My father (says Miss Roscoe) delighted to bring foreigners, and the more heterogeneous they were the more he was pleased. I remember one luncheon party of late years, consisting of a Chinaman, a Japanese, a Czech, a German, and our three selves, and the Occidentals were much the quietest of the party.
The visitors’ book at Woodcote is a possession of no little historical interest.
In spite of their varied delights and restful charm there were times when Roscoe was not wholly content to breathe his native air in his own grounds: pigs, poultry, and potatoes, as he said, occasionally lost their spell, and “the pathetic sadness of a garden in autumn” would drive him and Lady Roscoe to a sunnier clime. Grasse, Italy, Egypt, Sicily, Algiers, Tunis, Biskra were in turn visited by them during different winters. Both he and his wife were fond of foreign travel, and well-written books of travel were a constant source of interest to her.
And so the evening of their lives drew to its close. Her end came swiftly—and with scarce a warning. His call was to come five years afterwards, and was to be no less sudden and equally unlooked for.
In the meantime came the War, with all its horrors, griefs, and anxieties—the crushed hopes for the Peace he had struggled to preserve so far as in him lay—the unending enmity and bitterness he foresaw between two nations that in his big heart he had fondly linked together as the mightiest humanizing forces of the world. It was a real grief to him that he should have lived to see it all. He frequently thought and spoke of his old Heidelberg friends—most of whom had passed away—and tried to realize their feeling of horror at the spectacle which now confronts us. But his Germany was not the Germany of to-day, and gradually and reluctantly he was compelled to admit it. He still continued to occupy himself with his customary pursuits—so long as recurrent attacks of his arch-enemy the gout would permit. He read assiduously and took an active interest in current topics—the varying fortunes of the struggle, politics, and scientific matters. He preserved, in fact, all the interests of his life to the end. How mentally alert and vigorous he remained will be evident from the following letters:
Woodcote Lodge,
West Horsley, Leatherhead,
September 20, 1914.
I have been laid up, more or less, since the war broke out with dyspepsia and gout, but now I am recovering. What are you doing, and when can we meet—which means when can you come here?
What do you say to Ostwald! I enclose a cutting from the Westminster—which please return, as I am going to book it for future reference. I agree with you that his swelled head is cracked.
What horrors! One can scarcely believe that the German, as you and I have known him, could have assumed such brutal characteristics as we read of. Here we are peaceful enough, but thirty young men, including Tom Huck, have gone from our village of 700 souls. Not bad!
Our crops are in—hay poor; oats ditto; wheat fair. Pigs in plenty, but no sale during the summer. I find on totting up that during ten years—some very bad—of farming my average loss has been £58 per annum, which I don’t think is unsatisfactory, as I get quite that amount of value—beyond market price—in having good foodstuffs, and then pleasure in the processes and interest in the varying conditions, and in making things go in a bad situation for a farmer.