I'

CHAPTER XVII.

"JENNY."

1870-1871. AGE 42-43.

N the spring of 1870, Dante Gabriel Rossetti published his first volume of Poems. He presented a copy to Anne Gilchrist. After acknowledging its safe arrival, she writes a second time to the poet, and alludes to the poem, Jenny:—

My dear Mr. Rossetti: Now I have read all, the wish is very strong in me to write to you again. And please, do not make up your mind beforehand that my letter is burdensomely long, because these Poems have stirred me so deeply, will remain to me so precious, that I think you cannot help caring a little to hear the way in which this is so. I could linger long content, absorbed, over such noble Poems as the Dante at Verona,' The Last Confession,' Sea 'Sea Limits ' (grand!). But I should not tell true if I did not own to you that I believe the glory, the imperishable life of the book is in the Poems which treat of Love; including among these that dear first Poem, The Blessed Damozel, and one or two others, as well as the Songs and Sonnets. So it may well be. What material,

gathered by the intellect from afar, can be wrought into life and beauty like that which grows up out of a man's own Soul, with roots in his heart that are nourished by his life blood? The very outward form of the verse takes in these a subtler beauty, so that one thinks of the lines,

'Whose speech Truth knows not from her thought, Nor Love her body from her Soul,'

the words seeming to flow bodily into the mind and the outward ear to catch the very pulse and breathings of

the Soul.

They make me sigh with happiness to realize that the earth did bear on its bosom such sweet life for two human creatures. Then, Such Pity-such pity, it strains the heart too tightly, whelms it. I wish I could convey to you a sense of the vividness and strength of my conviction of the imperishableness of all Realities. Only a little pause, in that blended life! Only one of the two hidden for a few yards by a bend of the road, my friend! How could God spare the sight of such happiness out of His Universe?

"There is another poem-other indeed!-which moves me even to anguish one which comes upon a woman with appalling force after she has been standing gazing into the very Sanctuary of Love where womanhood sits divinely enthroned. For she knows that if, looking up joyfully, the brightness shining on her also, she may say, my sister,' she must also, though shame should rise up and cover her, look down and say 'O my sister,

No, that cannot be.

there seeing what that

no, not

But that can never be.'

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But looking into her own, and poor heart once was, heart once was, she may find

a little light for this dark question that men could not, even Poets. I think of how Jenny stood that fatal day innocent, ignorant, (how innocent, how ignorant of harm I do not think any but a woman rightly understands) heedless, rash, too, and near the edge of an abyss the very existence of which was only a far-off ugly dream to her-only an unmeaning word perhaps and in one swift blind bewildered moment was drawn by a strong ruthlessly vehement hand over the edge- her cheerful day changed into one long black night he that might have led so high hurling her so low-teaching her to take the very characters with which she might have spelled in heavenly radiance a word whose meaning would unfold in unutterable beauty throughout her life, and, with them, dipped in smoke and lurid fire from below, to write one that blasts her with shame and ruin.

"Then it seems to me that as God's eyes look on at this, they grow dim with such a mist of the tears of pity that it veils her guilt (if indeed the blind folly of yielding herself a passive victim ought to be called guilt, just because the consequences are so terrible) even from Him; nay I will dare to say, blots it out. Afterwards with no human hand to help her up again, perhaps pushed down from above by sisters-grasped from below by ever more and more brutalized men, her poor

body dragged and dragged through the mire, even then I do not believe its vileness stains through to her very inmost self. If I did, the pain would be more than I could bear these tears would burn my cheeks like flame; I should hate my womanhood-crave annihilation for the race. No! God has not cursed men with the hideous power to wreck her soul as they can wreck her body. Poor soul! it was but half awake and alert to begin with-all its finest instincts yet undeveloped, else it would not have let her stand for a moment within the atmosphere of danger, but would have shed round. her a subtle atmosphere banishing, dispelling danger! Now, crouched away, back, with face averted from the mad riot of a body that carries but is scarce owned by it-numb with misery, and the utter privation of all healthful activity and sympathy; conscious of itself only through sullen despair; it waits and waits, till there comes at last the mighty rescuing friend Deathmysterious New Birth. Then it finds itself once more animating a stainless body standing, not indeed among the happy sisters, but free to climb towards them carrying no defilements with it. Something within me-no echo from the Past-something more deeply convincing, more illuminating than reason or the evidence of the senses, tells me this is so.

"You touch Jenny gently-tenderly even, and I feel grateful to you for that; yet I think even you are hard on her: fond of guineas,' yes, for want is bitter and it always dogs her steps, or at any rate lurks just round the corner; and real enjoyments all gone clean out of life for her, she grasps at the paltriest sham ones. But

A HARD PROBLEM.

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fond of kisses,' no, I do not believe there is ever more any sweetness in a kiss for her, only, with whatever semblance it may be given or taken—an inward loathing. I could kiss poor Jenny if that would do her any good; but I fear it would not.

Perhaps it will not be so very long before women find out how to help one another. But it is a hard problem.

Yours always truly, ANNE GILCHRIST."

We revert to the principal subject of the foregoing chapter-An Englishwoman's Estimate of Walt Whitman, anent the publication of which W. D. O'Connor writes from Washington, May 18th, 1870, to William Michael Rossetti :

<< . . And here, as you will see when you receive the May number [of the Radical], our bird of Paradise has found a perch. It is the best thing possible, and in some respects could not be better.

"I need not add a word about the article. It is greatand better even in type than it was in manuscript. The friends of Walt Whitman are infinitely indebted, beyond words, for so broad and luminous an interpretation of his pages. It cannot fail to let in light, and to do good.

"I hope your own share in the matter will return to you in honor-in 'good fame renounné,' as Sir Thomas Malory's preface phrases it. We are all very grateful. Faithfully yours, W. D. O'CONNOR."

July the fourteenth, William Rossetti writes: "I am ready for any amount of talk or writing about Whitman: but don't very much expect to be convinced out of my