The Swan
Nell Harker was not like the other girls who came into the London milliner's shop where she worked. For one thing, she did not look like them. Invariably, the young ladies who bought her employer's elaborate hats were neatly coiffed, petite blondes and brunettes with corseted hourglass figures. In contrast, Nell was tall and willowy, and on top of her head was an unruly mass of flaming red hair. Her physical appearance aside, she did not act like her more affluent peers. She had no interest in the latest fashions, cotillions, dinner parties, afternoon teas or finding a suitable husband.
The youngest of ten children of an East London working class family, her prospects for the future were severely limited. Still, she longed to see the world beyond Britain's capital: vast oceans; majestic, snow-covered mountains; dense, humid jungles and scorching hot deserts. Nell was not a stupid girl. She knew someone of her limited means rarely ventured far from home. But if she could not physically visit these places, she could experience them through books.
If only I knew how to read, she thought longingly.
Yet despite there being a woman sitting on the throne, education was rarely available to poor females.
"Reading and writing ain't of any use to people in our class," her mother often told her. "They ain't likely to put coins in your pocket or keep a poor soul down on his luck out of the workhouse."
It was not financial gain Nell sought, however. It was escape. Every morning and evening, on her way to and from work, her route took her past Hatchards bookshop. In rain, sunshine or freezing temperatures, she would always stop and stare through the windows at the exquisitely bound volumes on display, wondering what treasures were hidden between their covers. It was while she was standing in front of the Piccadilly Street shop that Philo Larchmont saw her face and immediately fell in love with it.
"Are you a fan of Mr. Dickens?" he asked, noticing the young woman was gazing at a copy of David Copperfield.
"I don't know," she admitted, blushing with embarrassment. "I never read anything he wrote."
"Really? Not even The Pickwick Papers or Oliver Twist?"
"I ... I can't read."
"It's amazing!" Philo exclaimed, staring at the changing expressions in her eyes.
"Why?" she cried defensively. "I'm not stupid or anything. I just never learned how."
"No. I'm not amazed by your illiteracy. What amazes me is how expressive your facial features are. Are you an actress, by any chance?"
"No. I sell hats in a milliner's shop."
"Seems a rather dull job to me."
Although she secretly agreed with him, she took offense at his blatant assessment of her occupation.
"And what do you do then? Are the Lord Mayor of London? Or perhaps an equerry to Prince Albert?"
"Actually, I'm an artist, more specifically, a painter."
Now it was Nell's turn to be amazed. She had never met an artist before.
"And, forgive my boldness," he continued, "you were born to be an artist's model. The moment I saw your face I knew I wanted to paint you."
"Me? But there are so many pretty girls in London, why would you want to paint a plain one like me?"
"Plain? Whoever told you that you were plain?"
"No one, but I got eyes, ain't I? I work in a milliner's shop. I'm surrounded by mirrors every day. The girls that come in to buy hats are all petite and feminine, whereas I'm tall and lanky."
"Statuesque is a better word."
"Whichever way you say it, it amounts to the same thing: I'm not a pretty girl. Even as a child, I was a tall, skinny beanpole."
"Have you ever read—forgive me—heard the story of 'The Ugly Duckling'?"
"No."
"It's a fairy tale written a few years back by a Danish writer named Hans Christian Andersen," Philo explained. "It's about a baby duck that is shunned by others because he's considered ugly. But then, he grows up and realizes he's not a duck at all but a swan, a bird of exceptional beauty."
"Are you saying I'm not an ugly duck?"
"That's right. And if you agreed to model for me, people will realize you are, in fact, a beautiful swan."
"As much as I'd like that, I can't afford to take time off from my job."
"I'll pay you whatever the milliner does. And," he said, hoping to tempt her further, "I'll teach you to read, as well."
* * *
Philo Larchmont, one of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood of English artists and poets, painted Nell Harker as the tragic Desdemona from Shakespeare's Othello. When Adrian Redfern, a fellow member of the Brotherhood, saw the completed work, he was captivated by the model's beauty. Before he even had the opportunity to meet the shop girl, the enamored painter/poet picked up his pen and composed three sonnets dedicated to her.
"I simply have to paint her," Adrian told his friend, firmly believing he had found his muse.
"She comes to my house every Sunday afternoon. Why don't you stop by and ask her?" Philo suggested.
"Every Sunday? Why? Is she modelling for another painting?"
There was no question of a romantic relationship between the artist and his model since Philo Larchmont preferred men to women.
"No. I'm teaching her to read. That's how I got her to sit for me in the first place."
The following Sunday Adrian showed up at his friend's house with a bottle of wine, his sketchbook and pencils, hoping to make a few drawings of Nell Harker's face. When she arrived for her reading lessons half an hour later and her eyes met the painter's, it was one of those rare occurrences romantic fiction writers call "love at first sight." The tall, thin, redhaired teenager from East London and the dark-haired, blue-eyed artist from Kensington were instantly attracted to one another. When he asked her to model for him, she readily agreed.
Before the end of the month, Nell quit her job at the milliner's shop and moved into Adrian's Kensington home. Given the young man's rather Bohemian lifestyle, he did not see the need for something as trite as a wedding ring or marriage license. As for the young lady's reputation, what did it matter? Neither one of them cared for the company of polite society. The only friends they had were fellow artists and poets, all of whom led similarly unorthodox lives.
During the days, when the sunlight was most suitable for painting, Nell would sit in the studio, keeping still in a pose while the man she adored recited poetry as he painted. In the evenings, he would often continue her reading lessons where Philo had left off. Although she could not yet tackle anything as lengthy as Mr. Dickens's David Copperfield, she had no difficulty reading the short stories of Hans Christian Andersen.
"Philo said I was like the ugly duckling," she announced after closing the cover of the book.
"There's nothing remotely ugly about you, my love!" Adrian assured her.
"Don't you think I'm like a swan?"
"Your neck is definitely on the long side," he laughed. "But I think of you as a muse sent by the gods to inspire men. Just look what you've done for me. I've completed three paintings of you already, and I've lost count of the number of sonnets I've written about you."
"Aren't you going to get tired of painting my face over and over again? Don't you think you'll want to use another model eventually?"
"Never! If you study the three paintings I've done of you, you'll notice I've captured three different expressions on your face. You as Persephone look completely different than you do as Juliet and Helen of Troy."
As time went by, however, Nell began to feel insecure in her position as mistress. She firmly believed that a younger, prettier girl would come along and steal Adrian's heart from her. Thus, it was not for the sake of her good name that she wanted to marry him but for insurance. That "meaningless piece of paper" that he called a marriage license would bind them together.
Not wanting to alienate him, Nell did not openly demand a legal commitment. Instead, she interjected subtle and not-so-subtle hints into their conversations. She would often begin her sentences with the phrase "if we were married." From time to time, she would bring up the subject of children, hoping he would not want his offspring to suffer the stigma of illegitimacy. However, Adrian failed to nibble at the bait she hoped would lure him to the altar.
It was only when, after posing in a tub of cold water for hours on end while he painted her as a naiad, or water nymph, and she came down with pneumonia as a result, that he relented. When faced with the very real possibility of losing her, Adrian proposed. Marriage did little to change the relationship they shared—further proof to him that a wedding was an empty ceremony. To Nell, however, it meant security and stability. Even should a younger, prettier face come along to inspire him—God forbid!—she was his legal wife and could not be turned out of the house.
* * *
Years went by, and still under the spell of his beloved muse, Adrian continued to paint Nell in the guise of Cleopatra, Aphrodite, Titania, Isolde, Mary Magdalene, Queen Isabella of Spain and Eleanor of Aquitaine. In each painting, he managed to capture a different look, which, with a change in hair color and style, transformed her into another person. By the time the tenth painting was completed, her reading skills allowed her to get through not only Shakespeare's sonnets but also Romeo and Juliet—with her husband's help in defining some of the bard's archaic words and phrases.
"It so sad," she declared, wiping a tear from her eye, after reading of the suicides of the two young star-crossed lovers. "I don't know why their families couldn't leave them alone to be happy."
"Because, as Shakespeare said in A Midsummer Night's Dream, 'The course of true love never did run smooth.'"
"I don't think I like Mr. Shakespeare very much. I prefer your poetry to his plays."
Nell put down Romeo and Juliet and picked up the well-worn, leather-bound book in which her husband wrote his poems.
"That's because I write them about you and for you."
"I'll bet if you were to have these published, you would make a lot of money."
"I've got money. I inherited a small fortune from my grandfather. That enables me to devote my time to the arts and to you. No, my dearest, the poems in that book are for your eyes only."
As Nell neared her twenty-seventh birthday, she learned she was pregnant. She was overjoyed at the prospect of bringing Adrian's child into the world.
"I hope he looks like you," she said.
"I'd like it to be a girl," he answered. "A tall, thin, graceful swan with red hair."
Once his wife's middle started to expand, the artist limited the number of hours she modeled for him. He did not want to endanger her health or the baby's by having her sit in one position for too long a time. Still, he managed during those short periods to capture the glow of impending motherhood that lit up her face in a painting of Gaia, the Mother Earth goddess. It was the first and only painting in which Nell saw herself not as an ugly duckling but as a swan.
As all too often happens in tragic plays and actual life, it is at the time in our lives when we are most happy that fate steps in and turns our world upside down. It was when Nell was making the nursery ready for the new addition to the Redfern family that she went into labor.
"It's time," she calmly announced to her husband, who was writing another sonnet in his leather-bound book of poems.
"You lie down. I'll go get the midwife."
For a day and a half, the former East London shop girl writhed in pain, trying to deliver her baby.
"It wants to come out feet first," the midwife notified the anxious father as the birth drew closer. "I'll have to try to turn it around."
When the head finally emerged, the face was blue. The umbilical cord had wrapped around the infant's neck and asphyxiated her.
"It was a girl," Adrian told his wife when she asked about the baby. "She had red hair just like you."
"Was?"
When she learned of her daughter's death, Nell was inconsolable. She remained in her bed for days, barely eating or drinking anything brought to her. Always a thin woman, the resulting weight loss made her look gaunt.
The swan is an ugly duckling again, she thought, turning away from her reflection in the bedroom mirror.
As solicitous as he was of his wife's physical and mental wellbeing, Adrian was first and foremost a dedicated artist and, as such, needed to paint. While his wife continued to confine herself to the sanctuary of her bedroom, he hired another model to sit for him.
It was not long before Nell noticed that her husband's visits to her sickroom were less frequent. Wondering what had become of him, she got up from her bed and searched the house. Like a living ghost, the pale, sickly looking woman wandered from room to room, eventually making her way to his studio. Suffering from what we now call postpartum depression and grieving the loss of her child, when she saw the attractive blonde sitting in front of the easel, wearing the Guinevere costume intended for her, Nell imagined her worst fears had come true.
What a fool I was to think a piece of paper and a brief ceremony could keep us together, she thought as she quietly made her way back to her room.
Loathe to live an empty, lonely life without her husband and baby, the melancholic young woman reached for the nearly full bottle of laudanum on the bedside table. After swallowing the entire contents, she lay back on the bed, picked up the leather-bound book of poems her husband had written for her and read them as she waited for the end to come.
* * *
When Adrian Redfern found his wife's body, he had no idea that he unwittingly contributed to her death. He believed that it was the loss of their child alone that had driven her to take such drastic action. On the day of the funeral, he was bereft, mourning the death not only of a wife but also of his muse.
You meant everything to me, he thought as he looked down at the pale, thin form with is head lying peacefully on a satin pillow.
Before the mortician closed the lid of the coffin, the widower placed the leather-bound book of poems in her lifeless hands.
"I wrote these for you," he whispered, even though her ears were beyond hearing. "It's only right you should have them with you for all eternity."
Once the initial phase of shock and mourning passed, Adrian attempted to put the pieces of his broken life together again. Sadly, he found it a nearly impossible task. He was only able to tolerate the empty days and sleepless nights with the aid of alcohol. Given its growing popularity among artists and writers, absinthe became his salvation. The feeling of euphoria brought by the strong alcohol became his new muse. Under its influence, he locked himself away in a room and wrote poems, not of love but of loss and despair.
As his drinking increased, the fortune Adrian had inherited and the money he earned with his paintings dwindled. When the balance of his accounts became dangerously low, he was forced to sell his poems to a publisher in order to pay his bills. Despite his being primarily a painter, he was also a gifted poet. His published collection sold so well, in fact, that the publisher offered him an even greater sum for a second collection. By that time, however, the absinthe had taken hold of him. He consumed so much of the "green oblivion" that he could barely hold a pen, much less write a coherent thought with it.
When the money he made on his first book ran out, Adrian was faced with financial ruin. The threat of debtor's prison hanging over his head like the Sword of Damocles, Adrian made a desperate move. With the last of his cash on hand, he paid a gravedigger to exhume his wife's coffin and retrieve the book of poems inside it.
I'm sorry, darling, he thought as he stared at the miniature portrait he had made of Nell not long after they first fell in love. So, so sorry! But I have no choice.
After having committed the heinous act of robbing his own wife's grave, Adrian attempted to turn his life around. He immediately stopped drinking. Once he sold the leather-bound book of poems to the publisher, he used some of the money to hire a model, one recommended by Philo Larchmont, who took pity on his friend and agreed to give the girl a few extra pounds out of his own pocket.
As he prepared to resurrect his abandoned career, the widower had to quash painful memories of the days when a shy London shop girl agreed to model for him. It ought to have been easy since the new model bore no resemblance to his late wife. Where Nell had been a graceful swan, Maisie was more like a peacock. There was no denying her beauty, but she lacked the depth of expression his wife had possessed. As she sat in front of him, posing as the biblical temptress Delilah, Adrian reached for his brush. It had been more than a year since he last held one, and it felt foreign in his hand. He quickly put it down as though it had burned his fingers.
You can do this, he told himself, trying to bolster his confidence. You've painted dozens of portraits in your life.
He picked up the brush again, and once its paint-laden hairs made contact with the white canvas, it was as though a spell had been broken. The eyes that studied the model's features and the hand that wielded the paintbrush sang in perfect harmony. It was only when the late afternoon turned to evening and the sunlight faded away in the studio that their song came to an end.
"I think that will be enough for today," the painter announced, putting down his brush and palette.
Wanting to see the progress made on her portrait, Maisie took a peek at the easel. She was shocked by what she saw.
"That doesn't look anything like me!" she cried.
Adrian had been so intent on each individual brushstroke, that he never stepped back to look at the painting in its entirety. When he did, what he saw on the canvas made him tremble. The tall, thin Delilah had a shock of red hair and facial features that looked exactly like his late wife's.
The look of accusation on Delilah's face—on Nell's face!—drove him out of the house and to the nearest pub. The artist was halfway through a bottle of whiskey when the gravedigger who had exhumed his wife's coffin walked through the door. Although little more than a year had passed since he performed that appalling service, the man appeared to have aged at least a decade.
"I ain't seen you in here in a while," the gravedigger said, taking a seat next to Adrian.
"I've been busy."
"Me, too. Mine's a steady occupation: putting people in the ground and every once in a great while bringing them back up."
He downed several glasses of cheap gin before continuing.
"In all my years on the job, though, I ain't never seen nothing like her!"
"Like who?" Adrian asked, already far from sober.
"Your missus. When I opened the lid of her coffin, I was expecting to see ... well, she was dead for nearly six months by then."
The widower grimaced and downed another glass of whiskey.
"It was like," the gravedigger continued, "... like she was still 'fresh.' Sorry, guv, but that's the only way I can describe it. Yet there weren't nothing dead about her. It was like she just laid down and fell asleep. Honest to Christ, I half-thought she was going to open her eyes. And what a time I had prying that book from her hands!"
Adrian could bear no more. He finished the last of his whiskey and left the pub.
* * *
When Maisie arrived the following morning, ready to resume work, Adrian paid her and sent her away.
"I've decided not to finish the Delilah painting after all," he told Philo when his friend stopped by for a visit that afternoon.
"If Maisie doesn't inspire you, I know a few other models who might."
"It's not that. I just can't get Nell's face out of my mind."
Philo wanted to comfort his friend, but he was at a loss for words.
"I had a few drinks with the gravedigger last night," Adrian continued.
"You're drinking again? I thought you stopped."
"He told me what he saw when he dug up her coffin," he continued, ignoring Philo's question. "He said her remains were still 'fresh.' That's what he called it, as though Nell were a piece of fruit or a vegetable."
"That's impossible, and you know it. She had already been in the ground for six months."
"Don't you understand? She probably wasn't dead when I buried her."
"Don't torture yourself. Nell died, and regardless of what that drunken fool of a gravedigger claims, her body couldn't have been preserved. It's scientifically impossible."
"No. She was buried alive," Adrian insisted, stubbornly refusing to listen to reason.
"Even if she had been—and I sincerely doubt it—she wouldn't have lasted long, locked in a coffin. Once the limited air supply was gone, she would have died anyway, probably within hours after the lid was closed."
Despite Philo's attempts to reason with his friend, the possibility of Nell's premature burial preyed on Adrian's mind. For days, he was unable to eat or sleep. Driven to the brink of insanity, he entered the cemetery late one night, removed his jacket, rolled up his sleeves and proceeded to dig up his wife's grave. He worked at a feverish pitch, and within a short period of time he unearthed the coffin.
His heart pounding not only from physical exertion but also with fearful anticipation, he pried the lid open. The gravedigger's words were true! Nell looked more alive than dead. In fact, she looked as healthy and beautiful as she had before that disastrous childbirth had stolen her looks from her.
"Nell," he whimpered. "What have I done to you?"
The dead woman's eyes suddenly opened, and she stared at him. It was not with a look of accusation as he had seen on the portrait of Delilah, but rather one of love. She smiled gently and raised her thin arms. Adrian leaned forward and welcomed her embrace.
* * *
Philo Larchmont stood outside Adrian Redfern's door and knocked again. There was still no answer. It had been days since their bizarre conversation about premature burial, and he had not seen or heard from his friend since. Concerned about Adrian's emotional stability, he stopped by the house several times, but no one was home.
Where could he have gone?
Philo went first to the pub, but no one had seen Adrian there since the night he spoke to the gravedigger. Having failed to find his friend at any of the usual places he frequented, Philo went to the cemetery.
He was here, the worried artist thought, recognizing the jacket lying on the ground beside the grave. But where is ...?
One look at the discarded flowers and the disturbed earth in front of the headstone drove the questions from his mind.
Oh, Adrian! What have you done?
The gravedigger was not a hard man to find. In fact, he was in the cemetery at that very moment, digging the grave of a thirty-four-year-old man who recently passed away from consumption. After being offered a generous sum by Philo Larchmont, he temporarily abandoned the task at hand to dig up Nell's coffin once again.
"I suppose you want to see for yourself if I'm right about her still being 'fresh.'"
"No. I want to make sure her body is still in her coffin. I fear her husband might have lost his mind and dug her up."
"This ground was definitely disturbed recently," the gravedigger announced when he looked down at the loosely packed soil.
That ought to make my job easier, he thought gratefully.
Philo waited behind the headstone as the mounds of dirt beside the grave grew with every shovelful of soil. In a surprisingly short period of time, he heard the sound of metal scraping on wood.
"The coffin's still here," the gravedigger declared. "And it appears as though someone pried it open."
Philo temporarily closed his eyes, imagining the worst: an empty coffin, which would mean Adrian was out there somewhere with his dead wife's body. Although not a religious man, he held on to the belief his Christian upbringing had instilled in him, that the dead deserved to rest in peace.
The artist tensed when he heard the creaking of wood as the lid was pried open. He leaned forward and peered over the headstone, down into the open grave. What he saw there made his lower jaw drop in incredulity. The coffin was not empty. On the contrary, it contained not one, but two bodies. The more recognizable of the two was the recently deceased Adrian Redfern, who was lying peacefully, wrapped in the fleshless arms of the skeletal remains of his dead wife, Nell.
This story was inspired by events in the life of Pre-Raphaelite painter/poet Dante Gabrielle Rossetti and his model and wife, Elizabeth Siddal (or Siddall). After she committed suicide, he buried a book of his poems with her. When he found himself in financial trouble, he had her remains exhumed in order to take back the book.
The image in the upper left corner is a detail from Rossetti's La Ghirlandata (the Garlanded Woman). The model for this painting, however, was Alexa Wilding, not Elizabeth Siddal.
After seeing a portrait of Elizabeth Siddal, Salem wanted to dye his hair red. As usual, he had some difficulty with the Lady Clairol spell.
