Text this colour is a link for Members only. Support us by becoming a Member for only £3 a month by joining our 'Buy Me A Coffee page'; Membership gives you access to all content and removes ads.
Text this colour links to Pages. Text this colour links to Family Trees. Place the mouse over images to see a larger image. Click on paintings to see the painter's Biography Page. Mouse over links for a preview. Move the mouse off the painting or link to close the popup.
The Diary of George Price Boyce 1859 is in The Diary of George Price Boyce.
3rd January 1859. Took Simeon Solomon (age 18) to the Hogarth to see the works exhibited. Rossetti has a beautiful solemn purple drawing of Mary in the house of John. As Simeon said, "The impression of intense, thoughtful repose after the strife and excitement of the previous years is most impressive." R. also sent my little "Caper Nimbly" drawing, but has changed the subject into a "Borgia," and made the old grey-haired man into a Pope.
6th March 1859. (Sunday). (At Oxford.) Crowe, Faulkner, Jones and self rowed to Godstow where we saw the "Stunner" [Jane Morris nee Burden (age 19)] (the future Mrs. William Morris); on our return we all dined (Swinburne included) at Topsy's (Morris'). He and Swinburne (age 21) mad and deafening with excitement; adjourned to Crowe's to dessert; the chaff and row continued with great spirit and cleverness. Swinburne, a man of great reading, memory, and intellectual cleverness and accomplishment, seemed to be wanting in human feeling.8 In the evening we all went round to Johnson's, where we looked over a bundle of sketches among which were some beautiful things of Rossetti's.9
Note 8. Algernon Swinburne (1837-1909), the poet, had gone up to Oxford in 1857 and had known Morris at the time of the Union mural paintings. He was still at Balliol College and while already subject to wild and extravagant conduct, his powers of invective outdid Morris'. Undergraduates together, Charles Faulkener became one of Morris' closest friends. His mathematical brain was of great value when the firm of Morris, Marshall, Faulkner & Co. came to be founded in 1861.
Note 9. The reference here is probably to Professor Manuel John Johnson (1805-59), Radcliffe Observer. He is known to have befriended Swinburne, and William Morris was an enthusiastic admirer of his fine collection of mediaeval manuscripts. Johnson had died in February but his widow may have allowed his drawings to be examined. On his walls hung fifteenth and sixteenth-century engravings; perhaps the archaic romanticism of Rossetti's drawings had appealed to him.
30th April 1859. Found Simeon Solomon (age 18) and Poynter in Burges' room and appropriated (by leave) a caricature by Simeon of Morris and his wife.