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Chronological
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©1972 by Christopher Ricks
d’Eyncourt) of Bayons Manor. Tennyson’s wife, Emily, was later to write in her reminiscences for her sons:
The first poetry that moved me was my own at five years old.
When I was eight, I remember making a line I thought grander
than Campbell, or Byron, or Scott. I rolled it out, it was this:
‘With slaughterous sons of thunder rolled the Before I could read, I was in the habit on a stormy day of spreading my arms to the wind, and crying out ‘I hear a voice that’s speaking in the wind,’ and the words ‘far, far away’ had always a strange charm for me. When I was in my very earliest teens . . . I wrote an epic in three books. It was full of furious battles à la Scott, and descriptions of lake and mountain scenery which I had never looked upon. I never felt so inspired–I used to compose 60 or 70 lines in a breath. I used to shout them about the silent fields, leaping over the hedges in my excitement.
GENTLEMAN’S MAGAZINE: These poems are full of amiable feelings, expressed for the most part with elegance and correctness. . . . The volume is a graceful addition to our domestic poetry, and does credit to the juvenile Adelphi.
TENNYSON to Aunt Russell: I am sitting owl-like and solitary in my rooms (nothing between me and the stars but a stratum of tiles). The hoof of the steed, the roll of the wheel, the shouts of drunken Gown, and drunken Town come up from below with a sea-like murmur. . .I know not how it is, but I feel isolated here in the midst of society. The country is so disgustingly level, the revelry of the place so monotonous, the studies of the University so uninteresting, so much matter of fact. None but dry-headed, calculating, angular little gentlemen can take much delight in them.
In May, Tennyson was elected a member of the Apostles, an undergraduate debating society to which most of his Cambridge friends belonged. In June, Tennyson won the Chancellor’s Gold Medal with his prize poem, Timbuctoo.
CHARLES WORDSWORTH, bishop and nephew of the poet: What do you think of Tennyson’s Prize poem (‘Timbuctoo’)? If such an exercise had been sent up at Oxford, the author would have had a better chance of being rusticated, with the view of his passing a few months at a Lunatic Asylum, than of obtaining the prize. It is certainly a wonderful production; and if it had come out with Lord Byron’s name, it would have been thought as fine as anything he ever wrote.
A noble being, full of clearest insight– A man whom we’re beforehand with the time In loving and revering: but whose fame Is couching now with panther eyes intent, As who should say, “I’ll spring to him anon, And have him for my own!” Nor may we then Be all forgotten priests of his great honour . . . In July, Tennyson visited the Pyrenees with Hallam.
Next day, 16 March 1831, Tennyson’s father died. Tennyson left Cambridge without taking a degree.
We have remarked five distinctive excellencies of his own manner. First, his luxuriance of imagination, and at the same time his control over it. Secondly, his power of embodying himself in ideal characters, or rather moods of character, with such extreme accuracy of adjustment, that the circumstances of the narration seem to have a natural correspondence with the predominant feeling, and, as it were, to be evolved from it by assimilative force. Thirdly, his vivid, picturesque delineation of objects, and the peculiar skill with which he holds all of them fused, to borrow a metaphor from science, in a medium of strong emotion. Fourthly, the variety of his lyrical measures, and exquisite modulation of harmonious words and cadences to the swell and fall of the feelings expressed. Fifthly, the elevated habits of thought, implied in these compositions, and imparting a mellow soberness of tone, more impressive, to our minds, than if the author had drawn up a set of opinions in verse, and sought to instruct the understanding rather than to communicate the love of beauty to the heart. ARTHUR HALLAM (August 1831): Alfred, not intending to go into the Church, as the grandfather who has patria potestas over him wishes, and not having yet brought himself to cobble shoes for his livelihood, is desirous of putting his wits to profit, and begins to think himself a fool for kindly complying with the daily requests of Annuals without getting anything in return.
TICKLER. . . .Are there no younkers? NORTH. A few–but equivocal. I have good hopes of Alfred Tennyson. But the Cockneys are doing what they may to spoil him–and if he suffers them to put their birdlime on his feet, he will stick all the days of his life on hedgerows, or leap fluttering about the bushes. I should be sorry for it–for though his wings are far from being full-fledged, they promise now well in the pinions–and I should not be surprised to see him yet a sky-soarer. His “Golden Days of good Haroun Alraschid” are extremely beautiful. There is feeling–and fancy–in his Oriana. He has a fine ear for melody and harmony too–and rare and rich glimpses of imagination. He has–genius. TICKLER. Affectations. NORTH. Too many. But I admire Alfred–and hope–nay trust –that one day he will prove himself a poet. If he do not–then am I no prophet.
In October, Tennyson’s brother Edward (born 1813) succumbed to insanity, which proved incurable. In December, Tennyson published Poems (the title-page was dated 1833). Among the poems were ‘The Lady of Shalott,’ ‘Mariana in the South,’ ‘Œnone,’ ‘The Palace of Art,’ ‘The Lotos-Eaters,’ and ‘A Dream of Fair Women.’ The volume included seven poems which Tennyson did not subsequently reprint, as well as seven poems which he did not reprint in his collection of 1842 but reprinted later.
In April, there was a venomous review of Poems, by J. W. Croker in Quarterly Review. In September, Arthur Hallam died suddenly, while visiting Vienna.
EDWARD FITZGERALD, man of letters and poet, translator of the Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám (October 1833): Tennyson has been in town for some time: he has been making fresh poems, which are finer, they say, than any he has done. But I believe he is chiefly meditating on the purging and subliming of what he has already done: and repents that he has published at all yet. It is fine to see how in each succeeding poem the smaller ornaments and fancies drop away, and leave the grand ideas single.
JOHN STUART MILL, philosopher (July 1835): Of all the capacities of a poet, that which seems to have arisen earliest in Mr.
Tennyson, and in which he most excels, is that of scene-painting, in the higher sense of the term: not the mere power
of producing that rather vapid species of composition usually
termed descriptive poetry–for there is not in these volumes
one passage of pure description: but the power of creating
scenery, in keeping with some state of human feeling; so fitted
to it as to be the embodied symbol of it, and to summon up the
state of feeling itself, with a force not to be surpassed by anything but reality. Our first specimen, selected from the earlier
of the two volumes, will illustrate chiefly this quality of Mr.
Tennyson’s productions. We do not anticipate that this little
poem will be equally relished at first by all lovers of poetry:
and indeed if it were, its merits could be but of the humblest
kind; for sentiments and imagery which can be received at
once, and with equal ease, into every mind, must necessarily
be trite. Nevertheless, we do not hesitate to quote it at full
length. The subject is Mariana, the Mariana of Measure for
Measure, living deserted and in solitude in the ‘moated grange.’
SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE, poet and man of letters (published in 1835): I have not read through all Mr. Tennyson’s
poems, which have been sent to me; but I think there are some
things of a good deal of beauty in what I have seen. The misfortune is, that he has begun to write verses without very well
understanding what metre is. Even if you write in a known and
approved metre, the odds are, if you are not a metrist yourself,
that you will not write harmonious verses; but to deal in new
metres without considering what metre means and requires, is
preposterous. What I would, with many wishes for success,
prescribe to Tennyson,–indeed without it he can never be a
poet in act,–is to write for the next two or three years in none
but one or two well-known and strictly defined metres, such as
the heroic couplet, the octave stanza, or the octo-syllabic
measure. . . .
In September, Tennyson was persuaded by Richard Monckton Milnes (after an initial refusal which hurt Milnes’s feelings) to contribute to a charitable volume, The Tribute. Tennyson sent ‘Oh! that ’twere possible,’ the lyric around which he later created Maud. In deploring Milnes’s quickness to take offence, Tennyson sketched his own situation:
THOMAS CARLYLE, historical, religious and political thinker (September 1840): A fine, large-featured, dim-eyed, bronze-coloured, shaggy-headed man is Alfred: dusty, smoky, free and easy; who swims outwardly and inwardly, with great composure in an articulate element as of tranquil chaos and tobacco smoke: great now and then when he does emerge: a most restful, brotherly, solid-hearted man.
TENNYSON (February 1841) to the American publisher, C. S.
Wheeler, of Little, Brown: I am conscious of many things so
exceedingly crude in those two volumes that it would certainly
be productive of no slight annoyance to me, to see them repulisht as they stand at present, either here or in America. But
I will tell you what I will do, for when I was wavering before,
your letter has decided me. I have corrected copies of most
that was worth correction in those two volumes and I will in
the course of a few months republish these in England with
several new poems and transmit copies to Little and Brown and
also to yourself (if you will accept one) and you can then of
course do as you choose with them.
Tennyson’s friend JANE ELTON (April 1841): [She] says of
Alfred Tennyson (who has been at Tunbridge) ‘very far from
handsome, and his hair quite disturbed me–but after the first
sight I like him–he is agreeable and clever’. I wouldn’t cut his
hair for worlds, would you?
W. M. THACKERAY (May-June 1841): Alfred Tennyson, if he
can’t make you like him, will make you admire him,–he seems
to me to have the cachet of a great man. His conversation is
often delightful, I think, full of breadth, manliness and humour: he reads all sorts of things, swallows them and digests
them like a great poetical boa-constrictor as he is . . . Perhaps
it is Alfred Tennyson’s great big yellow face and growling voice
that has had an impression on me. Manliness and simplicity of
manner go a great way with me, I fancy.
LEIGH HUNT, poet and man of letters (October 1842): We are compelled to say, then, in justice to the very respect which we entertain, and the more which we desire to entertain, for the genius of Mr. Tennyson, that the above ‘lettings out of the bag’ of his dates and alterations, are a little too characteristic of a certain mixture of timidity and misgiving with his otherwise somewhat defying demands upon our assent to his figments and his hyphens, and that we have greater objections to a certain air of literary dandyism, or fine-gentlemanism, or fastidiousness, or whatever he may not be pleased to call it, which leads him to usher in his compositions with such exordiums as those to ‘Morte d’Arthur,’ and ‘Godiva’; in the former of which he gives us to understand that he should have burnt his poem but for the ‘request of friends’; and, in the latter, that he ‘shaped’ it while he was waiting ‘for the train at Coventry,’ and hanging on the bridge ‘with grooms and porters.’ Really this is little better than the rhyming fine-ladyism of Miss Seward, who said that she used to translate an ode of Horace ‘while her hair was curling.’ And, if the ‘grooms and porters’ have any meaning beyond a superfluous bit of the graphic, not in keeping with his subject, it is a little worse, for why should not Mr. Tennyson, in the universality of his poetry, be as content to be waiting on a bridge, among ‘grooms and porters,’ as with any other assortment of his fellow-men? Doubtless he would disclaim any such want of philosophy; but this kind of mixed tone of contempt and nonchalance, or, at best, of fine-life phrases with better fellowship, looks a little instructive, and is, at all events, a little perilous. There is a drawl of Bond-street in it. We suspect that these poems of ‘Morte d’Arthur’ and ‘Godiva’ are among those which Mr. Tennyson thinks his best, and is most anxious that others should regard as he does; and therefore it is that he would affect to make trifles of them. The reader’s opinion is at once to be of great importance to him, and yet none at all. There is a boyishness in this, which we shall be happy to see Mr. Tennyson, who is no longer a boy, outgrow.
Alfred is the son of a Lincolnshire Gentleman Farmer, I think; indeed you see in his verses that he is a native of “moated granges,” and green fat pastures, not of mountains and their torrents and storms. He had his breeding at Cambridge, as if for the Law, or Church; being master of a small annuity on his Father’s decease, he preferred clubbing with his Mother and some Sisters, to live unpromoted and write Poems. In this way he lives still, now here now there; the family always within reach of London, never in it; he himself making rare and brief visits, lodging in some old comrade’s rooms. I think he must be under forty, not much under it. One of the finest looking men in the world. A great shock of rough dusty-dark hair; bright-laughing hazel eyes; massive aquiline face, most massive yet most delicate, of sallow brown complexion, almost Indian-looking; clothes cynically loose, free-and-easy;–smokes infinite tobacco. His voice is musical metallic,–fit for loud laughter and piercing wail, and all that may lie between; speech and speculation free and plenteous: I do not meet, in these late decades, such company over a pipe!–We shall see what he will grow to. He is often unwell; very chaotic,–his way is thro’ Chaos and the Bottomless and Pathless; not handy for making out many miles upon.
JANE WELSH CARLYLE, wife of Carlyle (January 1845):
Carlyle went to dine at Mr. Chadwick’s the other day, and I,
not being yet equal to a dinner altho’ I was asked to “come in
a blanket and stay all night!” had made up my mind for a nice
long quiet evening of looking into the fire, when I heard a carriage drive up, and men’s voices asking questions, and then
the carriage was sent away! and the men proved to be Alfred
Tennyson of all people and his friend Mr. Moxon–Alfred
lives in the country and only comes to London rarely and for
a few days so that I was overwhelmed with the sense of
Carlyle’s misfortune in having missed the man he likes best,
for stupid Chadwick, especially as he had gone against his
will at my earnest persuasion. Alfred is dreadfully embarrassed
with women alone–for he entertains at one and the same
moment a feeling of almost adoration for them and an ineffable
contempt! adoration I suppose for what they might be–contempt for what they are! The only chance of my getting any
right good of him was to make him forget my womanness–so I
did just as Carlyle would have done, had he been there: got out
pipes and tobacco–and brandy and water–with a deluge of
tea over and above.–The effect of these accessories was miraculous–he professed to be ashamed of polluting my room, “felt”
he said, “as if he were stealing cups and sacred vessels in the
Temple”–but he smoked on all the same–for three mortal
hours!–talking like an angel–only exactly as if he were talking
with a clever man–which–being a thing I am not used to–men always adapting their conversation to what they take to
be a woman’s taste–strained me to a terrible pitch of intellectuality.
EDWARD FITZGERALD (February 1845) on In Memoriam: We
have surely had enough of men reporting their sorrows: especially when one is aware all the time that the poet wilfully
protracts what he complains of, magnifies it in the Imagination, puts it into all the shapes of Fancy: and yet we are to
condole with him, and be taught to ruminate our losses and
sorrows in the same way. I felt that if Tennyson had got on a
horse and ridden 20 miles, instead of moaning over his pipe,
he would have been cured of his sorrows in half the time. As
it is, it is about 3 years before the Poetic Soul walks itself out
of darkness and Despair into Common Sense.
ROBERT BROWNING, poet (February 1845) on Tennyson’s reviewers and his revisions: For Keats and Tennyson to “go
softly all their days” for a gruff word or two is quite inexplicable
to me, and always has been. Tennyson reads the “Quarterly”
and does as they bid him, with the most solemn face in
the world–out goes this, in goes that, all is changed and
ranged. .Oh me!
ELIZABETH BARRETT, poet, to Robert Browning (June 1845)
on Tennyson’s Timbuctoo, and other poems: Yes, the poem
is too good in certain respects for the prizes given in colleges. .
(when all the pure parsley goes naturally to the rabbits) . .
and has a great deal of beauty here and there in image and expression. Still I do not quite agree with you that it reaches the
Tennyson standard any wise; and for the blank verse, I cannot
for a moment think it comparable to one of the grand passages
in ‘Œnone’, and ‘Arthur’ and the like. In fact I seem to hear
more in that latter blank verse than you do, . . to hear not only
a ‘mighty line’ as in Marlowe, but a noble full orbicular wholeness in complete passages–which always struck me as the
mystery of music and great peculiarity in Tennyson’s versification, inasmuch as he attains to these complete effects without
that shifting of the pause practised by the masters, . . Shelley
and others. A ‘linked music’ . . in which there are no links! . .
that, you would take to be a contradiction–and yet something
like that, my ear has always seemed to perceive; and I have
wondered curiously again and again how there could be so
much union and no fastening. Only of course it is not model
versification–and for dramatic purposes, it must be admitted
to be bad.
Of borrowed notes, the mock-bird’s modish tune, The jingling medley of purloin’d conceits, Outbabying Wordsworth, and outglittering Keats, Where all the airs of patchwork-pastoral chime To drowsy ears in Tennysonian rhyme!
On “darling little rooms so warm and bright!” Chaunt, “I’m aweary,” in infectious strain, And catch her “blue fly singing i’ the pane.” Tho’ praised by Critics, tho’ adored by Blues, Tho’ Peel with pudding plump the puling Muse, Tho’ Theban taste the Saxon’s purse controuls, And pensions Tennyson, while starves a Knowles, Rather, be thou, my poor Pierian Maid, Decent at least, in Hayley’s weeds array’d, Than patch with frippery every tinsel line, And flaunt, admired, the Rag Fair of the Nine! AUBREY DE VERE, man of letters (July 1846): On my way in, paid a visit to Tennyson, who seemed much out of spirits, and said that he could no longer bear to be knocked about the world, and that he must marry and find love and peace or die. He was very angry about a very favourable review of him. Said that he could not stand the chattering and conceit of clever men, or the worry of society, or the meanness of tuft-hunters, or the trouble of poverty, or the labour of a place, or the preying of the heart on itself. . . He complained much about growing old, and said he cared nothing for fame, and that his life was all thrown away for want of a competence and retirement. Said that no one had been so much harassed by anxiety and trouble as himself. I told him he wanted occupation, a wife, and orthodox principles, which he took well.
SIR JAMES KNOWLES quoting Tennyson: It is in a way like St.
Paul’s ‘groanings which cannot be uttered’. . . It is what I
have always felt even from a boy, and what as a boy I called
the ‘passion of the past’. And it is so always with me now; it
is the distance that charms me in the landscape, the picture
and the past, and not the immediate to-day in which I move.
J. W. MARSTON, dramatic poet, on The Princess: The grand
error of the story is the incoherency of its characteristics. Its
different parts refuse to amalgamate. They are derived from
standards foreign to each other. The familiar and conventional
impair the earnestness of the ideal:–and what might else have
been appreciated as genial satire loses its force from its juxtaposition to tragic emotion. Nor are these opposite elements
used as contrasts to each other. It is sought to identify them;
but in the attempt to fuse both, each parts with its distinctiveness . . . It is true that the author has anticipated our exceptions. His very title-page declares The Princess to be a
‘Medley’. In the Prologue we have this avowal in detail . . .
But this consciousness of an eccentric plan can scarcely excuse it.
THOMAS CARLYLE (December 1847): Tennyson has been here
for three weeks; dining daily till he is near dead;–setting out
a Poem withal. He came in to us on Sunday evening last, and
on the preceding Sunday: a truly interesting Son of Earth,
and Son of Heaven,–who has almost lost his way, among the
will-o’wisps, I doubt; and may flounder ever deeper, over neck
and nose at last, among the quagmires that abound! I like him
well; but can do next to nothing for him. Milnes, with general
cooperation, got him a Pension; and he has bread and tobacco:
but that is a poor outfit for such a soul. He wants a task; and,
alas, that of spinning rhymes, and naming it “Art” and “high
Art” in a Time like ours, will never furnish him.
EDWARD FITZGERALD (November 1848): Tennyson is emerged half-cured, or half-destroyed, from a water establishment: has gone to a new Doctor who gives him iron pills; and altogether this really great man thinks more about his bowels and nerves than about the Laureate wreath he was born to inherit. Not but he meditates new poems; and now the Princess is done, he turns to King Arthur–a worthy subject indeed–and has consulted some histories of him, and spent some time in visiting his traditionary haunts in Cornwall. But I believe the trumpet can wake Tennyson no longer to do great deeds; I may mistake and prove myself an owl; which I hope may be the case. But how are we to expect heroic poems from a valetudinary? I have told him he should fly from England and go among savages.
EMILY SELLWOOD (April 1850), thanking Tennyson for letting
her read the manuscript of In Memoriam: Katie told me the
poems might be kept until Saturday. I hope I shall not have
occasioned any inconvenience by keeping them to the limit
of time; and if I have I must be forgiven, for I cannot willingly part from what is so precious. The thanks I would say
for them and for the faith in me which has trusted them to
me must be thought for me, I cannot write them. I have read
the poems through and through and through and to me they
were and they are ever more and more a spirit monument
grand and beautiful, in whose presence I feel admiration and
delight, not unmixed with awe. The happiest possible end to
this labour of love! But think not its fruits shall so soon perish,
for they are life in life, and they shall live, and as years go on
be only the more fully known and loved and reverenced for
what they are.
It is rather the cry of the whole human race than mine. In the poem, altogether private grief swells out into thought of, and hope for, the whole world. It begins with a funeral and ends with a marriage–begins with death and ends in promise of a new life–a sort of Divine Comedy, cheerful at the close. It is a very impersonal poem as well as personal. There is more about myself in ‘Ulysses’, which was written under the sense of loss and that all had gone by, but that still life must be fought out to the end. It was more written with the feeling of his loss upon me than many poems in In Memoriam . . . It’s too hopeful, this poem, more than I am myself . . . The general way of its being written was so queer that if there were a blank space I would put in a poem . . . I think of adding another to it, a speculative one, bringing out the thoughts of ‘The Higher Pantheism’, and showing that all the arguments are about as good on one side as the other, and thus throw man back more on the primitive impulses and feelings. CHARLES KINGSLEY, novelist and man of letters (September 1850): In every place where in old days they had met and conversed; in every dark wrestling of the spirit with the doubts and fears of manhood, throughout the whole outward universe of nature, and the whole inward universe of spirit, the soul of his dead friend broods–at first a memory shrouded in blank despair, then a living presence, a ministering spirit, answering doubts, calming fears, stirring up noble aspirations, utter humility, leading the poet upward step by step to faith, and peace, and hope. Not that there runs throughout the book a conscious or organic method. The poems seem often merely to be united by the identity of their metre, so exquisitely chosen, that while the major rhyme in the second and third lines of each stanza gives the solidity and self-restraint required by such deep themes, the mournful minor rhyme of each first and fourth line always leads the ear to expect something beyond, and enables the poet’s thoughts to wander sadly on, from stanza to stanza and poem to poem, in an endless chain of ‘Linked sweetness long drawn out.’ There are records of risings and fallings again, of alternate cloud and sunshine, throughout the book; earnest and passionate, yet never bitter; humble, yet never abject; with a depth and vehemence of affection ‘passing the love of woman’, yet without a taint of sentimentality; self-restrained and dignified, without ever narrowing into artificial coldness; altogether rivalling the sonnets of Shakespeare.–Why should we not say boldly, surpassing–for the sake of the superior faith into which it rises, for the sake of the poem at the opening of the volume–in our eyes, the noblest English Christian poem which several centuries have seen?
AUBREY DE VERE: Her great and constant desire is to make
her husband more religious, or at least to conduce, as far as
she may, to his growth in the spiritual life. In this she will
doubtless succeed, for piety like hers is infectious, especially
where there is an atmosphere of affection to serve as a conducting medium. Indeed I already observe a great improvement in
Alfred. His nature is a religious one, and he is remarkably free
from vanity and sciolism. Such a nature gravitates towards
Christianity, especially when it is in harmony with itself.
THOMAS CARLYLE: Alfred looks really improved, I should say;
cheerful in what he talks, and looking forward to a future less
“detached” than the past has been. Poor fellow, a good soul,
find him where or how situated you may! Mrs. T. also pleased
me; the first glance of her is the least favourable. A freckly
round-faced woman, rather tallish and without shape, a slight
lisp too.
EDWARD FITZGERALD: A Lady of a Shakespearian type, as I
think A.T. once said of her: that is, of the Imogen sort, far
more agreeable to me than the sharp-witted Beatrices, Rosalinds, etc. I do not think she has been (on this very account
perhaps) so good a helpmate to A.T.’s Poetry as to himself.
EDWARD FITZGERALD (December 1850): As to Alfred, I have heard of his marriage, etc., from Spedding, who also saw and was much pleased with her indeed. But you know Alfred himself never writes, nor indeed cares a halfpenny about one, though he is very well satisfied to see one when one falls in his way. You will think I have a spite against him for some neglect, when I say this, and say besides that I cannot care for his In Memoriam. Not so, if I know myself: I always thought the same of him, and was just as well satisfied with it as now. His poem I never did greatly affect: nor can I learn to do so: it is full of finest things, but it is monotonous, and has that air of being evolved by a Poetical Machine of the highest order. So it seems to be with him now, at least to me, the Impetus, the Lyrical œstrus, is gone. . . .
WILLIAM ALLINGHAM, poet (June 1851): I was admitted,
shown upstairs into a room with books lying about, and soon
came in a tall, broad-shouldered swarthy man, slightly stooping, with loose dark hair and beard. He wore spectacles, and
was obviously very near-sighted. Hollow cheeks and the dark
pallor of his skin gave him an unhealthy appearance. He was a
strange and almost spectral figure. The Great Man peered
close at me, and then shook hands cordially, yet with a profound quietude of manner. He was then about forty-one, but
looked much older, from his bulk, his short-sight, stooping
shoulders, and loose careless dress. He looked tired, and said
he had been asleep and was suffering from hay-fever. Mrs.
Tennyson came in, very sweet and courteous, with low soft
voice, and by and by when I rose to take leave she said, ‘Won’t
you stay for dinner?’ which I was too happy to do. Mr. Tennyson went out, and returning took me upstairs to his study–a
small room looking out to the back over gardens and trees. He
took up my volume of poems, saying, ‘You can see it is a good
deal dirtier than most of the books.’ Then turning the pages,
he made critical remarks, mostly laudatory . . .
He turned sharp round. ‘Ay! you may say “wonderful.” Why, when I saw the review of his poems in “Blackwood,” I set off within an hour, and walked seven miles to Misselton (for the horses were not in the way) and ordered them. Now, what colour are ash-buds in March?’ Is the man going mad? thought I. He is very like Don Quixote. ‘What colour are they, I say?’ repeated he, vehemently. ‘I am sure I don’t know, sir,’ said I, with the meekness of ignorance. ‘I knew you didn’t. No more did I–an old fool that I am!–till this young man comes and tells me. Black as ash-buds in March. And I’ve lived all my life in the country; more shame for me not to know. Black: they are jet-black, madam.’ And he went off again, swinging along to the music of some rhyme he had got hold of. When we came back, nothing would serve him but he must read us the poems he had been speaking of; and Miss Pole encouraged him in his proposal, I thought, because she wished me to hear his beautiful reading, of which she had boasted; but she afterwards said it was because she had got to a difficult part of her crochet, and wanted to count her stitches without having to talk. Whatever he had proposed would have been right to Miss Matty; although she did fall sound asleep within five minutes after he had begun a long poem, called ‘Locksley Hall,’ and had a comfortable nap, unobserved, till he ended; when the cessation of his voice wakened her up, and she said, feeling that something was expected, and that Miss Pole was counting: ‘What a pretty book!’ ‘Pretty, madam! it’s beautiful! Pretty, indeed!’
In July, he published Maud, and Other Poems.
GEORGE ELIOT [MARY ANN EVANS], novelist (October 1855),
on Maud: Its tone is throughout morbid; it opens to us the
self revelations of a morbid mind, and what it presents as the
cure for this mental disease is itself only a morbid conception
of human relations.
GOLDWIN SMITH, historian and political thinker (November
1855): To rely on external sensations instead of internal efforts
for a moral cure, is natural to that character which, whether
dramatically or otherwise, is presented to us throughout Mr.
Tennyson’s poems–sometimes directly as in Maud and ‘Locksley Hall’, everywhere as the medium through which the world
is viewed. It is the character of a man of high intellect and
exquisite sensibility, keenly alive to all impressions, but wanting in the power of action and active sympathies, dependent
on the world without him for happiness, and cynical because
it is not afforded. Not once throughout the poems is active
life painted with real zest. Not once are we called to witness
the happiness or the moral cures which result from self-
exertion. Everywhere we feel the force of circumstances, nowhere the energy of free will. The meditated suicide in the
‘Two Voices’ is arrested, not by an effort of reason or an act
of faith, but by the sound of the church bells, and the sight
of happy people going to church. Women seem to have no
function but that of casting out the demon of hypochondria
from the breast of the solitary, and relieving him of the melancholy which flows to him from all around him–from his home
and history, from nature, from philosophy, from science. They
are the ‘counter-charms of space and hollow sky’, without
active life or interests of their own; we can scarcely think of
them as wives, much less as daughters or as mothers. Marriage
itself, though painted as the gate of virtue and happiness,
seems to lead, not from melancholy listlessness into activity,
but only from an unhappy dream into a happy one. We see
the visionary and his wife in ‘The Miller’s Daughter’, leading
the life of lotus eaters. Even children would bore them. They
have had one, which has died, and become a pensive reminiscence, adding the luxury of melancholy to their happy
thoughts, as they sit at evening looking into each other’s eyes,
or wander out to see the sunset.
All this to the intense wonder of Browning, who as you know, treats reviewers in the way they deserve. T. actually insisted that for twelve years after his first publication, no notice whatsoever was taken of him, and seemed rather annoyed at anyone recollecting to the contrary. Of course there was something most delightful in the genuineness of all this, and he is quite as glorious in his way as Browning in his, and perhaps of the two even more impressive on the whole personally. One of his neverended stories was about an anonymous letter running thus (received since Maud came out)–‘Sir, I used to worship you, but now I hate you. I loathe and detest you. You beast! So you’ve taken to imitating Longfellow. Yours in aversion,–’ and no name, says Alfred, scoring the table with an indignant thumb, and glaring round with suspended pipe, while his auditors look as sympathising as their view of the matter permits. . . . But the idea of literary cabals, under which he is destined to sink one day, never seemed to leave his mind. As we walked home we passed the Holborn Casino before which cabs were driven up. ‘What’s that place’ asks A.T. and on my telling him –‘Ah!’ he says, ‘I’d rather like to go there, but la!’ (a minute afterwards) ‘there’d be some newspaper man, and he’d know me.
Tennyson’s friend JANE [ELTON] BROOKFIELD: One of these
mornings Tennyson came into breakfast rather late, with a
perturbed expression of face, his watch in his hand, saying
with great gravity: ‘My watch has stopped; what am I to do?’
We all felt concerned for a moment, then Mr. Fairbairn, with
equal gravity, rose from his chair, took the watch from Alfred’s
hand, asked for his key, wound it up, and silently returned it
to its owner.
RALPH WALDO EMERSON, from English Traits: There is no
finer ear, nor more command of the keys of language. Colour,
like the dawn, flows over the horizon from his pencil, in waves
so rich that we do not miss the central form. Through all his
refinements, too, he has reached the public,–a certificate of
good sense and general power, since he who aspires to be the
English poet must be as large as London, not in the same kind
as London, but in his own kind. But he wants a subject, and
climbs no mount of vision to bring its secrets to the people.
He contents himself with describing the Englishman as he is,
and proposes no better. There are all degrees in poetry, and we
must be thankful for every beautiful talent. But it is only a
first success, when the ear is gained.
ARTHUR HUGH CLOUGH, poet (November 1856): I like him
personally better than I do his manner in his verses; personally
he is the most unmannerly simple big child of a man that you
can find.
Knowing how much my wife would delight to see him, I went in search of her, and found her and the rest of us under the music-gallery; and we all, Fanny and Rosebud included, went back to the saloon of Old Masters. So rapid was his glance at the pictures, that, in this little interval, Tennyson had got half-way along the other side of the saloon; and, as it happened, an acquaintance had met him, an elderly gentleman and lady, and he was talking to them as we approached. I heard his voice; a bass voice, but not of a resounding depth; a voice rather broken, as it were, and ragged about the edges, but pleasant to the ear. His manner, while conversing with these people, was not in the least that of an awkward man, unaccustomed to society; but he shook hands and parted with them, evidently as soon as he courteously could, and shuffled away quicker than before. He betrayed his shy and secluded habits more in this, than in anything else that I observed; though, indeed, in his whole presence, I was indescribably sensible of a morbid painfulness in him, a something not to be meddled with. Very soon, he left the saloon, shuffling along the floor with short irregular steps, a very queer gait, as if he were walking in slippers too loose for him. I had observed that he seemed to turn his feet slightly inward, after the fashion of Indians. How strange, that in these two or three pages I cannot get one single touch that may call him up hereafter! . . . He is exceedingly nervous, and altogether as un-English as possible; indeed, an Englishman of genius usually lacks the national characteristics, and is great abnormally, and through disease. LEWIS CARROLL [THE REVEREND C. L. DODGSON], mathematician and nonsense writer (September 1857): After I had waited some little time the door opened, and a strange shaggy-looking man entered: his hair, moustache and beard looked wild and neglected: these very much hid the character of the face . . . Both face and head are fine and manly. His manner was kind and friendly from the first: there is a dry lurking humour in his style of talking. . . .
ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING: But the Idylls. Am I forced
to admit that after the joy of receiving them, other joys fell
short, rather?–That the work, as a whole, produced a feeling
of disappointment?–It must be admitted, I fear. Perhaps we
had been expecting too long–had made too large an idea to fit
a reality. Perhaps the breathing, throbbing life around us in
this Italy, where a nation is being new-born, may throw King
Arthur too far off and flat. But, whatever the cause, the effect
was so. The colour, the temperature, the very music, left me
cold. Here are exquisite things, but the whole did not affect
me as a whole from Tennyson’s hands.
THOMAS CARLYLE: We read, at first, Tennyson’s Idylls, with
profound recognition of the finely elahorated execution, and
also of the inward perfection of vacancy,–and, to say truth,
with considerable impatience at being treated so very like infants, tho’ the lollipops were so superlative.
GEORGE ELIOT: I had seemed in the unmanageable current of
talk to echo a too slight way of speaking about a great poet.
I did not mean to say Amen when ‘The Idylls of the King’
seemed to be judged rather ‘de haut en bas’. I only meant that
I should value for my own mind ‘In Memoriam’ as the chief
of the larger works, and that while I feel exquisite beauty in
passages scattered through the Idylls, I must judge some
smaller wholes among the lyrics as the works most decisive of
Tennyson’s high place among the immortals.
WALTER BAGEHOT, economist and man of letters: We have
said enough of the merits of this poem to entitle us to say what
ought to be said against it. We have not, indeed, a long list of
defects to set forth. On the contrary, we think we perceive only
one of real importance; and it is very probable that many critics
will think us quite wrong as to that one. It appears to us that
the Idylls are defective in dramatic power. Madame de Staël
said that Coleridge was admirable in monologue, but quite
incapable of dialogue. Something analogous may perhaps be
said of Mr. Tennyson. His imagination seems to fix itself on a
particular person in a particular situation; and he pours out,
with ease and abundance, with delicacy and exactness, all
which is suitable to that person in that situation. This was so
with ‘Ulysses’ in former years; it is so in his ‘Grandmother’s
Apology’, published the other day. Unnumbered instances of
it may be found in the Idylls. But the power of writing a
soliloquy is very different from that of writing a conversation; so different, indeed, that the person who is most likely
to wish to write one, is most likely not to wish to write
the other. Dialogue requires a very changing imagination,
ready to move with ease from the mental position of one mind
to the mental position of another, quick with the various
language suited to either. Soliloquy–prolonged soliloquy, at
any rate–requires a very steady imagination, steadily accumulating, slowly realising the exact position of a single person.
The glancing mind will tend to one sort of composition; the
meditative, solitary, and heavy mind to the other. All Mr.
Tennyson’s poems show more of the latter tendency than of
the first. His genius gives the notion of a slow depositing instinct; day by day, as the hours pass, the delicate sand falls into
beautiful forms–in stillness, in peace, in brooding.
He was very violent with the girls on the subject of the rage for autographs. He said he believed every crime and every vice in the world were connected with the passion for autographs and anecdotes and records,–that the desiring anecdotes and acquaintance with the lives of great men was treating them like pigs to be ripped open for the public; that he knew he himself should be ripped open like a pig; that he thanked God Almighty with his whole heart and soul that he knew nothing, and that the world knew nothing, of Shakespeare but his writings; and that he thanked God Almighty that he knew nothing of Jane Austen, and that there were no letters preserved either of Shakespeare’s or of Jane Austen’s, that they had not been ripped open like pigs. Then he said that the post for two days had brought him no letters, and that he thought there was a sort of syncope in the world as to him and to his fame.
EDWARD LEAR (June 1860): A.T. was most disagreeably
querulous and irritating and would return, chiefly because he
saw people approaching. But Frank Lushington would not
go back, and led zigzagwise toward the sea–A.T. snubby and
cross always. After a time he would not go on–but led me
back by muddy paths (over our shoes,) a short cut home–hardly, even, at last avoiding his horror,–the villagers coming
from church . . . I believe that this is my last visit to Farringford–nor can I wish it otherwise all things considered.
MATTHEW ARNOLD, poet, educationalist and man of letters
(December 1860): The fault I find with Tennyson in his
Idylls of the King is that the peculiar charm and aroma of the
Middle Age he does not give in them . . . The real truth is
that Tennyson, with all his temperament and artistic skill, is
deficient in intellectual power; and no modern poet can make
very much of his business unless he is pre-eminently strong in
this.
Gleams that untravelled world, whose margin fades For ever and for ever when I move. . . . When Mr. Spedding talks of a plainness of thought ‘like Homer’s’, of a plainness of speech ‘like Homer’s’, and says that he finds these constantly in Mr. Tennyson’s poetry, I answer that these I do not find there at all. Mr. Tennyson is a most distinguished and charming poet; but the very essential characteristic of his poetry is, it seems to me, an extreme subtlety and curious elaborateness of thought, an extreme subtlety and curious elaborateness of expression. In the best and most characteristic productions of his genius, these characteristics are most prominent. They are marked characteristics, as we have seen, of the Elizabethan poets; they are marked, though not the essential, characteristics of Shakspeare himself. Under the influences of the nineteenth century, under wholly new conditions of thought and culture, they manifest themselves in Mr. Tennyson’s poetry in a wholly new way. But they are still there. The essential bent of his poetry is towards such expressions as–
When the calmed mountain was a shadow, sunned
The fresh young captains flashed their glittering teeth,
He bared the knotted column of his throat,
Far on the ringing plains of windy Troy,–
In April, Tennyson had his first audience with Queen Victoria, at Osborne, Isle of Wight:
HENRY TAYLOR (May 1862): As to his reading, he is a deep-mouthed hound, and the sound of it is very grand; but I rather need to know by heart what he is reading, for otherwise I find sense to be lost in sounds from time to time; and, even when I do know what the words are, I think more of articulation is wanted to give the consonantal effects of the rhythm; for without these effects the melodious sinks into the mellifluous in any ordinary utterance; and even when intoned by such an organ as Alfred’s, if the poetry be of a high order, the rhythm so sounded loses something of its musical and more of its intellectual significance. In the best verse not every word only but every letter should speak. Nevertheless, his reading is very fine of its kind, and it is a very rare thing to hear fine reading of any kind.
Afterwards saw Mr. and Mrs. Tennyson and their 2 sons. Had some interesting conversation with him and was struck with the greatness and largeness of his mind, under a certainly rough exterior. Speaking of the immortality of the soul and of all the scientific discoveries in no way interfering with that, he said, ‘If there is no immortality of the soul, one does not see why there should be any God,’ and that ‘You cannot love a Father who strangled you’, etc. EDWARD FITZGERALD (August 1863): I was told that Tennyson was writing a sort of Lincolnshire Idyll: I will bet on Miss Ingelow now: he should never have left his old County, and gone up to be suffocated by London Adulation. He has lost that which caused the long roll of the Lincolnshire Wave to reverberate in the measure of Locksley Hall. Don’t believe that I rejoice like a Dastard in what I believe to be the Decay of a Great Man: my sorrow has been so much about it that (for one reason) I have the less cared to meet him of late years, having nothing to say in sincere praise. Nor do I mean that his Decay is all owing to London, etc. He is growing old: and I don’t believe much in the Fine Arts thriving on an old Tree.
In August, Tennyson published Enoch Arden.
GERARD MANLEY HOPKINS, Jesuit priest and poet (September
1864): . . . I think then the language of verse may be divided
into three kinds. The first and highest is poetry proper, the
language of inspiration. The word inspiration need cause no
difficulty. I mean by it a mood of great, abnormal in fact,
mental acuteness, either energetic or receptive, according as
the thoughts which arise in it seem generated by a stress and
action of the brain, or to strike into it unasked. This mood
arises from various causes, physical generally, as good health or
state of the air or, prosaic as it is, length of time after a meal.
But I need not go into this; all that it is needful to mark is,
that the poetry of inspiration can only be written in this mood
of mind, even if it only last a minute, by poets themselves.
Everybody of course has like moods, but not being poets what
they then produce is not poetry. The second kind I call Parnassian. It can only be spoken by poets, but is not in the highest sense poetry. It does not require the mood of mind in which
the poetry of inspiration is written. It is spoken on and from
the level of a poet’s mind, not, as in the other case, when the
inspiration which is the gift of genius, raises him above himself. For I think it is the case with genius that it is not when quiescent so very much above mediocrity as the difference between the two might lead us to think, but that it has the power
and privilege of rising from that level to a height utterly far
from mediocrity: in other words that its greatness is that it can
be so great. You will understand. Parnassian then is that language which genius speaks as fitted to its exaltation, and place
among other genius, but does not sing (I have been betrayed
into the whole hog of a metaphor) in its flights. Great men,
poets I mean, have each their own dialect as it were of Parnassian, formed generally as they go on writing, and at last,–this
is the point to be marked,–they can see things in this Parnassian way and describe them in this Parnassian tongue, without further effort of inspiration. In a poet’s particular kind of
Parnassian lies most of his style, of his manner, of his mannerism if you like. But I must not go farther without giving you
instances of Parnassian. I shall take one from Tennyson, and
from ‘Enoch Arden’, from a passage much quoted already and
which will be no doubt often quoted, the description of
Enoch’s tropical island.
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