The art historian, essayist and social reformer John Ruskin, after whom Ruskin College in Oxford is named, is well known, but what may not be so well known is his extraordinary – and perhaps disturbing – relationship with a young Irish girl and woman who many have described as his “muse”. Her name was Rose La Touche and she died 150 years ago on May 25th.
She was born in 1848 into a family of Huguenot background who were bankers. Her father was John La Touche, her mother Maria Price, the only child of the Dowager Countess of Desart, and the family lived in Harristown House, Co Kildare. Little is known of Rose’s childhood; it is likely she was privately tutored, as were many of her class at the time.
Her mother was introduced to John Ruskin by her friend Lady Waterford and asked him for help with her children’s education. In a letter to him, she said she regarded him highly as an art teacher, that she thought art education important and believed that Rose had potential talent in that area.
When he called on the La Touches, he was taken with them and “felt there was something exceptional about Rose”, according to Tim Hilton’s book, John Ruskin: The Early Years (1985). In his memoir Praeterita, published towards the end of his life, Ruskin recalled that at that first meeting, “presently the drawing room door opened, and Rosie came in, quietly taking stock of me with her blue eyes as she walked across the room, gave me her hand, as a good dog gives its paw, and then stood a little back”.
John Ruskin and the extraordinary relationship with his `muse’: Brian Maye on the young Irish girl who caught the art historian and social reformer’s attention
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He was 39 at the time and she almost 10. He considered her of normal height for her age and continued: “The eyes were rather deep blue at that time, and fuller and softer than afterwards, lips perfectly lovely in profile – a little too wide and hard in edge, seen in front; the rest of the features were what a fair, well-bred Irish girl’s usually are, the hair perhaps more graceful in short curl around the forehead, and softer than one sees often, in the close-bound tresses above the neck.”
It was almost as if he were painting her portrait – certainly the description is like the detailed one an artist would see – but how appropriate it was of a female child by a middle-aged man is debatable.
As time went on, Ruskin found her a puzzle, according to Tim Hilton; in some ways she was precocious and in others child-like. “I don’t know what to make of her … She wears her round hat in the sauciest way possible and is a firm, fiery little thing,” Ruskin wrote. He certainly became fascinated with her and some commentators have speculated as to when he actually “fell in love” with her, suggesting that it was some time when she was between 14 and 18 years of age.
At her parents’ request, the Scottish author, poet and Congregational minister George MacDonald oversaw her welfare in their absence and acted as go-between, close friend and adviser to both parties in the relationship. According to one source, Ruskin proposed to her when she was 18, but she asked him to wait until she was 21.
It seems her parents were against the union, having been warned about him by his first wife, Effie Gray, whose six-year marriage to him had been annulled because of non-consummation.
When Rose was legally free to decide for herself, she still turned him down. It has been suggested that her doctors told her that she was unfit for marriage. It would seem that she suffered from anorexia, which may have stunted her sexual development. She certainly suffered from poor health and died at the young age of 27 in a Dublin nursing home where her parents had placed her. Her death has been ascribed to various causes, such as madness, a broken heart, religious mania or hysteria, but it is likely that anorexia was a major factor.
Ruskin never recovered from her loss, which tipped him into periods of insanity. In an article in The Guardian (February 12th, 2005), Philip Hoare, author of England’s Lost Eden (2005: a study of myth, spiritualism and the search for Utopia during Victorian times), who discovered a cache of long-lost letters between Rose and Ruskin, said the relationship had destroyed Ruskin’s life.
In Praeterita, Ruskin reprinted in full the first letter Rose had ever sent him. Hoare described the letter as “pathetic, inconsequential, a child’s report on a day out in Nice … but in its innocent prattle lay the source of Ruskin’s pain and all that followed it”.
Some parallels between the Ruskin-Rose relationship and that between Lewis Carroll and Alice Liddell seem obvious. Perhaps in the case of both men concerned, their focus was on the aesthetic rather than the sexual aspects of relationships.
