364 Ouida at Home [1900 



but he said ' No, he preferred to be doctored by God,' and this is 

 probably best even scientically. I told him the tale of our shipwreck, 

 and he besought me to have a lamb slain for Sheykh Obeyd, and I 

 promised him so to do, though I have a quarrel with our local saint 

 for the little good he did me two years ago. I shall be grieved to 

 lose old Hassan, for he is good, and much beloved by his tribes-people. 

 We leave Sheykh Obeyd for Italy to-morrow." 



My journey home was made with Cockerell and Miss Lawrence, 

 Lady Anne having preceded us, and at Brindisi I received a telegram 

 from her, announcing the birth of a grandson. Another fellow-travel- 

 ler was M. Cogordan, the French Minister at Cairo, a man of great 

 intelligence and knowledge of art and archaeology. We stopped the 

 night at Ancona and several days at Florence, where we found Lady 

 Paget and Lady Windsor, and where I made acquaintance with Mrs. 

 Ross, Lady Duff Gordon's daughter, who was so long in Egypt, as to 

 which she had pleasant recollections of things that happened thirty and 

 more years ago. Our next halting place was Lucca, which I had 

 not visited since 1852, when, as a boy of eleven, I spent the summer 

 at the Lucca Baths. I remember having been taken to see the Holy 

 Coat, and of having beheld in the streets the Grand Duke and Duchess 

 of Tuscany, with the fat grand ducal children, pass in their carriage 

 in days before the invention of the Kingdom of Italy. 



The next day I went with Cockerell to call on Ouida at her villa 

 at S. Alessio, some three miles from Pisa. I had been in correspon- 

 dence with her on literary matters, and took the opportunity of pay- 

 ing her a visit. " Our driver did not know the house or who we 

 wanted, until he suggested ' the lady with the many dogs.' We said, 

 ' Oh, yes, the lady with the dogs,' and so it was. Ouida's house proved 

 to be a nice old villa with a high garden wall and an eighteenth century 

 iron gate, towards which from inside seven or eight dogs, poodles 

 mostly and nondescripts, came at us, open-mouthed, when we rang. 

 It was some time before we could make our ringing heard, and the bell 

 was answered at last by a portly man-cook in cap and apron, who, 

 after some further delay, on my sending in my card, admitted us. 

 We were shown into the front hall, and there found the lady of the 

 house seated at a small table, as one sees in the opening scene of a 

 play, arranged apparently for the occasion. She was a little old lady, 

 dressed in white, who rose to meet us and reprove her dogs, still yelp- 

 ing at us in chorus. A mild reproof it was, nor did it save us from 

 their caresses. The largest poodle placed himself upon my knees, and 

 another took my hat in his mouth. ' They do not often bite,' she ex- 

 plained, ' except beggars.' I had been prepared by the violence of her 

 writings and anecdotes I had heard of her from Lady Paget and others, 

 to find a person somewhat loud and masculine, but Ouida proved the 



