"Mr. Meredith had, rather irresponsibly, agreed to occupy a couple of rooms in Queen's House.... One morning therefore, shortly after Rossetti moved in,—Mr. Meredith, who was living in Mayfair, drove over to Chelsea to inspect his new apartments. 'It was,' says the unhappy co-tenant, 'past noon. Rossetti had not yet risen, though it was an exquisite day. On the breakfast table, on a huge dish, rested five thick slabs of bacon, upon which five rigid eggs had slowly bled to death! Presently Rossetti appeared in his dressing-gown with slippers down at heel, and devoured the dainty repast like an ogre.' This decided Mr. Meredith. He did not even trouble to look at his rooms, but sent in a quarter's rent that afternoon, and remained in Mayfair, where eggs and bacon were, presumably, more appetizingly served."
Rossetti's studio was at the back of the old house; but what the painter enjoyed most was the garden, an acre in extent in his time, with an avenue of limes opening out on to a broad grass plot;—part, no doubt, of the ancient "Manor House" garden:
"In this garden were kept" (says Mr. Marillier) "most of the animals for which Rossetti had such a curious and indiscriminate affection. How many of them there may have been at any one time does not seem to be stated; but as one died or disappeared, another would be got to replace it, or Rossetti would see some particularly outlandish specimen at Jamrach's and bear it home in triumph to add to the collection. Wire cages were erected for their accommodation, but these were not always proof against escape, especially in the case of the burrowing animals, which had an annoying way of appearing in the neighbours' gardens. Mr. W. M. Rossetti has given from memory a tolerably long list of creatures which at one time or another figured in the menagerie at Cheyne Walk. They included a Pomeranian puppy, an Irish deerhound, a barn-owl named Jessie, another owl named Bobby, rabbits, dormice, hedgehogs, two successive wombats, a Canadian marmot or woodchuck, an ordinary marmot, kangaroos and wallabies, a deer, two or more armadillos, a white mouse with her brood, a raccoon, squirrels, a mole, peacocks, wood-owls, Virginian owls, horned owls, a jackdaw, a raven, parakeets, a talking parrot, chameleons, grey lizards, Japanese salamanders, and a laughing jackass. Besides these there was a certain famous bull, a zebu, which cost Rossetti £20 (he borrowed it from his brother), and which manifested such animosity in confinement that it had to be disposed of at once. The strident voices of the peacocks were so little appreciated in the neighbourhood that Lord Cadogan caused a paragraph to be inserted in all his leases thereafter forbidding these birds to be kept."
The house, as I said, is very little changed,—though Mr. Haweis, its recent occupant, added a statue of Mercury, poised on the ball at its gable apex,—and its brickwork is said by Mr. Marillier to have "had an older, more natural look in Rossetti's day." And "in front the unembanked river, and ... the boating bustle and longshore litter of the old days added picturesqueness to the view, which in all essentials was the same as the aged Turner had looked out upon from his little house not very far away." Ghosts,—of Katherine Parr and others,—have, not unnaturally, been accredited to "Queen's House." But they do not appear to have survived Rossetti's tenancy; for Mr. Haweis, who lived and entertained here for 14 years, was not disturbed by them, "even though he unearthed the entrance of a mysterious subterranean passage, which was believed to have communicated with the Lord High Admiral's House;"—a sort of semi-royal cryptoporticus of intrigue! Mr. Haweis also discovered the antique watergate of the former stately mansion—leading to the stone steps where in old days barges were moored,—the shelving river banks extending in those days far nearer than now. The great thickness of the walls of Queen's House may, indeed, be partly accounted for by the necessity for protection against floods; Mr. Haweis, who sacrilegiously cut a window to light the spiral staircase, had to pierce three feet of solid brickwork.
Here is a funny story, retailed by Mr. Marillier, of Rossetti and the advancing Age of Progress:
"The only bridge along the reach" (he says) "was old Chelsea Bridge, concerning which Mr. George Meredith tells me a pleasant story. One day there called upon Mr. Rossetti a pompous individual of the vestryman class, with a paper to which he requested his signature. 'We are getting up a petition,' he said, 'to replace the old wooden bridge by a handsome new iron one, with gilt decorations, and I am sure that you as an artist, Mr. Rossetti, will lend us the weight of your name for so desirable an object.' Rossetti's language, on occasion, could be more forcible than polite, and his unvarnished reception of the vestryman's proposal caused that rash but well-meaning person to retire with extreme precipitation."
Of all his many pets, Rossetti was perhaps especially devoted to his wombats. To one of these he addressed the lines:
"O how the family affections combat
Within this breast, 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."
At the same time, it must be confessed, the poet regretted his pet's inveterate tendencies toward "drain architecture." Rossetti's domestic proclivities must, one thinks, have rendered him a terror to his neighbours! Indeed, the only London inhabitant,—if we except the celebrated "Lady of the Cats" in the desecrated Carlyle House,—who can be said to have at all emulated him in that line, was Frank Buckland the great naturalist, who, in his house, No. 34, Albany Street, Regent's Park, kept "a museum and a menagerie in one." "His house was full of crawling, creeping, barking, flying, swimming, and squeaking things." When he was at church one Sunday, "Dick, the rat," he relates, "stole away two five-pound notes from my drawers." Among other creatures Mr. Buckland kept, like Rossetti, a laughing jackass, who "would never laugh," and "who was only provoked to a titter by the consumption of a toothsome mouse"; this pet escaped from its cage one day and was found asleep on the bed of a gentleman near the Hampstead Road. But Mr. Buckland could at any rate excuse his vagaries on scientific grounds, for he was trying to acclimatize foreign animals suitable for food in this country.
The fleeting tide of fashion is now at its height in Chelsea; the historic old houses of Cheyne Walk are let at enormous rents, and, year by year, tall, prosaic red-brick edifices spring up like mushrooms all round them. A few old "bits" of Chelsea still remain unaltered,—but very few. The old church, and the rectory, the home of the Kingsleys, with its charming old walled garden, are still delightful; the embankment houses, standing back behind their gardens and ironwork, are fine in their dignified, time-hallowed red-brick; Paradise Row, that picturesque oasis of old dwellings that breaks the ugliness of the modern Queen's Road West, yet bears witness to the charm of old Chelsea. In humble Paradise Row, (now part of Queen's Road West, and converted to laundries and other uses;)—in Paradise Row, with its quaint tiled roofs, dormer windows, and high white gate-posts, many well-known people have lived; it was even connected, more or less, with royalty, for in 1692 it was the dwelling place of the first Duke of St. Albans, Nell Gwynne's son. Chelsea has always been associated with the Stuarts. When it was but a picturesque riverside village,—fishermen's huts diversified by a few old palaces,—divided yet by space of green fields from the storm and stress of the greater London,—they brought it wealth and fashion, and caused its gardens to spread in fragrant greenery down to the water's edge. The Chelsea of the Restoration had the patronage of the aristocracy, as well as that of the Royal favourites; here the King's Mistresses flaunted their grandeur, their extravagance, their impecuniosity before the world. It was in comparatively humble Paradise Row that the notorious Duchesse de Mazarin lived in her later and bankrupt stage; here she entertained royally, and was, besides, in arrears with the Parish Rates. At No. 2 in Paradise Row lived that Lord Robartes, Earl of Radnor, who, like the "Vicar of Bray," "trimmed" so judiciously through the Jacobite wars. This house (No. 2.), was, by the way, said by Pepys to be "the prettiest contrived house he ever saw in his life."