Imperial Hotel,
Pembroke Street, Cork,
Thursday, September 5, 1895.
Dear Lina,—I was glad to glean from your letter of last Thursday that, taking it all round, you are having a fairly good time, and Gussy ditto. (I can't stand wind either, it aggravates my system.) I've never seen Mull—should like to—but not being a sociable bird (like you) should wish to have no acquaintances. Is it Napier of Magdala? if so, I knew the old lord of that ilk; indeed, to be accurate, I knew him even if it was not so; or Lord Napier of Ettrick? if so ditto, ditto. It is always the previous lot I knew. By this time you will have been to Lindisfarne[86] (lovely name!)—if you did not enjoy the sands and the Abbey you need not call on me again. I suppose you are at home now. In a week or two I shall no doubt know how I am. Just off to Killarney, then Galway, then Malinmore, County Donegal, where I shall be from (say) the 10th to (say) the 17th, your affectionate old brother.
In another letter he wrote to Mrs. Orr: "I am too glad that you have made acquaintances—been a gregarious person. If I make an acquaintance anywhere, I have simply lost the game." From Malinmore on September 19th he wrote to me: "I'm sorry that you saw Scotland in a mist; its beauty is succulent colour—you want rain first and then a burst of sun—I am enjoying unsociable solitude keenly, like the bear I am; health so so; I'm sowing patience, but so far reaping nothing in particular. In a fortnight, off to Italy." On this visit to his "second home" Leighton began with Venice, from whence he wrote to me Oct. 9th: "The wind is howling and the rain pouring down in torrents—not a correct attitude in Venice—I'm no better." Leighton next went to Naples, where he wrote the following letter to Mrs. Orr:—
Hotel Bristol, Naples,
October 18, 1895.
Dear Lina,—I am sorry that you and Gussy don't see your way to going to Bayreuth, since it is your health that seems to stand in the way; other reasons are all my eye. I KNOW from Gussy's own mouth that she would particularly like to hear the Siegfried Tetralogy at Bayreuth (and this may be the last time of giving it there), I know also that, given, of course, the Fürsten Loge with its facilities, you would like to go, because you have said so. Well it will remain open in case you change what you, fondly and perhaps sincerely, regard as your minds.
I am very glad you take such a very sensible view of my ailment, because it makes it more easy to speak of it; I also live in the hope and, almost, expectation, that it will fizzle out some day of its own accord, and this enables me to bear up against the entire absence at present of any improvement. I have at last finished my "Nordau," which I have read through from cover to cover; it is a very vigorous and remarkable book and of riveting interest to any one who likes polemics (from outside) as I do. The author is at his best when he is dissecting a particular victim—say Nietzsche—on the other hand one is not a little repelled by his astoundingly unparliamentary insolence, his not infrequent disingenuousness and spitzfindelei and his curious narrownesses and lacunæ. The Böcke die er schneidet when he gets on the subject of graphic art are quite comic. The fact is he is in some respects absolutely devoid of perception, like an otherwise most intelligent and cultured man who should have no ear for music. What, for instance, can we say of a man who asserts, as a truism, that æsthetic and sexual(!) feelings (not sensual but "geschlechtlich") are not merely akin but actually cover one another to a very large extent! I doubt whether there is anything chaster than the sense of beauty in abstract form; he has no inkling of this. When all is said and done he is himself in some measure a cryptodegenerate, if I may so call him; degeneracy is a Zwangsvorstellung with him, he sees it everywhere; a curious instance is his seeing it in the fondness of English writers for alliteration; of course he knows, with his wide culture, better than I do that this assonance of the beginning of words dates from the dawn of our literature; he might, no doubt, say, "Yes! it is a Rückschlag," but he would therein give another proof of his ineptitude in æsthetic matters. In every Art, iteration, of which alliteration is a form, has ever been a powerful source of expression and charm. Meanwhile his last, remarkable, chapter "Therapie" takes a good deal of the sting out of the book; he owns that certain peculiarities—excess of sensibility and the like—are present in nearly all art, that it is, in fact, only a question of a degree and, he adds, in a passage which Gussy has marked, "Who shall say where, exactly, madness begins?" Amen! And that little (or large) spice of something which might be madness if there was much more of it, has given to us poor mortals some of our keenest delights—"more grease to its elbow," say I, in my vulgar way. But, I say! Nietzsche!! eh?—I've also read J. Kowaleski, with great interest—but, crikey! what a creature to live with!!
Tell Gussy, with my love, that I have got the usual two seats (Queen's Hall) for the November Wagner. Tell her to keep the day open.—Afftly. yrs.
Fred.
From Naples he travelled to Rome to find his dear friend Giovanni Costa, with whom he spent the last weeks of his holiday. Of this visit Costa wrote the following in his "Notes":—
"His last study from nature was painted in Rome in October 1895, for the unfinished picture of 'Clytie,' exhibited in the Royal Academy, 1896. It was a study of fruit, and he enjoyed working on it for several hours, though he was then ill; and I believe that the hours he passed in the courtyard of the Palazzo Odeschalchi painting these fruits, which he had arranged on a marble sarcophagus, afforded him, perhaps, the last artistic pleasures he ever enjoyed. It is true that after this he went to the Vatican, to Siena, and to Florence, where he saw for the last time the masterpieces with which these towns abound. But, standing before the great works of the masters of the past, he could only sigh.