Mrs. Tennyson thus described "her wild house amongst the pine trees":-- The golden green of the trees, the burning splendour of Blackgang Chine, and the red bank of the primeval river contrasted with the turkis blue of the sea (that is our view from the drawing-room) make altogether a miracle of beauty at sunset. We are glad that Farringford is ours. Although at times the weather can be cold and bleak enough in this sheltered corner of the Isle of Wight, and The scream of a madden'd beach Dragged down by the wave must oftentimes have "shocked the ear" in the Farringford house, the climate is too relaxing an one for continued residence, and Tennyson's second house, Aldworth, was well chosen as a contrast. Aubrey Vere thus describes it:-- It lifted England's great poet to a height from which he could gaze on a large portion of that English land which he loved so well, see it basking in its most affluent beauty, and only bound by the inviolate sea. The house stands at an elevation of some six hundred feet above the sea, on the spur of Blackdown, which is the highest ground in Sussex, on a steep side towards the Weald, just where the greensand hills break off. It is some two miles from Haslemere, and just within the Sussex border. Two of the drawings connected with these houses, which are reproduced here, were painted before Tennyson's death, namely, in 1890. The house at Farringford was drawn in the spring, when the lawn was pied with daisies, and the Laureate required his heavy cloak to guard him from the keenness of the April winds. The kitchen-garden at Farringford, which somewhat belies its name, for flowers encroach everywhere upon the vegetables, and the apple trees rise amidst a parterre of blossom, was painted in its summer aspect, when it was gay with pinks, stocks, rockets, larkspurs, delphiniums, aubrietias, eschscholtzias, and big Oriental poppies. Tennyson visited it almost daily to take the record of the rain-gauge and thermometer, which can be descried in the drawing about half-way down the path. The kitchen-garden at Aldworth opens up a very different prospect to the banked-up background of trees at Farringford. Standing at a very considerable elevation, it commands a magnificent view over the Weald of Sussex. The spot is referred to in the poem "Roses on the Terrace" in the volume entitled _Demeter_, thus-- This red flower, which on our terrace here, Glows in the blue of fifty miles away; as also in the lines-- Green Sussex fading into blue, With one grey glimpse of sea. It was this view that the dying poet longed to see once again on his last morning when he cried, "I want the blinds up! I want to see the sky and the light!" The time of year when Mrs. Allingham painted it was October, and a wet October too, for two umbrellas even could not keep her from getting wet through.