ABSTRACT

John Ruskin wrote a letter to Mary Frances Bradford, a teacher at Winnington Hall residential school for girls, arranging to meet Bradford and several of her pupils for an evening at the theatre. Ruskin's aesthetic eye enjoyed the company of young, preferably thin, women. For example, while staying at the Giessbach Hotel in July 1869, Ruskin wrote Joan Severn several letters about 'Marie of the Giessbach', a friend who was ill. Girl-women such as Marie Schmidlin were Ruskin's favoured type. Although she resonated on rather different levels, Rose La Touche, the young, thin Irish girl with whom he ultimately fell in love, was of a similar type. As Ruskin's account of his conversations with Marie Schmidlin and his baby-talk notes to Francesca Alexander suggest, Joan was not the only woman complicit in helping Ruskin to fashion and maintain his epistolary and realized fantasy life.