should have known nothing about but for Ainger's book. Butler
acquiesced in my proposals, but, when it came to the words
themselves, he wrote practically all the libretto, as he had done in
the case of 'Narcissus'; I did no more than suggest a few phrases and
a few lines here and there.

We had sent 'Narcissus' for review to the papers, and, as a
consequence, about this time, made the acquaintance of Mr. J. A.
Fuller Maitland, then musical critic of the 'Times'; he introduced us
to that learned musician William Smith Rockstro, under whom we
studied medieval counterpoint while composing 'Ulysses'. We had
already made some progress with it when it occurred to Butler that it
would not take long and might, perhaps, be safer if he were to look
at the original poem, just to make sure that Lamb had not misled me.
Not having forgotten all his Greek, he bought a copy of the 'Odyssey'
and was so fascinated by it that he could not put it down. When he
came to the Phoeacian episode of Ulysses at Scheria he felt he must
be reading the description of a real place and that something in the
personality of the author was eluding him. For months he was
puzzled, and, to help in clearing up the mystery, set about
translating the poem. In August, 1891, he had preceded me to
Chiavenna, and on a letter I wrote him, telling him when to expect
me, he made this note:


It was during the few days that I was at Chiavenna (at the Hotel
Grotta Crimee) that I hit upon the feminine authorship of the
'Odyssey'. I did not find out its having been written at Trapani
till January, 1892.