24 November 1884 – 30 November 1884

On a sudden impulse I walked up from Sandhills about 3 o'clock, to call at Aldworth, the roads greasy with a thaw, ice on pools. On Blackdown met Hallam, and then Tennyson. They hospitably determined that I was to stay the night, and would telegraph to Witley accordingly. They had come along the road to meet Miss Ritchie coming from London, who soon appeared, and we walked to the house together. In the ante-room, Miss Matilda and tea, and we all looked at a large coloured caricature, ' The Tower of Babel,' with portraits of peers, M.P.'s, etc. etc. Miss R. said, ' What a pity Mr. Gladstone sees so many sides of a subject.' T. — ' No, that he doesn't do — he cannot see all round a thing. Bacon could. Bacon says, "It were good if men in their innovations would follow the example of Time itself, which indeed innovateth greatly, but quietly, and by degrees scarce to be perceived." ' I said, ' Yes, but we ought not to wait to be forced on.' T. rejoined, ' Bacon says that too,' and went on to complain of the crude and dangerous haste of modern Reformers. (Bacon's Essays^ by the way, are mostly bundles of antitheses, and offer weapons to opposite combatants.) In the evening Tennyson questioned me again about Irish brogue, ' How do they pronounce " door " ? ' I answer, like ' boor ' : ' floor ' sometimes thus, and sometimes with a sharper u — hke ' flute.' T. has rhymed ' door ' to ' asthore ' in his Irish poem, and is uneasy in his mind about it, notwithstanding Aubrey de Vere's thinking it all right. In * Mary Donnelly ' I have — When she stood up for dancing her steps were so complete The music nearly killed itself to listen to her feet — but I avoid writing brogue, and leave it to the speaker or singer. An Irishman could read these lines without a jar in the rhymes and at the same time without saying ' complate ' in a broadly vulgar manner. But T. insists on the brogue all through his piece ; it's a brogue poem, and the rhymes ought to help emphatically. Hallam showed me his father's lines in the St. James's Gazette about the cataract. T. coming to us, said it was a cataract like those on the Nile (not precipitous), the river is supposed to divide round an island. The first word, printed ' Statesman,' he has altered into ' Steersman.' We spoke of Gladstone's oratory : I said I thought Brougham's (whom I heard two or three times) the most like it in practised verbosity and the long sentences out of which the speaker wound himself at last without a break — few memorable passages in either case. Tennyson is very fond of Gladstone as a private friend. Then spoke of Carlyle : Froude's quotation of the bitterness against Gladstone. I told Carlyle's saying about Dizzy : ' I wonder how long John Bull will allow this Jew to dance on his belly ! ' which amused Tennyson. T. or Hallam said that Gladstone (his own account) gave Carlyle offence at Rogers's table by refusing to agree in Carlyle's estimate of Goethe, and C. never forgave him. Gladstone laughed at the description of himself as ' the contemptiblest man.' T. thinks Byron's morals ought not to be considered in judging his poetry. ' Unless they come into his poetry ' (I maintain), and they certainly do. But it is less as voluptuary than as sneerer that I can't bear Lord Byron. T. thinks he was perhaps the cleverest man of his time. The more shame for him to be what he was. Byron was just before T.'s time, so there are no personal feelings one way or other such as are almost inevitably mixed with contemporary estimates. W. A. — ' Did you ever meet Coleridge ? ' T. — ' No, I was asked to visit him, but I wouldn't.' W. A. — ' Coleridge was a " noticeable man, with large gray eyes." ' T.— ' Oh yes.' We talked a good deal about metres — nothing new. T. brought on again the question of the rhymes in his Irish piece. I said, ' Have Maria (an Irish housemaid here) and try her with them.' T. on this told us a little story — ' A Suffolk vicar going into a parishioner's cottage found a Catholic engraving on the wall, the Virgin with St. Joseph on one side and St. Somebody else on the other. The woman of the house had got it by some chance.' ' Did she know what it meant .'' ' ' Well, yes, she'd made it out : *' There's the young woman, and two men making up to her, and the one man he says to t'other at last, ' 'Ave Maria i ' That's what's wrote up, you see, sir." ' Miss Ritchie played us some Beethoven finely. At Hallam's request she tried Edward FitzGerald's music (MS.) to ' Locksley Hall,' but found it amateurish in structure. Next day, wonderfully fine, T. started at his usual time (11.30) for a walk. Miss Ritchie, Hallam and I with him, and two dogs. We went by Chase Farm, z fine yellow russets still on the woods. T. stopped us to see the white doves on the outhouse. Then on the western ridge of Blackdown, looking over Valewood, Lynchmere, etc., mistily rich, hills folded on hills. In the foreground some bushes of gorse in good bloom. T. went up to one taller than himself, covered with new golden blossoms, and stood looking at it : I have the picture in my mind. Speaking of the new Franchise Bill, Miss R. said, * I suppose there's no country where the people care so much for politics as in England ^ ' T. — ' I hate politics ! I'm for the Empire, but I hate politics. The Queen said to me, " / hate politics," and no wonder she does. As to this Bill, I don't believe the people care anything about it.' In the evening Miss Tennyson reminded Alfred of the stories he used to tell his brothers and sisters. One called ' The Old Horse ' lasted for months.