‘Heaven’s Promise’: Dante Gabriel Rossetti and Spiritualism PART II

quite complex. And he also went to more showman séances as well. This is the Davenport brothers, American brothers, who came over here and did a number of séances where they locked themselves in cabinets and then resulting phenomena occurred, apparently controlled by the spirits. Now it's interesting, we have a letter, a reply to Rossetti from his sister Christina, talking about one of the Davenport séances that he visited. She says, your notes on the Davenport séance are most interesting. To me, the whole subject is awful and mysterious, though in spite of my hopeless inability to conceive a clue to the source of sundry manifestations, I still hope simple imposture may be the missing key. I hope it at least so far as the hope is not uncharitable. At any rate, I hope without any qualification that you and William escaped bumping bangs to the maiming of your outer men. And that's a reference, of course, to their brother William Michael, who will pop up a bit more detail in a moment. And she refers to maiming of their outer men because one of the big phenomenon of the Davenport brothers was to have things floating in the air. And phenomenon really ranged from being hit on the head by a floating guitar, that was an actual recorded incident in one of the Davenport séances. And also people were touched and somebody was actually struck on the face by a spirit hand. So these were much more kind of showman aspects. But it's interesting that Rossetti engaged with it in that way as well. And he also attended séances held by Mrs Gookie, who was one of the foremost mediums of the period. And here she is in a photograph with Georgiana Horton, who was a spirit artist. I'm not going to mention her more than that today. But she's a very interesting figure as well. And in 1868, he attended some of them with the Home of the Thames. So we have him engaging with some of the foremost mediums as well. And in fact, Henry Treffery Dunn, his studio assistant, does tell us that he engaged many famous mediums of the day. Mrs Fawcett, I think Mrs Marshall, although there's some debate, and also Kuhn. But again, there's some debate about that. But I'm continuing my research, so we'll see how we go. But we do have him very much part of this, right in the heart of the kind of movement from the 50s and 60s, all the way through. I mean, spiritualism really occupied Rossetti in many forms for over 20 years, as we'll see when we consider its effect on a couple of his works, as we'll come to have a look at. Now, excuse me while I just have a sip of water. So this is Ford Maddox Brown's painting of William Michael Rossetti, Rossetti's brother. And I want to bring him into it because this is very interesting. William Michael, one of the original members of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, of course, ends up being more of an art critic, and very much the kind of journal keeper for the Pre-Raphaelites and for his brother and brothers, and his sisters as well, making sure their works were catalogued after their death. So we have a kind of administrative role in some regards within the Rossetti family. And that role comes to the fore as regards Victorian spiritualism again, because William Michael recorded his séance experiences. He attended a number, both public and private, in his séance diary, and that was recorded from about 65 to 68, Rossetti attending a number of those gatherings together with his brother, including the Davenport one that we mentioned. Now, why I'm raising this is we can actually consider another layer on this work by Rossetti, Blessed Beatrice. And that is, of course, very directly a text which we can perhaps see as Rossetti's equivalent of his brother's séance diary. His brother as journal keeper of the Pre-Raphaelites, recording the information, and Rossetti recording experiences of séances in his own kind of version of a séance diary, Beatrice. Now we can see this when we have a look at first his intentions for the work that he talks about to other people, and in some of the symbolism and imagery as well. So let's have a look at his own words, and this were to Georgina Cavan Temple, who sort of took up the commission of the work in 66, and who was very much involved in spiritualism as well, held spiritual conferences in her country's state of Broadlands, where Rossetti stayed a number of times, attending a spiritual conference there in 1876. And her husband kept a séance diary. So I'm trying to suggest here the kind of context that we have for Rossetti, but let's move on. Let's have a look at his own words in this letter about Beatrice. It must, of course, be remembered in looking at the picture that it is not intended at all to represent death, but to render it under the semblance of a trance, in which Beatrice, seated at a balcony overlooking the city, is suddenly wrapped from earth to heaven. She, through her shut lids, is conscious of a new world. So Rossetti, and by the way, the working title for this work for many years was Beatrice in Trance, very much alludes to this trance state, which was very central to the cultural phenomenon of Victorian spiritualism. So we can see that his intentions for the work very much reflect the context in which he's involved. So how about looking at the painting with that in mind? Well, first of all, an interesting idea is the sundial here, which points to, in the reading as regards a Dante subject, this points to the hour of nine, the death time of Beatrice and the symbolic number that we see throughout Dante's works. But formally, Rossetti has pointed the gnomon of the sundial towards the third eye here of Lizzie, which was associated with second sight and the idea of maybe being able to access worlds beyond this one. So sight is asleep, normal sight is asleep, but second sight is opened here. And that's kind of symbolised by the column of light above her head, which literally kind of connects her to heaven. Now, the third eye was a concept that was talked about in these circles. Elizabeth Barrett Browning, who was much immersed in spiritualism, talked about, in a letter to her sister Henrietta, the opening of the third eye. And also Hume mentions the third eye in his autobiography, Incidents in My Life, where he recounts a lot of his seances and supernatural experiences. So that's an interesting idea. But we also have many other ways to look at this work, which reflects this idea of perhaps it being a kind of seance diary. I'm only going to mention a few today. I do have a longer course on this if you're interested next year, but you can ask me at the end if you are. But one aspect that we want to look at here is the quality of light. This is something very much associated with this glow that you would see in seances. The phosphorescent glow, sometimes described as fiery light surrounding, almost that you've got that kind of seance phenomena coming in. Rather interestingly as well, we might be able to interpret this in yet another way. We've had a look at it as representing the death of Beatrice when we think about the story, the subject, the Dante subject. We also see the personal symbol layer, an opium poppy alluding to the death of Siddle. Now we might also see it as a phenomenon that Rossetti experienced himself directly in seances, where we see the phenomenon of transports, A-P-P-O-R-T-S. The idea of physical objects which are manifested by spirits during a seance. Floral apports, the manifestation of flowers, was a very kind of common experience. In a seance by Mrs Guppy, Rossetti and his brother experienced this very thing, where the dropping of flowers into their laps was part of their experience of the seance. William described in his seance diary the dropping of a geranium into his lap. He talks about how Rossetti asked for different flowers and received them as well. It says, Gabriel, Rossetti of course, asked for hyacinth and got it, a good-sized sprig. Violets and daffodils were also asked for and were among the flowers found when the light came back on. The whole lot were fresh, mostly single sprigs of flowers as if pulled off one by one. So we may kind of see the flower here brought by the messenger from heaven or messenger of death dropped into the lap as a kind of visual representation of that. So interestingly, we might actually have a think about the way in which this work again has layers in terms of its reflection of Victorian spiritualism. So it depicts Beatrice as a kind of spirit medium, a medium who sees the world and we might also see it as her being that spirit embodied with the kind of spiritual light around her, that she is at once medium and the spirit that she knows she will become, that she is seeing through this clairvoyant trance that she will achieve when she's in heaven. And we can also see it as the kind of reflection of a seance attendee. So he's kind of conflated the different experiences and ideas around Victorian spiritualism in this work. So yeah, it's a very interesting text and we can talk a lot, there's a lot more in it as well that we can discuss but I'll leave it there for today as regards this but we'll move on. Briefly, just want to mention of course, let's widen out very quickly and talk about how other artists are reflecting this context in their work as well and here we have pre-Raphaelite, often called second generation pre-Raphaelite, Edward Burne-Jones here with his symbolic knight personified where knight is kind of seen as this mysterious figure in a trance or a synambulist trance moving through the sky and we also have many images by Simeon Solomon who was close to Rossetti for a time. Many depictions of personifications of knight and love and those kind of aspects which we see Rossetti using in his work and using very much the same imagery because of course the idea of knight being quite symbolic as well of dreams and sleep and trance states and death. So moving on, I want to move into the kind of final aspect that we can look at with this work and that's to locate it in a very, very specific aspect of Victorian spiritualism, a very specific form of engagement with Victorian spiritualism. So let's have a look at this quote from Upstone. Her facial expression, raised head, straining throat and parted lips are overtly sensual and Rossetti evidently intends to suggest a connection between the sexual and the divine, between orgasm and revelation. This was a concept that had been proposed by Immanuel Swedenborg in his book Conjugial Love from 1768, a text which seems to have influenced Rossetti deeply. Now I mentioned Swedenborg's influence in a general way upon the ideas and imagery and philosophy around Victorian spiritualism generally, but the engagement in a more kind of literary and specific way of interest in Swedenborg's esoteric ideas as part of an occult tradition is very much something that characterises Rossetti's interest as well in this field. For example, Blake, who Rossetti responds to a lot with his work and was very much influenced by, also for a time engaged very closely with Swedenborg, particularly with this idea of the conflation of the sexual or sensual and the ethereal or spiritual. So Conjugial Love is that love which is experienced between husband and wife or those who have a kind of true love for one another. Swedenborg calls Conjugial Love a kind of idealised form which continues after death in the next life. According to Swedenborg, those in this true idealised state of love will not just be two angels in heaven, but when they are united together as man and wife will be one angel, one kind of complete angel. And the idea is almost that there's this longing for those in that situation who share this love to be able to become almost one being in heaven by uniting. And he says Conjugial Love, this is Swedenborg, is to the spiritual man what sexual love is to the natural man, a continuation of romantic love in heaven. So this idea as well where there's a kind of presence of a kind of sexuality in the continuation of love that overlaid on this aspect of portraying Beatrice who is very idealised and there isn't that kind of sexuality in the Dante aspects. But there is this idea of sexuality in Rossetti and perhaps the idea that he might reunite with Lizzie. It's very much complicated because he had other lovers as well as we've mentioned, but there is this kind of idea. And we know that the Brownings read Conjugial Love who Rossetti was very close to, and we're going to have a look at a couple of things to finish about the kind of context around this that Rossetti is very much part of this specific engagement. It's more interest in Swedenborg's philosophies. And here's where we get interesting. We can identify a particular group of intellectuals and professionals who were part of this particular brand of spiritualism, very much interested in, as it says here, European mysticism and the writings of the Swedish seer Emmanuel Swedenborg. This is a quote from Alex Owen. They are of course the De Morgans, William Wilkinson soliciting someone involved very much with the Swedenborg society and also with the spiritual newsletter that he edited. And the Howitts who were writers and of course Mary Howitt, very famous for The Spider and the Fly, wrote some works for children as well. Now it's here in this group that we can locate Rossetti. Wilkinson's brother, Dr Garth Wilkinson, treated Lizzie in 1854 and also according to Garth Wilkinson's daughter, may have been one of the doctors called out for a siddle in her last illness before her death. Rossetti was in correspondence with Wilkinson and enjoyed reading Wilkinson's poems on the supernatural and the afterlife. And we'll move on to look at the Howitts and the De Morgans as we move through. So William Howitt wrote one of the earliest kind of histories of spiritualism with this kind of bent towards the interest in Swedenborg as a part, the whole thing as part of an occult tradition. You can see a very kind of, what we would say is kind of a very ambitious text, The History of the Supernatural in All Ages and Nations, etc, etc. But in it, it interestingly talks about Swedenborg but also talks about Dante as part of this wider whole tradition of spiritualism and he traces it back there. So I think that's interesting too, that this group represent a particular interpretation of Dante and we see that coming through in Rossetti. And this group too were very familiar with Hume. They were all very close. The Howitts contributed to Hume's autobiography and there was a lot of kind of cross-pollination of ideas between the group. Howitt's daughter, Anna Mary Howitt, we know her as part of the Pre-Raphaelite sisterhood, someone who trained together with Rossetti and William Holman Hunt at Sass's Academy, someone who is associated with the kind of proto-feminists of the Land and Place group, really interesting figure. Now she of course gave up her conventional painting in favour after a breakdown instigated by severe criticism by Ruskin. She followed a different path of art and she went into spirit drawing. So this idea of automatic drawing, which some have suggested the term may have originated with her, but the idea of course is that she would enter a trance state and create art whilst in that trance state and here is one of her drawings here. Also the De Morgans, let's mention them because we're of course in the De Morgan Foundation talk today, and Sophia's text From Matter to Spirit, the result of 10 years experience of spirit manifestations, is one of those texts from this period which is much kind of quite concerned with adapting Swedenborgian philosophy very directly to Victorian spiritualism. Now let's consider the date 63, Howitt 63, Hume's autobiography 63 and second edition 64, and then we have a think about the dates again of production of Rossetti's work. His work seems to be a kind of equivalent to the texts which are appearing in this group that he is friendly with. Of course we know his connection to William De Morgan who was associated with Morris and Burne-Jones and Rossetti in their work for the firm Morris's firm. So this is from 63 and we can see again the spirits here in the illustration are depicted as literally controlling through the top of the head the mediums who are performing automatic writing and interesting that it comes through the top of the head because we see that idea almost visually displayed by Rossetti. Now we're running over a little bit so we'll move on. So of course very briefly we can establish Evelyn De Morgan, the daughter-in-law of Sophia De Morgan, within this context too and she very much was interested in the kind of Swedenborgian aspects of spiritualism and I want to briefly mention why this might represent Swedenborgian ideas. Here we have the idea of the spirit body, the soul, being quite corporeal, quite physical. This is something again that Swedenborg is all about. The idea that a kind of physicality or corporeality exists in heaven, that people are as they were on earth in a sense. They retain an essential sort of human form. It also has the flowing robes of the angelic robes that Swedenborg describes angels in heaven as wearing their newly, the robes they would wear when they entered heaven, the spirit world. So we won't talk much more about that but just to mention that it's a similar thrust. So to finish I want to talk about another work by Rossetti which definitely engages with Victorian spiritualism but also engages quite specifically with that context of a more Swedenborgian idea about the afterlife that really aligns in with the group of people that he knew, the Howarts, the De Morgans, the Wilkinsons etc. So the Blessed Damsel, a work that Rossetti first wrote about in 1850 with a poem and went through many manifestations and he also produced two paintings from the subject. Now one of the main features of the work which we can see the first, the final three standards almost have this idea of the connection of the Blessed Damsel who is in heaven looking and longing for reunion with her beloved who is depicted here down on earth and the speaker says you know I almost saw her smile, I heard her tears. It's this idea of connection across the veil, through the veil. But the key thing about this work is that Rossetti identifies heaven as a reunion of true lovers. This is the voice of the damsel as she's in heaven longing to be reunited with her lover who's still on earth. She says there will I ask of Christ the Lord thus much for him and me only to live as once on earth with love only to be as then a while forever now together I and he. And this is reinforced when we have a look at this study for the background you can see much more clearly heaven being depicted as a reunion of lovers and of course this directly relates to Swedenborg's text of conjugal love and that romantic love and sexual love in a very chaste specific form is part of the heavenly experience and this is something and this is in some more lines from a later edition of the poem around her lovers newly met with deathless loves acclaims spoke ever more amongst themselves their rapturous new names. So we have that kind of aspect coming through in his work as well. And just to finish the house of life sonnet sequence also contains three sonnets which allude to this very specific engagement which Rossetti and those around his circle had with Victorian spiritualism that of a much more direct engagement with Swedenborg's ideas and philosophies of heaven. If we take the first few lines of this true woman free her heaven if to grow old in heaven is to grow young as the seer saw and said then blessed were he with you forevermore whose heaven should be true woman. So again the idea of heaven being a kind of uniting or a union of lovers becoming one being and here is the title of the talk yet shall heaven's promise clothe even yet those lovers who would cherish still this test for love in every kiss sealed fast to feel the first kiss and for both the last and he explains in a letter to Jane Morris the reference to the seer is Swedenborg and they paraphrase the lines from Swedenborg's great text heaven and hell they who are in heaven are continually bouncing to the springtime of life in a word to grow old in heaven is to grow young. So I just want to finish and my quotation boys with the quotation from William Michael Rossetti about Rossetti and spiritualism he says as to my brother's reported assertion I believe in a future life this was partially true at all periods of his career and was entirely true in his closing years and this of course was written or published a year before his death. His belief depended partly upon what we call spiritualism on many of whose manifestations he relied. So I'd like to end it there and I'd like to say thank you because I know I've run over in time I can get a bit carried away by the subject so I apologise but thank you for your attention and time today.