He was welcome wherever he went, full of fun and ready to play while doing the honours of the country.  Many of the peasants were old friends, and every day we were sure to meet someone who remembered him.  Perhaps it would be an old woman labouring along under a burden; she would smile and stop, take his hand and tell him how happy she was to meet him again and repeat her thanks for the empty wine bottle he had given her after an out-of-door luncheon in her neighbourhood four or five years before.  There was another who had rowed him many times across the Lago di Orta and had never been in a train but once in her life, when she went to Novara to her son’s wedding.  He always remembered all about these people and asked how the potatoes were doing this year and whether the grandchildren were growing up into fine boys and girls, and he never forgot to inquire after the son who had gone to be a waiter in New York.  At Civiasco there is a restaurant which used to be kept by a jolly old lady, known for miles round as La Martina; we always lunched with her on our way over the Colma to and from Varallo-Sesia.  On one occasion we were accompanied by two English ladies and, one being a teetotaller, Butler maliciously instructed La Martina to make the sabbaglione so that it should be forte and abbondante, and to say that the Marsala, with which it was more than flavoured, was nothing but vinegar.  La Martina never forgot that when she looked in to see how things were going, he was pretending to lick the dish clean.  These journeys provided the material for a book which he thought of calling “Verdi Prati,” after one of Handel’s most beautiful songs; but he changed his mind, and it appeared at the end of 1881 as Alps and Sanctuaries of Piedmont and the Canton Ticino with more than eighty illustrations, nearly all by Butler.  Charles Gogin made an etching for the frontispiece, drew some of the pictures, and put figures into others; half a dozen are mine.  They were all redrawn in ink from sketches made on the spot, in oil, water-colour, and pencil.  There were also many illustrations of another kind—­ extracts from Handel’s music, each chosen because Butler thought it suitable to the spirit of the scene he wished to bring before the reader.  The introduction concludes with these words:  “I have chosen Italy as my second country, and would dedicate this book to her as a thank-offering for the happiness she has afforded me.”

In the spring of 1883 he began to compose music, and in 1885 we published together an album of minuets, gavottes, and fugues.  This led to our writing Narcissus, which is an Oratorio Buffo in the Handelian manner—­that is as nearly so as we could make it.  It is a mistake to suppose that all Handel’s oratorios are upon sacred subjects; some of them are secular.  And not only so, but, whatever the subject, Handel was never at a loss in treating anything that came into his words by way of allusion or illustration.  As Butler puts it in one of his sonnets: