We engaged passage on the steamship Trave, sailing from New York to Gibraltar about the middle of May; the day for our departure was close at hand; many goodbyes had been said; and, altogether, the immediate future was looking bright, when suddenly I found myself once more within the orbit of my unlucky star. My son Robert chose this opportune moment to develop a case of scarlet fever. Of course that left me and the children out of all the plans and I was compelled to accept a hastily made arrangement which provided for my remaining behind and following my husband and his interesting party on a later ship. Fortunately Robert was not with the other children when he contracted the disease. He was visiting friends in another part of town and I had him removed immediately to the Good Samaritan Hospital, then settled down to my vigil which might be long or short as fortune decreed.
My husband’s mother was in Millbury while all these things were transpiring and he called her up on the long distance telephone to tell her about Bobby’s illness and to say goodbye.
“Then Nellie cannot go with you?” said Mrs. Taft.
“No, I’m sorry to say she can’t,” said my husband.
“But you have now an extra stateroom, have you not?”
“Yes, Mother.”
“Well, Will, I don’t think you ought to make such a trip alone when you are so far from strong, so I just think I’ll go with you in Nellie’s place,” said my mother-in-law.
And she did. The intrepid old lady of seventy-four packed her trunks and was in New York ready to sail within twenty-four hours, and my husband wrote that she acted altogether with an energy and an enterprise which filled him with pleasure and pride. On the steamer, and later at the hotel Quirinal in Rome, she presided with dignity for more than a month over a table at which daily gathered a company composed of a Colonial Governor, a Supreme Judge, a Roman Bishop, an Anglican Bishop and a United States Army officer.
Her activity and fearlessness kept her family and friends in a state of astonishment a good part of the time. She went wherever she liked and it never seemed to occur to her that it was unusual for a woman of her age to travel everywhere with so much self-reliance. She thought nothing of crossing the American continent every year to visit her daughter or sister on the Pacific Coast, and out in Manila we used to laugh at the possibility of her appearing on the scene at any moment. In fact, she very seriously considered coming at one time. I was glad that she could go with my husband to Rome because she really could be a comfort and a help and not at all a responsibility.
Robert was not nearly as ill as we expected he would be and in a few weeks I was able to make definite plans for joining my husband. My sister, Mrs. Anderson, was going to Paris so I took advantage of the opportunity to enjoy her companionship on the voyage and sailed with her on the fourth of June, landing in France and going by train to Rome.
That the record of our ill-luck may be quite complete I must add that on the way across the Atlantic my son Charlie managed to pick up whooping-cough, and that by the time we reached Rome he had passed it on to Helen. Her first remark to her father was a plaintive query: “Papa, why is it we can never go anywhere without catching something?”
I devoutly hoped that we had caught everything there was to catch and that we might now venture to predict a period of peace.
I found my party very comfortably bestowed. They were occupying a whole floor at the Quirinal, the largest hotel then open in the city, and were keeping what appeared to me to be considerable “state.” It looked as if they had the entire building to themselves, but that was because it was midsummer when few tourists visit Rome and when all Roman society is supposed to flock to its mountain homes and to northern resorts. However, midsummer though it was, a good many members of the “Black,” or Vatican division of society, still lingered in the city and I found them evincing every desire to make our stay both pleasant and memorable. Before I arrived Mr. Taft had already “met, called upon, taken tea with and dined with Cardinals, Princes, counts, marquises, and distinguished Englishmen and Americans resident in Rome,” to quote from one of his own letters, but he had a good many things to do over again in my honour. He had also had an audience with Pope Leo XIII, and was deep in the rather distracting uncertainties and intricacies of his negotiations.
He did not have the pleasure of seeing the King of