Gaunt - The Pre Raphaelite Tragedy

66766

THE PRE-RAPHAELITE TRAGEDY

The story of the remarkable Pre-Raphaelite artists and writers, whose activities formed a major episode of the Victorian Age, has somehow escaped contemporary treatment, except in partial detail. It is given in this book, with an especial fullness concerning the later life of the main characters, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Holman Hunt, John Millais and William Morris.

How the dream which arose out of their alliance became strangely and, at length, tragically confused with reality is traced through infinite complications: the dramatic series of events which included a suicide, a manifestation of the devil and an attempt at political revolution: abrupt changes of scene from London to the Australian gold-diggings, Jerusalem, Iceland, a medieval stronghold in Scotland, a bungalow at Birchington-on-Sea: and a network of relationships with the other Great Victorians. Unpublished letters and other original sources have been drawn upon and the illustrations include photographs of the Pre-Raphaelite leaders not before reproduced.

THE

PRE-RAPHAELITE TRAGEDY

By the same Author

ETCHING OF TODAY LONDON PROMENADE ROME, PAST AND PRESENT BANDITS IN A LANDSCAPE THE AESTHETIC ADVENTURE THE MARCH OF THE MODERNS

THE

PRE-RAPHAELITE TRAGEDY

by WILLIAM GAUNT

JONATHAN CAPE THIRTY BEDFORD SQUARE LONDON

>

FIRST PUBLISHED APRIL /1942

REPRINTED JUNE / 1942

REPRINTED AUGUSll 1948

PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN BY BUTLER AND TANNER LTD, FROMB AND LONDON

CONTENTS PAGB

THE ARGUMENT ti

I BROTHERHOOD

I A CHILD WONDER 13

II A CONSPIRACY OF TWO 15

HI ENTER A THIRD 17

IV THREE BECOME SEVEN 2O

V SEVEN BECOME BRETHREN 23

II SEPARATION

I THE DREAM-WOMAN APPEARS 28

H A TRAITOR AND A CHAMPION 3O

m AN IMPECCABLE ELOPEMENT 35

IV A TRIP TO AUSTRALIA 37

V A 'CRIB* IN DREAMLAND 4O

' VT THE BROTHERHOOD VANISHES 48

III ILLUSION AND DISILLUSION

I ON THE DEAD SEA SHORE 58

H AT THE TAIL OF THE HOUNDS 62

HI AT SCHOOL WITH THE ' GREAT PROHIBITED* 65

IV THE MAGIC RAY SPARKLES 69

V GAY KNIGHTS AND LADIES AT THE RIVER* S BANK 72

VI THE CARPENTRY OF A ROUND TABLE 84

VII SUGARING A PILL 89

VHI A LONELY BACHELOR 94

V CLIMAX AND CATASTROPHE

I

I , AN OVERDOSE OF LAUDANUM 99

/U THE WHIMS OP A CALIPH IO5

m HYPOCHONDRIA IN A CASTLE I2O

IV, POEMS FROM A GRAVE 127

^V A FATEFUL CONTROVERSY 129

VI AN EXCESS OF CHLORAL 133

CONTENTS

PAGE 2

I A DREAM SHOP 135

H THE CO-TENANCY OF AN EARTHLY PARADISE 143

HI A TRIP TO ICELAND 145

IV THE END OP A PARTNERSHIP 153

I GLITTERING PRIZES 155

II BUBBLES 166

III A DISAPPOINTING SUCCESS l68

IV THE VICTIMS OF JACOB OMNIUM 169

I UNEASY SOULS 173

II A STRANGE MARTYRDOM 177

III THE DEVIL IN MANRESA ROAD 183

I FROM KING ARTHUR TO KARL MARX 184 H A CLOISTER IN FULHAM 196

m A DESPERATE DESIGN 2OO

IV BLOODY SUNDAY 2O5

V THE LAST PHASE

I THE RECLUSE OF CHEYNE WALK 208

II AN ELEPHANT AND A RHINOCEROS 2IO

III A BOSWELL FROM THE ISLE OF MAN 215

IV A BUNGALOW AT BIRCHINGTON-ON-SEA 224 V A GENERAL MISUNDERSTANDING 227

VI THE END OF A GOOD TIME 233

VII A QUESTION OF VALUES 236

VHI THE END OF A DREAM 240

SOURCES 248

ELIZABETH ELEANOR siDDAL (Pencil drawing by Dante Gabriel

Rossetti) Frontispiece

Whitworth Art Gallery, Manchester

FORD MADOX BROWN FACING PAGE 66

JOHN RUSKIN 66

DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI 66

FANNY CORNFORTH (MRS. HUGHES) (Drawing in red chalk by

Dante Gabriel Rossetti, 1868) 102

City Museum and Art Gallery, Birmingham

JANE MORRIS (Drawing in coloured chalks ('Water Willow')

by Dante Gabriel Rossetti, 1871) 138

City Museum and Art Gallery, Birmingham

SIR JOHN MILLAIS 156

THOMAS WOOLNER 156

WILLIAM HOLM AN HUNT 156

WILLIAM HOLMAN HUNT IN HIS COSTUME WHEN PAINTING THE

SCAPEGOAT 178

WILLIAM MORRIS (Photograph by Elliott & Fry) 188

SIR EDWARD BURNS-JONES (Portrait sketch by Charles Fairfax

Murray) 188

DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI (Plaster cast from a death-mask by

D. Brucciani & Co.) 226

National Portrait Gallery

To MY MOTHER

A C K N OW LEDGEMENTS

THE author would like to express his thanks to all those who have provided him so generously with information, suggestions and material used in this book.

In particular he is indebted to Miss Susan Lushington for much valuable help and for access to Pre-Raphaelite letters in her possession: to Mr. G. D. Gordon Hake, who has permitted him to study his large collection of Rossetti letters: and to Miss E. Margaret Courtenay Boyd, Mrs. Margaret Mackail, Mrs. Gladys Joseph and the Ruskin Trustees for permission to quote from letters written by W. Bell Scott, Sir Edward Burne-Jones, William Holman Hunt and John Ruskin.

He wishes also to thank Mr. R. Ironside of the Tate Gallery and, for their assistance in regard to pictures and reproductions, Mr. Laurence Haward, Curator of the City Art Gallery, Manchester; Mr. Frank Lambert, Director of the Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool; Miss Margaret Pilkington, Director of the Whitworth Art Gallery, Manchester; Mr. A. E. Whitley, Keeper of the City Museum and Art Gallery, Birmingham, and Mr. K. T. Parker of the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford.

Thanks for their kindly interest and suggestions are also due to Sir Sydney Cockerell, Mr. James Laver, Mr. H. C. Marillier, Dr. John Rothenstein and Mr. Paull F. Baum.

THE ARGUMENT

THIS is the true story of what happens in mature life to a group of very remarkable people, united, when young, in the pursuit of an ideal. Estrangement springs up and their paths diverge, but they have generated, among them, a force which powerfully affects die life of each one in a different way. The main actors are Dante Gabriel Rossetti, poet and painter; William Holman Hunt and John Everett Millais, painters; William Morris, poet, craftsman and socialist.

Rossetti, Hunt and Millais meet as art students in London and form an alliance which they call the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. Each interprets its aim after his own fashion. Rossetti sees its ideal in a woman. He falls in love with a beautiful model, discovered by a member of the group, and marries her: but she takes a fatal dose of laudanum, as he thinks through his treatment of her, and in remorse he buries his poems in her grave. Later he resurrects them, though this also helps to make him a haunted man. He becomes a recluse and his existence is clouded by despair and the use of a dreadful drug. Hunt sees the ideal in religion, and his fanatic belief in the aims of the Brotherhood, which he conceives to be his own creation entirely (though the world gives the brilliant Rossetti most of the credit), turns into a kind of religious obsession. Millais, less intellectual than the others but superbly gifted in skill, sees the ideal in worldly success and gradually yields to its lure.

Before the death of his wife, Rossetti, already parted from his earlier friends in spirit, attempts to revive the original enthusiasm with a new set of disciples, of whom William Morris is the chief. To Morris the ideal represents itself as a complete change of the social order. His failure to achieve this object completes a many-sided tragedy, complex and subtle as the dream from which it has arisen.