DILECTA 575

with his nose close to the picture. He says that the picture was that one of the railway engine coming towards us at full speed.¹ But my brother is nearly ten years younger than I am. Turner was always full of little mysterious jokes and fun with his brother artists upon these varnishing days; and my father used to say that Turner looked upon them as one of the greatest privileges of the Academy. It is such a pleasure to me to think that I can be of any use to you, that I have risked sending this after my other letters. I have always been a man more or less of lost opportunities, and when living some fifteen years ago at Deal one occurred to me that I have never ceased to regret. My next-door neighbour was an old lady of the name of Cato; her maiden name was White; and she told me that she knew Turner well as a young man, also the young lady he was in love with. She spoke of him as being very delicate, and said that he often came to Margate for health. She seemed to know little of Turner as the artist. I cannot tell you how much I regret now not having pushed my inquiries further at that time; but twenty years ago I was more or less an unregenerate ruffian in such matters; and though I have always felt the same for Turner as the artist, I cared little to know much more than I remembered myself of him as a man.

“Trusting you will forgive the haste again of this letter,

“Believe me, dear Mr. Ruskin,

“Yours faithfully,

“ROBT. LESLIE.”

8. “Out of many visits to the house in Queen Anne Street, I never saw or was admitted to Turner’s working studio, though he used to pop out of it upon us, in a mysterious way, during our stay in his gallery, and then leave us again for a while. In fact, I think my father had leave to go there when he pleased. I particularly remember one visit, in company with my father and a Yankee sea captain, to whom Turner was very polite, evidently looking up to the sailor capacity, and making many little apologies for the want of ropes and other details about certain vessels in a picture. No one knew or felt, I think, better than Turner the want of these mechanical details, and while the sea captain was there he paid no attention to any one else, but followed him about the gallery, bent upon hearing all he said. As it turned out, this captain and he became good friends, for the Yankee skipper’s eyes were sharp enough to see, through all the fog and mystery of Turner, how much of real sea feeling there was in him and his work. Captain Morgan, who was a great friend of Dickens,² my father, and many other artists, used to send Turner a box of cigars almost every voyage after that visit to Queen Anne Street.

9. “Nothing I can ever do or write for you would repay the good you have done for me and mine in your books; and will you allow me to say, that in reading them I am not (much as I admire it) carried actually off my legs by your style, but that I feel more and more, each day I live,

¹ [“Rain, Steam, and Speed”; No. 538 in the National Gallery; exhibited at the Academy in 1844.]

² [He is mentioned in the Letters of Charles Dickens, vol. ii. pp. 136, 143. He was the original of “Captain Jorgan” in the Christmas number of 1860 (written jointly by Dickens and Wilkie Collins).]

[Version 0.04: March 2008]