Chapter XXIII: Letter XXII

DANTE ROSSETTI TO MADOX BROWN, HAMPSTEAD.

My brother’s parody on Tennyson’s _Kraken_ is published in my Memoir of him.

[Chatham Place, London.
7 November 1853.]

My dear Brown,

... I have had some news of Woolner (_i.e._, a letter to his
father which was shown me). He and B[ernhard] Smith were seven
months at the diggings (full accounts of which I have seen in
letters from Bernhard Smith to his brother). Their work seems to
have been something awful, and their result was the loss of £30
apiece, as they each made £50 and spent £80. Bernhard Smith went
after this to his brother’s farm and W[oolner] to Melbourne to
try Art. Here he seems to be getting on well. He has done several
medallions at £25 each--one of the Governor--and there seems to
be a good prospect of his getting a statue of the Queen to do for
Melbourne, in which case he will be back again next summer. He
sent two Australian papers in which he is spoken of as quite a
great fact, and a leading article given to him and the projected
statue. I thought I would write to you all this, not knowing when
I may see you, and now it suddenly strikes me that it was all
jawed over that night at Deverell’s.

I have made an admirable parody on Tennyson’s sonnet, _The
Kraken_, which I enclose with the original for your ecstatic
perusal.

Yours, D. G. R.