Mrs. [Robert?] Monro

Richard Gray, Mary Gray (née Monro), and Mrs. Monro

Richard Gray was a Scotsman who pursued a career much like that of John James Ruskin. In 1812, when John James was growing frustrated with his position in the wine firm, Gordon, Murphy & Company, he remarked to his mother that “Gray is doing a great deal at Lisbon & is a Merchant of consequence now . . . I look upon his fortune as made” (John James to Catherine Ruskin, 5 October 1812, in Burd, ed., Ruskin Family Letters, 1:58). In Praeterita, Ruskin also characterizes Richard as resembling his father in the “scholarly love of good literature”, and even exceeding him in “romantic sentiment”. Gray probably helped John James navigate foreign life in Spain and Portugal, when John James traveled there sometime between 1815 and 1817 to learn about sherry production (Ruskin, Works, 35:100; Viljoen, Ruskinʼs Scottish Heritage, 238–39 n. 14; Burd, ed., Ruskin Family Letters, 59–60 n. 8).
It was during Grayʼs time in Lisbon, according to Ruskin in Praeterita, that he met and married Mary Monro, an “extremely good and beautiful Scotch girl” (Ruskin, Works, 35:100). Later, the Grays and the Ruskins became neighbors when, in 1823, John James had become securely positioned with his own firm, Ruskin, Telford, & Domecq, and he moved his family to the house atop Herne Hill in the London suburb of Camberwell. Mary and Richard Gray were either then already established in Camberwell or would soon purchase their property, 2 Grove Hill Terrace. (Dearden suggests that the Grays arrived in Camberwell after the Ruskins had settled in Herne Hill; however, a letter by Margaret Ruskin to John James, 30 January 1822, indicates that the Grays were then already living in Camberwell, Margaret taking John there for an extended stay, away from the Ruskinsʼ London house in Hunter Street [John Ruskinʼs Camberwell, 23; Burd, ed., Ruskin Family Letters, 107].)
Also members of the Graysʼ Camberwell household, Ruskin adds in Praeterita, were Maryʼs mother, “old Mrs. Monro” and her “white French poodle, Petite” (Ruskin, Works, 35:101). Mrs. Monro, too, was a prior acquaintance. In 1821, for example, Margaret wrote to John James describing a visit by “Mrs. Gray & Mrs. Monro” to the Ruskinsʼ Hunter Street house, during which Mary sat with John “on the drawing room floor very deeply engrossed” in teaching John to play the flute (Burd, ed., Ruskin Family Letters, 100–101).
Since the Gray household proved childless, the Grays and Mrs. Monro continued to take great interest in Johnʼs development, when living near the Ruskins in Camberwell (see Burd, ed., Ruskin Family Letters, 59–60 n. 8). Mrs. Monro is presumably the addressee of Ruskinʼs ca. 1829 Letter to Mrs. Monro, copied in MS II. However, while Mary Grayʼs mother seems the likeliest addressee of Ruskinʼs letter, it is possible that another Mrs. Monro was intended—namely, the wife of Robert Monro, who was a brother of Maryʼs. The maiden name of this Mrs. Monro was Dowie. All three families—the Grays, the Monros, and the Dowies—were lifelong friends of the Ruskins (see Burd, ed., Ruskin Family Letters, 1:100. 101 n. 5, 121, 123 n. 4).