THE PRE-RAPHAELITE TRAGEDY — William Gaunt—Harcourt, Brace ($3).
When Britain trembled over one of its periodic French invasion scares in 1859, the home guards were somewhat puzzled by the enlistment of four unusual volunteers. Their names were Dante Gabriel Rossetti, William Morris, William Holman Hunt, John Everett Millais. The guards were even more puzzled:
> When Volunteer Hunt always lost the screws to his musket during lock drill.
> When at the command Form Fours! Volunteer Rossetti always asked, "Why?"
> When at the command Left! Volunteer Morris (although an early attachment to King Arthur had gradually converted him to Marxism) always marched right.
The home guards did not know that their strange comrades-in-arms were patriotic Pre-Raphaelites, members of that oddly assorted group of late 19th-Century British poets, painters and interior decorators whose whole creative life was a revolt against practically everything that had happened in the world for the last 400 years.
"Theirs," says Author William Gaunt, "was the tragedy of the century. . . . They had many different enthusiasms—in which, however, there is one consistent factor—a defiance of materialism." Few novels are as absorbing as this collective biography of the Pre-Raphaelites; few are as funny. And no other book on Rossetti and his circle has set them so accurately in their historical context, has given to the queer, excessive things they did so clear a historical meaning. For the Pre-Raphaelites, says Gaunt, are the only optimistic rebel artists who have so far defied industrial civilization. "They would not adapt themselves to their age. Its most brilliant misfits, they invented time and place of their own in which to live and work."
Chimney Sweep or Painter? Almost a pre-Pre-Raphaelite was Painter John Everett Millais. At ten, he used to clap "old daddy" familiarly on the back. "Dear creatures," he would say tolerantly of his parents. At this tender age John Everett's mother took her artistically precocious son to see the president of the Royal Academy. "Madam," said the president, "you had better make him a chimney sweep." Then he looked at John's drawings. "Madam," said the president, "it is your duty to bring the boy up to art." At twelve, John Everett won the Royal Academy's gold medal. As he tripped before the solemn Academicians, "long, light curls fell over his goffered collar, his face was fresh-colored and open, his eyes a candid blue." "The Child" had become "the darling of the institution."