Joan Agnew Severn. by John McClelland. Half-plate glass negative, 1890s. Courtesy National Portrait Gallery, London NPG x12187. We turn to Criterion A, the index which specifies that, over a period of at least six months, the person suspected of being a pedophile must have had “recurrent, intense sexually arousing fantasies, sexual urges, or behaviors involving sexual activity with a prepubescent child or children.” While there can be no doubt that Ruskin sometimes thought about girls and young women over extended periods of time and, on occasion, mentions in letters and conversations children he has seen or been with, I am aware of none that contain evidence demonstrating that he was consumed by such fantasies, urges, or behaviors. Brantwood was originally built as an 8-room cottage on a three-acre piece of land in 1797 by Thomas Woodville. Over the years, the cottage was expanded, with part of the drawing room and four more rooms on the ground floor added in 1830. Princeton University; John Ruskin Collection (CO 196): Folder 11 (AM 15328). The collection contains 25 letters sent by Ruskin to members of the Layton family between 1884-87. Also present at this special dinner, arranged at Denmark Hill perhaps at the instigation of Mr and Mrs Cowper, were Laurence Oliphant (1829-1888) and seventeen-year-old Connie Hilliard (1852-1915). It must have been an interesting encounter for Gordon. Oliphant was something of a mystic; he was a colourful character, wealthy, possibly a homosexual and the author of several travel books. He was a keen supporter of the fraudulent English-born American spiritualist medium Thomas Lake Harris (1823-1906), founder of a sect called the Brotherhood of the New Life. Connie Hilliard was the daughter of the Rev. J. C. Hilliard and his wife Mary, of Cowley, near Uxbridge. She was the niece of Lady Trevelyan, Ruskin's loyal friend who had died in Neuchậtel whilst on holiday with him in 1866. Ruskin had first met Connie in 1863 at a tea party the eleven-year-old girl had organised (Hilton, Later Years 101). The conversation turned to spiritualism and perhaps to Rose, for Ruskin derived immense satisfaction from it. He wrote in his diary of 6 October 1869: "Heard marvellous things – Breath of Heaven" ( Diaries, II, 681).

April Tuesday "Drove in with Joanna, to call on Mrs Pritchard. Waited in vain" ( Diaries, II, 614).Ruskin shared this letter with Joan Severn, his "Darling Pussie", and he was highly amused by Gordon's own reaction to lectures. "The bit about the three parts of lectures is very funny", he wrote at the top of the letter. The house affords a unique opportunity to look into the daily life of one of England’s most important social and cultural figures. The atmosphere at Brantwood is special, and because so many of Ruskin’s possessions remain, it feels as if the man himself has just stepped out into the garden!

The first Indian MP, Dadabhai Naoroji wins the seat for Finsbury Central, and Keir Hardie becomes the first MP for the Independent Labour Party, winning the seat for West Ham. Art and scienceWilliam Butler Yeats forms the National Literary Society in Dublin, and also publishes The Countess Cathleen, a short play and his first contribution to Irish poetic drama. The second critique fixes on his mental illness, the argument being that the highly reported imbalances of his later years (for which there is copious evidence) were of genetic origin and tainted his life and behavior to such an extent that serious consideration of his work was not likely to be time well spent. Employing an analytical framework similar to that which will be used here — namely, a study of the core psychiatric literature on mental illnesses — I have shown (Spates, “Dark Night”) that no reliable evidence exists to support the “genetic hypothesis,” while considerable evidence does exist that supports an “environmental hypothesis,” i.e., that Ruskin’s mental illness was occasioned by the accumulating effects of a series of untoward life experiences. In a number of other letters where an erotic attraction to girls and young women seems evident, Ruskin tells Joan of the guilt he suffers for having entertained such thoughts, confesses –sounding not unlike a newly pubescent Victorian teen—that he has been terribly “naughty.” Never, however, in these letters do we find a desire for sexual encounter. In which frame, it is important to keep in mind the criterion we are considering: that a pedophile has “recurrent, intense sexually arousing fantasies, sexual urges, or behaviors involving sexual activity with a prepubescent child or children.” About this definition, three other things should be mentioned: For a second account which parallels Webling’s, one which also stresses Ruskin’s positive influence on her life, see Goring. Ten when she met Ruskin, the holographs of the 27 letters he sent her during the first half decade of the 1880s are at New York’s Pierpont Morgan Library (hereafter PML; MA 4778). Comparison of these holographs with the transcriptions appearing in her published account shows them to be identical. Like Webling’s memories, they are devoid of any remarks which might be considered sexual.was a year of many changes for Ruskin. On 20 April 1871, Joan Agnew, Ruskin's ward and his mother's companion for many years, married the painter Arthur Severn, son of Joseph Severn, British Consul in Rome who was best known as the artist in whose arms Keats died. This was not an unexpected event for Ruskin had exercised his authority over Joan and Arthur and insisted on their waiting for three years, a trial period of separation, before marrying (Hilton, Later Years 130-31). Perhaps he hoped the marriage would not take place, for it would disrupt the family dynamics. Ruskin had no choice but to adapt if he wished to remain within this new orbit.

Two Views of Coniston Water. Left: View from the Painters Glade in early spring by Jacqueline Banerjee. Right: Another comment. The fact that a number of sub-types of male sexual obsessions for young females exists should make it clear that, in most public discussions, “pedophile,” the word commonly used to describe men with pronounced erotic attractions to young women (allowing for cases where it is accurate), is widely misused, a serious error given the reputational and social damage that descends once the label is affixed. Tim Hilton’s decision to label Ruskin a pedophile in his biography is more serious. Although his two volumes have justly received sharp criticism for his failure to consult the treasure troves of unpublished Ruskin letters and other biographic materials outside the U. K., it is in many ways one of the best, if hardly authoritative, biographies we have. Coming to grips with what he regarded as recurring evidence, particularly as it appeared in some of Ruskin’s letters and a lecture, he proclaimed that in Ruskin’s case, pedophilia was a late arriving malady, one not uncommon in men in their forties whose marriages had failed and who, as old age loomed, lived lives both lonely and isolated ( Early Years: 253-4). As an instance of this determination, Hilton provides his readers with what he presumes is a pedophilic image from a lecture of the 1860s wherein Ruskin reports having suddenly come across a nearly naked poor young girl of about ten or twelve lying on a hill near Turin, Italy. That the encounter disturbed him, Ruskin freely says, but what its true meaning was, he says he is not sure (see LE 19.82-85). Notwithstanding, Hilton reports—accurately—that this image of a sensual, nymph-like girl will reappear in Ruskin’s later diaries and in a last series of lectures delivered at Oxford in 1884. In which repetitive context, it can be viewed as an emblem of his disturbance. Although pedophilia “became a part of [Ruskin’s] character only gradually,” he writes, an “attraction to young girls was in Ruskin’s sexual nature to the end of his life.” Each made it clear in later statements that, given that both were virgins, they were, not surprisingly, nervous about this element in their married life (Brownell: 176-7).

Thematic collections

Early in the 1970s, before the accusations of pedophilia arrived, Ruskin had been the exemplar used, most famously by Kate Millet (“Debate”; Sexual), as an instance non pareil of the nineteenth century belief in “dual spheres,” an ideology that championed male dominance. Men, Ruskin said in his lecture “Of Queens’ Gardens” (1864), were the gender which, by virtue of its intrinsic nature, was charged with the responsibility of culture-building—making war, governing, thinking deeply; in contrast, women, possessors of a different intrinsic nature, were more suited to home-building. It was a bifurcation, Millet and others argued which, by definition, disallowed the full development of women’s potential and humanity, forcing almost all of them into the secondary and less powerful roles of family creators and maintainers. Millet’s thesis generated many, sometimes heated, responses both in support of and in challenge to it, some focusing on whether or not Ruskin deserved the symbolic status of “intransigent gender traditionalist” he had been accorded: cf. (among others) on the support side, Lloyd; Pierce; on the revisionist side, Birch; Sonstroem; O’Gorman (“Manliness”). It is possible that this widely public argument made later proposals that Ruskin was disposed to the sexual exploitation of little girls and young women less surprising. The early autumn Lakeland scenery was intensely beautiful with brown and golden hues. The Lake District lived up to its reputation for rain during Gordon’s stay. The diary entries confirm this: ' 10 October. Thursday. "Y[esterday] in pretty showery day to Langdale"; 11 October. Friday. "Y[esterday] pouring all day long"' ( Diaries, II, 732). Also staying at Brantwood was Lily Armstrong (the attractive Irish girl whom Gordon had first met in 1870), who had been there since 18 September. Ruskin showed Gordon some of the surrounding area and went to Langdale on Wednesday 9 October, accompanied by Lily Armstrong and Laurence Jermyn Hilliard ("Lollie") (1855-1887), his much-loved friend, secretary, painter and Brantwood neighbour and brother of Connie. Anyone who has wandered through the gardens or sat outside the Jumping Jenny café overlooking Coniston Water will have fallen under the spell of Brantwood. This house and small estate were bought by art critic and social reformer John Ruskin in 1871, who described it as ‘on the whole the finest view I know in Cumberland’. Within the woodland of its steep hillside, Ruskin made a series of small gardens in and of the landscape, idiosyncratic and using far-sighted principles: sustainability, local materials and skills, seasonality, harmony with nature and challenging accepted beliefs.