Letter from J. Ruskin [John Ruskin] [to George Maw]

Information

Scope & content: Written from Brantwood, Coniston, Lancashire [later Cumbria]. Manuscript

The lithograph arrived safely and is excellent; the notes on Maw’s journeys to the Levant [Middle East] and the Atlas Mountains [Morocco] are precious to him, though the others are in too small print; he is careful not to work his eyes too hard; he is not satisfied with the landscapes in Maw’s book [?a draft or specimen of ‘Monograph of the Genus Crocus’], and thinks they should be of higher quality; he will convey Maw’s offer of new croci to his ‘house-daughter’ Mrs Severn [Joan Severn, Ruskin’s niece, who cared for Ruskin] but she is upset this week by the rabbits’ taste for croci, which are all bitten down; he himself cares little for new species and looks only at his primroses, oxalis, violets, strawberries, hyacinths and pinks; he compares himself to Wordsworth’s Peter Bell in his love of primroses; he has given Mrs Severn and the gardener permission to ask Maw for plants, and gives his thanks in advance; ‘the gardener nursed me through my illness as carefully as if I had been a crocus’. Undated [c.1880; the subject matter matches letters written in 1880; although Maw’s ‘Monograph of the Genus Crocus’ was published in 1886, Maw sent a ‘specimen’ of it to Charles Darwin in November 1880 and may have sent similar specimens to others including Ruskin]