Ophelia's Muse

by Rita Cameron

  The men stumbled back, and even Howell felt a chill of fear. He mastered himself quickly, however, and gestured for a torch to be lit from the fire. He peered into the coffin, and then turned to the men with a smile that looked ghoulish in the flickering light. “Nothing but dust and bones. The worms had their way with her long ago.”

  He laughed, and the men laughed along nervously. He put on a pair of leather gloves and began to pick among the bones. Something sharp pierced his glove and he cursed and drew back. Then he saw what had stuck him, and smiled. It was a silver pin in the shape of a dragonfly, and if he wasn’t mistaken, it appeared to have a very nice sapphire set as its eye. He rubbed the dust from the pin and slipped it into his pocket.

  He found the book of poems and lifted it from the coffin. He held it up in the light from the fire, and began to page through it carefully. “Damn! A worm has eaten a hole right through the center. Never mind. Surely there’s enough still here to jog Rossetti’s memory, if the old lunatic still has half a mind left, after all the chloral he’s rotted it with.”

  The men shuffled their feet and looked at Howell. “That’s what you had us dig it up for?” one asked. “A book?”

  Howell sighed. “Yes. A book.” There was no point in explaining to this lot that, if Rossetti were to publish a successful volume, Howell himself would make a pretty penny off of his commission as agent. Rossetti had become less reliable in his production, and Howell was eager to get his best work from him while he still could.

  “What are you waiting for?” he asked the men. “Throw her back in, and quickly. This place gives me shivers.”

  Rossetti was sitting in the same place that Howell had left him. The only change was in his eyes, which had grown more sunken in the intervening hours. They glowed from beneath his furrowed brow like animal eyes, with the unnatural light of madness. The chloral and the gin had him in their grip, and his words were halting and slurred.

  “Is that it?”

  Howell placed the book on the desk.

  “And the body? Was it . . . ?” Rossetti was unable to form the words.

  “Perfectly preserved, as we expected.” Howell’s voice was smooth. “She was as beautiful as a saint in her tomb. And her hair.” He paused and looked off into the distance, as if he were remembering some wondrous sight. “Her hair had grown to fill the coffin in a crown of glorious red curls.”

  Rossetti sighed. “Thank God for that.” He lit a candle and picked up the book. The pages were brittle in his hands. He squinted, trying to read his own writing. His face, already white, took on a grayish hue. “But the pages,” he murmured. “They look as if, as if some creature had feasted upon them.” The image that he had held in his mind all night of Lizzie, as perfect as she ever was in life, began to decay.

  Howell frowned. “An effect, I’m afraid, of their age. The doctor warned me that paper might not fare so well in the grave. But I’ve inspected them, and you’ll see that much is still preserved.”

  Rossetti couldn’t reply. The weight of his crime, one of many, pressed against his chest and nearly choked the air from him. “Go,” he muttered, and then, when Howell hesitated, he shouted louder: “Leave me!”

  The dreams of chloral are fever dreams, and Rossetti tossed and turned in his bed, unable to wake from his nightmare. The sheets were as hot as the flames that rose high above an empty grave; they leapt and danced until the whole city was consumed by an inferno, with Rossetti himself at the center, burning and writhing in pain.

  And then, in a flash, there was nothing. Nothing but blackness, and somehow this was more terrifying than the fire, for he saw nothing and felt nothing, and knew that he was nothing. He opened his mouth to scream, but there was no sound.

  He was sinking into oblivion, the inky blackness of sleep, when a shining figure appeared: an exquisite angel, lighting the heavens like a second sun. The visitor hovered at the foot of his bed, held aloft by magnificent red wings. Her skin was white as porcelain and her thick auburn hair fell over her golden robes. Rossetti felt his heart beat hard in his chest. “Lizzie?”

  But the figure shook her head. “I am Love,” she whispered.

  The angel took his hand and led him from the bed. His burning skin cooled at her touch, and he felt that he was being led forth from hell. She guided him to his studio and stopped in front of the easel. Without a word, she handed him a brush. The studio was dark, but the angel radiated her own light, and she stood silently behind Rossetti, one hand on his shoulder, illuminating the canvas.

  Rossetti hesitated. The easel held the half-finished painting of Lizzie. He could no longer paint her from memory—it had been too long. He stared vainly at the brush in his hand.

  He heard a whisper, breathed from the corners of the room: “Paint her. She is I. We are one.” He saw Lizzie, as he had many times in his dreams, unconscious and awaiting death. Over the years, she had grown more beautiful in his memory; ever more perfect. The angel beside him nodded. He would create a final memorial to her: He would paint her one last time as Beatrice, at the very moment she was rapt from earth to heaven.

  He painted all through the night, and the angel never left his side. When his hands began to shake, he drank the trance-inducing chloral. When his eyes burned, he lit candle after candle, filling the studio as if for a séance.

  The picture was unlike anything he had ever painted. It was soft; the light a golden mist and the lines almost hazy. Beatrice sits with her eyes closed and her face lifted. Her lips are slightly parted, as if she were looking to heaven, awaiting a holy communion. Her hands rest open in her lap, waiting to accept a white poppy, dropped by a red dove. Behind her is the city of Florence. But it was not the Ponte Vecchio that Rossetti imagined as he painted the bridge, but Blackfriars, where he had first seen his dear, lost love.

  As dawn approached, he applied a last coat to the red hair that glowed like a halo, and he pushed back from the easel, throwing his brush aside. He no longer knew if he had painted Beatrice, or Lizzie, or the shining angel who rested by his side. But it didn’t matter; they were one.

  He turned, and the angel was gone. He was alone. He gazed at the painting. “It’s my masterpiece,” he whispered. And then, to the empty studio: “It’s a dream. A beautiful dream, of something that once was, and never will be again.”

  One face looks out from all his canvases,

  One selfsame figure sits or walks or leans:

  We found her hidden just behind those screens,

  That mirror gave back all her loveliness.

  A queen in opal or in ruby dress,

  A nameless girl in freshest summer-greens,

  A saint, an angel—every canvas means

  The same one meaning, neither more nor less.

  He feeds upon her face by day and night,

  And she with true kind eyes looks back on him,

  Fair as the moon and joyful as the light:

  Not wan with waiting, not with sorrow dim;

  Not as she is, but was when hope shone bright;

  Not as she is, but as she fills his dream.

  —Christina Georgina Rossetti

  “In an Artist’s Studio”

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  I want to thank my friend and agent, Jeff Ourvan, for his invaluable support, and my editor at Kensington, John Scognamiglio, for his help and guidance. I would also like to thank all of the coffee shops whose seats I hogged in Brooklyn and San Jose: Your caffeine and wifi made this all possible.

  Please turn the page for a very special

  Q&A with Rita Cameron!

  What interested you about the Pre-Raphaelites?

  I’ve always loved Pre-Raphaelite painting. I first saw Rossetti’s and Millais’s paintings at the Tate Britain when I was a child, and there was something in those paintings that made me want to invent stories about the gorgeous and mysterious women they portrayed. Later, when I was picking up my textbooks for my first year of law school, I stopped in the art section at the bookstore and
paged through a book on the Pre-Raphaelites. It was there that I first encountered the thrilling and tragic tale of Dante Gabriel Rossetti and his first love, his model Lizzie Siddal. The story had everything—love across class lines, the mysteries of the creative process, betrayal, drug addiction, even grave robbing—it was the stuff of the best fiction! There were more than a few nights when I should have been outlining contracts law that I was actually sketching out ideas for a book based on that story. I ended up losing that laptop, but the idea stuck with me. Later, when I had some time off from work with my first child, I started doing research on Rossetti in earnest, and I felt like I had to tell their story, that it was a story that people would want to hear.

  Lizzie Siddal is mostly known as a model for famous paintings—a pretty face. What did you find appealing about her as a main character?

  The fact that Lizzie is known mostly through other people’s interpretations and characterizations of her in their paintings and memoirs piqued my interest. A few of her paintings and poems have survived, but very few of her letters have been found, and most scholarly literature on her depends on the written opinion of the higher-class men who knew her as an artist’s model. I approached her as a character with sympathy for her position as a working-class woman in Victorian England, and with respect for her attempts to transcend her humble beginnings and make a name for herself as an artist and poet in her own right, in a society that was hostile to such attempts. I wanted to give a voice to a woman who had the power not only to inspire great men, but also to work alongside them. I also felt that although her story is very much rooted in the Victorian era, it has undeniable echoes in the situation of many modern women who still find themselves choosing between marriage and career, and facing disapproval of the choices they make that wouldn’t raise an eyebrow if a man made them.

  The book focuses on the difficult relationship between Rossetti and his model Lizzie Siddal, which is not always a happy tale. Was it hard not to take sides in telling their story?

  While writing the book I found that I had great sympathy for both Lizzie and Rossetti. It’s difficult to say that they were bad for each other, because together they made great art. But on a practical level neither one could give the other what they needed from the relationship. In this day and age, they could have moved on from the relationship. But in the Victorian era, once Lizzie allowed herself to be publicly linked to Rossetti, she had no choice but to see the relationship through to marriage. Anything less would have been social suicide: She never would have been able to find a husband, and her poor health left her unable to support herself with menial work. Rossetti himself was not immune to these pressures. He knew he ought to marry Lizzie, even as he realized that he regarded her more as a muse than a wife, and sought what he felt to be necessary inspiration in other models. They were both stuck in a system, and in a relationship, that became increasingly detrimental and poisonous to their art, but neither could see a way out.

  What is your favorite Pre-Raphaelite painting?

  There are so many beautiful paintings from this movement. Obviously I’m partial to John Everett Millais’s painting of Lizzie as Ophelia. That painting captures a very fleeting moment—the cusp of life and death, despair and release—almost perfectly. It’s a painting that manages to capture a very private and lonely moment without seeming small. Similarly, I’m very fond of Beata Beatrix, Rossetti’s painting of Lizzie as Beatrice, the muse of Dante. It’s another moment that captures a woman on the verge of death, accepting into her outstretched hands a symbolic poppy from a heavenly dove. That Lizzie served as the inspiration for these two paintings raises a lot of interesting questions: What was it about her that led some of the era’s best painters to both immortalize her, and to figuratively kill her?

  What sort of research did you have to do to prepare to write the book?

  Before I started writing, I spent about six months just reading about Rossetti, Lizzie, and the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. I started with the paintings and the poetry, and then moved on to biographies, critical works, and volumes of letters. The critical works start with biography and then move on to the art, but I liked getting to know my characters through the choices they made in their creative output first. Ophelia’s Muse takes history as its jumping-off point and then uses the poems and paintings of the era as inspiration for many of the personal scenes. I think the members of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood lived as if there were few boundaries between art and life, and I wanted the book to reflect this.

  What appeals to you about writing historical fiction?

  For me, the research was just as much fun as the writing. I loved delving into another time and place and learning how people lived in the past. Reading about Victorian England, it was hard not to go off on tangents—the dawn of the rail system, the intricacies of women’s dress, a feud between Whistler and Oscar Wilde—that weren’t directly useful in writing the book. But I felt like as long as I was steeping myself in Victorian culture, it was okay to follow the occasional bit of research down a rabbit hole.

  A READING GROUP GUIDE

  OPHELIA’S MUSE

  Rita Cameron

  About This Guide

  The suggested questions are included

  to enhance your group’s reading of

  Rita Cameron’s Ophelia’s Muse.

  DISCUSSION QUESTIONS

  1. Early in the book, Lizzie is described as being tall and thin, with “unlucky” red hair. Her looks are described as odd or striking, but never pretty in the conventional sense. The young artists who paint her, however, see her quite differently—as a great beauty. What do you think it was about Lizzie’s looks that made her an attractive model to the Pre-Raphaelites? How did Lizzie’s own perception of her beauty change, and how did this change affect her personality? What about later in the book, after her illness?

  2. At the beginning of the book, Lizzie is accosted by a drunk man on Blackfriars Bridge, before Rossetti chases him away. How does this scene foreshadow other parts of the novel, such as her relationship with Rossetti, and her illness from sitting in a cold bath when she models for John Millais? How do Lizzie’s character and social position make her vulnerable in these situations?

  3. Many people point out the differences in Lizzie’s and Rossetti’s social standing—she is a working-class shopgirl, while he is an art student at the Royal Academy from a literary family. But in many ways their positions aren’t so different: Both must work for their living, and both came from families where education is valued but money was tight. Do you think these similarities helped or hurt their chances for success as a couple?

  4. In many respects, Rossetti lives a bohemian life. He rejects the conventions of the Royal Academy, lives and works out of a studio in a dingy part of London, and is happy to associate with both high and low society. But in other respects he can be much more conventional in his views. What problems does this cause in his relationship with Lizzie? What forces act upon him to bring out his more conservative tendencies?

  5. When Rossetti first sees Lizzie, he thinks of Beatrice, the muse of the poet Dante Alighieri. Rossetti often paints Lizzie as Beatrice, and he comes to identify Lizzie very heavily with the saintly, silent Beatrice, who embodied virtue and died young. How does Rossetti’s idolization of Lizzie as a muse threaten their romance? In what ways does Lizzie try to live up to Rossetti’s ideals?

  6. Although Rossetti seems to love Lizzie, he often puts his work as an artist first. How does Rossetti use his art to rationalize his mistreatment of Lizzie? Do you think that great artists are ever justified in using or mistreating the people around them in pursuit of the greater purpose of making art?

  7. Why do you think Lizzie agrees to sit for Rossetti without a chaperone, and to engage in other behaviors that put her reputation at risk? How does she justify her behavior to herself, and to the people around her who are concerned?

  8. Lizzie first becomes ill after sitting too long in a cold tub while modeling for Jo
hn Millais’s portrait of Ophelia, but as her illness drags on, her doctors begin to think that many of her symptoms could be caused by stress, by not eating, and by the use of laudanum. To what extent do you think Lizzie’s ill health is caused by her relationship with Rossetti, and how does she use her illness to manipulate him?

  9. Ford Madox Brown, Rossetti’s friend and fellow artist, wrote in his diary about Lizzie and Rossetti: “She is a stunner and no mistake. Rossetti once told me that, when he first saw her, he felt his destiny was defined. Why does he not marry her?” Why do you think Rossetti puts off his marriage to Lizzie until it is almost too late?

  10. John Ruskin is convinced that if Lizzie and Rossetti marry and settle down to a more regular life, they will be able to produce more and better art. Do you agree? If Lizzie and Rossetti’s baby had lived, do you think it could have saved their marriage, and Lizzie’s life?

  To the extent that the image or images on the cover of this book depict a person or persons, such person or persons are merely models, and are not intended to portray any character or characters featured in the book.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.