han anything of his own, except, perhaps, "The Northern
Farmer." He used to preserve the monotonous rhythm of the galloping
horses in Browning's poem, and made the words come out sharply like
hoofs upon a road. It was a little comic until one got used to it, but
that fault lay in the ear of the hearer. It was the right way and the
fine way to read this particular poem, and I have never forgotten it.

In after years I met Tennyson again, when with Henry Irving I acted in
two of his plays at the Lyceum. When I come to those plays, I shall have
more to say of him. Gladstone, too, came into my later life. Browning I
saw once or twice at dinner-parties, but knew him no better than in this
early period, when I was Nelly Watts, and heedless of the greatness of
great men. "To meet an angel and not to be afraid is to be impudent." I
don't like to confess to it, but I think I must have been, according to
this definition, _very_ impudent!

One charming domestic arrangement at Freshwater was the serving of the
dessert in a separate room from the rest of the dinner. And such a
dessert it always was!--fruit piled high on great dishes in Veronese
fashion, not the few nuts and an orange of some English households.

It must have been some years after the Freshwater days, yet before the
production of "The Cup," that I saw Tennyson in his carriage outside a
jeweler's shop in Bond Street.

"How very nice you look in the daytime," he said. "Not like an actress!"

I disclaimed my singularity, and said I thought actresses looked _very_
nice in the daytime.

To him and to the others my early romance was always the most
interesting thing about me. When I saw them in later times, it seemed as
if months, not years, had passed since I was Nelly Watts.

Once, at the dictates of a conscience perhaps over fastidious, I made a
bonfire of my letters. But a few were saved from the burning, more by
accident than design. Among them I found yesterday a kind little note
from Sir William Vernon Harcourt, which shows me that I must have known
him, too, at the time of my first marriage and met him later on when I
returned to the stage.

"You cannot tell how much pleased I am to hear that you have been
as happy as you deserve to be. The longer one lives, the more one
learns not to despair, and to believe that nothing is impossible to
those who have courage and hope and youth--I was going to add
beauty and genius." (_This is the