A Century of Family Letters [CHAP, xm 



death. Her surroundings were delightful the little low 

 white house, the sunny drawing-room, the sleek black 

 spaniel Crab, and the well-cared-for garden, with a wealth 

 of southern shrubs, and peeps of the blue sea beyond. 



Fanny Allen to her great-niece Henrietta Darwin. 



HEYWOOD LANE, January 8th [1869]. 



Harry, like you, tried in the evening to make me a convert 

 to your beloved Tennyson with no great result, either of you. 

 I am going on with my reading of Shakespeare's historical 

 plays, and yesterday I came on the murder of Humphrey, 

 Duke of Gloster, and the death of Beaufort; and Tennyson's 

 " bland and mild " Shakespeare grated like gravel between 

 my teeth one, who could so measure such a genius has no 

 wings to soar into the higher regions of poetry; he must 

 content himself to write such things as Locksley Hall. 



Emma Darwin to her aunt Fanny Allen. 



MY DEAR AUNT FANNY, Monday, Feb. 8 [1869]. 



You were quite right hi telling me I should like 

 Bunsen if I persevered. What an angelic nature he had, and 

 how lucky he was to have a wife quite as high and spiritually 

 minded as himself, and his sons and daughters seem all to 

 have been made of the same stuff. It is consoling to read 

 such an intensely happy life as his was from beginning to 

 end. I believe it was his character, and not his talents, 

 which made him so looked up to. I cannot see any talent 

 in his letters and, when he talks of his own views and aims, 

 he is so hazy and unclear that I have never been able to 

 fathom what his particular aim and study was. I shall be 

 quite sorry to finish the book, and it does one good to enter 

 into such a mind. . . . 



Yours, my dearest Aunt F., 



EM. D. 



