FORD MADOX BROWN.

III

the widower of the gifted lady who died this past year, was couched in a letter of so much deep feeling that I had put it aside to send to you, and am sorry I cannot now succeed in laying my hand on it, having lost it I suppose through too much care. Mr. Wells had felt extremely the sincere and generous tone of an obituary notice of his wife which your husband wrote at the time -having indeed meant ever since to seek him and thank him for it; and the association of two such deaths struck him as forcibly as it had already done me.

"But this is only one instance of the sorrow felt on all hands more deeply than it can ever be expressed.

"I shall see Mr. Madox Brown this evening, and shall take the liberty of showing him your letter, for no one better deserves to see it. It was only the other day that we were saying, when he and I were met with other friends, that it almost seemed shameful to be even cheerful or occupied as usual in friendly intercourse so shortly after so valued a friend has left us. But in these feelings, as in all other respects, what can be done except to trust to what is surely at least a natural instinct in all -though as you say, one which it seems almost impious to offer at the moment in the form of direct consolation,—that is, that such terrible partings from love and work must be, unless all things are a mere empty husk of nothing, a guide to belief in a new field of effort and a second communion with those loved and lost?

"I have already made one or two utter failures in attempts to recall his features on paper, but if but if you would send me the daguerreotype you speak of (however different it may be from what I knew of him), it

would doubtless help me to something slightly less unsuccessful; but I shall never cease to regret that I omitted what I was always meaning to ask of him at odd moments—that is, the getting him to sit for a drawing of his face I should like much now as a last resource to try what I could do with the help of the daguerreotype, but shall never succeed I know in doing anything worth doing. I remember so well now speaking to him of my regret at the same omission on my part in respect of Mrs. Wells, of whom no good portrait, I then thought, existed, but have since found that there is one in profile by her husband. . . .

"When I have made such a sketch as I find possible with the help of the one you speak of, I have thought of another use to which, if at all tolerable, it might well be put—that is, to head a prefatory notice of him which should surely now be prefixed to the Life of Blake. That work will no doubt do much to keep his name, and something ought to be said of him in connection with it.

"Perhaps you yourself have thought of this and intend carrying out the idea. If, on the other hand, you would prefer its being attempted by a third person, it would be a melancholy pleasure to me to speak of him publicly as I think he ought to be spoken of; always supposing Mr. Macmillan fell in with the idea, which I should think from the feeling he has expressed on many occasions there would be no doubt of his doing. I know that my friendship with your husband was a short one; but what you so kindly and warmly tell me, con firms the belief I entertained that his sympathy with me

DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI.

113

was as strong as mine, I assure you, was with him from the very first. Indeed I never met a man whom I could. call my friend in so full a sense on no longer personal knowledge. But indeed I, as well as others who met him afterwards through me, had already felt that he was a man to seek out and know, from the time when we read his 'Life of Etty.' Thus, if such facts could be furnished by yourself, as you would wish to be included in a memoir of him, I think I might rely on my own knowledge of and sympathy with, his views and powers, to convey a true idea of these.

"Whenever you are ready to claim such assistance as my brother and I are not only ready but most anxious to render in bringing out the book, [Blake] conjointly with yourself, you may rely on our not delaying the publication by any neglect on our part. I have not a perfect idea in what state the MS. remains, but I know enough of his plans to be able perhaps to recognize where anything remains to be done. From what he last told me, however, I trust his work on it was almost complete if not quite so.

"I hope you will let me know therefore as soon as you are quite ready to enter on this task, and shall hope also, either now or when I see you, to receive the daguerreotype.

"With warmest wishes and remembrances, I remain, dear Mrs. Gilch rist, ever yours sincerely,

D. G R."

The following letter was the last that Anne Gilchrist received from Dante Gabriel Rossetti before her departure from Chelsea :

I

14 Chatham Place, 31 January, 1862.

MY DEAR MRS. GILCHRIST: I am convinced you are quite right in purposing to return to the country for the present. Indeed I am sure all Indeed I am sure all your friends would feel the greatest increase of anxiety on your account were you to remain at Chelsea. The associations there must indeed be quite overwhelming, when even to his friends elsewhere the reality of such a loss still seems bewildering.

"Mr. Ireland spent an evening with me and kindly brought the photograph, which is indeed as you say a record of him ten years ago, but not as I knew him— his face having gained latterly no less in power, I should think, than in what are commonly called good looks. . .

"I was very glad to hear from Mr. Ireland of the continued improvement in your little invalid [Herbert Harlakenden], and trust that recovery is now quite ensured."

Jane Carlyle endeavoured to persuade her neighbour to continue to live at number six; even suggesting that Anne Gilchrist and Geraldine Jewsbury should unite forces and live together. After a good deal of anxious consideration, Anne Gilchrist commenced house hunting in the country, and unassisted, one pouring wet night, lighted upon dear little Brookbank,' Shottermill : a wiser choice was hardly possible, as will be seen.

When the time drew near for leaving Chelsea, Jane Carlyle wrote: " Feb. 1862. . . . Since you are to go, I wish to Heaven you were out of all this! I know how dreadful these details must be! how little chance of calm

"Don't write, but tell Maria how the little girl is? and how your own head is?"

The day of departure soon came. "I remember," says Isabella Ireland, "watching from the windows (Mrs. Carlyle's drawing-room) the loading of the vans. When the third waggon, heavily laden with pretty old carved furniture, started for Haslemere, Mrs. Carlyle shrugged her shoulders and avouched a belief that Mrs. Gilchrist would skin, and bury herself alive for the benefit of her children.'”