My mother’s sisters rivalled my father’s in adding to the population—one, Lady Macclesfield, having had fifteen children, of whom twelve were alive to attend her funeral when she died at the age of ninety. So I reckoned at one time that I had a hundred first cousins alive, and generally found one in whatever quarter of the globe I chanced to visit.
Speaking of theatrical performances, I should specially mention my father’s next brother, Chandos Leigh, a well-known character at the Bar, as a Member of the Zingari, and in many other spheres. Whenever opportunity served and enough nephews and nieces were ready to perform he wrote for us what he called “Businesses”—variety entertainments to follow our little plays—in which we appeared in any capacity—clowns, fairies, Shakespeare or Sheridan characters, or anything else which occurred to him as suited to our various capacities, and for which he wrote clever and amusing topical rhymes.
CHAPTER II
A VICTORIAN GIRL
The Christmas festivities of 1862 had to be suspended, as my mother’s health again obliged my father to take her to the South of France. This time I was their sole companion, the younger children remaining in England.
We travelled by easy stages, sleeping at Folkestone, Boulogne, Paris, Dijon, Lyons, Avignon, and Toulon. I kept a careful journal of our travels on this occasion, and note that at Lyons we found one of the chief silk manufactories employed in weaving a dress for Princess Alexandra, then engaged to the Prince of Wales. It had a gold rose, shamrock and thistle combined on a white ground. There also we crossed the Rhône and saw in the hospital at Ville Neuve, among other curious old paintings, one by King Réné d’Anjou. It represented the Holy Family, and my childish eyes carried away the impression of a lovely infant patting a soft woolly lamb. So completely was I fascinated that, being again at Lyons after my marriage, I begged my husband to drive out specially to see the picture of my dream. Alas! ten years had changed my eyesight, and instead of the ideal figures, I saw a hard stiff Madonna and Child, with a perfectly wooden lamb. I mention this because I have often thought that the populace who were so enraptured with a Madonna like Cimabue’s in S. Maria Novella at Florence saw as I did something beyond what was actually there. Grand and stately it is, but I think that unsophisticated eyes must have endowed it with motherly grace and beauty, as I gave life and softness to the baby and the lamb.
MENTONE
We went on by train from Toulon as far as Les Arcs and then drove to Fréjus, and next day to Cannes. Whether the train then only went as far as Les Arcs or whether my parents preferred the drive through the beautiful scenery I do not know—anyhow we seem to have thoroughly enjoyed the drive. I note that in April we returned from Cannes to Toulon by a new railroad. Cannes was a little seaside country town in those days, with few hotels and villas such as have sprung up in the last half-century; but even then it attracted sufficient visitors to render hotel accommodation a difficulty, and we had to shorten our intended stay. We went to pay our respects to the ex-Lord Chancellor Brougham, already King of Cannes. He was then eighty-five, and I have a vague recollection of his being very voluble; but I was most occupied with his great-nephew, a brother of the present Lord Brougham, who had a little house of his own in the garden which was enough to fascinate any child. From Cannes we drove to Nice, about which I record that “the only thing in Nice is the sea.” We had considerable difficulty in our next stage from Nice to Mentone, as a rock had in one place fallen from the top of a mountain to the valley below and filled up part of the road with the débris of its fall. At Mentone we spent over three weeks, occupied in walks with my father and drives with him and my mother, or sometimes he walked while I rode a donkey up the mountains. There was considerable political excitement at that time, Mentone having only been ceded by Italy to France in 1861 and the natives being by no means reconciled to French rule. There was a great local feeling for Garibaldi, and though the “Inno Garibaldi” was forbidden I fear that my mother occasionally played it in the hotel, and any listener (such as the waiter) who overheard it beamed accordingly. I happened to have a scarlet flannel jacket for outdoor wear, and remember women in the fields shouting out to me “Petite Garibaldi.”