Venetia, Lady Digby on her deathbed by Sir Anthony Van Dyck DPG194
..and solves the mystery of Venetia’s death.
By Bruce Gregory
Phineas LaTouche had more surprises in store.
In December last year, I had met Phineas in the Dog in Dulwich Village and he had suggested that Ruskin was somehow implicated in the burning of Crystal Palace. (Phineas’ story) His source for this absurd and scurrilous story seemed to be the secret diaries of the love of Ruskin’s life, Rose LaTouche, who had died at the tender age of 27 in an asylum. I had found this all very shocking. But I found myself hopeful that I might meet Phineas again. And I did.
We met in Ruskin Park, of course, not far from where Ruskin Hall used to be before it was flattened and replaced by council flats. It was early January this year and I was taking a brisk late-morning walk. As I rounded the duck pond, I saw an old man in a big winter coat, sitting hunched on a bench. He had a hat pulled low on his head and was swathed in scarves.
‘Phineas, is that you?’ I said.
He looked up. His eyes were watery; his face pinched.
‘We talked last month at the Dog, I mean the Greyhound. About Ruskin.’ I said.
‘I remember’ he replied, giving a hollow cough.
‘May I sit down?’ I asked, sitting on the bench next to him.
At that moment, a train clattered past along the cutting by Kings Hospital.
‘Trains!’ said Phineas angrily, ‘They drove him away!’
‘Ruskin?’
‘He loathed them. He wrote an essay you know, on the aesthetics of transport. Intelligent, quiet, friendly, short-haired animals – horses, donkeys and so on – are good; noisy machines belching smoke are bad. It was never published.’
‘Very modern and green’ I said
‘By the end of 1872, he upped and left. His mother had died. The trains had come to Herne Hill. It was time to go. To Coniston.’
He rubbed his hands in the cold.
‘A shame,’ Phineas added, ‘because his investigative talents were never properly used again’
‘Talents?’ I said.
‘He was a genius. Published nearly ten million words. That amazing intellect, devouring every subject he turned to: art, history, science, economics, politics…’
‘I’d no idea,’ I said.
‘And a genius of forensic investigation,’ said Phineas.
I held my breath, hoping that Phineas would say more. He did:
‘A forensic genius he was. Ahead of his time. World-changing…’
Phineas paused for breath.
I was agog.
He continued:
‘Ruskin solved the mystery that had sat for years on the walls of the Dulwich Picture Gallery. Many people had wondered. But Ruskin used his astonishing powers of observation and deduction…’
‘You make him sound like Sherlock Holmes,’ I said.
‘Ha! Sherlock Holmes! An invention of Conan Doyle in 1887. But where do you think Doyle got the idea? Eh? Eh?’
‘What did Ruskin do?’
‘He solved the mystery of the death of Venetia Digby.’
‘I know the picture,’ I said, ‘Van Dyck painted her lying dead in her bed. Very young. Almost seems asleep.’
‘Ah’ said Phineas, ‘But you just think you know the picture. If you could only see it with the eyes and intelligence of that towering genius, Ruskin, you would know so much more.’
‘For example?’
‘ Well, for example, Van Dyck had pained two more pictures of Venetia in the same year that she died. The clues to her death are in both pictures…’
to be continued…
More from Phineas: Ruskin Walks His Dog, part 1
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