Complete works of hall c.., p.659
Complete Works of Hall Caine, page 659
PHILIP.
Let him go! He’s in the right! What he calls me I have called myself — a thousand, thousand times.
PETE.
Is that enough? Is there to be no punishment for a man like you?
PHILIP.
Punishment? Do you know what the word means, you brave, true soul? Does any man as honest as you know what it is to go through life as a liar and a cheat? Kill me, kill me!
PETE.
(To CAESAR.) Let me alone. The lust of blood is out of me. God forbid it should ever return. (Giving axe to CAESAR.) Take the cursed thing away! Oh, Phil! Phil! The pride I had in you as a boy, the worshipping I did of you as a man! Why did you do it, Phil?
PHILIP.
It was while you were away. We heard you were dead — I loved her — I couldn’t help it.
PETE.
Why didn’t you marry her, then?
PHILIP.
Because I was a coward — because ambition was too strong for love — and then you came back and —
PETE.
But why did you let her marry me?
PHILIP.
Because I didn’t know — I never dreamt — that the child — the child (Stops.)
(KATE is seen coming quietly downstairs.)
PETE.
(Looking round at the cradle.) I see! (After a pause.) Well, it’s all over now, I suppose, and for the sake of the poor creature upstairs we three have got to settle what we’re going to do.
CAESAR.
Ask me to do nothing, Peter Quilliam. The Lord’s hand is heavy on me this day. I thought I was marked out for the instrument of His vengeance. But He hath kept His own counsel and darkened mine. He hath put me to scorn; He hath held me in derision. Let me go home — and pray! (Going.)
PETE.
Wait! Pray and preach, too, if you please, Caesar, but let us do a bit of practice first. Deemster!
PHILIP.
Yes?
PETE.
If I make Kate a free woman, will you marry her?
(PHILIP is silent.)
Will you? Why don’t you answer me? Will you marry her now?
PHILIP.
I can’t, Pete. It is impossible — utterly impossible!
PETE.
I see! She would be a disgraced woman and you would be a ruined man. Caesar!
CAESAR.
Well?
PETE.
If I provide for your daughter, will you take her back?
CAESAR.
How can I? She would be a shame to me in the eyes of the congregation. I that have held up my head with the proudest in the Tabernacle would be bowed to the dust.
PETE.
Then neither of you will take her — neither you that were her father nor you that were the cause of her shame?
(They are silent.)
Are you thinking of the child? Nobody need know anything about that. (To DEEMSTER.) You dare not tell. (To CAESAR.) You will not, and won’t!
(They are still silent.)
Is it because she’s a woman that you cannot forgive her? You would forgive a man fast enough — is it because she’s a woman she must never know forgiveness? Is that your religion, Caesar? Is that your law, Deemster?
PHILIP.
It is the world’s eternal law, Pete.
CAESAR.
Aye, the world’s eternal law.
PETE.
Then damn the world’s eternal law — damn it, damn it to the devil and hell! See here, you two! I’m only a plain, common fellow, I know, but if that poor soul upstairs could come to me and say “Pete, I love you now better than ever I loved the man who wronged me” I would take her back, do you hear me, I would fake her back, as God is my witness, though every man and woman in the world called me a fool!
KATE.
(With outstretched arms.) Pete!
PETE.
(Hardly realising her intention.) Kate!
KATE
I love you! I love you! From the day you married me I have always loved you, without one unfaithful thought. I left you because I loved you, for I had deceived you, and your kindness was killing me. But if now that you know everything you are willing to take me back, in spite of all I have made you suffer — all the pain and shame I have . . . (trying to drop to her knees at his feet.) Oh, forgive me, forgive me!
PETE.
(Preventing her from kneeling and embracing her passionately.) Kirry! Kirry, woman! Not another word! Not another word about it!
(The two Men drop their heads and turn aside.)
(Enter NANCY.)
NANCY.
That trap’s at the door, sir.
PETE.
(With a shout, indicating CAESAR and PHILIP.) Then it’ll just do to carry off the gentlemen, Nancy.
(NANCY flies upstairs.)
CAESAR.
Pete, you’ve preached me a better sermon than I ever heard from the pulpit, and the text’s forgiveness.
(Goes out.)
PHILIP.
I am punished — I am ashamed!
(Goes out.)
PETE.
(Still with KATE in his arms.) It’s our wedding, Kate — our diamond wedding — and it’s a better diamond I have here, dear, than I ever dug up in the mines.
(NANCY comes quietly downstairs with the Baby.)
The Emperor! God bless me, the Emperor! Let me have hould of him! (Taking Baby and bringing it down stage.) Aw, the darling! The bogh millish! The child of my heart anyway! Do you think I could learn to unlove him? Not much! (MARY goes by the window, crying her fish.)
MARY.
Herrings! Fresh herrings!
PETE.
A dozen of the fattest you’ve got for breakfast, Mary! (Mimicking MARY’S cry.) (To the Baby.) Fresh herrings! Fresh herrings!
CURTAIN
The Non-Fiction
Greeba Castle, near Peel — Caine purchased this castellated house on the Isle of Man in 1896. The house was originally in a poor state of repair, but Caine remodelled and restored the property, where he continued to live until his death in 1931.
Peel, Isle of Man
RECOLLECTIONS OF DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI
CONTENTS
PREFACE.
CHAPTER I.
CHAPTER II.
CHAPTER III.
CHAPTER IV.
CHAPTER V.
CHAPTER VI.
CHAPTER VII.
CHAPTER VIII.
CHAPTER IX.
Dante Gabriel Rossetti by George Frederic Watts
PREFACE.
One day towards the close of 1881 Rossetti, who was then very ill, said to me:
“How well I remember the beginning of our correspondence, and how little did I think it would lead to such relations between us as have ensued! I was at the time very solitary and depressed from various causes, and the letters of so young and ardent a well-wisher, though unknown to me personally, brought solace.”
“Yours,” I said, “were very valuable to me.”
“Mine to you were among the largest bodies of literary letters I ever wrote, others being often letters of personal interest.”
“And so admirable in themselves,” I added, “and so free from the discussion of any but literary subjects that many of them would bear to be printed exactly as you penned them.”
“That,” he said, “will be for you some day to decide.”
This was the first hint of any intention upon my part of publishing the letters he had written to me; indeed, this was the first moment at which I had conceived the idea of doing so. Nothing further on the subject was said down to the morning of the Thursday preceding the Sunday on which he died, when we talked together for the last time on subjects of general interest, — subsequent interviews being concerned wholly with solicitous inquiries upon my part, in common with other anxious friends, as to the nature of his sufferings, and the briefest answers from him.
“How long have we been friends?” he said.
I replied, between three and four years from my first corresponding with him.
“And how long did we correspond?”
“Three years, nearly.”
“What numbers of my letters you must possess! They may perhaps even yet be useful to you.”
From this moment I regarded the publication of his letters as in some sort a trust; and though I must have withheld them for some years if I had consulted my own wishes simply, I yielded to the necessity that they should be published at once, rather than run any risk of their not been published at all.
What I have just said will account for the circumstance that I, the youngest and latest of Rossetti’s friends, should be the first to seem to stand towards him in the relation of a biographer. I say seem to stand, for this is not a biography. It was always known to be Rossetti’s wish that if at any moment after his death it should appear that the story of his life required to be written, the one friend who during many of his later years knew him most intimately, and to whom he unlocked the most sacred secrets of his heart, Mr. Theodore Watts, should write it, unless indeed it were undertaken by his brother William. But though I know that whenever Mr. Watts sets pen to paper in pursuance of such purpose, and in fulfilment of such charge, he will afford us a recognisable portrait of the man, vivified by picturesque illustration, the like of which few other writers could compass, I also know from what Rossetti often told me of his friend’s immersion in all kinds and varieties of life, that years (perhaps many years) may elapse before such a biography is given to the world. My own book is, I trust, exactly what it purports to be: a volume of Recollections, interwoven with letters and criticism, and preceded by such a summary of the leading facts in Rossetti’s life as seems necessary for the elucidation of subsequent records. I have drawn Rossetti precisely as I found him in each stage of our friendship, exhibiting his many contradictions of character, extenuating nothing, and, I need hardly add, setting down naught in malice. Up to this moment I have never inquired of myself whether to those who have known little or nothing of Rossetti hitherto, mine will seem to be on the whole favourable or unfavourable portraiture; but I have trusted my admiration of the poet and affection for the friend to penetrate with kindly and appreciative feeling every comment I have had to offer. I was attracted to Rossetti in the first case by ardent love of his genius, and retained to him ultimately by love of the man. As I have said in the course of these Recollections, it was largely his unhappiness that held me, with others, as by a spell, and only too sadly in this particular did he in his last year realise his own picture of Dante at Verona:
Yet of the twofold life he led
In chainless thought and fettered will
Some glimpses reach us, — somewhat still
Of the steep stairs and bitter bread, —
Of the soul’s quest whose stern avow
For years had made him haggard now.
I am sensible of the difficulty and delicacy of the task I have undertaken, involving, as it does, many interests and issues; and in every reference to surviving relatives as well as to other persons now living, with whom Rossetti was in any way allied, I have exercised in all friendliness the best judgment at my command.
Clement’s Inn, October 1882.
* * * It has not been thought necessary to attach dates to the
letters printed in this volume, for not only would the
difficulty of doing so be great, owing to the fact that
Rossetti rarely dated his letters, but the utility of dates
in such a case would be doubtful, because the substance of
what is said is often quite impersonal, and, where
otherwise, is almost independent of the time of production.
It may be sufficient to say that the letters were written in
the years 1879,1880, and 1881.
CHAPTER I.
Dante Gabriel Rossetti was the eldest son of Gabriele Rossetti and Frances Polidori, daughter of Alfieri’s secretary, and sister of the young physician who travelled with Lord Byron. Gabriele Rossetti was a native of Yasto, in the district of the Abruzzi, kingdom of Naples. He was a patriotic poet of very considerable distinction; and, as a politician, took a part in extorting from Ferdinand I. the Constitution of 1820. After the failure of the Neapolitan insurrection, owing to the treachery of the King (who asked leave of absence on a pretext of ill-health, and returned with an overwhelming Austrian army), the insurrectionists were compelled to fly. Some of them fell victims; others lay long in concealment. Rossetti was one of the latter; and, while he was in hiding, Sir Graham Moore, the English admiral, was lying with an English fleet in the bay. The wife of the admiral had long been a warm admirer of the patriotic hymns of Rossetti, and, when she learned his danger, she prevailed with her husband to make efforts to save him. Sir Graham thereupon set out with another English officer to the place of concealment, habited the poet in an English uniform, placed him between them in a carriage, and put him aboard a ship that sailed next day to Malta, where he obtained the friendship of the governor, John Hookham Frere, by whose agency valuable introductions were procured, and ultimately Rossetti established himself in England. Arrived in London about 1823, he lived a cheerful life as an exile, though deprived of the advantages of his Italian reputation. He married in 1826, and his eldest son was born May 12, 1828, in Charlotte Street, Portland Place, London. He was appointed Professor of Italian at King’s College, and died in 1854. His house was for years the constant resort of Italian refugees; and the son used to say that it was from observation of these visitors of his father that he depicted the principal personage of his Last Confession. He did not live to see the returning glories of his country or the consummation we have witnessed of that great movement founded upon the principles for which he fought and suffered. His present position in Italy as a poet and patriot is a high one, a medal having been struck in his honour. An effort is even now afoot to erect a statue to him in his native place, and one of the last occasions upon which the son put pen to paper was when trying to make a reminiscent rough portrait for the use of the sculptor. Gabriele Rossetti spent his last years in the study of Dante, and his works on the subject are unique, exhibiting a peculiar view of Dante’s conception of Beatrice, which he believed to be purely ideal, and employed solely for purposes of speculative and political disquisition. Something of this interpretation was fixed undoubtedly upon the personage by Dante himself in his later writings, but whether the change were the result of a maturer and more complicated state of thought, and whether the real and ideal characters of Beatrice may not be compatible, are questions which the poetic mind will not consider it possible to decide. Coleridge, no doubt, took a fair view of Rossetti’s theory when he said: “Rossetti’s view of Dante’s meaning is in great part just, but he has pushed it beyond all bounds of common sense. How could a poet — and such a poet as Dante — have written the details of the allegory as conjectured by Rossetti? The boundaries between his allegory and his pure picturesque are plain enough, I think, at first reading.” It was, doubtless, due to his devotion to studies of the Florentine that Gabriele Rossetti named after him his eldest son.
Dante Gabriel Rossetti, whose full baptismal name was Gabriel Charles Dante, was educated principally at King’s College School, London, and there attained to a moderate proficiency in the ordinary classical school-learning, besides a knowledge of French, which throughout life he spoke well. He learned at home some rudimentary German; Italian he had acquired at a very early age. There has always been some playful mention of certain tragedies and translations upon which he exercised himself from the ages of five to fifteen years; but it is hardly necessary to say that he himself never attached value to these efforts of his precocity; he even displayed, occasionally, a little irritation upon hearing them spoken of as remarkable youthful achievements.
One of these productions of his adolescence, Sir Hugh the Heron, has been so frequently alluded to, that it seems necessary to tell the story of it, as the author himself, in conversation, was accustomed to do. At about twelve years of age, the young poet wrote a scrap of a poem under this title, and then cast it aside. His grandfather, Polidori, had seen the fragment, however, and had conceived a much higher opinion of its merits than even the natural vanity of the young author himself permitted him to entertain. It had then become one of the grandfather’s amusements to set up an amateur printing-press in his own house, and occupy his leisure in publishing little volumes of original verse for semi-public circulation. He urged his grandson to finish the poem in question, promising it, in a completed state, the dignity and distinction of type. Prompted by hope of this hitherto unexpected reward, Rossetti — then thirteen to fourteen years of age — finished the juvenile epic, and some bound copies of it got abroad. No more was thought of the matter, and in due time the little bard had forgotten that he had ever done it. But when a genuine distinction had been earned by poetry that was in no way immature, Rossetti discovered, by the gratuitous revelation of a friend, that a copy of the youthful production — privately printed and never published — was actually in the library of the British Museum. Amazed, and indeed appalled as he was by this disclosure, he was powerless to remedy the evil, which he foresaw would some day lead to the poem being unearthed to his injury, and printed as a part of his work. The utmost he could do to avert the threatened mischief he did, and this was to make an entry in a commonplace-book which he kept for such uses, explaining the origin and history of the poem, and expressing a conviction that it seemed to him to be remarkable only from its entire paucity of even ordinary poetic promise. But while this was indubitably a just estimate of these boyish efforts, it is no doubt true, as we shall presently see, that Rossetti’s genius matured itself early in life.
Whilst still a child, his love of literature exhibited itself, and a story is told of a disaster occurring to him, when rather less than nine years of age, which affords amusing proof of the ardour of his poetic nature. Upon going with his brother and sisters to the house of his grandfather, where as children they occupied themselves with sports appropriate to their years, he proposed to improvise a part of a scene from Othello, and cast himself for the principal role. The scene selected was the closing one of the play, and began with the speech delivered to Lodovico, Montano, and Gratiano, when they are about to take Othello prisoner. Rossetti used to say that he delivered the lines in a frenzy of boyish excitement, and coming to the words —
