by Rita Cameron
Rossetti returned from Kent and begged for Lizzie’s forgiveness, giving her a paisley shawl in the softest wool as a token of his contrition. But Lizzie was too caught up in her work, and too excited for her upcoming show, to bear any real grudge against him. She welcomed him home eagerly and showed him her new paintings, asking for his opinion on which pieces she ought to send to Ruskin.
Rossetti praised her paintings, but he worried, as always, over her health. Was it possible that in his absence she had grown even thinner? He wasn’t at all convinced that she’d eaten regularly while he was away, and he blamed the laudanum, which seemed to have become the mainstay of her diet. But her excitement was infectious, and he put his worries aside, convincing himself that if the laudanum made her well enough to paint, then it was, after all, a good remedy.
Ruskin leased a small gallery in Charlotte Street for Lizzie’s show, not far from the Rossetti family home, and he oversaw the hanging of her work himself. The subjects were mostly from poetry, and by the time of the show she had a nice collection of illustrations and watercolors, including scenes from the work of Robert Browning, Sir Walter Scott, and her beloved Tennyson.
The two most striking pieces in the collection, however, were her self-portrait, which Rossetti had exclaimed over to no end upon his return, and her illustration from the old English ballad Clerk Saunders. It showed Margaret, a maid who is persuaded to go to bed with her lover before their marriage. Later, his ghost visits her in her room after her brothers kill him. Lizzie had rendered the figures in rich colors, which shone out brightly from the shadows of the dawn light. Margaret wishes to kiss her lover, but he must refuse; his kiss would kill her. Instead, her face taut with grief, Margaret kisses a branch to lay upon his grave. It was a touching painting, and Ruskin hung it in a place of honor in the gallery.
On the first day of the show, Lizzie stayed in Rossetti’s studio, waiting for word of her success or failure. She was far too nervous to attend the show herself, and Ruskin would be there to promote her work.
Rossetti, trying to patch over the hard feelings between them, invited Holman Hunt to go to the show with him. Ruskin greeted them at the door of the gallery, and Rossetti saw that it had been very well put on, and that Ruskin had secured a good attendance for the private view.
“Look at this one,” Rossetti said to Hunt, pointing to an illustration that Lizzie had done from a Browning poem. “She’s captured the form of the women perfectly. They’re so natural. She really is becoming quite a genius.”
“Very natural,” said Hunt. But under his breath he muttered, “Though I’m not sure I would say genius.”
“And here,” Rossetti went on, leading Hunt over to the watercolor of Clerk Saunders. “This is her best work. She has such depth of feeling, and such a natural understanding of color and shade.”
Hunt looked at the picture closely. “This one really is quite good! If I hadn’t known that it was Lizzie’s, I would have thought that perhaps it was yours, or maybe the work of poor Deverell. The style and the colors are so similar, don’t you think?”
Rossetti looked angry. “I wouldn’t say that at all. Deverell was a man of great talent, but Lizzie has real genius. Her work is completely original. It’s an insult, Hunt, to even suggest that she was influenced by him.”
Hunt was taken aback. “You misunderstand me!” he cried. “I meant it as a compliment. After all, she’s been studying with you for only such a short time. I didn’t mean to insult her talent, or her originality. And besides, weren’t they friends? I always find inspiration in the work of my friends, you included, Rossetti.”
Rossetti frowned, then turned on his heel and stalked away, leaving Hunt bewildered. Rossetti hated to be reminded of the old rumors: that Deverell had been in love with Lizzie, and that he had painted her in secret, behind his back.
Hunt shrugged, used to such outbursts from Rossetti, and walked after him. He found him speaking with John Ruskin and another man who was exclaiming over the paintings in a brassy American accent. Hunt laid a hand on Rossetti’s arm and said, in a conciliatory tone: “You’re right. Clerk Saunders is surely Miss Siddal’s finest work. It shows not only skill, but also perception. The true artist’s eye.”
“Well, I’m glad to hear you say so!” cried the American. “I’ve just agreed to purchase it!”
Rossetti and Ruskin were beaming; they’d made Lizzie’s first real sale.
“You’ll have to excuse me,” Rossetti said, his quarrel with Hunt forgotten in light of the good news. “I want to be the first to congratulate the artist in person.”
He turned to the American. “You must have Ruskin bring you around to our studio. I’m sure that Miss Siddal would like to show you some of her work in person.”
He shook hands all around, and then dashed off into the street. He couldn’t wait to share the good news with Lizzie.
Rossetti didn’t have to go far to find her. He was barely at the corner of the street when he ran right into her, hurrying in the other direction.
“Lizzie! What are you doing here?”
“I was going mad just sitting and waiting. I had to see what sort of impression my work was making.”
Rossetti swept her into his arms and spun her around, surprising the other people in the street. “You’ve made your first sale to the public, Lizzie, and a good one at that. An American purchased Clerk Saunders.”
Lizzie broke out into a wide smile. “Then, I am an artist.”
“Let’s celebrate. What would make you happy? The theater? Oysters and champagne? Tonight you must have whatever you want.”
Lizzie glanced around her. The news of her success made her feel bold. “Whatever I want? I don’t want champagne. Dante, I want to meet your mother. Doesn’t she live in Charlotte Street? Why don’t we pay her a visit. It’s high time, I think, that we met.”
“You want to celebrate in my mother’s drawing room?” Rossetti laughed, but he could see that Lizzie was serious. It was obvious that she intended to have her way. He shrugged. “As you wish. Today, I’m at your service.”
He led Lizzie a few blocks down the street to the door of a small but respectable house. Any remaining illusions that Lizzie might have had of Rossetti’s wealth were finally laid to rest. When she first met him, she thought that anyone who didn’t work at a trade must live a life of leisure. But she’d since learned a great deal about London society, and the artist’s place in that world. It was fitting that she first glimpsed Rossetti as the court jester in Deverell’s painting. Painters, she now saw, were admitted to society, but only so far as they were pleasing and amusing.
Rossetti paused on the doorstep. “You’re right, Lizzie. It’s time that you met my mother.” He’d put off this moment for far too long, and now that it had arrived, he couldn’t quite say why. It was a relief, after all this time, to finally be settling the question of their marriage. Once he introduced Lizzie to his mother as his intended, his future with her would feel more real, like a painting long in planning and finally marked out in pencil on the canvas. He knocked on the door.
The maid let them in, and Lizzie and Rossetti entered the drawing room and found Christina at her desk and Mrs. Rossetti reading a volume by the fireplace.
“Dante!” Christina cried. “You’re a welcome sight!”
Lizzie was standing slightly behind Rossetti, but now she stepped forward. She was prepared for a cold reception, so she was surprised when Christina’s smile did not dim at the sight of her.
“And Miss Siddal, as well! It’s been entirely too long. Please, come in and meet my mother. Here, this is the most comfortable chair. I know that you’ve not been well. This is my mother, Mrs. Rossetti. She’s heard so much about you, and she’s anxious to make your acquaintance.”
Lizzie swallowed her surprise. She followed Christina and sat in a chair by the fire, and Rossetti stood by her shoulder.
“Mother, this is Miss Elizabeth Siddal. Miss Siddal is a talented poet and painter, and sh
e’s done me the honor of agreeing to marry me. I hope that you’ll give us your blessing.”
Mrs. Rossetti embraced them both, tears in her eyes. “Welcome to our family, Elizabeth.” She turned to Rossetti. “You’ve picked a pretty one, dear, and made me a happy old woman. Now come and sit with me by the fire. I want to know everything.”
Rossetti told his mother about Lizzie’s painting, and about the success of her first show, but his mother and sister, as predicted, only wanted to talk about the wedding.
“Have you set a date?” Mrs. Rossetti asked.
“Not yet,” Rossetti laughed. “But I think you’ll agree that it would be best to wait for the nice weather in the spring.”
“Why not a Christmas wedding?” Mrs. Rossetti asked.
“That would be lovely,” Lizzie agreed, smiling at Rossetti.
“But we’ll want to travel after the wedding, so a spring wedding makes the most sense.”
Lizzie frowned, and Mrs. Rossetti watched the exchange with a keen eye. “There’s no reason to decide tonight,” she said, smoothing over the disagreement. “But these decisions are best left to the women, dear. I’ll write to Father Healy and see when he might be available.” Then she turned to Lizzie and asked after her family and her work. Lizzie obliged her, giving vague answers about her family that painted them as a poor but respectable and literary clan. Christina ordered the tea and pulled up a chair to join them, and Lizzie felt that Rossetti’s family had welcomed her with affection. She couldn’t help but wonder if Christina’s own romantic disappointments had made her more sympathetic, but whatever the change was, Lizzie welcomed it.
Rossetti watched his mother and sister, and saw that the Rossetti women had, as women will, quietly rallied around Lizzie. No matter what they may have thought of her background, it was their nature to feel indignant on behalf of a woman in distress. He knew that they disapproved of what they heard of his living arrangements, and that now that he had brought Lizzie home, they would do everything in their power to see that he did right by her. And of course, Mrs. Rossetti could forgive a lot for the promise of a grandchild.
Rossetti did what any man in his situation would do: He ignored the tea completely and poured himself a generous glass of port from the side table. The drink steadied his nerves, and after a second glass, he began to enjoy the sight of his dear, talented Lizzie sitting between his mother and Christina. Domesticity may have its constraints, but surely it also had its advantages? Perhaps Ruskin was right and a steadier way of life would allow him to concentrate more on his work.
When Rossetti and Lizzie rose to take their leave, the Rossetti ladies both embraced Lizzie, and offered her their compliments on her success. As she walked Lizzie to the door, Christina leaned close to her and whispered: “I’m sorry that I haven’t been a better friend to you. I hope that you’ll depend upon my friendship in the future.”
Lizzie nodded, feeling for the first time since her father had cast her out that she was safe and welcome in a real home. She wondered if now that Rossetti had announced their engagement to his family, she would finally be able to return to her house with her head held high. Sitting by the fire with Mrs. Rossetti had made her long for such moments with her own mother. Surely her family would welcome her again once she was a respectably married woman?
As they made their way out into the street, Rossetti took special care with her, making sure that her cloak was tied tightly around her shoulders and grasping her arm as they stepped over the curb. Lizzie was giddy with her accomplishments; she had sold a painting and she would soon be married to the man whom she loved. Everything would work out in the end, after all—she had been wrong ever to doubt Rossetti, or her own talent. She felt no need to resort to her bottle of laudanum. No anxiety plagued her, and the dulling effects of the laudanum would only have robbed the joy from the day, while offering an empty comfort. For the first time in as long as she could remember, the world was clear and bright, and she walked by Rossetti’s side with the feeling that all was just as it should be.
CHAPTER 19
Fall turned into winter, and it became clear that there would be no Christmas wedding. January of 1855 was cold; the coldest, some said, in the forty years since the last time the Thames froze over, when there was skating and sledding, and an elephant led across the ice under Blackfriars Bridge. The Thames did not freeze, but the sleet was constant, pooling in the streets in a cold black stew and coating everything from lampposts to ladies’ hems in a thick layer of ice and grime. Rossetti fed the fire at Chatham Place, but the hearth did little to drive away the damp that settled in the beams of the building, and soon invaded Lizzie’s delicate constitution as well. Her thin frame was no protection against the chill, and she coughed through much of the winter. A fire was lit in the bedroom, and some days she stayed there from morning till night, taking laudanum and hot tea, and leaving Rossetti to his own devices.
Spring came as if it had always been there, like a guest who arrives at a sleeping house and greets the family at the breakfast table. One night they went to bed to the howl of a hard wind blowing in off the Thames, and the next morning they woke to warm pale sunlight and the sound of gulls flying over the river. But the fine weather boded no better for Lizzie’s hopes of marriage than the paralyzing freeze of winter. It was a pattern as familiar to her as the changing of the seasons: Rossetti’s devoted attention persisted for several months before other concerns clamored for his attention, and Lizzie was once again forgotten, relegated to the corner of the studio to work on her own drawings.
She knew that he didn’t mean to be cruel; it was just that there were paintings to be finished and dinners to attend, poems to be written and sold off to magazines, and outings to the pleasure gardens at Cremorne now that the evenings were warm. John Ruskin was no longer the only man championing Rossetti’s work, and with the new interest in his painting came a flood of commissions and invitations. The winter left Lizzie weak, and Rossetti was not willing to give up his newfound celebrity to sit at home by her side.
The waiting—waiting for Rossetti to set the date, waiting for him to return home in the evenings—wore on her, and she once again turned from the demanding solace of her painting to the easy comfort of the laudanum. Rossetti grew concerned whenever he saw her taking it, but he accepted without argument her claim that it was the only thing that eased her aches. Emma Brown, on her frequent visits, was more skeptical. “Lizzie,” she said, “you’re poisoning yourself. If you took as much food as you take of that nasty potion, you might put a little meat on your bones. Why don’t you come stay with Ford and me for a few weeks? The children would love to see you, and chasing them about would give anyone an appetite.” But Lizzie demurred. “My work keeps me here,” she said, and Emma raised her eyebrows, looking at the small pile of sketches that Lizzie had completed, but held her tongue.
Rossetti traveled frequently that spring, spending weeks at a time in Oxford while he worked on a mural in the old debating hall at the Union Society. It was a group project that he’d undertaken with a few other painters, including his new friends Ned Burne-Jones and William Morris.
The mural would encompass ten panels that stretched from the tops of the bookcases that lined the room to the vaulted ceiling. The theme was Malory’s Morte d’Arthur, and Rossetti’s panel showed Lancelot prevented from entering the chapel of the Holy Grail by the sin of his adultery with Queen Guinevere. Lancelot has fallen asleep before the shrine, and he dreams that Guinevere is gazing at him with her arms spread out against the backdrop of an apple tree. She is at once Eve in the garden, the cause of Lancelot’s fall, and Christ at the crucifixion, savior of his soul. As Rossetti painted Guinevere’s outstretched arms, he imagined her holding scales: measuring the weight of their passion against the code of chivalry to which Lancelot is sworn.
If the size of the murals was grand, the painting party that set up camp at Oxford was even grander. Painters, poets, and friends from the city came and went, and Rosset
ti spent as much time making up silly verses and pursuing the local girls to sit for him as models as he did working on the mural. He became fast friends with Ned Burne-Jones, a young painter who had not only heard of the Brotherhood, but also admired them, and treated Rossetti as a mentor.
They began to refer to the undertaking as the Jovial Campaign, and when the six weeks allotted for the project came and went without much progress being made, the committee overseeing the work was at a loss and wrote to John Ruskin for advice. But Ruskin was of little help, writing back that painters were all a bit mad, and difficult to manage, and that the best thing to do was to let them have their way and hope for the best.
The mural was still far from finished when a letter came from London that broke up the painting party. Lizzie was ill again, and Christina wrote to Rossetti to urge him to return to the city. He was enjoying his new friends and new surroundings, but Christina’s words reminded him of his duty. He returned to Lizzie, chastened and bearing gifts, and swearing that he had thought of no one but her while he was away. Lizzie rallied, but she was still weak, and Rossetti found himself wondering, not for the first time, how long he would have to sit by her sickbed.
In June, Ford and Emma Brown proposed an outing to Hampton Court Palace, and Rossetti jumped at the chance to get out of the house. The city was already hot, and everyone longed for the fresh air of the countryside. A party was put together and two carriages were hired to take them west of the city to the palace grounds, which had been opened to the public by the Queen. At first, Lizzie demurred. But for once Rossetti insisted that she come with him, and she gave in, convinced that the change of scenery would do her good.