Lizzie Siddal

by Lucinda Hawksley

  Yet whereof life was barren, – on what shore

  Bides it the breaking of Time’s weary sea?

  Bondchild of all consummate joys set free,

  It somewhere signs and serves, and mute before

  The house of Love, hears through the echoing door

  His hours elect in choral consonancy.

  But lo! what wedded souls now hand in hand

  Together tread at last the immortal strand

  With eyes where burning memory lights love home?

  Lo! how the little outcast hour has turned

  And leaped to them and in their faces yearned:–

  “I am your child: O parents, ye have come!”

  But while Lizzie was prostrated by the death of their baby, Rossetti could not afford to dwell on the daughter he had lost. He knew there was still a danger Lizzie could die from the rigours of the birth and fussed over her just as he had for the long weeks before their wedding. Even after the doctor pronounced Lizzie out of danger their problems were by no means at an end. After giving birth to a dead baby, Lizzie would never be the same again. The baby girl had died inside her two or three weeks before the birth and Lizzie’s body was suffering the ill effects. Poisons from the dead foetus were leaching into her own system, causing distressing physical problems, while her mind was suffering equal torments from the knowledge her baby had died and she had not been able to save her. This was combined with an acute nagging guilt that her dependence on laudanum might have been the cause of death. Although both Lizzie and Rossetti had been aware for a while that the baby was probably dead and it was something they had been warned was a possibility from the outset, Lizzie had blocked such an eventuality out of her mind. By the time the birth took place, Rossetti had forced himself to accept the probable outcome, but Lizzie was never able to do so. Her usual tendency to depression, combined with a new pressure of postnatal depression and bereavement, led her to a dangerously increased dependence on laudanum. Her addiction worsened dramatically as she attempted to numb the physical and mental torment – Rossetti later admitted that he had known her take up to a hundred drops of laudanum in one dose. Shortly after the birth, Lizzie wrote the following poignant poem:

  Lord May I Come?

  Life and night are falling from me,

  Death and day are opening on me,

  Wherever my footsteps come and go,

  Life is a stony way of woe.

  Lord, have I long to go?

  Hallow hearts are ever near me,

  Soulless eyes have ceased to cheer me:

  Lord may I come to thee?

  Life and youth and summer weather

  To my heart no joy can gather.

  Lord, lift me from life’s stony way!

  Loved eyes long closed in death watch for me:

  Holy death is waiting for me –

  Lord, may I come to-day?

  My outward life feels sad and still

  Like lilies in a frozen rill;

  I am gazing upwards to the sun,

  Lord, Lord, remembering my lost one.

  O Lord, remember me!

  How is it in the unknown land?

  Do the dead wander hand in hand?

  God, give me trust in thee.

  Do we clasp dead hands and quiver

  With an endless joy for ever?

  Do tall white angels gaze and wend

  Along the banks where lilies bend?

  Lord, we know not how this may be:

  Good Lord we put our faith in thee –

  O God, remember me.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  “How is it in the unknown land?”

  Following the loss of her child, Lizzie was permanently altered. She would sit in the drawing room for hours without moving her position, just staring silently into the fire. If there was no fire, she would simply stare into space, apparently not seeing anything in front of her. Once more she refused to eat and became increasingly emaciated. The nurse hired as a maternity carer was living with them and taking care of her, but Lizzie was too wrapped up in grief to be aware of anything except her loss. When Ned and a heavily pregnant Georgie came to visit her, Lizzie was in her room alone, staring at the empty baby’s cradle, which she would rock tenderly from side to side as though soothing her daughter to sleep. As the door creaked open she looked up and told them to be quiet so as not to wake the baby. The pregnant Georgie found this heartrendingly sad; Ned thought Lizzie was being ridiculously over-dramatic.

  In June, she was invited to stay with the Madox Browns for a while. Rossetti could not cope with Lizzie’s misery and needed a break from caring for her and absorbing all her grief while suppressing his own. He also needed to be able to work. Their finances, although improved, were not yet stable and the birth and its attendant medical costs had been expensive. It was hoped that being with Emma would help Lizzie to grieve and be comforted, but Emma had a child and staying in the Madox Browns’ house with the constant reminder of the child she did not have was excruciating for Lizzie. The young Lucy Madox Brown, who was staying with her father and stepmother at the time of Lizzie’s visit, found the bereaved mother highly disturbing, with her vacant expression and silent staring.

  After just a few days, Rossetti was astonished to find Lizzie back in Chatham Place – she had left the Madox Browns’ without a word and made her own way back to Blackfriars. Lizzie could no longer bear to be in the home of such a happy family when she herself could not be a part of one. Lizzie was also paranoid that Rossetti would be with another woman in her absence – this became an obsession throughout the last months of her life and, given her husband’s past history of infidelity, her fears were not without basis. It seems, however, that they were groundless: Val Prinsep, who had become a good friend of Rossetti’s, wrote an article after the deaths of both Lizzie and Rossetti, in which he declared Rossetti was wholly faithful to Lizzie once they were married.

  Rossetti wrote an embarrassed letter to the Madox Browns, explaining that Lizzie had felt ill and, not wanting to trouble Ford and Emma with needing to look after her, had thought it best if she returned to her husband. He ended the letter with, “I hope if she comes again she may be better and give you less trouble. I write this word, since her departure must have surprised you as her return did me.” Today it seems unthinkable that a woman would be expected to suffer no ill effects from a stillbirth and that her friends – who had themselves endured the death of a young baby – would not have understood what she was going through. Rossetti’s letter is indicative of the nineteenth-century misconception about postnatal depression. Any form of depression or any other mental illness was considered something shameful, to be covered up and lied about in order to preserve a façade of “normality”.

  When the time approached for Georgie to have her baby, Lizzie decided she was going to give the Burne-Joneses all her carefully prepared baby clothes. Rossetti wrote to Georgie begging her not to accept them because he was frightened that her doing so would prove a bad omen for him and Lizzie. Lizzie already felt certain she would die childless, but Rossetti was blindly optimistic. He thought another baby would cure Lizzie of her depression; he believed they would get through the nightmare together and go on to have more children.

  In July, Lizzie was persuaded to go away from home again, this time to Red House to stay with the Morrises. Rossetti was desperate to work and could not while he needed to take care of her. He was also fearful because Lizzie’s physical health was once again precarious and he knew she needed a change of air from the summer-heated stench of the Thames and the smoke from the belching steamers. Upton was a country haven, a place where Lizzie could sit in tranquillity surrounded by greenery and flowers and, hopefully, start recovering from the birth and bereavement. The house was surrounded by an apple and cherry orchard through which Lizzie could wander. As well as the fruit trees, the gardens were dotted with oaks, limes, hawthorns and horse chestnuts and the air was scented by the carefully chosen flowers – white jasmine
, rosemary, lavender, passion flowers, honeysuckle, sunflowers and the thickly stocked rose beds. Beyond the house and gardens were fields and woodland, the ideal location for an artist seeking inspiration. It was hoped she would also feel entirely at home in the house which was a monument to the Pre-Raphaelite movement. The stained glass in the windows had been created by her husband, Morris and Burne-Jones, who had also painted the majority of the tiles and furniture (much of which had been specially designed for Red House by Philip Webb). Perhaps, however, Lizzie felt the strongest affinity with the motto Morris had carved over his drawing room fireplace: Ars Longa Vita Brevis – art endures, life is brief.

  Lizzie was not Rossetti’s only worry that July – one of his patrons, Thomas Plint, a wealthy stockbroker from Leeds, died very suddenly. Plint’s death dealt a financial blow not only to Rossetti but to Madox Brown and Burne-Jones, whose patron he had also been.96 In addition to losing the chance of future commissions, they all found themselves having to pay back money they had been given. The dependably wealthy Plint had, it seemed, experienced financial worries of his own and had died insolvent. As a result, Plint’s executors requested the return of all advances paid on unfinished pictures. Rossetti, who had stopped teaching at the Working Men’s College a couple of years previously, now returned to teaching.

  In spite of his fears after her ignominious return from Kentish Town, Lizzie stayed without incident at Red House, prompting Rossetti to believe she was at last on her way to recovery. She wrote him a letter from Kent, signed “your affectionate Lizzie”, after hearing of the death of one of their friends and fellow artist, Joanna Boyce Wells, who had died in childbirth. That summer, the Morrises and various artistic friends were employed in decorating their home by painting murals and patterns not only onto the walls but onto the furniture as well. Lizzie was having difficulty with her artwork, feeling inadequate in her ability to paint figures. “If you can come down here on Saturday evening, I shall be very glad indeed…” she wrote to her husband. “I want you to do something to the figure I have been trying to paint on the wall. But I fear it must all come out for I am too blind and sick to see what I am about.”

  A couple of months later, choosing to ignore the depressive undertones in her last letter from Upton, and feeling relieved by the apparent stability in Lizzie’s health, Rossetti accepted a commission in Yorkshire. He had been asked by one of his most dependable patrons, Ellen Heaton (1816–94), to paint a portrait at her Georgian home in Leeds.97 Eager to make up the money he had lost after the death of Plint, he arranged for Lizzie to stay with the Morrises again. This time it was all too much for her. The beautiful Janey Morris – with whom Lizzie was aware her husband continued to be sexually enthralled – not only had her eight-month-old daughter, Jenny, but she was pregnant again. It seemed that everywhere Lizzie turned for solace she found new babies, young children or the optimism of pregnancy – even her once closest ally, her sister Lydia, was a new mother. Janey’s contented fecundity was more than the postnatally depressed Lizzie could cope with and she ran away yet again. A frantic Rossetti, unable to leave Yorkshire, wrote an urgent letter to his mother requesting her to go to Chatham Place and take Lizzie some money as he knew there was none in the house and he had no idea what she could be doing for food.

  By the end of the year, Lizzie was once more accepted as an immovable invalid, lying listlessly in her chair to be sketched or staying in bed for most of the day. Neither she nor Dante had ever been early risers, regularly choosing to stay in bed until midday, to their visiting friends’ annoyance, but now she wanted to stay in bed continually.98 On Christmas Eve 1861, Rossetti wrote to his mother that, as Lizzie was so ill, there was “very little prospect of our coming tomorrow, but if we can we will”.

  Throughout December, Rossetti tried to recreate the happier days of being together, sketching Lizzie as Princess Sabra and as a sanctified Beatrice. Princess Sabra was the daughter of an Egyptian king, in a land that was terrorized by a dragon. Every year a virgin girl had to be sacrificed to the dragon to prevent his ravages to their kingdom. Eventually, it was the turn of the king’s daughter herself, a beautiful girl who was awaiting her fate with terror and increasing desperation. Her prayers for salvation were answered by the arrival of a passionate suitor, an Englishman we now know as St George. He slayed the dragon and rescued the princess, whom he married. Her Muslim father was overjoyed – until he discovered that George intended to take his new bride back to England where she would become a Christian, whereupon the king arranged to have his new son-in-law killed.

  In The Wedding of St George and Princess Sabra, Lizzie – as the princess – has her face raised heavenward (as in Beata Beatrix). She is clasped in the arms of St George, who has just rescued her from the dragon, lying dead on the ground beside them, but both figures wear an expression of misery, portentous of the danger that awaits them. The attitude of the lovers, his protective arms drawing her to him and her compliance, are similar to the attitudes adopted by the lovers in Lizzie’s Lovers Listening to Music.

  By January, however, Rossetti had to face the fact that he could not slay Lizzie’s personal dragons. His brave Princess Sabra and saintly Beatrice was once again dangerously ill and relying ever more increasingly on laudanum. Even the knowledge that she was pregnant again was unable to encourage moderation in the amount she consumed.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  “Lord May I Come?”

  The evening of Monday, February 10, 1862 started out like almost any other evening in the Rossettis’ diary. The lack of cooking facilities at Chatham Place meant they were accustomed to eating dinner at a restaurant and on this particular evening, Dante and Lizzie were joined by Swinburne, their most regular dinner companion. The couple set out at about six o’clock to meet the poet at one of their favourite restaurants, La Sablonière, in Lizzie’s old haunt, Leicester Square.99

  Rossetti later explained that he had been concerned at the start of the evening because his wife seemed to be fluctuating between being drowsy and over-excited when they set out from home (although he was used to it, her laudanum addiction having been his constant companion for the last twenty months). He realized she must have taken quite a large dose of the opiate before leaving and asked if she would rather they turn the cab round so she could stay at home instead of coming out to dinner – the implication being that he was worried she would embarrass him in the restaurant. Lizzie being embarrassing in public was something Rossetti was painfully used to by now. Lizzie, however, wanted to go out and dine, so they continued on their way to meet the faithful Swinburne, in whose eyes Lizzie could never be an embarrassment.

  The three enjoyed a spirited meal. Swinburne later wrote that nothing untoward or unpleasant had happened during dinner and that Lizzie had seemed in very good spirits, although at the inquest he commented that he had been worried because she had seemed to be even weaker than usual that evening. They finished eating at around eight o’clock and, after agreeing he would call round the following morning so Rossetti could continue painting his portrait, Swinburne left them to make their way back to Blackfriars. Lizzie and Rossetti returned home by cab. By this time Lizzie was feeling the soporific effects of the laudanum and was ready to go to sleep. They may have had an argument, as has often been suggested. If so, the incident is unrecorded. At about nine o’clock Rossetti left her, already in bed, and went out to the Working Men’s’ College. It has been suggested by several sources that Rossetti was, in fact, going out to meet another woman, leading Lizzie to turn in desperation to her laudanum bottle that evening. Val Prinsep’s assertions belie this suggestion, however, and no evidence has ever been discovered that he did not go to work that evening. It is likely, though, that Lizzie, by this time a serious and paranoid addict, had convinced herself he was going to meet a lover, even if his errand was genuinely innocent. Rossetti’s past infidelities and her own very disordered mind, increasingly unstable after the stillbirth, had led her to become highly erratic in her beha
viour.

  When he returned home at half past eleven, Rossetti found Lizzie snoring very loudly and disconcertingly. The bottle of laudanum beside the bed, which had been half-full earlier in the day, was now empty and ominously a note addressed to him was pinned to her nightgown. It was a suicide note asking him to take care of Henry, her disabled young brother.100 A distraught Rossetti made a tremendous effort to wake her, but it proved impossible. Removing the note, he yelled for a neighbour and friend of Lizzie’s, Ellen Macintire, and his landlady, Sarah Birrill. Dr Francis Hutchison, who lived in nearby Bridge Street, was called to treat Lizzie. He was the doctor who had attended at the stillbirth and knew Lizzie’s medical history. By the time Hutchison arrived she was already in a coma. The doctor tried both pumping her stomach to remove the laudanum and then washing her stomach out, but had no success at reviving her. At the inquest Hutchison stated that her stomach contents smelt overpoweringly of laudanum. When Hutchison’s attempts failed to bring her round, Rossetti called out a second doctor; later he called out a third and a fourth, but they could do no more than Hutchison had already done.

  A desperate Rossetti set out for the Madox Browns’ house in Kentish Town, with Lizzie’s note concealed in his pocket. He also sent urgent messages to Lizzie’s family in Kent Place. The unconscious Lizzie was left in the care of the four medics, Ellen Macintire, Mrs Birrill and her daughter, Catherine, who had sometimes acted as a maid when Lizzie had needed one. They were all painfully aware of how little any of them could do.

  Rossetti reached the Kentish Town house in the early hours of the morning. When he and Ford were alone together, Rossetti showed him the note. After reading it, Ford threw it on the fire and they agreed not to mention it to anyone else. Suicide was not only highly scandalous, it was also illegal. The Rossetti and Siddall families’ names would be tarnished permanently but – which was far worse – Lizzie would be unable to receive a Christian burial and would be buried in unconsecrated ground. This was a stigma that it would be intolerably difficult for her relations to recover from, as well as being an unbearable end for a woman whose religion had been an important part of her life.