Freshwater. We rented Mrs. Cameron's little house which opens by a door of
communication into the large hall of Dimbola, the house in which she
lived. The evening we arrived, she suddenly appeared in our drawing-room
saying, "When strangers take this house I keep the door between us locked,
with friends never"; and locked it never was. We lived almost as part of
the family, and it was a real enjoyment to be in such close intimacy with
one of the most original, and at the same time most tender-hearted and
generous women I have ever known. She was on very intimate terms at
Farringford, and would speak her mind to the Poet in a very amusing way.
On one occasion a party of Americans came to Freshwater, and Mrs. Cameron
sent them up to Farringford with a note of introduction. Tennyson was
tired or busy, and they were not admitted. They returned to Mrs. Cameron
full of their disappointment, and she put on her bonnet (I can see her now
as she walked through the lanes, her red or blue Chuddah shawl always
trailing behind her, and apparently not much the worse for the dust that
fringed it), and insisted upon their going back with her to Farringford.
Having made her way to Tennyson, she said to him solemnly, "Alfred, these
good people have come 3000 miles to see a lion and they have found a
bear." He laughed, relented, and received the strangers most courteously.
Mrs. Cameron's beautiful white-haired old husband in his royal purple
dressing-gown was a most interesting personality. In addition to the large
experience of men and things which his many years of official life in
India had given him, and which made his society delightful, he was a very
fine classical scholar of the old school, and in his old age, when
blindness and infirmity debarred him in great measure from his books, it
was his solace to repeat by heart odes of Horace, pages of Virgil, and
long passages from the Greek poets.
Easter 1872 brought a bright and merry gathering to Freshwater. One of
Mrs. Cameron's charming relations (they had lived with her for years as
adopted daughters) was about to marry, and go out with her husband to
India, and the "Primrose wedding" brought a large influx of young people,
friends and relations of Mrs. Cameron and the bride, in addition to the
visitors who always made Easter a pleasant time. The weather was perfect,
the "April airs that fan the Isle of Wight" especially soft and balmy.
Parties of twenty or thirty met every evening in Mrs. Cameron's hall or in
the Farringford drawing-room. Nearly every one there knew or got to know
Lord and Lady Tennyson. He was in particularly genial health and spirits;
he joined the young people in their midnight walks to the sea, in their
flower-seeking expeditions, in one of which some one was fortunate enough
to find a grape hyacinth in one of the Farringford fields. He read aloud
nearly as much as he was asked to, and danced as vigorously as the
youngest present at two dances that were given. It was during the first of
these dances that a young neighbour became engaged to the lady whom he
shortly afterwards married. Very soon after the decisive moment had
passed, and when the event was naturally supposed to be a profound secret,
Tennyson put the girl's mother, with whom he happened to be sitting,
completely out of countenance by saying, without a suspicion of malice,
and without for the moment recognizing the young couple who passed him, "I
wot they be two lovyers dear." When he was shortly afterwards told of the
engagement, he twinkled very much over his rather premature but very
apposite announcement.
My marriage took place in the autumn of 1872, and my husband, who already
knew the Tennysons, was at once received into their intimacy, and their
friendship was henceforth one of the greatest privileges of our joint
life. Tennyson and Hallam were present at our wedding, and the former held
our eldest boy in his arms when he was but a day or two old.
The Easter of 1873 saw us again at Freshwater with another pleasant
meeting of friends. On that occasion Tennyson said to me, "Why do you not
ask me to dinner?" It need not be said that we at once gave the
invitation, though not a little nervous at the thought of the
lodging-house fare and arrangements to which we were bidding him; but our
dear old landlady did her very best. We asked a small party (Lady Florence
Herbert and Leslie Stephen were our guests) to meet him and Hallam; he was
himself in the best of spirits, and our little dinner-party proved a great
success.
A few years later the Tennysons took a house in London three or four years
running (one spring they had my stepmother's house in Eaton Place).
Tennyson appeared to have in great measure lost his dislike to mixing in
general society, and they collected about them a very interesting and
varied circle of friends. I cannot help recalling an incident which
occurred one evening at their house, which, though painful at the moment,
is pleasant to look back upon on account of the affectionate and generous
apology it elicited. A large party was at their house one evening, and
Tennyson was persuaded to read aloud, and chose the "Revenge." Something
or other, I suppose the "Inquisition Dogs" and the "Devildoms of Spain,"
excited him as he read, and by the time he had finished he had worked
himself into a state, which I have occasionally, but seldom, seen at
other times, of fury against the Catholic Church, as exemplified by the
Inquisition, persecution of heretics, etc.; in fact, all the artillery of
prejudice at which Catholics can afford to laugh. It happened, however,
that my husband, one of my sisters, and myself were the only Catholics
there, and were sitting together in the same part of the room. As he
talked he turned towards us and addressed us personally in a violent
tirade which loyalty to our convictions made it impossible for us not to
answer, though our attempts at explanation and contradiction were drowned
in his fierce and eloquent denunciations. Every one in the room looked
very uncomfortable. I myself hardly knew whether to laugh or cry, and was
never more relieved than, when his flow of words had exhausted itself, he
began to read another poem. Before the end of the evening, however, he
felt that his outbreak had not been kind or courteous, and before we left
he took us all three into his study, and made so sweet and gracious an
_amende_ that we loved him, if possible, more than ever.
Any one who has read carefully the "Idylls of the King," "Sir Galahad,"
"St. Agnes," among many of his poems, still more any one who has spoken
with him intimately, cannot fail to realize the strong attraction which
many Catholic doctrines and practices had for Tennyson, and the reverence
with which he regarded the Catholic Church as standing alone among jarring
sects and creeds, majestic, venerable, and invulnerable. His mind was also
an essentially and intensely religious one, and I know that one of my
father's attractions for him lay in the religious tone of _his_ mind. On
these points, however, I will say no more. In jotting down these few
remembrances of a friendship which is amongst my most precious
possessions, I settled with myself to refrain entirely from any
presentation of what I believed to be Tennyson's views on theology,
metaphysics, or politics, no less than from any discussion of his poetic
greatness. I want nothing but to sketch the _man_ as he always seemed to
me, one of the noblest, truest, and most lovable of God's creatures, and
one who, even without the genius that has crowned his brow with
never-fading laurel, must, by weight of character and beauty of soul
alone, stand a giant amid his fellow-men!
We spent the Christmas holidays of 1890-91 at Freshwater with our five
children; not one of them will forget the delightful intercourse with
Farringford during those weeks, and the Christmas Tree arranged by Mrs.
Hallam Tennyson for her little Lionel in the large room known as the
ball-room.[82] Kind words and presents were showered on every one, and I
think the beloved grandparents enjoyed it as much as their
fourteen-months-old grandson, as they sat in the midst of their servants
and cottagers (some of whom were amongst the oldest of their friends), and
the guests, little and great, whom they had asked to share their Christmas
festival. Our two eldest children have a more precious remembrance of that
time and the following Easter, which we also spent at Freshwater, for
Tennyson read aloud to them for the first and only time. To our girl he
read "Old Roä" and the "Bugle Song," and to our boy the "Ode on the Death
of the Duke of Wellington." He read this in April 1891; it was the last
time I heard him read, and I look upon it as a special act of kindness; he
said he did not like to read to children--they did not understand, were
bored--and he only yielded to my strong entreaties. If, however, he saw,
as I think he did, the flushed cheeks and big tearful eyes of our
fourteen-year-old schoolboy, he must have felt that he had a listener who
_did_ understand and appreciate!
Through the early part of the winter of 1890 Tennyson was remarkably
well, walking in the morning with my husband and other friends, and taking
long walks in the afternoon up and down the ball-room, when he liked to
have one or two companions who would amuse him, and whom he would amuse
with witty stories and _bons mots_. He had always a great pleasure in racy
anecdotes, and the humorous side of life, and during the last years this
increased, so that his friends treasured up every good story they heard to
repeat to him at their next meeting.
Towards the end of the Christmas holidays Tennyson caught cold, and fears
of a return of gout and bronchitis confined him to his room. My husband
had already returned to London, and I was remaining only a few days longer
and thinking sadly enough that I should not be able to see Tennyson again
before I left, when on one of the last evenings I was spending at
Farringford, he sent for me to his room and then, to my delighted
surprise, proposed to read to me. I demurred, fearing it might be bad for
him, but he insisted, and for half an hour read me one unpublished poem
after another,[83] his voice nearly as strong as I had ever known it, and
it seemed to me even more pathetic and beautiful.
That Easter of 1891, among many pleasant recollections of Farringford and
of the group of friends who paid their daily visit there, has one which I
like to set against the stories of Tennyson's unapproachableness and
gruffness to those who went to see him, which are so often circulated, and
which, in nine cases out of ten, meant that those who presented themselves
to him had chosen an unfortunate time, or were in some respect deficient
in tact or politeness. An American friend, professor of literature at
Harvard, was staying with us. His admiration and veneration for the great
master of verse were unbounded, and he would, I feel sure, have crossed
the Atlantic merely to see and speak with him. The morning after his
arrival, my husband took him to Farringford, where they found Tennyson
somewhat annoyed by a communication from an unknown American admirer,
enclosing a photograph of the Poet, upon which he requested him to sign
his name; the coolness of the request being heightened by the fact that
the sender had posted his letter unstamped. My husband said to his friend,
"Now, M., here's your opportunity; put down sixpence and pay the national
debt, and Tennyson will sign you the receipt on this photograph." He
immediately took the joke, laughed, bade the professor take back his
sixpence, and signed the photograph for him.
On one of the last days we were at Freshwater that Easter, Tennyson met
our youngest child of five in the road, and addressed her, to her great
amusement: "Madam! you've a damask rose on either cheek, and another on
your forehead; rosy lips, golden hair, and a straw bonnet."
I never again saw the household at Farringford after April 1891. Once more
we were at Aldworth in October of that year, when Tennyson signed for us a
photograph from Mr. Watts's last picture. He was tired before we left and
had gone to rest in his room, but I begged Hallam to let me go in to wish
him good-bye. Had I known that it _was_ good-bye, and that for the last
time I looked on his face and kissed his dear hands, what could I have
said? Never could I express the sorrowing love, the immense gratitude,
which overflow my heart as I think of my father's friend and mine!
* * * * *
The following letter was written by Tennyson to Catherine Lady Simeon
after the death of his friend:
ALDWORTH, _June 27th, 1870_.
MY DEAR LADY SIMEON--Of course nothing could be more grateful to me
than some memorial of my much-loved and ever-honoured friend, the
only man on earth, I verily believe, to whom I could, and have more
than once opened my whole heart; and he also has given me in many a
conversation at Farringford in my little attic his utter confidence. I
knew none like him for tenderness and generosity, not to mention his
other noble qualities, and he was the very Prince of Courtesy; but I
need not tell you this; anything, little book, or whatever you will
choose, send me or bring when you come; and do pray come on the 4th
July, and we will be all alone; and Louie can come, when she will, and
you can spare her.--Believe me, always affectionately yours,
A. TENNYSON.
SIR JOHN SIMEON
By AUBREY DE VERE
The world external knew thee but in part:
It saw and honoured what was least in thee;
The loyal trust, the inborn courtesy;
The ways so winning, yet so pure from art;
The cordial reverence, keen to all desert,
All save thine own; the accost so frank and free;
The public zeal that toiled, but not for fee,
And shunned alike base praise, and hireling's mart.
These things men saw; but deeper far than these
The under-current of thy soul worked on
Unvexed by surface-ripple, beam, or breeze,
And unbeheld its way to ocean won:
Life of thy life was still that Christian Faith
The sophist scorns. It failed thee not in death.
TENNYSON
By ARTHUR SIDGWICK, Fellow of Corpus Christi, Oxford, and sometime Fellow
of Trinity College, Cambridge.
(Read in the Chapel of Trinity College, Cambridge, October 30, 1909.[84])
We are met here to-day to do honour to the memory and the life's work of
one of the greatest of Trinity's sons, who has also won for himself--few
lovers of poetry here or anywhere can feel a doubt--a high and secure
place in the glorious roll of English Poets, that roll which records the
poetic achievements of over 500 years.
In accepting (with whatever misgivings) the request of the College
authorities to speak some preliminary words in appreciation of the Poet, I
do not propose to deal in any detail with the history of his life and
work, on which the biography has thrown such interesting and welcome
light. The most that can here be attempted is to select a few aspects and
illustrations of Tennyson's life-long devotion to his art, such as may
serve to bring out something of those gifts and qualities which, wherever
English poetry is read, are felt to give to his work its special charm and
value.
Though I must pass the early years almost in silence, I cannot refrain
from quoting the delightful tale, first made known (I believe) by Miss
Thackeray,[85] how at the age of five the Poet was seen with outspread
arms in a high wind, sailing gaily along and shouting his first line of
poetry
I hear a voice that's speaking in the wind
--he did indeed all his life hear that voice and all other Nature-voices;
and also the other tale of ten years later, how on the news of Byron's
death (in 1824) the boy went out, desolate, and carved the sad tidings on
the sandstone, and (to use his own words) "thought everything over and
finished for every one, and that nothing else mattered."
Such despairing grief has seemed to some readers extravagant, to be
excused on the plea of youth--he was only fifteen: but it must not be
forgotten that Byron's death was the final blow of a triple fatality such
as finds no parallel in the history of literature. Three men of striking
genius and rich poetic gifts--Byron, Shelley, and Keats--were all
prematurely lost to the world within four years (1821-4). The fervid
sorrow of the impulsive and gifted boy of fifteen, so far from being
extravagant, must have been shared by countless readers of all ages who
cared for poetry, not in England only.
It is true that as the years went on the youthful sympathy of Tennyson
with what has been called the Revolutionary poetry was materially
modified--perhaps especially in the case of Shelley. Yet there is a
striking letter of the date 1834--when Shelley had been dead twelve years,
and Tennyson was twenty-five--which should not be forgotten. Henry Taylor
had attacked the Byron-Shelley school of poetry; and Tennyson, while not
disputing much of his general judgment, adds this penetrating comment: "It
may be that he (Taylor) does not sufficiently take into consideration the
peculiar strength evolved by such writers as Byron and Shelley, who,
however mistaken they may be, did yet give the world _another heart and
new pulses_, and so we are kept going."
Matthew Arnold was a fine critic and a poet of high distinction, but I
have always felt, if we compare his somewhat severe attitude towards the
earlier school with that of Tennyson, that it was the latter who showed
the truer insight, the wider sympathy, and the juster appreciation.
Of his Cambridge life, 1828-30, two main points stand out: the grievous
want he felt of any real stimulus or inspiration in the instruction
provided by the authorities; and, secondly, the remarkable group of
distinguished men of his own age with whom his college life was passed. As
to the first, the scathing lines written at the time, and published with
his express consent in the biography, are more eloquent than any
description could be. After naming all the glories of the Colleges--their
portals, gardens, libraries, chapels, "doctors, proctors and deans"--"all
these," he cries, "shall not avail you when the Daybeam sports, new-risen
over Albion ..." and the poem ends with the reason:
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_.
On the other hand, this lack (of official wisdom) was more than supplied
by the friends with whom he lived--James Spedding, Monckton Milnes
(afterwards Lord Houghton), Trench, Alford, Brookfield, Blakesley,
Thompson (afterwards Master), Merivale, Stephen Spring-Rice, J. Kemble,
Heath, C. Buller, Monteith, Tennant, and above all Arthur Hallam.
Thirty-five years later Lord Houghton justly said of this group of friends
that "for the wealth of their promise they were a body of men such as this
University has seldom contained." To this should be added the special
influence of the "Apostles," to which Society most of these friends
belonged, who had organized from the first regular weekly meetings for
essays and discussions, where no topic was barred, and speech was
absolutely free. The immense stimulus of such discussion to thought, to
study, to readiness and power of argument, to widening the range of
intellectual interests and literary judgment and appreciation, must be
obvious to all. And we must not forget that the years covered by young
Tennyson's residence at Cambridge were precisely the period of the keenest
intellectual stir and the stormiest political warfare that preceded the
great Reform Bill.
To return to the poetry. Passing over the purely juvenile _Poems by two
Brothers_ printed in his eighteenth year, we have, in 1830, the first book
of poems which have partially survived the mature and fastidious taste
which suppressed so much of the early work. Even here, half the pieces
have been withdrawn, and much of the rest re-written: what remains is
rather slight--the Isabels and Claribels and Adelines and Lilians and
Eleanores, poems which in some critics' views border on the trivial.
Really they should be regarded as experiments in lyric measures: and the
careful student will note the signs of the poet's fine ear and keen eye
for nature: but the depths were not sounded.
Two years later came the second volume (1832). Again much has been
withdrawn, much re-written: but when in this collection we find
"Oenone," "The Palace of Art," "A Dream of Fair Women," and "The
Lotos-eaters," we see that we have the real poet at last.
"The Palace of Art" is an attempt to trace the Nemesis of selfish culture,
secluding itself from social human life and duty. After three years of
these exclusive delights, the man's outraged nature--or conscience if you
will--reasserts itself in a kind of incipient madness: the soul of him
sees visions. Then a weird passage:
But in dark corners of her palace stood
Uncertain shapes; and unawares
On white-eyed phantasms weeping tears of blood,
And horrible nightmares,
And hollow shades enclosing hearts of flame,
And, with dim fretted foreheads all,
On corpses three-months-old at noon she came,
That stood against the wall.
The horrors, like Gorgons and Furies of ancient poets, are perhaps a
trifle too material; but in the description of the Nemesis there are
touches of real power, which at least are impressive and arresting.
"Oenone" is perhaps the most absolutely beautiful of these early poems,
and for the triumph of melodious sound, and finished picturesqueness of
description, the opening lines are unsurpassed. We should also note that
it took more than one edition to bring it to its present perfection of
form. It is very well known, but no one will object to hear it again:
There lies a vale in Ida, lovelier
Than all the valleys of Ionian hills.
The swimming vapour slopes athwart the glen,
Puts forth an arm, and creeps from pine to pine,
And loiters, slowly drawn. On either hand
The lawns and meadow-ledges midway down
Hang rich in flowers, and far below them roars
The long brook falling thro' the clov'n ravine
In cataract after cataract to the sea.
Behind the valley topmost Gargarus
Stands up and takes the morning: but in front
The gorges, opening wide apart, reveal
Troas and Ilion's column'd citadel,
The crown of Troas.
Before I pass on from "Oenone," I may perhaps add a word or two on
Tennyson's classical poetry generally, and his debt to the great ancient
masterpieces.
He was, perhaps, not exactly a scholar in what I may call the narrow
professional sense; but in the broadest and deepest and truest sense he
was a _great_ scholar. Direct imitations of classical form, even when they
show such power and poetry as Swinburne's "Atalanta" and "Erechtheus,"
have always something artificial about them. But in all Tennyson's classic
pieces--"Oenone," "Ulysses," "Demeter," "Tithonus," the legendary
subjects--and in the two historic subjects, "Lucretius" and "Boädicea,"
the classical tradition is there with full detail, but by the poet's art
it is transmuted. "Oenone" is epic in form, the rest are brief
monodramas; the material is all ancient, and in many subtle ways the
spirit; the handling is modern and original. In translations--too
few--Tennyson can only be called consummate: his version of one passage of
the _Iliad_ (viii. 552) makes all other translations seem second-rate. Let
me quote a few lines:
And these all night upon the bridge of war
Sat glorying; many a fire before them blazed:
As when in heaven the stars about the moon
Look beautiful, when all the winds are laid,
And every height comes out, and jutting peak
And valley, and _the immeasurable heavens
Break open to their highest_,[86] and all the stars
Shine, and the Shepherd gladdens in his heart:
So many a fire between the ships and stream
Of Xanthus blazed before the towers of Troy,
A thousand on the plain; and close by each
Sat fifty in the blaze of burning fire;
And eating hoary grain and pulse the steeds,
Fixt by their cars, waited the golden dawn.
The passage, let me add, is a crucial test of the power of a translator,
for this reason: it is a plain, simple description of the Trojan
camp-fires in the darkness, with a simile or comparison of the sight to a
clearance of the sky at night and the sudden shining of the multitude of
stars. With the infallible instinct of Greek Poetry there is a rapid lift
in the style, a sudden glorious phrase [Greek: huperragê aspetos aithêr],
to suggest adequately the magnificent sight of the sudden clearance. It is
this effect that is difficult to give in the translation; and it is
exactly this splendid climax that Tennyson's incomparable rendering, "And
the immeasurable heavens break open to their highest," so perfectly
conveys.