Digitised Manuscripts and Books

I have no personal recollection of Lady Jersey on this particular occasion for I was then barely out of my cradle, but I well remember her and Lady Clementina when they came some years later on their way to Homburg and dined at our house. When dinner was over Lady Jersey asked to be shown to a bedroom where she was attended by our German nursemaid Anna. We had been told of the stateliness and pride of the fine English Countess, and were vastly amused when Anna informed us that she was ordered to raise and shake her heavy gown and ample petticoats while sonorous, trumpet-like sounds issued from the depths of their folds.

Several foreign families were attracted to Frankfort by the cheapness of the living and the educational resources of the town. The English as a matter of course, were predominant. Amongst these was Lord Pollington, now Lord Mexborough, whose wife was a sister of the late Lord Orford, and their son, Master Savile, a plain and uncouth youngster with whom I tried hard but never succeeded in being on good terms. Nature had lavished her graces on Lady Pollington, but she was a victim to the terrible passion against which Sir Wilfrid Lawson thunders, and which degraded and brought her to an untimely end. We formed a close intimacy with Lady O’Donnell, a portly Irish dame, and her children were about the same age as my Sisters and Brother. We shared the same lessons and amusements and though circumstances eventually drove us apart, we have all retained a grateful recollection of those happy days. The eldest daughter, Miss O’Donnell, who was shy and rather plain was kept in the background by her somewhat worldly and very Hibernian mother.

Of the two Miss O’Hara’s, Lady O’Donnell’s children by her second marriage, Fanny married Mr Hozier and her son now sits in Parliament. Many years later I had the pleasure of enjoying her hospitality in London, but she has now been taken from this world. Robert O’Hara was at school in Frankfort, a bright and clever youth who prospered and made a brilliant career at the parliamentary bar; he too is no more. But the pearl of the family was Rose, dear, lovely, delightful Rose, no woman has ever been worthier of that name, or more than she had the beauty and charm – but alas! the ephemeral life – of the flower whose name she bore. When Lady O’Donnell took up her abode in London Rose O’Hara became the belle of the season. The Irish beauty she was called; she was tall, graceful, auburn haired, with the creamiest complexion, and last though not least, with the sweetest disposition. I have always wondered that of her many admirers of high social position not one ever came forward to ask for her hand, and regretted that so ideal a being should have been wasted on a dull Scottish laird, Mr. Forbes of Callender, in whose highland fastness she withered and passed away in the year 1865.

My Mother belonged to a Committee of ladies called the ‘Näh Verein’ – Sewing Committee – who assembled on certain evenings at each other’s houses where they made garments, knitted stockings and muffetees for the poor, while they drank tea, ate ices and cakes, and recorded the latest news. It was generally assumed that these meetings were intolerably dull, but as they long endured and were