66 PRÆTERITA-I

to write “within a fortnight”-but I cannot be sure of remembering my mother’s words accurately.

73. But when I was in Perth, there were still-Mary, her eldest daughter, who looked after us children when Mause was too busy; James and John, William and Andrew; (I can’t think whom the unapostolic William was named after). But the boys were then all at school or college,-the scholars, William and Andrew, only came home to tease Jessie and me, and eat the biggest jargonel pears; the collegians were wholly abstract; and the two girls and I played in our quiet ways on the North Inch, and by the “Lead,” a stream “led” from the Tay past Rose Terrace into the town for molinary purposes; and long ago, I suppose, bricked over or choked with rubbish;¹ but then lovely, and a perpetual treasure of flowing diamond to us children. Mary, by the way, was ascending towards twelve-fair, blue-eyed, and moderately pretty; and as pious as Jessie, without being quite so zealous.

74. My father rarely stayed with us in Perth, but went on business travel through Scotland, and even my mother became a curiously unimportant figure at Rose Terrace. I can’t understand how she so rarely walked with us children; she and my aunt seemed always to have their own secluded ways. Mary, Jessie, and I were allowed to do what we liked on the Inch:² and I don’t remember doing any lessons in these Perth times, except the above-described competitive divinity on Sunday.

Had there been anybody then to teach me anything about plants or pebbles, it had been good for me; as it

¹ [Not so, as late as 1876: see “Notes and Correspondence” in Fors Clavigera, Letter 66 (Vol. XXVIII. p. 637).]

² [For further reminiscences by Ruskin of these days, see Fors, Letter 52 (Vol. XXVIII. p. 302), and Deucalion, i. ch. vii. § 21 (Vol. XXVI. p. 176). In one MS. Ruskin starts § 74 thus:-

“In Fors, I left off at the time of our summer journeys to Perth. One of the most important results of them was my familiarity with the look of the Northumbrian and Scottish east coast from Holy Island to the Bass -knowledge of use to me now in final work on history. My father ...”

The “final work on history” was the intended continuation of Our Fathers have Told Us.]

[Version 0.04: March 2008]