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11 August 1901 — Hurstcote, Shere, Surrey | |
Sunday. 11th [August 1901]. Miss Brooke & I went to Shere church. The dead march in “Saul” was played for the Empress Frederick at the end of the service all standing the while. It was very trying to me. I have thought of little else all these days but the beloved Empress—& thought of her house of desolation & how today she was lying before the altar of the little church at Kronberg which she has restored so beautifully & for wh I am still working at the embroidery she chose to have done for the chancel. Her loss to me is very great—she showed me so much kindness & sympathy, but she has left me a grand example of nobility & braveness & one cannot repine that at last she should be at rest– Madeleine de Peyronnet who is staying next door with Lady Arthur Russell came to lunch—also a charming young American couple Mr & Mrs Sedgewick who drove over from Holmwood near Dorking. They hardly had any foreign accent & were intelligent & agreeable. They have been spending a year in Europe for the sake of his health. After lunch many people came in to visit our host—& he entertained them with tea– Met a Mr & Mrs Lefroy of Huguenot origin. Mrs F. had known intimately a mutual friend—Car Spencer Churchill now married to a Mr Dickson wh was a bond of union. Abt 6 Mr Beaumont ordered a carriage & took the Sedgewicks, Nellie, me & Mr Ball to call on Mr & Mrs Mudie Cook who have built themselves a kind of Italian cottage close by—very uncomfortable but picturesque—with very thick walls & very small windows, low ceilings & rafters in them. When I saw this house, I realized that an Italian manservant Calisto I had taken on Mrs M. Cooke’s recommendation was the man I ought to have taken or to have expected him to know how to manage a usual English establishment. From there we visited the garden of a Miss Ewart. She was absent but we walked round & admired her garden– The Sedgewicks here left us to drive back to Holmewood & we drove back to Shere stopping on the way to peep at the house of a Mrs Waterfield wh is built on the old quaker’s cemetery. Mr Rowland Vaughan Williams was with us—son of the Judge—a very pleasant travelled companion. We found his sister Miss V. Williams sitting with Miss Brooke. She is a farmer by profession—very plain & unattractive but intelligent & interesting on the topic of farms. She & her brother left abt 10 to drive back to the farm. | |
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