Another house of which I have grateful memories was that of Sir Arthur Mills, my mother’s lifelong friend, the hero of her comic poem, “The Millsiad”, written when they crossed the ocean together long before I was born. Sir Arthur was, at the time I knew him, a strong conservative and felt, I believe, little sympathy with my mother’s work for suffrage and other reforms. This made no difference in their friendship, which descended to the next generation; his son, Major Dudley Mills, of the Engineer Corps, was my mother’s devoted friend and correspondent to the end of her life.

I am glad that I knew London in the days of the hansom, before that perfect vehicle gave place to the taxi. We were often taken to drive in the Park by our smart friends in their fine carriages, but for me there was nothing like the fun of driving about London in a hansom cab. Next to the London hansom I loved best the box seat of a coach tooling along over the fine hard roads to Hampton Court, Brighton, or Richmond, where the coach drew up at the historic pastry cook’s to let the passengers buy those perfect cheese cakes, the “maids of honor.”

Hardly less dear than hansom or coach was the top of the omnibus that took us down to Barings’ in Threadneedle Street to draw our money or to go sight-seeing in the city.

“Benk, benk, benk!” cried the guard, swinging on the back of the ’bus; “’Igh Holborn, ’Igh Holborn, Shepperd’s Bursh, Elephant and Castle!” An artist friend took us one Saturday night to see Edgeware Road. The long street was crammed with people buying their Sunday dinners. At the doors of the butchers’ shops stood men in white aprons with long glittering knives, chanting a peculiar monotonous cry:

“Buy, buy, buy! Beef, pork, mutton, will you buy, will you buy?”

On either side the way was lined with costermongers, whose barrows were lighted by flaring lamps. They, too, shouted their wares,—shrimps, periwinkles, oysters, fruit, vegetables, toys of all descriptions, cooking ware and clothing, for on Saturday night Edgeware Road was transformed into a nocturnal fair, where the poor of London bargained, haggled, and gossiped. It was an amazing spectacle, and a strange pendant for another picture that still remains with me,—Hyde Park, after church on a Sunday morning, with its beauties and “swells.”

Eight o’clock in the evening is the hour I remember best of these memorable London days. Then I would be driving through Hyde Park in a hansom beside my mother. The long twilight still held, and through the lilac haze the lamps glowed and shone as we passed an endless stream of vehicles coming from the opposite direction, filled with people going out to dine like ourselves. There were a few of the old-time coaches with two powdered, silk-stockinged footmen standing on the footboard behind, a vast number of smart broughams, but the majority like ourselves drove in hansom cabs. We caught glimpses of ladies of dazzling beauty, gentlemen immaculate in evening dress and opera hats: sometimes we recognized a friend in a swiftly passing hansom, or some celebrity. The possibilities suggested, the romances guessed, the scandals and dark secrets imagined, as hansom after hansom flashed by and eye met eye, set the heart beating, the imagination dancing. Vanity Fair! Vanity Fair! will the world ever again see anything like that London I remember?

CHAPTER XI
Rome

Rome, the old enchantress, held me enthralled from the moment St. Peter’s dome floated before my eyes like a faint blue bubble on the far horizon. We passed the winter of 1878-1879 with my mother’s sister, Louisa (Crawford) Terry; doubtless the environment of her apartment in the old Palazzo Odescalchi and the companionship of the Crawford and Terry cousins—Romans born and bred—had something to do with the spell!

We reached Rome on Christmas Eve. The Corso was crowded with gaily dressed people. In a narrow side street a group of piffarari from the hills, clad like satyrs in shaggy goat skins, stood playing their pipes before a dimly lighted shrine of Mary and the Child. It was so cold in the streets that we were glad to lift the padded leathern curtain and enter the Church of St. Peter’s, sweet with the smell of incense, bright with its scores of golden lamps. The basilica was filled with people waiting for the midnight mass. A long line stood before the statue of St. Peter; each in his turn wiped the bronze toe of the saint, kissed it, wiped it again, and passed on. Just before twelve o’clock several couples came in together, the men in evening dress wearing orders, the women in ball gowns sparkling with jewels. As they passed the holy water basin, a young officer dipped his fingers and offered them to a girl in a scarlet cloak who lightly touched the gloved finger tips and crossed herself. I caught a word of their talk.