Ophelia's Muse

by Rita Cameron

  CHAPTER 13

  Rossetti never would have guessed, when pulling Lizzie from the cold bath, that she had suffered such a grave injury. She’d been pale, of course, and badly chilled, but her very pallor had made her all the more beautiful, and it had seemed at the time that nothing more than a hot fire and a glass of whiskey were in order. And then she had collapsed, and all was chaos.

  Millais called for a doctor and a carriage, and Emma Brown was called for as well, when it was discovered that neither man knew Lizzie’s address. Their arrival at the Siddal home was just as confused. Lizzie fainted again on the doorstep, and her father screamed like a teakettle and boiled over with threats and insults as the ladies hurried about, preparing the sickbed.

  It was, in the end, with equal measures of worry and relief that Rossetti was chased from the house, and he didn’t need Mr. Siddal’s shouts echoing down the street to tell him that he was a scoundrel. He felt his lack of care for Lizzie quite keenly on his own, and he cursed the day that he had permitted her to go sit for Millais. He worshipped her; why had he let another man paint her?

  At first, Rossetti couldn’t work without her. For many months she had been his near constant companion: sitting for his drawings and reading poetry aloud to him, walking with him for hours through the city. And then, suddenly, she was gone.

  He wrote to her daily, anxious for news of her health. He rejoiced in the receipt of her rare answers, and then fretted that they were often no more than a few weakly scrawled lines. He was restless, unable to concentrate on his work. Now that her life was in peril, he castigated himself for not marrying her and giving her a proper position, as he knew he should have. He made such thoughts the basis of many anguished rants to his friends, saying that if he were to lose her now, he would go mad with grief. His friends consoled him the best that they could, while privately shaking their heads over what they had come to refer to as Dante’s obsession. Only Walter Deverell had rebuked him, saying bluntly that if Rossetti had acted as more of a gentleman, and treated Lizzie as a lady, and not some common model, none of this would have happened. Rossetti shot back that Deverell had had his chance with Lizzie and had failed to take it, and that he was only jealous. The two parted that day on cold terms, and neither raised the subject again.

  As the days turned into weeks, the Lizzie of Rossetti’s memory became more ethereal and more beautiful than the real Lizzie had ever been. In his memories, she was always just striking a statuesque pose, her eyes bright and a smile forming on her lips, as if she were whispering a secret. She spoke only in murmured lines of poetry, and moved about the studio as lightly as if she were carried by the same breeze that rustled the sketches pinned to the walls.

  He longed for her, but he found that he could translate his longing into exquisitely executed works of art, just as Dante Alighieri had wrought his best verses from the pain of losing the lady Beatrice. Soon he was painting with more fervor than ever before. His paintings of Lizzie had always been beautiful: lush portraits of burning eyes in a pale face, crowned by the golden-red halo of her hair. But now his paintings described not only her physical beauty, but also its counterpart, the elevation of his spirit through beauty and love, longing and despair. They had a depth and resonance that he had not thought possible, and he often worked all night. He may have longed for her return, but her absence was also precious.

  The more he painted, the more he wanted to paint. He wrote, asking her if she might soon return, but there was no reply. It could be months, he finally realized, until she was able to sit for him again. In the meantime, he had an ambitious new painting in mind, and he cast about for another model to use while Lizzie was recovering. He finally decided on Annie Miller, whom he’d thought of often since they met at Lord Lamberton’s party. He remembered her warmth and her wide, easy smile. She seemed to bloom from the earth like a tiger lily, vibrant and inviting.

  He sent her a note, inviting her to sit. But the reply came back written in Holman Hunt’s bold hand and declining on Miss Miller’s behalf. No doubt Hunt suspected that Rossetti might have more than a painting in mind. But Rossetti would not be dissuaded. When Hunt’s ship sailed for Palestine in February, Rossetti appealed to Miss Miller again. This time a note came back, unexpectedly, from Ford. It seemed that Hunt was no fool. In his absence, he had left Annie’s care to friends who would make sure that she sat for only a few select and respectable painters, so that she could make a living while Hunt was away. To no one’s surprise, Rossetti’s name had not made the list.

  Rossetti wasted little time in stewing over Hunt’s slight. He was enjoying the chase—it worked to sharpen the image in his mind of the subject he wanted Annie to sit for, Helen of Troy.

  He took care with his next note. He wrote to Annie that he wished to paint her as the face that had launched a thousand ships. It was a vision of her, he said, that he saw when he thought of Helen, the most beautiful woman in the world. He sealed the letter and paid a boy to deliver it by hand, telling him to give it over to no one but Miss Miller herself.

  What woman made of flesh could resist such a note? Not Miss Miller, who arrived at his studio with a great rustle of new silk and happy laughter. She came right up and embraced him as an old friend, though they had met only once. Her smile was open and she seemed immediately at home.

  “Miss Miller,” he said, bowing. “Thank you for agreeing to sit for me at last.”

  “Think nothing of it! And call me Annie. I can’t understand all of this formality, no matter how many lessons my dear Hunt gives me on manners and such. It seems an awful lot of fuss, if you ask me.” She laughed and colored a bit. “But I expect he’s used to having things a certain way, and I’ve promised to keep at my lessons while he’s away.”

  Rossetti laughed as well. “Well, you needn’t be formal with me. It will be our little secret.”

  Annie giggled. Then she turned and walked over to the chaise that Rossetti had come to think of as Lizzie’s chair. Rossetti glanced at the sketches of Lizzie that lined the far wall. Was it his imagination, or did she look back disapprovingly? She would never have allowed him to talk like that to her, no matter what else she had let him do. For a moment he wished that it was Lizzie, and not Annie, who would be sitting for the painting. But Lizzie would have made a strange Helen of Troy—her beauty spoke of heavenly worship, not earthly lust. He turned to watch Annie cross the room, her hips swaying beneath her dress.

  She sat down by the window and began to unbraid her hair. It came loose in a cascade of golden curls, like a watch spring uncoiling. Without a word from him, she undid a few buttons of her gown, so that the sleeves slipped down and he could see her white neck and shoulders. She sat still, waiting like a siren on a rock.

  He cleared his throat, but his words still came out hoarse. “We’ll start with a sketch, just to capture the feel of the thing. When I’m ready to start painting, we’ll have to see about a costume, but for now you can wear what you like.”

  “How shall I sit?” She began to turn in the chair, throwing her hair back over her shoulders and widening her eyes. She pursed her lips, almost into a kiss. Rossetti laughed. He didn’t care that she wasn’t being serious; her levity was contagious.

  “You needn’t try so hard. You are Helen of Troy. The entire world has gone to war for the right to possess you, and every hero in Greece falls to his knees before your slightest glance. You’ve never been denied a thing that you want, and your very presence is a pleasure to others. It shouldn’t be difficult for a woman like you to imagine these things.”

  Annie laughed, but she seemed to understand what he wanted. She turned her body slightly away from him and looked back over her shoulder, without reservation or modesty. She let her lips drop into a hint of a pout.

  “Yes. That’s just it.” He began to draw, and the shape of her image already felt familiar to his hand. He worked without stopping, and several hours passed before the fading light forced him to put aside his charcoal. He thought that the sk
etches looked good, and he could already envision the warm colors he would use to paint her pink cheeks and yellow hair. The painting would be different from anything he’d done before: It would show only Helen, in all her beauty, without background or unnecessary adornment. The entire story of the fall of Troy would be written in the beauty of her features.

  The sun dropped low in the sky, and the room filled with a golden light. Rossetti stood and stretched, then motioned to Annie that she could do the same. For a moment they just stood smiling at each other. “Would you like anything? Tea? A glass of water?”

  Annie stretched like a cat. “I’ll take a taste of something stronger than tea, if you have it.”

  He pulled a bottle of whiskey from the cabinet and poured out two generous glasses. “To the new picture, and to my new model,” he toasted, raising his glass in cheers. They clinked glasses and tipped them back, emptying their cups, and Rossetti poured two more. The liquor burned warm and cheerful in his stomach. “Has Hunt’s absence been very hard on you? A beautiful woman like you must not be used to spending all her nights at home.”

  Annie didn’t blush; she had no false modesty. “It’s not my intention to spend all my nights at home alone. Hunt will be gone for a very long time. He could be gone for two years.”

  “You must be very lonely,” Rossetti muttered. In one quick movement he pulled her toward him and felt her body, warm and generous, press back. She tilted her head up, eager for his kisses.

  For an instant, an image of Lizzie standing before that same window troubled him. But the many months of tension and waiting overcame him, and he felt powerless against his own desire. The girl in his arms, pliant and tender, was all that he could think of.

  “You must be lonely as well,” she murmured as he kissed her neck. “I heard that Miss Siddal isn’t well. You must miss her very much.”

  “I do,” he said, annoyed. He didn’t want to discuss Lizzie with Annie Miller.

  Annie laughed again. She wasn’t given to jealousy. “Perhaps we can help each other. Come by my rooms tonight. If the weather is mild enough, we can go to the café at Cremorne together and hear the music. And then who knows what else the night might bring?”

  “You may expect me,” he said, thinking that he had a fairly good idea.

  In the weeks following Emma’s visit, Lizzie settled into a melancholy pattern, moving about the house as mutely as a figure in a painting. She helped her mother with the chores, but otherwise kept to her room. The coldness of her once affectionate father, and the pitying looks of her mother and sister, were more than she could bear. If Rossetti’s paintings of her had helped her to discover her true self, to gain gravity and confidence, then his absence worked an opposite spell, and away from his adoration Lizzie felt herself once again fading into the background, becoming as dull as the routines that now made up her days.

  Alone in her room, she found some solace in writing, and in sketching little scenes from her favorite poems. True to her word, she sent a few of her poems to Emma, but they were returned by the editor with compliments and regrets. Apparently Emma was right—her poems were too sad to be sent round in a circular. A few more letters arrived from Rossetti, but she threw them away without opening them. She didn’t want his pity, and she didn’t care to hear how his new painting was getting on. Eventually the notes stopped coming. It had been many months since the terrible day in Millais’s studio, and Lizzie began to retreat into her old way of life, living through books and daydreams, trying not to think of Rossetti.

  Mrs. Siddal tried her best to draw Lizzie back into the world, but Lizzie resisted all of her efforts, and would not be persuaded to leave the house. Eventually even Mrs. Siddal threw up her hands and decided to let Lizzie heal in her own time. But when she saw an advertisement for the Great Exhibition, she wouldn’t let the chance pass, and she insisted that Lizzie must go.

  On the first of May, with much fanfare, Queen Victoria opened the Great Exhibition in the extraordinary Crystal Palace in Hyde Park. All the papers said that Prince Albert had outdone himself, and that the world had never seen such a gathering of its many achievements of art and industry under one roof. The building itself was a miracle of engineering, with massive glass walls, and soaring halls filled with the newest machinery, finest textiles, and the most beautiful works of art from all four corners of the world. Prince Albert promised that the exhibition would cement England’s place at the forefront of modern technology and design.

  When the Exhibition first opened, admission cost a pound, but by the end of June the cost was lowered to five shillings, so that the industrial classes could attend. Mrs. Siddal somehow found the money in her small reserves and sent Lizzie and Lydia off to Hyde Park on a bright June morning. The brisk walk did Lizzie as much good as the promise of entertainment, and by the time the girls reached the park they were in good spirits. They stared at the throngs of oddly dressed foreigners who had flooded into the city for the Exhibition, and then joined the crowd making its way into the park.

  As they came down the path they were greeted by the sudden vista of the Crystal Palace, rising up from the dusty walk like a glittering mirage. Lizzie drew in her breath. It was a marvel—like a conservatory, but a thousand times larger, with a high vaulted ceiling and wings that stretched out like arms flung open to welcome the crowds.

  All of London seemed to have turned out for the display. Families dressed in their Sunday best picnicked on the lawn in front of the palace, and hawkers lined the paths, selling commemorative pictures, flags, and flower boutonnieres. The tourists approached the palace like pilgrims journeying to a holy site, some even crossing themselves as it came into view. The better-heeled visitors arrived in carriages with paired horses and footmen, and did their best to appear worldly and jaded in the face of the new wonder.

  A sea of pastel parasols bobbed before the gates of the palace, and the girls pushed their way through, waving away the pamphlets and religious tracts that were pressed into their hands. Lizzie glanced longingly at a vendor selling lemonade, but she only had enough money for the admission. Lydia pulled her toward the queue and they paid their fare and received their tickets and a plan of the exhibits.

  They entered a soaring space large enough to house full-grown elm trees, left intact while the palace was constructed around them. Their branches rose to the highest reaches of the dome. Potted palms and beds of flowers thrived in the warmth of the glass palace. In the center of the hall, a stunning fountain of pink cut glass threw arcs of water nearly thirty feet into the air. A great mass of people filled the hall, but it was an orderly crowd, with adults and children alike on their best behavior.

  Lizzie glanced at her plan, but found it of no help: There were thousands of exhibits that they might visit, and she could hardly decide where to begin. Before she could pick a direction, Lydia led her to a crowded display of modern cold-storage devices where they had a free taste of ice cream, deliciously cold and scented with vanilla, stored in an American freezing machine. They were tempted to wait for a second taste, but instead they made their way down the main hall.

  The breadth of the exhibits was astounding: marble sculptures and gleaming steam engines, trays of medical devices and displays of the finest Sevres porcelain plates and figurines. Lizzie was invited to peer through a microscope at the eye of a dragonfly, which looked to her like a beehive. At another booth they watched cotton being made on a massive machine, which performed all the steps from the combing of the raw cotton to the finishing of the cloth.

  Tiring of the scientific displays, the girls moved on to the hall of foreign lands. It seemed that every country in the world had sent an envoy to the Exhibition. Stall after stall showed both the new and traditional wares of Europe, Asia, Africa, and the Americas. Lizzie gazed in wonder as they passed colossal Egyptian statues, and longed to touch the display of luxurious Russian furs.

  They stopped in front of an exhibit showing the riches of the Indian court, a magnificent display of wealth.
Every shawl, sword, and instrument was decorated in iridescent jewels and minute gold work. A heavily secured cage at one end of the exhibit housed the Koh-i-Noor diamond. A card proclaimed it to be the largest in the world, and said that it carried a curse of misfortune for the unlucky owner. A stuffed elephant stood nearby, topped by a tiny gold carriage where a person could ride. Lizzie murmured to Lydia that the trappings of the conquered nation were exquisite, but what a shame it was that their beauty had proved no defense against their subjugation.

  Lydia shook her head at Lizzie’s sad observation. “Why don’t we go see the medieval court? It’s supposed to be the most beautiful of all of the exhibits.” Lizzie nodded, content to follow Lydia, and they joined the crowd flowing to the European hall.

  Although the exhibition was devoted to modern innovation, it also nodded to England’s past. In the medieval court, the walls were hung with finely embroidered tapestries of knights and ladies, and stained glass windows caught the light streaming in through the glass walls. Gilt swords and scepters glinted in their cases, and brass chandeliers hung from the ceiling.

  “This is every bit as beautiful as the Indian court,” Lizzie said, leaning over a case of jewels. “Lydia, look at this.” She pointed to a richly embroidered tapestry of a unicorn. “It’s just the sort of thing that Deverell and Rossetti would love.” She stopped short, embarrassed, and Lydia squeezed her arm.

  “Come, let’s go see the portrait of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert.” Lydia steered Lizzie toward the far wall, where a small crowd was gathered around an oil painting.

  The portrait showed the royal couple dressed as a medieval damsel and knight in armor, attired for a famous costume ball. Although richer in materials, the queen’s gown was not so different from the style of Lizzie’s dress. Lizzie had found that, particularly since her illness, the looser cut of the medieval dresses that she had sewn to sit for Rossetti’s drawings did more to flatter her thin frame, and she had kept wearing them, despite the fact that she was no longer modeling.