When Mrs. Allingham in wandering round a garden came upon this bed of flowering leeks, and, "singularly moved to love the lovely that are not beloved," at once sat down to paint it in preference to a more ambitious display in the front garden that was at her service, her friends probably considered her artistic perception to be peculiar, and some there may be who will deem the honour given to it by introduction into these pages to be more than its worth. But it has more than one claim to recognition here, for it is unusual in subject, delicate in its violet tints, not unbecoming in form, and is here disassociated from the disagreeable odour which usually accompanies the reality. [Illustration: 69. THE APPLE ORCHARD _From the Water-colour in the possession of Mrs. Dobson._ Painted about 1877.] Originally, no doubt, a study of one of those subjects which artists like to attack, a misshapen tree presenting every imaginable contortion of foreshortened curvature to harass and worry the draughtsman,--a tree, specimens of which are too often to be found in old orchards of this size, whose bearing time has long departed, and who now only cumber the ground, and with their many fellows have had much to do with the gradual decay of the English apple industry. CHAPTER IX TENNYSON'S HOMES Few poets have been so fortunate in their residences as was the great Poet Laureate of the Victorian era in the two which he for many years called his own. Selected in the first instance for their beauty and their seclusion, they had other advantages which fitted them admirably to a poet's temperament. Farringford, at the western end of the Isle of Wight, was the first to be acquired, being purchased in 1853; it was Tennyson's home for forty years, and the house wherein most of his best-known works were written. At the time when it came into his hands communication with the mainland was of the most primitive description, and the poet and his wife had to cross the Solent in a rowing-boat. So far removed was he from intrusion there that he could indulge in what to him were favourite pastimes--sweeping up the leaves, mowing the grass, gravelling the walks, and digging the beds--without interruption. Many of the visitors which railway and steamship facilities brought to the neighbourhood in later years felt that he set the boundary within which no foot other than his own and that of his friends should tread at an extreme limit. Golfers over the Needles Links--persons who, perhaps, are prone to consider that whatever is capable of being made into a course should be so utilised--were wont to look with covetous eyes over a portion of the downs that would have formed a much-needed addition to their course, but over which no ball was allowed to be played. But the pertinacity of the crowd, in endeavouring to get a sight of the Laureate, necessitated an inexorable rule if the retreat was to be what it was intended, namely, a place for work and for rest.