John Ruskin's Marital Secret and J. E. Millais's Painting “The Order of Release”

Admiral Sir William James published in December 1947 a vindication of his grandmother, (2) Effie Chalmers Gray, John Ruskin's former wife. Effie Gray divorced Ruskin in 1855 and remarried one year later the painter, Sir John Everett Millais with whom she subsequently had eight children, one of the descendente being this latest contributor to the famous art critic's matrimonial mystery.

The official legend, fostered by Ruskin's biographers Cook and Collingwood, assumed that Ruskin had never been in love with his wife, whom he alledgedly married out of filial duty. Ruskin's pathologically overprotective parents were credited with having selected the bride and arranged the marriage: “They saw in a marriage with Euphemia the means by which they might gain a daughter and not lose a son.” (Cook)

Admiral James has now published a selection of newly discovered letters of both participants proving the official story a camouflaging legend. The facts are that Ruskin had, before his marriage, been in love with Effie, that his parents interfered, being afraid that their son would marry Effie (there are letters to that effect written by Ruskin's father to Miss Gray's father), and that the whole mystery had a very banal solution: Ruskin's impotence.

Admiral James even goes so far as to accuse Ruskin's biographers of conscious concealment of facts known to them because of financial reasons: (3) “Ruskin's biographers. Cook and Colingwood, were not incompetent; on the contrary, they understood their work only too well. They realized that the British public are exceedingly frightened