Our next visit was in March 1890, when, with my wife’s sister, we stayed at Lambert’s Hotel. On Friday, March 28, we went to tea at Farringford, and found him in his little sun-trap of a summer-house, the evening sun playing full upon us, and bringing into perfect beauty the green lawn, the spreading trees, and the clumps of daffodils. He began by speaking of himself as depressed, but soon smiled away all such symptoms, and made us laugh with a story of the Duke of Wellington, when some prosy personage addressed him with a flattering compliment. He always seemed to enjoy anecdotes of the Great Duke. He was wearing a red cap which, in the sunlight, became him well; but he said playfully that Lady Tennyson disliked it as too suggestive of a “bonnet rouge.” Something, I forget what, led to a reference to the well-known verse:
Birds in the high Hall-garden
When twilight was falling,
Maud, Maud, Maud, Maud,
They were crying and calling.
He once asked a rather gushing lady what sort of birds she supposed these to be. “Nightingales,” was the rather sentimental answer. “Who ever heard a nightingale say ‘Maud’?” was the somewhat stern reply. “They were rooks of course.”
My wife mentioned that she and her sister had been reading the “Idylls” of late. “Do you mean my Īdylls,” he said; “I am glad you don’t call them Ĭdylls.” We soon got talking of his recently published “Crossing the Bar.” When asked what was the precise grammatical reference in the third line of the verse:
But such a tide as moving seems asleep,
Too full for sound and foam,
When that which drew from out the boundless deep
Turns again home,
he answered rather emphatically, “I meant both human life[61] and the water.” He went on, “They say I write so slowly. Well, that poem came to me in five minutes. Anyhow, under ten minutes.” Afterwards, when I had some quiet talk with Lady Tennyson, she confirmed what he had implied as to the rapidity with which he usually composed.
At this point I shall do well to insert extracts from my dear wife’s journal, describing a few incidents in what proved our last visit to Farringford. It was at the end of January 1892, when the Poet, born on August 6,[62] 1809, was well on in his eighty-third year. She writes as follows:
VISIT TO FARRINGFORD, JANUARY 1892
By Mrs. Montagu Butler
On January 26 Montagu and I left our two small boys at Eton Villa, Shanklin, to spend the night at Lambert’s Hotel, Freshwater. After leaving our traps at the hotel we walked up to Farringford in time for two o’clock lunch. I sat next the Poet at table, and had some talk with him. He spoke of the metres of Horace, and said that he always thought his Sapphics uninteresting and monotonous. “What a relief it is,” he said, “when he does allow himself some irregularity, for instance: