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Title: An Autobiography

Author: Elizabeth Butler

Release date: December 16, 2012 [eBook #41638]
Most recently updated: October 23, 2024

Language: English

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK AN
AUTOBIOGRAPHY ***

“Got It. Bravo!”

AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY
BY
ELIZABETH BUTLER

With Illustrations from Sketches by THE AUTHOR.

CONSTABLE & CO. LTD.
LONDON BOMBAY SYDNEY 1922

PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN BY THE WHITEFRIARS PRESS, LTD.,
LONDON AND TONBRIDGE.

To
MY CHILDREN

FOREWORD
THE memoirs of a great artist must inevitably evoke the interest and
appreciation of the initiated. But this book makes a wider appeal, written as
it is by a woman whose career, apart from her art, has been varied and
adventurous, who has travelled widely and associated, not only with the
masters of her own craft, but with the great and eminent in many fields. It
is, moreover, the revelation of a personality apart, at once feminine and
virile, endued with the force engendered by unswerving adherence to lofty
aims.
In this age of insistent ugliness, when the term “realism” is used to cloak
every form of grossness and degeneracy, it is a privilege to commune with
one who speaks of her “experiences of the world’s loveliness” and describes
herself as “full of interest in mankind.” These two phrases, taken at random
from the opening pages of “From Sketch Book and Diary,” seem to me
eminently characteristic of Lady Butler and her work. She is a worshipper
of Beauty in its spiritual as well as its concrete form, and all her life she has
envisaged mankind in its nobler aspect.
At seven years old little Elizabeth Thompson was already drawing
miniature battles, at seventeen she was lamenting that as yet she had
achieved nothing great, and a very few years later the world was ringing
with the fame of the painter of “The Roll Call.”
Through the accumulated interests of changeful years, charged for her
with intense joy and sorrow, she has kept her valiant standard flying, in her
art as in her life remaining faithful to her belief in humanity, using her
power and insight for its uplifting. Not only has she depicted for us great
events and strenuous action, with a sureness all her own, she has caught and
materialised the qualities which inspire heroic deeds—courage, endurance,
fidelity to a life’s ideal even in the moment of death. And all without
shirking the dreadful details of the battlefield; amid blood and grime and
misery, in loneliness and neglect, in the desperate steadfastness of a lost
cause, her figures stand out true to themselves and to the highest traditions
of their country.

During the recent world-upheaval Lady Butler devoted herself in
characteristic fashion to the pursuance of her aims. Many of the subjects
painted and exhibited during those terrible years still preached her gospel.
She worked, moreover, with a twofold motive. Widow of a great soldier,
she devoted the proceeds of her labours to her less fortunate sisters left
impoverished, and even destitute, by the War.
“L’artiste donne de soi,” said M. Paderewski once.
Lady Butler has always given generously of her best, and perhaps this
book of memories, intimate and characteristic, this record of wide interests
and high endeavour, full of picturesque incident and touched with delicate
humour, is as valuable a gift as any that she has yet bestowed.
M. E. Francis.

CONTENTS

CHAP. PAGE
I. First Impressions 1
II. Early Youth 10
III. More Travel 19
IV. In the Art Schools 38
V. Study in Florence 54
VI. Rome 69
VII. War. Battle Paintings 96
VIII. “The Roll Call” 101
IX. Echoes of “the Roll Call” 115
X. More Work and Play 130
XI. To Florence and Back 147
XII. Again in Italy 159
XIII. A Soldier’s Wife 167
XIV. Queen Victoria 183
XV. Official Life—The East 191
XVI. To the East 196
XVII. More of the East 211
XVIII. The Last of Egypt 224
XIX. Aldershot 234
XX. Italy Again 252
XXI. The Dover Command 260
XXII. The Cape and Devonport 275
XXIII. A New Reign 284
XXIV. Mostly a Roman Diary 311
XXV. The Great War 320
Index 333

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

PAGE
“Got It, Bravo!” Frontispiece
A Leaf from a very early Sketch-book 12
Flying Shots in Belgium and Rhineland in 1865 19
In Florence during my Studies in 1869 58
The Last of the Riderless Horse-races, and a Wet Trudge
to the Vatican Council 80
Crimean Ideas 103
Practising for “Quatre Bras” 130
One of the Balaclava Six Hundred 151
In Western Ireland: a “Jarvey” and “Biddy” 174
The Egyptian Camel Corps and the Bersaglieri 230
Aldershot Manœuvres: the Enemy in Sight 234
A Despatch Bearer, Boer War, and the Horse Gunners 284
Notes on the Eve of the Great War 323
The Shire Horses: Wheelers of a 4·7. A Hussar Scout of
1917 327
A Postcard, found on a German Prisoner, with “Scotland
for Ever” turned into Prussian Cavalry, typifying the
Victorious Onrush of the German Army in the New Year,
1915 332

AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY

ELIZABETH BUTLER
My Friends: You must write your memoirs.

I: Every one writes his or her memoirs nowadays. Rather a plethora,
don’t you think? An exceedingly difficult thing to do without too much of
the Ego.
My Friends: Oh! but yours has been such an interesting life, so varied,
and you can bring in much outside yourself. Besides, you have kept a diary,
you say, ever since you were twelve, and you have such an unusually long
memory. A pity to waste all that. You simply must!
I: Very well, but remember that I am writing while the world is still
knocked off its balance by the Great War, and few minds will care to attune
themselves to the Victorian and Edwardian stability of my time.
My Friends: There will come a reaction.

CHAPTER I

FIRST IMPRESSIONS

I WAS born at the pretty “Villa Claremont,” just outside Lausanne and
overlooking Lake Leman. I made a good start with the parents Providence
gave me. My father, cultured, good, patient, after he left Cambridge set out
on the “Grand Tour,” and after his unsuccessful attempt to enter Parliament
devoted his leisure to my and my younger sister’s education. Yes, he began
with our first strokes, our “pot-hooks and hangers,” our two-and-two make
four; nor did his tuition really cease till, entering on matrimony, we left the
paternal roof. He adopted, in giving us our lessons, the principle of “a little
and often,” so that we had two hours in the morning and no lessons in the
afternoon, only bits of history, poetry, the collect for the Sunday and
dialogues in divers languages to learn overnight by heart to be repeated to
him next morning. We had no regular holidays: a day off occasionally,
especially when travelling; and we travelled much. He believed that
intelligent travel was a great educator. He brought us up tremendous
English patriots, but our deepest contentment lay in our Italian life, because
we loved the sun—all of us.
So we oscillated between our Ligurian Riviera and the home counties of
Kent and Surrey, but were never long at a time in any resting place. Our
father’s daughter by his first wife had married, at seventeen, an Italian
officer whose family we met at Nervi, and she settled in Italy, becoming
one of our attractions to the beloved Land. That officer later on joined
Garibaldi, and was killed at the Battle of the Volturno. She never left the
country of her adoption, and that bright lure for us remained.
Although we were very strictly ruled during lessons, we ran rather wild
after, and, looking back, I only wonder that no illness or accident ever befell
us. Our dear Swiss nurse was often scandalised at our escapades, but our
mother, bright and beautiful, loving music and landscape painting, and
practising both with an amateur’s enthusiasm, allowed us what she
considered very salutary freedom after study. Still, I don’t think she would
have liked some of our wild doings and our consortings with Genoese

peasant children and Surrey ploughboys, had she known of them. But,
careful as she was of our physical and spiritual health, she trusted us and
thought us unique.
My memory goes back to the time when I was just able to walk and we
dwelt in a typically English village near Cheltenham. I see myself
pretending to mind two big cart-horses during hay-making, while the fun of
the rake and the pitchfork was engaging others not so interested in horses as
I already was myself. Then I see the Albergo, with vine-covered porch, at
Ruta, on the “saddle” of Porto Fino, that promontory which has been called
the “Queen of the Mediterranean,” where we began our lessons, and, I may
say, our worship of Italy.
Then comes Villa de’ Franchi for two exquisite years, a little nearer
Genoa, at Sori, a palazzo of rose-coloured plaster and white stucco, with
flights of stone steps through the vineyards right down to the sea. That sea
was a joy to me in all its moods. We had our lessons in the balcony in the
summer, and our mother’s piano sent bright melody out of the open
windows of the drawing-room when she wasn’t painting the mountains, the
sea, the flowers. She had the “semi-grand” piano brought out into the
balcony one fullmoon night and played Beethoven’s “Moonlight Sonata”
under those silver beams, while the sea, her audience, in its reflected glory,
murmured its applause.
Often, after the babes were in bed, I cried my heart out when, through
the open windows, I could hear my mother’s light soprano drowned by the
strong tenor of some Italian friend in a duet, during those musical evenings
so dear to the music-loving children of the South. It seemed typical of her
extinction, and I felt a rage against that tenor. Our dear nurse, Amélie,
would come to me with lemonade, and mamma, when apprised of the state
of things, would also come to the rescue, her face, still bright from the
singing, becoming sad and puckered.
A stay at Edenbridge, in Kent, found me very happy riding in big
waggons during hay-making and hanging about the farm stables belonging
to the house, making friends with those splendid cart-horses which
contrasted with the mules of Genoa in so interesting a way. How the
cuckoos sang that summer; a note never heard in Italy. I began writing verse
about that time. Thus:

The gates of Heaven open to the lovely season,

And all the meadows sweet they lie in peace.
We children loved the Kentish beauty of our dear England. Poetry
filtered into our two little hearts wherever we abode, to blossom forth in my
little large-eyed, thoughtful sister in the process of time. To Nervi we went
again, taking Switzerland on the way this time, into Italy by the Simplon
and the Lago Maggiore.
A nice couple of children we were sometimes! At this same Nervi, one
day, we little girls found the village people celebrating a festa at Sant’
Ilario, high up on the foothills of the mountains behind our house. We
mixed in the crowd outside, as the church emptied, and armed ourselves
with branches. Rounding up the children, who were in swarms, we gave
chase. Down, down, through the zone of chestnut trees, down through the
olive woods, down through the vineyards, down to the little town the throng
fled, till, landing them in the street, we went home, remarking on the
evident superior power of the Anglo-Saxon race over the Latin.
As time went on my drawing-books began to show some promise, so
that my father gave me great historical subjects for treatment, but warning
me, in that amused way he had, that an artist must never get spoilt by
celebrity, keeping in mind the fluctuations of popularity. I took all this
seriously. I think that, having no boys to bring up, he tried to put all the
tuition suitable to both boys and girls into us. One result was that as a child
I had the ambition to be a writer as well as a painter. We children were
fanatically devoted to the worship of Charlotte Brontë, since our father had
read us “Jane Eyre” (with omissions). Rather strong meat for babes! We
began sending poetry and prose to divers periodicals and cut our teeth on
rejected MSS.
We went back to Genoa, viâ Jersey (as a little détour!) Poor old
Agostino, our inevitable cook, saw us as we drove from the station, on our
arrival, through the Via Carlo Felice. Worse luck, for he had become too
blind for his work. In days gone by he had done very well and we had not
the heart to cast him off. He ran after our carriage, kissing our hands as he
capered sideways alongside, at the peril of being run over. So we were in
for him again, but it was the last time. On our next visit a friend told us,
“Agostino is dead, thank goodness!” He and our dear nurse, Amélie, used to
have the most desperate rows, principally over religion, he a devout
Catholic and she a Protestant of the true Swiss fibre. They always ended by

wrangling themselves at the highest pitch of their voices into papa’s
presence for judgment. But he never gave it, only begging them to be quiet.
She declared to Agostino that if he got no wages at all he would still make a
fortune out of us by his perquisites; and, indeed, considering we left all
purchases in his hands, I don’t think she exaggerated. The war against
Austria had been won. Magenta, Solferino, Montebello—dear me, how
those names resounded! One day as we were running along the road in our
pinafores near the Zerbino palace, above Genoa, along came Victor
Emmanuel in an open carriage looking very red and blotchy in the heat,
with big, ungloved hands, one of which he raised to his hat in saluting us
little imps who were shouting “Long live the King of Italy!” in English with
all our might. We were only a little previous (!) Then the next year came the
Garibaldi enthusiasm, and we, like all the children about us, became highly
exalted Garibaldians. I saw the Liberator the day before he sailed from
Quarto for his historical landing in Sicily, at the Villa Spinola, in the
grounds of which we were, on a visit at the English consul’s. He was sitting
in a little arbour overlooking the sea, talking to the gardener. In the
following autumn, when his fame had increased a thousandfold, I made a
pen and ink memory sketch of him which my father told me to keep for
future times. I vividly remember, though at the time not able to understand
the extraordinary meaning of the words, hearing one of Garibaldi’s adoring
comrades (one Colonel Vecchii) a year or two later on exclaim to my father,
with hands raised to heaven, “Garibaldi!! C’est le Christ le revolver à la
main!”
Our life at old Albaro was resumed, and I recall the pleasant English
colony at Genoa in those days, headed by the very popular consul, “Monty”
Brown, and the nice Church of England chaplain, the Rev. Alfred Strettell.
Ah! those primitive picnics on Porto Fino, when Mr. Strettell and our father
used to read aloud to the little company, including our precocious selves,
Shakespeare, Wordsworth, Keats, Tennyson, under the vines and olives,
between whose branches, far below the cultivated terraces which we chose
for our repose, appeared the deep blue waters of the Sea of seas. My early
sketch books are full of incidents in Genoese peasant life: carnival revels in
the streets, so suited to the child’s idea of fun; charges of Garibaldian
cavalry on discomfited Neapolitan troops (the despised Borbonici), and
waving of tricolours by bellicose patriots. I was taken to the Carlo Felice
Theatre to see Ristori in “Maria Stuarda,” and became overwhelmed with

adoration of that mighty creature. One night she came on the stage waving a
great red, white, and green tricolour, and recited to a delirious audience a
fine patriotic poem to united Italy ending in the words “E sii Regina
Ancor!” I see her now in an immense crinoline.
A charming autumn sojourn on the lakes of Orta and Maggiore filled our
young minds with beauty. Early autumn is the time for the Italian lakes,
while the vintage is “on” and the golden Indian corn is stored in the open
loggias of the farms, hanging in rich bunches in sun and luminous shade
amongst the flower pots and all the homely odds and ends of these
picturesque dwellings. The following spring was clouded by our return to
England and London in particularly cold and foggy weather, dark with the
London smoke, and our temporary installation in a dismal abode hastily
hired for us by our mother’s father, where we could be close to his pretty
little dwelling at Fulham. My Diary was begun there. Poor little “Mimi” (as
I was called), the pages descriptive of our leaving Albaro at that time are
spotted with the mementos of her tears. The journey itself was a distraction,
for we returned by the long Cornice Route which then was followed by the
Malle Poste and Diligence, the railway being only in course of construction.
It was very interesting to go in that fashion, especially to me, who loved the
horses and watched the changing of our teams at the end of the “stages”
with the intensest zest. I made little sketches whenever halts allowed, and,
as usual, my irrepressible head was out of the Diligence window most of
the time. The Riviera is now known to everybody, and very delightful in its
way. I have not long returned from a very pleasant visit there; everything
very luxurious and up-to-date, but the local sentiment is lessened. The
reason is obvious, and has been laboured enough. One can still go off the
beaten paths and find the true Italy. I have found one funny little sketch
showing our Malle Poste stopping to pick up the mail bag at a village (San
Remo, perhaps), which bag is being handed out of a top window, at night,
by the old postmistress. The Malle Poste evidently went “like the wind,” for
I invariably show the horses at a gallop all along the route.
My misery at the view of our approach to London through that
wilderness of slums that ushers us into the Great Metropolis is all
chronicled, and, what with one thing and another, the Diary sinks for a
while into despondency. But not for long. I cheer up soon.
In London I took in all the amusing details of the London streets, so new
to me, coming from Italy. I seem, by my entries in the Diary, to have been

particularly diverted by the colour of those Dundreary whiskers that the
English “swell” of the period affected. I constantly come upon “Saw no end
of red whiskers.” Then I read, “Mamma and I paid calls, one on Dickens
(sic)—out, thank goodness.” Charles Dickens, whom I dismiss in this
offhand manner, had been a close friend of my father’s, and it was he who
introduced my father to the beautiful Miss Weller (amusing coincidence in
names!) at an amateur concert where she played. The result was rapid. My
vivid memory can just recall Charles Dickens’s laugh. I never heard it
echoed by any other man’s till I heard Lord Wolseley’s. The volunteer
movement was in full swing, and I became even more enthusiastic over the
citizen soldiers than I had been over the Garibaldini. Then there are pages
and pages filled with descriptions of the pictures at the Royal Academy; of
the Zoological Gardens, describing nearly every bird, beast, reptile and fish.
Laments over the fogs and the cold of that dreadful London April and May,
and untiring outbursts in verse of regret for my lost Italy. But I stuffed my
sketch books with British volunteers in every conceivable uniform, each
corps dressed after its own taste. There was a very short-lived corps called
the Six-foot Guards! I sent a design for a uniform to the Illustrated London
News, which was returned with thanks. I felt hurt. Grandpapa attached
himself to the St. George’s Rifles, and went, later on, through storm and
rain and sun in several sham fights. Well, Punch made fun of those good
men and true, but I have lived to know that the “Territorials,” as they came
to be called, were destined in the following century to lend their strong arm
in saving the nation. We next had a breezy and refreshing experience of
Hastings and the joy of rides on the downs with the riding master. London
fog and smoke were blown off us by the briny breezes.

CHAPTER II

EARLY YOUTH

IN December we migrated back to London, and shortly before Christmas
our dear, faithful nurse died. That was Alice’s and my first sense of sorrow,
and, even now, I can’t bear to go over those dreadful days. Our father told
us we would never forgive ourselves if we did not take our last look at her.
He said we were very young for looking on death, but “go, my children,” he
said, “it is right.” I cannot read those heartbroken words with which I fill
page after page of my Diary even now without tears. She had at first
intended to remain at home at Lausanne when my parents were leaving for
England, shortly after my birth, but as she was going I smiled at her from
my cradle. “Ah! Mademoiselle Mimi, ce sourire!” brought her back
irresistibly, and with us she remained to the end.
As we girls grew apace we had a Parisian mistress to try and parisianise
our Swiss French and an Italian master to try and tuscanise our Genoese
Italian, and every Saturday a certain Mr. Standish gave me two hours’ drill
in oil painting. How grand I felt! He gave me his own copies of Landseer’s
horses’ heads and dogs as models. This wasn’t very much, but it was a
beginning. My lessons in the elementary class at the S. Kensington School
of Art are not worth mentioning. The masters gave me hateful scrolls and
patterns to copy, and I relieved my feelings by ornamenting the margins of
my drawing paper with angry scribblings of horses and soldiers in every
variety of fury. That did not last long. This entry in the Diary speaks for
itself:—
“Sunday, March 16th, 1862.—We went to Mr. Lane’s house preparatory
to going to see Millais in his studio. Mr. Richard Lane is an old friend of
papa’s. The middle Miss Lane is a favourite model of Millais’ and very
pretty. We entered his studio, which is hung with rich pre-Raphaelite
tapestry and pre-Raphaelite everything. The smell of cigar smoke prepared
me for what was to come. Millais, a tall, strapping, careless, blunt, frank,
young Englishman, was smoking with two villainous friends, both with
beards—red, of course. Instead of coming to be introduced they sat looking

at Millais’ graceful drawings calling them ‘jolly’ and ‘stunning,’ the
creatures! Millais would be handsome but for his eyes, which are too small,
and his hair is colourless and stands up in curls over his large head but not
encroaching upon his splendid forehead. He seems to know what a
universal favourite he is.” I naturally did not record in this precious piece of
writing a rather humiliating little detail. I wanted the company to see that I
was a bit of a judge of painting, ahem! In fact, a painter myself, and,
approaching very near to the wet picture of “The Ransom” (I think), I began
to scrutinise. Mr. Lane took me gently, but firmly, by the shoulders and
placed me in a distant chair. Had I been told by a seer that in 1875—the
year I painted “Quatre Bras”—this same Millais, after entertaining me at
dinner in that very house, would escort me down those very steps, and, in
shaking hands, was to say, “Good night, Miss Thompson, I shall soon have
the pleasure of congratulating you on your election to the Academy, an
honour which you will t’oroughly deserve”—had I been told this!
Our next halt was in the Isle of Wight, at Ventnor, and then at
Bonchurch, and our house was “The Dell.” Bonchurch was a beautiful
dwelling-place. But, alas! for what I may call the Oxford primness of the
society! It took long to get ourselves attuned to it. However, we got to be
fond of this society when the ice thawed. The Miss Sewells were especially
charming, sisters of the then Warden of New College. Each family took a
pride in the beauty of its house and gardens, the result being a rivalry in
loveliness, enriching Bonchurch with flowers, woods and ornamental
waters that filled us with delight. Mamma had “The Dell” further beautified
to come up to the high level of the others. She made a little garden herself at
the highest point of the grounds, with grass steps, bordered with tall white
lilies, and called it “the Celestial Garden.” The cherry trees she planted up
there for the use of the blackbirds came to nothing. The water-colours she
painted at “The Dell” are amongst her loveliest.

A leaf from a very early sketch-book.

Ventnor was fond of dances, At Homes, and diversions generally, but I
shall never forget my poor mother’s initial trials at the musical parties
where the conversation raged during her playing, rising and sinking with
the crescendos and diminuendos (and this after the worship of her playing
in Italy!), and once she actually stopped dead in the middle of a Mozart and
silence reigned. She then tried the catching “Saltarello,” with the same
result exactly. “The English appreciate painting with their ears and music
with their eyes,” said Benjamin West (if I am not mistaken), the American
painter, who became President of our Royal Academy. This hard saying had
much truth in it, at least in his day. Even in ours they had to be told of the
merits of a picture, and the sight of a pianist crossing his hands when
performing was the signal for exchanges of knowing smiles and nods
amongst the audience, who, talking, hadn’t heard a note. For vocal music,
however, silence was the convention. How we used inwardly to laugh
when, after a song piped by some timid damsel, the music was handed
round so that the words and music might be seen in black and white by the
guests assembled. I thankfully record the fact that as time went on my
mother’s playing seemed at last to command attention, and it being

whispered that silence was better suited to such music, it became quite the
thing to stop talking.
Though Bonchurch was inclined to a moderate High Church tone, its
rector was of a pungent Low-Churchism, and he wrote us and the other girls
who sang in his choir a very severe letter one day ordering us to discontinue
turning to the east in the Creed. We all liked the much more genial and very
beautiful services at Holy Trinity Church, midway to Ventnor, where we
used to go for evensong. The Rev. Mr. G., of Bonchurch, gave us very long
sermons in the mornings, prophesying dismal and alarming things to come,
and we took refuge finally in the Rev. A. L. B. Peile’s more heartening
discourses.
The Ventnor dances were thoroughly enjoyable, and the croquet parties
and the rides with friends, and all the rest of it. Yes, it was a nice life, but
the morning lessons never broke off. No doubt we were precocious, but we
like to dwell on the fact of the shortness of our childhood and the
consequent length of our youth. I now and then come upon funny juvenile
sketch books where I find my Ventnor partners at these dances clashing
with charges of Garibaldian cavalry. There they are, the desirable ones and
the undesirable; the drawling “heavy swell” and the raw stripling; the
handsome and the ugly. The girls, too, are there; the flirt and the wallflower.
They all went in.
These festive Ventnor doings were all very well, but it became more and
more borne in upon me that, if I intended to be a “great artist” (oh!
seductive words), my young ’teens were the right time for study. “Very
well, then—attention!—miss!” No sooner did my father perceive that I
meant business than he got me books on anatomy, architecture, costume,
arms and armour, Ruskin’s inspiring writings, and everything he thought the
most appropriate for my training. But I longed for regular training in some
academy. I chafed, as my Diaries show. For some time yet I was to learn in
this irregular way, petitioning for real severe study till my dear parents
satisfied me at last. “You will be entering into a tremendous ruck of
painters, though, my child,” my father said one day, with a shake of his
head. I answered, “I will single myself out of it.”
So, then, the lovely “Dell” was given up, and soon there began the
happiest period of my girlhood—my life as an art student at South

Kensington; not in the elementary class of unpleasant memory, but in the
“antique” and the “life.”
But our father wanted first to show us Bruges and the Rhine, so we were
off again on our travels in the summer. Two new countries for us girls,
hurrah! and a little glimpse of a part of our own by the way. I find an entry
made at Henley.
“Henley, May 31st.—Before to-day I could not boast with justice of
knowing more than a fraction of England! This afternoon I saw her in one
of her loveliest phases on a row to Medmenham Abbey. Skies of the most
telling effects, ever changing as we rowed on, every reach we came to
revealing fresh beauties of a kind so new to me. The banks of long grass full
of flowers, the farmsteads gliding by, the willows allowed to grow
according to Nature’s intention into exquisitely graceful trees, the garden
lawns sloping to the water’s edge as a delicious contrast to the
predominating rural loveliness, and then that unruffled river! I have seen the
Thames! At Medmenham Abbey we had tea, and one of the most beautiful
parts of the river and meadowland, flowery to overflowing, was seen before
us through the arcades, the sky just there being of the most delicious
dappled warm greys, and further on the storm clouds towered, red in the
low sun. What pictures wherever you turn; and turn and turn and turn we
did, until my eyes ached, on our smooth row back. The evening effects put
the afternoon ones out of my head. I imagined a score of pictures, peopling
the rich, sweet banks with men and women of the olden time. The skies
received double glory and poetry from the perfectly motionless water,
which reflected all things as in a mirror—as if it wasn’t enough to see that
overwhelming beauty without seeing it doubled! At last I could look no
more at the effects nor hear the blackbirds and thrushes that sang all the
way, and, to Mamma’s sympathetic amusement, I covered my eyes and ears
with a shawl. Alas! for the artist, there is no peace for him. He cannot gaze
and peacefully admire; he frets because he cannot ‘get the thing down’ in
paint. Having finished my row in that Paradise, let me also descend from
the poetic heights, and record the victory of the Frenchman. Yes,
‘Gladiateur’ has carried off the blue ribbon of the turf. Upon my word, these
Frenchmen!” It was the first time a French horse had won the Derby.
Bruges was after my own heart. Mediæval without being mouldy, kept
bright and clean by loving restorations done with care and knowledge. No
beautiful old building allowed to crumble away or be demolished to make

room for some dreary hideosity, but kept whole and wholesome for modern
use in all its own beauty. Would that the Italians possessed that same spirit.
My Diary records our daily walks through the beautiful, bright streets with
their curious signs named in Flemish and French, and the charm of a certain
place planted with trees and surrounded by gabled houses. Above every
building or tree, go where you would, you always saw rising up either the
wondrous tower of the Halle (the Beffroi), dark against the bright sky, or the
beautiful red spire on the top of the enormous grey brick tower of Notre
Dame, a spire, I should say, unequalled in the world not only for its lovely
shape and proportions, but for its exquisite style and colour: a delicious red
for its upper part, most refined and delicate, with white lines across, and as
delicate a yellow lower down. Or else you had the grey tower of the
cathedral, plain and imposing, made of small bricks like that of Notre
Dame, having a massive effect one would not expect from the material.
Over the little river, which runs nearly round the town, are oft-recurring
draw-bridges with ponderous grey gates, flanked by two strong, round,
tower-like wings. Most effective. On this river glided barges pulled
painfully by men, who trudged along like animals. I record with horror that
one barge was pulled by a woman! “It was quite painful to see her bent
forward doing an English horse’s work, with the band across her chest,
casting sullen upward glances at us as we passed, and the perspiration
running down her face. From the river diverge canals into the town, and
nothing can describe the beauty of those water streets reflecting the
picturesque houses whose bases those waters wash, as at Venice. When it
comes to seeing two towers of the Halle, two spires of Notre Dame, two
towers of the cathedral, etc., etc., the duplicate slightly quivering
downwards in the calm water! Here and there, as we crossed some canal or
other, one special bit would come upon us and startle us with its beauty.
Such combinations of gables and corner turrets and figures of saints and
little water-side gardens with trees, and always two or more of the towers
and spires rising up, hazy in the golden flood of the evening sun!”
In our month at Bruges I made the most of every hour. It is one of the
few towns one loves with a personal love. I don’t know what it looks like
to-day, after the blight of war that passed over Belgium, but I trust not much
harm was done there. How one trembled for the old beffroi, which one
heard was mined by the Huns when they were in possession.

“August 24th.—Dear, exquisite, lovely, sunny, smiling Bruges, good-
bye! Good-bye, fair city of happy, ever happy, recollections. Bright, gabled
Bruges, we shall not look upon thy like again.”
I will make extracts from my German Diary, as Germany in those days
was still a land of kindly people whom we liked much before they became
spoilt by the Prussianism only then beginning to assert itself over the civil
population. The Rhine, too, was still unspoilt. That part of Germany was
agricultural; not yet industrialised out of its charm. I also think these
extracts, though so crude and “green,” may show young readers how we
can enjoy travel by being interested in all we see. I may become tiresome to
older ones who have passed the Golden Gates, and for some of whom
Rhine or Nile or Seine or Loire has run somewhat dry.

Flying Shots in Belgium and Rhineland in /65.

CHAPTER III

MORE TRAVEL

“ALAS! for railway travellers one approach to a place is like another.
Fancy arriving at Cologne through ragged factory outskirts and being
deposited under a glazed shed from which nothing but the railway objects
can be seen! We made a dash to the cathedral, I on the way remarking the
badly-dressed Düppel heroes (!) with their cook’s caps and tight trousers;
and oh dear! the officers are of a very different mould here from what they
are in Belgium. Big-whiskered fellows with waists enough to make the
Belgians faint. But I am trifling. We went into the cathedral by a most
glorious old portal covered with rich Gothic mouldings. Happy am I to be
able to say I have seen Cologne Cathedral. Now, hurrah for the Rhine! that
river I have so longed, for years, to see.”
We don’t seem to have cared much for Bonn, though I intensely enjoyed
watching the swift river from the hotel garden and the Seven Mountains
beyond. The people, too, amused and interested me very much, and the long
porcelain pipe dangling from every male mouth gave me much matter for
sketching.
My Diary on board the Germania: “Koenigswinter at the foot of the
Dragenfels began that series of exquisite towns at the foot of ruined castles
of which we have had more than a sufficient feast—that is, to be able to do
them all the justice which their excessive beauty calls loudly for. We
rounded the Dragenfels and saw it ‘frowning’ more Byronically than on the
Bonn side, and altogether more impressive. And soon began the vines in all
their sweet abundance on the smiling hill slopes. Romantic Rolandsec
expanded on our right as we neared it, and there stood the fragment of the
ruined castle peering down, as its builder is said to have done, upon the
Convent amidst the trees on its island below. And then how fine looked the
Seven Mountains as we looked back upon them, closing in the river as
though it were a lake, and away we sped from them and left them growing
mistier, and passed russet roofs and white-walled houses with black beams
across, and passed lovely Unkel, picturesque to the core, bordering the

water, and containing a most delicious old church. Opposite rose curious
hills, wild and round, half vine-clad, half bare, and so on to Apollinarisberg
on our right, with its new four-pinnacled church on the hill, above Remagen
and its old church below. The last sight of the Dragenfels was a very happy
one, in misty sunlight, as it finally disappeared behind the near hills. On, on
we went, and passed the dark Erpeler Lei and the round, blasted and dismal
ruin of Okenfels; and Ling, with a cloud-capped mountain frowning over it.
As we glided by the fine restored château of Argenfels and the village of
Hönningen the sky was red with the reflection of the sunset which we could
not see, and was reflected in the swirling river. We did our Rhine pretty
conscientiously by going first aft, then forward, and then to starboard, and
then to port, and glories were always before us, look which way we would.
So the Rhine has not been too much cried up, say what you will, Messrs.
Blasé and Bore. The views were constantly interrupted by the heads of the
lack-lustre people on board, who, just like the visitors at the R.A., hide the
beauties they can’t appreciate from those who long to see them. But it soon
began to grow dark.
“As we glided by Neuwied and stopped to take and discharge passengers
a band was playing the ‘Düppel March,’ so called because the Prussians
played it before Düppel. They are so blatantly proud of having beaten the
Danes and getting Schleswig-Holstein. Fireworks were spluttering, and,
altogether, a great deal of festivity was going on. It was quite black on the
afterdeck by this time, minus lanterns. To go below to the stuffy, lighted
cabin was not to be thought of, so we walked up and down, sometimes
coming in contact with our fellow-man, or, rather, woman, for the men
carried lights at the fore (i.e., at the ends of their cigars). At last, by the
number of lights ahead, we knew we were approaching Coblenz. We went
to the “Giant” Hotel, close to the landing. It was most tantalising to know
that Ehrenbreitstein was towering opposite, invisible, and that such masses
of picturesqueness must be all around. Papa and I had supper in the Speise-
saal, and then I gladly sought my couch, in my sweet room which looked
on the front, after a very enjoyable day.
“Most glorious of glorious days! The theory held so drearily by Messrs.
Blasé and Bore about the mist and rain of the Rhine is knocked on the head.
We were off to Bingen, to my regret, for it was hard to leave such a place as
Coblenz, although greater beauties awaited us further up, perhaps, than we
had yet seen. But I must begin with the morning and record the glorious

sight before us as we looked out of our windows. Strong Ehrenbreitstein
against the pearly, hot, morning sky, the furrowed rock laid bare in many
places, and precipitous, sun-tinted and shadow-stained; the bright little town
just opposite, the hill behind thickly clothed in rich vines athwart which the
sun shone deliciously. The green of the river, too, was beautifully soft. After
breakfast we took that charming invention, an open carriage, and went up to
the Chartreuse, the proper thing to do, as this hill overlooks one of the
views of the world. We went first through part of the town, by the large and
rather ugly King’s Palace, passing much picturesqueness. The women have
very pleasing headdresses about here of various patterns. Of course, the
place is full of soldiers and everything seems fortified. On our ascent we
passed great forts of immense strength, hard nuts for the French to crack, if
they ever have the wickedness (sic) to put their pet notion of the Rhine
being France’s boundary into execution. What a view we had all the way
up; to our left, the winding Rhine disappearing in the distance into the
gorge, its beautiful valley smiling below, and the vine-clad hills rising on
either side, with their exquisite surfaces. Purple shadows, and golden vines,
and walnut trees, that contrast which so often has enchanted my eyes on the
Genoese Riviera, the Italian lakes, and my own dear Lake Leman,
gladdened them once more. And then the really clear sky (no factory
chimneys here) and those intense white clouds casting shadows on the hills
of lovely purple. We went across the wide plateau on the top, a magnificent
exercise ground for the soldiers, health itself, and then we beheld, winding
below us in its sweet valley and by two picturesque villages, the little
Moselle, by no means ‘blue,’ as the song says, but of a pinky brown and
apparently very shallow. We were at a great height, and having got out of
the carriage we stood on the very verge of a sheer precipice, at the far-down
base of which wound the high road. Sweet little Moselle! I was so loth to
leave that view behind. It really does seem such a shame to say so little of
it. The air up there was full of the scent of wild thyme, and mountain
flowers grew thick in that hot sun, and the short mountain grass was brown.
“We descended by another road and were taken right through the town to
the old Moselle bridge which crosses that river near its confluence with the
green Rhine. What turreted corners, what gable ends, what exquisite David
Roberts ‘bits’ at every turn! The bridge and its old gate were a picture in
themselves, and the view from the middle of the bridge of the walls, the old
buildings, church towers and spires, and boats and rafts moored below, was

the essence of the picturesque. Market women and pelotons of soldiers with
glittering helmets and bayonets make excellent foreground groups. How
unlike nearly-deserted Bruges is this busy, thronged city! Oxen are as much
used about here as horses, and add much to the artist’s joy. But I must hurry
on; there is all the glorious Rhine to Bingen to ascend. What a feast of
beauty we have been partaking of since leaving Failure Bonn!
“Lots of people at 1 o’clock table d’hôte: staring Prooshan officers in
‘wings’ and whiskers, more or less tightly clad, talking loud and clattering
their swords unnecessarily; swarms of English and a great many
honeymoon couples of all nations. It was very hot when we left to dive into
that glorious region we had seen from the Chartreuse. Those were golden
hours on board the Lorelei. But more ‘spoons’; more English; more Ya-ing
natives and small boys always in the way, and so we paddled away from
beautiful Coblenz, and very fine did the ‘Broadstone of Honour’ look as we
left it gradually behind. And now we began again the castles and the
villages, the former more numerous than below stream. Happy Mr. Moriarty
to possess such a castle as Lahneck; and then the beautiful town below, and
the gorgeous wooded steep hills and the beautiful tints on the water. Golden
walnut trees on the banks and old church towers—such rich loveliness
gliding by perpetually. The towns are certainly half the battle; they add
immensely to the scene. Rhense was the oldest town we had yet seen, and
the old dark walls are crumbling down. Such bits of archways, such corner
bits, such old age-tinted roofs! I must not pass over Marksburg, the most
perfect old castle on the Rhine, quite unaltered and not quite ruinous, as it is
garrisoned by a corps of Invalides. It therefore looks stronger and grander
than the others. Below the cone which it crowns nestled the inevitable
picturesque town (Braubach) upon the shore.
“Soon after passing this beautiful part we rounded another old village
and church on our right, for the river takes a great bend here. Of course,
new beauties appeared ahead as we swept round, soft purple mountains, one
behind the other, and hillsides golden with vines and walnut trees. And then
we came to Boppart, in the midst of the gorge, one of the most enchanting
old walled towns we had yet seen, with a large water-cure establishment
above it upon the orchard slopes of the hill. Then the old castle called ‘The
Mouse’ drew our attention to the left again, and then to the right appeared,
after we had passed the twin castles of Sternberg and Liebenstein, or the
‘Brothers,’ the magnificent ruin of Rheinfels above the town of St. Goar in

the shadow of the steep hill. How splendidly those blasted arches come out
against the sunny sky! Then ‘The Cat’ appeared on our left, supposed to be
watching ‘The Mouse’ round the corner; then, with the last gleam of the sun
upon it, appeared the castle of ‘Schönberg’ after we had passed the Lorelei
rock, tunnelled through by the railway, and hills glowing in autumn tints.
Sunset colour began to add new charm to mountains, hills, and river. Two
guns were fired in this part of the gorge for the echo. It rolled away like
thunder very satisfactorily. Gutenfels on its rock was splendid in the sunset,
with the town of Caub at its feet, and the curious old tower called the Pfalz
in mid-stream, where poor Louis le Débonnaire came to die. I can hardly
individualise the towns and their over-looking castles that followed. There
was Bacharach, with its curious three-sided towers and church of St.
Werner; then more castles, getting dimmer and dimmer in the deepening
twilight. The last was swallowed up in the night.”
I need not dwell on Bingen. I see us, happy wanderers, dropping down to
Boppart, to halt there for very fondly-remembered days at the water-cure of
“Marienberg,” which we made our habitation for want of an hotel. Being
there I did the “cure” for nothing in particular, but was none the worse for
it. At any rate it passed me as “sound” after the ordeal by water. The ordeal
was severe, and so was the Spartan food. To any one who wasn’t going
through the water ordeal the Spartan food ordeal seemed impossible. But
soon one got to like the whole thing and delight in the freshness of that life
in the warm sunny weather. We both accepted the “Grape Cure” with
unmixed feelings—2 lbs. each of grapes a day; and even the cold, deep
plate of sour milk (dicke milch), sprinkled with brown breadcrumbs, and
that kraut preserve which so dashed us at our first breakfast, became rather
fascinating. We took our pre-breakfast walk on four glasses of cold water,
though, to wet our appetites. I see now, in memory, the swimming baths,
with the blue water rushing through them from the hills, and feel the
exhilaration of the six-in-the-morning plunge. Oh! la jeunesse! La joie de
vivre!
They had dancing every Thursday evening in what was the great vaulted
refectory of the monks before that monastery was secularised. One gala
evening many people came in from outside. The young ladies were in
muslin frocks, which they, no doubt, had washed themselves, and the
ballroom was redolent of soap. The gentlemen went into the drawing-room
after each dance and combed their blond hair and beards at the looking-

glass over the mantelpiece, having brought brush and comb with them. The
next morning I was very elaborately saluted by a man in a blouse, driving
oxen, and I recognised in him one of my partners of the evening before who
had worn the correct frac and white tie. What a strange amalgamation of
democracy and aristocracy we found in Germany! The Diary tells of the
music we had every evening till 10 o’clock and “lights out.” My mother and
one or two typical German musical geniuses—women patients—kept the
piano in constant request, and the evenings were really very bright and the
tone so homely and kind. Kindness was the prevailing spirit which we
noticed amongst the Germans in those far-away days. How they
complimented us all on our halting German; how the women admired our
frocks, especially the buttons! I hope they didn’t expect us to go into equal
ecstasies over their own costumes. We sang and were in great voice,
perhaps on account of the “plunge baths,” or was it the “sour milk”?
A big Saxon cavalry officer who was doing the cure for a kick from a
horse and, being in mufti, had put off his “jack-boot” manners, was full of
enthusiasm about our voices. He expressed himself in graceful pantomime
after each of my songs by pointing to his ear and running his finger down to
his heart, for he spoke neither English nor French, and worshipfully paid
homage to Mamma’s pianoforte playing. She played indeed superbly. He
was a big man. We called him “the Athlete.” We had nicknames for all the
patients. There was “the Sauer-kraut,” there was the “Flighty,” the funniest
little shrivelled creature, a truly wonderful musical genius, who, having
heard me practising one morning, flew to Mamma, telling her she had heard
me go up to Si and that I must make my name as a prima donna—no less.
That Mendelssohn had proposed to her was a treasured memory. Her
mother, with true German pride of birth, forbade the union. There was a
very great dame doing the cure, the “Incog,” who confided her card to
Mamma with an Imperial embrace before leaving, which revealed her as
Marie, Prinzessin zu Hohenzollern Hechingen. Then there was a most
interesting and ugly duellist, who a short time previously had killed a
prince. His wife wore blue spectacles, having cried herself blind over the
regrettable incident. And so on, and so on.
The vintage began, and we visited many a vineyard on both banks of the
rapid, eddying river, watching the peasants at their wholesome work in the
mellowing sunlight. Whenever we bought grapes of these pleasant people,
they insisted on giving us extra bunches gratis in that old-fashioned way so

prevalent in Italy. I record in the Diary one classic-looking youth, with the
sunset gold behind his serious, handsome face, bent slightly over the vine
he was picking, on the hillside where we sat. He seemed the personification
of the sanctity of labour. All this sounds very sentimental to us war-weary
ones of the twentieth century, but we need refreshment in the pleasures of
memory; memory of more secure times. The Diary says:—
“When we left Boppart, Mamma and we two girls were half hidden in
bouquets, and our Marienberg friends clustered at the railway carriage door
and on the step—the ‘Sauer-kraut,’ the ‘Flighty,’ the ‘Athlete’ and all, and,
as we started, the salutations were repeated for the twentieth time, the
‘Athlete’ taking a long sniff of my bouquet, then quickly blocking his nose
hard to keep the scent in, after going through the pantomime of the ear, the
finger, and the heart. As Papa said, ‘One gets quite reconciled to the two-
legged creature when meeting such people as these.’ Good-bye, lovely
Boppart, of ever sweet recollections!”
We tarried at Cologne on our way to England. I see, together with
admiring and elaborate descriptions of the cathedral, a note on the kindly
manners of the Germans, so curiously at variance with the impression left
on the present generation by the episodes of the late war. At the table d’hôte
one evening the two guests who happened to sit opposite our parents, on
opening their champagne at dessert, first insisted on filling the two glasses
of their English vis-à-vis before proceeding to fill their own. German
manners then! The military class kept, however, very much aloof, and were
very irritating to us with their wilfully offensive attitude. That unfortunate
spirit had already taken a further step forward after the conquest of
Schleswig-Holstein, and was to go further still after the knock-down blow
to Austria; then in 1870 comes more arrogance, and so on to its own
undoing in our time.
“Aix la Chapelle.—Good-bye, Cologne, ever to remain bright by the
remembrance of its cathedral and that museum containing pictures which
have so inspired my mind. And so good-bye, dear, familiar Rhine; not the
Rhine of the hurried tourist and his John Murray Red Book, but the glorious
river about whose banks we have so often wandered at our leisure.
“And now ‘Vorwärts, marsch!’ Northwards, to the Land of Roast Beef
plus Rinderpest.[1] But first, Aachen. Ineffable poetry surrounds this
evening of our arrival, for from the three churches which stand out sharp

against the bright moonlight sky in front of the hotel there peal forth many
mellow bells, filling my mind with that sort of sadness so familiar to me.
This is All Hallows’ Eve.
“November 1st.—We saw the magnificent frescoes in the long, low,
arched hall of the Rathhaus, which is being magnificently restored, as is the
case with all the fine things of the Prussia we have seen. We only just
skimmed these great works of art, for the horses were waiting in the pelting
rain.... The first four frescoes we saw were by Rethel, the first representing
the finding of the body of Charlemagne sitting in his tomb on his throne,
crowned and robed, holding the ball and sceptre; a very impressive subject,
treated with all its requisite poetry and feeling. The next fresco represents in
a forcible manner Charlemagne ordering a Saxon idol to be broken; the
third is a superb episode from the Battle of Cordova, where Charlemagne is
wresting the standard from the Infidel. The horses are all blindfolded, not to
be frightened by the masks which the enemy had prepared to frighten them
with. The great white bulls which draw the chariot are magnificently
conceived. The fourth fresco represents the entry of the great emperor—
whose face, by the by, lends itself well to the grand style of art—into Pavia;
a superb composition, as, indeed, they all are. After painting this the artist
lost his senses. No doubt such efforts as these may have caused his mind to
fail at last. He had supplied the compositions for the other four frescoes
which Kehren has painted, without the genius of the originator. We were
shown the narrow little old stone staircase up which all those many German
emperors came to the hall. I could almost fancy I saw an emperor’s head
coming bobbing up round the bend, and a figure in Imperial purple appear.
Strange that such a steep little winding staircase should be the only
approach to such a splendid hall. The new staircase, up which a different
sort of monarch from the old German emperors came a few days ago, in
tight blue and silver uniform, is indeed in keeping with the hall, and should
have been trodden by the emperors, whereas this old cad of a king[2] (sic)
would get his due were he to descend the little old worn stair head
foremost.”
At Brussels my entry runs: “November 3rd.—My birthday. I feel too
much buoyed up with the promise of doing something this year to feel as
wretched as I might have felt at the thought of my precious ‘teens dribbling
away. Never say die; never, never, never! This birthday is ever to be marked
by our visit to Waterloo, which has impressed me so deeply. The day was

most enjoyable, but what an inexpressibly sad feeling was mixed with my
pleasure; what thoughts came crowding into my mind on that awful field,
smiling in the sunshine, and how, even now, my whole mind is
overshadowed with sadness as I think of those slaughtered legions, dead
half a century ago, lying in heaps of mouldering bones under that
undulating plain. We had not driven far out of Brussels when a fine old man
with a long white beard, and having a stout stick for scarcely-needed
support, and from whose waistcoat dangled a blue and red ribbon with a
silver medal attached bearing the words ‘Wellington’ and ‘Waterloo,’
stopped the carriage and asked whether we were not going to the Field and
offering his services as guide, which we readily accepted, and he mounted
the box. This was Sergeant-Major Mundy of the 7th Hussars, who was
twenty-seven when he fought on that memorable 18th June, 1815. In time
we got into the old road, that road which the British trod on their way to
Quatre Bras, ten miles beyond Waterloo, on the 16th. We passed the forest
of Soignies, which is fast being cleared, and at no very distant period, I
suppose, merely the name will remain. What a road was this, bearing a
history of thousands of sad incidents! We visited the church at Waterloo
where are the many tablets on the walls to the memory of British officers
and men who died in the great fight. Touching inscriptions are on them. An
old woman of eighty-eight told us that she had tended the wounded after the
battle. Is it possible! There she was, she who at thirty-eight had beheld
those men just half a century ago! It was overpowering to my young mind.
The old lady seems steadier than the serjeant-major, eleven years her junior,
and wears a brown wig. Thanks to the old sergeant, we had no bothering
vendors of ‘relics.’ He says they have sold enough bullets to supply a dozen
battles.
“We then resumed our way, now upon more historic ground than ever,
the field of the battle proper. The Lion Mound soon appeared, that much
abused monument. Certainly, as a monument to mark where the Prince of
Orange was wounded in the left shoulder it is much to be censured,
particularly with that Belgian lion on the top with its paw on Belgium,
looking defiance towards France, whose soldiers, as the truthful old
sergeant expressed himself, ‘could any day, before breakfast, come and
make short work of the Belgians’ (sic). But I look upon this pyramid as
marking the field of the fifteenth decisive battle of the world. In a hundred
years the original field may have been changed or built upon, and then the

mound will be more useful than ever as marking the centre of the battlefield
that was. To make it much ground has been cut away and the surface of one
part of the field materially lowered. On being shown the plan for this ‘Lion
Mound,’ Wellington exclaimed, ‘Well, if they make it, I shall never come
here again,’ or something to that effect, and, as old Mundy said, ‘the Duke
was not one to break his word, and he never did come again.’ Do you know
that, Sir Edwin Landseer, who have it in the background of your picture of
Wellington revisiting the field? We drove up to the little Hotel du Musée,
kept by the sergeant’s daughter, a dejected sort of person with a glib tongue
and herself rather grey. We just looked over Sergeant Cotton’s museum, a
collection of the most pathetic old shakos and casques and blundering
muskets, with pans and flints, belonging to friend and foe; rusty bullets and
cannon balls, mouldering bits of accoutrements of men and horses, evil-
smelling bits of uniforms and even hair, under glass cases; skulls perforated
with balls, leg and arm bones in a heap in a wooden box; extracts from
newspapers of that sensational time, most interesting; rusty swords and
breastplates; medals and crosses, etc., etc., a dismal collection of relics of
the dead and gone. Those mouldy relics! Let us get out into the sunshine.
Not until, however, the positive old soldier had marshalled us around him
and explained to us, map in hand, the ground and the leading features of the
battle he was going to show us.
“We then went, first, a short way up the mound, and the old warrior in
our midst began his most interesting talk, full of stirring and touching
anecdotes. What a story was that he was telling us, with the scenes of that
story before our eyes! I, all eagerness to learn from the lips of one who took
part in the fight, the story of that great victory of my country, was always
throughout that long day by the side of the old hussar, and drank in the
stirring narrative with avidity. There lay before us the farm of La Haie
Sainte—‘lerhigh saint’ as he called it—restored to what it was before the
battle, where the gallant Germans held out so bravely, fighting only with the
bayonet, for when they came to load their firearms, oh, horror! the
ammunition was found to be too large for the muskets, and was, therefore,
useless. There the great Life Guard charge took place, there is the grave of
the mighty Shaw, and on the skyline the several hedges and knolls that
mark this and that, and where Napoleon took up his first position. And there
lies La Belle Alliance where Wellington and Blücher did not meet—oh, Mr.
Maclise!—and a hundred other landmarks, all pointed out by the notched

stick of old Mundy. The stories attached to them were all clearly related to
us. After standing a long time on the mound until the man of discipline had
quite done his regulation story, with its stirring and amusing touches and its
minute details, we descended and set off on our way to Hougoumont. What
a walk was that! On that space raged most of the battle; it was a walk
through ghosts with agonised faces and distorted bodies, crying noiselessly.
“Our guide stopped us very often as we reached certain spots of leading
interest, one of them—the most important of all—being the place where the
last fearful tussle was made and the Old Guard broke and ran. There was
the field, planted with turnips, where our Guards lay down, and I could not
believe that the seemingly insignificant little bank of the road, which sloped
down to it, could have served to hide all those men until I went down and
stooped, and then I understood, for only just the blades of the grass near me
could I see against the sky. Our Guards must indeed have seemed to start
out of the ground to the bewildered French, who were, by the by, just then
deploying. That dreadful V formed by our soldiers, with its two sides and
point pouring in volley after volley into the deploying Imperial Guard, must
have indeed been a ‘staggerer,’ and so Napoleon’s best soldiers turned tail,
yelling ‘Sauve qui peut!’ and ran down that now peaceful undulation on the
other side of the road.
“Many another spot with its grim story attached did I gaze at, and my
thoughts became more and more overpowering. And there stood a survivor
before us, relating this tale of a battle which, to me, seems to belong to the
olden time. But what made the deepest impression on my mind was the
sergeant’s pointing out to us the place where he lay all night after the battle,
wounded, ‘just a few yards from that hedge, there.’ I repeat this to myself
often, and always wonder. We then left that historic rutted road and,
following a little path, soon came, after many more stoppages, to the outer
orchard of Hougoumont. Victor Hugo’s thoughts upon this awful place
came crowding into my mind also. Yet the place did look so sweet and
happy: the sun shining on the rich, velvety grass, chequered with the shade
of the bare apple trees, and the contented cows grazing on the grass which,
on the fearful day fifty years ago, was not green between the heaps of dead
and dying wretches.
“Ah! the wall with the loopholes. I knew all about it and hastened to
look at it. Again all the wonderful stratagems and deeds of valour, etc., etc.,
were related, and I have learnt the importance, not only of a little hedge, but

of the slightest depression on a battlefield. Riddled with shot is this old
brick wall and the walls of the farm, too. Oh! this place of slaughter, of
burning, of burying alive, this place of concentrated horror! It was there that
I most felt the sickening terror of war, and that I looked upon it from the
dark side, a thing I have seldom had so strong an impulse to do before. The
farm is peaceful again and the pigs and poultry grunt and cluck amongst the
straw, but there are ruins inside. There’s the door so bravely defended by
that British officer and sergeant, hanging on its hinges; there’s the well
which served as a grave for living as well as dead, where Sergeant Mundy
was the last to fill his canteen; and there’s the little chapel which served as
an oven to roast a lot of poor fellows who were pent up there by the fire
raging outside. We went into the terror-fraught inner orchard, heard more
interesting and saddening talk from the old soldier who says there is
nothing so nice as fighting one’s battles over again, and then we went out
and returned to the inn and dined. After that we streamed after our mentor
to the Charleroi road, just to glance at the left part of the field which the
sergeant said he always liked going over the best. ‘Oh!’ he said, looking
lovingly at his pet, ‘this was the strongest position, except Hougoumont.’ It
was in this region that Wellington was moved to tears at the loss of so many
of his friends as he rode off the field. Papa told me his memorable words on
that occasion: ‘A defeat is the only thing sadder than a victory.’ What a
scene of carnage it was! We looked at poor Gordon’s monument and then
got into our carriage and left that great, immortal place, with the sun
shedding its last gleams upon it. I feel virtuous in having written this much,
seeing what I have done since. We drove back, in the clear night, I a wiser
and a sadder girl.”
About this same Battle of Waterloo. Before the Great War it always
loomed large to me, as it were from the very summit of military history,
indeed of all history. During the terrible years of the late War I thought my
Waterloo would diminish in grandeur by comparison, and that the awful
glamour so peculiar to it would be obliterated in the fumes of a later terror.
But no, there it remains, that lurid glamour glows around it as before, and
for the writer and for the painter its colour, its great form, its deep tones,
remain. We see through its blood-red veil of smoke Napoleon fall. There
never will be a fall like that again: it is he who makes Waterloo colossal.

CHAPTER IV

IN THE ART SCHOOLS

AFTER tarrying in Brussels, doing the galleries thoroughly, we went to
Dover. I had been anything but in love with the exuberant Rubenses
gathered together in one surfeited room, but imbibed enthusiastic stimulus
from some of the moderns. I write: “Oh! that I had time to tell of my
admiration of Ambroise Thomas’ ‘Judas Iscariot,’ of Charles Verlat’s
wonderful ‘Siege of Jerusalem by Godfrey of Bouillon,’ with its strikingly
terrible incidents, given with wonderful vividness, so free from coarseness;
of Tshaggeny’s ‘Malle Poste,’ with its capital horses. There was not much
study to be done in the time, but enthusiasm to be caught, and I caught it.”
At Dover I find myself saying: “Still at my drawing of the soldiers
working at the new fort on the cliff, just outside the castle, which forms the
background of the scene. I am sending it to the Illustrated London News.”
Then, a few days later: “Woe is me! my drawing is returned with the usual
apologies. Well, never mind, the world will hear of me yet.” And there,
above my “diminished head,” right over No. 2, Sydney Villas, our
temporary resting-place, stood that very castle, biding its time when it
should receive me as its official châtelaine, and all through that art which I
was so bent on.
At Brompton I said “good-bye” to a year to me very bright and full of
adventure; a year rich in changes, full of varied scenes and emotions. I say:
“Enter, 1866, bearing for me happy promise for my future, for to-day I had
the interview with Mr. Burchett, the Headmaster of the South Kensington
School of Art, and everything proved satisfactory and sunny. First, Papa and
I trotted off to Mr. Burchett’s office and saw him, a bearded, velvet-skull-
capped and cold-searching-eyed man. After a little talk, we galloped off
home, packed the drawings and the oil, then, Mamma with us, we returned,
and came into The Presence once more. The office being at the end of the
passage of the male schools, I could see, and envy, the students going about.
So the drawings were scrutinised by that Eye, and I must say I never
expected things to go so well. Of course, this austere, rigid master is not one

to say much, but, on the contrary, to dwell upon the shortcomings and
weaknesses; to have no pity. He looked longer at my soldiers at work at
Dover Castle and some hands that I had done yesterday, saying they showed
much feeling. He said he did not know whether I only wished to make my
studies superficial, but strongly advised me to become an artist. I scarcely
needed such advice, I think, but it was very gratifying. I told him I wished
for severe study, and that I did not wish to begin at the wrong end. We were
a long time talking, and he was very kind, and told me off to the Life
School after preliminary work in the Antique. I join to-morrow. I now really
feel as though fairly launched. Ah! they shall hear of me some day. But,
believe me, my ambition is of the right sort.
“January 2nd.—A very pleasant day for me. At ten marched off, with
board, paper, chalk, etc., etc., to the schools, and signed my name and went
through all the rest of the formalities, and was put to do a huge eye in chalk.
I felt very raw indeed, never having drawn from a cast before. Everything
was strange to me. I worked away until twenty minutes to two, when I sped
home to have my lunch. Five hours’ work would be too long were I not to
break the time by this charming spin home and back in the open air, which
makes me set to work again with redoubled energy and spirits sky-high. A
man comes round at a certain time to the rooms to see by the thermometer
whether the temperature is according to rule, which is a very excellent
precaution; 65° seems to be the fixed degree. Of course, I did not make any
friends to-day; besides, we sit far apart, on our own hooks, and not on
forms. Much twining about of arms and darling-ing, etc., went on, however,
but we all seem to work here so much more in earnest than over those
dreary scrolls in the Elementary. One girl in our room was a capital hit,
short hair brushed back from a clever forehead and a double eyeglass on an
out-thrust nose. Then there is a dear little pale girl, with a pretty head and
large eyes, who is struggling with that tremendous ‘Fighting Gladiator.’ She
and he make a charming motif for a sketch. But I am too intent on my work
to notice much. The skeleton behind me seems, with outstretched arm, to
encourage me in my work, and smiles (we won’t say grins) upon me, whilst
behind him—it?—the écorché man seems to be digging his grave, for he is
in the attitude of using a spade. But enough for to-day. I was very much
excited all day afterwards. And no wonder, seeing that my prayer for a
beginning of my real study has now been granted and that I am at length on
the high road. Oh, joy, joy!

“January 15th.—Did very well at the schools. Upon my word, I am
getting on very smoothly. I peeped into the Life room for the first time
whilst work was going on, and beheld a splendid halberdier standing above
the girls’ heads and looking very uncomfortable. He had a steel headpiece
and his hands were crossed upon the hilt of his sword in front, and his face,
excessively picturesque with its grizzly moustache, was a tantalising sight
for me!
“January 16th.—Oh, how I am getting on! I can’t bear to look at my old
things. Was much encouraged by Mr. Burchett, who talked to me a good
deal, the mistress standing deferentially and smilingly by. He said, ‘Ah! you
seem to get over your difficulties very well,’ and said with what immense
satisfaction I shall look back upon this work I’m doing. Altogether it was
very encouraging, and he said this last thing of mine was excellent. He
remarked that my early education in those matters had been neglected, but I
console myself with the thought that I have not wasted my time so utterly,
for all the travel I have had all my life has put crowds of ideas into my
head, and now I am learning how to bring those ideas to good account.
“January 24th.—I shall soon have done the big head and shall soon
reach a full-length statue, and I shall go in for anatomy rather than give so
much time to this shading which the students waste so much time over. I
don’t believe in carrying it so far. The little pale girl I like, on the
completion of her gladiator, has been promoted to the Life class. A girl
made friends with me, a big grenadier of a girl, who says she wants to know
‘all about the joints and muscles’ and seems a ‘thoroughgoer’ like myself.”
This is how I write of dear Miss Vyvyan, a fine, rosy specimen of a well-
bred English girl, who became one of my dearest fellow students—and
drew well. In writing of me after I had come out in the art world, she
records this meeting in words all the more deserving of remembrance for
being those of a voice that is still. Of my other fellow-students the Diary
will have more to say, left to its own diction.
“February 13th.—It is very pleasant at the schools—oh, charming! In
coming home at the end of my work I fell in with Mr. Lane, my friend in
the truest sense of the word. He was coming over to us. His first inquiry
was about me and my work. He was very much disappointed that I was not
in the Life class, fully expecting that I should be there, seeing how highly
Mr. Burchett twice spoke of my drawings to Mr. Lane, and that I was quite

ready for the Life. But, of course, Mr. B. is desirous of putting me as much
through the regular course as possible. Mr. Lane shares Millais’ opinion that
‘the antique is all very well, but that there is nothing like the living model,
and that they are too fond of black and white at the Museum.’ I was enrolled
as a member of the Sketching Club this morning, and have only a week to
do ‘On the Watch’ in, the title they have given us to illustrate. Only a week,
Mimi? That’s an age to do a sketch in! Ah! yes, my dear, but I shall have
five hours in the schools every day except Saturdays. I have chosen for
subject a freebooter in a morion and cloak upon a bony horse, watching the
plain below him as night comes on, with his blunderbus ready cocked.
Wind is blowing, and makes the horse’s mane and tail to stream out.”
There follow pages and pages describing the daily doings at the schools:
the commotion amongst girls at the drawings I used to bring to show them
of battle scenes; the Sketching Club competitions, and all the work and the
play of an art school. At last I was promoted to the Life class.
“March 19th.—Oh, joyous day! oh, white! oh, snowy Monday! or
should I say golden Monday? I entered the Life this joyous morn, and,
what’s more, acquitted myself there not only to my satisfaction (for how
could I be satisfied if the masters weren’t?), but to Mr. Denby’s and the oil
master’s par excellence, Mr. Collinson’s. I own I was rather diffident,
feeling such a greenhorn in that room, but I may joyfully say ‘So far, so
good,’ and do my very best of bests, and I can’t fail to progress. How
willingly I would write down all the pleasant incidents that occur every day,
and those, above all, of to-day, which make this delightful student life I am
leading so bright and happy and amusing. However, I shall write down all
that my spare moments will allow me. Little ‘Pale Face’ took me in hand
and got me a nice position quite near the sitter, as I am only to do his head.
There was a good deal of struggling as the number of girls increased, and
late comers tried amicably to badger me out of my good position. We
waited more than half an hour for the sitter, and beguiled the time as we are
wont. Three semi-circles surround the sitter and his platform. The inner and
smaller circle is for us who do his head only, and is formed by desks and
low chairs; the next is formed by small fixed easels, and the outer one by
the loose-easel brigade, so there are lots of us at work. At length the martyr
issued from the curtained closet where Messrs. Burchett, Denby and
Collinson had been helping the unhappy victim to make a lobster of his
upper self with heavy plates of armour. He became sadly modern below the

waist, for his nether part was not wanted. To see Mr. Denby pinning on the
man’s refractory Puritan starched collar was rich. The model is a small man,
perfectly clean shaven with a most picturesque face; quite a study. Very
finely-chiselled mouth, with thin lips and well-marked chin and jaw. The
poor fellow was dreadfully nervous. He was posed standing, morion on
head, with a book in one hand, the other raised as though he were
discoursing to some fellow soldiers—may-be Covenanters—in a camp. I
never saw a man in such agony as he evinced, his nervousness seeming at
times to overpower him, and the weight of the armour and of the huge
morion (too big for him) told upon him in a painfully evident manner. He
was, consequently, allowed frequent rests, when down his trembling arm
would clatter and the instrument of torture on his heated forehead come
down with a great thump on the table. Mr. Denby was much pleased with
my drawing in, and Mr. Collinson commended my carefulness. This pleases
me more than anything else, for I know that carefulness is the most
essential quality in a student.
“March 27th.—Mr. Burchett showed me how to proceed with the
finishing of the face. He liked the way I had done the morion, which
astonished me, as I had done it all unaided. I am now a friend of more girls
than I can individualise, and they seem all to like me. ‘Little Pale Face’ is
very charming with me indeed. One girl told me a dream she had had of me,
and Mrs. C., wife of the Athenæum art critic, clapped me on the back very
cordially.”
I give these extracts just to launch the Memoirs into that student life
which was of such importance to me. Till the Easter vacation I did all I
could to retrieve what I considered a good deal of leeway in my art training.
There were Sketching Club competitions of intense effort on my part, and
how joyful I felt at such events as my illustrations to Thackeray’s
“Newcomes” coming through marked “Best” by the judges.
“May 9th.—Veni, vidi, vici! My re-entry into the schools after the
vacation has been a triumphal one, for my ‘Newcomes’ have been returned
‘The Best.’ The girls were so glad to see me back. I have chosen, as there is
not to be a model till next Monday week, a beautiful headpiece of elaborate
design on whose surface the red drapery near it is reflected. Some time after
lunch Mrs. C. came running to me from the Antique triumphantly waving a
bunch of lilac above her head and crying out that my ‘Newcomes’ had won!
I jumped up, overjoyed, and went to see the sketches, around which a

crowd of students was buzzing. Mr. Denby, who couldn’t help knowing
whose the ‘Best’ were, gave me a nod of approbation. I was very happy.
Returning to Fulham, I told the glad tidings to Papa, Mamma, Grandpapa
and Grandmamma as they each came in. So this has been a charming day
indeed.”
Page after page, closely written, describes the student life, than which
there cannot be a happier one for a boy or girl; thorough searchings through
the Royal Academy rooms for everything I could find for instruction,
admiration and criticism. I joined a class in Bolsover Street for the study of
the “undraped” female model, and worked very hard there on alternate
days. This necessitated long omnibus rides to that dismal locality, but I
always managed to post myself near the omnibus door, so as to study the
horses in motion in the crowded streets from that coign of vantage. I also
joined a painting class in Conduit Street, but that venture was not a success.
I went in about the same time for very thorough artistic anatomy at the
schools. I gave sketches to nearly all my fellow students—fights round
standards, cavalry charges, thundering guns. I wonder where they are all
now! I had always had a great liking for the representation of movement,
but at the same time a deep well of melancholy existed in my nature, and
caused me to draw from its depths some very sad subjects for my sketches
and plans for future pictures. How strange it seems that I should have been
so impregnated, if I may use the word, with the warrior spirit in art, seeing
that we had had no soldiers in either my father’s or mother’s family! My
father had a deep admiration for the great captains of war, but my mother
detested war, though respecting deeply the heroism of the soldier. Though
she and I had much in common, yet, as regards the military idea, we were
somewhat far asunder; my dear and devoted mother wished to see me lean
towards other phases of art as well, especially the religious phase, and my
Italian studies in days to come very much inclined me to sacred subjects.
But as time went on circumstances conducted me to the genre militaire, and
there I have remained, as regards my principal oil paintings, with few
exceptions. My own reading of war—that mysteriously inevitable
recurrence throughout the sorrowful history of our world—is that it calls
forth the noblest and the basest impulses of human nature. The painter
should be careful to keep himself at a distance, lest the ignoble and vile
details under his eyes should blind him irretrievably to the noble things that
rise beyond. To see the mountain tops we must not approach the base,

where the foot-hills mask the summits. Wellington’s answer to enthusiastic
artists and writers seeking information concerning the details of his
crowning victory was full of meaning: “The best thing you can do for the
Battle of Waterloo is to leave it alone.” He had passed along the dreadful
foot-hills which blocked his vision of the Alps.
I worked hard at the schools and in the country throughout 1867, and,
with many ups and downs, progressed in the Life class. My fellow students
were a great delight to me, so enthusiastically did they watch my progress
and foretell great things for me. We formed a little club of four or five
students—kindred spirits—for mutual help and all sorts of good deeds, the
badge being a red cross and the motto “Thorough.” I remember a money-
box into which we were, by the rules, to drop what coins we could spare for
the Poor. We were to read a chapter of the New Testament every day, and a
chapter of Thomas à Kempis, and all our works were to be signed with the
red cross and the club monogram. Seeing this little sign in the corner of
“The Roll Call” over my name set one of those absurd stories circulating in
the Press with which the public was amused in 1874, namely, that I had
been a Red Cross nurse in the Crimea. As a counterpoise to this more
“copy” was obtained for the papers by paragraphs representing me as an
infant prodigy, which I thank my stars I was not!
One day in this year 1867 I had, with great trepidation, asked Mr.
Burchett to accept two pen and ink illustrations I had made to Morris’s
poem, “Riding together.” Great commotion amongst the students. Some
preferred the drawing for the gay and happy first verse:

Our spears stood bright and thick together,
Straight out the banners streamed behind,
As we galloped on in the sunny weather,
With our faces turned towards the wind.

and others the tragic sequel:

They bound my blood-stained hands together,
They bound his corpse to nod by my side,
Then on we rode in the bright March weather,
With clash of cymbal did we ride.

The Diary says: “Mr. Burchett, surrounded by my dear fellow red
crosses, Va., B., and Vy., talked about the drawings in a way which pleased
me very much. When he was gone, Va. and B. disappeared and soon
reappeared, Va. with a crown of leaves to crown me with and B. with a
comb and some paper on which to play ‘See the Conquering Hero comes’
whilst Va. and Vy. should carry me along the great corridor in a dandy chair.
They had great trouble to crown me, and then to get me to mount. It was a
most uncomfortable triumphal progress, Vy. being nearly six foot and Va.
rather short. They just put me down in time, for, had we gone an inch
further on, we should have confronted Miss Truelock,[3] who swooped
round the corner. I cannot describe the homage these three pay me, Va.’s in
particular—Vy.’s is measured, and not humble like Va.’s or radiantly
enthusiastic like B.’s. I am glad that I stand proof against all this, but it is
hard to do so, as I know it is so thoroughly sincere, and that they say even
more out of my hearing than to my face.”
The Sultan Abdul Aziz and the Khedive Ismail paid a visit to London
that year. We were in the midst of the festivities; and such church-bell
ringing, fireworks, musical uproar, especially at the Crystal Palace, where
the “Hallelujah,” “Moses in Egypt,” and other Biblical choruses vied with
the cheering of the crowds in expressions of exultation, seldom had London
known. This fills pages and pages of the Diary. As we looked on from
Willis and Sotheran’s shop window, out of which all the books had been
cleared for us, in Trafalgar Square, at the arrival of the “Father of the
Faithful,” it seemed a strange thing for the bells of our churches to be
pealing forth their joyous welcome. But how vain all these political doings
appear as time goes by! What sort of reception would we give the present
Sultan I wonder? We have even abolished Khedives. Much more reasonable
and sane was the mob’s welcome to the Belgian volunteers, who were also
England’s guests that year. We English were very courteous to the Belgians.
Papa took us to the great Belgian ball, where we appeared wearing red,
black, and yellow sashes. He offered to hold a Belgian officer’s sword for
him while he (the Belgian) waltzed me round the hall. A silver medal was
struck to commemorate this visit, and every Belgian was presented with this
decoration. On it were engraved the words “Vive La Belge.” No one could
tell who the lady was.
This year saw my meek beginning in the showing of an oil picture
(“Horses in Sunshine”) at the Women Artists’ Exhibition, and then followed

a water colour, “Bavarian Artillery going into Action,” at the Dudley
Gallery—that delightful gallery which is now no more and which The Times
designated the “nursery of young reputations.” I continued exhibiting water
colours and black-and-whites for some years there. I had the rare sensation
of walking on air when my father, meeting me on parting with Tom Taylor,
the critic of The Times, told me the latter had just come from the Dudley’s
press view and seen my “Bavarian Artillery” on its walls. I had begun!
In the latter part of this year’s work at South Kensington Mr. Burchett
stirred us up by giving us “time” and “memory” drawing to do from the
antique, and many things which required quickness, imagination and
concentration, all of which suited me well. Charcoal studies on tinted paper
delighted me. I was always at home in such things. We often had “time”
drawings to do on very rough paper, using charcoal with the hog’s hair paint
brush. What a good change from the dawdling chalk work formerly in
vogue when I joined. I had by this time painted my way in oils through
many models, male and female, with all the ups and downs recorded
elaborately, the encouragements and depressions, and the happy, though
slow, progress in the management of the brush. I had won a medal for two
life-size female heads in oils, and through all the ups and downs the
devotion of my dear “Red Cross” fellow students never fluctuated.
The year 1868 saw me steadily working away at the Schools and doing a
great many drawings for sketching clubs and various competitions during
this period, till we were off once more to Italy in October. On March 19th
of that year I wrote in the Diary: “Ruskin has invited himself to tea here on
Monday!!!” Then: “Memorable Monday. On thee I was introduced to
Ruskin! Punctually at six came the great man. If I had been disposed to be
nervous with him, his cold formal bow and closing of the eyes, his
somewhat supercilious under-lip and sensitive nostrils would not have put
me at my ease. But, fortunately, I felt quite normal—unlike Mamma and
Alice, the latter of whom had reason for quaking, seeing that one of her
young poems, sent him by a friend, had been scanned by that eye and
pondered by that greatest of living minds.
“He sat talking a little, not commonplaces at all; on the contrary, he
immediately began on great topics, Mamma and he coinciding all through,
particularly on the subject of modern ugliness, railways, factory chimneys,
backs of English houses, sash windows, etc., etc. Then he directed his talk
to me, and we sat talking together about art, of course, and I showed him

two life studies, which he expressed himself as exceedingly pleased with in
a very emphatic manner. But here we went down to tea. After tea I showed
him my imaginative drawings, which he criticised a good deal. He said
there was no reason why I should not become a great artist (!), that I was
‘destined to do great things.’ But he remarked, after this too kindly
beginning, that it was evident I had not studied enough from nature in those
drawings, the light and shade being incorrect and the relations of tones, etc.,
etc. He told me to beware of sensational subjects, as yet, à propos of the
Lancelot and Guinevere drawing; that such were dangerous, leading me to
think I had quite succeeded by virtue of the strength of my subject and to
overlook the consideration of minor points. He said, ‘Do fewer of these
things, but what you do do right and never mind the subject.’ I did not like
that; my great idea is that an artist should choose a worthy subject and
concentrate his attention on the chief point. But Ruskin is a lover of
landscape art and loves to see every blade of grass in a foreground lovingly
dwelt upon. I cannot write down all he said as he and I leant over the piano
where my drawings were. But it was with my artillery water colour, ‘The
Crest of the Hill,’ that he was most pleased. He knelt down before it where
it hung low down and held a candle before it the better to see it, and
exclaimed ‘Wonderful!’ two or three times, and said it had ‘immense
power.’ Thank you, Dudley Gallery, for not hanging it where Ruskin would
never have seen it!
“He listened to Mamma’s playing and Alice’s singing of Mamma’s ‘Ave
Maria’ with perfectly absorbed attention, and seemed to enjoy the lovely
sounds. He had many kind things to say to Alice about her poem, saying
that he knew she was forced to write it; but was she always obliged to write
so sadly? Then he spied out Mamma’s pictures, and insisted on seeing lots
of her water colours, which I know he must have enjoyed more than my
imaginative things, seeing with what humble lovingness Mamma paints her
landscapes. In fact, we showed him our paces all the evening. Papa says he
(P.) was like the circus man, standing in the middle with the long whip,
touching us up as we were trotted out before the great man. He seems, by
the by, to have a great contempt for the modern French school, as I
expected.”
Daily records follow of steady work, much more to the purpose than in
the humdrum old days. Mr. Burchett continued the new system with
increasing energy. He seemed to have taken it up in our Life class with real

pleasure latterly. In July the session ended, and I was not to re-enter the
schools till after my Italian art training had brought me a long way forward.

CHAPTER V

STUDY IN FLORENCE

ITALY once more! Again the old palazzo at Albaro and the old friends
surrounding us! My work never relaxed, for I set up a little studio and went
in for life-size heads, and got more and more facility with the brush. The
kindly peasants let me paint them, and I victimised my obliging friends and
had professional models out from Genoa. That was a very greatly enjoyed
autumn, winter and spring, and the gaieties of the English Colony, the
private theatricals, the concerts at Villa Novello—all those things did me
good. The childish carnival revels had still power over me—yea, more—
though I was grown up, and, to tell the truth, I got all the fun out of them
that was possible within bounds. “The Red Cross Sketch Book,” which I
filled with illustrations of our journey out and of life at Genoa, I dedicated
to the club and sent to them when we left for Florence.
We found Genoa just as we had left it, still the brilliantly picturesque city
of the sea, its populace brightly clad in their Ligurian national dress, the
women still wearing the pezzotto, and the men the red cap I loved; the port
all delightful with oriental character, its shouting muleteers and facchini, its
fruit and flower sellers in the narrow streets and entrances to the palaces—
all the old local colour. Alas! I was there only the other day, and found all
the local charm had gone—modernised away!
When we left Genoa in April my father tried to get a vetturino to take us
as far as Pisa by road on our way to Florence, for auld lang syne, but
Antonio—he who used to drive us into Genoa in the old days—said that
was now impossible on account of the railway—“Non ci conviene,
signore!”—but he would take us as far as Spezzia. So, to our delight, we
were able once more to experience the pleasures of the road and avoid that
truly horrible series of suffocating tunnels that tries us so much on that
portion of the coastline. At Sestri Levante I wrote: “I sit down at this
pleasant hotel, with the silent sea glimmering in the early night before me
outside the open window, to note down our journey thus far. The day has
been truly glorious, the sea without even the thinnest rim of white along the

coast, and such exquisite combinations of clouds. We left Villa Quartara at
ten, with Madame Vittorina and the servants in tears. Majolina comes with
us; she is such a good little maid. We had three good horses, but for the
Bracco Pass we shall have an extra one. There is no way of travelling like
this, in an open carriage; it is so placid; there is no hurrying to catch trains
and struggling in crowds, no waiting in dismal salles d’attente. And then
compare the entry into the towns by the high road and through the principal
streets, perhaps through a city gate, the horse’s hoofs clattering and the
whip cracking so merrily and the people standing about in groups watching
us pass, to sneaking into a station, one of which is just like the other, which
hasn’t the slightest couleur locale about it, and is sure to have unsightly
surroundings.
“Away we went merrily, I feeling very jolly. The colour all along was
ravishing, as may be imagined, seeing what a perfect day it was and that
this is the loveliest season of the year. We dined at dear old Ruta, where also
the horses had a good rest and where I was able to sketch something down.
From Ruta to Sestri I rode by Majolina on the box, by far the best position
of all, and didn’t I enjoy it! The horses’ bells jingled so cheerily and those
three sturdy horses took us along so well. Rapallo and Chiavari! Dear old
friends, what delicious picturesqueness they had, what lovely approaches to
them by roads bordered with trees! The views were simply distracting.
Sestri is a gem. Why don’t water-colour painters come here in shoals? What
colouring the mountains had at sunset, and I had only a pencil and wretched
little sketch book.
“Spezzia, April 28th, 1869.—A repetition of yesterday in point of
weather. I feel as though I had been steeped all day in some balmy liquid of
gold, purple, and blue. I have a Titianesque feeling hovering about me
produced by the style of landscape we have passed through and the faces of
the people who are working in the patches of cultivation under the
mulberries and vines, and that intense, deep blue sky with massive white
clouds floating over it. We exclaimed as much at the beauty of the women
as at the purple of the mountains and the green of the budding mulberries
and poplars. And the men and boys; what perfect types; such fine figures
and handsome faces, such healthy colour! We left the hotel at Sestri, with its
avenue of orange trees in flower, at ten o’clock, and, of course, crossed the
Bracco to-day. We dined at a little place called Bogliasco, in whose street,
under our windows, handsome youths with bare legs and arms were playing

at a game of ball which called forth fine action. I did not know at first
whether to look well at them all or sketch them down one by one, but did
both, and I hope to make a regular drawing of the group from the sketch I
took and from memory. We stopped at the top of the hill, from which is seen
La Spezzia lying below, with its beautiful bay and the Carara Mountains
beyond. Here ends our drive, for to-morrow we take the train for Florence.
“Florence, April 29th.—Magnificent, cloudless weather. But, oh! what a
wearisome journey we had, the train crawling from one station to another
and stopping at each such a time, whilst we baked in the cushioned carriage
and couldn’t even have lovely things to look at, surrounded by the usual
railway eyesores. We passed close by the Pisan Campo Santo, and had a
very good view of the Leaning Tower and the Duomo. Such hurrying and
struggling at the Pisa station to get into the train for Florence, having, of
course, to carry all our small baggage ourselves. Railway travelling in Italy
is odious. It was very lovely to see Florence in the distance, with those
domes and towers I know so well by heart from pictures, but we were very
limp indeed, the wearisome train having taken all our enthusiasm away.
Everything as we arrived struck us as small, and I am still so dazzled by the
splendour of Genoa that my eyes cannot, as it were, comprehend the brown,
grey and white tones of this quiet-coloured little city. I must Florentine
myself as fast as I can. This hotel is on the Lung’ Arno, and charming was it
to look out of the windows in the lovely evening and see the river below
and the dome of the Carmine and tower of Santo Spirito against the clear
sky with, further off, the hills with their convents (alas! empty now) and
clusters of cypresses. No greater contrast to Genoa could be than Florence
in every way. Oh! may this city of the arts see me begin (and finish) my
first regular picture. April 30th.—I and Papa strolled about the streets to get
a general impression of ‘Firenze la gentile,’ and looked into the Duomo,
which is indeed bare and sad-coloured inside except in its delicious painted
windows over the altars, the harmonious richness of which I should think
could not be exceeded by any earthly means. The outside is very gay and
cheerful, but some of the marble has browned itself into an appearance of
wood. Oh! dear Giotto’s Tower, could elegance go beyond this? Is not this
an example of the complete savoir faire of those true-born artists of old?
And the ‘Gates of Paradise’! The delight of seeing these from the street is
great, instead of in a museum. But Michael Angelo’s enthusiastic
exclamation in their praise rather makes one smile, for we know that it must

have been in admiration of their purely technical beauties, as the gates are
by no means large and grand as gates, and the bronze is rather dark for an
entrance into Paradise! I reverently saluted the Palazzo Vecchio, and am
quite ready to get very much attached to the brown stone of Florence in
time.
“Villa Lamporecchi, May 1st.—We two and Papa had a good spell at the
Uffizi in the morning, and in the afternoon we took possession of this
pleasing house, which is so cool and has far-spreading views, one of
Florence from a terrace leading out of what I shall make my studio. A
garden and vineyards sloping down to the valley where Brunelleschi’s
brown dome shows above the olives.”

In Florence during my studies in /69.

Our mother did many lovely water colours, one especially exquisite one
of Fiesole seen in a shimmering blue midsummer light. That, and one done
on the Lung’ Arno, to which Shelley’s line

“The purple noon’s transparent might”

could justly be applied, are treasured by me. She understood sunshine and
how to paint it.
“May 3rd.—I already feel Florence growing upon me. I begin to
understand the love English people of culture and taste get for this most
interesting and gentle city. The ground one treads on is all historic, but it is
in the artistic side of its history that I naturally feel the greatest interest, and
it is a delightful thing to go about those streets and be reminded at every
turn of the great Painters, Architects, Sculptors I have read so much of.
Here a palace designed by Raphael, there a glorious row of windows carved
by Michael Angelo, there some exquisite ironwork wrought by some other
born genius. I think the style of architecture of the Strozzi Palace, the
Ricardi, and others, is perfection in its way, though at first, with the brilliant
whites, yellows and pinks of Genoa still in my eye, I felt rather depressed
by the uniform brown of the huge stones of which they are built. No wonder
I haunt the well-known gallery which runs over the Ponte Vecchio, lined
with the sketches, studies, and first thoughts of most of the great masters.
One delights almost more in these than in many of the finished pictures.
They bring one much more in contact, as it were, with the great dead, and
make one familiar with their methods of work. One sees what little slips
they made, how they modified their first thoughts, over and over again,
before finally fixing their choice. Very encouraging to the struggling
beginner to see these evidences of their troubles!
“I have never, before I came here where so many of them have lived,
realised the old masters as our comrades; I have never been so near them
and felt them to be mortals exactly like ourselves. This city and its environs
are so little changed, the greater part of them not at all, since those grand
old Michael Angelesque days that one feels brought quite close to the old
painters, seeing what they saw and walking on the very same old pavement
as they walked on, passing the houses where they lived, and so forth.”
I was at that time bent on achieving my first “great picture,” to be taken
from Keats’s poem “The Pot of Basil”; Lorenzo riding to his death between
the two brothers:

So the two brothers and their murdered man
Rode past fair Florence,

but, fortunately, I resolved instead to put in further training before attacking
such a canvas, and I became the pupil of a very fine academic draughtsman,
though no great colourist, Giuseppe Bellucci. On alternate days to those
spent in his studio I copied in careful pencil some of the exquisite figures in
Andrea del Sarto’s frescoes in the cloisters of the SS. Annunziata.
The heat was so great that, as it became more intense, I had to be at
Bellucci’s, in the Via Santa Reparata, at eight o’clock instead of 8.30,
getting there in the comparative cool of the morning, after a salutary walk
into Florence, accompanied by little Majolina, no signorina being at liberty
to walk alone. What heat! The sound of the ceaseless hiss of the cicale gave
one the impression of the country’s undergoing the ordeal of being frizzled
by the sun. I record the appearance of my first fire-fly on the night of May
6th. What more pleasing rest could one have, after the heat and work of the
day, than by a stroll through the vineyards in the early night escorted by
these little creatures with their golden lamps?
The cloisters were always cool, and I enjoyed my lonely hours there, but
the Bellucci studio became at last too much of a furnace. My master had
already several times suggested a rest, mopping his brow, when I also began
to doze over my work at last, and the model wouldn’t keep his eyes open. I
record mine as “rolling in my head.”
I see in memory the blinding street outside, and hear the fretful stamping
of some tethered mule teased with the flies. The very Members of
Parliament in the Palazzo Vecchio had departed out of the impossible
Chamber, and, all things considered, I allowed Bellucci to persuade me to
take a little month of rest—“un mesetto di riposo”—at home during part of
July and August. That little month of rest was very nice. I did a water colour
of the white oxen ploughing in our podere; I helped (?) the contadini to cut
the wheat with my sickle, and sketched them while they went through the
elaborate process of threshing, enlivened with that rough innocent romping
peculiar to young peasants, which gave me delightful groups in movement.
I love and respect the Italian peasant. He has high ideas of religion,
simplicity of living, honour. I can’t say I feel the same towards his betters
(?) in the Italian social scale.
The grapes ripened. The scorched cicale became silent, having, as the
country people declared, returned to the earth whence they sprang. The heat
had passed even cicala pitch. I went back to the studio when the “little

month” had run out and the heat had sensibly cooled, and worked very well
there. I find this record of a birthday expedition:
“I suggested a visit to the convent of San Salvi out at the Porta alla
Croce, where is to be seen Andrea del Sarto’s ‘Cenacolo.’ This we did in the
forenoon, and in the afternoon visited Careggi. Enough isn’t said about
Andrea. What volumes of praise have been written, what endless talk goes
on, about Raphael, and how little do people seem to appreciate the quiet
truth and soberness and subtlety of Andrea. This great fresco is very striking
as one enters the vaulted whitewashed refectory and sees it facing the
entrance at the further end. The great point in this composition is the
wonderful way in which this master has disposed the hands of all those
figures as they sit at the long table. In the row of heads Andrea has revelled
in his love of variety, and each is stamped, as usual, with strong
individuality. This beautifully coloured fresco has impressed me with
another great fact, viz., the wonderful value of bright yellow as well as
white in a composition to light it up. The second Apostle on our Saviour’s
left, who is slightly leaning forward on his elbow and loosely clasping one
hand in the other, has his shoulders wrapped round with yellow drapery, the
horizontally disposed folds of which are the ne plus ultra of artistic
arrangement. There is something very realistic in these figures and their
attitudes. Some people are down on me when they hear me going on about
the rendering of individual character being the most admirable of artistic
qualities.
“At 3.30 we went for such a drive to Careggi, once Lorenzo de’ Medici’s
villa—where, indeed, he died—and now belonging to Mr. Sloane, a
‘bloated capitalist’ of distant England. The ‘keepsake’ beauty of the views
thence was perfect. A combination of garden kept in English order and
lovely Italian landscape is indeed a rich feast for the eye. I was in ecstasies
all along. We made a great détour on our return and reached home in the
after-glow, which cast a light on the houses as of a second sun.
“October 18th.—Went with Papa and Alice to see Raphael’s ‘Last
Supper’ at the Egyptian Museum, long ago a convent. It is not perfectly
sure that Raphael painted it, but, be that as it may, its excellence is there,
evident to all true artists. It seems to me, considering that it is an early
work, that none but one of the first-class men could have painted it. It offers
a very instructive contrast with del Sarto’s at San Salvi. The latter
immediately strikes the spectator with its effect, and makes him exclaim

with admiration at the very first moment—at least, I am speaking for
myself. The former (Raphael’s) grew upon me in an extraordinary way after
I had come close up to it and dwelt long on the heads, separately; but on
entering the room the rigidity and formality of the figures, whose aureoles
of solid metal are all on one level, the want of connection of these figures
one with the other, and the uniform light over them all had an
unprepossessing effect. Artistically considered this fresco is not to be
mentioned with Andrea’s, but then del Sarto was a ripe and experienced
artist when he painted the San Salvi fresco, whereas they conjecture
Raphael to have been only twenty-two when he painted this. There is more
spiritual feeling in Raphael’s, more dignity and ideality altogether; no doubt
a higher conception, and some feel more satisfied with it than with
Andrea’s. The refinement and melancholy look of St. Matthew is a thing to
be thought of through life. St. Andrew’s face, with the long, double-peaked
white beard, is glorious, and is a contrast to the other old man’s head next to
it, St. Peter’s, which is of a harder kind, but not less wonderful. St.
Bartholomew, with his dark complexion and black beard, is strongly
marked from the others, who are either fair or grey-headed. The profile of
St. Philip, with a pointed white beard, gave me great delight, and I wish I
could have been left an hour there to solitary contemplation. St. James
Major, a beardless youth, is a true Perugino type, a very familiar face. Judas
is a miserable little figure, smaller than the others, though on the spectator’s
side of the table in the foreground. He seems not to have been taken from
life at all.
“On one of the walls of the room are hung some little chalk studies of
hands, etc., for the fresco, most exquisitely drawn, and seeming, some of
them, better modelled than in the finished work; notably St. Peter’s hand
which holds the knife. Is there no Modern who can give us a ‘Last Supper’
to rank with this, Andrea’s and Leonardo’s?”
This entry in my Diary of student days leads my thoughts to poor
Leonardo da Vinci. A painter must sympathise with him through his
recorded struggles to accomplish, in his “Cenacolo,” what may be called the
almost superhuman achievement of worthily representing the Saviour’s
face. Had he but been content to use the study which we see in the Brera
gallery! But, no! he must try to do better at Santa Maria delle Grazie—and
fails. How many sleepless nights and nerve-racking days he must have
suffered during this supreme attempt, ending in complete discouragement. I

think the Brera study one of the very few satisfactory representations of the
divine Countenance left us in art. To me it is supreme in its infinite pathos.
But it is always the way with the truly great geniuses; they never feel that
they have reached the heights they hoped to win.
Ruskin tells us that Albert Dürer, on finishing one of his own works, felt
absolutely satisfied. “It could not be done better,” was the complacent
German’s verdict. Ruskin praises him for this, because the verdict was true.
So it was, as regarding a piece of mere handicraft. But to return to the
Diary.
“We went then to pay a call on Michael Angelo at his apartment in the
Via Ghibellina. I do not put it in those words as a silly joke, but because it
expresses the feeling I had at the moment. To go to his house, up his
staircase to his flat, and ring at his door produced in my mind a vivid
impression that he was alive and, living there, would receive us in his
drawing-room. Everything is well nigh as it was in his time, but restored
and made to look like new, the place being far more as he saw it than if it
were half ruinous and going to decay. Even the furniture is the same, but
new velveted and varnished. It is a pretty apartment, such as one can see
any day in nice modern houses. I touched his little slippers, which are
preserved, together with his two walking sticks, in a tiny cabinet where he
used to write, and where I wondered how he found space to stretch his legs.
The slippers are very small and of a peculiar, rather Eastern, shape, and
very little worn. Altogether, I could not realise the lapse of time between his
date and ours. The little sketches round the walls of the room, which is
furnished with yellow satin chairs and sofa, are very admirable and free.
The Titian hung here is a very splendid bit of colour. This was a very
impressive visit. The bronze bust of M. A. by Giovanni da Bologna is
magnificent; it gives immense character, and must be the image of the
man.”
On October 21st I bade good-bye to Bellucci. His system forbade praise
for the pupil, which was rather depressing, but he relaxed sufficiently to tell
my father at parting that I would do things (Farà delle cose) and that I was
untiring (istancabile), taking study seriously, not like the others (le altre).
With this I had to be content. He had drilled me in drawing more severely
than I could have been drilled in England. For that purpose he had kept me
a good deal to painting in monochrome, so as to have my attention absorbed
by the drawing and modelling and chiaroscuro of an object without the

distraction of colour. He also said to me I could now walk alone (può
camminare da sè), and with this valedictory good-bye we parted. Being
free, I spent the remaining time at Florence in visits to the churches and
galleries with my father and sister, seeing works I had not had time to study
up till then.
“October 22nd.—We first went to see the Ghirlandajos at Santa Trinità,
which I had not yet seen. They are fading, as, indeed, most of the grand old
frescoes are doing, but the heads are full of character, and the grand old
costumes are still plainly visible. From thence we went to the small cloister
called dello Scalzo, where are the exquisite monochromes of Andrea del
Sarto. Would that this cloister had been roofed in long ago, for the weather
has made sad havoc of these precious things. Being in monochrome and
much washed out, they have a faded look indeed; but how the drawing tells!
What a master of anatomy was he, and yet how unexaggerated, how true: he
was content to limit himself to Nature; knew where to draw the line, had, in
fact, the reticence which Michael Angelo couldn’t recognise; could stop at
the limit of truth and good taste through which the great sculptor burst with
coarse violence. There are some backs of legs in those frescoes which are
simply perfect. These works illustrate the events in the life of John the
Baptist. Here, again, how marvellous and admirable are all the hands, not
only in drawing, but in action, how touching the heads, how grand and
thoroughly artistic the draperies and the poses of the figures. A splendid
lesson in the management of drapery is, especially, the fresco to the right of
the entrance, the ‘Vision of Zacharias.’ There are four figures, two
immediately in the foreground and at either extremity of the composition;
the two others, seen between them, further off. The nearest ones are in
draperies of the grandest and largest folds, with such masses of light and
dark, of the most satisfying breadth; and the two more distant ones have
folds of a slightly more complex nature, if such a word can be used with
regard to such a thoroughly broadly treated work. This gives such contrast
and relief between the near and distant figures, and the absence of the aid of
colour makes the science of art all the more simply perceived. Most
beautiful is the fresco representing the birth of St. John, though the lower
part is quite lost. What consummate drapery arrangements! The nude figure
vue de dos in the fresco of St. John baptising his disciples is a masterly bit
of drawing. Though the paint has fallen off many parts of these frescoes,

one can trace the drawing by the incision which was made on the wet
plaster to mark all the outlines preparatory to beginning the painting.”
These are but a few of my art student’s impressions of this fondly-
remembered Florentine epoch, which are recorded at great length in the
Diary for my own study. And now away to Rome!

CHAPTER VI

ROME

THAT was a memorable journey to Rome by Perugia. I have travelled
more than once by that line, and the more direct one as well, since then, and
I feel as though I could never have enough of either, though to be on the
road again, as we now can be by motor, would be still greater bliss. But the
original journey took place so long ago that it has positively an old-world
glamour about it, and a certain roughness in the flavour, so difficult to enjoy
in these times of Pulman cars and Palace Hotels, which make all places
taste so much alike. The old towns on the foothills of the Apennines drew
me to the left, and the great sunlit plains to the right, of the carriage in an
embarras de choix as we sped along. Cortona, Arezzo, Castiglione—
Fiorentin—each little old city putting out its predecessor, as it seemed to
me, as more perfect in its picturesque effect than the one last seen. It was
the story of the Rhine castles and villages over again. The Lake of
Trasimene appeared on our right towards sundown, a sheet of still water so
tender in its tints and so lonely; no town on its malaria-stricken banks; a
boat or two, water-fowl among the rushes and, as we proceeded, the great,
magnified globe of the sun sinking behind the rim of the lake. We were
going deep into the Umbrian Hills, deep into old Italy; the deeper the better.
We neared Perugia, where we passed the night, before dark, and saw the old
brown city tinged faintly with the after-glow, afar off on its hill. A massive
castle stood there in those days which I have not regretted since, as it
symbolised the old time of foreign tyranny. It is gone now, but how
mediæval it looked, frowning on the world that darkening evening. Hills
stood behind the city in deep blue masses against a sky singularly red,
where a great planet was shining. There was a Perugino picture come to life
for us! Even the little spindly trees tracing their slender branches on the red
sky were in the true naïf Perugino spirit! How pleased we were! We
rumbled in the four-horse station ’bus under two echoing gateways piercing
the massive outer and inner city walls and along the silent streets, lit with
rare oil lamps. Not a gas jet, aha! But we were to feel still more deeply
mediæval, whether we liked it or not, for on reaching the Hotel de la Poste

we found it was full, and had to wander off to seek what hostel could take
us in through very dark, ancient streets. I will let the Diary speak:
“The facchino of the hotel conducted us to a place little better than a
cabaret, belonging, no doubt, to a chum. I wouldn’t have minded putting up
there, but Mamma knew better, and, rewarding the woman of the cabaret
with two francs, much against her protestations, we went off up the steep
street again and made for the ‘Corona,’ a shade better, close to the market
place. My bedroom was as though it had once been a dungeon, so massive
were the walls and deep the vaulting of the low ceiling. We went to bed
almost immediately after our dinner, which was enlivened by the
conversation of men who were eating at a neighbouring table, all, except a
priest, with their hats on. One was very loquacious, shouting politics. He
held forth about ‘Il Mastai,’ as he called His Holiness Pope Pius the Ninth,
and flourished renegade Padre Giacinto in the priest’s face, the courteous
and laconic priest’s eyebrows remaining at high-water mark all the time.
The shouter went on to say that English was ‘una lingua povera e
meschina’ (‘Poor and mean’!)”
The next morning before leaving we saw all that time allowed us of
Perugia, the bronze statue of Pope Julius III. impressing me deeply. Indeed,
there is no statue more eloquent than this one. Alas! the Italians have
removed it from its right place, and when I revisited the city in 1900 I found
the tram terminus in place of the Pope.
“October 27th.—After the morning’s doings in sunshine the day became
sad, and from Foligno, where we had a long wait, the story is but of rain
and dusk and night. We became more and more apathetic and bored, though
we were roused up at the frontier station, where I saw the Papal gendarmes
and gave the alarm. Mamma went on her knees in the carriage and cried,
‘Viva Il Papa Rè!’ We all joined in, drinking his health in some very flat
‘red grignolino’ we had with us. I became more and more excited as we
neared the centre of the earth, the capital of Christendom, the highest city in
the world. In the rainy darkness we ran into the Roman station, which might
have been that of Brighton for aught we could see. I strained my eyes right
and left for Papal uniforms, and was rewarded by Zouaves and others, and
lots of French (of the Legion) into the bargain.
Then a long wait, in the ’bus of the Anglo-American Hotel, for our
luggage; and at last we rattled over the pavement, which, with its cobble

stones, was a great contrast to the large flat flags of Florence, along very
dark and gloomy streets. An apartment all crimson damask was ready
prepared for us, which looked cheery and revived us.
“October 28th, 56, Via del Babuino.—The day began rather dismally—
looking for apartments in the rain! The coming of the Œcumenical Council
has greatly inflated the prices; Rome is crammed. At last we took this
attractive one for six months, ‘esposto a mezzogiorno.’ Facing due south,
fortunately.
“The sun came out then, and all things were bright and joyous as we
rattled off in a little victoria to feast our eyes (we two for the first time) on
St. Peter’s. Papa, knowing Rome already, knew what to do and how best to
give us our first impressions. An epoch in my life, never to be forgotten, a
moment in my existence too solemn and beyond my power of writing to
allow of my describing it! I have seen St. Peter’s. No, indeed, no
descriptions have ever given me an adequate idea of what I have just seen.
The sensation of seeing the real thing one has gazed at in pictures and
photographs with longing is one of peculiar delight.
“To find myself really on the Ponte Sant’ Angelo! No dream this. There
is the huge castle and the angel with outstretched wings, and there is St.
Peter’s in very truth. The sight of it made the tears rise and my throat
tighten, so greatly was I overcome by that soul-moving sight. The dome is
perfect; the whole, with its great piazza and colonnade, is perfect; I am
utterly overpowered and, as to writing, it is too inadequate, and I do so
merely because I must do my duty by this journal.
“What a state I was in, though exteriorly so quiet. And all around us
other beauties—the yellow Tiber, the old houses, the great fortress-tomb—
oh, Mimi, the artist, is not all the enthusiasm in you at full power? We got
out of the carriage at the bottom of the piazza and walked up to the basilica
on foot. The two familiar fountains—so familiar, yet seen for the first time
in reality—were sending up their spray in such magnificent abundance,
which the wind took and sent in cascade-like forms far out over the
reflecting pavement. The interior of St. Peter’s, which impresses different
people in such various ways, was a radiant revelation to me. We had but a
preliminary taste to-day. We drove thence to the Piazza del Popolo, and then
had an entrancing walk on Monte Pincio. We came down by the French
Academy, with its row of clipped ilexes, under which you see one of the

most exquisite views of silvery Rome, St. Peter’s in the middle. We dipped
down by the steps of the Trinità, where the models congregate, flecking the
wide grey steps with all the colours of the rainbow.
“October 29th.—Papa would not let us linger in the Colosseum too long,
for to-day he wanted us to have only a general idea of things. Those bits of
distance seen through triumphal arches, between old pillars, through gaps in
ancient walls, how they please! As we were climbing the Palatine hill a
Black Franciscan came up to us for alms, and in return offered us his snuff-
box, out of which Alice and I took a pinch, and we went sneezing over the
ruins. On to the Capitol, and down thence homeward through streets full of
priests, monks and soldiers. All the afternoon given to being tossed about,
with poor Papa, by the Dogana from the railway station to the custom-house
in the Baths of Diocletian, and from there to the artist commissioned by the
Government to examine incoming works of art. They would not let me have
my box of studies, calling them ‘modern pictures’ on which we must pay
duty.”
Rome under the Temporal Power was so unlike Rome, capital of Italy, as
we see it to-day, that I think it just as well to draw largely from the Diary,
which is crammed with descriptions of men and things belonging to the old
order which can never be seen again. I love to recall it all. We were in
Rome just in time. We left it in May and the Italians entered it in September.
Though I was not a Catholic then, and found delight in Rome almost
entirely as an artist, the power and vitality of the Church could not but
impress me there.
“October 30th.—This has been one of the most perfectly enjoyable days
of my life. Papa and I drove to the Vatican through that bright light air
which gives one such energy. The Vatican! What a place wherein to revel.
We climbed one of the mighty staircases guarded by the interesting Papal
Guards, halberd on shoulder, until we got to the top loggia and went into the
picture gallery, I to enchant my eyes with the grandest pictures that men
have conceived. But I will not touch on them till I go there to study. And so
on from one glory to another. We turned into St. Peter’s and there strolled a
long time. Before we went in, and as we were standing at the bottom of the
Scala Regia enjoying the clearness of the sunshine on the city, we saw the
gendarmes, the Zouaves and others standing at attention, and, looking back,
we saw the red, black, and yellow Swiss running with operatic effect to
seize their halberds, and Cardinal Antonelli came down to get into his

carriage, almost stumbling over me, who didn’t know he was so near.
Before he got into his great old-fashioned coach, harnessed to those heavy
black horses with the trailing scarlet traces, a picturesque incident occurred.
A girl-faced young priest tremulously accosted the Cardinal, hat in hand, no
doubt begging some favour of the great man. The Cardinal spoke a little
time to him with grand kindness, and then the priest fell on one knee, kissed
the Cardinal’s ring, and got up blushing pink all over his beautiful young
face, and passed on, gracefully and modestly, as he had done the rest. Then
off rattled the carriage, the Zouaves presented arms, salutes were made, hats
lifted, and Antonelli was gone.
“In St. Peter’s were crowds of priests in different colours, forming
masses of black, purple, and scarlet of great beauty. Two Oriental bishops
were making the round, one, a Dominican, having with him a sort of Malay
for a chaplain in turban and robe. Two others had Chinamen with pigtails in
attendance, these two emaciated prelates bearing signs of recent torture
endured in China, living martyrs out of Florentine frescoes. Yonder comes a
bearded Oriental with mild, beautiful face, and following him a scarlet-clad
German with yellow hair, projecting ears, coarse mouth, and spectacles over
his little eyes; and then a sharp-visaged Jesuit, or a spiritual, wan
Franciscan and a burly Roman secular. No end of types. One very young
Italian monk had the face of a saint, all ready made for a fresco. I looked at
him in unspeakable admiration as he stood looking up at some inscription,
probably translating it in his own mind. On our way home, to crown all, we
met the Pope. His outrider in cocked hat and feathers came clattering along
the narrow street in advance, then a red-and-gold coach, black prancing
horses—all shadowy to me, as I was intent only on catching a view of the
Holy Father. We got out of the carriage, as in duty bound, and bent the knee
like the rest as he passed by. I saw his profile well, with that well-known
smile on his kind face. As we looked after the carriages and horsemen the
effect was touching of the people kneeling in masses along the way. The
sight of Italian men kneeling is novel to me in the extreme.
“October 31st.—I went first, with Mamma and Alice, to St. Peter’s,
where I studied types, attitudes and costumes. The sight of a Zouave officer
kneeling, booted and spurred, his sword by his side, and his face shaded
with his hand, is indeed striking, and one knows all those have enrolled
themselves for a sacred cause they have at heart—higher even than for love
of any particular country. The difference of types among these Zouaves is

most interesting. The Belgian and Dutch decidedly predominate. Papa and I
went thence for a fascinating stroll of many hours, finding it hard to turn
back. We went up to Sant’ Onofrio and then round by the great Farnese
Palace. The view from Sant’ Onofrio over Rome is—well, my language is
utterly annihilated here. How invigorated I felt, and not a bit tired.”
I have never been able to call up enthusiasm over the Pantheon, low-
lying, black and pagan in every line. Why does Byron lash himself into
calling it “Pride of Rome”? For the same reason, I suppose, that he laments
and sighs over the disappearance of Dodona’s “aged grove and oracle
divine.” As if any one cares! The view of Rome from Monte Mario, being
the view, should have a place here as we saw it one of those richly-coloured
days.
“November 3rd.—My birthday, marked by the customary birthday
expedition, this time to Monte Mario. Nothing could be more splendid than
looked the Capital of the World as it lay below us when we reached the top
of that commanding height. The Campagna lay beyond it, ending in that
direction with the Sabine and Alban Mountains, the furthest all white with
snow. Buildings, cypresses, pines, formed foreground groups to the silver
city as they only can do to such perfection in these parts. In another
direction we could see the Campagna with its straight horizon like a calm
rosy-brown sea meeting the limpid sky. We drove a long way on the high
road across the Campagna Florence-wards. No high walls as in the
Florentine drives were here to shut out the views, which unfolded
themselves on all sides as we trotted on. We got out of the carriage on the
Campagna and strolled about on the brown grass, enjoying the sweet free
breeze and the great sweep of country stretching away to the luminous
horizon towards the sun, and to the lilac mountains in the other direction.
These mountains became tender pink as we went Romewards, and when the
city again appeared it was in a richly-coloured light, the Campagna beyond
in warm shadow from large chocolate-coloured clouds which were rising
heaped up into the sky. A superb effect.”
Here follow many days chiefly given up to studio hunting and
“property” seeking for my work, soon to be set up. Models there were in
plenty, of course, as Rome was then still the artists’ headquarters. How
things have changed!

I began with a ciociara spinning with a distaff in the well-known and
very much used-up costume, just for practice, and another peasant girl.
Then I painted, at my dear mother’s earnest desire, “The Magnificat”—
Mary’s visit to Elizabeth—and on off days my father and I “did” all the
pictures contained in various palaces, the Vatican, and the Villa Borghese,
filling pages and pages of notes in the old Diary. I felt the value of every
day in Rome. Many people might think I ought not to have worked so much
in a studio, but I think I divided the time well. I felt I must keep my hand in,
and practise with the brush, though how often I was tempted to join the
others on some fascinating ramble may be imagined. Soon, however, the
rains of a Roman December set in, and Rome became very wet indeed. Our
father read us Roman history every evening when there were no visitors.
We had a good many, our mother and her music and brightness soon
attracting all that was nice in the English and American colonies. Dear old
Mr. Severn, he in whose arms Keats died, often took tea with us (we kept
our way of having dinner early and tea in the evening), and there was an
antiquarian who took interest in nothing whatever except the old Roman
walls, and he used to come and hold forth about the “Agger of Servius
Tullius” till my head went round. He kept his own on, it seemed to me, by
pressing his hand on the bald top of it as he explained to us about that bit of
“agger” which he had discovered, and the herring-bone brick of which it
was built. Often as I have revisited Rome, I cannot become enthusiastic
over the discovery of some old Roman sewer, or bit of hot-water pipe, or
horrible stone basin with a hole in the bottom for draining off the blood of
sacrificial oxen. I always long to get back into the sunshine and fresh air
from the mouldy depths of Pagan Rome when I get caught in a party to
whom the antiquarian enthusiasts like to hold forth below the surface of the
earth. Alice listens, deferential and controlled, while I fidget, supporting
myself on my umbrella, with such a face! Here is a little bit of Papal Rome
impossible to-day:
“November 29th.—In the course of our long ramble after my work Papa
and I, in the soft evening, came upon a scene which I shall not forget, made
by a young priest preaching to a little crowd in the street before the side
door of Santa Maria Sopra Minerva, a Rembrandtesque effect being
produced by the two lamps held by a priest at either side of the platform on
which the preacher stood. One of these held the large crucifix to which the
preacher turned at times, with gestures of rapture such as only an Italian

could use in so natural a way. To see him, lighted from below, in his black
habit and hear his impassioned voice! All the men were bareheaded, and
such as passed by took their hats off. Penetrating as the priest’s voice was, it
was now and then quite drowned by the street noises, especially the rattling
of wheels on the rough stones.”
The days that follow are filled with my work on “The Visitation,” with
few intervals of sight-seeing. Then comes the great ecclesiastical event to
be marked in history, which brought all the world to Rome.
“Opening of the Œcumenical Council, December 8th.—A memorable
day, this! We got up by candlelight, as at a quarter past seven we were to
drive to St. Peter’s. The dreary raining dawn was announced, just as it
broke, by the heavy cannon of Castel Sant’ Angelo, the flash of which was
reflected in the blue-grey sky long before the sound reached us, and the
cannon on the Aventine echoed those of the Castel. How dreary it felt, yet
how imposing for any one who has got into the right feeling about this
solemn event. On our way we overtook scores of priests on foot, trying to
walk clear of the puddles in those thin, buckled shoes of theirs. It must have
been trying for the old ones. There were bishops amongst them, too poor to
afford a cab. We have seen them day after day thus going to the Vatican
meetings. One great blessing the rain brought: it kept hundreds of people
from coming to the church, and thus saved many crushings to death, for it is
terrible to contemplate, seeing what a crowd there actually was, what it
might have been had the building been crammed. Entrance and egress were
both at one end of the church. That thought must console me for the terrible
toning down and darkening of what, otherwise, would have been a great
pageant. So many thousands of wet feet brought something like a lake half
way up the floor; so slippery was it that, had the crowd swayed in a panic, it
wouldn’t have been very nice.
“Papa and I insinuated ourselves into the hedge of people kept back by
Zouaves and Palatine Guards, as we came opposite the statue of St. Peter,
and I eventually got fixed three rows back from the soldiers, and was lucky
to get in so far. I was jammed between a monk and a short youth of the
‘horsey’ kind. The atmosphere in that warm, wet crowd was trying. I could
see into the Council Hall opposite.

Roman Impressions in 1870.
The Last of the Riderless Horse-races, and a Wet Trudge
To the Vatican Council.

“The passage kept clear for the great procession was very wide. On the
other side I could see rows of English and American girls and elderly
females in the best places, as usual, right to the front, as bold as brass, and
didn’t they eye the bishops over through their pince-nez! We must have
been waiting two hours before the procession entered the church. I ought to
have mentioned that the sacred dark bronze statue of St. Peter was robed in
gorgeous golden vestments with a splendid triple crown on its head, making
it look like a black Pope, and very life-like from where I saw it. It seemed
very strange.
“At last there was a buzz as people perceived the slowly-moving
silhouette of the procession as it passed along in a far-off gallery, veiled
from us by pink curtains, against the light and very high up, over the
entrance. We could see the prelates had all vested by the outlines of the
mitres and the high-shouldered look of the figures in stiff copes. As the
procession entered the church the ‘Veni Creator’ swelled up majestically
and floated through the immense space. The effect of the procession to me

was nil; all I could do was to catch a glimpse of each bishop as he passed
between the bobbing heads of the men in front of me. All the European and
United States Bishops were in white and silver, but now and then there
passed Oriental Patriarchs in rich vestments, their picturesque dark faces
(two were quite brown) telling so strikingly amongst the pale or rosy
Europeans. Each had his solemn secretary, with imperturbable Eastern face,
bearing his jewelled crown, something in shape like the dome of a mosque.
One Oriental wore a jewel on his dusky forehead, another a black cowl over
his head, shading his keen, dark face, the coarse cowl contrasting in a
startling way with the delicate splendour of the gold and pink and amber
vestments worn over the rough monk’s habit. Still, all this could not be
imposing to me, having to squint and crane as I did, seldom being able to
see with both eyes at once. I could at intervals see the silvery prelates, most
of them with snowy heads, and the dark Easterns mount into their seats in
the Council Chamber, our Archbishop Manning amongst them. I had a quite
good glimpse of Cardinal Bonaparte, very like the great Napoleon. Of the
Pope I saw nothing. He was closely surrounded, as he walked past, by the
high-helmeted Noble Guard, and, of course, at that supreme moment every
one in front of me strove to get a better sight of him. Then Papa and I gladly
struggled our way out of the great crowd and went to seek Mamma, who,
very wisely, had not attempted to get a place, but was meekly sitting on the
steps of a confessional in a quiet chapel. Mamma then went home, and we
went into the crowd again to try and see the Council from a point opposite.
We saw it pretty well, the two white banks of mitred bishops on each side
and, far back, the little red Pope in the middle. Mass was being sung, all
Gregorian, but it was faintly heard from our great distance.
“No council business was being done to-day; it was only the Mass to
open the meeting. The crowd was most interesting. Surely every nation was
represented in it. An officer of the 42nd Highlanders had an excellent effect.
What shall I do in London, with its dead level of monotony? Oh! dear, oh!
dear. I was quite loth to go home. And so the council is opened. God
speed!”
The Ghetto was in existence in those days, so I have even experienced
the sight of that. Very horrible, packed with “red-haired, blear-eyed
creatures, with loose lips and long, baggy noses.” Thus I describe them in
this warren, during our drive one day. What a “sventramento” that must
have been when the Italians cleared away and cleaned up all that congested

horror. Wide, wind-swept spaces and a shining, though hideous, synagogue
met my astonished gaze when next I went there and couldn’t find the
Ghetto.
At the end of the year La Signorina Elizabetta Thompson had to apply to
his Eminenza Riverendissima Cardinal Berardi, Minister of Public Works,
to announce her intention of sending the “Magnificat” to the Pope’s
international exhibition. At that picture I worked hard, my mother being my
model for Our Lady, and an old ciociara from the Trinità steps for St.
Elizabeth. How it rained that December! But we had radiant sunshine in
between the days when the streets were all running with red-brown rivulets,
through which the horses splashed as if fording a stream.
“January 25th, 1870.—I finished my ‘Magnificat’ to-day. Yet ought I to
say I ceased to paint at it, for ‘finish’ suggests something far beyond what
this picture is. Well, I shall enjoy being on the loose now. To stroll about
Rome after having passed through a picture is perfect enjoyment. I should
feel very uncomfortable at the present time if I had, up till now, done
nothing but lionise. I have no hope of my picture being accepted now, but
still it is pleasant to think that I have worked hard.
“February 3rd.—I took my picture to the Calcografia place, as warned
to do. There, in dusty horror, it awaits the selecting committee’s review,
which takes place to-morrow. Mamma and I held it manfully in the little
open carriage to keep it from tumbling out, our arms stretched to their
utmost. Lots of men were shuffling about in that dusty place with pictures
of all sizes. But, oh! what a scene of horror was that collection of daubs.
Oh! mercy on us.
“February 5th.—My ‘Magnificat’ is accepted. First, off goes Mamma
with Celestina to the Calcografia to learn the fate of the picture, and bring it
back triumphant, she and the maid holding it steady in the little open
carriage. Soon after, off we go to the Palazzo Poli to see nice Mr. Severn,
who says he is so proud of me, and will do all he can to help me in art
matters, to see whether he could make the exhibition people hang my
picture well, as we were told the artists had to see to that themselves if they
wanted it well done. I, for my part, would leave it to them and rather shirk a
place on the line, for my picture is depressingly unsatisfactory to me, but
Mamma, for whom I have painted it, loves it, and wants it well placed ‘so
that the Pope may see it’! From thence off we go to the abode of the

Minister of Commerce, Cardinal B., for my pass. We were there told, to our
dismay, that we could not take the picture ourselves to the exhibition, as it
was held in the cloisters of Sta. Maria degli Angeli, and no permission had
yet been given to admit women before the opening. But I knew that
between Papa and Mr. Severn the picture would be seen to inside the
cloistered walls. After lunch, off goes Papa with my pass, we following in
the little open carriage as before, holding the old picture before us with
straining arms and knitted brows, very much jolted and bumped. We are
stopped at the cloisters, and told to drive out again, and there we pull up,
our faces turned in the opposite direction. The hood of the carriage
suddenly collapses, and we are revealed, unable to let go the picture, with
the soldiers collected about the place grinning. Papa arrives, and he and two
facchini come to the rescue, and then disappear with the picture amongst
the forbidden regions enclosed in the gloomy ruins of Diocletian’s Baths.
Papa, on returning home, told me how charmed old Severn, who was there,
was with the picture, and even Podesti, the judge, after some criticisms, and
in no way ready to give it a good place, said to Severn he had expected the
signorina’s picture to be rubbish (porcheria). I suppose because it was a
woman’s work. He retracted, and said he would like to see me.
“February 14th.—I began another picture to-day, after all my resolutions
to the contrary, the subject, two Roman shepherds playing at ‘Morra’,
sitting on a fallen pillar, a third contadino, in a cloak, looking on. I posed
my first model, putting a light background to him, the effect being capital,
he coming rich and dusky against it. He soon understood I wanted energy
thrown into the action. I shall delight in this subject, because the hands
figure so conspicuously in the game.
“February 15th.—I went up alone to the Trinità to choose the other
young man for my ‘Morra,’ and, after a little inspection of the group of
lolling Romagnoli, gave the apple to one with a finely-cut profile and black
hair, the other models, male and female, clustering round to hear, and many
bystanders and the Zouave sentry, hard by, looking on.”
On one evening in this eventful Roman period I had the opportunity of
seeing the famous race of the riderless horses (the barberi), which closed
the Carnival doings. The impression remains with me quite vividly to this
day. The colour, the movement; the fast-deepening twilight; the historic
associations of that vast Piazza del Popolo, where I see the great obelisk
retaining, on its upper part, the last flush from the west; the impetuous

waters of the fountains at its base in cool shadow; St. Peter’s dome away to
the left—this is the setting. Then I hear the clatter of the dragoon’s horses as
the detachment forms up for clearing the course. The stands, at the foot of
the obelisk, are full, some of the crowd in carnival costume and with masks.
A sharp word of command rings out in the chilly air. Away go the dragoons,
down the narrow Corso and back, at full gallop, splitting the surging crowd
with theatrical effect. The line is clear. Now comes the moment of
expectancy! At that unique starting post, the obelisk upon which Moses in
Egypt may have looked as upon an interesting monument of antiquity in
pre-Exodus days, there appear eleven highly-nervous barbs, tricked out with
plumes and painted with white spots and stripes. The convicts who lead
them in (each man, one may say, carrying his life in his hand) are trying,
with iron grip, to keep their horses quiet, for the spiked balls and other
irritants are now unfastened and dangling loose from the horses’ backs. But
one terrified beast comes on “kicking against the pricks” already. The whole
pack become wild. The more they plunge, the more the balls bang and
prick. One furious creature, wrenching itself free, whirls round in the wrong
direction. But there is no time to lose; the restraining rope must be cut. A
gun booms; there is a shout and clapping of hands. Ten of the horses, with
heads down, get off in a bunch, shooting straight as arrows for the Corso;
the eleventh slips on the cobbles, rolls over and, recovering itself, tears after
its pals, straining every nerve. I hear a voice shout “E capace di vincere!”
(“He is fit to win!”) and in an instant the lot are engulfed in that dark,
narrow street, the squibs on their backs going off like pistol shots, and the
crackling bits of metallic tinsel, getting detached, fly back in a shower of
light. The sparks from the iron heels splash out in red fire through the dusk.
The course is just one mile—the whole length of the straight street. At the
winning post a great sheet is stretched across the way, through which some
of the horses burst, to be captured some days afterwards while roaming
about the open spaces of the Campagna. It is the dense crowd, forming two
walls along the course, that forces the horses to keep the centre. This was
the last of the barberi. They were more frightened than hurt, yet I am not
sorry that these races have been abolished.
Here follow records of expeditions in weather of spring freshness—to
catacombs, along the Via Appia, to the wild Campagna, and all the delights
of that Roman time when the lark inspires the poet. I got on well with my
“Morra” picture, which wasn’t bad, and which has a niche in my art career,

because it turned out to be the first picture I sold, which joyful event
happened in London.
“March 25th.—A brilliant day, full of colour. This is a great feast, the
Annunciation, and I gave up work to see the Pope come in grand procession
to the Church of the Minerva with his Cross Bearer on a white mule, and all
the cardinals, bishops, ambassadors and officials in carriages of antique
magnificence, a spectacle of great pomp, and nowhere else to be seen. We
did it in this wise. At nine we drove to the Minerva, the sun very brilliant
and the air very cold, and soon posted ourselves on the steps of the church
in the midst of a tight crowd, I quite helpless in a knot of French soldiers of
the Legion, who chaffed each other good-humouredly over my head. The
piazza, in the midst of which rises the funny little obelisk on the elephant’s
back, swarmed with people, black being quite the exception in that motley
crowd. Zouaves and the Legion formed a square to keep the piazza open,
and dragoons pranced officiously about, as is their wont. Every balcony was
thronged with gay ladies and full-dressed officers (some most gallant and
smart Austrians were at a window near us), and crimson cloth and brocade
flapped from every window, here in powerful sunshine, there in effective
shadow. Some dark, Florentine-coloured houses opposite, mostly in shade,
as they were between us and the sun, had a strong effect against the bright
sky, their crimson cloths and gaily dressed ladies relieving their dark
masses, and their beautiful roofs and chimneys making a lovely sky line.
“Presently the gilt and painted coaches of the cardinals began to arrive,
huge, high-swung vehicles drawn by very fat black horses dressed out with
gold and crimson trappings, but the servants and coachmen, in spite of their
extra full get-up, having that inimitable shabby-genteel appearance which
belongs exclusively to them. The Prior of the Dominicans, to which order
this church belongs, stood outside the archway through which the Pope and
all went into the church after alighting from their coaches. He was there to
welcome them, and, oh! the number of bows he must have made, and his
mouth must have ached again with all those wide smiles. Near him also
stood the Noble Guards and all the general officers, plastered over with
orders; and all these, too, saluted and salaamed as each ecclesiastical bigwig
grandly and courteously swept by under the archway, glowing in his scarlet
and shining in his purple. The carriages pulled up at the spot of all others
best suited to us. Everything was filled with light, the cardinals glowing like
rubies inside their coaches, even their faces all aglow with the red

reflections thrown up from their ardent robes. But there presently came a
sight which I could hardly stand; it was eloquent of the olden time and
filled the mind with a strange feeling of awe and solemnity, as though long
ages had rolled back and by a miracle the dead time had been revived and
shown to us for a brief and precious moment. On a sleek white mule came a
prelate, all in pure lilac, his grey head bare to the sunshine and carrying in
his right hand the gold and jewelled Cross. The trappings of the mule were
black and gold, a large black, square cloth thrown over its back in the
mediæval fashion. The Cross, which was large and must have weighed
considerably, was very conspicuous. The beauty of the colour of mule and
rider, the black and gold housings of that white beast, the lilac of the rider’s
robes, and the tender glory of the embossed Cross—how these things
enchant me! An attendant took the Cross as the priest dismounted. Then a
flourish of modern Zouave bugles and a sharp roll of the drum intruded the
forgotten present day on our notice, and soon on came the gallant
gendarmerie and dragoons, and then the coach of His Holiness, seeming to
bubble over with molten gold in the sunshine. Its six black horses ambled
fatly along, all but the wheelers trailing their long, red traces almost on the
ground, as seems to be the ecclesiastical fashion in harness (only the
wheelers really pull), and guided by bedizened postillions in wigs decidedly
like those worn by English Q.C.’s. Flowers were showered down on this
coach from the windows, and much cheering rang in the fresh, clear air. I
see now in my mind’s eye the out-thrust chins and long, bare necks of a
clump of enthusiastic Zouaves shouting with all their hearts under the
Pope’s carriage windows in divers tongues. But the English ‘Long live the
Pope King,’ though given with a will, did not travel as far as the open ‘Viva
il Papa Rè’ or ‘Vive le Pape Roi.’ I put in my British ‘Hurrah!’ as did Papa,
splendidly, just as three old and very fat cardinals had painfully got down
from His Holiness’s high coach and he himself had begun to emerge. We
could see him quite well in the coach, because the sides were more glass
than gilding, and very assiduously did the kind-looking old man bless the
people right and left as he drove up. He had on his head, not the skull cap I
have hitherto seen him in, which allows his silver locks to be seen, but the
old-lady-like headgear so familiar to me from pictures, notably several
portraits of Leo X. at Florence, which covers the ears and is bound with
ermine. It makes the lower part of the face look very large, and is not
becoming. After getting down he stood a long time receiving homage from

many grandees, and smiled and beamed with kindness on everybody. Then
we all bundled into the church, but as every one there was standing on,
instead of sitting on, the chairs, we could see nothing of the ceremonies. We
struggled out, after listening a little to the singing, and Papa and I strolled
delightedly to St. Peter’s, on whose great piazza we awaited the return of
the procession. It was very beautiful, winding along towards us, with my
white mule and all, over that vast space.”
Remember, Reader, that these things can never more be seen, and that is
why I give these extracts in extenso. Merely as history they are precious.
How we would like to have some word pictures of Rome in the
seventeenth, sixteenth and fifteenth centuries, but we don’t get them. The
chronicles tell us of magnificence, numbers, illustrious people, dress, and so
forth; but, somehow, we would like something more intimate and
descriptive of local colour—effects of weather, etc.—to help us to realise
life as it was in the olden time. I think in this age of ugliness we prize the
picturesque and the artistic all the more for their rarer charm.
After “Morra” I did a life-size oil study of the head of the celebrated
model, Francesco, which was a great advance in freedom of brush work.
But the walks were not abandoned, and many a delightful round we made
with our father, who was very happy in Rome. The Colosseum was rich in
flowers and trees, which clothed with colour its hideous stages of seats. The
same abundant foliage beautified the brickwork of Caracalla’s Baths, but
those beautiful veils were, unfortunately, slowly helping further to demolish
the ruins, and had to be all cleared away later on. I have several times
managed to wander over those eerie ruins in later years by full moon, but I
have never again enjoyed the awe-inspiring sensation produced by the first
visit, when those trees waved and sighed, and the owls hooted, as in
Byron’s time. And then the loneliness of the Colosseum was more
impressive, and helped one to detach oneself in thought from the present
day more easily. Now the town is creeping out that way.
“April 3rd.—Our goal was Santa Croce to-day, beyond the Lateran, for
there the Pope was to come to bless the ‘Agnus Dei.’ This ceremony takes
place only once in seven years. Everything was en petite tenue, the quietest
carriages, the seediest servants, but oh! how glorious it all was in that
fervent sunlight. We stood outside the church, I greatly enjoying the
amusing crowd, full of such varied types. The effect of the Pope’s two
carriages and the horsemen coming trotting along the straight, long road

from St. John’s to this church, the luminous dust rising in clouds in the
wind, was very pretty. The shouting and cheering and waving of
handkerchiefs were quite frantic, more hearty even than at the Minerva.
People seemed to feel more easy and jolly here, with no grandeur to awe
them. His Holiness looked much more spry than when I last saw him. We
lost poor little Mamma and, in despair, returned without her, and she didn’t
turn up till 7 o’clock!”
The Roman Diary of 1870 must end with the last Easter Benediction
given under the temporal power, Urbi et Orbi.
“Easter Sunday, April 17th.—What a day, brimming over with rich eye-
feasts, with pomp and splendour! What can the eye see nowadays to come
anywhere near what I saw to-day, except on this anniversary here in unique
Rome? Of course, all the world knows that the splendour of this great
ceremony outshines that of any other here or in the whole world. Mamma
and I reserved ourselves for the benediction alone, so did not start for St.
Peter’s till ten o’clock, and got there long before the troops. On getting out
of the carriage we strolled leisurely to the steps leading up to the church,
where we took up our stand, enjoying the delicious sunshine and fresh,
clear air, and also the interesting people that were gradually filling the
piazza, amongst whom were pilgrims with long staves, many being
Neapolitans, the women in new costumes of the brightest dyes and with
snowy tovaglie artistically folded. Some of these women carried the family
luggage on their heads, this luggage being great bundles wrapped in rugs of
red, black, and yellow stripes, some with the big coloured umbrella passed
through and cleverly balanced. All these people had trudged on foot all the
way. Their shoes hung at their waists, and also their water flasks. As the
troops came pouring in we were requested by the sappers to range ourselves
and not to encroach beyond the bottom step. Here was a position to see
from! We watched the different corps forming to the stirring bugle and
trumpet sounds, the officers mounting their horses, all splendid in velvet
housings, the officers in the fullest of full dress. There was no pushing in
the crowd, and we were as comfortable as possible. But there was a scene to
our left, up on the terrace that runs along the upper part of the piazza and is
part of the Vatican, which was worth to me all the rest; it was, pictorially,
the most beautiful sight of all. Along this terrace, the balustrade of which
was hung with mellow old faded tapestry, and bears those dark-toned,
effective statues standing out so well against the blue sky, were collected in

a long line, I should say, nearly all the bishops who are gathered here in
Rome for the Council, in their white and silver vestments, and wearing their
snowy mitres, a few dark-dressed ladies in veils and an officer in bright
colour here and there supporting most artistically those long masses of
white. Above the heads of this assembly stretched the long white awning,
through which the strong sun sent a glowing shade, and above that the clear
sky, with the Papal white and yellow flags and standards in great quantities
fluttering in the breeze! My delighted eyes kept wandering up to that terrace
away from the coarser military picturesqueness in front. Up there was a real
bit of the olden time. There was a feeling as of lilies about those white-
robed pontiffs. At last a sign from a little balcony high up on the façade was
given, and all the troops sprang to attention, and then the gentle-faced old
Pope glided into view there, borne on his chair and wearing the triple
crown. Clang go the rifles and sabres in a general salute, and a few
‘evvivas’ burst from the crowd, which are immediately suppressed by a
general ‘sh-sh-sh,’ and amidst a most imposing silence, the silence of a
great multitude, the Pope begins to read from a crimson book held before
him with the voice of a strong young man. Curiously enough, in this
stillness all the horses began to neigh, but their voices could not drown the
single one of Pio Nono. After the reading the Pope rose, and down went, on
their knees, the mass of people and soldiers, ‘like one man,’ and the old
Pope pressed his hands together a moment and then flung open his arms
upwards with an action full of electrifying fervour as he pronounced the
grand words of the blessing which rang out, it seemed, to the ends of the
Earth.
“In the evening we saw the famous illumination of the dome of St.
Peter’s from the Pincian. The wind rather spoiled the first or silver one, but
the next, the golden, was a grand sight, beginning with the cross at the top
and running down in streams over the dome. As I looked, I heard a funny
bit of Latin from an English tourist, who asked a priest ‘Quis est
illuminatio, olio o gas?’ ‘Olio, olio,’ answered the priest good-naturedly.”
And so our Papal Rome on May 2nd, 1870, retreated into my very
appreciative memory, and we returned for a few days to Florence, and
thence to Padua and Venice and Verona on our way to England through the
Tyrol and Bavaria. What a downward slope in art it is from Italy into
Germany! We girls felt a great irritation at the change, and were too
recalcitrant to attend to the German sights properly.

But I filled the Diary with very searching notes of the wonderful things I
saw in Venice, thanks to Veronese, Titian, Tintoretto, Palma Vecchio and
others, who filled me with all that an artist can desire in the way of colour. I
was anxious to improve my weak point, and here was a lesson!
It is curious, however, to watch through the succeeding years how I was
gradually inducted by circumstances into that line of painting which is so
far removed from what inspired me just then. It was the Franco-German
War and a return to the Isle of Wight that sent me back on the military road
with ever diminishing digressions. Well, perhaps my father’s fear, which I
have already mentioned in my early ‘teens, that I was joining in a
“tremendous ruck” in taking the field would have been justified had I not
taken up a line of painting almost non-exploited by English artists. The
statement of a French art critic when writing of one of my war pictures,
“L’Angleterre n’a guère qu’un peintre militaire, c’est une femme,” shows
the position. I wish I could have another life here below to share the joys of
those who paint what I studied in Italy, if only for the love of such work,
though I am very certain I should be quite indistinguishable in that “ruck.”

CHAPTER VII

WAR. BATTLE PAINTINGS

PADUA I greatly enjoyed—its academic quiet, its Shakespearean
atmosphere; and still more did Shakespearean Verona enchant me. I had a
good study of the modern French school at the Paris Salon, and on getting
back to London rejoined the South Kensington schools till the end of the
summer session. Then a studio and practice from the living model. In July
we were all absorbed in the great Franco-German War, declared in the
middle of that month. It seems so absurd to us to-day that we should have
been pro-German in England. This little entry in the Diary shows how
Bismarck’s dishonest manœuvres had hoodwinked the world. “France will
fight, so Prussia must, and all for nothing but jealousy—a pretty spectacle!”
We all believed it was France that was the guilty party. I call to mind how
some one came running upstairs to find me and, subsiding on the top step
with The Times in her hand, announced the surrender of MacMahon’s army
and the Emperor. I wrote “the Germans are pro-di-gious!” and I have lived
to see them prostrate. Such is history.
I was asked, as the war developed, if I had been inspired by it, and this
caused me to turn my attention pictorially that way. Once I began on that
line I went at a gallop, in water-colour at first, and many a subject did I send
to the “Dudley Gallery” and to Manchester, all the drawings selling quickly,
but I never relaxed that serious practice in oil painting which was my solid
foundation. I sent the poor “Magnificat” to the Royal Academy in the spring
of 1871. It was rejected, and returned to me with a large hole in it.
That summer, which we spent at well-loved Henley-on-Thames, was
marred by the awful doings of the Commune in Paris. The Times had a
stereotyped heading for a long time: “The Destruction of Paris.” What
horrible suspense there was while we feared the destruction of the Louvre
and Notre Dame. I see in the Diary: “May 28th, 1871.—Oh! that to-
morrow’s papers may bring a decided contradiction of the oft-repeated
report that the great Louvre pictures are lost and that Notre Dame no longer
stands intact. As yet all is confusion and dismay, and one clings, therefore,

to the hope that little by little we may hear that some fragments, at least,
may be spared to bereaved humanity and that all that beauty is not
annihilated.”
In August, 1871, we were off again. From London back to Ventnor!
There I kept my hand in by painting in oils life-sized portraits of friends and
relations and some Italian ecclesiastical subjects, such as young Franciscan
monks, disciples of him who loved the birds, feeding their doves in a
cloister; an old friar teaching schoolboys, al fresco, outside a church, as I
had seen one doing in Rome. For this friar I commandeered our landlord as
a model, for he had just the white beard and portly figure I required. Yet he
was one of the most furibond dissenters I ever met—a Congregationalist—
but very obliging. Also a candlelight effect in the Church of San Pietro in
Vincoli, in Rome; a large altar-piece for our little Church of St. Wilfrid, and
so on, a mixture of the ecclesiastical and the military. The dances,
theatricals, croquet parties, rides—all the old ways were linked up again at
Ventnor, and I have a very bright memory of our second dwelling there and
reunion with our old friends. In the spring of 1872 I sent one of the many
Roman subjects I was painting to the Academy, a water-colour of a Papal
Zouave saluting two bishops in a Roman street. It was rejected, but this
time without a hole. This year was full of promise, and I very nearly
reached the top of my long hill climb, for in it I began what proved to be
my first Academy picture.
What proved of great importance to me, this year of 1872, was my
introduction, if I may put it so, to the British Army! I then saw the British
soldier as I never had had the opportunity of seeing him before. My father
took me to see something of the autumn manœuvres near Southampton.
Subjects for water-colour drawings appeared in abundance to my delighted
observation. One of the generals who was to be an umpire at these
manœuvres, Sir F. C., had become greatly interested in me, as a mutual
friend had described my battle scenes to him, and said he would speak
about me to Sir Charles Staveley, one of the commanders in the impending
“war,” so that I might have facilities for seeing the interesting movements.
He hoped that, if I saw the manœuvres, I would “give the British soldiers a
turn,” which I did with alacrity. I sent some of the sketches to Manchester
and to my old friend the “Dudley.” One of them, “Soldiers Watering
Horses,” found a purchaser in a Mr. Galloway, of Manchester, who asked
through an agent if I would paint him an oil picture. I said “Yes,” and in

time painted him “The Roll Call.” Meanwhile, in the spring of 1873, I sent
my first really large war picture in oils to the Academy. It was accepted, but
“skyed,” well noticed in the Press and, to my great delight, sold. The
subject was, of course, from the war which was still uppermost in our
thoughts: a wounded French colonel (for whom my father sat), riding a
spent horse, and a young subaltern of Cuirassiers, walking alongside
(studied from a young Irish officer friend), “missing” after one of the
French defeats, making their way over a forlorn landscape. The Cameron
Highlanders were quartered at Parkhurst, near Ventnor, about this time, and
I was able to make a good many sketches of these splendid troops, so
essentially pictorial. I have ever since then liked to make Highlanders
subjects for my brush.
In this same year of 1873 my sister and I, now both belonging to the old
faith, whither our mother had preceded us, joined the first pilgrimage to
leave the shores of England since the Reformation. I had arranged with the
Graphic to make pen-and-ink sketches of the pilgrimage, which was
arousing an extraordinary amount of public interest. Our goal was the
primitive little town of Paray-le-Monial, deep in the heart of France, where
Margaret Mary Alacoque received our Lord’s message. I cannot convey to
my readers who are not “of us” the fresh and exultant impressions we
received on that visit. There was a mixture of religious and national
patriotism in our minds which produced feelings of the purest happiness.
The steamer that took us English pilgrims from Newhaven to Dieppe on
September 2nd flew the standard of the Sacred Heart at the main and the
Union Jack at the peak, seeming thus to symbolise the whole character of
the enterprise. Those Graphic sketches proved a very great burden to me.
Nowadays one of the pilgrims would have done all by “snapshots.” I tried
to sketch as I walked in the processions at Paray and to sing the hymn at the
same time. There was hardly a moment’s rest for us, except for a few
intervals of sleep. The long ceremonies and prescribed devotions, the
processions, the stirring hymns and the journey there and back, all crowded
into a week from start to finish, called for all one’s strength. But how
joyfully given!
I can never forget the hearty, well-mannered welcome the French gave
us, lay and clerical. The place itself was lovely and the weather kind. It is
good to have had such an experience as this in our weary world. The Bishop
of Salford, the future Cardinal Vaughan, led us, and our clergy mustered in

great force. The dear French people never showed so well as during their
welcome of us. It suited their courteous and hospitable natures. Most of our
hosts were peasants and owners of little picturesque shops in this jewel of a
little town. We two were billeted at a shoemaker’s. The urbanity of the
French clergy in receiving our own may be imagined. I love to think back
on the truly beautiful sights and sounds of Paray, with the dominant note of
the church bells vibrating over all. They gave us a graceful send-off,
pleased to have the assurance of our approval of our reception. Many
compliments on our solide piété, with regrets as to their own “légèreté,” and
so forth. “Vive l’Angleterre!” “Vive la France!” “Adieu!”

CHAPTER VIII

“THE ROLL CALL”

I HAD quite a large number of commissions for military water-colours to
get through on my return home, and an oil of French artillery on the march
to paint, in my little glass studio under St. Boniface Down. But after my not
inconsiderable success with “Missing” at the Academy, I became more and
more convinced that a London studio must be my destiny for the coming
winter. Of course, my father demurred. He couldn’t bear to part with me.
Still, it must be done, and to London I went, with his sad consent. I had
long been turning “The Roll Call” in my mind. My father shook his head;
the Crimea was “forgotten.” My mother rather shivered at the idea of the
snow. It was no use; they saw I was bent on that subject. My dear mother
and our devoted family doctor in London (Dr. Pollard[4]), who would do
anything in his power to help me, between them got me the studio, No. 76,
Fulham Road, where I painted the picture which brought me such utterly
unexpected celebrity.
Mr. Burchett, still headmaster at South Kensington, was delighted to see
me with all the necessary facilities for carrying out my work, and he sent
me the best models in London, nearly all ex-soldiers. One in particular, who
had been in the Crimea, was invaluable. He stood for the sergeant who calls
the roll. I engaged my models for five hours each day, but often asked them
to give me an extra half-hour. Towards the end, as always happens, I had to
put on pressure, and had them for six hours. My preliminary expeditions for
the old uniforms of the Crimean epoch were directed by my kind Dr.
Pollard, who rooted about Chelsea back streets to find what I required
among the Jews. One, Mr. Abrahams, found me a good customer. I say in
my Diary:
“Dr. Pollard and I had a delightful time at Mr. Abrahams’ dingy little
pawnshop in a hideous Chelsea slum, and, indeed, I enjoyed it far more
than I should have enjoyed the same length of time at a West End milliner’s.
I got nearly all the old accoutrements I had so much longed for, and in the
evening my Jew turned up at Dr. Pollard’s after a long tramp in the city for

more accoutrements, helmets, coatees, haversacks, etc., and I sallied forth
with the ‘Ole Clo!’ in the rain to my boarding house under our mutual
umbrella, and he under his great bag as well. We chatted about the trade
‘chemin faisant.’”

Crimean ideas.

I called Saturday, December 13th, 1873, a “red-letter day,” for I then
began my picture at the London studio. Having made a little water-colour
sketch previously, very carefully, of every attitude of the figures, I had none
of those alterations to make in the course of my work which waste so much
time. Each figure was drawn in first without the great coat, my models
posing in a tight “shell jacket,” so as to get the figure well drawn first. How
easily then could the thick, less shapely great coat be painted on the well-
secured foundation. No matter how its heavy folds, the cross-belts,
haversacks, water-bottles, and everything else broke the lines, they were
there, safe and sound, underneath. An artist remarked, “What an absurdly
easy picture!” Yes, no doubt it was, but it was all the more so owing to the
care taken at the beginning. This may be useful to young painters, though,
really, it seems to me just now that sound drawing is at a discount. It will

come by its own again. Some people might say I was too anxious to be
correct in minor military details, but I feared making the least mistake in
these technical matters, and gave myself some unnecessary trouble. For
instance, on one of my last days at the picture I became anxious as to the
correct letters that should appear stamped on the Guards’ haversacks. I
sought professional advice. Dr. Pollard sent me the beery old Crimean
pensioner who used to stand at the Museum gate wearing a gold-laced hat,
to answer my urgent inquiry as to this matter. Up comes the puffing old
gentleman, redolent of rum. I, full of expectation, ask him the question:
“What should the letters be?” “B. O.!” he roars out—“Board of Ordnance!”
Then, after a congested stare, he calls out, correcting himself, “W. D.—War
Deportment!” “Oh!” I say, faintly, “War Department; thank you.” Then he
mixes up the two together and roars, “W. O.!” And that was all I got. He
mopped his rubicund face and, to my relief, stumped away down my stairs.
Another Crimean hero came to tell me whether I was right in having put a
grenade on the pouches. “Well, miss, the natural hinference would be that it
was a grenade, but it was something like my ‘and.” Desperation! I got the
thing “like his hand” just in time to put it in before “The Roll Call” left—a
brass badge lent me by the War Office—and obliterated the much more
effective grenade.
On March 29th and 30th, 1874, came my first “Studio Sunday” and
Monday, and on the Tuesday the poor old “Roll Call” was sent in. I watched
the men take it down my narrow stairs and said “Au revoir,” for I was
disappointed with it, and apprehensive of its rejection and speedy return. So
it always is with artists. We never feel we have fulfilled our hopes.
The two show days were very tiring. Somehow the studio, after church
time on the Sunday, was crowded. Good Dr. Pollard hired a “Buttons” for
me, to open the door, and busied himself with the people, and enjoyed it. So
did I, though so tired. It was “the thing” in those days to make the round of
the studios on the eve of “sending-in day.”
Mr. Galloway’s agent came, and, to my intense relief, told me the picture
went far beyond his expectations. He had been nervous about it, as it was
through him the owner had bought it, without ever seeing it. On receiving
the agent’s report, Mr. Galloway sent me a cheque at once—£126—being
more than the hundred agreed to. The copyright was mine.

The days that followed felt quite strange. Not a dab with a brush, and my
time my own. It was the end of Lent, and then Easter brought such church
ceremonial as our poor little Ventnor St. Wilfrid’s could not aspire to. A
little more Diary:
“Saturday, April 11th.—A charming morning, for Dr. Pollard had a fine
piece of news to tell me. First, Elmore, R.A., had burst out to him yesterday
about my picture at the Academy, saying that all the Academicians are in
quite a commotion about it, and Elmore wants to make my acquaintance
very much. He told Dr. P. I might get £500 for ‘The Roll Call’! I little
expected to have such early and gratifying news of the picture which I sent
in with such forebodings. After Dr. P. had delivered this broadside of
Elmore’s compliments he brought the following battery of heavy guns to
bear upon me which compelled me to sink into a chair. It is a note from
Herbert, R.A., in answer to a few lines which kind Father Bagshawe had
volunteered to write to him, as a friend, to ask him, as one of the Selecting
Committee, just simply to let me know, as soon as convenient, whether my
picture was accepted or rejected. The note is as follows:

‘Dear Miss Thompson,—I have just received a note from Father Bagshawe of the Oratory in
which he wished me to address a few lines to you on the subject of your picture in the R.A. To tell
the truth I desired to do so a day or two since but did not for two reasons: the first being that as a
custom the doings of the R.A. are for a time kept secret; the second that I felt I was a stranger to you
and you would hear what I wished to say from some friend—but Father Bagshawe’s note, and the
decision being over, I may tell you with what pleasure I greeted the picture and the painter of it when
it came before us for judgment. It was simply this: I was so struck by the excellent work in it that I
proposed we should lift our hats and give it and you, though, as I thought, unknown to me, a round of
huzzahs, which was generally done. You now know my feeling with regard to your work, and may be
sure that I shall do everything as one of the hangers that it shall be perfectly seen on our walls.
I am tired and hurried, and ask you to excuse this very hasty note, but accept my hearty
congratulations, and
Believe me to be, dear Miss Thompson,
Most faithfully yours,
J. R. Herbert.’

I trotted off at once to show Father Bagshawe the note, and then left for
home with my brilliant news.”
While at home at Ventnor I received from many sources most
extraordinary rumours of the stir the picture was making in London
amongst those who were behind the scenes. How it was “the talk of the
clubs” and spoken of as the “coming picture of the year,” “the hit of the
season,” and all that kind of thing. Friends wrote to me to give me this
pleasant news from different quarters. Ventnor society rejoiced most kindly.
I went to London to what I call in the Diary “the scene of my possible
triumphs,” having taken rooms at a boarding house. I had better let the
Diary speak:
“‘Varnishing Day,’ Tuesday, April 28th.—My real feelings as, laden like
last year, with palette, brushes and paint box, I ascended the great staircase,
all alone, though meeting and being overtaken by hurrying men similarly
equipped to myself, were not happy ones. Before reaching the top stairs I
sighed to myself, ‘After all your working extra hours through the winter,
what has it been for? That you may have a cause of mortification in having
an unsatisfactory picture on the Academy walls for people to stare at.’ I
tried to feel indifferent, but had not to make the effort for long, for I soon
espied my dark battalion in Room II. on the line, with a knot of artists
before it. Then began my ovation (!) (which, meaning a second-class
triumph, is not quite the word). I never expected anything so perfectly
satisfactory and so like the realisation of a castle in the air as the events of
this day. It would be impossible to say all that was said to me by the swells.

Millais, R.A., talked and talked, so did Calderon, R.A., and Val Prinsep,
asking me questions as to where I studied, and praising this figure and that.
Herbert, R.A., hung about me all day, and introduced me to his two sons.
Du Maurier told me how highly Tom Taylor had spoken to him of the
picture. Mr. S., our Roman friend, cleaned the picture for me beautifully,
insisting on doing so lest I should spoil my new velveteen frock. At
lunchtime I returned to the boarding house to fetch a sketch of a better
Russian helmet I had done at Ventnor, to replace the bad one I had been
obliged to put in the foreground from a Prussian one for want of a better. I
sent a gleeful telegram home to say the picture was on the line. I could
hardly do the little helmet alterations necessary, so crowded was I by
congratulating and questioning artists and starers. I by no means disliked it
all. Delightful is it to be an object of interest to so many people. I am sure I
cannot have looked very glum that day. In the most distant rooms people
steered towards me to felicitate me most cordially. ‘Only send as good a
picture next year’ was Millais’ answer to my expressed hope that next year I
should do better. This was after overhearing Mr. C. tell me I might be
elected A.R.A. if I kept up to the mark next year. O’Neil, R.A., seemed
rather to deprecate all the applause I had to-day and, shaking his head,
warned me of the dangers of sudden popularity. I know all about that, I
think.
“Thursday, April 30th.—The Royalties’ private view. The Prince of
Wales wants ‘The Roll Call.’ It is not mine to let him have, and Galloway
won’t give it up.
“Friday, May 1st.—The to-me-glorious private view of 1874. I insert
here my letter to Papa about it:
‘Dearest ——, I feel as though I were undertaking a really difficult work in attempting to
describe to you the events of this most memorable day. I don’t suppose I ever can have another such
day, because, however great my future successes may be, they can never partake of the character of
this one. It is my first great success. As Tom Taylor told me to-day, I have suddenly burst into fame,
and this first time can never come again. It has a character peculiar to all first things and to them
alone. You know that “the élite of London society” goes to the Private View. Well, the greater part of
the élite have been presented to me this day, all with the same hearty words of congratulation on their
lips and the same warm shake of the hand ready to follow the introductory bow. I was not at all
disconcerted by all these bigwigs. The Duke of Westminster invited me to come and see the pictures
at Grosvenor House, and the old Duchess of Beaufort was so delighted with “The Roll Call” that she
asked me to tell her the history of each soldier, which I did, the knot of people which, by the bye, is
always before the picture swelling into a little crowd to see me and, if possible, catch what I was
saying. Galloway’s tall figure was almost a fixture near the painting. That poor man, he was sadly

distracted about this Prince of Wales affair, but the last I heard from him was that he couldn’t part
with it.
Some one at the Academy offered him £1,000 for it, and T. Agnew told him he would give him
anything he asked, but he refused those offers without a moment’s hesitation. He has telegraphed to
his wife at Manchester, as he says women can decide so much better than men on the spur of the
moment. The Prince gives him till the dinner to-morrow to make up his mind. The Duchess of
Beaufort introduced Lord Raglan’s daughters to me, who were pleased with the interest I took in their
father. Old Kinglake was also introduced, and we had a comparatively long talk in that huge
assembly where you are perpetually interrupted in your conversation by fresh arrivals of friends or
new introductions. Do you remember joking with me, when I was a child, about the exaggerations of
popularity? How strange it felt to-day to be realizing, in actual experience, what you warned me of,
in fun, when looking at my drawings. You need not be afraid that I shall forget. What I do feel is
great pleasure at having “arrived,” at last. The great banker Bunbury has invited me and a friend to
the ball at the Goldsmiths’ Hall on Wednesday night. He is one of the wardens. Oh! if you could only
come up in time to take me. Col. Lloyd Lindsay, of Alma fame, and his wife were wild to have “The
Roll Call.” She shyly told me she had cried before the picture. But, for enthusiasm, William Agnew
beat them all. He came up to be introduced, and spoke in such expressions of admiration that his
voice positively shook, and he said that, having missed purchasing this work, he would feel “proud
and happy” if I would paint him one, the time, subject and price, whatever it might be, being left
entirely to me. Sir Richard Airey, the man who wrote the fatally misconstrued order on his holster
and handed it to Nolan on the 25th October, 1854, was very cordial, and showed that he took a keen
pleasure in the picture. I told him I valued a Crimean man’s praise more than anybody else’s, and I
repeated the observation later to old Sir William Codrington under similar circumstances, and to
other Crimean officers. One of them, whose father was killed at the assault on the Redan, pressed me
very hard to consent to paint him two Crimean subjects, but I cannot promise anything more till I
have worked out my already too numerous commissions, old ones, at the horrible old prices.
Sir Henry Thompson, a great surgeon, I understand, was very polite, and introduced his little
daughter who paints. Lady Salisbury had a long chat with me and showed a great intelligence on art
matters. Many others were introduced, or I to them, but most of them exist as ghosts in my memory. I
have forgotten some of their names and, as some only wrote their addresses on my catalogue, I don’t
know who is who. The others gave me their cards, so that is all right. Horsley, R.A., is such a genial,
hearty sort of man. He says he shouldn’t wonder if my name was mentioned in the Royal speeches at
the dinner. Lady Somebody introduced me to Miss Florence Nightingale’s sister, who wanted to
know if there was any possibility of my “most kindly” letting the picture be taken, at the close of the
exhibition, to her poor sister to see. Miss Nightingale, you know, is now bedridden. Now I must stop.
More to-morrow....’

I remember how on the following Sunday my good friend Dr. Pollard,
who lived close to my boarding house, waylaid me on my way to mass at
the Oratory, and from his front garden called me in stentorian tones, waving
the Observer over his head. On crossing over I learnt of the speeches of the
Prince of Wales and the Duke of Cambridge at the Academy banquet the
evening before, in which most surprising words were uttered about me and
the picture.
“Monday, May 4th.—The opening day of the Royal Academy. A dense
crowd before my grenadiers. I fear that fully half of that crowd have been

sent there by the royal speeches on Saturday. I may say that I awoke this
morning and found myself famous. Great fun at the Academy, where were
some of my dear fellow students rejoicing in the fulfilment of their
prophecies in the old days. Overwhelmed with congratulations on all sides;
and as to the papers, it is impossible to copy their magnificent critiques,
from The Times downwards.
“Wednesday, May 6th.—The Queen had my picture abstracted from the
R.A. last night to gaze at, at Buckingham Palace! It is now, of course, in its
place again. Went with Papa to the brilliant Goldsmiths’ Ball, where I
danced. I was a bit of a lion there, or shall I say lioness? Sir William
Ferguson was introduced to me; and he, in his turn, introduced his daughter
and drank to my further success at the supper. Sir F. Chapman also was
presented, and expressed his astonishment at the accuracy of the military
details in my picture. He is a Crimean man. The King of the Goldsmiths
was brought up to me to express his thanks at my ‘honouring’ their ball with
my presence. The engravers are already at me to buy the copyright, but my
dear counsellor and friend, Seymour Haden, says I am to accept nothing
short of £1,000, and get still more if I can!
“May 10th.—The Dowager Lady Westmoreland, who is about 80, and
who has lost pleasure in seeing new faces, when she heard of my Crimean
picture, expressed a great wish to see me, and to-day I went to dine at her
house, meeting there the present earl and countess, an old Waterloo lord,
and Henry Weigall and his wife, Lady Rose. The dear old lady was so
sweet. She was the Duke of Wellington’s favourite niece, and his Grace’s
portraits deck the walls of more than one room. Her pleasure was in talking
of the Florence of the old pre-Austrian days, where she lived sixteen years,
but my great pleasure was talking with the earl and the Waterloo lord, who
were most loquacious. Lord Westmoreland was on Lord Raglan’s staff in
the Crimea.
“May 11th.—Received cheque for the ‘San Pietro in Vincoli’ and
‘Children of St. Francis.’ My popularity has levered those two poor little
pictures off. Messrs. Dickinson & Co. have bought my copyright for
£1,200!!!”
There follows a good deal in the Diary concerning the trouble with Mr.
Galloway, who made hard conditions regarding his ceding “The Roll Call”
to the Queen, who wished to have it. He felt he was bound to let it go to his

Sovereign, but only on condition that I should paint him my next Academy
picture for the same price as he had given for the one he was ceding, and
that the Queen should sign with her own hand six of the artist’s proofs when
the engraving of her picture came out. I had set my heart on painting the
28th Regiment in square receiving the last charge of the French Cuirassiers
at Quatre Bras, but as that picture would necessitate far more work than
“The Roll Call,” I could not paint it for that little £126—so very puny now!
So I most reluctantly suggested a subject I had long had in petto, “The
Dawn of Sedan,” French Cuirassiers watching by their horses in the historic
fog of that fateful morning—a very simple composition. To cut a very long
story short, he finally consented to have “Quatre Bras” at my own price,
£1,126, the copyright remaining his. All this talk went on for a long time,
and meanwhile, all through the London society doings, I made oil studies of
all the grey horses for “Sedan.” The General Omnibus Company sent me all
shades of grey percherons for this purpose. I also made life-size oil studies
of hands for “Quatre Bras,” where hands were to be very strong points,
gripping “Brown Besses.” So I took time by the forelock for either subject.
I was very fortunate in having the help of wise business heads to grapple
with the business part of my work, for I have not been favoured that way
myself.
There is no mention in the Diary of the policeman who, a few days after
the opening of the Academy, had to be posted, poor hot man, in my corner
to keep the crowd from too closely approaching the picture and to ask the
people to “move on.” That policeman was there instead of the brass bar
which, as a child, I had pleased myself by imagining in front of one of my
works, à la Frith’s “Derby Day.” The R.A.’s told me the bar created so
much jealousy, when used, that it had been decided never to use it again.
But I think a live policeman quite as much calculated to produce the
undesirable result. I learnt later that his services were quite as necessary for
the protection of two lovely little pictures of Leighton’s, past which the
people scraped to get at mine, they being, unfortunately, hung at right
angles to mine in its corner. What an unfortunate arrangement of the
hangers! Horsley told me that they went every evening after the closing,
with a lantern, to see if the two gems had been scratched. They were never
seen. I wonder if Leighton had any feelings of dislike towards “that girl.”
She who in her ‘teens records her prostrations of worship before his earlier
works, ere he became so coldly classical.

It is a curious condition of the mind between gratitude for the
appreciation of one’s work by those who know, and the uncomfortable
sense of an exaggerated popularity with the crowd. The exaggeration is
unavoidable, and, no doubt, passes, but the fact that counts is the power of
touching the people’s heart, an “organ” which remains the same through all
the changing fashions in art. I remember an argument I once had with Alma
Tadema on this matter of touching the heart. He laughed at me, and didn’t
believe in it at all.
“Tuesday, May 12th.—Mr. Charles Manning and his wife have been so
very nice to me, and this morning Mrs. M. bore me off to be presented to
His Grace of Westminster, with whom I had a long interview. What a face!
all spirit and no flesh. After that, to the School of Art Needlework to meet
Lady Marion Alford and other Catholic ladies. I ordered there a pretty
screen for my studio on the strength of my £1,200! Thence I proceeded on a
round of calls, going first to the Desanges, where I lunched. There they told
me the Prince of Wales was coming at four o’clock to see the Ashanti
picture Desanges is just finishing. They begged me to come back a little
before then, so as to be ready to be presented when the moment should
arrive. I returned accordingly, and found the place crowded with people
who had come to see the picture. As soon as H.R.H. was announced, all the
people were sent below to the drawing-room and kept under hatches until
Royalty should take its departure; but I alone was to remain in the back
studio, to be handy. All this was much against my will, as I hate being thrust
forward. But, as it turned out, there was no thrusting forward on this
occasion, and all was very nice and natural. The Prince soon came in to
where I was, Mr. Desanges saying ‘Here she is’ in answer to a question. His
first remark to me was, of course, about the picture, saying he had hoped to
be its possessor, etc., etc., and he asked me how I had got the correct details
for the uniforms, and so on, having quite a little chat. He spoke very
frankly, and has a most clear, audible voice.”
Of course, the photographers began bothering. The idea of my portraits
being published in the shop windows was repugnant to me. Nowadays one
is snapshotted whether one likes it or not, but it wasn’t so bad in those days;
one’s own consent was asked, at any rate. I refused. However, it had to
come to that at last. My grandfather simply walked into the shop of the first
people that had asked me, in Regent Street, and calmly made the
appointment. I was so cross on being dragged there that the result was as I

expected—a rather harassed and coerced young woman, and the worst of it
was that this particular photograph was the one most widely published.
Indeed, one of my Aunts, passing along a street in Chelsea, was astonished
to see her rueful niece on a costermonger’s barrow amongst some bananas!

CHAPTER IX

ECHOES OF “THE ROLL CALL”

ON May 14th I lunched at Lady Raglan’s. Kinglake was there to meet
me, and we talked Crimea. I had read and re-read his much too prolix
history, which I thought overburdened with detail, giving one an impression
of the two Balaclava charges as lasting hours rather than minutes. But I had
learnt much that was of the utmost value from this very superabundance of
detail. Then on the next day I rose early, and was off by seven with the
Horsleys to Aldershot at the invitation of Sir Hope Grant, of Indian
celebrity, commanding, who travelled down with us. “Lady Grant received
us at the house, where we found a nice breakfast, and where I got dried,
being drenched by a torrential downpour. Would that it had continued
longer, if only to lay the hideous sand in the Long Valley, which made the
field day something very like a fiasco. I tried to sketch, but my book was
nearly blown out of my hand, my umbrella was turned inside out and my
arms benumbed by the cold. M., most luckily, was on the field, and Mrs.
Horsley and I were soon comfortably ensconced in his hansom cab and
trying to feel more comfortable and jolly. When the sham fight began we
had to keep shifting our standpoint, and Mrs. H. and I had repeatedly to
jump out of the hansom, as we were threatened by an upset every minute
over those sandhills. As to the two charges of cavalry, which Sir Hope had
on purpose for me, I could hardly see them, what with the dust storms half
swallowing them up in dense dun-coloured sheets and my eyes being full of
sand. However, I made the most of the situation, and hope I have got some
good hints. I ought to have so much of this sort of thing, and hope to now,
with all those ‘friends in court!’ When the march past began Sir Hope sent
to ask me if I would like to stand by his charger at the saluting base, which I
did, and saw, of course, beautifully. I felt extraordinarily situated, standing
there, half liking and half not liking the situation, with an enormous
mounted staff of utterly unknown, gorgeous officers curvetting and jingling
behind me and the general. As one regiment passed, marching, as I thought,
just as splendidly as the others, I heard Sir Hope snap at them ‘Very bad,

very bad. Don’t, don’t!’ And I felt for them so much, trusting they didn’t see
me or mind my having heard.”
Three days later, at a charming lunch at Lady Herbert’s, I met her son,
Lord Pembroke, and Dr. Kingsley, Charles’s brother—“The Earl and the
Doctor.” It was interesting to see the originals of the title they gave their
book. The next day people came to the Academy to find, in place of “The
Roll Call,” a placard—“This picture has been temporarily removed by
command of Her Majesty.” She had it taken to Windsor to look at before
her departure for Scotland, and to show to the Czar, who was on a visit.
Calderon, the R.A., whom I met that evening, told me the Academy had
never been receiving so many daily shillings before, and that it ought to
present me with a diamond necklace. And so forth, and so forth—all noted
in the faithful Diary, wherein many extravagances of the moment in my
regard are safely tucked away. Two days later I see: “May 20th.—The
Woolwich review was quite glorious. I went with Lady Herbert, the Lane
Foxes, Lord Denbigh and Capt. Slade. We posted there and back with two
jolly greys and a postboy in a sky-blue jacket. This was quite after my own
heart. Lord Denbigh talked art and war all the way, interesting me beyond
expression. We were in the forefront of everything on arrival, next the
Saluting Point, round which were grouped the most brilliant sons of Mars I
ever saw gathered together, and of various nations. The Czar Alexander II.
headed these, flanked by my two friends, the Prince of Wales and the Duke
of Cambridge. The artillery manœuvres were effective, and I sketched as
much as I could, getting up on the box, Lord Denbigh holding my parasol
over my head, as the sun was strong. I suppose people like spoiling me just
now, or trying to.”
Then, two days later, I note that I dined at Lady Rose Weigall’s, my left-
hand neighbour at table the Archbishop of York, Dr. Thomson, who took in
the hostess. He and I seem to have talked an immense deal about all sorts of
things. He confided to me that his private opinion was that the Irish Church
should never have been disestablished. In the course of further conversation
I thought it better to let him know I was a Catholic by a passing remark. I
said I thought the Neapolitans did not make such solid Catholics as the
English. He stared, none too pleased! The next night I met at the
Westmorelands’, at dinner, Lord George Paget, Colonel Kingscote, and
Henry Weigall, my host of the previous evening. Lord George was drawn
out during dinner about Balaclava, and I listened to his loud cavalry

soldier’s talk with the keenest interest. He protested that we were making
him say too much, but we were insatiable. Lord George was a man I had
tried to picture; he was almost the last to ride back from the light cavalry
charge. His manner and speech were soldatesque, his expressions requiring
at times a “saving your presence” to the ladies, as a prefix. For me time
flew in listening to this interesting Balaclava hero, and it was very late
when I made up my mind to go, a wiser but by no means a sadder girl.
At a dinner at Lady Georgiana Fullerton’s my sister and I met Aubrey de
Vere, who delighted Alice with his conversation. The general company,
however, seem to have chiefly amused themselves with the long and, on the
whole, silly controversy which was appearing in The Times regarding the
sequence of the horse’s steps as he walks. It began by my horse’s walk in
“The Roll Call” having been criticised by those who held to the old
conventional idea. How many hours I had moved alongside horses to see
for myself exactly how a horse puts his feet down in the walk! I had told
many people to go down on all fours themselves and walk, noting the
sequence with their own hands and knees, which was sure to be correct
instinctively. At this same dinner Lady Lothian told me she had followed
my advice, and the idea of that sedate grande dame, with grey hair combed
under a white lace cap, pacing round her room on all fours I thought
delightful. Since those days I have been vindicated by the snap-shot.
I find many Diary pages chiefly devoted to preparations for “Quatre
Bras” and the doing of several pen-and-ink reminiscences of what I had
seen at Woolwich and Aldershot, and exhibited at the “Dudley.” Some were
bought by the picture dealer Gambart, and some by Agnew. One of those
pen-and-inks was the “Halt!”—those Scots Greys I only half saw through
the dust storm at Aldershot pulling up in the midst of a tremendous charge,
very close to us. Gambart had come to my studio to see if he could get
anything, and when I told him of this “Halt!” which I had just sent to the
“Dudley,” he there and then wrote me a cheque for it, without seeing it.
When he went there to claim it, behold! it had already been sold, before the
opening. He was very angry, and threatened law against the “Dudley” for
what he called “skimming” the show before the public got a chance. But the
possessor was, like Mr. Galloway, a Maanchester maan, and these are very
firm on what they call “our rights.” It was no use. I had to make Gambart a
compensation drawing. This introduces Mr. Whitehead, for whom I was to
paint “Balaclava.” He had the “Halt!” tight.

On Corpus Christi Day that year Alice and I, having received our
invitations from the Bishop of Salford, of happy pilgrimage memory, to join
in the services and procession in honour of the Blessed Sacrament at the
Missionary College, Mill Hill, we went thither that glorious midsummer
day. At page 127 of the Diary I have put down certain sentiments about the
practice of the Catholic faith in England, and I express a longing to see the
Host carried through English fields. I little thought in one year to see my
hope realised; yet so it was at Mill Hill. After vespers in the little church,
the procession was formed, and I shall long remember the choristers, in
their purple cassocks, passing along a field of golden buttercups and the
white and gold banners at the head of the procession floating out against a
typical English sky as their bearers passed over a little hillock which
commands a lovely view of the rich landscape. The bishop bore the Host,
and six favoured men held the canopy. Franciscan nuns in the procession
sang the hymns.
The early days of that July had their pleasant festivities, such as a dinner,
with Alice, at Lady Londonderry’s (she who was our mother’s godmother
on the occasion of her reception into the Catholic Church) and the Academy
soirée, where Mrs. Tait invited me and Dr. Pollard to a large garden party at
Lambeth Palace. There I note: “The Royalties were in full force, the
Waleses, as I have heard the Prince and Princess called, and many others. It
was amusing and very pleasant in the gardens, though provokingly windy. I
had a curiously uncomfortable and oppressed feeling, though, in that
headquarters of the—what shall I call it?—Opposition? The Archbishop and
Mrs. Archbishop, particularly Mrs., rather appalled me. But dear Dr.
Pollard, that stout Protestant, must have been very gratified.”
On July 4th Colonel Browne, C.B., R.E., who took the keenest interest in
my “Quatre Bras,” and did all in his power to help me with the military part
of it, had a day at Chatham for me. He, Mrs. B. and daughters called for me
in the morning, and we set forth for Chatham, where some 300 men of the
Royal Engineers were awaiting us on the “Lines.” Colonel Browne had
ordered them beforehand, and had them in full dress, with knapsacks, as I
desired.
They first formed the old-fashioned four-deep square for me, and not
only that, but the beautiful parade dressing was broken and accidenté by my
directions, so as to have a little more the appearance of the real thing. They
fired in sections, too, as I wished, but, unfortunately, the wind was so strong

that the smoke was whisked away in a twinkling, and what I chiefly wished
to study was unobtainable, i.e., masses of men seen through smoke. After
they had fired away all their ammunition, the whole body of men were
drawn up in line, and, the rear rank having been distanced from the front
rank, I, attended by Colonel Browne and a sergeant, walked down them
both, slowly, picking out here and there a man I thought would do for a
“Quatre Bras” model (beardless), and the sergeant took down the name of
each man as I pointed him out very unobtrusively, Colonel Browne
promising to have these men up at Brompton, quartered there for the time I
wanted them. So I write: “I shall not want for soldierly faces, what with
those sappers and the Scots Fusilier Guards, of whom I am sure I can have
the pick, through Colonel Hepburn’s courtesy. After this interesting
‘choosing a model’ was ended, we all repaired to Colonel Galway’s
quarters, where we lunched. After that I went to the guard-room to see the
men I had chosen in the morning, so as to write down their personal
descriptions in my book. Each man was marched in by the sergeant and
stood at attention with every vestige of expression discharged from his
countenance whilst I wrote down his personal peculiarities. I had chosen
eight out of the 300 in the morning, but only five were brought now by the
sergeant, as I had managed to pitch upon three bad characters out of the
eight, and these could not be sent me. We spent the rest of the day very
pleasantly listening to the band, going over the museum, etc. I ought to see
as much of military life as possible, and I must go down to Aldershot as
often as I can.
“July 16th.—Mamma and I went to Henley-on-Thames in search of a
rye field for my ‘Quatre Bras.’ Eagerly I looked at the harvest fields as we
sped to our goal to see how advanced they were. We had a great difficulty
in finding any rye at Henley, it having all been cut, except a little patch
which we at length discovered by the direction of a farmer. I bought a piece
of it, and then immediately trampled it down with the aid of a lot of
children. Mamma and I then went to work, but, oh! horror, my oil brushes
were missing. I had left them in the chaise, which had returned to Henley.
So Mamma went frantically to work with two slimy water-colour brushes to
get down tints whilst I drew down forms in pencil. We laughed a good deal
and worked on into the darkness, two regular ‘Pre-Raphaelite Brethren,’ to
all appearances, bending over a patch of trampled rye.”

I seem to have felt to the utmost the exhilaration produced by the
following episode. Let the young Diary speak: “The grand and glorious
Lord Mayor’s banquet to the stars of literature and art came off to-day, July
21st, and it was to me such a delightful thing that I felt all the time in a
pleasant sort of dream. I was mentioned in two speeches, Lord Houghton’s
(‘Monckton Milnes’) and Sir Francis Grant’s, P.R.A. As the President spoke
of me, he said his eye rested with pleasure on me at that moment! Papa
came with me. Above all the display of civic splendour one felt the
dominant spirit of hospitality in that ever-to-me-delightful Mansion House.
It was a unique thing because such aristocrats as were there were those of
merit and genius. The few lords were only there because they represented
literature, being authors. Patti was there. She wished to have a talk with me,
and went through little Italian dramatic compliments, like Neilson. Old
Cruikshank was a strange-looking old man, a wonder to me as the illustrator
of ‘Oliver Twist’ and others of Dickens’s works—a unique genius. He said
many nice things about me to Papa. I wished the evening could have lasted
a week.”
The next entries are connected with the “Quatre Bras” cartoon:
“Dreadful misgivings about a vital point. I have made my front rank men
sitting on their heels in the kneeling position. Not so the drill book. After
my model went, most luckily came Colonel Browne. Shakes his head at the
attitudes. Will telegraph to Chatham about the heel and let me know in the
morning.
“July 23rd.—Colonel Browne came, and with him a smart sergeant-
major, instructor of musketry. Alas! this man and telegram from Chatham
dead against me. Sergeant says the men at Chatham must have been sitting
on their heels to rest and steady themselves. He showed me the exact
position when at the ‘ready’ to receive cavalry. To my delight I may have
him to-morrow as a model, but it is no end of a bore, this wasted time.”
“July 24th.—The musketry instructor, contrary to my sad expectations,
was by no means the automaton one expects a soldier to be, but a
thoroughly intelligent model, and his attitudes combined perfect drill-book
correctness with great life and action. He was splendid. I can feel certain of
everything being right in the attitudes, and will have no misgivings. It is
extraordinary what a well-studied position that kneeling to resist cavalry is.
I dread to think what blunders I might have committed. No civilian would
have detected them, but the military would have been down upon me. I feel,

of course, rather fettered at having to observe rules so strict and imperative
concerning the poses of my figures, which, I hope, will have much action. I
have to combine the drill book and the fierce fray! I told an artist the other
day, very seriously, that I wished to show what an English square looks like
viewed quite close at the end of two hours’ action, when about to receive a
last charge. A cool speech, seeing I have never seen the thing! And yet I
seem to have seen it—the hot, blackened faces, the set teeth or gasping
mouths, the bloodshot eyes and the mocking laughter, the stern, cool,
calculating look here and there; the unimpressionable, dogged stare! Oh!
that I could put on canvas what I have in my mind!
“July 25th.—A glorious day at Chatham, where again the Engineers
were put through field exercises, and I studied them with all my faculties. I
got splendid hints to-day. Went with Colonel Browne and Papa.
“July 28th.—My dear musketry instructor for a few more attitudes. He
has put me through the process of loading the ‘Brown Bess’—a flint-lock—
so that I shall have my soldiers handling their arms properly. Galloway has
sold the copyright of this picture to Messrs. Dickenson for £2,000! They
must have faith in my doing it well.”
On August 11th I see I took a much-needed holiday at home, at Ventnor;
and, as I say, “gave myself up to fresh air, exercise, a little out-of-door
painting, and Napier’s ‘Peninsular War,’ in six volumes.” Shortly before I
left for home I received from Queen Victoria a very splendid bracelet set
with pearls and a large emerald. My mother and good friend Dr. Pollard
were with me in the studio when the messenger brought it, and we formed a
jubilant trio.
It was pleasant to be amongst my old Ventnor friends who had known
me since I was little more than a child. But on September 10th I had to bid
them and the old place goodbye, and on September 11th I re-entered my
beloved studio.
“September 12th.—An eventful day, for my ‘Quatre Bras’ canvas was
tackled. The sergeant-major and Colonel Browne arrived. The latter, good
man, has had the whole Waterloo uniform made for me at the Government
clothing factory at Pimlico. It has been made to fit the sergeant-major, who
put on the whole thing for me to see. We had a dress rehearsal, and very
delighted I was. They have even had the coat dyed the old ‘brick-dust’ red

and made of the baize cloth of those days! Times are changed for me. It will
be my fault if the picture is a fiasco.”
During the painting of “Quatre Bras” I was elected a member of the
Royal Institute of Painters in Water Colour, and I contributed to the Winter
Exhibition that large sketch of a sowar of the 10th Bengal Lancers which I
called “Missed!” and which the Graphic bought and published in colours.
This reproduction sold to such an extent that the Graphic must have been
pleased! The sowar at “tent-pegging” has missed his peg and pulls at his
horse at full gallop. I had never seen tent-pegging at that time, but I did this
from description, by an Anglo-Indian officer of the 10th, who put the thing
vividly before me. How many, many tent-peggings I have seen since, and
what a number of subjects they have given me for my brush and pencil!
Those captivating and pictorial movements of men and horses are
inexhaustible in their variety.
I had more models sent to me than I could put into the big picture—
Guardsmen, Engineers and Policemen—the latter being useful as, in those
days, the police did not wear the moustache, and I had difficulty in finding
heads suitable for the Waterloo time. Not a head in the picture is repeated. I
had a welcome opportunity of showing varieties of types such as gave me
so much pleasure in the old Florentine days when I enjoyed the Andrea del
Sartos, Masaccios, Francia Bigios, and other works so full of characteristic
heads.
On November 7th my sister and I went for a weekend to Birmingham,
where the people who had bought “The Roll Call” copyright were
exhibiting that picture. They particularly wished me to go. We were very
agreeably entertained at Birmingham, where I was curious to meet the
buyer of my first picture sold, that “Morra” which I painted in Rome.
Unfortunately I inquired everywhere for “Mr. Glass,” and had to leave
Birmingham without seeing him and the early work. No one had heard of
him! His name was Chance, the great Birmingham glass manufacturer.
“November 27th.—In the morning off with Dr. Pollard to Sanger’s
Circus, where arrangements had been made for me to see two horses go
through their performances of lying down, floundering on the ground, and
rearing for my ‘Quatre Bras’ foreground horses. It was a funny experience
behind the scenes, and I sketched as I followed the horses in their
movements over the arena with many members of the troupe looking on,

the young ladies with their hair in curl-papers against the evening’s
performance. I am now ripe to go to Paris.”
So to Paris I went, with my father. We were guests of my father’s old
friends, Mr. and Mrs. Talmadge, Boulevard Haussmann, and a complete
change of scene it was. It gave my work the desired fillip and the fresh
impulse of emulation, for we visited the best studios, where I met my most
admired French painters. The Paris Diary says:
“December 3rd.—Our first lion was Bonnat in his studio. A little man,
strong and wiry; I didn’t care for his pictures. His colouring is dreadful.
What good light those Parisians get while we are muddling in our smoky art
centre. We next went to Gérôme, and it was an epoch in my life when I saw
him. He was at work but did not mind being interrupted. He is a much
smaller man than I expected, with wide open, quick black eyes, yet with
deep lids, the eyes opening wide only when he talks. He talked a great deal
and knew me by name and ‘l’Appel,’ which he politely said he heard was
‘digne’ of the celebrity it had gained. We went to see an exhibition of
horrors—Carolus Duran’s productions, now on view at the Cercle
Artistique. The talk is all about this man, just now the vogue. He illustrates
a very disagreeable present phase of French Art. At Goupil’s we saw De
Neuville’s ‘Combat on the Roof of a House,’ and I feasted my eyes on some
pickings from the most celebrated artists of the Continent. I am having a
great treat and a great lesson.
“December 4th.—Had a supposed great opportunity in being invited to
join a party of very mondaines Parisiennes to go over the Grand Opera,
which is just being finished. Oh, the chatter of those women in the carriage
going there! They vied with each other in frivolous outpourings which
continued all the time we explored that dreadful building. It is a pile of
ostentation which oppressed me by the extravagant display of gilding,
marbles and bronze, and silver, and mosaic, and brocade, heaped up over
each other in a gorged kind of way. How truly weary I felt; and the
bedizened dressing-rooms of the actresses and danseuses were the last
straw. Ugh! and all really tasteless.”
However, I recovered from the Grand Opera, and really enjoyed the
lively dinners where conversation was not limited to couples, but flowed
with great ésprit across the table and round and round. Still, in time, my
sleep suffered, for I seemed to hear those voices in the night. How graceful

were the French equivalents to the compliments I received in London. They
thought I would like to know that the fame of “l’Appel” had reached Paris,
and so I did.
We visited Detaille’s beautiful studio. He was my greatest admiration at
that time. Also Henriette Browne’s and others, and, of course, the
Luxembourg, so I drew much profit from my little visit. But what a change
I saw in the army! I who could remember the Empire of my childhood, with
its endless variety of uniforms, its buglings, and drummings, and
trumpetings; its chic and glitter and swagger: 1870 was over it all now.
Well, never mind, I have lived to see it in the “bleu d’horizon” of a new and
glorious day. My Paris Diary winds up with: “December 14th.—Papa and I
returned home from our Paris visit. My eye has been very much sharpened,
and very severe was that organ as it rested on my ‘Quatre Bras’ for the first
time since a fortnight ago. Ye Gods! what a deal I have to do to that picture
before it will be fit to look at! I continue to receive droll letters and poems
(!). One I must quote the opening line of:

‘Go on, go on, thou glorious girl!’

Very cheering.”

CHAPTER X

MORE WORK AND PLAY

SO I worked steadily at the big picture, finding the red coats very trying.
What would I have thought, when studying at Florence, if I had been told to
paint a mass of men in one colour, and that “brick-dust”? However, my
Aldershot observations had been of immense value in showing me how the
British red coat becomes blackish-purple here, pale salmon colour there,
and so forth, under the influence of the weather and wear and tear. I have all
the days noted down, with the amount of work done, for future guidance,
and lamentations over the fogs of that winter of 1874-5. I gave nicknames
in the Diary to the figures in my picture, which I was amused to find, later
on, was also the habit of Meissonier; one of my figures I called the
“Gamin” and he, too, actually had a “Gamin.” Those fogs retarded my work
cruelly, and towards the end I had to begin at the studio at 9.30 instead of
10, and work on till very late. The porter at No. 76 told me mine was the
first fire to be lit in the morning of all in The Avenue.

Practising for “Quatre Bras.”

One day the Horse Guards, directed by their surgeon, had a magnificent
black charger thrown down in the riding school at Knightsbridge (on deep
sawdust) for me to see, and get hints from, for the fallen horse in my
foreground. The riding master strapped up one of the furious animal’s
forelegs and then let him go. What a commotion before he fell! How he
plunged and snorted in clouds of dust till the final plunge, when the riding
master and a trooper threw themselves on him to keep him down while I
made a frantic sketch. “What must it be,” I ask, “when a horse is wounded
in battle, if this painless proceeding can put him into such a state?”
The spring of 1875 was full of experiences for me. I note that “at the
Horse Guards’ riding school a charger was again ‘put down’ for me, but
more gently this time, and without the risk, as the riding master said, of
breaking the horse’s neck, as last time. I was favoured with a charge, two
troopers riding full tilt at me and pulling up at within two yards of where I
stood, covering me with the sawdust. I stood it bravely the second time, but
the first I got out of the way. With ‘Quatre Bras’ in my head, I tried to fancy
myself one of my young fellows being charged, but I fear my expression
was much too feminine and pacific.” March 22nd gave me a long day’s
tussle with the grey, bounding horse shot in mid-career. I say: “This is a

teaser. I was tired out and faint when I got home.” If that was a black day,
the next was a white one: “The sculptor, Boehm, came in, and gave me the
very hints I wanted to complete my bounding horse. Galloway also came.
He says ‘Quatre Bras’ beats ‘The Roll Call’ into a cocked hat! He gave me
£500 on account. Oh! the nice and strange feeling of easiness of mind and
slackening of speed; it is beginning to refresh me at last, and my seven
months’ task is nearly accomplished.” Another visitor was the Duke of
Cambridge, who, it appears, gave each soldier in my square a long scrutiny
and showed how well he understood the points.
On “Studio Monday” the crowds came, so that I could do very little in
the morning. The novelty, which amused me at first, had worn off, and I
was vexed that such numbers arrived, and tried to put in a touch here and
there whenever I could. Millais’ visit, however, I record as “nice, for he was
most sincerely pleased with the picture, going over it with great gusto. It is
the drawing, character, and expression he most dwells on, which is a
comfort. But I must now try to improve my tone, I know. And what about
‘quality’? To-day, Sending-in Day, Mrs. Millais came, and told me what her
husband had been saying. He considers me, she said, an even stronger artist
than Rosa Bonheur, and is greatly pleased with my drawing. That (the
‘drawing’) pleased me more than anything. But I think it is a pity to make
comparisons between artists. I may be equal to Rosa Bonheur in power, but
how widely apart lie our courses! I was so put out in the morning, when I
arrived early to get a little painting, to find the wretched photographers in
possession. I showed my vexation most unmistakably, and at last bundled
the men out. They were working for Messrs. Dickinson. So much of my
time had been taken from me that I was actually dabbing at the picture
when the men came to take it away; I dabbing in front and they tapping at
the nails behind. How disagreeable!”
After doing a water colour of a Scots Grey orderly for the “Institute,”
which Agnew bought, I was free at last to take my holiday. So my Mother
and I were off to Canterbury to be present at the opening of St. Thomas’s
Church there.
“April 11th, Canterbury.—To Mass in the wretched barn over a stable
wherein a hen, having laid an egg, cackled all through the service. And this
has been our only church since the mission was first begun six years ago, up
till now, in the city of the great English Martyr. But this state of things
comes to an end on Tuesday.”

This opening of St. Thomas’s Church was the first public act of Cardinal
Manning as Cardinal, and it went off most successfully. There were rows of
Bishops and Canons and Monsignori and mitred Abbots, and monks and
secular priests, all beautifully disposed in the Sanctuary. The sun shone
nearly the whole time on the Cardinal as he sat on his throne. After Mass
came the luncheon at which much cheering and laughter were indulged in.
Later on Benediction, and a visit to the Cathedral. I rather winced when a
group of men went down on their knees and kissed the place where the
blood of St. Thomas à Becket is supposed to still stain the flags. The
Anglican verger stared and did not understand.
On Varnishing Day at the Academy I was evidently not enchanted with
the position of my picture. “It is in what is called ‘the Black Hole’—the
only dark room, the light of which looks quite blue by contrast with the
golden sun-glow in the others. However, the artists seemed to think it a
most enviable position. The big picture is conspicuous, forming the centre
of the line on that wall. One academician told me that on account of the
rush there would be to see it they felt they must put it there. This ‘Lecture
Room’ I don’t think was originally meant for pictures and acts on the
principle of a lobster pot. You may go round and round the galleries and
never find your way into it! I had the gratification of being told by R.A.
after R.A. that my picture was in some respects an advance on last year’s,
and I was much congratulated on having done what was generally believed
more than doubtful—that is, sending any important picture this year with
the load and responsibility of my ‘almost overwhelming success,’ as they
called it, of last year on my mind. And that I should send such a difficult
one, with so much more in it than the other, they all consider ‘very plucky.’
I was not very happy myself, although I know ‘Quatre Bras’ to be to ‘The
Roll Call’ as a mountain to a hill. However, it was all very gratifying, and I
stayed there to the end. My picture was crowded, and I could see how it was
being pulled to pieces and unmercifully criticised. I returned to the studio,
where I found a champagne lunch spread and a family gathering awaiting
me, all anxiety as to the position of my magnum opus. After that hilarious
meal I sped back to the fascination of Burlington House. I don’t think,
though, that Mamma will ever forgive the R.A.’s for the ‘Black Hole.’
“April 30th.—The private view, to which Papa and I went. It is very
seldom that an ‘outsider’ gets invited, but they make a pet of me at the
Academy. Again this day contrasted very soberly with the dazzling P.V. of

‘74. There were fewer great guns, and I was not torn to pieces to be
introduced here, there, and everywhere, most of the people being the same
as last year, and knowing me already. The same furore cannot be repeated;
the first time, as I said, can never be a second. Papa and I and lots of others
lunched over the way at the Penders’ in Arlington Street, our hosts of last
night, and it was all very friendly and nice, and we returned in a body to the
R.A. afterwards. I was surprised, at the big ‘At Home’ last night, to find
myself a centre again, and people all so anxious to hear my answers to their
questions. Last year I felt all this more keenly, as it had all the fascination of
novelty. This year just the faintest atom of zest is gone.
“May 3rd.—To the Academy on this, the opening day. A dense, surging
multitude before my picture. The whole place was crowded so that before
‘Quatre Bras’ the jammed people numbered in dozens and the picture was
most completely and satisfactorily rendered invisible. It was chaos, for
there was no policeman, as last year, to make people move one way. They
clashed in front of that canvas and, in struggling to wriggle out, lunged right
against it. Dear little Mamma, who was there nearly all the time of our visit,
told me this, for I could not stay there as, to my regret, I find I get
recognised (I suppose from my latest photos, which are more like me than
the first horror) and the report soon spreads that I am present. So I wander
about in other rooms. I don’t know why I feel so irritated at starers. One can
have a little too much popularity. Not one single thing in this world is
without its drawbacks. I see I am in for minute and severe criticism in the
papers, which actually give me their first notices of the R.A. The Telegraph
gives me its entire article. The Times leads off with me because it says
‘Quatre Bras’ will be the picture the public will want to hear about most. It
seems to be discussed from every point of view in a way not usual with
battle pieces. But that is as it should be, for I hope my military pictures will
have moral and artistic qualities not generally thought necessary to military
genre.
“May 4th.—All of us and friends to the Academy, where we had a lively
lunch, Mamma nearly all the time in ‘my crowd,’ half delighted with the
success and half terrified at the danger the picture was in from the eagerness
of the curious multitude. I just furtively glanced between the people, and
could only see a head of a soldier at a time. A nice notion the public must
have of the tout ensemble of my production!”

I was afloat on the London season again, sometimes with my father, or
with Dr. Pollard. My dear mother did not now go out in the evenings, being
too fatigued from her most regrettable sleeplessness. There was a dinner or
At Home nearly every day, and occasionally a dance or a ball. At one of the
latter my partner informed me that Miss Thompson was to be there that
evening. All this was fun for the time. At a crowded afternoon At Home at
the Campanas’, where all the singers from the opera were herded, and
nearly cracked the too-narrow walls of those tiny rooms by the concussion
of the sound issuing from their wonderful throats, I met Salvini. “Having
his ‘Otello,’ which we saw the other night, fresh in my mind, I tried to
enthuse about it to him, but became so tongue-tied with nervousness that I
could only feebly say ‘Quasi, quasi piangevo!’ ‘O! non bisogna piangere,’
poor Salvini kindly answered. To tell him I nearly cried! To tell the truth, I
was much too painfully impressed by the terrific realism of the murder of
Desdemona and of Othello’s suicide to cry. I have been told that, when
Othello is chasing Desdemona round the room and finally catches her for
the murder, women in the audience have been known to cry out ‘Don’t!’
And I told him I nearly cried! Ugh!”
After this I went to Great Marlow for fresh air with my mother, and
worked up an oil picture of a scout of the 3rd Dragoon Guards whom I saw
at Aldershot, getting the landscape at Marlow. It has since been engraved.
By the middle of June I was at work in the studio once more. The
evenings brought their diversions. Under Mrs. Owen Lewis’s chaperonage I
went to Lady Petre’s At Home one evening, where 600 guests were
assembled “to meet H.E. the Cardinal.”[5] I record that “I enjoyed it very
much, though people did nothing but talk at the top of their voices as they
wriggled about in the dense crowd which they helped to swell. They say it
is a characteristic of these Catholic parties that the talk is so loud, as
everybody knows everybody intimately! I met many people I knew, and my
dear chaperon introduced lots of people to me. I had a longish talk with
H.E., who scolded me, half seriously, for not having come to see him. I was
aware of an extra interest in me in those orthodox rooms, and was much
amused at an enthusiastic woman asking, repeatedly, whether I was there.
These fleeting experiences instruct one as they fly. Now I know what it
feels like to be ‘the fashion.’” Other festivities have their record: “I went to
a very nice garden party at the house of the great engineer, Mr. Fowler,
where the usual sort of thing concerning me went on—introductions of

‘grateful’ people in large numbers who, most of them, poured out their
heartfelt(!) feelings about me and my work. I can stand a surprising amount
of this, and am by no means blasée yet. Mr. Fowler has a very choice
collection of modern pictures, which I much enjoyed.” Again: “The dinner
at the Millais’ was nice, but its great attraction was Heilbuth’s being there,
one of my greatest admirations as regards his particular line—characteristic
scenes of Roman ecclesiastical life such as I so much enjoyed in Rome. I
told Millais I had had Heilbuth’s photograph in my album for years. ‘Do
you hear that, Heilbuth?’ he shouted. To my disgust he was portioned off to
some one else to go in to dinner, but I had de Nittis, a very clever
Neapolitan artist, and, what with him and Heilbuth and Hallé and Tissot, we
talked more French and Italian than English that evening. Millais was so
genial and cordial, and in seeing me into the carriage he hinted very broadly
that I was soon to have what I ‘most t’oroughly deserved’—that is, my
election as A.R.A. He pronounced the ‘th’ like that, and with great
emphasis. Was that the Jersey touch?”
In July I saw de Neuville’s remarkable “Street Combat,” which made a
deep impression on me. I went also to see the field day at Aldershot, a great
success, with splendid weather. After the “battle,” Captain Cardew took us
over several camps, and showed us the stables and many things which
interested me greatly and gave me many ideas. The entry for July 17th says:
“Arranging the composition for my ‘Balaclava’ in the morning, and at
1.30 came my dear hussar,[6] who has sat on his fiery chestnut for me
already, on a fine bay, for my left-hand horse in the new picture. I have been
leading such a life amongst the jarring accounts of the Crimean men I have
had in my studio to consult. Some contradict each other flatly. When Col.
C. saw my rough charcoal sketch on the wall, he said no dress caps were
worn in that charge, and coolly rubbed them off, and with a piece of
charcoal put mean little forage caps on all the heads (on the wrong side,
too!), and contentedly marched out of the door. In comes an old 17th Lancer
sergeant, and I tell him what has been done to my cartoon. ‘Well, miss,’
says he, ‘all I can tell you is that my dress cap went into the charge and my
dress cap came out of it!’ On went the dress caps again and up went my
spirits, so dashed by Col. C. To my delight this lancer veteran has kept his
very uniform—somewhat moth-eaten, but the real original, and he will lend
it to me. I can get the splendid headdress of the 17th, the ‘Death or Glory
Boys,’ of that period at a military tailor’s.”

The Lord Mayor’s splendid banquet to the Royal Academicians and
distinguished “outsiders” was in many respects a repetition of the last but
with the difference that the assembly was almost entirely composed of
artists. “I went with Papa, and I must say, as my name was shouted out and
we passed through the lane of people to where the Lord Mayor and Lady
Mayoress were standing to receive their guests, I felt a momentary stroke of
nervousness, for people were standing there to see who was arriving, and
every eye was upon me. I was mentioned in three or four speeches. The
Lord Mayor, looking at me, said that he was honoured to have amongst his
guests Miss Thompson (cheers), and Major Knollys brought in ‘The Roll
Call’ and ‘Quatre Bras’ amidst clamour, while Sir Henry Cole’s allusion to
my possible election as an A.R.A. was equally well received. I felt very
glad as I sat there and heard my present work cheered; for in that hall, last
year, I had still the great ordeal to go through of painting, and painting
successfully, my next picture, and that was now a fait accompli.”
A rainy July sadly hindered me from seeing as much as I had hoped to
see of the Aldershot manœuvres. On one lovely day, however, Papa and I
went down in the special train with the Prince of Wales, the Duke of
Cambridge, and all the “cocked hats.” In our compartment was Lord
Dufferin, who, on hearing my name, asked to be introduced and proved a
most charming companion, and what he said about “Quatre Bras” was nice.
He was only in England on a short furlough from Canada, and did not see
my “Roll Call.”
“At the station at Farnborough the picturesqueness began with the gay
groups of the escort, and other soldiers and general officers, all in war trim,
moving about in the sunshine, while in the background slowly passed,
heavily laden, the Army on the march to the scene of action. Papa and I and
Major Bethune took a carriage and slowly followed the march, I standing
up to see all I could.
“We were soon overtaken by the brilliant staff, and saluted as it flashed
past by many of its gallant members, including the dashing Baron de
Grancey in his sky blue Chasseurs d’Afrique uniform. Poor Lord Dufferin
in civilian dress—frock coat and tall hat—had to ride a rough-trotting troop
horse, as his own horse never turned up at the station. A trooper was
ordered to dismount, and the elegant Lord Dufferin took his place in the
black sheepskin saddle. He did all with perfect grace, and I see him now, as
he passed our carriage, lift his hat with a smiling bow, as though he was

riding the smoothest of Arabs. The country was lovely. All the heather out
and the fir woods aromatic. In one village regiments were standing in the
streets, others defiling into woods and all sorts of artillery, ambulance, and
engineer waggons lumbering along with a dull roll very suggestive of real
war. At this village the two Army Corps separated to become enemies, the
one distinguished from the other by the men of one side wearing broad
white bands round their headdresses. This gave the wearers a rather savage
look which I much enjoyed. It made their already brown faces look still
grimmer. Of course, our driver took the wrong road and we saw nothing of
the actual battle, but distant puffs of smoke. However, I saw all the march
back to Aldershot, and really, what with the full ambulances, the men lying
exhausted (sic) by the roadside, or limping along, and the cheers and songs
of the dirty, begrimed troops, it was not so unlike war. At the North Camp
Sir Henry de Bathe was introduced, and Papa and I stood by him as the
troops came in.” A day or two later I was in the Long Valley where the most
splendid military spectacle was given us, some 22,000 being paraded in the
glorious sunshine and effective cloud shadows in one of the most striking
landscapes I have seen in England. “It was very instructive to me,” I write,
“to see the difference in the appearance of the men to-day from that which
they presented on Thursday. Their very faces seemed different; clean, open
and good-looking, whereas on Thursday I wondered that British soldiers
could look as they did. The infantry in particular, on that day, seemed
changed; they looked almost savage, so distorted were their faces with
powder and dirt and deep lines caused by the glare of the sun. I was well
within the limits when I painted my 28th in square. I suppose it would not
have done to be realistic to the fullest extent. The lunch at the Welsh
Fusiliers’ mess in a tent I thought very nice. Papa came down for the day. It
is very good of him. I don’t think he approves of my being so much on my
own hook. But things can’t help being rather abnormal.”
Here follows another fresh air holiday at my grandparents’ at Worthing
(where I rode with my grandfather), finishing up with a visit which I shall
always remember with pleasure—I ought to say gratitude—not only for its
own sake, but for all the enjoyment it obtained for me in Italy. That August
I was a guest of the Higford-Burrs at Aldermaston Court, an Elizabethan
house standing in a big Berkshire park. “I arrived just as the company were
finishing dinner. I was welcomed with open arms. Mrs. Higford-Burr
embraced me, although I have only seen her twice before, and I was made

to sit down at table in my travelling dress, positively declining to recall
dishes, hating a fuss as I do. The dessert was pleasant because every one
made me feel at home, especially Mrs. Janet Ross, daughter of the Lady
Duff Gordon whose writings had made me long to see the Nile in my
childhood. There are five lakes in the Park, and one part is a heather-
covered Common, of which I have made eight oil sketches on my little
panels, so that I have had the pleasure of working hard and enjoying the
society of most delightful people. There were always other guests at dinner
besides the house party, and the average number who sat down was
eighteen. Besides Mrs. Ross were Mr. and Mrs. Layard, he the Nineveh
explorer, and now Ambassador at Madrid, the Poynters, R.A., the Misses
Duff Gordon, and others, in the house. Mrs. Burr with her great tact allowed
me to absent myself between breakfast and tea, taking my sandwiches and
paints with me to the moor.”
Days at Worthing followed, where my mother and I painted all day on
the Downs, I with my “Balaclava” in view, which required a valley and low
hills. My mother’s help was of great value, as I had not had much time to
practise landscape up to then. Then came my visit, with Alice, to Newcastle,
where “Quatre Bras” was being exhibited, to be followed by our visit at
Mrs. Ross’s Villa near Florence, whither she had invited us when at
Aldermaston, to see the fêtes in honour of Michael Angelo.
“We left for Newcastle by the ‘Flying Scotchman’ from King’s Cross at
10 a.m., and had a flying shot at Peterborough and York Cathedrals, and a
fine flying view of Durham. Newcastle impressed us very much as we
thundered over the iron bridge across the Tyne and looked down on the
smoke-shrouded, red-roofed city belching forth black and brown smoke and
jets of white steam in all directions. It rises in fine masses up from the
turbid flood of the dark river, and has a lurid grandeur quite novel to us. I
could not help admiring it, though, as it were, under protest, for it seems to
me something like a sin to obscure the light of Heaven when it is not
necessary. The laws for consuming factory smoke are quite disregarded
here. Mrs. Mawson, representing the firm at whose gallery ‘Quatre Bras’ is
being exhibited, was awaiting our arrival, and was to be our hostess. We
were honoured and fêted in the way of the warm-hearted North. Nothing
could have been more successful than our visit in its way. These
Northerners are most hospitable, and we are delighted with them. They
have quite a cachet of their own, so cultured and well read on the top of

their intense commercialism—far more responsive in conversation than
many society people I know ‘down South.’ We had a day at Durham under
Mrs. Mawson’s wing, visiting that finest of all English Cathedrals (to my
mind), and the Bishop’s palace, etc. We rested at the Dean’s, where, of
course, I was asked for my autograph. I already find how interested the
people are about here, more even than in other parts where I have been.
Durham is a place I loved before I saw it. The way that grand mass of
Norman architecture rises abruptly from the woods that slope sheer down to
the calm river is a unique thing. Of course, the smoky atmosphere makes
architectural ornament look shallow by dimming the deep shadows of
carvings, etc.—a great pity. On our return we took another lion en passant
—my picture at Newcastle, and most delighted I was to find it so well
lighted. I may say I have never seen it properly before, because it never
looked so well in my studio, and as to the Black Hole——! What people
they are up here for shaking hands! When some one is brought up to me the
introducer puts it in this way: ‘Mr. So-and-So wishes very much to have the
honour of shaking hands with you, Miss Thompson.’ There is a straight-
forward ring in their speech which I like.”
We were up one morning at 4.30 to be off to Scotland for the day. At
Berwick the rainy weather lifted and we were delighted by the look of the
old Border town on its promontory by the broad and shining Tweed.
Passing over the long bridge, which has such a fine effect spanning the
river, we were pleased to find ourselves in a country new to us. Edinburgh
struck us very much, for we had never quite believed in it, and thought it
was “all the brag of the Scotch,” but we were converted. It is so like a fine
old Continental city—nothing reminds one of England, and yet there is a
Scotchiness about it which gives it a sentiment of its own. Our towns are, as
a rule, so poorly situated, but Edinburgh has the advantage of being built on
steep hills and of being back-grounded by great crags which give it a most
majestic look. The grey colour of the city is fine, and the houses, nearly all
gabled and very tall, are exceedingly picturesque, and none have those vile,
black, wriggling chimney pots which disfigure what sky lines our towns
may have. I was delighted to see so many women with white caps and
tartan shawls and the children barefoot; picturesque horse harness; plenty of
kilted soldiers.
We did all the lions, including the garrison fortress where the Cameron
Highlanders were, and where Colonel Miller, of Parkhurst memory, came

out, very pleased to speak to me and escort us about. He had the water
colour I gave him of his charger, done at Parkhurst in the old Ventnor days.
Our return to Newcastle was made in glorious sunshine, and we greedily
devoured the peculiarly sweet and remote-looking scenes we passed
through. I shall long remember Newcastle at sunset on that evening, Then, I
will say, the smoke looked grand. They asked me to look at my picture by
gas light. The sixpenny crowd was there, the men touching their caps as I
passed. In the street they formed a lane for me to pass to the carriage.
“What nice people!” I exclaim in the Diary.
All the morning of our departure I was employed in sitting for my
photograph, looking at productions of local artists and calling on the Bishop
and the Protestant Vicar. One man had carved a chair which was to be
dedicated to me. I was quaintly enthroned on it. All this was done on our
way to the station, where we lunched under dozens of eyes, and on the
platform a crowd was assembled. I read: “Several local dignitaries were
introduced and ‘shook hands,’ as also the ‘Gentlemen of the local Press.’ As
I said a few words to each the crowd saw me over the barriers, which made
me get quite hot and I was rather glad when the train drew up and we could
get into our carriage. The farewell handshakings at the door may be
imagined. We left in a cloud of waving handkerchiefs and hats. I don’t
know that I respond sufficiently to all this. Frankly, my picture being made
so much of pleases me most satisfactorily, but the personal part of the
tribute makes me curiously uncomfortable when coming in this way.”
Ruskin wrote a pamphlet on that year’s Academy in which he told the
world that he had approached “Quatre Bras” with “iniquitous prejudice” as
being the work of a woman. He had always held that no woman could paint,
and he accounted for my work being what he found it as being that of an
Amazon. I was very pleased to see myself in the character of an Amazon.

CHAPTER XI

TO FLORENCE AND BACK

WE started on our most delightful journey to Florence early in
September of that year to assist at the Michael Angelo fêtes as the guests of
dear Mrs. Janet Ross and the Marchese della Stufa, who, with Mr. Ross,
inhabited in the summer the delicious old villa of Castagnolo, at Lastra a
Signa, six miles on the Pisan side of my beloved Florence. Of course, I give
page after page in the Diary to our journey across Italy under the Alps and
the Apennines. To the modern motorist it must all sound slow, though we
did travel by rail! Above all the lovely things we saw on our way by the
Turin-Bologna line, I think Parma, rising from the banks of a shallow river,
glowing in sunshine and palpitating jewel-like shade, holds pride of place
for noontide beauty. After Modena came the deeper loveliness of the
afternoon, and then Bologna, mellowed by the rosy tints of early evening.
Then the sunset and then the tender moon.
By moonlight we crossed the Apennines, and to the sound of the droning
summer beetle—an extraordinarily penetrating sound, which I declared
makes itself heard above the railway noises, we descended into the Garden
of Italy, slowly, under powerful brakes. At ten we reached Florence, and in
the crowd on the platform a tall, distinguished-looking man bowed to me.
“Miss Thompson?” “Yes.” It was the Marchese, and lo! behind him, who
should there be but my old master, Bellucci. What a warm welcome they
gave us. Of course, our luggage had stuck at the douane at Modane, and
was telegraphed for. No help for it; we must do without it for a day or two.
We got into the carriage which was awaiting us, and the Marchese into his
little pony trap, and off we went flying for a mysterious, dream-like drive in
misty moonlight, we in front and our host behind, jingle-jingling merrily
with the pleasant monotony of his lion-maned little pony’s canter. We could
not believe the drive was a real one. It was too much joy to be at Florence—
too good to be true. But how tired we were!
At last we drove up to the great towered villa, an old-fashioned
Florentine ancestral place, which has been the home of the Della Stufas for

generations, and there, in the great doorway, stood Mrs. Ross, welcoming
us most cordially to “Castagnolo.” We passed through frescoed rooms and
passages, dimly lighted with oil lamps of genuine old Tuscan patterns, and
were delighted with our bedrooms—enormous, brick-paved and airy. There
we made a show of tidying ourselves, and went down to a fruit-decked
supper, though hardly able to sit up for sleep. How kind they were to us! We
felt quite at home at once.
“September 12th.—After Mass at the picturesque little chapel which,
with the vicario’s dwelling, abuts on the fattoria wing of the villa, we drove
into Florence with Mrs. Ross and the Marchese, whom we find the typical
Italian patrician of the high school. We were rigged out in Mrs. Ross’s
frocks, which didn’t fit us at all. But what was to be done? Provoking girls!
It was a dear, hot, dusty, dazzling old Florentine drive, bless it! and we were
very pleased. Florence was en fête and all imbandierata and hung with the
usual coloured draperies, and all joyous with church bells and military
bands. The concert in honour of Michael Angelo (the fêtes began to-day)
was held in the Palazzo Vecchio, and very excellent music they gave us, the
audience bursting out in applause before some of the best pieces were quite
finished in that refreshingly spontaneous way Italians have. After the
concert we loitered about the piazza looking at the ever-moving and
chattering crowd in the deep, transparent shade and dazzling sunshine. It
was a glorious sight, with the white statues of the fountain rising into the
sunlight against houses hung mostly with very beautiful yellow draperies. I
stood at the top of the steps of the Loggia de’ Lanzi, and, resting my book
on the pedestal of one of the lions, I made a rough sketch of the scene,
keeping the Graphic engagement in view. I subsequently took another of
the Michael Angelo procession passing the Ponte alle Grazie on its way
from Santa Croce to the new ‘Piazzale Michel Angelo,’ which they have
made since we were here before, on the height of San Miniato. It was a
pretty procession on account of the rich banners. A day full of charming
sights and melodious sounds.”
The great doings of the last day of the fêtes were the illuminations in the
moonlit evening. They were artistically done, and we had a feast of them,
taking a long, slow drive to the piazzale by the new zigzag. Michael Angelo
was remembered at every turn, and the places he fortified were especially
marked out by lovely lights, all more or less soft and glowing. Not a vile
gas jet to be seen anywhere. The city was not illuminated, nor was anything,

with few exceptions, save the lines of the great man’s fortifications. The old
white banner of Florence, with the Giglio, floated above the tricolour on the
heights which Michael Angelo defended in person. The effect, especially on
the church of San Miniato, of golden lamps making all the surfaces aglow,
as if the walls were transparent, and of the green-blue moonlight above, was
a thing as lovely as can be seen on this earth. It was a thoroughly Italian
festival. We were charmed with the people; no pushing in the crowds,
which enjoyed themselves very much. They made way for us when they
saw we were foreigners.
We stayed at Castagnolo nearly all through the vintage, pressed from one
week to another to linger, though I made many attempts to go on account of
beginning my “Balaclava.” The fascination of Castagnolo was intense, and
we had certainly a happy experience. I sketched hard every day in the
garden, the vineyards, and the old courtyard where the most picturesque
vintage incidents occurred, with the white oxen, the wine pressing, and the
bare-legged, merry contadini, all in an atmosphere scented with the
fermenting grapes. Everything in the Cortile was dyed with the wine in the
making. I loved to lean over the great vats and inhale that wholesome
effluence, listening to the low sea-like murmur of the fermentation. On the
days when we helped to pick the grapes on the hillside (and “helping
ourselves” at the same time) we had collazione there, a little picnic, with the
indispensable guitar and post-prandial cigarette. Every one made the most
of this blessed time, as such moments should be made the most of when
they are given us, I think. Young Italians often dined at the villa, and the
evenings were spent in singing stornelli and rispetti until midnight to the
guitar, every one of these young fellows having a nice voice. They were
merry, pleasant creatures.

One of the Balaklava Six-hundred.

Nothing but the stern necessity of returning to work could have kept me
from seeing the vintage out. We left most regretfully on October 4th, taking
Genoa and our dear step-sister on the way. Even as it was our lingering in
Italy made me too late, as things turned out, for the Academy!
October 19th has this entry: “Began my ‘Balaclava’ cartoon to-day.
Marked all the positions of the men and horses. My trip to Italy and the
glorious and happy and healthy life I have led there, and the utter change of
scene and occupation, have done me priceless good, and at last I feel like
going at this picture con amore. I was in hopes this happy result would be
obtained.” “Balaclava” was painted for Mr. Whitehead, of Manchester. I
had owed him a picture from the time I exhibited “Missing.” It was to be
the same size, and for the same price as that work, and I was in honour
bound to fulfil my contract! So I again brought forward the “Dawn of
Sedan,” although my prices were now so enlarged that £80 had become
quite out of proportion, even for a simple subject like that. However, after
long parleys, and on account of Mr. Whitehead’s repudiation of the Sedan
subject, it was agreed that “Balaclava” should be his, at the new scale

altogether. The Fine Art Society (late Dickenson & Co.) gave Mr.
Whitehead £3,000 for the copyright, and engaged the great Stacpoole, as
before, to execute the engraving.
I was very sorry that the picture was not ready for Sending-in Day at the
Academy. No doubt the fuss that was made about it, and my having begun a
month too late, put me off; but, be that as it may, I was a good deal
disturbed towards the end, and had to exhibit “Balaclava” at the private
gallery of the purchasers of the copyright in Bond Street. This gave me
more time to finish. I had my own Private View on April 20th, 1876: “The
picture is disappointing to me. In vain I call to mind all the things that
judges of art have said about this being the best thing I have yet painted.
Can one never be happy when the work is done? This day was only for our
friends and was no test. Still, there was what may be called a sensation.
Virginia Gabriel, the composer, was led out of the room by her husband in
tears! One officer who had been through the charge told a friend he would
never have come if he had known how like the real thing it was. Curiously
enough, another said that after the stress of Inkermann a soldier had come
up to his horse and leant his face against it exactly as I have the man doing
to the left of my picture.
“April 22nd.—An enormous number of people at the Society’s Private
View and some of the morning papers blossoming out in the most beautiful
notices, ever so long, and I getting a little reassured.” A day later: “Went to
lunch at Mrs. Mitchell’s, who invited me at the Private View, next door to
Lady Raglan’s, her great friend. Two distinguished officers were there to
meet me, and we had a pleasant chat.” And this is all I say! One of the two
was Major W. F. Butler, author of “The Great Lone Land.”
The London season went by full of society doings. Our mother had long
been “At Home” on Wednesdays, and much good music was heard at “The
Boltons,” South Kensington. Ruskin came to see us there. He and our
mother were often of the same way of thinking on many subjects, and I
remember seeing him gently clapping his hands at many points she made.
He was displeased with me on one occasion when, on his asking me which
of the Italian masters I had especially studied, I named Andrea del Sarto.
“Come into the corner and let me scold you,” were his disconcerting words.
Why? Of course, I was crestfallen, but, all the same, I wondered what could
be the matter with Andrea’s “Cenacolo” at San Salvi, or his frescoes at the
SS. Annunziata, or his “Madonna with St. Francis and St. John,” in the

Tribune of the Uffizi. The figure of the St. John is, to me, one of the most
adorable things in art. That gentle, manly face; that dignified pose; the
exquisite modelling of the hand, and the harmonious colours of the drapery
—what could be the matter with such work? I remember, at one of the
artistic London “At Homes,” Frith, R.A., coming up to me with a long face
to say, if I did not send to the Academy, I should lose my chance of election.
But I think the difficulties of electing a woman were great, and much
discussion must have been the consequence amongst the R.A.’s. However,
as it turned out, in 1879 I lost my election by two votes only! Since then I
think the door has been closed, and wisely. I returned to the studio on May
18th, for I could not lay down the brush for any amount of society doings.
Besides, I soon had to make preparations for “Inkermann.”
“Saturday, June 10th.—Saw Genl. Darby-Griffith, to get information
about Inkermann. I returned just in time to dress for the delightful Lord
Mayor’s Banquet to the Representatives of Art at the Mansion House, a
place of delightful recollections for me. Neither this year’s nor last year’s
banquet quite came up to the one of ‘The Roll Call’ year in point of
numbers and excitement, but it was most delightful and interesting to be in
that great gathering of artists and hear oneself gracefully alluded to in The
Lord Mayor’s speech and others. Marcus Stone sat on my left, and we had
really a thoroughly good conversation all through dinner such as I have
seldom embarked on, and I found, when I tried it, that I could talk pretty
well. He is a fine fellow, and simple-minded and genuine. My vis-à-vis was
Alma Tadema, with his remarkable-looking wife, like a lady out of one of
his own pictures; and many well-known heads wagged all around me. After
dinner and the speeches, Du Maurier, of Punch, suggested to the Lord
Mayor that we should get up a quadrille, which was instantly done, and the
friskier spirits amongst us had a nice dance. Du Maurier was my partner;
and on my left I had John Tenniel, so that I may be said to have been
supported by Punch both at the beginning and end of dinner, this being Du
Maurier’s simple and obvious joke, vide the post-turtle indulgence peculiar
to civic banquets. After a waltz we laggards at last took our departure in the
best spirits.”
I remember that in June we went to a most memorable High Mass, to
wit, the first to be celebrated in the Old Saxon Church of St. Etheldreda
since the days of the Reformation. This church was the second place of
Christian worship erected in London, if not in England, in the old Saxon

times. We were much impressed as the Gregorian Mass sounded once more
in the grey-stoned crypt. The upper church was not to be ready for years.
Those old grey stones woke up that morning which had so long been
smothered in the London clay.
Here follow too many descriptions in the Diary of dances, dinners and
other functions. They are superfluous. There were, however, some Tableaux
Vivants at an interesting house—Mrs. Bishop’s, a very intellectual woman,
much appreciated in society in general, and Catholic society in particular—
which may be recorded in this very personal narrative, for I had a funny
hand in a single-figure tableau which showed the dazed 11th Hussar who
figures in the foreground of my “Balaclava.” The man who stood for him in
the tableau had been my model for the picture, but to this day I feel the
irritation caused me by that man. In the picture I have him with his busby
pushed back, as it certainly would and should have been, off his heated
brow. But, while I was posing him for the tableau, every time I looked away
he rammed it down at the becoming “smart” angle. I got quite cross, and
insisted on the necessary push back. The wretch pretended to obey, but, just
before the curtain rose, rammed the busby down again, and utterly
destroyed the meaning of that figure! We didn’t want a representation of
Mr. So-and-so in the becoming uniform of a hussar, but my battered
trooper. The thing fell very flat. But tableaux, to my mind, are a mistake, in
many ways.
I often mention my pleasure in meeting Lord and Lady Denbigh, for they
were people after my own heart. Lady Denbigh was one of those women
one always looks at with a smile; she was so simpatica and true and
unworldly.
July 18th is noted as “a memorable day for Alice, for she and I spent the
afternoon at Tennyson’s! I say ‘for Alice’ because, as regards myself, the
event was not so delightful as a day at Aldershot. Tennyson has indeed
managed to shut himself off from the haunts of men, for, arrived at
Haslemere, a primitive little village, we had a six-mile drive up, up, over a
wild moor and through three gates leading to narrow, rutty lanes before we
dipped down to the big Gothic, lonely house overlooking a vast plain, with
Leith Hill in the distance. Tennyson had invited us through Aubrey de Vere,
the poet, and very apprehensive we were, and nervous, as we neared the
abode of a man reported to be such a bear to strangers. We first saw Mrs.
Tennyson, a gentle, invalid lady lying on her back on a sofa. After some

time the poet sent down word to ask us to come up to his sanctum, where he
received us with a rather hard stare, his clay pipe and long, black, straggling
hair being quite what I expected. He got up with a little difficulty, and when
we had sat down—he, we two and his most deferential son—he asked
which was the painter and which was the poet. After our answer, which
struck me as funny, as though we ought to have said, with a bob, ‘Please,
sir, I’m the painter,’ and ‘Please, sir, I’m the poet,’ he made a few
commonplace remarks about my pictures in a most sepulchral bass voice.
But he and Alice, in whom he was more interested, naturally, did most of
the talking; there was not much of that, though, for he evidently prefers to
answer a remark by a long look, and perhaps a slightly sneering smile, and
then an averted head. All this is not awe-inspiring, and looks rather put on.
We ceased to be frightened.
“There is no grandeur about Tennyson, no melancholy abstraction; and,
if I had made a demi-god of him, his personality would have much
disappointed me. Some of his poetry is so truly great that his manner seems
below it. The pauses in the conversation were long and frequent, and he did
not always seem to take in the meaning of a remark, so that I was relieved
when, after a good deal of staring and smiling at Alice in a way rather
trying to the patience, he acceded to her request and read us ‘The Passing of
Arthur.’ He was so long in finding the place, when his son at last found him
a copy of the book which suited him, and the tone he read in so deep and
monotonous, that I was much bored and longed for the hour of our
departure. He was vexed with Alice for choosing that poem, which he
seemed to think less of than of his later works, and he took the poor child to
task in a few words meant to be caustic, though they made us smile. But the
ice was melting. He seemed amused at us and we gratefully began to laugh
at some quaint phrases he levelled at us. Then he dropped the awe-inspiring
tone, and took us all over the grounds and gave us each a rose. He pitched
into us for our dresses which were too fashionable and tight to please him.
He pinned Alice against a pillar of the entrance to the house on our re-entry
from the garden to watch my back as I walked on with his son, pointing the
walking-stick of scorn at my skirt, the trimming of which particularly
roused his ire. Altogether I felt a great relief when we said goodbye to our
curious host with whom it was so difficult to carry on conversation, and to
know whether he liked us or not. Away, over the windy, twilight heath
behind the little ponies—away, away!”

At the beginning of August I began my studies for “The Return from
Inkermann.” The foreground I got at Worthing; and I had another visit to
Aldershot and many further conversations with Inkermann survivors—
officers of distinction. I am bound to say that these often contradicted each
other, and the rough sketches I made after each interview had to be re-
arranged over and over again. I read Dr. Russell’s account (The Times
correspondent) and sometimes I returned to my own conception, finding it
on the whole the most likely to be true.
I laugh even now at the recollection of two elderly sabreurs, one of them
a General in the Indian Army, who had a hot discussion in my studio, â
propos of my “Balaclava,” about the best use of the sabre. The Indian, who
was for slashing, twirled his umbrella so briskly, to illustrate his own
theory, that I feared for the picture which stood close by his sword arm. The
opposition umbrella illustrated “the point” theory.
Having finally clearly fixed the whole composition of “Inkermann,” in
sepia on tinted paper the size of the future picture I closed the studio on
August 25th and turned my face once more to Italy.

CHAPTER XII

AGAIN IN ITALY

MY sister and I tarried at Genoa on our way to Castagnolo where we
were to have again the joys of a Tuscan vintage. But between Genoa and
Florence lay our well-loved Porto Fino and, having an invitation from our
old friend Monty Brown, the English Consul and his young wife, to stay at
their castello there, we spent a week at that Eden. We were alone for part of
the time and thoroughly relished the situation, with only old Caterina, the
cook, and the dog, “Bismarck,” as company. Two Marianas in a moated
grange, with a difference. “He” came not, and so allowed us to clasp to our
hearts our chief delights—the sky, the sea, the olives and the joyous vines.
In those early days many of the deep windows had no glass, and one night,
when a staggering Mediterranean thunderstorm crashed down upon us, we
really didn’t like it and hid the knives under the table at dinner. Caterina
was saying her Rosary very loud in the kitchen. As we went up the winding
stairs to bed I carried the lamp, and was full of talk, when a gust of wind
blew the lamp out, and Alice laughed at my complete silence, more
eloquent than any words of alarm. We had every evening to expel curious
specimens of the lizard tribe that had come in, and turn over our pillows,
remembering the habits of the scorpion.
But that storm was the only one, and as to the sea, which three-parts
enveloped our little Promontory, its blue utterly baffled my poor paints. But
paint I did, on those little panels that we owe to Fortuny, so nicely fitting
into the box he invented. There was a little cape, crowned with a shrine to
Our Lady—“the Madonnetta” it was called—where I used to go daily to
inhale the ozone off the sea which thundered down below amongst the
brown “pudding-stone” rocks, at the base of a sheer precipice. The
“sounding deep.” Oh, the freshness, the health, the joy of that haunt of
mine! Our walks were perilous sometimes, the paths which almost
overhung the deep foaming sea being slippery with the sheddings of the
pines. At the “nasty bits” we had to hold on by shrubs and twigs, and haul
ourselves along by these always aromatic supports.

Admirable is the industry of the peasants all over Italy. Here on the
extreme point of Porto Fino wherever there was a tiny “pocket” of clay, a
cabbage or two or a vine with its black clusters of grapes toppling over the
abyss found foot-hold. We came one day upon a pretty girl on the very
verge of destruction, “holding on by her eyelids,” gathering figs with a
hooked stick, a demure pussy keeping her company by dozing calmly on a
branch of the fig tree. The walls built to support these handfuls of clay on
the face of the rock are a puzzle to me. Where did the men stand to build
them? It makes me giddy to think of it.
Paragi, the lovely rival of Monty’s robber stronghold, belonged to his
brother, and a fairer thing I never saw than Fred’s loggia with the slender
white marble columns, between which one saw the coast trending away to
La Spezzia. But “goodbye,” Porto Fino! On our way to Castagnolo, at
lovely Lastre a Signa, we paused at Pisa for a night.
“Pisa is a bald Florence, if I may say so; beautiful, but so empty and
lifeless. There are houses there quite peculiar, however, to Pisa, most
interesting for their local style. Very broad in effect are those flat blank
surfaces without mouldings. The frescoes on them, alas! are now merely
very beautiful blotches and stains of colour. We had ample time for a good
survey of the Duomo, Baptistery, Camposanto and Leaning Tower, all
vividly remembered from when I saw them as a little child. But I get very
tired by sight-seeing and don’t enjoy it much. What I like is to sit by the
hour in a place, sketching or meditating. Besides, I had been kept nearly all
night awake at the Albergo Minerva by railway whistles, ducks, parrots,
cats, dogs, cocks and hens, so that I was only at half power and I slept most
of the way to Signa.
“At the station a carriage fitted, for the heat, with cool-looking brown
holland curtains was awaiting us on the chance of our coming, and we were
soon greeted at dear Castagnolo by Mrs. Ross. Very good of her to show so
much happy welcome seeing we had been expected the evening before, not
to say for many days, and only our luggage had turned up! The Marchese,
who had to go into Florence this morning for the day, had gone down to
meet us last evening, and returned with the disconcerting announcement
that, whereas we had arrived last year without our luggage, this year the
luggage had arrived without us. ‘I bauli sono giunti ma le bambine—Chè!’”

Here follows the record of the same delights as those of the year before.
We had been long expected, and Mrs. Ross told me that the peaches had
been kept back for us in a most tantalising way by the padrone, and that
everything was threatening over-ripeness by our delay. The light-hearted
life was in full force. There were great numbers of doves and pigeons at
Castagnolo which shared in the general hilarity, swirling in the sunshine
and swooping down on the grain scattered for them with little cries of
pleasure. I don’t know whether I should find a socialistic blight appearing
here and there, if I returned to those haunts of my youth, over that
patriarchal life, but it seemed to me that the relations between the padrone
and his splendid contadini showed how suitable the system obtaining in
Tuscany was then. The labourers were the fanciulli (the children) of the
master, and without the least approach to servility these men stood up to
him in all the pride of their own station. But what deference they showed to
him! Always the uncovered head and the respectful and dignified attitude
when spoken to or speaking. I mustn’t forget the frank smile and the
pleasant white teeth. It was a smiling life; every one caught the smiling
habit. Oh, that we could keep it up through a London winter! And to a
London winter we returned, for my friends in England were getting fidgety
about “Inkermann.” One more extract, however, from the Castagnolo Diary
must find a place before the veil is drawn. The Marchese took us to Siena
for two days.
“September 29th.—We got up by candlelight at 5 a.m. and had a fresh
drive in the phaeton to the station, whence we took train to the fascinating
Etruscan city, whose very name is magic. The weather, as a matter of
course, was splendid, and Siena dwells in my mind all tender brown-gold in
a flood of sunshine. Small as the city is, and hard as we worked for those
two days, we could only see a portion of its treasures. The result of my
observation in the churches and picture galleries shows me that the art
there, as regards painting, is very inferior; and, indeed, after Florence, with
its most exquisite examples of painting and drawing, these works of art are
not taking. I suppose Florence has spoilt me. Here and there one picks out a
plum, such as the ‘Svenimento of St. Catherine’ in San Domenico, by
Sodoma, the only thing by him that I could look at with pleasure; also, of
course, the famous Perugino in Sant’ Agostino, which I beheld with delight,
and a lovely gem of a Holy Family by Palma Vecchio in the Academy—
such a jewel of Venetian colour.

“The frescoes, however, in the sacristy of the cathedral are things apart,
and such as I have never seen anywhere else, for the very dry air of Siena
has preserved them since Pinturicchio’s time quite intact, and there one
sees, as one can see nowhere else, ancient frescoes as they were when
freshly painted. And very different they are from one’s notions of old
frescoes; certainly not so pleasing if looked at as bits of colour staining old
walls in mellow broken tints, but intensely interesting and beautiful as
pictures. Here one sees what frescoes were meant to be: deep in colour,
exceedingly forcible, with positive illusion in linear and aërial perspective,
the latter being most unexpected and surprising. One’s usual notion of
frescoes is that they must be flat and airless, and modern artists who go in
for fresco decorative art paint accordingly, judging from the faded examples
of what were once evidently such as one sees here—forcible pictures.
“Certainly these wall spaces, looking like apertures through which one
sees crowds of figures and gorgeous halls or airy landscapes, do not please
the eye when looking at the room as a room. One would prefer to feel the
solidity of the walls; but taking each fresco and looking at it for its own
sake only, one feels the keenest pleasure. They are magnificent pictures, full
of individual character and realistic action, unsurpassable by any modern.
“I cannot attempt to put into words my impression of the cathedral itself.
Certainly, I never felt the beauty of a church more. It being St. Michael’s
Day, we heard Mass in the midst of our wanderings, and we were much
struck by the devotion of the people, the men especially—very unlike what
we saw in Genoa. In the afternoon we had a glorious drive through a perfect
pre-Raphaelite landscape to Belcaro, a fortress-villa about six miles outside
Siena, every turn in the road giving us a new aspect of the golden-brown
city behind us on its steep hill. Perhaps the most beautiful view of Siena is
from near Belcaro, where you get the dark pine trees in the immediate
foreground. The owner of the villa took us all over it, the Marchese gushing
outrageously to him about the beauties of the dreadful frescoes on walls and
ceilings, painted by the man himself. We had been warned, Alice and I, to
express our admiration, but I regret to say we had our hearts so scooped out
of us on seeing those things in the midst of such true loveliness that we
couldn’t say a thing, but only murmured. So the poor Marchese had to do
triple-distilled gush to serve for three, and said everything was ‘portentoso.’
“In the evening we all three went out again and, in the bright moonlight,
strolled about the streets, the piazza, and round the cathedral, which shone

in the full light which fell upon it. The deep sky was throbbing with stars,
and all the essence of an Italian September moonlight night was there. Oh,
sweet, restful Siena dream! Like a dream, and yet such a precious reality, to
be gratefully kept in memory to the end.”
Back at Castagnolo on October 1st. “Went for my solita passeggiata up
to the hill of lavender and dwarf oak and other mountain shrubs, where I
made a study of an oak bush on the only wet day we have had, for my
‘Inkermann’ foreground. Mrs. Ross, a fearless rider, went on with the
breaking in of the Arab colt ‘Pascià’ to-day. Old Maso, one of the habitués
of the villa, whooped and screamed every time the colt bucked or reared,
and he waddled away as fast as he could, groaning in terror, only to creep
back again to venture another look. And he had been an officer in the army!
I have secured some water-colour sketches of the vintage for the ‘Institute’
and knocked off another panel or two, and sketched Mrs. Ross in her
Turkish dress, so I have not been idle.” Janet Ross seemed to have
assimilated the sunshine of Egypt and Italy into her buoyant nature, and to
see the vigour with which she conducted the vintage at Castagnolo acted as
a tonic on us all; so did the deep contralto voice and the guitar, and the racy
talk.
We left on October 14th, on a golden day, with the thermometer at 90
degrees in the shade, to return to the icy smoke-twilight of London, where
we groped, as the Diary says, in sealskins and ulsters. Castagnolo has our
thanks. How could we have had the fulness of Italian delights which our
kind hosts afforded us in some pension or hotel in Florence? And what
hospitality theirs was! We tried to sing some of the “Stornelli” in the
hansom that took us home from Victoria Station. One of our favourites,
“M’affaccio alla finestra e vedo Stelle,” had to be modified, as we looked
through the glass of the cab, into “Ma non vedo Stelle,” sung in the minor,
for nothing but the murk of a foggy night was there. What but the stern
necessity of beginning “Inkermann” could have brought me back? My dear
sister cannot have rejoiced, and may have wished to tarry, but when did she
ever “put a spoke in my wheel”?

CHAPTER XIII

A SOLDIER’S WIFE

THOUGH the London winter was gloomy, on the whole, and I was
handicapped in the middle of my work by a cold which retarded the picture
so much that, to my deep disappointment, I had again to miss the Academy,
the brightest spring of my life followed, for on March 3rd I was engaged to
be married to the author of “The Great Lone Land.” It may not be out of
place to give a little sketch of our rather romantic meeting.
When the newly-promoted Major Butler was lying at Netley Hospital,
just beginning to recover from the Ashanti fever that had nearly killed him
at the close of that campaign, his sister Frances used to read to him the
papers, and they thus learnt together how, at the Royal Academy banquet of
that spring, the Prince of Wales and the Duke of Cambridge had spoken as
they did of Miss Elizabeth Thompson. As paper after paper spoke of me and
of my work, he said one day to his sister, in utter fun under his slowly
reviving spirits, “I wonder if Miss Thompson would marry me?” Two years
after that he met me for the first time, and yet another year was to go by
before the Fates said “Now!”
When “Inkermann” was carted off to Bond Street on April 19th, what a
relief and delight it was to tell the model “Time is up.” “Mamma and I
danced about the studio when the picture was gone, revelling in our
freedom to make as much dust as we liked, when hitherto one had had to be
so careful about dust.” We always did this on such occasions.
The Fine Art Society, at whose galleries in Bond Street the picture was
exhibited, bought it and the copyright together. No doubt for some the
subject of this work is too sad, but my dominant feeling in painting it was
that which Wellington gave expression to in those memorable words on
leaving the field of battle at Waterloo: “There is nothing sadder than a
victory, except a defeat.” It shows the remnants of the Guards and the 20th
Regiment and odds and ends of infantry returning in the grey of a
November evening from the “Soldiers’ Battle,” most of the men very weary.
The A.D.C. on horseback I painted from a fine young soldier, Rupert

Carrington, who kindly gave me a sitting. His mother, Lady Carrington,
sent me as a wedding present a medal taken from a dead Russian on the
field of Inkermann, set in a gold bracelet, which is one of my treasures, her
name and mine engraved on it.
“April 20th.—The first Private View of ‘Inkermann.’ I was there a short
time, and was quite happy at the look of my picture. The other three are in
the same gallery, and very popular the whole exhibition seems to be. They
have even got my 1873 venture, ‘Missing,’ by itself upstairs, and
remarkably well it looks, too. The crowd was dense and I left the good
people wriggling in a cloud of dust.”
June 11th of that year, 1877, was my wedding day. Cardinal Manning
married us in the Church of the Servite Fathers; our guests were chiefly that
gallant group of soldiers who, with my husband, had won the Ashanti War,
Sir Garnet Wolseley, Redvers Buller and their comrades. My “Red Cross”
fellow students of old South Kensington days gave me the very touching
surprise of strewing our path down the church, as we came out, with
flowers. I had not known they were there.
And now a new country opened out for my admiration and delight in
days so long before the dreadful cloud had fallen on it under which I am
now writing these Recollections—so long, so long before. It looks like
another world to me now. One might say I had had already a sufficiently
large share of the earth’s beauties to enjoy, yet here opened out an utterly
new and unique experience—Ireland. Our wedding tour was chiefly
devoted to the Wild West, with a pause at Glencar, in Kerry. I have tried in
happier political times to convey to my readers in another place[7] my
impression of that Western country—its freshness, its wild beauty, its
entrancing poetry, and that sadness which, like the minor key in music, is
the most appealing quality in poetry. That note is utterly absent from the
poetry of Italy; there all is in the major, like its national music, so that my
mind received, with strange delight, a new sensation, surprising, heart-
stirring, appealing. My husband had given me the choice of a local for the
wedding tour between Ireland and the Crimea. How could I hesitate?
My first married picture was the one I made studies for in Glencar
—“‘Listed for the Connaught Rangers.” I had splendid models for the two
Irish recruits who are being marched out of the glen by a recruiting
sergeant, followed by the “decoy” private and two drummer boys of that

regiment, the old 88th, with the yellow facings of that time. The men were
cousins, Foley by name, and wore their national dress, the jacket with the
long, white homespun sleeves and the picturesque black hat which I fear is
little worn now, and is largely replaced by that quite cosmopolitan peaked
cap I loathe. The deep richness of those typical Irish days of cloud and
sunshine had so enchanted me that I was determined to try and represent the
effect in this picture, which was a departure from my former ones, the
landscape occupying an equal share with the figures, and the civilian
peasant dress forming the centre of interest. Its black, white and brown
colouring, the four red coats and the bright brass of the drum, gave me an
enjoyable combination with the blue and red-purple of the mountains in the
background, and the sunlight on the middle distance of the stony Kerry bog-
land. Here was that variety as to local colour denied me in the other works.
It was a joy to realise this subject. The picture was for Mr. Whitehead, the
owner of “Balaclava.”
The opening day of my introduction to the Wild West was on a Sunday
in that June: “From Limerick Junction to Glencar. I had my first experience
of an Irish Mass, and my impression is deepening every day that Ireland is
as much a foreign country to England as is France or Italy. The
congregation was all new to me. The peasant element had quite a cachet of
its own, though in a way an exact equivalent to the Tuscan—the rough-
looking men in homespun coats in a crowd inside and outside of the church,
the women in national dress; the constabulary, equivalent to the gendarmes,
in full dress, mixing with the people and yet not of them. This Limerick
Junction was the nucleus of the Fenian nebula. In this terrible Tipperary the
stalwart constabulary, whom I greatly admire, have a grave significance. I
have never seen finer men than those, and they are of a type new to me.
How I enjoy new types, new countries, new customs! The girls, looking so
nice in their Bruges-like hoods, are very fresh and comely.
“We left at noon for the goal of our expedition, and I think I may say that
I never had a more memorable little journey. The distant mountains I had
looked at in the morning took clearer forms and colours by degrees, and the
charm of the Irish bogs with their rich black and purple peat-earth, and
bright, reedy grass, and teeming wild flowers, developed themselves to my
delighted eyes as the train whirled us southwards. At Killarney we took a
carriage and set off on my favourite mode of travel, soon entering upon
tracts of that wild nature I was most anxious to experience. The evening

was deepening, and in its solemn tones I saw for the first time the Wild
West Land, whose aspect gradually grew wilder and more strange as we
neared the mysterious mountains that rose ahead of us. I was content. I was
beginning to taste the salt of the Wilds. What human habitations there are
are so like the stone heaps that lie over the face of the land that they are
scarcely distinguishable from them; but my ‘contentment’ was much dashed
by the sight of the dwellers in this poor land which yields them so little.
Very strange, wild figures came to the black doors to watch us pass, with, in
some cases, half-witted looks.
“The mighty ‘Carran Thual,’ one of the mountain group which rises out
of Glencar and dominates the whole land of Kerry, was on fire with blazing
heather, its peaks sending up a glorious column of smoke which spread out
at the top for miles and miles, and changed its delicate smoke tints every
minute as the sun sank lower. As we reached the rocky pass that took us by
the remote Lough Acoose that sun had gone down behind an opposite
mountain, and the blazing heather glowed brighter as the twilight deepened,
and circles of fire played weirdly on the mountain side. Our glen gave the
‘Saxon bride’ its grandest illumination on her arrival. Wild, strange birds
rose from the bracken as we passed, and flew strongly away over lake and
mountain torrent, and the little black Kerry cattle all watched us go by with
ears pricked and heads inquiringly raised. The last stage of the journey had
a brilliant finale. A herd of young horses was in our way in the narrow road,
and the creatures careered before us, unable or too stupid to turn aside into
the ditches by the roadside to let us through. We could not head them, and
for fully a mile did those shaggy, wild things caper and jump ahead, their
manes flying out wildly, with the glow from the west shining through them.
Some imbecile cows soon joined them in the stampede, for no imaginable
reason, unless they enjoyed the fright of being pursued, and the ungainly
progress of those recruits was a sight to behold—tails in the air and horns in
the dust. With this escort we entered Glencar.”
Nothing that I have seen in my travels since that golden time has in the
least dimmed my recollections of that Glencar existence; nor could
anything jar against a thing so unique. I have fully recorded in my former
book how we made different excursions, always on ponies, every day, not
returning till the evening. What impressed me most during these rides was
the depth and richness of the Irish landscape colouring. The moisture of the
ocean air brings out all its glossy depth. Even without the help of actual

sunshine, so essential to the landscape beauty of Italy, the local colour is
powerful. In describing to me the same deep colouring in Scotland Millais
used the simile of the wet pebble. Take a grey, dry pebble on the seashore
and dip it in the water. It will show many lovely tints. Our inn was in the
centre of the glen, delightfully rough, and impregnated with that scent of
turf smoke which has ever since been to me the subtlest and most touching
reminder of those days. Yet with that roughness there was in the primitive
little inn a very pleasant provision of such sustenance as old campaigners
and fishermen know how to establish in the haunts they visit.
The coast of Clare came next in our journey, where the Atlantic hurls
itself full tilt at the iron cliffs, and the west wind, which I learnt to love,
comes, without once touching land since it left the coast of Labrador, to fill
one with a sense of salt and freshness and health as it rushes into one’s
lungs from off the foam. I was interested in making comparisons between
that sea and the other “sounding deep” that washes the rocks of Porto Fino
as I looked down on the thundering waves below the cliffs of Moher. Here
was the simplest and severest colouring—dark green, almost amounting to
black; light green, cold and pure; foam so pure that its whiteness had over it
a rosy tinge, merely by contrast with the green of the waves, and that was
all; whereas the sea around Porto Fino baffles both painter and word-painter
with its infinite variety of blues, purples, and greens. These are contrasts
that I delight in. How the west wind rushed at us, full of spray! How the
ocean roared! It was a revel of wind where we stood at the very edge of
those sheer cliffs. Across their black faces sea birds incessantly circled and
wheeled, crying with a shrill clamour. That and the booming of the waves
many fathoms below, as they leap into the immense caverns, were the only
sounds that pierced the wind. The black rocks had ledges of greyer rock,
and along these ledges, tier above tier, sat myriads of white-headed gulls,
their white heads looking like illumination lamps on the faces of titanic
buildings. The Isles of Arran and the mountains of Connemara spread out
before us on the ocean, which sparkled in one place with the gold beams of
the faint, spray-shrouded sun.
Then good-bye to Erin for the present on July 15th and the establishment
of ourselves in London till our return to the Land that held a magnet for us
on September 21st. There we paid a visit to the Knight of Kerry, at Valentia
Island. What a delightful home! The size of the fuchsia trees told of the
mild climate; the scenery was of the remotest and freshest, most pleasing to

the senses, and the ever-welcome scent of turf smoke would not be denied
in the big house where the sods glowed in the great fireplaces. My surprise,
when strolling on one of the innocent little strands by the sea, was great at
seeing the Atlantic cable emerging, quite simply, from the water between
the pebbles, as though it was nothing in particular. Following it, we reached
a very up-to-date building, so out of keeping with the primitive scene, filled
with busy clerks transmitting goodness knows what cosmopolitan
corruption from the New World to the Old, and vice versâ.

In Western Ireland.
A “Jarvey” and “Biddy.”

I would not have missed the Valentia pig for anything. A taller, leaner,
gaunter specimen has not his match anywhere, not even in the little black
hog of Monte Cassino, whose salient hips are so unexpected. There is
something particularly arresting in a pig with visible hips.[8] All the animals
in the west seemed to me free-and-easy creatures that live with the peasants
as members of the family, having a much better time than the humans. They
frisk irresponsibly in and out of the cabins—no “by your leave” or “with

your leave”—and, altogether, enjoy life to the top of their own highest
level. The poorer the people, the greater appears the contrast caused by this
inverted state of things.
The next time we left England was to go in the opposite direction—to
the Pyrenees. Rapid travel is fast levelling down the different countries, and
a carriage journey through the Pyrenean country is a bygone pleasure. We
have to go to Thibet or the Great Wall of China for our trips if we want to
write anything original about our travels. A flight by air to the North Pole
would, at first, prove very readable and novel, if well described. This,
however, does not take from the pleasure of going over the inner circle in
memory. In the year 1878 we could still find much that was new and
refreshing in a tour through the south of France! Some friends of mine went
up to Khartoum from Cairo not long ago, with return tickets, by rail, and all
they could say was that the journey was so dusty that they had to draw the
blinds of their compartment and play bridge all the way. Poor dears, how
arid!
This little tour of ours was well advised. The loss of our firstborn, Mary
Patricia, brought our first sorrow with it, and we went to Lourdes and made
a wide détour from there through the Pyrenees to Switzerland. There is
nothing like travel for restoring the aching mind to usefulness. But,
undoubtedly, the send-off from Lourdes gave me the initial impetus towards
recovery of which, though I say little, I am very sensible. We drove to St.
Sauveur after our visit to the Grotto where such striking cures have
happened, and each day brought more fully back to me that zest for natural
beauty which has been with me such an invigorator.
St. Sauveur was bracing and beautiful, but too full of invalids. It was
rather saddening to see them around the Hontalade Sulphur Springs. At
Lourdes they were clustering round the cascade that flows from the Grotto
where the statue of Our Lady stands, exactly reproducing the figure as seen
by the little Shepherdess. Poor humanity, reaching out hopeful arms in its
pain, here for physical help, there for spiritual. The Gave rushes through
both Lourdes and St. Sauveur, with a very sharp noise in the rocky gorge of
the latter, too harsh to be a soothing sound. I looked forward to getting yet
another experience of vetturino travel which I had never thought could be
enjoyed again, and which proved to be still possible. The journey was a
success, and, besides the beauty of that very majestic mountain scenery, the
little incidents of the road were picturesque. Our driver was proud to tell us

he was known as “L’ancien chien des Pyrénées,” and a characteristic “old
dog” he was, one-eyed and weatherbeaten, wearing the national blue béret
and very voluble in local patois. His horses’ bells jingled in the old familiar
way of my childhood; two absurd little dogs of his accompanied us all the
way who, in the noonday heat, sat in the wayside streams for a moment to
cool, and emerged little dripping rags. The first day’s ascent was over the
Pass of the Tourmalet, the second over that of the Col d’Aspin, and the third
and final climb was that of the Col de Peyresourde. Then Bagnères de
Luchon appeared deep down in the valley where our drive came to an end.
What would we have seen of the Pyrenees if we had burrowed in tunnels
under those Cols? Luchon was not embellished by the invalids there, whose
principal ailment amongst the female patients was evidently a condition of
embonpoint so remarkable that the suggestion of overfeeding could not
possibly be ignored.
We had refreshing “ascensions” on horseback; a wide view of Spain
from Super-Bagnère, wherein the backbone of the Pyrenees, with the
savage “Maladetta,” rising supreme, 11,000 feet above sea level, has its
origin. Many very pleasant excursions we had besides. I tried a hurried
sketch of one of these views from the saddle, the only precious chance I
had, but a little Frenchman in tourist helmet and blue veil (and such boots
and spurs!), who was riding in our direction with a party, threw himself off
his pony into my foreground and, hoping to be included in the view which
he was pretending to admire, posed there, right in my way, his comrades
calling him in vain to rejoin them.
On leaving Luchon we journeyed viâ Toulouse to Cette, following the
course of the Garonne, which famous river we had seen in its little muddy
infancy near Arreau and in its culminating grandeur at Bordeaux. Toulouse
looked majestic, a fair city as I remember it. There I was interested to see
that famous canal which carries on the traffic from the great river to the
Mediterranean. A noteworthy feature in the landscape as we journeyed on to
Cette in the dreary, dun-coloured gloaming was the mediæval city of
Carcassonne. To come suddenly upon a complete restoration to life of an
old-world city, full of towers and wrapped in its unbroken walls, gives one a
strange sensation. One seems to be suddenly deposited in the heart of the
Middle Ages. That dark evening there was something indescribably gloomy
in the aspect of that cinder-coloured mass against an ashen sky, and set on a
hill high above the fields cultivated in prim rows and patches, looking like a

town in the background of some hunting scene, so often shown in old
tapestry. All was darkening before an approaching storm. In writing of it at
the time I was not aware that we owed this most precious old city to Viollet-
le-Duc, who has restored it stone by stone.
Cette looked so bleared and blind the next morning in a sea mist that I
have preserved a dejected impression of those low shores, grey tamarisks,
and lagunes, and waste places, seen as though in a dismal dream. I was
coaxed back to cheerfulness by the sunshine of Nismes, where we spent
several hours, on our way to our halt for the night, strolling in the warm-
tinted Roman ruins, and I finally relaxed in the delight of our arriving once
more at one of my most beloved cities, splendid Avignon. Good travelling.
This closed the day. Under my parents’ régime, and chiefly on account of
my mother, who hated night travel, and on account of our general easy-
going ways, we gave nearly a fortnight to reach Genoa from England, with
pauses here and there.
My redundant Diary carries me on now, like the rapid Rhone itself, to
my native Lake Leman. I see it now as I saw it that day, August 8th, 1878—
a blue opal. There is always something sacred about a place in which one
came into the world. We visited “Claremont,” a lovely dwelling
overlooking the lake, and facing the snowy ridges of the Dents du Midi.
Looking at that house “all my mother came into my eyes” as I thought of
her that November night, long ago, and of our dear, faithful nurse whom I
captured there to our service till death, with a smile!
And now for the dear old Rhine once more. We got to Bâle next day, and
very scenic the old town looked on our arrival in the evening. On either side
of the swift-flowing river the gabled houses were full of lights, which were
reflected in the water, all looking red-gold by contrast with the green-gold
of the moon. On August 10th from Bâle to Heidelberg, the rose-coloured
city of the great Tun! Other tuns are also shown, not quite so capacious; but
what swilling they suggest on the part of the old electors, who gathered all
that hock in tithes!
I was mortified when trying to impress my husband with the charms of
the Rhine as we dropped down to Cologne. My early Diary tells of my
enchantment on that fondly-remembered river. But, alas! this time the
weather was rainy and ugly all the way, and as we came to the best part, the
romantic Gorge, he shut himself up in a deck cabin, out of which I could

not entice him. I suspect the natives on board drove him in there rather than
his resentment at the “come down” from the glowing descriptions one reads
in travel books. These natives were a most irritating foreground to the
blurred views. All day long, and into the night, meals were perpetually
breaking out all over the deck and, do what one could, the feeding of those
Teutons obtruded itself on one’s attention ad nauseam. I have a sketch,
taken sub rosa, of an obese and terrible frau, seated behind her rather smart
officer husband at one of the little tables. She had emptied her capacious
mug of beer, and was asking him for more, to which demand he was paying
no attention. But “Gustav! Gustav!” she persisted, poking him in the back
with her empty tankard. The “Gustav!” and the prods were getting too much
to be ignored by the long-suffering back, and she got her refill. What
General Gordon calls the “German visage” in contrast with the “Italian
countenance” never appeared so surprisingly ugly as it did to us that day on
the crowded deck of the Queen of Prussia.
My Diary says: “At Mayence, Will and I, always on the look-out for
soldiers, had a good opportunity of seeing German infantry, as we stopped
here a long time and two line battalions crossed the bridge near us. From
the deck of the steamer the men looked big enough, but when Will ran on
shore and overhauled them to have a nearer look, I could gauge their height
by his six-foot-two. He showed a clear head and shoulders above their
pickelhauben. They were short, chiefly by reason of the stumpy legs, which
carry a long back—a very unbeautiful arrangement.”
The next day we had a rather dull start from Cologne along a dismal
stretch of river as far as Düsseldorf. Killing time at Düsseldorf is not lively.
At the café where we had tea two young subalterns of hussars came gaily in
to have their coffee, and, just as they were sitting down with a cavalry
swagger, there came in a major of some other corps, and the two
immediately got up, saluted, and left the room. Here was discipline! On our
returning to the steamer Will found an epauletted disciple of Bismarck in
my place at supper. He told the epauletted one of his mistake, much to the
latter’s manifest astonishment, who didn’t move. I suppose there came
something into the British soldier’s eye, but, anyway, the sabre-rattler
eventually got up and went elsewhere: things felt electric.
August 14th found us nearly all day on board the boat. “A very
interesting day, showing me a phase of Rhine scenery familiar to me in
Dutch pictures by the score, but never seen by me till then in reality. The

strong wind blew from the sea and tossed the green-yellow river into
tumultuous waves, over which came bounding the blunt-bowed craft from
Holland, taking merchandise up stream, and differing in no way from the
boats beloved of the old Dutch masters. On either side of the river were low
banks waving with rushes, and beyond stretched sunken marshy meadows,
and here and there quaint little towns glided by with windmills whirring,
and clusters of ships’ masts appearing above the grey willows and sedges.
Dordrecht formed a perfect picture à la Rembrandt, with a host of
windmills on the skyline, telling dark against the brightness, at the
confluence of the Maes and Rhine. Here Cuyp was born, the painter of
sunlit cows. Rotterdam pleased us greatly, and we strolled about in the
evening, coming upon the statue of Erasmus, which I place amongst the
most admirable statues I have seen. Rotterdam possesses in rich abundance
the peculiar charm of a seaport. A place of this kind has for me a very
strong attraction. The varied shipping, the bustle on land and water, the
colour, the noise, the mixture of human types, the bustle of men and
animals; all these things have always filled me with pleasure at a great
seaport.” A visit to Holland (“the dustless” land, as my husband called it
truly), a revel amongst the Amsterdam galleries, then Antwerp, where we
embarked for Harwich, closed our trip. Invigorated and restored, I set to
work on an 8-foot canvas, whereon I painted a subject which had been in
my mind since childhood.

CHAPTER XIV

QUEEN VICTORIA

IT must have been at Villa de’ Franchi that my father related to me a
tragedy which had profoundly moved England in the year 1842, and he
laughingly encouraged me to paint it when I should be grown up. The Diary
says: “We are now at war with poor Shere Ali, and this new Afghan War
revived for me the idea of the tragedy of ‘42, namely, Dr. Brydon reaching
Jellalabad, weary and fainting, on his dying horse, the sole survivor, as was
then thought, from our disaster in the Cabul passes.... Here I am, on 1st
March, 1879, not doing badly with the picture. I think it is well painted, and
I hope poetical. But I have had the darkest winter I can remember, and lost
nearly all January by the succession of fogs which have accompanied this
long frost. Will sailed under orders for the Cape last Friday, February 28th.
Our terrible defeat at Isandula has caused the greatest commotion here, and
regiments are being poured out of England to Zululand in a fleet of
transports; and now staff officers are being selected for posts of great
responsibility out there, and amongst these is Colonel Butler, A.A.G. to
General Clifford.
“March 16th, 1879.—I am beginning to show my picture. Scarcely
anything is talked of still but the fighting in Zululand and the incapacity of
that poor unfortunate Lord Chelmsford, whom Government keeps telling
they will continue to trust in his supreme post of Commander-in-Chief,
though he would evidently be thankful to be relieved of an anxiety which
his nervous temperament and susceptible nature must make unbearable.
What magnificent subjects for pictures the ‘Defence of Rorke’s Drift’ will
furnish. When we get full details I shall be much tempted to paint some
episode of that courageous achievement which has shed balm on the aching
wound of Isandula. But the temptation will have to be very strong to make
me break my rule of not painting contemporary subjects. I like to mature
my themes.
“Studio Sunday. At last, at last! After three years of disappointment
another Academy Studio Show has come, and that very brightly and

successfully. I have called the Afghan picture ‘The Remnants of an Army.’ I
had the Irish picture to show also, by permission of Whitehead, ‘’Listed for
the Connaught Rangers.’ From one till six to-day people poured in. My
studio was got up quite charmingly with curtains and screens, and with wild
beast skins disposed on the floor, and my arms and armour furbished up.
The two pictures came out well, and both appeared to ‘take.’ However, not
much value can be attached to to-day’s praises to my face. But I must not
let Elmore’s (R.A.) tribute to the ‘Remnants of an Army’ go unrecorded. ‘It
is impossible to look at that man’s face unmoved,’ and his eyes were
positively dimmed! I have heard it said that no one was ever known to shed
tears before a picture. On reading a book, on hearing music, yes, but not on
seeing a painting. Well! that is not true, as I have proved more than once. I
can’t resist telling here of a pathetic man who came to me to say, ‘I had a
wet eye when I saw your picture!’ He had one eye brown and the other blue,
and I almost asked, ‘Which, the brown or the blue?’ It is often so difficult to
know what to answer appreciatively to enthusiastic and unexpected praise!
“Varnishing Day. A long and cheery day in those rooms of happy
memory at Burlington House. Both my pictures are well hung and look
well, and congratulations flowed in.” A few days later: “Alice and I to the
Private View at that fascinating Burlington House, so fascinating when
one’s works are well placed! The Press is treating me very well. No
subsidised puffs here, so I enjoy these critiques. The Academy has received
me back with open arms, and the members are very nice to me, some of
them expressing their hope that I am pleased with the positions of my
pictures, and several of them speaking quite openly about their
determination to vote for me at the next election.”
The Fine Art Society bought the Afghan subject of which they published
a very faithful engraving, and it is now at the Tate Gallery. It is a comfort to
me to know that nearly all my principal works are either in the keeping of
my Sovereign or in public galleries, and not changing hands among private
collectors.
I spent much of a cool, if rainy, summer at Edenbridge, in Kent, taking a
rose bower of a cottage there, my parents with me. There we heard in the
papers the dreadful news of the Prince Imperial’s death. Then followed a
hasty line from my husband, written in a fury of indignation from Natal, at
the sacrifice of “the last of the Napoleons.” When he returned at long last
from the deplorable Zulu War, followed by the Sekukuni Campaign, the

poor Empress Eugénie sent for him to Camden Place, and during a long and
most painful interview she asked for all details, her tears flowing all the
time, and in her open way letting all her sorrow loose in paroxysms of grief.
He had managed the funeral and embarkation at Durban. The pall was
covered with artificial violets which he had asked the nuns there to make, at
high pressure, and he subsequently described to me the impressive sight of
the cortège as it wound down the hill to the port off Durban, in the
afternoon sunshine.
At little Edenbridge I was busy making studies of any grey horses I
could find, as I had already begun my charge of the Scots Greys at Waterloo
at my studio. That charge I called “Scotland for Ever,” and I owe the subject
to an impulse I received that season from the Private View at the Grosvenor
Gallery, now extinct. The Grosvenor was the home of the “Æsthetes” of the
period, whose sometimes unwholesome productions preceded those of our
modern “Impressionists.” I felt myself getting more and more annoyed
while perambulating those rooms, and to such a point of exasperation was I
impelled that I fairly fled and, breathing the honest air of Bond Street, took
a hansom to my studio. There I pinned a 7-foot sheet of brown paper on an
old canvas and, with a piece of charcoal and a piece of white chalk, flung
the charge of “The Greys” upon it. Dr. Pollard, who still looked in during
my husband’s absences as he used to do in my maiden days to see that all
was well with me, found me in a surprising mood.
On returning from my villeggiatura in Kent with my parents I took up
again the painting of this charge, and one day the Keeper of the Queen’s
Privy Purse, Sir Henry Ponsonby, called at the studio to ask me if I would
paint a picture for Her Majesty, the subject to be taken from a war of her
own reign.
Of course, I said “Yes,” and gladly welcomed the honour, but being a
slow worker, I saw that “Scotland for Ever!” must be put aside if the
Queen’s picture was to be ready for the next Academy.
Every one was still hurrahing over the defence of “Rorke’s Drift” in
Zululand as though it had been a second Waterloo. My friends (not my
parents) urged and urged. I demurred, because it was against my principles
to paint a conflict. In the “Greys” the enemy was not shown, here our men
would have to be represented at grips with the foe. No, I put that subject
aside and proposed one that I felt and saw in my mind’s eye most vividly. I

proposed this to the Queen—the finding of the dead Prince Imperial and the
bearing of his body from the scene of his heroic death on the lances of the
17th Lancers. Her Majesty sent me word that she approved, to my great
relief. I began planning that most impressive composition. Then I got a
message to say the Queen thought it better not to paint the subject. What
was to be done? The Crimea was exhausted. Afghanistan? But I was
compelled by clamour to choose the popular Rorke’s Drift; so,
characteristically, when I yielded I threw all my energies into the
undertaking.
When the 24th Regiment, now the South Wales Borderers, who in that
fight saved Natal, came home, some of the principal heroes were first
summoned to Windsor and then sent on to me, and as soon as I could get
down to Portsmouth, where the 24th were quartered, I undertook to make
all the studies from life necessary for the big picture there. Nothing that the
officers of that regiment and the staff could possibly do to help me was
neglected. They even had a representation of the fight acted by the men who
took part in it, dressed in the uniforms they wore on that awful night. Of
course, the result was that I reproduced the event as nearly to the life as
possible, but from the soldier’s point of view—I may say the private’s point
of view—not mine, as the principal witnesses were from the ranks. To be as
true to facts as possible I purposely withdrew my own view of the thing.
What caused the great difficulty I had to grapple with was the fact that the
whole mass of those fighting figures was illuminated by firelight from the
burning hospital. Firelight transforms colours in an extraordinary way
which you hardly realise till you have to reproduce the thing in paint.
The Zulus were a great difficulty. I had them in the composition in dark
masses, rather swallowed up in the shade, but for one salient figure
grasping a soldier’s bayonet to twist it off the rifle, as was done by many of
those heroic savages. My excellent Dr. Pollard got me a sort of Zulu as
model from a show in London. It was unfortunate that a fog came down the
day he was brought to my studio, so that at one time I could see nothing of
my dusky savage but the whites of his eyes and his teeth. I hope I may
never have to go through such troubles again!
When the picture was in its pale, shallow, early stage, the Queen, who
was deeply interested in its progress, wished to see it, and me. So to
Windsor I took it. The Ponsonbys escorted me to the Great Gallery, where I

beheld my production, looking its palest, meanest, and flattest, installed on
an easel, with two lords bending over it—one of them Lord Beaconsfield.
Exeunt the two lords, right, through a dark side door. Enter the Queen,
left. Prince Leopold, Duchess of Argyll, Princess Beatrice and others
grouped round the easel, centre. The Queen came up to me and placed her
plump little hand in mine after I had curtseyed, and I was counselled to give
Her Majesty the description of every figure. She spoke very kindly in a very
deep, guttural voice, and showed so much emotion that I thought her all too
kind, shrinking now and then as I spoke of the wounds, etc. She told me
how she had found my husband lying at Netley Hospital after Ashanti,
apparently near his end, and spoke with warmth of his services in that
campaign. She did not leave us until I had explained every figure, even the
most distant. She knew all by name, for I had managed to show, in that
scuffle, all the V.C.’s and other conspicuous actors in the drama, the
survivors having already been presented to her. Majors Chard and
Bromhead were sufficiently recognisable in the centre, for I had had them
both for their portraits.
The Academicians put “The Defence of Rorke’s Drift” in the Lecture
Room of unhappy “Quatre Bras” memory, no doubt for the same reason
they gave in the case of that picture. Yes, there was a great crush before it,
but I was not satisfied as to its effect in that poor light. It is now with “The
Roll Call” at St. James’s Palace. I learnt later how very, very pleased the
Queen was with her commission, and that one day at Windsor, wishing to
show it to some friends, the twilight deepening, she showed so much
appreciation that she took a pair of candlesticks and held them up at the full
stretch of her arms to light the picture. I like to see in my mind’s eye that
Rembrandtesque effect, with the principal figure in the group our Queen.
She wanted me to paint her two other subjects, but, somehow, that never
came off.

CHAPTER XV

OFFICIAL LIFE—THE EAST

IN 1880 my husband was offered the post of Adjutant-General at
Plymouth, and thither we went in time, with the pretty little infant Elizabeth
Frances, who came to fill the place of the sister who was gone. There three
more of our children were born.
I took up “Scotland for Ever!” again, and in the bright light of our house
on the Hoe, with never a brown fog to hinder me, and with any amount of
grey army horses as models, I finished that work. It was exhibited alone. It
is quite unnecessary to burden my readers with the reason of this. I was
very sorry, as I expected rather a bright effect with all those white and grey
galloping hippogriffes bounding out of the Academy walls. There was a law
suit in question, and there let the matter rest. Messrs. Hildesheimer bought
the copyright from me, and the picture I sold, later on, to a private
purchaser, who has presented it to the city of Leeds. By a happy chance I
had a supply of very brilliant Spanish white (blanco de plata) for those
horses, and though I have ever since used the finest blanc d’argent, made in
Paris, I don’t think the Spanish white has a rival. Perhaps its maker took the
secret with her to the Elysian Fields. It was an old widow of Seville.
On May 11th of that year our beloved father died, comforted with the
heartening rites of the Church. He had been received not long before the
end.
Life at “pleasant Plymouth” was very interesting in its way, and the
charm of the West Country found in me the heartiest appreciation. But the
climate is relaxing, and conducive to lotus eating. One seems to live in a
mental Devonshire cream of pleasant days spent in excursions on land and
water, trips up the many lovely rivers, or across the beautiful Sound to
various picnic rendezvous on the coast. There was much festivity: balls in
the winter and long excursions in summer, frequently to the wilds of
Dartmoor. Particularly pleasant were the receptions at Government House
under the auspices of the Pakenhams—perfect hosts—and at the Admiralty,
with its very distinguished host and hostess, Sir Houston and Lady Stewart.

Over Dartmoor there spread the charm of the unbounded hospitality of the
Mortimer Colliers, who lived on the verge of the moor, and this was a thing
ever to be fondly remembered. No pleasanter house could offer one a
welcome than “Foxhams,” and how hearty a welcome that always was!
Riding was our principal pleasure. I never spent more enjoyable days in
the saddle elsewhere. My husband and I had a riding tour through Cornwall
—just the thing I liked most. But he was from time to time called away. To
Egypt in 1882, for Tel-el-Kebir; twice to Canada, the second time on
Government business; and in 1884 to the great Gordon Relief Expedition,
that terrible tragedy, made possible by the maddening delays at home. I
illustrated the book he wrote[9] on that colossal enterprise, so wantonly
turned into failure from quite feasible success.
My next picture was on a smaller scale than its predecessors, and was
exhibited at the Academy in 1882. The Boer War, with its terrible Majuba
Hill disaster, had attracted all our sorrowful attention the year before to
South Africa, and I chose the attack on Laing’s Nek for my subject. The two
Eton boys whom I show, Elwes and Monck, went forward (Elwes to his
death) with the cry of “Floreat Etona!” and I gave the picture those words
for its title.
Yet another Lord Mayor’s Banquet at the Mansion House, in honour of
the Royal Academicians, saw me late in 1881 a guest once more in those
gilded halls, this time by my husband’s side. He responded for the Army,
and joined Arts and Arms in a bright little speech, composed impromptu.
“We were a highly honoured couple,” I read in the Diary, “and very glad
that we came up. We must have sat at that festive board over three hours.
The music all through was exceedingly good and, indeed, so was the fare.
The homely tone of civic hospitality is so characteristic, dressed as it is with
gold and silver magnificence, rivalling that of Royalty itself! One of the
waiters tried to press me to have a second helping of whitebait by
whispering in my ear the seductive words, ‘Devilled, ma’am.’ It was a fiery
edition of the former recipe. I resisted.”
The departure of my husband with Lord Wolseley (then Sir Garnet) and
Staff for Egypt on August 5th, 1882, to suppress poor old Arabi and his
“rebels” was the most trying to me of all the many partings, because of its
dramatic setting. One bears up well on a crowded railway platform, but
when it comes to watching a ship putting off to sea, as I did that time at

Liverpool, to the sound of farewell cheering and “Auld Lang Syne,” one
would sooner read of its pathos than suffer it in person. Soldiers’ wives in
war time have to feel the sickening sensation on waking some morning
when news of a fight is expected of saying to themselves, “I may be a
widow.” Not only have I gone through that, but have had a second period of
trial with two sons under fire in the World War.
I gave a long period of my precious time to making preparations for a
large picture representing Wolseley and his Staff reaching the bridge across
the canal at the close of the battle of Tel-el-Kebir, followed by his Staff,
wherein figured my husband. The latter had not been very enthusiastic
about the subject. To beat those poor fellaheen soldiers was not a matter for
exultation, he said; and he told me that the capture of Arabi’s earthworks
had been like “going through brown paper.” He thought the theme
unworthy, and hoped I would drop the idea. But I wouldn’t; and, seeing me
bent on it, he did all he could to help me to realise the scene I had chosen.
Lord Wolseley gave me a fidgety sitting at their house in London, his wife
trying to keep him quiet on her knee like a good boy. I had crowds of
Highlanders to represent, and went in for the minutest rendering of the
equipment then in use. Well, I never was so long over a work. Depend upon
it, if you do not “see” the thing vividly before you begin, but have to build
it up as you go along, the picture will not be one of your best. Nor was this
one! It was exhibited in the Academy of 1885, and had a moderate success.
It was well engraved.
In the September of 1884 my husband left for the Gordon Expedition,
having finished his work of getting boats ready for the cataracts, boats to
carry the whole Army. In the following June he came home on leave, well
in health, in spite of rending wear and tear, but deeply hurt at the failure of
what might have been one of the greatest campaigns in modern history.
How he had urged and urged, and fumed at the delays! He told me the
campaign was lost three times over. Gordon was simply sacrificed to
ineptitude in high quarters at home. In this connection, I ask, can praise be
too great for the British rank and file who did their best in this unparalleled
effort? You saw Lifeguardsmen plying their oars in the boats, oars they had
never handled before this call; marines mounted on camels—more than
“horse-marines,” as a camel in his movements is five horses rolled into one;
everything he was called upon to do the British soldier did to the best of his
capacity.

We spent most of my husband’s precious leave in Glencar. What better
haven to come to from the feverish toil on river and in desert, ending in
bitter disappointment? We went to Court functions, also. How these
functions amused me, and how I revelled in their colour, in their variety of
types brought together, all these guests in national uniform or costume. And
I must be allowed to add how proud I was of my six-foot-two soldier in all
his splendour. The Queen’s aide-de-camp uniform, which he wore at the
time of which I am writing, till he was promoted major-general, was
particularly well designed, both for “dress” and “undress.” I frankly own I
loved these Court receptions. No, I was never bored by them, I am thankful
to say; and I don’t believe any woman is who has the luck to go there,
whatever she may say.

CHAPTER XVI

TO THE EAST

I FOLLOWED my husband to Egypt, where he had returned, in command
at Wady Halfa on the expiration of his leave, on November 14th, 1885. I
went with our eldest little boy and girl. A new experience for me—the East!
One of my longings in childhood was to see the East. There it was for me.
Cairo in 1885 still retained much of its Oriental aspect in the European
quarter. (I don’t suppose the old, true Cairo will ever change.) I was just in
time. The Shepheard’s Hotel of that day had a terrace in front of it where we
used to sit and watch the life of the street below, an occupation very
pleasing to myself. The building was overrun with a wealth of flowering
creepers of all sorts of loveliness, and surrounded with a garden. When next
we visited Cairo the creepers were being torn down, and the terrace
demolished. Then a huge hotel was run up in avaricious haste to reap the
next season’s harvest from the thronging visitors, and now stands flush with
the street to echo the trams.
It is difficult for me now to revive in memory the exquisite surprise I felt
when first I saw the life of the East. I could hardly believe the thing was
real, everyday life. Though I have often returned to Egypt since, that first-
time feeling never was renewed, though my enjoyment of Oriental beauty
and picturesqueness never, I am glad to say, faded in the least. Oh, you who
enjoy the zest of life, be thankful that you possess it! It is a thing not to be
acquired, but to be born with. I think artists keep it the longest, for it enters
the heart by the eye. The long letters I wrote to my mother on the spot and
at the moment I incorporated later in the little book already referred to. Oh,
the pleasures of memory, streaked with sadness though they must be, and
with ugly things of all kinds, too! Still, how intensely precious a possession
they are when weeded. To me, after Italy and, of course, the Holy Land,
give me the Nile.
I and the children remained in Cairo till I got my husband’s message
from the front that the way was clear enough for our journey as far as
Luxor. There I and the children remained until the fight at Giniss was won

and all danger was over further up stream. At Luxor began the most
enjoyable of all modes of travel—by houseboat. The dahabiyeh Fostat was
sent down from Wady Halfa to take us up to Assouan, where my husband
awaited us. We had reached Luxor from Cairo by the commonplace post
boat. The Assouan Dam was, of course, not in existence, and our dahabiyeh
had to be hauled in the old way through the first cataract, while we
transferred ourselves to another dahabiyeh moored off the now submerged
island of Philæ.
This cut-and-dried chronicle includes one of the most enchanting
experiences of my life. Above Philæ we entered Nubia, before whose
intensified colouring the lower desert pales. Time being very precious to my
husband, our slow, dreamy sailing houseboat had to be towed by a little
steamer for the rest of the way to Wady Halfa, where we lived till the heat
of March warned us that I and the children must prudently go into northern
coolness. And to Plymouth we returned, leaving the General to drag out the
burning summer at Wady Halfa in such heat as I never had had to suffer.
While at Halfa I made many sketches in oil for my picture, “A Desert
Grave,” out in the desert across the river. It is very trying painting in the
desert on account of the wind, which blows the sand perpetually into your
eyes. With that and the glare, I took two inflamed eyes back with me to
Europe. The picture should have been more poetical than it turned out to be,
and I wish I could repaint it now. It was well placed at the Academy. The
Upper Nile had these graves of British officers and men all along its banks
during that terrible toll taken in the course of the Gordon Expedition and
after, some in single loneliness, far apart, and some in twos and threes.
These graves had to be made exactly in the same way as those of the enemy,
lest a cross or some other Christian mark should invite desecration.
The World War has thrown a dreadful cloud between us and those old
war days, but the cloud in time will spread out thinner and let us look
through to those past times.
My next experience was Brittany. Thither we went for a rest, and to give
the children the habit of talking French. At Dinan, in an old farmhouse, we
ruralised amidst orchards and amongst the Breton peasantry. Very nice and
quiet and healthy. There our youngest boy was born, Martin William, who
was immediately inscribed on the army books as liable for service in the
French Army if he reached the age of eighteen on French soil. During that
part of our stay at Dinan I painted the 24th Dragoons, who were stationed

there, leaving the town by the old Porte St. Malo for the front, a great crowd
of people seeing them off. I had mounted dragoons and peasants for the
asking as models.
My husband was knighted—K.C.B.—in this interval, at Windsor. We
went to live in Ireland from Dinan, in 1888, under the Wicklow Mountains,
where the children continued their healthy country life in its fulness. The
picture I had painted of the departing dragoons went to the Academy in
1889, and in 1890 I exhibited “An Eviction in Ireland,” which Lord
Salisbury was pleased to be facetious about in his speech at the banquet,
remarking on the “breezy beauty” of the landscape, which almost made him
wish he could take part in an eviction himself. How like a Cecil!
The ‘eighties had seen our Government do some dreadful things in the
way of evictions in Ireland. Being at Glendalough at the end of that decade,
and hearing one day that an eviction was to take place some nine miles
distant from where we were staying for my husband’s shooting, I got an
outside car and drove off to the scene, armed with my paints. I met the
police returning from their distasteful “job,” armed to the teeth and very
flushed. On getting there I found the ruins of the cabin smouldering, the
ground quite hot under my feet, and I set up my easel there. The evicted
woman came to search amongst the ashes of her home to try and find some
of her belongings intact. She was very philosophical, and did not rise to the
level of my indignation as an ardent English sympathiser. However, I
studied her well, and on returning home at Delgany I set up the big picture
which commemorates a typical eviction in the black ‘eighties. I seldom can
say I am pleased with my work when done, but I am complacent about this
picture; it has the true Irish atmosphere, and I was glad to turn out that
landscape successfully which I had made all my studies for, on the spot, at
Glendalough. What storms of wind and rain, and what dazzling sunbursts I
struggled in, one day the paints being blown out of my box and nearly
whirled into the lake far below my mountain perch! My canvas, acting like
a sail, once nearly sent me down there too. I did not see this picture at all at
the Academy, but I am very certain it cannot have been very “popular” in
England. Before it was finished my husband was appointed to the command
at Alexandria, and as soon as I had packed off the “Eviction,” I followed, on
March 24th, and saw again the fascinating East.
My journey took me viâ Venice, where the P.& O. boat Hydaspes was
waiting. Can any journey to Egypt be more charming than this one, right

across Italy?
Oh! you who do not think a journey a mere means of getting to your
destination as quickly as possible, say, if you have taken the Milan-Verona-
Padua line, is there anything in all Italy to surpass that burst on the view of
the Lago di Garda after you emerge from the Lonato tunnel? On a blue day,
say in spring? If you have not gone that way yet, I beg you to be on the
look-out on your left when you do go. This wonderful surprise is suddenly
revealed, and almost as quickly lost. Waste not a second. I put up at the
“Angleterre” at Venice, on the Riva, because from there one sees the
lagunes and glimpses of the open sea beyond, and the air is open and fresh.
“March 28th.—Took gondola for the big P. & O. S.S. which is to be my
home for the next six days. I at once saw the ship was one of their smartest
boats, and all looked very festive on board. Luncheon was served
immediately after my arrival, and I found a bright company thereat
assembled, with Sir Henry and Lady Layard at their head; some come to see
friends off and others to go on. We amalgamated very pleasantly, and great
was the waving of handkerchiefs as we slowly steamed past the Dogana and
the Riva, our returning friends having gone on shore in gondolas whose
sable sides were hidden in brilliant draperies. The sashes of the gondoliers’
liveries flashed in coloured silks and gold fringes; the sea sparkled. I
rejoiced. The Montalba girls gave us a salvo of pocket handkerchiefs from
their balcony on the Giudecca. What a gay scene! Lady Layard, on leaving,
introduced Mrs. H. M., who was to join her husband at Brindisi for a long
trip in the big liner from England, and I was very happy at the prospect of
her pleasant and intellectual companionship thus far.”
And so we passed out into the early night on the dim Adriatic, after a
sunset farewell to Venice, which remains to me as one of the tenderest
visions of the past. That voyage to Alexandria is more enjoyable, given fair
weather, than most voyages, because one is hardly ever out of sight of land,
and such classic land, too! The Ionian Islands, “Morea’s Hills,” Candia. But
what a pleasure it is to see on the day before the arrival the signs that the
landing is near at hand. The General in Command will be waiting at sunrise
on the landing stage, perhaps the light catching the gold lace on his cap,
appearing above the turbans of the native crowd. Of course every one who
has been to Egypt knows the feeling of disappointment at the first sight of
its shores, low-lying and fringed with those incongruous windmills which
the Great Napoleon vainly planted there to teach the natives how better to

make flour. In vain. And so were his wheelbarrows. The natives preferred
carrying the mud in their hands. And the city, how it fails to give you the
Oriental impression you are longing for, with its pseudo-Italian architecture,
its hard paved streets, and dusty boulevards and squares. Government
House on the Boulevard de Ramleh was comfortable, roomy and airy, but I
missed the imagined garden and palm trees of the Cairo official residence.
“April 3rd.—We have a view of Cleopatra’s Tomb (so called) to the
right, jutting out into the intensely blue sea, but the other arm of the bay
(the old Roman harbour) to our left, covered with native houses and
minarets, is partly hidden by an abomination which hurts me to
exasperation, one of those amorphous buildings of tenth-rate Italian
vulgarity and dreariness which are being run up here in such quantities, and
rears its gaunt expanse close behind this house. To cap this erection it has
received the title of ‘Bombay Castle.’ Never mind, I shall soon, in my
happy way, cease to notice what I don’t like to see, and shall enjoy all that
is left here of the original East and its fascinating barbaric beauty. Will took
me for a most interesting drive, first to Ras-el-Tin, during which we
threaded a conglomeration of East and West which was bewildering. There
were nightmarish Italian ‘palazzi’ loaded with cheap, bluntly-moulded
stucco; glaring streets, cafés, dusty gardens, over-dressed Jewish and
Levantine women driving about in exaggerated hats, frocks and figures; and
there also appeared the dark narrow bazaars and original streets, the latticed
windows, the finely-coloured robes of the natives, the weird goats, the
wolfish dogs, straying about in all directions. Mounds of rubbish
everywhere; some only the leavings of newly-built houses, some the
remains of the bombardment’s havoc, others the dust of a once beautiful
city whose loveliness in old Roman times must have been supreme.
“Only here and there was I reminded of the charm of Cairo—a tree by a
yellow wall, a group of natives eating sugar cane, a water-seller with his
tinkling brass cups and a rose behind his ear, and so on. We then had a
really enjoyable drive along the Mahmoudieh Canal, which was balm to my
mind and eyes. All along the placid water on the opposite bank ran Arab
villages with their accompaniments of palms, buffaloes, goats, water jars,
native men and women in scriptural robes; water wheels; square-shaped,
almost window-less mud dwellings, so appropriate under that intense light.
On our bank were the remnants of Pashadom in the shape of gimcrack
palaces closed and let go to ruin, on account of fashion having betaken

itself to the suburb of Ramleh. These dwellings were, however, so hidden in
deep tropical gardens of great and rich beauty that they did not offend.
“Beyond the Arab villages on the other bank appeared Lake Mareotis,
and there was a poetical feeling about all that region. It was so strange to
have on one side of a narrow band of water old Egypt and the life of the
East going on just as it has been for ages past, and on the other the
ephemeral tokens of the sham and fleeting life of to-day, and this all the
way along a drive of some two miles. This is the fashionable drive, and to
see young Egypt on horseback, and old Jewry in carriages, passing and
repassing up and down this cosmopolitan Rotten Row is decidedly trying.
My admired friends, the running syces, though, redeem the thing to me.
Their dress is one of the most perfect in shape, colour and material ever
devised. The air was rich with the scent of strange flowers, some of which
billowed over entrance gates in magnificent purple masses.”
I must be excused for having shown irritation in my Diary at starting. I
soon adapted myself to the entourage, and I hope I “did my manners” as
became my official responsibilities. I liked the Greeks best of all—nay, I
got very fond of these handsome, sunny people.
It was a curiously cosmopolitan society, and I, who am never good at
remembering the little feuds that are always simmering in this kind of
mixed company, must have sometimes made mistakes. I heard a Greek
woman, who had dined with us the previous evening, informing her friends
in a voice fraught with meaning, ”Imaginez, hier au soir chez le Général
Monsieur Gariopulo a donné le bras à Madame Buzzato!” The recipients of
this information were filled with mirth. What had I done in pairing off these
two for the procession to dinner?
The British were entrenched at Ramleh. The little stations on the railway
there gave me quite a turn at first sight. One was “Bulkley,” the next
“Fleming,” then “Sydney O. Schutz,” and finally San Stefano at railhead,
and a casino with a corrugated iron roof under that scorching sun. Oh, that I
should see such a thing in Egypt! Cheek by jowl with the little villas one
saw weird Bedouin tents and wild Arabs and their animals, carrying on their
existence as if the Briton had never come there.
The incongruities of Alexandria became to me positively enjoyable; and
the desert air, as ever, was life-giving. My little Syrian horse, “Minnow,”
carried me many a mile alongside my husband’s charger, over that pleasant

desert sand. But an occasional khamseen wind gave me a taste of the
disagreeable phase of Egyptian weather. I name, with the vivid recollection
of the khamseen’s irritating qualities, the experience of paying calls (in a
nice toilette) under its suffocating puffs. And how the flies swarm; how they
settle in black masses on the sweetmeats sold in the streets, and hang in
tassels from the native children’s eyes. Oh, yes, there is a seamy side to all
things, but it isn’t my way to turn it up more than is necessary. Here may
follow a bit of Diary:
“May 22nd.—We had a memorable picnic at Rosetta to-day, with thirty
of the English colony. I had long wished to visit this ancient city, brick-built
and half deserted, a once opulent place, but now mournful in its decay. I
longed to see old Nile once more. We chartered a special train and left
Moharram Bey Station at 8 a.m. I was much pleased with the seaside desert
and the effects of mirage over Aboukir Bay. The ancient town of Edkou
struck me very much. It was built of the small brown Rosetta brick, and was
placed on a hill, giving it a different aspect from the usual Arab pale-walled
villages which are usually built on level ground. It had thus a peculiar
character. Shortly before reaching Rosetta the land becomes richly
cultivated. There is a subtle beauty about the cultivated regions of this
fascinating land of Egypt which I feel very much. It is the beauty of
abundance and richness as well as of vivid colour.
“At Rosetta dense crowds of natives awaited us and some police were
detailed to escort us through the town. I heard some of the women of our
party wishing they could pick the blue tiles off the minarets, but for my part
I prefer them under their lovely sky and sunshine, rather than ornamenting
mantelpieces in a Kensington fog. A little musharabieh lattice is still left
here in the windows and has not yet been taken to grace the British
drawing-rooms of Ramleh. We strolled about the bazaars and into the old
ramshackle mosques, and, altogether, exhausted the sights. Everywhere in
Rosetta you see beautiful little Corinthian marble columns incorporated
with the Arab buildings, and supporting the ceilings and pulpits of the
mosques. They are daubed over with red plaster. Very often a rich
Corinthian capital is used as a base to a pillar by being turned upside down,
so that the shaft, crowned with its own capital, possesses two—one at each
end—an arrangement evidently satisfactory to the barbarian Arabs who
succeeded the classic builders of the old city. Almost every angle of a house
has a Greek column acting as corner stone. But the brown brickwork is very

dismal, and but for the vivid colours of the people’s dresses the monotony
of tone would be displeasing. This is Bairam, and the people during the
three days’ feast succeeding the dismal Ramadan Fast are in their most
radiant dresses, and revelry and feasting are going on everywhere. Such a
mass of moving colour as was the market place of Rosetta to-day these
eyes, that have seen so much, never looked upon before.
“At last, when we had climbed into enough mosques and poked about
into houses, and through all the bazaars (the fish bazaar was trying), we
went down to the landing stage and took boat for the trysting place, about a
mile up the broad, wind-lashed Nile. Will and the Bishop of Clifton, sole
remaining straggler from the late pilgrimage to the Holy Land, and half our
party had gone on before us; and, after a quick sail along the palm-fringed
bank, we arrived at the pretty landing place chosen for our picnic. We found
a tent pitched and the servants busy laying the cloth under a dense
sycamore, close to an old mosque whose onion-shaped dome and Arab
minaret gave me great pleasure as we came in sight of them. I was
impatient to make a sketch. I lost no time, and went off and established
myself in a palm grove with my water colours. The usual Egyptian
drawbacks, however, were there—flies, and puffs of sand blown into one’s
eyes and powdering one’s paints. On the Mahmoudieh Canal I am exempt
from the sand nuisance, and nothing can be pleasanter than my experience
there, sitting in an open carriage with the hood up, and not a soul to bother
me.
“Our return to Rosetta was lively. As we were then going against the
wind, we had to be towed from the shore, and it was very interesting to
watch the agility of our crew dodging in and out of the boats moored under
the bank and deftly disengaging the tow-rope from the spars and rigging of
these vessels. A tall Circassian effendi of police cantered on his little Arab
along the bank to see that all went well with us. The other half of our party
chose to sail and progress by laborious tacking from one side of the wide
river to the other, and arrived long after we did. We all met at the house of
the Syrian postmaster, where he and his pretty little wife received us with
native politeness, and gave us coffee and sweets. Our return journey was
most pleasant, and we got to Alexandria at 8 p.m. Twelve charming hours.
“May 24th.—The Queen’s birthday. Trooping of the colour at 5 p.m. on
the Moharrem Bey Ground. Most successful. Will, mounted on a powerful
chestnut, did look a commanding figure as he raised his plumed helmet and

led the ringing cheers for the Queen which brought the pretty ceremony to a
close. The sun was near setting behind the height of Komeldik, and lit up
the roses in the men’s helmets and garlanded round the standard. In the
evening a dull and solemn dinner to the heads of departments and their
wives. A difficult function. We had the band of the Suffolks playing outside
the windows, which were wide open on the sea. I went out sketching in the
morning, very early. I should have been at my post all day on such an
occasion, I confess. Will said I was like Nero, fiddling while Rome was
burning.
“May 29th.—The Mediterranean Fleet is here. Great interchange of
cards, firing of salutes, etc., etc. All very ceremonious, but productive of
picturesqueness and colour and effect, so I like it very much. The Khedive
Tewfik, too, has arrived, with the Khediviah, for the hot season from Cairo.
Will, of course, had to be present at the station this morning for the
reception of our puppet, and it was not nice to see the Union Jack down in
the dust as the guard of honour of the Suffolks gave the salute. Our dinner
to-night was to the admiral and officers of the newly-arrived British
squadron.
“June 2nd.—To the Khediviah’s first reception at the harem of the Ras-
el-Tin Palace. I had two Englishwomen to present, rather an unmanageable
pair, as seniority appeared to be claimed erroneously at the last moment by
the junior. This reception has become a most dull affair now that Oriental
ways are done away with. Dancing girls no longer amuse the guests, nor
handmaidens cater to them with sweetmeats during the audience, and there
is nothing left but absolute emptiness. The Vice-Reine sits, in European
dress, on a divan at the end of a vast hall, and the visitors sit in a semi-circle
before her on hard European chairs reflected in a polished parquet,
speaking to each other in whispers and furtively sipping coffee. She
addresses a few remarks to those nearest her, and the pauses are articulated
by the click of the ever-moving fans of the assembly. The ladies-in-waiting
and girl slaves move about in a mooning way in the funniest frocks,
supposed to be European, but some of them absolutely frumpish.
Melancholy eunuchs of the bluest black, in glossy frock coats, rise and bow
as one passes along the passages to or from the presence, and it is a relief to
get out through the jealously-walled garden into the outer world.
“I find it difficult to converse in a harem, being so bad at small talk. I
upset the Vice-Reine’s equanimity by telling her (which was quite true) that

I had heard she was taking lessons in painting. ‘Moi, madame?!! Oh! je
n’aurais pas le courage!’ It was as bad as when I told her, in Cairo, how
much I liked poking about the bazaars. ‘Vous allez dans les bazaars,
madame?!!’ So I relapsed into talking of illnesses, which subject I have
always found touches the proper note in a harem. They say the Vice-Reine
delights in these audiences, as they are amongst the great events of her
days. She is a beautiful woman, a Circassian, and of lovely whiteness.
“Finished the delicate sketch of the loveliest bit of the canal, where the
pink minaret and the black cypress are. I wish I could do just one more
reach of that lovely waterway before I leave! There is a particular group of
oleanders nodding with heavy pink blossom by the water’s edge against a
soft blurred background of tamarisk, where women and girls in dark blue,
brilliant orange, and rose-coloured robes come down to fetch water in their
amphoræ. There is another reach lined for the whole length of the picture
with tall waving canebrakes, above whose tender green tops appears the
delicate distance of the lagoons of Mareotis; there is—but ah! each bend of
that canal reveals fresh beauties, and often as Will has driven me there, I am
as eager as ever to miss no point in the lovely sequence.
“June 14th.—All my days now I am sketching more continuously, as the
arduous work of paying calls has relaxed greatly. This evening we drove
again far beyond Ramleh on the old route followed by Napoleon to reach
Aboukir, and I finished the sketch there.”
And so on, till my departure a few days later. I had wisely left my oils at
home at Delgany, and thus got together a much larger number of subjects,
the handier medium of water-colour being better suited to the official life I
had to attend to.

CHAPTER XVII

MORE OF THE EAST

MY return voyage was made on board the Messageries boat to
Marseilles. This gave me the Straits of Messina as well as those of
Bonifacio. On passing Ajaccio I don’t think a single French passenger gave
a thought to Napoleon. I was intent on taking in every detail of that place,
as far as I could see it through a morning mist. Corsica looked very grand,
crowned with great snow-capped mountains.
I lost no time in getting home to the children, and passed the rest of the
summer in the green loveliness of Ireland, returning to Egypt, in the
following October, viâ Venice again. Every soldier’s wife knows what it is
to be torn in two between the husband far away abroad and the children one
must leave at home. The trial is great, no doubt of it. Then there is this
perplexity: whether it would be well to take one of the children with one
and risk the dangers of the journey and the climate at the other end. Parents
pay heavily for our far-flung Empire!
On the morning of my departure from Venice I woke to the call of the
sunbeams pouring into my room, and, behold, as I went to the window, the
dome of the “Salute” taking the salute, as we say in the Army, of the
sunrise! And the Dogana’s gilded globe responding, too. Joy! our start at
least will be calm. Till midday I had Venice to myself, and I could stroll
about the Piazza and little streets, and recollect myself in peaceful
meditation in St. Mark’s. What delicate loveliness is that of Venice! Those
russet reds and creamy whites and tender yellows, and here and there bits of
deep indigo blue to give emphasis to the colour scheme. And that tender
opalesque sky, and the gilded statues on domes and towers, and the rich
mosaics twinkling in the hazy light! These things make one feel a love for
Venice which is full of gratitude for so beautiful a thing.
At 12.30 I took gondola and was rowed to my old friend the Hydaspes
lying in the Giudecca, and was just in time to sit down to a truly Hydaspian
luncheon, which was crowded. To my indescribable relief the captain told
me I should have a cabin all to myself as last time. At two o’clock we cast

off, and that effective passage all along the front of the city was again made
which so impressed me the preceding spring; and then we turned off
seawards, winding through the channel marked out by those white posts
with black heads which, even in their humble way, are so harmonious in
tone and are beloved by painters, carrying out as they do the whole artistic
scheme. Every fishing boat we met or overtook gave one a study of
harmonies. Now it was an orange sail with a red upper corner in soft
sunlight against the flat blue-purple of the distant mountains and the vivid
green of the Lido; now, composing with a line of rosy, snowy mountain tops
that lay like massive clouds on the horizon, would rise a pale cool grey-
white sail, well in the foreground, with its upper part tinted a soft mouse-
grey and its lower border deep terra-cotta red. The sea, pale blue; the sky
thinly veiled with clouds of a rosy dove-grey. Nowhere does one see such
delicacy of colouring as here. Then the market boats looked well, full of
vegetables, whose cool green came just where it should for the completion
of the colour study. To think that the Local Board, or whatever those
modern vulgarians are called, of Venice are advocating the complete
suppression of those coloured sails, to be replaced by plain white ones all
round. Hands off, mascalzoni! All this enchantment gradually faded away in
the mists of evening and of distance, and we were soon well out to sea.
“Sunday.—At 9 a.m. Brindisi in bright, low sunshine,” says the Diary.
“To Missa Cantata; much pleasant strolling. What animation all day with
the loading and unloading, the coming and going of passengers, the cries
and laughter of the population thronging the quays! The Britannia from
London was already in, and I watched the transfer of my heavy luggage
from her to the Hydaspes with a hawk’s eye. I had a genuine compliment on
landing paid to my accent. Those pests, the little beggar boys, who hang on
to the English and can’t be shaken off, attacked me at first till I turned on
them and shouted, ‘Via, birrrrichini!’ One of them pulled the others away:
‘Come away, don’t you see she is not English!’ The Italians still think Gl’
Inglesi are all millionaires and made of scudi.
“November 12th.—What indescribable joy this afternoon to see the crew
busy with the preparations for our arrival to-morrow morning!
“November 13th.—Of course I began to get ready at 3 a.m. and peer out
of the porthole on the waste of starlit waters as I felt the ship stopping off
the distant lighthouse. We lay to a long time waiting for the dawn before
proceeding to enter the harbour. The sun rose behind the city just as we

turned into the port. I looked towards the distant landing stage. Half a mile
off, with my wonderful sight, I saw Will, though the sun was right in my
eyes. I knew him not only by his height, but by the shining gold band round
his cap. We were a long time coming in and swinging round alongside, and,
before the gangway was well down, Will sprang on to it and, in spite of the
warning shouts of the sailors, was the first to board the Hydaspes.”
I was back in Egypt; to be there once more was bliss. The now brimming
Mahmoudieh saw me haunting it again; the predominating red of the
flowering trees and creepers that I noted before had made place for
enchanting variations of yellow, and all the vegetation had deepened. The
heat was great at first. I was particularly struck by the enhanced beauty of
the date palms, whose golden and deep purple fruit now hung in clusters
under the graceful branches. But all too soon came a good deal of rain, to
my indignation. Rain in Egypt! The natives say we have brought it with us.
I never saw any in Cairo nor upstream.
The Governor of the city had invited us to make use of a little
dahabiyeh, the Rose, for a cruise on the Lower Nile, and on November 20th
we started. My husband had already welcomed on their arrival, in a worthy
manner, the officers of the French fleet, with whom he was in perfect
sympathy; but my Diary records the happy necessity for our departure by
the scheduled time on board the Rose on that very November 20th. That
morning the German squadron arrived and the thunder of its guns gave us
an unintentional send-off! They were duly honoured, of course, but the
General himself was away.
It was a nine days’ cruise to the mouth of the Nile and back. Quite a
different reading of the Nile from the one I have recorded in my letters to
my mother, and reproduced in “From Sketch Book and Diary.” Very few
tourists or even serious travellers have come so far down, so that one is less
afraid of being forestalled by abler writers in recording one’s impressions
there. It was pretty to see the big Turkish flag fluttering at our helm, and a
beautifully disproportionate pennon streaming in crimson magnificence
from the point of the little vessel’s curved felucca spar. But our first days
were damping: “November 22nd.—Oh, the rain! Alas! that I should know
Egypt under such deluges, and see in this land the deepest, ugliest mud in
the world. We had to moor off the residence of the Bey, to whom this
dahabiyeh belongs, last night, as we wished to pay him our respects and
tender him our thanks this morning. He made us stay to luncheon, and a

very excellent Arab repast it was. I got on well with him as he spoke
excellent French, but his mother! Oh! it was heavy, as she could only talk
Turkish, and my translated remarks didn’t even get a smile out of her. I
must say the Mohammedan women are deadly.
“We proceeded on our voyage very late in the day, on account of this
visit which common civility made necessary. The weather brightened up at
sunset and nothing more weird have I ever seen than the mud villages,
cemeteries, lonely tombs, goats, buffaloes and wild human beings that
loomed on the banks as we glided by, brown and black against that sky full
of racing clouds that seemed red-hot from the great fiery globe that had just
sunk below the palm-fringed horizon. These canal banks might give many
people the horrors. I certainly think them in this weather the most uncanny
bits of manipulated nature I have ever seen. I was fortunate in getting down
in colour such a telling thing, a goatherd in a Bedouin’s burnous, which was
wildly flapping in the hot wind against the red glow in the west, driving a
herd of those goats I find so effective, with their long, pendant ears, and
kids skipping in impish gambols in front. ‘Apocalyptic’ apparition, caught,
as we left it astern, in that portentous gloaming! I shall make something of
this. As to the inhabitants of those regions, to contemplate their life is too
depressing. As darkness comes on you see them creeping into their
unlighted mud hovels like their animals. On the Upper Nile, at least, the
fellaheen have glorious air, the sun, the clean, dry sand, but here in that mud
——!
“November 23rd.—No more rain. At Atfeh we left the canal at last, by a
lock, and I gave a sigh of relief and contentment, for we were on the broad
bosom of Old Nile. After a delay at this mud town to buy provisions we
pushed out into the current and with eight immensely long ‘sweeps’ (the
wind was against sailing) we made a good run to Rosetta, on whose mud
bank we thumped by the light of a pale moon. The rhythmic sound of those
splashing oars and of the chant of the oarsmen in the minor key, with
barbaric ‘intervals’ unknown to our music, continued to echo in my ears—it
all seemed wild and strange and haunting.
“November 24th.—Began this morning a sketch of Rosetta to finish on
our return from rounding up our outward voyage at the western mouth of
the great river where we saw it emerge into a very desolate, grey
Mediterranean. I may now say I have a very good idea of the mighty river
for upward of a thousand miles of its course—a good bit further, both below

and above stream, than the authoress of ‘A Thousand Miles up the Nile’
knew it, whom in my early days I longed to emulate and, if possible,
surpass! An old-fashioned book, now, I suppose, but all the more interesting
for that. Furling sail, for the wind had been fair to-day, we turned and were
towed back to Fort St. Julian, where we moored for the night.
“November 25th.—After a nice little sketch of the Fort St. Julian,
celebrated in Napoleonic annals, we started off, and reached Rosetta in
good time, so that I was able most satisfactorily to finish my large water-
colour of the place. I was rather bothered where I sat at the water’s edge by
the small boys and a very persistent pelican, which kept flying from the
river into the fish market and returning with stolen fish, to souse them in the
water before filling its pouch, in time to avoid capture by the pursuing brats.
“November 26th.—From Rosetta we glided pleasantly to Metubis, one of
the many shining cities, as seen from afar, that become heaps of squalid
dwellings when viewed at close quarters. But the minarets of those phantom
cities remain erect in all their beauty, and this city in particular was
transfigured by the most magnificent sunset I have ever seen, even here.”
The wild town of Syndioor was our mooring place for the next night,
and at sunrise we were off homewards. Syndioor and the opposite city of
Deyrout were veiled in a soft mist, out of which rose their tall minarets in
stately beauty, radiant in the level light. The effect on the mind of these
ruined places, once magnificent centres of commerce and luxury, is quite
extraordinary. They are now, all of them, derelicts. And so in time we
slipped back into the canal, landing under the oleanders of our starting
place. The crew kissed hands, the reis made his obeisance, and we returned
to the hard stones and rattle of the Boulevard de Ramleh, refreshed. The
Germans were gone.
Balls, picnics, gymkhanas and dinners were varied by intervals of water-
colour sketching in the desert. One picnic, out at Mex, to the west of
Alexandria, was distinguished by a great camel ride we all had on the soft-
paced, mouse-coloured mounts of the Camel Corps, the Englishwomen
looking so nice in their well-cut riding habits, sitting easily on their tall
steeds. I managed to secure several sketches that day of the men and camels
of the corps, and have one sketch of ourselves starting for our turn in the
desert. Our ponies took us back home. The sort of day I liked. As I record,
the completeness of my enjoyment was caused by my having been able to

put some useful work in, as usual. I had a Camel Corps picture in petto at
this time.
“February 13th, 1891.—We had the Duke of Cambridge to luncheon. He
arrived yesterday on board the Surprise from Malta, and Will, of course,
received him officially, but not royally, as he is travelling incog., and he
came here to tea. To-day we had a large party to meet him, and a very
genial luncheon it was, not to say rollicking. The day was exquisite, and out
of the open windows the sea sparkled, blue and calm. H.R.H. seemed to me
rather feeble, but in the best of humours; a wonderful old man to come to
Egypt for the first time at seventy-two, braving this burning sun and with
such a high colour to begin with! One felt as though one was talking to
George III. to hear the ‘What, what, what? Who, who, who? Why, why,
why?’ Col. Lane, one of his suite, said he had never seen him in better
spirits. I was gratified at his praise of our cook—very loud praise, literally,
as he is not only rather deaf himself, but speaks to people as though they
also were a ‘little hard of hearing.’ ‘Very good cook, my dear’ (to me).
‘Very good cook, Butler’ (across the table to Will). ‘Very good cook, eh,
Sykes?’ (very loud to Christopher Sykes, further off). ‘You are a gourmet,
you know better about these things than I do, eh?’ C. S.: ‘I ought to have
learnt something about it at Gloucester House, sir!’ H.R.H. (to me): ‘Your
health, my dear.’ ‘Butler, your very good health!’ Aside to me: ‘What’s the
Consul’s name?’ I: ‘Sir Charles Cookson.’ ‘Sir Charles, your health!’ When
I hand the salt to H.R.H. he stops my hand: ‘I wouldn’t quarrel with her for
the world, Butler.’ And so the feast goes on, our august guest plying me
with questions about the relationship and antecedents of every one at the
table; about the manners and customs of the populace of Alexandria; the
state of commerce; the climate. I answer to the best of my ability with the
most unsatisfactory information. He started at four for Cairo, leaving a most
kindly impression on my memory. The last of the old Georgian type! ‘Your
mutton was good, my dear; not at all goaty,’ were his valedictory words.”
Mutton is goaty in Egypt unless well selected. I advise travellers to
confine themselves to the good poultry, and to leave meat alone. What I
would have done without our dear, good old Magro, the major domo who
did my housekeeping out there, I dread to think. His name, denoting a lean
habit of body, was a misnomer, for he was rotund. A good, honest Maltese,
his devotion to “Sair William” was really touching. I was only as the moon
is to the sun, and to serve the sun he would, I am convinced, have risked his

life. I came in for his devotion to myself by reason of my reflected glory.
One morning he came hurtling towards me, through the rooms, waving aloft
what at first looked like a red republican flag, but it proved to be a sirloin or
other portion of bovine anatomy which he had had the luck to purchase in
the market (good beef being so rare). “Look, miladi, you will not often meet
such beef walking in the street!” He laid it out for my admiration. This is
the way he used to ask me for the daily orders: “What will miladi command
for dinner?” “Cutlets?” (patting his ribs); “a loin?” (indications of
lumbago); “or a leg?” (advancing that limb); “or, for a delicate entrée,
brains?” (laying a finger on his perspiring forehead). “Oh, for goodness’
sake, Magro, not brains!” When the day’s work was done he would retire to
what we called the “Ah!-poor-me-room”—his boudoir—where, repeating
aloud those words so dear to his nationality, he would take up his cigar.
Government gave him £250 a year for all this expenditure of zeal.
While on the subject of Oriental housekeeping, I must record the
following. Our predecessors of a former time had what to me would have
been an experience difficult to recover from. They were giving a large
Christmas dinner, and the cook, proud of the pudding he had mastered the
intricacies of, insisted on bringing it in himself, all ablaze. It was only a few
steps from the kitchen to the dining-room. Holding the great dish well up
before him, he unfortunately set fire to his beard, and the effect of his dusky
face approaching in the subdued light of the door, illuminated in that way
by blue flames, must have been satanic.
“March 14th.—Lord Charles Beresford, who has relieved the other ship
with the Undaunted, invited us all to luncheon on board, but Will and I
could not stay to luncheon as we had guests; nevertheless, we had a very
interesting morning on board. On arriving at the Marina we found Lady
Charles, Lady Edmund Talbot, Colonel Kitchener,[10] whose light, rather
tiger-like eyes in that sunburnt face slightly frightened me, and others
waiting to go with us to the Undaunted in the ship’s barge and a steam
launch. Lord Charles received us with his usual sailor-like welcome, and we
had a tremendous inspection of the ship, one of our latest experiments in
naval machinery—a belted cruiser. She will probably cruise to the bottom if
ever the real test comes. A torpedo was fired for us, but it gambolled away
like a porpoise, ending by plunging into a mudbank. I wish they would
diverge their direction like that in war, detestable inventions!

“April 1st, 1891.—I am now quite in the full swing of Egyptian
enjoyment. No more Egyptian rain! Excellent accounts from home, and my
intention of going back is rendered unnecessary. How thankful I am, on the
eve of our departure for Palestine, for the ‘all well’ from home!”
My entries in the Diary during that unique journey, and my letters to my
mother, are published in my book, “Letters from the Holy Land.” I
illustrated it with the water colours I made during our pilgrimage, and I was
most delighted to find the little book had an utterly unexpected success. It
was nice to find myself among the writers! To have ridden through this land
from end to end is to have experienced a pleasure such as no other part of
the earth can give us. Had I had no more joy in store for me, that would
have been enough.
As the railway was not opened till the following year the mind was not
disturbed, and could concentrate on the scenes before it with all the
recollection it required. I called our progress “riding through the Bible.”
Many a local allusion in both Testaments, which had seemed vague or
difficult to appreciate before, opened out, so to say, before one’s happy
vision, and gave a substance, a vitality to the Scripture narrative which
produced a satisfaction delightful to experience. Perhaps the strongest
longing in my childhood’s mind had been to do this journey. To do it as we
did, just our two selves, and in the fresh spring weather, was a happy
circumstance.
As I look back to that time which we spent amidst the scenes of Our
Lord’s revealed life on earth, no portion of it produces such a sense of
mental peace as does the night of our arrival on the shores of the Sea of
Galilee. There there were no crowds, no distractions, not a thing to jar on
the mind. Before and around one, as one sat on the pebbly strand, appeared
the very outlines of the hills His eyes had rested on, and far from modern
life encroaching on one’s sensitiveness, the cities that lined those sacred
shores in His time had disappeared like one of the fleeting cloud shadows
which the moon was casting all along their ruined sites. His words came
back with a poignant force, “Woe unto thee, Chorazin! Woe unto thee,
Bethsaida!... and thou, Capernaum, which art exalted unto heaven....”
Where were they? And the high waves raced foaming and breaking on the
shingle, blown by a strong though mild wind that came across from the dark
cliffs of the country of the Gadarenes. One seemed to feel His approach

where He had so often walked. One can hardly speak of the awe which that
feeling brought to the mind. He was quite near!
Undoubtedly the effect of a journey through the Holy Land does
permanently impress itself upon one’s life. It is a tremendous experience to
be brought thus face to face with the Gospel narrative. We returned to the
modern world on May 1st. This time I left Alexandria in company with my
husband on June 3rd, and on landing at Venice we at once went on to
Verona, where he was anxious to visit the battlefield of Arcole.

CHAPTER XVIII

THE LAST OF EGYPT

HERE at Verona was Italy in her richest dress, her abundant and varied
crops filling the landscape, one might say, to overflowing; not a space of
soil left untilled, and, all the way along our road to San Bonifacio for
Arcole, the snow-capped Alps were shimmering in the blue atmosphere on
one hand, and a great teeming plain stretched away to the horizon on the
other.
I noticed the fine physique of the peasantry, and their nice ways. Every
peasant man we met on the road raised his hat to us as we passed. At San
Bonifacio we got out of the carriage and, turning to the right, we walked to
Arcole, becoming exclusively Napoleonic on reaching the famous marsh.
History says that a soldier saved Napoleon from drowning early in the
battle by pulling him out of the water in that marsh, “by the hair!” I
pondered this bald statement, and came to the conclusion that the thing
must have happened in this wise. Young Bonaparte in those early days wore
his hair very long, and gathered up into a queue. Had he been close-
cropped, as his later experience in Egypt compelled him to be, the history of
the world might have been very different. As I looked into the water from
the famous little bridge, I saw the place where the young conqueror slipped
and plunged in. The soldier must have caught hold of the pigtail, and with
the good grip it afforded him pulled his drowning general out. Between the
little bridge and the spot where he sank Napoleon raised the obelisk which
we see to-day. Thus do I like to realise interesting events in history.
Our driver on the way back became a dreadful bore, for ever turning on
the box to chatter. First he informed us that Arcole was called after
Hercules, “a very strong man” (great thumping of biceps to illustrate his
meaning), which we knew before. Then, when within sight of the battlefield
of Custozza, where our dear Italians got such a “dusting” from the
Austrians, he informed us that he had been in the battle, and that the Italians
had blasted the enemy. “Li abbiamo fulminati.” “Oh, shut up, do! Basta,
caro!”

Our afternoon stroll all over Verona merged into a moonlight one which
takes first rank in my Italian chronicles. The effect of a roaring Alpine
torrent (for such is the Adige at this season of melting snows) rushing and
swirling through the heart of that ancient city, between embankments
bordered with domed churches, with towers and palaces, I found quite
unique. Mysterious, too, it all felt in the lights and profound shades of the
moonlight. Above rose the hills with very striking serrated outlines,
crowned with fortresses.
The rest of the summer saw me at home at Delgany. I must say the
“Green Isle” for summer, following Egypt for winter, makes a very pleasant
combination. My husband had returned to Alexandria on August 23rd, and I
and a wee child followed in November. I had half accomplished my next
Academy picture at home, and I took it out to finish in Egypt—“Halt on a
Forced March: Retreat to Corunna.” A study of an artillery team this time,
giving the look of the spent horses, “lean unto war.” It was very well placed
at the Academy in the fresh first room, and well received, but it was too sad
a subject, perhaps, so I have it still. There were no half-starved horses in all
Wicklow, I am happy to say, look where I would for models. I had well-to-
do ones to get tone and colour from, but I bided my time. In Egypt I had
plenty of choice, and had I not been able to put the finishing touches to my
team there, the picture would never have been so strong—an instance of my
favourite definition when I am asked, “What is the secret of success?”
“Seize opportunities.”
So on December 10th, 1891, I, with the little child I had safely brought
out with me, landed once more at Alexandria. The big charger and the grey
Syrian pony had now a black donkey alongside for the desert rides, which
were the chief pleasure of our life out there.
But the winter grew sad. On January 7th, 1892, the Khedive Tewfik died
rather mysteriously, it was said, but his death was announced as the result of
that plague we call the “flu,” which reached even to the East. Just eight
days later poor Albert Victor, Duke of Clarence, fell a victim to it, and in
the same way died Cardinal Manning. Also some of our own friends at
Alexandria went down. And yet never was there more brilliant weather, so
softly brilliant that one could hardly realise the presence of danger. All the
balls and other festivities were stopped, of course. I had ample time to
finish my “Halt on a Forced March” in this long interval, so boring and
depressing to Alexandrian society. Soon things returned to pleasantly

normal conditions, however, and being free from the studio on sending my
picture off, I went in whole-heartedly for the amenities of my official
position. The Private View at the far-away Royal Academy was in my mind
on the occasion of my giving away the prizes at some athletic sports, for I
knew it was just then in full blast, April 29th, 1892. I knew my quiet picture
could not make anything of a stir, and I chaffed myself by suggesting that
the “three cheers and one cheer more” proposed by the English consul at the
end of the prize-giving, which rent the sunset air in that dusty plain in my
honour, should be all I ought to expect. It would be a little too much to
receive applause in two quarters of the globe at the same moment, allowing
for difference of time!
I call upon my Diary again: “May 18th.—We joined a picnic in the very
palm grove through which the Turks fled from the French pursuit under
Bonaparte to find death in the surf of Aboukir Bay. We were shaded by
clumps of pomegranate trees in flower as well as by the waving, rustling
palms, and a cool wind blew round us most pleasantly, while the white and
grey donkeys that brought us rested in groups, their drivers and the villagers
squatting about them in those unconsciously graceful attitudes I love to jot
down in my sketch book. The moving shadows of the palm branches on the
sand always capture my observation; no other tree shadows produce that
effect of ever-interlacing forms. Far away in the radiant light lay the region
where the terrible naval battle took place later, to our credit. Altogether our
party was surrounded by frightful reminiscences, in the midst of which the
picnic went its usual picnicky way. We rode back to Alexandria by the light
of the stars.
“May 23rd.—A wonderful day, full of colour, movement and interest.
Young Abbas II., the new Khedive, was received here on his arrival from
Cairo, the whole population, swelled by strange wild Asiatics from distant
parts, filling the streets and squares through which he was to pass. Will, of
course, had to receive him at the station. The crowd alone was a pleasure to
look at. The Khedive seemed a squat young man with a round pink and
white painted face. They say he loves not the English. What I enjoyed
above all was the drive we took soon after, all the length of the line of
reception, to Ras-el-Tin. Oh, those narrow streets of the old quarter, filled
with numberless varieties of Oriental costumes. Now and then the crowd
was threaded by troops, some on horseback, some perched on camels, and,
to give the finishing touch of variety, the native fire brigade went by,

wearing the brass helmets of their London confrères, very surprising
headgear bonneting their black and brown faces.”
I, with the little child, left for home on June 7th, viâ Genoa, well
provided with a good stock of studies of camels and Camel Corps troopers.
These were for my 8-foot picture, destined for the next Academy. Many a
camel had I stalked about the Ramleh desert to watch its mannerisms in
movement. I got quite to revel in camels. Usually that interesting beast is
made utterly uninteresting in pictures, whereas if you know him personally
he is full of surprises and one never gets to the end of him.
The voyage to my dear old Genoa was full of beautiful sights, with one
exception. I don’t know what old Naples was like—I know it was
frightfully dirty—but I saw it modernised into a very horrid town, a smudge
of ugliness on one of the ideal beauties of the world. It gave me a shock on
beholding it as we entered the harbour, and so I leave the town itself
severely alone, with its new, barrack-like buildings looking gaunt and gritty
in the burning June sunshine. The cloisters of the Certosa at Sant’ Elmo are
very beautiful, and I much enjoyed the church and the splendid “Descent
from the Cross” of Spagnoletto. There was just time for a dash up there
before leaving at 12 noon. As we steamed out towards Ischia I got the oft-
painted (and, alas! oleographed) view of Vesuvius across the whole extent
of the bay from off Posilipo. Certainly nowhere on earth can a fairer scene
be beheld, and greater grace of coast and mountain outline. Then the fair
scene melted away into the tender haze of the June afternoon—blue and
tender grey, the volcanic islands one by one disappeared and the day of my
first sight of the Bay of Naples closed.
June 12th was a most memorable day, a day of deepest, sweetest, and
saddest impressions and memories for me. In the afternoon I made ready for
our approach to that part of the world where the brightest years of my
childhood were spent—the Gulf of Genoa. In order not to lose one moment
away from the contemplation of what we were approaching, I packed up all
our things before three o’clock, did all the fin de voyage paying and tipping,
and then, my mind free for concentration, I stationed myself at the starboard
bulwark, binocular in hand. At long last I saw in the haze of the lovely
afternoon a shadowy outline of rocky mountain which my heart, rather than
my eyes, told me was Porto Fino, for never had I seen it before from out at
sea, at that angle. But I knew where to look for it, and while to the other
passengers we seemed still out of sight of land I saw the shadowy form.

Then little by little the whole coast grew out of the haze and I saw again,
one after the other, the houses we lived in from Ruta to Albaro. With the
powerful glass I had I could see Villa de’ Franchi and its sundial, and see
how many windows were open or shut at Villa Quartara as we passed
Albaro, and see the old, well-loved pine tree and cypress avenue of the
latter palazzo.
“The sight of Genoa in the lurid sunset glow, with its steep, conical
mountains behind it, crowned with forts, half shrouded in dark grey clouds,
was very impressive. ‘La Superba’ looked her proudest thus seen full face
from the sea, seated on her rocky throne. By the by, when will people give
up translating ‘superba’ by ‘superb’? It is rather trying. ‘Genoa the Superb’!
Ugh!”

The Egyptian Camel-Corps and the Bersaglieri.

I worked away well in the pleasant seclusion of Delgany, at my 8-foot
canvas whereon I carried very far forward my “Review of the Native Camel
Corps at Cairo.” I had already a water-colour drawing of this subject, which
I had made while the scene was fresh in my mind’s eye. I had been indebted
to the then General commanding at Cairo for the facilities afforded me to

see, at close quarters, a charge of the native Camel Corps, which impressed
me indelibly. I had driven out of Cairo to the desert, where the manœuvres
were taking place, and, getting out of the carriage opposite the saluting
base, I placed myself in front of the advancing squadrons, so timing things
that I got well clear at the right moment. I wanted as much of a full-face
view as possible. The attitudes of the men, wielding their whips, the
movements of the camels, the whole rush of the thing gave me such a
sensation of advancing force that, as soon as the “Halt!” was sounded, and
the 300 animals had flung themselves on their knees with the roar and snarl
peculiar to those creatures when required to exert themselves, I hastened
back to Shepheard’s and marked down the salient points. The men were of
all shades, from fellaheen yellow to the bluest black of Nubia, and it was a
striking moment when they all leapt off their saddles (as the camels
collapsed), panting, and beginning to re-set their disordered accoutrements.
In those days the saddles were covered with red morocco leather, with
fringed strips that flew out in the wind, adding, for the artist, a welcome aid
to the representation of motion. Now, of course, that precious bit of colour
is gone, and the necessity for khaki invisibility reaches even to the camel
saddle, which is now a stiff and unattractive dun-coloured object.
For my last and most brilliant visit to Egypt I took out our eldest little
girl, and a very enjoyable trip we had, viâ Genoa. Of course, I took out the
picture to finish it on its native sands. I had the richest choice of military
camels, arms and accoutrements, and a native trooper or two, as models, but
only for studies. I was careful to have no posed model to paint from in the
studio, otherwise good-bye to movement. These graceful Orientals become
the stupidest, stiff lay figures the moment you ask them to pose as models.
Besides, the sincere Mohammedans refuse to be painted at all. I have never
used a Kodak myself, finding snapshots of little value, but quick sketches
done unbeknown to the sketchee and a good memory serve much better.
The picture, I grieve to say, was hung not very kindly at the Academy, but at
the Paris Salon it was received with all the appreciation I could desire.
What pleased me particularly in this last sojourn in Egypt was our visit
to Cairo, where I was so happy during my first experience, when I
described my sensations as being comparable to swimming in Oriental
colour, light, and picturesqueness. The only thing that jarred was the
tyranny of Cairo society, which compelled one to appear at the diversions,
whether one liked it or not. Nevertheless, I gained a very thorough

knowledge of the wondrously beautiful mosques, having the advantage of
the guidance of one who knew them all intimately—Dean Butcher. It was a
true pleasure to have him as cicerone, and I am grateful to him for his most
kindly giving up his time for little C. and me. My husband had long ago
been acquainted with every nook and corner of Cairo, but Dean Butcher had
made a special study of these mosques, and I think he was pleased with the
way we took in the fascinating information he gave me and the child.
It’s a far cry from Cairo to Aldershot! On November 1st, 1893, my
husband’s command of the 2nd Infantry Brigade began there. Much as I
loved Egypt, it was a great delight for me to know that the parting from the
children was not to be repeated. I had had Egypt to my heart’s content.
After returning home from Egypt, at Delgany, on June 17th, 1893, I set
up my next big picture, “The Réveil in the Bivouac of the Scots Greys on
the Morning of Waterloo—Early Dawn.” I was able to make all my twilight
studies at home, all out of doors; not a thing painted in the studio. I pressed
many people into my service as models, and I think I got the light on their
fine Irish faces very true to nature. I even caught an Irish dragoon home on
leave in the village, whose splendid profile I saw at once would be very
telling.

CHAPTER XIX

ALDERSHOT

AND now our Irish home under the glorious Wicklow Mountains broke
up, and I was to become acquainted with life in the great English camp. The
huts for officers were still standing at that time, wooden bungalows of the
quaintest fashion, all the more pleasing to me for being unlike ordinary
houses. The old court-martial hut became my studio, four skylights having
been placed in it, and I was quite happy there. I worked hard at “The
Réveil,” and finished it in that unconventional workshop.
To say that Aldershot society was brilliant would be very wide of the
mark. How could it be? But to us there was a very great attraction close by,
at Farnborough. There lived a woman who was and ever will be a very
remarkable figure in history, the Empress Eugénie. She hadn’t forgotten my
husband’s connection with her beloved son’s tragic story out in South
Africa, nor her interview with him at Camden Place, and his management
of the Prince’s funeral at Durban. We often took tea with her on Sundays
during our Aldershot period, her “At Home” day for intimate friends and
relatives, at the big house on the hill. She became very fond of talking
politics with Sair William, and always in English, and she used to sit in that
confidential way foreign politicians have, expressive of the whispered
divulgence of tremendous secrets and of occult plots and plans in various
parts of the world. She talked incessantly with him, but was a bad listener;
and if a subject came up in conversation which did not interest her, a sharp
snap or two of her fan would soon bring things to a stop.

Aldershot Manœuvres.
The Enemy in sight.

Entries from the Aldershot Diary:
“January 9th, 1894.—We went to the memorial service at the Empress’s
church in commemoration of the death of Napoleon III. After Mass we went
down to the crypt, where another short service was chanted and the tombs
of the Emperor and Prince Imperial were incensed. Between the two lies the
one awaiting the pathetic widow who was kneeling there shrouded with
black, a motionless, solitary figure, for whom one felt a very deep respect.
“March 14th.—Delightful dinner at Government House, where the Duke
and Duchess of Connaught proved most cheery host and hostess. He took
me to dinner, and we talked other than banalities. All the other generals’
wives and the generals and heads of departments were there to the number
of twenty-two.
“March 25th.—To a brilliant dinner at Government House to meet the
Duke of Cambridge. Good old George was in splendid form, and asked me
if I remembered the lunch we gave him at Alexandria. It was a most cheery
evening. We sat down about twenty-eight, of whom only six were ladies.
Grenfell, our old friend of Genoese days, and Evelyn Wood were there.

“May 17th.—A glorious day for the Queen’s Review, which was
certainly a dazzling spectacle. Dear old Queen, it is many a long year since
she reviewed the Aldershot Division; nor would she have come but that her
son is now in supreme command here. Old people say it was like old times,
only that she has shrunk into a tinier woman than ever she was, and by the
side of the towering Duchess of Coburg in that spacious carriage she looked
indeed tiny, and nearly extinguished under a large grey sunshade. A good
place was reserved for my little carriage close to the Royal Enclosure, and I
enjoyed the congenial scene to the utmost. Was I not in my element? The
review took place on Laffan’s Plain, a glorious sweep of intense green turf
which I often take little Martin to for our morning walk, and no Aldershot
dust annoyed us. I was very proud of the general commanding the 2nd
Brigade riding past the saluting base at the head of his troops on that mighty
charger, ‘Heart of Oak,’ that fine golden bay, set off to the utmost advantage
by the ceremonial saddle-cloth and housings of blue and gold. That general
gives the salute with a very free sweep of the sword arm. The march past
took a long time. As to the crowd of officers behind the Queen’s carriage,
my eyes positively ached with the sight of all that scarlet and gold. I must
say this scarlet is pushed too far to my mind. It must have now reached the
highest pitch of dyeing powers. It was a duller tone at Waterloo; and
certainly still more artistic when Cromwell first ordered his men to wear it.
But I may be wrong, and it is certainly very splendid. The Duke of
Cambridge and Prince of Wales were on huge black chargers, and wore
field marshals’ uniforms. It was pretty to see the Duke of Connaught—who,
at the head of his staff, in front of the division drawn up in line, had sat
awaiting the Queen’s arrival—canter up to his mother and salute her as her
carriage drove into the enclosure. Then he cantered back to his place, a very
graceful rider, and the review began. I managed to do good work at ‘The
Réveil’ in forenoon. What a contrast and rest to the eyes that picture is after
such glittering spectacles as to-day’s. War versus Parade! It was pathetic to
see the Queen to-day with her soldiers. She cannot pass them in review
many more times.
“The Empress Eugénie has returned, and we had a long interview with
her the other day at her beautiful home at Farnborough. She is by no means
the wreck and shadow some people are pleased to describe her as being, but
has the remains of a certain masculine power which I suppose was very
masterful in the great old days of her splendour. She is not too tall, and has

a fine, upright figure. She lives apparently altogether in the memory of her
son, and is surrounded by his portraits and relics, including drawings
showing him making his heroic stand, alone, forsaken, against the savage
enemy. I feel, as an Englishwoman, very uneasy and remorseful while
listening to that poor mother, with her tearful eyes, as she speaks of her
dead boy, who need not have been sacrificed. There is no trace in her words
of anger or reproach or contempt, only most appealing grief. She has one
window in the hall full to a height of many feet of the tall grass which
grows on the spot where her treasured son was done to death by seventeen
assegai wounds, all received full in front. I remember his taking us over
some artillery stables, I think, at Woolwich once. He had a charming face.
The Empress rightly described to us the quality of the blue of his eyes—‘the
blue sky seen in water.’
“We often go to her beautiful church these fine summer days. Her only
infirmity appears to be her rheumatism, which necessitates some one giving
her his arm to ascend or descend the sanctuary steps when she goes to or
comes from her prie-Dieu to the right of the altar. Sometimes it is M.
Franceschini Pietri, sometimes it is the faithful old servant Uhlmann who
performs this duty.
“August 13th.—We have had the Queen down again for another review
in splendid (Queen’s) weather. The night before the review Her Majesty
gave a dinner at the Pavilion to her generals, and for the first time in her life
sat down at table with them. Will gave me a most interesting account. In the
night there was a great military tattoo, which I witnessed with C. from
General Utterson’s grounds. Very effective, if a little too spun out. Will and
the others were standing about the Queen’s and the Empress Eugénie’s
carriages all the time, in the grass soaked with the heavy night dew, and felt
all rather blue and bored. In the Queen’s carriage all was glum, while the
Empress with her party chatted helpfully in hers to fill up the time. It was
pitch dark but for the torches carried by long lines of troops in the distance.
“To-day was made memorable by the review held of our brilliant little
division by the German Emperor on Laffan’s Plain, in perfect weather. He
wore the uniform of our Royal Dragoons, of which regiment he is honorary
colonel, and rode a bay horse as finely trained as a circus horse (and rather
suggestive of one, as are his others, too, that are here), with the curb reins
passing somewhere towards the rider’s knees, which supply the place of the
left hand, half the size of the right and apparently almost powerless. The

poor fellow’s shoulders are padded, too, and one sees a hiatus between the
false, square shoulder and the real one, which is very sloping. But the
general appearance was gallant, and the young man seemed full of gaiety
and martial spirit. He took the salute, of course, and was a striking figure
under the Union Jack which waved over his British helmet. Then followed a
little episode which, if rather theatrical, was enlivening, and a pretty
surprise. As the Royal Dragoons’ turn came to pass the saluting base the
Kaiser drew his sword and, darting away from his post, placed himself at
the head of his British regiment, the Duke of Connaught replacing him at
the flagstaff pro tem. The Kaiser couldn’t salute himself, of course, so
saluted the Duke, and, when the Dragoons were clear, back he came at a
circus canter to resume his post and continue to receive the salute of the
passing legions, as before. We all clapped him for this graceful compliment.
It was smartly done. The detachment (seventy-five in number) had been
sent over from Dublin on purpose for this little display. In the evening Will
dined at Government House in a nest of Germans, who seemed afraid to sit
well upon their chairs in the august presence of their Emperor, and sat on
the very edge. One particularly corpulent general was very nearly slipping
off. I went to the evening reception, no wives being asked to the dinner, as
the dining-room is so small and the German suite so voluminous.
“I was at once presented to H.I.M., who talked to me, like a good boy,
about my painting and about the army, which he said he greatly admired for
its appearance. He is just now a keen Anglo-maniac (sic)! We shall have
him dressing one of his regiments in kilts next. He is not at all as hard-
looking as I expected, but not at all healthy. His face, seen near, is
unwholesome in its colour and texture, and the eyes have that boiled look
which suggests a want of clarity in the system, it seems to me. He is nice
and natural in his manner and in the expression of his face, with light brown
moustache brushed up on his cheeks. He wore the mess dress of the Royal
Dragoons, and his right hand was twinkling with very ‘loud’ rings on every
finger, coiled serpents with jewelled eyes.
“August 14th.—A glorious sham fight in the Long Valley and heights for
the Kaiser. I shall always remember his appearance as, at the head of a large
and brilliant staff of Germans and English, he came suddenly galloping up
to the mound where I was standing with the children, riding, this time, a
white horse and wearing his silver English Dragoon helmet without the
plume. He seemed joyous as his eye took in the lovely landscape and he sat

some minutes looking down on the scene, gesticulating as he brightly spoke
to the deferential pickelhauben that bent down around him. He then dashed
off down the hill and crested another, with, if you please, C. on her father’s
huge grey second charger careering after the gallant band, and escaping for
an anxious (to me) half-hour from my surveillance. The child looked like a
fly on that enormous animal which overtopped the crowd of staff horses.
Adieu to the old gunpowder smoke. It has cleared away for ever. One sees
too much nowadays, and that mystery of effect, so awful and so grand,
caused by the lurid smoke, is gone. How much writers and painters owe to
the old black powder of the days gone by!
“September 23rd.—Had a delightful evening, for we dined with the
Empress Eugénie. I seemed to be basking in the ‘Napoleonic Idea’ as I sat
at that table and saw my glass engraved with the Imperial ‘N,’ and was
aware of the historical portraits of the Bonaparte Era that hung round the
room. The Empress was full of bright conversation and chaff; and I find, as
I see her oftener, that she has plenty of humour and enjoys a joke greatly.
We didn’t go in arm in arm, men and women, but Sa Majesté signed to me
and another woman to go in on either side of her. She called to Will to come
and sit on her right. I was very happy and in my element. Oh! how the mind
feels relieved and expanded in that atmosphere. We had music after dinner,
and I had long talks on Egypt with the Empress, whose recollections of that
bright land are particularly brilliant, she having been there during the
jubilant ceremonies in connection with the opening of the Suez Canal. One
year before the great calamities to her and her husband! She told me that
just for a freak she walked several times in and out between the two pillars
on the Piazzetta at Venice, that time, to brave Fate, who, it was said,
punished those who dared to do this. ‘Then les évènements followed,’ she
added. Well might she say that life is an up and down existence. She waved
her hand up and down, very high and very low, as she said it, with a very
weary sigh. Her face is often very beautiful; those eyes drooping at the
outer corners look particularly lovely as they are bent downwards, and her
white hair is arranged most gracefully. She is always in black.
“Will has accepted the extension of his command here to my great
pleasure; the chief charm to us in this place is the neighbourhood of the
Empress. That makes Farnborough unique. Not only is she so interesting,
but now and then there are visitors at her house whose very names are
sonorous memories. The other day as we came into her presence she went

up to Will and asked him to let Prince Murat, Ney (Prince de la Moscowa)
and Masséna (duc de Rivoli), see some of the regiments in his brigade at
their barracks. When the inspection was over these three illustrious Names
came to lunch with us, and I sat between Murat and Masséna, with le Brave
des Braves opposite. What’s in a name? Everything, sometimes. I thought
myself a very favoured creature last Sunday as I sat by Eugénie at her tea
table and she sprinkled my muffin with salt out of her little muffineer. I am
glad to know she likes me and she is very fond of Will. One Sunday she and
I and the Marquise de Gallifet were sitting together, and the Empress was
talking to the latter about ‘The Roll Call,’ pronouncing the name in English,
but Madame, who looked somewhat stony and unsympathetic, could not
pronounce the name when the Empress asked her to, and made a very funny
thing out of it. The Empress tried to teach her, making fun of her attempts
which became more and more comic, combined with her frigid expression.
At last the Empress turned to me and asked me to show how it ought to be
said in the proper way; but, as she had just given me an enormous chocolate
cream, I was for the moment unable to pronounce anything with this thing
in my cheek, and she went into fits of laughter as I made several attempts to
say the unfortunate name. So it was never pronounced, and Madame la
Marquise looked on as though she thought we were both rather childish,
which made the Empress laugh the more. The least thing, if it is at all
comical, sends her into one of her laughing fits which are very catching—
except by Gallifets.
“Talking of camel riding (and they say she rode like a Bedouin in the
desert) I sent her into another fit which brought the tears to her eyes by
saying I always forgot ‘quel bout de mon chameau se lève le premier’ at
starting. But she sent me into one of my own particular fits the other day. I
was telling her, in answer to her enquiry as to insuring pictures on sending
them by sea, that I thought only their total loss would be paid for, and what
the artist considered an injury of a grave nature amounting to total loss
might not be so considered by the insurance company. ‘And if,’ she said,
‘you have a portrait and a hole is made right through one of the eyes?’ Here
she slowly closed her left eye and looked at me stolidly with the right, to
represent the injured effigy, ‘would you not get compensation?’ The one-
eyed portrait continued to look at me out of the forlorn single eye with
every vestige of expression gone, and I laughed so much that I begged her
to become herself again, but she wouldn’t, for a long time.

“There has been a great deal of pheasant shooting, particularly at the De
Worms’ at Henley Park, where a chef at £500 a year has made that
hospitable house very attractive; but there has been one shoot at Farnboro’
made memorable by Franceschini Pietri distinguishing himself with his
erratic gunnery. Suddenly he was seen on a shutter, screaming, as the
servants bore him to the house. Every one thought he was wounded, but it
turned out he was sure he had hit somebody else, which happily wasn’t true.
People are shy of having him, after that, at their shoots, especially Baron de
Worms, who showed me how he accoutred himself by padding and goggles,
one day, bullet-proof against that excitable little southerner, who was a
member of the party at Henley Park.”
After one of the Empress’s dinners at Farnboro’ Hill, a small dinner of
intimate friends, we had fun over a lottery which she had arranged, making
everything go off in the most sprightly French way. What easy, pleasant
society it was! One admired the courage which put on this brightness,
though all knew that the dead weight on the poor heart was there, so that
others should not feel depressed. Even with these kind semblances of
cheeriness no one could be unmindful of the abiding sorrow in that
woman’s face.
“January 9th, 1895.—The anniversary of the Emperor Napoleon’s death
come round again. There was quite a little stir during the service in the
church. The catafalque, heaped up with flowers, was surrounded with
scores of lighted tapers as it lay before the altar. A young priest, in a laced
cotta, went up to it to set a leaf or flower or something in its place, when
instantly one of his lace sleeves blazed. Almost simultaneously the General,
in full uniform, springing up the altar steps without the smallest click of his
sword, was at the priest’s side, beating out the fire. Not another soul in that
crowded place had seen anything. That was like Will! We laid wreaths on
the tombs in the crypt.”
An entry in March of that year records good progress with “The Dawn of
Waterloo,” and mentions that we had the honour of receiving the Empress
Frederick and her hosts, the Connaughts, and their suites, who came to see
the picture. I found the Empress still more like her mother than when I first
saw her, when she and the Crown Prince Frederick dined at the
Goschens’—a memorable dinner, when the fine, serious-looking and
bearded Frederick told my husband he would desire nothing better for his
sons than that they should follow in his footsteps. The Empress was

beaming—that is exactly the word—and a few minutes after coming into
the drawing-room she showed that she was anxious to get on to the studio,
to save the light. So out we sallied, walking two and two, a formidable
procession, and we were nearly half an hour in the little court-martial hut.
They all had tea with us afterwards, quite filling the tiny drawing-room. The
Empress was very small, and as she talked to me, looking up into my face, I
thought her the most taking little woman I ever saw. She had what I call the
“Victoria charm,” which all her sisters shared with her—absolutely
unstudied, homely, and exceedingly friendly. At least it so appeared to me
in a high degree in her that day. But what a sorrow she had had to bear!
The picture was taken to the Club House, there to be shown for three
days to the division before Sending-in Day. The idea was Will’s, but I got
the thanks—undeserved, as I had been reluctant to brave the dust on the wet
paint. Crowds went to see it, from the generals down to the traditional last
drummer.
I thought the Academicians were again unkind in the placing of my
picture, and a trip to Paris was all the more welcome as a diversion, for
there I was able to seek consolation in the treat of a plunge into the best art
in the “City of Light.” One interesting day in May found us at Malmaison,
the country house of Napoleon and Josephine. There is always something
mournful in a house no longer tenanted which once echoed the talk, the
laughter, the comings and goings, the pleasant and arresting sounds of
voices that are long silent. But this house, of all houses! It was absolutely
stripped of everything but Napoleon’s billiard table, and the worm-eaten
bookshelves in his little musty study the only “fixtures” left. The ceilings
we found in holes; that garden, once so much admired and enjoyed, choked
with dusty nettles. We went into every room—the one where poor derelict
Josephine died; the guests’ bedrooms; the dining-room where Napoleon
took his hurried meals; the library where he studied; the billiard-room,
where he himself often took part in a game surrounded by “fair women and
brave men” in the glitter of gorgeous uniforms and radiant toilettes. One
lends one’s mind’s ear to the daily and nightly sounds outside—the clatter
of horses’ hoofs as the staff ride in and out of the courtyards with
momentous despatches; the sharp words of command; the announcement of
urgent arrivals demanding instant hearing. We found our minds revelling in
suchlike imaginings. The chapel, the coach-houses, the great iron gates
were all there, but seen as in a dream.

We were back at Aldershot on May 30th. “The Queen’s Ball, at
Buckingham Palace, brilliant as ever. The Shahzada, the Ameer of
Afghanistan’s son, was the guest of the evening, as it is our policy just now
to do him particular honour, after having made his father ‘sit up.’ A pale,
wretched-looking Oriental, bored to tears! The usual delightful medley of
men of every nationality, civilised and semi-civilised, was there in full
splendour, but the rush of that crowd for the supper-room, in the wake of
royalty, was most unseemly. Every one got jammed, and it was most
unpleasant to have steel cartridge boxes and sword hilts sticking into one’s
bare arms in the pressure. I think there was something wrong this time with
the doors. I was much complimented that night on my ‘Dawn of Waterloo,’
but that was an inadequate salve to my wounded feelings.
“June 15th.—A great review here in honour of the young Shahzada, who
is being so highly honoured this season. I don’t think I ever saw such a
large staff as surrounded that pallid princeling as he rode on to the field.
The whole thing was a long affair, and our bored visitor refreshed himself
occasionally with consolatory snuff. The whole of the cavalry finished up,
as usual, with a charge ‘stem on,’ and as the formidable onrush neared the
weedy youth he began to turn his horse round, possibly suspecting deep-
laid treachery.”
My husband and I were present when Cardinals Vaughan and Logue laid
the foundation stone of Westminster Cathedral. The luncheon that followed
was enlivened by some excellent speeches, especially Cardinal Logue’s,
whose rich brogue rolled out some well-turned phrases.
A week later we were at dinner at Farnborough Hill. “There was a large
house-party, including Princes Victor and Louis Napoleon, the elder a
taciturn, shy, dark man about thirty-three, and the younger an alert,
intelligent officer of thirty-one, who is a colonel in the Russian cavalry, and
is the hope and darling of the Bonapartists. I call him Napoleon IV. Victor
went in with the Empress to dinner and Louis with me, but on taking our
seats the two brothers exchanged places, so that I sat on Victor’s right. I had
an uphill task to talk with the studious, silent Victor, and found my right-
hand neighbour much more pleasant company, Sir Mackenzie Wallace. I
had not caught his name and his accent was so perfect and his idioms and
turns of speech so irreproachable that I never questioned his being a
Frenchman. Away we went in the liveliest manner with our French till
suddenly we lapsed into English, why I don’t know. This gave the Empress

her chance. She began chuckling behind her toothpick and asked me in
French if he had a good accent in speaking English. ‘Yes, madame, very
good!’ ‘Ah? really good?’ (chuckle). ‘Really good, madame.’ ‘Ah, that is
well’ (chuckle). I saw in Will’s face I was being chaffed and guessed the
truth. Much laughter, especially from Louis. He told Will, across the
Empress, that he had seen an engraving of ‘Scotland for Ever’ in a shop
window in Moscow, and had presented it to the mess of his own cavalry
regiment, the Czar being now colonel of the Scots Greys, and that he little
expected so soon to meet the painter of that picture. The dinner was very
bright and sparkling, so unlike a purely English one. How gratefully Will
and I conformed to the spirit of the thing. His Irish heart beats in harmony
with it. I didn’t quite recover from my faux pas at table, and, on our taking
leave, brought everything into line once more by wishing Prince Louis
‘Felicissima Sera!’ in a way denoting a bewilderment of mind amidst such a
confusion of tongues. I left amidst applause.
“July 8th.—There was a sham fight on the Fox Hills to-day to which the
two French princes went. Will mounted Victor on steady ‘Roly Poly,’ and
sent H. on ‘Heart of Oak’ to attend on His Imperial Highness throughout the
day. Louis was mounted by the Duke. My General loves to honour a
Napoleon, so, when he was riding home with Louis after the fight, and the
Guards were preparing to give the General the usual salute, he begged the
Imperial Colonel to take the salute himself. ‘But, General, I am not even in
uniform!’ answered Louis. ‘One of your name, sir, is always in uniform,’
was the ready reply. So Louis took it. On his way back to the Empress he
stopped at our hut, and after a glass of iced claret cup on this grilling day,
he looked at my sketches, and at the little oil picture I am painting for Miss
S.—‘Right Wheel!’—the Scots Greys at manœuvres. I wonder if he has it in
him to make a bid for the French Throne!
“July 12th.—The Queen came down to-day, and there was a very fine
display of the picked athletes of the army at the new gymnasium in the
afternoon, before Her Majesty, who did not leave her carriage. She looked
pleased and in great good humour. She gave a dinner to her generals in the
evening at the Pavilion as she did last year. Will sat near her, and she kept
nodding and smiling to him at intervals as he carried on a lively
conversation with Princesses Louise and Beatrice. Her Majesty expanded
into full contentment when nine pipers, supplied by the three Highland
Regiments of the Division, entered the room at the close of dinner in full

blast. They tell me that each regiment jealously adhered to its own key for
its skirls, or whatever the right word is, and so in three different keys did
the pibrochs bray, but this detail was not particularly noticeable in the
general hurly-burly. The Queen stood it well, though in that confined space
it must have tried her nerves. Give me the bagpipes on the mountain side or
in the desert, where I have heard them and loved them.
“July 13th.—At a very fine review for the Queen, who brought her usual
weather with her. She looked well pleased, especially with the stirring light
cavalry charge at the close, when Brabazon pulled up his line at full
charging pace within about 12 yards (it seemed to me) of the royal carriage.
Really, for a moment, I thought, as the dark mass of men and horses rolled
towards us, that he had forgotten all about ‘Halt!’ It was a tremendous tour
de force, and a bit of swagger on the part of this dashing hussar. That group
of the Queen in her carriage, with the four white horses and scarlet coated
servants; the Prince of Wales and the rest of the glittering Staff; Prince
Victor Napoleon in civilian dress, his heavy face shaded by his tall black
hat as he uneasily sat his excited horse; the other carriages resplendent in
red and gold; the Empress’s more sober equipage full of French élégantes,
and the wave of dark hussars bursting in a cloud of dust almost in amongst
the group, all the leaders of the charging squadrons with sabres flung up and
heads thrown back—what a sight to please me! I feel a physical sensation
of refreshment on such occasions. What discipline and training this
performance showed! Had one horse got out of hand he might have flopped
right into the Queen’s lap. I saw one of the squadron leaders give a little
shiver when all was over. On getting home I was doing something to the
bearskins of my Scots Greys in ‘Right Wheel,’ showing the way the wind
blew the hair back, as I had just seen it at the review, while fresh in my
mind, when a servant came to tell me Princess Louise was at the Hut. I had
got into my painting dress with sleeves turned up for coolness. I ran in,
changed in half a minute, and had a nice interview, the Duchess of
Connaught being there also, and we had one of those ‘shoppy’ art talks
which the Duchess of Argyll likes.
“August 16th.—My ‘At Home’ day was made memorable by the
appearance of the Empress Eugénie, who brought a remedy for little
Eileen’s cold. It was a plaster, which she showed me how to use. I cannot
say how touched we were by this act, so thoughtful and kind—that poor

childless widow! She seems to have a particularly tender feeling for Eileen,
indeed Mdlle. d’Allonville has told me so.”
The rest of the Aldershot Diary is filled with military activities up to the
date of the expiration of my husband’s time there, and his appointment to
the command of the South Eastern District with Dover Castle as our home.
But between the two commands came an interlude filled with a tour through
some parts of Italy I had not seen before, and a visit to the Villa Cyrnos at
Cap Martin, whither the Empress had invited us.

CHAPTER XX

ITALY AGAIN

IN January, 1896, we left Aldershot on a raw foggy day, with the usual
winter brown-paper sky, the essence of dreariness, on leave for the land I
love best. At Turin our train for Genoa was filled with poor young soldiers
off to Abyssinia, the Italian Government having followed our example in
the policy of “expansion”; with what success was soon seen. An Italian told
us that “good coffee” was to be had from there, amongst other desirable
commodities. So the poor young conscripts were being sent to fetch the
good coffee, etc. They were singing in a chorus of tenor voices as they
went, after affectionately kissing the comrades who had come to see them
off.
At sunrise we arrived at Naples, Vesuvius looking like a great amethyst,
transparent in the golden haze from the sun which rose just behind it. I must
say the Neapolitan population struck me as very wretched; the men were no
better than the poor creatures one might see in Whitechapel any day, and
dressed, like them, in shoddy clothing. The poor skeleton mules and horses
were covered with picturesque brass-mounted harness instead of flesh, and I
saw no red-sashed, brown-limbed lazzaroni such as were supposed to dance
tarantelle on the shore. Certainly there is not much dancing and singing in
their hungry-looking descendants.
January 17th was a memorable day, spent at Pompeii. One must see the
place for oneself. Familiar with it though you may be through books and
paintings, Pompeii takes you by surprise. The suddenness of that entrance
into the City of the Dead is a surprise to a newcomer, such as I was. To
come into the city at once by the “Street of Tombs,” which carries you
steeply upwards into the interior—no turnstiles at the gate, no ticket
collectors, no leave-your-umbrella-at-the-door; this natural way of entering
gave me a strange sensation as if I were walking into the past. The present
day was non-existent. Though we were three and a half hours circulating
about those theatres, baths, villas, shops, through the narrow streets, with
their deep ruts and stepping stones, I was so absorbed in the fascination of

realising the life of those days that I never needed to rest for a moment, and
the day had grown very hot. One rather drags oneself through a museum,
but we were here under the sky, and Vesuvius, the author of this destruction,
was there in very truth, looking down on us as we wandered through the
remnants of his victim.
As to beauty of colour there is here a great feast for the painter. What
could surpass, on a day like that, the simple beauty of those positive reds
and yellows and blues of walls and pillars in that light, back-grounded by
the tender blue of mountains delicately crested with the white of their
snows? The positive strong foreground colours emphasised by the delicacy
of the background! The absolute silence of the place was impressive and
very welcome.
The Diary had better “carry on” here: “Sunday, January 19th.—To Capri
and Sorrento on our way to Amalfi. There is a string of names! I feel I can’t
pronounce them to myself with adequate relish. To Mass at 8, and then at 9
by steamer to Capri, touching at Sorrento on our way. Three hours’ passage
over a very dark blue sea, which was flecked with foam off Castellamare.
Capri is all I expected, a mass of orange and lemon groves in its lower part,
with wonderful crags soaring abruptly, in places, out of the clear green
water. Tiberius’s villa is perched on the edge of a fearful precipice that has
memories connected with his cruelties which one tries to smother. Indeed,
all around one, in those scenes of Nature’s loveliness, the detestable doings
of man against man are but too persistently obtruding themselves on the
mind which is seeking only restful pleasure.
“We were driven to the Hotel Quisisana (‘Here one gets well’), very high
up on a steep ridge, where the village is, and were sorry to find our pleasure
marred by being set down to déjeuner with as repulsive a company of
Teutons as one could see. The perspective of those feeding faces, along the
edge of the table, tried me horribly. They say the Germans are
outnumbering the British as tourists in Italy now. Nowhere do their loud
voices and rude manners jar upon our sensibility so painfully as in Italy.
The Frau next to me actually sniffed at four bottles out of the cruet in
succession, poking them into her nose before she satisfied herself that she
had found the right sauce for her chop! What’s to be done with such people?
“We had not much time to give to the lovely island, for the little steamer
had to take us to Sorrento at two o’clock. We put up there at the Hotel

Tramontano, and had a stroll at sunset, with views of the coast and Vesuvius
that spread out beyond the reach of my well-meaning, but inadequate, pen. I
can’t help the impulse of recording the things of beauty I have seen. It is
owing to a wish to preserve such precious things in my memory, to waste
nothing of them, and to record my gratitude as well.”
At Amalfi came the culmination to our long series of experiences of the
Neapolitan Riviera. The names of Amalfi, Ravello, Salerno and Pæstum
will be with me to the end, in a halo of enchantment.
On returning to Naples, of course, we paid our respects to Vesuvius. Our
climb to the highest point allowable of the erupting cone was not at all
enchanting, and left my mind in a most perturbed condition. There was
much food for meditation when our visit was over, but at the time one had
only leisure to receive impressions, and very disconcerting impressions at
that. A keen north wind blew the fumes from the crater straight down my
throat as I panted upwards through the sulphur, ankle deep, and I could only
think of my discomfort and probable collapse. I disdained a litter. I
perceived several fat Germans in litters.
An even deeper impression was made on my mind than that produced by
the eruption proper on our coming, after much staggering over cold lava,
near a great, crawling river of liquid fire oozing out of the mountain’s side.
Above our heads the great maw of the crater was throwing up bursts of rock
fragments with rumblings and growls from the cruel monster. I wonder
when that wild beast will make its next pounce? And down there, far, far
below, in the plain lay little Pompeii, its poor, tiny, insignificant victim!
Yes, for a thoughtful climber there was more than the sulphurous north
wind to make him pause.
The little funicular railway had brought us up to the foot of the cone,
crunching laboriously over the shoulder of the mountain, and I could not
but think—“If the chain broke?” At one point the open truck seemed to
dangle over space. We were sitting with our faces turned towards the sea
and away from the cone, and (were we never to be rid of them?) two
corpulent Teutons faced us, hideously conspicuous, as having apparently
nothing but blue air behind them. There was no horizon at all to the sea, the
pale haze merging sea and sky into one. Then, when we alighted, we found
ourselves in a restaurant with Messrs. Cook & Co.’s waiters running about.

Certainly it was no time for meditating or moralising in that medley of the
prehistoric and the fin de siècle.
I found Rome very much changed after the lapse of all those years since
I was there with our family during the last months of the Temporal Power. I
shall never forget the shock I felt when, to lead off, on our arrival, I
conducted my husband to the great balustrade on the Pincian overlooking
the city, promising him my favourite view. It was a truly striking one in the
far-off days, and quite beautiful. Instead of the reposeful vineyards of the
area facing us beyond the Tiber, fitting middle distance between us and St.
Peter’s, gaunt buildings bordering wide, straight, staring streets glistening
with tramlines seemed to jeer at me in vulgar triumph, and I am not sure
that I did not shed tears in private when we got back to our hotel. One fact,
however, brought a sense of mental expansion as I surveyed that view,
which should have made amends for the sensitive contraction of my artist’s
mind. That great basilica yonder was mine now! A return to Rome had
another touch of sadness for me. Our father had been so happy there in
introducing his girls to the city he loved. He seemed now to be ever by my
side as the well-remembered haunts that were left unchanged were seen
again. Leo XIII. was now Pope. On one particular occasion in the Sistine
Chapel, at Mass, I was struck by the extraordinary effect of his white,
utterly ethereal face and fragile figure as he stood at the altar, relieved
against the background of Michael Angelo’s exceedingly muscular “Last
Judgment.” And, now, what of this “Last Judgment”? The action of our
Lord, splendidly rendered as giving the powerful realisation of the push
which that heavy arm is giving in menace to the condemned souls towards
the Abyss on His left (I had almost said the shove!), is realistic and strong.
But what a gross conception! Our modern minds cannot be impressed by
this fleshly rendering of such a subject, a rendering suitable to the coarser
fibre of the Middle Ages. I could positively hate this fresco, were I not
lured, as a painter, to admire its technical power.
Our visit to the Empress at Cap Martin followed, on our way home to
Aldershot. She received us with her usual genial grace. The place, of
course, ideal, and the typical blue weather. We were made very much at
home. Madame le Breton told me I was to wear a table d’hôte frock at
dinner, and Pietri told Sir William a black tie to the evening suit was the
order of the day.

“February 13th.—The Villa Cyrnos is in a wood of stone pines,
overhanging the sea on a promontory between Mentone and Monte Carlo. It
is in the French Riviera style, all very white—no Italian fresco colouring.
Plentiful striped awnings to keep off the intense sunlight. Cool marble
rooms, polished parquets, flowers in masses—a sense of grateful freshness
with reminders of the heat outside in the dancing reflections from the sea.
Indeed, this is a charming retreat. Madame d’Arcos and her sister, Mrs.
Vaughan, were there, who having just arrived from England, were full of
accounts of the arrival of the remains of Prince Henry of Battenberg from
Ashanti, and the funeral, at which Madame d’Arcos had represented the
Empress. The different episodes were minutely described by her of this, the
last act of the latest tragedy in our Royal Family. She had a sympathetic
listener in the poor Empress.
“February 14th.—A sunny day marred, to me, by a visit to Monte Carlo,
where the gambling is in fullest activity. The Empress wanted us all to go
for a little cruise in a yacht, but though the sea was calm enough I preferred
terra firma, and her ladies drove me to Monte Carlo. Hateful place! The
lovely mountains were radiant in the low sunshine of that afternoon and the
sea sparkling with light, but a crowd of overdressed riff-raff was circulating
about the casino and pigeon-shooting place, from which came the ceaseless
crack of the cowardly, unsportsmanlike guns. I record, with loathing, one
fellow I saw who came on the green, protected from the gentle air by a fur-
lined coat which his valet took charge of while his master maimed his
allotted number of clipped victims, and carefully replaced as soon as all the
birds were down. A black dog ran out to fetch each fluttering thing as it fell.
I was glad to see this hero was not an Englishman. Inside the casino the
people were massed round the gaming tables, the hard light from the
circular openings above each table bringing into relief the ugly lines of their
perspiring faces. The atmosphere was dusty and stifling, and the hands of
these horribly absorbed people were black with clawing in their gains
across the grimy green baize. I drank in the pure, cool air of the sunset
loveliness outside when I got free, with a very certain persuasion that I
would never pay a second visit, except under polite compulsion, to the
gambling palace of Monte Carlo.
“February 15th.—The Empress took us quite a long walk to see the
corps of the ‘Alpins’ at the Mentone barracks and back by the rocky paths
along the shore. She is very active, and is looking beautiful.

“Sunday, February 16th.—All of us to Mass at the little Mentone
church. The dear Empress gave me a little holy picture during the service
and said, ‘I want you to keep this.’ There is at times something very
touching about her.”
I sent a small picture this year to the “New Gallery,” instead of the
Academy, feeling still the effects of their unkindness in placing “The Dawn
of Waterloo” where they did the preceding year.

CHAPTER XXI

THE DOVER COMMAND

AND now Dover Castle rises into prominence above the horizon as I
travel onward. My husband was offered Colchester or Dover. He left the
choice to me. How could there be a doubt in my mind? The Castle was the
very ideal, to me, of a residence. Here was History, picturesqueness, a wide
view of the silver sea, and the line of the French coast to free the mind of
insularity. So to Dover we went, children, furniture, horses, servants, dogs
and all, from the Aldershot bungalow. As usual, I was spared by Sir William
all the trouble of the move, and while I was comfortably harboured by my
ever kind and hospitable friends, the Sweetmans, in Queen’s Gate, my
husband was managing all the tiresome work of the move.
It was a pleasure to give dances at the Constables’ Tower, and the
dinners were like feasts in the feudal times under that vaulted ceiling of the
Banqueting Hall. Our boys’ bedroom in the older part of this Constables’
Tower had witnessed the death of King Stephen, and a winding staircase
conducted the unappreciative London servants by a rope to their remote
domiciles. The modernised part held the drawing-rooms, morning-room,
library, and chief bedrooms, while in the garden, walled round by the
ramparts, stood the tower whence Queen Mary is said to have gazed upon
her lost Calais. My studio had a balcony which overhung the moat and
drawbridge. What could I have better than that? No wonder I accomplished
a creditable picture there, for I had many advantages. I place “Steady, the
Drums and Fifes!” amongst those of my works with which I am the least
dissatisfied. The Academy treated me well this time, and gave the picture a
place of honour. These drummer-boys of the old 57th Regiment, now the
Middlesex, are waiting, under fire, for the order to sound the advance, at the
Battle of Albuera. That order was long delayed, and they and the regiment
had to bear the supreme test of endurance, the keeping motionless under
fire. A difficult subject, excellent for literature, very trying for painting. I
had had the vision of those drummer-boys for many years before my mind’s
eye, and it is a very obvious fact that what you see strongly in that way
means a successful realisation in paint. Circumstances were favourable at

Dover. The Gordon Boys’ Home there gave me a variety of models in its
well-drilled lads, and my own boys were sufficiently grown to be of great
use, though, for obvious reasons, I could not include their dear faces in so
painful a scene. The yellow coatees, too, were a tremendous relief to me
after that red which is so hard to manage. I remember asking Detaille if he
ever thought of giving our army a turn. “I would like to,” he said, “but the
red frightens us.” The bandsmen of the Peninsular War days wore coatees of
the colour of the regimental facings. After long and patient researches I
found out this fact, and the facings of the 57th, being canary yellow, I had
an unexpected treat. I remember how the Duke of York[11] at an Aldershot
dinner had characteristically caught up this fact with great interest when I
told him all about my preparations for this picture. I am glad to know this
work belongs to the old 57th, the “Die Hards,” who won that title at
Albuera. “Die hard, men, die hard!” was their colonel’s order on that
tremendous day.
Many interesting events punctuated our official life at Dover:
“August 15th, 1896.—Great doings to-day. We had a busy time of it.
Lord Salisbury was installed Lord Warden in the place of Lord Dufferin.
Will had the direction, not only of the military part of the ceremonies but of
the social (in conjunction with me), as far as the Constables’ Tower was
concerned. Everything went well. Lord and Lady Salisbury drove in a
carriage and four from Walmer up to our Tower, and, while the procession
was forming outside to escort them down to the town, they rested in our
drawing-room for about half an hour, and Lord Dufferin also came in.
“I had to converse with these exalted personages whilst officers in full
uniform and women in full toilettes came and went with clatter of sabre and
rustle of silk. To fill up the rather trying half-hour and being expected to
devote my attention chiefly to the new Lord Warden, I bethought myself of
conducting him to a window which gave a bird’s-eye view of the smoky
little town below. I moralised, à la Ruskin, on the ugliness of the coal
smoke which was smudging that view in particular, and spoiling England in
general. On reconducting the weighty Salisbury to a rather fragile settee I
morally and very nearly physically knocked him over by this felicitous
remark: ‘Well, I have the consolation of knowing that the coalfields of
England are finite!’ ‘What?’ he shouted, with a bound which nearly broke
the back of that settee. I don’t think he said anything more to me that day.
Of course, I meant that smokeless methods would have to be discovered for

working our industries, but I left that unsaid, feeling very small. It is my
misfortune that I have not the knack of small talk, so useful to official
people, and that I am obliged to propel myself into conversation by
pronouncements of that kind. Shall I ever forget the catastrophe at the L
——s’ dinner at Aldershot, when I announced, during a pause in the general
conversation, to an old gentleman who had taken me in, and whose name I
hadn’t caught, that there was one word I would inscribe on the tombstone of
the Irish nation, and that word was—Whisky. The old gentleman was John
Jameson.
“But to return to to-day’s doings. I had to consign to C.,[12] as my
deputy, the head of the table for such of the people as were remaining at the
Castle for luncheon as I myself had to appear at that function at the Town
Hall. The procession, military, civil and civic—especially civic—started at
12 for the ‘Court of Shepway,’ where much antique ceremonial took place.
When they all reached the Town Hall after that, Lord Salisbury first
unveiled a full-length portrait of the outgoing Lord Warden, at the entrance
to the Banqueting Hall, and complimented him on so excellent a likeness
with a genial pat on the back. We were all in good humour which increased
as we filed in to luncheon and continued to increase during that civic feast,
enlivened by a band. Trumpets sounded before each speech, and the sharp
clapping of hands called, I think, ‘Kentish Fire,’ gave a local touch which
was pleasingly original. I am glad, always, to find the county spirit still so
strong in England, and nowhere is it stronger than in Kent. It must work
well in war with the county regiments.
“I am afraid Lady Salisbury must have got rather knocked out of time
coming to the Castle, by all the saluting, trumpeting and general prancing of
the guard of honour. She was nervous crossing our drawbridge with four
‘jumpy’ horses which she told me had never been with troops before!
Altogether I don’t think this was a day to suit her at all. I heard the
postillion riding the near leader shout back to the coachman on the box as
they started homeward from our door, ‘Put on both brakes hard!’ Away
went the open carriage which had very low sides and no hood, and Lord
Salisbury, being very wide, rather bulged over the side. Wearing a military
cape, lent him by my General, the day turning chilly, he had a rather top-
heavy appearance, and we only breathed freely when that ticklish
drawbridge, and the very steep drop of the hill beyond it, were passed. So

now let them rest at Walmer. Will will do all he can to secure peace for
them there.”
On August 20th I went to poor Sir John Millais’ funeral in St. Paul’s. The
ceremony was touching to me when I thought of the kind, enthusiastic
friend of my early days and his hearty encouragement and praise. They had
placed his palette and a sheaf of his brushes on the coffin. Lord Wolseley,
Irving, the actor, Holman Hunt and Lord Rosebery were the pall-bearers.
The ceremony struck me as gloomy after being accustomed to Catholic
ritual, and the undertaker element was too pronounced, but the music was
exquisite. So good-bye to a truly great and sincere artist. What a successful
life he had, rounded by so terribly painful a death!
One of the most interesting of the Dover episodes was our hiring of
“Broome Hall” for the South-Eastern District manœuvres in the following
September. The Castle was too far away for working them from there, so
this fine old Elizabethan mansion, being in the very centre of the theatre of
“war,” became our headquarters. There we entertained Lord Wolseley and
his staff as the house-party. Other warriors and many civilians whose lovely
country houses were dotted about that beautiful Kentish region came in
from outside each day, and for four days what felt to me like a roaring kind
of hospitality went on which proved an astonishing feat of housekeeping on
my part. True, I was liberally helped, but to this day I marvel that things
went so successfully. Everything had to be brought from the Castle—
servants in an omnibus, batterie de cuisine, plate, linen and all sorts of
necessary things, in military waggons, for the house had not been inhabited
for a long while. All the food was sent out from Dover fresh every day, by
road—no village near. The house had been palatially furnished in the old
days, but its glory was much faded and so ancestral was it that it possessed
a ghost. A pathetic interest attaches to “Broome” to-day, and I should not
know it again in its renovated beauty. Lord Kitchener restored it to more
than its pristine lustre, I am told.
The morning start each day of all these generals (Sir Evelyn Wood was
one of them) from the front door for the “battle” was a pleasing sight for
me, with the strong cavalry escort following. After the gallant cavalcade
had got clear I would follow in the little victoria with friends, hoping in my
innermost heart that I was leaving everything well in hand behind me for
the hungry “Cocked Hats” on their return.

On March 30th, 1897, I had a glimpse of Gladstone. We were on the pier
to receive a Royalty, and the “Grand Old Man” was also on board the Calais
boat. He was the last to land and was accompanied by his wife. He came up
the gangway with some difficulty, and struck me as very much aged, with
his face showing signs of pain. I had not seen him since he sat beside me at
a dinner at the Ripons’ in 1880, when his keen eye had rather overawed me.
He was now eighty-eight! The crowd cheered him well, but the old couple
were past that sort of thing, and only anxious to seek their rest at
“Betteshanger,” a few miles distant, whither Lord Northbourne’s carriage
whirled them away from public view.
And now comes the Diamond Jubilee of Queen Victoria. I think my
fresh impressions written down at the time should be inserted here as I find
them. Too much national sorrow and suffering brought to us by the Great
War, and too many changes have since blurred that bright picture to allow
of posthumous enthusiasm for its chronicling to-day. Were I to tone down
that picture to the appearance it has to me at the present time it would
hardly be worth showing.
“June 22nd, 1897.—Jubilee Day. I never expected to be so touched by
what I have seen of these pageants and rejoicings, and to feel so much
personal affection for the Queen as I have done through this wonderful
week. Thinking of other nations, we cannot help being impressed with the
way in which the English have comported themselves on this occasion—the
unanimity of the crowds; the willingness of every one concerned; all
resulting in those huge pageants passing off without a single jar. My place
was in the courtyard of the Horse Guards; Will’s place was on his big grey
before St. Paul’s, at Queen Anne’s statue, to keep an eye on things. I had an
effective view of the procession making the bend from Whitehall into the
courtyard, and out by the archway into the parade ground. This gave me
time to enjoy the varied types of all those nationalities whose warriors
represented them, as they filed past at close quarters. But we had five hours
of waiting. These hours were well filled up for me, so continually interested
in watching the movements of the troops as they took up their positions for
receiving the procession and saluting the Queen. I think in the way of
perfect dress and of superfine, thoroughbred horseflesh, Lord Lonsdale’s
troop of Cumberland Hussars was as memorable a group as any that day.
They wore the ‘sling jacket,’ only known to me in pictures and old prints of

the pre-Crimean days, and to see these gallant-looking crimson pelisses in
reality was quite a delightful surprise.
“The sun burst through the clouds just as the guns announced to us that
the Queen had started from Buckingham Palace on her great round by St.
Paul’s at 11.15. So we waited, waited. Presently some one called out,
‘Here’s Captain Ames,’ and, knowing he was the leader, we nimbly ran up
to our seats. It seemed hardly credible that the journey to St. Paul’s and the
ceremony there, and the journey homewards could have occupied so
comparatively brief an interval. I think the part of the procession which
most delighted me was the cohort of Indian cavalry, and then the gorgeous
bunch of thirty-six princes, each in his national dress or uniform. These
rode in triplets. You saw a blue-coated Prussian riding with a Montenegrin
on one side and an Italian bonneted by the absurd general’s helmet now in
vogue on the other. Then came another triplet of a Persian, whose breast
was a galaxy of diamonds flashing in the sun, an Austrian with fur pelisse
and busby (poor man, in that heat), and the brother of the Khedive, wearing
the familiar tarboosh, riding a little white Arab. Then followed an English
Admiral in the person of the Duke of York, a Japanese mannikin on his
right, and a huge Russian on his left, and so on, and so on—types and
dresses from all the quarters of the globe in close proximity, so that one
could compare them at a glance. The dignified Indian cavalry were superb
as to dress and puggarees, but the faces were stolid, very unlike the keen,
clean-cut Arab types which so charmed me in Egypt and Palestine. There
certainly were too many carriages filled with small Germans. Then came
the colonial escort to the Queen’s carriage. As they came on and passed
before us I do not exaggerate when I say that there seemed to pass over
them an ever-deepening cloud-shadow, as it were, from the white Canadians
riding in front, through ever-deepening shades of brown down to the
blackest of negroes, who rode last. What an epitome of our Colonial
Empire! Then, finally, before the supreme moment, came Lord Wolseley,
the immediate forerunner of the Royal carriage. He looked well and gallant
and youthful. Then round the curve into the courtyard the eight cream-
coloured horses in rich gala harness of Garter-blue and gold! So quick was
the pace that I dared not dwell too long on their beauty for I was too
absorbed in the Queen during that precious minute. There she was, the
centre of all this! A little woman, seated by herself (I had not time to see
who sat facing her) with an expressionless pink face, preoccupied in settling

her bonnet, which had got a little crooked, as though nothing unusual was
going on, and that was the last I saw of her as she passed under the dark
archway, facing homeward.
“June 26th.—Off from Dover at 2 a.m. for Southampton, by way of
London, to see the culminating glory of the Jubilee—the greatest naval
review ever witnessed. At eight we left Waterloo in one of the ‘specials’ that
took holders of invitation cards for the various ocean liners that had been
chartered for the occasion. Our ship was the P. and O. Paramatta, and very
pleased I was on beholding her vast proportions, for I feared qualms on any
smaller vessel. There were meetings on board with friends and a great
luncheon, and general good humour and complacency at being Britons. The
day cleared up at 10.30, and only a slight haze thinly veiled the mighty host
of the Channel Fleet as we slowly steamed towards it along the Solent.
Gradually the sun shone fully out and the day settled into steady brilliance.
“Well, I have been so inflated with national pride since beholding our
naval power this day that if I don’t get a prick of some sort I shall go off
like a balloon. Let us be exultant just for a week! We won’t think of the
ugly look of India just now and all the nasty warnings of the bumptious
Kaiser and the rest of it. We can’t while looking at Britannia ruling the
waves, as we are doing to-day. Five miles of ships of war five lines deep!
When all these ships fired each twenty-one guns by divisions as the Prince
of Wales steamed up and down the lines, and the crews of each vessel in
turn gave such cheers as only Jack Tar can give, it was not the moment to
threaten us with anything. I shall never forget the aspect of this fleet of ours,
black hulls and yellow funnels and ‘fighting tops’ stretching to east and
west as far as the eye could reach and beyond, the mellow sunlight full
upon them and the slowly-rolling clouds of smoke that wrapped them round
with mystery as their countless guns thundered the salute! Myriads of flags
fluttered in the breeze, the sea sparkled, and in and out of those motionless
battleships all manner of steam and sailing craft moved incessantly,
deepening by the contrast of their hurry the sense one had of the majestic
power contained in those reposing monsters.... Every one is saying, ‘And to
think that not a single ship has been recalled from abroad to make up this
display!’ We are all very pleased, and have the good old Nelson feeling
about us.” On June 28th the Queen held her Jubilee Garden Party in the
Buckingham Palace grounds. There we looked our last on her.

I took four of the children, in August, to Bruges, that old city so much
enjoyed by me in my early years. I was charmed to see how carefully all the
old houses had been preserved, and, indeed, I noticed that a few of them,
vulgarly modernised then, were now restored to their original beauty. How
well the Belgians understand these things! Seventeen years after this date
the eldest of the two schoolboys I had with me was to ride through that
same old Bruges as A.D.C. to the general commanding “The Immortal 7th
Division,” which, retiring before the German hordes, was to turn and help
to rend them at Ypres.
In 1898 I exhibited a smaller picture than usual—“The Morrow of
Talavera,” which was very kindly placed at the Academy—and I began a
large Crimean subject, “The Colours,” for the succeeding year. I had some
fine models at Dover for this picture. In making the studies for it I had an
interesting experience. I wanted to show the colour party of the Scots
Guards advancing up the hill of the Alma in their full parade dress—the last
time British troops wore it in action—Lieutenant Lloyd Lindsay carrying
the Queen’s colour. It was then he won the V.C. Lord Wantage (that same
Lloyd Lindsay), now an old man, but full of energy, when he heard of my
project, conducted me to the Guards’ Chapel in London, and there and then
had the old, dusty, moth-eaten Alma colours taken down from their place on
the walls, and held the Queen’s colour once more in his hand for me to see.
I made careful studies at the chapel, and restored the fresh tints which he
told me they had on that far-away day, when I came to put them into the
picture. I was in South Africa when the Academy opened in the following
spring.
On September 11th, 1898, we received the terrible news of the
assassination of the Empress of Austria. I had seen her every Sunday and
feast day at our little Ventnor church, at Mass, during her residence at Steep
Hill Castle. She had the tiniest waist I ever saw—indeed, no woman could
have lived with a tinier one. She was beautiful, but so frigid in her manner;
she seemed made of stone, yet she rode splendidly to hounds—altogether
an enigma.
October 27th, 1898, I thoroughly enjoyed. It was a day after my own
heart—picturesque, historical, stirring, amusing. Sir Herbert Kitchener, the
Sirdar par excellence, was received at Dover on his arrival from the
captured Khartoum with all the prestige of his new-won honours shining
around him. My husband had decided that the regulation military honours

“to be accorded to distinguished persons” were applicable to the man who
was coming, and so a guard of honour (Highlanders) with the regimental
colour was drawn up at the pier head, the regimental officers in red and the
staff in blue. The crowd on the upper part of the pier was immense and
densely packed all along the parapet, and the Lower Pier, reserved for
special people, was crowded, too. It was a calm, grey, yet bright day, and
the absence of wind made things pleasant. Great gathering of Cocked Hats
at the entrance gates, and we all walked to the landing stage. There was a
dense smudge of black smoke on the horizon. I knew that meant Kitchener.
Keeping my eye on that smudge, I took but a distracted part in the small
talk and frequent introductions of distinguished persons come from afar to
welcome the man of the hour, “the Avenger of Gordon.” I was conducted to
the head of the landing steps, together with such of the staff as were not to
go on board the boat with the General. Then the smudge got hidden behind
the pier end, but I could see the ever-increasing swish and swirl of the water
on the starboard side of the hidden steamer, and soon she swept alongside; a
few vague cheers began, no one in the crowd knowing the Sirdar by sight.
When, however, the General went on board and shook hands, this
proclaimed at once where the man was, and cheer upon cheer thundered
out. I have never, before or since, seen such spontaneous enthusiasm in
England. After a little talk (my husband and he were long together on the
Nile) and after the delivery of letters (one from the Queen) and telegrams,
during which the hurrahs went on in a great roar and multitudinous pocket
handkerchiefs fluttered in a long perspective, the big, solid, stolid, sunburnt
Briton stepped on English soil once more. While shaking hands with me he
seemed astonished and amused at all that was going on and, looking over
my head at the masses of people above, he lifted his hat, and thenceforth
kept it in his hand as he was escorted to the Lord Warden Hotel. He had
asked his A.D.C., on first catching sight of the reception awaiting him,
“What is all this about?”
Then there was an Address at the hotel to which he listened with an ox-
like patience, and after that the enormous company of invited guests went to
lunch. In his speech my husband paid the Sirdar the compliment of saying
that the traditional Field Marshal’s baton would be found in his trunk when
the customs officers opened it at Victoria. Kitchener spoke so low I could
not hear him. Had he been less immovable one could have plainly seen how
utterly he hated having to make a speech. His travelling dress looked most

interestingly incongruous amidst the rich uniforms and the glossy frock-
coats as he stood up to say what he had to say. As we all bulged out of the
hotel door the cheers began again from the crowds. I took care to look at the
people that day, and I was struck by their unanimity. All ranks were there,
and yet on every face, well bred or unwashed, I saw the same identical
expression—one of broad, laughing delight. Such were my impressions,
which I noted down, as usual, at the moment, and I have lived to see that
remarkable man work out his life, and end it with a tragedy that will hold its
place in history; my husband’s prophecy, put in those playful words at
Dover, fulfilled; a threatening disaster to the Empire turned into victory
with the aid of that extraordinary mind and physical endurance; and the
burning fire of that personality quenched, untimely, in the icy depths of a
northern sea.

CHAPTER XXII

THE CAPE AND DEVONPORT

ON November 12th, 1898, my husband sailed for South Africa, there to
take up the military command, and to act as High Commissioner in place of
Sir Alfred Milner, home on leave. His staff at Dover loved him. Their send-
off brought tears to his eyes. I, C. and the A.D.C. saw him off from
Southampton, to rejoin him in the process of time at the Cape. We little
knew what a dark period in his life awaited him out there, brought about by
the malice of those in power there and at home. It is too sacred and too
painful a subject for me to record it here further than I have done. The facts
will be found in his “Autobiography.” I left England on February 18th,
1899, with three of the children, leaving the two eldest boys at college. It
was a very painful leave-taking at the Waterloo Station. My mother was
there and all the dear ones, whom I did not expect to see again for two or
three years—my mother perhaps ever again. Yet in a few months we were
back there! My theory that one should try and not fret about the future,
which is an absolutely unknown quantity, proved justified. I have
chronicled our voyage out in my former little book, and described one night
at Madeira—a night of enchantment under the moon.
I need not go over the days on the “blue water” again, nor our strange
life beyond the Equator, where, though I was filled with admiration for the
beauty of our surroundings, I never felt the happiness which Italy, Egypt or
Palestine had given me. Very absurd, no doubt, and sentimental, but my
love of the old haunts made me feel resentful of the topsy-turvy state of
things I found down there. The crescent moon on what (to me) was the
wrong side of the sunset, the hot north wind, the cold blast from the south,
the shadows all inverted—no, I did not enjoy this contradiction to my well-
beloved traditions. There was, besides, a local melancholy in that strange
beauty I cannot describe. All this may be put down to sentimentality, but a
very real melancholy attaches to South Africa in my mind in connection
with my husband, who suffered there for his honesty and devotion to the
honour of the Empire he served. The authorities accepted his resignation of
the Cape command which he tendered for fear of embarrassing the

Government, and he accepted the command of the Western District in its
place, which meant Devonport. So on August 22nd we all embarked for
Home.
There we found the campaign of calumny, originated in South Africa
against Sir William, in its acutest phase. The Press was letting loose all the
poison with which it was being supplied, and I consequently went through,
at first, the bitter pain of daily trying to intercept the vilest anonymous
letters, many of them beer-stained missives couched in ill-spelt language
from the slums. Not all the reparation offered to my husband later on—the
bestowal of the Grand Cross of the Bath, his election to the dignity of Privy
Councillor, his selection as the safest judge to investigate the South African
war stores scandals, not to name other acts conveying the amende
honorable—ever healed the wound.
His offence had been a frank admission of sympathy for a people
tenacious of their independence and, knowing the Boers as he did, he knew
what their resistance would mean in case of attack. He was appalled at the
prospect of a war, not against an army but against a people, involving the
farm-burnings and all the horrors which our armies would have to resort to.
He would fain have seen violence avoided and diplomacy used instead,
knowing, as he did, that the old intransigent Dopper element would die out
in time, and the new generation of Boers, many of whom were educated at
our universities, intermarrying with the English, as they were already doing,
would have brought about that very union of the two races within the
Empire which has been reached to-day through all that suffering. In case,
however, war should be decided on he employed the utmost vigour allowed
to official language to warn those in power of the necessity for enormous
forces in order to ensure success. Some of his despatches were suppressed.
The idea at Headquarters was an easy march to Pretoria. What I have
alluded to as the malice which prompted the campaign of calumny had
caused the report to be spread that our initial defeats were owing to his
wilful neglect in not warning the directing powers of the gravity of their
undertaking.
The chief interest I found in our new appointment was caused by the
frequent arrivals of foreign men-of-war, whose captains were received
officially and socially, and there were admirals, too, when squadrons came.
It was interesting and amusing. Lord and Lady Charles Scott were at the
Admiralty and, later, Sir Edward Seymour, during our appointment. The

foreign sailors prevented the official functions from becoming monotonous,
and we got a certain amount of pleasure out of this Devonport phase of our
experiences. I carried my painting “through thick and thin,” and did well,
on the whole, at the Academy. I had the “consuming zeal”—a very
necessary possession. One year it was a big tent-pegging picture (I don’t
know where its purchaser is now), which was well lighted at Burlington
House. Then a Boer War subject, “Within Sound of the Guns”—well
placed; followed by an Afghan subject, “Rescue of Wounded,” which to my
great pleasure was given an excellent place in the Salle d’Honneur. I also
accomplished other smaller works and exhibited a great number of water
colours. It is a medium I like much. I also prepared for the Press my
“Letters from the Holy Land” there which I have already mentioned. My
publishers, Messrs. A. and C. Black, reproduced the water-colour
illustrations very faithfully.
Our French sailor guests were always bright, so were the Italians, but the
Japanese were very heavy in hand, and conversation was uphill work. It
was mainly carried on by repeated smiles and nods on their part. When their
big ships came in on one occasion the Admiralty gave them the first dinner,
of course, and at the end the bandmaster had the happy thought of giving a
few bars out of Arthur Sullivan’s “Mikado” before the Emperor’s health
was drunk, the National Air not being in his repertory. Some one asked the
Jap admiral if he recognised it. “Ah! no, no, no!” came the usual smiling
and nodding answer. At the Port Admirals’ I was to learn that in the navy
you mustn’t stand up for our Sovereign’s health, by order of William IV.
This resulted one evening in our sitting for “The King” and standing up for
“The Kaiser.” There were the German admiral and officers present. I
thought that very unfortunate.[13]
Well, Devonport in summer was very delightful, but Devonport in winter
had long periods of fog and gloom. I had the blessing of another trip to
Italy, this time with our eldest daughter, starting on a dark wintry day in
early March, 1900. Sir William’s work prevented his coming with us. Viâ
Genoa to Rome lay our happy way. Of course, it wasn’t the Rome I first
knew, but the shock I received when revisiting it four years before this
present visit had already introduced me into the new order, and I now knew
what to see, enjoy, and avoid. There were several new things to enjoy:
above all, the Forum, now all open to the sky! In the dear old days that
space was a rather dreary expanse of waste land where some poor old

paupers were to be daily seen, leisurely labouring under the delusion that
they were excavating. They grubbed up the tufts of grass and scraped the
dust with pocket-knives, and the treasures below remained comfortably
tucked away from public view. Then the much-abused Embankment. The
dignified sweep of its lines leads the eye up, as it follows the flow of the
stream, to the dignity of St. Peter’s, whereas, formerly, in its place,
unbeautiful masses of mouldering houses tottered over the Tiber and gave
that long-suffering river the reflections of their drainpipes. Then, the two
end arches of that most estimable Ponte Sant’ Angelo are now cleared of the
old mud which blocked them up malodorously and docked the lovely thing
of its symmetry. Then, finally, Rome is clean!
We had the good fortune to be present at two very striking Papal
functions, striking as bringing together Catholics from a wide-flung circle
embracing some remote nationalities unknown by sight to me. The first was
the Pope’s Benediction in St. Peter’s on March 18th. We were standing
altogether about three hours in the crowd at the Tomb, well placed for
seeing the Holy Father. He was taken round the vast basilica in his sedia
gestatoria, and blessed a wildly cheering crowd. I never saw a human being
so like a spirit as Leo XIII. He looked as white as his mitre as he leant
forward and stretched his arm out in benediction from side to side, borne
high above the helmets of the Noble Guard. One heard cheers in all
languages, and a curious effect was produced by the whirling
handkerchiefs, which made a white haze above the dark crowd. I have often
heard secular monarchs cheered, and that very heartily, but for a Pope it
seems that more than ordinary loyalty prompts the cheerers. The people
seem to give out their whole being in their voices and gestures.
The Diary says: “I am glad I have seen that old man’s face and his look,
as though it came to us from beyond the grave. At times the cheers went up
to the highest pitch of both men’s and women’s voices. A strange sound to
hear in a church.”
A spring day spent at the well-known Hadrian’s Villa, under Tivoli, is
not to be allowed to pass without a grateful record. It is a most exquisite
place of old ruins, cypresses, olives and, at this time, flowering peach trees,
violets and anemones. It is an enchanting site for a country house. Hadrian
chose well. From there you see the delicately-pencilled dome of St. Peter’s
on the rim of the horizon to the west, and behind you, to the north, rise the
steep foot-hills of the mountains, some crowned with old cities. The ruins of

the villa are all minus the lovely outer coating which used to hide the
brickwork, and poor Hadrian would have felt very woeful had he foreseen
that all the white loveliness of his villa was to come to this. But as bits of
warm colour and lovely surface those brick spaces take the sun and shadow
beautifully between the dark masses of the cypresses and feathery grey
cloudiness of the olives. Nowhere is the “touch and go” nature of life more
strikingly put before the mind than in dead Rome, where so much
magnificence in stone and marble and mosaic and bronze has fallen into
lumps of crumbling brick.
On March 26th we attended the Papal Benediction in the Sistine Chapel,
which is a remarkable thing to see. It was a memorable morning. The floor
of the chapel was packed with pilgrims, some of them rough men and
women from remote regions of the north-east, whose outlandish costumes
were especially remarkable for the heavy Cossack boots, reaching to the
knee, worn by both sexes. One wondered how these people journeyed to
Rome. What a gathering of the faithful we looked down on from our
gallery! The same ecstatic cheering we had heard in St. Peter’s announced
the entrance of Leo XIII. There he was, the holy creature, blessing right and
left with that thin alabaster hand, half covered with a white mitten. With all
their hoarse barbaric cheering, I noticed how those peasants, who had so
particularly attracted me, remembered to bend their heads and most
devoutly make the sign of the cross as he passed. They almost monopolised
my study of the motley crowd, but I was aware of the many nationalities
present, and the same enthusiasm came from them all. At such times a great
consolation eases the mind, saddened, as it often is, by the general
atmosphere of declining faith in which one has to live one’s ordinary life in
the world. After the Mass came the presentation of the pilgrims at the altar
steps. The Pope had kind words for all, bending down to hear and to speak
to them, and often stroking the men’s heads. One huge Muscovite peasant
knelt long at his feet, and the Pope kept patting the rough man’s cheek and
speaking to him and blessing him over and over again. At the sight of this a
wild “hourah!” broke from his fellow villagers. Where in the world was
their village? In the mists of remoteness, but here in heart, unmistakably.
Following the swarthy giant three sandy-haired German students, carrying
their plumed caps in their hands and girt with rapiers, presented some
college documents to receive the Papal benediction, and a great many men
and women knelt and passed on, but the Pope seemed in no way fatigued.

As he was borne out again he waved us an upward blessing with his white
and most friendly countenance turned up to us.
Our Roman wanderings included a visit to the Holy Father’s Vatican
gardens, which are part of the little temporal kingdom a Pope still
possesses, and to his tiny “country house” therein, where he goes for
change of air(!) in the summer, about two stonethrows from the Vatican. I
note: “There are well-trimmed vineyards there; there are pet birds and
beasts in a little ‘zoological gardens’; there is the arbour where he has his
meals on hot days; and, finally, we were conducted to his little villa
bedroom from whose window one of the finest views of Rome is seen,
dominated by the Quirinal, within (let us hope) shaking hands distance.” We
heard the “Miserere” at St. Peter’s on Good Friday—very impressive, that
twilight service in the apse of the great basilica! The unaccompanied voices
of boys sounded in sweetest music—one hardly knew whence it came—and
the air seemed to thrill with the thin angelic sound in the waning light as
one by one the candles at the altar were put out. At the last Psalm the last
light was extinguished, and the vast crowd with its wan faces remained
lighted only by the faint glimmer that came down from the pale sky through
the high windows. Then good-bye to Rome. We left for Perugia on April
22nd. I certainly ought to be grateful for having had yet another reception
by my Umbrian Hills! And such a reception that April afternoon, with the
low sun gilding everything into fullest beauty! I did my best to secure that
moment in miserably inadequate paint from the hotel window immediately
on arrival. Better than nothing. But no more of Perugia, nor of dear old
Florence on our way to academic Padua; no more of Verona. I have much
yet to record on getting home, and after!

CHAPTER XXIII

A NEW REIGN

SIR William was asked by Lord Wolseley to take up the Aldershot
command in the absence of Sir Redvers Buller, who was struggling very
desperately to retrieve our fortunes in the Boer War; so to Aldershot we
went from Devonport, where my husband’s command ran concurrently.
How intensely England had hoped for the turning of the tide when Buller
was given the tremendous task of directing our armies! We forget the
horrors the nation went through in those days because the late War has
made us pass through the same apprehensions multiplied by millions, but
there the fact remains in our history that we nearly suffered a terrible
catastrophe at the time of which I am writing. Buller, on leaving for the
Cape, had said to my husband how fervently he wished he possessed his
gift of imagination, and, indeed, that is a very precious gift to a commander.
This truly awful state of things—our terrible losses, and the temporary
lowering of our military prestige (thank heaven, so gloriously recovered and
enhanced in the World War!)—were the answer to the repeated assertion
made, when we were at the Cape, by those who ought to have known, that
“the Boers won’t fight.” How this used to enrage my husband, whose “gift
of imagination” made him see so clearly the danger ahead. Well, all this is
of the long ago, and, as I have already noted, it is better to say little now;
but the sense of injustice lives!

A Despatch-Bearer, Boer War, and the Horse-Gunners.

Buller had a great reception at Aldershot on his return from South Africa.
I never saw a more radiantly happy face on a woman than poor Lady
Audrey’s, who had been in a state of most tense anxiety during her dear
Redvers’ absence. As the train steamed into the station the band struck up
“See the Conquering Hero comes!” The horses of his carriage were
unharnessed, and the triumphal car was drawn by a team of firemen to
Government House. At the entrance gate a group of school children sang
“Home, sweet Home”; my husband hauled down his flag and Buller’s was
run up, and so that episode closed.
We had inhabited a suburban-looking villa on the road to Farnborough
during the absence of Sir Redvers, not wishing to disturb the anxious
watcher at Government House, and very often we saw the Empress, just as
in the old days. She told us the dear Queen was very ill, far worse than the
world was allowed to know. My husband had always said the war would
kill her, for she had taken our losses cruelly to heart, and so it happened on
January 22nd, 1901. The resumed Devonport Diary says:

“A day ever to be marked in English history as a day of mourning. Our
Queen is dead. At dinner S. brought us the news that she passed away at
6.30 this afternoon. We were prepared for it, but it seems like a dream. To
us who have been born and have lived all our lives under her sovereignty it
is difficult to realise that she is gone.
“January 23rd, 1901.—A dull gloomy day, punctuated by 81 minute
guns, which began booming at noon. All the royal standards and flags
hanging half-mast in the fog, on land and afloat.
“January 24th.—At noon-day all standards and flags were run up to the
masthead, and a quick thunder of guns proclaimed the accession of Edward
VII. At the end the band on board the guardship Nile struck up ‘God Save
the King.’ The flags will all be lowered again until the day after Queen
Victoria is laid to rest. Edward VII.! How strange it sounds, and how events
and changes are rolling down upon us every hour now. Albert Edward will
be a greater man as Edward VII.
“February 5th.—The Queen was buried to-day beside her husband at
Frogmore. It is inexpressibly touching to think of them side by side again.
Model wife and mother, how many of your women subjects have strayed
away, of late, from those virtues which you were true to to the last!
“February 16th.—There is great indignation amongst us Catholics at
Edward VII. having been called upon to take the oath at the opening of
Parliament which savours so much of the darkest days of ‘No Popery’
bigotry. I think it might have been modified by this time, and the lies about
‘idolatry’ and the ‘worship’ of the Virgin Mary eliminated. Could not the
King have had strength of mind enough to refuse to insult his Catholic
subjects? I know he must have deeply disliked to pronounce those words.
“August 6th.—Again the flags to-day are at half-mast, and so is the royal
standard, and this time, on the men-of-war, it is the German flag! The
Empress Frederick died yesterday.” I never mentioned at the time of our
visit to the Connaughts at Bagshot, when we were first at Aldershot, a
touching incident concerning her. Sir William sat next to her at dinner, and,
à propos of a really fine still-life picture painted by her, which hung over
the dining-room door in the hall, he asked her whether she still kept up her
painting. “No,” she said, “I have cried myself blind!” What with one
Empress crying as though her heart would break in speaking to him that
time at Camden Place and this Empress telling him she had cried herself

blind——! The illness and death of the Kaiser Frederick must have been a
period of great anguish.
During this summer I was very busy with my picture of the “10th Bengal
Lancers at Tent Pegging,” a subject requiring much sunshine study, which I
have already mentioned.
In September, Lord Roberts—“the miniature Field Marshal,” as I call
him in the Diary—came down on inspection, and great were the doings in
his honour. “How will this little figure stand in history? Will’s well-planned
defence against a night attack from the sea came off very well this dark still
night, though the navy were nearly an hour late. There was too much
waiting, but when, at last, the enemy torpedo boats and destroyers appeared,
the whole Sound was bordered with such a zone of fire that, had it been real
war, not a rivet of the invader’s flotilla would have been left in possession
of its hold. ‘Bobs’ must have been gratified at to-night’s display, which he
reviewed from Stonehouse.
“Our Roberts dinner was of twenty-two covers, and the only women
were Lady Charles Scott, myself and C. A guard of honour was at the front
door, and presented arms as the Field Marshal arrived, the band playing. He
certainly is diminutive. A nice face, soldierlike, and a natural manner. With
him that too jocose Evelyn Wood and others. ‘Bobs,’ of course, took me in
to dinner, and, on my left, Lord Charles Scott took in C. Will took in Lady
Charles. The others—Lord Mount Edgcumbe, H.S.H. Prince Louis of
Battenberg (in command of the Implacable), Admiral Jackson, and so forth
—subsided into their places according to seniority. Every man in blue or red
except one rifleman. Soft music during dinner and two bars of the National
Anthem before the still unfamiliar ‘The King, God bless him!’ at dessert.
Will still feels a little—I don’t know how to express it—of the mental
hesitation before changing ‘the Queen’ which he felt so strongly at first. He
was very truly attached to her. I was back in the drawing-room in good time
to receive the crowd, who came in a continuous flow, all with an expectant
smile, to pay homage to the Lion. I don’t think I forgot anybody’s name
(coached by the A.D.C.) in all those introductions, but that item of my
duties is a thing I dread. I never saw people in such good humour at any
social function before. We certainly do love to honour our soldiers. But, all
the time, things are not going too well with us in the war!

“September 14th.—Again the flags half-mast! Now it is the ‘Stars and
Stripes.’ Poor President McKinley succumbed to-day to his horrible wound.
The surgeons wouldn’t let him die for a long while, though he asked them
to. They did their best.
“March 7th, 1902.—And now for the royal visit, the principal occasion
for which is the launching of the great battleship the Queen, by Queen
Alexandra. Will was responsible for all matters ashore, as the admiral was
for those afloat. Lady Charles and I had to be on the platform at North Road
to receive Their Majesties, the only other women there being Lady Morley
and the Plymouth Mayor’s daughter, bearing a bouquet for presentation.
The royal train had an engine decorated in front of its funnel with an
enormous gilt crown, and I was pleased, as it majestically glided into the
station, to see that it is possible even in railway prose to have a little dash of
poetry. The band struck up, the guard of honour presented arms with a
clang. First, out sprang lacqueys carrying bags and wraps who scurried to
the royal carriages waiting outside, and out sprang various admirals and
diplomats in hot haste, all with rather anxious faces veneered with smiles.
And then, leisurely, the ever lovely and self-possessed Queen and her
kindly and kingly consort, wearing, over his full-dress admiral’s uniform, a
caped overcoat. Salutes, bows, curtseys, smiles, handshakes. Will presents
the great silver Key of the Citadel, which Charles II. had made for locking
the Great Gate against the refractory people. Edward VII. touches it and the
General Commanding returns it to the R.A. officer, who has charge of it.
We all kiss the King’s hand as seeing him for the first time to speak to since
his accession. The Queen withdraws her hand quickly before any officer
can salute it in like manner, which looks a little ungracious. Whilst the
General and Admiral are introducing their respective staffs to the King, the
Queen has a little chat with me and asks after my painting and so forth. She
is very fond of that water colour I did for her album at Dover of a trooper of
her ‘own’ 19th Hussars at tent-pegging. Lady Charles and I did not join in
the procession through the Three Towns to the dockyard, but hastened home
to avoid the crowd.
“In the evening we dined with Their Majesties on board the royal yacht
over part of which floating palace C. and I had been conducted in the
morning. Whatever the yacht’s sailing value may be she certainly cuts out
the Kaiser’s Hohenzollern in her internal splendour. When it comes to
washstand tops of onyx and alabaster; and carpets of unfathomable depth of

pile, and hangings in bedrooms of every shade of delicate colour, ‘toning,’
as the milliners say, with each particular set of furniture; and the most
elaborately beautiful arrangements for lighting and warming electrically,
and so on, and so on—one rather wonders why so much luxury was piled
on luxury in this new yacht which the King, I am told, does not like on the
high seas. Her lines are not as graceful as those of the old Victoria and
Albert, and it is said she ‘rolls awful’!
“Well, to dinner! As we drove up to the yacht, which is moored right
opposite the Port Admiral’s house and is the habitation of the King and
Queen during their sojourn here, we saw her outlined against the pitch black
sky by coloured electric lamps, which was pretty. Equerries, secretaries and
Miss Knollys received us at the top of the gangway, and the ladies of the
Queen soon filed into the ante-chamber (or cabin) where they and we, the
guests, awaited Their Majesties. Full uniform was ordered for the men, and
we ladies were requested to come in ‘high, thin dresses,’ as, it appears, is
the etiquette on board royal yachts. There were the Admiral and Lady
Charles, the Duke and Duchess of Buccleugh, Lord and Lady St. Germans,
Lord Walter Kerr, Lord Mount Edgcumbe (‘the Hearl,’ as he is known to
Plymothians), the Bishop of Exeter, Lady Lytton and others up to about
thirty-six in number. The King, still dressed as an admiral, and the Queen in
a charming black and white semi-transparent frock, with many ropes of
pearls, soon came in, and, the curtseying over, we filed into the great dining
saloon brilliantly lighted and splendid. The King led in his daughter,
Princess Victoria. Buccleugh led in the Queen, and so on. How unlike the
painfully solemn, whispered dinners of dear old Queen Victoria was this
banquet. We shouted of necessity, as the band played all the time. The King
and Queen seem to me to have acquired an expanded dignity since they
have come to the Throne. Will and I could not do justice to the dinner as it
was Friday, but that didn’t matter. After the sweets the head servant (what
Goliaths in red liveries they all are!) handed the King a snuff box! I was so
fascinated by the sight of the descendant of the Georges engaged in the very
Georgian act of taking a pinch that my eyes were riveted on him. I love
history and am always trying to revive the past in imagination. It is true that
‘a cat may look at a King,’ but then I am not a cat (at least I hope not). I
only trust His Majesty didn’t mind, but he certainly saw me!
“After dinner we women went down with the Queen to her boudoir,
where an Egyptian-looking servant wearing a tarboosh handed us coffee of

surpassing aroma, and Her Majesty showed us her beloved little Japanese
dog and some of the pretty things about the room. She then asked us to see
her bedroom (which I had already seen that morning) and the little dog’s
basket where he sleeps near her bed. She is still extremely beautiful. Her
figure is youthful and shapely, and all her movements are queenly. The
King had quite a long talk with Will about this dreadful Boer War which is
causing us all so much anxiety, after we went up again. He then came over
to me, and after a few commonplaces he came nearer and in a confidential
tone began about Will. I think he is fond of him. What he said was kind, and
I knew he wanted me to repeat his sympathetic words to my husband
afterwards. He spoke of him as a ‘splendid soldier.’ I know he had in his
mind the painful trial Will had gone through. It was late when Their
Majesties bade us good-night.
“March 8th.—The great day of the launch of H.M.S. Queen. I wonder if
the hearts of the sailors beat anxiously to-day at all! A quieter, more
unemotional-looking set of men than those naval bigwigs could nowhere be
seen in the world. But, first of all, there was the medal-giving at the R.N.
Barracks, where Ladies Poore and Charles Scott, Mrs. Jackson and myself
had to receive the King and Queen by the side of our respective husbands
on a raised daïs in the centre of the huge parade ground. It was very cold,
and the Queen told me she envied me my fur-lined coat. Will said I missed
an opportunity of making a pendant to Sir Walter Raleigh! The function was
very long, for the King had to give a medal to each one of the three hundred
bluejackets and marines who passed before him in single file. At the
launching place we all assembled on a great platform, and there in front of
us stood the huge hull of the battleship, the ram projecting over the little
table on which the Queen was to cut the ropes. That red-painted ram was
garlanded with flowers, and the bottle hung from the garland, completely
hidden under a covering of roses. It contained red Australian wine, a very
sensible change from the French champagne of former times. Down below
an immense crowd of workmen waited, some of them right under the ship,
and all round, in the different stands, were dense masses of people. We were
soon joined by three German naval grandees and two Japanese leprechauns,
one an admiral, a toadlike-looking creature in a uniform entirely copied
from ours. Our new allies are not handsome. Then came the Bishop of
Exeter, in robes and cap and with a peaked beard, a living Holbein in the
dress of Cranmer. How could I, a painter, not delight in that figure? I told a

friend that bishop had no business to be alive, but ought to be a painting by
Holbein, on panel. What does she do but whisk off straight to him and Mrs.
Bishop and tell them! Our privileged group kept swelling with additions of
officers in full glory and smart women in lovely frocks, and bouquets were
brought in, and everything was to me perfectly charming. Monarchy calls
much beauty into existence. Long may it endure!
“At last there was a stir; the monarchs came up the inclined approach
and the band struck up. They took their places facing the ship’s bows, and
Cranmer on panel by Holbein blessed the ship in as nearly a Catholic way
as was possible, with the sign of the cross left out. A subordinate held his
crozier before him. A hymn had previously been sung and a psalm,
followed by the Lord’s Prayer. Then came the ‘christening’ (strange word),
a picturesque Pagan ceremony. The Queen brightened up after the last
‘Amen’ and, nearing the table, reached over to the flower-decked bottle;
then, stepping back, swung it from her against the monstrous ram, saying,
‘God bless this ship and all that sail in her.’ I heard a little crack, and only a
few red drops trickled down. This wouldn’t do, for she immediately seized
the bottle again and, stepping well back this time and holding the bottle as
high over her head as the ropes would allow, flung it with such violence that
it smashed all to pieces and the red wine gushed over her hands and sleeves
and poured out its last drops on the table. A great cheer rang out at this, and
the King laughingly seemed to say to her, ‘You did it this time with a
vengeance!’ She flushed up, looking as though she enjoyed the fun. Then
came the great moment of the cutting by the Queen of the little ropes that
held the monster bound as by silken threads. Six good taps with the mallet,
severing the six strands across a ‘turtle back’ in the centre of the table, and
away flew the two ropes down amongst the cheering crowd of workmen
and, automatically, down came the two last supports on either side of the
yet impassive hull. Still impassive—not a hair’s breadth of movement! A
painful pause. Some men below were pumping the hydraulic apparatus for
all they were worth. I kept my eye on the nose of the ram, gauging it by
some object behind. Firm as a rock! At last a tiny movement, no more than
the starting of a snail across a cabbage leaf. ‘She’s off!’ A hurricane of
cheers, and with the most admirable and dignified acceleration of speed the
great ship, seeming to come into life, glided down the slips and, ploughing
through the parting and surging waters, floated off far into the Hamoaze to
the strains of ‘Rule Britannia.’ Queen Alexandra, in her elation, made

motions with her arms as though she was shoving the ship off herself.
Scarcely had the battleship Queen passed into the water than the blocks
displaced by her passage were rolled back, still hot as it were from the
friction, into the position they had occupied before she moved, and the
King, stepping forward, turned a little electric handle at the table, and lo!
the keel plate of the Edward VII. slowly moved forward and stopped in its
position on the blocks as the germ of the new battleship. The King, in a
loud voice, proclaimed that the keel plate of the Edward VII. was ‘well and
truly laid,’ and a great cheer arose and ‘God Save the King,’ and all was
over. A new battleship was born.[14] We met Their Majesties at the Port
Admiral’s at tea, and Will dined with them, together with some of his staff.
“March 10th.—Saw Their Majesties off. I wonder if they were getting
tired of seeing always the same set of faces and smiles? I am going to
present C. at Court on the 14th, and my function twin, Lady Charles, is
going there, too, so I shall feel it will be a case of ‘Here we are again,’ when
I meet the royal eye that night. In the evening the news of Methuen’s defeat
and capture by Delarey. To think this horror was going on the day we
received the King and Queen at North Road Station!
“March 14th.—The King’s Court was much better arranged than
formerly, as we had only to make two curtseys—nothing more—instead of
having to run the gauntlet of a long row of princes and princesses who were
abreast of Queen Victoria (or her representative), and who used to inspect
one from head to foot. These were now grouped behind the monarchs, and
formed a rich, subdued background to the two regal figures on their thrones.
(What a blessing to the aforesaid princes and princesses to be spared the
necessity of passing all those nervous women in review, and by daylight,
too!) Altogether the music and the generally more festive character of the
function struck one as a great and happy improvement on the old
dispensation. The King and Queen didn’t exactly say, ‘How do you do
again?’ as I appeared, but looked it as I met their smiling eyes. This is the
first Court of the King’s reign.
“March 27th.—Cecil Rhodes died yesterday. I am glad I saw him at the
Cape. One morning just at sunrise I and the children were driving to Mass
during the mission and, as we passed over the railway line, we saw people
riding down from ‘Grootschuur.’ The foremost horseman was Cecil Rhodes,
looking very big and with a wide red face. He gave me a searching look or

stare as if trying to make out who I was in the shade of the carriage hood.
So I saw his face well.
“April 3rd.—Will and I are invited by the King and Queen to see them
crowned at Westminster. I am to wear ‘court dress with plumes but without
train.’ But what if the nightmare war still is dragging on in June? The time
is getting short! We hear the King is getting anxious. Lord Wolseley’s trip to
the Cape (for his health!) is supposed to have really to do with bringing
about peace. But ‘’ware politics’ for me. They are not in my line. What a
wet blanket would be spread as a pall over all the purple canopies in
Westminster Abbey if war was still brooding over us all! Imagine news of a
new Methuen disaster on the morning of June 26th!”
On Varnishing Day that spring at the Royal Academy I found that my
tent-pegging picture could not look to greater advantage, but it was in the
last room, where the public looks with “lack-lustre eyes,” being tired.
On June 21st I left to attend the Coronation of Edward VII., spending
two days at Dick’s monastery at Downside on the way, high up in the
Mendip Hills. I note: “I had a bright little room at the guest house just
outside the precincts. That night the full moon, that emblem of serenity,
rose opposite my window, and I felt as though lifted up above that world
into which I was about to plunge for my participation in the pomp of the
Coronation in a few hours. It is inexpressibly touching to me to see my son
where he is. A hard probation, for the Benedictine test is long and severe, as
indeed the test is, necessarily, throughout the Religious Orders.
“June 24th.—Memorable day! I was passing along Buckingham Palace
Road at 12.30 when I saw a poster: ‘Coronation Postponed’! Groups of
people were buying up the papers. Of course, no one believed the news at
first, and people were rather amusedly perplexed. No one had heard that the
King was ill. On getting to Piccadilly I saw the official posters and the
explanation. An operation just performed! and only yesterday Knollys
telling the world there was ‘not a word of truth in the alarming rumours of
the King’s health.’ I and Mrs. C. went to a dismal afternoon concert at 2.30
to which we were pledged, and which the promoters were in two minds
about postponing, and we left in the middle to stroll about the crowded
streets and watch the effect of the disastrous news. There was something
very dramatic in the scene in front of the palace—the huge crowd waiting
and watching, the royal standard drooping on the roof (not half-mast yet?),

and the sense of brooding sorrow over the great building, which held the,
perhaps, dying King. What a change in two or three hours!
“June 26th.—This was to have been the Coronation Day. General
dismantling. Those dead laurel wreaths still lying in the gutters are said to
be the same that were used at the funeral of King Humbert. What a weird
thought! The crowds are thinning, but still, at night, they gaze at the little
clumps of illuminations which some people exhibit, as the King is going on
well. ‘Vivat Rex’ flares in great brilliancy here and there. The words have a
deeper meaning than usual. May he live!
“June 27th.—This was to have been the day of the royal procession.
Where is that rose-colour-lined coach I so looked forward to? Lying idle in
its cover. Every one is moralising. Even the clubmen, Will tells me, are
furbishing up little religious platitudes and texts; many are curiously
superstitious, which is strange.”
On our return home I was very busy in the studio. There was much
galloping and trotting of horses up and down in the Government House
grounds for my studies of movement for my next Academy picture (dealing
with Boer War yeomanry) and others.
“August 9th.—King Edward VII. was crowned to-day. At about 12.40
the guns firing in the Sound and batteries announced that, at last, the
Coronation was consummated. We were asked to the ceremony, but could
not go up this time.”
A little tour in France, with my husband and our two girls, made in
September, 1902, gave us sunny days in Anjou on the Loire. The majestic
rivers of France are her chief attraction for the painter, and to us English
Turner’s charm is inseparably blended with their slowly flowing waters. We
were visitors at a château at Savonnières, near Angers, for most of the time,
and our hosts took care that we should miss none of the lovely things
around their domain. The German “Ocean Greyhounds” of the Hamburg-
Amerika line used to call at Plymouth in those days, huge, three-funnel
monsters which, I think, we have since appropriated, and one of these, the
Augusta Marie, bore us off to Cherbourg in all the pride of her gorgeous
saloons, flower-decked tables, band, and extraordinary bombastic
oleographs from allegorical pictures by the Kaiser William II. As we
boarded her the band played “God Save the King,” the captain receiving Sir
William with finished regulation attention, and hardly had the great twin

engines swung the ship into the Sound to receive her passengers, than with
another swing forward, which made the masts wriggle to their very tops,
she was off. It was the “Marseillaise” as we reached France. That band
played us nearly the whole way over. A really pretty idea, this, of playing
the national air of each country where the ship touched.
It was vintage time at Savonnières, which was a French “Castagnolo,” a
most delightful translation into French of that Italian patriarchal home.
There were stone terraces garlanded with vines bearing—not the big black
grapes of Tuscany, but small yellow ones of surpassing sugariness. We were
in a typical and beautiful bit of France, peaceful, plenteous, and full of
dignity. They lead the simple life here such as I love, which is not to be
found in the big English country houses, as far as I know. I was truly
pleased at the sight of the peasantry at Mass on the Sunday. The women in
particular had that dignity which is so marked in their class, and the white
lace coifs they wore had many varieties of shape, all most beautiful, and
were very soignées and neatly worn. Not an untidy woman or girl amongst
these daughters of the soil.
I was anxious to see “Angers la Noire,” where we stayed on our way
from Savonnières to Amboise. But the black slate houses which gave it that
name are being turned into white stone ones, and so its grim characteristic
is passing away. Give me character, good or bad; characterless things are
odious. I don’t suppose a more perfect old Angevin town exists than
Amboise. It fulfilled all I required and expected of it. How Turner
understood these towns on the broad, majestic Loire! He occasionally
exaggerated, but his exaggerations were always in the right direction,
emphasising thus the dominant beauties of each place and their local
sentiment. Which recalls the deep charm of the rivers of France more subtly
to the mind, Turner’s series or an album of photographs? Turner’s mind saw
more truly than the camera. The castle of Amboise is superb and its creamy
white stone a glory. Then came Blois, with a quite different reading of a
castle, where plenty of colour and gilding and Gothic richness gave the
character—not so restful to eye and mind as Amboise. Through both the
châteaux we were marshalled along by a guide. I would sooner learn less of
a place, by myself, than be told all by a tiresome man in a cicerone’s livery.
Plenty of horrors were supplied us at both places, vitiating my otherwise
simple pleasure as a painter in the sight of so much beauty.

We returned to Plymouth Sound on a lovely day, and there our blue
launch, with that bright brass funnel I had so long agitated for, was awaiting
us, and we landed at the steps of Mount Wise as though we had merely been
for a trip to Penlee Point.
I found my picture of the yeomanry cantering through a “spruit” in the
Boer War, “Within Sound of the Guns,” admirably placed this time at
Burlington House, in the spring of 1903. I had greatly improved in tone by
this time. Millais’ remark once upon a time, “She draws better than any of
us, but I wish her tone was better,” had sunk deep.
On July 14th, 1903, the Princess Henry of Battenberg (as the title was
then), with a suite of six, paid us a visit of two days at Government House,
and we had, of course, a big reception, which was inevitable. Our guest
hated the ordeal of all those presentations, being very retiring, and I
sympathised. I heard her murmur to her lady, Miss Bulteel, “I shall die,” as
the first arrival was announced. And there she had to stand till I and the
A.D.C. had finished terrifying her with about 250 people in succession.
What a tax royalty has to pay! There was the laying of a foundation stone, a
trip in the launch up the Tamar, and something to be done each day, but
with as many rests as we could squeeze in for our very simpatica princess.
The drive through the streets of Plymouth showed me what the crowd looks
like from royalty’s point of view as I sat by her side in the carriage. I
remarked to her what bad teeth the people had. “They are nothing to those
in the north,” the poor dear said. How often royalty has to run that gauntlet
of an unlovely and cheering crowd!
I was now to go through the great ordeal of witnessing our dear
Dick’s[15] taking his vows. This was on September 4th, 1903, at Belmont
Minster, Hereford.
On July 10th, 1904, a German squadron of eighteen men-of-war came
thundering into the Sound, and on the 12th we assembled a Garden Party of
about three hundred guests to give the three admirals and their officers a
very proper welcome. Eighteen beautiful ships, but all untried. I lunched on
board the flagship, the Kaiser Wilhelm II., on the previous day, and
anything to equal the dandified “get up” of that war vessel could not be
found afloat. Wherever there was an excuse for a gold Imperial crown, there
it was, relieved by the spotless whiteness of its surroundings. The fair-
haired bluejackets were extremely clean and comely, but struck me as being

drilled too much like soldiers, and wanting the natural manner of our men.
The impression on my mind at the time was that immense care and pains
had been taken to show off these brand-new ships and to rival ours, but that
they were not a bit like their models. The General dined in state on board
that evening. Oh! the veneer of politeness shown to us these days; the
bowings, the clicking of heels, the well-drilled salutes; and all the time we
were joking amongst ourselves about the certainty we had that they were
taking soundings of our great harbour. As usual, they were allowed to do
just as they liked there. It is a tremendous thought to me that I have lived to
hear of the surrender of Germany’s entire navy. How often in those days we
allowed ourselves to imagine a modern possible Trafalgar, but such a
cataclysm as this was outside the bounds of any one’s imagination.
I devoted a great deal of my time to getting up a “one-man-show,” my
first of many, composed of water colours, and in accomplishing the Afghan
picture I have already mentioned as being so much honoured by the
Hanging Committee at the Academy in the spring of 1904. My husband’s
command of the Western District terminated on January 31st, 1905, and
with it his career in the army, as he had reached the retiring age. The Liberal
Party was very keen on having him as an M.P., representing East Leeds. I
am glad the idea did not materialise. I know what would have happened. He
would have set out full of honest and worthy enthusiasm to serve the
Patria. Then, little by little, he would have found what political life really
is, and thrown the thing up in disgust. An old story. Non Patria sed Party!
So utterly outside my own life had politics been that I had an amused
sensation when I saw the Parliamentary world opening before me, like a
gulf!
“January 31st, 1905.—Will is to stand for East Leeds. It is all very
sudden. Liberals so eager that he has almost been (courteously) hustled into
the great enterprise. Herbert Gladstone, Campbell-Bannerman and other
leaders have written almost irresistible letters to him, pleading. When he
goes to the election at Leeds he is to be ‘put to no expense whatever,’ and
they are confident of a ‘handsome majority.’ We shall see! Besides all this
he is given a most momentous commission at the War Office to investigate
certain ugly-looking matters connected with the Boer War stores scandal
that require clearing up. I am glad they have done him the ‘poetical justice’
of selecting him for this.

“February 13th.—We went to a very brilliant and (to me) novel
gathering at the Campbell-Bannermans’. All the leaders of the Liberal Party
there, an interesting if not very noble study. All so cordial to Will.
Tremendous crush, but nice when we got down to the more airy tea room.
The snatches of conversation I got in the general hubbub all sounded
somewhat ‘shoppy.’ Winston Churchill, a ruddy young man, with a roguish
twinkle in his eye, Herbert Gladstone and his lovely wife, our bluff, rosy
host and other ‘leaders’ were very interesting, and we met many friends, all
on the ‘congratulate.’ All these M.P.’s seem to relish their life. I suppose it
has a great fascination, this working to get your side in, as at a football
match.”
The general election in course of time swept over England and brought
in the Liberal Party with an overwhelming majority. My husband did not
stand for East Leeds. He had to abandon the idea, as a Catholic, on account
of the religious difficulties connected with the Education Act.
Our life in the glorious west of Ireland, which followed our retirement
from Devonport, has been so fully described by this pen of mine in “From
Sketch-book and Diary” that I give but a slight sketch of it here. Those were
days when one could give one’s whole heart, so to speak, to Erin, before the
dreadful cloud had fallen on her which, as I write, has lent her her present
forbidding gloom. That will pass, please God!
To come straight through from London and its noise and superfluous
fuss and turmoil into the absolute peace and purity of County Mayo in
perfect summer weather was such a relief to mind and body that one felt it
as an emancipation. Health, good sleep, enjoyment of pure air and noble
scenery; kindly, unsophisticated peasantry—all these things were there, and
the flocks and herds and the sea birds. In the midst of all that appealing
poetry, so peculiar to Ireland, I had a funny object lesson of a prosaic kind
at romantic Mulranny, on Clewe Bay. In the little station I saw a big heap in
sackcloth lying on the platform—“Hog-product from Chicago”—and the
country able to “cure” the matchless Irish pig! I went on to get some
darning wool in the hamlet—“Made in England”—and all those sheep
around us! Outside the shop door a horse had the usual big nose-bag
—”Made in Austria”! All these things, with a little energy, should have
come out of the place itself, surely? I thought to encourage native industry,
when found, by ordering woollen hose at the convent school. No two
stockings of the same pair were of equal length. The bay was rich in fish,

and one day came a little fleet of fishing boats—from France! There was
Ireland to-day in a nutshell. What of to-morrow? Is this really Ireland’s
heavy sleep before the dawn?
I have seen some of the most impressive beauties of our world, but never
have I been more impressed than by the solemn grandeur of the mountain
across Clewe Bay they call Croagh Patrick, as we saw it on the evening of
our arrival at Mulranny. The last flush of the after-glow lingered on its dark
slopes and the red planet Mars flamed above its cone, all this solemn beauty
reflected in the sleeping waters. At Mulranny I spent nearly all my days
making studies of sheep and landscape for the next picture I sent to the
Academy—“A Cistercian Shepherd.” This gave me a period of the most
exquisitely reposeful work. The building up of this picture was in itself an
idyll. But the public didn’t want idylls from me at all. “Give us soldiers and
horses, but pastoral idylls—no!” People had a slightly reproachful tone in
their comments after seeing my poor pastoral on the Academy walls. Some
one said, “How are the mighty fallen!”
We made our home in the heart of Tipperary, under the Galtee
Mountains. It seemed time for us to seek a dignified repose, “the world
forgetting, by the world forgot,” but we did not succeed in our intention. In
1906 my husband went on a great round of observation through Cape
Colony and the (former) Boer Republics on a literary mission. I and E. went
off to Italy, meanwhile; Rome as our goal. There I had the great pleasure of
the companionship of my sister, and it may be imagined with what feelings
we re-trod the old haunts in and about that city together.
“April 9th, 1906.—We had a charming stroll through the Villa d’Este
gardens, where the oldest, hoariest cypresses are to be seen, and fountains
and water conduits of graceful and fantastic shape, wherever one turns, all
gushing with impetuous waters. The architects of these gardens revelled in
their fanciful designs and sported with the responsive flood. Cascades spout
in all directions from the rocks on which Tivoli is built. We had déjeuner
under a pergola at the inn right over one of these waterfalls, where, far
below us, birds flew to and fro in the mist of the spray. Nature and art have
joined in play at Tivoli. I always have had a healthy dislike of burrowing in
tombs and catacombs. The sepulchral, bat-scented air of such places in
Egypt—the land, of all others, of limpid air and sunshine and dryness—is
not in any way attractive to me, and I greatly dislike diving into the Roman
catacombs out of the sunny Appian Way. On former occasions I went

through them all, so this time I kept above ground. I learnt all that the
catacombs teach in my early years, and am not likely to lose that
tremendous impression.
“April 10th.—A true Campagna day, as Italianised as I could make it. We
had a frugal colazione under the pergola of an Appian Way-side inn,
watched by half a dozen hungry cats, that unattractive, wild, malignant kind
of cat peculiar to Italy. The girl who waited on us drew our white wine in a
decanter from what looked like a well in the garden. It had, apparently, not
‘been cool’d a long age in that deep-delved earth,’ but it did very well. I
was perfectly happy. This old-fashioned al fresco entertainment had the
local colour which I look for when I travel and which is getting rarer year
by year. Our Colosseum moonlight was more weird than ever. At eleven we
had our moon. It was a large, battered, woeful, waning old moon, that
looked in at us through the broken arch. An opportune owl, which had been
screeching like a cat in the shade, flitted across its sloping disc just at the
supreme moment.”
To receive Holy Communion at the hands of the Holy Father is a
privilege for which we should be very thankful. It was mine and E.’s on
Easter morning that year, at his private Mass in the Sistine Chapel. There I
saw Pius X. for the first time. Goodness and compassion shine from that sad
and gentle face. It is the general custom to kiss the ‘Fisherman’s ring’ on the
Pope’s hand before receiving, but Pius X. very markedly prevents this. One
can understand! Our audience with the Holy Father took place on the eve of
our departure. There was a never-absent look with him of what I may call
the submissive sense of a too-heavy burden of responsibility. No
photographs convey the right impression of this Pope. He was very pale,
very spiritual, very kind and a little weary; most gentle and touching in his
manner. The World War at its outset broke that tender heart. I sent him my
“Letters from the Holy Land,” for which I received very urbane thanks from
one of the cardinals. I don’t think the Holy Father knows a single word of
English, and I wonder what he made of it.
As to our tour homeward, taking Florence and Venice on the way, I think
we will take that as read. I revel in the Diary in all the dear old Italian
details, marred only by the change I noticed in Venice as regards her broken
silence. The hurry of modern life has invaded even the “silent city,” and
there is too much electric glare in the lighting now, at night, for the old

enjoyment of her moonlights. It annoyed me to see the moon looking quite
shabby above the incandescent globes on the Riva.
From Venice to the Dublin Castle season is a big jump. We had an
average of twenty-one balls in six weeks in each of the two seasons 1907—
1908. Little did I think that it would be quite an unmixed pleasure to me to
do chaperon for some five hours at a stretch; but so it turned out. It all
depends what sort of daughter you have on the scene! The Aberdeens were
then in power.
Lady Aberdeen was untiring in her endeavours to trace and combat the
dire disease which seemed to fasten on the Irish in an especial manner. She
went about lecturing to the people with a tuberculosis “caravan.” She
brought it to Cashel, and my husband made the opening speech at her
exhibition there. But her addresses came to nothing. The lungs exhibited in
the “caravan” in spirits of wine appealed in vain. She actually asked the
people that day to go back to their discarded oatmeal “stir-about”! They
prefer their stewed tea and their artificially whitened, so-called bread, with
the resultant loss of their teeth. My experiences at the different Dublin horse
shows were sociable and pleasant. There you see the finest horses and the
most beautiful women in the world, and Dublin gives you that hospitality
which is the most admirable quality in the Irish nature.
Sir William spent the remaining days of his life in trying, by addresses to
the people in different parts of the country, to quicken their sense of the
necessity for industry, sobriety, and a more serious view of existence. They
did not seem to like it, and he was apparently only beating the air. I
remember one particularly strong appeal he made in Meath at a huge open-
air meeting. I thought to myself that such warnings, given in his vivid and
friendly Irish style, touched with humour to leaven the severity, would have
impressed his hearers. The applause disappointed me. Well, he did his best
to the very last for the country and the people he loved. He had vainly
longed all his life for Home Rule within the Empire. Was this, then, all that
was wanting?
I recall in this connection an episode which was eloquent of the hearty
appreciation of his worth, quite irrespective of politics. At a banquet given
in Dublin to welcome Lord and Lady Granard, after their marriage, he was
called upon to respond for “the Guests.” For fully one minute the cheers

were so persistent when he rose that he had to wait before his opening
words could be heard. The company were nearly all Unionists.
After all the misunderstandings connected with Sir William’s association
with the Boer War and its antecedents had been righted at last, these words
of a distinguished general at Headquarters were spoken: “Butler stands a
head and shoulders above us all.”
The year 1910 is one which in our family remains for ever sacred. My
dear mother died on March 13th.
On June 7th a very brave soldier, who feared none but God, was called
to his reward. Here my Diary stops for nearly a year.[16]

CHAPTER XXIV

MOSTLY A ROMAN DIARY

PALM Sunday, 1911, found me in Rome, on the eve of my son’s
ordination as priest. One of those extraordinary occurrences which have
happened in my life took place that day. Four of us joined at the appointed
place and hour: I and Eileen from Ireland (Dick, already in Rome) and
Patrick, just landed, in the nick of time, from India! We three met at the foot
of the Aventine and went up to Sant’ Anselmo, where we knew we should
see the other one during the Palm Sunday Mass, though not to speak to till
after the long service was ended. He intoned the Gospel as deacon, and
when his deep voice reached us in the gallery we looked at each other with
a smile. None of us had seen him for a more or less long time.
“Holy Saturday. The great day. Dick assumed the chasuble, and is
officially known now as Father Urban, though ‘Dick’ he will ever remain
with us. The weather was Romanly brilliant, but I was anxious, knowing
that these young deacons were to be on their knees in the great Lateran
Church, fasting, from 7 a.m. We three waited a long time in the piazza of
the Lateran for the pealing of the bells which should announce the
beginning of the Easter time, and which was to be the signal for our entry
into the great basilica at 9.15. We had places in two balconies, right over the
altar. Below us stood about forty deacons, with our particular one in their
midst, each holding his folded chasuble across his arms ready for the
vesting. The sight of these young fellows, in their white and gold deacons’
vestments, was very touching. Each one was called up by name in turn, and
ascended the altar steps, where sat the consecrating bishop, who looked
more like a spirit than a mere human creature. When Urbano Butler
(pronounced Boutler, of course, by the Italian voice) was called, how we
craned forward! To me the whole thing was poignant. What those boys give
up! (‘Well,’ answers a voice, ‘they give up the world, and a good thing
too!’)
“We went, when the ceremony was completed, into a side chapel to
receive the newly-made young priests’ first blessing. These young fellows

ran out of the sacristy towards the crowd of expectant parents and friends,
their newly-acquired chasubles flying behind them as they ran, with
outstretched hands, for the kisses of that kneeling crowd that awaited them.
What a sight! Can any one paint it and do it justice? Old and young,
gentlefolk and peasants, smiling through tears, kissing the young hands that
blessed them. Dick came to his mother first, then to his soldier brother, then
to his sister, and I saw him lifting an aged prelate to his feet after blessing
him. Strangers knelt to him and to the others, and I saw, in its perfection,
what is meant by ‘laughing for joy’ on those young and holy faces. There
was one exception. A poor young Irish boy, somehow, had no relative to
bless—no one—he seemed left out in his corner, and he was crying.
Perhaps his mother was ‘beyond the beyond’ in far Connemara? I heard of
this afterwards. Had I seen him, I would certainly have asked his blessing
too. So it is—always some shadow, even here.
“As soon as we could get hold of Dick, in his plain habit, we hurried him
to a little trattoria across the piazza, where his dear friend and chum, John
Collins,[17] treated him to a good cup of chocolate to break his long fast.”
It was quite a necessary anti-climax for me when we and our friends all
met again at the hotel and sat down, to the number of fifteen, to a bright
luncheon I gave in honour of the day. A very celebrated English cardinal
honoured me with his presence there.
“Easter Sunday.—Patrick, Eileen and I received Holy Communion in the
crypt of Sant’ Anselmo from Dick’s hands at his first Mass. These few
words contain the culmination of all.
“April 17th.—In the afternoon we were all off, piloted by Dick, to the
celebrated Benedictine monastery of Monte Cassino, a long way down
towards Naples, to spend a few days, Patrick as guest within the precincts,
and E. and I lodging at the guest-house, which forms part of the monastic
farm, poised on the edge of a great precipice. The sheer rock plunges down
to the base of the mountain whereon stands the wonderful monastery. It is
something to see a great domed church on the top of such a mountain, and a
building of such vast proportions, containing one of the greatest libraries in
the world. A mule path was all the monks intended for communication
between the two worlds, but now a great carriage road takes us up by an
easy zigzag.

“April 18th.—Every hour of our visit to Monte Cassino must be lived. I
made a sketch of the monastery and the abyss into which one peers from
that great height, with angry red clouds gathering over the tops of the
snowy mountains. But my sketches are too didactic; and, indeed, who but
Turner could convey to the beholder the awful spirit of that scene? The
tempest sent us in and we had the experience of a good thunderstorm amidst
those severe mountains that have the appearance of a petrified chaos. Last
night E. woke up to find the room full of a surprising blue light, which at
first she took to be the dawn because, through the open windows, she heard
the whole land thrilling with the song of birds. But such a blue light for
dawn? She got up to see. The light was that of the full moon and the birds
were nightingales.
“I was enchanted to see the beautiful dress of the peasant women here.
Their white tovaglie are looped back in a more graceful line than the
Roman. The queerest little thin black hogs, like poor relations of the tall,
pink Valentia variety which I have already signalised, browse on the steep
ascent to this great stronghold, and everything still looks wild, in spite of
the carriage road. I should have preferred coming up here on a mule. Our
suppers at the guest-house were Spartan. Rather dismal, having to pump
conversation with the Italian guests at this festive(!) board. Our intellectual
food, however, was rich. The abbot and his monks did the honours of far-
famed Monte Cassino for us with the kindest attention, showing very
markedly their satisfaction in possessing Brother Urban, whose father’s
name they held in great esteem.”
On April 22nd we had the long-expected audience with Pio Decimo. It
was only semi-private and there were crowds, including eleven English
naval officers, to be presented. I had my little speech ready, but when we
came into the Pope’s presence we found him standing instead of restfully
seated, and he looked so fatigued and so aged since I last saw him that I
knew I must keep him listening as short a time as possible. First I presented
“Mio figlio primogenito, ufficiale;” then “mio figlio Benedettino” and then
“mia figlia.” He spoke a little while to Dick in Latin, and then we knelt and
received his blessing and departed, to see him no more.
It is a great thing to have seen Leo XIII. and Pius X., as I have had the
opportunity of seeing them. Both have left a deep impression on modern
life, especially the former, who was a great statesman. To see the fragile
scabbard of the flesh one wondered how the keen sword of the spirit could

be held at all within it. It was his diplomatic tact that smoothed away many
of the difficulties that obtruded themselves between the Vatican and the
Quirinal, and that tact kept the Papacy on good terms with France and her
Republic, to which he called on all French Catholics to give their support. It
was he who forced “the man of blood and iron” to relax the ferocious laws
against the Church in Germany, and to allow the evicted bishops to return to
their Sees. Diplomatic relations with Germany were renewed, and the
Church’s laws regarding marriage and education had to be re-admitted by
the Government. Even the dark “Orthodox” intolerance of Russia bent
sufficiently to his influence to allow of the establishment of Catholic
episcopal Sees in that country, and the cessation of the imprisonment of
priests. The episcopate in Scotland, too, was restored. We owe to him that
spread of Catholicism in the United States which has long been such a
surprise to the onlooker. Then there are his great encyclicals on the Social
Question, setting forth the Christian teaching on the relations between
capital and labour; establishing the social movement on Christian lines.
How clearly he saw the threat of a great European war at no very distant
date from his time unless armaments were reduced. That refined mind
inclined him to the advancement of the cause of the Arts and of learning.
Students thank him for opening the Vatican archives to them, which he did
with the words, “The Church has nothing to fear from the publication of the
Truth.” His is the Vatican observatory—one of the most famous in the
world. It makes one smile to remember his remarks on the then young
Kaiser William II., who seems to have struck the Holy Father as somewhat
bumptious on the occasion of his historic visit. “That young man,” as he
called him, evidently impressed the Pope as one having much to learn.
What a contrast Pius X. presents to his predecessor! The son of a
postman at Rieti, a little town in Venetia. I remember when a deputation of
young men came to pay him their respects at the Vatican, arriving on their
bicycles, that he told them how much he would have liked a bike himself
when, as a bare-legged boy, he had to trudge every day seven miles to
school and back. Needless to say, he had no diplomatic or political training,
but he led the truly simple life, very saintly and apostolic. He devoted his
energies chiefly to the purely pastoral side of his office. We are grateful to
him for his reform of Church music (and it needed it in Italy!). He was very
emphatic in urging frequent communion and early communion for children.
His condemnation of “modernism” is fresh in all our minds, and we are

glad he removed the prohibition on Catholics from standing for the Italian
Parliament, thereby allowing them to obtain influential positions in public
life. He took a firm stand with regard to the advancing encroachment of the
French Government on the liberties of the Church in his day. His policy is
being amply justified under our very eyes.
We joined the big garden party, after the Papal audience, at the British
Embassy. A great crush in that lovely remnant of the once glorious, far-
spreading gardens I can remember, nearly all turned to-day into deadly
streets on which a gridiron of tram lines has been screwed down. Prince
Arthur of Connaught brought in the Queen-Mother, Margherita, to the lawn
where the dancing took place. The Rennell-Rodd children as little fairies
were pretty and danced charmingly, but I felt for the professional dancer
who, poor thing, was not in her first youth, and unkindly dealt with by the
searching daylight. To have to caper airily on that grass was no joke. It was
heavy going for her and made me melancholy, in conjunction with my
memories of the old Ludovisi gardens and the vanished pines.
On October 26th my youngest daughter, Eileen, was married to Lord
Gormanston, at the Brompton Oratory, the church so loved by our mother,
and where I was received. Our dear Dick married them. I had the reception
in Lowndes Square in the beautiful house lent by a friend.
Ireland has many historic ancestral dwellings, and one of these became
my daughter’s new home in Meath. Shakespeare’s “cloud-capp’d towers”
seemed not so much the “baseless fabric” of the poet’s vision when I saw,
one day, the low-lying trail of a bright Irish mist brush the high tops of the
towers of Gormanston. A thing of visions, too, is realised there in a cloister
carved so solidly out of the dense foliage of the yew that never monastic
cloister of stone gave a more restful “contiguity of shade.”
I spent the winter of 1911—12 in London, and worked hard at water
colours, of which I was able to exhibit a goodly number at a “one-man
show” in the spring. The King lent my good old “Roll Call,” and the whole
thing was a success. I showed many landscapes there as well as military
subjects; many Italian and Egyptian drawings made during my travels, and
scenes in Ireland. These exhibitions in a well-lighted gallery are pleasant,
and the private view day a social rendezvous for one’s friends.
Through my sister, with whom I revisited Rome early in 1913, I had the
pleasure of knowing many Americans there. How refreshing they are, and