The lake was very grand in a storm, black, green, and yellow, with lowering black clouds, enveloping mountain and lake, lit up by dark red lightning. We had great fun in being photographed by the Rev. Mr. Stewart, who was here with two charming sisters, Mr. and Mrs. Stanley, Richard and myself, and Saleh the black boy, and Mrs. Bancroft placed us. Mrs. Bancroft made us all laugh just as we were going to be taken, by seizing up a long broom-handle and poising it as a lance, saying, "Won't you have me as Tippoo Tib?" Mrs. Stanley did a very amusing thing; she got a piece of paper, and turning part of it down, said to my husband, "Will you give me your autograph, Sir Richard?" which he readily did, in English and Arabic. She then turned up the back of the paper, on which she had written, "I promise to put aside all other literature, and as soon as I return to Trieste, to write my own autobiography." So we all signed underneath him, and since I have had it framed.
On the 31st of August he deplores the death of his friend, General Studholm Hodgson.
We descend into Italy homewards.
The two or three last days of August the snow was so dreadful that we only longed to get down into Italy, and on the 1st of September, wishing good-bye to our friends, we started at two o'clock, and had a delightful drive of three hours and a quarter through the snow down the mountains. The snow was so bad that it was doubtful whether we could manage it, but we did without accident. We passed several picturesque places, amongst others Castasegna, where I got out of the carriage, while they were refreshing the horses, to look at the tombs in the little church, and walking up to one, I saw on it "Richard Vaughan Simpson, died in 1834, aged 23." I said a prayer for him—perhaps I was the first countrywoman that had passed and done so. As we passed the frontier we were lightly examined, and we got into Italian picturesqueness, passing one or two fine waterfalls. Chiavenna looked most picturesque in the distance, as we descended to the good little Hôtel Conradi. There was a blue shade over the snow mountains as the sun was setting.
The next day we left Conradi's to get to Como. The train was an hour late; we had to go in the third-class with forty-eight people, and the boat was late too. The lake was looking lovely, with its villages, especially Gravedona, Varenna, and Bellagio, which reminded us of Madeira. We were about seven hours doing twenty miles. We had delightful drives through the trees above the Villa Lervelloni to the ruined castle which overlooks Como with all its three arms of the lake, and listened to the bees and the birds, smelled the forest, and were glad we were alive. We also went to Como itself. In the evening we met Sir Frederick Napier Broome, late Governor of Western Australia. We were now reading Sinnett's "Kârma." We left Bellagio early, a couple of days later, and went down the other side of the lake (Lago di Lecco) on a very pleasant morning. You take a branch railway, and join the main line (Milan to Venice) at Rovato for Venice. We went to the Grand Hôtel, but soon left, as the gondola music used to drive Richard wild. There is one man, if he still exists, who sings as if he would burst, like the cicala.
On the 7th of September we left for Trieste, sauntering down the Gran Canale in gondola the last thing. We had a comfortable journey, and were glad to get home that evening after ten weeks out, which we had thoroughly enjoyed, except on the occasions when Richard was suffering. But how sorrowful it would have been, could we but have foreseen that it was the last journey we should ever take together in this life! If we could but look forward, we should not be able to bear it.
Home for the Last Few Weeks.
The few following weeks at Trieste we continued to write together in the evening, he being engaged all day with his "Scented Garden," his "Catullus," "Ausonius," "Apuleius, or the Golden Ass," and other things, as he had been since his last Supplementals came out (November 13th, 1888); and in early morning we used to take a list of all the manuscripts published and unpublished, their destinations when packed for England, and sorting the correspondence into years; and Dr. Baker took a great many photographs, as he had done all this year in the garden, of us and the views and friends, which I am having formed into two lamp-shades on gelatine.
These last few weeks Richard kept saying to me, "When the swallows form a dado round the house, when they are crowding on the windows, in thousands, preparatory to flight, call me;" and he would watch them long and sadly. Strange to say, after his death seven of them took up their abode at his window, and only departed in December. They are building again at "our cottage" at Mortlake. It seems as if he were watching.
On the 11th of September he deplores in his journal the death of Sir William Hardman, of the Morning Post.