John Ruskin's "Law of Business"

(After Today, You Won't be Able to See it Without Chuckling)

You’ve probably seen it posted a dozen times in boutique businesses and restaurants that want to remind you why you’re doing business “locally” with them and not the seemingly better deal at the big-box outfit across town. It’s the original value proposition (“Price is what you pay, Value is what you GET”)

Here’s a typical post:

(I found this here at: https://www.maendelwealth.com/p/our-commitment-to-value )

Some time ago, we came across the Law of Business by John Ruskin. Written over a century ago, it still holds true today and it is the best summation of our own notions of value we’ve ever come across:

“There is hardly anything in the world that someone cannot make a little worse and sell a little cheaper, and the people who consider price alone are that person’s lawful prey.

It is unwise to pay too much, but it is also unwise to pay too little.

When you pay too much, you lose a little money, that is all.

When you pay too little, you sometimes lose everything because the thing you bought is incapable of doing the thing you bought it to do.

The common law of business balance prohibits paying a little and getting a lot …

It can’t be done.

If you deal with the lowest bidder it is well to add something for the risk you run.

And if you do that you will have enough to pay for something better.”

 -John Ruskin, 1819 – 1900

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It’s an excellent motto. I've used it myself.

But if I hadn’t stumbled across a 2013 Emma Thompson movie about Rusk and gone down the rabbit hole of intrigue to learn more about his, ahem, “circumstances” I would have missed the richly salacious background story.

You see, after penning this Rusk went on to become England's greatest critic and social thinker of the 19th century.

Yet over 150 Years Later, there’s a pesky “set of circumstances” Rusk still hasnt been able to live down. It's pretty juicy stuff. A scandalous non-scandal if you will.

Here goes:

The scandal surrounding John Ruskin, his wife Effie, and John Everett Millais still fascinates a century and a half after the events. What makes it famous is that it wasn't a sex scandal but a NON-sex scandal.

Brownell, though, has subjected the surviving letters to a forensic reading and has drawn conclusions that are at odds with the established story that Ruskin was simply not “up to the job.”

Ruskin and Effie had known each other since she was a child. Both came from Perth families, and the Grays moved into the old Ruskin family home after John's father, a successful wine merchant, relocated to London for business. Effie would stay with the Ruskins during school holidays and John wrote his fairytale The King of the Golden River for her.

During two long stays in Venice in 1849 and 1851, while Ruskin was researching The Stones of Venice, he left her pretty much to her own devices in a city crawling with Austrian army officers after their recent successful siege.

Effie had no trouble attracting admirers. She wrote to her brother: "Venice is so tempting just now at night that it is hardly possible not to be imprudent." Her imprudence led to her encouraging – intentionally or not – a number of soldiers. The results escalated from arguments between them over her dance card (she was a committed polka dancer) to a duel in which one admirer was killed. At least two slighted others came openly to express their hatred for her, and things were exacerbated when some of her jewellery was stolen and suspicion fell on another soldier-admirer. According to gossip, perhaps the diamonds weren't in fact stolen but given.

Effie cleaned up from the whole business rather better than Ruskin. Her friends – and his enemies – used the non-consummation clause as a means to malign him, while he remained stoically tight-lipped. She also later ended any hopes he had of finding happiness with another young girl, Rose La Touche, by warning her parents about him. Her own marriage to Millais, though, was a success, and consummated with such relish by him that they had eight children and she was forced to write to him imploringly: "Basta!"

Ruskin himself did find love of sorts, however, with his books. Without the distraction of a wife he went on to become England's greatest critic and social thinker of the 19th century. Neither Ruskin nor Effie, however, fully managed to live down those "certain circumstances", however. Until now.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/books/2013/mar/29/ruskin-effie-marriage-inconvenience-brownell

Bonus: