Mr. ___ and M iss ___ nervously perpetuating the touch of a vanished hand.

Max Beerbohm

1922

Rossetti and His Circle, Plate 19

6 1/2 x 4 1/4 inches

The phrase "touch of a vanished hand" — itself virtually a Victorian icon — comes from the climactic section 95 of Tennyson's In Memoriam, where the poet's mystic experience provides the culmination of the hand imagery that runs through the poem. Here Beerbohm wryly applies it to the sordid matter of forgeries of Dante Rossetti's drawings by the adventurer, Charles Augustus Howell and Howell's artist-friend, Rosa Corder [GPL].

Scanned image and text by George P. Landow

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