... You ask me what I can remember of your Father and of mine in early days. I seem to know more than I actually remember....
In looking over old letters and papers, I have found very few mentions of the many actual meetings between them, though again and again the Poet’s name is quoted and recorded, nor can I recall the time when I did not hear it spoken of with trust and admiring regard. To this day we possess “The Day Dream,” copied out from beginning to end in my Father’s writing.
He was about twenty years of age when one day, in May 1832, he wrote down in his diary:
Kemble and Hallam sat here for an hour. Read an article in Blackwood about A. Tennyson, abusing Hallam for his essay in The Englishman.
Then again ...
Kemble read me some very beautiful verses of Tennyson’s.
And again:
Found that B. and I did not at all agree about Tennyson. B. is a clever fellow nevertheless, and makes money by magazine writing, in which I should much desire to follow his example.
After my Father’s marriage, when he was living in Coram Street, Tennyson and FitzGerald both came to see him there. In an old letter of my mother’s she describes Mr. Tennyson coming and my sitting at the table beside her in a tall chair and with a new pinafore for the occasion. FitzGerald, I think, also spoke of one of these meetings, and of my Father exclaiming suddenly, “My dear Alfred, you do talk d—— well.”
As we grew up, the Tennyson books were a part of our household life. I can especially remember one volume, which came out when I was a little girl and which my Father lent to a friend, and I also remember his laughing vexation and annoyance when she returned the book all scored and defaced with absurd notes and marks of exclamation everywhere.