Except for that adventure, which I would gladly have done without, Pontresina was an uneventful place, rather picnicky and wearisome. There was a friend of my sister Maggie there under the sentence of the white death: there was an elderly bishop who attached himself somewhat to our party: there was Miss Margot Tennant whom then I met for the first time; and after a rather dull fortnight, I turned back to England to embrace the career, at Chester, of a serious archæologist.
Now there was no particular reason why the Corporatn of Chester should allow a young gentleman from Cambridge University to pull the city walls about, in the hope of extracting therefrom Roman tombstones, even though he was quite willing that these monuments, if discovered, should be presented to the local museum. So with a view to securing a warmer welcome, I had got my father to write to the Duke of Westminster at Eaton, and this was a gloriously successful move. I went over to see him, explained the plan, and got his support. He in turn wrote to the Mayor urging the claims of archæology on an enlightened town, and gave me £50 to augment the grant from the Würtz fund. The technical part of the work, the underpinning of the wall, the subsequent building of it up again in case we extracted Roman tombstones from it was entrusted to the city surveyor: local subscriptions came in, and tombstones of considerable importance came out, for we found that a legion, “_Legio Decima Valeria Victrix_” (The victorious Valerian), whose presence in England was hitherto unknown, had been stationed at Chester. Professor Mommsen, the historian, must be informed about that, and the copies of these tombstones must be sent him, and these produced a letter of congratulation and acknowledgment from the great man. I skipped with joy over that, for was not this an apotheosis for the family dunce, that Professor Mommsen should applaud his work? And again I skipped when one of the famous post-cards came from Hawarden, asking me to come over and tell Mr. Gladstone about these finds. The sense of diplomacy spiced that adventure, for profoundly ignorant though I was about politics, I had just the prudence to be aware that Eaton and Hawarden must not be put, so to speak, into one pocket, since Mr. Gladstone with his policies of Home Rule for Ireland and the Disestablishment of the Welsh Church had digged a gulf of liquid fire between himself and the Duke. There must be nothing said that could tend to stoke that, and strict was the guard that I set on my lips.