To-day the safe was opened, and contained nothing of any value,—only a few official papers!
With this has gone our last hope of any salvage from the wreck of our property. Dillon's "perfect gentlemen," of whom he expressed himself so proud in the House the other night, had evidently broken open H.'s great official desk, and found the key of the safe and abstracted my jewel-case, F.'s field-glasses and several other of his much-prized possessions, and then locked the safe again. The only document they stole from among the official documents was F.'s commission. Why, we cannot imagine, unless the fact that it bore the King's signature made it worthy of special insult and desecration.
H. was very sad when he told me, but I think I am past caring about any possessions now. F. and all his precious things are gone. Nothing else seems worth considering. Perhaps some day we may pluck up heart to collect things again around us, but at present one can only feel, "Let the dead bury the dead."
20th.
To-day they are beginning on the excavations of H.'s room; the fire burnt with such ferocity that there is much less rubble in it than one would imagine. As you probably remember, H.'s room was on the first floor, with a storey above it. When the whole place fell in, H.'s room fell through into the room below, and a portion of that had fallen through to the cellars. The men are removing everything of the nature of bricks and iron and stone coping of the roof, and then four extra-careful men are to be put on to shovel up the rest of the débris, which is burnt to powder, and Noblett, H.'s confidential messenger, is going to be there to receive anything of ours that may be found.
23rd.
Yesterday morning and this morning I have been down watching the excavations of H.'s room. It is quite like the excavations at Pompeii. Every shovelful is most carefully overlooked, and several of our things have turned up, though so far nothing of any intrinsic value. When I went there yesterday morning Noblett produced a great lump of molten glass of no shape or form with one or two metal nobs sticking up at odd angles. He thought it was the remains of a cruet, but we had none; and on further examination it flashed across my mind that it was the cut-glass bottles in the large rosewood and brass-bound dressing-case in which I had packed all my jewellery—family miniatures, four gold watches and chains, diamond pendant, etc. It had been stolen out of the safe, and evidently the looters had not been able to get it away. Noblett was thrilled, and the men redoubled their carefulness, hoping to find some of the jewellery. When I went down again in the afternoon Noblett produced three little brooches that F. had given me on various birthdays when a wee boy. He always went out with his own sixpence, and nearly always returned with a brooch, which I used to wear with great pride. One, a Swastika brooch, he gave me when he was at Margate after that terrible illness, and he used to go on the pier in his bath-chair. The blue enamel on it was intact in several places; the other two were intact in form, but charred and black, with the pins burnt off. But how glad I was to see them again! During the afternoon two or three more brooches turned up, but nothing of any value whatever. So we came to the conclusion the rebels had broken open the box and taken out everything of value and thrown away the rest. The few burnt bits of jewellery that were found all came from one spot.
This morning when I went Noblett had nearly a sackful of curiosities, which I sorted over. Evidently these were the whole contents of the canteen of plated things we used to take with us when we took a furnished house and put the silver in a bank, quantities of spoons and forks, black, and looking like old iron, many twisted into weird shapes, and the knives, which were new when we came here, without a scrap of ivory handle, and the blades burnt and twisted in the most extraordinary way. A most miserable-looking collection, fit only for the dust-heap.
25th.
They are nearing the end of the excavations, and nothing of any value has been found. This morning when I went I found them cutting into a mound of what looked like solid white chalk. I could not imagine what it could be, but the men told me it was the books that had been stored in one of the great mahogany presses; not a trace of burnt wood was found. I could not believe that books could be reduced to such a substance. I had expected to find quantities of charred black paper, with possibly some fragments of binding, and was quite incredulous. However, on examining it I found the substance was in layers like the leaves of a book, but when I picked some up it felt like silk between my fingers, and you could blow it away like thistle-down. Had I not seen it myself I should never have believed such a thing possible. Besides H.'s and P.'s books there were a number of great official books in leather bindings half an inch thick, but all was reduced to the same substance.