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CHAPTER XV.

LETTER FROM CHRISTINA

G. ROSSETTI.

1864-1867. AGE 36-39.

Y acquaintance with Jean Ingelow's Poems to

"M which you kindly introduced me, has been

followed by a very slight acquaintance with herself. She appears as unaffected as her verses, though not their equal in regular beauty: however I fancy hers is one of those variable faces in which the variety is not the least charm.

"Have you noticed the advertisement appearing from time to time of William's blank verse translation of Dante's Inferno? I hope it will soon be published, but Mr. Macmillan does not send proofs with all the speed we could wish. Next year promises or threatens-to bear an unwonted crop of Dantesque literature: however, I think that on its own ground and within its own confessed limits, William's work will be well able to hold its own.

"Since my pleasant days at Brookbank last summer, I have paid a visit to Cheltenham and made a short stay at Malvern. The latter place is very delightful

with its grand old Priory church and view-commanding hills. .

From Hastings, in the same year, Christina Rossetti writes "My dear Mrs. Gilchrist: Thank you for one of those truly kind letters which ought to live (and I hope will live) in my affectionate memory. You are indeed good to offer me change of air at pleasant Brookbank, but my date will show you that something less genially cold has been advised. Not that there is much the matter with me; but a cold caught several weeks ago has not added to my bloom or strength, and as my Uncle and Cousin are wintering down here there is every convenience for my staying with them. . . . We have seen Gabriel two or three times since he returned from Paris; and thought him looking perhaps less stout, and so far better.

"Can you think yourself strong enough to face a second. winter in sole charge of your children? I hope, specially for their sake, that you will not run rash risks; and cannot but fear that you are over-taxing your powers. My love to them, please. The Burne Joneses are down here with their little boy; and some of the De Morgans, but I don't know whether the abstruse Professor himself.

"I have just received a present of Jean Ingelow's 8th edition imagine my feelings of of envy and humiliation!"

Brookbank was originally one of two cottages: "Finding no other chance of a suitable house in the neighbourhood," writes Anne Gilchrist, "and already the prospect of going through another winter in the same

AN UNHAPPY SHOWMAN.

149

discomfort as last, I have at length made up my mind to have my cottage enlarged.

"My neighbour here, Mr. Simmons, who is a magistrate, was telling me of a case that came before him at Farnham the other day. An itinerant showman with a 'ghost' on the principle of the Polytechnic Ghost, finding himself very hard up' indeed, was obliged to pawn his Ghost. The clumsy pawnbroker broke the large glass reflector which is the most important part of the apparatus. So the unhappy showman went up to London to get another. But not having money enough to pay for the whole journey back, he took a ticket for a short distance only. When he got out at Farnham the railway people took him up for the deficit in his fare: and he summoned the pawnbroker. But being unable to redeem his Ghost or himself he could not enforce his claim on the pawnbroker, so Ghost and Ghost proprietor remain in [pawn].

By the by I saw my Cousin John Carwardine a few days ago. He has been two years in the army of the Potomac under Generals M'Clellan and Burnside: has fought in ten battles, one of which lasted seven days; and was never wounded but once and that only with a bullet in the leg. He left because he had a return of the Panama fever, to which he has been subject ever since he originally took it, in crossing the Isthmus.

He tells me the accounts of the miseries and hardships endured by the army of the Potomac are exaggerated, and that in fact they have not at all exceeded what are inevitable in a military campaign: that the commissariat was well managed and they never suffered from want of

provisions, except, occasionally during forced marches. He also speaks very favourably of his comrades in arms; though it took him some time to get to like them. . . .”

On the first of July the family at Brookbank migrate to Earls Colne, to pay their annual visit to Henrietta Burrows; and on the twenty-fourth of July, 1864, a letter is written to William Haines from the Priory Cottage:

"The Colne people have finished their church to everybody's satisfaction; and really I think justly so. Knowledge and taste have, I suppose, now so far advanced that even small county architects know what they ought to imitate. And where there is nothing to spoil in the way of genuine ancient work--where they merely undo hideous churchwardenisms—they are real benefactors. They have, here, thrown open the oak roof, carried away the pews, built an aisle and put a tessellated floor, and really the church looks quite noble within. The lovely Tower, with staircase turret and flint work round the top; which I daresay you remember, as forming with the glorious avenue of elms, the beauty of Colne, they of course did not meddle with.

Hallam's

"I have had a parcel from the London. Remains one reads with some eagerness for the sake of In Memoriam. But except the love poems addressed to Tennyson's sister, which I like much from their sweetness and earnestness of feeling, there is not much that strikes one at least I do not fancy there is any vigorous thinking or originality, though much scholarship and fineness of perception. In the prose, he has such a provokingly metaphysical tendency, the most

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151

barren of all tendencies I believe. By the by, the last essay in the volume is a controversial one about one of Professor Rossetti's works-very antagonistic to his views of Dante's hidden meanings.

"I have been trying to get together (Walter White's advice) materials for an article on Dr. Carpenter's writings. Chiefly on his very remarkable and philosophical views of life and the vital force,' but I have not succeeded-seem to have got together every book he has ever written but the right one. "Nothing but minute descriptions of foraminifera, and so forth, but no general views. However, I must hunt further. The worst of it is, the best thoughts of our scientific men are buried alive in Philosophical Transactions, Proceedings of the Royal Institution and the like, and arduous and inconvenient is the fishing them out. It seems odd and unreasonable perhaps to you that in the teeth of all my difficulties and limitations within and without, of time and opportunity and ability, I should still persevere in trying to write, -but I feel that I must do it, for this reason: that else I should slowly gravitate downwards into entire absorption in busy, bustling, contriving working-day material life-weakly and basely giving up all attempts to fulfil dear Alec's hopes of me. For after all, when youth and growing time are left behind and ripening time comes-if there be anything to ripen-reading is not enough. Prose reading becomes either oppressive or useless unless the mind rouses itself to take a more active part than that of the being the bucket pumped into."

Soon after returning to Brookbank, Anne Gilchrist,

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