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Mortal Love, my impressions

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I devoured this book. And I know I will not hesitate to devour it again, its hold over me is that strong. It is a story with many layers and a narrative that switches between time periods. I enjoyed it, realizing early on that the story was told in an artistic, disjointed way that appealed to me. (read my entire post @ my site)

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Rossetti and His Baubles

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Rossetti in the Subway

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I am so grateful for the fabulous things people share with my to add to my website. Pre-Raphaelite Sisterhood is truly at its greatest when it is interactive, welcome to everyone to share their enthusiasm for Pre-Raphaelite art. Look at this find:

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The Lady of Shalott film now available on DVD

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Mortal Love

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Millais’s Silver Pillar

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Although not as often as the Lady of Shalott, Guinevere was an Arthurian subject visited by the Pre-Raphaelites. Medievalism had grown in popularity early in the nineteenth century England and had a definite influence on William Morris especially, who even rode a horse in a toy suit of armor as a child.

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St. George and the Princess Sabra was painted by Dante Gabriel Rossetti in 1862. His wife, Lizzie Siddal, died while modeling as Princess Sabra. I find myself searching her face, as if it were a photograph, looking for signs of what was to occur days later: her overdose of laudanum.

I just started reading Tracy Chevalier's book Falling Angels.  It is my first Chevalier--people have recommended Girl with a Pearl Earring to me but I haven't read it or seen the movie.  It is a curious thing with me, the more people recommend a book, the longer I seem to put off reading it.

This book is quite a coincidence.  I just caught a glimpse of the cover at the library and the synopsis on the back seemed interesting..."told through a variety of shifting perspectives-wives, husbands, friends and lovers, masters and servants, - and a gravedigger's son -- Falling Angels follows the fortunes of two families in the emerging years of the twentieth century"  This brief description is all I knew of the book.

I started reading it this morning and imagine my surprise to discover Highgate Cemetery features quite prominently!  Having just spent Sunday afternoon pouring over, resizing, and posting new photos of Highgate on my website LizzieSiddal.com, I have images of Highgate on the brain!

I'm only a little bit into the book, which is not divided by chapters but different narratives from all the characters in a journal-like fashion.  But I was interested that the author presented differing perspectives on the cemetery:
From Kitty Coleman, wife and mother:
"That blasted cemetery, I have never liked it.
To be fair, it is not the fault of the place itself, which has a lugubrious charm, with its banks of graves stacked on top of one another--granite headstones, Egyptian obelisks, Gothic spires, plinths topped with columns, weeping ladies, angels, and of course urns --winding up the hill to the glorious Lebenon cedar at the top.  I am even willing to overlook some of the more preposterous monuments--ostentatious representations of a families status.  But the sentiments that the place encourages in mourners are too overblown for my tastes."

Then from another character, a little girl called Lavinia:
"I had an adventure at the cemetery today, with my new friend and a naughty boy.  I've been to the cemetery many times before, but I've never been allowed out of Mama's sight.  Today, though, Mama and Papa met the family that owns the grave next to ours, and while they were talking about the things that grown-ups go on about, Maude and I went off with Simon, the boy who works at the cemetry.  We ran up the Egyptian Avenue and all around the vaults circling the cedar of Lebanon.  It is so delicious there, I almost fainted from excitement."

The areas of Highgate mentioned (the Egyptian Avenue and the Circle of Lebanon) are included in the photos I've recently added to my site.  For those of you who may not be as familiar with my site, it is dedicated to Elizabeth Siddal (Pre-Raphaelite artist's model, poet, and painter).   Lizzie died in 1862 due to an overdose of Laudanum and is buried in Highgate in an area that is currently closed to the public. Her grave is a famous one, her husband Dante Gabriel Rossetti had her exhumed several years after death in order to retrieve the manuscript he had buried with her.

I've noticed I often find coincidences in the things I'm interested in.  And apparently this week, it is Highgate, a place I've always wanted to visit.  So if some kindly anonymous benefactor would coincidentally send my husband and I plane tickets that could get us there, I would be truly grateful.
No?
Any takers?

http://preraphaelitesisterhood.com/?p=1016 The poem I’ve chosen today is fitting for a site discussing Pre-Raphaelite women. Women whose faces are familiar, who gaze silently from the canvas as the artists they loved cast them in roles such as Ophelia, Pandora, Helen of Troy. Without the artists, we would know nothing about these women at all. But when we see them, we are seeing them through the artist's eyes.