The Last Pre-Raphaelite by Fiona MacCarthy

Author:Fiona MacCarthy [Fiona MacCarthy]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780571275793
Publisher: Faber & Faber
Published: 2012-04-10T04:00:00+00:00

In June 1881 Rossetti wrote to Janey: ‘I heard something almost inconceivable – that is, that Ned has gone to spend a week at the countryside house of Lewis the Police Lawyer! I shd. as soon have thought of his applying for a lodging in Newgate.’ Rossetti is referring to George, later Sir George, Lewis, the Jewish criminal and divorce lawyer who became a pivotal figure in Victorian society. He first achieved celebrity in the Balham Mystery case of 1876 when Lewis represented the parents of the victim at the inquest into the poisoning of Charles Bravo. He acted in notorious society lawsuits, notably the Crawford–Dilke scandal of 1885–6, and was later to successfully defend the Prince of Wales in the so-called Royal Baccarat affair. Oscar Wilde, a friend, described him as ‘Brilliant, Formidable, Concerned in every great case in England. He knows about us all and forgives us all.’ George Lewis was a portly, bewhiskered and monocled, eminently cartoonable figure who wore a fur coat even in sweltering midsummer. He has been well described as the Lord Goodman of his day.

Burne-Jones’s friendship with the Lewis family burgeoned in the 1880s. George Lewis’s second wife, the German-Jewish Elizabeth Eberstadt, was equally formidable in her way, a cultivated, clever, socially ambitious woman who created a brilliant late Victorian London salon at their house at 88 Portland Place. George Henschel, Robert Browning, Arthur Sullivan, Ellen Terry, Henry Irving, Lillie Langtry, Henry James, Oscar Wilde, Du Maurier, Alma-Tadema, Whistler, Sargent: few people resisted her invitations. Graham Robertson described her as ‘a strange woman … with a wonderful gift of sympathy and understanding. I would as soon take her opinion of a man as anyone’s. (She doesn’t know so much about women).’ Determinedly but subtly, Elizabeth Lewis drew Burne-Jones into her network, asking him to London evening parties and inviting him to stay at Ashley Cottage, their country retreat in Walton-on-Thames.

Burne-Jones responded in the way he often did with alluring middle-aged sophisticated women. Initially he was bashful, taking up his pose of pitiable object, pleading his humility in the face of the glittering entertainments she was offering. ‘I haven’t chocolate cakes – only penny buns and bread and butter and you don’t like poverty.’ But soon his tone changes to the pleasure of flirtation and he asks her to visit, promising her as he promised Lady Leighton, as he would later be promising May Gaskell, to try to keep other people away. Soon he is suggesting himself to go and stay at Walton while Georgie and Margaret are safely away on holiday.

From then on Burne-Jones was often at Walton: ‘happy happy Walton’ he calls it. He sketches the long low double-cottage building in its setting of lush water meadows. His letters become more intimate, effusive: he wants Elizabeth ‘to sit in soft places and I will bring you things’. He vows to dedicate himself more and more to beauty. ‘I will paint you as you are now,’ he tells her, ‘so that one day

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