Tennyson and His Friends Part 6

There were no children of the marriage, but the pair adopted the children of the whole village, opening their house and grounds to them for Christmas trees and summer festivities. Children and animals were always devoted to Charles Turner, as he to them. He was, as the villagers said, "Strangen gone upon birds and things." He never shot after that tragedy of the swallow which he never forgot (see Sonnet 200), and birds of every kind flocked to him daily as he fed them on his lawn. Flowers and trees, too, he loved almost as keenly as he did children. He quarrelled seriously with one of his curates whom he found exorcising the flowers, which were to be used for church decoration, by means of the service contained in the Directorium Anglicanum, maintaining stoutly that if any spirits dwelt in flowers they must be angels and not devils. His garden was a jungle of old-fas.h.i.+oned flowers, golden-rod, sweet-william, convolvulus, and rose of Sharon; figs and apricots ripened on his walls, and the house was covered with roses, honeysuckle, white clematis, and blue ceanothus. The grounds, too, boasted some fine timber, which Charles never would allow to be pruned or cut, even permitting the willow-props to outgrow and destroy the rose trees (Sonnet 270), and once, when it was proposed to fell some large trees within sight of his house, he threatened to throw up his living and leave Grasby.

In this peaceful world Charles found plenty to occupy his time. He saw little of society except when Alfred or Frederick, or one of his old college friends, came to visit him, and the resources of the neighbourhood were strained to the utmost to afford them entertainment. He found, however, a congenial companion in Mr. Townsend, a neighbouring clergyman of wide culture much interested in science. And the care of his parish occupied the greater part of his time. Theology, too, was a favourite study with him. He began life as an Evangelical, but in later years tended (partly under the influence of his wife, who would often, on the vigil of a saint, spend half the night on her knees) more and more towards the High Church.

"I have been reading," he wrote to Alfred in 1865, "Pusey's _Daniel the Prophet_, which (thank G.o.d) completely--as I think and as very many will think with me--disposes of the rickety and crotchety arguments of those who vainly thought they had found a [Greek: pou sto] in him whereby to upheave all prophecy and miracle. It is a n.o.ble book from its learning and its logic. I knew he was a holy and n.o.ble-minded and erudite man, but for some reason I had not credited him with such 'act offence' and powers of righteous satire.... I have never in my old desultory reading days found such a charm and interest as in the study of the Queen Science, as Trench calls Theology, and those who a.s.sume that they will find there no food for the mature reason will be surprised at its large provision for the intellect and rich satisfaction of the highest imagination. It is reading round about a subject and not the subject itself which damages the intellect so much. Maurice said the study of the Prophets had saved him from the Tyranny of books."

He and his wife also spent much time in the study of Italian, in which they were a.s.sisted by their occasional visits to and from the Frederick Tennysons. Charles's Italian Grammar is annotated with numberless quaint rhymes made to fix its rules in his memory. On one page one finds in his wonderfully neat fluent hand (strangely like those of Frederick and Alfred):

From use of the following is no ban, "The fair of the fair is Mistress Ann"

or "Smith's a learned, learned man"

In English or Italian, Though the English use is far less common Speaking of Doctor or fine woman.

On another:

Say profeta, profeti Or else I shall bate ye.

On another a couplet which has all the subtle romance of Edward Lear:

Rare and changeless, firm and few, Are the Italian nouns in U.

The life at Grasby Vicarage was of the simplest. The hall-floor rattled with loose tiles, the furniture was reduced to the barest necessities.

Breakfast and lunch were movable feasts, for Charles had all a poet's carelessness of time, lingering over morning prayers while his agonized guest saw the bacon cooling to the consistency of marble before his eyes, and prolonging his mid-day walk to such distances in the study of flower and bird and b.u.t.terfly that it sometimes took a half-hour's tolling of the outdoor bell to recall him. The cook (who in times of scarcity was at the service of the whole village) must have led a life of irritation, yet servants stayed long at the Vicarage.

This sweet, even life knew little variety. The days of quiet service filled the year, and were succeeded by evenings no less quiet in the book-lined study, or, if the season were warm, in the hayfield near the house, where husband and wife would sit reading and talking to each other till the evening glow died away and left the hayc.o.c.ks and the steep side of the wold, which backed the red-brick Vicarage, gray and cold and silent.

Troubles they had beyond the recurrent anxiety for Charles's health. A rascally agent, a man of great plausibility and charm of manner, pillaged them for some years, and they were only able to recover a portion of his plunderings (most of which Charles subsequently devoted to the repair of the church) after a great deal of trouble. It is characteristic that in after years they always spoke of this gentleman as though _he_ had been the person who had suffered most in the transaction and deserved most pity. Charles was indeed possessed of an almost saintly patience, and no crisis could ever wring from him any e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.n more forcible than a half-humorous "I wish we were all in heaven." His wife's letters occasionally give us glimpses of days when the wish must often have been upon his lips, as when he was reluctantly compelled to join in a Harvest-Festival gathering in another parish. First of all we read how "poor Cubbie" (his wife's pet name for him) "was caught and dressed in a surplice which hung about him like a clothes bag." "Then he must join in a procession, with much singing and chanting, and then read the lessons in spite of a bad cold and hoa.r.s.eness, and finally at the end of the day, in the full hubbub of a garden party, at which all the neighbourhood were present in their finery (poor Cubbie!), a cannon, which had been charged with blank cartridge for the occasion, went off unexpectedly and knocked down three boys who were standing in front of it. The boys, whose clothes were torn to rags and their faces burnt black, shrieked as though in the death agony, women fainted and men stampeded--and Cubbie 'wished we were all in heaven.'"

But Charles Turner's poems are, after all, the best mirror of his life.

With Frederick it is otherwise. In spite of his great lyric gift, Frederick lacked the persistence and enthusiasm necessary for full self-expression. The want of proportion, which gave his ardent, erratic personality so much charm, prevented his longer poems being really successful. In spite of much beauty of phrase and richness of feeling, they lack architecture and have not sufficient unity to make them vital.

Had he continued to work at lyrical writing after his first volume, he might have avoided falling into the desultory method, which marred his later work, and left a really large body of first-cla.s.s poetry.

In the best of Charles's Sonnets, in all, that is, which spring from his daily experience, there breathes a spirit perpetually quickened by the beauty and holiness of common life and common things, an imagination which saw a life and a purpose not only in the ways of men and of all wild creatures and growing things, but in the half-human voice of the buoy-bell ringing on the shoals, the sad imprisoned heart-beat of the water-ram in the little wood-girt field, the welcome of the sunbeam in the copse running through the yielding shade to meet the wanderer, in the "mystic stair" of the steam thras.h.i.+ng-machine:

Accepting our full harvests like a G.o.d With clouds about his shoulders.

and the "mute claim" of the old rocking-horse:

In the dim window where disused, he stands While o'er him breaks the flickering limewalks' shade; No provender, no mate, no groom has he-- His stall and pasture is your memory.[14]

But in spite of the intimate correspondence between Charles Turner's life and his art, an intimacy which only the seclusion of that life made possible, one cannot help regretting that fortune did not force upon him some calling which would have afforded a progressive stimulus to his creative powers. These years of devotion amongst the bleak hill-sides and flowery dingles of his remote parish did for him what a life of ease and suns.h.i.+ne did for Frederick. Both had great talents, but neither the tender felicity of Charles nor Frederick's heart of cloud and fire ever came to full development. They represent two extremes of the Tennyson temperament, the mean and perfection of which is found in Alfred. In the elder the lyric fury, in the younger the craftsman's humility of the more perfect poet were developed to excess, and both suffered for the affection and respect in which they held him whom they knew to be their master. Yet each has left himself a monument, some part at least of which is worthy to rank with the more complete achievement of their younger brother.

TENNYSON ON HIS CAMBRIDGE FRIENDS

[Ill.u.s.tration: A. H. H. Obiit 1833.]

ARTHUR HENRY HALLAM

I past beside the reverend walls In which of old I wore the gown; I roved at random thro' the town, And saw the tumult of the halls;

And heard once more in college fanes The storm their high-built organs make, And thunder-music, rolling, shake The prophet blazon'd on the panes;

And caught once more the distant shout, The measured pulse of racing oars Among the willows; paced the sh.o.r.es And many a bridge, and all about

The same gray flats again, and felt The same, but not the same; and last Up that long walk of limes I past To see the rooms in which he dwelt.

Another name was on the door: I linger'd; all within was noise Of songs, and clapping hands, and boys That crash'd the gla.s.s and beat the floor;

Where once we held debate, a band Of youthful friends, on mind and art, And labour, and the changing mart, And all the framework of the land;

When one would aim an arrow fair, But send it slackly from the string; And one would pierce an outer ring, And one an inner, here and there;

And last the master-bowman, he, Would cleave the mark. A willing ear We lent him. Who, but hung to hear The rapt oration flowing free

From point to point, with power and grace And music in the bounds of law, To those conclusions when we saw The G.o.d within him light his face,

And seem to lift the form, and glow In azure orbits heavenly-wise; And over those ethereal eyes The bar of Michael Angelo.

TO JAMES SPEDDING

ON THE DEATH OF HIS BROTHER

The wind, that beats the mountain, blows More softly round the open wold, And gently comes the world to those That are cast in gentle mould.

And me this knowledge bolder made, Or else I had not dared to flow In these words toward you, and invade Even with a verse your holy woe.

'Tis strange that those we lean on most, Those in whose laps our limbs are nursed, Fall into shadow, soonest lost: Those we love first are taken first.

G.o.d gives us love. Something to love He lends us; but, when love is grown To ripeness, that on which it throve Falls off, and love is left alone.

This is the curse of time. Alas!

In grief I am not all unlearn'd; Once thro' mine own doors Death did pa.s.s; One went, who never hath return'd.

He will not smile--not speak to me Once more. Two years his chair is seen Empty before us. That was he Without whose life I had not been.

Your loss is rarer; for this star Rose with you thro' a little arc Of heaven, nor having wander'd far Shot on the sudden into dark.

I knew your brother; his mute dust I honour and his living worth: A man more pure and bold and just Was never born into the earth.

I have not look'd upon you nigh, Since that dear soul hath fall'n asleep.

Great Nature is more wise than I: I will not tell you not to weep.

And tho' mine own eyes fill with dew, Drawn from the spirit thro' the brain, I will not even preach to you, "Weep, weeping dulls the inward pain."

Let Grief be her own mistress still.