I remember that in June we went to a most memorable High Mass, to wit, the first to be celebrated in the Old Saxon Church of St. Etheldreda since the days of the Reformation. This church was the second place of Christian worship erected in London, if not in England, in the old Saxon times. We were much impressed as the Gregorian Mass sounded once more in the grey-stoned crypt. The upper church was not to be ready for years. Those old grey stones woke up that morning which had so long been smothered in the London clay.
Here follow too many descriptions in the Diary of dances, dinners and other functions. They are superfluous. There were, however, some _Tableaux Vivants_ at an interesting house--Mrs. Bishop’s, a very intellectual woman, much appreciated in society in general, and Catholic society in particular--which may be recorded in this very personal narrative, for I had a funny hand in a single-figure tableau which showed the dazed 11th Hussar who figures in the foreground of my “Balaclava.” The man who stood for him in the tableau had been my model for the picture, but to this day I feel the irritation caused me by that man. In the picture I have him with his busby pushed back, as it certainly would and should have been, off his heated brow. But, while I was posing him for the tableau, every time I looked away he rammed it down at the becoming “smart” angle. I got quite cross, and insisted on the necessary push back. The wretch pretended to obey, but, just before the curtain rose, rammed the busby down again, and utterly destroyed the meaning of that figure! We didn’t want a representation of Mr. So-and-so in the becoming uniform of a hussar, but my battered trooper. The thing fell very flat. But tableaux, to my mind, are a mistake, in many ways.
I often mention my pleasure in meeting Lord and Lady Denbigh, for they were people after my own heart. Lady Denbigh was one of those women one always looks at with a smile; she was so _simpatica_ and true and unworldly.
July 18th is noted as “a memorable day for Alice, for she and I spent the afternoon at _Tennyson’s_! I say ‘for Alice’ because, as regards myself, the event was not so delightful as a day at Aldershot. Tennyson has indeed managed to shut himself off from the haunts of men, for, arrived at Haslemere, a primitive little village, we had a six-mile drive up, up, over a wild moor and through three gates leading to narrow, rutty lanes before we dipped down to the big Gothic, lonely house overlooking a vast plain, with Leith Hill in the distance. Tennyson had invited us through Aubrey de Vere, the poet, and very apprehensive we were, and nervous, as we neared the abode of a man reported to be such a bear to strangers. We first saw Mrs. Tennyson, a gentle, invalid lady lying on her back on a sofa. After some time the poet sent down word to ask us to come up to his sanctum, where he received us with a rather hard stare, his clay pipe and long, black, straggling hair being quite what I expected. He got up with a little difficulty, and when we had sat down--he, we two and his most deferential son--he asked which was the painter and which was the poet. After our answer, which struck me as funny, as though we ought to have said, with a bob, ‘Please, sir, I’m the painter,’ and ‘Please, sir, I’m the poet,’ he made a few commonplace remarks about my pictures in a most sepulchral bass voice. But he and Alice, in whom he was more interested, naturally, did most of the talking; there was not much of that, though, for he evidently prefers to answer a remark by a long look, and perhaps a slightly sneering smile, and then an averted head. All this is not awe-inspiring, and looks rather put on. We ceased to be frightened.