ROSSETTI'S SECRET.

Auckland Star, Volume LIX, Issue 230, 28 September 1928, Page 7

ROSSETTI'S SECRET.

Hidden Love That Encompassed

Wife's Death.

HALL CAINE'S RECOLLECTIONS

(Australian and N.Z. Press Association.)

LONDON, September 27.

The novelist, Sir Hall Caine, has published his "Recollections of Rossetti," on which he has long been engaged. The book reveals that the painter and poet fell in love with a woman who later became the wife of the poet and craftsman, William Morris.

Rossetti was engaged to Miss Eliza-

beth Siddall and married her within two years in 1800. Mrs. Rossetti divined the secret of her husband's hidden love. Sir Hall affirms that she poisoned herself, leaving for Rossetti a letter which he destroyed 20 years later.

On a midnight journey from Cumberland to London, Rossetti unbtirdened his soul to the then young Hall Caine, saying his wife's message had left a scar on his heart which had never healed.

"When Rossetti buried the manuscript of his poems in his wife's coffin," Sir Hall says, "he meant, 'these were inspired by you. If I wronged you by losing my love for you, my poems shail go to the grave with 3'ou.'

"The ghost of Elizabeth Siddall haunted Rossetti's later days, and as a result Rossetti, in his hermit life, took an opiate as often as three times a day."

The author does not say that Rossetti ever told Mrs. Morris that he lo»ed her. Elizabeth Sidflnll. he savs, thus lives in his poems, whereas his love for Mrs. Morris lives in Rossetti's pictures.