WOMBATS

See Also: ANIMALS

Website: https://wombatawareness.com www.wombatprotection.org.au

The Wombatti

Upon moving to Chelsea, the artist and poet Dante Gabriel Rossetti began to build up a menagerie of animals. His peacocks became so irksome to his neighbours that regulations were introduced by the ground landlords that barred the residents of Cheyne Walk from keeping the birds.

His collection included two wombats (Vombatus ursinus). The Rossetti family appear to have had a particular interest in the marsupials. Prior to Rossetti's move, his sister Christina had used the creatures as one of the forms that the goblins take in her poem Goblin Market (1862). In it, she described them as 'obtuse and furry'. May be she had a degree of prescience, as her brother's pair were given to devouring any guest s hat that looked palatable to them.

Lewis Carroll knew the Rossettis socially. There is a story¹ that originally the character of the dormouse in Alice's Adventures In Wonderland (1865) was a wombat. However, Carroll found that he had to keep on explaining what a wombat was. Therefore, he changed the marsupial into a rodent.

Location: 16 Cheyne Walk, SW3 5RA (orange, purple)

See Also: A HIGHGATE RESURRECTION, A CHELSEA DECLINE; VAMPIRES Dracula;² MUSIC Handel, Handel House Museum, Tweedledee & Tweedledum

¹. According to Ford Madox Brown (a source who should sometimes be treated with a healthy dose of salt).

². Frances Polidori, mother of the Rossettis, was the sister of Byron's doctor.

David Backhouse 2024