The Lamp of Life
London: April 1855
“Please to consider yourself a valuable object, something worth conserving.”
Ruskin realised once it was out how awkward it must sound. “What I mean, Miss Siddal, is that if you were––let’s say––a majestic tree in danger of being cut down to no good purpose, or a cathedral to have its best bits of ancient ornament all hammered down––as I have watched to my distress throughout France and Italy––I should take all reasonable––and possibly some quite unreasonable––precautions to stop such barbarism. To have you continue to labour in a bonnet shop when you should be painting is tantamount to these acts.”
Miss Elizabeth Siddal sat almost motionless in her wooden chair in the little projecting gallery that hung out over the Thames. Gabriel Rossetti, that gypsy-romantic whose house on Chatham Place, hard by Blackfriars Bridge this was, sat there too, leaning forward in a lumpy chair covered over in some vaguely oriental stuff. He was smiling at his guest. Miss Siddal remained still, and unsmiling.
“What do you say, Gug?” asked Gabriel after some moments had passed. “Mr. Ruskin’s offer is unusual, granted, but what man amongst us wouldn’t be proud for such endorsement?”
Ruskin looked at the object of his unusual solicitation and waited for her response. From the first time he had visited Gabriel in his unhealthy and eccentric “crib” he had been taken by this young woman’s work. She herself had been absent––he was uncertain where she actually lived, and frankly did not wish to know––but as soon as he saw the drawing upon the second easel he asked Gabriel about it. Gabriel could be slippery in his answers, and it took him a while to teaze out the story from different sources.
It was poor dead Walter Deverell who had first found her. He had want of models ––all these young painters did, but most especially those working in the style of Pre-Raphaelitism; there was a rare and certain aspect they sought. Deverell had caught a glimpse of Miss Siddal in the millinery shop in Cranbourne Alley. Pale skin, masses of copper hair. And so slender as to be convincing as a maiden disguised as a page. He thought she would do, and perfectly, for the part of Viola in the scene from Twelfth Night he wanted to paint. She went on to sit for Hunt before Gabriel had claimed her.
It was Gabriel––who could scarcely draw himself––who began teaching her to draw; but that was, Ruskin thought upon consideration, one of the reasons her art was developing along such interesting lines. Both Gabriel and Miss Siddal were original in expression. Figures devoid of almost any modelling, a colouration either ghostly or garish, extreme flatness of plane in which the subject was presented. And what subjects! Gabriel of course went back and back again to Dante, she to the gristliest of old folk tales, and both of them to Shakespeare’s bottomless font.
When he first saw her work Ruskin offered to buy up all her drawings from Gabriel on the spot. He had already engaged Gabriel to make him a series of paintings taken from Dante, and the thought of discovering and fostering a new and unique ability such as Miss Siddal’s could only add relish to the association––Gabriel himself was so contrary that he rejected half of Ruskin’s advice yet took all his money. Gabriel had hazarded to suggest the sum of £25 for the lot, but Ruskin would not accept them for less than £30. Gabriel asked him around to Chatham Place more frequently after that, and at last the drawings’ creator was now before him.
“My proposition is simply this: that you leave off your labours trimming bonnets and turn whole-hearted and single-mindedly to your art. I will pay you an annual sum of £150, and ask in return that I be given first pick of all your output.”
Gabriel clapped his palms upon his knees. A turn of Miss Siddal’s head and a glance of her odd-coloured eyes silenced him before he spoke. It was her decision to make, Ruskin could see, and it made him all the more hopeful about her ability to maintain and express her distinct artistic perception.
He had a pretty clear idea of how Gabriel had described him to her earlier––as perhaps an undeniably queer chap; that his pamphlet about Pre-Raphaelitism had actually been all about Turner and a little about work; but that certain people listened to him nonetheless. And he had money in his pockets.
“I should rather sell my work on its merits, piece by piece,” she said to him, “than accept your offer of annual support.” Yet by the time Ruskin had left Chatham Place––needing to cover his nose and mouth against the foulness of the low-water-mark Thames––she had agreed.
As he drove home to Denmark Hill Miss Siddal occupied his thoughts. The passivity of her face suggested to his mind the stateliness of white marble monuments to long-dead Florentine princesses. But pale as her skin was it had the warmth, and apparent smoothness, of ivory.
There was something otherworldly about her, he realised, something close to unsubstantial. She was like a reflection of a golden mountain in a crystal lake, he thought.
Then he recalled a moment during their interview when she had parted her lips without speaking. He had met her image prisoned in a frame years before he had met the original––the singing, ecstatic Ophelia, floating down the flower-strewn river in her madness. His lost Millais had painted her.