SD1695.1. Diary Entry of William Allingham
Addendum to The Brownings’ Correspondence, vol. 19.
[London]
1 November 1853
In 1853, being in London, from Ireland, for a short holiday, I wrote to Twickenham and had a kind reply under the Poet’s hand asking me to come, and adding——‘As my wife is not well you must “tread softly and speak low.”’ So on Thursday the first of November I went from Waterloo Station to Richmond by rail, walked over Richmond Bridge—a fine day, autumnal woodlands mirrored in the river, struck a fieldpath on the left, and passing after a bit under some tall trees emerged through a little gate upon the grass-plot fronting Montpelier Terrace. As I came forward to Chapel House two other men approached the door, one of them something like T., and went in, not without a suspicious glance or two at me.
I was soon in the Poet’s much-longed-for presence, who shook hands in the most delightful, simple, friendly way, and asked me to stay and dine; then said he had to go away for a little and handed me a book for my amusement. When he returned he was carrying in his arms his baby son, called ‘Hallam’; the child had a ball to amuse him, which he liked to drop on the floor exclaiming, ‘Tha!’ or ‘Da!’ as it fell. Then T. took me up to wash my hands in the dressing-room, its window looking across several gardens, and a sunset sky shining through the trees. Returning to the drawing-room I found Mrs. Tennyson—sweet, pale, and kind; Mr. Frederick Tennyson the eldest of the brothers, and Mr. Edward FitzGerald (Omar Khayyám), the two gentlemen I had encountered at the front door. Mr. FitzGerald (‘Fitz’), an old and intimate friend, told droll stories with a quaint gravity, much amusing Mrs. Tennyson in particular. One was about old Miss Edgeworth, whom he knew, and her turban. She used to take it off for coolness and resume it when visitors were announced. One day by some mischance a strange gentleman came into the room and found her writing with her almost bald pate plainly visible. Miss E. started up with the greatest agility seized her turban which lay close by and darted through an opposite door, whence she quickly reappeared with the decoration upon her head, but unluckily turned wrong side foremost. He also told us of Mr. Edgeworth’s tombs of his three wives in the park at Edgeworthstown.
After dinner, poetry was the subject. Mr. FitzGerald stood up for Pope’s ‘Homer,’ and tried in vain to get T.’s approval.
‘You think it very wonderful surely?’
T.—‘I don’t think I do.’
‘O yes, you do, Alfred!’
T.—‘No, I do not.’
Frederick T. set Schiller above Goethe, to which I strongly objected. A. T. said: ‘If one of you is for Goethe and the other for Schiller, you’ll never agree on poetry.’ Moore was mentioned; his skilful versification in fitting words to music. T. objected to the line—
She is far from the land where her young hero sleeps.
I did not find much the matter with it, but T. would not allow ‘young hero’ to pass, the metre requiring a dactyl there: ‘I wonder you don’t see,’ he said. ‘Subaltern,’ I suggested. ‘Yes, that would do, as far as sound goes.’ We turned to Campbell’s ‘Soldier’s Dream,’ and T. objected to ‘Our bugles sang truce,’ both for the two ss and the accentuation. Of the two lines—
And thousands had sunk on the ground overpowered,
The weary to sleep and the wounded to die—
he said, ‘Those are perfect.’ Then we spoke of Shelley’s accents, and I quoted—
Of the snake’s adamantine voluminousness,
but without effect. I called Browning a vivid man, to which T. assented, adding, ‘How he did flourish about when he was here!’
Then came on Dickens’ cockney History of England, Professor Aytoun (not praised), Thackeray’s Book of Snobs, and Mr. Martin Tupper.
I spilt some port on the cloth, and T., with his usual imperturbability spread salt on it, remarking as he did so, ‘I believe it never comes out!’ Then we went upstairs to tea. I praised the view from the windows at the back. He said nothing would grow in his own garden but stones: ‘I believe they grow. I pick up all I can see, and the next time I come there are just as many.’ Then T., Frederick T., Edward F. and I to the study, where smoking and stories, some of an ammoniacal saltness. When I took leave, Mr. Frederick T. shook hands kindly, spite of our differences of opinion, and T. came with me to the front garden gate.
When I got to station the last train was gone, and I walked into London by Kew and Turnham Green, followed all along Kew Garden wall by a possible footpad, whom I outstept.
Text: William Allingham, A Diary, ed. H. Allingham & D. Radford (London, 1908), pp. 63–65.
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