31 October 1864 – 6 November 1864

Wm. Barnes ; he praised my Stratford-on-Avon dialogue, suggested some points of dialect, but does not understand the Warwickshire. I saw him into the train at 1.40. A man of simple manners and virtuous life, and a true poet. Though he is so much my elder, I was one of the first to make a stir about him, in talk and by the Press. The Brownings, Tennyson, Clough, Rossetti, etc. etc. — it was I who introduced Barnes's Dorset Poems to each and all of them. • I met in the street old ' Lawyer M.,' who said he had been at the lecture last night, and ' thought it the damnedest stuff he ever heard,' to which I made brief reply. Dined at Captain Mildmay's. Lord Eversley (bland and courtly), Miss Shaw Lefevre, Mr. and Mrs. De la Tour, Mr. Cornwallis West (heavy swell), etc., fine dinner, powdered lacqueys. Mrs. Mildmay plays well on the concertina ; Mrs. De la Tour sings ; Chat to her and Miss Mildmay — Show them Astrologer's Bill, etc. etc. The only bit of conversation I gleaned from the late Speaker (Lord E.) was this : helping himself to a lump of ice after dinner, he turned to me smiling and said, with great grace of manner — ' Ice, I think, is agreeable at all seasons.'

To Aubrey House, where is now settled old Mr. Sellwood (father of Mrs. Tennyson, Mrs. Weld, and Mrs. Tennyson-Turner). He is tallish, very thin, with white hair and beard. He was a con- fidential Family-Solicitor of the old school, at Horncastle in Lincolnshire. Weld (once Secretary to the Royal Society) is a bit of a sportsman, is away from his family a good deal, and writes slight books of travel — a Summer here, a Winter there.