“O that ’twere possible,”
and the dull consciousness of the poem of madness, with its dumb gnawing
confusion of pain and wandering memory; the hero being finally left, in
the author’s words, “sane but shattered.”
Tennyson’s letters of the time show that the critics succeeded in
wounding him: it was not a difficult thing to do. _Maud_ was threatened
with a broadside from “that pompholygous, broad-blown Apollodorus, the
gifted X.” People who have read Aytoun’s diverting _Firmilian_, where
Apollodorus plays his part, and who remember “gifted Gilfillan” in
_Waverley_, know who the gifted X. was. But X. was no great authority
south of Tay.
Despite the almost unanimous condemnation by public critics, the success
of _Maud_ enabled Tennyson to buy Farringford, so he must have been
better appreciated and understood by the world than by the reviewers.
In February 1850 Tennyson returned to his old Arthurian themes, “the only
big thing not done,” for Milton had merely glanced at Arthur, Dryden did
not
“Raise the Table Round again,”
and Blackmore has never been reckoned adequate. _Vivien_ was first
composed as _Merlin and Nimue_, and then _Geraint and Enid_ was adapted
from the _Mabinogion_, the Welsh collection of _Märchen_ and legends,
things of widely different ages, now rather Celtic, or Brythonic, now
amplifications made under the influence of mediæval French romance.
_Enid_ was finished in Wales in August, and Tennyson learned Welsh enough
to be able to read the _Mabinogion_, which is much more of Welsh than
many Arthurian critics possess. The two first Idylls were privately
printed in the summer of 1857, being very rare and much desired of
collectors in this embryonic shape. In July _Guinevere_ was begun, in
the middle, with Arthur’s valedictory address to his erring consort. In
autumn Tennyson visited the late Duke of Argyll at Inveraray: he was much
attached to the Duke—unlike Professor Huxley. Their love of nature, the
Duke being as keen-eyed as the poet was short-sighted, was one tie of
union. The Indian Mutiny, or at least the death of Havelock, was the
occasion of lines which the author was too wise to include in any of his
volumes: the poem on Lucknow was of later composition.
_Guinevere_ was completed in March 1858; and Tennyson met Mr Swinburne,
then very young. “What I particularly admired in him was that he did not
press upon me any verses of his own.” Tennyson would have found more to
admire if he had pressed for a sight of the verses. Neither he nor Mr
Matthew Arnold was very encouraging to young poets: they had no sons in
Apollo, like Ben Jonson. But both were kept in a perpetual state of
apprehension by the army of versifiers who send volumes by post, to whom
that can only be said what Tennyson did say to one of them, “As an
amusement to yourself and your friends, the writing it” (verse) “is all
very well.” It is the friends who do not find it amusing, while the
stranger becomes the foe. The psychology of these pests of the Muses is
bewildering. They do not seem to read poetry, only to write it and
launch it at unoffending strangers. If they bought each other’s books,
all of them could afford to publish.
The Master of Balliol, the most adviceful man, if one may use the term,
of his age, appears to have advised Tennyson to publish the _Idylls_ at
once. There had been years of silence since _Maud_, and the Master
suspected that “mosquitoes” (reviewers) were the cause. “There is a note
needed to show the good side of human nature and to condone its frailties
which Thackeray will never strike.” To others it seems that Thackeray
was eternally striking this note: at that time in General Lambert, his
wife, and daughters, not to speak of other characters in _The
Virginians_. Who does not condone the frailties of Captain Costigan, and
F. B., and the Chevalier Strong? In any case, Tennyson took his own
time, he was (1858) only beginning _Elaine_. There is no doubt that
Tennyson was easily pricked by unsympathetic criticism, even from the
most insignificant source, and, as he confessed, he received little
pleasure from praise. All authors, without exception, are sensitive. A
sturdier author wrote that he would sometimes have been glad to meet his
assailant “where the muir-cock was bailie.” We know how testily
Wordsworth replied in defence to the gentlest comments by Lamb.
The Master of Balliol kept insisting, “As to the critics, their power is
not really great. . . . One drop of natural feeling in poetry or the
true statement of a single new fact is already felt to be of more value
than all the critics put together.” Yet even critics may be in the
right, and of all great poets, Tennyson listened most obediently to their
censures, as we have seen in the case of his early poems. His prolonged
silences after the attacks of 1833 and 1855 were occupied in work and
reflection: Achilles was not merely sulking in his tent, as some of his
friends seem to have supposed. An epic in a series of epic idylls cannot
be dashed off like a romantic novel in rhyme; and Tennyson’s method was
always one of waiting for maturity of conception and execution.
Mrs Tennyson, doubtless by her lord’s desire, asked the Master (then
tutor of Balliol) to suggest themes. Old age was suggested, and is
treated in _The Grandmother_. Other topics were not handled. “I hold
most strongly,” said the Master, “that it is the duty of every one who
has the good fortune to know a man of genius to do any trifling service
they can to lighten his work.” To do every service in his power to every
man was the Master’s life-long practice. He was not much at home, his
letters show, with Burns, to whom he seems to have attributed _John
Anderson_, _my jo_, _John_, while he tells an anecdote of Burns composing
_Tam o’ Shanter_ with emotional tears, which, if true at all, is true of
the making of _To Mary in Heaven_. If Burns wept over _Tam o’ Shanter_,
the tears must have been tears of laughter.
The first four _Idylls of the King_ were prepared for publication in the
spring of 1859; while Tennyson was at work also on _Pelleas and Ettarre_,
and the Tristram cycle. In autumn he went on a tour to Lisbon with Mr F.
T. Palgrave and Mr Craufurd Grove. Returning, he fell eagerly to reading
an early copy of Darwin’s _Origin of Species_, the crown of his own early
speculations on the theory of evolution. “Your theory does not make
against Christianity?” he asked Darwin later (1868), who replied, “No,
certainly not.” But Darwin has stated the waverings of his own mind in
contact with a topic too high for _a priori_ reasoning, and only to be
approached, if at all, on the strength of the scientific method applied
to facts which science, so far, neglects, or denies, or “explains away,”
rather than explains.
The _Idylls_, unlike _Maud_, were well received by the press, better by
the public, and best of all by friends like Thackeray, the Duke of
Argyll, the Master of Balliol, and Clough, while Ruskin showed some
reserve. The letter from Thackeray I cannot deny myself the pleasure of
citing from the Biography: it was written “in an ardour of claret and
gratitude,” but posted some six weeks later:—
FOLKESTONE, _September_.
36 ONSLOW SQUARE, _October_.
MY DEAR OLD ALFRED,—I owe you a letter of happiness and thanks. Sir,
about three weeks ago, when I was ill in bed, I read the Idylls of
the King, and I thought, “Oh, I must write to him now, for this
pleasure, this delight, this splendour of happiness which I have been
enjoying.” But I should have blotted the sheets, ’tis ill writing on
one’s back. The letter full of gratitude never went as far as the
post-office, and how comes it now?
D’abord, a bottle of claret. (The landlord of the hotel asked me
down to the cellar and treated me.) Then afterwards sitting here, an
old magazine, Fraser’s Magazine, 1850, and I come on a poem out of
The Princess which says, “I hear the horns of Elfland blowing,
blowing,”—no, it’s “the horns of Elfland faintly blowing” (I have
been into my bedroom to fetch my pen and it has made that blot), and,
reading the lines, which only one man in the world could write, I
thought about the other horns of Elfland blowing in full strength,
and Arthur in gold armour, and Guinevere in gold hair, and all those
knights and heroes and beauties and purple landscapes and misty gray
lakes in which you have made me live. They seem like facts to me,
since about three weeks ago (three weeks or a month was it?) when I
read the book. It is on the table yonder, and I don’t like, somehow,
to disturb it, but the delight and gratitude! You have made me as
happy as I was as a child with the Arabian Nights,—every step I have
walked in Elfland has been a sort of Paradise to me. (The landlord
gave two bottles of his claret and I think I drank the most) and here
I have been lying back in the chair and thinking of those delightful
Idylls, my thoughts being turned to you: what could I do but be
grateful to that surprising genius which has made me so happy? Do
you understand that what I mean is all true, and that I should break
out were you sitting opposite with a pipe in your mouth? Gold and
purple and diamonds, I say, gentlemen, and glory and love and honour,
and if you haven’t given me all these why should I be in such an
ardour of gratitude? But I have had out of that dear book the
greatest delight that has ever come to me since I was a young man; to
write and think about it makes me almost young, and this I suppose is
what I’m doing, like an after-dinner speech.
_P.S._—I thought the “Grandmother” quite as fine. How can you at 50
be doing things as well as at 35?
October 16th.—(I should think six weeks after the writing of the
above.)
The rhapsody of gratitude was never sent, and for a peculiar reason:
just about the time of writing I came to an arrangement with Smith &
Elder to edit their new magazine, and to have a contribution from T.
was the publishers’ and editor’s highest ambition. But to ask a man
for a favour, and to praise and bow down before him in the same page,
seemed to be so like hypocrisy, that I held my hand, and left this
note in my desk, where it has been lying during a little
French-Italian-Swiss tour which my girls and their papa have been
making.
Meanwhile S. E. & Co. have been making their own proposals to you,
and you have replied not favourably, I am sorry to hear; but now
there is no reason why you should not have my homages, and I am just
as thankful for the Idylls, and love and admire them just as much, as
I did two months ago when I began to write in that ardour of claret
and gratitude. If you can’t write for us you can’t. If you can by
chance some day, and help an old friend, how pleased and happy I
shall be! This however must be left to fate and your convenience: I
don’t intend to give up hope, but accept the good fortune if it
comes. I see one, two, three quarterlies advertised to-day, as all
bringing laurels to laureatus. He will not refuse the private
tribute of an old friend, will he? You don’t know how pleased the
girls were at Kensington t’other day to hear you quote their father’s
little verses, and he too I daresay was not disgusted. He sends you
and yours his very best regards in this most heartfelt and artless
(note of admiration)!
Always yours, my dear Alfred,
W. M. THACKERAY.
Naturally this letter gave Tennyson more pleasure than all the converted
critics with their favourable reviews. The Duke of Argyll announced the
conversion of Macaulay. The Master found _Elaine_ “the fairest,
sweetest, purest love poem in the English language.” As to the whole,
“The allegory in the distance _greatly strengthens_, _also elevates_,
_the meaning of the poem_.”
Ruskin, like some other critics, felt “the art and finish in these poems
a little more than I like to feel it.” Yet _Guinevere_ and _Elaine_ had
been rapidly written and little corrected. I confess to the opinion that
what a man does most easily is, as a rule, what he does best. We know
that the “art and finish” of Shakespeare were spontaneous, and so were
those of Tennyson. Perfection in art is sometimes more sudden than we
think, but then “the long preparation for it,—that unseen germination,
_that_ is what we ignore and forget.” But he wisely kept his pieces by
him for a long time, restudying them with a fresh eye. The “unreality”
of the subject also failed to please Ruskin, as it is a stumbling-block
to others. He wanted poems on “the living present,” a theme not selected
by Homer, Shakespeare, Spenser, Milton, Virgil, or the Greek dramatists,
except (among surviving plays) in the _Persæ of_ Æschylus. The poet who
can transfigure the hot present is fortunate, but most, and the greatest,
have visited the cool quiet purlieus of the past.
VII.
THE IDYLLS OF THE KING.
THE Idylls may probably be best considered in their final shape: they are
not an epic, but a series of heroic _idyllia_ of the same genre as the
heroic _idyllia_ of Theocritus. He wrote long after the natural age of
national epic, the age of Homer. He saw the later literary epic rise in
the _Argonautica_ of Apollonius Rhodius, a poem with many beauties, if
rather an archaistic and elaborate revival as a whole. The time for long
narrative poems, Theocritus appears to have thought, was past, and he
only ventured on the heroic _idyllia_ of Heracles, and certain adventures
of the Argonauts. Tennyson, too, from the first believed that his pieces
ought to be short. Therefore, though he had a conception of his work as
a whole, a conception long mused on, and sketched in various lights, he
produced no epic, only a series of epic _idyllia_. He had a spiritual
conception, “an allegory in the distance,” an allegory not to be insisted
upon, though its presence was to be felt. No longer, as in youth, did
Tennyson intend Merlin to symbolise “the sceptical understanding” (as if
one were to “break into blank the gospel of” Herr Kant), or poor
Guinevere to stand for the Blessed Reformation, or the Table Round for
Liberal Institutions. Mercifully Tennyson never actually allegorised
Arthur in that fashion. Later he thought of a musical masque of Arthur,
and sketched a _scenario_. Finally Tennyson dropped both the allegory of
Liberal principles and the musical masque in favour of the series of
heroic idylls. There was only a “parabolic drift” in the intention.
“There is no single fact or incident in the Idylls, however seemingly
mystical, which cannot be explained without any mystery or allegory
whatever.” The Idylls ought to be read (and the right readers never
dream of doing anything else) as romantic poems, just like Browning’s
_Childe Roland_, in which the wrong readers (the members of the Browning
Society) sought for mystic mountains and marvels. Yet Tennyson had his
own interpretation, “a dream of man coming into practical life and ruined
by one sin.” That was his “interpretation,” or “allegory in the
distance.”
People may be heard objecting to the suggestion of any spiritual
interpretation of the Arthur legends, and even to the existence of
elementary morality among the Arthurian knights and ladies. There seems
to be a notion that “bold bawdry and open manslaughter,” as Roger Ascham
said, are the staple of Tennyson’s sources, whether in the mediæval
French, the Welsh, or in Malory’s compilation, chiefly from French
sources. Tennyson is accused of “Bowdlerising” these, and of introducing
gentleness, courtesy, and conscience into a literature where such
qualities were unknown. I must confess myself ignorant of any early and
popular, or “primitive” literature, in which human virtues, and the human
conscience, do not play their part. Those who object to Tennyson’s
handling of the great Arthurian cycle, on the ground that he is too
refined and too moral, must either never have read or must long have
forgotten even Malory’s romance. Thus we read, in a recent novel, that
Lancelot was an _homme aux bonnes fortunes_, whereas Lancelot was the
most loyal of lovers.
Among other critics, Mr Harrison has objected that the Arthurian world of
Tennyson “is not quite an ideal world. Therein lies the difficulty. The
scene, though not of course historic, has certain historic suggestions
and characters.” It is not apparent who the historic characters are, for
the real Arthur is but a historic phantasm. “But then, in the midst of
so much realism, the knights, from Arthur downwards, talk and act in ways
with which we are familiar in modern ethical and psychological novels,
but which are as impossible in real mediæval knights as a Bengal tiger or
a Polar bear would be in a drawing-room.” I confess to little
acquaintance with modern ethical novels; but real mediæval knights, and
still more the knights of mediæval romance, were capable of very ethical
actions. To halt an army for the protection and comfort of a laundress
was a highly ethical action. Perhaps Sir Redvers Buller would do it:
Bruce did. Mr Harrison accuses the ladies of the Idylls of
soul-bewildering casuistry, like that of women in _Middlemarch_ or
_Helbeck of Bannisdale_. Now I am not reminded by Guinevere, and Elaine,
and Enid, of ladies in these ethical novels. But the women of the
mediæval _Cours d’Amour_ (the originals from whom the old romancers drew)
were nothing if not casuists. “Spiritual delicacy” (as they understood
it) was their delight.
Mr Harrison even argues that Malory’s men lived hot-blooded lives in
fierce times, “before an idea had arisen in the world of ‘reverencing
conscience,’ ‘leading sweet lives,’” and so on. But he admits that they
had “fantastic ideals of ‘honour’ and ‘love.’” As to “fantastic,” that
is a matter of opinion, but to have ideals and to live in accordance with
them is to “reverence conscience”, which the heroes of the romances are
said by Mr Harrison never to have had an idea of doing. They are denied
even “amiable words and courtliness.” Need one say that courtliness is
the dominant note of mediæval knights, in history as in romance? With
discourtesy Froissart would “head the count of crimes.” After a battle,
he says, Scots knights and English would thank each other for a good
fight, “not like the Germans.” “And now, I dare say,” said Malory’s Sir
Ector, “thou, Sir Lancelot, wast the curtiest knight that ever bare
shield, . . . and thou wast the meekest man and the gentlest that ever
ate in hall among ladies.” Observe Sir Lancelot in the difficult pass
where the Lily Maid offers her love: “Jesu defend me, for then I rewarded
your father and your brother full evil for their great goodness. . . .
But because, fair damsel, that ye love me as ye say ye do, I will, for
your good will and kindness, show you some goodness, . . . and always
while I live to be your true knight.” Here are “amiable words and
courtesy.” I cannot agree with Mr Harrison that Malory’s book is merely
“a fierce lusty epic.” That was not the opinion of its printer and
publisher, Caxton. He produced it as an example of “the gentle and
virtuous deeds that some knights used in these days, . . . noble and
renowned acts of humanity, gentleness, and chivalry. For herein may be
seen noble chivalry, courtesy, humanity, friendliness, love, cowardice,
murder, hate, virtue, and sin. Do after the good and leave the evil.”
In reaction against the bold-faced heroines and sensual amours of some of
the old French romances, an ideal of exaggerated asceticism, of stainless
chastity, notoriously pervades the portion of Malory’s work which deals
with the Holy Grail. Lancelot is distraught when he finds that, by dint
of enchantment, he has been made false to Guinevere (Book XI. chap.
viii.) After his dreaming vision of the Holy Grail, with the reproachful
Voice, Sir Lancelot said, “My sin and my wickedness have brought me great
dishonour, . . . and now I see and understand that my old sin hindereth
and shameth me.” He was human, the Lancelot of Malory, and “fell to his
old love again,” with a heavy heart, and with long penance at the end.
How such good knights can be deemed conscienceless and void of courtesy
one knows not, except by a survival of the Puritanism of Ascham. But
Tennyson found in the book what is in the book—honour, conscience,
courtesy, and the hero—
“Whose honour rooted in dishonour stood,
And faith unfaithful kept him falsely true.”
Malory’s book, which was Tennyson’s chief source, ends by being the
tragedy of the conscience of Lancelot. Arthur is dead, or “In Avalon he
groweth old.” The Queen and Lancelot might sing, as Lennox reports that
Queen Mary did after Darnley’s murder—
“_Weel is me_
_For I am free_.”
“Why took they not their pastime?” Because conscience forbade, and
Guinevere sends her lover far from her, and both die in religion. Thus
Malory’s “fierce lusty epic” is neither so lusty nor so fierce but that
it gives Tennyson his keynote: the sin that breaks the fair
companionship, and is bitterly repented.
“The knights are almost too polite to kill each other,” the critic urges.
In Malory they are sometimes quite too polite to kill each other. Sir
Darras has a blood-feud against Sir Tristram, and Sir Tristram is in his
dungeon. Sir Darras said, “Wit ye well that Sir Darras shall never
destroy such a noble knight as thou art in prison, howbeit that thou hast
slain three of my sons, whereby I was greatly aggrieved. But now shalt
thou go and thy fellows. . . . All that ye did,” said Sir Darras, “was
by force of knighthood, and that was the cause I would not put you to
death” (Book IX. chap. xl.)
Tennyson is accused of “emasculating the fierce lusty epic into a moral
lesson, as if it were to be performed in a drawing-room by an academy of
young ladies”—presided over, I daresay, by “Anglican clergymen.” I know
not how any one who has read the _Morte d’Arthur_ can blame Tennyson in
the matter. Let Malory and his sources be blamed, if to be moral is to
be culpable. A few passages apart, there is no coarseness in Malory;
that there are conscience, courtesy, “sweet lives,” “keeping down the
base in man,” “amiable words,” and all that Tennyson gives, and, in Mr
Harrison’s theory, gives without authority in the romance, my quotations
from Malory demonstrate. They are chosen at a casual opening of his
book. That there “had not arisen in the world” “the idea of reverencing
conscience” before the close of the fifteenth century A.D. is an
extraordinary statement for a critic of history to offer.
Mr Harrison makes his protest because “in the conspiracy of silence into
which Tennyson’s just fame has hypnotised the critics, it is bare honesty
to admit defects.” I think I am not hypnotised, and I do not regard the
Idylls as the crown of Tennyson’s work. But it is not his “defect” to
have introduced generosity, gentleness, conscience, and chastity where no
such things occur in his sources. Take Sir Darras: his position is that
of Priam when he meets Achilles, who slew his sons, except that Priam
comes as a suppliant; Sir Darras has Tristram in his hands, and may slay
him. He is “too polite,” as Mr Harrison says: he is too good a
Christian, or too good a gentleman. One would not have given a tripod
for the life of Achilles had he fallen into the hands of Priam. But
between 1200 B.C. (or so) and the date of Malory, new ideas about “living
sweet lives” had arisen. Where and when do they not arise? A British
patrol fired on certain Swazis in time of truce. Their lieutenant, who
had been absent when this occurred, rode alone to the stronghold of the
Swazi king, Sekukoeni, and gave himself up, expecting death by torture.
“Go, sir,” said the king; “we too are gentlemen.” The idea of a “sweet
life” of honour had dawned even on Sekukoeni: it lights up Malory’s
romance, and is reflected in Tennyson’s Idylls, doubtless with some
modernism of expression.
That the Idylls represent no real world is certain. That Tennyson
modernises and moralises too much, I willingly admit; what I deny is that
he introduces gentleness, courtesy, and conscience where his sources have
none. Indeed this is not a matter of critical opinion, but of verifiable
fact. Any one can read Malory and judge for himself. But the world in
which the Idylls move could not be real. For more than a thousand years
different races, different ages, had taken hold of the ancient Celtic
legends and spiritualised them after their own manner, and moulded them
to their own ideals. There may have been a historical Arthur, _Comes
Britanniæ_, after the Roman withdrawal. _Ye Amherawdyr Arthur_, “the
Emperor Arthur,” may have lived and fought, and led the Brythons to
battle. But there may also have been a Brythonic deity, or culture hero,
of the same, or of a similar name, and myths about him may have been
assigned to a real Arthur. Again, the Arthur of the old Welsh legends
was by no means the blameless king—even in comparatively late French
romances he is not blameless. But the process of idealising him went on:
still incomplete in Malory’s compilation, where he is often rather otiose
and far from royal. Tennyson, for his purpose, completed the
idealisation.