Page:Recollections of Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1904).djvu/34

 rests whereon one might sit at ease and enjoy a survey of his pictures, which stood about on easels. Several cabinets of old English and Spanish design and workmanship filled up the odd nooks and corners that were left.

Inviting me to look at what he was then engaged upon, Rossetti drew my attention to his painting of Lady Lilith. It was the portrayal of a beautiful woman, sumptuously seated in some mediæval kind of chair, combing out a cataract of golden hair that fell in masses over her shoulders. By her side was a mirror of curious form, in which was reflected the greenery of the forest glade, through which the glinting sunlight pierced here and there, lighting up the densely-leaved branches of the trees, and a large red double poppy in a goblet of old Venetian glass stood near her. The dreamy beauty of the woman, and the rich colour in which the whole picture was steeped excited my admiration.16 I desired to know its meaning, and in answer to my enquiry he told me it was suggested by Lilith.

"Who was she?" I asked.

Rossetti then told me the Talmudic legend concerning her,17 and then I understood the allusion to her in Faust, where Goethe introduces Lilith into the witch scene on the Hartzbrocken, and makes Faust ask the same question in almost the same words that I had used.18 I am sorry to say Rossetti repainted the face some years later, for what reason I could never divine, and to my thinking he by no means improved upon the original.