Death
Rose died in 1875 at the age of 27, in a Dublin nursing home, where she had been placed by her parents. Various authors describe the death as arising from either madness, anorexia, a broken heart, religious mania or hysteria, or a combination of these. Whatever the cause, her death was tragic and it is generally credited with causing the onset of bouts of insanity in Ruskin from around 1877. He convinced himself that the Renaissance painter Vittore Carpaccio had included portraits of Rose in his paintings of the life of Saint Ursula. He also took solace in Spiritualism, trying to contact Rose's spirit.
Rose and Ruskin's romance is alluded to in Nabokov's novel Lolita. According to Wolfgang Kemp "the whole work is riddled with allusions and direct references to the la Touches".
Read more about this topic: Rose La Touche
Famous quotes containing the word death:
“For ‘tis not in mere death that men die most.”
—Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806–1861)
“For the sake of goodness and love, man shall let death have no sovereignty over his thoughts.”
—Thomas Mann (1875–1955)
“Old age is a tyrant that forbids us upon pain of death all the pleasures of youth.”
—François, Duc De La Rochefoucauld (1613–1680)