264 PRÆTERITA-II

saw it with right judgment, as a wreck, and a viciously neglected one.

23. I don’t think the reader has yet been informed that I inherited to the full my mother’s love of tidiness and cleanliness; so that quite one of the most poetical charms of Switzerland to me, next to her white snows, was her white sleeves. Also I had my father’s love of solidity and soundness,-of unveneered, unrouged, and well-finished things; and here on the Riviera there were lemons and palms, yes,-but the lemons pale, and mostly skin; the palms not much larger than parasols; the sea-blue, yes, but its beach nasty; the buildings, pompous, luxurious, painted like Grimaldi,¹-usually broken down at the ends, and in the middle, having sham architraves daubed over windows with no glass in them; the rocks shaly and ragged, the people filthy: and over everything, a coat of plaster dust.

I was in a bad humour? Yes, but everything I have described is as I say, for all that; and though the last time I was at Sestri² I wanted to stay there, the ladies with me wouldn’t and couldn’t, because of the filth of the inn; and the last time I was at Genoa, 1882, my walk round the ramparts was only to study what uglinesses of plants liked to grow in dust, and crawl, like the lizards, into clefts of ruin.³

24. At Genoa I saw then for the first time the circular Pietà by Michael Angelo,⁴ which was my initiation in all Italian art. For at this time I understood no jot of Italian painting, but only Rubens, Vandyke, and Velasquez. At Genoa, I did not even hunt down the Vandykes, but went into the confused frontage of the city at its port, (no traversing blank quay blocking out the sea, then,) and drew the crescent of houses round the harbour, borne on

¹ [Joseph Grimaldi (1779-1837), the reigning Clown in Ruskin’s youth.]

² [In 1872, with Mr. and Mrs. Arthur Severn and Mrs. and Miss Hilliard: Vol. XXII. p. xxvi.]

³ [For Ruskin’s notes on the plants, see Vol. XXXIII. p. xxxvi.]

⁴ [For references to it, see Vol. IV. pp. 138, 285 n.]

[Version 0.04: March 2008]