Tennyson2 writes to you this mail he lays upon me the blame of not having written to you sooner, & I am willing to bear it the fact is the books went to his London address & were not forwarded.3
Yours affectny , Cyril Flower loc.01617.002_large.jpg loc.01617.003_large.jpg from Cyril Flower 1871 see notes 22 Sept 23 1888 loc.01617.004_large.jpgCorrespondent:
Cyril Flower (1843–1907) was an English
barrister and a friend of Alfred, Lord Tennyson; see Harold Blodgett, Walt
Whitman in England (1934), 128–129. According to the February 20,
1886 Solicitor's Journal, Flower was appointed a Lord of
the Treasury (275). Flower served as a member of Parliament from 1880 to 1892, when he
was given the title Baron Battersea (see the London Gazette (6 September 1892), 5090). According to Flower's April 23, 1871 letter, he met Whitman in Washington
in December, 1870. He had later delivered some of Whitman's books to Tennyson,
who "was much touched by your memory of him, and I told him of your deep regard
for him." Flower wrote again on October 20, 1871: "When I read you or think of
you . . . I feel that I hold in my hand clasped strong & tight & for
security the great hand of a friend, a simple good fellow, a man who loves me
& who is beautiful because he loves, & with the Consciousness of that I
feel never alone—never sad."