Page:Recollections of Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1904).djvu/29

 me, of Dante Gabriel Rossetti, who he thought might be persuaded to do something for me in the way of employment. Upon hearing the name of Rossetti mentioned, I instantly recalled the announcement I had once seen in the Illustrated London News, and the premonition I had then received, and felt that what was then so strangely presaged was actually about to come to pass.

I lost no time in writing to Mr. Howell. In reply, he invited me over to Brixton, where he resided, to lunch with him, when my work and capabilities could be fully discussed. And taking with me a few sketches of what I considered most likely to find favour in his sight and pave my way to a meeting with Rossetti, I accordingly found myself at Brixton by the time appointed.

Mr. Howell received me with great kindness, and was so genial and so encouraging in his criticism, that I soon felt quite at my ease and most sanguine as to the future. Lunch was followed by a cigarette and a very pleasant chat, in the course of which I gathered much about Rossetti, as well as concerning John Ruskin.

As a start, my host gave me a commission to make facsimile copies of two heads of Dante that were in his study, but the owner of which was Rossetti. The history of these heads, as related by Howell, was both curious and interesting to me, since it opened up a field of literature and art of which I was hitherto almost ignorant. The first was a copy of a fresco discovered by Baron Seymour Kirkup7 in an old chapel at Florence8