3 November 1884 – 9 November 1884

Tennyson wished me to bring Mr. Alfred R. Wallace to visit him. It was arranged that W. and I should go over to-day. Mr. Wallace came by the 12.35 train from Godalming, and Helen and I (she specially invited by Hallam) joined at Witley. At Haslemere we found Hallam with a pony-carriage. T. ' not well ' — looking languid and rather sad. At luncheon, talk about the tropic woods : Wallace said you would find one kind of tree in flower for about a week, and at another time another kind of tree in flower for a short time, but you might come again and again and find no flowers at all ; there were never in the Tropics such masses of floral colour as in an English Spring. T. was disappointed at this, and asked about the trailing plants. W. called them ' glorious,' but more for the rich drapery than the colours. The palm-tops are mostly a grayish green. We digressed to novels. Mr. W. (rather to my surprise) reads ' a good many in the course of the year,' but does not hurry over them. He and Hallam exchanged names of novels to be ordered from the Circulating Library, Lord Tennyson being an incessant novel-reader. While we were speaking of woods etc. T. said, ' Bayard Taylor, who has been everywhere, said the most beautiful sight he ever saw was a wood in Lapland covered with frozen rain and the sun shining on it.' Also, ' Sir Robert Kane said the most awful thing he ever experienced was the absolute silence of an Arctic winter.' Mr. Wallace, Hallam and I went round the grounds, looking at various conifers. To the Study. W. gave details of table-rapping, table-prancing, and so forth, his own experiences and other people's. He never doubts any statement what- ever in favour of ' Spiritualism,' and has an answer to every objection. ' Maskelyne and Cooke do wonderful things.' — * Yes, partly by the help of mediumship.' ' The " Spirits " often give foolish and misleading answers.' — ' Yes, as might be expected ; that only proves them to be human beings.' ' Why noises and motions of tables ? Why these particular "Mediums"?' — 'Such are the conditions; why, we do not know.' W. said it was absurd to suppose that Matter could move itself. I ventured to remark that Matter, so far as we can penetrate, does move itself, indeed is per- petually in motion. He rejoined that in table-rapping etc. the phe- nomena were manifestly governed by an intelligence like our own. The means of communication between the Unseen World and ours were few and difficult. Here Tennyson said, 'A great ocean pressing round us on every side, and only leaking in by a few chinks ' ? — of which Wallace took no notice, but went on to describe instances of spirit-writing on slates, by Slade and others. (I fear my tone all through was hardly respectful to the spirits.) Somehow or other a sudden digression was made to politics, and W. came out with a strong opinion of the worthlessness of the House of Lords and the absurdity of the hereditary principle. T. said, ' I think I respect it more than the other House.' W. — ' The other House wants reforming very badly, no doubt.' The Duke of Marlborough was mentioned. Wallace denounced the purchase of his Raphael with the public money as ' scandalous ' — would not buy any pictures or works of art with the taxpayers' money — ' let wealthy men buy and present them to the nation if they think fit/ Egypt somehow came in, and Wallace thought we ought to leave the Mahdi alone. He is perhaps a great man, and at all events we know no harm of him. T. — * I know no good of him.' W. A. — ' Would you not like to see the Nile ? ' T. — ' I'd much rather see tropical nature, but now I never shall.' And then he questioned W. again about tropical scenery, producing a poem in MS., from which he read two or three lines about palms and purple seas. He wanted to know if the palm-trees could be seen rising distinct above the rest of the forest. W. — ' Yes, on a hill-side.' * What colour are they } ' ' Rather light — gray-green.' ' Is an expanse of tropical forest dark, seen from above ? ' ' Not particularly ; less so than an English wood- land.' T. — ' Then I must change the word " dark." ' He writes his poetry now in trim small quarto books, in limp covers, the writing as neat as ever, tho' sometimes a little shaky. He keeps these books handy and takes them up very often, both at set times and odd moments, considering and correcting, and frequently reading new poems aloud from them, first to his family and afterwards to visitors. After the compositions are put into type he usually keeps them by him in proof for a long time, months or even years, reconsidering and perfecting every part. T. referred with praise to Wallace's book. Tropical Nature, and remarked, ' You have said something very bold about Matter ? I think Matter more mysterious than Spirit. I can conceive, in a way, what Spirit is, but not Matter.' W. — ' I conceive Matter not as a substance at all, but as points of energy^ and that if these were withdrawn Matter would disappear.' T. said this was something like his own notion. W. — ' So far from a material atom being indestruc- tible, I believe that all the Matter in existence might be immediately destroyed by the withdrawal of the sustain- ing Force.'