SPACIOUS

DAYS
Nesta Webst er, who is well
known for her history of
the French Revolution, a
standard work , Chevalier de
Boufflers, World Revolution ,
and Secret Societies, gives in
this book a full and vivid
account of her famil y and
social life up to 191+. The
title is inde ed well-chosen,
for the life she describes was
indeed spacious and free in
spite of some social conven-
tions and restrictions which
ma y seem odd by comparison
with the very different social
standards of conduct and
behaviour t o-day.

Some Reviews :
Nesta Webst er's canvas is
such a big one th at to do full
justice to it would demand
much more space than is
available. But it can be
said that not a squa re inch
of it is was ted.... The deft-
ness of th e touch whereve r
the bru sh wanders is inescap-
abl e. This would necessarily
be so, since it is wielded by
the hand of a very good

Continued on back fl ap

18/ - net
 Continued from front flap

artist, who knows both what

colours to have on her palette
and how to use them.
TATI.ER

Thi s is yet another addition

to those nostalgic books
which deal with Edwardian
tim es. . . . Her days were
certainly spacious, and this
ch a rming a utobiogra ph y
captures their spirit clearly
and with warmth.
TIl E QUEEN

As Miss Bevan she took

part in the social life of the
day, travelled extensively,
observed shrewdly, and here
ha s written, in a st yle of
disarming modest y, a charm-
ingly discursive record of
those secure and carefree
days.
CU R R EN T LITERATURE

P rinted in Great Br itain

SPACIOUS DAYS
 BY THE SAME AUTHOR
The Chevalier de Bc>uffiers
The French Revoluti011
World Revolution
Secret Societies and Subversive Movements
The Surrender of en Empire
Etc_
The Author, aged 25
 SPACIOUS DAYS
An
AUTOBIOGRAPHY

by
NESTA H. WEBSTER

With 17 Illustrations

ThirdImpression

HUTCHINSON & CO. (Publishers) LTD

London New York Melbourne Sydney Cape Town
 Printed in Great Britain
by The Anchor Press, Ltd.,
Tiptree, Essex
 CONTENTS

Chapter I. Quaker Origins Page 11

11. The Shuttleworths 19
1II. Happy Days at Trent 26
IV. Fosbury 32
v. Le Revers de la Medaille 37
VI. The Family Abroad 45
VII. Literary Efforts 51
VIII. Years of Exile 57
IX. Brownshill Court 63
x. Lotus Land 67
XI. Westfie1d College 77
XII. Freedom at Last! 84
XlII. A White Elephant at Large 91
XlV. Round the World 97
xv. Burma 104
XVI. The Far East 113
XVII. Japan 119
XVIII. London in the 'Nineties 133
XIX. A Winter in Egypt 138
xx. Edwardian England 142
XXI. Across the World Again 149
XXII. Simla 155
XXIII. Kismet 160
XXIV. Ten Peaceful Years 166
xxv. The Chevalier de Bouffiers 171
XXVI. France in War-time 176
XXVII. England in War-time 182
XXVIII. The French Revolution 18j
Index 193
 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

The Author, aged 25 Frontispiece

My great grandfather, Silvanus Bevan Facing page 32
My grandfather, Philip Nicholas Shuttleworth 33
My mother 33
Trent in 1808 48
Trent, north front, in 1890 49
Trent, south front, in 1890 49
House Party at Trent 80
The Staff at Trent 81
My father, R. C. L. Bevan, and brother Edwyn 96
The Author, aged 3 97
Edwyn R. Bevan 97
The Author at the age of 22 128
Arthur Webster with his police 129
Rosalind 144
Marjorie 144
Mary Davies 145
 FOREWORD

THIS book was originally written for my children and not for publication.
When two publishers asked for it I said: "But of what interest will my life
be to people in generah I cannot introduce the lists of celebrities the British
public seems to love!"
Apparently they have always loved them. Madame du Deffand, writing
to Horace Walpole in 1775, remarked on two occasions, "As you like
proper names, here is the list of my guests," and there follows a string of
titles, dues, duchesses and marquises she had entertained to supper, which must
have delighted the heart of Walpole. The great French memoires were never
written on these lines; celebrities were only introduced when there was
something of interest to say about them; the art of the writers was to give a
picture of the times they lived in, not merely to record great events, but to
make everyday happenings interesting by their own reactions to them and
by reflections applicable to all ages and all countries.
Both publishers assured me that this form of autobiography has now
come to be most appreciated by the British public, that strings of famous
names are no longer de rigueur and that the life of any individual, however
unimportant, if written sincerely can be made of interest.
So, having lived in four reigns and through three wars, having travelled
all over the world and met all kinds of people, I have ventured to put into
print some account of life as I have seen it, looking back across the years
from the "controlled" and mechanized England of 1949 to the spacious. days
when individual liberty was our priceless possession, when travel was free
and the whole wide world open to the adventurous.
 CHAPTER I

QUAKER ORIGINS

T would be difficult to imagine a more peaceful scene than that on

I which m eyes first opened when, soon after eight o'clock one summer
evening !the rath of August) I entered the serene and untroubled world
of late Victorian England.
I do not think my advent can have caused anything of the stir or joyous
speculation which usually greets a further addition to a contented family
circle, such an event had in our case been so often repeated. For some
forty years Ninny, the old nurse, had sat in the nursery receiving babe
after babe into her lap, until I, the youngest and last of my father's seven
daughters and of his fourteen children, wound up the list. My birth must
thus have seemed almost a matter of routine in the well-ordered household
of Trent Park, near Barnet in Hertfordshire.
Looking out over the wide terrace from the windows of the room
where I was born in the long white house, overgrown with creepers,
smooth lawns and lush meadows could be seen sloping down to the shores
of a great pond turning gold and rose-colour in the rays of the setting sun.
Around it sleepy ducks and swans were settling down for the night amidst
the scented rushes, and great white cart-horses stood up to their knees in
the cool water. From the farther bank, meadows rose upwards towards
dense woods of ancient beech trees, looming black against the sunset sky,
whilst rooks circled cawing overhead, and wood-pigeons coo-ed softly
among the branches.
Such is the picture for ever imprinted on my memory of the home
where I was born, and which I loved with the strongest passion of my
childhood.
My father, Robert Cooper Lee Bevan, was the descendant ofa long line
of Welsh burghers who had inhabited Glamorganshire from the earliest
times to the beginning of the eighteenth century, when some of the family
migrated to London.
Owing to the habit of keeping pedigrees, prevalent in Wales, it was
possible to trace their descent without a break and including every alliance
by marriage, back to Jestyn-ap-Gwrgant in 1030. Until the sixteenth
century they retained the Welsh custom of calling themselves after their
respective fathers. Thus Evan the son of Owen was known only as Evan ap
Owen, and it was his son Jenkin ap Evan who, at the end of the sixteenth
century, combined his patronymic in the surname Bevan. His son, William
Bevan, joined the new sect of Quakers under the influence of George Fox,
II
12 SPACIOUS DAYS

and henceforth the Bevans were precluded from any profession other than
those permitted to the Society of Friends; hence they can claim no illustrious
ancestors in army, navy, church or law.
My great-great grandfather, Timothy Bevan, married Elizabeth Barclay,
grand-daughter of the "Apologist", and in 1767 his son Silvanusjoined his
uncle, David Barclay, in the Bank, which had been founded at the beginning
ofthe century. This eventually became Barclay, Bevan, Tritton and Co., and
in my childhood consisted only ofthe one building at 54 Lombard Street, of
which my father was the head during fifty years ofhis life.
By this time the Bevans had long since ceased to be Quakers. Louisa
Kendall, who married Silvanus, was the last of the family to belong to the
sect, and seems to have lived up admirably to their principles. It is related
that at one moment Silvanus, though really devoted to his wife, had allowed
his fancy to stray to a girl in Wales where he and Louisa were wont to spend
their summer holiday. One year, on the evening of their arrival in this rural
spot, Silvanus went for a stroll through the fields, and Louisa, innocently
following soon after, surprised him in amorous conversation with her rival
on a stile. Without a word she turned back to the house and Silvanus, seeing
he had been discovered, hurried after her, expecting to be met with re-
proaches. Entering the drawing-room he found her peacefully seated at the
tea-table, and as he came towards her she looked up and said gently: "Friend,
will thee have a dish of teat" Whereat Silvanus, overcome by her magnani-
mity, threw his arms round her exclaiming, "Friend, thee is an angel!" and,
it is said, never sought his charmer again.
Silvanus,however, seems to have been, on the whole, a dour personality,
and at the end ofhis life retired to the loneliest spot he could find amidst the
Wiltshire downs, where he built himself a grim stone house, Fosbury Manor,
near Hungerford, of which more anon.
His son David, who married Favell Bourke, daughter ofRobert Cooper
Lee-a London merchant with estates in Jamaica-succeeded him at the
Bank, and finding Fosbury too far away to spend much time there, took a
house in Russell Square, just opposite the present Russell Hotel, and was
thought very venturesome because in those days of cut-throats and foot-
pads he used sometimes to walk from there across the fields to Lombard
Street. In about 1808 he moved to Walthamstow, then right out in the
country; from thence to Belmont, a charming house near Barnet, and to
another town house, 42 Upper Harley Street. He also inherited from his
father Collingwood House at Brighton.
David's marriage was merely an arranged one, and although he wrote
Favell charming verses during their engagement, which have been pre-
served to this day, there seems to have been no romance in their married life.
His wife always spoke of him as "Mr. Bevan" and referred to him in the
same way in her diaries, which consisted mostly of pious reflections. This
was in strange contrast to the mentality of her brothers-Matthew, Scuda-
more and Richard, wild young men leading a life of dissipation, often as
 QUAKER ORIGINS 13

boon companions ofthe Regent (later George IV). Two ended by blowing
out their brains, and it may be that Favell, who was devoted to her brothers,
never recovered from the tragic day when Matthew came to see her and
left a ring lying on the mantelpiece. It was only when she heard ofhis death
that she realized this was his farewell gift.
David's first son was born and died in 1799, so that I can claim an uncle
who lived in the eighteenth century! Of the three who followed after, my
father, Robert Cooper Lee, named after his maternal grandfather, and born
on February 8, 1809, was the eldest. The others were Barclay and Richard
Lee. Barclay was a sober and serious-minded young man, who went into
the Church and achieved the feat of surviving his fourth wife; "Bob" and
"Dick" were thus the gay spirits of the trio, riding recklessly about the
country and indulging in every sort of escapade.
According to records ofthe day, they were the best men to hounds in the
Pytchley Hunt; Dick the hardest, but Bob the straightest. In a book published
when they had both grown old it is said: "The present chief of the great
house of Barclay, Bevan & Co. would probably doubt his own identity
were he to be told that at one time there was no one except himself who
could beat his brother Dick across Leicestershire or Northamptonshire.
That it was so, however, no one is more willing to allow than the younger
of the two brothers."!
Robert Bevan was the only man of his day, with the exception of Mad
Wyndham, who ever rode down the Devil's Dyke at Brighton, and it was
said that he could jump a five-barred gate with a sixpence between each of
his knees without letting it drop.
David seems to have exercised very little control over his sons, for
Robert, whilst still a boy of seventeen at Harrow, was allowed to take
himself away from school and spend a year enjoying himself in London and
the hunting field. After this interlude, however, he decided to go on with his
education and went to Trinity College, Oxford, where he was working for
his degree, when his father had a paralytic stroke, and Robert, at the age of
twenty, was recalled to take his place at the Bank.
So this gay young man, handsome and high-spirited, tall-6 foot 3
inches in height-with a splendid figure, a fine dancer, fond oftheatre-going
and all the pleasuresof "love, wine and song", had to settle down to business
life. He took his new duties very seriously. The other partners were old and
tired and by the time he was twenty-four he was practically running the
Bank himself, little dreaming ofthe vast octopus that was to grow from the
house at 54 Lombard Street.
It is indeed possible that but for him "Barclay's" would long since have
ceased to exist, and that it was only his action which saved it on a memorable
occasion many years later. In 1866 the bank of Overend Gurney in Lombard
Street failed, owing, I have been told, to the fact that a certain Gurney
heiress wished to marry her groom, and meeting with opposition from her
1 The Pykhlty Hunt, PastandPresent, by H. O. Nethercote (1888), p. 250.
14 SPACIOUS DAYS

relations, retaliated by withdrawing her entire fortune from the family

bank, and so broke it.
The repercussion was felt by Barclay, Bevan & Co. and on May n,
known henceforth as "Black Friday", the greatest anxiety prevailed at No.
54. According to a legend handed down by family retainers, and related to
me by one of them who remembered hearing of it at the time, a panic then
arose, and the doors of Barclay, Bevan were soon besieged by a crowd
clamouring for their money deposited there. It was then that Robert
Bevan stepped into the breach, and standing on the steps of the Bank, went
on calling out to the crowd: "Come and take your money away! Come and
take it! It is all there!"
His ringing voice and commanding presence had the effect ofreassuring
the crowd, which gradually melted away, and the panic was allayed. This
was in reality no game of bluff on the part of my father, for he had received
assurances ofsupport from the Bank ofEngland, so that large swns ofmoney
could have been paid. But a heavy run on the Bank would have dealt it a
blow from which it might never have recovered.
Although tied the whole year round to Lombard Street, my father did
not feel himself obliged to give up hunting altogether, but by taking his
holiday in the winter contrived to get in a few weeks with the Pytchley,
together with his brother Richard, who had not joined him in business. It
is said that he once intended doing so and duly arrived at the Bank, only to
find it shut as it was a holiday. Thereupon he went back to his hunting, to
which he devoted the rest of his life at Brixworth Hall, Northamptonshire.
It was perhaps all to the good of the Bank that he did not join it. Uncle
Dick was a "character" and, I imagine, without the vaguest idea of business.
Sport was the only thing he understood. Outdoor life had made him as hard
as nails and almost insensible to pain. In his youth he had shot himself in the
hand and was obliged to have half of it, comprising the third and fourth
fingers, amputated. As chloroform had not yet been invented, he held out
his hand for twenty minutes whilst the surgeon sawed through the bone and
muscle, and it is said that he endured the operation without wincing.
Neither this nor a permanently damaged knee, nor any other injuries-for he
was said to have broken every bone in his body at some time or another-
damped his spirits or abated his ardour for the chase.
Like my father he had no patience with nervous riders. It is related that
on one occasion a young man came to stay at Brixworth and bucked about
his exploits in the hunting field. But Uncle Dick, suspecting that he was less
good across country than he pretended, determined to put him to the test.
Accordingly he suggested they should take a ride together, and off they
started, Uncle Dick leading the way through a number of open gates. A
groom, however, had been instructed to follow behind them and padlock
each gate after they had pased through. When some half-dozen locked gates
lay between them and home, Uncle Dick gaily proposed to his companion
that they should take a few jumps and started off, leaving the young
 QUAKER ORIGINS IS

man, who dared not take the gates, to find his way back as best he
could.
I remember Uncle Dick only when I was a child and he came to visit us
at Trent. He was then quite an old man and looked exactly like a picture from
Jorrocks, with his cheery blue eye, his low top hat with the wide curling
brim and high starched collar with the points running into his ruddy,
weather-beaten cheeks. He came up to me with a chuckle, and shaking his
finger said, "Now don't you go and write any poems about me!" For
already I had been guilty of literary efforts, not altogether approved of by
the family-as will be seen later.
Of my father's four sisters, Louisa, Favell, Frederica and Fanny, only one
left her mark in the world. OfFrederica, who became Mrs. Stevenson, there
is nothing to be said. Aunt Louisa, whom I remember when she lived near
Trent Park at Osidge, later the home of Sir Thomas Lipton, became the
progenitress of a vast brood of Bosanquets. Aunt Fanny, who married
Admiral Morier, uncle of the well-known diplomat, was very clever and
amusing, but also remarkable for the extraordinary shrillness of her voice.
Aunt Favell, who at the age of thirty-nine eloped with a clergyman
called Mortimer, was, however, a really remarkable character. Although her
name is unknown to the public, she was the author of some of the most
famous children's books in the English Language: Reading Without Tears,
Peep of Day, Line upon Line, Near Home and Far Off, etc. We, ofcourse, were
all brought up on them, and it amused us to recognize our father in the new
baby described in Reading Without Tears, and the stories ofBob and Dick as
relating to him and his brother.
I do not know whether the book is still in use amongst the children of
today; the title, however, almost a flash of genius, has quite recently given
rise to the fashion of appending the words "without tears" in all sorts of
connections. It was strange to seethe words "French Without Tears" written
over the door of a London theatre, and to think how shocked Aunt Favell
would have been to see the phrase she coined one hundred years ago put to
"such base uses"!
For Aunt Favell, of course, never entered a theatre. Her austere form of
religion can be seen in Peep of Day, which is said to have had one of the
largestsales ofany book in the English language, but which, with its terrify-
ing references to Hell-fire, I frankly detested. Fortunately a bowdlerized
edition of Peep of Day has since been published.
Aunt Favell, however, in her actions showed herself superior to her in-
tolerant beliefs, for her whole life was devoted to the service ofhwnanity.
We still have the little diary she wrote in at Fosbury, where her carefully
kept accounts show that out ofher allowance of [,200 a year only £60 were
spent on herself; the rest went to keep up the village school.
She had a passion for teaching, and a real genius for imparting know-
ledge in such a way as to make it comprehensible and interesting to the
chird mind; unfortunately, although devoted to children, she had none ofthe
16 SPACIOUS DAYS

motherly tenderness that could win their affection. It was the tragedy ofher
life that whilst inspiring respect, she failed to inspire love, which accounts for
the fading of what seems to have been her one great romance.
My father's best friend at Harrow and later at Oxford was Henry
Manning, afterwards Cardinal Manning, who as a young man often spent
his holidays at Belmont with David and his family. Frederica, the gayest of
the four girls, tried to flirt with him; Favell was only concerned with his
spiritual welfare. issical schc learning contributed to their friendship, for she
was a first-class classic scholar, and she and Manning made a sort ofgame of
conversing in Greek and Hebrew whilst walking in the garden. It is said of
her later in life that "it was quite usual to hear her apostrophising her pet
lamb in Latin when it disobeyed her injunctions",'
Aunt Favell certainly exercised a great influence over Manning. His
Catholic biographer, Shane Leslie, relatesthat he spoke of her as his "spiritual
mother", and to the end of his life he used to say that it was she who had
first awakened him to unseen realities. In a letter he wrote her in 1832, when
he was a yOtUlg man at Oxford, he said: "By my admission to your family,
and more especially to the correspondence of yourself, I owe the largest
part of the feelings and principles which will, I hope, regulate my future
life."
We may question, however, whether Aunt Favell's feeling for Manning
was altogether that of a "spiritual mother"; references in her diary suggest
a more tender sentiment, and in order to see him alone, she used to arrange
interviews in the back-shop of Nesbitt, the publisher. But once again she
had failed to inspire love, and it must have been a crushing blow to any
hopes she may have entertained when Manning married a Miss Sargent on
November 7, 18 33.
My father still continued his friendship with Manning, and after his own
marriage Manning went to stay with him. During this visit my father began
to fear that he was becoming rather High Church and wrote to him in
protest. In reply he received a letter which in the light ofafter events is some-
what curious. My sisters well remembered it, and one of them, Millicent
Hart Dyke, has transcribed from memory the following passage:
"My dear Robert, you need have no fears for me on this account, for I
have always believed that Popery and Infidelity are the two Anti-Christs."
Millicent adds: "I can see that letter now, yellow with age, which my
father used to show us now and then and which he kept to the day of his
death." And he would say laughingly that he would publish it if ever
Manning became Pope.
Whether as consolation for the loss of Manning, or for some other in-
scrutable reason, Aunt Favell ended by marrying, in 1841, a morose and
uncultured clergyman, Thomas Mortimer, who treated her very badly, but

1 Letter from my cousin, H. W. Shepheard-Walwyn, to The Times supplementing the long

biographical article my brother. Edwyn Bevan, had contributed to that paper on June 27,
1933, the centenary of the publication of Peep ofDay.
 QUAKER ORIGINS 17

mercifully departed this life nine years later. In 1862 she retired to a charming
old cottage at West Runton, near Cromer, where she adopted a number of
orphans, who were expected to be content with the ascetic life she chose to
lead, for she had no patience with human frailties, even with a hearty
appetite. The meagrest rations were held to be sufficient, and my mother
described to me an occasion when Aunt Favell entertained a party of some
eight people, for whom one partridge was provided. This could not be
attributed to motives of economy, for besides her private fortune the enor-
mous sales ofher books must have brought her in large sums. Her frugality
was thus clearly part ofher stern and austere plan of life. Ifonly she had had
some of my father's humour and joie de vivre she might have won the
affection for which all her life she craved in vain.
Aunt Favellwas certainly eccentric. In the long article before referred to,
contributed by my brother Edwyn to The Times, this point was touched on
in the following passage:

"... while she bestowed her affections in some cases, with even un-
wise indulgence, she was sometimes autocratic in imposing upon those
for whom she cared, children or animals, her own ideas of what was for
their good. She could not believe that it was good for her parrot never to
rest its back and when she took it to bed with her compelled it by slaps
to lie on its back. The unhappy bird died, family tradition asserts,
from being washed with soap and water and dried before the kitchen
fire.
"She herself has described in Reading Without Tears, Vol.lI, how the
donkey was driven blind-fold into the sea, still harnessed to the cart,
because sea bathing was considered good for it, and how it swam in
terror out to sea.The lamb was also subjected to sea bathing; the problem
of drying its soaked fleece my aunt solved with characteristic ingenuity;
she had it left buried for a time in the sand with only its nose protruding.
She herself was a regular bather; the orphans were made to stand in a
circle, holding up towels, with their backs inwards, while she solemnly
undressed in the middle."

But to return to my father's youth. At the age oftwenty-five he married

Agneta Yorke, daughter of Admiral Sir ]oseph Yorke, a small, gentle
creature to whom he was devoted. At first they were as gay as other people
of their world, but at the end of a few years something happened which
changedthe current of my father's life. He became what the evangelicals of
his day describedas "converted" and decided that it was his duty to abandon
"worldly pleasures" so as to devote himself wholly to the service of God.
He gave up dancing and hunting, ceased to go to the play and allowed
himself only a few simple amusements as a recreation from the City. It
must be remembered that in those days the theatre was extremely coarse,
and he used to say that it was the foul language used on the stage that
B
18 SPACIOUS DAYS

decided him to give it up. Still, to a nature so pleasure-loving and so gre-

garious it was hardly less of a sacrifice than giving up riding to hounds.
Indeed, to the end ofhis life he could never see a hunting coat without his
eye kindling, or pass a theatre without longing to go in.
But his Christianity was not a mere matter of renunciation. Together
with his friend Lord Ashley, afterwards the great Lord Shaftesbury, he set
himself to better the conditions of the working classes, and as long as he
lived this question constantly occupied his mind. Politics interested him
only in so far as they related to the cause he had at heart-the welfare of
humanity and the maintenance of the Christian religion.
It was with this end in view that he stood for Parliament as one ofthree
Conservatives for the City of London in the General Election of 1847.
In opposition were six Liberals headed by the Prime Minister, Lord John
Russell, and including Baron Lionel de Rothschild who, as a Jew, was not
yet entitled to sit in Parliament. The Election turned largely on the proposed
Bill for the removal of Jewish disabilities.
Neither my father nor Lord AsWey, then member for Bath in the House
of Commons, were in any way "anti-Semites" in the sense that the word
is used today, but as leading Evangelicals they felt very strongly that the
Christian character of Parliament should be maintained. They therefore
opposed a measure by which the oath required of every member, "on the
true faith of a Christian", should be abrogated. As the Roman Catholics
however advocated it my father, wishing to avoid any appearance of racial
prejudice, in his Election speech took his stand on Protestantism as being
the faith he desired to defend.
At that date the opposing Parties did not hold separate meetings and
both spoke at the large joint meeting in the Guildhall on July the 28th.
Baron Rothschild was greeted with loud cheers and a general waving of
hats by hissupporters who had ralliedin force, and when my father, proposed
by Mr. Abel Smith, rose to speak they created such an uproar that he was
unable to make his voice heard, so summoning his sense ofhumour, always
one of his strongest characteristics, to his rescue, he amused himself by
pretending to speak, making gestures and moving his lips without emitting
a sound so as to enjoy the fun of making them shout themselves hoarse
for nothing.
My father headed the Conservatives with 5236 votes, but there were
6792 for Rothschild and the Liberals got in. My father never stood again.
Perhaps the lossofhis first wife changed the current ofhis thoughts. For
in 1851 Lady Agneta-as she had become on the succession ofher brother to
the title ofthe fourth Lord Hardwicke-died, leaving him with six children.
Five years later he married again, this time into a Whig family, whose
history contains some points that may be of interest here.
 CHAPTER II

THE SHUTTLEWORTHS

y mother, Frances Shuttleworth, whom my father married as his

M second wife in 1856, was of pure Lancashire descent. Her father,

Philip Nicholas Shuttleworth, Warden of New College and later
Bishop of Chichester, belonged to the younger branch of the Shuttleworths
of Gawthorpe Hall, near Preston, whose forbears had inhabited that part of
the world from time immemorial. Their name does not appear to have been
derived from the shuttle, since it was known before the introduction ofthat
implement to Lancashire, a Henry de Schutilswerthe being traced there as
early as 1200-but apparently the family, by way of a pun, later on adopted
a hand holding a shuttle as their crest.
According to a family tradition, a boar's head was added in 1367, when
Ughtred de Shuttleworth accompanied John of Gaunt on an expedition into
Spain, and as a reward for his military services received 1000 acres of land
and permission for himself and his descendants to bear the crest ofJohn of
Gaunt, the boar's head.
The House and Farm Accounts of the Shuttleworths, reproducing those kept
by the family during the end of the sixteenth century, and published by the
Chetham Society in 1857, provides one of the most complete records of
English country life in the Elizabethan era and the reign ofJames I; here we
can see precisely what our ancestors wore, what they ate and drank, the
prices paid for labour, the sums dispensed in charity, the hire of players who
in those days of marvellous drama, but of the most primitive theatrical
performances, existed mainly as troupes in the service of great nobles and
were "let out" on occasion to entertain the lesser country houses and re-
warded with some such sum as 2S. 6d. for their pains.
Not far from Gawthorpe, at Hoghton Tower, near Preston, lived my
great-grandmother's family, the Hoghtons-the "de" preceding their name
in the time ofEdward II had been dropped for several centuries and was not
reswnedtill 1866-who had inhabitated this ancient castlesince soon after the
Norman conquest. In July 1617 Sir Richard Hoghton, who had been
knighted by Queen Elizabeth, determined to entertain James I with great
magnificence during his progress into Scotland.
In the Appendix of The House and Farm Accounts of the Shuttleworths are
found the curious menus of the banquets served during the royal visit-
swans, herons, curlews, capons, red deer, "umble pye", pigs burred, hogs'
cheeks dried, neat's ton tart, forming course after course, whilst the item
"Quails, 5 for the King9ue
, was evidently a bonne bouche of some rarity.
This seems to have been the famous occasion when His Majesty, after
making Sir Richard a baronet and having feasted well, set about knighting
19
20 SPACIOUS DAYS

people all around him and finding no one else on whom to confer the
honour, smote the loin of beef before him with his sword, exclaiming:
"Rise, Sir Loin!"
An amusing sequel to this story is contained in a long history of the
Shuttleworths and de Hoghtons in my grandfather's handwriting which
has been handed down to us, but never printed, and thus describes the
feasting that took place:
"The reception afforded to King James on this occasion appears to
have vied in splendour with the festivities which celebrated Queen
Elizabeth's arrival at Kenilworth, and many years elapsed before the
resources of the family were restored from the effects of the vast expense
they then incurred.... A record of this royal visit has been preserved,
and in a household Book, still in existence, is inserted each day's ponder-
ous Bill of fare. Forty of the principal neighbouring gentry, it appears,
then condescended to assume the Hoghton Livery and to render their
voluntary services on the occasion. Amongst the number then assembled
was Richard Shuttleworth, at that time High Sheriff of the County."
The sight of his neighbour's munificence seems to have fired Richard
Shuttleworth with the desireto emulate him by entertaining the King at one
ofhis houses, Barton Manor, near Gawthorpe. Accordingly the High Sheriff
"solicited the honour of His Majesty's presence, but when he found that
honour was conceded to him, he prudently sat down to calculate the
probable expenditure thus entailed upon him by this act of royal con-
descension, his prudence perhaps awakened by the splendid scale on
which his neighbour's were made at Hoghton Tower, and conceiving
that his old Manor House (Barton) which then stood much in need of
repair, might possibly be rebuilt for the samesum, he at once set fire to the
edifice, and wasleft to express his unfeigned regret at sountoward an event."
Barton, however, was not rebuilt for a century. Meanwhile Richard
Shuttleworth was succeeded by his grandson, another Richard, who had
also inherited the Manor ofForcet, in Yorkshire, where he lived and received
a knighthood under curious circumstances. To quote my grandfather's
document again:
"It is related that when he and his wife (Margaret, daughter ofJolm
Tempest, Esq., of Old Durham) made their first appearance at Court,
soon after their marriage, which must have taken place at an unusually
early period, Charles the znd was so much struck by their almost
ludicrously juvenile appearance when presented to him, and especially
when he learnt that they were the Parents an Infant Child, and that of
the united ages of the three Individuals did not amount (it is said) to
thirty-five years, that he insisted on conferring the honour of Knight-
hood upon the youthful Father."
 THE SHUTTLEWORTHS 21

If this honour was intended as an incentive to prolificacy it failed signally

in its effect, for the infant remained an only child. He lived, however, to a
great age and left a son, lames, who showed no desire to win the kind of
reward bestowed upon his grandfather.
For many years he represented his COtUlty in Parliament, but when
offered a peerage replied: "No, no, I am lames Shuttleworth as my fore-
fathers were. I desire to be nothing more and therefore a peerage would
add nothing to my happiness." He was wont to say that "his notion of a
Patriot was a man who wisely spent his income", and by way ofcarrying out
this principle he turned his attention to his less fortunate relations.
For though the elder branch of the family enjoyed great wealth and
broad lands, the yotUlger branch was comparatively impecunious. lames
Shuttleworth accordingly bethought himself ofadopting the third son ofhis
cousin Nicholas, a bright boy, named Humphrey, and paid for his education
at Westminster and Oxford.
Humphrey, who was my great-grandfather, turned out brilliantly;
according to the family record before quoted, "he was considered a good
scholar and possessed many accomplishments, he spoke several languages
with great fluency and was an excellent musician". After entering the Church
he went with Lord Stormont as Chaplain to the British Embassy in Vienna,
and at the end of four years returned home to become Vicar of Kirkham, in
Lancashire. It was here that he won the heart of Anna Hoghton, sisterofSir
Henry Hoghton, of Hoghton Tower.
The prelude to this marriage is found in an amusing letter from my great-
grandmother which has been handed down to us. Anna was apparently
paying a country visit on her way to London for the season in the winter of
1771, when she heard that Humphrey Shuttleworth, yOtUlg, charming and
unmarried, had been appointed to the living of Kirkham near her home. So,
taking up her pen, she wrote to her mother as follows:
"Hedingham Castle
"Dec. 4th 1771.
"... I am prodigiously taken with what you say ofMr. Shuttleworth
and Betty has wrote about him since, I am affraid he will be snap'd up
before I arrive at Preston, Cou'd not you give him to understand that
you shall have a smart Daughter, next summer, newly imported from
London, dont you think he might be prevailed upon to wait to see her.
If Miss Bradkirck comes to Town I believe I shall be very civil to her,
on purpose to get an invitation to Kirkham, can he afford to keep a
Carriage do you think, I should like it better if he cou'd, but we won't
quarrelabout that.... My flirt Lord Clare is come down but I have not
seenhim yet.... I think you will say I have wrote nonsense enough.
"I am your most dutiful daughter
"Anna H ogh ton. "
Humphrey Shuttleworth was evidently prepared to wait; Anna duly
22 SPACIOUS DAYS

returned from town to find that he had not been "snap'd up", so pro-
ceeded to snap him up, or perhaps to be "snap'd up" herself. At any rate,
they were married two years later and lived happily, alas, for only too short
a time! In 1783 Anna Shuttleworth died, at the age of thirty-five, leaving
five children under eight years old, ofwhich my grandfather, Philip Nicholas,
was the youngest. Knowing herself to be dying, she bade them farewell in a
long letter, which lies before me as I write-a pathetic document in faded
ink on yellowed foolscap paper-beside the laughing letter she had written
to her mother twelve years earlier.

"My dear children," it begins, "when you read this you most probably
will have lost an affectionate Mother and one who wishes most ardently
that you may be happy both in this life and in that which is to come. But
above all endeavour to obtain ye latter, for there you will be eternally
blest and whatever Afflictions or distresses befall you here they will soon
have an end asyevery longest life isnothing in comparison with Eternity."

So in ten short years, the gay, flirtatious girl had become the saintly
woman, which is perhaps not as surprising as it may seem at first, for are
not the gayest natures often those most capable ofserious thought!
My grandfather, Philip Nicholas Shuttleworth, was no exception to this
rule, for his sense of humour seems to have been only equalled by his learn-
ing and piety. His memory was so prodigious that at the age of fourteen,
when a scholar at Winchester, he repeated 9000 lines of Greek and Latin
verse-Homer, Virgil, Horace and Sallust-and it is said that as a young man
he could read off a list of 150 disconnected words and repeat them by heart
after the third reading. (This habit ofmemorizing has, fortunately, descended
to his grandchildren, for we are nearly all able to learn by heart without an
effort.)
As Warden of New College he is recorded as the one man who could
always be depended on "to set the table on a roar"; his epigrams and
parodies, imitations and sketches delighted his friends. And as he was
acquainted with all the intellectual lights ofhis day New College became the
rendezvous of literary and political celebrities, and "no person of eminence
ever came to Oxford without dining with Shuttleworth".
In politics Philip Nicholas was aWhig, a fact which partly accounted for
his friendship with Lord and Lady Holland, to whose sons he acted as tutor
when quite a young man. We have numbers ofhis letters written during his
travels with them in France in 1814, and of those they wrote to him in
later life. Lady Holland must have been a most extraordinary person; my
mother could remember as a child seeing her when she came to stay with my
grandfather at New College, accompanied by her maid, her footman and
a small negro page ofwhom she seemed very fond. The little black boy used
to stand behind her chair at meals, and Lady Holland would feed him over
her shoulder with tit-bits offthe end ofher fork.
 THE SHUTTLEWORTHS 23

"My dear friend," she wrote afterwards to my grandfather-I copy

from the original letter before me-"J wish you could know the pleasure
my visit to you gave me and the deep and pleasing impression it has left
upon my mind. It was really gratifying to see you with such a charming
Wife, with such a (illegible) and most agreeable residence."
Henry Fox, however, did not think Mrs. Shuttleworth at all charming.
Meeting the newly married couple abroad, he wrote: "I am rather dismayed
at finding Madame so pious-I hate piety." (Considering he had admitted
that he had never been able to believe in the Christian religion, this pre-
judice is perhaps hardly surprising.) But worse than this: "Mrs. Shuttle-
worth is prim, precise and very dull. There is a provoking propriety about
her that would drive me wild."
My grandmother-daughter ofGeorge Welch, ofHigh Leek, Westmore-
land-had with her, on this occasion, her sister Helen, to whom a romantic
story attaches. Coming one day out of St. Mary's Chapel in Oxford, she
passed a young man in the road, who was so struck with her beauty that
after finding out who she was, he wrote to her father, asking to be allowed
to "pay her his addresses". Mr. Welch, however, did not consider him a
suitablematch for his daughter and refusedhis request. Thereupon the young
man retired into a mausoleum he built for himself on the top of a hill, and
lived there until he died, leaving her his entire fortune.
My grandmother did not share her sister's beauty, and up to a point
deserved Henry Fox's strictures, for she certainly was far from amusing. I
can remember her only as a very severe old lady when, at the age of four, I
was taken to see her at Wykeham Rise, Totteridge, where she spent the rest
of her life after her husband's death. It must have been in this light that she
appeared to one of her little grandsons, who, one day, after gazing at her
thoughtfully for a few moments, observed: "Grandmamma, I love my
prayer-book!" Grandmamma, who was a devout Churchwoman, patted
his head approvingly and said: "Indeed, my little boy, and tell me why you
love it." "Because my prayer-book tells me that a man cannot marry his
grandmother." This reply was decidedly disappointing!
It wasthrough the influence ofLord Holland that Philip Nicholas Shuttle-
worth was made a bishop. The Fox family had been working towards this
end for years.
In 1831 Henry Fox, who became the 4th Lord Holland, and who was
then a young man of twenty-nine, wrote irreverently to his former tutor
saying:
"I long to see the Reform Bill thro' the Lords. It would give me and
all your friends at Holland House the greatest pleasure should you be in
that Chamber time enough to give it a friendly vote. I know you are high
in Ld. Grey's list of Oxford candidates for a mitre and you need not be
told how happy it would make me to see it towering over your long
nose."
24 SPACIOUS DAYS

The appointment was mainly a political one, yet Philip Nicholas was in
no way a servile supporter of the Whigs. On the contrary, he delayed his
promotion in the Church for several years, by following the dictates of his
conscience. Like most ofthe Whigs, he was a supporter of Catholic emanci-
pation, but he displeased his Party by signing an address in 1835 to Sir Robert
Peel, congratulating him on his action with regard to his Irish Tithe Bill;
in not appropriating the surplus revenues of the Irish Church. This, wrote
Lord Holland, was clearly intended "to prevail on Peel to keep himself in
and the Whigs out of office, and was regretted by the latter as equivalent
to a vote for a Tory against a Whig Government".
The Foxes were in despair at his folly. "How I regret," wrote Charles
Fox, "that you had not the gout in both hands, and a small wandering from
slight fever when that foolish address went up to Peel!"
His friends, however, congratulated him on having declined a Bishopric
"on such degraded terms" and on "refusing to become the Tool of a falsely
called Liberal Ministry".
Eventually he was held to be a sufficiently good Whig for the long
delayed honour to be conferred on him, and on September I, 1840, Lord
Holland wrote to him triumphantly, saying that Lord Melbourne had
recommended him for the See of Chichester, and the Queen had approved,
though "she had asked him (Lord Melbourne) somewhat significantly if he
could rely on his (Dr. Shuttleworth's) Politics".
I have before me Melbourne's letter on thick grey gilt-edged paper with
"Windsor Castle" only written at the top, announcing the fact, curious as
showing the part played by politicians in Church appointments.
The Bishop lived only two years to enjoy his elevation in the Church, for
he died at Chichester in February 1842, as the result of taking a bath after
eating hot scones for tea.
The Bishop's only son, Ughtred, a curious name, peculiar, I believe, to
the Shuttleworths, died when he was a young man at Oxford. We always
mourned his loss, for he left behind him a set of the most amazing drawings
of imaginary monsters of the kind that delighted a later generation in the
Bad Child's Book of Beasts. If only Uncle Ughtred had lived, we used to say,
how he would have made us laugh!
Fortunately his youngest sister, Caroline Jemina, survived, whose
imagination was hardly less fertile. She seems to have shocked my mother
terribly by her youthful escapades, and indeed a young woman who could
be guilty ofretiring to the top of a hay-stack with young men on a Sunday
afternoon to smoke cigars--cigarettes had not yet been invented-was
calculated to outrage the feelings of the least prudish in the Victorian era.
Cigars and crinolines must certainly have seemed a.strange combination.
To come to my mother, "Fanny", the eldest ofthe family. Tall, upright,
with regular features-I do not think she was ever strictly beautiful, but since
she was nearly fifty when I was born, I could not visualizeher as young.
In those days of the late Victorian era, women aged much more quickly
 THE SHUTTLEWORTHS 25
than they do today, and with her matronly dress and cap placed on a hard
parting, a woman of fifty was already "an old lady". Apart from looks,
however, I do not imagine that my mother had ever been young. Never
can she have indulged in any ofthe follies, or even the gaieties ofyouth, her
whole mind was set on learning.
When, starting on a journey with her family as a child, her father asked
her whether she would not like a story-book to amuse her on the way, she
replied: "No thank you, Papa, I have my book on pneumatics to take with
me." She resentedit when people tried to amuse her, and a "fwmy man" at
a children's party stiffened her resistance to such attempts. "I would not be
made to laugh," she observed on talking to me of her childhood. This was
not priggishness, but a genuine inability to enter into the mind ofyouth.
She had, however, a fine and subtle sense of humour; in later life she
delighted in the "Alices" of Lewis Carroll and the drawings of Caran
d'Ache. She was a great artist, and, when a child, Ruskin is said to have gone
on his knees to her in admiration of her drawings, remarkable for their
beauty of line. Later, in 184S, when she was grown up, old Lady Holland
wrote to my grandmother:

"I thank you very much for letting me see your Daughter's very
agreeable and clever letters. They afforded me much pleasure and
amusement and the spirit and taste of the drawings quite extraordinary.
I have kept them longer than I should perhaps have done, to show them
to some friends ofgood taste and judgement, who admired them very
much."

(from one of the many letters from the Holland family now in our pos-
session.)
My mother wrote as well as she drew, both in the sense of handwriting
and of composition, for she had a wonderful command of English and
discrimination in her choice of words both on paper and in conversation;
she talked habitually like a well-written book. It was she who taught me all
I know of style.
"Avoid using Latin words," she would say, "such as 'commence' or
'similar' when the Anglo-Saxon ones 'begin' or 'like' will do." She would
have been horrified at the modern vulgarism of "prior to" instead of "be-
fore".
My mother might have had a considerable success as an authoress, but
the books she wrote, The LifeofJohn Wesley, The Three Friends of God, etc.,
as also her collections of poems, were not calculated to appeal to a wide
public. They had, however, sales enough to bring in regular royalties, which
my mother, too apart from worldly affairs to trouble about, left in the hands
of her publishers.
 CHAPTER HI

HAPPY DAYS AT TRENT

y mother first met my father when she was living with her mother
M and two sisters at a house called Wykeham Rise, in Totteridge,
not far from Trent Park, where my father, then a widower, lived
with his six children.
According to the legend concerning the way he came into the property,
his father David, then at Belmont, about a mile from Trent, attended a sale
near by in order to bid for some wine that was being sold at auction and,
whilst waiting for this lot to come up, fell asleep and nodded. This being
taken for a bid by the auctioneer my grandfather awoke to fmd that Trent
Park had been knocked down to him. He made a present of it to my father,
who settled in there with his first wife to whom he had been married two
years. It was then he planted the beautiful double avenue of lime trees,
arranged in four rows which meeting later overhead ran like green tunnels
along the half-mile ofits course.
At that date no railway system existed. The first train, from Darlington
to Stockton, ran in 1825, the year of my father's first marriage, and it is said
that he travelled in it. There were still only two when he went to live at
Trent, so he used to drive himself up to London every day in a buggy to
work at the Bank and, by way of enlivening the journey, chose the most
spirited horse to draw it.
One indeed was so fiery that it could not be brought round to the door
for no groom could hold it whilst my father got in. It had, therefore, to be
harnessed to the buggy behind the closed doors of a coach-house and kept
there until my father came round to the stables, got into his seat and took up
the reins. Then the doors were opened and the horse shot out like an arrow
from a bow, not slackening speed until it reached Lombard Street.
My father's life with his first wife was, I believe, very happy, but the
marriage was somewhat unfortunate from the point of view of physique,
for the Yorkes were short and inclined to embonpoint.
I remember at a family wedding noticing a little man with plump pink
cheeks who turned out to be Lady Agneta's nephew, Alec Yorke, groom-
in-waiting to Queen Victoria, and so privileged at Court that when sur-
prised by Her Majesty in the act of exercising his talent for mimicry at her
expense,instead ofmeeting with the reproof administered to the young man
in the famous story, he was accorded an indulgent smile signifying that
"We are amused."
Lady Agneta's children were more Yorke than Bevan in appearance.
Hitherto the Bevanshad been tall, well-made men; my father, indeed, had a
particularly fine figure and beautifully formed hands and feet.
26
 HAPPY DAYS AT TRENT 27
I can, ofcourse, only remember him in his old age, when, with his white
military moustache and upright bearing, he looked more like an old general
than a banker. But his marriage into the Yorke family brought down the
Bevan standard ofheight with a run, for his first family were all on the short
side. But with his second marriage it went up again for the Shuttleworths
were tall, thin and long-limbed, and my mother's children were all over
average height. Thus my father's two families bore not the slightest resem-
blance to each other, and his seven sons presented a curious picture of "the
long and the short of it", rising in exact gradation from my eldest half-
brother, who was only about 5 feet high and as round as a barrel, up to my
own and youngest brother Edwyn, who was 6 feet 4 inches and as thin as a
rail.
When I appeared on the scene my half-brothers and -sisters were married
and out in the world with a whole tribe of children of their own, so I was
born an aunt many times over and have lived to be a great-great-aunt with
a third great in prospect.
These nephews and nieces provided us with innumerable playmates,
Roland's daughter Winifred.! a most lovely child and a very good rider,
was my favourite who often came to stay; many were the glorious gallops
we had together through the green glades ofthe Trent beechwoods. Frank,
with his third wife and ten children, lived close by at Ludgrove, which was
later turned into a boys' preparatory school by Arthur Dunn, who married
Helen Malcolmson, the eldest of a delightful family who lived near Trent
and were my greatest friends.
Another famous school of the same order took on a new lease of life in
the same neighbourhood, for next door to Ludgrove was a cottage- where
once lived the Rev. Robert Stammers Tabor, vicar of Trent, to whom
Frank and Wilfrid were sent as pupils.
At that date a boys' school which had existed at Cheam since 1665,
whither it had been moved on account of the Great Plague, was at the end
of its resources and about to close down, when my father was asked to find
a new headmaster and help it to carry on. Thinking Mr. Tabor would be
suitable for the post my father lent him the necessary capital on the under-
standing that it was only to be repaid if the school succeeded. It proved a
triumphant success and my own brothers were sent there in due course,
Edwyn, whom Mr. Tabor used to call affectionately "Evvy Bevvy",
becoming one of his most brilliant pupils.
Two of my own three brothers continued the Shuttleworth tradition by
distinguishing themselves at the University. Anthony Ashley, named after
his godfather, my father's mend and eo-worker, Lord Shaftesbury, became
Professor of Semitic Languages at Trinity College, Cambridge, and Edwyn,
a Fellow of New College, Oxford, a D.Litt. and a great classical scholar.
1 She married the Hon. WilIiam Sidney, later Lord De L'Isle and Dudley.
Z In my day this cottage was occupied by a most charming old lady, Miss Jane Paris, known
to us all only as "Jane", who painted exquisitely. She is seen seated next but one to my father in the
family group facing page 80.
 SPACIOUS DAYS

I do not remember Ashley as a boy, but I believe he was very pretty and
most amusing. There was a story in the family about an incident which
occurred in his extreme youth when one of the Yorkes, a brother of my
father's first wife, known to us as "Uncle Eliot", was staying at Trent on a
visit.
Ashley, then about five years old, was allowed to come into the dining-
room at dessert and sat beside him at a corner of the table. By way of
friendly badinage with his little neighbour, Uncle Eliot, after taking a few
sips ofthe liqueur brandy beside his plate, turned to Ashley and said, "Now,
my boy, mind you don't drink any of that," pointing to the glass. "I
won't," said Ashley. "I tried it a few minutes ago and I didn't like it, so I
put it back."
My own recollectionsofAshley are only ofa savant such as he became on
entering Trinity College where he spent the rest ofhis life. He was always
buried in his books and his wit was ofthe caustickind, usually at the expense
of some less erudite mortal. He did, however. condescend to appreciate
Lewis Carroll and used to say a knowledge of Alice in Wonderland was so
necessary to one's education that an "Alice paper" should be included in
examination at the University, and any undergraduate ploughed who did
not pass in it.
He does not come into my life at all, as he never took any notice of us as
children and very little of me after I grew up so what I know of him is
mostly gleaned from his long obituary notices in The Times of October
1934. His health was marvellous, I never heard of his having a day's illness
in his life.
Hubert on the other hand, though always seedy and disgruntled, was
very kind to me when 1was small, and used to bring me toys and Turkish
Delight when he came down to Trent from London.
But it was Edwyn, the youngest of my own three brothers, who most
contributed to the gaiety of our youth. My own sisters, Millicent, Gladys
and Gwendolen, at the time of my birth were boisterous girls in the school-
room; the nursery party consisted of Edwyn, Enid and mysel£ Enid, of
whom I was very fond, was a melancholy child with sad grey eyes and a little
drooping mouth, but Edwyn was full of spirits and the most charming little
boy. He was a born actor and had a passion for animals, pretending every
day to be a different one. Such was his sympathy for them that on con-
templating a pig in a farmyard when we were in Wiltshire, he felt so sorry
for it being so ugly that he insisted on riding over constantly to visit it and
cheer it up.
Animals indeed made the great joy of life at Trent. In the meadows
grazed herds of Highland cattle, shorthorns and Alderneys; we loved to go
up the home farm, like a miniature village, and milk a gentle cow, warranted
not to kick us or the bucket over, then up to the underkeeper's, a man named
Jolly, where the shooting dogs, friendly spaniels and retrievers were kept.
Most of all 1 loved our schoolroom dog Dick, a black-and-tan terrier
 HAPPY DAYS AT TRENT 29
ofa breed now apparently extinct, whose soft satin head received many ofthe
tears I shed when, as often happened, I was in disgrace for some misdeed.
I have loved many dogs since then, but none has taken Dick's place in my
heart.
Love for dogs one day nearly involved us in a terrible tragedy. We
were all playing rounders on the lawn in front of the house at Trent when a
fox terrier appeared in the distance tearing towards us with its head down.
Normally we should have run towards it, but one child with us was afraid of
dogs and to tease her we screamed and ran away in all directions, pretending
to be terrified too. The dog came straight on, passed over the spot where we
had been playing, tore up to Jolly's and bit two ofthe dogs. It was then found
to be in the last stage of rabies and both dogs died of hydrophobia.
I have often thought what a merciful Providence ordained that this
particular child should have been with us at that moment and impelled us to
get out of the dog's way, for this was before the days of Pasteur, and who
knows how many of us might otherwise have died a ghastly death.
Horses naturally played a great part in our life at Trent. My father had
taught us all to ride at about the age of four, most of us on a lovely white
Arab pony named Comet, who perfectly suited his name when tearing at
full gallop with his long tail streaming out behind him. When my turn came
he was no longer in his first youth and had acquired a mouth ofiron, but so
well did he understand his duty to carry a child safely and stop at the right
moment that one could lie on his back as on a sofa and let him take one along
at a gentle canter with perfect confidence.
Birds added a further joy to life at Trent. I had a passion for studying
them and made quite a good collection oftheir eggs over whichJolly became
a great pal of mine. The woods all round the park made a marvellous hunt-
ing ground and Jolly used to bring me his finds, it being always understood
between us that only one egg, and never the whole clutch, was to be taken
from the nest. In this way I learnt a good deal about bird life, but envied
Jolly his great opportunities.
I remember that when asked to write in a "Confession Book"-a
fashion of the day-an answer to the question: "Ifnot yourself, who would
you ber" I wrote firmly: 'Jolly". For it really seemed to me impossible to
imagine a more delightful existence than his, spending not only the day on
the look-out for poachers, but often halfthe night, in the mysterious darkness
of the woods, listening to the gentle rustling of the tree leaves, the hoot of
owls which made their nests in the hollow trunks of the ancient beeches.
The part of the park where these were most to be found, known as "the
Rough Lot", was to me filled with romance, for there, surrounded by these
venerable giants, amidst the high stems of bracken, lay the circle of green
and slimy water, thick with weeds, which once had formed the moat of
Camlet Castle, home ofthe de Mandevilles. My mother, who loved archeo-
logy, looked up its history in various old chronicles, and found that during
the Wars ofthe Roses the Castle had been attacked, and to save it from falling
30 SPACIOUS DAYS

into the hands of their enemies the de Mandevilles had taken their chest of
treasure and dropped it to the bottom ofthe well, afterwards burning down
the Castle.
My mother felt sure that much of interest was to be found beneath the
ground and she begged my father to begin excavations. He, however, was
incredulous and only laughed at her enthusiasm. "You would find nothing
there," he said. "Then I will go and dig myself," my mother answered firmly,
and calling Enid and me-then about thirteen and ten-to join her, set forth
one summer afternoon, armed with spades and bill hooks, to the Rough
Lot.
The first thing was to cut away the brambles and brushwood with which
the whole island, surrounded by the moat, was overgrown, and after clearing
a small space,we began to dig. I shall never forget the thrill when, after about
an hour, we came upon the red tiles of the roo£
By this time we were all three too tired to go on, and returned triumphant
to the house to tell my father that "Mamma had been right" and there was
something to be found there. Papa, though still somewhat sceptical, then
allowed some of the estate labourers to come and help us with the heavier
digging and before long a number ofinteresting discoverieswere brought to
light.
A whole dungeon, with a chain attached to the wall, was dug out, also
some of the oak of the drawbridge, now turned black as ebony, sunk in the
slime ofthe moat; in course oftime no doubt the portcullis might have been
found. A quantity of small finds were also made-glazed tiles adorned with
knights on horseback, silver coins of Edward IV, a lady's thimble, quite
unlike the modern variety and covering only the tip ofthe finger, and so on.
But the chest oftreasure was never found, for it was at this juncture that
my father died and my brother Frank, who inherited Trent Park, cared even
less about archeological excavations. So those we had made were left to be
filled in by falling earth and the network of brambles soon covered them
until no trace of our labours remained.
Thus Camlet holds its secret still, which will perhaps only be revealed
when Trent Park, cut up into building lots, has been swallowed up in outer
London, and its ancient beech trees cleared away to make room for the
spreading sea of villadom.
It can be imagined that life at Trent was very pleasant. Nor was it less
happy for the employees on the estate. The head ones had their comfortable
cottages and gardens, the different families inter-married with each other,
servants stayed for ever, one stable helper had been there fifty years without
apparently any desire to "better himself" by becoming a coachman.
My father made himself beloved by everyone. Although crippled with
gout, yet spending every day in the City, he would go the round of the
farm and gardens, cheering the men piling the haystacks with jokes and
suggestions of an extra pint of beer.
His easy-going temperament and sense of humour made him, however,
 HAPPY DAYS AT TRENT 31

liable to be imposed on. The bailiff, a canny Y orkshireman, had, besides his
cottage garden, annexed a plot of ground in a field in order to grow vege-
tables for himself, which each year when we returned to Trent in the spring
was seen to have grown larger. At last it reached as far as a spreading oak
tree. " N ow," we sal,id ",It can go no f urt her."B ut next year w hen we came
back the oak tree had gone and the vegetable plot had advanced as usual.
Then there was the famous story of Henry Holmes' pig, which occurred
before my day but remained a legend in the family.
Henry Holmes, who was then butler, begged my father to let him have a
smallpig out ofa litter which had recently been born at the farm. My father
agreed, and Henry Holmes then proceeded to keep it in a pen near the back-
door, screenedfrom view by a high laurel hedge, and fed it with the overflow
from the kitchen and dairy. When it had grown into a fat porker Henry
Holmes calmly suggested selling it to my father, who was so amused at his
effrontery that he consented.
One servant, a coachman named Pratt, in some way unsatisfactory, was
~riodically given notice, but never left. One day my father said to him,
'I really think, Pratt, it is time you should leave." To which the man re-
plied,"Well, sir, you may not know when you have a good servant, but I do
know when r have a good master and r am staying on." And so he remained
indefinitely.
Trent, indeed, was the happiest little colony one could find and a bright
example of "Tory democracy", though r am sure my father never re-
garded it in this light. For although a convinced Conservative, politics in-
terested him but mildly and he never spoke of them to the men on the
estate except when at election times he would say a few words to them
before starting for the poll.
In those days there was no organized Socialism of any importance, but
agitators were already at work stirring up the people against the Monarchy,
and I can remember standing by my father's side with a row ofmen perched
along the railings facing him whilst he said:
"Don't you believe the people who tell that you would be happier under
a republic"-this was after we had started wintering abroad-"I live halfthe
year in a republic and I can tell you that some of the workers live in houses
you wouldn't put a dog in." He was thinking, no doubt, of the wretched
stone hovels in the villages around Cannes.
Then, finally, "Now, then, men, you'll vote the right way, won't
you,"
"Aye, aye, sir, that we will!" came in a chorus, and each went off to
drop hisvote for the Tory candidate into the ballot-box.
 CHAPTER IV

FOSBURY

VER Y August we used to go for about six weeks to Fosbury Manor,

E the grey stone house built by our great-grandfather, Silvanus, in the

midst of the Wiltshire downs.
The method by which the household was removed there remains one of
the most curious memories of my childhood. We, that is to say the family,
went inside the train, but the servants were packed into a large brake with
American cloth curtains along each side and a deep "boot" at the end for
the luggage.
Arrived at Paddington the horses were taken out and placed in a horse-
box on the train, then the brake with the servants inside, the curtains drawn
closely around them, was wheeled on to a railway truck which also formed
part of the train and off it started.
I remember wondering why it was necessary for the luckless servants to
stifle in heat and darkness between the thick curtains all the way down to
Wiltshire instead ofenjoying the air and scenery on the way, but on ventur-
ing this suggestion I met with the reply from my elders, "Of course, dear,
they must keep the curtains drawn or they would not be able to breathe
whilst going so fast through the air I"
Even the officials at Paddington concurred in this view, strictly enjoining
the servants not to draw the curtains aside lest they should be blown out.
The same reason was given me when I asked why carriages could not be
made to go along the roads like trains without rails-a silly question to
Victorians who seriously believed that one would stifle if carried along too
rapidly.
Life at Fosbury, even in the peaceful days of Queen Victoria, seemed
extraordinarily old world; it was like going back a hundred years from the
suburbanism which surrounded Trent to the quaint Wiltshire villages of
Fosbury and Oxenwood that lay on each side of the house. The old men
still went to church in smocks, the children still curtseyed when my mother
drove out in the ancient barouche that had belonged to my great-grand-
mother, the postman still blew a horn on his way through the village streets
-my mother well remembered the time he only came once a month.
Just where my father's property began, on a high point of the downs
where Wiltshire, Berkshire and Hampshire met, there still stood a gruesome-
looking gibbet where criminals were once hung in view ofthe three counties.
Our favourite ride was to this gibbet because the way there lay over miles of
downland where one could give one's horse its head-I can still hear the
wind whistling in my ears as we tore full gallop over the smooth turf My
father was often with us on these occasions and would enjoy making us ride
32
 by Z of/an y

My great grandf.1the r
Silvanus Bevan
 My Grandfather
Philip Nicholas Shuttlcworth

M y Moth er
 FOSBURY 33

down the most precipitous slopes, shouting: "Come on! Come on!" cheer-
fully if any of us hesitated to follow him.
At Fosbury my parents were in the right setting, for both belonged
essentially to the early Victorian era. My father still spoke of lilac as "lay-
lock" and would say "Put on your bonnet, my love!" when calling one of
us to go out with him. Sometimes he would tell us ofthe days when he went
back to school in a stage-coach, and used to see the unhappy victims of the
law at that date hanging on gibbets by the roadside. My mother, too, had not
advanced very far from the same period, and she in her turn would tell us of
the days when she was a child and little girls curtseyed to their parents,
called them "Sir" and "Ma'am" and their mothers carried long fans with
which to rap them over the knuckles ifthey misbehaved.
Fosbury House itself was redolent of old world memories; one wing
indeed was said to be haunted, we never knew by what, only that a young
French girl who came to spend her holidays with us spent her first night in
what wasknown as"the bowroom" ofthat wing, and was found next morn-
ing absolutely paralysed with terror and never to the end ofher days would
she tell us what she had seen. "It was too horrible, I cannot speak ofit!" she
said with a shudder, when some thirty years later I begged her to break her
silence on the subject.
I do not think the ghost or whatever it was could be connected with
Silvanus or with my grandfather David, who seems to have been a benign
sort of man.
In his day the labourers' wages were often wretchedly low, and on the
introduction of machinery in 1830, riots took place and incendiary fires
blazed all over the county.
One Sunday evening in that year when David and his family were at
Fosbury,a crowd of 200 men marched on the house to demand his signature
to a paper, but after being entertained and reasoned with they went off
cheering and shouting, "Bevan for ever!" promising to break only the
machines that interfered with their work.
My father, however, was not content with mere palliative measures
such as these, and his first act on succeeding to the property had been to re-
build practically the whole village of Oxenwood and to replace the old in-
sanitary houses by new ones, solid, well-built and at the same time de-
lightfully picturesque cottages with charming gardens and allotments in
addition.
The schools to which Aunt Favell had devoted herself were supported
entirely by him, so were the church and vicarage which he built. In this
unsophisticated part of the world the villagers depended on him almost
entirely for their well-being and he ruled them, not with a rod of iron, but
with a firmness that would have shocked the modern exponents of demo-
cracy.
Thus at the model public-house in Oxenwood no one was allowed to get
drunk, and far away on the downs were two cottages known as "Siberia"
C
34 SPACIOUS DAYS

to which people were liable to be sent if they made themselves a nuisance to

their neighbours. Abominable tyranny! readers will exclaim, but it did not
make my father less loved by all those around him. For although at Fosbury
he might be described largely as an "absentee landlord" he kept continually
in touch with the inhabitants, and thirty years after his death, when the
place had passed into other hands, they would sigh for the good old days
when they had someone to care for them and lend an attentive ear to their
troubles.
Wherever he lived my father's thoughts were always with the poor or
suffering. In London, where we spent the winter, he had a number ofinvalids
he used to visit, people in too comfortable circumstances to claim the at-
tention ofany district visitor, but often lonely or neglected, and in the even-
ing on his way back from the City to his home in Princes Gate he would
look in on them to take them books and try to cheer them.
The claims on his liberality were naturally incessant, and my elder sisters,
who acted as his secretaries, were kept busy answering the flood of begging
letters which poured in daily and to which he never paid a deaf ear. Millicent
has since described this in the following words:

"Amongst my father's treasures kept in a special drawer, was his

collection of 'funny letters' which were occasionally brought out and
read to us for our amusement, and amongst these were a few begging
letters. One was from an indignant lady who pressed her claim to his
benevolence, not only on the urgency of her needs, but on the fact that
she was related to a 'pear of the realm'.
"Another was from a very persistent beggar, who finally pleaded for
a pair of boots to go to Jerusalem. These were rather gladly bestowed,
probably with the reflection that Jerusalem was only a short distance
fromJericho, and with the hope that the boots might take him that much
further. Alas, after a due interval the boots, with the man in them, found
their way back to England, and a fresh SOS was received to help him
to go to America. Then there was an angry retort from one who did not
get a favourable reply to his request for money. These caustic lines may
have greatly relieved the feelings of the writer:
Mr. Bevan, Mr. Bevan,
Your name on earth doth rhyme with Heaven,
But how, dear sir, about your acts
Of hoarding wealth and giving tracts?
Keep your tracts, Sir, to yourself,
And spare a little of your pelf,
And remember, Mr. Bevan,
The rich man hardly enters Heaven.

..Asa matter offact, my father was inclined to give too freely, and my
sisters and I often felt the cases might not be as deserving as they would
 FOSBURY 35

have him believe; but when we expressed any opinion of this sort to
him, he always said that he would rather give to several undeserving
amongst the many applicants, than miss giving to the one who really
needed his help. In general, he tried, as much as possible, to distribute
his gifts amongst those who might most easily be overlooked; those
living in loneliness and obscurity, rather than to well-known charities,
which would have brought him fame and honours."
In answer to one he had befriended who wrote expressing the fear that
his name would pass away and be forgotten in less than a hundred years, and
proposing therefore that some monument should be put up to his memory,
one of his daughters wrote:
"My father desires me to say,

Who builds for God and not for fame,

Marks not the marble with his name.

"He is, therefore, quite content that R.C.L.B. should be forgotten

among men in much less than 100 years."
The tenth of his income he regarded as not his own at all, that belonged
to God; the rest must be laid out for the greatest good ofthe greatest number.
He did not, however, believe in the easy charity of giving to beggars in the
street whereby able-bodied men and women, who preferred sitting on a
pavement to doing a job of work, were often enabled to make a comfort-
able income, whilst the honest, self-respecting poor continued uncomplain-
ingly to struggle for the bare necessities of life.
Coming out of church one Sunday evening at Trent, with one of his
sons-in-law, he was accosted by a man who told him he was unemployed,
and that his family was starving. His son-in-law handed the man half a
crown, whereat my father said: "What is the good of half a crown? Ifhe is
really destitute it is not enough; ifhe is not destitute it is half a crown too
much," Then, turning to the man: "Give me your name and address." This
was done, and on reaching home, my father ordered a groom to pack a cart
with provisions, drive to the address given, and find out whether the case
was a genuine one. The man's story was found to be true, the family was
saved from destitution, and the man was given a job at the Bank.
Another encounter of his had a more surprising sequel. On his way to
church one summer evening, he was coming out of the gates at Trent Park
when he met a man and his wife coming in. "Where are you going, my
friends?" said my father with a smile. "We are just taking a walk in the
park," answered the man. As people were always allowed to go through
from one lodge to another, my father merely observed, "Well, I hope you
will have a pleasant walk, but I wish you were coming to church," and
with a friendly nod he passed on.
]6 SPACIOUS DAYS

Years afterwards, when he was interviewing candidates for the London

City Mission, a man who came up before him surprised him by saying,
"You d on' t remem ber me, SIn . ""N0, I can' t say I d 0," 'sal
d my lac: th er.
The man then reminded him of the incident that had taken place at the
lodge gates, and went on to say: "I told you that my wife and I were going
for a walk.. What I didn't tell you was that I had a gun folded up beneath
my coat, and my wife had a couple of snares under her skirts.We were
after your game, sir. But what you said that evening made us think. We
went to church, and our whole lives were changed from that moment."
So the ex-poacher became a London City missionary.
My father's desire not to win fame was certainly granted, for one of his
most striking characteristics was his great humility, and in this world men
are usually taken at their own estimate. Even in his life-time "R.C.L.B."
was not properly understood.
Lombard Street that saw him in his official role as the head of Barclay
and Bevan, Exeter Hall that acclaimed him. as a leading "Evangelical",
knew nothing ofhim as we saw him at home. No Memoir of him has ever
been written. The recently published History of Barclays Bank devotes only a
short paragraph to him, in which nothing is said that gives any idea of his
true character, of his role as a sportsman, of his fifty years administration
of the Bank, and his action in saving it on "black Friday", or of his work
for humanity. Had the authors of the book devoted less space to the
history of Barclays after it had become a Joint Stock concern, and more
to the character of its first directors before that period, it would have been
a finer picture. For its earlier success was made by the confidence inspired
in the public, by the known integrity and good faith of the men who used
the wealth it brought them for the service of the community.
 CHAPTER V

LE REVERS DE LA MEDAILLE

NYONE reading the foregoing account of life at Trent and Fosbury

X might well imagine a round of gaiety such as we see portrayed in

the pages of society papers with photographs of country houses and
their inhabitants continually at play. They might picture house-parties of
convivial guests, tennis tournaments, cricket matches, dances, private
theatricals, music, laughter, everything that could be devised for pleasure
and amusement.
Nothing, however, would be further from the reality. It is true that
lifeat Trent was happy for us all when we were very young, nature provided
all the distractions, the beauty and the charm we knew, but those who have
seenthe modern Trent transformed into a millionaire's red brick "mansion"
can have no idea ofthe austerity oflife as we knew it in the old white house
overgrown with creepers.
There was but one bathroom, used only by my father, no billiard-room,
no smoking-room-nowhere indeed where anyone might smoke; men
who wished to indulge in this obnoxious habit were obliged to repair to a
harness-room in the stables at some distance from the house. There was, of
course, no electric light, there were no telephones, no motor-cars, no daily
papersother than The Times, the Morning Post and others of a serious kind.
Life was singularly devoid of all artificial distractions. This was the same
for everyone in those days, only in the region of social gaiety our lives
differed so strangely from those of others.
The reason for this must now be explained. My father, as I have already
said, having devoted his life to the service of God, had given up hunting,
dancing and the theatre, but he had retained great joie de vivre, enjoyed his
horses, his gardens, sport and above all seeing young people at play. During
his life with his first wife he had not even judged it sinful to drive a four-
in-hand, for he was as good a whip as a rider.
My mother, however, renounced what she called "the world" to a far
greater extent. Very "High Church" when she was first married-she had
painted the reredos behind the altar in Fosbury Church with her own
hands-but after she came to live at Trent she made friends with an old
man with a long beard, who lived in Bamet and belonged to the Plymouth
Brethren, the very narrowest sect of dissenters, founded in 1800 by the
Rev.J.N. Darby.
Unhappily, my mother was converted to this gloomy creed and hence-
forth it was left to my father to take us to church on Sundays whilst my
mother drove off in a brougham to Barnet to attend meetings of the
Brethren.
37
 SPACIOUS DAYS

Her religious fervour now took the form of a sort of mysticism cutting
her off not only from society but even, to a certain extent, from family
life.
A pure intellectual, all her energies were concentrated on her books,
written in beautiful English, and on the exquisite drawings with which she
illustrated her poems. In theory she loved children and especially to draw
them-we have little sketch-books filled with lovely children's heads, but
she did not know how to hold a baby, and when one of us was put into her
arms a nurse would stand by, ready to "field" it in case she let it drop. I
can never remember her coming to kiss me good night in bed, or, indeed,
ever entering our night nursery at all, and only once do I remember seeing
her appear in the day nursery, then merely to give an order to a nurse, and
the sight of her tall, majestic figure was so unprecedented that I could
hardly have been more amazed if Queen Victoria herself, in robes and
crown, with ball and sceptre complete, had swept into the room.
My father, on the other hand, loved to play with me. Coming at the
end of so long a family it might have been expected that I should be "born
tired" like many children of old parents, but on the contrary I was endowed
with bounding spirits which delighted Papa, who, I think, looked upon
me as a sort ofhappy afterthought.
Sometimes, though over seventy, he would come up to the nursery
at Princes Gate on a winter evening after returning from the City, perhaps
with a long cardboard box found to contain a ravishing doll, or he would
have a glorious romp, letting us ride on his tall shoulders and rumple his
beautiful thick white hair.
Only for a short time were we taken down to the drawing-room, when
with hair brushed and freshly curled, in frilly white frocks with beautifully
tied sashes of pale-blue corded silk, as in illustration facing page 97, we were
set down to play on the floor with kindergarten toys until the hour came
for the nurses to sweep us up to bed; should we make too much noise, we
were liable to be removed earlier.
My mother did, however, give us a few lessons, notably in geography,
inventing the most amusing rhymes to impress the names of places on
my memory; and then, of course, Bible lessons at which I did not always
prove a docile pupil. Later on she taught me to love poetry, for which I am
eternally grateful to her.
It must be explained that we were an extraordinarily unmusical family,
though endowed with a particular gift for languages. It is usual to suppose
that a talent for music and for languages go together, our case proved
exactly the contrary. My mother spoke French and German well, and at
over seventy would be up every morning at 8.30 to read Hebrew, but she
had no ear for music, and declared that she could only recognize three tunes
when she heard them. She had, in fact, a theory that music is the lowest
of the arts because it is one we share with the animal kingdom; no bird or
beast can appreciate artistic objects-drawing, painting. architecture, etc.-
 LE REVERS DE LA MEDAILLE 39

but birds can sing in tune, cows may respond to the ranx-des-vaches, horses
to a trumpet call, even snakes may be charmed by music.
This curious prejudice was shared by Ashley, who detested music to
such a point that he was afraid ofdining out lest what he called "a screaming
woman", otherwise a singer, might be asked to perform. Yet he was the
best linguist of us all, knowing something of about sixteen languages,
Professor of Semitic ones, speaking French exactly like a Frenchman,
German so exactly like a German that when travelling in Germany with a
honeymooning couple they resorted to English in order to bill and coo
without being understood.
It was thus the music of words that made of poetry so great a delight to
my mother and to Edwyn, who had inherited his grandfather's fabulous
memory for verse, and would recite long poems to which I listened with
rapt attention, so that in time I came to share their passion; and Shelley's
"Skylark", "The Cloud", or the songs of Shakespeare brought me the
same ecstasyas a Beethoven sonata to a musician. Poetry, indeed, became my
great consolation when, as too often happened, I was sent to bed early in
disgrace.
I can still see in memory the little poetry book with its back of WOnt
green leather which I would smuggle into bed with me and leant my favour-
ite poems by heart in the fading summer twilight.
The one that thrilled me most when I was about eleven was Macaulay's
"Spanish Armada", for by that time we had taken to spending the winter
abroad and love ofEngland had become my strongest emotion. I remember
thinking "if these lines ever cease to stir me it will mean that I am dying".
One spring I fell ill with some childish complaint, nothing serious, but
enough to make everything seem very far away. Then I applied my test,
murmuring the words "See how the lion of the seas lifts up his ancient
crown!" No, it left me cold! Then I must be dying! After a while my
father came and sat beside my bed. Gladys, of whom he was very fond, had
just recovered from an acute attack of pleurisy and he evidently feared the
same for me, for I remember how he leant forward anxiously saying,
"Are you sure you feel no pain in your side, dean"
"N0, Papa, none. "
"Are you quite sures"
"yes, qUite
. sure.t"
And the relief on his face reassured me that my time had not come yet.
It was thus that all the tender memories of my family during my child-
hood were bound up with my father, and I still keep as one of my most
precious treasures a letter he wrote me from abroad when I was only four,
beginning:

"Dearest and Sweetest Nest, I was delighted with your nice long
letter so full oflove, it made me long to kiss both the little cheeks which
I am glad to hear are like pink roses."
4° SPACIOUS DAYS

It may seem almost indelicate to quote words so intimate and so little

intended for publication, but they serve to show the gentle character of the
man whose life was spent in the dry atmosphere of Lombard Street and to
explain the influence he exercised over my whole life, for it was his example
that came to be my great inspiration in the stormy years to come.
So long as he lived I was happy, and as a child at Trent my mother's
more rigid views did not affect me as they did my brothers and elder sisters.
For to her all forms of "worldly" amusements were wrong, not only
dances, theatres, race-meetings, card playing, and so on, but every form of
social gaiety and so the gates of Trent were closed to those who indulged in
it. Only the Evangelical circle that frequented Exeter Hall, or Moody and
Sankey's meetings then in vogue, were admitted; prayer meetings and Bible
readings were the only gatherings that took place.
I can still see them in memory, those saintly people, sweeping over the
smooth lawns in their flowing Victorian dresses or seated beneath the
cedars talking of Heaven and the Hereafter. No idlers these, for they were
all engaged in good works of some kind, old Lady Kinnaird concerned in
improving the lot of the poor women in Indian zenanas-and her three
unmarried daughters-a fourth had married my brother Roland-engaged
in running the YW.C.A., the kindliest and most human ofthe circle.
Then there were theWaldegraves, daughters of Lord Radstock, famous
for having founded a sect that bore his name in Russia, a large breezy person
with side whiskers, who carried a tremendous heartiness into his religious
activities. I remember after I grew up hearing him relate at dinner with the
Kinnairds how he had tried to convert a fakir in India and ending with the
words, accompanied by a thump on the table that made the glasses ring,
"And down we went on our knees!"
There was also his sister, Lady Beauchamp, with her daughters, one of
whom sang with Moody at his meetings, and a disciple of his, a Russian
colonel, with his wife and daughters, whose utterance was somewhat im-
peded by an ill-fitting set of false teeth which, out of pity, he had acquired
from an oppressedJewish dentist.
A very strange personality was Olive, Lady Sebright, who, after a wild
career of acting, gambling and horse-dealing, had come to see the error of
her ways and taken to preaching.
I can see her still, with her mop of grey hair which, anticipating the
fashions by some forty years, she wore short; her keen grey eyes and Puck-
like expression,her hands with the long pointed fingers ofthe born gambler,
clasping a large Bible with an elastic band around it.
By way of breaking with her past, Lady Sebright had resolved to give
up horse-dealing, but this, she explained to my father, could only be done
by selling off her stable. He accordingly agreed to buy up her remaining
horses, but somehow there was always one more, and yet one more, to be
disposed of, frequently strange animals, such as a pony that had been trained
in a circus and would only move in circles, and a horse without a tail that
 LE REVERS DE LA MEDAILLE 41
had to have a switch of false hair attached to the crupper. My father at last
grew tired of helping Lady Sebright not to be a horse-dealer, and her
stable was finally announced to be empty.
Then there were preachers and missionaries who stayed at Trent, or in
the village of Cockfosters, at our gates near by; one of these was quite an
interesting old man with a long white beard, from the South Sea Islands,
whose stories of cannibalism and collection of the most hideous idols in
the style of Epstein, delighted us, whilst another, named Haynes, with bald
head and long beard, also used to come in to prayers with a Bible about
the size of the Tables of the Law, and whom we used to call "the Prophet
H ynes" .
One evening, the grooms, by way of a joke, plied one of these mission-
aries with light refreshments before he started for a meeting with the
result that, on mounting the platform, he suddenly rolled up his sleeves
and declared he was going to fight the devil. After this, we saw him no
more.
For years we were taught to revere a Eurasian revivalist preacher, who
was fond of relating how, at one of his meetings, a man he "converted"
became so excited that he took a form out into a neighbouring field, and
went on jumping backwards and forwards over it. This revivalist, too,
appears to have in some way fallen from grace, for there came a time when
his name ceased to be mentioned, and when we asked the reason, we were
met by an ominous silence.
Revivalism, like the Moody and Sankey movement of that day, always
repelled me. I could not believe that with a sudden click a man could pass
from an unregenerate to a regenerate being, and it seemed to me that it
showed little reverence for spiritual things to shout about one's soul in
public and to sing vulgar American hymns such as:

"I shouldliketo die," said Willie,

"If my Pa-pacoulddietoo."

How different to the beautiful chants and hymns, "Abide with me"
or "Lead, kindly Light", sung at the services to which on summer evenings
we were taken by Papa at Trent or Fosbury!
Popular meetings of a friendly kind were held at Ludgrove, where my
brother Frank lived. His wife, one of the kindliest of women, bethought
herselfof entertaining all the haymakers employed in the neighbourhood,
every Sunday afternoon during the month ofJune, to a hearty tea, followed
by an address and hymns, which she accompanied herself on a harmonium.
But these, too, were not without their humorous incidents.
As far as possible, working-class speakers were invited to give the
address, and the most popular one was Tom Baker, a west-country man,
with a strong provincial burr, who believed in making Bible stories more
graphic, by adding little imaginative touches ofhis own. I shall never forget
 SPACIOUS DAYS

him relating the story of the flood on one occasion with this embellishment:
"And the spirit ofthe Lorrrd floated on the face ofthe waterrrs. And the
Lorrrd he came to the doorrr of the Harrrk and he called out: 'Noarrr!
Noarrr! I say, Noarrr, you in there, Noarrrr' And Noarrr he didn't answer.
Perhaps, dear friends, 'e was feeling the motion ofthe Harrrk!"
The idea of Noah with his head in a basin, unable to reply, convulsed
us, but the speaker intended no irreverence; it was only his way ofappealing
to the haymaking mind.
Although, as I have said, no entertaining took place at Trent this should
be understood to apply only to social functions. My father could not have
contented himself with the contemplative life which satisfied my mother;
with him, to the day ofhis death, it was always an urge to be up and doing.
He loved nothing so much as to see people enjoying themselves and so in-
dulged in the one form ofhospitality that my mother approved which took
the form of "treats".
These were the only entertainments that took place at Trent-school-
treats, treats for shop or factory girls, treats for the "Bus Drivers' Mission",
for the "Navvies' Mission", for Asiatics from the docks, for"Aged Pilgrims"
wheeled about in bath-chairs or a party of mild mental cases from the
neighbouring asylum at Colney Hatch.
It was a literal interpretation of our Lord's command: "When thou
makest a dinner or a supper, call not thy friends ... nor thy rich neighbours,
lest they also bid thee again, and a recompense be made thee. But when thou
makest a feast call the poor, the maimed, the lame, the blind, and thou shalt
be blessedfor they cannot recompense thee."
I cannot help feeling, however, that it was a pity hospitality should not
also have been extended to people who would have proved congenial
friends or acquaintances for us in later life. For youth is the time to make
friendships, to learn the art ofconversation and how to play one's part in the
world, to mix with the best type of men and women and so construct a
standard by which to judge those one meets later on. Both my parents had
enjoyed these advantages, my father at Harrow and Oxford, my mother in
the brilliant circle which had gathered round her father at New College, and
numbered amongst her friends some of the most interesting men of the day
-Lawrence Oliphant, Livingstone the explorer, Stephenson the inventor of
the steam-engine, Cardinal Howard, whilst he was still a gay young man in
the Guards, and his sisters Adelaide and Catherine, the de Bunsens, daughters
of the Prussian ambassador. With the last named alone she kept up her
friendship to the end of her life; the rest remained merely legends to us in
our youth.
My mother had thus acquired a poise and savoir faire which, with her
dignified appearance and talent for conversation, would have made her an
admirable hostess either at Trent or in a literary or artistic salon.
Moreover, whilst the most unsnobbish person I have ever known, she
attached great value to good breeding and what the old French aristocrats
 LE REVERS DE LA MEDAILLE 43

called "le bon ton"-a quite untransIatable expression-and often reminded

us of the old Wykehamist motto: "Manners maketh man".
In view ofall this one would have expected her to bring up her daughters
on the lines she approved and in the same milieu as herself, instead ofleaving
us to governesses chosen for their "soundness" on religious questions rather
than for their minds or manners, and preventing us from mixing with society
ofany kind. Asa result my sisters grew up shy and farouche, unable to over-
come the instinct to avoid any contact with people belonging to the gay
world.
My own brothers suffered from the same disadvantage for, instead of
following in my father's footsteps as Harrovians or like my half-brothers
who went to Eton, they were not sent to public schools at all for fear of
forming "worldly connections". Yet by a curious inconsistency I cannot
explain they had gone to Cheam and went on later to the university.
Such was the damage wrought by the old Plym with the long beard in
Barnet! I remember hearing that, when he died, his daughters, who had
expected to inherit some portion of his considerable fortune, were dis-
appointed to find he had left them nothing but the famous beard to make
into watch-chains.
Sunday was really a terrible day at Trent for no diversions of any kind
were allowed; we might not even paint texts like other children.
At 8.30 family prayers (as on week-days) attended by all the servants
entering in single file and in order of rank, breakfast, then a Bible reading, a
walk to morning church; after luncheon, bricks with the names of the Kings
of Israel and Judah to be set out and a hymn to be learnt by heart, then
another Bible-reading and finally a walk to evening church.
How often did I wish could go to sleep on Saturday night and wake
up to find that it was Monday morning and the dreaded day that came in
between was over! As it was, however, Monday usually found me fractious,
perhaps as a reaction from Sunday repression. Is there any luck in numbers
as astrologers pretend?
AllI know is that throughout my life Monday has always brought me ill
luck and Friday good luck, whilst 7 has always been my fateful number. I
was born on the rath of August, the youngest of 14 children and of 7
daughters. I was married on the 14th of May and every 7 years of my life
was marked by some crucial turn in the wheel ofmy fate.
But Monday was not the only day when I received bad conduct marks,
for I was regarded as an extremely naughty child, particularly by my half-
brothers and sisters-in-law who compared me unfavourably with their more
docile progeny. The fact is that I was born with a tiresomely enquiring
mind, I could not always accept the opinions ofmy elders unquestioningly or
submit meekly to their dictates.
Why, I used to wonder, was it necessary to think so many things wrong?
Why must Sunday be a day of gloomrWhy, above all, must there be this
talk of eternal punishment? These saintly people who would not hurt a fly,
44 SPACIOUS DAYS

who spent their lives doing good, whose hearts were full of pity, even for
the lowest criminals, could worship a God who would show no mercy to
the unregenerate. If He was indeed, as they declared, a God of love, how
could He condemn His creatures to an eternity of sufferingr
I do not think these questions greatly troubled my brothers and sisters,
but somehow, even as a child, I had the strange feeling that I had not always
belonged to the milieu in which I had been born, that somewhere I had
known a different world where larger views prevailed, where there was
warmth, colour, movement, gaiety. And in this mood I could not resist the
temptation to disturb the gravity of the family circle by some startling
remark or by playing pranks that set them laughing against their wills and
so earned a reputation for naughtiness. But how often on these occasions
I would catch an answering twinkle in my father's eye!
But it is time to shift the scene from Trent and Fosbury and go back to
the date when we made yet another home-across the sea.
 CHAPTER VI

THE FAMILY ABROAD

VER Y year when autumn came we left Trent and moved up to our

E grey Victorian house overlooking Hyde Park on one side and gardens
on the other-25 Princes Gate. There as a small child during the winter
I was allowed to indulge in quite a round of gaieties, afternoon and evening
parties at the houses of our friends and relations-Bevans, Trittons, Camp-
bells and so on-at which I remember seeing some of the bigger children
actually dancing. This little season at the age of four was to be my last. I
was to have no further dissipations of the kind throughout my childhood.
For when I was five years old a great change took place in our lives. My
father, more and more crippled by gout, was ordered to spend the winters
out of England and henceforth Cannes was to be our second home.
I remember as if it was yesterday that first journey to France, the novel
sight of the blue-bloused porters on landing and the arrival in Paris where,
for the first time in my life, I saw electric light in the shape ofthe great white
arc lamps hung over the streets.
Paris, where we now stopped every year on our way to or from Cannes,
was to become more familiar to me than London; the Rue de Rivoli, the
Rue de la Paix, the Place de la Concorde are amongst my earliest memories.
But somehow I was never happy there; Paris always seemed to me a place of
ghosts, a place where I had once seen terrible things and as I grew older the
feeling deepened. But more of this in a later chapter.
Our journeys to Cannes were the most curious expeditions, conducted
in a patriarchal war.' at first on a small scale, for a chefand his aide were only
engaged on arriva , but later when we had made Cannes our home it com-
prised the whole household-six or seven members of the family, governess,
nurse, all the indoor servants, the coachman, his wife and the horses, a
party ofnearly twenty people in all. So although we went to live in France
we were still surrounded by a mainly British atmosphere.
The first winter we spent at a house rented only for the season, the Villa
Madeleine on the Croix des Gardes, and here I had to do lessons seriously. I
had begun to learn French at the age ofthree and wrote quite well at four,
now at five it was my duty after prayers in the morning to announce break-
fastto the family each day in a different language-French, German, Italian,
Latin and Greek. At six I was given a prize for repeating all the provinces
and departments of France by heart.
My elder sisters were in the schoolroom, ruled over by an English
governess irreverently nicknamed "Poggs"; Edwyn was at Cheam, and
Enid, whom nobody could understand and manage, had also gone to
school. So I was left alone in the nursery. Old "Ninny" had retired on a
45
 SPACIOUS DAYS

pension, and an under-nurse had been kept on who now had charge
ofme.
I can never say what I owe to this loved companion of my childhood-
Tiny, as I christened her, was the daughter of our coachman, and had
come to us before I was born when she was only sixteen and remained until
I was grown up. It is often said that women have no instinctive desire for
education; Tiny was certainly a triumphant exception to such a rule; at
twelve years old she had read Shakespeare all through in her spare time whilst
living in the Mews behind Princes Gate. Her knowledge of history and of
natural history was remarkable, "here King Charles II walked with his
spaniels after the Restoration," I remember her saying to me as we passed
St. james's Palace.
Now we had come to live at Cannes, she taught herself French with me
whilst I sat at the nursery table looking out words in a dictionary and copy-
ing them out in an exercise book. Later she learnt German from my
mother's German maid, took lessons in Italian; often when I was in bed I
could hear her turning the pages of a book-the Divinia Comedia of Dante
in the original. With all this she combined a genius for sick nursing and the
care of children which tends to confirm a cherished theory of my own-
that the women who excel in what is known as "woman's sphere" are
those who have taken the trouble to cultivate their minds.
The second winter at Cannes we went to the Hotel Californie-which
in those days was very different to the Palace Hotel into which it developed
later-quite small, with a dark dining-room looking out at the back where all
the guests sat at one long table.
Separate tables for "table d'hote" were then almost unknown; people
who were too exclusive to sit at the common table had their meals brought
to their private salons. We had ours with the rest and made a number of
pleasant friends.
There were several other small children in the hotel, amongst them
Lilias and Oliver Borthwick, whose father, Sir Algernon Borthwick, later
Lord Glenesk, owned the Morning Post. How little we thought as we played
amongst the orange-trees and bamboos of the Californie garden and caught
green frogs in the banana leaves, that long years afterwards two ofus would
meet again in the most stormy period of our country's history, when Oliver
having unfortunately met an early death, Lilias as Lady Bathurst would be
controlling that great patriotic paper and I should be contributing articles to
its columns!
At the Hotel Californie I had severallove affairs, with a Peruvian colonel,
then with Mr. Cross, the husband of George Eliot, who, although nearly
middle-aged and bearded, was a most delightful companion.
He used to address me laughingly as "your ladyship" !-"what would
your ladyship like to do todayr" which pleased me very much because I
imagined the word referred to the white-sailed shipsI loved to watch on the
blue surface of the Mediterranean and that I reminded him of them.
 THE FAMILY ABROAD 47

Another object of my affections was Ion Keith-Falconer who, at the age

of twenty-five, had fallen in love with my sister Gwendoline, though she
was only fifteen, too young to be officially engaged to him. Ion, however,
spent part of the winter with us at the Califomie, and although a don at
Trinity College, Cambridge, later Professor of Semitic languages there, he
amused us all by his schoolboy pranks.
One day disguised as an Arab smoking a narghileh on the terrace of the
hotel, another masquerading as the concierge whose cap and coat he found
hanging in the hall when their owner was away at lunch and, having put
them on, Ion enjoyed himself immensely talking nonsense to people who
came to enquire for rooms.
As he was 6 feet 4 inches and very handsome, I soon fell in love with
him and when, in course of time, he told me he was going to marry my
sister, I said sadly, "Oh, Ion, I thought it was me!" to which he answered
laughingly, "Never mind, I'll marry Gwen first and you afterwards."
But this was not till three years later when we had moved into the Villa
that now became our winter home. It was an ugly little house, named the
Villa Duchapt, right on the road, but my mother liked it because it was
built in chalet style and so reminded her of Switzerland which she had
always loved. She persuaded my father to buy it and renamed it Chalet
Passiflora after the red passion-flowers that grew round the wooden balcony
in the front.
The position it occupied was certainly delightful, looking over the
harbour and the distant Esterel mountains, and when it had been added on to
and improved in various ways it became quite comfortable, though never
attractive. Later a neighbouring piece ofwoodland was bought and joined on
to our garden, then my father bought the Villa Monte Leo and the Villa
Pergola down below and threw part of their land into ours so in time the
garden and wood of Passiflora covered the pleasantest part of the Californie
hill and became really charming.
It was then that a new life began for us. At Trent and Fosbury it had
been easy for my mother to avoid society, but now we had come to live in
one of the gayest places on the Continent, our seclusion from the world
became more marked.
My three sisters, who had left the schoolroom but, as I have said, were
never allowedto "come out", took their strange position in good humour and
amused themselves keeping a journal, wonderfully illustrated by Millie,
which has been preserved and provides a curious picture of our family life:-
Mamma feels she must return the call of some neighbours named S.
de W., reasoning with herself that as they have "Tuesdays at home" on
their card they are sure to be out, so sets off in her garden hat and Shetland
shawl, quite forgetting that it is Tuesday and is ushered in by Mr. S. de W.
arrayed in blue velvet, to fmd herself in the midst of all the beau monde
of Cannes. Mrs. S. de W. turns out, however, to be an old acquaintance
whom she knew as "Emily" and who welcomes her rapturously.
48 SPACIOUS DAYS

(I well remember this lady, who used to take her walks abroad dressed
in a regal ensemble of scarlet, purple and ermine.)
My sisters are appalled when Papa takes them to a reception given by
MissPercival, a retired lady-in-waiting, at the Villa Nevada, in honour ofthe
Duke ofAlbany who is staying with her, and "Emily" sails up to His Royal
Highness "in even more than usual splendour-purple and silver ornaments"
-introduces herself, asks after his sisters, and proceeds to invite him to
lunch with her.
Another neighbour, at the villa des Mimosas, is the old Chevalier de
Colquhoun, a noted gourmet who is said to starve before attending a par-
ticularly recherche luncheon and has the curious habit of performing his
toilette on his balcony facing our windows. Several sketches illustrate this
ceremony, with his clothes spread out on the rail of the balcony and occa-
sionally fluttering down into the garden to be fished up again by the house-
maid. We often watched this scene from our windows-the Chevalier
washing, brushing his teeth into a basin, emptying it over the shrubs below
and finally saying his prayers to the East.
My sisters have few glimpses of Cannes gaieties-Millie having been
taken by Papa to call on Lady Vincent at the Villa Flora is astounded when
that charming old lady turns to her, saying kindly, "Well, my dear, I hope
you are having plenty of dancese" Dances! Dances! What an idea! No, such a
possibility had never entered my sister's head for a moment!
So when an invitation actually arrived at the Villa, it is stuck into the
journal as a curiosity, thus:
Villa Victoria Mr. and Mrs. Bevan
The Misses Bevan
LADY MURRAY
AT HOME
Tuesday evening, 12th February, 9 o'clock
Fancy Dress Dancing
Dominoes and masks till 11 o'clock
R.S.V.P.

The journal follows this up with the comment:

"Mamma is going to dress as Mother Hubbard and Papa as the dog.
Imagine Mamma dancing till eleven o'clock in a domino and mask!"
Mamma, of course, never goes to parties of any kind and it is always
Papa who takes his daughters to "At Homes", and on each occasion is guilty
of disobeying his doctor's orders by yielding to the temptation of that
delicious French beverage-chocolate with whipped cream on the top.
"Papa was quite in his element, handing about cakes and cups of tea, and
on the sly he got for himself a cup of chocolate, which is quite a forbidden
Iuxury. "
 --_.
=-"''"iin:;r'-l-., -__
=--___ ===--=
-~~ ~
- --~ .

Trent 1"11 1808

Trent, north front
in 1890

Trent, south front

in 1890
 THE fAMILY ABROAD 49

My mother, however, had one strange weakness-shops, especially

those dealing in Oriental hangings and embroideries, and we would often
meet her in the Rue d' Antibes after she had declared her intention of going
for a drive on the hills at the back of Cannes. So one day she and her three
daughters make an expedition to Nice where she succumbs to the seductions
of "a most hideous Arab blanket" in an Oriental shop on the Quai Massena,
then the great shopping centre ofthe town.

"After that it was lunch time and we repaired to the restaurant

'London House' because Miller (our Scotch butler) told us that was the
best place. We had not been there very long before Lord W olverton
came in and when he saw Mamma he said: 'Well, Mrs. Bevan, I hardly
expected to fmd you in the fastest place in Nice!' At which we exclaimed,
as we had no idea it was fast, but Mamma turned to him and said, 'At
any rate I shall be able to say I have seen you here!!' So, of course, he
could say no more."

Fortunately the Arab blanket got left behind in a cab on the way home,
so the expedition ended satisfactorily.

It always seemed to me impossible to live amongst the French people,

especially the Provencaux, without learning to love them. Their wit and
gaiety, their quick sympathy, the boundless interest they always displayed in
one's affairs made it a perpetual joy to return to them every autumn and we
made many friends amongst them. The cabmen at the foot of our hill were
always very much hurt if we persisted in walking instead of taking their
fiacres, and would exclaim to each other: "Les demoiselles Passiflora ne pren-
nent plus de voitures! Ah! c'est qu' elles ontde bonnes jambes!" And they would
give vent to audible sighs meant for us to hear.
My mother occupied herself largely in good works, in the "Amis des
Pauvres", the various Asiles for the sick, particularly the one for invalid
children, the Asile Dollfus, and also the "Societe protectrice des Animaux".
Many were the isolated cases she befriended. Amongst these was an extra-
ordinary old woman named Mademoiselle Pecout, who kept a hat shop in
the Rue d'Antibes which was always in the wildest confusion. In the middle of
the floor was a pile ofhats, all on the top ofone another, to which she would
point as one entered and say, "Choislssezl thoisissezl" and then hurry off to
attend to vieille Maman, who inhabited the arriere-boutique. When vieille
Maman died Mademoiselle Pecout put up a large notice in the window:
"Liquidation acause de depart". My mother asked her wonderingly whether
she really meant to go away, to which she answered, of course not-"C' est
seulement pourfaire venit les dames." However, as she had no idea of business,
she soon got into low water, and it was then my mother came to her rescue
and offered to help her, which annoyed her beyond words. She added that if
D
so SPACIOUS DAYS

Madame really insisted on giving her money she would send forty hats to
the children at the Asile Dollfus-which she did. She was, however, so
obviously hard up, even without enough to eat, that a kind friend sent her an
old hen to make into soup. But Mademoiselle Pecout would not think of
killing it, and taking it into her arms said to it fondly: "Sois tranquille, ma
fille, neaains tien, avec moi tu seras ensarete!" So the hen remained and used
to roost every night on the end of her bed where she slept peacefully amidst
a number of stray cats she had adopted. Mademoiselle Pecout lived to be
nearly a hundred, and after my mother's death imagined her to be her
guardian angel, always with her.
Some of the cases my mother helped were less deserving, for it was
unfortunately only too easy to enlist her sympathy by professions ofspiritual
strivings. One enterprising lady who kept a wool shop in the town was
chronically on the verge of "conversion", but fmancial difficulties always
seemed to impede the process. Ifonly Madame Bevan would give her a little
help her mind would be better attuned to apprehend religious truths. The
money was given and found its way on to the tables at Monte Carlo.
One really terrible case in which my mother interested herself is recorded
in my sisters' ''Journal''.

"Yesterday, as Miller"-{our Scotch butler before referred to)-"was

crossing the market place a woman rushed by him calling out that a man
had hanged himself in a buvette close by. He promptly went to see if it
was true, and to his'horror saw a man hanging from the ceiling still in a
convulsive struggle. In a second he got out hisjack-knife and was about to
cut the poor wretch down when the gens d'armes came in and in loud tones
forbade him to touch the rope, saying it was not his business, nor would
they themselves, the inhuman monsters, move a finger to save him, but
stood there, watching him die while they sent for a doctor who, ofcourse,
could not get to the spot for another ten minutes or so, when all was over
and the man dead. The poor man's wife all the time was perfectly frantic
and could do nothing but scream, but neither screams or anything else
could move the gens d'armes whose business it was 'to see that no one
interfered'. This is French law ... Mamma and Gladys went down to
see the widow today, but the shock has so stunned her that she can under-
stand nothing and sits motionless by her fire, taking in nothing that is
said."

How much of the cruelty attributed to the old regime in France must be
accounted for by this strange insouciance which characterizes the French
official mind and which more than a century of so-called "democracy" had
done little to remove!
 CHAPTER VII

LITERARY EFFORTS

HILST my elder sisters were finding the distractions described in

W their "Journal", Enid and I were hard at work in the schoolroom

with "Poggs" and other teachers, our favourite being Fraulein Maass,
a most delightful Pomeranian with a somewhat Dantesque profile and a keen
sense of humour. I had begun German at the age of eight and loved the
plays of Goethe and Schiller which we started on when I was about nine.
Iphigenie auf Tauris I found at that age heavy going, but Wilhelm Tell
thrilled me, and to this day I have never forgotten the beautiful lines on
blindness that occur in it; beginning:

0, eineedleHimmelsgabe istdasLichtder Augen!

German has always seemed to me detestable for conversation, and

French delightful, but for poetry and especially drama, German is, I think,
infinitely to be preferred as the medium for great conceptions, which is the
reason why Shakespeare is appreciated in Germany, but not in France.
Heine's lyrics too, proscribed later on in Nazi Germany, delighted me, still
more so when in after years I heard them sung. It is strange how the German
language, so guttural in speech, takes on a wonderful harmony when set to
music. The German folk songs we learnt with Praulein Maass are amongst
my happiest memories.
Aschildren the peculiarity of our manner oflife at Cannes affected us but
slightly, it is true that we missed the playmates and the animals that made
the joy of Trent, but we enjoyed the bathing, the picnics and the few other
pleasures which came our way.
These were selected with great care so as to avoid anything that could be
remotely described as improper. Thus when a circus visited the town at
which it was said that some remarkable performing elephants would be seen,
we were allowed to go to it with Poggs, but on the entry into the arena ofa
lady in tights on horseback we were hurried out into a back passage so as
not to be demoralized by this shocking spectacle, and whilst waiting there
until the turn was over Poggs gave instructions to one of the attendants with
the words: "Dites nous quand les elephants aniventl" So at last the elephants
having conferred an air of perfect propriety to the proceedings, we were
allowed to return to our seats and watch the rest ofthe show.
There was, of course, no question of theatres or dances for us, even
children's parties of the kind we had attended at Princes Gate never fell to
our lot at Cannes; that briefseason I had enjoyed as a four-year-old remained
the only glimpse I was to have of social gaiety throughout my childhood;
SI
 SPACIOUS DAYS

tea with the daughters of a French pastor was our wildest dissipation.
Should we ask my mother to let us go and have ices at Rumpelmayer's on
the Croisette-those glorious French ices made of strawberries and cream
with the frost glistening on the top-the reply was sure to be, "How can you
wish to spend money on ices when there are children who have not enough
to eat?"
All this did not seriously damp our spirits, for children are very easily
contented, but what did affect me was my mother's insistence on the
imminent "end of the world". I remember a small blue tract she gave me
entitled, A Vision ofthe Night, describing how the skieswould roll away with
the noise of thunder, our Lord would descend from Heaven, the regenerate
be caught up to meet Him in the air, while the unregenerate would be hurried
down below into a bottomless pit offire and brimstone.
The complacent way in which the kindly souls at Trent had contem-
plated this final and fearful prospect had puzzled me there; at Cannes it
appalled me and haunted me even in my dreams.
The reason for this was that our villa being built on the side of the hill,
carriages passing along the Californie road produced a reverberation on the
rock which sounded just like thunder in the distance and I would wake with
a start listening to it coming nearer and thinking, with a beating heart, that
was the skies rolling away and the end ofthe world beginning. Often, Tiny
told me in after years, did she hear me screaming in my sleepwith terror, and
she would hurry to my bedside to soothe and comfort me.
One morning when I was about eleven I felt sure that the dreaded moment
had really come, for Enid and I were awoken about six o'clock by the noise
of thunder, a terrible roaring underground, the whole room shaking,
glasses and china rattling.... I sat up in bed stiffwith fright. This time there
could be no mistake about it, the end of the world was here!
But the roar and the rattling ceased and then we realized that what had
happened was an earthquake. What a relief to find it was only an earthquake!
Quite a serious one though, the worst shock that coast had ever known, and
it was followed by two minor shocks, one a few minutes later and another
after an hour or two. By that time we were down in the schoolroom at
lessons when the rumbling began again and the room started to shake,
whereat we both exclaimed, "Oh, another earthquake!"
"Go on with your lessons," said Poggs severely. "If you stop for every
earthquake you will never learn anything." Which, of course, proved
marvellously reassuring.
When Praulein Maass arrived a little later, however, she was quite sur-
prised to find us indoors at all. At the hotels she had passed on her way all
the people had rushed down into the gardens at the first shock and were en-
camping there in various stagesofdress and undress. One lady, clothed only
in fur coat, sheltering under a palm tree, offered to share it with a man in the
airiest of attire. An old gentleman, clad only in his shirt, was said to have
mounted an omnibus horse he found in the stablesand to have ridden away.
 LITERARY EFFORTS 53

never to be seen again. Some people were so terrified that they drove down
to the station in their dressing-gowns, and thus attired took the train for Pau
or Biarritz.
Fraulein Maass herself had had a curious experience. Before the first
shock came she was awoken by the terrified twittering ofa number of birds
she kept in a large cage by the window. Thinking that a cat had got into the
room she sprang out of bed, and, looking out of the window, saw flames
shooting out of the sea. Then the earthquake began. This would seem to
suggest that some kind of volcanic disturbance was taking place under the
Mediterranean.
Fortunately, no lives were lost at Cannes, but some damage was done at
Nice and Mentone, where a few houses and walls collapsed, whilst at a little
villagejust on the Italian side of the frontier, called, I think, Santa Maria dei
Cerdi, nearly all the inhabitants, who had crowded into the church, were
killed.

In looking back on my childhood I see that there was one serious defect
in my education. My mother having a rooted objection to any form ofpure
amusement never gave us toys; my father as I have said, might bring me a
doll, but my mother's presents were always of the strictly useful kind-
needlework or writing materials and so on. And ofcourse she never gave us
sweets, nor were we allowed to buy any; "sucking sweets," she would say,
"is a vulgar habit."
But, unfortunately, on the same principle we were never allowed to read
novels; only true or "improving" stories were permitted. This was a great
privation, for it is whilst one is very young that one can best appreciate
imaginative writing and that the characters created by the great novelists
of the past come to life. It is, moreover, whilst one's mind is still fresh that
one has the patience to wade through the leisurely descriptions of the mise-
en-scene of the narrative to which so many pages were devoted; the rush of
modern life unfits one for this close attention to detail.
Not to have read Scott, Thackeray or Dickens is to be at a disadvantage
with educated people in England, and although I was able in later life to make
up some leeway it was too late to cover all the ground that should have
become familiar to me in the schoolroom. So to this day I have to confess
with shame that Ivanhoe, Colonel Newcombe and Oliver Twist are only
names to me when they should have been people I had known from child-
hood.
But my mother's restrictions went further than this, for even Charlotte
Yonge and The Heir of Redcliffe fell under the ban; the stories provided for us
largely dated from the early Victorian era of my mother's youth and all
contained a moral.
I remember one entitled The Looking-glassforthe Mind, which struck me as
irresistibly funny. Its main purpose was to show up the wisdom and virtues
54 SPACIOUS DAYS

of parents and the follies and errors of their children; one story that par-
ticularly delighted me was called The Foolifhness of Young People's Wifhes
Expc1ed-the s's looking like fs-in which a small boy was taken severely
to task by his father for saying in spring he wished it was always spring, in
summer that it was always summer and so on throughout the year, when he
was brought to book and made to realize the folly of his inconsequence
instead of being praised, as I felt he should have been, for his spirit of
contentment.
It was this sort of thing that inspired some of my earliest attempts at
authorship, just as some twenty years later the same early Victorian models
inspired the authors ofthe delightful Cautionary Tales and TheMoral Alphabet.
I had always longed to write. and can still see in memory the marble-covered
exercisebook in which at seven years old I had begun a story. At eleven I had
finished quite a long one about a family living in Islington, a district I had
once driven through on our way to the Military Tournament and struck
me as unspeakably dreary.
This story, sent home from Cannes to my nieces in London, so delighted
them that I embarked at thirteen on a great venture: the editorship of a
periodical entitled Auntie's Monthly Magazine, to which they call contri-
buted their efforts. Mine consisted in three serial stories, and it was here that
the influenceofsuch books as TheLooking-glass for the Mind became apparent.
It must be remembered that at that period a sharp division, often amounting
to antagonism, existed between youth and age in all classes of society; the
camaraderie now common amongst parents and children was then almost
unknown; to be young was still to be the object of perpetual reproof My
stories were thus largely a take-off of this attitude, and I enjoyed working
them out immensely.
The magazine, stillin existence. though torn and grimy with age, amused
the whole family, including my father. who loved me to read it aloud to
him. Frank, however, though laughing heartily over each number when it
arrived from Cannes, felt it his duty to reprove me for not adopting "a more
instructive and higher moral tone of teaching", so, after the magazine had
run to six numbers, it was stopped and I was obliged to confine my literary
activities to my diary.
For I had to write, I could not live without it, and strangely enough, in a
family so literary as ours, I was the only one who felt the urge to write
fiction. This was a pity, particularly in the case of Millie, who contributed
the largest part to my sisters' 'Journal" and had an extraordinary gift for
witty narrative. Her caricatures were delightful. and later on her really
exquisite miniatures met with great praise at the Royal Academy.
So through all the austerity ofour lives there ran a vein ofhumour; even
my mother could descend to pleasantry, especially in rhyme. Ashley and
Edwyn with all their erudition-see the list of their publications in Who's
Who for I934-could break out quite amusingly into verse. One of Ashley's
best efforts related to an extraordinary old lady, Mrs. S., who was in the
 LITERARY EFFORTS SS

habit of leaving little booklets on us consisting of beautiful thoughts she

had woven into a completely unintelligible form. After one ofthese effusions
had reached us Ashley suggested that this preamble should be printed at the
beginning of her next composition:

"As sometimes wandering through the dark,

We catch a gleam afar,
SomeLondon gas lamp or a spark
Blown from a cheap cigar,

So whenso'eer I read again

The books I'm wont to write,
Through the dense mists that cloud my brain
Glimmers a lonely light

And then I ask, "Oh, can it be

That in my handiwork,
Fruit oflaborious idiocy,
Some meaning yet may lurke"

Gwennie was the first to break up the family circle. At eighteen her long
engagement to Ion Keith-Falconer ended in their marriage at Cannes. But
their happiness was short-lived. After a year or two Ion insisted on leaving
Cambridge, where he had preceded Ashley as Professor ofSemitic languages,
in order to become a missionary in Arabia. They settled in the village of
Sheikh Othman, outside Aden, and there Ion died of fever. So at only
twenty-one Gwennie was left a widow.'
But a greater grief was in store for us all.
Every year when spring came we had set forth for England with great
rejoicings. Only my mother lamented, for Cannes assured her the seclusion
that the visits ofour many relations made impossible at Trent. How heavenly
it was, after the heat and dust of the Riviera in April, to pass through green
banks studded with primroses on our way from Dover to London and to see
the lambs skipping about in English meadows! Then the arrival at Trent,
the visits to our favourite animals, the flowers, the birds, the sound of the
cuckoo in the beechwoods-no one can really understand what it is to love
England who has not been obliged to spend weary months and years away
from her.
Then came one spring when we reached home again, filled with our usual
ecstasy, to find Trent lovelier than ever in the May sunshine. How settled it
all felt, how stable, how unchanging! To my childish mind it seemed as if
life must go on like this for ever. It had never occurred to me that one day it
must end.
1 She married Capt. F. E. Bradshaw some years later.
 SPACIOUS DAYS

I had not realized that my father, now eighty-one, was growing weaker,
and when, in July, he fell ill I did not guess at first that this was more than
one of his usual attacks of gout. Then gradually the truth dawned on me-
he was to be taken from us; the realization came like a thunderclap. But he
lay wrapped in peace, smiling on those around him, thinking to the last of
kind things to do for them. One morning he said:
"Today is the Parents' cricket match at Cheam. I wonder whether I
could go to it. I should love to see it. But perhaps I feel too tired."
Soon after, that great heart ceased to beat.
Next morning, sitting at the schoolroom window, I heard the bell
tolling in the village-I can hear it still.
Then came the last Sunday at Trent church, no mourning hymns or
funeral marches, but his favourite hymn "The King of Love my Shepherd
is", and as a voluntary, "0 rest in the Lord", the first so well expressing the
joyous contentment ofhis life, the second the peace ofhis passing.
Ten days later I drove out of the gates of Trent for the last time; it was
no longer my home. That first bright chapter in my life was closed.
 CHAPTER VIII

YEARS OF EXILE

ER my father's death Trent, Fosbury and the Villa Monte Leo

K passed to my half-brother Frank; my mother, according to her own

wish, was left Passiflora, which was the only home she cared for. My
own brothers and sisters, now all grown up, dispersed in various directions
and took it in turns to join my mother, with whom I was left to wander on
the Continent.
Our winters were, of course, spent at Cannes and I shall never forget the
despair of arriving there every year in the first week of October. I think the
climate of the Riviera must have changed entirely, for now it enjoys a
summer season which ends in October whilst in those days the heat in
spring and autumn was almost unbearable.
All the Cannois who were able to migrated to the mountains, even the
bees were transported there in their hives. The grass in the gardens was
rolled up like a carpet and melons sown on the bare earth, providing us with
some consolation on our return. But until December Cannes was a city ofthe
dead, hotels, churches, nearly all the shops were shut; even the canal was
turned offfor its autumn cleaning and one year we were obliged to migrate
to Grasse for want of water.
My mother loved heat. At Princes Gate a man was employed all night
to stoke the furnace which heated the pipes, and at the beginning of the
winter our night nursery windows were pasted up with brown paper and
not opened again till the spring, for in those days "night air" was generally
believed to be unhealthy. Even at Cannes we never slept with a window
open; at sunset every window throughout the house was shut and a large
calorifere in the hall kept up the heating.
My mother certainly disproved the theory of fresh air being absolutely
essential to robust health, for she kept her rooms at a mean temperature of
seventy degrees, went very little out ofdoors and lived to be eighty-one, yet
never can I remember her having a cold, a headache or any serious malady.
It was I who had to suffer in after life for being brought up in this hot-house
atmosphere and never "hardened off" so as to be able to endure an English
winter without shivering.
My mother only twice returned to England during the remaining
nineteen years of her life. Our summers were spent in Switzerland, usually
at the Hotel Montfleury above Territet, on the Lake of Geneva, which my
mother found secluded enough, as no entertainments ever took place there.
One year, however, in search of still greater solitude she resolved to try
the Grand Hotel at Leysin, in the valley of the Rhone which, from its
prospectus, promised to be even more secluded, and we duly arrived there.
57
58 SPACIOUS DAYS

But it turned out to be a sanatorium for consumptives in which we were

required to observe all the rulesprescribed for the patients, which my mother
found irksome.
I shall never forget the melancholy of the walks around the hotel, inter-
spersed with wooden shelters the walls of which were scribbled over with
such remarks as, "Adieu, 0 terre!" or "C'est le dernier jour d'un poitrinairel" J
was thankful when, after ten days, she decided to return to Territet.
Every summer J was allowed to go over to England and pay a few
visits to relations, but only for a short time. Oh, how I longed for Trent! A
letter from Millie,l who was staying there with Frank, reached me in Switzer-
land and pictures it so well that I cannot resist quoting it:

"Isn't it heavenly to write on dear Trent Park paper again? How you
must envy me! It is as near Paradise as anything can be in this world....
The trees are green and shady and the sun shines as, it seems to me now
on looking back, it always did shine when we were there.
"I always think of Trent warm, sunny and smelling of hay and fresh
paint. It is a typical Trent day now, hot hay-fields and the cattle gathered
under the trees for shade. Comet, a brown cart-horse and an Alderney
cow are standing together in a field by the cricket-field pond. Comet
would not let us pat him and pretended not to know us, but the cow
came up and let us pat its fluffy brown forehead. Lord Grey (our donkey)
wouldn't say whether he knew us or not, he was tied up in the stable-
shed. Dick, sweet dog, did not know me the first minute, but when he
did he jumped for joy and leaped upon my knee."

Ah, those July days at Trent! Two lines in The Lord of Burleigh always
bring them back to me:

"Summer winds about them blowing,

Made a murmur in the land."

The years of exile on the Continent, from the age offifteen to seventeen,
were the saddest and loneliest of my whole life. Enid, to whom I was
devoted and with whom I had done lessons for eight years under the rule
of Poggs, now married Harry Sulivan, a most charming and lovable
young man who, through the carelessness of an army doctor, had lost a
leg and was obliged to leave his regiment (the Border Regiment), and they
settled in Norfolk.
Poggs had departed and I was thus left alone in the schoolroom with her
successor, Fraulein K., a young Austrian-Polish governess-to judge by her
name, ofJewish origin, though this did not strike me at the time-who had
convinced my mother of the soundness of her religious views, but ended
by boring her as much as she did me. She was in reality a perfectly null
1 My sister Millicent, who later married Reginald Hart Dyke.
 YEARS OF EXILE 59

personality, quite harmless, without the faintest sense of humour or an idea

of any kind in her head. She was, however, passably bi-lingual. Every
morning we took a walk along the Californie road talking French, every
afternoon in another direction talking German. There was nothing to break
the monotony.
It is terrible to be unhappy when one is very young, the present presses so
closely around one that one cannot see beyond it or picture any change for
the better. Nothing is more important than to give children the habit of
happiness which may remain with them for life and enable them to face
whatever trials fate may have in store for them; to acquire a despondent cast
of mind is fatally easy. I had been happy as a child at Trent, but those three
yearsabroad effectually damped my spirits and it was long before I recovered
my joie de vivre.
Fortunately I still had German lessons with Fraulein Maass and Signorina
Gabiano to teach me Italian and read Dante with me, which was an un-
speakable delight; then a great treat was flower-painting with Madame Hegg,
a really remarkable Swissartist. These were bright spots in a most unevent-
fullife.
But the brightest were Edwyn's holiday when he came out to Cannes
from Oxford, where he was now an undergraduate at New College, and gave
me lessons in Greek and on the history of Egypt, which he illustrated with
the most marvellous drawings to impress names on my memory. I have one
still of Queen Hatshepsu with a sketch of a milliner offering a seat to her
customer, and the words "Hat-shop-sit-you" in Edwyn's beautiful classical
writing underneath, another of me sitting on his knee with my arm round
his neck, whilst he talked ofancient Greece and ofEgypt where, later on, he
went to excavate with Flinders Petrie.
Edwyn was one of the most lovable human beings I have ever known
and quite unique. His obituary notices in The Times of October 1944 gave
no idea ofhis real character. To judge by these he might have been a dry-as-
dust savant; in reality no more amusing and original personality could be
imagined.
As a small boy he had been particularly tiresome at his lessons; my
sisters, who were told off to see that he was working at his holiday tasks,
were sure to find him with his legs on the table, doing acrobatic stunts,
singing or drawing in his exercise books.
"Edwyn," they would say severely, "you will never get through your
exams at this rate!" But he passed with flying colours. He seemed to absorb
knowledge in some mysterious way through the pores of his skin, soaking
in the ancient world rather than studying it, until it became more real to
him than the world in which he lived.
When he had finished his first book, The House of Seleucus, I found him
dispatchingthe MS to press-type-writing was not de rigueur in those days-
with the most amazing drawings all down the margins-people tumbling
out of buses, fantastic monsters, mouthing faces.
60 SPACIOUS DAYS

"But, Edwyn," I said. "what will the printers make of all thisr"
He brushed away the question as if too trivial to need a reply. I do not
think he really noticed these extraordinary marginal decorations which he
had executed mechanically whilst his mind was concentrated on the text.
However. the book came out all right and only the critics were baffled
because. as one observed, there was no one in England learned enough to
review it adequately.
This habit of concentration was the cause of his astounding absent-
mindedness, a failing to which all of us are prone, but which in Edwyn
reached a point that made him almost incapable of dealing with mundane
matters.
One day at Cannes. having planned to spend the day wandering amongst
the hills behind Grasse, he got up early and dressed in the darkness of the
winter morning by the light of a bedroom candle. for the villa was not yet
lit by electricity. The butler had placed a packet of sandwiches for his lunch
on a table beside him, but a little later. on looking out from the pantry
window, he perceived Edwyn walking down the drive with the candle still
lighted in his hand, whilst the packet of sandwiches reposed on the table in
his room. The butler hastily fetched the packet and, running after Edwyn,
exchanged it for the candle, probably without Edwyn noticing his mistake.
One winter later on he went to India. and I well remember his return,
when I met him at the door of the villa, bewildered at the flood ofexpostu-
lation proceeding from the Italian cabman who had brought him up from
the station, and whom he had paid with an obsolete coin ofJubbulpore. He
was still wearing the solar topee he had worn in India, having quite for-
gotten to change it when travelling through Italy in wintry weather.
Edwyn's passion for poetry remained with him all his life; verses in
some language or another seemed to be always running in his head, walking
beside him in the hills at Cannes or the mountains of Switzerland, sitting
beside him in tram or train one was always liable to hear the rhythm of
Greek iambics; later in life it was Dante's Inferno or Paradise, of which he
knew many hundred lines by heart, that he would murmur as he wandered
amongst London traffic whilst we trembled for his safety.
I could well understand these tastes of Edwyn's for Greek and Italian
were my favourite lessons. I had a passion for Italy and sometimes on our
expeditions along the Riviera I would cross the Pont Saint Louis that divides
it from France, if only to kiss the soil ofthat enchanting land.
In looking back I see as a most merciful dispensation of Providence that
my mother should have elected to make her home on the Continent, for
with her religious views she might have been expected to settle at Bath or
Bournemouth instead of inhabiting a Tower of Babel where, at any rate, I
had the advantage of being able to learn languages without an effort.
Moreover, life at Cannes in those days was quite amusing to look on at.
As the playground of royalty-reigning monarchs. "rightful" monarchs
who had not succeeded in reigning. heirs apparent, festive Grand Dukes-it
 YEARS OF EXILE 61

attracted all the plutocrats from Liverpool and New York who longed to
bask in royal smiles. Aloof from these strivings in our villa on the hill, we
often caught glimpses ofcrowned heads at play, frequently on their way up
to the Villa Nevada to visit old Miss Percival, the retired lady-in-waiting
with whom Prince Leopold, the Duke ofAlbany, had been staying when he
died after a fall at the Cercle Nautique.
The Villa Nevada, after this sad event, became a place of pilgrimage for
members ofthe Royal Family, and it was no unusual thing for Miss Percival,
when sitting down to her tea, to find her drawing-room door flung open by
Teresa, her old Italian servant, announcing, "Madame la Reine d' Angle-
terre," whereupon Queen Victoria, with immense dignity, would enter the
room and Miss Percival, according to etiquette, would have to back out
into the hall and wait there until bidden to re-enter.
We loved to watch the Queen, for whom, as a child, I had a great
admiration, driving up to the Villa Nevada, and as soon as we saw her com-
ing Enid and I would run to different points ofthe road so as to get a separate
bow in return for our curtseys. I remember, too, seeing her in her donkey-
chair at Grasse where, in spite of the lese-majeste displayed by the donkey in
braying loudly with wide open mouth as it sped along, she retained the same
regal calm as behind her famous cream-coloured horses at her Jubilee.
Another frequent visitor to the Villa Nevada was the Prince of Wales,
later Edward VII, who always enjoyed himself hugely at Cannes, especially
at the Battle ofFlowers, standing up in a decorated carriage and gaily throw-
ing bouquets in all directions; for years I kept a bunch ofParma violets that
came my way.
But with regard to the Prince of Wales I regret to record that when
Enid and I were about thirteen and ten years old we had committed a really
terrible act of lese-majeste which now eventually recoiled on my head alone.
Along the lower wall of our garden there grew a row of beautiful
mimosa trees of which the boughs, with their fluffy yellow balls, overhung
the road and proved so tempting to passersby that they would stand up in
their carriages and tear down branches to take away with them. This
caused so much damage to the trees that one afternoon, without telling any-
one, Enid and I armed ourselves with a large garden syringe and a pail of
water, and perching amongst the branches, concealed by a screen ofleaves,
proceeded to squirt each pilferer who came along. Their strangled wails on
being met with an unexpected volley of water from an unseen source con-
tinued to amuse us until suddenly a male voice, deeper than the rest, assailed
us with a torrent of angry words. Then, peering through the leaves, we
realized what we had done. It was the Prince of Wales who, stopping his
carriage, had started to pull down a branch when a douche of cold water
shot down the royal sleeve!The story, ofcourse, went all round Cannes and,
somehow or other, although Enid and I were equally guilty, the dreadful
deed was attributed to me alone. I hoped I had lived it down when an un-
foreseen circumstance brought it home to me.
62 SPACIOUS DAYS

I should explain that Miss Percival had formed a curious friendship with
my mother, curious because she loved "Society" and could hardly be
expected to sympathize with my mother's religious views. She seemed, how-
ever, at moments to be impressed by them, indeed, on the verge ofa spiritual
awakening, and my mother, by way of hastening that event, showed her
great kindness, particularly by lending her our carriage, for Miss Percival
had none of her own.
Unable to make any return in the way ofhospitality, for she knew noth-
ing could draw my mother from her seclusion, Miss Percival used to invite
us up to the Villa, and now when I was fifteen and the Duchess of Albany
was staying there with her two children-a charming little girl of eight and
a little boy of six-I was asked to go to tea and play with them. My dismay
can be imagined when, on the first of these occasions, the Duchess greeted
me with the words, "So you are the little girl who squirted the Prince of
Wales!" Bathed in confusion, I could only murmur, "I'm very sorry,
Ma'am, I really didn't mean to!" But the Duchess, who was a most kindly
and delightful woman, only laughed and said, "I don't think it did him any
harm."
But she evidently thought me capable of any enormity for when, some
weeks later, we went with MissPercival to seeher offat the station, she stood
at the window ofthe train as it was moving out and waving gaily called out
to me, "Now mind you don't get into any more mischief!"

So the years went by until I was seventeen and Praulein K., to my in-
finite relief, departed to her native Poland.
But as my English education had been much neglected I begged my
mother now to let me go to school or college in England. She considered
that I was too young for college, so school would be more suitable. At first
Cheltenham was discussed, and I was thrilled at the prospect of going to
what seemed to be the next thing to a boys' public school with its separate
houses, games and so on, but in the end she decided that this would be too
gay. No, there was only one school to which I could safelybe sent, and that
was in Gloucestershire, kept by an old Miss Winscombe, whose religious
views could be absolutely depended on. So, one April day, I left Cannes
and reached England full of enthusiasm for this new adventure.
 CHAPTER IX

BROWNSHILL COURT

B
R OW NSHILL COURT, near Stroud, was a fine old country house
of the rather grim Georgian type, not unlike Fosbury, surrounded by
a large garden and woods. Edwyn, with whom I arrived there, had
joined me in the train on my way down from Paddington, and now handed
me over with fatherly care into the hands ofthe schoolmistress.
Miss Winscombe, a curious old lady with sandy hair turning white
which she wore in a sort of long bob down her back, was a believer in
Spartan methods. AsI tossed on my hard and narrow bed, stuffed apparently
with croquet balls, in the room I shared with four other girls, I wondered
how I was to learn to sleep under these conditions. The glorious French
mattresses into which I had sunk at Cannes were, as I found in after life, a
bad preparation for British bedding.
Fortunately, at that age I was quite healthy, and it was not for some
weeks that I began to feel the effects of the starvation diet provided. Dinner
in the middle of the day was the only hearty meal, at which, if one was
lucky, one might get a second helping; supper in the evening consisted only
of a ship's biscuit and water, and even the supply of the latter often ran
short, so that we were reduced to running down to a cow pond to drink.
On our rare expeditions into Stroud we could hardly bear to look into a
baker's shop, so tempting were the loaves and cakes spread out there! I am
glad to have had this experience of hunger-and how hungry one can be at
seventeen !-for it taught me that there are worse things to be endured in
life; to have plenty to eat and nothing to do seemed to me more intolerable.
What I found hardest to bear at Brownshill was the lack of fresh air and
exercise, for lessons occupied nearly the whole day, Breakfast at 8, chapel at
8.30 followed by a Scripture lesson, lessons from 9.30 to 1.3°, dinner, lessons
again from 3.15 to 5.30, tea, lessons again from 6 to 8, making about 9 hours
in all. The only time we were out of doors throughout that lovely summer
was for about an hour after dinner, and that was spent in compulsory
cricket.
Miss Winscombe was a great believer in cricket as part of a girl's educa-
tion, and I was glad of this as I had always been fond of the game at Trent,
and now succeeded in distinguishing myself by fielding at cover point.
But it was evident that the Mistress herself had not grasped the elements
of the game, for one afternoon when we were "drawing stumps" she gave
us a little lecture on our progress, saying: "You are getting on very well,
dear girls, but I notice one fault you are making-the batters are not careful
enough to send the ball to the fielders!" Whereat, I regret to say, cover
point gave way to a shout of mirth!
63
 SPACIOUS DAYS

Another mania of Miss Winscombe's was that no medicine should ever

be given in case of illness, so if, as sometimes happened, girls were seized
with colic they were left to recover as best they could. These attacks were not
uncommon, as owing to the meagreness of the fare we were forced to stay
the pangs ofhunger with slabsof bread, perhaps too new to be digestible.
One memorable day we were taken for a "treat", about an hour's journey
by train to a field where we were to enjoy a picnic. Dinner was provided at
one o'clock, consisting of mutton pies and jam puffs, but when tea-time
came the Mistress and her staff retired behind a hedge and enjoyed a hearty
meal, whilst we were left unfed and growing hungrier every moment until
the moment came for our return. But that was not for several hours. Only
at nine o'clock did we reach Stroud station, where we were packed into a
char-a-banc and taken back to the house. I shall never forget that dreadful
drive with one girl leaning in a dead faint on my shoulder whilst another lay
unconscious on the floor at my feet. The governesses took no notice of her,
and it was left to me on arrival to drag her out of the char-a-banc and up to
her room, there to revive her as best I could with smelling-salts and cold
water, for, of course, no brandy could be allowed.
At moments the conditions of life at Brownshill seemed unendurable,
and I wrote to my mother begging to be allowed to leave at the end of the
term and go to college. But she would not hear of this, it must be home or
school!
It is extraordinary what one can endure when one is young and healthy,
so I wrote back saying I would "stand the dirt, the famine and the cold in
the coming winter to get on with work and finish my education". Any-
thing seemed better than the luxurious idleness of Cannes!
But the matter was settled by a most extraordinary and unexpected
development.
Soon after my arrival at Brownshill I noticed that every night, just as
we had got into bed, a horse could be heard trotting along the high road
which ran parallel to the house, first coming nearer and nearer, and then,
instead ofdying away again in the distance, stopping dead at a point opposite
the house where there was no gateway or turning in any direction. I asked
the other girls in my room what this could mean, but they replied, evasively,
that they did not know. It was evident that some mystery attached to this
nocturnal visitor, and as the weeks went by the mystery deepened, not
merely with regard to the horseman, but to the place in general. There was
clearly some secret which I could not discover.
Then one morning suspicion gave way to certainty. We were all as-
sembled in chapel and the Mistresshad finished reading the service when she
suddenly turned and addressed us in words to this effect:
"I understand there has been further talk about a subject you are for-
bidden to discuss. This must cease immediately. Anyone infringing this rule
will be severely dealt with. Not a word more must be said on the matter."
What could it meant Once out ofchapel, I implored some ofthe girls to
 BROWNSHILL COURT

explain this cryptic utterance, but they only shook their heads and said, "We
are not allowed to s~k of it."
"Speak of whan ' I persisted. "Is it a ghostt Is the house hauntedt"
"We don't know. It may be ghosts, but we can't tell what it is. Anyhow,
we must say nothing about it. We are sworn to secrecy."
And not another word could I elicit from them beyond the fact that
another new girl who had arrived when I did, had "seen something" and
talked about it-hence the Mistress'ssolemn warning in chapel.
I had always been terribly afraid of ghosts and the idea that the place
was haunted finally shook my determination to stay on. So when school
broke up at the end ofthe term I resolved, if possible, never to return. But I
wanted to fathom the mystery. Fortunately, on getting into the train I found
myself alone in the same carriage with the new girl who had got in touch
with it, and I lost no time in plying her with questions:
"Do tell me what you saw! What is the secret ofBrownshilh"
"Well," she answered slowly, "as I am leaving-for I couldn't go back
after what has happened-I suppose there's no harm in my telling you all
about it." She seemed a quiet, matter-of-fact girl, not in the least nervous or
hysterical, but the story she told me was most extraordinary.
She had been awakened one night by a slight noise. The moonlight was
shining through the windows and fell across the floor where suddenly she
saw something moving-a human figure crawling on all fours towards her
bed. She thought it must be one ofthe other girls sleeping in the same room
and calledout, "Is anyone out ofbede" They all awoke and answered, "No."
Whereat the figure picked itself up and ran out of the room.
Next day she spoke ofwhat she had seen, and this was why the Mistress
gave strict injunctions not to talk about it. The other girls, however, now
told her all they knew. It seemed that strange things had constantly been
heard about the house, whispering behind doors, stealthy footsteps, a system
ofwhistles that coincided with the striking of the cuckoo-clock in the front
hall. These emanated from the basement to which the girls were strictly
forbidden to go, but one night two of them crept down in the dark, and
opening the door that led to it, heard the sound of hammering; then a
man's voice called out, "Time's up!" and the hammering ceased.
Of course, the girls talked about all this, and the Mistress, hearing of it,
summoned them to her room and made them take their oath on the Bible
that they would keep silent on the subject and not say a word about it to
their parents.
The girl who told me this story was so terrified that her people took her
away from Brownshill, and I had no difficulty in persuading my mother to
let me leave, too. I heard afterwards that so many ofthe girls' nerves had been
shakenby their experiences that they had to leave and the school was fmally
broken up.
What was the clue to the mysteryr I was never able to get definitely to
the bottom of it, but I was told some years later that a gang of false coiners
E
66 SPACIOUS DAYS

had taken possessionofthe basement, which they used as a workshop, hence

the hammering and the cry of, "Time's up!" It was also said that this base-
ment was connected with the high road by an underground passage which
opened at the point where I had heard the horse's footsteps stop nightly, the
horseman being apparently employed to bring them supplies.
But what was the reason for the Mistress's anxiety to hush the matter up
and enforce an oath ofsecrecy on her pupilst That is a mystery to which I can
offer no explanation.
 CHAPTER X

LOTUS LAND

y schooldays having ended thus abruptly I returned to Cannes for

M the winter.
It was a relief to fmd I could be of some use to my mother in
running the house, for, with her superb disregard of mundane matters, she
had engaged a number of servants without considering what language they
spoke. So shewould ring the bell and deliver a long order in German only to
find that she was speaking to the French butler, who looked completely
blank.
The worst of it was that she had chosen a German cook and an Italian
kitchenmaid, neither ofwhom understood a word of each other's languages
so every morning I had to go down to the kitchen and explain what the cook
wanted her aide to do. This descent served a further purpose, for it enabled
me to discover that the cook, with the co-operation ofmy mother's German
maid, who had the face of an angel, was getting in large quantities of food
which she took down to the town in a cab and sold in the market. I lost no
time in getting both women dispatched back to their native fatherland.
My mother had been unfortunate in losing a faithful German maid
named Boysen who had been with her for years, but was somewhat un-
accountable in her actions.
On one occasion my mother, being ill, asked her to sleep in the dressing-
room opening out ofher bedroom in a bed-bookcase she had recently bought
and thought a most useful piece of furniture, the bed part being made to let
down for use at night and to close up again for the day. Boysen, however,
refused to sleep in it as she was afraid of its turning into a bookcase in the
middle of the night, but said she would spend the whole night leaning up
against the door with her ear to the key-hole in case my mother wanted her.
and this she persisted in doing. She left in the end because she said Cannes
was too far from London, and then took a situation in Fiji.
My mother never allowed herself to be disturbed by "servant worries".
I remember one day when she was in the full flow of a discourse on some
learned subject in her beautiful well-chosen English, the door suddenly
opened. and Antoinette, a new French housemaid, entered tempestuously
in floods of tears:
"0 Madame, je ne puis pas rester, la cuislniire est si mechante avec mail Je
veux m'en allerl"
Doubtlessa long tale of woe would have been poured into our ears, but
my mother, hardly looking up from her crochet, gently backwatered with
her hand, waving the woman away as if she had been an importunate fly,
whereat Antoinette, taken aback, gave one short gasp and dashed out of the
67
68 SPACIOUS DAYS

room. My mother, completely ignoring this scene, took up the thread ofher
discourse where she had left it. Antoinette remained some fifteen years.
Apart from the polyglot staff my mother had assembled, our villa had
now become more than ever a Tower ofBabel, for she had collected round
her a curious cosmopolitan circle of people who sympathized with her
religious views-French, Swiss, Dutch, Russian, etc.
Some of the Russians were really delightful people, mostly "Rad-
stockians" -followers of old Lord Radstock-who used to assemble in our
drawing-room for meetings, usually led by Count Bobrinsky, a strange
bearded person who would come and talk by the hour in an almost unintelli-
gible mixture of French and English whilst the Countess sat by only saying
"Ach!" and smoking little Russian cigarettes. One day at lunch in their
villa he suddenly leant across the table to Millie and said: "When my wife
shall die shall you marry mer Now you gannot say you have had no bro-
bosal!" At this sort of thing the Countess would only smile and say gently,
"Aih, Alexis, ni shali, ni shali" (don't fool). "Why do you speak such
emptiness ~"
Millie made great friends with their daughters and learnt from them in
six weeks to talk Russian, whilst she was recovering from influenza. Sophie
and Lili were really very remarkable women. Sophie at twenty-five turned
the scale at over seventeen stone but it was all pure muscle. Her physical
strength was terrific; if during our walks in the Esterel, we came to a
stream that was difficult to cross, Sophie would tear up young pine trees by
the roots and fling them across the water to form a bridge. She could only
remember being tired once in her life and that was when she had boxed
with two British officers and knocked them both out. But her heart was as
soft as her biceps were hard.
During a terrible Russian famine she went without sugar in her coffee
the whole winter at Cannes in order to send every penny she could save to help
the starving peasants. Later on she trained as a hospital nurse in England
so as to be able to doctor them at a dispensary she set up at her home in
Bogorodsk in the province of Tula. The Revolution, thirty years later
showed her no favour on this account.
I have always found Russian women very superior to the men of their
country. Alosch, Count Bobrinsky's eldest son, was an extraordinary
creature and seemed to me only half civilized. Apparently he spent most of
his life in Russian forests where from a hole in the ground he kept a look-out
for bears which he shot as they fell through the network of branches erected
over his head.
One winter he came to Cannes and decided he would like to learn to
sing, so he engaged an Italian singing master who said the first step was to
teach him to smile for only when smiling was the mouth in the right position
for voice production. So for days Alosch and his teacher continued to sit on
two chairs in the kitchen with their arms folded over the backs, smiling
broadly at each other. We never heard what happened after that.
 LOTUS LAND

We had great fun with the Bobrinskys, playing "robbers" by moonlight

in the lovely garden of the villa Valetta they rented one winter, bathing
with them off the ne St. Honorat or going for picnics in the mountains. One
day we all planned to send the servants at their villa out for the day and cook
the lunch ourselves. So soon after breakfast eight of us set to work and
luncheon was announced for 12.30, at which hour the Countess, who had
not joined the kitchen party, seated herself at the dining-room table, expect-
ing the meal to appear. But as only one of us knew anything about cooking
it wasjust three o'clock when the first course, large Russian pancakes, known
as blini, servedwith melted butter and sour cream, emerged from the kitchen.
All this time the Countess sat peacefully at the table, her hands folded and
without moving, as ifit was quite natural to wait two and a half hours to be
served. She was a woman ofinfmite patience, with all the Slav's oblivion to
the passing of time.
I remember well how another Russian, dear old Princess Dolgorouki,
with a brown wrinkled face like a walnut, who lived near us with her
shaggy Caucasian dog, called Moka, once asked me to lunch, with her and
when I said, "A quelle heure]" she answered impatiently, "A quelle heure?
a a a
Mais midi, midi et demi, une heure! Mals queUe pManterie!" It had never
occurred to me that it was pedantic to have any particular hour for lunching.
At Cannes, as at Trent, a certain number of religious cranks and adven-
turers found their way into my mother's circle and imposed on her readiness
to believe in their sincerity. One missionary, whose meetings were said to
have been a great success, was arrested for burglary and ended ingloriously
in jail at Grasse. Another apparently went off his head and accused my
mother of stealing all the chairs out of his mission-hall. The idea of my
mother walking off with 200 rush-bottomed chairs moved us to tears of
mirth.
I remember hearing at the time about an English missionary who toured
that part of France urging his audiences, as he thought, to have recourse to
"the water of life", but saying, "Mes amis, qu'est-ce qui nous donne lajoie?
qu'est-ce qui nous donne lapaix? Mes amis, il n'y a que que I'eau-de-oiel" After
this he was doubtless pained to find himself taken for a traveller in some
special brand of cognac.
Most ofthese people were, ofcourse, animated by a horror of "Popery",
and with one of them it reached such a point that he ended by imagining
that one of his legs was a Roman Catholic so he set about punishing it in
various ways, hanging it out of the carriage when he was driving or out of
bed on a cold night. Another, persuaded by his wife and daughter to visit
Rome, determined not to look at that wicked city, so walked about with his
eyesshut until he came to the Pincio stairs and tumbled down them.
My mother, whilst indulging in no such extravagant displays of feeling,
nevertheless maintained an attitude of rigid opposition to Roman Catholi-
cism on which she would read us long treatises aloud. One I have never
forgotten was a purple covered book entitled Thilwall's Idolatry of the
70 SPACIOUS DAYS

Church of Rome, which at the age of eleven I found intolerably wearisome.

But here we come to a strange anomaly in my mother's complex nature
which, to be understood, must be prefaced by a somewhat lengthy
digression.
For those unfamiliar with the Riviera I should explain that off the coast
of Cannes there lie the Iles des Lerins, the largest and nearest being Ste.
Marguerite with a fortress where the Man in the Iron Mask was imprisoned
under Louis XIV and from which Bazaine made his famous escape, and the
further one St. Honorat with its ruined Saracen castle and close by the
ancient Benedictine monastery where Saint Patrick spent some years of his
life.
I do not know what may be the condition of these islands today, after
the Second World War, but in those days St. Honorat can hardly have
changed in the course of eight centuries. To cross the strip of deep blue sea
that separates it from the coast ofProvence was to step back over the years to
the early Middle Ages, to pass out of the rush and turmoil of modern life
into the drowsy peace of contemplation.
All around the little island the waves lapped sleepily against the white
rocks and the sea sparkled in the glorious sunshine. Not a sound broke the
silence of the land except that of men chopping wood in the olive groves
or the bleat of the dark brown sheep that browsed around the walls of the
monastery. Brown-clad figures crept noiselessly through the sunlight to
work or prayer; white oxen drew the plough driven by the same brown
figures. From time to time the chapel bell rang out over the island as it had
done for 1000 years. Nothing seemed to have changed in this world of the
soul; Heaven itself could hardly be more serene, more immutable in its
remoteness from all earthly things.
Here one could realize the attitude of the monastic mind, the focussing of
the eye of the soul on the remote Hereafter, the oblivion to all warm living
present life for the sake of future bliss, the deUces promised to the elus after
death.
And meanwhile, on the other side of the blue water, revellers crowded
into the white Casino by the sea, whose sole philosophy was to live for the
present moment only, to think of no future even though it be tomorrow,
to live in the light of the sun and never for an instant give a thought to the
darkness that lies ahead.
Was it this concentration on the thought of Eternity that attracted my
mother to St. Honoratr Was it some affinity with the monastic mind that
drew her therer I only know that many of her historical researches centred
around the visions of monks and nuns in their cells and that she loved
nothing better than to go over to the island and pass the whole day wander-
ing alone amongst the pine trees and round the monastery walls. For it was
the monastery that drew her, that seemed to hold for her some incon-
trollable fascination, so much so that one day she begged the lay brother in
the porter's lodge to let her into the precincts.
 LOTUS LAND 71

The lay brother replied that the foot of woman had never trodden them
since their foundation, but that if she could prove her descent from Saint
Louis an exception might be made in her case. My mother said she could
do this, whereat the lay brother suggested that if she wrote a letter to the
Pope, mentioning this fact, the Holy Father might possibly accord the
desired permission. But alas! she imagined that a letter to the Pope must
entail beginning with the words "Mon Pere", a proceeding from which my
mother's conscience shrank. So the gates of the monastery remained closed
to her for ever.
Many years after her death, in 1928, I happened to be at Cannes when
for the first time in 800 years the monastery was thrown open to the public
for one week. Apparently some alterations were being made to the precincts
which necessitated their re-consecration so the foot of woman was allowed
to profane them before this took place.
I lost no time in going over to the island, and as I passed through the
portals I wished my mother could have lived to see this day, that she too
might have gazed on the marvellous picture of the Last Supper on the walls
of the refectory, so living that the figures seem really to be seated there
around the table.
I thought how she would have loved the little stone cloister where
Saint Patrick walked in meditation, and where still every evening the monks
all met and turned on the little fountain in the tiny flower-grown courtyard,
standing around it in a circle and singing a hymn to the Blessed Virgin. This
ceremony described by the young monk who took us round struck me as
infinitely touching.
What is the explanation of the charm the monastic life seemed to hold
for my motherj Believers in re-incarnation will at once suggest the influence
ofa former life and it would certainly not have been difficult for anyone who
contemplated my mother in the long black gowns she affected, the black
or white lace that framed her features, with her great dignity and air of
command, to picture her as an abbess ruling over her weaker sisters within
convent walls. I have had too many strange experiences, which I shall touch
on later, to regard as fantastic a theory which provides a key to otherwise
inexplicable phenomena.
Whatever then the cause, my mother was clearly not ofher age or ofher
entourage, essentially a mystic, she lived in a world ofher own and it would
have been quite impossible to imagine her mixing in ordinary "society",
taking part in small talk or sitting in a row of dowagers around a ball-
room.
The Cannois, however, could not forgive my mother for refusing to
takepart in the festivities ofthe season,and revenged themselves by publishing
paragraphs about her in the local papers representing her as indulging in the
wildest gaieties. Madame Bevan was one of the prominent figures at the
Carnival or the Battle of Flowers; "parmi les sportsmen de Cannes nous
citerons Madame Bevan" and a description would follow of the horses
 SPACIOUS DAYS

she was running at the last race-meeting. One surprising announcement

ran:

SOIREE MUSICALE
Une soiree musicale a eu lieu dimanche chez Mme Bevan au Chalet Passiflora
ala Californie avec leconcours de Mile CO"oy de l'Opera Comique.
Note the choice of Sunday evening as a particular bit of malice!
My mother received these witticisms with complete sang-froid; indeed,
it is doubtful whether she ever noticed them.
But to me this enforced seclusion from "the world" was not amusing,
To have to live in one ofthe gayest places on the Continent and take no part
in its gaieties was like being taken to a ball and ordered to sit in a corner and
knit.
For I was not a mystic! For me the monastic life held no attractions, nor
could I enter enthusiastically into my mother's studies of prophecy relating
to the Second Advent and the return of the Jews to Palestine for which she
prayed daily.
I was eighteen now, no longer a schoolgirl content to remain a chrysalis
-as was the custom in those days before making one's debut-but longing
to burst out of my cocoon and spread my wings in the sunshine.
And what sunshine! How lovely Cannes was in those days! The long
jetee where the yachts later lay at anchor, had not been built, there was only
the old port ending with the lighthouse harbouring a picturesque variety of
craft; the Croisette with its palm trees and charming white villas had not yet
been disfigured by monster hotels, the tideless beach had not been vulgarized
by sun-bathers in every stage of unattractive nudity, the primitive little
Etablissement de Bains on the Promenade du Midi where we went to swim
was almost deserted. At a short distance juan-les-Pins, now a seething mob
of sun-baked humanity, consisted only of a white sandy sea-shore over
which the pine trees hung almost to the water's edge.
Our garden had now become a thing of beauty; the smell of scented
geraniums which, together with masses of purple heliotrope, grew thickly
round the house, always brings it back to me. I see again the sunny
terrace with the tall palm in the middle, shaded at one end by a spread-
ing pepper tree, its walls covered with lemons ripening in the sunshine,
orange-trees too, laden with fruit; down below sloping lawns with clumps
of palms, bananas, mimosas shedding their fluffy yellow balls, beds
of Princesse de Galles violets with heads nearly as big as pansies and
smelling as no violets I have ever met elsewhere could smell. And in the
spring the roses, papery roses de Bengale, clustering banksias, white rose,
carnelias, great Marechal Niels, falling in showers from walls and trellises,
pink Madame Lavallees climbing up the pine trees and hanging in festoons
from the branches, great bushes of Madame Abel Chatenay and other
ephemeral varieties that in the heat of May bloomed only for a day, buds in
 LOTUS LAND 73

the morning, full-blown by the evening. It was, as the women in the flower-
market would say, "une vraie indigestion de roses".
What a setting Cannes provided for gaiety ofall kinds! Sailing, yachting,
picnics, tennis tournaments, parties and dances in the lovely villas with their
marble steps and semi-tropical gardens, with the scent of flowers and the
sound of string bands in the air! All life seemed to be set to music in that
lotus-eating land "where it seemed always afternoon".
Music, indeed, was my one consolation. For though, as I have said, we
were a most unmusical family in the sense that none of us understood, or
pretended to understand, classical music, Millie, Enid and I had enough ear
to appreciate a melody and enough voice to be able to sing a little in tune.
I could not learn to play the piano because I was never able to stretch
an octave, but I learnt to accompany myself on the guitar. Signor Schwartz
came over from Nice and gave me lessons, Madame Fiametta Nabonnand
taught me in a throbbing Italian tremolo to sing airs from Donizetti and
Bellini,and I picked up from the Neapolitan musicianswho would come and
play under our windows a number of the old Italian songs-Santa Lucia,
Addio mio bello Napoli, Musica Proibita and the new canzoni de Piedigrotta-
Margarita and La Frangesa which just then had a great success. All that is
changed now, jazz, the saxophone and "crooning", since the First World
War have replaced on the Riviera the guitars and mandolines ofthe strolling
players that delighted my youth under the palms and blue skies of the
Mediterranean.
It seems to me that if one does not understand classical music it is better
to admit it frankly rather than pretend a rapture one does not feel. I often
wished, however, that I had had a musical education when my brother
Hubert married Isabelle Wienawska, the daughter of the famous violinist,
who, besides being herself a brilliant pianist, was a most charming and
original personality and must have found her talents sadly wasted on such
an unmusical family as ours.
But to return to the old days at Cannes. The heat at that date had one
compensation, that it enabled us to bathe right up till Christmas, sometimes
at Saint Honorat where we would spend hours in and out of the sea.
How delicious it was to float in that clear blue water, so translucent that
one could seeone's feet walking over the white sand as one entered it, and
watch the curious creatures in its depths, jelly-fish and sea horses, and so
buoyant that one could lie on its surface as on a divan, looking up into the
deep blue sky. Meanwhile the boatmen would be busy casting nets for
fishes ofall colours and sizes, racahouts and loups de mer and tiny sardines, out
ofwhich they would make a glorious bouillabaisse in a black pot on the white
beach ready for our dijeuner when we emerged with the hunger that only
swinuning in the sea can give one.
Swimming has always been to me the purest ecstasy; once in the water
I feel I have no body, whilst moving through it seemsto me the most perfect
form of motion, bringing every muscle into play-the nearest thing to it is
74 SPACIOUS DAYS

a
dancing, the old valse trois temps was indeed like swimming through the
air on waves of sound.
Ah! how in those old days at Cannes I longed to dance! for, although
I had never been allowed to have dancing lessons, I had learnt a little from
dear Praulein Maass who, whilst spending holidays with us at Fosbury,
would teach me polkas, mazurkas and above all waltzes on the old oak floor
of the dining-room when my mother had retired upstairs to her boudoir.
But I was never to be allowed to go to dances! Still unable to see beyond
the present moment, still shut in by its iron pressure, that word "never"
rang like a knell in my ears. The sound of violins and guitars tuning up for
dance music would drive me indoors, stopping my ears to shut out the
seductive strains; lying in bed at night I could hear the carriages rolling along
the road to the dances to which I had been invited and might not go, and
I would hide my head under the bedclothes to shut out the seductive sounds.
The shops in the Rue d' Antibes added to the tantalization for I have
always loved clothes, and there were the loveliest dance-frocks, the gayest
hats blown together by the deft hands of Parisian modistes, with persuasive
vendeuses tempting one to buy.
My mother's austerity had never extended to clothes. She herself was
anything but "dowdy", the beads and bugles affected by other old ladies
of her day were conspicuous by their absence from the long lines of her
black, well-cut gowns, and she had always ordered us charming frocks from
Liberty's. She did not even disapprove ofcosmetics, for although facepowder
at that date was considered somewhat daring, she used it freely, and as
children we each had our powder-box, complete with puff, on our dressing-
table.
My mother, however, detested the "royal fringes" then in fashion, and
certainly the mossy growths which decorated the foreheads of women
during the late Victorian era were far from artistic. But since hair was worn
dragged back from the face there was no other way of softening the line
which was often hard and unbecoming. I had never been allowed a fringe
as a child, but now at eighteen, greatly daring, I crept down to the town and
had a very small one cut by Azemard, the coiffeur.
I returned home, expecting my mother to be indignant at the result but
she noticed nothing, only after about two days when I said to her, "Mamma,
how do you like my fringes" she answered, "Of course it looks extremely
vulgar." "Then I have been looking vulgar for two days, Mamma!" At
which she had sufficient sense of humour to smile.
But what was the good of all such vanities to me when every form of
social gaiety was forbiddenr It is true we went to a few parties at the houses
of our French, Dutch or Russian friends, and oh! how prim a French soiree
in those days could be! The jeunes fiUes all parked together at one end of the
room, the married women at the other and only with them might the young
men indulge in light conversation. Occasionally one would pass us with a
graceful bow and some such remark as, "Quel charmant parterre de Jlesur!"
 LOTUS LAND 7S

which made one feel like a lobelia planted at the edge ofa Victorian flower-
bed. It would never have done for him to display any warmer shade of
feeling.
The brightest spots in the winter were when we went over to stay with
our friends, SirThomasand Lady Hanbury, at their lovely "Palazzo Orengo",
usually known as "La Mortola", from the name of the village in which it
stood. With its rare shrubs, no less than seventy-two kinds of mimosas, its
marble steps swathed in climbing roses and long cypress alleysleading to the
sea, it was a dream of beauty.
One year when we were there a very interesting discovery had been
made on the coast near Ventimiglia, three skeletons of the Stone Age were
unearthed in the face of the cliff overhanging the sea, a man seven feet high
holding a flint instrument in his hand and on either side of him a woman
apparently clinging to his shoulder, each wearing a necklace of fish-bones,
I remember counting the man's teeth as he lay stretched out on the earth
and finding that he had thirty, all perfect, with not a spot of decay. Cecil
Hanbury, who took us to see these curious remains, told us they were
believed to be "pre-Adamite", the explanation of the strange attitude in
which they were found being that either they had been overtaken by an
earthquake and that the women had clung to the man's shoulder for pro-
tection or that he had died and his two wives had been buried with him.
The one place along the coast of the Riviera I never longed to visit was
Monte Carlo where, of course, we were not allowed to set foot. When in
later life I entered the famous Casino I marvelled at the attraction that
nidde cocottes, as Marie Bashkirtseffnamed it, could exercise over the British
mind. The atrocious facade with its gaudy cupolas, the stifling atmosphere
in the Salle de Jeux, the dreary old women "punters" dressed in ulsters who
made a small living sitting round the tables, the silence broken only by the
croupier's rake shovelling in notes and coins, and down below the brutal
pigeon-shooting that turned one sick if inadvertently one looked that way,
all seemed to me to make Monte Carlo the most unattractive spot on the
whole Riviera.
We at Cannes heard too much of the tragedies that took place there to
cherish any illusions on the fascinations of gambling; lucky winners went in
risk of their lives, being followed into the train by thieves and cut-throats,
and the line became so dangerous that we were afraid even of our menfolk
travelling on it alone.
The unlucky gambler, on the other hand, frequently took his own life,
sometimes throwing himself into the sea from what became known as "the
suicide's rock" or shooting himself in the garden of the Casino. For losses
were more usualthan gains, and it was often said, "Rouge perd et noir perd,
mais blanc gagne toujours!" -Monsieur Blanc being the owner of the Casino.
I remember coming back from Mentone in the train des joueurs-the
evening train which at that hour picked up most of the gamblers at Monte
Carlo station on their way back to Nice or Cannes. Amongst these was
76 SPACIOUS DAYS

a French girl ofabout twenty, who had been to the Casino for the first time
and could not get over her delight at the experience. "Ah, quelle journie
delicieuse!" she cried. "Monte Carlo e'est le Paradisl" At that a middle-aged
woman in black, who had been gazing out ofthe window, turned and faced
the carriage:
"Et moi," she said fiercely, "moije vous dis que c'est l' Enfer-mais j'y vais
toujours!"
By the end of another winter life at Cannes had become for me intoler-
ably wearisome; young and healthy with no outlet for my energies, my time
was spent in reading or wandering about the garden alone, dreaming of the
great world that lay beyond the horizon. There, across the sea, was Africa,
land of burning deserts and palmy mirages; the home of Suliman-ben,
Abdaraman, one of the Arab prisoners of war once interned in the ne Ste.
Marguerite, who used to visit us when I was a child and tell us of his life in
Biskra,
I longed to cross the strip of blue water and land in Algiers, or to board
one of the vessels on the distant sky-line making for Egypt, that home of
mystery. I longed to sail away to the East, to India, to China, to Japan; the
thirst for travel was almost more than I could bear. To me the arid desert
was not the Sahara but the Riviera, and I could well understand how another
girl, Marie Bashkirtseff on that same coast only a few years earlier could
cry out in despair: "Que vais-je faire dans eet affreux desert?"
To me the most intolerable thing in life has always been inaction; I must
have work or play-and since I might not play I begged my mother once
again to let me work in earnest, this time to go to college and read for a
degree, and this time, to my infinite relief, she consented.
 CHAPTER XI

WESTFIELD COLLEGE

T must not be supposed that I now became what was called in those days

I "a Girton girl". No, Cambridge and Oxford were both regarded as too
gay; there was only one college that could be considered perfectly in-
nocuous and that was Westfield College, Hampstead, which worked for
London University, though forming no part of it, with the austere Miss
Maynard as Principal.
So once more, full of pleasant anticipations, I set off from Cannes and
one April day entered Westfield as a student. The building itself, composed
of biscuit-coloured stucco with massive Georgian pillars, was somewhat
forbidding, but the rooms allotted to me were very attractive, a small
bedroom and a really charming study with casement windows looking out
over the garden and orchard to the distant hills beyond. It was a very
different arrival to the one at Brownshill, and it was brightened still further
next day when a gardener appeared from Trent with plants and ferns sent by
my kind brother Frank to decorate my study.
I was very happy at first at Westfield, the new-found independence or
having one's own rooms, making one's own friends and going out with
them for walks and bicycle rides, of boiling one's own kettle and even
polishing one's own shoes, seemed to me quite delightful. Then there were
tennis and hockey matches, cocoa parties, debates and dances which added
a zest to life.
But the work was terrific. All I had learnt before counted for nothing,
for nearly all the other students had come on from High Schools and were
well up in Latin and mathematics, which formed the main part of the
curriculum, but of which I did not know a word, even my multiplication
table had grown rusty. So I figured humbly on the list of students as an
"Elementary" admitted only on probation, for it was necessary to pass an
examination in ten subjects before one's formal admission to the college.
I had therefore to begin at the very beginning with long division sums
and puella mensam ornat. However, a few months hard grind did it, and after
passing successfully, I settled down to work for the London Matriculation.
But as time went on the work seemed to grow harder and harder. On
looking back it seems to me still to have been a very stupid system, for in
order to take my degree as a B.A. in classics and Mental and Moral Science,
as I hoped, it was necessary to pass Matriculation in advanced mathematics,
a matter ofthree years before beginning to study logic, psychology and ethics
for the Final.
More than ever I wished I had been allowed to go to Girton or Lady
Margaret Hall, where I could have specialized from the beginning in order to
77
 SPACIOUS DAYS

obtain a Cambridge or an Oxford degree. Instead ofthis I was left to struggle

hopelessly through seas of x's, y's and z's that said nothing to me; Euclid or
applied mathematics, particularly dynamics, did not trouble me, but algebra,
and above all chemical algebra, bored me to tears.
The result of having to cover so much ground was that everybody
overworked, for the students studying for the B.Sc. to whom mathematics
usually came easily, were frequently stumped by French or Greek. Eight
hours was the minimum in which one could get through one's daily tasks.
Miss Maynard thought this quite moderate: "Work like a tiger for eight
hours a day," she would say, "and you will get through all right."
We worked like tigers, sometimes for ten and twelve hours, one or two
even for fifteen, yet could only just keep up the pace. But the Mistress showed
no pity. She herself was a woman of iron physique; when, on one occasion,
workmen came to dig up the drains in the garden she insisted on arming
herself with a spade and digging with them.
On the top of all our work some of us used to go up to the City in the
evening to teach in a night-school that coached boys for the Civil Service.
I had a class of about fifteen ranging from fourteen to eighteen years of age,
who at first kept up a running fire of chaff
If! asked, "Now can you tell me what are the chief towns in the South
of France?" a chorus of voices answered: "Monte Carlo!" Then someone
would begin, "Bill, he's been to Monte Carlo, tell us all about it, Bill!"
and so on ad infinitum. However, in time I succeeded in getting them to
attend, for they were not bad boys and, I believe, passed their examinations
very well.
By the end of a year the life at Westfield began to tell on me. After
working far into the night I found it difficult to sleep, the lack of heating
arrangements-sometimes the temperature in my study fell as low as 350 -
gave me incessant colds.
So at last I gave up working for Matriculation and stayed on as a General
student, attending lectures on the subjects that interested me-English
literature, Greek, and Mental and Moral Science. History at that time bored
me almost as much as algebra, perhaps because of the dry way in which it
was taught. I also detested Latin, ofwhich the syntax seemed to me far more
difficult to master than Greek accidence. By making fun of these particular
studies and writing little sketches that amused my friends amongst the
students, I earned the stern disapproval of the authorities, "flippant" was
the term most often applied to me. I was therefore never invited to con-
tribute to the Mistress's compilation of essays known as "the Budget"; only
once was I asked to write for the college magazine Hermes, and I responded
with a skit on Cicero's De Amicitia, which we had been reading in class and
struck me as the most amazing string of platitudes. Bicycling had just come
into fashion, so my contribution to Hermes was entitled De Bicyclio and con-
sisted in a dialogue between Punctilius Tyro the augur and Crassus Skidio
the praetor on the art of bicycling.
 WESTFIELD COLLEGE 79

"He who would exercise himself therein should possess a bicycle or

at any rate obtain the loan of one from a friend.Without a bicycle I may
say it is almost impossible to ride."
And so on ad infinitum.
Of course heads were shaken over this, still it had been accorded a place in
Hermes, and as it was the first time I ever saw myselfin print I felt duly elated.
Indeed, every now and then the lecturers themselves, when hard up for
ideas, would come very reluctantly and ask me to think out a charade or
a new college song, suggestions with which I readily complied, to the joy
of the brighter spirits amongst the students, but usually meeting with
disapproval.
The Mistress did, however, consider I was worthy to take the leading
part in a Greek play during my last term. I had always been fond of acting,
since the days when Edwyn used to make up plays and charades for us to
act in the schoolroom on wet days at Fosbury, in which he played the star
part as a comedian. But now for the first time I was called upon to play a
serious role in tragedy and I entered on it with deep misgivings, so it was a
great relief when the Mistressherself expressed approval ofmy performance
as Electra in the drama of Sophocles.
I did not, however, get on with Miss Maynard. As in all schools and
colleges the Mistress had her circle of adorers which I could not join. On
Sunday evenings the whole college used to assemblein her sitting-room for
what was known as "Function", a ceremony which consisted in a talk by her
and poems of a sentimental religious kind recited by the students.
The greatest honour was to be invited to sit on a footstool by the fireside
at her feet and have one's head stroked by her muscular hand. When one
evening this favour was extended to me I managed to avoid occupying the
coveted position on the hassock by saying I feared the heat of the fire would
be tOO much for me; nor could I take part in the recitations which pleased
the circle, and seemed to me mawkish and quite meaningless.
But as the other students assured me that sooner or later I should have to
recite something I consulted Edwyn on the subject when he came to see me,
describing the sort of thing that was required. "Oh, that's quite easy," he
answered, ''I'll write you something at once." And taking up a pencil he
wrote without a moment's hesitation the following poem:

"Do not ask me why I linger

In this vale of thorns and tears,
Whilst time's stern and solemn finger
Beckons the approaching years.

Falls the dead leaf of October

In life's sere and darkening stream,
Rise to aspirations sober,
Cast aside the foolish dream.
80 SPACIOUS DAYS

Work alone is sure and certain,

Work alone stands ever fast,
At the lifting of the curtain,
We shallknow the buried past.

Know the pain we could not smother,

Know the unforgotten moan,
Sees in every soul a brother,
Find in every heart our own.

Therefore is it that I linger

Till the rapid years are run
And Time's stern and solemn finger
Beckons the approaching sun."

"There," he said, throwing down the pencil, "I think it will do, though
I can go on as long as you like. It hasn't a word of meaning, but it sounds
beautiful, doesn't ite"
I could not trust myself to recite this with becoming gravity at the
Sunday evening gathering but I tried it privately on some of the students,
who, of course, did think it beautiful and were quite annoyed when I
assured them that it meant nothing at all.
In looking back I cannot feel that the intellectual standard at Westfield
was at all a high one, lecturers and students alike seemed to me not educated
in the real sense but to be only walking compendiums offacts. For cramming
is not education, and all they had learnt was with a view to examinations;
the interest ofthe subject hardly seemed to matter to them at all. They might
be able to win French Honours at Burlington House but they could hardly
have made themselves understood by a French porter.

"Small have continued plodders ever won,

Save base authority from others' books."

Shakespeare might have written that after a term at Westfield!

The great exception to this rule, however, was Miss Anne Richardson
from Northern Ireland, the head classical lecturer, a woman of real intellect
and with a most refreshing sense of humour. Her lectures on ancient
Greece were a great delight to me. It was she, too, who taught me to
love Browning whose obscure language she was able to elucidate in such a
manner that one ended by admitting that the thought could not have been
conveyed otherwise. Rabbi ben Ezra, The Grammarian's Funeral, portions of
The Ring and the Book, became to me a source ofinspiration that was to last
my whole life through. I had loved the beauty of Tennyson, the music of
Shelley, the grandeur of Shakespeare, but here in Browning was a philosophy
ofHfe that led to action.
Few writers, I believe, achieve this purpose of making one do differendy
': '::
::

House Party at Trent

Back row: Gwcndolen, Ion Keith-Falconcr, Merty Moore, Gladys, H ubert.
Front row: Lady Blanche Keith-Falconer, my father with me at his feet, m y half-sister Edith (Mrs. Middl cton-Carnpbcll), Miss lane Paris,
Millicent , w ith Frank standing behind her and his wife at her side.
 The Staff at Trent
Back ro/v: jrd from left David Mill er; Booth, bailiff.
Middle roU': John Mit chcll, first footman; Bartlett, coachman ; on extreme right Tiny, daughter of Bartlett, and afterwards married to Mit chell.
Boy sen on her right and J olly standing on her left. D ick on pedestal at left.
 WESTFIELD COLLEGE 81

to what one would otherwise have done; they may delight, they may soothe
but they do not point the way.
Browning and later on Emerson, in a more practical vein, became like
shining lights guiding me on the difficult path I had to tread. How often in
my darkest hours did I find help and comfort in the thought:

"He placed thee midst this dance

Of plastic circumstance,
This present thou forsooth wouldst fain arrest
~achineryjustmeant
To give thy soul its bent
Try thee and turn thee forth sufficiently impressed."

Or, when torn between conflicting counsels, wise kind Emerson, whom
I also got to know at college, came to my rescue with his essay on "Self-
Reliance": "Trust thyself: every heart vibrates to that iron string ... Insist
on yourself: never imitate ... Imitation is suicide."
But all my reading at college was not ofa philosophical kind; now for the
first time I ventured into the realms of fiction.
At home, as I have said, I had never been allowed to read a novel, even
the classics ofEnglish literature had been forbidden, but now at college I was
suddenly plunged into the flood of books and plays popular in the "Naughty
'Nineties" circulating amongst the other students-Hardy, Hall Caine,
Wilde and Ibsen, Tri/by and The Green Carnation, not to speak of Paul
Bourget, Maupassant and Gyp. How was it possible to go back after these to
Scott, Thackeray or even Dickens!
Alas! I could never bring myself to do this thoroughly; Scott I never
attempted, but I laboured through Pendennis and David Copperfield, tried
to laugh at Pickwick, enjoyed Vanity Fair and Pride and Prejudice, but only
succeeded in really loving Charlotte Bronte. There my efforts ended, and
that is why to this day I have to lament so great a gap in my education. I see,
too, how much a well-chosen course of novel reading in the schoolroom
would have contributed to my peace ofmind, for in the classics one is broken
in gently to the facts oflife; in the "modern" novels they were put forward
with brutal frankness and came upon me as a shock. I could not get the
taste of The Heavenly Twins out of my mouth for months.
It was not that I wanted to read "improper" books; to devour popular
novels at random seemed to me as stupid as a schoolboy over-eating at the
tuck-shop, and nasty books were as distasteful to me as nasty food, but I had
no-one to guide me.
How well Victor Hugo understood the importance of "that serious
business of preparing a woman for life", when he added, "Que de science il
{aut pour lutter contre cette grande ignorance qu'onappelle l'innocence!" But in those
Victorian days no such science was usually employed, girls were supposed
to know nothing of life until they married, often with disastrous results.
p
82 SPACIOUS DAYS

College life, however, enabled me to break way from most of the

restrictions that hedged one round at that date, and in the little circle of
friends I made amongst the students every subject in heaven or earth was
discussed over our evening cocoa. Years afterwards one of them wrote to
me:

"I should like to see you in your old room at college again ... it was
like a petulant sea and the foam of its waves was very iridiscent-is that
the right wordi-with philosophy and French poetry, pictures, cake and
cosmetics, new hats, The Yellow Book, etc."

No mention here of cigarettes it will be noticed! That was one of the

restrictions that still held good, for even in the most "worldly" circles
smoking for girls was taboo. My brother-in-law, Harry Sulivan, had,
however, initiated me into the joy of a cigarette sub rosa-the appropriate
name ofthe brand he affected-and I had smuggled a few into college where,
collected in my room in the evening, when lecturers were not likely to be
about, some ofus would light up. Should a dreaded footstep be heard outside
the door, cigarettes would be hastily thrust into a flower-pot and the
lecturer would be greeted with a wail of: "Oh, Miss Jones, I can't keep
the greenfly off my plants so I am trying to smoke them off with a little
tobacco!"
Yes, in spite ofoverwork college life was very good fun and I am thank-
ful to have spent two years there, for it taught me how to work. Euclid and
logic in particular gave me the habit ofconcentration without which I could
never have carried out the researches I was to make in later life.
It seems to me a thousand pities that the University has not yet come to
be regarded as necessary to a woman's training as to a man's; in those
days we thought it must eventually become so. If only girls went to
college at eighteen as a matter of course, especially now that work is made
lighter, they would be more fitted to play their part in the world and we
might see fewer unhappy marriages, and after the First World War have
heard less about the escapades of "bright young things" who could not find
any other outlet for their animal spirits.
At eighteen it is only natural to enjoy a "rag" and college is a better
place to work off this phase than "Society". Even at Westfield ragging was
not unknown, though it did not take the destructive form indulged in by
undergraduates at Oxford and Cambridge.
I think our most successful effort was the Ghost Party given by four of us
just before we went down for the last time. The invitations were sent out
anonymously in the name ofa spook and a leprechaun and the whole crowd
of women, including all the staff, arrived to find themselves in a pitch
dark room which we were able to keep so, as electric light had not yet been
installed there. The tableaux of ghost life we presented were, however, so
realistic that something of a panic ensued and finally the audience arose as
 WESTFIELD COLLEGE 83

one woman and the party broke up in pandemonium. We ourselves were

soon lost in the crowd and joined the rest in angry expostulations at the
proceedings, thus successfully covering up our tracks so that the real pro-
moters of the entertainment were never discovered.
My college days ended less happily than they had begun; the strain of
work and the chills ofwinter had really affected my health. The climax was
a chill caught at a shooting party in Norfolk during the last Christmas
vacation where, after we had waited about for an hour in a freezing wood,
our host, an extremely rich man and a teetotaller, regaled us with cold
rabbit pie and lemonade-one glass of claret or a whisky-and-soda might
have saved me. How often I have cursed the principles of prohibition, for
I returned to the house chilled to the bone and was left with a tendency to
internal catarrh which took many years to cure.
Besides all this, the course ofphilosophy I had done at college, combined
with the Mistress's own dissertations on theology, had disturbed my peace
of mind. Miss Maynard was a great believer in the necessity for examining
all the foundations of belief, and excelled, so to speak, in taking everything
to bits; unhappily she was not so good at putting things together again for
her constructive arguments proved unconvincing. So one was left won-
dering, "What is truths"
It was the Quakers who helped to restore my belief in religion; with
Miss Anne Richardson and my great friend Richenda Gillett (later Dr.
Gillett) I used to attend their meeting-house in Bunhill Row where an old
carpenter, Alexander Dunlop, spoke "when the spirit moved him" with
great power and eloquence. I loved the quiet atmosphere of these meetings,
for they taught belief in a God of love and, like Browning, in a guiding
principle directing human life. Without this I could not know a moment's
happiness.
 CHAPTER XII

FREEDOM AT LAST!

T HE year I left college was a momentous one for me for it was now
that I came ofage. My father had left us all independent at twenty-one,
so here I was with the world before me, free at last, frec to sail for
China, to go up in a balloon, to rent a flat, in a word to plan my own life as
I pleased. The sudden transition from complete bondage to unlimited liberty
was bewildering. How vividly the words of Locksley Hall bring back the
thrill of that moment:

"Make me feel the wild pulsation that I felt before the strife,
When I heard my days before me, and the tumult of my life!"

But how was I to use my freedomt Girls oftoday can have no idea ofthe
restrictions that hedged round their predecessors of Victorian England.
I had lived long enough now amongst women working for a purpose to
despise an idle life and long to embark on some useful career. But what
careers were open to women at that datet I might train to become a High
School teacher like most of my college companions, but would it be right
to take the bread out ofthe mouth ofsomeone who needed in
And even such posts were difficult to find. One of the brightest students
at Westfield wrote to me later on kitchen paper explaining that, as she had
been unable to obtain work as a teacher. she was reduced to becoming a
"general servant" and was writing to me on the kitchen table in the intervals
of chopping wood and peeling potatoes. Such were the benefits "the higher
education of women" had brought her.
I might, of course, have become a hospital nurse or, like my friend
Richenda Gillett, have qualified as a lady doctor, but sickness did not
attract me. Then there were "the slums", where my sister Gladys found her
vocation but where I could not feel I should fmd mine.
Well, if I could not fmd work, I would have amusement. I had always
had a passion for drama and longed to go to the theatre, now I was free to
go, and the first play J ever saw was The Geisha, which enchanted me. But
apart from theatre-going, few amusements were to be had, except as a
debutante, and like my sisters 1 had never "come out".
At one moment there had been a question ofmy going to "the Drawing-
Room", as it was known in those days. A sister-in-law wished to present
me, and I was just about to order my dress and "tail", when a telegram
arrived from Cannes peremptorily forbidding me to go to Court.
I was sorry, for I should have liked to pay my respectsto Queen Victoria,
but the ceremony itself was not an exhilarating one, taking place as it did in
84
 FREEDOM AT LAST!

broad daylight, very different to the evening Courts followed by supper

under King Edward VII. 1 did not feel, therefore, that it was worth while,
now I was free, to go against my mother's wishes in the matter, so, like my
sisters, I have never been to Court to this day.
I made indeed no kind of debut, since there was no-one to "take me out".
My sisters had all continued on the lines laid down for them and abjured
"Society"; my sisters-in-law had daughters of their own to chaperone; and
in those days the most rigid system of chaperonage prevailed; no girl could
go about alone, still less with a young man, unless a married woman was in
attendance. I remember the awful warning held up to me by my mother
in the affair of Lady V., daughter of Lord R., who had actually gone for
a drive alone with a young man in a dog-cart and meeting with an accident,
the cart having been upset into a ditch, the whole dreadful story came out
and the young man had to marry Lady V. to save her reputation: and of
course they lived unhappily ever after.
Even marriage did not save one from social conventions, for I also
remember as a child driving in Piccadilly with a sister-in-law and passing
my sister Gwennie, then a widow oftwenty-two, in a hansom cab. Whereat
my sister-in-law cast up her hands in horror, exclaiming, "Gwennie in a hat
in a hansom in the afternoon!" For a bonnet was de rigueur-all my elder
sisters went into bonnets at eighteen-and a cab was considered a most
undignified method of progression after lunch time.
Omnibuses were of course out of the question and in the stage they had
reached by the time I came of age, the old horse-drawn buses with narrow
seats and iron-bound wheels which took an interminable time to reach their
destination, did not tempt one to make use of them. When, in reply to a
lecture once given me by my mother on the subject of extravagance I said,
"Very well, Mamma, I will go in buses," she was deeply shocked and
answered: "No, of course not, that would never do!"
Apart from social functions the necessity for chaperonage made travel
abroad equally impossible; one could not go alone in a train on the Con-
tinent or stay alone in a hotel.
Indeed, a lady's-maid was often required to go with one on certain
occasions. Accordingly, when I left college a maid was chosen for me by the
f.unily, a dour female, to be known here as Briggs, who had been with a
lady-in-waiting and was not accustomed to being spoken to, her mistress
having been in the habit of communicating with her on slips of paper. After
friendly foreign servants J found it difficult to keep up the degree of taci-
turnity necessary to retain her respect.
My time in England was now spent in paying country visits to my
relations. Sometimes I stayed at Trent, where Frank had carried out
"improvements"; the beautiful cedar on the lawn had been cut down, the
unpretentious old white house had been faced with red brick and now
presented somewhat the appearance of a prosperous railway hotel.
"At any rate," 1 said, "Trent will have to remain in the family now,
86 SPACIOUS DAYS

Frank will never be able to sell it, no-one would buy anything so frightful."
But J was wrong. Trent was sold in 1909 to Sir Edward Sassoon, whose son
practically rebuilt it, in what, I must admit, was somewhat better taste. At the
same time Fosbury was sold to Mr. Huth and made the home of his famous
library for many years.
Soon after I came ofage my brother Edwyn married Daisy Waldegrave,
the daughter ofLord Radstock, who had sent her when she was eighteen and
very pretty, with fair hair and blue eyes, to live in Whitechapel, at about the
moment when the famous murders by 'Jack the Ripper" were taking place
there.
I think Lord Radstock was rather disappointed that Daisy did not marry
a costermonger, for after their wedding in London, at which I was brides-
maid, I drove on to the reception in the same carriage with him, and all the
way he kept repeating, "I've no patience with all this West End nonsense,
give me a good East End wedding!"
If only we had been jogging along the Old Kent Road in a coster's
donkey cart with a brave display of "pearlies" all around us how happy he
would have been! I believe he was a marvellous sight at the coronation of
King Edward VII, running to catch the train on the Underground in his
robes and coronet.
My happiest days were spent with Enid and Harry Sulivan in their
Norfolk home. Norfolk was, after Hertfordshire, the county I knew best in
my youth, the East coast round Cromer was the home of the clan with which
our family and the Bank were connected-Barclays, Gurneys, Buxtons, etc.,
who always received us with open arms. But the place we loved best as
children was West Runton with its memories of Aunt Favell. Fosbury had
been the scene of her earlier labours where she had written Peep of Day,
re-organized the school and taught the children, but her personality had
impressed itselfstill more on her home at West Runton where she spent the
last years of her life.
It was to this lovely cottage, The Rivulet, thickly overgrown with
honeysuckle and roses, that some years after her death, Enid and I had been
sent as children for a few weeks every spring. The cottage then belonged to
the Rev. Lethbridge Moore whom Aunt Favell had adopted when he was
a young officer who had fought in the Afghan War-she ended by marrying
him to my mother's sister Emmie Shuttleworth.
Uncle Lethbridge as he thus became to us, then went into the Church
and was Vicar of Sheringham where he was living at the time when he lent
us The Rivulet. As he had fully returned the affection lavished on him by
Aunt Favell, whom he used to call "the dear Mother" and regarded as a
saint, everything in the cottage had to remain as she had left it: there were
her pots of musk which scented the early Victorian drawing-room, the
white cotton fishing nets she had made herself, covering the sofas and chairs,
in which the buttons on our frocks used to get inextricably entangled. There
was even in the library a bottle ofeau-de-Cologne labelled, "Breathed by the
 FREEDOM AT LAST!

dear mother during her last moments", which one dreadful day Edwyn
broke so that its precious contents were spilt all over the fireplace.
It was this room which contained her library ofold leather-bound books,
one of which delighted me by its title, Morning Exercises Against Popery.
I used to wonder how these were performed, did one use boxing-gloves or
Indian clubs to bash Popery in the face, or merely practise with dumb-bells
in order to strengthen one's muscles so as to be able to oppose anyone who
put forward its pernicious doctrines ~
At West Runton we learnt many of the stories about Aunt Favell; it
was there that the incident took place, related in Reading Without Tears, of
the blindfolded donkey with the cart attached to it swimming out to sea;
there, too, was the cutting in the sand cliffs through which she went down to
bathe with the orphans forming a screen around her; it was probably there,
too, that the incidents of the pet lamb and the parrot, before referred to,
were enacted. Anyone reading these stories might conclude that Aunt Favell
was mad; she certainly was not so at the time she wrote her books, for their
clearness and logic are plain evidence of her sanity, but it is possible that at
the end ofher life some degree ofsoftening ofthe brain may have accounted
for her eccentricities.
A curious thing happened long after her death, when I was a child of
about twelve. A certain Lord and Lady R.-I forget their exact name-
rented The Rivulet for a time and declared that one night they saw a tall
thin old lady in a grey shawl standing at the foot of their bed, who looked
at them serenely and then vanished. Aunt Favell had usually worn a grey
shawl and those who had known her said that the description of the vision
seen by Lord and Lady R. tallied exactly with her appearance.
Uncle Lethbridge was hardly less peculiar than Aunt Favell hersel£
With a smooth pink face and white beard, he had a habit of walking about
with his eyes shut as ifenjoying ineffable bliss, and as he kept up this practise
even on horseback he once met with a nasty accident. He had taken Enid
out for a ride and, keeping his eyes shut as usual, he rode into a cart and
bruised his knee. This injury was made the subject of family prayers that
evening at the Vicarage, Uncle Lethbridge pleading for the recovery of his
knee, quoting the passage in the Scriptures, "not a bone of him shall be
broken", and ending with a hymn for the sick.
We used to enjoy going to his church on Sundays for it was furnished
with an old-fashioned two-decker pulpit, the Vicar on the top and a clerk
whom his nieces-the daughters of his sister Mrs. Newton-christened
"Cuckoo". When sermon time came Cuckoo remained in his box, whilst
Uncle Lethbridge descended from the pulpit and preached from a railed-in
enclosure below where he would walk up and down with his eyes shut all
through his sermon.
In the end his peculiarities led him into difficulties, for he insisted on
altering the words of the Liturgy "our gracious Queen and Governor" to
"our gracious Queen and Governess", maintaining that no woman could be
88 SPACIOUS DAYS

described as a Governor. This met with a protest from his Bishop, and
whether on this account or for other eccentricities he was asked to resign his
living. Uncle Lethbridge replied that he could not possibly do so until the
spirit moved him, but set about rebuilding The Rivulet which, with all
its picturesqueness, was tar from luxurious. And then precisely as the new
house, very comfortable and convenient, was finished, the spirit did move
him-into it, with his family.
I was very fond of his elder daughter Evelyn, who was both a poet and
an artist, and she was influenced by her brother Merry, a very curious person,
to study Theosophy.
Merty was an inner member of the sect, for he had spent some years with
Mme Blavatsky and after her death acted in the same capacity, as a sort of
aide-de-camp, to Annie Besant. In so far as Theosophy dealt with reincarna-
tion it interested me and I went to hear Mrs. Besant speak, for I had been
told she was marvellously eloquent.
But I was disappointed and told Merty so. "Then you must come and
talk with her quietly," he answered. So I went and spent the evening with
them both in Tavistock Square. But it was Merty who did all the talking
whilst Mrs. Besant sat silently on the sofa, wrapped in an attitude of con-
templation. There are speaking silences when one feels currents of thought
passing from mind to mind, but Mrs. Besant's silence was not of this order,
she might have been a wooden image seated there whilst we discussed the
Dhammapada and the Bhagavad Ghita; only when I got up to go she
seemed to awake from her reverie-or was it slumberr-e-to say, "Brahminism
is far higher than Buddhism!" and stretching out her hand to me in farewell
she added, "Come out to Benares with me and help me l" or words to that
effect.
That evening effectively damped my ardour for Theosophy, at any rate
as taught by Mrs. Besant. I was to learn more about it many years later, when
Merty, who went out with her to India, finally left her, bitterly disillusioned.
But if I could no longer entertain any belief in Mrs. Besant's reputed
"powers", an extraordinary incident that took place at West Runton led
me to a different conclusion with regard to Mme Blavatsky.
Aunt Emmie, my mother's sister, who, as I have said, had married Uncle
Lethbridge, was a gentle mousy old lady, strictly orthodox, and therefore
deeply shocked at Merry's and Evie's theosophical beliefs.
One evening they were sitting round the fireplace in the square hall
which formed the centre of the house, into which the drawing-room,
library and door leading to the kitchen all opened. Merty was standing on
the hearthrug with his back to the fireplace discussing Theosophy with Evie
and a friend of hers who was staying with them, whilst Aoot Emmie re-
mained alone in the drawing-room with her crochet. In the course of
conversation Evie's friend made a statement about Mme Blavatsky's theories
to which Merty replied with some heat: "I assure you that you are wrong, and
if Mme Blavatsky were alive today she would confirm what I am saying."
 FREEDOM AT LAST! 89

At that moment a loud rap rang out on the mantlepiece behind Merty
and was repeated all round the hall, the next moment Aunt Emmie came out
of the drawing-room in a great state of agitation, saying that rapping was
going on all round the drawing-room too, then the cook followed from the
kitchen to report the same extraordinary sounds, adding that a pair of boots
left on the window-sill for cleaning had been thrown violently to the
ground.
I arrived at Runton soon after this mysterious manifestation had taken
place and heard the story from Aunt Emmie herself, who, being a most
matter-of-fact old lady, was unlikely to have drawn on her imagination.
No explanation ofthe incident was ever forthcoming, and I cannot see how
one can doubt that some agency one can only describe as "supernatural"
was at work.
But if Aunt Emmie was unimaginative the same could certainly not be
said of her sister Carrie Shuttleworth, who was often at West Runton and
greatly contributed to our hilarity there. One morning she remarked at
breakfast that she had heard the foghorn going in the night at sea. "Had I
heard it," said Uncle Lethbridge in a faraway voice, "I should have thought
it was the last trump."
"Oh, but, Lethbridge," Aunt Carrie exclaimed, "surely you don't think
the last trump will sound like a brass foghorn~"
"Possibly not of brass, possibly of silver," Uncle Lethbridge replied
dreamily.
Aunt Carrie was indeed the most amusing relation we ever had, and she
had retained the same originality which characterized her in her youth when
she was given to smoking cigars on the top ofa hayrick. Although she never
married and lived in Kensington with a number of cats to whom she was
devoted-"I could not face life without cats," she once said to me-she was
not like any other old maid with cats but, as she used to say herself, more
like an old bachelor with a keen senseofhumour and an objective interest in
life.
She had certainly no romance laid away in lavender, for though she had
had many admirers she had never wanted to marry any of them, one because
when he came to stay she heard him snore, others simply because they bored
her. Her luxuriant imagination was our delight for it was this, we felt sure,
which accounted for many of the amazing stories of her adventures she used
to tell us.
There was the occasion when she was being driven over a mountain pass
in Switzerland and the coachman fainted, so she had to mount the box and
drive with one hand whilst holding the coachman round the waist with the
other arm. Then the day when she was going along Piccadilly in a hansom
when someone on the pavement shouted to her that she had no driver, and
sure enough he had got down to fetch his whip and been left behind, so
there was nothing for it but for Aunt Carrie to hook down the reins with her
umbrella and drive herself
90 SPACIOUS DAYS

Aunt Carrie was fond of studying the habits of birds and animals and
used to write letters to the Spectator about them which that weekly gravely
printed. I remember particularly the story of the pigeon which fell in love
with a ginger-beer bottle which no doubt she really believed. This passion
for animals sometimes led her into strange situations. One day, going
through some Mews, she espied in a doorway, where some stablemen were
standing, what she took to be a basket full of white puppies and rushed up
to them exclaiming: "Oh, what darlings! I must speak to them!" But on
coming nearer she perceived that the basket contained nothing but a quantity
of dusters rolled up into balls, so she retired in confusion whilst the men,
collected round in a circle, naturally concluded she was mad.
Whilst making allowance for her fertile imagination we delighted in
Aunt Carrie's stories for she was really a wonderful raconteuse. When we
stayed together in a hotel abroad where everyone sat at one long table, people
used to take notes of her conversation on the backs of the menus and no
doubt dined out on her bons mots afterwards. We have missed her terribly
since her death in 1917.
 CHAPTER XIII

A WHITE ELEPHANT AT LARGE

T
HE winter after I came ofage I returned to Cannes, for I did not wish
my mother to feel that now I was free I should care to leave her. She
was happy, however, during the last years ofher life in having her old
friend Fraulein Mimi de Bunsen, known to us always as "Aunt Mim", to
spend the winters with her at Cannes. The only drawback to this arrange-
ment was that Aunt Mim, as the daughter of the Prussian Ambassador in
London when she and my mother were girls together, had made many
friends amongst the royal families of Europe who wished to come and see
her at the villa, but were not always welcome there.
The Queen of Sweden, a deeply religious woman, met with a cordial
reception, but the Prince of Nassau was left to wait among the umbrellas
in the hall whilst the German-Swiss butler took a message from him to
Aunt Mim, and a certain Grand Duchess, known to be an habituee ofMonte
Carlo, could not be admitted inside the door at all, so Aunt Mim was obliged
to interview her in the garden.
Aunt Mim was a charming old lady, but the atmosphere was not ex-
hilarating, particularly when it was intensified by the arrival of a deaf and
aged Plymouth Brother who also came to spend the winter-three people
all over seventy and I was twenty-one. The conversation at meals turned
largely on proyhecy, centring round such questions as whether the fourth
beast in Ezekie should be said to stand for the Pope or the Czar of Russia,
grave heresy attaching to the wrong interpretation of these allegories.
Outside the villa little distraction was to be found, for the same restric-
tions continued as before; I must not dance or go in for any "worldly
pleasures", even tennis-parties at the houses ofpeople who indulged in them
were forbidden.
One brilliant exception was made, however, in favour of the Mul-
hollands: Mabel Sanderson, one of the family of lovely Irish sisters, had
stayedwith my mother's friend, Miss Perceval, and when she married Alfred
Mullholand (brother of Lord Dunleath), who had the charming Villa
Champfleuri on the Californie road, we became great friends. My happiest
days were spent with them in their small steam yacht, the Nirvana, cruising
along the coast to Agaye, Theoule or to the Islands.
One night Mabel planned a delightful surprise for me. I was invited to
dine at Champfleuri and after dinner folding doors were thrown open to
disclose the large drawing-room, its shining floor cleared of furniture,
prepared for a dance! Mabel, well knowing the prohibitions that hedged me
round, had cleverly told me nothing of the arrangements for the evening's
entertainment, and they were perfect. I shall never forget the exhilaration
91
 SPACIOUS DAYS

of that moment, feeling the parquet at last under my feet, the Italian string
band playing delicious waltzes, yOWlg men from the yachts as partners, the
scent of climbing white roses blown through the windows on the soft air
ofthe Southern night! That was the only time I ever danced at Cannes.
For whilst under my mother's roof I felt obliged to submit to the
conditions she imposed, though when away from her I felt the time had
come to take my own line.
But this was not easy, for I was very fond of my mother and it grieved
me to go against her wishes. She was not a person one could meet half-way;
it must be all or nothing. So I was faced with a really terrible choice, either
J must give up every form ofamusement, every opportunity ofmixing with
"the world" and lead the life of a recluse for ever, or I must decide for
myself what was permissible and do it boldly, braving the disapproval, not
only of my mother but of the whole family.
For I was the only one to break rank; all my brothers and sisters had
submitted, more or less, to the conditions laid down for them by avoiding
society and leading what I felt to be narrow lives. I could not follow in their
wake, I wanted colour, movement, adventure, I could not stay for ever
stagnating in a backwater, seeing the world go by at a distance. It was
Emerson who inspired me with courage to endure their strictures, to be
regarded almost as "a black sheep" merely for wishing to lead a normal life.

"The virtue in most request is conformity ... He who would gather

immortal palms must not be hindered by the name of goodness, but
must explore ifit be goodness ... What I must do is all that concerns me,
not what people think ... you will always find those who think they
know what is your duty better than you know it."

It was in the middle of my second winter at Cannes after I came of age

that AWlt Carrie came to my rescue. "You are really a white elephant to
your mother," she once remarked to me, and this was true, for my mother
really did not know what to do with me and to be both a black sheep and
a white elephant was certainly a trying role. So I was delighted to fall in with
a plan now proposed to me.
Aunt Carrie was in the habit of going abroad every winter, usually to
Bordighera, but now she thought she would try Biarritz, and suggested we
should take a villa there together for a few months. Accordingly I set off
across France and joined her at the Villa Marthe Marie on the Falaise over-
looking the sea.
Biarritz was then quite a small place, frequented mainly by golfers and
the impecunious who found the Riviera too expensive and enjoyed them-
selves much more than the plutocrats ofCannes and Nice. For great wealth is
often fatal to pleasure; the necessity for having to contrive adds a zest to life
which is denied to the very rich who are apt to become "money-logged"
and incapable ofkeen sensations. As I was to hear my daughter Rosalind say
 A WHITE ELEPHANT AT LARGE 93

later on after lunching gorgeously in Berkeley Square: "When one is as rich

as all that the whole world must seem like Woolworth. Everything for
sixpence!"
At Biarritz people were certainly very much alive; besides, the bracing
air blowing off the Atlantic made it a more exhilarating spot than the lotus-
eating Riviera. The season we spent there was enchanting-golfing, riding,
moonlight picnics, parties of all kinds and above all dances-masked balls,
fancy dress balls far into the night. Now at last I could dance to my heart's
content, for the cosmopolitan world of Biarritz comprised a number of
Spaniards always ready to turn night into day and get up a dance at a
moment's notice.
The leading spirit amongst these was a young semi-Spaniard named
Oscar Heeren, very good-looking and a magnificent dancer as well as
rider. We often rode together and led wild cotillons ofour own devising, and
how inspiriting it was to dance to the air of "Espana" in the Spanish way
with a click of the heels on the parquet, imitating the sound of castanets.
The Spanish world of laughter, love and song was certainly very amusing
for a time.
It was at Biarritz that for the first time I appeared on the stage in public.
Private theatricals were got up by an amateur company at the Casino and
I played the part ofold Mrs. Coleman in The Passport, apparently with some
success for it was remarked how kind it was of such an old lady to turn out
for the occasion.
The drawback to living abroad is that one sees much less of the Con-
tinent than people who set out from England on a tour with an itinerary
of places to visit mapped out for them. It was thus that in my desultory
wanderings about Europe, either with my mother or with friends, I went in
course of time to Rome, to Naples, the Italian Lakes, the Engadine, up the
Rhine and so on, but I have never seen either Florence or Venice to this day.
Nor have I ever been in the East ofEurope, a fact J bitterly regret, for to have
seen pre-revolutionary Russia would have been invaluable to me in later
life. Nothing would have been easier in those days when we had so many
Russianfriends, and I might have gone, like Millie, to stay with the Bobrinskys
at Bogoroditsk.
Northern climates did not attract me, it was the East that called me, and
I felt I could leave Russia until I was too old and tired to venture farther
afield,little dreaming how soon that mighty Empire was to be swept away.
Meanwhile, loving warmth and colour, I had to content myself with the
gay sunny life ofItaly and the blue waters of Lac Leman.
One September morning, on my way to bathe at Clarens, I was standing
at the foot of the Territet-Glion funiculaire looking at the fruit and flower
stalls arranged round the little square before the station, when I saw a figure
advancing towards me, a woman, no longer young, dressed in black glace
silk with little pleated flounces round the skirt, holding a parasol over her
head. My attention was attracted to her because of her magnificent way of
94 SPACIOUS DAYS

walking, there was something regal about her; then suddenly I realized that
she was the Empress ofAustria. Passing close by me she went and stood alone
in front of a fruit stall, looking at the peaches and grapes spread out there.
And at that moment the thought flashed through my mind: "Why do they
let her walk about alone like thatr How easy it would be for an anarchist to
assassinate her!" Do coming events cast their shadows beforer For a strange
feeling of apprehension came over me; I wondered no-one seemed to be
standing near to guard her.
The very next day, September 16, 1898, as we sat at dinner in Montreux,
the news reached us that she had been murdered at three o'clock that after-
noon in Geneva by the anarchist Luccheni. Of all brutal crimes the assassina-
tion of this sad and beautiful woman was the most senseless; what harm was
she doing to "the people", of whom these crazy fanatics constituted them-
selves the championse
Political assassinations will continue as long as authority refrains from
enquiring into the workings ofthose secret societies which make use ofblind
tools to carry out their fell designs. Luccheni paid for his crime in the
dungeons ofVenice, and since then many murderers of the same kind have
been brought to justice, but the hidden instigators of these deeds have never
been revealed nor does any attempt appear to have been made to discover
their identity.
The Italian lakes in September seemed to me a Paradise on earth. One
year on my way there down from the Engadine with friends, we stopped at
Promontogno where we spent most of our time with the Comte and
Comtesse Jean de Salis. The Comtesse, nee Princesse de Chimay, was a
most charming and beautiful woman.
At Bellagio, where we spent some weeks, we met that curious person
Prince Loewenstein who had recently married Lady Ann Savile and parted
from her almost inunediately. Every day he would remark, "Tomorrow I
go back to my wife," but he never went and later on disappeared mysteri-
ously. I do not know whether it was ever discovered what became of him.
It was at Bellagio that I met the only talking dog I have ever known.
He was a dachshund, named Bongo, belonging to Mr. Harvey Pechell who
had a villa overlooking the lake. Bongo would come in to tea and, sitting up
on his hind legs, would say quite distinctly, "How are yen" and rather less
clearly, "How's yer motherr" This is a story I have seldom been able to make
anyone believe, but it is a fact none the less.
I shall never forget those lovely evenings on the lake of Como with the
smell of oliafraga in the air and the sound of guitars and mandolines thrilling
up to the sky. There was a man who kept a tortoiseshell comb shop in the
day-time, and would come out at night and sing to his guitar with tears of
artistic fervour in his eyes.
Even the boatmen had "souls". One afternoon as we were being rowed
along the edge ofthe lake by a barcaiuolo in a beautiful red sash, we passedthe
steps of a villa leading down to the water.
 A WHITE ELEPHANT AT LARGE 95

"Who lives therer" I asked.

"The Duca di --" answered the barcaiuolo. Then he shook his head.
"But the Duchessa --!"
"You do not like herr"
"No, e commune, non e istruitta (no, she is common, she is uneducated),
we do not like her."
I wondered what boatman in England would object to a Duchess for
lack of education.
In Milan everyone seemed to have learnt about music, and the porter at
the hotel where I stayed could tell me exactly which music-shop kept the
best selection of the works of any particular composer.
Milan reminds me ofMelba. My sister-in-law's sister, Irene Wienawska
(later Lady Dean Paul), was a musical genius and a great friend of hers.
I once spent a delightful day with them both on the river where Melba had
a house. I asked the famous prima donna what she looked back upon as the
greatest triumph of her career.
"When I made my debut in Rigoletto at Milan," she answered without
a moment's hesitation, "and the little street-boys followed me crying out,
'Eao la Melba, la grande anistal' Then I knew, if! had pleased the Milanese
street-boys, that I could sing!"
I shall never forget hearing her in this same opera at Covent Garden
when her marvellous voice blended with Caruso's like a stream of pure
silver amidst rolls of black velvet. The great charm of Melba's singing was,
I think, that it was so effortless, as natural and spontaneous as the song of a
girl washing clothes on the banks ofthe Var.
Next to Italy, the expeditions I enjoyed most in summer were to Ireland,
where I used to stay with my friends the Butlers in County Carlow, and
always met with a warm welcome from the Irish who seemed in those days
to have no animus against the English. All the way from Dublin in the train
the guard and porters would look after me, putting their heads in at the
window and saying, "God bless you and give you a good journey!" At
Tullow station Mick, the old coachman, would be waiting with a friendly
beam in his wonderful grey Irish eyes. It was Mick who in the spring would
remind Sir Thomas Butler to invite me, as he drove him to the station in the
outside car: "Well, and when'll Miss Bevan be coming to us again! That's
the lady for us, she takes a real pleasure out of life. Och, we'll soon see her
lepping over the fields at her own pace!"
Ireland was great fun in those days, long drives in outside cars-no
motors yet-to lunch with neighbours miles away, merry gatherings round
the piano with Edith Butler.' my particular friend, playing dance music, and
"Tony" We1don singing Irish songs with always a hearty chorus for Mat
Hannigan's Aunt. Then we would all move up to Dublin for the Horse Show,
staying at the "Shelburne" with evenings at the theatre thrown in between

1 Now Mrs. Beauchamp Lecky.

 SPACIOUS DAYS

the days spent in watching horses taking the stone walls erected to test their
value as hunters in the West ofIreland.
I loved the simplicity of Irish sporting life; nothing was for show, good
horses and shabby liveries, fine old country houses with the paper peeling
off the walls, fresh salmon from the rivers in cracked china dishes and
everywhere the gay, happy-go-lucky spirit of the Irish peasants. I cannot
believe that these simple kindly people were ever really inflamed by the
hatred ofEngland attributed to them by their self-appointed representatives.
Rebellion in Ireland has always seemed to me an engineered movement,
worked from abroad as part of the great conspiracy against the British
Empire.
It was in Ireland that at last the opportunity came to me to realize my
dream of distant travel. It had only been the lack of a travelling companion
which had prevented me from setting sail for the East; I knew of no-one
ready to start with me on the long trail. But one afternoon at a garden-party
in County Carlow I was talking to two Irishwomen, Miss Grace Eustace
and Miss Ellie Archdale, when the former said, "I want to go to Japan."
"So do I," said Ellie Archdale.
"And I, too!" I put in eagerly.
"Let's all go round the world together!" we cried in chorus.
And so it was settled. The other two were respectively ten and twenty
years older than myself and I had only met them once or twice so that we
were almost strangers.
"How can you start off with people you hardly knowr" my friends and
relations said to me. "Travelling is often trying to the temper-suppose you
quarre I l "
"All the more reason not to spoil a friendship," I replied. "If we do
quarrel nothing will be lost by it and we shall have seen the world."
Besides, my dour maid, Susan Briggs, was to go with us, so if we parted
company I should not be left alone.
County Carlow wished us good speed and laughingly christened us
"the World, the Flesh and the Devil"; I was the World, being regarded as
the gayest of the trio; Grace, who must have turned the scale at some
thirteen stone, was the Flesh; and Ellie, prone to displays of temper, was the
Devil.
So that was how we came to set out on our great adventure.
My father, R. C. L. Bevan,
and brother Edwyn
 The Author
aged 3

Edwyn R. Bevan
 CHAPTER XIV

ROUND THE WORLD

N the peaceful days when we set off on our journey round the world
I travel was gloriously cheap, my first-class ticket from London to London
by all the best lines-c-P. & 0., Empress and Cunard-cost me exactly
£144. and this included the train journeys across India and America. A
further [80 secured a second-class ticket for Susan Briggs.
I shallnever forget the thrill of embarking at Marseilles, my first glimpse
of a great shipping port with its forests of masts, dense network of rigging,
the smell of the sea, the curious crowd of humanity from all quarters of the
globe, the babel of strange tongues, the noise, the traffic and the shouting;
I felt intoxicated with delight; now at last I was to see the Africa I had gazed
at in imagination across the Mediterranean from our terrace at Cannes, and
after that India, Ceylon, Japan; it seemed unbelievable that my dream had
really come true. I cannot describe what I felt when that winter evening we
slowly moved out of the harbour and saw the shore-lights fade away in the
distance.
I had never particularly loved the sea before, partly because I was a very
bad sailor and suffered indescribably every time we crossed the Channel.
But a friend had given me a useful tip: "Try sipping stout." It must not be
taken at a draught, but slowly, just a sip each time that the sinking feeling
creeps round one's waist-line, replacing it by a warm glow.
I had never tasted stout before and thought it sounded horrible but it
acted like magic, for though it did not always prevent a recurrence of that
malady it savedme from the deadly sensation that had hitherto accompanied
it. As a rule, however, it proved a complete preventive and I was often able
to go into meals with the "fiddles" on the tables when only the Captain, the
ship's doctor and a few other passengerswere able to brave the storm.
Now that I was able to enjoy the voyage I felt that there was nothing
more enchanting than sailing on Southern seas. How glorious to rise in the
freshness of the morning and, putting one's head out of the port-hole, to
look out on a vast blue world, turquoise sky and sapphire sea sparkling in the
goldensunshine! But perhaps it is at night that the sea seems most wonderful,
when one looks out over the glittering pathway of the moon leading to the
distant sky-line.
To me the sea conveys all the wonder that mountains inspire in many
minds. I do not love mountains, their heights oppress me, their frowning
brows chill me to the heart. Great masses ofmatter, rock and stone and earth,
they hold no mystery. For mountains can be explored from head to foot,
they can be climbed, blasted, tunnelled, observatories may be built on their
97 G
98 SPACIOUS DAYS

summits, funiculaires run Up their sides; in a word they can be disfigured,

desecrated to any extent.
But the sea, for all its changing moods, can never be transformed, it is
eternal, immutable, human life leaves no trace upon its surface. Hynms and
boat-songs, dirges and chanties, have been Soog on it, myriads ofvoices in all
the languages of the world have thrilled up to the sky from those blue waves
and now are still; sailors and craft alike lie buried in its depths and the sea
laughs on.
What is time on the sear What is a life lost to in Thousands, millions of
lives have ended there-kings, pirates, warriors, galley-slaves mingle their
bones in its vast depths and lie forgotten. So the sea holds its secrets to the
end.
I could. not love the sea, however, in her angry moods, her sudden rages
terrified me. When we sailed out of harbour that January evening she was
calm and smiling, but as we passedCrete three days later a terrific gale sprang
up, black waves edged with white seething foam began to crash like cannon-
balls against the port-holes, the contents of my cabin were hurled about,
soon the floor was a mass ofdebris, and at each lurch ofthe ship one heard the
distant smash of crockery.
When Susan Briggs called me in the morning she arrived head foremost
in my washing-basin and was then shot across the cabin and tried in vain
for some minutes to return. It was not till later that we heard the ship had
actually been in danger of capsizing, for she had never experienced so bad
a voyage.
We were a very amusing party on board the Egypt. There was Dr.
Welldon, late headmaster of Harrow, who had just been made Bishop of
Calcutta and preached to us on Sundays, there was Maurice Farkoa, the
French entertainer, to sing to us in the evenings, there was Lord Basil
Blackwood who had illustrated The Bad Child's Book of Beasts, to draw us
caricatures, whilst the smoking-room was enlivened by Sammy Loates, the
jockey, giving stable tips and relating anecdotes ofthe turf Musical evenings
were organized by Sir John Aird, the rich contractor, who looked exactly
like the prophet Elijah and went round urging totally incompetent people to
perform.
I got on very well with Dr. Welldon, who had a most breezy personality
and was trying hard to be a bishop with becoming dignity, though with
occasional lapses into uncontrollable pleasantry. One Sunday after he had
preached with great eloquence I told him how much his sermon had im-
pressed me, adding, "I mean to be quite good now!" to which he answered
promptly, "Don't, you won't be half so amusing!" Then, after having let
slip a remark of this kind he would add hastily, "Forget I said it, forget I
said id"
A gay party on board consisted of Mr. Lort Philipps and his friends,
including Captain Darby Griffith in the Grenadiers, who were on their way
out to shoot lions in Somaliland. One stormy Sunday night some of us
 ROUND THE WORLD 99

planned to play hide-and-seek in the dark round the deck and 1 naturally
invited the Bishop to join us. "You forget my cloth!" he said firmly and
walked disapprovingly away. But soon after, as I fled round a corner with
Captain Darby Griffith in pursuit, the Bishop, quite forgetting his cloth,
dashed forward with an outstretched hand exclaiming, "Caught!" Then,
suddenly remembering his dignity again, he pulled himself together and
continued his walk with his eyes solemnly bent upon his plump and gaitered
legs, as he paraded the deck.
On arrival at Port Said we found that the ship would be held up there for
two days; so a large party of us from the Egypt started offby train for Cairo
to spend the night. The journey was to me quite a new experience, at every
station along the line a yelling crowd of Arabs threw themselves upon the
train as soon as it drew up, and looking out one could see nothing but a sea
ofdark faces, whirling white robes, heads swathed in shawls, whilst clutching
brown hands were thrust in at the window amidst cries of, "Baksheesh!
Baksheesh!"
In Cairo an even larger and noisier mob awaited us and, precipitating
themselves upon our luggage, led us to a waiting omnibus into which we
packed, then amidst a chorus of shrieks we set off for the hotel, leaving a
crowd of Arabs fighting madly for the coins given them.
Noise was in fact the one impression left on my mind by Cairo, the cries
of the street sellers, of the saises clearing the way for the carriages of local
magnates with their shouts of "O-ah! Kelb!", the shrieks and yells that
accompanied every detail oflife, seemed to me a combination of the parrot-
house in the zoo with the nocturnal choruses of a thousand London cats.
As one entered a shop one was immediately surrounded by a howling crowd
displaying their wares, and on getting into an arabiya a dozen natives saw one
off with deafening farewells. Poor little Sammy Loates, who was only about
five feet high and looked like a worried monkey, grew very tired of being
what he called " 'ustled", but the Bishop of Calcutta, tall and powerfully
built, moved through these scenes with perfect dignity and treated all the
natives as personal friends, which attracted them in still greater numbers
around us.
The morning after our arrival we set forth for Mena House in a driving
Scotch mist which completely hid the top of the Great Pyramid when we
came in sight ofit. Descending from our carriages we set off on camels to the
Sphinx, and thence to the Pyramids, and all the way we were beset by Arabs
clamouring to run up the Pyramids for baksheesh. The Bishop was at his
best under these conditions and the following dialogue was wafted to me
on the top of my camel:
Arab (to Bishop): "1 run up Pyramid, mister. You give me two shillings.
1 do it in ten minutes."
Bishop (smiling benignly): "Why, that's nothing-ten minutes! I can
do it much quicker myself."
Arab: "How quick you do in"
100 SPACIOUS DAYS

Bishop (cheerfully): "Seven minutes. Seven minutes. Seven minutes!"

Arab (despairingly): "You cannot do it in seven minutes. Give me
baksheesh and I do it in nine."
Bishop (blandly): "My good man, I don't give, I take. I take £5 for seven
minutes."
Arab (desperately): "I will do it in eight minutes."
Bishop: "That's nothing. I tell you I do it in seven."
Arab goes away in despair.
However, when we reached the great Pyramid of Chufu the Bishop's
secretary alone felt equal to scaling it; the rest of us ingenuously imagined
that to penetrate inside it to the king's tomb would require less energy.
Never were we destined to greater disillusionment. We started for the
entrance, each clutched by two Arabs who dragged us up the steps, and then
found ourselves at the beginning of a dark passage down which we were
pulled by one Arab from the front and pushed by another from behind. The
roof grew lower and lower until at last we were obliged to crawl on all
fours; then came a higher roof and a Bight of crumbling stairs up which the
Arabs hauled us, seizing us round the waist, until finally, breathlessand dis-
hevelled, we arrived at the tomb. The atmosphere, meanwhile, had been
growing gradually denser, for as there appeared to be no means of venti-
lation, the oxygen must have been used up centuries ago.
It was a horrible experience and never were asphyxiated miners more
relieved to reach the upper air again. We all agreed that we would rather
have run up the Pyramid twice over. I have often wondered sincethen how,
in view of the ruined state of the inside of the great Pyramid, the British
Israelites manage to take the minute measurements by which they purport
to foretell the course of the world's history.
The rest of our voyage to India was marked by no further adventures,
most of the amusing people on board the Egypt had got off at Port Said,
but the Bishop remained to cheer us with his buoyant spirits; when we
reached Aden he was wild to land and play hide-and-seek on camelsalong
the shore.
Bombay, on our arrival there, held for me no surprises, I felt I had seen
it all before on the covers of Missionary magazines. One object at Watson's
Hotel, where we stayed, immediately attracted the attention of Susan Briggs,
this was a pair of hooks over my bed to which in hot weather a punkah
was attached.
"I suppose, m'm,' said Briggs, "that's where they hang the coolies up!"
-perhaps a pardonable mistake since punkahs are meant to cool one. But for
all Briggs' "superiority" her education was not of a high order, for on
trying to write out my washing list in France she had solemnly entered one
item as "3 moushairs", meaning mouchoirs for pocket handkerchiefs, whilst in
her accounts the cryptic entry of "odoglone" turned out to be a bottle of
eau-de-Cologne she had bought for me.
Angle-Indian society, of which I had my first glimpse in Bombay, did
 ROUND THE WORLD 101

not attract me, and I felt sorry for Englishwomen in India with so little of
solid interest in their lives; sorry, too, for their children, left to the care of
ayahs and deprived ofthe healthy surroundings of English nursery life.
My room in Watson's Hotel opened out on to a long verandah where
a number ofthese children used to play. One lovely little girl ofabout four,
with long fair hair, seemed very lonely and would creep into my room like
a homeless kitten. No-one seemed to bother about her. When I sat at the
dressing-table she would curl up on the tail of my muslin gown, watching
me with wondering blue eyes and saying very little, but nestling close up
to my side. One night when I came in from a dance the room was empty,
but a tiny dinner-party was laid out on the floor, where she had evidently
been playing when carried off to bed by her ayah. A darling child, I often
thought ofher afterwards and wondered what became of her.
It would be superfluous to describe all we saw on our journey across
India by Ahmedabad, jaipur, Agra, Lucknow and Benares to Calcutta; is
it not written in the books of Baedeker and Murrayr And to pretend to
know anything about that vast country with its heterogeneous population,
its innumerable races, religions, castes and customs, after one month of
travel or even after the year I spent there later on, would be an unpardonable
presumption.
Two Indian scenes in particular stand out from the rest-the Taj Mahal
at Agra, and the ghats at Benares; the first a vision of peace and loveliness,
the second a revelation in horror and dark superstition.
The Taj, that poem in white marble inlaid with exquisite designs in
bloodstone and cornelian, standing out in its white perfection against a
background of dark cypresses, is not merely a triumph of architecture, for
no picture can convey any conception ofthe effect it produces on the mind.
Although its outward form is the realization of all one's dreams of beauty
it appeals to far more than the senses; it is the soul to which it speaks, oflove
and hope and immortality. Wrapped in the atmosphere it creates around it
we know that we must live again, that death is not the end, and that beyond
the grave there lies that higher life rising, as from the tomb of Shah Jehan's
queen, to heights our fmite minds cannot grasp.
Strange land ofcontrasts! For across the river in the Palace ofthe Moguls
whence Shah Jehan gazed at the monument he had raised to the queen he
loved, may still be seen the room where the women of the royal Zenana
were wont to amuse themselves; around those pillars the child wives would
play their gamesofhide-and-seek. But in one corner is a hole through which
we were told that unhappy women, who had ceasedto charm, were dropped
into the waters of the Jumna down below.
The lot of women in modern India seemed to me pitiful, whether at
work in fields, or city, or leading idle lives in the Zenanas to which we were
admitted. In one of these we sat on the floor with a number of wives, all
cooped up on the house-top, and engaged in passing a dirty black baby boy,
attired in nothing but a coat and cap, from hand to hand. When our turn
102 SPACIOUS DAYS

came we were expected to kiss him, but we must not remark on his beauty
or even say that he looked healthy for fear such praise might draw on him
the anger of the gods. This curious superstition is carried to such a point
that Indian parents, proud of having a son and fearing that the gods may
snatch him from them, have been known to dress him as a girl until he
reached marriageable age, hoping thus to delude the gods and avert their
vengeance.
It is at Benares that Indian superstition is seen at its height. All along the
banks ofthe Ganges are flights of steps called ghats on which pilgrims from
all parts of India congregate, and fakirs perform the strangest rites. The
ordinary fakir contents himself with letting his hair grow long, covering
himself with white dust and sitting cross-legged on the ground in an attitude
ofmeditation, but some fakirs devise curious methods for attaining greater
sanctity, such as standing on their heads for hours, or keeping their eyes
fixed on the tips oftheir noses; one we noticed aswe floated down the Ganges
had been standing on one leg for years. Another had erected himself a little
platform on which he had sat for six years calling out, "Ram! Sita! Ram!"
at intervals of a few minutes from morning till night, and brandishing what
looked like two steel pokers in the air.
All the way along the river devotees could be seen bathing or else
burning their dead, sometimes incompletely, for looking down at the
water we perceived to our horror the feet ofa half-consumed corpse floating
towards us.
A pleasanter interlude was our visit to a very holy man, the Swami
Bhaskaranandaji Saraswati, who received us in his garden, where he had
erected a little shrine containing a life size statue of himself, which he daily
decked with flowers. His sanctity apparently took the form of continuing to
discard his garments, until by this time he was reduced only to a loin cloth,
whilst the rest of his lean body had turned to the colour of a new saddle.
He seemed a very genial person, completely bald and smiling; he shook
hands with us, enquired the names and professions of our parents, made us
write our names in his visitors' book, and fmally presented us each with
a flower and a blessing in farewell.
There are sadder aspects ofHinduism than we saw on the ghats ofBenares.
I shall never forget the little temple into which I was taken later on, in a
street of the bazaar whilst staying in Calcutta. At the gate of the temple
courtyard we were met by an enormously fat and nearly naked priest who
led us inside the precincts where a number of little widows veiled in black
were sitting on the ground amongst the mangled remains of sacrificedgoats
whose blood flowed around our feet. From the cornice of the temple the
scarlet tusked head of the elephant god, Ganesh, grinned down upon the
hideous scene.
As a contrast to this picture I like to remember the little Jain temple
at Ahmedabad into which we wandered one calm and lovely evening. The
building itself formed by a row of pointed stone pagodas about twenty feet
 ROUND THE WORLD 10]

high and ornamented with gods and monkeys, surrounded a small court-
yard paved with marble. Before entering this we had to remove our shoes
for it would be sacrilege to wear in them the skin ofthe sacred calf, so silently
we passed through the gates. Inside it was very quiet. Behind the temple
spires the SWl was setting. green parrots flew from tree to tree, big grey
monkeys perched on the roofs and gate-posts and small striped Indian
squirrels darted noiselessly along the walls.
In the middle of the courtyard was the shrine of the Jain god Dharmnath,
whose image, adorned with jewels, was seated like Buddha in an attitude of
contemplation. He could be seen through the grating of a small brass gate
where offerings of rice were placed before him in symbolic patterns by his
devotees.
As we sat there silently in the hush of the evening twilight a great peace
seemed to descend on us. Suddenly, like a whirlwind, two young Indian
women dressed in cIaret-coloured silk sarees, ran in, making no sound on the
marble with their soft naked feet and singing a plaintive hymn. Dropping
on their knees before the shrine they spread before it the few grains of rice
they had brought with them, chanting all the time and bowing with their
foreheads to the ground, Then light as air they rose and whirled out again
into the twilight. I think they had come to ask for children. A quaint and
touching ceremony, very different to the sanguinary rites of Hinduism.
But in India religion may attain to heights of real grandeur. No-one who
has stood in the Jumna Musjid at Delhi in the early morning can forget the
impressive sight of 5000 Moslems prostrating themselves in reverence before
the One God whilst from the minaret the cry rings out: "Allah ul Allah,
Mahomed Rasul Allah! (There is no god but God and Mahomed is the
prophet of God)."
My journey round the world led me to the conviction that behind all
great religions there lies a central truth, which might be compared to a lamp
with many-coloured sides. Through one the light shines red, through
another blue, yet it is the same light behind them all. Thus religions prove
religion. Were there but one faith we might attribute it to an invention of
the human mind, but the fact that through every age and in every country
men have believed in a God or gods, and in a life hereafter, must surely be the
most convincing argument against materialism. Only the fool has said in
his heart, "There is no God."
 CHAPTER XV

BURMA

UDDm SM always seemed to me one of the greatest of religions. On

B that first voyage out to India I had read The Soulofa People, by Fielding
Hall, describing life in Burma where the purest form of Buddhism was
practised, and I longed to see that country for myse1£ So on reaching
Calcutta I cast about me for some way ofrealizing this project.
My two travelling companions had decided to make an expedition up
to Darjeeling and Sikhim, but, not loving mountains, this did not appeal to
me, so after their departure I remained on in Calcutta where I made friends
with Mr. and Mrs. Donald Mackenzie Smeaton, who had spent several years
in Burma and made plans for me to be received by people they knew there.
Meanwhile Mrs. Smeaton delighted me with stories of life in that counter,.
The Burmese, she told me, christened her husband "the Raingiver",
because once when he arrived in Burma in the midst ofa drought a shower
fell as he descended from the train, so they concluded that he had some magic
power over the elements. The next time he came back hundreds of them
assembled on the shore to meet him, with an address, and he was led on to
the quay with a chain of pink roses hung round his neck and a golden um-
brella held over his head. A hymn they had composed themselves was then
read over him, beginning:

"Hail, Donald Mackenzie,

Shot from Britannia's chalky blue,
To cheer these melancholy shores!"

On another occasion an old Burman from the Shan hills came to visit
Mrs. Smeaton. He had never met a European lady before and travelled
hundreds of miles for the purpose. He arrived at last in a white satin coat
down to his feet, trimmed with gold lace. Finding conversation through an
interpreter rather tedious Mrs. Smeaton thought it might amuse him to
see some of the things in her drawing-room and finally showed him the
piano. He had, of course, never seen such a thing in his life and sat on the
floor whilst she played to him. She then proceeded to sing him The Skye
Boat Song, but could not understand why all the time he kept on fwnbling
at something under his coat. It then transpired that he thought he had
suddenly been translated to Paradise and was telling his beads in gratitude.
These stories naturally increased my longing to see Burma, and I was
delighted when the Smeatons arranged for me to be met by friends oftheirs
in Rangoon. In those days travellers were usually passed on from one house
to another, and in Burma and Ceylon met with extraordinary hospitality.
104
 BURMA IOS

It was, therefore, quite natural that Captain and Mrs. c., whom I had never
met before, should offer to put me up on arrival, and I started offgaily across
the Bay ofBengal with the melancholy Susan Briggs and Peter, a diminutive
Madrassi bearer, in attendance.
It certainly needed all my youth and enthusaism to bear up under this
experience, for travelling on the "British India" line was very different to
the P. & O. on which I had always been able to secure a cabin to mysel£
The S.S. Nerbudda was dirty, smelly, swarming with spiders, beetles,
cockroaches and red ants, the food was nasty and the heat terrific; to crown
all I found myself obliged to share a cabin with a Eurasian woman who
never washed, but scented herself heavily instead, and remained in her berth
throughout the whole voyage, clothed in salmon pink silk, drinking stout
and reading Zola to the accompaniment of a deafening gramophone. She
had all her meals, not unsubstantial ones, brought to her in the cabin which
attracted the insects, so that when I went to bed I found the air dense with
the odours of dinner and stale scent, and my bunk the parade-ground for
regiments ofred ants which marched over me as I slept and even crept under
my eyelids,stinging horribly as they went. At last I could bear it no more and
seizing my bedding and pillows I dragged them up on deck and slept there
peacefully in the beautiful tropical moonlight, fanned by gentle breezes.
After this, on further voyages, I always slept on deck whenever possible.
Apart from these contretemps the voyage was very amusing, for the other
passengers were a most polyglot collection, consisting ofan English couple-
Mr. and Mrs. Goodfellow-an Irishman, a Scotsman, two Australian women,
a French Vicomte, an Austrian baron and a German Prince with his attendant.
The Vicomte de P. seemed always sunk in gloom, his thick black brows
drawn together in a frown, as if nursing some secret sorrow, but the Baron
de B., who was a musical maniac, kept us all entertained every evening after
dinner on the deck piano, playing airs from every opera one had ever heard
ofand working himself up into a state of the wildest artistic frenzy.
After a while he insisted on my singing, accompanying me ecstatically,
and so we would continue to regale our fellow passengers with songs in all
their respective tongues, with English and Scotch airs, French nursery
rhymes, German Volkslieder, canzoni di Piedigrotta. Our greatest success was,
however, always:

"It r'ltait un petit navire,

Qui n'avail ja-ja-jamais navigul."

The sad fate of the petit marin consumed at last en sauce blanche by his
companions, seemed to appeal to the whole party who would join in a sort
of community singing, and even the Vicomte would rouse himself from his
state of chronic melancholy to something like cheerfulness.
"Ce pauvre de P.," the Baron, who always spoke French, would say,
shaking his head in the direction of the Vicomte, "it n'est pas trop doue par la
106 SPACIOUS DAYS

Nature, non, pas trop doue; la Nature s'est conduits envers lui plutot en marralne
'"
qu,en mere.
At last the cause ofhis secret sorrow was revealed, for under the influence
of music, moonlight, the sea and the tropical air, the Vicomte suddenly
became communicative: "Ma grand'mere desire que je memarie, elle cherche une
demoiselle pour moi."
So that was it! Grand'maman, it appeared, had sent the unhappy Vicomte
round the world whilst she looked out for a wife for him, and as soon as he
returned he would have to marry her, whatever she might be like. No
wonder that he sat sunk in gloom, brooding on the fate in store for
him.
The evening before we arrived in Rangoon, we had our final concert,
at which everyone joined in singing On the Road toMandalay. How strange
it seemed to think that there close by lay the coast of Burma, and that at
dawn we should see for ourselves the palm-trees and pagodas and hear
"the tinkly temple bells".
It is difficult, by the way, to understand how Kipling's "British soldier"
managed to "look eastward to the sea" from "the old Moulmein pagoda",
since Moulmein faces due west, nor how he could "hear the dawn come up
from China" which lies to the north. Perhaps it was true, as I was told in
India, that Kipling had never been in Burma when he wrote the poem.
On arrival in Rangoon two shocks awaited me, first Captain C., who
had offered to put me up, arrived to say that his house had been burnt down
and he and his wife were homeless, then a lady doctor came on board to
announce that a small-pox epidemic was raging on land and that everyone
must be vaccinated immediately. "It would be horrid to be pitted for life,"
I observed. "Pittedr" she replied cheerfully, "it's not a mere case of pitting;
it's confluent small-pox, the most virulent variety, which takes great chunks
out ofyou and you're lucky ifit doesn't blind you into the bargain."
It certainly seemed a grim prospect to land in Burma with nowhere to
go and knowing no-one, with the possibility of contracting this terrible
disease. But two kind friends I had made on the voyage, Mr. and Mrs.
Goodfellow, came to my rescue and whirled me offto their charming house
in Halpin Road, where they invited me to stay as their guest until I went up
country.
The first thing to do was to get vaccinated. Accordingly the same
evening Briggs and I presented ourselves at the Municipality, the only place
where this operation could be performed, to fmd that no English doctor was
available. So I was obliged to submit to my leg being scratched by a Burman,
who then proceeded to inoculate it by the light of a flaming torch held by
another Burman at his side. I insisted on being done on the leg for I have
never understood why girls should have their arms disfigured by deep scars
when vaccination on the leg is equally efficacious.
I have never felt anything like the heat in Rangoon, a mean temperature
of 97° in the shade. From 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. one could only lie down with the
 BURMA 107

air weighing on one's chest like lead, with mosquitoes trumpeting loudly
around one's head; no meals could take place between those hours. But in
the evening and the early morning one could feel the enchantment of the
country, the gorgeous, glowing East not to be found in India. How different
to the arid maidan of Calcutta were the lovely lakes of Rangoon!
Perhaps the most delicious moment ofthe day was soon after dawn when
town and village woke to life and gentle Burmese fathers tubbed their brown
babies whilst their wives set forth for the market. Then down the street came
the Buddhist monks, known as pongyis, in their yellow robes, the colour of
dead buttercups, with palm-leaf fans to shield them from the rays of the
rising sun, holding out their brass lotahs to receive the offerings of rice held
out to them, for no pongyi might possess anything ofhis own. That was the
time ofday to see the great Shwe Dagon Pagoda, that marvellous monument
of Buddhist piety. Around the central dome shining with gold leaf thickly
plastered on by the hands of devotees, rose innumerable small shrines and
pagodas, before which at dawn the faithful knelt in prayer and scattered
their offerings of pink rose petals.
After the caste-ridden population of India with its weary, toil-worn
women, the merry Burmese seemed to me delightful. Here the women in
their short white coats and silk pasohs in every shade ofpale pink, rose, cherry
colour rising to magenta, like a bed of asters, with a rose or camelia tucked
into their smooth black hair and smoking huge white cheroots, were not
only free but the real rulers ofthe household, driving bargains at market and
conducting business with all the acumen of the Frenchwomen they much
resemble.
The houses of Europeans in Burma seemed to me delightful after those
I had seen in India. Instead of ugly stucco buildings coloured white, pink or
yellow and occupying only one floor, were charming two-storey houses,
the upper floor of carved teak giving rather the effect of a Swiss chalet, with
a wide verandah all along the front. It was this floor that contained all the
living-rooms, the ground floor being used only as a go-down or store-room,
the verandahs arranged with rugs and easy chairs made a comfortable sitting-
out place. I remember how attractive these houses looked as one drove past
them after dark with shaded lamps shining out from the dark woodwork
through the open french windows.
The Goodfellows' house was particularly charming, and they were
extraordinarily kind in taking me about and showing me everything of
interest. When I told them I was longing to see a pwe (pronounced pway) as
the Burmese drama is called, they sent out to enquire whether a good one
was on view at the moment; the answer came back that a first-class company
had just arrived from Mandalay and would come and play in our garden.
The Burmese were very fond of music and acting and their great
national entertainment, the pwe, might consist of either acting or dancing,
to the accompaniment of an orchestra of strange native instruments. These
performances usually took place in the street, for there were no theatres,
108 SPACIOUS DAYS

or a company might be ordered to come and play just as bands of strolling

players would be engaged to perform during the Elizabethan era in England.
The one that was to come to us announced that they would begin at 6 p.m.
and go on till 5 a.m.; they were asked, however, not to begin till nine o'clock
and at 7.30 the troupe began to arrive; the lawn was gradually covered with
all sorts ofextraordinary vehiclescontaining the properties and the orchestra,
so that soon the whole compound presented the appearance of a gipsy
encampment.
Meanwhile we sat down to dinner, a large party, for the Goodfellows
had invited a number of our fellow-passengers from the Nerbudda, including
the Baron and the Vicomte. Conversation was carried on to the accompani-
ment of a deafening noise from the orchestra, beating their drums as practice
for the performance.
At nine o'clock we took our places on the lawn in front of the stage,
which consisted simply of a large mat spread on the grass, with wooden
packing-cases at one side to act as furniture. In the background all the
waggons and the oxen that had drawn them were collected; the spaces
between them acting as dressing-rooms where the performers sat making up
in full view of the audience.
At one corner of the stage was the orchestra, composed ofdrums and an
enormous round wooden frame, shaped like a drum, inside which the
performer sat striking a row of brass knobs fastened around its lower rim
with a clapper. These knobs, each forming a note, made up a scaleand gave
out a sound not unlike the ring of a blacksmith's hammer. The Baron,
however, went into ecstasies over this, declaring that he detected semi-tones
and quarter-tones unknown in Western music. "Non, non," he went on
repeating, "vous savez que e'est tres remarquable!" Meanwhile the drums were
only sounded at intervals as a sort of high-light.
The entertainment opened with an actress advancing upon the mat with
her hands full of fruit. which she waved in the air to the strains of the
orchestra. This was the preliminary ceremony of offering food to the nats
or spirits of the garden. There are all kinds of nats in Burma-tree nats,
river nats and so on, who, it seems, are rather touchy people and have to be
propitiated if any enterprise is to succeed.
Then the play began, apparently high tragedy, in which the Crown
Prince, seated on one ofthe packing-casesas a throne and with a handkerchief
tied round his head for a coronet, eloquently assured his spouse of his
devotion, to which the Crown Princess responded by doubling up every
joint in her body and backing violently to show her joy. Double-jointedness
seemed, indeed, to be the main qualifications for a Burmese actress, speeches
were hurried through with little or no attempt at histrionic effect, but to
bend back wrists and fingers to a most alarming extent was evidently
essential. Every now and then a song was introduced, not with the smiling
ease de rigueur in the West but, as elsewhere in the Far East, with every muscle
strained into an expression of tense agony, with eyes and forehead drawn up
 BURMA log

in the effort to wring out every quavering note-to us a strange and painful
performance,
The play having continued for two hours, and the plot remaining
somewhat obscure, we ventured to ask the stage-manager whether the
company would be kind enough to let us see a little Burmese dancing. He
shook his head at first and seemed to think that would be impossible. "If
you want dancing," he explained, "you must have a dancing pwe, but if
you ask for an acting pwe you must seeit out." It was very difficult, he added,
to interfere with the Burmese; they always liked to have their own way and
having begun to act would go on acting to the end. The end might be
expected on the third morning from now, at daybreak, the play continuing
each night from 9 p.m. to 5 a.m.
To say that we were appalled, is to give but a faint idea of our feelings
at this prospect, yet the Burmese stage-manager's point of view was per-
fectly reasonable. In a country where time is not, to watch a play for three
nights on end may seem no more of an effort than it is for us to sit through
a three hour matinee, and our request that the company should break off
the performance for a dance must have seemed like asking Shakespearian
actors to stop after the first act of Hamlet and execute a ballet. Indeed, after
two hours, we had probably not reached a further point than would cor-
respond to the second page of Hamlet-and yet we had had enough!
I blush even now to think how ungracious our attitude must have
seemed. For at last the stage-manager was persuaded to intervene on our
behalf,the play stopped and the entertainment ended with a dance performed
by six little Burmese girls whose gannents were wound so tightly round
their legs that they could hardly move and only went through a series of
contortions, not once moving their feet off the ground.
The next day I was up early to spend a very interesting morning in
Macgregor's timber yard watching the elephants piling teak. The intelligence
with which they performed this task was amazing, the mahouts, seated on
their heads, called out directions "Upright-Iongwise-to the right-to the
left," and so on in elephant language and the great beasts obeyed implicitly,
laying the huge beams of wood in perfect symmetry. There was a legend
that one elephant anxious to get them into an exactly straight line, had been
known to shut one eye and look along his trunk held out in front of him.
Sometimes, however, I was told, an elephant would get tired of work and
"run amok", then the other elephants would beat him with chains in their
trunks and so reduce him to submission.
But now I was longing to go up country to Mandalay and see the
Golden Palace of King Thebaw about which I had read so much. My plan
was to spend a day and night there, then sail down the Irrawaddy to Pro me,
from which point I proposed to take the train back to Rangoon and start
westwards for Ceylon to rejoin my two travelling companions from whom
I had parted in Calcutta.
Accordingly I set off for Mandalay and arrived at the Dak Bungalow-
ItO SPACIOUS DAYS

the only place where one could stay in those days-of which Briggs and
I were the sole European occupants. However, I had introductions to kind
people in the cantonment, who came to befriend me and we spent a glorious
evening wandering about the Golden Palace, literally golden, for the interior
was gilded throughout and incrusted with imitation rubies, giving a curious
effect of Oriental splendour. There on the door-post of the Throne Room,
where Thebaw once sat in state, might still be seen the blood marks left by
the fingers of a maid of honour as she fell back pierced by the Queen's
javelin. For Sapiyalat, a sort of Eastern Catherine de Medici, allowed no
rivals in her path, and intercepting the glance that passed between her royal
consort and the luckless maid, hurled the weapon with unerring aim,
striking her victim to the heart.
I have often wondered why no-one has ever dramatized the story of
Thebaw's Court; I am sure it must have been the scene of many romances,
for, as I sat in the verandah ofthe Dak Bungalow, Mah Kin, a little Burmese
woman who sold silks, came and spread her wares out before me and then,
sitting back on her heels, she would begin in a sing-song voice to tell me
stories of the Golden Palace. "Now I will tell you about the loves of Man-
galay and Loogalay," she chanted, and I have always regretted that I did not
write down the story of these famous lovers whose memory still clung
around the Golden Palace.
I had planned to start down the Irrawaddy by the evening steamer that
left about midnight, and having been invited to dine in the cantonment, set
off there with only my small bearer Peter, and dispatched Briggs with the
luggage to the boat, where I was to join her. But when I explained this at
about ten o'clock to my hostess she gasped with horror. "But the steamer,"
she said, "is miles down the river. It will take you hours to reach it and the
night is dark."
However, there was nothing for it but to set offwithout delay, so climbing
into a ticca-gharry-a sort of wooden four-wheeler-I started on my journey
with Peter on the box.
My hostess was right, the way was long and the night was very dark.
I shall never forget that interminable drive through the wilds of Burma,
wondering whether I should ever reach my destination. Once when we
drew up in a village I thought we must have arrived but it was to find we
had only stopped to change horses whilst a crowd of Burmans with flaring
torches gathered round and stared at me curiously.
On again through the night and at last another stop. This time no
village or human habitation was in sight, we were on the banks of the
Irrawaddy, but alas! no steamer was to be seen either. "Where is ite" I asked
desperately, and Peter, pointing down the river, indicated that we must get
down and walk in search of it. Stumbling through the darkness we made
our way along the river's edge until at last we perceived a tiny landing-stage
with the Irrawaddy Flotilla Company's steamer Belu drawn up beside it,
and the unhappy Briggs almost dancing with anxiety on the deck.
 BURMA III

"We thought you were never coming, m' m," she cried, as I stepped on
to the boat, "and the young gentleman on board says it is very dangerous
for you to drive about like this alone at night in these wild parts ofthe world.
Well, I am thankful you are safe here at last."
"Who is the young gentlemant" I asked.
"The only passenger on board. He says he knows your family and he's
very worried to know what has become of you."
"Well, here I am and now let's go to bed."
Down below a pleasant surprise awaited me, for instead of the usual
dingy cabin I found I was to be lodged in a charming room that had been
specially done up some twelve years earlier for the Duke of Clarence when
he took a trip down the Irrawaddy on the Belu, and looked as ifit had never
been used since then, with its fresh white paint, windows instead of port-
holes,and portraits of the Royal Family all round the walls. This was luxury
indeed and how delicious to wake next morning and lie back on one's pillow
watching the banks of the Irrawaddy slip past through the open windows-
endless pagodas, monasteries, pongyi choungs, and stone dragons rising out
of dense palm-groves as we floated by!
The only other passenger on board proved to be a most agreeable young
man, named Thomas, who did know my family and had apparently been
brought up in much the same entourage, for he said he had been regarded as
"a brand to be snatched from the burning". We spent a very pleasant day
taking our meals together on deck under an awning, playing picquet and
discussing philosophy and the religions of the East.
Burma seemed to me an enchanted land. The very air seemed filled with
spirit presences, a haunted feeling hung around the silent palm-groves.
Wrapped in that strange atmosphere, with the soft air from the river
breathing in one's face and no sound but the lapping of the water round the
ship's sides, and the cry of the Burmese boatman at the prow chanting out
the soundings, it seemed to me very easy to believe in nats-river nats and
wood nats all around one.
But the prosaic voice ofthe skipper roused me from my dreams:
"Ifyou want to get to Prome in time to catch the Shropshire in Rangoon
you won't do it by this steamer. We shan't reach Prome till Saturday."
The day the Shropshire sailed! Who had made a mistaker I, or the
Irrawaddy Flotilla Company's time-tablet There was no time to discover.
"We're now at Myingyan," the captain went on to say, "the only thing
you can do is to go back to Mandalay and take the train from there to
Rangoon. That steamer will take you, she sails in the morning."
So there was nothing for it but to leave my pleasant cabin, and travelling
companion, waving sadly from the deck, board the tiny steamer drawn up
by the river bank and spend the night there. Such a night! Myingyan was
a hotbed of flies and mosquitoes and reeked with the smell of napi-the
decaying fish favoured by the Burmese. I dined tete-a-tete with the skipper
of this other ship, a very homely person with no conversation, but was
112 SPACIOUS DAYS

somewhat cheered by a really marvellous vanilla souflle surprisingly sent up

by the Burmese cook. In the morning we started off, there were no other
passengers, so except for meals with the skipper I remained alone on deck.
But the river continued to fascinate me and the thirteen hours' cruise back
to Mandalay was full of interest.
From Mandalay I travelled back to Rangoon in a carriage with one other
passenger, an Englishwoman who had lived some time in Burma and said
she could not bear the Burmese.
"Why!" I asked wonderingly, for I thought them delightful.
"They make such bad servants," she said, and she went on to explain
that they were apt to leave if one had meals at the same time every day-
they thought that boring. It struck me as only amusing and reminded me of
Princess Dolgorouki with her, "QueUe pUanterie!" when I asked at what
time she lunched.
The Burmese, indeed, seemed to me the most lovable and friendly
people, lazy perhaps, vague and erratic, no doubt they did make impossible
servants with no idea of time. But time in Burma was an arbitrary affair,
one did not speak. ofsix o'clock in the morning or evening, but of "the hour
when pongyis go a-begging" or "when we put the little children to bed",
whilst distance was measured by "the time it takes to smoke a cheroot" or
"to chew a pinch of betel-nut". One understands that to practical British
housewives this sort of thing must be trying.
But Fielding Hall, I found, had not exaggerated the happiness of the
Burmese people, the charms ofthe women or the virtues ofthe pongyis who
at their choungs in every village received the small boys for eduction and
religious teaching and were highly respected by British officials at that time.
Alas! I was told some twenty years later agitators had spread unrest in that
once peaceful country, using as their instruments the women and the
pongyis, formerly the most stable elements ofthe population, but whom they
succeeded in infecting with their propaganda. With such diabolical cunning
do the agents of world unrest set about their work!
 CHAPTER XVI

THE FAR EAST

WAS heartbroken at leaving Burma, and the passengers on board the

I Bibby liner, S.S. Shropshire, in which I sailed for Colombo, were not
calculated to rouse my drooping spiritis. Sitting next me in the dining-
saloon was a man who told me at every meal that he was meditating suicide.
"I don't know whether I shall jump overboard tonight or wait till to-
morrow," he would say; the next day he would talk of some other way of
ending his life.
At first I tried to chaff him out of it, but gradually realized it was no
laughing matter. The other passengers refused to take it seriously declaring,
according to the popular theory, that if anyone threatens to commit suicide
that is the very reason for concluding he will do nothing of the kind. "He
wouldn't talk about it ifhe really meant it," they would say, nodding sagely.
I felt convinced that they were wrong and so it turned out that they were, for
I heard long afterwards that he had blown his brains out in Rangoon a year
later.
Ceylon is beautiful, a vast conservatory of tropical plants with a mean
temperature of 97° in the shade, more luxuriant than Burma but without its
soul. The Cingalese are not a lovable people, not perhaps as "vile" as Bishop
Heber's famous hymn declares,for doubtless they have their virtues, but they
lack the light-heartedness and the whimsicality of the Burmese. Amidst the
palm-groves round Colombo and in the lovely gardens of Peradeniya
I missed the haunted atmosphere of the Irrawaddy, I missed the nats. Here
in trees and rivers no spirit presences made themselves felt. Perhaps up
country in the heart of the jungle it is different.
We only spent one night in Colombo, where I joined my two travelling
companions again. The heat was stifling, so we set off next day for a tea
plantation at Oonoonagalla to stay with some friends of Grace Eustace's
who gave us a warm welcome. The scenery on the way was wonderful with
mountains in the distance and the most gorgeous vegetation-palms, banana
trees, bamboos of a gigantic size and beautiful ferns, mosses and orchids
growing in masses everywhere. Animal life, too, was most amusing, and one
morning from the terrace of the plantation we watched across the valley
the escapades of a rogue elephant making its way through the forest and
tearing down trees in its fury.
After only two nights up country we returned to Colombo where we
went on board the P. & O. S.S. Ballarat and started for China.
Our voyage as far as Singapore was still suffocating. Fortunately the
first-class women passengers had an upper deck to themselves at night and
how heavenly it was to sleep under the stars, with air like rolls of chiffon
XI) H
114 SPACIOUS DAYS

breathing in one's face whilst the ship glided smoothly onward over the
oil-like sea! But even that southern sea is subject to fits ofrage as we were to
discover when we turned the corner of the Malay Peninsula and came into
the tail of a monsoon.
At Singapore we went ashore, a party of about seven people, and
started off in rickshaws to the Botanical Gardens, some five miles out of the
town. There we spent several delightful hours whilst the Director, Mr.
Ridley, showed us not only the wonderful plants in the gardens but the
curious collection of animals, particularly monkeys, of which he had a
peculiar understanding.
One gentle chimpanzee was so devoted to him that she would some-
times refuse to go to sleep at night unless he sat beside her, holding her hand.
There was also a fine specimen of the cocoa monkey which is employed
on the cocoa tree plantations as a most valuable worker. The monkey runs
up to the top ofthe palm, shakes each cocoanut to find out whether it is ripe
and on hearing the milk splashing inside it, picks the nut, twirls it between
its hands and lets it drop so that it arrived spinning on its point and is not
broken when it reaches the ground. A really expert cocoa monkey fetched
a high price in the East.
Then there was the bear-cat, an animal with a strange taste in food, for
we were told that its favourite articles of diet were pineapple and "Three
Castles" cigarettes.
On our return from the Botanical Gardens I was really frightened, for
the first time since I had left home. When one is young an element ofdanger
only adds a zest to adventure, but this was rather more than a pleasant thrill.
My two Irish travelling companions started off in a gharry, whilst seven
of us set forth in rickshaws and by the time we reached the outskirts of
Singapore the short Eastern twilight had passed into night and it was very
dark. As our rickshaws, drawn by gigantic Chinamen, made their way in
single file through the narrow streets dimly lit by paper lanterns, the Chinese,
who principally inhabited this quarter of the town, could be seen through
their doorways smoking and playing fan-tan.
Suddenly as we rounded a corner one young man of the party and I
found that we were alone, separated from the other five who had evidently
taken a different turn; at that moment our rickshaw men put down the
shafts and intimated they would go no farther. A stentorian shout from my
companion seemed at first to have some effect, and picking up the shafts
they went on again for a little while, then, with more determination than
before, they put down the shafts again, crossed their arms and took up a
truculent attitude, evidently resolved not to budge an inch. What was to be
donee Had they asked for money we should have understood it was a simple
matter of more baksheesh, but their threatening manner seemed to suggest
more sinister possibilities and we wondered whether we were to be robbed
and knifed here in this lonely back-street, where, under cover ofthe darkness,
violence might well go on unchecked.
 THE FAR EAST lIS
Singapore, we knew, was one of the worst cities in the world where
crooks and criminals of all countries congregated. Around us we could see
nothing but Chinese to whom it would be useless to appeal, we looked
round wildly in the hope of sighting somewhere a white face or a Sikh
policeman. It was a horrid moment. And then suddenly-oh, joyful sight!
We perceived the file of rickshaws containing our five companions crossing
the street at right angles. Our shouts brought them promptly to our rescue and
the Chinamen, seeingwe were reinforced by several other Englishmen, picked
up the shafts and, joining the procession, brought us safely back to the ship.
This sort of hold-up seemsto have been a common practice in Singapore,
for my two travelling companions, who had driven back in a gharry, had much
the same experience. I forget by what agency they were helped out of their
predicament.
That evening in harbour we were cheered by a treat the captain of the
ship had provided for us-a feast of mangosteens he had had kept on ice for
our return. Never had I tasted a more delicious fruit, something like a large
pipless muscat grape which burst in one's mouth filling it with cool exquisite
juice. It was said to be the only fruit grown in the Empire which Queen
Victoria had never been able to enjoy owing to the fact that it would not
last in transit.
I did not learn to love the Chinese after our arrival in Hong Kong five
days later, a fact that may perhaps be set down to the superficial view which
is all that a tourist can obtain of these inscrutable people. For at first sight a
Chinese crowd is not attractive, cruelty seems to be stamped on too many
of those yellow countenances.
I know that China long ago evolved a marvellous civilization and
produced countless gems of art and literature. I know that Europeans who
had lived long in the country came to esteem the Chinese so highly that they
often ended by acquiring the Chinese mind. Everywhere in the Far East one
was assured that the Chinaman's word was his bond and that he was infmitely
to be preferred to his Japanese neighbour.
But just as it takes some twelve years to learn to read a Chinese news-
paper it takes no doubt still longer to reach a just appreciation ofthe Chinese
character. For the tourist that would be impossible, he can only judge by
what he sees and what I saw was certainly not pleasing.
I remember a scene that took place outside a shop in Hong Kong, to
which I was taken by Mr. Slade, an English resident who knew the Chinese
well, where I committed the indiscretion of trying on a beautiful coat of
deep blue brocade woven with golden dragons and intended for a mandarin.
Suddenly an uproar arose outside in the street and looking out I saw a sea
of angry Chinese faces. "Take off the coat or there will be trouble!" Mr.
Slade said hastily, and in a second the unlucky garment was off my back.
Apparently for a woman to put on a mandarin's coat was a breach ofChinese
etiquette I had not grasped. The crowd then dispersed-and I brought the
coat safely back with me to England.
116 SPACIOUS DAYS

The shops in China enchanted me-such marvellous embroideries,

paintings, porcelain, ivories, jade and blackwood! But unlike the Egyptian,
the Chinaman was not always eager to sell, as I found when Mr. Slade took
me to buy brocade. We repaired to the shop ofa well-known dealer we will
call Foo Ching where the following dialogue took place in pidgin English
which Mr. Slade spoke fluently. I quote from my "Journal" written at the
time:

As we enter, Foo Ching and several other Chinamen are sitting

round a table at the back of the shop smoking. Mr. Slade advancing says
heartily: "Good morning, Foo Ching, you show me one piecee No. I
Shanghai brocades" (No. I is the only equivalent for "best" in pidgin
English.)
Foo Ching looks bored, strolls over to the other end of the shop,
takes down the first roll of brocade he sees, slams it down on the counter
and returns to his chair. We look at the brocade and find it inferior.
Mr. Slade: "This brocade No. 2 kind. You go catchee No. I kind."
Foo Ching (from his corner, without moving or taking his pipe out
of his mouth): "That No. I kind."
Mr. Slade: "No, no. Me wantee more fat kind. You go catchee."
Foo Ching: "More fat no got."
Mr. Slade: "Other colour no got. Blue coloure"
Foo Ching: "Other colour no got."
Mr. Slade: "This piecee how mucheee"
Foo Ching: "Twenty dollars."
Mr. Slade: "Plentee muchee, more cheap kind go catchee."
Foo Ching: "More cheap no got."

So it resolves itself into our buying that one roll, which is perfectly
hideous and very expensive, or nothing. Although the shop seems filled with
rolls of brocade that is apparently the only piece we are to be allowed to see,
for whatever else we ask for, whatever sort of colour, Foo Ching "no got".
It is maddening when one knows that he has probably all sorts of gorgeous
materials put away somewhere but is simply too lazy to get them out.
I was able, however, to buy some exquisite embroideries elsewhere in
Hong Kong and several beautiful carved stools of Chinese "hardwood".
Dinner with "No. I man", as the Governor, then Sir Henry Blake, was
called by the Chinese, made a pleasant evening, but our most interesting
experience was the day we spent in Canton. We started off, a party ofseven,
up the river in a steamer named the Fat Shan and slept the night on board.
As we sat at dinner we noticed in one corner of the dining-saloon a sort of
gigantic umbrella stand filled with rifles.
"What is that fore" we asked a ship's officer.
"Oh, only in case the crew turn on us," he returned cheerfully, which
was hardly reassuring.
 THE FAR EAST II7
In the morning we awoke to find ourselves moored by the landing-stage
of Canton, with teeming Chinese life all around us. The denseness of the
population was something to be seen, not gauged by mere statistics. On
every side humanity swarmed as on an ant-heap. Chinese families offourteen
filled every barge and boat, every bridge and thoroughfare was packed to
overflowing. Here indeed were China's millions with a vengeance!
The progress of our seven palanquins through the streets-none of them
more than about sevenfeet wide-was slow and difficult. Covered palanquins,
our genial guide Ah Cum assured us, were essential, for in rickshaws we
should have no protection against whatever the inhabitants might choose
to pour on us from above. "Foreign devils" were not appreciated in Canton
-at every step howling crowds surrounded us, yelling, as we supposed,
imprecations which it was as well we could not understand. For the first
time we realized that to them we must appear grotesque, for the babies were
brought out amidst shrieks of derision to gaze at our strange white faces
and European clothes. Trusting blindly to Ah Cum we allowed ourselves
to be conducted from shop to temple, and temple to pagoda for six hours
on end.
At one moment we found ourselvesdrawn up outside the gates ofa large
courtyard, and Ah Cum bidding us descend we entered a lodge at the
entrance ofwhat we then discovered to be the prison ofCanton. The warders
received us amiably and by way ofentertainment took down certain objects
hanging on nails upon the walls. What could these bet But we were not left
long in doubt, these ingenious contrivances were no other than instruments
of torture, here a pleasing device for cutting a hundred bits out of a man,
there a kind of vice for fastening on his head and screwing it every day a
little tighter until its teeth penetrated his skull.... If the visitors liked, our
genial hosts intimated, some prisoners could be brought in and demonstrated
on for our benefit-it would be only a matter ofa few dollars.
Is it possiblethat this ghastly proposal had ever met with acceptance from
any previous travellerse As soon as we had grasped their meaning we turned
and fled back to our palanquins thankful to be outside those gruesome
precincts.
I have often wondered whether for 100 dollars they would have had
a convict in and executed him before our eyes. It is possible that a victim
might have been willing to submit to this form of entertainment, for the
Chinesehave little or no fear of death, and, it was said, would readily agree
to have their heads cut off, if a sufficient sum of money was given to their
families in compensation.
A pleasanter Canton picture printed on my mind is the House of the
Dead, where in a row of small compartments were laid the black lacquered
coffins containing the bodies ofthose who had lately died, whilst waiting for
burial. Around each little room there ran a shelf on which were ranged the
objects that the departed used in his life-time and which he might care to
have near him in his long sleep. A touching sight was the coffin of a little
nB SPACIOUS DAYS

schoolboy at the side of which were laid his last lesson-books. He had been
learning English, and an exercise-book was open at the place where he had
written in his childish hand:
"The lilies and the roses are flowers--" And at that point he had died
and the rest ofthe page was a blank. But the book was put besidehim in case
he might wish to get up from his coffin and go on with his book. I should
like to have seen more ofthis gentler side of Chinese life.
Education could be a stern matter in China as we realized when we saw
the examination hall of Canton. All round a large courtyard were ranged
little cubicles in which the luckless students were imprisoned the whole time
the examination lasted, sometimes for several days at a stretch, and where
they were kept under lock and key, their food being passed into them by a
little window. At the end of the time, we were told, several were usually
taken out dead, but what of that? The survivors could be counted on to
have filled in their papers without help from the outside.
Our stay in Hong Kong was enlivened by a curious incident that had
nothing to do with the Chinese. In the P. & O. ship coming from Colombo
we had been much amused by a gay American travelling with three com-
panions. He was evidently the show man of the party, always dressed in the
most exquisite white ducks and apparently acquainted with all the smart set
ofAmerica. He was a very sociableperson and on fmding some of us playing
piquet, saidhe had never played it and was delighted when I offered to teach
him the game.
On arrival at the Hong Kong Hotel he blossomed out into still greater
magnificence and entertained us all on his verandah with strawberries out
of season and an exhibition of his latest creations in the way of ties and
handkerchiefs from the Rue de la Paix, at a marvellous dinner-party with
large bunches of Parma violets for the ladies and a picnic to Bay View at
which he himself grilled chicken and fried eggs over a fire ofsticks.
But one morning he was nowhere to be seen, he and his three com-
panions had vanished without a word of farewell. It was not until we
reached Japan that we heard the explanation-they were a well-known
party of card-sharpers for whom the police were on the look-out at all the
Treaty ports. Suspicions had been aroused on board ship when the American
had been convicted of playing with marked cards which he had tipped the
smoke-room boy to produce when cards were asked for. And this was the
man I had taught to play piquet!
 CHAPTER XVII

JAPAN

s there any thrill like waking up in the morning to fmd oneself in a new
I country! One April morning we found that we had arrived at Nagasaki,
in Kiushiu, the southern island ofJapan. But the first day, spent on shore,
was disappointing; Nagasaki is not a romantic spot and it was only next
morning that I began to feel I was really inJapan, goal ofmy early dreams at
last.
Looking out of my port-hole at dawn it seemed to me at first that I was
back on the Riviera-was not that the coast between Agaye and Theoule,
red rocks, blue sea, and green pine-trees as I had always known them! But
what Provencal boatman ever looked like that ivory-faced old man in his
blue kimono, his head thatched with a spreading straw hat, paddling his
queer craft through the water! No, this was not the Mediterranean, it was
the Inland Sea, we were arriving in Nippon, the main island ofJapan.
Gradually, as I gazed, I felt as if a willow pattern plate was coming to
life before my eyes. Where elsehad I seen those strange arched bridges, those
curving eaves, those gnarled trees in fantastic shapes! This feeling of unreality
did not leave me on landing, Japan seemed to me like a toy country, not to
be taken seriously. Did people really live in those little wood and paper
houses, really walk in those tiny Japanese gardens with their dwarf trees,
bronze storks and flat stones on which to step from point to point!
In those days only the big towns ofJapan were at all Europeanized, the
villages, particularly up country, remained perfectly primitive and unspoilt.
And even in the largest towns there were only a few Western features-
telegraph poles, tram lines and railway stations-the architecture was still
almost entirely Japanese. Tokyo, which was enormous, covering, forty years
ago, the same area as London, was simply a vast sea of wooden one-storey
houses for, on account ofearthquakes, the Japanese had then wisely refrained
from erecting the high structures of masonry which in later disasters proved
so perilous.
I once asked a Japanese how many earthquakes usually occurred in the
course of a year in Japan; he answered, "I think about 365," a typically
Japanese way of saying they were of daily occurrence. But in spite of this
they never lost their terror for the inhabitants. "I suppose you have grown
quite accustomed to earthquakes!" I said thoughtlessly to an Englishwoman
with whom I lunched in Tokyo, but she shuddered as she answered: "Oh,
no, we never speak of them." During the seven weeks I spent in the country
we did not, however, experience a single shock.
We soon learnt to love Japanese houses. The perfect cleanliness of the
fine matting, the polished boards on the floors over which one might only
up
120 SPACIOUS DAYS

walk in stockinged feet, and the almost complete absence of furniture was
wonderfully soothing. Whenever possible we stayed in Japanese inns or in
the Japanese part ofa European hotel, and I could well understand how the
Comtesse de Polignac, who lived near us at Cannes, should, after travelling in
Japan, have wanted to erect a Japanese house in the garden of her villa "Les
Lotus".
I remembered going to see this after its triumphal completion. for there
had been an unforeseen hitch in the proceedings. The Comtesse had bought
the house in Japan and had it transported bit by bit to Europe together with
fifty Japanese workmen to put it together again. But on arrival at Cannes
they found they had forgotten to bring their tools so all went back to Japan
to fetch them-a quite simple way out of the difficulty from the Oriental
point of view.
The Japanese were not fond of showing their homes to foreigners. Cecil
Hanbury, who had entertained many Japanese at La Mortola on their
visits to Europe, received cordial invitations from them to avail himself of
their hospitality should he ever go to their country. He went there some time
later and, taking one of his former guests at his word, wrote to say he was
about to arrive in Japan and would like to visit him. The Japanese replied
with the utmost courtesy that he was extremely sorry not to be able to
invite him to stay as all his twelve country houses had just been burnt to the
ground.
On arrival in Japan we had been advised to engage a guide named Ito,
a little man with side whiskers, dressed in a loud check suit and bowler hat,
looking rather like a bookmaker; he did not fit at all well into the picture.
But as we knew nothing of the language it would have been difficult to
travel up country without him.
One evening after he had gone to bed we found ourselves in a most
awkward predicament. Ellie Archdale, having strained a muscle walking
over rough ground in the mountains, bethought herself of calling in a
masseur. The masseurs in Japan were always blind men who walked up and
down the streets ringing a bell like a muffin-man. Hearing this bell under
her window Ellie had the masseur called in and he immediately set to work,
kneading her remorselessly, on the spot where he believed the trouble to be.
This was about 10 p.m. Towards midnight, when we were all in bed, I
heard shouts for help and rushing into Ellie's room, found the masseur still
kneading whilst Ellie groaned, "He will go on rubbing the same spot and it's
getting so tender, but I can't tell him to stop!" None of us knew how to say
in Japanese, "It is enough" or "Please go away!" and since it is impossible to
conununicate with a blind man by signs we were at a loss how to get rid of
him. We tried drawing his hands away but back they went to the tender
spot again. At last I was obliged to go and wake up Ito who, entering, with
the magic word, "Takusanl" (enough) rescued poor Ellie from her misery.
Ito, however, cast such a blight over the first weeks of our stay in the
country, taking us only to the "show places" and to the shops where
 JAPAN I2I

doubtless he obtained a handsome commission, that at last we grew restive

and insisted on exploring back streets for curios, and picnicking instead
of going to the inns he proposed. This, of course, annoyed him, but the
climax was reached when one morning he explained to me in his usual sort
of pidgin-English that it was not the custom in Japan for a man to let
"radies" walk in front of him. (The Chinese and Japanese have a way of
transposing their 1'sand r's in English). "When I travel," he went on to say,
"my wife she walk behind, she cally my bag." "That," I could not refrain
from replying in his own jargon, "that because you not civilized, we in
England civilized, ladies walk in front."
We were not surprised when next morning Ito came in to say he wished
"to tender his lesignation", giving as his reason our habit of taking our
meals on the grass, and this having been rapturously accepted by us all three
in chorus, we settled down to enjoy Japan.
As it was necessary for one ofus to be able to make ourselves understood,
J set to work to learn a little Japanese, but it was no easy task. The difficulty
consisted less in grammar or pronunciation, than in construction and the
various forms of speech. For I found there were a number ofdifferent forms
of Japanese-coolies' Japanese, commercial Japanese, Court Japanese; the
Emperor, I believe, had a Japanese all to himself Then it was essential to
make use ofhonorifics if one did not want to appear discourteous; to learn
which things had to be distinguished as "0" (honourable), hot water being
honourable, "0 yu" but not cold water, which is simply "mlzu", And
instead of the brief imperatives of "ao", "lao" and "jao" (come, bring, ~o)
which served our purpose in India, a Japanese servant must be asked 'to
deign" to bring one's tea, and that anyone knocking at one's door must be
invited "to condescendto make an honourable entry". The omission ofany of
theselittle flowers ofspeechwould indicate a lack ofwhat Ito called 'Japanese
.
ponteness ".
I found even a slight knowledge ofJapanese extremely useful, not merely
as a means for explaining our wants but for inspiring confidence, and
persuadingJapanese art dealers to produce things they would not have shown
to anyone obviously new to the country.
The curious distaste for showing their wares to strangers which charac-
terized the Chinese, extended also to some ofthe Japanese shopkeepers, who
would keep their best things in the background rather than expose them to
the profane gaze of the tourist. On one occasion I saw a beautiful vase in
the window of a European shop in Yokohama and went inside to make
enquiries. I was told that it was modern china called Makudzu, made at a
kiln near Yokohama and much valued in Japan, but the output was small
and this was the only piece they had.
After buying it, I decided to visit the kiln in the hope of discovering
other specimens of the kind, and on arrival found an old man sitting on the
floor in what appeared to be a perfectly empty room. I asked him in halting
Japanese to show me some vases, but he shook his head and intimated that
 SPACIOUS DAYS

he had nothing for sale. However, by exerting all the arts of diplomacy
I persuaded him to let me push aside the sliding panel of a cupboard built
into the wall, after the Japanese fashion, and there inside were the loveliest
vases, three ofwhich he ended by allowing me to carry off.
The collector who revered only the antique found, however, less to
interest him in Japan than in China, for antique Japanese art was almost
entirely copied from the Chinese,and old Satsuma could not compare with
Sung or Ming for beauty. But some of the modern Japanese seemed to
me to have surpassed their modern Chinese rivals, notably Makudzu and the
exquisite Satsuma of Yabu Meizan in Osaka, whilst no modern Chinese
embroideries could compare with the work of Nishimura or Takashimaya
in Kyoto.
The Japanese forty years ago were artists to the core; they really loved
the things they made. An ivory carver from whom one had bought a little
figure would return next day with a tiny square of crepe lined with silk to
wrap it in; he could not bear to think that the object on which he had
lavished so much skill might be roughly treated.
Money was not the sole consideration with these people; they could
only work by the inspiration of the moment. For this reason it was almost
impossible to get them to copy anything, "No, we tired making that, we
make something else now," would be the answer whatever sums one offered
them.
Or perhaps the sun was shining and it seemed a pity to stay indoors, then
the Japanese would shut his shop for the day and go out with his family to
look at the irises.
It was a kindly provision of Nature that a country as lovely as Japan
should be inhabited by a people so capable of appreciating its beauty. In the
spring, seas of pale pink cherry blossom cover the hillsides, and azaleas in all
shades of rose and apricot grow with the profusion of gorse on an English
common, some varieties attaining such a height that riding along mountain
paths one looked up through azaleas to the sky. And below, the ground was
carpeted with pale blue violets and japonica.
The Japanese in those days worshipped Nature, a kuruma ya (rickshaw
coolie) would dash to pick me flowers and bring them back triumphantly,
expatiating on their beauty, and at a turn of the road, coming suddenly in
sight ofFuji-yama,the white pointed mountain ofJapan, he would put down
the shafts of the rickshaw and prostrate himself to the earth in veneration.
Arranging flowers was almost a religious ceremony in old Japan, per-
formed with much solemnity after years oflaborious training. We watched
an expert one evening, an old man with a hideous but charming counten-
ance, give an exhibition of his art, in an hour and a quarter he had filled
three vases. One I particularly remember was an arrangement of white
peoniesand perfectly bare brown twigs, which he took infinite pains to bend,
so as to make them all take the same direction, giving the effect of leafless
trees upon a windswept hill.
 JAPAN 12]

We spent several enchanting weeks up country inJapan, riding up steep

mountain pathways on rough ponies, putting up at inns and tea-houses and
boating on the lovely lakes of Chusenji and Hakone. Nowhere did we fmd
a trace of the xenophobia we had met in China, everywhere we were
welcomed with smiles.
Kindness, especiallyto children, was a striking feature ofJapanese life, the
spring festival in honour oflittle boys was in progress during April, and large
red balloons in the shape of fishes floated from the roofs of houses blessed
with sons.
It is true that, as everywhere in the East, except Burma, women occupied
an inferior position and, as Ito had said, walked behind their husbands,
unless they had adopted European dress (highly unbecoming to them), as at
the British Legation in Tokyo, where they enjoyed the privilege of going
through the door before their lords and masters. No Japanese, however,
would have thought of offering his seat to a lady in a train.
But the little girls were happy, running about shod with cotton socks and
straw sandals, in pleasant contrast to the little girls of China who, in the old
days, had their feet reduced to the required dimensions by strapping the heel
to the toe so as to form a sort ofhoo£ I measured a Chinese woman's shoe
on my hand in Shanghai and it was exactly the length of my forefinger.
Japanese children were early taught obedience, and respect for sacred
things. Seeing the floor of a temple strewn with coins, I asked if there was
no risk ofmoney left in this way being stolen, but was told, "No child would
think of taking money offered to the temple."
I loved the merry gods of Japan one saw everywhere, portrayed in
pictures or in the tiny wood or ivory carvings known as netzukes-jovial
Dai Koku, prosperous Hotei with his vast stomach, above all Jiro Jin with
his long beard and towering forehead, the benevolent god ofgood luck and
children. A more serious personality was the sage Dharma, represented only
by a head and shoulders, because he had sat and meditated so long that his
arms and legs had dropped offand he had to be carried about on the back of
a disciple.
It was impossible not to love the simpler Japanese, the little old men and
women one met on the mountains, greeting one with a smiling, "0 haro!
(Good day)," were charming. Sometimes, too, I would come up to my
room in an hotel and fmd a couple of pedlars, an old husband and wife, who
had spread out their wares and were engaged in wandering round the room
hand in hand, examining my possessions. An indiarubber hot-water bottle
filled them with amazement and they would touch the warm soft thing with
their fingers wondering whether it was alive.
European clothes were a never ending source of interest to the Japanese.
Coming out of our inn at Yamada, an unsophisticated village some seven
hours' journey from Kyoto, we found the whole street blocked with a dense
crowd waiting to seeus appear, and as we set out for a walk they all followed
us, clattering behind us on wooden clogs and whispering comments.
12 4 SPACIOUS DAYS

Yet that same morning my progress to the bath had created no excite-
ment. There was no bathroom in the inn and the nesan (maidservant) had
led me clothed in a kimono down the village street to the bath-house, a
building that looked like a shop, with one side facing a garden, made entirely
ofglass. In the middle ofthe room was a high wooden tub filled with steam-
ing hot water which I was invited to enter in full view of the garden where
a Japanese man sat peacefully smoking a pipe. Neither in the street nor when
I hastily sprang into the tub was a single head turned in my direction, and
J realized that once divested of my European clothes I ceased to be of the
least interest to the population. Baths indeed were frequently taken in public
by the Japanese themselves, and nowhere except in the most highly Euro-
peanized hotels could one expect to fmd a lock or bolt on the bathroom door.
Clean bathrooms were, however, to be found everywhere, usually with
deep wooden baths sunk in the floor and always beautifully hot water,
however primitive the other arrangements might be. In one place the bath
was filled through a thick bamboo pipe connecting with a shed at the top
ofthe garden, where an old man heated the water and poured it in bucketfuls
down the pipe. The only way of regulating the temperature was by using
the bamboo as a telephone and shouting to the old man: "0 yu" (honourable
hot water) or "mizu" (cold water), according to one's requirements, with
the risk ofreceiving a volley of boiling water in one's mouth whilst one was
speaking. Still, on the whole the plan answered very well.
In those days the people all retained their national dress, the men only
supplementing it occasionally with a European hat, the combination of a
billycock and a low-necked kimono producing the oddest effect.
The women wore nothing over their carefully arranged coiffures, and
kept almost entirely to dark blue or slate grey for their kimonos, with wide
silk obis swathed round their waists and wooden clogs or straw sandals over
their calico-shod feet. Gorgeous kimonos, such as one sees on the London
stage, were only worn by geishas or the women of the Yoshiwara-the pros-
titutes' quarter of the town-though perhaps princesses in the privacy of
their apartments may have indulged in brighter garments than one saw
abroad in the streets.
In adopting Japanese dress it was necessary to be very careful, for every
shape and colour had its significance, one form of obi distinguishing the
married woman, another the widow, and another the young girl of mar-
riageable age. This was explained to me as I sat in a shop choosing kimonos
and obis to bring home with me, for when my choice fell on a beautiful
rose-coloured obi I was gently reminded, "You no can wear that, it runatic
colour." It seemed a pity that so charming a tint should be the badge of the
demented.
Japanese parasols were still in fashion, particularly on wet days when the
rain poured relentlessly through the paper, reducing it to pulp; in fine
weather it was usual to appear with a "best Birmingham" black silk um-
brella as a protection from the sun.
 JAPAN uS

We alwaysenjoyed getting intoJapanesedress, which we found singularly

restful, except Susan Briggs, who, throughout our travels in the East
assumed an air of martyrdom.
I can see her still, moving gloomily around my room in a kimono much
too short for her, deeply resentful because on our arrival at an inn in the
mountains ofJapan, wet through from a rainstorm, we had all been obliged
to accept the kind offer of kimonos from the innkeeper's wife in exchange
for our soaking garments-a change that we much enjoyed but which
outraged Briggs's feelings!
Living in the Japanese style, however, sometimes led to embarrassing
situations. It must be remembered that only the outside walls are made of
wood, the rooms being divided from each other, and also from the verandah,
by partitions of thin rice paper framed in wooden slats, made to slide in
grooves so smoothly that at any moment two rooms can be thrown into
one. Hence privacy can never be ensured, for there isnothing to prevent one's
next door neighbour from pushing the partition away or poking a small
hole in it with his fmger.
It was thus that Ellie Archdale met with a strange experience at Miyano-
shita, where we stayed in the Japanese part of the hotel. Waking in the
morning she was astonished to find a large Teutonic countenance asleep
beside her, breathing heavily into her face. At first she could not imagine
what had happened, but gradually realized that her bed and that ofa German
in the next room, were both pushed up against the same paper partition and
in turning over he had given it only the light touch necessary to make it
slide away, leaving nothing between the two sleepers. Fortunately she was
able to replace the partition hastily before the German awoke.
To be provided with a bed at all was a concession to European habits.
The Japanese themselves slept on mattresses laid on the floor with large
padded kimonos for bedding, all of which were rolled up and put away
behind the sliding panels of the wall cupboards in the day-time. The only
furniture consisted of a kakemono, or long roll picture, in one corner, and
under it a bronze vase containing a branch ofcherry-blossom or azalea with
perhaps a bronze incense burner, and a few flat cushions on which to sit.
Chairs were only provided for Europeans and made it difficult to
conform to Japanese etiquette. For should any guest arrive it was necessary
to greet them by bending forward until one's face touched the floor, an easy
attitude to assume when sitting on one's heels. But when I took tea with
an Englishwoman in Tokyo, who kindly gave me a chair, I found it ex-
tremely difficult each time a Japanese guest entered, to plunge on to my
knees tea-cup in hand, and land with my nose on the matting.
"Tea ceremony", asit was calledamongst theJapanese, was a most curious
rite, which had nothing to do with the pleasant habit of tea-drinking as we
know it, or as it was carried on in the tea-houses all over Japan, where the
tea drunk. by the Japanese, known as Nihon cha in contradistinction to
Nankin cha preferred by Europeans, was a sort of green powder which,
126 SPACIOUS DAYS

dissolved in boiling water, served without milk or sugar and accompanied

by pink bean paste cakes made quite an agreeable meal.
But "tea ceremony" was quite another matter, not a question ofdrinking
tea or the art of making it, but solely that of pouring it out-which takes
many years to acquire. It did not seem to matter whether the resulting
beverage was good or not, proficiency consisted in the manner of mani-
pulating the tea-set. This solemn rite was usually carried out in a theatre
before a crowd of admiring spectators who understood the skill of every
movement just as music lovers can appreciate the execution of a brilliant
pianist.
On an occasion ofthis kind, we sat on the mats with a number ofserious
Japanese men who, by the respectful reception accorded them by the
manager, appeared to be magnates of no small importance, and watched
with bewilderment the careful handling ofeach cup, the studied curve ofthe
performer's arm asshe raisedthe tea-pot, and ofher fingers asshe moved each
spoon. This, we were told, was the result of three years' practice carried out
for twenty minutes every day. The audience was filled with rapture at the
perfection she had now attained.
"Tea ceremony", which took place in an outer room, was followed by
the "cherry-blossom dance" inside the theatre and was really charming.
The plan on which the theatre was arranged in Japan seemed to me
interesting, as reminiscent of the theatre in England in Shakespeare's day.
We did not attend any serious plays, for Japanese drama is apt to be
almost as lengthy as a Burmese pwe and to the foreigner would seem hardly
less tedious, though if there had been a Sada Yacco, whom I saw afterwards
in Paris, I would willingly have sat through a night to watch her. But the
shows we saw consisted mainly of music and dancing, the music produced
on samisens and kotos and on small drums that the meikos sound with their
knuckles. Japanese music has a weird fascination of its own, at first one
misses the melody and harmonies of Western music, but after a while one
begins to fall under the spell.
The performance usually begins with a few preliminary sounds, hardly
to be described as chords, evoked from the samisens by the meikos sitting stiff
and impassive on their mats. At the first note a strange sensation came over
one, a subdued thrill of expectancy, provoked by the slow solemn beats of
the rhythm.
Then the geisha comes forward, moving silently in time to the music,
first one foot and then the other, softly padding on the mats, her brocaded
sleeves waving like the wings of some brilliant butterfly. In her eyes, dark
and fathomless as the eyes of a spirit, there is nothing of the coquetry of the
Western dancing girl, she does not even smile and her lips are closed like the
bud of a flower. She hardly lifts her feet from the ground, she goes through
no contortions like the Burmese dancers, her skill lies in the rhythm of her
movements, executed in perfect harmony with the throbbing of the drums
and the wailing minor ofthe samisens and kotos. As one listens one seems to
 JAPAN I:J.7

be transported into a land of shadows, to hear the onward march oftime, to

seebefore one's eyesa ghostly pageant-daimyos with their glittering swords,
shoguns, samurais, ronins, princesses in their gorgeous robes, all marching
with muffled tread to the beat, beat of the music.
I shall never forget the sacred dance we attended at a Shinto temple in a
cryptomeria grove amidst the shrines of Ise near Yamada.
After casting our shoes at the entrance, we were shown into a sort of
chapel, the farther end divided offby a bamboo rail, after the manner of the
chancel in a Christian church. Before this rail we sat upon mats, whilst on
the other side of it were ranged a white altar, various religious accessories
and musical instruments. After a few moments four priests entered, attired
in moss green silk, followed by six dancing girls in short white silk kimonos
and enormously wide terra-cotta silk trousers that trailed behind them on
the ground.
The ceremony opened with a prayer, the priest praying for us all by name,
after which the "dance" began. This consisted in four of the dancing girls
waving branches of sacred trees, tied with purple ribbon, in time to the
music of a flute; a gong and a large drum breaking intermittently into a
weird and plaintive chant, which somehow inspired one with a feeling of
mysterious awe.
After the procession had left the chapel, strange viands were offered to
us in the shape of dried fish, tiny oranges and rice, accompanied by saki
(the wine ofJapan made from rice) and eaten with a pair of chop-sticks.
We were also presented with a number of paper charms which had all been
blessed by the god of the temple, and would bring us good luck for the rest
of our lives.
Japan, no less than Burma, seemed to me a land of spirits, not so much
happy spirits of the woods and rivers like the Burmese nats, but the spirits
of the dead which seemed to hover around the Shinto temples where the
people went to invoke their long departed ancestors, kneeling before a large
white sheet. There amidst the silenceofthe woods one might sit for hours on
the steps of such a temple, feeling the spirit world all around one. Belief in
the immortality of the soul became a very real thing in the atmosphere of
old Japan.
The religious rites and ceremonies of the Japanese in those days were
extraordinarily quaint and sometimes childish. Surrounding some of the
temples were numbers of stone dragons round the legs of which the faith-
ful tied little bandages as an act of sacrifice but, it was explained to us, one
must be careful to tie the knot with one finger only, otherwise it did not
count.
A very curious place of pilgrimage was the temple of Sengaku-ji at
Takanawa nearTokyo where the Japaneselined up with little sticksofincense
to burn before the shrines of the famous forty-seven ronins, those heroes of
the eighteenth-century Japan who died in defence of their honour. To such
a point did this veneration go that one old man, visiting the shrines, was so
128 SPACIOUS DAYS

overcome with emotion that he also committed hara-kiri, on the spot, and a
forty-eighth tombstone was added to the rest.
For Takumi-no-kami, having been insulted by Kotsuke-no-suki, a court
official, attempted his life and, failing, was obliged, according to the curious
code ofhis country, to commit hara-kiri. Then forty-seven of his followers
set out to avenge his death and, such was the devotion of their leader.
Oishi Kuranousuke, that in order to throw his enemy off his guard. he
pretended for years to be sunk in debauchery. So at last Kotsuke-no-suki
relaxed the precautions he had taken for his safety and fell a victim to the
blows of Kuranousuke and his band of avengers. But honour obliged the
forty-seven ronins in their turn to commit hara-kiri and there they lay more
than a hundred years later, venerated by their fellow-countrymen.
I did not wonder that the Japanese loved Nikko. "See Naples and die!"
said the Italians, and the Japanese declared that no one could use the word
"kekko" (magnificent) until he has seen the temples ofNikko, those marvels
ofJapanese art. Indeed one on completion seemed so beautiful to those who
had erected it that they feared the wrath of the gods and deliberately turned
one portion of the carving upside down so as to spoil the effect and save the
arch from destruction.
One picture that stands out in my memory is that of the temple at
Kamakura, a lovely spot that reminded of me Juan-les-Pins in the old days,
with pine trees growing along the silvery beach. It was there that the
famous Dai-Butsu, a gigantic image of Buddha, had been constructed out of
hollow bronze with an opening at one side through which one entered and
mounted upwards to look out through the back of his head. This was re-
garded as so sacred that we were forbidden to take a snapshot of it, though
photographs of it were easily obtained.
But the most interesting feature of Kamakura seemed to me the temple
of Hase-Dera then nearly 500 years old, dedicated to Kwan-se-on, the god-
dess of mercy whose golden image, preserved in the precincts, was said to
have worked miracles. The local priest, anxious to restore it, had issued a
beautiful appeal for funds in which this paragraph occurred:
"Buddhism is no narrow creed confined to one community or
nation, it is the law of the Universe which was before beginning and is
for ever without end; it is the law of Cause and Effect and it teaches ofa
Divine and Transcendant power in Nature, vast and boundless as eternal
space and yet governing the most trivial circumstances of men's lives
and providing a means of Salvation and eternal happiness benevolent and
welcome as light in a dark night."

It was Buddhism with its doctrine ofthe Inner Light, its teaching oflove
and mercy, Shintoism with its belief in the existence of the soul after death,
which made the spiritual life ofJapan as I knew it. If, as I was told some years
later, religion has been destroyed there by the tide ofmaterialism emanating
The Author at the age of 22
My husband, Arthur Webster, with his police, is the second British officer seated from the left
 JAPAN 12.9

from the Western world and of militarism propagated by Germany, it has

been the end, not only of a wonderful civilization, but of all that made life
worth living in that once peaceful and happy country.
In the light of events that took place at the end of the Second World
War it will no doubt be said that I have painted too rosy a picture in this
chapter. But I can only write ofJapan as I saw it, and at that date there was
no trace of the cruelty we are now assured to have been always inherent
in the Japanese character.
Such cruelty as they have shown in the recent war must, I think, have
been produced by the military caste inflamed by the ruthlessness the Germans
have always displayed in warfare. Militarism is bound to flourish in any
country where women exercise little influence, and the German idea of
"Kinder, Kiiche, Kirche" (Children, kitchen, church) as the only rightful
sphere for women, no doubt found a ready echo in the minds ofthe Japanese.
If anyone doubts my view ofJapan as it existed in the 'nineties of the last
century I would refer them to the delightful book ofMrs. Hugh Fraser, wife
ofthe British Minister in Tokyo at that date, where she speaks of the kindli-
ness of the people, their concern for the sick and poor, the consternation of
the whole population at the attempt on the life of the Czarevitch by a mad
policeman during his visit to Japan-a violation of their whole code of
honour and hospitality.
When I arrived in Tokyo Mr. Hugh Fraser had left, but Mr. Gubbins
(whom Mrs. Fraser often refers to as Mr. G.) was still at the Legation. Sir
Ernest Satow, a curious and rather sardonic personality was now Minister
and called on me the day after my arrival; on the following day Mrs. Gub-
bins chaperoned me to a tennis party at the Legation, a pleasant house in a
charming garden. I was particularly fascinated by the maze before the front
door which, I observed to Sir Ernest Satow, must provide a most con-
venient bolt-hole for him to slip into if he wished to escape from an im-
portune visitor. He replied that he had not thought ofit in that light, but he
would certainly bear the suggestion in mind.
The cosmopolitan atmosphere ofthese parties at the British Legation was
delightful, here were specimens of a number of different nationalities with
French as the accepted medium for conversation.
There were also several British officers from the Barileur, then in harbour
at Yokohama, with whom we made friends, Captain -ColviIle and the flag
lieutenant Mr. Bowden Smith in particular, who joined us in our expedi-
tions up country and afterwards entertained us to lunch in the Admiral's
cabin on the Badfeur. Amongst the foreign diplomats I met at the Legation
were two Belgians, Paul and Adolphe May, who afterwards came to call on
me in Yokohama. They were in great form at the Nippon Club spring race-
meeting where Jremember hearing them discussing their bets, thus:
"Mais, Adolphe mon cher, vous avez backl un complete outsidere!"
"C' est vral,..,
J aurats. dU backer IeJavourlle.
I: ...
'» le aois bien, dans ces country meetings il nefaut jamais backer un outsidire"
I
130 SPACIOUS DAYS

The race-meeting itself was a great occasion. At eleven o'clock in the

morning the Emperor Mutsu Hito made a triumphal progress along the
Bund, or sea-front of Yokohama, which had been decorated with little
coloured lamps in his honour, but as, of course, they did not show in the
day-time and were taken down at nightfall, they somewhat failed in their
effect; so did the fireworks which were let offin bright sunshine.
The first we knew of the Mikado's arrival was when little Japanese
policemen came running up to our rooms in the hotel which overlooked the
Bund, and ordered us to go and stand in the street below since it would be
sacrilege to look down on the Imperial head from our windows or even
from the terrace; at the same time our cameras were taken from us lest we
should commit Iese-majesd by photographing him.
The precautions taken for preserving the sanctity ofthe Imperial presence
did not, however, extend to the race-course, for once arrived there we were
all packed into one small Grand Stand-the Emperor, ourselves, the postman
and Susan Briggs. It was a curious scene; one felt as if one had walked on to
the stage of Daly's Theatre-with Japanese ladies in their national dress,
foreigners in every kind of sporting get-up, British officers in naval uniform
and a Japanese band playing selections from The Geisha. For although the
play itself was banned in Japan, mainly on account of the word 'Jap"
recurring in it which was regarded as offensive, the music of that charming
operetta was much appreciated there.
Our seven weeks in the Land ofthe Rising Sun had passed all to quickly
and now the Canadian Pacific steamer Empress of Japan lay in port,
waiting to bear us eastwards to America.
To drown the sadness of departure we spent our last evening at "The
lOO Steps Tea-house" in Yokohama. After a dinner of bamboo shoots,
ginger root and tiny raw fishes off the end ofchop-sticks, the geishas did some
dances. They began to perform "Chon Kina" but as this seemed likely to
become somewhat risque we cried, "Takusan! Takusan!" (Enough! Enough!)
whereat they smilingly replied, "Then we will play at 'Tiger'." And so we
did. according to their instructions, advancing in single file to the beat of
the samisens and jumping out on each other from behind a screen-a sin-
gularly infantile form of amusement.
The geishas indeed were all very young, some were mere children; one
little girl of about eight sat close beside me on the mats, stroking my hand.
"Can one kiss here" I asked the lady of the tea-house, not knowing what
form of endearment was employed with children in Japan. But our hostess
shook her head. "She would not understand, she has not yet learnt. Next
year she willleam in the European school." So it appeared that even "the
Kissing Duet" in The Geisha was true to life in this particular!
After the geishas had given us songs and music they said to me: "Now,
please, will you sing to USl Sing us something from The Geisha!"
Casting about in my mind for something that could not wound Japanese
susceptibilities. I hit on "The Goldfish", which pleased them very much,
 JAPAN 131

then we went on to songs in other languages, ending up with "Ach wie ist's
moglich dann" in which the geishas joined, for it had evidently been taught
them by German tourists.
So at last we bade them "Sayonara", that lovely Japanese word for
Good-bye, and made our way very sadly down the 100 steps.
The rest of our journey round the world was uneventful, though our
voyage across the Pacific might have ended in disaster, for half-way across
something went wrong with the engines and we were nearly brought to
a standstill. That, in those days, would have been the end of us, for wireless
had not yet been adopted at sea, and owing to the vast extent of the Pacific
it was said that no two ships were likely to sight each other, so that signals of
distress would have been sent up in vain.
However we reached Vancouver safely and started on our long journey
across Canada-seven days and nights in the train, broken only by a short
stay at Banffin the Rocky Mountains. But, as I have said, I do not love moun-
tains, and after the azalea-tipped hills of Japan and the snowy peak of
Fuji-yama, the Rockies appeared to me singularly grim and unsmiling.
After that the four days' journey across the prairies seemed interminable,
with nothing to vary the monotony of those vast plains and no sign of life
except prairie dogs perched on tiny hillocks, and picturesque groups of Red
Indians in skins and feathers on the platforms of the stations we passed
through. Now and then embryo towns could be seen springing up in the
wilderness. It is strange to think that what looked from the train windows
like collections of mere shanties, made of match boarding and corrugated
iron, bearing the curious names of Moose Jaw and Medicine Hat, are now
flourishing towns, whilst Winnipeg, where we spent some hours and which
seemed hardly less desolate, has become a large city.
Toronto, where we arrived at last, had however mellowed and for all its
air of modern cleanliness, its red gabled villas with gaily flowering gardens,
seemed to me to have retained an old world charm, whilst its fine public
parks and buildings were pleasantly reminiscent ofan English country town.
From Toronto we took the steamer across Lake Ontario, and arrived at
Buffalo in the evening. I shall never forget how beautiful the river looked
in the summer twilight-Niagara seen from the Canadian side was truly
magnificent-no words can give any idea of its grandeur.
At Buffalo I parted from my two travelling companions, and set offfor
England alone with Briggs. I did not like New York, where I spent two
days and a night, the chessboard pattern of the city, the streets all numbered
instead of named, the skyscrapers, the trams that hardly gave one time to
board them, the rush and hustle, all gave the impression ofhigWy developed
mechanization, which, to my mind, contrasted painfully with the London
of those days, with its queer winding streets, its leisurely horse buses and
tinkling hansoms, its lovely parks and gardens and general atmosphere of
laisser aller.
r was glad to go on board the Cunard liner S.S. Servia (only 6000 tons),
132 SPACIOUS DAYS

which took exactly nine days to cross the Atlantic, owing to the necessity of
dodging icebergs.
A man 1 once met said to me, "I could write all the history ofmy life in
smells." I can understand what he meant-the dusty smell of Egypt, the
scented dusk of India, the clean teak smell of Burma, the exotic odours of
Ceylon, the spicy aroma of China, the odour of flowers mingling with the
incense-laden air around the temples of Japan, the aromatic firwoods of
Canada, 1 had inhaled them all on my journey round the world. And now
as 1 awoke one morning there was wafted through my porthole an odour
so familiar that it brought tears to my eyes-the smell of malt and smoke
and brine, not perhaps a romantic blend, but none the less dear for all that,
the smell of England!
Travel is glorious but 1 know of no more rapturous sensation than to set
foot in one's native land again after long wanderings on alien soil.
 CHAPTER XVIlI

LONDON IN THE 'NINETIES

~
TER returning from my journey round the world I began to feel
the need of a pied-a-terre in London, where I could house the things
I had collected on my travels, so looked around for a flat and mean-
while joined a club. Both proceedings were regarded in those days as very
daring, women's clubs had only just come into being, the "Pioneer" was,
I think, the first and so "advanced" that to spare the feelings of my family I
chose a really "quiet" resort, the "Green Park Club" in Grafton Street,
where no smoking was allowed, and the foot of man might not cross the
threshold. None the less it horrified my mother and once again I regretted
having to cause her pain, but to stay at an hotel would have appeared more
improper.
I found a flat finally in Hans Mansions, in a new block which had just
been built over Harrod's Stores, then a fraction oftheir present size. My flat,
Number 9, now done away with and thrown into the Stores, was charming,
with central heating, that made it as warm in winter as in summer, and large
rooms flooded with sunshine.
But once at Hans Mansions the old problem ofchaperonage began again.
"You cannot live alone," said the family, and it was agreed that some
"companion" must be found, Meanwhile I was fortunate in securing good
maids, including a really marvellous French cook, and I lost no time in
parting with the melancholy Briggs. The change, however, was not at first
much for the better, as, at my mother's desire, she was replaced by Bantling,
a sanctimonious creature who had been partly trained as a Mildmay deaconess
and had a way of casting her eyes up to Heaven in moments of religious
fervour.
But there was one really bright addition to the party at Hans Mansions.
Whilst staying on the river, at Maidenhead, in the summer, my friend
Richenda Gillett came to me on a visit, and brought with her a paper bag
which looked as if it contained a bun. But what was my joy when she
opened it and disclosed the most delicious puppy, a few weeks old, just
a tiny square bundle of black and white wool with a paw at each corner and
dancing brown eyes that radiated mischie£ "Gill", as I always called Rich-
enda, had bought him for half a crown in Leadenhall Market, where he
formed one of a litter of supposed wire-haired terriers, and for a time we
expected him to grow into a pure specimen of that delightful breed-
fox-terriers, whether smooth or wire-haired, have always been my
favourites in the world of dogs.
We christened the little fellow Zola on account ofhis passion for bringing
unpleasant things, such as the backbone oflast night's fish, to light and laying
133
134 SPACIOUS DAYS

them on the drawing-room carpet. As weeks went by and he developed into

a shaggy dog with long hair falling over his bright eyes and with hind legs
too long for his little body, we began to have doubts as to his ancestry. He
was, I believe, a blend of terrier, spaniel, poodle and sheepdog, nevertheless
the result was charming, indeed the admiration he excited was sometimes
quite embarrassing; sentimental females would stop him in the street and
rave over his beauty.
Personally I prefer an intelligent mongrel to the narrow inbred terriers
that are now the fashion. Zola was certainly a marvel of intelligence, able
to find his way about London alone and with a passion for doing tricks that
would have made his fortune in a circus. He took, indeed, such a pride in the
accomplishments I taught him with the aid of biscuits, that after a while he
would refuse to eat a biscuit unless he had first been asked to do a trick. He
was fond of music, too, and would throw up his head and sing in a plaintive
tremolo that appeared to give him exquisite pleasure.
I was glad we had called him Zola for the name once saved his life.
Always an anti-motorist, he had a habit of rushing at the front wheels of a
car and trying to bite them. One day as I was walking with him through
a village in Suffolk, a car came along at a furious pace and Zola as usual
flew towards it. "Zola! ZoIa!" I shouted frantically, thinking his last
moment had come this time. But at that the car stopped dead and a voice
cried, "11 s'appelle Zola, it nefaut pas le tuerl" For by a lucky coincidence the
car was occupied by two Frenchmen who, hearing his name, immediately
jammed on the brakes.
Zola, however, was no chaperone and I was continually pressed by my
relations to engage a companion. "Remember," said one, "you must never
allow a young man inside your door!" I cannot say I obeyed this injunction
implicitly, but I met the first objection by having friends to stay with me on
long visits, so I was never alone. Edith Butler often came over from Ireland,
and delighted everyone with her piano playing and talent for conversation.
Gill, too, came to me for some time whilst working at a hospital as a medical
student.
A friend who now came into my life and became more to me than any
other was Mary Davies, the daughter of Sir Henry Davies, an ex-Lieutenant-
Governor of the Punjab. Her mother having died when she was a child,
Mary lived with her father in Wilton Place. When I first met her she
was about twenty-three, very attractive, with a whimsical sense of humour
and a most original turn of mind. To the world she appeared to be a mere
butterfly, fond of gaiety and always dressed in lovely clothes, often with a
green parrot on her shoulder. Parrots adored her; she seemed to have a
peculiar understanding of their psychology.
She was fond of all animals and used to frequent Jamrach's where all
kinds were for sale, but unlike some impassioned animal lovers her heart was
also full oflove and sympathy for human beings. Only her friends knew the
extent ofher devotion to her old father, once a brilliant intellect but who had
 ,
LONDON IN THE NINETIES I3j

now lost his memory and would sit for hours talking to himself of things
that happened long ago.
As a relief from this sad companionship Mary would come round to my
flat and philosophize by the hour. Sometimes she brought her cousin Ada
Marriott, a most lovely creature like a Greuze, who had just returned from
New York, and delighted us with the real "darkie" songs she had picked up
on the roof gardens of that city. Zola adored her and would sit listening
with pricked ears whilst she sang, and when she rose from the music-stool
would seizeher by the tail ofher gown and drag her back to it by way ofan
encore.
Mary contributed greatly to the gaiety of life at Hans Mansions and
would regale me with stories ofthe adventures she and Ada had had together,
how they had gone to masked balls at Covent Garden, entering into the
game ofmake-beliefin the Continental spirit, great fun, ofcourse, but in the
eyes of society quite shocking. Who would have guessed in those days that
this gay girl who loved to scandalize people would stand out as one of the
greatest heroines of the First World Wan
I knew at first few "Society" people in London, for having lived so long
abroad I felt like a foreigner in my own country. Zola, however, did his
best to make pleasant acquaintances for me by calling on the other occupants
of the flats, snobbishly picking out titles, such as Lord Claud Hamilton, a
charming old gentleman who kept a special cushion for him on his visits,
and Lady Hastings, once a famous beauty, known as "the pocket Venus",
the story ofwhose flight with Lord Hastings out ofthe door of Marshall and
Snelgrove's whilst still engaged to Mr. Henry Chaplin and the subsequent
victory of the latter's horse "Hermit" which ruined Lord Hastings, journa-
lists never tired of recounting when Derby Day came round. Lady Hastings,
who later married Sir George Chetwynd, was still beautiful when I knew her,
and I thought her one of the most charming and simple women I had ever
met.
One day when I went ill to tea with Lady Hastings who should I find
sitting on the sofa but Paul May, one of the two diplomat brothers from
Toklo. He sprang up and bounded towards me. "You remember mee"
, Certainly."
He turned in ecstasy to Lady Hastings. "She remembers me!" and then,
bending in my direction, "I cannot tell you how flattered I feel!"
Soon after he invited me to a dinner-party at his flat nearby at which no
less than seven languages were being talked round the table, and he himself
conversed with me in Japanese.
This, and the longing to revisit Japan and to get more offthe beaten track,
prompted me to learn more of that language, and I made enquiries for a
teacher whom I soon found in the person of Mr. Owaru Suwo, a young
clerk in the Japanese Naval Office who volunteered to come and talk to me
for an hour one evening a week. He was a charming young man with no
idea of time, who would stay on talking long beyond the hour agreed upon.
136 SPACIOUS DAYS

When at the end of several months I asked him what I owed him he replied,
"It is a pleasure to me to teach my language, I could not accept anything
for it,"
What was to be donee I asked a Japanese lady I knew and she assured me
that it would be impossible to insist on payment but one might offer Mr.
Suwo a present.
"It need not, however, be anything ofvalue. If you spend one shilling and
sixpence it will be quite enough. We have a proverb that says, 'Even a pine
needle given from the heart is precious'. He will appreciate anything you
care to give him,"
Finally I presented him with some books which appeared to delight him,
but this may have been only what Ito used to call 'Japanese poriteness".
Anyhow he had increased my longing to re-visit his country.
There seemed, however, no hope of this at the moment for no-one I
knew wanted to go with me so far afield. The South African War was now
occupying everyone's thoughts, and all through that Autumn Of1899 grim
news was reaching us of reverses at the front. At Trent, where I stayed,long
lists of casualties were read out at meal-time and groans went round the
table as names dear to those present rang out remorselessly; in London the
cries of the newsboys shouting " 'orrible slaughter!" sounded perpetually
under our windows. This ghoulish practice was mercifully put down during
the First World War.
I used to wonder whether all this need be, and wanted to be convinced
that it was necessary for I hated to feel that England might be in the wrong.
But I have always had a horror ofwar and could not help asking whether the
whole matter might not have been settled by arbitration. Yet even to raise
this question was to be stigmatized as "pro-Beer" although one's sympathies
were whole-heartedly with one's own people. It was their blood one grieved
to see shed, splendid young lives sacrificed-perhaps needlesslyr But there
were forces at work ofwhich I knew nothing at the time which might have
made any understanding with the Boers impossible.
A journey I made to Germany just after the war had ended showed me
that we had worse enemies to fear. I was still suffering from internal catarrh,
and as no English doctor was able to diagnose the trouble I was advised to
go to Wiesbaden for a cure. But the German doctor proved equally futile
and the country itself most uncongenial. The only thing I really enjoyed was
the opera; a most marvellous rendering of Oberon was given with scenery
painted on gauze that moved on rollers across the stage so that one really
seemed to be driving through a forest full of fairy life, a striking contrast
to the crude scenery of Covent Garden.
But nothing could make up for the unyleasantness and hostility of the
German people at that date. Cries of "verjluchte Engliinderint" pursued one
down the street and if one attempted to board a tram the women would
spread themselves out saying, "Da ist kein Platz, Friiulein," On one occasion
they became so insulting that I could contain myself no longer and turning
 LONDON IN THE 'NINETIES 137

on the whole tramful of chattering women I said in a voice of command,

"Schweigen Sie alle!-sogleich!" (Be quiet, all ofyou, at once!) Somewhat to
my surprise an instant silence ensued and they all looked at me respectfully.
It was a revelation to me in German psychology.
The Germans admire nothing so much as force and courage. Anyone
who imagined that they respectedthe British pacifists during the First World
War was strangely mistaken. Besides, to give them their due, they are
patriotic, and have a hearty contempt for people who are not willing to
stand up for their own country. It will probably be said that their hostility
in 1901 was caused by the South African War and was to be met with on
the same account in France as well as Germany. I can only say that I was in
and out of France all through that time and never met with the least un-
pleasantness from the French. If the Germans insulted us it was less because
they disapproved-as did many other nations-of our action in going to
war with the Boers than because they despised us for not bringing off a
speedier victory.
In their eyes the war had been a display of weakness on the part of
Great Britain and provided an incentive to their own schemes of Weltmacht.
A map of the world was exhibited in the window ofthe principal bookseller
in Wiesbaden with the words, "z« Deutschland gehort die Welt!" in large
letters beneath it.
From that moment I never doubted that we should have to fight
Germany.
 CHAPTER XIX

A WINTER IN EGYPT

HE last years ofthe nineteenth century were often enlived by contro-

T versy on what was known as "the Revolt ofthe Daughters"; a certain

Mrs. Lynn Linton provoking much innocent mirth by her fierce
denunciations ofthe rebels, who, after all, often had just cause for complaint.
Where girls were concerned I must admit that those days were not spacious,
for them it was a period of great retrogression; in the late Victorian
era they had less freedom than the spirited heroines of Jane Austen's
novels and were hardly allowed to express an opinion on any subject-
"What can you, a mere girl, know about id' was the crushing reply to any
such attempt. Still less were they able to take up a profession.
The counterblast to this system of repression was the campaign for
"Women's Rights", for the Suffrage movement was just beginning. I took
no part in this for I could not see that the vote would prove the panacea for
all the disabilities from which women suffered at that period. What they all
needed was an object in life.
It was not merely a matter of work as a means of livelihood, the theme
of most feminists to whom economic independence was the one and only
desideratum. Who had shown the need for women to find an outlet for their
energies apart from financial considerations, the tragedy ofstarving minds in
the midst of material plenryr For men a profession was generally regarded
as necessary, but at that date the only career open to a woman ofthe educated
classes was that ofa hospital nurse, a school teacher or a district visitor.
None of these spheres of usefulness appealed to me. Marriage, the one
vocation women were expected to embrace, did not attract me, because I
felt it to be the end of all adventure and it terrified me by its irrevocability.
For in those days it was regarded as irrevocable, a life affair, and I think
rightly. It has always seemed to me that the remedy for unhappy marriages
is not "easier divorce"-though that may be sometimes the only way out
of an intolerable situation-but in less easy marriage, that is to say in more
serious reflection before taking the plunge.
To be really happy one must have a great affection or an absorbing
interest; to have both is heaven on earth. "11fautfaire le bonheur de quelqu' un!"
I remember my mother saying and at that time of my life there was no-one
to whom I was necessary; I had no niche in the world. I had freedom, the
independence for which so many women crave, but is freedom in itself an
unmixed blessings The Arab wandering in the desert is free but ifhe lacks
water is he happyr That was the trouble with many of us in those days; we
were restless and dissatisfied because we were unemployed-desoeuvries, as
that untranslatable French word expresses it, and so we sought relief in mere
138
 A WINTER IN EGYPT 139

amusement. But to live only for amusement seemed to me like making one's
dinner off cream meringues; recreation, to be enjoyed, must come as the
corollary to work.
Once again I felt the urge to work seriously at writing. But I must see
more of the world if I was to write anything of value. So I must travel, if
possible in the Far East, but finding no-one to go with me I had to content
myself with Egypt and fell in with the suggestion of a certain Lady 1. that
we should spend the winter there.
The voyage out was saddened by the news of the death of Queen
Victoria, which reached us at Gravesend where our ship put in for repairs.
Egypt when we reached it was cold and misty, the glamour it had held for
me as my first glimpse ofthe East had faded, the thrill ofthat experience was
not to be repeated. Cairo still seemed to me a place of noise and tumult
which no longer amused me; the whole atmosphere was charged with
violence and unrest, the cruelty to animals sickened me.
The striking contrast to the tumult of Cairo was the desert; for whilst
in the city there was always deafening noise, in the desert there was almost
deafening silence. I loved riding there, especially by night, a weird and
strange sensation, and driving out to Mena House by day. This was the Egypt
about which Edwyn had told me so much, that I wanted to see more of.
I longed to go up the Nile but Lady 1. was unwilling to forgo whatever
social amenities Cairo had to offer, though owing to mourning for the
Queen these were not of an exhilarating kind; no dancing was allowed,
a few luncheon parties, quiet dinners and dreary evenings at bridge made
up our programme.
A further blight was cast over our stay by a most untoward incident. On
our way out to Egypt an aged German royal Princess had come on board at
Malta, accompanied by a lady-in-waiting named, I think, the Comtesse
Milewska. The Princess, having seen us playing bridge, expressedthe wish to
join us and took her place at our table, with the Comtesse seated at her side
murmuring terms of endearment.
At one moment the death of Queen Victoria was mentioned, whereat
the Princess observed:
"Ah, yes! Three things always happen at once. The Queen is dead, the
Empress (Frederick) is dying, it will be my turn next."
These words seemed to throw the Comtesse into a state bordering on
hysterics, her caresses grew more than ever impassioned, her voice broke and
finally bursting into tears she cried in German:
"No, no, Schatz, it will not be you, not you, you must not say it!"
The Princess took no notice but continued to play on immovably, but
under the cover of her deafness the Comtesse turned to me and whispered:
"But it is true all the same. She is very ill, she is dying, but she does not
know it."
Some days after this painful scene, when we had arrived at the Hotel
Savoy in Cairo, the Comtesse rushed into my room and began to pour forth
 SPACIOUS DAYS

her woes. The Princess, she explained, was not well off and was being
exploited by a gentleman to whom she had trusted her business affairs. She
had some priceless pearls which he was trying to persude her to entrust to
him to be re-strung. "But he will have them changed!" wailed the Comtesse,
"he will have false pearls substituted, and then I shall be accused! Already
I have spent hundreds of my own money to pay the Princess's expenses.
What am I to do, oh, what am I to doe"
I tried to console her and advised her to consult the German Minister in
Cairo. But I never saw her again. The very next morning, we were told, the
Comtesse, whilst out riding, was arrested by the German police and whirled
back to Germany.
At this moment we moved out to Ghezireh Palace Hotel and for a while
saw no more ofthe Princess. Then suddenly one day we met her out driving;
she signalled to us to stop and in a great state ofagitation told us that she was
now alone with only a German maid and would like to come and join us at
our hotel.
So to the Ghezireh Palace she came, and, to my dismay, took to having
her meals at our table. I am a royalist to the backbone, but to have the role of
unofficial lady-in-waiting thrust upon me when I wanted to study Egyptian
life was maddening. Besides, the Princess seemed to me almost as old as
Rameses II in the Ghizeh Museum.
But she was evidently very ill, really dying, as the Comtesse had said,
and I felt terribly sorry for her, so when she could no longer leave her room
and sent me messages to come and see her I used to sit by her and take down
German letters she dictated to the German Empress and other royal per-
sonages telling them of her condition.
Then she would talk to me sadly of her poverty, whether real or
imaginary I could not tell. One day she said:
"I have no money. When I leave Cairo I shall die in the street."
"Oh, no, ma' am," I said cheerfully, "the Emperor will not allow you to
do that!"
But she shook her head. "Oh, yes, he will. He will not care. And if! go
to London no-one will care for me either."
Convinced that this was only a delusion of old age and illness I said
soothingly:
"Oh well, ma'arn, if it comes to that, I've got a flat in London, I won't
let you die in the street."
"Very we, 11" shee said
sal at once, "I komm.I"
I was appalled. What on earth should I do if by a miracle the poor old
lady recovered and really came to join Zola and me at Hans Mansionsr
However, she was obviously so ill that it seemed quite safe to offer her
unlimited hospitality.
After a while her appeals to the German Royal Family met with some
response and a Grand Duke was sent to look after her. But he evidently
found Cairo life more amusing, and after entertaining us all at a magnificent
 A WINTER IN EGYPT

luncheon with champagne flowing he went back to Germany, leaving the

Princess still alone with the German maid. And at last we were obliged to
go home, too, leaving the Princess at the hotel, where she died a few weeks
later.
The astonishing sequel to this incident, which appeared at length in the
London Press, was an action brought against the Grand Duke for mis-
appropriation of her money by the Comtesse Milewska whose room had
been searched and her handbag containing about 20,000 marks confiscated
by orders from Berlin. The Duke's counsel, however, declared that it had
been taken by her homme de confiance which quite accorded with all that
Milewska had told me about him. But I never heard how this strange affair
ended.
 CHAPTER XX

EDW ARDIAN ENGLAND

ER my return from Egypt I was taken terribly ill with ptomaine

/{ poisoning and the doctor gave as his opinion that I could not live
through the night, which, with a temperature of 106'8 and a pulse of
140, seemed not unlikely. It was a curious sensation to feel oneself sinking
through one's bed, but at the time it did not greatly distress me.
It is a comfort to know that when one is ill enough to die one no longer
clings to life. I remember thinking quite calmly, "Now I have been round
this world and am going to another one; I wonder what it will be liker"
But I did not go. In the morning I was better; by the end ofthe week I was
going about as usual and able to enjoy the pleasures ofthe season.
London, now that the reign of Edward VU had begun, became very
pleasant, gayer probably than it had ever been since the days of the merry
Stuarts, or was ever to be again. It was said after the French Revolution that
those who had not lived before 1789 had never known la douceur de la vie,
so might it be said of our own times, that those who had not lived before
1914 could have no idea ofthe perfection to which civilization had attained.
Travel by road, rail or sea had become cheap and easy, home life had
been brightened by new schemes of architecture, house decoration and
gardening, and craftsmanship had achieved a pitch never dreamt of during
the Victorian era. How beautifully things were made in those days! What
exquisite furniture, glass and china, what lovely dress materials were to be
found in the London shops! And to what an art had bookbinding been
brought! After the First World War had burst over the succeeding Georgian
era, with its mass production, life was never the same again.
I now felt quite at home in London and no longer like a foreigner in my
own country. Life had become a merry whirl of theatres, supper parties,
days on the river, summer afternoons at Hurlingham or Ranelagh. In this
last connection I managed to horrify my mother for I had told her in a letter
that I had been to Ranelagh and she wrote back saying, "How can you
enjoy going to a low dancing-saloon such as Ranelaghr" She was, ofcourse,
thinking of the Ranelagh Gardens on the banks of the Thames which in the
eighteenth century really was a low resort where people ofall classes went to
dance; of the delightful country club with its lovely gardens, reedy ponds,
its golf course and polo matches-now alas! a thing of the past-she knew
nothing.
Dances, however, in that first Edwardian era were still, as in Victorian
days, for the few, not for the many in Society. There was no dancing, as
there is today, at hotels and restaurants, there were no night clubs except the
Supper Club in Grafton Street, to which one went on Sunday evenings on
142
 EDWARDIAN ENGLAND 143

the invitation of a member-which was quite "the thing to do". The

only public ball recognized by Society was the Caledonian Ball every season,
which was a gathering ofthe clansand their friends; apart from this, dancing
was confined to private houses, and to a close ring of hostesses. To give a
dance was like taking a ticket for all the other dances ofthe season, invitations
poured in on one from other dance-givers who might be quite unknown to
one, and who might unblushingly leave out their oldest friends if they were
unable to make the same return. It seemed to me a most detestably com-
mercial development of the "cutlet for cutlet" system.
This, and the snobbishness that then prevailed, were the lesspleasant side
of London life. My mother's aloofness from the world and her complete
disregard for wealth and position had not prepared me for the value attached
to them by Society. I had imagined love for titles to be peculiar to
parvenus like the people who gathered round the Grand Dukes at the Cannes
Golf Club, something ridiculous, to be laughed at; now I found it amongst
people of all classes, even those who might have been expected to know
better.
I could understand respect for breeding, pride in an ancient or an
honoured name. On the continent of Europe, in France before the Revolu-
tion, in Austria before the First World War, the "aristocracy" formed a
caste apart, a "de" or "von" really denoted a family ofancient lineage living
on their lands from time immemorial. "Nobles" were thus bred as scien-
tificallyas Pekes or Derby winners and the Almanach de Gotha formed a stud-
book to which one could refer. The sixteen quarterings demanded in Vienna
might be very absurd, nevertheless by their insistence on intermarriage
between those of equal rank they maintained the standard ofthe breed.
In Enr.land alone, rank has never been synonymous with breeding. The
"de" or 'von" of nobility have no equivalent in our country, where the
oldest families have lived on their lands for perhaps a thousand years without,
in most cases, acquiring a title or any distinguishing badge of rank. Yet the
odd anomaly remains, that whilst there is no country where rank means so
little as in England there is none-except America-where it counts for so
much.
This being so it was not surprising that society mothers in the past should
have sought these advantages for their daughters, and the London season
have become for them one wild struggle to secure partis. But too often the
"eligibles" refused to be lured, preferring the front row of the stalls at the
"Gaiety" to any London drawing-room; men of any kind, even the merest
"detrimentals", were difficult to collect in sufficient numbers to make up
a successful ball. Only supper tempted them and, knowing the welcome that
awaited them, young men coming out of the theatre would hail a hansom,
give the order to be driven "to the first awning", make a bee-line for the
supper-room, and after enjoying quails and champagne would depart
peacefully without entering the ballroom. I remember hearing of one
unfortunate hostess whose dance was completely spoilt because the rumour
144 SPACIOUS DAYS

went round that at another dance that night ortolans figured in the menu
and the men all left in a body.
The season was thus a most strenuous time for society mothers, obliged
to sit up round the walls of a ballroom till the small hours of the morning,
whilst the girls stood in rows waiting to be picked out by a partner or left
indefinitely as "wallflowers". The modern plan by which a girl can take her
own partner to a dance seems to me much to be preferred. But in those days
it would have been quite shocking, for no girl could go out with a young
man alone to any entertainment, even in the day-time. A man who wanted
to ask a girl to dine or to supper had to invite a married woman and another
man to keep her company so as to make up a partie carree, a not inconsiderable
expense which naturally limited these occasions.
But although the freedom given to girls today has no doubt brought
more colour and movement into their lives has it not gone a long way to
dispel romancer In the days when a man had to scheme and contrive to see
a girl alone there was an excitement about such meetings not to be found
now that girls are so readily accessible and, when met, so approachable.
The "purdah system", as one might almost term the seclusion in which they
were kept fifty years ago, had the effect of wrapping them in a sort of
mystery which made men eager to break through, now that veil has been
rudely torn aside-and sun-bathing has left little to the imagination. For-
bidden fruit is always the sweetest, but now that nothing is forbidden has it
not lost something of its savours I may be mistaken, but when I watch the
young people of today I cannot help thinking that they fail to get the thrill
out of life that we did in our day.
Being independent I was never what is called in India "strictly purdah"
and with other girls in the same circumstances managed to defy the most
stringent rules of chaperonage by going about together, with our men
friends, most often during summer-time in punts on the river, which was,
of course, regarded as too emancipated. Captain W. in the - - Guards-
with whom I had made friends in Egypt-was often with us on these
occasions, and we usually took Zola with us, for he was very happy sitting at
the head of the punt, barking at passing craft, and had discovered grand
ratting was to be had along the banks.
Captain W., however, seemed to think that Zola monopolized too much
of our attention and on one occasion vented his resentment of Zola's charms
in a most ungenerous manner. He was rather a connoisseur of art and had
taken me to a picture show during which we had left Zola outside, sitting
on the floor ofmy victoria. On coming out again we found an extraordinary
woman with a string bag on her arm standing in front ofhim with her hands
claspedin ecstasyand exclaiming: "Oh, buthe istoo beautiful! A perfect Bhutia l"
And turning to me she went on: "When can I see him againt I mustsee him!"
Thinking she was mad or merely another of the many sentimental
females who were wont to gush over Zola's beauty I answered, "I'm afraid
you can't see him again," and got into the carriage.
R osalind

Marjorie
[

Mary Davies
 EDWARDIAN ENGLAND 145

As we drove away Captain W. said quietly: "I suppose you don't know
who that wast Miss X, the greatest animal painter ofthe day. She has painted
Queen Alexandra's Bhutia terriers and apparently took Zola for a pure
specimen of that race!" And knowing something of Zola's very doubtful
ancestry he smiled sardonically.
Why had he not spoken in timer Ifonly he had revealed the strange lady's
identity I should have jumped at her request for a further meeting and Zola
might have figured in the Royal Academy!
The little dog had not been happy whilst I was away in Egypt. Gill had
sent him to stay with a Quaker brother and sister who happened to be
Socialists and insisted on their charwoman having meals with them and
addressing them as Edward and Margaret. The charwoman didn't like it,
nor did Zola, so he went out and tried to commit suicide by throwing
himself into a pond and holding on to a water lily with his teeth to keep him
under water when they tried to fish him out. But he was rescued and
returned in due course to Hans Mansions.
He was happier there now as Bantling had departed. Zola detested
Bantling, and on his walks with her always strained at his lead so as to keep
as far away from her as possible. But now she was replaced by Eleonore, a
most delightful French maid who added greatly to the gaiety of our lives.
She did hair wonderfully and taking up her stand behind me in the morning
at my dressing-table would enquire cheerfully, "Coifferai-je Mademoiselle ce
a cu;
matin la a
de Merode ou laLiane de Pougy?"-two ofthe leading French
comediennes of the day.
I was never very fond ofFrench plays or novels, for ever centring around
the "eternal triangle", until de Flers and Caillavet came out with their
brilliant series-Le Bois Sacri, L' Habit Vert, etc., just before the First World
War, which, by the death of one collaborator, brought them to an end. In
general French humour, always derisive, usually at the expense of someone
en place, provoked smiles but seldom that hearty laughter which greeted
the glorious wit of Gilbert and Sullivan operas and the clean fun of the
"Gaiety" with young Grossmith, Huntley Wright and Connie Eddiss, or
of the music-hall comedians-Dan Leno, Herbert Campbell and Dan
Rolyatt. I am sure it is our British capacity for seeing the funny side of
things that has contributed to the health of the nation and helped to coun-
teract the gloom of our climate, as well as to thwart the efforts of revolu-
tionary propagandists.
In looking back at the past I cannot remember any great figures on the
tragic stage, Henry Irving and Ellen Terry had been the leaders but in my
youth were long past their prime; Ellen Terry whom I saw only once, in
Cymbeline, was still charming, but I could not understand how Irving had
achieved his reputation, his mouthing diction and way of shooting his
eyebrows up and down seemed to me terribly stagey and affected.
There were several very good actors in the "problem plays" that were
then the rage-George Alexander and Charles Wyndham, the Vanbrugh
K
 SPACIOUS DAYS

sisters and in a lighter vein that delightful comedienne, Ellisjeffreys. But how
meaningless those old plays-The Second Mrs. Tanquerayor TheLiars-would
seem to the present generation! All the barriers against which they tilted
have been swept away, and with them most ofthe "situations" which made
drama in the past. The more license is admitted in society the fewer plots
there will be for dramatists or novelists, for ifdivorce is everywhere accepted
as the natural corollary to marriage where is the thrill of wedding-bells and
where the tragedy of conjugal infelicityr
On the European stage there was to my mind one outstanding figure-
one supreme genius-Eleonora Duse! I saw her when she came to London in
La Tosca and La Gioconda, and for weeks afterwards I could not bear to go
to a theatre, every other performance paled beside her presentation ofhuman
emotions. No longer young, with no make-up to conceal her pallor, already
greying hair and far from classical features, she gave one almost a shock when
first she came upon the stage; but, after five minutes one could look at no-one
else. I shall never forget her in that last act of La Gioconda, when having lost
her arms she cannot take the sea-shells held out by the peasant girl Beata,
kneeling before her, the ship-wrecked expression in her eyes as she says,
ivon ho0 pIU
"Jl.T oi manuit"
I saw her again in Germany in La Dame aux Camelias in which I had also
seen Sarah Bernhardt who repelled me as much as La Duse attracted me. It
seemed to me that neither woman was exactly fitted for the part, that Sarah
could never have had Marguerite Gauthier's good moments, or La Duse her
evil past. "Regarde done le fange de ton passe!" I felt that Eleonora could never
have walked through mire.
For "society girls" of my day the London season ended with a round of
social engagements in the country, Goodwood, Cowes, Scotland, shooting-
parties in the shires, later hunt balls throughout the winter. Not having been
brought up in that milieu I had no setprogramme ofthis kind, but I paid a few
country visits which I confess I did not greatly enjoy; for one thing I felt the
cold terribly after the Riviera. The Spartan habits of the British upper
classes never ceased to amaze me, I remember one country house in which
there were something like seventy rooms, but there was no electric light,
and the only "bathroom" contained a sort of tin tub that a campaigning
ancestor of the family had used during the Napoleonic wars.
I did not enjoy going out with the guns for I could not bear to see the
birds killed, beautiful pheasants soaring over the woods, their plumage
gleaming in the autumn sunshine, their tails streaming in the breeze, then
suddenly dropping like stones to earth. I know that the best kind ofmen love
sport, but somehow I never felt I could live happily in the country-house set
of people. The amazing seriousness with which they took all the details of
hunting, shooting, cricket, even golf remained incomprehensible to me.
Yet such is the triumph ofmatter over mind that they sometimes succeeded
in making me feel that their outlook was the only sane and normal one, and
that affairs of state, the problems of the Universe, were of no account
 EDW ARDIAN ENGLAND 147
compared with such momentous questions as which colt would stay the
course at the St. Leger or how many blows from a stick would get a small
white ball into a hole.
The advent of motor-cars did, however, lend a zest to country life for
they brought with them movement and variety. The first car I remember
seeing was at Cannes in about 1900, when I looked out of my bedroom
window and saw what looked like a round governess cart chugging along
the Californie road, and inside it the Prince ofWales wearing a yachting cap
and looking, as someone remarked, like a very big egg in a very small cup.
I think it must have been in the following year that I drove a motor for
the first and last time in my life. I was staying with the Alfred Mulhollands
at Debden Hall in Essex, where they had just started a Panhard car and also
a de Dion Bouton with a voiturette attached to the back. The latter was
standing at the front door one day when Alfred suggested I should try it and,
although I told him I had no idea how to drive, he insisted on my mounting
the seat, then turning on the switch, he hastily sprang into the voiturette
behind me and off we went full tilt up the drive.
"How do I slow downr We're going much too fast!" I shouted to him.
"Press the button on the right!" he called back.
But there were several knobs and I pressed the wrong one, for it was the
accelerator and we shot forward out ofthe lodge gates at what seemed to me
a terrific pace. Well, there was nothing for it but to keep one's head, steer
straight and trust to luck in not meeting any obstacle to block one's way,
for I had not the faintest notion how to stop the engine. We must have gone
several miles before at last I succeeded in pulling up and, having now dis-
covered which knob to press, managed the return journey successfully.
"How could you trust yourself to met" I said to Alfred when we were
safely home again. "We might both have been killed."
But he only laughed and said, "I knew you had a pretty cool head."
However, I did not feel that motor-driving was my vocation; I have no
flair for machinery, and as a family we are all too much given to fits of
abstraction to keep our minds fixed on the wheels. Not one of us has ever
learnt to drive a car and 1 never attempted it again.
At that time I was often ill with the same internal trouble, later to be
diagnosed as colitis, from which I had suffered at intervals ever since my
college days, and which nearly had a fatal ending after my return from
Egypt. The London doctors, at a loss for a remedy, could think of nothing
better than to remove my appendix, and at last I submitted to this tiresome
and-at that date---extremely painful operation.
When it was over I was ordered a seavoyage and at one moment thought
of going out to India with Mary Davies. For old Sir Henry had now died
and Mary was to live with her brother, a Deputy Commissioner in the
Punjab. At that moment, however, a hunting cousin, Ulrica Bevan,
daughter of my Uncle Dick, who thought she would like to go to the East,
though she was not sure she could bear to spend a winter so far from the
 SPACIOUS DAYS

Pytchley, suggested that we should go together to Ceylon, and as that balmy

island seemed an ideal place in which to convalesce, I decided to set offwith
her and to join Mary Davies later.
This meant parting with both Eleonore and Zola. For when I told her
that I was going on the long trail again Eleonore said in that case she would
marry the chef she had met at the sea-side hotel where we had stayed that
summer. "Then," I said, "you will soon be leaving for your honeymoons"
"Oh no, Mademoiselle, I shall put on a Casino hat and we shall make the
tour du Parco Then I shall return to Mademoiselle in the evening." And so she
did, only leaving me when I sailed.
So I lost Eleonore and ever afterwards regretted it. For thirty years she
never once missed sending me a Christmas card "desatoute devouee Eleonore",
often reminding me ofthe happy days we had spent together. Dear Eleonore!
I lost sight ofher in the maelstrom of the Second World War.
 CHAPTER XXI

ACROSS THE WORLD AGAIN

T was a bitterly cold December day when my cousin and I set forth from

I Marseilles for Ceylon in the Bibby liner, S.S. Shropshire, very different to
the comfortable P. & O. ships in which I had made earlier voyages. We
shivered miserably as we crawled into our narrow bunks in our tiny cabins,
and wondered whether we had been quite mad to leave our cosy firesides.
But by the time we reached Port Said the weather had grown warmer
and we received the usual rapturous welcome from the natives who seemed
to be well up in the doings of Court circles in England, for the young Arabs
had named their donkeys after the ladies then enjoying the royal favour-
Mrs. Langtry, Lady Warwick and so on, and as I walked into the hotel where
we stopped for coffee and cigarettes, I was greeted by a long-robed native
bowing low with the words, "Enter, 0 Mrs. Cornwallis West!"
Ceylon, when we reached it, made up in heat for the cold we had suffered
on the voyage, and we spent a very merry Christmas at the delightful
Galle Face Hotel, where we danced to the band of the Gloucesters and sat
out in the long cool verandahs drinking lemon squashes.
After a week in Colombo we went up country to Kandy, where we
visited the "Temple ofthe Tooth", where devotees were offering huge white
jasmine flowers to Buddha; and the lovely gardens of Peradeniya, where
mangosteens were ripening, later to Nuwara Eliya (pronounced Neuralia!),
the mountain resort of Ceylon, so chilly and sunless that it reminded me of
Scotland, but was beloved for this very reason by British residentsin Ceylon,
who were wont to allay their home-sickness by the sight of open fires.
I was touched by the hospitality of some of these people; on stopping
at a bungalow in the mountains to ask my way I was greeted by a charming
Englishwoman who begged me to come and stay with her, which I would
gladly have done if we had not been due elsewhere. I realized how great the
loneliness of these exiles must be during the few days we spent with some
friends of my cousin on a tea plantation at Nawala Pitiya in a long low
bungalow perched on a ridge amongst the mountains, miles away from any
other Europeans.
The silence was only broken by the thousand weird voices of Nature so
different to the pleasant country sounds one heard in England. The birds
seemed to have no songs, like the blackbird or nightingale, but rather to be
the victims of some distressing nervous affection of the throat, terribly
irritating to listen to; one sounded like a person in violent hysterics emitting
a series of convulsive shrieks all on the same note, another trilled like an
electric bell, yet another went on hooting like a steam whistle. I could
understand now what Europeans, who had lived through hot weathers in
1451
ISO SPACIOUS DAYS

the plains of India, meant when they spoke of the agony caused by the
maddening crescendo of the "brain fever bird".
There was one bird in Ceylon the natives held in terror, they called it
"the bad bird" and said it was an omen of death, so when it ventured near
the house they all fled in alarm and no servant would go back to work until
"the bad bird" had been killed or shoo-ed offthe premises.Then there were
the insects, grasshoppers vibrating, mosquitoes trumpeting and horrid fleshy
pink lizards which stuck to the walls and ceilings clucking loudly.
But there was one charming sight. After dark the fireflies lit up the whole
garden as if with hundreds of tiny electric lamps and, looking down into the
valley, one could imagine one saw the lights of a town below, only to
discover there was nothing there but a swarm offireflies in the vast loneliness
of the hills.
Apart from this isolation the tea-planter's life in Ceylon seemed to me
very pleasantand I found the tea itself extraordinarily stimulating. It was the
only time I have ever really enjoyed that beverage. The kindly British habit
of offering one "a nice cup of tea" under any circumstances-accident,
illness or merely ennui-has always left me cold; coffee and a cigarette are
what I crave under these conditions. But tea picked on the plantations,
especially the tips of the leaves known as "orange pekoe" and brewed next
day was very pleasant and had the effect of making me feel positively
brilliant, though doubtless this was not apparent to those around me.
But now I was again struck down by a return of myoid complaint, and
once back in Colombo had to take to my bed under doctor's orders, and
exist on liquid food, which in England would have meant beef tea, but in
Ceylon took the form of turtle soup, described in the dictionary as "the
chief glory of aldermanic banquets". In that luxuriant island it provided,
however, the commonest form of diet, being made out of the gigantic
turtles inhabiting the ponds and rivers, and was indeed delicious.
From my room in the Galle Face Hotel I could enjoy glimpses of what
the missionary hymn truly describes as "Ceylon's coral strand". How heav-
enly it was to wake in the morning in floods ofglorious sunshineand feel the
soft air blowing off the sea, to look through towering cocoa palms to the
pink sands and shining blue sea beyond! At night I could see through the
black shadows ofthese palm-trees the path ofmoonlight on the sea glittering
to the horizon and all day and all night I could hear the waves breaking softly
under my windows with a dreamy ripple.
But as the daylight grew the heat became terrific, so terrific that the
doctor ordered another sea-voyage, and, as the P. & O. India was then in
port at Colombo, bound for Australia, my cousin and I decided to embark
for that distant land.
This proved a most unfortunate expedition. On arrival at Melbourne
cold despair settled down on us both when we contemplated the country we
had travelled so many miles to reach. By this time my cousin had decided
that she could not miss the hunting any longer, at intervals throughout the
 ACROSS THE WORLD AGAIN ISI

journey I had heard her murmur, "Today they are drawing such and such a
coved" or "Today they are meeting at So-and-So!" until at last I cried,
"Oh, go back to England!"
Now in Melbourne a brilliant thought struck us both. The P. & O.
Arcadia was in harbour about to sail for home, and so after only one night in
Australia, during which the hotel she was in caught fire, my cousin went on
board, back to the Pytchley, leaving me alone with Miss N., a girl I had en-
gaged in Colombo as a sort ofnurse-attendant, who happened to be a native
of Sydney.
So to that city we went on together and, as I was too ill to travel up
country, we spent a dreary ten days exploring the neighbourhood. We duly
admired Sydney's harbour which, in its natural formation, is very fme, being
enclosed like a great lake and surrounded by pine-covered rocks, something
like the sea-coast ofJapan, but lacking the beauty of other great harbours of
the world; such as Naples or Nagasaki, for its shores are cruelly marred by
hideous villas, hotels and even factory chimneys.
The only place ofinterest I could think ofwas Botany Bay, for 1had once
seen a convict ship moored in the Thames, which some hundred years earlier
had plied between London and Australia and had made a deep and terrible
impression on me, which was increased by reading For the Term of his
Natural Life. So one afternoon we set forth in a hansom for that historic spot,
and after about an hour's jolting over stones and boulders, arrived at a
desolate sea-shore with nothing but a few dreary houses and "pot-house"
hotels as signs of human habitation. So after noting the white monument
which marked the spot where Captain Cook had landed, we drove back to
Sydney. And this was absolutely all I saw of Australia!
The expedition was nearly fraught with disaster, for on our way to
Botany Bay we had passeda notice bearing the words "Zoological Gardens",
and as I can never resist a glimpse of animal life we turned in to inspect it.
But the frightful odours of the lions' cages, which were apparently never
cleaned, drove us out again. Next day I developed a terrible throat: sent for
a doctor who, after glancing at it, remarked grimly, "I shouldn't like to see
a child of mine with a throat like that."
"You mean diphtheriar" I asked.
He nodded. "Ofcourse, ifyou went to the Zoo ...."
So that was it! 1 had caught diphtheria off the lions!
My throat certainly had a sinister appearance, studded with what looked
like neat round spots ofwhite leather. But thanks to the family constitution
I have always had amazing recuperative powers and a way of outwitting
doctors' verdicts. But the next day the spots had vanished and I had com-
pletely recovered, in fact I was now feeling better than I had done for a long
while. So finding the P. & O. India was still in Sydney harbour and about to
return to Ceylon, I bade farewell to Australia and embarked in her with my
companion.
The voyage this time was quite a pleasant one, we touched in Tasmania,
 SPACIOUS DAYS

for huge cargoes of apples to be brought on board, and had time to go on

shore at Hobart, and visit Fern Tree Gully which was delightful. The interest
we aroused in the Tasmanians was extraordinary. In those days visitors from
England must have been rare, for crowds of people came on board at
Hobart to look at us through the windows of the dining-saloon, as if we
were some strange animals at feeding-time, and when we were on deck they
wandered round examining us, and especially our clothes, with the greatest
curiosity.
"Crossing the line", that is to say the equator, was great fun, with its
traditional ceremonies of tarring and feathering members of the crew, and
throwing them into a sail ftlled with sea-water.
Now once more restored to normal health, I was able to enjoy the
delights of travel and particularly of Colombo. I had made no particular
plan of where to go from there, but on arrival found a letter from Mary
Davies inviting me to join her and her brother at Simla, to which I joyfully
agreed. A small P. & O. boat, the Palawan, was due to sail in a few days
for Calcutta, so I spent a strange and exciting time at the Galle Face Hotel,
repacking, shopping, swimming and, by great good luck, taking part in a
most amusing sport.
This was a pearl fishery, the first that had taken place for ten years and
was now going on off the west coast of Ceylon. The oysters were fished up
from their beds and sold all over the Island; one could buy them in the
Pettah of Colombo for about £1 a lOO, a pure gamble, for no-one could
know what was to be found insidethem, there might be nothing-a decaying
oyster, or a pearl ofpriceless value. The Bond Streetjeweller stood no better
chance than the casual tourist!
For the pearl is in reality a gastric tumour formed in the body of the
oyster, which, finding itself afflicted by some irritating particle, such as a
grain of sand, proceeds to coat it round with the iridescent substance that
turns it into a pearl. The "cultured pearls" now on the market are apparently
made by the same process, the irritant being artificially introduced but not
producing quite so perfect a result.
Now since the oyster must have been dead some days before its tissues
are sufficiently relaxed for human fingers to detect the presence of a pearl
inside it, which, though small, may be of great value, the process must be
carried out in the fresh air ifone is not to be poisoned by the odour. Accord-
ingly a party of us from the Galle FaceHotel repaired one afternoon to the
pink beach with natives carrying our pails of oysters. Then seated on the
sand with one native holding a parasol over one's head, a second keeping
a handkerchief soaked in eau-de-Cologne closeto one's nose, one remained in
front of one's pail whilst a third native, sitting opposite one, opened the
oyster and then handed it to one to feel for the pearl. The state of one's
fingers after this can be imagined; it took me three hours of scrubbing in
every kind of disinfectant to get rid of the smell, only the excitement of
hunting for pearls had kept me up to the end. And after all we found only
 ACROSS THE WORLD AGAIN

a few small ones, for the larger ones are usually produced in the lower beds
which were not to be taken up until the following year.
I am fond ofpearls and precious stones, though I do not care for diamonds,
but emeralds and Burma rubies fascinate me, so did some ofthe strange gems
to be found in the island.
I have always regretted that I did not get a specimen of that lovely stone
the alexandrite, an emerald by day and an amethyst by night-or is it the
other way roundt I forget. Sapphires of all shades, deep blue, bright blue,
light blue, white, even mauve, were ridiculously cheap in Ceylon; I bought
a handful for a little over £3 and have never understood why they should
fetch such high prices in London.
I was sorry to say farewell to Ceylon, where I had spent a delightful time,
but the Palawan was waiting, and so with Miss N. still in attendance I went on
board and set sail for Calcutta. It was a hot and delicious voyage going up the
Bay of Bengal, and our fellow travellers were quite pleasant except for one
Frenchman in khaki pyjamas which he never changed, who had been placed
next to me at meals and who told me his doctor had ordered him never to
take a bath. Fortunately I was able to get moved away from his vicinity.
When we reached Calcutta, we met with a most distressing contretemps.
My dressing-case containing all my money, letters of credit, my most
precious personal belongings, and the stones I had bought in Ceylon, was
carried on shore by a native and suddenly found to be missing. Wildly we
searched all over the quay, the dressing-case was nowhere to be found.
Finally we decided that after all it must have been left on board and turned
to go back to the ship to look for it. But to our dismay the Palawan was no
longer there, she had moved away from the landing-stage and could be seen
slowly making her way down the Hooghly to some distant point where she
was to be moored.
There was nothing for it but to follow her. It was now quite dark and
the prospect ofsetting forth on the black water ofthe river was not alluring.
There were only natives round us, no British sailors or officials to whom we
could turn for help. In halting Hindustani we explained our predicament and
found at last a small native boat, in charge of an aged man attired only in a
loin-cloth who looked exactly like Charon out of Dante's Inferno. He and
his mate volunteered to take us down the river, indicating by signs that the
Palawan could not be far away. Trusting to this assurancewe set offhopefully,
but as each bend of the Hooghly revealed nothing resembling a British
steamer our hearts sank lower.
That strange and rather terrifying voyage seemed interminable, but at
last, after what seemed an endless age, the large black bulk of a British
steamer loomed before us out of the night.
"Is that the Palawam" I shouted.
"Na, na, this is naw the Palawan!" a broad Scottish voice replied cheer-
fully from the deck, and never have I been more thankful to hear the homely
accents of Caledonia. "But she's close by, gang right on!"
154 SPACIOUS DAYS

And sure enough she was' Another moment and we were beside her, and
this time it was our friend the Captain who answered our shouts for help.
"What are you doing there? Come up on deck at once!"
In a second we were out of the boat and up the companion ladder,
tumbling metaphorically, if not literally, into his arms.
The kindly skipper listened sympathetically to our sad story and said
a search for the missing dressing-case should be made at once. But it was
nowhere to be found' However, he entertained us royally on ham and
strawberry jam-for we were starving-and, after scolding us well for
setting out on our wild adventure, said he would arrange for one of his
officers to escort us back to shore.
So we set off in a dinghy, with British sailors this time in charge of us
and safely landed on the river bank.
But not in Calcutta' the Palawan was too far down the river for that, and
the men could only be spared to go as far as the shore of a native village
several miles out ofthe city. It was now past midnight, everyone was asleep
and we stumbled over recumbent forms as we made our way along the
village street where there was no sign of life. But the ship's officer, who had
come on shore with us, succeeded in discovering an ancient landau parked
in a shed, and a sleepy native willing to drive us into the town.
At last we arrived at the Grand Hotel in Calcutta and next morning the
missing dressing-case arrived there too. It had been brought on shore with
another passenger's luggage and was peacefully sitting in the hall ofanother
hotel, whilst we were madly searching for it on the Hooghly. So that perilous
expedition need never have been made'
 CHAPTER XXII

SIMLA

OR TY years ago thejoumey up to Simla was an arduous one, fifty-six

F miles in a tonga from Kalka station, with a night spent on the way in the
rest-house ofDharmpur. No motors had yet penetrated to that distant
hill-station where horse-drawn vehicles were not allowed to anyone except
the Viceroy and his military secretary, the Commander-in-Chief and the
Lieutenant-Governor of the Punjab. The rest of the community had to
content themselves with rickshaws, the reason for this being that the roads
were too narrow for carriages to pass each other without the risk of going
over the khud into the valley below.
Here Mary Davies and her brother met me and we travelled together
up to their house, Townsend, on the hill called Jakko. It was not a balmy
spot, a rather gaunt house with wooden balconies and no flower garden,
perched on the hillside and looking out over a panoramic view of the
Himalayas. Though not a lover of mountains I can appreciate their beauty
if the foreground provides some warmth and colour, as in Japan, where
their sides were carpeted with flowers, or, as in Italy or Switzerland, where
blue lakes and rushing rivers relieve the monotony of rocky heights, but a
waterless landscape gives no relie£
The arid firclad range of the Himalayas oppressed me, I do not remember
ever finding a wild flower on the way up Jakko, nor ever hearing a bird sing.
The only sign of life was provided by the monkeys which bounded in the
branches of the trees and woke one early in the morning dancing on the tin
roof of the house. There were leopards, too, in the woods, but they seldom
ventured near human habitations, though occasionally they were known to
carry off luckless dogs from the verandahs. But what really struck a chill to
my heart was the sound of the jackals howling at night like souls in pain.
Society at Simla seemed to me hardly more exhilarating than the scenery,
it was entirely official, people ranked according to their place in the Pre-
cedence List of India, apparently a most formidable document which they
seemed to know by heart. For at the end ofevery dirmer party it was for the
burra mem, that is to say the lady highest on that list, to make the move for
departure, no-one dared to leave until she had led the way, and everyone
seemed to know who was the burra mem on each occasion.
I remember once after having tea with some people on their verandah,
going through the drawing-room on my way to the front door, and, the
floor being covered with soft rugs, I did not know that a burra mem was
following behind me, until she suddenly leapt forward to get first through
the door, glaring at me the while over her shoulder. For, ofcourse, as a mere
globe-trotter I had no place in the Precedence List at all.
ISS
 SPACIOUS DAYS

Globe-trotters were not loved in Simla, largely owing, I think, to

Rudyard Kipling's description of "Paget M.P.", the arrogant tourist who
set out to know all about India after a briefvisit. I could not help feeling some
resentment towards Kipling, for his creation of this character; it did infinite
harm to the unassuming visitor to India.
Elsewhere in the East, as I have said, I found British residents extremely
friendly and often amazingly hospitable, like the lady in Ceylon who had
invited me to stay with her without knowing anything about me. And
I shall never forget how my kind hostess in Rangoon wired to me after I had
left for Mandalay, whilst the small-pox epidemic was raging, "If you have
caught the infection come back to us." To invite anyone with confluent
small-pox to come and have it in one's house, seemed to me the climax of
generosity.
But Anglo-Indians, as English residents in India were then called-for at
that date the term was not applied to half-castes who were known as Eura-
sians-seemed haunted by the fear of entertaining a Paget M.P. unawares,
and had in consequence become less friendly than in the past. Smarting at the
idea ofbeing patronized by some new arrival from England they determined
to be first in the field by calling every traveller contemptuously a "t.g." or
"travelling gent", and by replying to any remark he might make about India
with a resentful glare, as much as to say, "What do you know about in"
But after all it is not necessary to live for years in a country to gain
certain defmite impressions, this must surely depend less on the length of
time one spends there than on one's powers of observation. I frequently met
Anglo-Indian women who knew nothing about India and had not even
troubled to learn Hindustanee.
Simla was indeed the centre ofthe universe to its habitues, the great world
outside it seemed hardly to exist for them. Where, we wondered, were the
sprightly ladies Rudyard Kipling had discovered "under the deodars"! The
men had become almost as limited in their outlook as the women.
"If only they would talk about something else besides polo ponies!" one
young man, also a newcomer, said to me with a groan as we rode together
round Simla. "But it's just the same in the plains. One day I really thought
they'd struck a different note. I went into the mess and heard two fellows
talking. One said to the other, 'Take Shakespeare now" Thank heaven,
I said to myself, there's someone here who caresfor Shakespeare, so I stopped
to listen. But the fellow went on, 'He always buys his ponies from So and
So.' Shakespeare was only another man in the regiment!"
As the season wore on and the warm weather came a certain liveliness
sprang up in official circles. But Viceregal Lodge was not conducive to
hilarity; the parties there were terribly formal, conducted with regal cere-
mony.
Lord Curzon was the Viceroy, and a most admirable one, but many
stories were told of his pomposity in private life. It was said that when on
a tiger hunt a photograph was to be taken ofthe party and just as the camera
 SIMLA IS?

man was about to snap the shutter, Lord Curzon called a halt, left the group
and reappeared in a top-hat and frock coat, which in the heart of the jungle,
with the corpses of slain tigers in the foreground, seemed somewhat out of
keeping.
The affair of the rice pudding made a great stir the summer I was in
Simla. Major Raymond Marker, one of the Viceroy's A.D.C's. and a most
delightful personality, occupied the post of what he called "Martha" at
Viceregal Lodge, his duty being to order meals with due regard to the state
which Lord Curzon always insisted on keeping up. One day, however,
Lady Curzon, tired of the elaborate dishes that made up the menu, confided
to Major Marker her craving for a plain rice pudding, and this duly appeared
on the table at lunch. Then the storm burst. Outraged at the sight of this
plebeian fare Lord Curzon took Major Marker severely to task and the
luckless A.D.C., gallantly shielding Lady Curzon, who dared not admit her
share in the dreadful solecism, received the full tide ofHis Excellency's wrath
on his own head.
Lord Kitchener, as Commander-in-Chief, kept up less pomp at his fine
house, Snowdon; his A.D.C's., Major Frank Maxwell and Captain Victor
Brooke, were young and full of spirits, and he himself possessed a certain
quiet sense of humour.
On the fourth ofJune Lord Curzon gave an Eton dinner at Viceregal
Lodge, and Lord Kitchener, not being an Etonian, suggested that as Lady
Curzon could not qualify for the banquet, she should dine with him at
Snowdon, and his staff should each invite one lady to make up the dinner-
party. I was naturally delighted when Captain Victor Brooke's choice fell on
me.
When the evening came J realized the importance ofarriving punctually,
but being usually rather vague about time got into a panic at the thought that
I was late in starting, so urged my jhampannis to greater speed with the usual
promise of more baksheesh. Accordingly I was whirled to Snowdon at a
breakneck pace, only to find on arrival that, far from being late, I was much
too early, no one else had arrived and when I was shown into the drawing-
room it was to fmd only the huge figure ofLord Kitchener towering on the
hearthrug.
So for twenty minutes I was alone with this formidable personage, for
none of his staff came to relieve the situation. I cast about me frantically for
subjects of conversation. What on earth was I to talk about to the '1ungi
Lahd", that is to say "the Lord ofWar", as the natives call the Commander-
in-Chief Then by good luck I hit upon one topic that interested him-
cretonnes! I admired the covers ofthe chairs and sofas in the drawing-room,
and instantly his somewhat grim features brightened, for he was particularly
fond of house decoration. So from that moment all went well.
The dinner itself was magnificent, exquisite food eaten off gold plate,
and fourteen well-chosen guests in all. I was glad to be sitting opposite Lady
CurZOD., who, dressedregally in brocade, struck me as wonderfully beautiful.
 SPACIOUS DAYS

Lord Kitchener and all his staffseemed to be enjoying themselves immensely;

wine and wit-ofa simple kind-flowed freely. But how little did any of us
guess that evening, that in fifteen short years nearly everyone present, and all
these strong men, would be dead! Lady Curzon died only three years later,
Lord Kitchener and all his staff-Colonel Hubert Hamilton, the most
charming ofthem all, Major Maxwell and Captain Victor Brooke, perished
in the First World War. So far as I know I am the only survivor ofthat gay
banquet.
Lord Kitchener was not reallyas formidable as he at first appeared, but he
was, no doubt rightly, a tremendous believer in discipline and, as I noticed
at that Simla dinner-party, adopted an autocratic manner even with his staff.
But they adored him none the less on this account. And when, a week or
two later, he came to supper on the stage of the Simla theatre he was amia-
bility itself
The Simla A.D.C. (Amateur Dramatic Company) was an important
feature in the life of that hill-station. The theatre itself was built on quite
professional lines, and the plays presented were not of the futile kind with
which amateurs usually have to content themselves, but really first-class
works for which a good deal oflocal talent could be found. I was therefore
duly elated when I was asked to take the second part in The Marriage ofKitty
which I had seen in London. As at Biarritz where I had played Mrs. Coleman
in The Passport, this was a character part and so appealed to me. I could not
have endured playing the ingenue and this part was taken by Simla's leading
actress, a charming woman who played it admirably, though as she was old
enough to be my mother a rather absurd situation was created.
However, I thoroughly enjoyed myself in the role of Madame de
Semiano, the Peruvian adventuress, and the comments of India's leading
paper, the Pioneer, were very amusing.

"A part which might well have tried an old actress and was certainly
a heavy ordeal for a young one, was that of Madame de Semiano.
Though fresh to the Simla stage, and, as far as is generally known, to
any stage, Miss Nesta Bevan played the part with a flow of foreign
excitability and a mysterious creepiness ofmanner that could hardly have
been improved upon by a trained hand. It has to be borne in mind that
the Peruvian widow is supposed to be of beautiful even dazzling appear-
ance, otherwise the whole story would be meaningless. Attired brilliantly
and looking impressively handsome, Miss Bevan cleverly contrived to
impart to her sinuous figure a weird snake-like sway of movement....
Indeed, had Miss Bevan's been a colourless instead of a spirited piece of
acting the good work ofthe other actors would have fallen comparatively
flat.... So promising a young actress should be heard of again soon."

We played TheMarriage of Kitty four nights running to a packed house,

and I returned home in my rickshaw nearly buried in bouquets.
 SIMLA 159

It was on the last of these nights that Lord Kitchener came to supper
with us on the stage and sat between Kitty and myself as we had taken the
two leading parts in the play. The rest of the cast seemed somewhat over-
awed by his presence, but I found that if one did not appear to be afraid of
him he ceased to be formidable. I think he was rather tired of being deferred
to as a great personage and found it refreshing to be treated as an ordinary
human being for once.
I remember that I asked him whether he had ever acted. He shook his
head. "I don't think I could act. I should never be able to get through a
big part."
"No," I said reflectively, forgetting for the moment who he was. "But
then one does not begin with a big part, one begins perhaps by bringing
in a letter on a tray."
This remark gave rise to the story which went round Simla that I had
suggested to Lord Kitchener he should play the part of a butler. Of course,
I meant nothing of the kind and was speaking only in general terms; at
any rate, he took it in this sense, and far from appearing offended, thawed
still further and discussed all sorts of topics with gaiety and humour which
made him a most delightful neighbour. I have always been glad to have had
this glimpse ofthe kindlier side ofthis man ofiron.
As the season wore on, life at Simla became quite a whirl of gaiety-
gymkhanas and races at Annandale, rides out to Mashobra, lunches, dinner-
parties and dances, endless dances, so that one was seldom in bed till four
o'clock in the morning. Once I had longed to dance, but now I grew sick
of the sound of a waltz tune, for the monotony of it all had begun to pall
on me. It was like always going to a dance at the same house-the same
band, the same decorations, the same people at each.
The only occasion when a new note was struck was the Black Hearts
ball. The Black Hearts were a band of bachelors who every year entertained
Simla at a ball, and this year asked Florence Brett, a delightful American
girl, and me to arrange and lead a cotillon, and being very generous gave
us carte blanche with regard to favours.We had a grand time hunting materials
for these in the bazaar, and devising new and original figures, which we
led with zest, The ball, a fancy-dress one, of some 500 guests, was a huge
success, and Florence and I were presented with gold trinkets when we
were made honorary members of the Black Hearts in recognition of our
efforts.
But a little of Simla goes a long way, and a whole summer there had
been too much. Often I had looked across the miles of bare grey mountains
and longed to get away beyond them, but it was considered dangerous to
go down to the plains during the hot weather: one might die of heat
apoplexy in the train. So I was obliged to wait until October, and then with
a deep sigh of relief set offjoyfully once more on my travels.
 CHAPTER XXIII

KISMET

T has always been my experience that the pleasures one plans and strives

I for end in disappointment. Perhaps that is why in the past women who
lived for "Society" so often got the hungry look that one does not see in
the faces of people who take amusement as a recreation from work. The
London season followed by a round of house-parties made up their lives, a
ceaseless struggle for enjoyment, fraught, except for the very few, with
pin-pricks, thwarted ambitions, blighted hopes. If the Second World War
put an end to what always seemed to me the social treadmill and set these
women to useful work, it served some purpose.
I had never trodden the treadmill, but there had been moments when
like every other young and eager spirit, I had wanted just "to have a good
time" and that was what inevitably proved a mirage.
I had set out for Cairo looking forward to a round of gaiety and had
found nothing to enjoy except the desert, I had gone to Simla expecting to
find life "under the deodars" amusing and had been bored to tears. On the
other hand, I had started for Biarritz with the idea of having a quiet time
with Aunt Carrie and had been caught in a whirl of gaiety; I had had other
happy times too, in Ireland, on the Italian lakes, with Harry and Enid
Sulivan in Norfolk, later in Suffolk; above all, I had had a glorious time
going round the world.
These happy moments were all impromptu, never striven for, never
planned; they just happened. For real happiness is the most elusive thing
in the world, we set out to seize it and it eludes our grasp; then suddenly it
bursts upon us like sunshine from behind the clouds, wrapping us round
in its warm rays. How truly Emerson had said, "The things that are for
thee gravitate to thee!"
It was with no idea of amusement, that, after going down to the plains
of India, I accepted the invitation ofMrs. K., with whom I had made friends
in Simla, to go and stay with her at Fatehgarh, near Cawnpore. "It will be
deadly dull for you," she said, "no gaietiesand no occasions for you to wear
your Paris frocks, but bring your oldest clothes and come and cheer me up!"
How little did I dream as I got into a wooden ticca-gharry at Fatehgarh
station that here in this strange out-of-the-world spot I was to meet my fate!
It was, however, a lovely place seen in the golden light of an Indian
autumn, with all its luxuriant vegetation freshened by the rains. Fatehgarh
had once been a big cantonment and had figured tragically in the Indian
Mutiny; the K.'s house was set a little way out of the city on the green
banks of the Ganges in a half-wild garden surrounded by seas of tamarisk
jungle.
160
 KISMET 161

"There is really nobody to ask to meet you," Mrs. K. said regretfully,

"except Arthur Webster, the D.S.P. (District Superintendant of Police). He
is one of the best riders in the United Provinces."
Two years earlier I had had my hand told by Mrs. Robinson, the
famous Bond Street palmist. "You will go on a long journey soon," she
said, "and on the other side of the water you will meet a man, not a soldier,
but in Government service, with hair going grey at the sides. His name will
be Arthur and something beginning with an M. He is the man you will
marry, and be very happy."
Not a word of this recurred to me when Arthur Webster, D.S.P. of
Fatehgarh, with thick fair hair prematurely grey at the sides-for he was
only 37-came to dine with us. It was only long afterwards that I remem-
bered this curious prophecy which I had written down at the time and was
to be so exactly fulfilled, except for the M, which is, after all, only a W
upside down!
A few days later we went to tea with ArthurWebster in his bungalow,
a delightful thatched house surrounded by the English garden he had made,
its smooth lawns shaded by old mohr trees and borders of sweet peas, stocks,
larkspur, tall sunflowers and phloxes. As we drove up to the door, several
dogs were sunning themselves on the steps, and a three-months-old foal
was peacefully cropping the carnations by the door.
Beyond the house were the public gardens ArthurWebster had trans-
formed from a wilderness into a small park with good grass tennis courts
and masses of flowers, for he had a passion for flowers and wherever he
went throughout his life his first thought was to make a garden.
Three weeks later we were engaged! Emerson had been right again:
"When I come to my own we shall both know it!"
Those were wonderful days that followed-long drives through the
scented Indian twilight behind Arthur's tandem which he drove as skilfully
as he rode his perfectly trained polo-ponies, rides along the river banks,
camping-out expeditions in the jungle, all in the soft warmth of an Indian
autumn.
These patriarchal journeys about the district filled me with delight;
early in the morning our tents would be struck and we would set off on an
elephant or on ponies across country, arriving in the evening to find a fresh
camp arranged exactly like the one we had left. As we reached the spot the
grunting of camels, bleating of goats, mooing of cows, cackling of hens,
announced the presence of the whole farmyard that travelled with us, for
in those spacious days the progress of a police officer through his district
had not become the signal for outrages but, on the contrary, for manifesta-
tions of loyalty on the part of the zemindars. This, of course, depended on
the character of the officer in question; and as Arthur Webster was always
careful to see that his camp followers did not prey on the villagers, and paid
their just dues to the bunnias before leaving, he enjoyed the widest popularity.
I remember one glorious day we spent drifting down the Ganges in a
L
162 SPACIOUS DAYS

country boat, shooting at the crocodiles that swarmed along the banks. It
was my first experience of "bagging" anything, for I have an instinctive
horror of taking life. I cannot conceive how people can wish to kill mild,
kind giraffes or harmless deer. When riding through the Indian jungle we
sighted a herd of black buck in the distance at which most shikaris would
have loved to fire, we both wondered what object there could be in bringing
down that splendid antlered stag marching majestically at the head of his
little flock of wives and in leaving a forlorn procession of gentle widows to
mourn his loss.
Beasts of prey, however, are a different matter. ArthurWebster, who
was a brilliant shot, had killed tigers and hundreds of leopards during his
twenty years in India, and had one of these crossed our path, I could have
pulled the trigger of my gun most joyfully. As it was, my bag consisted of
one solitary "mugger", the only animal I have ever killed; for when I
thought of the wretched Indian women dragged down by those cruel jaws
whilst washing their clothes on the river banks I could feel no compunction
at having removed one such monster from the world.
After we had pitched our camp by the Ganges that evening we received
a visit from the Rajah ofTirwa, who had ridden out to greet the "Captain
Sahib" and was most anxious to amuse us in every possible way. He began
by showing us his watch and making it strike, with which we were duly
impressed and delighted. Then he said, "Now you must see my palfrey
jwnp and my shikari shoot fish." Shooting fish certain promised to be a most
novel fonn of entertainment, and full of curiosity we descended to the
bank of the Ganges, where the shikari, an aged man with a long grey beard,
awaited us. After scattering marigolds on the surface ofthe river, preswnably
to propitiate the gods, the old man produced a fishing-rod and began to
angle in the usual manner. We then discovered that the Rajah's knowledge
of English being somewhat limited, he had not realized the difference
between the words "shoot" and "catch", and all the entertainment he had
proposed to offer us was to see his shikari catching fish with a rod.
The spectacle of the jumping palfrey proved hardly more exhilarating,
for the fat white beast could do nothing more than tumble across a privet
hedge. The Rajah then invited me to ride it, and not wishing to offend him,
I mounted its back and started off. The sensation was extraordinary; I had
not felt anything like it since the day in Egypt when I had been bolted with
on a camel from Mena House to the pyramid of Menkere, for the palfrey
had apparently been taught no paces, and shook me up and down until I
felt that every bone in my body would be dislocated. However, the Rajah
meant it kindly, so thanking him for his hospitality we bade him farewell.
Arthur Webster had been much amused by Lord Curzon's attitude
towards the Indian mind. He was one of the few men not overawed by the
Viceroy's magnificence, and so got on with him quite easily. He had been
appointed to police the Viceregalcamp at the recent Delhi Durbar, and later
to go out tiger shooting with His Excellency. Whilst they were going
 KISMET 163

through a very wild bit of jungle on an elephant, Lord Curzon noticed

several Indians squatting on their heels beside their path who merely stared
up at the Viceregal procession without moving. Thereupon he turned to
Arthur and said solemnly, "Webster, have these men no more respect for
the person of the representative of their Sovereign than to remain seated in
his presences" Arthur had only to utter a brief word of command for the
men to spring startled to their feet; but what, he said afterwards in telling
the story, could thesejungle men know about "their Sovereign" ~ They had
never heard of King or Viceroy, they had probably never even seen an
elephant before, and were merely overcome with amazement at the 00-
wonted spectacle.
The police officer, more perhaps than any other official, learnt to under-
stand the Indian and consequently to appreciate his good qualities; so in
time he became in reality what the natives were wont to call him-"the
protector of the poor". During the whole of the twenty years he had spent
in India, Arthur told me that he had never once heard a murmur against the
British Raj-on the contrary, the people would come to him and say,
"Sahib, see that my case is tried by a Sahib and not by a kala admi!" (black
man). Such was the confidence they then felt in British justice.
Arthur had come out to India when very young; he had wanted desper-
ately to go into the army, but his father, then a Commissioner in the United
Provinces, had insisted on his trying for the police. It went against the
grain, for he had no taste for the detection of crime-"My sympathies," he
would say, "were so often with the criminal." But he set to work, passed
his examinations and when barely eighteen was already in charge of a
district fifty miles from any other European. At that age and in the heat of
the plains he had sometimes found it difficult not to show irritability, but
he never forgot the reproof administered to him by his old bearer, Karim
Buksh, whom one day he had rated for some oversight: "Sahib, hum log bhi
admi haln!" (Sahib, we people, too, are men.) The quiet dignity of this
reminder made a deep impression on him, and after that he never failed to
show his men sympathy and consideration, whether they were Indian or
British. He liked to remember how, when he was still very yOW1g, his old
Scottish Police Inspector had said to him on retiring, "You have always
treated me more like an old gentleman than a subordinate."
But all the summers in the Plains had done their work, and repeated
attacks ofmalaria were undermining his health. "Get him out ofthe country
as soon as possible," his doctor said to me. I had read Kipling's The End of
the Passage, so could imagine what all those hot weathers must have meant.
Accordingly we decided to return to England and find employment
for him there; it was arranged that I should go on ahead, and Arthur should
follow by a later boat, when he had settled his affairs in India. So we parted,
and I set sail from Bombay.
When the D.S.P. of Fatehgarh announced to the Police of his district
that he was going back to Belaiti to be married to the Miss Sahib who had
 SPACIOUS DAYS

gone home, and that he would probably never return, there was great
lamentation, and on the fateful day of his departure sixty bearded Sikhs
stood weeping on the platform as his train moved out of the station. For
years afterwards they continued to write to him, letters ending with some
such assurance as "Praying every evening that you may be made a Lord".
One, breaking into verse, wrote:

"How sweet the hours we once enjoyed

How dear their memory still
But thou hast left an aching void
The world can never fill."

At the last moment ofleaving Fatehgarh a contretemps occurred which

might have proved fatal. One of his men was taken ill with plague and
asked for him. It was his duty to go and he went, but, knowing the frightful
danger ofinfection and being possessed of too vivid an imagination, by the
time he reached Bombay he had developed symptoms of plague, even to
swellings under the arms. "I suppose I'm in for itt" he said to the medical
officer in charge of embarkation; but the officer knew better. "Not a bit of
it, me boy! Go on board, you'll be all right!" And, sure enough, once at sea
the swellings subsided and every symptom of plague vanished.
I found the family in a great state of flutter over my engagement, my
mother in particular was agitated because I had told her nothing of Arthur's
ancestry. For although she was the last person in the world to care for rank,
she had a great regard for breeding. I ought, of course, to have mentioned
that Arthur's father belonged to a good old Forfarshire family, that his
mother was one of the well-known Templers in Devonshire; but I had
merely written about him himself, his tastes, his character, and enclosed
his photograph, which was what seemed to me to matter. I might have
added that his love ofanimals endeared him to me further and that he had a
glorious sense of humour, the best antidote to the small disagreements that
are bound to arise in the happiest married life; a serious quarrel is impossible
if one can laugh at the same things together.
But my mother was alarmed and wrote indignantly. I replied with
warmth, protesting at her want of confidence in my judgment; so Aunt
Carrie had to intervene.

"Of course" (shewrote from Cannes, where she was staying with my
mother], "it did seem very odd that you told none of us anything about
his people. I know how curiously unwordly and unsnobbish and
absent-minded you are, but even allowing for all that, one would think
you naturally would have told us who he was!"

However, all was well in the end. Arthur arrived home safely and was
heartily approved by the whole family.
 KISMET I6S

We were married at St. Saviour's, Walton Street, on May 14, 1904.

Edwyn, who was to give me away, actually remembered the date in time
and arrived, not too unpunctually, at Hans Mansions to take me to the
church close by. My nieces, Violet and Rosie Sulivan, Hubert's daughter
Dolly,' little Nancy, daughter of my dear cousin Elsie Blomfield, and
Arthur's niece Lorna Hewett were bridesmaids. Millie's charming little
boy, Ashley Hart Dyke, was page. His mother had given him strict injunc-
tions to be very good during the ceremony, and he had answered that he
would, if he could be given a little sister as a reward. Millie said she could
not promise that, to which he replied that a wheelbarrow would do instead.
This was duly presented to him, for he behaved perfectly, holding up the
train of my white satin dress from Paris, copied from a picture of Madame
de Pompadour. I carried a sheaf of white lilac, and every rath of May in
the years that followed, white lilac had to appear on our dinner-table.
At the church door a charming sight awaited us. Eleonore, who came to
dress me for my wedding, had given Zola a bath and parted his hair from the
tip of his nose to his tail, completing this exquisite toilette with a bow of
white satin ribbon and sprig of orange-blossom attached to his collar. Here
they were outside the church, Eleonore, with Zola in her arms, showering
us with silver horse-shoes and Zola barking with excitement.
That was the beginning of thirty-eight years of perfect peace and
happiness.

1 Now Mrs. Noel Bligh.

 CHAPTER XXIV

TEN PEACEFUL YEARS

T has been said that a happy woman has no history. Certainly those ten

I years of my life, from 1904 to 1914, offer little of public interest. We

lived peacefully in the country, first at Banstead, then a rural village
untouched by the growing fringe of Suburbia that encircled London, later
in the Surrey hills betweenWitley and Chiddingfold.
The London doctors having confirmed the verdict of those in India on
my husband's inability to stand the climate any longer, he was able to retire
on a medical certificate and draw his pension, but unfortunately never
entirely recovered his health. So we settled down to gardening and farming,
and now, for the first time since leaving Trent, I was able to enjoy country
life, for these pursuits gave us both plenty to do. With some fifteen acres of
grazing, a farmyard well stocked with cows, pigs, poultry-chickens, ducks
and turkeys-a large, productive kitchen-garden and a carpenter's shed in
which we turned out lovely garden seats, we were happy from morning till
night. One summer during the cook's holiday I took over the dairy and
thoroughly enjoyed coming down early in the morning, at 6.30, to take
in the milk, skim off the great rolls of yellow cream and churn them into
the most delicious butter I have ever tasted. Our herd ofJerseys and short-
horns became quite famous in the neighbourhood, for it was known that we
had them regularly tested for tuberculosis, and the villagerspoured in to buy
our surplus milk.
Our two babies, Marjorie and Rosalind, completed our happiness.
Remembering the shadow that the grim side of religion had cast on my
childhood, I did not talk to my children about death and the Hereafter. But
the conception of a God of Love became very real to them. When some
years later they asked me, "What is an atheists" and I replied, "Someone
who does not believe there is a God," they looked at me wonderingly and
exclaimed, "Oh, but how dull that must be!"
In those halcyon days one circwnstance alone disturbed our peace-my
husband and I were both frequently ill and no doctor seemed able to diagnose
our trouble. So having rung at the doors of Harley Street in vain for years,
we decided to go abroad in search of health. My mother had died at
Cannes in 1909 so it was no longer to the Riviera that we wended our way
but to Switzerland where amidst the snows ofDavos my husband regained
something of his former strength though to the end of his life he remained
extremely delicate.
Meanwhile I suffered from the same attacks of pain which had spoilt the
best years of my youth and were now found to be colitis for which the
London specialists could find no cure. Dr. Axel Munthe in his Story of San
166
 TEN PEACEFUL YEARS
Michele makes light ofthis complaint, treating it as a nervous affection ofthe
rich and idle. Fortunately there was one man who knew better-Dr. Combe
ofLausanne. He knew, ofcourse, that a nervous form ofcolitis existed which
he differentiated from the microbial form ofthe disease, and by studying the
ravages of the bacillus coli under the microscope had devised a scientific diet
system to arrest them. So, having heard of the wonderful cures he had
effected, we set off whilst in Switzerland for Lausanne to consult Combe.
We found a man of about fifty with greying hair and a thin lined
countenance, already suffering from the strain of overwork. "Yours is a bad
case," he said at the end of our interview, "but I can cure you if you will
promise to obey my orders to the letter for two years, never breaking the
rules for a single meal." I promised and kept my word. In eighteen months
I was completely cured. Moreover, I was only one of the many hundred
patients of Dr. Combe who filled three hotels and a clinic, blessing the day
they came to him.
Working in conjunction with Combe was Vittoz, the well-known
psychiatrist whose system was, I believe, founded on that of Dr. Paul
Dubois of Berne, author of the treatise l' Education de Sol-mime. Briefly it
consisted in restoring the balance between the conscious and the sub-
conscious brain. In cases of desequilibrement the sufferer allows himself to be
dominated by the latter, dwelling on imaginary ills, haunted by some
disturbing memory, hag-ridden by some fear. Vittoz, by judicious question-
ing, would elicit the nature ofthe trouble and then proceed to what he called
"breaking the cliche on the brain". All this might be described as psycho-
analysis, the term said to have been invented by Freud, but which differed
fundamentally from the Freudian system. Vittoz did not believe in dredging
in the sub-consciousness for long forgotten memories better left dormant
and liable to create a complex-only another word for cliche-but in finding
out the active cause of mental distress. The cure consisted in strengthening
the conscious brain by mental exercises, by fixing the attention on concrete
objects, teaching the patient to use his five senses, and to use his hands either
by manual labour or in sports and pastimes.
Vittoz again did not believe in giving play to undesirable impulses for
fear of producing "inhibitions"; on the contrary he taught his patients to
exercise self-control.
In The Green Carnation Mr. Robert Hichens makes one of his characters
say: "Ifwe check our tendencies, we drive the disease inwards; but ifwe sin,
we throw it off: Suppressed measles are far more dangerous than measles
that come out," How little did we dream when we laughed over this theory
in the "Naughty 'Nineties" that it would ever be made into a scientific
system seriously accepted by members of the medical profession! It was
certainly rejected by Vittoz. Still less did he encourage morbid pre-occupa-
tion with sex; his system was essentially sane and healthy.
The foregoing resume of Vittoz's system is perhaps unscientifically ex-
pressed being only taken from the conversation I had with him in 1911. For
168 SPACIOUS DAYS

whilst at Ouchy doing the Combe cure I became so interested in some ofhis
patients that I asked him for an appointment so as to hear about his theory
from himself I was glad I had done so for in after years I saw something of
the harmful effects of the Freudian variety of psycho-analysis and my
experience ofVittoz's methods enabled me on at least one occasion to direct
a sufferer to the curative form of that science.
A woman I had only met once came from a distance to see me and when
I had begun to wonder what was the reason for this visit, she said: "I have
come to seeyou becauseI felt you would help me. For some time I have been
having attacks of acute melancholy and I am afraid I am going out of my
mind. What do you advise me to do?"
I said, "Go at once to Lausanne and consult Vittoz."
She took my advice and not only recovered her complete mental balance
but proved so apt a subject that she was able, under Vittoz's direction, to
treat some of his patients successfully.
Combe and Vittoz are both dead now, but I believe their systemsare still
being carried on at Lausanne. I do not know whether anything is being done
011 the same lines in England.

With health restored the urge to write returned to me. During the
past few years my husband and children, gardening, farming and such
desultory hobbies as flower painting and photography, had absorbed all
the energy I had to spare. But now once more the craving which, from
the age of seven, had possessed me returned with force and I embarked
on a play which, through a theatrical agent, was finally sent to George
Alexander to read. For weeks I waited in trepidation to hear his verdict;
at one moment my hopes were raised sky high for I was told that although
it was one of 500 submitted for his consideration, he was giving it a second
reading. In the end it was returned, but nothing daunted I set to work again.
This time it was on an idea which I had often discussed with Mary Davies,
with whom I still kept constantly in touch. Long years before we had both
longed for work; now we had both found it. For Mary, whilst in India,
always intent on devoting herself to some cause, had set herself to study the
plague under a doctor who encouraged her talent for scientific research and
now at the Pasteur Institute in Paris was training to become a professional
bacteriologist. With her quick sympathy and receptive mind she entered
eagerly into my scheme for a novel which was to be a picture of Victorian
society as we had both seen it and to be called The Sheep Track.
Most authors have, I imagine, drawn on their own lives for their plots
and characters and this was to be no exception to the rule. It was, in fact,
a
frankly a roman clef, many ofthe incidents recounted had really taken place
and the people described really existed.
At that date of 1913 this was still possible without the risk of legal
proceedings, for the paralysing regulation which now demands that every
novel should be prefaced with the words "the characters in this book are
 TEN PEACEFUL YEARS 169

entirely imaginary and have no relation to any living person", had not yet
been introduced. Had this rule always been in force I wonder how many
of the great novels of the past could have been published, certainly not
David Copperfield, Villette, most of Thackeray's or in our day own such
brilliant satires as Dodo or The Londoners and many others. Indeed, the main
interest of the classics of fiction lies in the fact that they were drawn from
life and present pictures of the times. Provided that "nothing is set down in
malice" it seems a thousand pities that this practice should have been dis-
continued.
At present it is up to anyone out for money to sue an author for libel on
the strength of a fancied resemblance to the plaintiff's character or circum-
stances, although nothing damaging to his reputation may have been said
about either. The haunting fear oflibel intimidates publishers and inevitably
cramps the style of novelists, hence perhaps the decline in life-like character
drawing in works of fiction during the past twenty years.
The Sheep Track suffered from no restrictions ofthis kind and when it was
finished I cast about me for a publisher. I was fortunately given an intro-
duction to John Murray, so one morning, armed with the typescript, I made
my way to Albemarle Street and was ushered into the presence of Mr.
Murray's son, now Colonel Sir John Murray, who received me very kindly
and promised to give the book his early consideration.
With what renewed trepidation did I pass the next ten days, expecting
by every post to see the parcel returned to me with "Mr. Murray's polite
regrets", etc.! For ofcourse it would be refused! Had not every author, even
the greatest, at first met with rebuffs, wandered from publisher to publisher
before at last finding the one who dared to back the maiden effortt
I have often thought how through mere errors ofjudgment many great
books must have been lost to the world. Novels which would have stood on
our bookshelves next to Vanity Fair and Pride and Prejudice may, just because
they did not happen to hit the fancy ofa publisher's reader, have ended their
existence in the waste-paper basket. When one thinks of Charlotte Bronte
weeping silent tears behind the pages ofthe Quarterly with its cruel critique of
Jane Eyre, which, if the publisher had been of the same mind as the reviewer,
would doubtless never have seen the light, one realizes on what slender
chances of selection a work of genius may depend. Even Shakespeare, we
know, was not appreciated in his lifetime.
How could I hope to fare better than such illustrious predecessors setting
forth on the thorny path ofliteraturet Ofcourse my book would be returned,
and by way ofnerving myse1fto bear the shock I made out a list ofpublishers
to whom it should next be sent for no doubt it would go the round ofthem
all before-if ever it found acceptance.
Then one morning I knew that the blow had fallen, my parcel was
returned to me. Sadly I cut the string, yes, here was my manuscript but-
oh! joy! with it a letter from Mr. Murray, junior, saying they had no
hesitation in accepting it and were returning it only for a few cuts to be
 SPACIOUS DAYS

made. So my first book had been taken by the first publisher who had seen it
-it seemed unbelievable'
That day I walked on air. At last, at last, the dreams of my whole life
had been realized, the craving to write was no longer to vent itself in futile
effort, the magic world of literary work was open to me. I can honestly say
ambition played no part in my thoughts, I had never said to myself like
Marie Baschkirtseff, "I will be famous I" It was the act of writing that I had
always loved just as the musician loves to draw his bow across the strings of
his violin, whether an audience is there to applaud him or only the four walls
to hear his playing. I loved, as I still love, the tools of the writer's trade, pens,
pencils, paper, the actual formation of the letters for I could never compose
on a typewriter !-and then the joy of achievement, of feeling the current of
thought pass from brain to hand, the rare satisfaction of fmding the right
word to express the idea, of seeing just what one had wanted to convey set
down in black and white.
All this I had known in the past when filling copybooks with childish
writing, when scribbling on my desk at college or in my cabin on board ship,
for writing was as necessary to me as walking to a hiker, and if no book of
mine had ever been accepted I should still have gone on writing, adding to
the pile of manuscripts that filled the drawers of my table which I had not
felt worthy to be submitted for publication. But with all this there had been
the sense of futility, the feeling that I was wasting time on work that led to
nothing, now at last these misgivings were dispelled and I could go on
writing with a clear conscience.
The Sheep Track came out on February 12, 1914, and by July had gone
into its fourth edition. The reviewers on the whole were kind, only a few
radical papers were, for some reason, hostile, which seemed unaccountable for
the book touched on no political questions and tilted against the conventions
of a society which lefi-wingers of that date professed to despise. One in the
Daily News even referred to it as an example of "writing badly"; the Herald
of New York, however, said, it is "so well written that it is quite possible
that some author of established reputation has chosen to begin again under
a nom de plume".
It seemed indeed that I had "arrived", literary agents wrote asking to be
allowed to deal with my future work, requests for short stories came in, an
American magazine offered as much as £40 a story. But I have never been
able to write to order and already my mind was at work on quite a different
line, not fiction this time but a romance of real life.
 CHAPTER XXV

THE CHEVALIER DE BO UFFLERS

OUR years before the publication of The Sheep Track, whilst we were

F wintering in Switzerland, I had gone down to the library of the hotel

to look for some amusing book. Taking one after another out of the
shelves I came upon a volume ofhistorical essays by Imbert de Saint-Amand
entitled Portraits de Grandes Dames. I turned over the pages and found familiar
names-Madame du Deffand, Madame de Montespan, Louise de la Valliere,
yes, I had read about them all. But who was the Comtesse de Sabrant I had
never heard of her, nor of the Chevalier de Boufflers who appeared to be
her lover. I began to read extracts from their letters and as I went on an
extraordinary sensation came over me, the feeling that I had read them all
before, that I knew the writers and had somehow been closely connected
with them in the past.
I shall never forget that moment in the drab library of the Swiss hotel,
when, looking out of the windows at the snow falling slowly over the grey
mountains, I saw another world opening out before me, the brilliant world
of eighteenth-century France.
When I returned to London I went to Langlois, the French bookseller in
South Audley Street, and asked the proprietor for any books he might have
about the Chevalier de Boufflers and Madame de Sabran. "Ma foi, je n'en
sais rien, he answered, "mais je m'informerai."
A few weeks later a large parcel arrived from Langlois, it was the
voluminous Correspondance de laComtesse de Sabran et du Chevalier de BouJllers
published in 1875, long since out of print and forgotten. Now that I could
read these wonderful love letters in their entirety the sense of familiarity
grew stronger still, yes, indeed I had known these people, theirs was the
world I had once lived in, I could see them, hear their voices with an almost
painful pang of recollection.
Now all the memories of my childhood came flooding back to me, the
sense of apartness from the family circle in the old days at Trent, that first
journey to Paris, the arrival at the Gare du Nord, I could well remember
being put into the omnibus and looking up with wonder at the Baring
arc-lights. Then after that many visits to Paris-Paris which was said to be
so gay but to me was always a place ofghosts where once terrible things had
happened. In vain I had been taken to the Grand Magasin du Louvre and
given a toy balloon with a pheasant painted on it, in vain I had been led
through the gardens of the Tuileries on which the windows of the Hotel
Meurice where we stayed looked out, the sense of oppression never left me.
Walking through the streets, especially in the Rue Saint-Honore, I would
say to myself, "I have seen these streets running with blood."
17 1
172 SPACIOUS DAYS

In those days I knew nothing about the French Revolution, even as I

grew older I took no particular interest in it, still at college I never cared for
history. It was only long afterwards when reading the correspondence of
the Chevalier de Bouffiers and Madame de Sabran that the curious sense of
familiarity crept over me, these were people I had known and talked with,
I was transported back to that world of eighteenth-century France, I could
hear the music to which they danced, smell the scents they used,
move amongst the powdered heads, the brocaded coats in the salons of
Paris.
Above all it was in the French Revolution that I found myself! Every
moment of that terrific drama was real to me. The Reign of Terror! Now I
understood the "haunted" feeling that ever since I was five years old had
come over me in the Rue Saint-Honore, that Via Dolorosa of the Terror
along which the tumbrils moved in slow procession from the Palais de
Justice to the Place de la Revolution, now the Place de la Concorde.
What is the explanationr That I had lived before during that frightful
epochs I admit that ever since the days when my cousin Merty Moore had
talked to me of Theosophy, and still more since I had travelled in Buddhist
countries, I had always been drawn to the doctrine of reincarnation. I do not
say 1 believe in it for on such a subject who can dogmatizes One can but
speculate, and to me it seems the most probable clue to the mystery of those
vague memories with which some of us are born or again ofwhat are known
as "infant prodigies", children like Mozart who knew more of music than
he could possibly have learnt in this present life. I have referred earlier in this
book to the curious attraction monasteries seemed to hold for my ultra
Protestant mother, the monastic seclusion in which she wrapped herself-
had she been an abbess in a former incarnationt but a more remarkable case
was that of my friend Rosamund Fox-Strangways who, as a girl of seven-
teen, went to Palestine to stay with her sister Connie Newton. Rosamund
had never been in the East before, or studied it, although she had always "had
a feeling for it". Immediately after her arrival in Jerusalem she was standing
on the verandah with her sister and her friends when she noticed a woman
coming up the garden path carrying a bundle. She was vaguely wondering
what it contained when the people standing round her exclaimed, "We did
not know you spoke Arabic!"
"1 don't," Rosamund answered, "I don't know a word ofit."
"But you asked that woman in perfect Arabic what she was
.
carrymg. I"
Moreover, the woman had answered her in Arabic and she had under-
stood. But she never spoke it again.
Many great minds outside the ranks of Buddhists or Theosophists have
unconsciously inclined to the theory of reincarnation, Wordsworth was no
professed believer in it when in an inspired moment he wrote his immortal
poem-perhaps the finest in the English language-and seemed to have
obtained a sudden glimpse of pre-natal existence.
 THE CHEVALIER DE BOUFFLERS

"Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting

The soul that rises with us, thy life's star,
Hath had elsewhere its setting
And cometh from afar."

Reincarnation appealsto the reasonand to our senseofthe divine ordering

of human life because it is the one theory that accounts for its apparent
injustices and the inequalities of fortune with which many people are born.
I have never been able to see that it is in conflict with the Christian faith.
When His disciples said to Christ, "who did sin, this man or his parents,
that he was born blinds" our Lord did not reply, "How could he have
sinned before he was borne" but only answered, "Neither hath this man
sinned nor his parents but that the works of God should be made manifest
in him."
But whilst inclining to the doctrine of reincarnation I see that there may
be alternative theories to account for pre-natal impressions, notably ancestral
memory, that is to say memories handed down from some possibly distant
forbear, or again these impressions may be conveyed from the minds ofthose
who have passed over, spirit presences around us, or even of those still living
on this earth.
Telepathy, that is to say thought transference, is a subject of which we
know very little at present. But just as the air is filled with waves of sound
which, until the invention of wireless telegraphy, we were unable to hear,
I believe that it is full ofthought waves-"thought vortices", to use the term
of the Atomic School of Greek philosophers-which one day we may learn
to capture. Most people are aware of the "atmosphere" in certain houses,
how in one there is a feeling of peace and happiness whilst another breathes
unrest, legacies left behind by those who lived in them before. When these
have materialized they have been known as ghosts.
But what are ghostsr To say one does not believe in them is merely
absurd in view of the countless well-authenticated cases of apparitions and
haunted houses. I have known too many people who have seen them to
doubt the reality of these visions, people who were moreover of the rather
matter-of-fact and unimaginative type. Miss Jourdain, one of the two
authors of An Adventure at the Petit Trianon, who once came to see me,
struck me as a particularly sane and well-balanced personality. Perhaps the
most convincing story of this kind was told me by my husband's niece,
Lama Hewett, who was certainly not given to romancing.
When her father, Sir John Prescott Hewett, was Lieutenant-Governor
of the United Provinces, living in Government House at Lucknow, Lorna,
then a girl of about eighteen, having been taken ill, went to bed early. She
was still awake when she heard a sound and, looking round, saw a man in
a blue coat with brass buttons and white nankeen breeches, coming into
the room from the verandah. She made an exclamation of surprise, whereat
he murmured something and went out again. The next two nights the same
174 SPACIOUS DAYS

thing occurred but the last time he came into the room, threw himself into
a chair exclaiming, "There, I've brought it back!" and deposited something
on the floor with a thud. Then he vanished.
A few weeks later Lorna was taken into the mess of Hodson's Horse to
which Jack Atkinson, the man she eventually married, belonged, and there
on the wall was a picture ofthe man she had seen in her vision. It was Hodson
himself who, she now heard, had died in Government House on one of the
three nights when he had appeared to her and who had been accused of
looting, the thud being apparently the bag ofloot he was returning.
If imagination could make one see a ghost I should certainly have seen
one for I have always been so afraid of them that I could never sleep well in
an old house and nothing would induce me to stay in a haunted one. But
though I have never for a moment imagined that I saw or heard anything I
have felt something in the atmosphere of a house very vividly. Once it was
in London when we took a house for the winter and my bedroom, a very
pleasant one, somehow "gave me the creeps". We heard afterwards that the
house was known to be haunted, two people having committed suicide
there.
Are ghosts to be explained by this phenomenon ofthoughts and sensations
lingering in the air or are they really, as it has hitherto been supposed, the
spirits ofthe departedr What we need is a body ofseriousscientiststo examine
all forms of psychic phenomena in the same spirit as those who discovered
radium or wireless telegraphy.
I believe that the great discoveries of the future will relate to communi-
cation with (a) other worlds and (b) "the other world", that is to say between
the earth and other planets and between the visible and invisible worlds in
which we live. Some day, perhaps. we shall capture the thought-waves in the
air just as today we capture sound waves in a radio set. Then we shall not
only be able to tune in from one and to another but to extract thoughts and
sensations latent in the air which have hitherto only rarely or spasmodically
made themselves felt.
So to return to my own story. The feeling of familiarity which came
over me when studying the Chevalier de Bouffiers and Madame de Sabran
might be explained by the theory of reincarnation or of ancestral memory.
I have no French ancestors, but my mother may have read about these people
just before my birth or my grandfather. Philip Nicholas Shuttleworth, may
have been impressed by memories of the French Revolution, still fresh in
people's minds when he visited Paris with Lord Holland in 1815, although
hisletters written from there at the time convey no such impression. Or again
I may have received thought-waves from those who had passed over or
others still on earth.
Sceptics or materialists will say that all this is nonsense. that the simple
explanation is that I was interested in the French Revolution and gave rein
to my imagination. But I am deeply interested in the Elizabethan era, the
mystery of Shakespeare fascinates me, I know ofno subject in which I could
 THE CHEVALIER DE BOUFFLERS 17S
become more engrossed, yet never for a moment have I felt that I lived at
that period, to me it is merely history, wonderful, absorbing history but
with which I have no personal connection and of which I know no more
than I have read in books. But in eighteenth-century France, and particularly
in the Revolution, I am at home. I know what it filt like to live in those days.
So I resolved to reconstruct the story of the Chevalier de Bouffiers and
Madame de Sabran which at the outset had seemed to me so strangely
familiar, and which had never been related in its entirety even in France. It
was an enthralling task. I remember being told after my book came out
and was being discussed in a London drawing-room, that a Frenchman
present whose grandfather had been guillotined, remarked, "No one could
have written that book who had not lived at the Court ofMarie Antoinette."
I was very happy writing it. In our lovely Surrey home, looking out
over the Weald of Sussex, all the world seemed at peace and I could work
without distractions. How strange amidst the settled calm of twentieth-
century England to look back upon the stormy period ofthe French Revolu-
tion! The contrast provided just the stimulus needed to prevent country life
degenerating into mental stagnation.
Then dawned the memorable August day when we had motored down
to Goodwood for the races, and as we were standing by the course a friend
came up to us and said abruptly:
"So in a few days we shall be at war with Germany!"
The news fell on our earslike a thunder-clap. Wrapped in the calm ofthe
long summer days, far removed from political circles, we had paid no heed
to public events, had felt no repercussion of the tremors that were shaking
the soil of Europe at that moment, we had only vaguely realized that
Germany was a growing power to be reckoned with one day. And now the
hour had struck. Three days later war was declared. It was the end of an
epoch, the peaceful England we had always known was to be no more.
 CHAPTER XXVI

FRANCE IN W AR-TIME

~
THO UGH the actual outbreak of war came to us as a shock we
never for a moment doubted its inevitability. Brought up on the
memories of 1870 I entertained no illusions on the nature of Prussian
militarism. How often with our little French friends at Cannes did we listen
to stories of their summers in Alsace where little Andre playing in the
garden wearing a pinafore with a tricouleur stripe would have it torn offhim
by German policemen who had spotted that forbidden design from afar.
And we would sit round singing:

"Vous avez pris l' Alsace et la Lorraine,

Mais noire coeur vous ne l' aurez jamais,
Vous avez pu germaniser la plaine,
Mais malgre toutnous resterons franfais!"

Passing through Paris every year I would gaze sadly at the statue of
Alsace draped in mourning veils and wreaths in the Place de la Concorde and
long for the day when these funeral trappings would be triumphantly
removed.
My own experience in Germany had intensifiedthese feelings, and neither
my husband nor I could understand how our country could remain deaf to
Lord Roberts's courageous warnings of the German menace. We trembled
lest England should fail at the last moment to stand by France, and allthrough
that fateful Sunday of August 3, 1914, we waited in agonized suspense for
news. The terrible but necessary decision of the following day relieved our
minds but filled our hearts with grief The die was cast. Der Tag had come
at last.
For with the outbreak of war one's whole outlook on life was changed,
things that had meant so much had lost their value, nothing seemed to
matter but the fact that Lord Roberts's prophecy had come true and the
German tiger had sprung as it had openly threatened for so many years to
do when the propitious moment came.
Outwardly, however,life went on much as usual. It was strange during
the Second World War to remember how little in comparison the First one
affected the civilian population. There was so far no danger of air raids
except by infrequent Zeppelins, there was at first no rationing for there was
no shortage of food or of any of the commodities oflife.
So after a while I settled down seriously to finish the story ofthe Cheva-
lier de Boufllers. But for this purpose it was advisable to collect some fresh
material, ifpossible unpublished documents. Where were these to be found?
176
 FRANCE IN WAR-TIME 177

Only in Paris. So although the war was raging I resolved to try to get there.
It was the autumn of 1915, and although the German armies were pouring
into France civilian travel had not been stopped, but the passage across the
Channel was deflected from Folkestone to Dieppe, a matter of eight hours
sitting on my hat-box, the only perch available. The sailors breathed a sigh
of relief as we steamed into port without being torpedoed.
On shore a long queue formed for the inspection of passports, my first
experience ofthis formality. The crowd was swelled by a number ofBelgian
refugees fleeing from the advancing German hordes and a murmur of
sympathy went up at their forlorn aspect. "Ah, les braves Beiges! Les sales
Boches!" But the voice ofa young girl ofabout fifteen with a pigtail stemmed
the chorus: "But no, ours was the fault, because we were not prepared for
war!" A singularly bright child, I thought.
My first check occurred with the passport officials who put me through
a searching enquiry:
"Why do you wish to go to Parise"
"To find some historical documents."
"For what purposee"
"To write a book."
"On w h at subi~ectl "
"Oh, around the French Revolution."
"Comment? Encore un livre sur la Revolution?" and a groan went up from
them all. However in the end they let me through.
Paris, when at last I arrived there, seemed to me a city of the dead. The
great poussee at Loos was in progress and the deepest anxiety prevailed.
Fortunately for me the prestige of England stood high at that moment.
"A une Anglaise je ne puis rim refuser!" said the official at the Conciergerie
when I begged for permission to go round the prison on an off day so as to
be able to re-constitute the scenes of the Terror in telling the story of
Delphine de Custine. It was not till some years later that I was able to pene-
trate into the lair of Fouquier-Tinville in the Tour d'Argent where jerome
abstracted Delphine's dossier from beneath the fatal pile of death sentences.
The great object of my journey was, however, to get at the documents
I needed which meant a visit to Plon-Nourrit, the publishers of the famous
Correspondance in 1875. Monsieur Duivon, the manager, was cordial and said
that all the documents hitherto unpublished were in the possession of
Monsieur Gaston Maugras, author of the brilliant series La COUT de Luneville
ending with La Marquise de Boufllers et son fils le Chevalier, but he added:
"will he show them to youe" That seemed doubtful. However, Monsieur
Duivon was willing to give me a letter of introduction to the eminent
historian.
Armed with this I made my way to Monsieur Maugras' charming
appartement in the Champs Elysees. His manner at :first was somewhat dry.
"I regret that I have nothing to communicate. Such documents as 1 possess
I propose to publish myself."
M
178 SPACIOUS DAYS

"Mais voyons, monsieur," I began persuasively, "would you not give me

advice, you who are so documente on the eighteenth century?"
We went on talking and suddenly 1 noticed the photograph ofa familiar
face on his table.
"sure I" "d" tha t IS
y, 1 sal, " Dr. Combe? "
"Mais cui, c' est bien Combe, c'est mon ami, c'est mon sauoeurl" he cried
rapturously. So it appeared that here was yet another case of Dr. Combe's
almost miraculous treatment of colitis.
"Come back on Thursday," Monsieur Maugras went on, "and we will
a
lunch together la regime!"
So on the appointed day 1 returned to find him in the kindliest ofmoods.
"I have decided to show you the documents," he said, "and to let you
make use of them."
Then we sat down to a wonderful dijeuner with chicken cooked as only
a
the French can cook it and maccaroni la Combe.
1 told Monsieur Maugras that 1 wanted now to go and look at the house
of Madame de Sabran in the Rue du Faubourg Saint Honore.
"Mais c'est depuis longtemps demolie," he answered. A block of flats now
occupied its site.
However, 1 determined to visit the spot so as to be able to visualize her
life on the eve ofthe Revolution. Luckily 1had a letter ofintroduction to our
ambassador, Lord Bertie, from his brother who lived near us in Surrey, and
with this 1 made my way to the British Embassy, once the Hotel de Charost,
a few doors off the house ofMadame de Sabran.
Lord Bertie, a most charming and interesting personality, received me
very kindly and showed me all over the beautiful old house, he led me up
the staircase with its exquisite rampe to the bedroom of Pauline Borghese
which he had recently occupied himself, but now in war-time it was swathed
in dust-sheets which he removed to show me the fine Empire furniture
beneath. He even took me up in the lift to a housemaids' bedroom and threw
open the shutters so that (rom the top floor 1 could gain a glimpse of the
view over the Champs Elysees on which 1 could imagine Madame de
Sabran looking out for the last time before her flight from Paris on]uly 13,
1789, the day before the taking of the Bastille.
But which was her house? As 1 wandered along the Avenue Gabriel in
the Champs Elysees past the high iron grilles of the gardens leading down
from the glorious hotels of the eighteenth century noblesse 1 wondered
whether Monsieur Maugras was right in saying it had been demolished.
Peering through the railings one of these seemed to me strangely familiar,
a house that appeared to be shut up, with a long stone terrace leading down to
a great deserted garden overgrown with weeds and lush, brilliantly green
grass beneath the shade of the spreading trees.
Yes, surely that was the garden in which Eleonore had walked on
summer mornings long ago, that was the terrace on to which the Chevalier
would watch her coming out from her drawing-room windows, that rank
 FRANCE IN WAR-TIME 179

grass had once been smooth lawns on which her children played. Going
round to the Rue du Faubourg Saint Honore I looked for the entrance from
the street, and found it to be a tall dark red poite-cothere with a design of
wreaths and cupids at the top. This struck no answering chord, but from the
garden side each time I have passed the house since that day the strangest feel-
ing has crept over me, a flood of memory almost painful in its intensity, and
I cannot help believing that that indeed was the house ofMadame de Sabran,
My journey to Paris in search offresh material for my book had not been
in vain for Monsieur Maugras, true to his promise, with extraordinary
kindness, copied out for me in his own hand a number of the unpublished
letters he possessedand even posted me two ofthe originals for reproduction
in photostat and these appear on pages 258 and 402 of my book. I had all
the pages he had written out for me bound into my copy of Le Chevalier de
Bouiflers et la Comtesse de Sabran by Pierre de Croze, which I hope will
eventually find a home in the London Library for the use of future students
of the period, for as far as I know Monsieur Maugras, who died some years
ago, never published them in France. I sent him, of course, a copy of my
book and was delighted to find it met with his warm approval. I had ended
it with a sigh for it was a real grief to part from the lovers with whom I had
lived for two years, sharing their joys and sorrows, and indeed even moved
to tears by the death of Armand de Custine under the Terror.
The Chevalier de Bouiflers: a romance of the FrC11ch Revolution, beautifully
produced by John Murray, appeared in March, 1916, and had an excellent
press; several reviews, notably in the Daily Chronicle and the Evening
Standard, were extremely appreciative, but I was disappointed to meet with
less scholarly criticism than I had expected.
In France I felt that the discovery of so wonderful a romance set in the
stirring days of the Revolution would have been dealt with by savants who
had specialized in the period, and reviewed in well-chosen language com-
menting on the style ofits writing; to British reviewers it was no more than
a story to be smiled over as a pleasant bit of light reading. Style, I found,
counted for little or nothing, and I remembered how Mr. Arthur Humphreys,
the brilliant leading spirit in Hatchard's of that day, had said to me at the
outset of my literary career, "Remember, in this country good writing
counts for very little!"
It wasthus not until Lord Cromer came out with a splendid page offine
literary criticism in the Spectator ofAugust 26, 1916, that I could feel the book
had really come into its own. In a letter to my cousin David Bevan, Mr.
St. Loe Strachey, editor ofthe Spectator, wrote, "I never heard Cromer more
lyrical over a book; he was fascinated by it."
Lord Cromer himself had been so distressed to find that he had referred
to me wrongly in his review as Miss Webster, that I was urged to write and
tell him that I did not mind. In reply he wrote me a long and most delightful
letter which I have always treasured and which spurred me on to further
efforts, of which more anon.
M*
180 SPACIOUS DAYS

Another letter that gave me great pleasure was addressed to my husband

by Sir Edward Marshall Hall, the eminent K.C., who said: "will you forgive
me if! venture to offer to your wife through you my sincere congratulations
on having written and compiled one ofthe most delightful books I have ever
reads My appreciation is shown in a practical form in that I have bought
six copies of The Chevalier de Boufflers for Christmas presents."
I was again delighted to read in some war book that my gay Chevalier
had cheered many of our wounded officers in French hospitals at the front
for that I felt sure he would have loved to do. Bouffiers, I had often thought,
would have found himself peculiarly at home in England where his sense of
humour would have been even better appreciated than in France. The French,
in general, and particularly since the Revolution, have found cause for mirth
mainly in a derisive vein, making fun of people, especially of men in public
life. Bouffiers saw the funny side of things and gave a whimsical turn to
everyday happenings in the good-humoured way that appeals to our less
critical temperament. That is perhaps why my story of his life had a success
in England, for it has gone into no less than fifteen editions and was still
going well thirty years after its first appearance.

I had hoped during my flying visit to Paris in 1915 to see Mary Davies,
who had recently created something of a sensation in medical circles. The
outbreak of war had opened a fresh field for her activities in scientific
research,and she had been taken on as a trained bacteriologist at the American
Hospital in Neuilly where she worked under an American, Dr. Taylor.
The Germans, in direct violation of the Hague Convention to which
they had subscribed in 1907, had launched the first attack by poison gas to be
employed in warfare on April 22, 1915, and terrible cases of gas gangrene
poured into the hospital at Neuilly. Dr. Taylor inunediately set to work to
devise a counter-serum and told Mary that the results of his experiments
could best be tested on a healthy subject. Mary thereupon, without telling
him of her intention, abstracted a tube of gas gangrene poison from the
laboratory and returning to her lodgings injected into her own thigh a
sufficient quantity of the poison to kill fifty guinea-pigs. She then rang up
Dr. Taylor and invited him to come and try the counter-serum. Frantic with
anxiety the doctor, knowing that Mary had risked the loss ofher life ifnot of
a limb, rushed round to her pension to find her alive but aproaching the
crisis to which the injection must lead. Mercifully the counter-serum acted
successfully; the crisis passed, Mary was restored to almost complete health,
and its efficacy having now been proved the serum could be employed for the
victims of gas gangrene in the hospital.
Anxious to congratulate my friend I made my way out to NeuilIy only
to find that she had just left for England. Her landlady received me with
tears in her eyes. "Oh, Madame, c'est la chose la plus sublime qu'on afaitpendant
la guerre! Mon Dieu, quel courage, quel hlroisme!"
It was indeed sublime, but Mary did not think so, to her it would have
 FRANCE IN WAR-TIME 181

been only natural to sacrificeher life to save that ofa single soldier. Her only
thought now was to get on with a further experiment. Wounds, they had
found in the laboratory, were almost invariably complicated by a secondary
infection owing to the cloth of a soldier's uniform being driven into the
wound and setting up a septic centre. Iftherefore the cloth ofuniforms could
be not only sterilized but treated in such a manner as to act as antiseptic this
further danger would be eliminated. For months Mary worked at experi-
ments along this line and at last succeeded in producing a cloth that resisted
all attempts at contamination. But alas! the authorities would take no
notice; in vain she interviewed army officers, politicians and other men in
public life, in vain she drew out her own savings to finance the venture-for
the process was costly-all turned a deaf ear to her pleadings.
When she died twelve years later columns in the Press acclaimed her
as a heroine, declaring that she had refused all honours. The truth is that none
were offered her, though had they been she would certainly have refused
them; what broke her heart was her failure to achieve the purpose for which
she would willingly have sacrificed her life. I have stacks ofher letters written
throughout those years of intensive research in varying moods of buoyant
hope and deep discouragement, and through them all the sparkling vein of
humour that made her personality unique. One day perhaps her whole story
may be told.
 CHAPTER XXVII

ENGLAND IN WAR-TIME

T HAT journey to France in the midst of the war had shown me that
the French were much more alive to the dangers of German espionage
than we were in England. The notices in the railway carriages: "Silence!
Les oreilles ennemies feoutent!" had no parallel in our country where people
talked in the most incautious manner, and German tradesmen-hairdressers,
bakers, etc.-as well as restaurant keepers were allowed the utmost latitude.
Anyone who showed anxiety with regard to this question was derided as a
victim of "spy mania" and heavy penalties were inflicted on those who
ventured to express suspicions of any particular individual.
Rwnours of the kind were however current in the neighbourhood of
our house which, overlooking the Weald of Sussex towards Chactonbury
Ring, provided a strategic position for enemy agents. Accordingly my
husband, on account of his police experience, was asked by the X Office to
carry out investigations. This proved a most interesting field ofobservation-
mysterious flashes seen at night, carrier pigeons intercepted and other
happenings of a highly suspect nature were duly noted in his reports. To-
gether we traced out on an ordnance map the points at which these phen-
omena occurred and a curious line of communication could be traced out
between Aldershot and the sea.
It was a most exciting experience for Army officers also engaged in the
work of contre-espionage called at our house as a point of observation to
compare notes with us but too often complained of the hopelessness of their
task: "It is no use our reporting anything; we are up against a brick wall."
A most amusing adventure was when one spring evening Mr. William
le Queux, the novelist, who had been officially enlisted in the spy hunt,
arrived at our door with Lord T., an immense wireless apparatus mounted
on a lorry which made a terrific noise coming through the village and a
number ofnaval operators.Wireless was then in its infancy and the apparatus
set up in one of our fields was surmounted by a high mast at the foot of
which the investigators seated themselvesand invited us to join them in their
task oflistening-in for any German messages that might be passing through
the air. At about II p.m. they announced that they had been able to contact
a German agent and reply to him in German code inviting him to meet them
at a certain spot in the woods below the house.
It seemed to us unlikely that any German spies would fall into this trap,
however, Mr. le Queux and Lord T. set off hopefully for the rendez-vous,
having roped in our head gardener, all three armed with revolvers ready to
shoot down the unwary Hun at sight. Needless to say they drew a blank
and returned chilled at dawn to snatch a few hours' sleep.
182.
 ENGLAND IN WAR-TIME

Nothing daunted, however, they proposed on the following evening

that we should all motor up to the top of Hindhead and experiment with
flashlights. Accordingly at midnight we took up our stand beneath the gibbet
and signalled across the Devil's Punch Bowl to Aldershot. Again nothing
happened, which was not surprising. What was, however, surprising and still
more disquieting was that a party of unknown people should be allowed to
flash lights with impunity across country. At one moment we hoped that
some vigilance was being exercised over activities of this kind, for when we
started home we were stopped on our way through Hindhead by a police-
man. But it was only to tell us that our tail-light was not in order, merely an
offence against motoring regulations which were apparently of greater
importance than the safety of the country.
The thinnest excuses were made at the time for the laxity shown to
German agents. I remember one German being reported as constantly
telephoning to another in a manner that aroused suspicion, but the authorities
having tapped his wire assured the informer they were satisfied that the two
friends were a perfectly innocent pair of astronomers, only communicating
with each other on the movements of the stars. It would be difficult to ima-
gine a simpler method for conveying information about the movements of
troops or ships at sea.
The attitude of the general public towards this question was usually one
ofcomplacency. "After all what harm are spies doingr" But this contention
was not borne out by events. Ships were blown up, even in port,' and
mysterious accidents occurred from time to time which aroused a certain
amount ofanxiety and questions were asked in the House ofLords to which
no satisfactory replies were made.s
Our own experiences left no room for doubt that what came to be called
"the Hidden Hand" was at work in our midst. It was not only a matter of
espionage but of sedition on the Home Front. Socialists and Pacifists were
allowed to preach defeatism and discourage recruiting; people who had
openly sympathized with the enemy emerged from the conflict with
honours. "I passin England as a pro-German and as a matter offact rightly,"
Lord Haldane was reported as saying after the war had ended. "This feeling
for the German people has never altered in me and I have never concealed it."3
There was no need to conceal it; in that First World War it was patriots
who had to show caution in their utterances. That we ever won it was the
matter for surprise.
The fact is that we were in no way organized for a conflict so prolonged
and so skilfully prepared by underground methods. Food rationing, as I have
said, was not introduced until 1917 when England was on the verge of
starvation and then very inadequately administered. The winter of 1917 to
1918 wasa terrible time. Our men having been called up we had been obliged
1 The Princess Irene in Sheerness Harbour in May, 1915, the Audacious blown up by a mine,
Vanguard, Bulwark and Natal all mysteriously sunk.
2 See the Debate on "The Status of Aliens Bill on July 26,1918.
• Evening News, December 14, 1923.
 SPACIOUS DAYS

to leave our house and farm above Chiddingfold and move into two smaller
houses, one in London, the other in the village of Brook, near Godalming,
where unfortunately we could obtain no pasturage for our herds of cows
and were obliged to part with them. Two pints of milk a day for eight
people, including two children, and a minute ration of butter or margarine
were all that could be procured from the local dairy. At the same time meat
was strictly rationed and fish almost unobtainable; I shall never forget my
weary trudges through the snow to Godalming only to find the fishmongers'
slabsbare, for since petrol was also rationed shopping had to be done on foot.
In London, where we settled into 84 Cadogan Place which was to be our
home for twenty-six years, we fared better. Certain foods were rationed
there-meat, butter and sugar in particular-but not in the diminutive
quantities doled out in the Second World War. It was still possible to live
comfortably and for some people luxuriously, for then, as later, Government
regulations were easily avoided by the unpatriotic. My first glimpse of the
Black Market was when I descended to our kitchen and found our cook,
about whom I had some doubts, surveying a row ofsucculentjoints ofmeat
spread out on the table-sirloins of beef, saddles of mutton, etc., each
bearing a label with a name on it.
"What does this mean, Mrs. Smithr" I asked.
"Oh, just a butcher who happens to be a friend of mine," she answered.
"He lets me have as much meat as I like. There is no need for you to go short;
I can get it for you, too." And she showed me the bill from a butcher ofalien
extraction with whom she was evidently doing a thriving trade.
I need hardly say that I declined her offer. The incident has always
remained in my mind as an instance of the way State distribution of the
necessaries of life must operate-the friends of the distributors will always
get the lion's share.
The air raids on London began in 1917. One of the first occurred when
we were spending a week-end at our country cottage and had left a house-
maid alone in Cadogan Place. On our return I said to her:
"I am so sorry you were all by yourself, I'm afraid you must have been
frightened."
"Oh, I was, m'm,', she replied, looking white and shaken, "terribly
frightened! "
"The raid was a bad onet"
"Oh, it wasn't the raid, m'rn, that upset me. There's a mouse in the base-
mentl"
We adopted a black kitten and all was well after that.
 CHAPTER XXVIII

THE FRENCH REVOLUTION

N spite of alarms and privations, of alternating moments of hope and fear

I above all of that most wearing of all human emotions suspense, there was
a grandeur about the First World War that brought a thrill into life on
the Home Front which must still stir the hearts of those who can remember
the England of those days. Everyone found work, in the country we had
enough to do entertaining the Belgian refugees who, contrary to some
people's experience, proved wonderfully appreciative. I have always kept
the charming letters they wrote us after the first Christmas tree we had for
them at Widey. In London my husband I were both busy at War Supply
Depots making things for the wounded, and our children were happy for
even air raid nights were largely robbed oftheir terrors by the fun offeasting
in the basement on chocolates and biscuits which in those still spacious days
had not been placed on rations.
At the same time I had gone on writing. The success of The Chevalier de
Boufflers had led me on to a further line ofresearch. For in re-constituting the
background of the story during the French Revolution I began to realize
how much we had been told about that amazing period was false.
In France the study of the subject had gone through various phases. At
the end of the Revolution even the leaders themselves had recognized its
failure. Madame Roland in her famous apostrophe from the scaffold:
"0, Liberte, comme on t'a joui!" Danton crying out in his cell at the Con-
ciergerie: "]« laisse tout dans ungachis epouvantable: il n'y apas un qui s'entende
en gouvernement!" reflected the disillusionment to which those who had
worked for it were finally led. The revolutionary trilogy was later summed
up in the words:

"fiberte de mal faire

Egalite de misae
Fraternite de Cain etfrere I',

It was not until fresh upheavals were shaking the soil of France that the
first Revolution came to be re-habilitated in the interests of contending
political parties, the Orleaniste historians Thiers and Mignet paving the way
for Louis Philippe, and the panegyrists of the Girondins and Robespierre,
Lamartine and Louis Blanc, preparing their own succession to power in the
Socialist Revolution of 1848.
But towards the end ofthe century, and particularly after the Commune
of 1871, a new school of historians arose, working on more scientific lines
by the publication ofcontemporary evidence on the Revolution, the records
J8S
186 SPACIOUS DAYS

kept at the time and the official documents of the succeeding revolutionary
factions. By Taine, Wallon, Campardon, Mortimer-Ternaux, finally by
Lenotre, Louis Madelin and that brilliant Y01U1g writer Augustin Cochin,
a searchlight was turned on to the period which left no room for illusions.
It was not until the masonic influence of the Sorbonne, and the growing
power of Marxian Socialismin the last years of the nineteenth century and
the first decade of the twentieth revived the revolutionary spirit, that fresh
attempts were made to glorify its earliest manifestation as the dawn of
liberty for France.
All this passed almost unnoticed by British writers who, in their references
to the French Revolution, seemed to have drawn indiscriminately on the
earlier French historians without pausing to enquire into the value of their
evidence. Thus Carlyle, who early in the century had presented a turgid
picture of the movement, drawn largely from his own imagination, was
left in almost undisputed possession of the field. His work came to be
accepted as the one source of information on the subject, and his view of
the Revolution was popularized by Dickens in an equally imaginative
work of fiction, The Tale of Two Cities.
I had pilloried Carlyle in the Appendix to The Chevalier de Bou./flers and
this appeared to have interested Lord Cromer, for in his aforesaidletter to me
he observed:

"As to a real history of the French Revolution no such thing exists

in the English language, for Carlyle, besides being often very inaccurate
and prejudiced, produced merely a philosophical rhapsody. It is well
worth reading, but it is not history."

Well, if no true history of the Revolution existed in our language why

should I not write ones It was this letter of Lord Cromer's that fired me in
1916 to set about a gigantic task. For I was resolved not to follow the lead
of other British writers by consulting French historians, but to go to the
original sources of information for my facts. This, it seemed to me, would
make all the difference that exists between a portrait and a photograph;
I would see the Revolution, not through either the black or the rose-
coloured spectacles of the party writer but through the naked eye of the
contemporary. A saying attributed to Napoleon but ofwhich I cannot trace
the origin epitomizes this idea: "La verite historique ce n'est qu'une fable con-
venue. L'histoire? les memoires, les bons mots, les anecdotes, voila l'histoire!"
So it was on the records of the time that I set to work, letters, memoires,
published documents of the Revolution and here in this last category a vast
untilled field lay close at hand. For in the British Museum were to be found
the marvellous collections of pamphlets discovered immediately after the
Revolution by John Wilson Croker at Marat's lodgings in Paris and sold by
him to the Museum where they have never been properly collated. It was this
material that served for Croker's own book Essays on the early period of the
 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION

French Revolution published in 1859, the best documented work on the

subject in English, though all too fragmentary, for his project ofwriting a
complete history ofthe subject was unfortunately never realized.
A number of unpublished contemporary documents were also to be
found in the Foreign Office where again no expert hand appeared to have
been at work.
It was the study of first-hand sources of information, the evidence of
contemporaries, which led me to contest the accepted view of British writers
set forth in books of history, manuals for schools and colleges, representing
the French Revolution as the spontaneous rising ofan oppressedpeople against
tyranny; terrible, perhaps, but necessary for the regeneration of France.
I remembered how one summer evening some years earlier, sitting on the
terrace of the House of Commons after dinner with my friend Alice Butler
and her cousin Owen Wister, that distinguished American author had said
to me: "Remember, revolutions always come from above, not from below!"
Gustave le Bon in his Psychologie des Revolutions had expressed the same
opinion: "The people may make riots, but never revolutions."
What then was the role ofthe people? In the main quiescent, only on the
great days oftumult did they take part in the movement, so ifthe Revolution
was to be seen through their eyes it was only with these days that I must
concern myself My book could thus not be a complete history of the
Revolution but only one aspect ofit and one that had been hitherto ignored.
For not only Carlyle but every British writer, with the exception of Croker,
had viewed it largely from the standpoint ofthe revolutionary leaders, whilst
the people for whom it was ostensibly made remained in the background.
If, then, the Revolution was not made by the people by whom was it
made? What was the motive power behind it? St. Just himself provided the
key to the whole movement in the words: "The popular revolution was the
surface of a volcano ofextraneous conspiracies."
What were these conspiracies? That was the line I set myself to follow-
the Orleaniste intrigue for a change of dynasty, the Prussian scheme for
breaking the Franco-Austrian Alliance, the gradually evolved conception of
a Republic, finally of a Socialist State and behind them all the dark design
of "illuminized Freemasonry" working for world revolution and the
destruction of Christian civilization.
This was, of course, to reverse all accepted theories current in this
country and I wished most ardently at the outset that I could find some expert
to help and advise me, but on enquiry at the British Museum and the London
Library I was told that no-one then living had specialized on the period.
So I was left entirely to my own resources. Throughout the last two
years of the First World War and the year that followed, in the intervals of
spy-hunting, boot-making for the wounded and seeking food for the family,
I worked continuously, striving to weld the vast mass of material I had
collected into a consecutive whole. It was fascinating work, for all the time
I was conscious of some impelling force, as if a message was being sent
188 SPACIOUS DAYS

through me which I was bOW1d to deliver, I had no choice in the matter. And
in some uncanny way I seemed at every turn to be led to the right book or
document I needed to elucidate a point.
Honesty in the writing of history moreover simplifies the writer's task.
For if one is out for "the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth"
what need has one for the tortuous reasoning, the skilful evasions and
suppressions of contrary evidence the unscrupulous party writer has to
employ so as to prove his caset I had no wish to minimize the real grievances
of the people or to gloss over the shortcomings of the Old Regime, these
must be categorically set forth, but that the Revolution as it took place was
not the remedy became to me more and more evident as my work proceeded.
So after three years the book was fmished under the title of The French
Revolution: a Study in Democracy. What would the critics say~ Once more
I wished I had had expert advice, but it went to Press without having even
been submitted to a qualified publisher's reader and I had no-one to help me
to correct the proofs. Surely in dealing with so large a mass of material
unaided I must be caught tripping somewherer And sure enough a few minor
slips had occurred which I detected too late and corrected in further editions.
When the book appeared on July 17, 1919, I waited anxiously for the
reviews. Immensely long ones came out in all the leading organs ofthe Press,
many appreciative, even eulogistic, whilst those that were hostile confined
themselves merely to flatly contradicting or misrepresenting what I had said
without bringing forward a word of contrary evidence. Once again I was
surprised to meet with so little reasoned criticism.
The attitude ofthe Universities was most amusing. At Oxford, I was told,
the book could not be brought to the notice of students as it was calculated
"to upset the curriculum". I happened to mention this to the wife of a
Cambridge don who came to see me when she had held forth at some length
on the intolerance of the Roman Catholic Church in preventing people
thinking for themselves. In reply to my enquiry as to whether Cambridge
adopted the same line as Oxford with regard to my work on the French
Revolution, she replied loftily:
"Of course it would not be noticed there. If Cambridge wishes to know
anything about the French Revolution it appoints one of its own experts to
investigate."
So in the matter of historical truth it appeared that Cambridge showed
no more latitude towards independent thought than was ascribed to the
Roman Catholic Church. Aloud I said:
"And has it appointed anyoner"
"Yes, ofcourse, Lord Acton. Have you not read his Lectures onthe French
Revolution ~"
"Certainly I have. And what would you say if I were to point out, say,
eight mistakes he made in theme"
My visitor looked at me in shocked amazement. "Oh, you could not do
that!" she said incredulously and then added: "But ofcourse ifyou could and
 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION

were to write them out for me I would place them before our historical
lecturers and they would certainly consider them."
I typed out eight mistakes made by Lord Acton, not matters of opinion
but of facts, and posted them to her. But I heard no more ofthe matter.
It was thus apparently on Lord Acton that the mantle of Carlyle had now
descended, for The Times Literary Supplement in a patronizing review of my
book on August 21, 1919, satirically observed: "The most impartial book
on the Revolution is probably that ofActon, to whom, among her inefficient
predecessors, Mrs. Webster allows a faint glimmer of the light."
As a matter of fact I had quoted in the Preface the passage from Lord
Acton where he said:

"The appalling thing in the French Revolution is not the tumult

but the design. Through all the fire and smoke we perceive the evidence
of calculating organization. The managers remain studiously concealed
and masked; but there is no doubt about their presence from the first.
They had been active in the riots of Paris and they were again active in
the provincial risings."

This was precisely my own view, the one that gives the clue to all the
workings of the Revolution, and in quoting it I did indeed wish to show
that Lord Acton had perceived a glimmer ofthe truth, which, however, he
did not follow up, for nowhere in his book does he attempt to unmask the
managers or to throw any light on the calculating organization behind the
scenes. What value attached to his work 1 have never been able to discover
for it shows no evidence of original thought or research amongst contem-
porary documents, but to be almost entirely drawn from that of the early
French political historians referred to at the beginning of this chapter.
Amongst these was evidently Louis Blanc on whose authority he made the
astounding mistakeofquoting a bogus edition of Clery' s Memoires in evidence
against Louis XVI which had been publicly disowned by Clery a hundred
years earlier.
Lord Cromer's dictum still remains true, no complete history of the
French Revolution exists in the English language. I wrote to tell him of my
attempt to present one aspect of the movement in my book but alas! he died
before it could appear. Another scholarly review from his pen would have
delighted me even if it had entailed criticism of my views.
For every honest historian must welcome contrary opinion if it leads to
a revision of his own conclusions in the interests of truth, and controversy
should act as a spur to further effort. I had hoped for controversy, even for
heated but well reasoned attacks upon my main thesis of the Revolution as
an engineered movement, and I was prepared to prove it by fresh evidence
showing that the latest French historians had arrived at the same conclusion.
But nothing of the kind took place. To this day no serious attempt has been
made to refute any portion ofthe book.
190 SPACIOUS DAYS

What, however, I was not prepared for was the dishonest method of
attempting to stifle the evidence I had brought forward. Thus a whole book
was written to show that German intrigue played no part in the Revolution
without once mentioning my book where the proofs of the Prussian con-
spiracy were clearly set forth, the idea being evidently not to give any
publicity to my work.
Another book bore on its jacket the publisher's announcement that it was
a refutation ofMrs. W ebster' s book on the French Revolution, but contained
only a few references to it in footnotes refuting nothing. The author chal-
lenged by Lord Sydenham in the Press to show what attempts he had made
"to meet Mrs. Webster's exhaustive researches" made the significant
admission: "My book is not an examination of Mrs. Webster's volumes;
indeed I have been reproved elsewhere for making any reference to them at
all."
Reproved by whomr and wherej Somewhere then it had been decreed
that my books, both The Chevalier de BoujJlers and The French Revolution
were to be killed by silence. "Bruler n'est pas rlpondre," said Camille Des-
moulins. And to boycott is not to refute.
That this was indeed the plan in certain quarters was shown by a letter
I received from a critic immediately after The French Revolution appeared:

"There is something of a Boycott against your book for the Editor

of the newspaper for which I write reviews tells me that he does not
intend to notice your Revolution otherwise than by a line or two. The
letter being headed 'Private' I cannot give you further particulars."

What was the reason for these secret instructions! In embarking on the
book in 1916 I little dreamt that I was touching on a live mine; at that date
the French Revolution was a matter merely for historical research, having
no bearing on our present problem ofwar with Germany, and when in the
following year the Russian Revolution took place it was regarded generally
with favour in our country as signifying an intensification of Russia's war
effort in view of the pro-German influences supposed-and as we now
know, falsely supposed-to emanate from the Empress. It was not until the
Bolsheviks had betrayed the cause of the Allies by the separate peace the
Emperor had refused to sign and had established their ascendancy over the
helpless Russian people that the true significance of the revolution in that
country dawned on the Western world.
When this climax was reached my book on the French Revolution was
nearly finished, and since, as a work of history, no "topical" allusions could
be made in the main text, it had been arranged with the publisher that any
references to current events should be confined to an Epilogue to be added
at the last moment when the rest of the book was through the Press. The
French Revolution, I then pointed out in an amendment to the Preface, was
seen to be no dead event, and in the Epilogue I showed how the fire of that
 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 191

first conflagration had smouldered for ISO years beneath the soil of Europe
and had now burst into flame in Russia. For Bolshevism was only]acobinism
under another name, the same aims, the same methods had been pursued,
and the gigantic conspiracy of the same dark directorate against the whole
structure of Christian civilization was in active operation.
Hence the attempt to boycott my books in those quarters where the plan
of world revolution was secretly entertained and where it was realized that
any disclosures on its modus operandi and its ultimate purpose might lead to
its defeat. The myth of the French Revolution as the dawn of liberty for
France must at all costs be maintained. In revealing the truth about that
tragic epoch in what I imagined to be merely an academic work of history
I had entered the lists against terrific living forces ofwhich I had not guessed
the existence. My own life was now to become a prolonged contest with
these unseen powers. But that is another story which would require a whole
volume to itsel£
 INDEX

A Bevan, Roland Yorke, 27, 40

Bevan, Silvanus, 12, 33
Acton, Lord, 188, 189 Bevan, Timothy, 12
Ah Cum, 117 Bevan, Ulrica, 147
Aird, Sir John, 98 Bevan, Wilfrid, 27
Albany, Duchess of, 62 Bevan, William, 11
Albany, Prince Leopold, Duke of, 48, 61 Bevan, Winifred (later Lady De L'Isle and
Alexander, George, 145, 168 Dudley),27
Alexandra, Queen, 148 Bernhardt, Sarah, 146
Archdale, Eleanor, 96, 121 Bertie of Thame, Lord, 178
Ashley, Lord (later Lord Shaftesbury), 27 Besant, Mrs. Annie, 88
Atkinson, Captain Jack, 174 Biarritz, 92, 93, 160
Atkinson, Mrs. Jack (see Hewett) Blackwood, Lord Basil, 98
Australia, 150, 151 Blake, Sir Henry, 116
Blanc, Louis, 185, 189
Blavatsky, Madame, 88
B Blomfie1d, Mrs. Arthur (nee Elsie Bevan), 165
Bobrinsky, Count Alexis, 68
Baker, Tom, 41, 42 Bobrinsky, "Alosch", 68
Barclay, David, 12 Bobrinsky, Countess, 68, 69
Barclay, Elizabeth, 12 Bobrinsky, Lili (later Princess Lvov), 68
Barc1ay, Robert, the Apologist, 12 Bobrinsky, Sophie, 68
Barclay's Bank, 12, 14, 36 Borthwick, Sir Algernon (later Lord Glenesk),
Bashkirtseff, Marie, 75, 76, 170 46
Beauchamp, Lady, 40 Borthwick, Lilias (later Countess Bathurst),
Bevan, Lady Agneta (nie Yorke), 17,26,37 46
Bevan, Professor Anthony Ashley, 27-8, 39, Bosanquet, Mrs. (nee Louisa Bevan), 15
54,55 Bouffiers, Chevalier de, Chapter XXV, 185,
Bevan, Rev. Barc1ay, 13 186, 190
Bevan, David, 12, 26, 33 Bourke, Favell, 12
Bevan, David Lee, 179 Bowden-Smith, Lieut. W. (later Admiral),
Bevan, Dorothy (Dolly) (later the Hon. 129
Mrs. Noel Bligh), 165 Boysen,67
Bevan, Edwyn Robert, 17,27,28,45, 54, Brett, Florence (later Mrs. Watkyn Williams),
59, 60, 79, 80, 86, 165 159
Bevan, Emma Frances (nee Shuttleworth), Brixworth Hall, 14
19,24-6,29,30,37-9,42,47-50,52-5, Bronte, Charlotte, 169
57, 58, 63, 64, 67-72, 74, 76, 85, 143, Brooke, Captain Victor, 157, 158
166 Browning, Robert, 80, 81
Bevan, Enid Bertha (see Sulivan) Butler, Alice, Lady, 187
Bevan, Favell Lee (see Mortimer) Butler, Edith (later Mrs. Beauchamp Lecky),
Bevan, Frances Lee (see Morier) 95
Bevan, Francis Augustus (Frank), 27, 41, 54, Butler, Sir Thomas, 95
57,77,85
Bevan, Frederica Emma (later Mrs. Stephen-
son), IS, 16 C
Bevan, Gladys Mary, 28, 50, 84
Bevan, Gwendolen (see Keith-Falconer) Camlet Castle, 29, 30
Bevan, Hubert Lee, 28. 73 Cannes, 31, Chapters VI, VIII
Bevan, Louisa (see Bosanquet) Carlyle, Thomas, 186, 187, 189
Bevan, Millicent (see Hart Dyke) Carroll, Lewis (Charles Lutwidge Dodgson),
Bevan, Richard Lee, 13 25, 28
Bevan, Robert Cooper Lee, 11, 13-18. 26, Ceylon, 113, 132, 149, 150
27, 30, 31, 33-45 Chaplin, Henry, 135
193
194 INDEX

Charles 11, 46 F
Cheam school, 27, 56
Chetwynd, Sir George, 135 Farkoa, Maurice, 98
Clarence, Duke of (Prince Albert Victor), Fielding Hall, H., 104, 112
111 Fosbury Manor, 12, 32, 33
Clery, Jean Baptiste, valet of Louis XVI, 189 Fox, Charles, 24
Cochin, Augustin, 186 Fox, George, II
Colquhoun, Chevalier de, 48 Fox-Strangways, Mrs. Rosamund, 172
Colville, Captain, 129 Fraser, Mr. and Mrs. Hugh, 129
Combe, r», 167, 168, 178 French Revolution, 172, 174, Chapter
Croker, John Wilson, 46 XXVIII
Cromer, Evelyn Baring, Earl of, 179, 186, Freud, Sigisrnund, 167
189
Cross, John, 46
Curzon, Countess, 157
Curzon of Kedleston, George Nathaniel, G
Earl, 156, 157, 162, 163
Custine, Delphine de, 177 Gabiano, Signorina, 59
Gawthorpe Hall, 19
George IV, 13
D German Emperor and Empress, 140
Germany, 136, 137; War with, 175, Chap-
Darby, Rev. J. N., 37 ters XXVI, XXVII
Darby-Griffith, Captain, 98, 99 Gillett, Dr. Richenda, 83, 84, 133, 148
Davies, Sir Henry, 134, 147 Goodfellow, Mr. and Mrs., 105-8
Davies, Miss K. M. G. (Mary), 134, 135, Gubbins, Mr. and Mrs., 129
147, 152, 155, 168, 180, 181 Gyp (Comtesse de Martel), 81
De Bunsen, Baron, 42, 91
De Bunsen, Praulein "Mimi", 42, 91
De L'Isle and Dudley, Lady (see Winifred
Bevan) H
De Salis, Comte Jean de, 94
De Salis, Comtesse de (nee Princesse de Haldane, Lord, 183
Chimay),94 Hamilton, Colonel Hubert, 158
Dickens, Charles, 53, 81 Hanbury, Sir Thomas and Lady, 75
Dolgorouki, Princess, 69 Hardwicke, 4th Earl of, 18
Dubois, Paul, 167 Hart Dyke, Ashley, 165
Duivon, Monsieur, 177 Hart Dyke, Millicent (nee Bevan), 16, 47,
Dunlop, Alexander, 83 54, 58, 68, 93, 165
Dunn, Arthur, 27 Hastings, Marchioness of, 135
Dunn, Mrs. Arthur (nee Helen Malcolmson), Heeren, Oscar, 93
27 Hegg, Madame Theresa, 59
Ouse, Eleonora, 146 Hewett, Sir John Prescott, 173
Hewett, Lorna (later Mrs. Jack Atkinson),
165, 173, 174
E Hichens, Robert, 167
Hoghton, Anna (later Mrs. Shuttleworth), 21
Earthquake on the Riviera, 52, 53 Hoghton, Sir Henry, 21
Edward IV, 30 Hoghton, Sir Richard, 19
Edward VII, Prince of Wales, 61,62,85,86, Hoghton Tower, 19
147; H.M. King, 142 Holland, Henry Richard Fox, 3rd Lord, 22,
Eleoncre, 145, 148, 165 174
Elizabeth, Empress of Austria, 94 Holland, Lady, 22, 25
Elizabeth, H.M. Queen, 19 Howard, Adelaide (later Lady Marshall), 42
Eliot, George (Mrs. Cross), 46 Howard, Catherine (later Mrs. Middleton
Emerson, Ralph Waldo, 81, 93, 161 Biddulph), 42
Eustace, Grace (later Mrs. Scott-Moncrieff), Howard, Edward (later Cardinal), 42
96, 113 Hugo, Victor, 81
Exeter Hall, 36, 40 Humphreys, Arthur, 179
 INDEX I9S
May, Adolphe, 129
May, Paul, 129, 135
Imbert de Saint-Amand, 171 Maynard, Miss Constance, 77-9, 83
Ireland, 95, 96 Melba,95
Irving, Henry, 145 Melbourne, Viscount (WilIiam Lamb), 24
Ito, 120, 121 Miller, David, 49, 50
Monte Carlo, 75, 76
Moody and Sankey, 40, 41
J Moore, Evelyn, 88
Moore, Rev. Lethbridge, 86-9
James I, 19, 20 Moore, Mrs. Lethbridge (nee Emmie Shuttle-
Jestyn-ap-Gwrgant, 11 worth), 86, 88, 89
Jews and General Election of 1847, 18, return Moare, Mortimer (Merty), 88, 172
of, to Palestine, 72 Marier, Frances Lee (nee Bevan), 15
John of Gaunt, 19 Mortimer, Favell Lee (nee Bevan), 15-17, 33,
Jolly, gamekeeper, 28, 29 86,87
Jourdain, Miss E. F., 173 Mortimer, Rev. Thomas, 16
Mulholland, Hon. Alfred, 91, 147
Mulholland, Mabel, Hon. Mrs. Alfred, 91
K Munthe, Dr. Axel, 166
Murray, Colonel Sir John, 169
Kendall, Louisa, 12 Murray, John, 169, 179
Kinnaird, Lady, 40 Murray, Lady, 48
Kipling, Rudyard, 106, 156, 163 Mutsu Hito, Emperor ofJapan, 130
Kitchener of Khartoum, Earl, 157-9

L N

La Mortola, 75, 120 Nassau, Prince of, 91

Lee, Favell Bourke, 12 Newton, Constance , 172
Lee, Matthew, Richard and Scudamore, 12 Newton, Mrs., 87
Lee, Robert Cooper, 12 Niagara, 131
Le Queux, WilIiam, 182
Leslie, Sir Shane, 16
Lipton, Sir Thomas, 15 o
Livingstone, David, 42
Loates, Sammy, 98 Oliphant, Lawrence, 42
Loewenstein, Prince, 94 Osidge, IS
Lort PhilIips, Mr., 98 Overend Gurney's Bank, 13
Luccheni, 94 Owaru Suwo, 135
Ludgrove, 27, 41
Lynn Linton, Mrs., 138
P

M Paris, 45, 171, 176

Pechell, Harvey, 94
Maass, Praulein, 51-3 Pecour, Mademoiselle, 49
"Mad Wyndham", 13 Peel, Sir Robert, 24
Mah Kin, 110 Peep of Day, 15
Malcolmson, Helen (see Dunn) Percival, Miss Marie, 48, 61,91
Mandalay, 109, 110 Petrie, W. M. Flinders, 59
Manning, Cardinal Henry, 16 Polignac, Comtesse de, 120
Marie Antoinette, 175 Pytchley Hunt, 13, 14, 148, 151
Marker, Major Raymond, 157
Marriott, Ada, 135
Marshall Hall, Sir Edward, K.C., 180 Q
Maugras, Gaston, 177-9
Maxwell, Major Frank, V.C., 157, 158 Quakers, 11, 12
196 INDEX

R T

Radstock, Lord, 40, 68, 86 Tabor, Rev. Robert Stammers, 27

Ranelagh, 142 Taj Mahal, 101
Reaoing without Tears, 15, 17,87 Tasmania, 151, 152
Reincarnation, 172-5 Tempest, John, 20
Richardson, Miss Anne, 80, 83 Tempest, Margaret, 20
Ridley, Mr., 114 Terry, Ellen, 145
Roberts, Field Marshal F. S., Ist Earl, 176 Thackeray, WiIliam Makepeace, 53
Robinson, Mrs., palmist, 161 Thebaw, King ofBurmah, 109, 110
Roland, Madame Manon Phlipon, 185 Theosophy, 88
Rothschild, Baron Lionel de, 18 Thomas, Mr., III
Ruskin, John, 25 "Tiny" (Kate Bartlett, later Mrs. MitchelI),
Russian Revolution, 190, 191 46
Trent Park, Chapters I, Ill, V

S V

Sabran, Comtesse de, 171, 178 Victoria, H.M. Queen, 61; death of, 139
Sada Yacco, 126 Vincent, Lady, 48
Sanderson, Mabel (see Mulholland) Vittoz, Dr., 167, 168
Sapiyalat, Queen, 110
Saraswati, Swami Bhaskaranandaji, 102
Sargent, Caroline, 16 W
Sassoon, Sir Edward, 86
Satow, Sir Ernest, 129 Waldegrave, Mary (Daisy), 86 (later Mrs.
Savile, Lady Anne, 94 Edwyn Bevan)
Sebright, Lady Olive, 40, 41 Wales, Prince of (see Edward VII)
Shaftesbury, Earl of (see Ashley) Webster, Arthur Templer, 161-4
ShahJehan, 101 Webster, Marjorie, 166
Shepheard-Walwyn, H. W., 16 note Webster, Rosalind, 92, 166
Shuttleworth, Anna (see Hoghton) Welch, Emma (see Shuttleworth)
Shuttleworth, Caroline Jemima, 24, 89, 90, Welch, George, 23
92, 160, 164 Weldon, Sir Anthony, 95
Shuttleworth, Emma Frances (see Bevan) Welldon, Dr. J. E., Bishop of Calcutta, 98-
Shuttleworth, Emmie (see Moore) 100
Shuttleworth, Humphrey, 21 Westfield College, Chapter XI
Shuttleworth, james, 21 Wienawska, Henri, 73
Shuttleworth, Mrs. (nee Welch), 23 Wienawska,Irene (later Lady Dean Paul), 95
Shuttleworth, Nicholas, 21 Wienawska, Isabelle (later Mrs. Hubert
Shuttleworth, Philip Nicholas, Bishop of Bevan),73
Chichester, 19, 22-4, 174 Winscombe, Miss, 62-6
Shuttleworth, Richard, 20 Wister,Owen, 187
Shuttleworth, Ughtred, 24 W olverton, Lord, 49
Shuttleworth, Ughtred de, 19 World War, First (see Germany)
Shwe Dagon Pagoda, 107
Slade, Mr., lIS, 116
Smeaton, Donald Mackenzie (later Sir), 104 Y
Smeaton, Mrs., 104
Stephenson, Mrs. Frederica Emma (see Yorke, Lady Agneta (see Bevan)
Bevan) Yorke, Hon. Alec., 26
Stephenson, George, 42 Yorke, Hon. Eliot, 28
Stormont, David Murray, 1st Baron, 21 Yorke, Admiral Sir Joseph, 17
Sulivan, Enid Bertha (nee Bevan), 28, 45,
51, 52, 58, 61, 86, 160
Sulivan, Harry Filmer, 58, 82, 86, 160 Z
Sweden, H.M. Queen of, 91
Sydenham of Combe, Lord, 190 Zola, Emit, 134
 MARIA EDGEWORTH
An illustrated biography of the nineteenth
century authoress

lsabel C. Clarke

In 1800 there appeared anonymously a remarkable

novel of Irish life under the title Castle Rackrent.
It was immediately successful and a second edition
soon appeared, this time bearing the author's name:
Maria Edgeworth. She was born in 1767, daughter
of the amazing Richard Lovell Edgeworth, best
known as a revolutionary educationalist, whose
precepts she spread among her twenty-two brothers
and sisters. This was not Maria's first book-she
had already written a volume of short stories for
children and one on Practical Education in col-
laboration with her father-but it was her first
novel, and the foundation of a literary reputation
that remained high throughout the 19th century.
Sir Waiter Scott, in his preface to Waverley,
acknowledged his debt to this book; and later,
Turgeniev declared that Miss Edgeworth's novels
gave him the idea of writing about the Russian
peasantry.
After a long decline, there is now a revival of
interest in Maria Edgeworth's books. Miss Isabel
Clarke's very readable biography of that remark-
able woman, and her equally remarkable father,
could not appear at a more opportune moment.

Demy 8vo I I / llustrations 18s net

HUTCI-IINSON