We arrived at Karlsruhe and came to the Limmerstrasse to stay with Frau Lichtenauer. It was a very spacious apartment; magnificent and lofty. The ceiling in the wide corridor was painted with cherubs and garlands of flowers executed after Boticcelli. The walls were panelled with silk, pale in colour - a little faded here and there.

An enormous painting hung on the wall depicting the Empress Eugene and Napoleon. I thought of Tom Wakely - how he dressed up as Napoleon and had his picture taken. That man had once asked me to marry him but I did not like him one bit. He was a conceited fellow with all his money.

Our beds were each end of a long, low room and had tassels and canopies of dark red material - of Ottoman brocade. Big feather quilts were on top of the bed and not underneath like ours.

I only had a thin coat as I had given mine to Steffy. Her mother seemed awfully concerned. I wrote to my sister in West Bromwich and told her I wanted a coat. Dear Rosie had gone to Birmingham to live and she packed one off immediately. It was a mixture of grey and green with a green belt - quite nice - and I was glad when it came.

The old lady tried to talk to me and she gave us money and said we must go to the fair so off we went wearing our little red bonnet-like hats that Karl had bought us in Paris. They were trimmed in gay coloured ribbons.

We were very happy buying little china cups and saucers - all hand painted with little men and women. Suddenly we turned and saw a mob of women. They were listening to us speaking. The mob looked very menacing.

Steffy said quickly. “Do not speak English.”

Someone said, “Mein Liebe Gott.”

“It is out hats dear, they make fun of us.”

We hurried along and heard them louder.

“Gott shap England.’

The wailing voices became louder like a sing-song.

“Deutschland uber alles.”

We reached the Limmerstrasse and rushed in. Stephanie’s mother, Frau Lichtenauer, saw a crowd had gathered - they had flat pasty faces and were looking up at the window. Boys were whistling“Die Wocht an Rhein.”

We would not go out again having a feeling of fear. It was just before the 1914 war. Stephanie told her mother that the crowd had heard English spoken and it was like holding a red flag to a bull.

Someone shouted, “Vas verickle Englander. Vas verickle Frau.’ (mad English)

Frau Lichtenauer did not want us to have our holiday spoilt so she paid our fare to Italy. Stephanie could speak very good Italian and was always longing to see Fiesole again - where she had had her honeymoon.

It was a very long journey and an expensive one. We did no more shopping in Karlsruhe and we started out on a most wonderful journey I ever had in my life. Staying at Florence a very short period. The magnificent establishment filled with costly furs, pearls and diamonds. Drifted on to Venice on a beautiful sun shining day. We crossed the piazza to the steps where the gondoliers are moored. The sunsets were magnificent. The shops and arcades were dazzling. We only had a short time here. Two days to fill in the wonder and excitements. We visited the’ Academia De Belle Arts’ and stood before the ‘Madonna and Child’ by Giovanni Bellini. A small idyllic blue hooded figure — so serene — time had toned  

it down. The great genius Bellini must have been inspired for he felt truly that he was painting the Mother of Christ.

We stayed at the ‘Hotel L’ Europe’ and dined and ate ices out on the terrace and slept in small beds drawn close together. A sweet breath of air came haunting though the windows and once fancied in sleep to hear the moving waters with the gondoliers floating along to music.

I had a letter which had been forwarded on from Paris to Karlsruhe then on again to Venice in which mother told me that Rosie, my dear sister, had another child called Gwendolen - also to say that Frank Mellersh had called to say goodbye before he sailed to America. He had left me a book of poems by Dante Gabrielle Rosetti bound in a lovely blue. I felt sad that he had gone so far away as I knew him to be a man with greatness of soul.

I had a longing to see my sister and her baby girl. Norman and Eric, her sons, were deeply implanted in my heart and I felt the want of them as much as a mother wants her children. These two little boys have helped me many times to pass days which might otherwise have been very sad.

Stephanie saw how I felt and made me write and ask my mother to come to Frieburg and stay at Emmendingen.

Although the days had been filled with pleasure, everything passed like a film.

Germany had not gripped me like Paris. The German character seemed to be a kind of pagan mysticism. Some thought the language guttural but to me it had romantic beauty. Heine and Goethe; musical poems seem to reveal a richness of inner feeling and the German music moved me to ecstasy - and yet - sometimes I was afraid - of what I cannot tell.

The flying visit we made to Italy was like a beautiful dream. I had particularly noticed a painting in the Academia; a signorina was copying one of the great masters and I wished I were doing it. I will never forget that intense gaze of that girl painter in her blue overall and the simple way her hair was done.

However, we tore ourselves away and returned to Landeck where we walked again in the woods and Karl took our photographs. When I said I must return home they would not hear of it and Edmund promised both of us new dresses each for Christmas. But I had long days of reflection and kept thinking of Guy. I could not forget him. I used to take paints out with me and I tried painting the castle (Schloss) or the little church with its high steeple.

Edmund was painting a large canvas with magnificent scenery and could not get the model he required - being so far in the country he would have to have boarded a model. Steffy sat in one part of the picture and she asked if I could help out by sitting - but , as it was in the altogether, I said no. Steffy said it would be beautiful to see ourselves portrayed and could not understand when I said I would not for the world stand naked before Edmund.

“But its a lovely picture.” Edmund explained, “Beautiful figures surmounting the clear water. You would be running over the sloping grass grass holding a cup to catch the crystal water from a fountain.”

“Ask Mrs Denise,” I replied.

It was not mentioned again but he decided to take his picture to Dresden and finish it there.

Steffy said, “A fat woman like Mrs Denise would ruin his picture and that he would pay double to what he would pay any other model.”

“I would do anything for either of you but not that, “ I said.