A gift certainly not less acceptable comes from a little girl:

MY LORD--_Please_ let these flowers be in your room, and _do_ wear the little bunch.--I remain, your true admirer, * * *

Now follows the _Grande Armee_ of natural, amiable, but remorseless autograph hunters. A miscellaneous group comes first.

(1890)

HONOURED LORD--May I (an Australian maiden born 1870) hope to be pardoned for taking the liberty of writing to you--so distinguished a gentleman--to express my great admiration for your poems? It is my admiration that has emboldened me to venture so far ... etc. etc.

Let me conclude with one request: namely to ask you to do me the very great honour to acknowledge this letter; so that I may be able to boast of, and dearly treasure, even a line from the Great Poet.

(1890)

An obvious fisher for good things follows:

SIR--I hope that you will kindly excuse the liberty I take in requesting you to be so good as to inform me how the word "humble"

should be p.r.o.nounced: _i.e._ whether or not it is proper to aspirate the "h"?

A reply at your kind convenience will inexpressibly oblige....

(1890)

Another ingenuously finds it needful to ask whether the word be p.r.o.nounced _I_dylls or _E_dylls.

(1891)

DEAR SIR--A simple child (who writes from Holland), would feel extremely happy, would be in the seventh heaven, when she would be favoured with a mere line of the greatest poet of renown, Alfred Tennyson. Allow her, to offer you before, her sincere thanks for your autograph, with which she would feel the happiest child in the world.

With kind regards, most honourable lord, yours respectfully.

(1882)

A (German) collector of autographs, who has an autograph of Mr. Kinkel and Victor Hugo, the greatest living poets of Germany and France, only misses in his collection the autograph of the greatest living English poet. Therefore he requests you to give him an autograph of yours. May it only be your signature, it will find in my alb.u.m a place of honour.

(1882)

_To the prince of poets._

MONSIEUR--Forgive me, I beseech you, the liberty I take in daring to write to you; but I wish to beg the greatest of favours.

This favour, Monsieur, it is your signature.

I am only a young Belgian girl, and I have no reason to proffer why you should thus distinguish me; but I feel you must love all girls, or you could not have written "Isabel" or "Lilian"; and you must be kind and good, or you would not have given them to the world.

So, Monsieur, I humbly beg you send me the name we all venerate, traced by the hand that has guided the world with so much beauty, and make one more heart supremely happy.--One who loves you, * * *

Three pet.i.tions, which touched my father, may here have place.

The first (1884) consists of some twenty letters, in very creditable English and excellent hand-writing, each saying some handsome thing about the "May Queen," which they had learned, and now criticized with amusing _navete_, and asking for a line from Tennyson--signed with the children's names, and dated from a German High School for girls: "who," says their Mistress, "in the joy of their hearts tried to express their feeling of admiration in their imperfect knowledge of the English language."

In the next a young girl from India, training in England with comrades apparently for Zenana work, thanks "Our dear aziz Sahib" for a copy of the Poems, and then proceeds, in neat round hand:

Oh how we wish we could see you even for one minute The Great and good Poet Laureate, whom everybody loves so much and we love you too dear sweet Sahib, we are going to learn that pretty Poetry "The May Queen"

and several others out of that lovely Book. Will you please, dear Sahib, write out "The May Queen" and "The Dedication of the Idyols of the King," with your own hand, we will keep it till the last day of our lives.

They then explain why the "Dedication" is asked for; "because we know how dearly Prince Albert loved you, and, also our beloved Queen Empress, and how you love them": also how they long to go back "to our dear India," and sing hymns, and nurse and dose "our own countrywomen in the Zenanas."

Now good-bye our aziz (beloved) Sahib I am sending you some wild daisies and moss as you are so fond of flowers and everything beautiful in G.o.d's world. May G.o.d give you a sweet smile every day, prays your little loving, Indian Friend, * * *

This last explains itself:

DEAR MR. TENNYSON--I am one of a large struggling family of girls and boys who have never yet been able to afford to give 9s. for that much-coveted green volume Tennyson's "Poems," so at last, the boys having failed to obtain it as a prize, and the girls as a birthday present, I, the boldest of the party, venture to ask if you would kindly bestow a copy on a nest full of young admirers. * * *

He wrote his little Indian maid a pretty letter, and sent his poems to the "best girl." And in many an instance, (requests for aid included) the correspondence bears witness to my father's open-hearted kindliness and liberality. His _beggars_, at any rate, were often _choosers_.

The wish for an autograph, we may again reasonably suppose, was not absent from the minds of the following (and other a.n.a.logous) writers. The first dates from Scotland:

(1878)

I take the great liberty in writing to you, in order to settle a dispute that has arisen amongst several parties, regarding the song written by Sir Walter Scott, _Jock O' Hazeldean_. The words are as follows,

And ye shall be his bride Lady; So comely to be seen.

Does comely apply to the bride, or the bridegroom? As your opinion will be considered satisfactory to all, your reply will be considered a lasting favour. * * *

(1883)

I am an enthusiastic reader and admirer of your works, and have read those which I like especially, over and over again, in particular "Maud," which I consider to be surpa.s.singly fresh and beautiful--there is a sort of fascination about the poem to me ... but I really cannot understand the meaning of the end of it.

I should very much like to know whether it is intended to mean that Maud's brother, "that curl'd a.s.syrian bull," is slain by her lover: whether Maud is supposed to die of a broken heart, or does her lover come back, long after, presumably from the Russian war and marry her?

The remaining examples, in which respect is curiously blended with familiarity, are dated from the United States.

A lively boy of thirteen (1884) who loves "Nature and Poetry" shall here have precedence:

In the first place I wish to ask your pardon for bothering you with this letter, but I want to make a collection, or I mean get the autographs of 5 or 6 distinguished poets; and so I thought I would write and get yours if possible and then the minor ones may follow.

I have read most of your poems, and like them _very much_ indeed, etc.

etc.

(A biographical sketch follows, including a visit to England.) When we drove back from Stoke Pogis to Windsor we saw the deer in the Queen's hunting grounds, and the tall, mighty oaks on each side of the road seemed to say, "This is an Earthly Paradise."...

If you would write a verse or two from some one of your poems and write your name under it, I should be _very much_ obliged to you indeed.

(1885)