RUSKIN, John, letters, autographs, documents, manuscripts



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RUSKIN, John (1819-1900). Author, artist & social reformer.
Autograph Letter Signed ('Ever your affec[tionate] Master J. Ruskin) to 'Dear David' (probably his gardener, David Downes), 1 page 8vo, Brantwood, Coniston, 15 August 1879. Asserting that 'You were very good and right to tell me about the tomb', promising him the opportunity or putting it to rights, and sending a cheque for £90 to clear his account.

Ruskin had suffered a serious breakdown the previous year and was recuperating at Brantwood. Downes had been gardener at Denmark Hill and remained a servant of Ruskin's.

It is not clear to which tomb Ruskin is here referring. He took considerable trouble over his father's tomb (in London), and referred to it in a letter to Charles Eliot Norton in 1867: 'I have made it quite simple, with a granite slab on the top supported by a pure and delicate moulding from my favourite tomb of Ilaria di Caretto, at Lucca (a slender green serpentine shaft at each corner)'.

The present letter is not to be found in The Letters of John Ruskin, Library Edition, ed. Cook and Wedderburn (1909).
[No: 26071]


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