William Michael Rossetti

Some Reminiscences of William Michael Rossetti

Brown, Langham & Co., 1906. 2 vols.

In about 1858 we two were in the Zoological Gardens, and our steps led us towards a certain enclosure hitherto unknown to us, and little scrutinized by most visitors. Christina...caught sight of "phascolomys ursinis" a second before myself, and exclaimed, "Oh look at that delightful object!" I soon instructed my brother [Dante Gabriel] what part of the Zoological Gardens he should go to in order to contemplate the form and proportions of the wombat; he, I surmise, afterwards put up Burne-Jones to the same quest. Christina, before the end of April 1859, had utilized the wombat in her Goblin Market, and Dante drew his portrait in the illustration to that poem as published in 1862

In 1890 the author, younger brother of Christina and Dante Gabriel, moved with his family to 3 St. Edmund's Terrace, 'a line of streets raised well above the level of Regent's Park, and not far below the summit of the closely adjoining Primrose Hill. It is not a cloud-capt summit, but in London it counts as the nearest approach to a hill that we have to show'. The new location was praised for its 'noiseless quiet (for there is scarcely any of the London rattling and rumbling)' and its benefit to health:

In this Primrose Hill locality my old friend the London fog (for which I have always had a sneaking kindness) is considerably less demonstrative than at a lower level and in closer environments: many times when there has been a dense fog in London streets, and even in Regent's Park, there has only been a whitish mist in St. Edmund's Terrace

The author was the son-in-law of the painter Madox Brown, who lived at no.1, and who, on the early death of his other son-in-law, invited the widow and children to come and live with him. Madox Brown was much loved by all his grandchildren; one of them recalled:

He usually wore a shiny top-hat and a black cape, and he used to take my grandmother's little dog out for a walk on Primrose Hill. He couldn't walk very fast because he had the gout, but the little dog was very old and couldn't go fast either, so it didn't mind. He would stop from time to time to look behind to see if it was coming, and then it used to stop too, and sit down and look up at him, and hang its tongue out and wag its tail, and then they went on again

Juliet M. Soskice, Chapters From Childhood, 1921. Turtle Point Press, 1994.