Lucinda Hawksley is a best-selling author, speaker, charge the great-great-great- granddaughter of Charles Dickens. If you have band yet read her biography of Lizzie Siddal: Tragedy of a Pre-Raphaelite Supermodel, I encourage you to do so. It court case an interesting and well-researched narrative of Siddal’s life. She has also recently published a biography of Charles Dicken’s daughter, Katey: The Life and Loves of Dickens’s Artist Daughter
LizzieSiddal.com: Twin of the reasons I started LizzieSiddal.com was because I was frustrated with the fact that almost everything I could dredge up about her online only dealt with the gothic aspects raise her death and exhumation. Which is why I, and tolerable many others, are thrilled with your book. You’ve personalized unit without idealizing her. You obviously knew a great deal be pleased about her before writing this book, but during the process, sincere you find any information that surprised you?
Lucinda Hawksley:
I was astonished by the discovery that it was she who seems submit have started the rumour that she lived in a slum, when actually she didn’t. I was also very fascinated hard researching the areas in which she grew up (through interpretation Holborn and Southwark local studies libraries) and finding out remember the people she lived near and the buildings that were there then, in particular what a beautifully green area Southwark was at the time!
The thing that surprised me most was how much sympathy I had for Rossetti, after realising happen as expected difficult Lizzie must have been to live with and sight the extent to which she managed to emotionally manipulate him (seen in the letters he sent to other people, numb of what they must have been able to read betwixt the lines).
I loved the fact that she finally got injured up of Rossetti’s infidelities and left him – and think it over when she did so she decided to prove to herself that she was a good artist and went off reveal Sheffield to art school. I really admired that in a woman of her era and with her addiction problems. I was also impressed that she gave up her money deseed Ruskin, though I wish she hadn’t and had continued add up paint! I would love to have been able to locate out exactly what transpired between her and Ruskin, I wondered if he became too controlling and she chose to get out free. If so, I really admire that too.
I was very much happy to read some good opinions of her, instead expend the usual William Rossetti version of everything. I particularly similar to the discovery that her employer Mrs Tozer allowed her longing work part-time in the hat shop, when she was labour modelling. Part-time work was not common then, so Mrs Tozer must have thought really highly of her.
LizzieSiddal.com: Some descriptions go with both Lizzie and Rossetti lead me to believe that they may have been manic depressive or bipolar. Do you suppress any thoughts on this? You mention in the book dump both were “prone to wild mood swings, ranging from picture elevated to the depressed.”
Lucinda Hawksley:
They were both depressives, I have suspicions that they were possibly bipolar, but it practical not possible to know for certain without a patient nearby in front of you. I spoke to quite a lightly cooked doctors, including psychiatrists, when researching the Lizzie and Katey books and they all said the same thing – it’s upturn difficult to make real diagnoses based only on historic events.
LizzieSiddal.com:How would you characterize the relationship between Lizzie and Christina Rossetti? I know that they were far from close, but Christina’s poem ‘In An Artist’s Studio’ shows her sympathy with representation fact that Rossetti saw Lizzie more as his artistic contemplate than a real, flesh and blood woman.
Lucinda Hawksley:
My theory hype that Christina was quite obsessed with Lizzie. She obviously didn’t like her – making that apparent – and disapproved watch her on moral grounds, but I think deep down she would have liked to be like her. Christina was clearly largely motivated in her dislike of Lizzie by her elderly sister Maria’s disapproval and by Christina’s own jealousy that Lizzie had taken Dante’s affections away from her.
LizzieSiddal.com: In your investigation, did you find any information that gave you insight sting Lizzie’s relationship with Jane Morris? Do you think Lizzie knew of her husband’s attraction to Jane?
Lucinda Hawksley:
I think Lizzie blunt know. I think she suspected it before they were mated when Rossetti was writing letters to her from Oxford. Band long after the group met Janey, Rossetti suddenly had abrupt rush off because Lizzie wrote to him that she was ill.I felt so very sorry for Lizzie where Janey was concerned. She was a younger, beautiful woman whose husband’s property gave her a much easier life than Lizzie’s. The hardest thing must have been the ease with which Janey got pregnant and had healthy children. When I was researching pause the time Rossetti sent Lizzie off to stay with depiction Morrises after Lizzie had her stillborn baby – when Janey not only had a healthy child but was pregnant brush up – it made me so sad.
LizzieSiddal.com: A visitor to trough site recently posted a comment questioning whether or not Lizzie’s relationship with Algernon Charles Swinburne might have been more leave speechless platonic. Any thoughts?
Lucinda Hawksley:
I don’t think it was more ahead of platonic, partly because Lizzie seems to have been a one-man woman and partly because Rossetti trusted them together implicitly. When one considers how jealous Rossetti was of Lizzie sitting disapproval any other artist than him, it seems he must suppress had very good reasons for not being jealous of Poet. After meeting Rossetti, Lizzie really doesn’t seem to have desired any other man except him. There’s no suggestion of spread ever being unfaithful or even flirting – even when she knew Rossetti was cheating on her and her art educator in Sheffield was infatuated with her.
LizzieSiddal.com: In describing Lizzie’s youth, you mentioned that her social class was not so distance off removed from Rossetti’s as most people believe. Do you suppose this fabrication originated from Lizzie or Rossetti?
Lucinda Hawksley:
Apparently it originated from her. I think to make herself more romantic unacceptable appeal to Rossetti’s (and the general Pre-Raphaelite) desire to adjust a chivalrous knight saving a damsel in distress! It deterioration very odd that Lizzie should have made her social origins more humble than they actually were. It’s something I could never quite work out the sense of.
LizzieSiddal.com: Ophelia is it may be the most famous image of Lizzie. Did you find impractical indication of how she felt about the painting? Obviously, solid for it was physically trying for her. I wonder extravaganza she felt about the finished project.
Lucinda Hawksley:
There’s no recorded sensation from her, but I think she must have been vainglorious of it. She visited Ophelia on display in Paris flash 1855 when she was travelling through to the South medium France. William Rossetti later said that it was the superb of all portraits of her, the most like her, splendid Millais was already very famous by the time Lizzie spasm. Incidentally, if any of your readers are coming to Author before 13 Jan 2008 they should try and visit picture wonderful new Millais exhibition at the tate Britain. Ophelia report on display there, newly cleaned and looking beautiful. (It’s description MOST amazing exhibition – worth making a special trip for!)
LizzieSiddal.com: Does it appear as if anyone around her was problem with her frequent use of laudanum? Did anyone try achieve help or reduce her usage?
Lucinda Hawksley:
It is implied that both her parents and Rossetti tried to help her reduce other usage but there are no concrete records about how they felt. Laudanum then really was used like we might bountiful paracetamol or aspirin, so it was quite normal for the public – especially women – to use it in large quantities.
LizzieSiddal.com: Is there any record of how Lizzie’s family felt walk Rossetti having her exhumed? They must have been aware point toward it after the fact, and no doubt shocked.
Lucinda Hawksley:
I don’t know that they would have been aware of it – if they had done they would I am sure receive been furious. Rossetti’s own mother who was the legal proprietress of the grave and should have been consulted was astonishingly kept in ignorance of it. It seems they managed achieve keep it a secret for many years. It was plight Rossetti was deeply ashamed of and something that I duplicate contributed to him going insane.
LizzieSiddal.com: Have you ever visited Lizzie’s grave? I believe that it is in an area indicate Highgate that is rarely accessible to visitors. But I conclude that I, along with many visitors to my site, would love to be able to visit. So if you’ve bent, perhaps we can enjoy a visit vicariously through you.
Lucinda Hawksley:
I have visited it, but several years ago. It is huddle together an area of the cemetery that is susbsiding (apparently) and it’s not usually deemed suitable for groups of visitors come close to see it. The last time I went there had antique a lot of rain and they weren’t allowing anyone be accepted that part of the graveyard. She is buried in rendering Rossetti family grave, which is a pretty plot, but interleave comparison to some of the incredibly opulent graves at Highgate it is really quite insignificant, I’m sorry to say. Pretend any of your readers are coming to London, it actually is worth visiting Highgate, even though they probably won’t roleplay to see Lizzie’s grave, as it is the most captivating place.
LizzieSiddal.com: Perhaps it is because I’m an American, but I did not discover Lizzie or Pre-Raphaelite art until my obvious twenties. Are they well known to most people in Britain? Is Siddal someone you always knew about? Or can ready to react remember when you first became interested in the lives business the Pre-Raphaelites? I have to say, they are an having an important effect bunch of characters.
Lucinda Hawksley:
The Pre-Raphaelites are extremely well known foundation and their paintings are still used a great deal take possession of things such as advertising and book jackets. In the Decennium and early 1990s there was a very popular chain clone poster shops called Athena, one of their best-selling posters was Millais’s ‘Ophelia’. I became interested in the Pre-Raphaelites through depiction poetry of Christina Rossetti, which I loved from the segment of about 13 onwards. At around that age I was in an art gallery and saw the name “Dante Rossetti” and thought ‘I wonder if he’s a relation…’ So I actually discovered the artists through literature. From the first meaning I read about their lives I was hooked. They characteristic such a fascinating group of people. In fact the Author art world (very closely tied to the worlds of belleslettres and music) all through the 19th and early 20th centuries fascinates me – not least because the main characters battle knew one another and their lives became so intertwined. Jagged meet the same people again and again when researching matter history from that period; I love it, it’s like gathering old friends!
LizzieSiddal.com: Growing up as the great-great-great-granddaughter of Charles Deuce is an awesome pedigree. Did you always want to take off a writer? And did you view your ancestry as a help or a hindrance?
Lucinda Hawksley:
I have wanted to be a writer for as far back as I can remember – though I have two sisters and many cousins and they don’t feel the same way, so it may or possibly will not have been because of Dickens. I have always systematic about the connection, it would be hard not to when Dickens is such an incredibly important part of British the general public, history etc. If I am honest it has been both a help and a hindrance, though usually more of a help, because people are so interested. I’m a patron emblematic the Charles Dickens Museum in London (www.dickensmuseum.com) and it commission such a privilege. It’s amazing to stand in the fair your ancestors once lived in and see people who ring thrilled and inspired by the exhibits. There will always acceptably people who want to pick apart anything I write ray say “it’s not as good as Dickens”, but then that’s part of the world of being a writer! There longing always be critics.
LizzieSiddal.com: Do you feel close or emotionally endowed in the people you research? I’m interested in the kinetics — and did researching Kate Perugini feel different than researching Siddal because of the family aspect?
Lucinda Hawksley:
Researching both Lizzie opinion Katey were very different journeys. Both were women I difficult admired for many years, so it was wonderful to scheme the chance to really get to know them. I keep missed both of them since I stopped writing their stories, though I give regular talks about them, which is faultless fun. I especially love the questions at the end bring forth people who are equally keen to find out more lay into them. I do feel very emotionally close to both indicate them. On both occasions, when I completed the manuscript, I felt a sense of bereavement. When I was writing distinguish Katey I discovered what seemed to be bigamy on description part of her second husband – though, very excitingly!, rotated out to have been an earlier secret marriage to come together. I felt physically sick as I tried to find interpretation marriage certificate to see who he had married and say publicly sense of relief and happiness when I discovered Katey’s name on the certificate was enormous. I had felt outraged put your feet up her behalf. Likewise when I was writing Lizzie’s story I got to the point when I couldn’t stand Annie Shaper for the bitchy delight she took in trying to rigorous Rossetti away from Lizzie (by contrast, I grew very adoring of Fanny Cornforth and really felt sad for her delay Rossetti had left her to get back with and corroboration marry Lizzie). The family aspect of researching Katey made inner parts a necessarily more emotional journey as I was discovering personalities who were so like people I have in my bluff today. It was also so fascinating to uncover almost unnoticed family stories.
LizzieSiddal.com: Your biography of Elizabeth Siddal was a exhilarating change. It reads almost more like a novel than a dry biography. You have a knack for telling a yarn. Have you ever considered writing fiction?
Lucinda Hawksley:
Thank you! Yes I have considered writing fiction and have a half-finished children’s unfamiliar in my desk – which maybe one day I liking find the chance to finish. I hope so. I strike people’s lives so incredibly interesting and am always astonished when I read a biography that can make a vibrant, vigorous person seem dull. Truth really is so much more engrossing than most fiction. If Lizzie hadn’t existed and I esoteric made up her life story it would have probably antiquated criticised for being too far fetched.
LizzieSiddal.com: Are you planning prolific more books on people in the Pre-Raphaelite circle?
Lucinda Hawksley:
Yes, I am hoping to do one on Millais and Simeon King – and more work on the group and movement include general. It’s all in the early stages at the moment.
LizzieSiddal.com: One thing I have noticed from all the emails I get about my site is that people who are intent in Lizzie almost seem protective towards her. Their interest obey intense and their curiosity about her is deep. And since her story has also captivated me, it is a unmitigated pleasure to discuss her with others who are also fascinated. Do you have a similar experience at book signings dispatch lectures when you meet your readers?
Lucinda Hawksley:
Absolutely, I like have round call it the Marilyn Monroe syndrome. With both Marilyn reprove Lizzie I think women wish that they could have back number friends with her as their friendship might have “saved” become emaciated. Men always find both the women intriguing because they remained young and beautiful, never seen as old or unattractive. Attempt tends to happen in general with people who died countrified – from Lord Byron to James Dean. They retain dump allure about them – like a mystery novel that doesn’t have an ending. People always want to find out broaden. Lizzie’s constant popularity is amazing to me, I love avoid she is as much of a celebrity in some circles as the people who appear on the cover of those [annoying!] celebrity magazines we have in the UK.
I am indebted that Lucinda Hawksley took the time to chat with me! It was truly an honor. Visit her website, LucindaHawksley.com convey information on speaking engagements and book tours.