/ =2i>'V Lisbon Public Library* Shelf C. No. ZoL&l yt RULES AND REGULATIONS. 1. Books may be taken from the library on Wednesday and j Saturday afternoons of each week between the hours of three and six o’clock and on Saturday evening between the hours of seven and nine, and may he returned on the next library day or kept two weeks. If kept more than two weeks a fine of one cent per day shall be paid to the Librarian. 2. No hook shall he renewed until after it has been returned to the library and kept over one library day. 3 Residents and persons temporarily making their home in town shall have the right to use the library by signing a pre- pared agreement. 4. Non-residents, agreeing to comply with the rules and regulations of the library, may borrow hooks by paying five i cents per volume. 5. Non-residents who are members of The Lisbon Village Library Association, may enjoy the privileges of the library by j the payment of one dollar per year. G. No person shall take out more than one book at a time, I except by the payment of five cents for each volume so bor- rowed. 7. Any person who shall injure or lose a book shall pay therefor whatever sum the librarian shall require. Turning down leaves or marking in any way upon the books is strictly forbidden. 8. Any person who shall neglect or refuse to pay whatever sum is owing by them to the library shall be denied the use of the library. 9. N«< family shall have more than four books at any one! time. 10. Books shall not be loaned by any borrower from the library outside the borrower’s family. 11. No book shall be transferred from one patron to another , unless the same is first returned to the library rooms. 12. Every person who takes books from the library will be furnished with a card, on one side of which may be written the numbers of books wanted ; on the other side the dates of de- livery and return of books will be kept. This card must always be presented when borrowing, returning, or renewing books. vj \p V‘ p t i ' (L* Jw AfiS / W Presented to THE LISBON LIBRARY, BY Mrs. J. II. Hand. " w -.b clahke Co' Boo«S £atRSf ' ST "Tio« E RS J^ark SC. Church, Boston Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2015 https://archive.org/details/alfredlordtennys01tenn TENNYSON < ~(A)a/!%er c^BoutaAtAPAS c C < Aw n tp oi i . ^rxnri tAe JicrtrcuA jj tun ted AyndanutesP—J^axu~rsice. ALFRED lord TENNYSON A MEMOIR By HIS SON I have lived my life, and that which I have done May He within Himself make pure ! VOLUME I Nefo got fe 3j$ 3 f THE MACMILLAN COMPANY LONDON: MACMILLAN & CO., Ltd. 1899 All rights reserved Copyright, 1897, By THE MACMILLAN COMPANY. Set up and electrotyped September, 1897. Reprinted October, November twice 1897; January, March, August, September, 1898 June, 1899. >5 ' 05 r $ Norbxujtj ^rtsa J. S. Gushing Jc Co. — Berwick & Smith Norwood Mass. U.S.A. THESE VOLUMES ARE DEDICATED BY PERMISSION TO THE QUEEN An Unpublished Version of “To the Queen f 1851, THE NOBLEST MEN METHINKS ARE BRED OF OURS THE SAXO-NORMAN RACE; AND IN THE WORLD THE NOBLEST PLACE, MADAM, IS YOURS, OUR QUEEN AND HEAD. YOUR NAME IS BLOWN ON EVERY WIND, YOUR FLAG THRO’ AUSTRAL ICE IS BORNE, AND GLIMMERS TO THE NORTHERN MORN, AND FLOATS IN EITHER GOLDEN IND. I GIVE THIS FAULTY BOOK TO YOU, FOR, THO’ THE FAULTS BE THICK AS DUST IN VACANT CHAMBERS, I CAN TRUST YOUR WOMAN’S NATURE KIND AND TRUE. CONTENTS. CHAPTER PAGE Preface xi Chronology of the Books of Poems . . . xviii I. Boyhood, 1809-1827 1 II. Cambridge, 1828-1830 33 III. Cambridge, Somersby and Arthur Hallam, 1830-31 . 66 IV. Arthur Hallam, 1831-1833 79 V. The 1832 Volume. Solitude and Work, 1833-1835 . 116 VI. Visits to the Lakes and elsewhere. The “ Morte d’Arthur.” 1836-37 147 VII. Extracts from Letters to Emily Sellwood, 1838- 1840 167 VIII. London Life and the 1842 Volumes .... 182 IX. Reminiscences of Tennyson (about 1842) . . . 201 X. Letters, 1842-1845 . . . . . . .212 XI. Switzerland 1846, and Letters 1846-47 . . . 230 XII. “The Princess” 247 XIII. Cheltenham, London, Cornwall, Scotland and Ire- land, 1846-1850 263 XIV. “ In Memoriam 295 XV. Marriage, 1850-51 328 XVI. Cheltenham and Whitby, 1852 347 XVII. Twickenham, 1852-53 355 vii Vlll CONTENTS, CHAPTER PAGE XVIII. Farringford, 1853-1855 368 XIX. “ Maud ” 393 XX. Home Life and “ Idylls of the King,” 1856-1859 . 413 XXI. Tour in Cornwall and the Scilly Isles, i860 . . 458 XXII. Farringford Friends. The Pyrenees. Death of the Prince Consort. 1860-1862 .... 467 XXIII. Derbyshire and Yorkshire. Letters. 1862-1864 . 487 Appendix 497 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. Alfred Tennyson, from the Portrait painted by Samuel Lau- rence ......... Frontispiece Alfred Tennyson, from a Sketch by J. Spedding, made at Mire- house, April, 1835 146 Alfred Tennyson, from a Sketch by Edward Fitzgerald, made at Mirehouse, 1835 . . . . . . . . • I 53 Alfred Tennyson. Engraved by G. J. Stodart from a Daguerreo- type, 1838 166 “ Tears, idle Tears,” from the original MS. .... 246 “ Break, break, break,” from an original MS 295 Mrs Tennyson, from the Portrait at Aldworth, painted by G. F. Watts, R.A. ......... 330 View from Drawing-Room at Farringford, from a Painting by Richard Doyle ......... 365 Hallam and Lionel Tennyson, from the Picture at Aldworth painted by G. F. Watts, R.A 370 “ Let not the solid ground,” from the original MS. . . . 392 Farringford, from a Water-colour Drawing by Mrs Allingham . 412 Alfred Tennyson, from the Portrait in the possession of Lady Henry Somerset, painted by G. F. Watts, R.A., in 1859 . 428 Alfred Tennyson, engraved by G. J. Stodart from a Photograph by O. G. Rejlander, 1859 458 T. 1 PREFACE. Unpublished Sonnet ( Written originally as a preface to “ Becket ”). Old ghosts whose day was done ere mine began, If earth be seen from your conjectured heaven, Ye know that History is half-dream — ay even The man’s life in the letters of the man. There lies the letter, but it is not he As he retires into himself and is : Sender and sent-to go to make up this, Their offspring of this union. And on me Frown not, old ghosts, if I be one of those Who make you utter things you did not say, And mould you all awry and mar your worth; For whatsoever knows us truly, knows That none can truly write his single day, And none can write it for him upon earth. “History is half-dream — ay even The man’s life in the letters of the man but besides the letters of my father and of his friends there are his poems, and in these we must look for the innermost sanctuary of his being. For my own part, I feel strongly that no biographer could so truly give him as he gives himself in his own works ; but this may be because, having lived my life with him, I see him in every word which he has written ; and it is difficult for me so b 2 XI Xll PREFACE. far to detach myself from the home circle as to pourtray him for others. There is also the impossibility of fathoming a great man’s mind ; his deeper thoughts are hardly ever revealed. He himself disliked the notion of a long, formal biography, for “ None can truly write his single day, And none can write it for him upon earth.” However he wished that, if I deemed it better, the incidents of his life should be given as shortly as might be without comment, but that my notes should be final and full enough to preclude the chance of further and unauthentic biographies. For those who cared to know about his literary history he wrote “ Merlin and the Gleam.” From his boyhood he had felt the magic of Merlin — that spirit of poetry — which bade him know his power and follow throughout his work a pure and high ideal, with a simple and single devotedness and a desire to ennoble the life of the world, and which helped him through doubts and difficulties to “endure as seeing Him who is invisible.” Great the Master, And sweet the Magic, When over the valley, In early summers, Over the mountain, On human faces, And all around me, Moving to melody, Floated the Gleam. In his youth he sang of the brook flowing through his upland valley, of the “ ridged wolds ” that rose above PREFACE. Xlll his home, of the mountain-glen and snowy summits of his early dreams, and of the beings, heroes and fairies, with which his imaginary world was peopled. Then was heard the “ croak of the raven,” the harsh voice of those who were unsympathetic — The light retreated, The landskip darken’d, The melody deaden’d, The Master whisper’d “ Follow the Gleam.” Still the inward voice told him not to be faint-hearted but to follow his ideal. And by the delight in his own romantic fancy, and by the harmonies of nature, “ the warble of water,” and “ cataract music of falling torrents,” the inspiration of the poet was renewed. His Eclogues and English Idylls followed, when he sang the songs of country life and the joys and griefs of country folk, which he knew through and through. Innocent maidens, Garrulous children, Homestead and harvest, Reaper and gleaner, And rough-ruddy faces Of lowly labour. By degrees, having learnt somewhat of the real philosophy of life and of humanity from his own ex- perience, he rose to a melody “ stronger and statelier.” He celebrated the glory of “ human love and of human heroism ” and of human thought, and began what he had already devised, his Epic of king Arthur, “typifying above all things the life of man,” wherein he had intended to represent some of the great religions of the world. He had purposed that this was to be the chief work XIV PREFACE. of his manhood. Yet the death of his friend, Arthur Hallam, and the consequent darkening of the whole world for him made him almost fail in this purpose ; nor any longer for a while did he rejoice in the splendour of his spiritual visions, nor in the Gleam that had “ waned to a wintry glimmer.” Clouds and darkness Closed upon Camelot; Arthur had vanish’d I knew not whither, The king who loved me, And cannot die. Here my father united the two Arthurs, the Arthur of the Idylls and the Arthur “ the man he held as half divine.” He himself had fought with death, and had come out victorious to find “ a stronger faith his own,” and a hope for himself, for all those in sorrow and for universal humankind, that never forsook him through the future years. And broader and brighter The Gleam flying onward, Wed to the melody, Sang thro’ the world. «AA. ^ sJA. JA r VY' *7v *7V' W •a' I saw, whenever In passing it glanced upon Hamlet or city, That under the Crosses The dead man’s garden, The mortal hillock, Would break into blossom; And so to the land’s Last limit I came. PREFACE. XV Up to the end he faced death with the same earnest and unfailing courage that he had always shown, but with an added sense of the awe and the mystery of the Infinite. I can no longer, But die rejoicing, For thro’ the Magic Of Him the Mighty, Who taught me in childhood, There on the border Of boundless Ocean, And all but in Heaven Hovers the Gleam. That is the reading of the poet’s riddle as he gave it to me. He thought that “ Merlin and the Gleam ” would probably be enough of biography for those friends who urged him to write about himself. However, this has not been their verdict, and I have tried to do what he said that I might do, and have endeavoured to give briefly something of what people naturally wish to know, something about his birth, homes, school, college, friend- ships, travels, and the leading events of his life, enough to present the sort of insight into his history and pursuits which one wants, if one desires to make a companion of a man. The picture of his early days has been mainly sketched from what he and my mother have told me. My difficulty in arranging the later chapters has been how to choose, and how to throw aside, from the mass of material 1 . I have quoted from many manuscripts never 1 My thanks are due to Professor Henry Sidgwick and Professor Palgrave, who have helped me to make my selection from upwards of 40,000 letters. XVI PREFACE. meant for the public eye, many of which I have burnt according to his instructions. Among those that I have collected here, the most interesting to me are my father’s unpublished poems, letters, — and notes on his own life and work left me for publication after his death, Arthur Hallam’s letters, Edward Fitzgerald’s private MS notes 1 (some of which he gave me, and some of which have been lent to me by Mr Aldis Wright), and the jcurnal of our home life. This last is a simple record of daily something-nothings. If there appear, in the Reminiscences kindly con- tributed by his different friends, to be any discrepancies, let it be remembered that the many-sided man has sympathy with many and various minds, and that the poet may be like the magnetic needle, which, though it can be moved from without, yet in itself remains true to the magnetic pole. According to my father’s wish, throughout the memoir my hand will be as seldom seen as may be, and this accounts for the occasionally fragmentary character of my work. The anecdotes and sayings here related have been mostly taken down as soon as spoken, and are hence, I trust, not marred or mended by memory, which, judging from some anecdotes of him recently published, is wont to be a register not wholly accurate. “ Fingunt simul creduntque.” Such reviews as I have quoted are chiefly those which have met with my father’s approbation as ex- planatory commentaries. For my own part, I have generally refrained from attempting to pronounce judg- ment either on his poems or on his personal qualities and characteristics ; although more than any living man I 1 Generally signed E. F. G. throughout this work. PREFACE. XVII have had reason to appreciate his splendid truth and trustfulness, his varied creative imagination, and love of beauty, his rich humour, his strength of purpose, the largeness of his nature, and the wide range of his genius. If I may venture to speak of his special influence over the world, my conviction is, that its main and enduring factors are his power of expression, the perfection of his workmanship, his strong common sense, the high purport of his life and work, his humility, and his open-hearted and helpful sympathy — “ Fortezza , ed umilitade , e largo core CHRONOLOGY OF THE BOOKS OF POEMS. 1827. — Poems by Two Brothers. London: Printed for W. Simp- kin and R. Marshall, Stationers’-Hall-Court ; and J. and J. Jackson. Louth : 1827. Published in two sizes. 1829. — Timbuctoo. A Poem which obtained the Chancellor’s Medal at the Cambridge Commencement, 1829. By A. Tennyson, of Trinity College. 8vo. 1830. — Poems, chiefly Lyrical. By Alfred Tennyson. London: Effingham Wilson, Royal Exchange, Cornhill, 1830. i2mo. 1832. — Poems, by Alfred Tennyson. London : Edward Moxon, 64 New Bond Street (dated 1833). i2mo. 1833. — The Lover’s Tale, privately printed in London. 1842. — Poems, by Alfred Tennyson. Dover Street, 1842. 2 vols., i2mo. London : Edward Moxon, 1843.- -The Same. Second edition. London : 1843. 2 vols., 1 2mo. 1845.- -The Same. Third edition. London : 1845. 2 vols., i2mo. 1846.- -The Same. Fourth edition. London : 1846. 2 vols., i2mo. 1847. — The Princess. A Medley. By Alfred Tennyson. London: Edward Moxon, Dover Street, 1847. i2mo. 1848. — The Same. Second edition. London: 1848 (with addition of dedication to Henry Lushington). 1848. — Poems, by Alfred Tennyson. Fifth edition. London: Edward Moxon, Dover Street, 1848. i2mo. 1850. — In Memoriam. London: Edward Moxon, Dover Street, 1850. i2mo. (Appointed Poet-laureate Nov. 19.) xviii CHRONOLOGY OF THE BOOKS OF POEMS. XIX 1850. — The Princess. Third edition (altered, with songs added). London: Edward Moxon, Dover Street, 1850. i2mo. 1850. — Poems, by Alfred Tennyson. Sixth edition. London : 1850. i2mo. {A/ter reading a Life and Letters included.) 1851. — Poems, by Alfred Tennyson. Seventh edition. London: 1851. 1 2 mo. ( Come not when L am dead, Edwin Morris, The Eagle, and the dedication To the Queen included.) 1851. — The Princess. Fourth edition. London: 1851. i2mo. This edition first has the passages describing the Prince's weird seizures. 1851. — In Memoriam. Fourth edition. London: 1851. i2mo. ( O Sorrow, wilt thou live with me ? added.) 1852. — Ode on the Death of the Duke of Wellington. By Alfred Tennyson, Poet-laureate. London : Edward Moxon, Dover Street, 1852. 8vo. 1853. — Poems, by Alfred Tennyson. Eighth edition. London: 1853. i2mo. (With an alteration in the Dream of Fair Women, and lines To E. L. added.) 1853. — The Princess. Fifth edition (the final text). London: 1853. i2mo. 1854. — Charge of the Light Brigade, published in the Examiner, Dec. 9th, 1854, then printed for the soldiers before Sebastopol, August, i855- 1855. — Maud, and Other Poems. By Alfred Tennyson, D.C.L., Poet-laureate. London: Edward Moxon, 1855. i2mo. 1857. — Poems by Alfred Tennyson. Illustrations by D. G. Rossetti, J. E. Millais, and others. Edward Moxon. Royal 8vo. 1859. — Idylls of the King. By Alfred Tennyson, D.C.L., Poet-laureate. London: Edward Moxon & Co., Dover Street, 1859. i2mo. 1861. — The Sailor Boy. London: Emily Faithfull & Co., Victoria Press. 1862. — Idylls of the King. A new edition. London : 1862. i2mo. (with Dedication to the Prince Consort). 1862. — Ode: May the First, 1862, for the opening of the International Exhibition. London : Edward Moxon & Co. (published also in Fraser, June, 1862). 1863. — Welcome to Alexandra. 4 pages. London: Edward Moxon & Co. XX CHRONOLOGY OF THE BOOKS OF POEMS. 1864. — Enoch Arden, etc. By Alfred Tennyson, D.C.L., Poet- laureate. London : Edward Moxon & Co., Dover Street, 1864. i2mo. 1865. — Selections from the works of Alfred Tennyson, D.C.L., Poet-laureate. London: Edward Moxon & Co., Dover Street, 1865. i6mo. This was published in Moxon' s Miniature Poets , and contains six new poems , viz. : 1 The Captain ,’ ‘ On a Mourner ,’ 1 Horne They Brought Him Slain with Spears ,' and three ‘ Sonnets to a Coquette.' 1869. — The Holy Grail, and Other Poems. By Alfred Tennyson, D.C.L., Poet-laureate. London : Strahan & Co., Pub- lishers, 56 Ludgate Hill, 1869. i2mo. 1870. — The Window, or the Song of the Wrens. With music by Arthur Sullivan. London: Strahan, 1871 (Dec. 1870). 1871. — Miniature Edition of Complete Works. London: Strahan & Co. 1871. — The Last Tournament. Contemporary Review , December. 1872. — Gareth and Lynette, etc. By Alfred Tennyson, D.C.L., Poet-laureate. London: Strahan & Co., 56 Ludgate Hill, 1872. i2mo. 1872. — The Library Edition of the Complete Works. In seven volumes. London: Strahan & Co., 1872. Large 8 vo. (The Idylls of the King in sequence with Epilogue to the Queen.) 1874. — A Welcome to the Duchess of Edinburgh. H. S. King & Co. 1874. — The Cabinet Edition (H. S. King & Co.) contained: In the Garden at Swainston , The Voice and the Peak , England and America. 1875. — Queen Mary. A Drama, by Alfred Tennyson. London: Henry S. King & Co., 1875. I2m o. 1876. — Queen Mary, produced at the Lyceum Theatre. 1876. — Harold. A Drama, by Alfred Tennyson. London: Henry S. King & Co. (dated 1877). i2mo. 1879. — The Lover’s Tale. By Alfred Tennyson. London: C. Kegan Paul & Co., 1 Paternoster Square, 1879. i2mo. 1879. — The Falcon, produced at the St. James’ Theatre. The Victim. 7 * The Window. Printed by Sir Ivor Guest (Lord Wimborne), set to music by Sir Arthur Sullivan. CHRONOLOGY OF THE BOOKS OF POEMS. XXI 1880. — Collected Sonnets. By Charles Tennyson Turner with memorial lines by Alfred Tennyson. Edited (with a short preface) by Hallam Tennyson. London : C. Kegan Paul. 121110. 1880. — Ballads and Other Poems. By Alfred Tennyson. London : C. Kegan Paul & Co., 1 Paternoster Square, 1880. 12 mo. 1881. — The Cup, produced at the Lyceum Theatre. 1882. — The Promise of May, produced at the Globe Theatre. 1884. — The Cup and the Falcon. By Alfred Lord Tennyson, Poet- laureate. London: Macmillan & Co., 1884. i2mo. 1884. — A new Single-Volume Edition of Works. Revised by the Author with corrections. Macmillan & Co. 1884. — Becket. By Alfred Lord Tennyson, Poet-laureate. London : Macmillan & Co., 1884. Crown 8vo. 1885. — Tiresias, and Other Poems (including Once more the Heavenly Power , published in The Youth's Companion , Boston, U.S.A., 1884). By Alfred Lord Tennyson, D.C.L., Poet-laureate. London: Macmillan & Co., 1885. i2mo. 1886. — A new Library Edition of Complete Works. In ten volumes (revised, with additions by the author) . London : Macmillan & Co. (Also a new single-volume Edition, with slight alterations. Macmillan & Co.) 1886. — Locksley Hall Sixty Years After, etc. By Alfred Lord Tennyson, D.C.L., Poet-laureate. London and New York : Macmillan & Co., 1886. i2mo. 1887. — Carmen Saeculare. An ode in honour of the Jubilee of Queen Victoria. Macmillan' s Magazine , April. 1889. — Demeter and Other Poems. Macmillan & Co., London and New York. i2mo. (20,000 copies sold in first week.) 1889. — A new and revised Single -Volume Edition of Works (with many additions). Macmillan & Co. 1892. — The Foresters, Robin Hood and Maid Marian. London and New York : Macmillan & Co. i2mp. Produced at Daly’s Theatre in New York, March 17. 1892.-— The Silent Voices. Order of Service in Westminster Abbey, Oct. 12th. Printed for copyright purposes. London and New York : Macmillan & Co. 1892. — Oct. 28th. The Death of (Enone, Akbar’s Dream and Other Poems. London and New York: Macmillan & Co. i2mo. Also large paper Edition with five steel portraits. XXII CHRONOLOGY OF THE BOOKS OF POEMS. 1893. — Becket, as arranged for the stage by Henry Irving (revised by Alfred Lord Tennyson). Macmillan & Co. 1894. — The complete Single-Volume Edition of the Works, with last alterations, etc. London : Macmillan & Co. In Rowe’s Coming of Arthur, and Passing of Arthur ; G. C. Macaulay’s Gareth and Lynette , and Marriage of Geraint \ and Geraint and Enid ; Ainger’s Tennyson for the Young; Rowe’s Aylmer's Field ; Rowe’s Selections from Tennyson; Palgrave’s Golden Treasury Selection of Lyrical Poe?ns ; Dawson’s Princess ; Rolfe’s Enoch Arden, and Selections , whenever there was any doubtful point in the notes, I referred it to my father : so that in the later editions of these annotated volumes the commentaries may be considered tolerably accurate. Poems published in the “ Nineteenth Century.” My father contributed the following poems to the Nineteenth Century : in 1877, “ Prefatory Sonnet” (March), and “ Montenegro ” (May), and “To Victor Hugo ” (June), and “Achilles over the Trench ” (August) ; and in March, 1878, he contributed “The Revenge”; in April, 1879, “ The Defence of Lucknow, with a Dedicatory Poem to Princess Alice ” ; in May, 1880, “ De Profundis ” ; in November, 1881, “Despair”; in September, 1882, “To Virgil”; in March, 1883, “ Frater ave atque vale”; in February, 1892, “On the death of the Duke of Clarence and Avondale.” aS * X> co a o u > d3 a! iJ li- eu >, as CO 2 "qj H VO ^ ON £ ~ O I Oh m 'S.S O -T O O -S §■§ h * H b : o3 £ 11 - LTl ro ,00 £ >* O 40 «T 3 £ Q "S ^ O O II b - d Ph V ~U 1j j- j c o 72 £ S, « 8 £ 3 , O _§W § K *T3 g -£» £ co O 3 biO co o !_ H o co ^ - CO CT'_*_ ►h co o 1 W ° ^ _t: <2 0° o U ojz ^ 0 3 ^jo o * « £ $ •— » CO bJO" „ * O j| Sf ^'§^i ^ > oo O HH CQ _ O vO U ON CO 03 1-1 43 bjo £ 01 T3 CjD £ aj Q oS W < co ^ U ffi CHAPTER I. BOYHOOD. 1809-1827. The Tennysons may probably in their origin have been Danes, and they appear to have first settled north of the Humber, in Holderness. The earliest notice of the family that can be found is that in 1343 one John Tenison charged certain persons with forcibly taking away his goods and chattels at Paulfleet to the amount of £ 40 . In 1528 John Tennyson of Ryall directs that his body should be buried in the kirk-garthe of All Hallows at Skekelinge. To Margaret his wife he de- vises one ox-yard of land and half a close called Stockett Croft during her widowhood. Bequests are also made to his several children. One of them named William, who was possibly a Mayor, afterwards leaves to John, his son, his “ best mace, and to Paul Church, twenty pence.” He desires to be buried in the same kirk-garthe of All Hallows. From these Tennysons, through a Lancelot Tennyson of Preston, and Ralph Tennyson, who raised a troop of horse to support William III., descends Michael of Lincoln, my father’s great-grand- father. Michael was remembered by my grandfather, the Rev. Dr George Clayton Tennyson, as taking him into his bed and talking to him about the stars. Half-way between Horncastle and Spilsby, in a land T. I. 1 1 2 BOYHOOD. [l809- of quiet villages, large fields, gray hillsides and noble tail-towered churches, on the lower slope of a Lincolnshire wold, the pastoral hamlet of Somersby nestles, embosomed in trees. Here, on the 6th of August, 1809, was born, in his father’s rectory, Alfred Tennyson. He was the fourth of twelve children, eight sons and four daughters, most of them more or less true poets, and of whom all except two have lived to 70 and upward. Dr Tennyson bap- tized the boy two days after he was born, following the Prayer-book instruction that people “ defer not the Bap- tism of their children longer than the first or second Sunday next after their birth.” “ Here’s a leg for a babe of a week ! ” says doctor ; and he would be bound, There was not his like that year in twenty parishes round \ was said of him ; nevertheless during his infancy three times after convulsions he was thought to be dead. In 1892 I visited the old home, and when I returned, told my father that the trees had grown up obscur- ing the view from the Rectory, and that the house itself looked very desolate. All he answered was, “ Poor little place ! ” He always spoke of it with an affectionate remembrance; of the woodbine that climbed into the bay window of his nursery ; of the Gothic vaulted dining- room with stained glass windows, making, as my uncle Charles Turner used to say, “butterfly souls” on the walls ; of the beautiful stone chimney-piece carved by his father; of the pleasant little drawing-room lined with book-shelves, and furnished with yellow curtains, sofas and chairs, and looking out on the lawn. This lawn was overshadowed on one side by wych- elms, and on the other by larch and sycamore trees. 1 See “ The Grandmother.” SOMERSBY. 3 1827] Here, my father said, he made his early song “ A spirit haunts the year’s last hours.” Beyond the path, bound- ing the green sward to the south, ran in the old days a deep border of lilies and roses, backed by hollyhocks and sunflowers. Beyond that was A garden bower’d close With plaited alleys of the trailing rose, Long alleys falling down to twilight grots, Or opening upon level plots Of crowned lilies, standing near Purple-spiked lavender — sloping in a gradual descent to the parson’s field, at the foot of which flows, by “ lawn and lea,” the swift, steep- banked brook, where are “ brambley wildernesses,” and “ sweet forget-me-nots,” and in which the “ long mosses sway.” The charm and beauty of this brook, That loves To purl o’er matted cress and ribbed sand, Or dimple in the dark of rushy coves, And swerves to left and right thro’ meadowy curves That feed the mothers of the flock 1 , haunted him through life. Near Somersby the stream joins another from Holy- well, and their confluence may be referred to in the lines : By that old bridge, which, half in ruins then, Still makes a hoary eyebrow for the gleam Beyond it, where the waters marry. “ Flow down, cold rivulet, to the sea ” was the poem more especially dedicated to the Somersby stream, and not, as some have supposed, “ The Brook,” which is designed to be a brook of the imagination. The orchard on the right of the lawn forms a sunny 1 “ Ode to Memory,” which he considered one of the best among his very early and peculiarly concentrated Nature-poems. 4 BOYHOOD. [1809- little spot that awoke in his mind pleasant memories. “ How often,” he said, “have I risen in the early dawn to see the golden globes lying in the dewy grass among those apple trees.” He delighted too to recall the rare richness of the bowery lanes: the ancient Norman cross standing in the churchyard, close to the door of the quaint little church : the wooded hollow of Holywell : the cold springs flowing from under the sandstone rocks : the flowers, the mosses, and the ferns. When there I looked in vain for the words “ Byron is dead,” which he had carved on a rock when he was fourteen, on hearing of Byron’s death (April 19th, 1824), “a day when the whole world seemed to be darkened for me.” Like other children, the Tennysons had their imagi- native games; they were knights and jousted in mock tournaments, or they were “ champions and warriors, defending a field, or a stone-heap, or again they would set up opposing camps with a king in the midst of each. The king was a willow-wand stuck into the ground, with an outer circle of immortals, to defend him, of firmer, stiffer sticks. Then each party would come with stones, hurling at each other’s king and trying to overthrow him 1 .” Stories are told too about their boyish pranks in the old red-bricked house with em- battled parapet (Baumber’s Farm), said to have been built by Vanbrugh, which adjoins the Rectory garden, and is erroneously called by some “ The Moated Grange.” “ At all events, whatever may have happened,” my father writes, “ The Moated Grange is an imaginary house in the fen ; I never so much as dreamed of Baumber’s farm 2 as the abode of Mariana, and the character of Baumber was so ludicrously unlike the Northern Farmer, that 1 Taken from the account which my father gave Mrs Thackeray Ritchie. 2 The localities of my father’s subject-poems are wholly imaginary, although he has done for general Mid-Lincolnshire scenery what Virgil did for Mantua. EARLY DAYS AT HOME. 5 1827] it really makes me wonder how any one can have the face to invent such stories.” I think that their child- hood, despite the home circumstances which will be presently noticed, could not have been in the main un- happy. Their imaginative natures gave them many sources of amusement. One of these lasted a long time : the writing of tales in letter form, to be put under the vegetable dishes at dinner, and read aloud when it was over. I have heard from my uncles and aunts that my father’s tales were very various in theme, some of them humorous and some savagely dramatic ; and that they looked to him as their most thrilling story-teller. Among historical events the doings of Wellington and Napoleon were the themes of story and verse. Yet Somersby was so far out of the world that the elder children say they did not hear of the battle of Waterloo at the time. They had however an early memory that “ the coach drove through Somersby, the horses decorated with flowers and ribbons, and this might have been in honour of Wellington’s great victory.” My aunt Cecilia (Mrs Lushington) narrates how in the winter evenings by the firelight little Alfred would take her on his knee, with Arthur and Matilda leaning against him on either side, the baby Horatio between his legs; and how he would fascinate this group of young hero-worshippers, who listened open-eared and open- mouthed to legends of knights and heroes among untravelled forests rescuing distressed damsels, or on gigantic mountains fighting with dragons, or to his tales about Indians, or demons, or witches. The brothers and sisters would sometimes act one of the old English plays; and the elder members of the family thought that my father, from his dramatic rendering of his parts and his musical voice, would turn out an actor. When he was seven years old he was asked, “ Will 6 BOYHOOD. [l809- you go to sea or to school?” He said, “ To school,” thinking that school was a kind of paradise ; so he was taken to the house of his grandmother at Louth. His mother had been born in that town, being daughter of the vicar, the Rev. Stephen Fytche 1 ; and he was sent to the Grammar School there, then under the Rev. J. Waite, a tempestuous, flogging master of the old stamp. He remembered to his dying day sitting on the stone steps of the school on a cold winter’s morning, and crying bitterly after a big lad had brutally cuffed him on the head because he was a new boy. I still have the books which he used there, his Ovid , , Delectus , Analecta Grczca Minora , and the old Eton Latin Grammar , originally put together by Erasmus, Lilly and Colet. Among the incidents in his school life he would recall that of walking in a procession of boys, decked with ribbons, at the proclamation of the Coronation of George IV., and how the old women said that “ The boys made the prettiest part of the show.” Later in school life, he one day stood on a wall and made a political speech to his school-fellows, but was promptly ordered down by an usher, who asked him whether he wished to be the parish beadle. Two facts that his grandmother told him at this time impressed him. One was that she had become blind from cataract, and then had a dream that she saw ; and, that, although couching for cataract was not common in those days, owing to this dream she had gone to 1 George Clayton Tennyson of Tealby, clerk, and Elizabeth Fytche of Louth, spinster, were married in Louth Church by license on the 6th August 1805 by Wolley Jolland, Vicar, in the presence of John Fytche and Charles Tennyson. The Fytches were a county family of old descent. The first name on the Fytche pedigree is John Fitch of Fitch Castle in the North, who died in the 25th year of Edward I. His descendant Thomas Fitch was knighted by Charles II. 1679, served the office of High Sheriff in Kent, and was created baronet, Sept. 7th, 1688. LOUTH SCHOOL. 7 1827] London, and had been operated on successfully. The second was that she remembered having seen a young widow 1 , dressed in white, on her way to be strangled (her body afterwards to be burnt) for poisoning her husband. A few years ago the present master of Louth School gave a holiday in my father’s honour. The compliment gratified him ; yet he said, “ How I did hate that school ! The only good I ever got from it was the memory of the words, ‘ sonus desilientis aquae,’ and of an old wall covered with wild weeds opposite the school windows. I wrote an English poem there, for one of the Jacksons ; the only line I recollect is ‘ While bleeding heroes lie along the shore 2 .’ ” In 1820 he left Louth and came home to work under his father. When twelve years old he wrote the following liter- ary epistle (the earliest of those now remaining) to his aunt Marianne Fytche. Somersby. My dear Aunt Marianne, When I was at Louth you used to tell me that you should be obliged to me if I would write to you and give you my remarks on works and authors. I shall now fulfil the promise which I made at that time. Going into the library this morning, I picked up “ Sampson Agonistes,” on which (as I think it is a play you like) 1 “Women who were found guilty of murdering their husbands, or of the other offences comprised under the terms high or petit treason, were publicly burnt, by a law which was not abolished till 1790. A stake ten or eleven feet high was planted in the ground. An iron ring was fastened near the top, and from it the culprit was hung while the faggots were kindled under her feet. The law enjoined that she should be burnt alive, but in practice the sentence was usually mitigated, and she was strangled before the fire touched her body.” Lecky’s England in the Eighteenth Century , Vol. I. p. 506. 2 See Professor J. W. Hales 1 account of Louth School in the Gentleman 1 s Magazine , Dec. 1892. See Appendix, p. 497. 8 BOYHOOD. [ 1809 - I shall send you my remarks. The first scene is the lamentation of Sampson, which possesses much pathos and sublimity. This passage, Restless thoughts, that like a deadly swarm Of hornets arm’d, no sooner found alone, But rush upon me thronging, and present Times past, what once I was, and what am now, puts me in mind of that in Dante, which Lord Byron has prefixed to his “ Corsair,” “ Nessun maggior dolore, Che ricordarsi del tempo felice, Nella miseria.” His complaint of his blindness is particularly beautiful, O loss of sight, of thee I most complain ! Blind among enemies ! O worse than chains, Dungeon or beggary, or decrepit age ! Light, the prime work of God, to me is extinct, And all her various objects of delight Annulled, which might in part my grief have eased, Inferior to the vilest now become Of man or worm ; the vilest here excel me : They creep, yet see ; I, dark in light, exposed To daily fraud, contempt, abuse, and wrong, Scarce half I seem to live, dead more than half. O dark, dark, dark, amid the blaze of noon, Irrecoverably dark, total eclipse Without all hope of day ! O first created beam, and thou great Word, “ Let there be light ! ” and light was over all. — I think this is beautiful, particularly O dark, dark, dark, amid the blaze of noon. After a long lamentation of Sampson, the Chorus enters, saying these words : This, this is he. Softly awhile ; Let us not break in upon him : O change beyond report, thought, or belief ! See how he lies at random, carelessly diffused. If you look into Bp. Newton’s notes, you will find that he informs you that “ This beautiful application of the EARLY LETTERS. 9 1827] word ‘ diffused ’ is borrowed from the Latin.” It has the same meaning as “ temere ” in one of the Odes of Horace, Book the second, Sic temere, et rosa Canos odorati capillos, of which this is a free translation, “ Why lie we not at random, under the shade of the plantain (sub platano), having our hoary head perfumed with rose water? ” To an English reader the metre of the Chorus may seem unusual, but the difficulty will vanish, when I inform him that it is taken from the Greek. In line 133 there is this expression, “ Chalybean tempered steel.” The Chalybes were a nation among the ancients very famous for the making of steel, hence the expression “ Chalybean,” or peculiar to the Chalybes: in line 147 “ the Gates of Azzar ” ; this probably, as Bp. Newton observes, was to avoid too great an alliteration, which the “ Gates of Gaza ” would have caused, though (in my opinion) it would have rendered it more beautiful : and (though I do not affirm it as a fact) perhaps Milton gave it that name for the sake of novelty, as all the world knows he was a great pedant. I have not, at present, time to write any more : perhaps I may con- tinue my remarks in another letter to you : but (as I am very volatile and fickle) you must not depend upon me, for I think you do not know any one who is so fickle as Your affectionate nephew, A. Tennyson. P.S. Frederick informed me that grandmamma was quite growing dissipated, going out to parties every night. The Russels and grandmamma are to be at Dalby on Tuesday the 23rd, and I also hope to be taken by papa and mamma who are invited. Frederick made mamma promise to write him an account of the visit, but if I go, I shall take the trouble from mamma. IO BOYHOOD. [1809- His second earliest letter is a piece of nonsense with which he favoured his sisters’ governess. La Mancha. My dear Dulcinea, Pursuant to your request and the honour of Knight-errantry, and in conformity to my bump of con- scientiousness (which has grown so enormous since my visit to you that I can scarce put on my helmet), I now intend, as far as lies in my power, to fulfil that promise which the lustre of your charms extorted from me. Know then, most adorable mistress of my heart, that the manu- scripts which your angelic goodness and perfection were pleased to commend are not with me. If however my memory, assisted by the peerless radiance of your divine favour, avail me aught, I will endeavour to illume the darkness of my imagination with the recollection of your glorious excellence, till I produce a species of artificial memory unequalled by the Memoria Technica of Mr Gray. Who would not remember when thus requested? It would cause a dead idiot to start afresh to life and intellect. Accept then, soul of my soul, these effusions, in which no Ossianic, Miltonic, Byronic, Milmanic, Moorish, Crabbic, Coleridgic etc. fire is contained. The first is a review of death : Why should we weep for those who die ? etc. The second is a comparison : Je fais naitre la lumiere Du sein de l’obscurite. (Rousseau.) How gaily sinks the gorgeous sun, etc. And now farewell, my incomparable Dulcinea. In the truest spirit of knight-errantry, Yours ever, Don Quixote. As to his earliest attempts at poetry, he wrote the following note for me in 1890 : 1827] FIRST ATTEMPTS AT POETRY. II “ According to the best of my recollection, when I was about eight years old, I covered two sides of a slate with Thomsonian blank verse in praise of flowers for my brother Charles, who was a year older than I was, Thomson then being the only poet I knew. Before I could read, I was in the habit on a stormy day of spreading my arms to the wind, and crying out ‘ I hear a voice that’s speaking in the wind,’ and the words ‘ far, far away’ had always a strange charm for me. About ten or eleven Pope’s Homer s Iliad became a favourite of mine and I wrote hundreds and hundreds of lines in the regular Popeian metre, nay even could improvise them, so could my two elder brothers, for my father was a poet and could write regular metre very skilfully.” [I give one example: Can I forget thee ? In the festive hall, Where wit and beauty reign and minstrelsy, My heart still fondly shall recur to thee, Thine image still recall. Can I forget thee ? In the gloomy hour, When wave on wave tempestuous passions roll, Thou, loved ideal, still shalt soothe my soul, And health and peace restore. Farewell, my choicest blessings round thee wait, And kindred angels guard thine angel form, Guide and protect thee in life’s rudest storm, And every blast of fate 1 ! ] 1 These lines are copied from my grandfather’s scrapbook, a book which with others in his library he bound in leather with his own hands. His sister Mrs Matthew Russell also dabbled in poetry, and Dr Tennyson writes to her about some of her compositions in 1825 : “You do wrong to confess you are long in making verses, for no one would conceive it from the peculiar ease of the metre. You are not however singular: Gray hammer’d at his verses with great difficulty, and yet they' have immortalized his name. /Eschylus, the great Greek tragedian, with great difficulty once composed three verses in three days : a poetaster came to ^Eschylus, and boasted that he had composed three thousand in the same time. ‘Your three thousand verses,’ said /Eschylus, ‘ will last only for three days, whereas my three verses will last for ever.’ Your soliloquy is very beautiful, and so beautiful that I have transcribed it amongst my choice selections.” 12 BOYHOOD. [l809- The note continues — “ My father once said to me, ‘ Don’t write so rhythmically, break your lines occasion- ally for the sake of variety.’ ‘ Artist first, then Poet,’ some writer said of me. I should answer, ‘ Poeta nascitur non fit’; indeed, ‘ Poeta nascitur et fit.’ I suppose I was nearer thirty than twenty before I was anything of an artist. At about twelve and onward I wrote an epic of six thousand lines a la Walter Scott, — full of battles, deal- ing too with sea and mountain scenery, — with Scott’s regularity of octo-syllables and his occasional varieties. Though the performance was very likely worth nothing I never felt myself more truly inspired. I wrote as much as seventy lines at one time, and used to go shouting them about the fields in the dark. All these early efforts have been destroyed, only my brother-in-law Edmund Lushington begged for a page or two of the Scott poem. Somewhat later (at fourteen) I wrote a Drama in blank verse, which I have still, and other things. It seems to me, I wrote them all in perfect metre.” These poems made my grandfather say with pardon- able pride, “ If Alfred die, one of our greatest poets will have gone ” : and at another time, “ I should not wonder if Alfred were to revive the greatness of his relative, William Pitt 1 .” His grandmother, the sister of the Reverend Samuel Turner, would assert: “Alfred’s poetry all comes from me.” My father remembered her reading to him, when a boy, “ The Prisoner of Chillon ” very tenderly. Sam Turner, on the contrary, smashed the bottom out of his glass of rum and water on the dinner table, as he inveighed against “ this new-fangled Byron.” When at his grandfather’s desire my father wrote a poem on his grandmother’s death, the old gentleman gave 1 See p. xxii. UNPOETICAL ANCESTRY. 13 1827] him half a guinea with these words, “ Here is half a guinea for you, the first you have ever earned by poetry, and take my word for it, the last.” He himself was not a great hand at versification. Two lines of his are extant, de- scribing the crest of the Boynes, a goat drinking out of a stream. His younger son had previously made these lines, On yonder bank a goat is stood, He seems to sip the silver flood, which were corrected by the old gentleman as follows, On yonder bank a goat I spy, To sip the flood he seems to try. Owing to a caprice of my great-grandfather’s, my grandfather, who was the elder son, was disin- herited in favour of his only brother, Charles (Tennyson d’Eyncourt *), and so deprived of a position for which he would seem to have been well fitted. A neighbouring squire, being told by my great-grandfather of his in- tention, remonstrated, “ George, if you do this you’ll certainly be damned, you will indeed ” ; but, in spite of the remonstrance and the risk, the estate was left away from the elder son. As compensation for being disinherited, my grand- father was appointed not only Rector of Somersby and Wood Enderby, but also Incumbent of Benniworth and Vicar of Great Grimsby, for those were the days of pluralists. Not that he could have been a grasping man, for on one occasion a wealthy land-owner (whose heir was a remote relation and a poor farm-labourer) an- nounced his intention of leaving all his property to Dr Tennyson. But this my grandfather felt was unjust, and accordingly took the first opportunity of offending 1 Charles took the name of d’Eyncourt because, according to Burke and other heralds, the Tennysons represent the two branches of the old Norman family of d’Eyncourt. 14 BOYHOOD. [l809- his would-be benefactor in order that he might change his mind. The ruse was successful, as the sequel proved, for the estate devolved upon the rightful heir. Undoubtedly the disinheritance of my grandfather created a feeling of injustice in his mind which descended to his sons, though my father used to reflect in later years how little this early trial personally affected them and the d’Eyncourt sons; the cousins were always good friends. My grandfather had no real calling for the ministry of the Church, yet he faithfully strove to do his duty. He was a man of great ability, and considerably in advance of his age in his theological tenets, although in his sermons he could not escape the academic style of his time ; for example : “ The benevolent genius of Christianity affords the strongest presumption of its verity. The Almighty, so infinitely benevolent, can only wish to ensure the happiness of His creatures in the truths which He communicates, in the laws which He imposes, and in the doctrines which He promulgates. This indeed is so self-evident that it might be laid down as a rule that if any religion have not a benevolent tendency, this very circumstance is a sufficient refutation of its proceeding from God. What is revealed to us by Christianity but the Redemption of the whole human race by the merits of a crucified Saviour, and the glorious assurance of a future state of existence ? ” The Lincolnshire folk among whom he lived were in the early part of this century apt to be uncouth and mannerless. A type of rough independence was my grandfathers coachman, who, blamed for not keep- ing the harness clean, rushed into the drawing-room, flung the whole harness on the floor and roared out : “ Clean it yourself then.” It was perhaps the same man, who at the time of the Reform Bill said, “ I RELIGIOUS IMPRESSIONS. 1827] *5 suppose, Master Awlfred, your aunt Mrs^*Bourne will be going up to London before they begin to kill the quality .” (This aunt was a rigid Calvinist, who would weep for hours because God was so infinitely good. “ Has He not damned,” she cried, “ most of my friends ? But me, vie He has picked out for eternal salvation, me who am no better than my neighbours.” One day she said to her nephew, “ Alfred, Alfred, when I look at you, I think of the words of Holy Scripture — ‘Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire.’ ”) Again the Somersby cook was a decided character, and “ Master Awlfred ” heard her in some rage against her master and mistress exclaim : “ If you raaked out Hell with a smaall-tooth coamb you wean’t find their likes,” a phrase which long lingered in his memory. Yet notwithstanding their roughness the poor were fond of the “ stern Doctor,” as they called him, and would “ do anything for him.” Here perhaps I should mention that the sense of his father’s unkindness and injustice preyed upon his nerves and his health, and caused him at times to be terribly despondent. More than once Alfred, scared by his father’s fits of despond- ency, went out through the black night, and threw himself on a grave in the churchyard, praying to be beneath the sod himself 1 . 1 In one of his books I have found this unfinished prayer, composed by him, and written in his boyish hand ; it begins thus : “ O Lord God Almighty, high above all height, Omniscient and Omni- present, Whose lifetime is eternity, wilt Thou condescend to behold from the throne of Thy inexpressible Majesty the work of Thine own Hands kneeling before thee? Thou art the God of Heaven and of Earth. Thou hast created the immeasurable sea. Thou hast laid the foundations of the world that it should not be moved for ever. Thou givest and Thou takest life, Thou destroyest and Thou renewest. Blessed be Thy name for ever and ever.” The prayer continues with an appeal for pity to Christ — “ Who did leave the right hand of the Father to endure the agonies of the crown of thorns,” and “of the Cross.” i6 BOYHOOD. [1809- No doubt the children profited by the dominating force of their father’s intellect. A Hebrew and Syriac scholar, he perfected himself in Greek, in order that he might teach his sons. All that they learnt of lan- guages, of the fine arts, of mathematics, and natural science, until they went to Cambridge, was learnt from him. My father said that he himself received a good but not a regular classical education. At any rate he became an accurate scholar, the author “ thoroughly drummed ” into him being Horace; whom he disliked in proportion. He would lament, “ They use me as a lesson-book at schools, and they will call me ‘that horrible Tennyson.’ It was not till many years after boyhood that I could like Horace. Byron expressed what I felt, ‘ Then farewell Horace whom I hated so.’ Indeed I was so over-dosed with Horace that I hardly do him justice even now that I am old.’’ The boys had one great advantage, the run of their father’s excellent library. Amongst the authors most read by them were Shakespeare, Milton, Burke, Gold- smith, Rabelais, Sir William Jones, Addison, Swift, Defoe, Cervantes, Bunyan and Buffon. Dr Tennyson’s social powers were famous through- out the country side. The tradition lingered long among old barristers that, as young men, when they came to Spilsby on circuit, they were always anxious to persuade Dr Tennyson to dine with them because of his geniality and brilliant conversation. To this sketch of my grandfather, my uncle Arthur adds a few words. A scene comes before me of Frederick, Charles and Alfred having a regular scrimmage with lesson-books, and of my father suddenly coming round the corner. I didn’t wait to see what happened, but bolted; our father’s tall form appearing was generally at such moments the signal for a regular “ scatter,” but, THE BROTHERS AT SOMERSBY. 1 7 1827] although very severe, he had great tenderness of heart. I can well recollect him by my bedside, almost weeping, when I had a bad paroxysm of croup. Alfred had the same tenderness in spite of his somewhat gruff manner : he was notable among his brothers for strength and independence of character. His was a very gentle nature and I never remember quarrelling with him. He was very kind to us who were younger than he was, and I remember his tremendous excitement when he got hold of Bewick for the first time : how he paced up and down the lawn for hours studying him, and how he kept rushing in to us in the schoolroom to show us some of the marvellous wood-cuts, and to let us have a share in this new pleasure of his. Indeed he was always a great reader ; and if he went alont he would take his book with him on his walk. One day in the winter, the snow being deep, he did not hear the Louth mail coming up behind. Suddenly “ Ho ! ho 5 ” from the coachman roused him. He looked up, and found a horse’s nose and eyes over his shoulder, as if reading his book. Like my father, Alfred had a great head, so that when I put on his hat it came down over my face. He too like my father 1 had a powerful frame, a splendid physique, and we used to have gymnastics over the large beam in his attic den, which was in the gable looking westward. Alfred and I often took long rambles together, and on one particular afternoon, when we were in the home fields talking of our respective futures, he said most emphatically, “Well, Arthur, I mean to be famous.” (From his earliest years he felt that he was a poet, and earnestly trained himself to be worthy of his vocation.) For our less active amusements we carved in wood and moulded with clay, and one of my earliest recollections of Alfred is watching him form with clay a Gothic archway in the bole of an old tree. In the poem of “ Isabel ” my father more or less described his mother, who was a “ remarkable and saintly woman.” “ One of the most innocent and tender- hearted ladies I ever saw,” wrote Edward Fitzgerald. 1 He stood six feet two, and was strong and energetic. Tim Green, the Somersby rat-catcher, a great ally of the young Tennysons, said, “I remember the oud Doctor. What a clip he used to goa betweean them chooorches o’ Somersby an 1 Enderby! ” BOYHOOD. 1 8 [ 1809 - She devoted herself entirely to her husband and her children. The world hath not another (Tho’ all her fairest forms are types of thee, And thou of God in thy great charity) Of such a finish’d chasten’d purity. She had been among the beauties of the county. When she was almost eighty, a daughter, under cover of her deafness, ventured to mention the number of offers of marriage which had been made to her mother, naming twenty-four. Suddenly, to the amusement of all present, the old lady said emphatically, and quite simply, as for truth’s sake, “ No, my dear, twenty-five.” She had a great sense of humour, which made her room a paradise for the children. They inherited her love of animals 1 and her pity “for all wounded wings.” And my father was even then a keen observer of the habits of birds and beasts and ants and bees ; was “ wise in winged things, and knew the ways of Nature,” of which he had the true poet’s love. In later life this led to an earnest study of science. As a boy he would reel off hundreds of lines such as these : When winds are east and violets blow, And slowly stalks the parson crow. And The quick-wing’d gnat doth make a boat Of his old husk wherewith to float To a new life ! all low things range To higher! but I cannot change. 1 The boys of a neighbouring village used to bring their dogs to my grandmother’s windows and beat them in order to be bribed to leave off, or to induce her to buy them. 1827] HIS LOVE OF NATURE. 19 To the aggravation of the neighbouring gamekeepers he would spring all their traps, and more than one of them threatened that, if they caught “ that there young gentleman who was for ever springing the gins,” they would duck him in the pond. He liked to tell of an owl and a monkey of famous memory. Sitting at night by the open window in his own particular little attic (now used as a store-room for apples and lumber), he heard the cry of a young owl and answered it. The owl came nestling up to him, fed out of his hand, and finally took up its per- manent abode with the family. Sometimes it would perch on my grandmother’s head, and was so constantly with her that her pet monkey was made jealous. The monkey was a droll fellow: he would imitate the house- maid scrubbing the floor, and his prime luxury was to singe the hair of his back at a candle. One luckless day he was sitting in a corner of the sill outside the attic window, the owl in the opposite corner. The monkey glared at the owl ; the owl watched the monkey with solemn round eyes, — the monkey, advancing and retiring, and gibbering like a little Frenchman all the while. The little Frenchman at last plucked up courage, rushed at his solemn opponent, took him by the leg, and hurled him to the ground. “ One of the most comical scenes,” rny father said, “that I have ever witnessed.” The owl was eventually drowned in the well ; dying, it is supposed, a Narcissus death of vanity. “ Like Wordsworth on the mountains,” said Fitz- gerald, “ Alfred too, when a lad abroad on the wold, sometimes of a night with the shepherd, watched not only the flock on the greensward, but also the fleecy star that bears Andromeda far off Atlantic seas ” : 20 BOYHOOD. Two of Alfred’s earliest lines were [l809- The rays of many a rolling central star, Aye flashing earthwards, have not reach’d us yet. There is a story current in the family that Frederick, when an Eton school-boy, was shy of going to a neigh- bouring dinner-party to which he had been invited. “ Fred,” said his younger brother, “ think of Herschel’s great star-patches, and you will soon get over all that.” Of the few families in the neighbourhood the Ten- nysons were most intimate with the Rawnsleys. Mr Rawnsley, who was Rector of Halton, was appointed by Dr Tennyson one of the guardians of his children. For his son Drummond my father had a strong friendship which lasted through life, having been first attracted to him by a certain unworldliness of nature. In the summer-time Dr and Mrs Tennyson took their holiday by the seaside, mostly at Mablethorpe. From his boyhood my father had a passion for the sea, and especially for the North Sea in wild weather — The hollow ocean-ridges roaring into cataracts: and for the glorious sunsets over the flats — The wide-wing’d sunset of the misty marsh. The cottage 1 to which the family resorted was close under the sea bank, “ the long low line of tussocked dunes.” “ I used to stand on this sand-built ridge,” my father said, “ and think that it was the spine-bone of the world.” From the top of this, the immense sweep of marsh inland 1 and the whole weird strangeness of the place greatly 1 Or even a lowly cottage whence we see Stretch’d wide and wild the waste enormous marsh, Where from the frequent bridge, Like emblems of infinity, The trenched waters run from sky to sky. “Ode to Memory.” 1827] “POEMS BY TWO BROTHERS.” 21 moved him. On the other side of the bank at low tide there is an immeasurable waste of sand and clay. “ Nottingham and Lincoln foalk moastly coom ’ere,” one of the Mablethorpe fishermen grumbled, “a -vast sight of ’em, soom taime (time), but they saays it is a mighty dool plaace with a deal o’ sand, becos there isn’t naw band nor pier like : but howsoomever, the wind blaws the poor things a bit, an’ they weshes their bodies i’ the waaves.” At night on the shore, when the tide is full, the sound is amazing. All around there is a low murmur of seething foam, Like armies whispering where great echoes be. “Nowhere,” wrote Drummond Rawnsley, “are the waves in a storm higher than in the North Sea”: no- where have the breakers a more thunderous roar than on this Lincolnshire coast : and sometimes at half-tide the clap of the wave falling on the flat shore can be heard for miles, and is accurately described in “ The Last Tournament”: As the crest of some slow-arching wave, Heard in dead night along that table-shore, Drops flat, and after the great waters break Whitening for half a league, and thin themselves, Far over sands marbled with moon and cloud, From less and less to nothing. Fitzgerald writes : “ I used to say Alfred never should have left old Lincolnshire, where there were not only such good seas, but also such fine Hill and Dale among ‘ The Wolds,’ which he was brought up in, as people in general scarce thought on.” In 1827 my uncle Frederick went from Eton, where he was captain of the school, to Trinity College, Cam- bridge : and in March of this year Poems by Two Brothers 22 BOYHOOD. [l809- was published by Jackson of Louth. When these poems were written, my uncle Charles was between sixteen and eighteen, and my father between fifteen and seventeen. The brothers were promised the liberal sum of £ 20 , having however to take more than half of this in books out of Jackson’s shop. According to the fashion of the day, quotations from various authors were freely inter- spersed throughout the little volume, and the motto at the beginning was “ Haec nos novimus esse nihil.” Their preface states, “We have passed the Rubicon and we leave the rest to fate, though its edict may create a fruitless regret that we ever emerged ‘ from the shade ’ and courted notoriety.” As an outburst of youthful poetic enthusiasm, the book is not wanting in interest and a certain charm, although full of the boyish imitation of other poets. Unlike Swift, who exclaimed on re-reading his early work, “ What a genius I had when I wrote that ! ” my father could hardly tolerate what he called his “ early rot.” But latterly he said, “ Some of it is better than I thought it was ! ” In consequence of the unearthing of this MS by Messrs Jackson it fell to me to publish the second edition, sixty years after the publication of the first, and to endeavour to initial the poems. Yet I cannot be sure of the authorship of each, even though the original manuscript has been in my hands, for the poems are not always copied out by their respective authors. But the initials which I gave received the sanction and authority of my uncle Frederick, as far as his memory served him. He himself was the author of four of the poems, that had generally been attributed to Charles. The only contemporary criticism is in the Literary Chronicle (May 1827): This little volume exhibits a pleasing union of kindred tastes, and contains several little pieces of considerable merit. EARLY UNPUBLISHED POEMS. 23 1827] My uncle Charles would say that, on the afternoon of publication, my father and he hired a carriage with some of the money earned ; and driving away fourteen miles, over the wolds and the marsh, to Mablethorpe, their favourite waste sea-shore, “ shared their triumph with the winds and waves.” Unpublished Poems of Boyhood. (Fragments written at 14 or 15 years of age.) I showed the following early fragments to the late Master of Balliol and by his advice I publish them. He said, “They are most original, and it is wonderful how the whelp could have known such things.” They were omitted from the Poems by Two Brothers , being thought too much out of the common for the public taste. (A scene , written at 14.) Act 1, Sc. 1 (In Spain). DRAMATIS PERSONAE. Carlos (a spirited stripling with a spice of suspicion and a pre- ponderance of pride). Michael (his old attendant) . Moonlight. Carl. Hear you the sound of wheels? Mich . No, faith, not I. Carl. Methinks they tarry somewhat. What’s the clock ? Mick . Half way toward midnight. Carl. Why, they should be here. Mick. ’Tis a clear night, they will be here anon. Carl. Hist ! what was that ? 24 BOYHOOD. Mich . Carl . Mick, Carl. Mich . [1809-* The night gale in those trees. How beautifully looks the moonbeam through The knotted boughs of this long avenue Of thick dark oaks, that arch their arms above, Coeval with the battlemented towers Of my old ancestors ! I never look upon them but I glow With an enthusiastic love of them. Methinks an oak-tree never should be planted But near the dwelling of some noble race ; For it were almost mockery to hang it O’er the thatch’d cottage, or the snug brick box Of some sleek citizen. Ye proud aristocrats whose lordly shadows, Chequer’d with moonlight’s variation, Richly and darkly girdle these gray walls, — I and my son’s sons and our offspring, all Shall perish, and their monuments, with forms Of the unfading marble carved upon them, Which speak of us to other centuries, Shall perish also, but ye still shall flourish In your high pomp of shade, and make beneath Ambrosial gloom. Thou dost remember, Michael, How, when a boy, I joy’d to place me on The hollow-stemm’d and well-nigh leafless oak Which towers above the lake that ripples out In the clear moonshine. You were wont to call it Your throne. I was so, Michael. You’d sit there From dawn till sunset looking far away On the blue mountains, and most joyful when The wanton wind came singing lustily Among the moss-grown branches, and threw back Your floating hair. 1827] FRAGMENT OF A PLAY. 25 Carl. Ha! Ha! Why even then My Spanish blood ran proudly in my veins. Mich. Ay, Ay, I warrant you, and when I came And would have call’d you down to break your fast, You would look down and knit your baby brows Into your father’s frown, and beckon me Away. Carl. Ha! Ha! ’twas laughable, and yet It show’d the seeds of innate dignity That were within me ; did it not, good Michael ? Mich . And when your age had somewhat riper grown, And I was wont to dandle you upon My knee, and ask you whether you would be A great man in your time, You’d weave your waxen fingers in these locks (They are gray now) and tell me you were great Already in your birth. Carl. Ha! by St James Mine was no vulgar mind in infancy, Ev’n then the force of nature and high birth Had writ nobility upon my brow. Hark! they are coming. Extract from a Play also written at 14 (according to an entry made by my grandfather at the beginning of the MS). The Devil (speaks) (going to the timepiece). Half after midnight ! these mute moralizers, Pointing to the unheeded lapse of hours, Become a tacit eloquent reproach 26 BOYHOOD. [l809- Unto the dissipation of this Earth. There is a clock in Pandemonium, Hard by the burning throne of my great grandsire, The slow vibrations of whose pendulum, With click-clack alternation to and fro, Sound “Ever, Never” thro’ the courts of Hell, Piercing the wrung ears of the damn’d that writhe Upon their beds of flame, and whensoe’er There may be short cessation of their wails, Through all that boundless depth of fires is heard The shrill and solemn warning “Ever, Never”: Then bitterly I trow they turn and toss And shriek and shout to drown the thrilling noise. Half after midnight! {Looking again at the timepiece.) Wherefore stand I here? Methinks my tongue runs twenty knots an hour: I must unto mine office. {Exit abruptly .) After reading the Bride of Lammermoor he wrote the following: The Bridal.* The lamps were bright and gay On the merry bridal-day, When the merry bridegroom Bore the bride away ! A merry, merry bridal, A merry bridal-day ! And the chapel’s vaulted gloom Was misted with perfume. “ Now, tell me, mother, pray, Why the bride is white as clay, Although the merry bridegroom Bears the bride away, * Copyright, 1897, by The Macmillan Company. 1827] THE BRIDAL.’ 27 On a merry, merry bridal, A merry bridal-day? And why her black eyes burn With a light so wild and stern?” “ They revel as they may,” That skinny witch did say, “For — now the merry bridegroom Hath borne the bride away — Her thoughts have found their wings In the dreaming of past things: And though girt in glad array, Yet her own deep soul says nay: For tho’ the merry bridegroom Hath borne the bride away, A dark form glances quick Thro’ her worn brain, hot and sick.” And so she said her say — This was her roundelay — That tho’ the merry bridegroom Might lead the bride away, Dim grief did wait upon her, In glory and in honour. * # # # # In the hall, at close of day, Did the people dance and play, For now the merry bridegroom Hath borne the bride away. He from the dance hath gone But the revel still goes on. Then a scream of wild dismay Thro’ the deep hall forced its way, Altho’ the merry bridegroom Hath borne the bride away; And, staring as in trance, They were shaken from the dance. — 28 BOYHOOD. Then they found him where he lay Whom the wedded wife did slay, Tho’ he a merry bridegroom Had borne the bride away, And they saw her standing by, With a laughing crazed eye, On the bitter, bitter bridal, The bitter bridal-day. The Coach of Death.* (A fragment.) Far off in the dun, dark Occident, Behind the burning Sun: Where his gilding ray is never sent, And his hot steeds never run: There lies a land of chilling storms, A region void of light, A land of thin faces and shadowy forms, Of vapours, and mist, and night. There never green thing will gaily spring In that unwholesome air, But the rickety blast runs shrilly and fast Thro’ the bony branches there. When the shadow of night’s eternal wings Envelopes the gloomy whole, And the mutter of deep-mouth’d thunderings Shakes all the starless pole, Thick sobs and short shrill screams arise Along the sunless waste, And the things of past days with their horrible eyes Look out from the cloudy vast. * Copyright, 1897, by The Macmillan Company. 1827] “THE COACH OF DEATH.” 29 And the earth is dry, tho’ the pall of the sky Leave never an inch of blue; And the moaning wind before it drives Thick wreaths of cloudy dew. Whoever walks that bitter ground His limbs beneath him fail; His heart throbs thick, his brain reels sick: His brow is clammy and pale. But some have hearts that in them bum With power and promise high, To draw strange comfort from the earth, Strange beauties from the sky. Dark was the night, and loud the roar Of wind and mingled shower, When there stood a dark coach at an old Inn door At the solemn midnight hour. That Inn was built at the birth of Time : The walls of lava rose, Cemented with the burning slime Which from Asphaltus flows. No sound of joy, no revelling tones Of carouse were heard within : But the rusty sign of a skull and cross-bones Swung creaking before the Inn. No taper’s light look’d out on the night, But ever and anon Strange fiery eyes glared fiercely thro’ The windows of shaven bone. And the host came forth, and stood alone And still in the dark doorway: There was not a tinge on each high cheek bone, But his face was a yellow gray. 30 BOYHOOD. [l809- The skin hung lax on his long thin hands; No jolly host was he; For his shanks were shrunken to willow wands And his name was Atrophy ! Dimly the travellers look’d thro’ the glooms, Worn and wan was their gaze, I trow, As the shrivell’d forms of the shadowy grooms Yoked the skeleton horses to. They lifted their eyes to the dead, pale skies, And above the barkless trees They saw the green verge of the pleasant earth, And heard the roar of her seas. They see the light of their blest firesides, They hear each household voice : The whisper’d love of the fair young wives; And the laugh of their rose-lipp’d boys. The summer plains with their shining leaves, The summer hills they see ; The dark vine leaves round the rustling eaves, And the forests, fair and free. There came a gaunt man from the dark Inn door, A dreadnought coat had he: His bones crack’d loud, as he stept thro’ the crowd, And his boots creak’d heavily. Before his eyes so grim and calm The tingling blood grew chill, As each put a farthing into his palm, To drive them where he will. His sockets were eyeless, but in them slept A red infernal glow; As the cockroach crept, and the white fly leapt About his hairless brow. 1827] “THE COACH OF DEATH.” 31 They mounted slow in their long black cloaks, The tears bedimm’d their sight: The grim old coachee strode to the box, And the guard gasp’d out “All’s right.” The leaders bounded, the guard’s horn sounded: Far away thro’ the night ran the lengthen’d tones : As the quick wheels brush’d, and threw up the dust Of dead men’s pulverised bones. Whose blood in its liveliest course would not pause At the strife of the shadowy wheels, The chattering of the fleshless jaws, And the beat of the horny heels ? Deep dells of snow sunk on each side below The highway, broad and flat, As the coach ran on, and the sallow lights shone Dimly and blurly with simmering fat. Vast wastes of starless glooms were spread Around in the chilling air, And heads without bodies and shapes without heads Went leaping here and there. O Coachee, Coachee, what lights approach With heavenly melodies ? Oh ! those are the lights of the Paradise coach, That so gaily meet their eyes ! With pleasant hymns they soothe the air Of death, with songs of pride: With sackbut, and with dulcimer, With psaltery they ride. These fear not the mists of unwholesome damps That through that region rove, For all wreath’d with green bays were the gorgeous lamps, And a bright archangel drove. BOYHOOD. They pass’d (an inner spirit fed Their ever-burning fires,) With a solemn burst of thrilling light, And a sound of stringed lyres. With a silver sound the wheels went round, The wheels of burning flame ; Of beryl, and of amethyst Was the spiritual frame. Their steeds were strong exceedingly : And rich was their attire : Before them flow’d a fiery stream ; They broke the ground with hoofs of fire. They glitter’d with a stedfast light, The happy spirits within ; As stars they shone, in raiment white, And free from taint of sin. CHAPTER II* CAMBRIDGE. 1828-1830. I past beside the reverend walls In which of old I wore the gown ; I roved at random thro’ the town, And saw the tumult of the halls ; And heard once more in College fanes The storm their high-built organs make, And thunder-music, rolling, shake The prophets blazon’d on the panes : And caught once more the distant shout, The measured pulse of racing oars Among the willows ; paced the shores And many a bridge, and all about The same gray flats again, and felt The same, but not the same ; and last Up that long walk of limes I past To see the rooms in which he dwelt. Another name was on the door : I linger’d ; all within was noise Of songs, and clapping hands, and boys That crash’d the glass, and beat the floor ; Where once we held debate, a band Of youthful friends, on mind and art, And labour, and the changing mart, And all the framework of the land. On February 20th, 1828, my father and my uncle Charles matriculated at Trinity College, Cambridge, where their elder brother Frederick was already a dis- tinguished scholar, and had won the University medal for the best Greek ode on the Pyramids. * Copyright, 1897, by The Macmillan Company. 33 T. I. 3 34 CAMBRIDGE. [l828- Of their entrance into Cambridge, ■ — my father told me that they had left the coach and were walking down Trumpington Street in the dusk of the evening, when a proctor addressed him, “What are you doing without your cap and gown, sir, at this time of night? ” To which, not being aware of the dignity of the per- sonage who addressed him, he promptly retorted, “ I should like to know what business it can be of yours, sir.” They first occupied rooms at No. 12 Rose Crescent, moving afterwards to Trumpington Street, No. 57 Corpus Buildings. Although they knew but few men when be- ginning their University career, and were shy and reserved, they soon joined themselves to a set of friends who were all more or less remarkable. At first my father writes to his aunt, Mrs Russell : “ I am sitting owl- like and solitary in my rooms (nothing between me and the stars but a stratum of tiles). The hoof of the steed, the roll of the wheel, the shouts of drunken Gown and drunken Town come up from below with a sea-like murmur. I wish to Heaven I had Prince Hussain’s fairy carpet to transport me along the deeps of air to your coterie. Nay, I would even take up with his brother Aboul-something’s glass for the mere pleasure of a peep. What a pity it is that the golden days of Faerie are over ! What a misery not to be able to consolidate our gossa- mer dreams into reality ! When, my dearest Aunt, may I hope to see you again ? I know not how it is, but I feel isolated here in the midst of society. The country is so disgustingly level, the revelry of the place so monoto- nous, the studies of the University so uninteresting, so much matter of fact. None but dry-headed, calculating, angular little gentlemen can take much delight in them. I have been seeking ‘ Falkland’ for a long time with- out success. Those beautiful extracts from it, which you showed me at Tealby, haunt me incessantly; but wishes, I think, like telescopes reversed, seem to set their objects at a greater distance.” 1830] HIS APPEARANCE AND CHARACTER. 35 “ I can tell you nothing of his college days,” writes Edward Fitzgerald to a friend, “ for I did not know him till they were over, tho’ I had seen him two or three times before : I remember him well, a sort of Hyperion.” With his poetic nature, and warmth of heart, he soon made his way. Fanny Kemble, who used to visit her brother John, said of him when at College, “Alfred Tennyson was our hero, the great hero of our day.” Another friend describes him as “ Six feet high, broad- chested, strong-limbed, his face Shakespearian, with deep eyelids, his forehead ample, crowned with dark wavy hair, his head finely poised, his hand the admiration of sculptors, long fingers with square tips, soft as a child’s but of great size and strength. What struck one most about him was the union of strength with refinement.” On seeing him first come into the Hall at Trinity, Thompson 1 said at once, “ That man must be a poet.” Arthur Hallam “ looked up to him as to a great poet and an elder brother 2 .” Hallam said to Trench in 1832: “Alfred’s mind is what it always was, or rather, brighter, and more vigorous. I regret, with you, that you have never had the oppor- tunity of knowing more of him. His nervous tempera- ment and habits of solitude give an appearance of affectation to his manner, which is no interpreter of the man, and wears off on further knowledge. Perhaps you would never become very intimate, for certainly your bents of mind are not the same, and at some points they intersect ; yet I think you would hardly fail to see much for love, as well as for admiration.” Blakesley described Alfred as “Truly one of the mighty of the earth.” The friends among whom he lived were Spedding (author of the Life of Bacon), Milnes (afterwards Lord Houghton), Trench (afterwards Archbishop of Dublin), 1 Afterwards Master of Trinity. 2 A. H. Hallam was born on February 1 st, 1811 . 3-2 36 CAMBRIDGE. [l 828 - Alford (afterwards Dean of Canterbury), Brookfield, Blakesley (afterwards Dean of Lincoln), Thompson, Stephen Spring Rice, Merivale (afterwards Dean of Ely), J. M. Kemble, Heath (Senior Wrangler 1832), Charles Buller, R. Monteith, Tennant, and above all Hallam. Some summers ago my father and I went to see Hallam s rooms, at No. 3, G, New Court, in which with these friends he had spent so many happy hours. Of this band of men Lord Houghton spoke in 1866 at the opening of the New Cambridge Union: “I am inclined to believe that the members of that generation were, for the wealth of their promise, a rare body of men such as this University has seldom contained.” They were a genial, high-spirited, poetical 1 set, full of speculation and of enthusiasm for the great literature of the past, and for the modern schools of thought, and despised rhetoric and sentimentalism. Fitzgerald comments thus in one of his unpublished MS notes : The German School, with Coleridge, Julius Hare, etc. to ex- pound, came to reform all our notions. I remember that Livy and Jeremy Taylor were the greatest poets next to Shakespeare. I am not sure if you were not startled at hearing that Eutropius was the greatest lyric poet except Pindar. You hadn’t known he was a poet at all. I remember A. T. quoting Hallam (the great historian) as pronouncing Shakespeare “the greatest man.” I thought such dicta rather peremptory for a philosopher. “ Well,” said A. T., “ the man one would wish perhaps to show as a sample of mankind to those in another planet.” He used sometimes to quote Milton as the sublimest of all poets, and his two similes, one about the “gunpowder ore,” and the other about “the fleet,” as the grandest of all similes. He thought that “ ‘ Lycidas ’ was a touchstone of poetic taste.” Of Dryden, “ I don’t know how it is, but Dryden always seems greater than he shows himself to be.” 1 The modern poets in the ascendant among them were Wordsworth, Coleridge, Shelley, Keats ; but Byron’s “ comet blaze ” was evidently on the wane. HIS INSIGHT INTO CHARACTER. 37 1830 ] His friends noted that my father had from the first a deep insight into character, and would often turn upon them with a sudden terse criticism when they thought him far away in the clouds \ Fitzgerald remembered that of someone suddenly pronouncing a dogma he said, “ That’s the swift decision of one who sees only half the truth ” ; And of a very different character, somewhat apolo- getic, “ There’s a want of central dignity in him.” A few of his Cambridge contemporaries have been drawn in verse by him 2 . The then well-known Cambridge orator S — was partly described in the poem, “ A Character.” He was “ a very plausible, parliament-like, self-satisfied speaker at the Union Debating Society.” Another verse-portrait my father quoted to me, which he remembered with pleasure that Hallam had praised : 1 “We were looking one day at the portrait of an elderly politician in his bland, family aspect : A. T. (with his eye-glass), 4 It looks rather like a retired panther. 1 So true ! 11 MS Note, E. F. G. 2 Of Brookfield he wrote in 1875 for Lord Lyttelton’s preface to “ Sermons, by the late Rev. William Henry Brookfield 11 : Old Brooks, who loved so well to mouth my rhymes, How oft we two have heard St Mary’s chimes ! How oft the Cantab supper, host and guest, Would echo helpless laughter to your jest ! How oft with him we paced that walk of limes, Him, the lost light of those dawn-golden times. (It was of him that the late Dr Thompson wrote: — “He was far the most amusing man I ever met, or shall meet. At my age it is not likely that I shall ever again see a whole party lying on the floor for purposes of unrestrained laughter, while one of their number is pouring forth, with a perfectly grave face, a succession of imaginary dialogues between characters, real and fictitious, one exceeding another in humour and drollery.”) Of Kemble my father said in a sonnet published in 1830 : My hope and heart is with thee — thou wilt be A latter Luther and a soldier priest. 33 CAMBRIDGE. [l828- ( Unpublished . .) Thy soul is like a landskip, friend, Steeple, and stream, and forest lawn, Most delicately overdrawn With the first twilight of the even, Clear-edged, and showing every bend Of each dark hill against the Heaven, Nor wanting many a sombre mound, Stately and mild, and all between Valleys full of solemn sound, And hoary holts on uplands green, And somewhat loftier antient heights Touch’d with Heaven’s latest lights. Of Blakesleyhe said, “He ought to be Lord Chancellor, for he is a subtle and powerful reasoner, and an honest man.” Blakesley, he observed another time, was honestly indignant at gaining the Chancellor’s Medal, which, he asserted, “ ought to have gone to young Kennedy.” Later, of James Spedding he remarked, “ He was the Pope among us young men — the wisest man I know.” Of Hallam himself, “ He would have been known, if he had lived, as a great man but not as a great poet ; he was as near perfection as mortal man could be 1 .” Whewell, who was his tutor, he called “ the lion-like man,” and had for him a great respect. It is reported that Whewell, recognizing his genius, tolerated in him certain informalities which he would not have overlooked in other men. Thus, “ Mr Tennyson, what’s the compound interest of a penny put out at the Christian era up to the present time ? ” was Whewell’s good-natured call to 1 “ And over those ethereal eyes The bar of Michael Angelo. These lines I wrote from what Arthur Hallam said after reading of the prominent ridge of bone over the eyes of Michael Angelo : ‘Alfred, look over my eyes ; surely I have the bar of Michael Angelo !’ ” A. T. WHEWELL. 39 1830] attention in the Lecture Room while my father was reading Virgil under the desk. Once, when Whewell had made himself unpopular, a tumult arose among the undergraduates, who lined the street from the Senate House to Trinity Gate and hooted him, shouting “ Billy Whistle ! ” (Whewell’s nickname). As he passed between them, Hallam, Spring Rice, and my father, raised a cheer for him. He saw my father and bade him come instantly to his rooms. Whewell began, “ I was sorry to see, Mr Tennyson, that you were at the head of that very disorderly mob outside the Senate House.” “ But,” answered my father, “ my friends and I were not heading the mob, we were cheering you ! ” Whereat Whewell said nothing, but smiled grimly to himself with evident pleasure, inviting him to breakfast next morning. Another Cambridge story about Whewell, but perhaps of later date, my father would tell somewhat in this way. At 1 2 o’clock one night, horns and trumpets and bugles and drums began to play from all the windows round Trinity New Court, and a man, who had been expelled that day, strummed on a piano which had been set in the middle of the lawn; and there was the fiend’s own row. Presently Whewell, who lived in Nevile’s Court, next to the New Court, was heard thundering at his door which had been tied with a rope ; ‘ TpU jui v dpegar Icov ’ and at the third charge he broke through, rushed out, found all the windows closed, lights extinguished, dead silence every- where, only the expelled man standing immovable by the piano under a cold round moon. Whewell strode to the piano, the expelled man ran for his life round and round the colonnades of Nevile’s Court; thrice he ran round, Whewell pursuing. At last Whewell caught him. “ Do you know who I am, sir ? ” said Whewell, panting. “ Y es,” was the answer, “ Old Whistle, who made that mistake in his Dynamics .” Thereupon Whewell, seeing that he was the man who had been expelled, took him by the CAMBRIDGE. 40 [1828- scruff of the neck, carried him to the great gate, and shot him out like bad rubbish. As a young man my fathers friends have often described him to me as having Johnsonian common sense and a rare power of expression, very genial, full of enjoyment, full of sensitiveness and full of humour, though with the passionate heart of a poet, and sometimes feeling the melancholy of life. He passed through “ moods of misery unutterable,” but he eventually shook them off. He remembered how, when in London almost for the first time, one of these moods came over him, as he realized that “ in a few years all its inhabitants would be lying horizontal, stark and stiff in their coffins.” Despite such passages of gloom he worked on at his poems, wrote Latin and Greek odes 1 , read his classics 1 Before he had left Somersby for Cambridge, he had written in Greek hexameters an Homeric book on the Seven against Thebes, and an Ovidian poem about the death of a young girl who had died for love of the Apollo Belvedere. In his note-book, mixed up with translations of Aristophanes, and of Greek philosophers, and with astronomical diagrams, I find this fragment, mainly of value as showing at what an early date physical science began to penetrate his verse : The Moon. ( Unpublished fragment .) At- «A£. W W '7v' *7 y* *7v' Deep glens I found, and sunless gulfs, Set round with many a toppling spire, And monstrous rocks from craggy snouts Disploding globes of roaring fire. Large as a human eye the sun Drew down the West his feeble lights; And then a night, all moons, confused The shadows from the icy heights. [“ A night, all moons,” means that when seen from the airless moon all the principal stars and planets would be very large and bright in the black heavens, and strike the eye there as the moon strikes the eye here.] HIS INTEREST IN POLITICS. 41 1830] and history and natural science \ He also took a lively interest in politics. He was among the young supporters of the Anti-slavery Convention, and advocated the Measure for abolishing subscription to the Thirty-nine Articles, while admiring as statesmen Canning, Peel, and the Duke of Wellington. England was in a state of fer- ment with the hope or dread of the Reform Bill. Farms were fired, ricks were burnt, and “ sanguine Lazarus felt a vacant hand Fill ” with the rich man’s purse. In the poem addressed to Mary Boyle my father tells how he helped to “ hand the bucket from the well,” and to quench a conflagration in a homestead near Cambridge. At one of these farm fires he heard a countryman saying, “ Now we shall get our taters cheaper.” “You fools,” said my father, although he largely sympathized with the labourers in their demands, “ you are all going the way to make taters dearer.” Some undergraduates with over-zeal began to pull down the farmer’s house in order to help him to preserve the materials from fire. The poor man held them back, comically but naturally remonstrating, “ Leave me, sirs, I pray you, the little property that the fire has spared ! ” My father’s note-book contains these unpublished lines : I, loving Freedom for herself, And much of that which is her form, Wed to no faction in the state, A voice before the storm, I mourn in spirit when I think The year, that comes, may come with shame, Lured by the cuckoo-voice that loves To babble its own name. That “ deep chord which Hampden smote ” pulsed 1 “ I kept a tame snake in my rooms. I liked to watch his wonderful sinu- osities on the carpet . 11 A. T. 42 CAMBRIDGE. [l828- through the life of the young men of the day. These riots of the poorer classes filled my father with an earnest desire to do something to help those who lived in misery among the “ warrens of the poor.” Indeed from first to last he always preached the onward progress of liberty, while steadily opposed to revolutionary license — Freedom free to slay herself, and dying while they shout her name. Asked what politics he held : “ I am of the same politics as Shakespeare \ Bacon, and every sane man.” Carlyle’s account of Sterling best describes, as far as I can gather, the typical intellectual undergraduate of my father’s set : who hated the narrow and ignorant Toryism to be found in country districts : who loathed parties and sects : who reverenced the great traditions and the great men of past ages, and eagerly sympathized with the mis- fortunes and disabilities of his fellow-men. He tells how Sterling, famous already for the brilliance of his talk, had at Cambridge “ a wide and rather genial circle of comrades.” They had among them a society called the “ Apostles ” : . of which my father was an early member. “ On stated evenings,” Carlyle goes on, “ was much logic, and other spiritual fencing, and ingenuous collision — probably of a really superior quality in that kind ; for not a few of the then disputants have since proved themselves men of parts, and attained distinction in the intellectual walks of life.” It is of the “Apostles ” that Sterling writes to Trench : “ Pray let me see you as soon as you reach London, and 1 u Some critics,” he said to me more than once, “ object to Shakespeare’s aristocratic view of his clowns, because he makes them talk such poor stuff, but they forget that his clowns occasionally speak as real truths as Hamlet, and that sometimes they utter very profound sayings. That is the glory of Shakespeare, he can give you the incongruity of things.” 43 1830] THE “APOSTLES.” in the mean time commend me to the brethren, who, I trust, are waxing daily in religion and radicalism.” Arthur Hallam, in a letter to Gladstone, says of Frederick Maurice : “ The effects which he has pro- duced on the minds of many at Cambridge by the single creation of that society of ‘Apostles ’ (for the spirit though not the form was created by him) is far greater than I can dare to calculate, and will be felt, both directly and indirectly, in the age that is upon us.” There were regular meetings of the society as distin- guished from the almost daily gatherings in one or another man’s rooms, at all of which much coffee was drunk, much tobacco smoked. The Apostle who proposed the subject for discussion, generally stood before the mantel- piece, and said his say. Douglas Heath writes that the image he has carried away of my father is of one “sitting in front of the fire, smoking and meditating, and now and then mingling in the conversation.” With one short phrase he was wont to sum up the issue of the arguments. Heath continues : “ I cannot satisfy myself as to the time when I became an Apostle, or when I made acquaintance with A. T. My belief is that he had already become an honorary member extraordinary. In the usual course a member had to read essays in regular succession, or give a dinner in default during a certain period, after which he became honorary. But A. T. was, I suppose, bored by this, and the society was con- tent to receive him, his poetry and wisdom unfettered.” “ Ghosts ” was the subject of an essay written by my father for the Society, but he was too shy to deliver it. The preface alone has survived 1 . These friends not only debated on politics but read their Hobbes, Locke, Berkeley, Butler, Hume, Bentham, Descartes and Kant, and discussed such questions as the Origin of Evil, the Derivation of Moral Senti- 1 For the prologue of “ Ghosts 11 see Appendix, p. 497. 44 CAMBRIDGE. [ 1828 - men ts, Prayer and the Personality of God 1 . Among the Cambridge papers I find a remarkable sentence on “ Prayer” by Arthur Hallam. With respect to prayer, you ask how am I to distinguish the operations of God in me from motions in my own heart ? Why should you distinguish them or how do you know there is any distinction ? Is God less God because He acts by general laws when He deals with the common elements of nature ?... That fatal mistake which has embarrassed the philosophy of mind with infinite confusion, the mistake of setting value on a thing’s origin rather than on its character, of assuming that composite must be less excellent than simple, has not been slow to extend its deleterious influence over the field of practical religion. My father seems to have propounded in some college discussion the theory, that the “ development of the human body might possibly be traced from the radiated, vermicular, molluscous and vertebrate organisms.” The question of surprise put to him on this proposition was “ Do you mean that the human brain is at first like a madrepore’s, then like a worm’s, etc. ? but this cannot be for they have no brain 2 .” At this time, with one or two of his more literary friends, he took great interest in the work which Hallam had undertaken, a translation from the Vita Nuova of 1 Three questions discussed by the Society were: (i) Have Shelley’s poems an immoral tendency ? Tennyson votes “No.” (2) Is an intelligible First Cause deducible from the phenomena of the Universe ? Tennyson votes “No.” (3) Is there any rule of moral action beyond general expediency ? Tennyson votes “ Aye.” 1 have a note to my father from Tennant saying: “Last Saturday we had an Apostolic dinner when we had the honour, among other things, of drinking your health. Edmund Lushington and I went away tolerably early; but most of them stayed till past two. John Heath volunteered a song ; Kemble got into a passion about nothing but quickly jumped out again ; Blakesley was afraid the Proctor might come in ; and Thompson poured large quantities of salt upon Douglas Heath’s head because he talked nonsense.” 2 Letter from A. H. Hallam. Most of his philosophical and religious letters to my father have been lost. HALLAM AND DANTE. 45 1830] Dante, with notes and prefaces. For this task Hallam, who in 1827 had been in Italy with his parents and had drunk deep of the older Italian literature, says that he was perfecting himself in German and Spanish, and was proposing to plunge into the Florentine historians and the medieval Schoolmen. He writes to my father: “I expect to glean a good deal of knowledge from you concerning metres which may be serviceable, as well for my philosophy in the notes as for my actual handiwork in the text. I purpose to discuss considerably about poetry in general, and about the ethical character of Dante’s poetry.” My father said of his friend : “ Arthur Hallam could take in the most abstruse ideas with the utmost rapidity and insight, and had a marvellous power of work and thought, and a wide range of knowledge. On one occasion, I remember, he mastered a difficult book of Descartes at a single sitting.” On June 6th, 1829, the announcement was made that my father had won the prize medal for his poem in blank verse on “Timbuctoo 1 .” To win the prize in anything 1 From Somersby, after his father’s death (1831 probably), he wrote to the printer Metcalfe, who had asked permission to include “ Timbuctoo ” in a collection of Cambridge Prize Poems : Somersby. Sir, As you intend to reprint the Cambridge Prize Poems, it would seem odd to leave mine out, tho’ for my own part I had much rather you had not thought of it. Prize Poems (without any exception even in favour of Mr. Milman’s “Belvedere”) are not properly speaking “Poems” at all, and ought to be forgotten as soon as recited, I could have wished that poor “ Timbuctoo ” might have been suffered to slide quietly off, with all its errors, into forgetfulness : however as I do not expect to turn you from your purpose of republishing the p e p s , I suppose mine must be printed along with them: only for “cones of Pyramids,” which is nonsense (p. io), I will thank you to substitute “peaks of Pyramids.” I am, Sir, yours truly, Alfred Tennyson. (As the poem is now published this is the sole correction. My father would say, “‘The Lover’s Tale’ and ‘Timbuctoo’ are in no way imitative of 46 CAMBRIDGE. but rhymed heroics was an innovation. My grandfather had desired him to compete, so unwillingly he patched up an old poem on “ The Battle of Armageddon,” and came out prizeman over Milnes, Hallam and others. Charles Wordsworth (afterwards Bishop of St An- drews) writes to his brother Christopher Wordsworth, Sept. 4th, 1829 (see Annals of my Early Life , C. Wordsworth, 1890): What do you think of Tennyson’s Prize poem (“ Timbuctoo ”) ? If such an exercise had been sent up at Oxford, the author would have had a better chance of being rusticated, with the view of his passing a few months at a Lunatic Asylum, than of obtaining the prize. It is certainly a wonderful production ; and if it had come out with Lord Byron’s name, it would have been thought as fine as anything he ever wrote. Arthur Hallam writes, Sept. 14th, 1829, to W. E. Gladstone : I am glad you liked my queer piece about Timbuctoo. I wrote it in a sovereign vein of poetic scorn for anybody’s opinion, who did not value Plato and Milton just as much as I did. The natural consequence was that ten people out of twelve laughed or opened large eyes ; and the other two set about praising highly, what was plainly addressed to them, not to people in general. So my vanity would fain persuade me, that, like some of my betters, I “fit audience found, tho’ few.” My friend Tennyson’s poem, which got the prize, will be thought by the ten sober persons afore-mentioned twice as absurd as mine; and to say the truth, by striking out his prose argument, the Examiners have done all in their power to verify the concluding words, “All was night.” The splendid imaginative power that pervades it will be seen through all hindrances. I consider Tennyson as promising fair to be the greatest poet of our generation, perhaps of our century. any poet, and, as far as I know, nothing of mine after the date of 1 Timbuctoo’ was imitative. As for being original, nothing can be said which has not been said in some form or another before.”) 1830 ] “timbuctoo.” 47 I asked Dean Merivale, last survivor, except Douglas Heath, of that Cambridge set, to give me his recollec- tions. He answered : Believe me that I have not written a letter for several months, but you will, I am sure, allow me to make this excep- tion to your very kind note. I only wish I could give you any accurate recollection of your honoured father which would be worthy of your acceptance on such an occasion. You have seen, no doubt, the many contemporary diaries of those who rejoice to set down their reminiscences of so great and so loveable a member of their set.... May I be excused for recording a recollection of which I was proud — that of being allowed or enjoined by the Vice-Chancellor to declaim his “ Timbuctoo 1 ” in the Senate House in the summer of 1829, which he declined to do from the modesty which too often beset him ? The Dean also enclosed the following letter, written, my father said, “ under a horror of publicity ” which made him “ feel as Cowper did.” July 29 th, 1829. My dear Merivale, Will you write and tell me whether you can read my poem at Commencement or not, since I must come up to Cambridge if you cannot ? I hope you found my letter sufficiently clear relatively to corrections. The Vice-Chancellor observed to me, “We cannot do these things quite so well by proxy as with the person himself, to whom several of my objections might have been stated and answered immediately.” I hope you have somewhat recovered from the shock of your grandmother’s sudden death. I consider it as rather remarkable that on the morning when we were at Hampstead I seemed to myself to have some presentiment of it, and could not shake the idea from my mind, though I could not give utterance to 1 Matthew Arnold told G. L. Craik that when, as a youth, he first read “ Timbuctoo ” he prophesied the greatness of Tennyson. 4 8 CAMBRIDGE. [l828- it ; you remember my asking you whether either of your grandmothers was dead, and telling you that both mine were. Believe me, dear Merivale, Yours most truly, A. Tennyson. In 1829 my uncle Charles won a Bell Scholarship by the beauty of his translations. One sentence survived in my father’s memory : “ And the ruddy grape shall droop from the desert thorn.” The brothers Charles and Alfred would humorously describe how Much Ado about Nothing was played by their friends in March, 1830. Kemble as Dogberry, Hallam as Verges, Milnes as Beatrice. When Beatrice sat down, her weight was such that she crashed through the couch, and sank on the floor, nothing to be seen but a heap of petticoats, much to the discomfiture of the players and the immeasurable laughter of the spec- tators. The incident used to remind my father by contrast of Kemble’s observation to someone who was playing the part of Falstaff, “ Pooh, you should see my sister: she does Falstaff better than any man living/' My father, I may add, was famous in some parts of Shakespeare, especially in Malvolio. In certain College rooms he was often asked to de- claim the many ballads which he knew by heart, “ Clerke Saunders,” “ Helen of Kirkconnel,” “ May Margaret,” and others: and also his own poems “The Hesperides,” “The Lover’s Tale” (written 1827), “The Coach of Death ” ; and he would improvise verses by the score full of lyrical passion. I quote again from Edward Fitz- gerald : “‘Oriana’ Tennyson used to repeat in a way not to be forgotten at Cambridge tables.” For his exercise he either rowed, or fenced, or took 1830] “ POEMS, CHIEFLY LYRICAL.” 49 long walks, and would go any distance to see “a bubbling brook.” “ Somehow,” he would say, “ water is the element I love best of all the four.” His first volume, Poems , chiefly Lyrical ’ was pub- lished in 1830 by Effingham Wilson, also the publisher of Robert Browning’s Paracelsus . Favourable reviews appeared by Sir John Bowring in the Westminster, by Leigh Hunt in the Tatler, and by Arthur Hallam in the Englishman s Magazine . The Westminster article (January 1831) contained this prophetic notice of “ The Poet ” : If our estimate of Mr Tennyson be correct, he too is a poet; and many years hence may he read his juvenile description of that character with the proud consciousness that it has become the description and history of his own work. Arthur Hallam ’s enthusiasm was worthy of his true and unselfish friendship, and helped my father through the years of darkness and disparagement that were soon to come. There is a strange earnestness in his worship of beauty which throws a charm over his impassioned song, more easily felt than described, and not to be escaped by those who have once felt it... .The features of original genius are clearly and strongly marked. The author imitates no one ; we recognize the spirit of his age, but not the individual form of this or that writer. His thoughts bear no more resemblance to Byron or Scott, Shelley or Coleridge, than to Homer or Calderon, Firdusi or Calidasa. We have remarked five distinctive excellencies of his own manner. First, his luxuriance of imagination, and at the same time his control over it. Secondly, his power of embodying himself in ideal characters, or rather moods of character, with such accuracy of adjustment that the circum- stances of the narrative seem to have a natural correspondence with the predominant feeling and, as it were, to be evolved from it by assimilative force. Thirdly, his vivid, picturesque delinea- tion of objects, and the peculiar skill with which he holds all of them fused, to borrow a metaphor from science, in a medium of T. I. 4 50 CAMBRIDGE. [ 1828 - strong emotion. Fourthly, the variety of his lyrical measures and the exquisite modulation of harmonious words and cadences to the swell and fall of the feelings expressed. Fifthly, the elevated habits of thought, implied in these compositions, and importing a mellow soberness of tone, more impressive to our minds than if the author had drawn up a set of opinions in verse, and sought to instruct the understanding rather than to communicate the love of beauty to the heart. Coleridge 1 , indeed, for whose prose my father never much cared, but to whose poetry, especially “ Kubla Khan,” “ The Ancient Mariner,” and “ Christabel,” he was devoted, was more reserved in his praise about the first two ventures : I have not read through all Mr Tennyson’s poems, which have been sent to me ; but I think there are some things of a good deal of beauty in what I have seen. The misfortune is, that he has begun to write verses without very well understand- ing what metre is 2 . “ The first ‘ Mariana ’ and the ‘ Arabian Nights ’ were the two poems that marked the volume (1830) as something to be thought about.” “ The affectation ” (in 1 Arthur Hallam visited Coleridge at Highgate and wrote about him in his poem of “ Timbuctoo ” : “Methought I saw a face whose every line Wore the pale cast of thought, a good old man, Most eloquent, who spake of things divine. Around him youths were gather’d, who did scan His countenance so grand and mild, and drank The sweet sad tears of wisdom.” 2 Concerning this criticism my father said in 1890: “Coleridge did not know much about my poems, for he confounded Charles and me. From what I have heard he may have read Glen-river in 1 above the loud Glenriver,’ and tendril-twine in the line ‘ mantled with flowering ten- driltwine’ dactyl ically ; because I had an absurd antipathy to hyphens, and put two words together as one word. If that was the case, he might well have wished that I had more sense of metre. But so I, an old man, who get a poem or poems every day, might cast a casual glance at a book, and seeing something which I could not scan or understand, might possibly decide against the book without further consideration.” OPINIONS OF FRIENDS. 51 i83o] the volume), E. F. G. adds, “ was not of the man ; but of the time and society he lived in, and from which he had not yet emerged to his proper and distinct altitude. Two years afterwards he took his ground with ‘ The Miller’s Daughter,’ ‘ Palace of Art,’ ‘ Dream of Fair Women,’ etc.” On the appearance of the poems Hallam wrote the following letter to my grandmother: My dear Madam, As I have at last the pleasure of sending to Alfred his long-expected book, I take this opportunity of begging that you will accept from me a copy of some poems which I originally intended to have published in the same volume. To this joint publication, as a sort of seal of our friendship, I had long looked forward with a delight which I believe was no way selfish. But there are reasons which have obliged me to change my intention, and withdraw my own share of the work from the Press. One of these was the growing conviction of the exceeding crudeness of style which characterized all my earlier attempts.... I have little reason to apprehend your wasting much time over that book, when I send you along with it such a treasure in your son’s poetry. He is a true and thorough poet, if ever there was one ; and tho’ I fear his book is far too good to be popular, yet I have full faith that he has thrown out sparks that will kindle somewhere, and will vivify young generous hearts in the days that are coming to a clearer perception of what is beautiful and good. Believe me yours very sincerely, A. H. Hallam. During the summer my father joined Arthur Hallam, and both started off for the Pyrenees, with money for the insurgent allies of Torrijos, — a noble, accomplished, truth- ful man, worthy to be a leader. He it was who had raised the standard of revolt against the Inquisition and the tyranny of Ferdinand, King of Spain. Alfred and 5 2 CAMBRIDGE. [l 828 - Arthur held a secret meeting with the heads of the conspiracy on the Spanish border, and were not heard of by their friends for some weeks \ John Frere and James Spedding wrote to my uncle Charles inquiring about them, and about my grandfather who was also abroad, and he answers : To John Frere . Somersby, July 27 th , 1830. From Hallam I heard just now: he complains rather of the heat, and says Alfred is delighted with his journey, though regretting the impermanence of his impressions in the hurry of travel. My father has returned from his tour and I am much surprised to see him so well after the neck-break adventures he has encountered. On one occasion, proceeding along in a small carriage over the mountains, he was hurled down a precipice and stunned, but saved himself from certain death by convul- sively grasping a pine that grew out of a ledge : while the driver, carriage and horse were dashed to atoms thousands of feet below him. Again, at the Carnival in Rome, a man was stilettoed in his arms, drawing first suspicion and then violence on his person : the excess of which he prevented by exclaiming that he was an Englishman and had not done the deed. Again, he was suddenly seized with giddiness on the verge of a precipice, and only pre- served by the presence of mind of a person near him. At another (time) he was near being buried alive. To James Spedding . I expect the travellers home every day ; I heard twice from Hallam, who mentioned the middle of September as the most probable period of their return, but a dozen counter-resolutions may come athwart their homeward intention even yet for what I know. Hallam’s last letter was dated from Cauteretz, Dep 4 . des Hautes Pyrenees, but from what he there intimated of return about this time, it would be foolish in you to hazard your good things in an epistle directed thither. The said Hallam or one of 1 No further information upon this business has been preserved. THE SPANISH INSURRECTION. 53 1830] his fellow-travellers, it should seem, wrote a letter to Tennant with full intention, I guess, of its getting further than Perpignan ; but Tennant a short time back informed me that he had received a communication from les Administrateurs de la Poste, adver- tising him of a letter which had taken up its abode at Perpignan on account of its not being paid to the coast. What news it contained “ no one dreameth,” or whether it was written previous or subsequent to my last receipts from the Continent. Kemble is said to be at Gibraltar. Trench either on the way thither or arrived, and Hallam expressed some apprehensions on the score of their safety, but I hope with you there is not much fear in the present posture of things. Thank you for sending Southey my sonnets, thank you for cheering my heart with the worthy man’s good opinion, and thank you for your letter and address. Before going further it may be as well to pick up the threads of the story of this Spanish insurrection. Torrijos the leader had hoped to restore such a measure of freedom as the Cortes had secured for Spain, in the Constitution which had been framed after the Peninsular War. This was the Constitution to which Ferdinand had sworn when he returned from his long captivity in Bayonne, but which he speedily renounced, dissolving the Cortes and restor- ing the Inquisition. In 1820, revolution having followed revolution, the Cortes met again, under protection of part of the army, and the Inquisition was abolished. This state of things did not last. In 1823 Ferdinand was, by help of the Due d’Angouleme, proclaimed abso- lute King. Again despotism prevailed. Many Liberals fled to England. Of these Carlyle gives a pathetic description as they were seen, chiefly about Euston Square and the new Church of St Pancras — “ stately tragic figures, in proud threadbare cloaks,” who had acknowledged General Torrijos as their chief. A fiery sympathy had been kindled in the hearts of many of the “Apostles ” by this romantic band : some of whom had, after seven years’ banishment, “ got shipping as private passengers in one craft or the other ; and, by degrees 54 CAMBRIDGE. [l828- or at once, arrived all at Gibraltar; — Boyd (Sterling’s cousin), one or two young democrats of Regent Street, the fifty picked Spaniards, and Torrijos 1 .” Among the Pyrenean revolutionists met by Arthur Hallam and my father the chief man was one Senor Ojeda, who informed them that he desired “ couper la gorge a tous les cures,” then clapping his hand on his heart murmured “ mais vous connaissez mon cceur ” — “ and a pretty black one it is,” thought my father. After the travellers had returned, a report reached Somersby that John Kemble, who had joined the insur- gents in the South, had been caught and was to be tried for his life. Away my father posted for miles in the early dawn to try and find someone of authority at Lincoln or elsewhere, who knew the Consul at Cadiz and would help him to save his friend. The report turned out to be untrue and Kemble came back safe and sound. But on the last night of November, 1831, Torrijos and his gallant companions left Gibraltar in two small vessels ; the British Governor, on occasion of the fresh rising of General Mina against Spanish despotism, having intimated that Gibraltar must not shelter rebels against Spain. They set sail for Malaga, were chased by Spanish guardships, and ran ashore at Fuengirola near Malaga. They barricaded themselves in a farm-house, were sur- rounded by vastly superior forces and compelled to sur- render. All the fifty-six (Boyd among them) perished by military execution on the Esplanade of Malaga 2 . My father returned from the expedition in improved health. From this time forward the lonely Pyrenean 1 Carlyle’s John Sterling , p. 64 (ed. 1871). 2 Carlyle’s John Sterling , p. 77. RETURN TO ENGLAND. 55 1830] peaks, the mountains with “ their streaks of virgin snow,” like the Maladetta, mountain “ lawns and meadow- ledges midway down,” and the “long brook falling thro’ the clov’n ravine,” were a continual source of inspiration ; he had written part of “ GEnone ” in the valley of Cauteretz. His sojourn there was also com- memorated one and thirty years afterwards in “ All along the Valley.” He came home impressed with the “ lightheartedness ” of the French ; but, infinitely preferring the freer air of England,” he writes : “ Someone says that nothing strikes a traveller more on returning from the Continent than the look of an English country town. Houses not so big, nor such rows of them as abroad, but each man’s house little or big distinct from one another, his own castle, built according to his own means and fancy, and so indicating the Englishman’s free individual humour. I am struck on returning from France with the look of good sense in the London people 1 .” Unpublished Poem, 1828. By a Brook . Townsmen, or of the hamlet, young or old, Whithersoever you may wander now, Where’er you roam from, would you waste an hour, Or sleep thro’ one brief dream upon the grass, Pause here. The murmurs of the rivulet, Rippling by cressy isles or bars of sand, Are pleasant from the early Spring to when, Full fields of barley shifting tearful lights On growing spears, by fits the lady ash With twinkling finger sweeps her yellow keys. 1 Quoted from MS by E. F. G. (date of letter uncertain). 56 CAMBRIDGE. [l828- Unpublished Poems, written (1828-1831) at Cambridge.* Anacaona . [My father liked this poem but did not publish it, because the natural history and the rhymes did not satisfy him. He evidently chose words which sounded well, and gave a tropical air to the whole, and he did not then care, as in his later poems, for absolute accuracy.] I A dark Indian maiden, Warbling in the bloom’d liana, Stepping lightly flower-laden, By the crimson-eyed anana, Wantoning in orange groves Naked, and dark-limb’d, and gay, Bathing in the slumbrous coves, In the cocoa-shadow cl coves, Of sunbright Xaraguay, Who was so happy as Anacaona, The beauty of Espagnola, The golden flower of Hayti ? 2 All her loving childhood Breezes from the palm and canna Fann’d this queen of the green wildwood, Lady of the green Savannah : All day long with laughing eyes, Dancing by a palmy bay, In the wooded paradise, The cedar-wooded paradise Of still Xaraguay: None were so happy as Anacaona, The beauty of Espagnola, The golden flower of Hayti ! * Copyright, 1897, by The Macmillan Company. 1830] “ AN AC AON A.” 3 In the purple island, Crown’d with garlands of cinchona, Lady over wood and highland, The Indian queen, Anacaona, Dancing on the blossomy plain To a woodland melody : Playing with the scarlet crane 1 , The dragon-fly and scarlet crane, Beneath the papao tree ! Happy, happy was Anacaona, The beauty of Espagnola, The golden flower of Hayti ! 4 The white man’s white sail, bringing To happy Hayti the new-comer, Over the dark sea-marge springing, Floated in the silent summer: Then she brought the guava fruit, With her maidens to the bay; She gave them the yuccaroot, Maizebread and the yuccaroot, Of sweet Xaraguay : Happy, happy Anacaona, The beauty of Espagnola, The golden flower of Hayti ! 5 Naked, without fear, moving To her Areyto’s mellow ditty, Waving a palm branch, wondering, loving, Carolling “Happy, happy Hayti!” She gave the white men welcome all, With her damsels by the bay ; 1 Perhaps the scarlet ibis, guava rubra , not now known to visit Hayti. 58 CAMBRIDGE. [l828- For they were fair-faced and tall, They were more fair-faced and tall, Than the men of Xaraguay, And they smiled on Anacaona, The beauty of Espagnola, The golden flower of Hayti ! 6 Following her wild carol She led them down the pleasant places, For they were kingly in apparel, Loftily stepping with fair faces. But never more upon the shore Dancing at the break of day, In the deep wood no more, — By the deep sea no more, — No more in Xaraguay Wander’d happy Anacaona, The beauty of Espagnola, The golden flower of Hayti ! The Lark . Full light aloft doth the laverock spring From under the deep, sweet corn, And chants in the golden wakening Athwart the bloomy morn. What aileth thee, O bird divine, That thou singest with main and with might? Is thy mad brain drunk with the merry, red wine, At the very break of light ? It is not good to drink strong wine Ere the day be well-nigh done ; But thou hast drunk of the merry, sweet wine, At the rising of the sun. OTHER UNPUBLISHED VERSES. 59 1830] Some verses of “ Sir Launcelot and Queen Guine- vere ” were handed about at Cambridge among my father’s contemporaries. The following unpublished lines were among them, and kept by Edward Fitzgerald : Life of the Life within my blood, Light of the Light within mine eyes, The May begins to breathe and bud, And softly blow the balmy skies ; Bathe with me in the fiery flood, And mingle kisses, tears, and sighs, Life of the Life within my blood, Light of the Light within mine eyes. Life . Why suffer human life so soon eclipse? For I could burst into a psalm of praise, Seeing the heart so wondrous in her ways, E’en scorn looks beautiful on human lips ! Would I could pile fresh life on life, and dull The sharp desire of knowledge still with knowing! Art, Science, Nature, everything is full, As my own soul is full, to overflowing — Millions of forms, and hues, and shades, that give The difference of all things to the sense, And all the likeness in the difference. I thank thee, God, that thou hast made me live : I reck not for the sorrow or the strife : One only joy I know, the joy of life. 6o CAMBRIDGE. [l828- To Poesy . O God, make this age great that we may be As giants in Thy praise ! and raise up Mind, Whose trumpet-tongued, aerial melody May blow alarum loud to every wind, And startle the dull ears of human kind ! Methinks I see the world’s renewed youth A long day’s dawn, when Poesy shall bind Falsehood beneath the altar of great Truth: The clouds are sunder’d toward the morning-rise; Slumber not now, gird up thy loins for fight, And get thee forth to conquer. I, even I, Am large in hope that these expectant eyes Shall drink the fulness of thy victory, Tho’ thou art all unconscious of thy Might. To — . Thou may’st remember what I said When thine own spirit was at strife With thine own spirit. “ From the tomb And charnel-place of purpose dead, Thro’ spiritual dark we come Into the light of spiritual life.” God walk’d the waters of thy soul, And still’d them. When from change to change. Led silently by power divine, Thy thought did scale a purer range Of prospect up to self-control, My joy was only less than thine. 1830] “THE HESPERIDES.” 61 The Hesperides * [Published and suppressed by my father, and republished by me here (with accents written by him) in consequence of a talk that I had with him, in which he regretted that he had done away with it from among his “Juvenilia.”] Hesperus and his daughters three That sing about the golden tree. Comus. The North wind fall’n, in the new-starred night Zidonian Hanno, wandering beyond The hoary promontory of Soloe, Past Thymiaterion in calmed bays Between the southern and the western Horn, Heard neither warbling of the nightingale, Nor melody of the Libyan Lotus-flute Blown seaward from the shore ; but from a slope That ran bloom-bright into the Atlantic blue, Beneath a highland leaning down a weight Of cliffs, and zoned below with cedar-shade, Came voices like the voices in a dream Continuous ; till he reach’d the outer sea : — Song of the Three Sisters. I The Golden Apple, the Golden Apple, the hallow’d fruit, Guard it well, guard it warily, Singing airily, Standing about the charmed root. Round about all is mute, As the snowfield on the mountain-peaks, As the sandfield at the mountain-foot. Crocodiles in briny creeks Sleep and stir not: all is mute. * Copyright, 1897, by The Macmillan Company. 62 CAMBRIDGE. [l828- If ye sing not, if ye make false measure, We shall lose eternal pleasure, Worth eternal want of rest. Laugh not loudly: watch the treasure Of the wisdom of the West. In a corner wisdom whispers. Five and three (Let it not be preach’d abroad) make an awful mystery: For the blossom unto threefold music bloweth ; Evermore it is born anew, And the sap to threefold music floweth, From the root, Drawn in the dark, Up to the fruit, Creeping under the fragrant bark, Liquid gold, honeysweet thro and thro. ( slow movement) Keen-eyed Sisters, singing airily, Looking warily Every way, Guard the apple night and day, Lest one from the East come and take it away. II Father Hesper, Father Hesper, Watch, watch, ever and aye, Looking under silver hair with a silver eye. Father, twinkle not thy stedfast sight: Kingdoms lapse, and climates change, and races die; Honour comes with mystery; Hoarded wisdom brings delight. Number, tell them over, and number How many the mystic fruit-tree holds, Lest the red-comb’d dragon slumber Roll’d together in purple folds. SONG OF THE THREE SISTERS. 1830] 63 Look to him, father, lest he wink, and the golden apple be stol’n away, For his ancient heart is drunk with overwatchings night and day Round about the hallow’d fruit-tree curl’d — Sing away, sing aloud evermore in the wind without stop, (A nap cbs t) Lest his sealed eyelid drop, For he is older than the world. If he waken, we waken, Rapidly levelling eager eyes. If he sleep, we sleep, Dropping the eyelid over our eyes. If the golden apple be taken The world will be overwise. Five links, a golden chain are we, Hesper, the Dragon, and Sisters three Bound about the golden tree. Ill Father Hesper, Father Hesper, Watch, watch, night and day, Lest the old wound of the world be healed, The glory unsealed, The golden apple stol’n away, And the ancient secret revealed. Look from West to East along: Father, old Himala weakens, Caucasus is bold and strong. Wandering waters unto wandering waters call ; Let them clash together, foam and fall. Out of watchings, out of wiles, Comes the bliss of secret smiles. All things are not told to all, 6 4 CAMBRIDGE. [1828- Half-round the mantling night is drawn. Purplefringed with even and dawn Hesper hateth Phosphor, evening hateth morn. IV Every flower and every fruit the redolent breath Of the warm seawind ripeneth, Arching the billow in his sleep : But the land-wind wandereth, Broken by the highland steep, Two streams upon the violet deep. For the Western Sun, and the Western Star, And the low west-wind, breathing afar, The end of day and beginning of night, Keep the apple Holy and Bright; Holy and Bright, round and full, bright and blest, Mellow’d in a land of rest : Watch it warily night and day; All good things are in the West. Till mid-noon the cool East light Is shut out by the round of the tall hill brow, But, when the full-faced Sunset yellowly Stays on the flowerful arch of the bough, The luscious fruitage clustereth mellowly, Golden-kernell’d, Golden-cored, Sunset-ripen’d above on the tree. The world is wasted with fire and sword, But the Apple of gold hangs over the Sea! Five links — a Golden chain are we — Hesper, the Dragon, and Sisters three, Daughters three, Round about, All round about The gnarl’d bole of the charmed tree. 1830] “ LASTING SORROW.’’ 65 The Golden Apple, The Golden Apple, The hallow’d fruit, Guard it well, Guard it warily, Watch it warily, Singing airily, Standing about the charmed root. Lasting Sorrow . (Republished from Friendship' s Offering — an album published by Smith and Elder 1832.) Me my own Fate to lasting sorrow doometh: Thy woes are birds of passage, transitory : Thy spirit, circled with a living glory, In summer still a summer joy resumeth. Alone my hopeless melancholy gloometh, Like a lone cypress, thro’ the twilight hoary, From an old garden where no flower bloometh, One cypress on an inland promontory ; But yet my lonely spirit follows thine, As round the rolling earth night follows day ; But yet thy lights on my horizon shine Into my night, when thou art far away; I am so dark, alas ! and thou so bright, When we two meet there’s never perfect light. Another sonnet, “ There are three things which fill my heart with sighs,” he contributed (1832) to the Yorkshire Literary Annual . T. I. 5 CHAPTER III. CAMBRIDGE, SOMERSBY AND ARTHUR HALLAM. 1830-31. To Alfred Tennyson {at Somersby ) (unpublished). Those Gothic windows are before me now, Which long have shone dim-lighted in my mind ; That slope of softest green, the brook below, Old musty stalls, and tedded hay behind — All have I seen ; and simple tho 1 they be, A mighty awe steals with them on my heart, For they have grown and lasted as a part Of thy dear self, up-building thine and thee : From yon tall fir, weathering the April rain, Came influence rare, that deepened into song, Beauty lurk’d for thee in the long gray fields, By tufted knolls, and, Alfred, made thee strong ! Hence are the weapons which thy spirit wields, Musical thoughts of unexampled strain. A. H. H. As Sterling had been deeply moved “ by the opinions and feelings which pervaded the age,” and had instituted a crusade against the cold selfishness of the time ; so the narrowness and dryness of the ordinary course of study at Cambridge, the lethargy there, and absence of any teaching that grappled with the ideas of the age and stimulated and guided thought on the subjects of deepest human interest, had stirred my father to wrath 1 . He cried aloud for some “ soldier-priest, no sabbath-drawler of old saws,” to set the world right. But however 1 Macaulay had written of the Cambridge of his day: “We see men of four and five-and-twenty, loaded with academical honours and rewards — scholarships, fellowships, whole cabinets of medals, whole shelves of prize-books, enter into life with their education still to begin ; un- acquainted with the first principles of the laws under which they live, 66 RELATIONS WITH CAMBRIDGE. 67 1830] gloomy his own view and that of his contemporaries was then as to the present, my father clearly saw the “ Day-beam, New-risen o’er awaken’d Albion.” Indeed now, as always, he was one of those “ on the look-out for every new idea, and for every old idea with a new application, which may tend to meet the growing requirements of society ” ; one of those who are “ like men standing on a watch-tower, to whom others apply and say, not ‘What of the night?’ but ‘What of the morning and of the coming day 1 ?”’ At the request of Aubrey de Vere, he consented that the following denunciatory lines, written in his undergraduate days, should be published among my notes. Lines on Cambridge of 1830. Therefore your Halls, your ancient Colleges, Your portals statued with old kings and queens, Your gardens, myriad-volumed libraries, Wax-lighted chapels, and rich carven screens, Your doctors, and your proctors, and your deans, Shall not avail you, when the Day-beam sports New-risen o’er awaken’d Albion. No! Nor yet your solemn organ-pipes that blow Melodious thunders thro’ your vacant courts At noon and eve, because your manner sorts Not with this age wherefrom ye stand apart, Because the lips of little children preach Against you, you that do profess to teach And teach us nothing, feeding not the heart. In after years a great change came over Cambridge, unacquainted with the very rudiments of moral and political science.” And when Whewell in 1838 was elected to the chair of Moral Philosophy, he began his introductory address by elaborately justifying the innovation of delivering public lectures on the subject committed to his charge. 1 Speech of the Duke of Argyll in the House of Lords, Aug. 13th, 1894. 68 CAMBRIDGE, SOMERSBY AND ARTHUR HALLAM. [l830 and he was sorry that he had spoken so bitterly, for he always looked back with affection to those “ dawn-golden times ” passed with his friends at Trinity. He honoured the University for the way it had adapted itself to modern requirements ; and he especially approved of the University Extension movement, for spreading higher education throughout local centres in Great Britain. Every vacation after his marriage University men visited him, so that he kept level with such movements. What impressed him most, when he went to Cam- bridge in 1872, was the change in the relations be- tween don and undergraduate. While he was keeping his terms (1828-1831) there was “a great gulf fixed” between the teacher and the taught 1 , but in 1872 he found a constant personal intercourse and interchange of ideas between them. And, as the “living word” is to each man more than the mere lecture-room exposition, this change, he thought, could not fail to have the best influence on the enlargement of the views, sympathies and aspirations of the generations to come. A letter from Blakesley indicates an intellectual attitude somewhat similar to my father’s in relation to the prevailing habits of thought in Cambridge and in society at large. Blackheath, 1830. Dear Tennyson, The present race of monstrous opinions and feelings which pervade the age require the arm of a strong Iconoclast. A volume of poetry written in a proper spirit, a spirit like that which a vigorous mind indues by the study of Wordsworth and Shelley, would be, at the present juncture, the greatest benefit the world could receive. And more benefit would accrue from it than from all the exertions of the Jeremy Benthamites and Millians, if they were to continue for ever and a day. I have seen Sterling two or three times since I have been in these parts, and had some conversation with him. 1 He said to Dr Butler, “ There was a want of love in Cambridge then.” LETTER FROM J. W. BLAKESLEY. 69 1830] Sterling, and all of his class, who have been hawked at by the mousing owls of Cambridge, suffer from the narrow-minded- ness of criticism. He saw the abuses of the present system of things, which is upheld by the strong hand of power and custom, and he attacked them accordingly. For this conduct he was dubbed a radical. He soon saw that the reforms proposed by that party were totally inadequate to the end which they proposed : that if carried to their fullest effect they would only remove the symptoms and not the cause of evil ; that this cause was the selfish spirit which pervades the whole frame of society at present, and that to counterbalance the effects the cause of them must be removed. This end, he at first probably thought with Shelley, might be effected by lopping off those institutions in which that selfish spirit exhibits itself, without any more effort. He afterwards saw, with Wordsworth, that this was not the true method ; but that we must implant another principle with which selfishness cannot co-exist, and trust that this plant as it grows up will absorb the nourishment of the weed, in which case those wickednesses and miseries, which are only the forms in which the latter developes itself, will of their own accord die away, as soon as their principle of vegetation is withered and dried up. Hallam has gone back to Cambridge. He was not well while he was in London ; moreover, he was submitting himself to the influences of the outer world more than (I think) a man of his genius ought to do. I shall be in Cambridge, God willing (which, considering the depth of the snow is not quite clear), to-morrow evening. I hope soon to see you there. Believe me your affectionate friend, J. W. Blakesley. On October 4th, 1830, Arthur Hallam wrote from Forest House, Leyton, Essex: I am sorry, dear Alfred, that I have left your note so long unanswered ; but I don’t doubt you have found already that to return to one’s native land is to throw oneself into the jaws of all kinds of importunate people, from creditors upwards or down- wards, who leave one no time for pleasant things. Yet this 70 CAMBRIDGE, SOMERSBY AND ARTHUR HALLAM. [l830 excuse lies arrantly, I discover upon second thoughts. I am living here in a very pleasant place, an old country mansion, in the depths of the Forest, with cedars in the garden, the seed of which is vouched to have been brought from Lebanon, and a billiard-table within doors, by dint of which I demolish time pretty well. I have been studious too, partly after my fashion, and partly after my father’s; i.e. I read six books of Herodotus with him, and I take occasional plunges into David Hartley, and Buhle’s Philosophie Moderne for my own gratification. I cannot find that my adventures have produced quite the favourable impression on my father’s mind that his letter gave me to expect. I don’t mean that he blames me at all; but his old notions about the University begin to revive, and he does not seem quite to comprehend, that after helping to revolutionize kingdoms, one is still less inclined than before to trouble one’s head about scholarships, degree and such gear. Sometimes I sigh to be again in the ferment of minds, and stir of events which is now the portion of other countries. I wish I could be useful ; but to be a fly on that great wheel would be something. Spanish affairs, you will have seen by the papers, go on slowly : not therefore, I trust, less surely ; but I wish something was done. Sterling has had little direct news for a while, and Perina never wrote to me. Sterling has been unwell, and is going to be married. I am glad he does not go out of the Apostolic family, for his lady is to be Susan Barton, of whom you may often have heard Blakesley rave. I had a letter from Spedding the other day, full of pleasant scoffs. I found one on my return from Leighton, dated two months ago, and extolling your book above sun, moon and stars : I have written to him, but as he has not answered, he has probably quitted Upfield Lodge. I cannot make out that you have been reviewed anywhere, but I have seen no magazines, and a letter from Garden, also of very old date, gives hope of Blackwood. Effingham of course I shun, as I would “ whipping to death, pressing and hanging.” Moxon very civilly sent me two copies of Lamb’s Album verses, one for you ; the book is weak as water. What think you of Belgium ? The opinion of everybody here seems against them ; yet I cannot well conceive their present resolution, and increasing unanimity, unless the grounds of their aversion to the Dutch were stronger than it is the fashion to represent them. At all events, now blood has LIKELIHOOD OF EUROPEAN WAR. 183 l] 71 flowed in torrents, all union is rendered impracticable. The chances of a general war in Europe are great; the iniquitous prudence of the Allied Wolves, who struck the Lion down, has guaranteed the possession of Belgium to the Dutch crown, and should the insurgents, as is very likely, declare they never can submit to the government of a Thing who has made war upon them, the inevitable consequence will be that the Prussians will interfere to preserve the sanctity of the guarantee, and the French to maintain the principle, that the allegiance of a people depends on its consent, not on the autocratic transfer of another power. ’Twas a very pretty little revolution in Saxony, and a respectable one at Brunswick. I am surprised you have not heard of Frederick ; have you not written to the Hotel de Lille ? You really ought, for he may be in distress, and Temple- ton has very likely left Paris. I beg your pardon for this stupid note, and rest in expectation of your promised letter, which I hope will explain your intentions for the future, and the details of things as they are at Somersby. Remember me most kindly to your mother and sisters, and tell Charles to write. Affectionately yours, A. H. H. It may be as well to say here that all the letters from my father to Arthur Hallam were destroyed by his father after Arthur’s death: a great loss, as these par- ticular letters probably revealed his inner self more truly than anything outside his poems. In February 1831 my father left Cambridge, for my grandfather was somewhat ailing and wished that he should return to help his mother. On the night of leaving he gave a supper in his rooms, Corpus Buildings, and after supper he and his friends all danced a quadrille. As he drove away in the coach his last sight in Trumpington Street was “Thomp- son’s handsome face under the light of a street lamp.” After he had gone down, the Cambridge friends for- warded him his Alfieri , which one of them had borrowed from him and for which he had been making constant de- mands, and they also told him of the poet Wordsworth’s 72 CAMBRIDGE, SOMERSBY AND ARTHUR HALLAM. [l831 visit to Trinity. They told how Spedding gave him coffee in his rooms; how Wordsworth was in good talk- ing mood but furiously alarmist, nothing but revolutions, reigns of terror; how he had said he wished that Cole- ridge had not written the second part of “ Christabel ” because this required the tale to be finished, and asserted that the conclusion of Part I., “ It was a lovely sight to see,” was too much laboured : how he defended “ Passive Obedience ” by quoting Scripture. Upon the whole, although he “ said nothing very profound or original,” yet the young men enjoyed his talk till one o’clock in the morning; he also was pleased with his hearers. My father’s comment on such criticism about a poet whom he loved was : “ How can you expect a great man to say anything ‘ very profound ’ when he knows it is expected of him ? ” On a Wednesday of this March, shortly after n o’clock in the morning, my grandfather was found leaning back in his study chair, having passed away peacefully — Once thro’ mine own doors Death did pass, One went, who never hath return’d. He will not smile — not speak to me Once more. After Arthur Hallam’s death these lines were written in “ In Memoriam,” referring to the double loss of his father and of his friend : As down the garden-walks I move, Two spirits of a diverse love Contend for loving masterdom. My father told me that within a week after his father’s death he slept in the dead man’s bed, earnestly desiring 1 Wordsworth, according to Milnes, heard Hallam deliver his Declama- tion in Trinity College Chapel. “It was splendid,” he writes, “to see the poet Wordsworth’s face kindle as Hallam proceeded with it.” 183l] DEATH OF MY GRANDFATHER. 73 to see his ghost, but no ghost came. “You see,” he said, “ghosts do not generally come to imaginative people.” In a letter to his friend John Frere, my uncle Charles describes what happened : Somersby, March 23rd, 1831. ****** John, a melancholy change has taken place in our house since I saw you last. My poor father, all his life a man of sorrow and acquainted with grief , has gone to “ that bourne from whence no traveller returns.” After an illness of about a month’s continuance, he died last Wednesday at eleven o’clock in the day. He suffered little, and after death his countenance, which was strikingly lofty and peaceful, was I trust an image of the condition of his soul, which on earth was daily racked by bitter fancies, and tossed about by strong troubles. We are not certain whether we shall be permitted to remain much longer in this place. We must abide the pleasure of Robinson, the next Incumbent, &c. &c. If. ..I pay him a rent by which he will be a gainer, I think we are likely to be less under obligations to him than he to us. But as my father’s revenues are now sequestrated we are left entirely at the will of my grandfather, who may have a house of his own to put us into. Charles Tennyson (d’Eyncourt) \ Dr Tennyson’s brother, also writes to the co-trustee of my grandfather’s property, Mr Rawnsley of Halton: This morning’s post brought me the afflicting news from Somersby. You will guess my feelings, for you know that I valued my dear brother for his thousand admirable qualities of 1 The Right Hon. Charles Tennyson d’Eyncourt represented in Parliament successively Grimsby, Bletchingley, Stamford, and Lambeth. On his death in 1861, he was succeeded by his son George Hildeyard T. d’Eyncourt, who died in 1871. The Tennyson estates then passed to his brother, Admiral Edwin Tennyson d’Eyncourt, C.B., who had served with distinction in China, and in the Gulf of Finland during the Crimean War. Under an arrangement made with the Admiral, Edmund d’Eyncourt, son of Louis T. d’Eyncourt (long known as Senior Metropolitan Magistrate), now holds the property. 74 CAMBRIDGE, SOMERSBY AND ARTHUR HALLAM. [l831 heart, which would have contributed to his own happiness and that of those around him if he had not given way to failings arising out of a nervous temperament. I knew him to be excellent in intention, to be naturally full of worth and goodness, and I respected and loved him. I believe he also depended on my fraternal feelings towards him, and I will, as far as I can, endeavour to justify his good opinion of me. I transmit to you his will and a codicil..,. I was unable to get down to Somersby, my official business requiring my presence in town. I would however have broken through all, if I could have been of use or comfort to my poor brother’s widow. From Arthur Hallarn to Emily Tennyson . 1831. I cannot help thinking that if the name of Tennyson should pass from that little region, which all your life long has been to you home, that blessed little region, “ bosomed in a kindlier air, Than the outer realm of care And dole,” the very fields and lanes will feel a sorrow, as if part of their appointed being had been reft from them. Yet, after all, a consecration has come upon them from the dwellers at Somersby, which, I think, is not of the things that fail. Many years perhaps, or shall I say many ages, after we all have been laid in dust, young lovers of the beautiful and the true may seek in faithful pilgrimage the spot where Alfred’s mind was moulded in silent sympathy with the everlasting forms of nature. Legends will perhaps be attached to the places that are near it. Some Mariana, it will be said, lived wretched and alone in a dreary house on the top of the opposite hill. Some Isabel may with more truth be sought nearer yet. The belfry, in which the white owl sat “ warming his five wits,” will be shown, for six- pence, to such travellers as have lost their own. Critic after critic will track the wanderings of the brook, or mark the groupings of elm and poplar, in order to verify the “ Ode to Memory ” in its minutest particulars. I send down, along with this note, some numbers of the Tatter ■ containing a review of Alfred and Charles by Leigh Hunt. You will be amused with the odd style of his observations, and the frank familiarity with which he calls them by their Christian names, just as if he had supped with them a hundred times. His general remarks are 183 l] HALLAM AND EMILY TENNYSON. 75 nonsensical enough, but being a poet he has a keen eye for true beauty, and the judgments of his taste are worth having. Charles will be proud of this review because it is the first notice which the Press (our new despot, the Kehama, under whom the world now groans, already nearly almighty and omnipresent, but, alas ! as far as ever from all-wise) has deigned to take of his “ humble plot of ground.” But he has had better suffrages : voices have come to him from the Lakes, and the old man of Highgate has rejoiced over him 1 . I am looking forward with eagerness to seeing Charles ; would that Alfred were with him ! but that will not be, and perhaps ought not to be ; “ the days are awa ” that we have seen. The upshot of the various transactions as to Somersby was, that the new Incumbent was willing that the Tennysons should live on at the Rectory, where they remained till 1837. Arthur Hal lam had been attached to my aunt Emily since 1829. After the first year, when Mr Hallam thought it desirable that the lovers should be separated for a time, he stayed at Somersby as often as he could spare leisure from his work ; and whenever he came, he cheered all with his “ bright, angelic spirit and his gentle, chivalrous manner 2 .” “ I am,” wrote Hallam to Trench, “now at Somersby, not only as the friend of Alfred Tennyson, but as the lover of his sister. An attachment on my part of nearly two years’ standing and a mutual engagement of one year are, I fervently hope, only the commencement of a 1 S. T. Coleridge. 2 Witch-elms that counterchange the floor Of this flat lawn with dusk and bright ; And thou, with all thy breadth and height Of foliage, towering sycamore ; How often, hither wandering down, My Arthur found your shadows fair, And shook to all the liberal air The dust and din and steam of town. 76 CAMBRIDGE, SOMERSBY AND ARTHUR HALLAM. [l831 union which circumstances may not impair, and the grave itself may not conclude.” My aunt Emily had eyes “ with depths on depths,’" and “ a profile like that on a coin,” “ testa Romana,” as an old Italian said of her. All the Tennyson sons and daughters except Frederick had the colouring of Italy or the south of France with dark eyes and hair. This foreign colouring may possibly have been derived from a Huguenot ancestor, a relation of Madame de Maintenon. On the Continent my father was never taken for an Englishman, and even in Ireland in 1848* when he was at Valentia, an Irishman rose up from among the fern and heather, and said, “ From France, your honour ? ” thinking, as he confessed, that he was a Frenchman come to head a revolution. While Hallam was at Somersby, after the morning’s work the Tennysons and he would generally go for long walks together beyond the “ bounding hill.” Not only was my father fond of walking, but of “ putting the stone” and other athletic feats. Mrs Lloyd of Louth writes : “ In proof of his strong muscular power, when showing us a little pet pony on the lawn at Somersby one day he surprised us by taking it up and carrying it.” Brook- field remarked : “ It is not fair, Alfred, that you should be Hercules as well as Apollo.” Fitzgerald notes: “ Alfred could hurl the crowbar further than any of the neighbouring clowns, whose humours, as well as those of their betters, knight, squire, landlord and lieutenant, he took quiet note of, like Chaucer himself.” Yet as he wandered over the wold, or by the brook, he often seemed to be in dreamland, so that one who often saw him then called him “ a mysterious being, seemingly lifted high above other mortals, and having a power of intercourse with the spirit-world not granted to others.” In the evening he lived much in his attic den, but now and then came down and listened to the singing LIFE AT SOMERSBY. 77 183l] and playing of his sisters. He had a love for the simple style of Mozart, and for our own national airs and ballads, and played himself a little on the flute, but only “cared for complicated music as suggesting echoes of winds and waves.” The sisters were all very musical, my aunt Mary playing the harp and accompanying the brothers and sisters who sang. Fitzgerald speaks of music in College days, and says : A. T. was not thought to have an ear for music ; I re- member little of his execution in the line except humming over “the weary pund o’ tow,” which was more because of the weary moral, I think, than for any music’s sake. Carlyle once said, “ The man must have music dormant in him, revealing itself in verse” I remember A. T.’s speaking of Haydn’s “ Chaos,” which he had heard at some Oratorio. He said, “The violins spoke of light.” Carlyle, who was apt to look on poetry as a waste of talents which ought to be employed in other heroic work, took at once to A. T.: among other signs of the man, remarking his voice, “like the sound of a pinewood,” he said. In past years many friends of Somersby days have told me of the exceeding consideration and love which my father showed his mother, and how much they were struck by the young man’s tender and defer- ential manner towards her, and how he might often be found in her room reading aloud, with his flexible voice, Shakespeare, Milton, Chaucer, Spenser and Campbell’s patriotic ballads. When Arthur Hallam was with them, Dante, Petrarch, Tasso and Ariosto were the favourite poets : and it was he who taught my aunt Emily Italian, and made her a proficient scholar. CAMBRIDGE, SOMERSBY AND ARTHUR HALLAM. [l831 Arthur Hallam to Emily Tennyson . Lady, I bid thee to a sunny dome, Ringing with echoes of Italian song ; Henceforth to thee these magic halls belong, And all the pleasant place is like a home: Hark ! on the right, with full piano tone, Old Dante’s voice encircles all the air: Hark yet again ! like flute tones mingling rare Comes the keen sweetness of Petrarca’s moan. Pass thou the lintel freely ; without fear Feast on the music. I do better know thee Than to suspect this pleasure thou dost owe me Will wrong thy gentle spirit, or make less dear That element whence thou must draw thy life, An English maiden and an English wife. CHAPTER IV. ARTHUR HALLAM. 1831-1833. Thy leaf has perish’d in the green, And, while we breathe beneath the sun, The world which credits what is done Is cold to all that might have been. So here shall silence guard thy fame ; But somewhere, out of human view, Whate’er thy hands are set to do Is wrought with tumult of acclaim. In the spring of 1831 my father was much distressed about the condition of his eyes and feared that he was going to lose his sight, “ a sad thing to barter the uni- versal light even for the power of ‘ Tiresias and Phineus, prophets old.’ ” He took to a milk diet for some months, which apparently “ did good.” At all events his eyesight was strong enough to allow him to study Doji Quixote in the original. He also records that one night he “ saw the moonlight reflected in a nightingale’s eye, as she was singing in the hedgerow h” He adds that her voice vibrated with such passion that he wrote of The leaves That tremble round the nightingale o o 1 Owing to his extreme short-sight he could see objects at a short distance better than anyone : and at a long distance with his eye-glass or 79 So ARTHUR HALLAM. [l831 in “ The Gardener’s Daughter.” Hallam told him at this time that “ The nightingale with long and low preamble,” in the sonnet which I give, was “worth an estate in Golconda.” Check every outflash, every ruder sally Of thought and speech, speak low, and give up wholly Thy spirit to mild-minded Melancholy : This is the place. Thro’ yonder poplar alley, Below, the blue green river windeth slowly, But in the middle of the sombre valley, The crisped waters whisper musically, And all the haunted place is dark and holy. The nightingale, with long and low preamble, Warbled from yonder knoll of solemn larches, And in and out the woodbine’s flowery arches The summer midges wove their wanton gambol, And all the white-stemm’d pinewood slept above, When in this valley first I told my love. My father contributed “ Anacreontics,” “ No More 1 ,” and “A Fragment,” to a literary annual The Gem\ and Moxon, who had some sparks of poetry in him, and had come into possession of the Englishman' s Magazine , wished to start with a “ flash number,” and asked Hallam to persuade my father to forward him a poem which would appear along with contributions from Wordsworth, Southey, and Charles Lamb. Hallam urged him (July 15th, 1831) to send “The Sisters,” spectacles he could see as far as any long-sighted person. At this time he went to see Brodie for his eyes, and began to talk so learnedly about them, that Brodie raised his hand saying: “Wait; remember I never see medical students without a fee.” His hearing was extraordinarily keen, and this he held to be a compensation for his short-sight : he “ could hear the shriek of a bat,” which he said was the test of a fine ear. 1<4 No More” is written out in Arthur Hallam’s handwriting in a common-place book belonging to Archdeacon Allen, and is dated by Arthur Hallam 1826. Although my father considered the poem crude, it is re- markable for a boy of seventeen. 183l] “AS PISGAH TO CANAAN.” 8 1 or “ Rosalind,” or the “ Southern Mariana,” and begged him not to disdain a mode of publication which Schiller and Goethe chose for their best compositions. He pointed out that the fugitive pieces might form part of a volume hereafter. Hallam was at Hastings “listening all day to the song of the larks on the cliffs,” and reading Destiny and Inheritance. He had no answer from Alfred, or any of his brothers, so wrote again : Hastings, July 2 6 th, 1831. I have been expecting for some days an answer to my letter about Moxon; but I shall not delay any longer my reply to your last, and before this is sent off yours may come. I, whose imagination is to yours as Pisgah to Canaan, the point of distant prospect to the place of actual possession, am not without some knowledge and experience of your passion for the past. To this community of feeling between us, I probably owe your inestimable friendship, and those blessed hopes which you have been the indirect occasion of awakening. But what with you is universal and all-powerful, absorbing your whole existence, communicating to you that energy which is so glorious, in me is checked and counteracted by many other impulses, tending to deaden the influence of the senses which were already less vivacious by nature. When I say the senses, I mean those employed in the processes of imagination, viz. sight and hearing. You say pathetically, “Alas for me! I have more of the Beautiful than the Good ! ” Remember to your comfort that God has given you to see the difference. Many a poet has gone on blindly in his artist pride. I am very glad you have been reading Erskine [of Linlathen]. No books have done me so much good as his, and I always thought you would like them if they came in your way. His doctrine may not be the truth, but it may contain it still, and this is my own view of the case. You perhaps will be angry when I tell you that I sent your sonnet about the “Sombre Valley” to Moxon 1 , who is charmed with it, and has printed it off. I confess this is a breach of trust on my part, but I hope for your forgiveness... A. H. H. 1 Published in the EnglisJmiarC s Magazine for August. t. 1 . 6 82 ARTHUR HALLAM. [l831 The two friends, after a tour taken by Hallam in Devon, Cornwall and Yorkshire, met at Sheffield to talk over literary plans for the future. Hallam wrote that he was “ in the humbler station of critic,” while “ Alfred is brimful of subjects and artist thoughts.” The “ Apostles ” and their little band of Cambridge friends expressed themselves warmly as to Hallam’s article on the Poems , chiefly Lyrical . After his holiday Hallam returned to his reading of law, and enjoyed “ the old fellow Blackstone,” culling for Alfred poetic words like “forestal.” “The Dream of Fair Women,” Hallam was of opinion, should be published soon, for it would establish the poet at once in general reputation. The friends interchanged thoughts on the political state of the world and on Ireland especially, which is “ the most volcanic point.” They had grave arguments about the Church, and were exercised about the St Simonians, whose opinions on many points “ resembled those of Shelley, although they were much more practical.” Miss Austen’s novels were read and notes compared. My father preferred Emma and Persuasion , and Hallam wrote, “ Emma is my first love, and I intend to be constant. The edge of this constancy will soon be tried, for I am promised the reading of Pride and Prejudice .” My father meets Fanny Kemble, whom he holds “supreme in Juliet,” and she speaks of him as having “ the grandest head of any man whom she has clapt eyes on.” Adelaide Kemble copies out “ The Sisters,” “ raving about it at intervals in the most Siddonian tone,” and Fanny has set the ballad to music ; “ she inclines however to think it too painful, and to wish such things should not be written.” Her “ enthusiasm is high ” over some of the manuscript poems in the forthcoming 1832 volume, especially “The Lady of Shalott.” FANNY KEMBLE. 83 1832] Her own play, Francis /., runs for several nights (March 1832). “It is a remarkable production for seventeen ; the language is very pure, free, elegant English and strictly dramatic. There is none of that verbiage which is called mere poetry in it. She must have nourished her childhood with the strong wine of our old drama ” : so writes Hallam, who was more conversant with that old drama than any of his Cambridge contemporaries. The Hunchback is then given, and Hallam writes that “ The scene in the second Act, where Fanny Kemble plays fine lady, was excellent, but the tragic parts yet finer: for instance where Clifford comes in as Secretary, and afterwards where she expostulates with Master Walter. Her ‘ Clifford, why don’t you speak to me ? ’ and ‘ Clifford, is it you ? ’ and her ‘ Do it,’ with all the accompanying speech, I shall never forget.” Hallam and my father in their rambles through London, and in their smokes in Hallam’s den at the top of the house in the “ long unlovely street,” touched on all imaginable topics. Hallam was busy writing essays on modern authors; and these and my father’s 1832 volume were frequent subjects of discussion. The unsettled condition of the country and the misery of the poorer class weighed upon them. It seemed difficult to young men, starting in life, to know how to remedy these evils, but they determined not to lose hold of the Real in seeking the Ideal. Hallam writes : “ Where the ideas of time and sorrow are not, and sway not the soul with power, there is no true knowledge in Poetry or Philoso- phy.” On my father’s return to Somersby, the correspond- ence recommenced. Hallam desires the publication of “ The Lover’s Tale,” for there are “magnificent passages in that poem. The present casket, faulty as it is, is yet the only one in which the precious gems contained therein 6 — 2 8 4 ARTHUR HALLAM. [l832 can be preserved.” The author thinks it too diffuse and will not publish. Hallam answers that, since his is “ the only printed copy of the ‘ Lover’s Tale,’ he shall make a fortune by lending it out at five shillings a head.” One day he reads “ CEnone ” to his father, who “ seems to like Juno’s speech, but is called away in the middle of Venus’,” so the friends do not obtain the great man’s criticism. Meanwhile the colloquial critic of Blackwood , “ Chris- topher North,” had delivered his judgment on Poems , chiefly Lyrical in a comically aggressive though not wholly unfriendly article h The following two letters were written by Arthur Hallam about this review, and the poems which were to appear in the volume of 1832: \_Undated.~\ Professor Wilson has thought fit to have a laugh at you and your critics, amongst whom so humble a thing as myself, has not, as you will perceive, escaped. I suppose one ought to feel very savage at being attacked, but somehow I feel much more amused. He means well I take it, and as he has extracted nearly your whole book, and has in his soberer mood spoken in terms as high as I could have used myself of some of your best poems, I think the review will assist rather than hinder the march of your reputation. They little know the while that you despise the false parts of your volume quite as vehemently as your censors can, and with purer zeal, because with better knowledge. April 10 th, 1832. I don’t know that you ought to publish this spring, but I shall never be easy or secure about your MSS until I see them fairly out of your control. The Ballad of ‘‘The Sisters” was very popular at Cambridge. Indeed it is very perfect. Monteith showed his ignorance by wishing the murdering lady 1 For example in the criticism of the song entitled u The Owl,” he says, “ Alfred is as an owl : all that he wants is to be shot, stuffed and stuck into a glass case, to be made immortal in a museum.” ( Blackwood's Mag, Vol. xxxi.) 8 s 1832] LETTERS FROM HALLAM AND SPEDDING. to have been originally the rival of the seduced lady, which idea was of course scouted by the wiser listeners, that is, all the rest, as substituting a commonplace melodramatic interest for the very poetic interest arising from your conception of the character. All were anxious for the “ Palace of Art,” etc., and fierce with me for not bringing more. Venables is a great man (at Cambridge), also Dobson. New customs, new topics, new slang phrases have come into vogue since my day, which yet was but yesterday. I don’t think I could reside again at Cambridge with any pleasure. I should feel like a melancholy Pterodactyl winging his lonely flight among the linnets, eagles and flying fishes of our degenerate post-Adamic world. I have seen Gaskell, who is in the ninth heaven of happiness, going to be married the end of May. I have taken to my law again, and a little to my other studies. The [first Reform] Bill is now in the second reading, and will pass by a very small majority. The cholera is certainly abating ; the preliminary symptoms have been very widely prevalent ; disorders which are cured without difficulty in our rank of life turn to malignant cholera in the poor. Casimir Perier has had it but is recovering. The heroes of July are cutting the throats of physicians and wine merchants as you will see by the papers. The report about Macaulay in Tennant’s letter has no great foundation : at least he has not seen your book. I think Mac has some poetic taste, and would appreciate you. Yours affectionately, A. H. H. Spedding wrote from Cambridge to Thompson (May 4th, 1832) : Only think of an “Apostolic ” dinner next Friday, nth inst. ; present, Hallam, Trench, Kemble, Arthur Buller, Martineau, Pickering, Donne I hope, etc. etc. Only think of Heath’s essay on Niebuhr the day after ! Only think of the “ Palace of Art,” of which you may see part of a stanza, horribly misquoted, at what should have been the beginning of this sheet ! Only think of all these things, and others which your own fruitful imagination will readily suggest ! By the way, are you not tired by this time of the monotony and manufacture of your infernal county ? or if 86 ARTHUR HALLAM. [l832 you are still wandering on the sea-shore, does not your soul feel very much like A still salt pool, lock’d in with bars of sand Left on the shore, that hears all night The plunging seas draw backward from the land Their moon-led waters white ? Do you not begin to sigh for apostolic conversation, and your dear lodgings, and River-Gods of “ Mighty Michael Angelo,” and the massed chestnut boughs that promise soon to put out their leaves ? Charles Merivale also wrote to Thompson that “ A daily divan continued to sit throughout the term,” and that the “ ‘ Palace of Art ’ was read successively to each man as he came up from the vacation.” He continues : Though the least eminent of the Tennysonian Rhapsodists, I have converted by my readings both my brother and your friend (or enemy?) Richardson to faith in the “Lotos-eaters.” They rather scoff at the former (the “ Palace of Art”), and ask whether “The abysmal depths of personality” means the Times newspaper ? Spedding wrote again to Thompson, June 21st, 1832 : We talk out of the “ Palace of Art,” and the “ Legend of Fair Women.” The great Alfred is here (in London), i.e. in Southampton Row, smoking all the day, and we went from this house on a pilgrimage to see him, to wit, two Heaths, my brother and myself, and meeting Allen on the way we took him along with us, and when we arrived at the place appointed we found A. T. (Alfred Tennyson), and A. H. H. (Arthur Hallam), and J. M. K. (Kemble), and we made a goodly company, and did as we do at Cambridge, and but that you were not among us, we should have been happy. And on July 18th, 1832, Spedding writes: I say, a new volume by A. T. is in preparation, and will, I suppose, be out in Autumn. In the meantime I have no copy of the “ Palace of Art,” but shall be happy to repeat it to you when you come ; no copy of the “ Legend of Fair Women,” but TOUR ON THE RHINE. 87 1832] can repeat about a dozen stanzas which are of the finest; no copy of the conclusion of “ CEnone,” but one in pencil which none but myself can read. This July my father and Hallam went for a tour on the Rhine. Arthur Hallam to Emily Tennyson . NONNENWERTH,////y l6//z, 1832. I expect, as far as I can calculate (but a traveller’s calcula- tions are always liable to be deranged by unforeseen chances), to be in England by the end of this month, and then I shall go straight to Somersby. I had better tell you something of what Alfred and I have been doing. My last letter, I think, was from Rotterdam. We resumed our steam-boat last Wednesday morning, and came on slowly up the Rhine ; the banks of which are more uniformly ugly and flat as far as Cologne than any country I ever saw of so great an extent. Really, until yesterday, we had seen nothing in the way of scenery that deserved going a mile to see. Cologne is the paradise of painted glass : the splendour of the windows in the churches would have greatly delighted you. The Cathedral is unfinished, and if completed on the original plan, would be the most stupendous and magnificent in the world. The part completed is very beautiful Gothic. Alfred was in great raptures, only complaining he had so little time to study the place. There is a gallery of pictures quite after my own heart, rich, glorious old German pictures, which Alfred accuses me of preferring to Titian and Raffaelle. In the Cathedral we saw the tomb and relics of the three kings, Gaspar, Melchior, and Balthazar, the patrons of Cologne and very miraculous persons in their day, according to sundry legends. The tomb is nearly all of pure massy gold, studded with rich precious stones. From Cologne we came on to Bonn, which really bears a sort of family-likeness to Cambridge. Here the Rhine begins to be beautiful ; and yesterday we took a luxurious climb up the Drachenfels, looked around at the mild vine-spread hillocks, and “river-sundered champaign clothed with corn,” ate cherries under the old castle-wall at the top of the crag, then descended 88 ARTHUR HALLAM. [l832 to a village below, and were carried over in a boat to the place from which I am writing. And what is that? Ten years ago it was a large convent of Benedictine nuns ; now it is a large and comfortable hotel, still retaining the form of the Convent, the Cloisters, cell-like rooms, etc. It stands on an island in the middle of the river; you will understand the size of the isle* when I tell you it is rather larger, according to Alfred, than that of the Lady of Shalott, and the stream is rather more rapid than our old acquaintance that ran down to Camelot. The prospect from the window and gardens is most beautiful, the mountains, as they are called, Drachenfels being one, on one bank of the river, and Rolandseck towering up on the other,., with the hills about Bingen glooming in the distance. After their return Arthur Hallam writes to Alfred : 1832. My dear Alfred, Thanks for your batch of MSS. The lines to J. S. are perfect. James [Spedding], I am sure, will be most grateful. The “Old Year” is excellent. The “Little Room” is mighty pleasant 1 . Remember the maxim of the Persian sage : “ el hoLd^eis, cnre'xov” Your epigram to North is good, but I have scruples whether you should publish it. Perhaps he may like the lines and you the better for them; but “ fiepiiripL^cof I think the “ Lover’s Tale ” will be liked, as far as I can remember its old shape. Moxon is in ecstasies with the “ May Queen ” ; he says the volume must make a great sensation. He and your friends are anxious that it should be out before the storm of politics is abroad. The French Fleet has got the start of you, and I fear Antwerp may be taken before your last revise is ready; but still you may be beforehand with the elections, which is more 1 (Note by my father .) As soon as this poem was published, I altered the second line to “ All books and pictures ranged aright 11 ; yet “ Dear room, the apple of my sight (which was much abused) is not so bad as “Do go, dear rain, do go away.” A. T. 1832] THE FIRST-PROOF. 89 important. There has been some delay this week, owing to want of types, but the (printer’s) devils are full of promise to set up immediately. Moxon has sent me the revises of “ The Palace,” with the notes ; they are, I believe, correct, yet I would know whether you altered “ pouring glorious scorn” into “ frowning,” etc. In the course of next week I shall send you two composi- tions of my own, the one very trifling, an article of three pages only, in the Foreign Quarterly , the other, a pamphlet Moxon has just published for me on Rossetti’s Disquisizioni sullo spirito Antipapale 1 . I hope you will like it; yet I have not forgotten that the last time I sent you a publication of mine you did not even deign to read it. When should I have done the like by one of yours? Perhaps you may retort with justice, that this question is like the American’s remark in Mrs Trollope, to an Englishman, who had never read Bryant’s poems, “ How illiberal you English are ! just let me ask you, what you would say to one of us that had never read Milton or Shakespeare, or any of your great authors ! ” Fare thee well, old trump, poems are good things but flesh and blood is better. I only crave a few words. Ever yours affectionately, A. H. H. A fter staying at Kitlands . Dorking, October loth, 1832. My dear Alfred, I must snatch a few minutes from the overwhelming mass of law business which is now on my hands, just to talk with you about the first-proof. I had it sent down to me while I was staying at Heath’s. The weather was miserably rainy, so, after breakfast, we adjourned to an arbour in the garden, and while Thompson, who was also staying there, furnished cheroots, I furnished proof-sheets. After mature examination, we came, in full conclave, to some decisions, of which you shall have the benefit. We think the type very pretty, but are rather sorry the book will not bind up with its predecessor. We admire the Buonaparte sonnet but we strongly urge the substitution of 1 Among other papers Hallam wrote then were the brief though remark- able memoirs of Petrarch, Burke, and Voltaire, for the Gallery of Portraits published by the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge. 90 ARTHUR HALLAM. [l 832 “ dreamer ” for “ madman.” The stanzas “ All good things ” seem to us perfect. The “ Lady ” (of Shalott) reads charmingly in print : the more I read it, the more I like it. You were, indeed, happily inspired when the idea of that poem first rose in your imagination. We had a long battle with Mr Heath, a famous lawyer, but no man of letters, about the last stanza in the proof. We flatter ourselves we floored him ; to be sure we were three to one, but he fought well. The principal point of attack was “ cloud-white ” ; he said it was absurd to explain a fixed colour as pearl by the most variable hue in the world, that of a cloud. We recovered ourselves with all the grace of practised combatants, and talked learnedly about the context of feeling, and the conformity of the lady’s dress to her magical character, till at last our opponent left us in possession of the field, declaring still between his teeth, that, for his part, he thought poetry ought to be sense. In one place a whole line was omitted. Douglas Heath read, “ sudden laughters of the Tay ” (Jay); without ever suspecting the misprint. I hear Tennant has written to dissuade you from publishing “ Kriemhild,” “Tarpeia” (in the “ Fair Women ”). Don’t be humbugged, they are very good ; you may put a note or two if you will, yet Milton did not to “ Paradise Lost.” Rogers the poet has been staying here, and speaks of you with admiration. Have you written to Moxon ? He is anxious to have the rest of the MSS. Ever your most affectionate Arthur. My father wrote to Mr Moxon, in consequence of this letter from Arthur Hallam : 20 Nov. 1832. Dear Sir, After mature consideration, I have come to a resolution of not publishing the last poem in my little volume, entitled, “ Lover’s Tale”: it is too full of faults and tho’ I think it might conduce towards making me popular, yet, to my eye, it spoils the completeness of the book, and is better away ; of course whatever expenses may have been incurred in printing the above must devolve on me solely. “ TENNYSON OR MILTON ? ” 91 1852] The vol. can end with that piece titled to J. S. We, who live in this corner of the world, only get our letters twice or thrice a week: which has caused considerable delay : but on receipt of this you may begin to dress the volume for its introduction into the world, as soon as you choose. Believe me, Sir, yours very truly, Alfred Tennyson. P.S. The title-page may be simply POEMS By Alfred Tennyson (don’t let the printer squire me). Be so good as to send me five copies. Among the poems in this volume were “ The Lady of Shalott ” (so-called from an Italian novelette, “ Donna di Scalotta”), “Mariana in the South,” “The Miller’s Daughter,” “ CEnone,” “ The Palace of Art,” “ The Lotos-Eaters,” “The Dream of Fair Women,” “The May Queen,” and “To James Spedding” on the death of his brother Edward. After its publication Arthur Hallam wrote to my father, referring to a review of the book in the Quarterly (No. xlvii. i 833): [ Undated. ] Your book continues to sell tolerably and Moxon says the Quarterly has done good. Rogers defends you publicly as the most promising genius of the time. Sir Robert Inglis told my father he had heard from unquestionable authority that Alfred Tennyson was an assumed name like Barry Cornwall. I endeavoured to shake his scepticism, I fear without effect. I hear to-day that a question is put up at the Cambridge Union, “Tennyson or Milton, which the greater poet?” * * * % * My father met Milman one day who denies altogether having written the infamous article [in the Quarterly ]. He says he has 92 ARTHUR HALLAM. [1832 made a rule never to cut up any living poet. Once he made an exception in the case of a foreigner, and to his horror when at Florence he found himself invited to meet him at break- fast. Rogers thinks the first volume decidedly superior to the second.... I don’t quite comprehend this. From Arthur Hallam. [ Undated .] *12 f, tot, Aioyeves II arpo/cXecs, olov eet7re?; You are very impertinent about my talent of letter-writing ; I never said I composed my letters, now at least ; formerly I did in some sort, when Plancus was consul, and Gaskell my correspond- ent and hero of romance. Am I not thereby entitled to say of myself, as Mrs Langley said of her daughters, “ Whatever accom- plishment I may possess in that way, it is entirely self-taught ” ? That labour, if labour it was, was one of love. It had nothing of the file. I composed a letter as I composed a poem. Heart and mind went into it, and why? — because I couldn’t help it. I was full of thoughts so new to me that I was afraid of losing them, and took every way to treasure them : so dear they were too that I could not rest till those I loved were familiar with them. I have been reading Mrs Jameson’s Characteristics , and I am so bewildered with similes about groves and violets, and streams of music, and incense and attar of roses, that I hardly know what I write. Bating these little flummeries of style, it is a good book, showing much appreciation of Shakespeare and the human heart ev Bid Bvolv. I went again to Effingham Wilson’s shop to-day ; he was bland and submissive, promising to send me the account as soon as he should have time to make it out. I am confident the £11 1 will be found a mistake.' A rumour is current that Mrs Arkwright has set “ Oriana ” to music ! All the world loves her music, and “Oriana” has a fair chance of becoming as stale as the “ Captive Knight.” The country is in jeopardy hourly increasing. Yesterday I saw (perhaps) the last king of England go down to open the first assembly of delegates from a sovereign people. It is an unmanageable house. O’Connell 1 The sum my father received for the 1830 volume. THE REFORM BILL. 93 1832] raves. Government menaces. Your uncle [C. Tennyson d’Eyn- court] seems to be manoeuvring to be chief of the Penultimate Radicals, the Girondists, one might call them from their position, were they not alike destitute of genius and patriotism. But there can be no doubt that, if the Mountain continues unshaken, it must increase, and that more faint-hearted crew to which your uncle belongs will adhere to it. O’ConneH’s speech is said to have been very effective. He and Sheil on one side ; Macaulay and Stanley on the other, there will be some fine spectacles of intellectual combat. Ever yours affectionately, A. H. H. My father did not view, the political situation so gloomily as did Arthur Hallam. It was the “ dead waste and middle of the night ” when the news of the passing of the Reform Bill for England and Wales had reached Somersby. This “ Firm Bill,” as the Lin- colnshire people called it, had stirred all hearts ; and my father and some of his brothers and sisters at once sallied out into the darkness, and began to ring the church bells madly. The new parson, horrified at hear- ing his bells rung and not merely rung but furiously clashed without his leave, came rushing into his church, and in the pitch blackness laid hold of the first thing which he could clap hand to, and this happened to be my aunt Cecilia’s little dog — which forthwith tried to bite. The Tennysons then disclosed themselves amid much laughter ; and the parson, who I suppose was a Tory of the old school, was with difficulty pacified. More than once my father thought of turning this scene into verse as an interesting picture of the times. The advice as to sensitiveness 1 which Hallam 1 Jowett writes to me: “Your father was very sensitive and had an honest hatred of being gossiped about. He called the malignant critics and chatterers ‘mosquitoes . 1 He never felt any pleasure at praise (except from his friends), but he felt a great pain at the injustice of censure. It never occurred to him that a new poet in the days of his youth was sure to provoke dangerous hostilities in the ‘genus irritabile vatum , 1 and in the old-fashioned public.” 94 ARTHUR HALLAM. [l832 gave my father at this time was wise; since the Quarterly review could not but disturb the equanimity of a mind peculiarly liable to be annoyed by captious and unintelligent criticism 1 . Hallam urged him to find amusement in those hair-splitting critics, “ who are the bane of great art,” and to assure himself that even these reviews would bring him into notice. His friends were of opinion that even the sneering savage Quarterly attack would be innocuous, for the Review was known in London to be the organ of a party, both in politics and literature. They cheered him by telling him that his very creative originality and unlikeness to any poet, his uncommon power over varied metres and rare harmonies of sound and sense, needed the creation of a taste for his work before he could be appreciated. “To raise the many,” Hallam wrote, “ to his own real point of view, the artist must employ his energies, and create energy in others : to descend to their position is less noble, but practicable with ease.” However the estimation in which the Quarterly was then held throughout the country was given by an old Lincolnshire squire, who assured my father that “ The Quarterly was the next book to God’s Bible.” My father’s attitude towards his critics is illustrated in the following letter 2 , written by him to “Christopher North” in reference to a pamphlet by Mr Lake, which 1 More than once the writer in the Quarterly wilfully misinterprets the lines and poems. For instance, in “The Miller’s Daughter” my father describes the mill-pool, and says : A water-rat from off the bank Plunged in the stream. This is explained by the reviewer as the poet “likening the first intrusion of love into the virgin bosom of the miller’s daughter to the plunging of a water-rat.” 2 This letter was found in a rag-store in Dundee in September 1895 and forwarded to me by C. M. Falconer. 1832] “ CHRISTOPHER NORTH.” 95 he thought “ Christopher North ” might be disposed to notice. SOMERSBY, SPILSBY, LINCOLNSHIRE. Sir, Tho’ I am “ the star of little Britain,” I assure you I do not rise or set there very cordially. I prefer vegetating in a very quiet garden where I neither see nor hear anything of the great world of literature — not lighting even upon Maga once a year. Nevertheless, in the lack of better things, a composition, mistermed a Satyre, entitled Criticism and Taste , and particularly remarkable for the want of either, was forwarded to me, a day or two ago, by the author — with a note; he thinks I ought to promote the circulation of his book for the good of my own, does he ? so then I am to be pioneered — perhaps patronized, by Mr John Lake. Now, Sir, hew me piecemeal, cut me up any way you will, exhaust all your world of fun and fancy upon me, but do not suspect me- — tho’ I may have done, written, said foolish things, not excepting a silly squib to Christopher North — do not dream that I can, now or ever, own any one grain of sympathy with the ravings of this unhappy coxcomb. I would rather request you, if you do not object to meet me on such dirty ground, to shake hands over the puddle he has made. Five months after it had been printed I saw the critique 1 from which Mr L. has drawn his inspiration. I considered it at the time as somewhat too skittish and petulant, tho’ it was redeemed to me by a tone of boisterous and picturesque humour such as I love. My gall might have risen a little — that it could never have contained much bitterness the weakness of my epigram ought, I think, to prove; for I trust that you will give me credit for being able to write a better. 1 The Blackwood article by Wilson. 9 6 ARTHUR HALLAM. [l832 I could wish that some of the poems there broken on your critical wheel were deeper than ever plummet sounded. Written as they were before I had attained my nineteenth year they could not but contain as many faults as words. I never wish to see them or hear of them again — much less to find them dragged forward once more on your boards, if you should condescend to divide Mr L. from his one idea by replying to him. Perhaps you should not use him too harshly — tho’ his arrogance deserves reproof ; a consideration of the real imbecility of his nature ought to blunt the weapon. Someone (I think M. in his cups) told a friend of mine that you were the author of an article on me in the Quarterly. I do not believe it ; for I could not recognise one spark of genius or a single touch of true humour or good feeling. Moreover the man misprints me, which is worse than lying — but now that we have shaken hands (for I trust, we have) I find that you owe me an explanation. Somewhere or other you state “Alfred is a gentleman” — to which I answer with Con- rade and Borachio, “Yea, sir, we hope”: you say after- wards, that I have forgotten what was due to myself in that character, because having previously sent you “ a copy with a grateful superscription ” I had publicly dis- claimed much relish for your approbation. Now upon mine honour as a gentleman, I did never send or cause to be sent any such presentation-copy, or write, indite, or cause to be written or indited any superscription, grateful or ungrateful, to any Editor of any Review or Magazine whatsoever. Apologising for having thus far incroached on your valuable time 1 The next decade wrought a marvellous abatement of my father’s real fault, which was undoubtedly “ the 1 The signature of this letter has been cut off. 1832] “WHAT THOR SAID.” 97 tendency, arising from the fulness of a mind which had not yet learned to master its resources freely, to over- crowd his composition with imagery...to which may be added an over-indulgence in the luxuries of the senses, a profusion of splendours, harmonies, perfumes, gorgeous apparel, luscious meats and drinks and ‘creature com- forts ’ which rather pall upon the sense, and make the glories of the outward world a little too obscure and overshadow the world within 1 .” “ Alfred continued writing,” as Spedding says, “ like a crocodile, sideways and onward”: and defines one aspect of the poet’s work in this sort of way : (What Thor, armed with his hammer, said to the Bard before dinner.) Wherever evil customs thicken, Break thro’ with the hammer of iron rhyme, Till priest-craft and king-craft sicken, But pap-meat-pamper not the time With the flock of the thunder-stricken. If the world caterwaul, lay harder upon her Till she clapperclaw no longer, Bang thy stithy stronger and stronger, Thy rhyme-hammer shall have honour. Yet a poet cannot live his true life without sympathy, and he fancied that England was an unsympathetic at- mosphere, and half resolved to live abroad in Jersey, in the south of France, or in Italy. He was so far per- suaded that the English people would never care for his poetry, that, had it not been for the intervention of his friends, he declared it not unlikely that after the death of Hallam he would not have continued to write. T, I. 1 Spedding’s Reviews and Discussions. 7 9 8 ARTHUR HALLAM. [l832 Spedding wrote \ as to this second volume : “ The reception (of the poems), though far from triumphant, was not inauspicious ; for while they gained him many admirers, they were treated, even by those critics whose admiration, like their charity, begins and ends at home, as sufficiently notable to be worth some not unelaborate ridicule. The admiration and the ridicule served alike to bring them into notice...The superiority of his second collection of poems lay not so much in the superior workmanship (it contained perhaps fewer that were equally perfect in their kind) as in the general aim and character. If some of the blossom was gone, it was amply repaid by the more certain promise of fruit. Not only was the aim generally larger, the subjects and interest more substantial, and the endeavour more sustained, but the original and distinctive character of the man appeared more plainly. His genius was manifestly shaping a peculiar course for itself, and find- ing out its proper business ; the moral soul was begin- ning more and more to assume its due predominance, not in the way of formal preaching (the proper vehicle of which is prose), but in the shape and colour which his creations unconsciously took, and the feelings which they were made insensibly to suggest.” To his aunt, Mrs Russell, my father wrote the two following letters: Somersby. Dearest Aunt, What think you of the state of affairs in Europe ? Burking and cholera have ceased to create much alarm. They are our least evils, but reform and 1 In 1842. 1832 ] LETTER TO MRS RUSSELL. 99 St Simonism are, and will continue to be, subjects of the highest interest. The future is so dark in the prospect that I am ready to cry out with the poet : The empty thrones call out for kings, But kings are cheap as summer-dust. The good old time hath taken wings, And with it taken faith and trust, And solid hope of better things. Reform (not the measure, but the instigating spirit of reform, which is likely to subsist among the people long after the measure has past into a law) will bring on the confiscation of Church property, and maybe the downfall of the Church altogether : but the existence of the sect of the St Simonists 1 is at once a proof of the immense mass of evil that is extant in the nineteenth century, and a focus which gathers all its rays. This sect is rapidly spreading in France, Germany and Italy, and they have missionaries in London. But I hope and trust that there are hearts as true and pure as steel in old England, that will never brook the sight of Baal in the sanctuary, and St Simon in the Church of Christ. I should delight in having a line from you or Emma. Believe me, Ever yours most affectionately, A. T. 1 See an interesting account of Saint-Simon and his followers in Lecky’s Democracy and Liberty , Vol. n. pp. 207-215. 7-2 IOO ARTHUR HALLAM. [l833 Somersby, March 10th , 1833. My dearest Aunt, I am much grieved to find that your kind- hearted letter to me has been lying so many days unanswered. I was at Mablethorpe, a bathing-place on our bleak, flat Lincolnshire coast, when it arrived at Somersby, and as there is no species of post between the latter and the former place, I have only just now received it together with some others. I have sent Emma’s 1 picture to 15 Portland Place. I recollect when I first saw it, thinking that it did not do her justice: it wanted her life and vivacity. I would have forwarded this portrait to you long ago, and likewise visited you by the proxy of a letter, but to me as to Dante, “ La diritta via era smarrita,” for I knew not where you were. What astrologer can point out the place of any star that moves perpetually under a cloud ? You have been singing too in your solitude, and I should like much to hear some of your melodies, but a malicious fatality always seems to thwart me : the ghost of some ex-amateur, jealous of your notes, thrusts himself between me and any possible piano you may sit down to. My grandfather had lately a very severe fit of the gout, — Mr B. 2 stayed two nights in the house, — but our last accounts are that he is pretty well recovered and rides out, I believe, as usual. Mary remembers having once met you at Tealby: I wish you knew her better — she is a girl of great feeling 1 Her daughter, Lady Boyne. 2 Mr B , the county doctor, would miss out his “h’s,” and say: “Mr Tennyson, I work ’ard and get up so early that I ’eat my own grate.” He was in the habit of riding about at night with a gig-lamp fastened to each foot, for fear of being run over. THE RHINE. IOI 1833] and very warm in her attachments to her female friends, and true feeling is all that is really valuable on the windy side of the grave. For myself, I drag on somewhat heavily thro’ the ruts of life, sometimes moping to myself like an owl in an ivy-bush, or that one sparrow which the Hebrew mentioneth as sitting on the housetop (a passage which used always to make me uncomfortable), and sometimes smoking a pipe with a neighbouring parson and cursing O’Connell for as double-dyed a rascal as ever was dipped in the Styx of political villainy 1 . Last year, however, Hallam and myself steamed up the Rhine as far as Bingen ; we had the pleasure of being moored by a muddy island, full of stagnant dykes, in the river Maas, where we performed quarantine for a week, and saw by night the boats, from the cholera vessels stationed in the river, creeping round to the burial-place of the island with a corpse and a lantern. We at last got so enraged that we pulled down the Dutch colours and reversed them, which put the ancient skipper into such indignation that he swore he would hang us at the yard-arm. We returned by Aix-la-Chapelle and Brussels. My mother, who, as you know, is one of the most angelick natures on God’s earth, always doing good as it were by a sort of intuition, continues in tolerable health, though somewhat harassed with the cares incident to so large a family. She sends the essence of all love to you and yours, and begs me to state how happy it would make her to see you at Somersby : indeed this is a wish in which we all cordially join, tho’ for my own part I have very faint hopes that you will gratify it. Many thanks for your present and letter. Love to Emma and compliments to Gustavus 2 . I 1 He softened this opinion when he came to know more about O’Connell. 2 The baby son is the present Lord Boyne- ARTHUR HALLAM. 102 [l 833 hope for his own peace of mind that he will have as little of the Tennyson about him as possible. Believe me, My dearest Aunt, Ever your most affectionate nephew, A. T. During these years the Tennysons seem to have taken turns in going to London. We hear of my uncle Charles seeing his Cambridge friends in town. “ Brook- field is melancholy and not fancy-free.” “John Kemble is buried in Gothic manuscripts, and will only talk of Runes and Eddas, and of the brave knight Siegfried.” Arthur Hallam is “ as kind as ever,” and Charles rides with him “through the beautiful Norwood country.” In March of this year we are told that Arthur Hallam, Alfred and Mary enjoyed their sight-seeing in London together. They visited the Elgin Marbles, the Tower and the Zoological Gardens. They looked through microscopes at “ moths’ wings, gnats’ heads, and at all the lions and tigers which lie perdus in a drop of spring water.” My father would say, on looking through the microscope, “ Strange that these wonders should draw some men to God and repel others. No more reason in one than in the other.” In July Arthur Hallam wrote to my father who was in Scotland : July 31 st, 1833. 1 feel to-night what I own has been too uncommon with me of late, a strong desire to write to you. I do own I feel the want of you at some times more than at others ; a sort of yearning for dear old Alfred comes upon me, and that without 1833] VISITS TO SCOTLAND AND LONDON. IO 3 any particularly apparent reason. I missed you much at Somersby — not for want of additional excitement, I was very happy. I had never been at Somersby before without you. However I hope you are not unpleasantly employed in the land of cakes and broiled fish. I hear that you were charmed with the amiability of the Gardens ; I also hear in town that the old Monteiths have been here instead of there. I trust you finished the “ Gardener’s Daughter,” and enriched her with a few addi- tional beauties drawn from the ancient countenance of Monteith’s aunt. Have you encountered any Highland girl with “ a shower for her dower ” ? I should like much to hear your adventures, but I daresay it will be difficult to persuade you to write to Vienna, whither I am going on Saturday with tolerable speed. At all events if you have any traveller’s tale to tell, do not tell it often enough to get tired of it before we meet. I am going perhaps as far as Buda. I shall present your poetic respects to the Danube and to certain parts of Tyrol. In the parcel which accompanies this you will find a volume of poems by Hartley Coleridge, much of which I think you will agree with me is exquisitely beautiful. Probably Charles and Septimus will like the sonnets more than you will. I desire and peremptorily issue my orders that Emily may not be debarred from full, fair and free reading of that book by any of her brothers. A. H. H. My father went with Tennant to London to say farewell to his friend, before he set out abroad. There was a supper at my father’s lodgings, and Tennant writes to Septimus Tennyson: Moxon and Leigh Hunt were there, and we did not separate till half-past four o’clock : Alfred repeated glorious fragments of the “ Gardener’s Daughter,” which seemed to produce proper effect upon Leigh Hunt. Yesterday we went in a troop to see Rogers’ (the poet’s) gallery of paintings : superb Titian, very beautiful Raphael Madonna, and in fact all art gems 1 . There is a fresco 1 The Titian, presumably Noli me tangere , and the (so-called) Giotto, a fragment with two Apostles 1 heads, as well as the Madonna, which had belonged to the Orleans collection, are now in the National Gallery. 104 ARTHUR HALLAM. [1833 by Giotto. In the library we found Charles’ volume but not Alfred’s. There were many proofs of the engravings that will appear in his (Rogers’) forthcoming volume. Hallam sent as a parting present to Emily Ten* nyson the Pensees de Pascal , and Silvio Pellico. In August he started with his father for the “ Tyrol, and Salzburg.” “ Never have mountains seemed to him so sublime.” He admired “ the independence and self- respect of the Tyrolese.” Vienna he compared to Paris, but found the city “ more uniformly handsome.” He visited the Treasure Chamber, where he saw “ the largest diamond in the world.” The Prater was dismal, “ insipid, worse even than the Corso at Milan or the Cascine at Florence.” But he revelled in the picture gallery and wrote about it as follows : Sept . 6ih, 1833. The gallery is grand and I longed for you : two rooms full of Venetian pictures only; such Giorgiones, Palmas, Bordones, Paul Veroneses ! and oh Alfred such Titians ! by Heaven, that man could paint ! I wish you could see his Danae. Do you just write as perfect a Danae ! Also there are two fine rooms of Rubens, but I know you are an exclusive, and care little for Rubens, in which you are wrong : although no doubt Titian’s imagination and style are more analogous to your own than those of Rubens or of any other school. A. H. H. That is the last letter from Arthur Hallam. With his letters I find these MS lines : I do but mock me with the questionings. Dark, dark, irrecoverably dark Is the soul’s eye ; yet how it strives and battles Through the impenetrable gloom to fix That master light, the secret truth of things, Which is the body of the Infinite God. A. H. H. DEATH OF ARTHUR HALLAM. 105 1833] He died at Vienna on Sept. 15th, 1833. When Mr Hallam returned from his daily walk, he saw Arthur asleep as he supposed upon the couch ; a blood-vessel near the brain had suddenly burst : it was not sleep but death. On October 1st a letter from Arthur Hallam s uncle, Henry Elton, at Clifton, brought the sorrowful news to my father : At the desire of a most afflicted family, I write to you because they are unequal from the grief into which they have fallen to do it themselves. Your friend, sir, and my much-loved nephew, Arthur Hallam, is no more. It has pleased God to remove him from this, his first scene of existence, to that better world for which he was created. He died at Vienna, on his return from Buda, by apoplexy, and I believe his remains come by sea from Trieste. Mr Hallam arrived this morning in 3 Princes Buildings. May that Being in whose hands are all the destinies of man, and who has promised to comfort all that mourn, pour the balm of consolation on all the families, who are bowed down by this unexpected dispensation ! I have just seen Mr Hallam, who begs I will tell you that he will write himself as soon as his heart will let him. Poor Arthur had a slight attack of ague, which he had often had, ordered his fire to be lighted, and talked with as much cheerfulness as usual. He suddenly became insensible, and his spirit departed without pain. On examination it was the general opinion that he could not have lived long. This was also Dr Holland’s opinion. The account I have endeavoured to give you is merely what I have been able to gather, but the family of course are in too great distress to enter into details. (. Extract of letter from John M. Kemble to Fanny Kemble 1 . ) It is with feelings of inexpressible pain that I announce to you the death of poor Arthur Hallam, who expired suddenly from an attack of apoplexy at Vienna, on the 15th of last 1 Given me by Miss Cobbe. ig6 ARTHUR HALLAM. 1833 month. Though this was always feared by us as likely to occur, the shock has been a bitter one to bear : and most of all so to the Tennysons, whose sister Emily he was to have married. I have not yet had the courage to write to Alfred. This is a loss which will most assuredly be felt by this age, for if ever man was born for great things he was. Never was a more powerful intellect joined to a purer and holier heart; and the whole illuminated with the richest imagination, with the most sparkling yet the kindest wit. One cannot lament for him that he is gone to a far better life, but we weep over his coffin and wonder that we cannot be consoled : the Roman epitaph on two young children Sibimet ipsis dolorem abs title runt, suis reliquere (from themselves they took away pain, to their friends they left it !) is alway present to my mind, and somehow the miserable feeling of loneliness comes over one even though one knows that the dead are happier than the living. His poor father was with him only; they had been travelling together in Hungary and were on their return to England ; but there had been nothing what- ever to announce the fatal termination of their journey ; indeed bating fatigue Arthur had been unusually well. On December 30th Henry Hallam wrote to my father as follows: It may remove some anxiety from the minds of yourself and others to know that the mortal part of our dearest Arthur will be interred at Clevedon on Friday. I leave town to-morrow. My first thought was not to write to you till all was over : but you may have been apprehensive for the safety of the vessel. I did not expect her arrival so soon. Use your own discretion about telling your sister. Mrs H. is very anxious to hear about her; if not too painful to her, Miss Tennyson will have the kindness to write. Do your utmost, my dear young friend, to support her and yourself. Give as little way to grief as you may. But I feel that my own rather increases with time; yet I find also that both occupation and conversation are very serviceable. I fear the solitary life you both lead in the country is sadly unpropitious. We are now all well, though my boy 1 is not as vigorous as he should be. God bless you all. Affectionately yours, H. H. 1 Harry Hallam. BURIAL OF ARTHUR HALLAM. 107 1834] In the letters from Arthur Hallam’s friends there was a rare unanimity of opinion about his worth. Milnes, writing to his father, says that he had a “ very deep respect ” for Hallam, and that Thirlwall, in after years the great Bishop, for whom Hallam and my father had a profound affection, was “ actually captivated by him.” When at Cambridge with Hallam he had written : “ He is the only man here of my own standing before whom I bow in conscious inferiority in everything.” Alford writes: “Hallam was a man of wonderful mind and knowledge on all subjects, hardly credible at his age.... I long ago set him down for the most wonderful person I ever knew. He was of the most tender, affectionate disposition.” So “ those whose eyes must long be dim with tears,” Henry Hallam says, “ brought him home to rest among his kindred and in his own country ” : and the burial took place on Jan. 3rd, 1834, in the lonely church which overlooks the Bristol Channel. On the evening of one of these sad 1 winter days my father had already noted down in his scrap-book some fragmentary lines, which proved to be the germ of “In Memoriam ” : Where is the voice I loved ? ah where Is that dear hand that I would press ? Lo ! the broad heavens cold and bare, The stars that know not my distress ! Ji, Ji, ja. W '7?' W W W The vapour labours up the sky, Uncertain forms are darkly moved! Larger than human passes by The shadow of the man I loved, And clasps his hands, as one that prays ! 1 Francis Garden had written to Trench, Nov. 26th, 1833: “When in London, I saw a letter from poor Alfred Tennyson. Both himself and his family seemed plunged in the deepest affliction.” io8 ARTHUR HALLAM. [l 834 Later, Henry Hallam writes to my father: It is my intention to print, for private friends only, a few of those pieces which have already appeared, with some poems and perhaps prose papers that I have in my possession. Several of those printed in 1830, and a certain number that are in manu- script, will be included. It will be necessary to prefix a short memoir. I must rely on his contemporaries and most intimate friends to furnish me with part of my materials ; and I should wish to have anything that may be thought most worthy of being mentioned, communicated to me by letter. Perhaps you would do something. I should desire to have the character of his mind, his favourite studies and pursuits, his habits and views delineated. I shall not apply to too many persons; but it has been suggested to me that Spedding will be better able to assist me than any one else. I do not know whether this is the case, nor do I know Mr S.’s direction. It is somewhere in Cumberland. I shall be most happy if you can give me a better account than the last we have had of your sister ; we all unite in kindest love to all. Most truly yours, Henry Hallam 1 . To this volume of collected poems and essays, pub- lished some time after, Henry Hallam prefixed an intro- duction, in which he said “ Arthur seemed to tread the earth as a spirit from a better world.” Arthur’s old Eton friend Gladstone wrote : “ When much time has elapsed, when most bereavements will be forgotten, he will still be remembered, and his place, I fear, will be felt to be still vacant, singularly as his mind was calcu- lated by its native tendencies to work powerfully and for good, in an age full of import to the nature and destinies of man.” In consequence of her sudden and terrible grief my aunt Emily was ill for many months, and very slowly recovered. “We were waiting for her,” writes one of her friends, “ in the drawing-room the first day since her 1 See Appendix, p. 498, for Letters about Arthur Hallam. FIRST MS SECTIONS OF “ IN MEMORIAM.” IO9 loss that she had been able to meet anyone, and she came at last, dressed in deep mourning, a shadow of her former self, but with one white rose in her black hair as her Arthur loved to see her.” “ The Two Voices ” or “ Thoughts of a Suicide ” was begun under the cloud of this overwhelming sorrow, which, as my father told me, for a while blotted out all joy from his life, and made him long for death, in spite of his feeling that he was in some measure a help and comfort to his sister. But such a first friendship and such a loss helped to reveal himself to himself, while he enshrined his sorrow in his song. Tennant writes: “ Alfred although much broken in spirits is yet able to divert his thoughts from gloomy brooding, and keep his mind in activity.” In the earliest manuscript of “The Two Voices” a fine verse is found which was omitted in the published edition as too dismal (after “under earth”). From when his baby pulses beat To when his hands in their last heat Pick at the death-mote in the sheet. Then in the same manuscript-book come the first written sections of “ In Memoriam,” in the following order: Fair ship that from the Italian shore. ( written on a stray sheet ) With trembling fingers did we weave. When Lazarus left his charnel-cave. This truth came borne with bier and pall. It draweth near the birth of Christ. And between “ With trembling fingers ” and “ When Lazarus left his charnel-cave ” he has written the first draft of his “ Morte d’Arthur.” I IO ARTHUR HALLAM. [l83 U Unpublished Poems of this Period. The Statesman* They wrought a work which Time reveres, A pure example to the lands, Further and further reaching hands For ever into coming years ; They worshipt Freedom for her sake; We faint unless the wanton ear Be tickled with the loud “ hear, hear,” To which the slight-built hustings shake; For where is he, the citizen, Deep-hearted, moderate, firm, who sees His path before him? not with these, Shadows of statesmen, clever men ! Uncertain of ourselves we chase The clap of hands ; we jar like boys : And in the hurry and the noise Great spirits grow akin to base. A sound of words that change to blows ! A sound of blows on armed breasts ! And individual interests Becoming bands of armed foes ! A noise of hands that disarrange The social engine ! fears that waste The strength of men, lest overhaste Should fire the many wheels of change 1 Copyright, 1897, by The Macmillan Company. “the statesman.” Ill fares a people passion-wrought, A land of many days that cleaves In two great halves, when each one leaves The middle road of sober thought ! Not he that breaks the dams, but he That thro’ the channels of the state Convoys the people’s wish, is great ; His name is pure, his fame is free: He cares, if ancient usage fade, To shape, to settle, to repair, With seasonable changes fair, And innovation grade by grade : Or, if the sense of most require A precedent of larger scope, Not deals in threats, but works with hope, And lights at length on his desire : Knowing those laws are just alone That contemplate a mighty plan, The frame, the mind, the soul of man, Like one that cultivates his own. He, seeing far an end sublime, Contends, despising party-rage, To hold the Spirit of the Age Against the Spirit of the Time. I 12 ARTHUR HALLAM. [l833 I ^33* Youth* I Youth, lapsing thro’ fair solitudes, Pour’d by long glades and meadowy mounds, Crown’d with soft shade her deepening floods That wash’d her shores with blissful sounds : Her silver eddies in their play Drove into lines and studs of light The image of the sun by day, The image of the moon by night. The months, ere they began to rise, Sent thro’ my blood a prophet voice Before the first white butterflies, And where the secret streams rejoice. I heard Spring laugh in hidden rills, Summer thro’ all her sleepy leaves Murmur’d : a voice ran round the hills When corny Lammas bound the sheaves: A voice, when night had crept on high, To snowy crofts and winding scars, Rang like a trumpet clear and dry, And shook the frosty winter stars. When I was somewhat older grown These voices did not cease to cry, Only they took a sweeter tone, But did not sound so joyfully: Lower and deeper evermore They grew, and they began at last To speak of what had gone before, And how all things become the past. • Copyright, 1897, by The Macmillan Company. 1833] “ YOUTH.” I I 3 Life, to this wind, turn’d all her vanes, Moan’d in her chimneys and her eaves ; I grieved as woods in dripping rains Sigh over all their fallen leaves; Beside my door at morning stood The tearful spirit of the time ; He moan’d, “ I wander from my good ! ” He chanted some old doleful rhyme. So lived I without aim or choice, Still humming snatches of old song, Till suddenly a sharper voice Cried in the future “ Come along.” When to this sound my face I turn’d, Intent to follow on the track, Again the low sweet voices mourn’d In distant fields, “ Come back, come back.” Confused, and ceasing from my quest, I loiter’d in the middle way, So pausing ’twixt the East and West, I found the Present where I stay: Now idly in my natal bowers, Unvext by doubts I cannot solve, I sit among the scentless flowers And see and hear the world revolve: Yet well I know that nothing stays, And I must traverse yonder plain : Sooner or later from the haze The second voice will peal again. T. I. 8 ARTHUR HALLAM. [1833 114 II A rumour of a mystery, A noise of winds that meet and blend, An energy, an agony, A labour working to an end. Now shall I rest or shall I rise? It is the early morning, Hark! A voice like many voices cries, Comes hither throbbing thro’ the dark; Now one faint line of light doth glow, I follow to the morning sun, Behind yon hill the trumpets blow, And there is something greatly done : The voice cries “ Come.” Upon the brink A solitary fortress burns, And shadows strike and shadows sink, And Heaven is dark and bright by turns. “Come” and I come, the wind is strong: Hush ! there floats upward from the gulf A murmur of heroic song, A howling of the mountain wolf ; A tempest strikes the craggy walls, Faint shouts are heard across the glen, A moan of many waterfalls, And in the pauses groans of men. “ Come ” and I come, no more I sleep : The thunder cannot make thee dumb; “ Come ” and I come, the vale is deep, My heart is dark, but yet I come. 1833] “ YOUTH.” 1 1 5 Up hither have I found my way, The latest thunder-peal hath peal’d, Down from the summit sweeps the day And rushes o’er a boundless field. Out bursts a rainbow in the sky — Away with shadows ! On they move ! Beneath those double arches lie Fair with green fields the realms of Love. The whole land glitters after rain, Thro’ wooded isles the river shines, The casements sparkle on the plain, The towers gleam among the vines; “ Come ” and I come, and all comes back Which in that early voice was sweet, Yet am I dizzy in the track, A light wind wafts me from my feet. Warm beats my blood, my spirit thirsts; Fast by me flash the cloudy streaks, And from the golden vapour bursts A mountain bright with triple peaks: With all his groves he bows, he nods, The clouds unswathe them from the height, And there sit figures as of Gods Ray’d round with beams of living light. 8—2 CHAPTER V.* THE 1832 VOLUME (dated 1833). SOLITUDE AND WORK (1833-1835). Mighty the voices of earth, which are dull’d by the voices that say : “ All of us drift into darkness, wherein we shall all pass away ! ” Better to pass then at once than seeing the darkness to stay, But for a mightier Voice which was born of the Dawn of the Day. It becomes no man to nurse despair, But in the teeth of clench’d antagonisms To follow up the worthiest. Before following further the thread of the life, I must set down here certain notes upon the 1832 volume by my father and by Edward Fitzgerald, omitted from the last chapter, in order not to interrupt the sequence of Arthur Hallams letters. Fitzgerald writes on “The Lady of Shalott”: Well I remember this poem, read to me, before I knew the author, at Cambridge one night in 1832 or 3, and its images passing across my head, as across the magic mirror, while half asleep on the mail coach to London “ in the creeping dawn ” that followed. 1 The key to this tale of magic “ symbolism ” is of deep human significance, and is to be found in the lines : 'MS Note, E. F. G. * Copyright, 1897, by The Macmillan Company. 116 1833] THE MILLER’S DAUGHTER.” I 17 Or when the moon was overhead, Came two young lovers lately wed; “ I am half sick of shadows,” said The Lady of Shalott. Canon Ainger in his Tennyson for the Young quotes the following interpretation, given him by my father: The new-born love for something, for some one in the wide world from which she has been so long secluded, takes her out of the region of shadows into that of realities. The idea of “ Mariana in the South ” came to my father as he was travelling between Narbonne and Perpignan 1 , and foreign critics have found out and have appreciated this representation of southern France. The first original manuscript verse of “ The Miller’s Daughter,” which he altered both before and after publi- cation, seemed to Fitzgerald too good to be lost : I met in all the close green ways, While walking with my rod and line, The miller with his mealy face, And long’d to take his hand in mine. He look’d so jolly and so good — While fishing in the milldam-water, I laugh’d to see him as he stood, And dreamt not of the miller’s daughter. “This poem,” Fitzgerald writes, “as may be seen, is much altered and enlarged from the first edition of 1832 ; in some respects, I think, not for the better; losing somewhat of the easy character of ‘ talk across the walnuts and the wine.’” It shows the poet’s especial love of setting his human beings in a landscape which is strictly in harmony with the subject of the poem. “ The mill was no particular mill,” my father writes ; “if 1 See letter from Arthur Hallam on “ Mariana in the South ” in Appendix, p. 500. SOLITUDE AND WORK. 1 18 [1833- I thought at all of any mill it was that of Trumpington near Cambridge.” From the volume of 1832 he omitted several stanzas of “ The Palace of Art ” because he thought that the poem was too full. “ The artist is known by his self- limitation ” was a favourite adage of his. He allowed me however to print some of them in my notes, otherwise I should have hesitated to quote without his leave lines that he had excised. He “gave the people of his best,” and he usually wished that his best should remain without variorum readings, “ the chips of the workshop,” as he called them. The love of bibliomaniacs for first editions filled him with horror, for the first editions are obviously in many cases the worst editions ; and once he said to me : “ Why do they treasure the rubbish I shot from my full-finish’d cantos ? VTjTjioi ov 8 e Lcraoriv ocrco 7 t\ 4 ov yjfJLKTv ttolvtos” For himself many passages in Wordsworth and other poets had been entirely spoilt by the modern habit of giving every various reading along with the text. Be- sides, in his case, very often what is published as the latest edition has been the original version in his first manuscript, so that there is no possibility of really tracing the history of what may seem to be a new word or a new passage. “ For instance,” he said, “ in ‘ Maud ’ a line in the first edition was ‘ I will bury myself in my books , and the Devil may pipe to his own,’ which was afterwards altered to ‘ I will bury myself in myself, etc.’ : this was highly commended by the critics as an im- provement on the original reading — but it was actually in the first MS draft of the poem.” In 1890 he wrote the following notes: “ Trench said to me, when we were at Trinity together, ‘ Tennyson, we cannot live in art.’” ‘“The Palace of Art’ is the 1835] “THE PALACE OF ART.” II 9 embodiment of my own belief that the Godlike life is with man and for man, that Beauty, Good and Knowledge are three sisters... That never can be sunder’d without tears. And he that shuts out Love, in turn shall be Shut out from Love, and on her threshold lie, Howling in outer darkness.” “ When I first conceived the plan of the poem, I intended to have introduced both sculptures and paint- ings into it, but I only finished two sculptures. One was the Tishbite whom the raven fed, As when he stood on Carmel-steeps With one arm stretch’d out bare, and mock’d and said, ‘ Come, cry aloud, he sleeps.’ Tall, eager, lean and strong, his cloak wind-borne Behind, his forehead heavenly bright From the clear marble pouring glorious scorn, Lit as with inner light. One was Olympias ; the floating snake Roll’d round her ankles, round her waist Knotted, and folded once about her neck, Her perfect lips to taste, Down from the shoulder moved : she seeming blithe Declined her head : on every side The dragon’s curves melted, and mingled with The woman’s youthful pride Of rounded limbs — After the old verse xxvi was ‘ From shape to shape at first within the womb The brain is moulded,’ she began, ‘ And thro’ all phases of all thought I come Unto the perfect man. 120 SOLITUDE AND WORK. [1833- All nature widens upward. Evermore The simpler essence lower lies, More complex is more perfect, owning more Discourse, more widely wise.’ In the centre of the four quadrangles of the palace is a tower. Hither, when all the deep unsounded skies Shudder’d with silent stars, she clomb, And as with optic glasses her keen eyes Pierced thro’ the mystic dome, Regions of lucid matter taking forms, Brushes of fire, hazy gleams, Clusters and beds of worlds, and bee-like swarms Of suns, and starry streams. She saw the snowy poles and Moons of Mars, That mystic field of drifted light In mid Orion, and the married stars. The ‘ Moons of Mars ’ is the only modern reading here, all the rest are more than half a century old.” After perusing the “ marvellously compressed word- pictures of this poem,” Fitzgerald appends a personal note to “sat smiling babe in arm.” I remember A. T. 1 admiring the abstracted look of a Murillo Madonna at Dulwich ; the eyes of which are on you, but seem “ looking at something beyond, beyond the Actual into Abstrac- tion.” This has been noticed of some great men ; it is the trance of the Seer : I do not remember seeing it in A. T. himself ; great as he was from top to toe, and his eyes dark, powerful and serene 2 . He was still afraid of blindness, which his brother Frederick said might accompany the perception of the inward Sublime as in Homer and Milton. The names of Dante and Michael Angelo 1 Fitzgerald generally calls my father A. T. 2 Fitzgerald afterwards altered his mind and wrote: “I have seen it in his (A. T.’s). Some American spoke of the same in Wordsworth. I suppose it may be the same with all poets." 1835] “A DREAM OF FAIR WOMEN.” 121 in (the original form of) this poem remind me that once looking with A. T. at two busts of Dante and Goethe in a shop window in Regent Street, I said, “What is there wanting in Goethe which the other has ? ” “ The Divine 1 ! ” After visiting Italy some twenty years after this poem was written, he told me he had been prepared for Raffaelle but not for Michael Angelo : whose picture at Florence of a Madonna drag- ging a “ ton of a child ” over one shoulder almost revolted him at first, but drew him toward itself afterwards, and “would not out of memory.” I forget if he saw the Dresden Raffaelle 2 , but he would speak of the Child in it as “ perhaps finer than the whole composition, in so far as one’s eyes are more concentrated on the subject. The child seems to me the furthest reach of human art. His attitude is a man’s: his countenance a Jupiter’s — perhaps too much so.” But when A. T. had a babe of his own, he saw it was not “ too much so.” “ I am afraid of him : babies have an expression of grandeur which children lose, a look of awe and wonder. I used to think the old painters overdid the expression and dignity of their infant Christs, but I see they didn’t. This morning * * * lay half-an-hour worshipping the bed-post on which the sunlight flickered (pure nature worship ) 3 . ‘ If,’ as old Hallam said, ‘ one could have the history of a babe’s mind ! ’ ” The “ Dream of Fair Women ” began in the first edition of 1832 with some stanzas about a man sailing in a balloon, but my father did not like the “balloon stanzas ” so they were cut out. As Edward Fitzgerald said to him, “ They make a perfect poem by themselves without affecting the ‘ dream.’ ” As when a man that sails in a balloon, Down-looking sees the solid shining ground Stream from beneath him in the broad blue noon, Tilth, hamlet, mead and mound: 1 To me, he said, ‘‘The Divine intensity and possibly the same to Fitzgerald. H. T. 2 He went to Dresden on purpose to see this great picture. 3 “Afterwards he took to fetish-worship — the worship of a gilded doll sent him by Lear.” A. T. 122 SOLITUDE AND WORK. 1833- And takes his flags and waves them to the mob, That shout below, all faces turn’d to where Glows rubylike the far-up crimson globe, Fill’d with a finer air: So, lifted high, the poet at his will Lets the great world flit from him, seeing all, Higher thro’ secret splendours mounting still, Self-poised, nor fears to fall, Hearing apart the echoes of his fame. While I spoke thus, the seedsman, Memory, Sow’d my deep-furrow’d thought with many a name Whose glory will not die. From the letters of that time I gather that there was a strong current of depreciation of my father in certain literary quarters. However he kept up his courage, profited by friendly and unfriendly criticism, and in si- lence, obscurity, and solitude, perfected his art. “ First the workman is known for his work, afterwards the work for the workman ” : but it is “ only the concise and perfect work,” he thought, “ which will last k ” That the volume of 1832 was partially successful (three hundred copies having been sold) is obvious from the fact that Moxon was eager to publish more by him. Later an appreciative article by John Stuart Mill in the London Review (July 1835) was a great encouragement. Friendly critics, like G. S. Venables, wrote that his poems had too much concentrated power and thought, were too imaginative and too largely imbued with the “ inner- most magic,” easily to excite popular interest, or to be read at once by those whom he specially wished to influence. Kemble had said, “ In Alfred’s mind the materials of the greatest works are heaped in an abun- dance which is almost confusion.” Notwithstanding all 1 A. T. HIS HAND ON THE LEVER. 123 1835] hostile criticism, he had impressed himself deeply on a limited number of minds. He now began to base his poetry more on the “ broad and common interests of the time and of universal humanity,” although no doubt it was harder to idealize such themes than those that appealed mostly to the imagination. The great Catholic painters could express what was at the same time ideal and real in the minds of the people : but the modern artist has hardly ever found similar objects of high imagination and intense popular feeling for his art to work upon. If, wrote Venables, in a contemporary letter to my father, an artist could only now find out where these objects are, he would be the artist of modern times. Venables affirmed they were not to be sought in any transient fashions of thought, but in the “convergent tendencies of many opinions” on religion, art and nature, — of which tendencies he and others believed, he said, that my father, with his commanding intellect, and conspicuous moral courage, ought to be the artistic exponent and unifier. My father pondered all that had been said and — after a period of utter prostra- tion from grief, and many dark fits of blank despondency — his passionate love of truth, of nature, and of human- ity, drove him to work again, with a deeper and a fuller insight into the requirements of the age. H is resolve Upbore him and firm faith — And beating up thro’ all the bitter world, Like fountains of sweet water in the sea, Kept him a living soul \ Two pathetic lines of his written at this time are left : O leave not thou thy son forlorn; Teach me, great Nature : make me live. “ Perpetual idleness,” he would say, “ must be one of 1 “Enoch Arden.” 124 SOLITUDE AND WORK. [l833- the punishments of Hell.” Hundreds of lines were, as he expressed it, “ blown up the chimney with his pipe- smoke, or were written down and thrown into the fire, as not being then perfect enough.” “ The Brook ” in later years was actually rescued from the waste-paper heap. He lived for the most part at Somersby, and I give a list of his week’s work ; which he drew up. Monday . Tuesday . Wednesday. Thursday. Saturday. Sunday. Next Week. Third Week. History, German. Chemistry, German. Botany, German. Electricity, German. Animal Physiology, German. Mechanics. Theology. Italian in the afternoon. Greek. Evenings. Poetry. Unpublished Poem of this Period. The Mother s Ghost. Not a whisper stirs the gloom, It will be the dawning soon, We may glide from room to room, In the glimmer of the moon : Every heart is lain to rest, All the house is fast in sleep, Were I not a spirit blest, Sisters, I could almost weep ! In that cradle sleeps my child, She whose birth brought on my bliss: On her forehead undefiled I will print an airy kiss : 1835] Montgomery’s judgment. 125 See, she dreameth happy dreams, Her hands are folded quietly, Like to one of us she seems, One of us my child will be. Now and then, when he could save up a little hoard, he went to London or to visit his friends in their homes. From the occasional letters to and from them (1832-35) we can see something of what his life was and the im- pression which his work was then making. Brookfield writes from Sheffield : You and Rob Montgomery are our only brewers now! A propos to the latter, Jingling James, his namesake, dined with us last week. And now for a smack of Boswell. Brookfield . Glass of wine after your fish ? Montgomery. Thank you, sir ! B. Which vegetable, sir ? M. A potato, if you please ! B. Another, sir ! M. That will do, I thank you. B. Talking of potatoes, sir, have you read Alfred Tennyson ? M. Only in the reviews yet, but there are two brothers, aren’t there ? B. Both “ rather pretty,” but Alfred alone has been extracted at any length in the reviews. M. He has very wealthy and luxurious thought and great beauty of expression, and is a poet. But there is plenty of room for improvement, and I would have it so. Your trim correct young writers seldom turn out well. A young poet should have a great deal which he can afford to throw away as he gets older. Tennyson can afford this. But I can say little of one of whom I have seen so little. I sent him copies of both you and Charles yesterday, and met him in the street this morning. He said he was going out of town, but we would talk about you when he came back and read you. “I read,” said he, ‘‘twelve of the sonnets last night, which if I had not liked them better than other sonnets I could not have done. There are great outbreaks of poetry in them.” Omitting my own interjectional queries, etc., which leave to Jemmy’s remarks an over-pompous connectedness which they had not viva voce, I give you his words as nearly as I remember. They are not important, but we generally wish to know what 126 SOLITUDE AND WORK. [l833 is said of us, whether trivial or not. At autopsychography I am not good, if I had any idiopsychology to autopsychographize. I am just about as happy as a fish, neither excited by mirth, nor depressed by sadness. The Clerk’s 1 letter awoke me rather this morning ; if he be yet with you tell him it had been good service to have done so two months earlier. Writing from Somersby where there is so much to prevent one from thinking of any place else was certainly a meritorious exertion, and it has brought my pardon. My love to the wretch, and let him know he shall expiate his neglect by silence on my part, until I know whether his address be your house. Which information do thou give me in a day or two ; and tell me all about Frederick and Charles. From the former I never could worm a letter yet, but unless you can coax so much of him without, I shall perhaps make one more effort shortly. My kindest regards to all your family. Ever, dearest Alfred, yours, W. H. Brookfield. P.S. I wish very much you would make a sonnet for me as Hallam once did. I could not value it more, and should not less, than his. It may be that I could not make a more boring request. But I will incur nine chances of vexing you and thereby myself for the sake of the tenth of getting what I want. At this time Tennant shot an arrow: “May your success in rhyming vary inversely as the number of letters you write ! ” and Spedding sent to Somersby his Union speech on Liberty, which had gained renown in the University. The poem “ You ask me, why, tho’ ill at ease ” was not, as is often stated, “ an edition of this speech versified.” My father said to me that he and Spedding freely interchanged their political views, and that therefore it was not unlikely that there should be a similarity of thought and language. He did not think 1 Charles Turner. 1833 ] LETTER TO SPEDDING. 1 27 that he had ever read the speech when he wrote the poem. He wrote to Spedding, begging him to “ commend ” a book shortly to be published by an old Louth tutor of his, Mr Dale : SOMERSBY, February qth (1833 1 ?). My dear James, I seize upon a halfsheet, the blank half of a printed prospectus of a translation of the “ Osman Sultan’s campaigns in Western Asia, from Bayezyd Ildirim to the death of Murad the Fourth (1389-1640), from the German of Joseph Von Hammer, by Thomas Aquila Dale 2 ,’’ indeed mine ancient tutor and paidagogue in times of yore. Which work commend everywhere, for, I think, he is likely to do it well, and the book will contain a map of the countries from Sinope to Tiflis, and from Odana to Bagdad. Which map will be three feet and a half by two and a half, and you will grant that our literature is marvellously deficient in works of Oriental History. And as I said before the man is mine ancient and trusty paidagogue, and moreover a good man, and one that is publishing at a loss, and one that has not two cloaks, wherefore it is reasonable that you should commend his book. For your letter I thank you heartily: my thanks have lost half their natural vigour and beauty ; however you must recollect that half your epistle was to someone else, indeed you confessed as much in your P. S. Are we not quits then, or in the language of Mrs Jennings, “Does not one shoulder of mutton drive out another? ” You should not have written to me without telling me somewhat that was interesting to myself 1 The letters of this time are often undated. 2 Published by William Straker, West Strand, 1835. 128 SOLITUDE AND WORK. [l833 (always the first consideration !) or that bore some refer- ence to you and yours (always the second !), or lastly, without giving me some news of the great world, for know you not I live so far apart from the bustle of life that news becomes interesting to me ? I assure you that we have a spare bed and the bed is not so spare either, but a bed both plump and pulpy, and fit for “your domeship 1 ,’’ whenever you can come and see us. I express myself very clumsily, but being overawed by the memory of your calm personal dignity and dome, and melted likewise with the recollection of the many intellectual evenings we have spent together in olden days, while we sat smoking (for you know, James, you were ever fond of a pipe), — Speak for me, aposiopesis, or rather do not, for thou art an unhappy figure and born dumb and of no earthly use but to cut the throat of a clause ! Write to me now and then, lest I perish. Where is Tennant? I have not yet answered him: how shall I direct to him? You inquire after Charles. We see little of him : I believe his spirits are pretty good. Is Brooks at Cambridge ? To him I owe a letter, and I mean to pay my debt. Ever thine, A. T. From Hon . Stephen Spring Rice . Cambridge, November 27/h, 1833. Dear Alfred, When I received your note some days back I was at first inclined to think it a pity that so much good abuse should be thrown away. Such a happy facility of assertion combined with such apparent sincerity in the expression deserved a better 1 “ Domeship ” refers to Spedding’s head. 1833 ] LETTERS FROM CAMBRIDGE. I29 fate than being uselessly employed on one so steeled to abuse as myself. O king ! I hope that you will be sufficiently occupied till the 28th with the “ Morte d’ Arthur.” I send Keightley’s Fairy Legends and the other books, which it shall be my care to despatch to you to-morrow ; Kemble (Anglo-Saxon Lecturer to the University) sends you to fill up your leisure hours a folio Saxo-Grammaticus to be jammed into the bowl of your pipe. Matters are going on here much as usual. I have just written by Peacock’s desire to Blakesley to tell him to come here and be a lecturer, a summons which there is no doubt he will obey. Sterling is here still, and is to be at the yearly dinner 1 which takes place among “ mankind,” and which will come to pass on Monday next. Spedding, Alford, Donne, the two Farishes and Pickering are expected ; so much for eating. I have read Wilhelm Meister for the first time, with which I find as many faults and beauties as every one does. What think you of that f y\v/cv7ri/cpov performance ? there is another question to burthen your soul with unanswered. If your health is proposed I shall oppose it on the ground of your having been an unworthy member of the Society!! I hope that you will not be able to decipher this scrawl, and so write to ask what it is about. I shall send the books to-morrow; you ought to know when to send for them. Thine ever, S. E. Spring Rice. From J, M. Kemble . Cambridge, November, 1833. Dearest Alfred, I write you a line or two by this parcel to tell you what I know is no news to you, that I love you heartily and wish you were with us. There is little stirring here save that we all look with interest for news from you ; I wish you could come and dine with the Apostles on Monday next: I am not sure T. 1. 1 The “ Apostles 1 ” dinner. 9 130 SOLITUDE AND WORK. [l833 that Donne and Trench will not be with us. We are all pretty well, etc., looking out for more sprigs of the garden (or the gardener’s daughter, for I suppose she was not so imperfect a woman as not to be mother as well as maid and married)? Is there no gardener’s granddaughter ? “ Simeon Stylites ” is said by the prophane, that is the mathematicians Spring Rice and Heath, to be not “ the watcher on the pillar to the end,” but to the u th ; and I think this is an improvement ; the more so as it shows your universality off, and marks that you have a touch of mathematics in you : O Alfred ! could you only have made the height of the pillar a geometrical progression ! Give my affec- tionate remembrances to Charles and Fred. Write to me, or what is better yet, come to me. Ever your most affectionate friend, J. M. Kemble. To /. M. Kemble . My dear John, 1833- I hope this will find you at Cambridge. J. Heath wrote to me that the books should have been returned by the 21st and I received his note on the 2 1 st. I know not what the fine is, and as to applying for any information even on Cambridge subjects to Cambridge men I hold it vanity. They are so smoke- sotted. Shamefully careless was it to have let these books lie for three weeks in Spring Rice’s room. Shameful not to have sent the second volume of Keightley, and hateful the purloining of my album, which I will have found. If the thief be not Douglas himself, it is that luxurious, eye-glass-wearing, unconscienced fellow S. Rice, whom — fill up the chasm as you choose : if the book be returned, let it be with a blessing. Seriously speaking I am disgusted. I am heartily glad RICHARD MONCKTON MILNES. 1833] 131 you have got Beowulf out. Some thoughts, vague ones, I have, of coming up to Cambridge and attending your lectures next term, always provided they be gratis. Good bye, dear old Jack. Thine ever, A. Tennyson. Be so good as to send me the “ Morte d’Arthur” again. P.S. Perhaps you would use your paternal authority with the undergraduate whom you may suspect of being the thief. Douglas himself ought not to pass unreproved. What a careless set you are! From R. M. Milnes . After an “ Apostles ” dinner. Cambridge, {not dated). To Alfred, I feel I am getting cross, and as I wish to express in simple sincerity my hope that you will not long defer your promist visit to me, as soon as I return to Yorkshire, which will be in about a fortnight, I shall rock myself on the belief that you will bring or send me something comfortable. Yours affectionately, Richard M. Milnes. P.S. I suppose nobody writes to you because you never write to nobody. John Heath and many others were full to the brim of enquiries after you, and if you had heard the cheer that followed the health of A. T., the Poet of the Apostles, at our dinner, if you had ! 9—2 1 3 2 SOLITUDE AND WORK. [l833- Milnes wrote to him later about his Memorials of a tour in Greece which he was about to publish, and received the following answer: December 3 rd y 1833. My dear Milnes, A letter from you was like a message from the land of shadows. It is so long since I have looked upon and conversed with you, that I will not deny but that you had withdrawn a little into the twilight. Yet you do me a wrong in supposing that I have forgotten you. I shall not easily forget you, for you have that about you which one remembers with pleasure. I am rejoiced to hear that you intend to present us with your Grecian impressions. Your gay and airy mind must have caught as many colours from the landskip you moved through as a flying soap-bubble — a comparison truly somewhat irreverent, yet I meant it not as such; though I care not if you take it in an evil sense, for is it not owed to you for your three years’ silence to me whom you professed to love and care for? And in the second place, for your expression, “ clearing one’s mind of Greek thoughts and Greek feelings to make way for something better.” It is a sad thing to have a dirty mind full of Greek thoughts and feelings. What an Augean it must have been before the Greek thoughts got there ! To be done with this idle banter, I hope that in your book you have given us much glowing description and little mysticism. I know that you can describe richly and vividly. Give orders to Moxon, and he will take care that the volume is conveyed to me. Believe me, dear Richard, Ever thine, A. T. Wordsworth’s opinion. i33 1834] Spedding writes to Thompson (1834) about William Wordsworth and Alfred Tennyson: Wordsworth’s eyes are better, but not well, nor ever likely to be. Reading inflames them and so does composing. I believe it was a series of Highland sonnets that brought on the last attack, so much worse than he had before. He read me several, that I had not seen nor heard before, many of them admirably good : also a long, romantic wizard and fairy poem, of the time of Merlin and king Arthur, very pretty but not of the first order 1 : but I should not have expected anything so good from him which was so much out of his beat. He has not advanced much in his knowledge of Alfred; but he is very modest in his refusal to praise, attributing his want of admiration to a deficiency in himself, whether from the stiffness of old age which cannot accommodate itself to a new style of beauty, or that the compass of his sympathies has been narrowed by flowing too long and strongly in one direction (N.B. He is not answerable for the English that I am writing). But he doubts not that Alfred’s style has its own beauty, though he wants the faculty to enter fully into it, alleging as a parallel case the choruses in “ Samson Agonistes,” the measure of which he has never been able to enjoy, which comes to perhaps as high a compliment as a negative compliment can. He spoke so wisely and graciously that I had half a mind to try him with a poem or two, but that would have been more perhaps than he meant : and indeed it is always so pleasant to hear a distinguished man unaffectedly disclaiming the office of censor, that I think it fair to take him at his word. I have given a copy of Alfred’s second volume to Hartley Coleridge, who, I trust, will make more of it. He had only seen it for a few minutes, and was greatly behind the age, though he admitted that A. T. was undoubtedly a man of genius, and was going to say something sharp about the Quarterly in a review of “The Doctor,” which he was or is writing for Blackwood. I also sent him yesterday a copy of Charles Tennyson, accompanied with one of my most gentlemanly letters. In June 1834 there was great distress at Somersby among the Tennysons, because the landlord threatened 1 u The Egyptian Maid, or, The Romance of the Water Lily.” 134 SOLITUDE AND WORK. [l834 to cut down Enderby Wood and the Fairy Wood in Holywell, where, under the trees, the finest and earliest snowdrops blow. A hope was uttered that the fairies might haunt the desecrators. The Fairy Wood was left unscathed ; and my father completed his poem, the “ Sleeping Beauty ” ; and warmed to his work because there had been a favourable review of him lately published in far-off Calcutta. In July he visited his friend Heath at Kitlands near Dorking, and thence journeyed with him to Worthing. When they arrived at the little seaside town on a beautiful still night, the sea was calm and golden, and there was a Cuyp-like picture of boys bathing in the glowing sunset, and of gray fishing-boats moored out in the distance. Heath tried to persuade my father to go to Brighton, for he said “ The town is worth going to see, and moreover the coast is very fine, an infinitely finer place than Worthing.” But my father refused, and in- sisted on returning to his work. He took Kitlands again by the way and had “ lonely walks in dark valleys,” and by the side of the streams which rise in Leith Hill. In his note-book on one page there is a map of Kitlands and of the surrounding country : on another there is an unpublished fragment on mine host of an ancient hostelry ! Mine Host . ( Unpublished .) Yon huddled cloud his motion shifts, Where, by the tavern in the dale, The thirsty horseman, nodding, lifts The creaming horn of corny ale ! This tavern is their chief resort, For he, whose cellar is his pride, Gives stouter ale and riper port Than any in the country-side. 1834] VISIT TO KITLANDS. 135 Mine host is fat, and gray, and wise, He strokes his beard before he speaks; And when he laughs, his little eyes Are swallow’d in his pamper’d cheeks. He brims his beaker to the top, With jokes you never heard before, And sometimes with a twinkling drop, “To those who will not taste it more!” The following letter reached him at Kitlands from his sister Emily: Somersby Rectory, July 12th , 1834. My dearest Alfred, I certainly intend to go to Monlsey 1 . Would to God I could begin the journey immediately but it is not in my power. You will be sorry to hear that I have been considerably worse in health since your departure And once or twice indeed I thought that the chilly hand of death was upon me : however I still exist, tho’ reduced again to a great state of weakness. If possible I will journey southward soon. You know, Alfred, the great desire I have to become acquainted with the Hallam family, particularly with Ellen ; she will perhaps be the friend to remove in some degree the horrible feeling of desolation which is ever at my heart. I can no longer continue in this deepening grave of tears... depend upon it I will do all in my power to go to Moulsey. What is life to me ! if I die (which the Tennysons never do) the effort shall be made. The deep unaffected kind- ness of the Hallams made us all weep... How long do you think of remaining at Kitlands ? It would be pleasant to come while you are there. This however will scarcely be the case consider- ing my journey will commence in about three weeks’ time, if by any means I can conjure up resolution.. ..Remember us all to “ our Mr Heath ” and his brother, and cannot you intimate to the sister how sorry we were not to have been able to avail ourselves, that is Mary and myself, of her kind invitation ? Take 1 The Hallams 1 house at the time. SOLITUDE AND WORK. 136 [1834 care of thyself that thou mayest return with new health and spirits is the ardent wish of Thy very affectionate sister, Emily Tennyson. His mother wrote him a letter at the same time: What kind hearts the Hallams have ! I hope poor Emily will be able to go to Moulsey. The pony got out of the stables and she went with one of the servants to catch it (as Harrison had gone to Horncastle), which made her very ill for some hours, but she is now as well as usual. I wish I could have induced her to begin her journey immediately, but she fancies she has something still to do before she can set out. The great lassitude she feels makes her fear she is unequal for such an exertion. I should have liked her so much to be introduced to the Hallams by you ; she also considers this as very desirable. Charles is busy at present with his flock whom he is catechising, but I hope he will be able to travel with her in three weeks’ time. I have found the books which Mr Heath mentions. Shall I send them by Mr Spedding ? I have not heard whether or no he is at Tealby. I hope we shall see him Should you hear of anything likely to suit Arthur let me know. Remember me to all your friends. His sister Mary adds a line entreating him to lend an attentive ear to any music that may be sung, whether by way of chants, hymns, or songs, and to ascertain if Miss Heath will give the name of one or two that most affect his musical organs. She goes on : We were rather surprised to hear that the quaint creature Fred has set off to quaff companionless a “ beaker full of the warm South,” but I suppose a hot sun, south wind and cloudless sky (which constitute a humming day) and all of which are my aversion are all the world to him. And now I must bid thee adieu, hoping to see thee return as blithe as blithe can be. Remember me kindly to all at Kitlands. When my father returned to Somersby, he had not only Emily to comfort, but also his friend Tennant, POWER OF SYMPATHY. 1834] 137 who consulted him about a great sorrow which had befallen him and craved for sympathy. From R. J. Tennant ( after a visit to Somersby ). London University, August 4th, 1834. My dear Alfred, I cannot delay writing to you, and cannot express my earnest gratitude for your friendship. ...The sight of Somersby, and your kindness have overcome the hard-hearted stubbornness that shut up all my feelings. Forgotten friendships have been revived, and correspondences been renewed that had long since dropped, and home feelings aroused that had slept a long sleep. ...Your very kind letter serves me every day instead of a companion ; the only way in which it is in my power to show gratitude for the repeated and continued kindness I receive from you, is by following your counsel as far as I am able, and keep- ing my own mind in peace. ****** Ever your affectionate R. J. Tennant. What strikes me much in this early life of my father is not only his wide power of sympathy, but also his practical good sense, shown especially in the manage- ment of home and of family. For example, now that he knew Tennant wanted an interest in life, and was a good scholar, and that his brother Horatio never looked at a book (his time at Louth School being over), it occurred to him that Horatio might be placed at Blackheath under the care of Tennant, then a master in Blackheath School. The proposition was put before Tennant, with a plain statement, that, although Horatio had more than average power, he had grown rusty and his acquirements were less than they ought to be at his age. SOLITUDE AND WORK. 138 [l834 If he went from the lonely haunts of Somersby to Blackheath, it was hoped that it might be “ of advantage to him, for he would see men and he never seemed to care much about boys ; but his observations upon the men he had seen had been very just and penetrating.” So off to Blackheath by my father’s decision Horatio accordingly went. The elder brother Frederick was just then in the midst of music at Milan. He wrote a few lines urging my father to publish in the spring. But he would not and could not; his health since Hallam’s death had been “variable, and his spirits indifferent.” The chief change my father had from the monotony of Somersby life was to drive over to Charles at Tealby, “for Lincolnshire, a beautiful village.” Their grandfather George Tennyson, who was beginning to show signs of his approaching end, had left the Tennyson estate of Bayons Manor and migrated to a small house on a sandy moor, because his son Charles Tennyson d’Eyncourt pressed to be in- stalled in the squiredom. “ One would have supposed that such a thing,” said Frederick, “would have been sufficient to shake the last sands out of his glass.” However he lived on his moor comfortably and peaceably : and there died in 1835. As for his private occupations, my father was still reading his Racine, Moliere, and Victor Hugo among other foreign literature ; and had also dipped into Maurice’s work Eustace Conway , which appears to have been in great disfavour, and into Arthur Coningsby by John Sterling, “a dreary book”; “ ’Tis a pretty piece of work, would ’twere done ! ” wrote one of the friends. In October 1834, he told Tennant he was busy copying out his “ Morte d’Arthur ” ; then he posted Spedding some of the new poems for his opinion and Spedding replied as follows : 1834 ] SPEDDINGS CRITICISMS. 139 Mire House, Keswick, September 19th, 1834. My dear Alfred, Such as it is, this letter will I expect come to you in an independent character, by the good aid of Philip van Artevelde (Henry Taylor), to whom I have a decent excuse for writing. I received by Douglas and John Heath divers of your composi- tions, albeit too few for my appetite : to wit, “ Sir Galahad,” which enjoys my unlimited admiration. The virgin knight is as beautiful a spirit as Don Quixote in a more beautiful kind, if that could be. Also “ Nature, so far as in her lies,” one of those pieces which nobody except yourself can write, and I think the most exquisite of an exquisite race. Of the rest I cannot find words to express what and how great is the glory. I have also the alterations of “ Oh that ’twere possible,” improvements I must admit, tho’ I own I did not think that could have been: “Along this glimmering corridor” I had seen before, tho’ not as it stands now : and Fair is her cottage in its place, Where yon broad water sweetly, slowly glides. It sees itself from thatch to base Dream in the sliding tides — 1 It is perfectly true; how on earth did you find it out? Last and greatest (tho’ not most perfect in its kind) I have re- ceived “The Thoughts of a Suicide 2 ”; the design is so grand, and the moral, if there is one, so important that I trust you will not spare any elaboration of execution. At all events let me have the rest of it and I will tell you at large what I think ; also as many more as you can supply ; remembering that double letters or parcels will not distress my circumstances. Since I saw you, I have been cultivating my body to the entire exclusion of my soul, which some say is the better part. I have rolled great stones down mountains, but stirred no hidden principle of thought or deed. I have not done anything good ; nor said any good thing. I have written no prose and small verse. Perhaps I was too ambitious, for I endeavoured at nothing lower than Milton’s high-learned manner. I sent the small effort to 1 “ Requiescat.” 2 “The Two Voices.” 140 SOLITUDE AND WORK. [l834 Tennant, but that is no reason I should not send it to you, who will laugh at it less and understand it more. After all it is but a fragment of a simile ! Liker that far significant coach that bears The windy artist from his central tower Whither the stars come clustering to suggest The universal secret, she far off Swims on Macadam, etc. etc. The “far significant coach” is the Cambridge Telegraph, exquisitely described by its property of conveying Professor Airy from the Observatory. I have not forgotten my promise to write to Charles, but alas how many things are sincerely promised which are nevertheless not faithfully performed. Ever thine, James Spedding. To James Spedding . 1834. My dear James, It may be you have waited some time for a reply, but you haven’t waited, so say no more. I have been out or you should have heard from me before this, so, I pray you, make not any little lapse of time that may possibly have slicled away into the unrecoverable between the writing of your letter and the receipt of mine precedent for further delay in answering this, for your letters do my moral and intellectual man much good. I am going to town with Emily to-morrow and I expect a token from you on my return. You ask me what I have been doing: I have written several things since I saw you, some emulative of the “ rjSit teal fipaxv Kal p,eya\onpenes 1 ” of Alcaeus, others of the “ iKXoyrj tcov ovopLOLToiv Kal rrjs crvvOeo-ecos aKplfieta ” of Simonides, one or two epical, but you can scarcely expect me to write 1 Dion. Hal. v. 421. LETTER ABOUT THE NEW POEMS. 1834] 141 them out for you: for I can scarcely bring myself to write them out for myself, and do you think I love you better than myself? I had thought your Paley had taught you better. By a quaint coincidence I received your letter, directed (I suppose) by Philip van Artevelde, with Philip himself (not the man but the book), and I wish to tell you that I think him a noble fellow ; I close with him in most that he says of modern poetry, tho’ it may be that he does not take sufficiently into con- sideration the peculiar strength evolved by such writers as Byron and Shelley, who, however mistaken they may be, did yet give the world another heart and new pulses, and so are we kept going. Blessed be those that grease the wheels of the old world, insomuch as to move on is better than to stand still. But “ Philip is a famous man” and makes me shamed of my own faults. A propos of faults I have corrected much of my last volume, and if you will send me your copy I would insert my corrections. Heaven knows what Douglas brought you: as for some stanzas about a “ Corridor I know not whether there be such a poem ; if there be it is very evident you have it not rightly. I think on second thoughts tho’ much against my will I will write thee out a poem, partly because Charles likes it, partly to give a local habitation on this paper and in your brain-piece to what else flies loosely thro’ the wind of my own memory like a Sibyl’s leaf. Voila! be merciful. {Here is copied out ) Love thou thy land with love far brought etc. It is said one cannot make a silken purse out of a sow’s ear, yet have you made a Miltonian out of the Telegraph. “ Cynthius aurem vellit ” : your far significant 1 See page 146, “The Little Maid.” 142 SOLITUDE AND WORK. [l834- coach drew the purse of my mouth like a sow’s ear, it was not the wrong sow’s ear to lay hold on, for I grinned. Kemble would have said “ screamed ” but I never scream, I leave that to your vivid men. I dare say you are right about the stanza in “ Sir Galahad,” who was intended for something of a male counterpart to St Agnes. I cannot write the “Suicide 1 ” for you, ’tis too long, nor “ Morte d’Arthur,” which I myself think the best thing I have managed lately, for ’tis likewise too long; nor can I write any more at present, for it is much too late. Angels guard thee, dear Jimmy, Ever thine, A. T. P.S. Fragment on British Freedom . Grave mother of majestic works, From her isle-altar gazing down, Who, God-like, grasps the triple forks, And, King-like, wears the crown: Her open eyes desire the truth, The wisdom of a thousand years Is in them. May perpetual youth Keep dry their light from tears ! 1835- From J. M. Heath ( the first mention of “ In Memoriam ”). My dear Alfred, I sent Julia, on hearing her fears, a copy of your two companions to “ Fair Ship 2 ” which have been a great delight to her, and she seems to have communicated them to some others. “The Xmas 2 ” is indeed most beautiful, most touching, and the 1 “ Two Voices.” 2 The sections of “In Memoriam” which were first written ; see page 109. 1835] HEATH WRITES OF “ IN MEMORIAM.” 1 43 latter portions of the “Fair Ship” speak to our hearts indeed. That last verse, is it not the expression of each voiceless thought? But the enjoyment of these will sink deeper yet. I seem some- times as if I could not take in more than one thought at a time, I mean such thoughts as the mind loves to dwell on, and feed upon as it were, etc. etc. etc. I am doubtful how far I am justified in having sent you this, but I could not resist. There are many more people that take an interest in you than you are aware of. Your letter was balm to me, send me more such. I hope we shall see you in the summer. Your very affectionate friend, J. M. Heath. P.S. Thompson cometh, Spedding then, and if you ask what doeth the Spedding, why marry it is this. He bade me say in answer to all such enquiries that he, the said Spedding, was now waiting till he should grow wiser. To James Spedding. Somersby Rectory, Feb. i$th, 1835. Midnight. My dear James, I shall never more have such respect for the lymphatic temperament. A promise has been broken by you, a promise generated betwixt two cigars at Gliddon’s, corroborated in Holborn, and repeated in the archway of the Ball and Crown. I did write to you and you have thought me “ worthy of sacred silence,” but let that pass. I have heard much of your wisdom from Thompson and others, and I confess that, despite of your transgression, I have an inclination to come and see you, and if possible to bring you back with me here. Can I hear that men are wise and not look them in the face ? I will come to you as Sheba came to Solomon. 144 SOLITUDE AND WORK. [l835 She travell’d far from Indian streams, And he a royal welcome made In ample chambers overlaid With Lebanonian cedar-beams. I forget where I read this, and I do not know whether I shall have a royal welcome ; wherefore be no more lymphatic but answer me, for I have sold my medal 1 , and made money, and would visit you, and if you answer me not I shall — . Very affectionately thine As thou usest me, A. Tennyson. To James Spedding . [ Undated .] My dear James, I am sorry to disappoint myself (and perhaps in some slight measure you also) by postponing my visit. I am going to be from home for some time but not anywhere in your direction. The birds must sing and the furze bloom for you and Fitzgerald alone, “ par nobile fratrum.” I sincerely hope you have not put off any one else in the expectation of seeing me : tho’ I did not state as much in my note, it was only when I first proposed it that I could have come to you. Fortune will perhaps bring me whiter days. I know not whether you are aware that Charles has become an independent gentleman, living in a big house among chalky wolds at Caistor. His and my great uncle, Sam Turner, to whom he was heir, died some little time ago and left him property, but he complains 1 This, the Chancellor’s Medal for “ Timbuctoo,” was given back to him by his cousin Lewis Fytche in 1885. DISLIKE OF PREMATURE NOTICE. 1835] 145 that it is at present unavailable, talks of debts to be paid etc. etc. John Heath writes me word that Mill is going to review me in a new Magazine, to be called the London Review , and favourably ; but it is the last thing I wish for, and I would that you or some other who may be friends of Mill would hint as much to him. I do not wish to be dragged forward agam in any shape before the reading public at present , particularly on the score of my old poems, most of which I have so cor- rected (particularly “ CEnone ”) as to make them much less imperfect, which you who are a wise man would own if you had the corrections. I may very possibly send you these some time. I am in much haste and obliged to conclude, but absent or present, Believe me Ever your true friend and admirer, A. T. Unpublished Poems of this Period (about 1834). Whispers. ’Tis not alone the warbling woods, The starr’d abysses of the sky, The silent hills, the stormy floods, The green that fills the eye — These only do not move the breast; Like some wise artist, Nature gives, Thro’ all her works, to each that lives A hint of somewhat unexprest. Whate’er I see, where’er I move, These whispers rise, and fall away, Something of pain — of bliss — of Love, But what, were hard to say. T. I. 10 146 SOLITUDE AND WORK. [l835 The Little Maid. Along this glimmering gallery A child she loved to play ; This chamber she was born in ! See, The cradle where she lay ! That little garden was her pride, With yellow groundsel grown ! Those holly-thickets only hide Her grave — a simple stone ! ALFRED TENNYSON From a Sketch by J. Spedding , made at Mirehouse , April , 1 835 CHAPTER VI. VISITS TO THE LAKES AND ELSEWHERE. THE “MORTE D’ARTHUR.” I836-37- To a friend , Mrs Neville , who had lately lost her husband (written between 1830 and 1840, unpublished). W oman of noble form and noble mind ! Whithersoever thro’ the wilderness Thou bearest from the threshold of thy friends The sacred sorrows of as pure a heart As e’er beat time to Nature, take with thee Our warmest wishes, silent Guardians But true till Death; and let them go in hope, Like birds of passage, to return with thee Some happy Summer morning, when the winds Are fallen or changed ; and, water’d by thy tears, The two fair lilies growing at thy side Have slowly prosper’d into stately flowers. The only Tennyson who, in spite of their grand- father’s wish “to make all the brothers parsons 1 ,” 1 Alluded to in a letter from Frederick Tennyson to John Frere, April 18th, 1832. “After this long sit however I ought certainly to have some inter- esting passages to tongue. The foremost that presents itself is a crotchet 147 10 — 2 148 VISITS TO THE LAKES AND ELSEWHERE. [l836 became a clergyman, was my uncle Charles. He had been ordained in 1835, and appointed to the curacy of Tealby, the village adjoining Bayons Manor. On May 24th, 1836, he married Louisa Sellwood, my mother’s youngest sister. My mother as a bridesmaid was taken into church by my father. They had rarely been in each other’s company since their first meeting in 1830, when the Sellwoods had driven over one spring day from Horn- castle, to call at Somersby Rectory. Arthur Hallam was then staying with the Tennysons ; and asked Emily Sellwood to walk with him in the Fairy Wood. At a turn of the path they came upon my father, who, at sight of the slender, beautiful girl of seventeen in her simple gray dress, moving “like a light across those woodland ways,” suddenly said to her : “ Are you a Dryad or an Oread wandering here?” Now, as a bridesmaid, she seemed to him even lovelier: “ O happy bridesmaid, make a happy bride ! ” And all at once a pleasant truth I learn’d, For, while the tender service made thee weep, I loved thee for the tear thou couldst not hide, And prest thy hand, and knew the press return’d. My uncle Arthur says : “ It was then I first saw your mother, and she read to me Milton’s ‘ Comus,’ which I had not known before and which I have loved ever since.” My uncle Charles and his bride left for their honey- moon on the Rhine, a tour which was alluded to in “In Memoriam,” section xcvin. : of my grandfather’s, that we are all to take orders, myself especially, which puts me into a demisemijoram and causes me to lose time. In order to fill up this note I must add that I expect to be ordained in June, without much reason, for hitherto I have made no kind of preparation, and a pretty parson I shall make I’m thinking...” 149 1837] SOMERSBY LEFT FOR EPPING FOREST. You leave us: you will see the Rhine, And those fair hills I sail’d below, When I was there with him ; and go By summer belts of wheat and vine To where he breathed his latest breath, That City. To that city my father would never go, and he gave me a most emphatic “ no ” when I once proposed a tour there with him. Under the will of Sam Turner of Caistor, my uncle assumed the name of Turner, settling with his wife at the vicarage of Grasby near Caistor. The painful parting from Somersby took place in 1837. The patron, Mr Burton, and the Incumbent had allowed the Tennysons to continue in the Rectory thus long. My grandmother had understood that her father-in- law would leave her the estate of Usselby, not far from the old home; but this was not to be. Not that my grand- mother was destitute ; she had her jointure ; and my uncle Frederick had been left a property at Grimsby, and all his brothers and sisters had their small “ portions.” Under these circumstances the family decided that it was best for them to leave the county and live nearer London. My uncle Frederick was in Corfu, and remained there as long as his cousin George d’Eyncourt, who was secretary to Lord Nugent 1 , kept his appointment. Afterwards he went to Italy and lived near Florence on the Fiesole Road, in a villa planned by Michael Angelo. There, so report ran, “in a large hall, Frederick Tennyson (who was a great lover of music) used to sit in the midst of his forty fiddlers.” Thus, his two elder brothers being away, on my father devolved the care of the family and 1 High Commissioner of the Ionian Islands. 150 VISITS TO THE LAKES AND ELSEWHERE. [1837 of choosing a new home. The task was by no means easy. The mother “ ruled by right of love,” but knew nothing of the world. First of all a career had to be found for Horatio, the youngest brother, who wanted to be a soldier. The mother would not hear of this, and he was sent off to try his fortune in Tasmania. High Beech in Epping Forest was the home eventually selected; and there the Tennysons lived till 1840, when they went to Tunbridge Wells. Thence they moved in 1841 to Boxley near Maidstone. Mrs Procter (Barry Cornwall’s wife) once said to me: I have known three great poets, Wordsworth, Browning and your father, and when they chose they could be more prosaic and practical than anybody on earth. My father certainly proved his practical turn at this time in furnishing High Beech, for they say that he “ did not even forget the kitchen utensils: and that throughout the furniture was pretty and inexpensive.” The house and park were pleasant enough. There was a pond in the park on which in winter my father might be seen skating, sailing about on the ice in his long blue cloak. He liked the nearness of London, whither he resorted to see his friends Spedding, Fitzgerald, Heath, Kemble, Tennant and others: but he writes that he could not often stay in town even for a night, his mother being in such a nervous state that he did not like to leave her. “ The light of London flaring like a dreary dawn ” was an especial admiration of his, during the evening journeys between London and High Beech. When he could leave home he would often visit in Lincolnshire, and stay both at his brother’s vicarage and at the Sellwoods’ in Horncastle. My mother and he were then quasi- engaged but were not able to marry owing to want of funds. They were not married until 1850, when his poems brought him a competency. 1835] MY FATHER’S OPINION OF WORDSWORTH. 1 5 1 The study at High Beech, where he worked at his 1842 volume, was not the top attic, according to his usual preference, but a large room over the dining- room, with a bay window, red curtains, and a Clytie on a pedestal in the corner. The “faithful Fitz 1 ” writes that as early as 1835, when he met my father in the Lake Country, at the Speddings’ (Mirehouse, by Bassenthwaite Lake), he saw what was to be part of this 1842 volume, the “ Morte d’Arthur,” “ The Day-Dream,” “ The Lord of Burleigh,” “ Dora,” and “ The Gardener’s Daughter.” They were read out of a MS “in a little red book to him and Spedding of a night, ‘when all the house was mute.’” Fitzgerald continues : Spedding’s father and mother were both alive ; and his father, who was of a practical turn, and had seen enough of poets in Shelley and Coleridge (perhaps in Wordsworth also), whom he remembered about the Lakes, rather resented our making so serious a business of verse-making, though he was so wise and charitable as to tolerate everything and everybody, except poetry and poets. He was jealous of his son James applying his great talents, which might have been turned to public and practical use, to such nonsense. My father read them a great deal of Wordsworth, “the dear old fellow,” as he called him. “The Yews of Borrowdale,” “ The Simplon Pass,” the sonnet be- ginning “ Two Voices,” “ The Solitary Reaper,” “ Peele Castle,” the “ Ode on Intimations of Immortality,” “ The Fountain,” were among his favourites. Fitzgerald notes again : I remember A. T. saying he remembered the time when he could see nothing in “ Michael ” which he now read us in admiration ; though he thought Wordsworth often clumsy 1 Edward Fitzgerald. 152 VISITS TO THE LAKES AND ELSEWHERE. [l835> and diffuse. There was no end of “This Thorn” in the piece that bears the name : “ such hammering to set a scene for so small a drama.” My father also read Keats and Milton : saying that “ Lycidas ” was “ a test of any reader’s poetic instinct,” and that “ Keats, with his high spiritual vision, would have been, if he had lived, the greatest of us all (tho’ his blank verse was poor), and that there is something magic and of the innermost soul of poetry in almost everything which he wrote.” Then, perhaps in his weaker moments, he used to think Shakespeare greater in his sonnets than in his plays. “ But he soon returned to the thought which is indeed the thought of all the world. He would have seemed to me to be reverting for a moment to the great sorrow of his own mind ; and in that peculiar phase of mind he found the sonnets a deeper expression of the never-to-be-forgotten love which he felt, more than any of the many moods of many minds which appear among Shakespeare’s dramas V’ The three friends went to Ambleside together, but Spedding was obliged to leave Fitzgerald and my father there, and go home on business. Fitzgerald says : Alfred Tennyson staid with me at Ambleside. I will say no more than that the more I see of him, the more cause I have to think him great. His little humours and grumpinesses were so droll that I was always laughing. I must, however, say further,, that I felt what Charles Lamb describes, a sense of depression at times from the overshadowing of a so much more lofty intellect than my own. He adds a note about a row on Windermere with my father : Resting on our oars one calm day on Windermere, whither we had gone for a week from dear Spedding’s (Mirehouse), at the 1 Jowett. ALFRED TENNYSON From a Sketch by Edward Fitzgerald, made at Mirehouse , 1835 1835] HARTLEY COLERIDGE. 153 end of May 1835, resting on our oars, and looking into the lake quite unruffled and clear, Alfred quoted from the lines he had lately read us from the MS of “ Morte d’ Arthur ” about the lonely lady of the lake and Excalibur — Nine years she wrought it, sitting in the deeps Upon the hidden bases of the hills. “ Not bad that, Fitz, is it 1 ? ” This kind of remark he would make when reading his own or others’ poetry when he came to lines that he particularly admired, from no vanity but from a pure feeling of artistic pleasure. “ The Lord of Burleigh ” was also read from MS and Fitz writes : “ I remember the author doubting if it were not too familiar, with its ‘ Let us see these handsome houses,’ etc. for public taste. ‘ But a sister,’ A. T. said, ‘ had liked it ’ ; we never got it out of our heads from the first hearing; and now is there a greater favourite where English is spoken ? ” My father and Fitzgerald then had a contest as to who could invent the weakest Words- worthian line imaginable. Although Fitzgerald claimed this line, my father declared that he had composed it — A Mr Wilkinson, a clergyman. While my father was in the Lake Country he fell in with Hartley Coleridge, who discussed Pindar with him, calling Pindar “The Newmarket poet.” “ Hartley was wonderfully eloquent,” my father said, “and I suspect resembled his father in that respect. I liked Hartley, ‘ Massa ’ Hartley. I remember that on one occasion Hartley was asked to dine with the family of a stiff Presbyterian clergyman, residing in the Lake district. The party sat a long time in the drawing-room waiting for dinner. Nobody talked. At last Hartley could 1 E. F. G., MS Note. 154 VISITS TO THE LAKES AND ELSEWHERE. [l835 stand it no longer, he jumped up from the sofa, kissed the clergyman’s daughter, and bolted out of the house. He was very eccentric, a sun-faced little man. He once went a walking tour with some friends. They suddenly missed him, and could not find him anywhere, and did not see him again for six weeks, when he emerged from some inn. He was a loveable little fellow.” Sonnet to Alfred Tennyson , after meeting him for the first time . Long have I known thee as thou art in song, And long enjoyed the perfume that exhales From thy pure soul, and odour sweet entails And permanence on thoughts that float along The stream of life, to join the passive throng Of shades and echoes that are Memory’s being; Hearing, we hear not, and we see not, seeing, If Passion, Fancy, Faith, move not among The never-present moments of reflection. Long have I viewed thee in the crystal sphere Of verse, that like the Beryl makes appear Visions of hope, begot of recollection. Knowing thee now, a real earth-treading man, Not less I love thee and no more I can. Hartley Coleridge. Of this visit Spedding wrote to Thompson: Alfred left us about a week since, homeward bound, but meaning to touch at Brookfield’s on his way. The weather has been much finer since he went ; certainly, while he was here, our northern sun did not display himself to advantage. Nevertheless I think he took in more pleasure and inspiration than any one would have supposed who did not know his almost personal dislike of the present, whatever it may be. Hartley Coleridge is mightily taken with him ; and after the fourth bottom of gin, deliberately thanked Heaven (under me, I believe, or me under Heaven, I forget which) for having brought them acquainted. 155 1835 ] LETTERS FROM SPEDDING AND FITZGERALD. Said Hartley was busy with an article on “ Macbeth,” to appear (the vegetable spirits permitting) in the next Blackwood. He confessed to a creed touching Destiny which was new to me ; denying Free-Will (if I understood him right) in toto ; but at the same time maintaining that man is solely and entirely answerable for whatever evil he does, not merely that he is to suffer for it but that he is answerable for it, which I do not. I could not get Alfred to Rydal Mount, he would and would not 1 (sulky one), although Wordsworth was hospitably minded towards him ; and would have been more so, had the state of his household permitted, which I am sorry to say is full of sickness. ...Alfred despises the Citation and Exam, of W. Shakespeare 2 . From Edward Fitzgerald. ( After the visit at the Speddmgs\ Mirehousei) London, July 2nd, 1835. Dear Tennyson, I suppose you have heard of the death of James Spedding’s sister-in-law : for my part I only came to know of it a day or two ago : having till then lived out of communication with any one who was likely to know of such things. After leaving you at Ambleside, I stayed a fortnight at Manchester, and then went to Warwick, where I lived a king for a month. Warwickshire is a noble shire : and the Spring being so late, I had the benefit of it through most of the month of June. I sometimes wished for you, for I think you would have liked it well I have heard you sometimes say that you are bound by the want of such and such a sum, and I vow to the Lord that I could not have a greater pleasure than transferring it to you on such occasions ; I should not dare to say such a thing to a small man : but you are not a small man assuredly : and even if you do not make use of my offer, you will not be offended but put it to the right account. It is very difficult to persuade people in this world that one can part with a banknote without a pang. It is one of the most simple things I have ever done to talk thus to you, I believe : but here is an end ; and be charitable to me. 1 He said that he did not wish to “ obtrude himself on the great man at Rydal.” 2 This refers to Landor’s Essay so named. 156 VISITS TO THE LAKES AND ELSEWHERE. [l 835 Edgeworth 1 is a wonderful man, but I shall be very serious with him lest he should wean you from indulging in quaint and wonderful imaginations, and screw you up too tightly to moral purpose. If this sentence is unintelligible to you, I will console you with one that is as clear as daylight. Your muse has penetrated into France : there has been a review of your poems in a paper called the Voleur , in which you are called — guess what! — “Jeune Enthousiaste de 1’ecole gracieuse de Thomas Moore ” — this I think will make you laugh and is worth postage. Now I have told you all that I have in my head : it is fortunate that the sheet of paper is just spacious enough for my out- pourings. The “ Morte d’Arthur ” has been much in my mouth : audibly : round Warwick. I am yours very truly, E. Fitzgerald. P. S. When I was at Manchester, I bought a small Dante for myself : and, liking it well, the same for you : for I had never seen the edition before, and I dare say you have not. It is small but very clearly printed : with little explanations at the foot of each page, very welcome to me : the proper price was ten shillings but I only gave three. Leigh Hunt writes: 4 Upper Cheyne Road, Chelsea. 1835. The Prince Arthur 2 which I should have brought with me, I will send to-morrow or next day by a messenger ; and the rest shall reach you as quickly as may be. Meanwhile may I venture to hope that my two non-appearances will not hinder me from having another invitation some day, or yourself from coming to see me ? Carlyle expresses the pleasure he should have in meeting you here some evening Shall I hope to see you at Carlyle’s lecture on Monday ? 1 Nephew of Maria Edgeworth, the “Little Frank” of the Parent's Assistant. 2 This copy of Malory I have still in my possession, a small book for the pocket, published 1816, by Walker and Edwards, and much used by my father. lord Northampton’s annual. 157 From R. M. Milnes . Your brief was infallibly pleasant. I shall wait for you in December. If you like, we will have “ Freezetown ” (Fryston) all to ourselves and you may smoke while I play the organ. Now be a good boy and do as you’re told. Lord Northampton is getting up a charity book of poetry for the destitute family of a man of letters, born in the dead letter office, and he earnestly prays you to contribute not your mite but your might to it. I have half promised you will give him something pretty consider- able, for the fault of the book will be that the contributions are not as great in dimension as in name. He has got original things of Wordsworth, Southey, Miss Bailey, R. M. M. etc. I will love you more and more therefore if you will send some jewels directed to the Marquis of Northampton, Castle Ashby, Northampton, as soon as convenient. Your “ St Agnes 1 ” looks funny between Lord Londonderry and Lord W. Lennox, God her aid ! I like Brookfield’s sonnet eminently Yours affectionately, R. M. Milnes. P. S. You know your contribution will be at your disposal to do what you like with when the book is sold, i.e. in a year or so. To R. M. Milne s' 1 . December , 1836. Dear Richard, As I live eight miles from my post-town and only correspond therewith about once a week, you must not wonder if this reaches you somewhat late. Your former brief I received, though some six days behind time, and stamped with the postmarks of every little market-town in the country, but I did not think it demanded an immediate answer, hence my silence. 1 “St Agnes,” published in the Keepsake (1837), pp. 247-48, edited by Lady Emmeline Stuart Wortley. 2 Quoted in Wemyss Reid’s Life of Lord Houghto 7 i. 158 VISITS TO THE LAKES AND ELSEWHERE. [l837 That you had promised the Marquis I would write for him something exceeding the average length of “Annual compositions”; that you had promised him I would write at all : I took this for one of those elegant fictions with which you amuse your aunts of evenings, before you get into the small hours when dreams are true. Three summers back, provoked by the incivility of editors, I swore an oath that I would never again have to do with their vapid books, and I brake it in the sweet face of Heaven when I wrote for Lady What’s-her- name Wortley. But then her sister wrote to Brookfield and said she (Lady W.) was beautiful, so I could not help it. But whether the Marquis be beautiful or not, I don’t much mind ; if he be, let him give God thanks and make no boast. To write for people with prefixes to their names is to milk he-goats ; there is neither honour nor profit. Up to this moment I have not even seen The Keepsake : not that I care to see it, for the want of civility decided me not to break mine oath again for man nor woman, and how should such a modest man as I see my small name in collocation with the great ones of Southey, Wordsworth, R. M. M., etc., and not feel myself a barndoor fowl among peacocks ? Goodbye. Believe me always thine, A. T. Milnes was angry at the refusal, and my father answered him banteringly again: Jan. 10 //z, 1837 l . Why what in the name of all the powers, my dear Richard, makes you run me down in this fashion? Now is my nose out of joint, now is my tail not only curled 1 Quoted in Wemyss Reid’s Life of Lord Houghton. LETTER TO MILNES. 159 1837] so tight as to lift me off my hind legs like Alfred Crow- quill’s poodle, but fairly between them. Many sticks are broken about me. I am the ass in Homer. I am blown. What has so jaundiced your good-natured eyes as to make them mistake harmless banter for insolent irony : harsh terms applicable only to who big as he is, sits to all posterity astride upon the nipple of literary dandyism, and “ takes her milk for gall ”? “ In- solent irony ” and “ piscatory vanity,” as if you had been writing to St Anthony, who converted the soft souls of salmon ; but may St Anthony’s fire consume all misapprehension, the spleen-born mother of five- fold more evil on our turnip-spheroid than is malice aforethought. Had I been writing to a nervous, morbidly-irritable man, down in the world, stark-spoiled with the staggers of a mis-managed imagination and quite opprest by fortune and by the reviews, it is possible that I might have halted to find expressions more suitable to his case ; but that you, who seem at least to take the world as it comes, to doff it, and let it pass, that you, a man every way prosperous and talented, should have taken pet at my unhappy badinage made me lay down my pipe and stare at the fire for ten minutes, till the stranger fluttered up the chimney ! You wish that I had never written that passage. So do I, since it seems to have given such offence. Perhaps you likewise found a stumbling- block in the expression “ vapid books,” as the angry inversion of four commas seems so intimate. But are not Annuals vapid ? Or could I possibly mean that what you or Trench or De Vere chose to write therein must be vapid ? I thought you knew me better than even to insinuate these things. Had I spoken the same things to you laughingly in my chair, and with my own emphasis, you would have seen what they really meant, but coming to read them peradventure in a fit of indi- 160 VISITS TO THE LAKES AND ELSEWHERE. [l 837 gestion, or with a slight matutinal headache after your Apostolic symposium you subject them to such mis- interpretation as, if I had not sworn to be true friend to you till my latest death-ruckle, would have gone far to make me indignant. But least said soonest mended ; which comes with peculiar grace from me after all this verbiage. You judge me rightly in supposing that I would not be backward in doing a really charitable deed. I will either bring or send you something for your Annual. It is very problematical whether I shall be able to come and see you as I proposed, so do not return earlier from your tour on my account ; and if I come, I should only be able to stop a few days, for, as I and all my people are going to leave this place very shortly never to return, I have much upon my hands. But whether I see you or no, Believe me always thine affectionately, A. Tennyson. I have spoken with Charles. He has promised to contribute to your Annual \ Frederick will, I daresay, follow his example. See now whether I am not doing my best for you, and whether you had any occasion to threaten me with that black “Anacaona 2 ” and her cocoa- shod coves of niggers. I cannot have her strolling about the land in this way. It is neither good for her repu- tation nor mine. When is Lord Northampton’s book to be published, and how long may I wait before I send anything by way of contribution ? “ O that ’twere possible,” afterwards the foundation of “ Maud,” was sent to Lord Northampton. Fitzgerald also notes that in this year my father wrote a poem on 1 The Tribute. 2 P- 56 - 1837] THE QUEEN OF THE ISLES. l6l the Queen’s accession, “ of which the burden was ‘ Here’s a health to the Queen of the Isles.’ ” One stanza I have heard my father repeat : ( Unpublished.') That the voice of a satisfied people may keep A sound in her ears like the sound of the deep, Like the sound of the deep when the winds are asleep ; Here’s a health to the Queen of the Isles. A fragment of a poem about Mablethorpe he wrote then, and gave in 1850 to the Manchester Athenceum Album : Mablethorpe. Here often when a child I lay reclined : I took delight in this fair strand and free ; Here stood the infant Ilion of the mind, And here the Grecian ships all seem’d to be. And here again I come, and only find The drain-cut level of the marshy lea, Gray sand-banks, and pale sunsets, dreary wind, Dim shores, dense rains, and heavy-clouded sea. The following sonnet was also preserved, which he wrote at the end of 1837 or the beginning of 1838. Sonnet. ( U np ublished . ) To thee with whom my true affections dwell, That I was harsh to thee, let no one know; It were, O Heaven, a stranger tale to tell Than if the vine had borne the bitter sloe. Tho’ I was harsh, my nature is not so : A momentary cloud upon me fell : My coldness was mistimed like summer-snow, Cold words I spoke, yet loved thee warm and well. Was I so harsh ? Ah dear, it could not be. Seem’d I so cold ? what madness moved my blood 1 62 VISITS TO THE LAKES AND ELSEWHERE. [l838 To make me thus belie my constant heart That watch’t with love thine earliest infancy, Slow-ripening to the grace of womanhood, Thro’ every change that made thee what thou art ? It was in the latter part of 1837 or the beginning of 1838 that he appears to have first become known in America. Professor Rolfe, who has kindly interested himself in the matter, writes to me that R. W. Emerson somehow made acquaintance with the 1830 and 1832 volumes about that time and delighted in lending them to his friends. Emerson suggested a reprint of the volumes, and Longfellow, brother of the poet, showed Prof. Rolfe a letter from Messrs C. C. Little & Co. of Boston ad- dressed to the poet and dated April 27th, 1838, stating that they intended to publish the reprint; but for some reason this plan was not carried out. During some months of 1837 my father was deeply immersed in Pringle’s Travels , and Lyell’s Geology : and from Pringle he got the image of the hungry lion used in his simile in “ Locksley Hall Slowly comes a hungry people, as a lion creeping nigher, Glares at one that nods and winks behind a slowly- dying fire. He received the following letter from Leigh Hunt, dated July 31st : My dear Sir Many thanks for your kind letter. It delights me to think you should find anything to like in my verses, especially “ Paganini.” I always fancy that if ever I write anything worthy of the name of poetry, it is when I write about music. Your MISS BARRETT. 1838] 16 communication alas ! came too late for the book in question ; but the editor shall know of it, and will doubtless be gratified that you have written. I wish to send you a copy of the first number of the new series of a magazine (the Monthly Repository ) of which I myself have become editor ; but have not the face to put you to the expense of receiving it at such a distance. Will you drop me a word to say whether I can forward it to any intermediate place of communication, and will you at the same time look into your desk and see if you can oblige me with a few verses and your name to them , for my new adventure ? You will see in some verses of mine, in the number I speak of, that I have taken a liberty with said name, in speaking of a fair and no unworthy imitator of yours, a Miss Barrett 1 , who really has sparks of the “ faculty divine,” but what I say, as you will easily believe, has all due respect and admiration at the bottom of it ; as indeed every one knows who knows anything about you, or about what I say of you. Therefore do not hesitate to send me a Sibylline leaf if you can, and be sure I ask it for your honour and glory as well as my own advantage. I want my magazine to be such a magazine as was never seen before, every article worth something, though / say it that shouldn’t, and I believe you know my gallant wish to be a sort of Robin Hood of an editor, with not a man in my company that does not beat his leader. A sonnet — a fragment — anything will be welcome, most especially if you put your name to it ; and therefore for the sake of poetry and my love of it, again I say, oblige me if you can; and also send instantly because time begins to press. Ever truly yours, Leigh Hunt. P. S. The magazine shall come away the instant I hear from you where to send it. In the following extract from an unpublished letter of Leigh Hunt’s to S. C. Hall an interesting criticism is given of my father and his brothers Frederick and Charles : I do not know the birth, parentage and education of Tenny- son. I am pretty sure however that he is not long come from 1 Afterwards Mrs Barrett Browning. 1 1 — 2 164 VISITS TO THE LAKES AND ELSEWHERE. [l 838 Trinity College, Cambridge, and I believe him to be nephew of Tennyson d’Eyncourt, the member for Lambeth, and son of a clergyman (the last however I know still more dimly than the rest). He has a brother (Charles) whom you ought to know, if you do not know him already. I will send you his vol. of Sonnets to-morrow, together with the only vol. which I have at home (I find) of Alfred’s. If it is not the one you want, I will see who has got the other. Charles is not equal to Alfred, but still partakes of the genuine faculty. He has a graceful luxury but combining less of the spiritual with it, which, I suppose, is the reason why he has become clergyman ! I was fearful of what he would come to by certain migivings in his poetry and a want of the active poetic faith. There is also another brother, perhaps less inspired than Charles and who has only put forth a sonnet or so in public, Frederick, but still partaking of the right vein ; and I think I have heard there are two of the sisters poetical ! Here is a nest of nightingales for you ! *** The materials of the noblest poetry are abundant in him (Alfred), and we trust will not find any too weak corner in the sensitiveness of his nature to oppress him with their very exuberance. Mr Gladstone, as is well-known, was Arthur Hallam’s school friend, and on this account my father had a romantic desire to see him; and so called upon him about this time. I wrote to Mr Gladstone for some details of their early intercourse and he kindly replied: 10 Downing Street, Whitehall, October , 1892. My dear Hallam, I am afraid that I shall have to adjourn any attempt to record my intercourse with your father until after my resigna- tion of my present office, and even then I fear it might have to compete with the demands of my unfinished work. I do not think that at any time during the last forty years I have ever found myself able when in office to give continuous thoughts on any subject outside public affairs. I will however allow myself the pleasure of referring to the first occasion on 1838] FIRST MEETING WITH MR GLADSTONE. 1 65 which I saw him. It was about the year 1837, when he called on me in Carlton Gardens. This was an unexpected honour, for I had no other tie with him than having been in earlier life the friend of his friend, to whom he afterwards erected so splendid a literary monument. I cannot now remember parti- culars, but I still retain the liveliest impression of both the freedom and kindness with which he conversed with me during a long interview. I am greatly pleased to hear that you have undertaken the “ Life,” — doubtless an arduous task, but one to which your titles are multiple as well as clear. Believe me most sincerely yours, W. E. Gladstone. The years spent in strenuous labour and self-educa- tion, and his engagement to Emily Sellwood, had again braced my father for the struggle of life. The current of his mind no longer ran constantly in the channel of mourn- ful memories and melancholy forebodings. During this autumn of 1838 he sought out “fresh woods and pastures new” in Torquay, where he wrote his “ Audley Court.” His friends had not yet grasped the change in the tenor of his thoughts and still tried to cheer him. “ Go and live at Cambridge,” said Venables. “ You might perceive, if you had any doubt about it, when you were last there how great a pleasure it was to us all to see you, and how little trouble to provide for you. Now you would be more at home there than you were then after so long an absence, and you can get books innumerable, and smoke and talk, or not talk ; and make poetry and commit it to surer records than the leaves of which so many are lost. Do not continue to be so careless of fame , and of influence .” Or again he advised my father to go and work in Prague, where he would receive new impressions and a new stimulus to the imagination. “ I almost wonder that you with your love of music and tobacco do not go and live in some such place.” 1 66 VISITS TO THE LAKES AND ELSEWHERE. [l838 Yet my father paid heed to none of these invitations, but went his own way. He had abundant materials now for publication. He had made friends in London, and when he published again he would start as a well- known man, with the certainty that he could not be overlooked and that by many he would be appreciated. He was on the whole happy in his life, and looked forward to still better days. Hope, a poising eagle, burnt Above the unrisen morrow. He must earn a livelihood on which to marry. He would arrange his material and give as perfect a volume as he could to the world. “ I felt certain of one point then,” he said : “ if I meant to make any mark at all, it must be by shortness, for the men before me had been so diffuse, and most of the big things except ‘ King Arthur’ had been done.” Another fact also began to dawn upon him, that if he never published again, even that which he had published “ would be taken out of its napkin and would be given to him who had published ten volumes.” CHAPTER VII.* EXTRACTS FROM LETTERS TO EMILY SELLWOOD. [These extracts, that follow chronological order, are made from a series of letters from my father to my mother extending over three years. I have not felt able to include the many passages which would show the intensity of feeling expressed in these letters, but have burnt the correspondence according to my father’s directions.] 1838-1840. 1838. I saw from the high road thro’ Hagworth- ingham the tops of the elms on the lawn at Somersby beginning to kindle into green. Do you remember sitting with me there on the iron garden chair one day when I had just come from London? It was earlier in the year than now. I have no reason for asking except that the morning three years back seems fresh and pleasant ; and you were in a silk pelisse, and I think I read some book with you. I dare not tell how high I rate humour, which is generally most fruitful in the highest and most solemn human spirits. Dante is full of it, Shakespeare, Cer- vantes, and almost all the greatest have been pregnant with this glorious power. You will find it even in the Gospel of Christ. Copyright, 1897, by The Macmillan Company. 167 1 68 EXTRACTS FROM LETTERS TO EMILY SELLWOOD. [l83£ 1839. “The stern daughter of the Voice of God,” unclothed with the warmth of the feelings, is as impotent to convert as the old Stoicism. Wells . The light of this world is too full of refrac- tions for men ever to see one another in their true positions. The world is better than it is called, but wrong and foolish. The whole framework seems wrong,, which in the end shall be found right. Bitterness of any sort becomes not the sons of Adam, still less pride, for they are in that talk of theirs for the most part but as children babbling in the market-place. High Beech. I have been at this place (High Beech in Epping Forest) all the year, with nothing but that muddy pond in prospect, and those two little sharp- barking dogs. Perhaps I am coming to the Lincolnshire coast, but I scarcely know. The journey is so expensive and I am so poor. The far future has been my world always. I shall never see the Eternal City, nor that dome, the wonder of the world ; I do not think I would live there if I could, and I have no money for touring. Mablethorpe . I am not so able as in old years to commune alone with Nature. I am housed at Mr Wildman’s, an old friend of mine in these parts : he and his wife are two perfectly honest Methodists. When JOHN KEMBLE. 169 1839] I came, I asked her after news, and she replied : “ Why, Mr Tennyson, there’s only one piece of news that I know, that Christ died for all men.” And I said to her: “ That is old news, and good news, and new news ” ; wherewith the good woman seemed satisfied. I was half-yesterday reading anecdotes of Methodist ministers, and liking to read them too. ..and of the teaching of Christ, that purest light of God. That made me count the less of the sorrows when I caught a glimpse of the sorrowless Eternity. A good woman is a wondrous creature, cleaving to the right and the good in all change ; lovely in her youthful comeliness, lovely all her life long in comeliness of heart. London . There is no one here but John Kemble with whom I dined twice; he is full of burning indig- nation against the Russian policy and what he calls the moral barbarism of France: likewise he is striving against what he calls the “ mechanic influence of the age and its tendency to crush and overpower the spiritual in man,” and indeed what matters it how much man knows and does if he keeps not a reverential looking upward ? He is only the subtlest beast in the field. We must bear or we must die. It is easier perhaps to die, but infinitely less noble. The immortality of man disdains and rejects the thought, the immortality of man to which the cycles and the aeons are as hours and as days. 170 EXTRACTS FROM LETTERS TO EMILY SELLWOOD. [l839 “ Why has God created souls knowing they would sin and suffer ? ” a question unanswerable. Man is greater than all animals because he is capable of moral good and evil, tho’ perhaps dogs and elephants, and some of the higher mammalia have a little of this capability. God might have made me a beast ; but He thought good to give me power, to set Good and Evil before me that I might shape my own path. The happiness, resulting from this power well exercised, must in the end exceed the mere physical happiness of breath- ing, eating, and sleeping like an ox. Can we say that God prefers higher happiness in some to a lower happi- ness in all ? It is a hard thing that if I sin and fail I should be sacrificed to the bliss of the Saints. Yet what reasonable creature, if he could have been askt before- hand, would not have said, “ Give me the metaphysical power ; let me be the lord of my decisions ; leave physical quietude and dull pleasure to lower lives.” All souls methinks would have answered thus, and so had men suffered by their own choice, as now by the necessity of being born what they are, but there is no answer to these questions except in a great hope of universal good : and even then one might ask, why has God made one to suffer more than another, why is it not meted equally to all ? Let us be silent, for we know nothing of these things, and we trust there is One who knows all. God cannot be cruel. If he were, the heart could only find relief in the wildest blasphemies, which would cease to be blasphemies. God must be all powerful, else the soul could never deem Him worthy of her highest worship. Let us leave it therefore to God, as to the wisest. Who knows whether revelation be not itself a veil to hide the glory of that Love which we could not look upon without marring our sight, and our onward progress ? If it were proclaimed as a truth “ No man shall perish : all shall live, after a certain time shall have gone by, in bliss with God ” 1839] “THE DREAMS OF SPACE AND TIME.” I 7 1 such a truth might tell well with one or two lofty spirits, but would be the hindrance of the world. High Beech , July ioth. What a thunderstorm we had the other night ! I wonder whether it was so bad at H — . It lasted the whole night and part of the previous after- noon. Lewis Fytche, who was with us then, was looking out of my window about half-past 1 1 o’clock, and saw a large fireball come up the valley from Waltham till it seemed to come quite over our pond : it then according to his account grew on a sudden amazingly large. How large ? I askt him : he said, “ like a great balloon, and burst with an explosion like fifty batteries of cannon.” I was so sorry not to have seen it, for it was a thing to remember; but I had just gone to my mother’s room: she was grovelling on the floor in an extremity of fear when the clap came ; upon which she cried out, “ Oh ! I will leave this house : the storms are very bad here,” and F — ■ who is here burst out weeping. Such a scene, almost ludicrous in its extremes. I have been engaged in packing books. I have a good many. I am afraid I shall be obliged to sell them, for I really do not know where to stow them and the house at Tunbridge is too small, a mere mouse-trap. All life is a school, a preparation, a purpose : nor can we pass current in a higher college, if we do not undergo the tedium of education in this lower one. Annihilate within yourself these two dreams of Space and Time. To me often the far-off world seems nearer 172 EXTRACTS FROM LETTERS TO EMILY SELLWOOD [l839 than the present, for in the present is always something unreal and indistinct, but the other seems a good solid planet, rolling round its green hills and paradises to the harmony of more steadfast laws. There steam up from about me mists of weakness, or sin, or despondency, and roll between me and the far planet, but it is there still. Dim mystic sympathies with tree and hill reaching far back into childhood. A known landskip is to me an old friend, that continually talks to me of my own youth and half-forgotten things, and indeed does more for me than many an old friend that I know. An old park is my delight, and I could tumble about it for ever. Sculpture is particularly good for the mind: there is a height and divine stillness about it which preaches peace to our stormy passions. Methinks that, in looking upon a great statue like the Theseus (maim’d and defaced as it is), one becomes as it were Godlike, to feel things in the Idea. There is the glory of being loved, for so have we “ laid great bases for Eternity.” Thro’ darkness and storm and weariness of mind and of body is there built a passage for His created ones to the gates of light. That world of perfect chrysolite, a pure and noble heart. 1839] TOUR IN WALES. 173 Aberystwith. I cannot say I have seen much worth the trouble of the journey, always excepting the Welsh- women’s hats which look very comical to an Eng- lish eye, being in truth men’s hats, beavers, with the brim a little broad, and tied under the chin with a black ribband. Some faces look very pretty in them. It is remarkable how fluently the little boys and girls can speak Welsh, but I have seen no leeks yet, nor shot any cheeses. This place, the Cambrian Brighton, pleases me not, ...a sea certainly to-day of a most lovely blue, but with scarce a ripple. Anything more unlike the old Homeric “ much-sounding ” sea I never saw. Yet the bay is said to be tempestuous. O for a good Mablethorpe breaker! I took up this morning an un- happy book of English verse by a Welshman, and read therein that all which lies at present swampt fathom- deep under the bay of Carnarvon was long ago in the twilight of history a lovely lowland, rich in woods, thick with cities. One wild night a drunken man, who was a sort of clerk of the drains and sewers in his time, opened the dam-gates and let in the sea, and Heaven knows how many stately palaces have ever since been filled with polyps and sea-tangle. How many gentlemen discussing after-dinner politics of that day were surprised by the precocious entrance of lobster before supper ! How many young ladies playing at their pre-historic pianos ended some warm love-song of life in a quavering swan-song of death ! I require quiet, and myself to myself, more than any man when I write. Barmouth. Barmouth is a good deal prettier place than Aberystwith, a flat sand shore, a sea with breakers, looking Mablethorpelike, and sand hills, and close behind 174 EXTRACTS FROM LETTERS TO EMILY SELLWOOD. [l839 them huge crags and a long estuary with cloud-capt hills running up as far as Dolgeliy, with Cader Idris on one side. The most beautiful thing I saw this time in Wales — Llanberis lakes. (“Edwin Morris” was written there.) In letters , words too often prove a bar of hindrance instead of a bond of union. London . My friends have long since ceased to write, knowing me to be so irregular a correspondent. A brief and terse style suits the man, but the woman is well when she deals in words. So much to do and so much to feel in parting from the house. Such a scene of sobbing and weeping was there on Monday morning among the servants at Beech Hill, and cottagers’ daughters, as that cockney residence has seldom witnessed, perhaps never since its stones were cemented and trowelled. There were poor Milnes wringing her hands and howling, Ann Green swallowing her own tears with exclamations of such pathos as would have moved the heart of a whinstone, and other villagers all joining in the chorus, as if for some great public calamity. Finding we had human hearts, though we lived in a big house, they thought it all the harder that they were to lose us so soon. We drove the other day to see a Captain Pellew, who had drawn several sketches of the Himala mountains. Capt. P. said that in the early morning when all the hills were wrapt in blackness, the sharp snow-peaks shine out like rosy lamps hung high up in heaven, and apparently having no connection with 1840] VISIT TO WARWICK. 1 75 this earth. A man who had just visited the Alps was with him there, and he said “ the Himala was just twice as magnificent.” Warwick. 1840. I got into the third class of carriages in the train to Leicester. It is a carriage entirely open, without seats, nothing but a rail or two running across it, something like pens of cattle... .Tho’ we did not move very quickly, yet it was liker flying than anything else.... I learnt some curious lessons in per- spective, e.g. the two rails on the road were always drawn together with the greatest rapidity. I stopt last night at Leicester, and came on here (to Warwick) this morning by a slow mail. On driving into Warwick, by great chance I happened to have my glass in my eye and perceived my friend, Edward Fitzgerald, taking his walk on the pave towards Leamington. I stopt the coach, and he got up, and we drove to the George here, and had an evening together. Kenilworth looked grand in the distance. I think of going over with Fitz to-morrow. Warwick not to be seen till Saturday as the family are there. Almost afraid I cannot stop as long, as it is very expensive being at an inn. Warwick Castle looked grand and black among its woods from the bridge this evening, a nightingale was singing, and rooks were cawing, and there was moreover the noise of a waterfall. London. I went thro’ Warwick Castle. It is certainly a noble specimen of old feudalism, and the views from the windows would be of unrivalled loveliness if the river were only clearer. I and Fitzgerald also (climbed) up Guy’s tower, and had “ large prospect ” of the surrounding country : but nothing pleased me better on the whole than two paintings I saw in the castle : one, an Admiral van 176 EXTRACTS FROM LETTERS TO EMILY SELLWOOD. [l840 Tromp by Rembrandt, the other Macchiavelli by Titian, both wonderful pictures, but the last grand beyond all words. We strayed about the gardens.. ..Afterwards we went to Stratford and saw Shakespeare’s monument. I should not think it can be a good likeness. That foolish fellow painted it white all over, and served poor Johnny Combe, who lies on a monument near, in the same way. I suppose from a notion that so painted they would look more classic, but the monuments all about were gilded and painted, and so were theirs. By which fancy of Malone we have in all probability lost the colour of Shakespeare’s hair and eyes, which perhaps would do the world very little good to know, but would have been a little satis- faction to poor physiognomists like myself. We went also into the room where they say he was born. Every part of it is scribbled over with names. I was seized with a sort of enthusiasm, and wrote mine, tho’ I was a little ashamed of it afterwards : yet the feeling was genuine at the time, and I did homage with the rest. I forgot Kenilworth. We tumbled about the ruins for three hours, but I was rather disappointed. I had expected to find them larger and more august. (My father came from Coventry to London and wrote “ Godiva.” He encloses “a virgin-ballad never yet written down,” “ Sweet Emma Morland ” — “ simple enough at any rate,” he writes of it.) After this date all correspondence between Alfred Tennyson and Emily Sellwood was forbidden; since there seemed to be no prospect of their ever being married, owing to that unfortunately “ Eternal want of pence Which vexes public men.” 184o] LETTER TO TENNANT. 177 Letters to and from friends , 1840-1842 This letter to Tennant, without date or address, I have found among the letters received from his friends at this period: To Reverend R, J. Tennant 1 . My dear Robert, It is about three centuries since I heard from you. I suppose you did not calculate on my sending you any answer, had you written. I think it just possible that I might: however my regard for you has thriven as lustily as ever in the silence, and I have had, now and then, certain memorials of you from different quarters: not indeed altogether grateful, for I am told that your wife has been ill almost the whole time you have been in Italy, also that you had lost great part of your library by shipwreck, also that you hated the land of the sun, where men, according to Alfieri, come up more vigorously than in other latitudes. Often have I intended to come over and pay you a visit, and as often my empty purse has gaped in my face and broken my dream of you and the Pitti palace together. Well, I suppose we shall meet somewhere or other on this side of the grave, and that our friendship at Cambridge has not been only to cease to be. How many puns have we made together ! how many walks have we taken arm in arm in the dark streets of the old University and on the Trumpington 1 Since Cambridge days Tennant had been in an unsettled frame of mind. He had been a frequenter of Coleridge’s famous gatherings at Highgate, had been shaken in his belief and had hesitated, like many others then, to take orders. Subsequently he was ordained and became curate to J. C. Hare, at Hurstmonceux (a post afterwards filled by John Sterling), then he lived for several years as English chaplain at Florence, where he died. t. 1 . 2 MABLETHORPE. 178 [l841 road ! and how you used to scepticize till we both ran away ! My people are located at a place which is my abomination, viz. Tunbridge Wells in this county; they moved thither from Essex by the advice of a London physician, who said it was the only place in England for the Tennyson constitution: the sequel is that they are half killed by the tenuity of the atmosphere and the presence of steel more or less in earth, air and water. I have sometimes tried to persuade them to live abroad but without effect, and I dare say you in your exile agree with them that there is no place like an English home. I came over to this place about a fortnight back. A. T. To Edward Fitzgerald. Mablethorpe, Alford, 1841. Dear old Fitz, Not on the Western, on the Eastern coast. Mablethorpe near Alford in the fat shire of Lincoln is the place where I am. I walk about the coast, and have it all to myself, sand and sea. You bore me about my book ; so does a letter just received from America, threatening, tho’ in the civilest terms, that, if I will not publish in England, they will do it for me in that land of freemen. I may curse, knowing what they will bring forth. But I don’t care. I am in a great haste writing for the muffin-man, my only communication with the world, who comes once a week bringing the produce of his art, also what letters may be stagnating at the Alford post, waits five minutes and then returns. Always yours, A. T. 184l] BOLTON ABBEY AND WHARFEDALE. 179 To Edmund Lushing ton. Otley, September 19 th, 1841. My dear Edmund, This is to let you know that I am at present in the classic neighbourhood of Bolton Abbey whither I was led the other day by some half-remembrance of a note to one of Wordsworths poems, which told with me (to speak the truth) more than the poem itself : said Wordsworth having stated, (as far as I recollect) that everything which the eyes of man could desire in a land- skip was to be found at and about the Abbey aforesaid. I, coming with an imagination inflamed, and working upon this passage, was at first disappointed, but yesterday I took a walk of some seven or eight or, by our Lady, nine miles, to left and right of the Wharfe, and you may conjecture that no ordinary charms of nature could get nine miles walk out of legs (at present ) more familiar with armchair and settle than rock and greensward, so that I suppose there is something in what Wordsworth asserts, and that something will probably keep me here some time, and whether I shall see you or no before you return to Glasgow is thereby rendered uncertain. I suppose there is no chance of your coming here, is there ? that would be a Godsend I have no right to expect, but Harry at High Beech was a Godsend I did not expect. Poor fellow, he was very nervous, very uncomfortable too about his Italian journey, but in that respect I found it hard to sympathize with him. Ever yours, A. Tennyson. 12 — 2 [1842 l8o “CENONE”lN GREEK HEXAMETERS. To Edmund Lushington. Boxley, Early in 184?. Dear Edmund, I was very glad to hear of the reconvalescence of your “ Geschwister ” for I had some fancy (as I told you) that all was not right. Your lines 1 I liked. Some doubt I had about “ 7ro\vm§afC€ ” but Venables set me right : not that I believed you could be out of your Greek, but the “ noXvjTLhaKos *18179 ” ran in my head. “Naayx