LADY GROSVENOR A GiPSY.

Taranaki Herald, Volume LIV, Issue 13488, 31 July 1907, Page 8

LADY GROSVENOR A GiPSY.

— ■ "Sarah Lee, licensed hawker," is on her way, by caravan, through tho lanes of rural Oxfordshire. She began her summer journey (mivs the London Daily Mail) on May 2'clh. She is a petite and dainty gipsy, with a flaming red skirt, blue jersey, slouched straw hat, and immense earrings. She has a striking personality. To the villagers who buy the baskets with which her van is festooned she is only Sarah Lee, the gipsy; but to her friends in another sphere she is Lady Arthur Grosvenor. Her travelling establishment is extremely workmanlike, with nothing luxurious about it, nothing to distinguish it from that of the ordinary gipsy sojourner. There is the main van, just an ordinary vehicle of the familiar type, painted brown, with baskets for sale hung round it, and with kettles and frying-pan and saucepan slung beneath it." Inside the van the first thing that strikes the eyes is what appears to be a small kitchen stove. At the other end are two beds, one above the other, after I the manner of berths aboard ship. In | ! one of them sleeps Lady Arthur Grosvenor ; in the other a lady friend who is | accompanying her. There is a second an — a smaller one, with another stovo [ and sundry stores for use on the way. I When the caravan sets out, Lady Ar- ! thur Grosvenor, in her character of Sarah Lee, drives the first van, and a youth drives the second. A Daily Mail representative found the caravan of Sarah Lee pitched for the week-end in a beautiful meadow near Witney, and had a talk with the owner. "Daily routine?" said Lady Sarah. "Oh, we get up abovit five in the morning. Then we light a fire, and I cook the breakfast. We do all the cooking in the open." 1 "What time do you start your travels for the day?" "Generally about eight. We go on then till somewhere in the neighbourhood of midday, when we have lunch. Lunch is a cold meal, prepared from whatever wo may happen to have in the larder — cold beef, for instance. After that we go on till early evening, when we pitch our camp for the night. That is the great difficulty. Farmers do not care about letting a gipsy van come into a field or meadow for the night. Of course, we are not allowed to camp on the roadside. The consequence is we have to go on till we can get somebody to take us in. It has made us travel many extra miles sometimes. As a rule, fifteen are as many miles as we cover in a day." Lady Arthur Grosvenor was Miss Heled Sheffield, daughter of the late Sir Robert Sheffield. In 1893 she married Lord Arthur Grosvenor, second son of tho late Duke of Westminster. Their home is at Broxton Old Hall, near Chester.