Reviewed by Laura Fargas

An older man marries a beautiful young girl in the first bloom of her youth, but refuses to consummate the marriage. A few years later, along comes a young man in the bloom of his youth who is just beginning to flourish as an artist. Nature has its way. Still, because these are Victorian British people of the utmost respectability, passion is suppressed until the young lady can be parted from her nominal husband in a legal and respectable manner, which is nearly impossible in the society of her era.

This is the exciting story at the heart of Effie: The Passionate Lives of Effie Gray, John Ruskin and John Everett Millais, by Suzanne Fagence Cooper. Cooper was given unfettered access to a huge trove of letters to and from Effie and other members of the Gray and Millais families, the first scholar to receive this privilege. The result is a lively and highly readable triple biography of these figures, the first one to focus on the woman at the center of this triangle.

Euphemia Chalmers “Effie” Gray was the oldest of the eight surviving children of Henry and Sophie Gray, well-bred Scottish folk. She spent her girlhood at the edges of the countryside outside Perth, Scotland, and was sent to Stratford-upon-Avon for school at 12, where she received an upper-class young girl’s education. Also at age 12, Effie attracted the attention of young art critic John Ruskin, already a family acquaintance; smitten, he wrote a fairy tale for Effie’s amusement. (Attraction to very young girls was to be a hallmark of Ruskin’s character; his first romantic interest had been a 15-year-old girl, and his last, late in his life, was 10.) Over the following years, Effie spent happy extended vacations with and around John Ruskin and his family; when Effie was 19 and Ruskin nearly 30, they married.

Up to this point, the biography has been the narrative of a conventional Victorian life, but now it veers into strangeness. On their wedding night, Ruskin refused to consummate the marriage: Effie disrobed in front of him and he turned away. He later told her that he was “disgusted with her person,” despite the fact that she was one of the accredited beauties of the period. (Doctors later found that she was “naturally and properly formed.”) There has been a great deal of speculation about why Ruskin turned away from Effie; Cooper’s own contribution is to wonder if perhaps Effie was menstruating at that time. However, none of the speculations account for the persistence of Ruskin’s position over the next five years.

Ruskin is definitely the most enigmatic character in this book. Nearly 30 when he married Effie, he was and remained preeminently his parents’ child. His father was a sherry importer who had prospered, and he and his wife, Margaret, wanted their son to rise in society. Even in his youth, John Ruskin was a brilliant art and social critic who was already writing the books that made him the leading art theorist and scholar of his era. His parents’ ambitions for him were the center of his life, and their companionship seems emotionally far more significant to him than his wife ever became. Indeed, even after marriage and establishment in a separate house, Ruskin continued to go daily to his parents’ house to do his work. He planned vacations with his parents that did not include his wife. He also sided with his parents nearly every time any difference arose between their opinions or desires for him and his wife’s.

After five years of this treatment, Effie met John Everett Millais, a gifted and handsome painter about her own age whose work Ruskin extolled. Millais was one of the founding fathers of the Pre-Raphaelite group of painters, who focused intensely on the exact reproduction of the natural world, pursuing a kind of innocence they perceived in pre-Renaissance, Gothic art. Ruskin himself, an outspoken advocate for Gothic art, championed the movement and particularly praised Millais.

At this point, the biography takes on aspects of classic romance. Millais candidly falls in love with Effie, and Effie secretly reciprocates his feelings. She tells Millais about the peculiar circumstances of her marriage. Millais is appalled and determined to free her from this prison. With additional help from her parents and an influential aristocratic woman friend, Effie leaves her husband and returns to her father’s house. From there, Effie seeks and obtains not a divorce, but an annulment. The proceedings, which include examination by two physicians to prove that Effie remained a virgin, create a scandal which haunts both Effie and Ruskin far into the future. In the end, the annulment is granted on the grounds of Ruskin’s “incurable impotency.”

Cooper is very effective in showing the degree to which the staunch support and affection of Effie’s parents and siblings helped her to undertake and sustain her deviation from Victorian social norms. Divorce would have meant a kind of social death; there were a few households that would not receive Effie as it was. The Queen, in particular, refused to acknowledge any distinction between divorce and annulment, barring Effie from any social event at which she would be present, opining that she would not countenance “a lady who has been the wife of another man still living.”

After a year of complete separation, Effie and John Everett Millais met again; one year later, they were married. In the end, Effie and Millais had a long, prosperous marriage, 40 years in which they experienced both joys and woes, including Millais’ presidency of the Royal Academy and their loss of their first son at 21.

Charm is the hallmark of this book (its English publisher even has the quaint name of Duckworth Overlook). Effie, her family, and Millais come across as very appealing people. Ruskin, for all his cold treatment of Effie, is also at least a partially sympathetic character. Only Ruskin’s parents seem to be unreservedly unpleasant; they are shown regretting their son’s marriage, stigmatizing Effie as “a weak ignorant woman” and doing their best to turn Effie’s young sister, Sophie, against her.

The book is also thoughtfully illustrated, including two sketches by Ruskin that show him to have been an excellent draftsman, as well as a generous, well-chosen selection of Millais’ paintings of his wife, her family, and their own children.

Effie is not meant to be a deep or intensely scholarly study of all three of its major characters; instead, it is a lively, readable account of their lives as they centered on Effie Gray and her marriages, based on the copious materials made available from the Millais and Gray families. On those terms, it succeeds admirably, and it is a pleasure to read.

Laura Fargas is a Washington D.C. poet and attorney.