NECROCITY TIMES - Issue #2 - VALENTINE'S SPECIAL

True Story: True Love Beyond the Grave

TRUE LOVE BEYOND THE GRAVE:
THE STORY OF DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI AND ELIZABETH SIDDAL
By Silvana G. Sánchez

It begins in England, in the middle of the 19th century, with the Twelfth Night, a painting by Walter Howell Deverell...

"You fellows can't tell what a stupendously beautiful creature I have found. By Jove! She's like a queen, magnificently tall, with a lovely figure, a stately neck, and a face of the most delicate and finished modelling: the flow of surface from the temples over the cheek is exactly like the carving of a Phidean goddess...I got my mother to persuade the miraculous creature to sit for me for my Viola in 'Twelfth Night', and to-day I have been trying to paint her; but I have made a mess of my beginning. To-morrow she's coming again; you two should come down and see her...!"

—Walter Howell Deverell about his discovery of Elizabeth Siddal, as told by fellow pre-Raphaelite, William Holman Hunt.

Elizabeth worked in a millinery, Mrs. Tozer's hat shop, when she was discovered by painter Walter Howell Deverell. Her image captured as Viola in the Twelfth Night would become her introduction into the pre-Raphaelite sphere. One of her most famous portrayals was Ophelia by Sir John Everett Millais, but it would be Dante Gabriel Rossetti who would steal her heart and image forever.

Ophelia, by Sir John Everett Millais.

Rossetti not only became her lover but her tutor and mentor as he encouraged her art. Aside from writing poems, Lizzie drew and painted—though her work to this day is considered unpolished.

The Lady of Shallot by Elizabeth Siddal.

After a tempestuous love affair, Rossetti and Lizzie married in 1860. Theirs was a tragic story. Lizzie became addicted to Laudanum, they endured the loss of a stillborn daughter and only two years after their marriage, Lizzie died of a Laudanum overdose at the age of 32.

Sancta Lilias, 1874. Elizabeth Siddal as portrayed by Dante Gabriel Rossetti.

Driven by guilt and despair, Rossetti buried in her coffin his only manuscript of the poems he had been working on with Lizzie.

Soon after that, Rossetti moved into Tudor House at 16 Cheyne Walk, in Chelsea. This home, he shared with his brother William Michael and former lover Fanny Cornforth—who now acted upon housekeeping duties.

Harrowing years would follow Rossetti after Lizzie's death. Surgeon John Marshall, friend of Rossetti's, claimed: "for two years he saw her ghost every night!"

This was the era of Spiritualism and certain she had a message to convey, William Michael and Rossetti engaged in several séances to communicate with Lizzie and unravel her wishes beyond the grave.

There is little known about the messages collected during these séances, but it seems worth noting that the sessions were conducted by Fanny Cornforth herself. One may wonder if it would not cause grief to dear long-gone Lizzie to communicate with her husband through the channeling of his former lover.

All that is known is that seven years after Elizabeth Siddal's death, wrapped in eccentric debauchery and a bohemian lifestyle, Rossetti decided to exhume Lizzie's body in order to retrieve their book of poems for publication.

After the exhumation, Rossetti wrote to Swinburne saying "Had it been possible to her, I should have found the book upon my pillow the night she was buried; and could she have opened the grave no other hand would have been needed."

Legends arose in regards to Lizzie's appearance after almost a decade of her slumber underground. With hair, longer so and tinged in gold, an incorrupt body with immaculate gentle countenance lay on her final resting place in Highgate Cemetery, outside of London.

Was this her message to Rossetti beyond the grave? After a lifetime of many frustrated endeavors in the Arts, was Lizzie determined her verses saw the light of day? Would she not rest until her poetry's publication?

The answers to these questions are confined to the grave.

This author has had occasion to visit Siddal and Rossetti's grave, and I must say, theirs is the most peaceful gravesite in all of Highgate Cemetery. Strange things happen on the West side of the historical Victorian graveyard... but that's a tale for another time.

Rossetti and Elizabeth Siddal's grave at Highgate Cemetery.