Andrews Family

See Edward Andrews (1787–1841) for information about this celebrated Congregationalist preacher, who was the Ruskinsʼ clergyman when they attended Dissenting chapel, and who served as Ruskinʼs first tutor, instructing him from age ten in Latin and Greek. Andrews and his wife Elizabeth ( 1792–1831) bore twelve children, of whom the eldest daughter, Eliza ( 1816–92), appears to have had some connection with the Ruskins during Johnʼs youth. Elizaʼs younger sister, Emily Augusta (1824–62), married Coventry Patmore (1823–96) and became known as the eponymous heroine of Patmoreʼs Angel in the House.

In Praeterita, Ruskin mentions the sisters together: “Miss Andrews, the eldest sister of the ‘Angel in the House’, was an extremely beautiful girl of seventeen; she sang ‘Tambourgi, Tambourgi’ with great spirit and a rich voice, went at blackberry time on rambles with us at the Norwood Spa, and made me feel generally that there was something in girls that I did not understand, and that was curiously agreeable”. As noted by the editors of the Library Edition, Eliza, as Mrs. Charles Orme, maintained a salon, which was frequented by the Pre‐Raphaelites (Works, 35:73–74, 74 n. 1).

Some verse by Eliza, “The Brave Hussar”, was copied by John James Ruskin in Ruskinʼs MS VI. The eldest son, Edward, contributed poetry to his fatherʼs short‐lived periodical, Spiritual Times, which was also the venue for Ruskinʼs first published poems (see “On Skiddaw and Derwent Water”: Discussion.

A daughter of Eliza and Charles Orme (ca. 1807–93, also named Eliza Orme (1848–1937), earned the degree of LLB from the University of London and was a practicing lawyer, as well as a feminist and writer on womenʼs issues. Her relevance to ERM lies in her sharing a rare copy of her grandfatherʼs magazine, the Spiritual Times, with H. Robertson Nicoll, enabling him to track down Ruskinʼs first publications, the two poems that appeared in its pages in 1829 and 1830 (see “On Skiddaw and Derwent Water”: Nicollʼs Discovery of the Spiritual Times Ruskin Publications). Since Eliza Orme was unmarried and lived with her parents until their deaths in 1892 and 1893 (Howsam, “Orme, Eliza [1848–1937]”), she perhaps was custodian of this legacy of her grandfather. Nicoll published his findings in 1895.