| PAGE | |
| “Got It, Bravo!” | [Frontispiece] |
| A Leaf from a very early Sketch-book | [12] |
| Flying Shots in Belgium and Rhineland in 1865 | [19] |
| In Florence during my Studies in 1869 | [58] |
| The Last of the Riderless Horse-races, and a Wet Trudge to the Vatican Council | [80] |
| Crimean Ideas | [103] |
| Practising for “Quatre Bras” | [130] |
| One of the Balaclava Six Hundred | [151] |
| In Western Ireland: a “Jarvey” and “Biddy” | [174] |
| The Egyptian Camel Corps and the Bersaglieri | [230] |
| Aldershot Manœuvres: the Enemy in Sight | [234] |
| A Despatch Bearer, Boer War, and the Horse Gunners | [284] |
| Notes on the Eve of the Great War | [323] |
| The Shire Horses: Wheelers of a 4·7. A Hussar Scout of 1917 | [327] |
| A Postcard, found on a German Prisoner, with “Scotlandfor Ever” turned into Prussian Cavalry, typifyingthe Victorious Onrush of the German Army in theNew Year, 1915 | [332] |
AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY
ELIZABETH BUTLER
My Friends: You must write your memoirs.
I: Every one writes his or her memoirs nowadays. Rather a plethora, don’t you think? An exceedingly difficult thing to do without too much of the Ego.
My Friends: Oh! but yours has been such an interesting life, so varied, and you can bring in much outside yourself. Besides, you have kept a diary, you say, ever since you were twelve, and you have such an unusually long memory. A pity to waste all that. You simply must!
I: Very well, but remember that I am writing while the world is still knocked off its balance by the Great War, and few minds will care to attune themselves to the Victorian and Edwardian stability of my time.
My Friends: There will come a reaction.
CHAPTER I
FIRST IMPRESSIONS
I WAS born at the pretty “Villa Claremont,” just outside Lausanne and overlooking Lake Leman. I made a good start with the parents Providence gave me. My father, cultured, good, patient, after he left Cambridge set out on the “Grand Tour,” and after his unsuccessful attempt to enter Parliament devoted his leisure to my and my younger sister’s education. Yes, he began with our first strokes, our “pot-hooks and hangers,” our two-and-two make four; nor did his tuition really cease till, entering on matrimony, we left the paternal roof. He adopted, in giving us our lessons, the principle of “a little and often,” so that we had two hours in the morning and no lessons in the afternoon, only bits of history, poetry, the collect for the Sunday and dialogues in divers languages to learn overnight by heart to be repeated to him next morning. We had no regular holidays: a day off occasionally, especially when travelling; and we travelled much. He believed that intelligent travel was a great educator. He brought us up tremendous English patriots, but our deepest contentment lay in our Italian life, because we loved the sun—all of us.