The Samuel Butler Collection at Saint John's College, Cambridge Part 20

A leather (or sham leather) cigarette case from Palermo (but, I am afraid, made in Germany).

It contains a fragment of a Greek vase picked up on Mount Eryx and given to Butler by Bruno Flury. He was one of the young men who came about him in 1892 when he broke his foot on the mountain; he afterwards settled in Pisa, where I saw him in 1901.

Two of the blue and white wine cups mentioned in _Alps and Sanctuaries_ (ch. xxii.; new ed., ch. xxiii.), "A Day at the Cantine."

"These little cups are common crockery, but at the bottom there is written Viva Bacco, Viva l'Italia, Viva la Gioia, Viva Venere or other such matter; they are to be had in every crockery shop throughout the Mendrisiotto, and they are very pretty."

The Viva is not written in full; it is represented by a double V, which overlaps, so that it looks like W, but the letter W is not used by the Italians, so there is no chance of its being mistaken by them for anything but the symbol meaning Viva.

A small horn and tortoisesh.e.l.l snuff-box from Palermo.

It contains three coins wrapped in paper and a piece of the pilgrim's cross at Varello-Sesia. The cross is mentioned somewhere in Butler's books as being of very hard wood, so hard that the pilgrims have great difficulty in cutting pieces off it. So had I in cutting off this bit.

The day after Butler's death Alfred came to me with the coins and said:

"I took these out of his pockets, Sir; I thought you ought to have them."

Butler's watch and chain.

Butler used to possess his grandfather's gold watch and chain. He was robbed of the watch in Hyde Park one night just before starting on one of his journeys to Canada; he then bought this silver watch at Benson's, and, if I remember right, wore it with the gold chain. He was robbed of the chain in Fetter Lane, Oct. 1893 (_Memoir_, II. 167). He then bought a silver chain, which, with the silver watch, pa.s.sed under his will to Alfred. Alfred wore them until 1919, when the watch was declared by an expert to be beyond repair. I took it from him, giving him in exchange the watch of my brother Charlie, who had recently died.

The matchbox which Alfred gave to Butler.

When Alfred knew that I was handing Butler's watch and chain on to St.

John's College, he said:

"And then, Sir, they had better have this matchbox which I gave him."

I looked at it and said, "Well, but Alfred, how can that be? It is dated 1894, and he gave your matchbox to the Turk in 1895."

"I know he did, Sir; and when he told me I was very angry and went out into Holborn and bought this one and had it engraved same as the other."

"With the old date?"

"Yes, Sir, just the same as the one he gave to the Turk." See the _Note- Books_, p. 286.