February 11th marked the 150th anniversary of the death of Elizabeth Siddal.  I received several lovely emails and invitations to attend the commemorative service at Highgate Cemetery and I’m heartbroken that I could not attend.  However, there are some excellent  posts marking the day.  If I’ve missed yours, please let me know!

My dear friend Kirsty Stonell Walker outdid herself, not only visiting the grave of Lizzie Siddal, but also tracking down the grave of Pre-Raphaelite model Alexa Wilding.  Read her post about it, A Tale of Two Stunners.

Verity Holloway shares her thoughts on the death of Elizabeth Siddal.  “As is often the case with historical women, Lizzie Siddal has always been in danger of being overwhelmed by her own image.”

Author Robert Parry wrote a moving post about the anniversary. “There will never be a photo of an elderly Elizabeth Siddal discovered in a hidden attic.”

Valerie Meachum is a kindred spirit, we share a love and respect for Lizzie.  I found her post especially poignant and I think it’s wonderful that she took the title from one of Lizzie’s own poems:  And this is only earth, my dear.

Finally, what a perfect way to spend the day:  SomniumDantis was present at the Highgate memorial and then visited Lizzie as Ophelia by Millais.  Beautiful.

Thank you to my friend John R. Green who has given me permission to share his photos of the service at Highgate:

The Thorn and the Blossom is one of the most unique books I have ever seen.   It is literally two books in one, the same love story told from two different perspectives.  Before owning it, I had seen numerous pictures online of the book and the slipcover that contains it.  Even knowing what to expect did not prepare me for how physically pretty this book is.  It’s gorgeous.  The slipcover features a design that I find reminiscent of  a William Morris pattern. And the covers of the book are simple and elegant.  Quirk books is known for their innovative books and The Thorn and the Blossom does not disappoint either in execution or content.

Like me, I’m sure you’ve had that experience familiar to all avid readers:  you arrive at the end of the book and you don’t want the story to end.  This book is a reader’s dream:  you choose which story you want to read first.  When you reach the end, you start over from the other side and read the tale anew from the aspect of another character.  It doesn’t matter which side you start first.

I remember as a little girl, looking at old reference books that belonged to my parents. I loved the areas of our internal human anatomy overlaid with transparent pages.  I could see the mechanisms of our circulatory system and then lay the next transparency on top of it and see the digestive system too.  That’s what I thought of as I read the second half of the book.  Theodora Goss has taken her story and brilliantly given us another layer.  No matter where you start, reading the other half adds a depth to the narrative and I’m impressed by how well it was done.

From the publisher:

When Evelyn Morgan walked into the village bookstore, she didn’t know she would meet the love of her life. When Brendan Thorne handed her a medieval romance, he didn’t know it would change the course of his future. It was almost as if they were the cursed lovers in the old book itself . . .

The Thorn and the Blossom is a remarkable literary artifact: You can open the book in either direction to decide whether you’ll first read Brendan’s, or Evelyn’s account of the mysterious love affair. Choose a side, read it like a regular novel – and when you get to the end, you’ll find yourself at a whole new beginning

Apart from the book’s unusual format, the characters of Brenda and Evelyn appeal to me.  I enjoy modern characters with an interest in history, poetry, beauty.  When one character purchases a notebook featuring Waterhouse’s Lady of Shalott on the cover, it’s not merely a mundane act.  It is symbolic, it represents potential and beginnings and the hope of something pursued.  There is a certain aesthetic that I am drawn to, my loves are rooted firmly in the past.  When I see artists incorporate that aesthetic in their modern works, I want to applaud.  Not only has Theodora achieved this, but she has done it masterfully and seamlessly and it has resulted in a book thats beauty is only rivaled by the individuality of it’s construction.

Well done, Theodora, well done.

It’s serious and scary, but we are remaining hopeful and positive.

Over the weekend, while I was in the hospital I was browsing through Facebook and I saw that my friend, the super-talented Raine Szramski had liked this picture:

I snickered at the picture at first. But then I happened to look up and notice that the tote bag I have been using to carry books back and forth from the hospital was this one:

There it is, hanging on the bathroom door of this hospital room that we have become too comfortable in. It hangs there now as I write this.

It reminded me of how much I wanted to be Wonder Woman when I was a little girl. (I also wanted to be Nancy Drew, but that’s a different post.) My father was a football coach. We were always at some sporting event or another and I used to get paper cups from the concession stand, push the bottoms out and wear them on my wrists so they could be Wonder Woman’s bracelets. My mother never blinked an eye; I’m sure people around us would glance skeptically at this little girl constantly wearing paper cups as bracelets. This same little girl who would fashion tin foil into rings and bracelets and earrings and wear them at football games because she loved the way they sparkled under the stadium lights. I realize now that I wasn’t actually creating beautiful jewelry, the sparkle existed and grew within my imagination. That’s the kind of sparkle that really counts.

Today we are a family dealing with struggles. Physical, financial, the general stress involved with situations like these.  My paper cup bracelets aren’t going to help, but the spirit behind those bracelets still swells within me. Did you know Wonder Woman’s bracelets are made by a metal called Feminum?  Tell me that is not absolutely awesome.

Feminum was located on Paradise Island, the home of Diana Prince (Lynda Carter) a.k.a. “Wonder Woman,” a member of a race of Amazon warriors.

Prolonged exposure to Feminum gave these mighty female residents their super human strength and immortality. Via TV ACRES

The word Feminum resonates with me, it reinforces this idea I have that the connotation of the word feminine does not have to be sugar and sweetly pink and girly. We have this feminine strength that comes from something much deeper, something primal and fierce. Something Amazonian. There are many things about Pre-Raphaelite art that I respond to, but one of the greatest is that I love the image of woman as a Goddess:

Astarte Syriaca by Dante Gabriel Rossetti

It has been commented on a great deal that Rossetti had a tendency to make strange changes in women’s bodies when he painted them, especially with Jane Morris. He elongates her neck, he gives her cupid’s bow lips. When he painted her as Astarte Syriaca above, he did me a favor. He bestows upon her strong arms that are capable of anything, a steady gaze that could cause enemies to wither, a countenance that tells me that this Goddess fears nothing. She is calm and resolute. She is in control. In times like this, I would like to draw upon that strength.

These are the things that inspire me. A mixture of Wonder Woman, strong Goddesses, childhood memories of my own imagination and power. People have their own beliefs and faith, their own framework. In times of crisis, they ply you with platitudes that exist more for them than you. It is in these times that poetry and art feed my soul. Which made it such a wonderful coincidence when I saw this week that Kat Howard had just written about her experiences with poetry as prayer. I think of the line from To Autumn by Keats: Think not of them, thou hast thy music too and I know that in this moment I can make my own music, my own rhythm and I can overcome any obstacle. If I can not overcome, I can adapt. I’m in charge of my own tune and whatever the Universe throws at me, I can learn to harmonize.  I dig deep, I have my own version of Feminum.  I will wield it well.

I happened upon this image on Tumblr.  It’s the kind of Wonder Woman I am at this moment.  A little tired, battle-worn.  Give me a moment.  My strength always returns.

Here I am with my daughter, taken this morning before we made our daily trek to the hospital.  Whatever else I may achieve in my life, I hope that I can show her that to be a woman of wonder can be many different things and she is free to make her own path.  Perhaps the struggles we endure now will feed her and inform her, so when she faces obstacles when she’s older, we can clink our imaginary Feminum bracelets together and slowly nod as if today say Today, I am a Goddess.  Today, I can face it all.  And then she’ll go on her own way and say I’ve got this, Mom.  I’ve got this.

Here’s a photograph of both men, courtesy of George P. Landow and the Victorian web.  Ruskin looks absolutely frightening with that stick!

June 29, 1863

Albumen Print

Downey made made this double portrait during the same session at Rossetti’s house (16 Cheyne Walk) on June 29, 1863 he photographed Ruskin in Rossetti’s painting chair. The photographe posed his subjects in Rossetti’s garden (which Beerbohm so delightful caricatures). Maas comments: “Rossetti’s handkerchief hangs out sloppily and he stands awkwardly; and, furthermore, Downey objected to the menacing way Ruskin held his stick. He also wanted him seated. “‘Sit in the presence of Rossetti? Never!’ the critic replied.” (Ruskin and His Circle, 24). Downey prevailed for the single photograph of Ruskin by himself.

(Via the Victorian Web)

In the upcoming film Effie, Ruskin will be portrayed by actor Greg Wise with Dakota Fanning as Effie.  Wise definitely looks the part:

I will not imagine a world with out free knowledge.

I am editing this post to add that the Wikipedia blackout is over, but the fight against SOPA continues.  Learn more about what you can do.  

My print is titled Transposed onto the Blank Canvas and I can not wait to have it framed.

Transposed onto the Blank Canvas, Margje Bijl, 2011
Bistre ink and home made iron gall ink drawing,
original photos by Sipco Feenstra, 1992 and Rossetti (John Robert Parsons), 1865

February 11th is the 150th anniversary of Lizzie’s death. To commemorate this, Highgate Cemetery (Lizzie’s final resting place) is having a Talk at the cemetery on that day by Lucinda Hawksley, author of Lizzie Siddal: Face of the Pre-Raphaelites.  Being in the U.S., I will not be able to attend but my ever-faithful friend Kirsty Stonell Walker, author of Stunner, the Fall and Rise of Fanny Cornforth will be there!
From the Highgate Cemetery website:

This is a unique and historic occasion as it is in commemoration of the 150th anniversary of Lizzie Siddal’s death: she died on February 11th 1862 and was buried at Highgate Cemetery six days later.

Lizzie Siddal was a nineteenth-century phenomenon: a working-class girl whose beauty made her the Pre-Raphaelite movement’s most celebrated, iconic face. Dante Rossetti, founder and leading light of the movement, painted and drew her obsessively a thousand times. She soon became a poet and artist in her own right.

However, as his lover and finally his wife, Lizzie’s relationship with Rossetti was blighted by his infidelities and neglect. In despair, Lizzie resorted to laudanum to numb her senses. In 1862 she took an overdose and left a suicide note.

Lucinda’s illustrated and vivid account of Lizzie’s meteoric but brief career and her tortured relationship breathes new life into the images of Lizzie frozen in time in galleries around the world.

Doors open at 6 pm for refreshments. The talk commences at 6.30 and will last around an hour.

Booking: is in advance by email only at events@highgate-cemetery.org.

Tickets: cost £10 each (£8 for students) including refreshments and nibbles.

Space is limited so early booking is advised.

Venue: in our Grade I listed Chapel which has just been beautifully refurbished.

John Ruskin was an accomplished fellow.  This paragraph from Wikipedia illustrates the depth of his interests and works:  … leading English art critic of the Victorian era, also an art patron, draughtsman, watercolourist, a prominent social thinker and philanthropist. He wrote on subjects ranging from geology to architecture, myth to ornithology, literature to education, and botany to political economy. His writing styles and literary forms were equally varied. Ruskin penned essays and treatises, poetry and lectures, travel guides and manuals, letters and even a fairy tale. The elaborate style that characterised his earliest writing on art was later superseded by a preference for plainer language designed to communicate his ideas more effectively. In all of his writing, he emphasised the connections between nature, art and society. He also made detailed sketches and paintings of rocks, plants, birds, landscapes, and architectural structures and ornamentation.

Sounds like a great catch, right?  Not so for  Euphemia Chalmers Gray, known as Effie.  The thought of Effie and what she must have gone through as his wife is thoroughly depressing. And so very odd.  Ruskin was obviously intelligent but apparently he lacked a knowledge of female anatomy and rejected Effie on their wedding night on the premise that he was shocked by her appearance.  Their marriage remained loveless and without physical interaction.  Effie wrote to her father, “He alleged various reasons, hatred to children, religious motives, a desire to preserve my beauty, and, finally this last year he told me his true reason… that he had imagined women were quite different to what he saw I was, and that the reason he did not make me his Wife was because he was disgusted with my person the first evening 10th April.”   

Ruskin was a supporter of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood and formed a friendship with artist John Millais.  Effie appears in his painting The Order of Release and perhaps it was then that feelings for each other were born.  The trio later traveled to Scotland so that Millais could paint Ruskin’s portrait.  In a move that shocked Victorian society, Effie abandoned her travesty of a marriage to pursue happiness with Millais.

It was a shocking scandal.  All of the details of Effie’s marriage were made public and she was even forced into the humiliating experience of having a doctor confirm her virginity.  I think that her later life was a happy one.  She and Millais had eight children and settled into a loving family life.  Sadly, though, her annullment resulted in Effie’s becoming socially ostracized and was no longer invited to may social functions.

Effie’s saga is being revisited through Emma Thompson’s latest film project.  And like Effie’s life, it is not without scandal.  Plagiarism accusations have been leveled towards both Thompson and her husband, Greg Wise.  Also surprising is the casting of Effie’s role, to be portrayed by American Dakota Fanning instead of the obvious choice of a British actress.  This is not the first time the affairs of Ruskin, Effie and Millais has played out on the big screen.  A silent film, The Love of John Ruskin, was produced in 1912.

The strange relationships of John Ruskin do not end with Effie.  He later had an obsessive relationship with a very young Rose La Touche, whom he met when she was nine.  Nine.  Yes, that is definitely material for a future post.

Writing on the Sand, Dante Gabriel Rossetti

I’ve spent years reading about the relationship between Dante Gabriel Rossetti and Elizabeth Siddal.  One thing I’ve noticed through comments and emails I receive at lizziesiddal.com is that there are a lot of people who are so sympathetic towards Lizzie that they passionately hate Rossetti.  When you learn about people, I think a story forms in your head and it’s easy to cast them as villains or saints.  We like to have someone to root for and someone to vilify.  Even though I am obsessively interested in Lizzie Siddal, I simply can’t bring myself to dislike Rossetti.  He intrigues me.  I do not approve of  some of his choices.  He was complex and deeply flawed.  But good lord, could that man paint a goddess:

Proserpine by Dante Gabriel Rossetti, model Jane Morris

Lizzie was discovered by artist Walter Howell Deverell while she was working in a millinery shop and appears in his painting Twelfth Night.  This introduction to the Pre-Raphaelite circle led to her appearance in several works such as Ophelia by Millais and Valentine Rescuing Sylvia by Holman Hunt.  Eventually, she posed only for Dante Gabriel Rossetti.

Twelfth Night by Walter Howell Deverell

Lizzie sat exclusively for Gabriel and he drew and painted her image obsessively.  Again and again he captured her likeness.  When she expressed an interest in creating art instead of just posing for it, he became her mentor.  This is the part of their relationship that I most enjoy, I like the idea of a couple inspiring each other artistically and creating together.  Gabriel encouraged and supported her work, even helping to secure John Ruskin as her patron.

Elizabeth Siddal drawn by Dante Gabriel Rossetti

Pippa Passes drawn by Elizabeth Siddal

All of this seems promising, a couple who loves each other and whose lives revolve around their art.  Where did it go wrong?  At some point, Lizzie developed a reputation for being in ill-health and began to use Laudanum, which was quite common at the time.  It’s also apparent that Rossetti had placed her on a pedestal, she was someone to be loved from afar, idealized and admired as an artistic muse and not as a flesh and blood woman.  His sister, the poet Christina Rossetti, alludes to this in her poem In An Artist’s Studio:

One face looks out from all his canvasses,
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 canvass 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.

Their on and off relationship lasted close to a decade before they finally married.  Prior to marriage, there had been troubles.  It seemed Rossetti had been infatuated with model Annie Miller, who was involved with artist William Holman Hunt.  Lizzie developed a dislike towards both Annie and Holman Hunt.  Both Lizzie and Rossetti were moody and temperamental, which no doubt added to their friction.  The relationship must have been dizzying, he could shift between neglectfulness due to his attentions towards other women to being suddenly attentive and rushing to her side when she was ill.  And since she was so often ill — and so often recovered — it has been suggested that at times her illness was an attempt to manipulate Rossetti and play upon his sympathies. He later discovered both Fanny Cornforth and Jane Burden (later Morris).  I can’t say to what level his intimacy with them reached at this point in his life, but he was definitely captivated and Lizzie’s position as his only muse had been altered irrevocably.  She still remained a muse, but it was now a title she would share with more than one woman.

There were many times during their courtship when they endured separations:  she traveled for her health and once even attended an art school in Sheffield, which shows that she was serious in her pursuits and that her artistic endeavors did not exist only in relation to Rossetti.  Eventually though, her illnesses were more real than ever.  No longer manipulations, but serious physical problems that most likely stemmed from her extensive Laudanum use.  The alcohol/opiate derivative had taken its toll.

In 1860, Lizzie was staying in Hastings and was so ill that her family believed her to be dying.  Rossetti was summoned to her side.  He’d seen her ill many times before, but this time there must have been a sense of great urgency because finally he was ready to marry her.  Together they had a history of nine years.  Nine years of creating art, fueling their creativity, fighting passionately over various things and I’m sure that all of that history fed his desire to rescue Lizzie and to do that noble thing that he always said he intended to do.  He married her.

The Rossetti marriage was fated to last two years.  Despite her illness, they were able to make it to Paris for their honeymoon.  Their marriage was spent pursuing artistic endeavors and spending much time with fellow artists Burne-Jones and William Morris.  Rossetti and his bride contributed a great deal to the decorating of Morris’s Red House and I can picture that time as one filled with joy and creativity, a time of new beginnings and possibilities.

Sadly, Lizzie was still hopelessly addicted to Laudanum.  She became pregnant and their joy for upcoming parenthood was quickly dashed as grief set in when she lost the baby.  Their daughter was stillborn, quite likely because of Laudanum.  Lizzie was distraught, caught in a world of depression, grief and addiction.  Lucinda Hawksley describes this period in Lizzie Siddal:  The Tragedy of a Pre-Raphaelite Supermodel:

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 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 [Burn-Jones] and a heavily pregnant Georgie [Burne-Jones] 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 heart-rendingly sad; Ned thought Lizzie was being ridiculously over-dramatic.

I almost can’t bear how sad that is, the image of Lizzie rocking an empty cradle, the ghost of a child.  It’s interesting to see the differing reactions of Burne-Jones and his wife.  Georgie instantly feels compassion for Lizzie while Ned feels it to be needless melodrama.  Different gender reactions and levels of understanding towards emotional issues seems to be a recurrent theme of the time. Well, of many times since it’s not something limited to the Victorian era.   Women swoon, men carry on with a stiff upper lip.  When she later became pregnant again, who knows what her emotional states must have been?  Still an addict and not fully recovered from the previous tragedy, she must have been in a precarious emotional state.  On February 10, 1862 pregnant Lizzie, Rossetti, and poet Algernon Swinburne dined together.  Later that evening, Rossetti had an engagement at Working Men’s College.  When he returned, she was in a coma due to an overdose of Laudanum.  He summoned a doctor and when Rossetti was unable to accept that the doctor could not save her, he summoned three more.   Lizzie passed away in the early hours of February 11, 1862.

Most descriptions of Lizzie state that she committed suicide.  I do not believe it was purposeful.  Of course it was self-inflicted as all addict’s deaths are once they have spiraled out of control.  But I don’t believe Lizzie set out to kill herself and though there are documented stories of a destroyed suicide note, it seems to be hearsay that we can’t possibly prove.

Lizzie’s image continued to haunt Rossetti after her death.  He memorialized her in his painting Beata Beatrix, a tribute to Lizzie that incorporates a poppy flower being delivered to her hands by a dove.  Opium is derived from poppies; the dove delivers to her the very source of the ingredient that killed her.

Beata Beatrix, Dante Gabriel Rossetti

The Rossetti marriage was cemented into literary and art history by the macabre act of having Lizzie’s grave exhumed seven years after her death so that Rossetti could retrieve the manuscript of poems that he had buried with her.  In my opinion, it was a terrible thing to do.  Although, without that act many people would not know who Lizzie Siddal was — it is so strange and fascinating that when people read of it, they are compelled to find out more about her.  I have experienced that compulsion.  It was the beginning of my journey to learn all I could about Lizzie and her life and work.

I said in my previous post that Pre-Raphaelite marriages were strange.  As I write this one, I realize that the Rossetti marriage wasn’t strange, it is just hopelessly sad.  So many missed opportunities.  I feel sad for both of them, that neither of them seemed to get what they wanted out of their relationship.  They seem troubled and tragic.

I end this with Elizabeth Siddal’s own words:

Gone

To touch the glove upon her tender hand,
To watch the jewel sparkle in her ring,
Lifted my heart into a sudden song
As when the wild birds sing.

To touch her shadow on the sunny grass,
To break her pathway through the darkened wood,
Filled all my life with trembling and tears
And silence where I stood.

I watch the shadows gather round my heart,
I live to know that she is gone

Gone gone for ever, like the tender dove
That left the Ark alone.

Effie Ruskin (later Millais) appears in The Order of Release by Sir John Everett Millais

There has been a lot of talk about Emma Thompson’s new movie Effie, which covers the sad and unusual marriage of Victorian art critic John Ruskin and his wife Effie, who scandalously divorced him to marry Pre-Raphaelite artist John Millais. Ruskin and Effie were married for several years before she divorced him, and when they divorced she was still a virgin.  It occurred to me that I should write a post about Effie’s story because it has come to my attention lately that I have a lot of visitors that are new to the fascinating history of the Pre-Raphaelites. I’ve noticed that much of what I write is under the assumption that people who make their way to this blog have at least some knowledge already about the Pre-Raphaelites and perhaps that is a mistake on my part.

As I pondered a post about Effie, I said to myself, “You know what? Pre-Raphaelite marriages are strange.”  The story of Effie, Ruskin and Millais is scintillating and unusual.  Ruskin was decidedly one weird dude, but you can’t look at the strangeness of the tale as an isolated incident because for a relatively small group of people, the Pre-Raphaelite circle has some huge personal issues.

So Pre-Raphaelite marriages will be my theme for the week. I started to write one long post about it, but it’s a daunting task.  I’ll tackle each couple individually with the first post appearing tomorrow.  To think about it, I find it quite funny that  I would never judge or discuss a contemporary couple’s marriage since I have a live-and-let-live attitude and am not interested in what goes on behind close doors.  But apparently if you lived 150 years ago and your marriage was slightly outside the norm and had even the slightest whiff of scandal,  I am fascinated and will pick you apart with glee.