Was left a trampled orphan, and a selfish uncle's ward.
Of course love ensues. The woman in the chant or monologue proves a
false one; and as far as appears the ideal of woman, in the poet's
reflections, is a false one--at any rate for America. Woman is _not_
"the lesser man." (The heart is not the brain.) The best of the piece of
fifty years since is its concluding line:
For the mighty wind arises roaring seaward and I go.
Then for this current 1886-7, a just-out sequel, which (as an apparently
authentic summary says) "reviews the life of mankind during the past
sixty years, and comes to the conclusion that its boasted progress is of
doubtful credit to the world in general and to England in particular. A
cynical vein of denunciation of democratic opinions and aspirations runs
throughout the poem in mark'd contrast with the spirit of the poet's
youth." Among the most striking lines of this sequel are the following:
Envy wears the mask of love, and, laughing sober fact to scorn,
Cries to weakest as to strongest, 'Ye are equals, equal born,'
Equal-born! Oh yes, if yonder hill be level with the flat.
Charm us, orator, till the lion look no larger than the cat:
Till the cat, through that mirage of overheated language, loom
Larger than the lion Demo--end in working its own doom.
Tumble Nature heel o'er head, and, yelling with the yelling street,
Set the feet above the brain, and swear the brain is in the feet,
Bring the old dark ages back, without the faith, without the hope.
Beneath the State, the Church, the Throne, and roll their ruins down
the slope.
I should say that all this is a legitimate consequence of the tone
and convictions of the earlier standards and points of view. Then some
reflections, down to the hard-pan of this sort of thing.
The course of progressive politics (democracy) is so certain and
resistless, not only in America but in Europe, that we can well afford
the warning calls, threats, checks, neutralizings, in imaginative
literature, or any department, of such deep-sounding, and high-soaring
voices as Carlyle's and Tennyson's. Nay, the blindness, excesses, of the
prevalent tendency--the dangers of the urgent trends of our times--in my
opinion, need such voices almost more than any. I should, too, call it
a signal instance of democratic humanity's luck that it has such enemies
to contend with--so candid, so fervid, so heroic. But why do I say
enemies? Upon the whole is not Tennyson--and was not Carlyle (like an
honest and stern physician)--the true friend of our age?
Let me assume to pass verdict, or perhaps momentary judgment, for the
United States on this poet--a remov'd and distant position giving some
advantages over a nigh one. What is Tennyson's service to his race,
times, and especially to America? First, I should say--or at least not
forget--his personal character. He is not to be mention'das a rugged,
evolutionary, aboriginal force--but (and a great lesson is in it) he has
been consistent throughout with the native, healthy, patriotic
spinal element and promptings of himself. His moral line is local and
conventional, but it is vital and genuine. He reflects the uppercrust of
his time, its pale cast of thought--even its _ennui_. Then the simile
of my friend John Burroughs is entirely true, "his glove is a glove of
silk, but the hand is a hand of iron." He shows how one can be a royal
laureate, quite elegant and "aristocratic," and a little queer and
affected, and at the same time perfectly manly and natural. As to his
non-democracy, it fits him well, and I like him the better for it. I
guess we all like to have (I am sure I do) some one who presents those
sides of a thought, or possibility, different from our own--different
and yet with a sort of home-likeness--a tartness and contradiction
offsetting the theory as we view it, and construed from tastes and
proclivities not at all his own.
To me, Tennyson shows more than any poet I know (perhaps has been a
warning to me) how much there is in finest verbalism. There is such
a latent charm in mere words, cunning collocutions, and in the voice
ringing them, which he has caught and brought out, beyond all others--as
in the line,
And hollow, hollow, hollow, all delight,
in "The Passing of Arthur," and evidenced in "The Lady of Shalott," "The
Deserted House," and many other pieces. Among the best (I often linger
over them again and again) are "Lucretius," "The Lotos Eaters," and "The
Northern Farmer." His mannerism is great, but it is a noble and welcome
mannerism. His very best work, to me, is contain'd in the books of "The
Idylls of the King," and all that has grown out of them. Though
indeed we could spare nothing of Tennyson, however small or however
peculiar--not "Break, Break," nor "Flower in the Crannied Wall," nor the
old, eternally-told passion of "Edward Gray:"
Love may come and love may go,
And fly like a bird from tree to tree.
But I will love no more, no more
Till Ellen Adair come back to me.
Yes, Alfred Tennyson's is a superb character, and will help give
illustriousness, through the long roll of time, to our Nineteenth
Century. In its bunch of orbic names, shining like a constellation
of stars, his will be one of the brightest. His very faults, doubts,
swervings, doublings upon himself, have been typical of our age. We are
like the voyagers of a ship, casting off for new seas, distant shores.
We would still dwell in the old suffocating and dead haunts, remembering
and magnifying their pleasant experiences only, and more than once
impell'd to jump ashore before it is too late, and stay where our
fathers stay'd, and live as they lived.
May-be I am non-literary and non-decorous (let me at least be human, and
pay part of my debt) in this word about Tennyson. I want him to realize
that here is a great and ardent Nation that absorbs his songs, and has
a respect and affection for him personally, as almost for no other
foreigner. I want this word to go to the old man at Farringford as
conveying no more than the simple truth; and that truth (a little
Christmas gift) no slight one either. I have written impromptu, and
shall let it all go at that. The readers of more than fifty millions of
people in the New World not only owe to him some of their most agreeable
and harmless and healthy hours, but he has enter'd into the formative
influences of character here, not only in the Atlantic cities, but
inland and far West, out in Missouri, in Kansas, and away in Oregon, in
farmer's house and miner's cabin.
Best thanks, anyhow, to Alfred Tennyson--thanks and appreciation in
America's name.