another--with Rudyard Kipling as a result, followed in due
course by Mulvaney, Ortheris and Learoyd, who are quite as immortal as the
rest.

At this time Professor Rossetti was dead, and William Michael, Maria,
Christina and the widowed mother were living at One Hundred Sixty-six
Albany Street, fighting off various hungry wolves that crouched around the
door. Albany Street is rather shabby now, and was then, I suppose. At One
Hundred Twelve Albany Street lives one Dixon, who takes marvelous
photographs of animals in the Zoological Gardens, with a pocket camera,
and then enlarges the pictures a hundred times. These pictures go the
round world over and command big prices. Mr. Dixon was taking for me, at
the National Gallery, the negatives from which I made photogravures for my
Ruskin-Turner book. Mr. Dixon knows more in an artistic and literary way
than any other man in London (I believe), but he is a modest gentleman and
only emits his facts under cross-examination or under the spell of
inspiration. Together we visited the house at One Hundred Sixty-six Albany
Street.

It was vacant at the time, and we rummaged through every room, with the
result that we concluded it makes very little difference where genius is
housed. On one of the windows of a little bedroom we found the word
"Christina" cut with a diamond. When and by whom it was done I do not
know. Surely the Rossettis had no diamonds when they lived here. But Mr.
Dixon had a diamond and with his ring he cut beneath the word just noted
the name, "Dante Gabriel Rossetti." I have recently heard that the
signature has been identified as authentic by a man who was familiar with
Rossetti's handwriting.

When the firm of Morris and Company, Dealers in Art Fabrics, was gotten
under way, and Dante Gabriel had ceased to argue details with that
pre-eminently sane man, William Morris, his finances began to prosper.
Morris directed and utilized the energies of his partners. He marshaled
their virtues into a solid phalanx and marched them on to victory. No
doubt that genius usually requires a keeper. But Morris was a genius
himself and a giant in more ways than one, for he ruled his own spirit,
thus proving himself greater than one who taketh a city.

In Eighteen Hundred Sixty-two, we find Dante Gabriel throwing out the fact
that his income was equal to about ten thousand dollars a year. He took
the beautiful house at Eighteen Cheyne Walk, Chelsea, near the little
street wher