The Samuel Butler Collection at Saint John's College, Cambridge / A Catalogue and a Commentary

by Henry Festing Jones; A. T. Bartholomew

HENRY FESTING JONES

65. Water-colour: Jones’s chambers in Staple Inn, Holborn. 1899.

66. Water-colour: another view in the same room. 1899.

In these rooms Butler nearly always spent his evenings from 1893, when I moved into them, until the end of his life. The frames of these pictures are veneered with oak from the Hall of Staple Inn, and into each are inserted two buttons showing the wool-pack, the badge of the Inn, which is said to be named from the Wool-Staplers.

When Butler and I were on the Rigi-Scheidegg with Hans Faesch in 1900 I had these two sketches with me, and was showing them to the landlord, who spoke English. He looked at them and considered them carefully for some moments. Then he said gravely “Ah I see; much things. That means dustings; and then breakings; and then hangriness.”