Simeon
Solomon
Research
Archive

Description of items for sale by C. R. Johnson Rare Books ca. 1998 regarding a collection of manuscripts and letters by Everard Meynell on Simeon Solomon.

MEYNELL, Everard. ALS to Georgiana, Lady Burne-Jones. "...from none of my friends who knew him can I learn the things I care to learn. Your few words in the Life of E. B-J have been more valuable than everything else set down about him. From Ted Hollinger there came certain most welcome details of his passionate care for goodness - of the hand he burnt over a lamp in a fit of repentance, of the coat, his only one, he gave away...Such are the things I would like to have supplemented were it within your power or inclination to do so. I have something more than a biographer's official desire to know the best of him. It is a thing very near my heart, and you I feel, are one of the few people who had the insight to look beyond the cloud that blocks out for others the essential light of his nature.."

COLLECTION OF CORRESPONDENCE ADDRESSED TO MEYNELL ABOUT SIMEON SOLOMON. A collection of twenty or so letters to Meynell in response to his request for information about Solomon ...
D. G. Burne-Jones (2) "Thank you for telling me what you feel about the Memorials. It is always a joy to me to know that I have made some approach to presenting the personality to others who had not known my husband. I am glad you are going to write the article for the "Dictionary of National Biography" because you know and care for Mr. Solomon's work, which is surely the right key to a man.";
Gilbert Dalziel (2) "I know of all the best of the 'Sixties' books produced by my father, Edward Dalziel, and my uncles but I did not think Solomon's work appeared in any of them except "Bible Gallery". By the way, he made more drawings for this work than were ever published: though his best certainly appeared in it...";
Henry Holiday, who entered the Royal Academy at the same time as Solomon, ... "I have written the short account of a friendship I held dear...";
W. M. Ros[s]etti, "For tho I loathe Simeon Solomon and all that relates to his personality, I have no objection to stating (so far as I can) matters of fact to a friend..." Ro[s]setti speaks of destroying the letters he had received from Solomon. Meynell's questionnaire to Ros[s]etti concerns Solomon's friendships with the Ros[s]ettis, the Burne-Joneses and Swinburne. Meynell also questions Ros[s]etti about Solomon's disgrace. Asked "At what date did he fall away from his friends?" Ros[s]etti replies "It may have been (I think) in or about 1870 that some disgusting affair brought S. up in a Police Court. I don't know that all his friends gave him up at once..."

That Meynell had a genuine interest in Solomon is shown by the warmth of his letter to Lady Burne-Jones. She was one of the few who had stood by Solomon after his disgrace. That the scandal of Solomon's homosexuality made it very difficult to get any information about him is revealed in the same letter. Meynell obviously took great pains with this article on Simeon Solomon for the Dictionary of National Biography. ... The finished piece as printed and the considerably longer texts of the manuscript versions, deal with Solomon's Jewish parentage, upbringing, artistic life and development - with his friendships with Pater, Burne-Jones and Swinburne, of Swinburne's influence on him and of the eventual catastrophe summed up in the printed version in one stark sentence. "Solomon had fallen a prey to a vicious indulgence and was thenceforth a social outcast." After the fall, Solomon disappeared intermittently from view until he ended his days from a heart attack in the St. Giles Workhouse. From among the sections which do not appear or are strictly curtailed in the printed article something more can be learned about the wretched life lived by Solomon after he was ostracised by society. "The studios and implements provided for him by his co-religionists and constant friends were always relinquished after a few days...Clothing and money given him by a friend in Pembroke Square he shared ten minutes later with a beggar whom he found in the Earl's Court Road... As a pavement artist, not of Sienna, but of Grays Inn Rd., he had little success..." "His name was seldom printed... [instead there was] a silent space between the flourishing superlatives of 1871 and the obscure report at the foot of the 'Times' column of the coroner's inquest on his body in 1905. The alcohol from which he died had disordered his life for many years. One witness, Mr. Robert Ross, contends that he was happy in the metropolitan mire; that he enjoyed relating his encounters with the police, his nocturnal visits with a professional housebreaker to the house of friend from whom he had received help..."

Return to Home Page | Secondary Sources: 1906-1960 | All Secondary Sources

This web site was created by Roberto C. Ferrari and is therefore copyrighted by law. All digital images were reproduced with the permission of the owners; distribution rights for these works rests with the individuals who own the original work of art. All secondary source material reproduced here is protected by copyright with the author or publisher of the original source. The only exception to this rule are those items in the public domain. The rules of fair use apply if you wish to use any information from this site for non-profit educational purposes.