At Robertsbridge he returned to natural habits, having no gas and falling in with my hours perforce, as otherwise he had no company.
And Rossetti was one of the men most dependent on companionship I have ever known.

When not at work he needed some one to talk with, and in our long walks he unfolded his life to me as he probably never did to any other man, for he had a frank egotism which made him see everything and everybody purely in their relation to him.

And in these circumstances he and I were, after a manner, the only people in our world.

As he himself said, "In this Sussex desert one tells all his secrets," and I doubt if even in his own family he ever threw off reserve so completely as with me in the solitude of Robertsbridge, where he was very happy and very well.
Rossetti's was one of the most fascinating characters I ever knew, open and expansive, and, when well, he had a vein of most delightful talk of the things which interested him, mostly those which pertained to art and poetry, the circle of his friends and his and their poetry and painting.

To him, art was the dominant interest of existence, not only of his own, but of existence _per se_, and he tolerated nothing that sacrificed it to material or purely intellectual subjects.