A SOLDIER’S WIFE
Though the 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, revelling in 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 and their 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 a _local_ for 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, with the 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 a _cachet_
of its own, though in a way an exact equivalent to the Tuscan--the
rough-looking men in homespun coats in a crowd inside and outside of the
church, the women in national dress; the constabulary, equivalent to the
_gendarmes_, in full dress, mixing with the people and yet not of them.
This Limerick Junction was the nucleus of the Fenian nebula. In this
terrible Tipperary the stalwart constabulary, whom I greatly admire,
have a grave significance. I have never seen finer men than those, and
they are of a type new to me. 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 smoke which 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 brilliant
_finale_. 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 landscape colouring. The
moisture of the ocean air brings out all its glossy depth. Even without
the help of actual sunshine, so essential to the landscape beauty of
Italy, the local colour is powerful. 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.
The coast of Clare came next in our journey, where the Atlantic hurls
itself full tilt at the iron cliffs, and the west wind, which I learnt
to love, comes, without once touching land since it left the coast of
Labrador, to fill one with a sense of salt and freshness and health as
it rushes into one’s lungs from off the foam. I was interested in making
comparisons between that sea and the other “sounding deep” that washes
the rocks of Porto Fino as I looked down on the thundering waves below
the cliffs of Moher. Here was the simplest and severest colouring--dark
green, almost amounting to black; light green, cold and pure; foam so
pure that its whiteness had over it a rosy tinge, merely by contrast
with the green of the waves, and that was all; whereas the sea around
Porto Fino baffles both painter and word-painter with its infinite
variety of blues, purples, and greens. These are contrasts that I
delight in. How the west wind rushed at us, full of spray! How the ocean
roared! It was a revel of wind where we stood at the very edge of those
sheer cliffs. Across their black faces sea birds incessantly circled and
wheeled, crying with a shrill clamour. That and the booming of the waves
many fathoms below, as they leap into the immense caverns, were the only
sounds that pierced the wind. The black rocks had ledges of greyer rock,
and along these ledges, tier above tier, sat myriads of white-headed
gulls, their white heads looking like illumination lamps on the faces of
titanic buildings. The Isles of Arran and the mountains of Connemara
spread out before us on the ocean, which sparkled in one place with the
gold beams of the faint, spray-shrouded sun.
Then good-bye to Erin for the present on July 15th and the establishment
of ourselves in London till our return to the Land that held a magnet
for us on September 21st. There we paid a visit to the Knight of Kerry,
at Valentia Island. What a delightful home! The size of the fuchsia
trees told of the mild climate; the scenery was of the remotest and
freshest, most pleasing to the senses, and the ever-welcome scent of
turf smoke would not be denied in the big house where the sods glowed in
the great fireplaces. My surprise, when strolling on one of the innocent
little strands by the sea, was great at seeing the Atlantic cable
emerging, quite simply, from the water between the pebbles, as though it
was nothing in particular. Following it, we reached a very up-to-date
building, so out of keeping with the primitive scene, filled with busy
clerks transmitting goodness knows what cosmopolitan corruption from the
New World to the Old, and _vice versâ_.
[Illustration: In Western Ireland.
A “Jarvey” and “Biddy.”]
I would not have missed the Valentia pig for anything. A taller, leaner,
gaunter specimen has not his match anywhere, not even in the little
black hog of Monte Cassino, whose salient hips are so unexpected. There
is something particularly arresting in a pig with visible hips.[8] All
the animals in the west seemed to me free-and-easy creatures that live
with the peasants as members of the family, having a much better time
than the humans. They frisk irresponsibly in and out of the cabins--no
“by your leave” or “with your leave”--and, altogether, enjoy life to the
top of their own highest level. The poorer the people, the greater
appears the contrast caused by this inverted state of things.
The next time we left England was to go in the opposite direction--to
the Pyrenees. Rapid travel is fast levelling down the different
countries, and a carriage journey through the Pyrenean country is a
bygone pleasure. We have to go to Thibet or the Great Wall of China for
our trips if we want to write anything original about our travels. A
flight by air to the North Pole would, at first, prove very readable and
novel, if well described. This, however, does not take from the pleasure
of going over the inner circle in memory. In the year 1878 we could
still find much that was new and refreshing in a tour through the south
of France! Some friends of mine went up to Khartoum from Cairo not long
ago, with return tickets, by rail, and all they could say was that the
journey was so dusty that they had to draw the blinds of their
compartment and play bridge all the way. Poor dears, how arid!
This little tour of ours was well advised. The loss of our firstborn,
Mary Patricia, brought our first sorrow with it, and we went to Lourdes
and made a wide _détour_ from there through the Pyrenees to Switzerland.
There is nothing like travel for restoring the aching mind to
usefulness. But, undoubtedly, the send-off from Lourdes gave me the
initial impetus towards recovery of which, though I say little, I am
very sensible. We drove to St. Sauveur after our visit to the Grotto
where such striking cures have happened, and each day brought more fully
back to me that zest for natural beauty which has been with me such an
invigorator.
St. Sauveur was bracing and beautiful, but too full of invalids. It was
rather saddening to see them around the Hontalade Sulphur Springs. At
Lourdes they were clustering round the cascade that flows from the
Grotto where the statue of Our Lady stands, exactly reproducing the
figure as seen by the little Shepherdess. Poor humanity, reaching out
hopeful arms in its pain, here for physical help, there for spiritual.
The Gave rushes through both Lourdes and St. Sauveur, with a very sharp
noise in the rocky gorge of the latter, too harsh to be a soothing
sound. I looked forward to getting yet another experience of _vetturino_
travel which I had never thought could be enjoyed again, and which
proved to be still possible. The journey was a success, and, besides the
beauty of that very majestic mountain scenery, the little incidents of
the road were picturesque. Our driver was proud to tell us he was known
as “_L’ancien chien des Pyrénées_,” and a characteristic “old dog” he
was, one-eyed and weatherbeaten, wearing the national blue _béret_ and
very voluble in local _patois_. His horses’ bells jingled in the old
familiar way of my childhood; two absurd little dogs of his accompanied
us all the way who, in the noonday heat, sat in the wayside streams for
a moment to cool, and emerged little dripping rags. The first day’s
ascent was over the Pass of the Tourmalet, the second over that of the
Col d’Aspin, and the third and final climb was that of the Col de
Peyresourde. Then Bagnères de Luchon appeared deep down in the valley
where our drive came to an end. What would we have seen of the Pyrenees
if we had burrowed in tunnels under those _Cols?_ Luchon was not
embellished by the invalids there, whose principal ailment amongst the
female patients was evidently a condition of _embonpoint_ so remarkable
that the suggestion of overfeeding could not possibly be ignored.
We had refreshing “_ascensions_” on horseback; a wide view of Spain from
Super-Bagnère, wherein the backbone of the Pyrenees, with the savage
“Maladetta,” rising supreme, 11,000 feet above sea level, has its
origin. Many very pleasant excursions we had besides. I tried a hurried
sketch of one of these views from the saddle, the only precious chance I
had, but a little Frenchman in tourist helmet and blue veil (and such
boots and spurs!), who was riding in our direction with a party, threw
himself off his pony into my foreground and, hoping to be included in
the view which he was pretending to admire, posed there, right in my
way, his comrades calling him in vain to rejoin them.
On leaving Luchon we journeyed _viâ_ Toulouse to Cette, following the
course of the Garonne, which famous river we had seen in its little
muddy infancy near Arreau and in its culminating grandeur at Bordeaux.
Toulouse looked majestic, a fair city as I remember it. There I was
interested to see that famous canal which carries on the traffic from
the great river to the Mediterranean. A noteworthy feature in the
landscape as we journeyed on to Cette in the dreary, dun-coloured
gloaming was the mediæval city of Carcassonne. To come suddenly upon a
complete restoration to life of an old-world city, full of towers and
wrapped in its unbroken walls, gives one a strange sensation. One seems
to be suddenly deposited in the heart of the Middle Ages. That dark
evening there was something indescribably gloomy in the aspect of that
cinder-coloured mass against an ashen sky, and set on a hill high above
the fields cultivated in prim rows and patches, looking like a town in
the background of some hunting scene, so often shown in old tapestry.
All was darkening before an approaching storm. In writing of it at the
time I was not aware that we owed this most precious old city to
Viollet-le-Duc, who has restored it stone by stone.
Cette looked so bleared and blind the next morning in a sea mist that I
have preserved a dejected impression of those low shores, grey
tamarisks, and lagunes, and waste places, seen as though in a dismal
dream. I was coaxed back to cheerfulness by the sunshine of Nismes,
where we spent several hours, on our way to our halt for the night,
strolling in the warm-tinted Roman ruins, and I finally relaxed in the
delight of our arriving once more at one of my most beloved cities,
splendid Avignon. Good travelling. This closed the day. Under my
parents’ _régime_, and chiefly on account of my mother, who hated night
travel, and on account of our general easy-going ways, we gave nearly a
fortnight to reach Genoa from England, with pauses here and there.
My redundant Diary carries me on now, like the rapid Rhone itself, to my
native Lake Leman. I see it now as I saw it that day, August 8th,
1878--a blue opal. There is always something sacred about a place in
which one came into the world. We visited “Claremont,” a lovely dwelling
overlooking the lake, and facing the snowy ridges of the Dents du Midi.
Looking at that house “all my mother came into my eyes” as I thought of
her that November night, long ago, and of our dear, faithful nurse whom
I captured there to our service till death, with a smile!
And now for the dear old Rhine once more. We got to Bâle next day, and
very scenic the old town looked on our arrival in the evening. On either
side of the swift-flowing river the gabled houses were full of lights,
which were reflected in the water, all looking red-gold by contrast with
the green-gold of the moon. On August 10th from Bâle to Heidelberg, the
rose-coloured city of the great Tun! Other tuns are also shown, not
quite so capacious; but what swilling they suggest on the part of the
old electors, who gathered all that hock in tithes!
I was mortified when trying to impress my husband with the charms of the
Rhine as we dropped down to Cologne. My early Diary tells of my
enchantment on that fondly-remembered river. But, alas! this time the
weather was rainy and ugly all the way, and as we came to the best part,
the romantic Gorge, he shut himself up in a deck cabin, out of which I
could not entice him. I suspect the natives on board drove him in there
rather than his resentment at the “come down” from the glowing
descriptions one reads in travel books. These natives were a most
irritating foreground to the blurred views. All day long, and into the
night, meals were perpetually breaking out all over the deck and, do
what one could, the feeding of those Teutons obtruded itself on one’s
attention _ad nauseam_. I have a sketch, taken _sub rosa_, of an obese
and terrible _frau_, seated behind her rather smart officer husband at
one of the little tables. She had emptied her capacious mug of beer, and
was asking him for more, to which demand he was paying no attention. But
“Gustav! Gustav!” she persisted, poking him in the back with her empty
tankard. The “Gustav!” and the prods were getting too much to be ignored
by the long-suffering back, and she got her refill. What General Gordon
calls the “German visage” in contrast with the “Italian countenance”
never appeared so surprisingly ugly as it did to us that day on the
crowded deck of the _Queen of Prussia_.
My Diary says: “At Mayence, Will and I, always on the look-out for
soldiers, had a good opportunity of seeing German infantry, as we
stopped here a long time and two line battalions crossed the bridge near
us. From the deck of the steamer the men looked big enough, but when
Will ran on shore and overhauled them to have a nearer look, I could
gauge their height by his six-foot-two. He showed a clear head and
shoulders above their _pickelhauben_. They were short, chiefly by reason
of the stumpy legs, which carry a long back--a very unbeautiful
arrangement.”
The next day we had a rather dull start from Cologne along a dismal
stretch of river as far as Düsseldorf. Killing time at Düsseldorf is not
lively. At the café where we had tea two young subalterns of hussars
came gaily in to have their coffee, and, just as they were sitting down
with a cavalry swagger, there came in a major of some other corps, and
the two immediately got up, saluted, and left the room. Here was
discipline! On our returning to the steamer Will found an epauletted
disciple of Bismarck in my place at supper. He told the epauletted one
of his mistake, much to the latter’s manifest astonishment, who didn’t
move. I suppose there came something into the British soldier’s eye,
but, anyway, the sabre-rattler eventually got up and went elsewhere:
things felt electric.
August 14th found us nearly all day on board the boat. “A very
interesting day, showing me a phase of Rhine scenery familiar to me in
Dutch pictures by the score, but never seen by me till then in reality.
The strong wind blew from the sea and tossed the green-yellow river into
tumultuous waves, over which came bounding the blunt-bowed craft from
Holland, taking merchandise up stream, and differing in no way from the
boats beloved of the old Dutch masters. On either side of the river were
low banks waving with rushes, and beyond stretched sunken marshy
meadows, and here and there quaint little towns glided by with windmills
whirring, and clusters of ships’ masts appearing above the grey willows
and sedges. Dordrecht formed a perfect picture _à la_ Rembrandt, with a
host of windmills on the skyline, telling dark against the brightness,
at the confluence of the Maes and Rhine. Here Cuyp was born, the painter
of sunlit cows. Rotterdam pleased us greatly, and we strolled about in
the evening, coming upon the statue of Erasmus, which I place amongst
the most admirable statues I have seen. Rotterdam possesses in rich
abundance the peculiar charm of a seaport. A place of this kind has for
me a very strong attraction. The varied shipping, the bustle on land
and water, the colour, the noise, the mixture of human types, the bustle
of men and animals; all these things have always filled me with pleasure
at a great seaport.” A visit to Holland (“the dustless” land, as my
husband called it truly), a revel amongst the Amsterdam galleries, then
Antwerp, where we embarked for Harwich, closed our trip. Invigorated and
restored, I set to work on an 8-foot canvas, whereon I painted a subject
which had been in my mind since childhood.