Lizzie Siddal

by Lucinda Hawksley

  Treuherz, Julian; Prettejohn, Elizabeth; & Becker, Edwin, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool, 2003

  Vallance, Aymer, The Life and Work of William Morris, Studio Editions, London, 1995 (repr.)

  Vickers, J. Edward, A Popular History of Sheffield, E.P. Publishing, Wakefield, 1978

  Walford, Edward, Old and New London, London, (no date given)

  Watkin’s London Directory, 1852

  Watkinson, Ray, “Red House Decorated”, The Journal of the William Morris Society, Vol VII, No. 4, Spring 1988, pp.10–15

  Waugh, Evelyn, Rossetti, Duckworth, London, 1928

  Wildman, Stephen, Visions of Love and Life: Pre-Raphaelite Art from the Birmingham Museums and Art Gallery, Art Services International, Virginia, 1995

  Wilson, A.N., The Victorians, Arrow, London, 2003

  Wojtczak, Helena, Notable Women of Victorian Hastings, Hastings Press, Hastings, 2002

  Endnotes

  1. Mary Howitt, a Victorian writer who contributed articles to magazines aimed at young women, made the sarcastic comment that the Pre-Raphaelites had ushered in an age in which “plain women” could be considered beautiful. She added that the painters had made “certain types of face and figure once literally hated, actually the fashion. Red hair – once to say a woman had red hair was social assassination – is the rage”.

  2. Allingham is best known today for his poem, “The Fairies”, which begins: “Up the airy mountain Down the rushy glen, We daren’t go a-hunting, / For fear of little men …”.

  3. In wanting a red-haired model, Deverell was following Dante Gabriel Rossetti’s example. The previous year, Rossetti had sought in vain for a red-haired girl to be painted as the Virgin Mary, but had ended up using his sister, Christina, and painting her brown hair as auburn.

  4. In the 1600s, the Crossdaggers was called Hope Hall and was a small ancestral home owned by the Balguy family. It became a coaching inn around the start of the eighteenth century and the building remains a pub/hotel to this day. In 1876 its name was changed to the Hall Hotel; it is now called Old Hall.

  5. After 1807, no Siddalls appear in the records of the inn’s ownership.

  6. The Eyres’ heritage can be traced back to the time of the Norman Conquest and several branches of the family remain in the Derbyshire region today. Charlotte Brontë, who had very fond memories of the Peak District, paid homage to the area’s great landowning family by naming Jane Eyre after them. Today, the surnames Eyre and Siddall are commonly found throughout Derbyshire and Yorkshire. Lizzie’s great-grandfather, Christopher Siddall, grew up in Hope, but moved with his family to Sheffield, presumably to find work. Since then, Lizzie’s ancestors had lived in Sheffield, but dreamed of returning to Hope Hall.

  7. The incident of Clara throwing the papers on the fire was revealed in an interview given in March 1930 by one of the daughters of Lizzie’s sister, Lydia; the daughter was named Elizabeth Eleanor in memory of the aunt who had died around the time of her birth. The interview also records the dramatic assertion, “I have always understood … that Hope Hall should have been inherited by my grandfather. There is a local tradition that until a member of the Siddal family lives again at Hope Hall, ill-luck will always pursue the people who live there.”

  8. The 1841 census states that Charles and Elizabeth’s second child, Charles, born in 1828, was born in Yorkshire. Annie, born in 1825, was baptized in London, so it is likely she was born in London as well. She is not mentioned in the census, presumably being away from home on the night it was taken. Neither is she mentioned in the 1851 census, having by that time married a printer named David MacCarter and moved to his native Scotland.

  9. Taylor may have been Charles Siddall’s employer when the latter first arrived in London, or they may have been business partners; the relationship is unclear.

  10. Kent Place no longer exists.

  11. The census of 1861 lists an 18-year-old Henry as a “cutler”.

  12. Statistic obtained from http://eh.net/hmit/ppowerbp/

  13. The rate affirmed by Mrs Frith, wife of the popular artist William Powell Frith, when asked by either Mrs Deverell or Mrs Rossetti (the legend is unclear) to find out how much her son should pay Lizzie, his first professional model. Until then both Walter Deverell and Dante Gabriel Rossetti had painted their mothers and sisters when they needed a female sitter.

  14. This journal was initially titled Monthly Thoughts in Literature, Poetry and Art, but later changed to The Germ. Rossetti was much inspired by the current publication the Art Journal, which he wanted to emulate, but using the PRB’s own unique interpretation of things artistic. The first edition of The Germ was published on New Year’s Eve 1849. As well as the PRB, contributors to The Germ included William Allingham, Coventry Patmore, Walter Deverell, William Bell Scott and Christina Rossetti. The journal was to prove a particularly good career move for William Rossetti, making his name in the journalistic world and leading to other commissions. The Germ’s aim was to enforce and encourage an entire adherence to the simplicity of nature. It’s pages were scathing of any critic who had spoken against the Pre-Raphaelites and unreservedly laudatory in their reviews of the latest works by Robert Browning and Alfred, Lord Tennyson.

  15. Rossetti changed his name after the untimely death of his English godfather, Charles Lyell, whom it had been hoped would be a prominent patron of his works. After Lyell died, Rossetti saw no need to keep “Charles” in his own name and reversed the order of his remaining Christian names to become Dante Gabriel Rossetti.

  16. Ford Madox Brown wrote that Rossetti abstained from “tobacco, tea, coffee, stimulants” and described how, after a party or at the end of an evening, he would always pour himself a glassful of cold water.

  17. Rossetti was fascinated by wombats; see page [163 n3.]

  18. Bessie Rayner Parkes was a poet, essayist and champion of women’s rights. Today, she is mostly remembered as the mother of two more famous writers, Hilaire Belloc and Marie Lowndes Belloc, but she was an equally important figure in her own right. She met Barbara Leigh Smith, who introduced her to Rossetti and Lizzie, in 1846 and they remained lifelong friends. Together they founded The Englishwoman’s Review in 1858, and in 1866 co-founded the first Women’s Suffrage Committee. In 1867, Bessie was on holiday in France where she met and fell in love with Louis Belloc, an invalid several years her senior. Both families and Barbara were against the marriage (the two women’s friendship suffered a temporary coldness as a result), but the Bellocs enjoyed five very happy years of marriage before Louis’s early death. After his demise, Bessie returned to England with her children.

  19. This behaviour engendered several local rumours of eccentricity. One night, after an evening out, Holman Hunt was taking a cab home and his driver asked if he knew “the madman” who had a house on this street but chose to live in his own garden, rather than sleep in his bed. Holman Hunt listened, amused, to the cabbie – before apparently asking him to stop the cab a few doors away from his home, so the cabbie would not know that it was his passenger who was “the madman”.

  20. Holman Hunt later admitted that this picture of Lizzie does not look like her. In his memoirs of 1905, he magnanimously wrote about the woman who had disliked him so much by the end of her short life: “With my desire to give a rude character to the figure, and my haste to finish, certainly the head bore no resemblance to her in grace and refinement.” Another problem with his depiction of Lizzie in this painting is that her left arm and hand appear to have been painted from someone else who possesses much larger bone and muscle structure. Although her right hand, in which she holds the cloth, is dainty and feminine, the left hand, which supports the bowl, looks unfeasibly larger and out of proportion in comparison. The muscles of the exposed left arm also seem extremely over-developed for someone as slight as Lizzie.

  21. Although the lack of a buyer cast Holman Hunt into despair at the time, it was eventually bought by Thomas Combe, who was to become one of the Pre-Rap
haelites’ most important patrons and is largely responsible for the wealth of Pre-Raphaelite art that has remained in the UK. Combe paid £160 for A Converted British Family …

  22. The woman may well have been Fanny Cornforth, though she could have been one of several other former models.

  23. In this apologetic letter, Holman Hunt describes Lizzie as “a modest, agreeable girl … not a common model”.

  24. During this sojourn at Knole, Rossetti began painting the background for his Beatrice, Meeting Dante at a Marriage Feast, Denies him her Salutation.

  25. Charles Dickens ridiculed Millais’s Christ in the House of his Parents (1850) to such an extent it seems remarkable that, just a few years later, Millais was a close enough friend of the Dickens family for the author to allow his younger daughter, Katey, to model for the artist.

  26. The Cremorne and Vauxhall “pleasure gardens” were large parks that had been intended to provide respectable entertainment, but became notorious for prostitution, debauchery and generally un-Victorian activities. Hugely popular from Regency times onward (when there was also a third garden, at Ranelagh), pleasure gardens were the site of dancing, theatre, concerts, travelling shows, firework displays and even – on several memorable occasions – ballooning. By the mid-Victorian years, however, the pleasure gardens had acquired a dubious reputation, particularly in the evenings. Any unchaperoned young women Rossetti and his friends were likely to encounter in the gardens were most probably prostitutes. Vauxhall Pleasure Garden was closed in 1859, but Cremorne was still in existence in the 1870s.

  27. Collins later went on to marry the artist Katey Dickens, daughter of the novelist.

  28. It is interesting to note that Bell Scott still used the old spelling of Lizzie’s surname, even in 1860.

  29. Chatham Place no longer exists.

  30. One of Hughes’s most famous paintings is April Love (1855), now in the Tate Britain, London.

  31. Rossetti most famously gave living space at Cheyne Walk to the artist Frederick Sandys (1829–1904), with whom he fell out spectacularly, having irrationally accused Sandys of plagiarism.

  32. Rossetti spelled her name as both “Lizzy” and “Lizzie”, but she preferred the latter spelling and the very few letters written by her that remain are signed “Lizzie”.

  33. Lucy Madox Brown was later to marry Dante Rossetti’s brother, William.

  34. Cathy also became an artist, mainly of watercolours, exhibiting for the first time in 1869. In 1872 she married the musicologist Dr Franz Hueffer, who had been born in Germany but moved to England where he became the music critic for The Times. Their son was Ford Madox Hueffer, later renamed Ford Madox Ford (because of anti-German feeling), author of the classic novel The Good Soldier (1915) and the Editor of The English Review which published such unknown writers as Ezra Pound, James Joyce and Ernest Hemingway.

  35. After Lizzie’s death, Rossetti wanted Christina to publish Lizzie’s poetry in a volume of her own works. Christina was eager to do so until she received the poems, whereupon she decided they were “too hopelessly sad” to be published.

  36. Hector France, an aptly named Frenchman living in London in the mid-1800s, wrote a letter home revealing that he had seen condoms on sale in Petticoat Lane market, which were decorated with a portrait of the Prime Minister or the Queen!

  37. Rossetti was convinced that no one else could do justice to Lizzie’s ethereal beauty. After her death, Georgie Burne-Jones asked for a photograph of her as a remembrance, Rossetti told her that no photographs of Lizzie had been kept as none of them was a flattering enough likeness. Though, as Jan Marsh notes, at least two very small photos did survive at that time.

  38. He completed the painting in one week, a speed that astonished Madox Brown.

  39. William became engaged in 1856 to Henrietta Rintoul, the daughter of one of his colleagues. The engagement was dissolved in 1860 when she told him that she wanted a celibate marriage. In 1874, he married Lucy Madox Brown, whom he had known since she was a small child.

  40. Her first suitor, James Collinson, was a Catholic, a faith which he attempted to renounce for her sake, but was unable to do. His return to Catholicism in 1850 caused the end of their engagement, leaving Christina broken-hearted. In the 1860s, she had a romance with the linguist and translator Charles Cayley, with whom her brother William believed she was in love. Unfortunately, Cayley was an agnostic, which could also not be reconciled to a life allied to Christina. He proposed in 1866, after several years of acquaintance, but she refused him.

  41. In 1830, more than 22,000 lb (10,000 kg) of opium was imported into the UK from China. By 1860 Britain was buying more than four times that amount each year.

  42. Elizabeth Barrett Browning died just a few months before Lizzie, in 1861.

  43. After Deverell’s death, Rossetti finished off his deceased friend’s last painting so it could be sold and his family receive the money. Deverell must have been painting the picture for a long time as Lizzie had been one of the original models. Rossetti did not like the way Deverell had painted her hair, so he repainted it, sadly reminiscent of how he had repainted her hair in Twelfth Night.

  44. Barbara Leigh Smith Bodichon was a great social reformer, particularly concerned with women’s rights, and a philanthropist; she was also a prominent member of the religious movement known as the Dissenters and a cousin of Florence Nightingale (1820–1910). In addition, she was an amateur artist and the author of several works about social reform. Her father was a controversial MP who actively used his wealth to benefit the poor. In the enviable position of being independently wealthy, Barbara Leigh Smith was very generous with her homes in London and Sussex, always entertaining friends and concerned with their welfare. She took a considerable interest in Lizzie and often nursed her through times of illness. This interest may well have stemmed from the fact that her parents were unmarried and her mother, who came from a much poorer family than her father, had been a milliner. It seems likely that Barbara’s parents never married because the laws of the time – against which Benjamin Smith was totally opposed – meant that marriage was not at all an equal partnership, effectively making a woman the property of her husband. Barbara was a lifelong and active supporter of reform for married women’s rights and of women’s suffrage; she was also a fervent supporter of the poor and followed her father’s example of using her wealth to help the needy. In 1857 she married the eccentric French physician Eugene Bodichon, whom she had met in Algeria where Bodichon was working. They had no children, but supported one another’s many causes until his death in 1885.

  45. Health treatments for some invalids, however, did include sea bathing and “total immersion”, the latter would be performed by a large-muscled bathing attendant who carried the invalid out into the sea and dropped them unceremoniously into it before carrying them back to the shore.

  46. In the mid-nineteenth century, riding was also one of the most common ways for a woman to bring an end to an unwanted pregnancy, which may add another dimension to Hastings’ popularity as a health resort for ladies.

  47. In the 1850s, Hastings was beaten in popularity as a health resort only by Brighton, Great Yarmouth and Dover.

  48. At the end of 1854, one of Rossetti’s aunts, Ellen Polidori, also went to the Crimea as a nurse. Christina Rossetti begged to go with her, but the authorities turned her down on account of her being too young. A journalist who interviewed the war nurses immortalized Ellen in print as “Miss Polly Dory”, causing much hilarity amongst her nieces and nephews. Another notable sibling of Frances Rossetti was her younger brother Dr John Polidori, who travelled for a while with Lord Bryon as his personal physician and was himself a writer. His best-known work was The Vampire, published in 1819. Having made the most of his brief life, John Polidori tragically committed suicide at the age of 26, but even his death was to be distinguished. Instead of recording a verdict of suicide, the coroner decided that he had “died by the visitation of God”.

  49. I
t is commonly suggested in biographies that Barbara was quietly in love with Rossetti at this time. Barbara was not a beautiful woman, she was also a passionate believer in women’s causes and would not have dreamt of flirting with a friend’s partner, so even if she was in love with Rossetti she posed no threat to Lizzie and remained a true friend to the end, and beyond, stalwartly protecting Lizzie’s reputation long after her death.

  50. The house that Lizzie lived in on Weymouth Street no longer exists, replaced by a building from the early twentieth century.

  51. In 1848, Holman Hunt had used John Keats’s poem about the Eve of St Agnes as the inspiration for one of his paintings and Arthur Hughes exhibited a triptych of the same subject in 1856.

  52. The Lady of Shalott is usually identified with the figure of Elaine in Arthurian legend.

  53. After her death, Rossetti arranged to have Lizzie’s works photographed. In some cases, these photographs are now the only visual references remaining.

  54. The theory that Ruskin was interested only in young girls was borne out by the extraordinary behaviour he exhibited after his marriage. At the age of 39, he became obsessed with a 10-year-old girl, Rose de la Touche, whom he told he intended to marry when she came of age. Effie, alerted to his behaviour, wrote a letter to Rose’s parents, which convinced them to stop their daughter spending time with Ruskin, whom they had viewed as a caring family friend. Tragically, Rose later went insane before dying at the age of 26; her death caused Ruskin to undergo a mental breakdown.

  55. The Poet Laureate, Tennyson, was moved to write one of his most famous poems, “The Charge of the Light Brigade” after reading a report of the Crimean War in The Times. It was in homage to the “Noble six hundred” who were killed in one of the British army’s most ridiculous military blunders or, in the words of the poet, after “Some one had blunder’d”.

  56. Ruskin did not arrange the appointment with Acland purely out of interest in Lizzie; he was becoming increasingly concerned with the amount of energy Rossetti wasted in worrying about Lizzie. Ruskin was fearful – as was Madox Brown – that Rossetti’s constant fears about Lizzie were affecting his own work. Ruskin asked Acland to examine her as much to put Rossetti’s mind at ease as to help Lizzie.