we’re all a little crazy

. . . neurotic, but even more . . .

Ruskin was a really cool guy. Smart and funny and articulate and sophisticated. But he was also crazy.

Just like you.

Just like me.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Ruskin#Sexuality

Ruskin’s sexuality has been the subject of a great deal of speculation and critical comment. His one marriage, to Effie Gray, was annulled after six years owing to non-consummation. Effie, in a letter to her parents, claimed that Ruskin found her “person” [body] repugnant: “He alleged various reasons, hatred of children, religious motives, a desire to preserve my beauty, and finally this last year he told me his true reason… that he had imagined women were quite different to what he saw I was, and that the reason he did not make me his Wife was because he was disgusted with my person the first evening, 10th April [1848].”

Ruskin told his lawyer during the annulment proceedings: “It may be thought strange that I could abstain from a woman who to most people was so attractive. But though her face was beautiful, her person was not formed to excite passion. On the contrary, there were certain circumstances in her person which completely checked it.”

The cause of Ruskin’s “disgust” has led to much conjecture. Mary Lutyens speculated that he rejected Effie because he was horrified by the sight of her pubic hair. Lutyens argued that Ruskin must have known the female form only through Greek statues and paintings of nudes which lacked pubic hair. However, Peter Fuller wrote, “It has been said that he was frightened on the wedding night by the sight of his wife’s pubic hair; more probably, he was perturbed by her menstrual blood.” Ruskin’s biographers Tim Hilton and John Batchelor also took the view that menstruation was the more likely explanation, though Batchelor also suggests that body-odor may have been the problem. There is no evidence to support any of these theories.

Ruskin is not known to have had any sexually intimate relationships. During an episode of mental derangement after his infatuate Rose La Touche died, he wrote a letter in which he insisted that Rose’s spirit had instructed him to marry a girl who was visiting him at the time. It is also true that in letters from Ruskin to Kate Greenaway he asked her to draw her “girlies” (as he called her child figures) without clothing: “Will you — (it’s all for your own good — !) make her stand up and then draw her for me without a cap — and, without her shoes, — (because of the heels) and without her mittens, and without her — frock and frills? And let me see exactly how tall she is — and — how — round. It will be so good of and for you — And to and for me.”

In a letter to his physician, John Simon, on 15 May 1886, Ruskin wrote: “I like my girls from ten to sixteen — allowing of 17 or 18 as long as they’re not in love with anybody but me. — I’ve got some darlings of 8–12–14 — just now, and my Pigwiggina here — 12 — who fetches my wood and is learning to play my bells.”

Ruskin’s biographers disagree about the allegation of “pedophilia.” Tim Hilton, in his two-volume biography, asserts that Ruskin “was a pedophile” but leaves the claim unexplained, while John Batchelor argues that the term is inappropriate because Ruskin’s behavior does not “fit the profile.” Others point to a definite pattern of “nympholeptic” behavior with regard to his interactions with girls at a Winnington school.

However, there is no evidence that Ruskin ever engaged in any sexual activity with anyone at all. According to one interpretation, what Ruskin valued most in pre-pubescent girls was their innocence; the fact that they were not (yet) fully developed sexual beings is what attracted him. An exploration of this topic by James L. Spates declares that “whatever idiosyncratic qualities his erotic expressions may have possessed, when it comes to matters of sexual capability and interest, there is every reason to conclude that John Ruskin was physically and emotionally normal.”

In other words: Crazy.