account of them and to keep the printer going, and correct proofs, and to prepare Percy for school, and the children for coming here, and so that you will see it is not exaggeration to say I have literally not had breathing time...

"I am thankful to see my dear mother and to find her tolerably well, always excepting her malady, which increases. But Colne is intolerably painful to me, and I quite pine to get back to my quiet cottage among the dear Surrey Hills; for there Alec's spirit is with me ever-presides in my home, speaks to me in every sweet scene; broods over the peaceful valleys; haunts the grand wild hill tops; shines gloriously forth in setting sun, and moon and stars. But here bitter memories almost crush me: thank God for the hard work, that like harness to an overtired horse, keeps me up.

It will be remembered that as long ago as February, Gabriel Rossetti offered to write a memoir of Alexander Gilchrist; but eventually the idea was abandoned, owing chiefly to the amount of other literary matter which it was found necessary to include in the two volumes. Gabriel Rossetti speaks of this subject in a letter: "August, 1862, 59, Lincoln's Inn Fields:- You ask me exactly what particulars I need respecting Mr. Gilchrist for the notice? All such dates as concerned his life would of course be necessary, but besides this I would like any account that could be furnished me of the causes which led to his decided tendency towards the study though not the practice of art-a point I have often thought over as very curious in a man who was more really cognisant of Art than any one I have known

POOR FLUSTERED PROPRIETY.

127

that was not practically an artist-and rendered more curious by the declaration I have heard him make, that he not only never had drawn-but never could draw in the least. Was this strictly and literally the case? . . Of the mysterious Oothocn I never heard, nor did even Mr. Swinburne, who has made, next to your husband, the most diligent researches of anyone into the more recondite side of Blake.

"I shall be only too glad if I find a moment to run down to you, but am just now in the very act of moving, and cannot call my time, or indeed hardly my soul-my own. [Dante Gabriel Rossetti moved to Cheyne Walk, Michaelmas, 1862.] Some day I hope to show you my new house at Chelsea. What a much greater good fortune it would have been a year ago! For one thing it would have made us neighbours."

William Michael Rossetti writes:-"The pervading idea of the 'Daughters of Albion' is one which was continually seething in Blake's mind, and flustering Propriety in his writings; or rather would have flustered Propriety, if she had either troubled herself to read the oracles, or succeeded in understanding them. It is the idea of the unnatural and terrible result in which, in modern society, ascetic doctrines in theology and morals have involved the relation of the sexes. A great deal of his most powerful, appealing, incisive, odd, provoking, and enigmatic writing is expended upon this formidable question; in whose cause he is never tired of uprearing the banner of heresy and nonconformity."

Replying to William Rossetti, October 3rd, 1862, she says:-"I am afraid you will be vexed with me that

I was afraid to adopt entirely that most vigorous and admirable little bit apropos of the Daughters of Albion.' But it was no use to put in what I was perfectly certain Macmillan (who reads all the Proofs) would take out again. I am certain of this from past experiences-but I would have tried it at an earlier stage; but as that sheet has been twice set up-and has now kept us at a standstill for three weeks, I did not think it right to do so I therefore reduced the subject' to still less-to a very shadowy condition indeedbut left enough, I trust, for the cause of truth and honesty. It might be well perhaps to mention to Mr. Swinburne, if he is so kind as to do what was proposed, that it would be perfectly useless to attempt to handle this side of Blake's writings-that Mr. Macmillan is far more inexorable against any shade of heterodoxy in morals than in religion-and that in fact, poor 'flustered propriety' would have to be most tenderly and indulgently dealt with. . . .

To edit Blake's Prophetic books, to hold a publisher in hand, and to keep everybody going, was anxious work, responsibilities that drew forth Anne Gilchrist's judgment and tact.

She writes on November the ninth, about Frederick Tatham, the sculptor:

:

"MY DEAR MR. ROSSETTI: I should be so sorry on the one hand to throw hindrance in the way of one who is, I believe, a man of considerable talent struggling with great adversity; and on the other to be the means of leading you to do what you might have cause to regret that I think the best thing I can do is to tell

FREDERICK TATHAM.

129

you all I know about Tatham, and then leave you to decide the Fraser question.

[The Fraser question means this-F. Tatham sent W. M. Rossetti various MSS. of his own, "forcible and striking work in their peculiar way," Mr. Rossetti tells us," and I was willing to offer them to Fraser's Magazine, with which I had then a slight literary connexion. Finally they were either not offered or not accepted."]

"He is the actual Tatham who knew Blake and enacted the holocaust of Blake manuscripts-not designs, I think, as I have heard from his own lips. He is the son of an architect of some repute I fancy; and was himself originally a sculptor. He abandoned that early, and took to portraits in crayons by which he earned (chiefly in the Provinces I believe) a very sufficient income-but when the evil days (for this class of artist) of daguerreotype and photograph began, gradually lost all his practice and has since been striving ineffectually, I fear, to succeed with Oil Painting. I remember when he first came to see us at Chelsea his bringing a picture under his arm to show my Husband, who was interested by it-in which Dr. Johnson was one of the figures. Now as to his (Tatham's) relations with Blake- of course it could only have been during the last year or so of Blake's life that Tatham, then a very young man, knew him. His acquaintance was mainly with Mrs. Blake when a widow. And it is an inexplicable, and take it how you will, an ugly circumstance that while Miss Blake, the sole surviving relative and natural heiress to what was left of Blake's possessions after the widow's death-while Miss Blake I say, lived in such

K

penury, such absolute want, that I have heard a rumour she died by her own hand rather than continue in life on such terms of misery-Tatham came into possession of so large a stock of Designs and engraved Books, that he has, by his own confession, been selling them 'for thirty years' and at 'good prices.' It is quite possible that Mrs. Blake may have bequeathed them to him however-for she and Miss Blake got on very ill together; and latterly never met at all. Even this, however, would not wholly acquit Tatham, I think.

"There was another matter of which it is more difficult to get at the rights :-Linnell, as I daresay you know, during the last few years of Blake's life when nearly all other buyers failed him, took all Blake did (though himself a struggling man then, with large family) at fair though not high prices, paid in the way most convenient to Blake-so much a week. After his death Linnell fetched away the Dante Drawings as his own, having been paid for in this way. But Mrs. Blake-who appears to have always much disliked Linnell-said that a considerable sum was still due on them; which Tatham claimed on her behalf (and afterwards on his own): hence arose a quarrel; and Tatham and Linnell have never spoken since. Now my Husband, who had sifted the matter, and knew both parties, thought Linnell an upright truthful, if somewhat hard man, and that towards Blake his conduct had been throughout admirable. He also inclined to think, that Mrs. Blake retained one trait of an uneducated mind-an unreasonable suspiciousness. But Tatham would of course be disposed to give an entirely different account of the affair. You know I believe the