11 May 1868 – 17 May 1868

Breakfast with Froude, 5 Onslow Gardens — wife, two girls, little boy : Ireland, English cruelties, massacre of women and children on Raghlin Island, Sorley Buie looking on from mainland — ' he tore and tormented himself,' Library : F. speaks of my Fraser articles, says ' Carlyle has a greater regard for you than for anybody almost.' Cab to Browning's, invited to luncheon. R. B. (grayer). Tennyson, the Magazines, Morris's Earthly Para- dise^ etc. ' We ought to take up the ball at the furthest point to which it has been thrown. I should be sorry to think that any one was in advance in any way of me in my new Poem.' Perhaps not quite knowing what to say I remarked bashfully : — *I have always been a believer in you,' or to that effect. R. B. — * I am glad to believe that, for your own sake among other things.' When he went out, I stayed for a chat with Miss Sarianna. ' Robert, after writing Pauline, went to St. Petersburg, overland, in connection with a diplomatic mission, expenses only paid, and returned the same way after six weeks' residence at St. Petersburg. He saw the breaking up of the ice on the Neva, and the ceremony of declaring the river open.' Away — passing through Leicester Square, meet Alan Skinner, and walk with him in the flower avenue of Covent Garden, talking of the Home trial, the Eyre case, etc. Then we dine at Bertolini's pleasantly. I show him the local curiosity, old Mr. Seymour, now eighty-two, who has dined here every day for the last forty-three years : he comes at 5, stays till 8, sits always in the box on the left-hand of the fire-place as you go up the room, which is kept for him at this time of day ; has the joint, college pudding, a gill of Marsala ; puts his feet up and sleeps or snoozes for about twenty minutes, then reads the Daily News, fidgeting a good deal with the paper, for his hands tremble. Finally he puts on hat, buttons coat up to the throat, straightens his spine and walks down the middle of the room very stiff and wooden, driving off, the waiter says, to his house somewhere near the Regent's Park. I should mention that when he comes in every evening the waiter who receives him invariably says, ' Good evening, Mr. Seymour : you are looking very well this evening, Mr. Seymour.' Looks like a solitary old bachelor, lawyer or attorney, dried up, penurious ; the daily tavern dinner a sort of loophole glimpse of the outside world. Save a word or two to the waiters he never speaks to any one at Bert's. Skinner departed and 1 went into the Alhambra and see some good dancing, but the opera-glass is a terrible disenchanter. Next me a bald civil quiet gentleman with his wife and daughters. Leotard on the ' trapeze ' wonderful.