“We had a delightful day at Ostia. We went in a sort of waggonette with a cover as roof, the sides open, four horses and two men. Our start was made about a quarter after eight. You know the road? Through the gate of St. Paolo by the great Basilica, and then a turn to the right (to the left is the road to the Tre Fontane) took us across ‘the dumb Campagna sea’ for miles. The whole distance is sixteen miles. We stopped on the way to look at the magnificent stone-pine forest at Castel-Fusano, a little house belonging to the Chigi family. Then we returned to the grand old Castle of Ostia, and, laying down our rugs, encamped for dinner (or lunch) on the roadside. We had cold fowl, bread, butter, cake, cheese, wine, and oranges. With our etnas, we also made some cocoa. Fancy a perfectly delightful picnic on the 7th of January!
“Then we walked along the street of tombs under excavated Ostia. To any one who has not seen Pompeii, it would give a good notion of it. Some very fine statues have been dug up and put in the Lateran. The excavations are going on slowly for want of money. A fine temple has been cleared, facing the chief road from this post. Ostia must have been as magnificent as the Via Appia, in the days of St. Paul. You remember that lovely bust of the young Augustus which was dug up in Ostia?”
An interval followed after this till, in 1885, she took her nephew Frank and a college friend of his. Of this visit we have a full account by Miss Blatherwick, which lets us into the secret of the comprehensive knowledge of Rome which all recognized in Miss Buss—
“She had travelled all night, and arrived about 7 in the morning. I quite expected she would have had her breakfast sent up to her, and would have taken a few hours’ rest first; but no! she had seen Rome several times before, but the two gentlemen had not; and as she could only stay three weeks, there was no time to be lost. At 9 o’clock she appeared at the breakfast-table, looking ‘as fresh as a daisy,’ and just as though she had been there a week. Directly after breakfast she said to me, ‘You will join us in everything, will you not? We four will just fill a carriage.’ I assented only too gladly, and that morning began one of the happiest times I have ever had. Miss Buss brought with her double or treble the number of books about Rome that most people would care to take with them on so long a journey, and generally she put two or three of them into the carriage, and could turn to any passage she wanted to read aloud, although her own knowledge was such that she was herself a ‘walking guide to Rome.’ Her days there were passed much as follows: after breakfast at 9, she went to her room for a little reading; at 10.30 we drove out to see and study something in the Eternal City; then home to lunch, and, after a brief rest, went out again on the same errand. At 4.30 we assembled in her room for afternoon tea, which she and I had agreed to provide between us. We each boiled some water over our little travelling spirit-lamps; she had brought with her table-napkins and a dainty little tea-set; and then—all being prepared—we gathered round the table, and had a delightful half-hour. One day Miss Buss said to me, ‘Madame T. (our hostess) does not at all approve of these afternoon teas; I think we had better invite her to ours to-morrow.’ This was done, and the following day Miss Buss remarked, ‘Madame T. said she did not like afternoon teas, but I think she enjoyed hers very much yesterday.’ Tea over, the gentlemen disappeared to prepare for the late dinner, and Miss Buss quickly changed her dress, and at 5.30 punctually she and they met in an unused back drawing-room, and took an hour’s Italian conversational lesson. This daily lesson ended when the dinner-bell rang at 6.30, and afterwards we went up to the drawing-rooms, where all the visitors generally gathered together, and games at cards, chess, draughts, etc., were played. She always joined in some of them and in the conversation till 10 p.m. Once or twice there was an excursion for the day into the country, and one evening we went out to view the Colosseum by moonlight. And this was her holiday!
“I noticed that during this time, Miss Buss never once spoke of her college, the teachers, or anything connected with business, thus showing how wisely she could put care entirely aside for a time, and give herself up to relaxation.”
Miss Buss always went to the Pension Tellenbach, which, in her time, was quite a noted centre for the English in Rome, the visitors’ book at the old house in the Piazza di Spagna including the names of Dean Stanley and Lady Augusta, Dean Plumptre, Mr. E. A. Freeman, and, on one occasion, Mr. and Mrs. Gladstone. Madame Tellenbach was a German lady whose social position and knowledge of Rome gave her the power to make things very pleasant for her guests, and she was proud of the results of her skill and energy, a pride into which Miss Buss could enter with a real sympathy. On her death, Madame Tellenbach left her whole establishment to her brother-in-law, on condition that it should be still carried on, not being able to bear that the work of years should fall to pieces, and not perceiving that her bequest might be very much of a white elephant. But, though not in need of it, Colonel Tellenbach was not disposed to reject a valuable property, so he and his charming wife established themselves in one suite of apartments, and consoled themselves for the sufferings entailed in the management by giving soirées musicales and dansantes to their guests.
That I should go to Rome with Miss Buss had been our dream for years, during which my home claims had never made it possible. At last, in 1889–90, my sister and I met her at the Pension Tellenbach, arriving there two days before her. The advent of so scholastic a party would have carried consternation into any British hotel or boarding-house. There was Miss Buss herself, with all her weight of honours; there was a governor of her schools and the honorary secretary of her centre for the Cambridge Local Examination; there was the head of the Cambridge Training College for Teachers; there were two B.A.’s, head-mistresses, and two Kindergarten head-mistresses, A.C.P. (Associates of the College of Preceptors). Even the girl of the party was a Girton graduate. Fortunately, our kind German and Italian friends had not yet learnt their alphabet in this new style, and, in their happy ignorance, were conscious only of the bright wave of fun and frolic, of clever and wise talk, that filled the place with ripple and sparkle during the next three weeks. After the day’s excursions, amusing charades were acted by the English, with artistic tableaux vivants in return by the Germans. The B.A.’s gave a college party in their rooms, which were en suite, and were charmingly decorated for the occasion, where games were played and nonsense talked, to the despair of Colonel Tellenbach and other gentlemen, who were none of them invited, not even the Bishop himself, who was head of the English table. And when they had all gone, sad was the blank. My sister and I stayed on, and, very often, in the evenings, did Colonel Tellenbach come beside us to sigh over the loss of ces charmantes dames anglaises!
We had, of course, determined that our first sight of the Colosseum should be by moonlight, so, that, on the first brilliant night when all could go, we started—fourteen ladies in a procession of five of the nice little Roman victorias. None of the gentlemen were free to act as protectors, so we made up in quantity for lack of quality. It must be confessed that some of us could have entered sympathetically into the feelings of the rank-and-file of a forlorn hope. Malaria and brigands seemed to us to lurk in every deep dark corner of the vast ruin, and we did not know what might be the perils of the way thither. But our leader had our confidence, and we followed, to find the streets of Rome as quiet as those of an English village, and in the ruins nothing more than groups of tourists of all nations.
Still, our experience made us fully appreciate a story which was going the round at the time. A solitary Englishman, wandering in the ruins, was roused to suspicion by the number of times he came across the same burly, brown-frocked, cowled monk, who finally jostled against him, turning suspicion into certainty. The Englishman felt at once for his watch. It was not there! He strode after the monk, overmatching him in height if not in breadth, and, seizing him by the throat, demanded his watch. A colloquy, unintelligible on either side, ended in the monk giving up the watch; and, with a parting shake that sent him sprawling, the irate Englishman stalked off to tell his wife the tale. “But your watch is on the dressing-table!” she said, in alarm. He pulled out the watch in his pocket. It was not his own. A veil falls over the scene. But the early express next morning took away two passengers who were not likely soon to re-visit the Eternal City.
Nothing marred our own complete enjoyment of the scene as we sat for some time in the moonlight, opposite the imperial seat, trying to bring back the past, to see the cruel Roman crowd, to picture the stately Vestals with their power of life and death. And most clearly of all we seemed to see the Monk Telemachus as he sprang into the arena, the last human sacrifice to Roman lust of blood.