 red hair if she will sit to me." After some 
 hesitation Mrs. Deverell did so, and on this 
 chance hung the beginning of what is perhaps 
 the most tragic series of incidents in modern 
 literary life. 
 
 The girl sat as a model to Deverell, and 
 through him to Rossetti also. Her name was 
 Elizabeth Eleanor Siddall, and she was the 
 daughter of a singer at one of the dissenting 
 chapels. Father and daughter had lately come 
 from Sheffield, where certain records of them 
 are still preserved. The girl was young and 
 beautiful, clever also in various ways, and she 
 presently revealed a very marked aptitude for 
 art. She became known to all the young ar- 
 tists of the Rossetti circle, and Ruskin appears 
 to have taken a peculiar interest in her. It is 
 said that to enable her to liberate herself from 
 the thraldom of her menial occupation, yet not 
 to wound her pride, the great critic, who was 
 rich, offered to buy all the pictures she could 
 paint, on condition that she should become a 
 pupil of Rossetti. There appears to have been 
 no difficulty about this, for the painter's inter- 
 
 79
 
 MY STORY 
 
 est in his young model had speedily ripened 
 into love. In due course Rossetti and Eliza- 
 beth Siddall became engaged. 
 
 The young girl must have been a very re- 
 markable creature. Her face, as Rossetti 
 painted it, shows intellect and sensibility in 
 a high degree, but a certain tendency to sad- 
 ness. People who remember her, however, 
 speak of her as cheerful and bright, if not vi- 
 vacious, in that spring-time of her youth. 
 
 They seem to have been happy in those early 
 days, painting together, reading together, and 
 even writing together, for the girl developed 
 under Rossetti's tuition not only a wonderful 
 eye for colour and an astonishing power of 
 composition, but also a real appreciation of 
 the higher poetic literature and a capacity for 
 producing it; while he, too, as we may plainly 
 see without other knowledge than the internal 
 evidences of his work, produced some of the 
 most pure and perfect of his poems under the 
 impulse of her presence and the inspiration of 
 his first great love. 
 
 Then came a separation, and it is not easy 
 for me to say what it was due to, so conflict- 
 ing are the stories of those who claim to know. 
 I have heard that, beautiful and brilliant as 
 Elizabeth Siddall was, she was not (as is nat- 
 
 80
 
 THE STORY OF MY FKIEXD'S LIFE 
 
 ural) in the conventional sense an educated 
 woman, and that at her own suggestion and by 
 Eossetti's help she went away to school. I 
 have also heard that at a moment of some dif- 
 ference Ruskin again interposed, with certain 
 delicate overtures, which enabled her to return 
 for further study to her native place. At all 
 events, she left London and was away for a 
 considerable time. 
 
 Meantime, Eossetti, giving up poetry on 
 finding, as he says, that it " impeded attention 
 to what constituted another aim and a liveli- 
 hood into the bargain," devoted himself entirely 
 to his painting. At twenty-eight he undertook, 
 with two or three other young painters, to cover 
 with frescoes the walls of Union Debating Hall 
 at Oxford, and while engaged upon this task 
 he made the acquaintance of a group of un- 
 dergraduates, with whose name his own name 
 has ever since been associated — Burne-Jones, 
 Swinburne, and William Morris, as well as one 
 other who proved to be among the strongest, 
 purest, and most lasting influences upon his 
 life, the lady, herself a model at the beginning, 
 who afterward became his friend Morris's 
 wife. 
 
 "WTiat effect these new friendships, any or 
 all of them, may have had on the relation in 
 
 81
 
 MY STORY 
 
 wliicli he still stood to Elizabeth Siddall, it 
 would perhaps be hard to say, but I think 
 evidences are not wanting in the poems writ- 
 ten about this period of a new and disturbing 
 element, a painful and even tragic awakening, 
 a sense of a great passion coming too late, and 
 above all of a struggle between love and duty 
 which augured less than well for the happiness 
 of the marriage that was to come. 
 
 But Elizabeth Siddall returned to London, 
 and Rossetti and she were married. Friends 
 who saw much of them in earlier days of their 
 married life speak of their obvious happiness, 
 and protest, in particular, against evil rumours 
 circulated later, that nothing could have been 
 more marked than Rossetti's zealous attentions 
 to his young wife. All the same, it is true that 
 very soon her spirits drooped, her art was laid 
 aside, and much of the cheerfulness of home 
 was lost to both of them. Iler health failed, 
 she suffered from neuralgia, and began to be 
 a victim of nervous ailments of other kinds. 
 
 To allay her sufferings she took laudanum, 
 at first in small doses, but afterward in ex- 
 cess. A child came, but it was still-born, and 
 then her mood, already sad, appears to have 
 deepened to one of settled melancholy. I re- 
 member to have heard Madox Brown say that 
 
 82
 
 THE STORY OF MY FRIEND'S LIFE 
 
 she would sit for lon^ hours with her feet in- 
 side the fender looking fixedly into the fire. It 
 is easy to believe that to a man so impression- 
 able as Rossetti, so dependent on cheerful sur- 
 roundings, so liable to dark moods of his own, 
 this must have been a condition which made 
 home hard to bear. If he escaped from it as 
 often as possible, it is perhaps only natural, 
 and it is no less natural if his absence was mis- 
 understood. I express no opinion, but the facts 
 appear to point that way. 
 
 They were living in rooms in Chatham Place 
 by the old Blackfriars Bridge, and one evening, 
 about half -past six, being invited to dine with 
 friends at an hotel in Leicester Square, they 
 got into a carriage to go. It had been a bad 
 day for the young wife, and they had hardly 
 reached the Strand when her nervousness be- 
 came distressing to Rossetti, and he wished her 
 to return. She was unwilling to do so, and they 
 went on to their appointment, but it may be as- 
 sumed that her condition did not improve, for 
 at eight o'clock they were back at home. 
 
 Soon after that Rossetti left his wife pre- 
 paring to retire for the night, and went out 
 again apparently to walk. When he returned 
 at half -past eleven he found his rooms full of 
 a strong odour of laudanum, his wife breathing 
 
 83
 
 MY STORY 
 
 stertorously and lying unconscious on the bed. 
 He called a doctor, who saw at once, what was 
 only too o])vious, that the lady had taken an 
 overdose of her accustomed sleeping draught. 
 Other doctors were summoned, and every ef- 
 fort was made to save the patient's life, but 
 after lingering several hours without recover- 
 ing consciousness for a moment, and therefore 
 without offering a word of explanation, tow- 
 ard seven o'clock in the morning sllg died. 
 
 Next day an inquest was held at which Ros- 
 setti, though stimned and stupefied, had to give 
 the evidence which is summarised in the fore- 
 going statement. There had been no reason 
 why his wife should wilfully take her own life ; 
 quite the contrary; and when he left her about 
 nine o'clock she seemed more at ease. The ver- 
 dict was " accidental death." The proceedings 
 of the coroner's court were reported in a short 
 paragraph in one only of the London papers, 
 and there the poet's name was wrongly spelled. 
 " This was in 1862, no more than two years 
 after the marriage that had been waited for so 
 long. The blow to Rossetti was a terrible one. 
 It was some days before he seemed to realise 
 fully the loss that had befallen him, but after 
 that his grief knew no bounds, and it first ex- 
 pressed itself in a way that was full of the 
 
 84
 
 THE STORY OF MY FRIEND'S LIFE 
 
 tragic grace and beauty of a great renuncia- 
 tion. 
 
 Many of his poems had been, as I have said, 
 inspired by and addressed to his wife, and at 
 her request he had copied them out, sometimes 
 from memory, into a little book which she had 
 given to him for this purpose. With this book 
 in his hand, on the day of her funeral, he 
 walked into the room where her body lay, and 
 quite unmindful of the presence of others, he 
 spoke to his dead wife as though she could 
 hear, saying the poems it contained had been 
 written to her and for her and she must take 
 them with her to the grave. With these words, 
 or words to the same effect, he placed the little 
 volume in the coffin by the side of his wife's 
 face, and wrapped it round with her beautiful 
 golden hair, and it was buried with her in High- 
 gate Cemetery. 
 
 It was long before Rossetti recovered. Per- 
 haps he was never the same man again. At 
 least, the brilliant and perhaps rather noisy 
 young fellow, fond of intellectual gymnastics 
 and full of a sort of animal spirits, was gone 
 for good, and though after a time he recovered 
 a certain hilarity, there does not seem to have 
 been much real joy in it. Not long after his 
 wife's death he removed from Blackfriars 
 
 7 80
 
 MY STOEY 
 
 Bridge and made his home in the house already 
 referred to, Queen's House, ChejTie Walk, 
 Chelsea. 
 
 Before leaving his old quarters, he destroyed 
 many things associated with his life there, 
 among them being a great ])ody of letters, 
 some very valuable, from men and women 
 eminent in literature and art — Euskin, Tenny- 
 son, and Browning. Perhaps with the same 
 view of cutting himself off from everything 
 that was likely to remind him of his great loss, 
 he separated himself from many of his former 
 friends. It was of course the last course he 
 ought to have taken, whether in the interests 
 of his mental or bodily health, and the con- 
 sequences of his isolation came only too quickly 
 and lasted only too long. 
 
 Insomnia, that curse of the literary and 
 artistic temperament, had been hanging about 
 him for years, and now he began to try opiates. 
 He took them in sparing quantities after the 
 death of his wife, for had he not, in that fact 
 alone, the most fearful cause to avoid their 
 use? But presently he heard of the then newly 
 found drug, |6lilora], which was of course ac- 
 credited at the beginning with all the virtues 
 and none of the vices of other Imown narcotics. 
 Here, then, was the thing he wanted; this was 
 
 86
 
 THJ^ STORY OF MY FRIEND'S LIFE 
 
 the blessed discovery that was to save him 
 from days of weariness and nights of misery. 
 Eagerly he procured it, took it nightly in 
 small doses of ten grains each, and it gave him 
 pleasant and refreshing sleep. He made no 
 concealment of his habit; like Coleridge under 
 similar circumstances, he rather elected to talk 
 of it. Not yet had he learned the sad truth, 
 too soon to force itself upon him, that this 
 dreadful drug was an evil power with which 
 he was to fight, almost down to his djmg day, 
 a single-handed and losing battle. 
 
 It was not, however, for some years after he 
 began to use it that chloral produced any sen- 
 sible effects of an injurious kind, and mean- 
 time he pursued his calling as a painter, mak- 
 ing a substantial living and, though he never 
 exhibited, an unmistakable reputation. After 
 a while he amused himself, also, in furnishing 
 his big house in various novel and beautiful 
 styles, and in filling a big garden at the back 
 with a veritable menagerie of birds and beasts. 
 Life recovered a measure of interest for him 
 in other directions also, if only as the shadowy 
 ghost of the glad spirit of happier years, and 
 Queen's House began to hum with the doings 
 of friends old and new, Swinburne, Morris, 
 Burne-Jones, for a short while Meredith, and of 
 
 87
 
 MY STORY 
 
 course his ever constant and devoted brother, 
 "William. 
 
 Thus seven years passed, and during that 
 time Eossetti, who frequently immersed him- 
 self in the aims and achievements of his friends, 
 and witnessed their rise to fame and honour, 
 began to think with pain of the aspirations as 
 a poet which he had himself renounced, and to 
 cast backward glances at the book he had 
 buried in his wife's coffin. That book con- 
 tained the only perfect copy of his poems, 
 other copies being either incomplete or unre- 
 vised, and it is hardly to be wondered at that 
 he asked himself at length if it could not be 
 regained. The impulse of grief or regret, or 
 even remorse, that had prompted him to the 
 act of renimciation had been satisfied, and for 
 seven years he had denied himself the reward 
 of his best i)oetic effort — was not his penance 
 at an end? It was doing no good to the dead 
 to leave hidden in the grave the most beautiful 
 works he had been able to produce — was it not 
 his duty to the living, to himself, and perhaps 
 even to God, to recover and publish them? 
 
 If in the daily sight of the growing reputa- 
 tion of younger men, his friends and comrades 
 of no better genius, Rossetti began to be influ- 
 enced by thoughts like these, without reflect- 
 
 88
 
 THE STORY OF MY FRIEND'S LIFE 
 
 ing that while it may have been an act of emo- 
 tional weakness to bury his poems, it would be 
 an act of desecration to take them up again. 
 I set it down to the constant companionship 
 at that period of a man of whom I shall have 
 occasion to speak later on, a person out of 
 another world altogether, a daring, reckless, 
 unscrupulous soldier of fortune, very clever, 
 very plausible, very persuasive, but totally 
 destitute of delicate feeling and almost with- 
 out the moral sense. 
 
 Under this man's direction the exhumation, 
 when Rossetti had brought himself to agree to 
 it, was eventually carried out. According to 
 his own account, given to me twelve years af- 
 terward, the preparations were endless before 
 the work could be begun. But at length the 
 licence of the Home Secretary was obtained, 
 the faculty of the Consistory Court was 
 granted, and one night, seven and a half years 
 after the burial, a fire was built by the side of 
 the grave of Rossetti's wife in Highgate Ceme- 
 tery, the grave was opened, the coffin was 
 raised to the surface, and the buried book was 
 removed. 
 
 I remember that I was told, with much else 
 which it is unnecessary to repeat, that the body 
 was apparently quite perfect on coming to the 
 
 89
 
 MY STORY 
 
 light of the fire on the surface, and that when 
 the book was lifted, there came away some of 
 the beautiful golden hair in which Rossetti had 
 entwined it. 
 
 While the painful work was being done, the 
 mihap23y author of it, now keenly alive to its 
 gravity, and already torturing himself with the 
 thought of it as a deed of sacrilege, was sit- 
 ting alone, anxious and full of self-reproaches, 
 at the house of the friend who had charge of 
 it, until, later than midnight, he returned to 
 say it was all over. 
 
 The volume was not much the worse for the 
 years it had lain in the earth, but, nevertheless, 
 it was found necessary to take it back to Ros- 
 setti that illegible words might be deciphered 
 and deficiencies filled in. This was done, with 
 what result of fresh distress can easily be im- 
 agined, and then with certain additions of sub- 
 sequent sonnets the manuscript was complete. 
 Under the simple title of " Poems," it was pub- 
 lished in 1870, fifteen years after the greater 
 part of it was produced, and when the author 
 was forty-two. 
 
 / The success of the book was immediate and 
 immense, six or seven considerable editions 
 being called for in rapid succession. Appear- 
 ing in the same season as Disraeli's " Lothair," 
 
 90
 
 THE STORY OF MY FRIEND'S LIFE 
 
 it ran, from the bookseller's standpoint, a neck- 
 and-neck race with a political romance which 
 owed much of its popularit}^ to recognisable 
 portraiture of living persons. It was reviewed 
 with enthusiasm on nearly every side, and it 
 was at once the literary sensation and the so- 
 cial event of the hour. 
 
 It would perhaps be difficult to assign to any 
 single cause this extraordinary success of a 
 book whose popular qualities were obviously 
 inconsiderable, whether as Swinburne said in 
 a noble essay full of splendid praise, to those 
 innate qualities of beauty and strength which 
 are always the first and last constituents of 
 23oetry that abides, or to the sudden explosion 
 of the enthusiasm which had lived a subter- 
 ranean life for so many years while the poems 
 were in manuscript, or yet, as I think more 
 l^robable, to the flick of interest and curiosity 
 which came of a rumour of the book's romantic 
 history, culminating in its burial for so many 
 years in the grave of the woman whose love, 
 and beauty had inspired it. r 
 
 Whatever the cause of the l)Ook's immediate' 
 success, there can be no doubt that Rossetti, 
 himself took great delight in it, and that in the) 
 first flush of his new-foimd happiness he began 
 afresh with great vigour on poetic creation, 
 
 91
 
 MY STOEY 
 
 producing one of the most remarkable ballads 
 of his second volume within a short time of the 
 publication of the first. But then came a blow 
 which arrested his energies and brought his 
 literary activities to a long pause. 
 
 About a year after the appearance of the 
 " Poems," an article was published in one of 
 the most influential of the reviews, the Con- 
 temporary, which was in general a denuncia- 
 "^ tion of the sensual tendencies of the age, in art, 
 music, poetry, and the drama, and in particu- 
 lar an imj^eachment of the poetry of Eossetti, 
 Swinburne, and William Morris, who were said 
 io have " bound themselves into a solemn 
 league and covenant to extol fleshliness as the 
 I distinct and supreme end of poetic and picto- 
 I rial art, to aver that poetic expression is bet- 
 ter than poetic thought, and by inference that 
 the body is greater than the soul and sound 
 superior to sense." 
 
 The article, which was entitled " The Fleshly 
 \ School of Poetry," a name that was in itself an 
 offence, suggesting the shambles and wounding 
 the very sensibilities which it was supposed to 
 defend, was undoubtedly written with great 
 vigour, much knowledge of literature, and an 
 immense power of popular appeal. It pro- 
 duced a sensible effect, awakening that moral 
 
 92
 
 THE STORY OF MY FRIEND'S LIFE 
 
 conscience wliicli in the Eng'lisli people always 
 sliiml)ers, like the conventional lion, with one 
 eye open, and being quickly followed by arti- 
 cles in the same spirit appearing in other re\ 
 views and newspapers of equal or yet greater 
 standing. J 
 
 On its publication in the Contemporary j the 
 article bore the signature of " Thomas Mait- 
 land," but it afterward became known that the 
 actual writer was Robert Buchanan^ -then a 
 yoimg author who had risen to considerable 
 distinction as a poet. 
 
 Against Rossetti, as the latest and most uni- 
 versally acclaimed of poets, Buchanan's attack 
 was especially directed, and while it may be 
 freely admitted that there was actually present 
 in some of the poetry assailed a tendency to 
 deviate from wholesome reticence in dealing 
 with human passion, and that to deify mere 
 lust is an offence and an outrage, the sum total 
 of all the poetry that was really reprehensible 
 was probably less than one hundred lines, and 
 therefore too inconsideral^le to justify the 
 charge made against its authors of an attempt 
 to ruin society. 
 
 To say that Rossetti felt this charge is not 
 to express his sense of it. He who had with- 
 held his pictures from exhibition from dread 
 
 93
 
 MY STORY 
 
 of the distracting influences of public opinion, 
 be wbo for fifteen years bad kept back bis 
 poems from print in obedience first to an ex- 
 treme modesty of personal estimate, and after- 
 ward to tbe command of a mastering passion, 
 was of all men tbe one most likely to feel deeply 
 and incurably tbe wicked slander, bom in tbe 
 first instance of jealousy, tbat be bad unpacked 
 bis bosom of unbealtby passions and demoral- 
 ised tbe public mind. 
 
 If wbat Rossetti did, under tliis first fire of 
 tbe enemv, seems weak and futile, let it be said 
 tbat only those wbo know by experience what 
 it is to have this foul accusation made against 
 them, can have any idea of its distracting 
 l^ower. In tbe first moments of bis indigna- 
 tion he wrote a full and point-by-point rejoin- 
 der, printed it as a pamphlet, and had a great 
 number struck off, and then destroyed every 
 copy. After tbat he wrote a temperate, but not 
 very effectual, letter to the Athenceum, but find- 
 ing that the accusations be rebutted were re- 
 Ipeated immediately with increasing bitterness, 
 I he lost hope of stemming the tide of hostile 
 jeriticism and announced his intention of aban- 
 doning poetic composition. 
 ( One by one some of tbe remaining friends of 
 earlier years seemed now to have left him. 
 \ ■ 94
 
 THE STORY OF MY FRIEND'S LIFE 
 
 Whether, as I have heard certain of them say, 
 they wearied a little of Rossetti's al)sorptioii in 
 the critical attacks made upon him, thinking 
 he put them out of proportion, or interpreted 
 their origin and intention by a light that was\ 
 scarcely consistent with sanity, or whether 
 Rossetti, on his part (as one of the letters I 
 have quoted appears to show), began to think 
 of his old comrades as " summer friends," who 
 fell away at the first breath of winter, the re- 
 sult was the same — he shut himself up in his 
 big house in yet more absolute seclusion than 
 before. 
 
 Nor did the mischief end there. The chloral, 
 which he had first taken in small doses, he be- 
 gan now, in moments of physical prostration 
 and nervous excitement, to indulge in to ex- 
 cess, and as a consequence he went through a 
 series of terrible though intermittent illnesses, 
 inducing a morbid condition, in which he was 
 the victim of many painful delusions. Among 
 them, as was perhaps natural, were some that 
 related to the exhumation of his wife's body,i 
 and the curse that was supposed to have foW 
 lowed him for that desecration. This was an 
 idea very liable to torment a mind so suscepti- 
 ble to supernatural suggestion as Rossetti's, 
 and although one's soul cries out against a tor-/ 
 
 95
 
 MY STORY 
 
 tnre that was greater than any sins of his de- 
 served, one cannot but welcome the thought 
 that the sechision to which he doomed himself, 
 and the illness from which he suffered, were 
 due to something more serious and more worthy 
 of a man than the hostile article of a jealous 
 fellow-poet. 
 
 Several years passed during which Rossetti 
 lived in the closest retirement, seeing only the 
 two or three friends who had always been with 
 him, Madox Brown and his faithful and un- 
 failing brother, William, and then light came, 
 and he began in the fuller sense to live again. 
 Letters and articles reached him from many 
 quarters, from foreign countries and distant 
 colonies, showing that adverse criticism had 
 not quenched the light of his book. New friends 
 came, too, to take the jDlace of those who had 
 gone " from causes only too varj^ng," and un- 
 questionably the first of these — the first in the 
 confidence reposed in him and the affection felt 
 for him — was Theodore Watts-Dunton, known 
 at that time as Walter Theodore Watts, for- 
 merly a solicitor from Lincolnshire, and then 
 the leader of the reviewing staff of the AtJie- 
 nceum, as well as a poet of considerable claim. 
 Next to Watts, perhaps, among later friends 
 came Frederic Shields, an artist from Man- 
 
 96
 
 THE STORY OF MY FRIEND'S LIFE 
 
 Chester, whose power as a draiij^litsman and 
 qualities as a man Rossetti held in high esteem. 
 Others there were, too, such as Dr. Hake, him- 
 self a poet of some distinction, whose soothing 
 friendship brought lasting solace, and finally 
 there was myself, coming into Rossetti's life 
 under the conditions I have described. 
 
 I am older myself at this time of writing 
 than Rossetti was when I first knew him, and 
 perhaps I can understand better now than I 
 did then what interest I had for one who had 
 twice my years. In default of the knowledge 
 and the judgment that older friends could 
 bring, and in spite of the difference of our edu- 
 cation and gifts, I must have stood beside him 
 like his youth, with its eagerness, its hopes, its 
 dreams, its aspirations. This was just what 
 was wanted at that period by the great man 
 who had so latelv come out of the Shadowed 
 Valley, but was lonely enough yet, notwith- 
 standing the frequent company of loyal com- 
 rades, to find comfort and cheer in the s\Tn- 
 pathy of a young and enthusiastic stranger. 
 
 He began to try his hand again at poetic com- 
 position, to send me some of his new poems 
 and to write of others with a freedom and 
 familiaritv that were entirelv flattering. 
 
 " I am just finishing a ballad on the Death of 
 
 97
 
 MY STOEY 
 
 James I. of Scotland. ... It is a ripper, I can 
 tell you, my boy." 
 
 It was clear that life was beginning to take 
 a brighter outlook, and that he was preparing 
 to publish again. 
 
 " Tell me what you think in reading my 
 things. I have a fair amomit by me in the way 
 of later MS., which I may show you some day 
 when we meet. 
 
 " I hope sincerely that we may have further 
 and closer opportunities of intercourse. . . . 
 I should welcome vour advent in London 
 warmly." 
 
 Such, then, was Rossetti when I first knew 
 him, and during the earlier period of our cor- 
 resiDondence, and now the time had come when 
 I was to meet him face to face. There can be 
 no necessity to describe the feelings with which 
 I went forward to that first interview. Believ- 
 ing that my friend of twenty-five years ago 
 has entered into the company of the immortals, 
 and that a century hence everything will be 
 of interest that gets close to him at any period, 
 my portrait may perhaps exceed in details, but 
 it shall not fail in fidelity. 
 
 I cannot, of course, claim for my picture that 
 it will rej^resent Rossetti as he was from first 
 to last, or yet as he appeared to older friends, 
 
 98
 
 THE STORY OF MY FRIEND'S LIFE 
 
 who knew him through varying phases of his 
 changeful career, but it shall at least be true 
 to Rossetti as he appeared to me, twenty-five 
 years his junior, and coming to him, full of 
 admiration and affection, during the last years 
 of his life.
 
 I 
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 MY FIRST MEETING WITH EOSSETTI 
 
 T was in the aiitiimn of 1880 that I saw 
 Rossetti for the first time. Being some- 
 what reduced in health, I had contem- 
 plated a visit to one of the South-coast water- 
 ing-places, and wrote saying that in passing 
 through London I should like to avail myself 
 of his oft-repeated invitation to visit him. By 
 return of post came two letters, the one ob- 
 viously written and posted within an hour or 
 two of the other. In the first of these he said : 
 
 I will be truly glad to meet you when you come to 
 town. You will recognise the hole-and-cornerest of 
 all existences; but I'll read you a ballad or two, and 
 have Brown's report to back my certainty of liking 
 you. 
 
 In the second letter he said : 
 
 I would propose that you should dine with me on 
 Monday at 8.30 and spend the evening. . . . 
 
 100
 
 MY FIKST MEETING WITH ROSSETTI 
 
 p, S. — Of course when I speak of your dining with 
 me, I mean tete-a-tete and without ceremony of any 
 kind. I usually dine in my studio and in my painting 
 coatl D- G. R. 
 
 ChejTie Walk was unknown to me at the time 
 of my first visit to Eossetti, except as the lo- 
 cality in which men and women eminent in lit- 
 erature were residing. It was not even then 
 as picturesque as it appears to be in certain 
 familiar engravings, for the embankment and 
 the gardens that separated it from the main 
 thoroughfare had already taken something 
 from its quaint beauty, but it still possessed at- 
 tractions which it has since lost, among them 
 a look of age which contrasted agreeably with 
 the spick-and-span newness of neighbouring 
 districts, and the slumbrous atmosphere, as of 
 a cathedral close, drowsing in the autumn sun 
 to the murmur of the river which flowed in 
 front, and the rustle of the trees which grew 
 between. 
 
 Every foot of the old Walk was sacred 
 ground to me then, for George Eliot, after her 
 marriage with Mr. Cross, had lately come to 
 No. 4; while at No. 5 in the second street to 
 the westward Carlyle was still living, and a 
 little beyond Cheyne Eow stood the modest 
 cottage wherein Turner died. Rossetti's house 
 8 101
 
 MY STORY 
 
 was No. 16, and I found it answering in exter- 
 nal appearance to the frank description he had 
 given of it. It seemed to be the oldest house 
 in the Walk, and the exceptional size of its gate 
 Ijiers and the height and weight of its gate and 
 railings suggested to my eye, as an architect, 
 that perhaps at some period it had stood alone, 
 commanding as grounds a large part of the 
 space occupied by the houses on either side. 
 
 The house itself was a plain Queen Anne 
 erection, much mutilated by the introduction 
 of unsightly bow windows, the brick work fall- 
 ing into decay, the paint in need of renewal, 
 the windows dull with the dust of months, the 
 sills bearing more than the suspicion of cob- 
 webs, the angles of the steps to the porch and 
 the untrodden flags of the little court leading 
 up to them overgrown with moss and weed, 
 while round the walls and up the reveals of 
 door and windows were creeping the tangled 
 branches of the wildest ivy that ever grew un- 
 touched by shears. 
 
 Such was the exterior of the house of the 
 poet-painter when I walked up to it on the 
 autumn evening of my earliest visit, and the 
 interior of the house, when with trembling 
 heart I first stepped over the threshold, seemed 
 to be at once like and unlike the outside. The 
 
 102
 
 MY FIRST MEETING WITH ROSSETTI 
 
 hall had a puzzling look of equal nobility and 
 shabbiness, for the floor was paved with white 
 marble, which was partly covered by a strip 
 of worn-out cocoa-nut matting. Three doors 
 led out of the hall, one at each side and one 
 in front, and two corridors opened into it, but 
 there was no sign of a staircase, and neither 
 was there any daylight, except the little that 
 was borrowed from a fanlight which looked 
 into the porch. 
 
 I took note of these things in the few minutes 
 I stood waiting in the hall, and if I had to sum 
 up my first impressions of the home of Ros- 
 setti, I should say it looked like a house that 
 no woman had ever dwelt in, a house inhabited 
 by a man who had once felt a vivid interest in 
 life, but was now living from day to day. 
 
 Very soon Rossetti came to me through the 
 doorway in front, which proved to be the en- 
 trance to his studio. Holding out both hands 
 and crying " Hulloa," he gave me that cheery, 
 hearty greeting which I have come to recognise 
 as belonging to him alone, perhaps, of all the 
 men I have ever known. Leading the way 
 into the studio, he introduced me to his brother 
 William, who was there on one of the evening 
 visits which, at intervals of a week, he made 
 then with unfailing regularity. 
 
 103
 
 ]MY STORY 
 
 I should have described Eossetti, at that 
 time, as a man who looked quite ten years 
 older than his actual age (fifty-two), of full 
 middle height and inclining to corpulence, with 
 a roimd face that ought, one thought, to be 
 ruddy but was pale ; with large gray eyes that 
 had a steady introspective look and were sur- 
 mounted by broad protrusive brows, and divid- 
 ed by a clearly i^encilled ridge over the nose, 
 which was well cut and had breathing nostrils 
 resembling the nostrils of a high-bred horse. 
 
 His mouth and chin were hidden beneath a 
 heavy moustache and an abimdant beard which 
 had once been mixed black-brown and auburn, 
 but were now thickly streaked with gray. His 
 forehead was large, round, without protuber- 
 ances, and very gently receding to where thin 
 black curls l)egan to roll round to the ears. I 
 thought his head and face singularly noble, 
 and from the eyes upward full of beauty. 
 
 His dress was not conspicuous, being rather 
 negligent than eccentric, and only remarkable 
 for a straight sack coat (his "painting coat") 
 buttoned close to the throat, descending at 
 least to the knees, and having large perpen- 
 dicular pockets, in which he kept his hands al- 
 most constantly while he walked to and fro. 
 His voice, even in the preliminary courtesies 
 
 104
 
 MY FIRST MEETING WITH ROSSETTI 
 
 of conversation, was, I thought, the richest I 
 had ever heard. It was a deep, full barytone, 
 with easy modulations and undertones of in- 
 finite softness and sweetness, yet capable, as 
 I speedily found, of almost illimitable compass. 
 
 Such was Rossetti, as he seemed to me when 
 I saw him first — a noticeable man, indeed, an 
 Englishman in his stolid build, an Italian in the 
 dark fire of his face, a man of genius in the 
 strength and individuality which expressed 
 themselves in his outer jDersonality without 
 singularity or affectation. 
 
 The studio was a large irregular room, struc- 
 turally puzzling to one who saw it for the first 
 time. Over the fireplace and at either side of 
 it hung a number of drawings in chalk, chiefly 
 studies of female heads, all very beautiful, and 
 all by Rossetti himself. Easels of various size, 
 some very large, bearing partially painted pic- 
 tures, stood at irregular angles nearly all over 
 the floor, leaving room only for a few pieces 
 of furniture — a large sofa, under a holland 
 cover, somewhat baggy and soiled, two low 
 easy chairs, similarly apparelled, a large book- 
 case with a glass front, surmounted by a yel- 
 low copy of the Stratford bust of Shakespeare, 
 two carved cabinets, and a little writing desk 
 and cane-bottomed chair in the comer, near a 
 
 105
 
 MY STOEY 
 
 small window which was heavily darkened by 
 the thick foliage of the trees that grew in the 
 garden beyond. 
 
 As I had arrived late and the light was fail- 
 ing, Rossetti immediately drew up an easel 
 containing a picture he wished me to see, and I 
 recall a large canvas full of the bright sunshine 
 of spring, with a beautiful lady sitting reading 
 in a tree that was heavily laden with pink and 
 white blossom. Remembering the sense of 
 the ojoen air which the picture conveyed, I can- 
 not forget the pallid face of the painter as he 
 stood beside it, or the close atmosphere of his 
 studio, with its smell of paint and the musty 
 odour of accumulated treasures lying long un- 
 disturbed in a room that can have been rarely 
 visited by the winds of heaven. 
 
 I helped Rossetti to push the big easel out 
 of the way. Then he dropped down on the sofa 
 at full length, letting his head lie low on the 
 cushion and throwing his feet up on the back. 
 In this attitude — which I afterward saw was 
 a favourite one with him — he began the con- 
 versation by telling me with various humor- 
 ous touches, how like I was to what a well- 
 known friend of his had been at my age, and 
 then he bantered me for several minutes on 
 what he called my " robustious " appearance 
 
 106
 
 MY FIRST MEETING WITH ROSSETTI 
 
 compared with that which he had been led 
 to expect from gloomy reports of uncertain 
 health. It was all done in the easiest conceiv- 
 able way, and was so playful and so natural, 
 as coming from a great and famous man on his 
 first meeting with a young fellow half his age, 
 who regarded him with a reverence only modi- 
 fied by affection, that it might fairly have con- 
 veyed any impression on earth save the right 
 one, that Rossetti was a bundle of nerves, a 
 creature of emotions all compact, and that, at 
 this period, a visit from a new friend, however 
 harmless and insignificant, was an ordeal of 
 almost tragic gravity to him. 
 
 Then one by one he glanced at certain of the 
 more personal topics that had arisen in the 
 course of our correspondence, and I soon saw 
 that he was a ready, fluent and graceful talker, 
 with an unusual incisiveness of speech which 
 gave the effect of wit even when it was not wit. 
 I remember, among the little things that struck 
 me at that first meeting with Rossetti, a trick 
 he had of snapping his long fingers as he 
 talked, and the constant presence of his hands, 
 which were small and smooth and delicate as 
 a young girl's, with tapering fingers, that he 
 seemed to be always looking at and playing 
 with. 
 
 107
 
 MY STORY 
 
 Very soon the talk l)ecame general, his 
 brother William, who had hitherto been silent, 
 joining in it at intervals, and then Rossetti 
 spoke, without appearance of reserve, of the 
 few intimate friends who frequented his house 
 at that period, telling me, among other things, 
 that Mr. Watts (now Watts-Dunton) had a 
 head like Napoleon's, " whom he detests," he 
 said with a chuckle; that Frederic Shields 
 was as hysterical as Shelley, and Ford '^''^adox 
 Brown, whom I had met, as sententious c^ ^''. 
 Johnson. 
 
 I thought Rossetti was amusing himself by 
 bantering his friends in their absence, in the 
 assured confidence that he was doing so in the 
 presence of a well-wisher; but it was interest- 
 ing to observe that after any particularly 
 lively sally, or dash of personal ridicule, he 
 would pause in the midst of his laughter, which 
 was a deep, full-chested roar, to say something 
 in a sober tone that was intended to convey the 
 idea that he had really said nothing at all. 
 
 Contrary to his declared habit, he did not 
 dine in the studio, but when a bright young 
 maid-servant announced the dinner, he led the 
 way to one of the two rooms entering out of 
 the hall, a square apartment of moderate size, 
 apparently all green in colour, carpet, curtains, 
 
 108
 
 o 
 o 
 
 o 
 
 2 
 
 2 
 
 a 
 
 O 
 
 E-i 
 
 CO 
 
 O
 
 I
 
 MY FIRST MEETING WITH ROSSETTI 
 
 walls, and furniture, but also noticea])le for 
 many mirrors, most of them round and beau- 
 tiful. 
 
 I remember that as we dined, Rossetti, who 
 seemed to be in the best of spirits, rattled off 
 one or two of the rhymes, now called " Lim- 
 ericks," at the making of which, nol)ody who 
 ever attempted that form of amusement has 
 ever been known to match him. He could turn 
 them out as fast as he could talk, with such 
 point, such humour, such building up to a cli- 
 max, that even when they verged on the per- 
 sonal, or yet the profane (as I fear they some- 
 times did), it was impossible to receive the last 
 word without a shout. I recall that on this 
 occasion he recited for my amusement a rhj^me 
 he had made on a poet friend who had lost his 
 hair, and with the sting of it still in my mind 
 I should not wonder if the almost fatal facility 
 he had in the writing of satirical doggerel 
 sometimes cost the poet dear. 
 
 After dinner, in the studio, I asked Rossetti 
 to fulfil his promise to read some of his new 
 ballads to me. He responded readily, like a 
 man who was glad to read his poetry to an 
 admirer, only apologising to his brother, who 
 had heard everything before. 
 
 Unlocking a section of the big book-case, and 
 
 109
 
 MY STORY 
 
 again imlocking an old carved oak box tliat 
 stood on one of the shelves, he took out a small 
 manuscript volume, and after putting on a 
 second pair of spectacles over the pair he usu- 
 ally wore, he read " The White Ship." 
 
 It seemed to me that I had never heard any- 
 thing at all equal to Rossetti's elocution, if 
 reading so entirely without conscious art can 
 be called by that name. The poet's deep, rich 
 voice lent music to the music of the verse; it 
 rose and fell in the passages descrij^tive of the 
 wreck with something of the surge and sibila- 
 tion of the sea itself ; in» the tenderer passages, 
 it was as soft and low as a girl's, and in the 
 pathetic stanzas at the close, it was indescrib- 
 ably moving. 
 
 The evening had gone by the time the ballad 
 was ended, and when William Rossetti rose to 
 go, I got up to go with him. Then it was ar- 
 ranged that on returning through London after 
 my holiday on the South coast I should dine 
 with Rossetti again and sleep the night at his 
 house. He came into the hall to see us off, and 
 down to the last his high spirits never failed 
 him. I recall some further bantering as I was 
 going out at the door, and the full-chested 
 laugh that followed us over the little paved 
 court between the house and the gate. 
 
 110
 
 MY FIRST MEETING WITH ROSSETTI 
 
 Our little night journey, William's and mine, 
 in the hansom cab which was to drop me at the 
 door of the " hole-and-cornerest " of all hotels, 
 which, as a young countryman, ignorant of 
 London, I had somehow ferreted out, is made 
 ever memorable to me by a dazed sense I had 
 of having seen and spoken to and spent an 
 evening with — what I thought — the greatest 
 man on earth. That is a sensation that only 
 comes once perhaps to any of us, and it was 
 after my first meeting with Rossetti that it 
 came to me.
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 A NIGHT AT CHEYNE WALK 
 
 A BOUT a fortnight later I returned to 
 /-% Clieyne Walk, and was welcomed with 
 the same cheery " Hulloa " from Ros- 
 setti, who was lying, as I entered the studio 
 in the early evening, in his favourite attitude 
 on the couch. He was alone on this occasion, 
 and notwithstanding the warmth of my recep- 
 tion, I noticed that he was in some respects a 
 changed man, his spirits being lower, his face 
 more weary, even his voice more tired. 
 
 In answer to inquiries as to where I had been 
 and what I had been doing, I talked, with the 
 animation of a young man interested in life 
 in many aspects, of the delightful Halliwell- 
 Phillipps (with whom I had been staying at 
 Brighton) and his group of good old Shakes- 
 pearean dry-as-dusts, and then of Henry Ir- 
 ving, who was rising into celebrity as a Shakes- 
 pearean actor. Rossetti lay on the sofa and 
 listened, drojoping out occasional observations, 
 
 112
 
 A NIGHT AT CHEYNE WALK 
 
 such as that Miss Herbert, an actress and a 
 former friend, had sjioken long ago of a young 
 fellow in her company named Irving, predict- 
 ing great success for him. 
 
 But it was soon made clear to me that the 
 poet was more amused by the impetuous rush 
 as of fresh air from the outer world which 
 came to him with my company than interested 
 in the affairs of the outer world itself. Indeed, 
 I speedily saw that Rossetti knew very little 
 of what was going on outside the close atmos- 
 phere of his own house and the circle of his 
 literarv and artistic activities, and that he did 
 not care to know. 
 
 Expecting my return, he had pulled a huge 
 canvas into a position in which it could be seen, 
 and it was then I saw, for the first time, the 
 l^ainter's most important picture, " Dante's 
 Dream." The effect produced upon me by 
 that wonderful work, so simple in its scheme, 
 so conventional in its composition, yet so noble 
 in its feeling and so profound in its emotion, 
 has probably been repeated a thousand times 
 since in minds more capable of appreciating 
 the technical qualities of the painter's art; but 
 few or none can know what added power of 
 appeal the great picture had as I saw it then, 
 under the waning light of an autumn afternoon, 
 
 113
 
 MY STORY 
 
 in the painter's studio, so full of the atmos- 
 phere of the picture itself, and with the painter 
 beside it, so clearly a man out of another age. 
 
 Rossetti told me something of the history of 
 " Dante's Dream " ; how it had been commis- 
 sioned by a friend, and returned in exchange 
 for a replica because of its great size, which 
 made it practically impossible for a private col- 
 lection. Whereupon I decided, that if any ef- 
 forts of mine could avail, Liverpool should buy 
 the picture for its jjublic gallery. 
 
 " Does your work take much out of you in 
 jjliysical energy?" I asked. 
 
 " Not my painting, certainly," said Rossetti, 
 " though in earlier years it tormented me more 
 than enough. Now I paint by a set of unwrit- 
 ten but clearly defined rules, which I could teach 
 to any man as systematically as you could teach 
 arithmetic." 
 
 " Still," I said, " there's a good deal in a pic- 
 ture like this beside what you can do by rule 
 —eh?" 
 
 I laughed, he laughed, and then he said, as 
 nearly as I can remember: 
 
 " Conception, no doubt ; but beyond that, not 
 much. Painting, after all, is the craft of a su- 
 j)erior carpenter. The part of a picture that 
 is not mechanical is often trivial enough." And 
 
 114
 
 A NIGHT AT CHEYNE WALK 
 
 then, with the suspicion of a twinkle in his eye, 
 he added: 
 
 " I shouldn't wonder, now, if you imagine 
 that one comes down in a fine frenzy every 
 morning to daub canvas." 
 
 More laughter on both sides, and then I said 
 I certainly imagined that a superior carpenter 
 would find it hard to paint another " Dante's 
 Dream," which I considered the best example 
 I had yet seen of the English school. 
 
 " Friendly nonsense," replied my frank host ; 
 " there is now no English school whatever." 
 
 " Well," I said, " if you deny the name to 
 others who lay more claim to it, will you not 
 at least allow it to the three or four painters 
 who started with you in life — the pre-Raphael- 
 ites, you know? " 
 
 " Not at all, unless it is to Brown, and he's 
 more French than English. Hunt and Jones 
 have no more claim to it than I have. Pre- 
 Eaphaelites! A group of young fellows who 
 couldn't draw ! " With this came one of his 
 full-chested laughs, and then quickly behind it : 
 
 " As for all the prattle about pre-Raphaelit- 
 ism, I confess to you I am weary of it, and long 
 have been. VThj should we go on talking about 
 the visionary vanities of half-a-dozen boys! 
 We've all grown out of them, I hope, by now." 
 
 115
 
 MY STORY 
 
 We dined in the studio that night, and I re- 
 call the suggestion of my host's Italian origin 
 in the thick pipes of macaroni, cooked dry and 
 then smothered in thick layers of cheese, and 
 the red Chianti, diluted with water; but there 
 was no sweet or coffee, and Rossetti did not 
 smoke. 
 
 Returning, after dinner, to my inquiry as to 
 whether his work took much out of him, he re- 
 plied that his poetry usually did. 
 
 " In that respect," he said, " I am the reverse 
 of Swinburne. For his method of production, 
 inspiration is, indeed, the word. With me the 
 case is different. I lie on the couch, the racked 
 and tortured medium, never permitted an in- 
 stant's relief until the thing in hand is finished." 
 
 Then, at my request, taking the same little 
 manuscript volume from the small oak box in 
 the locked section of the bookcase, he read his 
 unpublished ballad, " Rose Mary," telling me it 
 had been written in the country shortly after 
 the publication of his first volume of poems, 
 that it had occupied only three weeks in the 
 writing, and that the physical prostration en- 
 suing had been more than he would care to go 
 through again. 
 
 He then read to me a great body of the new 
 sonnets, which in a forthcoming volume he in- 
 
 116
 
 A NIGHT AT CHEYNE WALK 
 
 tended to incorporate in a section to he called 
 " The House of Life." Sitting in that studio, 
 listening to the rise and fall of his wonderful 
 voice, and looking up at the chalk drawings 
 that hung on the walls, I realised how truly 
 he had said in correspondence that the feeling 
 pervading his pictures was such as his poetry 
 ought to suggest. 
 
 Once or twice, after the emotion of the writ- 
 ten words had broken up his voice, he would 
 pause and laugh a little (a constrained laugh 
 in his throat), and say: 
 
 " I dare say you think it odd to hear an old 
 fellow read such love poetry, as much of this 
 is, but I may tell you that the larger part of 
 it was written when I was as young as you 
 are." 
 
 I remember that he read, with especial emo- 
 tion and a voice that could barely support itself, 
 the pathetic sonnet entitled " Without Her " : 
 
 " What of her glass without her? . . . 
 . . . Her pillowed place 
 Without her? . . . 
 What of the heart without her? . . .'" 
 
 The lines came with tears of voice, subsiding 
 at length into something like a suppressed sob, 
 and they were followed by an interval of si- 
 9 117
 
 MY STORY 
 
 lence. But after a moment, as if trying to ex- 
 13lain away his emotion and to deprive it of 
 any personal reference in my mind, he said : 
 
 " All poetry affects me deeply, and often to 
 tears. It doesn't need to be pathetic, or yet 
 tender, to produce this result." 
 
 Then he went on to say that he had Imown 
 in his life two men, and two only, who were 
 similarly sensitive — Tennyson, and his friend, 
 Bell Scott. 
 
 " I once heard Tennyson read ' Maud,' " he 
 said, " and while the fiery passages were given 
 with a voice and vehemence which he alone 
 could compass, the softer passages and the 
 songs made the tears run down his cheeks like 
 rain. Morris is a fine reader, too, and so of his 
 kind, although a little prone to sing-song, is 
 Swinburne. Browning both reads and talks 
 well — at least he did so when I knew him in- 
 timately as a young man." 
 
 I asked if he had ever heard Ruskin read, 
 and he replied : 
 
 " I must have done so, but I remember noth- 
 ing clearly. On one occasion, however, I heard 
 him deliver a speech, and that was something 
 never to forget. When we were young we 
 helped Frederick Dennison Maurice by taking 
 classes at his Working Men's College, and there 
 
 118
 
 A NIGHT AT CHEYNE WALK 
 
 Charles Kingsley and others made speeches and 
 delivered lectures. Ruskin was asked to do 
 something of the kind, and at length consented. 
 He made no sort of preparation for the occa- 
 sion; I knew he did not — we were together at 
 his father's house the whole of the day. At 
 night we drove down to the college, and then 
 he made the most finished speech I ever heard. 
 I doubted at the time if anj'' written words of 
 his were equal to it. Such flaming diction, such 
 emphasis, such appeal ! Yet he had written his 
 first and second volumes of ' Modem Painters ' 
 bv that time." 
 
 There was a certain incisiveness in Rossetti's 
 conversation of which I try in vain to convey 
 more than a suggestion. He had both wit and 
 humour, but these qualities during the time I 
 knew him were only occasionally present, while 
 his incisiveness (sometimes giving the surprise 
 of wit) was always conspicuous. 
 
 On this night of my second visit we sat up 
 until four in the morning, no unaccustomed 
 hour for him, as I afterward learned, for he 
 had never at any period been an early riser, 
 and was then more than ever prone to reverse 
 the natural order of sleeping and waking hours. 
 
 " I lie as long, or say as late, as Doctor John- 
 son used to," he said. " You shall never know, 
 
 119
 
 MY STORY 
 
 until 5^011 discover it for yourself, at what hour 
 I rise." 
 
 And now I do not feel that I can omit to 
 mention that just as we were getting up to go 
 to bed, Rossetti revealed a new side of his char- 
 acter, or, more properly, a new phase of his 
 mind, which gave me infinite anxiety and dis- 
 tress. Branching off at that late hour from an 
 entirely foreign topic, he begged me to tell him 
 the facts of an unlucky debate in which I had 
 long before been engaged on a public platform 
 with some one who had attacked him. He had 
 read a short report of what had passed at a 
 time when both my name and the name of his 
 assailant were unlaiown to him, and now he 
 wished to hear everything. I tried to avoid 
 a circumstantial statement, being forewarned 
 by his brother, on that night ride after my first 
 visit, of the poet's peculiar sensitiveness to 
 criticism ; but Rossetti was " of imagination 
 all compact," and my obvious desire to shelve 
 the subject was plainly suggesting to his mind 
 a thousand inferences that were infinitely more 
 damaging than the fact. To avoid this result 
 I told him all, and there was not much to tell. 
 
 The lecture on his poetry, which led to the 
 beginning of our friendship, had been presided 
 over on the platform at Liverpool by a public 
 
 120
 
 A NIGHT AT CHEYNE WALK 
 
 man of more than local celebrity as a patron 
 and critic of art, and at the close of my pas- 
 sionate panegyric, in which I had perhaps dwelt 
 too insistently on the spiritual influences ani- 
 mating the poet's work, my chairman rose, and, 
 as nearly as I can remember, said: 
 
 " We have all listened with interest and ad- 
 miration to the eloquent . . ." (etc.), "but it 
 would be wrong of me not to warn the audience 
 against the teaching of the lecturer. So far 
 from Rossetti being animated mainly, or even 
 largely, by spiritual passion, he is the most 
 sensuous, not to say sensual*, of English poets, 
 and in his other character as artist I can best 
 describe him as the greatest animal painter 
 alive." 
 
 This and a few similar strictures, partly pro- 
 voked, it may be, by the misdirection of my own 
 eulogy, followed by a heated reply from myself, 
 rapturously applauded by an audience which 
 was probably indifferent to the question in dis- 
 pute, and interested only in the unusual spec- 
 tacle of a stand-up fight between the young 
 lecturer and the city father, with a word or two 
 of brusque characterisation aimed at " Jenny," 
 whom I had perhaps dwelt with as a soiled 
 Madonna, was all there was to repeat in the 
 way of an attack. 
 
 121
 
 MY STORY 
 
 Eossetti listened but too eagerly to my nar- 
 rative, with drooped head and changing colour, 
 and then, in a voice slower, softer, and more 
 charged, perhaps, with emotion than I had 
 heard before, said it was the old story, which 
 began ten years before and would go on until 
 he had been hunted and hounded into his grave. 
 
 Startled, and indeed appalled, by so grave a 
 view of what seemed to me, after all, an un- 
 important incident, and no more than an error 
 of critical judgment, coupled with some intem- 
 perance of condemnation for which my own 
 heat had been partly to blame, I prayed of him 
 to think no more of the matter, reproached my- 
 self with having yielded to his importunity, and 
 begged of him to remember that if one man 
 held the opinions I had repeated, many men 
 held contrary ones. 
 
 " It was right of you to tell me when I asked 
 you," he said, " though my friends usually 
 kee]) such facts from my knowledge. As to 
 * Jenny,' it is a sermon, nothing less. As I 
 say, it is a sermon, and on a great world, to 
 most men unknown, though few consider them- 
 selves ignorant of it. But of this conspiracy 
 to persecute me — what remains to say except 
 that it is widespread and remorseless? One 
 cannot but feel it." 
 
 122
 
 A NIGHT AT CHEYNE WALK 
 
 I assured liim that there existed no conspiracy 
 to persecute him ; that he had ardent upholders 
 everywiiere, though it was true that few men 
 had found crueller critics. He shook his head, 
 and said I knew that what he had alleged was 
 true, namely, that an organised conspiracy ex- 
 isted, having for its object to annoy and injure 
 him, and to hold him up to the public execration 
 as an evil influence on his time. So tyrannical, 
 he said, had the conspiracy become that it had 
 altered the habits of his life, and practically con- 
 fined him for years to the limits of his own home. 
 
 Growing impatient of this delusion, so tena- 
 ciously held to against all show of reason, I 
 forgot the disparity of our ages and told him 
 that what he was saying was no more than the 
 fever of a morbid brain, brought about by his 
 reclusive habits of life, by shunning intercourse 
 with all the world save some half-dozen or more 
 intimate friends. 
 
 " You tell me," I said, " that j^ou have rarely 
 been outside these walls for years, and mean- 
 while your brain has been breeding a host of 
 hallucinations that are like cobwebs in a dark 
 comer. You have only to go out again, and 
 the fresh air will blow all these things away." 
 
 He smiled, perhaps at the boldness of youth, 
 a sad smile, and then, going on again for some 
 
 123
 
 MY STORY 
 
 moments longer in the same strain, lie came to 
 closer quarters and distressed me by naming 
 as enemies two public men, one of them the 
 outstanding statesman of the time (who had 
 lately given a pension to the critic who had 
 most savagely abused him), and three or four 
 authors of high rej^ute, who had been his close 
 friends in earlier life, but had fallen away from 
 him in later years, owing to circumstances that 
 had no relation to alienated regard. 
 
 " You're all wrong," I said. " I'm sure you're 
 all wrong." 
 
 " Ah, well, let's go to bed," said Rossetti; and 
 I could see that his conviction was unshaken 
 and his delusions remained. 
 
 We took candles from a table in the hall and 
 went up a narrow and tortuous staircase, which 
 was otherwise dark, to a landing from which 
 many rooms seemed to open, so large was the 
 house in which Rossetti lived alone, except for 
 a cook and two maid-servants. 
 
 " You are to sleep in Watts's room to-night," 
 he said, and then he suggested that before going 
 to my own bedroom, I should take a look at his. 
 I cheerfully assented, but walking through the 
 long corridor that led to the poet's room, we 
 had to pass another apartment, and after a 
 moment's pause, Rossetti opened the door and 
 
 124
 
 A NIGHT AT CHEYNE WALK 
 
 we went in. It was the drawing-room, a very 
 large chamber, l)arely illuminated by the can- 
 dles in our hands, and full of the musty odour 
 of a place long shut up. 
 
 Suspended from the middle of the ceiling 
 there hung a huge Venetian candelabrum, from 
 whose facets the candle light glittered, and on 
 the walls were a number of small water-colour 
 drawings in plain oak frames. Rossetti drew 
 me up to the pictures, and I remember that 
 they seemed to me rather crude in colour and 
 in drawing, but very touching in sentiment 
 (one in particular representing a young girl 
 parting from her lover on the threshold of a 
 convent, being deeply charged with feeling), 
 and that I said : 
 
 " I should have thought that the man who 
 painted these pictures was rather a poet than 
 a painter — who was it?" 
 
 Eossetti, who was standing before the draw- 
 ing, as I see him still, in the dark room with 
 the candle in his hand, said, in a low voice: 
 " It was my wife. She had great genius." 
 
 His own bedroom was entered from another 
 and smaller room, which he told me he used as 
 a breakfast room. The outer room was made 
 fairly bright by a glittering chandelier (the 
 property at one time, he said, of David Gar- 
 
 125
 
 MY STORY 
 
 rick). By the rustle of the trees against the 
 window pane one realised that it overlooked 
 the garden. But the inner room was dark with 
 heavy hangings around the walls, as well as 
 about the bed (a black four-poster), and thick 
 velvet curtains before the windows, so that the 
 candles we carried seemed unable to light it, 
 and our voices sounded muffled and thick. An 
 enormous black oak chimneypiece, of curious 
 design, having an ivory crucifix on the largest 
 of its ledges, covered a part of one side of the 
 room and reached to the ceiling. Cabinets, a 
 bath, and the usual furniture of a bedroom 
 occupied places about the floor, and in the 
 middle of it, before a little couch, there was 
 a small table on which stood a wired lantern 
 containing a candle, which Rossetti lit from 
 the open' one in his hand — another candle ly- 
 ing by its side. I remarked that he probably 
 burned a light all night, and he said that was so. 
 
 " My curse is insonmia," he added. " Two 
 or three hours hence I shall get up and lie on 
 the couch, and, to pass away a weary hour, 
 read this book " (a volume of Boswell's " John- 
 son " which he had taken out of the bookcase 
 as we left the studio). 
 
 Then I saw that on the table were two small 
 bottles, sealed and la])elled, and l)eside them 
 
 12G
 
 A NIGHT AT CHEYNE WALK 
 
 was a little measuring glass. Without looking 
 further, but with a painful suspicion over me, 
 I asked if that was his medicine. 
 
 " They say there's a skeleton in every cup- 
 board," he said in a low voice. " That's mine ; 
 it's chloral." 
 
 When I reached the room I was to occupy 
 for the rest of the night, I found it, like Ros- 
 setti's' bedroom, heavy with hangings and black 
 with antique picture panels, having a ceiling 
 so high as to be out of all reach and sight, and 
 so dark from various causes that the candle 
 seemed only to glitter in it. 
 
 Presently Kossetti, who had left me in my 
 room, came back, for no purpose that I can 
 remember except to say that he had much en- 
 joyed my visit, and I replied that I should 
 never forget it. 
 
 " If you decide to settle in London," he said, 
 " I trust you'll come and live with me, and then 
 many such evenings must remove the memory 
 of this one." 
 
 I laughed, for what he so generously hinted 
 at seemed to me the remotest contingency. 
 
 " I have just taken sixty grains of chloral," 
 he said, as he was going out. " In four hours 
 I shall take sixty more, and in four hours after 
 that yet another sixty." 
 
 127
 
 MY STORY 
 
 "Doesn't the dose increase with you?" I 
 asked. 
 
 " It has not done so perceptibly in recent 
 
 years. I judge I've taken more chloral than 
 
 any man whatever. Marshall " (his medical 
 
 man) " says if I were put into a Turkish bath, 
 
 1^ I should sweat it at every pore." 
 
 As he said this, standing- half outside the 
 threshold, there was something in his tone and 
 laugh suggesting that he was even proud of 
 the accomplishment. To me it was a frightful 
 revelation, accounting largely, if not entirely, 
 for what had puzzled and distressed me in the 
 delusions I have referred to. 
 
 And so, after four in the morning, amid the 
 odour of bygone ages, with thoughts of that 
 big and almost empty house, of the servants 
 somewhere out of all reach and sound, of Ros- 
 , setti in his muffled room, of that wired lantern, 
 and the two bottles of chloral, I fell asleep. 
 
 When I awoke in the morning, the white day- 
 light was coming into my dark bedroom through 
 the chinks of the closed shutters, which, being 
 opened, disclosed a garden so large and so com- 
 pletely encompassed by trees as to hide almost 
 entirelv the surrounding houses. Remembering 
 what I had heard of the menagerie of wild birds 
 and tame beasts which Rossetti used to keep 
 
 128
 
 A NIGHT AT CHEYNE WALK 
 
 in this garden, I went down before breakfast 
 to look at it. 
 
 The garden was of a piece with what I had 
 seen of the house. A beautiful avenue of lime- 
 trees opened into a grass plot of nearly an acre 
 in extent. The trees were just as Nature made 
 them, and so was the grass, which was lying, 
 in its broad blades, long and dry and withered, 
 in ugly tufts, with weeds creeping up in the 
 dry places, and moss growing on the gravel 
 of the path. The wild birds and tame beasts 
 were gone, but the sparrows were chirping from . 
 the trees in the sunshine of the clear autmnn 
 morning, and one little linnet was singing from 
 a bough of the chestnut that looked in at the 
 window of Rossetti's bedroom, still blind with 
 its closed shutters, though the hour was now 
 late. 
 
 A pathway ran near to the wall round the 
 four sides of the garden, and here, as I heard 
 the night before, Rossetti took his only fresh 
 air and exercise, walking six times about the 
 enclosure every day. So quiet, indeed so dead, 
 was the overgrown place that it was difficult 
 to believe it was in the heart of London, and, 
 looking up at that shuttered window, it was 
 easy to wish it was not. 
 
 But if the back of the house was silent, the 
 
 129
 
 MY STORY 
 
 front of it was full enough of life. I break- 
 fasted in the little green dining-room — the 
 room of the round mirrors — and it was flooded 
 with sunshine, and even deafened with noise — 
 the rattle of tradesmen's carts and the whoop 
 of the butcher as he was scudding down the 
 Walk. 
 
 Before leaving the house I went into the 
 studio again to take another look at the great 
 " Dante," and the silent place, with its faint 
 odour of paint, its canvases full of glorious 
 colour, its chalk drawings in black and red of 
 women with beautiful but melancholy faces, 
 seemed to sweep one back again in a moment 
 to some Italian city of three centuries ago. 
 
 When I was about to leave the house at a 
 late hour that morning, Rossetti was not yet 
 stirring; but his housekeeper (who was also his 
 cook), an elderly l)ody, nervous and anxious 
 and obviously perplexed by the conditions of 
 her life in that strange house with a master 
 of exceptional habits, came to me with a letter 
 which she said she had found lying on the table 
 in the outer room where Rossetti took his 
 breakfast. It was a parting message from the 
 poet, probably written in that interval of wake- 
 fulness in the middle of the night when, as he 
 had told me, he got up and read on the couch. 
 
 130
 
 A NIGHT AT CHEYNE WALK 
 
 My Dear Caine. — 
 
 I forgot to say — Don't please, spread details as to 
 the story of Rose Mary. I don't want it to be stale 
 or to get forestalled in the traveling of report from 
 mouth to mouth. I hope it won't be too long before 
 you visit town again — I will not for an instant question 
 that you will then visit me also. D. G. R. 
 
 I do not think anybody who has realised (as, 
 indeed, should be most easy) the space that 
 divided me — a young fellow, unknown and but 
 half his age — from this great and illustrious 
 man, will wonder that he was absolutely irre- 
 sistible to me; but if I have to formulate the 
 emotions which possessed me as I left his house 
 on the occasion of this second visit, I will say 
 that it was not so much his genius as his un- 
 hajopiness that held me as by a spell. 
 
 Before this I had been attracted by admira- 
 tion of his great gifts, but now I was drawn 
 to him by something very akin to pity for his 
 isolation and suffering. Not that at this time 
 he made demand of much compassion. Health 
 was apparently whole with him, his spirits were 
 good, and his energies were at their best. He 
 had not yet known the full bitterness of the 
 Shadowed Valley; not yet learned what it was 
 to hunger for any cheerful society that would 
 relieve him of the burden of the flesh. All that 
 
 131
 
 MY STORY 
 
 came later, and meantime Rossetti was to me 
 the most fascinating, the most inspiring, the 
 most affectionate, and the most magnetic of 
 men. 
 
 Next morning I was at work with my draw- 
 ing-board and T-square in the little office over- 
 looking the builder's yard, busy with workmen 
 and carts and the commonplace traffic of mod- 
 ern life.
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 I BECOME EOSSETTl's HOUSEMATE 
 
 THE better part of a year passed before 
 I saw Rossetti again, but meantime I 
 was in constant correspondence with 
 him, so that the continuity of our intercourse 
 was never broken for so much as a day. Long 
 afterward, when he was very ill, he 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! T was at that time very solitary and 
 depressed from various causes, and the letters 
 of a well-wisher so young and so ardent, though 
 unknown to me personally, brought a good deal 
 of comfort." 
 
 " Your letters," I said, " were very valuable 
 to me." 
 
 " Mine to you," he answered, " were among 
 the largest body of literary letters I ever wrote, 
 others being often letters on personal subjects." 
 10 133
 
 MY STORY 
 
 " And so admirable in themselves," I added, 
 " that many of them would bear to be printed 
 exactly as yon penned them." 
 
 " That," he said, " will be for you some day 
 to decide." 
 
 Later still, I remember, at a very solemn 
 moment, he said: 
 
 " Caine, how long have we been friends ! " 
 
 I replied : " Between three and four years." 
 
 "And how long did we correspond!" 
 
 " Three years, nearly." 
 
 " What numbers of my letters you must pos- 
 sess! They may perhaps even yet be useful 
 to you; otherwise our friendship may prove to 
 have been more burden than service." 
 
 Only that I knew how unselfish had been the 
 imj3ulse which prompted the last remark, I 
 might perhaps from that moment have re- 
 garded the iDublication of Eossetti's letters to 
 me as a sort of trust. Some extracts I did 
 indeed give from them in the earlier book al- 
 ready referred to, and even now I content my- 
 self with indicating the drift of those long con- 
 versations by post which were the consequence 
 of the two hundred miles which divided me 
 from my friend. 
 
 If, as I have not hesitated to show in an 
 earlier chapter, Rossetti gave me on occasion 
 
 134
 
 I BECOME ROSSETTI'S HOUSEMATE 
 
 the encouragement of his warmest praise, he 
 did not shrink from playing the part of Mentor 
 also, censuring particularly a tendency to ob- 
 scurity and involution in style, the abnormal 
 search after " phrase " and the " outstanding 
 word," which, strange as I find it to remember, 
 was at that time a disfiguring characteristic of 
 my mind. Prose might be fervid and vivid, but 
 it ought to be simple and direct, rarely calling 
 attention to itself, never breaking the rhythmic 
 flow by forced or foreign expression or yet car- 
 rying it on for the mere sake of eifect. 
 
 " Surely," he said, " you are strong enough 
 to be English pure and simple. I am sure I 
 could write a hundred essays on all possible 
 subjects (I once did project a series under the 
 title ' Essays written in the intervals of Ele- 
 phantiasis, Hydrophobia, and Penal Servi- 
 tude'), without once experiencing the 'aching 
 void,' which is filled by such words as 'myth- 
 opoeic ' and ' anthropomorphism.' I do not find 
 life long enough to know in the least what they 
 mean. They are both very long and very ugly, 
 indeed — the latter only suggesting to me a 
 vampire or a somnambulant cannibal." 
 
 He was equally severe on my tendency to 
 quote the opinions of certain journals that had 
 spoken well of me. The criticism of good crit- 
 
 135
 
 MY STORY 
 
 ics might be good, and therefore good to quote, 
 but much criticism was bad, and therefore it 
 was bad to mention it. 
 
 " Really, I cannot but say," he said, " that the 
 last page of your new pamphlet is sadly dis- 
 figured by the names of London prints which 
 are conducted by the lowest gangs — at least I 
 will answer for one being so. You have begun, 
 as you tell me, and as I somewhat divine, in 
 a scrambling literary way, and the sooner you 
 shake all such connections off the nearer you 
 will be to your goal. No need to take any 
 notice of this in any way. It is a finger-post, 
 which only asks to be followed in silence. In- 
 deed, I will ask you not to answer." 
 
 Having to some extent cast in his lot with 
 me, he was irritated by any loss of what he 
 thought becoming dignity on my part, and not 
 only remonstrated against my publishing arti- 
 cles in magazines which he called " farragoes 
 of absolute garbage," but was even reluctant 
 to allow me, when I was about to edit an anthol- 
 ogy of sonnets, to write to the poets who were 
 to be asked to contribute. 
 
 " I must say I rather doubt the wisdom of 
 writing without introduction to such men as 
 you mention. A superior man runs the risk, 
 by doing so, of being confounded with those 
 
 136
 
 I BECOME ROSSETTI'S HOUSEMATE 
 
 who are perpetually directing correspondence 
 to any one whose name they have heard — and 
 the bibliographic and autograph-hunting tribe 
 whose name is legion. I do not mean that such 
 an application as yours could rightly be classed 
 with these, but I know the sort of exclamation 
 that rises to the lips of a man as much beset 
 by strangers as (say) Swinburne, when he 
 opens a letter and sees a new name at the end 
 of it." 
 
 He was hardly less irritated by a tendency 
 of mine to set the manner of a work higher 
 than its substance, to glorify style as if it were 
 a thing apart from su))ject. 
 
 " You have too great a habit of speaking of 
 a special octave, sestette, or line. Conception, 
 my boy. Fundamental Brainwoek, that is what 
 makes the difference in all art. Work your 
 metal as much as vou like, but first take care 
 that it is gold and worth working. A Shake- 
 spearian sonnet is better than the most perfect 
 in form because Shakespeare wrote it." 
 
 But " I hope you won't think that I am ever- 
 lastingly playing Mentor," he said, and to lift 
 up my heart after so many packs of the wet 
 blanket, he wrote, about a new lecture on the 
 scarcely confluent elements of " Politics and 
 Art " : " It is abundantly rich in spirit and ani- 
 
 137
 
 MY STORY 
 
 mated truth, and in powerful language, too, 
 when required. It must do you high credit 
 wherever seen, and when you are able to en- 
 large your sphere, I look to you as destined to 
 rank among the coming teachers of men." 
 
 All the same he was too discreet to accept 
 the dedication of this same lecture, when I 
 came to print it, though the letter in which 
 he declined was touching, and I think sin- 
 cere: 
 
 " I must admit at all hazards that my friends 
 consider me excej^tionally averse to politics; 
 and I suppose I must be, for I have never read 
 a Parliamentary debate in my life! At the 
 same time I must add, that, among those whose 
 opinions I most value, some think me not alto- 
 gether wrong when I venture to speak of the 
 momentary momentousness and eternal futil- 
 ity of many noisiest questions. However, you 
 must simply view me as a nonentity in any 
 practical relation to such matters. You have 
 spoken 1)ut too generously of a sonnet of mine 
 in the lecture just received. I have written a 
 few others of the sort (which, by-the-bye, 
 would not prove me a Tory), but felt no voca- 
 tion — i)erhaps no right — to print them. I have 
 always reproached myself as sorely amenable 
 to the condemnation of a very fine poem by 
 
 138
 
 I BECOME ROSSETTi'S HOUSEMATE 
 
 Barberino on ' Sloth against Sin,' which I 
 translated in the Dante volume. Sloth, alas! 
 has too much to answer for with me ; and is one 
 of the reasons (though I will not say the only 
 one) why I have always fallen back on quality 
 instead of quantity in the little I have ever 
 done. I think often with Coleridge : 
 
 * Sloth jaundiced all : and from my graspless hand 
 Drop friendship's precious pearls like hour-glass sand. 
 I weep, yet stoop not: the faint anguish flows, 
 A dreamy pang in morning's feverish doze.' " 
 
 Though my beginnings had been scrambling 
 ones, it was my own fault now if my literary 
 education was not more thorough, and even 
 more systematic, than any school or university 
 could have given me. Notwithstanding the calls 
 of my ordinary occupation, I was reading as 
 much as six, eight, and even ten hours a day, 
 and corresponding constantly on the subject of 
 my reading with a man of genius whose knowl- 
 edge of literature was very wide and whose 
 instinct for excellence very sure. Our studies 
 were, of course, mainly English, but I think 
 they covered the whole range of what was 
 best — from Shakespeare and even less-known 
 Elizabethan poets, through Steele, Savage, 
 Goldsmith, Johnson, Cowper, Fielding, and 
 
 139
 
 MY STORY 
 
 Eicliardson to the writers of the " Lake," 
 " Cockney," and " Satanic " schools, coming 
 down to our own day with Tennyson and 
 Browning, and covering some of the forgot- 
 ten geniuses of yesterday, such as Smart and 
 Wells. 
 
 Eossetti's letters, which are equal in quantity 
 to the contents of a large volume, are studded 
 with names familiar and unfamiliar, which show 
 how vigorously throughout the years in which 
 he had been occupied chiefly with painting he 
 must have burrowed in the by-paths as well as 
 laboured in the highways of literature; and 
 when I remember the disadvantages of my own 
 beginning, I must not forget that for two and a 
 half years I had the daily coaching of Eossetti's 
 forty years of reading and the constant guid- 
 ance of his fine selective instinct. That of itself 
 ought to have been a literary education of the 
 highest kind, though it was not then that I so 
 regarded it, nor do I suppose for a moment that 
 Rossetti himself looked at it in such a light. I 
 see, with some amusement, that in the course 
 of our correspondence I sometimes withstood 
 his judgments, and occasionally remonstrated 
 against his " prejudices." 
 
 Thus I protested that he was radically unjust 
 to Wordsworth, whom he had not the patience 
 
 140
 
 I BECOME KOSSETTI'S HOUSEMATE 
 
 to read except in fugitive passages taken at 
 random, and lie answered: 
 
 " I grudge Wordsworth every vote lie gets. 
 . . . No one regards the great Ode with more 
 special and unique homage than I do, as a thing 
 absolutely alone of its kind among all greatest 
 things. I cannot say that anything else of his 
 with which I have ever been familiar (and I 
 suffer from long disuse of all familiarity with 
 him) seems to me all on a level with this." 
 
 We were on common ground, however, in the 
 worship of Coleridge. " The three greatest 
 English imaginations," he said, " are Shake- 
 speare, Coleridge, and Shelley," and he was 
 never tired of extolling the beauties of " Chris- 
 tabel." 
 
 " Of course, the first part is so immeasur- 
 ably beyond the second, that one feels Charles 
 Lamb's view was right, and the poem should 
 have been abandoned at that point. The pas- 
 sage on Sundered Friendship is one of the 
 masterpieces of the language, but no doubt 
 was written quite separately and then fitted 
 into ' Christabel ' — the two lines about ' Roland 
 and Sir Leoline ' are simply an intrusion and 
 an outrage." 
 
 Another of Rossetti's references to " Chris- 
 tabel " is interesting for the peep it affords 
 
 141
 
 MY STORY 
 
 into the home of his boyhood, where English 
 books, it seems, were few. 
 
 " There are, I believe, many continuations of 
 ' Christabel.' Tupper did one ! I myself saw 
 a continuation in childhood, long before I saw 
 the original, and was all agog to see it for 
 years. Our household was all Italian, not Eng- 
 lish environment, however, and it was only 
 when I went to school later that I began to 
 ransack book-stalls." 
 
 With sufficient audacitv, I came into collision 
 with Rossetti again over Chatterton, whom I 
 was not at first prepared to regard with spe- 
 cial reverence, apart from the fact that, against 
 tremendous odds and at seventeen years of 
 age, he had written anything that deserved to 
 be remembered at all; but nothing would suf- 
 fice for Rossetti but that I should go down on 
 my knees and worship the author of the Afri- 
 can Eclogues. 
 
 " I assure you," he said, " Chatterton was as 
 great as any English jDoet whatever, and might 
 absolutely, had he lived, have proved the only 
 man in England's theatre of imagination who 
 could have bandied parts with Shakespeare." 
 
 At my insinuation that perhaps part of one's 
 interest in Chatterton had its origin in the fact 
 that he was a })it of a ])lackguard, and not so 
 
 U'2
 
 I BECOME ROSSETTI'S HOUSEMATE 
 
 much in admiration of his poems as in sur- 
 prise that a boy of sixteen should have written 
 them, Rossetti, as was most natural, fired up 
 warmly : 
 
 " I must protest finally that the man who 
 says that cannot know what criticism means. 
 Chatterton was an absolute and untarnished 
 hero. . . . Surely a boy up to eighteen may be 
 pardoned for exercising his faculty if he hap- 
 pens to be one among millions who can use 
 grown men as his toys. Certainly that most 
 vigorous passage commencing — 
 
 ' Interest, thou universal God of men/ 
 
 reads startlingly, and comes in a questionable 
 shape, AVhat is the answer to its enigmatical 
 aspect? AMiy, that he meant it, and that all 
 would mean it at his age, who had his power, 
 his daring, and his hunger." 
 
 I was on safer ground with Rossetti when 
 we began to write about Keats, " the lovely 
 and beloved Keats." 
 
 " You say an excellent thing,'' he said, " when 
 you ask, ' Where can we look for more poetry 
 per page than Keats gives us?' I shall look 
 forward with very great interest to your essay 
 on Keats." 
 
 And when the Keats paper was sent to him, 
 
 143
 
 MY STORY 
 
 he made up many critical denunciations by the 
 warmest sympathy. 
 
 " I have this minute at last read the Keats 
 paper, and return it. It is excellent through- 
 out, and the closing passage is very finely 
 worded. . . . You quote some of Keats's say- 
 ings. One of the most characteristic, I think, 
 is in a letter to Haydon : ' I value more the 
 privilege of seeing great things in loneliness 
 than the fame of a prophet.' . . . Keats wrote 
 to Shelley : ' You, I am sure, will forgive me 
 for sincerely remarking that you might curb 
 your magnanimity, and be more of an artist, 
 and load every rift of your subject with ore.' 
 Cheeky! but not so much amiss. Poetry and 
 not prophecy, however, must have come of that 
 mood; and no pulpit would have held Keats's 
 wings." 
 
 The Rossetti correspondence had, with great 
 profit to me, been going on for a considerable 
 time when my personal affairs reached an acute 
 but not altogether unexpected crisis. My long- 
 standing grievance against my everyday occu- 
 pation as a builder's draughtsman was, in spite 
 of the never-failing indulgence of my employer, 
 brought to a head by another attack of illness. 
 The symptoms were sufficiently alarming this 
 time, but, although satisfied that I had received 
 
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 'J2
 
 I BECOME ROSSETTI'S HOUSEMATE 
 
 my death warrant, I said nothing to anybody 
 except the doctor and Rossetti, to whom, ])y 
 this time, I was in the habit of telling every- 
 thing. Rossetti replied with his usual solici- 
 tude, coupled with his customary remonstrance. 
 
 Grave as the issue certainly was, it is almost 
 amusing to me to remember that, being con- 
 vinced that my failure of health was mainly 
 due to the zeal with which for several years I 
 had been burning the candle at both ends, it 
 did not occur to me for a moment to put it out 
 at the end that was apparently least necessary 
 to my material welfare. My easy work in the 
 building yard made me my living, while my 
 hard work with my books made me nothing at 
 all; but I take it to be an evidence of how the 
 itch for writing will conquer all practical con- 
 siderations, and perhaps evidence also of a cer- 
 tain natural vocation, that when I came to 
 choose between those two it was the living that 
 had to go. 
 
 It is also amusing to me to remember that 
 when I announced to Rossetti that the time had 
 come for me to cut away from business, and 
 to sink or swim in an effort to live by my pen, 
 having no literary connections at that time that 
 were safe for sixpence, it was he — he who had 
 predicted such certain success for me — that was 
 
 145
 
 MY STORY 
 
 thrown into a state of the greatest alarm. But 
 even Rossetti's alarm did not alarm me; and, 
 spurred, perhaps, by secret and increasing fear 
 of a disease from which more than one member 
 of my family had died, I left my architectural 
 employment rather abruptly, as I now see, 
 notwithstanding various kind overtures from 
 James Bromley, my employer and my friend. 
 
 On seeing that I was fully resolved to burn 
 my boats, Rossetti proposed that I should pitch 
 my tent with him in London. 
 
 " I feel greatly interested," he said, " in your 
 prosiDects and intentions, and at this writing I 
 can see no likelihood of my not remaining in 
 the mind that, in case of your coming to Lon- 
 don, your quarters should be taken up here. 
 The house is big enough for two, even if they 
 meant to be strangers to each other. You 
 would have your own rooms, and we should 
 meet just when we pleased. You have got a 
 sufficient inkling of my exceptional habits not 
 to be scared by them. It is true, at times my 
 health and sj^irits are variable, but I am sure 
 we should not l)e squabbling." 
 
 I hesitated to take advantage of such a one- 
 sided arrangement as Rossetti jiroposed, and 
 in order to overcome my reluctance he began 
 to protest that he, too, was far from well, and 
 
 146
 
 I BECOME ROSSETTPS HOUSEMATE 
 
 that my presence in his house might be helpful 
 in various ways. 
 
 " You must not be anxious on my account," 
 he said. " But any cause whatever which 
 should bring you (but not to your own injury) 
 to my door would l)e welcome in result," 
 
 The truth was, however, though I little 
 thought it, that while my illness was slight 
 and merely temporary, with youth to banish 
 it, RossettiVs was serious and fated to follow 
 him to the end. During the first half of 1881 
 he had been collecting, revising, and finally 
 printing and correcting the proofs of his sec- 
 ond volume of poems; carrying on (through 
 me) a rather difficult correspondence relating 
 to the sale of his picture, " Dante's Dream," 
 to the Corporation of Liverpool; and (through 
 Watts-Dunton) another vexatious correspond- 
 ence about the renewal of the lease of his house 
 in Chelsea and the loss of the large garden at 
 the back which had for years been his sole 
 ground for fresh air and exercise. Besides 
 these causes of worry there had been another 
 and yet more insidious enemy at work in un- 
 dermining Rossetti's health — the drug in which, 
 partly as the consequence of increasing anxi- 
 eties, he was now, unknown to his friends, ex- 
 ceeding terribly. 
 
 147
 
 MY STORY 
 
 So it came about that, when I had left Liver- 
 pool and gone up to Cumberland, resolved, if 
 I shook off my trouble, to toil early hours and 
 late and live in a cottage on oatmeal porridge 
 and barley bread rather than give up my inten- 
 tion of becoming a man of letters, Rossetti, also 
 influenced by considerations of health, came to 
 the conclusion that if I would not come to him 
 he must go to me. Scarcely had I settled in 
 my remote quarters when he wrote that he must 
 soon leave London; that he was wearied out 
 and unable to sleep ; that if he could only reach 
 my secluded vale he would breathe a purer air, 
 mentally as well as physically. 
 
 " They are now really setting about the 
 building at the back here. I do not know what 
 my plans may be. Suppose I were to ask you 
 to come to town in a fortnight from now, and 
 perhaps I returning with you for a while into 
 the country — would that be feasible to you? " 
 
 The idea of my going up to London and 
 bringing Rossetti back with me to Cumberland 
 became a settled scheme, and toward the be- 
 ginning of August he wrote: 
 
 " I will hope to see you in town on Saturday 
 next, unless an earlier day suits decidedly bet- 
 ter. We will then set sail in one boat. I am 
 rather anxious as to having become perfectly 
 
 148
 
 I BECOME EOSSETTPS HOUSEMATE 
 
 deaf on the rii»ht side of my head. Partial 
 api:)roaches to this have sometimes occurred to 
 me and passed away, so I will not be too much 
 troubled. ... I am getting cleared out the 
 rooms for your reception." 
 
 In due course I arrived in London, and was 
 received with the utmost warmth. The cheery 
 " Hulloa " greeted me again as I entered the 
 studio, and then Rossetti, feebler of step, I 
 thought, than before, led the way to the apart- 
 ments he had prepared for me. 
 
 My sitting-room was the room to the left of 
 the hall facing the green dining-room, with a 
 huge sofa and two huge chairs in an apple- 
 blossom chintz, a table, a black oak cabinet, and 
 a number of small photographs of Rossetti's 
 pictures in plain oak frames. It had been oc- 
 cupied in turn by Mr. Meredith and by Mr. 
 Swinburne in the days when they had lived 
 under the same roof with Rossetti, and now 
 it was to be mine for my permanent home in 
 London. In this way I drifted into my place 
 as Rossetti's housemate, and very soon I real- 
 ised what the position involved. 
 
 11
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 KOSSETTI AND HIS FRIENDS 
 
 ROSSETTI was now a changed man. He 
 , was distinctly less inclined to corpu- 
 lence, liis eyes were less bright, and 
 when he walked to and fro in the studio, as 
 it was his habit to do at intervals of about 
 an hour, it was with a laboured side-long mo- 
 tion that I had not previously observed. Half 
 sensible of an anxiety which I found it difficult 
 to conceal, he paused for an instant in the 
 midst of these melancholy perambulations and 
 asked how he struck me as to health. More 
 frankly than wisely, I answered, " Less well 
 than formerly." It was an unlucky remark, for 
 Rossetti's secret desire at that moment was to 
 conceal his lowering state even from himself. 
 
 He had written his " King's Tragedy " since 
 I had stayed with him before, and I think he 
 wished me to believe that the emotional strain 
 involved in the production of the poem had 
 been cliiefly to blame for his reduced condition. 
 
 150
 
 ROSSETTI AND HIS FRIENDS 
 
 Casting himself on the couch with a look of 
 exhaustion, he told me that the ballad had taken 
 a great deal out of him. " It was as though 
 my life ebbed out with it," he said. Undoubt- 
 edly the weight of his work was still upon him. 
 Even his voice seemed to have lost something 
 in quality, and to have diminished in comjDass 
 also, for when he spoke he conveyed the idea 
 of speaking as much to himself as to me. 
 
 In actual fact, however, making allowances 
 for the strain of work as well as the worry of 
 domestic disturbances, his physical retrogres- 
 sion was undoubtedly due in great part to re- 
 cent excess in the use of the pernicious drug. 
 "With that excess had come a certain moral as 
 well as bodily decline. I thought I perceived 
 that he was more than ever enslaved by the 
 painful delusions I have spoken of, more than 
 ever under the influence of intermittent waves 
 of morbid suspicion of nearly everybody with 
 whom he came in contact. 
 
 Right or wrong, this diagnosis of Rossetti's 
 case was perhaps the one thing that enabled 
 me, as a young fellow out of the fresh air of 
 the commonplace world, to do the poet some 
 good, to cheer and strengthen him, and to bring 
 for a time a little happiness into his life. Down 
 to the moment of my coming he had for years 
 
 151
 
 MY STORY 
 
 rarely been outside the doors of his great, 
 gloomy house, certainly never afoot, and only 
 in closed carriages with his friends; but on the 
 second night of my stay I marched boldly into 
 the studio, hat in hand, announced my intention 
 of taking a walk on the Chelsea Embankment, 
 and, without a qualm, asked Rossetti to accom- 
 pany me. To my amazement, he consented, 
 saying : 
 
 " Well — upon my word — really I think I 
 will," and every night for a week afterward 
 I induced him to repeat the unfamiliar experi- 
 ment. 
 
 But now I recall with emotion and some re- 
 morse the scene and circumstance of those 
 nightly walks : the Embankment, almost dark 
 with its gas lamps far apart, and generally 
 silent at our late hour except for an occasional 
 footfall on the pavement under the tall houses 
 opposite; the black river flowing noiselessly 
 behind the low wall and gurgling under the 
 bridge; and then Rossetti, in his slouch hat 
 with its broad brim pulled down low on his fore- 
 head, as if to conceal his face, lurching along 
 with a heavy, uncertain step, breathing audibly, 
 looking at nothing and hardly speaking at all. 
 From these nightly perambulations he would 
 return home utterly exhausted, and, throwing 
 
 152
 
 EOSSETTI AND HIS FRIENDS 
 
 himself on the couch, remain prostrate for 
 nearly an hour. 
 
 I seem to rememher that on one of our walks 
 along the Emhankment late at night we passed 
 in the half-darkness two figures which bore a 
 certain resemblance to our own — an old man 
 in a Scotch plaid, accompanied by a slight 
 young woman in a sort of dolman. The old 
 man was forging along sturdily with the help 
 of a stick, and the young woman appeared to 
 be making some effort to keep pace with him. 
 It was Carlyle with his niece, and I caught but 
 one glimpse of them as, out on the same errand 
 as ourselves, they went off in the other di- 
 rection. 
 
 Although it was understood between us that 
 I had come up to London with the express pur- 
 pose of taking Rossetti back with me to Cum- 
 berland, he seemed to be in no hurry for our 
 departure. Day by day and week by week, with 
 all the ingenuity of his native irresolution, he 
 devised reasons for delay, and thus a month 
 passed before we began to make a move. Mean- 
 time we commenced our career together under 
 the same roof, and to me it was both interest- 
 ing and helpful. Rossetti's habits of life were, 
 indeed, as he said, exceptional, and in some 
 respects they seemed to turn the world topsy- 
 
 153
 
 MY STOEY 
 
 turvy. I am convinced that at this time only 
 the necessity of securing a certain short inter- 
 val of daylight hj which it was possible to paint 
 l^revailed with him to get up before the middle 
 of the afternoon, Eising about noon and break- 
 fasting in his little ante-room (an enormous 
 breakfast of six eggs and half a dozen kidneys), 
 he would come down to the studio and sit stead- 
 ily at his easel for three or four hours, with 
 two or three intervals of perhaps a quarter of 
 an hour each for walking to and fro. 
 
 " I believe in doing a little work every daj', 
 and doing it as well as I can," he would say. 
 
 When the light began to fail he would come 
 to my sitting-room to see how I was " getting 
 along," an errand which invariably resulted in 
 our going back together to the studio and talk- 
 ing until dinner-time. 
 
 His talk at this period was hardly ever per- 
 sonal. I was now (by the invitation of Alder- 
 man Samuel son) preparing a course of lectures 
 to be delivered in Liverpool during the winter, 
 and our conversation was nearly always on the 
 subject of my studies. This was the prose lit- 
 erature of the latter half of the eighteenth cen- 
 tury in England (chiefly Fielding, Richardson, 
 Smollett, and De Foe), and Rossetti threw him- 
 self into my work with as much ardour as if it 
 
 154
 
 ROSSETTI AND HIS FRIENDS 
 
 had been his own. I remember that he did not 
 strike me as particularly well read in fiction, 
 but he had a faculty I had never seen in any- 
 body else — the faculty of knowing things with- 
 out taking the trouble to learn them, of seeing 
 things without looking at them, of understand- 
 ing things without thinking of them — a faculty 
 beyond and apart from talent, and having little 
 or nothing to do with industry. Remembering 
 the bright light of Rossetti's intellect, I am by 
 no means sure that of all men of genius I have 
 ever known he did not stand alone. 
 
 We dined about half-past eight, generally in 
 the studio and often without company, sat up 
 till two or three, and then went to bed with 
 volumes of " Clarissa " or " Tom Jones." 
 
 Nights of such loneliness were frequently 
 broken, however, by the society of Rossetti's 
 friends, and during the weeks of our waiting 
 I came to know one by one the few men and 
 women who remained of the poet's intimate 
 circle. There was his brother William, a staid 
 and rather silent man, at that time in the civil 
 service, growing elderly and apparently encom- 
 passed by family cares, but coming to Cheyne 
 Walk every Monday night with unfailing regu- 
 larity and a brotherly loyalty that never flagged. 
 There was Theodore Watts (Watts-Dunton), 
 
 155
 
 MY STORY 
 
 most intimate of Rossetti's friends, a short 
 man, then in the prime of life, with a great 
 head and brilliant eyes. There was Frederic 
 Shields, the painter, on the sunny side of mid- 
 dle age, enthusiastic, spontaneous, almost spas- 
 modic. There was William Bell Scott, poet and 
 painter, very emotional, very sensitive, a little 
 inclined to bitterness, a tall old man who had 
 lost his hair and wore a wig which somewhat 
 belied his face. There was Ford Madox Brown, 
 a handsome, elderly man with a long, whiten- 
 ing beard, a solid figure, with a firm step, a 
 dignified manner, and a sententious style of 
 speech. Then there was William Sharp, a 
 young fellow in his early twenties, very bright, ** 
 very winsome, very lively, very lovable, very 
 Scotch, always telling in what Rossetti called 
 " the unknown tongue " exaggerated and in- 
 credible stories which made him laugh uproari- 
 ously, but were never intended to be believed. 
 And then there was the blind poet, Philip 
 Bourke Marston, a pathetic figure, slack and 
 untidy, with large lips and pale cheeks, silent, 
 gloomy, and perhaps morbid. 
 
 These constituted the inner circle of Rosset- 
 ti's friends, and they came at varying inter- 
 vals: AVatts twice or thrice a week, Shields 
 more rarely, Brown on the occasions of his 
 
 156
 
 KOSSETTI AND HIS FRIENDS 
 
 holidays in London from his work on the fres- 
 coes in the Town Hall at Manchester, Sharp 
 and Marston now and then. Besides these, 
 there were calls from a few of the buyers of 
 Eossetti's pictures, chief among them being 
 Frederick Leyland, a remarkable man, tall and 
 stylish, almost sliow>% very clever and keen. 
 And once or twice during the weeks of our 
 waiting there were visits from the ladies of 
 Eossetti's family: his mother, a gentle, sweet- 
 faced old lady in a long sealskin coat (the treas- 
 ured gift of the poet), and his sister Christina, 
 a woman in middle life with a fine, intellectual 
 face, noticeably large and somewhat protrusive 
 eyes, a pleasant smile and a quiet manner, but 
 a power of clear-cut, incisive speech which gave 
 an astonishing effect of mental strength. Final- 
 ly, there were rare and valued visits from Mrs. 
 William Morris, the subject of many of Eos- 
 setti's pictures, no longer young but still won- 
 drously beautiful, with the grand, sad face 
 which the painter has made immortal in those 
 three-quarter-length pictures which for wealth 
 of sublime and mysterious suggestion, unaided 
 by dramatic design, are probably, as Watts- 
 Dunton says, " unique in the art of the world." 
 Naturally it could not be altogether a deso- 
 late house in which such men and women 
 
 157
 
 MY STORY 
 
 revolved at intervals around one of the most 
 extraordinary personalities of the age, and not- 
 withstanding the gradual lowering of Rossetti's 
 health, we had our cheerful hours together from 
 time to time. I recall the dinners in the studio, 
 in the midst of the easels, the game of " Limer- 
 icks " sometimes played about the table, every- 
 body taking his turn (the unhappy subject be- 
 ing usually the friend who had not turned up), 
 and the peals of laughter that rang through the 
 room as Rossetti's rhyme, aflame with satire 
 that was not always without the power to 
 scorch, fell on us like a thunderbolt. I recall, 
 too, the quieter evenings, when Rossetti and 
 Watts together, with a friendliness I can never 
 forget, talked for long hours on the literary 
 subjects that were at the moment most inter- 
 esting to me. 
 
 /'Not many echoes of the outer world came to 
 us in that closed circle of Rossetti's house, for 
 there was a kind of silent acquiescence in the 
 idea that the atfairs of everyday life were pro- 
 scribed. I cannot remember that we talked 
 politics at all, or that a daily newspaper ever 
 entered our doors. A criminal trial, with a 
 mystery attached to it, would awaken Rossetti's 
 keenest interest, and set his amazing powers of 
 deduction to work, but social movements had 
 
 158
 
 EOSSETTI AND HIS FRIENDS 
 
 small value in his eyes, and even religious agi- 
 tations rarely moved him. I remember that a 
 little of my native Puritanism took me one Sun- 
 day morning to hear Spurgeon, the great Noij- 
 conformist preacher, at the moment when lie 
 was in the fires of what was called his " dowji- 
 grade " crusade, but I tried in vain to interest 
 Rossetti in the burning propaganda. ^ 
 
 Literary doings, however, and in a less de- 
 gree artistic ones, also, commanded Rossetti's 
 attention always, for his house was a hot-bed 
 of intellectual activity, and I recall in particu- 
 lar his anxiety to know what was l>eing pub- 
 lished and discussed. A young poet, who was 
 just then attracting attention by certain pecul- 
 iarities of personal behaviour and a series of 
 cartoons in which he was caricatured by Du 
 Maurier in Punch, sent Rossetti his first book 
 of poems, a volume bound in parchment and 
 inscribed, I think, in gold. This was Oscar 
 Wilde, and I remember Rossetti's quick recog- | ,/ 
 nition of the gifts that underlay a good deal 
 of amusing affectation. 
 
 The air was at that time full of stories of 
 "^^-Tiistler's pecuniary distresses, and I remem- 
 ber, too, a string of ridiculous anecdotes which 
 Rossetti used to tell of " Jimmy's " eccentrici- 
 ties. Then there was Swinburne, a figure that 
 
 159
 
 MY STORY 
 
 seemed to be always hovering about Rossetti's 
 house (though during my time his body was 
 never present there), so constantly was he dis- 
 cussed either bj' Watts, by Rossetti, or by my- 
 self. But of other and still more intimate 
 friends of earlier life — Ruskin, Morris, Ilolman 
 Hunt, and Burne-Jones — nothing was seen and 
 hardly anything was said, and of this fact I 
 can offer no explanation — none, at least, except 
 by side-light derived from Rossetti's great love 
 and frequent repetition of Coleridge's " Work 
 Without Hope," with its — 
 
 Sloth jaundiced all, and from my graspless hand 
 Drop friendship's precious pearls like hour-glass sand. 
 
 Two events of much importance during our 
 month in London might have been expected to 
 awaken Rossetti to the keenest interest in life. 
 After lengthy negotiations, measureless corre- 
 spondence, countless interviews, and the exer- 
 cise of some tact and diplomacy to meet and 
 defeat the obstacles which Rossetti's pride or 
 personal antagonism had been constantly put- 
 ting in the way, I succeeded in selling the great 
 " Dante's Dream " to Liverpool. The picture 
 was exhibited immediately, and at first there 
 was a certain amount of criticism in the local 
 newspapers, a certain carping at the Corpora- 
 
 160
 
 ROSSETTI AND HIS FRIENDS 
 
 tion for the peculiarities of its purchase, but 
 Rossetti heard nothing of that. All he heard 
 were the rapturous i)raises of the few who 
 subscribed to Noel Paton's opinion that his 
 " Dante " was one of the half dozen great pic- 
 tures of the world, and all he knew besides was 
 that one morning I took to his bedroom a 
 cheque for the fifteen hundred guineas that 
 were the price paid by Liverpool. 
 
 His second volume of poems, also, " Ballads 
 and Sonnets," was published during our weeks 
 of waiting, and if, once again, there was at 
 first a measure of adverse criticism, Rossetti, 
 in his failing health, was allowed to know noth- 
 ing about that, either. All he saw in the name 
 of criticism was a noble and brilliant apprecia- 
 tion by Watts-Dimton (Athenceum), which, as 
 I remember, brought the tears to his eyes when 
 he read it ; a fine analysis by Professor Dowden 
 (Academy), and an article, all affection and 
 emotion, by myself. Beyond this, and the gen- 
 eral impression we all conveyed to him that his 
 book was having a magnificent reception, Ros- 
 setti had no other knowledge of the fate of 
 his new book than came to him in the substan- 
 tial form of his publishers' cheques. 
 
 Rossetti might have been expected to find joy 
 in the fact that in one month, by the simultane- 
 
 161
 
 MY STORY 
 
 ous production of two masterpieces, he had 
 again become illustrious in two arts, but it 
 would wrong the truth to say that he gave any 
 particular sign of satisfaction, I cannot recall 
 that he showed a real interest in the reception 
 of his picture, or that the fate of his new book 
 * gave him a moment's apparent uneasiness. 
 
 If I had not heard of the feverish watchful- 
 ness with which he had followed the fortunes 
 of his earlier volume, I should have concluded 
 that the absence of anxiety about his second 
 book was due to a calm reliance on its strength. 
 But the intensity of Rossetti's sensitiveness to 
 any breath of criticism was as great as ever, 
 and it is more than probable that the same 
 shrinking from public observation which had 
 made him a hermit made him shut out of his 
 consciousness any influence that might possi- 
 bly bring him pain. 
 
 I remember that one morning, not long after 
 the publication of the book, coming unexpect- 
 edly into my sitting-room and seeing on the 
 table a copy of a well-known weekly journal 
 lying open at a page in which some purblind 
 person, reviewing the " Ballads," began, " It is 
 difficult to determine exactly what position the 
 author of these poems fills in the category of 
 secondary poets," Rossetti fired up at me for 
 
 162
 
 ROSSETTI AND HIS FRIENDS 
 
 " shunting his enemies into his house," and then 
 went off to his studio in a towering rage. The 
 unlucky article was no doubt foolish enough as 
 criticism in a leading place of a book which 
 gave proof of one of the great poets of the 
 century, but I thought it was necessary to look 
 elsewhere than to the natural irritability of the 
 poetic- nature for the reason of Rossetti's want 
 of manliness in meeting with one more evidence 
 of the perpetual jiresence of the egregious ass. 
 
 Unfortunately, it was not necessary to look 
 far. Day by day, or night by night, prompted 
 perhaps by the desire to suppress the nervous- 
 ness created by his domestic worries, the sale 
 of his pictures, and the publication of his book, 
 Rossetti was giving way more and more to in- 
 dulgence in his accursed drug, and not all our 
 efforts to keep painful facts from his knowl- 
 edge, nor yet our innocent scheming to fill his 
 gloomy house with sunshine, availed to bring 
 any real happiness into his life. 
 
 I remember that one day his brother Will- 
 iam's wife (a daughter of Madox Brown) sent 
 her children to ChejTie Walk on a visit to their 
 uncle, thinking, no doubt, to brighten him up 
 by their cheerful presence; but beyond a mo- 
 mentary welcome from the poet as he sat in 
 the studio, and a constrained greeting from the 
 
 163
 
 MY STORY 
 
 little ones, nothing came of the innocent arti- 
 fice, and Rossetti heard no more of them than 
 their happy laughter as they romped through 
 the rest of the house. 
 
 x\ugust had slid into September while we 
 waited in London without obvious purpose, and 
 it was now plainly apparent to all Rossetti's 
 friends that out of regard both to the condition 
 of his health and the time of the year, he must 
 go back to Cumberland with me immediately 
 if he was to go at all. Once out of this atmos- 
 phere of gloom, of anxiety, and of irritation, 
 we thought his spirits would revive and his 
 physical weakness disappear. 
 
 Infinite were the efforts that had to be made, 
 and countless the precautions that had to be 
 taken, before Rossetti could l)e induced to set 
 out; but at length, after a farewell visit to 
 Torrington Square, to say good-bye to his 
 mother and sister, we found ourselves — we two 
 and the nurse — at 9 p.m., one evening in Sep- 
 tember, at Euston Station, sitting behind the 
 drawn blinds of a special saloon carriage that 
 was labelled for Keswick, and packed with as 
 many baskets and bags, as many books and 
 artist's trappings, as would have lasted for an 
 absence of a year.
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 FIRST WEEKS IN THE VALE OF ST. JOHN 
 
 TO paint a portrait of Rossetti as he 
 was when I lived with him in the last 
 year of his life is to present a very 
 complex personality, having many conflicting 
 impulses, many contradictory manifestations; 
 and if, by any revelation of truth, I can ac- 
 count for the want of harmony in the poet's 
 character, and in the impressions it made upon 
 observers, I shall perhaps do something to re- 
 cover the real Rossetti from the misrepresenta- 
 tions of the detractors who hated him and of 
 the admirers who did not understand him. 
 
 I have not concealed my conviction that the 
 less noble side of Rossetti came of prolonged] 
 indulgence in a pernicious drug, and once again 
 I cannot omit an illustration of the corrupting 
 influence of his unfortunate habit. Our journey 
 to Cumberland was long and tiresome. The 
 man who could not sleep in a muffled bedroom 
 fronting an open garden was hardly likely to 
 13 165
 
 MY STOKY 
 
 sleep in a rumblins^ and jolting railway train. 
 But toward midnight I gave Rossetti his usual 
 dose and went to sleep. 
 
 I awoke when the train stopped at Penrith, 
 and the dawn was breaking, but Eossetti was 
 still lying where I had left him. Something 
 suggested that I should look in my handliag, 
 and to my distress I discovered that one of the 
 two bottles of chloral had gone. 
 
 It was six o'clock when we reached the little 
 wayside station (Threlkeld) that was the end 
 of our journey, and there we got into a car- 
 riage which was to drive us through tho Vale 
 of St. John to the Legberthwaite end of it. The 
 morning was calm ; the mountains looked grand 
 and nol)le with the mists floating over their 
 crowns; nothing could be heard but the call 
 of awakening cattle, the rumble of the cata- 
 racts that were far away, and the surge of the 
 rivers that were near. Rossetti was all but 
 indifferent to our surroundings, or displayed 
 only such fitful interest in them as must have 
 been affected out of kindly desire to please me. 
 He said the chloral I had given him on the 
 journey was in his eyes, so that he could not 
 rightly see, and as soon as we reached the house 
 that was to be our home, he declared his inten- 
 tion of going to bed, 
 
 166
 
 FIRST WEEKS IN VALE OF ST. JOHN 
 
 I saw him to his room and then left him 
 immediately, perceiving he was anxious to 
 dismiss me; but, returning a moment after- 
 ward with some urgent message, I opened his 
 door without knocking and came suddenly 
 upon him in the act of drinking the contents 
 of the bottle of chloral I had missed from 
 the bag. / 
 
 It would be impossible for me, even now at 
 this distance of time, to convey any sense of 
 the crushing humiliation of this incident, of the 
 abject degradation whidi the habit of chloral 
 had brought about in an ingenuous, frank, and 
 noble nature. It was not then, however, that 
 Rossetti himself had any consciousness of this. 
 Indeed, I thought there was even something 
 almost cruel in the laugh with which he received 
 my nervous protest; but afterward, when the 
 effects of the drug were gone and he realised 
 the pain he had caused, the fear he had cre- 
 ated, the hours I had walked on tiptoe in the 
 corridor outside his door, listening for the 
 sound of his breathing, in terror lest it should 
 stop, the true man showed himself, the real 
 Eossetti, and he said (as he did again and again 
 on other occasions) : 
 
 " I wish you were really my son, for, though 
 I should have no right to treat you so, I should 
 
 167
 
 MY STORY 
 
 at least have some reason to expect your for- 
 giveness." 
 
 Although he had consumed since we left Lon- 
 don a quantity of chloral that would have been 
 sufficient to destroy, perhaps, all the other 
 members of our little household put together, 
 Eossetti awoke fresh and in good spirits toward 
 the middle of the afternoon, breakfasted heart- 
 ily, and then took a turn about the house which 
 was intended to be our home for at least a 
 couple of months to come. 
 
 It was a modest place called Fisher Ghyll, 
 having a guest house in front consisting of 
 three sitting-rooms and as many bedrooms, and 
 a group of farm buildings at the back. Stand- 
 ing in what may be called the estuary of the 
 valley, where the Vale of St. John empties into 
 the dale of Thirlmere, it had the purple heights 
 of Blencathra to the north, the scraggy rocks 
 of the Dunmail Raise to the south, the Styx 
 Pass and the brant sides of Helvellyn beside it, 
 and before it the wooded slopes of Golden 
 Howe, the climbing road to Keswick and the 
 pathway of the setting sun. Not a sound about 
 the house except the occasional voice of a child 
 or bark of a dog, the plash of falling water, the 
 bleating of sheep, the echo of the axe of the 
 woodman who was thinning the neighbouring 
 
 168
 
 FIRST WEEKS IN VALE OF ST. JOHN 
 
 plantation, and the hum of the mail-coach that 
 passed morning and evening from the little 
 market town five miles away. 
 
 Rossetti was delighted. Here, at least, he 
 might bury the memory of a hundred " bogies " 
 that had vexed him; here, in this exhilarating 
 air, he might recover the health he had lost iu 
 the close atmosphere of his studio in London, 
 and here, too, amidst the vivid scenery, so won- 
 derfully awakening to the imagination, so full 
 of poetic appeal and ghostly legend, he might 
 turn again to the romantic ballad which he had 
 expected to write among such surroundings. 
 
 Next day he was exceptionally well, and as- 
 toimded me by the proposal that we should 
 ascend Golden Howe together — the little moun- 
 tain of perhaps a thousand feet that stands at 
 the head of Thirlmere. With never a hope on 
 my part of reaching the top, we set out for that 
 purpose, but weak as he had been a few days 
 before, Rossetti actually accomplished the task 
 he proposed for himself, going up slowly, little 
 by little, through the ferns and the fir-trees, 
 with their rabbits and red-tailed squirrels, and 
 then sitting for a long hour on the summit. It 
 was a marvellous picture that lay about us, with 
 the lake below and the undulating mountain 
 tops above, and Rossetti was much impressed. 
 
 169
 
 MY STORY 
 
 " I'm not one of those who care about scenery, 
 l)ut this is wonderful and the colour is wonder- 
 ful," he said. 
 
 His spirits were high, and when on beginning 
 our descent he lost his footing and slithered 
 some distance through the bracken before I 
 could stop him, he only laughed and said : 
 
 " Don't be afraid. I always go up on my 
 feet, and come down on a broader basis." 
 
 He painted a little during those first quiet 
 days in Cumberland, not having touched a brush 
 for some time before we left London, and I 
 found it a pleasure to watch a picture growing 
 under his masterly hand from the first warm 
 ground that was made to cover the canvas be- 
 fore his subject was begun to the last indefina- 
 ble change in one of his idealised women's faces, 
 cold in their loveliness, unsubstantial in their 
 passion, tainted with the melancholy that clings 
 to the purest beauty. Naturally he had no 
 models, and speaking of that drawback, he said: 
 
 " It's wonderful what a bit of nature will do 
 for you when you can get it in " ; but he also 
 said something about style Ijeing injured by a 
 slavish submission to fact. 
 
 I remember that I asked him what was the 
 reason he had never painted the great dramatic 
 compositions he had designed in earlier years — 
 
 170
 
 FIRST WEEKS IN VALE OF ST. JOHN 
 
 the " Hamlet," the " Cassandra," and, above all, 
 the " Mary Magdalene at the Door of Simon 
 the Pharisee " — and he answered with a laugh : 
 
 " Bread and butter, my l3oy — that was the 
 reason. I had to paint what I could sell. But 
 I'll tell j^ou something," he added quickly. " I 
 like best to paint a picture that shall boil the 
 pot and yet be no pot-boiler." 
 
 The days were already short, the nights were 
 long. Rossetti could not read with ease by 
 lamplight or sleep until the small hours of the 
 morning, and so it came about that during our 
 first cheerful weeks in Cumberland he threw 
 himself with great ardour into my own occupa- 
 tions. I was still preparing my lectures on 
 prose literature, and to fortify myself for my 
 work I was reading the masterpieces over 
 again. Seeing this, Rossetti suggested that I 
 should read them aloud, and I did so. 
 
 Many an evening we passed in this way. It 
 lives in my memory both as a sweet and a sad 
 experience. Behind our little farm house was 
 the lowest pool of a ghyll, and the roar of the 
 falling waters could be heard from within. On 
 the farther side of the vale there were black 
 crags where ravens lived, and in the unseen 
 bed of the dale between lay the dark waters 
 of Thirlmere. The surroundings were impres- 
 
 171
 
 MY STORY 
 
 sive enough to eye and ear in the daylight, but 
 when night came, and the himps were lit and 
 the curtains were drawn, and darkness covered 
 everything outside, they were awesome and 
 grim. 
 
 I remember those evenings with gratitude 
 and some pain. The little oblong sitting-room, 
 the dull thud of the waterfall like distant thun- 
 der overhead, the crackle of the wood fire, my- 
 self reading aloud, and Rossetti, in his long sack 
 coat, his hands thrust deep in his upright pock- 
 ets, walking with his heavy and uncertain step 
 to and fro, to and fro, laughing sometimes his 
 big, deep laugh, and sometimes sitting down to 
 wipe his moist spectacles and clear his dim 
 eyes. Not rarely the dead white gleams of the 
 early dawn before the coming of the sun met 
 the yellow light of our candles as we passed 
 on the staircase, going to bed, a little window 
 that looked uj) to the mountains, and over them 
 to the east. 
 
 Perhaps it was not all pleasure even, so far 
 as I was concerned, but certainly it was all 
 profit. The novels we read were " Tom Jones," 
 in four volumes, and " Clarissa," in its original 
 eight, one or two of Smollett's and some of 
 Scott's. Rossetti had not, I think, been a great 
 reader of English fiction (French he knew bet- 
 
 172
 
 FIRST WEEKS IN VALE OF ST. JOHN 
 
 ter), but bis critical judgment on novels was in 
 some respects tbe surest and soundest I have 
 ever known. Notbing escaped bim. His alert 
 mind seized upon everytbing. He bad never 
 before, I tliink, given any tbougbt to fiction as 
 an art, but bis intellect played over it like a 
 brigbt ligbt. It amazes me now, after twenty 
 years' close study of tbe metbods of story-tell- 
 ing, to recall tbe general principles wbicb be 
 seemed to formulate out of tbe back of bis bead 
 for tbe defence of bis swift verdicts. 
 
 " Now, wby I " I would say, wben tbe art of 
 tbe novelist seemed to me to fail in imaginative 
 grip. 
 
 " Because so-and-so must bappen," Rossetti 
 would answer. 
 
 He was always rigbt. He grasped witb mas- 
 terly strengtb tbe operation of tbe two funda- 
 mental factors in tbe novelist's art — tbe sym- 
 pathy and tbe " tragic miscbief ." If tbese were 
 not working well, be knew by tbe end of tbe 
 first cbapters tbat, bowever fine in observation 
 or racy in bumour or true in patbos, tbe work 
 as an organism must fail. 
 
 It was an education in itself to sbarpen one's 
 wits on sucb a grindstone, to clarify one's 
 tbougbts in sucb a stream, to strengtben one's 
 imagination by contact with a mind tbat was 
 
 173
 
 MY STORY 
 
 of " ima£>-mation all compact " ; but how did 
 Eossetti, who had spent his energies on two 
 other arts, know the things that are hidden for 
 all time from nine-tenths of the professional 
 guides to fiction? What explanation is possi- 
 ble except the one I have given before, that 
 Eossetti was the one man I ever met who gave 
 me a sense of the presence of a gift that is 
 above and apart from talent — in a word, genius? 
 
 Down to that time, when I was beginning to 
 live in the outer courts of literature as a lec- 
 turer and as an occasional reviewer on the two 
 literary journals, the Athenmum and the Acad- 
 emy, it had never occurred to me that I might 
 write a novel. But I began to think of it then 
 as a remote possibility, and the immediate sur- 
 roundings of our daily life brought back recol- 
 lections of certain Cumbrian legends. I told 
 one of the stories to Eossetti, and he was im- 
 pressed by it; yet he strongly advised me not 
 to tackle it, because he saw no way of getting 
 sympathy into it on any side. 
 
 " But why not try your hand at a Manx 
 story? " he said, remembering my Manx origin. 
 " The Bard of Manxland — it's worth while to 
 be that." 
 
 I thought so, too, and hence Eossetti was in 
 some sort the foster-father of the novels with 
 
 174
 
 FIRST WEEKS IN VALE OF ST. JOHN 
 
 which, perhaps, more than any other efforts of 
 mine, my name has since been associated. 
 
 Rossetti was not one of the people who live 
 over and over again the lives they lived in their 
 youth, l)iit during those first cheerful weeks in 
 Cumberland, prompted thereto by my inquiries, 
 he talked a good deal in an easy and familiar 
 way about the men and women he had known 
 in earlier years. They pass before me now, as 
 they appeared in Rossetti's graphic sketches, 
 these people of the world he used to live in, 
 some of them grim and lugubrious forms, 
 slightly distorted by caricature, others rather 
 rakish young figures out of the borderland of 
 a somewhat boisterous Bohemia. 
 
 Not to charge Rossetti too strictly with re- 
 sponsibility for what comes back to me across 
 the space of so many years, I will give a sum- 
 mary of his reminiscences. Thus he talked of 
 George Eliot, then lately dead, with her longj 
 weird, horsey face — a good woman, modest, re- 
 tiring, and amial)le to a fault when the outer 
 crust of reticence had been broken through. 
 Then of her companion, Lewes, with his shaggy 
 eyebrows, and of how, at George Eliot's re- 
 quest, he had sent a photograph of his " Ham- 
 let " when Lewes, who was a kind of amateur 
 actor, was about to play the part. 
 
 175
 
 MY STORY 
 
 Then he talked of Mrs. Carl vie (how much he 
 knew of her I cannot remember) as a clever but 
 rather bitter little woman with the one redeem- 
 ing quality of unostentatious charity. " The 
 poor of Chelsea alwaj^s spoke well of her," he 
 said. Then of Carlyle himself, with a tinge of 
 personal dislike, telling how Bell Scott sent the 
 Seer his first volume, " Poems of a Painter," a 
 title which, being in florid lettering of the poet's 
 engraving, was mistaken for " Poems of a 
 Printer," and called forth a letter beginning, 
 " If a printer has anything to say, why in the 
 name of heaven doesn't he say it, and not 
 sing it ? " 
 
 Then of Scott walking with Carlyle on the 
 Chelsea Embankment, and pouring out his soul 
 in a rhapsody on Shelley, until the grim philos- 
 opher stopped him and said, " Yon man Shelley 
 was just a scoundrel, and ought to have been 
 hanged," a crushing blow which was atoned for 
 a few hours afterward when there came as a 
 present to Scott's house from Carlyle's the bust 
 of Shelley which had been made by Mrs. Shelley 
 and given to Leigh JTunt. Finally, of Carlyle 
 walking with William Allingham in the neigh- 
 bourhood of the Kensington Museum, and an- 
 nouncing his intention of writing a life of 
 Michael Angelo, and then adding, by way of 
 
 176
 
 FIRST WEEKS IN VALE OF ST. JOHN 
 
 remonstrance against his companion's quick- 
 ening interest, " But, mind ye, I'll no say much 
 about his art." 
 
 He talked of Browning, too, claiming to be 
 one of the poet's first admirers, and describing 
 him as he used to be — spruce, almost dapper, 
 wearing gloves that seemed to have grown on 
 his shapely hands, more than hinting that per- 
 haps he gave himself up too much to society, 
 and saying, " Dull dogs for the most part, those 
 fashionable folk, yet they treat a man of genius 
 as if he were a superior flunkey." He talked 
 of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, too, with re- 
 spect amounting almost to reverence. 
 
 Of Tennyson, also, he talked with warmth, 
 imitating the sonorous tones of his glorious 
 voice, but betraying a certain soreness at the 
 recollection that, to avoid an opinion on the 
 " Poems," the Laureate had merely acknowl- 
 edged the arrival of the book. Then he told a 
 story of Longfellow, " the good old bard " ; how 
 the poet had called on him during his visit to 
 England and been courteous and kind in the 
 last degree, but having fallen into the error of 
 thinking that Rossetti the painter and Rossett 
 the poet were different men, he had said, on 
 leaving the house : 
 
 " I have been very glad to meet you, Mr. 
 
 177 
 
 1
 
 MY STORY 
 
 Eossetti, and should like to have met your 
 brother also. Pray tell him how much I ad- 
 mire his beautiful poem, ' The Blessed Damo- 
 zeL' " 
 
 Rossetti's talk about Ruskin was, I thought, 
 curiously contradictory in tone and feeling, be- 
 ing sometimes tender, generous, highly appre- 
 ciative, and warmly affectionate, and sometimes 
 grudging and even hostile, as when, in reply 
 to something I had said about a difference with 
 Madox Brown on the subject of Ruskin's eco- 
 nomic propaganda, he said: 
 
 " Brown is one of the most naturally and 
 genially gifted talkers I know, but that mention 
 of yours of the biggest of all big R's was just 
 the unluckiest thing you could have said. And 
 I myself think that the talk from and about that 
 particular Capital Letter is already enough for 
 several universes, only don't say I said so, as 
 he is an old acquaintance." 
 
 If, after so many years, both Rossetti and 
 Ruskin being dead, I disregard the warning of 
 these last words, it is only to say that always 
 in the talk of the one about the other there was 
 this note of desire to avoid the appearance of 
 disloyalty to a friend of former years who was 
 a friend no longer. I should have said that 
 there had been a short period in which Ruskin 
 
 178
 
 RUSKIN AND ROSSETTI.

 
 FIRST WEEKS IN VALE OF ST. JOHN 
 
 and Rossetti had been on terms of the closest 
 intimacy, and that an estrangement had fol- 
 lowed that was due merely to that gradual 
 asundering which is more fatal to friendship 
 than the most violent quarrel. The period of 
 intimacy had apparently covered the most 
 tragic moment of Ruskin's life, for I recall a 
 story which Rossetti told of the dark days of 
 his friend's marriage and separation. 
 
 Ruskin and his wife had gone up, I think, to 
 Scotland, and there Millais had joined them 
 with the object of painting a picture. The pic- 
 ture represented the author standing at the foot 
 of a waterfall, and when it was finished it be- 
 came Ruskin's property, and he took it back 
 with him to London. Then the storm cloud 
 burst which separated Ruskin from his wife 
 and gave her to his friend, whereupon Ruskin's 
 father, thinking he saw in the portrait of his 
 son the first indications of a malign intent, 
 wished to put his penknife through the picture. 
 But Ruskin himself, whose love of a work of 
 art was greater than his hatred of the artist, 
 smuggled the incriminating canvas into a cal) 
 and carried it off to Rossetti's studio, begging 
 that it should be hidden awav until his father's 
 anger had cooled. 
 
 Brighter and better, however, because more 
 
 179
 
 MY STORY 
 
 easy and familiar, than Rossetti's talk of the 
 people who had stood a little apart from him 
 were his sketches of his own particular circle 
 in the days of their beginnings in art and lit- 
 erature, when all the world was young: of 
 Swinburne, with his small body and great head, 
 full of modern revolutionary fire and the cour- 
 age of an ancient morality whereof his personal 
 conduct was as innocent as a child's ; of Burne- 
 Jones, with his delicate face, and eyes that were 
 alight with dreams, a strong soul in a frail 
 body, a sword too keen for the scabbard; of 
 Morris (" Topsy," he called him), with his 
 rather rugged Scandinavian personality, writ- 
 ing some of the " Earthly Paradise," I think, 
 at ChejTie Walk, and declaiming it aloud from 
 a balcony at the back, to the consternation of 
 the neighbours who saw a shock-headed man 
 shouting at nothing in the garden below; of 
 Millais, something of a " swell " ; of Holman 
 Hunt, more humbly bom, with himself in a 
 social condition somewhere between; of Madox 
 Brown, with his sense of personal dignity and 
 his respect for the proprieties, sometimes out- 
 raged by Rossetti's utter disregard of appear- 
 ances, as when, out together in Ilolbom, Ros- 
 setti stopped at a potato stall on the pavement, 
 bought two pennyworth of roasted potatoes, 
 
 180
 
 FIRST WEEKS IN VALE OF ST. JOHN 
 
 and ate them as lie walked along, while Brown, 
 in high dudgeon, walked parallel with him on 
 the other side of the street. 
 
 Then there were Rossetti's sketches of the 
 bright days at Oxford, when the group of young 
 artists were painting the frescoes in the Union 
 debating room, being always in want of female 
 models and daily discovering " stunners." And 
 finally, there were faint glimpses of almost 
 fatal flirtations on that borderland of a rather 
 boisterous Bohemia when Rossetti, in his tu- 
 multuous youth, walking in Vauxhall gardens, 
 came upon a bouncing girl fresh from the coun- 
 try, with a great mass of the red hair he loved 
 to paint, cracking nuts with her white teeth and 
 throwing the shells at him. 
 
 Pale phantoms of the figures that floated 
 through Rossetti's stories of these earlier years, 
 how they rise around me! And if I present 
 them now, it is as witnesses to the cheerful 
 mood of the poet during those first weeks in 
 Cumberland rather than as wraiths to be chal- 
 lenged too literally after moving in my mem- 
 ory through so many years. 
 
 The change of air and scene had apparently 
 
 made the most astonishing improvement in 
 
 Rossetti's health, and we began to encourage 
 
 hopes of a complete recovery. It was a splen- 
 
 13 181
 
 MY STORY 
 
 did dream, full of great possibilities for the 
 future. After all, lie was only fifty-three years 
 of age, and he had a world of work in his heart 
 and brain which he had hardly attempted to 
 realise. Thus we nourished our glorious hopes, 
 and I think there were moments when even 
 Eossetti himself appeared to share them.
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 
 LAST WEEKS IN THE VALE OF ST. JOHN 
 
 OUR dream was not to be realised. After 
 a while Rossetti's physical vigour be- 
 came sensibly less, and his spirits de- 
 clined rapidly. He painted very little, and 
 made no attempt to write the ballad which he 
 had Ȥpoken of as likely to grow in the midst 
 of our romantic surroundings. I think now that 
 perhaps these surroundings themselves had 
 some effect in lowering the condition of his 
 health. Exhilarating and inspiring as the 
 scenery of the Lake country certainly is in 
 the cheerful days of summer, it is depressing 
 enough when the leaves fall and the bracken 
 withers and the deepening autumn drives long 
 dun-coloured clouds across the vallej^s, cutting 
 off the mountain tops and deadening the air 
 as with the daily march of noiseless thunder- 
 storms. And Rossetti seemed to feel the effect of 
 the dying year in a coimtry which gives one the 
 sense of being shut in by mountain and cloud. 
 
 183
 
 MY STORY 
 
 Once a week I had to leave him for a day 
 and a lialf to fulfil my lecturing engagement 
 in Liverpool, and the increasing earnestness 
 with which the reticent Cumbrian dalesman, 
 who always met me on my return with a dog- 
 cart at the station, used to say, " You'll be wel- 
 come back, sir," told me but too plainly that 
 Rossetti's health and spirits were sinking fast. 
 
 Week after week I brought back great stories 
 of how the world was ringing with his praises, 
 but save for a momentary emotion, betraying 
 itself in a certain tremor of the voice as he 
 said, " That's good, very good," I saw no sign 
 of real interest in his growing fame, certainly 
 no heartening and uplifting effect produced 
 by it. 
 
 I tried in vain to interest him in the literary 
 associations of the district. It was perhaps 
 natural that Grasmere could not draw him, 
 even though he could think of Dove Cottage 
 not only in connection with Wordsworth (whom 
 he did not worship), but also with De Quincey 
 and that Eastern opium-eater who perhaps 
 wandered out of a distempered imagination 
 into that secluded dale. I could not get him to 
 go with me to Keswick, only five miles away, 
 to look at Greta Hall, sacred to the memory of 
 Southey's stainless life, or at the cottage on 
 
 184
 
 LAST WEEKS IN VALE OF ST. JOHN 
 
 Castlerigg, where Shelley ("as mad there as 
 anywhere else, madder he could not be ") strug- 
 gled with the burglars and chased the ghosts, 
 and not even Borrowdale, scene of the second 
 part of " Christabel," could draw him to the 
 cliffs that had been rent asunder in the passage 
 he liked the best of the poet he admired the 
 most. 
 
 Even his daily walks became shorter day by 
 day, sometimes as far as to the " Nag's Head," 
 on the south or the mouth of the valley road 
 on the north, but generally no more than a 
 few hundred yards along the high-road to right 
 or left, ending too frequently in a long rest on 
 the grass, however damp from dew or rain. 
 
 If Rossetti's days were now cheerless and 
 heavy, what shall I say of the nights? At that 
 time of the year the night closed in as early 
 as seven o'clock, and then in that little house 
 ■ among the solitary hills his disconsolate spirit 
 would sometimes sink beyond solace into irre- 
 claimable depths of depression. Night after 
 night we sat up imtil eleven, twelve, one, and 
 two o'clock, watching the long hours go by with 
 heavy steps, waiting, waiting, waiting for the 
 time at which he could take his first draught 
 of chloral, drop back on to his pillow, and 
 snatch three or four hours of dreamless sleep. 
 
 185
 
 l\Y STORY 
 
 In order to break the monotony of such 
 nights, Rossetti would sometimes recite. His 
 memory was marvellous, and he could remem- 
 ber every line of his own two volumes, as well 
 as long passages from other poets. Thus, with 
 failing voice, he would again and again at- 
 tempt, at my request, his great " Cloud Con- 
 fines," or stanzas from " The King's Trag- 
 edy," and repeatedly, also, Poe's " Ulalume " 
 and " Raven." Even yet I can hear the deep 
 boom of his barytone, rolling out like an or- 
 gan that seemed to shake the walls of the 
 little room — 
 
 " 'Twas then the moon sailed clear of the rack 
 On high in her hollow dome." 
 
 And I can hear, too, the panting breath that 
 too often followed on his exertions as he 
 stopped in his peram])ulations to and fro and 
 sank into a chair. 
 
 It was ])erhaps natural enough that in this 
 condition of health and spirits, amid surround- 
 ings which I now see were entirely wrong for 
 him, though I had been chiefly responsible for 
 them, the craving for the chloral should in- 
 crease. Not soon shall I forget some of my 
 experiences in that relation, and if I tell the 
 story of one of them, and for the last time 
 
 186
 
 LAST WEEKS IN VALE OF ST. JOHN 
 
 lay bare the infirmity (already well known and 
 much misunderstood) of the great man who 
 was my intimate friend, it shall only be to show 
 how the noblest nature may be corrupted, the 
 largest soul made small by indulgence in a 
 damnable drug. 
 
 I have said that on the night I first slept at 
 Cheyne Walk, Rossetti, coming into my room 
 at the last moment before going to bed, told me 
 that he had just taken sixty grains of chloral, 
 that in four hours he would take sixty more, 
 and four later yet another sixty. Wliether 
 there was a conscious exaggeration or whether 
 (being incapable of affectation or untruthful- 
 ness) he was deceived by his doctors for the 
 good purpose of operating to advantage on his 
 all-potent imagination, I do not know, but I do 
 know that when the chloral came under my own 
 control I was strictly warned that one bottle at 
 one dose was all that it was necessary or safe 
 for Rossetti to take. This single bottle (by 
 Dr. Marshall's advice) I gave him on going 
 to bed, and we made the hour of retiring as 
 late as possible so that when he awoke it might 
 be dav. 
 
 But the power of the dose was now decreas- 
 ing rapidly, and hence it came to pass that 
 toward four o'clock, in the leaden light of early 
 
 187
 
 MY STORY 
 
 dawn, Eossetti would come to my room and 
 beg for more. Let those who never knew Ros- 
 setti censure me, if they think well, for yielding 
 at last to his pathetic importunities. The low, 
 pleading voice, the note of pain, the awful sense 
 of a body craving rest and a brain praying for 
 unconsciousness — they are with me even yet in 
 my memories of the man sitting on the side 
 of my bed and asking for my pity and my for- 
 giveness. 
 
 These were among the moments when Ros- 
 setti was utterly irresistible, but to compromise 
 with my conscience I would give him half a 
 bottle more and he would go off with an ap- 
 pearance of content. The result was disastrous 
 enough, but in a way that might have been least 
 expected. 
 
 I was already painfully aware of the corrod- 
 ing influence of the drug on Rossetti's better 
 nature, and one morning, as I took out of its 
 hiding-place the key that was to open the glass 
 doors of the little cabinet which contained the 
 chloral, I caught a look in his eyes which seemed 
 to say that in future he would find it for him- 
 self. To meet the contingency, and at the same 
 time to test a theory which I had begun to 
 cherish, that the drug was only necessary to 
 Rossetti because he believed it to be so, I de- 
 
 188
 
 LAST WEEKS IN VALE OP ST. JOHN 
 
 cided to try an experiment, and so defeat by 
 a trick the trick I expected. 
 
 The solution of chloral was hardly distin- 
 guishable at any time from pure water, and 
 certainly not at all in the dead white light of 
 dawn, so, with the connivance of the nurse, I. 
 opened a bottle, emptied it of the drug, filled 
 it afresh with water, corked and covered it 
 again with its parchment cap tied about with 
 its collar of red string, j^laced it in the cabinet, 
 and then awaited results. 
 
 Next morning I awoke of myself exactly at 
 the hour at which Rossetti had been accus- 
 tomed to awaken me, and I heard him coming 
 as noiselessly as he could down the corridor 
 toward my room. He opened the door, leaned 
 over me to satisfy himself that I was asleep, 
 fumbled for and found the key to the cabinet, 
 opened it, took away the bottle I had left ready 
 for him, and then crept back to bed. After 
 some ten minutes or more I rose and went to 
 his room to see what had occurred, and there, 
 sure enough, lay Rossetti, sleeping soundly, and 
 my bottle of water standing empty on the table 
 by his side. 
 
 In my ignorance, I imagined I had solved 
 the problem of Rossetti' s insomnia (of nearly 
 all insomnia), and found the remedy for half 
 
 189
 
 MY STORY 
 
 the troubles of his troiil:)led life. He was in- 
 deed " of imagination all compact," and if we 
 could only continue to make him think he was 
 consuming chloral while he was really drinking 
 water, we should in good time conquer his bane- 
 ful habit altogether. 
 
 What the result might have been of any con- 
 sistent attempt to put my theory into practice 
 it is not possible for me to say, for fate was 
 stronger than good intentions and my experi- 
 ment w^as not to be repeated. While I was out 
 walking the next morning the nurse told the 
 whole story to Rossetti in a well-meant but 
 foolish attempt to triumph over his melancholy, 
 and then more mischief was done than the mis- 
 chief we had tried to undo. 
 
 Besides the crushing humiliation that came 
 to him with the consciousness of the lowering 
 of his moral nature from the use of the drug, 
 and of our being so obviously aware of it, there 
 was the fact that from that day forward he 
 believed we were always deceiving him, and 
 that what we gave him for chloral was mainly 
 water. As if to establish my theory that Eos- 
 setti's body answered entirely to the mood of 
 his mind, sleep from that day forward refused 
 to come to him at all after the single bottle 
 which the doctor had prescribed. Then the dose 
 
 190
 
 LAST WEEKS IN VALE OF ST. JOHN 
 
 had, of necessity, to be increased; and when, 
 in alarm at the consequences, I refused to go 
 farther, Rossetti resorted to other aids to in- 
 duce sleep that chloral of itself would not 
 bring. 
 
 It was impossible that such a condition of 
 things should last, and it was with unspeakable 
 relief that 1 heard Rossetti express a desire 
 to go back to London. Before that the nurse 
 had already gone, and I had for some little 
 time been alone with the poet. Correspondence 
 he had always kept up with the friends of his 
 immediate circle, with his brother William, with 
 Watts, and, I think, with Shields, and this had 
 brought a constant flow of interests into his 
 life; but now he was becoming more and more 
 dependent upon personal company that should 
 not fail him, and never for an hour now could 
 he bear to be alone. Strange enough it seemed 
 that the man who for so many years had 
 shunned the world and chosen solitude when 
 he might have had society, seemed at last to 
 grow weary of his loneliness. But so it was, 
 and whatever the value of my own company 
 in the days when I came up to him out of the 
 fresh air of a widely different world, I was 
 growing painfully aware that it was very little 
 I could do for him now. 
 
 191
 
 V 
 
 MY STORY 
 
 I had tried to cheek the craving for chloral, 
 but unwittingly I had done worse than not 
 check it, and where the lifelong efforts of older 
 friends had failed to eradicate a morbid, ruin- 
 ous, and fatal thirst it seemed presumptuous, 
 if not ridiculous, to think that the task of con- 
 quering it could be compassed by a young fel- 
 low with heart and nerves of wax. Moreover, 
 the whole scene was beginning to have an effect 
 upon myself that was more personal and more 
 serious than I have yet given hint of. The 
 constant fret and fume of this life of baffled 
 effort, of struggle with a deadly drug that had 
 grown to have a separate existence in my mind 
 as the existence of a fiend, was beginning to 
 make me ill, and, utterly disastrous as our visit 
 to Cumberland had been on the whole, and 
 largely responsible as I felt for it, I jumped 
 eagerly at the opportunity of going home. 
 
 Many were the preparations that had to be 
 gone through again before we could make a 
 move: easels and canvases to pack, and a spe- 
 cial saloon carriage to bring round from the 
 junction to our wayside platform, so that we 
 might go u)) without a change, and at night — 
 above all, at night — to avoid the distraction of 
 day and the eyes of the people on the stations 
 at which the train might stop. But at length, 
 
 192
 
 LAST WEEKS IN VALE OF ST. JOHN 
 
 one evening in the gathering darkness, a little 
 more than a month after our arrival, we were 
 back at Threlkeld in a carriage, which half an 
 hour later was coupled at Penrith to the Scotch 
 express to London. 
 
 Never shall I forget that journey. 
 
 Whether Rossetti took his usual dose of the 
 drug, I cannot remember, but certainly he did 
 not sleep, and neither did he compose himself 
 to rest, though the lamps of the carriage were 
 darkened by their shades. During the greater 
 part of the night he sat up in an attitude of 
 waiting, wearing overcoat and hat and gloves, 
 as if our journey were to end at the next stop- 
 ping-place; but at intervals he made effort to 
 walk to and fro in the jolting saloon, as it was 
 his habit to do in his own studio. 
 
 Hour after hour passed in this way, while 
 the lights of the stations flashed by the cur- 
 tained windows, and I looked out from time 
 to time to see how far we had gone, how near 
 we were to the end. The night was very long, 
 and Rossetti's spirits were more disconsolate 
 than I had ever known them to be before. 
 
 Undoubtedly there was enough in the circum- 
 stances of our return to London to justify the 
 deepest depression. Rossetti had gone to Cum- 
 berland solely in the interests of his failing 
 
 193
 
 MY STORY 
 
 health, and he was returning in far worse con- 
 dition. The flicker of hope which had come 
 with his first apparent imiDrovement had made 
 the sadness of his relapse more dark. In the 
 light of subsequent events it would be impos- 
 sible to say that he exaggerated the gravity 
 of his symptoms, but it was only too clear that 
 he thought he was going home to die. 
 
 As the hours went on he was full of lamen- 
 tations, and I was making feeble efforts, over 
 the rattle and clanging of the car, to sustain 
 the pitiful insincerity of the comforter who has 
 no real faith in his own comforting, for I, too, 
 had begun to believe that the road for Rossetti 
 was all downhill now. 
 
 It is not for me, who by virtue of the closest 
 intimacy was loermitted to see a great and un- 
 happy man in his mood of most vehement sor- 
 row and self-reproach, to uncover his naked 
 soul for any jiurpose less sacred than that of 
 justifying his character against misrepresenta- 
 tion or bringing his otherwise wayward con- 
 duct and mysterious life within the range of 
 sympathy, and if I go farther with the story 
 of this terrible night, it is with the hope of 
 that result, and no other. 
 
 Rossetti's words during the hours that fol- 
 lowed I cannot, except in broken passages, re- 
 
 194
 
 LAST WEEKS IN VALE OF ST. JOHN 
 
 call; and if I could recall them, I should not 
 set them down, so deep was the distress with 
 which they were spoken and the emotion with 
 which they were heard ; but I can at least indi- 
 cate the impressions they left on me then, as a 
 young man who had known no more down to 
 that moment than most of his other friends of 
 some of the saddest and darkest chapters of 
 his life. 
 
 The first of those impressions was that while 
 the long indulgence in the drug^ight have 
 broken up his health and created delusions that 
 had alienated friends, it was not that, nor yet 
 the bitterness of malignant criticism, that had 
 separated him from the world and destroyed 
 the happiness of his life. The next of my im- 
 pressions was that Rossetti had never forgiven 
 himself for the weakness of yielding to the im- 
 portunity of friends and the impulse of literary 
 aml)ition which had led him to violate the sanc- 
 tity of his wife's grave in recovering the manu- 
 scripts he had buried in it. And, above all, it 
 was my impression that Rossetti had never 
 ceased to reproach himself with his wife's death 
 as an event that had been due in some degree 
 to failure of duty on his part, or perhaps to 
 something still graver. 
 
 Let me not seem to have forgotten that a 
 
 195
 
 I^IY STOEY 
 
 generous soul in the hours of deepest contrition 
 will load itself with responsibilities that are far 
 beyond its own, and certainly it was not for me 
 to take too literally all the burning words of 
 self-reproach which Rossetti heaped upon him- 
 self. If I had now to reconstruct his life 
 afresh from the impressions of that night, I 
 think it would be a far more human, more 
 touching, more affectionate, more unselfish, 
 more intelligible figure that would emerge 
 than the one hitherto known to the world. 
 
 It would be the figure of a man who, after 
 engaging himself to one woman in all honour 
 and good faith, had fallen in love with another, 
 and then gone on to marry the first out of a 
 mistaken sense of loyalty and a fear of giving 
 I)ain instead of stopping, as he must have done 
 if his will had been stronger and his heart 
 sterner, at the door of the church itself. It 
 would be the figure of a man who realised that 
 the good woman he had married was reading 
 his secret in spite of his efforts to conceal it, 
 and thereby losing all joy and interest in life. 
 It would be the figure of a man who, coming 
 home late at night to find his wife dying, prob- 
 ably by her own hand, was overwhelmed with 
 remorse, not perhaps for any unkindness, any 
 want of attention, still less any act of infidelity 
 
 196
 
 LAST WEEKS IN VALE OF ST. JOHN 
 
 on his part, but for the far deeper wrong of 
 failure of affection for the one being to whom 
 affection was most due. 
 
 Thus the burial of his manuscript in her 
 coffin was plainly saving : " This was how I 
 loved you once, for these poems were written 
 to and inspired by you ; and if I have wronged 
 you since by losing my love for you, the soli- 
 tary text of them shall go with you to the 
 grave." Thus the sadness and gloom of later 
 days, after the poet had repented of his sacri- 
 fice and the poems had been recovered and pub- 
 lished, were clearly showing that Kossetti felt 
 he had won his place among the English poets 
 only by forfeiting the tragic grace and wasting 
 the i)oignant pathos of his first consuming re- 
 nunciation. And thus, too, the solitude of his 
 last years, with its sleepless nights and its de- 
 lusions bom of indulgence in the drug, was not 
 the result of morbid brooding over the insults 
 of adverse critics, but of a deep-seated, if 
 wholly unnecessary, sense as of a curse resting 
 on him and on his work, whereof the malig- 
 nancy of criticism was only one of many mani- 
 festations. 
 
 In this reading of Rossetti's life there is no 
 room at all for any of the gross accusations of 
 ill-treatment or neglect which have been sup- 
 14 197
 
 MY STORY 
 
 posed by some of his less friendly judges to 
 have burdened his conscience with regard to 
 his wife. There was not one word in his self- 
 reproach which conveyed to my mind a sense 
 of anything so mean as that, and nothing I knew 
 of Rossetti's tenderness of character would 
 have allowed me to believe for a moment that 
 he could be guilty of conscious cruelty. But 
 there was indeed something here that was 
 deeper and more terrible, if more spiritual — 
 one of those tragic entanglements from which 
 there is no escape because fate itself has made 
 them. 
 
 All I knew of Rossetti, all he had told me 
 of himself, all he had revealed to me of the 
 troubles of his soul, all that had seemed so 
 mysterious in the conduct of his life and the 
 moods of his mind, became clear and intelligible 
 and even noble and deeply touching in the light 
 of his secret, as I thought I saw it for the first 
 time on that journey from Cumberland to Lon- 
 don. It lifted him entirely out of the character 
 of the wayward, weak, uncertain, neurotic per- 
 son who could put up a blank wall about his 
 existence because his wife had died by the acci- 
 dent of miscalculating a dose of laudanum; who 
 could do a grave act and afterward repent of 
 it and undo it; who could finally shut himself 
 up as a hermit and encourage a hundred delu- 
 
 198
 
 LAST WEEKS IN VALE OF ST. JOHN 
 
 sions about the world because a rival poet had 
 resented his success. Out of all this it raised 
 him into the place of one of the great tragic 
 figures of literature, one of the great lovers 
 whose lives, as well as their works, speak to the 
 depth of their love or the immensity of their 
 remorse. 
 
 It has only been with a thrill of the heart 
 and a trembling hand that I have written this, 
 but I have written it, and now I shall let it 
 go because I feel that, however it may at first 
 distress the little group who are all that are 
 left of Rossetti's friends, it is a true reading 
 of the poet's soul, and one that ennobles his 
 memory. 
 
 It was just daylight as we approached Lon- 
 don, and when we arrived at Euston it was 
 a rather cold and gloomy morning. Rossetti 
 was much exhausted when we got into the om- 
 nibus that was waiting for us, and when we 
 reached Cheyne Walk, where the blinds were 
 still down in all the windows, his spirits were 
 very low. I did my best to keep a good heart 
 for his sake as well as my own, but well do I 
 remember the pathos of his words as I helped 
 him, now feebler than ever, into his house: 
 
 " Thank God ! Home at last, and never shall 
 I leave it again ! "
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 
 BACK IN CHELSEA 
 
 VEEY deep and natural was the concern 
 of Rossetti's older friends on seeing how 
 wretched and stricken he looked on his 
 return to London. That going to the moun- 
 tains instead of to the sea had been a grievous 
 mistake was now apparent to all of them, l)ut 
 the whole extent of the injury sustained was 
 perhaps not at first realised by any. 
 
 Attributing Rossetti's physical prostration 
 chiefly to hypochondriasis, they did their best 
 during the next few weeks to induce him to take 
 a hopeful view of life. The cheerfulness of 
 their company, after what I well know must 
 have been the lugu])rious character of my own, 
 had for a little while a good effect on Rossetti's 
 spirits, and I will not forbear to say that I, too, 
 welcomed it as a breath of morning air after 
 a long month's lingering in an atmosphere of 
 gloom. The sense of responsibility which in the 
 solitude of the mountains had weighed me down 
 
 200
 
 BACK IN CHELSEA 
 
 was now divided with the friends who were 
 Kossetti's friends before they were mine. 
 
 Foremost among these friends was William 
 Eossetti, and looking back to his devotion to 
 his brother's personal needs during the last 
 months of the poet's life, and thinking of his 
 constant absorption in efforts to sustain and 
 promote the poet's fame since his death, I doubt 
 if the whole history of literary friendships has 
 any such story of brotherly love and admira- 
 tion. 
 
 Then there was Frederic Shields, so different 
 from Rossetti in personal character and tem- 
 perament, and as far apart from him as the 
 poles in spiritual outlook upon life and death, 
 yet always so faithful to the man, so loyal to 
 the artist, so ready to put aside his own inter- 
 ests at the call of the poet's needs. 
 
 And then, above all, perhaps, there was 
 Watts (Watts-Dunton), whose affection for 
 Rossetti and beneficial influence upon him was 
 perhaps the most touching and beautiful thing 
 I had ever witnessed. No light matter it must 
 have been to lay aside one's own cherished life- 
 work and ambitions to be Rossetti's friend and 
 brother at a time like this, but through these 
 dark davs Watts was with him to comfort, to 
 divert, to interest, and to inspire him — asking 
 
 201
 
 MY STORY 
 
 meantime no better reward than the knowledge 
 that a noble mind and nature were thereby re- 
 lieved from gloom or lifted out of sorrow. 
 
 If the poet's spirits had been low while we 
 were in Cumberland, they were all but insup- 
 portable during the first weeks after our return 
 to Chelsea. No longer able to work at the easel, 
 and full of apprehension about his failing sight, 
 he first tormented himself with the fear of pov- 
 erty. There might, indeed, have been some 
 ground for uneasiness on this head if Rossetti 
 had lived, for though he had long earned a 
 large income as a painter, he had saved little 
 or nothing, and knowing this, he sometimes 
 made rather grotesque predictions of absolute 
 want. Out of such moods of despondency he 
 had to be rallied by his friends, each in his 
 different way, and I recall with some amuse- 
 ment and a good deal of emotion certain wild 
 efforts by Shields to banish his melancholia, 
 as well as some quiet and touching assurances 
 by his brother that if the worst came to the 
 worst, he could always come to live with him. 
 
 But Rossetti's fear of poverty during the first 
 sad weeks after our return to Chelsea was not 
 so hard to contend with as his dread of death. 
 I should say as I think of this period, that if 
 there was no longer any passionate longing to 
 
 202
 
 BACK IN CHELSEA 
 
 live, there was certainl}^, with a settled convic- 
 tion that death was coming, a wild fear of dy- 
 ing. What it was exactly that was going on in 
 his mind, what struggle for mastery between 
 the will-to-live and the will-to-die, with the 
 dread of both, I cannot say, but I would ven- 
 ture the opinion that he was shrinking not only 
 from the thought of pain, but also from that 
 sinking into everlasting night and nothingness 
 which was all that, so far as I could see, death 
 seemed to mean to him then. 
 
 Never was I conscious that religious faith 
 relieved his fears, still less brightened with any 
 kind of hope the prospect of that passing and 
 parting which is rest and eternal life. On the 
 other hand, I was often aware that everything 
 was distressing that reminded him of death. 
 Belief in God was always with him — that I can 
 firmly say; but religion in the conventional 
 sense appeared to irritate him, and even the 
 ringing of the church bells on Sunday seemed 
 at this time to give him pain. 
 
 Perhaps it was a sign of his fear of death 
 that his mind seemed to be constantly brooding 
 upon it. I remember that one day, opening a 
 drawer of the bookcase, under the books he 
 took out a long, thick tress of rich auljum hair, 
 and showed it to me for a moment. What he 
 
 203
 
 MY STORY 
 
 told me about it I cannot say, but indeed there 
 was no need to tell me anything, for I thought 
 I knew what it was and where it came from. 
 That was one of those hushed moments of life 
 in which silence is sacred, and I will not break 
 it farther even now. Rossetti's downward road 
 was marked by many sign-posts that pointed to 
 the past. 
 
 In spite of all the tender offices of friends, 
 his health declined day l^y day, and he began 
 to be afflicted by a violent cough. I noticed 
 that it troubled him most at night after the 
 taking of the chloral, and that it shook his 
 whole system so terribly as to leave him for a 
 \^ while entirely exhausted. 
 
 The crisis was pending, and almost sooner 
 than any of us expected it came. One evening 
 a friend of former years, Westland Marston, 
 the dramatist, came with his son, Philip Bourke 
 Marston, the blind poet, to spend a few hours 
 with Rossetti. For a while he seemed much 
 cheered by their company, but later on he gave 
 certain signs of uneasiness which I had learned 
 to know too well. Removing restlessly from 
 seat to seat, he threw himself at last upon the 
 sofa in that rather awkward attitude which I 
 have previously described. Presently he called 
 out to me, in great nervous agitation, that he 
 
 204
 
 BACK IN CHELSEA 
 
 could not move liis arm, and, upon attempt- 
 ing to rise, that he had lost power in his leg 
 as well. 
 
 We were all startled, but knowing the force 
 of Rossetti's imagination on his bodily capac- 
 ity, I tried to rally him out of his fears. 
 
 " Nonsense, Rossetti, you're only fancying 
 it," I remember to have said. But, raising him 
 to his feet, we realised only too surely that, 
 from whatever cause, he had lost the use of his 
 limbs. 
 
 The servants were called, and with the ut- 
 most alarm we carried Rossetti to his bedroom, 
 up the tortuous staircase at the back of the 
 studio, and I remember the intense vividness 
 of his intellect at the moment and his obvious 
 sense of humiliation at his helplessness in our 
 hands. 
 
 The blind poet remained in the studio while 
 we were taking Rossetti to his room, and after 
 this was done he and I hurried away in a cab 
 to Savile Row to fetch the doctor. I recall 
 that drive through the streets at night with the 
 blind man, who had seen nothing of what had 
 occurred, but was trembling and breathing fast. 
 An hour after the attack the doctor was in the 
 house. 
 
 It was found that Rossetti had undergone a 
 
 205
 
 MY STORY 
 
 species of mild paralysis, called, I think, loss 
 of co-ordinative power. The juncture was a 
 critical one, and it was decided that the time 
 had come at last when the chloral, which was 
 the root of all the mischief, should be decisively, 
 entirely, and instantly cut off. 
 
 It is not for me to give an account of what 
 was done at this crisis. I only know that a 
 young medical man was brought into the house 
 as a resident doctor to watch the case during 
 the absence of the physician-in-chief, and that 
 morphia was at first injected as a substitute 
 for the narcotic which the system had grown 
 to demand. 
 
 I recall the many hours in which Rossetti 
 was delirious while his l)ody was passing 
 through the terrible ordeal of conquering the 
 craving for the former drug, and the three or 
 four days succeeding in which the two forces 
 seemed to fight like demons for possession of 
 him. During this period his mind had a strange 
 kind of moonlight clearness, with a plain sense 
 of all that was going on, a vivid memory of the 
 friends and incidents of the past, with a desire 
 to write letters to people whom he had not seen 
 for years, yet a total loss of executive faculty 
 of every kind. But the pathetic phase passed, 
 and within a week after the experiment had 
 
 206
 
 BACK IN CHELSEA 
 
 been begun he awoke one morning, calm in 
 body, clear in mind, and grateful in heart. 
 
 His delusions were all dead, his intermittent 
 suspicions of friends were as much gone as if 
 they had never been, and nothing was left but 
 the real Rossetti — a simple, natural, affection- 
 ate, lovable soul. 
 
 And now let me say that while it must have 
 been the most pitiful wealmess, not to say the 
 most mistaken tenderness on my part (after all 
 that has been published on the subject), to at- 
 tempt to conceal an infirmity of Rossetti's mind 
 which has led to much misconception of his 
 character, I feel myself justified in alluding to 
 it, and even dwelling on some of its painful 
 manifestations, for the sake of the opportunity 
 of showing that, coming with the drug that 
 blighted half his life, it disappeared when the 
 evil had been removed. 
 
 Perhaps none may say with any certainty to 
 what the use of the drug was due, or what was 
 due to it, though I have already given my opin- 
 ion that it came from a far deeper source than 
 the mental disturbance set up by adverse criti- 
 cism; but sure I am, that the sadder side of 
 his life was ever under its shadow, and that 
 he was a new man on the day when it was over.
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 
 THE LAST OF HOME 
 
 A S soon as Rossetti was liimself again he 
 /-% began to see his friends and relatives — 
 his mother and sister, his brother, now 
 always about him, Shields, Madox Brown, and 
 of course Watts, who was with him every day. 
 Some report of the seizure must have appeared 
 in the newspapers, for I recall inquiries from 
 well-known people which I received and an- 
 swered in Rossetti's name, among them being 
 a letter from Sir Henry Taylor, and one from 
 Turgenieff, who was, I think, in London, and 
 proposed to call. 
 
 I thought it strange when I realised how 
 strongly Rossetti's real nature possessed the 
 power of attaching people to his person that few 
 letters came from the famous men still living 
 who had been his friends in earlier years; but 
 the link with the past was not entirely broken, 
 for Burne-Jones came one evening, with his 
 delicate and spiritual face full of affectionate 
 
 208
 
 THE LAST OF HOME 
 
 solicitude, and when I took him into the bed- 
 room he was received with a faint echo of the 
 cheery " Hulloa ! " which he must have remem- 
 bered so well. 
 
 Rossetti must have looked sadly unlike his 
 former self, although our hearts were now so 
 cheerful about him, for when, after a long half 
 hour, the great painter came down from the 
 bedroom where I had left the two old friends 
 together, he was visibly moved, and at first 
 could scarcely speak. . I remember that he and 
 I dined in the studio in the midst of the easels, 
 and that, turning to an unfinished picture on 
 one of them, he said: 
 
 " They say Gabriel cannot draw, but look at 
 that hand. There isn't anybody else in the 
 world who can draw a hand like that." 
 
 Christmas day was now nigh, and Rossetti, 
 still confined to his room, begged me to spend 
 that day with him. " Otherwise," he said, " how 
 sad a day it must be to me, for I cannot fairly 
 ask any other." 
 
 I had been asked to dine at a more cheerful 
 house, but reflecting that this was my first 
 Christmas in London, and it might be Rossetti's 
 last, I readily decided to do as he wished. We 
 dined alone — he in his bed, I at the little table 
 at the foot of it on which I had first seen the 
 
 209
 
 MY STORY 
 
 wired lamp and the bottles of medicine. Later 
 in the evening William Rossetti, with brotherly 
 affection, left his children and guests at his 
 own house, and ran down to spend an hour with 
 the invalid. As the night went on we could 
 hear from time to time the ringing of the bells 
 of the neighbouring churches, and I noticed 
 that Rossetti was not disturbed by them as he 
 had been formerly. 
 
 He talked that night brightly, with more force 
 and incisiveness, I thought, than he had dis- 
 played for months. There was the ring of sin- 
 cerity in his tone as he said he had always 
 had loyal and unselfish friends; and then he 
 spoke of his brother, of Madox Brown, and, 
 perhaps, particularly of Watts. He said a 
 word or two of myself, and then spoke with 
 emotion of his mother and sister, and of his 
 sister who was dead, and how they were sup- 
 ported through their sore trials by religious 
 hope and resignation. He asked if I, like 
 Shields, was a believer, and seemed alto- 
 gether in a softer and more spiritual mood 
 than I could remember to have noticed be- 
 fore. 
 
 With such talk we passed the last of Ros- 
 setti's Christmas nights, and on many a night 
 afterward I spent some hours with him in his 
 
 210
 
 THE LAST OF HOME 
 
 room. The drug being- gone, he was in nearly 
 every sense a changed man, and I remem))er 
 particularly that there was no more fear of 
 poverty and no painful brooding over death. 
 Tliat any hope such as could be called faith 
 had taken the place of dread I cannot posi- 
 tively say, and perhaps if I had to give in a 
 word a definition of Rossetti's attitude toward 
 spiritual things, I should say that it was then 
 that of an agnostic — ^not of an unbeliever, but 
 of one who simply did not know. Before the 
 mystery of the hereafter, of the unknown and 
 the unknowable, he seemed to stand silent, per- 
 haps content, certainly without any anxious 
 questioning, any agonising doubts. 
 
 Those hours with Rossetti, when he had just 
 emerged from the thraldom of so many years, 
 are among the most treasured of my memories, 
 and I recall the impression I had at the time 
 that much of his conversation was like the stem 
 lamp of a ship which casts its light on the 
 path that is past. Thus one day he said : " To 
 marry one woman, and then find out, when 
 it is too late, that you love another, is the 
 deepest tragedy that can enter into a man's 
 life." 
 
 No more now than before did he interest him- 
 self in the affairs of the world outside his own 
 
 211
 
 MY STORY 
 
 walls, and what lie called " the momentary 
 momentousness " of many political questions 
 seemed never to stir his pulse for a moment; 
 but there was one great social problem which 
 always moved him to the depths. He had dealt 
 with it in both his arts — as a poet in " Jenny," 
 as a painter in " Found," and perhaps in " Mary 
 Magdalene." It was the age-long prol^lem of 
 the poor scapegoats of society who carry the 
 sins of men into a wilderness from which there 
 is no escape. These pariahs, these outcasts, 
 had a fascination for him alwavs, but it was 
 of a kind that could only be felt by a man who 
 was essentially pure-minded. 
 
 " That is a world," he used to say, " that 
 few understand, though there is hardly any- 
 body who does not think that he knows some- 
 thing about it." 
 
 On Rossetti it seemed to sit like a night- 
 mare. For the poor women themselves, who 
 after one false step find themselves in a blind 
 alley, in which the way back is forbidden to 
 them, he had nothing but the greatness of his 
 compassion. The pitiless cruelty of their posi- 
 tion often affected him to tears. That they 
 had transgressed against all the recognised 
 rules of morality and social order, and were 
 often wallowing in an abyss of degradation, 
 
 919
 
 THE LAST OF HOME 
 
 did not rob them of his pity. No human crea- 
 ture was common or miclean. " With our God 
 is forgiveness," and feeling this, Rossetti also 
 seemed to feel that behind the sin of these sin- 
 ners there was always the immensity, even the 
 majesty of their suffering. 
 
 All this he had put into " Jenny," with its 
 tenderness to the little closed soul of the girl, 
 and its passionate denunciation of the lust of 
 man ; he had put it into " Found," with the 
 agony of shame in the face of the woman on 
 her knees and the pathos of the net which con- 
 fined the calf that was going to slaughter in 
 the country cart ; he had put it into " Mary 
 Magdalene," too, in the light, as of an awaken- 
 ing soul, in the eyes of the courtesan when she 
 hears the Master's call; but more touching, 
 perhaps more immediately affecting than any 
 of these great works (in my view the greatest 
 the world has yet seen on this subject), was the 
 talk of the man himself when, at this most 
 spiritual hour of the period in which I knew 
 him, he would sjDeak of what he believed to 
 be one of the poignant tragedies of human 
 life. 
 
 I will not shrink from telling of one act of 
 Rossetti's moral courage at that time, which 
 I have never since been able to recall without 
 15 213
 
 MY STORY 
 
 a thrill of tlie heart. Somewhere I had met 
 with one of the women of the imderworld who 
 seemed to me to have kept her soul pure amid 
 the mire and slime that surrounded her poor 
 body. She was a girl of great beauty, some 
 education, refinement, knowledge of languages, 
 and not a little reading and good taste. Her 
 position had been due to conditions more tragic 
 than the ordinary ones, but she was held to it 
 by the same relentless laws which bound the 
 commonest of her class. 
 
 It was a very pitiful example of the tragedy 
 which most deeply interested Rossetti, and 
 when I told him al)out it he was much affected. 
 But he did not attempt or suggest the idea of 
 rescue. He knew the problem too well to imag- 
 ine that anything less than complete reversal 
 of the social order could help a girl like that 
 to escape from the blind alley in which she 
 walked alone. The only thing that could be 
 done for her was to keep her soul alive amid 
 all the dead souls about her, and this he tried 
 to do. 
 
 Asking me to bring him a copy of his 
 first volume of poems (the volume containing 
 "Jenny"), he wrote the girl's name and his 
 own, with a touching line or two, on the title- 
 page, and told me to give her the book. I did 
 
 214
 
 THE LAST OF HOME 
 
 so, and I recall the astonishment and emotion 
 of the poor outcast thing-, who appreciated per- 
 fectly what it meant to the illustrious poet to 
 send that present to a lost one like her. As 
 far as I can remember, I never saw her again, 
 nor heard what became of her, but well I know 
 that wherever she is that book is with her still, 
 and the tender grace of Rossetti's act has not 
 been lost. 
 
 I have one more memory of those cheerful 
 evenings in the poet's bedroom, with its thick 
 curtains, its black oak chimney-piece and cru- 
 cifix, and its muffled air (all looking and feel- 
 ing so much brighter than before), and that is 
 of Buchanan's retraction of all that he had 
 said in his bitter onslaught of so many years 
 before. One day there came a copy of the 
 romance called " God and the Man," with its 
 dedication, " To an Old Enemy." I do not 
 remember how the book reached Rossetti's 
 house, whether directly from the author or 
 from the publisher, or, as I think probable, 
 through Watts, who was now every day at 
 Cheyne Walk, in his untiring devotion to his 
 friend, but I have a clear memory of reading 
 to the poet the beautiful lines, in which his 
 critic so generously and so bravely took back 
 everything he had said : 
 
 215
 
 MY STORY 
 
 "I would have snatched a bay-leaf from thy brow, 
 Wronging the chaplet on an honoured head; 
 In peace and charity I bring thee now 
 A lily-flower instead. 
 
 ''Pure as thy purpose, blameless as thy song, 
 Sweet as thy spirit, may this offering be; 
 Forget the bitter blame that did thee wrong, 
 And take the gift from me." 
 
 Rossetti was, for the moment, much affected 
 by the pathos of the words, but, in the absence 
 of his name, it was difhcult at first to make him 
 believe they were intended for him. 
 
 " But tliey are, I'm sure they are, and Watts 
 says they are," I went on repeating, until he 
 was compelled to believe. 
 
 It was a moving incident, and doubly affect- 
 ing at that moment, when the poet had just 
 emerged from the long night of so much suffer- 
 ing. And it was fit and meet that Buchanan's 
 retraction should come before it was too late 
 for Rossetti to hear of it, but if I had wanted 
 anything to prove to me that the cloud that 
 had hung over the poet's life was not that 
 of another poet's criticism, but a far graver 
 thing, I should have found it in the fact that 
 after the first hour of hearing of the retrac- 
 tion, he never spoke of the matter again. 
 
 I have another memory of those evenings in 
 
 216
 
 THE LAST OF HOME 
 
 the bedroom, and it is to me a very touching 
 one. After some little time, in which Rossetti 
 seemed to regain strength, he got out of bed 
 for a few hours every day, and then we real- 
 ised that he was not recovering. The partly 
 stricken limbs had gained power in some meas- 
 ure, but his weakness was obvious, and it was 
 only too clear to everybody that the road for 
 Rossetti was indeed all downhill now. 
 
 On the last day of the year, I remember, 
 I found this certainty especially oppressive, 
 from the acute sense one always has of coming 
 trouble as one passes the solemn landmarks 
 of time. I could not stay indoors that night, 
 so I walked about the streets, but I had not 
 counted on the fact that by staying out of the 
 house to avoid painful emotions, I was only 
 gathering them up to fall in a single blow the 
 moment I came back. 
 
 It was about half an hour after midnight 
 when I returned home, and then, as well as I 
 can remember, Rossetti was alone. The church 
 bells were still ringing their cheerful appeal 
 as I stepped into his room, and after a feeble 
 effort at the customary " Hulloa," we wished 
 each other " A Happy New Year."
 
 CHAPTER X 
 
 AT BIRCHINGTON 
 
 A FTER a few weeks upstairs Rossetti was 
 /-% able to get down to his studio, but his j 
 
 strength did not increase, so it was de- 
 cided that the error of the autumn should, if 
 possible, be repaired by sending him, late as 
 it was, to the seaside. At that moment a 
 friend of earlier days, Seddon, the architect, of- 
 fered the use of a bungalow at Birchington, 
 a few miles from Margate, and I was asked 
 to go down and look at the place. I did so, 
 and, coming back, I reported so favourably of 
 the house and the situation that Rossetti de- 
 termined to move immediately. 
 
 There were the same laborious preparations 
 as before, only they were lightened now by 
 Rossetti's calmer spirits, and toward the end 
 of January the poet left his home for the last 
 time. Whether he had any premonitions that 
 this was the fact I cannot say, but, whatever 
 the hopes of his recovery cherished by his 
 
 218
 
 AT BIRCHINGTON 
 
 friends, it was clear enoui^li to me that the poet 
 hmiself had no illusions. And, though he gave 
 no outward sign of regret, I will not doubt that 
 the day was a sad one on which he turned his 
 back on the house in which he had known so 
 much joy and sorrow, the place so full of him- 
 self, written all over with the story of his life, 
 the studio, the muffled bedroom, the closed-up 
 drawing-room, the little green dining room, 
 and the garden, now ploughed up and lost. 
 
 We travelled in ordinary carriages now, tak- 
 ing with us the domestic servants from Cheyne 
 Walk, a professional nurse, and my sister, then 
 a little girl. Though so weak, Rossetti was 
 in good spirits, and I remember that on get- 
 ting into the compartment he tried to amuse 
 the child by pretending that the carriage itself 
 had been built expressly in her and his honour. 
 
 " Look here," he said, pointing to the initials 
 on the carpet ("London, Chatham, and Dover 
 Railway," as it was then), "they have even 
 written our names on the floor — L. C. and 
 D. R. — Lily Caine and Dante Rossetti." 
 
 It had been a fine and cheerful day when I 
 went down to Thanet to " report on the land," 
 but it was a dark and sullen one when I arrived 
 there with Rossetti. Birchington was not a 
 holiday resort in those days, though it was be- 
 
 219
 
 MY STORY 
 
 ing laid out for its career in that eliaracter. 
 It was merely an old-fashioned Kentish settle- 
 ment on the edge of a hungry coast. 
 
 The village, which stood back from the shore 
 the better part of a mile, consisted of a quaint 
 old Gothic church, gray and green, a winding 
 street, a few shops, and a windmill, while the 
 bungalow we were to live in stood alone on the 
 bare fields to the seaward side, and looked like 
 a scout that had ventured far toward the edge 
 of unseen cliffs. The land aroimd was flat and 
 featureless, unbroken by a tree or bush, and 
 one felt as if the great sea in front, rising up 
 to the horizon in a vast round hill, dominated 
 and threatened to submerge it. The clouds 
 were low, the sea was loud, the weather was 
 chill, and if Rossetti had been able to act on 
 his first impression of Birchington, I think he 
 would have gone back to London immediately. 
 
 But next dav the sun shone, the air was 
 bright, the skylarks were singing, and Rossetti 
 was more content. Our little house was home- 
 ly, too, in its simple way, a wooden building 
 of one story, with a corridor going down the 
 middle, and bedrooms opening to front and 
 back. Rossetti chose a back bedroom, that he 
 might hear as little as possible of the noise of 
 the sea. 
 
 220
 
 AT BIRCHINGTON 
 
 There was a large dining room at the end of 
 the corridor, and there we set up Rossetti's 
 easels, laid out my usual truckload of books, 
 and otherwise j^repared for a lengthy sojourn. 
 Somebody lent us a huge telescope, and we put 
 that up also, though there was little to look at 
 along the bleak coast except the bare headland 
 of Reculvers, and nothing on the empty sea 
 except an occasional sailing ship going up to 
 the Baltic, for the great steamers hardly ever 
 came so near. 
 
 During the first weeks of our stay in Birch- 
 ington, Rossetti was able to take short walks 
 with me every morning (he rose earlier now) 
 along the tops of the chalk cliffs overlooking 
 the rugged shore, and round the road that 
 winds about the church and churchyard. It is 
 not without a trembling of the heart that I 
 now remember how often we walked round that 
 churchyard, as long as Rossetti was able to 
 walk at all. But, though he would heavily lean 
 on a stick with one hand, and as heavily on my 
 arm with the other, the exercise soon proved 
 to be too much for him, for he was growing 
 weaker day by day. 
 
 Nevertheless his spirits kept up wonder- 
 fully, and besides painting a little at intervals, 
 he took to poetical compositions afresh, and 
 
 221
 
 ]\IY STORY 
 
 wrote (of all things in the world for that mo- 
 ment) a facetious ballad, called "Jan Van 
 Hunks," telling an eccentric story of a Dutch- 
 man's wager to smoke against the devil. Ros- 
 setti himself had never smoked in his life, I 
 think, but his enjojTnent of the Dutchman's 
 agony, as he recited or dictated to me in the 
 drawing-room the stanzas he had composed in 
 bed, made the place ring with laughter. 
 
 We had our serious and even thrilling mo- 
 ments, too, in that house on the edge of the 
 coast, as when the wind roared around the 
 little place at night, and the light of Reculvers 
 was all that we could see through the blackness 
 of rolling rain clouds, and we knew that long 
 stretches of the chalk cliffs in front were 
 churning down into the champing sea. 
 
 I remember that once in the morning, after 
 a storm, when the sea was calm and the sun 
 was shining, we saw that a foreign ship, which 
 had come to anchor a mile or so outside, had 
 taken fire, and we heard a little later that 
 the crew, on taking flight from her, had left be- 
 hind them the body of a comrade who had died 
 during the night. The incident took hold of 
 Rossetti's imagination. All through the day 
 he watched the burning ship, and at night, 
 when hull and rigging were aflame, and noth- 
 
 222
 
 AT BIRCHINGTOX 
 
 ing was to be seen but that blazing mass in a 
 circle of glittering light, the sense as of a 
 funeral pyre was so strong on both of us that 
 we sat for hours in the darkness to look at it. 
 
 Weak as he was in body, his intellect was 
 as powerful as in his best days, and he was 
 just as eager to occupy himself with my own 
 doings and tryings-to-do. Thus in the even- 
 ings he would make me read aloud the articles 
 I was writing for the literary journals, and tell 
 him my first vague schemes for the stories that 
 were on the forehead of the time to come. 
 
 I think he liked my tendency to take the sim- 
 ple incidents out of the Bible as foundations 
 for modern novels, not because he had any 
 Puritan leanings whatsoever, but because he 
 recognised the elemental strength of the primi- 
 tive themes. It was then that I was shaping 
 the tales that I have since written on the lines 
 of the lives of Jacob and Esau, of Samuel and 
 Eli, and of the Prodigal Son, and it is impos- 
 sible for me to say how much these stories may 
 owe (of whatever may be good in them) to the 
 sure criticism of his searching mind. One 
 thing I know and may be permitted to say, that 
 when I wrote that section of one of my novels 
 which describes a man who is cut off from his 
 kind and is alone with his own soul, I was 
 
 223
 
 MY STORY 
 
 drawing deeply of the well of Rossetti's mind, 
 as it revealed itself to me. 
 
 He may have been half-way to the other 
 world, but he was still not incapable of a level- 
 headed view of any attempt to get there be- 
 fore one's time, and he made more than a 
 single protest against certain spiritualistic 
 tendencies of mine, which were born, perhaps, 
 of the reading of Swedenborg. I particularly 
 recall the vehemence of his objection to my 
 going to a seance to which one of his own 
 earlier friends had invited me, and that the 
 reason he gave was like a speech out of " Ham- 
 let," or a passage from Sir Thomas Browne. 
 
 " You must not go," he said decisively. 
 
 "AVhy not, Rossetti? Do you think it's all 
 a fraud, and the spirits do not appear ? " 
 
 " No, but they're evil spirits — devils — and 
 they're allowed to torment and deceive people." 
 
 But even during these first weeks at Birch- 
 ington, Rossetti was not entirely dependent 
 upon me for society and solace. He was vis- 
 ited at intervals by nearly all the friends of 
 his later years, as well as by some of lifelong 
 standing. His spirits would rally perceptibly 
 on the sight of these friends, and then fall as 
 sensibly when they were gone, but when I re- 
 member the lighter moments of these rather 
 
 224
 
 AT BIKCHINGTON 
 
 heavy days I cannot forget the visit of one 
 other acquaintance whom I need not name. 
 
 This was the person who carried out the 
 work of the exhumation of his poems — the 
 companion of earlier days, more reckless and 
 tumultuous days, perhaps, as well as days of 
 blank darkness. I had often heard him spoken 
 of as a daring and adventurous creature, whose 
 humorous audacity had overcome nearly all 
 fear of his unscrupulousness. 
 
 Beginning life as the secretary, I think, of 
 Euskin, he had ultimately lived on his wits, 
 doing anything and everything for a living, 
 ingratiating himself into the graces and worm- 
 ing himself into the confidence of nearly all the 
 painters of Eossetti's immediate circle, and 
 making Eossetti, in particular, his conscious 
 victim. 
 
 One day this soldier of fortune turned up 
 unexpectedly at our bungalow, and was re- 
 ceived with the utmost cordiality. He was a 
 somewhat battered person, with the face of a 
 whipi^ed cab horse, but so clever, so humorous, 
 so audacious, that Eossetti's flagging spirits 
 were wonderfully awakened by his visit. I 
 think the poet remarked that the last time they 
 had met was when his visitor had bought " a 
 tidy bit of blue " (blue china) for him. 
 
 225
 
 MY STORY 
 
 "And what are you doing now, Charlie!" 
 said Rossetti. 
 
 " Buying horses for the King of Portugal," 
 said the soldier of fortune, and then Rossetti 
 laughed until he nearly rolled out of his seat. 
 
 Our visitor stayed all day, telling stories, 
 veracious and apocryphal, of nearly everybody 
 known to us in the world, and mentioning to 
 me, in a sort of parenthetical aside, that when 
 he was a young man he had written nearly all 
 Ruskin's early books, which was probably true 
 enough, since he had almost certainly copied 
 them from the author's manuscript in those 
 better days, when his fingers had done the work 
 which was now being discharged by his nimbler 
 wits. 
 
 Feeble as Rossetti was at the time, the visit 
 of this unaccoimtal)le being did him good, and 
 he laughed all evening after the man had gone, 
 talking of his adventures of various kinds, as 
 well as telling his familiar stories over again. 
 One of the latter, which particularly amused 
 him, was of a man near to death, to whom the 
 clergyman came and said, " Dear friend, do you 
 know who died to save you!" "Oh, Meenis- 
 ter, Meenister," said the dying man, "is this 
 a time for conundrums!" 
 
 All this, however, was but the flickering of 
 
 226
 
 AT BIRCHINGTON 
 
 the lamp that was slowly dying out, and it 
 was only too obvious that Rossetti's strength 
 was becoming less and less. His eyesight was 
 feebler, and having already given up his at- 
 tempts to paint, he had now given up his 
 efforts to read. With difficulty he rose for a 
 few hours every day, and only with the help 
 of the nurse's arm or mine was he able to reach 
 the drawing-room. Seeing how things stood 
 with him, I suggested that he should let me 
 send for his mother and sister, and he con- 
 sented, saying: 
 
 " Then you really think I am dying? At last 
 you think so ! "
 
 CHAPTER XI 
 
 " WHATEVER THERE IS TO KNOW " 
 
 ROSSETTI'S mother and sister came 
 without more than a day or two's delay. 
 The mother, a little, sweet woman, with 
 a soft face and a kind of pure morning air 
 always about her, very proud to be the mother 
 of a son whose name was ringing through the 
 world, very sad to see him so surely going be- 
 fore her. The sister, Christina, a woman of 
 great intellectuality, but without a trace of the 
 pride of intellect, a famous poet herself, yet 
 holding her reputation as nothing compared 
 with that of her l)rother, whose genius, she 
 plainly thought, was to carry on the family 
 name. 
 
 To relieve the long hours of the evenings, I 
 borrowed a great batch of novels from a lend- 
 ing library at Margate, and Christina read 
 them aloud in the drawing-room. She was a 
 fine reader, not emotional, perhaps, and cer- 
 tainly not humorous, but always vigorous of 
 
 228
 
 "WHATEVER THERE IS TO KNOW" 
 
 voice and full of intellectual life. Rossetti was 
 interested in nearly everything that was read 
 to him, and though some of it was poor stuff, 
 some of it, like " Henry Dunbar," was good, 
 and a little of it, like " The Tale of Two Cities," 
 was great. I remember that he was deeply 
 touched by Sidney Carton's sacrifice, and said 
 he would have liked to paint the last scene 
 of it. 
 
 Thus February slid into March, and spring 
 began to come, with its soft sunshine and the 
 skylarks singing in the morning, but Rossetti's 
 health did not improve. The hours in the 
 drawing-room became shorter every day, and 
 we all knew that the end was drawing on. At 
 the request, I think, of the London physician, 
 we called in a local doctor, a country practi- 
 tioner of more than average intelligence, who 
 knew nothing, however, of his patient, and 
 asked him some awkward and rather gawkish 
 questions. I remember that one morning I 
 met the good man coming out of the house with 
 a look of confusion on his face, and that he 
 drew me aside and whispered, by way of warn- 
 ing, his secret opinion of the state of Rossetti's 
 mind. 
 
 "Your friend does not tvant to live," he 
 said. " If I were to leave a glass of some- 
 16 229
 
 MY STORY 
 
 thing on the table by his l^ed, and say, ' Drink 
 that, and you'll be gone in five minutes,' it 
 would be done before I could get out of the 
 room." 
 
 I thought then the doctor was wrong, and 
 I still think so. True that by this time the 
 longing for life was gone, and gone, too, was 
 ^' the muddy imperfection " of fear of death, 
 but I cannot believe that by any act of his own 
 he would have hastened his end. He was in 
 no pain, he had reconciled himself to the 
 thought that his active life was over, and he 
 was clearly biding his time. 
 
 The local clergyman came, too, at Chris- 
 tina's suggestion, I think, and Rossetti saw 
 him quite submissively. He was a fairly capa- 
 ble man, I remember, and when he talked in 
 the customary way of such good souls Ros- 
 setti listened without resistance, having no 
 theological subtleties to baffle him with; but 
 after a while the deep, slow, weary eyes of the 
 poet, looking steadfastly at him, seemed to 
 silence the clergyman, and he got up and went 
 away. 
 
 Rossetti's attitude toward the other life 
 seemed to be the same then as his attitude 
 toward this life — the attitude of one who is 
 
 waitmg. 
 
 230
 
 "WHATEVEE THEEE IS TO KNOW" 
 
 Still we say as we go — 
 
 " Strange to think by the way, 
 
 Whatever there is to know, 
 That shall we know one day." 
 
 One day, more than usually cheerful with 
 signs of the coming spring, the local doctor 
 made the painful and somewhat belated dis- 
 covery that Rossetti was in an advanced stage 
 of Bright's disease, and we telegraphed to his 
 brother, to Watts, and to Shields to come down 
 immediately. That night his dear old mother 
 and I remained with him until early morning, 
 and then his sister took our place by his side. 
 
 Since the coming of his mother and sister, 
 I had seen less of Rossetti than before, feeling 
 a certain delicacy in intruding upon the sacred 
 intimacies of the home circle in these last re- 
 unions, but the next morning, after he had 
 received what we believed to be his death war- 
 rant, I spent a long hour with him. 
 
 " Hulloa ! Sit dow^n ! I thought at one time 
 you were going to leave me," he said, as I went 
 into his room. 
 
 " You'll have to leave me first, Rossetti," I 
 replied. 
 
 " Ah ! " 
 
 And then I Imew what I had said. 
 
 I found his utterance thick and his speech 
 
 231
 
 MY STORY 
 
 from that cause hardly intelligible, but in spite 
 of that he talked long and earnestly. 
 
 He spoke of his love of early English ballad 
 literature, and how he had said to himself, 
 when he first met with it, " There lies your 
 line,*' and then, in a simple, natural way, but 
 with a certain quiet exultation, reminding me 
 of Keats's calm confidence, he spoke of holding 
 his place among the English poets after his 
 death. After that he half sang, half recited 
 snatches from one of lago's songs in " Othello." 
 
 " Strange thing to come into one's head at 
 such a moment," he said. I had never seen 
 him more bright. 
 
 It was my last interview with Rossetti alone 
 of the many I had had of many kinds, and I 
 will not shrink from telling the stoiy of the end 
 of it, so deeply does it touch me as often as 
 it comes back to my mind. There had been a 
 friend of his earlier years whom we of his 
 later life could not but consider an evil influ- 
 ence, and this friend we finally expelled. It 
 was all done with Rossetti's consent, but clearly 
 as he saw that he had suffered from that 
 friendship, he never ceased to regret it, and 
 now, at the last moment, after months of si- 
 lence, he said in a whisper: 
 
 " Have you heard anything of ? " 
 
 232
 
 "WHATEVER THERE IS TO KNOW" 
 
 "Nothing at all." 
 
 " Would you tell me if you had? " 
 
 " If you asked me — yes." 
 
 " My poor ," he murmured, and, unable 
 
 to say more, I went out of the room, feeling 
 how poor and small had been our proud loy- 
 alty compared with the silent pathos of his 
 steadfast friendship. 
 
 Next day (it was Good Friday) the friends 
 we had sent for arrived — his brother, Watts- 
 Dunton, and Shields. Weak as he was he was 
 much cheered by their company, but well we 
 knew that he was always aware that the gath- 
 ering of his friends about him meant that the 
 wings of death seemed to us to be gathering, 
 too. 
 
 He made his will the day following, leaving 
 everything to his own, with the provision that 
 three or four of us who had been closest to him 
 during his last years should each choose some- 
 thing out of his house to remember him by. 
 Watts-Dunton drew up the document, I made 
 a fair copy of it, and after Rossetti had signed 
 it with his trembling hand, it was witnessed 
 by me and by another. Only at that moment 
 did the placid temper of these last days seem 
 disturbed. Money had never been an object 
 in Rossetti's life, and these material provisions 
 
 233
 
 MY STORY 
 
 seemed to vex liim a little now, as though they 
 came too late, and were dragging his spirit 
 back. 
 
 In view of the local doctor's alarming re- 
 port, the London x)hysician was telegraphed 
 for, and he arrived on Saturday evening. His 
 visit gave great heart to everybody. While 
 recognising the serious condition, he was not 
 without hope. After examining his patient, 
 he took us all into another room and explained 
 the position. It was true that Rossetti was 
 now suffering from Bright's disease, induced, 
 perhaps, by the prolonged use of the perni- 
 cious drug; but it did not follow that he must 
 die immediately. With care of diet and gen- 
 eral watchfulness over the conditions of health 
 he must still live long. People with that ail- 
 ment often lived five years, sometimes ten 
 years, even fifteen. 
 
 He administered a kind of hot pack, and 
 when we saw him off on Saturday night, we 
 were all in great spirits. Next morning Eos- 
 setti was perceptibly better, and I think every- 
 body in the house looked in upon him in his 
 room and found him able to listen, and some- 
 times to talk. It was a beautiful Easter morn- 
 ing, and when the bells rang a joyful Easter 
 peal I think both mother and sister went to 
 
 234
 
 "WHATEVER THERE IS TO IvNOAV" 
 
 church. All was well during the day, and in 
 the evening the nurse gave such a cheery re- 
 port of the poet's condition that we were very 
 happy. She was about to administer another 
 pack, so we went off to other rooms, the mother 
 and Christina to their bedroom, facing Ros- 
 setti's, William to the drawing-room, Watts- 
 Dunton and Shields and I to the dining room 
 down the corridor. 
 
 About nine o'clock Watts-Dunton left us for 
 a short time, and when he returned he said he 
 had been in Rossetti's room and found him at 
 ease and very bright. Then we three gave way 
 to good spirits, and began to laugh at little 
 things, as is the way with people when a long 
 strain seems to be relaxed. But immediately 
 afterward we heard a terrible cry, followed 
 by the sound of somebody scurrying down the 
 corridor, and rapping loudly at every door. 
 
 It was all over before we seemed to draw 
 breath. I remember the look of stupefaction 
 in our faces, the sense of being stunned, as we 
 three — Watts-Dunton, Shields, and I, leaving 
 the two good women murmuring their prayers 
 in the death chamber — returned to the dining- 
 room and said to each other, " Gabriel has 
 gone ! "
 
 CHAPTEE XII 
 
 " THAT SHALL WE KNOW ONE DAY " 
 
 WE found it hard to realise that Ros- 
 setti was dead, the dreadful fact 
 having fallen at last with such fear- 
 ful suddenness. Each of us no doubt had had 
 his vision of how it was to be with Rossetti at 
 the last. In mine he was to die slowly, body 
 and mind sinking gradually to rest, as the lamp 
 dies down, or as the boat, coming out of a 
 tempestuous sea, lets drop its sail and glides 
 into harbour. This was to be Nature's recom- 
 pense for Rossetti's troubled days and sleep- 
 less nights, for his fierce joys and stormy 
 sorrows. But Nature knew better the mys- 
 teries of the future, and Rossetti was to be 
 the same tragic figure to the end, in sunshine 
 and shadow, in life and death, always tragic. 
 
 The little household was still staggering 
 under its sudden blow, when William Rossetti's 
 wife arrived unexpectedly, and then, in the re- 
 gathering of the company, all our hearts went 
 
 236 .
 
 "THAT SHALL WE KNOW ONE DAY" 
 
 out to the old mother. The tides of memory 
 must have been flowing back upon her as upon 
 nobody else — back from the days of Rosset- 
 ti's childhood, of his father's house and his 
 father's death, to the hour when he, too, was 
 dead, and she was left in the world without 
 him. It was impossible to attempt to console 
 the sweet old lady without feeling that we were 
 holding out our hands to her in the dark. 
 
 Next morning I plucked some of the big pan- 
 sies and wild violets that come earlv in the 
 spring in that fresh sea air, and loving hands 
 laid them on the poet's breast. His face, as 
 he lay dead, was perfectly placid, the con- 
 vulsive expression gone, and even the tired 
 look that had clung to him in sleep as the leg- 
 acy of the troubled years quite smoothed away. 
 Shields spent the morning in making a pen- 
 cil sketch of him, finding it a painful task, and 
 weeping most of the time. Later in the day 
 a plaster cast was taken of his head and his 
 small, delicate hand. 
 
 The London newspapers were full of obitu- 
 ary articles, and the drowsy little seaside set- 
 tlement appeared to awake to some vague 
 consciousness of who it was that had been liv- 
 ing in their midst. Nevertheless, I recall the 
 look of blank bewilderment in the face of the 
 
 237
 
 MY STORY 
 
 local clerg-yman who, having come in all gra- 
 cious neighborliness to ask where the family 
 wished Rossetti to be buried, meaning in what 
 portion of the churchyard, received William 
 Rossetti's reply in words like these : 
 
 " If my brother had his due, he would be 
 buried in Westminster Abbey." 
 
 I wondered why it seemed to occur to no- 
 body that Rossetti should be buried at High- 
 gate with his wife, around whose life (and 
 death) his own life had so plainly revolved, 
 ))ut William decided to bury his brother at 
 Birchington, and no doubt William knew best. 
 
 I went up to London on some necessary busi- 
 ness between the death and the burial, and the 
 gaunt old house at Chelsea, which had always 
 seemed a desolate place to me, for all the 
 wealth of beautiful things, felt more than ever 
 so now that the man who had been the soul of 
 it lay dead in the little bungalow by the sea. 
 I remember the emotion with which I stepped 
 noiselessly into the studio, where there was no 
 longer the cheery voice to greet me, and the 
 sense of chill with which I passed the dark 
 bedroom, now empty, on my way to bed. 
 
 I took back from London the feeling that by 
 the death of Rossetti the world had become 
 aware of the loss of a man of twofold genius, 
 
 238
 
 "THAT SHALL WE KNOW ONE DAY" 
 
 but that its imagination had heen most moved 
 by learning of the two or three tragic facts in 
 his storm-beaten life. 
 
 The funeral was a private one, and a few of 
 llossetti's friends came down to it. They were 
 chiefly the friends of his later life, hardly any 
 of the friends of earlier days being there. We 
 heard that Burne-Jones had made effort to 
 come, and had got as far as the railway sta- 
 tion, where he became ill and turned back. 
 Madox Brown was unwell in Manchester, and 
 Euskin was now an old man in Coniston, and 
 as for the rest, perhaps the time and place of 
 the funeral had not been communicated to 
 them, or perhaps they thought the gradual 
 asundering of the years had left them no right 
 to be there. 
 
 It was a dumb sort of day, without wind, and 
 the sky lying low on the sea. When I got into 
 the last of the carriages there were some drops 
 of rain, but they stopped before we reached 
 the church. We were only a little company 
 who stood about the grave, and all I can re- 
 member about that group is the figure of the 
 blind poet, Marston, with tears in his sight- 
 less eyes. The grave was close to the church 
 porch, and only a few yards away was the 
 winding .path where Kossetti and I had so 
 
 239
 
 :\n^ STORY 
 
 often walked around the place which was now 
 to be the place of his rest. 
 
 The friends left us that night, and after a 
 day or two more the family went away. I was 
 ill in bed bv this time, and from some other 
 cause Watts-Dunton also remained a little 
 longer, I thought we two had been drawn 
 closer to each other by a common affection and 
 the loss of him by whom we had been brought 
 together. 
 
 AVlien I was better, and the time had come 
 for us to go away, too, we walked one morn- 
 ing to the churchyard and found Gabriel's 
 grave strewn with flowers. It was a quiet 
 spring day, the birds were singing and the yel- 
 low flowers were beginning to show. As we 
 stood by the grave under the shadow of the 
 quaint old church, with the broad sweep of 
 landscape in front, so flat and featureless that 
 the great sea appeared to lie on it, and with 
 the sleepy rumble of the rolling waters borne 
 to us from the shore, we could not but feel that, 
 little as we had thought to leave Rossetti there, 
 no other place could be quite so fit. 
 
 It was, indeed, the resting place for a poet. 
 In that bed, of all others, he must, at length, 
 after weary years of sleeplessness, sleep the 
 only sleep that was deep and would endure. 
 
 240
 
 PART THREE
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 I BECOME A JOURNALIST 
 
 THE part that chance plays in human life 
 needs no illustration from my personal 
 experience, but when I remember how 
 unimportant and how remote was the incident 
 which led to my short career as a journalist, 
 and thus to the calling which I have followed 
 during the past five-and-twenty years, I can- 
 not wonder that the blind force we call circum- 
 stance, whether working for good or for bad, 
 is often known by a more religious name. 
 
 Among the few members of the devoted 
 circle which had surrounded Rossetti was 
 William Bell Scott, a poet and painter, who 
 had never achieved the fame which I thought 
 was his due. To right this wrong, it occurred 
 to me one day, while we were at Birchington, 
 to publish an article in his honour, and, for 
 reasons I cannot recall, I sent it, uninvited, to 
 the Liverpool Mercury. The article was pub- 
 lished in due course, and it led to two very 
 
 243
 
 MY STORY 
 
 contrary results, the first being that I lost for- 
 ever the friendship of Scott, who became for 
 the remainder of his life my bitter enemy; and 
 the second, that I received a letter from John 
 Lovell, the then editor of the Mercury, saj^ng, 
 as far as I can remember, " I have for some 
 time thought of asking you to join our staff 
 as an outside contributor, and I should be glad 
 to know how vou would like some such ar- 
 rangement as that we should pay you, say £100 
 a year, and that you should write for us as 
 much or as little as you please." 
 
 It was certainly an extraordinary proposal ; 
 but I think in the sequel it proved both the gen- 
 erosity and the practical wisdom of the man 
 who made it. After the first six months of our 
 informal relation, I received a second letter 
 from the editor, saying : 
 
 " The proprietors of the Mercury had not 
 anticipated that you would do so much work, 
 and therefore they desire to increase the hon- 
 orarium to £150." 
 
 Rather later, a letter of similar purport 
 came to me, and I need not further deal with 
 this side of my connection with the paper than 
 to say that, on its financial side, it speedily 
 became everything that a young journalist 
 could expect. 
 
 244
 
 I BECOME A JOURNALIST 
 
 Shortly after Rossetti's death, I took two 
 rooms (I called them "chambers") in the old, 
 now demolished Clement's Inn, and there de- 
 voted myself to my work as a journalist, which 
 consisted chiefly of my work on the Mercury. 
 If it were necessary to dwell on my domestic 
 life, I could, perhaps, tell curious stories of 
 my days in chambers, for, with my income of 
 a hundred a year, I had to be my own cook 
 and housemaid, making my own bed and break- 
 fast, as well as my own politician and prophet, 
 regulating for the people of Liverpool some 
 of the affairs of state, and discussing for the 
 world in general the laws of the universe; but 
 it may be enough to say that I was rather poor 
 and very lonely, having few friends in London, 
 hardly any houses to call at, and little to live 
 for except my family, who were far away, and 
 mv work, which was alwavs with me. But 
 these were, perhaps, not the worst conditions 
 for a young provincial journalist, who, with a 
 fixed income, however small, was allowed the 
 liberty of a free lance. I was to do whatever 
 I liked, and I did many things in those lonely 
 days which helped me, I think, in later years, 
 to some knowledge of life and to a genuine 
 love of humanity. 
 
 This was the period when newspapers in 
 17 245
 
 MY STORY 
 
 London were for the first time becoming aware 
 that there was "news" in a new book; and 
 I did my best to put the Mercury on an equal- 
 ity with the London dailies, by giving a review 
 of an important work on the day of its pub- 
 lication, and that led, by one means after 
 another, to certain literary friendships, which 
 have become interesting and valuable to me all 
 my life. Thus at the table of my distinguished 
 friend Watts-Dunton I frequently met Mr. 
 Swinburne; under the wing of Lord Houghton 
 I met Lord Coleridge, and at the house of 
 Coleridge I met Matthew Arnold and Robert 
 Browning. 
 
 I think these associations helped to stimu- 
 late my ambition and to elevate my ideals, if 
 not to promote my material welfare ; and what- 
 ever the advantage I derived from them, I owe 
 it, in part or altogether, to my early connec- 
 tion with journalism. For the rest, I can 
 scarcely say if the reading and reviewing of 
 so manv modern books was good or bad for me 
 as a n6velist; and I sometimes remember with 
 a flush and a shudder that with even more than 
 the usual daring born of youth and inexperi- 
 ence, I played in my turn the extraordinary 
 part of law-giver and judge in literature while 
 I was still a learner and tyro. But this topsy- 
 
 24:6
 
 I BECOME A JOURNALIST 
 
 turveydom is apparently a necessary condi- 
 tion of nearly all literary criticism. 
 
 The roving commission which Lovell had 
 given me took me to the theatre on first nights, 
 and I suppose I telegraphed to Liverpool a 
 hundred notices of new plays produced in Lon- 
 don. In this relation I recaJl two incidents, 
 equally pleasing and equally fruitful, the first 
 being a letter addressed to my editor by Ed- 
 ward Russell (the best, I think, of all living 
 dramatic critics), saying enthusiastic things 
 of the Mercury dramatic articles ; and the sec- 
 ond being a letter from Wilson Barrett, pro- 
 testing against one of them, and desiring me 
 to call upon him and explain. The precise 
 ground of Barrett's objection I cannot now re- 
 member, but I recall the closing passages of his 
 frank attack, which was something like this: 
 " And now that I've told you what I think of 
 your article, I wish to tell you what I think of 
 yourself. I think you could write a play, and 
 if some day you should hit on a subject suit- 
 able for me, I shall be glad if you will let me 
 hear of it." 
 
 The theatre was not the only scene in which, 
 under the wing of the Mercury, I studied 
 drama. My editor discovered that at the 
 moment of the unexpected death of a celebrity 
 
 247
 
 MY STORY 
 
 he was sometimes hard pressed for an ade- 
 quate obituary notice, and therefore he re- 
 solved to have a good body of such articles 
 prepared and pigeon-holed in advance of the 
 times when they would be required. In this 
 work of preparation my services were engaged, 
 and I wrote numberless obituary notices of 
 people still living, including nearly all the lit- 
 erary friends with whom I used to dine and 
 smoke. 
 
 I called these my post-mortem examinations, 
 and, making no secret of them, I sometimes 
 engaged the co-operation of my subjects them- 
 selves in preparing the substance of what was 
 to be said about them after their deaths. Dur- 
 ing the twenty to thirty odd years which have 
 interv^ened, the greater part of my post-mor- 
 tem examinations have been published; and I 
 trust the readers of the Mercury have at least 
 not been wounded by such ill-timed censure of 
 people newly dead as too often, nowadays, un- 
 der the feeble pretence of impartiality and of 
 holding the scales of justice, disfigures, and, I 
 think, disgraces the columns of some leading 
 papers in London. 
 
 My post-mortem labours led me to the British 
 Museum, for the collecting of my material; and 
 there, during some six or nine months, I stud- 
 
 248
 
 I BECOME A JOURNALIST 
 
 ied, by the way, one of the most curious and 
 pathetic aspects of London life. The reading- 
 room of the great library was in those days 
 an extraordinary scene to one who had eyes 
 to see and ears to hear. Its regular fre- 
 quenters were a strange conglomeration of 
 people of all nationalities, all interests, and 
 nearly all classes; but the dominant class was 
 the dreaming class, the Don Quixotes of the 
 human family, creating a world of their own 
 — a world of vision which was tragically out 
 of harmony with the world of reality in which 
 thev lived. 
 
 The man in the shabby coat and greasy hat, 
 who had been working for ten years on the 
 treatise that was to make him immortal; the 
 exile from Germany or Italy, who had spent 
 half a lifetime in liberating his country, and 
 lived, meantime, in a bare back room in Soho ; the 
 fanatics, the cranks, the visionaries — all these 
 were there, and I came to know many of them, 
 and to feel a compassion for their mental and 
 material condition that was sometimes in- 
 tensely painful. I have often wondered that 
 nobody has used for the purposes of a novel a 
 scene of life so full of varied and pathetic in- 
 terest as the reading-room of the British 
 Museum. 
 
 249
 
 MY STORY 
 
 But, outside my literary and dramatic exer- 
 cises, there was one wide sphere of literary 
 activity in which I loved to live. My lonely life 
 in London left me to find my few amusements 
 for myself, and I found them principally in the 
 streets. I was living in the heart of the great 
 city, and, though the gardens of the old Clem- 
 ent's Inn gave me an almost cloisteral quiet 
 in mv rooms, I was on the edge of one of the 
 poorest quarters in London, the now denuded 
 Clare Market, wherein Richard Savage and 
 Samuel Johnson walked through the long 
 nights of their jjoverty, when, homeless and 
 without food, they resolved, in their patriotic 
 ardour, that, come what would, they " could 
 never desert their country." 
 
 Genius might not make its home there in my 
 days, but humanity did so ; and I found a world 
 that was valua1)le to study in the poor people 
 who lived in the wretched rookeries (or say 
 ratteries) which the County Council have since 
 pulled down. The " Old Frenchman," with his 
 Jovian bare head, who sold evening papers in 
 the Strand; the old hatter and the old second- 
 hand bookseller in Clement's Passage; the poor 
 chorus girls from the neighbouring theatres, 
 who were treated w^orse than dogs by creatures 
 worse than men; the poor little Italian organ 
 
 250
 
 I BECOME A JOURNALIST 
 
 boys, who were bought and sold like slaves; 
 and then the frequenters of the bogus clu])s, 
 of the dancing academies, of the gambling 
 hells — all these were my neighbours, a few of 
 them were my friends, and most of them found 
 their way in some sort of disguise into the 
 columns of my paper. 
 
 It was not a bad apprenticeship for a novel- 
 ist to live amid associates and scenes like 
 these; but I think I can say with truth that 
 what I prize most, as the result of the experi- 
 ence of those days, is the tenderness it left for 
 the poor and the oppressed, especially the op- 
 pressed among women and girls, whose suifer- 
 ing utters a cry which even yet threatens to 
 drown for me all the other sounds of life. 
 
 When I was in Iceland four years ago, I was 
 interested to hear from a young poet that Par- 
 liament had granted him a stipend to travel 
 abroad and develop his talent. Something like 
 that was what the Mercury did for me when 
 it gave me for several years at least a living 
 wage on condition that I reported myself every 
 day. It afforded me a magnificent apprentice- 
 ship to the profession of novelist, and it is my 
 own fault if adequate results have not ensued. 
 It sent me to the University of Life, the Uni- 
 versity of the London streets, the London po- 
 
 251
 
 MY STORY 
 
 lice courts, the London drinking, dancing, and 
 gaming halls and general underground resorts ; 
 and I should have had to be a poor apprentice, 
 indeed, to come through its curriculum with- 
 out some knowledge of the world. 
 
 I am now fifty-five years of age, and have 
 had thirty years' experience of the literary life, 
 and if a beginner were to ask me what school 
 I consider best for the novelist, I should an- 
 swer, without hesitation, the school of jour- 
 nalism. 
 
 The imaginative writer needs invention and 
 sympathy, and these are the gifts of Nature; 
 but, whatever the deftness of the workman's 
 hand, he cannot " make bricks without straw," 
 and the life of one man is hardly ever so full 
 of incident as to find material for many books. 
 But the school of iournalism is constantly 
 crowding the brain of the student with the in- 
 cidents of countless lives; and, speaking for 
 myself, I know that in those hours of mingled 
 agony and deliglit, in which the scheme of a 
 novel is being composed, there come swarming 
 in upon me at every turn of the plot the recol- 
 lections of my days as a journalist — recollec- 
 tions of this face, or of that voice, of the 
 pathetic figure of the blind mother who had 
 never seen her babe, or of the wistful eyes of 
 
 252
 
 I BECOME A JOURNALIST 
 
 the condemned man when he looked at me as 
 he momited the scaffold. But journalism, to 
 be the best school for the novelist, must be the 
 journalism of the police court, the divorce 
 court, the hospital, and the jail, where human 
 nature is real and stark, if vulgar and low — ■ 
 not the journalism of " society," where human- 
 ity is trying- its poor best to wear a mask.
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 JOHN RUSKIN 
 
 I HAVE spoken of the friends whom my 
 earliest efforts at authorship had won for 
 me, and one of the first of these was Bus- 
 kin. My friendship with Ruskin was not in- 
 timate, but it was of long standing, and it 
 revealed to me his mind and character at im- 
 portant periods of his life. The first point of 
 touch I had with him was when he was found- 
 ing his Guild of St. George, and writing in 
 vehement denunciation of the spirit of the age. 
 It was then the fashion for writers in news- 
 papers to deride his view of political economy 
 as something too puerile for serious treatment, 
 and perhaps it was the sincerity and enthusi- 
 asm of the championship in the salad days of 
 my journalism, though I was hardly more than 
 a schoolboy, and my organ was a little weekly 
 in the Isle of Man, which engaged his interest 
 and sympathy. I remember his tenderness, 
 his appreciativeness, his gratitude for the 
 
 254
 
 JOHN RUSKIN 
 
 feeblest help, the ardour of his own intellectual 
 passion, and his i)Ower of firing enthusiasm. 
 The years which have intervened have seen the 
 triumph of many of his theories, once so flip- 
 pantly derided, and it pleased him well that I 
 should say so when I visited at Coniston a little 
 while before his death. 
 
 My next point of touch with Ruskin was 
 throug-h Rossetti. It was not usual for the 
 members of Rossetti's circle to speak of Rus- 
 kin with enthusiasm. His social aims they did 
 not sympathise with or even care about, and 
 they were often impatient of his artistic criti- 
 cism. There were exceptions to the rule of 
 this unfavourable attitude, and I cannot recall 
 any hostility on the part of Rossetti himself. 
 Indeed, Rossetti's personal liking for Ruskin 
 seems strange to me now when I remember 
 how little their characters had in common, and 
 among the many stories of the one told to me 
 by the other, I recall a tale which illustrates 
 this liking and this difference clearly. 
 
 During the earlier years of their friendship 
 Ruskin had a secretary who was a never-end- 
 ing source of amusement to Rossetti, and of 
 embarrassment and vexation to Ruskin him- 
 self. This was the soldier of fortune who vis- 
 ited Rossetti in the last days of his life at 
 
 255
 
 MY STOEY 
 
 Birchington, and he was the most impudent 
 rogue it was possible to imagine. He had the 
 marks of the humorous rascal written all over 
 his face, and I remember that he informed me 
 that he had written most of Ruskin's earlier 
 works. One day he told Ruskin that a certain 
 friend of theirs, a painter, was in despair for 
 the want of a large sum — I think a thousand 
 pounds. Ruskin promptly sat down and wrote 
 a check for the amount, and gave it to his 
 secretary. 
 
 Time passed, Ruskin heard nothing more of 
 the money, almost forgot all about it, and he 
 and his secretary parted. But, calling one day 
 on his friend, he found him tramping the studio 
 in a state of semi-delirium. 
 
 "What's amiss?" said Ruskin. 
 
 "Why, that scoundrel and thief, , has 
 
 been getting money in my name, saying I sent 
 him to borrow it." 
 
 Ruskin dropped his head, but said nothing. 
 The painter's suspicions were aroused. 
 
 "Has he ever borrowed from you?" 
 
 " Perhaps — I'm not sure — I forget," said 
 Ruskin, looking embarrassed and ashamed. 
 
 This was Rossetti's story, as nearly as I can 
 remember it, but what is freshest in my mem- 
 ory is the roar of Rossetti's laughter at the 
 
 256
 
 JOHN RUSKIN 
 
 audacity of the rascal's theft. That was the 
 Italian in Rossetti, and, like a true son of Italy, 
 he continued, as I have shown, to tolerate the 
 man down to the last days of his life, knowing 
 his character, but enjoying his humour. Years 
 afterward I mentioned the humorous dog in 
 Ruskin's presence, and, though nothing partic- 
 ular was said, I could not mistake the mean- 
 ing of the heightened colour which crossed the 
 author's face. Ruskin's outlook on life was 
 purely ethical. 
 
 During the last year but one before Ruskin's 
 death, I had the pleasure to meet him at his 
 house at Coniston. Although I had known 
 more than a little of him for so long, and had 
 enjoyed so many points of touch with him, it 
 was the first time I had met him face to face. 
 He had then been for years silent, and, so far 
 as active interest in the affairs of life goes, he 
 had long been dead. I found him very old and 
 bont and feeble, a smaller, frailer man than I 
 looked for; well in health both of body and 
 mind, but with faculties that were dying down 
 very slowly and gently and almost impercep- 
 tibly, as the lamp dies down when the oil fails 
 in it. 
 
 His head was not so large as I expected to 
 find it, or it hardly seemed to me in form or 
 
 257
 
 MY STORY 
 
 size either grand or massive; his eyes were 
 slow and peaceful, having lost their former 
 fire; and his face, from which the quiet life of 
 later years had smoothed away the lines of 
 strong thought and torturing experience, was 
 too much hidden by a full gray beard. He 
 spoke very little, and always in a soft and gen- 
 tle voice, that might have been the voice of a 
 woman, but he listened to everybody, and 
 smiled frequently. All the fiery heat of earlier 
 days was gone, all the nervous force of the 
 fever patient, all the capacity for noble anger 
 and religious wrath. Nothing was left but gen- 
 tleness, sweetness, and quiet courtesy, the un- 
 ruffled peace of a breathless evening that is 
 sliding into a silent night. In short, his whole 
 personality left the impression of the ap- 
 proach of death, but of death so slow, so 
 gradual, so tender, and so beautiful that it al- 
 most made one in love with it to see it robbed 
 of every terror. 
 
 I think he was glad to see me, for the sake 
 of what I could tell him of certain friends of 
 his early manhood, from whom the world had 
 long divided him, and perhaps because, as he 
 said, I reseml)led one of them as he had known 
 him thirty years before. So he sat up until 
 nearly eleven o'clock on the two nights of my 
 
 258
 
 JOHN RUSKIN 
 
 visit, and in default of his own talking, which 
 I should dearly have loved to listen to, if 
 the days had not gone by for that eloquent 
 tongue to speak clearly, I talked of some 
 of the men and things he loved to hear 
 about. 
 
 I found that his strongest remaining inter- 
 est was not in art, but in social problems, and 
 it pleased him better to know that his social 
 teaching was finding followers than that his art 
 views were being discussed. It amused him, 
 also, that I could tell something about some 
 earlier occupants of his beautiful home, when 
 it was a kind of head centre for the production 
 of the literature of political revolt, with which 
 Mazzini and others ran the blockade of the cen- 
 sorship of Italy. Probably he knew more of 
 this than I did, although my story came from 
 the printer of the revolutionary pamphlets, but 
 perhaps he was less familiar with the incidents 
 of a sort of Jane Eyre story, whereof a well- 
 known authoress was the leading actor, and 
 Brantwood the central scene. 
 
 It was winter time, and Coniston Old Man 
 was heavily capped with snow, yet once a day 
 Ruskin took a walk in the road, going slowly 
 with a stick, and leaning on the arm of his man- 
 servant. Behind his house there is a rocky 
 
 259
 
 MY STORY 
 
 hillside, with winding steps to the summit, 
 and in former days he climbed the path con- 
 stantly, but that was an impossible exercise 
 now. Aj^parently he passed most of his time 
 in a little parlour overlooking the lake, taking 
 his meals there instead of with the family, and 
 only coming into the drawing-room after din- 
 ner. The little sitting room contained some 
 priceless treasures, chief among them being 
 bound copies of certain of Scott's manuscripts, 
 and mention of these documents reminds me 
 that some of Ruskin's stronger political an- 
 tii)athies remained with him almost to the 
 last. 
 
 It chanced that during my short visit to 
 Brantwood I received two letters which I val- 
 ued highly. One was from Lord Rosebery, 
 containing a request that I should offer his re- 
 spectful greetings to Ruskin, and this pleased 
 Ruskin exceedingly. The other was from Mr. 
 Gladstone, sent on from another address. With 
 Mrs. Severn, Ruskin's cousin, I was turning 
 over the leaves of the latest of Scott's manu- 
 scripts, when it struck me that the handwriting 
 of the novelist toward the end of his life bore 
 an extraordinary resemblance to Mr. Glad- 
 stone's handwriting, as I had just received it. 
 
 To show the similarity, I took out Mr. Glad- 
 
 260
 
 
 c 
 p 
 
 "z
 
 JOHN RUSKIN 
 
 stone's letter and placed it on Scott's page, and 
 certainly the likeness seemed to me, and I 
 think to everybody else in the room except 
 Ruskin, to be so close as to be almost startling. 
 But Ruskin would not have it to be so. Almost 
 without looking at the two specimens, he said 
 repeatedly, " No, no, no ! " and the heat of his 
 tone and the flush in his face convinced me that 
 his political and personal feelings were still 
 powerfully in play. Apart from this incident, 
 I saw nothing in Ruskin that made me feel that 
 his life had left any strong or painful impres- 
 sion whatever on that spirit, now so gentle and 
 at peace with all the world. 
 
 Ruskin's bedroom was, I think, the room 
 above his sitting room, a small chamber of 
 perhaps twelve feet by ten, covered from 
 ceiling to floor with water-colour pictures by 
 Turner, making the air warm with the glow and 
 splendour of their colour. The windows of the 
 little room looked out on a far different scene 
 from the scenes pictured within, the white top 
 and bare sides of Old Man, the half-frozen 
 lake, and the great mists of the moorland float- 
 ing between. And standing there in the midst 
 of those priceless treasures, with the fiery soul 
 beside me, now tempered with age and softened 
 by the joys of home and the love of devoted 
 18 261
 
 MY STORY 
 
 kindred, it was difficult to recall without emo- 
 tion his glorious passage which begins, " Morn- 
 ing dawns as I write," or to think without tears 
 of the day that was then so near when he who 
 loved it so would look on the scene no more.
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 EGBERT BUCHANAN 
 
 ABOUT two months after Rossetti's death 
 I was at work in my chambers in Clem- 
 ent's Inn on one of my articles for the 
 Mercury, when somebody knocked with his 
 knuckles on the door, and, in answer to my call, 
 came in. It was Robert Buchanan, whom I had 
 never seen before, a thick-set man, of medium 
 height, with a broad, fresh-coloured face, dis- 
 tinctly intellectual, but certainly not ascetic or 
 spiritual or inspired. He had seen something 
 I had written about Rossetti, with a reference 
 to himself, and he had come to thank me and 
 to reproach me at the same time. In a voice 
 that had a percei^tible tremor, he said : 
 
 " Did you want to heap coals of fire on my 
 head? Good God, man, what did you think you 
 were doing ? " 
 
 I was deeply touched by this strange mani- 
 festation of his gratitude, giving proof enough 
 ^that under that rather rugged exterior a real 
 
 263
 
 MY STORY 
 
 human heart was quivering. We became friends 
 immediately, and if I had any momentary 
 sense of disloyalty to my dead comrade in join- 
 ing hands with one whose enmity had helped 
 to darken the last years of his life, I persuaded 
 myself, not without reason, that, after all, Ros- 
 setti and Buchanan had a good deal in common, 
 and but for the devilish tangle of fate, they 
 might even have been friends. 
 
 At that first meeting we talked of Rossetti 
 only, and I well remember Buchanan's long 
 silence, the quivering of his eyelids, and the 
 moistening of his eyes, when I told him how the 
 poet, whom he had wronged so deeply, had 
 praised his " Lights o' Leith." A few days af- 
 terward he wrote a long letter, which was in- 
 tended to explain the motive which had led him 
 to make his unjust attack : 
 
 " In perfect frankness, let me say a few 
 words concerning our old quarrel. While ad- 
 mitting freely that my article in the Contempo- 
 rary Review was unjust to Rossetti's claims as 
 a poet, I have ever held, and still hold, that it 
 contained nothing to warrant the manner in 
 which it was received by the poet and his circle. 
 At the time it was written the newspapers were 
 full of panegyric; mine was a mere drop of gall 
 in an ocean of eau sucree. That it could have 
 
 264
 
 ROBERT BUCHANAN 
 
 had on any man the effect you describe, I can 
 scarcely believe; indeed, I think that no living 
 man had so little to complain of as Rossetti, 
 on the score of criticism. Well, my protest was 
 received in a way which turned irritation into 
 wrath, wrath into violence; and then ensued 
 the paper war which lasted for years. If you 
 compare what I have written of Rossetti with 
 what his admirers have written of myself, I 
 think you will admit that there has been some 
 cause for me to complain, to shun society, to 
 feel bitter against the world; but, happily, I 
 have a thick epidermis and the courage of an 
 approving conscience. 
 
 " I was unjust, as I have said ; most unjust 
 when I impugned the purity and misconceived 
 the passion of writings too hurriedly read and 
 reviewed cur rente calamo; but I was at least 
 honest and fearless, and wrote with no per- 
 sonal malignity. Save for the action of the 
 literary defence, if I may so term it, my article 
 would have been as ephemeral as the mood 
 which induced its composition. I make full ad- 
 mission of Rossetti's claims to the purest kind 
 of literarj^ renown, and if I were to criticise 
 his poems noiv, I should write very differently. 
 But nothing will shake my conviction that the 
 cruelty, the unfairness, the pusillanimity has 
 
 265
 
 MY STORY 
 
 been on the other side, not on mine. The 
 amende of my dedication in ' God and the 
 Man ' was a sacred thing — between his spirit 
 and mine; not between my character and the 
 cowards who have attacked it. I thought he 
 would understand — which would have been, 
 and indeed is, sufficient. I cried, and cry, no 
 truce with the horde of slanderers who hid 
 themselves within his shadow. That is all. 
 But when all is said there still remains the pity 
 that our quarrel should ever have been. Our 
 little lives are too short for such animosities. 
 Your friend is at peace with God — that God 
 who will justify and cherish him, who has dried 
 his tears, and who will turn the shadow of his 
 life-dream into full sunshine. My only regret 
 now is that we did not meet — that I did not 
 take him by the hand; but I am old-fashioned 
 enough to believe that this world is only a pre- 
 lude, and that our meeting may take place — 
 even yet." 
 
 During the next two years I saw a great deal 
 of Buchanan. We were constantly together, 
 and I think we became sincerely attached to 
 each other. It was impossible not to admire 
 his compelling power, his immense vigour, his 
 courage, and even his audacity. There was a 
 sense in which he was the true literary man, 
 
 26G
 
 ROBERT BUCHANAN 
 
 the born " slinger of ink." His control over 
 his vehicle was such as I have never seen 
 equalled, and what he could do he could do 
 without an effort. As a journalist he was worth 
 a wilderness of the men who were always de- 
 preciating him in the newspapers. He would 
 write an article while they were nibbling a pen 
 and gazing vacantly at a sheet of paper, hav- 
 ing a quick sense of what the public wants, the 
 art of swift assimilation, and a never-failing 
 power of vigorous expression. 
 
 He knew life, too, and though he knew books, 
 and knew them well, he had not spent all his 
 days within the four walls of a library. In 
 his youth he had gone through bitter priva- 
 tions, tramping the streets with David Gray, 
 and lodging in a top room in the " New Cut," 
 where a tender-hearted Cockney servant girl 
 would smuggle up a dish of half cold potatoes 
 from the kitchen in pity of the hunger of the 
 struggling boys from Scotland. 
 
 There was a heart in him, too, and when he 
 permitted himself to speak out of it the world 
 had no choice but to hear, so that the time had 
 been when, in recognition of the power, the 
 pathos, the humour, and the undoubted literary 
 form of his earlier poems, he was recognised 
 as the heir-apparent to Tennyson. 
 
 267
 
 MY STORY 
 
 That time was long passed when I came to 
 know him, but he was still the lusty, brawny, 
 stalwart fellow who had more than once flut- 
 tered the literary dove-cots. His hostility to 
 the profession of letters was beginning to run 
 to seed. He had an honest contempt for the 
 mutual admiration of the little cliques who 
 were then so busy tinkering up fictitious repu- 
 tations, and his big, robustious body would rock 
 with derisive laughter at the little kinking 
 humour of what he thought the Oxford manner 
 — the manner of the Don turned journalist. 
 
 Already he was rapidly becoming the Ish- 
 mael of literature, with his hand against every 
 man, and every man's hand against him. He 
 would make no terms with his literary con- 
 temporaries to win their confidence or disturb 
 their distrust. No clubs, no public dinners, no 
 literary gatherings ever knew him, and when 
 he saw himself left out of lists of men of let- 
 ters which included battalions of weaklings, 
 who were not fit to wipe his boots, he growled 
 out his disgust and spat at literature. 
 
 But the spirit of literature keeps a swift re- 
 venge for the literary men who lower her flag, 
 just as she loves the best, if she works the 
 hardest, those who hold her standard high. 
 Buchanan as a force in literature began to dis- 
 
 268
 
 ROBERT BUCHANAN 
 
 appear. The man who had written the " Bal- 
 lad of Judas Iscariot " declined on inconspicu- 
 ous melodrama, and wasted himself on casual 
 journalism. Setting the intelligence of the pub- 
 lic low, he deliberately gave them what he 
 thought they wanted, judging of that by the 
 quality of what he saw succeed. The high con- 
 scientiousness of early years, whereby he had 
 seen that less than his best was less than was 
 due from any artist to the public, had gone 
 down in the general debacle of his literary 
 character. 
 
 Then came a more tragical development. In 
 his last years life went hard with him. He 
 had been an affectionate son, husband, and 
 friend, and his dear ones were beginning to 
 suffer. At that his rebellious spirit seemed to 
 break all bounds, and even his faith began to 
 fail. He seemed to me sometimes like a man 
 at war with the Almighty. It was only the 
 struggle of a big soul, badly beaten in the fight 
 of life, to reconcile itself to the ways of God 
 with men, but the Ishmael in Buchanan lying 
 out in the desert and crying for a drink of 
 water became a trying thing to see. 
 
 In those last years he railed at the world and 
 nearly everything in it, but he kept a warm 
 place in his heart for a few (his devoted sister- 
 
 269
 
 MY STORY 
 
 in-law above everybody), and I have never 
 heard that he wrote a word against me. Very 
 early in our friendship he asked me to collab- 
 orate with him, and I attempted to do so, but 
 there was nothinii: to correct my faults in 
 Buchanan's undoubted qualities, and our lit- 
 erary partnership died almost before it was 
 born. 
 
 After a few years we parted company, not 
 from any quarrel, but by that gradual asun- 
 dering that makes a wider breach than open 
 rupture. I never ceased to think of him with 
 affection, or to regret what I saw of the decay 
 of his noble gifts, the lowering of his natural 
 quality, and when he celebrated his sixtieth 
 year I wrote to wish him many happy returns 
 of the day, and to lament the space by which 
 life and the world had divided us. 
 • His reply was painful reading. He was ill, 
 he had lost his mother, the world had forgotten 
 his existence, and but for one "angel in the 
 house," heaven alone knew what would have 
 become of him. It was a pretty thing to wish 
 a man many happy returns of a day that had 
 dawned on misery that was more than he could 
 bear. Only one good thing had emerged from 
 his sufferings — he had put away forever all 
 my own pitiful superstitions about a benefi- 
 
 270
 
 ROBERT BUCHANAN 
 
 cent Providence, who ruled the world in right- 
 eousness ! 
 
 I was hurt, but not hopeless. Down to the 
 last Ishmael was crying in the desert, but he 
 was not unheard there, and when the end came 
 everything was well.
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 I BECOME A NOVELIST 
 
 WHEN I came up to London to become 
 Rossetti's housemate, I brought with 
 me the MS. of a collection of lectures 
 which I had written while living in Liverpool. 
 Shortly after the poet's death, when ways and 
 means had begun to present serious problems, 
 somebody recommended that I should submit 
 this MS. to a certain great publishing house, 
 and I took it in person. At the door of the 
 office I was told to write my own name, and the 
 name of the person I wished to see, and to 
 state my business. I did so, and the boy who 
 took my message brought back word that I 
 might leave my manuscript for consideration. 
 It seemed to me that somebody might have seen 
 me for a minute, but I had expected too much. 
 The manuscript was carefully tied up in brown 
 paper, and so I left it. 
 
 After waiting three torturing weeks for the 
 decision of the publishers, I made bold to call 
 
 272
 
 I BECOME A NOVELIST 
 
 again. At the same little box at the door of 
 the office I had once more to fill up the same 
 little document. The boy took it in, and I was 
 left to sit on his table, to look at the desk which 
 he had been whittling away with his penknife, 
 to wait, and to tremble. After a while I heard 
 a footstep returning. I thought it might ))e 
 the publisher or the editor of the house. It 
 was the boy back again. He had a pile of loose 
 sheets of white paper in his hands. They were 
 the sheets of my book. 
 
 " The editor's compliments, sir, and — thank 
 you," said the boy, and my manuscript went 
 sprawling over the table. I gathered it up, 
 tucked it as deep as possible into the darkness, 
 under the wings of my Inverness cape, and went 
 downstairs, ashamed, humiliated, crushed, and 
 broken-spirited. Not quite that, either, for I 
 remember that as I got to the fresh air at the 
 door, my gorge rose within me, and I cried in 
 my heart, " By God, you shall — " and some- 
 thing proud and vain. 
 
 I dare say it was right and proper and in 
 good order. The book was afterward pub- 
 lished, and I think it sold well. I hardly know 
 whether I ought to say that the editor should 
 have shown me more courtesy. It was all a 
 part of the anarchy of things which Mr. Hardy 
 
 273
 
 MY STORY 
 
 considers the rule of life. But the sequel is 
 worth telling. That editor became my personal 
 friend. He is dead, and he was a good and 
 able man. Of course he remembered nothing 
 of this incident, and I never poisoned one hour 
 of our intercourse by telling him how, when I 
 was young, and a word of cheer would have 
 buoyed me up, he made me drink the waters of 
 Marah. 
 
 And three times since that day the publish- 
 ing firm I speak of has come to me with the 
 request that I should write a book for them. 
 I have never been able to do so, but I have 
 outgrown my bitterness, and, of course, I show 
 no malice. Indeed, I have now the best reasons 
 for wishing the great enterprise well. But if 
 literary confessions are worth anj^thing, this 
 one may perhaps be a seed that will somewhere 
 find grateful soil. Keep a good heart, even if 
 you have to knock in vain on many doors and 
 kick about the back stairs of the house of let- 
 ters. There is room enough inside. 
 
 Such was my first attempt to become an 
 author, but after years had passed, during 
 which I had been occupied in daily journalism, 
 I found myself settled in a little bungalow of 
 three rooms in the Isle of Wight, and there at 
 length I began to write my first novel. By this 
 
 274
 
 I BECOME A NOVELIST 
 
 time I had persuaded myself (perhaps wrong- 
 ly) that nobody would go on writing about 
 other people's writing who could do original 
 writing himself, and I resolved to live on little, 
 to earn nothing, and never to go back to Lon- 
 don until I had written something of some sort. 
 As nearly as I can remember, I had enough 
 money in my purse to keej) things going for 
 four months, and if, at the end of that time, 
 nothing had got itself done, I must go back 
 bankrupt. Something did get itself done, but 
 at a heavy price of labour and heart-burning. 
 
 When I began to think of a theme, I found 
 four or five subjects clamouring for acceptance. 
 There was the story of the Prodigal Son, which 
 afterward became " The Deemster " ; the story 
 of Jacob and Esau, which in the same way 
 turned into " The Bondman " ; the story of 
 Samuel and Eli, which after a fashion moulded 
 itself finally into " The Scapegoat," as well as 
 half a dozen other stories, chiefly Biblical, 
 which have since been written, or are still on 
 the forehead of the time to come. 
 
 But my first favourite at that moment was a 
 Cumberland legend, which I had recited to Ros- 
 setti during the time we spent together in the 
 Vale of St. John. It was one of the oldest 
 legends of the Lake mountains, and it told of 
 
 275
 
 MY STORY 
 
 the time of the Plague. The people were afraid 
 to go to market, afraid to go to church, and 
 afraid to meet on the highway. In these 
 days a widow with two sons lived in one of 
 the darkest of the Cumberland valleys; the 
 younger son died, and his body had to be car- 
 ried over the mountains to be ])uried. Its 
 course lay across Sty Head Pass, a bleak and 
 " brant " space where the winds are often high. 
 The elder son, a strong-hearted lad, undertook 
 the duty. He strapped the coflfin onto the back 
 of a yoimg horse, and the funeral party started 
 away. The day was wild, and on the top of 
 the pass, where the path dips into Wastdale, 
 between the breast of Great Gable and the 
 heights of Scawfell, the wind rose to a gale. 
 The horse was terrified. It broke away and 
 galloped over the fells, carrying its burden 
 with it. The lad followed and searched for it, 
 but in vain, and he had to go home at last, 
 unsatisfied. 
 
 This was in the spring, and nearly all the 
 summer through the surviving son of the 
 widow was out on the mountain trying to re- 
 cover the runaway horse. Only once did he 
 catch sight of it, though sometimes, as he 
 turned homeward at night, he thought he heard 
 in the gathering darkness, above the sough of 
 
 276
 
 I BECOME A NOVELIST 
 
 the wind, the horse's neigh. Then winter came, 
 and the mother died. Once more the dead body 
 was to be carried over the fells for burial, and 
 once again the coflfin was strapped on the back 
 of a horse. It was an old mare that was chosen 
 this time, the mother of the young one that had 
 been lost. 
 
 The snow lay deep on the pass, and from the 
 cliffs of the Scawfell pikes it hung in a great 
 toppling mass. All went well with the little 
 funeral party until they came to the top of the 
 pass, and though the day was calm the son held 
 the rein with a hand that was like a vise. But 
 just as • the mare reached the spot where the 
 wind had frightened the yoimg horse, there was 
 a terrible noise ; an immense body of snow had 
 parted at that instant from the beetling heights 
 overhead and rushed down into the valley with 
 the movement as of a mighty earthquake and 
 the deafening noise as of a peal of thunder. 
 The dale echoed and re-echoed from side to side 
 and from height to height. The old mare was 
 affrighted. She reared, leaped, flung her mas- 
 ter away, and galloped off. When the funeral 
 party had recovered from their consternation 
 they gave chase, and at length, down in a hol- 
 low place, they saw what they were in search 
 of. It was a horse with something strapped to 
 19 277
 
 MY STORY 
 
 its back, but when they came up with it, they 
 found it was the young horse with the coffin of 
 the younger son. They led it away, and buried 
 the body it had carried so long. But the old 
 mare they never recovered, and the body of the 
 mother never found sepulchre. 
 
 Such was the legend sufficiently terrible and 
 even ghastly, which was my favourite theme 
 when I began to think of my first novel. Ros- 
 setti had been impressed by it, but he had 
 strongly advised me not to tackle it. " It is 
 strong," he said, " but it lacks sjTupathy, and 
 without sympathy no novel can live." 
 
 His judgment had disheartened me, but now 
 I thought I saw a way to meet his objection. 
 The sympathy so necessary to the story was 
 to be got out of the elder son. He was to think 
 God's hand was upon him; but whom God's 
 hand rested on had God at his right hand; so 
 the elder son was to be a splendid fellow — 
 brave, strong, calm, patient, long-suffering — a 
 victim of unrequited love, a man standing 
 square on his legs against all weathers. 
 
 About this central figure and legendary in- 
 cident I first grouped a family of characters. 
 They were heroic and eccentric, good and bad, 
 but they all operated upon my hero. Then I 
 began to write. 
 
 278
 
 I BECOME A NOVELIST 
 
 Shall I ever forget the agony of the first 
 efforts? There was the ground to clear with 
 necessary explanations. This I did in the way 
 of Scott, in a long prefatory chapter. Having 
 written the chapter, I read it aloud, and found 
 it unutterably slow and dead. Twenty pages 
 were gone, and the interest was not touched. 
 Throwing the chapter aside, I began with an 
 ale-house scene, intending to work back to the 
 history in a piece of retrospective writing. 
 The ale house was better, but to try its quality 
 I read it aloud, after the Rainbow scene in 
 " Silas Marner," and then cast it aside in 
 despair. A third time I began, and when the 
 ale house looked tolerable the retrospective 
 chapter that followed it seemed flat and poor. 
 How to begin by gripping the interest, how to 
 tell all and yet never stop the action — these 
 were agonising difficulties. 
 
 It took me nearly a fortnight to start that 
 novel, sweating drops of blood at every fresh 
 attempt. I must have written the first half 
 volume four times at the least. After that I 
 saw the way clearer, and got on faster. At the 
 end of three months I had written nearly two 
 volumes (it was in the days of the three-volume 
 novel), and then, in good spirits, I went up to 
 London, 
 
 279
 
 MY STORY 
 
 My first visit was to J. S. Cotton, a close 
 friend (at that time editor of The Academy), 
 and to him I detailed the lines of my story. 
 His rapid mind saw a new opportunity. " You 
 want peine forte et dure,^'' he said. " What's 
 that?" I said. "An old punishment — a beau- 
 tiful thing," he answered. " Where's my dear 
 old Blackstone ? " and the statute concerning 
 the punishment for standing mute was read to 
 me. It was just the thing I wanted for my 
 hero, and I was in rapture, but I was also in 
 despair. To work this fresh interest into my 
 theme, half of what I had written would need 
 to be destroyed! 
 
 It was destroyed, the interesting piece of 
 ancient jurisprudence took a leading place in 
 my scheme, and after two months more I got 
 well into the third volume. Then I took my 
 work down to Liverjjool, and showed it to my 
 friend, John Lovell. After he had read it, 
 he said: 
 
 " I suppose you want my candid opinion? " 
 
 " Well, ye— s," I said. 
 
 " It's crude," he said. " But it only wants 
 subediting." 
 
 Subediting ! 
 
 I took it back to London, began again at the 
 first line, and wrote every page over again. 
 
 280
 
 I BECOME A NOVELIST 
 
 At the end of another month the story had 
 been reconstructed, and was shorter by some 
 fifty pages of manuscript. It had drawn my 
 heart's blood to cut out my " best " passages, 
 but they were gone, and I knew the l)ook was 
 better. After that I went on to the end and 
 finished with a tragedy. Then the story was 
 sent back to Lovell, and I waited for his verdict. 
 
 My home (or what served for it) was now 
 on the fourth floor of New Court, in Lin- 
 coln's Inn, and one morning Lovell came puff- 
 ing and blowing and steaming (the good fellow 
 was a twenty-stone man) into my lofty nest. 
 He had reread my novel coming up in the train. 
 
 " Well ? " I asked nervously. 
 
 " It's splendid," he said. 
 
 That was all the favourable criticism he of- 
 fered. All save one practical and tangible bit. 
 
 " We'll give you £100 for the serial right of 
 the story for the Weekly." 
 
 He offered one unfavourable criticism. 
 
 " The death of your hero will never do," he 
 said. " If you kill that man, you'll kill your 
 book. What's the good? Take no more than 
 the public will give you to begin with, and by 
 and by they'll take. what you give them" 
 
 It was practical advice, but it went sorely 
 against the grain. The death of the hero was 
 
 281
 
 MY STORY 
 
 the natural sequel to the story; the only end 
 that gave meaning and intention and logic to 
 its motif. I had a strong predisposition toward 
 a tragic climax to a serious story. 
 
 To close a narrative of disastrous events 
 with a happy ending, it always seemed neces- 
 sary to turn every incident into accident. That 
 was like laughing at the reader. Comedy was 
 comedy, but comedy and tragedy together was 
 farce. Then a solemn close was so much more 
 impressive. A happy ending nearly always 
 frayed off into rags and nothingness, but a 
 sad one closed and clasped a story as with a 
 clasp. Besides, a tragic end might be a glori- 
 ous and satisfying one, and need by no means 
 be squalid and miserable. But all these argu- 
 ments went down before my friend's practical 
 assurance, " Kill that man, and you kill your 
 book." 
 
 With much diffidence I altered the catas- 
 trophe and made my hero happy. Then, think- 
 ing my work complete, I asked Watts-Dunton 
 (the friend to whose wise coimsel I owed so 
 much in those days) to read some "galley" 
 slips of it. He thought the rustic scenes good, 
 but advised me to moderate the dialect, and he 
 propounded to me his well-known views on the 
 use of patois in fiction. 
 
 282
 
 I BECOME A NOVELIST 
 
 " It gives a sense of reality," he said, " and 
 also has the effect of wit, but it must not stand 
 in the way." 
 
 The advice was sound. A man may know 
 over much of his subject to write on it prop- 
 erly. I had studied Cumbrian to too much j^ur- 
 pose, and did not realise that some of my 
 scenes were like sealed books to the general 
 reader. So once again I ran over my story, tak- 
 ing out some of the " nobbuts " and the " dus- 
 tas " and the " wiltas." 
 
 My first novel was now written, but I had 
 still to get it published. In my early days in 
 London, while trying to live in the outer court 
 of the calling wherein the struggle for existence 
 is keenest and bitterest and cruellest, I con- 
 ceived one day the idea of offering myself as 
 a reader to the publishers. With this view I 
 called on several of them, who have perhaps 
 no recollection of my early application. I re- 
 call my interview with one of them. He was 
 sitting at a table when I was taken into his 
 room, and he never once raised his head from 
 his papers to look at me. I just remember that 
 he had a neck like a three-decker and a voice 
 like a peahen's. 
 
 "Well, sir!" he said. 
 
 I mentioned the object of my visit. 
 
 283
 
 MY STOEY 
 
 " What can you read? " 
 
 " Novels and poems," I answered. 
 
 " Don't publish either — good-day," he said, 
 and I went out. 
 
 But one of the very best, and quite, I think, 
 the very oldest of publishers now living, re- 
 ceived me differently. 
 
 " Come into my own room," he said. It was 
 a lovely little place, full of an atmosphere that 
 recalled the publishing house of the old days, 
 half office, half study ; a workshop where books 
 might be made, not turned out by machinery. 
 I read many manuscripts for that publisher, 
 and must have learned much by the experience. 
 And now that my novel was finished I took it 
 to him first. He offered to publish it the fol- 
 lowing year. That did not suit me, and I took 
 my book elsewhere. Next day I was offered 
 £50 for my copyright. That was wages at the 
 rate of about four shillings a day for the time 
 I had been actually engaged upon the work, 
 straining brain and heart and every faculty. 
 Nevertheless, one of my friends urged me to 
 accept it. 
 
 "Why?" I asked. 
 
 " Because it is a story of the past, and there- 
 fore not one publisher in ten will look at it." 
 
 I used strong language, and then took my 
 
 284
 
 I BECOME A NOVELIST 
 
 novel to Chatto & Windus. Within a few hours 
 Mr. Chatto made me an offer which I accepted. 
 The story I have told of many breakdowns 
 in the attempt to write my first novel may sug- 
 gest the idea that I was merely serving my 
 apprenticeship to fiction. It is true that I was, 
 but it would ])e wrong to conclude that the 
 writing of a novel has been plain sailing with 
 me ever since. Let me " throw a crust to my 
 critics," and confess that I am serving my ap- 
 prenticeship still. Every book that I have 
 written since has offered even greater difficul- 
 ties. Not one of the little series but has at 
 some moment been a despair to me. There 
 has always been a point of the story at which 
 I have felt confident that it must kill me. I 
 have written nine novels (that is to say about 
 ninety) and sworn as many oaths that I would 
 never begin another. The public expects a 
 novel to be light reading. It may revenge 
 itself for an occasional disappointment by re- 
 membering that a novel is not always light 
 writing.
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 R, D. BLACKMORE 
 
 ONE of the kindest things said about my 
 first novel at the moment of its publi- 
 cation was that it smelt of the peat, 
 which was the distinguishing odour of " Lorna 
 Doone," and this coupling of my first work of 
 fiction with Blackmore's masterxjiece quickly 
 led to a personal friendship with one of the 
 least known but most fascinating personalities 
 of my time. 
 
 Whether Blackmore wrote in the first in- 
 stance to me or I to him I cannot now recall, 
 but among his earliest letters I find one which 
 says : 
 
 " Your publishers have kindly sent me a copy 
 of ' The Shadow of a Crime,' and I am reading 
 it carefully. Your style does not permit any 
 skipping. No work that does so is of much 
 value. So far as I can yet judge, the book is 
 full of power and true imagination. To the 
 critical gift I have no claim; but I seem to 
 
 286
 
 R. D. BLACKMORE 
 
 myself to know when I come across genu- 
 ine matter. And you have also that respect 
 for yourself and your readers, which is a 
 sine qua non for the achievement of great 
 work. However, I will not show my own de- 
 ficiency in that quality by offering premature 
 remarks." 
 
 But Blackmore could be a frank critic as well 
 as a generous appreciator, and a day or two 
 later than the date of this letter he wrote again 
 in terms of much more limited praise. 
 
 " I would not write again," he says, " until 
 I had read your book through, which I have 
 now done with great care. My opinion is of 
 very little value ; but so far as I can distinctly 
 form one it is as follows : There is any amoimt 
 of vigour and power and some real pathos 
 (which is, of course, a part of power), also 
 there are many other merits, a strong English 
 style, great knowledge of character, keen ob- 
 servation, and much originality. 
 
 " But I think you will improve upon this book 
 vastly as experience grows. The incidents ap- 
 pear to me to be huddled, without sense of 
 proportion now and then, and there is much 
 strain upon credulity. But I am loath to find 
 fault, knowing I am not a skilled workman 
 myself." 
 
 287
 
 MY STORY 
 
 After the publication of my second and third 
 novels Blackmore was no less generous and no 
 less kindly. 
 
 " It has always seemed to me," he said, " that 
 your turn of mind and power of creation are 
 specially dramatic, and that you will write if 
 once you take to that form a very grand and 
 moving play. There is no one who can do that 
 now, so far, at least, as I can judge, and I shall 
 be proud if I live long enough to see you 
 achieve it. 
 
 " But for novel writing you have not yet (ac- 
 cording to my small judgment) the sense of 
 proportion and variety which are needful for 
 pleasant work. I have read with great care 
 your latest book, and have admired and been 
 stirred by it. But to my mind (which is not at 
 all a critic one) there is not the sliding and 
 the quiet shifting and the sense of pause 
 which are perhaps only the mechanical parts 
 of great work, but help to lift it. I cannot 
 exactly express my meaning, and I have no 
 science to second it; and I know that I can- 
 not do the thing itself, and never attempt it 
 consciously." 
 
 There was always encouragement as well as 
 counsel in Blackmore's excellent letters, and 
 little glimpses into his own life and character 
 
 288
 
 R. D. BLACKMORE 
 
 that were always interesting, and sometimes 
 beautiful. 
 
 " I conclude that you have left the Isle of 
 Man," he wrote, " and hope you are working 
 at a book, quocimque jeceris stabit. Any work 
 of yours will now command a larger circle than 
 the critics, to whom, like myself, you owe little. 
 If the matter were of more interest, I would 
 print the first notices of ' Lorna Doone,' which 
 they are now quoting as a standard. I have 
 them somewhere, and a damp bed they are to 
 smother a shy guest in. But you know well 
 enough how these men fumble the keys of an 
 open door." 
 
 I met Blackmore first in the earliest days of 
 our acquaintance. He came to the gate of his 
 garden at Teddington to meet me on my alight- 
 ing from the train. An elderly man, of more 
 than middle height and full proportions, with 
 a clear-cut face, clean shaven except for a tuft 
 of gray hair, in the manner of fifty years ago, 
 down the cheek. He wore a straw hat with a 
 wide brim, and gave generally the impression 
 of a comfortable old Quaker. His eyes were 
 neither large nor brilliant, and gave no hint 
 of having looked on the burning bush. The 
 expression was calm, and there was a solid 
 strength in face, figure, and bearing. I should 
 
 289
 
 MY STORY 
 
 have said he was then a man in good health, 
 on fairly good terms with life, and that he had 
 certainly slept o' nights. 
 
 That day our talk was not literary. He had 
 a large garden, which he thought he cultivated 
 for profit, although it had always involved him 
 in a steadily increasing loss. His wife, who 
 was lately dead, used to say that but for the 
 " profits " of his work in the garden they might 
 live in ease and content. But Blackmore knew 
 what he was doing. He loved his garden, he 
 loved his trees, above all he loved his pears, 
 and literature can have had no rewards so dear 
 to him as his annual deficit on his seventeen 
 acres. We walked over them for several 
 hours, and he talked of his fruit and flowers 
 with as much tenderness as if they had been 
 human beings. God had given him no other 
 children, and he was then, I think, quite 
 alone. Somewhat later his affectionate young 
 niece came to take charge of the place his 
 wife had left vacant, and the lonely man 
 became less lonely, but it was well for him 
 always that he had his garden to love and 
 care for. 
 
 His occupations as a market gardener gave 
 him a good deal of amusement. He was full of 
 stories of his experiences with his men, with the 
 
 290
 
 R. D. BLACKMORE 
 
 carters who took his fruit to Covent Garden, 
 and with the people he bought his seeds and 
 manure from. The general effect of these 
 stories was that he knew he was often cheated, 
 and that he enjoyed the simplicity of the means 
 employed to hoodwink him. One story, I re- 
 member, was of a carter, who dropped into the 
 trap of the boy in the legend, who rendered 
 his master an account, beginning : " A shil- 
 ling's worth of eggs — eighteen pence." The 
 fellow worked for Blackmore for many years 
 at a workman's wages, and while his master 
 lost on an average five hundred pounds a year 
 on growing fruit, his gardener built a row of 
 cottages on selling it. -The whirlwind came, 
 however, one Saturday night, when the man 
 had the ill luck to return home from market 
 drunk, and the money in his purse showed a 
 surplus of several pounds over his account. 
 Another of Blackmore's stories was of buying 
 manure from a farmer, who knew nothing of 
 his celebrity outside the business of market 
 gardening. 
 
 "How much a ton?" said Blackmore. 
 
 " Well," said the farmer, " I'm charging the 
 gentlemen seven-and-six, but you shall have it 
 for five." 
 
 Blackmore's house stood in the middle of his 
 
 291
 
 MY STOKY 
 
 garden, and was a plain square structure of 
 the simplest kind. He had built it himself, and 
 it expressed his own character in the absence 
 of every unnecessary ornament. No house 
 could be less like the literary man's home, 
 which usually gathers about it signs and sym- 
 bols of its class. Comparatively few books, 
 and those he had were chiefly classical, such 
 as one might find in the house of a school- 
 master or the library of a monastery, with a 
 fair sprinkling of treatises on horticulture. 
 Novels there were, but mainly presentation 
 copies of works of friends, with here and there 
 a series of Dickens and Thackeray. 
 
 His workroom was,- I think, also his bed- 
 room, an upstairs room of medium size, where- 
 of the most notable feature was a multi- 
 tudinous collection of meerschaum pipes of 
 varying size and degree of rosy colour. He 
 was a great smoker, and loved to have his huge 
 pipes aliout him. There were few photographs 
 except those of Sir Richard Owen and certain 
 other friends of earlier years. One thing only 
 would have betrayed the fact that this was the 
 home of Blackmore. On the drawing-room 
 table there was a large album devoted ex- 
 clusively to the portraits of girls called Lorna, 
 after his beloved heroine of that name. A 
 
 292
 
 E. D. BLACKMOEE 
 
 lovely collection of sweet faces which he could 
 not help being j^roud of. For he was godfather 
 to a vast family of beautiful children. 
 
 The fifteen years following my first visit to 
 Teddington ripened our friendship to the clos- 
 est intimacy. He had few friends among lit- 
 erary people, and except for Thomas Hardy, 
 of whom he had seen little in later years, he 
 had hardly a personal acquaintance of his own 
 class. My visits to Blackmore were not as fre- 
 quent as they would have been but for the dis- 
 tance which separated our homes, but our 
 correspondence was almost constant, and T 
 have many of his charming letters. They are 
 among the best letters I have ever received, 
 bright, humorous, full of pretty phrases, with 
 extraordinary power of condensed expression, 
 rhythmical in style, and generous in tone. 
 
 Strange as it may seem to say so, Blackmore 
 was not naturally a story-teller, and his suc- 
 cess in fiction is only another proof (of which 
 George Eliot's case is, I think, the most nota- 
 ble example) that it is possible to write great 
 novels without being by natural gift a story- 
 teller at all. One knows the story-teller the 
 moment he speaks, just as one recognises the 
 humourist the instant he enters the room, and 
 Blackmore's conversation, though greatly in- 
 20 293
 
 MY STORY 
 
 teresting, had never the vivacity, the surprise, 
 and the grip of the talk of the man who is bom 
 with the faculty for telling a story. It was, 
 therefore, not surprising to hear him say he 
 became a novelist by the pressure of circum- 
 stance. 
 
 I think he told me that after leaving the uni- 
 versity he was for a while a tutor, and then 
 entered the chambers of a conveyancer named 
 Warner, and was called to the bar. But no 
 practice came to him, and he began to write — 
 on classical subjects first by the choice of his 
 mind, for he was an excellent Greek scholar. 
 Nobody wanted his scholarship, however, and 
 he began to ask himself what the public really 
 did want. His first attempts at popular- 
 ity were in the way of the drama, and he 
 wrote on a Scandinavian subject a play which 
 was never produced. It had a powerful dra- 
 matic incident and some excellent dialogue, 
 but no motive and no structure. Failing to 
 interest the actors, he went next to the pub- 
 lic direct with an essay in fiction. Here his 
 success was better, although not quick, and 
 culminated in the great triumph of " Lorna 
 Doone." 
 
 Not being naturally a story-teller, though a 
 splendid recorder of stories, he invented very 
 
 294
 
 R. D. BLACKMORE 
 
 little, and depended largely on fact and mem- 
 ory. I think he told me that for almost every- 
 thing he had written he had the authority of 
 some original. John Ridd had his counterpart 
 in life, and Blackmore's old father, a clergy- 
 man of the old type, had served his son for a 
 model several times. I think Lorna herself 
 came more directly out of the heart of her cre- 
 ator, and I see Blackmore's own nature in 
 many of his children, both male and female, 
 but he did not greatly trust himself in the in- 
 vention of incident, and the wings of his 
 imagination always kept close to the ground. 
 Hence, no doubt, the vivid reality of his nar- 
 rative, and hence, also, the slowness of his 
 pace. 
 
 Perhaps the thing that struck one first in 
 Blackmore was his impatience of the great 
 fame of " Lorna Doone." In all soberness he 
 would have you believe that the success of that 
 book, beginning nearly a year after its publi- 
 cation, was due to a blimder on the part of the 
 public that, coming at the moment of the mar- 
 riage of the Princess Louise, the story had 
 something to do with the Marchioness of Lome. 
 And then his joy at the vast welcome given to 
 his offspring was always a little marred by 
 vexation that the public made a favourite of 
 
 295
 
 MY STORY 
 
 Loma, to the disadvantage of all her younger 
 sisters. 
 
 Blaekmore was not philosophical in his im- 
 patience of Lorna's preeminence in public 
 favour. He did not make allowance for the 
 natural limitations of the public. The author 
 who has won the great love of a section of the 
 people for one story or one character must 
 never hope and never desire to oust that love 
 in favour of another story or character. He 
 must go, if he can, to another section of the 
 people and turn up fallow ground. If he can- 
 not do that, he is wiser to be silent, for it is 
 not enough that his later books should be as 
 good as his earlier ones of the same kind to 
 win the same favour — they must be a hundred- 
 fold better. Hence the repeated cry that au- 
 thors fail of their former strength, when they 
 are usually only beating at the same door. 
 Blaekmore suffered more than any author of 
 the time from this cuckoo cry that he had writ- 
 ten one book only, while in truth he had written 
 half a dozen that were enough to make the 
 reputations of as many lesser men. 
 
 It is true, however, that toward the end his 
 higher quality failed him. No wonder it was 
 so, for his bodily health was failing him also, 
 and with it some faculties of mind, memory 
 
 296
 
 E. D. BLACKMOKE 
 
 above all. One day I found him makin.!^, on 
 the flyleaf of his manuscript book, a list of the 
 characters of a new novel, with particulars of 
 their ages and the colour of their eyes and 
 hair. Another day he was writing the third 
 version of a short Christmas story, which he 
 set no store by beyond the fee it was to bring 
 him, and that was eaten up by the time he had 
 spent on it. 
 
 It was pitiful, but then there was that be- 
 loved garden to keep going, and another spur 
 less easy to talk about — the desire not to be 
 entirely overlooked in the race of life, or to 
 be written about as if one were already dead. 
 Blackmore knew that his generation was for- 
 getting him as a living man, and the thought 
 must have hurt, but it never rankled. He saw 
 younger men arise, and he was too strong, too 
 generous, too much of a man to grudge them 
 the places they won for themselves. He had 
 had his own day, and on the whole the world 
 had been good to him, and life had been worth 
 living. So let others have their turn, and God 
 bless them ! 
 
 Blackmore's health had been failing him for 
 years. First a strange half-paralysis of one 
 hand, then occasional internal pain, then pain 
 every day and every hour. A change to the 
 
 297
 
 MY STORY 
 
 South Coast, to Wales, and then back to Ted- 
 dmgton, but no sensible improvement. Some 
 trouble of the colon at last that was sure to 
 kill him. His letters were always cheerful, but 
 he was not buoying himself up with any false 
 hopes. The end was coming, and it was only 
 a question of soon or late. I saw him last in 
 the early autumn. The full proportions were 
 gone, and he was only the shadow of the man 
 I had known first. The old workroom bed- 
 room was his sick room now, and medicine 
 bottles filled up every comer of the shelves not 
 occupied by the big pipes. His pain was con- 
 stant, and he was always taking drugs to re- 
 lieve it, but his cheerfulness continued. Of 
 course all work was at an end, but in the long 
 hours of the sleepless nights he was still read- 
 ing. The series of Dickens was standing him 
 in good stead. 
 
 " He is the only one I can read now," he 
 said. 
 
 I was going to Eome for the winter, and we 
 both knew that was the last we were to see of 
 each other. In the best way I could, I tried 
 to tell him how much his friendship had been 
 to me; how it had strengthened and stimulated 
 me; and then to say, with what delicacy I 
 could, that it must be a splendid thing, after 
 
 298
 
 R. D. BLACKMORE 
 
 all, to look back on a long life without a stain, 
 and on having produced several works of high 
 quality, and on leaving one novel behind that 
 would surely be ranked with the best twelve of 
 the century. 
 
 He listened to me with the simplicity of his 
 sincere nature, and seemed to take comfort 
 from what I said. A few weeks later I re- 
 ceived a letter from him saying that he was 
 now forbidden to see anybody, and was an exile 
 for the short remainder of his life. He bade 
 me good-bye, and returning to what I had said, 
 he wrote a few tender and touching words 
 about myself, and the life that might be before 
 me. It is mv own fault if I am not the better 
 as long as I live for having come so close to 
 one of the truest hearts and finest intellects of 
 the age.
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 MY FIRST MANX NOVEL 
 
 I HAD written two novels with their scenes 
 in Cumberland, my mother's country, be- 
 fore I thought of carrying out the sugges- 
 tion of Eossetti that I should try to become 
 the novelist of Manxland, but now I began to 
 see how readily the island lent itself to literary 
 treatment, not merely for its own sake, but 
 also for the sake of those great themes of 
 human sin and sorrow which are never so well 
 illustrated as when brought down to a little 
 scene, a narrow focus, from the general to 
 the particular. So I went with my project 
 of becoming a Manx novelist to consult a 
 famous Manxman of his day, the Rev. Hugh 
 Stowell Brown. 
 
 Brown disapproved of it altogether. " Don't 
 attemjjt it," he said. " If you do, you will 
 have a lasting disappointment. The readers 
 of novels don't care one straw about the 
 Isle of Man. Nobody cares about it, and I 
 
 300
 
 MY FIRST MANX NOVEL 
 
 would earnestly counsel you to dismiss the 
 thought." 
 
 Fortunately for myself, I think, I saw rea- 
 sons for doubting the wisdom of Brown's 
 advice, and, by way of experiment, I wrote a 
 little Manx story which no one remembers now, 
 except in America, where they are so indulgent 
 to my failure that they sell it at five cents in 
 tens of thousands. But under happier inspira- 
 tion I tried again. In dismissing me with his 
 wet blanket, my friend had said: 
 
 " But if you must write about that God-for- 
 saken little island, you ought to go to my 
 brother Tom." 
 
 I did not go to his brother Tom, but with 
 characteristic sweetness his brother Tom came 
 to me, and thus began one of the tenderest and 
 truest friendships of my life, my friendship 
 with the racy, the brilliant, the entirely charm- 
 ing and delightful author of " Fo'c's'le Yams," 
 the most loyal, the most generous, the most un- 
 selfish of men. If I quote from the letters he 
 wrote to me at the beginning of our acquaint- 
 ance more than one passage which modesty 
 might call upon me to suppress, I shall do so 
 with one object only — to reveal to the reader 
 the large generosity, the measureless charity, 
 the splendid if too lavish appreciativeness 
 
 301
 
 MY STORY 
 
 which made T. E. Brown, for all who knew 
 him, the most fascinating of friends. 
 
 " It may be late," he wrote, " but even so 
 I must write to tell you with what pleasure I 
 have read your Cumberland storj^. I think it 
 is wholly delightful. The style, too, is admi- 
 rable ; in fact, it is a style, and a very fine one. 
 "VYe are now looking out, somewhat nervously, 
 for a successor to George Eliot, and we should, 
 many of us, be well content to see a successor 
 to Mrs. Gaskell. I feel that you belong to this 
 rank of novelists, and that the sweet gravity 
 of your manner, and the total absence of 
 straining, bring you perhaps nearer to the lat- 
 ter than to the former. But these circum- 
 stances of distinction are very great, and have 
 gladdened many beside me. Please pardon this 
 intrusion upon your privacy. I would not have 
 ventured to address you thus, if I had not 
 reason to believe that you are, remotely, it may 
 be, a fellow-countryman of mine. Am I wrong 
 in supposing that you derive your second name 
 from the Isle of Man? You published, some 
 time ago, in the Liverpool Mercury, a tale of 
 Manx life, which much interested me, and 
 served rather to justify my conjecture. 
 
 " I am a Manxman, with a root in Cumbria, 
 and am passionately fond of both countries; 
 
 302
 
 2 
 
 <! 
 
 I-} 
 
 O 
 
 o 
 
 t-t 
 
 z 
 
 B 
 
 o 
 
 2 
 H
 
 MY FIRST MANX NOVEL 
 
 consequently I am, in some sort, made to be 
 one of your most sympathetic readers. 
 
 " It is possible that you may have read a book 
 of mine called ' Fo'c's'le Yarns,' in which I have 
 tried to tell a few Manx stories. If, as is in- 
 deed most probable, my little venture has not 
 come under your notice, I would esteem it an 
 honour if you would allow me to send you a 
 copy. My object, however, in writing to you 
 now is to assure you of my warm admiration 
 and sympathy. The mention of my own book 
 you will, I trust, regard as an attempt to pro- 
 duce credentials of my aptness to feel the sym- 
 pathy which I have tried to express." 
 
 If this letter indicated a breadth of sym- 
 pathy that was apt to lose itself in generosity, 
 I will quote again to show that Brown could 
 be a very severe as well as a very appreciative 
 critic. When I began to lay the keel for my 
 first serious Manx novel I sent a scenario to 
 the author of " Fo'c's'le Yams," and this is 
 part of his reply: 
 
 " Thanks for this admission to the secrets of 
 your workshop. The story is most interesting. 
 I think it best to return the sketch, as it is con- 
 venient for purposes of reference. 
 
 " It could not possibly be placed in the Isle 
 of Man nor timed in the nineteenth century. 
 
 303
 
 MY STORY 
 
 " The Isle of Man does not give you the re- 
 moteness of place which you want. Norway 
 might, Kamchatka might! but the Isle of Man 
 — no! 
 
 " Then as to time : 
 
 " The history of the Isle of Man since the 
 Revestment (1765?) is not legendary, nor has 
 it been otherwise than very clearly defined 
 since the Reformation. It is an eventless his- 
 tory, but quite ascertained, and rigid within its 
 narrow compass. The constitution has been 
 singularly unbroken; there is not the faintest 
 hint of any such resolution as you postulate. 
 The House of Keys was cooptative in my own 
 time, and the change to the popular method of 
 election was the merest migration 'from the 
 blue bed to the brown.' 
 
 " The stage is inadequate for your romance, 
 and moreover it is quite occupied by the most 
 obstinate fixtures. Your Dooiney (sic) Mooar 
 is less than a fable. Where can you get him 
 in? He is not, I suppose, the Earl of Derby, 
 or the Duke of Athol; but, if he is not, he 
 ought to be, for these gentlemen hold the 
 field, and you can't get rid of them. It is 
 impossible to conceive the privileged class, or 
 nobles, of whom you speak. The fact is, 
 you would take the Isle of Man as the merest 
 
 304
 
 MY FliiST MANX NOVEL 
 
 physical basis, and construct upon it a whole 
 system of manners, institutions, a social sys- 
 tem, in short, which it never knew. It can't 
 be done at the distance; it can't be done 
 at all. 
 
 " Now, why not cut away your socio-politico- 
 revolutionary setting altogether, and rely, as 
 no doubt you desire to do, on the sheer humani- 
 ties? The Dooiney Mooar need not be a Lear, 
 but he might be an old Manx gentleman; and 
 instead of resigning a seigniority, he might 
 resign his landed estate. Such a person, and 
 grouped around him nearly all the rest of your 
 story, you could place about the year 1800. 
 The Duke of Athol held a sort of court in those 
 days; he brought over with him to the island 
 a choice assortment of swashbucklers and cap- 
 tains and miscellaneous blackguards. . . . This 
 Athol episode is, I think, capable of treatment; 
 but it brings us perilously near our own time. 
 Bishop Wilson was an * epoch-making ' person- 
 age. The Church and State question was then 
 prominent. He was a complicated man, or, at 
 any rate, a composite one. Never was man 
 more beloved, never was there a serener saint, 
 never a more brutal tyrant. But why seek this 
 sort of person in the Isle of Man? Think of 
 Laud and his tremendous stage. lias any one 
 
 305
 
 MY STORY 
 
 ever ' done ' him, and the robin coming into his 
 study, and ' all to that ' ? 
 
 " But yours is a Romance 1 Not an uncondi- 
 tional Romance, though, I suppose? Your sketch, 
 as related to a background, is more like a Fic- 
 tion founded upon fiction, or, to express it 
 nautically, Fiction-by-fiction-half-fiction-with-a- 
 little-bit-of-fiction." 
 
 An opinion like that was not to be gainsaid, 
 and I went to work again, getting a little closer 
 to Manx soil, though still conscious that my 
 theme was floating over the real Isle of Man 
 as over an island of Prospero that had the in- 
 terest and perhaps the charm without the re- 
 sponsibilities of an actual country. In this 
 second effort I had the constant sympathy and 
 assistance of my correspondent, and when at 
 length my work was done, the best reward that 
 came to me was the whole-hearted enthusiasm 
 with which my first Manx novel was received 
 by the brilliant Manxman. 
 
 " I have broken a finger and can hardly guide 
 a pen," he wrote, " but I must write at least a 
 scratch or two to tell you of the delight with 
 which I have read the new book. I confess the 
 first volume did not attract me much. The 
 quotations from ' Fo'c's'le Yarns ' are stitched 
 on in a patchy way, like Dick-Quayle-Vessey's 
 
 306
 
 MY FIRST MANX NOVEL 
 
 buttons. Afterward you shake yourself free 
 from these tags and bobs, and your Manx does 
 not suffer for it. J)o you feel nervous about 
 this dialect business? I think, if I were you, 
 I'd drop it. 
 
 "You seem to have used a poor lecture of 
 mine on Manx Proverbs. Again, I should say 
 ' drop it ' ! and sic melius situm. 
 
 " The Proverbs seem lugged in, and some of 
 them hang in the air a propos de hottes. To 
 me all this kind of thing gives an air of weak- 
 ness. But in the second vol. we rise to very 
 noble work indeed. Here I have little to do but 
 to confess my warmest admiration, and so on 
 to the very end." 
 
 Then follow five or six pages in Brown's 
 minute and delicate hand of just and searching 
 criticism, coupled with splendid if extravagant 
 praise, and then this characteristic passage: 
 
 " I do so rejoice in that stark atmosphere — 
 gray, grim, almost colourless; the very style 
 is in outline-, no fat paint, no prettiness, no 
 ornament — dark silver, dark steel, if you like. 
 Mind, I would not have you overdo this; your 
 sentences are just on the point of becoming 
 jerky ; they are rigid, but you must not let them 
 become abrupt, snapped off by the keenness 
 of their own internal tension. It is extraor- 
 
 307
 
 MY STORY 
 
 dinary how whole pages of this book affect me 
 as beautiful frostwork; the icicles seem to ring 
 in the thin air. 
 
 "But I do like this; partly it is a vefie(n<; — 
 i. e., I have a savage sort of exultation in the 
 thought that to you our island is not a mere 
 fairy scene of the ' lovely ' and the ' sweet ' and 
 the ' really you know such a charming little 
 place ' — such ferns, such mosses — positively 
 demmee a little paradise of primeval simplicity 
 not incapable of Lawn-Tennis! 
 
 " Lord God ! What a reception for the Ed- 
 wins and Angelinas — this cold stern rebuke of 
 yours ! But to the a-werol, to those who know, 
 what comfort, what ghostly consolation in this 
 doiirnessl Whj^, there is not even a picnic, is 
 there ? 
 
 " You have evidently given up the notion of 
 a story which we discussed some time ago ; you 
 had thought of a story which would be based 
 upon some revolutionary social change. I 
 thought this would transcend the little Manx 
 canvas. I rememljer — you s]:»oke of Lear and 
 Macbeth, and so people do, but it's really Ger- 
 vinus-Dowden, and you are well rid of it. 
 
 " Your story fits the Isle of Man like a lid 
 to a box. Now if you had gone fumbling 
 about after aions and transition lEons and the 
 
 308
 
 MY FIRST MANX NOVEL 
 
 progress of society, God damn it, man! where 
 should we have been! Adrift upon the sea of 
 nowhere in the good ship Utopia, Captain 
 Ovri<;. As it is, I have but to unstopper this 
 alabaster box of precious ointment, and up 
 leaps the genuine Manx perfume so that the 
 house is filled with the savour thereof. Never 
 mind the little hitches of dialect, never mind 
 Dick-Quayle-Vessey's buttons! Whether it's 
 the blood in you, or the poet and diviner, you 
 know all about it, you need not that any should 
 tell you concerning Man, for you know what is 
 Man, and that in two senses." 
 
 Bather later Brown wrote an amusing letter 
 on the fact that for nearly a year after pub- 
 lication of this first Manx novel the island itself 
 appeared to be totally unaware of its existence. 
 
 " I am perfectly amazed that, as yet, no 
 notice of your book has appeared in the Manx 
 papers. But they are so curious, these Manx 
 pressmen! Conceive these worthy persons 
 week after week cramming their sheets with 
 Reports of Tynwald, and Local Companies, with 
 the facetiae of Auctioneers, the recriminations 
 of Town Commissioners, the lucubrations of 
 Lockerby v. Cowin of " The Belvedere," and 
 not a word, so far as I know, in recognition of 
 the fact that they have been caught to the 
 31 309
 
 MY STOKY 
 
 breast of genius, and that when all their little 
 turmoils shall have passed into the Limbo of 
 fatuities, ' The Deemster ' will live in the lit- 
 erature of the English nation, their own de- 
 scendants abashed and wondering, and asking 
 what their fathers meant bv an indifference so 
 stupid and so unaccountable. Of course I can 
 see that the year 1887 must always be an epoch 
 in Manx history, the year ' The Deemster ' was 
 published, not the year of the three rival steam- 
 boat companies." 
 
 It is hard for me to hold my hand in quoting 
 from Bro^Ti's letters, and if I have already 
 gone too far in reproducing my own glorifica- 
 tion, I ask my readers to believe that of all the 
 rewards that have come to me for my books 
 the most precious by far was the fact that cer- 
 tain of them were clasped to the breast of the 
 man of genius who wrote " Fo'c's'le Yams." 
 
 I have written several Manx novels since that 
 first one, calling up as from an inexhaustible 
 granary the crops of incident and character 
 which I had unconsciously gathered in my 
 youth, and perhaps it is by these books, what- 
 ever their shortcomings, that my name is best 
 known to the public in general, but it has al- 
 ways been a source of pathetic amusement to 
 me to remember how the island itself received 
 
 310
 
 MY FIRST MANX XOVPX 
 
 its first novelist. If novels had been written 
 about it before, that fact had made no impres- 
 sion upon its consciousness, and if dialect 
 poems of great raciness and charm had been 
 published by Brown, the rumour of them had 
 unhappily not gone far. But now for the first 
 time a writer of story-books had penetrated 
 into its households, getting into the heart of 
 the country, going into the farm houses, and de- 
 liberately sitting down by the turf fire in the 
 " chollagh." The outside world cannot under- 
 stand what that means ; but we who are of the 
 soil and have visions of stem old Churchmen 
 and grim old Methodists in every village, who 
 never saw a novel in their lives, and would not 
 have touched one with the longest " grip " if 
 it had been tossed over the tail-board of a cart, 
 can realise the feeling with which the island 
 must have grasped the fact that a degenerate 
 son of her own was (as the worthy preacher 
 on the "plan-beg" put it) "actually earning 
 his living by telling lies," 
 
 It was not at once, however, that our sober, 
 class-leading island reconciled itself to the idea 
 that these novels were fictions at all. I was 
 constantly hearing them discussed as fact. 
 Shortly after the publication of " The Deem- 
 ster" a good Manxman wrote to tell me that 
 
 311
 
 MY STORY 
 
 lie had known Dan Mylrea from his boyhood 
 up, that he had often warned the poor boy 
 against the way he was going, and that, when 
 drink got the better of him at last, and he 
 killed his cousin Ewan, he had come to his 
 house on the night of the murder and given 
 him the knife with which he had committed the 
 crime — and my correspondent had kept it ever 
 since. 
 
 After " The Bondman," I chanced on an old 
 Manxman in Kirk Maughold, who told me he 
 had known the place all his life, and he remem- 
 bered Adam Fairbrother and the six big, lazy 
 brothers, and the girl Greeba, and the mill at 
 Port-e-Vullin (for it was " himself that felled 
 it"), but he was "plagued mortal" to fix 
 Jason, the Icelander, and he couldn't meet 
 with any one in the parish who remembered 
 anything about him. After " The Manxman," 
 a shrewd old friend of mine, living by the water- 
 trough on Ballure, conceived the idea that he 
 was the hero of that story, a photographer 
 photographed him in that character, and now 
 the good canny man does a comfortable busi- 
 ness by selling souvenirs of himself as the only 
 original Pete Quilliam, whom Kitty Creegan 
 was so heartless as to run away from. 
 
 But whatever the attitude of the Isle of Man 
 
 312
 
 Runic Crosses at Douglas Kikk, Bkaddon.
 
 a
 
 MY FIRST MANX NOVEL 
 
 toward tlie novels that are chiefly associated 
 with my name, I comit it as a sufficient return 
 for all the labour they gave me that they 
 brought the brotherly friendship of T. E. 
 Brown. Rossetti alone excepted, he was the 
 most brilliant and fascinating creature I have 
 ever known. Half sailor, half parson, as W. 
 E. Henley happily described him, a thick-set, 
 almost " stocky " person to look upon, with a 
 roll in his walk, and a sort of lurch in his talk, 
 too, with a square jaw, a moist and glistening 
 eye, a mouth that could be as firm as if cast 
 in bronze and then as soft as if blown in foam, 
 strong yet tender, full of the joy of life, de- 
 lighting in the mere sense of being alive, lov- 
 ing the mountains and the sea and the sky and 
 the song of birds, but humanity above every- 
 thing, and woman above all — he was a man, 
 and I think a great one. 
 
 So unusual a mixture of saint and, let me 
 say, sinner, of scholar and poet, and parson 
 and ordinary human being I have never met 
 in any other being. He was capable of the 
 highest flights of the spirit when it is alone 
 with God and feels the knitting together of the 
 riven tissues, the dew of Hermon, the balm 
 of Gilead; but there was no sanctimoniousness 
 about Brown; no sickly and mawkish religios- 
 
 313
 
 MY STORY 
 
 ity; lie loved to adjust his ideas to tlie rugged 
 level of everyday life, to tune his talk to the 
 common lingua vulgaris (with an occasional 
 "Damn it all, man!"), whatever conventions 
 were made to bleed. No affectation ever 
 touched him, no pretence, no humbug of any 
 kind. As a poet he had the fulness of ma- 
 ternal delight in all that came up from the 
 depths of his being, and as a man he had the 
 never-failing joy of his masculinity. 
 
 He had been Vice-Principal of Clifton Col- 
 lege, and when he retired from his post he 
 made his home in the Isle of Man. With no 
 material interest in the welfare and prosperity 
 of his native island, with few (how few!) in- 
 tellectual associates there, parting from the 
 friends and ways of life of thirty years, never- 
 theless when the burden of his work was done 
 he returned to the Isle of Man because he loved 
 it, because it was linked. with the tenderest mem- 
 ories of his childhood and the fondest recollec- 
 tions of his youth, because the graves of his 
 kindred were there, and he had heard the mys- 
 terious call that comes to a mans' heart from 
 the soil that gave him birth. 
 
 I suppose there was a sense in which I heard 
 it, too, for shortly after Brown went back to 
 the Island I also returned to it. And then — 
 
 314
 
 MY FIRST MANX NOVEL 
 
 though there was so great a difference between 
 us — difference of age, character, and attain- 
 ments — we became the closest friends, the most 
 constant companions. We tramped the glens 
 and climbed the hills together, and Brown 
 would lie on the heather for sheer love of the 
 odour of the earth and plunge in the " dubs " 
 of cool water that tumbled and roared in the 
 deafening caverns of the rocks. 
 
 Five years only were given him to indulge 
 his great love of home, yet how much he got 
 into them! How he spent himself for the 
 Manx people, without a thought of himself! 
 If only a handful of his countrymen called 
 to him he came at their bidding. He was 
 at everybody's service, everybody's command. 
 Distance was as nothing even to his failing 
 strength, time as nothing, labour as nothing, 
 and the penalties he paid he did not count. 
 
 Sometimes his friends have thought that the 
 Island did not appreciate all this, did not real- 
 ise it to the full, did not rightly apprehend the 
 sacrifices that were being made, or the gener- 
 ous disproportion of the man to the work which 
 he allowed himself to do. But there can be 
 no question of that kind now. Manxmen and 
 Manxwomen know to-day that the Island lost 
 in Brown the greatest man who was ever bom 
 
 315
 
 MY STORY 
 
 to it, the finest brain, the noblest heart, the 
 largest nature that we can yet call Manx. We 
 do not point to his scholarship merely, though 
 that was splendid, or to the place he won in 
 life, though it was high and distinguished; or 
 yet to his books, though they were full of the 
 fire of genius and racy of the soil he loved the 
 best. None of these answer entirely to the 
 idea we have of the man we knew and loved 
 so well. But the bright and brilliant soul, 
 so strong, so humorous, so tender, so easily 
 touched to sympathy, so gloriously gifted, so 
 beautifully unselfish — this is the idea that an- 
 swers to our memory of the first of Manxmen 
 in the present age or any other. 
 
 When I pass from the Island's loss to my 
 own I can hardly trust myself to speak. I saw 
 him last at my own house at Greeba on a day 
 in 1897, when I was about to leave home for a 
 visit to Rome, and I think he had walked across 
 the mountains (no unusual adventure) to bid 
 me good-bye. His health had been failing for 
 some time, and he was rather silent and I 
 thought sad. At length, when we were alone, 
 in reply to some remark of my own, he said : 
 
 " I don't wish to frighten you, but I want to 
 tell you that . . . I'm afraid I will not be here 
 when you come back." 
 
 316
 
 MY FIRST MANX NOVEL 
 
 He would die soon ; he felt it ; he knew it ; he 
 was not going to make any fuss about it; life 
 on the whole had been worth living, and he was 
 content. 
 
 I did not believe for a moment that he was 
 right, and I would not take his warning seri- 
 ously, though I see now that I might have done 
 so, knowing how free he was from morbid 
 thoughts. All the same, the last letter I wrote 
 before leaving home was written to him say- 
 ing, " Good-bye and God bless you," and such 
 other words of farewell as one sends to one's 
 friend on the eve of a long journey. But he 
 was to take the longer journey of the two, and 
 I had got no farther than Paris when four lines 
 in the Figaro — meagre in their details, full of 
 errors, but only too obviously authentic — told 
 me that Brown was dead. 
 
 I felt then, and I feel now, that with Brown's 
 death something of myself died, too, the better 
 part of myself. I had leaned on him as on an 
 elder brother, a wiser, stronger, purer, serener 
 nature, to whom I could go at any time for 
 solace and counsel and support. I did nothing 
 without consulting him, and took no serious 
 step without his sanction. My stories were told 
 to him first, and he was always aware of my 
 plans and intentions. If I have done anything 
 
 317
 
 MY STORY 
 
 which deserves to be remembered, it is only 
 myself can know how much of what is good in 
 it is but a reflection from the light of his 
 splendid genius. He was the subtlest of ap- 
 preciators, the most enthusiastic of admirers, 
 the most inspiring of critics, the most loyal 
 of friends. To my moods of depression he 
 brought the buoyancy of his big heart, so full 
 of hope and courage, sustaining me amid the 
 despondency of failure as well as the rarer, but 
 no less real, despondency of success.
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 
 WILKIE COLLINS 
 
 ONE of the best of the rewards which my 
 first Manx novel brought me was the 
 friendship of Wilkie Collins, and I value 
 among the most priceless of my possessions 
 the letter he wrote to me after reading it. It 
 was a long letter full of generous and noble 
 praise, but full, too, of candid and valuable 
 advice. 
 
 " Now let me think of the next book that you 
 will write," he said, " and let me own frankly 
 where I see some room for improvement in 
 what the painters call ' treatment of the sub- 
 ject.' When you next take up your pen, will 
 you consider a little whether your tendency to 
 dwell on what is grotesque and violent in 
 human character does not require some dis- 
 cipline? Look again at 'The Deemster,' and 
 at some of the qualities and modes of thought 
 attributed to his nephew, Dan. 
 
 " Again — your power as a writer sometimes 
 
 319
 
 MY STORY 
 
 misleads you, as I think, into forgetting the 
 value of contrast. The picture which your 
 story presents of terror and grief wants relief. 
 Individually and collectively, there is variety 
 in the human lot. We are no more continu- 
 ously wretched than we are continuously 
 happy. Next time I want more of the humour 
 which breaks out so delightfully in old Quil- 
 leash. Those l)reaks of sunshine in your 
 splendid cloudy sky will be a truer picture of 
 nature — and will certainly enlarge the number 
 of your admiring readers. Look at two of the 
 greatest of tragic stories, ' Hamlet ' and ' The 
 Bride of Lammermoor,' and see how Shakes- 
 peare and Scott take every opportunity of pre- 
 senting contrasts and brightening the picture 
 at the right place. 
 
 " I believe you have not even yet written 
 your best book, and here you have the proof of 
 my sincerity." 
 
 I did not know Wilkie Collins long, but I 
 knew him well. He had written saying that I 
 should be welcome to call upon him, but must 
 be prepared to find him suffering the domestic 
 agonies of moving from one place of abode to 
 another. 
 
 " If you don't object to a room without a 
 carpet or a curtain, I can declare myself still 
 
 320
 
 WILKIE COLLINS 
 
 possessed of a table and two chairs, pen and 
 ink, cigars, and brandy and water, and I should 
 be delighted to see you." 
 
 I found him in the heart of London, for he 
 was then living in Gloucester Place. The house 
 was large and rather dingy. The walls were 
 panelled, the stairs were of stone, the hall 
 was cold, and the whole house cheerless. The 
 door had been answered by a man-servant, 
 whose nervousness and diffidence told a long 
 story in advance of the habits of close retire- 
 ment observed by the master I had come to 
 see. On the walls of the room that I was shown 
 into hung pictures of the greatest interest. 
 There was an etching of Dickens that I had 
 never seen anj^iere else, showing a healthier 
 and handsomer face than the one familiar to 
 the public, without any signs either of the days 
 of " Hungerford Market," or of the death's 
 hand that lay heavy on it at the last. Then 
 there was a portrait of Collins himself in the 
 earliest vears of his manhood, bovish, even 
 girlish, almost childlike in its simple expres- 
 sion, and with the forehead that belonged to 
 Collins alone — round, protrusive, and over- 
 hanging heavily. There was another portrait 
 of the author by Millais, and a i^hotograph by 
 Sarony, of New York, representing Collins 
 
 321
 
 MY STORY 
 
 when the boyish face was half hidden by an 
 abundant beard, and the Youthful head had 
 grown leonine. 
 
 I had first seen Wilkie some Years before, 
 when he was pointed out to me by Rossetti. It 
 was on one of our melancholy drives for fresh 
 air and exercise, through the streets and parks 
 of London, usually with the windows of the 
 carriage up and the poet thrust back into the 
 comer of the carriage, behind the folds of his 
 InYemess cape, and under the shadow of his 
 broad-brimmed hat, pulled low over his face. 
 The hidden eyes that missed nothing saw a 
 figure that they recognised walking past us on 
 the footpath. 
 
 " That must be Wilkie Collins," said Rossetti, 
 and I looked and saw a small, elderly man, 
 gray-haired and gray-bearded, large-eyed and 
 lion - headed, round - shouldered and stooping 
 heavily. That was my first glimpse of Collins, 
 and, swift as it was, it left its vivid impression, 
 so that when he came into the room to wel- 
 come me, I remembered in a moment that I had 
 seen him before. 
 
 But he had grown feebler in the interval, 
 paler in the face, and more flabby. His eyes 
 at that time were large and protuberant, and 
 they had the vague and dreamy look that is 
 
 322
 
 WILKIE COLLINS 
 
 sometimes seen in the eyes of the blind. Per- 
 haps I should come near to giving the right 
 impression if I were to add that the expres- 
 sion of Collins's eyes at this period of his life 
 was that of a man to whom chloroform had 
 just been administered. They fixed my atten- 
 tion instantly, and Collins saw that it was so. 
 Perhaps he suspected that I read their strange 
 look by the light of my experience with Ros- 
 setti; perhaps he was loath to trust me then 
 as he trusted me later ; but before we had been 
 talking long he interrupted the conversation 
 and said: 
 
 " I see that you can't keep your eyes off my 
 eyes, and I ought to say that I've got gout 
 in them, and that it is doing its best to blind 
 me." 
 
 I found him a good and animated talker, 
 never spontaneous, but always vigorous and 
 right. His voice was full and of even quality; 
 a good voice, not at all a great one. In manner 
 he was quiet, a little nerv^ous, and not prone to 
 much gesture. He sat, while he talked, with 
 his head half down, and his eyes usually on the 
 table; but he looked into one's face from time 
 to time, and then his gaze was steady and en- 
 couraging, and one never felt for a moment 
 that his eye was upon one. 
 
 323
 
 MY STOEY 
 
 Indeed, without being the most " magnetic " 
 of men, Collins was a man to set one at one's 
 ease, to get the best out of one, to send one 
 away with a comfortable feeling toward one's 
 self, and yet a man with a proper sense of 
 personal dignity. You never knew it for dig- 
 nity, and that was exactly where its strength 
 lay. The same large grasp of fact and com- 
 mand of detail which one found in the novels 
 one found in the novelist. If his conversation 
 was not luminous and large, if his outlook on 
 life was not wide, if his horizon was not far 
 away, neither were they little and narrow and 
 near. His insight was sure, his memory un- 
 failing, and his invention strong. 
 
 At that first meeting we talked on many sub- 
 jects. I remember that I wanted information 
 on the coi^yright law, for the plot of one of 
 my novels had been taken by some dramatic 
 thief, and I had a mind to fight him. Collins 
 was very full, very precise, and very emphatic 
 on that subject, having paid liitterly for special 
 knowledge over two of his own stories, " The 
 Woman in White " and " The New Magdalen." 
 He was quite sure that I had not a leg to stand 
 on, though of course he joined his wail with 
 mine over the iniquitous law that recognised 
 a copyright in words and none in ideas. 
 
 324
 
 \\ ILKIK CoLLIXS.
 
 WILKIE COLLINS 
 
 Then we talked of French writers, and he 
 said something that I cannot remember of how 
 he met with Victor Hugo, whose plays, no less 
 than his novels, he admired. But the elder 
 Dumas among French novelists was clearly 
 the god of his idolatry, and " The Three Mus- 
 keteers " was his ideal of a great story. He 
 had been many times in the way of meeting 
 Dumas, but had never done so. Then he talked 
 of Scott, whom he valued beyond words of ap- 
 praisement, thinking " The Bride of Lammer- 
 moor " the greatest of all prose tragedies. 
 Something he said, too, of Dickens, but only in 
 the character of a near and dear friend, with 
 a perceptible sinking of the soft voice and a 
 noticeable melting of the gentle eyes. Charles 
 Keade was also mentioned in relation to a 
 memoir that had then been lately published, 
 and the impression left with me was that the 
 rougher side of Reade's character had never 
 been seen by Collins except as the whole world 
 saw it in the squabbles of the newspapers. 
 
 I seem to have dwelt too long on this first 
 interview, but, indeed, it was the type of many 
 interviews that followed it. I consulted him on 
 schemes for novels, and discussed with him 
 the structure of several of my stories. He was 
 always kindly, always alert, always enthusi- 
 22 325
 
 MY STORY 
 
 astic, always capable of entering into the hopes 
 and aims of a younger literary colleague. 
 
 His letters were as full of pith as his con- 
 versation. Nothing appeared in them more 
 frequently than his boyish delight in his work. 
 It was not done easily, but with great and often 
 grievous labour — labour of conception, of con- 
 struction, and of repeated writing and re- 
 writing — and yet he held to it, clung to it, and 
 when torn from it by sickness he returned to 
 it in health with the fiercest eagerness of the 
 literary aspirant. Never was authorship less 
 of a trade to any author, though he was a com- 
 petent business man, and knew how to make 
 the most of his market. To write stories was 
 a passion to him, and he was as much a slave 
 to it when he was beginning the story which 
 he left unfinished at his death as he had been 
 five-and-twenty years earlier, before fame had 
 come to him or fortune was within his grasp. 
 
 Wilkie had many good stories, and he told 
 them well. His style was quiet, but emphatic, 
 precise, and perhaps slow, the points cumu- 
 lative in their effect, most carefully led up to, 
 and ending always in complete success. The 
 pistol never missed fire when Wilkie pulled the 
 trigger. His memory was strong, and his store 
 of good things was plentiful. 
 
 326
 
 WILKIE COLLINS 
 
 Some of his stories concerned his own novels 
 and their readers, and I recall one of them 
 that relates to " The Woman in White." Im- 
 mediately after the production of that book, 
 when all England was admiring the arch- 
 villainy of the "Fosco," the author received 
 a letter from a lady who has since figured very 
 largely in the public view. She congratulated 
 him upon his success with somewhat icy cheer, 
 and then said : " But, Mr. Collins, the great 
 failure of your book is your villain. Excuse 
 me if I say you really do not know a villain. 
 Your Count Fosco is a very poor one, and when 
 next you want a character of that description, 
 I trust that you will not disdain to come to me. 
 I know a villain, and have one in my eye at 
 this moment that would far eclipse anything 
 that I have ever read of in books. Don't think 
 that I am drawing upon my imagination. The 
 man is alive and constantly under my gaze. In 
 fact, he is my own husband." The lady was 
 the wife of Edward Bulwer Lytton. 
 
 Mention of " The Woman in AVhite " re- 
 minds me of a story which I may or may not 
 have heard from Wilkie's own lips. After the 
 story had been written and the time had come 
 to begin its serial publication, a title had not 
 yet been found. A story could not be pub- 
 
 327
 
 MY STOEY 
 
 lislied without a title, but neither the author 
 nor his friends could hit on one that seemed 
 suitable. Dickens had been appealed to and 
 had failed. So had Forster, who was prolific 
 in good titles. Wilkie was in despair. The day 
 was approaching when the story must begin 
 in All the Year Round. So one day the novel- 
 ist took himself off to Broadstairs, determined 
 not to return until a title had been found. He 
 walked for hours along the cliff between Kings- 
 gate and what is called Bleak House; he 
 smoked a case of cigars, and all to no purpose ; 
 then, vexed and much worn by the racking of 
 his brains, he threw himself on the grass as 
 the sun went down. He was facing the North 
 Foreland Lighthouse, and, half in bitter jest, 
 half unconsciously, he began to apostrophise 
 it thus ; 
 
 " You are ugly and stiff and awkward ; you 
 know you are as stiff and weird as my white 
 woman — white woman — woman in white — the 
 title, by Jove ! " 
 
 It was done; a title had been hit upon, and 
 the author went back to London delighted. 
 
 The idea of the white woman was suggested 
 by a letter from some unknown correspondent, 
 asking him to interest himself in some real or 
 supposed wrongful incarceration in a lunatic 
 
 328
 
 WILKIE COLLINS 
 
 asylum. About the same time he came upon 
 an old French trial (he had many French 
 "Newgate Calendars"), turning upon a ques- 
 tion of substitution of persons, and so it struck 
 him that a substitution effected by help of a 
 lunatic asylum would afford a good central 
 idea. He wrote the book and was quite ex- 
 hausted at the end of it. So he made arrange- 
 ments for its publication in library form, and 
 went away for a long holiday in a place at 
 some distance, where letters could not reach 
 him. 
 
 When he returned home he found his desk 
 piled moimtains high with letters from cor- 
 respondents, and newspapers containing re- 
 views. Also he found his mother (he was still 
 living under the parental roof) in great dis- 
 tress over the severity with which the book had 
 been handled by the press. " Well," he said, 
 " let us see." So he read the reviews first. 
 They were nearly all as bad as it was possible 
 for the good critics to make them. Then he 
 read the letters, and they brimmed over with 
 eulogy. 
 
 " Now," thought Wilkie, " this teaches me a 
 lesson. These letters are nearly all from total 
 strangers, and may be said to represent in 
 some measure the opinion of the general 
 
 329
 
 MY STORY 
 
 public. These reviews are by professional 
 writers, some of them my intimate friends. 
 Either the public is right and the Press is 
 wrong, or the Press is right and the public 
 is wrong. Time will tell. If the public turns 
 out to be right, I will never trust the Press 
 again." 
 
 Thus he waited for the verdict of time, and 
 it seemed to come confidently enough. The end 
 of it was that Collins lost all faith in review 
 articles, and went the length of grievously un- 
 derestimating their effect on public opinion. 
 
 His life was almost that of a hermit. Dur- 
 ing the last two or three years he went out 
 very little — rarely or never to the theatre, and 
 only one or twice to a dinner. With all the 
 surroundings of an invalid, he had quite a 
 morbid terror of being written about as a dy- 
 ing man. " My heart is not affected," he would 
 say, " and there is nothing amiss with me but 
 what they call stomachic nervousness." 
 
 One day, toward the beginning of 1888, I 
 called upon him in great excitement about a 
 difference I had just had with a friend with 
 whom I was trying to collaborate. I wished 
 him to adjudicate in the dispute, and he cor- 
 dially undertook to do so. " State the diffi- 
 culty," he said, and I stated it with much 
 
 330
 
 WILKIE COLLINS 
 
 fulness. He stopped me again and again — 
 repeated, questioned, and commented. Two 
 hours went by like ten minutes. We were 
 sitting in Wilkie's workshop, with proofs of 
 his current work everywhere about us. The 
 point was a knotty one, and a serious issue 
 seemed involved in it. Wilkie was much 
 worried. 
 
 " My brain is not very clear," he said once 
 or twice, taking a turn across the room. Pres- 
 ently, and as if by a sudden impulse, he opened 
 a cabinet, and took out a wine-glass and what 
 seemed to be a bottle of medicine. " I'm going 
 to show you one of the secrets of my prison- 
 house," he said with a smile, and then he 
 poured from the bottle a full wine - glass 
 of a liquid resembling port wine. Do you 
 see that?" he asked. "It's laudanum." And 
 straightway he drank it off. 
 
 "Good heavens, Wilkie Collins!" I said, 
 "how long have you taken that drug?" 
 
 " Twenty years," he answered. . 
 
 " More than once a day ? " 
 
 " Oh, yes, much more. Don't be alarmed. Re- 
 member that De Quincey used to drink lauda- 
 num out of a jug." 
 
 Then he told me a storj', too long to repeat, 
 of how a man-servant of his own had killed 
 
 331
 
 MY STORY 
 
 himself by taking less than half of one of his 
 doses. 
 
 " Why do you take it ? " I asked. 
 
 " To stimulate the brain and steady the 
 nerves." 
 
 " And you think it does that? " 
 
 " Undoubtedly," and laughing a little at my 
 consternation, he turned back to the difficult 
 subject I had come to discuss. " I'll see it 
 clearer now. Let us begin again," he said. 
 
 " Wait," I said. " You say, my dear Wilkie, 
 that the habit of taking laudanum stimulates 
 your brain and steadies your nerves. Has it 
 the same effect on other people? " 
 
 " It had on Bulwer Lytton," answered Collins. 
 " He told me so himself." 
 
 "Well, then, Wilkie Collins," I said, "you 
 know how much I suffer from nervous exhaus- 
 tion. Do you advise me to use this drug? " 
 
 He paused, changed colour slightly, and then 
 said quietly, " No." 
 
 The last time I saw Collins he was in great 
 spirits and full of the " Reminiscences " that he 
 intended to write. He talked of all his old 
 friends with animation, the friends of his youth, 
 "all gone, the old, familiar faces"; and there 
 was less than usual of the dull undertone of sad- 
 ness that had so often before conveyed the idea 
 
 332
 
 WILKIE COLLINS 
 
 of a man who felt that he had strutted too long 
 on his little stage. He enjoyed his wine and 
 some old brandy that came after it, and a couple 
 of delicious little cigars of a new brand which 
 he loudly recommended. The more serious 
 questions of literature and morality were all 
 banished, and yarn followed yam. I can only 
 remember a single sad note in his conversation, 
 and it was ominous. He was talking of Dickens, 
 and I think he said he had been engaged to visit 
 at Gad's Hill on the very day that Dickens died. 
 
 A few days later Wilkie Collins wrote invit- 
 ing me to lunch, but naming no particular day. 
 I was to go what day I liked, only remembering 
 to send a telegram two or three hours in ad- 
 vance. So one Sunday morning I wrote a let- 
 ter telling him that I meant to visit him the 
 following day, and asking him for a telegram 
 to say if the time would do. Instead of Wilkie's 
 telegram there came a message from his affec- 
 tionate adopted daughter, saying that on the 
 previous morning he had been struck down 
 with paralysis. 
 
 He may have had his weaknesses — I know of 
 very few. He may have had his sins — I never 
 heard tell of any. He was loyal and brave and 
 sweet and unselfish. He had none of the vices 
 of the literary character, none, at least, that 
 
 333
 
 MY STORY 
 
 ever revealed themselves to me. In the cruel 
 struggle for livelihood that depends on fame he 
 injured no man. He lived his own life, and was 
 beloved by his own people. 
 
 I have quoted from Wilkie Collins's letters 
 several passages which show that he could be a 
 severe if wholesome critic, and now in conclu- 
 sion I will not allow myself to be restrained by 
 any fear of a charge of immodesty from quot- 
 ing one passage which shows how splendidly 
 generous he could also be: 
 
 " You have written a remarkable work of 
 fiction — a powerful and pathetic story — the 
 characters vividly conceived, and set in motion 
 with a master hand. Within the limits of a let- 
 ter I cannot quote a tenth part of the passages 
 which have seized on my interest and admira- 
 tion. As one example among many others I 
 should like to quote, let me mention the chap- 
 ters that describe the fishermen taking the dead 
 body out to sea in the hope of concealing the 
 murder. The motives ascribed to the men and 
 the manner in which they express themselves 
 show a knowledge of human nature which 
 places you among the masters of our craft, and 
 a superiority to temptations to conventional 
 treatment which no words can praise too highly. 
 For a long time past I have read nothing in 
 . . 334
 
 WILKIE COLLINS 
 
 contemporary^ fiction tliat approaches wliat you 
 have done liere. I have read the chapters twice, 
 and if I know anything about our art, I am sure 
 of what I say." 
 
 It would be difficult to say how much good 
 this letter did me when I read it first. Wilkie 
 Collins was then at the height of his fame and 
 prosperity and his correspondent was a be- 
 ginner, living in two small rooms in the roof on 
 the fourth floor of New Court, Lincoln's Inn.
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 
 MY FIRST PLAY 
 
 NOTWITHSTANDING the generous con- 
 fidence of my friends, coupled, as I fear 
 it was with my own opinion, that under 
 favourable conditions I could write a play, I 
 made no serious attempt to do so until dramatic 
 pirates began to appropriate my novels. Then 
 I remembered Wilson Barrett's request, and 
 sent him my first Manx novel, thinking the sub- 
 ject and chief character might suit him. He an- 
 swered that both seemed promising, and asked 
 me to see him immediately, for he had reached 
 a crisis in his fortunes when a change in his pro- 
 gramme was necessary. 
 
 It was early spring, I remember, one of the 
 worst of the second winters that come to our 
 English climate, and I was staying with my peo- 
 ple in Liverpool, but with the utmost eagerness 
 I packed my bag and set off for London, hardly 
 knowing yet where the drama lay in my narrative 
 story, and seeing many perplexing difficulties. 
 
 336 
 
 I
 
 MY FIRST PLAY 
 
 A few miles out of Liverpool, travelling by 
 the Midland route, I was overtaken by a very 
 dense fog, and at Derby, to my great chagrin, I 
 was compelled to leave the train; but what 
 seemed to my impatience to be the most vexa- 
 tious accident proved to be the most fortunate 
 circumstance. The fog, which enveloped al- 
 most the whole of England, lasted eight days; 
 I sought refuge from it among the hoar frost in 
 the heights of Dove Dale, and while waiting in 
 the old Isaac Walton Inn (alone there, and 
 thrown entirely on my thoughts) for the clouds 
 to lift that cut me off from London, the clouds 
 in my brain were also dissipated, and I thought 
 my play for all practical purposes was pro- 
 duced. 
 
 Then with a full scenario I completed my 
 journey and found Barrett more than content. 
 We struck and signed a bargain straight away, 
 I remember, two guineas a performance for me 
 until my royalties reached eight hundred pounds, 
 when my interest was to end, and though I had 
 not a penny piece of this money in my pocket, 
 and everything depended upon the opinion of 
 the public, and my fortime was like a glistening 
 bubble in the air, I came awav from our inter- 
 view with a sense of possessing more wealth 
 than I had ever yet known to be in the world. 
 
 337
 
 MY STORY 
 
 Not only was my money not yet earned, but 
 my play was not yet written, and toil and pain 
 and sleepless nights there were to go through 
 before it got itself done. And even when I 
 came to an end and thought my curtain had 
 fallen for good, I realised from the sharp criti- 
 cism of my colleague that I had been working 
 in a medium that was new to me, and not all 
 the supernatural wisdom I had won in earlier 
 days as a dramatic critic had taught me the 
 hundred and one technical tricks that are neces- 
 sary to success on the stage. 
 
 What Barrett himself did to make my first 
 play a practical effort it is unnecessary to say, 
 but sure I am that without his knowledge of the 
 " ropes " of the theatre the dramatic instinct on 
 which my friend Blackmore had counted to pro- 
 duce " a grand and moving drama " would have 
 gone for nothing, and, conscious of this, I in- 
 sisted on coupling Barrett's name with mine 
 when the play came to be produced. 
 
 Before that, of course, there were the re- 
 hearsals, and though in my ignorance of stage 
 management I took little or no part in them, I 
 remember as a unique experience the first mo- 
 ment when, stumbling through the pall of dark- 
 ness which lies over " the front of the house " 
 in daytime, I first heard my own lines spoken 
 
 338
 
 MY FIRST PLAY 
 
 by an actor on the stage. It was almost as if 
 something of myself had in a dream, by a kind 
 of hypnotic transfer, passed into the mouth of 
 somebody else. 
 
 By the time of the first public performance 
 this elusive sensation had naturally passed 
 away, but then came another emotion equally 
 new to me and yet more thrilling — the emotion 
 created by the tears, the laughter, the applause, 
 and, above all, the silence of the audience. It 
 is just once in a man's life that he produces his 
 first play, and perhaps he may be pardoned if, 
 after the lapse of years, he puts the experience 
 out of proportion. 
 
 I think it was a great first night in some re- 
 spects. The audience was great, for in all the 
 years since I have never seen so many really 
 distinguished people in one place. The acting 
 was great, too, and the reception was generous 
 and almost tumultuous. I remember as some- 
 thing seen in a sort of delirious trance, through 
 a mist of blinding tears, that at the fall of the 
 curtain the whole audience was on its feet, and 
 that when Barrett led me in front of the curtain 
 there was a roar that dazed and stunned me. 
 
 It was not until an hour or two afterward 
 that I came to myself in some measure, and 
 then, with my friend Tirebuck, who had come up 
 
 339
 
 MY STORY 
 
 from the country to share my great experience, 
 I was tramping np and down Oxford Street in 
 the early morning, and making the silent thor- 
 oughfare ring with peals of foolish laughter. 
 Being too poor to think of a room at an hotel, 
 we were to sleep at a little shabby boarding- 
 house in Bloomsbury, and having suddenly re- 
 membered that we had not eaten anything since 
 breakfast, we were searching for a restaurant 
 that would be open late enough to give us sup- 
 per. We found one at length in the form of a 
 smoking coffee-stall at the corner of Berners 
 Street, and there we ate roasted potatoes with 
 a pinch of salt, and then home to our dingy lodg- 
 ings like creatures walking on the stars. 
 
 Next morning the London newspapers con- 
 tained many eloquent columns on the advent of 
 " the new dramatist," with glowing predictions 
 which I fear have never been fulfilled. 
 
 The success, such as it was, of my first play 
 revived an earh^ friendship with Henry Irving, 
 whom I had known during my days in Liver- 
 pool. Ho had lieen touring in America when 
 my Manx novel was published, and saying to 
 himself, " There's a character in that book [the 
 Bishop] which might be suitable for me," he 
 had resolved to propose a play to me on his re- 
 turn to England. But finding when he came 
 
 340
 
 MY FIRST PLAY 
 
 home that the play was already the property of 
 another actor, he suggested that I should try to 
 do something else for him. 
 
 I did try. During many years thereafter I 
 spent time and energy and some imagination in 
 an effort to fit Irving with a part, and the 
 pigeon-holes of my study are still heavy with 
 sketches and drafts and scenarios of dramas 
 which either he or I or our constant friend and 
 colleague, Bram Stoker (to whose loyal com- 
 radeship we both owed so much), thought pos- 
 sible for the Lyceum Theatre. I remember that 
 most of our subjects dealt with the super- 
 natural, and that the " "Wandering Jew," the 
 " Flying Dutchman," and the " Demon Lover " 
 were themes around which our imagination con- 
 stantly revolved. But in spite of the utmost 
 sincerity on both sides, our efforts came to noth- 
 ing, and I think this result was perhaps due to 
 something more serious than the limitations of 
 my own powers. 
 
 The truth is that, great actor as Irving was, 
 the dominating element of his personality was 
 for many years a hampering difficulty in the 
 way of popular success. AVhen in my boyhood 
 I knew him first, he was a young fellow of thirty, 
 very bright, very joyous, not very studious, not 
 very intellectual, full of animal vigour, never 
 23 341
 
 MY STOEY 
 
 resting, never pausing, always rushing about, 
 and hardly ever seen to go upstairs at less than 
 three steps at a time. At the end of his life he 
 was a grave and rather sad old man, very sol- 
 emn, distinctly intellectual, and with a never- 
 failing sense of personal dignity. Between his 
 earlier and his later days he had done some- 
 thing which I have never known to be done by 
 anybody else — he had created a character and 
 assumed it for himself. 
 
 Just as an actor might create a character for 
 the stage, or a novelist for a novel, so Irving 
 had created a character for his own use in real 
 life. It was a character of singular nobility and 
 distinction, but a difficult character, too, not 
 easy to put on, and having little in common with 
 the outstanding traits of his original self — a 
 silent, reposeful, rather subtle, slightly humor- 
 ous, detached, and almost isolated personality, 
 with a sharp tongue, but a sunny smile and cer- 
 tain gleams of the deepest tenderness — in short, 
 a compound of Voltaire and Cardinal Manning. 
 
 There was nothing artificial or theatrical in 
 Irving's assumption of this character, which 
 grew on him and became his own and gave value 
 to every act of his later life ; but all the same it 
 stood in the way of his success in a profession 
 wherein the first necessity is that the actor 
 
 342
 
 MY FIRST PLxVY 
 
 should be able to sink his own individuality and 
 get into the skin of somebody else. 
 
 No man could sink a personality like that of 
 Henry Irving, and toward the end of his life, 
 with the ever-increasing domination of his own 
 character and the limitation of choice which al- 
 ways comes with advancing years, it was only 
 possible for him to play parts that contained 
 something of himself. He was painfully con- 
 scious of this for a considerable time, and there- 
 fore it was with brightening eyes that he 
 brought to my room one day the typewritten 
 copy of a play on the subject of Mohammed. 
 
 " It's not right," he said, " but it's the right 
 subject. See if you can do it over again." 
 
 I spent months on " Mohammed," and think 
 it was by much the best of my dramatic efforts ; 
 but immediately it was made known that Irving 
 intended to put the prophet of Islam on the 
 stage, a protest came from the Indian Moslems, 
 and the office of the Lord Chamberlain inter- 
 vened. This was a deep disappointment to 
 Irving himself, for the dusky son of the desert 
 was a part that might have suited him to the 
 ground, and to me it looked like an overwhelm- 
 ing disaster, slamming the door on the efforts 
 of years, but the story of this incident has been 
 told by Bram Stoker with such truth and such 
 
 343
 
 MY STORY 
 
 sympathy in liis tender and affectionate remi- 
 niscences of our friend that I hesitate to say 
 more. 
 
 I have produced many plays since then, but I 
 have never again attempted to fit my subject to 
 the personality of any actor, not even in the 
 case of a personality so pronounced as that of 
 Mr. Tree, and I have never tried again to write 
 independent drama, being content with such 
 chances as the material in my novels affords for 
 treatment in the art of the stage. 
 
 That is a noble and beautiful art, but it is 
 not one which ought to be practised, as I fear 
 I have practised it, with the left hand, while the 
 right hand has been otherwise engaged. It asks 
 all a man's time and more than all his energy if 
 it is to yield the best results. Those results are 
 broader now than they were when I began to 
 write, and they include a large moral influ- 
 ence. 
 
 In my earliest days in London they produced 
 on the stage a play of Tennyson's, called " The 
 Promise of May." The play" was not a good one, 
 but its failure on its first night was not so much 
 due to its artistic defects as to its daring treat- 
 ment of moral questions. It presented the con- 
 ventional seducer of innocence, not as a ruffian 
 who ought to be kicked, but as a thinker who had 
 
 344 
 
 '
 
 MY FIRST PLAY 
 
 even something to say for himself. This was 
 grotesque to the English public at that time, and 
 consequently they howled and howled. I alone, 
 or almost alone, with my friend Watts-Dunton, 
 cheered and cheered. It was not that we cared 
 much for the scoundrel on the stage, but that 
 we claimed the right of the drama to deal with 
 moral problems. 
 
 That night, in my lodgings in Clement's Inn, 
 I wrote to Tennyson. I meant him to receive 
 my letter with what I knew must be the un- 
 favourable newspapers next morning, and the 
 following day's post brought me the poet's 
 reply : 
 
 " I should feel myself very ungrateful if I 
 did not write my thanks for your kind and 
 sympathetic letter. 
 
 " I meant Edgar to be a shallow enough the- 
 orist. I never could have thought that he 
 would have been taken for an * ordinary free- 
 thinker.' 
 
 " The British drama must be in a low state 
 indeed, if, as certain dramatic critics have 
 lately told us, none of the great moral and 
 social questions of the time ought to be touched 
 upon in a modern play. 
 
 " A. Tennyson." 
 345
 
 MY STORY 
 
 Tliat was only a score of years ago, and what 
 have those years witnessed? They have wit- 
 nessed the rise of Ibsen in England. Think 
 what you like of Ibsen, consider him a morbid, 
 unhealthy, middle-class sceptic, if you will, but 
 you must needs admit that he has once for all 
 brought back the living nioral questions to the 
 stage. 
 
 It is sometimes said that the public, espe- 
 cially the i^laygoing public, is a stubborn pa- 
 tron, very narrow in its sympathies and lim- 
 ited in its tastes. I am not in the least of that 
 opinion. So far as I can see, there is only one 
 thing the public demands and will not do with- 
 out, whether in drama or novel, and that is 
 human nature. It says to the author: "Amuse 
 me ! Comfort me ! Thrill me ! Sustain me ! " 
 But it leaves him to please himself how he does 
 it. He can sing what song he pleases. All it 
 asks is, that the song shall be good, and that he 
 shall sing it well enough. Otherwise it may be 
 a song of love, or a ditty of the forecastle. And 
 if the song says something that has a real rela- 
 tion to life, so much the better. 
 
 I cannot conclude this chajoter, with its few 
 and imperfect notes of my friendship with 
 Henry Irving, without recalling two quaint if 
 rather grotesque tributes to his power as an 
 
 346
 
 MY FIRST PLAY 
 
 actor which came from my father and my 
 mother in those early days of his career when 
 I knew him jSrst. 
 
 My father had heen born and brought up 
 under conditions as little favourable as any- 
 thing could be to the appreciation of dramatic 
 talent — on the edge of that bleak coast at Bal- 
 laugh in the Isle of Man, with its tiny church, 
 now tumbling out of the perpendicular, where 
 he was baptised nearly a hundred years ago at 
 the little font by the runic cross ; with its group 
 of whitewashed farm-buildings lying close and 
 low like a herd of white cattle in a storm ; with 
 its broad stretch of gray sea and its rare and 
 far view of the lowering Scotch and Irish hills. 
 Though he broke away from these conditions 
 in early manhood he carried the stark spirit of 
 them with him to Liverpool, and becoming for 
 a time a Methodist of the most primitive type, 
 a class-leader, and I think a local preacher, as 
 well as a politician of the grimmest radicalism, 
 his views of life were fairly representative of 
 what is known, not too wisely, as the Non-con- 
 formist conscience. 
 
 Toward the theatre and all its doings he 
 held an attitude of determined hostility, and 
 how it came to pass that after sixty years of 
 age he went with me to see Irving play " Ilam- 
 
 347
 
 MY STORY 
 
 let " I cannot remember or explain except in 
 the light of the fact that the young actor of 
 whom everybody was talking had somehow be- 
 come a friend of his son. But I recall the even- 
 ing as if it were yesterday, and the extraordi- 
 nary effect of a stage play on a mind that had 
 taught itself to regard all imagined things as 
 wicked make-believe. There was first the un- 
 comfortable sense, only too plainly indicated in 
 his face, that he was in a theatre, and if death 
 came to him there what would he have to say 
 for himself? — and then there was an ever- 
 increasing consciousness that he was listening 
 to serious things seriously spoken. Of Shake- 
 speare he knew nothing but the name, and that, 
 I am afraid, was not entirely a badge of honour, 
 but the dramatist was speedily forgotten in his 
 theme. I remember that more than once in the 
 philosophical passages my father said " Hear, 
 hear," and that at the triumphant moments he 
 looked as if he wanted to say, " Glory be to 
 God ! " But the crowning tribute to the play 
 and the player came at the end, when, as we 
 walked home together, I asked him how he 
 liked Irving, and he answered: 
 
 " What he said was good, very good, it was 
 grand; but, after all, it was not so much what 
 he said as the wonderful way he said it." 
 
 348 

 
 MY FIRST PLAY 
 
 Considering tliat the play was " TTamlet," I 
 doubt if such another tribute to the power of an 
 actor can anywhere be found. 
 
 My mother was born and brought up under 
 conditions equally unfavourable to the appreci- 
 ation of dramatic talent, and there was the fur- 
 ther difficulty in her case that, unlike my father, 
 she was, and is (for at more than eighty years 
 of age she is still with us), though generous to a 
 fault, utterly incapable of enthusiasm. As far 
 as I can remember she had never seen a stage 
 play until she saw Irving in, I think, " Louis 
 XI," when he played it first in the best days of 
 his manhood. In a few minutes the illusion of 
 the drama had completely carried her away, 
 and it was the same to her as if she were look- 
 ing on a scene in life. More than once it seemed 
 to surprise her that the people on the stage did 
 not see through the King's hypocrisy and wick- 
 edness; and when the curtain fell on the first 
 act and we asked her what she thought of the 
 actor, she said : 
 
 " I think he acts his part very well indeed — 
 considering he is such a very old man."
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 
 MY FIRST VISITS TO AMERICA 
 
 I HAVE made four visits to America, but 
 two of them were occupied entirely by busi- 
 ness interests, and only the first and second 
 had any real relation to my life as an author. 
 To meet the unknown friends whom my books 
 had won for me across the Atlantic was always 
 a joyful, sometimes an embarrassing, and occa- 
 sionally an exacting experience. A malady 
 which might well be known by the name of 
 American hospitality awaits every Englishman 
 who has spoken to the hearts of the people of 
 the United States. 
 
 I know nothing like it in any other part of 
 the world, and when I read of the reception of 
 Dickens and Thackeray in America, and see 
 how the cities of the States seemed to stand 
 still in order to give to two writers of great 
 books the welcome which is reserved in other 
 countries for soldiers and statesmen, I am as 
 much perplexed as proud. But I know by per- 
 
 350
 
 MY FIRST VISITS TO AMERICA 
 
 sonal experience that the hospitality of America 
 is equal to an effort more unaccountable than 
 that, and I remember with gratitude and emo- 
 tion which will last as long as my life the kind- 
 ness that was shown to me in the generous 
 country across the Atlantic when the great Eng- 
 lish nation that is American began to interest 
 itself, through my earlier books, in the little 
 English nation that is Manx. 
 
 It would not become me to dwell upon that, 
 further than to recognise and acknowledge it, 
 but it may be allowed to me to speak of certain 
 aspects of American life which come within the 
 purview of a man of letters. 
 
 How did I find the interviewer in America? 
 Just as I have found him everywhere — good, 
 bad, and indifferent. Sometimes the American 
 interviewer is a perfectly honest man, who aims 
 only at setting down what you say in all truth 
 and simplicity ; and sometimes he is a pert per- 
 son, who cares a vast deal more about what he 
 says himself. As might be expected, the per- 
 sonal descriptions of the lady interviewer are 
 embarrassingly precise. The colour of your 
 hair and eyes and the pattern of your clothes 
 are facts of the first importance. Hardly any 
 of the interviewers, male or female, write short- 
 hand, and as a consequence the visitor talks the 
 
 351
 
 MY STOEY 
 
 idiom of the reporter. In certain interviews I 
 found myself saying, " It makes me tired," and 
 " It tickles me to death." 
 
 Several imaginary interviews with me were 
 published during my visits to America. In one 
 of these I gave a modest description of my own 
 head, saying the "upper part" resembled 
 Shakespeare's, and the "lower part" resem- 
 bled Christ's! Flamboyant fictions like these 
 are, I observe, the tit-bits oftenest quoted in 
 England by journals which most affect to look 
 down on American journalism. But whatever 
 the interviewer may be, it is folly of the Eng- 
 lishman in America to attempt to escape from 
 him. As a general statement, I think it would 
 be true that, whether you allow yourself to be 
 interviewed or refuse to allow yourself to be in- 
 terviewed, you are equally certain to regret it. 
 But that has been my experience in England 
 also. 
 
 During the run of one of my plays in New 
 York there was a sad and terrible incident. A 
 young actress died of heart disease in the course 
 of a performance. I chanced to be in the thea- 
 tre at the moment of the death, and I was still 
 suffering from the shock when I returned to the 
 hotel. Between midnight and one in the morn- 
 ing a reporter sent up his card. He must see 
 
 352
 
 MY FIRST VISITS TO AMERICA 
 
 me at once, if only for a moment. I saw him at 
 the door of my bedroom. 
 
 " It's about this poor young lady," he said. 
 
 "WelH" 
 
 "She played Polly Love, didn't she?" 
 
 " She did." 
 
 " The part is a very exciting one, isn't it ? " 
 
 " There are scenes of some excitement." 
 
 " They probably contributed to her death, 
 didn't they?" 
 
 " I see no reason to think so, and it would be 
 extremely painful to accept that idea. Besides, 
 heart disease was hereditary in the lady's 
 family." 
 
 " Just so ! By the way, Mr. Caine, I haven't 
 read your book, but one of my colleagues tells 
 me that Polly Love dies suddenly in the novel. 
 Now, don't you think that is an extraordinary 
 coincidence? " 
 
 " Perhaps it is, but for mercy's sake don't 
 say so, at least for me. The Polly of the novel 
 commits suicide. To bring together the real 
 and the fictitious at a solemn and sacred mo- 
 ment like this would be a shocking and shameful 
 outrage. Don't, I beg of you, make me say any- 
 thing about that." 
 
 " Oh, no, no ! Good night ! " 
 
 "Good night!" 
 
 353
 
 MY STORY 
 
 Next morning my interviewer's newspaper 
 published a full and particular account of my 
 opinion that the poor lady's death had been due 
 in great part to the zeal with which she threw 
 herself into her part, and a detailed comparison 
 of the strange and dramatic coincidence of the 
 sudden and startling deaths of the Polly of the 
 novel and the Polly of the stage. 
 
 Another story of the American interviewer. 
 A murderer named Holmes had been tried and 
 condemned in Philadelphia, and was awaiting 
 his execution. One day two journalists from a 
 " yellow " journal called on me at the hotel, 
 bringing a roll of manuscript written by the 
 prisoner. 
 
 " This is Holmes's account of his crimes," said 
 one of the men ; " he has sold it to our editor on 
 condition that you review it," 
 
 " I won't touch it," I answered. 
 
 " Don't say that, Mr. Caine. We'll leave it 
 with you, and call for your answer in an hour." 
 
 They put the manuscript on a sideboard and 
 went away. Half an hour later another man 
 came up. I thought he looked both nervous and 
 audacious. 
 
 " Our editor has sent for Holmes's story, and 
 to know if you have decided to review it," he 
 said. 
 
 354
 
 MY FIRST VISITS TO AMERICA 
 
 " No, there it is still ; take it away with you," 
 I answered. Then, glancing up quickly, I saw 
 the man reaching out his hand for the manu- 
 script. There was a greedy look in his eye 
 which made me uneasy. 
 
 " Wait," I said. " I am an old journalist my- 
 self, you know, and I think it would be better 
 form to give the thing back to the men who 
 brought it." 
 
 " Well, if you prefer to," said the fellow, 
 and he edged out. In half an hour more the 
 two earlier visitors returned. 
 
 " I hope you've decided to do that review," 
 said one of the gentlemen. 
 
 " No, I've not," I replied, " and I've told your 
 editor so already by the messenger he sent a 
 little while ago." 
 
 Then the men looked at me in blank aston- 
 ishment. 
 
 " What messenger? " they asked. 
 
 I described the man who had come for the 
 . manuscript. They stared into each other's 
 faces. 
 
 "Good ! It's that fellow on the 
 
 . ! " 
 
 A journalist on a rival " yellow " journal, get- 
 ting wind of their errand, had tried to " scoop '* 
 both the murderer's manuscript and my review. 
 
 355
 
 MY STORY 
 
 A story of the journalistic photographer. 
 The interviewer is frequently accompanied by 
 an unattached photographer, whose business it 
 is to take snap shots of his subjects in char- 
 acteristic and, if possible, ridiculous attitudes, 
 at unwary moments. One of the photographic 
 " hawks " came aboard the Campania in the 
 customs boat early in the morning of my arrival 
 at New York. For some time he "mooched" 
 about the ship, without doing anything which 
 attracted mv attention. Then, as we steamed 
 to the ship's berth, his writing confrere came up 
 to me. The sun was shining, we were standing 
 on the promenade deck, under the shade of the 
 hurricane deck, and he drew me to the ship's 
 side, while he pointed out his own lodgings on 
 the fourteenth floor of a lofty sky-scraper. I 
 didn't feel an absorbing interest in his story, 
 and I was rather at a loss to know why he told 
 it to me. A few minutes afterward I heard him 
 telling the same story to my fellow-passenger. 
 Lord Brassey, and a little later to Mr. Godkin, 
 then editor of the Evening Post. It began to 
 strike me as funny that this person should be 
 so zealously circulating such valuable informa- 
 tion about himself, when all at once I became 
 aware that the snap-shot man was busy behind 
 him. The promenade deck was in shadow, and 
 
 356
 
 MY FIRST VISITS TO AMERICA 
 
 this was the piece of collusion by which that 
 artful pair of hawks got their subjects into 
 the sun. 
 
 " You did him pretty well," I said to the 
 photographer, when he had finished with Mr. 
 Godkin. 
 
 " Oh, he's not the first I've done — see ! " and 
 he showed me the list of his morning's " tak- 
 ings." The fiend had got three separate snap 
 shots of myself ! 
 
 The worst fault of American journalism — its 
 undue love of sensationalism — is fostered by a 
 bad professional practice, that of employing 
 what are called " space writers." These per- 
 sons are unattached journalists, who are paid 
 by space on the copy that is accepted. Their 
 business is to hunt up out-of-the-way facts. The 
 more startling the fact, the more acceptable it is, 
 and of two space writers dealing with the same 
 incident, that one is employed who brings in the 
 more astounding stor}\ This is a setting of 
 premium on sensation, on personality, on every 
 form of falseness that can take the colour of 
 fact. 
 
 Apparently there is no libel law in America 
 
 strong enough and swift enough to cope with 
 
 the doings of the space writer, ^^^len a New 
 
 York newspaper published a false accusation of 
 
 24 357
 
 MY STORY 
 
 mj^self, and followed it up by a still more false 
 apology, and I contemplated an action at law, 
 Mr. Goldwin Smith said, "You might as well 
 take action against a mosquito." 
 
 While I was at Washington I discussed this 
 aspect of the lower American journalism with 
 John Hay, then Secretary of State. 
 
 " No libel law, however rigorous, will meet the 
 case," he said. " There's only one thing that 
 will meet it." 
 
 "What's that?" I asked. 
 
 " A horsewhip," he answered. 
 
 It would be quite wrong, however, to talk of 
 the interviewer as if he covered the whole field 
 of American journalism. The extraordinary 
 vigour of the every-day work of the American 
 journalist is what first impresses you. He is 
 always " on the nail." To-day's subject is to- 
 day's need, and whether it is the fate of the 
 Philippines or how to sweep the snow out of 
 the streets, the journalist tackles it for all it is 
 worth. Then the general enterprise of the 
 American Press is beyond comparison greater 
 than that of almost every other press in the 
 world. Not even the great London newspa- 
 pers, with their correspondents in every capi- 
 tal, can surpass the amazing enterprise of the 
 best papers in America. To appreciate this 
 
 358
 
 MY FIRST VISITS TO AMERICA 
 
 one has only to reflect that by reason of dis- 
 tance the material of the American paper 
 costs incomparably more, and that nearly every 
 day's paper contains columns of cabled news. 
 
 Then the Sunday papers of America, what- 
 ever we may think of them as literary products, 
 are examples of journalistic enterprise without 
 parallel in the world. Outside London there is 
 nothing published, whether in Paris, Berlin, 
 Vienna, or Rome, which for interest or quality 
 or yet bulk bears a moment's comparison with 
 the best American Sunday papers. The imag- 
 ination shown in the mapping out and con^struc- 
 tion of a typical American newspaper to meet 
 the needs of the largest numbers of readers, is 
 another striking characteristic. Therefore, when 
 we gibe, as it is so easy to do, at the unconscien- 
 tious and even vulgar aspects of some American 
 journalism, we should remember its good quali- 
 ties, which are neither few nor hard to find. 
 
 One salient fact, however, about the Amer- 
 ican newspaper is that its first aim is to de- 
 serve its name. It is above everything else a 
 paper intended to provide news. A policy it 
 may have, and it may sometimes advocate the 
 interests of a party, but some of the best and 
 most popular American newspapers appear to 
 have neither policy nor party. 
 
 359
 
 MY STORY 
 
 " Do you conduct the policy of your paper 
 from Paris f " I said to the proprietor of a well- 
 known American journal. 
 
 " My paper has no policy," the proprietor an- 
 swered ; " its business is to give the people news, 
 not to tell them what they are to think." 
 
 " But isn't that rather opposed to journalistic 
 traditions I " I asked. 
 
 " So much the worse for the traditions," was 
 the reply. " I employ a man at two, three, four, 
 or five thousand dollars to edit this, that, or the 
 other section of my paper, and I should think 
 it a pretty cheeky thing if he undertook to pre- 
 side over the policy of the country. His busi- 
 ness is to record its doings." 
 
 But the attitude of the American public 
 toward the American newspaper would in any 
 case be one of complete independence. On the 
 British side of the ocean we are apt to believe 
 what we see in the journals. On the other side 
 of the ocean they betray no such infirmity. The 
 newspapers are so many, the competition be- 
 tween them is so keen, their methods are so 
 manifest, that nobody regards them with the 
 reverence which the mystery enshrouding the 
 anonymity of English journalism still perpetu- 
 ates among ourselves. 
 
 In like manner the personalities of American 
 
 360
 
 < 
 
 
 g 
 
 c 
 
 s 
 
 o 
 
 a: 
 
 Eh 
 
 n
 
 MY FIRST VISITS TO AMERICA 
 
 journalism are fenced by tlie attitude of Amer- 
 ican readers. They take their spiciest dishes 
 with a proper grain of salt. Hence it is neces- 
 sary to read the American newspaper with 
 American eyes; seen in that light the jour- 
 nalism of America is neither so sensational nor 
 so flagrant as English readers suppose. For 
 the rest, it would seem to me that the inde- 
 pendence of the American mind toward the 
 Press of the country is a most wholesome and 
 hopeful sign. The American public are con- 
 stantly reversing the verdicts of their professed 
 guides to public opinion. A play or a book 
 which has been the victim of a general onslaught 
 in the newspapers is frequently the idol of the 
 hour. 
 
 " In the old days, after a new production," a 
 theatrical manager said to me, " I used to be 
 fool enough to sit up till six in the morning to 
 see what the newspapers had to say." 
 
 " And now? " I asked. 
 
 " Now, if the audience is right, I go to bed 
 at twelve," he answered. 
 
 I went to America on the first occasion partly 
 as the delegate of the English Society of Au- 
 thors and partly as the informal representative 
 of the Colonial Office to prevail upon the Cana- 
 dian ministers to withdraw the more objection- 
 
 361
 
 MY STORY 
 
 able of the provisions of a Copyright Bill which 
 seemed to conflict with the Imperial Act, and 
 this mission brought me into active relations 
 with American publishers and enabled me to 
 realise that the making of American copyright, 
 for which Dickens and Thackeray pleaded in 
 vain, had done more than secure justice for the 
 English author — it had created the American 
 author as a professional man of letters. Litera- 
 ture as a profession was for the first time be- 
 ginning to live, and it is no matter of surprise 
 to me that in the few years that have inter- 
 vened American books have ousted English 
 books in the favour of the American people. 
 
 But art has no nationality, and I was never 
 made conscious for a moment that a novelist 
 from the United Kingdom was an alien in the 
 United States. On the contrary, I was always 
 made to feel that there is no country in the 
 world so good as America for an Englishman 
 to travel in. Of course I know how much I may 
 be influenced by personal feelings, and how 
 many of my opinions may be aifected by the 
 accident of my own reception. If that is so, it 
 is only as it ought to be. On four visits under 
 varying circumstances, America was good to 
 me, and it is right that I should praise the 
 bridge I passed over. 
 
 362
 
 MY FIRST VISITS TO AMERICA 
 
 I love America and the Americans. I love 
 America because it is big, and because its big- 
 ness is constantly impressing the imagination 
 and stimulating the heart. I love its people be- 
 cause they are free with a freedom which the 
 rest of the world takes as by stealth, and they 
 claim openly as their right. I love them be- 
 cause they are the most industrious, earnest, 
 active, and ingenious people on the earth; be- 
 cause they are the most moral, religious, and, 
 above all, the most sober people in the world; 
 because, in spite of all shallow judgments of 
 superficial observers, they are the most child- 
 like in their national character, the easiest to 
 move to laughter, the readiest to be touched to 
 tears, the most absolutely true in their impulses, 
 and the most generous in their applause. I love 
 the men of America because their bearing 
 toward the women is the finest chivalry I have 
 yet seen anywhere, and I love the women be- 
 cause they can preserve an unquestioned purity 
 with a frank and natural manner, and a fine in- 
 dependence of sex. I love the constitution of 
 America because its freedom is the freest I 
 know of, because it has broken away from all 
 effete superstitions of authority, whether in 
 Church or State, and has left the rest of the 
 world in the pitiful shadows of both follies, 
 
 363
 
 MY STORY 
 
 to toil after it by more than a hundred 
 years. 
 
 And if these are qualities which have their 
 defects, I go the length of loving some of the 
 failings of American life and character as well. 
 I love the brusqueness of speech and the free- 
 dom of manners which imply that Jack is as 
 good as his master, and sometimes a good deal 
 better. In this connection I can tell a story 
 of a good and loyal, though rather embarrassing 
 friend of mine who is a conductor on a Broad- 
 way electric car. He is about twenty years of 
 age, and he has a frank, open face, with bright 
 eyes and a laughing mouth. AYlien I met him 
 first he was standing on the tail-board of the 
 car as I was leaping onto it. 
 
 " Will this car take me to Fifty-sixth Street? " 
 I asked. 
 
 He did not answer, but looked me over from 
 head to foot. 
 
 "Will it?" I repeated. 
 
 Instead of replying to my question, he asked 
 another. 
 
 "Are you Hall Caine?" 
 
 "Yes— will it?" I asked. 
 
 Again he did not reply, but, smiling from ear 
 to ear, and holding out a grimy hand, he said: 
 
 " Shake ! " 
 
 364
 
 CHAPTEE X 
 
 THE LITERARY LIFE 
 
 I HAVE reached the beginning of my last 
 chapter without making more than casual 
 references to my earnings as a man of let- 
 ters, and I do not now intend to enter into any 
 detailed confidences on that subject. It will be 
 well within the truth to say that money has 
 never at any time been an aim in my life, and 
 that I have never allowed myself to think of it 
 first in regard to any single thing I have ever 
 done. If money has come to me it has certainly 
 not been by " first intention," and if there is 
 anything that hurts me in the published letters 
 of certain great writers who are among the 
 gods of my idolatry it is the presence of the 
 thought that such and such work represents 
 such and such sum. 
 
 But, thinking it may cheer the beginner who 
 is trudging through the dark ways of the liter- 
 ary life, knee-deep in disappointments, to see 
 
 365
 
 MY STORY 
 
 how stiff a struggle it was to me, I will gladly 
 show how modest were my earnings during 
 many of my earlier years. 
 
 I had been working on the Mercury for some 
 time at about two hundred pounds a year, eked 
 out by perhaps a hundred more from the Athe- 
 nceum and the Academy, when I began to write 
 my first novel. Soon I found myself crippled 
 by want of leisure, and was compelled to realise 
 that I must either abandon my hope of becom- 
 ing a novelist or curtail my energies, and there- 
 fore my earnings, as a journalist. It was a seri- 
 ous crisis, for, taking my heart in both hands, 
 I had married in the meantime, and had other 
 responsibilities. But, after serious deliberation 
 with my wife, hardly knowing where we were or 
 what leap in the dark we were making, with in- 
 finite misgiving and most natural, if ludicrous, 
 nervousness, I wrote to my editor in Liverpool 
 asking him — to reduce my salary! 
 
 Lovell appears to have been flabbergasted by 
 my letter. He replied that he was frequently 
 requested to increase a salary, but he had never 
 been asked to reduce one, and he was at a loss 
 to know if I was well and if I could be serious. 
 Evidently my good friend thought I must at 
 least be suffering from an acute attack of con- 
 science; so I replied that so far as I knew I 
 
 366
 
 THE LITERARY LIFE 
 
 was in perfectly good health, that I was very 
 much in earnest, and that my request was not 
 prompted by any Quixotic dreams, but was 
 based on the most rational economic expecta- 
 tion of earning more in the long run and becom- 
 ing a novelist as well. 
 
 Lovell answered that he would come to see 
 me on the subject. He did so. My salary was 
 reduced by half, and I wrote and published my 
 first novel. Then my modest success as an au- 
 thor emboldened me to think that I could live 
 without journalism at all, and having ceased to 
 write on the Athenceum and Academy from a 
 conviction that the man who wrote books had no 
 right to review books, I resigned the remaining 
 half of my position on the Mercury. 
 
 Like the good fellow he was, Lovell would not 
 at first hear of my resignation, and I trust I do 
 not reveal a fact which will shock the propri- 
 etors of the paper, among whom is my friend 
 and colleague, Egerton Castle, when I say that 
 during the last year of my connection with the 
 Mercury I received my half salary without 
 writing, so far as I can remember, a single 
 line. 
 
 Meantime, however, I was casting my bread 
 on the waters with rather reckless prodigality, 
 for it was not immediately that my fiction made 
 
 367
 
 MY STORY 
 
 up to me for the loss of journalism. I had been 
 paid a hundred pounds for my first story as a 
 serial, but when I came to publish the book all 
 I could get was seventy-five pounds for the copy- 
 i-ight out-and-out. For my second book I fared 
 only a little better, and for my third, my first 
 Manx story, " The Deemster," which contained 
 the work of a laborious year plus the Manx lore 
 acquired during eighteen years of my youth, I 
 received one hundred and fifty pounds in all. 
 I dare say it was as much as I had a right to 
 expect, and I am very far from wishful (what- 
 ever my children may be) to chew the cud of my 
 old bargain with my first publisher, whose three 
 books are, I am happy to see, as much alive now 
 as they were when we published them a quarter 
 of a century ago ; but the literary beginner will 
 please observe that the story of my struggles is 
 not yet told. I had been writing for ten years, 
 and had published at least five novels, every one 
 of them considered a success, before I had made 
 a penny beyond what was necessary to meet the 
 most modest of daily needs. Since then, so far 
 as I am able to judge, taking the earnings of 
 plays and books together, it is not improbable 
 that as much money has come to me (though so 
 little has remained) as ever came to any one, 
 not now living, who followed the profession of 
 
 368
 
 < 
 
 «5 
 
 o 
 
 z
 
 THE LITERARY LIFE 
 
 the pen ; but I see no reason to think that either 
 in bad fortune or good there has been anything 
 exceptional in my experience of the literary life. 
 
 If I have had more wages than most of my 
 fellow-writers, I think I have also had less, and 
 assuredly I have never thought that money was 
 the only currency in which my profession paid 
 me. Of all work I think literary work is the last 
 that ought to be measured against the money 
 one gets for it. Much or little, the money has 
 no relation to the expenditure of one's self, one's 
 soul, which writing, if it comes from the hearf, 
 requires. The consciousness of having done a 
 good piece of work is the reward to be reck- 
 oned with first. 
 
 Trying, however feebly, to follow literature 
 in that spirit, I have found the profession of let- 
 ters a serious pursuit, of which in no country 
 and in no company have I had reason to be 
 ashamed. It has demanded all my powers, fired 
 all my enthusiasm, developed my sympathies, 
 enlarged my friendships, touched, amused, 
 soothed, and comforted me. If it has been hard 
 work, it has also been a constant inspiration, 
 and I would not change it even now for all the 
 glory and more than all the emoluments of the 
 best-paid and most illustrious profession in the 
 world. 
 
 369
 
 MY STORY 
 
 It is indeed a j^rofession in which the struggle 
 for life is always keen and often bitter, and I 
 must have written this book ill if, in spite of any 
 optimism, that fact has not emerged. Open to 
 everybody, having no tests, no diplomas, issuing 
 no credentials, and being practically without or- 
 ganisation, the literary profession is perhaps 
 the easiest of all for the rank and file to enter, 
 and the most difficult for them to rise in. On 
 the other hand, it is a mansion that has many 
 outer courts, all opening into the central cham- 
 ber. There are hundreds of newspapers and 
 magazines in the United Kingdom waiting day 
 by day or week by week to be filled, and the 
 hunger for " copy " can never be satisfied. 
 Every morning millions of people at their 
 breakfast tables are saying, " Interest me ! En- 
 tertain me ! Startle me ! " and every night hun- 
 dreds of thousands in the theatres are asking 
 to be amused or moved. For the writer whose 
 grip is strong, whose romance is really roman- 
 tic, whose pathos is pathetic, whose power is 
 powerful, there is an ever-increasing clamour. 
 He must know his work and have lived and per- 
 haps suffered, but there is no question about the 
 extent of his appeal. "Whether he is journalist 
 or novelist or dramatist, whether he raises his 
 curtain on a tragedy or a farce, in high life or 
 
 370 

 
 THE LITERARY LIFE 
 
 low life, on the land or on the sea, an immense 
 audience is always waiting to welcome him. 
 
 It is true that in the profession of letters a 
 man's vogue is apt to be brief, but brevity is a 
 condition which attaches itself to great success 
 in nearly all professions, and long life in liter- 
 ature, as in law and medicine, is only to him 
 who can grow with the growing years and live 
 up to the last hour of his time. If a man cannot 
 do this, he must not complain that after he has 
 had his day a new generation should be knock- 
 ing at the door. 
 
 It is true, too, that in the profession of let- 
 ters some of the sweetness of success is likely 
 to be drained away by jealousy and envj, as 
 well as by the operation of natural laws that 
 have little or no relation to bad passions of any 
 sort. The literary man must make up his mind 
 to criticism; he must recognise the certainty 
 that the worst of it will always come from his 
 own class, often from his own juniors, some- 
 times from those who find him where they them- 
 selves would be, and generally anonymously. 
 This last is a condition peculiar to literature, 
 but perhaps it is not harder to bear than that of 
 the politician who gets his criticism full in the 
 face from the opposite benches in Parliament, 
 or that of the lawyer, who takes it in open snub- 
 
 371
 
 MY STORY 
 
 bings from a judge, or that of the parson, who 
 gets it in wild tornadoes at his Easter vestry. 
 At least it leaves the author at liberty to ignore 
 criticism if he has a mind to do so, and thus 
 spares him the loss of self-respect, which too 
 frequently comes of fighting one's adversary, 
 even when one beats him. 
 
 When two of my literary friends were quar- 
 relling in their attempt to collaborate, one of 
 them said : 
 
 " But see what insulting letters you send 
 me ! " Whereupon the other replied : 
 
 " You should see the letters I don't send you, 
 though ! " 
 
 I think of that answer with a certain satisfac- 
 tion when I look at the letters, often very in- 
 temperate and indiscreet, which I have sent to 
 the newspapers in reply to my own critics, and 
 at the same time remember the letters I have 
 kept to myself. And if an author who has not 
 always " recked his own rede " may offer ad- 
 vice to the literary beginner who is tempted to 
 reply to criticism, however unjust or apparently 
 injurious, I will say that, inasmuch as few men 
 have ever gained by combativeness, it is at once 
 the easiest and most effective course to leave 
 your adverse critics to themselves. 
 
 Of all the incidents in literary history, the 
 
 372
 
 THE LITERARY LIFE 
 
 most pitiful, I think, is that of Gogol, the father 
 of Russian fiction, going about in his last days 
 from country house to country house with a 
 carpet-bag full of adverse notices of his great 
 novel, " Dead Souls," reading them again and 
 again, exhibiting them to his friends, complain- 
 ing of them, railing against them, permitting 
 them to suck his life-blood like so many literary 
 leeches, until they killed him in his misery and 
 shame. The shocking waste of Gogol's valuable 
 life becomes hideously apparent when one says 
 to one's self, " ' Dead Souls ' is here still, but 
 where are the adverse notices, and, in the name 
 of Heaven, what were they?" 
 
 There is only one writer who can really in- 
 jure any author, and that writer is himself. If 
 his work is bad, it will die of the seeds of disso- 
 lution it carries within it, but if it is good, it will 
 live, and long before the little turmoils of crit- 
 ical condemnation have passed into the limbo of 
 fatuities, the public will stand abashed and won- 
 dering at censure so stupid and so unaccount- 
 able. He that hath the bride is the bridegroom. 
 
 The beginner's experience, however, will not 
 be like mine if he does not find that among his 
 critics are some whose wise counsel, as well as 
 generous praise, have encouraged, sustained, 
 stimulated, and even inspired him. Many of 
 25 373
 
 MY STORY 
 
 my warmest friends' have been won for me from 
 the critics of my books, and when I think of 
 what Charles A. Cooper, the late editor of the 
 Scotsman, did for me in my earlier years of 
 novel-writing, I am ready to forgive and to for- 
 get any hard word that any of his fellow- 
 journalists may have written and 2^ublished 
 against me. 
 
 And this leads me to say that the literary life 
 has joys which, so far as I know, belong to no 
 other profession, and I count among the chief 
 of them the tributes that come from the readers 
 of one's books. I can hardly suppose that my 
 experience in this regard has not been shared 
 by my brother authors when I say that during 
 the past twenty years there cannot have been 
 a day on which I have not received letters, 
 sometimes manv letters, from unknown corre- 
 spondents, who have had nothing to ask or gain 
 in writing to me. The sense of having, how- 
 ever unwittingly, come closer to some of them 
 than a brother, closer than a sister, sometimes 
 as close as their inmost soul, has been one of the 
 most precious rewards of the literary life, and 
 there is no other profession, so far as I can see, 
 that could have given me a joy so true and last- 
 ing as that. 
 
 . Then in the reckoning of one's return for pro- 
 
 374
 
 THE LITERARY LIFE 
 
 ducing books I count the delight of writing 
 them. I remember that in my days with Ros- 
 setti there was a story of how William Morris 
 reproved a young author for complaining that 
 his book had brought him no money. 
 
 " What are you grumbling alwut? " said Mor- 
 ris. *' Didn't the work do you good and make 
 you a better man? Do you want to be paid 
 twice over? " 
 
 But the writer who loves his work, and is so 
 happy as to make the public love it also, is paid 
 over and over again. If in the course of this 
 book I have dwelt too frequently on the penal- 
 ties of literary production, it is partly because 
 I have always worked against the odds of health 
 that has never been good, and of a temperament 
 that is not too sanguine ; but let me leave no un- 
 certainty that in my view the delights of lit- 
 erary work far outweigh its labour and pain. 
 
 ^Vhat literary work is to the literary worker 
 must depend largely upon what the man is him- 
 self. To Walter Scott it was a perfect fountain 
 of joy; for he always wrote as if it did him 
 good, like riding and swimming. Dickens, too, 
 bubbled and boiled with the delights of mere 
 composition, but Flaubert laboured along with 
 a strain that was strong and continuous. 
 
 No matter which of these classes of creators 
 
 375
 
 MY STORY 
 
 the imaginative writer belongs to, sure it is that 
 if he is to stir the public to enthusiasm, his own 
 enthusiasm must be kindled first. And this en- 
 thusiasm in the act of creation, if not of pro- 
 duction, is perhaps the highest joy of the liter- 
 ary life. Without it there is nothing done that 
 is worth doing, and no reward that is worth 
 fighting for. Oh, that one could keep forever 
 burning the fire of fusion, the central glow out 
 of whose depths all creative work should come ! 
 But no one knows better than the novelist and 
 dramatist how life and the world, and even 
 self-criticism itself, are perpetually quenching 
 the ardour of his spirit. 
 
 Here again, however, I see in the literary life 
 a wider horizon than any other profession ap- 
 pears to offer. Whatever a man's outlook on 
 the world, he may reproduce it in literature and 
 be sure of finding a public that sees eye to eye 
 with him. Does he see life as a comedy, there 
 are multitudes who also see it so ; and if he sees 
 it as a tragedy or as a cynical farce or as a 
 parti-coloured mixture of all three, there are 
 always people enough to look through his lens. 
 And just as there is no restriction as to the lit- 
 erary man's point of view, so there is no limit 
 to his subject. He may pick out a little corner 
 of life and produce a local picture, or he may 
 
 376
 
 THE LITERARY LIFE 
 
 take from the world's mountain tops the broad- 
 est sweep his sight can reach. If he has any of 
 the larger consciousness of the place of man in 
 the universe, he may develop it, for there is no 
 one to prevent the free fruition of what is his 
 own. If life has said anything to him, if suffer- 
 ing has taken him down into the deep places of 
 human experience, he can make his work re- 
 volve about the highest message or motive his 
 soul can reach, for there is nobody to disturb 
 the strength and dominance of his first inten- 
 tion. In the broad world he speaks to there 
 are people to hear whatever he has to say, and 
 they listen to him in numbers large or small, 
 according as he addresses himself to their 
 needs. I know of no other profession that of- 
 fers so wide a range for the exercise of varying 
 talents with varying temperaments, and there- 
 fore none in which success of some kind can be 
 reasonably expected. 
 
 If I may further glorify my own calling, as 
 I think I am in loyalty free to do, I will also 
 say that of all professions the profession of let- 
 ters has the largest and the most lasting influ- 
 ence. In the progress of the nations from the 
 barbaritv of statecraft, I see no force that is so 
 surely making for the peace of the world as the 
 force of education whereby the great national 
 
 377
 
 MY STORY 
 
 literatures are becoming one literature. I may 
 hate and loathe the Russian Government, and in 
 any difference it may have with the government 
 of England I may be a rabid Englishman, but 
 when I open the books of Tolstoy and enter with 
 him into the houses of the moujiks, and live 
 their lives and share their joys and sorrows, I 
 love the Russian people, and hate the thought 
 that my country can ever go to war with 
 them. 
 
 And while the range and the power of the lit- 
 erary life is such as I have tried to describe, I 
 count it not the least of its advantages as a 
 profession that it can be practised everywhere, 
 by any person, and by either of the sexes. The 
 man of letters may live in a palace, and nobody 
 thinks the better of his work ; or he may live in 
 a garret, and nobody thinks the worse. He may 
 write in town or in the country, at home or 
 abroad, at the top of Helvellyn or at the bot- 
 tom of a coal-mine, and the matter is of no 
 moment to anybody except himself. He may 
 plunge into the turmoil of the life of his time, 
 or he may hold aloof from the " momentary mo- 
 mentousness " of passing problems, and it is no- 
 body's business except his own. Once the public 
 has pronounced in his favour, it has emanci- 
 pated him from a score of shackles which bind 
 
 378
 
 THE LITERARY LIFE 
 
 men of other professions to time and place, and 
 his freedom is the freest in the world. 
 
 But while this is so, it is also true that the 
 spirit of literature is very jealous of the condi- 
 tions under which she is pursued, and very 
 watchful of the purpose for which she is fol- 
 lowed. Literature is a mistress that will not 
 share her lover with any rival, and if she is to 
 unveil her face in all its beauty, it can only be 
 in the still atmosphere of the harem. 
 
 When I think of the ideal life for the man of 
 letters I have to dismiss the memory of the lives 
 of the great men of my own branch of the craft 
 — Dickens in his last days, dragging his poor 
 dying body through America, while he gave 
 public readings of his writings, with his pulse 
 at 117 and his temperature at 102 degrees ; and 
 Walter Scott struggling to establish a family 
 while writing abroad to preserve his health and 
 to pay his creditors, and then climbing up in 
 the carriage as he drove home for the last time 
 to catch sight, through eyes half blind with 
 tears, of the towers of Abbotsford. 
 
 Instead of these heart-breaking records of the 
 lives of great writers, I love to think of the life 
 of Wordsworth, and I cannot do better than con- 
 clude my book with a flashlight picture of a 
 literary life that was totally unlike the tumultu- 
 
 379
 
 MY STORY 
 
 OTIS scrambling of my own, and far above the 
 tmsatisfied ending of any of the lives I have yet 
 described in these pages, being so calm, so sim- 
 ple, so noble, and so right. 
 
 Wordsworth practised the literary art for 
 something like sixty years, and during the 
 greater part of that time he met with little or 
 no encouragement. His first works were re- 
 ceived with howls of derision, and on the ap- 
 pearance of one of his last a great critic wrote, 
 " This will never do." All the same, he went on 
 writing, never questioning his poetic vocation, 
 never murmuring because critical applause did 
 not come to him, never looking for the wages 
 of popular success. He was always poor, and 
 he lived the life of a dalesman, first in a cottage 
 in Grasmere, and afterward in a modest home 
 at Rydal. Famous men of letters like Scott and 
 Jeffrey and Christopher North came to see him 
 there, drawn by his greatness, not his renown. 
 At long intervals he visited London, and three 
 or four times in the course of his life he made 
 thrifty journeys abroad. 
 
 He was always profoundly interested in the 
 groat movements of the world, but he cared 
 nothing for the activities of the passing hour. 
 The life he lived, as he once said, had nothing 
 in common with Westminster elections and Mrs. 
 
 380
 
 THE LITERARY LIFE 
 
 Such-a-One's five o'clock teas. Steadily, stead- 
 fastly, without the stimulus of applause or the 
 impetus of pecuniary success, he went on for 
 nearly fifty years giving the world of his best. 
 
 Then the nation, which had paid him no 
 homage hitherto, remembered him at last. It 
 gave to his poverty a small paid position, and 
 to his pride the rank of poet-laureate. Once in 
 his latest days he came up to Cambridge, and 
 the audience in the theatre of the University 
 rose to its feet and shouted its welcome in a 
 roar of cheers. It was a theatrical climax of 
 infinite pathos that he, the poor country com- 
 missioner of stamps, who had lived out the long 
 tale of the days of his strength in obscurity, 
 broken by derision, with labour unbrightened 
 by reward, had come into the heritage of his 
 fame when he was feeble and white-headed and 
 old. Yet if the demonstration was grateful even 
 to him who built his big hopes on no such things, 
 to us, after all, what is it but a note of glorious 
 discord in the harmony of his simple life? It 
 was like hanging a mantle of silk velvet over a 
 coat of russet cloth; like perching a crown of 
 bay-leaves on a furrowed forehead honoured 
 enough by the snows of time. 
 
 The story of Wordsworth's death and burial 
 is one of the sweetest in literary history. For 
 
 381
 
 MY STORY 
 
 more than a year tlie poet had been a dying man. 
 In the late autumn of 1849, when William John- 
 son, the author of a brief and little-known 
 memoir, parted from him at nightfall on the 
 bridge that crosses the Rotha, Wordsworth 
 took his hand and said: 
 
 " I am an old man, nearly fourscore, and per- 
 haps may not live to see you again — farewell ! 
 God bless you ! " Then his drooping figure dis- 
 appeared in the darkness. 
 
 On April 14, 1850, in the cold, bright evening, 
 he went out of his house for the last time, walk- 
 ing as far as the cottage by the quarry at the 
 northern end of the lake, sitting there on a stone 
 by the roadside, and then toiling heavily back 
 with much pain and weakness, and going early 
 to bed. On the 19th it was known that no hope 
 was left; that he was sinking rapidly, and that 
 the end was near. On Saturday, the 20th, his 
 son John asked if he would take the Sacrament, 
 and he answered, " It is what I wanted." On 
 Tuesday he died. 
 
 They said it was exactly at twelve that he 
 passed away, and that a cuckoo clock that stood 
 in the death-room was singing the hour of noon. 
 The day was fine and clear and wann, the sun 
 came out at intervals, and two ladies, friends 
 of the poet's family, were climbing the hills 
 
 382
 
 Probably the Last Puktuait of Tennyson.
 
 THE LITERARY LIFE 
 
 above the house and looking down upon it and 
 talking sadly of the event expected, when sud- 
 denlv the windows were closed and the white 
 blinds drawn. It was almost as if they had wit- 
 nessed from those heights the faring forth of 
 the great soul that was even then winging its 
 way to Heaven. Thus Wordsworth died in his 
 mountain home, with its long seaward gaze, 
 amid its old familiar hills and above its sedgy 
 lake, on April 23d, a day already written in gold 
 in literary history as the birthday and deathday 
 of Shakespeare. 
 
 In his last hour he was surrounded by his 
 family only, for he had outlived the generation 
 of men who had been his brethren in youth — 
 Coleridge and Southey and Lamb ; and the later 
 generation of friends whom the new fame of the 
 old poet had won for him were far away. His 
 strong soul had supported him through twenty 
 years of ridicule and fifty years of neglect; it 
 had not forsaken him through his poor ten years 
 of recognition, adulation, and flattery; and he 
 died in content, in peace, and without pain, 
 hardly any one being quite aware of the moment 
 when he ceased to breathe. The same day his 
 son John wrote to tell Rogers, his son-in-law, 
 Quillinan, wrote to Crabbe Robinson, and some- 
 body else wrote to Henry Taylor. There was 
 
 383
 
 MY STORY 
 
 not a note of mourning in the letter of either 
 and hardly a word of grief. Why should there 
 have been ? No man can die less than the great 
 poet who dies when his work is done. 
 
 They buried Wordsworth on Saturday, April 
 27th, in Grasmere churchyard. That is one of 
 the sweetest spots in all the world, the little 
 dotted plot lying low, with its old gray church, 
 in the arms of the, green hills, within its half- 
 circular road, breasted by its beautiful river, 
 and shaded by its spreading yews. The poet's 
 wife was present at the funeral, in the end as at 
 the beginning, " an angel, yet a woman, too." 
 She was very old, and had long been ailing, and 
 a month before, when some one on the road had 
 asked about her health, the poet had answered : 
 " I think she suffers less pain, but no one can 
 tell, for she never complains." 
 
 She walked after the coffin between her two 
 sons, and with her son-in-law behind her, bowed 
 and feeble, yet bearing herself calmly. Few or 
 none had been invited to join them, but the little 
 churchyard was more than half filled with un- 
 bidden mourners, of all country ranks and ages, 
 chiefly- the rude statesmen of the dale. As far 
 as I can see, no men of letters were there. The 
 grave was where the poet himself had chosen it 
 when he selected a resting place for poor, rest- 
 
 384
 
 THE LITERARY LIFE 
 
 less " laal Hartley " Coleridge, and then turned 
 to the sexton and said, " And keep this other 
 place for me." 
 
 It is in the sweetest corner of that sweet spot. 
 A gravel path goes round it, and the low wall 
 of the churchyard is very close at its foot and 
 at its side. When the day dawns it is the first 
 bed in the dale to know it, and being out of the 
 shadow of the church, it is the last to parley 
 with the setting sun. And the beautiful river, 
 the Rotha, which babbles and laughs before it 
 comes to this corner and again laughs and bab- 
 bles beyond it, flows deep and silent and with 
 a solemn hush as it goes slowly under the quiet 
 place of the poet's rest. 
 
 There they buried Wordsworth on that little 
 edge of land where scarce twenty persons could 
 gather without crowding. The morning was 
 fine, with the breath of summer and the smile 
 of spring, but a frosty mist had rolled down in 
 the night, and over the hills and the meadows 
 and the church roof and the two yew trees which 
 the poet had planted when he buried his Dora, 
 there lay a soft, gray, hoary bloom. Along the 
 village street the cries of the children were 
 hushed, and the anvil of the smith was quiet, but 
 the cattle lowed in the fields, and the sheep 
 bleated on the fells, and the water slipped down 
 
 385
 
 MY STORY 
 
 the ghylls, and all nature was just as it had ever 
 been when he who was being laid away in the 
 deep repose of death had seen and loved it. 
 
 Such was the death and burial of Words- 
 worth, and I should like in a last word to com- 
 jDare both with the death and burial of another 
 poet of something like the same magnitude and 
 genius — a poet who, like Wordsworth, held him- 
 self in personal seclusion throughout his long 
 life, but was not allowed to be laid at rest in 
 the simplicity which he loved. A new order of 
 things had arisen in a few years between 
 Wordsworth and Tennyson, and perhaps it was 
 natural that the sweet oblivion of a peaceful 
 silence should not any longer surround the cir- 
 cumstance of a great man's death. For ten 
 days before Tennyson died the newspapers 
 were filled with the name of the great poet, 
 and the eye of England was on him alone. 
 While he lived we watched by his bed, marking 
 every change in his condition, and when he died 
 we stood in his death-cham])er, seeing the moon- 
 light resting on his grand old head and on the 
 hand that held open the page of " Cymbeline." 
 When his body was put into the coffin we were 
 told of it, and we were told, too, when it was 
 brought on its last night ride from his home 
 in the country to Westminster Abbey. We 
 
 386
 
 THE LITERARY LIFE 
 
 were told who made his pall, and the nature and 
 design of it; and, when the final page of his 
 history had to be filled up, we read the names 
 of some two hundred out of more than twice 
 two thousand who followed him to his grave. 
 
 I was one of the latter, and I well remember 
 the effect produced upon me by the funeral of 
 the greatest man of letters of my time. The 
 ceremony was noble in its scene and its propor- 
 tions, and in the presence of nearly all the intel- 
 lect of the land. But for those of us who had 
 no personal recollections of the dead poet to 
 touch us with tender memories, there was little 
 to bring the tears to the eyes and the throb to 
 the throat, and not much to stir the imagination 
 or to hold the heart as by a spell. 
 
 I myself felt the incongruity of the martial 
 scene as the funeral of a great writer. There 
 was something out of keeping in the specta- 
 cle of Tennyson, who had hidden himself from 
 the world throughout his life, exposed to its 
 gaze in his death. He loved the meadows, the 
 flowers, the elemental passions of humble life; 
 he was a child of nature, and he fled from the 
 glare of what stands to the children of the 
 world for the eye of the light. Him the utmost 
 pomp of a funeral could not ennoble, for whom 
 God has made a noble poet is already a noble 
 
 387
 
 MY STORY 
 
 man. And now that the splendid ceremony is 
 so many years past, in the gross reckoning of 
 his fame, what is it? Only a line in his history, 
 a passing word that makes no noise, a fact that 
 adds nothing to his gift, and pays nothing of 
 our debt and leaves him where Wordsworth is 
 without it. 
 
 I remember that, feeling this very keenly in 
 the mid-day of Tennyson's funeral, I walked 
 down to Westminster again at night. The little 
 door in the cloisters was open, and I stepped 
 into the Abbey. It was dark, save for the shift- 
 ing light of a lantern over the place of the poet's 
 grave, where two or three masons, with shrill 
 taps of their trowels, were cementing down the 
 covering stone. And then I felt that, different 
 as had been the circumstances of the burials of 
 Tennyson and Wordsworth, that was an hour 
 when the scene of their graves was the same, 
 though the one was in the heart of London and 
 the other in the arms of the fells. 
 
 The crowds were gone, with their eager eyes 
 and curious questions, and the grave was filled 
 and the stone slid over it, and the cloisters were 
 empty and the transept dark, and one great star 
 " globed itself " through a window of the clere- 
 story, and the black columns of the nave bowed 
 their heads like phantoms, and the clock chimed 
 
 388
 
 THE LITERARY LIFE 
 
 in the tower, and only the footsteps of the por- 
 ters echoed in the aisles, and the great poet lay 
 alone at length, " compassed round by the blind 
 walls of night," as silent in the surroundings of 
 his last sleep as if no bawling, clamouring, gar- 
 rulous city rolled and rushed about him, and he 
 slumbered with his simple predecessor in the 
 deep solitude of the sleeping hills. 
 
 26
 
 INDEX 
 
 Academy, The, Rossetti's " Bal- 
 lads and Sonnets," 161; 
 Hall Caine's connection 
 with, 174,366,367. 
 
 AU the Year Round, "The 
 Woman in White," serial, 
 328. 
 
 America, an early story of Hall 
 Caine's, 301 ; Hall Caine's 
 visits to, 350-64; its press, 
 351-61; no libel law, 357- 
 58; copyright in, 362; 
 characteristics of its peo- 
 ple, 363; Dickens in, 379. 
 
 Angelo, Michael, Carlyle's in- 
 tention to write a life of, 
 176. 
 
 Arnold, Matthew, 246. 
 
 Athenceum, The, Rossetti re- 
 plies to his critics in, 94; 
 Rossetti's "Ballads and 
 Sonnets," 161 ; Hall Caine's 
 connection with, 174, 366, 
 367. 
 
 Ballads and Sonnets, Rossetti's, 
 
 161-63. 
 Ballaugh, Hall Caine's early 
 
 daj's at, 5, 8-14, 29: the 
 
 old church, 24; his father 
 
 born at, 347. 
 
 Barberino (Francesco da), 
 poem, "Sloth against 
 Sin," 139. 
 
 Barrett, Wilson, 247, 336-40. 
 
 Beddoes, Thomas Lovell, 65. 
 
 Birchington, 218-40, 256. 
 
 Blackfriar's Bridge, Rossetti's 
 home near, 83-85. 
 
 Blackmore, R. D., 286-99, 338. 
 
 Blake, William, 63. 
 
 Blessed Damozel, The, Long- 
 fellow's admiration for, 
 178. 
 
 Bondman, The, 275, 
 
 Brantwood, 259-62. 
 
 Brassey, Lord, 356. 
 
 Bride of Lammermoor, The, 
 320, 325. 
 
 Bright, H. A., 52-54. 
 
 British Museum Reading-room, 
 248-49. 
 
 Bromley, James, 146. 
 
 Brown, Ford Madox, Hall 
 Caine sits for, 66; Pre- 
 Raphaelites, 77, 115; Eliz- 
 abetli Siddal, 82; Rosset- 
 ti's friend, 96, 208, 210; 
 his report of Hall Caine, 
 100; "sententious as Dr. 
 Johnson," 108; a thumb- 
 nail sketch of, 156; on 
 
 391
 
 INDEX 
 
 Ruskin's economic propa- 
 ganda, 1 78 ; his respect for 
 the proprieties, 180; ab- 
 sence from Rossetti's fu- 
 neral, 239. 
 
 Brown, the Rev. H. S., 300-1. 
 
 Brown, T. E., 301-18. 
 
 Browning, Elizabeth Barrett, 
 177. 
 
 Browning, Robert, Rossetti 
 destroys letters from, 86; 
 as a reader, 118; Rossetti 
 tallcs of, 177; Hall Caine's 
 meeting with, 246. 
 
 Buchanan, Robert, attacks 
 Rossetti, 93; retracts, 215- 
 16; the man, 263-^4, 266- 
 71 ; explains, 263-66. 
 
 Builder, The, 44-47. 
 
 Building News, 44. 
 
 Bulwer-Lytton, Edward, 327. 
 
 Bulwer-Lytton, Rosina (Bar- 
 oness Lytton), letter to 
 Wilkie Collins, 327. 
 
 Burden, Jane. See Morris, 
 Jane. 
 
 Burne-Jones, Sir Edward, his 
 friendship with Rossetti, 
 81, 87, 160, 180; affection- 
 ate meeting with Rossetti, 
 208-9; sudden illness on 
 the way to Rossetti's fu- 
 neral, 239. 
 
 Caine, Hall. 
 
 Early Days: Isle of Man, 3- 
 29; uncles, 3-7, 25, 38-40; 
 grandparents, 8-13, 20, 
 30; aunt, 14; parents, 30- 
 
 392 
 
 32; Liverpool, 30-43; as 
 architect, 32-35, 38, 43; 
 meeting with Gladstone, 
 33 - 34 ; stewardship of 
 Gladstone's estates, 34, 48; 
 love of books, 35; early 
 hterary efforts, 35-39, 254; 
 Socialist, 39, 49; New 
 Theologian, 39; "Am I 
 my brother's keeper?" 40; 
 as schoolmaster, 40-41 ; 
 penny readings and de- 
 bates, 41-42; Builder and 
 Builditig News, 44-47; 
 builder's assistant, 48-50, 
 61, 64, 66, 70, 132, 144- 
 46; lectures at Liverpool, 
 55-59, 120-24, 154, 171, 
 184; "Supernatural in 
 Poetry," 64-65; Irving's 
 Macbeth, 65; "Night"— 
 "Nell," 66; sits to Madox 
 Brown, 66 ; essay on Keats, 
 143-44; business forsaken 
 for literature, 144-48; re- 
 viewing for Athenaeum and 
 Academy, 174, 366, 367; 
 Liverpool Mercury, 243- 
 53, 263, 302, 366-67; 
 "rather poor and very lone- 
 ly," 245; post-mortem ex- 
 aminations, 247-48; Brit- 
 ish Museum Reading- 
 room, 248-49; the "Uni- 
 versity of Life," 250-53; 
 letters from Lord Rosebery 
 and Mr. Gladstone, 260; 
 publishers' scant courtesy, 
 272-74, 283-84; a pub-
 
 INDEX 
 
 lisher's reader, 284; his 
 parents' tribute to Irving, 
 346-49; married, 366. 
 
 Friendships: D. G. Ros- 
 setti, first touch, 42-43, 
 51-56; lecture on, 55-59, 
 120-24, 272; correspond- 
 ence, 58-71, 97-98, 100-1, 
 131, 133-49; his life's trag- 
 edy, 81-82, 196-99, 211, 
 216; first meeting, 100-1 1 ; 
 a night at Cheyne Walk, 
 112-32; housemates at 
 Cheyne Walk, 133-64— 
 Cumberland, 153, 164-92; 
 as mentor, 135 etseq., 223- 
 24; a memorable journey, 
 192-99; back to Chelsea, 
 200-19; treasured mem- 
 ories, 211; at Birchington, 
 220 et seq. ; last quiet talk, 
 231-33; the end, 235, 236- 
 40. 
 
 Early literary friendships, 
 246. 
 
 First literary friends, 44-59. 
 
 John Ruskin, "Guild of St. 
 George," 39, 254-62; en- 
 couragement, 45-46; a 
 visit to his home, 257-62; 
 Henry Irving, 50, 340-44, 
 346-47; Robert Buchan- 
 an, 263-71; J. S. Cotton, 
 280; John Lovell, 280-82; 
 Watts-Dunton, 282-83; R. 
 
 D. Blackmore, 286-99; T. 
 
 E. Brown, "Rossetti alone 
 excepted, he was the most 
 brilliant and fascinating 
 
 creature I have ever 
 known," 301-18; Wilkie 
 Collins, 319-35; Bram 
 Stoker, 341, 343; Charles 
 A. Cooper, 374. 
 
 Novels: Rossetti as foster- 
 father, 1 74 ; the best school 
 for, 252; a confession, 285; 
 journalism sacrificed for, 
 366-67. 
 
 First novel — The Shadow of 
 a Crime, 275-78; the plac- 
 ing of it, 284-85; Black- 
 more 's criticism, 286-87; 
 T. E. Brown's apprecia- 
 tion, 301-3; its monetary 
 value, 368. 
 
 Second novel — .4 Son of 
 Hagar, 368. 
 
 First Manx Novel — The 
 Deemster, its basis, 275; 
 criticism by T. E. Brown, 
 303-10 ; reception in Manx- 
 land, 309-12; what it sold 
 for, 368; criticism by Wil- 
 kie Collms, 319-21, 334- 
 35. 
 
 The Bondman, 21 o ; its 
 characters "recognised," 
 312. 
 
 The Manxman, the " origi- 
 nal " Pete Quilliam, 312. 
 
 Plays: Encouragements to 
 write, 247, 288; Wilson 
 Barrett accepts "The 
 Deemster," 337; indebted- 
 ness to him, 338; first-night 
 sensations, 339-40; Irving 
 asks for a play, 340-43; 
 
 393
 
 INDEX 
 
 the Lord Chamberlain's 
 interdict, 343; difficulties 
 of writing, 344. 
 Tennyson's play howled 
 
 down, 344-45. 
 Ibsen and morals, 346; the 
 demands of the public, 346. 
 Visits to America: A warm 
 welcome, 350-51, 362; in- 
 terviewers, 351-55; photo- 
 graphic "hawks," 356-57; 
 journalism, 357-61 ; copy- 
 right, 362; America and 
 its people, 363-64. 
 Canadian Copyright Bill, 
 
 361-62. 
 The Literary Life : Encour- 
 agement for beginners, 
 365 et seq.; remuneration, 
 365-69; its greater re- 
 wards, 369, 374-75; criti- 
 cism, 371-74; its joys, 
 374-75; a wide horizon, 
 376-78; advantages, 378- 
 79; exacting requirements, 
 379; heart-breaking rec- 
 ords, 379 ; contrasts : 
 Wordsworth and Tenny- 
 son, 380-89. 
 
 Caine, Lily, 219. 
 
 Carlyle, Jane B. W., 176. 
 
 Carlyle, Thomas, his residence, 
 101; Hall Caine's glimpse 
 of, 153; his opinion of 
 Shelley, 176; a contem- 
 plated life of Michael An- 
 gelo, 176-77. 
 
 Castle, Egerton, 367. 
 
 Castletown, 28. 
 
 Charlotte Street, Rossetti's 
 birthplace, 75-76. 
 
 Chatterton, Thomas, 142-43. 
 
 Chatto and Windus, 285. 
 
 Cheyne Walk, Rossetti's home, 
 54-55, 67, 86-87, 101-10, 
 112-30. 
 
 Christabel, 141—42; Borrow- 
 dale the scene of, 185. 
 
 Clare Market, 250. 
 
 Clement's Inn, 245, 250, 263, 
 345. 
 
 Cloud Confines, 186. 
 
 Coleridge, Hartley, 385. 
 
 Coleridge, Lord, 246. 
 
 Coleridge, S. T., Rossetti's es- 
 timate of, 141; "Chris- 
 tabel," and its continua- 
 tions, 141-42; "Work 
 without Hope," Rossetti's 
 love for, 160; Borrowdale 
 the scene of "Christabel," 
 185; outlived by his friend 
 Wordsworth, 383. 
 
 Collins, William Wilkie, treat- 
 ment of lunatics on the Isle 
 of Man, 19; "The Deem- 
 ster," 319, 334-35; pic- 
 tures, 321; the man, 322- 
 24, 333-34; dramatic pi- 
 racy, 324; French writers 
 and Dickens, Scott, Reade, 
 325-33; boyish delight in 
 his work, 326; stories of 
 "The Woman in White," 
 227-29; i)ress versus pub- 
 lic, 329-30; laudanum, 
 331-32; "Reminiscences," 
 332; paralysis, 333. 
 
 394
 
 INDEX 
 
 Colonial Office, 361. 
 
 Coniston, 239, 259. 
 
 Contemporary Review, The, 
 "The Fleshly School of 
 Poetry," 92-94; a retrac- 
 tion, 215-16; Buchanan's 
 explanation, 263-66. 
 
 Cooper, Charles A., 374. 
 
 Copyright, 324 ; in Canada and 
 America, 361-62. 
 
 Corkill, Billy, 26, 41. 
 
 Cotton, J. S., "The Shadow of 
 a Crime," 280. 
 
 County Council (London), 
 rookeries of Clare Market, 
 250. 
 
 Cumberland, Rossetti and Hall 
 Caine, 148, 153, 164-92; 
 a legend of, 275-78, 300. 
 
 Dante's Dream, 113-15, 130; 
 sold to Liverpool, 160; 
 Noel Paton's opinion of, 
 161. 
 
 Dead Souls, 373. 
 
 Deemster, The, 71, 275, 319-20, 
 334-35. 
 
 De Quincey, Thomas, 184, 331. 
 
 Deverell, Mrs., 78-79. 
 
 Deverell, W. H., Pre-Raphael- 
 ite, 77; meeting with 
 Rossetti's future wife, 78- 
 79. 
 
 Dickens, Charles, 298; an 
 etching of, 321; Wilkie 
 Collins and, 325, 328, 333; 
 in America, 350, 362, 379; 
 delight in his work, 375. 
 
 Douglas, 3, 4, 5, 28. 
 
 Dove Cottage, 184. 
 
 Dove Dale, 337. 
 
 Dowden, Edward, 52, 161. 
 
 Dumas, 325. 
 
 Du Maurier, G. L. P., 159. 
 
 Eliot, George, 101, 175, 293, 
 
 302. 
 English Society of Authors, 
 
 361-62. 
 
 Festus, 53. 
 
 Fisher Ghyll, 168. 
 
 "Fleshly School of Poetry," 
 
 92-94. 
 Fo'c's'le Yarns, 301-3, 306, 
 
 310. 
 Fors Clavigera, 39. 
 Forster, John, 328. 
 Found, 212, 213. 
 
 Gad's Hill, 333. 
 
 Garrick, David, a relic of, 125. 
 
 Gaskell, Elizabeth C, 53, 302. 
 
 Gell, Sir James, J. P., 19. 
 
 Germ, The, 77. 
 
 Gladstone, William Ewart, 33- 
 34, 260. 
 
 God and the Man, 215. 
 
 Godkin, E, L., 356-57. 
 
 Godwin, George, 46-47. 
 
 Gogol, N. v., 373. 
 
 Grasmere, 184. 
 
 Grasmere Churchyard, Words- 
 worth's funeral, 384-86, 
 389. 
 
 Gray, David, 267. 
 
 Greta Hall, 184. 
 
 "Guild of St. George," 39, 254. 
 
 395
 
 INDEX 
 
 Hake, Dr. T. G.. 97. 
 HalUwell-Phillipps, J. O., 112. 
 Hamlet, 320; a tribute to Ir- 
 
 ving's Hamlet, 347-49. 
 Hay, John (Secretary of State, 
 
 r. S. A.), 358. 
 Henley, W. E., 313. 
 Herbert, Miss, prediction of 
 
 Irving's success, 113. 
 Highgate Cemetery, 85, 89, 
 
 238. 
 Houghton, Lord, "Life of 
 
 Keats," 52-53; describes 
 
 Rossetti, 53-54; Hall 
 
 Caine and, 246. 
 House of Life, The, Rossetti's 
 
 sonnets, 117. 
 Hugo, Victor, 325. 
 Hunt, Leigh, 176. 
 Hunt, W. Holman, friendship 
 
 with Rossetti, 77, 160; 
 
 Pre-Raphaelite, 115; Ros- 
 setti talks of, 180. 
 
 Ibsen, 346. 
 
 Iceland, 251. 
 
 Interviewers, 351-57. 
 
 Irving, Henry, "Notes and 
 Queries" Society, 50-51; 
 Hall Caine's pamphlet on 
 his Macbeth, 65; MLss Her- 
 bert predicts success, 112- 
 13; invites Hall Caine to 
 write a play — unsuccess- 
 ful efforts, 340-41; "A 
 compound of Voltaire and 
 Cardinal Manning," 341- 
 43; a crowning tribute, 
 346-49. 
 
 Isle of Man, Hall Caine's early 
 days in, 3-29, 31-32, 38- 
 43, 254; intermarriage, 8, 
 18; superstitions, 9; court- 
 ship, 14; marriage, 15; 
 poor relief, 16-17; lunacy, 
 18-19; its government, 19- 
 20, 28, 304; banks and 
 money-lending, 20-21 ; re- 
 ligious life, 21-27; intemT 
 perance, 22; wrecking and 
 smuggling, 24; a Christ- 
 mas-eve custom, 25-27; 
 newspapers, 27, 309; its 
 isolation, 27-28; the Lord 
 Bishop, 28; history, 304; 
 its first novelist, 309-12; 
 T. E. Brown, 313-16. 
 
 Isle of Wight, Hall Caine re- 
 siding in, 274. 
 
 Italy and its exiles, 75-76. 
 
 James I. of Scotland, Rossetti's 
 ballad, 98. 
 
 Jan Va7i Hunks, ballad, 222. 
 
 Jeffrey, Francis, Lord Jeffrey, 
 380. 
 
 Jenny, making for moral ends, 
 57; revised, 64; "a ser- 
 mon," 122; a great social 
 problem, 212-13; a kind 
 act, 214-15. 
 
 Johnson, Samuel, Ford Madox 
 Brown as sententious as, 
 108; Rossetti a late riser 
 like, 119; in Clare Market, 
 250. 
 
 Johnson, William, Words- 
 worth's farewell to, 382. 
 
 396
 
 INDEX 
 
 Keats, John, 51, 52-53, 57, 62- 
 
 63, 143-44, 232. 
 King's College School, Rossetti 
 
 at, 76. 
 King's Tragedy, 150, 186. 
 Kirk Maughold, 23. 
 Kirk Maughold Head, 40-41. 
 
 Lamb, Charles, 141, 3&3. 
 
 Landor, Walter Savage, 52-53. 
 
 Lewes, G. H., 175. 
 
 Leyland, Frederick, 157. 
 
 Lights o' Leith, 264. 
 
 "Limericks," 109, 158. 
 
 Liverpool, Hall Caine's early 
 days in, 30-43, 64; Rus- 
 kin, 46; Hall Caine's lec- 
 tures at, 55-59, 120-24, 
 154, 171, 184; purchases 
 "Dante's Dream," 160; 
 Hall Caine leaves for Lon- 
 don, 336, 337; Hall Caine's 
 father in, 347. 
 
 Liverpool Free Library, 35, 55. 
 
 Liverpool Mercury, The, Hall 
 Caine and, 243-53, 263, 
 302, 366-67. 
 
 Liverpool, "Notes and Queries " 
 Society, 50-51, 55. 
 
 Longfellow, H. AV., Rossetti's 
 story of, 177-78. 
 
 Lord Chamberlain, The, inter- 
 dicts "Mohammed," 343. 
 
 Lorna Doone, 286, 289, 294-96. 
 
 Lothair, 90-91. 
 
 Louis XI, Irving in, 349. 
 
 Louise, Princess, supposed 
 connection with " Lorna 
 Doone," 295. 
 
 Lovell, John, 244, 247, 280-82, 
 366-67. 
 
 Macbeth, Hall Caine's pam- 
 phlet on, 65. 
 
 Maitland, Thomas. See Bu- 
 chanan, Robert. 
 
 Manchester Town Hall, its 
 frescoes, 66, 157. 
 
 Marshall, Dr. John, 128, 187. 
 
 Marston, Phillip B., at Cheyne 
 Walk, 156-57, 204-5; at 
 Rossetti's funeral, 239. 
 
 Marston, Westland, at Cheyne 
 Walk, 204-5. 
 
 Mary Magdalene, 212, 213. 
 
 Maud, Tennyson's reading of, 
 118. 
 
 Maurice, Frederick Denison, 
 118. 
 
 Mazzini, 259. 
 
 Meredith, George, at Cheyne 
 Walk, 87. 
 
 Millais, Sir John E., a Pre- 
 . Raphaelite, 76 ; portrait of 
 Ruskin and its sequel, 1 79 ; 
 "something of a swell," 
 180: portrait of Wilkie 
 Collins, 321. 
 
 Morris, Jane, influence on 
 Rossetti, 81-82; immor- 
 talised in Rossetti's pic- 
 tures, 157. 
 
 Morris, W,, "Notes and 
 Queries" Society, 50-51; 
 friendship with Rossetti, 
 81, 87, 160; "The Fleshly 
 School of Poetry," 92; a 
 fine reader, 118; declaim- 
 
 397
 
 INDEX 
 
 ing "The Earthly Para- 
 dise," 180. 
 
 Nell, Rossetti and, 66. 
 New Magdalen, The, 324. 
 Night, Rossetti and, 65-66. 
 Noble, Ashcroft, 51-52. 
 North, Christopher, 380. 
 North Foreland Lighthouse, 
 
 328. 
 "Notes and Queries" Society, 
 
 50-51, 52, 5o. 
 
 Opiates, 82, 84, 86 et seq., 126- 
 28, 147, 151, 163, 165-68, 
 185-86, 187 et seq., 206, 
 331-32. 
 
 Oxford and Cambridge, The, 77. 
 
 Oxford University, undergrad- 
 uates digging at, 39; the 
 frescoes at the Union De- 
 bating Hall, 81, 181. 
 
 Paton, Sir Joseph Noel, 
 "Dante's Dream," 161. 
 
 Peel, 28. 
 
 Philadelphia, 354. 
 
 Piracy, 324. 
 
 Poe, Edgar Allan, unmoral 
 poetry, 57; Rossetti re- 
 cites poems of, 186. 
 
 Poems of a Painter, 1 76. 
 
 Poems, Rossetti's, buried with 
 Rossetti's wife, 42-43, 52, 
 85; exhumation of, 55, 88- 
 90; publication — their re- 
 ception, 90-95; Tennyson 
 and, 177. 
 
 Politics and Art, 137-38. 
 
 Pre-Raphaelitism, 77, 115. 
 Promise of May, The, 344-45. 
 Punch, Oscar Wilde carica- 
 tured, 159. 
 
 Queen's House. See Cheyne 
 
 Walk. 
 Quillinan, Edward, 383-84. 
 
 Ramsey, 28. 
 
 Rathbone, Philip, 50. 
 
 Raven, The, 186. 
 
 Reade, Charles, and Wilkie 
 Collins, 325. 
 
 Robinson Crabbe, 383. 
 
 Rogers, Samuel, 383. 
 
 Rome, 298, 316. 
 
 Rose Mary, 116, 131. 
 
 Rosebery, Lord, 260. 
 
 Rossetti, Christina G., 157, 
 228, 230, 231, 235. 
 
 Rossetti, Dante Gabriel 
 (Gabriel Charles Dante), 
 His Life: Parentage, 75-76; 
 education, 76; meets his 
 future wife, 78 et seq. ; their 
 engagement, 80; a tragic 
 entanglement? 81-82, 196- 
 99,211, 216; marriage, 82; 
 domestic unhappiness, 82- 
 83, 196; his wife's death, 
 84-85, 195-97; opiates, 86 
 et seq., 126-28, 147, 151, 
 163, 165-68, 185, 187 et 
 seq. ; a humorous rascal. 89, 
 225-20, 255-57, 263-65; 
 secluded life, 95-96, 123; 
 emerges from retirement, 
 96 et seq. ; paralysis, 204-5 ; 
 
 398
 
 INDEX 
 
 conquering the craving for 
 chloral, 206-7. 
 
 His Home: Cheyne Walk, 
 54-55, 67, 86-87, 101 et 
 seq., 124-30, 149-64, 200- 
 19, 238; Charlotte Street, 
 75-76,142; Chatham Place, 
 83-85. 
 
 Word Portraits, 53-55, 78 
 et seq.; unselfishness, 69- 
 71 ; morbid sensitiveness to 
 criticism, 93-96, 120-24- 
 162-63; age fifty-two, 104- 
 8; elocutionary powers, 
 110, 117-18, 186; alert- 
 ness of mind, 173-74; 
 stories of early days, 181; 
 new man mentally, 207. 
 
 Poetry: Poems buried with 
 his wife, 42, 52, 85; poems 
 exhumed, 55, 88-90, 195; 
 an analysis, 56; "Jenny," 
 57, 64, 212, 213, 214-15; 
 early efforts, 77-78; for- 
 saken for painting, 81; 
 publication of "Poems," 
 90-95; bitter attacks — 
 "The Fleshly School of 
 Poetry," 92-94, 121; ap- 
 preciation, 96; a fresh 
 start, 97; Limericks, 109, 
 158; "The White Ship," 
 110; "Rose Mary, ""House 
 of Life," "Without Her," 
 116-17; "Ballads and Son- 
 nets," 161-63; Buchanan's 
 retraction, 215-16; "Jan 
 Van Hunks," 222; love 
 of ballad literature, 232; 
 
 399 
 
 Buchanan's explanation, 
 263-66. 
 
 Painting : Pre-Raphaelit- 
 ism, 77; EUzabeth E. Sid- 
 dal, as pupil and model, 
 70; frescoes at Oxford, 
 81 ; a substantial living, 
 87; studio, 105-6, 117; 
 "Dante's Dream," 113-15 
 130, 160-61; "weary of 
 Pre-Raphaelitism," 115; 
 a purchaser, 157; "Dante's 
 Dream" purchased by 
 Liverpool, 160 ; Noel 
 Paton, 161; in Cumber- 
 land, 170-71; faiUng in- 
 terest, 183; "Found," 212; 
 "Mary Magdalene," 212, 
 213. 
 
 His Friends: 155-63. 
 
 Friendship with Hall 
 Caine: Lecture by Hall 
 Caine, 55-59, 120-24; cor- 
 respondence, 58-71, 97- 
 98,100-1,131,1.33, etseq.; 
 their first meeting, 100-1 1 ; 
 at Cheyne Walk, 112- 
 32; housemates — Cheyne 
 Walk, 133-64; Cumber- 
 land, 148, 153, 164-92; 
 back to Chelsea, 200-19; 
 Birchington, 218-40; a 
 Cumberland legend, 275- 
 78. 
 
 Failing Health: 150-51, 
 1 58, 1 6 1 , 1 83 e< seq. ; paraly- 
 sis, 204-7. 
 
 Last Day-s: Fears of pover- 
 ty, 202, 211; dread of
 
 INDEX 
 
 death; 202-3, 211, 230; be- 
 lief in God, 203; a spiritual 
 mood, 210; an agnostic, 
 211 ; society outcasts, 212- 
 15; leaving home for the 
 lasttime,218-19; spiritual- 
 ism, 224; the other life, 
 230-31 ; an evil influence, 
 232-33; making his will, 
 233-34; "Gabriel has 
 gone," 235; funeral, 239- 
 40. 
 
 Rossetti, E. E. (D. G. Ros- 
 setti's wife), in a milliner's 
 workroom, 78-79; helped 
 by Ruskin, becomes a 
 pupil of D. G. Rossetti — 
 their engagement, 79-80; 
 described, 79, 80; a separa- 
 tion, 80-81 ; a disturbing 
 element, 81-82; a tragic 
 suggestion, 81-82, 196-99, 
 211, 216; married to Ros- 
 setti, 82; evil rumours — 
 laudanum, 82-83; "acci- 
 dental death," 84; MS. 
 of Rossetti's poems buried 
 with her, 85; exhumation, 
 88-90; "She had great 
 genius," 125. 
 
 Rossetti, Frances P. (D. G. 
 Rossetti's mother), 75, 
 157, 228-31, 235, 237. 
 
 Rossetti, Gabriele (D. G. Ros- 
 setti's father), an exile — 
 his home in London, 75- 
 76. 
 
 Rossetti, Lucy (W. M. Ros- 
 setti's wife), 163, 236. 
 
 Rossetti, Maria F., 75. 
 
 Rossetti, William Michael, 
 brotherly love, 71, 88, 96, 
 155, 191, 201, 210, 233, 
 235; the only brother, 75; 
 Hall Caine meets him, 103, 
 108, 110; "If my brother 
 had his due he would be 
 buried in Westminster 
 Abbey," 238. 
 
 Royal Academy Antique School, 
 Rossetti at, 76. 
 
 Ruskin, Euphemia C, sepa- 
 rated from her husband, 
 179. 
 
 Ruskin, John, "Guild of St. 
 George," 39; encourage- 
 ment, 45-46, 50, 254; 
 on Pre-Raphaelitism, 77; 
 Elizabeth E. Siddal and, 
 79-81 ; D. G. Rossetti, 86, 
 118-19, 160, 178-79, 239, 
 255; his wife, 179; his sec- 
 retary, 225-26, 255-57; 
 Brantwood and its treas- 
 ures, 259-62. 
 
 Russell, Sir Edward R., 51, 247. 
 
 Samuelson, Alderman, invites 
 Hall Caine to lecture at 
 Liverpool, 154. 
 
 Savage, Richard, 250. 
 
 Scapegoat, The, 275, 300-18. 
 
 Scotsman, The, 374. 
 
 Scott, Sir Walter, 172; MS. 
 at Brantwood, 260; hand- 
 writing like Gladstone's, 
 260-61; his long prefa- 
 tory chapters, 279; his 
 
 400
 
 INDEX 
 
 contrasts, 320; joy in his 
 work, 375; struggles, 379; 
 visitor of Wordsworth, 
 380. 
 
 Scott, W. Bell, sensitiveness to 
 poetry, 118; a description 
 of, 1.56: Carlyle, 176; Hall 
 Caine, 243. 
 
 Seaforth, Gladstone's property 
 at, 33-34. 
 
 Seddon, John P., his bungalow 
 at Birchington where Ros- 
 settidicd, 218. 
 
 Severn, Mrs., 260. 
 
 Shakespeare, bust of, 105; 
 sonnets, 137; "One of the 
 three greatest English 
 imaginations," 141; and 
 Chatterton, 142; his con- 
 trasts, 320; the American 
 comparison, 352. 
 
 Sharp, William, Rossetti's 
 friend, 156-57. 
 
 Shelley, Mrs., 176. 
 
 Shelley, P. B., Lord Houghton 
 on, .52; Rossetti on, 63, 65; 
 Frederic Shields as hyster- 
 ical as, 108; great imagina- 
 tive powers, 141; letter 
 from Keats, 144; Bell 
 Scott and Carlyle on, 176; 
 cottage at Castlerigg, 185. 
 
 Shields, Frederic, friendship 
 with Rossetti, 96-97, 156, 
 191, 201-2, 208, 210, 231, 
 233, 235; "as hysterical as 
 Shelley," 108; makes a 
 pencil sketch of his dead 
 friend, 237. 
 
 Siddal, Elizabeth. See Ros- 
 setti, E. E. 
 
 Sloth against Sin, 139. 
 
 Smith, Goldwin, 358. 
 
 Son of H agar, A, 368. 
 
 Southey, Robert, 184, 383. 
 
 Spurgeon, C. H., 159. 
 
 Stephens, F. G., Rossetti's 
 friend, 66-67; Pre-Raph- 
 aelite, 77. 
 
 Stoker, Bram, 341, 343. 
 
 Sulby Glen, 4. 
 
 Supernatural in Poetry, 64-65. 
 
 Swinburne, Algernon €., Ros- 
 setti makes his acquaint- 
 ance, 81 ; at Cheyne Walk, 
 87; essay on Rossetti's 
 "Poeins," 91; impeached 
 as of "The Fleshly 
 School," 92; Rossetti talks 
 of, 116, 137, 159-60, 180; 
 as a reader, 118; Hall 
 Caine meets, 240. 
 
 Taylor, Sir Henry, 208. 
 
 Tennyson, Alfred, Lord, Ros- 
 setti destroys letters from, 
 86; his sensitiveness to 
 poetry, 118; Rossetti talks 
 of him, 177; "The Promise 
 of May" howled down, 
 344-45; his death and 
 funeral contrasted with 
 Wordsworth's, 386-89. 
 
 Thackeray, William Make- 
 peace, 350, 362. 
 
 Three Mxisketeers, The, 325. 
 
 Times, The, Wilkie Collins on 
 treatment of lunatics in 
 
 401
 
 INDEX 
 
 Man, 19; Ruskin sup- 
 pbrts Pre-Raphaelites in, 
 77. 
 
 Tirebuck, William, 36, 50, 339. 
 
 Tolstoi, L. N., Count, on work 
 of William Tirebuck, 36; 
 book.s of, 378. 
 
 Tree, H. Beerbohm, 344. 
 
 Trelawney, Edward John, 63. 
 
 Tupper, M. F., his contin- 
 uation of ''Christabel" 
 ("Geraldine"), 142. 
 
 Turgenieff, I. S., 208. 
 
 Turner, J. M., 101. 
 
 Ulalume, 186. 
 
 Vale of St. John. See Cum- 
 berland. 
 Vauxhall Gardens, 181. 
 
 Watson, William, 51-52. 
 
 Watts-Dunton, W. T., his 
 affectionate friendship 
 with Rossetti, 96, 155-56, 
 158, 191, 201-2, 208, 210, 
 216, 231, 233, 235, 240; 
 a head like Napoleon's, 
 108; Rossetti's paintings, 
 157: Swinburne, 160; 
 
 "Ballads and Sonnets," 
 161 ; Hall Caine, 246, 282- 
 83. 
 
 Wesley, John, 25. 
 
 Westminster Abbey, Tenny- 
 son's funeral, 386-89. 
 
 Whistler, J. McNeill, 159. 
 
 White Ship, The, 110.' 
 
 Wilde, Oscar, 159. 
 
 Wilson, Bishop, 15, 305. 
 
 Without Her, 117. 
 
 Woman in White, The, 324, 
 327-30. 
 
 Woolner, Thomas, a Pre- 
 Raphaelite, 77. 
 
 Wordsworth, Dorothy, 385. 
 
 Wordsworth, John, 382. 
 
 Wordsworth, Mary, 384. 
 
 Wordsworth, William, Ros- 
 setti on, 140-41; Dove 
 Cottage, 184; reception of 
 first work, 380; always 
 poor, 380; recognition at 
 last, 381; death, 381- 
 84; buried in Grasmere 
 Churchyard, 384-86; a 
 contrast with Tennyson, 
 386-89. 
 
 Working Men's College, 118. 
 
 Tl^orA; without Hope, 160. 
 
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