Omaha daily bee., 1893-07-21
balloon goes up tonight.
RUSKiN'S ROMANCE.
How the Eccentric Critic Was Welded and
Divorced

Divorced.
John Ruskin did a strangely wayward
thing when he consented to get married.
He did most erratic, and to the public,
a most ineXplicabe thing when he ar
ranged for his divorce.
He had accepted some of the loftiest
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 London friend, who, without his
knowing it, had brought The young lady
to meet the eyes of the great writer.
1t was June night: he was 30, and
she looked like a Greek goddess.
He was da2zled. She was a tall, grace
full girl of 10, 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,
needed a 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
enlighten their existence. She admire
the great man she had married and was
grateful for the wealth and comfort he
showered on 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 tradi
tions that made her sex love distant wor-
ship.
One day Ruskin brought an artist to
paint his wifeS picture. And the man
was Millais. and he was a bright, CHEEKY,
handsome fellow, human, every inch Of
him, with great and absorbing love
for the beautiful and Willingness to
tell of his love.
He began to paint the portrait Of the
magnificent woman, and when he had
finished 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 lain at her feet.
And Ruskin. His wide eyes saw the
| romance that was weaving around those
two lives and his heart realized how lit
| tie affection he had to lavish on the
woman whom 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
| England, but john RuSkln secured 1t Tor
her, and one bracing morning in the
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 ana wife.
That was good many years ago, and
since then Millais has become rich and
famous and is now Sir John and his wife
is my Lady Millais.
QThe 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 almost daily visitor to the man and
woman whose lives he so unselfshly
crowned with happiness.
1t is a strange story, and the world
knows little about it, and some men have
condemned him, as some women have
censured her. But the two men and
that one woman who knew best have
been happy and contented with the
change that John Ruskin's pure unset
tishness brought into their lives Anc
SO the world should not complain.