When we were both called to the Bar, Anson and I went the old Home Circuit and the Kent Sessions together for some years and during the Assize fortnight at Croydon, where in those days important London causes were tried and the provincial town was full of big merchants and City solicitors, we were more than once guests of the Daniells at Fairchilds, their beautiful country place outside the town. John Daniell, our host, was married to Katherine Bradshaw, a cousin of my mother, who still retained much of the beauty and charm which earlier had inspired some characteristic lines of Tennyson; I may be pardoned for quoting them, as I do not think they have ever yet found their way into print: ‘Because she bore the iron name Of him who doomed the King to die, I dreamt her one of stately frame With look to awe the passer-by, But found a maiden tender, shy, With soft blue eyes and winning, sweet, And longed to kiss her hand and lie A thousand summers at her feet.’ One day Katherine Bradshaw, driving with her mother and Alfred Tennyson, looked at her watch. ‘Don’t do that,’ said the Poet; ‘if it looks at you it will stop!’ She was as clever and delightful as she was beautiful, and those were happy days when we lounged in the summer evening in that beautiful garden, so near and seeming so far from the ‘fumum et opus strepitumque’ of the noisy Courts we had just left. Her children, who still live there, gathered round us while we read or recited poetry. I can remember Alfred Thesiger’s rendering of Tennyson’s ‘Gardener’s Daughter,’ all its vivid nature touches appealing the more to us because we were camped where ‘the cedar spread his dark-green layers of shade,’ ‘the voices of the well-contented doves’ forming a fit accompaniment to the musical lines. I think the presence of her brother Henry Bradshaw, the beloved Cambridge Librarian, who much resembled his sister, added a charm which those of his friends who are still living will recall with gratitude and affection. The tragedy which burst like a thunder-cloud upon this peaceful holiday group fell with its full weight upon Willie Anson. I shall never forget that day in August 1873 when a messenger of ill tidings broke in upon us with the news of the terrible accident at Wigan which wrecked the carriage in which Sir John Anson and his two daughters were travelling north, killing him instantly. The calamity touched me the more closely as the father and sisters were on their way to Poltalloch, where I was myself shortly due for one of those happy ‘Autumns in Argyllshire’ which had already begun.