28 September 1863 – 4 October 1863

Cross by 3 o'clock Boat, invited to spend Sunday at Mrs. Clough's. Rainy and roughish. The Coltmans are gone. Mrs. Clough tells me I am invited to go to the Tennysons with her to-night. (Hurrah !) We drove to Farringford, picking up on the way Mr. Pollock (afterwards Sir F. P.) and his son, a youth in spectacles. Drawing- room, tea, Mrs. Tennyson in white, I can some- times scarcely hear her low tones. Mrs. Cameron, dark, short, sharp-eyed, one hears very distinctly. I wandered to the book-table, where Tennyson joined me. He praised Worsley's Odyssey. In a book of Latin versions from his own poetry he found some sHps in Lord Lyttleton's Latin — ' Cytherea Venus,' etc. ' Did I find Lymington very dull ? ' I told him that since coming there I had heard Cardinal Wiseman lecture (on ' Self-culture '), Spurgeon preach, and seen Tom Sayers spar. ' More than I have,' he remarked. In taking leave he said, ' Come to-morrow ! '

In the forenoon I walk over alone to Farringford ; find first Mrs. T., the two boys, and their tutor, Mr. Butterfield, fair-haired, modest- mannered. T. at luncheon : ' John Wilson's Life — leave such things alone ! they're done for money.' — ' Entozoa — germs were mingled in a convict's food, for experiment ; after his death the parasites were found stuck all over him inside. Fancy one feeding on your brain ! ' — ' What do we know of the feelings of insects ? nothing. They may feel more pain than we.' I think not. T. takes me upstairs to his ' den ' on the top-story, and higher, up a ladder, to the leads. He often comes up here a-night to look at the heavens. One night he was watching shooting-stars and tumbled through the hatchway, falling on the floor below, a height of at least ten feet I should say. The ladder probably broke his fall and he was not hurt. I quoted ' A certain star shot madly from his sphere.' T. — -' I've never heard any Sea-Maid's music in Fresh- water Bay, but I saw an old lady swimming one day.' The view of sea and land is delectable, stretching northward across the Solent up into the New Forest. Then we went down and walked about the grounds, looking at a cedar, a huge fern, an Irish yew. The dark yew in Maud ' sighing for Lebanon ' he got at Swainston, — Sir John Simeon's. In one place are some little arches half-covered with ivy, which I pretend to believe are meant for mock ruins. This T. repudiates. He paused at a weed of goatsbeard, saying, ' It shuts up at three.' Then we went down the garden, past a large tangled fig-tree growing in the open — ' It's like a breaking wave,' says I. ' Not in the least,' says he. Such contradictions, from him, are noway disagreeable : and so to the farmyard. ' Have you a particular feeling about a farmyard ^ ' he asked, ' a special delight in it .'' I have. The first time I read Shakespeare was in a haystack. — Othello — I said, '* This man's overrated." Boys can't understand Shakespeare, nor women.' We spoke a little of the Shakespeare ' Ter-Centenary ' next year. * Most people pronounce "Arbtitus" wrong, with the second syllable long. Clematis, too, which should be Cle-mStis.' In the porch, or somewhere near it, I noticed a dusty phial hanging with some dried brown stuff in it. ' It's a Lar,' he said, with a twinkle in his eyes. ' And what else is it ? ' I asked. ' An old bottle of Ipecacuanha.' I thought the woodwork of the windows a rather crude green : ' I don't know why you shouldn't like it,' he said. We looked at the great magnolia stretching up to the roof, then into the hall and saw some fossils. ' Man is so small ! ' he said, ' but a fly on the wheel.' Mrs. Clough was in the house and she and I now departed, T. coming with us as far as the little south postern opening on to the lane, afraid to go further. He said he was one day pursued full cry along the road by two fat women and sixteen children ! Another day he saw a man's face, who had climbed on the outside fence and was looking over into the garden : ' I said to him, " It isn't at all pretty of you to be peeping there! You'd better come down" — and he did.' ' Was he like an educated man } ' ' Yes — or half- educated.' In parting he said to me, ' We shall see you sometimes .? ' — which gladdened me. Mrs. Clough and I dined at Mrs. Cameron's.