Three crockery examples of “the Virgin with Child” (6).
One only is shown in the photo. One of these is from Oropa where the Virgin and Child are both black, see “A Medieval Girl-School” in The Humour of Homer. These holy water holders and Madonnas are some of the cheap religious knick-knacks which are sold at most Italian Sanctuaries. We often brought back a few and gave them away to Gogin, Alfred, Clark, and other friends.
Bag for pennies (7).
Miss Savage’s kettle-holder (8).
In Oct. 1884 (see the Memoir), about four months before her death, Miss Savage sent Butler a present of a pair of socks which she had knitted herself, and she promised to make him some more. Butler gratefully accepted her gift, but
“As for doing me any more, I flatly forbid it. I believe you don’t like my books, and want to make me say I won’t give you any more if you make me any more socks; and then you will make me some more in order not to get the books. No, I will let you read my stupid books in manuscript and help me that way. If you like to make me a kettle-holder, you may, for I only have one just now, and I like to have two because I always mislay one; but I won’t have people working their fingers out to knit me stockings.”
Miss Savage to Butler, 27th Oct. 1884: “Here is a kettle-holder. And I can only say that a man who is equal to the control of two kettle-holders fills me with awe, and I shall begin to be afraid of you. . . . The kettle-holder is very clumsy and ugly, but please to remember that I am not a many-sided genius, and to expect me to excel in kettle-holders and stockings is unreasonable. I take credit to myself, however, for affixing a fetter to it, so that you may chain it up if it is too much disposed to wander. My expectation is that it is too thick for you to grasp the kettle with, and the kettle will slip out of your hand and scald you frightfully. I shall be sorry for you but you would have it, so upon your own head be it.”
Butler to Miss Savage, 28th Oct. 1884: “The kettle-holder is beautiful; it is like a filleted sole, and I am very fond of filleted sole. It is not at all too thick, and fits my kettle to perfection.”
The subject is developed antiphonally between Miss Savage and Butler throughout several letters, and near the close comes this note made by Butler when “editing his remains” at the end of his life:
“I need hardly say that the kettle-holder hangs by its fetter on the wall beside my fire, and is not allowed to be used by anyone but myself. S.B. January 21st, 1902.”