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[Illustration: “GOT IT. BRAVO!”]
AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY
BY
ELIZABETH BUTLER
_With Illustrations from Sketches by
THE AUTHOR._
CONSTABLE & CO. LTD.
LONDON BOMBAY SYDNEY
1922
PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN BY THE WHITEFRIARS PRESS, LTD.,
LONDON AND TONBRIDGE.
To
MY CHILDREN
FOREWORD
The memoirs of a great artist must inevitably evoke the interest and
appreciation of the initiated. But this book makes a wider appeal,
written as it is by a woman whose career, apart from her art, has been
varied and adventurous, who has travelled widely and associated, not
only with the masters of her own craft, but with the great and eminent
in many fields. It is, moreover, the revelation of a personality apart,
at once feminine and virile, endued with the force engendered by
unswerving adherence to lofty aims.
In this age of insistent ugliness, when the term “realism” is used to
cloak every form of grossness and degeneracy, it is a privilege to
commune with one who speaks of her “experiences of the world’s
loveliness” and describes herself as “full of interest in mankind.”
These two phrases, taken at random from the opening pages of “From
Sketch Book and Diary,” seem to me eminently characteristic of Lady
Butler and her work. She is a worshipper of Beauty in its spiritual as
well as its concrete form, and all her life she has envisaged mankind in
its nobler aspect.
At seven years old little Elizabeth Thompson was already drawing
miniature battles, at seventeen she was lamenting that as yet she had
achieved nothing great, and a very few years later the world was ringing
with the fame of the painter of “The Roll Call.”
Through the accumulated interests of changeful years, charged for her
with intense joy and sorrow, she has kept her valiant standard flying,
in her art as in her life remaining faithful to her belief in humanity,
using her power and insight for its uplifting. Not only has she depicted
for us great events and strenuous action, with a sureness all her own,
she has caught and materialised the qualities which inspire heroic
deeds--courage, endurance, fidelity to a life’s ideal even in the moment
of death. And all without shirking the dreadful details of the
battlefield; amid blood and grime and misery, in loneliness and neglect,
in the desperate steadfastness of a lost cause, her figures stand out
true to themselves and to the highest traditions of their country.
During the recent world-upheaval Lady Butler devoted herself in
characteristic fashion to the pursuance of her aims. Many of the
subjects painted and exhibited during those terrible years still
preached her gospel. She worked, moreover, with a twofold motive. Widow
of a great soldier, she devoted the proceeds of her labours to her less
fortunate sisters left impoverished, and even destitute, by the War.
“_L’artiste donne de soi_,” said M. Paderewski once.
Lady Butler has always given generously of her best, and perhaps this
book of memories, intimate and characteristic, this record of wide
interests and high endeavour, full of picturesque incident and touched
with delicate humour, is as valuable a gift as any that she has yet
bestowed.
M. E. FRANCIS.
CONTENTS
CHAP. PAGE
I. FIRST IMPRESSIONS 1
II. EARLY YOUTH 10
III. MORE TRAVEL 19
IV. IN THE ART SCHOOLS 38
V. STUDY IN FLORENCE 54
VI. ROME 69
VII. WAR. BATTLE PAINTINGS 96
VIII. “THE ROLL CALL” 101
IX. ECHOES OF “THE ROLL CALL” 115
X. MORE WORK AND PLAY 130
XI. TO FLORENCE AND BACK 147
XII. AGAIN IN ITALY 159
XIII. A SOLDIER’S WIFE 167
XIV. QUEEN VICTORIA 183
XV. OFFICIAL LIFE--THE EAST 191
XVI. TO THE EAST 196
XVII. MORE OF THE EAST 211
XVIII. THE LAST OF EGYPT 224
XIX. ALDERSHOT 234
XX. ITALY AGAIN 252
XXI. THE DOVER COMMAND 260
XXII. THE CAPE AND DEVONPORT 275
XXIII. A NEW REIGN 284
XXIV. MOSTLY A ROMAN DIARY 311
XXV. THE GREAT WAR 320
INDEX 333
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
PAGE
“GOT IT, BRAVO!” _Frontispiece_
A LEAF FROM A VERY EARLY SKETCH-BOOK 12
FLYING SHOTS IN BELGIUM AND RHINELAND IN 1865 19
IN FLORENCE DURING MY STUDIES IN 1869 58
THE LAST OF THE RIDERLESS HORSE-RACES, AND A WET TRUDGE
TO THE VATICAN COUNCIL 80
CRIMEAN IDEAS 103
PRACTISING FOR “QUATRE BRAS” 130
ONE OF THE BALACLAVA SIX HUNDRED 151
IN WESTERN IRELAND: A “JARVEY” AND “BIDDY” 174
THE EGYPTIAN CAMEL CORPS AND THE BERSAGLIERI 230
ALDERSHOT MANŒUVRES: THE ENEMY IN SIGHT 234
A DESPATCH BEARER, BOER WAR, AND THE HORSE GUNNERS 284
NOTES ON THE EVE OF THE GREAT WAR 323
THE SHIRE HORSES: WHEELERS OF A 4·7. A HUSSAR SCOUT OF 1917 327
A POSTCARD, FOUND ON A GERMAN PRISONER, WITH “SCOTLAND
FOR EVER” TURNED INTO PRUSSIAN CAVALRY, TYPIFYING
THE VICTORIOUS ONRUSH OF THE GERMAN ARMY IN THE
NEW YEAR, 1915 332
AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY
ELIZABETH BUTLER
MY FRIENDS: You must write your memoirs.
I: Every one writes his or her memoirs nowadays. Rather a plethora,
don’t you think? An exceedingly difficult thing to do without too much
of the Ego.
MY FRIENDS: Oh! but yours has been such an interesting life, so varied,
and you can bring in much outside yourself. Besides, you have kept a
diary, you say, ever since you were twelve, and you have such an
unusually long memory. A pity to waste all that. You simply _must_!
I: Very well, but remember that I am writing while the world is still
knocked off its balance by the Great War, and few minds will care to
attune themselves to the Victorian and Edwardian stability of my time.
MY FRIENDS: There will come a reaction.
CHAPTER I
FIRST IMPRESSIONS
I was born at the pretty “Villa Claremont,” just outside Lausanne and
overlooking Lake Leman. I made a good start with the parents Providence
gave me. My father, cultured, good, patient, after he left Cambridge set
out on the “Grand Tour,” and after his unsuccessful attempt to enter
Parliament devoted his leisure to my and my younger sister’s education.
Yes, he began with our first strokes, our “pot-hooks and hangers,” our
two-and-two make four; nor did his tuition really cease till, entering
on matrimony, we left the paternal roof. He adopted, in giving us our
lessons, the principle of “a little and often,” so that we had two
hours in the morning and no lessons in the afternoon, only bits of
history, poetry, the collect for the Sunday and dialogues in divers
languages to learn overnight by heart to be repeated to him next
morning. We had no regular holidays: a day off occasionally, especially
when travelling; and we travelled much. He believed that intelligent
travel was a great educator. He brought us up tremendous English
patriots, but our deepest contentment lay in our Italian life, because
we loved the sun--all of us.
So we oscillated between our Ligurian Riviera and the home counties of
Kent and Surrey, but were never long at a time in any resting place. Our
father’s daughter by his first wife had married, at seventeen, an
Italian officer whose family we met at Nervi, and she settled in Italy,
becoming one of our attractions to the beloved Land. That officer later
on joined Garibaldi, and was killed at the Battle of the Volturno. She
never left the country of her adoption, and that bright lure for us
remained.
Although we were very strictly ruled during lessons, we ran rather wild
after, and, looking back, I only wonder that no illness or accident ever
befell us. Our dear Swiss nurse was often scandalised at our escapades,
but our mother, bright and beautiful, loving music and landscape
painting, and practising both with an amateur’s enthusiasm, allowed us
what she considered very salutary freedom after study. Still, I don’t
think she would have liked some of our wild doings and our consortings
with Genoese peasant children and Surrey ploughboys, had she known of
them. But, careful as she was of our physical and spiritual health, she
trusted us and thought us unique.
My memory goes back to the time when I was just able to walk and we
dwelt in a typically English village near Cheltenham. I see myself
pretending to mind two big cart-horses during hay-making, while the fun
of the rake and the pitchfork was engaging others not so interested in
horses as I already was myself. Then I see the _Albergo_, with
vine-covered porch, at Ruta, on the “saddle” of Porto Fino, that
promontory which has been called the “Queen of the Mediterranean,” where
we began our lessons, and, I may say, our worship of Italy.
Then comes Villa de’ Franchi for two exquisite years, a little nearer
Genoa, at Sori, a _palazzo_ of rose-coloured plaster and white stucco,
with flights of stone steps through the vineyards right down to the sea.
That sea was a joy to me in all its moods. We had our lessons in the
balcony in the summer, and our mother’s piano sent bright melody out of
the open windows of the drawing-room when she wasn’t painting the
mountains, the sea, the flowers. She had the “semi-grand” piano brought
out into the balcony one fullmoon night and played Beethoven’s
“Moonlight Sonata” under those silver beams, while the sea, her
audience, in its reflected glory, murmured its applause.
Often, after the babes were in bed, I cried my heart out when, through
the open windows, I could hear my mother’s light soprano drowned by the
strong tenor of some Italian friend in a duet, during those musical
evenings so dear to the music-loving children of the South. It seemed
typical of her extinction, and I felt a rage against that tenor. Our
dear nurse, Amélie, would come to me with lemonade, and mamma, when
apprised of the state of things, would also come to the rescue, her
face, still bright from the singing, becoming sad and puckered.
A stay at Edenbridge, in Kent, found me very happy riding in big waggons
during hay-making and hanging about the farm stables belonging to the
house, making friends with those splendid cart-horses which contrasted
with the mules of Genoa in so interesting a way. How the cuckoos sang
that summer; a note never heard in Italy. I began writing verse about
that time. Thus:
The gates of Heaven open to the lovely season,
And all the meadows sweet they lie in peace.
We children loved the Kentish beauty of our dear England. Poetry
filtered into our two little hearts wherever we abode, to blossom forth
in my little large-eyed, thoughtful sister in the process of time. To
Nervi we went again, taking Switzerland on the way this time, into Italy
by the Simplon and the Lago Maggiore.
A nice couple of children we were sometimes! At this same Nervi, one
day, we little girls found the village people celebrating a _festa_ at
Sant’ Ilario, high up on the foothills of the mountains behind our
house. We mixed in the crowd outside, as the church emptied, and armed
ourselves with branches. Rounding up the children, who were in swarms,
we gave chase. Down, down, through the zone of chestnut trees, down
through the olive woods, down through the vineyards, down to the little
town the throng fled, till, landing them in the street, we went home,
remarking on the evident superior power of the Anglo-Saxon race over the
Latin.
As time went on my drawing-books began to show some promise, so that my
father gave me great historical subjects for treatment, but warning me,
in that amused way he had, that an artist must never get spoilt by
celebrity, keeping in mind the fluctuations of popularity. I took all
this seriously. I think that, having no boys to bring up, he tried to
put all the tuition suitable to both boys and girls into us. One result
was that as a child I had the ambition to be a writer as well as a
painter. We children were fanatically devoted to the worship of
Charlotte Brontë, since our father had read us “Jane Eyre” (with
omissions). Rather strong meat for babes! We began sending poetry and
prose to divers periodicals and cut our teeth on rejected MSS.
We went back to Genoa, _viâ_ Jersey (as a little _détour_!) Poor old
Agostino, our inevitable cook, saw us as we drove from the station, on
our arrival, through the Via Carlo Felice. Worse luck, for he had become
too blind for his work. In days gone by he had done very well and we had
not the heart to cast him off. He ran after our carriage, kissing our
hands as he capered sideways alongside, at the peril of being run over.
So we were in for him again, but it was the last time. On our next visit
a friend told us, “Agostino is dead, thank goodness!” He and our dear
nurse, Amélie, used to have the most desperate rows, principally over
religion, he a devout Catholic and she a Protestant of the true Swiss
fibre. They always ended by wrangling themselves at the highest pitch of
their voices into papa’s presence for judgment. But he never gave it,
only begging them to be quiet. She declared to Agostino that if he got
no wages at all he would still make a fortune out of us by his
perquisites; and, indeed, considering we left all purchases in his
hands, I don’t think she exaggerated. The war against Austria had been
won. Magenta, Solferino, Montebello--dear me, how those names resounded!
One day as we were running along the road in our pinafores near the
Zerbino palace, above Genoa, along came Victor Emmanuel in an open
carriage looking very red and blotchy in the heat, with big, ungloved
hands, one of which he raised to his hat in saluting us little imps who
were shouting “Long live the King of Italy!” in English with all our
might. We were only a _little_ previous (!) Then the next year came the
Garibaldi enthusiasm, and we, like all the children about us, became
highly exalted _Garibaldians_. I saw the Liberator the day before he
sailed from Quarto for his historical landing in Sicily, at the Villa
Spinola, in the grounds of which we were, on a visit at the English
consul’s. He was sitting in a little arbour overlooking the sea, talking
to the gardener. In the following autumn, when his fame had increased a
thousandfold, I made a pen and ink memory sketch of him which my father
told me to keep for future times. I vividly remember, though at the time
not able to understand the extraordinary meaning of the words, hearing
one of Garibaldi’s adoring comrades (one Colonel Vecchii) a year or two
later on exclaim to my father, with hands raised to heaven,
“_Garibaldi!! C’est le Christ le revolver à la main!_”
Our life at old Albaro was resumed, and I recall the pleasant English
colony at Genoa in those days, headed by the very popular consul,
“Monty” Brown, and the nice Church of England chaplain, the Rev. Alfred
Strettell. Ah! those primitive picnics on Porto Fino, when Mr. Strettell
and our father used to read aloud to the little company, including our
precocious selves, Shakespeare, Wordsworth, Keats, Tennyson, under the
vines and olives, between whose branches, far below the cultivated
terraces which we chose for our repose, appeared the deep blue waters of
the Sea of seas. My early sketch books are full of incidents in Genoese
peasant life: carnival revels in the streets, so suited to the child’s
idea of fun; charges of Garibaldian cavalry on discomfited Neapolitan
troops (the despised _Borbonici_), and waving of tricolours by bellicose
patriots. I was taken to the Carlo Felice Theatre to see Ristori in
“Maria Stuarda,” and became overwhelmed with adoration of that mighty
creature. One night she came on the stage waving a great red, white, and
green tricolour, and recited to a delirious audience a fine patriotic
poem to united Italy ending in the words “_E sii Regina Ancor!_” I see
her now in an immense crinoline.
A charming autumn sojourn on the lakes of Orta and Maggiore filled our
young minds with beauty. Early autumn is the time for the Italian lakes,
while the vintage is “on” and the golden Indian corn is stored in the
open loggias of the farms, hanging in rich bunches in sun and luminous
shade amongst the flower pots and all the homely odds and ends of these
picturesque dwellings. The following spring was clouded by our return to
England and London in particularly cold and foggy weather, dark with the
London smoke, and our temporary installation in a dismal abode hastily
hired for us by our mother’s father, where we could be close to his
pretty little dwelling at Fulham. My Diary was begun there. Poor little
“Mimi” (as I was called), the pages descriptive of our leaving Albaro at
that time are spotted with the mementos of her tears. The journey
itself was a distraction, for we returned by the long Cornice Route
which then was followed by the _Malle Poste_ and Diligence, the railway
being only in course of construction. It was very interesting to go in
that fashion, especially to me, who loved the horses and watched the
changing of our teams at the end of the “stages” with the intensest
zest. I made little sketches whenever halts allowed, and, as usual, my
irrepressible head was out of the Diligence window most of the time. The
Riviera is now known to everybody, and very delightful in its way. I
have not long returned from a very pleasant visit there; everything very
luxurious and up-to-date, but the local sentiment is lessened. The
reason is obvious, and has been laboured enough. One can still go off
the beaten paths and find the true Italy. I have found one funny little
sketch showing our _Malle Poste_ stopping to pick up the mail bag at a
village (San Remo, perhaps), which bag is being handed out of a top
window, at night, by the old postmistress. The _Malle Poste_ evidently
went “like the wind,” for I invariably show the horses at a gallop all
along the route.
My misery at the view of our approach to London through that wilderness
of slums that ushers us into the Great Metropolis is all chronicled,
and, what with one thing and another, the Diary sinks for a while into
despondency. But not for long. I cheer up soon.
In London I took in all the amusing details of the London streets, so
new to me, coming from Italy. I seem, by my entries in the Diary, to
have been particularly diverted by the colour of those Dundreary
whiskers that the English “swell” of the period affected. I constantly
come upon “Saw no end of red whiskers.” Then I read, “Mamma and I paid
calls, one on Dickens (_sic_)--out, thank goodness.” Charles Dickens,
whom I dismiss in this offhand manner, had been a close friend of my
father’s, and it was he who introduced my father to the beautiful Miss
Weller (amusing coincidence in names!) at an amateur concert where she
played. The result was rapid. My vivid memory can just recall Charles
Dickens’s laugh. I never heard it echoed by any other man’s till I heard
Lord Wolseley’s. The volunteer movement was in full swing, and I became
even more enthusiastic over the citizen soldiers than I had been over
the _Garibaldini_. Then there are pages and pages filled with
descriptions of the pictures at the Royal Academy; of the Zoological
Gardens, describing nearly every bird, beast, reptile and fish. Laments
over the fogs and the cold of that dreadful London April and May, and
untiring outbursts in verse of regret for my lost Italy. But I stuffed
my sketch books with British volunteers in every conceivable uniform,
each corps dressed after its own taste. There was a very short-lived
corps called the Six-foot Guards! I sent a design for a uniform to the
_Illustrated London News_, which was returned with thanks. I felt hurt.
Grandpapa attached himself to the St. George’s Rifles, and went, later
on, through storm and rain and sun in several sham fights. Well, _Punch_
made fun of those good men and true, but I have lived to know that the
“Territorials,” as they came to be called, were destined in the
following century to lend their strong arm in saving the nation. We next
had a breezy and refreshing experience of Hastings and the joy of rides
on the downs with the riding master. London fog and smoke were blown off
us by the briny breezes.