ARTIST’S LOVE TRAGEDY

Hokitika Guardian, 28 September 1928, Page 5

ARTIST’S LOVE TRAGEDY

, D. G. ROSSETTI’S SECRET. (United Press Association—By Electric Telegraph—Copyright), LONDON, Sept. 27. Sir Hall Caine, K.B.E. bas published his long-expected “Recollections of Rossetti,’’ The book reveals that the painter and poet fell in love with a woman,' who later became the wife: of William Morris (the noted artist and Socialist, one of the founders of the Fabian Society along with Stephen Crane). Rossetti was engaged to Miss Elizabeth Siddall, and he married her. Within two yeans Mrs Rossetti divined the secret of her* husband’s hidden love for the other woman, and Sir Hall Caine affirms that she poisoned herself with laudanum, leaving' Rossetti a .letter, which he destroyed. Twenty years later during a midnight journey from Cumberland to London, Rossetti unburdened his soul to young Hall Caine, saying that his wife’s message had left a scar on his heart which had never healed.

“When Rossetti buried the manuscript of poems in his wife? S' 1 coffin,” Sir Hall Caine says, “he meant, ‘These were inspired by you. If 'I wronged you, the poems shall go to the grave with you.’ ” !

Sir Hall Caine writes: “The ghost of Elizabeth Sid dal 1 haunted Rossetti’s later days and resulted in Rossetti, in his hermit life, taking chloral, often three times a day.” Sir Hall Caine does not say that Rossetti ever told Mrs Morris the fact that he loved her. Elizabeth Siddall thus Jives in his poems, whereas his love ior Mrs Morris lives in Rossetti’s pictures.