One of our favourite drives was to Lipizza, the Emperor's stud. It was established three hundred years ago. It is about two hours from Trieste. You come to a kind of farm, where you may get something to eat. You are then taken to the stables, where the Emperor keeps about nine thoroughbred Arab stallions, and afterwards you are taken through the park, where are herds of thoroughbred mares, chiefly Hungarians and Croats, most of them with foals, perhaps two hundred including foals. If anything is not perfect it is sold, and thus you see a very good breed of horses, in Trieste, often drawing a cart. The pleasantest way to make this trip for your own comfort is to take a luncheon basket for yourself and nosebags with corn for your horses, as well as a small tub or pail to draw water for them, as nothing will induce them—and rightly—to let your horses come anywhere near the stud, or to drink out of anything belonging to their horses, and two hours there and two hours back is a long way for animals to go without drink or any refreshment.
We had now, after six months, taken our first lodging in Trieste, and we showed Charley Drake all our wonderful country around. Here we had a visit from Schapira of famous memory. One of the charms near Trieste is Aquilea, where there is a museum with all its antiquities; and there was then, until a year or two ago, Doctor Gregorutti and his charming wife and family, who had a far more choice collection than that of the museum, of every sort of thing; but most interesting were his incised gems. He was very anxious to sell his little collection for £4000, which was very reasonable considering what he possessed; though we tried hard we were not successful in obtaining purchasers, and he has since died. There you could see country Italian life in a country-house.
There was another place, called San Bartolo, where people used to go to sup by the sea on summer evenings, about half an hour's drive from Trieste.
Duino is also another romantic place where we frequently went and passed some weeks. The castle and the village belong to the Princess von Hohenlöhe, who is the châtelaine of all the country round, and lives there with her sons and daughters, who were good friends to us all the time we were there. The castle is a romantic and ancient pile, built on a rock overhanging the sea. The next promontory to that is Miramar, and from Trieste we can see both, and especially from our last home, which was also on a wooded promontory projecting into the sea. There are beautiful excursions to be taken by steamer all round the Bay of Trieste.
Venice—Good-bye to Charley Drake.
We crossed over to Venice to see Charley Drake off, when he was obliged to leave us. The Governor's (Ceschi's) party took the whole of the saloon. There were seventy-two first-class passengers, and only twenty-two beds. We passed a delightful night on deck on the skylights, and were awfully amused at the Governor and his wife coming up and envying us, and saying, "You English always know how to get the best places." "We like that," said Richard, "when you have taken the whole of the saloon. It might have been blowing great guns, and seas washing over the deck, and we should have had to sleep here all the same."
In those days, in Venice, a gondolier serenade by moonlight was rather a romantic thing; you paid a hundred and twenty francs. There were choice singers in one large gondola full of coloured lamps; the voices were good. They sang Tasso and Dante, as well as popular songs, and little by little some two hundred gondolas would follow. It was like hunting a fox; you pursued the music gondola under the Rialto, and then came the best singing. Now two gondolas come at once, and try who can bawl the other down under the hotel windows, and sing all sorts of things that one is dead tired of. Latterly it used to drive my husband out of Venice.
Poor Charley Drake left on the 4th of July. We never saw him again; he was dead the following year.