Having recently read Richard Holmes's excellent account of Tennyson's early years, The Boundless Deep, I was amused to come across this picture, in J.G. Riewald's Beerbohm's Literary Caricatures (a great book for browsing in). It shows Thomas Woolner, the only sculptor in the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, sculpting his portrait bust of the still beardless Tennyson in 1857 – the bust that is now in Poets' Corner in Westminster Abbey. The caption reads:
Mrs Tennyson: 'You know, Mr Woolner, I'm one of the most unmeddlesome of women; but – when (I'm only asking), when do you begin modelling his halo?'
No comments:
Post a Comment