the old one at Freshwater, and although it represents a later stage of
Tennyson's life, the interest of the house is almost as great. The fine
Laurence portrait is there, besides the admirable Watts portrait of the
Poet's wife, and that of his sons as boys. And many other pictures and
things of interest and value have accumulated within its walls.
In his old age a change, easily understood, came over the old Bard. He
lost his shyness of "the crowd," and seemed thoroughly to enjoy his
glimpses of London society. He never visited us at Oxford, but when my
father succeeded Dean Stanley at Westminster, my parents once more enjoyed
some delightful visits from him. He was there in company with his eldest
son and his daughter-in-law, on the occasion of his taking his seat in the
House of Peers. Then and at other times there were memorable meetings of
great men--Gladstone and others--with the Poet, in the fitting frame of
the ancient Deanery.
My mother writes of Tennyson in 1888, after thirty-three years of
friendship, "he grows more and more unselfish and thoughtful for others."
She noted how the self-absorption and melancholy of his earlier years
passed away in the calm sunshine of his old age.
The passing years had brought changes to others. The brilliant little
scholar with the tongue which had once held in check the boldest offender
against the laws of God or the Latin Grammar--although it never smote to
defend or advance himself--had ripened into the constant peacemaker; one
of the gentlest and humblest of that little band, who really walk in the
footsteps of their Master Christ, and make those footsteps clearer for
ever to all whose privilege it has been to live in their intimacy.
At length the day came when, full of years and honours, the famous singer,
the Great Voice of Victorian England, lay silenced in the solemn shade of
Westminster Abbey, with the clamour of London about him instead of the
roar of his sea. It was his old friend, he who had walked and talked with
him those long hours of the summer day and night thirty-seven years
before, who pronounced the last blessing above his grave. And now that
friend also sleeps, as it were, in the next room.
NOTES ON CHARACTERISTICS OF TENNYSON
By the late MASTER OF BALLIOL (PROFESSOR JOWETT)
Absolute truthfulness, absolutely himself, never played tricks.
Never got himself puffed in the newspapers.
A friend of liberty and truth.
Extraordinary vitality.
Great common sense and a strong will.
The instinct of common sense at the bottom of all he did.
Not a man of the world (in the ordinary sense) but a man who had the
greatest insight into the world, and often in a word or a sentence would
flash a light.
Intensely needed sympathy.
A great and deep strength.
He mastered circumstances, but he was also partly mastered by them, _e.g._
the old calamity of the disinheritance of his father and his treatment by
rogues in the days of his youth.
Very fair towards other poets, including those who were not popular, such
as Crabbe.
He had the high-bred manners not only of a gentleman but of a great man.
He would have wished that, like Shakespeare, his life might be unknown to
posterity.
_Conversation._
In the commonest conversation he showed himself a man of genius. He had
abundance of fire, never talked poorly, never for effect. As Socrates
described Plato, "Like no one whom I ever knew before."
The three subjects of which he most often spoke were "God," "Free-Will,"
and "Immortality," yet always seeming to find an (apparent) contradiction
between the "imperfect world," and "the perfect attributes of God."
Great charm of his ordinary conversation, sitting by a very ordinary
person and telling stories with the most high-bred courtesy, endless
stories, not too high or too low for ordinary conversation.
The persons and incidents of his childhood very vivid to him, and the
Lincolnshire dialect and the ways of life.
Loved telling a good story, which he did admirably, and also hearing one.
He told very accurately, almost in the same words, his old stories,
though, having a powerful memory, he was impatient of a friend who told
him a twice-repeated tale.
His jests were very amusing.
At good things he would sit laughing away--laughter often interrupted by
fits of sadness.
His absolute sincerity, or habit of saying all things to all kinds of
persons.
He ought always to have lived among gentlemen only.
Of his early friends (after Arthur Hallam) FitzGerald, Spedding, Sir John
Simeon, Lushington--A. T. was enthusiastic about them.
Spedding very gifted and single-minded. He spent his life in defending the
character of Bacon.
TENNYSON, CLOUGH, AND THE CLASSICS
By HENRY GRAHAM DAKYNS
You ask me to write a little paper for you on my reminiscences of
Farringford, the Pyrenees, and, later, Aldworth; and, although I am still
beset by something of the old horror of biography which so obsessed me
when I had the chance that I religiously abstained from taking notes at
the time, I cannot refuse the opportunity you offer me of having my say
also about your father and mother, and certain others whose friendship was
and is so precious to me in its affection, and their image ineffaceable.
To your cairn of memories I wish to add my pebble. I might seem lacking in
affection otherwise, and that would be to do myself an injustice, and
yourselves, your father and mother, an injury, that of seeming insensible
to their true worth. _Semper ego auditor tantum? Nunquamne reponam?_
This then is, if somewhat meagre, a faithful record of what I recollect.
To avoid repetition and for reverence' sake, I shall speak of Lord and
Lady Tennyson as Him and Her, and of yourselves, my two pupils, by your
names. If I have occasion to mention myself (your old tutor), I will use
the symbol [Greek: D], the first letter of [Greek: Dakunidion], which,
being interpreted, is "Little Dakyns," by which name your father spoke of
me, at least on one occasion.
[Illustration: TENNYSON AND HIS TWO SONS. By Julia Margaret Cameron.]
_My first Introduction to her and the two Boys, and presently to him, at
Farringford, March (?) 1861_
I shall never forget the beauty of the scene--I wish I could actualize
it--and it was accompanied by what appealed not only to the eye, but to
the heart, a mysterious sense of at-homeness. Your mother, as I think I
have often told you, was seated half-reclining on the sofa which stood
with its back to the window, with that wonderful view of capes and sea
beyond. And you two stood leaning against her, one on either side. She
was, and always remained, supremely beautiful, not only in feature and the
bodily frame, but still more from the look in her eyes, the motion of her
lips, and the deep clear music of her voice. Such a combination of grace
and dignity with simplicity and frankness and friendliness of accost as
never was. Such gentle trustfulness and sincerity of welcome as must have
won a less susceptible heart than that of the diffidently intrusive
[Greek: paidagôgos D]. I thought she must be a queen who had stept down
from mediæval days into these more prosaic times which she ennobled. And
the two Boys. If I cannot speak about them to you, you will guess the
reason. But for the benefit of a younger generation, I appeal to the
portraits of her by Watts (now at Aldworth), and of Hallam and
Lionel--surely among the best he ever painted--which are given in your
father's _Memoir_ (vol. i. facing p. 330 and p. 370).
And then he came in, a truly awful[49] moment, but in an instant of time
he too had not only banished the nervousness of [Greek: D], but won his
heart. His welcome resembled hers in its sincerity. And even if I had been
ten times more nervous than I was, and awe-stricken I was, no doubt,
something set me at my ease at once. Of his look and manner I find it not
only hard, but absurd to attempt to speak. He must have been at that date
somewhat over fifty. I was twenty-three, not quite thirty years
younger.[50] His figure, so well known in the photographs of the time, was
imposing, and it was awe-inspiring to be in the presence of the great Poet
we had hero-worshipped in our youth (though he, I think, was not the only
divinity in our Pantheon, there was Clough also--Browning at that date had
not appeared). But even so formidable as he was on these grounds, the
humanity of the man, and what I came to regard as the most abiding,
perhaps the deepest-seated, characteristic, his eternal youthfulness,
acted as a spell, and timidity melted into affection. I can still feel his
hand-grip, soft at once and large and strong, as he stood there peering
down on the relatively small mortal before him--so sane, and warm, and
trustful.
As to his so-called gruffness of manner, I will speak about that later on,
but I want at once to make clear a certain quality of mind which I believe
helped things, so that he was not troubled by the presence of a stranger,
either then or when [Greek: D] was no longer a stranger, ever afterwards.
I suppose if there had been any occasion for comparing notes he might have
discovered much to object to in my attitude to the universe, especially
during my turbulent youth, but we had much in common, he in his great
grand way illimitably, and I in my tentative fashion diminutively. The
quality I refer to as a bond was a heartfelt detestation on [Greek: D]'s
part of what I venture to call the pseudo-biographic mania. The notion of
collecting tiny pinhead facts, or words actually spoken but separated
from their context: the idea of collecting these and calling the result
biography I loathed. So when I found, as I did at once, that the great
man, the poet, and the equally great woman his wife, held similar views, I
applauded myself and became more and more rigidly unbiographic. Of course,
I see now that [Greek: D] was possibly over-scrupulous. Instead of
depending on mere recollection, how much more sensible, and not a whit the
less reverential, it would have been to have taken down at many a
conversation some catchword of what he said, and his remarks were apt to
be as incisive as they were laconic. And the Poet's fore-ordained
biographer would have blessed the inspiration. Would Tennyson himself have
been equally pleased? I am not so sure. But what he really deprecated was
after all only the vulgar tales of the spurious biographer. "In life the
owls--at death the ghouls."
With this apology I come to some among the dicta current in my time. I
think it was the first night I happened to use the word "knowledge,"
pronouncing it as I had been brought up to do with the o long, whereupon
he complimented me.[51] "You say 'knowledge,'" and explained that
"knowledge" to rhyme with "college" was the only permissible exception. I
felt pleased with my domestic training. Then he went on to denounce a
solecism, the use of "like" with a verb, "like he did," instead of "as he
did," and humorously he begged me to correct any one guilty of such
barbarism, a pledge I undertook, and acted up to, correcting speakers
right and left till it came to the superior clergy, bishops, and so forth,
in the pulpit; then I desisted....
But to proceed. Apropos of Voltaire saying that to listen to English
people talking was to overhear the hissing of serpents, he commented, "and
to listen to German was to overhear _k's_ like the scrunching of
egg-shells." He had two or three pithy sayings, which came straight home
to me and became part of my mental furniture, so much so that I have at
times given myself the credit of innovating them. One of these was that
the defect of most people--not critics only, but others, _la foule_ in
general--is "to impute themselves." I felt this to be at the root of the
matter, a profound if humorous extension of the wise man's saw, [Greek:
pantôn metron anthrôpos]. He said it often and most seriously. The other I
might call the "_elogium vatis_" _par excellence_. It took the form of a
caution against "mixing up things that differ," and to this also among his
_sententiae_ I assented _quod latius patet_. I think I once used it
incidentally to him, and he at once pulled me up. "That's mine." He
certainly did so when I asked him his own riddle: "My first's a kind of
butter, my second's a kind of liquor, and my whole's a kind of charger."
Answer: "Ramrod." And he exclaimed, "That's my riddle."[52] Then there is
the old story how the Englishman, wishing to direct the _garçon_ not to
let the fire go out, gently growled, "Ne permettez pas sortir le fou,"
whereupon the _garçon_ locks up the other Englishman. I think it was
brought up by Frank Lushington as now told against the Poet, and Tennyson
gave us the correct version; originally he had invented it himself of
Edmund Lushington when they were in Paris, chaffing his friend's French.
But it was a case of biter bit. In the vulgar version I find the Poet with
his long hair is made to play the part of the _fou_. Thus far these
trifles. I come to _memorabilia_ more precious to me and of larger import.
I will head the section
_Tennyson and the Classics, English and Other_,
and it is what you asked for. And let me make two preliminary remarks. In
reference to the defect of self-imputation above mentioned, I wish to
point out to any, consciously or unconsciously, critically minded person,
that the striking thing to me was the wide sympathy, the catholicity of
the Poet's mind, his width of view. Thus he--I will not use the word
"displayed," as if it were an external habit of any sort--but simply and
naturally he had ingrained in him the greatest generosity in his feeling
for, in his criticism of, contemporary authors. And this applies to his
appreciation of the great classical authors of the past. I do not say, of
course, that he had not his favourites, as we all have, especially,
perhaps, the smaller we are. For instance--and here other of his
contemporaries, Clough, Jowett, etc., would have borne him out--his
appreciation of [Greek: D]'s favourite poet Shelley was not so spontaneous
nor, I venture to think, so profound as, let us say, his appreciation of
Wordsworth (whom he also "criticized"[53]) or Victor Hugo, or, to take an
opposite instance, his ready appreciation of Walt Whitman, or of Browning,
or possibly of Clough. But all this is admirably discussed in your
_Memoir_.[54] I only wish to add my testimony, and I take as my text a
saying of his about Goethe, which I seem to recollect if I recollect
rightly: "In his smaller poems, _e.g._ those in _Wilhelm Meister_, Goethe
shows himself to be one of the great artists of the world. He is also a
great critic, yet he always said the best he could of an author. Good
critics are rarer than good authors" (cp. his own "And the critic's rarer
still").[55]
And I must further premise that the samples given of quotations from the
Classics are from the particular ones he chanced upon--the artist in him,
perhaps, instinctively selecting--for the particular youth, and what he
needed, or because they fitted on to things on which his mind was working
at that date. Here, at all events, they are, or some of them. I omit
continual references to Shakespeare, to Dante, to Virgil, to Homer. He was
perpetually quoting Homer and Virgil, and to my mind there was nothing for
grandeur of sound like his pronunciation of Latin and Greek as he recited
whole passages or single lines in illustration of some point, of metre,
perhaps, or thought, or feeling; for instance, the line from Homer:
[Greek: bê d' akeôn para thina polyphloisboio thalassês],
commenting on the possibility of pronouncing [Greek: oi] not in our
English fashion like _oy_ in _boy_, but like the German _ö_--_o_ of
"wood"--_phlösböo_--imitating the lisping whisper of the tideless
Mediterranean on a soft summer day. Then how he rolled out his Virgil,
giving first the thunder, then the wash of the sea in these lines:
Fluctus ut in medio coepit quum albescere ponto
Longius, ex altoque sinum trahit; utque volutus
Ad terras immane sonat per saxa, neque ipso
Monte minor procumbit; at ima exaestuat unda
Verticibus, nigramque alte subiectat arenam.
He used to say, "The Horatian alcaic is, perhaps, the stateliest metre
except the Virgilian hexameter at its best."
I take my samples in chance order. I suppose I knew my Catullus fairly
well before, but I am sure that, in a deeper sense, I learnt to know "the
tenderest of Roman poets" for the first time that day when he read to me
in that voice of his, with half-sad _Heiterkeit_, and with that refinement
of pronunciation which seemed--I am sure was--the right thing absolutely,
those well-known poems about his lady-love's pet sparrow (translated
roughly here in case a reader should chance not to know Latin):
Passer, deliciae meae puellae,
Quicum ludere, quem in sinu tenere,
Cui primum digitum dare appetenti
Et acris solet incitare morsus,
Cum desiderio meo nitenti
Carum nescio quid libet iocari.
Credo ut, cum gravis acquiescet ardor,
Tecum ludere sicut ipsa possem
Et tristis animi levare curas!
Sparrow, pet of my lady-love, with you she will play; she will hold
you in her bosom and give you her finger-tips to peck at, and tease to
quicken your sharp bite, when my shining heart's desire is in the
humour for some darling jest. Doubtless, when the fever of passion
dies away she seeks to find some little solace[56] for her pain. Oh,
if I could only play with you as she does, and so relieve the gloomy
sorrow of my soul!
And then the tear-moving sequel in the minor:
Lugete, o Veneres Cupidinesque,
Et quantum est hominum venustiorum.
Passer mortuus est meae puellae,
Passer, deliciae meae puellae,
Quem plus illa oculis suis amabat;
Nam mellitus erat suamque norat
Ipsam tam bene quam puella matrem,
Nec sese a gremio illius movebat,
Sed circumsiliens modo huc modo illuc
Ad solam dominam usque pipillabat.
Qui nunc it per iter tenebricosum
Illuc, unde negant redire quemquam.
At vobis male sit, malae tenebrae
Orci, quae omnia bella devoratis:
Tam bellum mihi passerem abstulistis.
Vae factum male! Vae miselle passer!
Tua nunc opera meae puellae
Flendo turgiduli rubent ocelli.
Mourn, all ye Goddesses of Love, and all ye Cupids mourn: mourn, all
ye sons of men that know what love is. My lady's sparrow is dead,
dead; her sparrow, my lady's pet, whom she loved more than her own
eyes, for he was honey-sweet, and knew his own mistress as well as any
girl her mother; nor would he stir from his lady's bosom, but hopping
about, now here, now there, he piped his little treble to her and her
alone. But now he goes along the darksome road, to that place whence
they say no one returns. Ah, my curse upon you! Cursed shades of
Orcus, that devour all things beautiful! So beautiful a sparrow have
ye taken from me! Alas for the ill deed done! Alas, poor little[57]
sparrow! Now, because of you my lady's dear eyes are swollen, they are
red with weeping.
The tenderness of his voice when he came to the eleventh and twelfth
lines, and the measured outburst of passionate imprecation, come back
almost audibly. I wish I could reproduce the pathos. But in the poem he
next read to me, the tenderness of Catullus and his perfection of form
reach, I think, a climax. So I think he felt, he who so revived his manner
in "Frater Ave atque Vale," and his reading gave me that impression. I
refer to the passionate poem:
Vivamus, mea Lesbia, atque amemus,
Rumoresque senium severiorum
Omnes unius aestimemus assis.
Soles occidere et redire possunt:
Nobis cum semel occidit brevis lux,
Nox est perpetua una dormienda.[58]
Da mi basia mille, deinde centum,
Dein mille altera, dein secunda centum,
Deinde usque altera mille, deinde centum.
Dein, quum millia multa fecerimus,
Conturbabimus illa, ne sciamus,
Aut nequis malus invidere possit,
Cum tantum sciat esse basiorum.
Let us live, my Lesbia, live and love; and, as for the slanderous
tongues of greybeards, value them all at a farthing's worth. Suns may
set and suns may rise again, but for us, when our short day has ended,
one long night comes, a night of sleep that knows no ending. Give me a
thousand kisses, then a hundred, and then another thousand and a
second hundred, and then once more a thousand and again a hundred, on
and on. And then, when we have made up many thousands, we will
overturn the reckoning that we may not know the number, nor any
villain cast an evil eye on us, though he discover all that huge
amount of kisses.
Can't you overhear his voice? _Conturbabimus illa, ne sciamus_, deep-toned
and fast, like a pent-up stream in spate, bursting its barriers, till the
tale is told.
Two other poems of Catullus I must mention. The first of these he had much
on his mind, for he was just then in the mood for experiments on metre,
and the famous poem "Boädicea" was, I think, the first of these,[59]
echoing the galliambics of Catullus in the "Attis":
Super alta vectus Attis celeri rate maria.
How far his own metre corresponds to Catullus' is a question for experts
like Bridges, Mayor, R. C. Trevelyan, etc., to determine, but I heard him
more than once read first the Attis poem and then his "Boädicea," and I
thought at the time there was an extraordinary resemblance in rhythm. He
wished that the "Boädicea" were musically annotated, so that it might be
read with proper quantity and pace.
The last of the Catullus poems I want to refer to he never read to me as a
whole. It is the lovely Epithalamium in honour of Junia and Manlius,
calling on Hymenaeus to attend and bless the marriage:
Collis o Heliconii
Cultor, Uraniae genus,
Qui rapis teneram ad virum
Virginem, o Hymenaee Hymen,
O Hymen Hymenaee!
Dweller on the mount of Helicon,
Seed of the Heavenly One,
Thou that bearest off the tender maiden to her bridegroom,
O Hymenaean Hymen,
O Hymen Hymenaean!
I do not know if he ever read it as a whole to any one. It would have been
splendid to hear, but towards the end of the long poem, where the poet,
like Spenser, prays, "Send us the timely fruit of this same marriage
night," comes a verse he was very fond of quoting, and in particular the
third line:
Torquatus volo parvulus
Matris a gremio suae
Porrigens teneras manus
Dulce rideat ad patrem
Semhiante labello.
I want a baby-boy Torquatus to stretch out his little hands from his
mother's lap, and sweetly to smile upon his father with half-opened
lips.
These, I think, were the most remarkable of the Catullus poems he showed
me, though of course there were others. I come now to the kindred Greek
genius, who had a special fascination for him, the poetess Sappho. He
loved her Sapphics, and greatly disliked the Sapphics of Horace, "with
their little tightly curled pigtails." I believe I owe it to him that I am
a worshipper of that most marvellous muse of Sappho....
[EDITORIAL NOTE.--Unhappily Mr. Dakyns never completed his paper. For,
while still engaged on it, he died suddenly, June 21, 1911. A friend,
Miss F. M. Stawell, has added the following notes from recollections
of what Mr. Dakyns said or wrote to her on the subject.]
Mr. Dakyns's manuscript breaks off abruptly, but he left some headings for
what he intended to write: Sappho, Goethe, Béranger, Walt Whitman, Victor
Hugo, Life at Farringford, The French Tour and Clough, Clough and the
Pyrenees. I think he would have quoted first from Sappho the lines
beginning:
[Greek: hoion to glykymalon ereuthetai akrô ep' ysdô]
Like the sweet apple that reddens upon the topmost bough,
for he loved the passage, and the book was left open at this page.
No doubt he would have gone on to quote others that were favourites both
with the Poet and with himself. Such as the heart-sick cry of love:
[Greek: dedyke men ha selanna
kai Plêiades, mesai de
nyktes, para d' erchet' hôra,
egô de mona katheudô.]
The moon has set, the Pleiades have gone;
Midnight! The hour has past, and I
Sleep here alone.
Or again:
[Greek: glukeia mater, outoi dunamai krekên ton histon,
pothô dameisa paidos bradinan di' Aphroditan.]
Dear mother mine, I cannot weave my web--
My heart is sick with longing for my dear,
Through Aphrodite fair.
And he would probably have included that longer poem of passion which has
been the wonder of the world, that invocation to
Starry-throned, immortal Aphrodite.
[Greek: poikilothron, athanat Aphrodita.]