When I was writing that same magazine article from which I have already given an extract, I asked Edward FitzGerald if he could help me, and if I might quote anything from his letters and from _Euphranor_:
"MY DEAR ANNE RITCHIE"--Mr. FitzGerald wrote--"Your letter found me at Aldburgh on our coast where I come to hear my old sea talk to me, as more than sixty years ago, and to get a blow out on his back. Pray quote anything you please, provided with Alfred's permission and no compliments to the author.
"I do not think my _fanfaron_ about him would be of any such service as you suppose; strangers usually take all that as the flourish of a friendly adviser, and would rather have some facts, such as that perhaps of his words about the Raphael and the little Hallam's worship of the bed-post.[27] I suppose it was in 1852 at Seaford near Brighton. I can swear absolutely and can now hear and see him as he said it; so don't let him pretend to gainsay or modify that, whether he may choose to have it quoted or not.
"Ah, I have often thought that I might have done some good service if I had kept to him and followed him and noted the fine true things which fell from his lips on every subject, practical or aesthetic, as they call it.
"Bayard Taylor, in some essays lately published, quotes your Father saying that Tennyson was the wisest man he knew--which, by the way, would tell more in America than all I could write or say.
"Your finding it hard to make an article about A. T. will excuse my inability to help you, as you asked. I did not know (as in the case of your Father also) where to begin or how to go on without a beginning.--Ever yours,
In 1863, just after our Father's death, my sister and I came to Freshwater. It seemed to us that perhaps there more than anywhere else we might find some gleam of the light of our home, with the friend who had known him and belonged to his life and whom he trusted.
We arrived late in the afternoon. It was bitter weather, the snow lying upon the ground. Mrs. Cameron had lent us a cottage, and the fires were already burning, and as we rested aimlessly in the twilight, we seemed aware of a tall figure standing in the window, wrapped in a heavy cloak, with a broad-brimmed hat. This was Tennyson, who had walked down to see us in silent sympathy.