9 August 1880 – 15 August 1880

Helen and I with the babes to Tennyson's. He sits on chair beside us. Two Miss s call (very old family). Tennyson tells us afterwards ' A former Lord H , queer old fellow — was found on his knees near the kitchen one day riddling the cinders — he looked up and said, "Dick never riddles 'em right." He kept his two daughters in the nursery till they were thirty, and then they climbed over the garden wall and ran away. The young ladies to-day would have my autograph — ugh ! I said, " the glory of your presence has got it. I would never have sent it if you had asked by letter." ' Fair and dark people — dark people are thinner skinned. T. — ' I am. A countryman in the North said, " A wouldn't be as black as him for summat ! " At Dieppe the touter appealed to me as French, Spanish, Italian — and at last said in astonishment " Vous etes Anglais I " But my brother Frederick, a white and rosy man, got much more admiration when we travelled together — he was adored by all the landladies and chambermaids.' ' The New Forest is the finest thing in England, the most peculiar. There are mountains elsewhere, and cliffs, and lakes. When Palgrave and 1 came back from Spain we went to the New Forest, and as we lay under great trees with a green heaven above our heads I said, " We saw nothing so fine as this in Spain," and he said, " No." '