xxviii INTRODUCTION

were hacking away at the Doge’s Palace, after Napoleon’s entry, the old mason had been ordered to chip the carving off the stone in order to fit it into the pavement. He, too, regarded the sculpture as symbolic of the glory of Venice, and did not like the job of erasing it; so he turned the stone face downwards, worked on the under side, and fitted it so into its appointed place. Then the mason had a serious fall, which was like to kill him, but when he was picked up alive they placed a cross on the stone upon which he fell. The cross and the Mowbray stone were both identified, and Brown laid plots forthwith for securing the latter. The mason was ordered to prepare a new stone of the exact size. They waited for a dark evening, substituted the new stone, and removed the old one to Brown’s gondola. He examined it eagerly, and it was found to bear the very date of Mowbray’s death. After some further adventures, Brown had the slab shipped to England (in 1839), and it is at Corby Castle that this stone of Venice may now be seen. Not long after, Brown made confession to the authorities. They took it in good part, and set up a cast of the slab, which he had ordered, in that hall in the Ducal Palace from which one enters the stair-way above which is Titian’s fresco of St. Christopher. Beneath it was placed in after years a glowing inscription in honour of Rawdon Brown, the illustrious investigator of the history and monuments of Venice.¹

Brown himself never found heart to revisit England; Ruskin had difficulty in finding heart to revisit Venice. “I don’t think,” he wrote to his old friend in 1862, “I can come to Venice, even to see you. I should be too sad in thinking-not of ten-but of twenty-no, sixteen years ago-when I was working there from six in the morning till ten at night, in all the joy of youth.”² In such work, at the time with which we are now concerned (1851-1852), Brown’s help was of the greatest assistance, and is gratefully acknowledged on many a page of The Stones of Venice.³ But the first good offices which Brown rendered were in the matter of lodgings. These were found in the house of the Baroness Wetzler, in the Campo Sta. Maria Zobenigo⁴:-

“We have got (Ruskin writes) the Baroness Wetzler’s apartments, after a great fight for a room which we insisted on having-a room for me

¹ In the library of the British Museum there is a lithographed flysheet giving the plate of arms and an explanation, by Rawdon Brown. It is dated “Casa Ferro, Venice, 20 March 1841.” For the Ca’ Ferro, see below, p. 9 n.

² The full text of this letter will be found in a later volume of this edition.

³ See Vol. IX. pp. 420, 459 n.; in this volume, pp. 284 n., 353 n., 453; and in the next volume, ch. iii. § 10 n., Epilogue, § 3, Appendices 4 and 9, and Venetian Index, s. “Contarini” and “Othello.”

⁴ Now the Palazzo Swift, an annex of the Grand Hotel.

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