Ruskin and the Women

Edited by PETER QUENNELL

AMONG prophetic voices raised in England during the nineteenth century, Ruskin’s was one of the most harmonious, sustained, and nobly representative. It would be convenient, no doubt, were such voices disembodied: if all that we knew of them was the message they brought us. In fact, our appreciation of each message is qualified by our vision of an individual personality.

Hitherto the catastrophe of Ruskin’s married life has been examined almost exclusively from Ruskin’s and from his parents’ standpoint. Now a mass of papers in the possession of the descendants of Sir John Millais (who became Euphemia Gray’s second husband in 1855) illuminate the relationship from an entirely different angle. We sec John Ruskin through the eyes of his wife, a young woman of great attractions and considerable shrewdness. We watch her good resolutions being gradually undermined by the possessive machinations (which may well have been more than half unconscious) of Mrs. Ruskin senior; and we note Ruskin’s emotional subservience to the household on Denmark Hill.

In one respect, he had never fully developed; he adored the child in the woman he had married, but adult femininity, except as it was exemplified by his mother, disgusted and alarmed him. Years later, he was to pursue and lose another childish phantom in a precocious adolescent, the ethereal Rose La Touche.

Towards his wife, as a grown woman of perfectly normal instincts, Ruskin’s attitude would appear to have been neither generous nor understanding. Yet, when the phantom was still a phantom, before the wraith had begun to solidify in a distressingly physical guise, there can be no question of the deeply romantic emotions with which Euphemia Gray inspired him. John Ruskin’s letters to her, written after their betrothal, in the years 1847 and 1848, finally dispose of the suggestion (which Ruskin had encouraged) that he had never really loved his wife and had married to please his parents; and they throw a vivid light on the writer’s psychology. They are touching letters, and also tragic — in so far as they show a deep and passionate affection utterly incapable of making any genuine human contact with the object that has provoked it.

November 11, 1847
. . . Evening. My Mother gave me a message for you yesterday — which I forgot! an important one, too, that you must not — though — of course — you will know this without her telling you — but it may be as well to remind you — that any dresses you may be buying for next year, had better be of the plainest kind — for travelling — of stuffs that will not crush — nor spoil, nor be bulky in a carriage— for you know we shall be four — and very simply made — you will only want one of any more visible or exhibitable kind — in case we might go to opera at Paris — or be seen a day or two here, before leaving. You may guess there is no dressing at Chamouni — the higher the rank commonly the plainer the dress — and it would be no use to leave handsome dresses behind you here, merely to find them out of fashion when you come back. . . .
When we are alone — You and I — together Mais — c’est inconceivable — I was just trying this evening after dinner — to imagine our sitting after dinner at Keswick — vous et moi. — I couldn’t do it — it seemed so impossible that I should ever get you all to myself—and then I said to myself “If she should be dull— if she should not be able to think but of her sweet sisters — her deserted home — her parents — giving up their chief joy — if she should be sad — what shall I do — And — if she should not — what shall I do — either — how shall I ever tell her my gladness — Oh — my own Love — what shall I do indeed — I shall not be able to speak a word — I shall be running round you — and kneeling to you — and holding up my hands to you as Dinah does her paws — speechless — I shan’t do it so well as Dinah though — I shall be clumsy and mute — at once perfectly oppressed with delight — if you speak to me I shall not know what you say — you will have to pat me — and point to something for me to fetch and carry for you — or make me lie down on the rug and be quiet — or send me out of the room until I promise to be a good dog; and then you let me in again — I shall be worse— What shall I do?” . . .
Ever my dearest — fairest — kindest Effie
Yours beyond all telling.

November 30, 1847
My BELOVED EFFIE,
I never thought to have felt time pass slowly any more — but — foolish that I am, I cannot help congratulating myself on this being the last day of November — Foolish, I say — for what pleasure soever may be in store for us, we ought not to wish to lose the treasure of time — nor to squander away the heap of gold even though its height should keep us from seeing each other for a little while. But your letter of last night shook all the philosopher out of me. That little undress bit! Ah — my sweet Lady — What naughty thoughts had I. — Dare I say? — I was thinking — thinking, naughty — happy thought, that you would soon have — some one’s arms to keep you from being cold! Pray don’t be angry with me. How could I help it — how can I? I’m thinking so just now, even. Oh — my dearest — I am not so “scornful” neither, of all that I hope for — Alas — I know not what I would not give for one glance of your fair eyes — your fair — saucy eyes. . . .
I hardly know how great a misfortune it may yet turn out to be — that I was not permitted to engage myself to you long ago — it would at any rate have saved me from much loss of health — a loss which I think it unlikely I shall ever altogether recover — and it would have given me two or three years of happiness — which — come what may now, are lost for ever — irremediably lost — and three years of human life — spent thus — or thus — in Paradise — or in thorny ground and barren — are something — humanly speaking — But divinely speaking — and in God’s sight, they are not. They are nothing — and so I strive to consider them — first because it does no good now to regret them — secondly — because it is right and just so to think — . . . Only — whatever philosophy I may bring to my aid, of this severe and stoical kind — pray do you still maintain the other side of the question — and act as if I were no philosopher at all — by receiving me — that is — at Bowers Well as soon as you and Mama possibly can — and by naming a day as close as close can possibly be upon Easter Sunday. For you know my Father’s birthday is the 10th of May, and we must — God willing — be at Denmark Hill for that — Therefore yours, which is Sunday, will be the last day we can spend among the lakes — Monday and Tuesday we must allow for getting home — so — even at the best we cannot have more than a week among the lakes, and that is very little — however we shall have better hills and lakes in prospect, and perhaps a week — or — including travelling days — a fortnight, is as long as it would be wise in us to trust ourselves with each other alone — at first — lest we should quarrel!
Then we may stop in Switzerland — or go on to Venice if we like — I said I should be afraid — just as I said in almost my first letter that I would not take you abroad alone — The new happiness, new anxiety, — and excitement of travelling, are too much for most people — and in the course of my travelling on the continent I have heard — of oh — such and so many sad things happening on these bridal tours. Still if I find that I have my senses about me at all (which I do not think likely) — and that you are strong and well, I do not say I will not — but it will depend upon your feelings, and my Mother’s advice. Mama’s plans about Chamouni are just mine. . . .
— Your wearying — happy — devoted servant,

March 13, 1848
... I do not think you will often see me committing the sin of discontent — after I am with you. I may sometimes be mortified or vexed with myself— but I trust that my regrets of things quite past are now nearly at an end. If people do right they will never be but cheerful and I do hope to be enabled to do right — not absolutely of course — but in the main, right, hereafter. I am truly rejoiced to hear you are so happy, my love: and — don’t think me vain — I suppose it to be because I am coming —. But you must not only be a very happy creature — but a very clever creature — or the old Judges would not give you whole hours of tête-à-têtes. Lady Trevelyan is very kind — not that I was not sure that everybody would love you and think well of you — still, her saying that you are worthy of me is very delightful — because, you know, it is a compliment — no — a testimony to us both. . . .
And now love — I have not another letter to write to you, I hope — for many a day to come — I wish this was a better letter—but I have had much to do today . . . and so I have only time to say that I hope the next letter I write to my dearest Effie, how long t ime soever may intervene — will be more fond and kind — far, than any of these — and will have for its chief purpose to express my deep joy and gratitude, in and for the more than fulfilment of all my dearest hopes: and the possession of far more than ever I hoped — though I seem to hope — yes —and to believe of you everything that is pure and lovely, and as your own Changeless name signifies — of good report —• and if there be any virtue and if there be any praise — I think of it as in you — Ever — my dearest — and for ever— Your faithful and entirely devoted lover — servant — and soon, God grant — your own husband —

John Ruskin and Euphcmia Gray were married in the small drawing room of the bride’s home at Bowerswell near Perth on April 10, 1848.

2

So FAR as her parents could judge, the course of Effie’s honeymoon was tranquil and unclouded. An affectionate and well-brought-up young woman, she sent home from Scotland and the Lake District long enthusiastic descriptions of local food and scenery. Landscapes were duly impressive, inn rooms warm and comfortable.

But the honeymoon soon came to an end, for John was anxious to start work on the proofs of a second edition of Modern Painters, and towards the close of April they returned by rail to London. Mr. Ruskin met them at Euston Station in his carriage, a vehicle that struck Effie as “very nice and handsome being all newly painted and lined, and Powell in new coat with Numerous capes, and hammercloth, etc., in honour of our arrival.” From Euston they drove to the family house on suburban Denmark Hill, where they were welcomed by Mrs. Ruskin amid her servants in all the spreading splendor of prosperous middle-class gentility: —

. . . When we arrived at the gate of the garden the carriage stopped and the Gardener presented me with the most splendid bouquet of Geraniums, Orangeblossom, Heath of the most delicate kinds, Myrtles, cineraria, etc., all tied in ornamental Paper and with White Satin ribbon. When we came to the door the servants were all standing with Mrs. Ruskin to welcome us, the women looked so nice with their neat caps of white net and ribbon and green and stone colored mousselines up to the neck with their muslin aprons. Mrs. Ruskin had on a most splendid rich drab or pale brown satin with rich fringe on the front and a white blonde cap. She and Mr. Ruskin never saw John looking half so well and are quite delighted to see him so happy — and she bids me say how happy she is to have me here and she hopes now I will feel quite a daughter to her, but to go on — When we had dressed and gone into dinner a band of Germans came and played delightful music before the windows all time of dinner and it was a great treat. We spent the evening very happily. I played to Mr. Ruskin and Mrs. R spoke to John and me and made kind speeches. Mrs. R has given us the top of the house and very comfortable it is. Mr. Ruskin, John and I go tomorrow to the private view of the Academy where we shall sec all the nobs.

Effie’s desire to consort with nobs received, for a time at least, the complete approval of John’s adoring parents; and Mr. Ruskin on May 24, writing to her father, observed that he was “glad to see Effie gets John to go out a little. He has met with most of the first men for some years back but he is very indifferent to general Society and reluctantly acknowledges great attentions shown him and refuses one half— Seven years ago he refused to spend a month at the Duke of Leinster’s. . . .”

There could be no doubt, on the other hand, of Effie’s social gifts and instincts. With the excitement of a young girl and the gusto of a newcomer, she proceeded to make her way on John’s arm through the elaborate ceremonial of a mid-Victorian season. Clothes delighted her, and she wrote of them at length: even today the colors glow, the texture of silk and velvet gleams or glistens. Thus for a private view— “You know,” she reminded her provincial audience, “it is a great compliment getting these tickets and you only meet there the artists themselves and the nobility” — she had worn her “pale glacée silk, White lace bonnet, black Mantilla, pale gloves, etc.,” while John for his part was “also very well dressed.”

Her parents-in-law professed themselves “entirely pleased” with their new domestic acquisition, and she herself was delighted with her new life and with the homage she continued to receive from her husband’s distinguished friends. Samuel Rogers invited her to breakfast, showed her his bibelots, and said she had a fine taste. Turner, John’s idol, entertained them with wine and biscuits in his “bare and miserly” room. There was a sumptuous dinner party given by Lady Davy, at which Effie was “much amused and enjoyed all I saw.” Grisi and Lind sang for her delectation. No shadow had yet appeared — none, that is to say, was reflected in her letters home. “I am happier every day with John,” she informed her mother and father, “for he really is the kindest creature in the world and he is so pleased with me. . . .”

On both sides the contentment was superficial. In Ruskin’s busy mind was already germinating a new project, presently to take shape as The Seven Lamps of Architecture. And when, after a visit to Oxford (where they attended parties with “fine music and scientific pleasures such as looking at the circulation through a living Frog in a microscope”), husband and wife embarked on a tour of the English cathedral cities, Effie learned that they were to be accompanied by old Mr. and Mrs. Ruskin. These expeditions a trois had been a habit in the Ruskin household, almost a rite indeed, consecrated by John’s love of his parents and by the intense unwearying solicitude with which they had surrounded him since childhood.

Effie was entirely normal and healthily energetic. John having caught cold, she was astonished at the tremulous anxiety displayed by both old people. “If Mr. and Mrs. Ruskin would only let him alone. . . .” But to release their hold upon their ewe lamb, their delicate and brilliant child, a man who had entered his thirtieth year but whom they still treated as an ailing youth to be guided and protected, was something that his parents neither would nor could do.

Did the pampered son really resent their authority? As an elderly man writing Praeterita, he was to discuss their effect on his adult growth with considerable frankness. But, although he was aware of the bond, he did not during their lifetime attempt to shake off his servitude; as early as 1848 it had begun to sap the foundations of his fragile relationship with Effie and to give an odd and disastrous turn to his whole emotional existence. “You who are so kind as a son will be a perfect lover as a husband,” Effie had once written to him during their engagement; but in fact he was too devoted a son to take his place in her life either as a husband or a lover. For those who remain, as Ruskin remained, in an unnaturally retarded state of emotional development — held back by the claims of a possessive mother or father — there exists very often a disastrous dichotomy between real and ideal love.

Of his love for the virginal, remote, childlike, unreal Effie, Ruskin’s letters provide abundant proof. But the vision and the reality could not be reconciled: he could not, when the moment came, translate romantic love into terms of adult passion. His marriage was never consummated; and Effie, at first amused and distracted by the pleasures of her new position as the unusually appealing wife of a young and famous writer, grew gradually more bewildered and at length disillusioned and embittered.

3

LETTERS hitherto unpublished make it possible to dismiss two suggestions frequently put forward by writers about Ruskin. It is not true that the marriage had been engineered by Mr. and Mrs. Ruskin, for we now know that they were reluctant to give their consent until it became clear that John was deeply and desperately enamored. And it is equally untrue that Mr. Gray, by his daughter’s advantageous marriage, hoped to benefit financially; his financial affairs, at one time parlous, eventually recovered without assistance from the Ruskins.

The young people, having returned to their new house in Park Street, Grosvenor Square, continued to live up to old Mr. Ruskin’s highest expectations. They entertained, and they were entertained. In December, at dinner with Sir Robert Inglis, Effie met Macaulay and was impressed by the dazzling exuberance of his dinnertable conversation: —

December 2, 1848
. . . Mr. T. B. Macaulay sat opposite and he is quite a Lion at present from his very clever History from James II down that everyone is reading just now. I never heard such a man at conversation, he goes from St. Chrysostom’s sermon at Antioch to the people not to pick each other’s pockets in Church to M. Thiers speeches twenty years ago, gives them word for word, then back again to Greek Mausoleums 4 Centuries B.C., gives you all the names of the people who built them contemporary with the battle of Salamis, then to Seringapatam streets and mud houses and going at such a pace. . . .
But at Christmas she felt ill — so ill that she was pronounced unfit to accompany John and his parents on a Swiss tour they had planned for the spring months of 1849; and instead she was packed off north for a holiday at Bowcrswell. Her illness was described as a “nervous ailment.” Ruskin must have suspected its origin; but, although he was himself tired and despondent, the old affection still persisted, and, from Paris, he wrote to her in the familiar adoring strain: —

April 24, 1849
I expect a line from my dearest love tomorrow at Sens; Do you know, pet, it seems almost a dream to me that we have been married: I look forward to meeting you; and to your next bridal night; and to the time when I shall again draw your dress from your snowy shoulders: and lean my cheek upon them, as if you were still my betrothed only; and I had never held you in my arms.
God bless you, my dearest.

Later he was to complain that his frivolous and self-willed wife had refused to share his interests. Hut this allegation is hardly borne out by a passage that occurs in a letter of May 3: —

May 3, 1849
... I had nearly forgotten to ask you, love, whether it would be very irksome to you as you read Sismondi to note every word that bears in the remotest degree on the interests or history of Venice? as I want to get at all the facts of Venetian history as shortly as I can, when I come home. Note every man who is a Venetian, wherever he appears: and make references to the places distinctly in a little note book kept for the purpose. It will be a great assistance to me if you can do this.

Yet the shadow on their relationship was slowly lengthening and deepening. Now that they had exclusive possession of their adored son, Mr. and Mrs. Ruskin ventured to make overt criticisms of Effie’s character and conduct. His wife, they seem to have insinuated to John, was both secretive and intractable. They wished to help her, but she would not be helped. “I often,”wrote John to Effie, “hear my mother or father saying poor child — if she could but have thrown herself openly upon us, and t rusted in us, and felt that we desired only her happiness and would make her ours, how happy she might have been; and how happy she might have made us all.”
Mr. Ruskin improved the occasion with a letter lo Mr. Gray: —

I address you again to repeat the expression of my sincere regret at the continuance of our daughter’s bad state of health and further to inform you of the trouble we are all in from not knowing what should be done, if anything can be done on our part to bring about an amendment. It is evident to me that my son also suffers from not being able to make out what his wife’s entire feelings and wishes are. . . .
I excuse her in not being able to sympathise in many of his local attachments, they come from early association, and from peculiar pursuits. Ninety women out of a hundred would soon tire of this place and would prefer what I have heard Effie say, she would, the flying over a desert on horseback, but I would expect from her great good sense and talent that she would sec that her ambition, of which she has too much mind not to have good share, would be little gratified by her husband abandoning the haunt, where his genius finds food and occupation, to seek for stirring adventures, which might end in more mishap than profit. I am quite aware that his pursuits to ordinary people may appear absurd, but Effie is not one of these ordinary people. . . .
If I might take the liberty of prescribing for her own comfort and amendment, I should urge an effort to be made to sacrifice everything to duty, to become interested and delighted in what her husband may be accomplishing by a short absence and to find a satisfaction in causing him no unnecessary anxiety that his faculties may be in full force for the purposes to which they are devoted. . . .

On June 24, John replied affectionately to a letter from Effie, in which she had expressed a pat hetic desire to have children and lead a normal married life: —

I have been thinking of you a great deal in my walks today, as of course I always do when I am not busy, but when I am measuring or drawing mountains, 1 forget myself — and my wife both; if 1 did not I could not stop so long away from her: for I begin to wonder whether I am married at all, and to think of all my happy hours, and soft slumber in my dearest lady’s arms, as a dream. I got a letter on Friday; that in which you tell me you are better — thank God; and that you would like a little Alice of our own. So should I; a little Effie, at least. Only I wish they weren’t so small at first that one hardly knows what one has got hold of.

Yet, ten days later, he wrote to her father, propounding his private theory that her reason was disordered: —

... If she had not been seriously ill I should have had fault to find with her: but the state of her feelings I ascribe; now, simply to bodily weakness; that is to say — and this is a serious and distressing admission — to a nervous disease affecting the brain.
I do not know when the complaint first showed itself: but the first that I saw of it was at Oxford after our journey to Dover: it showed itself then, as it does now, in tears and depression: being probably a more acute manifestation, in consequence of fatigue and excitement, of disease under which she had long been labouring. I have my own opinion as to its principal cause — but it does not bear on matter in hand. I was not however, at the lime, at all prepared to allow all I should have done for her state of health — and in consequence — when, some week or so afterwards, she for the first time showed causeless petulance towards my mother, I reproved her when we were alone. The matter in question was indeed one of very grave importance — being a wish on my mother’s part that I should take a blue pill when I went to bed — the first case as far as I remember of “interference” on her part since our marriage. It was however also the first time that Effie had heard herself blamed: and the effect upon her otherwise excited feelings was permanent — and disposed her — as I think, to look with jealousy upon my mother’s influence over me. I was at this time very sufficiently vexed, for my own part — at not being able to get abroad — as well as labouring under severe cough — so that I was not able to cheer Effie or support her, just at the period when she began first to feel her changed position and lament her lost home. It was a sad time for her therefore altogether — and the mental and bodily illness were continually increased. No further unpleasantness however took place between her and my mother and we got abroad at last.
I had hoped that this would put us all to rights: but whether I overfatigued her in seeing Cathedrals — or whether we drank too much coffee at night — her illness continued to increase.
So she returned worse than she went and I am still in entire ignorance that there was anything particularly the matter with her.
The depression gained on her daily — and at last my mother, having done all she could to make her happy in vain, was, I suppose, partly piqued and partly like myself—disposed to try more serious reason with her. Finding her one day in tears when she ought to have been dressing for dinner, she gave her a scold — which had she not been ill she would have deserved. Poor Effie dressed and came down — looking very miserable. I had seen her look so too often to take particular notice of it — and besides thought my mother right. Unluckily Dr. Grant was with us — and seeing Effie look ready to faint thought she must want his advice. I being thoroughly puzzled about the whole affair, thought so too and poor Effie, like a good girl as she is —r took — to please me — what Dr. Grant would have her — weakened herself more — sank under the influenza — and frightened me at last very sufficiently — and heaven only knows now when she will forgive my mother. So far as I know then — these are the causes — and this was the progress — of her illness — and of the change of feeling towards my parents. You know — better than I — what is likely now to benefit her — but I look forward with confidence to her restoration of health by simple physical means — and I am delighted to hear of the shower bath and the riding and the milk instead of tea — and the quiet. When I have her to manage again, I hope to do it better — and not to reason with — nor blame a physical weakness — which the course of time will, I doubt not, entirely cure. In all this, however, you will perceive that I look upon the thing as a purely medical question — not a moral one.
If Effie had in sound mind been annoyed by the contemptible trifles which have annoyed her: if she had cast back from her the kindness and affection with which my parents received her and refused to do her duty to them under any circumstances whatever but those of an illness bordering in many of its features on incipient insanity, I should not now have written you this letter respecting her . . .
I hope [he concluded] to see her outgrow with her girl’s frocks that contemptible dread of interference and petulant resistance of authority which begins in pride and is nourished in folly and ends in pain. Restiveness I am accustomed to regard as unpromising character even in horses and asses.

This extraordinary communication, so oddly at variance with tho gentleness and benignity assumed by most biographers to have been Ruskin’s ruling traits, can only be described as both dishonest and insensitive. But still there was no open breach; and soon after Ruskin’s return from Switzerland at the end of August, 1849, John and Effie left for Venice, where John passed five months of incessant activity gathering data for his new book. Effie meanwhile explored the city under proper chaperonage, attracting nevertheless the attention of amorous Venetian citizens and gallant Austrian officers — “they pass me and say ‘dear creature’ and lots of things like that and throw bouquets at me.” But at home, alas, guerrilla warfare had again broken out between the Grays and Ruskins. An anonymous letter was the immediate cause. This scurrilous missive, which asserted that a plot was on foot to separate John from his parents, old Mr. Ruskin forwarded to Mr. Gray, who replied, sensibly enough, suggesting it should be disregarded. Mr. Ruskin’s acknowledgment of the suggestion was decidedly unhelpful: —

October 29, 1849
. . . There required no anonymous letter to suggest to Mrs. Ruskin and me that there seemed to be an amazing effort made to withdraw our son as much as possible from the influence and society of his parents. It was not the imagining this but the clear perception of it which gave Mrs. Ruskin and myself uneasiness. Was it likely we should feel otherwise than hurt at seeing a creature who camo to us so readily and, as often as we asked her, professing considerable attachment to us and appearing happy with us, at once change on becoming our daughter-in-law and evince a repugnance both to ourselves and to our house so marked that the French people who were here and who saw Effie, in place of staying to help Mrs. Ruskin with her visitors, hurry my son away from the house, gave expression to their sympathy by declaring they would become our children themselves. I would not go again into these matters but that you say you gave up your intention of visiting London when you saw John’s affection for Effie was unchanged. It is singular that whilst you were fancying a want of proper feeling in John we were fearing the like in Effie, and as I speak to her as I write to you I told her the last day she was here that I almost feared she had taken my son to please somebody else because she left him so easily. I knew John’s attachment was unshaken, but he had firmness of character enough not to become the altered man towards his parents which it was sought to make him — towards that mother especially to whom, under God, he was all that he now or ever will be.

4

EFFIE’S attempts to persuade her husband to adopt a more independent attitude were evidently foredoomed; and no sooner had they returned to Park Street than John announced (Effie wrote to inform an English friend in Venice) that “every morning after breakfast he is going to Denmark Hill to write and remain the whole day till six when he will return and dine with me. I endeavoured to point out that he might shut himself up in his study here and then I might see him sometimes during the day, but he says he has no light in town nor his Turners and that I will soon find acquaintances and can take care of myself (which I think you rather doubt).”

Still, she amused herself as best she might, dined out, attended parties, and in May was presented at Court, where she observed that “the Queen looked immensely stout and red but very calm. I kissed her hand which was fat and red too. . . .”

Around the unattached beauty collected an enthusiastic circle of rakish men of the world; but she held these admirers at arm’s length with considerable sang-froid; and having rebuffed the assiduities of Clare Eord, a young and dissipated guardsman, she set about his reformation, advising him to save money and to give up “drinking Brandy with his coffee and smoking till three in the morning,” till a friend told her that her house in Park Street should be renamed “The Reform Club.”

Inevitably there was some gossip; but, she assured her mother, the gossip was unjustified. “. . . I am so peculiarly situated as a married woman that, being left much alone, and most men thinking that I live quite alone I am more exposed to their attentions. But I assure you — I never allow such people to enter the house and stop everything of the kind which might bo hurtful to my reputation. . . .” Clare Ford had accepted his congé: he joined the Diplomatic Service and later made his mark as British Ambassador at Constantinople, Madrid, and Rome. A new interest was emerging: Ruskin had met and constituted himself the literary champion of John Everett Millais.

The appearance of this handsome and compulsive figure — a man as warm-blooded and direct as John was cool, elusive, complicated — did not, in spite of the popular legend, destroy the Ruskins’ marriage. Millais would appear to have behaved throughout with Tennysonian chivalry; and Effie, conscious that her husband’s parents would have liked nothing better than to catch her in a false position, and latterly suspicious that her husband himself was aiding and abetting them, evinced uncommon good sense during the stormy years that followed.

In the winter of 1851 the Ruskins revisited Venice; and on their return they removed from Park Street, where to old Mr. Ruskin’s loudly expressed dismay they had overspent their income, and set up in a house that the old people had chosen in their own suburban neighborhood, “a small, ugly red-brick house,” No. 29 Herne Hill. Here John finished t he second and third volumes of Stones of Venice. Finally, during the summer of 1853, Millais and his brother, William, accompanied John and Effie on holiday to Scotland. They spent three months at Glenfinlas; and while Millais painted his celebrated portrait of Ruskin, poised pensive and sandy-whiskered above a foaming Highland cascade, he remarked with stupefaction his friend’s extraordinary lack of interest in a young and seductive wife, “his hopeless apathy, in everything regarding her happiness.” During the December of that same year, he summed up his impressions in a letter to Mrs. Gray: —

December 21, 1853
I am afraid my answer to your kind and judicious letter was dreadfully incoherent, but now I will endeavour to reply more satisfactorily — Although you know John Ruskin’s odd propensity for roaming away by himself from all human creatures and their habitations, yet you cannot be aware of the abstracted way in which he neglects his wife — It is utterly impossible for a friend to sojourn with them for any length of time, without absolutely being compelled in common courtesy to attend to her— I assure you that Ruskin only expressed approval and delight at perceiving that your daughter and myself agreed so well together, and when I spoke to him about his extraordinary indifference to her attractions (which could not be but excessively unpleasing, and conducive to her unhappiness) he only apathetically laughed and said, he thought all women ought to depend upon themselves for engrossing employment, and such like cold inhuman absurdities — There was something so revolting to me about this sickly treatment of her just cause of complaint and discontent, that I never again ventured to speak on the subject, as I could not depend upon keeping my temper.

Mrs. Gray in December also received a letter from her mysterious son-in-law: —

I will write you a word of Effie’s health; but I fear I shall have little cheering information to give you. She passes her days in melancholy, and nothing can help her but an entire change of heart.

Back in London, Effie had been joined by a younger sister, Sophie, a precocious child of ten, to whom both Ruskin and his parents seem to have spoken with unbecoming freedom; and at the close of February Effie wrote to her mother: —

He has told Sophie that he watches everything I do or say, therefore it is impossible I can talk about anything that comes uppermost — I do not know what on earth they are such fools for, especially John, as were it not for the pain of exposure I have him most completely in my power. I must tell you all these things just to show you how impossible any behaviour is to help things straight for all our sakes, when their object is to get rid of me, to have John altogether with them again, at any price they are resolved to do this, but they seem to wish if possible to disgust me to such a degree as to force me — or else get me — into some scrape John has been trying again to get me by taunts to write to Millais. . . .

But Millais was on his guard. He would be “more careful than ever,” he wrote to Mrs. Gray, and gave it as his opinion that, if Effie’s health were to be saved, “some steps should be speedily taken to protect her from this incessant harassing behaviour of the Rs.” But Effie’s powers of resistance were exhausted. At last, on March 7, 1854, advised by her friend Lady Eastlake, she wrote a long letter to her father, appealing for his help and telling him without reservation the story of her marriage.
Yet, still afraid of what the Ruskins might do, — she had by this time begun to regard them with almost superstitious horror, — Effie did not warn John that she wished or meant to leave him. When she set out from London with Mrs. Gray on April 25, Ruskin, who suspected nothing, accompanied them to the station; but on the same day she wrote to her mother-in-law, returning her wedding ring and her account books, and explaining the circumstances that made life with John impossible.
Ruskin weathered the crisis calmly. “Be assured,” he told a friend, “I shall neither be subdued, nor materially changed, by this matter. The worst of it for me had long been past.” Later that year, his friendship with Millais was summarily wound up. Ruskin addressed him from Denmark Hill on December 11, when the portrait begun in Scotland was at length completed and framed: —

We have just got the picture placed — in I think the very light it wants — or rather for it cannot be said to want any light — in that which suits it best. I am far more delighted with it now than I was when I saw it in your room. . . . Please send me your proper address, as I may often want to write to you now. I need not, I hope, tell you how grateful I am to you for finishing this picture as you have.
Faithfully and gratefully yours
J. RUSKIN.

Millais replied after the passage of a week: —

My address is Langham Chambers, Langham Place, but I can scarcely see how you conceive it possible that I can desire to continue on terms of intimacy with you. Indeed I concluded that after finishing your portrait you yourself would have seen the necessity of abstaining from further intercourse.
The barrier which cannot but be between us personally does not prevent me from sympathising with all your efforts to the advancement of good taste in Art, and heartily wishing them success.

To which Ruskin responded two days later: —

SIR,
From the tenour of your letter, received yesterday, I can only conclude that you either believe I had, as has been alleged by various base or ignorant persons, some unfriendly purpose when I invited you to journey with me in the Highlands, or that you have been concerned in the machinations which have for a long time been entered into against my character and fortune. In either case I have to thank you for a last lesson, though I have had to learn many and bitter ones, of the possible extent of human folly and ingratitude. I trust that you may be spared the natural consequences of the one, or the dire punishment of the other.
I remain
Your obedt servt
JOHN RUSKIN.

5

A DECREE of nullity having been granted to “Euphemia Chalmers Gray falsely called Ruskin” on July 15, 1854, Effie was married to Millais at Iiowerswell on July 3, 1855. Her married life was happy, and she became the mother of eight children.
Ruskin she was never to meet again; but that their association had a momentous sequel is now revealed by papers in the Millais archives. It is well known that, during the year 1858, Ruskin was introduced to a certain Mrs. La Touche, the wife of an Irish banker, of Harristown, Kildare, and through her became acquainted with her nineyear-old daughter, Rose, an unusually beautiful and oddly serious child. Soon Ruskin had begun to fasten upon Rose all his hopes of future happiness. In 1860 he informed a friend that he could love no one “except my Mouse-pet in Ireland who nibbles me to the very sick-death with weariness to see her.”
When she was eighteen he proposed marriage, but was told that, for an answer, he must wait till she was twenty-one. At twenty-one she postponed her decision. Two years later he proposed again and was then definitely rejected. Rose was undoubtedly attached to Ruskin: her mother was a close friend. What induced them to deal him a blow from which his emotional equilibrium never quite recovered? Hitherto no biographer has produced a satisfactory explanation; and it has even been suggested that Mrs. La Touche was personally jealous of Ruskin’s devotion to her daughter.
The problem has now been solved. In October, 1870, Mrs. La Touche wrote to Effie Millais, stating that a Mr. and Mrs. Cowper Temple were attempting to influence Rose in Ruskin’s favor. They were repeating Ruskin’s account of his marriage, according to which the betrothal to Effie had been arranged by his parents, he had respected his wife too much to proceed to consummation, their interests and tastes were incompatible, but he had done his utmost, and employed every means, to make her happy.
Fifteen years had gone by, but Effie emerged from the past like an avenging spirit. Her reply was as follows: —

I have received your kind letter and I am truly distressed that you are in such trouble about your daughter.
Mr. Millais is extremely averse to my being brought into contact even by correspondence with your daughter who, if she is still under the mischievous influence of Mr. Ruskin, will not think differently whatever I say.
If your daughter can for a moment believe such a statement as his that he should marry a girl of 19 without professions of the most devoted kind, how can any words of mine undeceive her.
He pursued exactly the same course with me as with her; he always took the tone of his love and adoration being higher and above that of ordinary mortals, and immediately after the ceremony he proceeded to inform me that he did not intend to marry me. He afterwards excused himself from doing so by saying that I had an internal disease. His father tried to induce him to believe me insane and his whole conduct was simply as monstrous as his present statements are perfect falsehoods.
Our marriage was never arranged by anybody. There was no inducement but the utmost determination on his part to marry me. Prior to his professions to me he had been devoted to a Spanish lady and broke a blood vessel from disappointment that he did not get her. I do not think she wished it but religion was given as the obstacle.
But he had quite got over that and on our visiting her years after he had no feeling about her.
Now that I am a married woman and happy with a family I think his conduct can only be excused on the score of madness, as his wickedness in trying his dreadful influence over your daughter is terrible to think of.
I can easily understand the hold he has acquired, as it was exactly the same over myself. His conduct to me was impure in the highest degree, discreditable, and so dishonourable that I submitted to it for years not knowing what else to do, although I would have often been thankful to have run away, and envied the people sweeping the crossings.
His mind is most inhuman; all that sympathy which he expects and gets from the female mind it is utterly impossible for him to return excepting on artistic subjects which have nothing to do with domestic life. It is perfect falsehood to say that I did not agree with his pursuits. No one more so. He not only gave me the opportunity but the means of education when abroad for acquiring knowledge of painting, sculpture, architecture, every branch of the fine arts, a slight knowledge of Latin and Greek, and we read together the works of the ancients and, as I am particularly fond of history, every thing he wanted for his writings of this kind.
From his peculiar nature he is utterly incapable of making a woman happy. He is quite unnatural and in that one thing all the rest is embraced.
He always pretended to me to the last that he was the purest and holiest of men and he had a peculiar influence over a young mind in making himself believed.
I had no idea I could get away up to within a month of leaving him, which I did under the care of my parents and entirely without his knowledge by the advice of lawyers. So far from his conniving at my leaving him it was a great shock to them all this statement of his is also entirely false.
He once years before offered me £800 a year to allow him to retire into a monastery and retain his name — that I declined. He was then under the influence of Manning.
I think if your daughter went through the ceremony wit h him that her health would give way after a time and she would be submitted to the same kind of treatment as I was.
It is very painful to write all this and be again obliged to recall all those years of distress and suffering, of which I nearly died. But I hope that your daughter may be saved and come to see things in a different light.

This letter had a decisive effect. Rose finally broke with Ruskin. Already consumptive, she gradually drifted into depths of religious melancholy, and by the spring of 1875 Ruskin knew that she was dying. To Carlyle he wrote that he had just finished his notes on an exhibition at the Royal Academy “and was away into the meadows, to see clover and bean blossom, when the news came that the little story of my Wild Rose was ended, and the hawthorn blossoms would fall this year — over her.” In 1878 he experienced his first attack of madness. Effie died on December 23, 1897; Ruskin on January 20, 1900.