James Bores Mrs Rossetti

William Michael Rossetti (1829-1919)
by Julia Margaret Cameron
Anyone wearing a hat like this probably takes himself too seriously.

William Rossetti was the brother of Dante Gabriel and Christina Rossetti. William attended the founding of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood and although a career civil servant he was a critic, editor and biographer.

In the summer of 1857 Rossetti began organising an exhibition of British art in the United States of America. It appears from his letters that many artists were reluctant to lend their work. This was with some justification because some paintings were damaged by a rainstorm during transit and Rossetti claimed that he had paid at least £1200 in compensation.

James Hervé d'Egville exhibited seven watercolours in the exhibition at the Boston. At least one of his paintings was damaged and he evidently doorstepped Mrs Rossetti. If James behaved in anyway like his father William was lucky not to have his hat inserted as an aesthetic suppository.

To Frances Rossiti,

Freshwater Gate

1 September [1858]

Thanks for your little note received this morning. I am sorry you have to endure the bore of visits from d'Egville etc., but am not without fear that, either just before or just after my return to town, such visits will be pretty frequent, as a lot of pictures are now about returning, some of which, as Ruxton learned a little while ago, have been severely damaged by a rainstorm while en route to the vessel. If any such visits are inflicted upon you, of course you can refer the visitor either to me by address or to Ruxton personally, and all I can beg of you is to subject yourself to as little annoyance in the matter as you can.

  Will you tell Christina, in answer to a precedent note, that I did, shortly after leaving town, think of her Common Objects of the Seashore with regret at not having brought it, but that some days ago, finding the book at a shop hereabouts, I purchased a copy for myself. It is sufficiently to the purpose. Also that little Solomon's visit must have been paid under a misapprehension of something I said to him 2 or 3 months ago, as I had nothing of Gabriel's at home to show him, but may rather have offered to take him to Blackfriars. He is an unsightly little Israelite; but a youth of extraordinary genius in art - and perhaps otherwise.

  Here we are still, and here, spite of occasional gleams of projected removal to some other spot in the Island, we are likely in my opinion to remain, at least until Sunday week next, which will be my last holiday day: on Monday I ought to be back at Somerset House, and the position of colleagues there as regards leave will not admit of my outstaying my time. Tennyson has been back since Friday, and took the trouble of looking me up on Saturday - but bent his steps through some mistake to Alu Bay - some six times too far off - where of course he could learn nothing of me. I spent Monday very pleasantly at his very commodious house (not half a mile from here), and shall return there as often as I can spare myself from here. He found the Norway travelling very laborious. He and his wife (a most lovely human creature) like Gabriel's Arthur watched by weeping queens as well as, or better than, any other illustrations in the edition.

  Our sea-anemones - strawberry, red, brown and olive-yellow, and longer-feelered grey and greens, - mingled with an occasional crab or shell-fish, were beginning to get rather a nuisance: we have reduced their number to 9, which have been most flourishing these 3 days.

Your

W.M.R.

I shall post with, or soon after, this one or two Athenaeums. One No, never came; and the next following that not till the week after, or you should have had them in due course.

Selected Letters of William Michael Rossetti

Edited by Roger W. Peattie (1990)