I can remember vaguely, on one occasion through a cloud of smoke, looking across a darkening room at the noble, grave head of the Poet Laureate. He was sitting with my Father in the twilight after some family meal in the old house in Kensington; it was Tennyson himself who afterwards reminded me how upon this occasion, while my Father was speaking, my little sister looked up suddenly from the book over which she had been absorbed, saying, in her sweet childish voice, "Papa, why do you not write books like _Nicholas Nickleby_?" Then again, I seem to hear across that same familiar table, voices, without shape or name, talking and telling each other that Mr. Tennyson was married, that he and his wife had been met walking on the terrace at Clevedon Court, and then the clouds descend again, except, indeed, that I can still see my Father riding off on his brown cob to Mr. and Mrs. Tennyson's house at Twickenham to attend the christening of Hallam their eldest son. * * * * * Being _themselves_, when men, such as these two men, appreciate each other's work, they know, with their great instinct for truth and directness, what to admire--smaller people are apt to admire the men rather than the work. When Tennyson and my Father met, it was as when knights meet in the field. How my Father appreciated the _Idylls_ will be seen from the following letter, which came as an answer to his own:[25] FARRINGFORD, I.W. MY DEAR THACKERAY--Should I not have answered you ere this 6th of November! surely; what excuse--none that I know of; except indeed that perhaps your very generosity--boundlessness of approval--made me in a measure shamefaced. I could scarcely accept it, being, I fancy, a modest man and always more or less doubtful of my own efforts in any line; but I may tell you that your little note gave me more pleasure than all the journals and monthlies and quarterlies which have come across me, not so much from being the Great Novelist, I hope, as from your being my good old friend--or perhaps of your being both of these in one. Well--let it be. I have been ransacking all sorts of old albums and scrap-books, but cannot find anything worthy sending you. Unfortunately, before your letter arrived, I had agreed to give Macmillan the only available poem I had by me. I don't think he would have got it (for I dislike publishing in magazines), except that he had come to visit me in my island, and was sitting and blowing his weed _vis-à-vis_.... Whenever you feel your brains as "the remainder biscuit," or indeed whenever you will, come over to me and take a blow on these downs where the air, as Keats said, "is worth sixpence a pint," and bring your girls too.--Yours always, A. TENNYSON. * * * * *