| Description | Letter from Amelia Nyasa Laws, 7 Via Venti Settembre, Rome, to her relatives, regarding Easter Sunday weather; Miss Piggott's luncheon visit and her enjoyment of the lamb; meat is now so expensive they will have no more for a while; fish is going up because people were buying it as a cheap alternative; Aunt is spending over her allowance to feed them and they are coming to a crisis; Ernesta is unhappy with the food and wants to go home, but there she will live on potatoes and beans; Aunt has told her that she is free to go; Maria is to stay for the summer, and next season they hope to have one servant to replace both; Maria agrees that it is the only way; Uncle and Aunt will probably not be able to leave Rome at all for the summer; people have to take their tessere (bread-tickets) with them and hotel prices are still high, even where the bread may not be good; she fears the effect of the heat on Aunt; reference to an appalling battle which will no doubt send casualties to Chambéry; 'This country is doing nothing to assist or draw off the enemy from the French front. Probably it is not desired. The untrustworthiness of the morale would likely add another burden, instead of being a help'; Amelia would like to have gone to hear the pipers in Rome for the Highland sports, but missed them; Uncle's visit to the League meeting for the pipers, which was as usual in the hands of the Brock-Miller faction; Miss Jamieson's indecisiveness spoiled their afternoon; Uncle's prolonged visit to the tax office; Vita has argued the case for the manse only being taxed as one apartment, as the upper apartment is mostly offices for the church; Uncle's unsatisfactory proposals for moving downstairs and letting the two upstairs floors; Aunt would have no room for clothes and the servant would have to live in the bathroom; visit from Admiral and Signora Baggio; she was Miss Dickie from Glasgow, whose friends predicted that she would return from Italy married to a Marquis; they were right, and she is eager to point out that it is a real title, not one bought with land; Mr. Green's cordial last lesson; he says that her main faults now are 'lack of experience and self-confidence', so she is happy; she is content to improvise now, and will go on with counterpoint when she has the opportunity; he has drafted a letter of recommendation for her; visit of Miss Bell, matron of the Hebron Hospital, and Miss Mann, 'lent by the Medical Mission to work in Palestine'; there will be four elements there in a joint civil hospital, Americans, British, Episcopalian and Presbyterian; Miss Bell is Episcopalian but 'the most attractive missionary that has come round this way. She looks real'; she has run a hospital, possibly Bangour, in Edinburgh, with 2,000 beds; Mrs. Holme and Janie Holme, née Irving, joined them for tea; Ted Holme was on business in Genoa but joined them all for church; Mrs. Holme is shrunken and old looking, and Janie is not happy in her marriage to Ted; 'When he went to London Janie hoped the War Office would accept his third offer, "to make a man of him", but his varicose veins are the hindrance'; she has a dreary future; Mr. Guppy insisted on greeting Mrs. Holme after the service, even when she drew back; Amelia took Miss Bell and Miss Mann to see St. Paul's; trying to help a Frenchwoman, married to an Italian now a prisoner, whose half-pay has been withheld for eight months; she has an infant, and is of a good family at Bordeaux; she impressed them and Uncle managed to have her pay increased for her. |