"Mr and Miss Rossetti" Elizabeth and Rossetti's Holiday Jaunt During The Estrangement

 

By the end of summer 1858 Elizabeth and Rossetti's fraught seven year romance and quasi engagement looked over. Leaving picturesque Lime Tree View,  in Matlock*, where they had lodged together for the previous eight or so months, as Lizzie convalesced , they parted ways, no longer a couple. Rossetti's reluctance to marry, his infidelities, and his waning infatuation for Elizabeth had  taken its toll on the relationship while Lizzie's bitterness,  struggles with  poor health, and a growing laudanum habit  had added to growing tensions. Rossetti returned  permanently to London, and Elizabeth vanished from his life.  Resuming his life and work  in London, Rossetti embarked on a relationship with Fanny Cornforth,  while no records exist of Elizabeth’s whereabouts or activities, nor is she mentioned in any of Rossetti’s letters. Possibly she had returned to her parents'  home in Southwark. Apparently estranged from each other for the next 20 months,  they next  rekindled their relationship in  April 1860 when  Rossetti rushed to see her in Hastings on learning reportedly from  John Ruskin , alerted by her parents, that she was gravely ill , possibly at the point of death. Conscience- stricken, Rossetti decided to make good his earlier promises to marry her. They married on 23 May 1860 in St Clement's Church, Hastings when she was fit enough to walk down the aisle.

* https://www.andrewsgen.com/matlock/pix/e_matlockhydro_limetreeview1863.htm

However remarkable new documentary evidence has emerged that changes this picture and the timeline of their estrangement. According to Jan Marsh  , Elizabeth and Rossetti  had reunited together, at least briefly, four months earlier to enjoy a travelling holiday together  in Warwickshire around Christmas 1859  staying at an hotel in Stratford-upon-Avon where they signed the register as “Mr and Miss Rossetti”, presumably posing as  relatives to ensure respectability  in accordance with contemporary social conventions.  Their signatures in visitors' books reveal that they visited the Lord Leycester Hospital in Warwick on 23 December 1859 , and  then nearly three weeks later  Shakespeare’s birthplace  in Stratford-upon-Avon on 9 January 1860. The excerpt below , from Norma Hampson on the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust,  notes their signatures in the visitors' records: .https://www.shakespeare.org.uk/explore-shakespeare/blogs/dante-gabriel-rossetti-1828-1882-poet-illustrator-painter 

Lord Leycester Hospital
Wikimedia Commons
 Visited by Elizabeth Siddal and D G Rossetti 23rd Dec, 1859 
 

"On 9 January 1860 Rossetti accompanied by his muse and lover Eleanor Elizabeth (Lizzie) Siddal visited the Birthplace and signed the Visitors’ Book. Having, some years ago, entered the names of visitors at the Lord Leycester Hospital, Warwick on to a data base (now at Warwick County Record Office) I was aware that they had visited there on 23 December 1859 and signed the book in similar fashion. It is thought that they were enjoying a walking holiday in the county."

Yet another twist in the saga of their troubled  relationship, the surprising discovery of their holiday jaunt sheds light on an unknown reunion  between Elizabeth and Rossetti during their separation.  At the very least it changes the time line and narrative of their estrangement  but  tantalisingly  it also adds to its mystery .  Was it a one off holiday reunion,  a brief or more permanent reconciliation or simply a truce between them?  It raises many questions, not least what, if any,  interaction they had after this holiday and prior to their dramatic reunion and unexpected marriage in Hastings.

Love and Hate With Elizabeth Siddal's Handwritten Manuscript

                                               

E Siddal Manuscript - Courtesy of The Ashmoleum Image Library

Ope not thy lips, thy foolish one

Nor turn to me thy face;

The blasts of heaven shall strike thee down

Ere I will give thee grace.

Take thou thy shadow from my path,

Nor turn to me and pray;

The wild wild winds thy dirge may sing

Ere I will bid thee stay.

Turn thou away thy false dark eyes,

Nor gaze upon my face;

Great love I bore thee: now great hate

Sits grimly in its place.

All changes pass me like a dream,

I neither sing nor pray;

And thou art like the poisonous tree

That stole my life away.

Elizabeth Siddal's poetry was never published in her life time.  Handwritten on undated and untitled manuscripts and scraps of paper, it is not clear if they were ever intended for publication. Collected by Rossetti after her death in 1862 , he offered some to his sister,  the poet Christina Rossetti,   for publication but she  deemed them " too hopelessly sad".  Bleak in tone, mainly on themes of the intransience of love,  death and grief,  his brother ,William Rossetti  remarked  on a " darkness that can be felt" within some of her verses. He edited and published some of her poems from the 1890's onwards , underwhelmingly endorsing them as: "restricted in both quantity and development; but... far from undeserving of notice". Siddal's handwritten manuscripts can be viewed online at the  Ashmoleum's Museum Image Library.

 In common with the other Pre-Raphaelites,  Siddal used literary sources such as folk ballads and poems as subjects or inspiration for her art and poetry. While her art was exhibited in a Pre-Raphaelite exhibition in 1857,  her poetry was not always considered worthy of critical analysis, but deemed as personal or biographical musings and writing.  Serena Trowbridge suggests that "the poems do not seem to have gained credibility in critical works on nineteenth-century literature. Partly this is due to Siddall’s mythologised, idolised status”¹ . Increasingly her poems are recognised for poetic merit including  the use of  imagery, tone, form and rhythm. In particular elements such as the emotional charge of her poetry , its directness of tone, and the articulation of the female voice and perspective  have been praised.

D G Rossetti  E Siddal Reading
Fitzwilliam Museum, University of Cambridge

"Siddal creates with "Love and Hate a poem that, by its demands for the addressee's silence and averted gaze, flaunts its own outspokenness"  Constance Hassett ²

First published and given its title by William Rossetti , Love and Hate is startling in its tone of anger. The speaker directly vents her fury at her lover's falseness and toxicity and her bitterness that she has wasted her love and life, and is now left emotionally spent. The target is obviously assumed to be Rossetti  but the reasons less clear as the poem is undated : possibly infidelity , his persistent inability to commit to marriage or their estrangement from 1858-1860 prior to their marriage.  The scathing command of " Nor gaze upon my face" recalls the line  "He feeds upon her face by day and night," from Christina Rossetti's poem In An Artist's Studio" which describes Rossetti's obsessive  portrayals of Siddal's features in the early years of their relationship. 

A  recent collection of  15 of  Elizabeth Siddal poems can be found in The (Mostly) Complete Poems of Elizabeth Eleanor Siddal by Elizabeth Elinor Siddal (Author), Kyle Cassidy (Introduction) 2025 (featured above). There is also a You Tube clip which provides a look inside the book. www.youtube.com/watch?v=nWgt3hYClgM

¹Serena Trowbridge, My Lady’s Soul: The Poems of Elizabeth Eleanor Siddall.

² Constance Hassett,  Elizabeth Siddal's Poetry: A Problem and Some Suggestions