Information
Although not in the best of health herself, the poetess Christina Rossetti travelled willingly down to Hunter’s Forstal in August 1877 to help care for her sick and depressed brother, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, in the small farmhouse he had rented near Herne Bay. With her mother, she undertook the housekeeping, helped with the nursing, supervised the daily regime of fresh air and exercise, kept an anxious eye on Dante Gabriel’s chloral intake and encouraged his return to artistic activity. She found time to appreciate the quiet beauty of their country retreat, expressing her response in a poem written during the six weeks she spent there.
Quotations
AN OCTOBER GARDEN
In my Autumn garden I was fain
To mourn among my scattered roses;
Alas for that last rosebud which uncloses
To Autumn’s languid sun and rain
When all the world is on the wane!
Which has not felt the sweet constraint of June,
Nor heard the nightingale in tune.
Broad-faced asters by my garden walk,
You are but coarse compared with roses
More choice, more dear that rosebud which uncloses
Faint-scented, pinched, upon its stalk,
That least and last which cold winds balk;
A rose it is tho’ least and last of all,
A rose to me tho’ at the fall.
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Place
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Extract
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Birchington
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After his death on 9th April 1882, she wrote a sonnet evoking the setting of his grave...
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Herne Bay
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In the summer of 1847, at the age of sixteen, the poetess holidayed here with her parents...
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Hunters Forstal
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With her mother, she undertook the housekeeping, helped with the nursing, supervised the daily regime of fresh air and exercise, kept an anxious eye on Dante Gabriel’s chloral intake and encouraged his return to artistic activity...
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