The Wayward Muse (20 page)

“No,” said Morris adamantly. “If we have to leave Red House, I don’t want to live anywhere near it. I don’t want to pass it on my daily walk. I don’t want to see how the new owners destroy it or have to speak politely to them.”

“Where then?” asked Jane, feeling helpless.

“London,” said Morris. “We can live over the shop,” he said with a hard laugh. “It will be better; I can keep a closer eye on things there.”

“London,” repeated Jane bleakly. “Over the shop.”

“Don’t reproach me, Jane, I can’t bear it,” he said, and fell into her lap. It seemed to Jane that the men in her life were desperate for her good opinion but did very little to secure it.

Jane oversaw the packing with a heavy heart. She tried to console herself with the thought that she would have friends close by. Better that they had come to Red House, but what mattered was that they would be together. They could play tag in anyone’s house. They could drink wine and play charades anywhere. With a shiver she remembered the night Rossetti had kissed her.

Morris stayed in London as much as possible. He could not bear to see things in boxes or being driven away. Jane wanted to console her husband, but the truth was, she did blame him. How had he managed things so poorly?

Their new house was not as nice as Red House, of course. It was not even as nice as the place they had lived when they were first married. She had enjoyed London then, but she had not been encumbered with two children, a very small kitchen, and a husband who worked constantly. She had forgotten how sooty everything was, how hard it was to keep things clean. She had forgotten that London gave her a cough and made her back ache even more. Jane knew that Red House had spoiled her, and she told herself that things would improve. After all, she had not lost a child. And Morris was sure he could make his business a success. Sometimes, though, she wondered what would become of her.

Five years into her marriage she was married to a tradesman who kept a shop, a man who scarcely looked at her, though he had once been entranced by her beauty. She examined her face carefully in the mirror, but she did not think her looks had gone. At least, they were much the same as they had been.

J
ANE
was sitting in the garden of Rossetti’s new house, petting the lemur he had just acquired. It was a twitchy, active thing and kept squirming out of her hands. Rossetti was stage-directing as his friend John Robert Parsons attempted to photograph her holding it, but every time he found the right light and the right pose, the lemur would escape into the trees and have to be coaxed down with apple slices.

“What about the wombat?” said Jane. “Would he make a better portrait subject?”

“Top?” asked Rossetti, who was perched on the lowest limb of the tree in case the lemur wriggled free again. “He is heroically good-natured, but about the least romantic-looking creature I’ve ever seen. Like his namesake.”

“Perhaps one of the parrots,” mumbled Parsons from underneath the camera curtain.

“I don’t like birds,” said Jane. “They’re so dirty.”

“Not my red-tailed Polynesian parrot!” exclaimed Rossetti. “I assure you he is as well-groomed as any dandy in London.”

It was wonderful to see Rossetti smile, and joke, and climb trees, and take photographs. For nearly two years he had been a virtual recluse. Even Morris had to admit that his grief and depression were genuine. He had found that he could not stay at the flat where he and Lizzie had lived. She haunted him there, he said. For several months he had stayed with his family and then, with a loan from Ruskin, he had taken the house at 16 Cheyne Walk, with a view of the Thames. Several boats were moored in the river just below, and across the way was a green glimpse of Battersea Park.

The house itself was spacious, a welcome contrast to Jane’s own cramped abode, and though other houses crowded close on either side, the back garden was expansive and filled with plane trees, and the fence that separated it from the others was covered with climbing roses. Rossetti called it Tudor House.

Early on he seldom left Tudor House and received very few visitors. For months he could not paint, and when he began again, the only thing he was interested in was an apotheosis of Lizzie entitled
Beata Beatrix.
Jane was not sure if this canonization of Lizzie was morbid or not. He worked on the painting relentlessly, drawing and painting many versions of it to the exclusion of anything else. In his mind Lizzie became conflated with Dante’s Beatrice, and he developed a fervent belief that Lizzie had been a saint.

When Jane visited they talked about Lizzie. She seldom discussed her own isolation and loneliness. She felt that by comparison she had nothing to complain about, and Rossetti was too preoccupied to ask her about herself.

Then one day Rossetti wrote to Jane and asked if she would like to come to his house to be photographed.

If I had my wish,
he wrote,
you would always be nearby so that I could always look at you, but as that is impossible, I hope that the photographs will serve as memory aids to me when I wish to paint you and you’re far away.

Despite herself, Jane was flattered. It had been so long since her husband had wanted just to look at her. Even when they were in the same room now, he barely seemed to see her. She missed being someone’s muse.

She did not inform her husband of her plans, telling herself that he would not care anyway. Jenny and May could spend the afternoon with their nanny.

So there she was, in the lavender silk dress Rossetti had specifically requested. Laid out on the table were various shawls and sashes and parasols to be used as props. Rossetti had contributed a large black silk umbrella to block or direct the light, and of course his menagerie. Hanging up inside were two other dresses that she had brought just in case, one the color of the chalk cliffs at Dover, the other a watery green.

When she had asked him what she should bring, he had given her a list and then said, “Most of all, my dear, you should bring yourself, with all of your movements and gestures, all of your expressions and moods, all of your thoughts and ideas, for that, after all, is what will make the photographs stunning, and not any of the props.”

Jane colored a little as he said it, and hoped that he did not notice.

Though she had had her photograph taken several times before, Jane was rather excited about it, even though the lemur had muddied her skirt and scratched her hand.

“When will I be able to see what you’ve done?” she asked the photographer, as Rossetti stood behind him to see what he was composing.

“The plates have to be developed while they are still wet,” Parsons answered. “You’ll see them this afternoon.”

“I don’t think I can wait that long,” said Rossetti. “In fact,” he said, leaping down and heading toward the house, “perhaps I can sketch each one as you’re making it. That will give me something to do until they are ready.”

The photographs had turned out well; at least Rossetti thought so. Jane was alarmed to see how very dark and thick her eyebrows looked; they almost touched in the center. She thought her nose looked very large and her forehead did look uncommonly low, but Rossetti assured her that they were perfect.

Several days later Jane went with her husband to a party at John Everett Millais’s. She wore a new dress with some trepidation. She knew that there would be at least one reporter at the party to make notes on “Mrs. Morris’s latest bed coat” and that—no matter how lovely her attire—a caricature of her, looking stooped and witchlike, would appear in the papers in the morning.

Her gown was lovely. It was of pumpkin-colored velvet with trailing devoré sleeves and a wide belt of peacock blue satin. She hoped that she had stayed one step ahead of her imitators and that there would be no one else at the party in a similar dress.

When Jane walked through the door of Millais’s London town house and removed her coat, she was aware of many eyes upon her, judging her. They made note of the foulard print of her Indian shawl, and its colors of saffron, gold, and peach. Some ladies tittered when they saw her sleeves, but Jane was used to it by now and could sweep past without much embarrassment or self-consciousness.

At parties many people asked to be introduced to Jane. It was not so acute as it had been when she first arrived in London, but there were still plenty of curiosity seekers: writers from America, painters from France, soldiers’ wives who had been in India and were just returning home. They all wanted to meet her. At first, worried that she would be a disappointment to them, she had tried to be a good conversationalist, to ask them about their country or their travels or their work, but she soon found that the less she said, the more they liked her. So after a time she gave up trying to charm anyone, and sat laconically while they gazed at her. It was somewhat tedious, but she was used to it.

Tonight it was an English explorer who had been in Papua, New Guinea.

“You compare very favorably to the native women,” he said. “They are not very tall there, but they have coarse hair, like yours. Their skin is somewhat darker, and not quite so sallow.”

“How interesting,” she said.

“Of course, being heathens, they wear only skins, which they have treated and worked to the thinnest, softest leather imaginable. And feathers. They wear the most vibrant, colorful feathers, from birds no white man has even seen.” The explorer gazed at her, shining-eyed, as if he were imagining her in such an outfit.

“I hear it is very hot there,” said Jane. “I imagine they would not be comfortable in a velvet gown such as mine.”

At this moment Rossetti thankfully appeared before her with a plate of strawberries.

“If you will excuse me, sir,” said Rossetti. “We must not allow the lady to become hungry and faint.”

“Of course,” said the explorer, and stood up to find his friend the cartographer and tell him of his conversation with the curious dark lady.

Rossetti sat down beside Jane.

“Enjoying yourself?” he inquired.

“I feel like a bearded lady,” said Jane. “That man will probably write pages in his journal tonight about my low forehead and the odd cast of my skin, as if I were a Hottentot to be studied.”

“There, there,” said Rossetti. “Have a berry.” He picked one up by the stem and solemnly shook the cream from it; Jane did not like cream. When it was bare and red, he held it to her lips. Obediently Jane opened her mouth and took in the sweet fruit. “You know you are the most beautiful woman that silly man is likely to ever meet,” he said, sounding serious suddenly. “No wonder he said foolish things to you. His mind switched off at the sight of you.”

“I think he wants to have me stuffed and put in the British Museum. Or perhaps he’ll take my pelt back to Borneo and show it to my kinswomen there,” said Jane.

“How dull it would be if the room were full of English roses, with no Dark Lady in sight,” said Rossetti.

“I sometimes wish I were as blond as Fanny Cornforth,” Jane sighed.

“Perish the thought!” Rossetti cried. “The explorer has bewitched you. He must be punished. We shall write about him in
our
journals tonight.” The man was still in their line of sight, chattering away to poor Georgie. “I will say that with that high color, he almost certainly drinks. And might there be a touch of madness in him, from spending too much time with the native women to whom you compare so favorably?”

To even hint at syphilis was shocking and enlivening. Jane already felt better. “I will say that he lacks imagination,” she said.

“The cruelest cut of all,” said Rossetti. He held up another berry and again she parted her lips and took it in.

“What are you two whispering about over here in the corner?” said Georgie, approaching them, “and may I join in? I’ve just had the most horrid conversation with that red-faced man about”—she sucked in her breath as she attempted to say the words—“female nudity! Can you imagine?”

Rossetti and Jane looked at each other and then burst into gales of laughter.

“We’ve been casting hoodoo curses on him,” said Jane, making a place for Georgie next to her. On her other side, Rossetti held up another strawberry, cupping his hand underneath it to catch its juice, and she took it into her mouth.

Georgie fidgeted uncomfortably. “Did he say something rude to you, Jane?” she asked.

“You have spilled cream on your velvet, you messy girl,” said Rossetti, pulling out his handkerchief. He pretended to dab the shoulder of Jane’s dress, but she knew it was just an excuse to touch her. She tried not to gasp with pleasure and desire.

“I’ll just go find Ned,” Georgie said, standing up quickly, her eyes resolutely fastened to the crowd in front of her and not the couple beside her.

“Tell him we’re forming a Hottentot Society,” called Rossetti as Georgie hurried away. “Ask him if he wants to join us!”

Jane knew she was behaving outrageously, and for a moment she flushed with shame. She knew she was allowing Rossetti to lure her into a compromising position, but she couldn’t help herself.

“Is something wrong?” asked Rossetti, concerned. “Are you not enjoying the party?”

The truth was, Jane had never had so much fun in all her life, and like an addict, having tasted her poison she could not give it up now. She reached over and touched Rossetti’s shoulder and felt him shudder under her hand.

“I am perfectly happy,” she said.

When Morris came to collect her, the bowl of strawberries contained only pale pink, seed-flecked cream and Rossetti was stroking Jane’s wrist under the guise of arranging her hands in a pose.

She was nervous on the carriage ride home, waiting for Morris to say something, to chastise her for her behavior.

“Did you have a good time?” he asked. He was looking out the window of the carriage, so she could not see his face, and his tone was neutral.

“Yes, it was a very nice party,” said Jane.

“I thought you must be very bored, to sit in the corner with Rossetti all evening,” he said.

“I was just trying to avoid the explorer,” she said quickly.

“I was thinking about the font for the text in the All Saints window,” said Morris. “I copied it from the book of hours in the Bodleian, the one I told you about. But now I think it may be too rounded, too feminine. I think something more square and unabashedly Gothic is needed. I wonder if they have anything else that would be useful there. I may have to go to Oxford on Monday. Or maybe I’ll call at the British Museum.” He spoke to her but Jane knew it did not matter to him whether she was there or not. It did not matter whether or not she replied. He had not even noticed Rossetti stroking her wrist. She should have been relieved but instead was furious. Morris obviously paid no attention to her at all.