TALE OF TRAGIC LOVE

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 471, 28 September 1928, Page 9

TALE OF TRAGIC LOVE

POET’S SCARRED HEART RECOLLECTIONS OF ROSSETTI (Australian and N.Z. Press Association) LONDON, Thursday.

The novelist, Sir Hall Caine, has published his “Recollections of Rossetti,” on which he has boon long en-

gaged. The book reveals that the painter and poet fell in love with a woman who later he came the wife of the poet and craftsman. William Morris. Rossetti was en gaged to Miss Eliza beth Siddall am’ married her within two years in 1860.

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 unburdened 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 said, “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 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 loved her. Elizabeth Siddall. he says, thus lives in his poems, whereas his love for Mrs. Morris lives in Rossetti’s pictures. %