Tennyson and His Friends Part 35

The first to pa.s.s away was my father, and as his best friend walked in the garden at Swainston on the day, May 31, 1870, on which he came to see him laid to rest, he made those verses,[81] than which few lovelier tributes were ever paid from friend to friend, and which will keep the name of the "Prince of Courtesy" green even in the long years to come.

The autumn and winter '71-'72 my eldest brother and I spent together at Freshwater. We rented Mrs. Cameron's little house which opens by a door of communication into the large hall of Dimbola, the house in which she lived. The evening we arrived, she suddenly appeared in our drawing-room saying, "When strangers take this house I keep the door between us locked, with friends never"; and locked it never was. We lived almost as part of the family, and it was a real enjoyment to be in such close intimacy with one of the most original, and at the same time most tender-hearted and generous women I have ever known. She was on very intimate terms at Farringford, and would speak her mind to the Poet in a very amusing way.

On one occasion a party of Americans came to Freshwater, and Mrs. Cameron sent them up to Farringford with a note of introduction. Tennyson was tired or busy, and they were not admitted. They returned to Mrs. Cameron full of their disappointment, and she put on her bonnet (I can see her now as she walked through the lanes, her red or blue Chuddah shawl always trailing behind her, and apparently not much the worse for the dust that fringed it), and insisted upon their going back with her to Farringford.

Having made her way to Tennyson, she said to him solemnly, "Alfred, these good people have come 3000 miles to see a lion and they have found a bear." He laughed, relented, and received the strangers most courteously.

Mrs. Cameron's beautiful white-haired old husband in his royal purple dressing-gown was a most interesting personality. In addition to the large experience of men and things which his many years of official life in India had given him, and which made his society delightful, he was a very fine cla.s.sical scholar of the old school, and in his old age, when blindness and infirmity debarred him in great measure from his books, it was his solace to repeat by heart odes of Horace, pages of Virgil, and long pa.s.sages from the Greek poets.

Easter 1872 brought a bright and merry gathering to Freshwater. One of Mrs. Cameron's charming relations (they had lived with her for years as adopted daughters) was about to marry, and go out with her husband to India, and the "Primrose wedding" brought a large influx of young people, friends and relations of Mrs. Cameron and the bride, in addition to the visitors who always made Easter a pleasant time. The weather was perfect, the "April airs that fan the Isle of Wight" especially soft and balmy.

Parties of twenty or thirty met every evening in Mrs. Cameron's hall or in the Farringford drawing-room. Nearly every one there knew or got to know Lord and Lady Tennyson. He was in particularly genial health and spirits; he joined the young people in their midnight walks to the sea, in their flower-seeking expeditions, in one of which some one was fortunate enough to find a grape hyacinth in one of the Farringford fields. He read aloud nearly as much as he was asked to, and danced as vigorously as the youngest present at two dances that were given. It was during the first of these dances that a young neighbour became engaged to the lady whom he shortly afterwards married. Very soon after the decisive moment had pa.s.sed, and when the event was naturally supposed to be a profound secret, Tennyson put the girl's mother, with whom he happened to be sitting, completely out of countenance by saying, without a suspicion of malice, and without for the moment recognizing the young couple who pa.s.sed him, "I wot they be two lovyers dear." When he was shortly afterwards told of the engagement, he twinkled very much over his rather premature but very apposite announcement.

My marriage took place in the autumn of 1872, and my husband, who already knew the Tennysons, was at once received into their intimacy, and their friends.h.i.+p was henceforth one of the greatest privileges of our joint life. Tennyson and Hallam were present at our wedding, and the former held our eldest boy in his arms when he was but a day or two old.

The Easter of 1873 saw us again at Freshwater with another pleasant meeting of friends. On that occasion Tennyson said to me, "Why do you not ask me to dinner?" It need not be said that we at once gave the invitation, though not a little nervous at the thought of the lodging-house fare and arrangements to which we were bidding him; but our dear old landlady did her very best. We asked a small party (Lady Florence Herbert and Leslie Stephen were our guests) to meet him and Hallam; he was himself in the best of spirits, and our little dinner-party proved a great success.

A few years later the Tennysons took a house in London three or four years running (one spring they had my stepmother's house in Eaton Place).

Tennyson appeared to have in great measure lost his dislike to mixing in general society, and they collected about them a very interesting and varied circle of friends. I cannot help recalling an incident which occurred one evening at their house, which, though painful at the moment, is pleasant to look back upon on account of the affectionate and generous apology it elicited. A large party was at their house one evening, and Tennyson was persuaded to read aloud, and chose the "Revenge." Something or other, I suppose the "Inquisition Dogs" and the "Devildoms of Spain,"

excited him as he read, and by the time he had finished he had worked himself into a state, which I have occasionally, but seldom, seen at other times, of fury against the Catholic Church, as exemplified by the Inquisition, persecution of heretics, etc.; in fact, all the artillery of prejudice at which Catholics can afford to laugh. It happened, however, that my husband, one of my sisters, and myself were the only Catholics there, and were sitting together in the same part of the room. As he talked he turned towards us and addressed us personally in a violent tirade which loyalty to our convictions made it impossible for us not to answer, though our attempts at explanation and contradiction were drowned in his fierce and eloquent denunciations. Every one in the room looked very uncomfortable. I myself hardly knew whether to laugh or cry, and was never more relieved than, when his flow of words had exhausted itself, he began to read another poem. Before the end of the evening, however, he felt that his outbreak had not been kind or courteous, and before we left he took us all three into his study, and made so sweet and gracious an _amende_ that we loved him, if possible, more than ever.

Any one who has read carefully the "Idylls of the King," "Sir Galahad,"

"St. Agnes," among many of his poems, still more any one who has spoken with him intimately, cannot fail to realize the strong attraction which many Catholic doctrines and practices had for Tennyson, and the reverence with which he regarded the Catholic Church as standing alone among jarring sects and creeds, majestic, venerable, and invulnerable. His mind was also an essentially and intensely religious one, and I know that one of my father's attractions for him lay in the religious tone of _his_ mind. On these points, however, I will say no more. In jotting down these few remembrances of a friends.h.i.+p which is amongst my most precious possessions, I settled with myself to refrain entirely from any presentation of what I believed to be Tennyson's views on theology, metaphysics, or politics, no less than from any discussion of his poetic greatness. I want nothing but to sketch the _man_ as he always seemed to me, one of the n.o.blest, truest, and most lovable of G.o.d's creatures, and one who, even without the genius that has crowned his brow with never-fading laurel, must, by weight of character and beauty of soul alone, stand a giant amid his fellow-men!

We spent the Christmas holidays of 1890-91 at Freshwater with our five children; not one of them will forget the delightful intercourse with Farringford during those weeks, and the Christmas Tree arranged by Mrs.

Hallam Tennyson for her little Lionel in the large room known as the ball-room.[82] Kind words and presents were showered on every one, and I think the beloved grandparents enjoyed it as much as their fourteen-months-old grandson, as they sat in the midst of their servants and cottagers (some of whom were amongst the oldest of their friends), and the guests, little and great, whom they had asked to share their Christmas festival. Our two eldest children have a more precious remembrance of that time and the following Easter, which we also spent at Freshwater, for Tennyson read aloud to them for the first and only time. To our girl he read "Old Roa" and the "Bugle Song," and to our boy the "Ode on the Death of the Duke of Wellington." He read this in April 1891; it was the last time I heard him read, and I look upon it as a special act of kindness; he said he did not like to read to children--they did not understand, were bored--and he only yielded to my strong entreaties. If, however, he saw, as I think he did, the flushed cheeks and big tearful eyes of our fourteen-year-old schoolboy, he must have felt that he had a listener who _did_ understand and appreciate!

Through the early part of the winter of 1890 Tennyson was remarkably well, walking in the morning with my husband and other friends, and taking long walks in the afternoon up and down the ball-room, when he liked to have one or two companions who would amuse him, and whom he would amuse with witty stories and _bons mots_. He had always a great pleasure in racy anecdotes, and the humorous side of life, and during the last years this increased, so that his friends treasured up every good story they heard to repeat to him at their next meeting.

Towards the end of the Christmas holidays Tennyson caught cold, and fears of a return of gout and bronchitis confined him to his room. My husband had already returned to London, and I was remaining only a few days longer and thinking sadly enough that I should not be able to see Tennyson again before I left, when on one of the last evenings I was spending at Farringford, he sent for me to his room and then, to my delighted surprise, proposed to read to me. I demurred, fearing it might be bad for him, but he insisted, and for half an hour read me one unpublished poem after another,[83] his voice nearly as strong as I had ever known it, and it seemed to me even more pathetic and beautiful.

That Easter of 1891, among many pleasant recollections of Farringford and of the group of friends who paid their daily visit there, has one which I like to set against the stories of Tennyson's unapproachableness and gruffness to those who went to see him, which are so often circulated, and which, in nine cases out of ten, meant that those who presented themselves to him had chosen an unfortunate time, or were in some respect deficient in tact or politeness. An American friend, professor of literature at Harvard, was staying with us. His admiration and veneration for the great master of verse were unbounded, and he would, I feel sure, have crossed the Atlantic merely to see and speak with him. The morning after his arrival, my husband took him to Farringford, where they found Tennyson somewhat annoyed by a communication from an unknown American admirer, enclosing a photograph of the Poet, upon which he requested him to sign his name; the coolness of the request being heightened by the fact that the sender had posted his letter unstamped. My husband said to his friend, "Now, M., here's your opportunity; put down sixpence and pay the national debt, and Tennyson will sign you the receipt on this photograph." He immediately took the joke, laughed, bade the professor take back his sixpence, and signed the photograph for him.

On one of the last days we were at Freshwater that Easter, Tennyson met our youngest child of five in the road, and addressed her, to her great amus.e.m.e.nt: "Madam! you've a damask rose on either cheek, and another on your forehead; rosy lips, golden hair, and a straw bonnet."

I never again saw the household at Farringford after April 1891. Once more we were at Aldworth in October of that year, when Tennyson signed for us a photograph from Mr. Watts's last picture. He was tired before we left and had gone to rest in his room, but I begged Hallam to let me go in to wish him good-bye. Had I known that it _was_ good-bye, and that for the last time I looked on his face and kissed his dear hands, what could I have said? Never could I express the sorrowing love, the immense grat.i.tude, which overflow my heart as I think of my father's friend and mine!

The following letter was written by Tennyson to Catherine Lady Simeon after the death of his friend:

ALDWORTH, _June 27th, 1870_.

MY DEAR LADY SIMEON--Of course nothing could be more grateful to me than some memorial of my much-loved and ever-honoured friend, the only man on earth, I verily believe, to whom I could, and have more than once opened my whole heart; and he also has given me in many a conversation at Farringford in my little attic his utter confidence. I knew none like him for tenderness and generosity, not to mention his other n.o.ble qualities, and he was the very Prince of Courtesy; but I need not tell you this; anything, little book, or whatever you will choose, send me or bring when you come; and do pray come on the 4th July, and we will be all alone; and Louie can come, when she will, and you can spare her.--Believe me, always affectionately yours,

A. TENNYSON.

SIR JOHN SIMEON

By AUBREY DE VERE

The world external knew thee but in part: It saw and honoured what was least in thee; The loyal trust, the inborn courtesy; The ways so winning, yet so pure from art; The cordial reverence, keen to all desert, All save thine own; the accost so frank and free; The public zeal that toiled, but not for fee, And shunned alike base praise, and hireling's mart.

These things men saw; but deeper far than these The under-current of thy soul worked on Unvexed by surface-ripple, beam, or breeze, And unbeheld its way to ocean won: Life of thy life was still that Christian Faith The sophist scorns. It failed thee not in death.

TENNYSON

By ARTHUR SIDGWICK, Fellow of Corpus Christi, Oxford, and sometime Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge.

(Read in the Chapel of Trinity College, Cambridge, October 30, 1909.[84])

We are met here to-day to do honour to the memory and the life's work of one of the greatest of Trinity's sons, who has also won for himself--few lovers of poetry here or anywhere can feel a doubt--a high and secure place in the glorious roll of English Poets, that roll which records the poetic achievements of over 500 years.

In accepting (with whatever misgivings) the request of the College authorities to speak some preliminary words in appreciation of the Poet, I do not propose to deal in any detail with the history of his life and work, on which the biography has thrown such interesting and welcome light. The most that can here be attempted is to select a few aspects and ill.u.s.trations of Tennyson's life-long devotion to his art, such as may serve to bring out something of those gifts and qualities which, wherever English poetry is read, are felt to give to his work its special charm and value.

Though I must pa.s.s the early years almost in silence, I cannot refrain from quoting the delightful tale, first made known (I believe) by Miss Thackeray,[85] how at the age of five the Poet was seen with outspread arms in a high wind, sailing gaily along and shouting his first line of poetry

I hear a voice that's speaking in the wind

--he did indeed all his life hear that voice and all other Nature-voices; and also the other tale of ten years later, how on the news of Byron's death (in 1824) the boy went out, desolate, and carved the sad tidings on the sandstone, and (to use his own words) "thought everything over and finished for every one, and that nothing else mattered."

Such despairing grief has seemed to some readers extravagant, to be excused on the plea of youth--he was only fifteen: but it must not be forgotten that Byron's death was the final blow of a triple fatality such as finds no parallel in the history of literature. Three men of striking genius and rich poetic gifts--Byron, Sh.e.l.ley, and Keats--were all prematurely lost to the world within four years (1821-4). The fervid sorrow of the impulsive and gifted boy of fifteen, so far from being extravagant, must have been shared by countless readers of all ages who cared for poetry, not in England only.

It is true that as the years went on the youthful sympathy of Tennyson with what has been called the Revolutionary poetry was materially modified--perhaps especially in the case of Sh.e.l.ley. Yet there is a striking letter of the date 1834--when Sh.e.l.ley had been dead twelve years, and Tennyson was twenty-five--which should not be forgotten. Henry Taylor had attacked the Byron-Sh.e.l.ley school of poetry; and Tennyson, while not disputing much of his general judgment, adds this penetrating comment: "It may be that he (Taylor) does not sufficiently take into consideration the peculiar strength evolved by such writers as Byron and Sh.e.l.ley, who, however mistaken they may be, did yet give the world _another heart and new pulses_, and so we are kept going."

Matthew Arnold was a fine critic and a poet of high distinction, but I have always felt, if we compare his somewhat severe att.i.tude towards the earlier school with that of Tennyson, that it was the latter who showed the truer insight, the wider sympathy, and the juster appreciation.

Of his Cambridge life, 1828-30, two main points stand out: the grievous want he felt of any real stimulus or inspiration in the instruction provided by the authorities; and, secondly, the remarkable group of distinguished men of his own age with whom his college life was pa.s.sed. As to the first, the scathing lines written at the time, and published with his express consent in the biography, are more eloquent than any description could be. After naming all the glories of the Colleges--their portals, gardens, libraries, chapels, "doctors, proctors and deans"--"all these," he cries, "shall not avail you when the Daybeam sports, new-risen over Albion ..." and the poem ends with the reason:

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_.

On the other hand, this lack (of official wisdom) was more than supplied by the friends with whom he lived--James Spedding, Monckton Milnes (afterwards Lord Houghton), Trench, Alford, Brookfield, Blakesley, Thompson (afterwards Master), Merivale, Stephen Spring-Rice, J. Kemble, Heath, C. Buller, Monteith, Tennant, and above all Arthur Hallam.

Thirty-five years later Lord Houghton justly said of this group of friends that "for the wealth of their promise they were a body of men such as this University has seldom contained." To this should be added the special influence of the "Apostles," to which Society most of these friends belonged, who had organized from the first regular weekly meetings for essays and discussions, where no topic was barred, and speech was absolutely free. The immense stimulus of such discussion to thought, to study, to readiness and power of argument, to widening the range of intellectual interests and literary judgment and appreciation, must be obvious to all. And we must not forget that the years covered by young Tennyson's residence at Cambridge were precisely the period of the keenest intellectual stir and the stormiest political warfare that preceded the great Reform Bill.

To return to the poetry. Pa.s.sing over the purely juvenile _Poems by two Brothers_ printed in his eighteenth year, we have, in 1830, the first book of poems which have partially survived the mature and fastidious taste which suppressed so much of the early work. Even here, half the pieces have been withdrawn, and much of the rest re-written: what remains is rather slight--the Isabels and Claribels and Adelines and Lilians and Eleanores, poems which in some critics' views border on the trivial.

Really they should be regarded as experiments in lyric measures: and the careful student will note the signs of the poet's fine ear and keen eye for nature: but the depths were not sounded.

Two years later came the second volume (1832). Again much has been withdrawn, much re-written: but when in this collection we find "none," "The Palace of Art," "A Dream of Fair Women," and "The Lotos-eaters," we see that we have the real poet at last.

"The Palace of Art" is an attempt to trace the Nemesis of selfish culture, secluding itself from social human life and duty. After three years of these exclusive delights, the man's outraged nature--or conscience if you will--rea.s.serts itself in a kind of incipient madness: the soul of him sees visions. Then a weird pa.s.sage:

But in dark corners of her palace stood Uncertain shapes; and unawares On white-eyed phantasms weeping tears of blood, And horrible nightmares,

And hollow shades enclosing hearts of flame, And, with dim fretted foreheads all, On corpses three-months-old at noon she came, That stood against the wall.