Above all, there were the powerful forces unleashed by his liaison with Maria Zambaco (1843-1914; fig. 73). This episode — naturally not mentioned by Georgie in her biogra- phy but now well known — was the emotional climax of Burne-Jones's life. Wayward and headstrong, artistically tal- ented, and ravishingly beautiful, Maria was a cousin of the Ionides. Born Maria Cassavetti in 1843, sne nac ^ married Demetrius Zambaco, the doctor to the Greek community in Paris, in 1861, and borne him two children. In 1866, however, she had left him and returned with the children to London, where, at the age of twenty-three, she was introduced to Burne-Jones, her senior by ten years. It is not hard to see why he was swept off his feet by this passionate and elemental creature, with her "glorious red hair," her "almost phosphores- cent white skin," 31 and her mysterious, well-like eyes (cat. no. 49). There could not have been a greater contrast to Georgie, either in looks or in temperament. Indeed nothing in his life hitherto — his provincial middle-class childhood, the earnest soul-searching years at Oxford, or the happy but hardworking decade in London, still haunted by Ruskinian ideology — had remotely prepared him for this devastating experience. The emotional turmoil put a severe strain on his health, and the affair reached a bizarre climax in January 1869, when Maria tried to commit suicide in the Regent s Canal. Restrained by her lover, she failed, and the relationship con- tinued, if not at such a pitch of ardor, well into the early 1870s. Some suspected that it went on even longer. 32
Rossetti letter to Madox Brown 23 January 1869: Poor Ned's affairs have come to a smash altogether, and he and Topsy, after the most dreadful to-do, started for Rome suddenly, leaving the Greek damsel beating up the quarters of all his friends for him and howling like Cassandra. Georgie stayed behind. I hear to-day however that Top and Ned got no further than Dover, Ned being so dreadfully ill that they will probably have to return to London.
In January 1869 his wife Georgina found a letter from Maria in his clothing and Burne-Jones reluctantly ended the affair.