19 June 1865 – 25 June 1865

London to Lymington. Lym- ington looks very pretty, and the view from my windows in Prospect Place is delightful. I send ' Home- ward Bound' to Dalziel for his book.

Very fine. Walk to Aubrey House, Mrs. Weld, Agnes ; boat to Hurst Castle, the Jersey steamer passes ; fortifications, shingle poppies. Dinner- tea. Mr. Selwood — pleasant day — walk home by field-paths under the stars.

After Custom-House, steamer to Island. Farringford, hid my bag — find some people in the hay -field and Mrs. Cameron photographing everybody like mad. Went to house : A. T. says, ' Are you come to stay } ' I confess the bag and we go to fetch it. Mrs. Cameron focuses me, but it proves a failure and I decline further operations. She thinks it a great honour to be done by her. Dress for dinner. Mr. King, the publisher, at dinner and Mrs. King. Talk of Ireland, — -Petrie and other men, of whom A. T. hardly knows the existence. The cholera. T.'s den at top of house ; smoking, — Public Schools, Charter- house, etc., effect of a few bad boys on the rest — Tupper — Swinburne. The Kings take leave, are at the Albion Hotel. I sit reading and A. T. comes down to me, Farringford^ Sunday^ June 25. — Fine — at breakfast A. T. with his letters, one from D. of Argyll. Swin- burne— Venables. Out and meet the Kings — Mrs. Cameron. Return to Farringford. Dinner (which is at 6.30 always). Sitting at claret in the drawing-room we see the evening sunlight on the landscape. I go to the top of the house alone ; have a strong sense of being in Tennyson's ; green summer, ruddy light in the sky. When I came down to drawing-room found A. T. with a book in his hand ; the Kings expectant. He accosted me, ' AUingham, would it disgust you if I read " Maud " } W^ould you expire ? ' I gave a satisfactory reply and he accordingly read ' Maud ' all through, with some additions recently made. His interpolated comments very amusing. ' This is what was called namby-pamby ! ' — ' That's wonderfully fine ! ' — ' That was very hard to read ; could you have read it ? I don't think so.' What strikes me most in ' Maud ' this time, as always, is the section beginning, ' O that 'twere possible after long grief and pain.' It contains the germ of the whole^ and was written many years ago. Upstairs, talk of Poe. I praise Emerson, to which T. rather demurs but says little. By and by he asks me to lend him Emerson's books, which I will gladly do. I feel his naturalness much.