Notes

A Cosmopolitan Origin: Family Background

Written by Dr S. de V. Merriman in 1947

My origin was about as cosmopolitan as was possible: Father Russian and Orthodox ( his parental ancestors, before 1760 Herzegovinian and Orthodox, his maternal ones Central Russian and Orthodox), Mother American (of Highland ,Scottish and English origin) and Presbyterian, myself born in a third country (Germany;this did not affect my nationality) and naturalised in a fourth country (Great Britain, land of my Mother's forebears some of whom reached America from Lincolnshire already about 1624, the Scottish ones later).

According to an old monastic family document, dated Trebinje, Hercegovina, 1767 on my Father's side, I am descended from Vesseliitchik, Jupan Ruling Prince of Trbinje, in the 17th century. His grandson Peter was the last Prince, losing all his Landed estates and political power in 1711 (after the Battle of the River Pruth) at which he was one of the various small Balkan allies of Peter the Great. He died about the middle of the 18th century.

His son Peter(1730-1790) was known as Peter de Vesselitsky already before he settledin Russiain 1760, became a Russian nobleman and was a courtier at the Court of Catherine the Great. He also married in Russia and was twice sent by his Empress to the Crimea as her Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary. He and his wife were taken prisoners of war by the Turks and confined in the "Prison Castle of the Seven Towers"in Constantinople.They were threatened with death, but as the Koran expressly forbids any violence to be done to an expectant mother, the Turks hesitated and the diplomat and his wife were finally rescued by a Russian Army.

Meanwhile a son was born unto the couple and was given the name of Gabriel. He lived from 1774 -1828 and eventually became Lt. General in the Russian Army.

Among his numerous decorations Russian, Prussian and Austrian, was the nearest Russian equivalent to the British V.C, i.e. the Order of St. George (which he received twice). He campaigned in Turkey and received the surrender of a Turkish army, he fought also in Italy and led the vanguard of Suvoroff's army across the Alps. At the spot in Schollenen Gorge known as the "Devil'sBridge", the retreating French army blew up the then existing bridge (year 1799). So my great-grandfather ordered an improvised bridge to be made of wooden logs and muskets tied with the ornamental sashes of the officers. My ancestor then led his men across under the fire of the French Infantry, being the first to get across.

Many years later (in 1813) he fought in the "Battle of the Nations" at Leipzig, Subsequently he entered Paris with the Allies (1814).In 1812 he was awarded a hereditary bronze medal given to every Russian nobleman who fought in that war. We still possess it. The inscription is "Not unto us should be the glory, but unto thy Holy Name".

He had a brother Michael, who after a career as an army officer retired to his estate in Western Russia where he owned some hundreds of serfs (called "souls" in documents of that time). Michael left no male descendants,while his elder and more prominent brother had five sons who all became army officers,but only the eldest (from whom I am descended) had male heirs.

On the eve of the sanguinary battle of Boradino (1812) two Russian Colonels struck up a friendship and vowed that if they survived the impending terrible battle, Colonel de Zouieff would eventually give his daughter Marie in marriage to Sergei,eldest son of Colonel de Vesselitsky .The Zouieffs were nobles and landowners of the province of Tula (Central Russia).

The Empress Katherine the Great rewarded my great-grandfather Peter's diplomatic services with a landed estate near the city of Kieff (South Russia). It remained in the family for about100 years.

My paternal grandfather Serei ,after whom I was named, lived from 1856-1866. He was educated at the "Corps of the Pages of the Emperor of all the Russias" (limited not only to nobles, but even only to such as had a father or grandfather of the rank of Lt. General or higher, Vice Admiral or higher, or of corresponding extra high rank in the Civil Service or in the Imperial Household).

My grandfather (like his father) earned the order of St George for military valour, was repeatedly wounded in battle and lost his right arm, but taught himself to write with his left hand and even then wrote beautifully.

He commanded a regiment of Foot Guards, known as the "Finland Guards", later he was in charge of a brigade and finally reached the rank of Lt. General. In the Crimean War he commanded a Division which formed the vanguard of the Russian Army. His last years were spent at St. Petersburg where he held a high post at the Imperial General Staff.

For his distinguished military services he received not only many decorations, but also a landed estate in the province of Samara (East Central Russia), also several swords of honour, the most interesting one being from a grateful Hungarian town occupied by his troops in the campaign of 1849,in which he maintained strict discipline in his command and prevented any looting whatsoever.

On one occasion he disobeyed a militarily quite incompetent Grand Duke (of the Russian ImperialHouse) and had to retire for a while, but on the eve of the Crimean War he asked for an audience of the Emperor AlexanderII, was cordially received,thanked for his faithfulness to real duty, embraced by the Sovereign, immediately reinstated,his seniority as a general officer antedated, so that he lost nothing by his temporary retirement and was soon promoted to Lt. General.

Moral: Honesty does pay In the end.

Early Memories

When I was a child,a boy and even a youth,my family,who had a habit of living in various countries, resided chiefly in Germany.

So it happened that many of my early recollections were centered around that country. Yet even Imperial Germany(reigns of William I and WilliamII ) had its difficulties.When we lived at Dresden(1878-1888) we were in the habit of Driving at least once a week or more through the "Grossen Garten", a fine park on the fringe of the Saxon Capital, and a short distance through the open country beyond, to reach the nice estate of our friend Baron von Rosenberg and his English Wife. By a strange coincidence the Baron's English Grandson through his daughter, Alice became joint head master of the Preparatory School (Shrewsbury House School, Surbiton, Surrey) which both our sons attended before going to a public school Dover College) On such occasions I was always carefully watched over as Gypsies abounded then and had a bad reputation for kidnapping children of the intelligentsia and holding them for ransom.During the aforesaid reigns' almighty' Bismarck, after waging the so called "Kultulsckampf", a struggle between the German central government and the Roman Catholic Church, was next obliged to cope with the complications created by the Social Democrats (Socialists).

Considering the then practised cult of the sabre-rattling German army officers, it came as a great shock to the whole population of Berlin where we lived in 1890, when on May Day all officers were instructed to appear only in "mufti" for 24 hours.

However the anticipated danger passed without too many untoward incidents and the Officer class breathed freely once more and enjoyed their privileges as heretofore.

Two prerogatives which they greatly prized were the axiom quite generally held in Germany then, that the word of honour of an officer was superior to that of a civilian,which was recognised even in the Law Courts,and the right to demand the removal of a civilian passenger from a railway compartment (German Officers in Uniform travelled always first class). On the other hand officers were indirectly compelled to vote Conservative at elections,or resign their commissions.

In those days brides of officers were invariably expected to have dowries,which varied with the lineage and rank of the bridegroom and the prestige of the individual army unit to which he belonged. In fact there seemed to be a generally approved and accepted scale for such matters.

I received most of my school and university education at Leipzig. Never before and never since have I seen class hatred so violently expressed as in that large city.

I went to a private school where my schoolmates used to tell me "du bist dumm weil du adlig bist" which means you are stupid because you are of the nobility. All boys of all schools had to wear peaked caps (mine was blue and white) and that had its pros and cons. Shop keepers and many other people treated you with all the more consideration if you belonged to one of the better schools,working class boys on the

They attacked us openly in streets and public parks,especially if they saw one of us alone. I well remember being surrounded in the Johanna by a rabble of rough and utterly uncouth boys.They tried to throw me down and even using my fists feebly was all in vain, there were too many against myself alone, so in despair I unpacked a ruler from my school satchel and had to hew myself a way through my assailants 'ranks.

Another time while cycling through a municipal wood, the sc called Ratswald, some workmen who were on foot went into the road and linking arms, made an effective human barrier from one side to the other,so as to force me to dismount. As I was determined not to yield to intimidationI rang my bell loudly and rode on as fast as I could. At the last moment two of the men stepped aside and let me through.

All that period,these were whole streets of purely proletarian dwellings which Policemen seldom dared to patrol and even then only in batches of three or four men.

Before about the year 1897 it was a common sight to see ladies on bicycles being pelted by workmen with mud and stones just because

which the latter could not afford . Nevertheless only a few years later the same factory workers used bicycles very freely.

We often heard housewives calling their maids by every imaginable swear word. If the mistress could still not keep her maids in hand, she fetched the station sergeant of the nearest police station.He would come, rattle his sword and succeed in temporarily intimidating the disobedient maids. Needless to add he always took the mistress'part. After 1902 such domestic troubles were taken to the newly created Generbergerichte, or Industrial Courts where both parties concerned were given fair hearing.

At Christmas time in all the households where only one or two or three maids were kept, each was given a gold piece (10 or 20 marks),a "servant's dress" which as it was standardized,could easily be bought in many of the shops for 6 or 7 marks each, also a large Christmas cake with currants,known as "Stolle"and little things such as stockings, handkerchiefs, etc. At the period young maids of fourteen received only 12 marks per month in wages,occasionally only 10 marks per month, while a good "cook general"could command16 or 17 marks per month. Maids often slept in miserable attics known as "Hangeboden", or in airless small dressing rooms.

We were considered wildly extravagant by German families because we paid our cook general16 marks a month in wages and 1 mark a day "Kostgeld", i.e. food allowance which she found ample as she could easily feed herself on 6d. a day and used to save the other 6d.Consequently if we needed a new general servant there was always a great crowd of applicants to choose from. It is only fair to add that it was sometimes a little difficult to separate the "master's food" entirely from the servants! Such items as butter, lard, salt,pepper and sugar were particularly

Difficult to separate. Ladies'cast—off dresses and stockings and shoes were usually given to maids.

Each maid and each male servant was obliged to have an "Arcbeitsbuch"or Workbook issued by the Police and every change of employment had to be entered in it

Together with the cause of leaving. On each termination of work and on each beginning of similar new work the aforesaid book had to be stamped by the Police after approval. These rules all came under the "Gesindeordnung" or "Order for governing the Rabble".

In my time the neighbourhood of Leipzig was one of the flattest parts of North Germany and many citizens longed to possess a local hill. So the enterprising Town Council decided to create one.The burgesses were invited to deposit all their rubbish in a certain corner of a park known as the "Rosengarten"and presently a hill was built up from odds and ends of all sorts with the addition of plenty of sand and some large stones intended to symbolise rocks.The hill was named Scherbelberg, or the Rubble Mountain,and picture postcards were printed making it look quite idyllic and giving the height as considerably over 30,000 millimetres, or over 100 feet. To increase the height still more a tall wooden view tower was Erected on top and the public were proudly informed that the Harz Mountains were visible; needless to say that in spite of my good sight I vainly tried to imagine their outlines.

Once a year in summer a sort of cyclist parade took place in this park..Cyclists were encouraged to decorate their machines with flowers and the general effect was very pleasing.

Leipzig was a great educational and musical centre and its university , dating from 1409, used to attract students from many countries. British and American students there nearly all took courses in Chemistry, but occasionally in bacteriology and in general medicine. Many years later I was invited to a Leipzig University Reunion dinner in London, and was Interested to hear what important as well as highly lucrative posts all those men now held. My host on that occasion was the late sir John Ledingham F.R.S. He too had studied at Leipzig and was now Director of the Lister Institute of Preventive Medicine.

The pursuit of music was carried almost to excess in Leipzig, every house almost containing numerous vocalists, pianists,violinists and other instrumental performers. Music students often did 12 hours of work per day . Suicides were then very frequentthere,but whetherthey were due to fogs (much worse than London ones) or to excess of music I cannot say. When we lived in Berlin we had a house for a couple of years in the Herrwartsstrasse opposite the vast building of the Prussian General Staff whose Chief (Count Waldersee) and his American wife mother-in-law were friends of ours and used to exchange visits with us. On a great many days of each year the Emperor WilliamI1 and his first wife, the Empress Augusta Victoria used to drive to a spot only a few minutes away and then walked,or to be more exact, twaddled like geese the rest of the way to the aforesaid building. This was in marked contrast to the fine Impression they made when on horseback. From our windows we witnessed this imperial ritual innumerable times and often invited our friends to come and see it.

In Berlin I remember walking in the "Lustgarten", a public park near the Imperial Palace, and hearing the guns of an artillery battery giving a salute in honour of the marriage of William II's very plain sister to the Crown Prince Constantine of Greece

(later King Constantine and Queen Sophia of Greece).

New Year's Day was always a "gala"day in all German cities in my time, and was used by all German army officers for strutting about in fashionable streets in uniforms and wearing decorations.This was particularly noticeable in Berlin. I can also recollect being invited to go to the "Tempelhoferfeld" to witness a parade of 30,000 troops. What struck me as remarkable was the minute way in which carriages spectators were parked. After Royalties and the Corps Diplomatique came those of non-Royal Princes and their families, then came the Grafenor Countsthen the "Frelherren", then the Barons, then the "Herrenvon" or untitled nobles, then a Limited number of Upper Middle Class people and some foreign visitors to Berlin.

Travels.

During a walk in the Harz mountains in 1891 (on a densely wooded hill near the spa resort known as Bad Harzburg), my American grandmother and I suddenly heard a tremendous tramping of feet above us, so we left the path and hid behind some bushes.About a minute later half a dozen wild boars come charging down the path where we had been. This was one of the most exciting incidents in my life, although less dangerous than when,a great many years later, I was charged by a stag in Richmond Park (near the Petersham Gate).I had always read and heard that animals dislike sudden movements and noises; so I stood motionless until the stag was only a few yards off, then I opened my umbrella with a great flourish and to my immense relief he sidestepped and went off in a different direction.

In 1890 came my first sightseeing journey. That summer my family went to Ilfracombe (South Devon) where they much enjoyed rock climbing above the coast.

Meanwhile an impecunious American music student was offered a month's free holiday(fares included) if he would take me on a sightseeing journey in Thuringia,South Germany and Switzerland. My first long alpine walk was up the Faulhorn (8,800 feet high) and during it I beheld my first eagle; many years later in the CaucasusI saw plenty of eagles and vultures only a few yards away while 1 was Riding in the rolling country of Ciscaucasia. My horse did not mind them too much, but always gave a wide berth to carcasses of dead horses which we seemed to come across rather often.

In 1890 I also saw my first big waterfall,the then still celebrated falls of the Rhine near Schaffhausen,in the extreme north of Switzerland.It was well that I saw a relatively modest, though beautiful waterfall first and far greater falls in Norway later and finally Niagara. In that way my sense of proportion had a chance of adapting itself by easy stages.

In 1892 during my second visit to SwitzerlandI first set foot on a glacier; I walked a number of times on the lower Grindelwaldand Eiger glaciers.That summer I also saw my first great fire when a large part of the long village of Grindelwald was consumed in flames, it coincided with the fierce onslaught of the "Fohn"or South Wind which is considered dangerous for fires all over Switzerland, but more particularly in the Bernese Oberland and in the central cantons. I spent one hot long afternoon standing in a double line of villagers and summer visitors passing buckets of water to the only pump in the village, a hand pump at that.
In 1948 or 1949 at ZermattI met a retired English doctor who had also stood in that line as a small boy.

Between two sojourns in 1892, both in Grindelwald,of several weeks each, we spent a delightful fortnight at the then small, isolated alpine hotel, the Hotel Bellevue on the Little Scheldegg Pass, some 3,400 feet above Grindelwald.The few visitors staying there were nearly all English and on Sundays an English clergyman held services; once he thought that as the weather was splendid it would be nice to worship in the open air. At first all went admirably, but suddenly some over- enthusiastic cows charged down on us and parson and congregation hastily retreated into the quiet hotel drawing room where we were able to complete our devotions in peace. The harmonium was safely retrieved as the cows took no interest in a silent instrument. On the following Sunday, service was held entirely indoors. Outdoor religious services are popular in Switzerland among both Protestants and Roman Catholics, Mass has been said even on the top of the Matterhorn, on whose Italian cummit a Cross was erected many years ago.

At the Little Scheidegg we conversed everyday with three sisters by the name of Urlin who came from London; our two families have kept up friendly relations ever since.The surviving of the sisters is Lady Petrie, widow of the eminent Egyptologist, Sir Flinders Petrie,and herself an archeologist and writer of great merit.

In 1893 on my third visit to Switzerland,my grandmother and I stayed three weeks at Engelberg in the Alps of Unterwalden and then proceeded to Corve and the Engadine (both upper and lower).

In 1894, after ten months spent on and above the Lake of Geneva, I was again at Grindelwald,this time for four weeks at the comfortable Hotel Pension Schonegg.

There we met many people;one boy who sat opposite us at the long "tabled' hotel" later became a diplomat and as such acted as one of my groomsmen when I was married in London in 1914. Others whom I got to know then were Sir Henry Lunn and all his intellectual family. I still meet Arnold,elder son of Sir Henry,and, like myself, a member of the Alpine Club.

After the grass had just been mown we used to slide down steep hill slopes at tremendous speed sitting on tea trays.

In the summer of 1895 my mother took me for a long journey of sightseeing, alpine walking and a little mountaineering in Bavaria and in the Austrian and Swiss Alps, including a few days spent at Bormio in the Alps of Italy;the first time I set foot in Italy. At Rothenburg-am-der-Tauberin Bavaria, we stayed a night after doing

the sights of that "falry—tale"town as tourist agencies in England and America used to call that ancient place which still looked like a picture taken straight from the middle ages.

One of the greatest treasures of that Franconian municipality was what was claimed to be a drip of the "Holy Blood" (i.e blood shed by Christ). It was kept under glass and had, so the devout burgesses alleged, caused a beautiful tree to grow right through the pavement around a local church.

Another thing the Rothenburgers greatly prized was a huge tankard which played its part in saving the town on an historic occasion. In the long drawn out devastating struggle in the eighteenth century, known as the "Thirty Years War"(1618 -1648), Tilly, a brilliant cavalry general of the Roman Catholics wanted to raze Rothenburg to the ground, but on second thoughts,declared that he might relent after all if one of the local magistrates would drain the wine in the tankard at one draught. A self-sacrificing notability did so and Rothenburg was spared the fate which overtook various towns in the war.

On the dining room walls of every Austrian hotel and inn which we patronized hung portraits of the Emperor Francis Joseph and the Empress Elizabeth. Although he often quarrelled with his family and dynasty he was greatly loved by the peasants in the Austrian Alps.

That summer I climbed my first big alpine peak,the Ortler (12,800 feet high ), at that time the highest mountain in Austria;it now belongs to Italy. My mother engaged a seemingly trustworthy and well recommended guide and told him he might take me up to a height of 10,000 feet. He entirely agreed,but as it was a cool day I covered the 3,900 feet difference in altitude between the village of Sulden and the agreed maximum limit of 10,000 feet, not in three or three and a half hours as expected,but in one and three quarter hours.The guide said "It is still so early, wouldn't you like to go a little further?". I said "yes" and the question and answer were repeated several times and eventually we stood on the summit of the roof of a whole great empire.

We hastened down to Sulden as best we could,but we still got there later than had been anticipated.

Two things now happened:

(1) The over ambitious guide took his medicine like a true man and patiently endured an indignant parent's righteous reproaches to which he listened hat in hand and with a look of humility though without actual fear, and

(2) my mountaineering mother gave the guide not only his

full fee for the larger expedition, but added a "royal" tip thereto.

Finally various summer visitors came to offer congratulations.

That summer by wandering from one Alpine group to another I learned more about Alpine geography than in any other year; at one stage of that long journey we stayed each night in a different place for nine consecutive nights. In those times the old-fashioned horse drawn mail coaches or "diligences" were still running with their picturesquely dressed postilions in blue jackets, scarlet waistcoats and cream coloured riding britches and white riding boots. It was a fascinating early morning sight at Colre ( in Eastern Switzerland )to see quite a number of such mail coaches being prepared simultaneously and then starting amid the blowing horns and jingling bells for various directions, some for St. Moritz via the Albula Pass, some also for the beautiful Upper Engadine via the JulierPass, others all the way to Chiavenna in North Italy via the reowned Via Mala Gorge of the infant river Rhine and then across the Splugen Pass to the southside of the Alps, some for destinations along another initial branch of the Rhine and via the Oberalp Pass for Andermattin Central Switzerland, some for the Italian speaking Swiss canton of Ticinoacros the San Bernardino and Lukmanier Passes and so forth,

In September we stayed at least ten days at the isolated Alpine Hotel known as the Eggishorn Hotel, situated all by itself on the slopes of the Eggishorn, one of the finest view points anywhere in the Alps.

The hotel (about 7,100 feet above the sea) could then be reached only on foot, on horseback or by "chaise a porter", i.e. by sitting in a chair carried by relays of porters.

During that sojourn my older sister Vava took what were passed off to her as a "guide"and a "porter",but turned out to be merely male hotel servant quite incompetent for finding the best way up the great mountain known as the Jungfrau(13,670feet high) and that after fresh snow, therefore in very bad conditions.

However she reached the summit safely and got down all right too. My mother in a spell of enthusiasm sent my grandmother the following telegram:"Hooray. One Jungfrauon on top of another". My grandmother was greatly puzzled until a couple of days later she received the much desired letter of explanation.

After leaving the High Alps we stayed several weeks at Lausanne above the Lake of Geneva and much enjoyed our sojourn there at the Hotel Beausejour which had a very nice garden with pine trees. An American girl friend of mine (Laure Lloyd Coates) and I used to climb trees a lot. Once I fixed several boards as a small bench high up and then went off to buy a lot of rich pastries and finally Laure and I climbed again to our improvised bench and "gorged" on the good things I had bought.

Then years later her mother and step-father(now Mr and Mrs Joseph Wainewright) invited me to visit them at their delightful house in Philadelphia.

In the summers of 1896 and 1897 we went each time for two months to Sweden,

Norway and Denmark. My memories of those holidays were largely of magnificent fjords and waterfalls,of salmon served to us thrice daily and of tough reindeer steak.

On arriving at Stockholm we were surprised to see the old King Oscar II and his son, the then Crown Prince Gustavus (the late King Gustavus V), standing on the station platform in their full dress uniforms of Swedish Generals with cocked hats with green plumes,while a guard of honour of Swedish grenadiers with Russian style helmets and white epaulettes presented arms, with their colours dipping in salute and their regimental band playing the Russian National Anthem.

It turned out that this fine ceremonial reception had been arranged in honour of the Grand Duke Vladimir of Russia (uncle of the late Emperor Nicholas II and maternal grandfather of the Duchess of Kent) who had come on a visit to the Court of Sweden. We ourselves had to wait until the Royal Cortege had left the station before alighting from the train. The Grandduke's special coach had simply been added to the last ordinary coach of the train.

Although Sweden played a great role in European affairs for a limited time (approximately from 1630 till about 1730) she has been only a very lesser power since then and accustomed to sober ceremonial display which might well account for the absence of a whole special train for the Grand Duke Vladimir (means Valdemar or Waldemar ) who was then not in the direct line of succession to the Russian Throne.

After the extermination of the whole inner circle of the House of Romanoff- Holstein Gottorp, the elder son of Vladimir, the late Grand Duke Cyril became pretender (married the great-granddaughter of Queen Victoria through the 19th century Duke of Edinburgh). Cyril's son, Vladimir Cyrilovitch,is now the legitimised Russian Pretender (married a grand-daughter of the late Kaiser William II).

In Norway in 1897 my sister Vava and I took a guide from the mountain hamlet of Rosjhem and climbed the easy Galdhoepig (Norway's highest mountain,about 8,200 feet above the sea). We had to sleep at the Galdhoepig Inn partway up the mountain.We enjoyed the magnificent view from the summit,a feature which is rare owing to the more usually prevailing mist.

In NorwayIn 1896 and 1897 there were comparatively few railways;we travelled partly by steamer, partly by rowboat (in the late season) and much also by carriage ‘Thus for the three day delightful drive through the beautiful Telemarken District we shared a two horse Landau with an English Civil Servant and his sister (Mr Burls and Miss Burls); the first day we drove from Dalen to Guingedal,the second from thereto Roldal and the third day thenceto the wonderfulwaterfall,the Laatefoss and on to Odda, charmingly situated on the Hardanger Fjord.On other drives we

used the more characteristically Norwegian vehicles known as the Stolkjaere and the Karjoler. The former was a four wheeled cart, the driver sat in the front while my mother and sisters were behind.

The Karjoleris a two wheeled very light vehicle with a small (almost saddle-like) leatherseat, each of my feet resting on a small iron bar

which involved fairly skillful balancing when driving on rough and bumpy roads.

In our case the Stolkjaere driven by the coachman always went in front while I followed behind alone in the Karjoler.

At all wayside inns we saw notices put up on the dining room or waiting room walls with the inscription: "Vaer gad til hesten"("be kind to the horse".). Norwegian horses amply repaid the natural kindness shown to them by their patient and safe behaviour even on the worst roads.

In Norway we also visited two remarkable"Stavekirken",i.e. the old wooden parish churches of Fortun and Borgund which belong to a mere handful of surviving Churches of the Middle Ages.They have three principal features:

1. they are built entirely of wood

2. they have a number of strangely shelving roofs, one sticking out from beneath the other, very narrow at the top, getting gradually wider lower down and extremely wide at the bottom

and

3. they are decorated throughout with dragon figures.

Many years later (in 1922 ) I came across a belfry at a village in the South of England (Brookland, Kent, near the border of Sussex ) which was built exactly in this style.

In the summer of 1898 my mother took me for a three months' holiday journey to Western Germany and France.By far the greatest part of the time we were actually in France and stayed at over 40 different places.I n the matter of distance we covered a total of about 2,600 miles in France alone and besides Paris visited many provincial towns in all parts of the country,a great number of cathedrals, historic castles, spa resorts, one celebrated seaside place (Biarritz),various summer resorts, and mountain resorts (Pyrenees and French Alps). The "Cirque de Gavarnie" was in

some ways the grandest natural amphitheatre of mountains I had up till then seen.

Its features include also the impressive waterfall known as the "Cascade de Gavarnie", and on the tremendous rocky sky line, the cleft in the chain known as the "Brechede Roland",with the romantic legend or traditional tale, according to which the heroic Roland, after performing many wonderful deeds of valour, got separated from his brave followers. He blew his horn so loud that when they rallied to his call and reached him he had expired from the mighty effort.

Another place whose romantic associations greatly appealed to me, was the remarkable ancient walled town of Aigues Hortes. As a child and a boy I had often admired a picture which we possessed, illustrating the departure from there on a sailing ship of the great King Louis IX, known to all Christendom as Saint Louis,

Starting on his Crusade to the Holy Land in the XIIIth century. Year after year Gustave Dore's picture appeared before my eyes at every mention of France's greatest king. I could never forget Saint Louis standing on the deck of his ship, resting on his sword and deeply meditating on his mission, with great hosts of angels preceding and following him. Those thoughts gave me an indescribable thrill when we visited that former Mediterranean port, which owing to centuries of neglect had become silted up with sand and was now unusable.

Rouen, Orleans and the Castle of Chinon were, of course,full of associations with Joan of Arc, the cathedrals of Angouleme and Toulouse showed Moorish influence in their style.Toulouse as a city, besides its Interest as the capital of ancient Languedoc, made one think of the great battles connected, one with Wellington's

Triumph over the French, the other with the secular struggle with Islam.

The castle of Amboise in Touraine had two features of special interest,vis, a double Staircase inside one of its towers, i.e. one inside the other so that persons using the inner one could not see or be seen by those using the outer one; the second point being a terrace from which the French Royal Court witnessed the burning of the Houses of the Huguenots in St. Bartholemew's Night and heard their shrieks as they were being murdered.

An interesting episode was a visit to the then renowned Monastery of the "Grande Chartreuse" in Dauphine,in the foothills of the Alps of France. As ladies were not allowed to accompany their men folk inside the monastery, my mother had to wait for me in a large hall outside,where light refreshments could be had.

The monks were divided into two categories: the regular white robed, silence keeping Trappist or Carthusian Brethren, and the brown robed lay Brethren who looked after the food supply and some other needs of their more ascetic companions and who also maintained contact with the outer world. The strangest scene was to see the white robed monks taking their midday dinner. As ordinary speech was forbidden to them, They uttered the strangest sounding cries and noises in general whenever they

Wanted a second helping of any given food course; thus when they desired more soup they made sound similar to "lib, lib, 1ib, lulio, lu lulu", if more meat or potatoes were wanted,a deep throated grunting noise took place, while for pudding or wine a more light-hearted or caressing sound was used. What a humbug to even imagine that they were entirely silent!

However,in the church of the monastery, they were allowed to chant and even sing and during occasional interviews with the abbot, they could reply to his questions in ordinary speech. Queen Victoria was, I understand, the only woman who had ever visited the monastery in the ordinary way, because as a Queen-Regnant she was supposed to have no sex.

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