Lizzie Siddal

by Lucinda Hawksley

  For some time, the idea of an artists’ commune had been mooted amongst members of the group. The idea had been to find a large property, or group of homes, where they could live together but keep an element of privacy. The property needed to have a large, picturesque garden which the artists could use for backgrounds in outdoor scenes. It was something Rossetti had discussed with several friends in the past, including Madox Brown, Holman Hunt, William Morris and Edward Burne-Jones; Rossetti had also talked about the scheme in general terms to Lizzie. Assuming that they would have to be married in order to be included, Lizzie was enthusiastic about it. She was not, however, fully aware of the plan; she knew only that the inhabitants would include herself, Rossetti and the Madox Browns. On February 25, 1857, Ford Madox Brown came for dinner with Lizzie and Rossetti and started an innocent conversation about the proposed scheme. The problem was that he mentioned an aspect of the plan Lizzie had not yet heard about: he dropped into conversation that Holman Hunt and Annie Miller were to be a part of the commune. Lizzie descended into fury, not caring that Madox Brown was there to witness it. She began raving violently at the suggestion of her being expected to live in the same house as Annie and Holman Hunt. Madox Brown was embarrassed and utterly bemused as to why Lizzie was making such a scene about a scheme he thought she had already agreed to. He was looking at it purely from an artistic point of view, and to his mind Holman Hunt was an integral member of the group. Quite why Ford and Emma had not discussed the potential disaster of Lizzie and Annie being expected to reside in such close proximity to one another is uncertain, but it seemed genuinely not to have occurred to him that it could be a problem.

  The following day, Rossetti wrote an embarrassed letter to Madox Brown, attempting to gloss over what had happened, but Lizzie was already on her way to Kentish Town to find out what else Rossetti had been keeping secret about the proposed living arrangements. Unfortunately Emma was away in Hastings, recuperating after the difficult birth of Arthur, so Ford was forced to cope alone with a hysterical Lizzie. She created another furious, tearful scene, making herself alarmingly distressed before collapsing dramatically. Madox Brown took her home and contacted Rossetti to take care of her, but this made her even more distressed. At last Rossetti told Madox Brown he was ready to marry her and begged him to lend him the money to buy a marriage licence. The money was duly forwarded and Madox Brown heaved a welcome sigh of relief that this tempestuous courtship would at last be resolved. Somehow, however, Rossetti spent the money elsewhere – there were always bills to pay or painting materials to be bought – and his good intentions disintegrated.

  Lizzie had been so certain that, at last, she would be married, that this overwhelming disappointment was debilitating in the extreme. To have been so certain of her future after all these years and then, yet again, to have been cheated of it was more than she could bear. Rossetti’s presence could no longer cure her and after a couple of days a scared Ford was moved to write to his beleaguered wife, begging her to come back to London and take care of Lizzie who was refusing, once again, to eat anything – neither would she allow Rossetti anywhere near her. This time Lizzie’s refusal to acknowledge him was more prolonged than before and they were not back on speaking terms until the middle of April, around which time Rossetti was called away to a portrait commission in Wales, leaving Lizzie to attend Arthur’s christening on her own. Ostensibly they had made up the rift, but the cracks in their relationship were becoming increasingly difficult to heal or ignore.

  Rossetti returned to London in time to attend one of the most important events in Lizzie’s calendar. On May 25, 1857 the Pre-Raphaelite Exhibition opened in Fitzroy Square, in Marylebone. Several of Lizzie’s paintings were being shown, including Clerk Saunders, We Are Seven and The Haunted Tree, as well as illustrations from Tennyson’s and Browning’s poems. Among the other painters whose works appeared in the show were Rossetti, Madox Brown, Arthur Hughes, John Brett, Charles Collins, Millais and Holman Hunt – Lizzie was the sole female exhibitor.67 Rossetti threw himself into Lizzie’s cause, writing to his own patrons and acquaintances about her work at the exhibition. In June he wrote to the collector James Leathart, “In case you should visit our little collection with any view to possessing something from it, I cannot forbear directing your attention to Miss Siddal’s watercolour from ‘Clerk Saunders’, which I have marked in the list – a most highly finished & admirable drawing. Mr. Ruskin has hitherto bought most of hers, but has not yet visited Russell Place.” Clerk Saunders was bought by an American collector, and acquaintance of Ruskin and Rossetti, Charles Eliot Norton from Massachusetts.

  It was around the time of the exhibition that Lizzie suddenly gave up her allowance from Ruskin. Her reasons for doing so are unrecorded, but it seems likely that she did so at least partly because her health was now too poor for her to continue with art, and she could not accept his annuity without giving him anything in return. Her most creatively artistic periods had been when she was at her happiest; giving up her allowance was a sad indication that she did not anticipate being happy again. Ruskin wrote to her, entreating her to change her mind, but she would not capitulate. Ruskin had grown increasingly controlling and Lizzie was frustrated with feeling like his puppet. Ruskin wrote to Rossetti shortly afterwards, pleading to be allowed to be of use to Lizzie again:

  I shall rejoice in Ida’s success with her picture,68 as I shall in every opportunity of being useful to you or her. The only feeling I have about the matter is some shame at having allowed the arrangement between us to end as it did, and the chief pleasure I could have about it now would be by her simply accepting it as she would have accepted a glass of water when she was thirsty, and never thinking of it any more.

  Lizzie refused to be swayed. Ruskin’s entreaties were ignored and Lizzie left London. Running away to Bath had been only the beginning of her bid for freedom. The reality of her relationship with Rossetti had taken a long time to penetrate through to her, but she was finally having to face up to the sham it had become. By bringing Ruskin’s patronage to an end – an arrangement she knew she owed almost entirely to Rossetti’s interference on her behalf – and by leaving London, she was making a serious attempt at independence. This time she did not head to Hastings or Bath. She headed north to take the waters at the hydropathic spa in Matlock, Derbyshire, just a few miles from the disputed family home in Hope.

  The visit to Derbyshire was in company with one of her sisters and they stayed at a Temperance hotel in Lime Tree View, Matlock, which was run by a Mrs Cartwright. The sisters spent some of their time sightseeing, visiting the nearby town of Castleton, where they explored the Blue John mines69 and the area around the Duke and Duchess of Devonshire’s grand ancestral home, Chatsworth. They also visited Haddon Hall, whose historic associations had helped to inspire one of Lizzie’s favourite authors, Walter Scott. His novel, Peveril of the Peak, was about the castle that gave the village of Castleton its name – built by the one-time owner of Haddon Hall. It has been suggested that the grounds of Haddon Hall were the inspiration for the battlefield, glimpsed through the window in Lizzie’s painting Lady Affixing a Pennant to a Knight’s Lance. John Ruskin had described the county of Derbyshire as “a lovely child’s alphabet; an alluring first lesson in all that is admirable” and Lizzie was equally impressed by the magnificent scenery.70

  By giving up London, Ruskin’s annuity and Rossetti’s “lessons”, Lizzie was breaking away from everything to do with Rossetti. He had refused to change her name to his, so she decided to rediscover her own family and mingle with the people she thought she had left behind. She had some money left over from her generous allowance, so did not need to rely on anyone else. This time she did not ignore Rossetti, as she had done in Bath, but wrote to him regularly, occasionally sending him the new poems she had been inspired to write. As usual they were about death, gloom and broken hearts.

  Back in London, Rossetti had little time to fret over Lizzie’s absence, faced as he was with more se
rious concerns. In the middle of July, baby Arthur Madox Brown became suddenly and dangerously ill. Within a week he was dead and buried in St Pancras Cemetery.71 He had died aged just ten months. Lizzie was not around to comfort her best friend as she mourned the loss of her baby; neither was she there to witness the body of her tiny godson disappearing into its grave. She had attended Arthur’s christening on her own and Rossetti had been alone at his funeral. This was the stuff of heartrending poetry, but no such poem written by Lizzie survives.

  After a fortnight of treatments at Matlock, Lizzie decided not to return to London. She had renewed her acquaintance with her second cousins, the Ibbitts, who were obviously enchanted with her and invited her to stay at their home in Sheffield. This was the change that she needed and her health seems to have improved dramatically. In Sheffield she did not need to cultivate her reputation as an invalid because her cousins were quite willing to give her the attention she craved without needing to be emotionally manipulated beforehand. It was also more difficult to consume laudanum in the quantities to which she had become accustomed while living in someone else’s home.

  This was the one time that Lizzie really dared to strike out on her own. She became a great favourite with her Sheffield family, who were awed by her grand connections in London, but she did not attempt to live on her friends’ reputations, as she had done in Oxford. She became particularly friendly with her cousin, William Ibbitt (1804–69), who was also an artist, and a town councillor. Ibbitt, who was 25 years her senior, was a prominent local figure and a useful friend to have in a new town. He and Lizzie often discussed art and she agreed to sit for him while he painted her portrait, which he started but did not complete. Lizzie’s movements in Sheffield are a little obscure, but it seems that after spending a while with the Ibbitts she moved into lodgings on Ecclesall Road.

  She decided to spend her time gainfully, and to learn more about art. She wanted to break out of the role into which she had been cast, no longer content to remain the pupil and property of Dante Gabriel Rossetti (who, by now, was a name to be reckoned with). Lizzie wanted to discover if she had genuine artistic talent and, if so, to improve in whatever direction her art was meant to be taken, not solely by dint of the direction Ruskin and Rossetti thought appropriate for her. Missing the friendship of Emma, she became close to a girl she met through the Ibbitts, Annie Drury, who was a student at the Sheffield School of Art. Through Annie’s intervention, Lizzie was permitted to use the school’s facilities and attend classes under the tutelage of the school’s head teacher, Mr Young Mitchell.

  In the 1850s, there were no life classes – the idea of learning drawing from a nude model was not accepted at the school until 1903 – but the students were allowed to study the human figure in the form of casts of antique statues. Lizzie often stayed on after classes to work on her own in the Figure Room. Mr Mitchell was aware of Lizzie’s London connections and they had regular conversations about the Pre-Raphaelites and Ruskin. His obvious admiration for this new girl, whom most of the other students thought was stuck up and odd, did not pass unnoticed and she became the object of mild bullying. The Pre-Raphaelite fashion had not made it as far as Sheffield, so her unique style of dressing became a point of ridicule. Annie and Mr Mitchell defended her – the latter discovered a bitchy caricature of Lizzie being handed around the class and punished the girls severely – but it was Lizzie herself who put an end to the snide comments and whisperings. She had brought with her to Sheffield the clothes she had bought in Paris, corsets and all, and turned up on a school excursion to Manchester dressed in a style more grand, and fashionable, than any of her fellow students could possibly emulate.72

  The excursion, which took place in September 1857, was to see Manchester’s Great Exhibition. A special train had been commissioned from Sheffield and held 150 passengers, including William Ibbitt, Lizzie, Lydia (who had travelled up especially) and students and teachers from the Art School. The atmosphere was alive with excitement. At the exhibition, Lizzie was approached by an odd but strangely charismatic figure, who introduced himself as a friend of Rossetti’s and Ruskin’s and explained that he recognized her from Rossetti’s portraits. He was in Manchester, he added, on behalf of John Ruskin, having been appointed his art adviser. The man’s name was Charles Augustus Howell.

  Howell, known affectionately to his contemporaries as “Owl”, was one of the nineteenth century’s most fascinating and scurrilous figures. Born in obscurity in Portugal at a date some time between 1839 and 1841, depending on which version is adhered to, he managed to become a pivotal figure of London artistic society in the mid-and late 1800s. He was employed by the highly upright Ruskin as his “art expert” and trusted by all the greatest names of the day – even though they acquired proof of just how untrustworthy he could be. Howell was an inveterate liar, at times perhaps even convincing himself of the lies. At a particularly low financial point in his life, he faked his own death to avoid his creditors. Even his actual death on April 25, 1890, was complicated. There are two versions of his demise. The first, and most popular because it suggests a man dying as he lived (even if the story is untrue), tells of how he was found at dawn, lying in a gutter outside a Chelsea pub. His throat had been cut and between his rigid teeth had been placed a ten-shilling coin. Still alive, he was taken to hospital, where he later died. The problem with this story, although it makes for a great tale of which Howell would no doubt have approved, is that no police investigation into his death appears to have taken place. The second – and more prosaic – version of his death, and the one that was written in his obituary, was that he died in hospital from pneumonia, developed after a severe bout of influenza.

  After his death, Howell’s effects were sold off by auction. The celebrated actress Ellen Terry wrote pleadingly to a friend in London, “Howell is really dead this time – Do go to Christie’s and see what turns up.” Her correspondent, Graham Robertson, duly made his way to Christie’s and made notes of the lots being sold. He later reported on the sale to the artist James Abbott McNeill Whistler (1834–1903), who gleefully punctuated the rendition all the way through with comments such as, “That was Rossetti’s … that’s mine … that’s Swinburne’s!” Whistler also made the following observation of Howell: “He was really wonderful … You couldn’t keep anything away from him and you always did exactly as he told you.”

  In 1857, Howell was about 17 years old and had only just begun what was to become an enviably varied career. He was very taken with the society into which he had managed to effect an entrance, although at this date his role in relation to Ruskin was less elevated than he led Lizzie to believe.73 His recognition of Lizzie flattered her, and impressed any remaining sceptics in her student entourage. The doting Mr Mitchell was in awe.

  While Lizzie was proving a triumph in Sheffield, Rossetti was in the thick of an exciting new art project of his own. In company with the younger Pre-Raphaelites, including William Morris and Edward Burne-Jones, Rossetti was in Oxford, working on the murals for the Oxford Union. The project had been his idea and he threw himself into it with a passion. The architect Benjamin Woodward was excited about Rossetti’s offer to cover the white walls of his new buildings with murals, aware of the importance his friend Ruskin afforded to the young eccentric. The university agreed to let the painters lodge free, feed them and supply the paint. Rossetti brought together a party of men, including Morris, Burne-Jones, Val Prinsep, John Roddam Spencer-Stanhope (1829–1908) and Arthur Hughes. The gathering had about it an atmosphere reminiscent of the early days of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood – a group of young artists, excited and enthusiastic about the future, determined to change the face of the artistic world by their own endeavours. “Topsy”, “Ned” and co. were as young as Rossetti, Deverell, Millais, Holman Hunt and the others had been when they began the PRB, and Rossetti was infected by their vitality and their passionate ideals. In Oxford, surrounded by adoring disciples, he was no longer the slightly jaded lover of a woman he
knew he had wronged. He could be the young Dante again, going out to the theatre and concerts with his single friends, looking for stunners and wondering feverishly if the beautiful girl a few seats away would agree to sit for her portrait. The naked adulation in the faces of Ned and Topsy was intoxicating; it was the kind of unmitigated admiration Lizzie had once shown him every time they met.

  One evening in October, a group of the enthusiastic mural painters were at a play when Morris spotted a stunner in one of the seats below their balcony. The impressionable young men excitedly concurred that Topsy had found the genuine article, a woman they all longed to paint. The tall, dark-haired young woman who had magnetically drawn the artists’ attention away from the stage was a 17-year-old from a down-rodden area of Oxford. Her father was a stable groom and she had grown up, as Lizzie had done, believing nothing exceptional was ever likely to occur to her, in a life mapped out by financial necessity. She was certainly striking in appearance, with unusually exotic colouring and clearly defined features – and, unlike Rossetti, Morris needed to have no concerns about marrying for money. He had plenty of his own. The stunner’s name was Jane Burden, later known affectionately to their circle as “Janey”. The group, in true PRB fashion, were all smitten with her, but it was understood from the start that she was the “property” of Topsy. Rossetti was irritated that Morris had staked his claim first, but his friends all knew about Lizzie; he was not expected to be seeking to meet other women. As far as his friends were aware, Rossetti complied wholeheartedly with Morris’s romance, but in reality he was as equally in thrall to Jane Burden as Morris was. His male friends remained unsuspecting at this early date, but Lizzie, although a great distance away, was made suspicious by the manner in which he wrote about Topsy’s new stunner (Jane had, by now, agreed to be painted by Morris as Queen Guinevere).