Butler was not satisfied with having written only half of this work; he wanted it to have a successor, so that by adding his two halves together, he could say he had written a whole Handelian oratorio.  While staying with his sisters at Shrewsbury with this idea in his mind, he casually took up a book by Alfred Ainger about Charles Lamb and therein stumbled upon something about the Odyssey.  It was years since he had looked at the poem, but, from what he remembered, he thought it might provide a suitable subject for musical treatment.  He did not, however, want to put Dr. Butler aside, so I undertook to investigate.  It is stated on the title-page of both Narcissus and Ulysses that the words were written and the music composed by both of us.  As to the music, each piece bears the initials of the one who actually composed it.  As to the words, it was necessary first to settle some general scheme and this, in the case of Narcissus, grew in the course of conversation.  The scheme of Ulysses was constructed in a more formal way and Butler had perhaps rather less to do with it.  We were bound by the Odyssey, which is, of course, too long to be treated fully, and I selected incidents that attracted me and settled the order of the songs and choruses.  For this purpose, as I out-Shakespeare Shakespeare in the smallness of my Greek, I used The Adventures of Ulysses by Charles Lamb, which we 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 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.