Читать книгу Life of Octavia Hill as Told in Her Letters онлайн

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December 19th, 1858.

Emily to Miranda.

Dear Ockey has had rather a disappointment lately about her work,—that is to say she has been awakened to the sense of its not being as accurate as she had hoped it was. She wrote to Ruskin to ask about his employing a young artist. He wrote back very kindly saying he could employ two or three girls, supposing they could copy accurately; but accuracy meant so much. “Even you are nothing near the mark yet, tho’ the Claude foreground is a step in advance.” Of course O. knew that the things she had done in water colour were very far from right; but she had thought that her pencil and pen work was very nearly so. In the same letter he said that he always had a chivalrous desire to help women, but he began to think his old lady friends were right when they cautioned him against it, as he had found all his girl protegés, with the exception of Ockey, “very sufficiently troublesome.” She met him the same day at Dulwich, and he was very kind; and if she can have a little bright weather, so as to get on with her Dulwich work, she will be in good spirits again, I think.