ELIZABETH MOORASH
1845–46
Oil on canvas, 34 1/2 × 28 1/2 in.
The final portrait of Elizabeth was begun in October 1845. Moorash worked at it continuously for about a month and then fitfully until the following May, when he set aside all his paintings for the ill-fated self-portrait.
Over the dark lake, Elizabeth lies sleeping. So deeply sunk in sleep is she that she appears to be under an enchantment. And indeed there is an air of enchanted stillness in the dark repose of the painting, as of a wildness calmed. It is as if the tension and disturbing energy of the portraits of William and Sophia have been transposed into peace — the same long, flowing lines here resolve into restfulness. The portrait has about it a storybook air: Elizabeth is a princess closed in a tower of sleep, to which no prince will come. Deeply, deeply, Elizabeth lies sleeping, in a spell from which she can never awake. But the world too lies sleeping: the hills, the night sky, the lake, all have fallen asleep beside and beneath and within her. The effect is different from that of Elizabeth in Dream [5], for there the world was dissolved by the dreamer, but here there is no dreamer and no dream; rather, there is the vision of an animate universe stilled in sleep. It is, if you like, a childlike vision, but one deepened with adult knowledge — it is such a vision as is possible only after a searing spiritual struggle. For in this portrait Moorash has done nothing less than imagine Elizabeth’s death; and by lifting it into a realm beyond grief, he has come out on the other side of anguish.
By the summer of 1845 Elizabeth’s headaches and other ailments were causing her to spend more and more time indoors, where she became increasingly dependent on the soothing effects of laudanum, prescribed by a Dr. Long of Strawson and easily obtainable in the two druggist shops of Saccanaw Falls. Only in the remissions of her illness was she able to leave Stone Hill Cottage to take long walks in her beloved woods, along her stream, or in the direction of Black Lake. After a particularly bad attack in late summer William persuaded Moorash to let him hire a housekeeper, a Mrs. Duff from Strawson, who came three times a week and soon became deeply devoted to both Elizabeth and Edmund. Elizabeth at first protested, but she quickly succumbed; there were certain chores she could no longer do.
The absence of Dr. Long’s medical records, and the predominance of nonspecific symptoms such as headaches and dizziness, make it impossible to determine the nature of Elizabeth’s illness, which may or may not have been psychosomatic. Although a depressive disorder cannot be ruled out, neither the Journal nor the scanty medical records provide conclusive evidence (see Havemeyer, p. 210 ff., for a complete summary). The “vertigo” and headaches suggest the strong possibility of high blood pressure; but since a practical blood-pressure gauge was not invented until the end of the century, all such suggestions must remain entirely speculative. Although hypertension or some related cardiovascular pathology would explain most, if not all, of Elizabeth’s symptoms, they can also have resulted from other causes, such as extreme anxiety or excitement. Finally, in any consideration of illness before the mid-nineteenth century — that is, before the discovery of drug-induced poisoning — it must always be kept in mind that the manifestation of new, unexplained symptoms may have been caused by the doctors themselves.
Although the Journal records an increased irritability to certain stimuli, such as the sharp sound of a knife on a plate, the smell of urine, and the sudden dimming and flaring up of a candleflame because of imperfections in the wick, one of the odder manifestations of Elizabeth’s illness was heightened sensitivity to literature, music, and art. Certain slow, languorous rhythms in the 1842 Poems of Alfred Tennyson, specific hushed, dreamy, drowsily drawn-out effects in Keats, produced by long vowels interwoven with droning m’s and n’s and softened with sibilants (she records “The maiden’s chamber, silken, hushed, and chaste” from The Eve of St. Agnes), stray lines suggesting a mysterious vastness (“Noiseless as fear in a wide wilderness”) or ringing with a call to some high action (“Say, my heart’s sister, wilt thou sail with me?”) would bring a quickening of heartbeat and flushed cheeks, so that Elizabeth would be forced to put aside a volume and lie with her hands folded on her collarbone, as if to press down her excitement. Listening to Sophia play Schumann’s In der Nacht from the Fantasiestücke, op. 12, or Chopin’s Nocturne in E-flat major, op. 9, no. 2, or the andante doloroso of Sonnenstein’s Brocken Sonata, op. 16, with its long chains of unresolved harmonic suspensions and its plunging five-note motif, she would be brought to a state of dangerous exaltation, during which a pulse throbbed “visibly” in her neck (did she observe herself in the mirror?) and she felt alternately fiery hot and icy cold. But it was the art of painting that evoked in her the strongest and most disturbing responses. Once when William brought her a book of engravings of medieval German paintings, Elizabeth was gripped by a feverish excitement that kept her from sleep all that night and led the next morning to a fit of such violent coughing that Edmund in alarm had to summon Dr. Long from Strawson. She seemed to take in a picture all at once, like a sudden blow, and to experience it not simply in her nerve endings but in the deepest fibers of her being. It was as though some protective film had been dissolved by her illness, leaving her wide open. But if she was acutely susceptible to painting in general, she was fervently and perhaps unwholesomely sensitive to Edmund’s painting in particular, the effect of which she describes in language of increasing intensity: “I turned to look, and lo! it entered me like fire” (2 May 1845); “a blow to the temple was that night sky to me, and I staggered back, gasping for breath” (14 August 1845); “the sweet poison flowed in me, chilling as it warmed” (8 November 1845).
That summer William and Sophia prolonged their stay at Black Lake to mid-September. It was during the second week of September, on a bright and unseasonably warm day, that Elizabeth held an interview with William which she recorded briefly in her Journal, but which Sophia reported at greater length in a letter to Eunice Hamilton (12 September 1845). Lying on her sickbed, her long hair strewn about her, her eyes “glowing with unnatural brightness,” Elizabeth asked William to watch over her brother “if he should ever be left alone,” for Edmund was “like a child, in some things.” William gave his solemn pledge. When he stepped from the room, Sophia noted that his face was wet with tears.
SELF PORTRAIT
1845?–46
Oil on canvas, 36 1/4 × 30 3/8 in.
In October 1845 Moorash spoke to Elizabeth of a self-portrait, but it is not clear from the Journal whether he had actually begun it. A self-portrait is mentioned again in December, although in a way that suggests he may still have been only dreaming his way toward it (8 December 1845: “E hard at work on The Devil’s Dream [a lost painting]. Spoke of paradox of self-portrait: what is a self?”) He was clearly at work on a self-portrait by May 1846, and he appears to have worked on it steadily from that time, setting aside all other work, until his death on 27 July.