"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.
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