Tennyson and His Friends Part 11

MY DEAR ALFRED--I must thank you, as I ought, for your second note.

The best return I can make is _not_ to listen to Mrs. Tennyson's P.S., which bids me send another Omar:--for I have only got Omar the Second, I am sure now _you_ would not like him so well as the first (mainly because of "too much"). I think he might disgust you with both.

So though two lines from you would have done more to decide on his third appearance (if Quaritch still wishes that), I will not put you to that trouble, but do as I can alone--cutting out some, and retaining some; and will send you the result if it comes into type.

You used to talk of my crotchets: but I am quite sure you have one little crotchet about this Omar: which deserves well in its way, but not so well as you write of it. You know that though I do not think it worth while to compete with you in your paltry poetical capacity, I won't surrender in the critical, not always, at least. And, at any rate, I have been more behind the scenes in this little matter than you. But I do not the less feel your kindness in writing about it: for I think you would generally give 100 sooner than write a letter. And I am--Yours ever,

E. F. G.

The next year, in 1873, he wrote again, touching on the same theme and others:

DEAR MRS. TENNYSON--I remember Franklin Lus.h.i.+ngton perfectly--at Farringford in 1854; almost the last visit I paid anywhere: and as pleasant as any, after, or before. I have still some sketches I made of the place: "Maud, Maud, Maud," etc., was then read to me, and has rung in my ears ever after. Mr. Lus.h.i.+ngton, I remember, sketched also.

If he be with you still, please tell him that I hope his remembrance of me is as pleasant as mine of him.

I think I told you that Frederick came here in August, having (of course) missed you on his way. The Mistress of Trinity wrote to me some little while ago, telling me, among other things, that she, and others, were much pleased with your son Hallam, whom they thought to be like the "Paltry Poet" (poor fellow).

The Paltry one's Portrait is put in a frame and hung up at my _chateau_, where I talk to it sometimes, and every one likes to see it. It is clumsy enough, to be sure; but it still recalls the old man to me better than the bearded portraits[18] which are now the fas.h.i.+on.

But oughtn't your Hallam to have it over his mantelpiece at Trinity?

The first volume of Forster's d.i.c.kens has been read to me of a night, making me love him, up to 30 years of age at any rate; till then, quite unspoilt, even by his American triumphs, and full of good humour, generosity, and energy. I wonder if Alfred remembers dining at his house with Thackeray and me, me taken there, quite unaffected, and seeming to wish any one to show off rather than himself. In the evening we had a round game at cards and mulled claret. Does A. T.

remember?

I have had my yearly letter from Carlyle, who writes of himself as better than last year. He sends me a Mormon Newspaper, with a very sensible sermon in it from the life of Brigham Young, as also the account of a visit to a gentleman of Utah with eleven wives and near forty children, all of whom were very happy together. I am just going to send the paper to Archdeacon Allen to show him how they manage these things over the Atlantic.

About Omar I must say that _all_ the changes made in the last copy are not to be attributed to my own perverseness; the same thought being constantly repeated with directions, whether by Omar or others, in the 500 quatrains going under his name. I had not eyes, nor indeed any further appet.i.te, to refer to the Original, or even to the French Translation; but altered about the "Dawn of Nothing" as A. T. pointed out its likeness to his better property.[19] I really didn't, and don't, think it matters what changes are made in that Immortal Work which is to last about five years longer. I believe it is the strong-minded American ladies who have chiefly taken it up; but they will soon have something wickeder to digest, I dare say.

I am going to write out for Alfred a few lines from a _Finnish_ Poem which I find quoted in Lowell's "Among my Books"--which I think a good Book. But I must let my eyes rest now.

In September 1876 a lucky chance brought Tennyson and himself face to face again after twenty years. The Poet was travelling with his son, and together they visited him at Woodbridge. They found him, as Tennyson describes, in his garden at Little Grange. He was delighted to see them, and specially pleased with the son's relation and att.i.tude to his father.

Together he and Tennyson walked about the garden and talked as of old.

When Tennyson complained of the mult.i.tude of poems which were sent him, Old Fitz recommended him to imitate Charles Lamb and throw them into his neighbour's cuc.u.mber frames. Tennyson noticed a number of small sunflowers, with a bee half-dying--probably from the wet season--on each, "Like warriors dying on their s.h.i.+elds, Fitz," he said. He reverted, of course, to his favourite Crabbe, and told the story of how Crabbe (when he was a chaplain in the country) felt an irresistible longing to see the sea, mounted a horse suddenly, rode thirty miles to the coast, saw it, and rode back comforted.

FitzGerald did not compliment them on their looks, because, he said, he had always noticed men said, "How well you are looking!" whenever you were going to be very ill. Therefore he had ceased saying it to any one. He told, too, a story of a vision, how he had one day clearly seen from outside his sister and her children having tea round the table in his dining-room. He then saw his sister quietly withdraw from the room, so as not to disturb the children. At that moment she died in Norfolk.[20]

He wrote shortly after this visit to Tennyson:

LITTLE GRANGE, WOODBRIDGE, _October 31st, 1876_.

MY DEAR ALFRED--I am reading delightful Boccacio through once more, escaping to it from the Eastern Question as the company he tells of from the Plague. I thought of you yesterday when I came to the Theodore and Honoria story, and read of Teodoro "_un mezzo meglio per la pineta entrato_"--"More than a Mile immersed within the wood," as you used to quote from Glorious John. This Decameron must be read in its Italian, as my Don in his Spanish: the language fits either so exactly. I am thinking of trying Faust in German, with Hayward's Prose Translation. I never could take to it in any Shape yet: and--_don't believe_ in it: which I suppose is a piece of Impudence.

But neither this, nor _The Question_ are you called on to answer--much use if I did call. But I am--always yours,

E. F. G.

When I thought of you and Boccacio, I was sitting in the Sun on that same Iron Seat with the pigeons about us, and the Trees still in Leaf.

One of the poems after 1842 which he liked was the "Ode on the Duke of Wellington," though characteristically he made a somewhat fastidious criticism on the "vocalization" of the opening.

"I mumble over your old verses in my memory as often as any one's," he wrote, "and was lately wis.h.i.+ng you had found bigger vowels for the otherwise fine opening of the Duke's Funeral:

'Twas at the Royal Feast for Persia won, etc.

(Dryden.)

Bury the great Duke, etc.

(A. T.)

So you see I am always the same crotchetty

FITZ."

The paradox is that it was FitzGerald who was always urging "Alfred" to go on, and finding fault with him for not doing more, and not singing in grander, sterner strains,--not becoming the Tyrtaeus of his country. In truth, Tennyson's strength and physical force and his splendid appearance in youth, added to his mental grandeur, seem to have deeply impressed his youthful contemporaries. He was, they felt, heroic, and made for heroic songs and deeds. When he did go on, in his own way, FitzGerald did not like it, or only half liked it. For Tennyson did go forward on his own lines. He had not a little to daunt and deter him. He, too, had his sensitiveness and capacity for feeling and pa.s.sion not less exquisite than FitzGerald's own. FitzGerald said his friends.h.i.+ps were more like loves. He was not alone in this att.i.tude. "What _pa.s.sions_ our friends.h.i.+ps were,"

wrote Thackeray, another of the set, the early friend of both FitzGerald and Tennyson. But of no friends.h.i.+p could such language be used more truly than of that which existed between Tennyson and Arthur Hallam. When, however, the sundering blow fell, and the friends.h.i.+p which was a love lay shattered, Tennyson braced himself and went on. For

It becomes no man to nurse despair, But in the teeth of clench'd antagonisms To follow up the worthiest till he die.

His faith, even to the last, was still at times dashed with doubt, for, with "the universality of his mind," he could not help seeing many sides of a question. But he "followed the Gleam," as he has himself described.

FitzGerald did the opposite. He drifted, he dallied, he delayed, he despaired. He ruined his own life in great measure by his marriage. His early ambitions seemed to wither prematurely, and he let his career slide.

Yet he was always, as Mr. A. C. Benson has excellently brought out, admirable in his sincerity, his friendly kindliness, his innocence, his conscientious adherence to his literary standards. Too much has been made of his unconventionality, his slovenliness and slackness, his love of low or common company. He remained a gentleman and a man of business.

Thackeray, a man of the world, when he was starting for America, wanted to leave him the legal guardian of his daughters. He was an Epicurean, not a Pyrrhonist. He took life seriously. He showed at times an austerity of spirit which was surprising. His _Omar_ has often, and naturally, been compared to Lucretius and to Ecclesiastes. There is probably more of Lucretius about the poem, but more of Ecclesiastes about the translator.

There is another Epicurean, with whose tenets he might have been thought to show even more sympathy--the easy-going poet-critic Horace. _Vitae summa brevis spem nos vetat incohare longam_ is the constant burden of FitzGerald's strain. His friends.h.i.+p, early formed, with Tennyson, the contrast of their divergent views, might be compared with the friends.h.i.+p of Horace and Virgil. For Virgil, too, began as an Epicurean. But FitzGerald was not content with Horace. "Why is it," he wrote, "that I can never take up with Horace, so sensible, agreeable, elegant, and sometimes even grand?" It was, perhaps, just that masculine and worldly element that put him off. Yet he not seldom quotes Horace, and perhaps liked him better than he knew. "_Naturam expellas furca, tamen usque recurret_," he wrote in a copy of Polonius which he gave to a special friend, and Nature was what he was always seeking in poetry. Still he preferred Virgil, just as he really preferred Tennyson.

Though he was destined to produce a poem which bids as fair for immortality as any of its time, he did not think highly of his own powers as a poet. But he did plume himself on being a critic. "I pretend to no Genius," he said, "but to Taste, which according to my aphorism is the feminine of Genius." This was another gift in common. Tennyson was himself a consummate critic, as FitzGerald was the first to recognize.

FitzGerald had his limitations and his prejudices--his "crotchets." He did not like many even of those whom the world has agreed to admire. He did not like Euripides or even Homer. With Goethe's poems he could not get on.

He eschewed Victor Hugo. He liked, indeed, very little of the prose and none of the poetry of his contemporaries, except that of the Tennysons. He could not away with Browning. Arnold, he wrote down "a pedant." He thought very little of Rossetti and Swinburne, though the former, especially, was a great admirer not only of _Omar_ but of _Jami_ and some of the Spanish translations. He tried to read Morris's _Jason_, but said, "No go." He "could not read the _Adam Bedes_ and the _Daisy Chains_." All this must be remembered when we read his criticism of Tennyson's later work which belonged to the period of these writers and their productions. But within certain limits he was a very fine critic. It cannot be said of him as of his special favourite among Greek poets, Sophocles, that

He saw life steadily and saw it whole.

As he was aware himself, he by no means saw it whole. But with his detachment and his critical gift, it may, perhaps, be said:

He saw life lazily, but saw it plain.

To the question of Browning's merits, or want of merits, he is always returning. A very characteristic letter is a long, discursive one, written to Tennyson himself in 1867:

MARKETHILL, WOODBRIDGE, _November 3rd, 1867_.

MY DEAR OLD ALFRED--I abuse Browning myself; and get others to abuse him; and write to you about it; for the sake of easing my own heart--not yours. Why is it (as I asked Mrs. Tennyson) that, while the Magazine critics are belauding him, _not one_ of the men I know, who are not inferior to the writers in the Athenaeum, Edinburgh, etc., can _endure_, and (for the most part) can read him at all? I mean his last poem. Thus it has been with the Cowells, Trinity Thompsons, Donnes, and some others whom you don't know, but in whose candour and judgment I have equal confidence, men and women too.

Since I wrote to your wife, Pollock, a great friend of Browning's, writes to me. "I agree with you about Browning and A. T. I can't understand it. _Ter conatus eram_ to get through the Ring and the Book--and failing to perform the feat in its totality, I have stooped to the humiliation to point out extracts for me (they having read it _all quite through_ three times) and still could not do it. So I pretend to have read it, and let Browning so suppose when I talk to him about it. But don't you be afraid"? (N.B. I am _not_, only angry) "things will come round, and A. T. will take his right place again, and R. B. will have all the honours due to his learning, wit and philosophy."

Then I had the curiosity to ask Carlyle in my yearly letter to him. He also is, or was, a friend of B.'s, and used to say that he looked on him as a sort of light-cavalry man to follow you. Well, Carlyle writes, "Browning's book I read--_insisted_ on reading: it is full of talent, of energy, and effort, but totally without _backbone_, or basis of common sense. I think among the absurdest books ever written by a gifted man." (Italics are his.)

Who, then, are the people that write the nonsense in the Reviews? I believe the reason at the bottom is that R. B. is a clever London diner-out, etc., while A. T. holds aloof from the newspaper men, etc.

"Long life to him!" But I don't understand why Venables, or some of the men who think as I do, and wield trenchant pens in high places, why they don't come out, and set all this right. I only wish I could do it: but I can only see the right thing, but not prove it to others.

"I do not like you, Dr. Fell," etc.