The subject is from a ballad by the early poet Francois Villon (c.1431-1463)), of which Rossetti published a translation in 1870 introducing his own work (Poems, FS Ellis, 1870). Each lady, listed in the banner above the procession, is described in the poem:

Tell me now in what hidden way is

Lady Flora the lovely Roman?

Where‘s Hipparchia, and where is Thais,

Neither of them the fairer woman?

Where is Echo, beheld of no man,

Only heard on river and mere—

She whose beauty was more than human?—

But where are the snows of yester-year?

Where‘s Heloise, the learned nun,

For whose sake Abeillard, I ween,

Lost manhood and put priesthood on?

(From Love he won such dule and teen!)

And where, I pray you, is the Queen

Who willed that Buridan should steer

Sewed in a sack‘s mouth down the Seine?—

But where are the snows of yester-year?

White Queen Blanche, like a queen of lilies,

With a voice like any mermaiden—

Bertha Broadfoot, Beatrice, Alice,

And Ermengarde the lady of Maine—

And that good Joan whom Englishmen

At Rouen doomed and burned her there—

Mother of God, where are they then?—

But where are the snows of yester-year?

Nay, never ask this week, fair lord,

Where they are gone, nor yet this year,

Except with this for an overword—

But where are the snows of yester-year?

Havers was the son of the prominent painters Fred Morgan and Alice Havers, who married in 1872. Val was born nine months later. Fred was not a good family man and soon began to stray. There were several transgressions (the housemaid Hetty Screwby was found sitting on his knee), but Fred was also violent and the couple divorced in 1889, when Val was 15. His mother died the year after, of an overdose of morphine, which she injected for neuralgia. Val took his mother’s maiden name.