Introduction
John Ruskin -- a towering intellect and great moral voice of the second half of the 19th Century. Known firstly as an author and art-critic, he championed Turner and the Pre-Raphaelites, but increasingly turned his attention to economic and social matters, using his wealth and influence for education and socialistic enterprises. He was elected Professor of Art at Oxford University, and was instrumental in the founding of the National Trust. Sadly, his prolific intellectual success was not matched by his unhappy personal life.
His marriage in 1848 to his cousin Effie Gray was never consummated and was annulled in 1854. In 1858, aged 39, he became infatuated with a 10-year-old girl, Rose de la Touche, and planned to marry her when she came of age. She later spurned him at the behest of her Evangelical parents, and her death in 1875 set off the bouts of depression from which he suffered for the rest of his life.
Evidence :
Three sources:
(1) Abse, Joan. John Ruskin - The Passionate Moralist. London. Quartet Books, 1980.
(2) Austin, Linda M.
Ruskin and Rose At Play With Words
CRITICISM, Vol. XXVIII, No. 4, Fall 1986. pp. 409-425.
(3) Kemp, Wolfgang. The Desire of my Eye - the life and works of John Ruskin. London. Harper Collins, 1991.
Quotes:
"There is some cause for assigning Ruskin to the ranks of the 'nympholeptics', the lovers of little girls. How else can we explain the fact that for years he served loyally as teacher and benefactor to a progressive girls' boarding school [Winninigton Hall], that he wrote hundreds of letters to the school community and to individual girls, and that on his numerous visits he never failed to spend some time romping, dancing, and playing hide-and-seek with the girl pupils ? Indeed, these girls, who are the same age as Rose, are the ones he takes into his confidence at the start of his love affair with Rose. They are the ones to who he complains about what is always the main sorce of grief to those who love children: the fact that they grow up. In May 1861 he wrote them a plaintive message:
"I shan't she her [Rose] again for ever so long - not till winter I fancy - and then she'll be somebody else - Children are as bad as the clouds at sunrise - golden change - but change always - I was horribly sad this morning." [Kemp 1991 : p.258]
Several of Ruskin's biographers feel that his mistake lay in trying to conserve his love for the child Rose and then transfer it to the grown woman...
"If only Ruskin could then have ceased to love her [when she grew up], if only, like 'Lewis Carroll', he could have found some new houri of the nursery," writes Quentin Bell, referring to C.L. Dodgson, the most famous of all nympholeptics and an acquaintance of Ruskin's, as was Dodgson's beloved Alice Liddell, the model for Alice in Wonderland." [Kemp 1991 : p.288]
"In a letter written to his father from Italy the same year he met Rose, Ruskin describes...
"One girl of about ten, with her black hair over her eyes and half-naked, bare limbed to above the knees, and beautifully limbed, lying on the sand like a snake..." [Austin 1986 : p.410]
"[...] the attraction of instructing inquiring and impressionable children [at Winninigton Hall] was very strong. The fact that these were young and female was undoubtedly important. Not only did it mean that they were fresh, graceful, good to look upon; but they were also affectionate and responsive; and besides being very attentive to what he had to say, they shared with him an exuberant playfulness which he had hardly ever indulged in before. He romped with the girls, they embraced him, yet it all remained on an undisturbing, only mildly titillating level. [Abse 1980 : p.164]
"He wrote to Rose, giving her humourous and tender accounts of the strawberry treats for the local children [in France, 1861] - while to Georgiana Burne-Jones, his friend's new wife, he wrote of Rose, 'Nay, I shall never see _her_ again. It's another Rosie every six months now. Do I want to keep her from growing up ? Of course I do.' No idle remark this for he was well aware by now that the older girls became, the more their attractions diminished in his eyes. He liked them best, as he was to tell his friend, Lady Naesmith two years later, when they were 'just in the very rose of dawn'. [Abse 1980 : p.177-178]
Ruskin was friend of fellow girl-lovers, the writer George MacDonald, author of 'At the back of the North Wind' [Abse 1980 : p.190], and 'Lewis Carroll' . Ruskin was also...
"[...] an admirer of the work of Kate Greenaway; the portrayer, above all, of endearing children, who had already made a considerable reputation for herself as an illustrator. Not that he accepted her work without stringent criticism; as he had lectured Rossetti and other proteges years ago, he exhorted her to 'draw things as they are', not to rely on clothes for effect: - 'you _must_ draw your figures now undraped for a while - Nobody wants anatomy - but you can't get on without Form.' Still, her little girls, whether in drawings or when he, on occasions, met the models at tea in her house, curiously delighted him." [Abse 1980 : p. 302-303]
He lectured at Oxford in May 1884 "[...] on Kate Greenway [in relation to] the art provided for children. It was a worthy enough theme and there were cogent insights provided, but his delight in Kate Greenaway's little girls led him into unguarded comments which must have startled his audience." [Abse 1980 : p.303]
"As Ruskin worked in the woods [Spring 1884] at his favorite occupation of cutting and chopping branches, Jane Anne, the little daughter of a local farmer, formerly a miner, was often his valued companion. Increasingly he enjoyed the society of sympathetic children and the nearby Coniston school had for some years been a deep source of interest to him [...] 'it is almost impossible in Coniston to meet a child whom it is not a sorrow to lose sight of,' he once said. [Abse 1980 : p. 307]
"Children from Coniston came to him for various lessons, for games, for cooking, and for a large tea on Saturday afternoons. 'We should be lost without our lessons,' was the appreciative comment by Jane Anne, which Ruskin faithfully recorded in his diary." "[...] She [Joan, his cousin and great support in his old age] had long been anxious about Ruskin's penchant for harmless flirtation with young girls and longing for the company of children. Nor did she sympathise very much with his efforts to educate the Coniston schoolchildren which he had curtailed earlier in the year to sessions on a Saturday afternoon. Alarmed therefore by a suggestion that Ruskin proposed to adopt one of the little girls of Coniston, Joan attempted to end these last Saturday afternoon sessions. It proved to be the most inflammitory thing she could have done, and produced a tremendous flare-up between them which left her prostrate and resulted in Ruskin leaving his house to stay at the Waterhead Hotel in Coniston." [A few days later she went back to London, leaving Ruskin undefeated.] [Abse 1980 : p.317]
Wed 31 Mar 2010 - 6:32
Sorry, sounds like you have more than one of me to contend with.