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hall was lined with old cuirasses and bayonets, the latter all picked up on the field of
Inkerman, where Sir George, then a lieutenant, was engaged.’
The hospitality of English houses was fully appreciated, but the formalities made
Colonel Higginson a little impatient.
He amused his family by reporting after a London luncheon that he had been ‘swamped in Lords and Ladies.’
From
Oxford he wrote:—
Great and prompt is the kindness of these English people.
Already invitations of some kind for almost every day, before we have been here twenty-four hours .. . The librarian of the great Bodleian library remembered me twenty-five years ago and says I ought to have had a degree of D. C.L. in place of some of the Colonial premiers.
He spent a Sunday at
Stratford and wrote:—
I went to Shakespeare's church, a lovely place, and there was a very ritualistic service, a great deal of signs of the cross, etc. The rector presently announced that he would have a prayer service of thanks for an American party saved from danger at sea. After the service I was suddenly surrounded by American Librarians.
It proved that they were the party, the Cephalonia having broken a shaft.
And this is his family's account of that Sunday morning:—
Wentworth sat through the service unhappily, watching the people cross themselves, and then
