The Hawaiian star. [volume] (Honolulu [Oahu]) 1893-1912, 1893-10-09
RusklN's WEDDING ROMANCE.
The story of the Eccentric Critics Mar
riage and Divorce.


riage and Divorce.
John Ruskin did a strangely hayward
thing when he consented to get married
He did a most erratic and, to the public, a
most inexplicable thing when he arranged
for his divorce. He had ace ~ted some of
the Hottest traditions about womanhood
that men sometimes read and talk about,
and he looked for his ideal companion. One
night he met her in the drawing room of a
London friend, who, without his knowing
1t, had brought the young lady to meet the
eyes of the great writer.
1t was n June night. He was 49, and she
looked like Greek goddess. He was daz-
Fled. She was "a tall, graceful girl of 10,
with face and figure as faultless rs one of
the statues of old. No one ever expected
Ruskin to fall in love, and he did not. She
was poor, 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 a spark of affection to enlighten their
existence. She admired the great man she
had married and was grateful for the wealth
and comfort he showered on her. He wor-
SHIPPED 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
a woman who in her heart like all true
women, laughed at the traditions that
made her sex love distant worship.
One day Ruskn brought an artist to
paint his wife's picture. And the man was
Millais, and he was bright, CHEEKY, hand
| some fellow, human every inch of him, with
great and absorbing love for the beautiful
| and a willingness to tell of his love.
/ 10 f,,N he - he
magnificent woman, and when he had fin
| ished he was in love with his friends wife.
Womanlike she saw it, and perhaps she
| was not full of sorrow and reproach. 1t
| was the first tribute of real manly love that
| had ever laid at her feet
And Ruskin! His wide eyes saw the ro-
nance that was weaving around those two
| lives, and his heart realized how little af-
| lection he had to lavish on the woman he
| had made his wife How he told her the
| story of his pride in her, and the sacrifice
he was to make for her, while she lay prone
at his feet is one of the things which only
| he or she could tell.
| 1t is difficult to obtain divorce in Eng
| land, but John Ruskin secured it for her,
and one bracing morning in the early win
ter, 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 then Millais has become rich and IA
nous and is now Sir John, and his wife is
my Lady Millais. The warmest, sturdiest
friend the struggling painter had in his
toiling days was the man whose wife he
had married, and through all the years of
Millais' later success and greater honor
John Ruskin has been the welcome guest
and daily visitor to the man and woman
whose lives he so unselfishly crowned with
happiness.
1t is n strange story, and the world knows
little about it, and some men have con-
demned him, as some women have censured
her. But the two men and that one woman
who knew best have been happy and con-
tented with the change that John Ruskin's
pure unselfishness brought into their lives.
And so the world should not complain
Chicago News.