An Autobiography

I would not have missed the Valentia pig for anything. A taller, leaner, gaunter specimen has not his match anywhere, not even in the little black hog of Monte Cassino, whose salient hips are so unexpected. There is something particularly arresting in a pig with visible hips.[8 - I have just been told by an Irishman that the Valentia breed are trained for racing!] All the animals in the west seemed to me free-and-easy creatures that live with the peasants as members of the family, having a much better time than the humans. They frisk irresponsibly in and out of the cabins – no “by your leave” or “with your leave” – and, altogether, enjoy life to the top of their own highest level. The poorer the people, the greater appears the contrast caused by this inverted state of things.

The next time we left England was to go in the opposite direction – to the Pyrenees. Rapid travel is fast levelling down the different countries, and a carriage journey through the Pyrenean country is a bygone pleasure. We have to go to Thibet or the Great Wall of China for our trips if we want to write anything original about our travels. A flight by air to the North Pole would, at first, prove very readable and novel, if well described. This, however, does not take from the pleasure of going over the inner circle in memory. In the year 1878 we could still find much that was new and refreshing in a tour through the south of France! Some friends of mine went up to Khartoum from Cairo not long ago, with return tickets, by rail, and all they could say was that the journey was so dusty that they had to draw the blinds of their compartment and play bridge all the way. Poor dears, how arid!

This little tour of ours was well advised. The loss of our firstborn, Mary Patricia, brought our first sorrow with it, and we went to Lourdes and made a wide détour from there through the Pyrenees to Switzerland. There is nothing like travel for restoring the aching mind to usefulness. But, undoubtedly, the send-off from Lourdes gave me the initial impetus towards recovery of which, though I say little, I am very sensible. We drove to St. Sauveur after our visit to the Grotto where such striking cures have happened, and each day brought more fully back to me that zest for natural beauty which has been with me such an invigorator.

St. Sauveur was bracing and beautiful, but too full of invalids. It was rather saddening to see them around the Hontalade Sulphur Springs. At Lourdes they were clustering round the cascade that flows from the Grotto where the statue of Our Lady stands, exactly reproducing the figure as seen by the little Shepherdess. Poor humanity, reaching out hopeful arms in its pain, here for physical help, there for spiritual. The Gave rushes through both Lourdes and St. Sauveur, with a very sharp noise in the rocky gorge of the latter, too harsh to be a soothing sound. I looked forward to getting yet another experience of vetturino travel which I had never thought could be enjoyed again, and which proved to be still possible. The journey was a success, and, besides the beauty of that very majestic mountain scenery, the little incidents of the road were picturesque. Our driver was proud to tell us he was known as “L’ancien chien des Pyrénées,” and a characteristic “old dog” he was, one-eyed and weatherbeaten, wearing the national blue béret and very voluble in local patois. His horses’ bells jingled in the old familiar way of my childhood; two absurd little dogs of his accompanied us all the way who, in the noonday heat, sat in the wayside streams for a moment to cool, and emerged little dripping rags. The first day’s ascent was over the Pass of the Tourmalet, the second over that of the Col d’Aspin, and the third and final climb was that of the Col de Peyresourde. Then Bagnères de Luchon appeared deep down in the valley where our drive came to an end. What would we have seen of the Pyrenees if we had burrowed in tunnels under those Cols? Luchon was not embellished by the invalids there, whose principal ailment amongst the female patients was evidently a condition of embonpoint so remarkable that the suggestion of overfeeding could not possibly be ignored.

We had refreshing “ascensions” on horseback; a wide view of Spain from Super-Bagnère, wherein the backbone of the Pyrenees, with the savage “Maladetta,” rising supreme, 11,000 feet above sea level, has its origin. Many very pleasant excursions we had besides. I tried a hurried sketch of one of these views from the saddle, the only precious chance I had, but a little Frenchman in tourist helmet and blue veil (and such boots and spurs!), who was riding in our direction with a party, threw himself off his pony into my foreground and, hoping to be included in the view which he was pretending to admire, posed there, right in my way, his comrades calling him in vain to rejoin them.

On leaving Luchon we journeyed viâ Toulouse to Cette, following the course of the Garonne, which famous river we had seen in its little muddy infancy near Arreau and in its culminating grandeur at Bordeaux. Toulouse looked majestic, a fair city as I remember it. There I was interested to see that famous canal which carries on the traffic from the great river to the Mediterranean. A noteworthy feature in the landscape as we journeyed on to Cette in the dreary, dun-coloured gloaming was the mediæval city of Carcassonne. To come suddenly upon a complete restoration to life of an old-world city, full of towers and wrapped in its unbroken walls, gives one a strange sensation. One seems to be suddenly deposited in the heart of the Middle Ages. That dark evening there was something indescribably gloomy in the aspect of that cinder-coloured mass against an ashen sky, and set on a hill high above the fields cultivated in prim rows and patches, looking like a town in the background of some hunting scene, so often shown in old tapestry. All was darkening before an approaching storm. In writing of it at the time I was not aware that we owed this most precious old city to Viollet-le-Duc, who has restored it stone by stone.

Cette looked so bleared and blind the next morning in a sea mist that I have preserved a dejected impression of those low shores, grey tamarisks, and lagunes, and waste places, seen as though in a dismal dream. I was coaxed back to cheerfulness by the sunshine of Nismes, where we spent several hours, on our way to our halt for the night, strolling in the warm-tinted Roman ruins, and I finally relaxed in the delight of our arriving once more at one of my most beloved cities, splendid Avignon. Good travelling. This closed the day. Under my parents’ régime, and chiefly on account of my mother, who hated night travel, and on account of our general easy-going ways, we gave nearly a fortnight to reach Genoa from England, with pauses here and there.

My redundant Diary carries me on now, like the rapid Rhone itself, to my native Lake Leman. I see it now as I saw it that day, August 8th, 1878 – a blue opal. There is always something sacred about a place in which one came into the world. We visited “Claremont,” a lovely dwelling overlooking the lake, and facing the snowy ridges of the Dents du Midi. Looking at that house “all my mother came into my eyes” as I thought of her that November night, long ago, and of our dear, faithful nurse whom I captured there to our service till death, with a smile!

And now for the dear old Rhine once more. We got to Bâle next day, and very scenic the old town looked on our arrival in the evening. On either side of the swift-flowing river the gabled houses were full of lights, which were reflected in the water, all looking red-gold by contrast with the green-gold of the moon. On August 10th from Bâle to Heidelberg, the rose-coloured city of the great Tun! Other tuns are also shown, not quite so capacious; but what swilling they suggest on the part of the old electors, who gathered all that hock in tithes!

I was mortified when trying to impress my husband with the charms of the Rhine as we dropped down to Cologne. My early Diary tells of my enchantment on that fondly-remembered river. But, alas! this time the weather was rainy and ugly all the way, and as we came to the best part, the romantic Gorge, he shut himself up in a deck cabin, out of which I could not entice him. I suspect the natives on board drove him in there rather than his resentment at the “come down” from the glowing descriptions one reads in travel books. These natives were a most irritating foreground to the blurred views. All day long, and into the night, meals were perpetually breaking out all over the deck and, do what one could, the feeding of those Teutons obtruded itself on one’s attention ad nauseam. I have a sketch, taken sub rosa, of an obese and terrible frau, seated behind her rather smart officer husband at one of the little tables. She had emptied her capacious mug of beer, and was asking him for more, to which demand he was paying no attention. But “Gustav! Gustav!” she persisted, poking him in the back with her empty tankard. The “Gustav!” and the prods were getting too much to be ignored by the long-suffering back, and she got her refill. What General Gordon calls the “German visage” in contrast with the “Italian countenance” never appeared so surprisingly ugly as it did to us that day on the crowded deck of the Queen of Prussia.

My Diary says: “At Mayence, Will and I, always on the look-out for soldiers, had a good opportunity of seeing German infantry, as we stopped here a long time and two line battalions crossed the bridge near us. From the deck of the steamer the men looked big enough, but when Will ran on shore and overhauled them to have a nearer look, I could gauge their height by his six-foot-two. He showed a clear head and shoulders above their pickelhauben. They were short, chiefly by reason of the stumpy legs, which carry a long back – a very unbeautiful arrangement.”

The next day we had a rather dull start from Cologne along a dismal stretch of river as far as Düsseldorf. Killing time at Düsseldorf is not lively. At the café where we had tea two young subalterns of hussars came gaily in to have their coffee, and, just as they were sitting down with a cavalry swagger, there came in a major of some other corps, and the two immediately got up, saluted, and left the room. Here was discipline! On our returning to the steamer Will found an epauletted disciple of Bismarck in my place at supper. He told the epauletted one of his mistake, much to the latter’s manifest astonishment, who didn’t move. I suppose there came something into the British soldier’s eye, but, anyway, the sabre-rattler eventually got up and went elsewhere: things felt electric.

August 14th found us nearly all day on board the boat. “A very interesting day, showing me a phase of Rhine scenery familiar to me in Dutch pictures by the score, but never seen by me till then in reality. The strong wind blew from the sea and tossed the green-yellow river into tumultuous waves, over which came bounding the blunt-bowed craft from Holland, taking merchandise up stream, and differing in no way from the boats beloved of the old Dutch masters. On either side of the river were low banks waving with rushes, and beyond stretched sunken marshy meadows, and here and there quaint little towns glided by with windmills whirring, and clusters of ships’ masts appearing above the grey willows and sedges. Dordrecht formed a perfect picture à la Rembrandt, with a host of windmills on the skyline, telling dark against the brightness, at the confluence of the Maes and Rhine. Here Cuyp was born, the painter of sunlit cows. Rotterdam pleased us greatly, and we strolled about in the evening, coming upon the statue of Erasmus, which I place amongst the most admirable statues I have seen. Rotterdam possesses in rich abundance the peculiar charm of a seaport. A place of this kind has for me a very strong attraction. The varied shipping, the bustle on land and water, the colour, the noise, the mixture of human types, the bustle of men and animals; all these things have always filled me with pleasure at a great seaport.” A visit to Holland (“the dustless” land, as my husband called it truly), a revel amongst the Amsterdam galleries, then Antwerp, where we embarked for Harwich, closed our trip. Invigorated and restored, I set to work on an 8-foot canvas, whereon I painted a subject which had been in my mind since childhood.

CHAPTER XIV

QUEEN VICTORIA

IT must have been at Villa de’ Franchi that my father related to me a tragedy which had profoundly moved England in the year 1842, and he laughingly encouraged me to paint it when I should be grown up. The Diary says: “We are now at war with poor Shere Ali, and this new Afghan War revived for me the idea of the tragedy of ‘42, namely, Dr. Brydon reaching Jellalabad, weary and fainting, on his dying horse, the sole survivor, as was then thought, from our disaster in the Cabul passes… Here I am, on 1st March, 1879, not doing badly with the picture. I think it is well painted, and I hope poetical. But I have had the darkest winter I can remember, and lost nearly all January by the succession of fogs which have accompanied this long frost. Will sailed under orders for the Cape last Friday, February 28th. Our terrible defeat at Isandula has caused the greatest commotion here, and regiments are being poured out of England to Zululand in a fleet of transports; and now staff officers are being selected for posts of great responsibility out there, and amongst these is Colonel Butler, A.A.G. to General Clifford.

“March 16th, 1879.– I am beginning to show my picture. Scarcely anything is talked of still but the fighting in Zululand and the incapacity of that poor unfortunate Lord Chelmsford, whom Government keeps telling they will continue to trust in his supreme post of Commander-in-Chief, though he would evidently be thankful to be relieved of an anxiety which his nervous temperament and susceptible nature must make unbearable. What magnificent subjects for pictures the ‘Defence of Rorke’s Drift’ will furnish. When we get full details I shall be much tempted to paint some episode of that courageous achievement which has shed balm on the aching wound of Isandula. But the temptation will have to be very strong to make me break my rule of not painting contemporary subjects. I like to mature my themes.

“Studio Sunday. At last, at last! After three years of disappointment another Academy Studio Show has come, and that very brightly and successfully. I have called the Afghan picture ‘The Remnants of an Army.’ I had the Irish picture to show also, by permission of Whitehead, ‘’Listed for the Connaught Rangers.’ From one till six to-day people poured in. My studio was got up quite charmingly with curtains and screens, and with wild beast skins disposed on the floor, and my arms and armour furbished up. The two pictures came out well, and both appeared to ‘take.’ However, not much value can be attached to to-day’s praises to my face. But I must not let Elmore’s (R.A.) tribute to the ‘Remnants of an Army’ go unrecorded. ‘It is impossible to look at that man’s face unmoved,’ and his eyes were positively dimmed! I have heard it said that no one was ever known to shed tears before a picture. On reading a book, on hearing music, yes, but not on seeing a painting. Well! that is not true, as I have proved more than once. I can’t resist telling here of a pathetic man who came to me to say, ‘I had a wet eye when I saw your picture!’ He had one eye brown and the other blue, and I almost asked, ‘Which, the brown or the blue?’ It is often so difficult to know what to answer appreciatively to enthusiastic and unexpected praise!

“Varnishing Day. A long and cheery day in those rooms of happy memory at Burlington House. Both my pictures are well hung and look well, and congratulations flowed in.” A few days later: “Alice and I to the Private View at that fascinating Burlington House, so fascinating when one’s works are well placed! The Press is treating me very well. No subsidised puffs here, so I enjoy these critiques. The Academy has received me back with open arms, and the members are very nice to me, some of them expressing their hope that I am pleased with the positions of my pictures, and several of them speaking quite openly about their determination to vote for me at the next election.”

The Fine Art Society bought the Afghan subject of which they published a very faithful engraving, and it is now at the Tate Gallery. It is a comfort to me to know that nearly all my principal works are either in the keeping of my Sovereign or in public galleries, and not changing hands among private collectors.

I spent much of a cool, if rainy, summer at Edenbridge, in Kent, taking a rose bower of a cottage there, my parents with me. There we heard in the papers the dreadful news of the Prince Imperial’s death. Then followed a hasty line from my husband, written in a fury of indignation from Natal, at the sacrifice of “the last of the Napoleons.” When he returned at long last from the deplorable Zulu War, followed by the Sekukuni Campaign, the poor Empress Eugénie sent for him to Camden Place, and during a long and most painful interview she asked for all details, her tears flowing all the time, and in her open way letting all her sorrow loose in paroxysms of grief. He had managed the funeral and embarkation at Durban. The pall was covered with artificial violets which he had asked the nuns there to make, at high pressure, and he subsequently described to me the impressive sight of the cortège as it wound down the hill to the port off Durban, in the afternoon sunshine.

At little Edenbridge I was busy making studies of any grey horses I could find, as I had already begun my charge of the Scots Greys at Waterloo at my studio. That charge I called “Scotland for Ever,” and I owe the subject to an impulse I received that season from the Private View at the Grosvenor Gallery, now extinct. The Grosvenor was the home of the “Æsthetes” of the period, whose sometimes unwholesome productions preceded those of our modern “Impressionists.” I felt myself getting more and more annoyed while perambulating those rooms, and to such a point of exasperation was I impelled that I fairly fled and, breathing the honest air of Bond Street, took a hansom to my studio. There I pinned a 7-foot sheet of brown paper on an old canvas and, with a piece of charcoal and a piece of white chalk, flung the charge of “The Greys” upon it. Dr. Pollard, who still looked in during my husband’s absences as he used to do in my maiden days to see that all was well with me, found me in a surprising mood.

On returning from my villeggiatura in Kent with my parents I took up again the painting of this charge, and one day the Keeper of the Queen’s Privy Purse, Sir Henry Ponsonby, called at the studio to ask me if I would paint a picture for Her Majesty, the subject to be taken from a war of her own reign.

Of course, I said “Yes,” and gladly welcomed the honour, but being a slow worker, I saw that “Scotland for Ever!” must be put aside if the Queen’s picture was to be ready for the next Academy.

Every one was still hurrahing over the defence of “Rorke’s Drift” in Zululand as though it had been a second Waterloo. My friends (not my parents) urged and urged. I demurred, because it was against my principles to paint a conflict. In the “Greys” the enemy was not shown, here our men would have to be represented at grips with the foe. No, I put that subject aside and proposed one that I felt and saw in my mind’s eye most vividly. I proposed this to the Queen – the finding of the dead Prince Imperial and the bearing of his body from the scene of his heroic death on the lances of the 17th Lancers. Her Majesty sent me word that she approved, to my great relief. I began planning that most impressive composition. Then I got a message to say the Queen thought it better not to paint the subject. What was to be done? The Crimea was exhausted. Afghanistan? But I was compelled by clamour to choose the popular Rorke’s Drift; so, characteristically, when I yielded I threw all my energies into the undertaking.

When the 24th Regiment, now the South Wales Borderers, who in that fight saved Natal, came home, some of the principal heroes were first summoned to Windsor and then sent on to me, and as soon as I could get down to Portsmouth, where the 24th were quartered, I undertook to make all the studies from life necessary for the big picture there. Nothing that the officers of that regiment and the staff could possibly do to help me was neglected. They even had a representation of the fight acted by the men who took part in it, dressed in the uniforms they wore on that awful night. Of course, the result was that I reproduced the event as nearly to the life as possible, but from the soldier’s point of view – I may say the private’s point of view – not mine, as the principal witnesses were from the ranks. To be as true to facts as possible I purposely withdrew my own view of the thing. What caused the great difficulty I had to grapple with was the fact that the whole mass of those fighting figures was illuminated by firelight from the burning hospital. Firelight transforms colours in an extraordinary way which you hardly realise till you have to reproduce the thing in paint.

The Zulus were a great difficulty. I had them in the composition in dark masses, rather swallowed up in the shade, but for one salient figure grasping a soldier’s bayonet to twist it off the rifle, as was done by many of those heroic savages. My excellent Dr. Pollard got me a sort of Zulu as model from a show in London. It was unfortunate that a fog came down the day he was brought to my studio, so that at one time I could see nothing of my dusky savage but the whites of his eyes and his teeth. I hope I may never have to go through such troubles again!

When the picture was in its pale, shallow, early stage, the Queen, who was deeply interested in its progress, wished to see it, and me. So to Windsor I took it. The Ponsonbys escorted me to the Great Gallery, where I beheld my production, looking its palest, meanest, and flattest, installed on an easel, with two lords bending over it – one of them Lord Beaconsfield.

Exeunt the two lords, right, through a dark side door. Enter the Queen, left. Prince Leopold, Duchess of Argyll, Princess Beatrice and others grouped round the easel, centre. The Queen came up to me and placed her plump little hand in mine after I had curtseyed, and I was counselled to give Her Majesty the description of every figure. She spoke very kindly in a very deep, guttural voice, and showed so much emotion that I thought her all too kind, shrinking now and then as I spoke of the wounds, etc. She told me how she had found my husband lying at Netley Hospital after Ashanti, apparently near his end, and spoke with warmth of his services in that campaign. She did not leave us until I had explained every figure, even the most distant. She knew all by name, for I had managed to show, in that scuffle, all the V.C.’s and other conspicuous actors in the drama, the survivors having already been presented to her. Majors Chard and Bromhead were sufficiently recognisable in the centre, for I had had them both for their portraits.

The Academicians put “The Defence of Rorke’s Drift” in the Lecture Room of unhappy “Quatre Bras” memory, no doubt for the same reason they gave in the case of that picture. Yes, there was a great crush before it, but I was not satisfied as to its effect in that poor light. It is now with “The Roll Call” at St. James’s Palace. I learnt later how very, very pleased the Queen was with her commission, and that one day at Windsor, wishing to show it to some friends, the twilight deepening, she showed so much appreciation that she took a pair of candlesticks and held them up at the full stretch of her arms to light the picture. I like to see in my mind’s eye that Rembrandtesque effect, with the principal figure in the group our Queen. She wanted me to paint her two other subjects, but, somehow, that never came off.

CHAPTER XV

OFFICIAL LIFE – THE EAST

IN 1880 my husband was offered the post of Adjutant-General at Plymouth, and thither we went in time, with the pretty little infant Elizabeth Frances, who came to fill the place of the sister who was gone. There three more of our children were born.

I took up “Scotland for Ever!” again, and in the bright light of our house on the Hoe, with never a brown fog to hinder me, and with any amount of grey army horses as models, I finished that work. It was exhibited alone. It is quite unnecessary to burden my readers with the reason of this. I was very sorry, as I expected rather a bright effect with all those white and grey galloping hippogriffes bounding out of the Academy walls. There was a law suit in question, and there let the matter rest. Messrs. Hildesheimer bought the copyright from me, and the picture I sold, later on, to a private purchaser, who has presented it to the city of Leeds. By a happy chance I had a supply of very brilliant Spanish white (blanco de plata) for those horses, and though I have ever since used the finest blanc d’argent, made in Paris, I don’t think the Spanish white has a rival. Perhaps its maker took the secret with her to the Elysian Fields. It was an old widow of Seville.

On May 11th of that year our beloved father died, comforted with the heartening rites of the Church. He had been received not long before the end.

Life at “pleasant Plymouth” was very interesting in its way, and the charm of the West Country found in me the heartiest appreciation. But the climate is relaxing, and conducive to lotus eating. One seems to live in a mental Devonshire cream of pleasant days spent in excursions on land and water, trips up the many lovely rivers, or across the beautiful Sound to various picnic rendezvous on the coast. There was much festivity: balls in the winter and long excursions in summer, frequently to the wilds of Dartmoor. Particularly pleasant were the receptions at Government House under the auspices of the Pakenhams – perfect hosts – and at the Admiralty, with its very distinguished host and hostess, Sir Houston and Lady Stewart. Over Dartmoor there spread the charm of the unbounded hospitality of the Mortimer Colliers, who lived on the verge of the moor, and this was a thing ever to be fondly remembered. No pleasanter house could offer one a welcome than “Foxhams,” and how hearty a welcome that always was!

Riding was our principal pleasure. I never spent more enjoyable days in the saddle elsewhere. My husband and I had a riding tour through Cornwall – just the thing I liked most. But he was from time to time called away. To Egypt in 1882, for Tel-el-Kebir; twice to Canada, the second time on Government business; and in 1884 to the great Gordon Relief Expedition, that terrible tragedy, made possible by the maddening delays at home. I illustrated the book he wrote[9 - “The Campaign of the Cataracts.”] on that colossal enterprise, so wantonly turned into failure from quite feasible success.

My next picture was on a smaller scale than its predecessors, and was exhibited at the Academy in 1882. The Boer War, with its terrible Majuba Hill disaster, had attracted all our sorrowful attention the year before to South Africa, and I chose the attack on Laing’s Nek for my subject. The two Eton boys whom I show, Elwes and Monck, went forward (Elwes to his death) with the cry of “Floreat Etona!” and I gave the picture those words for its title.

Yet another Lord Mayor’s Banquet at the Mansion House, in honour of the Royal Academicians, saw me late in 1881 a guest once more in those gilded halls, this time by my husband’s side. He responded for the Army, and joined Arts and Arms in a bright little speech, composed impromptu. “We were a highly honoured couple,” I read in the Diary, “and very glad that we came up. We must have sat at that festive board over three hours. The music all through was exceedingly good and, indeed, so was the fare. The homely tone of civic hospitality is so characteristic, dressed as it is with gold and silver magnificence, rivalling that of Royalty itself! One of the waiters tried to press me to have a second helping of whitebait by whispering in my ear the seductive words, ‘Devilled, ma’am.’ It was a fiery edition of the former recipe. I resisted.”

The departure of my husband with Lord Wolseley (then Sir Garnet) and Staff for Egypt on August 5th, 1882, to suppress poor old Arabi and his “rebels” was the most trying to me of all the many partings, because of its dramatic setting. One bears up well on a crowded railway platform, but when it comes to watching a ship putting off to sea, as I did that time at Liverpool, to the sound of farewell cheering and “Auld Lang Syne,” one would sooner read of its pathos than suffer it in person. Soldiers’ wives in war time have to feel the sickening sensation on waking some morning when news of a fight is expected of saying to themselves, “I may be a widow.” Not only have I gone through that, but have had a second period of trial with two sons under fire in the World War.

I gave a long period of my precious time to making preparations for a large picture representing Wolseley and his Staff reaching the bridge across the canal at the close of the battle of Tel-el-Kebir, followed by his Staff, wherein figured my husband. The latter had not been very enthusiastic about the subject. To beat those poor fellaheen soldiers was not a matter for exultation, he said; and he told me that the capture of Arabi’s earthworks had been like “going through brown paper.” He thought the theme unworthy, and hoped I would drop the idea. But I wouldn’t; and, seeing me bent on it, he did all he could to help me to realise the scene I had chosen. Lord Wolseley gave me a fidgety sitting at their house in London, his wife trying to keep him quiet on her knee like a good boy. I had crowds of Highlanders to represent, and went in for the minutest rendering of the equipment then in use. Well, I never was so long over a work. Depend upon it, if you do not “see” the thing vividly before you begin, but have to build it up as you go along, the picture will not be one of your best. Nor was this one! It was exhibited in the Academy of 1885, and had a moderate success. It was well engraved.

In the September of 1884 my husband left for the Gordon Expedition, having finished his work of getting boats ready for the cataracts, boats to carry the whole Army. In the following June he came home on leave, well in health, in spite of rending wear and tear, but deeply hurt at the failure of what might have been one of the greatest campaigns in modern history. How he had urged and urged, and fumed at the delays! He told me the campaign was lost three times over. Gordon was simply sacrificed to ineptitude in high quarters at home. In this connection, I ask, can praise be too great for the British rank and file who did their best in this unparalleled effort? You saw Lifeguardsmen plying their oars in the boats, oars they had never handled before this call; marines mounted on camels – more than “horse-marines,” as a camel in his movements is five horses rolled into one; everything he was called upon to do the British soldier did to the best of his capacity.

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

CHAPTER XVI

TO THE EAST

I FOLLOWED my husband to Egypt, where he had returned, in command at Wady Halfa on the expiration of his leave, on November 14th, 1885. I went with our eldest little boy and girl. A new experience for me – the East! One of my longings in childhood was to see the East. There it was for me.

Cairo in 1885 still retained much of its Oriental aspect in the European quarter. (I don’t suppose the old, true Cairo will ever change.) I was just in time. The Shepheard’s Hotel of that day had a terrace in front of it where we used to sit and watch the life of the street below, an occupation very pleasing to myself. The building was overrun with a wealth of flowering creepers of all sorts of loveliness, and surrounded with a garden. When next we visited Cairo the creepers were being torn down, and the terrace demolished. Then a huge hotel was run up in avaricious haste to reap the next season’s harvest from the thronging visitors, and now stands flush with the street to echo the trams.

It is difficult for me now to revive in memory the exquisite surprise I felt when first I saw the life of the East. I could hardly believe the thing was real, everyday life. Though I have often returned to Egypt since, that first-time feeling never was renewed, though my enjoyment of Oriental beauty and picturesqueness never, I am glad to say, faded in the least. Oh, you who enjoy the zest of life, be thankful that you possess it! It is a thing not to be acquired, but to be born with. I think artists keep it the longest, for it enters the heart by the eye. The long letters I wrote to my mother on the spot and at the moment I incorporated later in the little book already referred to. Oh, the pleasures of memory, streaked with sadness though they must be, and with ugly things of all kinds, too! Still, how intensely precious a possession they are when weeded. To me, after Italy and, of course, the Holy Land, give me the Nile.

I and the children remained in Cairo till I got my husband’s message from the front that the way was clear enough for our journey as far as Luxor. There I and the children remained until the fight at Giniss was won and all danger was over further up stream. At Luxor began the most enjoyable of all modes of travel – by houseboat. The dahabiyeh Fostat was sent down from Wady Halfa to take us up to Assouan, where my husband awaited us. We had reached Luxor from Cairo by the commonplace post boat. The Assouan Dam was, of course, not in existence, and our dahabiyeh had to be hauled in the old way through the first cataract, while we transferred ourselves to another dahabiyeh moored off the now submerged island of Philæ.

This cut-and-dried chronicle includes one of the most enchanting experiences of my life. Above Philæ we entered Nubia, before whose intensified colouring the lower desert pales. Time being very precious to my husband, our slow, dreamy sailing houseboat had to be towed by a little steamer for the rest of the way to Wady Halfa, where we lived till the heat of March warned us that I and the children must prudently go into northern coolness. And to Plymouth we returned, leaving the General to drag out the burning summer at Wady Halfa in such heat as I never had had to suffer. While at Halfa I made many sketches in oil for my picture, “A Desert Grave,” out in the desert across the river. It is very trying painting in the desert on account of the wind, which blows the sand perpetually into your eyes. With that and the glare, I took two inflamed eyes back with me to Europe. The picture should have been more poetical than it turned out to be, and I wish I could repaint it now. It was well placed at the Academy. The Upper Nile had these graves of British officers and men all along its banks during that terrible toll taken in the course of the Gordon Expedition and after, some in single loneliness, far apart, and some in twos and threes. These graves had to be made exactly in the same way as those of the enemy, lest a cross or some other Christian mark should invite desecration.