We are immeasurably indebted to the late Violet Hunt, for her reconstruction of the period, and we have profited by her recording the names of many of the minor characters in this narrative, though we differ in our attitude and approach to The Wife of Rossetti.

It will be remembered that manuscripts were freely circulated among the writers of the fifties of the last century, therefore we have in several instances, referred to books, prior to the date of publication.

The character of Godfrey Lushington, as outlined in this romance, is presented in a purely symbolic manner, for the sake of completing the old pattern and inspiring a new cycle of the original *Order of Sir Galahad*, founded at Oxford by William Morris.

Lausanne
Lugano

1948

I

If only he would stop talking.

She had heard it all before but mostly from Mum and Annie. He read to them evenings and with his black scarf, his thin face and long hands, sitting with his book under the lamp, he might have been that other (the only picture in the small room), blackened, almost defaced, whose very name they had forgotten - Christopher, Mum said they said in Sheffield, but it was at best an indifferent likeness, perhaps only a copy and a bad copy at that, so it hadn't been sold up, along with the effects at Hope Hall. It was Dad's auctioneer cousin who said it would bring nothing. Let Charles Siddall have Christopher Siddall - leaving out that one "l"; his grandfather had added it, after the failure of the flax and bankruptcy.

It was Anna Grant de Hope who married Jacobus Sidall - and again in her thoughts, she spelt it differently, though Gabriel said she was Sidal really - de Grant de Hope.

2

Sudel or Suddel was carved on some of the oldest tombstones. Gabriel said he would take her to Hope Dale to see the carvings on the church front and "inside, there is sure to be," he said, "Per Bend Vert and Gules: an Eagle displayed, somewhere."

That was the Greaves quartering.

Who would expect Dad to talk about his family? He had cut her short once when she was a little girl. She had never forgotten. She had not asked him again.

It was about the later coat that he was talking, *Three Birds* and the word *Honour*.

It was after Harry began to call her the ginger-cat, that she had chosen the Eagle. They were the *Three Birds*, it was Annie's idea really. Annie, Lizzie and Lyddie (Clara didn't count then) were *Three Birds*, Anna, Elizabeth and Lydia. There were seven of them altogether, that is counting Charlie. Annie and Charlie were both born in Sheffield; Charlie died there. She, Lyddie, Clara and the two boys were born in the old house, number five, which Dad had taken over for his business. "This is number eight, Kent Place," she said to herself. It was necessary to remind herself of the *Three Birds*, having

3

remembered Gabriel's joy in his discovery of _Gules_ and
_Eagle displayed_. That is what she had wanted to ask Dad -
what are _Gules_?

She had not asked Dad, neither had she asked Gabriel.

Nor had she told Gabriel that she had chosen the
_Eagle_. She had told no-one. Moreover, to be on the safe
side, she had kept the _Three Birds_, that is her share in
them. "I am Elizabeth Siddall," she said to herself and
that in the beginning was the bird in the middle.

She had left her room and come across the river,
dressed up (for to dress as she used to, was "dressing up"
now) in the very dress she had worn at Mrs. Tozer's. She
kept it carefully for these occasions. It was as if Dad
were an actor or a clergyman, talking out of a book and
talking about honour. She did not say, "I am engaged to
marry Mr. Rossetti," for that wouldn't have made any dif-
ference. She had come to say something else, at last
secure. But she might have been a prospective governess
being interviewed, whose credentials are not satisfactory.
This would not be the drawing-room itself, but a small
ante-room. There would be a garden outside. The new sheds
and houses had encroached on their old play-ground and you

5

three still; though Annie had got married, Clara had joined
the ranks of the *Three Birds*.

That is why she blessed Harry and if only Dad would
stop talking, she would ask him if that new school had
agreed to keep on Harry. It was Harry hissing and spitting
"gin-gin-ginger-cat" that had driven her to take refuge in
the fancy that her hair was like the feathers of a golden
eagle. But she had to remember that she was also one of
the *Three Birds* and the first now and "an example to the
others"; she heard her father saying, "you are an example
to the others and - my favourite daughter."

...

...

If only Lyddy would come in. Could she interrupt him
to ask him about Lyddy? Lyddy had had the room to herself,
and that was another reason for moving across the river. It
wasn't only Gabriel, though it was all Gabriel. Lyddy could
never sleep lying down.

"I wanted Mum and Lyddy and you, all together - to tell
you the news." But he thought it was something else.

"Your mother went with James to fetch Lydia from your
Aunt Day's."

6

Lyddy was in Aunt Lucy Day's shop now; she slept there, working-days.

No-one had ever crossed the river to Cranbourne Street, not that she remembered, to fetch her home from Mrs. Tozer's.

"Do they always call for Lyddy on Saturday?"

"When I can spare James."

"Why?" asked Elizabeth Siddall.

At least he had stopped talking about honour or perhaps that is what he was still saying, but saying it differently and saying it about Lyddy. It wasn't the crowds and anyway, she liked walking alone. What had happened that they had gone to Aunt Day's shop to fetch Lyddy? She could not really believe that they went often. She had been so happy when Mum's friend, out of her Euston Road days, had said she could work in the shop. She had been in there with Mum when she was a child, and admired Mum's old friend who wasn't married then. But she married Mr. Tozer. He was a little old gentleman and it seemed funny, a man in a bonnet-shop. But his father was, he said, French and he spelt his name differently. It was something about war that brought them to England, and he called her mademoiselle and said, would she like to help them.

8

She thought of the times she had hemmed the black square of that special soft cotton and of how she had scolded Clara, more than once, for polishing the table with it.

"But I always know where to find Dad's duster," Clara told her.

The violin-case was standing in the corner.

The leather folder with the music was lying on the table.

She realised that she was sitting "tight in her chair", the way she had so often sat, lifting her head from her sewing, about to take a deep breath, as Annie flung down her scissors, and (firm as Mum and grown-up now and going to be married) rapped out, "Harry, no more fooling." It was for Mum's sake they stood it. Mum said he was growing too fast and all lads were a bit wild at that age.

It was Mr. Tozer's idea really.

He even cut the rounds of velvet for her, but he let her measure and cut the inside circles of ordinary cloth to wipe the pens on.

The black velvet pen-wiper was still on his table in the office.

11

checking up on the accounts, had really given her her place
there; Dad said she was good at numbers. She was happy
when Mrs. Tozer called her out of the shop, into the little
office and said, "Lizzie, just see what's wrong here," and
she could sit there, after she got the sum right, nursing
Tabby and warming her toes at the tiny fender. She remembered
when it happened.

Mrs. Tozer said, "Thanks, Lizzie, and now will you give
a hand to Jenny and Ellen; that buyer had all the bonnets
down." She was reaching up, she was taller than the others,
putting the boxes back on the upper shelf, when she felt
something. She turned with her arms still lifted. It
wasn't a face reflected in the window. It was a face in
the window.

It was two faces.

They were looking at her, that was the strange thing
about it.

...

...

But she mustn't think of the faces in the window, until
she found out what Dad meant about war. Yet somehow the
faces in the window and Mr. Allingham by the street-lamp on

15

"Mrs. Deverell didn't really want a bonnet. Mum said that was real proof of her son's intentions, his bringing his mother in to choose a bonnet, before even he spoke to me. It was, in fact, his mother asked me. 'But I must speak to your mother first,' she said. I remember how she said it. Mrs. Deverell asked me if I liked reading, she didn't ask me if I read Shakespeare, she just went on with it; did I not think Viola, somehow, was reminiscent of Rosalind? I said, no, Viola was the sea and Rosalind was the forest. 'Oh, I mean,' she said, 'their doublet and hose. Would you mind wearing a page-costume, the jerkin comes almost to the knees, with pointy shoes and a Rosalind-sort of cap to hide away the aureole.' She meant my hair. It was my hair they wanted for their pictures.

"There was another Shakespeare, Mr. Millais' _Ophelia_. Mr. Hunt did Silvia and another Viola. Mr. Deverell didn't finish _The Marriage of Rosalind and Orlando_ but Mr. Rossetti said he would finish it. Mr. Deverell had what he called _The Flight of an Egyptian Ibis_ in mind but he didn't even begin. He wanted me to do _Ophelia_ again. Mr. Deverell died a year ago last winter."

She waited for her father to say something.

24

I can't say I helped much this evening, but the old blighter worries lest *come away, come away, death* should interfere with the final, pluperfect version, interpretation, illumination of his three-ringed circus. Those circles, you know, can't say I understand them, though I've explained them to you often enough, in my lucid Bacchic moments. Eh, what?

He was looking at the picture.

"Your girl's a bit scrawny even for Viola," he said.

Deverell went on painting.

"I like myself, though, as Feste - but then, I always like myself, anyway.

"But then, there's this too. Does he mean by cypress, the cypress-wood box or coffin? I don't like the Elizabethans, do you, really? Of course, if you're like some people and have a pull with the committee and your Guv'nor runs a school for teaching imbeciles how not to paint and you do hack-work yourself, in your odd moments, and call it *Fête Champêtre* or *The Masked Ball* or whatever it was you called the last one - Dev, I positively blush to think I know you. That was a rotten picture the Academy hung last year; couldn't you have left it at that? But nothing succeeds like success and it's a pity - I will find myself on the line, after all the

25

trouble I've taken to keep off it and to damn their
stinking old Academy. And with that, too - Oh, so there's
your model."

It was the first time Elizabeth Siddall had heard
herself referred to as a model.

Deverell said, "I'm through painting. Get your things,
Gab, we'll go immediately."

Automatically, as Walter Deverell stuck his paint-brush
in the jaw, she pulled off her cap.

"So that's who you are," said Gabriel Rossetti.

She was only wearing the jerkin over her dress, that
evening.

She went on unlacing the strings.

She slipped her arms out of the sleeves.

She folded the jacket, as she always did, and laid it
on the chair below the estrade. She laid the cloth cap
on it. She did not look at Dante Gabriel Rossetti.

Her hair was not really coming down.

She found her outdoor coat, hanging on the peg behind
the door, where she had left it.

Walter Deverell would understand her not saying good-
night. He was putting away the easel.

26

He always left it standing. He was putting it away,
so as to give her time to slip out.

"I don't think I caught your name, Miss, did I?"
said Gabriel Rossetti. "Mine's Punchinello, yours to
favour. I mean, Madame, yours to command. It was a
night on the Rialto - no, not Shakespeare - this is another
story; do you remember the moon? Come, don't say you have
forgotten me?

"Madame, it was I, not Titian who invented your hair."

"I am poor brother Lippo, by your leave. Do you
really like Browning? I don't. Taken all in all, he and
the would-be laureate, I mean Tennyson, are provincial.
And likewise, Mrs. Browning, O great god Pan by the river.
It is, Madame, exactly what I mean. They never got out
of Pimlico. Do you like poppies? You see the black coal
in the centre. But Lor', Madame, we are not in Manchester -
or is it Newcastle, they bring coals to?"

She was shivering, though it was not late and it was
still mid-summer.

"I can't wait for Mum and James and Lyddy; will you
tell them?" she said.

She was standing. She glanced down at the music-folder,

27

with what Annie had told her was a Church Eagle, stamped
or embossed upon it.

"It's by way of a commission," she said, "you'll tell
the others. But for that -

"I mean, it's an undertaking and already paid for.
It's for a year's work. I couldn't forfeit the promise
I've made. I'll come back when I can stay and tell them
properly. It's for - design and drawing. Mr. Ruskin wants
a whole portfolio."

Her father said, "And who is Mr. Ruskin?"

31

both about a girl who had gone wrong.

Mr. Hunt's girl was Annie Miller in *The Awakened Conscience*. It was Mary Howitt who protested that Annie Miller was getting herself talked about with Gabriel. Mr. Hunt had stipulated, as Mr. Allingham had done with her, before he brought Walter Deverell to look in the Cranbourne Street shop-window, that Annie was to sit for no-one else, only he expected Mr. Boyce. It was while Annie was sitting for Mr. Boyce that Gabriel got to know her, though they had all met her before. Mr. Hunt was having her educated with the intent to marry. It was Mary Howitt who thought with Barbara, it was a pity, Annie Miller throwing away her chances. And with Gabriel, it was only (he told Mr. Allingham) for a joke, "Hunt stole my picture," he said, "so I'm stealing his model."

Mr. Hunt's picture was a success, it and *The Light of the World*, last May at the Academy. Not that she liked Annie Miller. She didn't pretend to like her. She knew that Mary Howitt and Bessie Parkes, who Barbara always kept rooms for, at Scalands Gate, were working for her good. That is, Annie Miller's good, but it involved something that she had no care then to be discussed openly -

43

of giving up Mrs. Tozer's, until Mr. Hunt came in, one Sunday afternoon. Mrs. Deverell came over to the studio to ask first if she would mind; a friend of Walter's, she said, was planning to do another scene from Shakespeare and he didn't want to begin until he had seen Walter's picture, in case it might appear that he was taking Walter's subject. In fact, they were much alike, Mr. Hunt was doing Silvia in *Two Gentlemen of Verona*.

Mrs. Deverell presented Mr. Hunt and excused herself as there were other guests in the drawing-room.

Mr. Hunt said, not knowing anything about her, would she sit for him?

Walter Deverell said that Miss Siddall was not a model.

Walter Deverell tried to dissuade her from sitting to other people. She did not read now but they talked together, in the "rest". He told her that he had wanted to be an actor but the family were against it and he was glad now that he had stayed on at the School. The stage offered, at best, only a precarious living. He was interested in her writing but he said that that, too, would never earn a living.

She said, "I've been thinking it out, since Mr. Hunt came in last Sunday." She explained to him that twenty-four

47

Walter Deverell said he actually had a place in mind,
but he had to wait till next quarter to move in.

The studio he told her was set back in a garden. It
was number seventeen Red Lion Square.

But he did not tell her what William Allingham had
told him.

...

...

Mary Howitt helped Mrs. Howitt edit *The People's Journal* and *Household Words*, while Mr. Howitt was away.

Mrs. Howitt was working separately as well, writing
a book on the new faith.

Mary should not have shown her the letter, but Mary
didn't know Mr. Allingham then, and Mary didn't know that
she had met Mr. Allingham. Gabriel took him out to the
Hermitage, after they had printed *Sister Helen*; Mr.
Allingham wrote poetry. But Mrs. Howitt made no reference
to the letter when Gabriel presented Mr. Allingham to her
and Mary in the garden.

Elizabeth wondered if Mary remembered the letter and
the poem that Mr. Allingham had enclosed with it.

51

"Walter even as a child, was always absorbed in
Shakespeare," Mrs. Deverell said, after Ann had left the
tea-things. "But except for a Mr. Garrick or a Miss
Siddons, there's hardly a career in acting, is there?
He was always casting everyone he knew for a part - now Miss
Siddall - "

Mr. Allingham put down his cup and looked at her, as
if he had never seen her before.

Elizabeth Siddall held her cup steady.

"Miss Siddall has agreed - she also is fond of Shakes-
peare - as a special favour, to sit for Walter in his
*Twelfth Night*."

Mr. Allingham said, "I trust Walter does a faithful
likeness of Miss Siddall."

"He has done his own portrait excellently. There is
something about Walter. He was hardly fitted for a solici-
tor's office - he may have told you how concerned we were
about it. We couldn't have him go on the stage, but we
agreed to his leaving his uncle Travel's office, if he
would give up acting. Mr. Dyce and Mr. Herbert at the
Academy, recommended his painting highly, so his father

58

home but I want a place to work in. The sneaks stole my
books and furniture at Newman Street, while I was at Brown's.
That is to say, it was Bill's books mostly that paid the
back rent. You're at the Schools all day. I can make do
with this place and I can use your model. What an excellent
arrangement this is. I got your address from the porter's
wife, you know, Fanny."

Fanny?

Elizabeth Siddall did not want to think of Fanny.

Fanny called her the civet-cat.

But Fanny did not really matter, not that first year
at Red Lion Square.

She could not now recall the exact sequence, there were
preliminary sketches, then Gabriel would toss aside a sheet
of drawing-paper and say, "We'll finish Saint George later.
I must find a proper brocade first, for the Princess Sabra.
I've a half-offer for a Triptych but I must do Dante.
There's the *Salutation* and I must finish the *Dream*."

The first drawing was a sketch for the *Salutation*.

She did not move when Walter said, "My hour's up."

Gabriel said, "Mine isn't."

Walter said, "The lady is not a model. I promised a -

60

"I'm sorry," he said, "Gabriel, but I can't kick you
out."

"Not that I don't like Raphael, it's them that followed
after. And them that followed them that followed after. A
fashionable set-piece painter. Block in your pyramid forma-
tion, regard your colour and proportion it discreetly. Let
light shine from this direction or from that direction, but
never from any other. Mechanical rules laid down by Reynolds;
there is no God but Raphael and Reynolds is his prophet. But
you know all this, Dev."

...

...

And another day (she and Gabriel were alone in the
studio):

"The blessed Damozel leaned out
From the gold bar of heaven,
Her eyes were deeper than the depth
Of waters stilled at even;
She had three lilies in her hand
And the stars in her hair were seven.

I wrote that when I was nineteen and now I've found you,
would you mind telling me if your lilies were the usual,
or could they be white iris? But why white, you ask me,

64

mentioned Madame Tussaud."

"Lizzie," he stopped storming, "I almost suspect sometimes, you have a sense of humour. Or aren't you trying to be funny?"

"I can be funny without trying," she said.

"Mary wrote me you were dying."

"Well - what of it?"

"I tell you, Lizzie - and I went out to the Hermitage to tell Mrs. Howitt - "

"How was Mrs. Howitt?"

"Damn - I went out with Allingham, your precious Allingham who started all the mischief, to clear away - misapprehension. These misunderstandings - "

"Mary Howitt's waiting downstairs. Don't shout."

But he went out to the corridor and screamed down Mrs. Elphick's narrow staircase, "Come up here, Mary."

Elizabeth Siddall did not know why, but the scene was somehow familiar. It might almost have been one of the old houses across the bridge, beyond the tanyards, or it might even have been Kent Place or Aunt Day's rooms above the shop in Pentonville.

Elizabeth Siddall was at home here, Mrs. Elphick might

76

be better cared for. Gabriel hasn't enough to keep a wife
on." Elizabeth didn't want Emma to go on. She did not
want to know what Mrs. Rossetti thought about Gabriel's
"model", as she called her, or "that girl from the bonnet-
shop." Mrs. Rossetti could hardly say with her second son,
"I never heard her speak other than correctly", for as
far as she could recollect, she had said nothing.

Gabriel did all the talking.

He was good on these occasions and he was shrewd and
business-like when his mind was on it, when he was getting
the better of someone, like luring Annie Miller from Mr.
Hunt, because he was annoyed that Hunt stole, as he said,
his picture.

Gabriel could be patient and his easy negligence could
hide a predatory something - what she meant was a cat stalk-
ing a bird. Harry had called her gin-gin-ginger and now
there was that Fanny, the wife of Hughes who used to be the
porter at Somerset House, calling her a cat too, a civet-cat,
whatever kind of a cat that was. Fanny came to sit here
sometimes, in the studio, but now she was engaged to Gabriel
she could stop that simply by setting up her easel. Fanny
didn't like sitting while she was around; Elizabeth knew

77

that. It was Fanny he had found at last suitable for the
girl in the *Bridge* picture.

"There is money in the *Bridge*," Gabriel told her,  
"that's why I want to finish it, so as to cut that door  
through, and make some alterations and improvements in the  
place here." He had already sold *Found*, but he was selling  
it again. "I have only to dash off another copy, but I  
must finish this first; I've sold *Found*. I've as good  
as sold *Lost*. This is the *Bridge*." It was the same  
picture.

She did not want to have another scene, not just now.
It was all so confusing. How could he sell a picture
that wasn't finished, and then sell it again? He had only
changed the title. She did ask him, "What became of *The
Drover*?" But that time, perhaps it was just as well, he
didn't sense the taste and sting in the words and the
strength she got from saying them. Fortunately, he didn't
realize that she was being funny.

She was the Dove now.

What had she not been?

She was Ruskin's Princess Ida.

They had called her the Cid; they got that from Mr.

82

anything she had ever seen with Miss Herbert) Mary had refused to speak to Gabriel. They would refuse to speak to Gabriel. There was something stronger, even than that charm, that was, someone said, like a spell that Gabriel cast on people.

But the very thing that was standing, as you might say, at her elbow, waiting to rescue her, had betrayed her.

It was like a conspiracy.

It was *Three Birds and the word Honour*.

It was three circles certainly, out of Mr. Rossetti's book on Dante.

And maybe it was *Three Birds*, but one of them was *an Eagle displayed*.

It was a hawk really, like they carried on their wrists, like the picture in *The Triumph of Death*, an old book that John Millais's father had given Gabriel. It was, Gabriel had explained, a collection of engravings from old frescoes from the *campo santo* at Pisa. It was this very book, he had explained, that had started them in their ideas; these painters looked at things differently, they were pre-Raphael, that is before the Renaissance in Italy. The little flowers

93

thought that he might safely broach the subject. He sug-
gested Ruskin joining him that evening, with another fellow,
at the Academy in Sloane Street. Ruskin said, "on no
account, Ressetti;" Gabriel noted the deliberate mis-
pronunciation of his surname, "I have heard of their so-
called psychic investigation. On no account and at no
time will I go there to a séance."

...

...

The other fellow was waiting as pre-arranged, in what
Gabriel called the foyer of the Academy. Gabriel had dined
after a fashion and wined out of proportion.

"Ressetti," he said, "a fellow called me Ressetti,
before dinner. It's true, the guv'nor's father was a
blacksmith - my guv'nor's, that is. His deals in wines,
a better business altogether. Ruskin something-or-other
and Domecq. Adéle Domecq broke his heart the first time;
he kept a glove of hers eighteen years, even after the
fatal Euphemia (Mrs. Millais as is) came trailing clouds
of glory. Ever heard of Domecq?"

95

Even in this half-light, they go phosphorescent."

Gabriel staggered forward like a moth to the flame.

His friend dragged him back. "We can wait here.
We'll go in at the break. The second part is always more
amusing."

"Of Vasto, the Abruzzi, the counts of Della Guardia -
why Rossetti?"

"It's something on your 'scutcheon, I'll wager, a rose
or rosette," his friend said.

A late arrival left the street door open. The night
air seemed a palpable presence in the dim hall.

"Br-rr," said Gabriel, "I never did like fresh air.
Let's find a warm pub."

But his friend said, "I've got to wait here."

"For why, Gus?" said Gabriel.

"Well - er - he isn't certain how he'll feel, after
his talk. I sometimes help him."

Gabriel Rossetti seemed suddenly sobered. "You mean
it's all fake - or do you actually - see things yourself?"

"No," said Gus, "I'm a sort of secretary, and it's by
no means all fake. He keeps the afternoons for maiden-ladies,

96

for simple-Simon faith-healing and the mediums from Bayswater. He can't do everything and he can't waste his - his power. Depending who turns up - no, Norton Ely is no fake."

"I didn't know that you were in the business, Gus. You just say that."

"By no means, Gabriel."

Gabriel straightened in his chair. He reached for a cigar, but his hand rested on his breast-pocket and Gabriel Rossetti forgot the cigar. Those voices - those voices from the Abruzzi - the guv'nor's older brother who started him on Dante - a priest.

"You know Italian?"

"No," said Gus.

"Ely know Italian?"

"No," said Gus.

"You say you're not in the business, you're lying to me."

"No," said Gus.

"What do you do, anyway - and why do you tell me all this?"

"We're friends, aren't we?"

97

"I thought you were a painter - Charles Augustus - "

"Call me Manuel."

"You're a weird card," said Gabriel Rossetti, "but I
like you. I'm sick of these damn' English - you really
are a Spaniard?"

"Portuguese," said Manuel.

"Your English is too good."

"My father was a copyist at the Prado," said Manuel,
"half English."

"(He is no fool, is Gus," thought Gabriel Rossetti,
"he wants something.") Gabriel tried to re-capture his
vague stare, he felt the line tauten across his forehead,
what his father had been wont to call the bar of Angelo,
of Michaelangelo, a sign they said, of genius.

He thought of _casa Rossetti_ and the crowd there.
His mother had lived in retirement, since the death of
Gabriele. Gabriel had loved his father.

There was Mazzini and Father Gavazzi, always tender
with him. It wasn't that Pierce connection of his mother's.
It wasn't Bloomsbury, it was Malta and Lady Moore and a
refugee - a poet. What had the voice said?

The bar of Angelo glowed fiery but cold, across his

98

forehead.

What had the voice said - inheritors?

War.

Not that he cared a damn for Balaclava.

"What do you want, Gus?"

"You know people."

"What sort of people?"

"Oh, interested in - in copies of old masters."

"I see. You mean Louis the Seventeenth?"

"Who's Louis the Seventeenth?"

"Louis Naundorf. But I've lost track of Louis. What about Caterina Cornaro?"

"Who's Caterina?"

"Another old friend; that sneak Browning's done a poem on her. I'm doing a picture for it - Queen of Cyprus."

"Caterina?"

"Well, one of her family once was."

Gabriel sank back in his chair. "Come out to a pub."
He tried to re-capture his sodden insouciance. He thought
of Ida de St. Elme whose lover had been a marshal of
Napoleon.

He remembered Paganini, Michael Costa and again Mazzini.

99

"But the rest were dancing-teachers and piano-tuners."

"Piano-tuners can be useful."

The cards were on the table - or was this just a joke?
In any case, Gabriel was an old hand at this game. He had
been familiar with codes, secret signs, pass-words, revolu-
tion, conspiracy ever since he could remember. A fellow
like Gus was sure to be in on something.

"Better begin at the top," said Gabriel, "if you're
dealing with old masters. I'll take you to see Ruskin."

If there were anything in this, Bill with his Board
of Trade connection could be trusted to follow a clue.

Gabriel let his chin sink forward. Then he started,
as if suddenly aware of his surroundings.

"Can't sleep here - or can I? Had I better go home
and come back later? But he'll be worn out to-night, after
his lecture. Hardly worth sitting an hour with twenty people
and the Bayswater medium for a message from great-grandmama's
pet tabby - or is it? Better than nothing, you'll say, and
it's fun watching the others. But," Gabriel pulled himself,
as with difficulty, to his feet, "you said Ely wouldn't see
me again, for a private sitting. Who are you, anyway, Gus?"

102

Scratch - scratch - "His is not the pen of a ready writer," thought Gabriel.

Norton Ely turned round. "Don't look at his eyes," said Gabriel to himself. Gabriel bowed, "do not let me disturb you." Dr. Ely passed his hand over his forehead. He laid down his pen.

He said, "pray, be seated. I leave the arrangement of the groups to the desk. But I require a personal interview before I engage a new medium. My secretary sent you?"

Gabriel said, "yes."

"Ours is, you understand, a personal dedication. But already the movement is growing, perhaps growing too fast. There are new, unforeseen developments. Now, as to that congress in Cleveland; they are already arranging for branch societies and supervision of group-centres. It appears, all this is necessary but it is really beyond my power to control the more popular and sensational aspects of our work. I don't know. They say we must have some sort of hold over meetings and demonstrations. They say, how else control but by committees and supervision? I don't know. I say, let control come from within - guidance will

103

best serve and personal devotion. It was at the suggestion
of Miss Fox, the elder of the sisters, that I came here to
help establish this London centre."

Gabriel saw from the shadow that Norton Ely now had
his back to the light. He looked up.

Norton Ely's eyes were half-closed; "dead tired,"
thought Gabriel.

"But I need not interview you," said Dr. Ely, "you
are a seeker. They will tell you, at the desk downstairs,
your duties if you wish to work here."

Dr. Ely coughed. He turned back to his table, a
polite intimation that the interview was over. "Good-night,
sir."

"I'm sorry," said Gabriel, "I am not a medium."

"It's Miss Mary," said Dr. Ely, "I do not frankly
approve of Miss Mary, a sensitive, delicate lady, appearing
at public meetings."

"(Those Fox sisters," thought Gabriel. He had heard
Mrs. Howitt speak of them.)

"But I see you are too tired to-night," said Gabriel,
"for a sitting."

"Mr. Manuel does not send clients to my private office."

104

"It was a special arrangement."

"You are a friend of Manuel?"

"You do not remember me?" said Gabriel.

Norton Ely turned. The phosphorescence was burnt out. He had probably been working earlier in the evening. Gabriel had especially wanted to see Dr. Ely when he was not tired.

"Manuel, like myself, is not wholly English. My name is Rossetti."

"I think I remember seeing you. I think I remember your face."

"I have attended your lectures and sat with your mediums at the séances. But I am grateful to say, you gave me two private sittings."

"I am all gone this evening," said Dr. Ely. "It's thinking of Miss Mary. Pray - did you receive guidance from my Guardian?"

"Guidance and consolation," said Rossetti.

"Then I will ask your guidance now," said Dr. Ely.
"I am not in two minds about it. But they argue round me."
He lowered the lamp. "They say if you have a message, you must give it. We in America are a divided people. We do

105

not pretend to see the future, but war is coming. What
can we do to stop war? Nothing. But we can do this.
We can leave the door open."

"Je dis que le tombeau ....
Ouvre le firmament,"
said Gabriel.

"I do not understand," said Ely.

"You do not speak French?"

"I know no foreign language."

"It is a line of Hugo."

"Hugo?"

"Victor Hugo, a French poet. I learn he is in Jersey."

"Jersey?"

"One of the Channel islands. I am told that he, too,
communicates with the Spirits."

"This is a message from the Spirits?"

"You asked me for my guidance and I thought of this
poem." Gabriel remembered how Mary Howitt had brought the
poem to him and asked him to translate it for _The People's
Journal_. He was back in their good graces at the Hermitage.
"The translation is,

The tomb, I declare it ....
Opens the star-gate,

106

but star-gate is not literal, *firmament* he says, firmament
or heaven."

"I take it for an answer. We must go on. My personal
predelection is for - secrecy. But secrecy is not quite
what I mean. I would have more selection and smaller
gatherings. It is not so much persecution from outside
that I dread, but actual submergence. I cannot interview
everyone who enters these doors. It is a tide-wave. I am
told that Italy, Belgium, Holland, Sweden, Spain - the
whole world has been swept into this current. There are
undesirable write-ups and sensations about the movement.
Is it the Lord's doing?"

Gabriel was silent.

"In confidence, Mr - "

"Rossetti."

"You know languages. You are French?"

"Italian," said Rossetti.

"Mr. Manuel is conversant with foreign languages.
In confidence, I have not yet signed this."

Dr. Ely turned to the table. He handed Gabriel a
letter.

Gabriel leaned forward to the half-circle of the light.

108

with the Foreign Office and talk English, but there are
times when they bring a distinguished visitor."

Gabriel, with no visual effort, saw the visitor.
He had seen so many in his time, that is while old Gabriele
(as he called his father) was still living.

What was it Ely wanted to know? Didn't he trust Manuel?
But Gus was, as Gabriel had already admitted, no fool.

"Manuel simply says what you say," repeated Gabriel,
"that for a private sitting, you don't want interpreters.
But Manuel says it, of course, as if dictated by you.
Perhaps he is a little - well, gushing at the end, but
felicitations and all that, is the French way of writing."

Dr. Ely handed him back the letter, "Read out what he
says."

"Dear Princess - "

"But you just said she was no princess."

Had Gabriel come here to elucidate the mysteries of
the French aristocracy? Or had he come for his own (as
Ely would say) guidance?

"Well, it's difficult to explain."

Had Ely never heard of Louis and Eugènie?

"The present Emperor is the third Napoleon. There

111

"Miss Mary is only a girl, but her devotion to her father compels her to vow not to marry. Miss Cathy won't leave her sister. They are really up-state people, but Mr. Fox had, out of sentiment, kept on their Connecticut farm."

Now Gabriel was listening to a foreign language.

"Connecticut?"

"Pretty with golden-rod up to the door, and asters drifting to the stone-walls. They wouldn't let the hired man mow down the field that September. It was the first year they were alone there. I didn't know what took it into Miss Mary's head to leave the golden-rod and asters growing in their front-yard."

"They lived there?" Gabriel felt that Ely was retreating into his reverie. "But I must not keep you from your letters."

"Pray, Mr. Rossetti, forgive my being absent. I was there in that farm. Not a large place, counting in acres, but containing an edge of woodland. The spring rose beyond the wood, from a hollow dip. There was fern there, may-flower and violets. Miss Cathy was child-like in her ways and would always set the violets in one of her grandmother's

112

old mugs. She had notions. The barns were empty though
there had been cattle, in the old days. There were, of
course, blackberry tangles, the run of the stone walls.
The sumac made red splashes there; Indian paint-brush,
some call it."

"Paint-brush?"

"The Indians painted themselves."

"Were there many Indians?"

"Mr. Rossetti, you will forgive me, but here you are
singularly ignorant about our country. The Indians, but for
the Far West, have all gone."

"I am ignorant, I grant you - Con-net-ti-cut? Is it
a town?"

"One of our New England States."

Ruskin was planning to send pictures to some exhibition
in America. But America to Gabriel was chiefly associated
with talks at home in the old days, Ida de St. Elme and
discussions of a certain Louisianna Purchase.

"I confess to ignorance. There was talk at one time,
at my father's home, about Louisiana."

"French and Spanish," said Dr. Ely, "far away but near

113

at hand, too. It concerned Miss Cathy when Miss Mary said
they would move out of New York State altogether and live
there, at the farm, all the year round, not only in the
summer. They were working for the run-aways."

"Run-aways?"

"The slaves, Mr. Rossetti. The Friends in Philadelphia
had the tunnels. The slaves got across from Maryland, even
from the deep south, and worked their way up. The Abolition-
ists in Boston and the Friends in Philadelphia, it was being
reported being said from Virginia, would land the country
in war."

"War?"

"Secession, they call it - the right to what the
plantation-owners call their own property; some of the
States already plan breaking away. I told you our country
was divided. It is a grave problem, but it is no problem.
It was worry about the slaves got Miss Mary thinking of
the Indians. Hiram the man, was son of old Hiram who was
head of the farm in grandfather Fox's day. He was loyal.
But he stopped my buggy on the road. He stated there was
talk from people driving down that way to the rocks to watch
the sunset, summer evenings But Thanksgiving Day was near,

122

were on a different level, stronger maybe, but Mary was
nearer the Spirit. Mary said we were the same, but Mary
didn't know what Cathy and I knew, that she (Mary) spoke
with tongues, in trance state. It was somehow agreed
between us, without too much talk, that I was to leave
town."

"It is fortunate for us, Dr. Ely," said Gabriel, "that
you came here."

"A professor from Harvard, interested in what they call
metaphysics, came to our help. We got the thing under some
sort of control, after the summer visitors cleared out, and
Mrs. Hiram took in a group from Boston, over Christmas. I
need not tell you that we would, as I said, have worked to-
gether in secret, if it were possible. But it was no longer
possible. The table helped us, you might almost say Gran's
table saved us. Miss Mary and Miss Cathy gave good-will
messages from the table to the Christmas people. The folks
from Boston said they would see that the two were sheltered.
Miss Mary and Miss Cathy agreed to spend the summer visiting
in Vermont and Massachussets. That was last summer. There
was a distinguished set in Boston, abolitionists and writers.
It was your speaking of this French poet and my remembering

124

the answer. It was the message he had had the second time,
the last time, war and inheritors.

There had always been war, Ely had said earlier, but
we could leave the door open.

"We cannot stop war," Dr. Ely had said.

"We cannot stop inheritance," said Gabriel.

Dr. Ely reached forward to adjust the lamp.

"I will finish my letter," he said. "I will tell Miss
Cathy that I will go on."

126

have been Miss Louise Herbert, in the green-room.

"Well, I asked you, what have you done to yourself, Lizzie?" Gabriel repeated. It was perhaps perversity on her part that she stood so still, that she turned her head, so that the chin and throat took the line, "Your chin, your chin - you've spoilt that line." It seemed that she would tilt her head back and laugh. She did laugh. It was not, however, the green-room laughter of Miss Herbert. It was too tense, "her flighty giggle," William had called her laughter, and "she is flighty," William Rossetti had said (it was reported to her) on more than one occasion. Gabriel's outlandish pranks and ridiculous and not always funny parodies, were acclaimed as expression (even the most trivial) of genius should be. It was never put on record that William Rossetti called his brother flighty.

"What is the matter with you, Liz?"

"What is the matter with you, Gabriel? I hardly ever remember, except for the first few times I sat for the _Damozel_, your asking me to talk."

"You've been here six weeks, Lizzie, something's happened to you."

"Something's happened to you, Gabriel."

127

"_Tu quoque_ was always forbidden in our family."

"Ah - your family." (Ah - Miss Herbert!)

"Something stiffish about you, Lizzie."

"That's what you said of Spenser and Wykeham Deverell."

"My God - what a memory you have."

"That's what you said when I remembered after three
months (at Red Lion Square) that you hadn't thanked me for
the _Damozel_."

"But I think I said it wasn't finished."

"And you said, why should you thank me, 'it's you',
you said, 'who should thank me, for making you immortal.'"

She swayed over to the window. Outside was a walled
garden. She looked down on the wall; above it, there was
placed for her exact requirement a roof slanting at a
probable angle to meet gables, and above and beyond, uneven
planes, roofs set at impossible angles, broken now and again
by dormer-windows. Beyond them, was the pinnacle of the
lesser _Saint Germain_. There were bells, no sweeter but
more personal somehow, than the chimes of Bridewell.

"I thought Scotus would come over with Monro, but
only Monro turned up."

128

"You have already seen him?"

"We crossed together."

"What are you planning to do first?" From an immense height, from an immeasurable distance, Elizabeth Siddall, for the first time in the erratic, surcharged years, spoke with gentle patronage to Gabriel Rossetti.

"Do? Well, we'll barge into the Louvre, I suppose, first."

"You won't like the way they've been cleaning up the Claudes. There is too much of Rubens but you'll like the Marriage."

"Marriage?"

"Veronese's Marriage in Cana."

It had been reported in London that the Sid was getting out of hand. Scotus had remarked to one of them, William, Boyce or Stevens, that she actually thought herself a genius, with her "small, quaint, quasi-poetical imitations of his works." It was Scott who had looked in at Chatham Place last summer to retrieve some books he had lent Gabriel and found the Sid in charge "sleeping there - well - in Gabriel's absence." William Bell Scott had also

132

her lap. Still, her fingers felt within them the sheen
of the deep-rose taffeta she had chosen that first week,
with such care and so extravagantly, with Mrs. Kincaid.
She had worn the dress to get the "feel" of it, so that
she wouldn't be shy in it when Gabriel saw her. It (or
something) had gone to her head.

It was _taffetas de soie_ but it wasn't silk exactly.
It had the lustre of shot-silk but it wasn't stiff like
taffeta.

"It was the stuffs; they have rooms and show-cases
and costumes made up, and you couldn't buy anything, not
outright, at the Exhibition, even if you wanted. So you
look around, without embarrassment, at what they call the
_dentelles_, lace, every kind of stitch-work, Flemish, Spanish
and of course, French embroideries - and tapestries."

"Old tapestries?"

"I - I don't know."

"You mean you wasted six weeks pottering about the
Exhibition?"

"Oh - no, Gabriel."

"You think the time wasn't wasted? Why the protestation?"

133

"I wasn't protesting. It was a way of - forgetting."

"Forgetting what, Lizzie?"

Gabriel, strangely contrite, thought of bleak London periods, his neglect, her illness. He wished he had not asked her what she had forgotten.

He saw the face, a shadowed cameo. There was the throat and the hands, in the darkness.

"It was a story I made up while you were out at Highgate, out of what you called the Lasinio book, peeled off from the walls at Pisa."

"It was a story as real as if I'd lived it."

"It was those coffins on the ground and the Kings, meant to be portrayed horrible, in the coffins."

"I knew it was a picture (you all talked about it) of a painting from a wall in a grave-yard, what you called the campo santo."

"It was going to Chartres. That's why I wouldn't leave Paris."

The face, the throat, the hands - the rest had faded away.

"Lizzie - "

138

"Only that we are happy."

"We aren't happy, Lizzie, not as we could be. We
could cut everything and get out, go to Florence - "

Florence?

"She talked about Florence and Venice."

Venice? "I suppose that's Ruskin."

"Why Ruskin, Gabriel?"

"Who ever heard of Venice, before Ruskin went there?"

He was only marking time. He was thinking of Veronese.
He was thinking of Carpaccio. He was thinking of Titian
and of Tintoretto.

"Do you remember that first time you saw me, Gabriel?
If I think of Venice, I think of that first time at
Walter's studio in the garden at Kew."

Kew. It was bog and fog and water sucking under the
wharves, and the gnawing of rats in the old partitions.
The *Bridge*.

"There's a bridge there; she called it the *Bridge of Sighs*." Lizzie was taking the very thoughts out of his mind.

"Well, Byron really started it," he said. "Why did I
drag in Ruskin?"

142

walking on air - being a sort of cloud - but fashionable."

"Oh - fashionable - "

"It's the way they walk. It's their seeing me
somehow, different. No-one ever seemed to think I was
a scarecrow, even in the beginning."

"Whoever thought you were a scarecrow?"

"The girls at Mrs. Tozer's - not Ellen and Jenny,
but the others - and, oh, Gabriel, lots of London people."

"We'll never go back to London. We can talk about
that later - why Lizzie, you look like an empress."

"It's what it's called - the bell-flower."

"Bell-flower?" asked Gabriel.

"Bell-flower Impératrice," said Lizzie.

145

But "Gad", Gabriel said, "quelle politesse."

A gentleman had risen from the next table and was
making his way to the door. There was music playing
somewhere.

"Ancien régime," said Gabriel, "wears his broadcloth
like brocade, a little like Allingham."

Gabriel had turned round in his chair.

Lizzie said, "Why did you say *quelle politesse*, Gabriel?"

"He didn't look at you, Lizzie."

"Is that politeness?"

"The essence. You were in his line of vision. Of
course, he wouldn't turn round, but he never saw you."

"He must have seen me, Gabriel, he was sitting just
opposite."

"So you've been looking at him?"

"Not to notice, not till you said he looked like Mr.
Allingham, and he does, a little."

"He's faithful - but he didn't stare at you. That's
why I'm suspicious. He treated you exactly as he would her,
not a *soupçon* of recognition."

The waiter had placed a fresh bottle on the table;
Gabriel hadn't even noticed his drawing the cork and re-filling

154

were going on, in the name of talking-spirits - and -
conjurations - "

"Did she - get back to Paris?"

"How do you know they tried to keep her there in
Venice?"

"You said something about Mr. Allingham going to her
rescue, from Vienna."

"I said nothing of the kind, Lizzie." But to her,
everything was quite clear. There were mirrors that
reflected double candles and then reflected them again,
going backward and going forward. "They say the new waltz
is from Vienna."

"Allingham knows Vienna?"

"You said so."

She had stepped from the marble pavement (it was
mosaic pattern) onto the polished dance floor. Her heels
were lifting her, like a ladder, to God, and someone
whispered, "Ah - Mozart."

"Was it Mozart invented the waltz?"

"You're thinking of the minuet, Lizzie."

"Did we dance in Venice?"

162

trees and snow, only on the high mountains.

"They had trouble with their passports," Gabriel told Ruskin. He read part of the letter to him.

"Well, at least she's out of England," said Ruskin, "with this new epidemic about."

Ruskin was actually sitting on the edge of the table, with his great-coat wrapped about him.

"I'll tell Miss Heaton then, that you'll do a replica of Paolo and Francesca, in place of Beatrice."

Gabriel said, "You were always ragging me about copying my own pictures and selling them twice over."

"Well," said Ruskin, "you needn't copy it; do a variation of the same subject."

"But she ordered Beatrice," said Gabriel, "why not copy the Beatrice?"

"Because I do not want you to copy the Beatrice," said Ruskin.

All right. Gabriel wasn't quarrelling with his bread and butter. He was wilful and usually shouted down Ruskin's pronouncements, "take out the green there. I don't like your shadows. You must have some line somewhere." Gabriel

165

architect's office, at the moment. But Gad, they were both
intended for the cloth. Fancy two budding parsons, hearing
High Mass at Beauvais (they were on a walking tour) and
swearing, before they left Havre, that they would dedicate
themselves to art - in place of, or because of God. But
why come to me about it?" asked Gabriel and with no affecta-
tion.

"Who else would they go to, Gabriel?"

"You started them. It was the *Nature of Gothic* and
your description of the Guilds, artist and craftsman all
submerged in the Cathedral - so this Morris told me. I
never read *The Stones of Venice* and I never thanked you for
the copy that you sent me."

"My *Venice* can teach you nothing."

Gabriel did not know himself. He had always on
principle quarrelled with "that sneak, Ruskin."

"This Morris thinks if he can get in with the archi-
tects, he might in time, stop some of these restorations."

"Venice," said John Ruskin.

"What about Venice?" asked Gabriel.

"They're talking about taking up the old mosaic and
laying a new floor in St. Mark's Cathedral."

166

"What can we do about it?"

"I'm starting a petition. Gladstone might help," said Ruskin.

"Well, Gladstone's some use then. I should have thought he was too busy with the Powers - France, Austria, Prussia! But Austria and Prussia got out of the alliance, didn't they? I don't know. What's it all about, anyway? And Louis Napoleon got out of it, too. That meant only us - only England was left. But I suppose Louis has come back or there wouldn't be talk of a Conference in Paris."

"Is there talk of a Conference in Paris?"

"Well, I heard something - probably confidential - from Gus. He has a finger in every pie. Looks like a Spanish grandee sometimes, like an organ-grinder with a monkey, others. Which reminds me, did you ever hear of <u>Sonnets from the Portuguese?</u> Lizzie was a bit foggy over dinner, the first night she wore her bell-flower, and quoted something that she called a sonnet, saying she didn't know where the wall left off and the sonnet began."

"Ida - foggy?"

"Your Ida was illuminated and dead drunk."

167

Ruskin got off the table. "You're lunching with me, Gabriel."

"I'd like to. But I want first to talk of Lizzie. If you would sit down - Oh, throw those things on the floor. This isn't equal to Ruskin something-or-other Domecq, and it isn't sherry, but Monro smuggled it back from Paris under his Inverness. I didn't even know he had it, till he left it on the table. I swore to myself, I wouldn't have a drop without Lizzie - without Lizzie being in it, somehow." Gabriel placed the bottle on the table. "The glasses are clean, too."

"I see you've opened it. You had a drop then?"

"When I came back, trying to remember. I think the damned stuff's Russian."

Ruskin studied the label on the bottle, "Curious - maybe Turkish." He lifted his glass, "The bouquet is Greek."

"Damn you, John Ruskin, how did you know that? You are a curious fellow. Someone called you a spiteful saint, I don't know who. Gus said you were the best mannered fellow he ever met, and one of the best dressed. I forgive you everything."

"What have you to forgive me, Gabriel?"

"Your damned professorial attitude, your pseudo-

168

superiority, your way of drawing leaves under a microscope;
your way of teaching the fellows at the College to draw,
'line is everything, colour will come afterwards.' Was
there any line in the firmament when heaven and earth
created He them? There was colour first. Let them have
their fun with colour."

"Line's fun, too," said John Ruskin.

"You see everything reflected and you see it all so
damn' clearly that he makes me sick."

Ruskin went on savouring the bouquet.

"Don't you like it? Oh, I see, you are waiting for
your host to prove the stuff isn't poison. Ah, Lizzie - "
Gabriel raised his glass.

"And when I say Lizzie, John Ruskin, I mean another
Lizzie than your frowsty Ida. I mean Lizzie in a bell-
flower and Lizzie talking about Chartres and Lizzie in a
room, stuck round with mirrors and candles reflected
backward and forward (as she said) in them, and Lizzie
with a waltz playing - anyway, she said it was a waltz and
from Vienna."

"And the bell-flower?"

"That's what I mean - why don't you marry Lizzie?"

170

Gabriel refilled the glasses.

"She liked Allingham - you know old Allingham? But somehow, it wasn't Allingham. It was something rugged, though polished if you will. It was something with eyes from which there is no escaping. It was something less suave than Allingham - I say nothing against his - his charm. It's just something Lizzie wanted. Does Lizzie love you, Ruskin?"

"No, Gabriel," said John Ruskin.

"You're hypnotic, Ruskin. You could make her love you."

"Women don't love line. They want colour."

"What she wants - she as good as said so - is a rock."

"What is a mere mountain when you have the firmament? I always told you, Gabriel, when I didn't like your pictures."

"Why do you buy the damn' things, then - to keep Lizzie?"

"I buy them, as I buy Turner for the colour. I don't like the mediaeval."

"What of your glass windows, your seven lamps, your Byzantine mosaic, your Carpaccio? Lizzie looks Byzantine; you said yourself at Denmark Hill, she was like those

171

elongated figures in your Missals - yes, you did see her
once, in a proper setting. She liked your room, your
mother showed her your room - horrible, no curtains, those
beastly windows. But Lizzie liked it. She liked the shells
you showed her and the rose-quartz or whatever it was in
chunks, blasted out of your beastly mountain. You can't
say she doesn't like you."

"I didn't say she didn't like me. You're volcanic,
like the fire in the mountain."

"But she likes snow," said Gabriel.

...

...

He saw him now. Gabriel had been trying to "see" John
Ruskin. He was the father-superior of some learned order,
who had served inheritance.

"They even discussed seriously, they told me, at one
time, a plan for a monastic foundation. They are good
chaps, really. Jones is the more sensitive and the less
gifted. I mean, the other fellow whom Jones calls Top,
has the verve or the nerve. And there's another blighter
I haven't seen yet, a sort of golden goblin or dwarf

182

so beautiful nor so eloquent in gesture, but reining a
horse, notching an arrow, drawing a bow, had a peculiar
meaning for her, at the moment, when she laid down <u>Hand</u>
<u>and Soul</u>, because the light was going and she wanted to
think about the arrows. No, she did not (any more than
Gabriel) believe in all that ... murder. But the isolated
instance, as Gabriel had called Mr. Greenacre, as compared
with the dead and wounded at Sebastopol, was countered
or was checked or was check-mated by another isolated
instance. Gabriel was not isolated. He drew her into the
whirlpool of his enthusiasms and the plots and counter-
plots of Pre-Raphaelite quarrels and intrigue. She was,
Mrs. Gabriele Rossetti was right about that, "Gabriel's
model".

And Gabriel's model might gain immortality as <u>Beatrice</u>
or as the more personal presentation of Beatrice, the
<u>Damozel</u>, but there is something, thought Elizabeth Siddall,
that must not be washed into the inner sea (she did not call
it the Sargosso sea) of Gabriel's circle. It was all right,
there was fire there and she had been stiff and frozen, that
is inwardly (she thought) frozen and stiff, sitting those

185

Or as it happened sometimes that something he said was like
light shining through ruby glass.

*Hand and Soul* was published in January, 1950.

Then Gabriel must have written it before that, say in
1849.

It was just about then that she met Gabriel.

It seemed to have been written for her, to give her
back her faith, so that she could go on.

In the basket-chair in Chatham Place, her thoughts
had been a fever. She had suspected Gabriel of making
love to Fanny, his *Bridge* model for the girl who had gone
on the town. Elizabeth had been almost as unhappy before
that, about Annie Miller. But Fanny Hughes and Annie
Miller and her agony about unpaid bills and the rent over-
due, no longer mattered.

She would write her story.

Moreover, she would go into Nice, the first thing
in the morning and find some drawing-paper suitable for
illuminated lettering. She would get out her paints and
brushes.

She would sketch in the *small consecrated image of*

189

"But you're busy."

"I can go on painting, and anyway what's that got to
do with it?"

Gabriel realized that this was the first time he had
seen this fellow without the other fellow.

"Where's the other fellow?"

"He went round to the College. He said you had
suggested he go round the next evening he was in town."

"I? When did I ever suggest to anybody, teaching
the Working Man anything?"

"It was there Ted said he met you. He said the chaps
like what you teach."

"What the Hell do I teach? I go round there to take
the taste of Ruskin out of their mouths. 'Line, line, line,'
says Professor Ruskin. I say, 'Don't you chaps like colour?'
'The Professor hid the paints after your last lecture,'
they said."

Gabriel said, "You've got to bang the door shut or
it will blow open." The door banged shut. "I didn't tell
you to knock the house down," said Gabriel. "You'd better
take off your coat - unless it's too cold. I can't tell
your length from your breadth. It's got snowed on? I

196

"No. I don't see things."

The fellow was a liar.

"What I mean is, Lizzie is not consumptive. Ruskin
sent her to Doctor Ackland at Oxford. Ackland said (a
profound diagnosis) her ill-health was caused by mental
power long pent-up and lately overtaxed. That's what I
do, overtax people. But Lizzie is out of London."

"Where is - "

"Siddall her name is, Sudal really, came in with the
Conqueror like Deverell, D'Evrolles."

"I'm plain Morris."

"I can see that. I'm not worried about you. But the
other chap might get _exalté_. It's what they said of
Deverell, that _casa Rossetti_ was a bad influence. Well,
this isn't like the Old Antique days - Antique is the
mater. She gave up the _casa_ gatherings after the death
of Gabriele, my father."

"What could you do to Ted but inspire him?"

"That's just what I mean, inspiration, they say, takes
it out of one."

"They say?"

"I'm told so."

197

"Then you - ah - know nothing first-hand of inspiration?"

"It's just routine - inspiration was our daily bread, while old Gabriele was living. But you damn' English are so suspicious of inspiration."

"I don't know," said William Morris, "there's Browning."

"I'm glad you didn't say Tennyson. And I don't mean you."

What was it Lizzie had said? There would be snow only on the high mountains. Was there snow in the Hollow Land?

"You have your feet on the ground."

"Well, Ted's practical."

"Who got religion, first of you two?"

"Religion?"

"You know what I mean, exultation, ecstasy."

"I should say Ted."

"Gad - it's worse when you stand still, than when you walk round. But you're not as broad as you look. How's architecture? You can't stay forever in that Oxford office, you know. What are you thinking of -

Ships sail through the Heaven
With red banners dress'd?

200

"That thing of yours?"

"I was thinking, it wasn't mine."

"Whose was it?"

"I got the idea of going back in time, half in a
dream, from your *Hand and Soul*."

"It's hardly my idea."

"I got the idea from you, anyway, and the *Oxford and
Cambridge* too, from the *Germ*. You don't know what we owe
you."

"God bless my soul."

"I had an idea that *Hand and Soul* should be copied
out in Canterbury Missal script - or I suppose you'd
choose Venetian."

"Are you *en rapport* with Lizzie? Or are you mind-
reading? I had a letter from Lizzie only to-day, saying
she had bought drawing-paper and was making illuminated
letters for some of the Chiaro story."

"Perhaps I am *en rapport* with Miss Siddall. Only, I
don't know her .... *like one just come out of a dusk*,
hollow country, bewildered with echoes, where he has lost
himself."

"I don't remember your *Hollow Land*, not to that extent.

201

I remember the 'Ships sail through the Heaven' and
'Christ keep the Hollow Land
Through the sweet spring-tide - '"

"It's not my _Hollow Land_, I'm quoting, it's your
_Hand and Soul._"

Gabriel's nonchalance abandoned him. He did not
know why. He remembered how he had seen Lizzie's face,
that first evening, like a cameo rising from the shadows
and her hands resting upon darkness.

"Come, come, my dear fellow -" What would he say,
what would he say next?

Jones was bad enough but you could cope with Jones'
charming affectations. This fellow wasn't affected. He
meant everything he said. Jones had been in, frequently.
He had brought Morris once or twice. Gabriel had considered
Morris awkward and shy.

But William Morris was not shy.

"Tumpty-ti-tum - might have some grog or something.
Rather go to the pub on the corner, or stay in?"

"I'd rather stay in."

"Well, I've only the Elixir of Life to offer you."

"I don't need a drink."

202

"I'll just scrape out this cuff, while you go on thinking."

"There was snow," said William Morris, "and a walled city. That is why I wanted to look out of the window. I did _The Hollow Land_ in what I called Fyttes. I mean, there were three Fyttes, after I died. I called myself Florian, ours was the House of Lilies, so I was Florian de Liliis. There was a feud between the Lilies and Red Harald. That was when they went out into the snow."

"A good fight," said Gabriel, "I remember - crash, bang, lashing with swords; picturesque but realistic, soldiers and monks fighting together on your side, battle-axes, trumpets, long spears - "

"Her hair was not light yellow, but dusky golden, when he saw her."

"Eh - what? Reciting poetry?"

"It's a line from _The Hollow Land_."

If only he could explain to Gabriel Rossetti, but how could he?

"Ted said, it was a bit confusing, going on with the story after Florian was dead. Perhaps you remember that

203

Fytte the First, Second and Third were Florian's experience
in _The Hollow Land_. He meets Margaret and loses her and
finds her again."

William Morris had seen the face of Margaret from
_The Hollow Land_.

He was standing behind Rossetti.

Rossetti said, "Damn-blast, don't touch that curtain."

But William Morris had seen the picture before he
dropped the curtain.

It was an unfinished picture, in a wooden frame, set
against the wall under the window.

There were other canvases.

Should he ask Rossetti if he could have a look round,
at his pictures?

He sank back in the chair. Rossetti was right, "did
you see something?" he had said.

He had seen something.

_Christ keep the Hollow Land_.

It was Margaret as she would have been, if he had
seen her before he left the world.

"O brave heart," she had said.

She should have been Margaret de Liliis. She bore

209

Magic?

The fellow was a magician.

"I'll pretend it's the Holy Grail," Rossetti had said, "at that, very few are fit to sample this Elixir. I'll get Gus to bring over those bottles, if he can find them, and pretend it's all out of the fabulous original."

"What did Ted make of it?"

"Ted?"

William Morris remembered the way the shadow fell on the forehead and how the wide-spaced grey eyes were black with their dilated pupils.

"Yes, Ted."

"What made you think that Ted was qualified to sample the Elixir?"

"What made you think that I was?"

"Sea-dogs like grog."

It was the way he said it, tenderness mixed with mockery. William Morris had never heard a voice so beautiful.

"It's all very simple," said William Morris. He stopped above the water-steps to stare at the river.

210

He drew the fragile image closer to him and tucked
the frail hand into his great-coat pocket.

"But you are Margaret de Liliis," he said, "you like
snow."

...

...

"You ask me to explain it to you? Let's stay a moment,
looking at the river. But your hands are ice, put on my
gloves." He laughed at her and stooped to pick up the
heavy leather glove she dropped in the snow.

"I don't know what to do about it," he said, "you
left your gloves upstairs? Shall I run back and get them?"

She said he mustn't leave her.

"Shall we go back together?"

She said, no, she liked to be out of doors, and he
might want to finish the picture.

"But he's working on Gus."

That was, she said, only because she had been away.

"But he wouldn't have you sitting in a cold room,
and so late?"

She said, he never noticed the cold, that is, not when

212

But there was a gleam of light from a window, and in
a side street where he dragged her, blinded with snow, there
was a church door.

"I thought it had stopped snowing," he said.

She said, it was the wind that was blowing the dry
snow in their faces.

"I suppose we can wait here, in the porch, out of
the wind," said Florian.

...

...

"But the door's locked," said Florian.

She said that she had already told him that the city
churches were always locked.

"There was a light in the window."

She said it was moonlight reflected.

She wondered what he had expected. This is only
Fytte the First, she reminded him. It was not until the
end, when he had lost her and found her again that she
said, *come now and look for it, love, a hollow city in the
Hollow Land.*

213

William Morris, huddled in his great-coat, sat down on the stone step. "I'll call it St. Bride's," he said to himself, "it might be. As long as I'm broad, am I? Oh, Margaret, for the brotherhood of the golden dwellings."

The wind swirled the snow, a transparent mist, the veil before the altar.

"Fancy her having that idea of illuminated lettering," mused William Morris.

"Can't take her into a pub to get warm, can I? I suppose that was some <u>Avenue de l'Opéra</u> place they went to. Was she really happy or was she just pretending? He seemed to want to talk about her. There was some gossip at one time, that he was indifferent to her, but Ted ran across that fellow Monro, the chap who was in Paris, and Ted said, Monro said that Rossetti was mad about her. I told him didn't I, that you can't have two Elixirs?

"A stain of rose, I said, did I, for colour when he asked me? Rossetti - roses.

"And he called her Liz; I suppose it's his <u>quatro cento</u> way of pronouncing Lis.

"Lizzie - Lily.

217

photographs at the Bodleian, as well as in the Marlborough
College library, before he went to Oxford. His mother
knew from his letters how he spent his half-holidays, ex-
ploring ruins and old churches. "Fitting for a lad,
destined for the Church", was her inevitable comment to
the boy's grandmother, after reading out his last letter to
the Water House, at Walthamstow, where they had moved from
Woodford Hall, soon after the death of William Morris,
his father.

But William Morris, the son, was not destined for the
Church, not in the sense implied in the words of Mrs.
William Morris his mother, to Mrs. William Morris, his
grandmother.

"I am plain Morris," he had said to Gabriel Rossetti,
now more than a month ago, that night in London.

He had already had a preliminary tussle with his
mother, about leaving Street's office. "But you have
only just taken up architecture. After our disappointment
about the Church - what will you want next? I need not
point out to you that we have always been reliable business

220

he had written her. His mother's father was a certain Joseph Shelton of Worcester. But he could no longer be implicated in the generations; his mother had reminded him of her two brothers, both canons, but Worcester Cathedral and Westminster Abbey had another message for him now. Bishop, canon and dean, they were all rapacious, smug as earth-worms - and now these restorations. But he must be honest - it was hardly the fault of the many good church folk that he knew, that a fortune was being squandered on a disgraceful restoration of St. Albans, while Thames-side stank like Babylon to heaven.

Line upon line. He lifted the tracing paper. Hackwork, any journeyman apprentice could do this and do it better. No, not do it better. There was grim irony in the thought that he had done this vile copy as well as the least of them.

Well, at the worst, if he were a copy, it was a copy of a good original; a faithful copy? It was possible. After all, there were the tradesmen. His mother called them professional people but law, business and the Church were hardly to be distinguished now from one another. It was his

223

The Unknown Church who carved the marble "all about with
many flowers and histories". His sister was Margaret;
Amyot his friend loved Margaret; his face was "the most
beautiful among all the faces of men and women I have
ever seen." Amyot was wounded in the wars, and Margaret,
on his return, died with him.

"Margaret and Amyot did go, and left me very lonely
and sad."

That was the January number, so Rossetti must have
read *The Unknown Church* as well as *The Hollow Land*. "I
must ask Ted if he sent Rossetti *The Hollow Land*."

But William Morris knew that he would not ask Ted
anything about Gabriel Rossetti.

Rossetti - rose.

And of course, there were two of them.

Who was the second Margaret? Perhaps a cousin of
Florian's, not a sister.

He had Margaret. He would always have Margaret,
but he had never had her in his heart and his head, at one
and the same time, until he saw the picture.

Granted that the picture had been painted by Rossetti,
granted that the girl in the picture was Rossetti's rose -

238

positive whatever happened. We couldn't go back to Rome,
though we even talked of that too. We found the Anglo-
Catholic ritual lacked the guts of Amiens and Beauvais.
We wanted colour and direction, we didn't just want to
mark time with *Pater Nosters* done in English. We wanted
the *rose* of Rome, the *rose* of England, not a plaster
rosette."

"Well, there's the old circle."

"Circle?"

"They called it the Rose, didn't they?"

"You mean the Round Table?"

"In general - but didn't those old Rounds always
have an inner circle and so on and so on, till you got to
the inmost?"

"Can't say I know much about it."

"I thought it was you started them all on Malory."

"Can't say I remember Malory going on about the Round
Table as - what you call a circle."

"I may be wrong. I always thought it was what it was
all about."

"A circle in the sense of - "

247

ladies at the Hall, mind you."

"This - Rolando's a good fellow."

"It didn't matter what they said about him, he said; he was going back to Paris, but we all agreed it might be diplomatic if occasionally Vernon and I spent an evening out of his company, so we rode off to Quarles, but we made a détour and met Roland at the Tower (Rolando called it the Tower). It only came out afterwards that we'd never been to Quarles. But by that time, Roland had gone and it didn't matter. Nothing really mattered."

The lion had made a détour, he padded into the open.

"Ah - what sort of questions did you ask Faulkner's table?"

"Faulkner had put a question, rather vague, I don't remember - I cut across it. The answer to Faulkner's question, or to mine rather, was Vernon."

"I remember."

"It might have been one of those - well, thought-transferences. I asked the same question the next evening."

"They didn't know any Vernon."

"I asked it a third time."

248

"And the question?"

"I asked if the fellow, sitting there beside me, was
in on this."

"Yes, thank you," said William Morris, "the port is
excellent."

"They spelt Vernon a third time."

"And the fellow?"

"Enjoys his port?"

William Morris put down his glass.

How mark time?

"No furlong farther for us to-night,
The Little Tower draweth in sight.
There are a lot of things I must ask you."

"Not always disembodied, from what Roland said, and
did it matter if it were a form of dual-personality?"

"I don't quite follow."

"The question that you ask the table - the Lady
answers - or as with the *belle-soeur*, the Knight or the
*preux chevalier*."

"And - ah - Vernon?"

"My brother," said Godfrey Lushington.

275

"Dash it, Godfrey - the lady's to be married to the man
I love best in the whole world - except - "

Tell Godfrey that you loved him?

Said William the Englishman, "with the single exception
of Godfrey - "

"Sans peur but not sans reproche, you're thinking."

"Godfrey sans peur et sans reproche is, perhaps, as I
am, in danger."

Godfrey said, "there is only one danger."

"Perhaps ultimately. You mean death?"

"I mean separation."

"From the Lady?"

"From the self."

"Well, if you look on it that way. It's what in a
way I've been thinking, why (heroically) I stayed away,
just as I've stayed away from London."

"You said, the lady was not in London."

"Dash it, Godfrey, have you no imagination? I could
talk about her with - with - "

"This other fellow? Can't you talk about her with me?"

"You don't know her, Godfrey."

288

"What nonsense - "

"It's what you're thinking. That's why you stayed away. I said, I was Godfrey <u>sans peur</u> but not <u>sans reproche</u>, you remember."

"But you may remember that I contradicted you."

"You said I was in danger. I was, until Vivien brought Carew."

Carew, some damned Elizabethan or Lovelace fellow. William claimed only superficial knowledge of the counties but he wondered if this Ayton Carew was descended from the poet. Better go easy - cup-bearer to King Charles, damned Royalist.

Circles upon circles of enchantment. I go back to Chaucer.

"It was Byronic nonsense. We've got to be realistic. We've got to face it."

"That's what I'm trying to do," said Godfrey.

Said Morris, "we've got to go back to Chaucer. There's about two hundred years between him and Shakespeare."

"What exactly," said Godfrey, "has that got to do with it?"

"For two hundred years, the country was wasted by - Roses."

291

are the anodine that saved me. I might hope that they'll
save others - I mean, if I go on writing. But it's too
easy. I simply talk. I simply tell a story - it's all
improvised. I don't myself know what will happen. I
go on writing to see what will happen. They don't shout
at me, they crop up. You pass a field one day, it's brown,
the next, pale green, green, then gold. So you know the
seasons. It's that way with my stories. I wonder why
Shakespeare didn't have Chaucer walk into one of his
plays? Do you know why? Chaucer didn't."

"Chaucer didn't?"

"Don't you notice? I listen and wait for Chaucer.
<u>The Tempest</u> is an artificial storm, a device, an invention
to get Naples to Bermuda (was it Bermuda?) There is wind
on the moors, the heath, <u>Lear</u> and <u>Macbeth</u>. There is only
one forest, Arden. Don't you see, Godfrey, having Shakespeare
makes us too important. They didn't know, perhaps not one of
them had read through a whole play, but <u>wish not a man from
England</u> was the reason for it.

"But it wasn't Agincourt, and they'll go on making
Agincourt of it till the world's ruined.

293

If I were a devout Catholic, I would cross myself and be
done with it. As to the others - I died with them. I
met my death before the massed spears of The Hollow Land.
That is why I say, all wars are wars of Roses. But
perhaps I evaded the end. Red Harald did not get me with
his axe. I was holding on to a tuft of yellow broom.
The long spears had crowded me off the cliff edge. I
had sheathed my sword and I heard their laughter. The
broom gave before Red Harald's axe reached me. I fell
down into The Hollow Land."

299

"How did they say yes-no?" William asked him.
"There was one tap," said Godfrey, "a distinct pause,
then two taps. We used the one-tap, two-tap signal with
Roland, as we did with Faulkner. There were some questions
that I didn't care to ask them, and occasionally Carew
wouldn't answer."

"Perhaps he couldn't," said William, but he did not
like to ask what questions were unanswered.

"It was a mercy they were after; you were right about
Merci. And you were right about the East. Carew kept
coming back to it, e-a-s-t."

"Is that why you thought they wanted you to go there?"

"Yes."

"It doesn't follow. I went over some of the older
Arthurian texts. There was one with Latin annotations. For
once, I found my Latin useful. Didn't those paladin fellows
pick up some mystery? There was a suggestion that when the
fighting died down, they got together somehow, The Cross and
Crescent."

"Do you think it likely?" Godfrey asked him. "I'm
asking you to ask Carew," said William and when he said that,
he knew that he had entered Godfrey's circle.

300

"We'll ask now," said Godfrey.

Godfrey brought out the table and said in a matter-of-
fact way, "would you like to share it with me?" But William
said, if the table talked alone to Godfrey, it was better if
he sat back and let Godfrey do the asking. "But you can ask
it mental questions," Godfrey told him, "if you want to."

"I would rather ask out loud," said William.

Godfrey laid his hands on the table. "Well, ask
then," he said.

William laid down his pipe. "This is all very friendly,"
he said. "I confess, I was afraid of some transcendental
business. It's warm here. I thought, I'd feel cold shivers.
They're friendly people."

Said William Morris, "did the Cross and Crescent get
together?"

"Yes," said the table.

"All these mad new inventions," said William Morris,
"I suppose something will come of it, in time?"

"Yes," said the table.

Godfrey said, "they call it the _télégraph de Dieu_." He took his hands off the table.

"I'll wait for your next question," said Godfrey.