530 PRÆTERITA-III

sat on deck & didn’t mind-We thought & talked about you-Every great wave that came we called a ninth wave and we thought how pleasant it w^d be to sit in a storm and draw them, but I think if you had wanted it done I’d have tryed to do it S^t. Crumpet-There was what do you think at the prow of our steamer-yr brother Archigosaurus, an alligator, and we said it was you-Well so we got to Calais, breakfasted at the Table d’Hôte there, and then began that weary railroad journey from Calais to Paris-The scenery was just the same all the way-I suppose you know it-Those long straight rows of poplars cut even at the tops & flat uninteresting country. I drew the poplars in perspective for you S^t. Crumpet -We got to Paris on

Friday evening & stayed till Wednesday-No, I couldn’t I tell you, there wasn’t one bit of time or do you think I would not have seized it directly for I know yr thinking why didn’t she write-Its too long to say all we did & didn’t do in Paris, so I’ll only tell about the Louvre and Notre Dame. We went to the Louvre. Oh S^t. Crumpet how we thought of you there-How we looked and talked about the Titians you told us to look at particularly the glass ball one & the white Rabbit¹-Yes we looked so much at them and we did, all of us, think them so very beautiful- I liked two portraits of Titian’s of two dark gentlemen with earnest eyes better than any I think. We thought his skins (I mean the skins he made his picture-people have) so very beautifully done & we looked at the pinks at the corners of the eyes & thought of the Portrait of Lord Bute’s & you again S^t. Crumpet.

58. We liked the picture of Paul Veronese of the children playing with the dog very much I think one of them the most prominent with dark eyes & not looking at the dog is very beautiful Why does Paul Veronese put his own family in the pictures of sacred subjects, I wonder? I liked the little puppy in the boys arms trying to get away-The statues in the Louvre I think most beautiful. Is it wrong S^t. Crumpet to like that noble Venus Victrix as well as Titian. If it is, am I a hardened little tinner? Oh but they are so beautiful those statues there’s one of a Venus leaning against a tree with a Lacerta running up it-Notre Dame they are spoiling as quick as they can by colouring those grand old pillars with ugly daubs of green and yellow etc. Is not that “light” in the French?* It’s a bore saying all we thought of Paris, I must get on to the mountains not

* Referring to a debate over Mrs. Browning’s poem in defence of them; the one in which she says, rightly, that they are no more “light” than a rifle-ball is.²

¹ [“An Allegory in honour of Alfonso d’Avalos” (No. 1589) and “The Virgin with the Rabbit” (No. 1578): for Ruskin’s notes on the pictures, see Vol. XII. pp. 458, 452.]

² [“The English have a scornful insular way

Of calling the French light ...

... Is a bullet light,

That dashes from the gun-mouth?”

(Aurora Leigh, at the beginning of the Sixth Book.)]

[Version 0.04: March 2008]