It is pretty well understood that he who figures too much as an alabaster saint in his official biography, had an earthier side to his nature. His gloomy moods and sensitive shyness sometimes broke out in fits of ill-humour, such as caused Mrs Cameron to remonstrate with him on behalf of a friend of hers found trespassing on his domain, who had come expecting to “see a lion, not a bear.” While he shrank in almost morbid horror from peeping pilgrims, he pointed himself out to their gaze by a picturesque “get up,” as to which one of his favoured grandchildren is said to have bluntly asked him, “If you don’t like people to look at you, why do you wear that queer hat and cloak?” I have a story to tell which has not yet, I think, been in print, but was vouched for by one of those concerned. As the Poet-laureate, with his friends Palgrave and Woolner, the sculptor, were walking through a village, irreverent urchins, having no fear of he-or she-bears, ran after them with the cry “Old Jew!”--“Poor Palgrave’s nose!” Tennyson whispered to Woolner, while Palgrave, for his part, presently took the opportunity of an aside to their companion, “That’s what Tennyson gets by dressing himself up in such a way!” Another story of Tennyson’s manners reached me in two pieces, at a long interval, each dovetailing into each other. I knew a kind and gentle lady who venerated all genius, and especially his who was the flower of Victorian literature. Many years ago she told me, how being invited to see the University boat-race from George Macdonald’s house at Hammersmith, she found herself beside an unknown gentleman of her own mature age, to whom she remarked that it would be well if a window could be opened. He turned his back on her without a word and walked out of the room, which he would not enter again. To her dismay, my friend heard that this was the Poet-laureate, who did not like to be spoken to. She went to her grave hardly able to forgive herself for having unwittingly hurt such a man. Many years afterwards, on his coming to be buried at Westminster, another friend told me how in her girlhood, she was at George Macdonald’s boat-race party, when Tennyson was so offended at being spoken to by an old lady, that he shut himself up in a separate room, to which she was sent with some food for him, in the hope that a mere child might be a David to the mood of Saul; and that he spoke very crossly to her because she had forgotten to bring the mustard.