Wombats?? Who Knew?!

Liz sent me a WhatsApp with this link to a Radio 4 programme, and the enigmatic comment "I consider myself fairly well informed about the Pre-Raphaelites, but I had no idea about the wombats..."

A comment like that meant I just had to listen to the piece myself, and look again at this group of artist who have fascinate dme since my teens.

It seems that wombats [also called womback and wombar by the indigenous Australians] had become a curiosity in mid 19th Century England, and there were some in Regents Park Zoo - a favourite meeting place for the P-R brotherhood [and sisterhood!] Dante Gabriel Rosetti in particular, was obsessed with this furry brown marsupial.

He gave one to his love, Janey Morris, and named it Top. Here they are painted by DGR, both wearing haloes. DGR's sister Christina mentioned wombats in her great poem Goblin Market. How have I not noticed this before?

Curious Laura chose to linger
Wondering at each merchant man.
One had a cat’s face, 
One whisk’d a tail,
One tramp’d at a rat’s pace,
One crawl’d like a snail,
One like a wombat prowl’d obtuse and furry,
One like a ratel tumbled hurry skurry.
 

When her poem was published, her brother drew the frontispiece- and you can see the protagonist 'Lizzie' with the merchants, one of whom is a wombat!

Christina even wrote her own wombat ode, in Latin,  describing the animal as cheerful, agile, hairy, round...and heavy! 

Here is her brother's poem

Oh how the family affections combat
Within this heart, and each hour
flings a bomb at

My burning soul!

Neither from owl nor from bat

Can peace be gained until I clasp

my wombat.]

Another P-R, Edward Byrne Jones, drew a wombat frolicking in front of the Pyramids. Rather odd, imho

And when Top eventually died, grief stricken Rosetti wrote another poem for the pet. 

In 1857 Byrne Jones and friends were asked to paint the walls of the Oxford Union - sadly most of their work has gone, but one of the helpers said of that episode “Rossetti was the planet around which we revolved, we copied his way of speaking. All beautiful women were 'stunners' with us. Wombats were the most beautiful of God’s creatures.”

Thank you Liz, I shall definitely be looking at the P-Rs in a new way now! You can learn more about their crazy fascination here and here.