_T._ "You cannot wonder at my horror of all the libels and slanders; people began to slander me in early days. For example, after my marriage we spent the honeymoon on Coniston Lake in a cottage lent to me by James Marshall. Shortly after this, a paragraph appeared in an American newspaper to the following effect: 'We hope, now that Mr. Tennyson is married and has returned to his native lakes, that he will give up opium.' The penny-a-liners evidently confounded your uncle, S. T. Coleridge, with myself--anyhow, if he wasn't quite certain, he gave your relative the benefit of the doubt." "Again, I was once persuaded by an adventuress (who wrought upon me by her tale of hopeless poverty) to hear her read in my own drawing-room. She was in my house for exactly half an hour, and profited by her experience in telling her audiences that she had seen me thrashing my wife, and carried away drunk by two men-servants to my bedroom." * * * * * One day we visited the grave of Lord Tennyson's shepherd; he died at the age of ninety-one. On his death-bed Hallam asked him if he would remember in his will his two sons in Australia who had entirely ignored and neglected him. "No," he said firmly; and he left his 17s. 6d. a year to the poorest man in the parish of Freshwater. On his tombstone are engraved the Laureate's own words from "In Memoriam": God's finger touched him and he slept. I showed Lord Tennyson some manuscript verses by my friend Bernard Drake, who died at Madeira in 1853. He read them twice through, slowly and aloud. I had told him of Drake's history, and then showed him the verses; their sadness impressed him greatly: ON ILLNESS I Thou roaring, roaming Sea! When first I came into this happy isle, I loved to listen evermore to thee, And meditate the while. II But now that I have grown Homesick, and weary of my loneliness, It makes me sad to hear thy plaintive moan And fills me with distress. III It speaks of many a friend, Whom I shall meet no more on Life's dark road, It warns that _here_ I must await the end And cast no look abroad. IV Thou ever roaring Sea! I love thee, for that o'er thy waters come The stately ships, breasting them gloriously, That bring me news of home. V I cannot pray for grace-- My soul is heavy, and my sickness sore-- Wilt Thou, O God, for ever hide Thy face? O! turn to me once more. MADEIRA, _November 30, 1853_. Drake's career at Eton and Cambridge really interested him, for my old friend was an ardent worshipper of the Poet in days before Tennyson's fame had become a national asset. I showed with some pride "Of old sat Freedom on the heights," translated into Latin Alcaics, a version very popular with Etonians and King's men. Scholarship has made gigantic strides since it appeared; "those who know" can read and see if we overvalued it. OF OLD SAT FREEDOM