( 96 ) 
He gave her his hand to help her dowu the 
steep path into Watcombe Bay, which, as I have 
said, was his own especial bay of which he was 
extremely proud, and he showed her all the 
wealth of minute animal and vegetable life that 
fills its limpid rock-pools. As they gained the 
summit of the Beacon Down he brought to her 
mind's eye a graphic picture of the geological 
changes that have taken place in the exten- 
sive landscape upon which they looked, and 
then brought her back to the life history of the 
tiny mollusc, half-hidden in the short turf upon 
which they »vere treading. When after lunch at 
Farringford she returned to Dinibola, tliat young 
girl eciioed the remark made to rae by the late 
Dean Wellesley of Windsor, "I honoured Tennyson 
so highly for his writings that I feared to know 
him lest I might be disappointed in him ; but 
now that I have seen and known your uncle, I 
can truly say that he himself is liigher and 
greater than the greatest of all the poems he 
has written." ^ „ 
I am indebted to Mr Hardinge Garaeron,* 
the Camerons' eldest surviving son, for writing 
the following notes on his parents for this chapter; 
beginning with his father's verses — 
° "The English Channel famed in war, 
The Solent aea and winding Yar 
Have cut an islet, yet not quite 
An islet, from the Isle of V/ight, 
For 'fcwiat the Channel famed in war 
And silent sources of the Yar, 
Dry land the twentieth of a mile 
TJiiiies it to the parent isle.t 
There dwell I, fronting Afton Down, 
With little Yarmouth for my nearest town, 
The little Yarmouth where the Yar 
Though hindered by its gathering bar 
After four miles of winding reach 
At length divides the yellow beach. 
And meets iu Solent's brine the rills 
That southward flow from Hampshire's hills. 
There dwell I, nowise unreproved, 
By those who, loving and beloved, 
Think that to them I ought to give 
The remnant I have yet to live. 
Nor can they cease to wonder why 
I let the guaty Solent he 
'Twist me and them, 'twist me and all 
That men ' The World and Life ' do call. 
No idle motive hath my will inclined. 
But such as well might sway an earnest mind, 
Such as to all may gladly be confessed 
To dwell united near the chosen nest, 
And hear the Nightingale that sings unseen 
In the dark ilex, on the flowr'y green 
That carpets Farriogford's muse-haunted scene. 
* Who has had a distinguished career in Oeylon. 
+In old ma,ps this strip of dry land is absent, and 
a channel with big ships sailing on it runs all the way 
from the Solent to Freshwater Bay. _ , . , , 
"These were the graceful words m which dear 
old Mr Cameron apologised to his relations and 
friends for leaving the neighbourhood of London 
where his friends for the most part were settled, 
accepting \vilh sweet unconscious acquiescence the 
entire responsibility for a step concerniug whioh, 
to tell the truth he had hardly been consulted for 
ib was du'-iug his absence on a visit to Ceylon, 
that the puicuase of his picturesque little home 
at Freshwater had been planned and concluded by 
he impulsive spirit that with generous love and 
resistible debennination administered his house- 
Id affairs. 
MR AND MRS 0. H. CAMERON. 
"Charles Hay Cameron was a philosopher, a 
scholar, and a distinguished lawyer, who had 
done good service to the crown as a Koyal Com- 
missioner in Ceylon and as legal Member of the 
Supreme Council in Calcutta. For the control of 
domestic details he had neither p.ptitude nor 
inclination, and gladly left their management to his 
accomplished wife, who, iittle though either of them 
knew it, was perhaps theleast business-like of the 
two. Whatever she undertook, however, sheaccom- 
plished ; and as all her undertakings were inspired 
by love and carried out with ungrudginggenerosity, 
whether they concerned her nearest nnd dearest, 
or whether they had in view the health, comfort, 
or convenience of perfect strangers, it is not to 
be virondered at that she was generally beloved — 
as her husband also was for the placid grandeur 
of his cliaracter, as well as for his wisdom and 
his knowledge. It was a charming sight to aee 
Mr Cameron on a summer morning pacing up 
and down his lawn — that lawn which his wife 
(deaf to his asseverations that the little kitchen- 
garden was quite good enough for his perambu- 
lations, and that the expense of making a lawn 
was not to be thought of) had, with the magic 
Avand of £ s. d., wielded by the hand of energy, 
caused in one single night to take the places 
of cabbages and scarlet-runners. It was, I say, a 
charming sight to see him pacing up and down 
spontitig Homer or Theocritus to one of liisboys. 
And if the sight was charming there was amuse- 
ment also to be found in the announcement we 
heard him make in perfect good faith soon after 
the turf had been laid down, that he had at last 
induced his wife to sacrifice her kitchen garden, 
and carry oat his long projected plan of con- 
structing a lawn in its place. 
"Tennyson's presence, as I have already in- 
dicated, was the attraction which brought the 
Camerons to Freshwater ; as well it might, for 
to all who knew him the charm of the Laureate's 
personality was irresistible. One of the Cameron 
boys Cnow holding high office in an Eastern 
Colony) recited one day to the poet the lines of 
his father's which I have quoted. 'Does he mean 
me by the Nightingale ?' asked the bard in his 
deep tones ; 'tliat's very good of him.' It was not 
lightly that Tennyson valued Mr Cameron's 
criticism and praise, for he would bring his new 
poems and plays down to ' Dimbola Lodge' before 
they were published, and read them aloud, sitiing 
on the end of the bed (for my father, being 
rather an invalid, got up late), whilst Mrs 
Cameron listened from her own arm chair, and 
the boys were seated in reverential silence on 
the floor. 
"To estimate the depth of friendship and 
afifection that subsisted between the Tennysons 
and the Camerons we must turn from these scenes 
of everyday life when the poet invaded by the 
irrepressible photographer in search of autograph 
signatures for a bundle of her portraits of him, 
w;)uld say, 'Julia Cameron, Julia Cameron, you 
are a dreadful woman'; or when his friend on 
obtaining some le-ss cordial reception than she 
desired for some American acquaintance who had 
gone to Farringford 'to see the lion,' would say, 
'Alfred, you are a bear.' We must turn, I say 
from these scenes to the picture of the great poet 
with large tears iu bis eyes, gently patting the 
