An Autobiography

At last we drove up to the great towered villa, an old-fashioned Florentine ancestral place, which has been the home of the Della Stufas for generations, and there, in the great doorway, stood Mrs. Ross, welcoming us most cordially to “Castagnolo.” We passed through frescoed rooms and passages, dimly lighted with oil lamps of genuine old Tuscan patterns, and were delighted with our bedrooms – enormous, brick-paved and airy. There we made a show of tidying ourselves, and went down to a fruit-decked supper, though hardly able to sit up for sleep. How kind they were to us! We felt quite at home at once.

“September 12th.– After Mass at the picturesque little chapel which, with the vicario’s dwelling, abuts on the fattoria wing of the villa, we drove into Florence with Mrs. Ross and the Marchese, whom we find the typical Italian patrician of the high school. We were rigged out in Mrs. Ross’s frocks, which didn’t fit us at all. But what was to be done? Provoking girls! It was a dear, hot, dusty, dazzling old Florentine drive, bless it! and we were very pleased. Florence was en fête and all imbandierata and hung with the usual coloured draperies, and all joyous with church bells and military bands. The concert in honour of Michael Angelo (the fêtes began to-day) was held in the Palazzo Vecchio, and very excellent music they gave us, the audience bursting out in applause before some of the best pieces were quite finished in that refreshingly spontaneous way Italians have. After the concert we loitered about the piazza looking at the ever-moving and chattering crowd in the deep, transparent shade and dazzling sunshine. It was a glorious sight, with the white statues of the fountain rising into the sunlight against houses hung mostly with very beautiful yellow draperies. I stood at the top of the steps of the Loggia de’ Lanzi, and, resting my book on the pedestal of one of the lions, I made a rough sketch of the scene, keeping the Graphic engagement in view. I subsequently took another of the Michael Angelo procession passing the Ponte alle Grazie on its way from Santa Croce to the new ‘Piazzale Michel Angelo,’ which they have made since we were here before, on the height of San Miniato. It was a pretty procession on account of the rich banners. A day full of charming sights and melodious sounds.”

The great doings of the last day of the fêtes were the illuminations in the moonlit evening. They were artistically done, and we had a feast of them, taking a long, slow drive to the piazzale by the new zigzag. Michael Angelo was remembered at every turn, and the places he fortified were especially marked out by lovely lights, all more or less soft and glowing. Not a vile gas jet to be seen anywhere. The city was not illuminated, nor was anything, with few exceptions, save the lines of the great man’s fortifications. The old white banner of Florence, with the Giglio, floated above the tricolour on the heights which Michael Angelo defended in person. The effect, especially on the church of San Miniato, of golden lamps making all the surfaces aglow, as if the walls were transparent, and of the green-blue moonlight above, was a thing as lovely as can be seen on this earth. It was a thoroughly Italian festival. We were charmed with the people; no pushing in the crowds, which enjoyed themselves very much. They made way for us when they saw we were foreigners.

We stayed at Castagnolo nearly all through the vintage, pressed from one week to another to linger, though I made many attempts to go on account of beginning my “Balaclava.” The fascination of Castagnolo was intense, and we had certainly a happy experience. I sketched hard every day in the garden, the vineyards, and the old courtyard where the most picturesque vintage incidents occurred, with the white oxen, the wine pressing, and the bare-legged, merry contadini, all in an atmosphere scented with the fermenting grapes. Everything in the Cortile was dyed with the wine in the making. I loved to lean over the great vats and inhale that wholesome effluence, listening to the low sea-like murmur of the fermentation. On the days when we helped to pick the grapes on the hillside (and “helping ourselves” at the same time) we had collazione there, a little picnic, with the indispensable guitar and post-prandial cigarette. Every one made the most of this blessed time, as such moments should be made the most of when they are given us, I think. Young Italians often dined at the villa, and the evenings were spent in singing stornelli and rispetti until midnight to the guitar, every one of these young fellows having a nice voice. They were merry, pleasant creatures.

Nothing but the stern necessity of returning to work could have kept me from seeing the vintage out. We left most regretfully on October 4th, taking Genoa and our dear step-sister on the way. Even as it was our lingering in Italy made me too late, as things turned out, for the Academy!

October 19th has this entry: “Began my ‘Balaclava’ cartoon to-day. Marked all the positions of the men and horses. My trip to Italy and the glorious and happy and healthy life I have led there, and the utter change of scene and occupation, have done me priceless good, and at last I feel like going at this picture con amore. I was in hopes this happy result would be obtained.” “Balaclava” was painted for Mr. Whitehead, of Manchester. I had owed him a picture from the time I exhibited “Missing.” It was to be the same size, and for the same price as that work, and I was in honour bound to fulfil my contract! So I again brought forward the “Dawn of Sedan,” although my prices were now so enlarged that £80 had become quite out of proportion, even for a simple subject like that. However, after long parleys, and on account of Mr. Whitehead’s repudiation of the Sedan subject, it was agreed that “Balaclava” should be his, at the new scale altogether. The Fine Art Society (late Dickenson & Co.) gave Mr. Whitehead £3,000 for the copyright, and engaged the great Stacpoole, as before, to execute the engraving.

I was very sorry that the picture was not ready for Sending-in Day at the Academy. No doubt the fuss that was made about it, and my having begun a month too late, put me off; but, be that as it may, I was a good deal disturbed towards the end, and had to exhibit “Balaclava” at the private gallery of the purchasers of the copyright in Bond Street. This gave me more time to finish. I had my own Private View on April 20th, 1876: “The picture is disappointing to me. In vain I call to mind all the things that judges of art have said about this being the best thing I have yet painted. Can one never be happy when the work is done? This day was only for our friends and was no test. Still, there was what may be called a sensation. Virginia Gabriel, the composer, was led out of the room by her husband in tears! One officer who had been through the charge told a friend he would never have come if he had known how like the real thing it was. Curiously enough, another said that after the stress of Inkermann a soldier had come up to his horse and leant his face against it exactly as I have the man doing to the left of my picture.

“April 22nd.– An enormous number of people at the Society’s Private View and some of the morning papers blossoming out in the most beautiful notices, ever so long, and I getting a little reassured.” A day later: “Went to lunch at Mrs. Mitchell’s, who invited me at the Private View, next door to Lady Raglan’s, her great friend. Two distinguished officers were there to meet me, and we had a pleasant chat.” And this is all I say! One of the two was Major W. F. Butler, author of “The Great Lone Land.”

The London season went by full of society doings. Our mother had long been “At Home” on Wednesdays, and much good music was heard at “The Boltons,” South Kensington. Ruskin came to see us there. He and our mother were often of the same way of thinking on many subjects, and I remember seeing him gently clapping his hands at many points she made. He was displeased with me on one occasion when, on his asking me which of the Italian masters I had especially studied, I named Andrea del Sarto. “Come into the corner and let me scold you,” were his disconcerting words. Why? Of course, I was crestfallen, but, all the same, I wondered what could be the matter with Andrea’s “Cenacolo” at San Salvi, or his frescoes at the SS. Annunziata, or his “Madonna with St. Francis and St. John,” in the Tribune of the Uffizi. The figure of the St. John is, to me, one of the most adorable things in art. That gentle, manly face; that dignified pose; the exquisite modelling of the hand, and the harmonious colours of the drapery – what could be the matter with such work? I remember, at one of the artistic London “At Homes,” Frith, R.A., coming up to me with a long face to say, if I did not send to the Academy, I should lose my chance of election. But I think the difficulties of electing a woman were great, and much discussion must have been the consequence amongst the R.A.’s. However, as it turned out, in 1879 I lost my election by two votes only! Since then I think the door has been closed, and wisely. I returned to the studio on May 18th, for I could not lay down the brush for any amount of society doings. Besides, I soon had to make preparations for “Inkermann.”

“Saturday, June 10th.– Saw Genl. Darby-Griffith, to get information about Inkermann. I returned just in time to dress for the delightful Lord Mayor’s Banquet to the Representatives of Art at the Mansion House, a place of delightful recollections for me. Neither this year’s nor last year’s banquet quite came up to the one of ‘The Roll Call’ year in point of numbers and excitement, but it was most delightful and interesting to be in that great gathering of artists and hear oneself gracefully alluded to in The Lord Mayor’s speech and others. Marcus Stone sat on my left, and we had really a thoroughly good conversation all through dinner such as I have seldom embarked on, and I found, when I tried it, that I could talk pretty well. He is a fine fellow, and simple-minded and genuine. My vis-à-vis was Alma Tadema, with his remarkable-looking wife, like a lady out of one of his own pictures; and many well-known heads wagged all around me. After dinner and the speeches, Du Maurier, of Punch, suggested to the Lord Mayor that we should get up a quadrille, which was instantly done, and the friskier spirits amongst us had a nice dance. Du Maurier was my partner; and on my left I had John Tenniel, so that I may be said to have been supported by Punch both at the beginning and end of dinner, this being Du Maurier’s simple and obvious joke, vide the post-turtle indulgence peculiar to civic banquets. After a waltz we laggards at last took our departure in the best spirits.”

I remember that in June we went to a most memorable High Mass, to wit, the first to be celebrated in the Old Saxon Church of St. Etheldreda since the days of the Reformation. This church was the second place of Christian worship erected in London, if not in England, in the old Saxon times. We were much impressed as the Gregorian Mass sounded once more in the grey-stoned crypt. The upper church was not to be ready for years. Those old grey stones woke up that morning which had so long been smothered in the London clay.

Here follow too many descriptions in the Diary of dances, dinners and other functions. They are superfluous. There were, however, some Tableaux Vivants at an interesting house – Mrs. Bishop’s, a very intellectual woman, much appreciated in society in general, and Catholic society in particular – which may be recorded in this very personal narrative, for I had a funny hand in a single-figure tableau which showed the dazed 11th Hussar who figures in the foreground of my “Balaclava.” The man who stood for him in the tableau had been my model for the picture, but to this day I feel the irritation caused me by that man. In the picture I have him with his busby pushed back, as it certainly would and should have been, off his heated brow. But, while I was posing him for the tableau, every time I looked away he rammed it down at the becoming “smart” angle. I got quite cross, and insisted on the necessary push back. The wretch pretended to obey, but, just before the curtain rose, rammed the busby down again, and utterly destroyed the meaning of that figure! We didn’t want a representation of Mr. So-and-so in the becoming uniform of a hussar, but my battered trooper. The thing fell very flat. But tableaux, to my mind, are a mistake, in many ways.

I often mention my pleasure in meeting Lord and Lady Denbigh, for they were people after my own heart. Lady Denbigh was one of those women one always looks at with a smile; she was so simpatica and true and unworldly.

July 18th is noted as “a memorable day for Alice, for she and I spent the afternoon at Tennyson’s! I say ‘for Alice’ because, as regards myself, the event was not so delightful as a day at Aldershot. Tennyson has indeed managed to shut himself off from the haunts of men, for, arrived at Haslemere, a primitive little village, we had a six-mile drive up, up, over a wild moor and through three gates leading to narrow, rutty lanes before we dipped down to the big Gothic, lonely house overlooking a vast plain, with Leith Hill in the distance. Tennyson had invited us through Aubrey de Vere, the poet, and very apprehensive we were, and nervous, as we neared the abode of a man reported to be such a bear to strangers. We first saw Mrs. Tennyson, a gentle, invalid lady lying on her back on a sofa. After some time the poet sent down word to ask us to come up to his sanctum, where he received us with a rather hard stare, his clay pipe and long, black, straggling hair being quite what I expected. He got up with a little difficulty, and when we had sat down – he, we two and his most deferential son – he asked which was the painter and which was the poet. After our answer, which struck me as funny, as though we ought to have said, with a bob, ‘Please, sir, I’m the painter,’ and ‘Please, sir, I’m the poet,’ he made a few commonplace remarks about my pictures in a most sepulchral bass voice. But he and Alice, in whom he was more interested, naturally, did most of the talking; there was not much of that, though, for he evidently prefers to answer a remark by a long look, and perhaps a slightly sneering smile, and then an averted head. All this is not awe-inspiring, and looks rather put on. We ceased to be frightened.

“There is no grandeur about Tennyson, no melancholy abstraction; and, if I had made a demi-god of him, his personality would have much disappointed me. Some of his poetry is so truly great that his manner seems below it. The pauses in the conversation were long and frequent, and he did not always seem to take in the meaning of a remark, so that I was relieved when, after a good deal of staring and smiling at Alice in a way rather trying to the patience, he acceded to her request and read us ‘The Passing of Arthur.’ He was so long in finding the place, when his son at last found him a copy of the book which suited him, and the tone he read in so deep and monotonous, that I was much bored and longed for the hour of our departure. He was vexed with Alice for choosing that poem, which he seemed to think less of than of his later works, and he took the poor child to task in a few words meant to be caustic, though they made us smile. But the ice was melting. He seemed amused at us and we gratefully began to laugh at some quaint phrases he levelled at us. Then he dropped the awe-inspiring tone, and took us all over the grounds and gave us each a rose. He pitched into us for our dresses which were too fashionable and tight to please him. He pinned Alice against a pillar of the entrance to the house on our re-entry from the garden to watch my back as I walked on with his son, pointing the walking-stick of scorn at my skirt, the trimming of which particularly roused his ire. Altogether I felt a great relief when we said goodbye to our curious host with whom it was so difficult to carry on conversation, and to know whether he liked us or not. Away, over the windy, twilight heath behind the little ponies – away, away!”

At the beginning of August I began my studies for “The Return from Inkermann.” The foreground I got at Worthing; and I had another visit to Aldershot and many further conversations with Inkermann survivors – officers of distinction. I am bound to say that these often contradicted each other, and the rough sketches I made after each interview had to be re-arranged over and over again. I read Dr. Russell’s account (The Times correspondent) and sometimes I returned to my own conception, finding it on the whole the most likely to be true.

I laugh even now at the recollection of two elderly sabreurs, one of them a General in the Indian Army, who had a hot discussion in my studio, â propos of my “Balaclava,” about the best use of the sabre. The Indian, who was for slashing, twirled his umbrella so briskly, to illustrate his own theory, that I feared for the picture which stood close by his sword arm. The opposition umbrella illustrated “the point” theory.

Having finally clearly fixed the whole composition of “Inkermann,” in sepia on tinted paper the size of the future picture I closed the studio on August 25th and turned my face once more to Italy.

CHAPTER XII

AGAIN IN ITALY

MY sister and I tarried at Genoa on our way to Castagnolo where we were to have again the joys of a Tuscan vintage. But between Genoa and Florence lay our well-loved Porto Fino and, having an invitation from our old friend Monty Brown, the English Consul and his young wife, to stay at their castello there, we spent a week at that Eden. We were alone for part of the time and thoroughly relished the situation, with only old Caterina, the cook, and the dog, “Bismarck,” as company. Two Marianas in a moated grange, with a difference. “He” came not, and so allowed us to clasp to our hearts our chief delights – the sky, the sea, the olives and the joyous vines. In those early days many of the deep windows had no glass, and one night, when a staggering Mediterranean thunderstorm crashed down upon us, we really didn’t like it and hid the knives under the table at dinner. Caterina was saying her Rosary very loud in the kitchen. As we went up the winding stairs to bed I carried the lamp, and was full of talk, when a gust of wind blew the lamp out, and Alice laughed at my complete silence, more eloquent than any words of alarm. We had every evening to expel curious specimens of the lizard tribe that had come in, and turn over our pillows, remembering the habits of the scorpion.

But that storm was the only one, and as to the sea, which three-parts enveloped our little Promontory, its blue utterly baffled my poor paints. But paint I did, on those little panels that we owe to Fortuny, so nicely fitting into the box he invented. There was a little cape, crowned with a shrine to Our Lady – “the Madonnetta” it was called – where I used to go daily to inhale the ozone off the sea which thundered down below amongst the brown “pudding-stone” rocks, at the base of a sheer precipice. The “sounding deep.” Oh, the freshness, the health, the joy of that haunt of mine! Our walks were perilous sometimes, the paths which almost overhung the deep foaming sea being slippery with the sheddings of the pines. At the “nasty bits” we had to hold on by shrubs and twigs, and haul ourselves along by these always aromatic supports.

Admirable is the industry of the peasants all over Italy. Here on the extreme point of Porto Fino wherever there was a tiny “pocket” of clay, a cabbage or two or a vine with its black clusters of grapes toppling over the abyss found foot-hold. We came one day upon a pretty girl on the very verge of destruction, “holding on by her eyelids,” gathering figs with a hooked stick, a demure pussy keeping her company by dozing calmly on a branch of the fig tree. The walls built to support these handfuls of clay on the face of the rock are a puzzle to me. Where did the men stand to build them? It makes me giddy to think of it.

Paragi, the lovely rival of Monty’s robber stronghold, belonged to his brother, and a fairer thing I never saw than Fred’s loggia with the slender white marble columns, between which one saw the coast trending away to La Spezzia. But “goodbye,” Porto Fino! On our way to Castagnolo, at lovely Lastre a Signa, we paused at Pisa for a night.

“Pisa is a bald Florence, if I may say so; beautiful, but so empty and lifeless. There are houses there quite peculiar, however, to Pisa, most interesting for their local style. Very broad in effect are those flat blank surfaces without mouldings. The frescoes on them, alas! are now merely very beautiful blotches and stains of colour. We had ample time for a good survey of the Duomo, Baptistery, Camposanto and Leaning Tower, all vividly remembered from when I saw them as a little child. But I get very tired by sight-seeing and don’t enjoy it much. What I like is to sit by the hour in a place, sketching or meditating. Besides, I had been kept nearly all night awake at the Albergo Minerva by railway whistles, ducks, parrots, cats, dogs, cocks and hens, so that I was only at half power and I slept most of the way to Signa.

“At the station a carriage fitted, for the heat, with cool-looking brown holland curtains was awaiting us on the chance of our coming, and we were soon greeted at dear Castagnolo by Mrs. Ross. Very good of her to show so much happy welcome seeing we had been expected the evening before, not to say for many days, and only our luggage had turned up! The Marchese, who had to go into Florence this morning for the day, had gone down to meet us last evening, and returned with the disconcerting announcement that, whereas we had arrived last year without our luggage, this year the luggage had arrived without us. ‘I bauli sono giunti ma le bambine – Chè!’”

Here follows the record of the same delights as those of the year before. We had been long expected, and Mrs. Ross told me that the peaches had been kept back for us in a most tantalising way by the padrone, and that everything was threatening over-ripeness by our delay. The light-hearted life was in full force. There were great numbers of doves and pigeons at Castagnolo which shared in the general hilarity, swirling in the sunshine and swooping down on the grain scattered for them with little cries of pleasure. I don’t know whether I should find a socialistic blight appearing here and there, if I returned to those haunts of my youth, over that patriarchal life, but it seemed to me that the relations between the padrone and his splendid contadini showed how suitable the system obtaining in Tuscany was then. The labourers were the fanciulli (the children) of the master, and without the least approach to servility these men stood up to him in all the pride of their own station. But what deference they showed to him! Always the uncovered head and the respectful and dignified attitude when spoken to or speaking. I mustn’t forget the frank smile and the pleasant white teeth. It was a smiling life; every one caught the smiling habit. Oh, that we could keep it up through a London winter! And to a London winter we returned, for my friends in England were getting fidgety about “Inkermann.” One more extract, however, from the Castagnolo Diary must find a place before the veil is drawn. The Marchese took us to Siena for two days.

“September 29th.– We got up by candlelight at 5 a.m. and had a fresh drive in the phaeton to the station, whence we took train to the fascinating Etruscan city, whose very name is magic. The weather, as a matter of course, was splendid, and Siena dwells in my mind all tender brown-gold in a flood of sunshine. Small as the city is, and hard as we worked for those two days, we could only see a portion of its treasures. The result of my observation in the churches and picture galleries shows me that the art there, as regards painting, is very inferior; and, indeed, after Florence, with its most exquisite examples of painting and drawing, these works of art are not taking. I suppose Florence has spoilt me. Here and there one picks out a plum, such as the ‘Svenimento of St. Catherine’ in San Domenico, by Sodoma, the only thing by him that I could look at with pleasure; also, of course, the famous Perugino in Sant’ Agostino, which I beheld with delight, and a lovely gem of a Holy Family by Palma Vecchio in the Academy – such a jewel of Venetian colour.

“The frescoes, however, in the sacristy of the cathedral are things apart, and such as I have never seen anywhere else, for the very dry air of Siena has preserved them since Pinturicchio’s time quite intact, and there one sees, as one can see nowhere else, ancient frescoes as they were when freshly painted. And very different they are from one’s notions of old frescoes; certainly not so pleasing if looked at as bits of colour staining old walls in mellow broken tints, but intensely interesting and beautiful as pictures. Here one sees what frescoes were meant to be: deep in colour, exceedingly forcible, with positive illusion in linear and aërial perspective, the latter being most unexpected and surprising. One’s usual notion of frescoes is that they must be flat and airless, and modern artists who go in for fresco decorative art paint accordingly, judging from the faded examples of what were once evidently such as one sees here – forcible pictures.

“Certainly these wall spaces, looking like apertures through which one sees crowds of figures and gorgeous halls or airy landscapes, do not please the eye when looking at the room as a room. One would prefer to feel the solidity of the walls; but taking each fresco and looking at it for its own sake only, one feels the keenest pleasure. They are magnificent pictures, full of individual character and realistic action, unsurpassable by any modern.

“I cannot attempt to put into words my impression of the cathedral itself. Certainly, I never felt the beauty of a church more. It being St. Michael’s Day, we heard Mass in the midst of our wanderings, and we were much struck by the devotion of the people, the men especially – very unlike what we saw in Genoa. In the afternoon we had a glorious drive through a perfect pre-Raphaelite landscape to Belcaro, a fortress-villa about six miles outside Siena, every turn in the road giving us a new aspect of the golden-brown city behind us on its steep hill. Perhaps the most beautiful view of Siena is from near Belcaro, where you get the dark pine trees in the immediate foreground. The owner of the villa took us all over it, the Marchese gushing outrageously to him about the beauties of the dreadful frescoes on walls and ceilings, painted by the man himself. We had been warned, Alice and I, to express our admiration, but I regret to say we had our hearts so scooped out of us on seeing those things in the midst of such true loveliness that we couldn’t say a thing, but only murmured. So the poor Marchese had to do triple-distilled gush to serve for three, and said everything was ‘portentoso.’

“In the evening we all three went out again and, in the bright moonlight, strolled about the streets, the piazza, and round the cathedral, which shone in the full light which fell upon it. The deep sky was throbbing with stars, and all the essence of an Italian September moonlight night was there. Oh, sweet, restful Siena dream! Like a dream, and yet such a precious reality, to be gratefully kept in memory to the end.”

Back at Castagnolo on October 1st. “Went for my solita passeggiata up to the hill of lavender and dwarf oak and other mountain shrubs, where I made a study of an oak bush on the only wet day we have had, for my ‘Inkermann’ foreground. Mrs. Ross, a fearless rider, went on with the breaking in of the Arab colt ‘Pascià’ to-day. Old Maso, one of the habitués of the villa, whooped and screamed every time the colt bucked or reared, and he waddled away as fast as he could, groaning in terror, only to creep back again to venture another look. And he had been an officer in the army! I have secured some water-colour sketches of the vintage for the ‘Institute’ and knocked off another panel or two, and sketched Mrs. Ross in her Turkish dress, so I have not been idle.” Janet Ross seemed to have assimilated the sunshine of Egypt and Italy into her buoyant nature, and to see the vigour with which she conducted the vintage at Castagnolo acted as a tonic on us all; so did the deep contralto voice and the guitar, and the racy talk.

We left on October 14th, on a golden day, with the thermometer at 90 degrees in the shade, to return to the icy smoke-twilight of London, where we groped, as the Diary says, in sealskins and ulsters. Castagnolo has our thanks. How could we have had the fulness of Italian delights which our kind hosts afforded us in some pension or hotel in Florence? And what hospitality theirs was! We tried to sing some of the “Stornelli” in the hansom that took us home from Victoria Station. One of our favourites, “M’affaccio alla finestra e vedo Stelle,” had to be modified, as we looked through the glass of the cab, into “Ma non vedo Stelle,” sung in the minor, for nothing but the murk of a foggy night was there. What but the stern necessity of beginning “Inkermann” could have brought me back? My dear sister cannot have rejoiced, and may have wished to tarry, but when did she ever “put a spoke in my wheel”?

CHAPTER XIII

A SOLDIER’S WIFE

THOUGH the London winter was gloomy, on the whole, and I was handicapped in the middle of my work by a cold which retarded the picture so much that, to my deep disappointment, I had again to miss the Academy, the brightest spring of my life followed, for on March 3rd I was engaged to be married to the author of “The Great Lone Land.” It may not be out of place to give a little sketch of our rather romantic meeting.

When the newly-promoted Major Butler was lying at Netley Hospital, just beginning to recover from the Ashanti fever that had nearly killed him at the close of that campaign, his sister Frances used to read to him the papers, and they thus learnt together how, at the Royal Academy banquet of that spring, the Prince of Wales and the Duke of Cambridge had spoken as they did of Miss Elizabeth Thompson. As paper after paper spoke of me and of my work, he said one day to his sister, in utter fun under his slowly reviving spirits, “I wonder if Miss Thompson would marry me?” Two years after that he met me for the first time, and yet another year was to go by before the Fates said “Now!”

When “Inkermann” was carted off to Bond Street on April 19th, what a relief and delight it was to tell the model “Time is up.” “Mamma and I danced about the studio when the picture was gone, revelling in our freedom to make as much dust as we liked, when hitherto one had had to be so careful about dust.” We always did this on such occasions.

The Fine Art Society, at whose galleries in Bond Street the picture was exhibited, bought it and the copyright together. No doubt for some the subject of this work is too sad, but my dominant feeling in painting it was that which Wellington gave expression to in those memorable words on leaving the field of battle at Waterloo: “There is nothing sadder than a victory, except a defeat.” It shows the remnants of the Guards and the 20th Regiment and odds and ends of infantry returning in the grey of a November evening from the “Soldiers’ Battle,” most of the men very weary. The A.D.C. on horseback I painted from a fine young soldier, Rupert Carrington, who kindly gave me a sitting. His mother, Lady Carrington, sent me as a wedding present a medal taken from a dead Russian on the field of Inkermann, set in a gold bracelet, which is one of my treasures, her name and mine engraved on it.

“April 20th. – The first Private View of ‘Inkermann.’ I was there a short time, and was quite happy at the look of my picture. The other three are in the same gallery, and very popular the whole exhibition seems to be. They have even got my 1873 venture, ‘Missing,’ by itself upstairs, and remarkably well it looks, too. The crowd was dense and I left the good people wriggling in a cloud of dust.”

June 11th of that year, 1877, was my wedding day. Cardinal Manning married us in the Church of the Servite Fathers; our guests were chiefly that gallant group of soldiers who, with my husband, had won the Ashanti War, Sir Garnet Wolseley, Redvers Buller and their comrades. My “Red Cross” fellow students of old South Kensington days gave me the very touching surprise of strewing our path down the church, as we came out, with flowers. I had not known they were there.

And now a new country opened out for my admiration and delight in days so long before the dreadful cloud had fallen on it under which I am now writing these Recollections – so long, so long before. It looks like another world to me now. One might say I had had already a sufficiently large share of the earth’s beauties to enjoy, yet here opened out an utterly new and unique experience – Ireland. Our wedding tour was chiefly devoted to the Wild West, with a pause at Glencar, in Kerry. I have tried in happier political times to convey to my readers in another place[7 - “From Sketch-Book and Diary,” A. & C. Black.] my impression of that Western country – its freshness, its wild beauty, its entrancing poetry, and that sadness which, like the minor key in music, is the most appealing quality in poetry. That note is utterly absent from the poetry of Italy; there all is in the major, like its national music, so that my mind received, with strange delight, a new sensation, surprising, heart-stirring, appealing. My husband had given me the choice of a local for the wedding tour between Ireland and the Crimea. How could I hesitate?

My first married picture was the one I made studies for in Glencar – “‘Listed for the Connaught Rangers.” I had splendid models for the two Irish recruits who are being marched out of the glen by a recruiting sergeant, followed by the “decoy” private and two drummer boys of that regiment, the old 88th, with the yellow facings of that time. The men were cousins, Foley by name, and wore their national dress, the jacket with the long, white homespun sleeves and the picturesque black hat which I fear is little worn now, and is largely replaced by that quite cosmopolitan peaked cap I loathe. The deep richness of those typical Irish days of cloud and sunshine had so enchanted me that I was determined to try and represent the effect in this picture, which was a departure from my former ones, the landscape occupying an equal share with the figures, and the civilian peasant dress forming the centre of interest. Its black, white and brown colouring, the four red coats and the bright brass of the drum, gave me an enjoyable combination with the blue and red-purple of the mountains in the background, and the sunlight on the middle distance of the stony Kerry bog-land. Here was that variety as to local colour denied me in the other works. It was a joy to realise this subject. The picture was for Mr. Whitehead, the owner of “Balaclava.”

The opening day of my introduction to the Wild West was on a Sunday in that June: “From Limerick Junction to Glencar. I had my first experience of an Irish Mass, and my impression is deepening every day that Ireland is as much a foreign country to England as is France or Italy. The congregation was all new to me. The peasant element had quite a cachet of its own, though in a way an exact equivalent to the Tuscan – the rough-looking men in homespun coats in a crowd inside and outside of the church, the women in national dress; the constabulary, equivalent to the gendarmes, in full dress, mixing with the people and yet not of them. This Limerick Junction was the nucleus of the Fenian nebula. In this terrible Tipperary the stalwart constabulary, whom I greatly admire, have a grave significance. I have never seen finer men than those, and they are of a type new to me. How I enjoy new types, new countries, new customs! The girls, looking so nice in their Bruges-like hoods, are very fresh and comely.

“We left at noon for the goal of our expedition, and I think I may say that I never had a more memorable little journey. The distant mountains I had looked at in the morning took clearer forms and colours by degrees, and the charm of the Irish bogs with their rich black and purple peat-earth, and bright, reedy grass, and teeming wild flowers, developed themselves to my delighted eyes as the train whirled us southwards. At Killarney we took a carriage and set off on my favourite mode of travel, soon entering upon tracts of that wild nature I was most anxious to experience. The evening was deepening, and in its solemn tones I saw for the first time the Wild West Land, whose aspect gradually grew wilder and more strange as we neared the mysterious mountains that rose ahead of us. I was content. I was beginning to taste the salt of the Wilds. What human habitations there are are so like the stone heaps that lie over the face of the land that they are scarcely distinguishable from them; but my ‘contentment’ was much dashed by the sight of the dwellers in this poor land which yields them so little. Very strange, wild figures came to the black doors to watch us pass, with, in some cases, half-witted looks.

“The mighty ‘Carran Thual,’ one of the mountain group which rises out of Glencar and dominates the whole land of Kerry, was on fire with blazing heather, its peaks sending up a glorious column of smoke which spread out at the top for miles and miles, and changed its delicate smoke tints every minute as the sun sank lower. As we reached the rocky pass that took us by the remote Lough Acoose that sun had gone down behind an opposite mountain, and the blazing heather glowed brighter as the twilight deepened, and circles of fire played weirdly on the mountain side. Our glen gave the ‘Saxon bride’ its grandest illumination on her arrival. Wild, strange birds rose from the bracken as we passed, and flew strongly away over lake and mountain torrent, and the little black Kerry cattle all watched us go by with ears pricked and heads inquiringly raised. The last stage of the journey had a brilliant finale. A herd of young horses was in our way in the narrow road, and the creatures careered before us, unable or too stupid to turn aside into the ditches by the roadside to let us through. We could not head them, and for fully a mile did those shaggy, wild things caper and jump ahead, their manes flying out wildly, with the glow from the west shining through them. Some imbecile cows soon joined them in the stampede, for no imaginable reason, unless they enjoyed the fright of being pursued, and the ungainly progress of those recruits was a sight to behold – tails in the air and horns in the dust. With this escort we entered Glencar.”

Nothing that I have seen in my travels since that golden time has in the least dimmed my recollections of that Glencar existence; nor could anything jar against a thing so unique. I have fully recorded in my former book how we made different excursions, always on ponies, every day, not returning till the evening. What impressed me most during these rides was the depth and richness of the Irish landscape colouring. The moisture of the ocean air brings out all its glossy depth. Even without the help of actual sunshine, so essential to the landscape beauty of Italy, the local colour is powerful. In describing to me the same deep colouring in Scotland Millais used the simile of the wet pebble. Take a grey, dry pebble on the seashore and dip it in the water. It will show many lovely tints. Our inn was in the centre of the glen, delightfully rough, and impregnated with that scent of turf smoke which has ever since been to me the subtlest and most touching reminder of those days. Yet with that roughness there was in the primitive little inn a very pleasant provision of such sustenance as old campaigners and fishermen know how to establish in the haunts they visit.

The coast of Clare came next in our journey, where the Atlantic hurls itself full tilt at the iron cliffs, and the west wind, which I learnt to love, comes, without once touching land since it left the coast of Labrador, to fill one with a sense of salt and freshness and health as it rushes into one’s lungs from off the foam. I was interested in making comparisons between that sea and the other “sounding deep” that washes the rocks of Porto Fino as I looked down on the thundering waves below the cliffs of Moher. Here was the simplest and severest colouring – dark green, almost amounting to black; light green, cold and pure; foam so pure that its whiteness had over it a rosy tinge, merely by contrast with the green of the waves, and that was all; whereas the sea around Porto Fino baffles both painter and word-painter with its infinite variety of blues, purples, and greens. These are contrasts that I delight in. How the west wind rushed at us, full of spray! How the ocean roared! It was a revel of wind where we stood at the very edge of those sheer cliffs. Across their black faces sea birds incessantly circled and wheeled, crying with a shrill clamour. That and the booming of the waves many fathoms below, as they leap into the immense caverns, were the only sounds that pierced the wind. The black rocks had ledges of greyer rock, and along these ledges, tier above tier, sat myriads of white-headed gulls, their white heads looking like illumination lamps on the faces of titanic buildings. The Isles of Arran and the mountains of Connemara spread out before us on the ocean, which sparkled in one place with the gold beams of the faint, spray-shrouded sun.

Then good-bye to Erin for the present on July 15th and the establishment of ourselves in London till our return to the Land that held a magnet for us on September 21st. There we paid a visit to the Knight of Kerry, at Valentia Island. What a delightful home! The size of the fuchsia trees told of the mild climate; the scenery was of the remotest and freshest, most pleasing to the senses, and the ever-welcome scent of turf smoke would not be denied in the big house where the sods glowed in the great fireplaces. My surprise, when strolling on one of the innocent little strands by the sea, was great at seeing the Atlantic cable emerging, quite simply, from the water between the pebbles, as though it was nothing in particular. Following it, we reached a very up-to-date building, so out of keeping with the primitive scene, filled with busy clerks transmitting goodness knows what cosmopolitan corruption from the New World to the Old, and vice versâ.