The sun nor loiters nor speeds,
The rivers run as they ran,
Through clouds or through windy reeds
All run as when all began.
from
Time Flies, A Reading Diary
by Christina Rossetti
December 5th entry
(First published 1885)
Christina is the subject of my work-in-progress next novel, The Dove Upon Her Branch.
Photograph by Charles Dodgson, AKA Lewis Carroll
1863
She was part of a remarkable family of English-Italian scholars, artists, and poets, her older brother being Dante Gabriel Rossetti, founder of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. I wrote a brief bio of her for The Literary Ladies Guide.
Today is the 190th anniversary of her birth, December 5, 1830
A Birthday
By Christina Rossetti
My heart is like a singing bird
Whose nest is in a water’d shoot;
My heart is like an apple-tree
Whose boughs are bent with thickset fruit;
My heart is like a rainbow shell
That paddles in a halcyon sea;
My heart is gladder than all these
Because my love is come to me.
Raise me a dais of silk and down;
Hang it with vair and purple dyes;
Carve it in doves and pomegranates,
And peacocks with a hundred eyes;
Work it in gold and silver grapes,
In leaves and silver fleurs-de-lys;
Because the birthday of my life
Is come, my love is come to me.
by Dante Gabriel Rossetti
Excerpt from The Dove Upon Her Branch
Christina and William Rossetti posing
for the painting of Ecce Ancilla Domini
by Dante Gabriel Rossetti
in November 1849
Another painting to pose for offered an alternative, productive engagement, being the handmaiden of the Lord a worthy occupation. William’s participation, not only as someone to accompany Christina to and from where their brother now worked on Newman Street above a hop-shop, but also to portray the Angel Gabriel, made for a happy distraction of camaraderie and creation.
“Why is the painting tall and narrow?” Christina wondered with her first glance at the work in progress.
“It is one-half of a diptych. Its companion will depict the Virgin’s death.”
“Will you have both finished by spring for the RA?” William slapped his arms around himself in an attempt to warm his sleeveless, sheeted body. “Any more coal for the grate?”
“Doubt it.” Gabriel urgently picked through the pile of brushes on the small pedestal table next to his easel.
Christina noticed they were all thin-handled and fine-bristled.
“No wonder it will take so long.” She also looked at his pallet, noticing he wasn’t mixing colors but using fresh daubs of unadulterated white, blue, and red paint.
“I hope you won’t get bronchitis again.” William repositioned the woolen shawl that had slipped off her shoulders.
“I haven’t even caught a cold.” Christina had resigned herself to shivering in her flimsy nightgown for the sake of Gabriel’s vision and to prove as enduring as any of the other models who sat for him.
“Interesting.” As he leaned forward, William put a hand on his brother’s back. “Even with as little as you’ve done, I see the perspective of Giotto. Yet, I also see Flemish primitive, what you and Hunt were so taken with in Bruges. Before you started, I noticed you had followed Van Eyck’s practice of preparing the canvas with white ground.”
Gabriel smiled, probably more because of his own thoughts than William’s. “I’m sure it will all seem a confused mess to those, like Ruskin, who think their opinions matter.”
“A risk worth taking. But you must enter both panels together.”
“I don’t paint to exhibit.”
“You have to make a name for yourself, Gabe, a living. Your work has to be seen. And critiqued.”
“Says the would-be critic.”
“Now I see why you want me contorted on a corner of that saggy cot.” Christina though it wise to change the subject. “And all crinkly and looking about to jump up and run away.”
“I thank Collinson for your disquiet.”
They had spoken of many things during the hours of posing and painting, breaking to eat and drink, and for Christina and William to wrap themselves in blankets long enough to feel their fingers and toes again. Not once, until that moment, considering Gabriel was still brooding over Mr. Hunt falling into arrears with the rent at the Cleveland Street studio and defecting to James’ in Brompton, had anyone mentioned the man Christina had, without good reason, agreed to marry. She was almost convinced the last year of his waxing and waning hadn’t happened; that somewhere out there was the face not seen, the voice not heard, the heart that had not yet—
Or, maybe they had been and it would if only it could.
Copyright © DM Denton 2020
by Dante Gabriel Rossetti
Brief was the day of its power,
The day of its grace how brief:
As the fading of a flower,
As the falling of a leaf,
So brief its day and its hour …
from
Time Flies, A Reading Diary
by Christina Rossetti
December 5th entry
(First published 1885)
Sing, that in thy song I may
Dream myself once more a child
from Maud by Christina Rossetti
Happy Birthday, Christina Rossetti
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