Ophelia's Muse (25 page)

The three talked as if they were old friends, and Ruskin was particularly solicitous of Lizzie's opinions. But he made no more mention of her drawings, and she began to think that he had complimented them only out of kindness. He could hardly have said otherwise, after all, with her standing right there. She felt foolish for thinking that a great critic such as John Ruskin could be interested in her own poor work. She was surely nothing more to him than Rossetti's lover, to be petted and treated kindly out of deference to his friend.

She consoled herself, however, with the news that she would soon meet Rossetti's sister. Even if his plans for her illustrations should come to nothing, it would at least give her a chance to be introduced to his family, as she should have been long ago. No understanding between them, no matter how many times it was sworn to in private, could be depended upon until she had been welcomed by his family.

 

Rossetti was as good as his word. The first week of May they swept the studio clean of its dust, bought fancy tea and biscuits, and displayed Lizzie's sketches on the walls to their best advantage. Lizzie donned a demure blue dress, tied her hair back, and waited nervously for the arrival of Christina Rossetti.

Lizzie was determined to make a good impression. She was anxious to move forward with their marriage, but whenever she pressed Rossetti to set a date, he always had some excuse as to why the time was not quite right. Soon, he said, soon. But she was tired of waiting, and she hoped that a successful introduction to his sister would reassure Rossetti that she would be welcomed by his family. He would never say it aloud to her, but she knew that he worried that she wasn't refined enough for his mother. Lizzie hoped that if Christina liked her, Rossetti would take her to meet his mother next.

Christina entered the studio on Rossetti's arm, her back as straight as an arrow and her dark eyes inscrutable. Her face was already familiar to Lizzie—Christina's high cheekbones and strong brow peered out from many of Rossetti's early paintings. She had modeled for his painting of the Virgin Mary, and Lizzie thought that Christina carried herself with an air of calm superiority that would have befitted that sainted lady herself.

Lizzie stepped forward and embraced Christina with affection. “Welcome, Miss Rossetti. I am so glad to meet you at last. I hope that we will be great friends. I admire your poetry very much.”

Christina leaned into Lizzie's embrace stiffly and made a small smile that did not extend to her eyes. “I'm pleased to meet you, as well,” she said, not sounding at all pleased. “Dante has told us so much about you, and about your interesting history.”

Lizzie colored, thinking that Christina was not at all what she had expected of a poetess. She seemed instead like a very cross abbess, with none of the flairs of dress or manners that Lizzie associated with artists. She swallowed hard and kept her smile pasted on her face. She was determined to win Christina's approval, and she would not be put off by a few icy words. “Will you have some tea? I've prepared everything myself.”

Rossetti joined them at the table and they sat down to eat. Lizzie poured out the cups of tea and passed around the cakes, very conscious that she was being watched, and judged.

“You manage everything so well,” Christina said. “Considering that you have so little to work with.”

Both women were now staring at each other with frozen smiles, that feminine armor for the battlefield of the tea table. Lizzie could see that Christina was not prepared to give her an inch. She turned to Rossetti for help, but he was oblivious to the silence that had settled over the table.

Lizzie groped around for a neutral topic. “You're engaged, I believe, to the painter James Collinson? I know that Dante admires his work very much.”

Christina blushed and Rossetti cleared his throat. “I'm afraid that the engagement has been broken off. Terrible of course, but probably for the best.”

Lizzie was mortified. She couldn't believe that Rossetti hadn't shared this news with her. She felt keenly how cut off she was from his family, how little she really knew about them.

When Lizzie said nothing, Christina took pity on her. “My work has been a great consolation to me, of course.”

“Of course,” Lizzie murmured, thinking that her own work had lately been a consolation as well—something to keep her mind from dwelling constantly on what Rossetti was really thinking, or whether his attentions were engaged elsewhere.

Christina seemed to follow Lizzie's thoughts, and for a moment the hard lines of her face softened. She looked around the studio, at the many sketches of Lizzie that lined the walls, and then down at Lizzie's hands, and her bare finger. She let just the hint of a sympathetic smile pull at the corner of her lips.

Lizzie smiled back, but as soon as it had begun, the moment was over. The sympathy passed from Christina's face, and coldness once again dropped over her features like a mask. They sat in silence for another moment before Rossetti finally noticed that the conversation was lagging.

“Christina, why don't I show you some of Lizzie's work? She's a very apt student, and she's done some excellent illustrations from Wordsworth and Tennyson. You'll see, I think, that she has a real gift for capturing the nature of a poem on the canvas. As I mentioned in my note, I think she might be just the person to illustrate your new poems. And I know that Lizzie would devote herself to the project—her dedication can be much greater than my own, I'm afraid.”

“Dante, we do so hate to see you waste so much of your time with trifles when you should be painting.” She glanced over at Lizzie, who remained at the table, silently fuming.

Rossetti didn't seem to notice the slight. He was used to being worried over by his sister and mother, and he hardly heard their admonishments anymore. He gave Christina his arm as he showed her around the studio.

Christina glanced over at the wall where Rossetti's sketches were pinned up. A hundred drawings of Lizzie stared back. She raised her eyebrows and sighed, then moved on to look over Lizzie's drawings. Lizzie heard her turn to her brother and say, “She has real talent, but the style is crude,” as if Lizzie weren't standing right there. But Lizzie seized on it as an opening.

“It would be an honor to illustrate for you. Would it be possible for me to see your new poems, to get a feel for the work?”

Christina turned to Lizzie as if she had, in fact, forgotten that Lizzie was present. “They aren't yet ready to be seen.” Then she looked back at Rossetti, and her tone warmed as she addressed her brother. “I've been doing a little painting of my own, you know. I have a mind to do the illustrations myself. Miss Siddal is not the only woman, after all, who can be taught to paint.”

“Is that so?” Rossetti asked. “Well, that's grand, but you must be careful not to rival dear Lizzie, but to keep within respectful limits! No, Christina, I think that you'd better stick to poetry, and awe us with your words alone.” He laughed, thinking it a joke, but both women were now looking stonily at their feet.

“Perhaps you should come home for a visit, and you can judge my work for yourself. And of course Mother would love to see you. She longs for your company.” Christina gathered her shawl up and wrapped it around her shoulders. “As for myself, I must be on my way.” She turned to Lizzie. “It was so lovely to meet you.” She did not, Lizzie noticed, extend the invitation to visit to Lizzie, and Lizzie thought longingly of her own sister, Lydia, whom she hadn't seen in months. She wondered how her mother was managing, and whether Lydia had ever been able to repair things with Robert Crane after Lizzie's scandalous departure. The thought filled her eyes with tears, but she held them back, not wanting Christina to think that it was her coldness that had upset Lizzie.

“How does Tuesday sound?” Rossetti was saying to Christina. “You can expect me for lunch,” Rossetti promised, kissing his sister on the cheek and showing her to the door. He made no mention of Lizzie joining them, either.

When Christina had gone, he turned to Lizzie and said, “Well, I think that went well.”

Lizzie paused and turned to look at him, to assure herself that he did not jest. “Did you?” Lizzie knew that there was nothing to be gained in picking a fight with Rossetti, but she couldn't hide her disappointment. “Dante, your sister barely said a civil word to me! It's obvious that she thinks you're wasting your time, and that I'm a detriment to your work. And how could you have failed to tell me that her engagement was broken off? It was humiliating.”

Rossetti laughed uncomfortably. “I'm sorry you felt that way. But you shouldn't be so sensitive. Christina is no different from the other artists we know—she's very serious, and not given to pleasantries and small talk. I'm sure that she meant nothing by it.”

“And why,” Lizzie asked, finally posing the question that really bothered her, “didn't you introduce me to her as your betrothed? Why must there be this secrecy about our engagement? It's been almost a year since you asked me, Dante, and we haven't told a soul.”

“Lizzie,” Rossetti sighed, exasperated. “I've told you, the time just isn't right. I couldn't very well tell my sister without telling my mother. And once we announce our intentions to our families, they will want us wed as soon as possible. You know how mothers are.”

“And what's wrong with that? Why shouldn't we marry as soon as possible?”

“I just need more time, Lizzie. I have so much more that I want to accomplish with my painting before I settle down into married life. Why should we spoil this idyll? We have everything we need right here—a place to work, each other, a few willing buyers to keep us in canvases and paint. We can do what we like and go where we please. And you are just beginning your own career. Why should you wish to take on the duties and obligations of a household when you can instead paint and create and be free? Let's not leave this Eden just yet, Lizzie. There is time for all that later.”

Lizzie stared at him for a moment, struck by his allusion to Eden. Hadn't he said the same thing to her that day under the apple tree in Hastings? How quickly his definition of perfection could shift to suit his whims. How could she have pinned her hopes on a man who seemed to create his reality to meet his needs as easily, and as often, as he created new worlds in his paintings? She would never be sure where she stood with him, what version of her he wanted at any moment—whether he wanted the woman or the muse; the collaborator in his art or merely the silent beauty in his paintings.

And what of what she wanted? Of course she wanted to paint, to have the satisfaction of doing good work and maybe one day earning a living by her painting. But she couldn't see why this should prevent her from marrying, and securing her place in society as well. Not for the first time, Lizzie felt the vast difference between her and Rossetti's upbringings. The idea that a respectably married woman might still work was not so odd to her. But to Rossetti and his sort, it would be strange for a married woman to enjoy the freedoms that Lizzie now took for granted. For all of his talk of artistic freedom and bohemian ideals, it seemed that Rossetti was still very much a product of his conventional upbringing, and all of the expectations that entailed.

“Dante,” she said carefully. “Of course I want what you want. Your work, and my own, are of the utmost importance to me. But you know the difficulty of my position. You gave me your promise. I'm willing to wait, but I need to know: Is there is any reason why I shouldn't rely on your word? I can trust you, can't I?”

“Of course you can trust me,” he replied, his voice sounding tired.

Lizzie nodded and let the matter drop, seeing no point in pursuing it further tonight. She cleared the table and took down her sketches. She thought longingly of the laudanum bottle in the bedroom, and the easy oblivion it offered, the chance to forget her humiliations, if only for a few hours. But instead she returned to her easel and took up her brush. If the studio had once been her refuge, she now found comfort more readily in the landscape of her imagination, and the careful, detailed work that rendered it onto the canvas. Perhaps, like Rossetti, she could learn to paint herself into her own Eden.

 

If there was a coolness between Lizzie and Rossetti after Christina's visit, there was no sign of it a few days later when Rossetti burst into the studio with a smile and a shout, pulling Lizzie from her seat and spinning her around.

“What's this?” she asked. “Good news?”

“The best—a sale!”

“Was it the painting of Lancelot and Guinevere? It was so beautiful, I knew that it was bound to sell quickly, but I'm sad to see it go.”

“You've got it quite wrong. It's you who's made a sale.”

Lizzie laughed, thinking it some sort of joke, but Rossetti held a letter out to her. “It's Ruskin. I knew that he would be interested in your drawings. He wrote to me, asking me to name a price for all the works that he saw. I told him that twenty five pounds would take the lot—I hope that you don't mind—but he's just written back to say that he wouldn't take them for less than thirty. Thirty pounds, Lizzie! Can you believe it?”

She could not. She sat down on the sofa while Rossetti danced a little jig before her. Thirty pounds was more than she had made in a year at Mrs. Tozer's. And all for a pile of sketches. It seemed too good to be true. “It's too great a sum. What can he mean by it?”

Rossetti stopped dancing and looked at her with disbelief. “It's a fine sum. But not a penny more than those sketches are worth. I gave him a low figure in the hope that he would take your work and show it around, stir up some interest in your painting.” He knelt before her. “I'm not jesting with you when I tell you that you have talent. John Ruskin can see that as plainly as I can.”