The Millais Exhibition at Tate Britain is nearly upon us, and, as he's the man who stole Ruskin's young wife off of him, its time for us to once again have a little look at some of the disagreeable sexy stuff that went on back in them there Victorian times. There's the incriminating letters about Millais’s friend and mentor, the barking Ruskin. There’s the strange story of one Euphemia Chalmers Gray (Effie) and her terrifying pubic hair. There's the stories of naked, drugged-up floozies in bathtubs: “Ophelia” was a young woman called Lizzie Sidall, “the Kate Moss of her day”, who was rather too fond of the laudanum and stripping off for famous painters. It was she who floated in a bath for Millais – and caught pneumonia for the privilege of so doing. Yes, Millais' version of Victorian Sexuality reeks of Sex/Death confusion and combines into a heady and attractive mix.
The allure of Millais' 'Ophelia' with its Sexy suicide appeal was highlighted recently when the Millais exhibition travelled to Japan. They had to take the posters of Ophelia down from the underground lest too many Japanese school girls be moved to top themselves. The Victorian approach to sex may have been paradoxical, but it was compelling, and still has a hold over us.
Lets have a little recap of the connection between Ruskin and Millais. Ruskin married Effie in 1848, but he’d been sniffing about for a couple of years at least, perhaps longer. When the girl was 13, Ruskin presented her with a fantasy novel, a sort of pre-Victorian Lord of the Rings, which he’d written, called The King of the Golden River. It is likely the wooing started back then. In those days, you could do that without the filth arriving to carry away your laptop. Ruskin’s friend Lewis Carroll was at the time plying Alice Liddell with very similar gifts in order to possibly achieve similar ends.
After the disaster of the marriage and the Ruskinian Sexual Experience, Ruskin and Effie were divorced. Her letters at this time, and those from close friends, betray a certain bitterness. Some commiserate with her upon her “fearful ordeal”. Another correspondent writes, of Ruskin, that she has “never heard of a human being so unnatural”.
During the last few months of her marriage, Effie was in constant contact with Millais. Sensing entropy within the marriage of his friend and benefactor, Millais too was avidly on the sniff, not least during a sojourn with the still married couple in Scotland, during which Millais and Effie went on long walks together while Ruskin wandered off being mental. Ruskin could not deal with the two younger people and the bond that had grown up between them; he preferred instead to take long walks alone, thus leaving the door wide open for Millais to seduce his wife. After the Ruskins' divorce Millais was straight in there, marrying Effie not long after.
As we know Ruskin then fell in love with another very young woman, Rose. Her parents became somewhat alarmed, all the more so when both Effie and Millais pointed out to them that Ruskin was as mad as a box of mad. Rosa turned Ruskin down and he finally succumbed to the profound mental illness that had been banging on his door for the previous 50 years. He died alone, unhappy, lost. Millais, meanwhile, was afforded a state funeral at St Paul’s Cathedral, the crowds thronging Paternoster Square, the flags flying at half-mast, the obituarists filling page after page of adulatory copy.
