Elizabeth Butler

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ THE LAST OF EGYPT
HERE at Verona was Italy in her richest dress, her abundant and varied crops filling the landscape, one might say, to overflowing; not a space of soil left untilled, and, all the way along our road to San Bonifacio for Arcole, the snow-capped Alps were shimmering in the blue atmosphere on one hand, and a great teeming plain stretched away to the horizon on the other.
I noticed the fine physique of the peasantry, and their nice ways. Every peasant man we met on the road raised his hat to us as we passed. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The beauty of the colour of mule and rider, the black and gold housings of that white beast, the lilac of the rider’s robes, and the tender glory of the embossed Cross—how these things enchant me! An attendant took the Cross as the priest dismounted. Then a flourish of modern Zouave bugles and a sharp roll of the drum intruded the forgotten present day on our notice, and soon on came the gallant gendarmerie and dragoons, and then the coach of His Holiness, seeming to bubble over with molten gold in the sunshine. ”

“ I don’t know what old Naples was like—I know it was frightfully dirty—but I saw it modernised into a very horrid town, a smudge of ugliness on one of the ideal beauties of the world. It gave me a shock on beholding it as we entered the harbour, and so I leave the town itself severely alone, with its new, barrack-like buildings looking gaunt and gritty in the burning June sunshine. The cloisters of the Certosa at Sant’ Elmo are very beautiful, and I much enjoyed the church and the splendid “Descent from the Cross” of Spagnoletto. ”

“ May 17th.—A glorious day for the Queen’s Review, which was certainly a dazzling spectacle. Dear old Queen, it is many a long year since she reviewed the Aldershot Division; nor would she have come but that her son is now in supreme command here. Old people say it was like old times, only that she has shrunk into a tinier woman than ever she was, and by the side of the towering Duchess of Coburg in that spacious carriage she looked indeed tiny, and nearly extinguished under a large grey sunshade. ”

“ The Grenadier and Scots Guards were all on their knees as we arrived, and the bright green and gold vestments of the priest were relieved very vividly in the sunshine against the darker green background of the forest beyond. Quite a little crowd of stalwart guardsmen received Holy Communion, and two of them were sheltering with their careful hands the candles from the soft warm breeze, one at each end of the altar. We sit out in the leafy garden of the hotel and have tea there, we parents and relatives, with our boys by us at all spare moments. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Ross, inhabited in the summer the delicious old villa of Castagnolo, at Lastra a Signa, six miles on the Pisan side of my beloved Florence. Of course, I give page after page in the Diary to our journey across Italy under the Alps and the Apennines. To the modern motorist it must all sound slow, though we did travel by rail! Above all the lovely things we saw on our way by the Turin-Bologna line, I think Parma, rising from the banks of a shallow river, glowing in sunshine and palpitating jewel-like shade, holds pride of place for noontide beauty. ”

“ I have seen some of the most impressive beauties of our world, but never have I been more impressed than by the solemn grandeur of the mountain across Clewe Bay they call Croagh Patrick, as we saw it on the evening of our arrival at Mulranny. The last flush of the after-glow lingered on its dark slopes and the red planet Mars flamed above its cone, all this solemn beauty reflected in the sleeping waters. At Mulranny I spent nearly all my days making studies of sheep and landscape for the next picture I sent to the Academy—“A Cistercian Shepherd.” ”

“ 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. ”

“ This old-fashioned al fresco entertainment had the local colour which I look for when I travel and which is getting rarer year by year. Our Colosseum moonlight was more weird than ever. At eleven we had our moon. It was a large, battered, woeful, waning old moon, that looked in at us through the broken arch. An opportune owl, which had been screeching like a cat in the shade, flitted across its sloping disc just at the supreme moment.”
To receive Holy Communion at the hands of the Holy Father is a privilege for which we should be very thankful. ”

“ I never saw a human being so like a spirit as Leo XIII. He looked as white as his mitre as he leant forward and stretched his arm out in benediction from side to side, borne high above the helmets of the Noble Guard. One heard cheers in all languages, and a curious effect was produced by the whirling handkerchiefs, which made a white haze above the dark crowd. I have often heard secular monarchs cheered, and that very heartily, but for a Pope it seems that more than ordinary loyalty prompts the cheerers. The people seem to give out their whole being in their voices and gestures. ”

“ We got into the carriage which was awaiting us, and the Marchese into his little pony trap, and off we went flying for a mysterious, dream-like drive in misty moonlight, we in front and our host behind, jingle-jingling merrily with the pleasant monotony of his lion-maned little pony’s canter. We could not believe the drive was a real one. It was too much joy to be at Florence—too good to be true. ”

“ The regiments in it are ‘The Queen’s,’ the Welsh Fusiliers, Staffords, and Warwicks, with the monstrous 4·7 guns drawn by my well-loved mighty mammoths. The guns are made impossible to the artist of modern war by being daubed in blue and red blotches which make them absolutely formless and, of course, no glint of light on the hidden metal is seen. Still, there is much that is very striking, though the colour, the sparkle, the gallant plumage, the glinting of gold and silver, have given way to universal grimness. After all, why dress up grim war in all that splendour? ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ I was fortunate in getting down in colour such a telling thing, a goatherd in a Bedouin’s burnous, which was wildly flapping in the hot wind against the red glow in the west, driving a herd of those goats I find so effective, with their long, pendant ears, and kids skipping in impish gambols in front. ‘Apocalyptic’ apparition, caught, as we left it astern, in that portentous gloaming! I shall make something of this. As to the inhabitants of those regions, to contemplate their life is too depressing. As darkness comes on you see them creeping into their unlighted mud hovels like their animals. ”

“ 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 ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ July 24th.—The musketry instructor, contrary to my sad expectations, was by no means the automaton one expects a soldier to be, but a thoroughly intelligent model, and his attitudes combined perfect drill-book correctness with great life and action. He was splendid. I can feel certain of everything being right in the attitudes, and will have no misgivings. It is extraordinary what a well-studied position that kneeling to resist cavalry is. I dread to think what blunders I might have committed. No civilian would have detected them, but the military would have been down upon me. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ What a tax royalty has to pay! There was the laying of a foundation stone, a trip in the launch up the Tamar, and something to be done each day, but with as many rests as we could squeeze in for our very simpatica princess. The drive through the streets of Plymouth showed me what the crowd looks like from royalty’s point of view as I sat by her side in the carriage. I remarked to her what bad teeth the people had. “They are nothing to those in the north,” the poor dear said. How often royalty has to run that gauntlet of an unlovely and cheering crowd! ”

“ 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.” ”