56 BANQUET AT VARALLO XXVI 1887 the people are so pleased to see him and compliment him on his Aet. 51 good looks and on keeping so young. Then he puts on an air of great sadness, lowers his voice, and tells them he has had the misfortune to lose his father. He sends you his love. Yours always, HENRY FESTING JONES. H. F. Jones to Charles Gogin. HOTEL CAVOUR, MILANO, 10 Sept. 1887. DEAR GOGIN-There were no letters or papers at Aosta and, as it is pretty certain some were sent there, we have concluded there is something wrong with the Aosta post-office; it is like the telephone in the hotel at Casale-not in activity. Consequently if you wrote to us there we did not get your letter. Our day at the vineyards went off without intoxication. Dionigi's uncle came with us and we both fell in love with him; he is a delightful old man. He brought a basket containing some bread and the remainder of half a bottle of sherry, but he left it in the train and it went on to Novara and he had it on his mind all day; it was not the bread nor the sherry, he said, but the basket. We told him we had drunk the sherry while he was asleep in the train, and the way he said "Chow" would have won your heart. He did nearly everything Dionigi told him, took the wrong turnings, drove the carriage, cut up the chicken etc., but once or twice (as when the turning was too wrong) he put his foot down and wouldn't, and then Dionigi dried up at once. The banquet was a tremendous affair, altogether there were 26 people including the Procuratore del Re, the Sotto Prefetto, the Direttore del Sacro Monte, the Municipio and all the swells. Butler was put at the head of the table and we had a very good dinner. Afterwards there were speeches. The Director of the Sacred Mountain proposed Butler's health in florid terms, and Butler replied in Italian. I forget how the speeches went, there were not many, but some villain proposed the health of England and mentioned me, and it was considered proper for me to reply which I did in about five words of what I intended to be French. Butler made two speeches and spoke beautifully. I asked Fuselli (an Italian who has been in America and who sat next me) how Butler spoke, and he said "he finds his words as easily as we do." Before dinner we went to look at one of the figures in the Deposition Chapel, an old man Butler has discovered [the Vecchietto] and about whom he will tell you-very interesting. The custode brought the keys and we all got into the chapel and examined him. XXVI ADAM AND EVE 57 We had been told that two of the soldiers, in the chapel 1887 where Christ is taken in the garden, were made out of the old Aet. 51 statues of Adam and Eve when the present Adam and Eve in the first chapel were made, and we had examined the chapel in the morning and made up our minds that the soldier with a moustache and real drapery was Adam and the other soldier with long hair and armour was Eve. Eve was bigger than Adam which was wrong, and she had no breasts to speak of, but that might have been because neither Cain nor Abel was yet born. Her breast had been painted to represent armour in silver scales, which stopped short of her girdle, her intervening belly being painted blue, like an ancient Briton. As we were going into chapels before dinner, we thought we might as well settle the Adam and Eve question for certain, so we went in and Dionigi investigated; I also pulled up their clothes and we found we had been quite wrong in the morning. It is Eve who has the moustache and the drapery hides her breasts; and it is Adam's stomach that is painted blue. On Friday (2 Sept.) we went to Alagna in the post and here we had to put up with a double-bedded room which we never like. He is afraid his snoring will disturb me and says I am to Iwake him if he snores. The consequence is we neither of us go to sleep; he is afraid if he does he shall snore and disturb me, and I am afraid if I do he will snore and I shall not be able to wake him, and he won't like that. In the morning occurred the toothbrush riots. He accused me of using his toothbrush-said he could see the marks of my teeth upon it. [I have not the faintest recollection of all this.-S. B., Feb. 22, 1902.] It was only with the greatest difficulty I got him to believe he was mistaken by assuring him that I had not cleaned my teeth for a fortnight. On Saturday 3 Sept. we walked over the Col d' Olen to Gressoney La Trinité, on the 4th down the Valley to Issime, on the 5th further down to Pont Saint Martin, where we took the train to Aosta. Daniele was our guide the last 2 days, a charming young man who hates his sister. He can stand home on work days when he can get out, but the Sundays and the feste are killing him. On the 7th to Ivrea, and on the 8th to Casale. On the 9th we took train to Serra Lunga, and then drove to Crea where there is a Sanctuary containing figures by Tabachetti. Many of the chapels are empty and some only half full, being restored; some have been restored. He will tell you about it when we get back. One chapel had been turned into a studio by an old Jew sculptor, the image of Shylock with a port-wine mark on his face. We found him suitably engaged 58 A TOPSY-TURVY GOLGOTHA XXVI 1887 in modelling Christ on a wooden cross for the Crucifixion Chapel. Aet. 51 It was the most rapid Crucifixion on record. He assured us that he only began at 9 that morning and when we saw it a few hours P.S.-The banquet is reported in the Varallo paper. The word "Chow" uttered by Dionigi's uncle is really "Ciao," but I have preserved the other spelling because Butler so writes it in Alps and Sanctuaries. The municipal banquet took place in the loggia of the Albergo on the Sacro Monte which Butler always spoke of as the most beautiful dining-room he knew. As we came down the slippery mountain path when it was all over, he said to me: Well, after this you know, the next thing I do must be my book about the Sacro Monte." He refers to this dinner on p. 25 of Ex Voto, where he says, speaking of the people of Varallo : Personally I owe them the greatest honour that has ever been conferred upon me an honour far greater than any I have ever received among those who know me better and are probably better judges of my deserts. A reproduction of the figure in the Deposition chapel, the Vecchietto, is given as the frontispiece of Ex Voto. The chapel that the old Jew sculptor was using as a studio at Crea was littered with limbs half-formed and coming into being, and Butler said it was a topsy-turvy Golgotha. At Milan, Butler had photographs taken of the Bellini heads in Gentile's great picture of "St. Mark Preaching at Alexandria," and of those in Carpaccio's "Preaching of St. Stephen." We went to Bergamo and from there by the Lago d'Iseo to Lovere, Ponte della XXVI HAIR-BRUSHES 59 Selva, and back to Bergamo, and, by Lecco and Colico, 1887 to Chiavenna, where we stayed at the Albergo Grotta Act. 51 Crimea. This albergo is mentioned in The Note-Books of Samuel Butler (1912). ALFRED AND THE TRIAD ON G Some years ago I tried to teach Alfred music, but by mutual consent we dropped the lessons after a few months, I asked him once what position the common chord of G was in, and played meaning him to say that it was in its it for him thus: original position. The dear fellow looked at it for some time and answered: "I should say, sir, it was about the middle." Butler to Mrs. Bridges. 2 Nov. 1887-His [Alfred's] music lessons had been intermitted by my going abroad but I have lately resumed them. He kicks hard at the scales, but I am obdurate. He is very good, but is evidently under the impression that I am an old, decrepit person with one foot in the grave. I got a new pair of hairbrushes the other day-a good pair-the others having been long on their very last legs. I said to him that they would last my time. "Yes, sir," said he promptly. I was a little piqued and determined to give him a locus paenitentiae, so I said: "Of course, I can never hope to see them out." "No, sir," he replied with equal promptitude. I was exceedingly amused. Of course one never can tell from week to week, but I am not going to settle the matter out of hand that I am not to survive my hair-brushes. In 1887 Francis Darwin published the Life and Letters of Charles Darwin. On p. 220 of vol. III. occurs a passage referring to the publication of Erasmus Darwin and to Butler's accusations which followed; the passage will be found in an Appendix (post) quoted by Butler in his letter to The Athenaeum, 26th November 1887. It concludes: The affair gave my father much pain, but the warm sympathy of those whose opinion he respected soon helped him to let it pass into a well-merited contempt. 60 PHOTOGRAPHY XXVI 1887 In 1887 Francis Darwin also issued a new edition of Aet. 52 Charles Darwin's Erasmus Darwin, and fulfilled his father's promise to Butler by adding to the original preface this footnote Mr. Darwin accidentally omitted to mention that Dr. Krause revised, and made certain additions to, his essay before it was translated. Among these additions is an allusion to Mr. Butler's Evolution Old and New. Butler saw that this third foot-note changed the sense which the other two foot-notes had borne when they stood alone in the preface to the first edition, and wrote to The Academy a letter which is reproduced in an Appendix (post) dated 17th December 1887: "Mr. Francis Darwin has now stultified his father's preface." In so writing he did not know, and he had no means of knowing, that the third foot-note had restored to the preface the meaning which Charles Darwin had originally intended it to bear. In his early days Butler had dabbled in photography; he now bought two cameras, one for snap-shots and one for time-exposures, and took a few lessons so that he might photograph the statues in the chapels at VaralloSesia. A WINTER JOURNEY Gogin and I spent Xmas at Boulogne and on the afternoon of Dec. 28, 1887 I left for Varallo-travelling all night to Basel. It was bitterly cold and, between Châlons and the Swiss frontier, the snow drifted in from each window and piled itself up on the seats near the windows, so that I could only sit in the very middle of the carriage. Fortunately I was the only occupant. I was very thickly clad, but was wearing a sling bag outside my greatcoat, so that the warmth of my body would hardly affect the thermometer that I had within it-still no doubt the temperature inside the bag would be warmer than that outside. About 2 A.M. I took the thermometer out and found it at 26°. At Basel everything was warm. I crossed Switzerland to Luino on a brilliant cloudless day-everything was deep in snow. I never saw Switzerland look more beautiful, but I suppose it was chiefly the strangeness that made it fascinate me so strongly. After Luino there was very little snow, but all the little waterfalls were locked in frost. The carriages were now no longer |