Down the rabbit hole – Its amazing the things you can find when you’re looking

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For as long as I can remember, my Nana has been researching our family history. When I was younger I never really had an interest in it, but recently I’ve been finding it fascinating.

My Nana's book "Everlasting Memories"

Nana loves to learn and share her genealogy research with the rest of our family. But I guess I must not have been paying enough attention to what Nana was saying all those years.  I remember her talking about someone called John Ruskin. It wasn’t till last year that I was looking through a bookshelf somewhere and I was surprised to see his name on the spine of a quite old looking book. “So he was a writer.” I guessed he must have been kind of a big deal back then.

Turns out he was kind of a big deal. Not just an author, but an art critic, artist & philanthropist. The funny thing was that it was my relative, Effie Gray who divorced him. Now I’d consider myself just a little bit bold and audacious, but Effie must have been amazingly strong willed to divorce her famous husband. Divorce wasn’t really a socially accepted option then.

It turns out that there’s already been several tv series and movies about John Ruskin & Effie Gray. One I’ve just seen is Desperate Romantics, a BBC tv series. Next year Dakota Fanning will star as Effie Gray in the movie Effie which begins production October 17th 2011.

Dakota Fanning will star as Effie Gray in Effie (2012)

Effie’s marriage to Ruskin and her romance with Millais have been dramatised on many occasions:

• The Love of John Ruskin (1912) a silent movie about Ruskin, Effie and Millais.
• The Love School (1975) a BBC series about the Pre-Raphaelites, starring Anne Kidd (Effie), David Collings (Ruskin), Peter Egan (Millais)
• John Ruskin’s Wife (1979) a novel about the relationship by Eva McDonald.
• The Passion of John Ruskin (1994), a short film directed by Alex Chappel, starring Mark McKinney (Ruskin), Neve Campbell (Effie) and Colette Stevenson (Effie’s voice).
• “Modern Painters” (opera) (1995) an opera about Ruskin, Effie and Millais.
• Parrots and Owls (1994) a radio play by John Purser about the O’Shea brothers in which Effie appears as a friend of James O’Shea and her marital problems are discussed.
• The Countess, (1995) a play written by Gregory Murphy concentrating on the breakdown of the marriage between Ruskin and Effie.
• The Order of Release (1998) A radio play by Robin Brooks about Ruskin (Bob Peck), Effie (Sharon Small) and Millais (David Tennant).
  

  Photo taken by Lewis Carroll (Alice in Wonderland) - Effie, Millais & their daughters Effie & Mary. 21st July 1865, signed Effie Millais

• The Woman Who Gave Birth to Rabbits (2002), a collection of short stories by Emma Donoghue, contains a story Come, Gentle Night about Ruskin and Effie’s wedding night.
• Mrs Ruskin (2003), a play by Kim Morrissey about the breakdown of the marriage and Effie’s fraught relationship with Ruskin’s domineering mother.
• Desperate Romantics (2009), a six-part BBC television drama serial about the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. She is played by Zoe Tapper.

Ive just come across the book The Model Wife: Effie Ruskin and Millaisby Suzanne Fagence Cooper, which I’ll have to get a copy of!

Something else I thought was pretty interesting – Last year I had a photo shoot done and out of about 300 photos there was one I liked the best, which I now use as my profile picture on everything. Now, when I visited Nana late last year (after I’d done the shoot), she showed me a picture of Sophie Gray (Effie’s sister) and something I found quite amazing was the similarity between my picture and John Everett Millais portrait of Sophie Gray  (“Portrait of a Girl”).

Sophie Gray (Effie's sister) models for John Millais in "Portrait of a Girl"

A photo of me taken by Adam Mazur (Atomic Arts) in Perth, Australia (2, Oct 2010)

One of my favourite quotes from Lewis Carroll – “When I was your age, I always did it for half-an-hour a day. Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.” – The White Queen, Through the Looking Glass by Lewis Carrol.”

Download Through the Looking Glass by Lewis Carroll (audio book)