‘A Bizarre Medium’: the Return of the Dead and New Historicism

Abstract

‘Tudor House and its grounds became a sort of wonderland; and once the author of “Wonderland” photographed us in the garden.’¹ Thus Christina Rossetti affectionately remembers the exotic pets, and other eccentric inhabitants, of her brother’s bohemian residence at Tudor Walk in Chelsea. The ‘Wonderland’ of Dante Gabriel Rossetti’s home was documented during four days in the Autumn of 1863 by Charles Dodgson, two years before the publication of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. A photograph of the Rossetti family group survives that, rather than a Carrollian wonderland, discloses a carefully posed and rather mundane domestic scene (Plate 1). William Michael and Dante Gabriel frame Christina and her mother, who are positioned at the bottom of stairs, which lead to the garden. Christina here takes her favourite ‘lowest place’, while her mother is seated on a chair beside her.² Unlike another plate taken that afternoon, with Maria replacing her brother William Michael, the figures are crisp and clear. The details of their mid-Victorian dress, the shabby stairs, the fallen autumnal leaves, all present themselves as an access to the moment (or several moments) of the photographic exposure.