Jane Morris was the subject of many pre-Raphaelite raptures and numerous paintings featuring her shock of auburn locks. (Here she is as Proserpine.) Unlike Rossetti’s wife, Lizzy, she even lived to the gray stage of coiffure. Of course, the case history of Jane Burden Morris and Lizzy Siddal, love and hair interests of the poet-painter Rossetti, is a precautionary tale for all of us who think we would like to “know artists” if not even “fall in love” with them.
They may, after all, only love us for our hair…
The real love interests of Rossetti, however, were apparently a couple of wombats, one named “Top” that slept in the center-piece on the dining table during dinner parties and died very shortly of dyspepsia or alcohol poisoning or something or other.
Rossetti’s wife, Lizzy Siddal, killed herself at a fairly young age too, no doubt over worry about Jane and the wombats plus Laudanum addiction and postpartum depression. Rossetti felt sufficiently remorseful to bury her body with a sheaf of love poems he had written (circa 1869) only to recover his artistic sense of entitlement seven years later and dig up his wife’s body at night under torchlight in order to disinter them and publish them.
Alas, the reviews were bad.
He went mad, addicted to chloral.
For some reason I was reminded of their stories by this.
26 November 2007 at 2:14 pm
OK, the article about the ten pound hairball has to be one of the most bizarre stories I’ve read in quite some time! Each of the Pre-Raphaelites had their own individual quirks and oddities. A hair-eater would have surely fit right in.
26 November 2007 at 3:01 pm
Yeah. But such lovely hair!