The Sunday herald and weekly national intelligencer., 1890-10-05
RUsKIN's STRANGE ROMANCE.

Giving Up His Beautiful Wife to Man
Who Loved Her More Than He Did.
From the New York Star.
The last reports from England say that ohm
Ruskin is dying. Not long ago the cablegrams
stated that he was becoming insane. Probably
both reports are true, though up to a short time
ago men were satisfied to call him eccentric.
Perhaps he was. But then he was rich, and
fortune such as he had was like charity-it cov-
cred multitude of eccentricities. When he be-
gan to dabble in literature John Ruskin had no
need to write for the money his work would
bring him. He is not rich to-day, for he has Law
ished his wealth on art, on charities, on thou
sands of deserving men and women whom the
world never heard about. John Ruskin did
strangely wayward thing when he consented to
get marred-for he was married. He did most
erratic and, to the public, most inexplicable
thing when he arranged for his divorce. He had
accepted some of the loftiest traditions about
womanhood that men sometimes read about and
talk Of, and he looked for his ideal companion.
One night he met her in the drawing room of a
London friend, who, without his knowledge, had
brought the young lady to meet the eyes of the
great writer.
1t was June night. He was thirty-five and
she looked like a Greek goddess He was daz-
Zleu sic WitS IL Jall, STaCelul SlTl Ol HlueCeen,
with face and figure as faultless as one of the
statues of old. No one ever expected Ruskin to
fall in love, and he did not She was poor and
needed home and its comforts and so they
were married. Their welded life was peaceful,
friendly, kindly to the highest degree, but there
was not spark of affection to brighten their ex-
istence. She admired the great man she had
married, and was grateful for the wealth, the
comforts, and the luxury which he showered
upon her. He worshiped her as he would the
marble made lifelike by the sculptor's chisel.
There was nothing human about the life they led
as husband and wife, and she was woman who
in her heart, like all true women, laughed at the
traditions that assume that her sex love distant
worship.
One day Ruskin brought an artist to paint
his wifes picture. The man was Millais, and
he was bright, CHEEKY, handsome fellow,
human, every inch of him, full to Overlooking
with great and absorbing love for the beauti-
full, and with willingness to tell of his love.
He began to paint the portrait of the magnifi
cent woman, and when he had finished he was
in love with his friends wife. Womanlike, she
saw it, and perhaps her heart was not full of
sorrow and reproach. 1t was the first tribute of
real, manful love that had ever been laid at her
feet. And Ruskin ? His wide eyes saw the
romance that was weaving around these two
lives and in his heart he realized how little af-
fection he had to lavish on the woman whom he
had made his wife. How he told her the story
to make for her while she lay prone at his feet,
is one of the things only he or she could tell.
Ii is difficult to obtain "A divorce in England,
but John Ruskin secured it for her, and one
bracing morning in early winter, month after
the divorce was granted, Ruskin stood beside
the couple in one of London's quiet churches
and saw them made man and wife. That was a
good many years ago, and since that time Mil
lais has grown rich and famous, and is now Sir
John and his wife is Lady Millais. The warm
est, sturdiest friend the struggling painter had
in his toilng days was the man whose wife he
had married, and through all the days of Mil
lais's later success and great honor John Rus
kin has been the welcome guest and almost
daily visitor of the man and woman whose
lives he so unselfshly crowned with happiness.
1t is a strange story and the world knows lit
tie about it, and so some men have condemned
him as some women have censured her. But
the two men and that one woman, who know
best, have been content. And they may ask,
Why, then, should the world complain