Around 1849. Walter Deverell (age 22). Self-portrait.

1850. Walter Deverell (age 23). "Twelfth Night". Model for Viola, left, Elizabeth Siddal (age 20), model, right, the jester Feste, Dante Gabriel Rossetti (age 21).

Letters of Dante Gabriel Rossetti. Miss S (age 20). was Miss Siddal (age 20), with whom Rossetti had fallen in love so early as 1850. though it was not till 1860 that he married her. His brother has told us how her striking face and "coppery-golden hair" were discovered, as it were, by Deverell (age 23) in a bonnet-shop. She sat to him, to Holman Hunt, and to Millais, but most of all to Rossetti. The following account was given me one day as I sat in the studio of Mr. Arthur Hughes, surrounded by some beautiful sketches he had lately taken on the coast of Cornwall:—

"Deverell (age 23) accompanied his mother one day to a milliner's. Through an open door he saw a girl workiing with her needle; he got his mother to ask her to sit to him. She was the future Mrs. Rossetti. Millais painted her for his Ophelia— wonderfully like her. She was tall and slender, with red coppery hair and bright consumptive complexion, though in these early years she had no striking signs of ill health. She was exceedingly quiet, speaking very little. She had read Tennyson, having first come to know something about him by finding one or two of his poems on a piece of paper which she brought home to her mother wrapped round a pat of butter. Rossetti taught her to draw. She used to be drawing while sitting to him. Her drawings were beautiful, but without force. They were feminine likenesses of his own."

Rossetti's pet names for her were Guggum, Guggums. or Gug. A child one day overheard him as he stood before his easel, utter to himself over and over again the words. "Guggum, Guggum." "All the Ruskins were most delighted with Guggum." he wrote. "John Ruskin said she was a noble, curious creature, and his father said by her look and manner she might have been a countess." Ruskin used to call her Ida.

1853. Walter Deverell (age 26). "A Pet".

Around 1853. Walter Deverell (age 26). "As You Like It".

1853. Walter Deverell (age 26). "As You Like It". Act IV Scene 1: Rosalind Tutoring Orlando in the Ceremony of Marriage and The Mock Marriage of Orlando and Rosalind'.