An Autobiography

The picture was taken to the Club House, there to be shown for three days to the division before Sending-in Day. The idea was Will’s, but I got the thanks – undeserved, as I had been reluctant to brave the dust on the wet paint. Crowds went to see it, from the generals down to the traditional last drummer.

I thought the Academicians were again unkind in the placing of my picture, and a trip to Paris was all the more welcome as a diversion, for there I was able to seek consolation in the treat of a plunge into the best art in the “City of Light.” One interesting day in May found us at Malmaison, the country house of Napoleon and Josephine. There is always something mournful in a house no longer tenanted which once echoed the talk, the laughter, the comings and goings, the pleasant and arresting sounds of voices that are long silent. But this house, of all houses! It was absolutely stripped of everything but Napoleon’s billiard table, and the worm-eaten bookshelves in his little musty study the only “fixtures” left. The ceilings we found in holes; that garden, once so much admired and enjoyed, choked with dusty nettles. We went into every room – the one where poor derelict Josephine died; the guests’ bedrooms; the dining-room where Napoleon took his hurried meals; the library where he studied; the billiard-room, where he himself often took part in a game surrounded by “fair women and brave men” in the glitter of gorgeous uniforms and radiant toilettes. One lends one’s mind’s ear to the daily and nightly sounds outside – the clatter of horses’ hoofs as the staff ride in and out of the courtyards with momentous despatches; the sharp words of command; the announcement of urgent arrivals demanding instant hearing. We found our minds revelling in suchlike imaginings. The chapel, the coach-houses, the great iron gates were all there, but seen as in a dream.

We were back at Aldershot on May 30th. “The Queen’s Ball, at Buckingham Palace, brilliant as ever. The Shahzada, the Ameer of Afghanistan’s son, was the guest of the evening, as it is our policy just now to do him particular honour, after having made his father ‘sit up.’ A pale, wretched-looking Oriental, bored to tears! The usual delightful medley of men of every nationality, civilised and semi-civilised, was there in full splendour, but the rush of that crowd for the supper-room, in the wake of royalty, was most unseemly. Every one got jammed, and it was most unpleasant to have steel cartridge boxes and sword hilts sticking into one’s bare arms in the pressure. I think there was something wrong this time with the doors. I was much complimented that night on my ‘Dawn of Waterloo,’ but that was an inadequate salve to my wounded feelings.

“June 15th.– A great review here in honour of the young Shahzada, who is being so highly honoured this season. I don’t think I ever saw such a large staff as surrounded that pallid princeling as he rode on to the field. The whole thing was a long affair, and our bored visitor refreshed himself occasionally with consolatory snuff. The whole of the cavalry finished up, as usual, with a charge ‘stem on,’ and as the formidable onrush neared the weedy youth he began to turn his horse round, possibly suspecting deep-laid treachery.”

My husband and I were present when Cardinals Vaughan and Logue laid the foundation stone of Westminster Cathedral. The luncheon that followed was enlivened by some excellent speeches, especially Cardinal Logue’s, whose rich brogue rolled out some well-turned phrases.

A week later we were at dinner at Farnborough Hill. “There was a large house-party, including Princes Victor and Louis Napoleon, the elder a taciturn, shy, dark man about thirty-three, and the younger an alert, intelligent officer of thirty-one, who is a colonel in the Russian cavalry, and is the hope and darling of the Bonapartists. I call him Napoleon IV. Victor went in with the Empress to dinner and Louis with me, but on taking our seats the two brothers exchanged places, so that I sat on Victor’s right. I had an uphill task to talk with the studious, silent Victor, and found my right-hand neighbour much more pleasant company, Sir Mackenzie Wallace. I had not caught his name and his accent was so perfect and his idioms and turns of speech so irreproachable that I never questioned his being a Frenchman. Away we went in the liveliest manner with our French till suddenly we lapsed into English, why I don’t know. This gave the Empress her chance. She began chuckling behind her toothpick and asked me in French if he had a good accent in speaking English. ‘Yes, madame, very good!’ ‘Ah? really good?’ (chuckle). ‘Really good, madame.’ ‘Ah, that is well’ (chuckle). I saw in Will’s face I was being chaffed and guessed the truth. Much laughter, especially from Louis. He told Will, across the Empress, that he had seen an engraving of ‘Scotland for Ever’ in a shop window in Moscow, and had presented it to the mess of his own cavalry regiment, the Czar being now colonel of the Scots Greys, and that he little expected so soon to meet the painter of that picture. The dinner was very bright and sparkling, so unlike a purely English one. How gratefully Will and I conformed to the spirit of the thing. His Irish heart beats in harmony with it. I didn’t quite recover from my faux pas at table, and, on our taking leave, brought everything into line once more by wishing Prince Louis ‘Felicissima Sera!’ in a way denoting a bewilderment of mind amidst such a confusion of tongues. I left amidst applause.

“July 8th.– There was a sham fight on the Fox Hills to-day to which the two French princes went. Will mounted Victor on steady ‘Roly Poly,’ and sent H. on ‘Heart of Oak’ to attend on His Imperial Highness throughout the day. Louis was mounted by the Duke. My General loves to honour a Napoleon, so, when he was riding home with Louis after the fight, and the Guards were preparing to give the General the usual salute, he begged the Imperial Colonel to take the salute himself. ‘But, General, I am not even in uniform!’ answered Louis. ‘One of your name, sir, is always in uniform,’ was the ready reply. So Louis took it. On his way back to the Empress he stopped at our hut, and after a glass of iced claret cup on this grilling day, he looked at my sketches, and at the little oil picture I am painting for Miss S. – ‘Right Wheel!’ – the Scots Greys at manœuvres. I wonder if he has it in him to make a bid for the French Throne!

“July 12th.– The Queen came down to-day, and there was a very fine display of the picked athletes of the army at the new gymnasium in the afternoon, before Her Majesty, who did not leave her carriage. She looked pleased and in great good humour. She gave a dinner to her generals in the evening at the Pavilion as she did last year. Will sat near her, and she kept nodding and smiling to him at intervals as he carried on a lively conversation with Princesses Louise and Beatrice. Her Majesty expanded into full contentment when nine pipers, supplied by the three Highland Regiments of the Division, entered the room at the close of dinner in full blast. They tell me that each regiment jealously adhered to its own key for its skirls, or whatever the right word is, and so in three different keys did the pibrochs bray, but this detail was not particularly noticeable in the general hurly-burly. The Queen stood it well, though in that confined space it must have tried her nerves. Give me the bagpipes on the mountain side or in the desert, where I have heard them and loved them.

“July 13th.– At a very fine review for the Queen, who brought her usual weather with her. She looked well pleased, especially with the stirring light cavalry charge at the close, when Brabazon pulled up his line at full charging pace within about 12 yards (it seemed to me) of the royal carriage. Really, for a moment, I thought, as the dark mass of men and horses rolled towards us, that he had forgotten all about ‘Halt!’ It was a tremendous tour de force, and a bit of swagger on the part of this dashing hussar. That group of the Queen in her carriage, with the four white horses and scarlet coated servants; the Prince of Wales and the rest of the glittering Staff; Prince Victor Napoleon in civilian dress, his heavy face shaded by his tall black hat as he uneasily sat his excited horse; the other carriages resplendent in red and gold; the Empress’s more sober equipage full of French élégantes, and the wave of dark hussars bursting in a cloud of dust almost in amongst the group, all the leaders of the charging squadrons with sabres flung up and heads thrown back – what a sight to please me! I feel a physical sensation of refreshment on such occasions. What discipline and training this performance showed! Had one horse got out of hand he might have flopped right into the Queen’s lap. I saw one of the squadron leaders give a little shiver when all was over. On getting home I was doing something to the bearskins of my Scots Greys in ‘Right Wheel,’ showing the way the wind blew the hair back, as I had just seen it at the review, while fresh in my mind, when a servant came to tell me Princess Louise was at the Hut. I had got into my painting dress with sleeves turned up for coolness. I ran in, changed in half a minute, and had a nice interview, the Duchess of Connaught being there also, and we had one of those ‘shoppy’ art talks which the Duchess of Argyll likes.

“August 16th.– My ‘At Home’ day was made memorable by the appearance of the Empress Eugénie, who brought a remedy for little Eileen’s cold. It was a plaster, which she showed me how to use. I cannot say how touched we were by this act, so thoughtful and kind – that poor childless widow! She seems to have a particularly tender feeling for Eileen, indeed Mdlle. d’Allonville has told me so.”

The rest of the Aldershot Diary is filled with military activities up to the date of the expiration of my husband’s time there, and his appointment to the command of the South Eastern District with Dover Castle as our home. But between the two commands came an interlude filled with a tour through some parts of Italy I had not seen before, and a visit to the Villa Cyrnos at Cap Martin, whither the Empress had invited us.

CHAPTER XX

ITALY AGAIN

IN January, 1896, we left Aldershot on a raw foggy day, with the usual winter brown-paper sky, the essence of dreariness, on leave for the land I love best. At Turin our train for Genoa was filled with poor young soldiers off to Abyssinia, the Italian Government having followed our example in the policy of “expansion”; with what success was soon seen. An Italian told us that “good coffee” was to be had from there, amongst other desirable commodities. So the poor young conscripts were being sent to fetch the good coffee, etc. They were singing in a chorus of tenor voices as they went, after affectionately kissing the comrades who had come to see them off.

At sunrise we arrived at Naples, Vesuvius looking like a great amethyst, transparent in the golden haze from the sun which rose just behind it. I must say the Neapolitan population struck me as very wretched; the men were no better than the poor creatures one might see in Whitechapel any day, and dressed, like them, in shoddy clothing. The poor skeleton mules and horses were covered with picturesque brass-mounted harness instead of flesh, and I saw no red-sashed, brown-limbed lazzaroni such as were supposed to dance tarantelle on the shore. Certainly there is not much dancing and singing in their hungry-looking descendants.

January 17th was a memorable day, spent at Pompeii. One must see the place for oneself. Familiar with it though you may be through books and paintings, Pompeii takes you by surprise. The suddenness of that entrance into the City of the Dead is a surprise to a newcomer, such as I was. To come into the city at once by the “Street of Tombs,” which carries you steeply upwards into the interior – no turnstiles at the gate, no ticket collectors, no leave-your-umbrella-at-the-door; this natural way of entering gave me a strange sensation as if I were walking into the past. The present day was non-existent. Though we were three and a half hours circulating about those theatres, baths, villas, shops, through the narrow streets, with their deep ruts and stepping stones, I was so absorbed in the fascination of realising the life of those days that I never needed to rest for a moment, and the day had grown very hot. One rather drags oneself through a museum, but we were here under the sky, and Vesuvius, the author of this destruction, was there in very truth, looking down on us as we wandered through the remnants of his victim.

As to beauty of colour there is here a great feast for the painter. What could surpass, on a day like that, the simple beauty of those positive reds and yellows and blues of walls and pillars in that light, back-grounded by the tender blue of mountains delicately crested with the white of their snows? The positive strong foreground colours emphasised by the delicacy of the background! The absolute silence of the place was impressive and very welcome.

The Diary had better “carry on” here: “Sunday, January 19th.– To Capri and Sorrento on our way to Amalfi. There is a string of names! I feel I can’t pronounce them to myself with adequate relish. To Mass at 8, and then at 9 by steamer to Capri, touching at Sorrento on our way. Three hours’ passage over a very dark blue sea, which was flecked with foam off Castellamare. Capri is all I expected, a mass of orange and lemon groves in its lower part, with wonderful crags soaring abruptly, in places, out of the clear green water. Tiberius’s villa is perched on the edge of a fearful precipice that has memories connected with his cruelties which one tries to smother. Indeed, all around one, in those scenes of Nature’s loveliness, the detestable doings of man against man are but too persistently obtruding themselves on the mind which is seeking only restful pleasure.

“We were driven to the Hotel Quisisana (‘Here one gets well’), very high up on a steep ridge, where the village is, and were sorry to find our pleasure marred by being set down to déjeuner with as repulsive a company of Teutons as one could see. The perspective of those feeding faces, along the edge of the table, tried me horribly. They say the Germans are outnumbering the British as tourists in Italy now. Nowhere do their loud voices and rude manners jar upon our sensibility so painfully as in Italy. The Frau next to me actually sniffed at four bottles out of the cruet in succession, poking them into her nose before she satisfied herself that she had found the right sauce for her chop! What’s to be done with such people?

“We had not much time to give to the lovely island, for the little steamer had to take us to Sorrento at two o’clock. We put up there at the Hotel Tramontano, and had a stroll at sunset, with views of the coast and Vesuvius that spread out beyond the reach of my well-meaning, but inadequate, pen. I can’t help the impulse of recording the things of beauty I have seen. It is owing to a wish to preserve such precious things in my memory, to waste nothing of them, and to record my gratitude as well.”

At Amalfi came the culmination to our long series of experiences of the Neapolitan Riviera. The names of Amalfi, Ravello, Salerno and Pæstum will be with me to the end, in a halo of enchantment.

On returning to Naples, of course, we paid our respects to Vesuvius. Our climb to the highest point allowable of the erupting cone was not at all enchanting, and left my mind in a most perturbed condition. There was much food for meditation when our visit was over, but at the time one had only leisure to receive impressions, and very disconcerting impressions at that. A keen north wind blew the fumes from the crater straight down my throat as I panted upwards through the sulphur, ankle deep, and I could only think of my discomfort and probable collapse. I disdained a litter. I perceived several fat Germans in litters.

An even deeper impression was made on my mind than that produced by the eruption proper on our coming, after much staggering over cold lava, near a great, crawling river of liquid fire oozing out of the mountain’s side. Above our heads the great maw of the crater was throwing up bursts of rock fragments with rumblings and growls from the cruel monster. I wonder when that wild beast will make its next pounce? And down there, far, far below, in the plain lay little Pompeii, its poor, tiny, insignificant victim! Yes, for a thoughtful climber there was more than the sulphurous north wind to make him pause.

The little funicular railway had brought us up to the foot of the cone, crunching laboriously over the shoulder of the mountain, and I could not but think – “If the chain broke?” At one point the open truck seemed to dangle over space. We were sitting with our faces turned towards the sea and away from the cone, and (were we never to be rid of them?) two corpulent Teutons faced us, hideously conspicuous, as having apparently nothing but blue air behind them. There was no horizon at all to the sea, the pale haze merging sea and sky into one. Then, when we alighted, we found ourselves in a restaurant with Messrs. Cook & Co.’s waiters running about. Certainly it was no time for meditating or moralising in that medley of the prehistoric and the fin de siècle.

I found Rome very much changed after the lapse of all those years since I was there with our family during the last months of the Temporal Power. I shall never forget the shock I felt when, to lead off, on our arrival, I conducted my husband to the great balustrade on the Pincian overlooking the city, promising him my favourite view. It was a truly striking one in the far-off days, and quite beautiful. Instead of the reposeful vineyards of the area facing us beyond the Tiber, fitting middle distance between us and St. Peter’s, gaunt buildings bordering wide, straight, staring streets glistening with tramlines seemed to jeer at me in vulgar triumph, and I am not sure that I did not shed tears in private when we got back to our hotel. One fact, however, brought a sense of mental expansion as I surveyed that view, which should have made amends for the sensitive contraction of my artist’s mind. That great basilica yonder was mine now! A return to Rome had another touch of sadness for me. Our father had been so happy there in introducing his girls to the city he loved. He seemed now to be ever by my side as the well-remembered haunts that were left unchanged were seen again. Leo XIII. was now Pope. On one particular occasion in the Sistine Chapel, at Mass, I was struck by the extraordinary effect of his white, utterly ethereal face and fragile figure as he stood at the altar, relieved against the background of Michael Angelo’s exceedingly muscular “Last Judgment.” And, now, what of this “Last Judgment”? The action of our Lord, splendidly rendered as giving the powerful realisation of the push which that heavy arm is giving in menace to the condemned souls towards the Abyss on His left (I had almost said the shove!), is realistic and strong. But what a gross conception! Our modern minds cannot be impressed by this fleshly rendering of such a subject, a rendering suitable to the coarser fibre of the Middle Ages. I could positively hate this fresco, were I not lured, as a painter, to admire its technical power.

Our visit to the Empress at Cap Martin followed, on our way home to Aldershot. She received us with her usual genial grace. The place, of course, ideal, and the typical blue weather. We were made very much at home. Madame le Breton told me I was to wear a table d’hôte frock at dinner, and Pietri told Sir William a black tie to the evening suit was the order of the day.

“February 13th.– The Villa Cyrnos is in a wood of stone pines, overhanging the sea on a promontory between Mentone and Monte Carlo. It is in the French Riviera style, all very white – no Italian fresco colouring. Plentiful striped awnings to keep off the intense sunlight. Cool marble rooms, polished parquets, flowers in masses – a sense of grateful freshness with reminders of the heat outside in the dancing reflections from the sea. Indeed, this is a charming retreat. Madame d’Arcos and her sister, Mrs. Vaughan, were there, who having just arrived from England, were full of accounts of the arrival of the remains of Prince Henry of Battenberg from Ashanti, and the funeral, at which Madame d’Arcos had represented the Empress. The different episodes were minutely described by her of this, the last act of the latest tragedy in our Royal Family. She had a sympathetic listener in the poor Empress.

“February 14th.– A sunny day marred, to me, by a visit to Monte Carlo, where the gambling is in fullest activity. The Empress wanted us all to go for a little cruise in a yacht, but though the sea was calm enough I preferred terra firma, and her ladies drove me to Monte Carlo. Hateful place! The lovely mountains were radiant in the low sunshine of that afternoon and the sea sparkling with light, but a crowd of overdressed riff-raff was circulating about the casino and pigeon-shooting place, from which came the ceaseless crack of the cowardly, unsportsmanlike guns. I record, with loathing, one fellow I saw who came on the green, protected from the gentle air by a fur-lined coat which his valet took charge of while his master maimed his allotted number of clipped victims, and carefully replaced as soon as all the birds were down. A black dog ran out to fetch each fluttering thing as it fell. I was glad to see this hero was not an Englishman. Inside the casino the people were massed round the gaming tables, the hard light from the circular openings above each table bringing into relief the ugly lines of their perspiring faces. The atmosphere was dusty and stifling, and the hands of these horribly absorbed people were black with clawing in their gains across the grimy green baize. I drank in the pure, cool air of the sunset loveliness outside when I got free, with a very certain persuasion that I would never pay a second visit, except under polite compulsion, to the gambling palace of Monte Carlo.

“February 15th.– The Empress took us quite a long walk to see the corps of the ‘Alpins’ at the Mentone barracks and back by the rocky paths along the shore. She is very active, and is looking beautiful.

“Sunday, February 16th.– All of us to Mass at the little Mentone church. The dear Empress gave me a little holy picture during the service and said, ‘I want you to keep this.’ There is at times something very touching about her.”

I sent a small picture this year to the “New Gallery,” instead of the Academy, feeling still the effects of their unkindness in placing “The Dawn of Waterloo” where they did the preceding year.

CHAPTER XXI

THE DOVER COMMAND

AND now Dover Castle rises into prominence above the horizon as I travel onward. My husband was offered Colchester or Dover. He left the choice to me. How could there be a doubt in my mind? The Castle was the very ideal, to me, of a residence. Here was History, picturesqueness, a wide view of the silver sea, and the line of the French coast to free the mind of insularity. So to Dover we went, children, furniture, horses, servants, dogs and all, from the Aldershot bungalow. As usual, I was spared by Sir William all the trouble of the move, and while I was comfortably harboured by my ever kind and hospitable friends, the Sweetmans, in Queen’s Gate, my husband was managing all the tiresome work of the move.

It was a pleasure to give dances at the Constables’ Tower, and the dinners were like feasts in the feudal times under that vaulted ceiling of the Banqueting Hall. Our boys’ bedroom in the older part of this Constables’ Tower had witnessed the death of King Stephen, and a winding staircase conducted the unappreciative London servants by a rope to their remote domiciles. The modernised part held the drawing-rooms, morning-room, library, and chief bedrooms, while in the garden, walled round by the ramparts, stood the tower whence Queen Mary is said to have gazed upon her lost Calais. My studio had a balcony which overhung the moat and drawbridge. What could I have better than that? No wonder I accomplished a creditable picture there, for I had many advantages. I place “Steady, the Drums and Fifes!” amongst those of my works with which I am the least dissatisfied. The Academy treated me well this time, and gave the picture a place of honour. These drummer-boys of the old 57th Regiment, now the Middlesex, are waiting, under fire, for the order to sound the advance, at the Battle of Albuera. That order was long delayed, and they and the regiment had to bear the supreme test of endurance, the keeping motionless under fire. A difficult subject, excellent for literature, very trying for painting. I had had the vision of those drummer-boys for many years before my mind’s eye, and it is a very obvious fact that what you see strongly in that way means a successful realisation in paint. Circumstances were favourable at Dover. The Gordon Boys’ Home there gave me a variety of models in its well-drilled lads, and my own boys were sufficiently grown to be of great use, though, for obvious reasons, I could not include their dear faces in so painful a scene. The yellow coatees, too, were a tremendous relief to me after that red which is so hard to manage. I remember asking Detaille if he ever thought of giving our army a turn. “I would like to,” he said, “but the red frightens us.” The bandsmen of the Peninsular War days wore coatees of the colour of the regimental facings. After long and patient researches I found out this fact, and the facings of the 57th, being canary yellow, I had an unexpected treat. I remember how the Duke of York11 at an Aldershot dinner had characteristically caught up this fact with great interest when I told him all about my preparations for this picture. I am glad to know this work belongs to the old 57th, the “Die Hards,” who won that title at Albuera. “Die hard, men, die hard!” was their colonel’s order on that tremendous day.