Lizzie Siddal

by Lucinda Hawksley

  By the end of April, Lizzie and Mrs Kincaid were preparing for their return to England. Both were relieved at the prospect of their uneasy companionship coming to an end, but Lizzie was not entirely at ease with the thoughts of her homecoming. Ruskin, however, was as excited about it as Rossetti and generously resigned to pay out yet more money to secure her safe homecoming. He wrote to Rossetti, “I am almost certain Ida, or Ida’s travelling incubus of a companion, will have more debts than they say. People are always afraid to say all at once. Hence it is best to be prepared for the worst.” Although Ruskin had not put any pressure on her to start painting at once, Lizzie knew she would have to start work in earnest soon – and that she would need to work with an attitude she had not needed to summon up since leaving Mrs Tozer. Her health, however, was little improved – laudanum having proved an invaluable ally in her battle to dilute Mrs Kincaid’s irksome company – and the idea of working to earn her comfortable living filled her with dread.

  Even Rossetti’s letters were no longer a tonic. Lizzie was longing to see him, but it seemed he felt less excited about her return than she had hoped. She was grimly aware from the tone of his letters that someone else was currently occupying his mind, and it did not take much detective work to decipher who that someone was. Even with Holman Hunt back in London, Rossetti was continuing to see Annie Miller. He had also become enthralled by a beautiful young actress, currently seducing the London audience nightly, by the name of Ruth Herbert. Lizzie, aware of her slowly advancing age and increasingly delicate body, found these two paragons of lusty vitality and beauty depressingly successful opponents.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  “She hath no loyal Knight and true”63

  Lizzie’s return from the Continent in May was marked by a noticeable slump in her health or, as Rossetti described it, there was “little palpable change in her physical health” from when she had left England. Her health had improved abroad, but she had not managed to loosen the hold laudanum had over her and her return and its resultant depression made her cling to its offer of salvation even more closely. Now her adventure was over, she had no idea when she would next have excitement in her life, and the realization that her special treatment was at an end was enervating. She was examined by a doctor who diagnosed “a continuous decline in vital force”. Depression had taken hold and Rossetti’s behaviour did nothing to alleviate it. She threw herself back into art, reworking some of her watercolours in oils, a medium she was never fully at ease with, using painting as a means of escape.

  Lizzie was not only influenced by Rossetti in her artistic choices. She shared the general Pre-Raphaelite affinity for medievalism in her painting, which was one of the reasons why Ruskin found her art so appealing. In the late 1850s (probably around 1857 or 1858) she finished an oil painting she had been struggling with for a while, entitled Lady Affixing a Pennant to a Knight’s Lance (also known as Before the Battle) a crudely executed image of a young woman in medieval dress helping to tie her pennant to the lance her doomed lover will carry to the battlefield. Both the knight and his lover seem aware that he is doomed. The pennant is red, the colour representative of Love, as is demonstrated in many of Rossetti’s paintings.

  Lizzie also attempted to write similarly themed poetry, such as the chivalric verses “True Love”, which could be a continuation of the story in Lady Affixing a Pennant. In the poem, a lady has to say goodbye to her murdered lover. She kneels at his grave for a grief-stricken farewell, before leaving to marry his opponent, who has won her in the conflict. She swears that she will be true to Earl Richard, despite being forced to marry another, and looks forward to the day she will join him in death.

  True Love

  Farewell, Earl Richard,

  Tender and brave;

  Kneeling I kiss

  The dust from thy grave.

  Pray for me, Richard,

  Lying alone

  With hands pleading earnestly,

  All in white stone.

  Soon must I leave thee

  This sweet summer tide;

  That other is waiting

  To claim his pale bride.

  Soon I’ll return to thee

  Hopeful and brave,

  When the dead leaves

  Blow over thy grave.

  Then shall they find me

  Close at thy head

  Watching or fainting,

  Sleeping or dead.

  This poem has more than a faint echo of Dante and Beatrice, although in this instance it is Beatrice who remains alive and Dante’s sacred memory that is immortalized by death.

  Before travelling to France, Lizzie had begun two new designs: an illustration for Keats’s ballad “La Belle Dame Sans Merci”64 and an original scene entitled Lovers Listening to Music. In the latter, two lovers, similar in looks to Lizzie and Rossetti, are seated on a bench listening intently to music being performed by two dark-skinned women, perhaps intended to be Indian. The musicians are seated on the ground at the lovers’ feet, playing an unusual stringed instrument. Beside the group is a gate at which stands a young child, dressed in a long robe and representative of Love. The child looks wistfully at the musicians who are themselves caught up in the music and apparently oblivious to anything else. Although Lizzie and Rossetti were of a similar height (approximately five feet seven inches tall), the lovers in this picture are dramatically different in size. She is much smaller and in apparent need of protection, emphasizing Lizzie’s desire for Rossetti to become her protector by becoming her husband. The man’s arm encircles his lover’s waist, drawing her closely beside him. Her head rests on her hand which she has placed lovingly on his shoulder and his head is inclined towards her, resting against the top of her head and cradling it between his cheek and shoulder. The woman’s eyes are closed in happiness, though whether this is because she is enjoying the music or luxuriating in her proximity to her lover is open to debate.

  Lizzie’s ability to draw the human figure is apparent in this work, as is her command of depicting draperies, evinced in the toga-like apparel of the musicians. The style and subject matter of Lovers Listening to Music was strongly influenced by Rossetti. As well as being an obvious reflection on their relationship, it illustrates the ideal they seemed able to attain in Hastings and Paris, but which eluded their relationship so much of the time.

  Rossetti’s ink drawing entitled How They Met Themselves (1851–60), which he worked at for the entire length of their courtship and was still making amendments to on their honeymoon, is another representation of their relationship.65 It depicts the story of a couple, quite obviously portraits of himself and Lizzie, who are out walking in a wood when they are approached by their doppelgängers. The woman faints and is caught in a swoon by her lover, as the doppelgänger figures look on in concern. The picture is a fascinating depiction of the dual nature of Lizzie’s and Rossetti’s relationship. On occasion they are Dante and Beatrice, yet at other times they are their own depressing selves, bickering and real, ill, depressed or angry, not at all the poetic figures Rossetti would like them to be.

  Other paintings created by Lizzie in early 1855 include The Haunted Tree and The Witch. The latter was singled out by Ruskin for special praise, though he also suggested she stop working on such ghoulish subjects as he was worried such ghostly thoughts were affecting her health. He was similarly displeased by her working on Sister Helen, which he felt an unhealthy preoccupation for a sensitive woman such as his protégée.

  After her return from France, Lizzie’s new artistic endeavours included reworking her original woodblock engraving of Clerk Saunders as a watercolour and attempting an oil version of the watercolour The Lass of Lochroyan. Despite the many new influences, experiences, sights and colours she had experienced during her time abroad, she was unable to start anything new, finding it difficult to express herself creatively when depressed. She and Rossetti spent a great deal of their time together that summer, William Allingham recording in his diary that he was often
with the two of them during those months, but Rossetti’s mind was elsewhere. Annie was back with Holman Hunt and it was infuriating the jealous Rossetti. His obsession was so all-consuming, as once it had been for Lizzie, that he was foolish enough to talk to Lizzie about Annie, making Lizzie not only miserable but terrified of being left alone in case he left her to go to Annie. Her health was failing – her addiction fuelled by the desire to blot out Rossetti’s infidelity and cruel ravings about another woman – and as a result she felt unable to work. This led to feelings of guilt that she was taking Ruskin’s annuity without being able to offer him any artworks in return.

  Throughout July and August, Lizzie confided her miseries to Emma Madox Brown, who had no solution to offer. No other respectable man would be likely to marry Lizzie now, with her reputation of being Rossetti’s mistress, as well as her history of modelling (a past she was unable to bury as Millais’s Ophelia had become one of the decade’s most acclaimed paintings). She was, however, in the enviable position of being financially independent, and Ruskin himself was not agitating for Lizzie to work herself to death in return for his patronage. In August 1856, while Lizzie was worrying in London, Ruskin was in Europe with his parents. Despite Lizzie’s fears of what he must be thinking about her lack of industry, his most pressing concern was about getting Lizzie’s money to her. In the end he entrusted it to a mutual friend, Ellen Heaton, who was fortuitously also travelling in Europe but about to return to England. Lizzie, however, was proud and reluctant to take Ruskin’s money if it came as charity rather than genuine artistic patronage. She knew she had to start painting in earnest or be obliged to give up his income. At the moment, marriage to Rossetti seemed further away than it had ever done.

  Yet by the end of the summer Rossetti was returning to his senses. His passion for Annie had led to his alienating one of his oldest friends, a situation he was desperate to rectify, and had resulted in his running the serious risk of losing Lizzie forever. Infatuated though he had been with Annie, he could not live without Lizzie and he returned to her, apologetic and adoring. After furious rows she accepted him back and they were a couple once again, outwardly appearing even more in love than previously and talking openly of marriage. As Madox Brown recorded in his diary on September 8, 1856, Rossetti had “foresworn” Annie Miller and “he and Guggum seem on the best of terms now”. The following week Emma gave birth to another son, Arthur Gabriel, and Lizzie and Rossetti were asked to be joint godparents.

  In October, Rossetti was once again sketching his Guggum as feverishly as he had been wont to do in the early days of Chatham Place, visiting her in her Weymouth Street rooms and sketching her as she slept in a chair, too exhausted to make the journey to Blackfriars. It was in early November of this year that Rossetti confided in Madox Brown his plan to marry Lizzie and take her to Algeria. Barbara Leigh Smith had just been there – her sister Isabella was consumptive and they had gone together to seek a cure – and had come back full of praise for the country.

  Yet just a week after Madox Brown recorded Rossetti’s intentions in his diary, Rossetti had changed his mind again. Lizzie was incensed and humiliated and, this time, she really did leave him, rushing off to Bath with her sister Clara and refusing to see Rossetti. Just as she had thought marriage was finally within her grasp, he had snatched it away again. She was sick of it and desperately ill yet again.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  In Sickness and In Health

  In Bath, Lizzie and Clara stayed at 17 Orange Grove, a lodging house run by a Mrs Green, the wife of a furrier and draper named James Green. Orange Grove was a terrace of elegant houses which had been built in the early eighteenth century and named after William of Orange. It was fronted by gardens and healthy-looking trees, altogether a smarter residence than Lizzie’s old invalid lodgings on Hastings High Street and indicative of her more wealthy status. On her arrival in Bath, Lizzie told Clara she would not return to Rossetti, and she refused to reply to his pleading letters. Resolute but miserable, she attempted the traditional Bath remedies for invalids, including drinking the water from the medicinal springs (never a particularly palatable experience). Bath had been England’s most fashionable health resort in Regency times, but by the middle of Victoria’s reign it was no longer such a popular choice. The railways had led to a renaissance for spa towns in previously inaccessible areas, such as Sussex, added to which was the fashion for travelling to spa towns in Germany.66 Despite this decline from its Georgian heyday, Bath was nonetheless still famed in the mid-nineteenth century for its Mineral Water Hospital (which remained a popular treatment centre until after the Second World War).

  The town was also renowned for its mild climate and thus recommended as an ideal location to avoid “the worst features of an English winter”. It was decreed by local doctors that invalids could gain the most advantage from the hot springs’ mineral waters between the months of September and May. The high-calcium and low-sodium content of Bath water made it especially recommended for invalids with stomach complaints, which is one possible reason for Lizzie choosing to visit the town. The baths themselves were divided into first and second class – and priced accordingly – and the swimming baths were open to men and women on alternate days. Invalids were recommended to drink two glasses of Bath water every day, after which they were advised to take “gentle exercise” and to limit their visits to the baths themselves to a maximum of four times a week. When not in the capable hands of the bathing attendants, invalids were expected to relax, to eat in moderation and avoid alcohol.

  The Siddal sisters remained in Orange Grove for several weeks with Lizzie trying all the recommended cures but, of course, continuing to rely on her regular fixes of laudanum. Despite the perceived health-giving properties of the Bath spa water, her health continued to deteriorate, and when Rossetti arrived at the lodging house in early December she was too weak – and too relieved to see him – to turn him away. He stayed with her until Christmas and, as usual, her health began to improve as the result of his arrival. Despite the many heartbreaking problems that had prompted her escape to Somerset, they were soon laughing and joking together and their relationship resumed as before. Rossetti was in high spirits now his Guggum was his once again. He made the two girls laugh by pretending to be an invalid, lolling his head mockingly from side to side as they wheeled him around in a Bath chair, pretending to be his nurses. On December 18, a triumphant Rossetti wrote to Allingham that Lizzie had been “terribly ill” but was better.

  The couple returned to London together around Christmas-time – it was on this Christmas Eve that Christina Rossetti wrote her poem “In An Artist’s Studio”. Lizzie, on Rossetti’s recommendation, gave up her tenancy at Weymouth Street and moved into new lodgings in Hampstead, not far from the Madox Browns’ home in Kentish Town. It was around this time that Lizzie finished a painting she had been working on since 1854, Lady Clare, based on a poem by Tennyson. It is a return to one of Lizzie’s recurrent themes: love between two social classes. Ostensibly Lady Clare and her fiancé, and cousin, Lord Ronald are social equals. The day before their wedding, however, Clare discovers that she is in fact the daughter of a servant, the woman she has been brought up to regard as her nurse. She determines to tell Lord Ronald of her low birth and release him from their engagement, and her mother, Nurse Alice, tries to stop her. In response to Alice begging her not to tell, Clare proudly replies:

  “If I’m a beggar born,” she said

  “I will speak out, for I dare not lie,

  Pull off, pull off the brooch of gold,

  And fling the diamond necklace by.”

  She then dresses herself in a peasant’s dress and goes to tell Lord Ronald of her discovery. He is astonished by her clothes and her story. When she convinces him it is the truth, he replies they will still be married and then she will legally bear the name Lady Clare – as his wife. In the picture, Alice kneels before her daughter, pleading with her not to reveal her secret to her lover. Clare is standing b
ut Alice’s hands upon her shoulders attempt to drag her down; Clare’s left hand is placed over Alice’s face as though she cannot bear to look at what she herself will become and is pushing her away. It is symbolic that, although she is determined to refuse the title she no longer feels she has a right to, Clare resists her mother’s physical attempt to draw her down to her own level. In the background is a stained-glass window telling of the biblical story of the wisdom of Solomon, another tale of a child with two claimants to be its mother. The painting is strangely dissimilar to Lizzie’s other works – Lady Clare’s elongated, quite distorted neck looks as though it could be the work of Rossetti, or at least that Lizzie was guided by him when she painted it. Lizzie believed her story to be the reverse of Lady Clare’s; after her father’s long evening tales, she believed she had been born into a much lower estate than was rightfully hers. Through marrying Rossetti, she would be making her way back up to where she deserved to be.

  In Hampstead, everything seemed cosy and happy, but there was a major element missing: Rossetti did not renew his retracted offer of marriage. This time, instead of running away, Lizzie turned to her other option of manipulation. She stopped eating. A short time after they returned to London she claimed she had not eaten for two weeks. It worked – Rossetti was instantly frantic with worry, though not enough to offer the one solution she wanted. She took to her bed and refused to get up, too listless even to make an arranged visit to the Madox Browns. Rossetti, as usual, revealed his most endearing characteristics by caring for her when she was ill – but another, enormous, row was brewing.