Anne Strachan (ca. 1799–1871)
In
Praeterita,
Ruskin characterizes the household servant
Anne (or Ann or Anna) as “my fatherʼs nurse, and mine”,
paying tribute to her “natural gift and specialty . . . the service of a sick room”. A life‐long servant,
she was thus “occupied” with “other peopleʼs good instead of her own”,
Ruskin writes, from “the age of fifteen to seventy‐two”
(
Ruskin, Works, 35:30–31. a paragraph first published in letter 28 of
Fors Clavigera in
1873, two years after
Anneʼs death
[
Ruskin, Works, 27:517–18]).
If
Anne came into service at age fifteen—as “a bare‐foot child”, according to
Georgiana Burne‐Jones
(
Memorials of Edward Burne‐Jones, 1:300)—then she would have begun work around
1814,
and in a Ruskin household prior to that of
John James and
Margaret Ruskin, who were not married until
2 February 1818.
W. G. Collingwood states that she “had come from the
Edinburgh home” of
John Thomas and
Catherine Ruskin
(
Life of John Ruskin [1900], 26); however,
Helen Viljoen realizes that in
1814
the elder Ruskins—who were
John Jamesʼs parents and
Margaretʼs aunt and uncle—were living in
Perth,
not
Edinburgh, in the house known as
Bowerswell.
Viljoen connects these facts with
Ruskinʼs implication in
Praeterita
that
Anne was his fatherʼs nurse before she was his, and concludes that the girl must have helped
with
John Jamesʼs convalescence at
Bowerswell from typhoid. He came down with a fever while on the road to
Perth in
August 1813,
and the disease kept him confined at
Bowerswell until
July 1814 (
Ruskinʼs Scottish Heritage, 157, 246 n. 23; and see
Catherine to John James Ruskin, 14 August 1813, and
Margaret Cock to John James Ruskin,
in
Burd, ed., Ruskin Family Letters, 63–64, 67–70).
It was
Margaret who was sent to rescue
John James when he fell ill on the way to
Perth
(
Catherine to John James Ruskin, 14 August 1813 and
21 August 1813, in
Burd, ed., Ruskin Family Letters
, 64, 66–67). In the ensuing months,
she would have been stretched between her regular housekeeping duties and nursing
John James, so it makes sense
that a girl would have been hired to help in the house. The fifteen‐year‐old
Anne presumably was inexperienced,
not yet the servant who, according to
Ruskinʼs testimonial, “was never quite in her glory unless some of us were ill”
(
Ruskin, Works, 35:39). But a mere girlʼs service may have been as much as the Ruskins could afford in their straitened circumstances.
To reduce expenses,
Catherine had pressed her husband to move from
Edinburgh to the country,
where household management could be confined to “Meggy [i.e.,
Margaret] my self and one servant”
(
Catherine to John James Ruskin, 15 March 1808, in
Burd, ed., Ruskin Family Letters, 23). They had already lived a year in the “retired”
but “shabby” coastal town of
Dysart before moving to
Perth to be near the household of their daughter,
John Jamesʼs sister,
Janet (“Jessie”) Richardson (1783–1828) and her husband,
Patrick Richardson (1774–1824).
Anne is not mentioned in surviving family correspondence,
1814–18; she first appears
(assuming she is the “Anna” taking orders from
Margaret) in the earliest surviving letter written by
Margaret to
John James
following their marriage, when living at their
Hunter Street house in
London.
John was at this time a newborn
(
26 March 1819, in
Burd, ed., Ruskin Family Letters, 92, 94 n. 6). But if
Anne had been present in the background over the past five years,
she was to some extent privy to the most dramatic events of her employersʼ lives.
John James and
Margaret had been betrothed since
1809,
and the crisis of
John Jamesʼs near‐lethal illness appears to have deepened their commitment, but now their union faced opposition by
John Thomas.
John James was convinced that the tension would bring about
Margaretʼs death (see
Margaret Cock to John James Ruskin, 12 July 1814;
John James Ruskin to Margaret Cock, 22 March 1815 and
13 April 1815;
and
John James to Catherine and John Thomas Ruskin, 13 April 1815, in
Burd, ed., Ruskin Family Letters, 67–77).
Unexpectedly, in
June 1815,
John Thomas descended into madness. His sonʼs emotions were divided between apprehension for his parents and relief for himself and
Margaret.
Writing to his mother,
John James rejected recourse to a “public asylum” where his father would be subjected to “Surrounding Horrors”,
while recognizing that even “the strictest confinement” at home risked the “safety” and “health of the rest of the family”. Writing to
Margaret,
he expressed compassion for his fatherʼs “frailties” but he could not resist interpreting his fatherʼs madness to their advantage
as having rendered his father “in a manner dead to all of us”, exonerating the family from “a place in his affections”, and putting their
“actions” beyond a hold even on
John Thomasʼs “least interest” much less his control.
John James also fretted over how public exposure “may injure me in business”
(
John James to Catherine Ruskin, 30 June 1815; and
John James Ruskin to Margaret Cock, 3 July 1815, in
Burd, ed., Ruskin Family Letters, 79, 80).
As it turned out, release came by way of further calamity: in
October 1817,
Catherine Ruskin died suddenly,
followed shortly by
John Thomasʼs bloody suicide. At the time,
Margaret was already in mourning for her own mother,
Margaret Cock of
Croydon. Throughout all this,
John James was struggling to launch a new wine importing business in partnership with
Pedro Domecq and
Henry Telford, for his fateful journey north in
1813 had been prompted by his flight from the declining fortunes
of his previous employer, Gordon, Murphy, & Company (see the correspondence,
1812–17, in
Burd, ed., Ruskin Family Letters, 53–88;
and
Hilton, John Ruskin: The Early Years, 6–8).
As a young servant at
Bowerswell,
Anne shared the womenʼs vantage on these events, which helps to explain a degree of intimacy
between her and
Margaret. One can only speculate, however, about the causes that underlay a prickliness in their relationship,
which is treated as comedy in reminiscences by
Ruskin and by
Georgiana Burne‐Jones, but with a strong suggestion
that
Anne was fiercely loyal to
John James and
John to the detriment of civility to
Margaret and “a want of deference” toward her mistress that,
as
Burne‐Jones put it, “was certainly not the growth of the moment”
(see
Ruskin, Works, 35:31;
G. Burne‐Jones, Memorials of Edward Burne‐Jones, 300–301). One can only speculate, too,
about how
Anne chose to manage her power by virtue of her presence at events that
John James and
Margaret presumably did not want divulged to
John—at
least in his youth.
Glimpses of
Anneʼs supervision of
John appear frequently in the family letters: sitting with him in church, a few rows behind
Margaret
(
Margaret to John James Ruskin, 2 April 1821); looking after him apart from
Margaretʼs sisterʼs family, while
Margaret visited
the house of her sister
Bridget Richardson in
Croydon (
Margaret to John James Ruskin, 30 January 1822).
Margaret records an episode of
John tearfully assuming he must be “bad” since neither
Anne nor his papa were available to “take care of me”
(
Margaret to John James Ruskin, 30 January 1822) (
Burd, ed., Ruskin Family Letters, 100, 108, 108–9)
At any rate, the somewhat caricatured “white‐haired, light‐eyed, spare little figure, harsh and unattractive to our southern feeling” as perceived
by
Burne‐Jones (
Memorials of Burne‐Jones, 300) was only in her twenties and early thirties when she accompanied
John and his cousin
Mary Richardson
on many of their formative encounters at home and during travels in
Britain and abroad.