Jan. 15th. To-day the Moxon connection of 37 years ceased. A. however anonymously still allows the widow [Mrs. Moxon] and her daughters a considerable sum a year. We would that the necessity for leaving had not arisen.1

Feb. 13th. A. read what he had done of the birth and marriage of “ Arthur.”

Feb. 16th. The agreement with Mr. Strahan came for signature. Mr. Strahan had offered to publish for A. for nothing, but that A. would not allow. A letter arrived from Mr. Gladstone in answer to one about our proposal for increasing the post-office percentage on the small deposits of the poor.

II CARLTON HOUSE TERRACE,
Feb. 16th, 1869.

DEAR MRS. TENNYSON,

Taxation and all that belongs to it form rather a painful chapter in human affairs. For good nine years and over I had to pore over that chapter night and day. I am now in a measure emancipated from that and inducted into another and more varied servitude. But the best answer I can make to your note is to claim upon the strength of it that you should within no long time give me an opportunity of conversing upon it with you by a visit to or better still a sojourn in London. My kindest remembrances to your

husband.

Sincerely yours, W. E. GLADSTONE.

Before the end of February A. had read me all "The Coming of Arthur" finished, and was reading at night Browning's "Ring and the Book "—"Pompilia and "Caponsacchi" are the finest parts.

1 Virtually through the death of Mr. E. Moxon.

1869 FITZGERALD ON BROWNING

Mr. FitzGerald wrote about Mr. Browning:

MY DEAR OLD ALFRED,

I have been thinking of you so much for the last two or three days, while the first volume of Browning's Poems has been on my table, and I have been trying in vain to read it, and yet the Anthenæum tells me it is wonderfully fine. And so sometimes I am drawn to write to you (with only one eye, the other scorched by reading with a paraffin lamp these several winters), and, whether you care for my letter or not, you won't care to answer; and yet I want to know what you yourself think of this poem; you, who are the one man able to judge of it, and magnanimous enough to think me capable of seeing what is fine in it. I never could read Browning. If Browning only gave a few pence for the book he drew from, what will posterity give for his version of it, if posterity ever find it on a stall? If Shakespeare, Milton, Dryden, Pope and Tennyson survive, what could their readers make out of this Browning a hundred years hence? Anything so utterly unlike the Ring too which he considers he has wrought out of the old gold-this shapeless thing. "You are unjust, Fitz "—that is what you will say or think, I fancy. I wish you would say as much; and also that you are not angry with me for the use I made of your name, which I am rather afraid of. And I don't at all wish to give you any such offence, and never thought, till too late, that you were jealous of such liberties-even in such a local trifle as I took it in. For you have no more loyal follower than

E. F. G.
Who can hardly see.

May 7th. A. said "Leodogran's Dream to me, just made, giving the drift of the whole poem.

May 18th. A. read the "San Graal." I doubt whether the "San Graal" would have been written but for my endeavour, and the Queen's wish, and that of the Crown Princess. Thank God for it. He has had the subject on his mind for years, ever since he began to write about Arthur and his knights.

May 25th. Mr. and Mrs. Fields and Miss Lowell [daughter of James Russell Lowell] came. A. took them to the Needles. Miss Lowell said that her grandmother, Mrs. Spence, used to shut her shutters and put crape on her knocker every 4th of July. Her grandfather was even banished for his love of England. A. assured her that he would drink a "cup of wine to her grandmother's memory. Miss Lowell saw her first cowslips here. Very pleasant guests.

June 14th. A. left Folkestone with Mr. Locker for Munich and Switzerland. Mr. Eardly joined them. Before starting, A. had written to Mr. Locker: "We will go by the Brussels route: we might possibly be detained at Paris, which seems ready to break out into fire."

Notes made by A. in Switzerland

"The last cloud clinging to the peak when all the mists have risen." "Snow and rock thro' cloud unbelievably high." "The top of the Jungfrau rich saffron colour at dawn, the faded moon beside it." "The vision over the valley of Schwarenbach.” Splendour of sunlit clouds passing over the shadowed peak of the Eiger."

CHAPTER III

TOUR IN SWITZERLAND (1869); ALSO SOME OPINIONS ON POETRY

MR. FREDERICK LOCKER-LAMPSON kindly gave me the following account of his travels with my father:

I am proud to have won the friendship of Alfred Tennyson, "quella fonte che spande di parlar si largo fiume." I first met him in Publisher Moxon's Dover Street parlour. Shortly afterwards, I think about 1864 or 1865, I stayed with him at Grayshott Hall, near Haslemere. We were cordial, we soon became intimate. I rejoice to think we have always remained so. I have often visited Tennyson at Farringford and at Aldworth, and not seldom he has been my guest. We have not met so constantly of late years. Before Hallam and Lionel Tennyson grew up, I used to see a good deal of him in London, for to be near us at 91 Victoria Street he secured a pied-à-terre in Albert Mansions opposite. It was from there that we sallied forth together to see many of his old friends, among others Carlyle, Froude and Mr. Gladstone, and we often took morning walks in the Parks and Kensington Gardens.

Tennyson and I have made two successful little tours together, to Paris in December 1868, and through

France to Switzerland in June and July, 1869. We also met at St. Moritz in 1873. I found him an exceedingly amiable and most interesting travelling companion.

It was thus that the first tour came about.

Tennyson had not been out of England for eight years or more, and we agreed that it would be very pleasant to go abroad together, if only for a week; so without more ado, we arranged that on the coming Saturday, the 28th November, he should pick me up at 91 Victoria Street, that we should catch the 4.30 p.m. train at Victoria Station (you see we were precise), and that we should sleep at Dover.

At four o'clock on the day appointed, when I was sitting ready packed and expectant, a message arrived that Tennyson's cold was so severe he could not possibly start, and further that he was to be heard of at Mr. Knowles'. I swallowed my disappointment, went to church next day, forgave Tennyson his cold, and on the Monday drove down to Clapham.

It was then and there that we solemnly agreed to set off on Wednesday, the 2nd December, which we actually did.

Shortly after quitting the wind-swept cliffs of Dover, as we were looking down on the tumbling waves, and enjoying the salt smell and keen spray that flew up towards the bows of the steamer, Tennyson said: "They are swift, glittering deeps, sharp like the back fin of a fish," and so they were.

We took life easily in Paris, went to the Louvre, especially to see the Venus of Milo and a Demosthenes seated; then there was a little picture by Nicolas Poussin, which Tennyson on the journey had spoken of with pleasure. The subject was the death of Narcissus, Echo slightly in the background, fading slowly away,