An Autobiography

“Henley, May 31st.– Before to-day I could not boast with justice of knowing more than a fraction of England! This afternoon I saw her in one of her loveliest phases on a row to Medmenham Abbey. Skies of the most telling effects, ever changing as we rowed on, every reach we came to revealing fresh beauties of a kind so new to me. The banks of long grass full of flowers, the farmsteads gliding by, the willows allowed to grow according to Nature’s intention into exquisitely graceful trees, the garden lawns sloping to the water’s edge as a delicious contrast to the predominating rural loveliness, and then that unruffled river! I have seen the Thames! At Medmenham Abbey we had tea, and one of the most beautiful parts of the river and meadowland, flowery to overflowing, was seen before us through the arcades, the sky just there being of the most delicious dappled warm greys, and further on the storm clouds towered, red in the low sun. What pictures wherever you turn; and turn and turn and turn we did, until my eyes ached, on our smooth row back. The evening effects put the afternoon ones out of my head. I imagined a score of pictures, peopling the rich, sweet banks with men and women of the olden time. The skies received double glory and poetry from the perfectly motionless water, which reflected all things as in a mirror – as if it wasn’t enough to see that overwhelming beauty without seeing it doubled! At last I could look no more at the effects nor hear the blackbirds and thrushes that sang all the way, and, to Mamma’s sympathetic amusement, I covered my eyes and ears with a shawl. Alas! for the artist, there is no peace for him. He cannot gaze and peacefully admire; he frets because he cannot ‘get the thing down’ in paint. Having finished my row in that Paradise, let me also descend from the poetic heights, and record the victory of the Frenchman. Yes, ‘Gladiateur’ has carried off the blue ribbon of the turf. Upon my word, these Frenchmen!” It was the first time a French horse had won the Derby.

Bruges was after my own heart. Mediæval without being mouldy, kept bright and clean by loving restorations done with care and knowledge. No beautiful old building allowed to crumble away or be demolished to make room for some dreary hideosity, but kept whole and wholesome for modern use in all its own beauty. Would that the Italians possessed that same spirit. My Diary records our daily walks through the beautiful, bright streets with their curious signs named in Flemish and French, and the charm of a certain place planted with trees and surrounded by gabled houses. Above every building or tree, go where you would, you always saw rising up either the wondrous tower of the Halle (the Beffroi), dark against the bright sky, or the beautiful red spire on the top of the enormous grey brick tower of Notre Dame, a spire, I should say, unequalled in the world not only for its lovely shape and proportions, but for its exquisite style and colour: a delicious red for its upper part, most refined and delicate, with white lines across, and as delicate a yellow lower down. Or else you had the grey tower of the cathedral, plain and imposing, made of small bricks like that of Notre Dame, having a massive effect one would not expect from the material. Over the little river, which runs nearly round the town, are oft-recurring draw-bridges with ponderous grey gates, flanked by two strong, round, tower-like wings. Most effective. On this river glided barges pulled painfully by men, who trudged along like animals. I record with horror that one barge was pulled by a woman! “It was quite painful to see her bent forward doing an English horse’s work, with the band across her chest, casting sullen upward glances at us as we passed, and the perspiration running down her face. From the river diverge canals into the town, and nothing can describe the beauty of those water streets reflecting the picturesque houses whose bases those waters wash, as at Venice. When it comes to seeing two towers of the Halle, two spires of Notre Dame, two towers of the cathedral, etc., etc., the duplicate slightly quivering downwards in the calm water! Here and there, as we crossed some canal or other, one special bit would come upon us and startle us with its beauty. Such combinations of gables and corner turrets and figures of saints and little water-side gardens with trees, and always two or more of the towers and spires rising up, hazy in the golden flood of the evening sun!”

In our month at Bruges I made the most of every hour. It is one of the few towns one loves with a personal love. I don’t know what it looks like to-day, after the blight of war that passed over Belgium, but I trust not much harm was done there. How one trembled for the old beffroi, which one heard was mined by the Huns when they were in possession.

“August 24th.– Dear, exquisite, lovely, sunny, smiling Bruges, good-bye! Good-bye, fair city of happy, ever happy, recollections. Bright, gabled Bruges, we shall not look upon thy like again.”

I will make extracts from my German Diary, as Germany in those days was still a land of kindly people whom we liked much before they became spoilt by the Prussianism only then beginning to assert itself over the civil population. The Rhine, too, was still unspoilt. That part of Germany was agricultural; not yet industrialised out of its charm. I also think these extracts, though so crude and “green,” may show young readers how we can enjoy travel by being interested in all we see. I may become tiresome to older ones who have passed the Golden Gates, and for some of whom Rhine or Nile or Seine or Loire has run somewhat dry.

CHAPTER III

MORE TRAVEL

“ALAS! for railway travellers one approach to a place is like another. Fancy arriving at Cologne through ragged factory outskirts and being deposited under a glazed shed from which nothing but the railway objects can be seen! We made a dash to the cathedral, I on the way remarking the badly-dressed Düppel heroes (!) with their cook’s caps and tight trousers; and oh dear! the officers are of a very different mould here from what they are in Belgium. Big-whiskered fellows with waists enough to make the Belgians faint. But I am trifling. We went into the cathedral by a most glorious old portal covered with rich Gothic mouldings. Happy am I to be able to say I have seen Cologne Cathedral. Now, hurrah for the Rhine! that river I have so longed, for years, to see.”

We don’t seem to have cared much for Bonn, though I intensely enjoyed watching the swift river from the hotel garden and the Seven Mountains beyond. The people, too, amused and interested me very much, and the long porcelain pipe dangling from every male mouth gave me much matter for sketching.

My Diary on board the Germania: “Koenigswinter at the foot of the Dragenfels began that series of exquisite towns at the foot of ruined castles of which we have had more than a sufficient feast – that is, to be able to do them all the justice which their excessive beauty calls loudly for. We rounded the Dragenfels and saw it ‘frowning’ more Byronically than on the Bonn side, and altogether more impressive. And soon began the vines in all their sweet abundance on the smiling hill slopes. Romantic Rolandsec expanded on our right as we neared it, and there stood the fragment of the ruined castle peering down, as its builder is said to have done, upon the Convent amidst the trees on its island below. And then how fine looked the Seven Mountains as we looked back upon them, closing in the river as though it were a lake, and away we sped from them and left them growing mistier, and passed russet roofs and white-walled houses with black beams across, and passed lovely Unkel, picturesque to the core, bordering the water, and containing a most delicious old church. Opposite rose curious hills, wild and round, half vine-clad, half bare, and so on to Apollinarisberg on our right, with its new four-pinnacled church on the hill, above Remagen and its old church below. The last sight of the Dragenfels was a very happy one, in misty sunlight, as it finally disappeared behind the near hills. On, on we went, and passed the dark Erpeler Lei and the round, blasted and dismal ruin of Okenfels; and Ling, with a cloud-capped mountain frowning over it. As we glided by the fine restored château of Argenfels and the village of Hönningen the sky was red with the reflection of the sunset which we could not see, and was reflected in the swirling river. We did our Rhine pretty conscientiously by going first aft, then forward, and then to starboard, and then to port, and glories were always before us, look which way we would. So the Rhine has not been too much cried up, say what you will, Messrs. Blasé and Bore. The views were constantly interrupted by the heads of the lack-lustre people on board, who, just like the visitors at the R.A., hide the beauties they can’t appreciate from those who long to see them. But it soon began to grow dark.

“As we glided by Neuwied and stopped to take and discharge passengers a band was playing the ‘Düppel March,’ so called because the Prussians played it before Düppel. They are so blatantly proud of having beaten the Danes and getting Schleswig-Holstein. Fireworks were spluttering, and, altogether, a great deal of festivity was going on. It was quite black on the afterdeck by this time, minus lanterns. To go below to the stuffy, lighted cabin was not to be thought of, so we walked up and down, sometimes coming in contact with our fellow-man, or, rather, woman, for the men carried lights at the fore (i. e., at the ends of their cigars). At last, by the number of lights ahead, we knew we were approaching Coblenz. We went to the “Giant” Hotel, close to the landing. It was most tantalising to know that Ehrenbreitstein was towering opposite, invisible, and that such masses of picturesqueness must be all around. Papa and I had supper in the Speise-saal, and then I gladly sought my couch, in my sweet room which looked on the front, after a very enjoyable day.

“Most glorious of glorious days! The theory held so drearily by Messrs. Blasé and Bore about the mist and rain of the Rhine is knocked on the head. We were off to Bingen, to my regret, for it was hard to leave such a place as Coblenz, although greater beauties awaited us further up, perhaps, than we had yet seen. But I must begin with the morning and record the glorious sight before us as we looked out of our windows. Strong Ehrenbreitstein against the pearly, hot, morning sky, the furrowed rock laid bare in many places, and precipitous, sun-tinted and shadow-stained; the bright little town just opposite, the hill behind thickly clothed in rich vines athwart which the sun shone deliciously. The green of the river, too, was beautifully soft. After breakfast we took that charming invention, an open carriage, and went up to the Chartreuse, the proper thing to do, as this hill overlooks one of the views of the world. We went first through part of the town, by the large and rather ugly King’s Palace, passing much picturesqueness. The women have very pleasing headdresses about here of various patterns. Of course, the place is full of soldiers and everything seems fortified. On our ascent we passed great forts of immense strength, hard nuts for the French to crack, if they ever have the wickedness (sic) to put their pet notion of the Rhine being France’s boundary into execution. What a view we had all the way up; to our left, the winding Rhine disappearing in the distance into the gorge, its beautiful valley smiling below, and the vine-clad hills rising on either side, with their exquisite surfaces. Purple shadows, and golden vines, and walnut trees, that contrast which so often has enchanted my eyes on the Genoese Riviera, the Italian lakes, and my own dear Lake Leman, gladdened them once more. And then the really clear sky (no factory chimneys here) and those intense white clouds casting shadows on the hills of lovely purple. We went across the wide plateau on the top, a magnificent exercise ground for the soldiers, health itself, and then we beheld, winding below us in its sweet valley and by two picturesque villages, the little Moselle, by no means ‘blue,’ as the song says, but of a pinky brown and apparently very shallow. We were at a great height, and having got out of the carriage we stood on the very verge of a sheer precipice, at the far-down base of which wound the high road. Sweet little Moselle! I was so loth to leave that view behind. It really does seem such a shame to say so little of it. The air up there was full of the scent of wild thyme, and mountain flowers grew thick in that hot sun, and the short mountain grass was brown.

“We descended by another road and were taken right through the town to the old Moselle bridge which crosses that river near its confluence with the green Rhine. What turreted corners, what gable ends, what exquisite David Roberts ‘bits’ at every turn! The bridge and its old gate were a picture in themselves, and the view from the middle of the bridge of the walls, the old buildings, church towers and spires, and boats and rafts moored below, was the essence of the picturesque. Market women and pelotons of soldiers with glittering helmets and bayonets make excellent foreground groups. How unlike nearly-deserted Bruges is this busy, thronged city! Oxen are as much used about here as horses, and add much to the artist’s joy. But I must hurry on; there is all the glorious Rhine to Bingen to ascend. What a feast of beauty we have been partaking of since leaving Failure Bonn!

“Lots of people at 1 o’clock table d’hôte: staring Prooshan officers in ‘wings’ and whiskers, more or less tightly clad, talking loud and clattering their swords unnecessarily; swarms of English and a great many honeymoon couples of all nations. It was very hot when we left to dive into that glorious region we had seen from the Chartreuse. Those were golden hours on board the Lorelei. But more ‘spoons’; more English; more Ya-ing natives and small boys always in the way, and so we paddled away from beautiful Coblenz, and very fine did the ‘Broadstone of Honour’ look as we left it gradually behind. And now we began again the castles and the villages, the former more numerous than below stream. Happy Mr. Moriarty to possess such a castle as Lahneck; and then the beautiful town below, and the gorgeous wooded steep hills and the beautiful tints on the water. Golden walnut trees on the banks and old church towers – such rich loveliness gliding by perpetually. The towns are certainly half the battle; they add immensely to the scene. Rhense was the oldest town we had yet seen, and the old dark walls are crumbling down. Such bits of archways, such corner bits, such old age-tinted roofs! I must not pass over Marksburg, the most perfect old castle on the Rhine, quite unaltered and not quite ruinous, as it is garrisoned by a corps of Invalides. It therefore looks stronger and grander than the others. Below the cone which it crowns nestled the inevitable picturesque town (Braubach) upon the shore.

“Soon after passing this beautiful part we rounded another old village and church on our right, for the river takes a great bend here. Of course, new beauties appeared ahead as we swept round, soft purple mountains, one behind the other, and hillsides golden with vines and walnut trees. And then we came to Boppart, in the midst of the gorge, one of the most enchanting old walled towns we had yet seen, with a large water-cure establishment above it upon the orchard slopes of the hill. Then the old castle called ‘The Mouse’ drew our attention to the left again, and then to the right appeared, after we had passed the twin castles of Sternberg and Liebenstein, or the ‘Brothers,’ the magnificent ruin of Rheinfels above the town of St. Goar in the shadow of the steep hill. How splendidly those blasted arches come out against the sunny sky! Then ‘The Cat’ appeared on our left, supposed to be watching ‘The Mouse’ round the corner; then, with the last gleam of the sun upon it, appeared the castle of ‘Schönberg’ after we had passed the Lorelei rock, tunnelled through by the railway, and hills glowing in autumn tints. Sunset colour began to add new charm to mountains, hills, and river. Two guns were fired in this part of the gorge for the echo. It rolled away like thunder very satisfactorily. Gutenfels on its rock was splendid in the sunset, with the town of Caub at its feet, and the curious old tower called the Pfalz in mid-stream, where poor Louis le Débonnaire came to die. I can hardly individualise the towns and their over-looking castles that followed. There was Bacharach, with its curious three-sided towers and church of St. Werner; then more castles, getting dimmer and dimmer in the deepening twilight. The last was swallowed up in the night.”

I need not dwell on Bingen. I see us, happy wanderers, dropping down to Boppart, to halt there for very fondly-remembered days at the water-cure of “Marienberg,” which we made our habitation for want of an hotel. Being there I did the “cure” for nothing in particular, but was none the worse for it. At any rate it passed me as “sound” after the ordeal by water. The ordeal was severe, and so was the Spartan food. To any one who wasn’t going through the water ordeal the Spartan food ordeal seemed impossible. But soon one got to like the whole thing and delight in the freshness of that life in the warm sunny weather. We both accepted the “Grape Cure” with unmixed feelings – 2 lbs. each of grapes a day; and even the cold, deep plate of sour milk (dicke milch), sprinkled with brown breadcrumbs, and that kraut preserve which so dashed us at our first breakfast, became rather fascinating. We took our pre-breakfast walk on four glasses of cold water, though, to wet our appetites. I see now, in memory, the swimming baths, with the blue water rushing through them from the hills, and feel the exhilaration of the six-in-the-morning plunge. Oh! la jeunesse! La joie de vivre!

They had dancing every Thursday evening in what was the great vaulted refectory of the monks before that monastery was secularised. One gala evening many people came in from outside. The young ladies were in muslin frocks, which they, no doubt, had washed themselves, and the ballroom was redolent of soap. The gentlemen went into the drawing-room after each dance and combed their blond hair and beards at the looking-glass over the mantelpiece, having brought brush and comb with them. The next morning I was very elaborately saluted by a man in a blouse, driving oxen, and I recognised in him one of my partners of the evening before who had worn the correct frac and white tie. What a strange amalgamation of democracy and aristocracy we found in Germany! The Diary tells of the music we had every evening till 10 o’clock and “lights out.” My mother and one or two typical German musical geniuses – women patients – kept the piano in constant request, and the evenings were really very bright and the tone so homely and kind. Kindness was the prevailing spirit which we noticed amongst the Germans in those far-away days. How they complimented us all on our halting German; how the women admired our frocks, especially the buttons! I hope they didn’t expect us to go into equal ecstasies over their own costumes. We sang and were in great voice, perhaps on account of the “plunge baths,” or was it the “sour milk”?

A big Saxon cavalry officer who was doing the cure for a kick from a horse and, being in mufti, had put off his “jack-boot” manners, was full of enthusiasm about our voices. He expressed himself in graceful pantomime after each of my songs by pointing to his ear and running his finger down to his heart, for he spoke neither English nor French, and worshipfully paid homage to Mamma’s pianoforte playing. She played indeed superbly. He was a big man. We called him “the Athlete.” We had nicknames for all the patients. There was “the Sauer-kraut,” there was the “Flighty,” the funniest little shrivelled creature, a truly wonderful musical genius, who, having heard me practising one morning, flew to Mamma, telling her she had heard me go up to Si and that I must make my name as a prima donna– no less. That Mendelssohn had proposed to her was a treasured memory. Her mother, with true German pride of birth, forbade the union. There was a very great dame doing the cure, the “Incog,” who confided her card to Mamma with an Imperial embrace before leaving, which revealed her as Marie, Prinzessin zu Hohenzollern Hechingen. Then there was a most interesting and ugly duellist, who a short time previously had killed a prince. His wife wore blue spectacles, having cried herself blind over the regrettable incident. And so on, and so on.

The vintage began, and we visited many a vineyard on both banks of the rapid, eddying river, watching the peasants at their wholesome work in the mellowing sunlight. Whenever we bought grapes of these pleasant people, they insisted on giving us extra bunches gratis in that old-fashioned way so prevalent in Italy. I record in the Diary one classic-looking youth, with the sunset gold behind his serious, handsome face, bent slightly over the vine he was picking, on the hillside where we sat. He seemed the personification of the sanctity of labour. All this sounds very sentimental to us war-weary ones of the twentieth century, but we need refreshment in the pleasures of memory; memory of more secure times. The Diary says: —

“When we left Boppart, Mamma and we two girls were half hidden in bouquets, and our Marienberg friends clustered at the railway carriage door and on the step – the ‘Sauer-kraut,’ the ‘Flighty,’ the ‘Athlete’ and all, and, as we started, the salutations were repeated for the twentieth time, the ‘Athlete’ taking a long sniff of my bouquet, then quickly blocking his nose hard to keep the scent in, after going through the pantomime of the ear, the finger, and the heart. As Papa said, ‘One gets quite reconciled to the two-legged creature when meeting such people as these.’ Good-bye, lovely Boppart, of ever sweet recollections!”

We tarried at Cologne on our way to England. I see, together with admiring and elaborate descriptions of the cathedral, a note on the kindly manners of the Germans, so curiously at variance with the impression left on the present generation by the episodes of the late war. At the table d’hôte one evening the two guests who happened to sit opposite our parents, on opening their champagne at dessert, first insisted on filling the two glasses of their English vis-à-vis before proceeding to fill their own. German manners then! The military class kept, however, very much aloof, and were very irritating to us with their wilfully offensive attitude. That unfortunate spirit had already taken a further step forward after the conquest of Schleswig-Holstein, and was to go further still after the knock-down blow to Austria; then in 1870 comes more arrogance, and so on to its own undoing in our time.

“Aix la Chapelle.– Good-bye, Cologne, ever to remain bright by the remembrance of its cathedral and that museum containing pictures which have so inspired my mind. And so good-bye, dear, familiar Rhine; not the Rhine of the hurried tourist and his John Murray Red Book, but the glorious river about whose banks we have so often wandered at our leisure.

“And now ‘Vorwärts, marsch!’ Northwards, to the Land of Roast Beef plus Rinderpest.[1 - The cattle plague was raging in England.] But first, Aachen. Ineffable poetry surrounds this evening of our arrival, for from the three churches which stand out sharp against the bright moonlight sky in front of the hotel there peal forth many mellow bells, filling my mind with that sort of sadness so familiar to me. This is All Hallows’ Eve.

“November 1st.– We saw the magnificent frescoes in the long, low, arched hall of the Rathhaus, which is being magnificently restored, as is the case with all the fine things of the Prussia we have seen. We only just skimmed these great works of art, for the horses were waiting in the pelting rain… The first four frescoes we saw were by Rethel, the first representing the finding of the body of Charlemagne sitting in his tomb on his throne, crowned and robed, holding the ball and sceptre; a very impressive subject, treated with all its requisite poetry and feeling. The next fresco represents in a forcible manner Charlemagne ordering a Saxon idol to be broken; the third is a superb episode from the Battle of Cordova, where Charlemagne is wresting the standard from the Infidel. The horses are all blindfolded, not to be frightened by the masks which the enemy had prepared to frighten them with. The great white bulls which draw the chariot are magnificently conceived. The fourth fresco represents the entry of the great emperor – whose face, by the by, lends itself well to the grand style of art – into Pavia; a superb composition, as, indeed, they all are. After painting this the artist lost his senses. No doubt such efforts as these may have caused his mind to fail at last. He had supplied the compositions for the other four frescoes which Kehren has painted, without the genius of the originator. We were shown the narrow little old stone staircase up which all those many German emperors came to the hall. I could almost fancy I saw an emperor’s head coming bobbing up round the bend, and a figure in Imperial purple appear. Strange that such a steep little winding staircase should be the only approach to such a splendid hall. The new staircase, up which a different sort of monarch from the old German emperors came a few days ago, in tight blue and silver uniform, is indeed in keeping with the hall, and should have been trodden by the emperors, whereas this old cad of a king[2 - William I., afterwards German Emperor.] (sic) would get his due were he to descend the little old worn stair head foremost.”

At Brussels my entry runs: “November 3rd.– My birthday. I feel too much buoyed up with the promise of doing something this year to feel as wretched as I might have felt at the thought of my precious ‘teens dribbling away. Never say die; never, never, never! This birthday is ever to be marked by our visit to Waterloo, which has impressed me so deeply. The day was most enjoyable, but what an inexpressibly sad feeling was mixed with my pleasure; what thoughts came crowding into my mind on that awful field, smiling in the sunshine, and how, even now, my whole mind is overshadowed with sadness as I think of those slaughtered legions, dead half a century ago, lying in heaps of mouldering bones under that undulating plain. We had not driven far out of Brussels when a fine old man with a long white beard, and having a stout stick for scarcely-needed support, and from whose waistcoat dangled a blue and red ribbon with a silver medal attached bearing the words ‘Wellington’ and ‘Waterloo,’ stopped the carriage and asked whether we were not going to the Field and offering his services as guide, which we readily accepted, and he mounted the box. This was Sergeant-Major Mundy of the 7th Hussars, who was twenty-seven when he fought on that memorable 18th June, 1815. In time we got into the old road, that road which the British trod on their way to Quatre Bras, ten miles beyond Waterloo, on the 16th. We passed the forest of Soignies, which is fast being cleared, and at no very distant period, I suppose, merely the name will remain. What a road was this, bearing a history of thousands of sad incidents! We visited the church at Waterloo where are the many tablets on the walls to the memory of British officers and men who died in the great fight. Touching inscriptions are on them. An old woman of eighty-eight told us that she had tended the wounded after the battle. Is it possible! There she was, she who at thirty-eight had beheld those men just half a century ago! It was overpowering to my young mind. The old lady seems steadier than the serjeant-major, eleven years her junior, and wears a brown wig. Thanks to the old sergeant, we had no bothering vendors of ‘relics.’ He says they have sold enough bullets to supply a dozen battles.

“We then resumed our way, now upon more historic ground than ever, the field of the battle proper. The Lion Mound soon appeared, that much abused monument. Certainly, as a monument to mark where the Prince of Orange was wounded in the left shoulder it is much to be censured, particularly with that Belgian lion on the top with its paw on Belgium, looking defiance towards France, whose soldiers, as the truthful old sergeant expressed himself, ‘could any day, before breakfast, come and make short work of the Belgians’ (sic). But I look upon this pyramid as marking the field of the fifteenth decisive battle of the world. In a hundred years the original field may have been changed or built upon, and then the mound will be more useful than ever as marking the centre of the battlefield that was. To make it much ground has been cut away and the surface of one part of the field materially lowered. On being shown the plan for this ‘Lion Mound,’ Wellington exclaimed, ‘Well, if they make it, I shall never come here again,’ or something to that effect, and, as old Mundy said, ‘the Duke was not one to break his word, and he never did come again.’ Do you know that, Sir Edwin Landseer, who have it in the background of your picture of Wellington revisiting the field? We drove up to the little Hotel du Musée, kept by the sergeant’s daughter, a dejected sort of person with a glib tongue and herself rather grey. We just looked over Sergeant Cotton’s museum, a collection of the most pathetic old shakos and casques and blundering muskets, with pans and flints, belonging to friend and foe; rusty bullets and cannon balls, mouldering bits of accoutrements of men and horses, evil-smelling bits of uniforms and even hair, under glass cases; skulls perforated with balls, leg and arm bones in a heap in a wooden box; extracts from newspapers of that sensational time, most interesting; rusty swords and breastplates; medals and crosses, etc., etc., a dismal collection of relics of the dead and gone. Those mouldy relics! Let us get out into the sunshine. Not until, however, the positive old soldier had marshalled us around him and explained to us, map in hand, the ground and the leading features of the battle he was going to show us.

“We then went, first, a short way up the mound, and the old warrior in our midst began his most interesting talk, full of stirring and touching anecdotes. What a story was that he was telling us, with the scenes of that story before our eyes! I, all eagerness to learn from the lips of one who took part in the fight, the story of that great victory of my country, was always throughout that long day by the side of the old hussar, and drank in the stirring narrative with avidity. There lay before us the farm of La Haie Sainte – ‘lerhigh saint’ as he called it – restored to what it was before the battle, where the gallant Germans held out so bravely, fighting only with the bayonet, for when they came to load their firearms, oh, horror! the ammunition was found to be too large for the muskets, and was, therefore, useless. There the great Life Guard charge took place, there is the grave of the mighty Shaw, and on the skyline the several hedges and knolls that mark this and that, and where Napoleon took up his first position. And there lies La Belle Alliance where Wellington and Blücher did not meet – oh, Mr. Maclise! – and a hundred other landmarks, all pointed out by the notched stick of old Mundy. The stories attached to them were all clearly related to us. After standing a long time on the mound until the man of discipline had quite done his regulation story, with its stirring and amusing touches and its minute details, we descended and set off on our way to Hougoumont. What a walk was that! On that space raged most of the battle; it was a walk through ghosts with agonised faces and distorted bodies, crying noiselessly.

“Our guide stopped us very often as we reached certain spots of leading interest, one of them – the most important of all – being the place where the last fearful tussle was made and the Old Guard broke and ran. There was the field, planted with turnips, where our Guards lay down, and I could not believe that the seemingly insignificant little bank of the road, which sloped down to it, could have served to hide all those men until I went down and stooped, and then I understood, for only just the blades of the grass near me could I see against the sky. Our Guards must indeed have seemed to start out of the ground to the bewildered French, who were, by the by, just then deploying. That dreadful V formed by our soldiers, with its two sides and point pouring in volley after volley into the deploying Imperial Guard, must have indeed been a ‘staggerer,’ and so Napoleon’s best soldiers turned tail, yelling ‘Sauve qui peut!’ and ran down that now peaceful undulation on the other side of the road.

“Many another spot with its grim story attached did I gaze at, and my thoughts became more and more overpowering. And there stood a survivor before us, relating this tale of a battle which, to me, seems to belong to the olden time. But what made the deepest impression on my mind was the sergeant’s pointing out to us the place where he lay all night after the battle, wounded, ‘just a few yards from that hedge, there.’ I repeat this to myself often, and always wonder. We then left that historic rutted road and, following a little path, soon came, after many more stoppages, to the outer orchard of Hougoumont. Victor Hugo’s thoughts upon this awful place came crowding into my mind also. Yet the place did look so sweet and happy: the sun shining on the rich, velvety grass, chequered with the shade of the bare apple trees, and the contented cows grazing on the grass which, on the fearful day fifty years ago, was not green between the heaps of dead and dying wretches.

“Ah! the wall with the loopholes. I knew all about it and hastened to look at it. Again all the wonderful stratagems and deeds of valour, etc., etc., were related, and I have learnt the importance, not only of a little hedge, but of the slightest depression on a battlefield. Riddled with shot is this old brick wall and the walls of the farm, too. Oh! this place of slaughter, of burning, of burying alive, this place of concentrated horror! It was there that I most felt the sickening terror of war, and that I looked upon it from the dark side, a thing I have seldom had so strong an impulse to do before. The farm is peaceful again and the pigs and poultry grunt and cluck amongst the straw, but there are ruins inside. There’s the door so bravely defended by that British officer and sergeant, hanging on its hinges; there’s the well which served as a grave for living as well as dead, where Sergeant Mundy was the last to fill his canteen; and there’s the little chapel which served as an oven to roast a lot of poor fellows who were pent up there by the fire raging outside. We went into the terror-fraught inner orchard, heard more interesting and saddening talk from the old soldier who says there is nothing so nice as fighting one’s battles over again, and then we went out and returned to the inn and dined. After that we streamed after our mentor to the Charleroi road, just to glance at the left part of the field which the sergeant said he always liked going over the best. ‘Oh!’ he said, looking lovingly at his pet, ‘this was the strongest position, except Hougoumont.’ It was in this region that Wellington was moved to tears at the loss of so many of his friends as he rode off the field. Papa told me his memorable words on that occasion: ‘A defeat is the only thing sadder than a victory.’ What a scene of carnage it was! We looked at poor Gordon’s monument and then got into our carriage and left that great, immortal place, with the sun shedding its last gleams upon it. I feel virtuous in having written this much, seeing what I have done since. We drove back, in the clear night, I a wiser and a sadder girl.”

About this same Battle of Waterloo. Before the Great War it always loomed large to me, as it were from the very summit of military history, indeed of all history. During the terrible years of the late War I thought my Waterloo would diminish in grandeur by comparison, and that the awful glamour so peculiar to it would be obliterated in the fumes of a later terror. But no, there it remains, that lurid glamour glows around it as before, and for the writer and for the painter its colour, its great form, its deep tones, remain. We see through its blood-red veil of smoke Napoleon fall. There never will be a fall like that again: it is he who makes Waterloo colossal.

CHAPTER IV

IN THE ART SCHOOLS

AFTER tarrying in Brussels, doing the galleries thoroughly, we went to Dover. I had been anything but in love with the exuberant Rubenses gathered together in one surfeited room, but imbibed enthusiastic stimulus from some of the moderns. I write: “Oh! that I had time to tell of my admiration of Ambroise Thomas’ ‘Judas Iscariot,’ of Charles Verlat’s wonderful ‘Siege of Jerusalem by Godfrey of Bouillon,’ with its strikingly terrible incidents, given with wonderful vividness, so free from coarseness; of Tshaggeny’s ‘Malle Poste,’ with its capital horses. There was not much study to be done in the time, but enthusiasm to be caught, and I caught it.”

At Dover I find myself saying: “Still at my drawing of the soldiers working at the new fort on the cliff, just outside the castle, which forms the background of the scene. I am sending it to the Illustrated London News.” Then, a few days later: “Woe is me! my drawing is returned with the usual apologies. Well, never mind, the world will hear of me yet.” And there, above my “diminished head,” right over No. 2, Sydney Villas, our temporary resting-place, stood that very castle, biding its time when it should receive me as its official châtelaine, and all through that art which I was so bent on.

At Brompton I said “good-bye” to a year to me very bright and full of adventure; a year rich in changes, full of varied scenes and emotions. I say: “Enter, 1866, bearing for me happy promise for my future, for to-day I had the interview with Mr. Burchett, the Headmaster of the South Kensington School of Art, and everything proved satisfactory and sunny. First, Papa and I trotted off to Mr. Burchett’s office and saw him, a bearded, velvet-skull-capped and cold-searching-eyed man. After a little talk, we galloped off home, packed the drawings and the oil, then, Mamma with us, we returned, and came into The Presence once more. The office being at the end of the passage of the male schools, I could see, and envy, the students going about. So the drawings were scrutinised by that Eye, and I must say I never expected things to go so well. Of course, this austere, rigid master is not one to say much, but, on the contrary, to dwell upon the shortcomings and weaknesses; to have no pity. He looked longer at my soldiers at work at Dover Castle and some hands that I had done yesterday, saying they showed much feeling. He said he did not know whether I only wished to make my studies superficial, but strongly advised me to become an artist. I scarcely needed such advice, I think, but it was very gratifying. I told him I wished for severe study, and that I did not wish to begin at the wrong end. We were a long time talking, and he was very kind, and told me off to the Life School after preliminary work in the Antique. I join to-morrow. I now really feel as though fairly launched. Ah! they shall hear of me some day. But, believe me, my ambition is of the right sort.

“January 2nd.– A very pleasant day for me. At ten marched off, with board, paper, chalk, etc., etc., to the schools, and signed my name and went through all the rest of the formalities, and was put to do a huge eye in chalk. I felt very raw indeed, never having drawn from a cast before. Everything was strange to me. I worked away until twenty minutes to two, when I sped home to have my lunch. Five hours’ work would be too long were I not to break the time by this charming spin home and back in the open air, which makes me set to work again with redoubled energy and spirits sky-high. A man comes round at a certain time to the rooms to see by the thermometer whether the temperature is according to rule, which is a very excellent precaution; 65° seems to be the fixed degree. Of course, I did not make any friends to-day; besides, we sit far apart, on our own hooks, and not on forms. Much twining about of arms and darling-ing, etc., went on, however, but we all seem to work here so much more in earnest than over those dreary scrolls in the Elementary. One girl in our room was a capital hit, short hair brushed back from a clever forehead and a double eyeglass on an out-thrust nose. Then there is a dear little pale girl, with a pretty head and large eyes, who is struggling with that tremendous ‘Fighting Gladiator.’ She and he make a charming motif for a sketch. But I am too intent on my work to notice much. The skeleton behind me seems, with outstretched arm, to encourage me in my work, and smiles (we won’t say grins) upon me, whilst behind him – it? – the écorché man seems to be digging his grave, for he is in the attitude of using a spade. But enough for to-day. I was very much excited all day afterwards. And no wonder, seeing that my prayer for a beginning of my real study has now been granted and that I am at length on the high road. Oh, joy, joy!

“January 15th.– Did very well at the schools. Upon my word, I am getting on very smoothly. I peeped into the Life room for the first time whilst work was going on, and beheld a splendid halberdier standing above the girls’ heads and looking very uncomfortable. He had a steel headpiece and his hands were crossed upon the hilt of his sword in front, and his face, excessively picturesque with its grizzly moustache, was a tantalising sight for me!

“January 16th.– Oh, how I am getting on! I can’t bear to look at my old things. Was much encouraged by Mr. Burchett, who talked to me a good deal, the mistress standing deferentially and smilingly by. He said, ‘Ah! you seem to get over your difficulties very well,’ and said with what immense satisfaction I shall look back upon this work I’m doing. Altogether it was very encouraging, and he said this last thing of mine was excellent. He remarked that my early education in those matters had been neglected, but I console myself with the thought that I have not wasted my time so utterly, for all the travel I have had all my life has put crowds of ideas into my head, and now I am learning how to bring those ideas to good account.

“January 24th.– I shall soon have done the big head and shall soon reach a full-length statue, and I shall go in for anatomy rather than give so much time to this shading which the students waste so much time over. I don’t believe in carrying it so far. The little pale girl I like, on the completion of her gladiator, has been promoted to the Life class. A girl made friends with me, a big grenadier of a girl, who says she wants to know ‘all about the joints and muscles’ and seems a ‘thoroughgoer’ like myself.”

This is how I write of dear Miss Vyvyan, a fine, rosy specimen of a well-bred English girl, who became one of my dearest fellow students – and drew well. In writing of me after I had come out in the art world, she records this meeting in words all the more deserving of remembrance for being those of a voice that is still. Of my other fellow-students the Diary will have more to say, left to its own diction.

“February 13th.– It is very pleasant at the schools – oh, charming! In coming home at the end of my work I fell in with Mr. Lane, my friend in the truest sense of the word. He was coming over to us. His first inquiry was about me and my work. He was very much disappointed that I was not in the Life class, fully expecting that I should be there, seeing how highly Mr. Burchett twice spoke of my drawings to Mr. Lane, and that I was quite ready for the Life. But, of course, Mr. B. is desirous of putting me as much through the regular course as possible. Mr. Lane shares Millais’ opinion that ‘the antique is all very well, but that there is nothing like the living model, and that they are too fond of black and white at the Museum.’ I was enrolled as a member of the Sketching Club this morning, and have only a week to do ‘On the Watch’ in, the title they have given us to illustrate. Only a week, Mimi? That’s an age to do a sketch in! Ah! yes, my dear, but I shall have five hours in the schools every day except Saturdays. I have chosen for subject a freebooter in a morion and cloak upon a bony horse, watching the plain below him as night comes on, with his blunderbus ready cocked. Wind is blowing, and makes the horse’s mane and tail to stream out.”

There follow pages and pages describing the daily doings at the schools: the commotion amongst girls at the drawings I used to bring to show them of battle scenes; the Sketching Club competitions, and all the work and the play of an art school. At last I was promoted to the Life class.

“March 19th.– Oh, joyous day! oh, white! oh, snowy Monday! or should I say golden Monday? I entered the Life this joyous morn, and, what’s more, acquitted myself there not only to my satisfaction (for how could I be satisfied if the masters weren’t?), but to Mr. Denby’s and the oil master’s par excellence, Mr. Collinson’s. I own I was rather diffident, feeling such a greenhorn in that room, but I may joyfully say ‘So far, so good,’ and do my very best of bests, and I can’t fail to progress. How willingly I would write down all the pleasant incidents that occur every day, and those, above all, of to-day, which make this delightful student life I am leading so bright and happy and amusing. However, I shall write down all that my spare moments will allow me. Little ‘Pale Face’ took me in hand and got me a nice position quite near the sitter, as I am only to do his head. There was a good deal of struggling as the number of girls increased, and late comers tried amicably to badger me out of my good position. We waited more than half an hour for the sitter, and beguiled the time as we are wont. Three semi-circles surround the sitter and his platform. The inner and smaller circle is for us who do his head only, and is formed by desks and low chairs; the next is formed by small fixed easels, and the outer one by the loose-easel brigade, so there are lots of us at work. At length the martyr issued from the curtained closet where Messrs. Burchett, Denby and Collinson had been helping the unhappy victim to make a lobster of his upper self with heavy plates of armour. He became sadly modern below the waist, for his nether part was not wanted. To see Mr. Denby pinning on the man’s refractory Puritan starched collar was rich. The model is a small man, perfectly clean shaven with a most picturesque face; quite a study. Very finely-chiselled mouth, with thin lips and well-marked chin and jaw. The poor fellow was dreadfully nervous. He was posed standing, morion on head, with a book in one hand, the other raised as though he were discoursing to some fellow soldiers – may-be Covenanters – in a camp. I never saw a man in such agony as he evinced, his nervousness seeming at times to overpower him, and the weight of the armour and of the huge morion (too big for him) told upon him in a painfully evident manner. He was, consequently, allowed frequent rests, when down his trembling arm would clatter and the instrument of torture on his heated forehead come down with a great thump on the table. Mr. Denby was much pleased with my drawing in, and Mr. Collinson commended my carefulness. This pleases me more than anything else, for I know that carefulness is the most essential quality in a student.

“March 27th.– Mr. Burchett showed me how to proceed with the finishing of the face. He liked the way I had done the morion, which astonished me, as I had done it all unaided. I am now a friend of more girls than I can individualise, and they seem all to like me. ‘Little Pale Face’ is very charming with me indeed. One girl told me a dream she had had of me, and Mrs. C., wife of the Athenæum art critic, clapped me on the back very cordially.”

I give these extracts just to launch the Memoirs into that student life which was of such importance to me. Till the Easter vacation I did all I could to retrieve what I considered a good deal of leeway in my art training. There were Sketching Club competitions of intense effort on my part, and how joyful I felt at such events as my illustrations to Thackeray’s “Newcomes” coming through marked “Best” by the judges.

“May 9th.—Veni, vidi, vici! My re-entry into the schools after the vacation has been a triumphal one, for my ‘Newcomes’ have been returned ‘The Best.’ The girls were so glad to see me back. I have chosen, as there is not to be a model till next Monday week, a beautiful headpiece of elaborate design on whose surface the red drapery near it is reflected. Some time after lunch Mrs. C. came running to me from the Antique triumphantly waving a bunch of lilac above her head and crying out that my ‘Newcomes’ had won! I jumped up, overjoyed, and went to see the sketches, around which a crowd of students was buzzing. Mr. Denby, who couldn’t help knowing whose the ‘Best’ were, gave me a nod of approbation. I was very happy. Returning to Fulham, I told the glad tidings to Papa, Mamma, Grandpapa and Grandmamma as they each came in. So this has been a charming day indeed.”

Page after page, closely written, describes the student life, than which there cannot be a happier one for a boy or girl; thorough searchings through the Royal Academy rooms for everything I could find for instruction, admiration and criticism. I joined a class in Bolsover Street for the study of the “undraped” female model, and worked very hard there on alternate days. This necessitated long omnibus rides to that dismal locality, but I always managed to post myself near the omnibus door, so as to study the horses in motion in the crowded streets from that coign of vantage. I also joined a painting class in Conduit Street, but that venture was not a success. I went in about the same time for very thorough artistic anatomy at the schools. I gave sketches to nearly all my fellow students – fights round standards, cavalry charges, thundering guns. I wonder where they are all now! I had always had a great liking for the representation of movement, but at the same time a deep well of melancholy existed in my nature, and caused me to draw from its depths some very sad subjects for my sketches and plans for future pictures. How strange it seems that I should have been so impregnated, if I may use the word, with the warrior spirit in art, seeing that we had had no soldiers in either my father’s or mother’s family! My father had a deep admiration for the great captains of war, but my mother detested war, though respecting deeply the heroism of the soldier. Though she and I had much in common, yet, as regards the military idea, we were somewhat far asunder; my dear and devoted mother wished to see me lean towards other phases of art as well, especially the religious phase, and my Italian studies in days to come very much inclined me to sacred subjects. But as time went on circumstances conducted me to the genre militaire, and there I have remained, as regards my principal oil paintings, with few exceptions. My own reading of war – that mysteriously inevitable recurrence throughout the sorrowful history of our world – is that it calls forth the noblest and the basest impulses of human nature. The painter should be careful to keep himself at a distance, lest the ignoble and vile details under his eyes should blind him irretrievably to the noble things that rise beyond. To see the mountain tops we must not approach the base, where the foot-hills mask the summits. Wellington’s answer to enthusiastic artists and writers seeking information concerning the details of his crowning victory was full of meaning: “The best thing you can do for the Battle of Waterloo is to leave it alone.” He had passed along the dreadful foot-hills which blocked his vision of the Alps.

I worked hard at the schools and in the country throughout 1867, and, with many ups and downs, progressed in the Life class. My fellow students were a great delight to me, so enthusiastically did they watch my progress and foretell great things for me. We formed a little club of four or five students – kindred spirits – for mutual help and all sorts of good deeds, the badge being a red cross and the motto “Thorough.” I remember a money-box into which we were, by the rules, to drop what coins we could spare for the Poor. We were to read a chapter of the New Testament every day, and a chapter of Thomas à Kempis, and all our works were to be signed with the red cross and the club monogram. Seeing this little sign in the corner of “The Roll Call” over my name set one of those absurd stories circulating in the Press with which the public was amused in 1874, namely, that I had been a Red Cross nurse in the Crimea. As a counterpoise to this more “copy” was obtained for the papers by paragraphs representing me as an infant prodigy, which I thank my stars I was not!

One day in this year 1867 I had, with great trepidation, asked Mr. Burchett to accept two pen and ink illustrations I had made to Morris’s poem, “Riding together.” Great commotion amongst the students. Some preferred the drawing for the gay and happy first verse: