Lizzie Siddal Page 5
CHAPTER FIVE
Falling in Love with Ophelia
Not long after Lizzie had posed as Ophelia, Rossetti decided that he could no longer abide the thought of sharing her. He asked her not to sit for anyone else and requested that his friends no longer ask her to model for them. This was not as difficult for the group as it would have been two years earlier – inspired by Deverell’s success with Lizzie, and because each artist now wanted to discover his own, even more beautiful stunner, the men had been busy approaching suitable-looking women and by now had quite a variety of models at their disposal. Rossetti was no exception, always scanning the streets, theatres and pleasure gardens for stunners.26
What Lizzie felt about the loss of this extra income is unrecorded. She also gave up working for Mrs Tozer, so by agreeing to model solely for Rossetti – a man not renowned for wisdom where money was concerned – she was placing herself in a very vulnerable position. However, it was around this time that Lizzie’s health, which had never been robust, began to become a recurrent theme in Rossetti’s letters, so it became of sudden import that she should not continue with millinery or any similarly exhausting career. Rossetti did not make Lizzie regular payments for modelling incessantly for him, but one must assume that he supported her (not least because, in 1854, Lizzie moved out of the family home and rented rooms in a house in central London).
In 1852, Charles Allston Collins – the younger brother of Wilkie Collins and, at one time, an unsuccessful suitor for the hand of Maria Rossetti – wrote to Lizzie asking her to model for him, hoping that she would make an exception to her rule of sitting solely for Rossetti. He was prompted to try because of his long association with Rossetti, having been his friend in the pre-Brotherhood days and been present at the start of the PRB itself.27 A letter written by Millais relates that she “answered in the most freezing manner, stating that she had other occupations”. Collins, a romantic and quite neurotic young man, was deeply dejected by her refusal, feeling it especially painfully as he seemed unable to find another model whom he believed would fulfil the role as Lizzie would have done. According to Millais, that particular picture was never painted.
At the start of 1852, Rossetti was living at The Hermitage in Highgate, the house of a friend, the designer Edward Latrobe Bateman. As Bateman was often away, Rossetti was allowed the run of his home and the freedom to invite over whomever he chose. In 1860 (at the time of Rossetti’s and Lizzie’s marriage), William Bell Scott wrote to William Rossetti reminiscing about the occasion in early 1852 when he had first encountered Lizzie. Arriving unannounced at The Hermitage, at a time “when the place seemed to be in the sole occupancy of Gabriel and Miss Siddall”28 he had let himself into the house. On walking up the stairs, he came upon the couple looking very cosy in a dark nook lit by candlelight, with Rossetti lovingly reading poetry out loud to Lizzie. In the words of Bell Scott: “I came upon them like Adam and Eve in Paradise, only they wasn’t naked, and he was reading Tennyson.”
Much has been made of this meeting in books about Rossetti, as he did not introduce Lizzie to his friend and she left almost as soon as Bell Scott arrived, apparently slighting him. Bell Scott told friends at the time that he supposed Rossetti to be ashamed of her. In this letter of 1860, however, Bell Scott admits he was tactless, coming upon them unexpectedly and grinning at their discomfiture, whereupon an embarrassed and annoyed Lizzie glowered at him and left without a word. An unsurprising action, considering she found herself in a particularly compromising position, being discovered alone in a house with a man. Bell Scott obviously assumed she was Rossetti’s mistress and she took exception to his leering.
In November 1852, Dante decided it was time to rent a place of his own and persuaded William Rossetti to take on the lease of a flat at 14 Chatham Place, in Blackfriars, London.29 William was still living at home, so renting a place in Blackfriars made sense, as it was within convenient walking distance of his office in Somerset House on the Strand. In Dante’s eyes, the flat was located satisfyingly close to Lizzie’s home in Southwark, from which Bateman’s home in Highgate was a considerable distance. As well as a small bedroom, the flat had a large sitting room, walls covered in bookshelves and – most importantly – a large studio. There were no cooking facilities, which was quite usual at the time. A bachelor with no cook was expected to eat out or to order food from a local tavern or his landlady.
Chatham Place was on the river, which was occasionally a beautiful sight worthy of an artist’s eyes. The apartment had a convenient sunny balcony on which the light conditions for painting were perfect – and the balcony was large enough to house the painter, his easel and a model. More often, however, the river proved a stinking, unhealthy encumbrance that forced Rossetti’s guests to leave his parties early, or to decline future invitations, in order to escape the foul odour he claimed he could not smell. At times the stench was strong enough even to force Rossetti out, on which occasions he would overstay his welcome at friends’ houses or spend some time at home, being pampered by his doting sisters and mother. The rent of 14 Chatham Place was £60 a year, a sum William considered too expensive. It was almost triple the yearly amount Lizzie had been earning when she had been discovered by Allingham, just three years previously.
The year he moved to Chatham Place was also the year in which Rossetti decided to become Lizzie’s art teacher. From an early age she had shown an aptitude for painting and drawing, as well as for poetry. Rossetti knew that she had shown her works to Deverell and, discovering that she had received no formal education, Rossetti offered to tutor her. This arrangement was a welcome development for him as their relationship was unsettled and he was obviously reluctant to commit himself. Despite the fact that by 1853 Lizzie was regularly staying alone or with Rossetti at the one-bedroomed flat in Blackfriars, he often described her to friends as his “pupil”. The offer to teach her was intended kindly and genuinely – Rossetti always believed Lizzie had a prodigious undiscovered talent – but it had also the extra attraction for him of providing an ideal excuse for not needing to place their relationship on a more permanent, or official, footing. In September 1853, Rossetti sketched an image of the two of them in the studio at Chatham Place. In it, he reclines on a couple of chairs – sitting on one with his feet resting on the other – while an eager Lizzie bends over her canvas to sketch him. The scene is dimly lit by a tall lamp, her canvas rests on the backrest of his second chair and she peers intently at him. Meanwhile, Rossetti sits in a relaxed fashion, his hands in his pockets, observing her as keenly as she is observing him. The brown-ink sketch, swiftly executed, captures a wonderfully intimate moment in their relationship.
There has been much speculation about precisely when Rossetti did propose. After both Lizzie and Dante were dead, William Rossetti made a vague claim that they had become engaged in 1851, but there is no proof for this and it seems that William was attempting to salvage his brother’s reputation – which was badly sullied by Lizzie’s death and the resulting scandal – by claiming he behaved in a more gentleman-like manner than he had. Violet Hunt, who wrote a florid biography of Lizzie in the 1930s, claims they became engaged in 1854, during a passionate moment in the Sussex countryside, but this is also unsubstantiated. Despite having attempted to meet one another’s families in 1855, it seems no formal engagement did take place until Rossetti was called to what everybody thought was Lizzie’s deathbed in 1860, and swore to marry her if she would only live long enough.
Rossetti was an odd and intriguing mixture of selfishness and selflessness. Although he could be quite astonishingly heedless of other people’s feelings and needs, he could also be extremely kind and hospitable. He was generous enough to offer to share his studio space at Chatham Place with painters struggling even more than himself, such as Arthur Hughes (1832–1915).30 In later years, when he was famous and wealthy, he would suggest to impecunious artists that they live with him at Cheyne Walk when they could not afford to pay rent.31 Rossetti was also well known
by his friends for giving money to beggars and even for handing out his own clothes to the homeless when he could scarcely afford to buy himself food. He frustrated his great friend and one-time tutor, Ford Madox Brown, by continually borrowing money he did not repay, yet then parading expensive new clothes in front of him, or by jaunting off to Paris when he should have been finishing a paid commission. The Madox Browns were not in particularly solid financial circumstances, especially when their children were very young – there was no free health service in the nineteenth century – but Rossetti’s charm was such and his friendship so very genuine and, in his unique way, loyal, that both Ford and his wife Emma regularly forgave him. William Rossetti treated his brother with equal indulgence, selflessly giving up his own dreams of studying to become a doctor so he could start work at the age of 15 to pay for his older brother’s erratic lifestyle and support Dante’s refusal to even think about getting a regular job and income.
Although William’s name was on the lease, and he paid the rent and bills with far greater frequency than his brother, it seems William never actually lived at Chatham Place, just staying over occasionally. Lizzie, on the other hand, was there almost incessantly. On November 25, just days after moving in, Dante wrote to his brother:
My dear William,
I have written to Hunt, as I told you I should, to decline attending the meeting tomorrow. In case I should not see you before then, I beg that you will avoid asking him (should it enter your head) to come down here on Saturday, as I have Lizzy32 coming, and do not of course wish for anyone else. I have written to him that I am engaged that evening …
Yet just a couple of months later, Rossetti was writing to Ford Madox Brown, describing Lizzie as his “pupil”.
Madox Brown, affectionately called “Bruno” by Rossetti, was a few years older than the members of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. He was a groundbreaking artist, who has since become famous for works such as Take Your Son, Sir (1851), The Last of England (1855–66) and Work (1863), but he was already disillusioned by the time the band of seven brothers set out on their quest to change the world.
Rossetti and Madox Brown had met for the first time in March 1848. Rossetti, having seen some of Madox Brown’s work and been profoundly moved by it, determined to be taken on as a pupil by this great master. He wrote a richly complimentary letter to the older artist, begging him to become his art tutor. Unhappy with the direction his life had taken and distrustful of people in general, Madox Brown was convinced this young swaggerer’s letter was intended to mock him, so he turned up at the Rossettis’ home in Charlotte Street, complete with a sturdy stick, where he threatened to beat Dante Rossetti for his impudence. The mistake was eventually cleared up, Dante’s adulation for Madox Brown’s work discovered to be genuine and an astonished Madox Brown agreed to take on the promising new pupil. “Bruno” later swallowed his pride when Rossetti left his tutelage, after just five months, for that of Holman Hunt and he remained one of Rossetti’s closest – and certainly his most altruistic – friend until death. Madox Brown was also among the few people of Rossetti’s acquaintance who genuinely liked Lizzie.
Madox Brown had been widowed early and left with a young daughter, Lucy (who lived with her grandparents).33 Around the time that Rossetti met Lizzie, Madox Brown had also fallen in love again, with another young model called Emma Hill, “a very young girl, with little education or domestic training”. For a few years, Madox Brown and Emma were lovers without being married. On November 11, 1850, while Rossetti and Lizzie were fast falling in love, Emma gave birth to Madox Brown’s baby, Cathy (also known as “Catty”).34 The couple eventually married in April 1853. Coincidentally, Emma’s family were acquaintances of the Siddalls, a shared history that led to a close friendship developing between her and Lizzie. Because of this intertwined relationship, Madox Brown’s diary contains valuable information about Dante’s and Lizzie’s relationship (as well as his own). It reveals a relationship that was intense, often troubled but always exceedingly close. It also tells of Rossetti’s jealousy of the closeness between Lizzie and Emma.
Another key source to discovering Rossetti’s true feelings for Lizzie are his own letters. In August 1852, a few months before moving to Blackfriars, Rossetti wrote a revealing missive to Christina. Maria had told him that Christina was trying her hand at portraiture and he asked to see an example. Though he added, with a tactless air of teasing, “You must take care however not to rival the Sid, but keep within respectful limits.” Not a comment calculated to endear the un-met girlfriend to a sister’s heart. In smitten tones he added, “I have had sent me, among my things from Highgate, a lock of hair shorn from the beloved head of my dear, and radiant as the tresses of Aurora, a sight of which may perhaps dazzle you on your return.” He also told her that Lizzie had recently made herself two dresses, one in grey and one in black silk. The grey “bringing out her characteristics as a ‘meek unconscious dove’” and the black one making her as graceful as a swan. Rossetti used the word “dove” as one of his nicknames for Lizzie; in correspondence, he would often draw a picture of a dove instead of writing her name (doves were also one of his favourite artistic devices, featuring regularly in his paintings).
Giving a man a lock of one’s hair was a sure symbol of love and fidelity. It was not an action a woman was supposed to undertake unless she was engaged to the recipient, which suggests that Rossetti had led Lizzie to believe at this early date that he intended to marry her. In this letter, Rossetti seems to be suggesting this unspoken intention to Christina.
August 1852 is also the first time that mention is made of Lizzie’s poor health. In that month, she went to Hastings to take a rest cure and Rossetti followed her, unwilling to stay in London without her, even forsaking his precious studio. Lizzie was by now experimenting excitedly with her art, enthused by Rossetti’s own passion for painting. By the following January, Rossetti was writing to Madox Brown to come to Blackfriars and see Lizzie’s drawings. She had been illustrating poems from Wordsworth and he particularly wanted “Bruno” to see a finished piece inspired by Wordsworth’s poem, “We Are Seven”. It was a typically melancholy subject to be chosen by Lizzie: the story of a child who insists that she has six siblings, even though two of them are buried in the local church-yard. The poem, which starts with the lines, “A simple Child, That lightly draws its breath, And feels its life in every limb, / What should it know of death?” is in a similar vein to Lizzie’s own poems, all of which centre on gloomy subjects, usually death or betrayal in love. The death of a child – a tragically common occurrence in Victorian England – was a subject sentimental enough to be guaranteed commercial success.
On June 20, 1853, Dante sent a letter to William Rossetti which he marked PRIVATE. He sent it from Newcastle, where he was staying with a friend, William Bell Scott, and attempting to recover from an illness. In the letter, he confided to William that while he was out of London Lizzie was staying at Blackfriars, but he did not want anyone else to know. As he was expected back in London sooner than he was now able to return, he anticipated friends attempting to call on him at Chatham Place in his absence, and he did not want any of them to discover Lizzie in residence in his rooms. Being discovered in a man’s rooms, even while he was not in residence, was strictly taboo, according to the conventions of the time. Lizzie’s reputation would have been ruined and Rossetti would never have been able to marry her if her behaviour became discussed. Dante requested that his brother discourage anyone from going to the studio and explained that he had told Lizzie to keep the doors locked while he was away and not to answer to anyone who called round. However, as there was no kitchen, she must have left and returned to the studio quite regularly. Despite Rossetti’s attempts at this stage to keep the relationship – and Lizzie’s presence in his rooms – a secret, the other residents of the building already believed that she was his mistress.
It was not until March 28, 1854 that Dante Rossetti finally decided to introduce this adored �
�dove” to his sister, asking Christina to visit him at his studios, where she was to have the pleasure of seeing Lizzie’s artwork. Rossetti had been talking to Allingham about the possibility of getting Christina’s poems published and was keen for Lizzie to be their illustrator (Christina’s poems were not published until 1862, the year of Lizzie’s death, and Lizzie was not invited to help with the project). Rossetti attempted to forge a friendship between the two women, hoping their shared love of writing poetry would create a bond, but it was something that would never be. Christina, a little shrewish at times and eventually disappointed by life, was unimpressed by this rather common, but uncommonly attractive, woman who had usurped her in “Gabriel’s” life. However, there was also a measure of fascination for the woman whose friendship she shunned (after her sister-in-law’s death, a genuinely remorseful Christina encouraged her brother to publish Lizzie’s poems).35
Six months after this first meeting, Christina composed a poem entitled “Listening”, which demonstrates how much of an impression Lizzie’s adoration for Dante had made upon his sister:
Listening
She listened like a cushat dove
That listens to its mate alone;
She listened like a cushat dove
That loves but only one.
Not fair as men would reckon fair