I find it difficult to recall all our foreign travels. In 1876 I paid—with my husband—my first visit to Switzerland, and three years later we went again—this time making the doubtful experiment of taking with us Villiers aged six and Margaret (called Markie) aged three. Somehow we conveyed these infants over glaciers and mountains to various places, including Zermatt. We contrived a sort of awning over a chaise à porteurs carried by guides—but they did a good bit of walking also. I was really terrified on one occasion when we drove in a kind of dog-cart down precipitous roads along the edge of precipices. The children sat on either side of me—their little legs too short to reach the floor of the carriage. I had an arm round either, feeling—I believe justly—that if I let go for a moment the child would be flung into space. Jersey was walking—the maid, I suppose, with courier and luggage—anyhow I had sole responsibility for the time being. Our courier was excellent, and no matter where we arrived contrived to produce a rice-pudding on which the children insisted. It is unnecessary to describe the well-known scenes through which we passed. Switzerland impressed me, as it does all travellers, with its grandeur and beauty—but I never loved it as I did the South and, later on, the East.
SARAH BERNHARDT
Another winter we went—after Christmas—with Villiers only—to Biarritz; again I did not think it southern enough in sky and vegetation to rival the Riviera, though the pinewoods, and great billows rolling in from the sea, were attractive. Soon afterwards we embarked in a governess—a clever young woman called Ada Mason, who was recommended by Lady Derby. She had been a show pupil at the Liverpool Girls’ College, and before we engaged her permanently she went to complete her French education in Paris. She stayed with us till she married in Australia. In March 1883 we took Villiers, Markie, and Miss Mason to the Riviera, Florence, and Venice. I do not know that there is anything exceptional to record. I observe in a short journal which I kept on this occasion that Jersey and I while in Paris went to the Vaudeville to see Sarah Bernhardt in Fédora. My comment is: “She acted wonderfully but I did not think much of the play. The great coup was supposed to be when the hero gave her a bang on the head, but as that used to make the ladies faint he contented himself with partially throttling her when we saw it.” I suppose French ladies are more susceptible than English. Once in after years I went with a friend to see the divine Sarah in La Tosca. I thought the torture part horrid enough, but when La Tosca had killed the wicked Governor my companion observed plaintively, “We did not see any blood,” as if it were not sufficiently realistic.
On this same journey abroad we visited, as on various other occasions, the Ile St. Honorat and Ste Marguerite, a picnic party being given on the former by Lord Abercromby and Mr. Savile. The Duchesse de Vallombrosa brought Marshal McMahon, and special interest was excited on this occasion since Bazaine had lately escaped from what had been formerly the prison of the Masque de Fer. Jersey went with some of the party to Ste Marguerite, and Marshal McMahon told Mr. Savile that he did not connive at Bazaine’s escape, but that Madame Bazaine came to him and asked when he would let her husband out. He replied, “In six years, or six months, if he is a bon garçon”; so she went out saying, “Then I shall know what to do,” and slammed the door after her, with the evident purpose of unlocking another door, which she accomplished.
Marshal McMahon must have been a fine fellow, but hardly possessed of French readiness of speech if this story which I have heard of him is true. He was to review the Cadets at a Military College—St. Cyr, I think—and was begged beforehand to say a special word of encouragement to a young Algerian who was in training there. When it came to the point the only happy remark which occurred to him was, “Ah—vous êtes le nègre—eh bien continuez le!”
From Cannes we went to several other places, including Spezzia, Genoa, Venice, and Florence. We saw all the orthodox sights in each place and at Florence dined with Mr. John Meyer and his first wife, who, if I remember rightly, was a Fitzgerald. He was in the exceptional position of having no nationality—he was somehow connected with Germany and Russia (not to speak of Judæa) and had been in South America and Switzerland. He had been a Russian, but had lost that nationality as having been twenty-five years absent from that country. He wanted to become an Englishman, as his wife wanted to send her boy to school in England, but it would mean a lengthened residence or a private Act of Parliament costing £3,000. In the end the nice Mrs. Meyer who entertained us on this occasion died, and he bought an Italian Marquisate and turned into an Italian! He married as his second wife a beautiful Miss Fish, and I last saw them in their charming villa near Florence.
The Meyers were pleasant hosts, and it was at the dinner which I have mentioned that I first made the acquaintance of a telephone. They had asked some people to come in after dinner, and to show how the instrument worked telephoned to invite an additional guest. I never encountered a telephone at a private house in London till long afterwards.
Our younger children, Mary and Beatrice, stayed during our absence at our little Welsh home—Baglan House, near Briton Ferry—a place which all our children loved.
DEATH OF GILBERT LEIGH
In 1884 a great sorrow befell our family. My brother Gilbert, then M.P. for South Warwickshire, went in August of that year to America with Mr. W. H. Grenfell—now Lord Desborough—with the object of getting some bear-shooting in the Rockies. Towards the end of the month they began camping—but the hunting was not good, as Indians had previously driven the part of the country which they visited with the view of getting game for their side. Mr. Grenfell’s journal records frost at the end of August and heavy snow on the night of September 1st. On September 12th they pitched a camp in the Big Horn Mountains on a charming spot close to a clear, rocky river with trees and high walls on either side. On Sunday the 14th, a boiling hot day, they had an hour’s wash in the river, and after luncheon Gillie started off down the Ten Sleeper cañon alone on his horse—he was never seen alive again. For a whole week Mr. Grenfell and the three men whom they had with them searched in every possible direction, and at last, on the 21st, they found my brother lying dead at the foot of a precipice from which he had evidently fallen and been instantaneously killed—“a terrible way,” writes Mr. Grenfell, “to find a friend who had endeared himself to all—always cheery and ready to make the best of everything—nothing put him out”—“his simplicity, absence of self-assertion, and quaint humour made him a general favourite—whatever happened he never complained and did not know what fear was.”