Ophelia's Muse (13 page)

“I'm afraid that I haven't had the pleasure of meeting her,” Ford said, stepping forward and taking Lizzie's hand. “Ford Madox Brown. I'm always enchanted to meet friends of my wife, and of course friends of Rossetti.”

“Your wife?” Lizzie asked, turning to Emma.

“Yes, I'm Emma Brown now!” Emma turned a beaming face on her husband and laid her hand on his arm. “Just married last month! Oh, Lizzie, this is too wonderful. I'd heard the rumor, of course, that Dante had discovered some stunning new muse, but I had no idea that it was you. If I had, I would have had Ford bring me over to the studio at once!”

“It's so lovely to see you,” Lizzie said. “And congratulations on your marriage.”

Emma glowed. “Yes, well, we had to get round to it one day! And it wasn't a moment too soon.” She winked, discreetly patting her stomach.

Lizzie looked down and saw a gentle roundness beneath Emma's loosely corseted dress. She could see that, despite having only been married a month, Emma would be welcoming a child before the summer was out. Lizzie blushed. “I'm so happy for you.”

“I can see that you're shocked,” Emma laughed. “But you mustn't be. Ford, Dante, all of their friends—they live as true artists, and with no apologies. They're all very wicked, you know, not at all what you're used to. I don't mind saying that I was Ford's model for a long while before I was his wife.” She paused and gave Lizzie a knowing look, causing Lizzie to blush again. “But you'll come round to it—it's such a lot of fun. You see, they care only for the really important things in life—love, art, beauty. And we are so very lucky to be a part of it.”

“I do feel lucky.” Lizzie glanced at Rossetti. Emma had put words to the breathlessness that Lizzie felt when she was with him; the sense of possibility, as if the drab surface of London could be peeled back like the rind of an orange, revealing a feast for the senses. Sometimes it was easy to forget that the real London, the one that she had to return to each night, had standards that must be met if a girl wished to walk with her head up in decent society. But in the excitement of the moment, Lizzie didn't have time to dwell on such thoughts. Perhaps Emma was right—the art was the important thing; the rest was just the dull realm of the uninitiated.

Rossetti caught her eye and walked over to them. “Come, ladies,” he said, offering an arm to each woman. “Let's find Deverell and congratulate him on his success. I see that there is quite a little crowd gathered around his
Twelfth Night.
”

Lizzie squeezed Rossetti's arm, and he steered them through the crowd. Heads turned as they sailed past, and women whispered behind their fans. Rossetti had promised to make her the envy of London, and it seemed that he was as good as his word. She drank up the crowd's approving looks, threw her shoulders back, and allowed herself a moment of triumph. Rossetti murmured, “All eyes are on you,” and she shivered at his compliment, and his closeness.

But Lizzie's beauty, and the spectacle of her dress, wasn't the only thing causing a stir. Rossetti's painting
The Girlhood of Mary Virgin
was the talk of the Exhibition. It showed Mary as a child, at work on a bright scarlet piece of embroidery, with her mother by her side. It was done in the style of an early Italian religious painting, rich in both color and symbolic detail. Mary and her mother were crowned by golden halos, and a vase of white lilies suggested Mary's purity. The current fashion was for muted domestic scenes, but Rossetti's painting took the divine as its subject, and its bright hues stood out from the other paintings. A crowd had gathered in front of it all day, and whether they had adored it or detested it, no one had failed to notice Rossetti's painting, or the mysterious initials “PRB” that followed his signature.

Many in the crowd had connected the letters with the matching initials on paintings by John Millais and William Holman Hunt. The public loved nothing more than a good scandal, and the possible meanings of “PRB” had been on everyone's lips since the exhibition's opening. Despite the vow of secrecy, many friends had been let in on the Brotherhood's existence and its revolutionary goals. These insiders now found themselves surrounded as they recounted the tale of a secret meeting, the plot to overthrow the supremacy of the Royal Academy, and the pact among the seven audacious brothers in art. This buzz followed Rossetti as he moved through the room.

At the end of the hall, Lizzie finally saw Deverell's painting. She felt a thrill of recognition at seeing her own face peer back as the pageboy. The picture had earned a good place, and she felt as pleased as if she had painted it herself.

She knew from Rossetti's stories how fraught the submission process could be. Having a picture selected for display was an achievement, but the location of the picture on the wall made all the difference. The pictures were stacked three and four on top of each other, starting at eye level and ascending the wall. Some pictures were hung so high that a man would have needed to stand on his neighbor's shoulders to get a good look at them. On Hanging Day, when the jury made its final selections and the work went up, each artist was frantic to find out whether his picture had earned a good place. Deverell's picture was hanging in the center of the wall, right at eye level. It was quite a coup.

A small crowd was gathered in front of Deverell's painting, and it seemed that some of the Brotherhood's celebrity had shone on him. The keen eye of the crowd was quick to make the connection in style between the paintings.

“Deverell!” Rossetti cried, clasping his friend by the shoulders. “The picture is extraordinary! And I don't say that just because it features the lovely Miss Siddal and myself—you have done us more than justice. It's been surrounded all evening, and rightly so. May I offer my congratulations on a very auspicious beginning to what is sure to be a long and distinguished career?”

“My thanks, and the same to you. The talk tonight has been of nothing but your
Girlhood
painting and the mystery of the PRB.” He turned to Lizzie. “Miss Siddal, it's been entirely too long. When I last saw you, you played the lowly page, but now I see that you are more like a countess.” In a move more in keeping with Rossetti's extravagant behavior than his own very English comportment, Deverell took Lizzie's hand and brushed his lips against it, holding her eye as he raised his head. Emma giggled and gave Lizzie a sly look before she offered her own hand to Deverell.

Lizzie was happy to see Deverell. Success agreed with him—he looked as flushed and proud as a new father. In the excitement of sitting for Rossetti, she had almost forgotten how pleasant her afternoons sitting for Deverell had been. Now she embraced him as a friend and murmured her congratulations. “It's a very fine painting. I'm honored to have played some small part in its success.”

“I couldn't have painted it without you. And how does your own work get on?”

“My own work? Do you mean Dante's new painting? It's nearly finished, I believe.”

“No, not Dante's painting. What of your own sketches and poems? The drawing that you made of my sister Mary still hangs on my studio wall. As I told you then, it showed great promise.”

“You're too kind—I'm afraid that I've done nothing more than dabble in drawing lately. I do a little sketching here and there, mostly while Dante is working. But I would love to really learn to paint.” She colored a little at this admission, embarrassed to talk of her own wish to paint in such a setting. But Deverell didn't laugh at her.

“Well then, Rossetti must give you lessons. Or perhaps I could do so myself. In fact, I've been meaning to send you a note. I'm planning a new picture, and I was hoping that you might come sit for me again. Mary is eager to have your company. She speaks of you often.”

Before Lizzie could reply, Rossetti broke in. “I'm afraid that Miss Siddal is very much occupied with my own work at the moment. I couldn't possibly spare her.”

“Oh, come now, Rossetti! You can't mean to keep this lovely creature all to yourself? Miss Siddal says that you're almost finished with your picture, and I've planned my picture around her—no one else will do.”

“As I said, Miss Siddal is occupied at the moment,” Rossetti said sharply. “I really can't spare her—she's absolutely essential to my work.”

Lizzie stared at Rossetti in surprise. He was nearly finished with the Beatrice painting, and she had taken on extra days at the shop, knowing that he might not pay her to sit again for a few weeks. It seemed odd that, knowing that she must make her living as a model or else return to Mrs. Tozer's, he would wish to prevent her sitting for Deverell. But perhaps he had some something besides painting in mind. If he was planning on proposing soon, of course he wouldn't want her sitting for other painters.

Deverell was frowning, and Lizzie sought to smooth over any ruffled feathers. “My dear Mr. Deverell, I'm busy at the moment, but I'll write to you as soon as I am free.”

“Yes, of course.” He looked questioningly at Rossetti. “Some other time.”

“Well, we must make the rounds,” Rossetti said, drawing the conversation to an abrupt end. He seemed embarrassed by his outburst, and eager to get away from Deverell. He took Lizzie's arm and steered her into the crowd, leaving her no choice but to shrug and smile at Deverell over her shoulder.

Deverell stared after them as they crossed the room arm in arm, their heads inclined toward each other as Rossetti whispered some little comment in her ear. His eyes lingered on the pair as they joined another group, Rossetti joking with friends and Miss Siddal smiling her serene smile, her eyes locked on him. If Deverell was uneasy at the sight, it would have been difficult for him to say why. Perhaps it was only jealousy that Rossetti had lacked his scruples in the matter of Miss Siddal. Or perhaps it was a more instinctive alarm at the way Miss Siddal's radiance seemed to dim in Rossetti's company, as if her light reflected off of him to greater effect, leaving her somehow depleted.

Rossetti led her into a private alcove at the far end of the gallery, and Deverell at last turned away, shrugging and muttering under his breath, “If they are in love, or lovers, what business, really, is it of mine?”

 

Rossetti pulled Lizzie onto his lap and loosened the velvet curtains of the alcove so that they were hidden from view.

He was in his element, his sudden celebrity a more powerful intoxicant than the fine champagne, though he'd drunk plenty of that as well. He thought of all the hours spent in his studio, choosing just the right paints, working and reworking his figures; the labor so draining that it sometimes felt like a bloodletting, as if the paint came not from a pot but from his open veins. And the other moments, when he sketched Lizzie as if he had been born to do nothing else, each drawing engendering the next; the desperate need to capture every telling glance, his hand racing across the page for hours until he fell back, spent. The exhaustion and the exhilaration had all culminated in this, his moment of victory.

He felt as rich men must feel—the reckless abandon of a heavy purse. Tonight London was his, and he saw what he wanted: Lizzie, resplendent in her rich velvet gown, no longer of this age or place. She was Beatrice, as if he had conjured her from Dante's sonnets with a sorcerer's spell. She was a
tableau vivant
staged only for him, poetic verse given the warmth and weight of a body. “You look divine,” he said, running his fingertips over her cheek and down her white neck.

“But who will see me back here, in this alcove?” she laughed.

“Who could look at the paintings when you are in the room? I'm doing the other artists a favor by taking you aside.”

“Promise me,” Lizzie whispered, taking his face in her hands, and feeling her power over him at this moment, “you will paint no one but me.”

“No one but you,” he said, kissing her. “There's no one else worth painting.” He slipped his hands around her waist, and she was instantly pliant, leaning against him and sighing. He wanted to whisper poetry into her hair, but none of Dante's verses felt right. Such carefully constructed lines, love tempered by restraint, felt pale and stilted in the face of his desire for Lizzie at this moment. His lips mute, he kissed her neck and her shoulders, pulling at the sleeve of her dress as he searched for more of her white skin. All of his art seemed to fall away; he would worship her not with verse but with a love so pure that it would transcend all words. Was not love an art in itself? But Lizzie drew back with unexpected force and put a restraining hand on his chest.

“Somebody might see us, Dante! And what will they think?”

“Our friends will think that we are in love, and what should I care what anyone else thinks?” he said, renewing his efforts.

“Are we in love?”

“Yes, of course we are, you silly girl. If this isn't love, what is?” Rossetti stopped trying to kiss her for a moment, and looked at her with tenderness and amusement.

Lizzie smiled, but she kept a hand firmly between them. “You may not care what people think, but I
must
care. Already people are talking. I can't be seen back here, alone with you. Unless, of course, there was some reason . . .” She let the suggestion hang in the air.

Rossetti released her and sat back. Thoughts of marriage, and its attendant concerns—houses to be let, visits to be made, the cries of babies outside the studio door—were so far from his mind that it took him a moment to catch her meaning. “Lizzie,” he murmured, but no further words came to his lips, and his brow furrowed. Had he not, just a moment before, thought his love for her a thing more perfect and pure than Dante's sonnets to Beatrice? And yet . . . the practical concerns of marriage and family seemed to have little to do with such a love. That day in St. Saviour's he had nearly proposed, but something had held him back. He wanted to savor what they had, and was in no rush to change it. He desired the Lizzie who walked among other women like a goddess, who fed upon nothing more than love and poetry, and demanded nothing more, or less, than worship.