Tennyson and His Friends Part 3

It was from Gunby that Algernon Ma.s.singberd disappeared, going to America and never being heard of again, which gave rise to a romance in "Novel"

form, that came out many years later called _The Lost Sir Ma.s.singberd_.

Going on eastward still, by Boothby, where Dr. Tennyson's friends the Walls family lived, in a house to which you drove up across the gra.s.s pasture, the sheep grazing right up to the front door, a thing still common in the Lincolns.h.i.+re Marsh, you come to Burgh, with its magnificent Church tower and old carved woodwork. Here was the house of Sir George Crawford, and here from the edge of the high ground on which the Church stands you plunge down on to the level Marsh across which, at five miles'

distance, is Skegness, at that time only a handful of fishermen's cottages, with "Hildred's Hotel," one good house occupied by a large tenant farmer, and a reed-thatched house right on the old Roman sea bank, built by Miss Walls, only one room thick, so that from the same room she could see both the sunrise and the sunset. Here all the neighbourhood at different times would meet, and enjoy the wide prospect of sea and Marsh and the broad sands and the splendid air. When the tide was out the only thing to be seen, as far as eye could reach, were the two or three fishermen, like specks on the edge of the sea, and the only sounds were the piping of the various sea-birds, stints, curlews, and the like, as they flew along the creeks or over the gray sand-dunes. Mablethorpe was nearer to Somersby, but had no house of any size at which, as here, the dwellers on the wold knew that they were always welcome.

But we have other houses to visit, so let us return by Burgh and Bratoft, where above the chancel arch of the ugly brick Church is a remarkable picture of the Spanish Armada, represented as a huge red dragon, with the s.h.i.+ps of Effingham's fleet painted in the corner of the picture.

Pa.s.sing Bratoft, the next thing we come to is the Somersby brook, which is here "the Halton River," and on the greensand ridge, overlooking the fen as far as "Boston Stump," stands the fine Church of Halton Holgate. In this Church, as at Harrington, Alfred as a boy must have seen the old stone effigy of a Crusader as described in "Locksley Hall Sixty Years After"

with his feet upon the hound, Cross'd! for once he sailed the sea to crush the Moslem in his pride.

The road ascends the "hollow way" cut through the greensand, and a timber footbridge is flung across it leading from the Church to the Rectory. Dr.

Tennyson could tell the story of how his old friend T. H. Rawnsley, the Rector, and Mr. Eden, brother of the Admiral, being in London, looked in at the great Globe in Leicester Square and heard a man lecturing on Geology. They listened till they heard "This Greensand formation here disappears" (he was speaking of Suss.e.x) "and crops up again in an obscure little village called Halton Holgate in Lincolns.h.i.+re." "Come along, Eden!"

said the Rector; "this is a very stupid fellow."

Halton was the house, and Mr. and Mrs. Rawnsley the people, whom Dr.

Tennyson most loved to visit. She had been previously known to him as the beautiful Miss Walls of Boothby. The Rector was the most genial and agreeable of men, and her charm of look and manner made his wife a universal favourite.

Here are two characteristic letters from Dr. Tennyson to Mr. Rawnsley:

_Tuesday 28th, 1826._

DEAR RAWNSLEY--In your not having come to see me for so many months, when you have little or nothing to do but warm your s.h.i.+ns over the fire while I, unfortunately, am frozen or rather suffocated with Greek and Latin, I consider myself as not only slighted but spifflicated.

You deserve that I should take no notice of your letter whatever, but I will comply with your invitation partly to be introduced to the agreeable and clever lady, but more especially to have the pleasure of seeing Mrs. Rawnsley, whom, you may rest a.s.sured, I value considerably more than I do you. Mrs. T. is obliged by your invitation, but the weather is too damp and hazy, Mr. Noah,--so I remain your patriarchs.h.i.+p's neglected servant,

G. C. TENNYSON.

This letter was addressed to the Rev. T. H. Rawnsley, Halton Parsonage.

The next was addressed to Halton Palace, and runs thus:

SOMERSBY, _Monday_.

DEAR RAWNSLEY--We three shall have great pleasure in dining with you to-morrow. We hope, also, that Mr. and Mrs. Clarke and yourselves will favour us with their and your company to dinner during their stay. I like them very much, and shall be very happy to know more of them.--Very truly yours,

G. C. TENNYSON.

_P.S._--How the devil do you expect that people are to get up at seven o'clock in the morning to answer your notes? However, I have not kept your Ganymede waiting.

The friends.h.i.+p between the families, which was further cemented when the Rector's son Drummond married Kate Franklin, whose cousin, Emily Sellwood, afterwards became the Poet's wife, has been maintained for three generations. Alfred shared his father's opinion of Halton, and often wrote both to the Rector and his wife. In one letter to her, after pleading a low state of health and spirits as his reason for not joining her party at Halton, he says: "At the same time, believe me it is not without considerable uneasiness that I absent myself from a house where I visit with greater pleasure than at any other in the country, if indeed I may be said to visit any other."

After leaving Somersby, he wrote on Jan. 28, 1838, from High Beech, Epping Forest:

MY DEAR MRS. RAWNSLEY--I have long been intending to write to you, for I think of you a great deal, and if I had not a kind of antipathy against taking pen in hand I would write to you oftener; but I am nearly as bad in this way as Werner, who kept an express (horse and man) from his sister at an inn for two months before he could prevail upon himself to write an answer to her, and her letter to him was, nevertheless, on family business of the last importance. But my chief motive in writing to you now is the hope that I may prevail upon you to come and see us as soon as you can. I understood from some of my sisters that Mr. Rawnsley was coming in February to visit his friend Sir Gilbert. Now I trust that you and Sophy will come with him--of course he would not pa.s.s without calling, whether alone or not. I was very sorry not to have seen Drummond. I wish he would have dropt me a line a few days before, that I might have stayed at home and been cheered with the sight of a Lincolns.h.i.+re face; for I must say of Lincolns.h.i.+re, as Cowper said of England,

With all thy faults I love thee still.

You hope our change of residence is for the better. The only advantage in it is that one gets up to London oftener. The people are sufficiently hospitable, but it is not in a good old-fas.h.i.+oned way, so as to do one's feelings any good. Large set dinners with stores of venison and champagne are very good things of their kind, but one wants something more; and Mrs. Arabin seems to me the only person about who speaks and acts as an honest and true nature dictates: all else is artificial, frozen, cold, and lifeless.

Now that I have said a good word for Lincolns.h.i.+re and a bad one for Ess.e.x, I hope I have wrought upon your feelings, and that you will come and see us with Mr. Rawnsley. Pray do. You could come at the same time with Miss Walls when she pays her visit to the Arabins, and so have all the inside of the mail to yourselves; for though you were very heroic last summer on the high places of the diligence, I presume that this weather is sufficient to cool any courage down to zero.--Believe me, with love from all to all, always yours,

A. TENNYSON.

BEECH HILL, HIGH BEECH, LOUGHTON, ESs.e.x.

To this letter Mrs. Tennyson, the Poet's mother, adds a postscript, though she complains that Alfred has scarcely left her room to do so. The letter is dated in her hand.

The Halton family consisted of Edward, Drummond, and Sophy. The latter, with Rosa Baring, were two of Alfred's favourite partners at the Spilsby and Horncastle b.a.l.l.s. Sophy Rawnsley became Mrs. Ed. Elmhirst; she often talked of the old Halton and Somersby days. "He was," she said, "so interesting, because he was so unlike other young men; and his unconventionality of manner and dress had a charm which made him more acceptable than the dapper young gentleman of the ordinary type at ball or supper party. He was a splendid dancer, for he loved music, and kept such time; but you know," she would say, "we liked to talk better than to dance together at Horncastle, or Spilsby, or Halton; he always had something worth saying, and said it so quaintly." Rosa at eighty-three recalled the same times with animation, and said to me, "You know we used to spoil him, for we sat at his feet and wors.h.i.+pped him; and he read to us, and how well he read! and when he wrote us those little poems we were more than proud.

Ah, those days at Somersby and Harrington and Halton, how delightful they were!"

The Halton family were a decade younger than Charles, Alfred, and Mary Tennyson, but Drummond married eight years before Alfred. Emily Sellwood, just before her marriage with Alfred, wrote to Mrs. Drummond Rawnsley:

MY DEAREST KATIE--You and Drummond are among the best and kindest friends I have in the world, and let me not be ungrateful, I have some very good and very kind--Thy loving sister

EMILY.

The use of the _thy_ is very frequent with the Sellwoods, and in all Mary Tennyson's letters too.

It was at Halton, in the time of its next Rector, Drummond Rawnsley, that the farmer Gilbey Robinson gave his son Canon H. D. Rawnsley the famous advice which the Poet has preserved in his Lincolns.h.i.+re poem "The Churchwarden and the Curate":

But creeap along the hedge bottoms an thou'll be a Bishop yit.

And it was at Halton that Mr. Hoff, a large tenant farmer, lived of whom Dr. Tennyson heard many a story from the Rector. He was quite a character, and the Lord Chancellor Brougham was brought over by Mr. Eden from Harrington to see and talk with him. I knew Mr. Hoff, and have heard the Rector describe the lively afternoon they had. Farming was one of Lord Brougham's hobbies, and he talked of farming to his heart's content, and was delighted with the old fellow's shrewdness and independence, and his racy sayings in the Lincolns.h.i.+re dialect, the kind of sayings which Tennyson has preserved in his "Northern Farmer." The farmer, too, was pleased with his visitor, but he said to the Rector afterwards, "He is straange cliver mon is Lord Brougham, and he knaws a vast, noa doubt, but he knaws nowt about ploughing." It was the same farmer who was introduced by the Rector to the leading Barrister at the Spilsby sessions, where both the Rector and Dr. Tennyson were always in request to dine with the bar, when the Judge was at Spilsby, for the charm of their presence and the brightness of their conversation. Mr. Hoff had seen "Councillor Flowers"

in Court in his wig and gown, but meeting him now in plain clothes, and finding him a very small man, he said to him straight out, "Why, you're n.o.bbut a mean-looking little mon after all." These tenant farmers, whether in the Marsh, wold, or fen, were very considerable people in days when agriculture was at its best. In the Marsh, one in particular, Marshal Heanley, was always termed the Marsh King. He it was who at the Ram-show dinner at Halton, when Ed. Stanhope, the Minister for War, had spoken of the future which was opening for the great agriculturists, and, after alluding to Lord Brougham's visit to the s.h.i.+re and the sending of some farmers' sons to the Bar, had suggested the possibility of one of them arriving at the top of the tree and sitting some day on the Woolsack. The "Marsh King" got up and said, "I allus telled yer yer must graw wool; but when you've grawed it, yer mustn't sit on it, yer must sell it."

There was a good deal of humour and also of characteristic independence about both the farmers and their men in those days; the Doctor's own man, when found fault with, had flung the harness in a heap on the drawing-room floor, saying, "Clean it yersen then." And at Halton Rectory an old Waterloo cavalryman was coachman, who kept in the saddle-room the sword he had drawn at Quatre-Bras, a delight to us boys to see and hear about. He had a way of thinking aloud, and when, driving once at Skegness, he saw the Halton schoolmaster, his particular aversion, Mrs. Rawnsley heard him say, "If there ain't that conceated aape of ourn." On a later occasion, when, at a rent-day dinner, he was handing round the beer, and the schoolmaster asked, "Is it ale or porter?" in a voice heard by all the table he replied, "It's nayther aale nor poorter, but very good beer, much too good for the likes o' you, so taake it and be thankful." Perhaps his most famous saying was addressed to my younger brother who, when attempting to copy his elders who always jumped the quickset hedge opposite the saddle-room as a short cut to the house, had stuck in the thorns and cried, "Grayson, Grayson, come and help me out!" The old man slowly wiped his hands, and with his usual deliberation said, "Yis, I'm a-coming." "But look sharp, confound you, it's p.r.i.c.king me." "Oh, if you're going to sweer you may stay theer, and be d.a.m.ned to you."

From Halton the way is short to Spilsby, the market town where the Franklins had lived, and the statue of Sir John resting his hand on an anchor looks down every Monday on the chaffering Market folk at one end of the Market Place, whilst the women still crowd round the old b.u.t.ter-cross at the other end. In the Church is the Willoughby chapel, full of interesting monuments.

Many of the Franklin family lie in the Churchyard, and on the Church wall are three tablets to the three most distinguished brothers,--James, the soldier, who made the first ordnance survey of India; Sir Willingham, the Judge of the Supreme Court of Madras; and Sir John, the discoverer of the North-West Pa.s.sage. Hundleby adjoins Spilsby where Mr. John Hollway lived, of whom the Poet wrote: "People say and I feel that you are the man with the finest taste and knowledge in literary matters here." Next to Hundleby comes Raithby, the home of the Edward Rawnsleys, where the Poet was a frequent visitor, and thence pa.s.sing Mavis-Enderby on the left, the road runs on the Ridge of the Wold through Hagworthingham to Horncastle, the home of the Sellwoods. Mavis-Enderby is referred to in Jean Ingelow's poem, "The High Tide on the Coast of Lincolns.h.i.+re, 1571":

Play uppe, play uppe, O Boston bells!

The brides of Mavis Enderby.

After a visit to Raithby in 1874 Alfred wrote to Mrs. Edward Rawnsley:

MY DEAR MARY--I stretch out arms of love to you all across the distance,--all the Rawnsleys are dear to me, and you, though not an indigenous one, have become a Rawnsley, and I invoke you in the same embrace of the affection, tho' memory has not so much to say about you.

At Keal, east of Mavis-Enderby, the Cracrofts, whom the Doctor knew well, were living; and below the far-famed Keal Hill, in the flat fen, lay Hagnaby Priory, the home of Thomas Coltman, whose nephews Tom and George were often there. George, a genial giant of the heartiest kind, became Rector of Stickney, half-way between Keal and Boston; he was one of the Poet's closest friends. In a letter to the Rector of Halton he says, "Remember me to all old friends, particularly to George Coltman"; and in after years he seldom met a Lincolns.h.i.+re man without asking, "How is George Coltman? He was a good fellow." Agricultural depression has altered things in Lincolns.h.i.+re. Among the farmers the larger holders have disappeared in many places, and in the pleasant homes of Halton and Somersby, such men as the Rectors in those Georgian and early Victorian days, Nature does not repeat.

The departure of the Tennyson family made a blank which could never be filled. The villagers whom they left behind never forgot them, and even in extreme old age they were still full of memories of the family, and talked of the learning and cleverness of "the owd Doctor," the fondness of the children for their mother and, most noticeable of all, their "book-larning,"

And books, what's books? thou knaws thebbe naither 'ere nor theer.

The old folk all seemed to think that "to hev owt to do wi books" was a sign of a weak intellect. "The boys, _poor things!_ they would allus hev a book i' their hands as they went along." A few years ago there was still one old woman in Somersby who remembered going, seventy-one years back, when she was eleven years old, for her first place to the Tennysons. What she thought most of was "the young laadies." She was blind, but she said, "I can see 'em all now plaan as plaan; and I would have liked to hear Mr.

Halfred's voice agean--sich a voice it wer."