price from five shillings to one shilling, and then to one penny. Rossetti
heard of it through Whitley Stokes, and showed it to Swinburne. They were
attracted by it and bought sixpenny-worth. Quaritch raised his price to
twopence. They carried off a few more, and the rest, a little later, were
eagerly bought up at a guinea or more apiece. Yet the poem remained long
known to very few. Quaritch published a second edition, again a small one,
nine years later in 1868, and four years later still, a third small
edition in 1872, and in 1879 a fourth edition, including Salámán and
Absál. The third edition came out just about the time I was going to
Oxford as an undergraduate, and it was then that I first heard of it
through J. A. Symonds and H. G. Dakyns, who gave me in 1874 a copy which
Symonds had presented to him, and which I still possess. Even at Oxford I
found only a few, either graduates or undergraduates, who heeded it or
knew anything about it. Professor Henry Smith was the only senior I can
remember who spoke to me about it, telling me of the previous editions,
and praising its merits one day as we turned it over together in Parker's
shop. But stealthily and underground it made its way. Edition followed
edition, with increasing rapidity. Suddenly it became ubiquitously
popular, and it is now certainly one of the best-known pieces of the kind
in the language. Messrs. Macmillan put it, in 1899, after a dozen times
reprinting it, into their Golden Treasury Series. They had to reprint
three times in that year, and this edition has been in constant demand.
But there are ever so many others. The poem has been reproduced in a
hundred forms, both in England and America, illustrated, illuminated,
decorated, annotated. A reprint of the first edition is once more sold for
a penny. It has been translated into Latin verse. There is a Concordance
to it. A whole literature has sprung up around it. An "Omar Khayyam Club"
was founded in 1892. Pious pilgrimages have been made to the translator's
tomb, and Omar's roses planted over it, and verses recited in celebration
of both poet and poem.
Of all this immense vogue and success, as his letters show, FitzGerald
himself never dreamed. Even when in 1885 Tennyson published, as the
dedication of _Tiresias and other Poems_, the lines "To E. FitzGerald,"
the translator of _Omar_ was still, for most readers, "a veiled prophet."
To-day, when the poem has become one of the utterances of the century,
lovers of paradox have even ventured to hint that instead of FitzGerald
being known as the friend of Tennyson, Tennyson might be known hereafter
as the friend of FitzGerald.
FitzGerald is certainly known on his own account. The publication of his
letters by his loyal old friend, Dr. Aldis Wright, revealed the man
himself to the world. The publication of Tennyson's Life by his son aided
the process. Every one will remember the part which FitzGerald plays
there, beginning with the meeting at James Spedding's house in the Lakes
in 1835, his early enthusiastic admiration, when he fell in love both with
the man and his poems, and then his ever-constant friendship, tempered by
grumbling, and what appears sometimes almost grudging criticism. He became
the friend, it must be remembered, not only of Alfred, but of the whole
family, and especially of Frederick, the eldest brother. "All the
Tennysons are to be wished well," he says in a letter of 1845. Though he
affected to think little of society and hated snobbery as much as Tennyson
or his other friend Thackeray himself, he greatly admired the better
qualities of the English gentry, and had even a kindly weakness for their
foibles. When Frederick went to live in Italy he wrote: "I love that such
men as Frederick should be abroad: so strong, haughty, and passionate."
When FitzGerald first met Alfred, the poetic family was still living on at
Somersby after their father's death. He went there and fell in love with
their mother, and with their mode of life, and with the region, where
"there were not only such good seas, but such fine Hill and Dale among the
Wolds as people in general scarce thought on." It was characteristic of
him that he used to say that Alfred should never have left Lincolnshire.
FitzGerald kept up the friendship mainly, as he did most of his
friendships, by letter. In particular, he made a point of writing to the
Alfred Tennysons twice a year, once in the summer and again about
Christmas time. He addressed himself sometimes to the Poet himself,
sometimes to Mrs. Tennyson, and in later days to their eldest son. To
Frederick Tennyson, who went to live in Italy, as the readers of Dr. Aldis
Wright's volume will remember, he wrote a whole series of letters, many of
them very long and full. Of all these letters--to his father, his mother,
himself, and his uncle--the present Lord Tennyson has placed a collection
in my hands for the purpose of this article. The story of the friendship
which it is an attempt to sketch will best be told by pretty full
quotations from them. Many of them, and indeed most of those to his father
and mother, are now published for the first time.
FitzGerald did not always succeed, and indeed did not expect to succeed,
in drawing a reply from Tennyson himself. In a letter written in the
summer of 1860 to Mrs. Tennyson he makes a very amusing reference to this,
and also throws some light on his own habits:
Thank old Alfred for his letter which was an unexpected pleasure. I
like to hear of him and you once or twice in the year: but I know he
is no dab at literature at any time, poor fellow. "Paltry Poet"--Let
him believe it is anything but want of love for him that keeps me out
of the Isle of Wight: nor is it indolence neither.--But to say _what
it is_ would make me write too much about myself. Only let him believe
what I _do_ say.
Their relations were always of this playful, intimate kind, resting on
long acquaintance. If FitzGerald was amused by "Alfred," Tennyson, on the
other hand, was well used to his old friend's humour. When we spoke about
him, he dwelt, I recollect, on this particular trait, and told me, to
illustrate it, the story which is now, I think, pretty well known, how,
when some common acquaintance had bored them with talking about his titled
friends, "Old Fitz," as at last he took up his candle to go to bed, turned
to Tennyson and said, quietly and quaintly, "I knew a Lord once, but he's
dead."
When Tennyson spoke of _Omar_ he said, what he has said in verse, that he
admired it greatly:
Than which I know no version done
In English more divinely well;
A planet equal to the sun
Which cast it.
But of course he was aware that it was by no means always faithful to the
original. It is indeed a liberal, rather than a literal translation--how
liberal, all know who have been at the pains to compare FitzGerald's poem
with any of the many literal versions to which it has given rise.
In quite the early Twickenham days, just after their marriage, he would
invite himself to dine or stay with Tennyson and his wife, nay more, would
ask to bring friends to see them, such as the Cowells and W. B. Donne. In
1854 he stayed at Farringford for a fortnight, a visit he always
remembered, and often referred to, with pleasure. Together he and Tennyson
worked at Persian. He also sketched, and botanized with the Poet. But he
could not be got to repeat the visit; and indeed, as he said himself, it
was the last of the kind he paid anywhere, except to Mrs. Kemble. When he
reached London, just after this visit, he wrote to Tennyson:
60 LINCOLN'S INN FIELDS,
_June 15th, 1854_.
MY DEAR ALFRED--I called at Quaritch's to look for another Persian
Dictionary. I see he has a copy of Eastwick's Gulistan for _ten
shillings_: a translation (not Eastwick's, however, but one quite
sufficient for the purpose) can be had for five shillings. Would you
like me to buy them and send them down to you by the next friend who
travels your way: or will you wait till some good day I can lend you
_my_ Eastwick (which is now at Oxford)? I could mark some of the
pieces which I think it might not offend you to read: though you will
not care greatly for anything in it.
Oh, such an atmosphere as I am writing in!--Yours,
E. F. G.
I left my little Swedenborg at Farringford. Please keep it for me, as
it was a gift from my sister.
The note of the letters is always the same--warm affection, deep
underlying admiration and regard, superficial banter and play of humour,
and humorous, half-grumbling criticism. When they met face to face, after
being parted for twenty years, they fell at once into exactly the old
vein. FitzGerald was surprised at this, but he need not have been. Both
were the sincerest and most natural of men, and nothing but distance and
absence had occurred to sever them.
From the first he had conceived an intense and almost humble-minded
admiration for Alfred. One of his earliest utterances describes his
feelings, and strikes, with his keen critical perception, the true note.
"I will say no more of Tennyson," he wrote, "than that the more I have
seen of him, the more cause I have to think him great. His little humours
and grumpinesses were so droll that I was always laughing,--I must,
however say further, that I felt, what Charles Lamb describes, a sense of
depression at times from the over-shadowing of a so much more lofty
intellect than my own--_I could not be mistaken in the universality of his
mind_."
His descriptions in _Euphranor_, published some sixteen years later, of
"the only living and like to live poet he had known," tell the same tale.
They speak of Tennyson's union of passion and strength. "As King Arthur
shall bear witness, no young Edwin he, though as a great Poet
comprehending all the softer stops of human Emotion in that Register where
the Intellectual, no less than what is called the Poetical, faculty
predominated. As all who knew him know, a Man at all points,
Euphranor--like your Digby, of grand proportion and feature...."
There was no one for whose opinion he had so much regard, grumble though
he might, and criticize as he would. He had a special preference for the
poems at whose production he had assisted, which he had seen in MS., or
heard rehearsed orally. Toward the later poems his feeling was not the
same. The following extracts are all equally characteristic:
MARKETHILL, WOODBRIDGE,
_November 20th, 1861_.
MY DEAR OLD ALFRED--It gives me a strange glow of pleasure when I come
upon your verses, as I now do in every other book I take up, with no
name of author, as every other person knows whose they are. I love to
light on the verses for their own sake, and to remember having heard
nearly all I care for--and what a lot that is!--from your own lips.
MARKETHILL, WOODBRIDGE,
_December 14th, 1862_.
MY DEAR OLD ALFRED--Christmas coming reminds me of my half-yearly call
on you.
I have, as usual, nothing to tell of myself: boating all the summer
and reading Clarissa Harlowe since. You and I used to talk of the Book
more than twenty years ago. I believe I am better read in it than
almost any one in existence now--No wonder: for it is almost
intolerably tedious and absurd--But I can't read the "Adam Bedes,"
"Daisy Chains," etc., at all. I look at my row of Sir Walter Scott and
think with comfort that I can always go to him of a winter evening,
when no other book comes to hand.
_To Frederick Tennyson._
_November 15th, 1874._
I wrote my yearly letter to Mrs. Alfred a fortnight ago, I think; but
as yet have had no answer. Some Newspaper people make fun of a Poem of
Alfred's, the "Voice and the Peak," I think: giving morsels of which
of course one could not judge. But I think he had better have done
singing: he has sung well--_tempus silere_, etc.
But his love for the man and his underlying belief in his opinion and
genius never varied. "I don't think of you so little, my dear old Alfred,"
he wrote one day in the middle of their friendship, "but rejoice in the
old poems and in yourself, young or old, and worship you (I may say) as I
do no other man, and am glad I can worship one man still."
His delight when he found that Alfred had really liked _Omar_ was
unusually _naïf_ and keen. He forgot his grumbling, and wrote to Mrs.
Tennyson:
_To Mrs. Tennyson._
_November 4/67._
To think of Alfred's approving my old Omar! I never should have
thought he even knew of it. Certainly _I_ should never have sent it to
him, always supposing that he would not approve anything but a literal
Prose translation--unless from such hands as can do original work and
therefore do _not_ translate other People's! Well: now I have got
Nicolas and sent a copy to Cowell, and when he is at liberty again we
shall beat up old Omar's Quarters once more.
I'll tell you a very pretty Book. Alfred Tennyson's Pastoral Poems, or
rather Rural Idylls (only I must hate the latter word) bound up in a
volume, Gardener's, Miller's, Daughters; Oak; Dora; Audley Court, etc.
Oh the dear old 1842 days and editions! Spedding thinks I've shut up
my mind since. Not to "Maud, Maud, Maud, Maud." When I ask People
what Bird says that of an evening, they say "The Thrush."
I wish you would make one of your Boys write out the "Property" Farmer
Idyll. Do now, pray.
E. F. G.
When he had first "discovered" Omar, and was beginning to work upon him,
Tennyson (who was then finishing the early "Idylls of the King") had been
one of the first to whom he wrote. It is worth remembering that FitzGerald
was then in deep depression. It was the middle of the sad period of his
brief, unhappy married life. This had proved a failure in London. It was
proving a failure now in the country. He wrote:
GORLESTONE, GREAT YARMOUTH,
_July 1857_.
MY DEAR OLD ALFRED--Please direct the enclosed to Frederick. I wrote
him some months ago getting Parker to direct; but have had no reply.
_You_ won't write to me, at which I can't wonder. I keep hoping for
King Arthur--or part of him. I have got here to the seaside--a dirty,
Dutch-looking sea, with a dusty Country in the rear; but the place is
not amiss for one's Yellow Leaf. I keep on reading foolish Persian
too: chiefly because of it's connecting me with the Cowells, now
besieged in Calcutta. But also I have really got hold of an old
Epicurean so desperately impious in his recommendations to live only
for _To-day_ that the good Mahometans have scarce dared to multiply
MSS. of him. He writes in little quatrains, and has scarce any of the
iteration and conceits to which his people are given. One of the last
things I remember of him is that--"God gave me this turn for drink,
perhaps God was drunk when he made me"--which is not strictly pious.
But he is very tender about his roses and wine, and making the most of
this poor little life.
All which is very poor stuff you will say. Please to remember me to
the Lady. I don't know when I shall ever see you again; and yet you
can't think how often I wish to do so, and never forget you, and never
shall, my dear old Alfred, in spite of Epicurus. But I don't grow
merrier.--Yours ever,
E. F. G.
In 1872 he was busy with the _third_ edition of _Omar_, and wrote to
consult Tennyson. The first edition had contained only seventy-five
quatrains. The second was a good deal longer, containing one hundred and
ten. The third was again shortened to one hundred and one:
WOODBRIDGE, _March 25th, 1872_.
MY DEAR ALFRED--It would be impertinent in me to trouble you with a
question about _my_ grand Works. But, as you let me know (through Mrs.
T.) that you liked Omar, I want to know whether you read the _First_
or _Second_ Edition; and, in case you saw _both, which you thought
best_? The reason of my asking you is that Quaritch (Publisher) has
found admirers in America who have almost bought up the whole of the
last enormous Edition--amounting to 200 copies, I think--so he wishes
to embark on 200 more, I suppose: and says that he, and his Readers,
like the first Edition best: so he would reprint these.
Of course _I_ thought the second best: and I think so still: partly (I
fear) because the greater number of verses gave more time for the day
to pass from morning till night.
Well, what I ask you to do is, to tell me which of the two is best, if
you have seen the two. If you have _not_, I won't ask you further:--if
you have, you can answer in two words. And your words would be more
than all the rest.
This very little business is all I have eyes for now; except to write
myself once more ever your's and Mrs. Tennyson's,
E. F. G.
Another letter a little later refers to the same reprinting of _Omar_:
MY DEAR ALFRED--I must thank you, as I ought, for your second note.
The best return I can make is _not_ to listen to Mrs. Tennyson's P.S.,
which bids me send another Omar:--for I have only got Omar the Second,
I am sure now _you_ would not like him so well as the first (mainly
because of "too much"). I think he might disgust you with both.
So though two lines from you would have done more to decide on his
third appearance (if Quaritch still wishes that), I will not put you
to that trouble, but do as I can alone--cutting out some, and
retaining some; and will send you the result if it comes into type.
You used to talk of my crotchets: but I am quite sure you have one
little crotchet about this Omar: which deserves well in its way, but
not so well as you write of it. You know that though I do not think it
worth while to compete with you in your paltry poetical capacity, I
won't surrender in the critical, not always, at least. And, at any
rate, I have been more behind the scenes in this little matter than
you. But I do not the less feel your kindness in writing about it: for
I think you would generally give £100 sooner than write a letter. And
I am--Yours ever,
E. F. G.
The next year, in 1873, he wrote again, touching on the same theme and
others:
DEAR MRS. TENNYSON--I remember Franklin Lushington perfectly--at
Farringford in 1854; almost the last visit I paid anywhere: and as
pleasant as any, after, or before. I have still some sketches I made
of the place: "Maud, Maud, Maud," etc., was then read to me, and has
rung in my ears ever after. Mr. Lushington, I remember, sketched also.
If he be with you still, please tell him that I hope his remembrance
of me is as pleasant as mine of him.
I think I told you that Frederick came here in August, having (of
course) missed you on his way. The Mistress of Trinity wrote to me
some little while ago, telling me, among other things, that she, and
others, were much pleased with your son Hallam, whom they thought to
be like the "Paltry Poet" (poor fellow).
The Paltry one's Portrait is put in a frame and hung up at my
_château_, where I talk to it sometimes, and every one likes to see
it. It is clumsy enough, to be sure; but it still recalls the old man
to me better than the bearded portraits[18] which are now the fashion.
But oughtn't your Hallam to have it over his mantelpiece at Trinity?
The first volume of Forster's Dickens has been read to me of a night,
making me love him, up to 30 years of age at any rate; till then,
quite unspoilt, even by his American triumphs, and full of good
humour, generosity, and energy. I wonder if Alfred remembers dining
at his house with Thackeray and me, me taken there, quite unaffected,
and seeming to wish any one to show off rather than himself. In the
evening we had a round game at cards and mulled claret. Does A. T.
remember?
I have had my yearly letter from Carlyle, who writes of himself as
better than last year. He sends me a Mormon Newspaper, with a very
sensible sermon in it from the life of Brigham Young, as also the
account of a visit to a gentleman of Utah with eleven wives and near
forty children, all of whom were very happy together. I am just going
to send the paper to Archdeacon Allen to show him how they manage
these things over the Atlantic.
About Omar I must say that _all_ the changes made in the last copy are
not to be attributed to my own perverseness; the same thought being
constantly repeated with directions, whether by Omar or others, in the
500 quatrains going under his name. I had not eyes, nor indeed any
further appetite, to refer to the Original, or even to the French
Translation; but altered about the "Dawn of Nothing" as A. T. pointed
out its likeness to his better property.[19] I really didn't, and
don't, think it matters what changes are made in that Immortal Work
which is to last about five years longer. I believe it is the
strong-minded American ladies who have chiefly taken it up; but they
will soon have something wickeder to digest, I dare say.
I am going to write out for Alfred a few lines from a _Finnish_ Poem
which I find quoted in Lowell's "Among my Books"--which I think a good
Book. But I must let my eyes rest now.
In September 1876 a lucky chance brought Tennyson and himself face to face
again after twenty years. The Poet was travelling with his son, and
together they visited him at Woodbridge. They found him, as Tennyson
describes, in his garden at Little Grange. He was delighted to see them,
and specially pleased with the son's relation and attitude to his father.
Together he and Tennyson walked about the garden and talked as of old.
When Tennyson complained of the multitude of poems which were sent him,
Old Fitz recommended him to imitate Charles Lamb and throw them into his
neighbour's cucumber frames. Tennyson noticed a number of small
sunflowers, with a bee half-dying--probably from the wet season--on each,
"Like warriors dying on their shields, Fitz," he said. He reverted, of
course, to his favourite Crabbe, and told the story of how Crabbe (when he
was a chaplain in the country) felt an irresistible longing to see the
sea, mounted a horse suddenly, rode thirty miles to the coast, saw it, and
rode back comforted.
FitzGerald did not compliment them on their looks, because, he said, he
had always noticed men said, "How well you are looking!" whenever you were
going to be very ill. Therefore he had ceased saying it to any one. He
told, too, a story of a vision, how he had one day clearly seen from
outside his sister and her children having tea round the table in his
dining-room. He then saw his sister quietly withdraw from the room, so as
not to disturb the children. At that moment she died in Norfolk.[20]
He wrote shortly after this visit to Tennyson:
LITTLE GRANGE, WOODBRIDGE,
_October 31st, 1876_.
MY DEAR ALFRED--I am reading delightful Boccacio through once more,
escaping to it from the Eastern Question as the company he tells of
from the Plague. I thought of you yesterday when I came to the
Theodore and Honoria story, and read of Teodoro "_un mezzo meglio per
la pineta entrato_"--"More than a Mile immersed within the wood," as
you used to quote from Glorious John. This Decameron must be read in
its Italian, as my Don in his Spanish: the language fits either so
exactly. I am thinking of trying Faust in German, with Hayward's Prose
Translation. I never could take to it in any Shape yet: and--_don't
believe_ in it: which I suppose is a piece of Impudence.
But neither this, nor _The Question_ are you called on to answer--much
use if I did call. But I am--always yours,
E. F. G.
When I thought of you and Boccacio, I was sitting in the Sun on that
same Iron Seat with the pigeons about us, and the Trees still in Leaf.
One of the poems after 1842 which he liked was the "Ode on the Duke of
Wellington," though characteristically he made a somewhat fastidious
criticism on the "vocalization" of the opening.
"I mumble over your old verses in my memory as often as any one's," he
wrote, "and was lately wishing you had found bigger vowels for the
otherwise fine opening of the Duke's Funeral:
'Twas at the Royal Feast for Persia won, etc.
(Dryden.)
Bury the great Duke, etc.
(A. T.)
So you see I am always the same crotchetty
FITZ."
The paradox is that it was FitzGerald who was always urging "Alfred" to go
on, and finding fault with him for not doing more, and not singing in
grander, sterner strains,--not becoming the Tyrtaeus of his country. In
truth, Tennyson's strength and physical force and his splendid appearance
in youth, added to his mental grandeur, seem to have deeply impressed his
youthful contemporaries. He was, they felt, heroic, and made for heroic
songs and deeds. When he did go on, in his own way, FitzGerald did not
like it, or only half liked it. For Tennyson did go forward on his own
lines. He had not a little to daunt and deter him. He, too, had his
sensitiveness and capacity for feeling and passion not less exquisite than
FitzGerald's own. FitzGerald said his friendships were more like loves. He
was not alone in this attitude. "What _passions_ our friendships were,"
wrote Thackeray, another of the set, the early friend of both FitzGerald
and Tennyson. But of no friendship could such language be used more truly
than of that which existed between Tennyson and Arthur Hallam. When,
however, the sundering blow fell, and the friendship which was a love lay
shattered, Tennyson braced himself and went on. For
It becomes no man to nurse despair,
But in the teeth of clench'd antagonisms
To follow up the worthiest till he die.