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A home is a reflection of its occupants. And it is interesting to see how homes change
or are altered along with the character of the occupants, each new inhabitant
putting their personal stamp upon them. To
my mind, a house, or anywhere we consider as home, becomes a reflection of our feelings
and physical bodies, the symbolic place the soul inhabits. Often when a building becomes neglected and
starts to need repair, a person’s health also suffers as if the house is an
outer shell to the human bodies within it.
Jung might have considered this as synchronicity but I have observed a
definite relationship with bodies and surroundings and the places that draw us
to them or the type of house we may want to live in but which life and fortunes
deny us. We still dream. I always yearned for a villa in Italy but that’s
not going to happen in this lifetime! It isn’t because I couldn’t do so but I choose
to stay in a country with which I am now familiar, near family and the English countryside
I love.
On the whole, woman was and still is largely the home maker
and a house reflects much of her taste. It’s
always interesting to see how single men furnish or neglect their home! Their taste is generally more sparse and
utilitarian but perhaps things are changing as men and women share the task of
homemaking far more. Gabriel Rossetti did share his first real home with his
eventual wife, Lizzie Siddal, but after her death remained a widower till he
died. In his case, both of his important
homes tended to reflect his own dominant, energetic, eclectic personality far
more than a shared one. And it was by
no means a utilitarian or sparse taste.
It befitted such an artistic, flamboyant nature with a love of unusual
and beautiful objects to delight the eye.
Rossetti moved around London
at first, renting studios. He and his
fellow Pre-Raphaelites, Hunt, Stevens and Collinson chanced upon a beautiful
old house along the riverside at Chelsea . It was said to be built on the site of a
mansion used by Queen Catherine Parr, Henry the Eighth’s last wife, and named
Queen’s House or Tudor House. It had a many
bedrooms, sitting rooms, drawing rooms and a kitchen and cellars. The young artists easily envisaged having a
studio each. But the rent and the long
lease were more than they could afford and they regretfully gave up the idea,
going for separate studios instead.
Gabriel took a room in Newman
St. over the top of a dancing academy and
continued to live at his parental home.
This was followed by a studio in the garden of a house
called The Hermitage on Highgate’s West Hill. During this time, Gabriel was
painting and falling deeply in love with his red-haired muse, Lizzie Siddal. His
fascination with the great Dante Alighieri, his namesake, led him to see Lizzie
as his own Beatrice. He often painted
her as such in his varied pictures with Dantesque themes. However, it was a complicated relationship
due as much to the fact that their social standing was very different and so
marriage seemed unlikely in those class-ridden times. They were said to be
engaged but it was nothing definite or declared publicly.
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| Lizzie Siddal (Rossetti archive) |
For various reasons, of which Lizzie was one, Gabriel needed
a new ‘crib’. He and his brother,
William, (who purportedly shared it and
paid half the rent) eventually found rooms on the second floor of a house in Chatham
Place, very close to Blackfriars Bridge and over the confluence of the Fleet
and the Thames. The buildings no longer
exist sadly, part now of Blackfriars Station.
There were two rooms; one was to be the studio, the other a small
bedroom with a balcony overlooking the river from whence arose the stench of
sewage, meat thrown in from Smithfield’s and other unpleasant odours. Londoners were used to the foulness of their
river. It was a busy river in those days
and no doubt interesting. It had its
charms according to Gabriel’s visitors.
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| Lizzie as Beata Beatrix painted after her death |
The rooms had windows on all sides and virtually hung out
over the river, which made it light and cheerful. As always, Gabriel begged and
borrowed furnishing from home, particularly mirrors which he considered
essential for his studio. He was always fond of mirrors. This, his first home, so to speak, reflected
the young Rossetti. It was cheerful,
bright, adequate to his simple needs and his beloved Lizzie lived just a short
distance away in the Old Kent Rd. A convenient place therefore for her to model
as well as remain and dine with him, allowing them to enjoy each other’s
company without interference. George
Boyce, an artist friend, wrote that it was a picturesque place, especially at
night with the gas lamps on the bridge and wharf side shedding their wavering reflections
on the river. Here was enjoyed the
intelligent, good-hearted company of gentlemen
who could speak freely without need for coarseness or fear of public mores and
opinions. The whole ethos of the
Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood . . . and they did indeed feel like brothers at
first . . . was that it was to be about truth, freshness, no pretentious
nonsense, secrecy or chiaroscuro. It
seems that these were Gabriel’s happiest days; deeply in love yet uncommitted,
his greatness rising and manifesting itself in his poetic and artistic works
with more beautiful work still to come.
Poetry in his heart and soul.
Simplicity was the order of the day then. He disliked ‘tobacco, tea, coffee,
stimulants’, drank water, allowing others in his usual easy going and
uncritical manner to imbibe what they would.
How different he became in later life when disappointment, tragedy and
depression overcame that sweet, pure young soul.
Rossetti at last committed himself to marriage with Lizzie
in 1860. They had been together for so
many years that love had altered to companionship and mutual understanding but
the fires of passion had long gone. By
this time Lizzie, always a sensitive, refined woman had become sickly, perhaps
a little hypochondriac, unhappy and sad, reliant on laudanum to ease her pains
of mind and body, feeling that Rossetti was now replacing her with younger
models and perhaps in love with them.
But his love for her was real and constant in its way even though, as
with all long-term relationships, well past the ‘first fine careless
rapture’. He had at one point broken
off their engagement but knowing she was very ill, married her as much from
pity as anything else. Sadly, in 1861
she lost her eagerly desired first child, a stillborn girl, becoming pregnant
again almost immediately that year. Whether she suffered from postnatal
depression, or was heart broken because she felt that Rossetti’s love was
slipping away and thus committed suicide, we shall never really know. Ford Madox Brown destroyed the note she left
and the verdict was recorded as an accidental overdose.
Tudor House, Cheyne
Walk
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| Cheyne Walk in early 1800's |
By 1869, Gabriel had changed greatly. He was now addicted to drugs and alcohol . .
. this the young man once desirous of
being clear-headed and inwardly pure! From
a slender, handsome young man he was now corpulent, said to eat enormous
amounts of food where once he had lived simply and lightly.
After Lizzie’s death, Rossetti was able to
achieve his earlier dream of renting the house in Cheyne Walk in  |
| Cheyne Walk today |
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| 16 Cheyne Walk. You can just see the blue plaque behind me. |
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| The Sitting Room at 16, Cheyne Walk by Henry Treffry Dunn (a studio assistant of Rossetti) |
At first, Rossetti hoped to be able to bring all the women
of his family together in the large house to take care of the place and
himself. Marriage held no attractions
for him. One doubts if it ever did and
if his release from the invalid, Lizzie, was not a relief deep down in his
heart, much as he grieved her loss and grieved for old memories of passionate love.
However, grief or not, within a very short while, he
installed Fanny Cornforth, his golden haired model of many years, purportedly
as the housekeeper. Fanny, who did love
Rossetti, had by now left her husband whom she had married in a sort of pique
when Rossetti married Lizzie. She was followed by Swinburne the poet, Meredith
the novelist and William Rossetti who also now occupied the large house. Rossetti was an individualist and a loner,
yet like many such loners, he did not want his own company for too long. He needed people around him, needed
recognition while at the same time spurning it.
A complex character. The whole
idea of the Pre Raphaelite Brotherhood was founded on the idea of non-conformity
to the given artistic values of his day.
Rossetti steadfastly refused to enter his pictures in the Royal Academy
Tudor house began to take shape in the style of Rossetti. The large, spacious, beautiful rooms slowly
filled with amazing and unusual items picked up from curiosity shops, a mix of
high quality articles and junk. Many of
the items were used in his pictures as background; furnishings, materials,
peacock feathers, pieces of jewellery.
None of the decorative jewellery was of any real value, his favourite
being the pearl pin, which features in many portraits. Sadly, this has not survived though other
items did. While away with his brother
William in Antwerp ,
the two men enjoyed themselves scouring old shops for brooches, ‘a large jar
with blue birds’ old prints and varied items.
When a fried, Henry Munby, dined with Rossetti he was amazed and
fascinated by the wonderful drawing room filled with so many objects, curios,
mirrors on ever wall, pictures and Italian cabinets, Dutch blue tiles on the
fireplaces. He walked up and down the
room, examining everything with delight absorbing ‘the aroma of its manifold
romance’. On another occasion, an evening
this time, he found the room bathed in the glow of the firelight with huge
Elizabethan candlesticks gleaming on ebony furnishings, silver gilt dishes and flagons, creating a delightful ambience
of poetry and beauty. Rossetti lived out
his inner romance through his house and his unique style of furnishing. The intriguing and eclectic mix also
reflected Rossetti’s own interests and the breadth of his conversation which
all those who loved and knew him acknowledged to be erudite and filled with
arcane as well as modern knowledge.
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| Rossetti's bedroom reflected in a mirror by H T Dunn. |
The strangest room in the house was Rossetti’s bedroom, which was particularly dark and heavy. In it he installed a dark black mantelpiece that rose to the ceiling.
According to Hall Caine, the bedroom ‘was entered from another and smaller room, used as a breakfast-room. This outer room was made fairly bright and cheerful by a glittering chandelier (the property once, he said, of David Garrick), and from the rustle of trees against the window pane one perceived that it overlooked the garden; but the inner room was dark with heavy hangings round the walls as well as the bed, and thick velvet curtains before the windows, so that candles seemed unable to light it and voices sounded thick and muffled.’
The thickly curtained windows, the heavy hangings around the dark oak four-poster bed reflected Gabriel’s inner state. While the rest of the house glowed with colours, imagination, brilliant objects as did his portraits, here were the dark, depressed thoughts with which Gabriel lay down to his slumbers and to which he awoke.
Rossetti now turned to becoming an avid collector.
Blue Porcelain:
One of Rossetti’s most obsessive and passionately acquired
collections was for blue porcelain. When
living with Lizzie, he had begun with standard willow pattern pieces. (Intriguingly, the willow pattern design appears
to have originated in England
based on a tragic Chinese love story and then adapted by the Chinese for their designs.) Then Gabriel began to collect beautiful
pieces of ware from Nanking . This particular porcelain, painted with
greater precision and detail and with finer glazes, was considered superior to
the Canton
china. China
produced a great deal of the blue and white ware in the 18/19th
century when it became highly popular both in the States and in Europe . The exquisite blue colour was derived from
Persian Cobalt, exported to China
and used to make bowls, ginger jars, vases, plates and so on. The craze for this blue found its way to Europe , where it took hold in Parisian circles. One can imagine how it might appeal to the
artistic society: something about this colour draws us to it all the time,
spiritual, sky, heaven, purity, calm and peaceful. Certainly, something needed in the rather zany
household of Rossetti and his friends.
His great rival in collecting was the artist Whistler who
lived close by. They tried to outdo one
another by buying up choice pieces from antique shops, the Oriental warehouse
in Regent Street
and abroad. ‘My pots now baffle
description altogether. Come and see them!’ said the exultant Rossetti to his
friend Ford Madox Brown. Whistler was
said to eat his heart out with envy if Gabriel secured a particularly splendid
piece. And no doubt vice-versa as well!
The Zoo
His other famous collection was of varied animals, which he
kept in his garden. The garden
flourished in a wild state, left as Nature intended for the ‘survival of the
fittest.’ In it roamed peacocks, whose irritating noise kept neighbours awake
and indeed resulted in Lord Cadogan inserting a clause into the lease of Tudor
House forbidding that these birds be kept in the garden. Other inmates of this
scatterbrained zoo were a deerhound, a barn owl, rabbits, dormice, hedgehogs,
wombats of which Gabriel was particularly fond, lizards, salamanders, parrots
armadillos and a kangaroo. A fierce zebu
(an Indian bull) was also brought in which turned out to be so ungovernable,
chasing Gabriel into the house and almost uprooting the tree to which it had
been tethered, that it was promptly resold.
The animals were mainly kept in specially
built cages but unfortunately, Rossetti was as ignorantly neglectful of these
myriad pets as he was of the women in his life. Many ate one another, burrowed
their way out of the garden or simply died from lack of adequate nutrition and
care. One of the armadillos was said to
have turned up in a neighbour’s kitchen much to the horror of the cook.
There was even talk of buying a lion, gorilla or an elephant. Not a
garden for the dainty to enter!
Thankfully this didn’t happen.
Images of Jane Morris
Gabriel’s studio also reflected his desire to collect. He collected feminine beauty in the form of
first Lizzie, his Beatrice, then later with his compulsive longing to possess
Jane, the wife of his friend William Morris.
He could not quite do so (though it is generally assumed they were
lovers (perhaps not physically however) but he possessed her as his muse and
model’ Her image looked out on all sides
of his studio, the place where he could indeed possess his loved ladies,
stacked against the walls, sketches and drawings, paintings and photographs. Rossetti was searching all his life for this
inner muse, his anima figure and felt that she eluded him, as do all writers,
musicians and artists for we can never really capture this inner being in flesh
and blood. Both Lizzie and Jane became
beauties in his portraits though neither was especially handsome and even
slightly masculine in their looks. Dark haired Jane seemed to reflect the Italian
genes far more.
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| Jane as Blanzifiore (Snowdrop) ArtMagick |
Gabriel did move into Kelmscott with Jane and William later in life but it was never his home as such, rather reflected the taste of Jane and William and their family. He kept the tenancy of Tudor House till he died. By then the animals were long gone, the garden totally overgrown and Rossetti a complete wreck. Fanny Cornforth remained faithful to him all his life but she was never a great love of his, rather a person
with whom he could relax, feel comfortable and cared for knowing she truly
loved him. It is always good to feel
loved. However, the mores of the times prevailed and Fanny was not considered a suitable person to attend his funeral and kept away. In April, 1882, Rossetti died on Easter Day, aged 54, at Birchington-on-Sea, Kent, his last and temporary home.
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| photo of Jane Morris (Rossetti archive.org) |
Main Sources:
Dante Gabriel Rossetti Painter and Poet by Jan Morris
Weidenfield and Nicholson, London . To my mind one of the best accounts of his
life.
http://preraphaelitesisterhood.com
Dante Gabriel Rossetti, An Illustrated Memorial of His Art
and Life
http://www.rossettiarchive.org/docs/nd497.r8.m33.rad.html
Blanzifiore (Snowdrops) by Dante Gabriel Rossetti :: artmagick.com
http://www.artmagick.com
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