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Janet Ross

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Janet Ann Ross (née Duff Gordon; 1842–1927) was an English historian, biographer, travel writer, translator, cookbook author, journalist, and memoirist.

Quotes

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  • From the very first Lucie Austin possessed a correct and vigorous style, and a nice sense of language, which were hereditary rather than implanted, and to these qualities was added a delightful strain of humour, shedding a current or original thought all through her writings. That her unusual gifts should have been so early developed is hardly surprising with one of her sympathetic temperament when we remember the throng of remarkable men and women who frequented the Austins' house. The Mills, the Grotes, the Bullers, the Carlyles, the Sterlings, Sydney Smith, Luttrell, Rogers, Jeremy Bentham, and Lord Jeffrey, were among the most intimate friends of her parents, and 'Toodie,' as they called her, was a universal favourite with them. Once, staying at a friend's house, and hearing their little girl rebuked for asking questions, she said: ' My mamma never says "I don't know" of "Don't ask questions." '
    • "Memoir by Janet Ross". Letters from Egypt: Lady Duff Gordon's Letters from Egypt (revised ed.). McClure, Phillips & Company. 1902. pp. 1–17.  (383 pages; quote from pp. 2–3; 1st edition 1875, edited by Janet Ross, published by Macmillan & Company; 2nd edition 1876; 1902 edition published with a new introduction by George Meredith)
  • Of Mrs. Taylor's seven children, Sarah Austin was perhaps the handsomest and most gifted; the extraordinary vigour of her mind and body was almost overpowering, but it stood her in good stead during a long and not over-prosperous life, and was tempered by an excellent judgment and a very kind heart. No one ever appealed to her in vain; and in her old age children flocked round her with delight to hear "Puss in boots" or one of Grimms' fairy tales, so well and graphically told.
    • "Introduction". Three Generations of English Women: Memoirs and Correspondence of Susannah Taylor, Sarah Austin, and Lady Duff Gordon (new, revised, enlarged ed.). T. F. Unwin. 1893. pp. iii–ix.  (571 pages; quote from pp. iii–iv; 1st edition 1888)
  •      Cabbage (Red) ' alla Fiamminga.'
    Remove the outer leaves of a red cabbage and cut it in pieces. Put it into boiling water for fifteen minutes, then dry, and place it in a sauce-pan with four ounces of butter, a chopped-up onion, a bay leaf, two cloves, and a little salt and pepper. Boil slowly for about half an hour, stirring it often. When cooked, take out the bay leaf, add a little butter and serve quickly.
  • How many of the travelers who visit Pisa now remember that she is one of the most ancient cities of Italy, and was famous when Rome was but a hamlet? They can see the ancient walls, but can they conceive that in the long history of the community settled between the rivers Arno and Serchio the grey lines of buildings are but of yesterday? They may perhaps remember that a palace of Hadrian, one of the greatest or Roman Emperors, stood where the cathedral now stands; that temples to Apollo and to Mars covered the sites of the churches of S. Pierino and S. Michele in Borgo; that at the foot of the Via S. Maria grave priestesses of Ceres sang hymns in honour their goddess, who ripened the golden corn which covered the plains from the Monte Pisano to the coast; and that in a temple which stood in the Piazza S. Andrea love-sick young men and maidens presented their offerings at the shrine of Venus and made their vows to the goddess they evoked. But can they realize that in those far-off days, before our Christian era began, Pisa was a city so old that its beginnings were even then half-concealed, half-concealed, half-disclosed, in legends of her origin?

Quotes about Janet Ross

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  • ... Victor Emmanuel ... made the move, relocating to ... the Pitti Palace. He formally entered the city in February 1865 ...
    Two years after this Janet arrived from Alexandria, Egypt, where she had been living with her husband Henry Ross, for the previous five years. Her trip to Florence was planned as a short holiday. She booked a berth on a run-down steamer that took a route out from Alexandria across the Mediterranean to the southern Italian port of Brindisi. From there she went by carriage northwards up the peninsula, through beautiful countryside with hills of old knotted olive trees and swathes of perfumed lavender, beneath a brilliant blue sky. Her plan was to arrive in Florence and stay for a fortnight as the guest of an old family friend and relative by marriage, Sir Henry Elliot, the British Ambassador to Italy.
    She had read about Florence, its treasures and its history. She was familiar with its great writers, Dante and Boccaccio, the unsurpassed beauty created by its painters, and the understated order achieved by its architects. She had heard stories of the proud patrician families with their age-old feuds and allegiances — names like Medici, Pazzi and Strozzi — and she knew something of the story of Savonarola and how he was burnt at the stake in the Piazza della Signoria. This was her opportunity to witness for herself the history that till now she had only read about in books.
  • Janet Ross was one of those Lady Bracknell-like dragons for whom the word “formidable” was practically invented. Born in London in 1842, she spent the last six decades of her life — from 1867 until her death in 1927 — as an increasingly commanding personage in the Anglo-Tuscan colony around Florence, where she was known (and feared) as Aunt Janet. Ben Downing freely acknowledges near the beginning of “Queen Bee of Tuscany” that Ross “had her limitations. Though intelligent and learned, especially for an autodidact, she was by no means brilliant. She had little imagination or inner life, and she made no towering contribution to humanity.” Thus the biographer throws down his own gauntlet: Why, then, are we reading about her?
    Downing, a co-editor of Parnassus, a poetry review, and a walking Who’s Who of the Victorian era, provides an answer in the form of It’s Who She Knew. And Aunt Granite (as the younger generation called her) knew everybody — or at least everybody who passed through Florence, which in Downing’s telling comes to the same thing. An endless procession of now forgotten artists and writers and social somebodies made their way to her door. Major figures do show up. In 1887, Henry James pays her a three-day visit, although “nowhere in her writings,” Downing acknowledges, somewhat sheepishly, “does she so much as mention James.”
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