SAMUEL BUTLER
1. Black and white outline sketch: Civita Vecchia, 1854.
Butler went abroad with his family, his second visit to Italy, for the winter of 1853-4. They travelled through Switzerland to Rome and Naples, starting in August 1853, and Butler thus missed the half-year at school. I am sorry that I have not found any more finished drawing made by him on this occasion.
DOUGLAS YEOMAN BLAKISTON
2. Pencil drawing: Samuel Butler, 1854.
Reproduced in the Memoir, ch. iii. On the back of this drawing is the beginning of a water-colour sketch. It was in a book with others mentioned in the Memoir as having been given to Shrewsbury School (I. 44). I have no doubt that the sketch on the back is by Butler, and represents part of the Rectory house at Langar.
The Rev. D. Y. Blakiston was born in 1832. He studied art at the Royal Academy Schools especially under W. Dobson, R.A. From about 1850 to 1865 he painted in London and at St. Leonard’s, and exhibited at the Royal Academy. About 1865 he entered at Downing College, took Orders in 1869, and was presented to the living of East Grinstead in 1871, which he held till his retirement soon after 1908. He died in 1914. Throughout his life he made a practise of sketching his friends. I suppose he must have met and sketched Butler on some occasion when Butler was in London staying with his cousins the Worsleys. The artist’s son, the Rev. H. E. D. Blakiston, when President of Trinity College, Oxford, gave me a cutting from The East Grinstead Observer containing a full obituary of him. It is among the papers at St. John’s College, and is referred to in the Postscript to the Preface to my Memoir of Butler.