Mr. Petit, the famous ecclesiologist,[195] spent some time at Mentone afterwards, and was very kind in taking me sketching excursions, as a fourth in the carriage with his sister, Miss Emma Petit, and his niece, Miss Salt. Mr. Petit was extraordinarily clever, especially as an artist, but most eccentric. He covered the backs of his pictures with caricatures of goblins, &c., representing the events of each day on which the pictures were done. When they travelled, this extraordinary family used to keep what they called "the Petit count:" if they met a cat, it counted for so much—a black goat for so much more, and so on: but if they met a royal prince, it annihilated the whole of the Petit count, and the party would consequently go a whole day's journey out of their way to evade a royal prince. Mr. Petit was most striking in appearance, with a great deal of colour and snow-white hair and beard. I remember the start which our donkey-boy François gave when he first saw him, and his exclaiming, "Je crois, Monsieur, que c'est le frère du Père Eternel!" One day I had gone with Mr. Petit and Miss Salt to Ventimiglia, and we were returning at a most alarming speed (with their horses, from Toulon, unaccustomed to the road) along the edge of an almost unguarded and perpendicular precipice. Suddenly the horses made a great dash, and I felt, rather than saw, that they were leaving the road. I threw myself out instantly over the side of the carriage. As I picked myself up, I had the horror of seeing the horses over, hanging in the branches of an olive-tree which overhung the sea at a tremendous height, and on the tiny plateau on which it grew. The carriage was swaying to and fro on the wall, which it had broken down, and which was rapidly giving way altogether. "Uncle, shall I get out?" said Miss Salt, as coolly as if nothing was going on. "Yes," he said—and they both got out. A crowd of men came and rescued the horses with ropes from their perilous position, and we walked home.
As usual, in our return to England, we lingered much by the way. The railway then only reached as far as Aix in Provence, and we joined it there after a long vetturino journey; then, after visiting the wonderful deserted town of Les Baux near Arles and Vaucluse near Avignon, we went to S. Laurent du Pont and the Grande Chartreuse, greatly enjoying the beauty of the spring flowers there, as well as the scenery.
X
WORK IN NORTHERN COUNTIES
| "Al ogni uccello suo nido par bello." |
| —Italian Proverb. |
| "O my life! have we not had seasons |
| That only said, Live and rejoice? |
| That asked not for causes or reasons, |
| But made us all feeling and voice." |
| —Lowell. |
ON our arrival in England, we were delighted with our little Holmhurst, which we arranged to be as much like Lime as possible, while many of the plants and shrubs we had brought with us, were, in the garden, a perpetual reminder of our old home. To my mother, however, our return was greatly clouded by the loss of her only brother, my Uncle Penrhyn, who died at Sheen while we were at Mentone, passing away most peacefully, surrounded by his family. This uncle is one of the few figures connected with my childhood with whom I have no associations but those of unvarying kindness, and in later years we had been brought nearer to him in our long winter visits at Sheen, and we missed him greatly.
My Handbook (nominally Murray's) of Oxfordshire, Buckinghamshire, and Berkshire had been published during our winter absence: my little book "A Winter at Mentone" appeared soon after our return. With Murray's Handbook I had taken as much pains as if it were to appear in my own name, and felt as strongly the responsibility of what Miss Edgeworth calls "irremediable words," once past the press. The "Winter at Mentone" fell perfectly flat, but Murray was so pleased with the laudatory notices which followed the appearance of the Handbook, that he asked me to select any other counties I liked. I chose Durham and Northumberland, and after the middle of July went there for three months. In undertaking these counties, I again assented to an arrangement by which I was never repaid for my work; but the work was one which I liked extremely, bringing me in contact with endless interesting persons, enabling me to be much with "Cousin Susan," who gave me a second home at Ridley Hall, and opening a field of historic study of the most interesting kind. On the way north I went to the Vaughans at Doncaster, of which Dr. Vaughan had lately become Vicar.