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, andvice versâ.
In Western Ireland. A “Jarvey” and “Biddy.”In Western Ireland.A “Jarvey” and “Biddy.”
I would not have missed the Valentia pig for anything. A taller, leaner, gaunter specimen has nothis match anywhere, not even in the little black hog of Monte Cassino, whose salient hips are so unexpected. There is something particularly arresting in a pig with visible hips.[8]All the animals in the west seemed to me free-and-easy creatures that live with the peasants as members of the family, having a much better time than the humans. They frisk irresponsibly in and out of the cabins—no “by your leave” or “with your leave”—and, altogether, enjoy life to the top of their own highest level. The poorer the people, the greater appears the contrast caused by this inverted state of things.
The next time we left England was to go in the opposite direction—to the Pyrenees. Rapid travel is fast levelling down the different countries, and a carriage journey through the Pyrenean country is a bygone pleasure. We have to go to Thibet or the Great Wall of China for our trips if we want to write anything original about our travels. A flight by air to the North Pole would, at first, prove very readable and novel, if well described. This, however, does not take from the pleasure of going over the inner circle in memory. In the year 1878 we could still find much that was new and refreshing in a tour through the south of France! Some friends of mine went up to Khartoum from Cairo not long ago, with return tickets, by rail, and all they could say was that the journey was so dusty that they had to draw the blinds of their compartment and play bridge all the way. Poor dears, how arid!
This little tour of ours was well advised. The loss of our firstborn, Mary Patricia, brought our firstsorrow with it, and we went to Lourdes and made a widedétourfrom 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 ofvetturinotravel 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 bluebéretand very voluble in localpatois. His horses’ bells jingled in the old familiar way of my childhood; two absurd little dogs of his accompaniedus 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 thoseCols?Luchon was not embellished by the invalids there, whose principal ailment amongst the female patients was evidently a condition ofembonpointso 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 journeyedviâToulouse 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 thatfamous 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, andinto 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 attentionad nauseam. I have a sketch, takensub rosa, of an obese and terriblefrau, 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 theQueen 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 theirpickelhauben. 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 thetwo 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 pictureà laRembrandt, 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, thebustle 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.
ITmust 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 postof 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 eyebrown 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 puffshere, 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 Eugéniesent 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 thecortègeas 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 myvilleggiaturain 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 meif 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. Nothingthat 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 theprivate’spoint 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 candlesticksand 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.
IN1880 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 gallopinghippogriffesbounding 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 finestblanc d’argent, made in Paris, I don’t think the Spanish white has a rival. Perhaps its maker took the secret with her to the Elysian Fields. It was an old widow of Seville.
On May 11th of that year our beloved father died, comforted with the heartening rites of the Church. He had been received not long before the end.
Life at “pleasant Plymouth” was very interesting in its way, and the charm of the West Country found in me the heartiest appreciation. But the climate is relaxing, and conducive to lotus eating. One seems to live in a mental Devonshire cream of pleasant days spent in excursions on land and water, trips up the many lovely rivers, or across the beautiful Sound to various picnic rendezvous on the coast. There was much festivity: balls in the winter and long excursions in summer, frequently to the wilds of Dartmoor. Particularly pleasant were the receptions at Government House under the auspices of the Pakenhams—perfect hosts—and at the Admiralty, with its very distinguished host and hostess, Sir Houston and Lady Stewart. Over Dartmoor there spread the charm of the unbounded hospitality of the Mortimer Colliers, who lived on the verge of the moor, and this was a thing ever to be fondly remembered. No pleasanter house could offer one a welcome than “Foxhams,” and how hearty a welcome that always was!
Riding was our principal pleasure. I never spent more enjoyable days in the saddle elsewhere. My husband and I had a riding tour through Cornwall—just the thing I liked most. But he was from time to time called away. To Egypt in 1882, for Tel-el-Kebir; twice to Canada, the second time on Government business; and in 1884 to the great Gordon Relief Expedition, that terrible tragedy, made possible by the maddening delays at home. I illustrated the book he wrote[9]on that colossal enterprise, so wantonly turned into failure from quite feasible success.
My next picture was on a smaller scale than itspredecessors, 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, composedimpromptu. “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 itspathos 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 poorfellaheensoldiers 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 carrythe 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 lostthree 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 didtheirbest 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.
IFOLLOWEDmy 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 theleast. 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 whenweeded. 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. Thedahabiyeh Fostatwas 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 ourdahabiyehhad to be hauled in the old way through the first cataract, while we transferred ourselves to anotherdahabiyehmoored 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 tillthe heat of March warned us that I and the children must prudently go into northern coolness. And to Plymouth we returned, leaving the General to drag out the burning summer at Wady Halfa in such heat as I never had had to suffer. While at Halfa I made many sketches in oil for my picture, “A Desert Grave,” out in the desert across the river. It is very trying painting in the desert on account of the wind, which blows the sand perpetually into your eyes. With that and the glare, I took two inflamed eyes back with me to Europe. The picture should have been more poetical than it turned out to be, and I wish I could repaint it now. It was well placed at the Academy. The Upper Nile had these graves of British officers and men all along its banks during that terrible toll taken in the course of the Gordon Expedition and after, some in single loneliness, far apart, and some in twos and threes. These graves had to be made exactly in the same way as those of the enemy, lest a cross or some other Christian mark should invite desecration.
The World War has thrown a dreadful cloud between us and those old war days, but the cloud in time will spread out thinner and let us look through to those past times.
My next experience was Brittany. Thither we went for a rest, and to give the children the habit of talking French. At Dinan, in an old farmhouse, we ruralised amidst orchards and amongst the Breton peasantry. Very nice and quiet and healthy. There our youngest boy was born, Martin William, who was immediately inscribed on the army books as liable for service in the French Army if he reached the age of eighteen on French soil. During that part of ourstay at Dinan I painted the 24th Dragoons, who were stationed there, leaving the town by the old Porte St. Malo for the front, a great crowd of people seeing them off. I had mounted dragoons and peasants for the asking as models.
My husband was knighted—K.C.B.—in this interval, at Windsor. We went to live in Ireland from Dinan, in 1888, under the Wicklow Mountains, where the children continued their healthy country life in its fulness. The picture I had painted of the departing dragoons went to the Academy in 1889, and in 1890 I exhibited “An Eviction in Ireland,” which Lord Salisbury was pleased to be facetious about in his speech at the banquet, remarking on the “breezy beauty” of the landscape, which almost made him wish he could take part in an eviction himself. How like a Cecil!
The ‘eighties had seen our Government do some dreadful things in the way of evictions in Ireland. Being at Glendalough at the end of that decade, and hearing one day that an eviction was to take place some nine miles distant from where we were staying for my husband’s shooting, I got an outside car and drove off to the scene, armed with my paints. I met the police returning from their distasteful “job,” armed to the teeth and very flushed. On getting there I found the ruins of the cabin smouldering, the ground quite hot under my feet, and I set up my easel there. The evicted woman came to search amongst the ashes of her home to try and find some of her belongings intact. She was very philosophical, and did not rise to the level of my indignation as an ardent English sympathiser. However, I studied her well, and on returning home at Delgany I set upthe big picture which commemorates a typical eviction in the black ‘eighties. I seldom can say I am pleased with my work when done, but Iamcomplacent about this picture; it has the true Irish atmosphere, and I was glad to turn out that landscape successfully which I had made all my studies for, on the spot, at Glendalough. What storms of wind and rain, and what dazzling sunbursts I struggled in, one day the paints being blown out of my box and nearly whirled into the lake far below my mountain perch! My canvas, acting like a sail, once nearly sent me down there too. I did not see this picture at all at the Academy, but I am very certain it cannot have been very “popular” in England. Before it was finished my husband was appointed to the command at Alexandria, and as soon as I had packed off the “Eviction,” I followed, on March 24th, and saw again the fascinating East.
My journey took meviâVenice, where the P.& O. boatHydaspeswas waiting. Can any journey to Egypt be more charming than this one, right across Italy?
Oh! you who do not think a journey a mere means of getting to your destination as quickly as possible, say, if you have taken the Milan-Verona-Padua line, is there anything in all Italy to surpass that burst on the view of the Lago di Garda after you emerge from the Lonato tunnel? On a blue day, say in spring? If you have not gone that way yet, I beg you to be on the look-out on your left when you do go. This wonderful surprise is suddenly revealed, and almost as quickly lost. Waste not a second. I put up at the “Angleterre” at Venice, on the Riva, because from there one sees the lagunes and glimpses of the open sea beyond, and the air is open and fresh.
“March 28th.—Took gondola for the big P. & O. S.S. which is to be my home for the next six days. I at once saw the ship was one of their smartest boats, and all looked very festive on board. Luncheon was served immediately after my arrival, and I found a bright company thereat assembled, with Sir Henry and Lady Layard at their head; some come to see friends off and others to go on. We amalgamated very pleasantly, and great was the waving of handkerchiefs as we slowly steamed past the Dogana and the Riva, our returning friends having gone on shore in gondolas whose sable sides were hidden in brilliant draperies. The sashes of the gondoliers’ liveries flashed in coloured silks and gold fringes; the sea sparkled. I rejoiced. The Montalba girls gave us a salvo of pocket handkerchiefs from their balcony on the Giudecca. What a gay scene! Lady Layard, on leaving, introduced Mrs. H. M., who was to join her husband at Brindisi for a long trip in the big liner from England, and I was very happy at the prospect of her pleasant and intellectual companionship thus far.”
And so we passed out into the early night on the dim Adriatic, after a sunset farewell to Venice, which remains to me as one of the tenderest visions of the past. That voyage to Alexandria is more enjoyable, given fair weather, than most voyages, because one is hardly ever out of sight of land, and such classic land, too! The Ionian Islands, “Morea’s Hills,” Candia. But what a pleasure it is to see on the day before the arrival the signs that the landing is near at hand. The General in Command will be waiting at sunrise on the landing stage, perhaps the light catching the gold lace on his cap, appearing above the turbans of the nativecrowd. Of course every one who has been to Egypt knows the feeling of disappointment at the first sight of its shores, low-lying and fringed with those incongruous windmills which the Great Napoleon vainly planted there to teach the natives how better to make flour. In vain. And so were his wheelbarrows. The natives preferred carrying the mud in their hands. And the city, how it fails to give you the Oriental impression you are longing for, with its pseudo-Italian architecture, its hard paved streets, and dusty boulevards and squares. Government House on the Boulevard de Ramleh was comfortable, roomy and airy, but I missed the imagined garden and palm trees of the Cairo official residence.
“April 3rd.—We have a view of Cleopatra’s Tomb (so called) to the right, jutting out into the intensely blue sea, but the other arm of the bay (the old Roman harbour) to our left, covered with native houses and minarets, is partly hidden by an abomination which hurts me to exasperation, one of those amorphous buildings of tenth-rate Italian vulgarity and dreariness which are being run up here in such quantities, and rears its gaunt expanse close behind this house. To cap this erection it has received the title of ‘Bombay Castle.’ Never mind, I shall soon, in my happy way, cease to notice what I don’t like to see, and shall enjoy all that is left here of the original East and its fascinating barbaric beauty. Will took me for a most interesting drive, first to Ras-el-Tin, during which we threaded a conglomeration of East and West which was bewildering. There were nightmarish Italian ‘palazzi’ loaded with cheap, bluntly-moulded stucco; glaring streets, cafés, dusty gardens, over-dressed Jewish and Levantine women driving about inexaggerated hats, frocks and figures; and there also appeared the dark narrow bazaars and original streets, the latticed windows, the finely-coloured robes of the natives, the weird goats, the wolfish dogs, straying about in all directions. Mounds of rubbish everywhere; some only the leavings of newly-built houses, some the remains of the bombardment’s havoc, others the dust of a once beautiful city whose loveliness in old Roman times must have been supreme.
“Only here and there was I reminded of the charm of Cairo—a tree by a yellow wall, a group of natives eating sugar cane, a water-seller with his tinkling brass cups and a rose behind his ear, and so on. We then had a really enjoyable drive along the Mahmoudieh Canal, which was balm to my mind and eyes. All along the placid water on the opposite bank ran Arab villages with their accompaniments of palms, buffaloes, goats, water jars, native men and women in scriptural robes; water wheels; square-shaped, almost window-less mud dwellings, so appropriate under that intense light. On our bank were the remnants of Pashadom in the shape of gimcrack palaces closed and let go to ruin, on account of fashion having betaken itself to the suburb of Ramleh. These dwellings were, however, so hidden in deep tropical gardens of great and rich beauty that they did not offend.
“Beyond the Arab villages on the other bank appeared Lake Mareotis, and there was a poetical feeling about all that region. It was so strange to have on one side of a narrow band of water old Egypt and the life of the East going on just as it has been for ages past, and on the other the ephemeral tokens of the sham and fleeting life of to-day, and this all the way along a drive of some two miles. This is thefashionable drive, and to see young Egypt on horseback, and old Jewry in carriages, passing and repassing up and down this cosmopolitan Rotten Row is decidedly trying. My admired friends, the running syces, though, redeem the thing to me. Their dress is one of the most perfect in shape, colour and material ever devised. The air was rich with the scent of strange flowers, some of which billowed over entrance gates in magnificent purple masses.”
I must be excused for having shown irritation in my Diary at starting. I soon adapted myself to the entourage, and I hope I “did my manners” as became my official responsibilities. I liked the Greeks best of all—nay, I got very fond of these handsome, sunny people.
It was a curiously cosmopolitan society, and I, who am never good at remembering the little feuds that are always simmering in this kind of mixed company, must have sometimes made mistakes. I heard a Greek woman, who had dined with us the previous evening, informing her friends in a voice fraught with meaning,”Imaginez, hier au soir chez le Général Monsieur Gariopulo a donné le bras à Madame Buzzato!”The recipients of this information were filled with mirth. WhathadI done in pairing off these two for the procession to dinner?
The British were entrenched at Ramleh. The little stations on the railway there gave me quite a turn at first sight. One was “Bulkley,” the next “Fleming,” then “Sydney O. Schutz,” and finally San Stefano at railhead, and a casino with a corrugated iron roof under that scorching sun. Oh, that I should see such a thing in Egypt! Cheek by jowl with the little villas one saw weird Bedouin tents and wild Arabs andtheir animals, carrying on their existence as if the Briton had never come there.
The incongruities of Alexandria became to me positively enjoyable; and the desert air, as ever, was life-giving. My little Syrian horse, “Minnow,” carried me many a mile alongside my husband’s charger, over that pleasant desert sand. But an occasional khamseen wind gave me a taste of the disagreeable phase of Egyptian weather. I name, with the vivid recollection of the khamseen’s irritating qualities, the experience of paying calls (in a nice toilette) under its suffocating puffs. And how the flies swarm; how they settle in black masses on the sweetmeats sold in the streets, and hang in tassels from the native children’s eyes. Oh, yes, there is a seamy side to all things, but it isn’t my way to turn it up more than is necessary. Here may follow a bit of Diary:
“May 22nd.—We had a memorable picnic at Rosetta to-day, with thirty of the English colony. I had long wished to visit this ancient city, brick-built and half deserted, a once opulent place, but now mournful in its decay. I longed to see old Nile once more. We chartered a special train and left Moharram Bey Station at 8 a.m. I was much pleased with the seaside desert and the effects of mirage over Aboukir Bay. The ancient town of Edkou struck me very much. It was built of the small brown Rosetta brick, and was placed on a hill, giving it a different aspect from the usual Arab pale-walled villages which are usually built on level ground. It had thus a peculiar character. Shortly before reaching Rosetta the land becomes richly cultivated. There is a subtle beauty about the cultivated regions of this fascinating land of Egypt which I feel very much. It is the beautyof abundance and richness as well as of vivid colour.
“At Rosetta dense crowds of natives awaited us and some police were detailed to escort us through the town. I heard some of the women of our party wishing they could pick the blue tiles off the minarets, but for my part I prefer them under their lovely sky and sunshine, rather than ornamenting mantelpieces in a Kensington fog. A littlemusharabiehlattice is still left here in the windows and has not yet been taken to grace the British drawing-rooms of Ramleh. We strolled about the bazaars and into the old ramshackle mosques, and, altogether, exhausted the sights. Everywhere in Rosetta you see beautiful little Corinthian marble columns incorporated with the Arab buildings, and supporting the ceilings and pulpits of the mosques. They are daubed over with red plaster. Very often a rich Corinthian capital is used as a base to a pillar by being turned upside down, so that the shaft, crowned with its own capital, possesses two—one at each end—an arrangement evidently satisfactory to the barbarian Arabs who succeeded the classic builders of the old city. Almost every angle of a house has a Greek column acting as corner stone. But the brown brickwork is very dismal, and but for the vivid colours of the people’s dresses the monotony of tone would be displeasing. This is Bairam, and the people during the three days’ feast succeeding the dismal Ramadan Fast are in their most radiant dresses, and revelry and feasting are going on everywhere. Such a mass of moving colour as was the market place of Rosetta to-day these eyes, that have seen so much, never looked upon before.
“At last, when we had climbed into enough mosquesand poked about into houses, and through all the bazaars (the fish bazaar was trying), we went down to the landing stage and took boat for the trysting place, about a mile up the broad, wind-lashed Nile. Will and the Bishop of Clifton, sole remaining straggler from the late pilgrimage to the Holy Land, and half our party had gone on before us; and, after a quick sail along the palm-fringed bank, we arrived at the pretty landing place chosen for our picnic. We found a tent pitched and the servants busy laying the cloth under a dense sycamore, close to an old mosque whose onion-shaped dome and Arab minaret gave me great pleasure as we came in sight of them. I was impatient to make a sketch. I lost no time, and went off and established myself in a palm grove with my water colours. The usual Egyptian drawbacks, however, were there—flies, and puffs of sand blown into one’s eyes and powdering one’s paints. On the Mahmoudieh Canal I am exempt from the sand nuisance, and nothing can be pleasanter than my experience there, sitting in an open carriage with the hood up, and not a soul to bother me.
“Our return to Rosetta was lively. As we were then going against the wind, we had to be towed from the shore, and it was very interesting to watch the agility of our crew dodging in and out of the boats moored under the bank and deftly disengaging the tow-rope from the spars and rigging of these vessels. A tall Circassianeffendiof police cantered on his little Arab along the bank to see that all went well with us. The other half of our party chose to sail and progress by laborious tacking from one side of the wide river to the other, and arrived long after we did. We all met at the house of the Syrian postmaster, where heand his pretty little wife received us with native politeness, and gave us coffee and sweets. Our return journey was most pleasant, and we got to Alexandria at 8 p.m. Twelve charming hours.
“May 24th.—The Queen’s birthday. Trooping of the colour at 5 p.m. on the Moharrem Bey Ground. Most successful. Will, mounted on a powerful chestnut, did look a commanding figure as he raised his plumed helmet and led the ringing cheers for the Queen which brought the pretty ceremony to a close. The sun was near setting behind the height of Komeldik, and lit up the roses in the men’s helmets and garlanded round the standard. In the evening a dull and solemn dinner to the heads of departments and their wives. A difficult function. We had the band of the Suffolks playing outside the windows, which were wide open on the sea. I went out sketching in the morning, very early. I should have been at my post all day on such an occasion, I confess. Will said I was like Nero, fiddling while Rome was burning.
“May 29th.—The Mediterranean Fleet is here. Great interchange of cards, firing of salutes, etc., etc. All very ceremonious, but productive of picturesqueness and colour and effect, so I like it very much. The Khedive Tewfik, too, has arrived, with the Khediviah, for the hot season from Cairo. Will, of course, had to be present at the station this morning for the reception of our puppet, and it was not nice to see the Union Jack down in the dust as the guard of honour of the Suffolks gave the salute. Our dinner to-night was to the admiral and officers of the newly-arrived British squadron.
“June 2nd.—To the Khediviah’s first receptionat the harem of the Ras-el-Tin Palace. I had two Englishwomen to present, rather an unmanageable pair, as seniority appeared to be claimed erroneously at the last moment by the junior. This reception has become a most dull affair now that Oriental ways are done away with. Dancing girls no longer amuse the guests, nor handmaidens cater to them with sweetmeats during the audience, and there is nothing left but absolute emptiness. The Vice-Reine sits, in European dress, on a divan at the end of a vast hall, and the visitors sit in a semi-circle before her on hard European chairs reflected in a polishedparquet, speaking to each other in whispers and furtively sipping coffee. She addresses a few remarks to those nearest her, and the pauses are articulated by the click of the ever-moving fans of the assembly. The ladies-in-waiting and girl slaves move about in a mooning way in the funniest frocks, supposed to be European, but some of them absolutely frumpish. Melancholy eunuchs of the bluest black, in glossy frock coats, rise and bow as one passes along the passages to or from the presence, and it is a relief to get out through the jealously-walled garden into the outer world.
“I find it difficult to converse in a harem, being so bad at small talk. I upset the Vice-Reine’s equanimity by telling her (which was quite true) that I had heard she was taking lessons in painting. ‘Moi, madame?!! Oh! je n’aurais pas le courage!’ It was as bad as when I told her, in Cairo, how much I liked poking about the bazaars. ‘Vous allez dans les bazaars, madame?!!’ So I relapsed into talking of illnesses, which subject I have always found touches the proper note in a harem. They say the Vice-Reinedelights in these audiences, as they are amongst the great events of her days. She is a beautiful woman, a Circassian, and of lovely whiteness.
“Finished the delicate sketch of the loveliest bit of the canal, where the pink minaret and the black cypress are. I wish I could do just one more reach of that lovely waterway before I leave! There is a particular group of oleanders nodding with heavy pink blossom by the water’s edge against a soft blurred background of tamarisk, where women and girls in dark blue, brilliant orange, and rose-coloured robes come down to fetch water in their amphoræ. There is another reach lined for the whole length of the picture with tall waving canebrakes, above whose tender green tops appears the delicate distance of the lagoons of Mareotis; there is—but ah! each bend of that canal reveals fresh beauties, and often as Will has driven me there, I am as eager as ever to miss no point in the lovely sequence.
“June 14th.—All my days now I am sketching more continuously, as the arduous work of paying calls has relaxed greatly. This evening we drove again far beyond Ramleh on the old route followed by Napoleon to reach Aboukir, and I finished the sketch there.”
And so on, till my departure a few days later. I had wisely left my oils at home at Delgany, and thus got together a much larger number of subjects, the handier medium of water-colour being better suited to the official life I had to attend to.
MYreturn voyage was made on board the Messageries boat to Marseilles. This gave me the Straits of Messina as well as those of Bonifacio. On passing Ajaccio I don’t think a single French passenger gave a thought to Napoleon. I was intent on taking in every detail of that place, as far as I could see it through a morning mist. Corsica looked very grand, crowned with great snow-capped mountains.
I lost no time in getting home to the children, and passed the rest of the summer in the green loveliness of Ireland, returning to Egypt, in the following October,viâVenice again. Every soldier’s wife knows what it is to be torn in two between the husband far away abroad and the children one must leave at home. The trial is great, no doubt of it. Then there is this perplexity: whether it would be well to take one of the children with one and risk the dangers of the journey and the climate at the other end. Parents pay heavily for our far-flung Empire!
On the morning of my departure from Venice I woke to the call of the sunbeams pouring into my room, and, behold, as I went to the window, the dome of the “Salute” taking the salute, as we say in the Army, of the sunrise! And the Dogana’s gilded globe responding, too. Joy! our start at least will be calm. Till midday I had Venice to myself, and I could stroll about the Piazza and little streets, andrecollect myself in peaceful meditation in St. Mark’s. What delicate loveliness is that of Venice! Those russet reds and creamy whites and tender yellows, and here and there bits of deep indigo blue to give emphasis to the colour scheme. And that tender opalesque sky, and the gilded statues on domes and towers, and the rich mosaics twinkling in the hazy light! These things make one feel a love for Venice which is full of gratitude for so beautiful a thing.
At 12.30 I took gondola and was rowed to my old friend theHydaspeslying in the Giudecca, and was just in time to sit down to a truly Hydaspian luncheon, which was crowded. To my indescribable relief the captain told me I should have a cabin all to myself as last time. At two o’clock we cast off, and that effective passage all along the front of the city was again made which so impressed me the preceding spring; and then we turned off seawards, winding through the channel marked out by those white posts with black heads which, even in their humble way, are so harmonious in tone and are beloved by painters, carrying out as they do the whole artistic scheme. Every fishing boat we met or overtook gave one a study of harmonies. Now it was an orange sail with a red upper corner in soft sunlight against the flat blue-purple of the distant mountains and the vivid green of the Lido; now, composing with a line of rosy, snowy mountain tops that lay like massive clouds on the horizon, would rise a pale cool grey-white sail, well in the foreground, with its upper part tinted a soft mouse-grey and its lower border deep terra-cotta red. The sea, pale blue; the sky thinly veiled with clouds of a rosy dove-grey. Nowhere does one see such delicacy of colouring as here. Then the market boats lookedwell, full of vegetables, whose cool green came just where it should for the completion of the colour study. To think that the Local Board, or whatever those modern vulgarians are called, of Venice are advocating the complete suppression of those coloured sails, to be replaced by plain white ones all round. Hands off,mascalzoni!All this enchantment gradually faded away in the mists of evening and of distance, and we were soon well out to sea.
“Sunday.—At 9 a.m. Brindisi in bright, low sunshine,” says the Diary. “To Missa Cantata; much pleasant strolling. What animation all day with the loading and unloading, the coming and going of passengers, the cries and laughter of the population thronging the quays! TheBritanniafrom London was already in, and I watched the transfer of my heavy luggage from her to theHydaspeswith a hawk’s eye. I had a genuine compliment on landing paid to my accent. Those pests, the little beggar boys, who hang on to the English and can’t be shaken off, attacked me at first till I turned on them and shouted, ‘Via, birrrrichini!’ One of them pulled the others away: ‘Come away, don’t you see she is not English!’ The Italians still thinkGl’ Inglesiare all millionaires and made ofscudi.
“November 12th.—What indescribable joy this afternoon to see the crew busy with the preparations for our arrival to-morrow morning!
“November 13th.—Of course I began to get ready at 3 a.m. and peer out of the porthole on the waste of starlit waters as I felt the ship stopping off the distant lighthouse. We lay to a long time waiting for the dawn before proceeding to enter the harbour. The sun rose behind the city just as we turned into theport. I looked towards the distant landing stage. Half a mile off, with my wonderful sight, I saw Will, though the sun was right in my eyes. I knew him not only by his height, but by the shining gold band round his cap. We were a long time coming in and swinging round alongside, and, before the gangway was well down, Will sprang on to it and, in spite of the warning shouts of the sailors, was the first to board theHydaspes.”
I was back in Egypt; to be there once more was bliss. The now brimming Mahmoudieh saw me haunting it again; the predominating red of the flowering trees and creepers that I noted before had made place for enchanting variations of yellow, and all the vegetation had deepened. The heat was great at first. I was particularly struck by the enhanced beauty of the date palms, whose golden and deep purple fruit now hung in clusters under the graceful branches. But all too soon came a good deal of rain, to my indignation. Rain in Egypt! The natives say we have brought it with us. I never saw any in Cairo nor upstream.
The Governor of the city had invited us to make use of a littledahabiyeh, theRose, for a cruise on the Lower Nile, and on November 20th we started. My husband had already welcomed on their arrival, in a worthy manner, the officers of the French fleet, with whom he was in perfect sympathy; but my Diary records the happy necessity for our departure by the scheduled time on board theRoseon that very November 20th. That morning the German squadron arrived and the thunder of its guns gave us an unintentional send-off! They were duly honoured, of course, but the General himself was away.
It was a nine days’ cruise to the mouth of the Nile and back. Quite a different reading of the Nile from the one I have recorded in my letters to my mother, and reproduced in “From Sketch Book and Diary.” Very few tourists or even serious travellers have come so far down, so that one is less afraid of being forestalled by abler writers in recording one’s impressions there. It was pretty to see the big Turkish flag fluttering at our helm, and a beautifully disproportionate pennon streaming in crimson magnificence from the point of the little vessel’s curved felucca spar. But our first days were damping: “November 22nd.—Oh, the rain! Alas! that I should know Egypt under such deluges, and see in this land the deepest, ugliest mud in the world. We had to moor off the residence of the Bey, to whom thisdahabiyehbelongs, last night, as we wished to pay him our respects and tender him our thanks this morning. He made us stay to luncheon, and a very excellent Arab repast it was. I got on well with him as he spoke excellent French, but his mother! Oh! it was heavy, as she could only talk Turkish, and my translated remarks didn’t even get a smile out of her. I must say the Mohammedan women are deadly.
“We proceeded on our voyage very late in the day, on account of this visit which common civility made necessary. The weather brightened up at sunset and nothing more weird have I ever seen than the mud villages, cemeteries, lonely tombs, goats, buffaloes and wild human beings that loomed on the banks as we glided by, brown and black against that sky full of racing clouds that seemed red-hot from the great fiery globe that had just sunk below the palm-fringed horizon. These canal banks might give many peoplethe horrors. I certainly think them in this weather the most uncanny bits of manipulated nature I have ever seen. I was fortunate in getting down in colour such a telling thing, a goatherd in a Bedouin’s burnous, which was wildly flapping in the hot wind against the red glow in the west, driving a herd of those goats I find so effective, with their long, pendant ears, and kids skipping in impish gambols in front. ‘Apocalyptic’ apparition, caught, as we left it astern, in that portentous gloaming! I shall make something of this. As to the inhabitants of those regions, to contemplate their life is too depressing. As darkness comes on you see them creeping into their unlighted mud hovels like their animals. On the Upper Nile, at least, the fellaheen have glorious air, the sun, the clean, dry sand, but here in that mud——!
“November 23rd.—No more rain. At Atfeh we left the canal at last, by a lock, and I gave a sigh of relief and contentment, for we were on the broad bosom of Old Nile. After a delay at this mud town to buy provisions we pushed out into the current and with eight immensely long ‘sweeps’ (the wind was against sailing) we made a good run to Rosetta, on whose mud bank we thumped by the light of a pale moon. The rhythmic sound of those splashing oars and of the chant of the oarsmen in the minor key, with barbaric ‘intervals’ unknown to our music, continued to echo in my ears—it all seemed wild and strange and haunting.
“November 24th.—Began this morning a sketch of Rosetta to finish on our return from rounding up our outward voyage at the western mouth of the great river where we saw it emerge into a very desolate, grey Mediterranean. I may now say I have a verygood idea of the mighty river for upward of a thousand miles of its course—a good bit further, both below and above stream, than the authoress of ‘A Thousand Miles up the Nile’ knew it, whom in my early days I longed to emulate and, if possible, surpass! An old-fashioned book, now, I suppose, but all the more interesting for that. Furling sail, for the wind had been fair to-day, we turned and were towed back to Fort St. Julian, where we moored for the night.
“November 25th.—After a nice little sketch of the Fort St. Julian, celebrated in Napoleonic annals, we started off, and reached Rosetta in good time, so that I was able most satisfactorily to finish my large water-colour of the place. I was rather bothered where I sat at the water’s edge by the small boys and a very persistent pelican, which kept flying from the river into the fish market and returning with stolen fish, to souse them in the water before filling its pouch, in time to avoid capture by the pursuing brats.
“November 26th.—From Rosetta we glided pleasantly to Metubis, one of the many shining cities, as seen from afar, that become heaps of squalid dwellings when viewed at close quarters. But the minarets of those phantom cities remain erect in all their beauty, and this city in particular was transfigured by the most magnificent sunset I have ever seen, even here.”
The wild town of Syndioor was our mooring place for the next night, and at sunrise we were off homewards. Syndioor and the opposite city of Deyrout were veiled in a soft mist, out of which rose their tall minarets in stately beauty, radiant in the level light. The effect on the mind of these ruined places, once magnificent centres of commerce and luxury, is quiteextraordinary. They are now, all of them, derelicts. And so in time we slipped back into the canal, landing under the oleanders of our starting place. The crew kissed hands, thereismade his obeisance, and we returned to the hard stones and rattle of the Boulevard de Ramleh, refreshed. The Germans were gone.
Balls, picnics, gymkhanas and dinners were varied by intervals of water-colour sketching in the desert. One picnic, out at Mex, to the west of Alexandria, was distinguished by a great camel ride we all had on the soft-paced, mouse-coloured mounts of the Camel Corps, the Englishwomen looking so nice in their well-cut riding habits, sitting easily on their tall steeds. I managed to secure several sketches that day of the men and camels of the corps, and have one sketch of ourselves starting for our turn in the desert. Our ponies took us back home. The sort of day I liked. As I record, the completeness of my enjoyment was caused by my having been able to put some useful work in, as usual. I had a Camel Corps picturein pettoat this time.
“February 13th, 1891.—We had the Duke of Cambridge to luncheon. He arrived yesterday on board theSurprisefrom Malta, and Will, of course, received him officially, but not royally, as he is travelling incog., and he came here to tea. To-day we had a large party to meet him, and a very genial luncheon it was, not to say rollicking. The day was exquisite, and out of the open windows the sea sparkled, blue and calm. H.R.H. seemed to me rather feeble, but in the best of humours; a wonderful old man to come to Egypt for the first time at seventy-two, braving this burning sun and with such a high colour to begin with! One felt as though one wastalking to George III. to hear the ‘What, what, what? Who, who, who? Why, why, why?’ Col. Lane, one of his suite, said he had never seen him in better spirits. I was gratified at his praise of our cook—very loud praise, literally, as he is not only rather deaf himself, but speaks to people as though they also were a ‘little hard of hearing.’ ‘Very good cook, my dear’ (to me). ‘Very good cook, Butler’ (across the table to Will). ‘Very good cook, eh, Sykes?’ (very loud to Christopher Sykes, further off). ‘You are agourmet, you know better about these things than I do, eh?’ C. S.: ‘I ought to have learnt something about it at Gloucester House, sir!’ H.R.H. (to me): ‘Your health, my dear.’ ‘Butler, your very good health!’ Aside to me: ‘What’s the Consul’s name?’ I: ‘Sir Charles Cookson.’ ‘Sir Charles, your health!’ When I hand the salt to H.R.H. he stops my hand: ‘I wouldn’t quarrel with her for the world, Butler.’ And so the feast goes on, our august guest plying me with questions about the relationship and antecedents of every one at the table; about the manners and customs of the populace of Alexandria; the state of commerce; the climate. I answer to the best of my ability with the most unsatisfactory information. He started at four for Cairo, leaving a most kindly impression on my memory. The last of the old Georgian type! ‘Your mutton was good, my dear; not at allgoaty,’ were his valedictory words.”
Muttonisgoaty in Egypt unless well selected. I advise travellers to confine themselves to the good poultry, and to leave meat alone. What I would have done without our dear, good old Magro, the major domo who did my housekeeping out there, I dread tothink. His name, denoting a lean habit of body, was a misnomer, for he was rotund. A good, honest Maltese, his devotion to “Sair William” was really touching. I was only as the moon is to the sun, and to serve the sun he would, I am convinced, have risked his life. I came in for his devotion to myself by reason of my reflected glory. One morning he came hurtling towards me, through the rooms, waving aloft what at first looked like a red republican flag, but it proved to be a sirloin or other portion of bovine anatomy which he had had the luck to purchase in the market (good beef being so rare). “Look, miladi, you will not often meet such beef walking in the street!” He laid it out for my admiration. This is the way he used to ask me for the daily orders: “What will miladi command for dinner?” “Cutlets?” (patting his ribs); “a loin?” (indications of lumbago); “or a leg?” (advancing that limb); “or, for a delicateentrée, brains?” (laying a finger on his perspiring forehead). “Oh, for goodness’ sake, Magro, not brains!” When the day’s work was done he would retire to what we called the “Ah!-poor-me-room”—his boudoir—where, repeating aloud those words so dear to his nationality, he would take up his cigar. Government gave him £250 a year for all this expenditure of zeal.