Sancta Lilias

1862–1882

A Tudor house at 16 Cheyne Walk

After his wife’s death Rossetti leased a Tudor house at 16 Cheyne Walk in Chelsea, where he lived for twenty years surrounded by extravagant furnishings and a parade of exotic birds and animals.

1869–1874

Kelmscott Manor: a summer house and a retreat

In 1869 Morris and Rossetti rented Kelmscott Manor at Kelmscott, Oxfordshire, as a summer home, but it became a retreat for Rossetti and Jane Morris: they spent summers there with the Morrises’ children while William Morris travelled to Iceland in 1871 and 1873.

October 1871 – May 1872

Buchanan’s attack: the “fleshly school of poetry”

In October 1871 Robert Buchanan attacked both Rossetti’s poems and his morality in The Contemporary Review; against the advice of his brother William Michael, Rossetti issued a written reply in December, and in May 1872 Buchanan published a 100-page pamphlet, “The Fleshly School of Poetry and Other Phenomena of the Day.”

June – September 1872

The breakdown of 1872: laudanum and Scotland

In June 1872, after the savage criticism of his poems, Rossetti suffered a mental breakdown in which he attempted unsuccessfully to kill himself with an overdose of laudanum. He spent nine weeks recuperating in Scotland and in September joined Jane Morris at Kelmscott, but spent his days in a haze of chloral and whisky.

1874

Morris cuts Rossetti out of the firm

In 1874 Morris reorganised his decorative arts firm, cutting Rossetti out of the business, and the polite fiction that both men were in residence with Jane at Kelmscott could no longer be maintained.

1874

An abrupt departure from Kelmscott

In July 1874 Rossetti abruptly left Kelmscott and never returned.