Tennyson, but Tennyson quoted the following poems to his eldest son,
Hallam. The sad, comforting, beautiful chant of Danaë to her baby, afloat
on the waters, was quoted in one of Mr. Dakyns's last letters to me, when
his mind was full of his unfinished article. He wrote: "Isn't that lovely
and tear-drawing? true and tender and sempiternal?" And then he copied out
the whole song, in case I should chance not to have the text at hand, with
J. A. Symonds's translation beside it:
[Greek: hote larnaki en daidalea
anemos te min pneôn kinêtheisa te limna
deimati êripen, out' adiantoisi pareiais,
amphi te Persei balle philên cheira,
eipe t'; ô tekos, oion echô ponon.
su d' aôteis, galathênô t' êtori knôsseis en aterpei
dourati chalkeogomphô,
nukti alampei kuaneô te dnophô staleis;
halman d' huperthe tean koman batheian
pariontos kumatos ouk alegeis,
oud' anemou phthongon,
porphurea keimenos en chlanidi, kalon prosôpon.
ei de toi deinon to ge deinon ên,
kai ken emôn rhêmatôn lepton hupeiches ouas.
kelomai d', heude brephos, heudetô de pontos,
heudetô d' ametron kakon;
metaibolia de tis phaneiê, Zeu pater, ek seo;
hoti de tharsaleon epos
euchomai nosphin dikas, syngnôthi moi.]
When in the carven chest
The winds that blew and waves in wild unrest
Smote her with fear, she not with cheeks unwet
Her arms of love round Perseus set,
And said: "O child, what grief is mine!
But thou dost slumber, and thy baby breast
Is sunk in rest.
Here in the cheerless, brass-bound bark,
Tossed amid starless night and pitchy dark,
Nor dost thou heed the scudding brine
Of waves that wash above thy curls so deep,
Nor the shrill winds that sweep--
Lapped in thy purple robe's embrace
Fair little face!
But if this dread were dreadful, too, to thee,
Then would'st thou lend thy listening ear to me;
Therefore I cry, Sleep, babe, and sea be still,
And slumber our unmeasured ill!
Oh, may some change of fate, sire Zeus, from Thee
Descend our woes to end!
But if this prayer, too overbold, offends
Thy justice,--yet be merciful to me.
It was natural also that the heroic poems of Simonides should have
appealed to both men, and of special interest to know the delight that
Tennyson took in one of these, and perhaps because of the similarity shown
by his own splendid lines in the "Duke of Wellington" Ode:
He, that ever following her commands,
On with toil of heart and knees and hands,
Thro' the long gorge to the far light has won
His path upward, and prevail'd,
Shall find the toppling crags of Duty scaled
Are close upon the shining table-lands
To which our God Himself is moon and sun.
[Greek: esti tis logos
tan aretan naiein dysambatois epi petrais;
hagnan de min thean chôron hagnon amphepein.
oude pantôn blepharois thnatôn esoptos,
ô mê dakethymos hidrôs
endothen molê, hikê t' es akron
andreias.]
There is a tale
That Valour dwells above the craggy peaks
Hard, hard to scale,
A goddess pure in a pure land, and none
May see her face,
Save those who by keen Toil and sweat have won
That highest place,
That goal of manhood.
And with these heroic lines go the others on the men who fell at
Thermopylae:
[Greek: tôn en Thermopylais thanontôn
eukleês men ha tycha, kalos d' ho potmos,
bômos d' ho taphos, pro goôn de mnastis, ho d' oiktos epainos:
entaphion de toiouton out' eurôs
outh' ho pandamatôr amaurôsei chronos.
andrôn agathôn hode sakos oiketan eudoxian
Hellados heileto: martyrei de Leônidas,
ho Spartas basileus, aretas megan leloipôs
kosmon aenaon te kleos.]
Of those who fell at far Thermopylae,
Fair is the fate and high the destiny:
Their tomb an altar, memory for tears
And praise for lamentation through the years.
On such a monument comes no decay,
And Time that conquers all takes not away
Their greatness: for this holy Sepulchre
Of valiant men has called to dwell with her
The glory of all Greece. Bear witness, Sparta's king,
Leonidas! thy ever-flowing spring
Of fame and the high beauty of thy deed!
There is a kindred note echoing through the popular catch in praise of the
tyrannicides, Harmodius and Aristogeiton, one of the first bits of Greek
that Tennyson made his sons learn:
[Greek: en myrtou kladi to xiphos phorêsô,
hôsper Harmodios kai Aristogeitôn,
hote ton tyrannon ktanetên
isonomous t' Athênas epoiêsatên.]
In myrtle I wreathe my sword
As they wreathed it, the brave,
Brave Harmodius, Aristogeiton,
When they slew the oppressor, the lord,
And to Athens her freedom gave.
Mr. Dakyns must have rejoiced in a spirit that could feed boys on such
gallant stuff as this.
From Goethe he would have selected the noble proem to Faust:
Ihr naht Euch wieder, schwankende Gestalten,
for there was a note among his papers to that effect.
And there is one note about Béranger (written in a letter):
It was he too who introduced me to Béranger, _e.g._ "Le Roi d'Yvetot,"
and the refrain:
Toute l'aristocratie à la lanterne![60]
And how _he_ read it! Like the _Conturbabimus illa, ne sciamus_ of
Catullus quoted above--with fire and fury, _tauriformis
Aufidus_-like--a refrain which, like the "Marseillaise," stirred my
republican spirit [Greek: nosphin dikas], inordinately, I mean, and in
a monstrous cruel sort of way: but what _he_ liked was the form and
force of the language, the pure art and horror of it, I imagine.
Mr. Dakyns, in the short time I knew him, often spoke to me about
Tennyson, and always with stress on "the width of his humanity," and how
he could appreciate works at which a smaller man might have been shocked;
how, for example, he sympathized with the inmost spirit of Hugo's cry to
the awful vastness of God:
Je sais que vous avez bien autre chose à faire
Que de nous plaindre tous;
saw nothing irreverent in it, as lesser critics have done; found in it
rather a fortifying quality against "the grief that saps the mind." "I
wish you could have heard him read it," he wrote afterwards, "in his
organ-voice." Once he said to me how much he had wanted Tennyson to write
the Ode on the Stars which was always floating before his mind: "He could
have done it, for he had the sense of vastness. And it would have been a
far finer work than the 'Idylls of the King.'"
Tennyson also, he told me, was the first man to tell him about Walt
Whitman, and the first passage he showed him was one of the most daring
Whitman ever wrote. On his side Whitman had a deep feeling for Tennyson
and used to write of him affectionately as "the Boss," a touch that
pleased Mr. Dakyns greatly, for he admired and loved Walt. He gave me a
vivid impression of Tennyson's large-heartedness in all kinds of ways: for
instance, his own opinions were always intensely democratic, and the
Tennysons sympathized rather with the old Whig and Unionist policy, but he
said it never made any difference or any jar between them. "I remember his
coming into my little study at the top of the house and finding me
absorbed in Shelley, and asking me what I was reading, and I was struck at
the time by the quiet satisfied way in which he took my answer, no cavil
or criticism, though I knew he did not feel about Shelley as I did.... I
don't know how to give in writing the true impression of his dear genial
nature. It often came out in what might seem like roughnesses when they
were written down. He was very fond of Clough: and Clough at that time was
very taciturn--he was ill really, near his death--and I remember once at a
discussion on metre Clough would not say one word, and at last Tennyson
turned to him with affectionate impatience, quoting Shakespeare in his
deep, kindly voice, 'Well, goodman Dull, what do _you_ say?' How can I put
that down? I can't give the sweet humorous tone that made the charm of it.
And then people called him 'gruff.' His 'gruffness' only gripped one
closer."
Another time he told me with keen enjoyment of Tennyson's discovering a
likeness to him in some drawing on the cover of the old _Cornhill_--I
think it was the figure of a lad ploughing--pointing to it like a child
and saying, "Little Dakyns." He would speak with delight of Tennyson's
humour, far deeper and wilder, he said, than most people would have
guessed, Rabelaisian even in the noble sense of the word, and always fresh
and pure.
"I remember an instance of my own audacity," he said, "at which I almost
shudder now. We were riding into a French town, it was the evening of a
fête, and the whole population seemed to be capering about with the most
preposterous antics. It struck a jarring note, and the Poet said to me, 'I
can't understand them, it's enough to make one weep.' Somehow I couldn't
help answering--but can you imagine the audacity? I assure you I trembled
myself as I did so--'Tears, idle tears, I know not what they mean.' And he
took it, he took it! He did indeed!"
The memories of Clough also were very dear to Mr. Dakyns, and he said he
could never help regretting that he had not heard him read his last long
work, "In Mari Magno," to the Poet. "Tennyson said to me afterwards,
'Clough's Muse has lost none of her power,' and I couldn't help feeling a
little hurt that I had not been asked to hear the reading: perhaps it was
vanity on my part."
Clough always came down to see them bathe. He was very fond of bathing
himself, but could not take part in it then on account of his health. "I
never feel the water go down my back now," Mr. Dakyns said, "without
thinking of Clough."
But the sweetest of all the memories was, I think, the memory of the
valley at Cauteretz, sacred to Tennyson because of Arthur Hallam. I heard
Mr. Dakyns speak of that the first time he was at our house. My mother
chanced to ask him what he did after taking his degree, and he said, "I
was with the Tennysons as tutor to their boys, and we went to the
Pyrenees." The name and something in his tone made me start. "Oh," I said,
"were you with them at Cauteretz?" He turned to me with his smile, "Yes, I
was, and if I had not already a family motto of which I am very proud, I
should take for my legend 'Dakyns isn't a fool'" (the last phrase in a
gruffly tender voice). And then he told us: "There was a fairly large
party of us, the Tennysons, Clough, and myself, some walking and some
driving. Tennyson walked, and I being the young man of the company, was
the great man's walking-stick. When we came to the valley--I knew it was a
sacred place--I dropped behind to let him go through it alone. Clough told
me afterwards I had done well. He had noticed it, and the Poet said--and
it was quite enough--'Dakyns isn't a fool!'"
It was that evening that Tennyson wrote "All along the Valley."
RECOLLECTIONS OF TENNYSON
By the Rev. H. MONTAGU BUTLER, D.D., Master of Trinity College, Cambridge.
You have asked me to put on paper some recollections of the many happy
visits which it was my good fortune to pay to Farringford and Aldworth
between 1860 and 1890. I wish that I could respond to this kind request
more worthily; but the truth is, that, though I have always counted those
visits among the happiest events of my life, and though my memory of the
general impression left upon me on each occasion is perfectly clear, it is
not clear, but on the contrary most confused and hazy, as to any
particular incidents.
Speaking first generally in the way of preface, I may say that it would be
difficult to exaggerate the hero-worship with which I regarded the great
Poet, ever since I was a boy. Before I went up to Trinity in 1851, he had
been the delight of my friends and myself at Harrow. And further, through
members of the Rawnsley family, I had heard much of his early days when
the Tennysons lived at Somersby.
During my life at Trinity, from 1851 to 1855, and then, with long
intervals of absence, till the end of 1859, Coleridge and Wordsworth and
Tennyson, but especially Tennyson, were the three poets of the nineteenth
century who mainly commanded the reverence and stirred the enthusiasm of
the College friends with whom I lived. Robert Browning became a power
among them almost immediately after, but by that time I had gone back to
Harrow. Matthew Arnold and Clough and Kingsley also attracted us greatly
in their several ways, and of course Shelley and Keats, but Tennyson was
beyond a doubt our chief luminary. "In Memoriam" in particular, followed
by "Maud" and the first four "Idylls of the King," was constantly on our
lips, and, I may truly say, in our hearts, in those happy hours.
It was with these feelings, then, and these prepossessions that I was
prepared to make the acquaintance of the great Poet, should such an honour
ever be granted me. It came first, to the best of my recollection, when my
late brother-in-law, Francis Galton, and I were taking one of our
delightful walking trips or tramps in the Easter holidays. Galton used to
plan everything--district, hours, stopping-places, length of each day's
march. One Easter--I forget which, but it must have been about 1859--was
devoted to the New Forest. From there we crossed over to the Isle of
Wight; and after visiting Shanklin and Bonchurch, we walked round to
Freshwater. To leave Freshwater without paying our homage to the Poet at
Farringford was impossible. Whether we had any definite introduction to
him, I cannot now remember, but we had reason to think that we should be
kindly received. My brother Arthur had lately been paying more than one
visit to that part of the Island, and had keenly enjoyed several long
walks with him. His report of these was not lost upon me.
Galton had known intimately some of Tennyson's friends, such as Sumner
Maine, W. G. Clark, Franklin Lushington, and specially "Harry" Hallam,
younger brother of Arthur. He was, I think, as full of hero-worship for
the Poet as I was myself. The fame which he has since won in connexion
with Science may make it difficult, even for his later friends, to
understand the passion--I can use no weaker word--which he then cherished
for some branches of imaginative literature, in particular for Chaucer,
Shakespeare, Milton, Keats, and for at least three of Kingsley's novels,
_Alton Locke_, _Yeast_, and _Westward Ho!_ These we used in the course of
our Easter rambles to read out in the open air after an _al-fresco_ lunch.
Tennyson's works were all very familiar to Galton. He had known them at
Cambridge as each came out, and had discussed them eagerly with admiring
friends, some of them first-rate critics. He delighted not only in the
subtlety and elevation and freedom of the thoughts, but also in the beauty
and perfection and melody of the expression.
We went, as I have said, to call on the Poet. We went together with rather
beating hearts. He received us cordially as Trinity men, but unfortunately
I can remember no detail of any kind. I am not sure whether we were even
introduced to Mrs. Tennyson. All I remember is that we left the house
happy and exhilarated.
But my real acquaintance with the Tennyson family dates from the end of
1861 and the early days of 1862. My first marriage had been on December
19, 1861, and a few days afterwards we came to Freshwater, and stayed at
the hotel close to the sea, where Dr. and Mrs. Vaughan had sometimes
stayed during his Harrow Mastership. It was then that we first met the
Granville Bradleys, destined to be our dear friends for life, and it was
in their company that we soon found ourselves most kindly welcomed guests
at Farringford.
The two first incidents that I remember were the Poet showing us the proof
of his "Dedication of the Idylls," and, at our request, reading out to us
"Enoch Arden." The "Dedication" must have been composed almost immediately
after the death of the Prince Consort on December 14. He seemed himself
pleased with it. I thought at the time, and I have felt ever since, that
these lines rank high, not only among his other tributes of the same kind,
but in the literature of epitaphs generally. We felt it a proud privilege
to be allowed to stand at his side as he looked over the proof just
arrived by the post, and it led us of course to talk sympathetically of
the late Prince and the poor widowed Queen.
Very soon after, the Bradleys and we dined at Farringford. The dinner hour
was, I think, as early as six, and then, after he had retreated to his
_sanctum_ for a smoke, he would come down to the drawing-room, and read
aloud to his guests. On this occasion he read to us "Enoch Arden," then
only in manuscript. I had before heard much of his peculiar manner of
reading, with its deep and often monotonous tones, varied with a sudden
lift of the voice as if into the air, at the end of a sentence or a
clause. It was, as always, a reading open to criticism on the score of
lack of variety, but my dear bride and I were in no mood to criticize. The
spell was upon us. Every note of his magnificent voice spoke of majesty or
tenderness or awe. It was, in plain words, a prodigious treat to have
heard him. We walked back through the winter darkness to our hotel,
conscious of having enjoyed a unique privilege.
During this vacation I had, as often in after years, not a few walks with
him on the downs, leaving the Beacon on the left and going on to the
Needles. It was a walk of about two hours. It is here that my memory so
sadly fails me as to his talk. In tone it was friendly, manly, and
perfectly simple, without a touch of condescension. He seemed quite
unconscious that he was a great man, one of the first Englishmen of his
time, talking to one young and utterly obscure. Almost any subject
interested him, grave or gay. He would often talk of metres, Greek and
Latin; of attempts to translate Homer; of the weak points in the English
hexameter; or again of more serious topics, on which he had thought much
and felt strongly, such as the life after death, the so-called "Eternity
of Future Punishment," the unreality of the world as known to the senses,
the grander Human Race, the "crowning race," still to be born.
Occasionally, not very often in these days, he would speak of his own
poems. Once, I remember, a few days after an examination of the sixth form
at Harrow, I told him that we had set for Greek Iambics the fine passage
in "Elaine," where Lancelot says to Lavaine:
... in me there dwells
No greatness, save it be some far-off touch
Of greatness to know well I am not great.
_There_ is the man,
pointing to King Arthur. "Yes," he said in substance, "when I wrote that,
I was thinking of Wordsworth and myself."
I noticed that he never spoke of Wordsworth without marked reverence.
Obviously, with his exquisite ear for choice words and rhythm, he must
have been more sensitive than most men to the prosaic, bathetic side of
Wordsworth; but I never heard him say a word implying that he felt this,
whereas I _have_ heard him qualify his admiration for Robert Browning's
genius and his affection for his person by some allusion to the roughness
of his style. This, he thought, must lead to his being less read than he
deserved in years to come, and he evidently regretted it.
It was in the period, roughly speaking, between 1862 and 1880 that I saw
most of him, for it was then our habit to make frequent visits to
Freshwater or Alum Bay, generally at Christmas, and we were always
received with the same cordial kindness. It was then that the long walks
and the readings of his poetry after dinner continued as a kind of
institution, and never palled. Among the poems that he read out to us were
"Aylmer's Field," the "Ode on the Death of the Duke of Wellington," parts
of "Maud," "Guinevere," "The Holy Grail," "The Charge of the Light
Brigade," "The Revenge," "The Defence of Lucknow," "In the Valley of
Cauteretz." With regard to this beautiful poem I cannot help recalling an
amusing and most unexpected laugh. He had read the third and fourth lines
in his most sonorous tones:
All along the valley, where thy waters flow,
I walked with one I loved two and thirty years ago;
and then suddenly, changing his voice, he said gruffly, "A brute of a
----has discovered that it was thirty-one years and not thirty-two.
Two-and-thirty is better than one-and-thirty years ago, isn't it? But
perhaps I ought to alter it."
It was at this time that we used often to meet Mr. Jowett and also the
Poet's great friend and admirer, the gifted Mrs. Cameron and her dignified
and gray-bearded husband, who looked like a grand Oriental Chief.
One trifling incident occurs to me as I write, the Poet's remarkable skill
at battledore. One duel with him in particular comes back to my mind, in
which I found it hard to hold my own. He was a very hard hitter. He did
not care merely to "keep up" long scores. He liked each bout to be a trial
of strength, and to aim the shuttlecock where it would be difficult for
his opponent to deal with it. In spite of his being short-sighted he
played a first-rate game. With the exception of my brother Arthur, I never
came upon so formidable an antagonist.
But I must leave these earlier years, of which I cannot find any written
record, and pass on to the end of 1886, when, nearly four years after the
death of my dear wife and a year and a half after my leaving Harrow, I
was, to my great surprise, appointed Master of Trinity.
On December 3 I was installed, and on December 13 I was invited to
Farringford, with the prospect of returning on the 16th to Davos Platz,
where I had left my invalid daughter. Of this short visit I find I have
made a few notes. The Poet was as cordial as ever. After dinner he took me
to his _sanctum_, and read me his new Jubilee Ode in Catullian metre, and
then "Locksley Hall Sixty Years After." Next morning there came a letter
from Dr. W. H. Thompson's executor containing an early poem of Tennyson's
of 1826, and a Sonnet, once famous, complaining of defects in the College
system of his day:
Therefore your Halls, your ancient Colleges,
Your portals statued with old kings and queens,
Your gardens, myriad-volumed libraries,
Wax-lighted chapels, and rich carven screens,
Your doctors, and your proctors, and your deans,
Shall not avail you, when the Day-beam sports
New-risen o'er awaken'd Albion. No!
Nor yet your solemn organ-pipes that blow
Melodious thunders thro' your vacant courts
At noon and eve, because your manner sorts
Not with this age wherefrom ye stand apart,
Because the lips of little children preach
Against you, you that do profess to teach
And teach us nothing, feeding not the heart.
About eleven o'clock the Poet took me out alone. We went first to
Freshwater Gate, where he said the "maddened scream of the sea" in "Maud"
had been first suggested to him. He talked of our late friend, Philip
Stanhope Worsley, the translator of the _Odyssey_ and half of the _Iliad_,
who was living there a good many years ago, and whom I had met at his
table. He admired him much. He talked also, but I forget to what effect,
of "The Holy Grail" and the old Arthur myth, but before this we talked of
the Cambridge Sonnet just mentioned. "There was no _love_," he said, "in
the system." I understood him to mean that the dons, as a rule, were out
of sympathy with the young men. He spoke also of the bullying he had
undergone at his first school; how, when he was a new boy of only seven
and a half, he was sitting on the school steps crying and homesick. Up
came a big fellow, between seventeen and eighteen, and asked him roughly
who he was and what he was crying for, and then gave him a kick in the
wind! This experience had evidently rankled in his mind for more than
seventy years. Again, in April 1890, he told me the same story.
But to return to our morning walk of December 14, 1886. Something led me
to speak of my favourite lines:
The old order changeth, yielding place to new,
And God fulfils Himself in many ways,
Lest one good custom should corrupt the world.
Spedding, it seems, and others had wanted him to alter the "one _good_
custom." "I was thinking" he said, "of knighthood." He went on to speak of
his "Experiments in Quantity," and in particular of the Alcaic Ode to
Milton, beginning:
O mighty-mouth'd inventor of harmonies.
"I thought _that_," he said, "a bit of a _tour de force_," and surely he
was right there. He tilted a little at C. S. Calverley for demurring to
God-gifted organ-voice of England.
"I didn't mean it to be like your
'September, October, November';
I was imitating, not Horace, but the original Greek Alcaic, though
Horace's is perhaps the finest metre." The two Latin metres which I have
more than once heard him admire were the Hexameter and the Alcaic.
I find that in my Journal I wrote as regards this walk: "I wish I could
remember more. He was wholly _facilis_, and I never felt less afraid of
him or more reverent." Perhaps I should add that during the walk he told
me an extraordinary number of ghost stories--a man appearing to several
people, and then vanishing before their eyes.