Historical, Biographical, and Literary Fiction / Essays / Poetry / Reviews /Book Cover and Interior Illustrations / Pet Portraits and Other Commissioned Artwork
The snow has come early, silently covering leaves never raked but left to nourish or suffocate the ground on which the future stands.
Deeper and deeper, it’s all hidden for now.
This season for gathering is not crowded here in the quiet company of snow.
Looking back to the place called home, candles are lit to welcome without letting in. Although the passing of possibilities might, at least, enter dreams in the night.
Photograph & Painting Copyrighted by DM Denton 2013
The light comes up and notices a Cardinal heart-red against the idea that winter is colorless – also challenged by berries clinging to the bareness of branches.
Copyright 2013 by DM Denton
‘Tis the season for standing still. All growing needs a rest.
The rain is falling now, warm and then icy, washing away the cleanliness of snow, which is already missed. I hear it will return before too long.
Nature has decided some trees have stood long enough. They will be missed, but have been cleared away for a new outlook.
This is winter before it is Christmas. This is hope after it has given up.
Copyright June M DiGiacomo (my mom) March 10, 1929 – October 14, 2021
Wishing all
a warm and wonderous
Winter Solstice and Holiday season
however you celebrate and enjoy!
In the Bleak Mid-Winter Christina Rossetti
In the bleak mid-winter Frosty wind made moan, Earth stood hard as iron, Water like a stone; Snow had fallen, snow on snow, Snow on snow, In the bleak mid-winter Long ago.
Our God, Heaven cannot hold Him Nor earth sustain; Heaven and earth shall flee away When He comes to reign: In the bleak mid-winter A stable-place sufficed The Lord God Almighty, Jesus Christ.
Enough for Him, whom cherubim Worship night and day, A breastful of milk And a mangerful of hay; Enough for Him, whom angels Fall down before, The ox and ass and camel Which adore.
Angels and archangels May have gathered there, Cherubim and seraphim Thronged the air, But only His mother In her maiden bliss, Worshipped the Beloved With a kiss.
What can I give Him, Poor as I am? If I were a shepherd I would bring a lamb, If I were a wise man I would do my part, Yet what I can I give Him, Give my heart.
From left to right: Christina, Dante Gabriel, Frances (mother), William, and Maria Rossetti Photograph by Charles Dodgson, AKA Lewis Carroll 1863
A Birthday By Christina Rossetti
My heart is like a singing bird Whose nest is in a water’d shoot; My heart is like an apple-tree Whose boughs are bent with thickset fruit; My heart is like a rainbow shell That paddles in a halcyon sea; My heart is gladder than all these Because my love is come to me.
Raise me a dais of silk and down; Hang it with vair and purple dyes; Carve it in doves and pomegranates, And peacocks with a hundred eyes; Work it in gold and silver grapes, In leaves and silver fleurs-de-lys; Because the birthday of my life Is come, my love is come to me.
from Ecce Ancilla Domini, or The Annunciation by Dante Gabriel Rossetti
Excerpt from The Dove Upon Her Branch
Christina and William Rossetti posing for the painting of Ecce Ancilla Domini by Dante Gabriel Rossetti in November 1849
Another portrait to pose for offered an alternative, productive engagement, being the handmaid of the Lord a worthy occupation. William sitting for the Angel Gabriel completed a happy if draughty distraction of camaraderie and creation with her brothers.
At that time Gabriel worked on Newman Street above a hop-shop or Dancing Academy as its proprietor tried to improve it.
“Why is the painting tall and narrow?” Christina wondered with her first glance at the work in progress.
“It is one-half of a diptych. Its companion will depict the Virgin’s death.”
“Will you have both finished by spring for the R.A.?” William slapped his arms around himself in an attempt to warm his sleeveless, sheeted body. “Anymore coal for the grate?”
“Doubt it.” Gabriel urgently picked through the pile of brushes on the small pedestal table next to his easel.
Christina noticed they were all thin-handled and fine-bristled. “No wonder you take so long to finish anything.” She also looked at his pallet, noticing he wasn’t mixing colors, but using fresh daubs of unadulterated white, blue, and red paint.
“I hope you won’t get bronchitis again.” William repositioned the woolen shawl that had slipped off her shoulders.
“I haven’t even caught a cold.” Christina had resigned herself to shivering in her flimsy nightgown for the sake of Gabriel’s vision and to prove as enduring as any of the other models who sat for him.
“Interesting.” As he leaned forward, William put a hand on his brother’s back. “Even with as little as you’ve done, I see the perspective of Giotto. Yet, I also see Flemish primitive, what you and Hunt were so taken with in Bruges. Before you started, I noticed you had followed Van Eyck’s practice of preparing the canvas with white ground.”
Gabriel smiled. “I’m sure it will all seem a confused mess to those, like Ruskin, who think their opinions matter.”
“A risk worth taking. But you must enter both panels together.”
“I don’t paint to exhibit.”
“You must, Gabe, to make a name for yourself, a living. Your work must be seen. And critiqued.”
“Says the would-be critic.”
“Now I see why you want me contorted on a corner of that saggy cot.” Christina though it wise to change the subject. “And all wrinkly and looking about to jump up and run away.”
“I thank Collinson for your disquiet.” Gabriel was still brooding over Mr. Hunt falling into arrears with the rent on Cleveland Street and defecting to James’ studio in Brompton.
They had spoken of many things during the hours of posing and painting, breaking to eat and drink, and for Christina and William to wrap themselves in blankets long enough to feel their fingers and toes again. Not once, until that moment, had anyone mentioned the man Christina had, without good reason, agreed to marry. She was almost convinced the last year of his waxing and waning hadn’t happened; that somewhere out there was the face not seen, the voice not heard, the heart that not yet—
My latest commissioned pet portrait of Poppy, a Groodle (cross between a Poodle and a Golden Retriever) traveled all the way to Australia, a recent birthday present for the daughter of one of my Facebook friends, Rosanna Taylor.
Rosanna wrote: “Jasmin was absolutely thrilled to receive this beautiful surprise for her 50th birthday … serendipity at its finest … as it was 10 years ago for her 40th that you painted her first dog Harry who sadly passed away 5 years ago …
“Both pictures are now on the family room wall.”
Here’s Harry …
Our perfect companions never have fewer than four feet.” ~ Colette
Visit my website for more examples of my artwork. Scroll down for the pet portraits.
And here is my latest fur-baby, two-year-old Tommy.
It’s just over five weeks since sweet, sassy, joyous, extremely affectionate Tommy got his fur-ever home with Oscar, Kenji, and Yoshi and me!
He’s settled in so well, learning the different personalities and boundaries of his big brothers, while filling our lives with his magnetically pur-fect personality and spirit.
He is SO loved!
Tommy was rescued from a hoarding situation by the Wyoming County SPCA in Attica NY. He is the fifth cat I have adopted from this shelter. Support through donations is always needed.
The Wyoming County SPCA is an organization that relies solely on contributions from the community. We collect NO government funding! Without you we would not be able to provide temporary housing to animals that need loving homes. Please help us to continue our mission with your generous donation!
This post is in memory of a dear friend’s cat, Kita, who recently passed over the rainbow bridge. I painted a portrait of beautiful Kita a few years ago.
Until one has loved an animal, a part of one’s soul remains unawakened. ~ Anatole France
On July 30th, 1818, Emily Jane Brontë was born in Thornton, West Yorkshire, England.
Emily didn’t often show enthusiasm for going to church and was usually loathed to enjoy herself in public, but her happy anticipation of Mendelssohn’s Paulus put on quite a display of smiles and excited fidgeting.
Also uninhibited by excitement, Anne grasped Emily’s hand, hoping she wouldn’t mind.
Emily endorsed Anne’s effort with a quick squeeze. “I have to catch up with his Songs without Words volumes. I believe there are eight now. I only have five.”
Finally Anne knew what Emily’s birthday present should be, just enough time to send away for it.
Although my novel Without the Veil Between focuses on Anne, Emily is essential to the narrative, whether they are together at Haworth, on an excursion to York, or separated for long periods of time.
Emily was an imaginative and liberating influence on dutiful, devout Anne, a constant and protective best friend who by example more than precept reminded her little sister to leave at least some of her spirit unfettered and even encouraged her to now and then step out of life’s responsibilities and live a little wildly, especially as mother earth beckoned her to.
For nature is constant still
For when the heart is free from care
Whatever meets the eye
Is bright, and every sound we hear
Is full of melody …
~ Anne Brontë, from Verses for Lady Geralda, 1836
Long after the Brontë sisters had died, Charlotte’s friend Ellen Nussey wrote in Reminisces of Charlotte Brontë that “(Emily) and Anne were like twins – inseparable companions, and in the very closest sympathy, which never had any interruption.”
What better way to enjoy time with Emily again than by reliving their habit of wandering west to meet only earth and sky. Their dogs, like themselves, despite contrasting physiques and personalities, were intrinsically similar, especially in their need to frequently escape the stuffiness and limited amusement of being indoors.
As children they formed an alliance apart from Charlotte, brother Branwell and the fictional world of Angria to invent their own imaginary kingdom of Gondal. The departure of Charlotte to Roe Head School meant they became even closer, but something more powerful than circumstance cemented their devotion: the innate ability to understand, unconditionally love, lighten, consolingly burden and so strengthen each other, to speak in silence as much as conversation, and, perhaps, most significantly, to create “the very closest sympathy” through the infinite sisterhood of their imaginations.
To Imagination by Emily Brontë
When weary with the long day’s care, And earthly change from pain to pain, And lost, and ready to despair, Thy kind voice calls me back again O my true friend, I am not lone While thou canst speak with such a tone!
So hopeless is the world without, The world within I doubly prize; Thy world where guile and hate and doubt And cold suspicion never rise; Where thou and I and Liberty Have undisputed sovereignty.
What matters it that all around Danger and grief and darkness lie, If but within our bosom’s bound We hold a bright unsullied sky, Warm with ten thousand mingled rays Of suns that know no winter days?
Reason indeed may oft complain For Nature’s sad reality, And tell the suffering heart how vain Its cherished dreams must always be; And Truth may rudely trample down The flowers of Fancy newly blown.
But thou art ever there to bring The hovering visions back and breathe New glories o’er the blighted spring And call a lovelier life from death, And whisper with a voice divine Of real worlds as bright as thine.
I trust not to thy phantom bliss, Yet still in evening’s quiet hour With never-failing thankfulness I welcome thee, benignant power, Sure solacer of human cares And brighter hope when hope despairs.
Emily Brontë’s fold-up writing desk and contents
Anne was less hesitant [than Charlotte] to being drawn into Emily’s simply lived yet creatively complex orbit; then Anne had grown up in it, been sustained by it, and found true friendship in it. She knew, welcoming the hope in that knowledge, that even as Emily seemed unsentimental, letting them go to their beds and disappointments and fears and useless efforts to change what couldn’t be changed, she was keeping a place for them by the fire of her imagination and fidelity.
What was complicated for her sisters and brother was simple for Emily: there was no going back to working for little profit to end up more impoverished. She settled once and for all into the confinement that unleashed her fantasies, escaping change except as she grew taller and stronger and unapologetically herself. “I am as God made me,” Charlotte reported Emily’s answer to the “silly” girls at the Pensionnat who ridiculed her clothes, walk, thoughts, and habits. Anne couldn’t decide if such certainty made Emily saintly or blasphemous. According to Charlotte it did the trick in stopping the harassment, so it would seem an enlightened declaration after all.
Emily knew her place and stuck with it without being stuck, like a solitary tree on the moor. She was as violently content, shaped by the wind yet unyielding, in motion without leaving the spot she was rooted in.
I walk among the daisies, as of old; But he comes never more by lane or fold. The same warm speedwell-field is dark with dew; But he’s away beyond a deeper blue. A year to-day we saw the same flowers grow– Last May! Last May! A century ago.
Above the speedwell leans the rosy tree From which he plucked an apple bough for me. Not all the blossom on the branches left Can fill the place of that sweet bough bereft; And none can fill the heart that loved him so Last May! Last May! Eternities ago.
~Mary Gladys Webb (1881 – 1927, English novelist and poet, whose work is set chiefly in the Shropshire countryside and among Shropshire characters)
There is but one May in the year, And sometimes May is wet and cold; There is but one May in the year Before the year grows old. Yet though it be the chilliest May, With least of sun and most of showers, Its wind and dew, its night and day, Bring up the flowers. ~ Christina Rossetti (1830-1894, English poet of romantic, devotional, and children’s poems)
The May Queen
But I must gather knots of flowers, And buds and garlands gay, For I’m to be Queen o’ the May, mother, I’m to be Queen o’ the May. ~ Alfred Lord Tennyson (1809-1892, Poet Laureate of Great Britain and Ireland during much of Queen Victoria’s reign)
Oh! that we two were Maying
Oh! that we two were Maying Down the stream of the soft spring breeze; Like children with violets playing, In the shade of the whispering trees. ~ Charles Kingsley (1819-1875, social reformer, historian and novelist)
May-Day
Wreaths for the May! for happy Spring Today shall all her dowry bring The love of kind, the joy, the grace, Hymen of element and race, Knowing well to celebrate With song and hue and star and state, With tender light and youthful cheer, The spousals of the new-born year. Lo love’s inundation poured Over space and race abroad ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882, American essayist, lecturer, philosopher and poet)
May Day
A delicate fabric of bird song Floats in the air, The smell of wet wild earth Is everywhere. Red small leaves of the maple Are clenched like a hand, Like girls at their first communion The pear trees stand. Oh I must pass nothing by Without loving it much, The raindrop try with my lips, The grass with my touch; For how can I be sure I shall see again The world on the first of May Shining after the rain? ~ Sara Teasdale (American poet, 1884 – 1933)
Now the bright morning-star, Day’s harbinger, Comes dancing from the East, and leads with her The flowery May, who from her green lap throws The yellow cowslip and the pale primrose. Hail, bounteous May, that dost inspire Mirth, and youth, and warm desire! Woods and groves are of thy dressing; Hill and dale doth boast thy blessing. Thus we salute thee with our early song, And welcome thee, and wish thee long. ~ John Milton (1608-1674, English poet, polemicist, man of letters, and civil servant)
Winds of May, that dance on the sea, Dancing a ring-around in glee From furrow to furrow, while overhead The foam flies up to be garlanded, In silvery arches spanning the air, Saw you my true love anywhere? Welladay! Welladay! For the winds of May! Love is unhappy when love is away! ~ James Joyce (1882-1941, Irish novelist, short story writer, and poet)
Yes, I will spend the livelong day With Nature in this month of May; And sit beneath the trees, and share My bread with birds whose homes are there; While cows lie down to eat, and sheep Stand to their necks in grass so deep; While birds do sing with all their might, As though they felt the earth in flight. ~ William Henry Davies (1871-1940, Welsh poet and writer)
Queer things happen in the garden in May. Little faces forgotten appear, and plants thought to be dead suddenly wave a green hand to confound you. ~ W. E . Johns (1893-1968, English First World War pilot, and writer of adventure stories)
The fair maid who, the first of May Goes to the fields at break of day And washes in dew from the hawthorn tree Will ever after handsome be. ~ Mother Goose Nursery Rhyme
When April steps aside for May, Like diamonds all the rain-drops glisten; Fresh violets open every day: To some new bird each hour we listen. ~ Lucy Larcom (1824-1893, American teacher, poet, and author)
The Sun and the Wind
The sun was warm but the wind was chill. You know how it is with an April day. When the sun is out and the wind is still, You’re one month on in the middle of May. But if you so much as dare to speak, a cloud come over the sunlit arch, And wind comes off a frozen peak, And you’re two months back in the middle of March. ~ Robert Frost (1874-1963, American poet)
I cannot tell you how it was, But this I know: it came to pass Upon a bright and sunny day When May was young; ah, pleasant May! As yet the poppies were not born Between the blades of tender corn; The last egg had not hatched as yet, Nor any bird foregone its mate.
I cannot tell you what it was, But this I know: it did but pass. It passed away with sunny May, Like all sweet things it passed away, And left me old, and cold, and gray. ~ Christina Rossetti (1830-1894, English poet of romantic, devotional, and children’s poems)
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May. ~ William Shakespeare
Above all, through the well-measured words of Denton, a young Anne emerges more and more. She frees from the web of religiosity with which she traditionally is painted, [and] tries to leave something good in the world through her measured but deliberately targeted writing. A different Anne at the beginning of the book, timidly in love; then resigned to accept her own death with dignity and fortitude. A meaningful homage to the memory of Anne Brontë.
~ Maddalena De Leo, Italian Representative of The Bronte Society
STC98097 Portrait of Anne Bronte (1820-49) from a drawing in the possession of the Rev. A. B. Nicholls, engraved by Walker and Boutall (engraving) by Bronte, Charlotte (1816-55) (after) engraving Private Collection The Stapleton Collection English, out of copyright
Thanks to her dear sister Emily, who is reported to have been a wonderful baker, Anne celebrates her birthday in Chapter Nine of Without the Veil Between.
It was years since Anne was home on her birthday. Emily baked an oatmeal and treacle cake a couple of days ahead of the teatime designated for its consumption to soften it in a tin.
“I’ll allow no one to refuse a piece of Annie’s parkin.” Emily, unusually, looked very pleased with herself. “I mean to give my bet’r sen some happy thoughts.” She even sang some lines from an old ballad supposedly from the time of Robin Hood. “‘Now the guests well satisfied, the fragments were laid on one side when Arthur, to make hearts merry, brought ales and parkins and perry.’”
“‘When Timothy Twig stept in, with his pipe and a pipkin of gin,’” Branwell followed on singing.
“Always the spoiler.” Emily didn’t look at him.
“Well, part of a song doesn’t tell the whole story.”
Anne briefly escaped their argument to take a piece of cake out to Tabby in the back kitchen. Easily wearied and hard-of-hearing, the old servant was trying to nap in a straight-backed chair positioned in the draft from the back door.
“Where’s your shawl?” Almost as soon as she wondered, Anne found it draped over the handle of a broom leaning against a wall.
“Eh? What yer fuss?”
Anne gently laid the loosely-knit shawl around Tabby’s shoulders and gave her the plate of cake.
“Dear angel-lass.”
Later, as the sisters spent a final parlor-cozy evening before Anne returned to Thorpe Green, Branwell off to take advantage of his last chance for a while to “stept in” at the Black Bull, even Charlotte admitted the liability he presented to their progress.
“The way it’s going with him, it’s better our school scheme comes to nothing. No doubt he’ll soon be home again, unemployable, even less able to provide decent company. Certainly not an example of manhood young girls should witness.”
Anne never told Charlotte as much as she did Emily, but there was no way to prevent the disturbance of her and Branwell returning home for the holidays together but estranged. As soon as they arrived, Anne fled the hours of traveling with him as though nothing ever disgusted her more. Over the weeks Branwell tried to converse with her beyond yes and no and maybe. Normally, her forbearing nature wouldn’t allow her to slight anyone, but with agitated busyness she dismissed him—to comb Flossy or clean Dick’s cage or help in the kitchen, which she rarely did, or beg Charlotte to let her read to their father who didn’t know of his son’s latest sin but might notice his guilt, so Branwell kept out of his way.
For a while Anne was as cowardly avoiding her brother, even if it meant staying in her room when he was in the house.
She wasn’t proud of her behavior. Gradually she felt more ashamed of her own choices and failings than Branwell’s, blaming her intransigence and righteousness for her failure to persuade him to stand stronger against temptation. Love was what she was made for, understanding, forgiveness and faith at the heart of her, good memories soothing the bad. Flashes of the gentle brother with his little sister on his knee, proving his talent for telling stories too entertaining to question and drawing pretty pictures he inscribed for Anne, tempted her to once more hope he might yet chose rationale and, especially, what was right, over ruin.
“Let’s expect he’ll be better and do better.” It was as if Emily had read Anne’s thoughts. “Speak no more of it tonight. Are you still working on the same poem, Annie?”
“Still wrangling with it. You know how it is, thinking it might be better with a different word or different order of words, more metaphors or less. That it might benefit from leaving some sentiments out altogether.”
“I hope it isn’t gloomy.” Charlotte was sitting across the parlor table from Anne, the paper she was fingering easily in view as the beginnings of a letter in French.
Emily’s lounging took on the look of someone double-jointed with her right leg slid off the sofa and her left one lifted and bent, its stockinged foot pressed against the back of the couch. She made a feeble effort of controlling her skirt for modesty’s sake. “It’s rather pleading.”
“Entreating,” Anne corrected as she knew Emily would appreciate.
Emily winked. “If you say so.”
“Let’s hear it entreat then,” Charlotte challenged.
Anne didn’t want to read the poem out loud and spoil the evening with dread of what she was going back to the next day. For a moment, she considered sharing a little of Passages instead, an excerpt that was well-worked and entertaining. Sensing her sister’s impatience, she stood with one of her journals, opening it to its middle and flipping a few pages further. With a slow, almost tiptoeing stride, she recited as she moved around the table, because of the limited space brushing Charlotte’s back with each passing by.
“‘God. If this indeed be all that Life can show to me; if on my aching brow may fall no freshening dew from Thee; if no brighter light than this the lamp of hope may glow, and I may only dream of bliss and wake to weary woe—’”
Emily sighed as dramatically as she never naturally did.
“You always cheer us so.”
“I’m sorry, Charlotte. I won’t continue.” Anne had reached her chair after a second circling.
“No, go on. The writing itself is lovely.”
“‘If friendship’s solace must decay, when other joys are gone, and love must keep so far away—’”
“Enough.” Charlotte groaned.
“Not for me.” Emily threw her head back and closed her eyes.
Anne continued, realizing the poem was quite good and nearly as she intended. However, she hesitated when she reached the fourth verse, mustering up the courage to take a risk.
“Vice and sin?” Emily echoed. “Nothing to do with anyone we know, of course.”
“That’s it for now. I have yet to perfect the rest of it.”
Illustration by DM Denton from “Without the Veil Between”
I wished to tell the truth, for truth always conveys its own moral to those who are able to receive it. ~ Anne Brontë, from her introduction to the second edition of The Tenant of Wildfell Hall
I allow she has small claims to perfection; but then, I maintain that, if she were more perfect, she would be less interesting. ~ Anne Brontë, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall
Happy Birthday, Anne Brontë and thank you
for taking me on an extraordinary and transformational writing experience!
This is the most beautiful novel about Anne Brontë and her sisters that I’ve read in a very long time. I couldn’t put it down once I’d started. I fell into the author’s languid writing style and was captivated by her research and depth of scope of the life of the sisters. The novel is beautifully illustrated by the author herself. It is a book to be savored and enjoyed.
This is my fourth Christmas without my mom who passed in October 2021. The Snow WhiteGift, a Kindle short story published by All Things That Matter Press, was based on true events from her childhood. She loved it and always talked about how it deserved more readers.
I agree!
Anyone who spent time with my mother June soon discovered that she was a wonderful verbal storyteller.
It is with some sadness but mostly gratefulness of being able to preserve one of my mother’s special memories that, as a storyteller through the written word, I continue to reach out with it.
In Depression-weary times, a little girl’s wish for a special doll touches a stoic heart. Through sacrifice and pure intent, giving her what she wants results in disappointment but eventually confirms that love and patience can work magic.
A seasonal story for every season
The Snow White Gift
by DM Denton
A childish gasp greeted the wide-eyed porcelain doll. The exploration of a trunk full of old clothes uncovered it, eager hands lifting it from lying so long on its back in the dark. It blinked, dropped its arms, stretched its legs and lowered its chin while its sleeves were pinched out. An attempt was made to smooth the creases in its skirt and cape; the ribbon in its hair retied. Other than twisting awkwardly when it was hugged like a long lost friend, it offered no resistance to being rescued from what might have been the end of its story.
The Snow White Gift is available to read in its entirety on Kindle devices or for most other devices by downloading the Kindle app.
Happy Holidays and New Year to all. We must not lose hope that peace and love will prevail.
The Snow White Gift by Diane Denton is a compelling, moving, touching and beautiful fictional short story set around Christmas in Depression-weary times. Personally, I think this is a story everyone should read for its all about the art of giving. Unconditional giving, from the heart without asking anything back in return. Willing to set our own wishes aside to be able to give to another person. I can highly recommend this wondrous and excellent written story to you! I read all the pages in one breath. ~ 5 Star Amazon Review
National Family Care Givers Month is commemorated every November. Caring for a loved one at home – whether they live with a long-term illness or are elderly in need of support – is a significant commitment and is life-changing for the entire family. Local author Diane Denton has shared her experience as a caregiver to her late mom June in blog posts while June was living and shortly after she passed away. This year she shares her reflections a few years after her mother’s passing.
Here’s an excerpt:
You shared your experience as a caregiver in two previous posts here: in the years since your mother passed, what are your thoughts on being an at home caregiver for a loved one?
It’s just over three years since my mom passed. I’ll be honest. These days I try to avoid reliving the experience of my being her caregiver, especially the last few years of her life when she was bedridden, blind, and increasingly distressed.
My thoughts and emotions are more willing to reflect on the life we built together as suddenly single women, when, having been separated for sixteen years, unable to share birthdays and holidays and, especially, everyday moments and spontaneous (long before cell or smart phones) communication, I returned to the US and moved in with her. We certainly made up for lost time. I was only 36, she was in her early 60s, and there were many years ahead for us to enjoy life in all the ways we had in common, and, despite some differences and conflicts, to be mutually supportive. If anything, having to start over in so many aspects of my life, I was more reliant on her than she was on me.
As my mom progressed through her 80s, she could be left on her own. She cooked, did laundry and other things around the house, drove short distances, and walked well enough to go out to eat, attend church, take a painting class, enjoy lunch and cards at the senior center, and even be an election inspector. As her body grew frailer and limited her activity, her mind was vibrant and her personality recognizable. I didn’t suspect what was coming. Taking care of her as she, hopefully, lived a long life, keeping her in the home she loved amongst her cats and surrounded by nature, didn’t seem beyond my ability to manage.
Looking back, I realize how unprepared I was for coming home to her having fallen, worrying about her starting a fire so I turned off the trip switch to the stove, calling over and over to her not answering the phone or talking incoherently if she did. Suddenly I was summoning the EMTs at midnight, visiting her in the hospital and hearing her hallucinating as I approached her room, and, even worse, when she was home and it was all on me to try to calm her and make sure she was safe, which meant acting more like her jailer than daughter, and experiencing her resentment that broke my heart over and over.
A perfect way to begin October 2024! A review of The Dove Upon Her Branch: A Novel Portrait of Christina Rossetti featured in the PRS Review XXII, Number 2, Summer 2024
So says Christina Rossetti in The Dove Upon Her Branch, D.M. Denton’s thorough and expressive novel-portrait of the celebrated author’s life. It is an incisive comment, one which the readers of Rossetti will quickly recognise in her poetry. Anyone who has read ‘When I am dead, my dearest’ cannot fail to be moved by its aching finality, and its heart-felt simplicity. And yet, in reading Denton’s well-researched volume, it becomes ever clearer that we must not reduce Rossetti merely to a Victorian stereotype, a wistful and longing woman with only melancholy to express. Rather, Denton’s portrait depicts a person in their entirety: their joys, triumphs, disappointments, and trials.
Denton’s novel is very evidently a labour of love, meticulously researched and crafted, which brings together academic research and creative reconstruction. It offers not only an insight into Rossetti’s life, but more broadly into the interior workings of the Pre Raphaelite Brotherhood and their acquaintances. The interconnectedness of the Victorian radical art scene becomes apparent from very early on; Christina Rossetti’s entanglements with the artists and poets outside of her immediate family have a very evident impact on her development as a poet in her own right. Denton writes convincingly about the literary circles of the time: from Christina’s encounters with Charles Dodgson to the artistic community which built up around the Rossettis’ various houses – notably 56 Euston Square which played host to gatherings that included Julia Margaret Cameron. The discussions and debates are tenderly drawn, and even characters who appear infrequently have distinctive and vivid voices.
Yet the most well-drawn characters must certainly be the Rossettis themselves, with Christina Rossetti at the heart. Denton provides an exploration of the unconventional life of the family, from its establishment in England through the lives of its artistic, and wildly different, offspring. The closeness of the family, particularly of Christina and her mother, is highlighted, and at times feels almost claustrophobic. Denton depicts the joys of family life with humour but does not shy away from the practicalities of Victorian life, realities like having enough coal for the fire. And while the relationship between the siblings is warm and supportive, there is still a hint of jealousy, particularly regarding their poetic endeavours. The Dove Upon Her Branch, although superficially the story of Christina Rossetti, actually goes beyond that: it is a story of a family, a saga.
In doing so, however, Denton does not neglect her key focus. She interweaves primary source material, most often poetry, into her narrative in order to give a real sense that we are witnessing Christina’s innermost thoughts and emotions. This is most powerful at moments of vulnerability, especially Christina’s frequent periods of illness and moments of grief. Her relationships, and sometimes regrets at ending them, provide much inspiration for her poetry, and the blending of poetry and story highlight this beautifully. Moreover, Denton delves into the complexities of Rossetti’s character in an effort to avoid reducing her to a fragile, two-dimensional Victorian stereotype. Christina ‘wasn’t comfortable with ambition but wasn’t immune to it’; she was ‘impeded’ by her prettiness and stoically endured its loss after several health battles; she was intensely charitable and despaired at seeing ‘a child swallowed by this monster’ at the gates of a workhouse. Denton’s portrait is of a multifaceted woman: sometimes fragile and vulnerable, sometimes strong and demanding, sometimes caring and maternal to those around her.
Some of the most memorable parts of this impressive novel-portrait, however, are the humorous and vivid portrayals of the chaos of bohemian Victorian life. Nowhere is this more comically evident than in the description of Dante Gabriel Rossetti’s menagerie, an ‘animal hoard’ that included owls, a parrot, and a wombat. The quirks and habits of Christina herself are also sometimes written with a wry smile, and the reader will not struggle to imagine Rossetti pasting paper over the salubrious lines in Swinburne’s poetry or demolishing a room in a violent fit of youthful temper.
The final pieces of the tapestry of research and imagination that makes up this novel are Denton’s own illustrations which begin each part of the narrative. These monochrome pencil sketches bring to life Denton’s Christina: as a toddling child, a beautiful young woman surrounded by nature, a thoughtful older writer. In much the same vein as Dante Gabriel Rossetti’s ekphrastic portraits with sonnets written on the frames, Denton’s prose and illustrations work beautifully together, blending art and word, image, and text in a memorable way. The Dove Upon Her Branch is a true labour of love, and an honest, moving portrait of one of the Victorian era’s most intriguing figures.
The Pre-Raphaelites were a secret society of young artists (and one writer), founded in London in 1848. They were opposed to the Royal Academy’s promotion of the ideal as exemplified in the work of Raphael
The name Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood referred to the groups’ opposition to the Royal Academy’s promotion of the Renaissance master Raphael. They were also in revolt against the triviality of the immensely popular genre painting of time.
Inspired by the theories of John Ruskin, who urged artists to ‘go to nature’, they believed in an art of serious subjects treated with maximum realism. Their principal themes were initially religious, but they also used subjects from literature and poetry, particularly those dealing with love and death. They also explored modern social problems.
Its principal members were William Holman Hunt, John Everett Millais, and Dante Gabriel Rossetti. After initial heavy opposition the Pre-Raphaelites became highly influential, with a second phase of the movement from about 1860, inspired particularly by the work of Rossetti, making major contribution to symbolism.
The Pre-Raphaelite Society is the international society for the study of the lives and art of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood and their circle. Founded in 1988, the PRS produces the Review of the Pre-Raphaelite Society three times a year, a journal which includes articles relating to the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood and their successors, book and exhibition reviews and meeting reports. We host meetings and lectures of national and international interest, and are the home of The Pre-Raphaelite Podcast. The PRS also organises a Postgraduate Network and a Professionals Network. We also run annual competitions for essays, poetry and art inspired by Pre-Raphaelitism, and occasionally offer funding for Pre-Raphaelite projects.
If you are interested in supporting the Society, please consider purchasing a membership or making a donation.
I heartfeltly thank those who have purchased the novel in one of its formats (paperback, e-book, and audiobook) and those who have taken the time to write and post a review.
There seemed to be a lot of excitement around the novel’s release, and I was optimistic for its reception, certainly that it would reach out as much if not more than had been the case for my previous three novels.
I probably shouldn’t, but will, express my disappointment that I haven’t heard more from readers, whether in the form of reviews or just letting me know what they thought of the novel.
A review of the novel is set to appear in The PRS Review 2024 Summer Issue, which will be out soon. I’m hopeful it will encourage more readers in the Pre-Raphaelite Society’s demographic and beyond.
Here’s a summary followed by some snippets of reviews, as well as links to purchase.
“How many children could say their home hosted the humblest and highest at the same time, on any given evening invaded by expatriates their father never hesitated to invite in? Through the back door he welcomed a bookseller, organ grinder, biscuit maker, vagrant macaroni man, and one called Galli who thought he was Christ. Through the front, disgraced Italian counts and generals made as officious entrances as a small house on Charlotte Street afforded.”
Christina Georgina Rossetti is the youngest of four siblings in a close-knit, creative Anglo-Italian family. A spirited child like her brother, Pre-Raphaelite artist Dante Gabriel Rossetti, in adolescence she struggles with being sickly and depressed. She emerges “a dove on a solitary branch,” realizing her voice through writing, most exceptionally poetry.
Her respectable Victorian life teeters on the edge of a bohemian one. London is Christina’s beginning and end, travels, possibilities and impossibilities for love and marriage, ambivalent ambition, piety, charity, illness, and bonds of blood, heart, and soul tell her story. Journeys through reflection and imagination create her legacy.
Review excerpts
The lively depictions of Christina’s family and friends are one of the huge pleasures of reading this book as we follow her life from childhood into young womanhood, middle age and death at 64. A complex character, we share Christina’s powerful and fluctuating emotions as she struggles with the idea of marriage; Dante Gabriel’s relationships with other women; her ambivalence towards the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood; and doubts about the worth of her own poetry.~D. Bennison, Bennison Books
The fine tapestry of words in The Dove Upon Her Branch evokes a life lived more in the shadows than the light, but also reveals Christina Rosetti’s verve and certainty of talent.~Mary Clark, poet, author
The author doesn’t disappoint with her latest.
I read with enjoyment because I am sure it was enjoyably written for it flows with a writer’s passion for her subject. It is a breath of bookish history written as if for a stage “in bringing a story and themes, characters, their thoughts and emotions alive”.~Martin Shone, poet, author
What made the novel important to me, however, was the amazing amount of detail about the Rossetti household and the milieu in which the family lived that Denton conjures, partially from research and partially from her imagination.
I think there is always value at examining the lives of people like Christina Rossetti to see what the wellsprings of extraordinary creativity truly are. Christina Rosetti’s poetry, especially her children’s poems, still represent some of the most extraordinary poetry ever written by an English poet. But there is also value in understanding the context of a time through the details of the lives lived during that time. I am just glad that I have read Denton’s latest novel.~ Thomas Davis, poet, author
This is a fictionalized account of the poet’s life and her family. More than that, Ms. Denton has woven Rossetti’s own words into the tale in such a way as to bring her words to life and give them new meaning. Beyond that, the author’s own language flow and word choices resonate beautifully with what we know of Christina Rossetti’s own use of language. All in all, this is a brilliant work.~Kenneth Weene, poet, author
Still famous today are the rambunctious poet-painter Dante Gabriel Rossetti and his sister Christina (1830-1894), whose poetry and prose has been rediscovered and praised since the rise of feminist criticism in the 1970s, and who is the subject of Denton’s new biographical novel.
Christina’s life was much more staid than her brother’s. A staunch Anglo-Catholic, she never married, and the bulk of her work is devotional. Denton’s novel carries her from childhood to early old age, weaving snippets of her poetry into the prose text, but generally without the verse divisions, as though it were Christina’s thoughts—which of course it is.~ The Historical Novel Society
bardessdmdenton - author- artist 