He had been British chaplain in Venice 1905-1909 and wrote, with his wife Laura, two worthwhile publications on the city, the Venice volume of the attractive A & C Black Colour Book series, (with the wishy-washy watercolour illustrations that embellish those volumes, these by Mortimer Menpes, but the house style is pretty invariable, though invariably pretty), and a little book ‘Things Seen in Venice’ (this too, one of a popular series, to which Laura on her own contributed ‘Things Seen in the Italian Lakes’). Lonsdale, as befitted his cloth, also wrote a number of Christian essays, ‘The Book of Books’, ‘Evidences of Christianity’ ‘The Gospel of St Barnabas (with Laura), ‘The Church of the Apostles’. Nor should we forget ‘Dante and his Italy’, still less, ‘Some of My Tree Friends’ (later, ‘Trees I Have Met’).
He was something of a draughtsman himself and liked to draw trees, though he would have found limited opportunities in the Serenissima. Back home he illustrated ‘The Lyrical Woodlands’ for Margaret Sackville, as well as his own amicable tree book.
In the nailbiter Rolfe’s ‘The Desire and Pursuit of the Whole’, Ragg appears thinly disguised as Exeter Warden (subsequently Londonderry Bagge).
