"What, with this flaming horror overhead?"
we should suspect we were reading Tennyson if we did not know it; and
our suspicion would he amply confirmed by half a dozen other lines:
"Taken the rifted pillars of the wood."
"My greyhounds fleeting like a beam of light."
"Suffer a stormless shipwreck in the pools."
"That scared the dying conscience of the king."
_Harold_ is interesting as illustrating, in addition to _Queen Mary_,
Mr. Tennyson's idea of what makes a drama. A succession of short scenes,
detached from the biography of a historical character, is, apparently,
to his sense sufficient; the constructive side of the work is thereby
reduced to a primitive simplicity. It is even more difficult to imagine
acting _Harold_ than it was to imagine acting _Queen Mary_; and it is
probable that in this case the experiment will not be tried. And yet the
story, or rather the historical episode, upon which Mr. Tennyson has
here laid his hand is eminently interesting.
Harold, the last of the "English," as people of a certain way of feeling
are fond of calling him--the son of Godwin, masterful minister of Edward
the Confessor, the wearer for a short and hurried hour of the English
crown, and the opponent and victim of William of Normandy on the field
of Hastings--is a figure which combines many of the elements of romance
and of heroism. The author has very characteristically tried to
accentuate the moral character of his hero by making him a sort of
distant relation of the family of Galahad and Arthur and the other
moralising gallants to whom his pages have introduced us. Mr. Tennyson's
Harold is a warrior who talks about his "better self," and who alludes
to
"Waltham, my foundation
For men who serve their neighbour, not themselves,"
--a touch which transports us instantly into the atmosphere of the
Arthurian Idyls. But Harold's history may be very easily and properly
associated with a moral problem, inasmuch as it was his unhappy fortune
to have to solve, practically, a knotty point which might have been more
comfortably left to the casuists. Shipwrecked during Edward's life upon
the coast of Normandy, he is betrayed into the hands of Duke William,
who already retains as hostage one of his brothers (the sons of Godwin
were very numerous, and they all figure briefly, but with a certain
attempt at individual characterisation, in the drama). To purchase his
release and that of his brother, who passionately entreats him, he
consents to swear by certain unseen symbols, which prove afterwards to
be the bones of certain august Norman saints, that if William will
suffer him to return to England, he will, on the Confessor's death,
abstain from urging the claim of the latter's presumptive heir and do
his utmost to help the Norman duke himself to the crown.
This scene is presented in the volume before us. Harold departs and
regains England, and there, on the king's death, overborne by
circumstances, but with much tribulation of mind, violates his oath, and
himself takes possession of the throne. The interest of the drama is in
a great measure the picture of his temptation and remorse, his sense of
his treachery and of the inevitableness of his chastisement. With this
other matters are mingled: Harold's conflict with his disloyal brother
Tostig, Earl of Northumberland, who brings in the King of Norway to
claim the crown, and who, with his Norwegian backers, is defeated by
Harold in battle just before William comes down upon him. Then there is
his love-affair with Edith, ward of the Confessor, whom the latter,
piously refusing to hear of his violation of his oath, condemns him to
put away, as penance for the very thought. There is also his marriage
with Aldwyth, a designing person, widow of a Welsh king whom Harold has
defeated, and who, having herself through her parentage, strong English
interests, inveigles Harold into a union which may consolidate their
forces.
Altogether, Harold is, for a hero, rather inclined to falter and
succumb. It is to his conscience, however, that he finally succumbs; he
loses heart and goes to meet William at Hastings with a depressing
presentiment of defeat. Mr. Tennyson, however, as we gather from a
prefatory sonnet, which is perhaps finer than anything in the drama
itself, holds that much can be said for the "Norman-slandered hero," and
declares that he has nothing to envy William if
"Each stands full face with all he did below."
Edith, Harold's repudiated lady-love, is, we suppose, the heroine of the
story, inasmuch as she has the privilege of expiring upon the corpse of
the hero. Harold's defeat is portrayed through a conversation between
Edith and Stigand, the English and anti-papal Archbishop of Canterbury,
who watches the fight at Senlac from a tent near the field, while the
monks of Waltham, outside, intone a Latin invocation to the God of
Battles to sweep away the Normans.
The drama closes with a scene on the field, after the fight, in which
Edith and Aldwyth wander about, trying to identify Harold among the
slain. On discovering him they indulge in a few natural recriminations,
then Edith loses her head and expires by his side. William comes in,
rubbing his hands over his work, and intimates to Aldwyth that she may
now make herself agreeable to _him_. She replies, hypocritically, "My
punishment is more than I can bear"; and with this, the most dramatic
speech, perhaps in the volume, the play terminates. Edith, we should
say, is a heroine of the didactic order. She has a bad conscience about
Harold's conduct, and about her having continued on affectionate terms
with him after his diplomatic marriage with Aldwyth. When she prays for
Harold's success she adds that she hopes heaven will not refuse to
listen to her because she loves "the husband of another"; and after he
is defeated she reproaches herself with having injured his prospects--
"For there was more than sister in my kiss."
Though there are many persons in the poem it cannot be said that any of
them attains a very vivid individuality. Indeed, their great number, the
drama being of moderate length, hinders the unfolding of any one of
them.
Mr. Tennyson, moreover, has not the dramatic touch; he rarely finds the
phrase or the movement that illuminates a character, rarely makes the
dialogue strike sparks. This is generally mild and colourless, and the
passages that arrest us, relatively, owe their relief to juxtaposition
rather than to any especial possession of the old Tennysonian energy.
Now and then we come upon a few lines together in which we seem to catch
an echo of the author's earlier magic, or sometimes simply of his
earlier manner. When we do, we make the most of them and are grateful.
Such, for instance, is the phrase of one of the characters describing
his rescue from shipwreck. He dug his hands, he says, into
"My old fast friend the shore, and clinging thus
Felt the remorseless outdraught of the deep
Haul like a great strong fellow at my legs."
Such are the words in which Wulfnoth, Harold's young brother, detained
in Normandy, laments his situation:
"Yea, and I
Shall see the dewy kiss of dawn no more
Make blush the maiden-white of our tall cliffs,
Nor mark the sea-bird rouse himself and hover
Above the windy ripple, and fill the sky
With free sea-laughter."
In two or three places the author makes, in a few words, a picture, an
image, of considerable felicity. Harold wishes that he were like Edward
the Confessor,
"As holy and as passionless as he!
That I might rest as calmly! Look at him--
The rosy face, and long, down-silvering beard,
The brows unwrinkled as a summer mere."
We may add that in the few speeches allotted to this monarch of virtuous
complexion this portrait is agreeably sustained. "Holy, is he?" says the
Archbishop, Stigand, of him to Harold--
"A conscience for his own soul, not his realm;
A twilight conscience lighted thro' a chink;
Thine by the sun."
And the same character hits upon a really vigorous image in describing,
as he watches them, Harold's exploits on the battle-fields:
"Yea, yea, for how their lances snap and shiver,
Against the shifting blaze of Harold's axe!
War-woodman of old Woden, how he fells
The mortal copse of faces!"
We feel, after all, in Mr. Tennyson, even in the decidedly minor key in
which this volume is pitched, that he has once known how to turn our
English poetic phrase as skilfully as any one, and that he has not
altogether forgotten the art.