“Not very difficult to get on with?” The answer to that question is given clearly enough in a very few of the reminiscences of those happy days—Miss Findon first—
“I went away with her several times in the holidays, and in 1878 had the great privilege of being with her in Rome. Mrs. Bryant was also there, and our party was more than a pleasant one. Every day for a month we went about with Miss Buss, and she seemed never tired of showing us the places she knew so well, and pouring out to us her own stores of knowledge in history and art, which made everything of double interest to us.”
Then comes Miss Lawford—
“The time I, with some others, spent with Miss Buss in Rome will ever remain a delightful memory. The many visits which she had paid to Italy, together with her love of history, ancient and modern, enabled us to get much out of our stay there in a comparatively short time. We were in no danger of imagining we knew the city, as she constantly impressed upon us that she was merely introducing us to it! I can still hear her. ‘Ecco Roma!’ when we came within sight of the lights of the town on our arrival there at night.”
Mrs. Bailey (Miss Emma Elford) writes at Christmas, 1894—
“This time of year always carries me back to the happy month I had the privilege of spending with her in Rome. How delightful it was to know her in her private life, and how she entered into all one’s little joys and sorrows. I shall never forget that delightful Christmas holiday; each day now, as it passes, I almost know where we were, though it is so long ago as 1877. Dear Miss Buss! how good she was ever to me; never forgetting me in anything that was going on.”
Miss Marian Elford echoes the same strain—
“But to be in Rome with her was the climax of all delights. She literally knew the history of every corner of it, both ancient and modern. She was a good linguist, being able to converse in Italian, German, and French. Not one word of ‘school’ passed between us from the time we left Holborn until we were back in our own places, for she had the happy faculty of leaving work with all its worries behind.”
In 1880, her party included my sister and Miss Fawcett, who give still the same report. Of a visit to Ostia, on this occasion, Miss Buss writes fully—
“January 11, 1880.