It was a red-letter evening indeed when Poet and new poem were ready for a reading, either in the little upstairs study, or in the drawing-room, where dessert was always laid after dinner, and he sat at the head of the round table in a high carved chair. Country life was in those days very simple and dinners early, so that even young children appeared with the dessert, and my mother's description of those evenings recalls very clearly some of the earliest of the pictures in memory's picture-book, as well as some later ones. I remember now a story of Tennyson's which tickled my childish sense of humour exceedingly, the point of it lying in a bit of bad French, the badness of which I could appreciate. My father had a vein of dry humour, which being akin to that of the Poet, doubtless assisted to knit the bonds of friendship, since to find the same thing humorous is almost essential to real intimacy. There was between the two the natural give-and-take of friendship, and to the warm appreciation given as well as received, Emily Tennyson's letters bear constant witness. "Mr. Bradley's intellectual activity, so warmed by the heart, is very good for my Ally," she writes; and again: "I know you would be pleased if you could hear Ally recur to his talks with Mr. Bradley, and one particular talk about the Resurrection and [illegible]. It is difficult to express admiration, so I won't say any more, except God bless you both." My father was now in the full stress of his great work at Marlborough, and spent his summer holidays for the most part in Switzerland, but Christmas and Easter still often found us at Freshwater. In 1866 Tennyson's eldest son, Hallam, was sent to school at Marlborough. "I am not sending my son to Marlborough--I am sending him to Bradley," he said in reply to the Queen's question. On another occasion he said: "I am sending him to Marlborough because Bradley is a friend of mine, and Stanley tells me that Marlborough is the best school in England." There followed three visits to Marlborough during the four years longer that my father remained there. The second one, when Lady Tennyson came with her husband, was brought about by the severe illness of the cherished son, and lasted seven weeks. At first the anxiety about the boy was too great to admit of pleasure either to them or to my parents, to whom--especially to my mother--Hallam was almost as a son of their own. But later, and during the Poet's other visits, there were walks and drives in Savernake forest, beautiful at all seasons of the year, and over the windy spaces of the gray silent downland, where "the chronicles of wasted Time" are written in worn and mysterious hieroglyphs of stone, and fosse, and hillock. During the first visit "The Victim" was written by him in the room called the green dressing-room, looking out on the clipped yews and tall lime-circle of Lady Hertford's old garden. In summer-time he had great pleasure in the