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And Another Thing

Paul Johnson

Wednesday, 12th March 2008

Was Sir William Joynson-Hicks hair-brained?

Whether pubic hair explains the failure of Ruskin’s marriage is still an open question. Statues may have misled him but there were plenty of sketches in the Prints and Drawings Rooms of the British Museum, where he used to rummage, showing ciccia and pubes. So far as I know his only comment on the matter was made in old age: ‘I wish I had known more when I was young. I might have been happier and had a son of my own.’ He may have been misled by a striking and characteristic remark of Sir Thomas Browne: ‘That women are menstruant, and men pubescent, at the year of twice seven, is accounted a punctual truth,’ which implies growing pubic hair is the male equivalent of menstruation. But I think it far more likely that the hair issue was an excuse. Ruskin, like many men, was clumsy, and his efforts to make love on the nuptial night were a failure. But this happened in countless Victorian marriages, and was overcome by patience and love. But I don’t think love came into it, the marriage being arranged by Ruskin’s masterful parents, and Effie, as the portraits of her show, was an impatient woman. She was much more suited to Millais, a steam engine of a man, and Ruskin became a better writer through suffering.

One of the drawbacks of pubic hair is that it provides a refuge for that revolting form of body lice known as crabs. Strachey’s letters show that he was twice infested with the scourge by his crucifixioner, Senhouse, which implies to me that the latter had dealings with the rough trade of Leicester Square. In those days the beast flourished mightily in Spain. When I spent a year in Gibraltar at the end of the 1940s, they were to be found, hanging on tenaciously, at all levels of society. Our soldiers got them, of course, and the chief medical officer of the Fortress sent round a warning, but called them by their Latin name. I found the Brigadier o/c Troops puzzling over it. ‘He means crabs, Sir,’ I said. ‘Oh, does he? Why the hell can’t these medics write English. Everyone knows what crabs are, by God!’