Table of contents
A Non-sex Scandal
Here’s a quick rundown: In 1848, 29-year-old Ruskin, already known for his influential work 'Modern Painters', married 19-year-old beauty Euphemia Gray, the daughter of family friends. After a rocky and unhappy six years, Effie fell for her husband’s student, Millais, and sought to annul the marriage.
The scandal involving John Ruskin, his wife Effie, and artist John Everett Millais is a captivating story even after all these years. It stands out because it wasn’t a typical sex scandal but rather a non-sex scandal.
The reason they gave for ending their union was that it had never been consummated. But what really caught the public's attention was Ruskin’s awkward explanation for not fulfilling his marital duties: he claimed that while Effie was beautiful, she “was not formed to excite passion” and that there were certain “circumstances in her person” that completely turned him off.
These “circumstances” have led to loads of speculation over the years, anything from his dislike of children, his religious beliefs, wanting to preserve Effie’s beauty, to being grossed out by body odour and menstruation. Even Effie herself mentioned that Ruskin was shocked at her appearance on their wedding night, thinking women were different from what he expected. This sparked the rumour that Ruskin, used to the smooth, idealised forms of classical statues, was horrified to discover that Effie had pubic hair.
Marriage of Inconvenience
We might never fully understand what happened on their wedding night or throughout their marriage. However, a book entitled 'Marriage of Inconvenience' by Robert Brownell aims to change how we view this whole sad saga. Much of the letters and correspondence among the key players were edited or destroyed by Effie's relatives to protect her honour. Brownell, however, has carefully examined the surviving letters and drawn some conclusions that challenge the established narrative.
Ruskin and Effie had known each other since she was a child, raised in Perth, with the Grays moving into the Ruskin home after John’s family relocated to London. Effie spent time there over school holidays, and Ruskin even wrote her a fairytale called 'The King of the Golden River'.
Ruskin was an only child, spoiled by his parents, and faced significant pressures from his overly religious, ill mother. There’s speculation that he might have had tuberculosis, but his father blamed it on "overstudy." Given that he wrote an extensive poem at just 12 years old, that blame doesn’t seem too far-fetched. As a result, young Ruskin came off as reserved, unsure around women, not great with horses, and somewhat socially awkward. He even said, “If I had been a woman, I never should have loved the kind of person that I am.”
In contrast, Effie was lively, flirtatious, smart, but not particularly well-educated. When Ruskin finally declared his feelings, his letters read more like over-the-top poetry: “You saucy – wicked – witching – malicious – merciless mischief-loving – torturing – martyrising … mountain nymph that you are.” Unfortunately, Effie didn’t have anything nearly as passionate preserved.
Effie rejected Ruskin's first proposal. She had a sort of “understanding” with a soldier heading to India and was interested in at least six other men. But things changed when her father's finances took a turn for the worse. Mr. Gray was a risky investor, and the family faced bankruptcy. To save themselves, they figured marrying off Effie to the wealthy Ruskin was their best bet. So, they moved the wedding date up to avoid financial disaster. Effie walked down the aisle with no dowry but got £10,000 from Mr. Ruskin instead, and the wedding took place in Scotland with none of Ruskin’s family in attendance. The Grays got a financial lifeline, but Ruskin ended up feeling tricked.
According to Brownell, this realisation of being duped is what really led to the marriage not being consummated. Before they married, Ruskin had written to her excited about their wedding night, but his letters were mixed with tension and uncertainty. He came to view her with realism ("She is unfitted to be my wife unless she also loved me exceedingly"). Even though they shared a bed, the knowledge that he had unwittingly entered a marriage with love on one side only meant that his naughty thoughts never became deeds: he was too scrupulous to have sex without reciprocity. They agreed instead to wait six years, when Effie would be 25, to give themselves time to fall properly in love before broaching the subject again.
Love was to Prove a Vain Hope
Love was to prove a vain hope; the most they ever managed was fondness, and that began to erode soon enough. There was an added overlay of friction caused by Effie's resentment of John's parents, who paid for the couple's comfortable lifestyle and kept a close watch on them in return. Effie was thought to need supervision: during two long stays in Venice in 1849 and 1851, while Ruskin was researching The Stones of Venice, he left her pretty much to her own devices in a city crawling with Austrian army officers after their recent successful siege.
Effie had no trouble attracting admirers. She wrote to her brother: "Venice is so tempting just now at night that it is hardly possible not to be imprudent." Her imprudence led to her encouraging, intentionally or not, several soldiers. The results escalated from arguments between them over her dance card (she was a committed polka dancer) to a duel in which one admirer was killed. At least two slighted others came openly to express their hatred for her, and things were exacerbated when some of her jewellery was stolen, and suspicion fell on another soldier-admirer. According to gossip, the diamonds weren't in fact stolen but given.
Challenged to a Duel
Effie now had a reputation that followed her to London to the extent that the unwitting Ruskin himself was twice challenged to a duel by friends of the supposed jewel-thief. It was at this point, Brownell says, that Ruskin rather than Effie actively started to look for a way out. This presented itself in the shape of Millais. Ruskin had defended the painter against critical attacks, and soon Effie was modelling for his aptly titled picture The Order of Release. She was willing, as she wrote to her mother: "Millais is so extremely handsome, besides his talents, that you may fancy how he is run after."
In the summer of 1853, Ruskin invited Millais to join them on a Scottish holiday to paint his portrait. He rented a cottage and left his wife and the painter alone together as much as possible, all the while keeping an "evidential diary". Ruskin's aim, says Brownell, was not divorce (it was so difficult, demeaning and expensive that there were on average only four divorces a year in England at the time) but annulment, which allowed for the dissolution of a marriage on the grounds of, among other things, bigamy, kidnap, incest or non-consummation due to incurable impotence or mental/physical inaptitude.
Ruskin was willing to take the stigma of non-consummation on himself because he wouldn't be medically examined, and annulments were not usually reported in the press. If Effie's father had helped dupe Ruskin into the marriage he was in turn duped into ending it. Ruskin, says Brownell, used the threat of divorce and the ensuing scandal to pressurise Mr Gray into persuading Effie to instigate annulment proceedings instead. The ruse worked. Two doctors attested to Effie's virginity and in 1854 the marriage was officially ended.
Conclusion
In fact Effie emerged from the whole business rather better than Ruskin. Her friends, and his enemies, used the non-consummation clause as a means to malign him, while he remained stoically tight-lipped. She also later ended any hopes he had of finding happiness with another young girl, Rose La Touche, by warning her parents about him. Her own marriage to Millais, though, was a success, and consummated with such relish by him that they had eight children and she was forced to write to him imploringly: "Basta!", meaning "Enough"!
Ruskin himself did find love of sorts, however, with his books. Without the distraction of a wife he went on to become England's greatest critic and social thinker of the 19th century. Neither Ruskin nor Effie, however, fully managed to live down those "certain circumstances".
