THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 LOS ANGELES
 
 r 
 
 M
 
 GLIMPSES OF TENNYSON
 
 /iu«i/
 
 LORD TENNYSON 
 
 From a miniature
 
 GLIMPSES OF TENNYSON 
 AND OF SOME OF HIS ^ 
 RELATIONS AND FRIENDS 
 
 By Agnes Grace Weld ^ #» ^ 
 
 With an Appendix 
 
 by the late 
 
 BERTRAM TENNYSON 
 
 WILLIAMS & NORGATE 
 
 14 Henrietta Street, Covent Garden, London, W.C. 
 
 AND 7 Broad Street, Oxford 
 
 1903
 
 / dedicate 
 
 to my beloved Cecilia, Mavd, and Violet, 
 
 the daughters of Horatio Tennyson, 
 
 r\ these memories of our revered Uncle. 
 
 and of some of our relaiicns who were 
 
 dear to him 
 
 
 
 632219
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 TENNYSONS AND SELLWOODS, ... 1 
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 FRESHWATER DAYS, . . . .30 
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 SOME ISLE OF WIGHT FRIENDS OF THE INNER 
 
 CIRCLE, . .... 53 
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 TALKS WITH TENNYSON, . . -98 
 
 APPENDIX, . . . . .123
 
 Glimpses of Tennyson 
 
 and of some of his Relations 
 and Friends 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 TENNYSONS AND SEI.LWOODS 
 
 " Let those who love us edit us after 
 death," said Alfred Tennyson shortly 
 before he passed away, and it is in the 
 name of my reverential love for our great 
 poet that 1 am going to try and tell in the 
 course of these pages what manner of man 
 Tennyson seemed to me during the many 
 years of close companionship it was my 
 privilege to enjoy with him, and what I 
 gathered to be the teaching he most 
 desired to convey to mankind by his 
 
 1 1
 
 v 
 
 example, as well as by his spoken and 
 written words. 
 
 His wife, Emily Sellwood, was my 
 mother's eldest sister, her youngest sister 
 Louisa being the wife of his elder brother 
 Cliarles, but though thus only my uncles 
 by marriage, Cliarles and Alfred Tenny- 
 son treated me just as if I had been their 
 OAvn child ; indeed, the latter said that the 
 fact of my father's having left him my 
 guardian placed him in a sort of parental 
 relationship to me. 
 
 Long before the double marriage to 
 which I have just alluded took place, an 
 intimate friendship existed between my 
 maternal grandfather and his three 
 daughters, and Tennyson and his parents, 
 brothers, and sisters. The young people 
 were constantly riding and driving over 
 to spend the day with each other, for 
 Horncastle, the busy I^incolnshire town 
 where the Sellwoods resided, was only 
 seven miles from Somersby, at whose 
 pretty country rectory Dr Tennyson, the 
 learned father of the poet, lived as clergy- 
 man of the parish for many years. Since 
 
 2
 
 the Sellwoods entered so much into the 
 lives of both my Tennyson uncles, a few 
 words about my grandfather Sellwood will 
 not be out of place, especially as in him my 
 uncles found much that was congenial to 
 their own nature, especially the determina- 
 tion to undergo any self-sacrifice rather 
 than swerve one iota from the strictest 
 truth and honour, and also the intense 
 patriotism which, as it stirred Tennyson to 
 sing of his country's noble deeds, had made 
 my grandfather long in his youth to emu- 
 late those deeds by serving in the cam- 
 paigns then going on against Napoleon. 
 
 A rich living in the family failed to 
 shake my grandfather or his brothers from 
 their fixed conviction that the army, not 
 the church, was their vocation ; but their 
 love for their mother, who got it into her 
 head that they would be slain if they went 
 to the wars, made them give up the mili- 
 tary career, even though the Duke of 
 York, when he was reviewing them as 
 volunteers, spoke of them as the finest 
 officers he had ever come across. For a 
 time they lived the expensive life of the 
 
 3
 
 country gentlemen of the period on the 
 large family estates in Berkshire. But 
 before long my grandfather came to feel 
 that it was his duty to take up some pro- 
 fession, and having taken up that of a 
 solicitor he worked in it with a single eye 
 for the glory of God and the good of his 
 fellow-men. For a few brief years his 
 new home in T Lincolnshire was brightened 
 by the companionship of liis young bride, 
 the sister of Sir John Franklin, the famous 
 explorer who lost his life in the Arctic 
 regions and on whose cenotaph in West- 
 minster Abbey are inscribed the following 
 lines by Tennyson — 
 
 " Not here ! the white North has thy 
 bones : and thou. 
 Heroic sailor-soul. 
 Art passing on tliine happier voyage now 
 Toward no earthly pole." 
 
 In the very prime of her youth and 
 beauty my grandmother died, leaving to 
 my grandfather's charge the baby 1 >ouisa, 
 and Emily and Anne still of very tender 
 years. The baby was the first to leave 
 
 4
 
 her father's roof, as a lovely girl in her 
 teens, to become the wife of Charles, that 
 elder brother of Tennyson whom he loved 
 so dearly, and of whom he wrote in " In 
 IMemoriam " the foUowino^ lines : — - 
 
 "o 
 
 *' ' More than my brothers are to me ' — 
 Let this not vex thee, noble heart ! 
 I know thee of what force thou art 
 To hold the costliest love in fee. 
 
 "■ But thou and I are one in kind, 
 As moulded like in Nature's mint. 
 And hill and wood and field did print 
 The same sweet forms in either mind. 
 >. . . . 
 
 *' At one dear knee we profFer'd vows. 
 One lesson from one book we learn'd, 
 Ere childhood's flaxen ringlet turn'd 
 To black and brown on kindred brows." 
 
 And in the prefatory poem prefixed to 
 his brother Charles' " Collected Sonnets," ^ 
 Tennyson wi-ites : — 
 
 1 Published after Charles Turner s death 
 by Macmillan & Co. 
 
 5
 
 " And thou hast vanish'd from thine 
 own 
 To tliat wliich looks hke rest, 
 True brother only to be known 
 By those who love thee best. 
 
 • • • • ■ 
 
 " And thro' this midnight breaks the sun 
 Of sixty years away ; 
 The light of days when life begun, 
 The days that seem to-day. 
 
 " When all my griefs were shared with 
 thee. 
 And all my hopes were thine — 
 As all thou wert was one with me 
 May all thou art be mine ! " 
 
 Charles and ^Vlfred Tennyson wrote 
 together the " Poems by Two Brothers," 
 but their relationship was in after years 
 almost lost sight of by Charles taking the 
 siu-name of his uncle Turner on inheriting 
 the property of the latter, whom he suc- 
 ceeded in tlie living of Grasby, not far 
 from Brigg, in one of the prettiest parts 
 
 6
 
 of his native county, whose varied features 
 formed the theme of many of those sonnets 
 of his tliat I have heard his brother Alfred 
 speak of as " exquisite." During the long 
 visits I yearly paid to my Uncle Charles 
 and Aunt Louisa, I saw how ungrudgingly 
 the gifts that woidd have made them shine 
 in the most intellectual society were turned 
 to the service of the poor villagers among 
 whom their lot was cast. When they first 
 went to Grasby some of these peasants 
 were sunk in such gross superstition that 
 they firmly believed of a Sunday school 
 teacher, of most benevolent aspect, that 
 when she walked lame for a time it was in 
 consequence of a piece having been bitten 
 out of her leg by a dog when she had 
 assumed the form of a hare. The neigh- 
 bours were so certain that she bewitched 
 them that they waved branches of the 
 rowan-tree at her whenever she appeared 
 at her door, and finally they killed her by 
 a course of petty persecutions. To free 
 yourself from certain bewitchments they 
 believed it was necessary to steal a sheep 
 and cut it in twain, and laying each half 
 
 7
 
 upon a bit of scarlet cloth, to pass between 
 the divided carcase. Patiently did my 
 uncle and aunt labour to teach their flock 
 the folly of such superstition, and tlieir 
 labours were not in vain, since their 
 parishioners loved them very dearly, and 
 would tell how the vicar and his wife 
 would get up in the dead of a stormy 
 niglit, and go forth, lantern in hand, to the 
 bedsides of the small-pox patients who had 
 the disease in so virulent a form that all 
 their own relations had fled in terror from 
 them. 
 
 The former vicar of Grasby, Charles' 
 old " Uncle Sam Turner," had li\'ed three 
 miles off* at the little town of Caistor on 
 the " wold," but the time consumed in 
 getting to and fro in the deep snow de- 
 cided the Tennyson-Turners that it was 
 their duty to live among their flock as the 
 Nonconformist ministers of the village 
 already did. A\^itli these ministers my 
 uncle always strove to keep on the best of • 
 terms ; and I well remember liow he would 
 stand on his lawn on a summer Sunday 
 afternoon and listen with the keenest in-
 
 terest to an open-air service that was being 
 held close by ; though his innate shrinking 
 from publicity used to set him wondering 
 as the preacher would shout in a stentorian 
 voice, "Now, brethren, let us count up 
 how many the Lord lias saved at this 
 service," and would proceed to enumerate 
 the " converted " by name. Tlie Christi- 
 anity of the villagers was apt to be of a 
 somewhat stern cast, and their views as to 
 the present condition of the deceased were 
 very decided, as my aunt experienced 
 when on talking to an old couple one 
 evening about something that Hobbes, the 
 17th century philosopher, had said, the 
 husband turned sliarply round to his wife, 
 and exclaimed eagerly, " Why, loovey, 
 that's the graate Hobbes that's in hell." 
 The tone in which this assertion was made, 
 and the expression of the speaker's face 
 made visible by the lurid glare of the 
 winter's fire, combined to give quite a 
 ■creepy sensation. I knew that old couple 
 v/ell, as indeed I knew almost all the 
 villagers, who were a fine race of some- 
 what Scandinavian type, and very conser- 
 
 9
 
 A'ati\'e ways, the men still reaping with 
 the sickle and threshing wheat with the 
 flail, the women still wearing the quilted 
 sun bonnets that suited iheir flashing eyes 
 so admirably. Men and women alike had 
 much skill in the preparation of simples — 
 the valuable recipes for which had been 
 handed down to them from their ancestors, 
 though their present descendants have un- 
 fortunately consigned these useful remedies 
 to the same limbo as such merely super- 
 stitious cures as that highly approved by 
 their mothers of a " shebobbyurchinjaw " ^ 
 for rheumatism. Grasby was a favourite 
 spot for gipsy encampments, on account 
 of a circular chalk quarry in which they 
 pitched their tents, and to which they 
 summoned the vicar to baptise their chil- 
 dren. One beautiful girl was tamed into 
 domestic service, but as soon as her tribe 
 came into the neighbourhood again, the 
 spell of the old free life carried her back 
 to the bosom of her people. She never 
 
 ^ Jaw of a female hedgehog, spelt all 
 in one word. 
 
 10
 
 made so good a servant as the Grasby 
 girls did, they being one and all simply 
 splendid in that capacity, not least so her 
 fellow-servant Alkamya, who always main- 
 tained that this name, by which my uncle 
 had been asked to christen her, came from 
 the Bible, though I have entirely failed to 
 find it there. 
 
 The vicar's servants were kept very 
 busy cooking for the sick poor to whom 
 the Turners' generosity knew no bounds ; 
 and who loved that red brick vicarage as 
 much as I did. It was a cosy house, built 
 at the foot of the high chalk ridge or wold 
 that ran like a backbone across the wide 
 valley over wliich it commanded a magni- 
 ficent view. 
 
 The front windows of the vicarage 
 looked out over lawns and meadows, and 
 were embowered in roses and honeysuckle 
 and clematis, and the summer breezes that 
 brought the sweet fragi-ance of these 
 flowers into the rooms, wafted in with 
 them also the weirdly musical notes of an 
 Eolian harp. 
 
 On the walls hung many valuable paint- 
 
 11
 
 ings collected in Italy by the Tennysons' 
 father in the days when no go\'er!iment 
 enactments forbade the Italian nobility to 
 export their art treasures. Both my 
 imcles Alfred and Charles have often told 
 me of the influence exerted upon their 
 minds by tlie poetic dreams that were 
 suggested to them by the beautiful picture 
 of " Armida and llinaldo with the Decoy- 
 Nymph," concerning which my Uncle 
 Charles wrote : — 
 
 " Dear is that picture for my childhood's 
 
 sake, — 
 The man asleep, so near to love ot- 
 
 harin ; 
 The winged boy that stays Armida's 
 
 arm. 
 The siren-girl all hushed lest he awake ; 
 \Vliile in the background of that 
 
 pictured tale. 
 Sown with enchanted lierbs and clad 
 
 with gloom, 
 A sombre eminence o'erlooks the vale, 
 A purple liill v/liere all my dreams 
 
 found room. 
 
 12
 
 'Tis strange with liow few touches of a 
 
 brush 
 That painter's hand siipphed, in Hfe's 
 
 fresh dawn. 
 The mystic thoughts 1 loved ! Sweet 
 
 thoughts ; deep-drawn ; 
 Far destined ; cherished still without a 
 
 blush ; 
 Deep-drawn — from God's own fount of 
 
 mystery, 
 Far destined — for my soul must ever 
 
 be."i 
 
 Over the fireplace hung the graceful 
 portrait of the mother of the Tennysons, 
 as a young woman, clad in a short-waisted 
 white dress and a big Gainsborough black 
 hat, which set off the piquant beauty of 
 her sweet face with its dark laughing eyes 
 and its rosy complexion — a beauty of 
 which some traces remained when she 
 smiled in her old age upon my tender 
 
 ^ No. clxiii. in " Collected Sonnets," by 
 Charles Tennyson Turner, published in 
 1884 by JNIessrs Macmillan. 
 
 13
 
 years. On liis brother Charles' death all 
 his father's pictures were removed to 
 Farringford by Alfred Tennyson, and this 
 portrait of their inother placed by the 
 latter's bedside that he might, as he ex- 
 pressed it, see her smiling on his morning 
 waking. Her sons simply adored her, and 
 were never weary of telling me about her. 
 They were also fond of her sister, " Aunt 
 Mary Ann, " whom I learnt to love as a 
 frequent visitor at Grasby ^"icarage. She 
 seemed to us, who knew her wortli, " a de- 
 lightful proof that a single woman may 
 keep her heart open and loving, free from 
 all old-maidisin, and her spirit ardent, 
 though softened," as my Aunt Emily said 
 of her. 
 
 When T was a child my grandfather 
 Sell wood (who afterwards came to live 
 witli us and died at our home in Bath in 
 1807) li^ed with the Turners at Grasby, 
 and used to take me with him in the brisk 
 walks he kept up till he was past eighty. 
 He and my Uncle Charles were at one 
 in their love for the old-fasliioned vicarage 
 garden, but they totally differed in their 
 
 14
 
 method of showing it. The latter had, to 
 an excessive degree, the Tennyson aversion 
 to having a single twig cut, whereas his 
 father-in-law was for the judicious pruning 
 which would have prolonged the life of 
 the trees that were killing each other in 
 their struggle for existence. He, how- 
 ever, allowed the master of the house to 
 have his own way, and so the willow 
 stakes slew the rose bushes, to which they 
 had been tied as props, and grew in their 
 place into such mighty trees as only 
 Lincolnshire willows could have become. 
 In their branches dwelt many of the wild 
 birds that had waxed tame through my 
 uncle's practice of feeding them every 
 morning all the year round. When he 
 went out to do this in the winter, he 
 would wrap himself in the ample folds of 
 a shaggy poncho to which he had become 
 so much attached that he refused to leave 
 it off, even when it had got torn right in 
 the middle of the back. "Don't you 
 see," he would say, " what an ad^ antage 
 that neat little patch is, because people 
 are so taken up with looking at it that 
 
 15
 
 they never think of looking for my 
 faults?" My Uncle Chjirlcs had to the 
 full the Tennyson originality in his way of 
 putting things. Thus, he used to say, " I 
 wish my curates would not remind me of 
 a plaice rolling over from its brown upper 
 side to its white under one, by tm-ning 
 their stoles round from their violet to 
 their white sides, as they pronounce the 
 words, ' Seeing now that this child is 
 regenerate,' in the christening service." 
 One of these curates was the afterwards 
 well-knoAvn Doran, of church nuisic fame, 
 and I can remember what a disagi-eement 
 he and my uncle liad over the service 
 in the Directorium Anglicanmn (of which 
 Mr Doran used to make private use) for 
 exorcising flowers before using them for 
 churcli decoration, my uncle stoutly 
 maintaining that if any beings dwelt in 
 the flowers, these must be angels, not 
 devils. My uncle loved to examine the 
 structure of -plants with a microscope 
 my mother had given him, his letter of 
 thanks for which is so characteristic that 
 I cannot resist quoting it. 
 
 16
 
 Grasby, 
 ^5th October 1856. 
 
 INIy dear Anne, — I discovered the 
 microscope amongst its mystic envelopes 
 with great pleasure, and put it to immedi- 
 ate use — the use you recommended as its 
 first probation. Ladies and gentlemen 
 who indulge in the notion of their per- 
 sonal smoothness should employ these 
 three-guinea inspectors, and their vanity 
 will be routed in a moment, and all resort 
 to emollient soaps be discarded before the 
 awful conviction that even in the most 
 dehcate httle finger there are deep grooves 
 and trenches and (if it be a gentleman's) 
 shaggy defiles and wart-studded caverns 
 that converge about his fine seal-ring and 
 coat-of-arms. Indeed, it is a great treat 
 to be enabled to turn a rural walk to such 
 account in future, as I shall now be 
 prepared to do. So thank you most 
 kindly for the microscope, through which 
 my skin indeed looks coarse, but your 
 kindness only the more delicate and 
 beautiful. With love to Charles, — Your 
 affectionate brother, Charles Turnek. 
 
 17 2
 
 To show how my uncle could adapt his 
 mind to the varying circumstances of his 
 correspondents, I will quote from three of 
 his letters, the first to me as a merry child, 
 the second to me as a young girl, the 
 third to my father when he was in acute 
 temporary bodily suffering. 
 
 To me he writes, in answer to a childish 
 epistle, " You have stuck your little dog 
 amongst the music, but as he is a ' nice 
 dog ' he does well : but let us see the next 
 words, ' his favourite amusement is to bite 
 my legs.' I have complimented him too 
 soon, and you go on to say, ' He will eat 
 any tiling but mustard.' You had better 
 put mustard on your legs, then, or I shall 
 be in constant apprehension about your 
 pegs. 
 
 "My Incisure Hours have not arrived. 
 They are taking their time, as Incisure 
 Hours should do, I suppose, so you need 
 not fear their arrival at last ; only, if they 
 liiiger very long, I shall bark at them as 
 strangers, as Frisk did at tlie bear-skin." 
 
 The second letter was written shortly 
 after ha^'ing stayed Avith us at Aubrey 
 
 18
 
 House, our Keyhaven home, just opposite 
 the Isle of Wight, to which we used often 
 to cross. He begins it by two sonnets 
 which I give in their entirety, as there are 
 verbal differences between this their first 
 form and that in which they now appear 
 (as ccxxiv. and ccxxvi. of " Collected 
 Sonnets,'" by Charles Tennyson Turner). 
 
 The Needles Light House. 
 
 From Aubrey House, Keyhaven. 
 
 The Downs and tender tinted cliffs are lost, 
 And nothing but the guardian fire re- 
 mains. 
 That crimson-lieaded tower on the rough 
 
 coast, 
 Whose steady lustre flashes not nor wanes 
 Till sunrise from the east restores agak*- t^ <v~J 
 The mighty Vectian^ wold and tawny 
 
 tract 
 Of shingle seen through bowers of arbutus 
 Like some fair cornfield mellow and com- 
 pact. 
 
 ^ In allusion to the classical name of 
 
 19 
 
 the Isle of Wight
 
 How that deep glow the deepening gloom 
 
 attests, 
 How much is by that high-set lighthouse 
 
 taught. 
 Mine eye rests on it as the spirit rests 
 In sorrow on some holy ardent thought, 
 The sole light in our darkness ! Those 
 
 who dwell 
 Near these great beacons are instructed 
 
 well. 
 
 A Farewp:ij. to the Isi-e of Wight: 
 
 In Lymington River. 
 
 Silent I gazed upon our foaming wake. 
 And silent on the island hills I gazed. 
 As up the ebbing stream we bore, to make 
 Our harbour, while the West athwart us 
 
 blazed ; 
 What were my thoughts ? My memory 
 
 wander'd back 
 To those fair shores -the Needles and the 
 
 Downs, 
 The happy woodlands and the little towns, 
 For every day a new and pleasant track ; 
 
 20
 
 LOUISA TURNER 
 
 From a. pa.inting 
 by Anne Weld
 
 How grieved we were those social walks 
 
 to lose, 
 Those friendly hands ! The shadow of 
 
 our mast 
 And sail ran sadly o'er the fruitless ooze 
 At sunset, as between the banks we past 
 Of that tide-fallen river ; spreading fast 
 To land and farther from their fond adieus. 
 
 My dear Agnes, — I return you in a 
 manner good for evil, viz., two respectable 
 sonnets relating to your own locality in 
 return for a poisonous serpent, for this 
 Pharaoh's Serpent ^ has got into the news- 
 papers, as you may have noticed, and is 
 represented as very dangerous for children 
 and even adults. It is composed of the 
 most deleterious material, and, more- 
 over, looks like a sweetmeat, and whether 
 burnt or inadvertently eaten by a hapless 
 bau*n, will work it woe. We have not 
 tried it yet, partly because we thought 
 a tiny or two of our village might like 
 to see it. But we shall give it, knowing 
 
 ^ A scientific toy we had sent my uncle. 
 
 21
 
 its awful character, in private and witli 
 precautions. What do you mean, you 
 apparently harmless female hobble-de-hoy, 
 by sending down to our unsophisticated 
 village this fragment of ancient Egypt ! 
 Your horned poppy and shingle-gro\Mi 
 nightshade are better. I^ove to Papa and 
 JMamma, — Your still affectionate uncle, 
 
 Chaiii.es TuilNEll. 
 
 To my father my Uncle Charles 
 writes : — 
 
 " I myself have a horror of pain, and 
 God has mercifully spared me such a trial 
 hitherto, but I have been tried much 
 by nerves ! I have come in course of 
 years to accept trials of temperament and 
 circumstances as developers of faith, 
 searchers and cleansers. We need often 
 to be purified with waters of Mara, bitter 
 as gall itself. But provided we get our 
 spiritual eye once fairly opened by our 
 lifelong probations, intensified as Ciod sees 
 fit and idioi — we shall not undervalue the 
 wholesome agonies." 
 
 The same spirit as breathes in this 
 letter animates the concluding lines of the
 
 writer's sonnet, entitled, " Hope beneatli 
 the Waters," in these words of comfort — 
 
 '* Meek patience is as diver's breath to all 
 Who sink in sorrow's sea, and many a 
 
 ray 
 Comes gleaming downward from the 
 
 source of day 
 To guide us reascending from our fall. 
 The rocks have bruised thee sore, but 
 
 angel's wings 
 Grow best from bruises, hope from 
 
 anguish springs." 
 
 INIy Uncle Charles reminded me very 
 much in his ways with children of my 
 childhood's friend, the author of Alice in 
 JVondei^Iand, and like the latter he at- 
 tracted them to him as a magnet. His 
 magnetic nature was potent likewise in 
 attracting to Grasby the scattered mem- 
 bers of his own large family of brothers 
 and sisters on frequent visits. 1 wish I 
 could remember more of the wise and 
 witty words with which that brilliant band 
 of brothers, Frederick, Alfred, Charles, 
 Arthur, Septimus, and Horatio made the 
 
 2S
 
 walls of the vicarage parlour ring. All 
 had the poetic temperament, and Frederick 
 had, in addition, considerable musical and 
 artistic gifts, Avhich he indulged to the 
 full in his beautiful Jersey home, whilst 
 Arthm-, too, could handle tlie pencil with 
 considerable skill. Though my Uncle 
 Charles was not himself either a painter 
 or a musician, he tlioroughly appreciated 
 his wife's talents in that direction, and it 
 always seemed to me that in the twain 
 there dwelt but one soul. She was such 
 an inseparable companion of her husband's 
 that the villagers called them " two turtle 
 doves," which my aunt said was not really 
 a compliment, as " turtle do^es happen to 
 be some of the most quarrelsome of birds 
 in spite of their affectionate cooing." 
 
 Apart from their travels along the 
 Moselle with my father, and their visits to 
 the Channel Islands, the Turners' longest 
 journeys were those they were always 
 ready to undertake at a moment's notice 
 right across England to help and to com- 
 fort any of their relatives and friends who 
 might need their tender ministrations. 
 
 24
 
 A loving, gentle nature was that of this 
 poet-pastor, who, if men and things were 
 contrary, would only exclaim, " I wish we 
 were all in Heaven," and find solace in 
 writing one of those sonnets which im- 
 parted to so many that divine strength 
 by which he was himself supported. 
 
 Although only two of the Tennysons 
 were my relations by marriage, yet I used 
 to see so much of most of the others at 
 Grasby and Freshwater that they all 
 adopted me as their niece. Especially 
 was this the case with bonnie " Aunt 
 Tilly," Alfred Tennyson's third sister, who 
 entered so heartily into any fun that was 
 going on, and with his youngest sister, 
 " Aunt Cecilia," whose marriage with the 
 learned Professor Lushington is com- 
 memorated at the end of "In Memoriam," 
 as well as with the youngest brother 
 Horatio, who used to say to my mother, 
 " It always seems to me, Nanny, we must 
 be really relations, for you have been just 
 like my sister." One of my earliest re- 
 collections is his calling and beckoning to 
 ine as he sat smoking on the lawn at 
 
 25
 
 (Trasby Vicarage, and my inflicting on 
 myself grievous bodily injury in crashing 
 through a pane of glass, in answer to that 
 call from '^ Nunke Caia Moke Pipe," and 
 as the years went on, I learned to appreci- 
 ate him more and more. 
 
 It is a rarer fault for people to think too 
 little of tliemselves than to think too 
 highly, but it is a fault which probably 
 does more harm in the world through 
 causing many a noble soul to miss its 
 true vocation in hfe. Such was the case 
 with " Uncle Horatio," for never was a 
 man better fitted tlian he was to make an 
 ideal parish priest, yet he never could be 
 persuaded to think himself wortliy of 
 becoming a clergyman, and so his magnifi- 
 cent voice was only heard in lay ministry 
 at the bedsides of the sick and dying with 
 whom he spent most of his time when 
 living at Freshwater,^ and to v/hom he 
 
 1 At "The Terrace," afterwards oc- 
 cupied by the Tennysons' cousin, I^ouis 
 Ffytche, who died there at an advanced 
 age. He and his brother General Albert
 
 would insist on carrying off any special 
 dainty intended for his own dinner — a meal 
 which he would constantly omit to come 
 home to — his hunger forgotten in making 
 others partake with him of the Bread of 
 Life. His was a loving spirit that dwelt 
 especially on the Fatherhood of God and 
 the Divine compassion, and when all beside 
 had failed to remove the awful terror of 
 perdition from the soul of the truly peni- 
 tent sinner, he could change the look of 
 hopeless agony into one of perfect peace. 
 
 I remember well having a conversation 
 with an artisan who had gone grievously 
 astray, and was longing to forsake his evil 
 ways. " Why does not INIr Horatio come 
 to see me ? " he said. " Tell him to come, 
 for he is the only man in the world who 
 can ever save me." Horatio Tennyson 
 
 Ffytche (who won laurels by his adminis- 
 tration of one of our further Indian 
 provinces) were men of that marked 
 personality which distinguished most of 
 the members of the family of Tennyson's 
 mother, Ehzabeth Ffytche. 
 
 27
 
 took this as a divine call, and went at 
 once to the cottage, where he spent hour 
 after hour, till far into tlie night, wrestling 
 for and with tliat soul, and this was the 
 turning-point in the life of that father of 
 a family whose children asked their mother 
 wonderingly next day, " Why is father so 
 kind to us now ? " 
 
 The Freshwater cottagers have never for- 
 gotten the deeds of kindness done by their 
 true and loving friend, and to this day the 
 name of Horatio Tennyson is a household 
 word ever held in reverence amongst them. 
 
 He used frequently to take his elder 
 children with him in his visits to the poor, 
 and his daughters Cecilia (wife of the 
 Censor of the Unattached Students of Ox- 
 ford University), INIaud, and \^iolet have 
 always found their chief delight in philan- 
 thropic work, ^"iolet worked for years at 
 Canning-town, till her health broke down 
 under the strain, when she founded a home 
 (which she still superintends) for the little 
 slum children needing fresh country air. 
 
 Horatio Tennyson's beautiful and be- 
 loved first wife had died before he went 
 
 28
 
 to Freshwater with his young family, and 
 the Alfred Tennysons in consequence 
 took to their losing hearts his motherless 
 children, of whom the daughters alone 
 survive. Bertram, the eldest son of 
 Horatio Tennyson, was u most interesting 
 personahty, a short account of whom, 
 written by his sister JNIaud, will be found as 
 the appendix to this volume, together with 
 a tale and a poem by Bertram Tennyson 
 himself, which were thought highly of by 
 our uncle, Alfred Tennyson, when they ap- 
 peared in a small privately-printed volume. 
 
 29
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 FRESHWATER DAYS 
 
 The second of the Sellwood daughters to 
 marry was my mother, xVnne, who became 
 tlie wife of Charles Ricliard Weld, a young 
 barrister, whose ancestry was an interesting 
 one, he being descended from the Earls of 
 Mercia tin*ougli the Rev. Thomas AA^eld, 
 who was driven to America by persecution 
 at the hands of Archbishop I^aud, and 
 '* after becoming one of the founders of 
 
 Harvard College returned to England 
 with his third son Edmund, who afterwards 
 went as Cromwell's chaplain to Ireland, 
 where that elder branch of the AA^eld family 
 remained till my father took up his abode 
 in London, on his call to the English bar. 
 Tlie latter subsequently became connected 
 with the Royal Society, and wrote what is 
 
 30 
 
 vy
 
 still a standard work on its history, as well 
 as many books of travel, several of which 
 publications were illustrated by my mother, 
 who was a talented amateur artist. Alfred 
 Tennyson had great sympathy Mith the 
 literary pursuits of his brother-in-law, and 
 was a frequent visitor to my parents at 
 Somerset House, Burlington House, and 
 Lansdowne Crescent, Notting Hill, during 
 the period of some twenty years that my 
 father and mother lived in London. 
 We often used to stay in the spring with 
 the Alfred Tennysons at Farringford, and 
 when we went to live at Aubrey House, 
 only just across the water from the Isle 
 of Wight, our intercourse with my aunt 
 and uncle was very frequent. It was 
 naturally rather less so when we moved 
 to Bath, but was closest of all, as far as 
 my mother and myself were concerned, 
 when we took up our abode at Fresh- 
 water, but then my father had passed 
 away. 
 
 Tennyson constantly consulted my 
 father about his publishing affairs and 
 other matters ; for instance, one day my 
 
 31
 
 father received the MS. of " Riflemen 
 Form " enclosed in the following letter : 
 
 " I send yon the song in its last form. 
 I don't think the Times will pnt it in, but 
 you can try, if you like. Another paper 
 will. To be signed T." 
 
 To which epistle my father appends a 
 note. " The lines appeared in the Times, 
 Monday, May 9th, 1859; and on Thursday, 
 May 12th, the government sanctioned the 
 formation of volunteer rifle-corps. The 
 lines were copied into a great number of 
 papers." 
 
 The fragment of a poem, a fac-simile 
 copy of which faces this page, was given 
 to my father by Tennyson to do what he 
 liked with. He also gave him the JMS. 
 of " The Grandmother," which was one of 
 my uncle's favourites among his own 
 poems. 
 
 When my father and ray uncle were 
 together they were wont to indulge for 
 hours at a time in earnest converse, and 
 among the many subjects they used to 
 discuss were tlie marvels of science and 
 ancient mythologies, and a propos of the 
 
 32
 
 '^ C^iuJ-kA ''U-Cf^i '^^^ '^-^ '^'^''"^ ^''' 
 
 H
 
 latter subject, Tennyson thus expressed 
 himself to my father : "I do not believe 
 that Wooden and Thor are Mars and 
 Jupiter, but in the old unlearned days, 
 when men thought themselves most 
 learned, and knew but little Latin and 
 less Greek, they used to confuse and 
 transubstantiate the classic and barbaric 
 divinities at pleasure." Tennyson always 
 took a great interest in Brittany, and after 
 my father's tour there it formed a frequent 
 topic of conversation. My uncle was 
 somewhat startled to learn that there was 
 a church in that part of France dedicated 
 to Our Lady of Hatred. " That is very 
 singular," he remarked, " your account of 
 Notre Dame de la Haine — how many 
 unconsciously or half-consciously worship 
 in her temple still." 
 
 In his correspondence with my father, 
 from which I give a couple of extracts, 
 Tennyson says : " If you write a book on 
 Brittany, I am sure that it will be, as all 
 yours are, pleasant, picturesque, and grace- 
 ful. The subject is, to me at least, most 
 captivating, but heaven help you if you 
 
 33 3
 
 intend to dive deeply into Celtic antiqui- 
 ties. 
 
 " I received the other day a most flatter- 
 ing; letter from Kuskin, touching poor little 
 ' JNIaud.' I am glad tliat you too find 
 something in her. It is a poem written 
 in an entirely new form, as far as I know. 
 I think that properly to appreciate it you 
 ought to hear the author read it, and this 
 I say not in vanity ; but that to give full 
 effect to the long sweeps of metre, you 
 must have a reader who not only reads 
 somewhat dramatically, but who likewise 
 has a full voice and ample lungs." 
 
 On receipt of my father's book on 
 " Brittany," Tennyson writes : " A thou- 
 sand thanks for your kindness in sending 
 me your ' Brittany.' Very refresliing to me 
 after tlie almost daily verse-books that are 
 sent. It must be pesshni poetce swcli 
 incovimoda, as Catullus happily calls 
 them. 
 
 " I am for free trade in the bookselling 
 question, as in other things ; yet I can 
 scarcely think that my opinion is of much 
 value, for I have neither read these dis- 
 
 34
 
 ANNE WELD 
 From a painting
 
 J T -;? '■ L.^
 
 -JJ^
 
 cussions in the papers on this matter nor 
 have I myself carefully examined it. 
 
 " Pity me ; scores of letters to answer, I 
 snatch a moment to say these words to 
 you. I can no more (as people say when 
 they die on the stage). We are both 
 happy in learning that dear little Agnes 
 is recovering [from whooping-cough]. 
 We shall be coming up to town in a day 
 or two. Can you give me a bed ? I 
 must go either to Spedding, or the 
 Camerons, or you, but I should prefer 
 coming to you. Love to Anne and 
 Missie. — Ever yours affectionately, 
 
 "A. Tennyson." 
 
 When my uncle stayed in our house in 
 London, I well remember the almost 
 Spartan simplicity of the fare he insisted 
 on our giving him. We knew he liked 
 plain boiled salt beef, but were scarcely 
 prepared for his begging to be allowed to 
 have it (instead of the fresh roasts we had 
 cooked for him) three days running, cold 
 for his dinner. No guest ever gave so 
 little trouble, or was so full of considera- 
 
 35
 
 tion for our servants ; but this was because 
 he was always full of thought for others. 
 A little instance of which comes into my 
 mind, the occasion being a visit my mother 
 and I paid to Farringford when my aunt 
 happened to be away for a few hours. 
 Tennyson came into our room to see if it 
 was all comfortable, and disagreeing with 
 the housemaid, who had thought tlie 
 weather too warm to light the fire, said, 
 " Oh, this doesn't look half a welcome," 
 and dropping on his knees, lighted it, and 
 fanned it into a bright flame. 
 
 I remember, too, my uncle's kind deal- 
 ings with the many unknown correspon- 
 dents with whom others might have had 
 scant patience. On one occasion a letter 
 had been following him about for days, and 
 we found, on opening it, that the writer, a 
 young German poet, declared therein his 
 intention of committing suicide, imless a 
 letter from the great English poet, for 
 whom he professed a profound admiration, 
 should reach him before a certain date — 
 and that date was already past. My 
 uncle was a first-rate German scholar, but 
 
 36
 
 he disliked wiiting in the characters they 
 use in correspondence, so he said, " Sit 
 down at once, Agnes, and write a kind 
 letter to the poor beast ; " ^ and his anxiety 
 was great, till he lieard again from the 
 German poet, and found that our letter 
 had been in time to save his life. 
 
 Tennyson loved to hold communion 
 with the men of other nations by personal 
 intercourse, where possible, and failing this 
 by studying their books. He was much 
 attracted by Amiel's Journal Intivie, and 
 we worked together one summer at trans- 
 lating it into English. He drew my 
 attention especially to the following 
 passage as describing his own feelings and 
 experiences : " I believe the discipline of 
 those who are to live in the coming age 
 is different from that of any previous one. 
 I can only look at the strange providences 
 in my own life with wonder as to what 
 they were intended to fit me for, some 
 state, as I cannot help thinking, very new 
 
 ^ A favourite epithet of compassion with 
 Tennyson. 
 
 37
 
 and surprising, which will need us to have 
 a thorough assurance of our own absolute 
 littleness, and yet of our high calling. I 
 sometimes feel a strong conviction that I 
 have had lessons taught me of the way in 
 which people are nowadays trying to get 
 out of the government of God and 
 establish themselves into gods, losing in 
 the process everything that makes them 
 better than worms." 
 
 While rejoicing to trace the pulsations 
 of the great common heart of humanity 
 through all nations and down all the 
 centuries, Tennyson would point out to 
 me the special aspects of truths that were 
 brought out by individual nations at the 
 present day, and still more markedly at 
 certain periods in the world's past history ; 
 expressing himself much as he has done in 
 the lines he wrote down for my father — 
 
 " Some high-thoughted moods and moulds 
 of mind 
 Can never be remodelled or expressed 
 Again by any later century." 
 
 It was topics such as these that my 
 
 38
 
 uncle most dwelt on in the almost daily 
 walks that we took together in my Fresh- 
 water days, and all the more because of 
 late years our homes had lain far apart, 
 and my opportunities of meeting him were 
 rare. Precious beyond measure to me is 
 the memory of those days of my youth, 
 when we used to take cross-country 
 scrambles over hedge and ditch, or ramble 
 together along breezy downs, and when 
 he used to open to me the treasure-house 
 of his mind and heart. Everything we 
 came across interested him, and he could 
 see something to admire even in a raw- 
 boned old hack gi-azing by the wayside. 
 " You would scarcely call that poor beast 
 beautiful," he exclaimed, "with his ribs 
 almost sticking through his skin, but he is 
 certainly picturesque as he stands shivering 
 on the cominon, his meagre tail blowing 
 in the wind. It seems to me that the 
 picturesque is generally associated with 
 age, or the commencement of decay ; for, 
 take a cottage that when newly built 
 seemed common-place enough, and pull 
 down some of its thatch, then break the 
 
 39
 
 windows, and introduce a baby clad in 
 rags, sprawling across the threshold, and 
 you have at once a picturesque subject 
 for the artist." 
 
 Tennyson did not, however, approve of 
 the degree to which some of the Fresh- 
 water folk carried this picturesqueness of 
 tlieir homes. I'here was one such cottage 
 we used to pass in our walks that was 
 inhabited by a family living a half-nomadic 
 life, the aged father habitually clad in a 
 blanket that he wore like a mantle with 
 the air of a noble savage. The parlour 
 could never be entered because its ceiling 
 hung down as a bag, pressing against the 
 door. One of the bedrooms above was 
 turned into a sty, where two pigs passed 
 a very dirty existence, without the ventila- 
 tion that was afforded to a still more 
 picturesque cottage with which we were 
 acquainted, by the absence of much of the 
 thatch and all the ceiling from its one 
 bedroom. Through its open rafters the 
 wind and rain found free entrance, to the 
 complete imconcern of the owner, who 
 had built the shanty years before and ever 
 
 40
 
 after left it severely alone. This careless- 
 ness as to domestic comfort was a heritage 
 of the life of adventure and hardship led 
 by the race of smugglers not yet quite ex- 
 tinct in Freshwater. Just before we left 
 our home there I was informed that 
 during the whole of the fifteen years we 
 had occupied tree-embowered Hawkridge, 
 its grounds had been used as a hiding-place 
 for illicit spirits. This information ex- 
 plained the noises which had awakened 
 and puzzled me in the dead of night — the 
 long-drawn whistle from behind a near 
 pine tree, answered by a confederate from 
 a more distant part of the garden, which 
 was the signal for the shuffling of feet, 
 and the roUing of a heavy body along the 
 ground, followed at one time by a runa- 
 way ring at the front door, at another by 
 the tramp of hobnailed boots across our 
 cellar. 
 
 In his daily walks on the Downs 
 Tennyson was in the habit of chatting 
 with the coastguards whom he met 
 marching along the path that skirted the 
 edge of the cliffs, and many a tale they 
 
 41
 
 told liiiii of the fierce contests they used 
 to have with tlie smugglers ; but it was 
 difficult to get the latter to tell of their 
 own daring deeds, though my uncle had 
 quite the knack of drawing out the 
 villagers to talk of the auld lang syne. He 
 would smile at their yarns of how one 
 morning the tidings flew througli Fresh- 
 water that IJonaparte's fleet was in siglit, 
 and forthwitli most of the able-bodied 
 men, women, and children hied them up 
 to the top of the Beacon Down and 
 ranged themselves in a long line which 
 they still fin-ther lengthened by sheep- 
 pens set up on end, hoping that Napoleon 
 would take the whole lot for soldiers, and 
 be thus scared from his purpose of in- 
 vasion. ^^^ith the fishermen and tlieir 
 love for a seafaring life my uncle, who 
 was a splendid sailor, had the fullest 
 sympathy, and he quite agreed with 
 tliem that it was infinitely preferable 
 to " wyverning about atop of dry land," 
 as they expressed the act of travelling 
 by rail. 
 
 Frequent were the visits we paid to- 
 
 42
 
 getlier to the cottage of Tennyson's old 
 shepherd, and still more frequently did 
 we watch him as he called out by name 
 the various members of his master s flock, 
 and bid us observe, as each answered to 
 its name, how it differed in countenance 
 and expression from its fellows. In their 
 intense love of Nature, animate and in- 
 animate, Shepherd Paul and my uncle 
 were at one, and indeed the latter's 
 sympathy with Nature led him to mourn 
 the cutting down of trees as if they were, 
 like the gi'ove in Dante's Inferno, the 
 abode of his personal friends, and specially 
 did he grieve if the axe smote them in 
 summer-time. I well remember his 
 gazing long upon a horse-chestnut that 
 had continued to put forth flowers 
 days after it had been felled to the 
 earth. " Look at it," he said, " stretch- 
 ing out a beseeching arm, and blossom- 
 ing on, its blooms unfolding in all their 
 beauty, quite unconscious that they 
 can never turn to fruitage. How like 
 they are to some men, who appear 
 blooming outwardly, and think that 
 
 43
 
 they are living whilst they are already 
 dead within." 
 
 He scolded me severely, as a child, 
 when he met me trundling along a wheel- 
 barrow that I had filled full of the 
 daffodils I had been picking in Farringford 
 home-park, telling me how wrong it was 
 to waste in that way the good gifts of 
 God, since while 1 should derive no more 
 enjoyment from these hundreds of plucked 
 blossoms than from lialf a dozen ; if left 
 on their own roots they would have 
 lasted double the time as a joy for many 
 to look upon. Every spring the glory 
 of these " Lent Lilies " that flooded tlie 
 grass of the park with their golden sun- 
 shine was a fresh delight to him, as were 
 the masses of cowslips that succeeded 
 them. He had the artist's eye for form, 
 and would lay an ivy spray by his side, 
 and carve a faithful copy of its graceful 
 outlines ; and this design of his. together 
 with an Agnus Dei, to which he had 
 taken a great fancy, formed the decorative 
 terra-cotta mouldings round tlie windows 
 of a model labourer's cottage on his estate, 
 
 44
 
 whose erection he used to superintend 
 daily.^ 
 
 Tennyson was by no means blind to 
 the darker side of Nature. " She will 
 never teach men morality," he would say, 
 " and her ravening tooth is a cruel one. 
 Indeed, it was the observed cruelty of 
 Nature that gave rise to the cult of the 
 Khonds, with their human sacrifices. 
 You could not learn to know the higher 
 attributes of God from Nature even witli 
 the aid of science." His mind, however, 
 dwelt far less on her discords than on her 
 harmonies, which he wrought into the 
 harmonies of his verse. 
 
 He held strongly that scientific truth 
 can never be really at variance with 
 divine truth, but he considered that men 
 are too apt to mistake what they person- 
 ally hold to be true for the absolute truth. 
 On this account, when I asked him 
 whether he considered the motto " Truth 
 
 ^ These designs are copied on the cover 
 of this volume from duplicate mouldings 
 in my possession 
 
 45
 
 against the W^orld " a wise one to be used 
 by people in general, he answered, " No, 
 I don't exactly thiiik that would be a 
 wise motto to be proposed for universal 
 adoption, because if each man were to 
 stick himself up with his owti ideas of 
 truth against all the rest of mankind, 
 and blurt out these ideas in the faces of 
 everybody else, each would be a great 
 bore." Yet my uncle thought there were 
 certain great moral truths in which all 
 might agree, and he used to explain to 
 me how he had sought to express these 
 in his " Idylls of the King," though he 
 said that his meaning in these Idylls 
 had not always been fully understood. 
 For instance, that : " The Three Queens " 
 are not faith, hope, and charity ; the 
 " I^ady of the Lake " is not the church, 
 though she teaches Christianity; and 
 " Arthur " is not the conscience merely, he 
 is the ideal man, the whole man, not 
 the part. 
 
 It is surprising how many people still 
 continue to read Tennyson's poetry with 
 their attention so exclusively directed to 
 
 46
 
 the beauty of its form that they entirely 
 ignore the soul within it, for whose sake 
 the casket was so exquisitely wrought, 
 and are thus led to assert that it is as 
 an artist, rather than as a teacher, that 
 Tennyson takes his high rank among the 
 great poets of the 19th century ; whereas 
 he assured me that any measure of per- 
 fection to which he might seem to have 
 attained as an artist in metre was im- 
 perfect compared with the standard he 
 had set before himself, since he felt that 
 the gift of poetry was bestowed on him 
 by his Heavenly Father as "a great 
 trust," that it might be a vehicle in whicli 
 he was permitted to convey to his fellow- 
 men the message he had received from 
 the Master. He told me that his sense 
 of the divine source of this gift was 
 almost awful to him, since he felt that 
 every word of his should be consecrated 
 to the service of Him who had touched 
 his lips with that fire of Heaven which 
 was to enable him to speak in God's 
 name to his age. So that great as was 
 the delight he felt in the exercise of his 
 
 47
 
 art, the constant realisation of his re- 
 sponsibiUty so far outweighed to him the 
 joy of production that he was wont to 
 say to me that nothing he had ever 
 written seemed to him to have reached 
 that perfection short of which he must 
 never rest, and that all he could hope 
 was that he had brought men a little 
 nearer to God ; for as he sat day by day 
 at the Master's feet with that humility 
 of childhood which he kept to his dying 
 hour, he felt no words of his could ever 
 fully reproduce the messages which had 
 been spoken to his owti heart, and yet 
 that he must strive with all his might 
 to clothe them in the best language he 
 could find. And so he sang on all 
 through that long life of his, not that 
 he might receive the homage of his own 
 or future ages as a consummate artist, 
 but as one to whom, all unworthy though 
 he deemed himself, the mission had been 
 entrusted of raising the thoughts of all 
 who should come under his influence to 
 a higher, diviner level — the level to which 
 he himself was ever aspiring. 
 
 48
 
 This sense of the divine mission en- 
 trusted to him in no way interfered with 
 — nay, rather enhanced — the perfect 
 naturalness of his Hfe. To try and find 
 out what God had made him to be, and 
 then to resolve to be that very self, and 
 none other, was his constant aim ; for his 
 conviction was that only as far as a man 
 is true to himself can he fulfil the purpose 
 of his existence. 
 
 I think no man that ever lived came 
 nearer than he did to perfect truthfulness. 
 He was often a martyr to his determina- 
 tion never to say anything that was not 
 strictly and absolutely true ; for none 
 could be more sensitive than he was 
 about paining people, and yet he would 
 discard all smooth speeches that would 
 have given pleasure, but would not have 
 been quite sincere, and would just say 
 right out the wholesome, though some- 
 times unpalatable truth instead, feeling 
 utterly miserable for hours, and some- 
 times for days afterwards, with the fear 
 that in this moral surgery he had not 
 handled the knife as gently as he might 
 
 49 4
 
 have done. Unless by liis keeping silence 
 the cause of trutli would have suffered, 
 he would never mention any matter that 
 might injin-e a single human being, and 
 he always put the best possible construc- 
 tion upon people's words and actions. 
 I am sure his attitude towards them 
 made them better men and women than 
 they would otherwise have been, for they 
 were ashamed not to be what he showed 
 that he thought them. 
 
 He was always far more severe with 
 himself than with others, and would 
 bitterly reproach himself for being brusque 
 in manner to untactful strangers, and for 
 allowing fits of depression to get possession 
 of him at times. In a letter to my father 
 he earnestly warns him to avoid following 
 his example in this latter respect, though 
 after his marriage my uncle found it much 
 easier to shake off these fits of depression 
 than he had dojie in the days when my 
 mother knew him as one sorely tried by 
 the long deferment of that marriage with 
 her sister which at last brought the " peace 
 of God " into his life. 
 
 50
 
 His deeply affectionate nature caused 
 the death of each of the many friends he 
 survived to leave a scar that never quite 
 healed ; but he was always so anxious to 
 keep sorrowful thoughts out of the hearts 
 of the young that, in the hours when I 
 sat upon his knee listening to all the 
 marvellous fairy-tales of science that he 
 would tell me evening after evening, I 
 little knew the effort it had cost him to 
 be all brightness to me, when his soul was 
 sorrowing for the loss of one dear to 
 him. 
 
 In after years he would frequently talk 
 to me about the friends of his youth, 
 especially Arthur Hallam, of whom he 
 spoke as of one who had died but 
 yesterday. He used to dwell much 
 upon his stainless purity and absolute 
 truthfulness ; and this it was which made 
 my uncle feel that the lessons of perfect 
 purity and of utter truthfulness which he 
 strove to teach in the whole cycle of the 
 " Idylls of the King " were not impossible 
 to be put into practice by the sons of 
 men. 
 
 51
 
 My mother remembered Arthur Hallam 
 as a man whose intellectual and moral 
 worth rendered him well worthy of the 
 shrine Tennyson made for him in his 
 " In Memoriam," and she often spoke to 
 me of his striking personal appearance 
 and gi'eat charm of manner. In the 
 pencil sketch she took of him that always 
 stood on my uncle's mantel-piece, she has 
 brought out the bony ridge over the eyes 
 which he and Tennyson referred to as 
 *' The bar of Michael Angelo."
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 SOME ISLE OF WIGHT FRIENDS OF THE 
 INNER CIRCLE 
 
 It was my privilege to know intimately 
 all Tennyson's Isle of Wight friends of 
 the Inner Circle ; and in writing of those 
 of them who have crossed the bar to the 
 land beyond the grave I shall begin with 
 Sir John Simeon, to whom my uncle was 
 linked in close bonds of friendship from 
 the early fifties till the May of 1870, when 
 Tennyson immortalised him as one of the 
 three chief friends of his life in those lines 
 entitled " In the Garden at Swainston," in 
 which he eulogises Sir John (whose 
 funeral he had just attended) as " The 
 Prince of Courtesy," and writes of him in 
 a tone which shows that my aunt's words, 
 
 53
 
 " Sir John was a brother to us/' were not 
 too strongly expressed. 
 
 W^hen not detained in London by his 
 duties as a member of Parliament, Sir 
 John Simeon lived in his beautiful home 
 at Swainston near Newport, where Tenny- 
 son used often to visit him, and still more 
 often the Simeons drove over to stay at 
 Farringford, where I used constantly to 
 meet tliem, to my great delight, for Sir John 
 Simeon and his eldest daughter Louisa were 
 indeed among the noblest natures God 
 ever created. With both of them Tenny- 
 son was able to enjoy the fullest com- 
 munion of soul, undisturbed by the fact 
 that he entirely differed from them on 
 theological grounds, for, though Sir John 
 and his family were devout Roman Catho- 
 lics, they were as utterly free from narrow 
 bigotry as my imcle himself, and so they 
 could meet on the common ground of 
 love of the Father in Heaven and the 
 brethren — for lo\'e to God and man was 
 the keynote of the lives of the Simeons 
 as well as of the Alfred Tennysons. 
 
 Some fjiint idea of the kind of friend- 
 
 54
 
 ship that subsisted between the two 
 famihes may be gathered from the notes 
 which Sir John Simeon's eldest daughter 
 Louisa, then JMrs Richard ^Vard, wrote 
 down shortly before her death, and from 
 which her family have kindly allowed me 
 to extract the following passages. She 
 writes : " ^Ir and Mrs Tennyson had been 
 looking for a house, and they found them- 
 selves one summer evening on the terrace 
 walk of Farringford, with the rosy sunset 
 lighting up the long line of coast to St 
 Catherine's Point, and the golden-blue sea 
 with its faint rosy line mingling with the 
 rosiness, and they said, *We will go no 
 further ; this must be our home.' An 
 ideal home it was, ideal in its loveliness, in 
 its wild but beautiful gardens, and more 
 than all, ideal in its calm serenity, the hospit- 
 able simphcity, the high thought and utter 
 nobleness of aim and life which the pair 
 brought with them, and which, through 
 the long years of change, of sickness, and 
 of sorrow, of which every home must be 
 the scene, made the atmosphere of Farring- 
 ford impossible to be forgotten by those 
 
 55
 
 who hud the happiness of breathing it." 
 AVhat J\Irs AVard notes about the quietness 
 of P'aiTingford in these early days is borne 
 out by Tennyson's writing to my father 
 in 1855: "I don't much wonder at your 
 complaining tliat you waste your sweetness 
 on the desert air when you write to me : 
 but this time I liave liad some little excuse. 
 I have been writing letters which must be 
 attended to since I received yours. Then, 
 you know, what have I got to tell you 
 from this place ? You would not care 
 to hear about the wild flowers wliich we 
 gather and anatomise daily, nor to be told 
 that we sit listening to the song of the 
 seamews, and hardly ever see a human 
 face not of our household. But you, in 
 the heart of T..ondon society, with some- 
 thing new every day almost occurring, 
 nuist needs be full of matter to talk or to 
 write of." 
 
 Part of tlie reason for my uncle's not 
 keeping up so active a correspondence as 
 usual with my father was that at that 
 period his thoughts were engaged with 
 '*]Maud," concerning which poem i\Irs 
 
 56
 
 Ward relates the following facts : '* The 
 writing and publication of ' Maud ' were 
 largely due to my father. Looking 
 through some papers one day at Farring- 
 ford with his friend, he came upon the ex- 
 quisite lyric 'O that 'twere possible,' and 
 said, ' A¥hy do you keep those beautiful 
 lines unpubhshed V Mr Tennyson told him 
 that it was really intended to belong to a 
 dramatic poem which he had never been 
 able to carry out. My ftither gave him no 
 peace till he had persuaded him to set 
 about the poem, and not very long after 
 he put ' ^laud ' into his hands. 
 
 " It was about this time that Tennyson 
 gave my ftither the JMS. of ' In ^Nlemoriam.' 
 He had often asked him to give him a 
 manuscript poem, and he had put him off, 
 but one day at Swainston he asked my 
 father to reach him a particular book from 
 a shelf in the library, and as he did so, 
 down fell the MS., which Tennyson had 
 put there as a surprise. Never was gift 
 more appreciated by the recipient." Mrs 
 Ward continues : " As I got older I was 
 sometimes allowed to drive over to Far- 
 
 57
 
 ringford with my fkther, and need I say 
 I looked forward to these as the red-letter 
 days of my life. Not only were the talk 
 and intellectual atmosphere intoxicating 
 to me, but 1 became passionately attached 
 to Mrs Tennyson. My father was fond 
 of saying of her that she was ' A piece of 
 the finest china, the mould of which had 
 been broken as soon as she was made.' 
 It was not, however, till after my mother's 
 death in 1860 that my real grown-up in- 
 timacy with them began, and that Far- 
 ringford became the almost second home 
 which for many years it was to me. 
 
 "During my father's absences in I^ondon 
 and elsewhere, I was free to go and stay 
 there as often and for as long as I liked. 
 I used to go for long walks, sometimes 
 alone with Mr Tennyson, sometimes in 
 the company of other guests, of whom Mr 
 Jowett ^ was one of the most frequent. 
 Tennyson in these walks would rise to the 
 
 ^ The well known INIaster of Baliol 
 College, Oxford, one of Tennyson's 
 dearest friends, 
 
 58
 
 highest themes, and thread his way through 
 the deepest speculations till I caught the 
 infection of his moid, and the questions of 
 matter and spirit, and of time and eternity, 
 and such kindred subjects, became to me 
 the burning questions, the supreme in- 
 terests of life. But however absorbed he 
 might be in earnest talk, his eye and ear 
 were always alive to the natural objects 
 around him. ,1 have heard him stop short 
 in a sentence to listen to a blackbird's song, 
 to watch the sunlight glint on a butterfly's 
 wing, or to examine a field flower at his 
 feet." 1 cannot resist here interrupting 
 Mrs Ward's notes to illustrate them by 
 telling how, when walking one day with 
 the present Rector of Corfe Castle, along 
 the top of Watcombe Bay — that pictur- 
 esque little cove dear to Tennyson from a 
 sense of his Lord of the Manorship over 
 it as well as from its own beauty — my 
 uncle stopped suddenly in a line of argu- 
 ment to point out the sunlight gilding to 
 a deeper golden shade the fragile rock- 
 cistus bloom at his feet, and, tenderly 
 plucking the delicate flower, he held it 
 
 59
 
 lovingly in his hand, and, looking up, said, 
 " There is not a flower on all this Down 
 that owes to the sun what I OAve to Christ." 
 Sir John Simeon's daughter continues : 
 " The afternoon walks were followed by 
 the long talks in the flrelight by the side 
 of Mrs Tennyson's sofa — talks less eagei% 
 less thrilling than those I have recalled ; 
 but so helpful, so tender, full of the wisdom 
 of one who has learnt to look upon life, 
 and all it embraces, from one standpoint 
 only, and that the very highest. Then 
 came dinner, seasoned with merry, genial 
 talk, unexpected guests arriving, and 
 always flnding the same warm welcome, 
 for none came wlio were not tried and 
 trusted friends. Afterwards we adjourned 
 to the drawing-room, according to tlie old 
 college fashion, for the delightful dessert. 
 Mr Tennyson went up after dinner to his 
 httle study at tlie top of the house with 
 any men friends who were staying in the 
 house. They smoked there for an hour or 
 two, and then came down to tea, imless, 
 as sometimes happened, we all joined them 
 upstairs ; and tlien there was more talk, 
 
 60
 
 and reading aloud of published, or, still 
 better, unpublished poems. He would 
 sometimes read from other poets, Shake- 
 speare, IMilton, Pope, and some lyrics of 
 Campbell being what he often chose, and 
 he taught me to know and appreciate 
 Crabbe, whom he placed very high in the 
 rank of English poets. 
 
 " INIy father's re-election to parliament 
 in 1865 made our seasons in London 
 longer than they had been. Some glori- 
 ous days there were, however, when at 
 Easter or at Whitsuntide my father went 
 down to Swainston. We always went 
 over to Farringford either to spend a night 
 or two, or to drive back through the spring 
 night, with its scented breath, and its mad 
 revelry of cuckoos and nightingales vying 
 with each other as to which could out- 
 shout the other, and my father, fresh from 
 communion with his friend, would open 
 himself out as he never did at any other 
 time or place." 
 
 As I turned over the leaves of the notes 
 by Sir John Simeon's daughter, from which 
 I have made the foregoing extracts, I felt 
 
 61
 
 as if standing once more in that upper 
 room of which she writes — the httle old 
 study which seemed to me to fit in with 
 my uncle's own simplicity of nature and 
 tastes far better than the big studies which 
 he afterwards built at Farringford and 
 Aldworth. Round three of its sides ran 
 rows of shelves filled with the books he 
 loved, and tliree tables, a sofa, and two or 
 three chairs completed the simple furni- 
 ture. Merrily humming, flew in and out 
 of the open casements of the oriel window, 
 swarms of busy bees, nice fat bees they 
 were, too good-natured for the most part 
 to sting, since all through the long summer 
 days they feasted on the nectar of the 
 magnolia flowers which blossomed the 
 whole way up this southern side of Far- 
 ringford, so that one liad but to step out 
 on to the ledge outside this study window 
 to gather the huge white buds, whose fra- 
 grance as they opened was well-nigh over- 
 powering, and was imparted almost intact 
 to the pounds of honey the bees stored one 
 year in the part of the roof over this side 
 of the house. 
 
 62
 
 I used to feel a sort of proprietorship in 
 the old study, for if the Tennysons hap- 
 pened to be away froin Farringford M^hen 
 we were at Freshwater, my uncle would 
 give me the key of the room ; but I loved 
 it best wlien I used to go up to it between 
 eleven and twelve to fetch my uncle down 
 for our morning walk together, before 
 starting on which I used to coax him to 
 read to ine from the volume which he 
 generally was holding in his hands when 
 I entered, which sometimes consisted of 
 the MS. of his last written poem, and 
 sometimes was a new book of science, 
 history, or philosophy, all of which sub- 
 jects interested him keenly. 
 
 The reading finished, we went down to 
 my aunt in the drawing-room for a few 
 minutes, and then my uncle donned his 
 large, soft felt hat, and we passed out of 
 the breakfast-room on to the broad lawn, 
 across which Tennyson strode with rapid 
 steps into the windmg shrubbery path 
 that had been bordered all through the 
 spring with primroses of many hues, self- 
 sown for the most part. Opening the 
 
 63
 
 little wicket gate to which the path led, 
 we passed into the bowery lane and 
 turned dowii it to the left towards Fresh- 
 water Bay, if our first halting-place was 
 to be the picturesque i\y-clad '• E)imbola," 
 garlanded to its very roof with roses, 
 where dwelt that unique personality Julia 
 Margaret Cameron, wlio seemed to be all 
 the famous women of the French salons 
 of the 18th century rolled into one, 
 with an added charm of her own beside. 
 As Sir John Simeon and his eldest 
 daughter were Tennyson's dearest man 
 and girl friends of the Isle of AA^ight circle, 
 so was Mrs Cameron, whose nature was 
 fully as noble a one as theirs, his dearest 
 woman friend ; almost the only woman 
 outside his relations whom he called by her 
 Christian name, and who called him in 
 turn by his. She was a woman of earnest 
 piety and rare intellectual powers, and 
 especially was she the very incarnation of 
 friendship ; no trouble was ever too great 
 for her to take to serve or give pleasure to 
 the many she folded to her motherly 
 heart, and when with Mrs Cameron she 
 
 64
 
 made each feel that he or she was the 
 only being in the whole universe for whom 
 this Queen of Friends lived. This rare 
 power was only attained by an utter and 
 exhausting sacrifice of self — a sacrifice 
 which, while it undoubtedly shortened 
 INIrs Cameron's life, made it infinitely 
 better worth living. However busy she 
 might be, if her business was one which 
 could possibly be postponed, she would 
 put it aside if a friend came to her for 
 advice in difficulty, or congratulation in 
 joy, or solace in sorrow. I'here was no 
 looking past that friend to something or 
 somebody else beyond, but an absolute 
 concentration of mind on to each personal 
 detail, however minute, that might be 
 related. A boundless enthusiasm and an 
 unquenchable optimism enabled her to 
 see and seize upon the best side of people 
 and force them to act up to it, and 
 influence the world for good to a degree 
 of which they had not hitherto thought 
 tliemselves capable. 
 
 She refused to be bound by any of the 
 artificialities of modern society life, and 
 
 65 5
 
 her complete freedom from affectation 
 was a great refreshment to Tennyson, 
 and even made him bear patiently the 
 many scoldings she gave him for refusing 
 to waste (as he considered) the precious 
 hours of lovely summer mornings in 
 sitting to lier for his photograph. Un- 
 fortunately for my uncle she had discovered 
 what an iminense source of pleasure to 
 her friends her photographs of him were ; 
 and still more unfortunately, from his 
 point of view, she had made the further 
 discovery that this pleasure was greatly 
 enhanced when the said photographs 
 were signed with the poet's own auto- 
 graph. The more he signed, the more 
 slie wanted him to sign ; and I have 
 really pitied my uncle when she has come 
 flying up to Farringford with such a huge 
 sheaf of lier photographs of him that she 
 has had to hire a carriage to bring them, 
 and has plumped them down before him, 
 with a selection of new pens, so tliat he 
 might not have the excuse of not having 
 a pen handy to sign them with. 
 
 Some of Mrs Cameron's photographs 
 
 66
 
 of Tennyson were as successful as were 
 those of her husband, who used to look 
 very patriarchal in his purple caftan, over 
 which flowed his long snowy locks and 
 beard. He had done much active and 
 important work in India, but now led a 
 reposeful existence, absorbed in the classics, 
 of which he had such a thorough mastery 
 that Tennyson loved to discuss them with 
 him. 
 
 The Camerons' sons being about the 
 same age as the young Alfred Tennysons 
 were their constant companions, and such 
 was the intimacy between the two families 
 that an introduction fi'om JNIrs Cameron 
 was generally an open sesame to the 
 charmed circle of Farringford. I remem- 
 ber witnessing this with a young girl who 
 was paying a short visit to Dimbola, and 
 happened to be looking out of an upper 
 window v/ith Mrs Cameron at the view 
 of the sea which it commanded, when the 
 latter espied a tall figure, in a flowing 
 mantle-like cloak, approaching with rapid 
 strides, and smiling up to her. Instantly 
 she flew out into the garden with both 
 
 67
 
 her arms outstretched to meet and greet 
 her honoured guest, to whom she proudly 
 exhibited the good results she was getting 
 from that last negative of him which 
 occupied a large printing frame on the 
 lawn. Tennyson, who remembered what 
 long sittings it involved, shrugged his 
 shoulders at her suggestions of a new pose, 
 in which she declared she could make a 
 quite Rembrandt-like picture of him that 
 Aery morning, on which the strongly actinic 
 rays of the spring simshine would be sure 
 to bring out the very best effects of light 
 and shade. Tennyson was not to be moved 
 by her pleadings, eagerly emphasised by 
 gesticidations with those expressive hands 
 of hers, deeply stained by the chemicals 
 in which she was continually soaking them, 
 for she did every part of the process her- 
 self, even to the making of those wet plates 
 of the messiness of which modern photog- 
 raphers with the dry plate luiAc so little 
 idea. 
 
 She next in-ged that if the way\N'ard poet 
 would insist on preferring a walk in the sun- 
 shine to making the far better use of it of 
 
 68
 
 letting it immortalise her through him to 
 future ages, he would at all events congratu- 
 late her on a capital illustration to one of 
 his poems she had found in a young lady 
 visitor to Freshwater. She picked up a 
 second printing-frame from the lawn, and 
 releasing the catch disclosed the face of 
 the girl who had been leaning with her 
 out of the window, which Tennyson pro- 
 nounced to be that of a winsome maiden, 
 but not exactly his conception of the 
 particular character to which Mrs Cameron 
 has fitted her. " Well, if you won't sit to 
 me to-day, you must take that girl for a 
 walk," said Julia IMargaret in the impera- 
 tive mood tone, and the poet, glad to grant 
 her a small ftivour after refusing her a 
 large one, consented at once, and the 
 maiden was beckoned up to at the window 
 out of which she was still leaning. She 
 blushed with awe and shyness as her 
 hostess dragged her forward, and told her 
 she was to put on her hat quickly for a walk 
 with one whom she had hitherto regarded 
 as a being to be almost worshipped for his 
 genius. Before the walk was half over, her 
 
 69
 
 fear of him had vanished, but her rever- 
 ence was intensified. She was amazed 
 at the vast depth of his learning ; amazed, 
 too, at the way he managed to make 
 subjects she had hitherto thought far too 
 abstruse and difficult for her quite easy of 
 comprehension. 
 
 He gave her his liand to help her down 
 the steep path into A\^atcombe Eay, which, 
 as I have said, was his own especial bay of 
 which he was extremely proud, and he 
 showed her all the wealth of minute animal 
 and vegetable life that fills its limpid 
 rock-pools. As they gained the summit of 
 the Beacon Down he brought to her mind's 
 eye a graphic picture of the geological 
 changes that have taken place in the exten- 
 sive landscape upon which tliey looked, and 
 then brought her back to the life-history 
 of the tiny mollusc, half-hidden in the 
 short turf uj^on which they were treading. 
 When after lunch at Farringford she re- 
 turned to Dimbola, that young girl echoed 
 the remark made to me by the late Dean 
 AA^ellesleyof Windsor, " I honoured Teiuiy- 
 son so highly for his writings that I feared 
 
 70
 
 to kiiow him lest I might be disappointed 
 in him ; but now that I have seen and 
 known your uncle, I can truly say that he 
 himself is higher and greater than the 
 greatest of all the poems he has written." 
 
 1 am indebted to ISIr Hardinge 
 Cameron/ the Camerons' eldest surviving 
 son, for writing the following notes on his 
 parents for this chapter; beginning with 
 his father's verses — 
 
 " The English Channel famed in war. 
 The Solent sea and winding Yar 
 Have cut an islet, yet not quite 
 An islet, from the Isle of Wight, 
 For 'twixt the Channel famed in war 
 And silent sources of the Yar, 
 Dry land the twentieth of a mile 
 Unites it to the parent isle.^ 
 There dwell I, fronting Afton Down, 
 
 ^ Who has had a distinguished career 
 in Ceylon. 
 
 2 In old maps this strip of dry land is 
 absent, and a channel with big ships sailing 
 on it runs all tlie way from the Solent to 
 Freshwater Bay. 
 
 71
 
 With little Yarmouth for my nearest town, 
 The little Yarmouth where the Yar 
 Though hindered by its gjithering bar 
 After four miles of winding reach 
 At length divides the yellow beach, 
 And meets in Solent's brine the rills 
 That southward flow from Hampshire's 
 
 hills. 
 There dwell I, nowise unreproved, 
 By those who, loving and beloved. 
 Think that to them I ought to give 
 The remnant I have yet to lixe. 
 Nor can they cease to wonder why 
 I let the gusty Solent lie 
 'Twixt me and tlieni, 'twixt me and all 
 That men ' The AVorld and Life' do call. 
 No idle motive hath my will inclined. 
 But such as well might sway an earnest 
 
 mind. 
 Such as to all may gladly be confessed 
 To dwell imited near the chosen nest, 
 And hear the Nightingale that sings 
 
 unseen 
 In the dark ilex, on tlie flowr'y green 
 Tliat carpets Farringford's muse-haunted 
 
 scene." 
 
 72
 
 "These were the graceful words in 
 which dear old INIr Cameron apologised 
 to his relations and friends for leaving the 
 neighbourhood of London, where his 
 friends for the most part were settled; 
 accepting with sweet unconscious acquies- 
 cence the entire responsibility for a step 
 concerning which, to tell the truth, he 
 had hardly been consulted, for it was 
 during his absence, on a visit to Ceylon, 
 that the purchase of his picturesque 
 little home at Freshwater had been 
 planned and concluded by the impulsive 
 spirit that with generous love and irre- 
 sistible determination administered his 
 household affairs. 
 
 " Charles Hay Cameron was a philos- 
 opher, a scholar, and a distinguished 
 lawyer, who had done good service to the 
 crown as a Royal Commissioner in Ceylon 
 and as Legal Member of the Supreme 
 Council in Calcutta. For the control of 
 domestic details he had neither aptitude 
 nor inclination, and gladly left their 
 management to his accomplished wife, 
 who, little though either of them knew it, 
 
 73
 
 was perhaps the least business-Kke of the 
 two. A\'^hatever she undertook, however, 
 she accompHshed ; and as all her under- 
 takings were inspired by love and carried 
 out with ungrudging generosity, whether 
 they concerned her nearest and dearest, or 
 whether they had in view the health, 
 comfort, or convenience of perfect 
 strangers, it is not to be wondered at that 
 she was generally beloved — as her husband 
 also was for the placid grandeur of his 
 character, as well as for his wisdom and 
 his knowledge. It was a charming sight 
 to see ]Mr Cameron on a summer morning 
 pacing up and down his lawn — that lawn 
 wliich his wife (deaf to his asseverations 
 that tlie little kitchen-garden was quite 
 good enough for his perambulations, and 
 that the expense of making a lawn was 
 not to be thought of) had, witli the magic 
 wand of £ s. d., wielded by the liand of 
 energy, caused hi one single night to take 
 the places of cabbages and scarlet-runners. 
 It was, I say, a charming sight to see 
 him pacing up and down spouting Homer 
 or Theocritus to one of his boys. And if 
 
 74
 
 this sight was charming there was amuse- 
 ment also to be found in the announce- 
 ment we heard him make in perfect good 
 fiiith soon after the turf had been laid 
 down, that he had at last induced his wife 
 to sacrifice her kitchen garden, and carry 
 out his long projected plan of constructing 
 a lawn in its place. 
 
 " Tennyson's presence, as I have already 
 indicated, was the attraction which brought 
 the Camerons to Freshwater; as well it 
 might, for to all who knew him the charm of 
 the Laureate's personality was irresistible. 
 One of the Cameron boys (now holding 
 high office in an Eastern Colony) recited 
 one day to the poet the lines of his father's 
 which I have quoted. 'Does he mean 
 me by the Nightingale ? ' asked the bard 
 in his deep tones ; ' that's very good of him.' 
 It was not lightly that Tennyson valued 
 Mr Cameron's criticism and praise, for he 
 would bring his new poems and plays 
 down to 'Dimbola Lodge' before they 
 were published, and read them aloud, 
 sitting on the end of the bed (for my 
 fether, being rather an invalid, got up late), 
 
 75
 
 whilst JNIrs Cameron listened from her 
 own arm-chair, and the boys were seated 
 in reverential silence on the floor. 
 
 " To estimate the depth of friends] lip 
 and affection that subsisted between the 
 Tennysons and the Camerons we must 
 turn from these scenes of e^ eryday life, 
 when the poet, invaded by the irrepressible 
 photographer in search of autograph 
 signatures for a bundle of her portraits of 
 him, would say, 'Juha Cameron, Julia 
 Camei'on, you are a dreadful woman ' ; or 
 when his friend on obtaining some less 
 cordial reception tlian she desired for 
 some American acquaintance who had 
 gone to Farringford ' to see the lion," 
 woidd say, ' Alfred, you are a bear.' 
 AA^e must turn, I say, from these scenes to 
 the picture of the great poet with large 
 tears in his eyes, gently patting the hand, 
 and comforting the heart, of her whose 
 husband was reported sick unto deatli in 
 distant Ceylon, and not expected to reacli 
 home alive." 
 
 Here Hardinge Cameron lays down his 
 pen, and T take up mine again wuth the 
 
 76
 
 remark that one reason for jNlrs Canierons 
 immense admiration for Tennyson's 
 character was that she could see for 
 herself how noble his nature was in its 
 utter freedom from literary jealousy and 
 in his frank dehght in the greatness of 
 other men ; and in this particular he and 
 Browning ran each other close, for I shall 
 never forget how, when my mother intro- 
 duced iSlaud Tennyson and myself to 
 Browning (at our Oxford JNIasonic /tV^) as 
 Tennyson's nieces, he seized our hands in 
 his, and burst into language of highest 
 praise and deepest affection about his 
 friend who was so dear to him that all 
 that friend's relations must ever be dear 
 to him too. Browning was one of the 
 many famous men who sat successfully to 
 Mrs Cameron, but she did not disdain 
 sitters unknown to fame, if she thought 
 they would make picturesque pictures. 
 For instance, she was one day talking on 
 an interesting subject with the friend who 
 relates that she suddenly broke off the 
 conversation, and rushing away at full 
 speed with extended arms, called out, 
 
 77
 
 " Stop him, stop him ; there goes Time." 
 She succeeded in getting the peasant 
 captured, and after a very necessary wash- 
 ing, the shirtless old man was dressed in 
 her best shawls, and duly photographed 
 by her as " Time." 
 
 She once saw her ideal of an ancient 
 Egyptian descending into an Oxford 
 kitchen, and calling on her mistress, who 
 was quite a stranger, persuaded her to spare 
 her cook for several days, in the course 
 of which INIrs Cameron took a truly 
 magnificent photograph of this superb re- 
 incarnation of the Greco-Egyptian type. 
 A whole volume might be written about 
 Mrs Cameron's own beautiful servants, 
 who frequently sat for their portraits. 
 One of them, who had a saintly face, was 
 known in Freshwater as " The IMadonna," 
 so frequently did she appear in photo- 
 graphs of the Holy Family taken by INIrs 
 Cameron on the lines of the old masters. 
 In the romantic marriage of another, 
 brought about tlirough the gentleman's 
 seeing Mrs Cameron's photograph of her, 
 the Tennysons were keenly interested, and 
 
 78
 
 she drove from church to Farringford in 
 their carriage as a lovely bride, with her 
 wealth of golden hair hanging down her 
 back. 
 
 Mrs Cameron is linked with the 
 Simeons by her fine photograph of Sir 
 John, and by the following passage, written 
 by his daughter concerning JNIrs Cameron. 
 "The autumn and winter of 1871-72 my 
 eldest brother [Sir Barrington Simeon] 
 and I spent together at Freshwater. We 
 rented JMrs Cameron's little house, which 
 opens by a door of communication into 
 the large hall of Dimbola, the house in 
 which she lived. The evening we arrived 
 she suddenly appeared in our drawing- 
 room, saying, ' When strangers take this 
 house, I keep the door between us locked — 
 with friends never ' ; and locked it never 
 was. We lived almost as part of the 
 family, and it was a real enjoyment to be 
 in such close intimacy with one of the 
 most original and at the same time tender- 
 hearted and generous women I have ever 
 known." 
 
 Concerning IVIrs Cameron's generosity 
 
 79
 
 [ may truly endorse INIrs Ward's eommen- 
 datioii, and say that all her friends were 
 quite afraid of ever admiring anything 
 belonging to her, for the moment they 
 did so she insisted on making a present of 
 it to them there and then. 
 
 Of her tender-heartedness I may adduce 
 as proof that she did all she could to 
 persuade my mother to let her come and 
 nurse me through a severe attack of 
 typlioid fever. She and my mother loved 
 each other almost as sisters, and the 
 following extract from an article written 
 by Mr Scott O'Conner will show that 
 they had much in common : 
 
 "Though Mrs AVeld's insistence on 
 always being kept in the background has 
 hitherto caused the omission of any 
 mention of her in notices of Lord Tenny- 
 son's friends, she was, from the days when 
 they were neighbours in I^incolnshire, one 
 of the nearest of those for whom he had a 
 regard. He appreciated the attraction of 
 her rare nature, and fully agreed with his 
 wife in saying of her that ' There never 
 was a better sister, nor one who was more 
 
 80
 
 a sister to all she could help.' ^Vhilst 
 Mrs AVeld remained at Hawkridge the 
 sisters saw each other almost daily, but in 
 later years she went to live at Oxford, 
 where her house became the rendezvous 
 of much of the best society it had to offer. 
 The learned men whom she gathered 
 round her found refreshment in talking 
 with a woman wliose charm of personality 
 and fresh marvellous bright flow of happi- 
 ness were among the least elements in her 
 refined and beautiful character. She 
 attracted to her side inany to whom 
 ' society ' in its ordinary forms was irk- 
 some, and she had the rare gift of bringing 
 out in each mind with which she came 
 into contact the very best and the parti- 
 cular best it had to offer. ' To know 
 her,' said one who spoke from the fulness 
 of knowledge, ' was to love her, for hers 
 was a rare nature. She was full of intui- 
 tions, of beautiful thoughts, of graceful 
 kindnesses, and of tender ways.' 
 
 " ' She was admired,' says another, ' not 
 only for her talents but still more for her 
 goodness, for she was one of the most 
 
 81 6
 
 perfectly generous and unselfish women 
 that ever hved.' " 
 
 For the sake of the love Mrs Cameron 
 bore the Alfred Tennysons and my 
 mother, when "Julia Margaret" went on 
 her last journey to join her sons in Ceylon, 
 she commended to us all for a double 
 portion of the love we had already be- 
 stowed upon them, her beautiful and 
 charming sister Sara, and the latter's 
 husband, Thoby Prinsep. Tennyson had 
 stayed with the Prinseps years before at 
 their picturesquely countrified London 
 abode, " I^ittle Holland House," long 
 since swept away by the advancing tide of 
 bricks and mortar. It was a rambling 
 house, witli a thatched porch opening on 
 to smooth green lawns, where witty 
 women and learned men held contests of 
 intellect on summer Sunday afternoons, 
 under Mrs Prinsep's skilled and gentle 
 guidance. AVith them dwelt then JNIr 
 Watts, the famous painter, but though the 
 Freshwater home also was his as much as 
 theirs, T will not dilate on his friendship 
 with Tennyson, as I am confining myself 
 
 82
 
 to writing of his Isle of AVight friends 
 who are dead. 
 
 Our way to the Prinseps' led in exactly 
 the opposite direction to that which took 
 us to the Camerons. We first turned into 
 the walled kitchen-garden, made beautiful 
 nearly all the year round by the wealth 
 of old-fashioned flowers, glorious in colour- 
 ing and rich in fragrance that bordered its 
 paths, and by the great rosemary bushes 
 that Tennyson would rub through his Angers 
 as he passed, quoting to me one day as 
 he did so, the old folks' saying that 
 *' Where rosemary flourishes, there the 
 woman of the house bears rule," and add- 
 ing, that if all women bore rule as his wife 
 did, he could wish every garden in the 
 land to be filled with rosemary. We 
 generally went round to look up the horses 
 and dogs, and often lingered in the farm- 
 yard to watch the poultry. As an irate 
 turkey-cock charged down upon us in fuU 
 sail, my uncle exclaimed, "There, now, 
 Agnes, don't you see what I meant 
 yesterday afternoon, when I told you I 
 could hear your proud wing-feathers 
 
 83
 
 grating along the ground. It was that 
 bird I had in my mind." 
 
 From tlie farmyard we turned into the 
 lane, which my uncle told me was shunned 
 at night by some of the more superstitious 
 villagers, one youth having shortly before 
 fled up it, panting out breathlessly, when 
 he reached the shelter of a house, that the 
 headless ghost (supposed to haunt this 
 lane) had pursued him, and that he had 
 seen it plainly, though all he really saw 
 was a grey mare's tail waving in the moon- 
 light. Ghost stories interested Tennyson, 
 but his was a critical and practical just as 
 much as it was a poetical nature, and 
 these stories could seldom stand against 
 his keen sifting of e\'idence. 
 
 Passing between the well-grown trees 
 that had apparently once formed the 
 avenue of approach to a former Farring- 
 ford, the summer breezes wafted to us the 
 scent of the hedges of sweet-brier from 
 which the Prinseps' Freshwater abode of 
 " The l^riery " took its name. At The 
 Briery Tennyson was ever the thrice-wel- 
 come guest, and almost daily did he go for 
 
 84
 
 a chat with " Uncle Thoby," as we all called 
 grand old Thoby Prinsep, who had all the 
 mien and manner befitting the post of 
 Director of the East India Company, 
 which lie held so long. 
 
 Though the eyesight had failed which 
 had enabled jMr Prinsep, when he first 
 went to India, to gain a prize for learning 
 Persian in five months, yet his mind was 
 full of vigour, and he could converse by 
 the hour with my uucle on politics, litera- 
 ture, science, or theology, for his ready 
 grasp of almost every imaginable subject 
 was only less wonderful than his marvel- 
 lous memory. 
 
 Tennyson took delight in reading aloud 
 to him the interesting letters which every 
 mail brought him from his artist son, Val 
 Prinsep, whilst the latter was engaged on 
 his large painting of the " Proclamation of 
 the Queen as Einpress of India." 
 
 A little side gate led from The Briery 
 garden into "Love Lane," which is just 
 like a Devonshire lane in miniature, and 
 leads into a succession of fields, along which 
 Tennyson used to walk to Glen Headon, 
 
 85
 
 so called from tluit bit of the Highlands 
 of Scotland transplanted, as it were, to the 
 Isle of A\^ight, which was named Headon 
 Hill, and at whose foot Glen Headon lay 
 overlooking Totland Bay. Here dwelt the 
 father and mother of the well-known judge, 
 Lord Bowen, and of his still better known 
 brother E. E. 15owen of Harrow, who used 
 to be constantly at Farringford when he 
 came down for the vacations, and whose 
 spirited songs Tennyson thought decidedly 
 above the average, and used to find their 
 talented writer a congenial companion. 
 
 Buckle, in his work on Civilisation, 
 remarks that clever men are always found 
 to have clever mothers, and this was the 
 case witli Lord Bowen and his brother. 
 JNIy uncle loved to hear Mrs Bowen tell 
 the story of her parents, which I will try to 
 relate just as she told it to him. 
 
 " ^ly grandfather," she said, " was a 
 Count of the Holy Roman Empire, who, 
 while riding a white horse at the Siege of 
 Antwerp, was mistaken by the enemy for 
 the Duke of York, and killed under that 
 mistake. In consequence of this, the 
 
 86
 
 English government offered the widow a 
 pension, and she came to live in Bath 
 with her two daughters, both of tender 
 age. Before long, however, it was 
 rumoured that a handsome young cavalry 
 officer. Sir Richard Steele by name, was 
 paying his addresses to the eldest daughter, 
 but that, as she was only sixteen, it would 
 probably be a long engagement. To the 
 amazement of everybody, it was the 
 youngest sister to whom Sir Richard 
 proposed, and whom he married before 
 she was fourteen. As, immediately after 
 the wedding, he was called to serve in 
 putting down the Irish rebellion, his bride 
 and her mother went with him to Ireland, 
 and a fearfully anxious time those women 
 had of it while he was out all day at his 
 dangerous duty. On one occasion he was 
 at the head of a squadron which he was 
 about to lead across a broad ditch, when 
 the soldiers, perceiving the ditch to be 
 bristling with the glistening steel of the 
 rebel pikemen, drew back. 'Are you 
 afraid ? Follow me, my men,' shouted 
 Sir Richard, setting spurs to his horse, 
 
 87
 
 but the animal reared and threw the 
 brave yoinig officer, who was impaled on 
 one of the pikes. Hour after liour waited 
 the bride and the mother, straining their 
 ears to catch every challenge exchanged 
 by the pickets who met close to 
 the house they occupied. At last there 
 came the challenge, ' Who goes there ? ' 
 and the answer, ' Sir Kichard Steele — 
 dead ' ; and in upon a litter was borne to 
 them tlie pallid form of him they loved. 
 A consultation of doctors was held. Some 
 said, ' He is quite dead ' ; others, * No, not 
 quite, but when the pike is drawn out 
 the last spark of life will be quenched 
 with tlie flow of blood.' However, as it 
 was of no use to bury him with the pike 
 sticking in him, it was pulled out, and 
 he lived to see many fair children born 
 to him, the first when his wife was only 
 fifteen. Though Lady Steele was such 
 a young mother that she was playing 
 with her first-born in an arbour when it 
 was but two days old, yet she became a 
 staid and dignified matron ere her children 
 reached their teens." 
 
 88
 
 Although Mr Bo wen had no such 
 romances to narrate of his own family 
 history, yet he used to interest my uncle 
 immensely by the many thrilling episodes 
 he had to tell of scenes in his clerical life 
 which began in a curacy among wild Irish 
 folk. 
 
 They once attempted to stop a funeral 
 which "Sir Bowen was conducting by 
 trying to push him into the open grave. 
 Seeing that while there were dozens 
 thrusting him hard from behind, there 
 was but one antagonist across the trench 
 (though he was a very Hercules for 
 strength), JNIr Bowen sprang across the 
 grave, and seizing that one man un- 
 expectedly, held him tight till he had 
 finished the service. 
 
 As senior curate of Bath Abbey, IMr 
 Bowen had to cope with the Chartists, 
 who tried to gain possession of that build- 
 ing, but his most interesting experiences 
 were those gained as the East London 
 Rector of a parish, down some of whose 
 streets, when he first entered on his cure, 
 no respectable person dared go without 
 
 89
 
 the escort of a policeman, but which 
 same streets were traversed in perfect 
 safety by young hidies unattended after 
 My Bowen's ministry had worked its 
 miracles of love. The rector's strong 
 sense of Irish humour helped him in his 
 difficult task, and made the retrospect 
 thereof amusing to others as well as to 
 himself. My uncle used to laugli as Mr 
 l^owen told liow his curate, being asked 
 how he had got on at his first service in 
 the mission-room the rector had lately 
 built, said, '• Oh, all right, till I got into 
 the pulpit, when two men took off their 
 coats and began fighting, and the rest of 
 the congregation formed a ring round 
 them till tliey had finished, when they 
 put their coats on again, and all resumed 
 their seats and listened quite quietly to 
 my sermon." 
 
 Despite his great age, INlr ]5owen used 
 to perform the service most impressively 
 at the Totland Churcli which he was the 
 means of having erected. 
 
 In tliis undertaking he had the hearty 
 support of another of Tennyson's intimate 
 
 90
 
 friends, Charles Pritchard, a clergyman, 
 afterwards well known as Professor 
 of Astronomy at Oxford. My uncle 
 greatly missed the Pritchards when they 
 left Freshwater, for in the earnest, in- 
 tensely devout, simple-minded man of 
 science he found a nature much akin in 
 many respects to his o^\ii. As in earlier 
 days, when headmaster of that school at 
 Clapham, where he gave to so many boys 
 that power of thinking and acting for 
 themselves which made them famous men 
 in after life, so at Freshwater and Oxford 
 Professor Pritchard possessed the rare gift 
 of gaining a thorough knowledge of the 
 most abstruse branches of science and of 
 the latest scientific discoveries, and then 
 imparting that knowledge in so graphic and 
 lucid a form that it seemed positively easy. 
 Well do I remember his bringing his 
 microscope to Farringford, and showing my 
 uncle some recent deep-sea dredgings by 
 polarised light. Tennyson and he used to 
 work together at astronomy and geology, 
 and to them both the study of Nature 
 ever led them up and on to Nature's God. 
 
 91
 
 Professor Pritchiird told nie how struck 
 he was with my uncle's manner one day 
 when a scientific man was arguing against 
 religion. "T . . . ," said the Laureate, 
 bringing down his fist with tremendous 
 force on the table at which they were 
 sitting, "there is a God." 
 
 Tlie road tliat led from Farringford to 
 the Pritchards' house passed at the foot of 
 the hill on which Hawkridge, our own 
 house, was built. From the field at the 
 south side of Hawkridge to A^^eston 
 Manor House, on the opposite hill, wound 
 a special gravel path, made for liis own 
 use by the squire of A\''eston Manor, 
 Mr W . G. ^^''ard, known to a former 
 generation as " The Ideal Ward," because 
 of his book on TJic Ideal of a Chiistinn 
 ChurcJi, which caused him the loss of his 
 fellowship at Oxford, owing to its lean- 
 ings to that lloman Catholicism which he 
 afterwards embraced. He was at one 
 time President of the Metaphysical Society, 
 of which Tennyson was a member, and 
 in whose formation Professor Pritchard 
 had a share, and both men were equally 
 
 92
 
 ardent students of philosophy, and had in 
 common a perfectly guileless child-like 
 nature. The mixture of the dreamy 
 student and the hearty friend in Mr 
 A\^ard was very amusing, for his carriage 
 had generally half passed by before he dis- 
 covered that a lady had bowed to him, and 
 then he would spring up, as if shot, turn 
 right round, and bow effusively, hat in hand. 
 
 Like Tennyson, he would tell you the 
 truth straight out. " Mrs Weld," he said 
 to my mother one day, " your house is so 
 excessively ugly on the side I look upon, 
 that you must let me plant a row of trees 
 in my adjoining field to block out the 
 view of it." 
 
 We prided ourselves on the beauty of 
 our heavy stone-mullioned oriel windows 
 to the front, but were quite ready to 
 acquiesce in the ughness of the kitchen side 
 to which he had alluded, since we specially 
 wanted trees as a shelter from the pre- 
 vaiUng south-west winds. But at Fresh- 
 water Mr Ward certainly did not set the 
 example of having many trees in his own 
 grounds, for in his Cowes home he had been 
 
 93
 
 set against groves and shrubberies, because 
 of the crowds of nightingales which they 
 harboured and which used to come so close 
 to his windows that he could not sleep for 
 their loud singing. He told my uncle, to 
 the latter's intense horror, that he used to 
 offer a prize of a guinea for every nightin- 
 gale's head that was brought to him, 
 though, in other matters, JNlr Ward was 
 one of the kindest-hearted of men. 
 
 Mr Ward's Lord of the JNIanorship 
 joined my uncle's on the Down, a little to 
 the west of The Beacon, near a spot where 
 the heather began to grow, which heather 
 sometimes served for a turning-point in 
 Tennyson's walks, because, as he used to 
 say to me, " I must have something to 
 turn back at, if that something be but a 
 shadow." 
 
 The Beacon Down was always the 
 favourite walk ; there was such a sense of 
 freedom about its craggy heights echoing 
 the " wild sea laughter " of the gulls and 
 other cliff-nesting birds. My uncle and T 
 used sometimes to race each other down 
 its steep slippery landward slopes of turf, 
 
 94
 
 entering Farringford by " ^laiden's Croft," 
 so called from the times when the demesne 
 was a Priory dedicated to the \^irgin 
 Mary. Here Tennyson spent much of 
 his time writing his poems in the 
 picturesque summer-house he decorated 
 with his own hands. Seeing one of the 
 IMS. books which my aunt used to bind 
 for my uncle to write in, lying one day 
 upon its table, I began to read it. " INIy 
 wife would never have dared to do that," 
 said Tennyson, but I think he was more 
 amused than vexed, as he was with tlie 
 tourists who used to steal his quill pens 
 from this summer-house and leave the 
 moultings of some barn-door fowl instead. 
 If we had a friend with us, Tennyson 
 would pause to point out the lovely view 
 the Croft commands of the long un- 
 dulating ranges of the Beacon and Afton 
 Downs and the lake-like expanse of Fresh- 
 water Bay, its JMediterranean blue waters 
 chequered with streaks of rosy pink, 
 bordered by white and red-coloured cliffs, 
 which latter at times gleam like some 
 tropical flower as they stretch out towards 
 
 95
 
 the headland of St Catherine's Poii it. N ot 
 far from the spot wliere we were standing, 
 my uncle said, was located the scene of 
 the legend the Freshwater villagers used 
 to tell of how in some part of the extensive 
 Priory grounds the entrance might be 
 seen to an underground passage which 
 ran under the sea to France and where a 
 vast hoard of priceless treasure was con- 
 cealed. But woe worth the mortal who, 
 from motives of cupidity or curiosity, 
 attempted to fathom its dark recesses, for 
 a huge bird of sable hue arose to bar his 
 progress, and flapped its bat-like wings 
 over him, when he sank down to rise no 
 more, or if his Hfe were spared, the 
 adventurer wlio had entered the dusky 
 labyrinth in the prime of life, emerged, 
 grey and wrinkled, with just enough 
 strength left to gasp out his tale of horror 
 and warning ere he expired. 
 
 Out of Maiden's Croft a little gate leads 
 into the AVilderness — a small grove, 
 carpeted in spring with daffodils and 
 primroses, and leading to a rustic bridge 
 across Farringford Lane, which bridge 
 
 96
 
 gives access to the oval lawn where Tenny- 
 son loved to gather his family and friends 
 (in which latter category he included his 
 favourite dogs) around him for tea on 
 summer afternoons, the murmur of the 
 bees around the great linden tree which 
 shadows it making music in their ears. 
 Choice evergi-eens grow around it, and here 
 flourishes the " Alexandrian " or " Poet's 
 laurel" (really a kind of Ruscus), used in 
 classical times for making wreaths to crown 
 the victors with in the Greek contests, as 
 my uncle told me when he gave me a slip 
 from it. Little did I think, as I tended 
 its early growth, that it was destined to 
 furnish its wealth of glossy dark green 
 sprays to be laid as a crown on the grave 
 of him who had given me the treasured 
 slip. 
 
 97
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 TALKS WITH TENNYSON 
 
 The East exercised a strong fascination 
 over Tennyson, and he greatly envied my 
 mother and myself for having visited the 
 Holy Land and Egypt. Though I 
 always read all I could get hold of relating 
 to the archaeology of the latter country, 
 yet I generally found that my uncle was 
 better up in the subject of the most recent 
 excavations than I was. He was also 
 keenly interested in Abyssinia, owing to 
 having seen so much of Captain Speedy 
 and his charge, the young Prince Alama- 
 you, when they resided at Freshwater. 
 The youth inherited the proud bearing of 
 his mother, who, being seated reading the 
 Psalms, when King Theodore entered her 
 
 98
 
 apartment, refused to rise, saying, " I am 
 communing with a greater monarch than 
 thou." My uncle was much struck with 
 a remark the Prince made. " There's one 
 thing I don't hke in England. We 
 Abyssinians look angry at a man when 
 we hate him, but you English smile at 
 people while you are hating them. You 
 don't speak the truth with your faces." 
 " He is quite right," said Tennyson ; 
 " there are some people who even kiss to 
 disguise their hatred. The deeper the 
 hate with such folks, the heartier the 
 kiss." 
 
 My uncle disUked an over display of de- 
 monstration in public, and said that in his 
 experience, " When young married people 
 keep on publicly raining ' my dears ' thick 
 upon each other, it is a sure sign that a 
 quarrel is at hand." Akin to this hatred of 
 an unreal show of affection was my uncle's 
 dislike to the fulsome flattery and general 
 vapidnessof many after-dinner speeches, and 
 he declared to me that, if called on to make 
 a speech when he felt he had really nothing 
 to say, he should just rise and exclaim — 
 
 99
 
 " Out of my latitude, as I live, 
 Therefore no platitude— pray forgive," 
 
 and promptly resume his seat. 
 
 Even more interesting to my uncle than 
 I'rince Alamayou was Queen Emma of 
 the Sandwicli Islands, and IMr and JNIrs 
 Hoapili, who accompanied her as his 
 guests. The latter looked a thorough 
 Polynesian as she squatted on the floor, 
 her glossy black hair wreathed with the 
 wild bryony berries my cousins and I had 
 gathered for her ; swaying her lithe form 
 to and fro in cadence with the wild 
 melodies of her native Hawaii, that she 
 and her husband sang together, bringing 
 so much pathos into their rendering of the 
 ode on the young Prince who had died 
 that his mother burst into passionate 
 weeping. It seemed to us that the choos- 
 ing of this poem for chanting in the 
 presence of others before the bereaved 
 parent was just as tactless as the choice 
 by a lady for recitation before my aunt 
 and imcle of the latter's poem of " The 
 Grandmother," with its reference to the 
 
 100
 
 LADY TENNYSON 
 
 From a. minia.tare 
 by Violet Baker
 
 ^OBY]A\A3LT YQAJ
 
 boy that " was dead before he was born," 
 as was Tennyson's own eldest son, whom 
 he spoke of to me as " a glorious babe." 
 Great as was his grief at the time of that 
 loss my uncle was able to write to my 
 mother that it was " well — God orders 
 all." And even so when his own time 
 came, and he was told he was about to die, 
 he was able again to say, with the con- 
 fidence of one who still believed, as he had 
 done through all the years between, that 
 God's ordering was ever for the best — 
 "that is well." And thus he was enabled 
 out of his own greatest sorrows to bring 
 consolation to his fellow-men. I know of 
 a man who, feeling his utter loneliness in 
 a distant colony quite intolerable after the 
 death of his wife, was going in search of 
 tlie weapon with which he had decided to 
 put an end to his existence, when he came 
 across a copy of the " In JNIemoriam " 
 which he had taken out with him, and open- 
 ing its pages, at first half-mechanically, he 
 became interested, and read on and on, 
 till there stole into his soul a peace that 
 never afterwards left it, and he resolved 
 
 101
 
 once more to face the bcattle of life — a 
 battle he has not fout^ht in v^ain. 
 
 JNIy uncle questioned Queen Emmamucli 
 on the vegetation of the tropics, which lie 
 would liave certainlygonetoseewith hisown 
 eyes but for the long absence it would have 
 entailed from my aunt, who was not strong 
 enough to accept the invitation Queen 
 Emma gave us all to visit her in her Islands. 
 
 INIy uncle used to quote, as a great 
 consolation to stay at homes, the saying 
 of one who had spent years in the tropics, 
 that there was nothing there to compare 
 to his mind in beauty with an Enghsh 
 field of buttercups. " And we can have 
 much of the glory of the tropics in our 
 own gardens," Tennyson would add, as he 
 gazed Avith admiration at the rhododendron 
 trees — one slieet of purple bloom — that 
 adorned the garden of Aubrey, my fiither's 
 Hampshire home, to which my uncle and 
 cousins would come over in open boats, in 
 responsetoour iuA'itation sent by tlie mirror- 
 si o-nals we children worked between our re- 
 spective liouses, wliicli were only four miles 
 distant from each otlier as the crow flies. 
 
 102
 
 Close us was our intercourse in 
 those days, Tennyson wished it to be 
 still more close when my mother and I 
 were left alone by the death of my father 
 and grandfather, and pleading as a reason 
 that he was my guardian as well as my 
 uncle, he urged us to make our home 
 with him and his wife. When we finally 
 decided to build ourselves a house a mile 
 from Famngford, my uncle took the 
 gi'eatest interest in its erection,^ and in 
 the turning of the land around it from 
 a corn-field into a grove of trees, from 
 amid whose branches the nightingales held 
 converse with us. Tennyson was inuch 
 interested by the way in which they would 
 burst into song the moment we opened our 
 avenue gate, and would change the bar 
 with which they opened to another part of 
 their melody, if we sang or whistled that 
 to them; but if a stranger entered with us, 
 they would remain perfectly mute. 
 
 ^ IMaking us a gift from his own 
 quarries of the ironstone with which it 
 was built. 
 
 103
 
 Whilst I lived at our Freshwater home, 
 my uncle and I used to take it in turns 
 to call and fetch each other for the almost 
 daily walk together in which we were 
 sometimes accompanied by some friend, 
 and now and then by my eldest cousin, 
 the present Lord Tennyson. His brother 
 Lionel liad left home for his work in life 
 at the India Office, but he used to come 
 on occasional visits with his wife^ (niece 
 of Dean and Lady Augusta Stanley, and 
 daughter of Frederick Locker, the well 
 known poet), who had been a great friend 
 of mine when we were young girls, and 
 she and I stayed together at Farringford. 
 
 " Why don't you marry, Agnes," Lionel 
 said to me one day, " that you may know 
 what perfect happiness is, as I do now ? " 
 Only a few brief years afterwards his young 
 life was cut short by jungle fever ere he 
 could rise to that distinction we all felt 
 sure liis talents Mould have won for him. 
 
 X^^hen my mother and I were sitting 
 with Tennyson in his study at Aldworth, 
 
 ^ Now the wife of Augustine Birrell. 
 
 104
 
 a fortnight before his death, he dwelt 
 much on this son Lionel in his early 
 days, the days in which I recollect him 
 so plainly, liis golden hair blowing in the 
 breezes of the Downs, along which he and 
 his brother loved to draw my aunt in her 
 tiny carriage ; and right careful little 
 ponies they made, though they frisked 
 along at a brisk pace. Of his whole 
 career his father wrote that his was — 
 
 " A soul that watch'd from earhest youth, 
 And on thro' many a brightening year 
 Had never swerved for craft or fear, 
 By one side path, from simple truth." 
 
 One of Lionel's main characteristics 
 was faithfulness to his friends. He 
 seemed an embodiment of his own lines 
 on " Sympathy " — lines which show that 
 he had a decided poetic gift — 
 
 " In this sad world, where mortals must 
 Be almost strangers, 
 Should we not turn to those we trust. 
 To save us from its dangers ? 
 
 105
 
 " God wills that we have sorrow here, 
 
 And we Avill share it ; 
 Whisper thy sorrow in mine ear, 
 
 That I may also bear it. 
 If anywhere our trouble seem 
 
 To find an end, 
 'Tis in the fairy-land of dreams, 
 
 Or with a friend." 
 
 On I^ionel Tennyson's cenotaph in Fresh- 
 water church are graven his father's words — 
 
 " Truth, for Truth is Truth, he worshipt, 
 being true as he was brave. 
 Good, for Good is Good, he foUow'd, 
 yet he look'd beyond the grave." 
 
 INIy uncle and aimt never really quite 
 got over this beloved son's premature 
 death in the lied Sea, though their only 
 surviving son exerted himself more than 
 ever to be all in all to them both, sacri- 
 ficing during their lifetime the independ- 
 ent career of himself and liis wife, and 
 merging his individuality in theirs. Tliis 
 unselfishness of tlie present Lord Tenny- 
 son won for him, however, from both his 
 
 106
 
 parents a love as deep as he gave to them, 
 and his career, since their death, has been 
 the richer for his fihal devotion. 
 
 If I saw how nearly perfect the love 
 between child and parent could be, I saw 
 too at Farringford how still more perfect 
 could be the love between husband and 
 wife. Long had been the time my uncle 
 had waited for his betrothed, but "All 
 things come to him who waits," says the 
 old proverb, and it generally comes true 
 to him whose waiting is a prayerful one, 
 as Alfred Tennyson's was. For he was 
 pre-eminently a man of prayer, and, as 
 he told me shortly before his death, never 
 had one earnest prayer of his failed to 
 receive an answer. And so at last (to 
 quote once more his own words on the 
 subject), " The peace of God " came into 
 his life before the altar to which he led 
 my aunt Emily as his bride. And this 
 peace of God never left their hearth and 
 home, for their wedded life was daily con- 
 secrated to their joint service of the Father 
 in heaven and the brethren on earth. 
 
 Like her husband, and like our mutual 
 
 107
 
 friend JNIrs Cameron, my aunt seemed 
 able to give tlie whole wealth of her 
 affection to her own immediate family, 
 whilst lavishing her love at the same time 
 on my mother and myself, and on all her 
 own and her husband's relations and 
 friends. It was this capacity for loving 
 vrhich, by making her a blessing to all 
 around her, blessed her in return and 
 enabled her to write in one of her last 
 letters to my mother, "I have had so 
 wonderfully much in life of happiness, 
 that I feel somewhat overwhelmed by 
 the thought." Idohsed by her husband 
 and by her children and grandchildren 
 (who were the pride and delight of their 
 parents and grandparents), and chosen of 
 God to do many a great work for Him, 
 no wonder this happiness constantly 
 glowed in her face, and specially did it 
 light it up when she and her husband 
 partook together of the Holy Communion. 
 To tliis rite my uncle attached a very 
 high value, and he would often dwell in 
 his talks witli me upon the special near- 
 ness of Christ to him in this sacrament, 
 
 108
 
 but the manner thereof, he said, was far 
 too sacred to be expressed in words. His 
 reverence for all the services of the Church 
 was so great that I well remember how 
 vexed he was with me one Sunday when, 
 deluges of rain having prevented our going 
 to church, he found me mounted behind 
 an extemporised reading - desk, engaged 
 (quite solemnly as it seemed to my childish 
 mind) in acting as clergyman to a congre- 
 gation of children younger than myself. 
 
 The determination never to seem other 
 than he was brought with it the absolute 
 unworldhness that was such a marked 
 characteristic of the life and teaching of 
 Tennyson. In reading his correspondence 
 with Queen A^ictoria (which she kindly 
 allowed my cousin to incorporate in the 
 hfe of his father) we see how grateful she 
 is to him for having valued her true 
 woman's heart more than her royal state ; 
 and his many friends among the great 
 ones of the earth all knew they owed my 
 uncle's friendship with them to what they 
 were in themselves, and not to the out- 
 ward trappings of their rank. He was 
 
 109
 
 just jis ready to make friends witli those 
 in an obscure station as in a lofty one, and 
 once he had proved their worth, they were 
 always sure of the same hearty recognition, 
 no matter when or where he might meet 
 them again. 
 
 In the course of his long life he was 
 occasionally obliged to hold intercourse 
 with people who would be generally con- 
 sidered connnonplace, but they quite 
 ceased to be commonplace when he took 
 them in hand, for he held that everybody 
 is interesting, if you could only get at him 
 in the right way ; and he had a marvellous 
 intuition for finding out that right way. 
 It might have been said of him (as it was 
 of our aunt. Sir John Franklin's widow) 
 that the dullest people, when in his com- 
 pany, became aware of depths in their 
 nature that they had never before sus- 
 pected ; for he knew how to bring out the 
 very best that was in them, and in the 
 deep humility of his nature he would so 
 treat them that he made them feel he was 
 the learner, and they the teachers. It was 
 Just because he was to the end the patient 
 
 no
 
 listener, the earnest inquirer, the teach- 
 able-minded, ever ready to learn from the 
 humblest of God's creatures, that he has 
 been able to leave the world such a 
 precious legacy in the teachings of his life 
 and writings. 
 
 There was one incident in his life that 
 my uncle knew had often been misunder- 
 stood, and he most solemnly laid upon me 
 the charge that I, who, he said, could best 
 imdertake the task, should let all the 
 world know " how great a sacrifice " (these 
 were his very words, uttered in a tone of 
 intense earnestness) he had practised in 
 yielding to Mr Gladstone's pressing en- 
 treaties that he should take the peerage. 
 Having, however, once accepted it, he was 
 most anxious to fulfil aright the new duties 
 which it involved. He became doubly 
 fearful lest his shortsightedness should be 
 mistaken for haughtiness. 
 
 "Nowthat I am Lord Tennyson," he said 
 to me, "you must be sure and tell me of any- 
 one meeting us in the road whom I ought to 
 salute, because they might feel more hurt 
 than before if I took no notice of them." 
 
 Ill
 
 Tennyson considered worldliness one of 
 the most besetting sins of the age, and one 
 harder to root out than untruthfulness 
 and impurity, because while none could 
 harbour those sins without their presence 
 betraying itself, worldliness could exist 
 unsuspected until it had poisoned the 
 whole natiu'e, unless a constant watch 
 were kept over the motives of every 
 action. JNIy uncle believed the study of 
 nature, in a scientific spirit, to be a great 
 antidote to worldliness, as showing the 
 individual his true position in the universe ; 
 for, as he said to me, " When I think of 
 the mighty worlds around us, to which 
 ours is but a speck, I feel what poor little 
 worms we are, and ask myself, ' What is 
 greatness ? ' " A still more potent anti- 
 dote (as Tennyson has pointed out in 
 " I>.ady Clara Vere de A^ere " and " The 
 Palace of Art ") is the self-sacrificing ser- 
 vice to one's fellow-creatures, and he told 
 me that so higlily did he esteem such 
 service that his idea of heaven was "to be 
 engaged in perpetual ministry to souls in 
 this and other worlds " : and pointing one 
 
 112
 
 evening to the myriads of stars shining 
 above us, he said to a friend, " Can some 
 of these 'other sheep' of whom Christ 
 speaks be the dwellers in those distant 
 worlds we are now gazing upon ? " He 
 went on to tell me how he felt that " We 
 shall have much to learn in a future world, 
 and so shall all be children to begin with 
 when we get to heaven, whatever our age 
 when we die, and shall grow on there 
 from childhood to the prime of life, at 
 which we shall remain for ever." 
 
 ]My uncle was careful to distinguish 
 these his own personal opinions about 
 heaven, and also his personal opinions on 
 home and foreign politics, from the 
 message with which he believed himself 
 intrusted by the Most High concerning 
 the great eternal verities of morals and of 
 faith in a divine providence. In his desire 
 to foster the smallest spark of belief in the 
 breast of the perplexed seeker after truth, 
 Tennyson has used expressions of en- 
 couragement which were wrested by some 
 into statements of his own views, till the 
 publication of his son's biography of him, 
 
 113 8
 
 luid that of the reminiscences of those to 
 whom he spoke openly of his rehgious 
 attitude, showed the world that his faith 
 was by no means a vague and colourless 
 one. He often spoke to me of the actual- 
 ity of Christ's presence to him in the Holy 
 Communion — a presence which he con- 
 sidered the divinity of our Lord alone 
 rendered possible. He dwelt much on 
 tlie grandeur of the title the Son of Man. 
 " V\^e are all sons of God," he was wont to 
 say, " but one alone is worthy to be called 
 f//c Son of JMan, the representative of the 
 whole of humanity. That, to my mind, 
 is the diviner title of the two, for none 
 dare apply to himself this title save Christ, 
 as thus representing the whole human race." 
 ]Mv uncle considered the freedom of the 
 human will and the starry heavens as the 
 two greatest mar\Tls that come under our 
 observation, and v/onderful did it seem to 
 him that the whole of these heavens are 
 retained upon the retina of the eye ; in the 
 thought of this he was no less over- 
 whelmed with awe than when he reahsed 
 that, in a space of the sky that looked 
 
 114
 
 smaller than the palm of the hand, there 
 are 60,000 suns. As he gazed on these 
 from the platform on the roof of Farring- 
 ford, whither he often resorted on fine 
 nights, he would say, " I do not like such 
 a word as design to be applied to the 
 Creator of all these worlds ; it makes Him 
 seem a mere artificer. A certain amount 
 of anthropomorphism must, however, 
 necessarily enter into our conception of 
 God, because though tliere may be in- 
 finitely higher beings than ourselves in the 
 worlds beyond ours, yet, to our conception, 
 man is tlie highest form of being. E . . . . 
 says there is something higher than God. 
 If there be, then it must be God. What- 
 ever is the highest of all must be the 
 Deity, call it by what name you will. 
 Matter, time, and space are all illusions, 
 but above and beyond them all is God, 
 who is no illusion. Time has no absolute 
 existence, and we can as little conceive of 
 space being finite as of its being infinite. 
 We can really understand the existence of 
 spirit much better than that of matter, 
 v/hich is to me far more incomprehensible 
 
 115
 
 than spirit. We see nothing as it really 
 is, not even our fellow-creatures." 
 
 My uncle always seemed to like best 
 to talk about spiritual matters, and few 
 have ever been more earnest students of 
 the Bible, or more impressive readers 
 thereof. It used to be a treat to me to 
 hear him recite one of liis own poems, in 
 that grand sonorous voice of his, but it 
 was a still greater delight to listen to his 
 reading of a chapter of Isaiah, for then so 
 thoroughly did he send his whole soul forth 
 with his words that one was reminded of 
 Eunsen's remark on F. D. Maurice's read- 
 ing of the Church Service, " Such reading 
 is in itself a sermon." He could not find 
 words strong enough to express his love 
 of and reverence for the sacred volume ; 
 and when his picture of old age, in the 
 " Ancient Sage," was said to be like that 
 in Ecclesiastes, " I only wish it were," he 
 replied. " I never could equal that descrip- 
 tion." Yet surely the sublime poem just 
 mentioned is well wortliy to have been 
 written by the author of Ecclesiastes, and 
 it must be studied attentively by all who 
 
 116
 
 desire to enter into the mind of Tennyson, 
 for, from what he used to tell me when 
 thinking it into being, I can testify wliat 
 a deep insight it gives into his own views. 
 "It is just what I should have believed if 
 I had lived, as I make my Ancient Sage do. 
 
 ' A thousand summers ere the time of 
 Christ,' " 
 
 he said to me, " but to get at my present 
 belief you must add on Christianity." 
 
 How like a clarion his voice rang forth 
 as he read me, the day after he had wiitten 
 them, those lines in it which are a very 
 gospel of hopefulness — 
 
 " Cleave ever to the sunnier side of doubt, 
 And cling to Faith beyond the forms of 
 
 Faith ! 
 She reels not in the storm of warring 
 
 words. 
 She brightens at the clash of ' Yes ' and 
 
 ' No,' 
 She sees the Best that glimmers thro' 
 
 the Worst, 
 She feels the Sun is hid but for a night, 
 
 117
 
 She spies the Summer thro' the Wirxter 
 
 bud, 
 She tastes the fruit before the blossom 
 
 falls. 
 She hears the lark within the songless 
 
 She finds the fountain where they wail'd 
 ' JNlirage ' ! " 
 
 I once asked my uncle whether he 
 agreed with Bacon's dictum tliat Pilate's 
 question, " What is Truth ?" was put jest- 
 ingly. " No," he imhesitatingly answered, 
 " it was in no spirit of jesting he uttered 
 those words. They may hiive been 
 accompanied with a shrug of the shoulder, 
 and spoken in a cynical tone, but I believe 
 rather tliat they were wrung from the 
 depths of a heart that had learnt that 
 there was no truth in the religious systems 
 then in vogue, and knew not where to 
 seek it. Alas ! tliat we should hear this 
 cry repeated in our own age, and that men 
 should fail to iind their souls craving for 
 truth satisfied by Christianity. The great 
 spread of agnosticism and unbelief of all 
 
 118
 
 kinds seems to me to show that there is 
 an evil time close at hand. Sometimes I 
 feel as if it would not surprise me to see 
 all things perish. I firmly believe that if 
 God were to withdraw Himself from the 
 world around us and from within us, for 
 but one instant, every atom of the creation, 
 both animate and inanimate, would come 
 utterly to nought, for in Him alone do 
 all beings and things exist. Wherever 
 life is, there God is, specially in the life 
 of man. I believe that beside our material 
 body we possess an immaterial body, 
 something hke what the ancient Egyptians 
 called the Ka. I do not care to make 
 distinctions between the soul and the 
 spirit as men did in days of old, though 
 perhaps the spirit is the best word to use 
 of our higher nature, that nature which 
 1 believe to have been in Christ truly 
 divine, the very presence of the Father, 
 the one only God, dwelling in the perfect 
 man. Though nothing is such a distress 
 of soul to me as to have this divinity of 
 Christ assailed, yet I feel we must never 
 lose sight of the Unity of the Godhead, 
 
 119
 
 the Three Persons of the Trinity being 
 Hke three candles giving together one 
 hght. I love that hynni, ' Holy, holy, holy, 
 Lord God Almighty,' and sliould like to 
 write such a one." As Tennyson spoke 
 these words we were just descending from 
 the summit of the lofty Down then 
 crowned by the Beacon whence it derived 
 its name. The historical associations of 
 this picturesque landmark, inherited by it 
 through a line of ancestors, of which it 
 was the exact facsimile, were a great source 
 of interest to Tennyson. I could have 
 wished that the cross now taking its place 
 on the DoAvn above Freshwater had been 
 erected elsewhere, so as to leave intact the 
 familiar outlines of that beacon whose dark 
 form, looming mysteriously through the 
 mist, often seemed to us like some Hving 
 being. No memorial could be more ap- 
 propriate than this would ha\'e been to 
 Tennyson, whose wliole hfe was a striving 
 to be the beacon that he felt God had 
 destined him to become to the storm- 
 tossed mariners on the sea of life. If I 
 ever reach the heavenly haven beyond the 
 
 120
 
 grave it will be largely because my 
 uncle's beacon-light showed me the way. 
 Nothing that others ever spoke to me, and 
 nothing I ever read, even in the pages of 
 the Bible, ever made the impression upon 
 me that his words and manner did when 
 he would say to me, in exactly the same 
 natural way as a child would express his 
 delight at his father making him his com- 
 panion : " God is with us now on this 
 Down, as we two are walking together, 
 just as truly as Christ was with the two 
 disciples on the w^iy to Emmaus : we can- 
 not see Him, but He, the Father, and the 
 Saviour, and the Spirit, are nearer perhaps 
 now than then to those that are not afraid 
 to believe the words of the Apostles about 
 the actual and real presence of God and 
 His Christ with all who yearn for it." 
 
 I said I thought such a near actual 
 presence would be awful to most people. 
 '• Surely the love of God takes away and 
 makes us forget all our fear," he answered. 
 "• I should be sorely afraid to live my life 
 without God's presence ; but to feel He 
 is by my side now just as much as you 
 
 121
 
 are, that is the very joy of my heart." 
 And I looked on Tennyson as he spoke, 
 and the glory of God rested upon his face, 
 and I felt that the Presence of the Most 
 High had indeed overshadowed him. 
 
 1 QO
 
 APPENDIX 
 
 THE BLIZZARD 
 
 AND 
 
 BRONCHO DAYS 
 
 BY THE LATE 
 
 BERTRAM TENNYSON
 
 APPENDIX 
 
 JNIy brother, Bertram Tennyson, was a 
 sailor, a soldier, and a barrister, besides 
 being something of a poet and an artist. 
 He was a man who loved ease and luxury, 
 and yet could lead cheerfully the hardest 
 life. He was an affectionate son and 
 brother, a good comrade, a lover of nature 
 and the country, of children and of 
 animals — an altogether lovable man. His 
 love of adventure was fostered by the 
 reading of A¥alter Scott's novels, which, 
 when we were eleven and twelve years old 
 respectively, he and I used to save up our 
 weekly pennies to buy in sixpenny edi- 
 tions. I well remember the little dark 
 bookseller's shop and the feeling of excite- 
 ment when we had saved enough to buy 
 another precious volume. After we had 
 read it we generally chose out certain 
 characters from it, and played them in the 
 garden, throwing much vigour into our 
 impersonations. 
 
 125
 
 He was educated for the navy, which he 
 entered at an early age. His first voyage 
 was to a very unhealthy station on the 
 West Coast of Africa, where he was taken 
 ill of yellow fever. This ga\'e him a 
 distaste for his profession, which was 
 moreo\ er most uncongenial to him from 
 its monotony. The tales our father^ 
 used to tell us of his oa\ti hfe of adventure 
 in Tasmania inspired my brother with a 
 longing for the life of a colonist, and 
 induced him to go out to INIanitoba to try 
 his luck at farming ; but when he got 
 tliere he found he had not enough capital 
 to be a successful farmer, so took to driv- 
 ing a coach and breaking in horses, and 
 acting as a pioneer in helping to explore 
 and open up the Far AVest. He and a 
 friend lived for all one winter in a hole in 
 the ground, at a spot where the cold was 
 so intense that if you threw water into 
 the air it descended in the form of icicles, 
 and if you put your bare hand on a bar of 
 
 1 Horatio, Tennyson's youngest brother. 
 See chapter i. pp. 26-29. 
 
 126
 
 iron it blistered your palm. I\Iy brother 
 hunted tx great deal, and was such a good 
 shot that he was able to do splendid 
 service as a scout in the North-AVest 
 Territory Rebelhon War. He had many 
 narrow escapes, but the dreadful hardships 
 and privations he endured with courage 
 and cheerfulness were even more recom- 
 pensed in his eyes by the consciousness 
 of the part he had borne in the putting 
 down of the rebeUion than by the medal 
 that was awarded to him for his services. 
 
 Bertram next turned his energies from 
 fighting to legal studies, and read law so 
 hard, and passed his examinations in it so 
 quickly, that it was not long before his 
 call to the Canadian bar led to his becom- 
 ing a Q.C. He took up his abode in the 
 small town of IMoosomui, in the North- 
 West Territories, which he and others 
 beheved to be a growing township which 
 would in tiine afford him a good practice. 
 But their hopes were doomed to dis- 
 appointment, for the miles of prairie which 
 surrounded it and looked so gay in 
 summer, adorned with brilliant flowers of 
 
 127
 
 every hue, were all through the winter an 
 unbroken expanse of dazzlingly white 
 snow that lay for months w ithout melting 
 and cut off all communication with the 
 outer world, rendering JNIoosomin dreary 
 beyond words, and preventing its ever 
 rising above the level of a small country 
 town. 
 
 For a time my brother got carried away 
 by the wave of excitement tliat bore many 
 to Klondyke, and he had some success 
 with a little interlude of gold working not 
 far from that region, and quite enjoyed 
 returning for a while to tlie adventurous 
 life of his youth. Bidding farewell to his 
 books — save the Bible and Shakespeare, 
 from which he never parted, and out of 
 each of which he read a daily portion — he 
 took up his abode for months upon an 
 island in the middle of a river, and used, 
 day after day, to stand at work up to his 
 waist in ice-cold water. I^'rom leading 
 this roughly primitive life, he came straight 
 to London and Oxford, and mixed in the 
 most intellectual circles of these centres of 
 learning as if he had always belonged to 
 
 12H
 
 their learned sets. After Dr Creightoii, 
 the late Bishop of London, had been sit- 
 ting next him at a club dinner, he remarked 
 to a friend that he had much enjoyed 
 talking to young Tennyson, as he was 
 such an extremely well-informed man. 
 My brother was a brilliant talker, with a 
 fund of information drawn from his own 
 varied experiences and from the pages of 
 the many books he loved to read and 
 whose contents he could so rapidly assimi- 
 late. He was once asked to write an 
 article on the Japanese as an artistic race — - 
 a subject of which he knew nothing at all. 
 In a short time the article was written, 
 and was considered to read as if the writer 
 had lived in Japan for years. 
 
 He had equal facility in writing poetry, 
 and embodied some of his memories of 
 the life of the Far West in a little 
 privately printed volume of prose and 
 verse, from which I extract a specimen of 
 each, both of which were thought highly 
 of by our uncle, Alfred Tennyson. 
 
 There is a large basis of actual fact in 
 the tale which follows, entitled — 
 
 129 9
 
 The Blizzard. 
 
 The sky was as blue as an Italian one. 
 Under foot the snow was beautifully 
 white and crisp, even in the streets of 
 the little town of Wood vi lie. The air 
 was as brisk as champagne, but as cham- 
 pagne that bit if taken in large quantities. 
 The sleigh bells on Stansfield's horses rang 
 merrily as he drove down from the 
 principal store to pull up opposite the 
 door of the hotel as the landlord in his 
 shirt-sleeves came hastily out and shouted : 
 
 " Say, Stan ! ! are you pulling out for 
 home ? " 
 
 " Riglit away," replied Stansfield. 
 " Woa, mare." 
 
 " There's a woman going out to stay 
 with the INIoreton outfit," continued the 
 landlord ; " she'll be ready in two minutes, 
 if you will give her a lift." 
 
 " Right you are," assented Stansfield ; 
 " get her to hurry up, like a good chap." 
 
 The landlord returned to the hotel, and 
 in a very few mmutes a much bundled up 
 
 130
 
 figure was conducted out, introduced to 
 Stansfield, and after she had been tucked 
 well in with the buffalo robe, the sleigh went 
 gaily jingling down the main street and 
 out into the open country. The two said 
 little, for conversation was not easy when 
 the one had his fur collar turned up to 
 meet his cap, and the other was well 
 muffled in shawls. 
 
 Their way led through a pleasant, well- 
 wooded, and settled country, along a 
 broadly marked trail for some seven 
 miles, till they reached the Sandstone 
 Creek, and that crossed they emerged on 
 a wide, white plain, destitute of trees, 
 which, however, was well known to 
 Stansfield, who often crossed it. Here 
 and there, but at rare intervals, a house 
 could be seen in the distance, like a 
 strange shaped vessel on the wide expanse ; 
 now and again a flock of snow birds rose 
 before the horses, wheeled, and settled 
 again. In spite of the cold, it was a 
 pleasant February day for the North - 
 West. 
 
 But a change had come over the 
 
 131
 
 weatlier — a change not unmarked by 
 Stansfield. A white haze, like a low 
 cloudbank, had risen in the West, and 
 the wind began to blow a little. 15y-and- 
 by the loose surface snow began to rise 
 and drift sharply, like fine sand, across 
 their faces, and Stansfield urged his team 
 with cheery voice but somewhat anxious 
 countenance. "Is it going to snow?" 
 asked his companion, lifting her face a 
 little out of her enshrouding shawls. 
 
 " Oh, no," repHed Stansfield, assuming a 
 cheerfulness he did not quite feel. " The 
 wind has risen a little, and it makes the 
 snow drift." 
 
 The wind increased, and the air was 
 full of flying particles that stung the face, 
 the horizon became blotted out, and once 
 or twice Stansfield used the whip, the 
 team swerved a little, and the nigh horse 
 plunged in deeper snow as he left the 
 trail. Stansfield uttered an exclamation 
 of impatience as he pulled the horses back 
 on to the road, but the wind increased, 
 and in another ten minutes both horses 
 were off" the trail. Again Stansfield 
 
 132
 
 pulled them to the right, but this time 
 did not succeed in hitting the road. He 
 pulled up, therefore, and leaning down 
 asked his companion if she would hold the 
 reins for a time. 
 
 " I think 1 am off the trail a bit," he 
 said, with an assumption of carelessness. 
 " I'll just get down and hit it off; the horses 
 will stand all right." He was away some 
 time, and the woman was beginning to be 
 afraid he was lost, when he loomed up sud- 
 denly quite close in the thick snow haze. 
 
 " Have you found it ? " she inquired 
 anxiously. 
 
 " No, not exactly," he replied, " but I 
 know the direction ; " and he climbed in 
 and started the horses again. 
 
 There was now no doubt that the situation 
 had assumed a real gravity. The woman 
 with him began to complain of the cold, 
 and at last Stansfield decided to head the 
 horses back, in order, if possible, to strike 
 the creek, where comparative shelter 
 could be found. He argued that, as he 
 was going south from the creek when he 
 lost the trail, the wind at that time blow- 
 
 133
 
 ing from the west, he could keep his 
 direction to the north by keeping the 
 wind on his left cheek. On one point he 
 could not calculate : if tlie wind had 
 changed in the meantime, he would prob- 
 ably go as far astray as ever, but the 
 chance of the creek appeared to be the 
 one forlorn hope left to him. 
 
 For about two hours the horses 
 stumbled and waded through the snow, 
 getting weaker and weaker, while the 
 woman at his side alternated querulous 
 wailings at the cold, and despairing 
 silence. The snow flew thick as ever, 
 and the cold was intense ; it was impos- 
 sible to see farther than the horses' heads, 
 and for this reason, when they began to 
 dip down a sudden incline, Stansfield was 
 quite unprepared with his numb hands to 
 hold them back. For a moment he half 
 hoped that the incline led to the Creek, 
 but he was quickly undeceived, as the 
 horses plunged heavily in the deep snow 
 at the bottom of the ravine, and then fell 
 on their noses. There was a sudden jar 
 and crash as the tongue slipped from the 
 
 1.S4
 
 neck-yoke, struck the frozen ground and 
 splintered in two. The horses regained 
 their feet, half-swung round, and started 
 to kick ; the iron came off one end of the 
 near whipple-tree and the tug from the 
 other end ; the free horse started ahead, 
 and the off horse kicked his whipple-tree m 
 two. In another moment the reins slipped 
 through Stansfield's stiff fingers, and the 
 team disappeared in the flying snow. 
 
 The situation had become desperate. 
 The blizzard still continued to rage with 
 unabated fury, the cold was appalling, the 
 horses were gone, and Stansfield was alone 
 with a weak woman for a companion. 
 One faint ray of hope alone remained. 
 The ravine, probably, led to the Sandstone 
 Creek, and by following its windings, 
 which were sure to be many, they might, 
 if their strength held out, eventually reach 
 the Creek. The only other possible 
 alternative was to turn the sleigh-box on 
 its side for a break-wind, and lie down, 
 wrapped in furs, behind its shelter till the 
 storm moderated and they had a chance 
 to look about them. Stansfield felt that 
 
 135
 
 under the circumstances his companion 
 must be told of the two alternativ^es and 
 given her choice, but the woman un- 
 hesitatingly declared for going forward. 
 Stay in that dismal spot she would not, 
 and she was certain tlie Creek was near. 
 Stansfield, hoping against hope, inwardly 
 prayed for the sheltering bluffs, and taking 
 his companion's arm they started on their 
 toilsome joiu*ney. 
 
 Try as they would, however, they could 
 not keep to the ravine. Walking along the 
 bottom was impossible, owing to the deep- 
 ness of the drift, so they took the right- 
 hand bank, but even then, with all their 
 determination and knowledge of the 
 direction, tliey could not always face the 
 blast ; they must at times turn from it for 
 relief, except when the winding of the 
 ravine brought tlie wind at their backs. 
 The end was that they lost the ravine, as 
 they had the trail, and like strayed cattle 
 went down the wind, utterly and com- 
 pletely ignorant of their whereabouts. 
 But now the woman began to grow weary 
 and to insist upon sitting down for a 
 
 136
 
 minute. This Stansfield, in the utmost 
 alarm, strenuously resisted, and she tugged 
 at his arm hke a petulant child, crying 
 that she was only a woman and could not 
 walk as he did. At length she ftiirly 
 sUpped from his arm and sat down. 
 Stansfield pulled her instantly and roughly 
 to her feet, at which she flashed into anger 
 and ralhed for a time. But the fatid death 
 with which the Frost King slays his 
 victims was upon her, and she sat down 
 again. This time Stansfield actually 
 struck and beat her, but she would not be 
 roused, only faintly moaned. In utter 
 despair the man raised her in his arms and 
 started forward at a run ; in three steps 
 he stumbled and fell, and when he let her 
 go to rise again she slipped gently down 
 in a snow drift, with her head upon her 
 hand, like a little child nesthng in its cot, 
 gave a gentle sigh, and closed her eyes. 
 Thereupon rose the most desperate 
 struggle in Stansfield's heart which the 
 mind of man can conceive. To stay with 
 the woman meant certain death to both, 
 to go forward a chance for him, and a 
 
 137
 
 chance, one in a million, that he might 
 shortly find a house and bring help to the 
 woman. But then to leave a woman in 
 dire extremity ? Again he fell to cuffing 
 and pinching her, as well as his half 
 frozen hands would serve, but all to no 
 purpose ; again he raised her in his arms 
 and went forward, more carefully tliis 
 time ; again he fell, and this time she fell 
 all abroad and helpless ; she was either 
 dead or on the borderland. Stansfield 
 looked at her for one moment, then started 
 and arranged the sprawling limbs, and ran 
 from her wildly into the storm. 
 
 How long he ran, how often he fell, it 
 is impossible to say, but he came to him- 
 self to find the storm gone down and tlie 
 day on its decline. He stood alone in the 
 vast white plain, and scan the horizon as 
 he might, nothing was in view. Nothing ! 
 As for the woman she was not to be seen, 
 but that mattered little, she was beyond 
 all help from man. 
 
 The sun went down, the stars came out, 
 later the moon rose, flooding tlie snow 
 M'ith a ghastly radiance, and Stansfield 
 
 138
 
 walked through the night. IMoriiiug 
 dawned with a shudder, colder than night, 
 in a long level band of amber and tawny 
 red, and the stars faded away. Still he 
 walked and still the horizon was broad 
 and blank. Stansfield was walking in a 
 dogged way towards a terrace in the 
 prairie which obstructed his forward view. 
 Surmounting it he gazed on the surround- 
 ing country ; it was as blank as the sky 
 above him. Then he fell on his knees, 
 with arms outstretched, and prayed aloud 
 in that vast wilderness to God, the all- 
 merciful, the all-powerful, to succour him 
 in this his utmost need. The rising sun 
 struck from him a huge shadow across the 
 snow in the form of a gigantic cross ; the 
 pitiless blue heaven looked down with an 
 ironical smile on the solitary man wrestling 
 for his life against nature in her most 
 cruel mood. He rose again, and, with 
 some sort of faith in him from the fervency 
 of his own outcry, went forward, paying 
 no heed whither he bent his steps, with 
 his eyes upon the ground. 
 
 As he walked thus he suddenly stopped, 
 
 IS9
 
 then went forward eagerly, for he had 
 seen the tracks of a man's footprints 
 upon the snow, leading in the direction 
 he was then travelling in. Far different 
 were his feelings from those of Robinson 
 Crusoe at a similar sight. His heart was 
 suffused with joy and gi-atitude to God, 
 hope again sprang up in his bosom, and 
 he felt again the imminent presence of 
 cheerful human kind and the warmth of 
 houses. His eyes again searched the wild 
 and still blank horizon, but though nothing 
 was in sight, as ever, he knew, as every 
 plainsman does, that the seeming flatness 
 of the prairie was but an optical illusion, 
 and that many houses might be con- 
 cealed in its hollows and ravines. 
 
 Taking this new guide, he became 
 aware of the tracks of another man which 
 led into tlie footprints he was already 
 following. This sight confirmed his 
 hopes, for, througli his previous walk he 
 was followed by a haunting fear that, 
 perhaps, the footsteps he followed were 
 tliose of some unfortunate, astray like 
 himself. But now this was impossible : 
 
 140
 
 this second track was confirmation strong 
 as Holy writ, and he pressed forward with 
 new energy. 
 
 He walked thus for about half an hour, 
 until he was aware of a third set of tracks 
 leading into these he followed. 
 
 For one moment his heart bounded 
 with even greater joy, but it was but 
 momentary. He cast a swift glance right 
 and left, and recognised a small bunch of 
 willow he had already passed. He was 
 walking round in an ever narrowing circle, 
 following his own footsteps. 
 
 It is impossible to describe the revul- 
 sion of feeling that wrung the poor 
 wi'etch's soul. From being buoyed, as 
 on wings, to Heaven, to be dashed to 
 the greatest depth of Hell — Dante's 
 frozen circle. For a space of time he 
 stood mute, and then fell on his knees 
 as before, and raising his clinched hand 
 to Heaven cursed the God who had not 
 only left him to die, but had added 
 bitterness to his cup with that last drop 
 of blighted hope ; and the pitiless blue 
 heavens looked do^\^l on the man blas- 
 
 141
 
 pheming his Maker, with the same ironical 
 smile as before. He cursed his God, but 
 did not he down to die ; the Anglo-Saxon 
 race are made of sterner stuff than that ; 
 he rose to his feet, and stumbled forward, 
 desperate, heedless of where he went. 
 
 The sun was now some distance above 
 the horizon, and tlie glare from the white 
 surface of the snow became intolerable. 
 Stansfield felt little sharp pricks in his 
 eyes — a premonition he well knew — so he 
 drew his cap as close over his brows as 
 possible, and, as it did not signify whither 
 he went as far as he knew, covered his 
 eyes with his hand as much as possible. 
 
 But now being unable to see, he 
 stumbled over small inequalities in the 
 snow, and frequently had to throw out 
 his hands to save himself from falling, 
 necessarily constantly exposing his eyes, 
 and the sunlight stabbed them like a knife. 
 Soon his eyes began to run mucus, and 
 shortly he was unable to open them, hence- 
 forth all was night. OuMard he went, 
 often falling, sometimes running, having 
 no account of time, or whither he went ; 
 
 142
 
 while to his agonised soul came the con- 
 viction that he might pass within a few 
 yards of shelter, knowing it not. Hunger 
 was dead with him ; but he was consumed 
 with thirst. Strange amongst abundance 
 of snow this should be the case, but the 
 verdict of huntsmen and plainmen on this 
 point seems to be unanimous. The small 
 quantity of real liquid possible to take at 
 a time seems to aggravate the thirst. 
 
 On, on, he went, minutes might be 
 hours, hours days. He might be again 
 walking in a circle or still farther out 
 into the ilhmitable inane ; and as he 
 wandered thus, lost to hope, his hands 
 frozen, his legs stiff to the knees, he heard 
 the barking of a dog. He raised his tired 
 head erect once more, and turned his 
 sightless eyes toAvards the soimd ; he 
 listened again. Yes ! there was no mis- 
 take about it, and hope, but now forgotten, 
 once more reanimated the poor wreck of 
 humanity. Strung to one last effort he 
 started forward at a feeble run, fell, rose, 
 stumbled, and fell again, and rose no more. 
 
 143
 
 The little child awoke to find his 
 mother bending over his cot to give him 
 a good-night kiss. She was evidently 
 going to some party, for she wore a white 
 camellia in her glossy dark hair and jewels 
 gleamed on her bosom and wrists. The 
 little boy awoke enough to put his arms 
 around her neck and catch the dainty 
 perfume from her hair ; then he fell back 
 into the dreamless sleep of childhood. 
 These are the little things one remembers 
 through all the after years. 
 
 A little later the boy remembers his 
 nurse dressing him in the cosy nursery, 
 when the younger children are in their 
 cots. He has on his blue velvet frock, 
 surmounted with white lace, through 
 which the blue shows bravely, and his 
 fair head is crowned with a great golden 
 curl. He is taken to the dining-room, 
 where he sees his father at the head of 
 the long table, round which sit many 
 gentlemen in black clothes and white 
 shirt fronts. The long mahogany table 
 gleams under the light of tlie candles in 
 the silver sconces ; fruit and decanters of 
 
 144
 
 ruby wine are on the table, and he is 
 allowed to sit at his father s right hand. 
 His father gives him a very little claret 
 at the bottom of a wine glass, and he 
 gravely drinks to the health of his father's 
 guests with a little bow. Then, after a 
 few pleasant jests from the gentlemen, 
 which he doesn't exactly understand, 
 but takes in good part, he is carried off to 
 bed, sleepy, yet happy, thinking himself 
 already alinost a man. 
 
 Later still he can remember a high 
 curtained bed, and a fire that crackles and 
 flashes, making the old portraits round the 
 room leap from the darkness and retire 
 again, as if, indeed, they meant to step 
 from their frames, and in a moment thought 
 better of it. Outside the wind whistles 
 and howls round the corners of the house, 
 and the rain pours. A belated wayfarer's 
 footfalls grow out of the distance, ring- 
 down the pavement, and fade away 
 again, while the boy nestles down in 
 the bedclothes, secure in warmth and 
 protection. 
 
 Again, he can remember school, with 
 
 145 10
 
 all its trouble and joys, and how on one 
 occasion he, a child of ten, ran between 
 the legs of long Evans, as he came 
 hurtling down the football field, and 
 sent that five feet ten of muscle and 
 good nature flying on his head, amidst 
 tunmlts of applause; the first applause 
 of his life, and perhaps the most spon- 
 taneous. Nor are you forgotten, old 
 Alma Mater; the gardens of St John's, 
 the twisted columns of St Mary's, the 
 quiet quaintness of Turl Street, even the 
 solitary lamp-post which keeps Grove 
 Street inviohite from all veliicular traffic, 
 all are remembered ; many a time in some 
 wide and ringing a^'enue of the new West, 
 the young man has sighed for the sound 
 of the rowlock on the river, the leafy 
 solitudes of the Cherwell. To have been 
 at Oxford once more he would have even 
 braved the pernicious Proctor on liis prowls. 
 But these days are passed for ever. 
 
 Spring has come again, and the chest- 
 nut trees hold out imploring palms to the 
 fickle April sun. There is a shimmer of 
 green on tlie birches, a delicate hint of 
 
 1*6
 
 spring, and the rooks caw in the tardy 
 elms. As the young man passes through 
 the wood the leaves of yester year are as 
 a carpet to his feet. Soon he is past the 
 wood and is on the open hill. He stands 
 at the top of a hundred or more rude, 
 worn, stone steps, up and down which a 
 saintly hermit of old went twice a day on 
 his knees. The young man looks out 
 upon that country he has learned to love 
 so well in his exile, loved better than all 
 the world beside, aye ! perhaps, even 
 better than his mistress. He looks out, 
 in front, on a placid sea, grey now from 
 the April clouds passing athwart the sun, 
 but on the far horizon glitters a line of 
 brilliant light. To his right and below 
 him is a rich level country between the 
 two promontories which jut into the sea, 
 and midway this champaign he sees the 
 tower of the old Cistercian Monastery, 
 reft long years ago by the Crown from 
 the church, now a farm-house, where 
 the cattle stable where the monks have 
 dined. Further away a little coast town 
 gleams white in the distance, and almost 
 
 147
 
 below his feet is the square grey toAver of 
 the parish church, with the starhngs 
 circHiig round it. The Rectory, deep in 
 its terraced garden, nestles close to the 
 shoulder of the tower as if for protection, 
 and underneath the leafless pink of a 
 blossoming almond tree he sees tlie flutter 
 of a dress. Now the clouds drift away, 
 and he is sure that he sees her, who to 
 him is the priceless gem of which aU the 
 surroundings are, after all, only the set- 
 ting. He starts joyfully on his downward 
 way, and mellow and sweet the cuckoo 
 calls from the hill. The cuckoo — calls — 
 from the hill. 
 
 • • • • • 
 
 It is night, and nothing breaks the vast 
 white expanse, save one prone and motion- 
 less figure. A little, bitter wind arises, and 
 the liglitly drifting snow begins already to 
 powder the dark form with wliite, indica- 
 tive of the nameless grave and the remorse- 
 less shroud soon to be. From far away 
 in the distance comes in dismal ululation 
 the cry of a wolf, canorous of death. 
 
 148
 
 The poem which follows was addressed 
 to an old comrade who had gone back to 
 England. 
 
 Is your seat as fiiin as ever, is yotir eye 
 
 as keen and true. 
 Can you 7^ope a flying foreleg, as once you 
 
 used to do ? 
 Can you ride a bucking broncho, can you 
 
 spot a stranger s brand. 
 Or head the rvild stampede at night and 
 
 turn the rushing band ? 
 
 Broncho Days. 
 
 How is it with you now, old chum ? In 
 
 England's crowded ways, 
 To you immured in brick and stone the 
 
 thought of other days 
 Must sometimes come when breezes stir 
 
 the roses on your lawn, 
 And once again you rise with me and 
 
 saddle up at dawn. 
 14-9
 
 The liglit is level on the sward, the old 
 
 times come again, 
 Your broncho feels the warning heel and 
 
 reaches at the rein ; 
 Oh ! merrily the llea^'y bit chimes in with 
 
 jingling spur, 
 The flapping fringes on our chapps make 
 
 just a pleasant stir. 
 
 The hoof strokes fall with rhythmic beat, 
 
 the road is flying by, 
 And all the world is yet asleep, save only 
 
 you and 1. 
 The bronchos feel their oats to-day, the 
 
 world is wild and wide. 
 Let go their heads, and let them swing 
 
 their gallop stride for stride. 
 
 And when we stop beside the slough to 
 let our horses drink. 
 
 The air is pure, and close at hand a tune- 
 ful bob-o-linc' 
 
 Sings liis sweet matins to the morn ; 
 perched low upon a spray. 
 
 The meadow lark calls back to him, 
 responsive to his lay. 
 
 150
 
 The pasque blooms linger here and there ; 
 
 the tiger lily gems 
 With points of red the grassy sward, and 
 
 on their slender stems 
 The fragile bluebells nod their heads to 
 
 every passing breeze, 
 That shakes the petal from the rose, and 
 
 whispers to the trees. 
 
 'Tis all a dream ; an ocean wide is cold 
 
 between us twain. 
 And nevermore together shall we ride the 
 
 Western plain, 
 Or camped in comfort hear the wolf, and 
 
 on the sky-line clear 
 See the quick broncho lift his head and 
 
 slant a startled ear. 
 
 The world is fair in this new land, and 
 
 yet I envy you. 
 For we have not the primrose pale, and 
 
 though 'tis just as blue. 
 The violet, in exile here, throws out a 
 
 scentless bloom ; 
 The rose is fair as England's rose, but has 
 
 not its perfume. 
 
 151
 
 No thrush sings England's ballads, no 
 blackbird whistles clear, 
 
 No skylark wings to heaven the day's 
 sweet pioneer, 
 
 And chief of all the sights I love I long 
 to see the glade 
 
 AA^here the lily of the valley grows be- 
 neath the coppice shade ; 
 
 And chief of all the sounds I love, 1 long 
 
 to hear the sea 
 Break on the shores of England when the 
 
 scud is flying free ; 
 Or, in its calmer moments, when the 
 
 ripples kiss the strand, 
 Beneatli tlie tall wliite cliffs of chalk that 
 
 guard tlie English land. 
 
 But we'll meet some day or other, no 
 
 doubt, at last in town, 
 Two old bow-windowed beggars, with the 
 
 grey streaked thro' the brown ; 
 And we'll agree in spite of fate, there's 
 
 one thing all repays, 
 'Tis to fight once more tJie battles of our 
 
 good old broncho days. 
 
 152
 
 Thus far I wrote, in hope that you would 
 
 sometime scan these rhymes, 
 And overlook their many faults for sake 
 
 of youthful times ; 
 But, wider than the ocean, between us 
 
 yawns the grave, 
 And one is left, the other sleeps beyond 
 
 the restless wave. 
 
 Sleep in your quiet churchyard, true 
 heart that's still at last, 
 
 Whose every red pulsation beat friend- 
 ship firm and fast ; 
 
 Pray God the stories of our youth are not 
 all quite in vain, 
 
 I hope for some world far from this where 
 old friends meet again. 
 
 The sky is clear above me, and the turf is 
 
 sound below. 
 The jree wind flies to meet me and fans 
 
 me as I go. 
 The tree-tops bend and rustle, the world 
 
 is fair to see. 
 But you are not beside me now, nor ever 
 
 more tvill be.
 
 T .little did Bertram Tennyson think us 
 he penned these stirring and pathetic lines 
 how soon he was to join his friend in the 
 silent land. He was born in London, and 
 always said there was no place to compare 
 with it, so that there seemed a certain 
 fitness in his death there, on September 
 26th, 1900, cut off by influenza, in the 
 midst of a career of much promise. 
 
 PRINTED BY NEIll, AND CO., LTD., EDINBURGH. 
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