Saturday, 22 February 2014

"The Wise Man builds his House upon the Rock": William Morris's Red House

Compared to the intoxicating loves of Rossetti, William Morris's love was very grounded.



He was inspired by courtly love and perseverance of high minded ideals.  He built his Red House in the style of an Arthurian Legend.  It was just off Watling Street, which was the pilgrim's road, leading directly to Canterbury, one train ride from Charing Cross, London.  Chaucer wrote the Canterbury Tales about this route, with stories told by his pilgrim characters, with similar appreciation of nature and surrounding countryside.


'of al the flours in the med,
Thanne love I most this flours whiter and rede,
Swiche as men called daises in our town'

And nature, for Morris, was the inspiration for all his creations and designs.





Geographically positioned on this famous route of pilgrimage meant spiritual renewal, blessing and the paying of penance.  For Morris this route represented the Medieval world, whose ideals were the Knights' conquests and feats of the King Arthurian legends, a passion and fascination of Morris since childhood.

The house, red bricked, is stalwart and bold, though its northern facade was gone green from the cool, damp moss.  Morris worked on the house with the passion and commitment of a medieval knight, a Sir Gallagher or a Sir Lancelot, in alliance with his friend architect Philip Webb.  He constructed the unusual red brick house with a castle-like appearance, with turrets, wind vanes, arched doorways, stained glass windows in medieval style, tapestries, fireplaces and dresses painted 'dragon-blood red'

The house was also to lure his bride, the 'stunner' of a beauty, Jane Burden, with whom he had met at the theatre while living in London.  During their stay in Red house they conceived and gave birth to two children.  The years there were described by Georgina Burne-Jones as idyllic,
"the time we spent tighter was one to swear by if human happiness were doubted"and at the same time Morris's firm flourished and prospered, with the making of wallpaper, furnishings and designs.


Morris had dreamed of an artist's brotherhood, as bold and creative as King Arthur's round table of knights, and had invited other artists to come and work and stay, among them Dante Gabriel Rossetti and Burne-Jones, but human complexities had complicated his perfect vision, for during their stay in the Red House there became an attraction between Morris's wife Jane and Dante Gabriel Rossetti.

Rossetti often came to Red House with his wife Elizabeth Siddal.  Siddal and Rossetti were a deeply interwoven couple, for he had helped her start drawing and painting, and though she had been a stalwart model, even catching pneumonia when posing as Ophelia while modeling in a bath of water, there became a strong attraction between Rossetti and Jane.


In 1865, five years after moving to Red House, Morris's marriage to Jane became strained.

Siddal must have noticed the attraction between her husband and Jane while she was staying at the Red House, for she had begun painting a mural on one of o the bedroom walls.

William Morris stood back and let the romance between Rossetti and Jane happen.  He left for Iceland and he put his heart and mind into the designs he was working on, so that his business flourished.  

But it was not so easy for Elizabeth Siddal.  Though Rossetti's attractions to other women was no surprise to her,  her poetry the disappointment she feels and she shows longing for the initial perfect intoxication of love when at first it had seemed true and reliable.

"Love held me joyful through the day
And dreaming ever through the night;
No evil thing could come to me,
My spirit was so light.
O Heaven help my foolish heart
Which heeded not the passing time
That dragged my idol from its place
And shattered all its shrine"


Her modeling potential had been discovered at 19 years old while working as a milliner's assistant.  She was an intelligent, interesting and lively minded person, as well as being a 'stunner' 







yet Rossetti had been reluctant to propose marriage, supposedly in part because of Siddal's working class background. Since their romantic debut, Siddal and Rossetti had become less congenial toward each other.  Rossetti's wandering eye had caused grief and pain to Elizabeth Siddal.   




In the pain, she could not carry herself with independence and strength, unable to nourish herself when Rossetti was on his womanizing romps.  She was also suffering from increasingly poor health. She could be needy, demanding, and irritating.  

Her own self-portrait reveals someone who is not a goddess to worship, not someone formidable and strong, but someone who is frail and delicate.  





The intoxication of Rossetti's initial love which had been given plentifully at first, but she

resented its withdrawal.  Like an addict, she had longed for the source of his love.  

She had tried to improve herself by fleeing to France, only began filling the void in herself with laudanum, which was then an easily available drug, cheaper to buy than alcohol and people were ignorant of its addictiveness and danger.


Soon after her stay at the Red House, Elizabeth gave birth to a still born, which some say was caused by her addiction to laudanum.  The cycle of her addiction worsened, and, while pregnant once again, it is believed she took an overdose when Rossetti was out.  


Finding her dead Rossetti was mortified, throwing all his poems into her grave, only to want them back seven years later.  The grave was exhumed and the grave diggers said that her red hair was still growing and bubbling out of the coffin.


Jane removed herself from Rossetti when she realized that he too was an addict of sleeping tablets, although many of his greatest paintings were when she was his muse.  Gradually Rossetti became more and more isolated, attempting also to overdose on laudanum and finally he lost all his money.  


However Morris's friendship with Jane remained solid until the end and theirs was a love that was strong.  


Morris and Jane only stayed at the Red House for five years, before moving to London and then the Cotswolds, to where Morris moved his business, but the dream of the Pre-Raphaelite brotherhood was always strong to him and his social ideals were hugely inspirational.  The broken dreams, the laudanum disguised dragons and false loves of witches and creativity of wizards and the stumbling blocks of all good knights on their chivalrous missions were part of the trips and deceptions of his artist companions, but it could be argued that Morris's knightly ideals grounded him to the end.    

Jane was buried with her daughters and William Morris in a family tomb, their love and friendship consistent until the end. 






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