Village books

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.


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