Join me and my author friends while they tell you some of their own ghost stories on this Halloween!

Well, on this Halloween you will find a few ghost stories told by some of my author friends and new friends. You see, as usual I had this idea to do one group blog post. I contacted my friends asking them if they had any ghostly experiences and if I could share them here with all of you. I gave them very short notice and to my wonderful surprise they didn't let me down. Within hours, I had wonderful emails with such tales of hauntings...So, to my dear ones I thank you very, very much for once again not letting me down. Also, I will share each friend's story followed by a link to their website for more information about them.

I will start with my own experience. It's only fair now isn't it.  Well, last July, I visited Lincolnshire, England staying with  my friend Debbie Jenner.  I was there for four days and the first two days went on beautifully no strange noises, no weird sounds nothing. The third night, I went to bed as usual in the upstairs bedroom right next to Debbie and her gorgeous cocker spaniel Molly.  You know that feeling when you are in a deep sleep and you feel something softly touching your chest area between your neck and collarbone? Well, in my sleep I felt soft touches around that area, not rough at all. Just enough touches to bring me out of a deep sleep. I was alone in bed in that room. I opened my eyes, the digital clock said, 1:30 a.m. I sat up and looked to my right against the wall next to my bed stood an older aged woman dressed in a top and pants looked as from this era not another century at all. She was not exactly solid but not thin or smoky in form either. She was solid enough I could make out her features. Her mouth was moving quickly but I could not hear a voice, at the same time her hand extended pointing a finger at me in a "go away" motion!  She was not happy I was in that room. I was half asleep and not feeling threatened or as if she would hurt me but scared enough my first reaction was to put out both my hands in front me palms up toward her while saying loudly, "no no no!"  Immediately after that she literally disappeared before my eyes. I thought for sure Debbie would have heard me or Molly would start barking but nothing. I went back to sleep and when I woke up later I went downstairs said good morning to Debbie and said, "Do you know you have a ghost?"  I stayed one last night as I was leaving that next morning to drive to the Isle of Wight.  I can happily report nothing else happened. I did say before bed something to the effect, "I mean no harm and I only mean to come with love as it is so beautiful here."  I slept well, woke as usual and got ready for my teary goodbyes. I would stay with Debbie again, if she would ever have me back!

From Debbie Jenner, 

My one encounter with a ghost is when I was doing panto. This is about 35 years ago if not longer. It was in the Arts Theatre,Cambridge. 

It was a bad winters evening and many of the audience couldn't make it into the city. We were doing a performance, I was onstage and I looked into the auditorium and saw in a large gap where a coach load of people should have been sitting, but was empty, a figure in a 3-cornered hat and large overcoat. He didn't look all quite there, was quite pale looking, but because the auditorium is dark and when you're onstage you can't see them very well, I didn't think much of it. 

Anyway I went offstage and told one of the stagehands who said that I'd see whoever it was - I forget now, but apparently the theatre was reputedly haunted and others had seen him too in previous productions. 

Debbie Jenner is a singer, dancer, choreographer, who promotes awareness of the early life of Alfred Tennyson in Lincolnshire, England, the heart of Tennyson country. She works tirelessly with such places as his birthplace, Somersby Rectory giving walking tours of the famous Wolds and so much more. 
To learn a bit more visit her website, Tennysons Birthplace

 

From Mrs. Middleton herself, take it away, Gail,

Ok, well it was a story that was told to me in the Bookshop about a month ago...

A customer came in with her sister who lives on the East of the Island. The lady bought a book about Fairies, and was chatting about when she used to live in Freshwater in the seventies. 

We got talking about Dimbola because of the JMC£20 Note Campaign, and she said "Well, I could tell you things about Dimbola" (funnily enough I have heard that phrase before!) 

I asked her what she meant- and we were off...

Apparently back in the 1970's, prior to any talk about saving the building, when half of the house was set for demolition, this lady-whom I shall call Wendy and another- who was a Healer, were in the vicinity between Dimbola and the Farringford, doing some healing.

Suddenly, the healing lady's hands appeared to be stained yellow, and she spoke in a voice that was not her own. She said that she was Julia Cameron, and that she lived at Dimbola. Neither women knew who she was,and the session broke up.

Sometime later, Wendy was in Newport and passed a Bookshop called Micawbers. In the window was a book about Julia Margaret Cameron. Realising that this was the woman who had come through at the healing session,she bought the book, and took it to her friend. They decided on another visit to Freshwater Bay.

 

 As they walked up from the Bay, they could see a woman standing in the doorway at Dimbola. I asked her how she was dressed, and she described her as wearing a shawl over a long dress. The woman spoke to them as they got near. She said that this was her house, and that half of it was being pulled down- and she didn't want that to happen. She told them where she had played her piano, and that a green vase had fallen and smashed, and that there were pieces under the floorboards.

 

 Apparently- this was true- sometime later, pieces of the vase were found.

At the end of the story- we joked about the spirit of Julia Margaret Cameron, saying that she must be at it again, calling for troops to do her bidding and help her become the face on the new £20 note!

Gail Middleton lives on the Isle of Wight and owns a bookshop called, 'Mrs. Middleton Shop.' She also is the author of, 'The Freshwater Circle and what Lewis Carroll found there.' I am one of the very lucky people who have visited Gail in her bookshop and sat and talked about Julia Margaret Cameron over a few cups of tea. I recommend buying her tshirts!

So, if you would like to find out more about Gail and her beautiful shop, she sells more goodies on her website,  mrsmiddletonsshop

Author, Kevin Marsh shares his ghost story, 

When on holiday a few years ago on the Isle of Wight, Maria and I stayed in a lovely family owned mansion house. It was not at all a dismal haunted kind of place so I didn’t expect to experience anything spooky.

Just after 2am one morning I was suddenly woken by a rustling sound. I was convinced that someone had just rushed past my bed. It was dark in the room so I couldn’t see anything but the illuminated face of the clock on the bedside table. The air was perfumed with a sweet floral scent that was not at all unpleasant, so I turned on the light and went across the room to the huge windows that opened up onto the garden. I thought that the lovely smell must be coming from the plants growing just outside the window, so throwing them open I leaned out to discover that the smell was definitely not coming from the garden. Turning back into the room, the scent had almost faded, the air was warm and I was left with a calming feeling.

It was not at all a frightening experience but it was strange. I am certain it was not a vivid dream or my over active imagination. I have never experienced anything like this before or since.

I just adore Kevin's novels, Belgae Torc, The Gordian Knot, and The Witness. To find out more about him and his novels, take a look at his website where you will also find a link to his blog that he runs separately,  Kevin Marsh Novels 

 

Here is author, Jeanne Treat's story, 'Visions at the Dale' by Jeanne Treat

We experience visions at Lilydale Assembly

It was the summer of 2004, an unusually hot and dry season in Western New York. I had been working hard on a project at work and it was time for a retreat at one of my favorite places, Lily Dale Assembly, a Spiritualist community situated on the banks of Lake Cassadaiga that was known for its psychic readers and happenings.
My friend Heather and her husband Mike joined me. He had recently lost his father to cancer and was hoping to contact him. We rented rooms in one of the quaint private guest homes and found ourselves among a group of spiritual insight training students led by a trained medium and Spiritualist minister named Candy.
The grounds of Lily Dale were breathtaking. There was lush vegetation, an old growth forest, the beauty of the lake, and charming 1940’s style houses and cottages. Readings were available at the Forest Temple and Inspiration Stump, as well as a service in the Healing Temple. As we walked the grounds and took supper in the outdoor pagoda, we felt the energy of the place and wondered where this day would take us.
Night fell and we returned to our lodging. As the evening wore on, we talked with Candy’s students Felicia and Lester and established a rapport. Soon, midnight was approaching and we were invited to join them for a trip to Leolyn Woods to visit Inspiration Stump in the dark.
What was the significance of the Stump, we wondered? Candy explained that it was the site of some of the most profound spiritual energy in all of Lily Dale. It was not unusual for visitors to the Stump to experience a strong sense of heightened awareness, profound peace, and receive messages from the beyond. Were we interested? Of course!
Armed with a few flashlights, we headed towards Leolyn Woods. There were six of us; Candy, Felicia, Lester, Heather, Mike, and myself. We entered the forest with a sense of excitement, passed a spooky old pet cemetery, and found the Stump in a grove surrounded by magnificent old trees.
Candy explained that in this place, mediums had been passing messages from Spirit to others since 1898. The Stump at one time had been a tree around which children had gathered and levitated.
She led the group in some energy work and encouraged us to stand on the stump. One by one, we felt the pull towards the middle and the feeling of being in some kind of vortex.
Heather came down from the Stump and claimed that she felt a persistent tugging on her right sleeve, like someone was trying to get her attention. She was pretty freaked out by it, especially when she started to experience shifting in her peripheral vision on the left side.
Lester snapped Polaroid pictures off and on using a flash, even though it was dark.
Heather panicked and begged us to return to the guest house. On the way back, she was ice cold, even though it was a hot night. The number nine kept coming at her, and she told everyone so. Leaving Leolyn Woods, the shifting in her vision reoccurred and she turned to see a dark-haired boy who she thought to be nine, bare-chested and barefooted, wearing old fashioned dark brown and green checkered shorts, rather worn.
She felt a dull aching pain in his left temple, and realized that he had a hurting wound there. Instinctively she knew that he woke up on the shore with that wound, only to see a canoe flopping in the water.
As we neared the guest house, she had a vision of him sitting in a canoe watching the back of another boy’s head in front of him. He looked over his shoulder at the shoreline. At that point, she said that it was ‘like his eyes were her eyes’. He scanned the shore and saw an old house with a shed attached and a three wheel tricycle, rather old fashioned looking. She experienced his panic as he heard choking behind him. The canoe was wooden, dark reddish-brown, and small, for two people only.
We went into the guest house and tried to get her to settle down. She turned and screamed, saying that she saw the child at the top of the stairs. He was speaking to her but his lips were not moving. Only his expressions were changing. He was repeating that the year is 48, and saying Ryan, Ryan, Ryan with a deep sadness. She couldn’t tell if it was a last or first name or the name of the victim or friend.
The last part of it came as a vision of a boy floating face down in the water, his red shirt like a bubble on top of the water. Her impression was that the boy was telling her that his friend drowned and relayed sadness and remorse. He was sorry for his part in it. Then he left her alone.
Some interesting facts…
Heather is not a trained medium or student, just a visitor to Lilydale who tagged along with this group. She did not invite this communication and wishes that it never happened. She says that John Edward can keep his job.
Other people who went with her that night got impressions of the color red, deep sadness, and saw a point of light on her right sleeve at the Stump when she said that her sleeve was being tugged. The camera also captured this. They recorded her experience on paper as she was relaying it.
We visited the museum the next morning and described her vision to the curators. We learned that over the years there had been many drownings on that lake, although this specific one wasn’t recorded.
Years later, we still wonder what it was all about. Why would that spirit want to contact us and relay that heart wrenching confession? Could it be that a man who recently died needed to return to the scene and tell the real story? We checked with local newspapers and historical societies, but we never found an answer.
The spirit appears to be at rest. 

Jeanne Treat is author of one of my very favorite trilogies, The Dark Birthright Saga. If you enjoy 17th Century Scotland well now you are in for such a treat. I hope you will learn more about her books, Dark Birthright Saga

 

Finally, I leave you with a ghostly experience written by Ben Perkins,

When I was child I lived in a very dark Edwardian house, not helped by the fact that my parents in their wisdom put really thick curtains in my room so that night time was pitch black in there. It should come as no surprise then that I developed a fear of the dark, when you can’t see what is around you at all, then your imagination takes over. For me monsters were not only real but ready to jump out at me if I got out of bed at night. I had to sleep with my head under the sheets for years because it was the only way I felt safe. But if things got too much I could always depend on my parents to let me sleep with them in their room. One night when I was five, things did get too much and I went up into the attic where my parent’s room was. But before I went to sleep I had a look around the room and I saw a silvery man shape underneath the window and I buried my head in the sheets so that it would go away. That was the only night I saw something, even though my brother claims he saw a green man walking around our shared room a few years later, but that house was strange, I had more than one thing drop off a shelf for no reason and the Cat would stare at things that were not visible to us humans. I’m glad I don’t live there anymore. 

Ben is a Victorian Literature and Arts Geek. He loves Tennyson and I highly recommend checking out his blog and catching up with him on social media as well,  The Talking Oak

WELL THAT IS IT FOR THIS HALLOWEEN. THANK YOU ONCE AGAIN TO ALL MY FRIENDS FOR TAKING TIME TO SEND ME YOUR STORIES AND CONTRIBUTING TO THIS GROUP POST. I AM ETERNALLY GRATEFUL TO KNOW EACH OF YOU. I HAVE LEARNED SO MUCH MORE ABOUT MYSELF AND AM A BETTER PERSON FOR HAVING YOU ALL, EVERY SINGLE SOLITARY PERSON READING THIS IN MY LIFE.   

My review of The Lake House by Kate Morton

A missing child…

June 1933, and the Edevane family’s country house, Loeanneth, is polished and gleaming, ready for the much-anticipated Midsummer Eve party. Alice Edevane, sixteen years old and a budding writer, is especially excited. Not only has she worked out the perfect twist for her novel, she’s also fallen helplessly in love with someone she shouldn’t. But by the time midnight strikes and fireworks light up the night skies, the Edevane family will have suffered a loss so great that they leave Loeanneth forever.

 An abandoned house…

 Seventy years later, after a particularly troubling case Sadie Sparrow is sent on an enforced break from her job with the Metropolitan Police. Sadie retreats to her beloved grandfather’s cottage in Cornwall but soon finds herself at a loose end. Until one day, she stumbles upon an abandoned house surrounded by overgrown gardens and dense woods, and learns the story of a baby boy who disappeared without a trace.

 An unsolved mystery…

 Meanwhile, in the attic writing room of her elegant Hampstead home, the formidable Alice Edevane, now an old lady, leads a life as neatly plotted as the bestselling detective novels she writes. Until a young police detective starts asking questions about her family’s past, seeking to resurrect the complex tangle of secrets Alice has spent her life trying to escape…

  

• Hardcover: 512 pages
• Publisher: Atria Books (October 20, 2015)
• Language:English
• ISBN-10:1451649320
• ISBN-13:978-1451649321

In the middle of a sunlit clearing stood a house. A brick house with twin gables and a front door tucked beneath a portico. Multiple chimneys rose from the tiled roof and three levels of leadlight windows winked conspiratorially. A climber, green-leafed and voracious, clung to the brick face of the building and small birds flew busily in and out of the fretwork of tendrils, creating an effect of constant movement. 

That strange, almost ominous, feeling was there again but Sadie shook it off. She dealt in facts, not feelings, and after recent events it was as well to remind herself of that. She steepled her hands against a glass pane and pressed her face to them, peering through the window. Sadie experienced the familiar, agreeable sensation of opening the lid on someone else's life; she'd always been fascinated by the way other people lived. Sadie automatically started making mental notes.  

Now, I know The Lake House by Kate Morton doesn't cover the Victorian era but I have finished reading an advanced reader's copy and I am in love with this novel!  The Lake House is the second book of Kate Morton's that I've read; the first being, The Distant Hours. Anyway, if you are seeking a novel that is beautifully written, dual storylines intelligently crafted holding a few red herrings, a few plot twists, some turns leading down gravel paths then you will thoroughly enjoy another one of Kate Morton's gems.  

Beginning in 1933, you will meet separately and as a family together, the Edevane family presiding at their ancestral home, 'Loeanneth' in Cornwall, England. Sixteen year old Alice Edevane is the main protagonist living with her two sisters Deborah and Clemmie, youngest eighteenth month old brother Theo and parents Eleanor and Anthony.  This family dynamic is vitally important because Kate Morton juxtaposes shades of similarities between real life Alice Liddell and her sisters Lorina and Edith Liddell. For instance, you will meet older man friend of The Edevane family Mr. Llellwyn who again reminds me very much of Rev. Charles Dodgson who was family friend of the Liddell family. He became author Lewis Carroll of Alice in Wonderland. Just pay close attention to the happenings of The Edevane Family living in their manor house in Cornwall during and after that party they had one Midsummer Eve in 1933 when their brother Theo disappeared never to be seen again! 

"Mr. Llellwyn!" Alice exclaimed, when she saw the hunched figure standing there, an easel under one arm, a large sketch block clutched awkwardly to his other side. 'You frightened me.' 

'Sorry, Alice, dear. It would appear I don't know my own stealth. I was hoping we might have a little chat.' 

'Now, Mr. Llellwyn? Despite her affection for the old man, she fought a wave of frustration. He didn't seem to understand that the days of Alice sitting with him while he sketched, of bobbing downstream together in the rowing boat, of her confessing all her childish secrets as they hunted fairies were gone. He'd been important to her once, there was no denying that; a treasured friend when she was small and a mentor when she was first getting started with her writing. Many times she'd run to present him with the small childish stories she'd scribbled in a fit of inspiration and the'd made a great show of providing earnest critique. But now, at sixteen, she had other interests, things she couldn't share with him. 'I'm rather busy, you see.'  

His gaze drifted towards the hole in the hedge and Alice felt her cheeks buzz with sudden warmth. 

Skip ahead to the second storyline in 2003 (present day) where we meet police detective sargaent Sadie Sparrow who visits her grandfather in Cornwall only to discover an abandoned manor house. She is strangely attracted to it. Remember that old saying, 'curiousity killed the cat'? Well, perhaps D.S. Sparrow should have listened to her own instincts!

Enter into the frame, a grown up, aged, Alice Edevane, now a successful crime writer using the pen name A.C. Edevane. When Sadie writes to her requesting an interview, Alice immediately knows it's about her missing brother Theo. What happens next will awaken The Edevane Family secret which may or not have been laying dormant for seventy years. 

To purchase in the UK, Amazon UK

To purchase in the US, Amazon US

Her Divine Glorified Beauty ~ The Memento Mori of Adeline Grace Clogstoun (1862-June 8, 1872)

 Adeline Grace Clogstoun by Julia Margaret Cameron, June 1872,

Memento Mori in Latin means remember that you must die. It is defined as a reminder of mortality. When I saw the photographs of Adeline Grace Clogstoun taken by Julia Margaret Cameron I was stunned. I had to learn more.  Now, there is not much information found on this precious child or her unusual death. The information that is out there is somewhat mysterious in that the dates and years seem to run together almost melting into each other. I hope to bring you this sad story along with some bits of information framing a story of a child whose life was short lived but who should be remembered. She was running through the house playing with her sister Blanche and Beatrice who was Julia Margaret Cameron’s son Eugene Hay Cameron’s daughter. They were warned about rough-housing but on June 8, 1872, ten year old Adeline Grace Clogstoun died of her injuries. Perhaps, a good starting place is with the words of Mrs. Cameron,

My cherished little Adeline (Grace Clogstoun), 1872, private collection, UK

“It has been like a mysterious dream losing that blossom of my old heart thus and in such a way! …I did not after all have my darling opened tho’ I felt sure it would all be confirmed-the Doctors all three thought so but for Blanche’s sake I did not want it confirmed to darken her whole life! for Beatrice got on Addie’s back & then Blanche with a spring from the couch bounded on the top of Beatrice’s Back so that fragile Addie had the double weight-So fragile even the 6^th day her sweet little joints were all plastic and supple. Her divine glorified beauty…” A letter written to Anne Thackeray by Julia Margaret Cameron on June 17, 1872, Eton College Library.

 

 (Group) Blanche Clogstoun, Mary Clogstoun, Adeline Grace Clogstoun, 1868-70, present whereabouts unknown

 Major Herbert Mackworth Clogstoun, VC

The Clogstoun Sisters: Mary Augusta Lynch Clogstoun (26 May 1860-27 April, 1930), Blanche Margaret Standish Clogstoun (1861-1895), and Adeline Grace Clogstoun (1862-1872) were the daughters of parents Herbert Mackworth Clogstoun (13 June, 1820-6 May, 1862) and Mary Julia Blanche Mackenzie (13 August, 1834-12 April, 1870).  Their father was born in Trinidad and living in India when he married Mary Mackenzie on 8 January, 1856 at the Melsion Chapel in Blacktown, Bolarum Cannamore, India. Together they had six children including sons Herbert Clogstoun (24 January, 1857-15 April, 1936) and Sybella Adeline Caroline Clogstoun (18 May 1859-17 May 1961). Herbert at the age of 38 was a captain in the 19^th Madras Native Infantry, Madras Army during the Indian Mutiny. He received the Victoria Cross on 15 January 1859; the highest and most prestigious award for gallantry in the face of the enemy that can be awarded to British and Commonwealth forces, according to the London Gazette of October 21, 1859. He was promoted to major but died at Hingoli in India on 6 May 1862. So, as far as I can put together, Herbert and Mary were living in India after their marriage and birth of six children, the last one born, dear Adeline Grace, in 1862. This being the year of her father’s death, I can only believe that Mary travelled with her children to the Isle of Wight, where upon she dies eight years later in 1870 on Freshwater, Isle of Wight at the age of 36 years old. Now the interesting thing is according to, Julia Margaret Cameron: The Complete Photographs by Julian Cox and Colin Ford, ‘Around the time that Cameron began photography, she also adopted Mary and Adeline Grace Clogstoun, A third sister Blanche, was taken into the Prinsep household at Little Holland House and adopted by Watts’.  A very sweet story about that day Blanche Clogstoun was taken in by G.F. Watts (Signor). It seems that all three Clogstoun daughters visited Little Holland House to see which one Sara and Thoby Prinsep would adopt. Well, little blonde haired nine year old Blanche spotted Watts sitting across the room in his armchair, and took off running towards him and jumped on his lap. He enfolded his arms around her immediately, ‘I have undertaken the charge of a little orphan girl, so I must endeavour to do what I have not hitherto thought of doing, viz establishing a little capital.’ Letter from G.F. Watts to Rickards, 21 September 1872.  Blanche Clogstoun became the charge of G.F. Watts and he took care of her all her life. So, that was one Clogstoun sibling taken care of. Now, back to little Mary and Adeline Grace, who we are told were also adopted by The Cameron’s ‘around the time she took up photography’ (1863-4) Why is it that the death date of their mother Mary Clogstoun isn’t until 1870 on Freshwater Bay, Isle of Wight? We know the sisters were living on Freshwater before their mother’s death because Mrs. Cameron’s photographs are dated 1868-70. Only the one of Adeline alone is dated the year of her unexpected death in 1872? 

I don’t have any answers, just questions and curiousity. However, during this tale of discovery, who enters the frame, but good old Alfred Tennyson! Well, are you surprised? It is Freshwater Bay, Isle of Wight, and we are at Dimbola Lodge after, all.  I bring you a last small story of those days in 1872 when ten year old Adeline died….

“My first visit to England in 1872 is when I saw Tennyson. You see, I met two ladies in London, Lady Pollock and Miss Anne Thackeray, who kindly offered to introduce me, and write in advance that I was coming. I spent the night at Cowes, and was driven eight miles from the hotel to Farringford by a very intelligent young groom who had never heard of the poet; and when he reached the door of the house, the place before me seemed such a haven of peace and retirement that I actually shrank from disturbing those who dwelt therein. Tennyson and his wife, were sitting beneath a tree talking unreservedly, when they discovered, by a rustling in the boughs overhead, that two New York reporters had taken position in the branches and were putting down the conversation. Fortunately, I saw on the drawing-room table an open letter from one of the ladies just mentioned, announcing my approach, and it lay near a window, through which, as I had been told the master of the house did not hesitate to climb, by way of escape from any unwelcome visitor. 

I therefore sent up my name. Presently I heard a rather heavy step in the adjoining room, and there stood in the doorway the most un-English looking man I had yet seen. He was tall and high-shouldered, careless in dress, and while he had a high and domed forehead, yet his brilliant eyes and tangled hair and beard gave him rather the air of a partially reformed Corsican bandit, or else an imperfectly secularized Carmelite monk, than of a decorous and well-groomed Englishman.  He greeted me shyly, gave me his hand, which was in those days a good deal for an Englishman, and then sidled up to the mantelpiece, leaned on it, and said, with the air of a vexed schoolboy, “I am rather afraid of you Americans; your countrymen do not treat me very well. There was Bayard Taylor” – and then he took me to his study, then to his garden, where the roses were advanced beyond any I had yet seen in England. I was struck, in his conversation, with that accuracy of outdoor knowledge which one sees in his poems; he pointed out, for instance, which ferns were American, and which had been attempted in this country, but had refused to grow. He talked freely about his own books. He soon offered, to my great delight, to take me to the house of Mrs. Cameron, the celebrated amateur photographer, who lived close by. We at once came upon Mr. Cameron a very picturesque figure, having fine white hair and beard, and wearing a dressing-gown of pale blue with large black velvet buttons, and a heavy gold chain. I had heard it said that Mrs. Cameron selected her housemaids for their profiles, that she might use them for saints and madonnas in her photographic groups; and it turned out that all these damsels were upstairs, watching round the sickbed of the youngest, who was a great favorite in the Tennyson family. We were ushered into the chamber, where a beautiful child lay unconscious upon the bed, with weeping girls around; and I shall never forget the scene when Tennyson bent over the pillow, with his sombre Italian look, and laid his hand on the unconscious forehead; it was like a picture by Ribera or Zamacois. The child, as I afterwards heard, never recovered counsciousness, and died within a few days. Presently Mrs. Cameron led us downstairs again, and opened chests of photographs for me to choose among. I chose one, The Two Angels at the Sepulchre, for which one of the maid servants had stood as a model; another of Tennyson’s Eleanore, for which Mrs. Stillman had posed; and three large photographs of Darwin, Carlyle, ad Tennyson himself, the last of these being one which he had christened The Dirty Monk, and of which he wrote, at Mrs. Cameron’s request, in my presence, a certificate that it was the best likeness ever taken of him.”  Cheerful Yesterdays by Thomas Wentworth Higginson, 1898, published by Hougton, Mifflin and Company.

Adeline Grace Clougston June 1872