Yes, I spelled that correctly.
Just a bit of trivia:
George Meredith posed as Thomas Chatterton (the forger poet, 1752-1770) for Henry Wallis’s infamous painting, “The Death of Chatterton” (1856). Wallis ended up being the other man who wooed Meredith’s wife, Mary Ellen Peacock Nicolls (daughter of the poet Thomas Love Peacock). Wallis and Nicolls eloped in 1858. 
For those pop fiends in the house who don’t know their Wallis from their Peacock, this image re-entered the popular imaginary about 10 years ago in a charming little film about intergenerational fan obsession, titled Love and Death on Long Island. John Hurt stars as a crusty, cantankerous, luddite scholar named Giles De’Ath. De’Ath is reborn after an accidental encounter with a horndog teen film called “Hotpants College II” starring the heartthrob “Ronnie Bostock” (played with puppy dog earnestness by Jason Priestley). Priestley strikes a pose at the end of the film within the film that evokes, for De’ath, Wallis’s “Death of Chatterton.” 
Do with this what you will.
KT
