The habits and customs of the people are described by Lady Brassey with all the interest of a novel. On their return home, "again the Battle bells rang out a merry peal of gladness; again everybody rushed out to welcome us. At home once again, the servants and the animals seemed equally glad to see us back; the former looked the picture of happiness, while the dogs jumped and barked; the horses and ponies neighed and whinnied; the monkeys chattered; the cockatoos and parrots screamed; the birds chirped; the bullfinches piped their little paean of welcome.... Our old Sussex cowman says that even the cows eat their food 'kind of kinder like' when the family are at home. The deer and the ostriches too, the swans and the call ducks, all came running to meet us, as we drove round the place to see them." Kindness to both man and beast bears its legitimate fruit.
Two years later she prepared the letter-press to Tahiti: a Series of Photographs, taken by Colonel Stuart Wortley. He also is a gentleman of much culture and noble work, in whose home we saw beautiful things gathered from many lands.
The last long trip of Sir Thomas and Lady Brassey was made in the fall of 1883, and resulted in a charming book, In the Trades, the Tropics, and the Roaring Forties, with about three hundred illustrations. The route lay through Madeira, Trinidad, Venezuela, the Bahamas, and home by way of the Azores. The resources of the various islands, their history, and their natural formation, are ably told, showing much study as well as intelligent observation. The maps and charts are also valuable. At Trinidad they visit the fine Botanic Gardens, and see bamboos, mangoes, peach-palms, and cocoa-plants, from whose seeds chocolate is made. The quantity exported annually is 13,000,000 pounds.
They also visit great coffee plantations. "The leaves of the coffee-shrub," says Lady Brassey, "are of a rich, dark, glossy green; the flowers, which grow in dense white clusters, when in full bloom, giving the bushes the appearance of being covered with snow. The berries vary in color from pale green to reddish orange or dark red, according to their ripeness, and bear a strong resemblance to cherries. Each contains two seeds, which, when properly dried, become what is known to us as 'raw' coffee."
At Caracas they view with interest the place which, on March 26, 1812, was nearly destroyed by an earthquake, twelve thousand persons perishing, thousands of whom were buried alive by the opening of the ground. They study the formation of coral-reefs, and witness the gathering of sponges in the Bahamas. "These are brought to the surface by hooked poles, or sometimes by diving. When first drawn from the water they are covered with a soft gelatinous substance, as black as tar and full of organic life, the sponge, as we know, being only the skeleton of the organism."
While all this travelling was being enjoyed, and made most useful as well, to hundreds of thousands of readers, Lady Brassey was not forgetting her works of philanthropy. For years she has been a leading spirit in the St. John's Ambulance Association. Last October she gave a valuable address to the members of the "Workingmen's Club and Institute Union," composed of several hundred societies of workingmen. Her desire was that each society take up the work of teaching its members how to care for the body in case of accidents. The association, now numbering over one hundred thousand persons, is an offshoot of the ancient order of St. John of Jerusalem, founded eight hundred years ago, to maintain a hospital for Christian pilgrims. She says: "The method of arresting bleeding from an artery is so easy that a child may learn it; yet thousands of lives have been lost through ignorance, the life-blood ebbing away in the presence of sorrowing spectators, perfectly helpless, because none among them had been taught one of the first rudiments of instruction of an ambulance pupil,--the application of an extemporized tourniquet. Again, how frequent is the loss of life by drowning; yet how few persons, comparatively, understand the way to treat properly the apparently drowned." Lectures are given by this association on, first, aid to the injured; also on the general management of the sick-room.
Lady Brassey, with the assistance of medical men, has held classes in all the outlying villages about her home, and has arranged that simple but useful medical appliances, like plasters, bandages, and the like, be kept at some convenient centres.
At Trindad, and Bahamas, and Bermudas, when they stayed there in their travels, she caused to be held large meetings among the most influential residents; also at Madeira and in the Azores. A class was organized on board the Sunbeam, and lectures were delivered by a physician. In the Shetland Islands she has also organized these societies, and thus many lives have been saved. When the soldiers went to the Soudan, she arranged for these helpful lectures to them on their voyage East, and among much other reading-matter which she obtained for them, sent them books and papers on this essential medical knowledge.
She carries on correspondence with India, Australia, and New Zealand, where ambulance associations have been formed. For her valued services she was elected in 1881 a Dame Chevaliere of the Order of St. John of Jerusalem.
Her work among the poor in the East End of London is admirable. Too much of this cannot be done by those who are blessed with wealth and culture. She is also interested in all that helps to educate the people, as is shown by her Museum of Natural History and Ethnological Specimens, open for inspection in the School of Fine Art at Hastings. How valuable is such a life compared with one that uses its time and money for personal gratification alone.