My husband went to a medical conference, paid for by a pharmaceutical company, in Padua, where the university has been teaching medicine since the 14th century. So I went too and popped over to Venice, taking with me Mrs Ruskin.
I mean Effie, who, poor thing, ran away from John Ruskin in 1854 after six years of marriage when he had still not steeled himself to do the deed. Nothing wrong with her. She had eight children after she married Millais. Her letters Effie in Venice, edited by Mary Lutyens, were, I found, just the companion to a few days in that irresistible city.
Effie refers to a visit to the Borromean Islands, the property of the rich old family to which the sympathetic saint Charles Borromeo belonged. But the phrase reminded me of something I’d come across recently in that memorable, slightly flawed children’s book The Box of Delights by John Masefield.
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