FORUM
An Interview with
Angela Thirlwell
Yale University Press – London
Your book provides the first insight into two of the most resonant
members of the
Pre-Raphaelite movement – why do you think that it’s taken so
long for their lives to be documented?
In popular perception, his more obviously glamorous siblings
- Dante Gabriel and Christina Rossetti - have long overshadowed
the genuine achievements of William Michael Rossetti. His own
principled behaviour and honourable personality have not made
an easy, obvious appeal to biographers. Similarly, the huge
presence of Ford Madox Brown, a major Pre-Raphaelite painter
(although never one of the ‘Brotherhood’) has obscured the fact
that both his daughters, Lucy and Cathy, were considerable artists
in their own right.
Frances Wilson, in The Sunday Telegraph,
recently described your book as ‘break[ing] the mould of biography’
– what approach did you take and why?
I’ve always been interested in the two very different but
related genres of Autobiography and Biography. I’ve taught these
fascinating subjects to groups of adult students for the Faculty
of Continuing Education, Birkbeck College, London University.
I also edited The
Folio Anthology of Autobiography (The Folio Society,
1994), which ranged with eclectic variety from Egyptian tomb
inscriptions to the present day. William Michael Rossetti wrote
both biographies and autobiography and Lucy, too, wrote a biography
although she never tackled autobiography. Biography is one of
the most popular literary forms today but like the novel it’s
not a fixed genre. It’s a form that is constantly developing
and changing and my dual subject provided an opportunity to
experiment with structure.
Choosing to present two lives rather than the more usual single
life that drives most conventional biography, I realised that
the standard linear chronological structure simply would not
work. Lucy’s life was almost 40 years shorter than William’s
and did not neatly slot into his. I had to find a structure
that did not diminish Lucy’s life in an unfair comparison with
William’s. So I decided on what I call a ‘spots of experience’
approach. The reader goes straight to the heart of the complex
relationship between William and Lucy, as the book opens with
an earthquake in San Remo in 1887, naturally introducing many
of the main characters and providing A Certain Tremor, a metaphor
perhaps for the marriage which is to unfold. After strolling
through a portrait gallery of the surviving likenesses of Lucy
and William, the following chapters focus on particular themes,
either individually or jointly – art, literature, family life,
office life, tuberculosis, radicalism. The demarcations are
fluid. Inevitably, Lucy impacts on the ‘William’ chapters and
William walks into the ‘Lucy’ chapters. Underlying this arrangement
is the natural thrust of chronology.
For me, it’s a biography written with unspoken reference to
music or film, with counterpointing motifs, flashbacks and flash-forwards,
and themes that subtly unfold.
You comment in your book that as biography
can only re-examine the past – you can only re-imagine a present
vision – what do William and Lucy mean to you?
I had no agenda when I began to research their lives but I
must confess that they have both come to mean a great deal to
me. People ask biographers: ‘Are you haunted by your subjects?’
At first, I jauntily dismissed any such suggestion. But as I
delved deeper and deeper into the thousands of documents, letters
and diaries, and lived with William and Lucy as I wrote about
them, I began to see the world through their words and with
their eyes. They became my daily companions. I admired William’s
quiet, unsung personality more and more. I empathised with Lucy’s
more erratic temperament and her all-too-recognisable problems
of combining a creative career with bringing up children. They
were both Victorians – so different from us – but both travailing
individuals – and so like us. This paradox made them poignantly
alive to me.
Why did you incorporate so many pictures
into your narrative?
I was lucky enough to make some great discoveries of previously
unpublished drawings, paintings and contemporary photographs
(many but not all in private collections). Naturally, I wanted
to use these to illuminate my text. Pictures in biographies
are often just dropped in as central inserts and the writer
makes little or no comment on them. As art was the mainspring
of both Lucy’s and William’s lives, I wanted to maximise the
impact of these new visual images and make the pictures really
‘work’ for their inclusion in the story. The pictures are always
there for a purpose, and always (I hope!) discussed in their
context. As William and Lucy’s lives were a marriage of literature
and art, I wanted my book to reflect that in a meaningful alliance
of pictures and text.
Your introduction states that an insight
into William and Lucy’s lives offers a unique glimpse into the
world of nineteenth century marriage and challenges our notions
of how Victorians behaved in private. What were the surprises
for you whilst writing this book?
Their letters completely exploded for me the myth that all
Victorians were prudes. Lucy and William discussed lovemaking
and menstruation, mental illness and death. There were probably
less taboo subjects in the 19th century than we have today.
But of course, William and Lucy were not conventional Victorians.
They were on the edges of Bohemianism, part of the aesthetic
‘set’.
Finally, with some great reviews under
your belt – do you have any further plans to
re-illuminate important figures from the past?
Yes, I’m currently working on a new idea that will centre on
an important Victorian but which will tell his story through
the ‘voices’ of four un-explored women. I like doing original
research and writing about characters who deserve a biography
but who have not yet been treated.
