Todd war diary, 3 August 1914-29 February 1916 / Arthur Todd - Page 104
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[Page 104]
we always took the Delineator [American womens magazine] and Lady's Pictorial [English] to keep ourselves up to date.
Several of the Public buildings eclipse anything we have in Australia tho' perhaps a little too ornate for the sober British taste.
There is a big university which boasted a staff of forty professors.
The Uruguayan club is a gorgeous affair three stories high fronting a big tree lined square.
One enters by a wide marble paved hall with huge pillars of the same material supporting the roof. Off this opens a series of large reception rooms all richly carpeted and filled with statuary reported to have cost 30,000 pounds.
This is a mixed club and all nationalities belong and the Englishman sits cheek by jowl with the Hun.
The English Club is less pretentious but nevertheless very good and comfortable and we were made very welcome by its hospitable members.
Everything is painfully dear and one needs to go ashore with fivers in every pocket and a couple in ones boots to get back on. In the evening a party of us dined with the British Ambassador in a restaurant as big as the Piccadilly in London.
The food was excellent & champagne laid on, and the lights and music and the animated throng of diners made up a scene which we will never forget.
Remember we had been at sea for many weeks.