Notwithstanding the apparently fortunate circumstances by which Tennyson
was surrounded, the record of his early life produces in the reader’s
mind a sense of unhappiness. Happiness is an affair of temperament, not
of outward circumstances. Happy, in the sense of enjoying the present as
Wordsworth enjoyed it, Tennyson could never be. Once, no doubt, Nature’s
sweetest gift to all living things—the power of enjoying the present—was
man’s inheritance too. Some of the human family have not lost it even
yet; but poets are rarely of these. Give Wordsworth any pittance, enough
to satisfy the simplest physical wants—enough to procure him plain living
and leisure for “high thinking”—and he would be happier than Tennyson
would have been, cracking the finest “walnuts” and sipping the richest
“wine” amidst a circle of admiring and powerful friends. As to opinion,
as to criticism of his work—what was that to Wordsworth? Had he not from
the first the good opinion of her of whom he was the high priest elect.
Natura Benigna herself? Nay, had he not from the first the good opinions
of Wordsworth himself and Dorothy? Without this faculty of enjoying the
present, how can a bard be happy? For the present alone exists. The
past is a dream; the future is a dream; the present is the narrow plank
thrown for an instant from the dream of the past to the dream of the
future. And yet it is the poet (who of all men should enjoy the raree
show hurrying and scrambling along the plank)—it is he who refuses to
enjoy himself on his own trembling little plank in order to “stare round”
from side to side.
Spedding, speaking in a letter to Thompson in 1835 of Tennyson’s visit to
the Lake country, lets fall a few words that describe the poet in the
period before his marriage more fully than could have been done by a
volume of subtle analysis:—
“I think he took in more pleasure and inspiration than any one would have
supposed who did not know his own almost personal dislike of the present,
whatever it might be.”
This is what makes us say that by far the most important thing in
Tennyson’s life was his marriage. He began to enjoy the present: “The
peace of God came into my life before the altar when I wedded her.” No
more beautiful words than these were ever uttered by any man concerning
any woman. And to say that the words were Tennyson’s is to say that they
expressed the simple truth, for his definition of human speech as God
meant it to be would have been “the breath that utters truth.” It would
have been wonderful, indeed, if he, whose capacity of loving a friend was
so great had been without an equal capacity of loving a woman.
“Although as a son,” says the biographer, “I cannot allow myself full
utterance about her whom I loved as perfect mother and ‘very woman of
very woman’—‘such a wife’ and true helpmate she proved herself. It was
she who became my father’s adviser in literary matters; ‘I am proud of
her intellect,’ he wrote. With her he always discussed what he was
working at; she transcribed his poems: to her and to no one else he
referred for a final criticism before publishing. She, with her ‘tender,
spiritual nature,’ {156} and instinctive nobility of thought, was always
by his side, a ready, cheerful, courageous, wise, and sympathetic
counsellor. It was she who shielded his sensitive spirit from the
annoyances and trials of life, answering (for example) the innumerable
letters addressed to him from all parts of the world. By her quiet sense
of humour, by her selfless devotion, by ‘her faith as clear as the
heights of the June-blue heaven,’ she helped him also to the utmost in
the hours of his depression and of his sorrow.”
There are some few people whose natures are so noble or so sweet that how
rich soever may be their endowment of intellect, or even of genius, we
seem to remember them mainly by what St. Gregory Nazianzen calls “the
rhetoric of their lives.” And surely the knowledge that this is so is
encouraging to him who would fain believe in the high destiny of
man—surely it is encouraging to know that, in spite of “the inhuman
dearth of noble natures,” mankind can still so dearly love moral beauty
as to hold it more precious than any other human force. And certainly
one of those whose intellectual endowments are outdazzled by the beauty
of their qualities of heart and soul was the sweet lady whose death I am
recording.
Among those who had the privilege of knowing Lady Tennyson (and they were
many, and these many were of the best), some are at this moment eloquent
in talk about the perfect helpmate she was to the great poet, and the
perfect mother she was to his children, and they quote those lovely lines
of Tennyson which every one knows by heart:—
Dear, near and true—no truer Time himself
Can prove you, tho’ he make you evermore
Dearer and nearer, as the rapid of life
Shoots to the fall—take this and pray that he
Who wrote it, honouring your sweet faith to him,
May trust himself;—and after praise and scorn,
As one who feels the immeasurable world,
Attain the wise indifference of the wise;
And after autumn past—if left to pass
His autumn into seeming leafless days—
Draw toward the long frost and longest night,
Wearing his wisdom lightly, like the fruit
Which in our winter woodland looks a flower.
Others dwell on the unique way in which those wistful blue eyes of hers
and that beautiful face expressed the “tender spiritual nature” described
by the poet—expressed it, indeed, more and more eloquently with the
passage of years, and the bereavements the years had brought. The
present writer saw her within a few days of her death. She did not seem
to him then more fragile than ordinary. For many years she whose fragile
frame seemed to be kept alive by the love and sweet movements of the soul
within had seemed as she lay upon her couch the same as she seemed when
death was so near—intensely pale, save when a flush as slight as the pink
on a wild rose told her watchful son that the subject of conversation was
interesting her more than was well for her. As a matter of fact,
however, Lady Tennyson was no less remarkable as an intelligence than as
the central heart of love and light that illumined one of the most
beautiful households of our time.
Though her special gift was no doubt music, she had, as Tennyson would
say with affectionate pride, a “real insight into poetical effects”; and
those who knew her best shared his opinion in this matter. Whether, had
her life not been devoted so entirely to others, she would have been a
noticeable artistic producer it is hard to guess. But there is no doubt
that she was born to hold a high place as a conversationalist, brilliant
and stimulating. Notwithstanding the jealous watchfulness of her family
lest the dinner talk should draw too heavily upon her small stock of
physical power, the fascination of her conversation, both as to
subject-matter and manner, was so irresistible that her friends were apt
to forget how fragile she really was until warned by a sign from her son
or, daughter-in-law, who adored her, that the conversation should be
brought to a close.
Her diary, upon which her son has drawn for certain biographical portions
of his book shows how keen and how persistent was her interest in the
poetry of her husband; it also shows how thorough was her insight into
its principles. As a rule, diaries, professing as they do to give
portraitures of eminent men, are mostly very much worse than worthless.
The points seized upon by the diarist are almost never physiognomic, and
even if the diarist does give some glimpse of the character he professes
to limn, the picture can only be partially true, inasmuch as it can never
be toned down by other aspects of the character unseen by the diarist and
unknown to him.
Very different, however, is the record kept by Lady Tennyson. As an
instance of her power of selecting really luminous points for
preservation in her diary, let me instance this. Many a student of the
‘Idylls of the King’ has been struck by a certain difference in the style
between ‘The Coming of Arthur’ and ‘The Passing of Arthur’ and the other
idylls. Indeed, more than once this difference has been cited as showing
Tennyson’s inability to fuse the different portions of a long poem. This
fact had not escaped the eye of the loving wife and critic, and two days
before her death she said to her son, “He said ‘The Coming of Arthur’ and
‘The Passing of Arthur’ are purposely simpler in style than the other
idylls as dealing with the awfulness of birth and death,” and wished this
remark of the poet’s to be put on record in the book.
It is needless to comment on the value of these few words and the light
they shed upon Tennyson’s method.
Those who saw Lady Tennyson in middle life and in advanced age, and were
struck by that spiritual beauty of hers which no painter could ever
render, will not find it difficult to imagine what she was at seventeen,
when Tennyson suddenly came upon her in the “Fairy Wood,” and exclaimed,
“Are you an Oread or a Dryad wandering here?” And yet her beauty was
only a small part of a charm that was indescribable. An important event
for English literature was that meeting in the “Fairy Wood.” For, from
the moment of his engagement, “the current of his mind was no longer and
constantly in the channel of mournful memories and melancholy
forebodings,” says his son. And speaking of the year, 1838, the son
tells us that, on the whole, he was happy in his life. “When I wrote
‘The Two Voices,’” he used to say, “I was so utterly miserable, a burden
to myself and my family, that I said, ‘Is life worth anything?’ and now
that I am old, I fear that I shall only live a year or two, for I have
work still to do.”
The hostile manner in which ‘Maud’ was received vexed him, and would,
before his marriage, have deeply disturbed him. A right view of this
fine poem seems to have been taken by George Brimley, an admirable
critic, who in the ‘Cambridge Essays,’ had already pointed out with great
acumen many of the more subtle beauties of Tennyson.
There are few more pleasant pages in this book than those which record
Tennyson’s relations with another poet who was blessed in his
wife—Browning. Although the two poets had previously met (notably in
Paris in 1851), the intimacy between them would seem to have been
cemented, if not begun, during one of Tennyson’s visits to his and
Browning’s friends, Mr. and Mrs. Knowles at the Hollies, Clapham Common.
Here Tennyson read to Browning the ‘Grail’ (which the latter pronounced
to be Tennyson’s “best and highest”); and here Browning came and read his
own new poem ‘The Ring and the Book,’ when Tennyson’s verdict on it was,
“Full of strange vigour and remarkable in many ways, doubtful if it will
ever be popular.”
The record of his long intimacy with Coventry Patmore and Aubrey de Vere
takes an important place in the biography, and the reminiscences of
Tennyson by the latter poet form an interesting feature of the volumes.
In George Meredith’s first little book Tennyson was delighted by the
‘Love in a Valley,’ and he had a full appreciation of the great novelist
all round. With the three leading poets of a younger generation,
Rossetti, William Morris, and Swinburne, he had slight acquaintance.
Here, however, is an interesting memorandum by Tennyson recording his
first meeting with Swinburne:
“I may tell you, however, that young Swinburne called here the other day
with a college friend of his, and we asked him to dinner, and I thought
him a very modest and intelligent young fellow. Moreover I read him what
you vindicated [‘Maud’], but what I particularly admired in him was that
he did not press upon me any verses of his own.”
Of contemporary novels he seems to have been a voracious and
indiscriminate reader. In the long list here given of novelists whose
books he read—good, bad, and indifferent—it is curious not to find the
name of Mrs. Humphry Ward. With Thackeray he was intimate; and he was in
cordial relations with Dickens, Douglas Jerrold, and George Eliot. Among
the poets, besides Edward Fitzgerald and Coventry Patmore, he saw much of
William Allingham. Though he admired parts of ‘_Festus_’ greatly, we do
not gather from these volumes that he met the author. Dobell he saw much
of at Malvern in 1846. The letter-diary from Tennyson during his stay in
Cornwall with Holman Hunt, Val. Prinsep, Woolner, and Palgrave, shows how
exhilarated he could be by wind and sea. The death of Lionel was a sad
blow to him. ‘Demeter, and other Poems,’ was dedicated to Lord Dufferin,
“as a tribute,” says his son, “of affection and of gratitude; for words
would fail me to tell the unremitting kindness shown by himself and Lady
Dufferin to my brother Lionel during his fatal illness.”
Tennyson’s critical insight could not fail to be good when exercised upon
poetry. Here are one or two of his sayings about Burns, which show in
what spirit he would have read Henley’s recent utterances about that
poet:—
“Burns did for the old songs of Scotland almost what Shakespeare had done
for the English drama that preceded him.”
“Read the exquisite songs of Burns. In shape each of them has the
perfection of the berry, in light the radiance of the dew-drop: you
forget for its sake those stupid things his serious poems.”
Among the reminiscences and impressions of the poet which Lord Tennyson
has appended to his second volume, it is only fair to specialize the
admirable paper by F. T. Palgrave, which, long as it is, is not by one
word too long. That Jowett would write wisely and well was in the nature
of things. The only contribution, however, we can quote here is
Froude’s, for it is as brief as it is emphatic:—
“I owe to your father the first serious reflexions upon life and the
nature of it which have followed me for more than fifty years. The
same voice speaks to me now as I come near my own end, from beyond
the bar. Of the early poems, ‘Love and Death’ had the deepest effect
upon me. The same thought is in the last lines of the last poems
which we shall ever have from him.
“Your father in my estimate, stands, and will stand far away by the
side of Shakespeare above all other English Poets, with this relative
superiority even to Shakespeare, that he speaks the thoughts and
speaks _to_ the perplexities and misgivings of his own age.
“He was born at the fit time, before the world had grown inflated
with the vanity of Progress, and there was still an atmosphere in
which such a soul could grow. There will be no such others for many
a long age.”
“Yours gratefully,
“J. A. FROUDE.”
This letter is striking evidence of the influence Tennyson had upon his
contemporaries. Comparisons, however, between Shakespeare and other
poets can hardly be satisfactory. A kinship between him and any other
poet can only be discovered in relation to one of the many sides of the
“myriad-minded” man. Where lies Tennyson’s kinship? Is it on the
dramatic side? In a certain sense Tennyson possessed dramatic power
undoubtedly; for he had a fine imagination of extraordinary vividness,
and could, as in ‘Rizpah,’ make a character live in an imagined
situation. But to write a vital play requires more than this: it
requires a knowledge—partly instinctive and partly acquired—of men as
well as of man, and especially of the way in which one individual acts
and reacts upon another in the complex web of human life. To depict the
workings of the soul of man in a given situation is one thing—to depict
the impact of ego upon ego is another. When we consider that the more
poetical a poet is the more oblivious we expect him to be of the
machinery of social life, it is no wonder that poetical dramatists are so
rare. In drama, even poetic drama, the poet must leave the “golden
clime” in which he was born, must leave those “golden stars above” in
order to learn this machinery, and not only learn it, but take a pleasure
in learning it.
In honest admiration of Tennyson’s dramatic work, where it is admirable,
we yield to none, at the time when ‘The Foresters’ was somewhat coldly
accepted by the press on account of its “lack of virility,” we considered
that in the class to which it belonged, the scenic pastoral plays, it
held a very worthy place. That Tennyson’s admiration for Shakespeare was
unbounded is evident enough.
“There was no one,” says Jowett in his recollections of Tennyson, “to
whom he was so absolutely devoted, no poet of whom he had a more intimate
knowledge than Shakespeare. He said to me, and probably to many others,
that there was one intellectual process in the world of which he could
not even entertain an apprehension—that was the plays of Shakespeare. He
thought that he could instinctively distinguish between the genuine and
the spurious in them, _e.g._, between those parts of ‘King Henry VIII.,’
which are generally admitted to be spurious, and those that are genuine.
The same thought was partly working in his mind on another occasion, when
he spoke of two things, which he conceived to be beyond the intelligence
of man, and it was certainly not repeated by him from any irreverence;
the one, the intellectual genius of Shakespeare—the other, the religious
genius of Jesus Christ.”
And in the pathetic account of Tennyson’s last moments we find it
recorded that on the Tuesday before the Wednesday on which he died, he
called out, “Where is my Shakespeare? I must have my Shakespeare”; and
again on the day of his death, when the breath was passing out of his
body, he asked for his Shakespeare. All this, however, makes it the more
remarkable that of poets Shakespeare had the least influence upon
Tennyson’s art. There was a fundamental unlikeness between the genius of
the two men. The only point in common between them is that each in his
own way captivated the suffrages both of the many and of the fit though
few, notwithstanding the fact that their methods of dramatic approach in
their plays are absolutely and fundamentally different. Even their very
methods of writing verse are entirely different. Tennyson’s blank verse
seems at its best to combine the beauties of the Miltonic and the
Wordsworthian line; while nothing is so rare in his work as a
Shakespearean line. Now and then such a line as