Elizabeth Butler
An Autobiography

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.

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.

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.

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 king² (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.”

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.”

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The cattle plague was raging in England.

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2

William I., afterwards German Emperor.

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3

The severe Lady Superintendent.

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