The Wayward Muse (28 page)

“Of course he shouldn’t drink alcohol,” William had told her before he relinquished Rossetti into her care. “No matter how much he teases. It gives him headaches and makes it hard to sleep. I know he thinks he needs it, but the doctor tells me it is actually detrimental to his recovery.”

The other rule that William gave her was that he must be weaned from chloral.

“It’s terribly difficult,” he said to her. “Are you sure you are ready to take on such a task?”

She had no idea what it involved, but she assured him she was. He could not stop taking it all at once, or he would become violently ill and might in fact die from the lack of it. So he must be weaned slowly, a little at a time. When he first arrived at Kelmscott, William Rossetti handed her the case of vials and told her that she must dispense them.

“Start with two in the morning, one at teatime, and two at night,” he said. “Then in about a week take away one of the morning ones. Then one of the night ones. Then the one at teatime. Next to last take away the final morning vial, and then finally the one in the evening. In about six weeks he will be completely free of the stuff.”

“What if he asks for more?” she said. “What if he gets sick?”

“You must be strong,” said William. “No matter what he says or does or how he tries to manipulate you. And keep that case under lock and key.”

She had done exactly as he asked and now Rossetti was down to one vial three times a day. They still had wine with dinner, which Rossetti downed by the bottleful, but he no longer had gin or scotch afterward, and he did seem better for it.

So it was with shock that she entered his room one day with a vaseful of fresh roses to find him dispensing a clear liquid into a glass with an eyedropper. It was ten o’clock in the morning and Rossetti had said he wanted to sleep in.

“Where did you get that?” she asked, more in surprise than in anger.

“You think I’d tell you?” Rossetti snarled. “You, who are in league against me?”

“Gabriel, you know that is not true,” she said. “I’m trying to help you.”

“Did you know I can no longer sleep at night?” he said. “Did you know that I heave and choke up bile when I wake up in the morning? Did you know that my head aches worse than if I’d been hit in the temple with an anvil, and you take away from me the one thing that will help me?”

“It’s killing you,” Jane said. “The doctors say so. If you hang on a little longer, it will get better.”

“It will be better when I’m dead,” said Rossetti.

Jane went cold. “What do you mean by that?” she asked.

“Just what you think,” said Rossetti. “Please leave.”

She left him there and went to check the cabinet where she kept the supply of chloral. It was all as she had left it. She concluded that Rossetti must have bribed one of the servants to go into town for him, but no one admitted having done it.

In the end she gave up and let him have as much as he wanted. She was too afraid of what he would do if she didn’t, and she couldn’t bear the thought of losing him, either by death or by his turning against her. She couldn’t stand it that he might hate her. When he had as much chloral as he liked, he seemed almost like his old self again, charming and witty. He began to take a notepad on their walks by the river, and to write a little poetry again, which was always about her and which he would read aloud as he worked. Jane loved to hear the adoring words, more for what they symbolized than for the praise they heaped on her: Rossetti was getting better.

One afternoon they were stretched out, as usual, on the bank of the Thames. She lay in his arms as he stroked her hair. He had brought his sketchbook, though he had not opened it. She was reading to him from a new work of Dickens. Then the hunters came tramping through.

It was common enough for hunters to pass by, and she had never thought much about it. They never came in the summer, of course. They had stayed so late at Kelmscott that it was now duck-hunting season. She recognized one as the gentleman who owned the adjoining estate and greeted him politely. But Rossetti stood up, enraged.

“What are you doing?” he screamed. The hunters looked up, startled.

“Excuse me, Mr. Rossetti, just passing,” said the leader of the group, their neighbor. They moved as if to go on.

“Stop!” Rossetti shouted. “Thieves! Murderers! Christ killers! Lovers of Satan and of Sodom and Gomorrah!” Before Jane had a chance to stop him, he had advanced on the hunters, who appeared to be frozen to the ground in confusion.

“I will kill you for defiling this land with your sinful feet,” he said, and punched one of the men in the face. The man reeled but didn’t fall.

“Mr. Rossetti, get hold of yourself,” said their neighbor. He attempted to restrain Gabriel but was knocked to the ground.

“Mrs. Morris,” cried her neighbor. “Get some servants to help us!”

As she ran toward the house, she watched as the hunters beat Rossetti down and restrained him until she came back with her two gardeners and some ropes. Somehow, though they were seven strapping men, they could not seem to subdue the lone invalid. She tried to help them tie the ropes around Rossetti’s wrists, but one of his arms came free and hit her in the face. She fell back, stunned, and stayed out of the fray as they at last held and tied him. She tried not to watch, but his screams and curses were impossible to ignore.

When the doctor came he looked with disgust at the vials next to Rossetti’s bed.

“You’ve been allowing him to ingest this poison?” he said.

“How could I stop him?” she said in anguish. “He said without it he would kill himself.”

Now the doctor looked at her with pity instead of anger. “I am sorry,” he said. “Mr. Rossetti has had a complete psychotic break.”

“What does that mean?” she asked with dread.

The doctor shook his head. “His delusions have become his reality,” he said. “He is no longer in the world that we are in. He may return now and then, but it is increasingly unlikely that he will ever be entirely cured.”

“What should I do?” she asked.

“Write to his family,” the doctor advised. “You cannot care for him alone.”

After the doctor had left, she sat by Rossetti’s bedside and watched him sleep. The doctor had administered laudanum and it would be hours before Rossetti would awaken. His jaw was bruised from where one of the hunters had elbowed him in an effort to subdue him. His left eye was blackened and he had scratches on his neck and arms. In his drug-induced stupor he no longer strained against the ropes that bound his arms, but she could see that his wrists were red and chafed from his writhings. He was like an animal, without sense or reason.

She thought about the autumn. She had had Rossetti here, but it was Rossetti in body only. His spirit was lost somewhere, and she didn’t know if it would ever return. Shall I have a séance for it? she thought to herself. Is he any less dead because his body is still alive? In fact, Rossetti’s body only tormented her with what she had lost.

It was foolish to still love him, and yet she did. After all, she thought, it was not his fault. He was very ill. He had not meant to strike her, and none of the hunters had been seriously hurt. He had periods of lucidity where he seemed, if not his old self, then at least someone she enjoyed being with.

The truth was, the doctor was right. The nursing Rossetti required was beyond her abilities. Perhaps it had always been, but it certainly was now. He would have to go back to his brother. Or she could go back to London and William Rossetti could send someone to Kelmscott to stay with him.

Perhaps the breakdown was her fault, as so many people said. The guilt of doing something he knew to be sinful, no matter how hard he tried to rationalize it away, must have been weighing on him. Jane felt that you tried to do your best and God would forgive you the rest, but despite his insouciant air Jane knew Rossetti feared the wrath of a vengeful God.

She could not take care of him. The primary thing that husbands and wives should do for one another, and she could not do it. She had been fooling herself; she was no wife to him. If she had been his wife, perhaps he would have responded to her ministering. Perhaps she could have helped him.

As for herself, she could no longer depend on him for anything, not even affection. He had become an invalid, a dangerous and violent one. The burden she would be asked to assume would be heavy and thankless. And yet, to abandon the man she had pledged herself to was unthinkable. The choices were intolerable.

She stayed at his side until he awoke. The light was fading and in the shadows his expression was hard to read.

“Jane,” he said. She was relieved that he knew her. More than once he had called her Lizzie and it had torn out her heart.

“I’m here, darling,” she said.

“My head,” he said trying to sit up.

“Don’t,” she said. “You have to rest.”

“Did I really attack five gentlemen with rifles?” he asked, feeling his tender jaw.

“Yes, you did,” she said.

“I must be truly insane, then,” he said. “I don’t even remember why I did it. If they passed by the house now, I doubt I would even notice them.”

“You were upset,” said Jane.

“It defies explanation,” Rossetti said, and Jane had to agree.

“I struck you,” said Rossetti, looking at her swollen eye.

“Only accidentally,” she said. “I was trying to get the ropes around your wrists while the others held you.”

He turned his head and she knew that he was crying. “I have been reduced to this?” he said. “I strike you while you’re trying to restrain me and then you feed me mugs of broth and bathe me as if I were a child?”

“It won’t always be like this,” she said. “You will be well again and then things will be as they were before.”

“I’m beginning to doubt it,” he said. “I think that something inside me is irrevocably broken.”

Jane didn’t answer, as she was not sure what to say.

“You’ll go back to him,” Rossetti said.

“Yes,” Jane said.

He fell back upon the pillows. “It’s probably for the best. It was insanity to think we could live this way, out of time, out of society. We were fools.”

That whole, terrible day Jane had not shed a tear, but at last she could stand it no longer. “How can I do it?” she screamed. “How will I stand it?” And she fell upon the bed, shaking with sobs. Her screams brought the servants running, and, though they found no signs that Rossetti had harmed her, they were taking no chances. They forcibly escorted her to her own room, and she offered little resistance as she was led away. A sleeping draft was prepared for her, and, though she hated the stuff more now than before, she obediently drank it. Anything to be away from her own thoughts. Anything to enter a dreamless land of emptiness.

J
ANE
wrote to William Rossetti, and he came promptly to oversee his brother’s care. He did not reproach her for her failure, but he did seem relieved when she told him that she was leaving Kelmscott. She also wrote to her husband to tell him that Rossetti was worse and she was coming back to London. She knew Morris would understand what that meant. Rossetti seemed not to notice, or care, when she came into his room to say goodbye, which was most heartbreaking of all.

On the journey back to London and to Morris, Jane tried to think of what she would say to her husband, but nothing sounded right. “I’m sorry” sounded insincere, because was she really sorry? She was sorry that Rossetti’s mind had faltered, she was sorry that his illness necessitated her leaving him, but she was not sorry she had fallen in love with him. She could not say “Forgive me,” because what she had done was unforgivable. She would not seek to diminish her treachery by asking her husband to absolve her. “I am home” was completely inadequate. When her carriage pulled up in front of the brick town house, she still had no idea what she was going to say.

He was waiting for her in the parlor, Rossetti’s book of verse,
Poems,
in his lap.

“How is he?” Morris asked.

“Not very well, I’m afraid,” she said. “He attacked Peter Godrick.”

“Attacked him?” Morris did not seem overly concerned. “With a shovel?”

“Flew at him. Hit him. It took seven men to bring him down. The doctor said he has had a complete breakdown.”

“My God,” said Morris, sounding serious now. “Will he recover?”

“William is there,” said Jane. “He will not let Gabriel hurt himself.”

“Terrifying, isn’t it, how fragile some minds are,” said Morris. “Rossetti’s mind, it seems, is the thinnest glass. Mine, though, I’ve been relieved to discover, seems to be fashioned of shoe leather and cannot be more than scuffed.”

“Who is to say that the scuffing isn’t more painful than the shattering?” said Jane.

“You are the only person in a position to observe who suffers most,” said Morris. “Perhaps it is you.”

“What is my mind made of?” asked Jane.

“Oh, I think it’s a willow basket,” said Morris. He put down his pipe and stood up. “Soft and pliable but incredibly resilient. The only way to unravel it would be with great violence and a pair of very sharp scissors.”

Jane waited to see if he would embrace her, but instead he picked up her traveling case. “I’ll take you up to your room,” he said. “There’s something I want to show you.”

As she climbed the staircase, Jane noticed with dismay how very drab the carpets looked and how dirty the casements were. She had always disliked the house, but the summer at Kelmscott had made its shabbiness seem almost unbearable. When she reached the doorway of her bedroom, however, she halted in surprise. Next to her, Morris watched her face.

“I thought,” he said, “that if you were coming home to stay, you might like a change.”

He had replaced the garish Victorian wallpaper with Jasmine, one of his newest designs. The fluted white flowers with their gray-green leaves tendriled around pinwheel flowers of pale green. Her bed had been covered with fabric of the same pattern. He had framed and hung some of Rossetti’s drawings on the wall, as well as one of his manuscript pages from
Icelandic Stories.
The woodwork had been freshly painted, and a new crewel rug had been laid on the floor.

“William,” she said, and touched his arm.

“Shall we plan the menu for the week now?” he asked, but she saw that his eyes were moist. He went to the window to hide his emotion from her.

“I’d like to rest for a moment,” said Jane. And then, hesitantly, “Will you sit with me?”

Morris was still watching the street and did not reply. “Jenny and May are back,” he observed.

“Mummy’s home,” shouted May from below, and clambered up the stairs into the room.

“Hello, Mummy,” she said, leaping into Jane’s arms.

“How was your walk, darling?” Jane asked.

“We saw the most adorable dog,” said May. “It had puffs of hair on its tail and around each foot.”

“The gentleman said it was a Pomeranian,” said Jenny from the doorway. She seemed shy and Jane reflected that it was probably better she was not going to go away again.

“May we have one?” said May, already knowing the answer.

“I’m afraid they’re temperamental,” said Morris. “But we could shave your head into a little puff and it would be almost the same.” He lunged for May and she shrieked in delight.

“What would you like for dinner, sweet?” Jane asked Jenny.

“Turnips,” replied Jenny promptly, in a way that made Jane’s heart constrict. How she had missed them!

“Just turnips?” she asked.

“With ham,” said Jenny. “And potato soup.”

“And fried parsnips,” said Morris.

“And chocolate cake,” said May.

Jane folded up the letter with a sad smile. For a moment she thought of asking Morris what she should do, but then she realized that only she could decide. She went to her desk, pulled out a sheet of her stationery, dipped her pen, and began to write.