Frank Mellersh was the son of General Mellersh, who fought in the Indian Mutiny and his grandfather was an admiral of the fleet who put down the Chinese pirates. Frank was born in India. His family had many servants out there and he came to London when he was only a lad.

In the early days he became private secretary to Lord Walsingham and had a beautiful office with black wood furniture hung with yellow silk curtains. He eventually went to America and there he made a pile of money introducing a steam heating process on the railways. It was patented and he brought the patent over. There was a trial run on the London South Western Railways and it was used from Euston to Hollyhead. This one patent bought him in twenty nine thousand pounds.

He was twenty one years of age when my cousin, Nelly Curtis, was introduced to him by Arthur Bertram, who had married her sister. Nelly Curtis fell in love with Frank and they married. They went to New York and stayed there three years until she asked him to go home to Ireland where her parents lived. She was the youngest daughter and the same age as Frank.

The first time I met them was on Euston Station, the night I went to Ireland, after I had lost my father - in 1896. I met them again in 1899 and stayed with them on a visit to Liberia Road, Highbury where Nell and I had lots of fun with men friends of hers who used to visit us in the evening and play cards and drink coffee and smoke cigarettes.

Frank was away travelling all the time as he was on the ‘Times’ After many years, when he was old, the ‘Times’ gave him a pension.  

 There was a man called Hermoglous Gerondious, whom I thought I was in love with as he made dramatic overtures to me. Frank came home and Nelly told him about it and he advised me not to have anything to do with him. When I saw Frank again I told him my heart was breaking for the love of Guy. Guy was writing me love letters from Hong Kong and other parts where he touched.

Then Frank and Nelly moved to Hilldrop Road and I went there to mind Eunice, their only child, and look after the cat while Nell went to Monte Carlo with Mr Parks; a very rich man, and his daughter.

Several times she was either away with him abroad, or he would be staying at some grand hotel in London, and she meeting him and going to the opera or places of amusement.

Sometimes I was asked to stay with them at Hilldrop Road, to be companionable to Eunice.

This little girl was very much attached to me and often said , “Cousin Nell, you fascinate me. I love looking at you and seeing the things you have in your case and smelling that lovely peculiar scent you have about you. “

To please her, I said, “If you are a good girl I will give you some.”

It was a bottle of ‘Oppenox’ that a Mr Pohl had given to me for my birthday and it had, indeed, a lovely aroma. The older it got, the more fragrant it became.