ruskin's bourne identity

Just re-read a famous passage of Ruskin's fragmentary autobiography, Praeterita; this is from Book II, Chapter III, in which Ruskin is recounting his 1841 family journey to Italy. He's going back over his diaries from the time, and transcribing large chunks, and here he records his arrival at Venice (which will be the center of so much of his writing):

I find a sentence in diary on 8th May, which seems inconsistent with what I have said of the centres of my life work [ie, he has earlier specified that the "centres" of his life's work have been Rouen, Geneva, and Pisa]:–
"Thank God I am here; it is the Paradise of cities.
*  *  *  *  *  *  *  *
This, and Chamouni, are my two homes of Earth."

That is how the passage is printed in the Library Edition, Volume 35, ed. Cook & Wedderburn (1908). Glancing over my other copies of Praeterita, I find the following:

CLARK: I find a sentence in diary on 6th May, which seems inconsistent with what I have said of the centres of my life work.
"Thank God I am here; it is the Paradise of cities."
*  *  *  *  *  *  *  *
"This, and Chamouni, are my two bournes of Earth."

 (1949 Rupert Hart-Davis edition, introduced by Kenneth Clark, as reprinted by Oxford UP 1978)

HILTON: I find a sentence in diary on 8th May, which seems inconsistent with what I have said of the centres of my life work.
"Thank God I am here; it is the Paradise of cities.
*  *  *  *  *  *  *  *
This, and Chamouni, are my two homes of Earth."

(2005 Everyman's Library edition, introduced by Tim Hilton)

O'GORMAN: I find a sentence in diary on 6th May, which seems inconsistent with what I have said of the centres of my life work.
'Thank God I am here; it is the Paradise of cities.'
*  *  *  *  *  *  *  *
'This, and Chamouni, are my two bournes of Earth.'

(2012 Oxford World's Classics edition, edited by Francis O'Gorman)

Four editions, two different texts: Cook/Wedderburn and Hilton give "8th May";  Clark and O'Gorman give "6th May." Cook/Wedderburn and Hilton give "homes of earth"; Clark and O'Gorman give "bournes of earth." So what's going on?

First of all, it's pretty clear that Ruskin, in drafting Praeteritia, wrote "bournes of earth." It was so printed in the piecemeal publication of the chapter in 1886, and then in the book edition of Volume II in 1887, and in several following book editions preceding the Library Edition of 1908. Ruskin didn't have a lot of involvement in reading proof at this point in his life, but he still knew a good sentence when he heard one, and it's clear that "my two bournes of earth" (think Hamlet's "undiscovered country, from whose bourn / No traveller returns...) is far richer and sonically superior to "my two homes of earth."

Cook and Wedderburn, however, in editing Praeterita have gone back not merely to JR's manuscript of the autobiography, but to the diaries upon which he's drawing. Their conclusion is that Ruskin, looking back from his sixties, has misread his own 22-year-old's handwriting: "The diary of 1841 shows that Ruskin wrote "homes," not "bournes" (as hitherto printed)" is their note to the passage. So they have amended Praeterita – against Ruskin's own manuscript – on the basis of the diary manuscript upon which his later text is based. Hilton is clearly doing no more than following Cook and Wedderburn (his text is identical to theirs).

It gets a trifle more complicated, thanks to Ruskin's devilishly illegible hand. Joan Evans and John Whitehouse, in their 1956 Clarendon edition of Ruskin's diaries, give us "This and Chamouni are my two bournes of earth...," and O'Gorman, independently consulting the diary manuscript (for Evans/Whitehouse is notoriously unreliable), notes "'bournes' is correct though some transcribers give it as 'homes'." My gut follows O'Gorman – "bournes" is far more Ruskinian, far better than "homes" – but his argumentation is lacking: "some people, including Ruskin's first editors who knew him personally & knew his handwriting better than anyone living does, think Ruskin wrote 'homes,' but they're wrong – just because."

Even more interesting is the date, which Cook/Wedderburn and Hilton give as "8th May," and Clark and O'Gorman as "6th May." Evans/Whitehouse makes it quite clear: Ruskin wrote the entry in question on May 6, not May 8. Ruskin, writing in 1886, just plain misread the date of his own diary. Cook & Wedderburn, with access to the diary, chose not to correct his misdating, or even to annotate it. Clark and O'Gorman, on the other hand, have opted to (silently) correct the date.

Which text is to have authority for a printed version of Praeterita? Ruskin's own manuscript of the book, or the materials upon which he drew for that manuscript, and which might be distorted or be misread in his transcription? I'm of the opinion that the Praeterita manuscript should be authoritative, and any differences between it and its source materials (Ruskin's diaries, letters, etc.) should have attention drawn to them in the notes. The book itself, however, should continue to bear the marks of its author's mistakes and misreadings. That's what's frustrating about Cook/Wedderburn: they leave the mistake of "8th May" unannotated, but go to the trouble of "correcting" "bournes" to "homes." Similarly, while Clark fixes the date to "6th May" without comment, he prints "bournes" without any suggestion that there might be a problem with transcription.

To correct "bournes" to "homes" seems to me to mistake the status of the autobiographical text; it's an aesthetic object in its own right, not a transcription of diaries (or life), but a transmutation of them. Who's to say that Ruskin didn't know perfectly well he'd written "homes" in 1841, and quite intentionally changed it to "bournes"? (Unlikely, but just barely possible.)

My ideal presentation of this passage:

I find a sentence in diary on 8th May,* which seems inconsistent with what I have said of the centres of my life work.
"Thank God I am here; it is the Paradise of cities.
*  *  *  *  *  *  *  *
This, and Chamouni, are my two bournes** of Earth."

*Ruskin's mistake for 6th May.
**Thus in the 1886 Praeterita. The transcription of the diary of 1841 is unclear; Ruskin may have written "homes" there.