SD2023. Dante Gabriel Rossetti to William Allingham
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 23, 261–263 (in part).
Mrs. Green’s 17 Orange Grove, Bath.
[Postmark: 18 December 1856]
My dear Allingham,
Very glad was I of your undeserved letter. How long have I meant to write to you! It was sent on to me here, where I have been a week or two, and may still be a week.
The piece of news freshest in my mind is Aurora Leigh—an astounding work surely. You said nothing of it. I know that St. Francis & Poverty do not wed in these days of St. James’s Church, with rows of portrait figures on either side, & the corners neatly finished with angels. I know that if a blind man were to enter the room this evening and talk to me for some hours, I should, with the best intentions, be in danger of twigging his blindness before the right moment came, if such there were, for the chord in the orchestra & the proper theatrical start. Yet with all my knowledge, I have felt something like a bug ever since reading Aurora Leigh. O, the wonder of it!—and O the bore of writing about it!
The Brownings are long gone back now, and with them one of my delights—an evening resort where I never feel unhappy. How large a part of the real world, I wonder, are those two small people?—taking meanwhile so little room in any railway carriage, & hardly needing a double bed at the inn. …
Did you see his [Ford Madox Brown’s] woodcut in the Poets of 19th Century—very fine still, though sadly mauled? They have treated you snobbily enough there. I had engaged to do Browning, but what could have been done with Evelyn Hope or Two in the Campagna? Count Gismond now!—but they wouldn’t. …
You will see no more of the poor Oxford and Cambridge. It was “too like the Spirit of Germ. Down, down!” & has vanished into the witches’ cauldron. Morris & Jones have now been some time settled in London, & are both, I find, wonders after their kind. Jones is doing designs (after doing the ingenuous & abject so long) which quite put one to shame, so full are they of everything—Aurora Leighs of art. He will take the lead in no time. …
Have you heard of the Howitts? I have seen them, though not very lately, and fear that Miss H. is anything but well. Spiritualism has begun to be in the ascendant at the Hermitage, & this to a degree which you could not conceive possible without witnessing it. Do not say anything to anybody though. I elicited from Mr. Howitt, before his family, his opinion of it with some trouble, & found it to be a modified form of my own which of course I give without reserve—but the ladies of the house seem to take but one view of the subject, and, astounding as it may appear, Mrs. Browning has given it her adherence. I hope Aurora Leigh is not to be followed by “that style only.” Browning, of course, pockets his hands & shakes his mane over the question, with occasional foamings at the mouth, & he and I laid siege to the subject one night, but to no purpose. …
Publication: Rossetti, 2, 145–151.
Manuscript: Pierpont Morgan Library.
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