Elspeth Thompson, one of Tennyson's younger admirers, often accompanied the poet on his meanderings about London. Marching through the city streets, the eccentric poet -- with his swirling Spanish cloak and immense sombrero -- was apparently oblivious to the glances which his appearance invariably drew from passersby.

"Child, your mother should dress you less conspicuously," he once grumbled. "People are staring at us."

[In 2004, Freiburg University hospital psychologist Stefan Schmidt published a study entitled "Distant Intentionality and the Feeling of Being Stared At" in the British Journal of Psychology. According to Schmidt, people may have a "sixth sense" that they are being stared at. "There is a tremendous amount of data here, more than 1,000 sessions of experiments... The effects are small, but they are there."]