APPENDIX 637

month’s summer holiday from her nursing task to better her drawing of Alpine flowers-Sir Walter finding the rarest for us with unfailing knowledge of locality, and Lady Trevelyan, ill though she was, rejoicing in the progress of the notes I was then writing for Proserpina.

Chapter vi. (“Königstein”) was to have given some general account of Ruskin’s tours abroad with his parents, of which the tour of 1859 (to Königstein, near Dresden, among other places) was the last. The following scrap was to have formed the beginning of the chapter:-

The close of the journey¹ was memorable to me, in having granted the last happy walk in the Alps which I had with my mother. I had long intended to make a careful study of the pine forests, traversed by cascades, on the left bank of the Arc, four miles above St. Michel on the Cenis road. We found very pleasant rooms in the little inn of the village of St. Michel, and there papa and mamma settled themselves for ten days or a fortnight, in which time I promised to complete my drawing; and for a wonder, and for once, did so. But of course my subject, with effect of sunshine aslope from the east and south, could only be worked upon in the morning; and I used to drive the four miles up hill to it, work for two or three hours steadily, and get back to the village in time to take papa and mamma for a walk before dinner. On both sides of the valley of St. Michel, the terraced walks from cottage to cottage are of perfect beauty.

For chapter vii. (“The Rainbows of Giessbach”) Ruskin had copies made of some letters written from there to his mother in 1866: these have been printed in Vol. XVIII. pp. xl.-xlii.

Chapter viii. was to have told of the Righi (as promised in the text, see p. 167)-hence the title of the chapter, “Regina Montium,” that being one of the traditional derivations of the name.

Chapter ix. (“The Hunter’s Rock”) was to have had as its “motto” “The Hills of Carrara” from Ruskin’s “old poems” (see Vol. II. p. 208). It would have dealt with Lucca and Pisa. There was a drawing in the Ruskin Exhibition of 1907 (No. 96) which Ruskin entitled “View from Lucca, under the Hunter’s Rock.” The following scrap, intended to introduce the chapter, is printed from a proof-sheet:-

In the only bit of Dante that English people ever read or have heard of (after their favourite piece of the adultery of Francesca), the starving of Count Ugolino, they are content to enjoy the description of his starvation, when they might see any quantity of Ugolinos, not counts, starved to death in their own villages. Also, they never inquire what the Count had done to deserve starving; nor what sort

¹ [It is not possible to say which year is meant. The drawing of the pine-forest on the Cenis road (now at Oxford, Vol. XXI. p. 99 and Plate XXXIV.) was dated by Ruskin “1854 or 1856” (Vol. XIII. p. 510). In W. G. Collingwood’s Life and Work of Ruskin (1st ed., 1893, vol. i. p. 232) the sojourn on the Cenis road is given to the year 1859; the diaries, however, while not fixing the date, make it almost certain that Ruskin must here refer to one of the former years.]

[Version 0.04: March 2008]