CHAPTER XVI
I MET Lord Tennyson during my first year in London, but it was not until I knew him in his own home that I learned a little of the largeness and beauty of his nature. His shyness or reserve during early acquaintanceship he concealed by a decided brusqueness of manner which was misleading to those who never realized the privilege of becoming his friends. I first visited the Tenny-sons at Aldworth, their Surrey home. How full of poetry and romance were its great oriel windows and flowered terraces! How full of peace its surrounding heather-covered slopes, studded with golden gorse, and its splendid landscape silently stretching far into the purple distance! I shall never forget my first meeting with Lady Tennyson. She was resting on the couch upon which she has lain for so many years. The lovely saintliness of her face recalled Ary Schaffer's " St. Monica," and Pere Grou's words that " the greatest trial of suffering is not in the suffering