I. THE SPRINGS OF WANDEL 19

himself; and who at last effectually ruined, and killed, himself. My father came up to London; was a clerk in a merchant’s house¹ for nine years, without a holiday; then began business on his own account; paid his father’s debts; and married his exemplary Croydon cousin.

11. Meantime my aunt² had remained in Croydon, and married a baker. By the time I was four years old, and beginning to recollect things,-my father rapidly taking higher commercial position in London,-there was traceable- though to me, as a child, wholly incomprehensible, -just the least possible shade of shyness on the part of Hunter Street, Brunswick Square, towards Market Street, Croydon. But whenever my father was ill,-and hard work and sorrow had already set their mark on him,- we all went down to Croydon to be petted by my homely aunt; and walk on Duppas Hill, and on the heather of Addington.

12. My aunt lived in the little house still standing-or which was so four months ago³-the fashionablest in Market Street, having actually two windows over the shop, in the second story; but I never troubled myself about that superior part of the mansion, unless my father happened to be making drawings in Indian ink, when I would sit reverently by and watch; my chosen domains being, at all other times, the shop, the bakehouse, and the stones round the spring of crystal water at the back door (long since let down into the modern sewer); and my chief companion, my aunt’s dog, Towzer, whom she had taken pity on when he was a snappish, starved vagrant; and made a brave and affectionate dog of: which was the kind of thing she did for every living creature that came in her way, all her life long.

¹ [See below, § 26, p. 27.]

² [Bridget Cox (his mother’s sister), who married Mr. Richardson of Croydon.]

³ [That is, in 1874, when Ruskin wrote this passage for Fors Clavigera; subsequently demolished (compare p. 122 n.). The kind of house is shown in his coloured sketch, “Looking to end of Market Street from my aunt’s door,” given as frontispiece to Vol. I.]

[Version 0.04: March 2008]