Nuts!

 This is a bit of a rambling post but it's something that has always puzzled me, but I've never been able to put my finger on what the problem is.  Anyway, the point of this post is to try and unpick a very famous anecdote.  

It's a truth universally acknowledged that this is the first picture that Fanny Cornforth appears in...

Found (1854-1881) Dante Gabriel Rossetti

To be exact, she appeared in a sketch for this unfinished piece, probably something like this one...

Study for the Girl's Head in Found (c.1858) Dante Gabriel Rossetti

In Fanny's account, which has never been disputed, she said that after they met, Rossetti invited her to the studio where he put her head against the wall and drew it for what she called 'the calf picture' or as we know it, Found. The story behind Found is that a country chap comes to London and discovers his former beloved, who had abandoned him for the bright lights of London. She's been living a thoroughly sinful life that seems to have turned her green and she is very ashamed of herself.  Somehow, this account of an innocent country girl who becomes a sex worker in London has also become co-opted as Fanny's story. The simplicity of Found is in stark contrast to the utterly bizarre nature of Fanny's own alleged origin story, and there is just something about the details of that fable that have always bothered me. Let's start with a famous quote...

'He met her in the Strand. She was cracking nuts with her teeth and throwing the shells about: seeing Rossetti staring at her, she threw some at him. Delighted with this brilliant naivete, he forthwith accosted her to sit to him for her portrait' (Autobiographical Notes of the Life of William Bell Scott (1892) William Bell Scott)

This is the now infamous account about how Rosetti met Fanny.  It is, of course, utter bobbins, but was sort of backed up by William Michael Rossetti in his book on his brother, where he says 'I cannot recollect ever hearing anything about the nuts, but do not contest Mr Scott's statement on that point.' It has to be noted that William Michael did not like Fanny, especially around the time he was writing.  Also, William Bell Scott was not present at the alleged meeting in the Strand. Why William Bell Scott would make up such an elaborate lie is something that really interests me. The reasoning I always go for is this entry in William Allingham's diary, Sunday 26th June 1864: 

'Enter Fanny, who says something of W. B. Scott which amuses us. Scott was a dark hairy man, but after an illness has reappeared quite bald, Fanny exclaimed, ' O my, Mr. Scott is changed ! He ain't got a hye-brow or a hye-lash — not a 'air on his 'ead ! ' Rossetti laughed immoderately at this, so that poor Fanny, good-humoured as she is, pouted at last— ‘Well, I know I don't say it right,' and I hushed him up.'

From the diary entry, it doesn't seem it was at a party or said to anyone other than Allingham and Rossetti but I don't put it past Rossetti to have to told William Bell Scott this 'hilarious' anecdote. I also don't feel, from Allingham's record of the incident, that Fanny meant the remark maliciously, she was just exclaiming on the change in Scott's appearance. Scott, by reputation, was proud of his looks, but his sudden alopecia after his illness had caused him great embarrassment. Like Rossetti, he appears to have been a very good looking chap in his youth but not so much later on.

William Bell Scott (1850s) Arthur Hughes

Bell Scott, Ruskin and Rossetti in 1863

I also wonder about the fact that Bell Scott was born in 1811, older even than Ruskin, but in with a crowd  two or more decades younger than he was, with all that youthful energy.  Bell Scott is a great painter, wonderful landscapes and interesting genre pieces but never the most interesting man in the room. He is obviously allowed to dislike Fanny and I understand his problem with her, even before she made a comment on the one thing he didn't want commenting on. She had no qualities he seemed interested in.  She was not ethereal or quiet, she was not well-bred and titled (his mistress was Alice Boyd, the painter and sister of the Laird of Penkill Castle).  She was also Rossetti's mistress and not to be too judgemental, Rossetti could be an absolute git-weasel, so what does that say about her if she likes that?  In hindsight, with all the evidence we now have, we can see that Rossetti's behaviour is all coming from a very dark and sad place but that doesn't mean that he couldn't be a antagonistic to be with, especially for people who had no appreciation of the vagaries of mental health conditions. Anyway, in a way, I'm not surprised that William Bell Scott lashed out in memoir form, after all he was writing at the time when lots of people were claiming the narrative of the Pre-Raphaelites and Rossetti. What interests me is the story itself, and to be exact, the nuts.

Rebecca Davies in Desperate Romantics

In the BBC's Desperate Romantics, Fanny Cornforth cracks nuts between her teeth and spits the shells at Rossetti (‘Do you make a habit of spitting?’ ‘Depends what I have in my mouth at the time, sir…’). In Scott's account Fanny is cracking the nuts in her teeth and throwing the shells about, but that rapidly became spitting the shells, hands-free, which is quite impressive. I've always maintained that the cracking in the teeth is the important part, that Scott was labelling Fanny an animal, but I never considered the nuts themselves.  What do they symbolise?

Fanny Cornforth in the garden of Tudor House (1863) W & D Downey

Yes, well, we have the very obvious body parts.  Scott was judgemental of Rossetti's attachment to Fanny, which he obviously didn't approve of or understand, so it would be understandable that he'd think it was purely sexual and that Fanny had Rossetti by the nuts, as it were.  There is also the connotation of the 'nut' being the head, and possibly Fanny being a cause of the mental change of Rossetti, that she was 'cracking' his nut, damaging or lowering his IQ by her cheap, tarty presence. It's also interesting that the nuts are in her mouth, whether she spits them or not. She is not even cracking them in her hands. The nuts have become the words that she uses to communicate.  They come from her mouth and are either spat or thrown. Her non-verbal, semi-violent methods or attracting attention again make me think of animals but also of a lack of intelligence and threat. That Rossetti is 'delighted' with this 'brilliant naivete' says quite a bit about how Scott perceived him.  Was Rossetti that sophisticated that he needed a break from it? It does mark Rossetti as a man who enjoys simplicity, or put less politely, crudity. Seen with hindsight of his painting and poetry output of the 1860s, especially the more fleshly stuff (which involved Fanny), you could draw the conclusion that Rossetti liked pretty girls doing things with their mouths and that's all. It rather takes one of the great painter/poets of the nineteenth century down a peg or two.

Fair Rosamund (1861) Dante Gabriel Rossetti

So, nuts - why nuts? I did wonder if they had any significance and so turned to the language of flowers and the symbolism of food as I was interested to see that if you type in 'language of flowers' and 'nuts', many websites come back with 'stupidity'. It's not a massive shock if Scott intended the nut to represent Fanny's stupidity, especially when coupled with her brilliant naivete. In Mrs L Burke's 1865 The Miniature Language of Flowers, there are no nuts, but the Bladder Nut Tree symbolised frivolity and rather crude amusement due to the fact that the seeds make a rude noise when you squeeze them. For the Romans, nuts symbolised fertility and the shells were thrown before bridegrooms and brides. Taken with Fanny's perceived occupation as a sex worker, this symbolism would fit as well. Although she didn't have any children, Fanny is often seen as a bountiful, luxurious, extra woman, with her size and appearance.  In Theresa Dietz's 2022 The Complete Language of Food, various different nuts have interesting meanings, including brazil and pecans (hospitality), sweet chestnuts (luxury and interestingly, chastity) and macadamia (ingenuity). Scott didn't specify a nut, but subsequent writers have opted for walnuts which are often linked to Christianity (the shell being the church and the kernel, the congregation), but also of male virility and power, which would link to how forward and proactive Fanny is in the story of their meeting.  I especially liked the symbolism of walnuts as representing people who are tough on the outside and sweet and soft inside, which I think fits Fanny as shown by her actions, but I very much doubt that is what Scott intended unless I have misjudged him.

Woman Combing Her Hair (1864) Dante Gabriel Rossetti

If you fancy a really way-out reading of the nut story, I can offer you the Celtic Revival and Echtra Cormac (Cormac's Adventure in the Land of Promise), which Whitley Stokes offered in translation in 1891.  Within this tale of Irish mythology, there is a very interesting passage which goes something like this...

'Lo, it is custom for those who dwell in that city to break the nut with their teeth and swallow the fruit within. For others it is custom to break the nut and give food to those near them, who sate the hunger of others with the nuts which they are eager to take.' 

Okay, so it's a stretch, but the symbolism of the nut as knowledge or faith being learned, digested or shared, is an interesting one. Read in this way, Fanny's nut cracking and throwing is an act of sharing, but it is only the shell she throws. If her nut cracking and throwing is truly symbolic, then it is an act of sharing something useless, that she keeps the good things for herself and shares that which is no use to anyone. This sort of symbolic reading of Fanny is repeated in Violet Hunt's The Wife of Rossetti (1932) where she talks about Fanny's ancestor who would promise to share peaches and apricots when all she had was apples. Hunt learned her version of the Pre-Raphaelite drama from Scott, who was a family friend, so the use of symbolism might have come from him. 

 

Found (study of a head of a woman) (1853-7) Dante Gabriel Rossetti

So, where does all this leave us? Honestly, I have no answers, as the reason why William Bell Scott would write down such an elaborate lie is mysterious.  Was the intended target Fanny or Rossetti?  He brands one a sex worker and the other a man who likes women with strong teeth and weird soliciting techniques. It does occur to me that Scott might have seen a sex worker perform such a trick (I'm guessing with peanuts rather than walnuts unless she had really sturdy false teeth) and kept that in mind for when he was writing up his memoir, but why bother? Had Fanny really upset him that much? Part of me is really doubtful that Fanny was the intended target as that is a lot of weird effort to go to in order to get even with a working class woman, who by that point had retreated to obscurity. I have a feeling a lot of the appalling things said about Fanny are actually about Rossetti - she becomes collateral damage in people getting even with Rossetti, who alienated a lot of people, if not actually infuriated them. By the 1890s, William Michael had actually done a fairly decent job in creating the myth of 'the great man' Rossetti, backed by various biographers who had piled on after Thomas Hall Caine's unctuous offering, Recollections of Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1882). I can see people who may have felt aggrieved or felt that they had a different story to tell, getting in on the act. 

Woman with a Fan (1870) Dante Gabriel Rossetti

So, we end up with nuts. Whether it is about the thrower or the target is unclear but the story only came to define one of the people involved. The fictitious Fanny with her strong teeth may symbolise strength, masculinity, emasculation, luxury, ingenuity or idiocy but that is not the woman who Rossetti approached in a dining alcove at a firework event in 1856 and pulled the pins from her hair. Let's hope we never forget that again.