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11 March 1902 — Rome | |
Tuesday. 11th [March 1902]. Sat from 11 to 1 with Sophy who is much better. Then after lunch I walked to the Hotel Beau Site & called on Mme de Bülow the widow of Baron B who had been many years Danish Minister in London. She is a wonderful old lady & though very infirm manages to come down here from Copenhagen every winter & looks just as she did 20 years ago. She was very anxious for news of our Queen & how she was liked. She said she knew that she had suffered much from what she had had to go through from the Kings infidelities & that the first row had been at the time of the divorce of Lady Mordaunt when she had declared she would return home & never come back to England. That Baron de Bülow had been sent for & had joined in persuading her that she could not carry out her threat. I told Mme de B. how popular the Q. is and how beautiful still. From her I walked on to Via Porta Pinciana to call on Css Cora Brazzà. It was her “day” & so many other ladies called that I had no speech of her so I soon left promising to dine with her on Thursday. I walked on to the Hotel Royal & called on Lady Elizabeth Biddulph, there met Lord de Manley who is known as “the wandering Jew” as he is always travelling about. Lady E. was full of the details of the marriage of Lady Douglas who was engaged to young George Montagu. She dined with him one evening at the House of Commons & they parted the best of friends. The next morning he got a telegram from his lady love saying “I have just married Lord Douglas. It is all for the best.” It appears that Lord A. D. had been half engaged to her in America but as the young ladies’ parents knew that he was an undesirable youth they brought the girl over to England hoping she wd forget him. They were delighted at her engagement to George & did not know that the other man had followed them & was seeing their daughter until she had run away with him & they are in despair. Poor George I am very fond of him & feel what an escape he has had! I went on to the Embassy & had tea with Lady Currie. She had Mr & Mrs Lawrence Currie staying with her– A miserable looking youth with a very pretty wife. Lady Currie seemed to me as foolish & garrulous as ever. She said she had just come from a shop where she had bought a picture—a portrait & proceeded to run on about Bellini & my portrait of the Sultan & Prince Gem &c &c until I got more & more bewildered as to what sort of picture she had bought. She said she endeavoured every year to buy out of her own money (& goodness knows that was little eno’) at least one picture so that her heirs might have something left– I felt rather sorry for the heirs when I thought what a trial those pictures would probably be to them but I looked my sympathy. Lord Currie came in just before I left looking ill & aged. I went to the Hotel Querinale to write my name on the Gd Duchess of Saxe-Weimar & then drove in a cab back to the hotel. I dined with Ct de Franqueville who had Sophy & me to dine with him in his rooms & she & I early retired to Sophy’s rooms & sat talking till bed time. | |
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