| Chapter 1: | Introduction |
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occupied, at least so Jan Marsh believes (Dante 214). In any case, finding her very ill, Rossetti came to the belief that they should marry before she died, and their wedding occurred in the church of St. Clement in Hastings on May 23. She did not die, however, and their life together was complicated. Lizzie conceived a child, a daughter who, sadly, was stillborn on May 2, 1861. As her despair deepened, Lizzie began to consume increasing quantities of laudanum, and she died of an overdose on February 11, 1862 (Marsh, Legend 9–13). In a spasm of grief, and perhaps even of guilt, Rossetti buried a manuscript of his poems with her.
After his wife’s death, Rossetti relocated to Tudor House, 16 Cheyne Walk, Chelsea, which was his home for the rest of his life. Fanny Cornforth soon became housekeeper there and, despite the opposition of his family and friends, the two were attached romantically as well as artistically. Rossetti had been professionally active in 1861, publishing Early Italian Poets, a collection of translations. With Morris, Burne-Jones, Ford Madox Brown, and others, he founded “The Firm” (Morris, Marshall, Faulkner and Company), generally recognized as the beginning of the Arts and Crafts Movement (Spencer-Longhurst 124). He also visited Belgium with his brother that year. In 1864 Rossetti made his fourth visit to Paris, and while there visited the studios of Courbet and Manet (Spencer-Longhurst 124). By this time, his painting had moved away from Pre-Raphaelitism toward his own creative representations of women. In 1865 he painted Blue Bower and began using Jane Morris and Alexia Wilding as regular models. Rossetti began to suffer from ill health in 1866, and he was especially upset by eye trouble that reminded him of his own father’s blindness at the end of his life (Doughty 350). Anxious to publish his poetry and regretting having impulsively committed so much of it to the grave with Lizzie, he consented in 1869 to the suggestion of his agent, Charles Augustus Howell, that her body be exhumed to permit the retrieval of the manuscript (Grylls 128–130). With the originals in hand, he was able to bring out Poems in 1870 (Doughty 445). The appearance of Poems, in some ways his crowning achievement, also exposed him to the blistering criticism of Robert Buchanan, which he could not withstand (an episode discussed in detail in the next chapter).