Pets have played an important part in people’s lives during the lockdown. They have provided love, comfort and entertainment as illustrated by the many, many, many videos uploaded to social media for our amusement.
Many famous artists also had pets, from Gustav Klimt’s cat, Katz, to Picasso’s dachshund, Lump, and Frida Kahlo’s dog, Señor Xolotl.
Dante Gabriel Rossetti, one of the founding members of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, whose work you can find in our Pre-Raphaelite collection, was also an enthusiastic (or should we say over-enthusiastic) animal lover, but he wasn’t content with a dog or a cat. Oh no. After all, this was Dante Gabriel Rossetti we’re talking about. He did nothing by halves. No, what Rossetti longed for was… a wombat.
Wombat - credit: Wikpedia, by JJ Harrison (jjharrison89@facebook.com) - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0.
Just what on earth was Rossetti doing with a wombat, you may ask? Well, everything wrong, apparently. Twice. But let’s put that out of our minds for the moment and ask, why wombats?
Wombats, in case you didn’t know, are tailless marsupial inhabitants of South Eastern Australia. Mainly nocturnal, there are three species; the Common Wombat, the Northern Hairy-Nosed Wombat and the Southern Hairy-Nosed Wombat. They are about the size of a badger, with short powerful legs and long claws. Their diet consists mostly of grass, roots, shrubs, and bark. Like other marsupials, they have pouches but their pouches face backwards because they are burrowing animals and it protects the young when they dig. They also have armoured bums made of cartilage. If they come under attack, they can dive into their burrow and plug the entrance with their toughened posterior. Their bum is remarkable in one other respect, too. Wombats do cube-shaped poos.
Wombat_Faeces credit: Wikipedia by Bjorn Christian Torrissen - Own Work cc BY-SA 3.0.jpg
So, if any animal was going to capture the attention of a Victorian artist, it’s not surprising that it was the wombat.
The Victorians had a great interest in natural history. Whether it was collections of stuffed animals from mysterious corners of the empire, or living menageries of the same, there was an insatiable curiosity fed by the Empire at its height. They transported exotic animals from the colonies by land and sea, for the education of scientists and the delight and edification of a curious public.
Regent’s Park Zoo acquired their first wombat in 1830, When it opened to the public in 1847 Rossetti was a frequent visitor, along with his brother William and sister Christina, and the three became lifelong wombat aficionados. He famously declared that "the Wombat is a Joy, a Triumph, a Delight, a Madness!"
Wombat sketch by Christina Rossetti credit; commons.wikimedia.org
Dante remained a regular visitor to the zoo, introducing friends such as Edward Burne-Jones and Valentine Princep to the delights of the wombat, often meeting ”by the wombat’s lair”, to the point where wombats became something of an in-joke amongst the PRB.
When Rossetti painted the murals of the Oxford Union in 1857, along with William Morris and Edward Burne-Jones, they even found time to indulge their passion there;
“Mr. Princep says that the windows in the space they were painting were whitened to tone the light, and that the whitened glass was covered all over with sketches, chiefly of wombats. “Do you know the wombat at the Zoo?” asked Rossetti; “a delightful creature – the most comical little beast.” He was drawn by Edward in endless different positions and situations.” […] “Rossetti was the planet around which we revolved,” says Mr. Princep; “We copied his very way of speaking. All beautiful women were ‘stunners’ with us. Wombats were the most delightful of God’s creatures.”
-pgs 162-164, Memorials of Edward Burne-Jones by Lady Georgiana Burne-Jones (1904)
Wombat by Edward Burne-Jones pg 163, Memorials of Edward Burne-Jones (1904) by Lady Georgiana Burne-Jones
Christina Rossetti’s poem The Goblin Market, published in 1859, also contained a mention of a wombat, as one goblin ”like a wombat prowled obtuse and furry."
Which is all well and good but, to take your obsession to the next level, where could the discerning gentleman procure such a beast? You couldn’t just walk into the local pet shop and buy one, could you?
As luck would have it, and if you had the money, there was just such a place - Charles Jamrach’s Animal Emporium on the Ratcliff Highway in the East End. If you wanted anything “from a hippopotamus to a humming-bird, Jamrach’s is the very place to go to”. I mean, a polar bear would only set you back £25.
At Jamrach’s, The dealer in wild animals, East London – Illustrated London News, 1887
In 1862, after his wife, Lizzie Siddal’s, death, Rossetti no longer felt able to stay in the house they had lived in and moved to Tudor House, Cheyne Walk in Chelsea. The house had an enormous garden that finally allowed Rossetti to indulge his fondness for exotic animals and he collected quite a menagerie that included; a white Brahmin bull, armadillos, monkeys, two kangaroos, peacocks, a racoon, an assortment of owls, an Australian kingfisher, dormice, a Pomeranian puppy, an Irish wolfhound, hedgehogs, parakeets, chameleons, lizards, salamanders, marmots and a mole.
Rossetti’s Marmot Seated in his Master’s Lap 1871 by William Bell Scott. Credit; Tate Images
Although this was much to Rossetti’s delight, it was to the consternation of his neighbours and to the detriment of the animals. At one point, Rossetti even expressed an impulsive desire to own an elephant but it proved too expensive, even for him. On another occasion, he attempted to buy a penguin but he was three pounds short which his brother William refused to lend him, on account of the fact that ‘the animal would die almost as soon as it was bought’. And thank goodness.
Tudor Lodge 16 Cheyne Walk, London by Walter W. Burgess credit: commons.wikimedia.org
There were many mysterious deaths and disappearances among the menagerie at Cheyne Walk, largely stemming from Rossetti’s inability to look after them properly.
He kept the bull tied to a tree until it broke free and chased him round the garden, at which point he got rid of it. The racoon was a complete menace, often escaping to steal eggs from the neighbours and wreck their gardens. It also ate several of Rossetti’s poetry manuscripts. One night, Rossetti awoke to a fearful keening that he took to be the ghost of Lizzie Siddal. That is, until his brother discovered that it was the racoon that Rossetti had absent-mindedly shut in a drawer.
The armadillos broke out of the garden into the neighbours’ gardens, digging holes everywhere. They became such a nuisance that Rossetti attempted to poison them, but they seemed immune even to that. Eventually they escaped and never returned, much to everyone’s relief.
The peacocks, too, were the bane of the neighbours’ lives. Thomas Carlyle (portrayed in Ford Madox Brown’s painting, ‘Work’, standing on the right-hand side, and which hangs in gallery 7) complained bitterly about the racket. In fact, the noise of the peacocks led to the landlord inserting a clause into the tenancy agreement that no other tenant could keep peacocks. Ever. One peacock escaped into Rossetti’s house, shot under a sofa and fought so hard against being pulled out that they could not recover it until after it died a short time later.
It was into this chaos that, in September 1869, Rossetti introduced a wombat which, because of its stout figure, he called Top, after William Morris, whose nickname was Topsy and who he taunted constantly. Rossetti was also besotted with his wife, Jane.
Jane Morris leading the Wombat by Dante Gabriel Rossetti © The Trustees of the British Museum
Rossetti’s studio assistant purchased Top from Jadrach’s for the sum of £8 while Rossetti was in Scotland. He couldn’t wait to get back to see it. As he wrote to Jane Morris:
Oh, how the family affections combat
Within the heart, and each hour flings a bomb at
My burning soul; neither from owl or bat
Can peace be gained till I have clasped my wombat.
His sister, Christina, got in on the act, too, penning her own poem, “O Uommibatto”.
William described the animal as “the most lumpish and incapable wombat […] He is much addicted to following one about the room, and nestling up against one, and nibbling one’s calves or trousers.”
When Rossetti returned to London he took to the wombat immediately; “He is a round furry ball with a head something between a bear and a guinea pig, no legs, human feet with heels like everybody else and no tail… his habits are most endearing.”
“Mr William Bell Scott Wondering What It is Those Fellows Seem to See in Gabriel", from Max Beerbohm's Rossetti and his Circle (1922) credit; Tate, the Estate of William Beerbohm
Top seemed popular with the visitors to Cheyne Walk. When John Ruskin called round to expound on some weighty topic, Rossetti wrote; “you should see him wring his hand and soul towards his forlorn species, while the wombat burrowed between his coat and waistcoat.”
The artist James McNeill Whistler told of a dinner party where, while Algernon Swinburne read poetry by Walt Whitman, Top used the distraction to eat an entire box of cigars. Ladies’ straw hats often featured in its diet, too. And Ford Madox Brown recounted the anecdote of Top eating a wodge of chewing tobacco. However, it soon became clear that Top was far from well and was showing signs of some kind of mange. He was seen by ‘a dog doctor’ but soon took a turn for the worse.
The Invalid – Cheyne Walk 1869, 2017 by Walton Ford (b. 1960) (c) Walton Ford
Whatever the truth, Top was unsuited to life at Cheyne Walk, where his diet was obviously insufficient to his needs and by the 6th November the poor animal was dead. William Rossetti later observed; “The poor wombat died […] after some spasmodic symptoms; one more instance of the extraordinarily ill-luck that has attended Gabriel’s animals.”
“Death of a Wombat” by Dante Gabriel Rossetti 1869 (c) the Trustees of the British Museum
Underneath his drawing of himself mourning Top, Rossetti wrote;
I never reared a young wombat
To glad me with his pin-hole eye,
But when he most was sweet and fat
And tailless, he was sure to die!
Rossetti, unwilling to lose his endearing wombat, had it stuffed, mounted and placed in his entrance hall, although William thought the effect was less than satisfactory.
You’d think that would be the end of it, but the death of his beloved Top didn’t put him off. Rossetti tried again with a second wombat the next year. But, bought on the 14th of May it was dead barely two weeks later.
If you have pets, we trust you’ve been taking better care of them than Dante Gabriel Rossetti did. And we hope that during lockdown they have been, like Rossetti’s wombat, “a Joy, a Triumph, a Delight, a Madness!"