‘Words fail Mr. Woolner, all eloquent as he is, when he speaks of the Pattle sisters, especially of beautiful Mrs. Jackson and her three beautiful daughters.’
Among her guests Mrs. Tennyson specially enjoyed Jowett’s visits. She says:
‘He stays this week on condition of being allowed solitary mornings for work. You know this suits me well who also have work, not a little, to do. In the evening Alfred or he read aloud, and we are very happy.’
One year there is a mention of a very important personage departing from Farringford to London—‘“Tithonus,” the companion poem of “Ulysses,” going to-day to Thackeray for the Cornhill.’
There had been a plan for buying a house at Freshwater for the Camerons, and the Tennysons are helping in the negotiation for securing the land before Mr. Cameron’s return. Lawyers, business agents, purchases, furnishings take up much of the correspondence. Some people look upon business as a bore, Mrs. Cameron took it as the battle of life.
‘The garden is being laid out,’ Mrs. Tennyson writes; ‘Merwood proposes that you should have a hedge of black bay and copper beach which his wise man Pike tells him make an evergreen hedge almost impenetrable, but it is too hard a frost for planting. The ice is so thick that Hallam announces an iceberg.’
Then Mrs. Cameron writes:
‘C. is indeed well pleased to hear that all seems to prosper at Freshwater Bay for us. Yes, how dear it will be for our children to grow and live happy together playing mad pranks along the healthy lea.’
Then she continues:
‘Two days ago, in one of those rare bright days which sometimes make autumn delicious, Henry Taylor walked about his own garden for an hour with Lord John Russell discoursing politics, and suffered in no way.’