‘As for me I have been fairly drowned in troubles and cares, and the waters seem to pass over one’s soul. The 20th November is now fast approaching and whilst it approaches I am not at all more prepared in heart or in deed. I have not had courage to make the necessary preparation. To-day the portmanteaux have been dragged out, and they stand to me threatening, to Charles promising departure.’ Mr. Cameron was seized with illness about this time. ‘I tell him this should be a warning to him not to leave home and home care and comforts. He assures me that the sea voyage is the best thing for him and Ceylon is the cure for all things. I look upon this illness as the tender rebuke of a friend. He requires home and its comforts. He has been having strong beef-tea thickened with arrowroot six times a day!...’ Here is Mrs. Cameron’s menu when the invalid, her husband, was recovering. What would nurses of to-day say to it? ‘The patient has poached eggs at eight, gets up at eleven, has his dinner; gravy soup and curry, at one, mulligatawny soup and meat at five, a free allowance of port wine, averaging a bottle a day. Ten drops of Jeremie’s opiate every morning, a dose of creosote zinc and gum arabic before his meals, and a dose of quinine after each meal.’ Notwithstanding home comforts and his wife’s remonstrance, the invalid started with one of his sons while she remained with the younger children. To add to her troubles Sir Henry Taylor was also very ill at this time and suffering terribly from the complications of asthma. Mrs. Cameron says: ‘He bears what he calls a hedgehog in his chest with a most divine patience, even as a good husband would bear with a bad wife, and I fear he will have his hedgehog in his chest till death do them part.’[1] Julia Cameron’s chief comfort seems to have come from her correspondence with Mrs. Tennyson. This was an eventful year for the Camerons. The first grandchild, their daughter’s child, was born. ‘May she ever be the delight of your lives,’ wrote Mrs. Tennyson; ‘I can fancy the proud happiness of the little Uncles. After all this excitement, sorrowful and joyful, after the anxious watching of so many hours you need care yourself I am sure, so now take a little thought for yourself and so best thought for those who love you.’ Already in 1859, not burglars on the lawn such as those Horace Walpole describes, but Cockneys were beginning to wander across the Farringford grounds. We read of two who are sitting on one of the gates in the garden, watching Mr. and Mrs. Tennyson under the cedars. Alfred is actually speaking of moving, so averse is he to these incursions. Later on he went for a change to Staffa and Iona. Mrs. Tennyson stayed at home with her young children, urging him to prolong his tour.