He was fond of the theatre, but avoided serious pieces.  He preferred to take his Shakespeare from the book, finding that the spirit of the plays rather evaporated under modern theatrical treatment.  In one of his books he brightens up the old illustration of Hamlet without the Prince of Denmark by putting it thus:  “If the character of Hamlet be entirely omitted, the play must suffer, even though Henry Irving himself be cast for the title-role.”  Anyone going to the theatre in this spirit would be likely to be less disappointed by performances that were comic or even frankly farcical.  Latterly, when he grew slightly deaf, listening to any kind of piece became too much of an effort; nevertheless, he continued to the last the habit of going to one pantomime every winter.

There were about twenty houses where he visited, but he seldom accepted an invitation to dinner—­it upset the regularity of his life; besides, he belonged to no club and had no means of returning hospitality.  When two colonial friends called unexpectedly about noon one day, soon after he settled in London, he went to the nearest cook-shop in Fetter Lane and returned carrying a dish of hot roast pork and greens.  This was all very well once in a way, but not the sort of thing to be repeated indefinitely.

On Thursdays, instead of going to the Museum, he often took a day off, going into the country sketching or walking, and on Sundays, whatever the weather, he nearly always went into the country walking; his map of the district for thirty miles round London is covered all over with red lines showing where he had been.  He sometimes went out of town from Saturday to Monday, and for over twenty years spent Christmas at Boulogne-sur-Mer.

There is a Sacro Monte at Varallo-Sesia with many chapels, each containing life-sized statues and frescoes illustrating the life of Christ.  Butler had visited this sanctuary repeatedly, and was a great favourite with the townspeople, who knew that he was studying the statues and frescoes in the chapels, and who remembered that in the preface to Alps and Sanctuaries he had declared his intention of writing about them.  In August, 1887, the Varallesi brought matters to a head by giving him a civic dinner on the Mountain.  Everyone was present, there were several speeches and, when we were coming down the slippery mountain path after it was all over, he said to me: 

“You know, there’s nothing for it now but to write that book about the Sacro Monte at once.  It must be the next thing I do.”

Accordingly, on returning home, he took up photography and, immediately after Christmas, went back to Varallo to photograph the statues and collect material.  Much research was necessary and many visits to out-of-the-way sanctuaries which might have contained work by the sculptor Tabachetti, whom he was rescuing from oblivion and identifying with the Flemish Jean de Wespin.  One of these visits, made after his book was published, forms the subject of “The Sanctuary of Montrigone,” reproduced in this volume.  Ex Voto, the book about Varallo, appeared in 1888, and an Italian translation by Cavaliere Angelo Rizzetti was published at Novara in 1894.