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The Diary of George Price Boyce 1858 is in The Diary of George Price Boyce.
5th January 1858. January 5. At T. F. Marshall's request sent by messenger for the meeting of the Philographic Society held this evening at 21 Savile Row, a portfolio of 52 sketches, framed drawing of the interior of S. Nicholas Giornico, and my Rossetti drawing of the dancers and lady with the lute.
11th January 1858. Took steam boat down the river to the Leviathan steam-ship at Milwall. Got into a small boat and was rowed alongside and in front of it. Looking at it foreshortened ahead of the bows, the lines very graceful and nautilus like. Saw it move, or rather strive, 4 times.
21st January 1858. January 21. Holman Hunt (age 30) and Martineau called on me at 7 and stayed till nearly half-past 10. After desultory chat and looking at drawings, etc., Hunt introduced the subject which principally brought him. Having in prospect to marry Annie Miller (age 23), after that her education both of mind and manners shall have been completed, he wished to destroy as far as was possible all traces of her former occupation, viz, that of sitting to certain artists (those artists, however, being all his personal friends, Rossetti, A. Hughes, Stephens, Egg, Holliday, Millais, Collins and myself), and as mine was the only direct study of her head, as it was, he would hold it a favour if I would give it him and he in return would give me something of his doing that I might like. At first I resisted stoutly, but finding that it was a serious point with him, and that my refusing would be in some degree an obstacle in the carrying out of his wishes with regard to her (which it would be both selfish and unkind and foolish in the remotest degree to thwart) I at last reluctantly assented to give him the study, the most careful and the most interesting (to me) and which I prize the most I have ever made. He thanked me heartily for my compliance. He gave me real pleasure by telling me that she says I always behaved most kindly to her.
8th February 1858. February 8. On the road stopped to see the Princess Royal (age 17) accompanied by her husband, the Prince Frederick of Prussia (age 26), Prince Albert (age 38) and the Prince of Wales (age 16) go by on her departure from England. She was flushed, and her eyes swollen and red and she had evidently been crying. The snow, the first this year, was falling and driving into her face. Yet she kept her veil up and bowed to the throng who lined the roads.
Note. Frederick and Victoria had married on the 25th of January 1858.
8th February 1858. February 8. Attended meeting of the Philographic Society at Walter's Studio, 21 Savile Row.
7th February 1858. February 7. Gave Burges (in exchange for something he is to do for me) a sketch I made of Llyn Crafuant in N. Wales in the autumn of 1856, which he persists in calling the 7th Hell, as it reminds him of Dante's Inferno. The only alteration I made in it (to suit his fancy) is giving a red flush as of flame in the horizon.
13th February 1858. February 13. Miss Cooke came to sit for me. Little Simeon Solomon (age 17) called and stayed a long while and jawed and bored us considerably. Burges came up and I introduced them.
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15th February 1858. February 15. Miss Varley sat to me. Discovered Burges had sent on to me the Valentine she had sent to him, followed by another. I enclosed them both again in an envelope for her to post to him. Went to a dancing and musical "shine" at Clayton & Bells', 24a Cardington St. Jovial and unceremonious. Some very good singing and playing.
17th February 1858. February 17. Proposed by T. F. Marshall and seconded by Chester I was elected to-day a member of the Philographic Society.
19th February 1858. February 19. Solomon's (age 34) weekly re-union. Tea and fish, wine and cake. Much interested with a book of sketches by young Simeon (age 17).
22nd May 1858. To Wyld's reading rooms15 where I met Dante Rossetti. We went off to his rooms in a cab and had tea there. While I was looking at his excellent drawings he read aloud to me several translations of his in the metre of the original early Italian Sonnets and other pieces before and contemporary with Dante. Several of them most touching and graphic, terse and simple. Admiring a little pen and ink sketch of a little girl wheeling a child along in a go-cart, he gave it me. He came back with me in a cab to my place and there we sat and read and talked of Browning. He recited also 2 excellent little pieces by Morris (Topsy). He spoke of Jones being “an angel on earth, and too good for this world.16
Note 15. James Wylde, 16½ Leicester Square offered chess, cigar-smoking and a cafe, as well as the reading-room, where newspapers were provided.
Note 16. In 1861, with Ruskin's financial help, Rossetti published The Early Italian Poets; these were translations from Dante and others. The little sketch had been made at Coventry in the summer of 1853 (S.61). Moving on from Chatham Place to Buckingham Street Rossetti delighted Boyce with a rendering of Morris' poems, probably from The Defence of Guenevere which had been published in March and dedicated 'To my friend Dante Gabriel Rossetti'. Edward Burne Jones(1833-98) had intended taking holy orders but under Rossetti's influence exchanged all thought of this vocation for that of an artist. His gentleness and modesty provided the perfect foil to William Morris' vigorous personality.
29th May 1858. Dante Rossetti called to see me while Burges was taking tea with me. After a while he got Annie Harrison (the landlady's daughter) to sit to him. Burges bullied him into using vellum when he wished simply for paper. Consequently he didn't make so good a sketch as he would have done had he been left to his own bent. It was in pen and ink, and he gave it to me before leaving, which was at a very late hour. He told me some amusing anecdotes about Thackeray, and repeated some most ludicrous exclamations of Morris'. He read a lovely little MS. poem of Browning's, about a portrait of a golden-haired beauty on a golden ground that he copied from some lady's album.17
Burges asked him how he would lay in a head in oil colour. He said "begin by modelling it thoroughly in pure blue, tempered with white where necessary. For the darkest shadows use it very purely and thinly, and perhaps in hatchings and in reflected lights omit it, leaving them for the local colour of second painting; which may be taken up as soon as the first is dry and can be scraped smooth." I made a slight sketch of Annie while Rossetti was doing his.
Note 17. This was a Face. ("If one could have that little head of hers Painted upon a background of pale gold ...")
2nd June 1858. Rossetti called in the evening and stayed till about 12.30 chatting. He told me further particulars about Dickens, who it appears has left his wife and taken to Miss Fernan, the actress, with whom he is infatuated (platonically as he pretends). His daughters side or keep to him and his sons to their mother.18
Note 18. R. had induced, thro' intervention of Tom Taylor, Miss Herbert (age 27) (rightly Mrs. Crabbe, though she doesn't live with her husband) to sit to him for a picture he has commenced. He says she is perfectly beautiful, more so even than she looks on the stage. He made one or two rough pen and ink scratches whilst talking, one of a "Stunner" Oxford, which he tore in fragments, but which I recovered from the fire grate.19
Note 19. The Oxford "stunner" was presumably Jane Burden (age 18) whose arresting looks had attracted Rossetti when painting the Union murals, and who next year was to marry William Morris. Rossetti had admired his present model, "the beautiful Miss Herbert" (?1832-1921), for two years but till now had seen her only on the stage of the Strand and the Adelphi Theatres. After two years marriage she abandoned her husband Edward Crabb, a well-to-do stockbroker, and was set up by a wealthy lover in Cliveden Place (then Westbourne Place), Eaton Square. Her stage career was marked by equal success for now she was playing leads at the Olympic and before long would become manageress of the St. James's Theatre, engaging a little-known actor to join her company, one Henry Irving. Tom Taylor (1817-80), dramatist and editor of Punch, had befriended her and had now effected the introduction between artist and actress. Dazzled by her beauty, Rossetti recorded the likeness of this 'goddess' in a number of portrait studies. The work he was just now starting upon was Mary Magdalene at the door of Simon the Pharisee in which she sat for the Magdalene (Fitzwilliam; S.109).
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15th December 1858. To Rossetti. The new things I noticed were an intensely impressive water colour of the Virgin in the house of John, the latter seated at the window and striking a light and looking out upon Jerusalem at twilight. The Virgin is spinning. A Knight girded for combat embracing his Lady Love. Several studies of Miss Herbert (age 27) (Mrs. Crabbe). A most beautiful pen and ink study of Topsy's (Morris's) "Stunner" at Oxford. He showed me some fine medieval drapery and some gorgeous Eastern pieces lent him from the India House. We went off at dusk and dined at the Cock, and afterwards adjourned to 24 Dean St., Soho, to see "Fanny." Interesting face and jolly hair and engaging disposition.29
Note 28. The water-colour of Mary in the house of St. Jobn (Wilmington; S.110) had been nearly completed in November and in a fortnight's time would be hanging at the Hogarth Club. It is clear therefore that Boyce was writing from a faulty memory and that the action of the central figure (taken from Ruth Herbert) was even then as it is today. The spinning-wheel is on the extreme right but Mary has risen from her work and stands before the window filling a lamp with oil. Chapel before the Lists (Tate; S.99) is the second water-colour. The drawing of Jane Burden (age 19) is probably the study for Guenevere inscribed 'Oxford 1858' (National Gallery, Dublin; S.364).
Note 29.