to see what Rossetti’s famous Chelsea house was like inside, it is a pity he does not give it as a frontispiece to some future edition of Aylwin.  Unfortunately, Mr. G. F. Watts’s picture, now in the National Portrait Gallery, was never finished, and I never saw upon Rossetti’s face the dull, heavy expression which that portrait wears.  I think the poet told me that he had given the painter only one or two sittings.  As to the photographs, none of them is really satisfactory.

The ’young gentleman from Oxford who has been acting as my secretary,’ as mentioned in Aylwin, was my brother. [Footnote] With regard to the two circular mirrors surrounded by painted designs telling the story of the Holy Grail, ’in old black oak frames carved with knights at tilt,’ I do not remember seeing these there.  But they are evidently the mirrors decorated with copies of the lost Holy Grail frescoes once existing on the walls of the Union Reading-Room at Oxford.  These beautiful decorations I have seen at ‘The Pines,’ but not elsewhere.  I have often seen ‘D’Arcy’ in the company of several of the other characters introduced into Aylwin; for instance, ‘De Castro’ and ‘Symonds’ (the late F. R. Leyland, at that time the owner of the Leyland line of steamers, living at Prince’s Gate, where was the famous Peacock Room painted by Mr. Whistler).  I did not myself know that quaint character Mrs. Titwing, but I have been told by people who knew her well that she is true to the life.  With regard to ‘De Castro,’ it is a matter of regret to those who knew him that, after giving us that most vivid scene between ‘D’Arcy’ and ‘De Castro’ at Scott’s oyster-rooms (a place which Rossetti was very fond of frequenting in those nocturnal rambles that caused ’De Castro’ to give him the name of Haroun al Raschid), the author did not go on and paint to the full the most extraordinary man of the very extraordinary group, the centre of which was Rossetti’s Chelsea house.  Rossetti was a well-known figure at Scott’s and at Rule’s oyster-rooms at the time he encountered ‘Henry Aylwin.’  That scene at Scott’s is, in my opinion, the most living thing in the book—­a picture that whenever I turn to it makes me feel that everything said and done must have occurred.  ‘De Castro’ seemed to belong not merely to the Rossetti group, but to all groups, for he was brought into touch with almost every remarkable man of his time, and fascinated every one of them.  Literary and artistic London was once full of stories of him, and no one that knew him doubted he was what must be called a man of genius—­although a barren genius.  Among others, he was brought into close relations with Ruskin, Burne-Jones, and, I think, Smetham (’Wilderspin’), and others.

[Footnote:  This was George Hake, who died in Central Africa a few years ago.]