ALFRED TENNYSON From a photograph by the Autotype Company, London RECORDS OF Tennyson, Ruskin, Browning ANNE THACKERAY RITCHIE / have written /rafik/y, garrulously , and at ease, speaking of what gives me joy to renteutber at aiiy length I like ; sometimes very carefully of what I think may be usefil for others to knoiu, and passing over in total silence things which I have no pleasure in reviewing. — Pk.'F.terita ILLUSTRATED NEW YORK HARPER & BROTHERS, FRANKLIN SQUARE 1892 oc ,1* >^ Copyright, 1892, by Hari'er & Brothers. All rights reserved. /Z'3^030 " Miiiil lliat there i,s always a certain laclicl about great men — tlie\' speak of cDiiimon life more largely and generously than common men do — they regard the world with u manlier countenance, and see its real features more fairly than the timid shufflers who only dare to look up at life through blinkers, or to have an oi)inion when there is a crowd to back it." — Etti^lish I/unioris/s. " ' I remember poor ijyron, llobhouse, Trelawney, and myself, dining with Cardinal Mezzocaldo at Rome,' Captain Sumph began, ' and we had some Orvieto wine for dinner, which Byron liked very much. And I remember how the Cardinal regretted that he was a single man. We went to Civita Vecchia two days afterwards where Byron's yacht was — and, by Jove, the Cardinal died within three weeks, and Byron was very sorry for he rather liked him.' "'A devilish interesting story, indeed,' Wagg said. 'You should publish some of these stories. Captain Sumph, you really should,' .Sliandon said." — /'nidcniiis. /.■f Tf) HELENA FAUCIT. LADY MARTIN AND lO SIR THEODORE MARTIN, K.C.B. S)e^lcatc^ WITH OI.J) AKFKCTION AND KKMEMBRANCE Iitli May, i8f)2 Jmo(;p;n. " 'Mongst Friends" Cviiihrliiir, III. \ I. r; CONTENTS PACE ALFRED TENNYSON i JOHN RUSKIN . . 6i ROBERT AND ELIZABETH BARRETT DROWNING 127 LLUSTRATIONS PAGE Alfred Tennyson Frontispiece Tennyson's Birthplace, Somersby Rectory, Lincolnshire Mrs. Tennyson Tennyson's Children Clevedon Court .... The Meeting of the Severn and Wye Caerleon upon Usk .... Burleigh House, by Stamford Town Almesbury Isle of Wight " Maud" Farringford House, In the New Forest Tennyson Reading Farringford Beacon . The Oak Lawn, Aldworth The Edge of Blackdown, Showing Tennyson's Tennyson's Home at Aldworth, Surrey The Tennyson Coat of Arms Brantwood John Ruskin Looking from Brantwood Towards the Head of Lake The Turret Room — Ruskin's Bedroom Coniston — Old Hall and Old Man Entrance to Brantwood ■ Elizabeth Barrett Browning . Robert Browning .... Mrs. Browning's Tomb at Florence Mr. Milsand House Coniston 5 9 15 19 24 27 30 33 37 41 45 47 49 53 57 60 63 71 75 79 85 91 133 141 i5r 159 ALFRED TENNYSON b < ^^:^^ "// footfall there Suffices to upturn to the warm air Half germinating spices ; mere decaf Troduces richer life ; and dav by day New pollen on the I ih- petal grows, y^iid still more labyrinthine buds the rose.'' SORDELLO. I THERE is a place called Somersby in Lincolnshire, where an old white rectory stands on the slope of a hill, and the winding lanes are shadowed by tall ashes and elm-trees, and where two brooks meet at the bottom of the glebe field. It is a place far away from us in silence and in distance, lying upon the " ridged wolds." They bound the horizon of the rectory garden, whence they are to be seen flowing to meet the sky. I have never known Somersby, but I have often heard it described, and the pastoral country all about, and the quiet, scattered homes. One can picture the rectory to one's self with something of a monastic sweet- ness and quiet; an ancient Norman cross is standing in the church-yard, and perhaps there is still a sound in the air of the bleating of fiocks. It all comes before one as one reads the sketch of Tennyson's native place in the Homes and Haunts of the British Poets: the village not far from the fens, "in a pretty pastoral district of softly sloping hills and large ash-trees. . . . The little glen in the neighborhood is called by the old monkish name of Holywell." Lord Tenny- son sometimes speaks of this glen, which he remembers white with snow-drops in their season ; and who will not recall the exquisite invocation : "Come from the woods that belt the gray hill-side, The seven elms, the poplars four That stand beside my father's d(;or, 3 And chiefly from the brook that loves To purl o'er matted cress and ribbed sand, Or dimple in the dark of rushy coves. ... O ! hither lead thy feet ! Pour round mine ears the livelong beat Of the thick-fleeced sheep from wattled folds, Upon the ridged wolds." The wind that goes blowing where it listeth, once, in the early beginning of this century, came sweeping through the garden of this old Lincolnshire rectory, and, as the wind blew, a sturdy child of five years old with shining locks stood opening his arms upon the blast and letting himself be blown along, and as he travelled on he made his first line of poetry and said, " I hear a voice that's speaking in the wind,'" and he tossed his arms, and the gust whirled on, sweeping into the great abyss of winds. One might, perhaps, still trace in the noble, familiar face of our Poet Laureate the features of this child, one of many deep-eyed sons and daughters born in the quiet rectory among the elm-trees. Alfred Tennyson was born on the 6th of August, 1809. He has heard many and many a voice calling to him since the time when he listened to the wind as he played alone in his father's garden, or joined the other children at their games and jousts. They were a noble little clan of poets and of knights, coming of a knightly race, with castles' to defend, with mimic tournaments to fight. Somersby was so far away from the world, so behindhand in its echoes (which must have come there softened through all manner of green and tranquil things, and, as it were, hushed into pastoral silence), that though the early part of the century was stir- ring with the clang of legions, few of its rumors seem to have reached the children. They never heard at the time of the battle of Waterloo. They grew up together playing their own games, living their own life ; and where is such > c — c life to be found as that of a happy, eager family of boys and girls before Doubt, the steps of Time, the shocks of Chance, the blows of Death, have come to dim or shake their creed ? These handsome children had beyond most children that wondrous toy at their command which some people call imagination. The boys played great games like Arthur's knights ; they were champions and warriors defending 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. Perhaps as the day wore on they became romancers, leaving the jousts deserted. When dinner-time came, and they all sat round the table, each in turn put a chapter of his story underneath the potato-bowl — long, end- less stories, chapter after chapter diffuse, absorbing, unend- ing, as are the histories of real life ; some of these romances were in letters, like Clarissa Harlowe. Alfred used to tell a story which lasted for months, and which was called "The Old Horse." Alfred's first verses, so I once heard him say, were written upon a slate which his brother Charles put into his hand one Sunday at Louth, when all the elders of the party were go- ing into church, and the child was left alone. Charles gave him a subject — the flowers in the garden — and when he came back from church little Alfred brought the slate to his brother all covered with written lines of blank verse. They were made on the model of Thomson's Seasons, the only poetry he had ever read. One can picture it all to one's self : the flowers in the garden, the verses, the little poet with waiting eyes, and the young brother scanning the lines. "Yes, you can write," said Charles, and he gave Alfred back the slate. 7 1 have also heard another story of his grandfather, later on, asking him to write an elegy on his grandmother, who had recently died, and when it was written, putting ten shil- lings into his hands and saying, " There, that is the first money you have ever earned by your poetry, and, take my word for it, it will be the last." The Tennysons are a striking example of the theory of family inheritance. Alfred was one of twelve children, of whom the eldest, Frederick, who was educated at Eton, is known as the author of very imaginative poems. Charles was the second son, and Alfred was the third. Charles and little Alfred were sent for a few years to the Grammar School at Louth, where the Laureate was not happy, al- though he still remembers walking adorned with blue rib- bons in a procession for the proclamation of the corona- tion of George the Fourth. The old wives said at the time that the boys made the prettiest part of the show. Charles Tennyson — Charles Turner he was afterwards called, for he took the name with a property which he in- herited — was Alfred's special friend and brother. In his own most sweet degree, Charles Tenn3'son too was a true poet. Who that has ever read his sonnets will cease to love them ? His brother loves and quotes them with affection. Coleridge loved them ; James Spedding, wise critic, life-long friend, read them with unaltered delight from his youth to his much-honored age. In an introductory essay to a volume of the collected sonnets, published after Charles Turner's death, Mr. Spedding quotes the picture of a summer's day- break : " But one sole star, none other anywhere ; A wild-rose odour from the fields was borne ; The lark's mysterious joy filled earth and air, And from the wind's top met the hunter's horn ; The aspen trembled wildly; and the morn Breathed up in rosy clouds divinely fair." MRS. TENNYSON After the painting at Aldworth by G. I-. Watts, R.A. Charles Tennyson was in looks not unlike his younger brother. He was stately, too, though shorter in stature, gentle, spiritual, very noble, simple. I once saw him kneel- ing in a church, and only once again. He was like some- thing out of some other world, more holy, more silent than that in which most of us are living ; there is a picture in the National Gallery of St. Jerome which always recalls him to me. The sons must have inherited their poetic gifts from their father. He was the Rev. George Clayton Ten- nyson, LL.D., a tall, striking, and impressive man, full of accomplishments and parts, a strong nature, high-souled, high -tempered. He was tjie head of the old family; but his own elder-brother share of its good things had passed by will into the hands of another branch, which is still represented by the Tennysons d'Eyncourt. Perhaps be- fore he died he may have realized that to one of his had come possessions greater than any ever yet entailed by lawyer's deeds — an inheritance, a priceless Benjamin's por- tion, not to be measured or defined. n .Alfred Tennyson, as he grew up towards manhood, found other and stronger inspirations than Thomson's gen- tle Seasons. B3'ron's spell had fallen on his generation, and for a boy of genius it must have been absolute and overmas- tering. Tennyson was soon to find his own voice, but mean- while he began to write like Byron. He produced poems and verses in endless abundance : trying his wings, as peo- ple say, before starting on his own strong flight. One day the news came to the village— the dire news which spread across the land, filling men's hearts with consternation— that Byron was dead. Alfred was then a boy about fifteen. " Byron was dead ! I thought the whole world was at an end," he once said, speaking of these by-gone days. " I thought everything was over and finished for every one — that nothing else mattered. I remember I walked out alone, and carved ' Byron is dead' into the sandstone." I have spoken of Tennyson from the account of an old friend, whose recollections go back to those days, which seem perhaps more distant to us than others of earlier date and later fashion. Mrs. Tennyson, the mother of the family, so this same friend tells me, was a sweet and gentle and most imaginative woman , so kind-hearted that it had pass- ed into a proverb, and the wicked inhabitants of a neigh- boring village used to bring their dogs to her windows and beat them in order to be bribed to leave off by the gentle lady, or to make advantageous bargains by selling her the worthless curs. She was intensely, fervently religious, as a poet's mother should be. After her husband's death (he had added to the rectory, and made it suitable for his large family) she still lived on at Somersby with her children and their friends. The daughters were growing up, the elder sons were going to college. Frederick, the eldest, went first to Trinity, Cambridge, and his brothers followed him there in turn. Life was opening for them, they were seeing new aspects and places, making new friends, and bringing them home to their Lincolnshire rectory. In Alemoriavi gives many a glimpse of the old home, of which the echoes still reach us across half a century. "O sound to rout the brood of cares, The sweep of scythe in morning dew, The gust that round the garden flew, And tumbled half the mellowing pears ! O bliss, when all in circle drawn About him, heart and ear were fed To hear him, as he lay and read The Tuscan poets on the lawn : Or in the all-golden afternoon A guest, or happy sister, sung, Or here she brought the harp and flung A ballad to the brightening moon." Dean Garden was one of those guests here spoken of, who with Arthur Hallam, the reader of the Tuscan poets, and James Spedding and ©thers, used to gather upon the lawn at Somersby — the young men and women in the hght of their youth and high spirits, the widowed mother leading her quiet life within the rectory walls. Was it not a happy sister herself who in after-days once described how, on a lovely summer night, they had all sat up so late talking in the starlight that the dawn came shining unawares; but the young tnen, instead of going to bed, then and there set off for a long walk across the hills in the sunrise. "And suck'd from out the distant gloom A breeze began to tremble o'er The large leaves of the sycamore,* And fluctuate all the still perfume, And gathering freshlier overhead, Rock'd the full-foliaged elms, and swung The heavy-folded rose, and flung The lilies to and fro, and said 'The dawn, the dawn,' and died away; And East and West, without a breath, Mixt their dim lights, like life and death, 'i"o broaden into boundless day." * I am told that the sycamore has been cut down, and the lawn is altered to another shape. '3 Ill One thing which cannot fail to strike us when we are looking over the records of these earlier days is the remark- able influence which Alfred Tennyson seems to have had from the very first upon his contemporaries, even before his genius had been recognized by the rest of the world. Not only those of his own generation, but his elders and masters seem to have felt something of this. I remember hearing one of Tennyson's oldest friends, Dr. Thompson, the late Master of Trinity, say that " Whewell, who was a man him- self, and who knew a man when he saw him,'' used to pass over in Alfred Tennyson certain informalities and forget- fulness of combinations as to gowns, and places, and times, which in another he would never have overlooked. Whewell ruled a noble generation — a race of men born in the beginning of the century, whose praise and loyal friendship were indeed worth having, and whose good opin- ion Tennyson himself may have been proud to possess. Wise, sincere, and witty, these contemporaries spoke with au- thorit}', with the moderation of conscious strength. Those of this race that I have known in later days — for they were many of them my father's friends also — have all been men of unmistakable stamp, of great culture, of a certain digni- fied bearing, and of independence of mind and of nature. Most of them have succeeded in life as men do who are possessed of intellect and high character. Some have not made the less mark upon their time because their names are less widely known ; but each name is a memorable chapter Tn:N'N\'SfiN S CHII.DKEN After the painting at Alilworth l.y (.. 1-. Watts, R.A. in life to one and another of us who remember them. One of those old friends, who also loved my father, and whom he loved, who has himself passed away ; one who saw life with Ills own eyes, and spoke with his own words has de- scribed Tennyson in his youth, in a fragment which is a remembrance, a sort of waking dream, of some by-gone days and talks. How many of us might have been glad to listen to our poet, and to the poet who has made the philosophy of Omar Kha,yam known to the world, as they discoursed together ; of life, of boyish memories, of books, and again more books; of chivalry — mainly but another name for youth — of a possible old age, so thoroughly seasoned with its spirit that all the experience of the world should serve not to freeze but to direct the genial current of the soul ! and who that has known them both will not recognize the truth of this description of Alfred in early days ? " A man at all points, of grand proportion and feature, significant of that inward chivalry becoming his ancient and honorable race ; when himself a ' Yonge Squire,' like him in Chancer, ' of grete strength,' that could hurl the crowbar farther than any of the neighboring clowns, whose humors, as well as of their betters — knight, squire, landlord, and lieu- tenant — he took quiet note of, like Chaucer himself ; like Wordsworth on the mountain, he too when a lad abroad on the world, sometimes of a night with the shepherd, watching not only the flock on the greensward, but also ' the fleecy star that bears Andromeda far off Atlantic seas,' along with those other Zodiacal constellations which Aries, I think, leads over the field of heaven." Arthur Hallam has also written of him in some lines to R. J. 'Pennant of "a friend, a rare one, A noble being full of clearest insight, . . . whose fame Is couching now with jiantherized intent, As who shall say, I'll spring to him anon. And have him for my own." All these men could understand each other, although they had not then told the world their secrets. Poets, critics, men of learning — such names as Trench and Monckton Milnes, George Stovin Venables, the Lushingtons and Kinglake, need no comment ; many more there are, and deans and canons — a band of youthful friends in those days meeting to hold debate " on mind and art, And labor, and the changing mart, And all the framework of the land ; When one would aim an arrow fair. But send it slackly from the string ; And one would pierce an outer ring, And one an inner, Jjere and there ; And last the master-bowman, he. Would cleave the mark." The lines to J. S. were written to one of these earlier associates. "And gently comes tlie world to those That are cast in gentle mould." It was the prophecy of a whole lifetime. There were but few signs of age in James Spedding's looks, none in his charm- ing companionship, when the accident befell him which took him away from those who loved him. To another old com- panion, the Rev. W. H. Brookfield, is dedicated that sonnet which flows like an echo of Cambridge chimes on a Sabbath morning. B 17 IV It is in this sonnet to W. H. Brookfield that Tennyson writes of Arthur Hallam : " Him the lost light of those dawn- golden days." Arthur Hallam was the same age as my own father, and born in 1811. When he died he was but twenty-three; but he had lived long enough to show what his life might have been. In the preface to a little volume of his collected poems and essays, published some time after his death, there is a pathetic introduction. " He seemed to tread the earth as a spirit from some better world," writes his father; and a correspondent, who is, as I have been told, Arthur Hallam's and Tennyson's common friend, Mr. Gladstone, says, with deep feeling : "It has pleased God that in his death, as well as in his life and nature, he should be marked beyond ordinary men. 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 calculated by its native tendencies to work powerfully and for good, in an age full of import to the nature and destinies of man." How completely these words have been carried out must strike us all now. The father lived to see the young man's unconscious influence working through his friend's genius, and reaching whole generations unborn. A lad}-, speaking of Arthur Hallam after his death, said to Tennyson, "I think he was perfect." " And so he was," said Lord Tennyson. \]\ ^r-t::^^#f ill fSySr^^W^n "as near perfection as a mortal man can be." Arthur Hallam was a man of remarkable intellect. He could take in the most difficult and abstruse ideas with an extraordinary rapidity and insight. On one occasion he began to work one afternoon, and mastered a difficult book of Descartes at a single sitting. In the preface to the Alemorials Mr. Hallam speaks of this peculiar clearness of perception and facility for acquiring knowledge ; but, above all, the father dwells on his son's undeviating sweetness of disposition and ad- herence to his sense of what was right. In the Quarterlies and Reviews of the time, his opinion is quoted here and there with a respect which shows in what esteem it was already held. At the time when Arthur Hallam died he was engaged to be married to a sister of the poet's. She was scarcely seven- teen at the time. One of the sonnets addressed by Arthur Hallam to his betrothed was written when he began to teach her Italian : " 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, lii