20 August 1888 – 26 August 1888

Ride to Blackdown, in lane meet Tennyson carriage. He with Miss Boyle and Hallam, who says, ' we were going to you.^ I ride after them. Find Miss B. seated in our garden, T. wander- ing in the field. ' I wonder you can leave this place.' Take him in and show him some drawings, which he likes. ' That's Carlyle — looking very grumpy.' Tea in garden. He admires the tall mullein. I bring up Emerson's comparison of Salisbury spire to the great mullein. T. grunted, and said * This doesn't taper.' I gave him a white rose, and said ' Perhaps the ladies would rather have jasmin.' T. — ' You called me Jasmin, once.' I said ' I don't think you were quite satisfied with it.' T. murmured something which I took to mean, ' No, — not satisfied with it.' I said jasmin grew on a cottage I lived in when a child, and it had most delightful associations in my mind. While looking at a drawing with daffodils, T. said ' Millais put daffodils along with wild -roses in his Ophelia picture. I pointed this out to him. He said he had painted the rose-bush from nature ; and some time after when he was finishing he wanted a bit of yellow and sent to Covent Garden and got the daffodils. I told him it was quite wrong.' I took T. part way up the path on our common to see the view and showed him his own hill ; ' this is a beautiful country,' he said. In shaking hands with me he said ' I don't think I shall do the " Banshee." You have done one } ' ' Yes, and published it lately in a volume.' ' I've not seen it. I'm so much obliged to you for not sending it to me — get heaps every day.' I said ' Oh, I promised long ago never to send you anything.' Miss Boyle and I laughed.