When any one has survived the allotted age of man, there is a long past to
remember, and a short future to expect; and it is the period of youth
which is then found most clearly recorded on the tablets of the brain--the
days, probably, of school and college, and the first establishment of a
self-made home.
Middle life, with its work and anxieties, is by comparison only feebly
retained; as though there had been found no room for fuller records on the
preoccupied mind. But, in the indistinct interval of forty or fifty years,
the loss by death of those whom we have loved cannot be forgotten; and
when one dearer than any friend is also taken away, then, under such
bereavement, may be found an amount of comfort and support in the Poet
Laureate's _In Memoriam_ which no other secular writing can supply.
To me, this Poem has been an additional buttress to the faith, which my
education and sacred profession had sustained.
When a great mind, at once so speculative and so untrammelled, runs over
the whole field of thought, and comes to the conviction that the hope of
the Christian is the one sure prospect beyond the grave; this imparts to
the mourner a consolation, to which nothing earthly can compare.
My own interest in this great Poem has been farther enhanced by the fact
that I and mine, long years ago, enjoyed friendly intercourse with the
Poet at Freshwater; and this was afterwards renewed in the lives of his
younger son and mine.
The incidents of the Poem have also slightly touched me, inasmuch as I was
a contemporary of Arthur H. Hallam, at Eton; and I was in Chapman's
house, at Charterhouse, with Edmund Law Lushington, when he was, at a very
early age, captain of the school. The associates of Hallam's schooldays I
well recall, for they included several who became eminent in the service
of the state, and in the ranks of literature; and most of these have now
passed away. _In Memoriam_ has thus, in a measure, been the means of
recalling my own early youth; and I have felt that the subject of the Poem
befitted the study of my advanced life.
The scenery of _In Memoriam_ being principally laid either at Somersby or
Clevedon--the birth-place of the Poet or the burial-place of his friend--I
had long been desirous of visiting these somewhat retired spots; and my
wish has at length been gratified.
After sleeping at Horncastle, we drove six miles across a flat
uninteresting country, where the fields betrayed signs of agricultural
depression, until a short steep descent brought us into a more sheltered
and wooded region, where was the sound of running water;[1] and the little
old church, with its square stumpy moss-covered tower, told us that we
were in the village of Somersby--
"the well-beloved place
Where first we gazed upon the sky."
And one could well fancy that the roomy comfortable residence, in which
the Rev. Dr. Tennyson reared a large family, was a cherished home, and is
still held in fond remembrance.
This house is not the Rectory, though for a long time it was so tenanted:
it is rather the Manor House of the Burton family, who for centuries[2]
have owned the land and been patrons of the living. The present possessor
now occupies it, and he received our visit of interested enquiry with much
courtesy and kindness.
The house stands a little back from the road, with a drive to the door
which may be called the front entrance; though the principal rooms are
behind, and look into the garden. Here are the
"Witch-elms that counterchange the floor
Of this flat lawn with dusk and bright;"
and the lawn may still be called _flat_, (see note, page 96), though it
slopes slightly downward with the natural leaning of the ground. The four
poplars have been blown down.
Beyond the lawn stretches the garden, and yet a little farther is a pond,
on which, they say, the young inhabitants of the pseudo-Rectory learned to
skate. The largest room in this Manor House was added by Dr. Tennyson: it
is the dining-room, with an open groined roof; and the walls of it are
now covered with apparently old paintings--heirlooms, one may suppose, of
the Burton family.
In the centre of the hamlet, where three roads meet, with a guide-post
directing the wayfarer to Louth, Horncastle, and Alford, there stands a
fine witch-elm; and at Bag Enderby, also in the middle of the road, is
another still larger witch-elm, with a huge arm that craves support. Both
these trees were carried and planted, about a century ago, by the
grandfather of Mr. Burton, the present proprietor of the estate.
Somersby and Bag Enderby are hamlets about one quarter of a mile apart,
and are held by one Rector, who now resides at the latter place. Their
ancient churches are structures of more strength than beauty; and though
neither of them is larger than a good sized chamber, it quite suffices for
the few inhabitants. At both churches we found the key in the door, and
could therefore investigate the sacred buildings at our leisure; and
coming from a populous manufacturing district, with a grand mediaeval
parish church, we found the contrast very striking.
Somersby churchyard adjoins the road, but the ground is higher. The first
object which greets you on entering through a short shaded path, is a most
remarkable crucifix, which has fortunately escaped the hand of Puritan
violence. On a thin stone shaft, which is at least twelve feet high, there
is the carved figure of our Lord on the Cross, still plainly traceable;
and behind is a full-length draped female figure. This antique gem is
sheltered under a narrow-pointed roof of stone. It is a curious and rare
memorial of ante-Reformation times; and within the porch there is a
contemporary relic--a shallow stone basin for holy water--which still
seems to invite the finger to dip, and mark the holy sign. Over the porch
entrance is a plain dial with the motto, "Time passeth."
The interior of the church has lost something of the primitive character
that still reigns at Enderby: there has been a partial restoration: both
nave and chancel are now floored with coloured tiles, and the old pews
have been superseded by open sittings of red pine. There is a plain solid
font lined with lead; and having seen the chamber in which the great Poet
was born, we could not help thinking that _here_ was the birth-place of
that name,[3] which not even his well-earned peerage will ever obliterate.
Over the porch door inside are the royal arms, and at the west end two
bell ropes depend, which are the means of summoning the few worshippers to
the Sunday service. In the _sacrarium_ is a small brass, showing a
kneeling figure and an armorial shield, dedicated to George Littlebury,
1612. A more modern marble monument, to one of the Burtons, is fixed on
the wall near the pulpit.
The exterior of the church shows strong coarse stone masonry, which is
here and there repaired and patched by local art with bricks. In the small
graveyard are two altar tombs, which drew our attention. They seem to
cover a vault, and are railed round; and the inscription on one records
that Dr. Tennyson held the livings of Somersby, Bag Enderby, Benniworth,
and Great Grimsby, and that he died on 16th March, 1831, aged 52.[4] Wild
violets were in flower encircling the base of this tomb. A successor was
buried near, the Rev. L. B. Burton, who had held the two adjoining
benefices for more than forty years.
Immediately opposite the church, and closely adjacent to the Manor House,
is a very remarkable building, of considerable architectural pretension;
as will be credited when it is told that Sir J. Vanbrugh designed it! It
is entirely composed of brick--sombre and solid in character--it has a
flat roof and is battlemented. If differently placed, it might have
suggested Mariana's "Moated Grange." It is an edifice of more exterior
grandeur than the adjoining Manor House, and the rooms are lined with oak
panelling; but it is unsuited to the habits of modern life, and now stands
empty.
The village of Enderby is, like its sister hamlet, absolutely rural, with
an antiquated little church, much needing such material repair as times
and circumstances do not seem to allow. It is dedicated to S. Margaret,
and has a fine old font, octagonal in shape, and each side has rudely
carved figures upon it. The flat modern ceiling cuts off the point of the
chancel arch, and the same disfigurement occurs at the west end, where the
two bells are rung from the floor. In neither village did we see either a
nonconformist chapel or a public-house.
In giving some account of Clevedon, I would tell how my own interest in
the subject of this little work has drawn forth the friendly notice of one
who fully participates in all the enthusiasm and admiration that _In
Memoriam_ can excite.
Edward Malan, himself a fine scholar and son of a most scholarly father,
has greatly assisted me, especially with classical illustrations of the
text; and as he visited Clevedon before I went there, and has described
Hallam's burial-place so appreciatively, I shall freely use his words when
I come to that part of my subject.
How the friendship came about which has found such undying record in this
Poem, is soon told. Alfred Tennyson and Arthur H. Hallam met, as
undergraduates, at Trinity College, Cambridge, about the year 1828.
Tennyson, born in 1809, was the older by one year and a half. Both these
young men were inheritors of remarkable ability--the one being a son of
the distinguished historian, and the other a son of an accomplished
divine--both, too, were themselves highly educated, and one at least was
possessed of the highest genius. Their friendship was not founded on a
common participation in the ordinary interests of youth, but they
sympathized in poetical temperament and philosophical taste. The mental
stature of Hallam, and his pure and beautiful disposition in their college
life, are recalled by the Poet in many places, but especially in Poems
cix. and following.
In 1829, the two friends competed for the Chancellor's gold medal for the
English Prize Poem, the subject being "Timbuctoo," and Tennyson gained it.
This College intimacy was continued at both their homes, and Hallam became
engaged in marriage to one of Tennyson's sisters. This alliance may have
deepened the attachment of the friends; but was not needed to account for
the survivor writing of the departed as "more than my brothers are to me."
Arthur Hallam took his degree at Cambridge in January, 1832, and then
lived with his father in London; having been entered on the boards of the
Inner Temple, as a student of Law. At the beginning of August, 1833, they
went a short tour into Germany, and, in returning to Vienna from Pesth, a
wet day caused a slight attack of intermittent fever in Arthur, which was
apparently subsiding, when a sudden rush of blood to the head put an
instantaneous end to his life, on the 15th September, 1833.
A subsequent "examination showed a weakness of the cerebral vessels, and a
want of sufficient energy in the heart." Mr. Hallam adds this sad tribute
to his son's memory: "Those whose eyes must long be dim with tears, and
whose hopes on this side the tomb are broken down for ever, may cling, as
well as they can, to the poor consolation of believing that a few more
years would, in the usual chances of humanity, have severed the frail
union of his graceful and manly form, with the pure spirit it enshrined.
The remains of Arthur were brought to England, and interred on the 3rd
January, 1834, in the _chancel_[5] of Clevedon Church, Somersetshire,
belonging to his maternal grandfather, Sir Abraham Elton; a place selected
not only from the connexion of kindred, but on account of its still and
sequestered situation, on a lone hill that overhangs the Bristol Channel."
My friend, Edward Malan, gives the following graphic account of his visit
to Hallam's grave--
"The chief attraction for visitors to Clevedon is the obscure and solitary
parish church of St. Andrew, where the great historian and his eldest
son, Arthur Hallam, are interred. You seek it by the beach and through the
fields, and you find it at last, an old and lonely church beside the sea,
in a hollow between two green headlands. The path up to it, bordered with
ash trees and hawthorns, winds along the side of Church Hill, the first of
the two headlands, which shuts it from view until, rounding a green
shoulder, you come suddenly upon it, like a ghost. Even then, unless you
have brought a mind in harmony, there is little to see, for the spot is so
deserted and so lifeless that you seem to have stepped back through
centuries, and to be moving in some old-world time. A weird sensation
creeps over you, gazing on the ivy and wall-rue, and the path trodden by
cottagers--a feeling akin to awe, which reminds you somehow of the poems
of Ossian. You are in the presence of these three grey sisters, grey
thought, grey silence, grey repose: only clouds, like a troop of
mourners, hurrying up over the waste, only a solemn dirge as the wind
sweeps wailing by, only the low faint murmur of the sea. The sun's last
beams are on the distant hills, and the tide is ebbing dim and shadowy to
the shadowy ocean beyond.
"Inside, the church is old and dim, and filled with a faint odour of age.
As the wind rises, mysterious pulses of sound awaken in the rafters
overhead. The monuments of the Hallams are not in the chancel, but they
are in the manor aisle affixed to the western wall. There are four of
them, Arthur Hallam's being one of the two centre tombs.
"A new organ now stands on the vault. The familiar names--familiar, that
is, in the classical sense--are those of the Elton family, Hallam's
relations. A memorial brass near at hand bears the name of Hallam's
maternal grandfather, the Rev. Sir Abraham Charles Elton, fifth baronet,
together with the names of the four preceding baronets; and a marble
tablet, close to the site of the old family pew, records the death by
drowning of Hallam's two cousins, Abraham and Charles, in 1819, at
Weston-super-Mare, when Hallam himself was eight years old. This unhappy
occurrence has been commemorated by their father in an elegy entitled _The
Brothers_. The moon, when high in the heavens (24 Dec. 1882), strikes
through the south window of the aisle, slanting-wise on the monuments of
the dead."
Mr. Malan goes on wisely to say: "No apology is necessary for calling
attention to _In Memoriam_. It has become an heirloom. We may affirm of
it, as has been affirmed of another great poem, that it was the work of
the Poet's life, his favourite child, for which he stored up the riches of
his science and the fruits of his inspiration. He carried it in his bosom
like a lover's secret, and added to it from time to time as the tide of
sorrow ebbed and flowed. If the insight thus gained into the workings of
a great intellect, brought suddenly to the verge of sorrow, were all the
reward that the poem offered, it would still be worth serious study. But
we feel as we read that the man has not arrived at his view of truth
without much labour, that we are witnessing an endeavour to escape from
the coils of doubt, and that we have a victor who has faced and fought his
troubles and difficulties."
I may state that we had an interesting conversation with the sexton at
Clevedon, Augustus James. He had held the office for about eighteen years,
and perfectly remembered the interment of Arthur Hallam. His father, who
was sexton for forty-three years, made the vault, and officiated at the
burial.
Being astonished by the account of a hearse and mourning coaches
traversing the whole distance from Dover to Clevedon, and employing
sixteen horses for the journey, I ventured to ask the late Sir A. H.
Elton, if he could corroborate the report, and he replied: "I think there
may have been some truth in the statement of the old sexton. I believe
that on the Continent very great precautions are required by the
authorities, before the remains of a deceased person are permitted to be
removed from the place in which the death occurred. I can easily believe
that the heavy amount of lead, and other precautions, rendered it
necessary to use a large force of horses." A. James says, that "the coffin
was carried in every night where they stopped."
Clevedon itself is a semi-seaside place, by no means interesting, at least
as we saw it; for the water was thick and had none of the bold features of
the genuine ocean. But Clevedon Court, the seat of Sir Edmund H. Elton, to
whom we had an introduction, is a picturesque rambling mansion, of which
the most beautiful part is many centuries old, and the grounds are
lovely. And I cannot pass by the interest and pleasure we derived from an
insight into Sir Edmund's workshop, where, self-taught, he manufactures
with his own hands, aided by a crippled lad who is his pupil, the
beautiful pottery now well known to connoisseurs as the "Elton ware," and
of which he kindly gave us a specimen.
Since this autumn visit (1884), which led to my appealing to Lady
Lennard--a surviving sister of Arthur Hallam--on the point of obtaining a
portrait of her brother, I have received from this lady the gift of a copy
of the volume known as the "Remains in Verse and Prose of Arthur Henry
Hallam," edited by his father, and which was privately printed. The
interest of its contents was much enhanced to me by there being a portrait
of Arthur from a bust by Chantrey, which Lady Lennard considers most like
her brother, and therefore most suitable as a frontispiece to my book.
I must add that the plate on which the portrait is engraved is in the
possession of Mr. Murray, of Albemarle Street, to whom was entrusted the
production of the volume, and he has been most kind in affording
facilities for my having a number of copies of the engraving.
But to no one am I so much indebted as to the late Lord Tennyson himself,
who examined a previous edition of my "Key," and made some invaluable
corrections, which are all printed in _italics_. I would not imply that I
have now dived into the metaphysical depths of this marvellous poem; or
that its author gave his _imprimatur_ to all he did not alter; but as my
"Key" was for some time in his possession, I feel sure that it contains
nothing which he disapproved: and it is enough for me, if it shall open
the door of comfort and sympathy to any who either mourn or doubt.
"I, _in these poems, is not always the author speaking of himself, but the
voice of the human race speaking through him. A. T._"