The Defence of Wombat Friday

Hello m'darlings and I hope you all had a good Christmas.  Today, believe it or not, is Friday (I always lose track over the Christmas/New Year fortnight) and therefore is Wombat Friday.  However, just before Christmas my attention was drawn to a piece on Wombat Friday criticising the practice.  Now, I read the article and while not agreeing (for reasons I will go into in a second) I respect the right of anyone to say they have a problem with it.  Were it only that and nothing more I would be happy to agree to disagree and leave it at that.  However, things got a little personal in the comments and I quote:

 'Nothing like dumbing-it-down for the masses - at least these earnest damsels (and mostly they are) might have considered that 'Wombat Wednesday' has a decidedly nicer ring to it. But you know, they are self-proclaimed experts on all things PRB, so I suppose one must grin and bear it all and ignore.'

Oh dear me.   Shall we begin?

Last March I wrote a piece here on this blog about Wombat Friday.  It had really just begun among the blogging Pre-Raphaelite community and it seemed like a jolly good thing because it gave everyone a light-hearted excuse to celebrate some aspect of Pre-Raphaelitism at the end of every week.  Everyone.  Lawks knows what we did for the sales of stuffed cuddly wombats but even one of those was not strictly necessary. You just had to turn up on-line and have a giggle.  Where could be the harm in that?

Rossetti's Wombat by William Bell Scott (Actually, probably a woodchuck)

Rossetti, Morris and that short-lived wombat 'Topsy' are the cause of the problems apparently.  Rossetti (along with a large slice of Victorian society) had a passion for exotic animals and acquired his wombat whom he named Topsy.  Why did he call the blessed beast Topsy when that name was already applied to his friend William Morris?  It is suggested it was a sexual slur against the man he was busy cuckolding but I take issue with that.  Firstly, since when did wombats mean sexual disfunction?  Buy a panda if you wish to make that point.  Secondly, and I do hate being crude but someone dismissed my 20 years of research and academic achievement in a throw-away comment on the internet so there you go - show me one piece of evidence that Rossetti ever had sex with Jane Morris.  Really.  Just one.  

Jane Morris denied it.  Rossetti was affected by hydrocele of the testicle.  I'm not arguing that his relationship with Jane Morris was an affair, just not a sexual one.  It's not always about sex you know.  Also, just because Rossetti had the relationship with Jane it did not mean he hated William.  To be honest I have always thought that Topsy the Wombat gives us an insight into the relationship between Morris and Rossetti.  Rather than the wombat being a figure of contempt Rossetti loved the creature.  His grief when Topsy died was more demonstrative than when his wife died, for goodness sake.  This tells me that (a) Rossetti was a mess and (b) something more symbolic was going on.  Topsy the wombat is the perfect symbol of how more complicated interpersonal relationships between the Pre-Raphaelite circle of the late 1860s was.  But you knew that.

The sleeping wombat at the wedding feast in The Red House mural

The National Trust's involvement with Wombat Friday happened just before the summer.  I'm sure they will happily respond to any criticism of their involvement, but do you know why I think their participation is genius?  Because my visually-impaired 7 year old daughter walked very slowly around The Red House, spending around an hour and a half looking at everything.  Sure, she was searching for cuddly wombats but on the way she looked at murals, wall paper, stained glass, tiles, furniture, the contents of the garden.  I want my daughter to appreciate the art that I love and that has to start somewhere.  I don't want to wait until she is old enough to grasp the fine points of design and socialism, I want her to be comfortable in that situation now.  If she doesn't get warm, happy feelings about her heritage when she is 7 then maybe she won't be inclined to visit when she is 17 or 27 or ever.  I've worked in heritage as long as I've researched the Pre-Raphaelites, and the art of getting children engaged and active within a challenging collection is a tough one.  Wombats are a way in.  I'm all for a way in.

My wombat, my cake, my Stunner...

Hello.  You know me.  I'm Kirsty Stonell Walker, author of Stunner: The Fall and Rise of Fanny Cornforth.  I've written this blog for a couple of years now, I get 15,000 people a month look at it.  I have a masters in art and literature and my thesis was on the Pre-Raphaelite visual language of Tennyson's poetry.  I work my backside off researching and writing and do you know something?  You are just like me.  I'm not different from any one of you lovely people, just possibly a bit louder.  This isn't just a rambly aside.  Wombat Friday is a perfect example of what I believe in - it's not dumbing-down, it's access.  Wombat Friday isn't about wombats, okay maybe just a bit, it's about people feeling that they have the right to be here, the right to have fun, the right to enjoy the paintings that touch their hearts and make their souls sing.  Pre-Raphaelite art is not about big words and complicated notions of the proto-colonial feminist complex or whatever.  It can be, but first and foremost it is about that 'ping' when your eye meets a painting and you love it.

This is not a clique.  This is not a closed party.  This is your art, if you are reading this, this is your passion.  The wombat in London was a stranger, an exotic, at odds with society.  The wombat was our Pre-Raphaelite heroes and heroines, at odds with their society,  in a cuddly furry bundle of mischief.  Wombat Friday goes beyond whether one man slept with another man's wife (Really, can we not move on?) and gives those of us who adore this unfashionable, maddening, curious, beautiful, familiar, strange art movement somewhere to go and meet people who love the same thing.  

Wombat Friday is a smile amongst friends - it's just that some of your friends are bona-fide art historians, some work in universities, some are brilliant novelists, some are men and women who dedicate their life to researching the art we all love.  

Hi, I'm Kirsty Stonell Walker, self-proclaimed expert and earnest damsel and this is Wombat Friday.  
And you are all very much invited to play along.