Tennyson and His Friends Part 24

You have asked me to put on paper some recollections of the many happy visits which it was my good fortune to pay to Farringford and Aldworth between 1860 and 1890. I wish that I could respond to this kind request more worthily; but the truth is, that, though I have always counted those visits among the happiest events of my life, and though my memory of the general impression left upon me on each occasion is perfectly clear, it is not clear, but on the contrary most confused and hazy, as to any particular incidents.

Speaking first generally in the way of preface, I may say that it would be difficult to exaggerate the hero-wors.h.i.+p with which I regarded the great Poet, ever since I was a boy. Before I went up to Trinity in 1851, he had been the delight of my friends and myself at Harrow. And further, through members of the Rawnsley family, I had heard much of his early days when the Tennysons lived at Somersby.

During my life at Trinity, from 1851 to 1855, and then, with long intervals of absence, till the end of 1859, Coleridge and Wordsworth and Tennyson, but especially Tennyson, were the three poets of the nineteenth century who mainly commanded the reverence and stirred the enthusiasm of the College friends with whom I lived. Robert Browning became a power among them almost immediately after, but by that time I had gone back to Harrow. Matthew Arnold and Clough and Kingsley also attracted us greatly in their several ways, and of course Sh.e.l.ley and Keats, but Tennyson was beyond a doubt our chief luminary. "In Memoriam" in particular, followed by "Maud" and the first four "Idylls of the King," was constantly on our lips, and, I may truly say, in our hearts, in those happy hours.

It was with these feelings, then, and these prepossessions that I was prepared to make the acquaintance of the great Poet, should such an honour ever be granted me. It came first, to the best of my recollection, when my late brother-in-law, Francis Galton, and I were taking one of our delightful walking trips or tramps in the Easter holidays. Galton used to plan everything--district, hours, stopping-places, length of each day's march. One Easter--I forget which, but it must have been about 1859--was devoted to the New Forest. From there we crossed over to the Isle of Wight; and after visiting Shanklin and Bonchurch, we walked round to Freshwater. To leave Freshwater without paying our homage to the Poet at Farringford was impossible. Whether we had any definite introduction to him, I cannot now remember, but we had reason to think that we should be kindly received. My brother Arthur had lately been paying more than one visit to that part of the Island, and had keenly enjoyed several long walks with him. His report of these was not lost upon me.

Galton had known intimately some of Tennyson's friends, such as Sumner Maine, W. G. Clark, Franklin Lus.h.i.+ngton, and specially "Harry" Hallam, younger brother of Arthur. He was, I think, as full of hero-wors.h.i.+p for the Poet as I was myself. The fame which he has since won in connexion with Science may make it difficult, even for his later friends, to understand the pa.s.sion--I can use no weaker word--which he then cherished for some branches of imaginative literature, in particular for Chaucer, Shakespeare, Milton, Keats, and for at least three of Kingsley's novels, _Alton Locke_, _Yeast_, and _Westward Ho!_ These we used in the course of our Easter rambles to read out in the open air after an _al-fresco_ lunch.

Tennyson's works were all very familiar to Galton. He had known them at Cambridge as each came out, and had discussed them eagerly with admiring friends, some of them first-rate critics. He delighted not only in the subtlety and elevation and freedom of the thoughts, but also in the beauty and perfection and melody of the expression.

We went, as I have said, to call on the Poet. We went together with rather beating hearts. He received us cordially as Trinity men, but unfortunately I can remember no detail of any kind. I am not sure whether we were even introduced to Mrs. Tennyson. All I remember is that we left the house happy and exhilarated.

But my real acquaintance with the Tennyson family dates from the end of 1861 and the early days of 1862. My first marriage had been on December 19, 1861, and a few days afterwards we came to Freshwater, and stayed at the hotel close to the sea, where Dr. and Mrs. Vaughan had sometimes stayed during his Harrow Masters.h.i.+p. It was then that we first met the Granville Bradleys, destined to be our dear friends for life, and it was in their company that we soon found ourselves most kindly welcomed guests at Farringford.

The two first incidents that I remember were the Poet showing us the proof of his "Dedication of the Idylls," and, at our request, reading out to us "Enoch Arden." The "Dedication" must have been composed almost immediately after the death of the Prince Consort on December 14. He seemed himself pleased with it. I thought at the time, and I have felt ever since, that these lines rank high, not only among his other tributes of the same kind, but in the literature of epitaphs generally. We felt it a proud privilege to be allowed to stand at his side as he looked over the proof just arrived by the post, and it led us of course to talk sympathetically of the late Prince and the poor widowed Queen.

Very soon after, the Bradleys and we dined at Farringford. The dinner hour was, I think, as early as six, and then, after he had retreated to his _sanctum_ for a smoke, he would come down to the drawing-room, and read aloud to his guests. On this occasion he read to us "Enoch Arden," then only in ma.n.u.script. I had before heard much of his peculiar manner of reading, with its deep and often monotonous tones, varied with a sudden lift of the voice as if into the air, at the end of a sentence or a clause. It was, as always, a reading open to criticism on the score of lack of variety, but my dear bride and I were in no mood to criticize. The spell was upon us. Every note of his magnificent voice spoke of majesty or tenderness or awe. It was, in plain words, a prodigious treat to have heard him. We walked back through the winter darkness to our hotel, conscious of having enjoyed a unique privilege.

During this vacation I had, as often in after years, not a few walks with him on the downs, leaving the Beacon on the left and going on to the Needles. It was a walk of about two hours. It is here that my memory so sadly fails me as to his talk. In tone it was friendly, manly, and perfectly simple, without a touch of condescension. He seemed quite unconscious that he was a great man, one of the first Englishmen of his time, talking to one young and utterly obscure. Almost any subject interested him, grave or gay. He would often talk of metres, Greek and Latin; of attempts to translate Homer; of the weak points in the English hexameter; or again of more serious topics, on which he had thought much and felt strongly, such as the life after death, the so-called "Eternity of Future Punishment," the unreality of the world as known to the senses, the grander Human Race, the "crowning race," still to be born.

Occasionally, not very often in these days, he would speak of his own poems. Once, I remember, a few days after an examination of the sixth form at Harrow, I told him that we had set for Greek Iambics the fine pa.s.sage in "Elaine," where Lancelot says to Lavaine:

... in me there dwells No greatness, save it be some far-off touch Of greatness to know well I am not great.

_There_ is the man,

pointing to King Arthur. "Yes," he said in substance, "when I wrote that, I was thinking of Wordsworth and myself."

I noticed that he never spoke of Wordsworth without marked reverence.

Obviously, with his exquisite ear for choice words and rhythm, he must have been more sensitive than most men to the prosaic, bathetic side of Wordsworth; but I never heard him say a word implying that he felt this, whereas I _have_ heard him qualify his admiration for Robert Browning's genius and his affection for his person by some allusion to the roughness of his style. This, he thought, must lead to his being less read than he deserved in years to come, and he evidently regretted it.

It was in the period, roughly speaking, between 1862 and 1880 that I saw most of him, for it was then our habit to make frequent visits to Freshwater or Alum Bay, generally at Christmas, and we were always received with the same cordial kindness. It was then that the long walks and the readings of his poetry after dinner continued as a kind of inst.i.tution, and never palled. Among the poems that he read out to us were "Aylmer's Field," the "Ode on the Death of the Duke of Wellington," parts of "Maud," "Guinevere," "The Holy Grail," "The Charge of the Light Brigade," "The Revenge," "The Defence of Lucknow," "In the Valley of Cauteretz." With regard to this beautiful poem I cannot help recalling an amusing and most unexpected laugh. He had read the third and fourth lines in his most sonorous tones:

All along the valley, where thy waters flow, I walked with one I loved two and thirty years ago;

and then suddenly, changing his voice, he said gruffly, "A brute of a ----has discovered that it was thirty-one years and not thirty-two.

Two-and-thirty is better than one-and-thirty years ago, isn't it? But perhaps I ought to alter it."

It was at this time that we used often to meet Mr. Jowett and also the Poet's great friend and admirer, the gifted Mrs. Cameron and her dignified and gray-bearded husband, who looked like a grand Oriental Chief.

One trifling incident occurs to me as I write, the Poet's remarkable skill at battledore. One duel with him in particular comes back to my mind, in which I found it hard to hold my own. He was a very hard hitter. He did not care merely to "keep up" long scores. He liked each bout to be a trial of strength, and to aim the shuttlec.o.c.k where it would be difficult for his opponent to deal with it. In spite of his being short-sighted he played a first-rate game. With the exception of my brother Arthur, I never came upon so formidable an antagonist.

But I must leave these earlier years, of which I cannot find any written record, and pa.s.s on to the end of 1886, when, nearly four years after the death of my dear wife and a year and a half after my leaving Harrow, I was, to my great surprise, appointed Master of Trinity.

On December 3 I was installed, and on December 13 I was invited to Farringford, with the prospect of returning on the 16th to Davos Platz, where I had left my invalid daughter. Of this short visit I find I have made a few notes. The Poet was as cordial as ever. After dinner he took me to his _sanctum_, and read me his new Jubilee Ode in Catullian metre, and then "Locksley Hall Sixty Years After." Next morning there came a letter from Dr. W. H. Thompson's executor containing an early poem of Tennyson's of 1826, and a Sonnet, once famous, complaining of defects in the College system of his day:

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.

About eleven o'clock the Poet took me out alone. We went first to Freshwater Gate, where he said the "maddened scream of the sea" in "Maud"

had been first suggested to him. He talked of our late friend, Philip Stanhope Worsley, the translator of the _Odyssey_ and half of the _Iliad_, who was living there a good many years ago, and whom I had met at his table. He admired him much. He talked also, but I forget to what effect, of "The Holy Grail" and the old Arthur myth, but before this we talked of the Cambridge Sonnet just mentioned. "There was no _love_," he said, "in the system." I understood him to mean that the dons, as a rule, were out of sympathy with the young men. He spoke also of the bullying he had undergone at his first school; how, when he was a new boy of only seven and a half, he was sitting on the school steps crying and homesick. Up came a big fellow, between seventeen and eighteen, and asked him roughly who he was and what he was crying for, and then gave him a kick in the wind! This experience had evidently rankled in his mind for more than seventy years. Again, in April 1890, he told me the same story.

But to return to our morning walk of December 14, 1886. Something led me to speak of my favourite lines:

The old order changeth, yielding place to new, And G.o.d fulfils Himself in many ways, Lest one good custom should corrupt the world.

Spedding, it seems, and others had wanted him to alter the "one _good_ custom." "I was thinking" he said, "of knighthood." He went on to speak of his "Experiments in Quant.i.ty," and in particular of the Alcaic Ode to Milton, beginning:

O mighty-mouth'd inventor of harmonies.

"I thought _that_," he said, "a bit of a _tour de force_," and surely he was right there. He tilted a little at C. S. Calverley for demurring to

G.o.d-gifted organ-voice of England.

"I didn't mean it to be like your

'September, October, November';

I was imitating, not Horace, but the original Greek Alcaic, though Horace's is perhaps the finest metre." The two Latin metres which I have more than once heard him admire were the Hexameter and the Alcaic.

I find that in my Journal I wrote as regards this walk: "I wish I could remember more. He was wholly _facilis_, and I never felt less afraid of him or more reverent." Perhaps I should add that during the walk he told me an extraordinary number of ghost stories--a man appearing to several people, and then vanis.h.i.+ng before their eyes.

After dinner that evening we went to his _sanctum_ to hear him read the last Act of the "Promise of May." "Well, isn't that tragic?" he navely asked at one point, I think where Eva falls down dead.

Next morning, I had to leave quite early for London. He just appeared at the top of the stairs, and offered to come down to say good-bye, but I would not let him. "I can remember little more of this delightful visit,"

so I wrote at the time. "He was full, as usual, of the public lies, and the necessity of England being strong at sea."

I did not see him again till after my second marriage, which took place on August 9, 1888. We paid a flying visit to Lambert's Hotel, Freshwater, in April 1889. Of this I have made only the scantiest record. Something led us to speak of the famous line in the chorus of the _Agamemnon_:

[Greek: ommaton en acheniais.]

"So modern," he remarked. He also spoke of the pathos of Euripides, and of the grandeur of the "Pa.s.sing of Oedipus" in the _Oedipus Coloneus_, and _Theseus_

[Greek: cheir' antechonta kratos.]

He referred again to lack of sympathy in his time between dons and undergraduates. This seemed to be a memory often present to his mind.

Our next visit was in March 1890, when, with my wife's sister, we stayed at Lambert's Hotel. On Friday, March 28, we went to tea at Farringford, and found him in his little sun-trap of a summer-house, the evening sun playing full upon us, and bringing into perfect beauty the green lawn, the spreading trees, and the clumps of daffodils. He began by speaking of himself as depressed, but soon smiled away all such symptoms, and made us laugh with a story of the Duke of Wellington, when some prosy personage addressed him with a flattering compliment. He always seemed to enjoy anecdotes of the Great Duke. He was wearing a red cap which, in the sunlight, became him well; but he said playfully that Lady Tennyson disliked it as too suggestive of a "bonnet rouge." Something, I forget what, led to a reference to the well-known verse:

Birds in the high Hall-garden When twilight was falling, Maud, Maud, Maud, Maud, They were crying and calling.

He once asked a rather gus.h.i.+ng lady what sort of birds she supposed these to be. "Nightingales," was the rather sentimental answer. "Who ever heard a nightingale say 'Maud'?" was the somewhat stern reply. "They were rooks of course."

My wife mentioned that she and her sister had been reading the "Idylls" of late. "Do you mean _my_ Idylls," he said; "I am glad you don't call them Idylls." We soon got talking of his recently published "Crossing the Bar." When asked what was the precise grammatical reference in the third line of the verse:

But such a tide as moving seems asleep, Too full for sound and foam, _When that which drew from out the boundless deep_ Turns again home,

he answered rather emphatically, "I meant _both_ human life[61] _and_ the water." He went on, "They say I write so slowly. Well, that poem came to me in five minutes. Anyhow, under ten minutes." Afterwards, when I had some quiet talk with Lady Tennyson, she confirmed what he had implied as to the rapidity with which he usually composed.