My mother travelled up to London on one occasion to consult a
celebrated oculist, and confided to him that she was growing
apprehensive about her eyesight, as she began to find it difficult
to read small print by lamplight. The man of Harley Street, after
a careful examination of his patient's eyes, asked whether he
might inquire what her age was. On receiving the reply that she
had been ninety on her last birthday, the specialist assured her
that his experience led him to believe that cases of failing
eyesight were by no means unusual at that age.
My mother had known all the great characters that had flitted
across the European stage at the beginning of the nineteenth
century: Talleyrand, Metternich, the great Duke of Wellington, and
many others. With her wonderful memory, she was a treasure-house
of anecdotes of these and other well-known personages, which she
narrated with all the skill of the born reconteuse. She belonged,
too, to an age in which letter-writing was cultivated as an art,
and was regarded as an intellectual relaxation. At the time of her
death she had one hundred and sixty-nine direct living
descendants: children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren, and
great-great-grandchildren, in addition to thirty-seven
grandchildren and great-grandchildren by marriage.
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