Yet there was little doubt that they were a happy couple. Many Victorians, as they knew, had unorthodox private lives. Dickens and Irving were both separated from their wives and deeply involved elsewhere. Wilkie Collins divided his time between two women, neither of whom he married, and had a secret family. Gladstone did not commit adultery but was much mocked for his interest in prostitutes, and had an inappropriate relationship with a woman called Laura Thistlethwayte. Frith, the painter of Derby Day, had twelve children by his wife and seven by his mistress; the aged George Cruikshank also supported two households. Ford Madox Brown did not marry his second wife Emma until two years after their daughter was born. Rossetti was notoriously involved with William Morris’s wife; Burne-Jones had a very public affair which dragged on for years and caused his wife great pain. William Bell Scott lived in a ménage à trois; Whistler had several liaisons before his late marriage and at least three illegitimate children. Compared to all of them, Mr and Mrs Millais appeared stodgily respectable. Yet there was still a blot on Effie’s name.
Effie: A Victorian Scandal - From Ruskin’s Wife to Millais’s Muse, by Merryn Williams
