Ned Jones, a poor boy with outsize artistic ambitions......[met Georgiana Macdonald at her parents home where he was accustomed to have tea] Georgiana was not yet 16 when Ned proposed. They were married four years later, in 1860.
Ned changed his last name to the grander-sounding Burne-Jones, but he and his wife were desperately poor for the first few years. Flanders is particularly adept at describing the back-breaking work Georgiana undertook as she tackled what the Victorians euphemistically described as domestic chores. Sheets had to be washed, clothes cleaned, fire grates emptied, vermin eradicated, everyday soot and dust removed. The family's lodgings had only a limited supply of cold water and no kitchen. Somehow, though, Georgiana managed to create an inviting home where Ruskin, Rossetti, Morris and Swinburne were regular visitors.
What crushed her was not the thanklessness of domestic life -- or Burne-Jones's cheerful dismissal of her own artistic talents -- but her exclusion from company once her first child was born. ''I remember the feeling of exile with which I now heard through its closed doors the well-known voices of friends together with Edward's familiar laugh,'' Georgiana wrote, ''while I sat with my little son on my knee and dropped selfish tears upon him as the 'separator of companions and the terminator of delights.' ''
Although the sale of Burne-Jones's paintings and his partnership with William Morris improved Georgiana's standard of living, her marital happiness seems to have been brief. After her husband's death, she claimed that the three best years of her life were 1856 to 59, during their engagement. For Burne-Jones, the golden years were those of his affair with the Greek sculptor Mary Zambaco, which nearly ended in a suicide pact. He later compounded the betrayal by exhibiting a painting entitled ''Phyllis and Demophoon,'' which depicted Mary as the nymph Phyllis.
Georgiana consoled herself with her children and her friends (among whom were George Eliot and Rosalind Howard, Countess of Carlisle). William Morris loved her to his dying breath, although there is no evidence that their deep relationship was anything more than platonic.
Here is a cartoon her husband sketched of his studio:
Georgiana shared with her sisters an access to fame. Her sisters included the mother of a prime minister, the mother of Rudyard Kipling, and the wife of the director of the National Gallery.
