The End of the Wombat

As I explained in Wednesday's post, Dante Gabriel Rossetti ordered a mail-order wombat. When it arrived he was ecstatic. He wrote to his brother saying that the wombat was "a Joy, a Triumph, a Delight, a Madness".

But the wombat died. So Rossetti wrote another poem:

I never reared the young wombat
To glad me with his pinhole eye
But when he was most sweet and fat
And tailless he was sure to die!

He even painted two memorial paintings. One is of the wombat ascending to heaven alongside Jane Morris (William Morris's wife).

The wombat has a halo.

The other illustrates the poem above and is a self-portrait of the poet in mourning. 

 

 The wombat never actually got a tomb like this. Instead, he had it stuffed. I'm off to Australia now and whether I blog or not before my return on June 2nd is a riddle wrapped in a mystery wrapped in an enigma.