The journey to Rome with Madame de Trafford was full of unusual incidents. The heat was most intense, and my sister suffered greatly from it. At Turin she was so ill that she thought it impossible to proceed, but Madame de Trafford insisted upon her getting up and going on. Whilst they were still en route Madame de Trafford telegraphed to Rome for a carriage and every luxury to be in readiness. She also telegraphed to Pisa to bid M. Lamarre, the old family cook of Parisani, go to Rome to prepare for them. My sister telegraphed to Monsignor Talbot to have places reserved for the ceremonies, &c. All the last part of the way the trains were crowded to the greatest possible degree, hundreds of pilgrims joining at every station in Umbria and the Campagna, for whom no places were reserved, so that the train was delayed six or seven hours behind its time, and the heat was increased, by the overcrowding, to the most terrible pitch. My sister wrote:—
"In the carriage with us from Florence was a young Florentine noble, a Count Gondi, all of whose relations I knew. He asked me what I should do after the canonisation. 'Ça dépend, M. le Comte, si on attaquera Rome.'—'Mais, certainement on l'attaquera.'—'Eh bien, done je reste.'—'Mais vous restez, Mademoiselle, si on attaque Rome.'—'Oui, certainement.'—'Et vous, Madame,' said Count Gondi, turning to Madame de Trafford. 'Mais si on attaque Rome,' said Madame de Trafford, 'je ferais comme Mademoiselle Hare, je reste, bien sure.' His amazement knew no bounds.
"When we arrived at Rome, I was so afraid that Madame de Trafford might do something very extraordinary that I made her sleep in my room, and slept myself in the little outer room which we used to call the library, so that no one could pass through it to my room without my knowing it. The morning after we arrived she came into my room before I was up. I said, 'Mais, Madame, c'était à moi de vous rendre cette visite?'—'Laissez donc ces frivolités,' said Madame de Trafford, 'nous ne sommes pas ici pour les frivolités comme cela: parlons du sérieux; commençons.'"
The ceremonies far more than answered my sister's expectations. She entered St. Peter's with Madame de Trafford by the Porta Sta. Marta, and they saw everything perfectly. She met the Duchess Sora in the church, radiant with ecstasy over what she considered so glorious a day for Catholicism. "I knew you would be here," said the Duchess; "you could not have been away." The meeting was only for a moment, and was their last upon earth. "When the voices of the three choirs swelled into the dome," wrote Esmeralda, "then I felt what the Pope expressed in words, 'the triumph of the Church has begun.' When we first went into St. Peter's, Giacinta,[377] who had felt I should be there, was waiting for me. 'Eccola, la figlia,' she said, 'io l'aspettava.'"
Afterwards Giacinta came to see my sister at the Palazzo Parisani. "I shall never forget the meeting of those two souls," wrote Esmeralda, "when Giacinta first saw Madame de Trafford. They had never heard of one another before: I had never mentioned Giacinta to Madame de Trafford, and she had never heard of Madame de Trafford, but they understood one another at once. Madame de Trafford passed through the room while Giacinta was talking to me, and seeing only a figure in black talking, she did not stop and passed on. Giacinta started up and exclaimed, 'Chi è?'—'Una signora,' I said. 'Quello se vede,' said Giacinta, 'ma quello non è una risposta—chi è?'—and when I told her, 'O vede un' anima,' she exclaimed. Madame de Trafford then did what I have never known her do for any other person; she looked into the room and said, 'Faites la passer dans ma chambre,' and we went in, and the most interesting conversation followed."
As she returned through Tuscany, Esmeralda had her last meeting with her beloved Madame Victoire, who had then no presentiment of the end. At Paris she took leave of Madame de Trafford, and returned to London, where she for the first time engaged a permanent home—5 Lower Grosvenor Street. The furnishing of this house was the chief occupation of the next two months, though Esmeralda began by depositing in the empty rooms a large crucifix which Lady Lothian had given her, and saying, "Now the house is furnished with all that is really important, and Providence will send the rest." A room at the top of the house was arranged as an oratory; an altar was adorned with lace, flowers, and images; a lamp burned all night long before the crucifix, and if Esmeralda could not sleep, she was in the habit of retiring thither and spending long hours of darkness in silent prayer. There also she kept the vigil of "the Holy Hour." Early every morning the Catholic household in Grosvenor Street was awakened by the sharp clang of the prayer-bell outside the oratory door.
I went to stay with my sister in August for a few days. Esmeralda was at this time looking very pale and delicate, but not ill. Though the beauty of her youth had passed away, and all her troubles had left their trace, she was still very handsome. Her face, marble pale, was so full of intelligence and expression, mingled with a sort of sweet pathos, that many people found her far more interesting than before, and all her movements were marked by a stately grace which made it impossible for her to pass unobserved. Thus she was when I last saw her, pale, but smiling her farewell, as she stood in her long black dress, with her heavy black rosary round her neck, leaning against the parapet of the balcony outside the drawing-room window.
All through the winter Esmeralda wrote very seldom. She was much occupied with her different books, some of which seemed near publication. "The Study of Truth," upon which she had been occupied ever since 1857, had now reached such enormous dimensions, that the very arrangement of the huge pile of MS. seemed almost impossible. A volume of modern American poetry was to be brought out for the benefit of the Servites, and was also in an advanced state; yet her chief interest was a collection of the "Hymns of the Early Church," obtained from every possible source, but chiefly through the aid of foreign monasteries and convents. Upon this subject she kept up an almost daily correspondence with the Padre Agostino Morini of the Servites, who was her chief assistant, especially in procuring the best translations, as the intention was that the original Latin hymn should occupy one page and that the best available translation should in every case be opposite to it: many hundreds of letters remain of this correspondence. In the autumn Esmeralda was again at Ifield Lodge, where she was persuaded into a wild scheme for building a town for the poor at Crawley. Land was bought, measurements and plans were taken, and a great deal of money was wasted, but Esmeralda fortunately withdrew from the undertaking before it was too late.
But the state of excitement and speculation in which she was now persuaded to live had a terrible effect upon Esmeralda, who had continued in a weak and nervous state ever since her hurried journey to Rome. She now found it difficult to exist without the stimulus of daily excitement, and she added one scheme and employment to another in a way which the strongest brain could scarcely have borne up against. On her return to London she threw herself heart and soul into what she called a scheme for the benefit of the "poor rich." She remembered that when she was herself totally ruined, one of her greatest trials was to see her mother suffer from the want of small luxuries in the way of food to which she had been accustomed, and that though their little pittance allowed of what was absolutely necessary, London prices placed chickens, ducks, cream, and many other comforts beyond their reach. Esmeralda therefore arranged a plan by which she had over twice a week, from certain farms in Normandy, large baskets containing chickens (often as many as eighty at a time), ducks, geese, eggs, apples, and various other articles. The prices of the farm produce in Normandy were so low, that she was able, after paying the carriage, to retail the contents of her hampers to the poor families she was desirous of assisting, besides supplying her own house, at a cost of not more than half the London prices. Many families of "poor rich" availed themselves of this help and were most grateful for it, but of course the trouble involved by so many small accounts, with the expenditure of time in writing notes, &c., about the disposition of her poultry was enormous. It was in the carrying out of this scheme that Esmeralda became acquainted with a person called Mrs. Dunlop, wife of a Protestant, but herself a Roman Catholic. Esmeralda never liked Mrs. Dunlop; on the contrary, she both disliked and distrusted her; but owing to her interesting herself in the same charities, she inevitably saw a great deal of her.
During the winter an alarming illness attacked my brother Francis. He was my brother by birth, though I had seldom even seen him, and scarcely ever thought about him. Looking back now, in the distance of years, I wonder that my Mother and I never spoke of him; but he was absolutely without any part in our lives, and we never did, till this winter, when my sister mentioned his refusing to go to live with her in Grosvenor Street, which she had hoped that he would do when she took the house, and of his putting her to the unnecessary expense of paying for lodgings for him. Here he caught cold, and one day, unexpectedly, Dr. Squires came to tell Esmeralda that he considered him at the point of death. She flew to his bedside and remained with him all through the night. As she afterwards described it, she "could not let him die, and she breathed her life into his: she was willing to offer her life for his."