A thing of beauty is a joy forever, or so John Keats (1795–1821) stated in the opening stanza of his poem Endymion (1818). While the line is well-known, its”meaning in relation to the story of the shepherd Endymion and his complicated love life is rather more obscure. In fact, when you consider exactly what is meant by that opening line, you must wonder if anything should be a joy forever.

Before I get to Keats, I should mention that during the 19th century, the name Endymion was famous because of the book of the same name by Benjamin Disraeli, Earl of Beaconsfield, a former prime minister and best-selling novelist, beloved by the public for his romanticism, which often came with a political edge. When he published his final novel Endymion in 1880, the newspapers wrote that “first class passengers, especially ladies, carry it with them as they would a favorite pug or a flask of fluid refreshment.” In Disraeli’s novel, Endymion is the son of a disgraced politician, determined to redeem the family name by becoming a politician for the other side. Disraeli’s hero is good, virtuous, and ultimately successful, with the book ending on his assent to prime minister. The connection to the poem is purely superficial, but the name is used to denote goodness and love together with a sense of renewal and revitalization. You could also guess that for the young women clasping the book as they traveled, it was a joy until the last page, if not forever.

The wellspring of the name, well known to Disraeli, was obviously the poem. Keats based his work on the Greek myth of the beautiful shepherd on the slopes of Mount Latmus, named Endymion. From the various retellings, the shepherd was possibly also a prince and an astronomer, but what we can agree on is that he was so handsome that celestial beings placed him into an eternal sleep so they could worship him forever. Licymnius of Chios, an ancient Greek poet, told the story that Hypnos, the god of sleep, loved the shepherd so much that he cast his spell over him with the caveat that Endymion’s eyes remained open so Hypnos could gaze into them eternally. Mercifully, Keats told the marginally less creepy version of the myth, in which the slumbering beauty is visited by the goddess of the moon, Selena (or Cynthia as she is known in this poem). To the relief of all viewers of the art created from said myth, Endymion’s eyes remain closed.

In the traditional myth, Selena, the Titan goddess of the moon, fell deeply in love with the beautiful shepherd and begged Zeus, another of her lovers, to grant Endymion eternal youth so that the shepherd would always be with her. The goddess should have known never to trust Zeus, a tricksy devil at the best of times and one with a grudge in the case of our pretty shepherd. Turns out Endymion had also been the object of desire for Hera, Zeus’s wife/sister, and so Zeus chose to interpret the plea from Selena in a malicious manner. Instead of making Endymion immortal, he put the shepherd into an eternal sleep, preserving his beauty in a permanently unconscious manner.

Not that I’m one to speak in defense of Zeus, but he is not the only one to be petty in this myth. A lesser-known story connected to Endymion is that a girl called Muia found the sleeping shepherd and took a shine to him. He was a great listener, so she would sit and talk to him every night and her endless chatter disturbed his celestial sleep, which is quite a talent. This infuriated Selena so much that she turned the girl into a fly, doomed to annoy sleepers forever with her irritating buzzing. There are no romantic art depictions of this particular myth, unfortunately, so Selena’s shady past can be overlooked on this occasion.

When artists portrayed this poetic love story, the emphasis was always on the gorgeous supine shepherd, his beauty shimmering in the moonlight. Above him, sighing and longing, leans Selena, gazing upon the man she loves who will never gaze back. Anne-Louis Girodet’s 1791 painting The Sleep of Endymion shows a remarkably naked shepherd in all his glory, snoozing under a bush while a chubby child, presumably Eros, parts the branches so the silvery fingertips of moonlight can caress his splendid form. By the time of Jerome-Martin Langlois’s 1822 interpretation, Selena had taken an equally naked shape and is seen floating down on the beams of moonlight to get a closer look at the sleeping beauty with Eros helpfully lifting his blanket. Mercifully, Eros is missing from later paintings as his presence feels both a little unnecessary and rather weird. I’m sure the goddess can sneak a peek under the blanket on her own. By Victor Pollet’s work of 1854, Selena gazes upon the object of her desire alone, her body as pale as the crescent moon that cradles her. Endymion, covered by the smallest piece of animal fur, his shepherd’s crook clutched in his hand, remains an object of glory, the personification of perfection.

Another reason for the departure of Eros from the scene might be an extension of the myth where the moon goddess not only gazed upon her slumbering love but physically visited him every night, giving birth to fifty children by him, which is a little excessive. A magical interpretation appeared in John Atkinson Grimshaw’s 1879 Endymion on Mount Latmus, where Selena, fluttering like a fairy, glows above the object of her desire. It could be that the goddess is departing her love in the glow of the rising sun, curving her body to get a last look at his face, clutching her heart as she is banished by the day.

This rather lustier attraction becomes apparent in later depictions, such as Edward Poynter’s 1902 painting showing Selena skipping down from the sky to find her lover sleeping among the poppies, which denote his endless slumber. A year later, George Frederick Watts painted Selena as a swirling cloud engulfing her lover, creating a circle along with his golden sleeping form. The spirit of the goddess seems to enter the slumbering shepherd, who echoes her body above him, and they appear to form two halves of a whole. They become the phases of the moon together, symbolic of the time passing and the goddess’s love renewing eternally.

The tale of Endymion, the sleeping shepherd, adored in his unconsciousness, is remarkable for the passivity of the male protagonist. Our hero is eternally snoozing because a goddess wanted to possess him. His best qualities are being submissive, silent, and decorative—talents usually required of heroines and yet this feminization of a hero is accepted as a triumph and the pinnacle of romance. There is also a reflection of nature and its joyful cycles. You can interpret Selena’s swooping down to Endymion every night as the lowering of the moon so that the sun can rise, as his name may be derived from the Greek word for “to dive into.” Thus Endymion’s power is to tempt the moon down every night so that the sun can rise and day can come again. In that way, his beauty is his power, keeping the world turning even from his endless sleep. Likewise, Selena’s love is not destructive like that of some of her fellow immortals, but revives each night, new and passionate, to last forever.

Feature Image:
A Scene From ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’ (1873)Image courtesy Wikimedia Commons

When fairy fever struck the Victorians, they never recovered. Many would say thank goodness for that, as this fever created some of the most beautiful art to float gently on the breezes of the 19th century, art that still captures our imagination today. One of the most impactful yet mysteriously unknown proponents of this fashion for fae was a modest young artist from the southwest of England. This is the story of John Simmons (1823–1876).

“By the time Simmons found his forte in fairyland, it had already been in fashion for over a decade. On stage and canvas, Shakespeare was always a commercial favorite, and The Tempest and A Midsummer Night’s Dream fit the fashion for the supernatural. At the end of the previous century, fantasy artist Henry Fuseli (1741–1825) produced influential and popular illustrations for a folio of the Bard’s plays that enabled them to be reproduced and sold to a greater audience. His classical yet raucous images of Titania and Bottom paved the way for a genre of art that could be literary and still pleasingly nude. This foreshadowed what was to follow in the 19th century’s years of fairies, with artists such as Richard Dadd, who offered his interpretation of midsummer madness with Puck from 1841 and Contradiction: Oberon and Titania from 1854–58.

A Midsummer Night’s Dream also held sway on the stage, delighting audiences during this period. Its poetic language, lack of tragedy, and fantasy elements lifted audiences from the industrial modern world they inhabited. Samuel Phelps’s production at Sadler’s Wells in 1853 used layers of green and blue gauze to create a dreamlike separation from fairyland, close to us but still beyond our grasp. Opera singer and producer Lucia Elizabeth Vestris (1797–1856) drew her audience into fairyland in her 1840 revival of the play at Covent Garden, using flittering lights around the theater to suggest the fairies when Oberon proclaimed that they “through the house give glimmering light.” With her background not only in grand opera but also in burlesque, Vestris also knew how to tread the fine line between fairy costume and scantily clad scandal, which would become pertinent in the paintings that followed.

This experience with the fantasy of fairyland and the human yearning for it drew artists to create canvases that brought this specific Shakespeare play to an artistic audience. The plays beguiled the public, but more importantly, they ensnared the imagination of artists, drawing them deeper into this world. John Simmons had been a portrait and miniature artist, making a modest living in Bristol, in the crevice of Southwest England, across the water from Wales. Miles from the Royal Academy, he painted local dignitaries but did not create any ripples in the art world at large. These earnest and dignified works earned him membership in the Bristol Academy of Fine Arts, where he also taught. All in all, he was a well-respected man by both his pupils and peers and regarded as kindhearted, congenial, and an encouraging teacher. His marriage in the 1850s and the four children who arrived in quick succession in the 1860s seem to have coincided with his change from portraits to fairies, a reckless and inspired move that brought him fame, if only for a while.

His training as a miniaturist was surely a gift for a man entering the delicate world of the fae. Each of his visions was executed with clarity, detail, and a smooth finish as if it’d been brushed onto glass. His dreams of fairyland were both innocent yet alluring, free of any mischief and malice that crept into some fae imagery of the time. Instead, Simmons found his ideal of womanhood in the peerless Titania, statuesque and naked. In this he drew an interesting parallel to Vestris’s performances. Sharing the high art is all very well, but everyone would want to sneak a look at a beautiful naked lady. Take, for example, The Honey Bee Steals From the Bumble Bees (opposite), where we see a woman with pale moth wings regarding an errant bee caught taking pollen from a drowsy bumble bee. As the title references a line from A Midsummer Night’s Dream, we know it is the figure of Titania who is shining a light on this theft, the pinprick of bright burning from the tip of her hair-thin wand as she looks on admonishingly. Pale,with a cascade of platinum blonde hair, our Fairy Queen is naked but for the thinnest veil of gauze that seems to swoop from her waist to cover her modesty but very little else. It is debatable whether we are meant to feel titillated by this ivory queen or to await her judgement of our own misdeeds.

The same figure with powder-soft wings appears in one of Simmons’s best-known paintings, Titania (1866) (not shown here). On the frame is inscribed the repeated motto: “The honey bags steal from the humblebees.” The fairy queen once more glows in her spiderweb-thin gown, a spectral orb among the flowers and foliage. Echoing her pallor are the convolvulus or small field bindweed blooms, their meaning possibly hinting at the humility she’ll feel as she succumbs to the play’s spell and falls in love with Bottom. Her absorption with the natural world around her also speaks of her fascination with transience and mortality, which she, as an immortal being, can never possess.

Often in Victorian art of this genre, the fairy world seems within reach of our own, if we could only be aware of it. In Simmons’s 1870 Hermia and Lysander (opposite page), the mortal protagonists of A Midsummer Night’s Dream appear lost in a wood, unaware of the fae folk who surround them. In contrast to the flimsily clad fairies, Hermia’s robes are modest and her hair neatly bound. The couple is so absorbed with each other that Lysander doesn’t notice the fairy riding a mouse-powered chariot by his hand, nor the naked beauty atop the white hare with glowing eyes. Just beyond them, another stunning nude dances in the pollen of the honeysuckle while being fanned with a peacock feather. Any one of those extraordinary vignettes should be enough to catch even the most ardent of lovers’ eye, so either our couple is devoted beyond measure or extremely shortsighted.

Another explanation for our ignorance of the magical world just beyond our fingertips is that we are quite literally unconscious of it. In his 1873 A Scene From ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’ (see pages 30-31), Simmons shows the sleeping figures of Hermia and Titania, watched by the fairies. Around them climb the bindweed flowers, but if the blooms are read as woodbines, they have a narcotic inference. Couple that with the foxgloves present in his other works, and there is a hint of drugging and dreams. As in John Austen Fitzgerald’s The Dream After the Masked Ball, also known as The Stuff Dreams Are Made Of (1864), or his 1858 painting The Nightmare, the Victorians were aware of the presence, welcome or otherwise, of fae folk as they slept. The overt drugging of the figures in A Midsummer Night’s Dream may well have chimed with the use, and misuse, of opiates in the 19th century and the hallucinations that could arise. It is easy to believe in the magical world that surrounds you if you must be deeply slumbering for it to manifest. Also, the presence of such light and fleeting beauty when life becomes dark and difficult brings a comfort of its own.

Simmons’s art was embraced by critics and public alike. He was praised in the newspapers for his poetical treatment and cited as a talented and rising star, but his glory was too brief to be of great financial benefit. He died suddenly, at only 51. Such was the shock and sorrow felt in Bristol that a subscription was raised within the artistic world to save his widow and four young children who were left penniless. Despite his brief career and modest number of small canvases, the paintings Simmons left were to join the canon of the fairy genre that brought pinpricks of light to the modern certainties of the 19th century.

Sometimes life seems beyond our control and without hope, but take comfort in the fact that just beyond your peripheral vision, a fairy is racing by in a mouse chariot … and be glad.

Feature Image: Fairy Resting on a Mushroom (1860), by Thomas Heatherley

The house we lived in when I was a child had a storage cupboard outside the front door. Possibly inadvisably, my father grew mushrooms in there, making the cool, dark, tiled space smell earthy and magical. Outside, our modern home bordered a wood rich with puffballs, ink caps, and all manner of strangely named fungi.

I always knew that the mushrooms in the cupboard were safe, but it was best not to touch the ones in the wood. As a little girl, I did not understand why; I was too young to tell the poisonous from the delicious, so I rationalized that those mushrooms in the woods were homes to fairies or pixies and that it would have been rude, not to mention risky, to disturb them.

I was being unexpectedly Victorian in my reasoning, as the 19th century love of mushrooms was science tinged with fairy folk. The growing interest in vegetarianism in the latter half of the century celebrated the “meaty” delights of some of the larger specimens, while the button mushroom was a little gem to be added to stews.

And with more and more lady artists casting about and searching for suitable subjects for their still-life paintings, it seems unsurprising that they’d be attracted to the smooth white caps, velvet gills, and pops of color that marked the different varieties of fungi. And still-life pictures of nature were considered safe and appropriate.

Not only the mushrooms themselves but the genteel peasants who gathered them became the subject of works of art. In The Mushroom Gatherers (1878), James Clarke Hook showed a girl holding a wide basket full of fungi, her little brother on the ground in front of her pulling up a particularly large specimen. Similarly, in James J. Edgar’s The Mushroom Gatherer (c. 1860s), a beautiful young woman in modest working clothes sits beside her equally beautiful basket of shrooms, all pale and ripe like their collector.

These girls might have been particularly fond of foraging because of its perceived link to witchcraft. In Valentine Prinsep’s Medea the Sorceress (1880), the beautiful witch gathers red-tipped toadstools and places them in her basket, no doubt to fuel her craft rather than her breakfast. Of course she’s gathering the Amanita muscaria, or fly agaric, possibly the best known toadstool, renowned for its narcotic effect. For the Victorians, the red top with its white flecks symbolized positive magic as well as mischief and was even believed to have inspired the robes of Father Christmas (although I’m sure a certain cola company would have something to say about that). Broken into little pieces and soaked in milk, the fly agaric provided a powerful and irresistible poison to flies, and, when dried and swallowed whole, would inspire wild dancing and the spilling of secrets.

The botanist Mordecai Cubitt Cooke published a ten-volume guide to British fungi and wrote extensively about hallucinogenic plants and the mind-altering effects of the fly agaric shroom.

This stunner was also well-known as an antidote to nightshade poisoning, so Medea’s gathering might have been medicinal rather than murderous.

I’ve always wondered what the difference between a mushroom and a toadstool was and the answer is danger.

While there are stipulations that a toadstool has a stalk and a cap, we can all think of innocent white mushrooms that fit the definition but would never be called toadstools. During outbreaks of poisonings such as the epidemic in New York in 1893, the poisoning of the Marchant family in England in 1891, or the Andrieux family in Mureaux, France, in 1882, the perils of toadstools were always blamed. During the latter case, newspapers warned quite dramatically of “the danger of mistaking toadstools for mushrooms.” Quite honestly, all toadstools are mushrooms, but not all mushrooms are toadstools. The very word toadstool is a warning.

It also tells you there is something magical afoot. Do toads need to sit on stools? The toad in my garden needs to sit grumpily under my lavender bush and has never once expressed a desire for furniture.

Of course, where there are toads, other magical creatures usually abound. An interesting example is in John Anster Fitzgerald’s The Intruder (1865; pictured on page 38). The artist had such an obsession with the miniature magical world, he became known as Fairy Fitzgerald and was described by the London Daily Chronicle as “the well-known painter of hob- goblins, fairies, imaginative and classical subjects and portraits.” In The Intruder, wee fae folk confront a toad who wants to access his stool. The situation appears to have escalated fairly quickly with fairies of all sizes getting involved, yet the toad looks completely unbothered by it all—which is very brave because some of those little sprites look terrifying. More sensuous are the fairies of Thomas Heatherley (see page 71), their pink curvy bottoms and flaxen hair spilling over the white flesh of the mushroom cap. These are saucy fairies perched on pearly fungi, perfect and glittering, unconcerned with the matters of man.

There are often accompanying pointy-hatted pixies, mind you, fighting with snails, which is enough to entertain anyone.

As a complete contrast, the fairy ring mushroom, Marasmius oreades, brings such positivity that poet Eliza Cook wrote a whole ode to its glory. Her poem contains the repeated refrain “For, while love is a fairy spirit, / The world is a fairy ring.” While the toadstool seems to shun human interaction and keep company with some very unpleasant types, the fairy ring of mushrooms invites the human in to meet the fae. In Edward Robert Hughes’s Midsummer Eve (c. 1905) a girl stands amid a full fairy ring and jamboree with lots of tiny fairy lights and naked fairies, as one does.

Little Victorian girls seem to have had a particular affinity with mushrooms, seen especially in Edward Atkinson Hornel’s works The Little Mushroom Gatherers (1902) and Gathering Mushrooms (1930) and Florence Small’s The Mushroom Girl (1886). These girls are dressed in picturesque rural attire, with spotless aprons and little baskets and not a dirty fingernail among them. I wonder if the link between young girls and mushrooms is that their innocence chimes with the fae sprites that find them. That’s why it seems perfectly natural that, in the 1917 case of the Cottingley Fairies, it was young Elsie Wright and Frances Griffiths who saw the fairies rather than their parents.

If human interaction with fairies and their rings seems to cause trouble, then far more civilized is Walter Jenks Morgan’s A Fairy Ring (1870–80; pictured on page 5). Here we have a very demure circle of fairies, both male and female, fully dressed and listening politely to the fairy who’s speaking. Maybe it’s the presence of humans that makes fairies behave wildly—do we lead fairies astray? I always thought it was meant to be the other way around, but upon further reflection, we humans are a rum lot. Morgan’s fairies obviously conduct themselves in a democratic manner—dressed, neat, free of fighting or debauchery. The pale mushrooms reveal white gills beneath, giving the impression of purity, refinement, and goodness.

These fairies and their mushrooms are positive forces in the world, but that world is not ours.

In the end, the problem with mushrooms may be that they’re not primarily made for humans. Mushrooms in all their guises are unexpectedly beautiful things, so it’s not surprising that people believed them capable of all manner of magic and, by extension, mischief and malice. I was surprised to find that the fly agaric—arguably the archetypal forest mushroom—is in fact a rare sight in Britain’s woodlands. Its dangerous red coat announces that particular toadstool’s poison, unlike some of

its more innocuous, pale cousins native to Britain’s woods. The destroying angel (Amanita verna) and death cap (Amanita phalloides) look very similar to the ones I have lined up for my risotto tonight, as it happens, all pearly white and innocent.

I ought to reassure you that as a sensible coward, I foraged mine from my local supermarket. The advice my parents gave me as a child was wise after all: Do not steal the fairy houses for your supper; you might not live long enough to have the leftovers for breakfast.

Over a decade ago, in light of many, many years of harassment, I underwent a dramatic transformation. Prior to this point, I was considered so extraordinary that people would shout at me in the street. I would be grabbed, pointed at, poked. Once in a record shop, a man brought his girlfriend to look at me as he couldn’t believe anyone like me would be allowed out in public. Another man crawled across the floor of a bar to take a photo of me.

An unexpected gift of money allowed me to suddenly, albeit painfully, alter my appearance, and since then, I have faded into invisibility, safe at last.

Because of my own transformation, I have always felt a kinship to those women in mythology who alter to find peace. Back in the mists of time, droves of women implored the gods for help and were altered for their own safety and sanity. Ambrosia turned into a grapevine to avoid murder; Clytie turned into a sunflower to eternally watch her lover, Helios the sun god, chart his luminous progress in the sky. Phyllis, in abandoned despair, transformed into an almond tree but did manage the rare feat of reversal, exploding dramatically out of the bark at her husband’s return.

Most famous of all the transforming maidens is Daphne, pursued by a man who felt she did not understand how lucky she was to be the focus of his attention. After all, he was Apollo, the most beautiful god of them all and, apparently, the most entitled. Daphne was devoted to Apollo’s twin sister, Artemis, the goddess of the hunt and of the moon. She followed this wise and chaste leader’s example and wanted absolutely nothing to do with men. Apollo, as it turned out, had no such qualms about the opposite sex and was the lover of a multitude, including Adonis, all nine Muses, and a woman who afterward transformed into the astral constellation Virgo, which might say something of his performance. While out wandering in his sister’s forest, Apollo was shot with a mischievous arrow from the bow of Eros, the little god of lust. The first woman he saw afterward was the unfortunate Daphne, with whom he fell hopelessly in love. She was less enamoured, but he felt he did not have to accept her rejection. Daphne ran as fast as her huntress’s legs would carry her, faster than Apollo, who called after her that she should slow down or else she might hurt herself. Surely the reverse was nearer the truth.

As she continued to flee Apollo, fearing she would not escape, Daphne called upon her father, a river god, to save her. The result created a moment that has inspired artists for centuries. From the tips of Daphne’s fingers grew twigs, and then branches and bark curled up around her legs and Daphne became a laurel tree, safe from the grasp of a man who wouldn’t take no for an answer.

This powerful image appeared in art as early as in Pompeii, as a wall mural, but it found a deep resonance during the Renaissance. Piero del Pollaiuolo’s 15th century masterpiece (opposite) shows the lustful young god attempting to carry away his victim, but she is already sporting two sizable trees from her shoulders—at any moment she will hopefully shout, “Timber!” and squash him. Apollo seems to be gazing up at his arboreal conquest with an expression that says, I’m sure she wasn’t that leafy when I started this pursuit, while Daphne’s resigned countenance suggests a woman who suspected her day would end like this.

Gian Lorenzo Bernini’s astonishing 17th century statue of the subject (above) shows the dramatic moment when Apollo catches Daphne as she transforms, the bark claiming her skin even before he does, so his capturing hand finds only knurls and nobbles rather than the smoothness he expected. As she spins in horror at his touch, her hair flares out and becomes leaves, her outstretched fingers are morphing into twigs, and by the time she faces him, he will be embracing her trunk, solid and resisting. The cold white marble and Daphne’s panicked expression make this an especially chilling rendition of the tale. Is she more frightened at the pursuit or her own change? Is this transformation, the epitome of a Renaissance “rebirth,” within Daphne’s control or just another decision made for her by a man? Choosing between violation or transformation seems like no choice at all when both change violently who Daphne was moments before.

Similarly, Michele Rocca’s Baroque-era painting shows the river god popping up to help his daughter right at the pivotal moment that a barely draped Apollo grasps the even less draped Daphne. They are almost tumbling into the river as she begins to sprout her leaves.

Apparently, a lot of dramatic fleeing was done in the nude in classical times. John William Waterhouse confirms this in his beautiful 1908 painting of Apollo and Daphne, but unusually, the tree appears to be encasing Daphne, gathering her close in protection. Again, like the Bellini marble, the tree intercedes between the persistent young man and the terrified young woman, so as he reaches for her, leaves cross her upturned palm, shielding her from his touch. I find it fascinating that in this painting, although Daphne calls to her father, it is Mother Nature that saves her, quite literally holding her close.

Possibly my favorite version of the myth must be Bartolomeo di Giovanni’s 16th century vision of the fleeing Daphne (above), but she transforms well before Apollo catches her. She turns to him, her tree-arms raised, looking as if she were about to clobber him. Apollo looks undeniably alarmed, and there is the potential of a sequel painting of a beautiful young man fleeing from a vengeful, girl tree who has had just enough of men’s nonsense and needs to settle some scores. She is the Marvel hero we never knew we needed.

I wonder if there is a connection between the Renaissance’s growing harnessing of the natural world, the growth of natural history as an academic subject, and the organization of agriculture, which implied that humans were becoming the master of nature. Images of the unknowable power of the natural world, and of women’s seemingly innate ability to link to ancient, mysterious earth power to thwart the will of man, grow as if watered by fear. The male art viewers were reminded that while your power may permit you to take what you want, nature will always have the last word.

At the end of the story, Apollo takes leaves from Daphne and weaves a headdress, a victor’s crown. He undoubtedly saw himself as the winner in that scenario, which raises so many questions, not least of which is, Can women really ever win? Not only that, he carries a piece of her away even after her transformation, claiming a small part of her forever while she remains rooted to the spot. Having taken my own transformation, I prefer to think more positively. For the rest of time, Daphne is left unmolested, her leaves waving in the wind, sunshine on her branches. If some of her leaves were needed for winner’s crowns, she simply grew more and no longer had to put up with presumptuous gods or the collateral damage from Eros’s jokes.

The gift of transformation is change and choice, and if you ever miss the person you were, remember why you needed that self-revolution. It is the power of rejection, of not only the people who harass you but also the feelings of fear. Remember to grow some thick bark, as the Apollos of this world rarely need an excuse.

If any Pre-Raphaelite woman ever became the image that she portrayed, it was Jane Burden Morris. Although she was a stable hand’s daughter from the (relatively) mean streets of Oxford, Jane made such a remarkable transformation into art royalty that it allegedly inspired the OG Eliza Doolittle in George Bernard Shaw’s 1913 play Pygmalion. Other models appeared as fallen women in Pre- Raphaelite art; Jane almost immediately ascended to her throne and never fell. She truly was the Pre-Raphaelite Queen.

When novelist Henry James met Jane in the late 1860s, he wrote a vivid account of her for his sister: “a tall lean woman in a long dress of some dead purple stuff … an apparition of fearful and wonderful intensity. It’s hard to say … whether she’s an original or a copy. In either case she is a wonder.” It’s not hard to see that the young Henry was in awe of this stately and, more to the point, silent woman (silent because, as he later admits, she had a toothache), and he imbues her with everything he knows of the Pre-Raphaelite vision of her. George Bernard Shaw, onetime suitor of Jane’s daughter May, likewise projected a persona onto Jane, concluding that she was “the silentest woman I have ever met. She did not take much notice of anyone.” Jane’s ability to remain silent in company drew people to fill in blanks, and they used the only evidence of her they felt they could: paintings of her.

The Pre-Raphaelites’ discovery of Jane was intimately tied to her future role as a queen in their work. When Dante Gabriel Rossetti came across her at a theater in Oxford in 1857, he begged her to pose for him and his friends, who were painting murals around the ceiling of the Oxford Union rooms in the colleges (now a library). Jane, with her towering height and halo of black crimped hair, was unlike the small, neat ideal of Victorian feminine beauty, but her imposing presence made her a striking choice for the female lead in their Arthurian vision. In Rossetti’s contribution to one mural, Jane, as a vision of Queen Guinevere, appears in the dreams of Lancelot as a symbol of his sins, preventing him from finding the Holy Grail. Despite the couple’s apparent romance, Rossetti was already avoiding two other women whom he had been romancing and left Jane high and dry as well. This was when Rossetti’s best friend, the shy, retiring, and very rich William Morris, asked to paint Jane, again as a queen.

I’m not saying the girl got typecast—but for her second modeling job, not only was Jane a queen, she was again a queen with fidelity problems. Morris, in a rather shy attempt to romance this stately lass, chose to portray her as the cheating wife of King Mark, La Belle Iseult. Such was his bashfulness, he apparently wrote on the back of the canvas, “I cannot paint you, but I love you.” The inscription renders the subject matter even more puzzling, as he cements his lady love’s persona as the beautiful cheater, the ruination of men. Jane’s repeated portrayal as a queen crowned with infidelity was an unsettling portent of what was to follow.

What is surprising is that Jane either hadn’t noticed the meaning of the roles she was playing for these men or opted to lean into them. After all, had she not risen from being a stable hand’s daughter to leading an enviable lifestyle among the painting elite? In 1860, the year after her marriage to William Morris, the couple collaborated on a wool-thread- on-linen embroidery of the figure of Guinevere, again based on Jane, and worked by them both. Why the Morrises wished to court disaster in a tragic-romantic manner is anyone’s guess, but possibly the answer lies in Morris’s 1858 poem The Defence of Guenevere. Morris imagines a time when Guinevere is charged with adultery, punishable by burning, and she tells her story, her life and loves, her dreary marriage and the rebirth through love for Lancelot. I can see why he would idolize Jane as his perfect woman, his Guinevere, but in marrying her the next year (1859), he became her Arthur—hardly the recipe for a happy marriage.

As a celebration of the marriage of William Morris to Jane, Rossetti painted the pair as Saint George and Princess Sabra in a beautiful 1862 watercolor. As Saint George, William washes the dragon off his hands while watching the villagers carry bits of the slain monster around outside. The grateful, freshly rescued princess kneels, holding up a water bowl and kissing his hands, which is both touching and unhygienic. This is Jane’s brief respite from the series of cheating queens and was one of the few instances where Jane and William appeared together in a painting. Despite being one of the most authentic images of affection, neither George nor Sabra look at each other, and the marked difference in their positions hints at an imbalance in the power dynamic between the pair. Viewing this painting in that light is interesting, particularly in contrast to sketches Rossetti made; in those, William often trails behind his stately bride, trying to make her happy in a bumbling, humorous manner while she remains stoic and unreachable.

If Jane as Sabra can be written off as Rossetti’s brief moment of generosity toward his friends, his projected series Twelve Coins for One Queen can be seen as a more brutally honest expression of how he came to think of his best friend’s wife. By the late 1860s, Rossetti had developed a morbid fixation on Jane. She became a regal, threatening figure looming out of darkness, haunting his vision in works such as Proserpine (1874), Astarte Syriaca (1876-77), and Mnemosyne (1881). Rossetti’s queen was his wife’s best friend, and an emotional affair between them became a keynote in both their lives. Due to Rossetti’s physical and mental illnesses, the Twelve Coins project—intended to comprise twelve portraits, each with an accompanying poem—was never realized. Only one of the portraits exists, Perlascura (1871), and it is one of the most beautiful and delicate portraits ever done of Jane. The medium is pastels, the composition featuring her shoulders bare and her hair shining. All that is missing is a crown.

The deaths of Rossetti in 1882 and William Morris in 1896 might have meant that Jane’s royal days were over. Yet one more artist came to crown this Pre-Raphaelite queen, but with an interpretation far different from that of the men who had loved her. In Evelyn De Morgan’s 1904-7 painting The Hourglass, Jane is once more enthroned, but she is watching her time coming to an end. Now older, gaunt, and seemingly exhausted, she sits in her finery, watching the sands of an hourglass trickle away. Behind her are medieval tapestries not unlike those she worked on with her husband, and outside she is serenaded by a trumpeting figure of Life. But the rose at her feet has seen better days, and so has she. As her fingers rest on the eponymous hourglass, you wonder if she’s trying to summon the strength to turn it back over and relive those glory days once more—but it is pointless. We all get only one turn of time, and her sand is running out.

Following the death of her husband, Jane lived on in solitude at Kelmscott in Oxfordshire. Although she lived in near obscurity, it was still considered a great honor for undergraduates at Oxford to be brought to meet her in her old age, as if they were being presented at some mythical court.

When Jane died in 1914, her obituaries remembered her as a distinguished beauty and discussed how, with her death, the last link to Pre-Raphaelitism had been broken. The latter claim is indicative of how entirely Jane and her image ruled the idea of Pre-Raphaelitism; models and artists like Annie Miller and Marie Spartali Stillman lived on until the 1920s, but it was Jane’s death that was seen as the official end of the era.

The role of queen bookended Jane’s life, from a tempted, remorseless Guinevere to De Morgan’s mournful, lonely woman watching her time trickle away—a reflection of how women are often seen still. When we’re young and beautiful, we’re accused of inspiring desire in others, but if we age, we’re decried for allowing that lust to die. In many ways, De Morgan’s painting typifies that struggle for women and the way our power rises and then counts down, from our birth to our last desirable day, when we might as well cease to exist. The riches that surround De Morgan’s queen mean nothing, as they’re not where a woman’s power resides.

Jane’s face had raised her from humbleness to wealth, from obscurity to worship. In Shaw’s Pygmalion, Eliza Doolittle’s transformation from flower seller to lady is so complete that Professor Higgins’s former pupil Nepommuck suspects she’s of “the blood royal.” Likewise, in the art she inspired, as well as in the many accounts from admirers and her obituaries, Jane’s humble origins have been overlooked and even concealed. “Queen Jane” reigned from her throne, seeking love from unreliable men with the blessing of her king until the last grain of golden sand fell.

But before we feel too sorry for her, remember that of all her peers raised from working-class origins, she had the most comfortable life. She has also likely had the most books and exhibitions dedicated to her and her work. Her homes are preserved for pilgrims to pay homage. There is no doubt that even in death, Jane still reigns.

You are no doubt expecting me to expound on the romance of flowers in Victorian art, but I think I shall instead start with a splendid murder. In Agatha Christie’s 1932 short story “The Four Suspects,” Miss Marple and her friend Dolly Bantry solve a Secret Service murder by use of the language of flowers. When Sir Henry Clithering, former head of Scotland Yard, tells his friends about a murder victim who received a letter signed “Georgina” shortly before being bumped off, Miss Marple makes the following observation:

My sister and I had a German governess—
a Fraülein. A very sentimental creature.
She taught us the language of flowers—
a forgotten study nowadays but most charming.
A yellow tulip for instance means
Hopeless Love, while a China Aster means
I Die of Jealousy at Your Feet.
The letter was signed Georgina, which I seem to
remember is Dahlia in German.

In the language of flowers, dahlia means treachery and misrepresentation, and therefore Miss Marple and Dolly, avid gardeners, solved the case. For Victorian-born women like Miss Marple, the language of flowers was a way to combine science with secrets, exercising the brain while subverting the strictures that held women in their place. Floriography developed alongside the growing scientific interest in botany and the categorization of different plant types. Studying flowers appeared both remarkably educational and incredibly frivolous, which made it possibly the perfect Victorian pastime. The young women who cultivated the language of flowers learned Latin names and biological details of all the different plants because each part of the plant could send a different message. I see it in the same vein as fern mania (or pteridomania), which gripped Victorian England from the 1850s to the 1890s. (By the way, ferns mean fascination in the language of flowers …)

Obviously, in art, the language of flowers was a way to add layers of meaning to an image, not to mention a way to show off what a splendid still-life painter you were. In George Dunlop Leslie’s 1885 The Language of Flowers, two young women have gathered flowers to study. The young lady in black is looking a bit bored, but her friend, consulting a copy of the useful tome, is holding a sprig of love-in-a-mist. You would think a flower with that particular name had a romantic meaning, but according to the books it actually means perplexity. What—or more likely, who—has this young lady perplexed?

Likewise, we have an insight into the thoughts of the young lady who is sitting and pondering in the quaint and peaceful painting A Quiet Moment (1899) by Carlton Alfred Smith. The girl was reading but has become lost in thought—what is she thinking about? Beside her, daffodils tumble from her basket, hinting at unrequited love, so she is lost in a daydream about someone who is unlikely to be thinking about her.

Flowers represent love’s many forms,including the love from an artist toward the sitter. George Frederic Watts chose two floral signifiers in his honeymoon portrait of his young bride, actress Ellen Terry. In Choosing (1864), shown at right, Ellen bends to inhale the fragrance of a showy red camellia, often taken to represent worldly ambition and her stage career. In her other hand, cradled to her breast, she has a handful of violets, which are felt to represent innocence. Due to the disastrous nature of their marriage, many viewers use this painting as proof that the artist thought his bride was easily distracted by flashy nonsense while overlooking the true treasure of their marriage.

If we use the language of flowers, however, there are less judgmental possible readings that might leave us feeling better toward both artist and model. The violets, sweetly smelling in her cupped hand, represent faithfulness, something Miss Terry holds close to her heart, but she is aware of the beautiful red camellia, which represents both admiration and excellence. Despite her young age, Ellen was already a stage star; she went on to be the greatest actress in England in the 19th century. I think her husband knew that her ambition and talent would, and should, win out. As the couple remained friends, I like to think he didn’t blame her for choosing her camellias.

Speaking of love, it was not unusual for an artist to hint at his less proper feelings for a model through the language of flowers. In his first formal portrait of his best friend William Morris’s wife, Dante Gabriel Rossetti painted Jane Morris sitting behind a vase of white roses, with pink and red carnations at her belt. White roses can mean either passion or virginal love, and carnations signify a woman’s pure love. This painting is seen as an expression of Rossetti’s growing obsession with Jane Morris, which would continue for the rest of his life. He also painted her holding snowdrops, denoting hope, and pansies, which could indicate that he was thinking of her and possibly that he imagined she was thinking of him. More likely it was a secret reference to the fact that when he stayed with the Morris family at Kelmscott Manor, Jane would leave a pansy on his bed if she wished him to visit her room at night.

It should also be noted that Rossetti painted all sorts of flowers in the hands of the lovely Alexa Wilding without having any sort of affair with her. One of the most beautiful is La Ghirlandata (1873), or The Garlanded Woman, which shows honeysuckle and pink roses, expressing love and devotion. Strangely, at the front is monkshood, often read as a warning about the approach of a foe. It seems at odds with the image, and even Rossetti’s brother said he thought his brother meant to paint another flower there. However, meanings can differ between reference books, and some say monkshood could also represent a knight-errant’s courtly protection. So maybe the viewer of the painting is meant to be the knight protecting this beautiful, garlanded woman.

Feature Image:
Sappho and Erinna in a Garden at Mytilene (1864), by Simeon Solomon

According to the Ancient Greek poet Alcaeus of Mytilene, “No man sings like a Lesbian singer.” A very progressive statement for 600 B.C., but he was actually speaking of the magic and beauty of the lyric poets of the island of Lesbos and, more particularly, of his contemporary Sappho. Possibly the most heralded singer-songwriter of pre-Christian times, Sappho is mainly remembered today for her love of the ladies, as so little of her poetry survives. Yet for a woman who literally gave her name to a euphemism for female gayness, she wrote an awful lot of lust poems about men as well and even apparently threw herself off a cliff because a man didn’t love her. All this complication leads me to Sappho’s unexpected heyday, the 19th century, where this magical Greek poet by necessity became all these things and more.

Let’s start with who Sappho was. As someone who lived around six hundred years before Christ, she didn’t leave a lot of personal information, but we know that she wrote lyric poetry that was intended to be sung with accompanying music and that her work was so popular that she was christened the “Tenth Muse.” Much of what we know about Sappho is inferred from her poems, as the earliest biography of her wasn’t written until nearly 800 years after her death. Most of her poetry is now lost, however, with only fragments and one complete poem, the famous “Ode to Aphrodite,” surviving. But such was the power of her reputation and the lines that were discovered that she remained in the canon for centuries. Then along came the Victorians, for whom she would personify all aspects of womanhood. Do you want a talented poetess whose work has transcended centuries? Do you want a decadent lover, whose queerness knows no shame? Do you fancy a suicidal, spurned tragic heroine? A love witch with incantations for her errant lovers? There is a Sappho for every occasion—but how many of them were figments of the 19th century imagination?

The Victorians loved the classical period. Painters joyously placed wistful figures on cold marble benches, draped in flimsy fabric. In Sappho, they found the perfect subject onto which they could project all the ideas of the civilized intellect that the homogenous “classics” evoke. In Sappho at Mytilene (1876), Pierre Coomans shows bevies of classical beauties listening to Sappho while offering her laurel crowns. Similarly, John William Godward’s 1904 Sappho of Lesbos shows a buxom woman wrapped in diaphanous fabrics, sensibly sitting on a fur rug—I’m guessing marble is a tad cold, especially first thing in the morning. In Lawrence Alma-Tadema’s 1881 Sappho and Alcaeus, the painter, well-known for his classical scenes, places the two poets together, with Sappho leaning forward in contemplation as she listens to her contemporary’s song. These images are like corporate portraits: Sappho at work as an intellectual, among her peers who respect and celebrate her. It’s unsurprising that poets such as Felicia Hemans, Katherine Bradley, and Edith Cooper (who wrote under the male pseudonym Michael Fields) wrote in praise of their sister poetess.

Not that there weren’t scores of male poets who also aligned themselves with Sappho. Most famous among them was Algernon Swinburne, whose extremely florid verse envisaged “the Lesbians kissing across their smitten / Lutes with lips more sweet than the sound of lute-strings.”

Possibly what Swinburne was imagining in “Sapphics” (1866) was an 1864 painting by Simeon Solomon, Sappho and Erinna in a Garden at Mytilene. In this work, Sappho is not kissing her beloved Erinna across her smitten lute; she has instead sensibly put her instrument to one side. No one wants a lute awkwardly poked in their ribcage during an embrace.

Solomon in turn was apparently inspired by Swinburne’s earlier poems about the life and loves of Sappho, including
of her fellow poet Erinna. In Sappho’s own poem “Ode to Aphrodite,” the poet calls upon the goddess to make the girl she desires fall in love with her. In return Aphrodite recites an incantation, some love magic that will win her heart: “She who shuns love soon will pursue it, / She who scorns gifts will send them still: / That girl will learn love, though she do it / Against her will.” In Solomon’s painting, it’s noticeable that Sappho seems far more enamored of Erinna, leaning in, eyes closed. Erinna, by contrast, just sort of sits there, not really getting involved. It is tempting to think that Sappho was calling for help from Aphrodite because Erinna was just not that into her. Here, however, we encounter the main problem with Erinna and Sappho’s relationship: They never met. Erinna played very hard to get by being born a few centuries after Sappho’s death. Sappho undoubtedly sang to Aphrodite about the love of a girl, or possibly a few girls, but who they were remains unknown.

Another problem with the well-known Lesbian is that she also wrote about her love of boys. In my favorite of her fragments, she foreshadows Charli XCX’s 2017 lyrical ballad “Boys,” telling her mother she can’t possibly do any weaving today as she is busy thinking ’bout boys …

I can’t take the shuttle in hand,
There is a boy, and lust
Has crushed my spirit …

This bisexuality could well have come from some overzealous translators correcting Sappho’s “mistake” of putting girl where she obviously meant boy. There is a fair amount of back and forth in the translations, as some poems could be interpreted as a boy speaking of his love of a girl, and some feature boy lust that leaves you too weak to weave. All of these could be said to have a narrator who is not Sappho but a character. But when Sappho names herself in the poem, such as in “Ode of Aphrodite,” there is no mistaking that she is asking for the love of a girl. Then the obvious conclusion is that Sappho fell in lust with everyone. No wonder she had no energy for weaving.

All this rampant queerness startled some of her more conservative translators and readers, and so another myth of Sappho came to take the artistic world by storm: that of a tragic leap to her death. According to legend, Sappho fell in love with Phaon, a boatman who had been made young and beautiful by a magical ointment given to him by Aphrodite. His newly found hotness turned him into a very unpleasant chap indeed, and when he mistreated Sappho, she threw herself off the Leucadian cliffs to cure herself of her love for him.

But this is rather spurious, as Phaon was entirely mythical. For Sappho to die for his love would be a bit like me falling into despair because Sherlock Holmes won’t call me back. Yet the idea of the poetic, lovelorn Sappho atop a cliff became a recurring theme for such artists as Charles Mengin. In his Sappho (1877), the poet is so distraught in love that her boobs have fallen out of her frock. Similarly, Miquel Carbonel Selva’s The Death of Sappho (1881) shows the poet casting aside her lyre and preparing to plunge into the tumultuous seas below. Charles Lenoir goes a step further in his 1896 painting, showing the drowning Sappho sinking beneath the water, clutching her lyre, completely naked. Unrequited love seems to make all your clothes fall off.

My favorite take on this motif must be Lawrence Koe’s 1888 masterpiece of Sappho, naked on a rock, clutching her lyre. It’s hard to work out if she’s dead, mad, or just having a bit of a tough day, but there are shades of Ophelia about her. While we have no proof that Sappho hurled herself off a cliff for the love of a feckless man, there are shades of that torment in her poems, such as “In all honesty, I want to die,” where Sappho and her lover say that despite everything they have been through, they can’t help but remember the good times, and it is hard to say goodbye to that.

The poetry of Sappho, more than 2,500 years old, has a magic that is eternal. This fact was apparent to Sappho herself, who says to us in a fragment:

“I declare / That later on, / Even in an age unlike our own, / Someone will remember who we are.”

For previous eras, she spoke openly about love in all the different shades and flavors, how she loved those that did not love her, how she was parted from those she loved and learned to love again. The reason the Victorians were drawn to her work was partly because of the discovery of more fragments in archaeological digs, but it was also that her free discussion of love chimed with the decadent aesthetic period. Feel your feelings and love your loves!

Yet the myth of the suicidal Sappho also serves as a warning against such behavior: Too much love will be the death of you. A woman in full pursuit of a lover will never be successful; let that be a warning to you. Despite that, the Victorians made her beautiful and uncompromising even in death.

When I see the paintings of Sappho sitting on a marble bench looking thoughtful, I don’t believe she is having the intellectual thoughts the artist probably intended. Instead I imagine her thinking one her poems: “May you bed down, / Head to breast, upon / The flesh / Of a plush / Companion.” Our girl Sappho spoke the eternal truth that everybody needs a bosom for a pillow.

Feature Image:
Circe Offering the Cup to Ulysses (1891), by John William Waterhouse
Image Courtesy Wikimedia Commons

Once upon a time there was a talented young painter who fell in love with a beautiful sorceress. This love lasted from one end of his career to the other and would cause him to create multiple works on the same subject. Her raven locks, imperious gaze, and gauzy gown haunted his dreams, and he returned again and again to her story, each time showing her sadness and isolation. At the beginning of his career, the painter depicted the sorceress bewitching a hero with her beauty and power. The hero looked uncannily like the painter himself. By the end of his career, the painter showed his beloved witch as pensive and alone, wounded by her actions and the harms bestowed upon her in return. The artist was John William Waterhouse and his beloved sorceress, painted numerous times between 1886 and 1914, was Circe.

Waterhouse was first inspired by the sorceress that would haunt him for the rest of his career in 1886. Although unnamed in The Magic Circle, the beautiful woman brandishing a staff is undoubtedly Circe. In his later pictures she is often framed by a circle or arch, the sign of both sun and moon, and her long dark hair frames a face of intense emotion and concentration. She is a solitary figure, alone with her magic, observed by creatures who regard her reverently. This is her magic, her power and passion, and within the magic circle is fire, flowers, and light. Outside is dust and desolation, murmuring that a woman who is self-sufficient has everything she needs within her space. She has her circle of protection against the world; within that circle she is life itself.

Circe is a deeply mystical figure, the child of, according to various legends, Helios the sun god and Hecate, goddess of moonlight and witchcraft. Her power and wisdom caused her to withdraw to an island named Aeaea where she lived her peaceful life of solitude, pausing only to turn those who disturbed her into animals. That is where Waterhouse placed her in Circe Offering the Cup to Ulysses (1891). This grand goddess sits on her throne, her wand aloft and potion raised. She is aloof, untroubled by any threat offered by the world of men as she can swiftly dispense with them. If we needed proof of this, at her feet slumbers a snuffling fat pig, a crewmate of Ulysses’s who had annoyed her by helping himself to her food. Circe, in her infinite power, used her potions not to kill but to reveal. If these men wish to act like pigs, then so be it: Pigs they are.

Ulysses approaches this beautiful, wicked witch, his hand on his sword. In the epic poems that mention Circe, the undefeatable woman is quickly defeated in the way only a confident man with a big sword can (in tales written by men, of course). Circe has bewitched his crew and turned them to swine, but Ulysses has placed his trust in a holy plant that will protect him, an antidote against such a piggy fate. We would recognize this flower as the snowdrop, but the ancient name is moly. Ulysses uses the power of holy moly to fend off the irresistible power of the enchantress. In Waterhouse’s painting, however, the moment of male triumph hangs in the balance as he approaches but does not strike, seemingly hypnotized by her aura. In the bright circular mirror that frames Circe, we see the face of the cautious hero, and it is a self-portrait of Waterhouse. Why is he hesitant? A pause could cost him his humanity, unless he really wants to end his days with a snout and trotters. There is a hint in Ulysses’s expression that he does not desire to conquer but to honor the strength of an equal and create a bond. Waterhouse’s Ulysses doesn’t draw his sword against this enemy; he watches, acknowledges, and admires. Ulysses’s magic protects him, and he convinces Circe to join him, un-pig his crew, and be a part of his adventures—well, at least until he goes home to his wife. As powerful and formidable as Circe seems, her weakness is men who ask for her help.

Ah, her ability to fall fast in love becomes her undoing, which Waterhouse revealed in his 1892 painting, Circe Invidiosa. As the envious woman (the Invidiosa), Circe is extremely dangerous; she has all the power but seemingly no control when it comes to love. Glaucus, a sea god, beseeched all-powerful Circe to help him win the heart of the beautiful Scylla, who was repulsed by him as he was a tad … fishy. Circe, being a contrary sorceress and not as shallow as Scylla, in turn fell in love with Glaucus and asked him to come away with her to her little love island. His refusal sparks the fire of jealousy within Circe, a dangerous thing in a woman that strong. In Circe Invidiosa, she is tall and imposing, pouring poison into the bathing pool where Scylla swims. Circe is given extra height, rising above her destruction on a sea monster who supports her. As the poison that Circe pours will transform the beautiful into the grotesque, the viewer is left to wonder what creature that serpentine coil of darkness was before the poison was poured into the pool. When Scylla walked into her favorite pool, the dark magic turned her legs into six barking dogs. As curses go, that is an unusual one, but Scylla became a fearful monster who lived out her days attacking ships that sailed too close. Circe, unlucky in love and vengeful in rejection, retreated to her island, alone again at last.

As he approached the end of his life, Waterhouse returned for a final time to his seductive sorceress. Here she is not envious, destructive, or imperious; in Circe (1911–14) the mighty enchantress sits at her table and thinks. In the oil sketch, sometimes entitled The Sorceress, Circe leans on her wand distractedly, her magical paraphernalia surrounding her and two exotic jungle cats watching her keenly. Deadly potions spill, the magical text goes unheeded, the leopard growls for his former human life, but Circe is lost in thought. By the time Waterhouse completed his final oil painting from this sketch, all that is left is Circe, sitting at her table alone, thinking. Her marble table is clear, the magical scroll is neat, and her potions are safely in their bulbous vessels. What is Circe thinking about? With all her power, she is alone but conflicted. Her expression is peaceful but just a little sad. When it comes down to it, the men she had loved were not hers to love and the ones she despised, she turned to animals. As binary choices go, that’s one that would make you a little wistful, to say the least.

When I see Circe, I see a woman tired of the world’s nonsense. All she wants in life is to be left alone, peaceful on her island with all her power. She does not bother anyone until they bother her, and it is invariably men who do so. There is no doubt that Circe’s power is what draws them to her and attracts their attention. All that power residing in one woman appears a waste when they could be using it. Make a woman love me, make my quest successful, cleanse my sins—the men who ask her help want two things: They want to win without too much effort, and they want to be right. None of the things that are asked of the mighty Circe benefit anyone but the men who ask. No wonder she turns them into animals, when it is their basic animal desires that they show her.

The solitude of Circe is where she is safe and others are safe from her power. But as a resource it seems that she is irresistible, no matter the danger. The Magic Circle (1886), which you can see on page 58, shows a woman in a space of her own creation, blooming and shining. She is harming no one, but she still she seems threatening. This is not Circe Invidiosa, the envious, destructive woman who is spurned in love and seeks to ruin love for everyone. This is the same woman who sits peacefully at her table, in a work from almost thirty years later, with her magic, in contemplation. What is she thinking about? Is she sad? None of that is our business. As such, Circe becomes a metaphor for so many things: power, science, the will of the people—powerful, mighty things that so many confident, hungry men think they can use for their own benefit. No wonder she looks tired and wistful in Waterhouse’s final image. Maybe he could finally see that her loneliness was not a source of sadness but a protection. In The Magic Circle, the sorceress stands within the circle, alone, locking out the world and the animals that watch her. Circe’s sadness is not that she is alone but that we will not leave her alone. Her thoughts are not on her vengeful deeds but the idea that there is not another soul in the world who appreciates the absolute majesty of her power. She is alone, she is sad, but ultimately she is at peace.

For the Victorians, witchcraft was a thing of both fantasy and all too real fact. As late as 1895, there was the terrifying case of Bridget Cleary in Tipperary, Ireland. Believed to be bewitched, she was burned alive by her husband on the evidence that one of her legs was longer than the other—ample proof that she must have been bedeviled. Bridget’s fate was extreme, but more mundane tales regularly peppered the newspapers throughout the later 19th century. Regional papers carried accounts of witchcraft resulting in the killing of livestock, illness in servants, and drying up cow’s milk. That particular spell was supposedly countered by putting a pair of breeches on the cow’s horns, causing it to run toward the house of the witch. Against a backdrop of all these rural accusations and superstitions, it seems odd that painters would choose witches as their glamorous muses, but women and their magical powers have always fascinated male artists. When the spell is cast, however, who has the power and who should be afraid?

You don’t have to search too far in 19th century art to find an archetypal witch. She is the fairy-tale type, the trope of an old crabapple-faced bundle lurking malevolently in a cave and cackling at inappropriate moments. Images like Edward Brewtnall’s 1882 painting Visit to the Witch shows witchcraft as a preserve of the old while young nubile maidens come to visit, flirting with the chance of a bit of magic on their side without having to put in the hard work of gathering herbs and squeezing toads and the like. The beautiful and youthful are merely spell tourists, not yet dedicated to the world of black cats and brooms. The old, wizened witch of art is sexless and amoral, not actively evil but fiddling with the natural order of things. The girls who visit want love potions to ensnare an unwilling suitor, proving to men that women are always up to something when you leave them alone together.

There is a definite difference between a sorceress and a witch in art. John William Waterhouse’s The Magic Circle (1886) shows a young and beautiful creature with overtones of Kate Bush in her long gray-lavender dress and wild hair. She is alluring but to be feared, as she is serious in her craft. Similarly, Frederick Sandys’s Medea (1868) is so intense in her art that she’s in the act of yanking off her coral beads. The significance is that coral protects children, and part of the spell she is casting will kill her errant lover’s children and his new wife. Men are right to fear a sorceress; just look at Merlin and Vivien of Arthurian legend. There was a wizard who was capable of great magic, such awesome power, and he is left ensnared and entangled by Vivien, the beautiful enchantress. A sorceress or an enchantress has definite overtones of sex in their arsenal. Vivien and Medea have that power over men, yet neither use it for merely love. Medea wants to rain death down upon him and Vivien wants Merlin locked away. If a woman has ultimate power, she will not use it to make you love her. She will destroy you, unless you get her first.

Tragically, this was the case for Dorothy Henry, the beautiful young model for artist John Currie, who was obsessed with her. He painted her portrait and, after leaving his wife, vowed to marry her, his muse and torment. His obsession grew deranged, and he painted her again in 1913 as The Witch, in which she combed her hair and smiled in a knowing manner. Dorothy had become Lady Lilith, a Biblical witch and destroyer of men’s dreams, combing her hair in her self-absorbed vanity. No man is enough for these creatures, no man can fulfill the desires they have. Only their own reflection is enough, and that is a frightening thought. Currie, mad with jealousy and anger, shot Dorothy in her Chelsea apartment in 1914. He then shot himself, telling a policeman who found him as he died that he had done it because he loved her. Currie left his wife a letter of explanation, saying that Dorothy had power over him, was ruining him, and he had no choice, even at the expense of his own life. She was twenty years old.

In a climate of such fear, it is unsurprising that artists sought to strip witches of their power by stripping them of their clothes. Among the necklace-clutching sorceresses and wrinkle-cheeked grannies are a swath of naked, nubile, naughty witches astride their broomsticks, some of the most beautiful painted by Luis Ricardo Falero. Twin Stars (1881) is possibly Falero’s best known, if not most notorious, work. It was once boarded up by Scotland Yard’s vice squad for being obscene, but now graces the walls of the Metropolitan Museum in New York. It didn’t take long for Falero to add flying witches to his heavenly bodies, and they were equally as gorgeous. Falero painted witches many times, clutching their broomsticks between plump pink thighs as they hurtle about deep blue night skies. One is even riding side-saddle in The Witches’ Sabbath, her flame-red hair flickering behind her as she holds a torch to light her way. In The Belated Witch, Falero shows us one of the sorcery-sisterhood who has obviously been too busy getting ready to get to the Sabbath on time. For Falero, witches are Titian-haired, like fiery thunderbolts, far more titillating than threatening.

But in 1878, Falero produced the truly epic Witches Going to the Sabbath, a whirlwind of bottoms, boobs, thighs, and the occasional goat. This swirl of naked flesh shows half the witches not even bothering with a broom at all, some hanging on to others. A game old hag is shown grabbing both a goat horn and a younger witch and even a chap with a beard in this equal-opportunity Sabbath. It’s hard to know where to look as there is enough disturbing erotica to satisfy everyone. It is an unusual witch picture that involves men, so what is this hurricane of a Sabbath warning us about? Surely by making the women young and sexy, Falero has given the male gaze the power and made the witch merely an excuse for women to be naked in a picture? There is a playfulness in all of Falero’s nudes, but Witches Going to the Sabbath is different. There is urgency and determination in the journey, and these denizens of the night have gathered as a group, providing strength in numbers. Unlike his other nubile ladies, these witches are not displayed for your pleasure—they have somewhere to be. The witches in this picture have a gathering to attend that is none of your business, and you should be afraid. But what could those naked ladies be up to that could be of concern?

The answer may lie in Jean Veber’s turn-of-the-century picture Witches (1900). Like Falero, Veber’s girls ride naked on a broomstick. One girl has her hair streaming behind, the other has hers piled up in a Gibson Girl–style pouf on the top of her head. These are very Edwardian witches, modern and ridiculous, but below them is a neat little sketch of presumably the same two girls on a tandem bicycle. We are suddenly struck that these witches not only want freedom in the skies; they want freedom over themselves. Susan B. Anthony wrote in 1896: “I rejoice every time I see a woman ride by on a bike. It gives her a feeling of self-  reliance and independence the moment she takes her seat; and away she goes, the picture of untrammeled womanhood.”

Witchcraft!

The spell these women Witches (1900), Jean Veber wanted to cast was one of emancipation, and it is no coincidence that the suffragettes embraced the bicycle as their chosen form of transportation, free of male control. Through cycling, they were able to slowly transform their style of dress away from constriction and corsets to gathered trousers and freedom. With the new harem-style pants, you could clearly see that a woman had two legs! She might as well be naked. The bicycle was mostly a vehicle for one, a way for a woman to travel away from the control of
her father, brother, or husband. She could determine her own path, her own destination, and she could go at speed. A woman on a bicycle needs no husband to transport her or decide her destiny. The Suffragette Spinster on her bicycle was the epitome of self-determination and became the poster woman for the new market for bicycle sales to young women. Despite being embraced by capitalism, the lingering distrust of a cycling spinster remained. It’s no coincidence that in the 1939 movie The Wizard of Oz, the frantically peddling Miss Gulch transforms into the Wicked Witch of the West, her bicycle morphing into a broom before Dorothy’s eyes.

The power of the witch lies in her autonomy. The Victorians feared that women would discover freedom was for life and not just for Sabbath, and make off on their tandems or broomsticks, whichever was to hand. I have always wondered about the significance of a witch’s broomstick. Is it meaningful that a woman could use possibly her most important domestic tool, a symbol of labor and servitude, to subvert and deny male power? If women cannot be trusted alone with brooms, what can be done? Even removing their clothes does not make women behave, although it does give us something pretty to look at. Freed of clothing, aboard transport built for one (or shared with a like-minded friend), women move more quickly, bright and fast like comets, finding others that share their beliefs. Together, the witches will gather, will combine their magic.

If I were the patriarchy, I’d be worried—and start watching the skies.

Feature Image:
Ulysses and the Sirens (1891), by John William Waterhouse

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When people ask me which of the many beautiful Pre-Raphaelite paintings is my favorite, I always mention the beauty of Dante Gabriel Rossetti’s pouting maidens or John William Waterhouse’s swirling fabric, but I’m holding back. Just between you and me, my favorite Pre-Raphaelite painting must be Edward Burne-Jones’s The Depths of the Sea (1886). Good heavens! An absolutely gorgeous young sailor is being dragged to his watery grave by a mermaid and doesn’t she look pleased with herself ? The absolutely glorious oddness of the whole piece attracts me in rather unsettling ways, and I find the mermaid’s direct, conspiratorial gaze draws me in like an unsettling motivational poster, as if she is whispering, “Come on, you can drag a sailor to his doom too!” I was never the painting’s intended audience, and Burne-Jones’s intention was never to inspire women in their late forties to start recreationally drowning men. He meant it as a warning and a visceral expression of a personal, if not societal, terror—that given half a chance, all women are dangerous.

These days, you would be forgiven for thinking that mermaids are fairly benign creatures. From Disney’s The Little Mermaid to the Starbucks twin-tailed siren, these aqua-maidens appear to be playful, romantic beings with a shell bra and a caffeinated beverage as their only aims in life. This was not always the case, and in fact for centuries, mer-ladies were seen as actively destructive and scandalous. Whether they are in the form of sirens, nixies, or Jenny Greenteeth, the river hag (which I grant you is a bit rude), watery women have been feared and desired in equal amounts. It is therefore unsurprising that these moist temptresses were such tempting subjects for artists, keen on showing their skill on rending both the movement of water and a nice pair of bosoms.

For as long as we have had ships, humankind has had shipwrecks. Luckily, there were women who could have the blame assigned to them in the form of tricksy mermaids or sirens. These enchanting half-women, half-fish could lure unlucky sailors to their doom with their beautiful singing voices. Some mythologies saw these creatures as half-bird, flying over the boats, singing so sweetly they could absolutely unstoppable as they sank the boats and drowned the sailors. These sirens appeared in The Odyssey, with Ulysses (a.k.a. Odysseus) deliberately sailing into a mermaid-infested area out of curiosity after taking the precaution of stuffing his crew’s ears with beeswax and tying himself to the mast. In John William Waterhouse’s dramatic 1891 depiction, the crew of the ship are bombarded with monstrous birds with beautiful faces. One has even landed next to a poor lad on the side of the boat. As Ulysses called to be released, his crew merely tightened the bonds until they got past these terrible sirens, who having been rejected, perished.

According to Leonardo da Vinci, the mermaid’s song would lull the unsuspecting sailors to sleep, then she would climb aboard and kill the slumbering men. This brings me to a very thorny point: So do mermaids have legs or tails? When I read about da Vinci’s stealthy mermaids sneaking aboard, I got as far as them getting onto the deck and then imagined them floundering around in a very ungainly manner, making an awful lot of noise. Artist Arnold Böcklin imagined the merfolk as having decidedly fishy legs, shimmering with silvery scales from the thighs downward but discernibly separate, all the better for climbing onto ships and committing murder.

A way around this problem seems to be that most mermaids, or at least those up to no good, have legs. Quite what makes them a mermaid in this case, rather than a woman who enjoys murdering in water, I’m not sure. In Gustav Wertheimer’s The Kiss of the Siren (1882), a naked lady is dragging a young sailor over the side of his boat while kissing him. In such rough weather, he really should be paying a bit more attention to remaining afloat, but then the mermaid is awfully pretty and extremely nude, so maybe keeping his boat upright is not high in his priorities. In contrast, Knut Ekwall’s fisherman looks rather more perturbed at being seized by the glorious mermaid as she seems to have erupted from the sea, bosom aloft. She is clearly interfering with his rudder, and those sorts of shenanigans have very serious marine health and safety implications.

For our ancestors, the perils of mermaids were not simply a problem of ancient times. In the 18th century, newspaper articles abounded with reports of fishermen catching both mermen and maids, but rather than being tempted or overpowered by these “surprizing fish” (as a local paper in 1738 called them), the fishermen immediately killed them and took them back for display. As late as 1870, one newspaper reported that Scotland was the last stronghold of mermaids and that they were current all around the coast. A Victorian poetic defense by Samuel Lover, entitled “The Irish Mermaid,” told how the mermaid was entirely innocent of such crimes, and the sea loved the mermaid so much, it wrecked the boats in order to bring her treasures. In fact, there are many images of defenseless and attractive mermaids being scooped into the nets of lucky fishermen, including The Sea Maiden (1894) by Herbert Draper. Rather than coming aboard to murder them all, the poor maid is being hauled in with the catch, much to the lusty disbelief of the crew. I think that should be a sobering warning against skinny-dipping, to be honest.

It must be addressed that despite the modest clamshell bra that I’m sure we all thought was standard issue for mermaids, most of them seem to merrily cavort around in the nude. I suppose that makes tempting fishermen to their doom a little easier, as the only thing a fisherman likes more than fish are boobs, apparently. The link between mermaids and sex has centuries of history; Mary, Queen of Scots, used the heraldry of a mermaid, which became derogatory slang for a promiscuous woman after the death of her first husband. The link between mermaids singing and female musicians, or courtesans, also touched on the idea of a musically talented, unmarried woman who brought danger in the form of sin and autonomy. While it is commonly seen that these women, steeped in sin and scandal, fit perfectly into the mermaid role, it could be argued that what Mary, Queen of Scots, and the unmarried women share is independence and power, however slight. A woman with freedom is a danger, as she is a threat to the status quo. Better, then, to see them hampered by a fish tail, easily caught in fishermen’s nets.

As a side note, in my research I was disappointed to find out that mermen are not so common, and my chances of being dragged off into the ocean by a handsome, singing fish-man are decidedly low these days. In past and, some would argue, happier times, women were given the warning that they were in danger of being carried off if they ventured to the shoreline without the protection of their husband. These strappingly handsome fish-men wore lobster claws in their hair and were ill-tempered and lustful, but for some reason they rarely appeared in 19th century art, apart from images of a frolicking family group as in Böcklin’s example. I moved to the South Coast of England twenty years ago, so mermen have had ample opportunity to carry me off (it might take a couple of them, I admit), but thus far I have been unbothered as I walk unchaperoned by the sea. I’m trying not to take it personally.

Aside from the folk tales of nixies and Jenny Greenteeth, it has to be wondered how mermaids went from being a bonus catch for lucky fishmen to being man-drowning harridans, fixed on committing salty massacres. It is 19th century art where you can see this change expressed most clearly. If art is anything to go by, you could hardly get near the beach in Victorian times for the number of crooning lovelies, hell-bent on wrecking ships and having it away with doomed fishermen. From Rossetti’s The Sea Spell (1877) to Frederic Leighton’s The Fisherman and the Syren (1856–58), water-borne temptresses lined the shore, singing and endlessly combing their hair. No longer “water hags,” mermaids were beguiling and beautiful, and their victims could not see the danger before it was too late. It is tempting to link the escalation in mermaid-related violence to the growth of the female suffrage movement. From the middle of the century onward, women were broaching the male bastion of education, of thought and reason and opinion, plus—to add insult to injury—these tricksy women also wanted the vote. These paintings of mermaids can be seen as whispered warnings, from one man to another: I know they look beautiful, but beware! They hold power that will destroy us! The men in the paintings are by and large utterly helpless in the presence of a beautiful woman and hand over their very lives willingly. Conceding any control to women therefore becomes an act fraught with danger. If you give women the vote, what will they want next? It is a testament to how wise and powerful chaps are that they managed to resist women, who are tempting and murderous and apparently able to harness the wind and sea. No wonder men are in charge …

What should be evident to us all by now is that mermaids are not to be trifled with. Honestly, I think it’s better to extend that to all women, because the mermaids and sirens of Victorian art can’t quite make up their mind if the two are entirely separate. Not only that, as we see in The Depths of the Sea, the comparative physical strength between the great strapping man and the mermaid makes no difference in the outcome. Women will conquer, given half the chance, and they are ruthless and not a little mad, the pictures seem to say. When Charles Dana Gibson drew his archetypal New Woman, watching imperviously as her companion drowns in In the Swim (1900), he connected the aspirational modern woman with men’s timeless fears of sinking in a world where women rise to the surface. Possibly instead of worrying about the temptresses filled with lustful murder, consider that if men are so wonderful, why are women attempting to drown them all the time? The only resolution to all this mayhem on the high seas is to stop being easily tempted by a naked woman with an enchanting singing voice. I don’t mean to victim-blame, but if Odysseus got past them with a bit of bondage and beeswax, then you can too. Also, give women the vote. Honestly, they will feel less inclined to drown you if you do, I promise you.

Kirsty Stonell Walker is a writer and researcher whose passion is bringing forward the stories of women who might have otherwise vanished in history. She’s the author of Pre-Raphaelite Girl Gang and Light and Love and Stunner, a biography of Pre-Raphaelite superstar Fanny Cornforth. Visit her on Instagram @kstonellwalker.