ROSSETTI'S LOVE STORY PUBLISHED.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 18578, 28 September 1928, Page 5

ROSSETTI'S LOVE STORY PUBLISHED.

SIR HALL CAINE WRITES HIS RECOLLECTIONS OF POET AND PAINTER. (United Press Assn.—By Electric Telegraph.—Copyright.) LONDON, September 27. Sir Hall Caine’s long expected “ Recollections of Rossetti ” reveals that the painter and poet fell in love with the woman who later became the wife of William Morris. Rossetti was engaged to Elizabeth Siddall, and married her within two years. Mrs Rossetti divined the secret of her husband’s hidden love, and Sir Hall Caine affirms that she poisoned herself with laudanum, leaving Rossetti a letter, which he destroyed. Twenty years later, during a mid night 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 a manuscript of poems in his wife’s coffin,” Sir Hall Caine says, “he meant: ‘These were inspired by you. If I wronged you by losing my love for you, my poems shall go to the grave with you.” The ghost of Elizabeth Siddall haunted Rossetti’s later days, and resulted in Rossetti in his hermit life taking chloral as often as three times a day.’ Sir Hall Caine does not say whether Rossetti ever told Mrs Morris of the fact that he loved her. Elizabeth Siddall thus lives in his poems, whereas his love for Mrs Morris lives in Rossetti’s pictures.—Australian Press Association. Dante Gabriel Rossetti was born in 1828 and died in 1882. - He was one of the four brilliant children of Gabriele Rossetti, an Italian poet and Liberal who went to England in 1824. He was a close friend of William Morris, another brilliant artist and poet, and the friendship lasted all his life. Rosetti married Elizabeth Siddall, a beautiful milliner’s assistant, in 1860. He painted and drew many pictures of her. Her health was delicate and she died of ah overdose of laudanum in 1862. Rossetti buried his poems, which were in manuscript, in her coffin, but he disinterred them in 1869 and had them published in 1870. He was attacked by insomnia in 1868 and the disease and its consequent nervousness was aggravated by his use of narcotics'.

William Morris’s wife was Jane Burden, a beautiful Oxford girl, who had sat to him as a model. They were married in 1859. Morris died in 1896.

Sir Hall Caine in his youth was a friend of Rossetti and at his invitation went to London and lived with him till his death. He published a volume of recollections of Rossetti in 1882.