‘We have just come back from seeing Garibaldi, a noble-looking man with a grand high square forehead, like the great men of the Elizabethan days, strong and sweet with kindly simple manners. He stroked Hallam’s head and said it was a good thing that the boys lived in the country, his own had grown up strong in the fine air of Caprera.’ One quaint story is connected with the meeting of Garibaldi and Mrs. Cameron. She longed to add a portrait of the Liberator to those she had already taken of the other great men of the time. Hearing that he was to come again to the Island she begged the Tennysons to invite him to sit to her. Mrs. Tennyson wrote in reply that he was only coming for a few hours. The Seelys were driving him over, and that during his brief visit to Farringford he could not be asked to spend most of the time posing in a dark room; they were sure Mrs. Cameron would understand the impossibility of suggesting such an arrangement. Garibaldi came with cordial interest, spoke in Italian, planted a tree, and was talking quietly to Tennyson, when Mrs. Cameron joined them unannounced, and then quite suddenly went down upon her knees, holding up her two hands in supplication. ‘Who is this poor woman? What does she want?’ asks Garibaldi much puzzled by Mrs. Cameron’s entreaties, not the less when she exclaims to explain her stained finger-tips, ‘General, listen to me! This is honourable Art, not Dirt!’ Alas! the moment was inopportune and we have no portrait of Garibaldi by Mrs. Cameron! V. The gaiety and youth of Freshwater in the ’seventies still reaches one as one thinks back. The place was full of young people. Two of Mrs. Cameron’s five sons lived at home and Hardinge, her special friend and adviser, used to come over from Ceylon from time to time to gladden his mother’s warm heart, to add up her bills, to admonish her, to cheer and enliven the home.