‘Dear Miss Beale,—I have to ask your pardon for never having replied to your former letter; but it came when I was already over-wrought and threatened with illness, and it gave me more to think of than it was possible then to review.
‘I am now, however, most seriously bent on understanding the principles and knowing some of the results of modern girl education....
‘A very few lines would enable me to become of some use to you—in my own fields of work—and without moving from my fields of rest.
‘I have the deepest respect for Mr. Shields’ work, nevertheless it is out of my way; and such drawing models as I may send you would be altogether different in feeling.
‘But the first thing I want to know is what kind of library or schoolroom you have, for quiet separate reading, and what standard books the College possesses in Lexicons, works on natural history, and classic literature, and what place Latin and Italian have in your code of studies.—Ever faithfully yours,
J. Ruskin.’
‘Brantwood, Coniston, Lancashire, February 18, 1887.
‘Dear Miss Beale,—I can only thank you to-day for the most interesting parcel, which gives me an idea of the College and its branches, admitting every degree of enthusiasm in its Principal.
‘ ... but for the moment, entirely puzzling to me, as I neither want to confuse the strict College work with that of Ruskin societies, nor the elementary and general teaching with that of artists’ studios, or of general papers in your Magazine.
‘And when I give you books I should like them to be accessible to the classes in general. I can’t scatter them among the boarding-houses or give them only to the senior students at St. Hilda’s. You can surely put up some shelves for me in a corner of some generally inhabited room, and put them under the care of an official librarian. It seems to me the office might be given for a term at a time to any girl who cared to take it, involving also the curatorship of any drawings, casts of coins, or the like, which I could at times lend or present to you.