Tennyson and His Friends Part 10

Thank old Alfred for his letter which was an unexpected pleasure. I like to hear of him and you once or twice in the year: but I know he is no dab at literature at any time, poor fellow. "Paltry Poet"--Let him believe it is anything but want of love for him that keeps me out of the Isle of Wight: nor is it indolence neither.--But to say _what it is_ would make me write too much about myself. Only let him believe what I _do_ say.

Their relations were always of this playful, intimate kind, resting on long acquaintance. If FitzGerald was amused by "Alfred," Tennyson, on the other hand, was well used to his old friend's humour. When we spoke about him, he dwelt, I recollect, on this particular trait, and told me, to ill.u.s.trate it, the story which is now, I think, pretty well known, how, when some common acquaintance had bored them with talking about his t.i.tled friends, "Old Fitz," as at last he took up his candle to go to bed, turned to Tennyson and said, quietly and quaintly, "I knew a Lord once, but he's dead."

When Tennyson spoke of _Omar_ he said, what he has said in verse, that he admired it greatly:

Than which I know no version done In English more divinely well; A planet equal to the sun Which cast it.

But of course he was aware that it was by no means always faithful to the original. It is indeed a liberal, rather than a literal translation--how liberal, all know who have been at the pains to compare FitzGerald's poem with any of the many literal versions to which it has given rise.

In quite the early Twickenham days, just after their marriage, he would invite himself to dine or stay with Tennyson and his wife, nay more, would ask to bring friends to see them, such as the Cowells and W. B. Donne. In 1854 he stayed at Farringford for a fortnight, a visit he always remembered, and often referred to, with pleasure. Together he and Tennyson worked at Persian. He also sketched, and botanized with the Poet. But he could not be got to repeat the visit; and indeed, as he said himself, it was the last of the kind he paid anywhere, except to Mrs. Kemble. When he reached London, just after this visit, he wrote to Tennyson:

60 LINCOLN'S INN FIELDS, _June 15th, 1854_.

MY DEAR ALFRED--I called at Quaritch's to look for another Persian Dictionary. I see he has a copy of Eastwick's Gulistan for _ten s.h.i.+llings_: a translation (not Eastwick's, however, but one quite sufficient for the purpose) can be had for five s.h.i.+llings. Would you like me to buy them and send them down to you by the next friend who travels your way: or will you wait till some good day I can lend you _my_ Eastwick (which is now at Oxford)? I could mark some of the pieces which I think it might not offend you to read: though you will not care greatly for anything in it.

Oh, such an atmosphere as I am writing in!--Yours,

E. F. G.

I left my little Swedenborg at Farringford. Please keep it for me, as it was a gift from my sister.

The note of the letters is always the same--warm affection, deep underlying admiration and regard, superficial banter and play of humour, and humorous, half-grumbling criticism. When they met face to face, after being parted for twenty years, they fell at once into exactly the old vein. FitzGerald was surprised at this, but he need not have been. Both were the sincerest and most natural of men, and nothing but distance and absence had occurred to sever them.

From the first he had conceived an intense and almost humble-minded admiration for Alfred. One of his earliest utterances describes his feelings, and strikes, with his keen critical perception, the true note.

"I will say no more of Tennyson," he wrote, "than that the more I have seen 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 over-shadowing of a so much more lofty intellect than my own--_I could not be mistaken in the universality of his mind_."

His descriptions in _Euphranor_, published some sixteen years later, of "the only living and like to live poet he had known," tell the same tale.

They speak of Tennyson's union of pa.s.sion and strength. "As King Arthur shall bear witness, no young Edwin he, though as a great Poet comprehending all the softer stops of human Emotion in that Register where the Intellectual, no less than what is called the Poetical, faculty predominated. As all who knew him know, a Man at all points, Euphranor--like your Digby, of grand proportion and feature...."

There was no one for whose opinion he had so much regard, grumble though he might, and criticize as he would. He had a special preference for the poems at whose production he had a.s.sisted, which he had seen in MS., or heard rehea.r.s.ed orally. Toward the later poems his feeling was not the same. The following extracts are all equally characteristic:

MARKETHILL, WOODBRIDGE, _November 20th, 1861_.

MY DEAR OLD ALFRED--It gives me a strange glow of pleasure when I come upon your verses, as I now do in every other book I take up, with no name of author, as every other person knows whose they are. I love to light on the verses for their own sake, and to remember having heard nearly all I care for--and what a lot that is!--from your own lips.

MARKETHILL, WOODBRIDGE, _December 14th, 1862_.

MY DEAR OLD ALFRED--Christmas coming reminds me of my half-yearly call on you.

I have, as usual, nothing to tell of myself: boating all the summer and reading Clarissa Harlowe since. You and I used to talk of the Book more than twenty years ago. I believe I am better read in it than almost any one in existence now--No wonder: for it is almost intolerably tedious and absurd--But I can't read the "Adam Bedes,"

"Daisy Chains," etc., at all. I look at my row of Sir Walter Scott and think with comfort that I can always go to him of a winter evening, when no other book comes to hand.

_To Frederick Tennyson._

_November 15th, 1874._

I wrote my yearly letter to Mrs. Alfred a fortnight ago, I think; but as yet have had no answer. Some Newspaper people make fun of a Poem of Alfred's, the "Voice and the Peak," I think: giving morsels of which of course one could not judge. But I think he had better have done singing: he has sung well--_tempus silere_, etc.

But his love for the man and his underlying belief in his opinion and genius never varied. "I don't think of you so little, my dear old Alfred,"

he wrote one day in the middle of their friends.h.i.+p, "but rejoice in the old poems and in yourself, young or old, and wors.h.i.+p you (I may say) as I do no other man, and am glad I can wors.h.i.+p one man still."

His delight when he found that Alfred had really liked _Omar_ was unusually _naf_ and keen. He forgot his grumbling, and wrote to Mrs.

Tennyson:

_To Mrs. Tennyson._

_November 4/67._

To think of Alfred's approving my old Omar! I never should have thought he even knew of it. Certainly _I_ should never have sent it to him, always supposing that he would not approve anything but a literal Prose translation--unless from such hands as can do original work and therefore do _not_ translate other People's! Well: now I have got Nicolas and sent a copy to Cowell, and when he is at liberty again we shall beat up old Omar's Quarters once more.

I'll tell you a very pretty Book. Alfred Tennyson's Pastoral Poems, or rather Rural Idylls (only I must hate the latter word) bound up in a volume, Gardener's, Miller's, Daughters; Oak; Dora; Audley Court, etc.

Oh the dear old 1842 days and editions! Spedding thinks I've shut up my mind since. Not to "Maud, Maud, Maud, Maud." When I ask People what Bird says that of an evening, they say "The Thrush."

I wish you would make one of your Boys write out the "Property" Farmer Idyll. Do now, pray.

E. F. G.

When he had first "discovered" Omar, and was beginning to work upon him, Tennyson (who was then finis.h.i.+ng the early "Idylls of the King") had been one of the first to whom he wrote. It is worth remembering that FitzGerald was then in deep depression. It was the middle of the sad period of his brief, unhappy married life. This had proved a failure in London. It was proving a failure now in the country. He wrote:

GORLESTONE, GREAT YARMOUTH, _July 1857_.

MY DEAR OLD ALFRED--Please direct the enclosed to Frederick. I wrote him some months ago getting Parker to direct; but have had no reply.

_You_ won't write to me, at which I can't wonder. I keep hoping for King Arthur--or part of him. I have got here to the seaside--a dirty, Dutch-looking sea, with a dusty Country in the rear; but the place is not amiss for one's Yellow Leaf. I keep on reading foolish Persian too: chiefly because of it's connecting me with the Cowells, now besieged in Calcutta. But also I have really got hold of an old Epicurean so desperately impious in his recommendations to live only for _To-day_ that the good Mahometans have scarce dared to multiply MSS. of him. He writes in little quatrains, and has scarce any of the iteration and conceits to which his people are given. One of the last things I remember of him is that--"G.o.d gave me this turn for drink, perhaps G.o.d was drunk when he made me"--which is not strictly pious.

But he is very tender about his roses and wine, and making the most of this poor little life.

All which is very poor stuff you will say. Please to remember me to the Lady. I don't know when I shall ever see you again; and yet you can't think how often I wish to do so, and never forget you, and never shall, my dear old Alfred, in spite of Epicurus. But I don't grow merrier.--Yours ever,

E. F. G.

In 1872 he was busy with the _third_ edition of _Omar_, and wrote to consult Tennyson. The first edition had contained only seventy-five quatrains. The second was a good deal longer, containing one hundred and ten. The third was again shortened to one hundred and one:

WOODBRIDGE, _March 25th, 1872_.

MY DEAR ALFRED--It would be impertinent in me to trouble you with a question about _my_ grand Works. But, as you let me know (through Mrs.

T.) that you liked Omar, I want to know whether you read the _First_ or _Second_ Edition; and, in case you saw _both, which you thought best_? The reason of my asking you is that Quaritch (Publisher) has found admirers in America who have almost bought up the whole of the last enormous Edition--amounting to 200 copies, I think--so he wishes to embark on 200 more, I suppose: and says that he, and his Readers, like the first Edition best: so he would reprint these.

Of course _I_ thought the second best: and I think so still: partly (I fear) because the greater number of verses gave more time for the day to pa.s.s from morning till night.

Well, what I ask you to do is, to tell me which of the two is best, if you have seen the two. If you have _not_, I won't ask you further:--if you have, you can answer in two words. And your words would be more than all the rest.

This very little business is all I have eyes for now; except to write myself once more ever your's and Mrs. Tennyson's,

E. F. G.

Another letter a little later refers to the same reprinting of _Omar_: