Rose La Touche

Rose La Touche (1848–1875) was the pupil, cherished student, "pet", and ideal from which John Ruskin based Sesame and Lilies (1865).

Ruskin met La Touche when she was nine years old (3 January 1858; he was about to turn 39) as a private art tutor (Cook and Wedderburn lxvi), and the two maintained an educational relationship through correspondence until she was 18. Rose's mother, Mrs. Maria La Touche, was a friend of Louisa, Lady Waterford, and wrote to Ruskin on assistance with her children's education after a formal introduction from Lady Waterford. Ruskin recalls the correspondence in Praeterita:

Soon after I returned home, in the eventful year 1858, a lady wrote to me from—somewhere near Green Street, W.,--saying, as people sometimes did, in those days, that she saw I was the only sound teacher in Art; but this farther, very seriously, that she wanted her children—two girls and a boy—taught the beginnings of Art rightly; especially the younger girl, in whom she thought I might find some power worth developing. (Praeterita, 525)

Although some debate exists over the nature of Mrs. La Touche and Ruskin's first correspondence, Tim Hilton notes in John Ruskin: The Early Years that he did not call as immediately as his autobiography suggests. Rather "he sent William Ward to see her, being too busy to call himself" (262).

When Ruskin did call on the La Touches for the first time, he was "taken with them" and "felt there was something exceptional about Rose" (Hilton 264). Upon first meeting Rose, Ruskin wrote in the final pages of Praeterita that

...presently the drawing room door opened, and Rosie came in, quietly taking stock of me with her blue eyes as she walked across the room; gave me her hand, as a good dog gives its paw, and then stood a little back. Nine years old, on 3 January 1858, thus now rising towards ten; neither tall nor short for her age; a little stiff in her way of standing. The eyes rather deep blue at that time, and fuller and softer than afterwards. Lips perfectly lovely in profile;--a little too wide, and hard in edge, seen in front; the rest of the features what a fair, well-bred Irish girl's usually are; the hair, perhaps, more graceful in short curl around the forehead, and softer than one sees often, in the close-bound tresses above the neck. (Praeterita, 525)

She was a high-spirited, precocious, but also very childlike adolescent. Tim Hilton writes that

The Irish girl [Rose] was a puzzle, for she was precocious in some ways and not in others. Sometimes she had a surprising understanding of adult attitudes: at the next moment she was once more completely a child. She had a pretty way of making herself engaging, even coquettish, but could also be rather solemn. 'I don't know what to make of her', Ruskin confessed. '...She wears her round hat in the sauciest way possible—and is a firm—fiery little thing.

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