The Cambridge mathematics don and writer of Alice in Wonderland entered in his diary on this date that he visited Dante Gabriel Rossetti here at Tudor House otherwise Queen's House and now 16 Cheyne Walk, and that 'he was most hospitable in the offers of the use of house and garden for picture-taking, and I arranged to take my camera there on Monday.' He duly did and diarised that he 'Went over to Mr Rossetti's, and began unpacking the camera, etc. While I was doing so, Miss Christina Rossetti arrived and Mr. Rossetti introduced me to her. She seemed a little shy at first, and I had very little time for conversation with her, but I much liked the little I saw of her. She sat for two pictures...' Rossetti had a considerable menagerie about his house. Thea Holme in her book 'Chelsea' suggests that Dodgson should have taken a picture of a wombat which was member of the menage, particularly because that animal is supposed to have inspired the invention of the doormouse at the Mad Hatter's Tea Party.

O/S Co-ords:2744.7771
Source(s):

Chelsea

Rossetti's full name was Gabriel Charles Dante Rossetti and he moved here into Tudor House otherwise Queen's House and now 16 Cheyne Walk in 1862 when 34. He died here. Rossetti ,and others, believed the house had at one time been a wing of Henry VIII's palace. The house was in fact, like several in Cheyne Walk, constructed on one of the plots which Sir Hans Sloane sold off from the estate that he had acquired from Sir William Cheyne in 1712. (Numbers 19 to 26 however were constructed on what had once been Henry VIII's palace of which Sir Hans was the last occupant and which in his will he had wished should become a museum.) Rossetti's health had deteriorated since the early 1870's. His painting had been savagely attacked by a pamphlet published in 1871, 'The Fleshly School of Painting' from a poet, Robert William Buchanan (1841-1901). He had a breakdown and attempted suicide in 1872. In 1874 his favourite model Jane Morris, with whom he spent a lot of time at Kelmscott the home of Ruskin, went to Italy with her children. After that he started taking chloral to overcome his insomnia but became an addict and seriously depressed. He was latterly most upset by the building works around him. (It was in 1874 that the river's embankment was extended from Millbank to Chelsea and the Chelsea Embankment road continued from Cheyne Walk.) The lease on his house was about to end and to renew it he was going to lose a part of his garden to allow the building of flats that would overlook it. That was horrifying for a man who was now a somewhat paranoid recluse.

O/S Co-ords:2744.7771
Source(s):

Chambers Biographical Dictionary

Chelsea

Sir Hans Sloane (1663-1753) had a major influence on how Chelsea developed after the 17th century. He had bought the Chelsea Manor estate from Sir William Cheyne in 1712. He moved to what had once been Henry VIII's palace in 1741. He died here. He brought with him his enormous collection of rarities which after his death returned to his house in Bloomsbury and became the basis of the British Museum. The script on Sloane's monument in the Old Church tells that 'in the 92nd year of his age, without the least pain of body, and with conscious serenity of mind, ended a virtuous and beneficial life'. There is also a monument to him in the Chelsea Physic Garden which was saved for the Apothecaries' Society by his generosity. He also: was a signatory to the petition which saved the King's Road for public use when George I had closed it; gave the land which was a burial ground but is now a garden to the north of King's Road; and gave the land adjacent to it for a work house. He sold plots of land on which were built the houses of which some remain at the eastern end of Cheyne Walk. The action which he took that has been considered a terrible desecration was that he razed the Great House of Sir Thomas More, which came into Sloane's possession as Beaufort House. However it had been derelict since 1716 when he bought it in 1737 from the Beaufort estate. Sir Hans made a bequest of his collection of rarities to the nation to be kept in the Old Palace. However he wanted the nation to pay £20,000 for the collection and Walpole refused the offer. After Sloane's death the house was pulled down and numbers 19 to 26 Cheyne Walk built in its place.

O/S Co-ords:2742.7770
Source(s):

Chelsea