Women With Big Hair.
Posted: Wed Aug 10, 2011 7:51 am
I am so in awe of people with extraordinary talent. Whenever I come across such I person, I always try to research their lives and to come up with the “story behind the story” so to speak.
Take Dante Gabriel Rossetti (12 May 1828 – 9 April 1882)
He was an English poet, illustrator, painter & translator who founded the Pre-Raphaelite brotherhood in 1848 with William Holman Hunt & John Everett Millais. He had a thing for women with “big hair” and most of his models had beautiful long, lustrous locks.
After a rather long engagement, some sources say ten years, in 1860 Rossetti married one of his models Lizzie Siddal.
Twenty months later after the birth of a still born baby, Lizzie took an overdose of laudanum (morphine), a wildly popular drug during the Victorian era and the coroner decided rather generously it seems, that her death was accidental.
The grieving Rossetti placed a notebook of his unpublished poems in her coffin, some say within her long tresses. Then six years after Lizzie’s death, the now ailing poet found that he was not able to remember the words of the poems he had buried with her. It was then that he decided to retrieve the notebook.
So in 1869 he and a group of men travelled in the dead of night to Highgate Cemetery and dug up her coffin. It may just be an urban legend, but it seems that Lizzie’s hair had grown so much after her death, that Rossetti was forced to cut her hair in order to remove the rotting notebook. He then copied the poems and destroyed the notebook.
Rather ironic that in the end he had to cut thru his beloved Lizzie's "big hair" to get to his notebook.
Take Dante Gabriel Rossetti (12 May 1828 – 9 April 1882)
He was an English poet, illustrator, painter & translator who founded the Pre-Raphaelite brotherhood in 1848 with William Holman Hunt & John Everett Millais. He had a thing for women with “big hair” and most of his models had beautiful long, lustrous locks.
After a rather long engagement, some sources say ten years, in 1860 Rossetti married one of his models Lizzie Siddal.
Twenty months later after the birth of a still born baby, Lizzie took an overdose of laudanum (morphine), a wildly popular drug during the Victorian era and the coroner decided rather generously it seems, that her death was accidental.
The grieving Rossetti placed a notebook of his unpublished poems in her coffin, some say within her long tresses. Then six years after Lizzie’s death, the now ailing poet found that he was not able to remember the words of the poems he had buried with her. It was then that he decided to retrieve the notebook.
So in 1869 he and a group of men travelled in the dead of night to Highgate Cemetery and dug up her coffin. It may just be an urban legend, but it seems that Lizzie’s hair had grown so much after her death, that Rossetti was forced to cut her hair in order to remove the rotting notebook. He then copied the poems and destroyed the notebook.
Rather ironic that in the end he had to cut thru his beloved Lizzie's "big hair" to get to his notebook.