II.
The real neighbours in life do not depend on vicinity only, they have a way of continuing to be neighbours quite irrespective of their different addresses. The Tennysons had ever a very faithful following of old friends wherever they happened to be, none more faithful than Julia Cameron.
As I have said the first letter quoted from Twickenham was followed by a life-long correspondence. Mrs. Tennyson had hurt her wrist in early youth and writing was often difficult to her; though until her son grew up almost the whole of her husband’s correspondence depended upon her.
Mrs. Cameron on the contrary loved her pen. She wrote a large and flowing hand. She allowed herself more space in life and on paper than is usually accorded to other people. I remember her offering to write for my father. ‘Nobody writes as well as I do’ she said.
It was in 1854 that the Tennysons first settled at Farringford. Those must have been happy days for Mrs. Tennyson, though the trial of delicate health was always there. She sends to her friend, describing the sights to be seen from her drawing-room windows:
‘The elms make a golden girdle round us now. The dark purple bills of England behind are a glorious picture in the morning when the sun shines on them and the elm trees....’
Again:
‘It is tantalizing to have a big smooth rounded down just in front of a large window and to be forbidden by bitter winter blasts to climb it. It is a pity the golden furze is not in bloom, for when it is, it makes a gorgeous contrast to the blue Solent.... Alfred has been reading “Hamlet” to me and since then has been drawn to the bay by the loud voice of the sea.... There is something so wholesome in beauty and it is not for me to try to tell of all we have here in those delicate tints of a distant bay and the still more distant headlands. These I see every day with my own eyes, and so many other things with his, when he comes back from his walk.’
Of her two boys she writes:
‘People say they are winning children, even those who are neither poets nor mothers. What should I do if I had not a poet’s heart to share my feelings for the children?’