lxvi INTRODUCTION

Præterita, successive Introductions have given full account.¹ A part of the story, not yet fully dealt with in any Introduction, remains, however, to be told here. The romance and the real tragedy of Ruskin’s life are touched upon in the last chapter but one of Præterita, and hinted at in various passages of his books. Now that those to whom the tragedy was most poignant have passed away, the time has come when the story may briefly be told.² Ruskin first saw Rose La Touche, then a girl of ten, in 1858. Her mother was a friend of Louisa, Lady Waterford, and it was through her introduction that Mrs. La Touche came to write to him about the education of her daughters in drawing.³ He has described in Præterita (pp. 525-532) the meeting, the home circle, the lessons, the affection of the girls, and especially of Rosie, for him, and his for her and the family. The lessons begun in London were often continued at Denmark Hill, and almost the last words of Præterita are memories of “Paradisiacal walks with Rosie,” by the little stream in his garden there (p. 560). The La Touches, though often in London for the season, lived in Ireland, at Harristown, Kildare, in which county Mr. La Touche occupied a position of considerable importance. The mother and her daughters were often abroad; but whether they were in Ireland or on the Riviera, Ruskin continued his correspondence and his lessons. He was a born teacher, and the education of girls was with him a favourite hobby. In Rose La Touche he began to see in imagination the perfect flower of womanly culture. In the child’s letter from her, printed in Præterita, a note of precocity, though Ruskin denies it (p. 533), will strike many readers. This did not escape the shrewd eyes of Ruskin’s mother, who warned her son against the danger of overpressure. But he had his theories, and set himself, among other things, to teach her Greek by correspondence. “I think you are both wrong,” he wrote to his parents (Bonneville, October 12, 1861),

“in thinking Rosie shouldn’t learn Greek. She shouldn’t overwork at anything, but if she learns any language at all, it should be that, on whatever ground you take it. If she is to be a Christian,

¹ A reader desiring to follow the story consecutively should note that the chronological order of the Introductions (so far as their biographical matter is concerned) is as follows: I., II., III., IV., VIII., V., IX., X., XII., XIII., VII., XVII.

² Miss Rose La Touche died in 1875; her father in 1904, at the age of ninety-one; her mother, at that of eighty-one, in 1906. Mrs. La Touche left it in Mrs. Arthur Severn’s discretion to tell so much as seemed to her desirable, in order that the truth of a story, already much bruited about, should be known.

³ Mrs. La Touche was half-sister to Ruskin’s friend, Lord Desart, her mother (Catherine O’Connor) having married first the second Earl of Desart (d. 1820),

[Version 0.04: March 2008]