The Germ: Thoughts towards Nature in Poetry, Literature and Art. Various
of this body must however have agreed with several of his utterances, and sympathized with others, apart from strict agreement.
By Patmore: “The Seasons.” This choice little poem was volunteered to “The Germ” in September, after the author had read our prospectus, which impressed him favourably. He withheld his name, much to our disappointment, having resolved to do so in all instances where something of his might be published pending the issue of a new volume.
By Christina Rossetti: “Dream Land.” Though my sister was only just nineteen when this remarkable lyric was printed, she had already made some slight appearance in published type (not to speak of the privately printed “Verses” of 1847), as two small poems of hers had been inserted in “The Athenæum” in October 1848. “Dream Land” was written in April 1849, before “The Germ” was thought of; and it may be as well to say that all my sister's contributions to this magazine were produced without any reference to publication in that or in any particular form.
By Dante G. Rossetti: “My Sister's Sleep.” This purports to be No. 1 of “Songs of One Household.” I do not much think that Dante Rossetti ever wrote any other poem which would have been proper to such a series. “My Sister's Sleep” was composed very soon after he emerged from a merely juvenile stage of work. I believe that it dates before “The Blessed Damozel,” and therefore before May 1847. It is not founded upon any actual event affecting the Rossetti family, nor any family of our acquaintance. As I have said in my Memoir of my brother (1895), the poem was shown, perhaps early in 1848, by Major Calder Campbell to the editress of the “Belle Assemblée,” who heartily admired it, but, for one reason or another, did not publish it. This composition is somewhat noticeable on more grounds than one; not least as being in a metre which was not much in use until it became famous in Tennyson's “In Memoriam,” published in 1850, and of course totally unknown to Rossetti when he wrote “My Sister's Sleep.” In later years my brother viewed this early work with some distaste, and he only reluctantly reprinted it in his “Poems,” 1870. He then wholly omitted the four stanzas 7, 8, 12, 13, beginning: “Silence was speaking,” “I said, full knowledge,” “She stood a moment,” “Almost unwittingly”; and he made some other verbal alterations.2 It will be observed that this poem was written long before the Præraphaelite movement began. None the less it shows in an eminent degree one of the influences which guided that movement: the intimate intertexture of a spiritual sense with a material form; small actualities made vocal of lofty meanings.
By Dante G. Rossetti: “Hand and Soul.” This tale was, I think, written with an express view to its appearing in No. 1 of our magazine, and Rossetti began making for it an etching, which, though not ready for No. 1, was intended to appear in some number later than the second. He drew it in March 1850; but, being disgusted with the performance, he scratched the plate over, and tore up the prints. The design showed Chiaro dell' Erma in the act of painting his embodied Soul. Though the form of this tale is that of romantic metaphor, its substance is a very serious manifesto of art-dogma. It amounts to saying, The only satisfactory works of art are those which exhibit the very soul of the artist. To work for fame or self-display is a failure, and to work for direct moral proselytizing is a failure; but to paint that which your own perceptions and emotions urge you to paint promises to be a success for yourself, and hence a benefit to the mass of beholders. This was the core of the “Præraphaelite” creed; with the adjunct (which hardly came within the scope of Rossetti's tale, and yet may be partly traced there) that the artist cannot attain to adequate self-expression save through a stern study and realization of natural appearances. And it may be said that to this core of the Præraphaelite creed Rossetti always adhered throughout his life, greatly different though his later works are from his earlier ones in the externals of artistic style. Most of “Hand and Soul” was written on December 21, 1849, day and night, chiefly in some five hours beginning after midnight. Three currents of thought may be traced in this story: (1) A certain amount of knowledge regarding the beginnings of Italian art, mingled with some ignorance, voluntary or involuntary, of what was possible to be done in the middle of the thirteenth century; (2) a highly ideal, yet individual, general treatment of the narrative; and (3) a curious aptitude at detailing figments as if they were facts. All about Chiaro dell' Erma himself, Dresden and Dr. Aemmster, D'Agincourt, pictures at the Pitti Gallery, the author's visit to Florence in 1847, etc., are pure inventions or “mystifications”; but so realistically put that they have in various instances been relied upon and cited as truths. I gave some details as to this in my Memoir of Dante Rossetti. The style of writing in “Hand and Soul” is of a very exceptional kind. My brother had at that time a great affection for “Stories after Nature,” written by Charles Wells (author of “Joseph and his Brethren”), and these he kept in view to some extent as a model, though the direct resemblance is faint indeed. In the conversation of foreign art-students, forming the epilogue, he may have been not wholly oblivious of the scene in Browning's “Pippa Passes” (a prime favourite of his), where some “foreign students of painting and sculpture” are preparing a disagreeable surprise for the French sculptor Jules. There is, however, no sort of imitation; and Rossetti's dialogue is the more markedly natural of the two. In re-reading “Hand and Soul,” I am struck by two passages which came true of Rossetti himself in after-life: (1) “Sometimes after nightfall he would walk abroad in the most solitary places he could find—hardly feeling the ground under him because of the thoughts of the day which held him in fever.” (2) “Often he would remain at work through the whole of a day, not resting once so long as the light lasted.” When Rossetti, in 1869, was collecting his poems, and getting them privately printed with a view to after-publication, he thought of including “Hand and Soul” in the same volume, but did not eventually do so. The privately-printed copy forms a small pamphlet, which has sometimes been sold at high prices—I believe £10 and upwards. At this time I pointed out to him that the church at Pisa which he named San Rocco could not possibly have borne that name—San Rocco being a historical character who lived at a later date: the Church was then re-named “San Petronio,” and this I believe is the only change of the least importance introduced into the reprint. In December 1870 the tale was published in “The Fortnightly Review.” The Rev. Alfred Gurney (deceased not long ago) was a great admirer of Dante Rossetti's works. He published in 1883 a brochure named “A Dream of Fair Women, a Study of some Pictures by Dante Gabriel Rossetti”; he also published an essay on “Hand and Soul,” giving a more directly religious interpretation to the story than its author had at all intended. It is entitled “A Painter's Day-dream.”
By W. M. Rossetti: “Review of Clough's Bothie of Toper-na-fuosich.” The only remark which I need to make on this somewhat ponderous article is that I, as Editor of “The Germ,” was more or less expected to do the sort of work for which other “proprietors” had little inclination—such especially as the regular reviewing of new poems.
By W. M. Rossetti: “Her First Season: Sonnet.” As I have said elsewhere, my brother and I were at one time greatly addicted to writing sonnets together to bouts-rimés: the date may have been chiefly 1848, and the practice had, I think, quite ceased for some little while before “The Germ” commenced in 1850. This sonnet was one of my bouts-rimés performances. I ought to have been more chary than I was of introducing into our seriously-intended magazine such hap-hazard things as bouts-rimés poems: one reason for doing so was that we were often at a loss for something to fill a spare page.
By John L. Tupper: “A Sketch from Nature.” The locality indicated in these very spirited descriptive lines is given as “Sydenham Wood.” When I was compiling the posthumous volume of John Tupper's “Poems” which came out in 1897, I should, so far as merit is concerned, have wished to include this little piece: it was omitted solely on the ground of its being already published.
By Christina Rossetti: “An End.” Written in March 1849.
By Collinson: “The Child Jesus, a Record Typical of the Five Sorrowful Mysteries.” Collinson, as I have already said, was hardly a writing man, and I question whether he had produced a line of verse prior to undertaking this by no means trivial task. The poem, like the etching which he did for it, is deficient in native strength, nor is there much invention in the symbolical incidents which make it up: but its general level, and several of its lines and passages, always appeared to me, and still
I may call attention to Stanza 16, “She stooped an instant.” The word is “stooped” in “The Germ,” and in the “Poems” of 1870. This is undoubtedly correct; but in my brother's re-issue of the “Poems,” 1881, the word got mis-printed “stopped”; and I find the same mis-print in subsequent editions.