15 August 1881 – 21 August 1881

Sandhills. H. and I to Blackdown — Foxholes. H. draws. Tennyson and I sit with her. Beauty and picturesqueness — T. says, ' take a trim, snug, unbeautiful house, half ruin it, and you make it picturesque ; same as to ragged clothes, etc' I argue that neglect alone will not make a thing picturesque, there must be beauty in it. For a thing to be absolutely ' beautiful ' it must have regularity. The beauty in a picturesque neglected object comes from nature regain- ing her sway over it. T. would not be drawn out of the commonplaces of the subject. T. — ' I said to Tyndall, " You can but scratch the surface of things. You are like a swallow that dips on the water." He seemed to agree to this.' T. sitting on the faggot complained of the ' bees ' (flies) being ' as fell as ought.' I said I would break him a bit of oak, not esh^ and I did so. He said, ' There was a real farmer in our parts — in Lincolnshire — that used to say he heard his horse's hooves saying "Propetty ! Propetty ! Propetty ! " His name was Thimbleby. His wife, when she came into a room, would slap her pockets and say, " The day I married Thimbleby I brought him ^5000 on each shoulder ! " '