Lizzie Siddal Read online

  Called on Dante Rossetti. Saw Miss Siddal, looking thinner and more deathlike and more beautiful and more ragged than ever; a real artist, a woman without parallel for many a long year. Gabriel as usual diffuse and inconsequent in his work. Drawing wonderful and lovely Guggums one after another, each one a fresh charm, each one stamped with immortality, and his picture never advancing.

  Almost a year later, in August 1855, Rossetti’s obsession had not been muted and Madox Brown wrote, “To see Rossetti … He showed me a drawer full of ‘Guggums’; God knows how many, but not bad work, I should say, for the six years he has known her; it is like a monomania with him. Many of them are matchless in beauty, however, and one day will be worth large sums.” Another visitor to Rossetti’s studio, while Lizzie was absent, wrote that all the while he painted, Rossetti kept repeating the word “Guggum” ceaselessly to himself.37

  Rossetti’s all-consuming passion for Lizzie was, however, worrying Madox Brown. Rossetti was not yet a rich man and he was reliant entirely on the goodwill of relations – one of his aunts was very adoring and William was always generous – and friends, namely Madox Brown himself, who seemed to be constantly lending Rossetti money. Yet even though he had commissions to complete in 1855 and he was in real need of the money these would bring, Rossetti could not stop drawing and painting Lizzie. She was more than a muse. Through no fault of her own she had become an obsession – and one that was endangering his career. At the end of 1855, when Lizzie travelled to France for her health, Madox Brown noted with relief that at last Rossetti would be able to get on with some work. In fact, several of his associates commented on how much better Rossetti worked when Lizzie was not around.

  Yet, though he may have worked better, Rossetti could not bear the separation and continued to ignore the unfinished commissions. He chose instead to work day and night to complete a new painting as fast as possible,38 so he could sell it and use the money to go and join Lizzie for ten days. Alexander Munro, who joined Rossetti in his trip to Paris so they could visit the French Great Exhibition, wrote home: “We enjoyed Paris immensely, in different ways of course, for Rossetti was every day with his sweetheart of whom he is more foolishly fond than ever I saw lover.”

  That he genuinely loved her cannot be in dispute but, to echo Ford Madox Brown, why did he not marry her? It seems the answer lies not with Lizzie, but with Dante Rossetti himself and his aversion to being married. It is notable that, despite having passionate relationships after Lizzie’s death, he did not ever marry again and, in spite of spending many years obsessed with Lizzie, he found himself unable to make the ultimate commitment until he was so torn apart by the belief she was about to die that he did the only thing within his power to make her happy – he married her almost on her deathbed. William’s daughter, Helen, later described Dante by saying he “was not a man with any particular propensity for the married state”. Why Dante had this distaste for marriage is unknown, but of the four Rossetti children, only William actively embraced the concept (and this was only after he had already suffered one broken engagement).39 Both Christina and Maria turned down eligible suitors; Christina was engaged once and proposed to twice, but neither culminated in marriage.40

  In 1856, after Rossetti and Lizzie had fought furiously about his infidelity with Annie Miller (a misdemeanour that had also been discovered by an angry Holman Hunt), their relationship took an unexpected upward turn. Rossetti was apologetic and loving; he bought Lizzie a sumptuous evening cloak to wear and rashly announced that there would finally be a wedding. In November he arrived at Madox Brown’s studio, interrupting a private meeting between Ford and William Rossetti, and joyously proclaimed that he and Lizzie would be married as soon as possible and that he intended they should honeymoon in Algeria, at the time a popular spot for invalids and a place he had decided Lizzie would benefit from visiting. Barbara Leigh Smith had recently taken her consumptive sister, Isabella, to Algeria. No doubt Rossetti was also inspired to travel abroad having viewed the magnificent works Holman Hunt had been producing since his time overseas. A honeymoon in Algeria would be the perfect excuse for him to paint its landscapes and people. He told Lizzie he would fix the wedding date as soon as he received an expected payment from one of his patrons.

  The payment arrived within a couple of weeks but, to Lizzie’s humiliation, Rossetti suddenly stopped talking about wedding plans and Algeria, and spent the money elsewhere. As far as Lizzie was concerned, their relationship was now at an end. Mortified and miserable, she fled to Bath with her sister Clara, but Rossetti followed her and persuaded her to come back to him. Like the addict she was, she did so, returning to London and living, as before, entirely on Rossetti’s terms, while her health deteriorated even more rapidly.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Lizzie’s Mysterious Illness

  To examine the state of Lizzie’s health and the way it affected her relationship with Rossetti, we need to return to 1852 and the first time it was mentioned in Rossetti’s letters. It was August and Rossetti wrote to Christina, mentioning that he was about to make a trip to Hastings. He was going there to visit Lizzie, who was convalescing by the sea – this was shortly after her experience of modelling for Ophelia and is suggestive that the extended cold bath had more seriously endangered Lizzie’s health than John Millais’s son was prepared to admit. From this time onward, Lizzie’s poor health was to become a recurrent theme in Rossetti’s correspondence. Her mysterious illness has long baffled medics and scholars. In her lifetime she was erroneously diagnosed as having consumption (tuberculosis) and curvature of the spine, but since then it has been suggested she suffered from an eating disorder, such as anorexia or bulimia, or that she was simply “neurotic” – a vague description that can encompass myriad symptoms and mental illnesses.

  The long-accepted belief that Lizzie was consumptive does not tally with the many sudden recoveries she made, or with the fact that she lived for so long after the diagnosis was made. If she had been a victim of tuberculosis, her symptoms would have continually worsened and eventually proved fatal – this did not happen. Instead, she would languish and appear to be hovering on the brink between life and death and then quite suddenly – usually with the arrival of Rossetti at her side, or with the ending of one of his affairs – she would rally. Within days – sometimes within hours – she would have risen from what was believed to be her deathbed and be striding across the Downs or visiting an art exhibition with him. In the end it was not her poor physical health that killed her: she died from a self-administered overdose.

  Lizzie did suffer from an undiagnosed digestive disorder. This could have been something as commonplace as severe indigestion or irritable bowel syndrome, or it could have been indicative of an eating disorder. The pain, however, may have been unconnected with her digestive system – “stomach pain” was a useful phrase to cover the embarrassments of gynaecological problems, such as period pains. Whatever the original ailment was, Lizzie began alleviating it with one of the nineteenth century’s most common drugs, laudanum. It was that which was to prove her downfall.

  Many of her symptoms – which included nausea, lack of appetite, a continually nagging nervous cough, sudden bouts of vomiting, breathlessness, a general feeling of weakness and dizzy spells – can be attributed to the effects of laudanum addiction. The suggestions that Lizzie had some kind of eating disorder seem to be borne out by the fact that Rossetti makes several references in letters to Lizzie having refused to eat – at one point she tells him she has not eaten for two weeks. These periods of starvation coincide with a time when Rossetti has been unfaithful or neglectful, indicative that her illness was emotional rather than physical. As their relationship deteriorated, it became common for her to emotionally blackmail him by refusing to eat. She remained unhealthily thin and suffered from a multitude of emotional miseries and feelings of self-loathing, which attacked her at around the same time as her apparent inability to eat, or an inability to digest what she did eat without vomi
ting. All these symptoms, including her lack of appetite, can also be attributed to laudanum addiction.

  Laudanum, otherwise known as “tincture of opium”, was a mixture of opium and alcohol. It was available widely and without need of anything as regulatory as a prescription. Laudanum was perceived as a cure-all painkiller, much as aspirin or paracetamol are viewed today. During Lizzie’s lifetime, thousands of kilograms of opium were imported into the UK from China and until 1868 opium was not even classified as a poison.41 The profession of pharmacist was recognized in Britain only in the 1840s, so in Lizzie’s lifetime there were relatively few professional pharmacies. As a result, laudanum was sold over the counter in an eclectic variety of outlets. One could buy the drug from the greengrocer, the barber, the ironmonger or at market stalls. In 1865, a local government survey conducted in Preston discovered that the large number of people selling drugs at that time hailed from such disparate trades as a basketmaker, a baker, a tailor and a rent collector.

  Laudanum was sold regularly to mothers to soothe their babies. The practice of spiking a baby’s bottle with laudanum, to be sure of a good night’s sleep, was common and several preparations created specifically for children were on the market, including the famous Godfrey’s Cordial (which continued to be sold during the first decades of the twentieth century).The cordial was especially coveted by working mothers. In working-class areas, almost all able-bodied people were out working themselves, so the lot of child care usually fell to anyone who was not eligible for paid work – older children, the elderly and the infirm. Laudanum was therefore a vital part of ensuring that the children they were looking after did not become unmanageable. As a result, many children grew to adulthood already addicted to the opium-derived drug.

  To understand why laudanum was so widely taken, one needs to look at the vast list of disparate symptoms it was claimed to alleviate. These included symptoms of alcoholism (even though alcohol was the main ingredient of the “medicine”), bedwetting, bronchitis, chilblains, cholera, coughs and colds, depression, diarrhoea, dysentery, earache, flatulence, gout, gynaecological problems, headaches, hysteria, insanity, menopause, morning sickness, muscle fatigue, nausea, nervous tension, period pains, rheumatism, stomachache, teething in babies and toothache in adults. Lotion made with laudanum was said to heal a variety of complaints, including bruises, chilblains, piles, sprains and ulcers.

  One can see how easy, and how acceptable, it was for Lizzie to become addicted to laudanum. In fact, laudanum addiction was so common that it was rarely referred to, treated much as drinking alcohol is accepted in society today. Lizzie was not alone in her addiction. Walter Scott and Coleridge were well known for their dependence on it, and Wilkie Collins and Elizabeth Barrett Browning (also an habitual invalid), were both regular imbibers of the alcohol-based drug.42 Charles Dickens also took laudanum from time to time.

  Lizzie’s overwhelming problem, in addition to her addiction, was that she suffered from severe depression. Whether this was caused by the laudanum or whether she originally took laudanum to combat the depression is impossible to determine. Much of Lizzie’s ill health originated in her mind, stemming from her desire to receive attention and love. Dr Acland, a friend of Ruskin’s who made a close study of Lizzie over a fortnight, and Mrs Kincaid, with whom she spent several months abroad for her health, both became aware that much of Lizzie’s illness was imaginary, or self-inflicted. On rare occasions, and increasingly toward the end of her life, she was genuinely very ill, but at other times her poor health seldom prevented her from undertaking anything she really wanted to do, although it was extraordinarily effective in stopping her from carrying out other people’s wishes.

  Very few letters between Lizzie and Rossetti survive, so the information we have comes from letters he wrote to his friends and family. One very revealing aspect of these letters – although unrecognized by Rossetti – is the extent to which Lizzie manipulated him through the medium of her ill health. Time and again when they were apart, Rossetti would leave whatever he was doing and rush to wherever Lizzie was as he had been told she was dangerously ill. More often than not, his next letter would enthuse that Lizzie had made a remarkable recovery thanks to his arrival and within a day or two they would be off walking for miles and carving their initials in the bark of unfortunate trees. It was also very common for him to write that he would be returning home in a couple of days, only for this letter to be followed rapidly by another saying he had been forced to change his plans as Lizzie had had a sudden relapse and needed him to stay with her.

  It is interesting to see how often Lizzie’s ill health coincided with Rossetti’s affections being taken up by another woman. By his refusal to marry her, Rossetti had forced her to blackmail him emotionally and she used every opportunity to do so. At the start of their relationship it seems the balance of power was very much in his favour as she struggled to prevent him tiring of her, but by the end of her life she had become overtly manipulative and controlling, to the point that his friends claimed he shrank when she spoke to him, always expecting a rebuke or for her to sink dangerously into illness, blaming him wordlessly for its onslaught.

  On August 25, 1853, Rossetti mentioned in a letter to Ford Madox Brown that Lizzie had been “very ill lately”. Six months later she was in extremely poor health again, following Walter Deverell’s death, on February 2, 1854.43 Lizzie had remained very fond of Deverell, in later years telling friends that she had loved him before Rossetti. She was always grateful for his life-changing discovery of her and the kindness he showed her; his death caused her great sadness, as well as being a shocking reminder of her own mortality. Despite knowing that Deverell’s doctors had warned him of the extent of his illness, his friends were unable to believe, until the very end, that this vivacious star of Pre-Raphaelitism, and of their social group in general, would ever let the disease get the better of him.

  In 1857, when she and Rossetti were temporarily separated, Lizzie told an acquaintance in Sheffield that she and Deverell would have been married if he had lived. Although there is no apparent truth in the statement, Lizzie and Deverell had been very fond of one another. After Deverell’s death, both she and Rossetti were dogged by depression, neither able to help the other as each was so wrapped up in their own misery.

  A month after Deverell’s death, when Lizzie’s health was still exhibiting no improvement, Rossetti’s friends, the Howitts, suggested that Lizzie be seen by a friend of theirs, the Swedenborgian physician Dr Garth Wilkinson. Anna Mary Howitt (1824–86) was engaged to Edward Bateman, whose home Rossetti had shared in Highgate, and it was through Anna Mary that he and Lizzie were introduced to Barbara Leigh Smith (1827–91) and her great friend, Bessie Rayner Parkes. The three women were to prove invaluable friends to the couple, especially to Lizzie.44 Anna Mary was an artist, a serious female artist who had been trained at the Royal Academy “pre” school, Sass’s – although her gender precluded her from going on to the Royal Academy itself. Bessie and Barbara were amateur artists. Rossetti was hugely impressed by the three women and took their advice about Lizzie seriously. He related the resultant medical consultation to Ford Madox Brown:

  The Howitts insisted on Lizzy seeing a Dr Wilkinson, a friend of theirs, and I believe an eminent man. He finds that the poor dear has contracted a curvature of the spine, and says she ought not to paint at present; but this, of course, she must. He says her case is a very anxious but by no means a hopeless one …

  Curvature of the spine was an extremely odd diagnosis to make about a woman whose main symptoms were fainting, serious digestive disorders, loss of appetite and severe and sudden weight loss. It also seems a singularly strange report to give of a woman whom all contemporary reports claim had such perfect deportment and who never even wore a corset to keep her back straight. Lizzie was famed for being tall and elegant of bearing, and it was remarked that she walked with a superbly erect spine. It is interesting, however, that one of the symptoms of laudanum addiction, as noted b
y nineteenth-century observers, was a stooped posture. It seems likely that when Lizzie saw Dr Wilkinson, at the height of her depression, she had been dosing herself liberally with laudanum to try and numb the misery. It is also safe to assume that she suffered back pains as a result of her many hours of modelling for Rossetti, as well as from sitting huddled over her own easel. Curvature of the spine was not, however, the reason she was such an invalid and Wilkinson’s diagnosis was to be dismissed by the several doctors who attended her in the coming years.

  This letter of Rossetti’s is interesting for his instant dismissal not of the diagnosis but of the recommended treatment: that she should give up art. To Rossetti the idea that one could give up art was as preposterous as suggesting that one should give up breathing. He would never entertain the idea, either for himself or Lizzie. He was also not going to deprive himself of his favourite and always available model, even if modelling was the cause of her constant illness. He loved her, but he loved his art even more.

  By mid-April, Lizzie was still no better. Rossetti was concerned enough to arrange for her – on the advice of Barbara Leigh Smith – to return to Hastings and convalesce. On first meeting Lizzie, Barbara had written to Bessie expressing great interest in this needy woman’s welfare:

  I have a strong interest in a young girl formerly model to Millais and Dante Rossetti, now Rossetti’s love and pupil … She is a genius and will, if she lives, be a great artist. Alas! Her life has been hard and full of trials, her home unhappy and her whole fate hard. Dante Rossetti has been an honourable friend to her and I do not doubt if circumstances were favourable, would marry her. She is of course under a ban, having been a model (tho’ only to two PRBs) ergo do not mention it to anyone …