Mr. Cameron would not land at Malta; it had painful memories for him, he had been there as a child with his beautiful mother, Lady Margaret, and his father who was Governor of the Island. ‘Our voyage is fabulously beautiful,’ she says, and she dwells on the pleasure it gives them to make it easier for an invalid on board by bestowing their most comfortable chair upon the suffering lady.
As they glide through the Suez Canal Mrs. Cameron writes:
‘It is an honour to the French nation that in the face of all assertions of impossibility from men of all countries, Lesseps persevered and achieved this mighty enterprise. Whilst I write we pass a pier and at the end of it is a whole flock of camels, with camel drivers waiting to see if any one cares to cross the Desert; no one does care, so we glide on.
‘The only time I crossed, my Har was a baby in my arms whom I never for one instant put down. We crossed through a beautiful starlight night. I have never forgotten the rising of the morning star nor the utter silence, one seemed to lose the idea of time and to feel in a land that could have had no beginning and still less could have no end.’
As she finishes her letter the young moon is hanging over the vessel.
‘O what good it does to one’s soul to go forth. How it heals all the little frets and insect stings of life, to feel the pulse of the large world and to count all men as one’s brethren and to merge one’s individual self in the thoughts of the mighty whole!’
Here is another letter written a year later to Mrs. Tennyson:
Easter, 1876.
‘My Own Beloved and Sweetest Friend,—This day’s post brought me your letter, so strong in love, so feeble in calligraphy, in the wielding of that pen which is meant to say so much but which now trembles in the hand which used never to tire. Its very trembling is expressive of all that you have it in your heart to say. How glad I am that your sons, that Alfred’s sons, should be what they are! How truly does an answer seem to be given in them to your life of holy prayer! I do so devoutly wish that you could spend next winter here, the air is so uplifting and so life-giving. I think my illness on arrival was the result of all that I suffered mentally and bodily, the hurry of that decision, the worry of all minutiæ, the anguish of some partings, the solemnity of all, the yielding to my husband’s absorbing desire, and the yearning need to live with my absent children, all this is satisfied and beyond all this, beyond the inward content, there is certainly a strength given by the aspect of nature in this Island.’
After describing Ceylon and its beauties, the mother returns to the theme she loves best of all, that of her son Hardinge, who had just paid her a visit.