Vernon Lushington Thomas Hughes, and Richard Buckley Litchfield, became a unifying force at the College. He was a friend to artists, authors and activists, particularly those of The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood and the Arts and Crafts Movement who gravitated to the Working Men's College. In 1856, it was he who first introduced Edward Burne-Jones to Dante Gabriel Rossetti in his college rooms. Rossetti used Lushington’s wife, Jane, as a model in 1865. Lushington, friend of William Morris, was a frequent visitor to Kelmscott Manor. He was a close friend of Leslie Stephen and his family; Stephen’s daughter Virginia (later Woolf) based her character
Dante Gabriel Rossetti one of his "Three Songs" (1926), Rossetti's poem "The One Hope" from "Poems" (1870). In 1904 Ralph Vaughan Williams (1872-1958) created his song cycle "The House of Life" from six poems by Rossetti. One song in that cycle, Silent Noon, is one of Vaughan Williams's best known and most frequently performed songs. In 1904, Phoebe Anna Traquair painted "The Awakening", inspired by a sonnet from Rosetti's "The House of Life". "Rossetti divided his attention between painting and poetry for the rest of his life" - Poetry Foundation Dante Gabriel Rossetti Gabriel Charles Dante Rossetti (12 May 1828 – 9 April