Part 1 (1/2)

An Autobiography

by Elizabeth Butler

FOREWORD

The reat artist must inevitably evoke the interest and appreciation of the initiated But this book makes a wider appeal, written as it is by a woman whose career, apart from her art, has been varied and adventurous, who has travelled widely and associated, not only with the reat and eminent in many fields It is, moreover, the revelation of a personality apart, at once feendered by unswerving adherence to lofty ailiness, when the tereneracy, it is a privilege to commune with one who speaks of her ”experiences of the world's loveliness” and describes herself as ”full of interest in mankind”

These two phrases, taken at randoes of ”From Sketch Book and Diary,” seem to me eminently characteristic of Lady Butler and her work She is a worshi+pper of Beauty in its spiritual as well as its concrete fored mankind in its nobler aspect

At seven years old little Elizabeth Thothat as yet she had achieved nothing great, and a very few years later the world was ringing with the fah the accued for her with intense joy and sorrow, she has kept her valiant standard flying, in her art as in her life re her power and insight for its uplifting Not only has she depicted for us great events and strenuous action, with a sureness all her own, she has caught and e, endurance, fidelity to a life's ideal even in thethe dreadful details of the battlefield; alect, in the desperate steadfastness of a lost cause, her figures stand out true to thehest traditions of their country

During the recent world-upheaval Lady Butler devoted herself in characteristic fashi+on to the pursuance of her ai those terrible years still preached her gospel She worked, reat soldier, she devoted the proceeds of her labours to her less fortunate sisters left impoverished, and even destitute, by the War

”_L'artiste donne de soi_,” said M Paderewski once

Lady Butler has always given generously of her best, and perhaps this book of memories, intih endeavour, full of picturesque incident and touched with delicate huift as any that she has yet bestowed

M E FRANCIS

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 o

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 _ 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 Clare Lake Leave e set out on the ”Grand Tour,” and after his unsuccessful atteer sister's education