I was anxious to see “Angers la Noire,” where we stayed on our way from Savonnières to Amboise. But the black slate houses which gave it that name are being turned into white stone ones, and so its grim characteristic is passing away. Give me character, good or bad; characterless things are odious. I don’t suppose a more perfect old Angevin town exists than Amboise. It fulfilled all I required and expected of it. How Turner understood these towns on the broad, majestic Loire! He occasionally exaggerated, but his exaggerations were always in the right direction, emphasising thus the dominant beauties of each place and their local sentiment. Which recalls the deep charm of the rivers of France more subtly to the mind, Turner’s series or an album of photographs? Turner’s mind saw more truly than the camera. The castle of Amboise is superb and its creamy white stone a glory. Then came Blois, with a quite different reading of a castle, where plenty of colour and gilding and Gothic richness gave the character--not so restful to eye and mind as Amboise. Through both the _châteaux_ we were marshalled along by a guide. I would sooner learn less of a place, by myself, than be told all by a tiresome man in a _cicerone’s_ livery. Plenty of horrors were supplied us at both places, vitiating my otherwise simple pleasure as a painter in the sight of so much beauty.
We returned to Plymouth Sound on a lovely day, and there our blue launch, with that bright brass funnel I had so long agitated for, was awaiting us, and we landed at the steps of Mount Wise as though we had merely been for a trip to Penlee Point.
I found my picture of the yeomanry cantering through a “spruit” in the Boer War, “Within Sound of the Guns,” admirably placed this time at Burlington House, in the spring of 1903. I had greatly improved in tone by this time. Millais’ remark once upon a time, “She draws better than any of us, but I wish her _tone_ was better,” had sunk deep.
On July 14th, 1903, the Princess Henry of Battenberg (as the title was then), with a suite of six, paid us a visit of two days at Government House, and we had, of course, a big reception, which was inevitable. Our guest hated the ordeal of all those presentations, being very retiring, and I sympathised. I heard her murmur to her lady, Miss Bulteel, “I shall die,” as the first arrival was announced. And there she had to stand till I and the A.D.C. had finished terrifying her with about 250 people in succession. What a tax royalty has to pay! There was the laying of a foundation stone, a trip in the launch up the Tamar, and something to be done each day, but with as many rests as we could squeeze in for our very _simpatica_ princess. The drive through the streets of Plymouth showed me what the crowd looks like from royalty’s point of view as I sat by her side in the carriage. I remarked to her what bad teeth the people had. “They are nothing to those in the north,” the poor dear said. How often royalty has to run that gauntlet of an unlovely and cheering crowd!