by Rita Cameron
The dinner was, on its face, a success. The wine was poured freely and their laughter floated out through the open windows into the cool night air until well after midnight. Rossetti and Ford spoke of their work, and for once Lizzie felt that she was included as a fellow artist, and not just as Rossetti’s model and lover. Ford congratulated her on her allowance from Ruskin, and offered to take her out shopping for some painting supplies of her own, to Lizzie’s delight. When they said good night at the door, it was with glowing faces and heartfelt affection.
But for all of her good cheer, Lizzie couldn’t stop thinking of the small booties sitting by the fire, and the scent of Catherine’s hair as she held the little girl in her arms. Were things different, she thought, she too could have had a little babe of her own, asleep in her cradle, waiting for her mama to return home.
The thought was too sad to bear, and for the thousandth time, she repeated to herself her catechism of despair: He loves me, he will marry me, I must be patient. What else could she do, and where else could she go? She was banished from her home, too ill to go back to the bonnet shop, and too far outside of decent society to hope that another man might have her. She had her painting, but she had so much work ahead of her. Rossetti’s promise was her only chance.
When they returned home that night, her instinct was to sulk, to lapse into one of her fits of illness that seemed to rise and fall with the tide of her emotions. It was so easy to punish Rossetti for his failures and his affairs by giving him reason to fear for her life. And it was little more, she thought churlishly, than he deserved. But she remembered Emma’s advice, and dipped deep into the well of tenderness and love that she still felt for him. She went to him and wrapped her arms around him. She let her head rest on his shoulder for a moment, and felt him warm to her touch.
He looked at her with surprise. It had been a long time since she had invited him into her arms, and he rarely insisted. But of course he had longed for her, even as he found pleasure in other women.
He led her to the bed and began to undress her carefully. He loosened her hair and let it fall onto her shoulders, tracing his finger from the base of her neck down to the small of her back. He didn’t immediately lay her down on the bed, as he had when she first came to live with him at the studio. Instead he sat before her and studied her as if he were going to draw her. It was humbling to see her like this, with nothing but her glorious hair for ornament. No painting would ever match her living, breathing beauty, or the depth of spirit that showed in her eyes.
He pretended to paint her, using her body as the canvas. He touched his finger to the tip of hers and then ran his hand lightly up on her arm, over her shoulder, and across her collarbone. He moved to her face, tracing the outline of her lips, her eyes, and the curve of her ear. He used his palms to follow the slight curve of her waist, her hips, the soft skin of her calves. At last he was kneeling before her, and she bent down toward him, as Guinevere bent over Lancelot to knight him. She bestowed upon him a kiss, offered her hand, and led him to bed.
The night of their visit to the Browns marked the beginning of a long period of peace between them. Rossetti ceased his nighttime wanderings, preferring to stay home with Lizzie in the evening and entertain a few friends for impromptu dinners or cards. During the day they worked on their paintings side by side. He was writing poetry again, and Lizzie provided some illustrations for his work. For once, money was not an issue; Rossetti’s commissions and Ruskin’s allowance were more than sufficient for their needs.
Rossetti never mentioned their delayed marriage, but they lived together much like man and wife, and Lizzie did not press. She missed her family, Lydia especially, but otherwise she felt happy. Her work absorbed her, and when she wasn’t painting, she read voraciously, searching through old books of poetry and myth for suitable subjects for her illustrations. Her health didn’t improve, but neither did it deteriorate. She took the laudanum for her aches, but it was just as effective at easing her worries, and she visited the chemist often to refill her bottle.
Their door was always open to friends, and John Ruskin was a frequent guest at Chatham Place. He was always kind to Lizzie, almost to the point of tenderness, but Rossetti didn’t mind. Ruskin was a friend as well as his patron, and it seemed only natural to Rossetti that Lizzie’s health and development as an artist should be of interest to him. Ruskin treated her almost as a favorite daughter, a girl who, through his patronage, he could care for, instruct, and take pride in. But the peace at Chatham Place was not to last.
Ruskin managed, through his recommendation, to secure Rossetti a new commission from a wealthy Irish merchant. The merchant admired Rossetti’s style, but he was a man of modern tastes and cared little for myth or antiquity, preferring subjects of current fashion. Ruskin expected Rossetti to balk at the request, but Rossetti surprised him by agreeing. He wanted to try something new, perhaps a comment on the perils of the city, and the commission gave him the opportunity. Despite his best efforts, however, his subject proved challenging, and Rossetti found that months had slipped by, and by the summer of 1854 the painting was still only half finished.
The scene was the Thames embankment at dawn, the gaslights still bright against the lingering dark. A farmer from the countryside drives a calf into town to sell at the market. A girl hurries past him in the road, and despite the dim light, he recognizes her immediately: She is his sweetheart, a simple country girl, who left for London to make her living. He abandons his cart and steps toward her. But when he sees her cheap dress and her sallow face, his joy of recognition quickly turns to horror. There can be no doubt—his beloved has fallen into despair and prostitution.
Rossetti could see it in his mind’s eye: the dawning dismay of the young man and the burning shame of the woman as she tries to hide her face. Touched by her plight, he runs to her, grasping her hands just as she falls into a faint under the weight of her disgrace. Behind them, the calf struggles vainly to free itself from its bindings.
The longer that he worked on the painting, the more he came to consider it as one of his most important works. But he couldn’t seem to finish it. He was both drawn to and repelled by the painting. At times he worked at it all night, and then abandoned it for weeks while he busied himself with other projects.
Today he was getting nowhere. He cursed and threw aside his brush. He looked over at Lizzie, hard at work on her painting, single-minded in her attention to her craft. Usually he found the sight charming: her lower lip caught between her teeth and her white hand brushing her hair back from her eyes as she dabbed at the canvas. But today he found it irritating.
Ruskin had told him in confidence that he was trying to arrange a showing for Lizzie’s work. At the moment Rossetti had clapped his friend on the back and thanked him for his support of Lizzie’s art. But on further reflection, he’d felt less pleased. The thought was ugly and distressing: What if she surpassed him in her art? After all, Ruskin had said nothing of arranging a show for him. It was a terrible thought, but he wondered if he would have done better to keep her as his model, and not tried to make her into his pupil after all.
Lizzie felt Rossetti’s eyes on her and turned. She smiled and put down her brush to join him at his canvas. But when she saw that he was working on his picture of the fallen woman, her face tightened and she stepped back. She hated this painting. She’d many times wished it finished and shipped up to Ireland.
“The Prostitute and the Virtuous Sheep Herder. Is it giving you trouble again?”
“I’m calling it Found. You know that.” Rossetti hated Lizzie’s invented name for his painting.
“She certainly has been found,” Lizzie observed. “But to what end? Will the young man take her home to the country and make her his wife now? What good is it to her to have been found at all? It only puts her shame on display. And her young sweetheart—why didn’t he marry her when he had the chance, so that she might have escaped her sad fate?”
“Perhaps he couldn’t afford
to do so. You know very well, Lizzie, that this is meant to be a commentary on the perils and corrupting forces of the city. It’s not a fairy tale.” They’d argued over this many times before.
“So you say. But I can’t help but think that this is much more than a commentary on the plight of the fallen woman. Is the setting not suggestive to you?”
Rossetti couldn’t think what she was getting at. The problem, he thought, was that he had used another woman as a model. She always disliked the paintings that he made of other women, and it was becoming tiresome to constantly fight over his models. It wasn’t possible that he only ever paint Lizzie, no matter how much he loved her, but she didn’t seem to understand.
“The embankment of the Thames, under the gaslights from the bridge? Does that setting mean nothing to you?” she asked.
He shook his head, tired of feeling that Lizzie was always looking over his shoulder.
“Dante,” Lizzie insisted. “Isn’t it Blackfriars Bridge? Where you first saw me, on that terrible night? You can’t pretend to me that the setting is a coincidence. Is the fallen woman meant to be me?”
He flushed. She was right, of course. How could he have failed to see it? Was it possible that he had been thinking of that night? He walked over to the cupboard and poured himself a generous glass of brandy. He could feel her disapproval, but he looked straight at her as he took a long drink from the glass. “But if that’s true—if the painting really is of you,” he said, choosing his words carefully, “then that would make you the whore.”
Lizzie looked as if she’d been slapped; her face went white and her lips parted in surprise. She’d thought it many times, but to have it said out loud was too cruel. “No. It means that you think me the whore. But you know perfectly well why I was down there that night. I was doing nothing more than walking home from work—and let me remind you that although I may have had a humble position, it was, at least, respectable. Not like the position that you’ve given me. If I am a whore, Dante,” she said, beginning to cry, “it’s only because you’ve made me one. You’ve imagined me into the role of the whore just as you once imagined that I was your Beatrice. You like to think of yourself as my savior, like the young man in the painting. But you are really no different from the old drunk who accosted me.”
Rossetti slammed his glass down on the table. “Are we going to argue about this again?”
“No. But I’ll remind you of your promise to me when I became your lover. Surely you haven’t forgotten? You’re a gentleman; you wouldn’t place me in the same predicament as that poor girl.” She gestured toward the painting without looking at it.
Rossetti sighed and sat down. There was no argument to be made with her. She was right. He’d made a promise to her, and he owed her that much and more. “Please don’t press me. We will marry, I promise you.”
“But why not now? I can’t understand the delay. We already live together as if we were married.”
“It’s not the right moment. I’m just starting to make my name, and now you have your allowance from Ruskin. You’ll have to give it up when we marry—it wouldn’t be proper. I’d hate to see you lose his patronage. As soon as I’m making enough from my work to support you in the way that you deserve, we will marry.”
“I don’t care about the money, Dante. I care only about you. I’m happy with the way we live now, here in the studio. I don’t need anything else.”
“If you’re happy, then why should we change anything? Do you want to be an artist, Lizzie, or do you want to be a wife? You have a chance at greatness, especially with John Ruskin as your benefactor. This is not the time to give all that up. We must put everything into our art right now. Later, when we’ve established ourselves, it will be the right time for marriage. I promise you, Lizzie.”
Rossetti could see that his assurances had lost their effect on Lizzie. She didn’t look satisfied as she turned and walked back to her easel. He wondered if he had given her his promise too soon. He had been only twenty-two when he met her, after all, a mere boy. He had been entranced by her beauty, and he still was now, four years later. But he had come to see that there were many pleasures in life, and he wasn’t ready to forsake them just yet. The looming necessity of a proposal was beginning to feel like another debt that he had accrued but could not make good on.
“I’m afraid that I have to be away from London for a bit this fall,” he said suddenly. “There’s a group going to Kent on a painting trip. Holman Hunt will be back from Jerusalem, and a few others will join us. I’ve been longing to paint real girls under real trees. A return to nature.” He paused. “Of course, you’re welcome to come along.”
She was quiet for a moment. She had pushed too hard, she realized, and now Rossetti would run off with his friends to be free of her. “You’re going to Kent to paint? Will Annie Miller be going?”
“Most likely. No doubt Hunt will want to bring her along after his long absence.”
“No doubt,” Lizzie agreed, her clipped tone matching Rossetti’s.
“And of course, I’ll be working on my painting of her, so we really must have her there.”
Lizzie could see that she was not wanted, and she knew that to chase Rossetti would only drive him further away. But she couldn’t resist one jab. “And whose bed will Annie be sharing? Yours or Hunt’s?”
Rossetti flushed scarlet, and Lizzie surprised herself by laughing, though it was a mirthless laugh. The fact of Rossetti’s affair was always unspoken between them, though its evidence, in the beauty of Annie’s half-finished portrait, stood in the corner of the studio. It was a relief to Lizzie to speak, and she went on, the torrent of anger unleashed. “If Hunt doesn’t know already, he’ll figure it out before long. He’s not stupid.” She gestured to the painting of Annie. “He’ll see the same thing in that picture that I do. You may have told yourself that it’s all for art’s sake, that it means nothing, but I don’t suppose that Hunt will see it that way. No, I don’t think I want to be there when he realizes that you’ve been bedding his intended while he’s been trudging through the desert. I’d prefer to stay here and see to my own work.”
Rossetti had no answer to this, and so Lizzie turned back to her easel. But she couldn’t paint. Despite what she’d said, she wasn’t sure that Hunt would put the pieces together. How smart could he be, to expect a woman like Annie Miller to spend two years sitting by a lonely fireside, waiting for his return?
She sat rigidly, imagining Rossetti and Annie Miller on long rambles together through the woods in Kent. It seemed so long since she and Rossetti had enjoyed their walks in the countryside at Hastings. She thought of the day beneath the apple tree, when Rossetti had asked her to be his wife. They would never, she thought sadly, return to their Eden.
Fall came quickly, ushering in cool evenings that relieved the oppressive swelter of the city. Rossetti’s mood improved with the weather. He looked forward to the trip to Kent, and knowing that he would soon be free of Lizzie’s care made him more solicitous of her health and comfort. On the day that he left, he even brought her a bouquet of forget-me-nots and lilies. He kissed her and told her that he would miss her terribly, and would write every day. But he didn’t renew his offer for her to join them. She watched him pack his things through a hazy veil of laudanum, grateful for its comfort.
When at last the door closed behind him, she collapsed on the bed, raging at his abandonment. Her anger was like a hot beast clawing its way up from the pit of her stomach, and her sobs, muffled into the bedsheets so as not to alarm the landlady, provided no relief. She took drop after drop of laudanum, and though the medicine did not sate the jealous beast, it mollified him, and he curled up, content to take his hourly dose.
Several days must have passed this way. Her waking hours seemed no different from her dreams, and life was reduced to a simple series of rituals: Uncork the green glass bottle and measure out the drops, lie on the bed to wait for the shivers and sweat to melt away in the drug’s balmy caress, then wake,
stumble into the studio to make tea, stare out the window, and wonder at her own lack of wonder about the world outside. Then back to the bed, back to the green bottle.
On the third day she woke from her opium dream, slippery and sly, and reached for the bottle. But it was empty, and she was forced to sit up, her head pounding. The shutters were open and the sun was pouring in through the windows, blinding her. Her dress was damp with sweat, and her hair hadn’t been combed and was knotty. She couldn’t go out to the chemist’s like this.
She stood slowly and walked into the studio. The landlady had set a pitcher of water and a loaf of bread on the table in the hall. Rossetti must have told her that Lizzie was staying in the studio. At least he’d done that, she thought. She couldn’t stomach the thought of the bread, but she used the water to make tea. She combed out her hair and braided it. She thought that she might vomit, but she didn’t.
She wrapped a shawl around her shoulders and checked her purse, but as she readied herself to leave, one of the unfinished drawings on her easel caught her eye. It was her illustration of the Robert Browning poem Pippa Passes. It showed the virginal Pippa, her spine straight and her head high, passing a group of loose women who lounge on some steps, staring at her curiously. When Lizzie started the drawing, she had thought of herself as Pippa, poor but virtuous, holding her head high in the face of adversity. Now she was sickened to think that she looked more like the loose women: sloppy and lazy, watching life pass them by in the street.
She decided at once: She wouldn’t go to the chemist. She was ashamed. Ashamed that she had wasted so much time when she might have been working; ashamed that she’d given in to the easy comfort of the laudanum. What if Rossetti had returned to find her like this? Even she wouldn’t have blamed him for running back into the arms of Annie Miller. She took her shawl off, put her purse away, and went back to the bedroom. She needed to paint, but first, she needed to sleep.