Not of the sunlight,
Not of the moonlight,
Nor of the starlight!
O young Mariner,
Down to the haven,
Call your companions,
Launch your vessel,
And crowd your canvas,
And ere it vanishes
Over the margin,
After it, follow it,
Follow the Gleam.
--_Merlin_
[Illustration: ALFRED TENNYSON]
The grandfather of Tennyson had two sons, the elder boy, according to
Clement Scott, being "both wilful and commonplace." Now, of course, the
property and honors and titles, according to the law of England, would all
gravitate to the commonplace boy; and the second son, who was competent,
dutiful and worthy, would be out in the cold world--simply because he was
accidentally born second and not first. It was not his fault that he was
born second, and it was in no wise to the credit of the other that he was
born first.
So the father, seeing that the elder boy had small executive capacity, and
no appreciation of a Good Thing, disinherited him, giving him, however, a
generous allowance, but letting the titles go to the second boy, who was
bright and brave and withal a right manly fellow.
Personally, I'm glad the honors went to the best man. But Hallam Tennyson,
son of the poet, sees only rank injustice in the action of his ancestor,
who deliberately set his own opinion of right and justice against
precedent as embodied in English Law. As a matter of strictest justice, we
might argue that neither boy was entitled to anything which he had not
earned, and that, in dividing the property between them, instead of
allowing it all to drift into the hands of the one accidentally born
first, the father acted wisely and well.
But neither Alfred nor Hallam Tennyson thought so. How much their opinions
were biased by the fact that they were descendants of the firstborn son,
we can not say. Anyway, the descendants of the second son, the Honorable
Charles Tennyson d'Eyncourt, have made no protest of which I can learn,
about justice having been defeated.
Considering this subject of the Law of Entail one step further, we find
that Hallam, the present Lord Tennyson, is a Peer of the Realm simply
because his father was a great poet, and honors were given him on that
account by the Queen. These honors go to Hallam, who, as all men agree, is
in many ways singularly like his grandfather.
Genius is not hereditary, but titles are. Hallam is eminently pleased with
the English Law of Entail, save that he questions whether any father has
the divine right to divert his titles and wealth from the eldest son. Lord
Hallam's arguments are earnest and well expressed, but they seem to show
that he is lacking in what Herbert Spencer calls the "value sense"--in
other words, the sense of humor.
Hallam's lack of perspective is further demonstrated by his patient
efforts to explain who the various Tennysons were. In my boyhood days I
thought there was but one Tennyson. On reading Hallam's book, however,
one would think there were dozens of them. To keep these various men,
bearing one name, from being confused in the mind of the reader, is quite
a task; and to better identify one particular Tennyson, Hallam always
refers to him as "Father," or "My Father." In the course of a recent
interview with W.H. Seward, of Auburn, New York, I was impressed by his
dignified, respectful, and affectionate references to "Seward." "This
belonged to Seward," and "Seward told me"--as though there were but one.
In these pages I will speak of Tennyson--there has been but one--there
will never be another.
* * * * *
I think Clement Scott is a little severe in his estimate of the character
of Tennyson's father, although the main facts are doubtless as he states
them. The Reverend George Clayton Tennyson, Rector of Somersby and Wood
Enderby parishes, was a typical English parson. As a boy he was simply
big, fat and lazy. His health was so perfect that it overtopped all
ambition, and having no nerves to speak of, his sensibilities were very
slight.
When he was disinherited in favor of his younger brother, a keen, nervous,
forceful fellow, he accepted it as a matter of course. His career was
planned for him: he "took orders," married the young woman his folks
selected, and slipped easily into his proper niche--his adipose serving as
a buffer for his feelings. In his intellect there was no flash, and his
insight into the heart of things was small.
Being happily married to a discreet woman who managed him without ever
letting him be aware of it, and having a sure and sufficient income, and
never knowing that he had a stomach, he did his clerical work (with the
help of a curate), and lived out the measure of his days, no wiser at the
last than he was at thirty.
In passing, we may call attention to the fact that the average man is a
victim of Arrested Development, and that the fleeting years bring an
increase of knowledge only in very exceptional cases. Health and
prosperity are not pure blessings--a certain element of discontent is
necessary to spur men on to a higher life.
The Reverend George Clayton Tennyson had income enough to meet his wants,
but not enough to embarrass him with the responsibility of taking care of
it. Each quarterly stipend was spent before it arrived, and the family
lived on credit until another three months rolled around. They had roast
beef as often as they wanted it; in the cellar were puncheons, kegs and
barrels, and as there was no rent to pay nor landlords to appease, care
sat lightly on the Rector.
Elizabeth, this man's wife, is worthy of more than a passing note. She was
the daughter of the Reverend Stephen Fytche, vicar of Louth. Her family
was not so high in rank as the Tennysons, because the Tennysons belonged
to the gentry. But she was intelligent, amiable, fairly good-looking, and
being the daughter of a clergyman, had beyond doubt a knowledge of
clerical needs; so it was thought she would make a good wife for the newly
appointed incumbent of Somersby.
The parents arranged it, the young folks were willing, and so they were
married--and the bridegroom was happy ever afterward.
And why shouldn't he have been happy? Surely no man was ever blessed with
a better wife! He had made a reach into the matrimonial grab-bag and drawn
forth a jewel. This jewel was many-faceted. Without affectation or silly
pride, the clergyman's wife did the work that God sent her to do. The
sense of duty was strong upon her. Babies came, once each two years, and
in one case two in one year, and there was careful planning required to
make the income reach, and to keep the household in order. Then she
visited the poor and sick of the parish, and received the many visitors.
And with it all she found time to read. Her mind was open and alert for
all good things. I am not sure that she was so very happy, but no
complaints escaped her. In all she bore twelve children--eight sons and
four daughters. Ten of these children lived to be over seventy-five years
of age. The fourth child that came to her they named Alfred.
* * * * *
Tennyson's education in early youth was very slight. His father laid down
rules and gave out lessons, but the strictness of discipline never lasted
more than two days at a time. The children ran wild and roamed the woods
of Lincolnshire in search of all the curious things that the woods hold in
store for boys. The father occasionally made stern efforts to "correct"
his sons. In the use of the birch he was ambidextrous. But I have noticed
that in households where a strap hangs behind the kitchen-door, for ready
use, it is not utilized so much for pure discipline as to ease the
feelings of the parent. They say that expression is a need of the human
heart; and I am also convinced that in many hearts there is a very strong
desire at times to "thrash" some one. Who it is makes little difference,
but children being helpless and the law giving us the right, we find
gratification by falling upon them with straps, birch-rods, slippers,
ferules, hairbrushes or apple-tree sprouts.
No student of pedagogics now believes that the free use of the rod ever
made a child "good"; but all agree that it has often served as a
safety-valve for a pent-up emotion in the parent or teacher.
The father of Alfred Tennyson applied the birch, and the boy took to the
woods, moody, resentful, solitary. There was good in this, for the lad
learned to live within himself, and to be self-sufficient: to love the
solitude, and feel a kinship with all the life that makes the groves and
fields melodious.
In Eighteen Hundred Twenty-eight, when nineteen years of age, Alfred was
sent to Trinity College, Cambridge. He remained there three years, but
left without a degree, and what was worse, with the ill-will of his
teachers, who seemed to regard his as a hopeless case. He wouldn't study
the books they wanted him to, and was never a candidate for academic
distinctions.
College life, however, has much to recommend it beside the curriculum. At
Cambridge, Tennyson made the acquaintance of a group of young men who
influenced his life profoundly. Kemble, Milnes, Brookfield and Spedding
remained his lifelong friends; and as all good is reciprocal, no man can
say how much these eminent men owe to the moody and melancholy Tennyson,
or how much he owes to them.
* * * * *
Tennyson began to write verse very young. His first line is said to have
been written at five, and he has told of going when thirteen years of age
to visit his grandfather, and of presenting him a poem. The old gentleman
gave him half a guinea with the remark, "This is the first money you ever
made by writing poetry, and take my word for it, it will be the last!"
When eighteen years of age, with his brother, Charles, he produced a thin
book of thin verses.
We have the opinion of Coleridge to the effect that the only lines which
have any merit in the book are those signed C.T. Charles became a
clergyman of marked ability, married rich, and changed his name from
Tennyson to Turner for economic and domestic reasons. Years afterward,
when Alfred had become Poet Laureate, rumor has it he thought of changing
the "Turner" back to "Tennyson," but was unable to bring it about.
The only honor captured by Alfred at Cambridge was a prize for his poem,
"Timbuctoo." The encouragement that this brought him, backed up by Arthur
Hallam's declaiming the piece in public--as a sort of defi to
detractors--caused him to fix his attention more assiduously on verse. He
could write--it was the only thing he could do--and so he wrote.
At Cambridge he was in the habit of reading his poetry to a little coterie
called "The Apostles," and he always premised his reading with the
statement that no criticism would be acceptable.
The year he was twenty-one he published a small book called, "Poems,
Chiefly Lyrical." The books went a-begging for many years; but times
change, for a copy of this edition was sold by Quaritch in Eighteen
Hundred Ninety-five for one hundred eighty pounds. The only piece in the
book that seems to show genuine merit is "Mariana."
Two years afterward a second edition, revised and enlarged, was brought
out. This book contains "The Lady of Shalott," "The May Queen," "A Dream
of Fair Women" and "The Lotus-Eaters."
Beyond a few fulsome reviews from personal friends and a little surly
mention from the tribe of Jeffrey, the volume attracted little or no
attention. This coldness on the part of the public shot an atrabilarian
tint through the ambition of our poet, and the fond hope of a success in
literature faded from his mind.
And then began what Stopford Brooke has called "the ten fallow years in
the life of Tennyson." But fallow years are not all fallow. The dark
brooding night is as necessary for our life as the garish day. Great crops
of wheat that feed the nations grow only where the winter's snow covers
all as with a garment. And ever behind the mystery of sleep, and beneath
the silence of the snow, Nature slumbers not nor sleeps.
The withholding of quick recognition gave the mind of Tennyson an
opportunity to ripen. Fate held him in leash that he might be saved for a
masterly work, and all the time that he lived in semi-solitude and read
and thought and tramped the fields, his soul was growing strong and his
spirit was taking on the silken self-sufficient strength that marked his
later days. This hiatus of ten years in the life of our poet is very
similar to the thirteen fallow years in the career of Browning. These men
crossed and recrossed each other's pathway, but did not meet for many
years. What a help they might have been to each other in those years of
doubt and seeming defeat! But each was to make his way alone.
Browning seemed to grow through society and travel, but solitude served
the needs of Tennyson.
"There must be a man behind every sentence," said Emerson. After ten years
of silence, when Tennyson issued his book, the literary world recognized
the man behind it. Tennyson had grown as a writer, but more as a man. And
after all, it is more to be a man than a poet. All who knew Tennyson, and
have written of him, especially during those early years, begin with a
description of his appearance. His looks did not belie the man. In
intellect and in stature he was a giant. The tall, athletic form, the
great shaggy head, the classic features, and the look of untried strength
were all thrown into fine relief by the modesty, the half-embarrassment,
of his manner.
To meet the poet was to acknowledge his power. No man can talk as wise as
he can look, and Tennyson never tried to. His words were few and simple.
Those who met him went away ready to back his lightest word. They felt
there was a man behind the sentence.
Carlyle, who was a hero-worshiper, but who usually limited his worship to
those well dead and long gone hence, wrote of Tennyson to Emerson: "One of
the finest-looking men in the world. A great shock of dusky hair; bright,
laughing, hazel eyes; massive aquiline face, most massive, yet most
delicate; of sallow brown complexion, almost Indian-looking, clothes
cynically loose, free and easy, smokes infinite tobacco. His voice is
musical, metallic, fit for loud laughter and piercing wail, and all that
may lie between; speech and speculation free and plenteous; I do not meet
in these late decades such company over a pipe! We shall see what he will
grow to."
And then again, writing to his brother John: "Some weeks ago, one night,
the poet Tennyson and Matthew Arnold were discovered here sitting smoking
in the garden. Tennyson had been here before, but was still new to
Jane--who was alone for the first hour or two of it. A fine,
large-featured, dim-eyed, bronze-colored, shaggy-headed man is Alfred;
dusty, smoky, free and easy; who swims outwardly and inwardly, with great
composure, in an articulate element as of tranquil chaos and
tobacco-smoke; great now and then when he does emerge; a most restful,
brotherly, solid-hearted man."
The "English Idylls," put forth in Eighteen Hundred Forty-two, contained
all the poems, heretofore published, that Tennyson cared to retain. It
must be stated to the credit, or discredit, of America, that the only
complete editions of Tennyson were issued by New York and Boston
publishers. These men seized upon the immature early poems of Tennyson,
and combining them with his later books, issued the whole in a style that
tried men's eyes--very proud of the fact that "this is the only complete
edition," etc. Of course they paid the author no royalty, neither did they
heed his protests, and possibly all this prepared the way for frosty
receptions of daughters of quick machine-made American millionaires, who
journeyed to the Isle of Wight in after-days. Soon after the publication
of "English Idylls," Alfred Tennyson moved gracefully, like a ship that is
safely launched, into the first place among living poets. He was then
thirty-three years of age, with just half a century, lacking a few months,
yet to live. In all that half-century, with its many conflicting literary
judgments, his title to first place was never seriously questioned. Up to
Eighteen Hundred Forty-two, in his various letters, and through his close
friends, we learn that Tennyson was sore pressed for funds. He hadn't
money to buy books, and when he traveled it was through the munificence of
some kind kinsman. He even excuses himself from attending certain social
functions on account of his lack of suitable raiment--probably with a
certain satisfaction.
But when he tells of his poverty to Emily Sellwood, the woman of his
choice, there is anguish in his cry. In fact, her parents succeeded in
breaking off her relations with Tennyson for a time, on account of his
very uncertain prospects. His brothers, even those younger than he, had
slipped into snug positions--"but Alfred dreams on with nothing special in
sight." Poetry, in way of a financial return, is not to be commended.
Honors were coming Tennyson's way as early as Eighteen Hundred Forty-two,
but it was not until Eighteen Hundred Forty-five, when a pension of two
hundred pounds a year was granted him by the Government, that he began to
feel easy. Even then there were various old scores to liquidate.
The year Eighteen Hundred Fifty, when he was forty-one, has been called
his "golden year," for in it occurred the publication of "In Memoriam,"
his appointment to the post of Poet Laureate, and his marriage.
Emily Sellwood had waited for him all these years. She had been sought
after, and had refused several good offers from eligible widowers and
others who pitied her sad plight and looked upon her as an old maid
forlorn. But she was true to her love for Alfred. Possibly she had not
been courted quite so assiduously as Tennyson's mother had been. When that
dear old lady was past eighty she became very deaf, and the family often
ventured to carry on conversations in her presence which possibly would
have been modified had the old lady been in full possession of her
faculties. On a day as she sat knitting in the chimney-corner, one of her
daughters in a burst of confidence to a visitor, said, "Why, before Mamma
married Papa she had received twenty-three offers of marriage!"
"Twenty-four, my dear--twenty-four," corrected the old lady as she shifted
the needles.
No one has ever claimed that Tennyson was an ideal lover. Surely he never
could have been tempted to do what Browning did--break up the peace of a
household by an elopement. His love was a thing of the head, weighed
carefully in the scales of his judgment. His caution and good sense saved
him from all Byronic excesses, or foolish alliances such as took Shelley
captive. He believed in law and order, and early saw that his interests
lay in that direction. He belonged to the Church of England, and doubtless
thought as he pleased, but ever expressed himself with caution.
It is easy to accuse Tennyson of being insular--to say that he is merely
"the poet of England." Had he been more he would have been less.
World-poets have usually been revolutionists, and dangerous men who
exploded at an unknown extent of concussion. None of them has been a safe
man--none respectable. Dante, Shakespeare, Milton, Hugo and Whitman were
outcasts.
Tennyson is always serene, sane and safe--his lines breathe purity and
excellence. He is the poet of religion, of the home and fireside, of
established order, of truth, justice and mercy as embodied in law.
Very early he became a close personal friend of Queen Victoria, and many
of his lines ministered to her personal consolation. For fifty years
Tennyson's life was one steady, triumphal march. He acquired wealth, such
as no other English poet before him had ever gained; his name was known in
every corner of the earth where white men journeyed, and at home he was
beloved and honored. He died October Sixth, Eighteen Hundred Ninety-two,
aged eighty-three, and for him the Nation mourned, and with deep sincerity
the Queen spoke of his demise as a poignant, personal sorrow.
* * * * *
It was at Cambridge he met Arthur Hallam--Arthur Hallam, immortal and
remembered alone for being the comrade and friend of Tennyson.
Alfred took his friend Arthur to his home in Lincolnshire one vacation,
and we know how Arthur became enamored of Tennyson's sister Emily, and
they were betrothed. Together, Tennyson and Hallam made a trip through
France and the Pyrenees.
Carlyle and Milburn, the blind preacher, once sat smoking in the little
arbor back of the house in Cheyne Row. They had been talking of Tennyson,
and after a long silence Carlyle knocked the ashes out of his pipe, and
with a grunt said: "Ha! Death is a great blessing--the joyousest blessing
of all! Without death there would ha' been no 'In Memoriam,' no Hallam,
and like enough no Tennyson!" It is futile to figure what would have
occurred had this or that not happened, since every act of life is a
sequence. But that Carlyle and many others believed that the death of
Hallam was the making of Tennyson, there is no doubt. Possibly his soul
needed just this particular amount of bruising in order to make it burst
into undying song--who knows! When Charles Kingsley was asked for the
secret of his exquisite sympathy and fine imagination, he paused a space,
and then answered--"I had a friend." The desire for friendship is strong
in every human heart. We crave the companionship of those who can
understand. The nostalgia of life presses, we sigh for "home," and long
for the presence of one who sympathizes with our aspirations, comprehends
our hopes and is able to partake of our joys. A thought is not our own
until we impart it to another, and the confessional seems a crying need of
every human soul.
One can bear grief, but it takes two to be glad.
We reach the Divine through some one, and by dividing our joy with this
one we double it, and come in touch with the Universal. The sky is never
so blue, the birds never sing so blithely, our acquaintances are never so
gracious, as when we are filled with love for some one.
Being in harmony with one we are in harmony with all.
The lover idealizes and clothes the beloved with virtues that exist only
in his imagination. The beloved is consciously or unconsciously aware of
this, and endeavors to fulfil the high ideal; and in the contemplation of
the transcendent qualities that his mind has created, the lover is raised
to heights otherwise unattainable.
Should the beloved pass from the earth while this condition of exaltation
endures, the conception is indelibly impressed upon the soul, just as the
last earthly view is said to be photographed upon the retina of the dead.
The highest earthly relationship is, in its very essence, fleeting, for
men are fallible, and living in a world where material wants jostle, and
time and change play their ceaseless parts, gradual obliteration comes
and disillusion enters. But the memory of a sweet affinity once fully
possessed, and snapped by Fate at its supremest moment, can never die from
out the heart. All other troubles are swallowed up in this, and if the
individual is of too stern a fiber to be completely crushed into the dust,
time will come bearing healing, and the memory of that once ideal
condition will chant in the heart a perpetual eucharist.
And I hope the world has passed forever from the nightmare of pity for the
dead: they have ceased from their labors and are at rest.
But for the living, when death has entered and removed the best friend,
Fate has done her worst; the plummet has sounded the depths of grief, and
thereafter nothing can inspire terror. At one fell stroke all petty
annoyances and corroding cares are sunk into nothingness. The memory of a
great love lives enshrined in undying amber. It affords a ballast 'gainst
all the storms that blow, and although it lends an unutterable sadness, it
imparts an unspeakable peace. Where there is this haunting memory of a
great love lost, there are always forgiveness, charity and a sympathy that
makes the man brother to all who suffer and endure. The individual himself
is nothing: he has nothing to hope for, nothing to lose, nothing to win,
and this constant memory of the high and exalted friendship that once was
his is a nourishing source of strength; it constantly purifies the mind
and inspires the heart to nobler living and diviner thinking. The man is
in communication with Elemental Conditions.
To know an ideal friendship and to have it fade from your grasp and flee
as a shadow before it is touched with the sordid breath of selfishness, or
sullied by misunderstandings, is the highest good. And the constant
dwelling in sweet, sad recollection on the exalted virtues of the one that
has gone, tends to crystallize these very virtues in the heart of him who
meditates them. The beauty with which love adorns its object becomes at
last the possession of the one who loves.
At the hour when the strong and helpful, yet tender and sympathetic,
friendship of Alfred Tennyson and Arthur Hallam was at its height, there
came a brief and abrupt word from Vienna to the effect that Arthur was
dead.
"In Vienna's fatal walls
God's finger touched him and he slept!"
The shock of surprise, followed by dumb, bitter grief, made an impression
on the youthful mind of Tennyson that the sixty years which followed did
not obliterate.
At first a numbness and a deadness came over his spirit, but this
condition erelong gave way to a sweet contemplation of the beauties of
character that his friend possessed, and he tenderly reviewed the gracious
hours they had spent together.
"In Memoriam" is not one poem; it is made up of many "short
swallow-flights of song that dip their wings in tears and skim away."
There are one hundred thirty separate songs in all, held together by the
silken thread of love for the poet's lost friend.
Seventeen years were required for their evolution. Some people, misled by
the title, possibly, think of these poems as a wail of grief for the dead,
a vain cry of sorrow for the lost, or a proud parading of mourning
millinery. Such views could not be more wholly wrong.
To every soul that has loved and lost, to those who have stood by open
graves, to all who have beheld the sun go down on less worth in the world,
these songs are a victor's cry. They tell of love and life that rise
phoenix-like from the ashes of despair; of doubt turned to faith; of fear
which has become serenest peace.
All poems that endure must have this helpful, uplifting quality. Without
violence of direction they must be beacon-lights that gently guide
stricken men and women into safe harbors.
The "Invocation," written nearly a score of years after Hallam's death,
reveals Tennyson's personal conquest of pain. His thought has broadened
from the sense of loss into a stately march of conquest over death for the
whole human race. The sharpness of grief has wakened the soul to the
contemplation of sublime ideas--truth, justice, nobility, honor, and the
sense of beauty as shown in all created things. The man once loved a
person--now his heart goes out to the universe. The dread of death is
gone, and he calmly contemplates his own end and waits the summons without
either impatience or fear. He realizes that death itself is a
manifestation of life--that it is as natural and just as necessary.
"Sunset and evening star
And one clear call for me,
And may there be no moaning of the bar
When I put out to sea."
The desire for sympathy and the wish for friendship are in his heart, but
the fever of unrest and the spirit of revolt are gone. His heart, his
hope, his faith, his life, are freely laid on the altar of Eternal Love.