gb0551ms-33-84

Transcription

[Page] 84
[continued from page 83]

Dundee, Aberdeen, Falkirk, Lanark, Melrose,
Gullane, Dunbar besides lecturing to two or three Societies
in Edinburgh. This winter I am to lecture in
St. Andrews, Edinburgh (3 times.) Milnathort, Cargil:
:field and Cambridge. Since my last entry
the Treasury have raised the whole of the officers
in the Museum with beneficial results to myself.
Taxation, though we have got one shilling off the
income tax, is still very high. (Income tax 5/-!)
but the cost of living has come down con:
:siderably, and feeding is coming back to
pre-war quality. Margarine is now only an
unpleasant memory, and as one eats good
butter one wonders how we ever faced the loss
of it with equanimity. Clothes are cheaper,
but still much above pre-war prices.
Last year, 1921. we made a great expedition,
Jocelyn & I, to Italy along with our friends the
Gordons, the parson of St. John's & his wife. It was
a glorious summer, we were detained here
till 13th September by the meeting of the British Association
& a conversazione in the Museum. We left on
a Monday, spent a night in London at the
Grosvenor Hotel, & next day crossed to Calais
where we boarded the trans continental express
1st class sleeper and travelled right through

to Basle where we arrived early in the morning.
There we had time for baths & breakfast & left about
10.0 a.m. for Italy. Such a glorious journey as
it was I never experienced. Through Switzerland
all agog to get the first peep of the Alps, then
through Lucerne, and most splendid of all
the journey over the St. Gothard, mounting up
with the little swiss houses perched ever higher on the
flanks of the hills, and the roaring torrents deep
in the gorges below us. Then the crossing through
the tunnel into Italy, the sudden change in
the character of the villages, the appearance of
the chestnut woods, and as the afternoon wore
on, the glimpses of the lakes. At Milan
we arrived about 7.0 and left the comfortable
train we had travelled in from Basle. We
dined in the big railway restaurant, not a
very satisfactory meal, we were all tired & no
one knew what they wanted. We secured four
corner seats in a corridor carriage, there being
no sleeper on the train, and it was not long
ere the two other seats were taken by a man &
woman, husband & wife, or mother & son, I
could not make out which. It was a
hot stuffy night, the train was crowded
with people lying asleep stretched out in the
[continued on page 85]