The London visit lasted nearly two months; as the engagements multiply, its records grow briefer and briefer. There are many entries like the following:—
"Breakfast with Lord Houghton, where met Lord Granville and M. Waddington, late Minister of Education in France. Garden party at Chiswick in the afternoon. Prince of Wales there with his eldest son, Prince Albert Victor. Mrs. Julian Goldsmith's ball in the evening."
It is remembered that she bravely watched the dancers foot it through the livelong night, and drove home by daylight, with her "poor dancing Maud"!
Madame Waddington was formerly Miss King, the granddaughter of Mr. Ward's old partner. Our mother was always interested in meeting any descendants of Prime, Ward & King.
With all this, she was writing letters for the Chicago "Tribune" and the "Woman's Journal." This year of 1877 saw the height of the Æsthetic movement. Mrs. Langtry, the "Jersey Lily," was the beauty and toast of the season. Gilbert and Sullivan's "Patience" was the dramatic hit of the year, and "Greenery yallery, Grosvenor Gallery" the most popular catch of the day.
She found it hard to tear herself away from England; the visit (which she likened to one at the house of an adored grandmother) was over all too soon. But July was almost gone; and the two travellers finally left the enchanted island for Holland, recalling Emerson's advice to one going abroad for the first time: "A year for England, and a year for the rest of the world!"
The much neglected Journal now takes up the story.
The great Franz Hals pictures delighted her beyond measure. She always bought the best reproductions she could afford, and valued highly an etching that she owned from his Bohémienne. She never waited for any authority to admire either a work of art or a person. She had much to say about the influence of the Dutch blood both in our own family and in our country, which was to her merely a larger family connection. All through Holland she was constantly noting customs and traditions which we seemed to have inherited; and she felt a great likeness and sympathy between herself and some of the Dutch people she knew.
"The Hague. To the old prison where the instruments of torture are preserved. The prison itself is so dark and bare that to stay therein was a living death. To this was often added the most cruel torture. The poor wretch was stretched on a cross, on which revolving wheels, turned by a crank, agonized and destroyed his spinal column—or, by another machine, his head and feet were drawn in opposite directions—or, his limbs were stretched out and every bone broken with an iron bar. Tortures of fire and water were added. Through all these horrors, I saw the splendors of faith and conscience which illuminated these dungeons, and which enabled frail humanity to bear these inflictions without flinching."
She always wanted to see the torture chambers. She listened to all the detailed explanations and looked at all the dreadful instruments, buoyed up by the thought of the splendors she speaks of, when mere shrinking flesh-and-blood creatures like her companion, who only thought of the poor tortured bodies, could not bear the strain of it.