Название: Josephine E. Butler
Автор: Butler Josephine Elizabeth Grey
Издательство: Public Domain
Жанр: Зарубежная классика
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At Oxford the subject was entirely new, at least to the older members of the university, who, however, to their credit, came to the lectures, and listened with teachable minds to truths novel to them concerning the world they were living in. We drew large illustrative maps for the walls of the lecture room. I recall a day when I was drawing in a rough form an enlarged map of Europe, including the northern coast of Africa and a part of Asia Minor. It happened that several fellows and tutors of colleges called at that moment. I continued my work while they chatted with him on the curiosity of his introduction in Oxford of so elementary a study. The conversation then turned on letters we had just received from Arthur Stanley and Theodore Walrond, who were visiting Egypt. “Where is Cairo?” someone asked, turning to the map spread on the table. I put the question to an accomplished college tutor. His eye wandered hopelessly over the chart. He could not even place his hand on Egypt! I was fain to pretend that I needed to study my performance more closely, and bent down my head in order to conceal the irreverent laughter which overcame me.
George Butler was one of the first, also, who introduced and encouraged the study of Art in Oxford in a practical sense. In the winter of 1852-53 he obtained the permission of the Vice-Chancellor and Curators to give a course of lectures on Art in the Taylor building. These lectures were afterwards published by J. W. Parker, under the title of Principles of Imitative Art. While promoting the study of Art in Oxford, working with pupils, and examining in the schools, he undertook to write a series of Art criticisms for the Morning Chronicle and afterwards for another paper, visiting for this purpose the galleries and yearly exhibitions in London. This he did for a year or two.
“It was amusing,” he wrote to his mother, after his first visit in this capacity to the Society of British Artists, “to see the ‘gentlemen of the press’ (of whom I was one!) walking about dotting down observations. I travelled up to town with Scott, the architect, who has engaged me to attend a meeting of his workmen, and give them an address on ‘Decorative Art and the Dignity of Labour.’ Josephine and I are both engaged in copying some drawings by Turner in the Taylor Gallery.”
Indefatigable in his efforts to master any subject which attracted him, he was also equally ready and anxious to impart to others any knowledge he had thus gained. He found time among his other occupations to make a very thorough study of some ancient Oscan inscriptions, with engravings of their principal monuments, which he found in the Bodleian Library. He became much interested in that portion of history – almost lost in the mists of the past – which is illustrated by the marvellous records and monuments of Oscan, Umbrian, and Etruscan life in the great museum at Bologna. He worked at and completed, during one of the long vacations, a series of enlarged copies in sepia of the small engravings and prints of these monuments in the Bodleian. These enlargements were suitable for wall illustrations, for a set of lectures which he afterwards gave on the “Ancient Races of Italy.” It was very pleasant to us when we visited Florence together, some years later, to see the originals of some of the Cyclopean ruins of which we had together made large drawings, those gigantic stones of all that remains of the ancient Etruscan walls of Fiesole, up to the lovely heights of which we drove one clear, bright winter’s day.
I have many other memories of our life at Oxford – some very sweet, others grave. I recall with special pleasure our summer evening rides. During the first two years we spent there my father kindly provided me with a horse, a fine, well-bred chestnut. My husband and I explored together all the rising grounds round Oxford. Behind our own little garden there were tall trees where nightingales sang night and day for a few weeks in spring. But it was in the Bagley Woods and in Abingdon Park that those academic birds put forth all their powers. We sometimes rode from five in the afternoon till the sun set and the dew fell, on grassy paths between thick undergrowths of woods such as nightingales love to haunt, and from which issued choruses of matchless song.
Our Italian studies were another source of enjoyment. Dante Rossetti was then preparing matter for his book, Dante and His Circle, by carefully translating into English the Vita Nuova and lyrical poems of Dante, together with other sonnets and poems written by some of his predecessors, such as Cavalcante, Orlandi and Angiolieri of Siena. Mr. Rossetti sent to us occasionally for criticism some of his translations of the exquisite sonnets of Dante, the English of which he was anxious to make as perfect as possible. We had visited Rossetti’s studio at Chelsea, where he had shown us his portfolios of original sketches for his great paintings, besides many unfinished drawings and pathetic incidents expressed in artist’s shorthand – slight but beautiful pencil designs. My husband’s critical faculty and classical taste enabled him to return the sonnets submitted to his judgment with occasional useful comments. There was little to find fault with in them, however.
Aurelio Saffi was at this time in exile and living in Oxford. He had been associated with Mazzini and Armellini in the Triumvirate which ruled in Rome for a short period, and was parliamentary deputy for his own native town of Forli. He was a cultivated and literary man, with a thorough knowledge of the Italian poets. As an exile his material means were at that time very slender. My husband sought his acquaintance, and invited him to give a series of evening lectures on Dante in our own drawing-room. These were attractive to some, and increased the personal interest felt in Saffi in the university. Twenty-seven years later, having returned to Italy from exile, Saffi was presiding at a great congress in Genoa where we were. He alluded, with much feeling, to the years he had spent in Oxford; and turning to my husband, who was near him, he said: “It is twenty-seven years to-day that, an exile from my native land, I had the happiness of being received in your house at Oxford, and I have never forgotten, and shall never forget, the hospitable and gracious reception given to me by you and your worthy companion. The times are changed; a long interval has elapsed, and it is to me a great joy to-day to greet you once more, and on my native soil.”
But this pleasant life at Oxford had its shadow side. I had come from a large family circle, and from free country life to a university town – a society of celibates, with little or no leaven of family life; for Oxford was not then what it is now under expanded conditions, with its married fellows and tutors, its resident families, its ladies’ colleges, and its mixed, general social life. With the exception of the families of a few heads of houses, who lived much secluded within their college walls, there was little or no home life, and not much freedom of intercourse between the academical portion of the community and others. A one-sidedness of judgment is apt to be fostered by such circumstances – an exaggeration of the purely masculine judgment on some topics, and a conventual mode of looking at things.
In the frequent social gatherings in our drawing-room in the evenings there was much talk, sometimes serious and weighty, sometimes light, interesting, critical, witty and brilliant, ranging over many subjects. It was then that I sat silent, the only woman in the company, and listened, sometimes with a sore heart; for these men would speak of things which I had already revolved deeply in my own mind, things of which I was convinced, which I knew, though I had no dialectics at command with which to defend their truth. A few remarks made on those evenings stand out in my memory. They may seem slight and unimportant, but they had a significance for me, linking themselves, as they did, to long trains of thought which for some years past had been tending to form my own convictions.
A book was published at that time by Mrs. Gaskell, and was much discussed. This led to expressions of judgment which seemed to me false – fatally false. A moral lapse in a woman was spoken of as an immensely worse thing than in a man; there was no comparison to be formed between them. A pure woman, it was reiterated, should be absolutely ignorant of a certain class of evils in the world, albeit those evils bore with murderous cruelty on other women. One young man seriously declared that he would not allow his own mother to read such a book as that under discussion – a book which seemed to me to have a very wholesome tendency, though dealing with a painful subject. Silence was thought to be the great duty of all on such subjects. On one occasion, when I was distressed by a bitter case of wrong inflicted on a very young girl, I ventured to speak to СКАЧАТЬ