Ophelia's Muse

by Rita Cameron

  Lizzie did not need to look at Rossetti to know that his eyes were still on her. She tried to look down, but it was impossible not to return his gaze. When their eyes met, his were dark and focused. He held her gaze for a moment, and then let his eyes roam deliberately over her body.

  The air in the studio changed. It became heavy and still, with the scent of earth, like a field before a storm. Lizzie struggled to hold her pose, trying to radiate Beatrice’s chastity along with her beauty. Their eyes met once again, and remained locked; Lizzie was magnificent in her velvet robes and Rossetti was rapt before her. Then, exhaling, he turned away. Without a word he retreated to his easel and began to paint.

  His movements were quick and focused, almost angry. He stabbed at the canvas with fast, precise brushwork and long strokes. His whole body moved as he painted, as if he were dancing, the easel his partner. He worked furiously, seeing nothing now but the canvas.

  Lizzie let out a breath that she did not realize she was holding. Electric traces danced along her skin where his eyes had moved over her. She stood and started to move toward him. She was drawn to him like a pin to a magnet, a sudden motion without determination. “Dante,” she whispered, calling him back to her, away from the painting that seemed to consume him.

  He looked up, surprised, and then in a second he was next to her. “Beatrice,” he whispered, and Lizzie did not correct him.

  He kissed her, his lips biting hard against hers, as if he were drinking after a long thirst. She closed her eyes and he kissed her eyelids, and then her brow, while the studio spun around them, a whirl of dusty sunlight and paint and shadow. He ran his hand lightly from her shoulder, over the bodice of her dress, to her waist. He held her like that for a moment, and then took her hand and began to lead her across the room, to a small sofa.

  She followed him, as if in a trance. But the sight of the sofa recalled her abruptly to her senses. The spell was broken, and she drew her breath in, shocked at her daring. As she turned away, she was aware only of a vague and unnamable frustration, and a sense that things were happening very much out of order.

  She pulled her hand back and stood still, and Rossetti saw at once that he had made a mistake. “Please forgive me,” he muttered, red-faced. The girl before him was as pure as a dove. He couldn’t be the instrument of her downfall. And yet—even now he wanted nothing more than to take her back into his arms. He stood uncertainly, his hand reaching toward her.

  They were still standing like that when a knock on the door caused them to jump apart.

  Before Rossetti could call out, the door swung open and William Holman Hunt strode into the room. He stopped when he saw Rossetti and Lizzie standing flushed and silent. “Well, hello!” he said, with a knowing smile. “I didn’t mean to interrupt anything!”

  Rossetti recovered first. “Not at all, Hunt. Miss Siddal was just obliging me by posing for my new watercolor.”

  “Yes, obliging you. I quite see what you mean.”

  Lizzie stared at the floor, mortified. The rose tint of her cheeks was gone, and her face was pale and drawn. She tugged clumsily at her dress, trying to pull up the sleeve where it had slipped from her shoulder. If Hunt had caught a glimpse of the stunning beauty who had just been posing as Beatrice, she was gone now, and an ordinary young woman had taken her place.

  Rossetti glared at Hunt and then turned to Lizzie, begging her forgiveness with his eyes. “That will be enough for today, Miss Siddal.”

  Lizzie nodded without looking up and hurried into the back room.

  Hunt watched her go. “I would ask you where you’ve been, but I can very well see what, or should I say who, has been occupying you.” He looked around the room at the dozens of sketches of Lizzie that lined the walls.

  Rossetti followed Hunt’s gaze. He shrugged. “I can’t stop drawing her. She’s the most beautiful woman that I have ever seen.”

  “Aren’t they all?”

  From the back room, Lizzie could hear the men speaking about her. She struggled to free herself from the velvet gown, which now looked cheap and tawdry to her eye. How easily she had let herself slip into Rossetti’s fantasy! She was relieved to put her plain gray dress back on, and she pulled her hair into a simple bun. Embarrassed, she tried to slip quietly out the door without Rossetti’s notice.

  “Wait, Miss Siddal! Allow me to introduce Mr. Hunt. A fellow artist.”

  Lizzie wished nothing more than to be free of the studio, but she turned and tried to present a smooth face to Rossetti’s friend. “How do you do?” she asked, the coolness in her voice a rebuke.

  Hunt smiled gallantly. “Exceedingly well, now that I’ve seen Rossetti’s new painting and his lovely new model.”

  “You’re too kind,” Lizzie murmured. If she did not quite forgive him for his insolence, she was practical enough to be grateful for his interruption. Who knew what may have happened if he had not come in at that moment?

  Rossetti accompanied Lizzie to the door of the studio. On the landing, he took her hand and spoke to her quietly. “Please don’t take Hunt’s jokes too seriously. No one else does. You will come again tomorrow, won’t you?” He smiled, and Lizzie reflexively returned his smile, failing to maintain the haughtiness that she knew that he deserved.

  She hesitated for only a moment. “I’ll come again tomorrow. But only to sit for your painting. I’m already taking a risk in coming here alone, and I must know that I can trust you.”

  Rossetti looked relieved. “What a sweet little dove you are. Please don’t worry, you have nothing to fear from me.”

  Lizzie waited for a moment, as if there were something else that ought to be said by one of them. The silent, shared knowledge of their quick embrace hung between them, more intimate than any touch. But perhaps it was better not to put words to such things, and so Lizzie turned with a last shy smile and made her way down the stairs.

  In the vestibule, she stepped aside to make way for another woman who was just coming in from the street. The woman was plainly dressed, a servant of some sort. But something about her careless knot of thick blond hair and the unnatural rouge of her cheeks caught Lizzie’s attention. As the woman passed, she looked slyly at Lizzie and then smirked, as if she recognized her.

  Lizzie was sure that she didn’t know her, and so she let her pass with a shrug. But she paused in the vestibule and listened to her footsteps as she mounted the stairs, counting off each flight until they stopped on Rossetti’s floor. Or was it the floor below? Lizzie couldn’t be sure.

  For a moment, she toyed with the idea of going back up to Rossetti’s studio on some pretext—a forgotten glove, perhaps. Then she laughed, acknowledging her own foolishness. No good ever came of listening at keyholes. Besides, Rossetti’s visitors, real or imagined, were no business of hers.

  Despite Rossetti’s promise that she could trust him, Lizzie spent a restless night thinking of how close she had come to forgetting herself. She had always looked down her nose at girls who gave themselves up for the flimsiest of promises, or for nothing at all. How could they put themselves in such a position, Lizzie had often murmured to her mother, watching as a neighborhood girl was rushed down the aisle, already showing her shame. And far worse were the girls who had to leave home and take up in some obscure town to have their babies alone, after the lad took off.

  Lizzie knew this, and yet she had still found herself alone in Rossetti’s studio, letting him take liberties with her that she could hardly have imagined a few months ago. No, not just letting him. When she was honest with herself, she knew that she had willed him to kiss her, had wanted him to take her in his arms. The feel of his gaze was a strong breeze; his touch was the storm.

  She knew that she should not go back to his studio, at least not alone. But when she thought of the alternative—the tedium of the millinery, the plain gray work dresses, and the men who hung about the shop and confused their crude jokes with compliments—she knew that she would return to Rossetti. She had to see him again.


  She told herself over and over that he was a gentleman, different from the men whom she knew; that he would never put her in an impossible position. In the studio he spoke to her of Dante’s chaste and perfect love for Beatrice. But his voice, as he spoke, seemed to say something else, to hint at a deep current of desire unbound from any code of chivalry. Lizzie sensed the same danger in his paintings, a worship of love and beauty that owed no obedience to ordinary notions of right and wrong. His paintings, and his studio, were a romantic dream, and Lizzie was drawn to them even as she sensed the peril that lay beneath their shimmering surfaces.

  And so she returned to his studio, assuring herself that now that she was aware of the temptation, and of her own weakness, she would be better prepared to resist it. But she need not have worried. The next afternoon Rossetti greeted her at the door, his hat already on. The brim was low enough that Lizzie could not quite tell whether the rosiness of his cheeks was due to embarrassment, or merely the warmth of the studio. “It’s far too fine a day to stay inside painting,” he said. “Let’s go for a walk.”

  Lizzie didn’t stop to examine whether the quick surge of emotion that she felt was relief or disappointment. She gave him her arm and let him lead her back out into the street.

  Rossetti was right; it was too beautiful to stay indoors, if one could help it. It was a perfect May afternoon, the sun’s warmth kept at bay by a pleasant breeze. The streets were full, as if all of society, from the errand boys of the city to the young lords of St. James’s Park, had emerged to enjoy the good weather in a spirit of thanksgiving for spring and goodwill for humanity.

  In the anonymous crowd, Lizzie felt that she and Rossetti could be anyone. Who was to say that they were not newlyweds, perfectly free to walk alone through the sunny streets? Rossetti kept up a steady discourse on the poems that he was translating, and Lizzie held her head high and smiled at the men who tipped their hats to her. She was a different girl, after sitting for Deverell and Rossetti, from the one who had only a few months before scurried to and from work with her bonnet pulled low and her eyes down. Her new confidence was more flattering than any new gown, and she basked under the admiring glances thrown her way as others basked under the spring sun.

  But the fine weather did not hold. A stiff wind blew in the clouds that had hovered at the horizon, and they settled quickly over the city, turning the air damp and chilly. Lizzie wore only a shawl, and Rossetti threw his coat over her shoulders. When a light rain began to fall, they made a dash for the cover of St. Saviour’s. They stood on the steps of the cathedral, laughing and shivering under the watchful eyes of a stone saint.

  Rossetti reached out to smooth Lizzie’s hair, which had come loose as they ran. His touch was gentle, and here on the church steps Lizzie felt none of the confusion and unease that she had felt in the studio. They were no different from any other couple caught in the rain, sharing a moment of the most ordinary intimacy in the quiet alcove of the church stairs. Rossetti let his hand linger on her cheek, and smiled at her sweetly.

  From beyond the heavy oak doors of the church, they heard music. First the low rumble of the organ, and then a high clear note, the sound of angels singing.

  “Evensong,” Lizzie murmured. Rossetti pushed open the door, and the music swelled and filled the entryway, the chorus of voices carrying them into the cathedral on its tide. They passed into the nave, a soaring space of arched columns that rose to form a high tower. Above the altar, the last pale light of the afternoon illuminated the jeweled panels of a stained glass window. There were only a few worshippers, crowded into the first few pews and scattered toward the back.

  The rising notes of the choir echoed from the stone columns, and Lizzie shivered with pleasure. They walked down the aisle that flanked the nave, passing small chapels and racks of candles that testified to the prayers of those hoping for solace, healing, and luck. When they came to the chapel of the Virgin Mary, Lizzie slipped a coin into the wooden box and took a long white candle, which she lit and placed before the altar. She knelt down and lowered her head in prayer.

  Rossetti stood and watched her pray. Behind them, the choir began a quiet chant, a whisper no louder than a breeze that slowly built strength until it resonated in a high, clear note, the innocent voices of the children offering their glory to God. In the half light of the chapel, Lizzie, with her porcelain skin, looked no different from the carved stone saints that surrounded her. Rossetti saw that it was not some spell of the studio that drew him to her—she had the power to transform any landscape into art, as if her presence could convert the ordinary into the sublime.

  The scene was perfect: the pious, innocent girl, the curve of her neck mirrored by the bent head of the Virgin; the rich embroidery of the altar cloth and the gold of the saints’ halos; the warm light cast by the candles. Lizzie was so beautiful at that moment that Rossetti didn’t know whether he ought to go to her or paint her. He hesitated. He knew instinctively that to enter the scene was to change it, subtly but definitively. Alone she was a praying saint; together they would be a man and woman, kneeling at the altar.

  But he had no brush and no easel, and so he went to her, kneeling down beside her and assuming his role, unable to resist adding the necessary detail that would bring the painting into harmony. “What do you pray for?” he asked her.

  Without looking at him, Lizzie lifted her face toward the statue of the Virgin. She too could feel the weight of the moment, the rush of emotion that built toward some end as naturally as the crescendo of the choir rose to a transcendent finale. “I pray that I am worthy of you. Of your talent.”

  She could not have chosen words better calculated to entrance him. “Then you have wasted a candle. Your beauty requires no further grace.”

  “And am I worthy of your regard?”

  “Lizzie.” He took her face in his hands. He could feel the beat of her pulse against his palm, like the quiver of a dove. He leaned in to kiss her, but she stood suddenly, jarringly, and put her finger to his lips.

  “Would I be worthy of your regard if I let you kiss me here, in this church?”

  He hesitated. In the studio he might have grabbed her hand and pulled her back to him, but here before the Virgin such gestures rang a false and empty note. He knelt before her and took her hand. “Is there a more perfect place to kiss you, than in a church? I should like to be able to kiss you freely before God and all the world.”

  Lizzie’s face lit up and he could see, within the young woman before him, the little girl who had dreamed of knights-errant. The power to please her was a potent aphrodisiac, and he continued in a rush, his spirit stirred by the sound of the choir and the perfume of the candles. His words tumbled out, unplanned and heartfelt. “Lizzie, you may trust me. I know that you haven’t had an easy life, and I won’t add to your troubles. I can offer you nothing now but to paint you. But if my work succeeds, when I gain a name for myself. . . there will be no happiness that can be denied to us. There is something that I would ask you, if I could only be sure of being worthy of your answer.”

  “Then kiss me once,” Lizzie said, her smile beatific. “And then let us go, before Evensong ends. I want to carry this music, and this moment, with me for the rest of the night.”

  CHAPTER 7

  Charlotte Street, London, May 22, 1850

  Dear Lizzie,

  I write with happy news—my picture of the Virgin Mary has been accepted for the Summer Exhibition. Will you do me the honor of accompanying me to the opening reception? I can hardly sleep for thinking how, in one night, my career may be either set on a path for glory, or else tossed onto the ash heap. But if you are on my arm, I’ll be able to face whatever might come. If you will allow me, I will call for you at six o’clock, the fourth of June.

  Your friend,

  D. G. Rossetti

  Lizzie received the invitation, written in Rossetti’s now familiar scrawl, and accepted at once. When a similar note arrived from Walter Deverell the next day, she declined with
only a tinge of regret, adding a friendly note that she looked forward to congratulating him on his success in person.

  In the days leading up to the reception, she could think of little else. The Artists’ Reception was a bohemian highlight of the city’s social calendar; a much-anticipated chance for the wealthy patrons of the arts to mingle with the more artistic set whom their purchases supported. In her days at Mrs. Tozer’s, she had worked on special orders for the event, and she knew that many fashionable ladies would be there. She knew that any dress that she had would be very poor by comparison, and when she and Lydia looked over her best dress, the dove-gray silk, with an eye to re-trimming it, they found it hopelessly plain for an evening gown.

  There wasn’t much time before the reception, but Lizzie’s work at the millinery had made her a quick and competent seamstress, and she thought she might be able to design something original in time for the party. There was no time, and not nearly enough fabric on hand for her to sew a full ball gown. But she thought she might be able to do something simple, in the style of the dress that she wore as a model for Beatrice. The costume’s high waist and flowing skirt was much more becoming to her tall and slim figure than the modern style of corsets and crinolines, which emphasized curves she did not in fact possess. She had begun to take her role as muse to Rossetti seriously, and she was excited at the idea of wearing a medieval-styled gown and entering the reception as if she were stepping from one of his paintings.

  Mrs. Tozer was willing to part with a length of sapphire blue velvet for ten shillings, a good price that still required Lizzie’s entire savings. Using long, simple lines, she cut a dress from it that fell straight from a high waist to the floor in an elegant column. She added long sleeves and a square neck, and at the shoulders and waist she attached a gold lace trimming, leftovers from the shop. Mrs. Tozer, despite her initial annoyance at Rossetti’s appearance in the shop, had been exceedingly helpful, letting Lizzie work only a few hours a week in the shop while she sat for Rossetti, and lending her a fashionable new bonnet to wear to the reception.