The domestic calamity of 1862 rendered a change of residence imperative to the young widower, left desolate amid surroundings charged to the utmost with poignant memories of the past. The old rooms in Chatham Place became unbearable to Rossetti, full as they were of associations of courtship as well as of married life. He sojourned for a time in chambers in Lincoln’s Inn Fields, and in the autumn of the same year he moved to No. 16, Cheyne Walk, Chelsea, where he lived intermittently up to the time of his death. It was a fine old house, well suited to be an artist’s abode; and especially fortunate in a large garden, which became a valuable resource to Rossetti in those sad days in store for him when any emergence from the seclusion of home grew more and more distasteful to his mind. By the end of October Rossetti seems to have been established in his new dwelling, which thenceforth it was his pleasure to adorn with all the quaint old curios he could lay his hands on. In the natural revulsion of overwrought feeling, he threw himself upon decorative hobbies of many kinds; developed a passion for blue china and antique pottery; cultivated oriental textures and old oak; and haunted second-hand furniture warehouses with the pertinacious enthusiasm of the devout lover of a bargain. His shelves groaned under their picturesque load of reliquary wares and studio-properties gathered from every age and clime. Here, too, flourished a whole colony of curious animals, such as he delighted to indulge with unbridled license in his domains,—to the produce of countless anecdotes of their pranks, and of the embarrassment of their victims.