An English Drawing Room, from "Picture Poesies"
Not on view
Houghton's image of elegantly dressed men and women at an evening gathering first appeared in "A Round of Days" (1866, see 65.629.1), engraved by the Dalziel Brothers and published by Routledge. This impression was reissued in "Picture Poesies" (1874) and illustrates a poem by Christina G. Rossetti that contrasts a vibrant Italian woman with her cool, reserved English peers.
An English Drawing Room
She came amongst us from the South
And made the North her home awhile;
Our dimness brightened in her smile,
Our tongue grew sweeter in her mouth.
We chilled beside her liberal glow,
She dwarfed us by her ample scale,
Her full-blown blossom made us pale,
She summer-like and we like snow.
We Englishwomen, trim, correct,
All minted in the selfsame mould,
Warm-hearted, but of semblance cold,
All-courteous out of self-respect:
She woman in her natural grace,
Less trammeled she by lore of school,
Courteous by nature not by rule,
Warm-hearted and of cordial face.
So for awhile she made her home
Amongst us in the rigid North,
She who from Italy came forth
And scaled the Alps and crossed the foam:
But if she found us like our sea
Of aspect colourless and chill,
Rock-girt; like it she found us still
Deep at our deepest, strong and free.
