October 22, 1880.
Yesterday was Trafalgar Day. About half-a-dozen old Admirals of ninety and upwards met and dined together! I don't know what I would not have given to have been present at that most ghostly banquet! How like a dream, a shadow, a bubble, a passing vapour, and all the rest of it, must life not have seemed to these ex-midshipmen of the Victory and the Téméraire! muffling their poor old throats against this sudden frost, and toddling to table, and hobnobbing their glass in old-fashioned ways to immortal memories,
"here in London's central roar,
Where the sound of those, he wrought for,
And the feet of those he fought for,
Echo round his bones for Evermore!"
The cold is sudden and most severe. I fear it will hustle some of those dear old Admirals to rejoin their ancient comrade—the "Saviour of the silver-coasted isle."
May 1881.
"The Harbour Bay was clear as glass—
So smooth—ly was it strewn!
And on—the Bây—the moonlight lay
And—the—Shad—ow of—the Moon!"
—thus was it at 11 p.m. on the night of the 4th of May, when I looked out of my bedroom window at Plâce Castle, Fowey, on the coast of Cornwall!!!!—(and we must also remember that Isolde was married to the King of Cornwall, and lived probably in much such a place as Plâce!)