Snuffbox and coins
(XI/8/13)
Another of Butler’s souvenirs from Palermo, this tortoiseshell snuffbox contains three coins found in Butler’s pockets on the day he died (18 June 1902). Just a month earlier, in declining health, Butler had managed to travel from Palermo to Naples, where his assistant Alfred Cathie met him and escorted him back to London.
Settled in a nursing home in St John’s Wood, waiting for the end, Butler answered a letter from the editor of the Sicilian journal Quo Vadis with these words: ‘Al medesimo tempo, saluto gli amici Trapanesi, li abraccio, alzo mio cappello, e li dico cordialmente addio’ (‘At the same time I salute my Trapanese friends, I embrace them, I raise my hat, and I bid them cordially farewell’).