to have been, who would probably have answered my question by "You are
a fool, sir; use your own judgment," while Tennyson made the very
sensible answer that rhyme assisted the memory....

It was generally after dinner ... that Tennyson began to thaw, and to
take a more active part in conversation. People who have not known him
then, have hardly known him at all. During the day he was often very
silent and absorbed in his own thoughts, but in the evening he took an
active part in the conversation of his friends. His pipe was almost
indispensable to him, and I remember one time when I and several
friends were staying at his house, the question of tobacco turned up.
I confessed that for years I had been a perfect slave to tobacco, so
that I could neither read nor write a line without smoking, but that
at last I had rebelled against the slavery, and had entirely given up
tobacco. Some of his friends taunted Tennyson that he could never give
up tobacco. "Anybody can do that," he said, "if he chooses to do it."
When his friends still continued to doubt and to tease him, "Well," he
said, "I shall give up smoking from to-night." The very same evening I
was told that he threw his tobacco and his pipes out of the window of
his bedroom. The next day he was most charming, though somewhat
self-righteous. The second day he became very moody and captious, the
third day no one knew what to do with him. But after a disturbed night
I was told that he got out of bed in the morning, went quietly into
the garden, picked up one of his broken pipes, stuffed it with the
remains of the tobacco scattered about, and then having had a few
puffs, came to breakfast, all right again.

He once very kindly offered to lend me his house in the Isle of Wight.
"But mind," he said, "you will be watched from morning till evening."
This was, in fact, his great grievance, that he could not go out
without being stared at. Once taking a walk with me and my wife on the
downs behind his house, he suddenly started, left us, and ran home,
simply because he had descried two strangers coming towards us.

I was told that he once complained to the queen, and said that he
could no longer stay in the Isle of Wight, on account of the tourists
who came to stare at him. The queen, with a kindly irony, remarked
that she did not suffer much from that grievance, but Tennyson not
seeing what she meant, replied, "No, madam, and if I could clap a
sentinel wherever I liked, I s