Bookend
That Ne'er Shall Meet Again: Rossetti, Millais, Hunt. G. H. Fleming (Michael Joseph £6) "The rings under the eyes," wrote Octave Mirbeau, " . . are unique in the whole history of art; it is impossible to tell whether they are the result of masturba' tion, lesbianism, normal love-making or tuberculosis." The figures in Burne-Jones's painting are the subject of this sally, but it is an approach many biographers, of the Pre-Raphaelite movement and its offshoots, find hard to avoid. The latest study is nn exception. In 1854, not much to the interest of Florence Nightingale in Scutari, the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood was dissolved. Holman Hunt, originally the driving spirit, went off to paint in the 1-10IY, Land; Millais was received into the Royal Academy; Dante Gabriel Rossetti withdrew to devote himself to poetry, water-colours and Elizabeth Siddal; and his brother William turned to writing art criticism for The Spectator. Professor Gordon Fleming, whose hobbies are the visual arts, jazz and baseball, takes up the story.
The result is a conscientious, long' winded but undeniably interesting book. Hunt, Millais and D. G. Rossetti, with Ruskin always in the foreground as herald, standard-bearer and finally antagonist, led extraordinary lives. Since visual arts is only a hobby with the Professor he wiselY refrains from tracing currents, influences, tendencies and such, which might provoke thought and jeopardise the lucidity of his narrative summary. He accedes to the vieW that it was women — models, Iri5,. tresses, wives — that formed, directed an' finally ruined their careers.
Rossetti is inspired by a young silo)* assistant Elizabeth Siddall, paints het' keeps her, nurses her, leaves her for brief flirtations with Jane Burden and An Miller, returns in guilt and marries her, buries her with his manuscript of poen)5 which, six years later, he disentangle' from the bones and red hair. Millais, 85 everyone knows, takes Effie from Ruskin' marries her, and achieves his greatest triumph when, in his last illness, he flnaq prevails upon Queen Victoria to receiv` her at Windsor Castle, Holman Huill marries Fanny Waugh and then, marrYinb Edith, falls foul of common law thirty-t''° years before The Deceased Wife's Sister Marriage Act. Beyond all this fiddle, it is worth recalling to mind the pictures themseive,s,' the bright, allegorical set-pieces hanging Liverpool, Birmingham, Manchester, an London art galleries — the heroines' ethereal and slumberous, declining heavY" lidded eyes upon buckskin poesy; and the androgynous warriors, freshly down frnrlif Oxford, strutting in ridiculous suits n, armour against backgrounds of violet saw, pistachio-green. Gordon Fleming describe; them for us, and there are a number Ts black-and-white illustrations, but he much happier to rely on extensivd` quotation from letters, memoirs contemporary reviews. What emerge; although very readable, is curiously ne sided.
Christopher Huds0
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