Christina Rossetti - Page 2

and rich. He loved one of the daughters of Seignior Polidori, and she
loved him. He was forty and she was twenty-three--but what of that! A
position as Professor of Languages was secured for him in King's College.
He rented the house at Thirty-eight Charlotte Street, off Portland Place,
and there, on February Seventeenth, Eighteen Hundred Twenty-seven, was
born their first child, Maria Francesca; on May Twelfth, Eighteen Hundred
Twenty-eight, was born Dante Gabriel; on September Twenty-fifth, Eighteen
Hundred Twenty-nine, William Michael; on December Fifth, Eighteen Hundred
Thirty, Christina Georgiana. The mother of this quartette was a sturdy
little woman with sparkling wit and rare good sense. She used to remark
that her children were all of a size, and that it was no more trouble to
bring up four than one, a suggestion thrown in here gratis for the benefit
of young married folks, in the hope that they will mark and inwardly
digest. In point of well-ballasted, all-round character, fit for Earth or
Heaven, none of the four Rossetti children was equal to his parents. They
all seem to have had nerves outside of their clothes. Perhaps this was
because they were brought up in London. A city is no place for
children--nor grown people either, I often think. Birds and children
belong in the country. Paved streets, stone sidewalks, smoke-begrimed
houses, signs reading, "Keep Off the Grass", prying policemen, and zealous
ash-box inspectors are insulting things to greet the gaze of the little
immigrants fresh from God. Small wonder is it, as they grow up, that they
take to drink and drugs, seeking in these a respite from the rattle of
wheels and the never-ending cramp of unkind condition. But Nature
understands herself: the second generation, city-bred, is impotent.

No pilgrim from "the States" should visit the city of London without
carrying two books: a Baedeker's "London" and Hutton's "Literary
Landmarks." The chief advantage of the former is that it is bound in
flaming red, and carried in the hand, advertises the owner as an American,
thus saving all formal introductions. In the rustle, bustle and tussle of
Fleet Street, I have held up my book to a party of Americans on the
opposite sidewalk, as a ship runs up her colors, and they, seeing the
sign, in turn held up theirs in merry greeting; and we passed on our way
without a word, ships that pass in the afternoon and greet each other in
passing. Now, I have no desire to rival the flamboyant Baedeker, nor to
eclipse my good friend Laurence Hutton. But as I can not find that either
mentions the name "Rossetti," I am going to set down (not in malice) the
places in London that are closely connected with the Rossetti family,