‘Though her vocation was to be a poet’s wife she reminded me of a holy Abbess of old, and there was something almost cloistral about her.’ She had a gift we all felt, of harmonising and quieting by her _presence_ alone; often too tired to say much, she could contribute the right word to the talk for which Farringford was always notable. I have a special memory of once dining with the Tennysons in the company of George Eliot and Lord Acton, but it was Mrs. Tennyson’s gentle voice which seemed to take the lead. Tennyson had said: ‘I felt the peace of God come into my life at the altar before which I married her.’ And after more than forty years of marriage he dedicated his last book to her. ‘I thought to myself I would offer this work to you, This, and my love together, To you that are seventy-seven, With a faith as clear as the height of the June-blue heaven And a fancy as summer-new As the green of the bracken amid the gloom of the heather.’ The following paper left by Lady Tennyson concerning her husband might seem almost too intimate to quote here, if it did not give so truly the atmosphere at Farringford that one does not venture to omit it. ‘... He felt intensely the sin and all the evils of the world and all its mystery, and still kept an unshaken faith in the God of perfect love, perfect wisdom and infinite power, with that confident assurance of man’s immortality which pointed to a hereafter where all would be reconciled. “Be ye perfect as your Father in Heaven is perfect.” In the _life_ of Christ he found his Christianity; undisturbed by the jarring of sects and creeds. Politics were to him patriotism, and passionately did he feel for all that concerned the welfare of the Empire. Party, as far as his own personal opinion went, was unintelligible. That all should work conscientiously and harmoniously for the common good, each with such differing powers as God has given to each, recognising the value of the difference, this was his highest idea of Empire. He honoured all honest work.’ FOOTNOTES [1] He did most of his work for the Colonial Office from his sick bed, and few Secretaries of State have done more important work than he. [2] Tennyson would say, ‘some of those stupid critics say that King Arthur is meant for Prince Albert. I never thought of him.’ _DUBLIN DAYS: THE RISING._ LETTERS FROM MRS. HAMILTON NORWAY.