7. Oil Painting: His own head.

“He painted at home as well as at Heatherley’s, and by way of a cheap model hung up a looking-glass near the window of his painting room and made many studies of his own head. He gave some of them away and destroyed and painted over others, but after his death we found a number in his rooms—some of the earlier ones very curious” (Memoir, ch. viii.). This is one of the earlier ones. It is inscribed, “S.B., Feb. 18, 1865.” We found also a still more curious one which was given to Gogin, who was interested in it as being the work of an untaught student. See also no. 36.

JOHN LEECH

8. Five pencil drawings on one card.

John Leech died in 1864, the year in which Butler returned from New Zealand. There was a sale of his drawings by his sisters, and I remember going to see them as a boy, but I do not remember when; it was, no doubt, soon after the artist’s death. The house was in Radnor Place, Bayswater. His sisters afterwards kept a small girls’ school, and my sister Lilian went there. I have placed these Leech drawings here in order of date on the assumption that Butler bought them at the sale. He had another drawing by Leech, which used to hang in his chambers, and was given to his cousin, Reginald Worsley.

SAMUEL BUTLER

9. Oil Painting: Interior of Butler’s sitting-room, 15, Clifford’s Inn.

There is something written in pencil on the panelling in the left-hand bottom corner. I believe the words to be “Corner of my room, Augt. 1865, S.B.” Reproduced in the Memoir, ch. xv.

Here are shown Butler’s books, including Bradshaw’s Guide and Whitaker’s Almanack, of which he speaks somewhere as being indispensable. I admit that I cannot identify them, but he used to keep them among the books in these shelves. I do not think he ever possessed that equally indispensable book the Post Office Directory. But he had more books than those shown in this painting. Between his sitting-room and his painting-room was a short passage in which was a cupboard, and this contained the rest. I do not remember how many there were, but not enough to invalidate the statement he made to Robert Bridges (Memoir II. 320), “I have, I verily believe, the smallest library of any man in London who is by way of being literary.”

10. Water-colour: Dieppe, The Castle, 1866.