low rambling house, to which a loftier hall adjoining, with its Gothic
windows, lends a touch of distinction. The garden with one towering
sycamore and the wych-elms, that threw long shadows on the lawn, opened
on to the parson's field, where on summer mornings could be heard the
sweep of the scythe in the dewy grass. Here Tennyson's father had been
rector for some years when his fourth child Alfred was born in August
1809, the year which also saw the birth of Darwin and Gladstone. The
family was a large one; there were eight sons and four daughters, the
last of whom was still alive in 1916. Alfred's education was as
irregular as a poet's could need to be, consisting of a few years'
attendance at Louth Grammar School, where he suffered from the rod and
other abuses of the past, and of a larger number spent in studying
literature at home under his father's guidance. These left him a liberal
amount of leisure which he devoted to reading at large and roaming the
country-side. His father was a man of mental cultivation far beyond the
average, well fitted to expand the mind of a boy of literary tastes and
to lead him on at a pace suited to his abilities. He had suffered from
disappointments which had thrown a shadow over his life, having been
disinherited capriciously by his father, who was a wealthy man and a
member of Parliament. The inheritance passed to the second brother, who
took the name of Tennyson d'Eyncourt; and though the Rector resented the
injustice of the act, he did not allow it to embitter the relations
between his own children and their cousins. His character was of the
stern, dominating order, and both his parishioners and his children
stood in awe of him; but the gentle nature of their mother made amends.
She is described by Edward FitzGerald, the poet's friend, as 'one of the
most innocent and tender-hearted ladies I ever met, devoted to husband
and children'. In her youth she had been a noted beauty, and in her old
age was not too unworldly to remember that she had received twenty-five
proposals of marriage. It was from her that the family derived their
beauty of feature, while in their strength of intellect they resembled
rather their father. One of Alfred's earliest literary passions was a
love of Byron, and he remembered in after life how as a child he had
carved on a rock the woful tidings that his hero was dead. In this
period he was already writing poetry himself, though he did not publish
his first volume till after he had gone up to Cambridge.
From this home life, filled with leisurely reading, rambling, and
dreaming, he was sent in 1828 to join his brother Frederick at Trinity
College, Cambridge, and he came into residence in February of that year.
Cambridge has been called the poets' University. Here in early days came
Spenser and Milton, Dryden and Gray; and--in the generation preceding
Tennyson--Wordsworth, Coleridge, and Byron had followed in their steps.
However little we can trace directly the development of the poetic gift
to local influence, at least we can say that Tennyson gained greatly by
the time he spent within its walls. He came up an unknown man without
family connexions to help him, and without the hall-mark of any famous
school upon him. Shy and retiring by nature as he was, he might easily
have failed to win his way to notice. But there was something in his
appearance, in his manner, and in the personality that lay behind, which
never failed to impress observers, and gradually he attached to himself
the most brilliant undergraduates of his time and became a leader among
them. Thackeray and FitzGerald were in residence; but it was not till
later that he came to know them well, and we hear more of Spedding (the
editor of Bacon), of Alford and Merivale (deans of Canterbury and Ely),
of Trench (Archbishop of Dublin), of Lushington, who married one of his
sisters, and of Arthur Hallam, who was engaged to another sister at the
time of his early death. Hallam came from Eton, where his greatest
friend had been W. E. Gladstone, and he had not been long at Cambridge
before he was led by kindred tastes and kindred nature into close
friendship with Tennyson. In the judgement of all who knew him, a career
of the highest usefulness and distinction was assured to him. His
intellectual force and his high aspirations would have shone in the
public service; and at least they won him thus early the affection of
the noblest among his compeers, and a fame that is almost unique in
English literature.
Much has been written about the society which these young men formed and
which they called 'the Apostles'. The name has been thought to suggest a
certain complacency and mutual admiration. But enough letters and
personal recollections of their talk have been preserved to show how
simple and unaffected the members were in their intercourse with one
another. They had their enthusiasms, but they had also their jests.
Their humour was not perhaps the boisterous fun of William Morris and
Rossetti, but it was lively and buoyant enough to banish all suspicion
of priggishness. Just because their enthusiasm was for the best in
literature and art, Tennyson was quickly at home among them. Already he
had learnt at home to love Shakespeare and Milton, Coleridge and Keats,
and no effort was required, in this circle of friends, to keep his
reading upon this high level. _Lycidas_ was always a special favourite
of Tennyson's, and appreciation of it seemed to him a sure 'touchstone
of poetic taste'. In conversation he did not tend to declaim or
monopolize the talk. He was noted rather for short sayings and for
criticisms tersely expressed. He had his moods, contemplative, genial or
gay; but all his utterances were marked by independence of thought, and
his silence could be richer than the speech of other men. But for
display he had no liking. In fact, so reluctant was he to face an
audience of strangers, that when in 1829 it was his duty to recite his
prize poem in the senate-house, he obtained leave for Merivale to read
it on his behalf. On the other hand, he was ready enough to impart to
his real friends the poems that he wrote from time to time, and he would
pass pleasant hours with them reciting old ballads and reading aloud the
plays of Shakespeare. His sonorous voice, his imagination, and his
feeling for all the niceties of rhythm made his reading unusually
impressive, as we know from the testimony of many who heard him.
The course of his education is, in fact, more truly to be found in this
free companionship than in the lecture room or the examination hall. His
opinion of the teaching which he received from the Dons was formed and
expressed in a sonnet of 1830, though he refrained from publishing it
for half a century. He addresses them as 'you that do profess to teach
and teach us nothing, feeding not the heart'--and complains of their
indifference to the movements of their own age and to the needs of their
pupils. For, despite the ferment which was spreading in the realms of
theology, of politics, and of natural science, the Dons still taught
their classics in the dry pedantic manner of the past, and refused to
face the problems of the nineteenth century. For Tennyson, whose mind
was already capacious and deep, these problems had a constant
attraction, and he had to fall back upon solitary musings and on talks
with Hallam and other friends. Partly perhaps because he missed the more
rigorous training of the schools, we have to wait another ten years
before we see marks of his deeper thinking in his work. He was but
groping and feeling his way. In the 'Poems, chiefly Lyrical' which he
produced in 1830, rich images abound, play of fancy and beauty of
expression; but there are few signs of the power of thought which he was
to show in later volumes.
After three years thus spent, by no means unfruitfully, though it was
only by his prize poem of 'Timbuctoo' that he won public honours, he was
called away from Cambridge by family troubles and returned to Somersby
in February 1831. His father had broken down in health, and a month
later he died, suddenly and peacefully, in his arm-chair. After the
rector's death an arrangement was made that the family should continue
to inhabit the Rectory; and Tennyson, who was now his mother's chief
help and stay, settled down to a studious life at home, varied by
occasional visits to London. The habit of seclusion was already forming.
He was much given to solitary walking and to spending his evening in an
attic reading by himself. But this was not due to moroseness or
selfishness, as we can see from his intercourse with family and friends.
He would willingly give hours to reading aloud to his mother, or sit
listening happily while his sisters played music. From this time indeed
he seems to have taken his father's place in the home; and with Hallam
and other friends he continued on the same affectionate terms. He had
not Dickens's buoyant temper and love of company, nor did he indulge in
the splenetic outbursts of Carlyle. He could, when it was needed, find
time to fulfil the humblest duties and then return with contentment to
his solitude. But his thoughts seemed naturally to lift him above the
level of others, and he was most truly himself when he was alone. Apart
from his eyesight, which began to trouble him at this time, he was
enjoying good health, which he maintained by a steady regime of physical
exercise. His strength and his good looks were alike remarkable.[25] As
his friend Brookfield laughingly said, 'It was not fair that he should
be Hercules as well as Apollo'.
Another volume of verse appeared in 1832; and its appearance seems to
have been due rather to the urgent persuasion of his friends than to his
own eagerness to appear in print. Though J. S. Mill and a few other
critics wrote with good judgement and praised the book, it met with a
cold reception in most places, and the _Quarterly Review_, regardless of
its blunder over Keats, spoke of it in most contemptuous terms. All can
recognize to-day how unfair this was to the merits of a volume which
contained the 'Lotos-Eaters', 'Oenone', and the 'Lady of Shalott'; but
the effect of the harsh verdict on the poet, always sensitive about the
reception of his work, was unfortunate to a degree. For a time it seemed
likely to chill his ardour and stifle his poetic gifts at the very age
when they ought to be bearing fruit. He writes of himself at this time
as 'moping like an owl in an ivy bush, or as that one sparrow which the
Hebrew mentioneth as sitting on the house-top'; and, despite his
friendship with Hallam, which was closer than ever since the latter's
engagement to his sister Emily, he had thoughts of settling abroad in
France or Italy, since he found, or fancied that he found, in England
too unsympathetic an atmosphere.
[Note 25: The portrait of 1838 by Samuel Laurence, of which the
original is at Aldworth, speaks for itself.]
Such a decision would have been disastrous. Residence abroad might suit
the robust, many-sided genius of Robert Browning with his gift for
interpreting the thoughts of other nations and other times; it would
have been fatal to Tennyson, whose affections were rooted in his native
soil, and who had a special call to speak to Englishmen of English
scenes and English life.
The following year brought him a still severer shock in the loss of his
beloved friend, Arthur Hallam, who was taken ill at Vienna and died
there a few days later, to the deep sorrow of all who knew him. Many
besides Tennyson have borne witness to his character and gifts; thanks
to their tribute, and above all to the verses of _In Memoriam_, though
his life was all too short to realize the promise of his youth, his name
will be preserved. The gradual growth of Tennyson's elegy can be
discerned from the letters of his friends, to whom from time to time he
read some of the stanzas which he had completed. Even in the first
winter after Hallam's death, he wrote a few lines in the manuscript book
which he kept by him for the purpose during the next fifteen years, and
which he was within an ace of losing in 1850, just when the poem was
completed and ready for publication. As a statesman turns from his
private sorrow to devote himself to a public cause, so the poet's
instinct was to find comfort in the practice of his art. Under the
stress of feelings aroused by this event and under the influence of a
wider reading, his mind was maturing. We hear of a steady discipline of
mental work, of hours given methodically to Italian and German, to
theology and history, to chemistry, botany, and other branches of
science. Above all, he pondered now, as he did later so constantly, on
the mystery of death and life after death. Outwardly this seems the most
uneventful period of his career; but, in their effect on his mind and
work, these years were very far from being wasted. When next, in 1842,
he emerges from seclusion to offer his verses to the public, he had
enlarged the range of his subjects and deepened his powers of thought.
We see less richness in the images, less freedom in the play of fancy,
but there is a firmer grip of character, a surer handling of the
problems affecting the life of man. Underground was flowing the hidden
stream of _In Memoriam_, unknown save to the few; only in part were the
fruits of this period to be seen in the two volumes containing 'English
Idyls' and other new poems, along with a selection of earlier lyrics now
revised and reprinted.
The distinctive quality of the book is given by the word Idyl, which was
to be so closely connected with Tennyson's fame. Here he is working in a
small compass, but he breaks fresh ground in describing scenes of
English village life, and shows that he has used his gifts of
observation to good purpose. Better than the slight sketches of
character, of girls and their lovers, of farmers and their children, are
the landscapes in which they are set; and many will remember the
charming passages in which he describes the morning songs of birds in a
garden, or the twinkling of evening lights in the still waters of a
harbour. More original and more full of lyrical fervour was 'Locksley
Hall', where he expresses many thoughts that were stirring the younger
spirits of his day. Perhaps the most perfect workmanship, in a volume
where much calls for admiration, is to be found in 'Ulysses', which the
poet's friend Monckton Milnes gave to Sir Robert Peel to read, in order
to convince him that Tennyson's work merited official recognition. His
treatment of the hero is as far from the classical spirit as anything
which William Morris wrote. He preserves little of the directness or
fierce temper of the early epic. Rather does his Ulysses think and speak
like some bold adventurer of the Renaissance, with the combination of
ardent curiosity and reflective thought which was the mark of that age.
Even so Tennyson himself, as he passed from youth to middle life, and
from that to old age, was ever trying to achieve one more 'work of noble
note', and yearning
To follow knowledge like a sinking star
Beyond the utmost bound of human thought.
But between this and the production of his next volume comes the most
unhappy period in the poet's career, when his friends for a time
despaired of his future and even of his life. At the marriage of his
brother Charles in 1836, Tennyson had fallen in love with the bride's
sister, Emily Sellwood; and in the course of the next three or four
years they became informally engaged to one another. But his prospects
of earning enough money to support a wife seemed so remote that in 1840
her family insisted on breaking off the engagement, and the lovers
ceased to write to one another. Even the volumes of 1842, while winning
high favour with cultivated readers, and stirring enthusiasm at the
Universities, failed to attract the larger public and to make a success
in the market. So when he sustained a further blow in the loss of his
small fortune owing to an unwise investment, his health gave way and he
fell into a dark mood of hypochondria. His star seemed to be sinking,
just as he was winning his way to fame. Thanks to medical attention,
aided by his own natural strength and the affections of his friends, he
was already rallying in 1845, when Peel conferred on him the timely
honour of a pension; and he was able not only to continue working at _In
Memoriam_, but also to produce in 1847 _The Princess_, which gives clear
evidence of renewed cheerfulness and vigour. Dealing as it does, half
humorously, with the question of woman's education and her claim to a
higher place in the scheme of life, it illustrates the interest which
Tennyson, despite his seclusion, felt in social questions of the day.
From this point of view it may be linked with _Locksley Hall_ and
_Maud_; but in _The Princess_ the treatment is half humorous and the
setting is more artificial. Tennyson's lyrical power is seen at its best
in the magical songs which occur in the course of the story or
interposed between the different scenes. They have deservedly won a
place in all anthologies. His facility in the handling of blank verse is
also remarkable. Lovers of Milton may regret the massive grandeur of an
earlier style; but, as in every art, so in poetry, we pay for advance in
technical accomplishment, in suppleness and melodious phrasing, by the
loss of other qualities which are difficult to recapture.
Meanwhile _In Memoriam_ was approaching completion; and this the most
central and characteristic of his poems illustrates, more truly than a
narrative of outward events, the phases through which Tennyson had been
passing. Desultory though the method of its production be, and loose
'the texture of its fabric', there is a certain sequence of thought
running through the cantos. We see how from the first poignancy of
grief, when he can only brood passively over his friend's death, he was
led to questioning the basis of his faith, shaken as it was by the
claims of physical science--how from those doubts of his own, he was led
to think of the universal trouble of the world--how at length by
throwing himself into the hopes and aspiration of humanity he attained
to victory and was able to put away his personal grief, believing that
his friend's soul was still working with him in the universe for the
good of all. At intervals, during the three years mirrored in the poem,
we get definite notes of time. We see how the poet is affected each year
as the winter and the spring come round, and how the succeeding
anniversaries of Hallam's death stir the old pain in varying degree. But
we must not suppose that each section was composed at the time
represented in this scheme. Seventeen years went to the perfecting of
the work; it is impossible to tell when each canto was first outlined
and how often it was re-written; and we must be content with general
notions of its development. The poet's memory was fully charged. As he
could recall so vividly the Lincolnshire landscape when he was living in
the south, so he could portray the emotions of the past though he had
entered on a new period of life fraught with a different spirit.
Thus many elements go to make up the whole, and readers of _In Memoriam_
can choose what suits their mood. To some, who wish to compare the
problems of different ages, chief interest will attach to that section
where the active mind wakes up to the conflict between science and
faith. It was a difficult age for poets and believers. The preceding
generation had for a time been swept far from their bearings by the
tornado of the French Revolution. Some of them found an early grave
while still upholding the flag; others had won back to harbour when
their youth was past and ended their days in calm--if not
stagnant--waters. But the advance of scientific discoveries and the
scientific spirit sapped the defences of faith in more methodical
fashion, and Tennyson's mind was only too open to all the evidence of
natural law and the stern lessons of the struggle for life. To
understand the influence of Tennyson on his age it is necessary to
inquire how he reconciled religion with science; but this is too large a
subject for a biographical sketch, and valuable studies have been
written which deal with it more or less fully, by Stopford Brooke[26]
and many others.
[Note 26: _Tennyson_, by Stopford Brooke (Isbister, 1894).]
To Queen Victoria, and to others who had been stricken in their home
affections, the human interest outweighed all others; the sorrow of
those who gave little thought to systems of philosophy or religion was
instinctively comforted by the note of faith in a future life and by
the haunting melodies in which it found expression.
Many were content to return again and again to those passages where the
beauty of nature is depicted in stanzas of wonderful felicity. No such
gift of observation had yet ministered to their delight. Readers of Mrs.
Gaskell will be reminded of the old farmer in _Cranford_ revelling in
the new knowledge which he has gained of the colour of ash-buds in
March. So too we are taught to look afresh at larch woods in spring and
beech woods in autumn, at the cedar in the garden and the yew tree in
the churchyard. We are vividly conscious of the summer's breeze which
tumbles the pears in the orchard, and the winter's storm when the
leafless ribs of the wood clang and gride. As the perfect stanza lingers
in our memory, our eyes are opened and we are taught to observe the
marvels of nature for ourselves. Here, more than anywhere else, is he
the true successor of Wordsworth, the Wordsworth of the daisy, the
daffodil, and the lesser celandine, though following a method of his
own--at once a disciple and a master.
But other influences than those of nature were coming into his life. In
1837 the Tennyson family had been compelled to leave Somersby; and the
poet, recluse though he was, showed that he could rouse himself to meet
a practical emergency with good sense. He took charge of all
arrangements and transplanted his mother successively to new homes in
Essex and Kent. This brought him nearer to London and enlarged
considerably his circle of friends. The list of men of letters who
welcomed him there is a long one, from Samuel Rogers to the Rossettis,
and includes poets, novelists, historians, scholars, and scientists. The
most interesting, to him and to us, was Carlyle, then living at Chelsea,
who had published his _French Revolution_ in 1837, and had thereby
become notable among literary men. Carlyle's judgements on the poet and
his poems have often been quoted. At first he was more than contemptuous
over the latter, and exhorted Tennyson to leave verse and rhyme and
apply himself to prose. But familiar converse, in which both men spoke
their opinions without reserve, soon enlightened 'the sage', and he
delighted in his new friend. Long after, in 1879, he confessed that
'Alfred always from the beginning took a grip at the right side of every
question'. He could not fail to appreciate the man when he saw him in
the flesh, and it is he who has left us the most striking picture of
Tennyson's appearance in middle life. In 1842 he wrote to Emerson:
'Alfred is one of the few... figures who are and remain beautiful to
me;--a true human soul... one of the finest-looking men in the world. A
great shock of rough dusty-dark 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!' Not only were pipes
smoked at home, but walks were taken in the London streets at night,
with much free converse, in which art both were masters, but of which
Carlyle, no doubt, had the larger share. Tennyson was a master of the
art of silence, which Carlyle could praise but never practice; but when
he spoke his remarks rarely failed to strike the bell.