“November 27th.—In the morning off with Dr. Pollard to Sanger’s Circus, where arrangements had been made for me to see two horses go throughtheir performances of lying down, floundering on the ground, and rearing for my ‘Quatre Bras’ foreground horses. It was a funny experience behind the scenes, and I sketched as I followed the horses in their movements over the arena with many members of the troupe looking on, the young ladies with their hair in curl-papers against the evening’s performance. I am now ripe to go to Paris.”
So to Paris I went, with my father. We were guests of my father’s old friends, Mr. and Mrs. Talmadge, Boulevard Haussmann, and a complete change of scene it was. It gave my work the desired fillip and the fresh impulse of emulation, for we visited the best studios, where I met my most admired French painters. The Paris Diary says:
“December 3rd.—Our first lion was Bonnat in his studio. A little man, strong and wiry; I didn’t care for his pictures. His colouring is dreadful. What good light those Parisians get while we are muddling in our smoky art centre. We next went to Gérôme, and it was an epoch in my life when I saw him. He was at work but did not mind being interrupted. He is a much smaller man than I expected, with wide open, quick black eyes, yet with deep lids, the eyes opening wide only when he talks. He talked a great deal and knew me by name and ‘l’Appel,’ which he politely said he heard was ‘digne’ of the celebrity it had gained. We went to see an exhibition of horrors—Carolus Duran’s productions, now on view at theCercle Artistique. The talk is all about this man, just now the vogue. He illustrates a very disagreeable present phase of French Art. At Goupil’s we saw De Neuville’s ‘Combat on the Roof of a House,’ and I feasted my eyes on some pickings from the mostcelebrated artists of the Continent. I am having a great treat and a great lesson.
“December 4th.—Had asupposedgreat opportunity in being invited to join a party of verymondaines Parisiennesto go over the Grand Opera, which is just being finished. Oh, the chatter of those women in the carriage going there! They vied with each other in frivolous outpourings which continued all the time we explored that dreadful building. It is a pile of ostentation which oppressed me by the extravagant display of gilding, marbles and bronze, and silver, and mosaic, and brocade, heaped up over each other in a gorged kind of way. How truly weary I felt; and the bedizened dressing-rooms of the actresses anddanseuseswere the last straw. Ugh! and all really tasteless.”
However, I recovered from the Grand Opera, and really enjoyed the lively dinners where conversation was not limited to couples, but flowed with greatéspritacross the table and round and round. Still, in time, my sleep suffered, for I seemed to hear those voices in the night. How graceful were the French equivalents to the compliments I received in London. They thought I would like to know that the fame of “l’Appel” had reached Paris, and so I did.
We visited Detaille’s beautiful studio. He was my greatest admiration at that time. Also Henriette Browne’s and others, and, of course, the Luxembourg, so I drew much profit from my little visit. But what a change I saw in the army! I who could remember the Empire of my childhood, with its endless variety of uniforms, its buglings, and drummings, and trumpetings; itschicand glitter and swagger: 1870 was over it all now. Well, never mind, I have livedto see it in the “bleu d’horizon” of a new and glorious day. My Paris Diary winds up with: “December 14th.—Papa and I returned home from our Paris visit. My eye has been very much sharpened, and very severe was that organ as it rested on my ‘Quatre Bras’ for the first time since a fortnight ago. Ye Gods! what a deal I have to do to that picture before it will be fit to look at! I continue to receive droll letters and poems (!). One I must quote the opening line of:
‘Go on, go on, thou glorious girl!’
‘Go on, go on, thou glorious girl!’
Very cheering.”
SOI worked steadily at the big picture, finding the red coats very trying. What would I have thought, when studying at Florence, if I had been told to paint a mass of men in one colour, and that “brick-dust”? However, my Aldershot observations had been of immense value in showing me how the British red coat becomes blackish-purple here, pale salmon colour there, and so forth, under the influence of the weather and wear and tear. I have all the days noted down, with the amount of work done, for future guidance, and lamentations over the fogs of that winter of 1874-5. I gave nicknames in the Diary to the figures in my picture, which I was amused to find, later on, was also the habit of Meissonier; one of my figures I called the “Gamin” and he, too, actually had a “Gamin.” Those fogs retarded my work cruelly, and towards the end I had to begin at the studio at 9.30 instead of 10, and work on till very late. The porter at No. 76 told me mine was the first fire to be lit in the morning of all in The Avenue.
Practising for “Quatre Bras.”Practising for “Quatre Bras.”
One day the Horse Guards, directed by their surgeon, had a magnificent black charger thrown down in the riding school at Knightsbridge (on deep sawdust) for me to see, and get hints from, for the fallen horse in my foreground. The riding master strapped up one of the furious animal’s forelegs and then let him go. What a commotion before he fell!How he plunged and snorted in clouds of dust till the final plunge, when the riding master and a trooper threw themselves on him to keep him down while I made a frantic sketch. “What must it be,” I ask, “when a horse is wounded in battle, if this painless proceeding can put him into such a state?”
The spring of 1875 was full of experiences for me. I note that “at the Horse Guards’ riding school a charger was again ‘put down’ for me, but more gently this time, and without the risk, as the riding master said, of breaking the horse’s neck, as last time. I was favoured with a charge, two troopers riding full tilt at me and pulling up at within two yards of where I stood, covering me with the sawdust. I stood it bravely thesecondtime, but the first I got out of the way. With ‘Quatre Bras’ in my head, I tried to fancy myself one of my young fellows being charged, but I fear my expression was much too feminine and pacific.” March 22nd gave me a long day’s tussle with the grey, bounding horse shot in mid-career. I say: “Thisisa teaser. I was tired out and faint when I got home.” If that was a black day, the next was a white one: “The sculptor, Boehm, came in, and gave me the very hints I wanted to complete my bounding horse. Galloway also came. He says ‘Quatre Bras’ beats ‘The Roll Call’ into a cocked hat! He gave me £500 on account. Oh! the nice and strange feeling of easiness of mind and slackening of speed; it is beginning to refresh me at last, and my seven months’ task is nearly accomplished.” Another visitor was the Duke of Cambridge, who, it appears, gave each soldier in my square a long scrutiny and showed how well he understood the points.
On “Studio Monday” the crowds came, so that I could do very little in the morning. The novelty, which amused me at first, had worn off, and I was vexed that such numbers arrived, and tried to put in a touch here and there whenever I could. Millais’ visit, however, I record as “nice, for he was most sincerely pleased with the picture, going over it with greatgusto. It is the drawing, character, and expression he most dwells on, which is a comfort. But I must now try to improve mytone, I know. And what about ‘quality’? To-day, Sending-in Day, Mrs. Millais came, and told me what her husband had been saying. He considers me, she said, an even stronger artist than Rosa Bonheur, and is greatly pleased with mydrawing.That(the ‘drawing’) pleased me more than anything. But I think it is a pity to make comparisons between artists. Imaybe equal to Rosa Bonheur in power, but how widely apart lie our courses! I was so put out in the morning, when I arrived early to get a little painting, to find the wretched photographers in possession. I showed my vexation most unmistakably, and at last bundled the men out. They were working for Messrs. Dickinson. So much of my time had been taken from me that I was actually dabbing at the picture when the men came to take it away; I dabbing in front and they tapping at the nails behind. How disagreeable!”
After doing a water colour of a Scots Grey orderly for the “Institute,” which Agnew bought, I was free at last to take my holiday. So my Mother and I were off to Canterbury to be present at the opening of St. Thomas’s Church there.
“April 11th, Canterbury.—To Mass in the wretched barn over a stable wherein a hen, having laid an egg,cackled all through the service. And this has been our only church since the mission was first begun six years ago, up till now, in the city of the great English Martyr. But this state of things comes to an end on Tuesday.”
This opening of St. Thomas’s Church was the first public act of Cardinal Manning as Cardinal, and it went off most successfully. There were rows of Bishops and Canons and Monsignori and mitred Abbots, and monks and secular priests, all beautifully disposed in the Sanctuary. The sun shone nearly the whole time on the Cardinal as he sat on his throne. After Mass came the luncheon at which much cheering and laughter were indulged in. Later on Benediction, and a visit to the Cathedral. I rather winced when a group of men went down on their knees and kissed the place where the blood of St. Thomas à Becket is supposed to still stain the flags. The Anglican verger stared and didnotunderstand.
On Varnishing Day at the Academy I was evidently not enchanted with the position of my picture. “It is in what is called ‘the Black Hole’—the only dark room, the light of which looks quite blue by contrast with the golden sun-glow in the others. However, the artists seemed to think it a most enviable position. The big picture is conspicuous, forming the centre of the line on that wall. One academician told me that on account of the rush there would be to see it they felt they must put it there. This ‘Lecture Room’ I don’t think was originally meant for pictures and acts on the principle of a lobster pot. You may go round and round the galleries and never find your way into it! I had the gratification of being told by R.A. after R.A. that my picture was in some respects anadvance on last year’s, and I was much congratulated on having done what was generally believed more than doubtful—that is, sending any important picture this year with the load and responsibility of my ‘almost overwhelming success,’ as they called it, of last year on my mind. And that I should send such a difficult one, with so much more in it than the other, they all consider ‘very plucky.’ I was not very happy myself, although I know ‘Quatre Bras’ to be to ‘The Roll Call’ as a mountain to a hill. However, it was all very gratifying, and I stayed there to the end. My picture was crowded, and I could see how it was being pulled to pieces and unmercifully criticised. I returned to the studio, where I found a champagne lunch spread and a family gathering awaiting me, all anxiety as to the position of mymagnum opus. After that hilarious meal I sped back to the fascination of Burlington House. I don’t think, though, that Mamma will ever forgive the R.A.’s for the ‘Black Hole.’
“April 30th.—The private view, to which Papa and I went. It is very seldom that an ‘outsider’ gets invited, but they make a pet of me at the Academy. Again this day contrasted very soberly with the dazzling P.V. of ‘74. There were fewer great guns, and I was not torn to pieces to be introduced here, there, and everywhere, most of the people being the same as last year, and knowing me already. The samefurorecannot be repeated; the first time, as I said, can never be a second. Papa and I and lots of others lunched over the way at the Penders’ in Arlington Street, our hosts of last night, and it was all very friendly and nice, and we returned in a body to the R.A. afterwards. I was surprised, at the big ‘AtHome’ last night, to find myself a centre again, and people all so anxious to hear my answers to their questions. Last year I felt all this more keenly, as it had all the fascination of novelty. This year just the faintest atom of zest is gone.
“May 3rd.—To the Academy on this, the opening day. A dense, surging multitude before my picture. The whole place was crowded so that before ‘Quatre Bras’ the jammed people numbered in dozens and the picture was most completely and satisfactorily rendered invisible. It was chaos, for there was no policeman, as last year, to make people move one way. They clashed in front of that canvas and, in struggling to wriggle out, lunged right against it. Dear little Mamma, who was there nearly all the time of our visit, told me this, for I could not stay there as, to my regret, I find I get recognised (I suppose from my latest photos, which are more like me than the first horror) and the report soon spreads that I am present. So I wander about in other rooms. I don’t know why I feel so irritated at starers. One can have a little too much popularity. Not one single thing in this world is without its drawbacks. I see I am in for minute and severe criticism in the papers, which actually give me their first notices of the R.A. TheTelegraphgives me its entire article.The Timesleads off with me because it says ‘Quatre Bras’ will be the picture the public will want to hear about most. It seems to be discussed from every point of view in a way not usual with battle pieces. But that is as it should be, for I hope my military pictures will have moral and artistic qualities not generally thought necessary to militarygenre.
“May 4th.—All of us and friends to the Academy,where we had a lively lunch, Mamma nearly all the time in ‘my crowd,’ half delighted with the success and half terrified at the danger the picture was in from the eagerness of the curious multitude. I just furtively glanced between the people, and could only see a head of a soldier at a time. A nice notion the public must have of thetout ensembleof my production!”
I was afloat on the London season again, sometimes with my father, or with Dr. Pollard. My dear mother did not now go out in the evenings, being too fatigued from her most regrettable sleeplessness. There was a dinner or At Home nearly every day, and occasionally a dance or a ball. At one of the latter my partner informed me that Miss Thompson was to be there that evening. All this was fun for the time. At a crowded afternoon At Home at the Campanas’, where all the singers from the opera were herded, and nearly cracked the too-narrow walls of those tiny rooms by the concussion of the sound issuing from their wonderful throats, I met Salvini. “Having his ‘Otello,’ which we saw the other night, fresh in my mind, I tried toenthuseabout it to him, but became so tongue-tied with nervousness that I could only feebly say‘Quasi, quasi piangevo!’ ‘O! non bisogna piangere,’poor Salvini kindly answered. To tell him I nearly cried! To tell the truth, I was much too painfully impressed by the terrific realism of the murder of Desdemona and of Othello’s suicide tocry. I have been told that, when Othello is chasing Desdemona round the room and finally catches her for the murder, women in the audience have been known to cry out ‘Don’t!’ And I told him Inearlycried! Ugh!”
After this I went to Great Marlow for fresh air with my mother, and worked up an oil picture of a scout of the 3rd Dragoon Guards whom I saw at Aldershot, getting the landscape at Marlow. It has since been engraved.
By the middle of June I was at work in the studio once more. The evenings brought their diversions. Under Mrs. Owen Lewis’s chaperonage I went to Lady Petre’s At Home one evening, where 600 guests were assembled “to meet H.E. the Cardinal.”[5]I record that “I enjoyed it very much, though people did nothing but talk at the top of their voices as they wriggled about in the dense crowd which they helped to swell. They say it is a characteristic of these Catholic parties that the talk is so loud, as everybody knows everybody intimately! I met many people I knew, and my dear chaperon introduced lots of people to me. I had a longish talk with H.E., who scolded me, half seriously, for not having come to see him. I was aware of an extra interest in me in those orthodox rooms, and was much amused at an enthusiastic woman asking, repeatedly, whether I was there. These fleeting experiences instruct one as they fly. Now I know what it feels like to be ‘the fashion.’” Other festivities have their record: “I went to a very nice garden party at the house of the great engineer, Mr. Fowler, where the usual sort of thing concerning me went on—introductions of ‘grateful’ people in large numbers who, most of them, poured out their heartfelt(!) feelings about me and my work. I can stand a surprising amount of this, and am by no meansblaséeyet. Mr. Fowler has a very choice collection of modern pictures, which Imuch enjoyed.” Again: “The dinner at the Millais’ was nice, but its great attraction was Heilbuth’s being there, one of my greatest admirations as regards his particular line—characteristic scenes of Roman ecclesiastical life such as I so much enjoyed in Rome. I told Millais I had had Heilbuth’s photograph in my album for years. ‘Do you hear that, Heilbuth?’ he shouted. To my disgust he was portioned off to some one else to go in to dinner, but I had de Nittis, a very clever Neapolitan artist, and, what with him and Heilbuth and Hallé and Tissot, we talked more French and Italian than English that evening. Millais was so genial and cordial, and in seeing me into the carriage he hinted very broadly that I was soon to have what I ‘mostt’oroughly deserved’—that is, my election as A.R.A. He pronounced the ‘th’ like that, and with great emphasis. Was that the Jersey touch?”
In July I saw de Neuville’s remarkable “Street Combat,” which made a deep impression on me. I went also to see the field day at Aldershot, a great success, with splendid weather. After the “battle,” Captain Cardew took us over several camps, and showed us the stables and many things which interested me greatly and gave me many ideas. The entry for July 17th says:
“Arranging the composition for my ‘Balaclava’ in the morning, and at 1.30 came my dear hussar,[6]who has sat on his fiery chestnut for me already, on a fine bay, for my left-hand horse in the new picture. I have been leading such a life amongst the jarring accounts of the Crimean men I have had in my studioto consult. Some contradict each other flatly. When Col. C. saw my rough charcoal sketch on the wall, he saidnodress caps were worn in that charge, and coolly rubbed them off, and with a piece of charcoal put mean little forage caps on all the heads (on the wrong side, too!), and contentedly marched out of the door. In comes an old 17th Lancer sergeant, and I tell him what has been done to my cartoon. ‘Well, miss,’ says he, ‘all I can tell you is that my dress cap went into the charge and my dress cap came out of it!’ On went the dress caps again and up went my spirits, so dashed by Col. C. To my delight this lancer veteran has kept his very uniform—somewhat moth-eaten, but the real original, and he will lend it to me. I can get the splendid headdress of the 17th, the ‘Death or Glory Boys,’ of that period at a military tailor’s.”
The Lord Mayor’s splendid banquet to the Royal Academicians and distinguished “outsiders” was in many respects a repetition of the last but with the difference that the assembly was almost entirely composed of artists. “I went with Papa, and I must say, as my name was shouted out and we passed through the lane of people to where the Lord Mayor and Lady Mayoress were standing to receive their guests, I felt a momentary stroke of nervousness, for people were standing there to see who was arriving, and every eye was upon me. I was mentioned in three or four speeches. The Lord Mayor, looking at me, said that he was honoured to have amongst his guests Miss Thompson (cheers), and Major Knollys brought in ‘The Roll Call’ and ‘Quatre Bras’ amidst clamour, while Sir Henry Cole’s allusion to my possible election as an A.R.A. was equally well received. I felt veryglad as I sat there and heard my present work cheered; for in that hall, last year, I had still the great ordeal to go through of painting, and painting successfully, my next picture, and that was now afait accompli.”
A rainy July sadly hindered me from seeing as much as I had hoped to see of the Aldershot manœuvres. On one lovely day, however, Papa and I went down in the special train with the Prince of Wales, the Duke of Cambridge, and all the “cocked hats.” In our compartment was Lord Dufferin, who, on hearing my name, asked to be introduced and proved a most charming companion, and what he said about “Quatre Bras” was nice. He was only in England on a short furlough from Canada, and did not see my “Roll Call.”
“At the station at Farnborough the picturesqueness began with the gay groups of the escort, and other soldiers and general officers, all in war trim, moving about in the sunshine, while in the background slowly passed, heavily laden, the Army on the march to the scene of action. Papa and I and Major Bethune took a carriage and slowly followed the march, I standing up to see all I could.
“We were soon overtaken by the brilliant staff, and saluted as it flashed past by many of its gallant members, including the dashing Baron de Grancey in his sky blueChasseurs d’Afriqueuniform. Poor Lord Dufferin in civilian dress—frock coat and tall hat—had to ride a rough-trotting troop horse, as his own horse never turned up at the station. A trooper was ordered to dismount, and the elegant Lord Dufferin took his place in the black sheepskin saddle. He did all with perfect grace, and I see him now, as he passed our carriage, lift his hat with a smiling bow, as though he was riding the smoothest of Arabs. The countrywas lovely. All the heather out and the fir woods aromatic. In one village regiments were standing in the streets, others defiling into woods and all sorts of artillery, ambulance, and engineer waggons lumbering along with a dull roll very suggestive of real war. At this village the two Army Corps separated to become enemies, the one distinguished from the other by the men of one side wearing broad white bands round their headdresses. This gave the wearers a rather savage look which I much enjoyed. It made their already brown faces look still grimmer. Of course, our driver took the wrong road and we saw nothing of the actual battle, but distant puffs of smoke. However, I saw all the march back to Aldershot, and really, what with the full ambulances, the men lying exhausted (sic) by the roadside, or limping along, and the cheers and songs of the dirty, begrimed troops, it was not so unlike war. At the North Camp Sir Henry de Bathe was introduced, and Papa and I stood by him as the troops came in.” A day or two later I was in the Long Valley where the most splendid military spectacle was given us, some 22,000 being paraded in the glorious sunshine and effective cloud shadows in one of the most striking landscapes I have seen in England. “It was very instructive to me,” I write, “to see the difference in the appearance of the men to-day from that which they presented on Thursday. Their very faces seemed different; clean, open and good-looking, whereas on Thursday I wondered that British soldiers could look as they did. The infantry in particular, on that day, seemed changed; they looked almost savage, so distorted were their faces with powder and dirt and deep lines caused by the glare of the sun. I was well within thelimits when I painted my 28th in square. I suppose it would not have done to be realistic to the fullest extent. The lunch at the Welsh Fusiliers’ mess in a tent I thought very nice. Papa came down for the day. It is very good of him. I don’t think he approves of my being so much on my own hook. But things can’t help being rather abnormal.”
Here follows another fresh air holiday at my grandparents’ at Worthing (where I rode with my grandfather), finishing up with a visit which I shall always remember with pleasure—I ought to say gratitude—not only for its own sake, but for all the enjoyment it obtained for me in Italy. That August I was a guest of the Higford-Burrs at Aldermaston Court, an Elizabethan house standing in a big Berkshire park. “I arrived just as the company were finishing dinner. I was welcomed with open arms. Mrs. Higford-Burr embraced me, although I have only seen her twice before, and I was made to sit down at table in my travelling dress, positively declining to recall dishes, hating a fuss as I do. The dessert was pleasant because every one made me feel at home, especially Mrs. Janet Ross, daughter of the Lady Duff Gordon whose writings had made me long to see the Nile in my childhood. There are five lakes in the Park, and one part is a heather-covered Common, of which I have made eight oil sketches on my little panels, so that I have had the pleasure of working hard and enjoying the society of most delightful people. There were always other guests at dinner besides the house party, and the average number who sat down was eighteen. Besides Mrs. Ross were Mr. and Mrs. Layard, he the Nineveh explorer, and now Ambassador at Madrid, the Poynters, R.A., the Misses Duff Gordon,and others, in the house. Mrs. Burr with her great tact allowed me to absent myself between breakfast and tea, taking my sandwiches and paints with me to the moor.”
Days at Worthing followed, where my mother and I painted all day on the Downs, I with my “Balaclava” in view, which required a valley and low hills. My mother’s help was of great value, as I had not had much time to practise landscape up to then. Then came my visit, with Alice, to Newcastle, where “Quatre Bras” was being exhibited, to be followed by our visit at Mrs. Ross’s Villa near Florence, whither she had invited us when at Aldermaston, to see thefêtesin honour of Michael Angelo.
“We left for Newcastle by the ‘Flying Scotchman’ from King’s Cross at 10 a.m., and had a flying shot at Peterborough and York Cathedrals, and a fine flying view of Durham. Newcastle impressed us very much as we thundered over the iron bridge across the Tyne and looked down on the smoke-shrouded, red-roofed city belching forth black and brown smoke and jets of white steam in all directions. It rises in fine masses up from the turbid flood of the dark river, and has a lurid grandeur quite novel to us. I could not help admiring it, though, as it were, under protest, for it seems to me something like a sin to obscure the light of Heaven when it is not necessary. The laws for consuming factory smoke are quite disregarded here. Mrs. Mawson, representing the firm at whose gallery ‘Quatre Bras’ is being exhibited, was awaiting our arrival, and was to be our hostess. We were honoured and fêted in the way of the warm-hearted North. Nothing could have been more successful than our visit in its way. These Northerners aremost hospitable, and we are delighted with them. They have quite acachetof their own, so cultured and well read on the top of their intense commercialism—far more responsive in conversation than many society people I know ‘down South.’ We had a day at Durham under Mrs. Mawson’s wing, visiting that finest of all English Cathedrals (to my mind), and the Bishop’s palace, etc. We rested at the Dean’s, where, of course, I was asked for my autograph. I already find how interested the people are about here, more even than in other parts where I have been. Durham is a place I loved before I saw it. The way that grand mass of Norman architecture rises abruptly from the woods that slope sheer down to the calm river is a unique thing. Of course, the smoky atmosphere makes architectural ornament look shallow by dimming the deep shadows of carvings, etc.—a great pity. On our return we took another lionen passant—my picture at Newcastle, and most delighted I was to find it so well lighted. I may say I have never seen it properly before, because it never looked so well in my studio, and as to the Black Hole——! What people they are up here for shaking hands! When some one is brought up to me the introducer puts it in this way: ‘Mr. So-and-So wishes very much to have the honour of shaking hands with you, Miss Thompson.’ There is a straight-forward ring in their speech which I like.”
We were up one morning at 4.30 to be off to Scotland for the day. At Berwick the rainy weather lifted and we were delighted by the look of the old Border town on its promontory by the broad and shining Tweed. Passing over the long bridge, which has such a fine effect spanning the river, we were pleased tofind ourselves in a country new to us. Edinburgh struck us very much, for we had never quite believed in it, and thought it was “all the brag of the Scotch,” but we were converted. It is so like a fine old Continental city—nothing reminds one of England, and yet there is aScotchinessabout it which gives it a sentiment of its own. Our towns are, as a rule, so poorly situated, but Edinburgh has the advantage of being built on steep hills and of being back-grounded by great crags which give it a most majestic look. The grey colour of the city is fine, and the houses, nearly all gabled and very tall, are exceedingly picturesque, and none have those vile, black, wriggling chimney pots which disfigure what sky lines our towns may have. I was delighted to see so many women with white caps and tartan shawls and the children barefoot; picturesque horse harness; plenty of kilted soldiers.
We did all the lions, including the garrison fortress where the Cameron Highlanders were, and where Colonel Miller, of Parkhurst memory, came out, very pleased to speak to me and escort us about. He had the water colour I gave him of his charger, done at Parkhurst in the old Ventnor days. Our return to Newcastle was made in glorious sunshine, and we greedily devoured the peculiarly sweet and remote-looking scenes we passed through. I shall long remember Newcastle at sunset on that evening, Then, I will say, the smoke looked grand. They asked me to look at my picture by gas light. The sixpenny crowd was there, the men touching their caps as I passed. In the street they formed a lane for me to pass to the carriage. “What nice people!” I exclaim in the Diary.
All the morning of our departure I was employed in sitting for my photograph, looking at productions of local artists and calling on the Bishop and the Protestant Vicar. One man had carved a chair which was to be dedicated to me. I was quaintly enthroned on it. All this was done on our way to the station, where we lunched under dozens of eyes, and on the platform a crowd was assembled. I read: “Several local dignitaries were introduced and ‘shook hands,’ as also the ‘Gentlemen of the local Press.’ As I said a few words to each the crowd saw me over the barriers, which made me get quite hot and I was rather glad when the train drew up and we could get into our carriage. The farewell handshakings at the door may be imagined. We left in a cloud of waving handkerchiefs and hats. I don’t know that I respond sufficiently to all this. Frankly, my picture being made so much of pleases me most satisfactorily, but thepersonalpart of the tribute makes me curiously uncomfortable when coming in this way.”
Ruskin wrote a pamphlet on that year’s Academy in which he told the world that he had approached “Quatre Bras” with “iniquitous prejudice” as being the work of a woman. He had always held that no woman could paint, and he accounted for my work being what he found it as being that of an Amazon. I was very pleased to see myself in the character of an Amazon.
WEstarted on our most delightful journey to Florence early in September of that year to assist at the Michael Angelo fêtes as the guests of dear Mrs. Janet Ross and the Marchese della Stufa, who, with Mr. 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. After Modena came the deeper loveliness of the afternoon, and then Bologna, mellowed by the rosy tints of early evening. Then the sunset and then the tender moon.
By moonlight we crossed the Apennines, and to the sound of the droning summer beetle—an extraordinarily penetrating sound, which I declared makes itself heard above the railway noises, we descended into the Garden of Italy, slowly, under powerful brakes. At ten we reached Florence, and in the crowd on the platform a tall, distinguished-looking man bowed to me. “Miss Thompson?” “Yes.” It was the Marchese, and lo! behind him, whoshould there be but my old master, Bellucci. What a warm welcome they gave us. Of course, our luggage had stuck at thedouaneat Modane, and was telegraphed for. No help for it; we must do without it for a day or two. 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. But how tired we were!
At last we drove up to the great towered villa, an old-fashioned Florentine ancestral place, which has been the home of the Della Stufas for generations, and there, in the great doorway, stood Mrs. Ross, welcoming us most cordially to “Castagnolo.” We passed through frescoed rooms and passages, dimly lighted with oil lamps of genuine old Tuscan patterns, and were delighted with our bedrooms—enormous, brick-paved and airy. There we made a show of tidying ourselves, and went down to a fruit-decked supper, though hardly able to sit up for sleep. How kind they were to us! We felt quite at home at once.
“September 12th.—After Mass at the picturesque little chapel which, with thevicario’sdwelling, abuts on thefattoriawing of the villa, we drove into Florence with Mrs. Ross and the Marchese, whom we find the typical Italian patrician of the high school. We were rigged out in Mrs. Ross’s frocks, which didn’t fit us at all. But what was to be done? Provoking girls! It was a dear, hot, dusty, dazzling old Florentine drive, bless it! and we were very pleased.Florence wasen fêteand allimbandierataand hung with the usual coloured draperies, and all joyous with church bells and military bands. The concert in honour of Michael Angelo (the fêtes began to-day) was held in the Palazzo Vecchio, and very excellent music they gave us, the audience bursting out in applause before some of the best pieces were quite finished in that refreshingly spontaneous way Italians have. After the concert we loitered about the piazza looking at the ever-moving and chattering crowd in the deep, transparent shade and dazzling sunshine. It was a glorious sight, with the white statues of the fountain rising into the sunlight against houses hung mostly with very beautiful yellow draperies. I stood at the top of the steps of the Loggia de’ Lanzi, and, resting my book on the pedestal of one of the lions, I made a rough sketch of the scene, keeping theGraphicengagement in view. I subsequently took another of the Michael Angelo procession passing the Ponte alle Grazie on its way from Santa Croce to the new ‘Piazzale Michel Angelo,’ which they have made since we were here before, on the height of San Miniato. It was a pretty procession on account of the rich banners. A day full of charming sights and melodious sounds.”
The great doings of the last day of the fêtes were the illuminations in the moonlit evening. They were artistically done, and we had a feast of them, taking a long, slow drive to the piazzale by the new zigzag. Michael Angelo was remembered at every turn, and the places he fortified were especially marked out by lovely lights, all more or less soft and glowing. Not a vile gas jet to be seen anywhere. The city was not illuminated, nor was anything, with few exceptions,save the lines of the great man’s fortifications. The old white banner of Florence, with theGiglio, floated above the tricolour on the heights which Michael Angelo defended in person. The effect, especially on the church of San Miniato, of golden lamps making all the surfaces aglow, as if the walls were transparent, and of the green-blue moonlight above, was a thing as lovely as can be seen on this earth. It was a thoroughly Italian festival. We were charmed with the people; no pushing in the crowds, which enjoyed themselves very much. They made way for us when they saw we were foreigners.
We stayed at Castagnolo nearly all through the vintage, pressed from one week to another to linger, though I made many attempts to go on account of beginning my “Balaclava.” The fascination of Castagnolo was intense, and we had certainly a happy experience. I sketched hard every day in the garden, the vineyards, and the old courtyard where the most picturesque vintage incidents occurred, with the white oxen, the wine pressing, and the bare-legged, merrycontadini, all in an atmosphere scented with the fermenting grapes. Everything in theCortilewas dyed with the wine in the making. I loved to lean over the great vats and inhale that wholesome effluence, listening to the low sea-like murmur of the fermentation. On the days when we helped to pick the grapes on the hillside (and “helping ourselves” at the same time) we hadcollazionethere, a little picnic, with the indispensable guitar and post-prandial cigarette. Every one made the most of this blessed time, as such moments should be made the most of when they are given us, I think. Young Italians often dined at the villa, and the evenings were spent in singingstornelliandrispettiuntil midnight to the guitar, every one of these young fellows having a nice voice. They were merry, pleasant creatures.
One of the Balaklava Six-hundred.One of the Balaklava Six-hundred.
Nothing but the stern necessity of returning to work could have kept me from seeing the vintage out. We left most regretfully on October 4th, taking Genoa and our dear step-sister on the way. Even as it was our lingering in Italy made me too late, as things turned out, for the Academy!
October 19th has this entry: “Began my ‘Balaclava’ cartoon to-day. Marked all the positions of the men and horses. My trip to Italy and the glorious and happy and healthy life I have led there, and the utter change of scene and occupation, have done me priceless good, and at last I feel like going at this picturecon amore. I was in hopes this happy result would be obtained.” “Balaclava” was painted for Mr. Whitehead, of Manchester. I had owed him a picture from the time I exhibited “Missing.” It was to be the same size, and for the same price as that work, and I was in honour bound to fulfil my contract! So I again brought forward the “Dawn of Sedan,” although my prices were now so enlarged that £80 had become quite out of proportion, even for a simple subject like that. However, after long parleys, and on account of Mr. Whitehead’s repudiation of the Sedan subject, it was agreed that “Balaclava” should be his, at the new scale altogether. The Fine Art Society (late Dickenson & Co.) gave Mr. Whitehead £3,000 for the copyright, and engaged the great Stacpoole, as before, to execute the engraving.
I was very sorry that the picture was not ready for Sending-in Day at the Academy. No doubt the fuss that was made about it, and my having begun amonth too late, put me off; but, be that as it may, I was a good deal disturbed towards the end, and had to exhibit “Balaclava” at the private gallery of the purchasers of the copyright in Bond Street. This gave me more time to finish. I had my own Private View on April 20th, 1876: “The picture is disappointing to me. In vain I call to mind all the things that judges of art have said about this being the best thing I have yet painted. Can oneneverbe happy when the work is done? This day was only for our friends and was no test. Still, there was what may be called a sensation. Virginia Gabriel, the composer, was led out of the room by her husband in tears! One officer who had been through the charge told a friend he would never have come if he had known how like the real thing it was. Curiously enough, another said that after the stress of Inkermann a soldier had come up to his horse and leant his face against it exactly as I have the man doing to the left of my picture.
“April 22nd.—An enormous number of people at the Society’s Private View and some of the morning papers blossoming out in the most beautiful notices, ever so long, and I getting a little reassured.” A day later: “Went to lunch at Mrs. Mitchell’s, who invited me at the Private View, next door to Lady Raglan’s, her great friend. Two distinguished officers were there to meet me, and we had a pleasant chat.” And this is all I say! One of the two was Major W. F. Butler, author of “The Great Lone Land.”
The London season went by full of society doings. Our mother had long been “At Home” on Wednesdays, and much good music was heard at “The Boltons,” South Kensington. Ruskin came to seeus there. He and our mother were often of the same way of thinking on many subjects, and I remember seeing him gently clapping his hands at many points she made. He was displeased with me on one occasion when, on his asking me which of the Italian masters I had especially studied, I named Andrea del Sarto. “Come into the corner and let me scold you,” were his disconcerting words. Why? Of course, I was crestfallen, but, all the same, I wondered what could be the matter with Andrea’s “Cenacolo” at San Salvi, or his frescoes at the SS. Annunziata, or his “Madonna with St. Francis and St. John,” in the Tribune of the Uffizi. The figure of the St. John is, to me, one of the most adorable things in art. That gentle, manly face; that dignified pose; the exquisite modelling of the hand, and the harmonious colours of the drapery—whatcouldbe the matter with such work? I remember, at one of the artistic London “At Homes,” Frith, R.A., coming up to me with a long face to say, if I did not send to the Academy, I should lose my chance of election. But I think the difficulties of electing a woman were great, and much discussion must have been the consequence amongst the R.A.’s. However, as it turned out, in 1879 I lost my election bytwovotes only! Since then I think the door has been closed, and wisely. I returned to the studio on May 18th, for I could not lay down the brush for any amount of society doings. Besides, I soon had to make preparations for “Inkermann.”
“Saturday, June 10th.—Saw Genl. Darby-Griffith, to get information about Inkermann. I returned just in time to dress for the delightful Lord Mayor’s Banquet to the Representatives of Art at the MansionHouse, a place of delightful recollections for me. Neither this year’s nor last year’s banquet quite came up to the one of ‘The Roll Call’ year in point of numbers and excitement, but it was most delightful and interesting to be in that great gathering of artists and hear oneself gracefully alluded to in The Lord Mayor’s speech and others. Marcus Stone sat on my left, and we had really a thoroughly good conversation all through dinner such as I have seldom embarked on, and I found, when I tried it, that I could talk pretty well. He is a fine fellow, and simple-minded and genuine. Myvis-à-viswas Alma Tadema, with his remarkable-looking wife, like a lady out of one of his own pictures; and many well-known heads wagged all around me. After dinner and the speeches, Du Maurier, ofPunch, suggested to the Lord Mayor that we should get up a quadrille, which was instantly done, and the friskier spirits amongst us had a nice dance. Du Maurier was my partner; and on my left I had John Tenniel, so that I may be said to have been supported by Punch both at the beginning and end of dinner, this being Du Maurier’s simple and obvious joke,videthe post-turtle indulgence peculiar to civic banquets. After a waltz we laggards at last took our departure in the best spirits.”
I remember that in June we went to a most memorable High Mass, to wit, the first to be celebrated in the Old Saxon Church of St. Etheldreda since the days of the Reformation. This church was the second place of Christian worship erected in London, if not in England, in the old Saxon times. We were much impressed as the Gregorian Mass sounded once more in the grey-stoned crypt. The upper church was not to be ready for years. Those old grey stoneswoke up that morning which had so long been smothered in the London clay.
Here follow too many descriptions in the Diary of dances, dinners and other functions. They are superfluous. There were, however, someTableaux Vivantsat an interesting house—Mrs. Bishop’s, a very intellectual woman, much appreciated in society in general, and Catholic society in particular—which may be recorded in this very personal narrative, for I had a funny hand in a single-figure tableau which showed the dazed 11th Hussar who figures in the foreground of my “Balaclava.” The man who stood for him in the tableau had been my model for the picture, but to this day I feel the irritation caused me by that man. In the picture I have him with his busby pushed back, as it certainly would and should have been, off his heated brow. But, while I was posing him for the tableau, every time I looked away he rammed it down at the becoming “smart” angle. I got quite cross, and insisted on the necessary push back. The wretch pretended to obey, but, just before the curtain rose, rammed the busby down again, and utterly destroyed the meaning of that figure! We didn’t want a representation of Mr. So-and-so in the becoming uniform of a hussar, but my battered trooper. The thing fell very flat. But tableaux, to my mind, are a mistake, in many ways.
I often mention my pleasure in meeting Lord and Lady Denbigh, for they were people after my own heart. Lady Denbigh was one of those women one always looks at with a smile; she was sosimpaticaand true and unworldly.
July 18th is noted as “a memorable day for Alice, for she and I spent the afternoon atTennyson’s!I say ‘for Alice’ because, as regards myself, the event was not so delightful as a day at Aldershot. Tennyson has indeed managed to shut himself off from the haunts of men, for, arrived at Haslemere, a primitive little village, we had a six-mile drive up, up, over a wild moor and through three gates leading to narrow, rutty lanes before we dipped down to the big Gothic, lonely house overlooking a vast plain, with Leith Hill in the distance. Tennyson had invited us through Aubrey de Vere, the poet, and very apprehensive we were, and nervous, as we neared the abode of a man reported to be such a bear to strangers. We first saw Mrs. Tennyson, a gentle, invalid lady lying on her back on a sofa. After some time the poet sent down word to ask us to come up to his sanctum, where he received us with a rather hard stare, his clay pipe and long, black, straggling hair being quite what I expected. He got up with a little difficulty, and when we had sat down—he, we two and his most deferential son—he asked which was the painter and which was the poet. After our answer, which struck me as funny, as though we ought to have said, with a bob, ‘Please, sir, I’m the painter,’ and ‘Please, sir, I’m the poet,’ he made a few commonplace remarks about my pictures in a most sepulchral bass voice. But he and Alice, in whom he was more interested, naturally, did most of the talking; there was not much of that, though, for he evidently prefers to answer a remark by a long look, and perhaps a slightly sneering smile, and then an averted head. All this is not awe-inspiring, and looks rather put on. We ceased to be frightened.
“There is no grandeur about Tennyson, no melancholy abstraction; and, if I had made a demi-god ofhim, his personality would have much disappointed me. Some of his poetry is so truly great that his manner seems below it. The pauses in the conversation were long and frequent, and he did not always seem to take in the meaning of a remark, so that I was relieved when, after a good deal of staring and smiling at Alice in a way rather trying to the patience, he acceded to her request and read us ‘The Passing of Arthur.’ He was so long in finding the place, when his son at last found him a copy of the book which suited him, and the tone he read in so deep and monotonous, that I was much bored and longed for the hour of our departure. He was vexed with Alice for choosing that poem, which he seemed to think less of than of his later works, and he took the poor child to task in a few words meant to be caustic, though they made us smile. But the ice was melting. He seemed amused at us and we gratefully began to laugh at some quaint phrases he levelled at us. Then he dropped the awe-inspiring tone, and took us all over the grounds and gave us each a rose. He pitched into us for our dresses which were too fashionable and tight to please him. He pinned Alice against a pillar of the entrance to the house on our re-entry from the garden to watch my back as I walked on with his son, pointing thewalking-stickof scorn at my skirt, the trimming of which particularly roused his ire. Altogether I felt a great relief when we said goodbye to our curious host with whom it was so difficult to carry on conversation, and to know whether he liked us or not. Away, over the windy, twilight heath behind the little ponies—away, away!”
At the beginning of August I began my studies for “The Return from Inkermann.” The foreground Igot at Worthing; and I had another visit to Aldershot and many further conversations with Inkermann survivors—officers of distinction. I am bound to say that these often contradicted each other, and the rough sketches I made after each interview had to be re-arranged over and over again. I read Dr. Russell’s account (The Timescorrespondent) and sometimes I returned to my own conception, finding it on the whole the most likely to be true.
I laugh even now at the recollection of two elderlysabreurs, one of them a General in the Indian Army, who had a hot discussion in my studio,â proposof my “Balaclava,” about the best use of the sabre. The Indian, who was for slashing, twirled his umbrella so briskly, to illustrate his own theory, that I feared for the picture which stood close by his sword arm. The opposition umbrella illustrated “the point” theory.
Having finally clearly fixed the whole composition of “Inkermann,” in sepia on tinted paper the size of the future picture I closed the studio on August 25th and turned my face once more to Italy.
MYsister and I tarried at Genoa on our way to Castagnolo where we were to have again the joys of a Tuscan vintage. But between Genoa and Florence lay our well-loved Porto Fino and, having an invitation from our old friend Monty Brown, the English Consul and his young wife, to stay at their castello there, we spent a week at that Eden. We were alone for part of the time and thoroughly relished the situation, with only old Caterina, the cook, and the dog, “Bismarck,” as company. Two Marianas in a moated grange, with a difference. “He” came not, and so allowed us to clasp to our hearts our chief delights—the sky, the sea, the olives and the joyous vines. In those early days many of the deep windows had no glass, and one night, when a staggering Mediterranean thunderstorm crashed down upon us, we really didn’t like it and hid the knives under the table at dinner. Caterina was saying her Rosary very loud in the kitchen. As we went up the winding stairs to bed I carried the lamp, and was full of talk, when a gust of wind blew the lamp out, and Alice laughed at my complete silence, more eloquent than any words of alarm. We had every evening to expel curious specimens of the lizard tribe that had come in, and turn over our pillows, remembering the habits of the scorpion.
But that storm was the only one, and as to the sea,which three-parts enveloped our little Promontory, its blue utterly baffled my poor paints. But paint I did, on those little panels that we owe to Fortuny, so nicely fitting into the box he invented. There was a little cape, crowned with a shrine to Our Lady—“the Madonnetta” it was called—where I used to go daily to inhale the ozone off the sea which thundered down below amongst the brown “pudding-stone” rocks, at the base of a sheer precipice. The “sounding deep.” Oh, the freshness, the health, the joy of that haunt of mine! Our walks were perilous sometimes, the paths which almost overhung the deep foaming sea being slippery with the sheddings of the pines. At the “nasty bits” we had to hold on by shrubs and twigs, and haul ourselves along by these always aromatic supports.
Admirable is the industry of the peasants all over Italy. Here on the extreme point of Porto Fino wherever there was a tiny “pocket” of clay, a cabbage or two or a vine with its black clusters of grapes toppling over the abyss found foot-hold. We came one day upon a pretty girl on the very verge of destruction, “holding on by her eyelids,” gathering figs with a hooked stick, a demure pussy keeping her company by dozing calmly on a branch of the fig tree. The walls built to support these handfuls of clay on the face of the rock are a puzzle to me. Where did the men stand to build them? It makes me giddy to think of it.
Paragi, the lovely rival of Monty’s robber stronghold, belonged to his brother, and a fairer thing I never saw than Fred’s loggia with the slender white marble columns, between which one saw the coast trending away to La Spezzia. But “goodbye,” Porto Fino! On our way to Castagnolo, at lovely Lastre a Signa, we paused at Pisa for a night.
“Pisa is abald Florence, if I may say so; beautiful, but so empty and lifeless. There are houses there quite peculiar, however, to Pisa, most interesting for their local style. Very broad in effect are those flat blank surfaces without mouldings. The frescoes on them, alas! are now merely very beautiful blotches and stains of colour. We had ample time for a good survey of the Duomo, Baptistery, Camposanto and Leaning Tower, all vividly remembered from when I saw them as a little child. But I get very tired by sight-seeing and don’t enjoy it much. What I like is to sit by the hour in a place, sketching or meditating. Besides, I had been kept nearly all night awake at the Albergo Minerva by railway whistles, ducks, parrots, cats, dogs, cocks and hens, so that I was only at half power and I slept most of the way to Signa.
“At the station a carriage fitted, for the heat, with cool-looking brown holland curtains was awaiting us on the chance of our coming, and we were soon greeted at dear Castagnolo by Mrs. Ross. Very good of her to show so much happy welcome seeing we had been expected the evening before, not to say for many days, and only our luggage had turned up! The Marchese, who had to go into Florence this morning for the day, had gone down to meet us last evening, and returned with the disconcerting announcement that, whereas we had arrived last year without our luggage, this year the luggage had arrived without us. ‘I bauli sono giunti ma le bambine—Chè!’”
Here follows the record of the same delights as those of the year before. We had been long expected, and Mrs. Ross told me that the peaches had been kept backfor us in a most tantalising way by thepadrone, and that everything was threatening over-ripeness by our delay. The light-hearted life was in full force. There were great numbers of doves and pigeons at Castagnolo which shared in the general hilarity, swirling in the sunshine and swooping down on the grain scattered for them with little cries of pleasure. I don’t know whether I should find a socialistic blight appearing here and there, if I returned to those haunts of my youth, over that patriarchal life, but it seemed to me that the relations between thepadroneand his splendidcontadinishowed how suitable the system obtaining in Tuscany was then. The labourers were thefanciulli(the children) of the master, and without the least approach to servility these men stood up to him in all the pride of their own station. But what deference they showed to him! Always the uncovered head and the respectful and dignified attitude when spoken to or speaking. I mustn’t forget the frank smile and the pleasant white teeth. It was a smiling life; every one caught the smiling habit. Oh, that we could keep it up through a London winter! And to a London winter we returned, for my friends in England were getting fidgety about “Inkermann.” One more extract, however, from the Castagnolo Diary must find a place before the veil is drawn. The Marchese took us to Siena for two days.
“September 29th.—We got up by candlelight at 5 a.m. and had a fresh drive in the phaeton to the station, whence we took train to the fascinating Etruscan city, whose very name is magic. The weather, as a matter of course, was splendid, and Siena dwells in my mind all tender brown-gold in a flood of sunshine. Small as the city is, and hard aswe worked for those two days, we could only see a portion of its treasures. The result of my observation in the churches and picture galleries shows me that the art there, as regards painting, is very inferior; and, indeed, after Florence, with its most exquisite examples of painting and drawing, these works of art are not taking. I suppose Florence has spoilt me. Here and there one picks out a plum, such as the ‘Svenimento of St. Catherine’ in San Domenico, by Sodoma, the only thing by him that I could look at with pleasure; also, of course, the famous Perugino in Sant’ Agostino, which I beheld with delight, and a lovely gem of a Holy Family by Palma Vecchio in the Academy—such a jewel of Venetian colour.
“The frescoes, however, in the sacristy of the cathedral are things apart, and such as I have never seen anywhere else, for the very dry air of Siena has preserved them since Pinturicchio’s time quite intact, and there one sees, as one can see nowhere else, ancient frescoes as they were when freshly painted. And very different they are from one’s notions of old frescoes; certainly not so pleasing if looked at as bits of colour staining old walls in mellow broken tints, but intensely interesting and beautiful as pictures. Here one sees what frescoes were meant to be: deep in colour, exceedingly forcible, with positive illusion in linear and aërial perspective, the latter being most unexpected and surprising. One’s usual notion of frescoes is that they must be flat and airless, and modern artists who go in for fresco decorative art paint accordingly, judging from the faded examples of what were once evidently such as one sees here—forcible pictures.
“Certainly these wall spaces, looking like aperturesthrough which one sees crowds of figures and gorgeous halls or airy landscapes, do not please the eye when looking at the roomasa room. One would prefer to feel the solidity of the walls; but taking each fresco and looking at it for its own sake only, one feels the keenest pleasure. They are magnificent pictures, full of individual character and realistic action, unsurpassable by any modern.
“I cannot attempt to put into words my impression of the cathedral itself. Certainly, I never felt the beauty of a church more. It being St. Michael’s Day, we heard Mass in the midst of our wanderings, and we were much struck by the devotion of the people, the men especially—very unlike what we saw in Genoa. In the afternoon we had a glorious drive through a perfect pre-Raphaelite landscape to Belcaro, a fortress-villa about six miles outside Siena, every turn in the road giving us a new aspect of the golden-brown city behind us on its steep hill. Perhaps the most beautiful view of Siena is from near Belcaro, where you get the dark pine trees in the immediate foreground. The owner of the villa took us all over it, the Marchese gushing outrageously to him about the beauties of the dreadful frescoes on walls and ceilings, painted by the man himself. We had been warned, Alice and I, to express our admiration, but I regret to say we had our hearts so scooped out of us on seeing those things in the midst of such true loveliness that we couldn’t say a thing, but only murmured. So the poor Marchese had to do triple-distilled gush to serve for three, and said everything was ‘portentoso.’
“In the evening we all three went out again and, in the bright moonlight, strolled about the streets, thepiazza, and round the cathedral, which shone in the full light which fell upon it. The deep sky was throbbing with stars, and all the essence of an Italian September moonlight night was there. Oh, sweet, restful Siena dream! Like a dream, and yet such a precious reality, to be gratefully kept in memory to the end.”
Back at Castagnolo on October 1st. “Went for mysolita passeggiataup to the hill of lavender and dwarf oak and other mountain shrubs, where I made a study of an oak bush on the only wet day we have had, for my ‘Inkermann’ foreground. Mrs. Ross, a fearless rider, went on with the breaking in of the Arab colt ‘Pascià’ to-day. Old Maso, one of thehabituésof the villa, whooped and screamed every time the colt bucked or reared, and he waddled away as fast as he could, groaning in terror, only to creep back again to venture another look. And he had been an officer in the army! I have secured some water-colour sketches of the vintage for the ‘Institute’ and knocked off another panel or two, and sketched Mrs. Ross in her Turkish dress, so I have not been idle.” Janet Ross seemed to have assimilated the sunshine of Egypt and Italy into her buoyant nature, and to see the vigour with which she conducted the vintage at Castagnolo acted as a tonic on us all; so did the deep contralto voice and the guitar, and the racy talk.
We left on October 14th, on a golden day, with the thermometer at 90 degrees in the shade, to return to the icy smoke-twilight of London, where we groped, as the Diary says, in sealskins and ulsters. Castagnolo has our thanks. How could we have had the fulness of Italian delights which our kind hosts afforded us in some pension or hotel in Florence? And whathospitality theirs was! We tried to sing some of the “Stornelli” in the hansom that took us home from Victoria Station. One of our favourites, “M’affaccio alla finestra e vedo Stelle,” had to be modified, as we looked through the glass of the cab, into “Ma non vedo Stelle,” sung in the minor, for nothing but the murk of a foggy night was there. What but the stern necessity of beginning “Inkermann” could have brought me back? My dear sister cannot have rejoiced, and may have wished to tarry, but when did she ever “put a spoke in my wheel”?
THOUGHthe London winter was gloomy, on the whole, and I was handicapped in the middle of my work by a cold which retarded the picture so much that, to my deep disappointment, I had again to miss the Academy, the brightest spring of my life followed, for on March 3rd I was engaged to be married to the author of “The Great Lone Land.” It may not be out of place to give a little sketch of our rather romantic meeting.
When the newly-promoted Major Butler was lying at Netley Hospital, just beginning to recover from the Ashanti fever that had nearly killed him at the close of that campaign, his sister Frances used to read to him the papers, and they thus learnt together how, at the Royal Academy banquet of that spring, the Prince of Wales and the Duke of Cambridge had spoken as they did of Miss Elizabeth Thompson. As paper after paper spoke of me and of my work, he said one day to his sister, in utter fun under his slowly reviving spirits, “I wonder if Miss Thompson would marry me?” Two years after that he met me for the first time, and yet another year was to go by before the Fates said “Now!”
When “Inkermann” was carted off to Bond Street on April 19th, what a relief and delight it was to tell the model “Time is up.” “Mamma and I danced about the studio when the picture was gone, revellingin our freedom to make as much dust as we liked, when hitherto one had had to be so careful about dust.” We always did this on such occasions.
The Fine Art Society, at whose galleries in Bond Street the picture was exhibited, bought it and the copyright together. No doubt for some the subject of this work is too sad, but my dominant feeling in painting it was that which Wellington gave expression to in those memorable words on leaving the field of battle at Waterloo: “There is nothing sadder than a victory, except a defeat.” It shows the remnants of the Guards and the 20th Regiment and odds and ends of infantry returning in the grey of a November evening from the “Soldiers’ Battle,” most of the men very weary. The A.D.C. on horseback I painted from a fine young soldier, Rupert Carrington, who kindly gave me a sitting. His mother, Lady Carrington, sent me as a wedding present a medal taken from a dead Russian on the field of Inkermann, set in a gold bracelet, which is one of my treasures, her name and mine engraved on it.
“April 20th.—The first Private View of ‘Inkermann.’ I was there a short time, and was quite happy at the look of my picture. The other three are in the same gallery, and very popular the whole exhibition seems to be. They have even got my 1873 venture, ‘Missing,’ by itself upstairs, and remarkably well it looks, too. The crowd was dense and I left the good people wriggling in a cloud of dust.”
June 11th of that year, 1877, was my wedding day. Cardinal Manning married us in the Church of the Servite Fathers; our guests were chiefly that gallant group of soldiers who, with my husband, had won the Ashanti War, Sir Garnet Wolseley, Redvers Buller andtheir comrades. My “Red Cross” fellow students of old South Kensington days gave me the very touching surprise of strewing our path down the church, as we came out, with flowers. I had not known they were there.
And now a new country opened out for my admiration and delight in days so long before the dreadful cloud had fallen on it under which I am now writing these Recollections—so long, so long before. It looks like another world to me now. One might say I had had already a sufficiently large share of the earth’s beauties to enjoy, yet here opened out an utterly new and unique experience—Ireland. Our wedding tour was chiefly devoted to the Wild West, with a pause at Glencar, in Kerry. I have tried in happier political times to convey to my readers in another place[7]my impression of that Western country—its freshness, its wild beauty, its entrancing poetry, and that sadness which, like the minor key in music, is the most appealing quality in poetry. That note is utterly absent from the poetry of Italy; there all is in the major, like its national music, so that my mind received, with strange delight, a new sensation, surprising, heart-stirring, appealing. My husband had given me the choice of alocalfor the wedding tour between Ireland and the Crimea. How could I hesitate?
My first married picture was the one I made studies for in Glencar—“‘Listed for the Connaught Rangers.” I had splendid models for the two Irish recruits who are being marched out of the glen by a recruiting sergeant, followed by the “decoy” private and two drummer boys of that regiment, the old 88th, withthe yellow facings of that time. The men were cousins, Foley by name, and wore their national dress, the jacket with the long, white homespun sleeves and the picturesque black hat which I fear is little worn now, and is largely replaced by that quite cosmopolitan peaked cap I loathe. The deep richness of those typical Irish days of cloud and sunshine had so enchanted me that I was determined to try and represent the effect in this picture, which was a departure from my former ones, the landscape occupying an equal share with the figures, and the civilian peasant dress forming the centre of interest. Its black, white and brown colouring, the four red coats and the bright brass of the drum, gave me an enjoyable combination with the blue and red-purple of the mountains in the background, and the sunlight on the middle distance of the stony Kerry bog-land. Here was that variety as to local colour denied me in the other works. It was a joy to realise this subject. The picture was for Mr. Whitehead, the owner of “Balaclava.”
The opening day of my introduction to the Wild West was on a Sunday in that June: “From Limerick Junction to Glencar. I had my first experience of an Irish Mass, and my impression is deepening every day that Ireland is as much a foreign country to England as is France or Italy. The congregation was all new to me. The peasant element had quite acachetof 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 thegendarmes, in full dress, mixing with the people and yet not of them. This Limerick Junction was the nucleus of the Fenian nebula. In this terribleTipperary the stalwart constabulary, whom I greatly admire, have a grave significance. I have never seen finer men than those, and they are of a type new to me. How I enjoy new types, new countries, new customs! The girls, looking so nice in their Bruges-like hoods, are very fresh and comely.
“We left at noon for the goal of our expedition, and I think I may say that I never had a more memorable little journey. The distant mountains I had looked at in the morning took clearer forms and colours by degrees, and the charm of the Irish bogs with their rich black and purple peat-earth, and bright, reedy grass, and teeming wild flowers, developed themselves to my delighted eyes as the train whirled us southwards. At Killarney we took a carriage and set off on my favourite mode of travel, soon entering upon tracts of that wild nature I was most anxious to experience. The evening was deepening, and in its solemn tones I saw for the first time the Wild West Land, whose aspect gradually grew wilder and more strange as we neared the mysterious mountains that rose ahead of us. I was content. I was beginning to taste the salt of the Wilds. What human habitations there are are so like the stone heaps that lie over the face of the land that they are scarcely distinguishable from them; but my ‘contentment’ was much dashed by the sight of the dwellers in this poor land which yields them so little. Very strange, wild figures came to the black doors to watch us pass, with, in some cases, half-witted looks.
“The mighty ‘Carran Thual,’ one of the mountain group which rises out of Glencar and dominates the whole land of Kerry, was on fire with blazing heather, its peaks sending up a glorious column of smokewhich spread out at the top for miles and miles, and changed its delicate smoke tints every minute as the sun sank lower. As we reached the rocky pass that took us by the remote Lough Acoose that sun had gone down behind an opposite mountain, and the blazing heather glowed brighter as the twilight deepened, and circles of fire played weirdly on the mountain side. Our glen gave the ‘Saxon bride’ its grandest illumination on her arrival. Wild, strange birds rose from the bracken as we passed, and flew strongly away over lake and mountain torrent, and the little black Kerry cattle all watched us go by with ears pricked and heads inquiringly raised. The last stage of the journey had a brilliantfinale. A herd of young horses was in our way in the narrow road, and the creatures careered before us, unable or too stupid to turn aside into the ditches by the roadside to let us through. We could not head them, and for fully a mile did those shaggy, wild things caper and jump ahead, their manes flying out wildly, with the glow from the west shining through them. Some imbecile cows soon joined them in the stampede, for no imaginable reason, unless they enjoyed the fright of being pursued, and the ungainly progress of those recruits was a sight to behold—tails in the air and horns in the dust. With this escort we entered Glencar.”
Nothing that I have seen in my travels since that golden time has in the least dimmed my recollections of that Glencar existence; nor could anything jar against a thing so unique. I have fully recorded in my former book how we made different excursions, always on ponies, every day, not returning till the evening. What impressed me most during these rides was the depth and richness of the Irish landscapecolouring. The moisture of the ocean air brings out all its glossy depth. Even without the help of actual sunshine, so essential to the landscape beauty of Italy, the local colour is powerful. In describing to me the same deep colouring in Scotland Millais used the simile of the wet pebble. Take a grey, dry pebble on the seashore and dip it in the water. It will show many lovely tints. Our inn was in the centre of the glen, delightfully rough, and impregnated with that scent of turf smoke which has ever since been to me the subtlest and most touching reminder of those days. Yet with that roughness there was in the primitive little inn a very pleasant provision of such sustenance as old campaigners and fishermen know how to establish in the haunts they visit.