18 PRÆTERITA-I

My maternal grandfather was, as I have said,¹, a sailor, who used to embark, like Robinson Crusoe, at Yarmouth, and come back at rare intervals, making himself very delightful at home. I have an idea he had something to do with the herring business, but am not clear on that point; my mother never being much communicative concerning it. He spoiled her, and her (younger) sister, with all his heart, when he was at home; unless there appeared any tendency to equivocation, or imaginative statements, on the part of the children, which were always unforgiveable. My mother being once perceived by him to have distinctly told him a lie, he sent the servant out forthwith to buy an entire bundle of new broom twings to whip her with. “They did not hurt me so much as one” (twig) “would have done,” said my mother, “but I thought a good deal of it.”

9. My maternal grandfather was killed at two-and-thirty, by trying to ride, instead of walk, into Croydon; he got his leg crushed by his horse against a wall; and died of the hurt’s mortifying. My mother was then seven or eight years old, and, with her sister, was sent to quite a fashionable (for Croydon) day-school, Mrs. Rice’s: where my mother was taught evangelical principles, and became the pattern girl and best needlewoman in the school; and where my aunt absolutely refused evangelical principles, and became the plague and pet of it.

10. My mother, being a girl of great power, with not a little pride, grew more and more exemplary in her entirely conscientious career, much laughed at, though much beloved, by her sister; who had more wit, less pride, and no conscience. At last my mother, formed into a consummate housewife, was sent for to Scotland to take care of my paternal grandfather’s house;² who was gradually ruining

¹ [This is a slip. He has not said it before in Præterita; but the passage is reprinted from Fors, Letter 46, and there he had said it before in Letter 45 (see Vol. XXVIII. pp. 147, 170).]

² [It will be remembered that Ruskin’s father and mother were first cousins; his mother being the daughter of his grandfather’s sister (see p. 603).]

[Version 0.04: March 2008]