Monday, January 05, 2009

Bohemian beauty ...

... and Desperate Romantics.

[Lizzie] Siddall, who showed signs of becoming a talented artist, may also have been anorexic. Spotted in a milliner's shop by the voracious Walter Deverell, she became his muse before being passed on to Hunt, after which she posed as Ophelia in the picture that made Millais's name. Rossetti kept her as his mistress for 10 years before marrying her, at the point where he thought (hoped, Moyle suggests) she might be dying of an illness we can only suppose was depression. When, two years later, Lizzie killed herself in response to Rossetti's affair with Fanny Cornforth, he threw his only copy of the love poems he had written to his wife into her coffin. Later, regretting his rashness, he exhumed the body to retrieve the poems that he now dedicated to his new lover, Jane Morris. Rossetti then asked Jane's husband, William Morris, to write him a complimentary review. “Ugh,” Morris said when he had completed the task.

Hell of a guy, Rossetti.

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