The Wayward Muse (4 page)

“I’m Mrs. Burden,” her mother said, keeping the door open just a crack. “What’s this about?”

“It’s about your daughter Jane,” he said, giving Jane, or at least the part of her that was not blocked by Mrs. Burden, a small smile. Mrs. Burden’s tone became belligerent.

“Are you the Italian? She’s not a prostitute, if that’s what you’re thinking,” Mrs. Burden said. “She may be ugly, she may be the laziest girl in Oxford, and the most disrespectful, but she won’t sell herself for money, not while I have anything to say about it.”

Burne-Jones blushed. His expression was pained, and even Mrs. Burden could tell that she had greatly embarrassed him.

“No, Mrs. Burden, I’m not”—he choked on the words a little—“the Italian. I’m Edward Burne-Jones, lately of Oxford. I had the pleasure of making Miss Burden’s acquaintance at the theater the other night, along with my friend Mr. Rossetti.”

“Rossetti!” shrieked Mrs. Burden. “I don’t want to hear any more about him. Treacherous people, the Italians.”

“Mr. Rossetti is as English as you or I,” said Burne-Jones emphatically. “He was born and has lived his whole life in London, where his father is a respected professor of languages.”

“I don’t care who his father is. It’s obvious he’s a libertine and a rogue. You look well enough, but the fact that you’re associating with him and conversing with my daughter without an introduction—well, I’d say your morals are suspect as well.”

Burne-Jones withstood this quietly.

“If you speak with a Professor Lowell at the college, you will find that Mr. Rossetti and I are exactly whom we purport to be: artists from London who are in Oxford to paint the Debating Hall.”

“If you are an artist, you must be a bad one, to want to paint her,” said Mrs. Burden, echoing Jane’s thoughts of the night before. She jerked her shoulder back toward Jane. “I never saw an uglier girl.”

Burne-Jones was too polite to contradict her directly. “Nevertheless,” he said. Then he brought out his best argument. He pulled several shillings out of his pocket and handed them to Jane’s mother. “This is how much she’ll make for a day of sitting. I’ll see to it that she’s paid at the end of every day, if you let her come.”

Mrs. Burden seized the money and Jane knew Burne-Jones was about to triumph. “Are you sure it’s Jane you want?” said Mrs. Burden curiously after she had counted the coins carefully and put them in her pocket. “Are you sure it’s not Bessie?”

“Mr. Rossetti was quite clear,” Burne-Jones said.

“Well, there’s no accounting for taste,” said Mrs. Burden. She opened the door all the way and allowed him to come in.

There were particulars to be worked out. “She can only come two days a week,” said Mrs. Burden. “I can’t spare her more than that. And her brother will come pick her up. There’ll be no standing around and flirting. I know about artists. My uncle was a sign painter. You can’t imagine how many women he had.”

Burne-Jones kept a straight face with great effort. “Of course,” he said.

J
ANE
hurried through her morning chores as fast as she could. The moment they were finished, she skipped out the door, ignoring her mother’s shouts to mind herself. For a glorious moment she forgot that she was ugly and poor, and thought only of Rossetti. He was everywhere and in everything. The bright sun was the blinding flash of his smile, the limpid eyes of an adorable urchin were his eyes. The soaring college spires reminded her of his graceful carriage. Passing the tailor she recalled his lovely clothes, and crossing the steps of the Bodleian Library made her think of his poetic speech.

Despite living in Oxford all of her life, Jane had never been inside any of the colleges. She had never been invited before. It was a world that had always been closed to her, as a girl, and a poor one. Even her brother was stopped just inside the gates. He had seen the open courtyards with their flowering trees, but he had never seen the private chapels, or the classrooms, or the living quarters. Still, Jamey’s limited access was more than she could ever hope for. Until now.

Jane knew the guard at the gate to the Oxford Union. He gazed at her curiously and asked what her business was in a suggestive tone Jane disliked, but when she gave Rossetti’s name, he let her through.

The Oxford Union was a debating society open to all Oxford students. It had been established more than thirty years before, but only now had the money been found to build a hall. Jane followed a brick path planted on either side with very young oak trees that one day would provide majesty and shade but that looked a little bit pathetic now with their spindly trunks and leafless branches. The redbrick building with sandstone mullions and cornices was similar in design to many of the other buildings in town but, unmarked by moss or soot or time, it seemed callow and garish.

The courtyard was full of young men in billowing college robes. They nodded to her as they passed and she saw in face after face an unmarked beauty, the softness of an easier life, an innocence and obliviousness that touched her and angered her at the same time. The young men were glamorous, and beautiful, and utterly stupid in their privilege. She hated them, all of them, all except Rossetti. Somehow he was different. Every now and then a tutor would pass, gray haired and stern looking. She thought they glared at her, wondering what a girl was doing here. Any minute one was going to stop and question her. She would try to explain, but they wouldn’t listen to her and would throw her out. Rossetti would be disappointed again, and angry. He would wash his hands of the stupid local girl who could not manage to appear at the appointed time.

At last she was at the door. Too intimidated at first to push the door open and step inside, she rapped on it lightly. There was no answer. She waited a few moments and then knocked again. Nothing happened. She had just about decided that she must be brave and push her way in, when the door opened.

It was Rossetti. He wore the look of amusement she remembered. Jane found that she was overcome with self-consciousness and could hardly look him in the face. He was so beautiful she had trouble catching her breath.

“My lovely,” he said. “I heard a scratching at the door but I thought it was a cat. Come in.”

He led her into an enormous, high-ceilinged room that she realized was suddenly, unnaturally quiet. She counted seven other young men in the room. They were all staring at her.

“Eyes on your work!” Rossetti commanded. “Let Miss Burden become accustomed to our environment. You’ll scare her half to death.” Someone threw a pencil in their direction but the young men obeyed Rossetti. Now the only eyes on her were his.

“Thank you for your note,” he said. “I felt as if I was in a fairy story, receiving a missive from a captive princess.”

“I’m so very sorry—,” she began, but he raised his hand.

“Nonsense,” he said. “It is I who should apologize. I had no idea that my innocent invitation would cause you so much trouble. But now everything is arranged and you are here! Let me take your coat. You wander around. See what you think.”

The Debating Hall was composed of one great room, oval in shape. It was quite bare except for the scaffolding on the walls and the artists’ equipment. Each young man had his own easel and his own table for supplies. At first she stood still and watched the young men timidly, but they had obeyed Rossetti and were hard at work again, paying no attention to her. When she was sure they would not notice, she walked quietly around the room and peeked over the shoulder of each one to see what he was working on. They all seemed to be doing something different. One was copying a bust, another a still life of apples on a silver tray. One seemed to be working entirely from memory. Two of the young men were dressed in doublet and hose and stood stiff and frozen while Burne-Jones sketched them.

“That expression is nothing like noble thoughtfulness, Morris,” complained Burne-Jones. “You look like you just sucked on a lemon.”

“My neck is stiff,” growled the model named Morris, a plump, curly-haired young man holding a sword straight out in front of him. “And my arms are tired. How long does it take you to make a sketch?”

He looked so ridiculous in his costume and so awkward in his pose that Jane felt a little less uncomfortable.

“Poor Topsy,” said the other model, as slight and blond as Morris was solid and dark. “Should Ned give you some chocolate to sweeten your temper?”

Morris dropped the sword with a loud crash and Jane nearly jumped out of her skin. “Find someone else for your Launcelot, I’m through.” Jane couldn’t tell if he was really angry or not. He grabbed the other model by his collar and attempted to wrestle him to the ground.

“Morris,” cried Burne-Jones, “I’m nearly finished. Ten more minutes.”

“I was only teasing,” cried the pummeled model.

“Serves you right, Faulkner,” said Rossetti. The models returned to their places, red faced and breathless. Burne-Jones returned to his drawing.

“The artistic temperament,” Rossetti said, smiling at Jane. “We can’t do anything with either of them. But they’re harmless.”

Jane knew that she should say something, but when Rossetti was near, her mind was a blank.

“So many gentlemen,” she finally said, and immediately cursed herself for being stupid.

“Don’t worry,” said Rossetti. “Miss Lipscombe is coming to sit a little bit later, so you won’t be completely outnumbered.” He smiled sympathetically, as if he knew how she felt.

As she surveyed the room, she finally thought of something to say.

“Why is the scaffolding still here?” she asked. “I thought this building was completed months ago.”

“Look up, Miss Burden,” Rossetti said, and she obediently lifted her head. Above her was a walkway that ran all the way around the hall. The walls were divided by arches into ten bays. Above that was a brick dome.

“That is where we are to do our work,” he said. “Each of those ten spaces has to be filled. I’m to do three of them.”

She still wasn’t sure how this would be accomplished. Would she be asked to model up there? Jane was afraid of heights and hoped this would not be the case. But she smiled and nodded in what she hoped was a confident way. Rossetti immediately understood that it was all a mystery to her and very kindly explained what they were doing.

They were to paint murals on the walls. It had been Rossetti’s idea to make it a series illustrating the tales of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table. The legends had nothing whatever to do with debating, but that was what Rossetti wanted to paint, and he had used his powers of persuasion to convince the architect to let him do it, and to choose the other artists who were to join him. They were only being paid housing and expenses, but Morris and Burne-Jones were young and inexperienced and saw it as a great opportunity to have their work on display.

Rossetti carried his well-worn copy of Malory’s
Le Morte D’Arthur
with him everywhere and knew the story by heart, and his favorite part was the quest for the Holy Grail. He knew what scenes he wanted to paint—Launcelot’s vision of the Holy Grail, the knights Galahad, Bors, and Percival receiving the Holy Grail, and Sir Launcelot in the queen’s chamber. He had begun to sketch the first two already, but it was the third scene for which he needed Jane.

“I wish I could paint Launcelot and Guinevere in the chamber bed together,” said Rossetti, “but of course that’s impossible. The union would never allow it and it would be a horrible scandal.” Jane blushed when she thought of modeling for such a picture, and was glad that Rossetti had thought better of it.

“So it is to be afterward, when Launcelot and Guinevere were besieged by Mordred and his men. Launcelot of course has been caught unawares and has no armor, and they are both sure that they are going to be slain, that this is the end. What an anguished moment! The difficulty is how to portray all of the emotion, especially of the queen.”

Jane must have looked worried, for Rossetti laughed and touched her arm in a way that was meant to be reassuring. Instead it shocked all the breath from her body. She tried not to gape like a fish.

“It’s all in how I organize the composition,” he said. “You won’t have to do anything but pose how I tell you, and if I’ve set things up right, the tension will all be there.”

They had come to Rossetti’s work space, where he had taped sketches of the first mural painting to the walls. Each showed a knight asleep in the right-hand corner of the paper and a statuesque woman leaning over him with an upraised arm. Jane could not see any difference between the sketches and she wondered why he had to do so many.

Rossetti watched her looking at the drawings. “Now that you’re here, I may rework the messenger. I’m not quite satisfied with her proportions. Miss Lipscombe is not the stunner you are. Yes, I think I will redo it.”

Then Rossetti led her around the room and introduced her to each young man. Mr. Dixon, Mr. Price, Mr. Faulkner, Mr. Prinsep. Their names and faces were a blur. They looked much like the undergraduates she had passed in the courtyard—young, blond, prosperous looking.

Morris appeared to be the youngest, the shortest, and the most unkempt. He had changed into his regular clothes, but when he took her hand Jane could not help but remember how thick his legs had looked in hose. Her face grew hot at the memory. Perhaps he realized what she was thinking because he gave her the briefest of glances before turning away.

“Topsy is shy,” whispered Rossetti to her. “But I assure you he is first-rate. Not quite an artist yet—he’s just started. But he works tremendously hard. He’s my most promising protégé.” Morris had turned back to his table and was running his hands through his hair as he stared at the paper he had taped to his easel.

“Don’t let his appearance alarm you,” Rossetti said. “He pays no attention to his grooming when he’s working.” Jane nodded and hoped he could not hear them.

“How long do you think you will need me?” she asked bashfully. “Altogether, I mean?”

Rossetti gazed at his drawings and thought for a moment.

“A few weeks at least. Perhaps months. It will take some time to finish the entire series of sketches. When the time comes to paint, we’ll cover up the windows and whitewash the walls and the ceiling. Then we’ll paint directly onto it as the Italian masters did. When I’m actually painting the frescoes, I won’t need you unless I’ve made a mistake that I need to correct, or I change my mind about how I want to do things, but that could easily happen, mercurial as I am.” He took her hand and squeezed it. “I hope that isn’t too much trouble for you.”

“Oh no,” gasped Jane. Her heart sang at the thought of perhaps three months with Rossetti. She prayed it was long enough to make him fall in love with her.