A Key to Lord Tennyson's 'In Memoriam' Part 21

FOOTNOTES:

[1] "The brook alone far off was heard." P. xcv. s. 2.

[2] In Bag Enderby Church is a stone memorial tablet to the Burton family, let into the wall, and dated 1591. Upon it are carved, in bold relief, parents and children in a kneeling posture. It has a Latin motto, signifying, that all begins with the dust of the earth, and ends with it.

[3] The name is happily preserved in his patent of n.o.bility, which runs thus: "Alfred, 1st Baron Tennyson of Aldworth, in the County of Suss.e.x."

[4] About the time of Dr. Tennyson's death, the population of Somersby was 61, the church accommodation 60, and the annual value of the benefice 92.

The population of Bag Enderby was 115, church accommodation 100, and value 92.

[5] The use of this word misled the Poet himself, who has since exchanged the term "chancel" for "dark church."

[6] The scene is not laid in Somersby Churchyard, as there is no clock in the Church tower.

[7] Critics have regarded the term "lying lip" as too harsh; but in Poem x.x.xix. it is again applied to sorrow--

"What whisper'd from her lying lips?"

See also Psalm cxx. 2.

[8] It is said of a celebrated clerical wit, that almost his last words were, "All things come to an end"--a pause--"except Wimpole Street."

[9] This reminds one of the _Jour des morts_--All Souls' Day, or The Day of the Dead, when it is a Continental custom to visit the graves of relatives and friends, with pious offerings of flowers, &c.

[10] This invocation to the s.h.i.+p reminds one of Horace's appeal to the vessel that was to bring Virgil home:--

_Navis, quae tibi creditum Debes Virgilium, finibus Atticis Reddas incolumem, precor; Et serves animae dimidium meae._

Lib. I., Ode 3.

[11] "Sphere" _glomera_.

[12] This fruit of the vine, Matt. xxvi., 29.

[13] "Tangle," or "oar-weed," _Laminaria digitata_, says the Algologist, "is never met with but at extreme tide-limits, where some of its broad leather-like fronds may be seen darkly overhanging the rocks, while others, a little lower down, are rising and dipping in the water like sea-serpents floated by the waves." Plato, _Rep._, x., has a n.o.ble comparison from the story of Glaucus (498): "We must regard the soul as drowned ([Greek: diakeimenon]) like the sea-G.o.d, Glaucus: who, buffetted and insulted by the waves, sank, cl.u.s.tered with [Greek: ostrea te, kai phokia, kai petras]."

[14] In the month of October, 1884, I walked in the thickly wooded precincts of Hughenden Manor, the seat of the Earl of Beaconsfield; and I never heard the horse chestnuts patter to the ground as then and there.

Quite ripe, they were constantly falling; and as they touched the gravelled walk the sh.e.l.l opened, and out sprang the richly coloured chestnut.--A. G.

[15] In Job x.x.xvii., 18, we read, "Hast thou with him spread out the sky, which is strong, and as a molten looking gla.s.s?" This term applies equally well to the sea.

[16] See 2 Cor. xii., 2.

[17] See P. ix., 5.

[18] The tenant farmers on the Clevedon estate were the bearers. The Rev.

William Newland Pedder, who was Vicar of Clevedon for forty years, and died in 1871, read the burial service. The "familiar names" are those of the Elton family, which are recorded both on bra.s.s and marble in the church.

[19] The corpse was landed at Dover, and was brought by sixteen black horses all the way to Clevedon--so says Augustus James, who, when a boy, witnessed the interment. Sir A. H. Elton, the late Baronet, kindly corroborated this statement. Besides the coffin, there was a square iron box, deposited in the vault, which may have contained

"The darken'd heart that beat no more."

It is certain that the Poet always thought that the s.h.i.+p put in at Bristol.

Hallam's family resided in London, which accounts for the mourners coming from so great a distance. Augustus James told me, that the funeral procession consisted of a hea.r.s.e and three mourning coaches, each of which was drawn by four horses; and he saw the sixteen animals under cover after their journey. My friend, Mr. Edward Malan, heard the same story from A.

James.

[20] _It is a fact, that the Poem was written at both various times and places--through a course of years, and where their author happened to be, in Lincolns.h.i.+re, London, Ess.e.x, Gloucesters.h.i.+re, Wales, anywhere, as the spirit moved him._

[21] The effect of vapour in magnifying objects is shown towards the end of the Idyll, "Guinevere," where it says

"The moony vapour rolling round the King, Who seem'd the phantom of a Giant in it."

Can "the haze of grief" refer to the tear, which acts as a magnifying lens?

[22] "My proper scorn"--_proprius_--is scorn of myself, an imprecation.

See Lancelot's self-condemnation at the end of "Lancelot and Elaine."

[23] The churches are not to be identified. Those in the neighbourhood of Somersby have too small belfries to allow of change ringing. The sounds may have been only in the Poet's mind.

[24] John, xii., 3

[25] A South African snake--_bucephalus Capensis_--commonly called the "Boom-slange "--attracts birds into its mouth as prey, drawing them by an irresistible fascination. Dr. Smith, in his "Zoology of South Africa,"

describes the process.

[26] In Cary's translation of Dante's "h.e.l.l," canto iii., line 21, we find this note on what Dante and Virgil encountered in the infernal shades--"_Post haec omnia ad loca tartarea, et ad os infernalis baratri deductus sum, qui simile videbatur puteo, loca vero eadem horridis tenebris, faetoribus exhalantibus, stridoribus quoque et nimiis plena erant ejulatibus, juxta quem infernum vermis erat infinitae magnitudinis, ligatus maxima catena._" _Alberici Virio_, -- 9.

[27] If time be merged and lost in eternity, why may not place, all sense of locality, be equally lost in infinitude of s.p.a.ce?

[28] I remember holding a serious conversation with an enlightened physician, some years ago, who said, "I hardly like to venture the theory, but it almost seems to me, as if what is now said and thought becomes written on the physical brain, like a result of photography, and that a revelation of this transcript, may be our real accuser at the day of judgment." Had Shakespeare any such notion, in making Macbeth say,

"Raze out the written troubles of the brain?"

[29] Wordsworth entertains the notion of our having lived before in his fine Ode, "Intimations of Immortality," wherein he says,

"Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting: The soul that rises with us, our life's star, Hath had elsewhere its setting, And cometh from afar," &c.

See Sir W. Scott's "Journal," where a like impression is acknowledged on 17th February, 1828.

Tennyson also says in "The Two Voices:"

"Moreover, something is or seems That touches me with mystic gleams, Like glimpses of forgotten dreams--

Of something felt, like something here, Of something done, I know not where, Such as no language may declare."

[30] "Ay" must have the force of the Greek [Greek: ai] "alas"--and "ay me"