INTRODUCTION lxvii

she can only read her Bible with complete understanding in the Septuagint and Greek Testament; if she is to be a heathen, Greek is the greatest language of mankind, the chief utterance of the nations. I have warned her against ‘smattering’ either of that or anything else; a ‘smattering’ means an inaccurate knowledge, not a little knowledge. To have learned one Greek verb accurately will make a difference in her habits of thought for ever after. She is taken great care of as regards overwork, and as long as she can leap ten feet with a short run, she will do well enough. But she has been having headaches lately, and has been stopped in several things, and sent out to play.”

Ruskin, it will be seen, was bent on training his pet in the ways that his ideal woman should follow. His play with her was more wholesome, perhaps, than the Greek verbs. When her mother was in London, he would call and spend an afternoon with the children in the schoolroom; telling them stories, or drawing pictures. In summer days they would come out to him at Denmark Hill; to play in the garden, or be shown the wonders of his frames and cabinets. In 1861 he paid his first visit to Mr. and Mrs. La Touche in Ireland. Those were golden days for the children, when Ruskin took them out for walks or paddles in the Liffey, which runs through the park at Harris-town, or begged off formal lessons on their behalf in favour of talks about flowers or stones or clouds. Rosie was but thirteen, but she had “such queer little fits sometimes, like patience on a monument. She walked like a little white statue through the twilight woods, talking solemnly.”¹ Papa and mamma sometimes went out to dinner, and then the children held high carnival with their friend-pretending to be lords and ladies, with him to read “a canto of Marmion” to them. When he went away he sent her little rhymes:-

“Rosie, Rosie-Rosie rare,

Rocks and woods and clouds and air

Are all the colour of my pet,

And yet, and yet, and yet, and yet

She is not here, but where?”

and secondly Mr. Rose Price (son of Sir Rose Price, Bart.). It was not until Ruskin’s first visit to Harristown in 1861 that he found, to his surprise, that his new friend, Mrs. La Touche, was nearly related to his old Oxford friend, Lord Desart.

¹ Letter from Ruskin to his father (September 2, 1861).

[Version 0.04: March 2008]