Despite this, or perhaps in addition to this she was much more than just a pretty face, she was endowed with a talent to compete with and sometimes surpass that of her husband the great Dante Gabriel Rosetti. It appears to be this very talent that proved to be her undoing. It is interesting to note that those who are most beautiful, or most talented, often die young. It’s as if the gift of being outstanding in whatever shape or form comes wit it the burden of a fleeting opportunity to show it off, perhaps us lesser mortals would struggle with such vivid examples of excellence and it’s the cosmic’s way of making us feel gifted.

Elizabeth, by all accounts, suffered continuously from fragile health, whether this was as a result of being in such demand as a model or related to the passion of the time for going to extreme lengths to appear as fashion dictated. Anorexia was commonplace, medicinal drugs – in reality powerful narcotics were prescribed freely by doctors for a range of aliments from depression to pneumonia, both of which Elizabeth suffered from at some time in her life. Elizabeth seems to have had an air of fragility about her, as if she was tied to this world by no more than wishes and tears, this only served to make her all the more attractive to the Pre-Raphaelite artists.

Elizabeth’s romance and subsequent marriage to Rosetti further exacerbated her tenuous hold on reality. Intensity overshadows the lives of the Pre-Raphaelites, life was to be lived to it’s fullest, the very juice of experience to be drunk like wine. It was a licentious age, superb in it’s flair for experimentation, drug and alcohol addiction the very lifeblood of the arts. As an already intense woman, Elizabeth exposed to this level of deification and excess put further strain on her health and ultimately her sanity. After the still birth of her only daughter she sank further into the sweet oblivion promised by the Laudanum prescribed by her doctor. Day by day her independence was crushed from her by her debilitating weakness and her resulting dependence on the often overbearing Rosetti.

Finally after approximately two years of marital upheaval with the philandering Rosetti (he was with a mistress the day she overdosed), Elizabeth took an overdose of Laudanum and slipped from this world with the grace that characterized all she did. Rosetti in a fit of remorse buried a sheaf of never published love poetry, a roll of parchment nestled in the flowing tresses of an earth bound angel.

Seven years later, on the back of a failing career and an unfortunate affair with his best friends wife, Rosetti agreed to have Elizabeth exhumed to recover the very sheaf of poetry he buried with her. Rosetti was not present at the exhumation but the gasps of astonishment when her coffin was opened must surely have reached him where he waited, appalled finally by his actions. Elizabeth lay in her coffin, untouched by decay despite being buried for seven years, indeed it appeared only that she slept and could be awoken by the slightest touch. The only evidence of her interment was her fiery hair, which had grown to fill the coffin and seemed to burn and flicker in the light of the torches held over her.

Rosetti regretted the action and the subsequent publication of the poetry met with little success. The memory haunted him for the rest of his life.....