Project Gutenberg's Recollections of Dante Gabriel Rossetti, by T. Hall Caine

This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or
re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org

Title: Recollections of Dante Gabriel Rossetti
1883

Author: T. Hall Caine

Release Date: May 23, 2008 [EBook #25574]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK RECOLLECTIONS OF ROSSETTI ***

Produced by David Widger

RECOLLECTIONS OF DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI

By T. Hall Caine

Roberts Brothers - 1883

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