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Jane Morris as 'Proserpine'. Painted by Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1871). The poster was on sale for twenty-five dollars. I opened my wallet and saw that I.
Typology: Summaries
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famous paintings, Beauty in Thorns is the story of
Most people know the story of Sleeping Beauty, a girl who is cursed to sleep for a hundred years after pricking her finger on a spindle. She is awoken with a kiss … My fascination with this fairy tale springs from my own life story, when I too was awoken from a death-like coma by a kiss. When I was just two years old, I was attacked by a Doberman in the back garden of my father’s veterinary practise on the Pacific Highway in Artarmon. My mother was bringing in the washing and I was riding my tricycle round and around the Hills Hoist when the dog lunged forward and seized my head in its jaws. My mother had to break open the dog’s jaws to free me, then wrapped me in towels and ran inside, the dog chasing after us. She ran out on to the Pacific Highway, carrying me, my older sister Belinda running beside. A young man picked us up, and took us to the Royal North Shore Hospital. When the triage nurses unwound the bloody towels from my head, he fainted. The dog’s fangs had torn open my skull so that the grey matter of the brain could be seen. My right ear had been almost torn off and my left eye was badly damaged. It took hours of surgery and more than two hundred stitches to repair the injuries. I did not wake up after the surgery. My temperature soared. I lay on a bed of ice, fans blowing cold air on me. Nothing worked. Ten days after the dog attack, the doctors told my mother that I had contracted bacterial meningitis and that it was unlikely that I could survive. Then the doctors diagnosed meningoencephalitis, an acute life-threatening infection of the cerebral tissues of the brain and meninges. The inflammation and swelling caused by the infection was crushing the brain tissues, and my mother was told that – if I survived
profound stutter. Years of speech therapy followed, and every day is still a struggle to defeat it. When I was eleven, I became the first Australian to have an artificial tear duct implanted. The procedure involves removing a small piece of bone from the nose and inserting a glass cylinder called a Lester Jones tube. It is an imperfect solution. I still suffer chronic eye and upper respiratory tract infections, and the emergency department at Royal North Shore Hospital is no stranger to me. However, if I could go back in time I would not try and stop that savage dog attack. Because if I did, perhaps I would never have become a writer! The cover of a novel I wrote when I was nine
The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood was a secret society of young and idealistic artists and writers which formed in September 1848, in the hope of revitalising British art. It was a time of great social unrest, with bloody revolutions sweeping across Europe and uprisings protesting the impact of the Industrial evolution on the lives of ordinary people. Self-portrait by Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1847) At the heart of the Brotherhood were three artists who were all students at the Royal Academy of Art. Named John Everett Millais, William Holman Hunt and Dante Gabriel Rossetti, they wished to discard the heavy brown tones and rough brushwork of most Victorian paintings and return to the luminous colour palette and lapidary
detail of late medieval and early Renaissance art. Millais, Hunt and Rossetti were inspired by myths, legends, fairy-tales, history and poetry, and – in the beginning, at least – had high moral ambitions, striving to paint with seriousness, sincerity and truth to nature. The other members of the brotherhood were Rossetti’s younger brother William, who kept a diary of their meetings; the painter and art critic Frederic George Stephens; the sculptor Thomas Woolner; and the painter James Collinson, who resigned after breaking off his engagement to Rossetti’s sister, Christina. Christina Rossetti, drawn by her brother Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1866) Although the Brotherhood dissolved in the early 1850s, it was to prove highly influential on a younger generation of artists, including Edward Burne-Jones and William Morris — two divinity students at Exeter College, Oxford— who gave up their studies to pursue careers in art. They hero-worshipped Dante Gabriel Rossetti and forged a close friendship with him that led to a new flowering of creativity. They painted, wrote poetry, and designed wallpaper, soft furnishings and stained-glass windows and furniture for the company they set up together, Morris, Marshall, Faulkner & Co. (later called Morris & Co.) ‘Sweetbriar’ design by Morris & Co (1875) These three men of the later Pre-Raphaelite circle were also joined together in complex romantic triangles. After Rossetti’s first wife Lizzie died, he embarked on a passionate affair with Morris’s wife Janey. Morris turned to Burne-Jones’s wife Georgie for
Jane Morris as ‘Proserpine’ Painted by Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1871) The poster was on sale for twenty-five dollars. I opened my wallet and saw that I was one dollar short. It was all the money I had. If I spent it I would not be able to eat for a week. But I knew I had to have it. The man in the shop agreed to sell the poster to me. As he rolled it up, I said timidly, ‘She’s very beautiful.’ ‘Oh yes. She was famous for her face,’ he told me. ‘Rossetti painted her hundreds of times. They were madly in love, but she was married to one of his best friends and so they couldn’t be together.’ Beauty. Art. Myth. Poetry. Love. Heartbreak. It was all there, everything that most drew me, in that one richly-coloured and mysterious painting. So began my lifelong fascination with the Pre-Raphaelites. A few weeks later, I bought a biography of Rossetti at a second-hand book sale. It cost me $17, a huge amount for a poor student. I was so fascinated by the painting, however, I wanted to know more about it. That was the first time I read about the tangled lives of the Pre-Raphaelites. As time went on, I bought more books, and more posters, and even began to dress how I imagined a Pre- Raphaelite poetess would look. Years passed, and I became a university student again, undertaking a doctorate in fairy tale studies. I wrote a chapter on William Morris and his ‘Rapunzel’ poem, the first creative response to the fairy tale in the world. Studying the work of William Morris reignited my interest in the lives of the Pre-
Raphaelite circle, and I began to think about their work reimagining other beloved fairy tales. In late June 2013, I scribbled down a few ideas. My doctoral exegesis was published as The Rebirth of Rapunzel: A Mythic Biography of the Maiden in the Tower A year later, my doctorate finished, I idly began to play with those ideas. As soon as I read about Edward Burne-Jones’s lifelong obsession with the ‘Sleeping Beauty’ fairy- tale, I knew this was a story I wanted to tell. I bought a notebook and began to explore and read and research and imagine. Two years later, I finished what proved to be the most fascinating and challenging book I have ever written. ‘Study for Briar Rose – The Garden Court’ Edward Burne-Jones (c.1888)
The woman with the sorrowful face was named Janey Burden, and she was born in a slum in Oxford. Her father was an ostler at an inn, her mother an illiterate laundress who signed her marriage certificate with an X. Janey lived with her parents and brother and sister in a single room not much bigger than the stalls where the horses were kept. Portrait of Jane Burden, Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1857) One evening in autumn 1857, to celebrate her eighteenth birthday, Janey and her sister Bessie went to see a travelling theatre group perform at the local gymnasium. There she caught the eye of an exotic-looking gentleman with ruffled dark curls and paint
exhibited in the first Pre-Raphaelite exhibition earlier that year. Gabriel and Lizzie had become engaged a few years earlier, but somehow the marriage had never taken place. Hearing rumours about Gabriel and Janey, she wrote to him and begged him to come to her. Gabriel obeyed reluctantly. The Oxford set was broken up, the murals left unfinished. ‘Clerk Saunders’ painted by Lizzie Siddal (1857) William Morris, however, stayed in Oxford. He was trying to paint Janey as the tragic queen Iseult. Jane Burden, ‘Iseult’ By William Morris (1858) One day he wrote on the back of the canvas, ‘I cannot paint you but I love you.’ Topsy was stout and rather awkward, but he was also kind and rich. Janey was a slum girl who had been abandoned by her lover. His offer of marriage was not something she could easily refuse. They were married in 1859, after Janey had spent months being taught how to act like a lady. A year later Gabriel married Lizzie, after promising her on her death-bed that they would be wed if only she would get better. They had been lovers for more than eleven years.
A scant two weeks later, Ned married Georgie Macdonald, a sweet-faced nineteen- year-old who also dreamed of creating art. Georgie Macdonald Drawn by Dante Gabriel Rossetti (c.1860) Topsy built a grand Art & Crafts manor in the Kentish countryside called Red House, and the six couples spent many happy weekends painting murals on the walls, embroidering tapestries, and playing hide- and-seek by candlelight. Together they created the company that is now known as Morris & Co, creating fabrics, wallpaper, stained glass, hand-painted tiles and furniture. The joyous times could not last, however. Janey gave birth to a healthy little girl in January 1861, but - a few months later - the Rossettis’ daughter was stillborn. Lizzie sank deep into postnatal depression. One day Georgie and Ned found her rocking an empty cradle and singing lullabies to a baby who was not there. Photo of Jane Morris with her first daughter Jenny (taken 1864 by H. Smith) Six months later, Lizzie died of a laudanum overdose. The inquest found death by misadventure, but rumours of suicide have abounded ever since. Racked with grief and guilt, Gabriel buried his only manuscript of poems with her. Haunted by her ghost, he began to hold séances in the hope of reaching her. He filled his house with a menagerie of exotic animals – including peacocks, owls, raccoons and a wombat – and rarely left the house in sunlight. He drank too much and began to self-dose himself with chloral hydrate, a highly addictive sedative.
By that time, Topsy had won great acclaim with his epic poem ‘The Earthly Paradise’. Jealous of his success and in love with his wife, Gabriel began to wish he had not been so impetuous in burying his own poetry in Lizzie’s coffin. In October 1869 – seven years after her death - Gabriel secretly obtained a court order to have her dead body exhumed so he could retrieve his manuscript, riddled with wormholes and reeking of rot. One of the few remaining pages of Gabriel’s poetry manuscript which had been buried with Lizzie
But the world could not be shut out. Portrait of Jane Morris (with Kelmscott Manor in the background) painted by Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1871) The scandal intensified, with Gabriel’s art and poetry being excoriated in the press. Tortured by guilt, racked with insomnia, Gabriel had a nervous breakdown. In June 1872 – ten years after Lizzie’s death – he tried to commit suicide with an overdose of laudanum. He was revived, but was left paralysed down one side. His addiction to whisky, chloral and laudanum grew fiercer. In 1876, unable to bear it any longer, Janey broke off their affair. In 1882, Gabriel painted Janey as Proserpina for the eighth and final time, except that he gave her Lizzie’s mane of fiery red hair. A few days later, he died. Janey lived for another thirty-odd years, spending much of her time in the old manor house on the river where she had been so happy so briefly. She kept his notebook of love poems all her life.
Edward Burne-Jones painted the Sleeping Beauty fairy tale many times over the forty- odd years of his career: In May 1856, Burne-Jones drew a pencil sketch of his betrothed, Georgie Macdonald, as the Sleeping Beauty to amuse her little sister Louie on her birthday. He was 23 years old and Georgie was sixteen. I believe this is the sketch, though it has not been officially confirmed. ‘Study for Sleeping Woman’s Head’ Edward Burne-Jones (date unknown)
Margaret Burne-Jones, ‘Study for Briar Rose’ by Edward Burne-Jones (18 81 ) This beautiful drawing is a chalk study of his daughter Margaret (called Margot) that Burne- Jones made in 1881, when he was planning another sequence of painting inspired by the fairy tale. Margot was then fifteen, the age of the princess in the story. Margaret Burne-Jones, ‘Study for Briar Rose’ by Edward Burne-Jones (c. 1881 - 82 ) He drew a number of studies of Margot, in preparation for creating his masterpiece, ‘The Legend of Briar Rose’ (1884-1887), four huge painting which now hang in Buscot Park, in Oxfordshire. ‘The Briar Wood' by Edward Burne-Jones (1881- 1890 ) ‘The Council Chamber’ by Edward Burne-Jones (1881- 1890 ) ‘The Garden Court’ by Edward Burne-Jones (1881- 1890 ) ‘The Rose Bower’ by Edward Burne-Jones (1881- 1890 )
Edward Burne-Jones painted his daughter obsessively throughout her late teens and early twenties. Margot had fallen in love with a young poet and scholar named John William Mackail, but dared not tell her father for fear of his distress. 'The Legend of Briar Rose' caused an absolute sensation when the paintings were first exhibited in 1890, with queues of carriages along Bond Street. Burne-Jones sold the quartet of painting for fifteen thousand guineas, the most money a British artist had ever been paid, and he was subsequently knighted by the Queen. His final ‘Sleeping Beauty’ painting is a small circle, entitled 'Wake Dearest' which he painted for his ever-loving and faithful wife Georgie in the final year of his life (1898). ‘Wake, Dearest!’ by Edward Burne-Jones from The Flower Book I believe Georgie was the model for the princess. This tiny masterpiece - along with 37 other tiny glowing circles - were left to Georgie in his will, and later published as 'The Flower Book'.
When Edward Burne-Jones was painting his series of small water-colours inspired by the names of flowers, he wrote, ‘it is not enough to illustrate them—that is such poor work: I want to … wring their secret from them’. This is what I hoped to do with this novel about the women of the Pre-Raphaelite circle. I wanted to wring their secrets from them. John Ruskin wrote: ‘Pre-Raphaelitism has but one principle, that of absolute, uncompromising truth …. By always endeavouring to conceive a fact as it really was likely to have happened, rather than as it most prettily might have happened.’
circle a chance to tell their own stories, in their own voices. So it is Lizzie’s version of events I have drawn upon. Lizzie Siddal has not been treated well by the key biographers of the Pre-Raphaelites. She has been called sickly, wan, morbid, passive, obstinate, primitive, stupid, prim, neurotic, hysterical, feeble, and frigid, along with many other similar emotionally loaded words. Many of these biographers were apologists for Rossetti (including his niece), and so were not unbiased. Lizzie Siddal, one of the first drawings of her by Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1853) Her addiction to laudanum is widely known. What is not so well-known is that Lizzie may have suffered from an eating disorder. Nowadays, when we see a young woman wasting away to a virtual skeleton, refusing food, or vomiting after meals, we would suspect anorexia nervosa or bulimia nervosa. However, in the mid- 19 th^ century such pronounced emaciation was normally attributed to tuberculosis, commonly called ‘consumption’ because it seemed to consume the sufferer. The first medical identification of eating disorders was made in 1868 (six years after Lizzie’s death), when Sir William Gull, the Queen’s physician, delivered a paper describing a digestive disorder with no known cause, which he called ‘hysteric apepsia’ (apepsia means ‘without digestion’). In 1873 (eleven years after Lizzie’s death), Ernest-Charles Lasègue, a French physician, published a paper entitled De l’Anorexie Histerique which was the first real examination of the idea that the wasting away of these young women could be caused by self-starvation. It was not understood as a mental illness, however, but as a ‘ maladie imaginaire’. Sir William Gull consequently undertook further investigation and coined the term ‘anorexia nervosa’. Elizabeth Siddal, study for 'Delia' Dante Gabriel Rossetti (c.1855-56)
If Lizzie was an anorectic, she and her family and friends would have had absolutely no idea what was wrong with her. Any ‘curious perversions of appetite’, as Lasègue named them, such as binge eating, secret eating, hoarding of food, purging, refusal of food, or food-related rituals, would have seemed , at best, a hysterical demand for attention. The possibility that Lizzie might have had an eating disorder was first suggested by Elaine Shafer in a 1985 essay, ‘The Bird in the Cage’. However, it has never been closely examined as a probable cause for her troubling illnesses. Even the most recent biography of her life, by Lucinda Hawksley in 2004, says: ‘Much of Lizzie’s ill health originated in her mind, stemming from her desire to receive attention and love.’ Lucinda Hawksley does acknowledge that Lizzie may have had some kind of eating disorder, but then says that ‘it became common for her to emotionally blackmail (Gabriel) by refusing to eat.’ Anorexia nervosa and other eating disorders are mental illnesses with devastating physical consequences, having the highest mortality rate of any psychiatric disorder. They cannot, and must not, be dismissed as a form of emotional blackmail (even though they are commonly misunderstood in such a way). The more I researched Lizzie’s life, the more convinced I became that she did have an eating disorder. Descriptions of her thinness and her inability to eat are constant in the letters and diaries of the PRB. Lizzie Siddal Reading A Book Dante Gabriel Rossetti (c. 1856)
