Nothing Daunted Read Online Free PDF

imported some wood and Japanese workers for the construction of her teahouse. She hired the French horticulturalist and landscape architect Édouard André to organize the nine-acre park. It had stretches of lawn interrupted by masses of junglelike palms and cacti, cedars, cypresses, magnolias, araucaria, fig trees, and eucalyptus.
    The Browns employed twelve gardeners. “The mimosa trees are beyond adjectives,” Dorothy wrote, “but imagine great trees of goldenrod, with the sun on it—against a deep blue sky! It was almost intoxicating after our dull Paris skies—and the air is so soft and delicious.” The most remarkable flower bed contained dozens of varieties of flowers, all in various shades of red. When she got up the next day, the gardeners had changed the color scheme to all white. “Cousin Josephine,” as she later put it, “said that when the weather got warm in the spring, along about the end of May, the gardeners would roll up the lawn—and throw it away, I suppose.”
    One day Ros and Dorothy went to Monte Carlo with the Woodruffs. It was a beautiful drive on the Corniche Road, winding high above the sea, through hill towns balanced on rocks, where all the houses were the same shade of gray, and then bright orange groves, which reminded Dorothy of a Maxfield Parrish picture. Far below the rocks was the jagged coastline, “with the blindingly white towns, standing out against the glorious sea.” At Monte Carlo they went to the casino, which she and Ros found disappointing: “the people were such an ordinary uninteresting-looking lot—and the decorations were so tawdry.”
    Back at the villa, Josephine kept her company busy. “It has been as strenuous as Paris,” Dorothy commented, “with so many engagements, and a mortal terror of being late to meals,” which were served by footmen in striped waistcoats and short breeches. Every day they went out to drive in an open victoria with two men on the box and two horses done up in a dressy harness. “I never lived in such luxuryand magnificence, and I can tell you—after a winter with a French family—I am ready to appreciate it.”
    After their stay with the Browns, the Woodruffs and Ros went to Barcelona, where it was cold and rainy. Although the girls were excited to see their first “aeroplane” meet, they were tired of sightseeing, and Dorothy told Milly that they were desolate: “We didn’t see how we were going to put in the day.” Walking down the street with Mr. Woodruff, huddled under their umbrellas, they were approached by a portly man with a gray beard. He stepped up to her father and said, “You must be an American.” They chatted with him briefly, and then stopped in at a bank. When they came out, he was waiting for them on the sidewalk. He introduced himself as Mr. Stuart, “once from New York.” He told them he had lived in Barcelona for twenty-one years, “being driven over by domestic trouble!”
    He invited them to his house, saying he had a few things that might interest them. “Papa said yes, so we puddled along behind,” Dorothy said, surprised by the unlikely encounter and by Mr. Woodruff’s courtesy to a peculiar stranger. Ros, who had withdrawn a significant amount of cash, whispered to Dorothy that she was sure he was going to rob them, as in stories they’d seen in the Herald about naive “Yankees.” He led them to Rambla de Catalunya in the Eixample, the best part of town, “and the minute we got inside, our eyes flew open,” Dorothy wrote. “It was like a very rich Oriental palace—and it was the last touch when his servant put a red fez on his head.”
    The house was a maze of rooms overflowing with priceless works of art: “You never saw so many pictures in a private house—and such wonderful ones!” This time Dorothy admired the Rubens, along with the silk rugs on the walls and the Persian carpets on the floor. One room, “The Lounge of the Queen Regent ,” had thirteen Goya tapestries,