I laugh even now at the recollection of two elderly _sabreurs_, one of them a General in the Indian Army, who had a hot discussion in my studio, _â propos_ of my “Balaclava,” about the best use of the sabre. The Indian, who was for slashing, twirled his umbrella so briskly, to illustrate his own theory, that I feared for the picture which stood close by his sword arm. The opposition umbrella illustrated “the point” theory.
Having finally clearly fixed the whole composition of “Inkermann,” in sepia on tinted paper the size of the future picture I closed the studio on August 25th and turned my face once more to Italy.
My sister and I tarried at Genoa on our way to Castagnolo where we were to have again the joys of a Tuscan vintage. But between Genoa and Florence lay our well-loved Porto Fino and, having an invitation from our old friend Monty Brown, the English Consul and his young wife, to stay at their castello there, we spent a week at that Eden. We were alone for part of the time and thoroughly relished the situation, with only old Caterina, the cook, and the dog, “Bismarck,” as company. Two Marianas in a moated grange, with a difference. “He” came not, and so allowed us to clasp to our hearts our chief delights--the sky, the sea, the olives and the joyous vines. In those early days many of the deep windows had no glass, and one night, when a staggering Mediterranean thunderstorm crashed down upon us, we really didn’t like it and hid the knives under the table at dinner. Caterina was saying her Rosary very loud in the kitchen. As we went up the winding stairs to bed I carried the lamp, and was full of talk, when a gust of wind blew the lamp out, and Alice laughed at my complete silence, more eloquent than any words of alarm. We had every evening to expel curious specimens of the lizard tribe that had come in, and turn over our pillows, remembering the habits of the scorpion.
But that storm was the only one, and as to the sea, which three-parts enveloped our little Promontory, its blue utterly baffled my poor paints. But paint I did, on those little panels that we owe to Fortuny, so nicely fitting into the box he invented. There was a little cape, crowned with a shrine to Our Lady--“the Madonnetta” it was called--where I used to go daily to inhale the ozone off the sea which thundered down below amongst the brown “pudding-stone” rocks, at the base of a sheer precipice. The “sounding deep.” Oh, the freshness, the health, the joy of that haunt of mine! Our walks were perilous sometimes, the paths which almost overhung the deep foaming sea being slippery with the sheddings of the pines. At the “nasty bits” we had to hold on by shrubs and twigs, and haul ourselves along by these always aromatic supports.