Allingham. On
August 30, from Chapel House, Twickenham, Tennyson wrote to Mrs. Browning
of the birth of his son, Hallam, to which she replied:

"Thank you and congratulate you from my heart. May God bless you all
three.... Will you say to dear Mrs. Tennyson how deeply I sympathize
in her happiness...."

To this letter Browning added a postscript saying:

"How happy I am in your happiness, and in the assurance that it is
greater than even you can quite know yet. God bless, dear Tennyson,
you and all yours."

Tennyson wrote again to Mrs. Browning, saying, "... How very grateful your
little note and Browning's epilogue made me." And he signs himself "Ever
yours and your husband's." There was a brilliant christening luncheon at
the home of Monckton Milnes, "and his baby," notes Mrs. Browning, "was
made to sweep, in India muslin and Brussels lace, among a very large
circle of admiring guests." The Brownings were especially invited to bring
their little Penini with them, "and he behaved like an angel, everybody
said," continued his mother, "and looked very pretty, I said myself; only
he disgraced us all at last by refusing to kiss the baby on the ground of
its being '_troppo grande_.'"

To Mrs. Tennyson's note of invitation to the Brownings to attend the
christening of their child, Mrs. Browning replied that they had planned to
leave England before that date; "but you offer us an irresistible motive
for staying, in spite of fogs and cold," she continued, "and we would not
miss the christening for the world." At the last, however, Mrs. Browning
was unable to go, so that the poet went alone. After the little ceremony
Browning took the boy in his arms and tossed him, while Tennyson, looking
on, exclaimed: "Ah, that is as good as a glass of champagne for him."

Florence Nightingale was a not infrequent visitor of the Brownings that
summer, and she always followed her calls by a gift of masses of flowers.
While "Morte d'Arthur" had been written more than ten years previously,
Tennyson was now evolving the entire plan of the "Idylls of the King."
Coventry Patmore, who brought the manuscript copy of his own poems,
published later, for Mr. Browning to read, mentioned to the poets that
Tennyson was writing a collection of poems on Arthur, which were to be
united by their subject, after the manner of "In Memoriam," which project
interested Mrs. Browning greatly. "The work will be full of beauty, I
don'