*Ophelia 1852, painted by Sir John Everett Millais (public domain reproduction)
If you appreciate and love arts, there is no way you will not sigh deeply in front of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood works, especially if you love mysterious and enigmatic motifs. There is one particular face of a special beauty that at the end started representing the whole Brotherhood. That is and was the face of our other-wordly Ophelia. She was real and she existed and she walked among the humans between 1829 and 1862.
Elizabeth Eleanor Siddall was born in Hatton Garden in a working-class family. There are no records of Siddall attening any school, but we do know that she could read and write and that she was very passionate about the poetry. The love for the poetry was awaken by a poem she had discovered. It was a poem written by Alfred Tennyson and it made her start writing her own poetry.
Miss Siddall was a very keen artist and she also drew. In 1849 she was introduced to Walter Deverell and through him, she met the members of the Brotherhood. Elizabeth Siddall started her relationship with the Brotherhood as a model. Her beauty struck them and impressed them, as she had dark, red hair and big eyes.
The painting that you can see above is one of the most famous Pre-Raphaelite works, if not the most famous one. While posing for Millais, she was floating in the tub every day, deep into the winter. The water was warmed by the oil lamps which were put under the tub. In one ocassion, the lamps went out and, as she did not complain, she floated for hours in cold water. After that, she got ill with pneumonia. Her father was overwhelmed with these circumstances and he made Millais pay for the doctor's bills.
Dante Gabriel Rossetti met miss Elizabeth in 1849. She was to be his muse for years to come. Rossetti stopped her from modelling for other painters. There are thousands of drawings of her made by Rossetti. His best known work is Beata Beatrix from 1863, started and finished a year after Siddall's death. Words are useless here and there is no way to describe this mystic work of art.
*Beata Beatrix 1863, painted by Dante Gabriel Rossetti (public domain reproduction)
Elizabeth mainly did sketches, watercolours and drawings, in a very old-fashioned Arthurian legend manner and with medieval themes. Her work and her writing were much admired and appreciated by the critics. There was always something medieval and ancestral in her work.
Siddall and Rossetti got married and it was said that they avoided their contacts, mainly stayed at home and were absorbed in their work and each other.
Elizabeth Siddall was ill and fragile all throughtout her life. Some historians say she had tuberculosis, some that she was anorexic and others that she suffered intestinal disorder. She was also depressed and addicted to laudanum (an opiate used as a sedative in England).
After giving birth to a stillborn daughter in 1861, she suffered severe post-partum depression. Later that year, she got pregnant once again.
In February 1862, she overdosed on laudanum being just 32 years old. There are suggestions that there was a suicide note found on her sleeping dress, where she asked Rossetti to take care of her invalid brother. Be that as it may, the note must have been burned by Rossetti.
Rossetti buried her with the only manuscript of the poems he had written for her. Seven years later, he exhumed the body, retrieved the copy and published all the poems which were saved.
I have chosen one Siddall's poem for this post as it struck me hard. It was written after her traumatic experience of giving a birth to a stillborn.
At Last
by Elizabeth Siddal
O mother, open the window wide
And let the daylight in;
The hills grow darker to my sight
And thoughts begin to swim.
And mother dear, take my young son,
(Since I was born of thee)
And care for all his little ways
And nurse him on thy knee.
And mother, wash my pale pale hands
And then bind up my feet;
My body may no longer rest
Out of its winding sheet.
And mother dear, take a sapling twig
And green grass newly mown,
And lay them on my empty bed
That my sorrow be not known.
And mother, find three berries red
And pluck them from the stalk,
And burn them at the first cockcrow
That my spirit may not walk.
And mother dear, break a willow wand,
And if the sap be even,
Then save it for sweet Robert’s sake
And he’ ll know my soul’s in heaven.
And mother, when the big tears fall,
(And fall, God knows, they may)
Tell him I died of my great love
And my dying heart was gay.
And mother dear, when the sun has set
And the pale kirk grass waves,
Then carry me through the dim twilight
And hide me among the graves.
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