I evaded the question by asking if she knew the Rossettis who once lived in this house.  “Oh, yes; I know Mr. William and Miss Christina.  They came here together a year ago, and told me they were born here and that their brother Dante and their sister, too, were born here.  I think they were all writin’ folks, weren’t they?  Miss Rossetti anyway writes poetry, I know that.  One of my boarders gave me one of her books for Christmas.  I’ll show it to you.  You don’t think seven and six is too much for a room like this, do you?”

I inwardly noted that the ceilings were much lower than those of my room in Russell Square and that the furniture was old and worn and that the room looked out on an army of sooty chimney-pots, but I explained that seven and six seemed a very reasonable price, and that ninepence for breakfast with ham and eggs was cheap enough, provided the eggs were strictly fresh.

So I paid one week’s rent in advance on the spot, and going back to Russell Square told my landlady that I had found friends in another part of the city and would not return for two days.  My sojourn at Number Thirty-eight Charlotte Street developed nothing further than the meager satisfaction of sleeping for two nights in the room in which Dante Gabriel Rossetti was born, and making the acquaintance of the worthy ticket-taker, who knew all four of the Rossettis, as they had often passed through his gate.

Professor Rossetti lived for twelve years at Thirty-eight Charlotte Street; he then moved to Number Fifty in the next block, which is a somewhat larger house.  It was here that Mazzini used to come.  The house had been made over somewhat, and is now used as an office by the Registrar of Vital Statistics.  This is the place where Dante Gabriel and a young man named Holman Hunt had a studio, and where another young artist by the name of William Morris came to visit them; and here was born “The Germ,” that queer little chipmunk magazine in which first appeared “Hand and Soul” and “The Blessed Damozel,” written by Dante Gabriel when eighteen, the same age at which Bryant wrote “Thanatopsis.”  William Bell Scott used to come here, too.  Scott was a great man in his day.  He had no hair on his head or face, not even eyebrows.  Every follicle had grown aweary and quit.  But Mr. Scott was quite vain of the shape of his head, for well he might be, since several choice sonnets had been combed out of it.  Sometimes when the wine went round and things grew merry, then sentimental, then confidential, Scott would snatch off his wig to display to the company his fine phrenological development, and tell a story about Nelson, who, too, used to wear a wig just like his, and after every battle would take it off and hand it over to his valet to have the bullets combed out of it.

The elder Rossetti died in this house, and was carried to Christ Church in Woburn Square, and thence to Highgate.  His excellent wife waited to see the genius of her children blossom and be acknowledged.  She followed thirty years later, and was buried in the same grave with her husband, where, later, Christina was to join them.