STUDY IN COLOUR FOR "SOLITUDE." 1890
By permission of Mrs. Stewart Hodgson[ToList]
Leighton also particularly desired that his sister should see Malinmore, County Donegal, when visiting Ireland. He wrote from Kensington, "I am bent on your seeing Malinmore."
And again, from Scotland:—
Inverness, September 13.
Dear Lina,—I can't help feeling a good deal of responsibility about the melancholy, treeless wilds to which I have sent you, because I happen to like them vastly; and I particularly feel that everything will turn on your seeing, not indeed all or nearly all I saw—that is impossible—but as much as your strength will allow; take your courage, therefore, in one hand, your goloshes in another, and your umbrella in a third, and from the car—abseits—see the whole coast-line close to the rocks overlooking the sea; there is not an inch that won't reward you. There is a bit not more than half a mile from Malinmore (to'ards Malinhead), that is, though small, quite Dantesque in its grim blackness (a few wet feet im Nothfall won't hurt you). Of course, to do this well you must be in cars every day to take you in all directions to the point from which to make your Abstecher—sometimes towards Glencolumskill and the Hog's Back beyond (magnificent), sometimes towards Malinhead, where you must see every little bay, including the Silver Strand.
At first sight the breaking up of the weather is a bore, mit Seitenblick auf Ihnen—but is not as bad as it seems; bad (dirty) weather suits these parts, and the day will not dawn in which I shall have forgotten certain dramatic sunsets and the swooping of certain storm-clouds like the flight of huge fiery birds of prey, more than once witnessed and deposed to on canvas by me, over this treeless tract of moor.
FOOTNOTES:
[58] "Athlete Strangling a Python," exhibited in the International Exhibition, Paris, 1878.