Lizzie Siddal

She arrived, silent, still and beautiful. Alice Florence Rossetti. They took her away as Lizzie broke down in a pool of her own fluids. Laudanum relieved the pain and brought her back. She was very much real to her. 

For months she watched her, nursed her, and rocked her cradle back and forth. Dante watched in fear, for her sanity and his own. He missed the child he never got to know and the wife he once loved unconditionally, but everything changes, and she certainly had. She became nasty, vicious, something unexpected from a beautiful creature. Every so often she would come back, and although the grief was still there, a sparkle in her eyes would appear as she remembered playing catch just off the curb with her siblings. The stew and dumplings her mother used to make and curling up in front of the fire. Dante tried his best, but it was not good enough. 
He attempted to move the cradle, give it to his sister who was due anytime soon. It had been five months after all. She launched at him like a cheetah on its prey, arms flaring. Her nails tearing the flesh from his face as his attempt to defend himself failed. He threw her down and walked out. She clung to the legs of the cradle, weeping like a scene from a Greek play.
He returned days later. She had barely noticed he had gone as she had gotten high for three days straight. They made love. 
He thought the make up sex and her carrying another baby would at least papier-mâché over the cracks. She was barely showing that day she took her life. The day started off as everyday did. Breakfast. Dante left to see an artist friend of his. 
She wrote a note. Black ink, calligraphic handwriting:

‘Oh grieve not with thy bitter tears
The life that passes fast;
The gates of heaven will open wide
And take me in at last.

Then sit down meekly at my side
And watch my young life flee;
Then solemn peace of holy death
Come quickly unto thee.’[1]

She drank the final bottles of her laudanum. Only it understanding her grief as she slumped in a haze.  
As he walked towards their bedroom the atmosphere felt different . She lay still on the bed, note in her hand.
He knew, he just knew. 
He read the note; tears leaving his face hitting the page as the ink ran. He burnt it. She would get a church burial that was deserved of a grieving mother and to save bringing shame upon the Rossetti name, but they all knew.                
Her long copper locks filled her coffin, and in them he put the only copies of his poems. His words with her forever. 


During my Varieties of Fiction module we were given some facts about Elizabeth Siddal an artists' model. 
I had never heard of her but found her story not only sad but very interesting.
This is an extract from the piece I did.

Pen. Paper. Prose. Poetry.

Those who know me know my love for writing. I may not do it as often anymore but pen to paper has always been my release. When me and my sister used to argue, I used to pen poems about how I hated being the youngest (by a minute). And if you read my work for Creative Writing in my first year of Uni, you can gather which pieces were written after my Nan died. Therefore I have decided that I will share some of my work, old and new on with you lucky lot. As stated in my previous post here this blog is a mix, so you never know what you are going to get next.

"Opposite of Loneliness" by Marina Keegan

I do not know this girl, in fact H's mom emailed me this this morning with a link to this piece because to quote 'I know you like writing', which I thought was sweet.  Not only do I remember the feelings of starting uni petrified and leaving even more so, I remember the feeling of it being my home. My friends became family, and even if I was sitting alone I didn't feel it as the place was so familiar. My home was the University of Chester. I guess all those who do go to uni and take the big leap of moving away feel the same, if not, you're at the wrong uni.

'The piece below was written by Marina Keegan '12 for a special edition of the Yale Daily News distributed at the class of 2012's commencement exercises last week. Keegan died in a car accident on Saturday. She was 22.' - abcnews.com.

We don't have a word for the opposite of loneliness, but if we did, I could say that's what I want in life. What I'm grateful and thankful to have found at Yale, and what I'm scared of losing when we wake up tomorrow and leave this place.

It's not quite love and it's not quite community; it's just this feeling that there are people, an abundance of people, who are in this together. Who are on your team. When the check is paid and you stay at the table. When it's four a.m. and no one goes to bed. That night with the guitar. That night we can't remember. That time we did, we went, we saw, we laughed, we felt. The hats.

Yale is full of tiny circles we pull around ourselves. A cappella groups, sports teams, houses, societies, clubs. These tiny groups that make us feel loved and safe and part of something even on our loneliest nights when we stumble home to our computers -- partner-less, tired, awake. We won't have those next year. We won't live on the same block as all our friends. We won't have a bunch of group-texts.

This scares me. More than finding the right job or city or spouse -- I'm scared of losing this web we're in. This elusive, indefinable, opposite of loneliness. This feeling I feel right now.

-->But let us get one thing straight: the best years of our lives are not behind us. They're part of us and they are set for repetition as we grow up and move to New York and away from New York and wish we did or didn't live in New York. I plan on having parties when I'm 30. I plan on having fun when I'm old. Any notion of THE BEST years comes from clichéd "should haves..." "if I'd..." "wish I'd..."

Of course, there are things we wished we did: our readings, that boy across the hall. We're our own hardest critics and it's easy to let ourselves down. Sleeping too late. Procrastinating. Cutting corners. More than once I've looked back on my High School self and thought: how did I do that? How did I work so hard? Our private insecurities follow us and will always follow us.

But the thing is, we're all like that. Nobody wakes up when they want to. Nobody did all of their reading (except maybe the crazy people who win the prizes…) We have these impossibly high standards and we'll probably never live up to our perfect fantasies of our future selves. But I feel like that's okay.

We're so young. We're so young. We're twenty-two years old. We have so much time. There's this sentiment I sometimes sense, creeping in our collective conscious as we lay alone after a party, or pack up our books when we give in and go out – that it is somehow too late. That others are somehow ahead. More accomplished, more specialized. More on the path to somehow saving the world, somehow creating or inventing or improving. That it's too late now to BEGIN a beginning and we must settle for continuance, for commencement.

When we came to Yale, there was this sense of possibility. This immense and indefinable potential energy – and it's easy to feel like that's slipped away. We never had to choose and suddenly we've had to. Some of us have focused ourselves. Some of us know exactly what we want and are on the path to get it; already going to med school, working at the perfect NGO, doing research. To you I say both congratulations and you suck.

For most of us, however, we're somewhat lost in this sea of liberal arts. Not quite sure what road we're on and whether we should have taken it. If only I had majored in biology…if only I'd gotten involved in journalism as a freshman…if only I'd thought to apply for this or for that…

What we have to remember is that we can still do anything. We can change our minds. We can start over. Get a post-bac or try writing for the first time. The notion that it's too late to do anything is comical. It's hilarious. We're graduating college. We're so young. We can't, we MUST not lose this sense of possibility because in the end, it's all we have.

In the heart of a winter Friday night my freshman year, I was dazed and confused when I got a call from my friends to meet them at EST EST EST. Dazedly and confusedly, I began trudging to SSS, probably the point on campus farthest away. Remarkably, it wasn't until I arrived at the door that I questioned how and why exactly my friends were partying in Yale's administrative building. Of course, they weren't. But it was cold and my ID somehow worked so I went inside SSS to pull out my phone. It was quiet, the old wood creaking and the snow barely visible outside the stained glass. And I sat down. And I looked up. At this giant room I was in. At this place where thousands of people had sat before me. And alone, at night, in the middle of a New Haven storm, I felt so remarkably, unbelievably safe.

We don't have a word for the opposite of loneliness, but if we did, I'd say that's how I feel at Yale. How I feel right now. Here. With all of you. In love, impressed, humbled, scared. And we don't have to lose that.

We're in this together, 2012. Let's make something happen to this world.

Rest in peace Marina, and thank you for summing up the experience I had yet to find the words for. The rest of us will continue to make something happen in this world.

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