THE WORLD OF BOOKS.

Press, Volume LXIII, Issue 18942, 5 March 1927, Page 13

THE WORLD OF BOOKS.

IiALF HOURS IN A LIBRARY. (SmiALLT WRITTEH FOB THE 18E35.) By A. H. Grisling. CCVU.-OX AUTHORS \M> MARRIAGE : (7) JOHN RI'SKIN. In 1930 when John Ruskin was seventeen, ho fell deeply in love with Adele. the eldest of the four daughters of 1; father's partner in the wino business, M. Domeeq. The Domecqs lived in good society in Paris, and thev came to England to stay with tho Rtiskins at Heme Hill. Ruskin, with his customary candour, has told the story in "Praeterita." Clotildo ("Adele Clotilde in full, but her s * s ~ ters called her Clotilde after the queen saint, and 1 Adele, because it rhymed to shell, spell and knell'') was a graceful oval-faced blonde ol' fifteen. To Ruskin, the four girls appeared ns "a most curious galaxy or southern cross, of unconccived stars, floating of a sudden into my obscure firmament of London suburb." They were thf first well-bred and well-dressed girls ho had ever seen—or at least spoken to. and lie exclaims:— ii'iv; my )iaren!s could allow their young : >vice to be cast into tho fiery furnace the outer world in this helpless wit liner, the reader may wonder, r.iul only tho i'ates know. . . . Having no athletic. n!;ill or pleasure tn check my ■.'.roaming, 1 was thrown hand and foot, my unaccomplished simplicity, into tho licry furr.tico or fiery cross cf ih°se four ir'a —who oi course 'educed rie to x mcro heap of v.-hite ashes in four days. Four days at t,he most it took to reduce in? to sshe3, 'jut the Mercrcdi rips cendrc- lasted four ■ cart."

'"ln accounting fop the iinhappincss nnd melancholy that shadowed Ruskin's life," says Mrs Eurland, "too much stress seems to have been laid on his unrequited lovo for Adele Clotilde Domeeq. The question is. had she accepted the boy's attachment and married him, would the tenor 'if bis life have run more smoothly? A very little consideration will show that, whether Ruskin himself was aware of it or not, his iinhappincss was due to his hvper-sensitivo temperament of genius, increased by deprivation of sports and companionship suited to his age. Had he been sent to school and allowed to mix freely with boys of his own age, or even been allowed to run wild, as he himself s"fteosts. with a Welsh pony on the Welsh hil's, his originality might have suffered, but both mind nnd body would have gained in robustness." Mrs Earlnnd continues :

Calf-love is no uncommon uiliucnt. Most lads have jt more or less severely, but with a normal healthy boy it is neither dangerous nor lasting. Poor .Tohn Kuskin, at seventeen, was neither able to resist the disease nor strong enough to throw it off. Shy, sensitive, awkward, pondantic, he wes little used to the society of girls, much legg to Rny ns seli-possesscd and highly bred as tho Dotnecqs, with their Parisian dress and experience. Adele laughed at him. Littlo wonder; for nt fifteen the sterling worth nnd genius of her admirer were unlikely to blind her to his disadvantages of manner. 110 tolls us that the subjects he selected for conversation were. "Tho Spanish Armada, the Battle oi Waterloo, and the doctrine of transubstantiation"—all from tho British nnd evangelical standpoint. And Adele, a Spanish Catholio, educated in c Frnncc. Hifl lovo sonnets he was too shy .to show her, but he wroto her a story of Neapolitan bandits which made her laugh, and sent after hor to Paris a letter of seven quarto pages in bad French—and again Adele laughed. A Spanish blonde, maturing early, she must have been very beautiful at fifteen; but by Huskin's own account not onnable. Yet she made a good wifo to Baron Duquesne, so perhaps it was not cruelty but only girlish thoughtlessness that mado her seem so heartless. Ono thing is evident; ahe was utterly unsuitable, both as regards character and religion, for Ruskin and if he hod been left to himself, most probably tho episode would have ended naturally in a very short time.

Two years later. John being nineteen, and Adele seventeen, he saw hor again in England, but she still laughed at him. Her father died, and sho became engaged to tho Baron Duquesne, who wns both handsome and rich, and in March, 1840, they wero married. Ruskin's parents tried to keep tho news from him as ho was ing for his degree at Oxford, but nis health suffered, and there were symptoms of consumption. "For two years," writes Frederic Harrison, "John was nn invalid, aimlessly roving from plnce to place, and mind as littlo settled to any definite point as wns his body." Tho two fathers had looked upon the prospect in marriage of sou and daughter witn complacency, but Mrs Ruskin. a severe Cnlvinist, viewed with horror the match between John nnd Adele. It wns his mother, howover, who picked out a wife for her son "The distnste he showed for societv, says Mrs Enrland. "and his tendencv towards morbidness nnd depression also worried his parents. They turne'l to matrimony as n pnnncea. A wife might induce him to settle down quietly near them instead of spend'ng so much time - on the Continent. Having mnrlo this resolution. Mrs Ruskin, who had ordered his life hitherto, took unon the choice of o wife. Frederic Hirrison says:— Tho parents came to the conclusion that John's health and spirits were only to bo cured by matrimony; and they pressed him to marry the daughter of their old Perthshire friends, the Grays. Seven years before this (1817) they had been visitors Herno Hill, nnd th® girl hud challenged John to write her a fairy atory, which "ho cheerfully undertook. It was "The King of th» Golden River"—a medley of Orimm, Dickens, and the Alps. Accordingly, somewhat suddenly and perhaps unthinkingly, John Ruskin was married at Perth to Euphemia Chalmers Gray, on April 10th. 1843. . . She wni a erana beautv, of high spirit, whom alt tho worl-1 knows as tho triumphant wife in the famous picture, "The Order for Re.ease, in the Tate Gallery.

There is no mention of either wife or marriage in the diaries of travel in tho Alps, in "Praeterita,'' in "Fors," or any of the memoirs sanctioned by the family or their friends. A letter lias been published written by Kuskin to his friend William Macdonald, dated from Bowerswill, Perth, October sth, 1847, and which written a year before the marriage, gives an expression of his ftselings towards Euphemia Chalmers Gray; "I love Miss Gray very much." he writes, "and therefore tannot tell what to think of her. only this I know, that in many -espects she is unlit to be my wife unless she also loved me exceedingly. She is surrounded by people who pay her attention, rnd though I believe most of them inferior in some points to myself, f« r more calculated to catch a girl's fancy. Still Miss Gray and I are old friends. F have every reason to think that if I were to try I could make her more than a friend, and if after I leave her this time, if sho holds out for six months more. I believe I shall a.-k her to conic to Switzerland with meanest year, and if she will not or if >ho takes anyone else in the meantime. I nin sadly afraid F shall enjoy my mucli than nsiinl. thoucl) no disappointment of this kind would affect me as the first did."

"In the life of Buskin.'" says A. C". Benson, "a catastrophe wn« at hand. He himself was l>ored and tired of society and his vo'im: wife was absorbed in it. In 1533 the pair went to Scotland, Millais came to stay with them, and painted their portraits. . . • Not long after Mm RuaJrin Wt ° er

homo and returned to her parents. A Mut for nullity mis brought against her husband, and was nut defended; and sho shortly afterwards married .Milbis. Iho first marriage had been a mistake Irom beginning to end, and was beat annulled."'

Writing to Dr. John Carlyle under date May ( Jth, 1554, Mi's Carlyle says: "J'hero is a great deal of talking about the Ruskius hero at present. -Mrs Ruskin has been taken to iscotlaiul t)v her parents; and Ruskin is gone to Switzerland with his; and the separation is understood to bo pcrmanen'- There is even a rumour that Mrs Kuskin is to sue for a divorce. 1 know nothing about it. except that 1 have always pitied Mrs Ruskin while people generally blame her—for love of dress and company and flirtation. She was 100 yotiny and pretty to bo left to her own devices as sho was by her husband, who seemed to wish nothing moro of her but the credit of having a pretty well-dressed wife.' 1 'i'iiere is a story extant that at a party in Ijondon Mrs Ruskin was talking with a gentleman friend who enquired, "Where is Mr Ruskin r" "Oh! Mr Ruskin r" she replied, "he is with his mother: he ought to have married his mother.''

It is significant that Ruskin himself preserves complete silence in regard to his six. years of married lite, in contrast to the nnivo freedom with which bo chats about Adele Domeeq, and Roso La Touehe and others of tho girls of whom lie was so fond. The third occasion on which Ruskin was thwnrted_ in bis love affairs was when in ISi.'i lie asked Roso l,a Toucho to marry him but sho refused to yoke herself "with an unbeliever.'' It was in 180S that it began, when Ruskin was a man of nearly forty. "Hero," says A. C. Benson, [ 'l will relate in a feiv words what was probably tho central fact in Ruskin's life—a lovo that transformed itself from a paternal affection into a consuming passion; a lovo which was for years the mainspring and comfort of his life and the frustration of which not only cost him tho deepest of all tho sorrows which he had to endure, hut caused the strain under which his over-burdened •niml gave way. Just, at the timo when, after much thought and struggle, lie had decided to abjure tho old evangclii-il beliefs in which he had been brought up. and when as a consequence he was in a very despondent frame of mind, ho received a letter from a Mrs La Touehe, an Irish woman, asking if he could find timo (o give her three children a few lessons in drawing. And one of the girls was Roso La Touehe. From A. 0. Benson's account I extract ilic following:—

Reap J,.\ Touehe cm undoubtedly ft vnv cliarininpr and precocious child, extremely bountiful, full of lively fancies, with marvellous power of winning nnd returning love, with pretty half-mocking, hnlf-carossintr ways, with n set of pot niakncmcs for the people round her; just tho 6ort of child, with her wayward fancies and her warm affection to win the heart of a sorrowful and lonely man. . . . Sho wns a child of ton when they first met, and when sho was eighteen the whole cf Ruskin's power of devotion was centred upon her. 110 told her of his desires that sho should become his wifo, but she could give him no answer, and ho agreed to wait until plie wns twenty-one. . . . But she had no desire to change the old relation, and moreover she had hecomo deeply devout on the Evangelical lines, which he had discarded. She published a little religious manual in 1373 called "Cloud and Light," hnd when he aßked her for an answer, sho told him frankly nnd sweetly enough that she could not marry an unbeliever. ' Ho plnnßcd into work to deaden thought. In tho autumn ho heard she was dying; her precocious intellect and her deep reli"ious emotion Imd burnt the spirit out. . . Ho saw her often, and was with her to "the last. Sho died in 1875, and lu« heart was buried in her grave.

Tho epilogue to tho Ruskin's love affairs is to be found in his friendship with Kat# Greennway, Franccsca Alexander, and Susanna Bee,or. Mrs Garland writes, and with this I conclude: "As timo rolled on Ruskin _ took full advantage of the privilege claimed by age to cultivate the friendship of mway loving women nnd carry on mild flirtations with young girlS. His gentle philandering wns so innocent and paternal, that Mrs Grundy, in her sternest mood never seems to have taken exception to it. lluskm had suffered much through women; ins vouth was embittered by Adele s indifference, his manhood shadowed u> his wife's desertion; his whole nature warped by his mother's injudicious fondness. But instead of developing into a misogynist Ruskin found his genuine solnco in their friendship; ceiviii" in return a heaped measure of tho "semi-maternal affection good women delight to bestow."