Dante Gabriel Rossetti was away in Scotland when his first pet wombat arrived in September 1869. In response to an enquiry, "Have you seen the Wombat?," his sister, Christina, sent him this poem in Italian entitled 'O Uommibatto.' John Simons translates it as "O wombat, agile, joyful, how have you grown, furry and round! Ah do not flee like a vagabond, do not vanish, burrowing through the world: it's really the weight of a hemisphere, not a light burden." Christina also wrote an English distich as a motto for these verses: "When wombats do inspire, / I strike my disused lyre." Dante Gabriel Rossetti returned the favour by adding a wombat to his frontispiece for Christina's Goblin Market.
Top (1867-1869), the wombat celebrated in these verses, only briefly resided at the Cheyne Walk residence of the poet and painter Dante Gabriel Rossetti. Top was born near Hobart, Tasmania, sometime early in 1867, and was apparently transported to England in 1868 with Prince Alfred, the Duke of Edinburgh on his ship the Galatea. Top then lived for nearly a year with the London supplier of wild animals, Charles Jamrach, before entering the Rossetti household, where he was renowned for his charm and his contributions to literary and artistic dinners with acquaintances such as James Whistler, Algernon Swinburne, John Ruskin and Sir Edward Burne-Jones. Top died in London on 6 November 1869, and although his body was initially preserved by means of taxidermy, his resting place is now unknown.-Based on a cancelled entry for The Dictionary of National Biography.
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