[113c] This card is now in my possession, ‘Mr. Alfred Tennyson. Farringford.’ On it is written in pencil, “Dear old Fitz—I am passing thro’ and will call again. [The last three words are crossed out and ‘am here’ is written over them]. A.T.” FitzGerald enclosed it to Thompson (Master of Trinity) and wrote on the back, ‘P.S. Since writing, this card was sent in: the Writer followed with his Son: and here we all are as if twenty years had not passed since we met.’
[114a] About the same time he wrote to me:—“Tennyson came here suddenly ten days ago—with his Son Hallam, whom I liked much. It was a Relief to find a Young Gentleman not calling his Father ‘The Governor’ but even—‘Papa,’ and tending him so carefully in all ways. And nothing of ‘awfully jolly,’ etc. I put them up at the Inn—Bull—as my own House was in a sort of Interregnum of Painting, within and without: and I knew they would be well provided at ‘John Grout’s’—as they were. Tennyson said he had not found such Dinners at Grand Hotels, etc. And John (though a Friend of Princes of all Nations—Russian, French, Italian, etc.—who come to buy Horse flesh) was gratified at the Praise: though he said to me ‘Pray, Sir, what is the name of the Gentleman?’”
[114b] On September 11th, 1877, he wrote to me: ‘You ought to have Hugo’s French Shakespeare: it is not wonderful to see how well a German Translation thrives:—but French Prose—no doubt better than French Verse. When I was looking over King John the other day I knew that Napoleon would have owned it as the thing he craved for in the Theatre: as also the other Historical Plays:—not Love of which one is sick: but the Business of Men. He said this at St. Helena, or elsewhere.’
[115] It was in 1867. See ‘Letters,’ ii. 90, 94.
[116] Life, vi. 215. Letter to Lockhart, January 15th, 1826.
[117a] These expressions must not be looked for in the Decameron, as ‘emendato secondo l’ordine del Sacro Concilio di Trento.’
[117b] See ‘Letters,’ ii. 203. In a letter to me dated November 4th, 1876, he says:—
“I have taken refuge from the Eastern Question in Boccaccio, just as the ‘piacevoli Donne’ who tell the Stories escaped from the Plague. I suppose one must read this in Italian as my dear Don in Spanish: the Language of each fitting the Subject ‘like a Glove.’ But there is nothing to come up to the Don and his Man.”
[118] Book XVIII., vol. vii. p. 188.
[119a] See ‘Letters,’ ii. 208.