Effie in Venice

"I picked up this book and I thought, ‘This is the last thing I want to read. I know how uninteresting this will be . . .’ Yet it was one of the most insightful books that I read. To get a view on Ruskin from the woman who was living and breathing with him twenty-four hours a day, for this relatively short period of time, was a revelation. The crass view of her, perhaps particularly among die-hard Ruskinians, is that this woman deserves to be dismissed as an air-headed socialite. In fact, this is far from the case. She was far cleverer than this. She was also a very different sort of person from Ruskin himself, which is what makes the contrast all the more interesting. Effie could be very flighty, and she did love society, dressing up, dancing, in fact all the things that Ruskin completely abhorred. But her insights into the way he behaved, worked and conducted himself and how he treated other people, make for an absolutely fascinating read. It helps us to build a wonderful, varied portrait of Ruskin the man. He would dismiss people without a second’s hesitation. He often really had no interest in them. He would meet someone, and on the following day forget he’d ever met them. On one occasion, he is reported as making this wonderful remark: I have to turn up to dinner today, in order to prove that I’m not a myth. These are delightfully revelatory things that Effie manages to tell us about him, and incidentally, she reminds us that she’s clever enough in her own right. She describes how she’s learning German, she knows Italian, feels that her French is not up to scratch as far as she’s concerned. We’re talking about a woman who is no pushover, intellectually. We learn an awful lot about the unguarded Ruskin by reading her letters, his weaknesses and foibles, his impulsive collecting habits, the money he would spend (often his father’s) on flights of fancy such as casts of sculpture and all sorts of other stuff, and having them shipped back to England, constantly. He was spending absurd amounts of money, and were it not for these letters of Effie’s, we might not be unaware of the extent of his compulsive behaviour. It’s an insightful commentary upon the nature of the man himself, and how he proceeded through life, pleasing himself. A wonderful foil, and it’s delightful to have a joke at his expense from time to time, as when she describes him returning home covered in dust like some old witch on a broomstick. There’s so much ponderous seriousness in the world of Ruskin that it’s refreshing to find a little bit of lightness, a little bit of fresh air in the archives."