Primrose Day.—T. “All the floral displays for which we Isle of Wighters suffer are based on a mistaken version of the Queen’s meaning, when she sent a wreath of primroses for Lord Beaconsfield’s grave, inscribed with ‘His favourite flower.’ She meant Prince Albert’s, not Lord Beaconsfield’s partiality for the flower in question.”
T. “I could imitate the hoot of an owl, and once practised successfully enough to attract one which flew in through my window. The bird soon made friends with me, would sit on my shoulder and kiss my face. My pet monkey became jealous, and one day pushed the owl off a board that I had had raised some feet from the ground. The owl was not hurt, but he died afterwards a Narcissus death from vanity. He fell into a tub of water contemplating his own beauty, and was drowned.”
The Poet admired Carlyle’s French Revolution, but he seemed surprised at my having read Carlyle’s Frederick the Great; the length of it had been too much for him. I was vexed by the author’s omission of an account of Sebastian Bach’s famous interview with the king at Potsdam, and pressed on my old friend Sir George Grove to inquire the reasons of so strange an omission. He ascertained that Carlyle not only knew the fact, but the actual day and date of the occurrence. The omission, therefore, was really of malice aforethought. Quantz, the flute-player, has his appropriate niche in the monumental work, but the great Sebastian is out of it altogether; the tootler takes the cake and be hanged to him.
Great sailors and soldiers were very favourite subjects. The Poet had personally known well one naval officer who had served with Nelson.
T. “Among many odd letters I have received,[69] an American curate wrote to me that he made a sudden resolution one Sunday that he would read ‘The Charge of the Light Brigade’ instead of his ordinary sermon. An old Dorsetshire soldier who had fought at Balaclava, happened to be in the congregation, though the preacher was unaware of the fact. The verses had the happy result of the soldier giving up a bad, reckless life, and completely reforming. My poem was never meant to convey any spiritual lesson, but the very curious fact of the chance soldier and the parson’s sudden resolution has often set me thinking.”
T. “Twice, I am glad to say, I have been taken into battle; once by Sir Fenwick Williams of Kars; another officer wrote after a fight: ‘I escaped with my life and my Tennyson.’ I admire General Hamley, a good writer and accomplished soldier.”