CHAPTER II¹

HERNE-HILL ALMOND BLOSSOMS

36. WHEN I was about four years old my father found himself able to buy the lease of a house on Herne Hill, a rustic eminence four miles south of the “Standard in Cornhill”;² of which the leafy seclusion remains, in all essential points of character, unchanged to this day:³ certain Gothic splendours, lately indulged in by our wealthier neighbours, being the only serious innovations; and these are so graciously concealed by the fine trees of their grounds, that the passing viator remains unappalled by them; and I can still walk up and down the piece of road between the Fox tavern and the Herne Hill station, imagining myself four years old.

37. Our house was the northernmost of a group which stand accurately on the top or dome of the hill, where the ground is for a small space level, as the snows are, (I understand,) on the dome of Mont Blanc; presently falling, however, in what may be, in the London clay formation,

¹ [§§ 36-54 of this chapter are a collection of passages, slightly revised, from Fors Clavigera, Letters 54, 53 (1875), 33 (1873), and 42 (1874). For particulars and note of the revision, see the Bibliographical Note; above, p. xcii.]

² [A water-standard, with four sprouts running at every tide four different ways, built in 1582 by Peter Morris, a Dutchman, the first person who conveyed Thames water into houses by pipes of lead. “The Standard stood near the junction of Cornhill with Leadenhall Street, and distances were formerly measured from it, as many of our suburban milestones still remain to prove” (Peter Cunningham’s Handbook of London, 1850, p. 141).]

³ [No longer so. Most of the old houses are now gone, and their gardens have been made into streets of small villas. Ruskin’s house (of which the front is shown on Plate IV. and the back on Plate V.) still remains (1908); Mr. and Mrs. Arthur Severn renewed the lease of it until September 1907, when they vacated it altogether. The window of Ruskin’s nursery (and during Mr. and Mrs. Severn’s tenancy, his bedroom) is on the top storey in front; the two windows of his old study are the one immediately below, and the one to the left. The top window most to the left on Plate V. is that of a little room from which Ruskin was fond of looking at the sunsets.]

[Version 0.04: March 2008]