Little Journeys to the Homes of Famous Women — Christina Rossetti, Part 1

CHRISTINA ROSSETTI

My life is but a working-day, Whose tasks are set aright: A while to work, a while to pray, And then a quiet night.

And then, please God, a quiet night Where Saints and Angels walk in white.

One dreamless sleep from work and sorrow, But reawakening on the morrow.

--_In Patience_ [Illustration: CHRISTINA ROSSETTI] As a study in heredity, the Rossetti family is most interesting.

Genius seems so sporadic a stuff that when we find an outcrop along the line of a whole family we are wont to mark it on memory's chart in red.

We talk of the Herschels, of Renan and his sister, of the Beechers, and the Fields, in a sort of awe, mindful that Nature is parsimonious in giving out transcendent talent, and may never do the like again.

So who can forget the Rossettis--two brothers, Dante Gabriel and William Michael, and two sisters, Maria and Christina--each of whom stands forth as far above the ordinary, yet all strangely dependent upon one another?

The girls sing songs to the brothers, and to each other, inscribing poems to "my loving sister"; when Dante Gabriel, budding forth as artist, wishes a model for a Madonna, he chooses his sister Christina, and in his sketch mantles the plain features with a divine gentleness and heavenly splendor such as only the loving heart can conjure forth.

In the last illness of Maria, Christina watches away the long, lagging hours of night, almost striving with her brothers for the right of serving; and at Birchington-on-the-Sea, Dante Gabriel waits for death, wearing out his friends by insane suspicions, and only the sister seems equal to ministering to this mind diseased, plucking from memory its rooted sorrow.

In a few years Christina passes out, and of the four, only William is left; and the task of his remaining years is to put properly before the world the deathless lives of his brother and sisters gone.

Gabriel Rossetti, father of the illustrious four, was an Italian poet who wrote patriotic hymns, and wrote them so well that he was asked to sing them elsewhere than in Italy.

This edict of banishment was followed by an order that the poet be arrested and executed.

The orders of banishment and execution appear quite Milesian viewed across the years, but to Rossetti it was no joke.

To keep his head in its proper place and to preserve his soul alive, he departed one dark night for England.

He arrived penniless, with no luggage save his lyre, but with muse intact.

Yet it was an Italian lyre, and therefore of small avail for amusing Britons.

Very naturally, Rossetti made the acquaintance of other refugees, and exile makes fast friends.

It is only in prosperity that we throw our friends overboard.

He came to know the Polidori family--Tuscan refugees--proud, intellectual and rich.

He loved one of the daughters of Seignior Polidori, and she loved him.

He was forty and she was twenty-three--but what of that!

A

position as Professor of Languages was secured for him in King's College.

He rented the house at Thirty-eight Charlotte Street, off Portland Place, and there, on February Seventeenth, Eighteen Hundred Twenty-seven, was born their first child, Maria Francesca; on May Twelfth, Eighteen Hundred Twenty-eight, was born Dante Gabriel; on September Twenty-fifth, Eighteen Hundred Twenty-nine, William Michael; on December Fifth, Eighteen Hundred Thirty, Christina Georgiana.

The mother of this quartette was a sturdy little woman with sparkling wit and rare good sense.

She used to remark that her children were all of a size, and that it was no more trouble to bring up four than one, a suggestion thrown in here gratis for the benefit of young married folks, in the hope that they will mark and inwardly digest.

In point of well-ballasted, all-round character, fit for Earth or Heaven, none of the four Rossetti children was equal to his parents.

They all seem to have had nerves outside of their clothes.

Perhaps this was because they were brought up in London.

A city is no place for children--nor grown people either, I often think.

Birds and children belong in the country.

Paved streets, stone sidewalks, smoke-begrimed houses, signs reading, "Keep Off the Grass", prying policemen, and zealous ash-box inspectors are insulting things to greet the gaze of the little immigrants fresh from God.

Small wonder is it, as they grow up, that they take to drink and drugs, seeking in these a respite from the rattle of wheels and the never-ending cramp of unkind condition.

But Nature understands herself: the second generation, city-bred, is impotent.

No pilgrim from "the States" should visit the city of London without carrying two books: a Baedeker's "London" and Hutton's "Literary Landmarks."

The chief advantage of the former is that it is bound in flaming red, and carried in the hand, advertises the owner as an American, thus saving all formal introductions.

In the rustle, bustle and tussle of Fleet Street, I have held up my book to a party of Americans on the opposite sidewalk, as a ship runs up her colors, and they, seeing the sign, in turn held up theirs in merry greeting; and we passed on our way without a word, ships that pass in the afternoon and greet each other in passing.

Now, I have no desire to rival the flamboyant Baedeker, nor to eclipse my good friend Laurence Hutton.

But as I can not find that either mentions the name "Rossetti," I am going to set down (not in malice) the places in London that are closely connected with the Rossetti family, nothing extenuating.

London is the finest city in the world for the tourist who desires liberty as wide as the wind, and who wishes to live cheaply and live well.

In New York, if you want lodgings at a moderate price, you must throttle your pride and forsake respectability; but they do things different in Lunnon, you know.

From Gray's Inn Road to Portland Place, and from Oxford Street to Euston Road, there is just about a square mile--a section, as they say out West--of lodging-houses.

Once this part of London was given up to the homes of the great and purse-proud and all that.

It is respectable yet, and if you are going to be in London a week you can get a good room in one of these old-time mansions, and pay no more for it than you would pay for a room in an American hotel for one day.

And as for meals, your landlady will get you anything you want and serve it for you in the daintiest style, and you will also find that a shilling and a little courtesy will go a very long way in securing creature comforts.

American women in London can live in this way just as well as men.

If you are a schoolma'am from Peoria, taking your vacation, follow my advice and make your home in the "Bedford District," within easy reach of Stopford Brooke's chapel, and your London visit will stand out forever as a bright oasis in memory's desert waste.

All of which I put in here because Larry Hutton forgot to mention it and Mein Herr Baedeker didn't think it worth while.

When in London I usually get a room near the British Museum for ten shillings a week; and when I want to go anywhere I walk up to the Gower Street Station, past the house where the mother of Charles Dickens had her Young Ladies' Establishment, and buying a ticket at the "Booking-Office" am duly set down near the desired objective point.

You can go anywhere by the "Metropolitan," or if you prefer to take Mr. Gladstone's advice, you climb to the top of an Oxford Street bus, and if you sit next the driver you have a directory, guide and familiar friend all at your service.

Charlotte Street is a narrow little passage running just two squares, parallel with Portland Place.

The houses are built in blocks of five (or more), of the plainest of plain bricks.

The location is not far from the Gower Street Station of the Metropolitan Railway, and only a few minutes' walk from the British Museum.

Number Thirty-eight is the last but one on the east side of the street.

When I first saw it, there was a sign in the window, "Apartments," and back of this fresh cambric curtains.

Then the window had been cleaned, too, for a single day of neglect in London tells its tale, as does the record of crime on a rogue's face.

I paused and looked the place over with interest.

I noted that the brass plate with the "No. 38" on it had been polished until it had been nearly polished out of sight, like a machine-made sonnet too much gone over.

The steps had been freshly sanded, and a little lemon-tree nodding in one of the windows made the rusty old house look quite inviting.

A stout little woman with a big market-basket, bumped into me and apologized, for I had stepped backwards to get a better look at the upstairs windows.

The stout little woman set down her basket on the steps, took a bunch of keys from a pocket under her big, white, starched apron, selected one, turned to me, smiled, and asked, "Mebbe, Sir, you wasn't looking for apartments, I dunno?"

Then she explained that the house was hers, and that if I would step in she would show me the rooms.

There were two of 'em she could spare.

The first floor front was already let, and so was the front parlor--to a young barrister.

Her husband was a ticket-taker at Euston Station, and didn't get much since last cutdown.

Would I care to pay as much as ten shillings, and would I want breakfast?

It would only be ninepence, and I could have either a chop or ham and eggs.

She looked after her boarders herself, just as if they were her own folks, and only took respectable single gentlemen who came well recommended.

She knew I would like the room, and if ten shillings was too much I could have the back room for seven and six.

I thought the back room would answer; but explained that I was an American and was going to remain in London only a short time.

Of course the lady knew I was an American: she knew it from my hat and from my foreign accent and--from the red book I had in my hand.

And did I know the McIntyres that lived in Michigan?

I evaded the question by asking if she knew the Rossettis who once lived in this house.

"Oh, yes; I know Mr. William and Miss Christina.

They came here together a year ago, and told me they were born here and that their brother Dante and their sister, too, were born here.

I think they were all writin' folks, weren't they?

Miss Rossetti anyway writes poetry, I know that.

One of my boarders gave me one of her books for Christmas.

I'll show it to you.

You don't think seven and six is too much for a room like this, do you?"

I inwardly noted that the ceilings were much lower than those of my room in Russell Square and that the furniture was old and worn and that the room looked out on an army of sooty chimney-pots, but I explained that seven and six seemed a very reasonable price, and that ninepence for breakfast with ham and eggs was cheap enough, provided the eggs were strictly fresh.

So I paid one week's rent in advance on the spot, and going back to Russell Square told my landlady that I had found friends in another part of the city and would not return for two days.

My sojourn at Number Thirty-eight Charlotte Street developed nothing further than the meager satisfaction of sleeping for two nights in the room in which Dante Gabriel Rossetti was born, and making the acquaintance of the worthy ticket-taker, who knew all four of the Rossettis, as they had often passed through his gate.